Author: Wildbow

Crossed with Silver – 19.15 | Pale

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“…Some of the word choices seem weird, and I’m sure there’s a good reason, but this stuff gets tricky because I can’t exactly look it up,” Lucy said.

“Right.”

Sebastian Harless was on a video call with her, same program she used when talking to Dr. Mona.  Lucy had the window open so the document was on one half and Mr. Harless was on the other.  Avery had made the connection between Lucy and the magical contract lawyer from Thunder Bay.

Lucy went on, “I can read example contracts and statements and see what comes up, learn it like how you learn new words when reading and sort of get the meaning, even if you’ve never read it.”

“I think that’s how you have to do it.  It’s the product of years and years of work, lots of reading, lots of practical experience.”

“I have two days, and it’s like I’m kneecapped by the Wild Hunt, and a bunch of other distractions.”

“What’s the end goal?”

“Trying to make an argument that someone like Abraham Musser can’t just, I dunno.  Wave his hands and nullify?”

“Wild Hunt and Abraham Musser, huh?  Can I be honest?”

Lucy sighed heavily.

“Is that a no?  I don’t want to overstep.”

“It’s not a no.  It’s… I want to hear.  Avery’s paying you for your expertise.”

“This isn’t expertise, exactly.  I hope you take this question in the way it’s meant, which is me arguing my way out of a paycheque, because I’d rather do right than make money.  But are you sure this is the route you want to take?  Contracts, against them?”

“Like challenging a giant to an arm wrestling contest.”

“Yeah.  Something like that.”

“What else are we going to do, Mr. Harless?  It’s not going to be much better if we try to fight, I don’t think.  We can try, we can pull strings, we can do stuff, but… words first?”

“I suppose.”

“The way I figure it, if I’m challenging a giant to an arm wrestling contest, maybe I can like… drive a truck into their arm when they aren’t expecting it and bam, score before they know it.”

“Avery has impressed on me that he may now know the general thrust of what you’re doing, so I’m not sure that’s valid.”

“Right,” Lucy said, quiet.

Avery had called during one of the council meetings and they’d discussed their options.  They’d decided that if Avery was okay trying, she could go talk to Fernanda and Raquel, trying for a win, because what they had set up already hadn’t felt like enough.  And they’d won some, lost some, when they definitely couldn’t afford to lose some.

“If you do want to try this, I’m happy to continue working with you on this.  But I’d hate to think that I helped you with this and gave you a false sense of security, and you- I don’t know.  Faced consequences?”

“Thanks,” Lucy replied, quiet.  She’d set up in her bed, laptop in her lap.  She glanced at the window, half expecting to see a member of the Wild Hunt there, peering in between the curtains.  “I’m not feeling very secure, don’t worry.”

“I’m sorry.”

She adjusted her position, and showed him her bandaged arm.  “The Hunt came into my school and sliced my arms open before disappearing.  They would’ve cut my throat if I was a little slower.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Lucy’s response didn’t come out when she tried.  She could see him, graying hair, not wrinkled, but he looked like the kind of person who wore wrinkled suits from head to toe, somehow.  Or like he was someone who’d been mugged, dragged into an alley, beaten, and he’d gotten up after, dusted himself off, and limped home, just accepting it as a matter of course.

That was the default look on his face, that she’d picked up from him.  The face of someone who’d been through that.  Yet he looked so sorry for her as he said that, his eyes so kind, that it left her momentarily speechless.

“That sounds horrible,” he added.  “I can’t imagine.”

“I- I wasn’t looking for sympathy.  I was- trying to make it clear where the situation is at.”

“Okay.”

“Look, I- I don’t want to sound like I’m being a pity whore, but- my arms are pretty sore and weak.  I’m not in great shape to fight, and if I do get better, or stronger, or find an edge, I think the Hunt will come again.  So I’m not really trying to get stronger.  Not physically.  Let them leave me in this state.  I don’t think they understand the internet, so they’re not blocking this call or interfering with this.  To them, I think it looks like I’m just lying around, feeling sorry for myself, waiting for Musser to come crush us.”

“Careful.  They may be able to hear you.”

“I’ve got an earring as an implement, I’ve set up wards with the implement to protect it, I’m pretty sure I’m okay as far as protection against eavesdropping goes, at least.”

“Alright.”

“I’m trying to look some stuff up, that gets into Law, the processes, the way these things work.  I know I’m up against a heavyweight.  But maybe I catch him on a bad day.  Maybe there’s a chance.  And patterns count, right?  So if he underestimates me, maybe I can start establishing a pattern.  I want to fight back, do something, but I can’t, you know, actually fight.”

“Me either,” he said, with a note of humor in his voice.  “I don’t even have the excuse of being wounded.”

Lucy smiled.

He asked, “Are you going to be okay if this doesn’t work out?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy replied.  That question didn’t come across as a vote of confidence so soon after she’d tried to rally her spirits and talk about possibilities, chances, and fighting back.  “But there’s a better chance of it working out if I can keep from fumbling things if he starts challenging me on the contracts we made with other groups and people.  If he picks out some word and I can’t explain why we used it, that’d take everything we’re building, network-wise, and slash this big, shitty sword through it all, you know?”

“Okay.  Do you have suggestions open?”

“Suggestions?”

“Which program are you using?”

“It automatically opened to… Xenix twenty-twenty.”

“Okay.  Let me open that up.  I try to keep them all, in case something doesn’t convert.  Okay.  Toolbar, edit…”

He hit a key combination, and his picture was replaced with a view of the contract.  He showed her where to go as he explained verbally.

The little option was ticked, and the document came alive with highlights and speech bubble style annotations.

“Oh hey, wow.  This is great.”

“Some of those notes are mine, but if you notice a strange word and it’s tied into something like… see this line?”

On his screen, he clicked a highlighted line, and focused in on a speech bubble.  It brought up a citation that reminded Lucy of what she’d had to do for school for a big essay, except legal.

“I see it.”

“If you’re really stuck on something or something seems important, you can try searching for that.  It might get you better results.”

Lucy scrolled, clicking on things.  “Okay.  This feels like a lot to wrap my head around still.  Maybe I can keep my laptop on hand to reference stuff, but that feels shaky.  I don’t suppose I could do some practice, have your voice in my ear?  I think I could pull that off.  Use my implement to fine tune it?”

“I’d be the Cyrano to your Christian?”

“Huh?”

“A play.  That would come a little too close to me confronting Musser directly.”

“Crap.”

“Give it a read, skim the comments, if something is puzzling you, or if you spot something that doesn’t make sense, even after you’ve read it, I can try explaining.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “There’s one in the first paragraph?”

“Of the body or the-”

“The introduction part.  Statement of intent, summary, whatever.”

“There shouldn’t be anything too puzzling there.  It’s plainspeak.”

“Wed,” Lucy said.  “The contract herein is intended to wed the organized markets of Kennet above, Kennet below, and Kennet found, hereafter referred to as Kennet, to the Thunder bay Fairy Circle, hereafter referred to as the TBFC, in a mutually beneficial business arrangement.  Kennet intends to take the bulk of responsibility in this contract, blah blah blah, the individual parties are named, with key figures listed, council, faerie, signatures included, blah blah blah, no expectation to defend Kennet… and then it appears a few more times at the bottom of the summary.  And in other places.”

“Ah,” Sebastian said.  He let out a rueful chuckle.

“It’s not a trap?” Lucy asked.

“No!” Sebastian hurried to assure her.  He switched back to camera, maybe to show her he was genuine.  “Not at all.  But I can see where the word would trip you up.”

“It’s one of the weird words that jumped out at me.  And it’s something that keeps cropping up, like the universe is bugging me about it.  Popped up in my Implement ritual, the Wild Hunt were asking me to make an obligation…”

“Okay, let me try to explain.  This is contract work, it ties into rhetoric, language, discourse, and Law.  Do you know what rule of discourse is?”

“If I talk a certain way, use words a certain way, it holds more sway, doesn’t get counted as a lie.  I know a goblin that’s wrong all the time, but that’s her rule of discourse, I guess.  Snowdrop talks backwards.”

“Right.  But there are other dimensions to that.  The rules of discourse are shaped and helped along by society as a whole.  What’s a common utterance…? I keep thinking of rude ones.”

“I don’t mind.”

“No, no, thought of one.  Literally.  In many circles, the word has been used for emphasis, even when it’s not strictly literal.  Which is fine and accepted, and even in dictionaries… and that works, in those circles.”

“Right.”

“Would you want to use the word that way in an oath?  Probably not, but you might get away with it, if all parties involved understood and accepted that use of the word.”

“Even if challenged?”

“Potentially.  A lot would depend on the disposition of the Lord of your area, or the higher powers like the Judges in areas without Lords.  But I could see that happening in a very specific region.  In this scenario, you make a casual oath using the word literally to mean figuratively, someone challenges you, but because everyone else that’s involved, Lords or higher powers, spirits, and maybe even the random hypothetical individual pulled off the street to quiz for an interpretation were all in agreement, you could get away with it.  And stuffy practitioners halfway across the world would throw a fit, I’m sure.”

Lucy smiled a bit at the idea.

“The society we’re in sets its rules for discourse.  That goes for contracts and Law, too.  The word we choose here sets the tone for a lot of this document and agreement.  If I were to use the word bind, for example…”

“Stricter.”

“Yes.”

“But we wanted strict.”

“You do, but your potential partners don’t.  Especially after having met some of them, I can confidently say that they wouldn’t have signed something with that terminology.”

“Okay.”

“One of them, a fairy, he liked the use of ‘wed’.  I squeezed in a ‘divorce’ in one paragraph toward the end.  It’s highlighted, there’s a note on why it’s in there, actually.”

“I’m not going to end up with Musser wagging his finger at me, saying I have to marry this fairy or someone, right?”

“No.  It’s word choice to skew things toward a particular kind of deal, with expectations, connotations, and all of that matters if you end up in a situation where someone’s having to decide how to read it.  Like with the rule of discourse, but it’s less about truth and more about whole package of rules and ideas we’re including in here.”

“Hmm.  Yeah, sorry, this is still hard to wrap my head around.  I think I get you.”

“There are word choices and ideas I can put in this that would make it so if the council changes, things are more flexible and open to reinterpretation, even if the overall terms were the same.  Ways to make this harder to walk away from, temporary, positive…”

“Okay.  So ‘wed’.”

“Implying partnership, combination of strengths, something you or your new partner can walk away from, given an excuse, ties into my use of ‘divorce’, but it’s not something that others on the outside can easily interfere with.  Strict but comfortable.”

“Okay.  Alright, that makes sense, I guess.  It’s a bit uncomfortable.”

As she voiced the word ‘uncomfortable’, she unconsciously wanted to check her surroundings again.

Peering in between the curtains were a pair of narrow silvery eyes, angled like the head had been tilted to a right angle.  One near the curtain rod, the other below it.

“Did the feed die?  You froze.”

She’d frozen because she didn’t know what to do.

She shook her head slowly, not taking her eyes off the two silvery eyes.  Everything beyond the window was so dark that she could only see the eyes, reflecting the light from her room.

They blinked slowly, stared.

Then they closed again, and they didn’t open.

“Is there anything you need me to do?” Sebastian asked.

“Give me a sec?” she asked.

She stood, forgot she had her headphones on, and nearly pulled her laptop to the floor.  She caught it, pulled the headphones off, and put them on the bed, before walking over to the window.

Standing closer to it let her see that there was no silhouette there.  She could see the ski hills lit up by lights, skiiers going up and down the hill.  It would be a mostly adult crowd at this hour.

Lucy searched the backyard, nearby trees, and looked for the Fae.  Or whatever it had been.  The Wild Hunt weren’t necessarily Fae.  She’d figured that much.

She pulled the curtains closed tight enough there’d be no gap to peer through, then went back to the laptop.

She didn’t make it a full two steps before the window shattered.

Lucy tumbled, even though nothing had actually touched her.  The figure was big enough that them crashing in through the window at a high speed and stopping pushed the air at her, knocking her off balance mid-step.

Freezing cold draft, snowflakes, and fragments of window washed over her as she flipped over onto her back.

The Fae was tall enough his head nearly grazed the ceiling.  He was framed by panels of what looked like stained glass windows, each panel in the windows frosted ice of different consistencies and shades, to allow the images to stand out.  He kept his hands folded inside his sleeves, dressed in flowing clothes.

“Lucy, wha-” Sebastian’s voice came over the laptop, and it was abruptly cut off.

The wards around the room had gone off.  Connection block stuff, a silencing effect.

Her window was gone.  Broken, torn out of the frame.  Her bedroom had a gaping hole in it.

Paper fluttered, and Lucy recognized the octopus drawing Verona had given her.  She saw the linework on the backside.

An apology gift from Verona, back when she’d given Avery and Verona a chewing out for making her take care of them while not having her back as much.  Verona had done some intricate diagram work on the back side of the page, with the idea being that Lucy could blow a hole through her wall and escape a bad situation, she’d said.

Except Lucy already had a hole in the wall.  She shielded her head and face, squinting her eyes to keep track of what was happening.  An adjustment of her body to anticipate the heat, letting it slide past her-

The explosion was focused, a column of roaring fire and light that took the damage that had already been done to her bedroom and compounded it.  More runes lit up, responding to the presence of fire, insulating things.  Insulating her.  She hadn’t needed to adjust her stance- as much as she had one, lying on her floor.

The Fae -and it sure as fuck looked like a Fae- blocked the worst of it with the three panels of ice, levitating them into the way to shield itself.

There was no sound to it.  The connection blockers she’d put at her room in case some magic item blew up or her mom started spying on her while she and Verona were doing something- made back before her mom had been turned Aware, all lit up.

Keeping civilians unaware of the house.

And that was its own little benefit.  A bit of coup, knocking this tall Fae off balance, a bit of karmic pendulum-swinging, automatically cleaning up the mess this Fae had created.

If she rounded it out by lashing out…

What would that even accomplish?  They’d blow the horn.

She remained frozen, lying on the floor, breathing hard.  Flame licked parts of her bedroom and the pieces of wood that had been part of the window.  Glass, ice, and snow made things glitter.

The Faerie didn’t even pull his hands out of his sleeves.  One of the glass panels had partially reformed after being broken, and as he turned his head, the panel slammed into the wall, its jagged edge punching through paint and drywall, piercing the sound-nullifying ward.

It came back to return to its place in the arrangement and continued regenerating.

The voice was like a smooth whisper at speaking value, but with no rasp or hiss to it.  “If a king were to visit, would you dare shut a door in his face?”

Lucy knew she couldn’t forfeit too much momentum here.  “I’m afraid I don’t pay much attention to kings.  Are you a king?”

“No.  But I am deserving of respect, aren’t I?” he asked.  He walked around the room, fingers running over her desk, which was covered in splinters and glittering bits of snow and ice.

“I don’t know you.”

“You should know enough of us.  Or do you need a more serious injury to leave you with a more lasting impression?”

She shivered.  She hadn’t been dressed for having a hole in her wall.

She shivered more because she was freaked the fuck out.

He kept asking questions that cornered her.

“If your teachers have failed you in your instruction, then they should be corrected.  It is vitally important to show the proper respect to officers of the Court.”

Lucy clenched her teeth, shivering, not moving.

“Executing you in front of them should be sufficient correction,” he said.  He stepped onto a piece of burning wood, extinguishing the lick of fire.  Then he turned to her, those narrow silvery eyes studying her.  “Convince me otherwise.”

“Anything I say or do will only be more reasons and ways to come at me, won’t it?” Lucy asked, and there was resentment in the words.  She knew he caught it.

“If you’re that sure of that, then there’s no reason not to deliver a verdict now.”

“It’s a question, not a statement,” she told the Fae.  She was afraid the words wouldn’t come, like how she’d been speechless with Sebastian earlier.  That would be it.  She had to be careful how she worded what she said.  A parry and thrust from the Fae would be it too.  “The home is a sanctuary, I’ve had to clean up your karmic mess-”

“It was handled.”

“By me,” Lucy told him.  “I handled it.  There is currently a giant hole in my wall, and I can see the connection blocks are active.  That means I’m handling it.”

“It was unnecessary.”

“Handling karma is widely seen as necessary.  I handled it,” Lucy told him.  Because I set stuff up to go off automatically, because from the very beginning, I was worried about this crap getting in the middle of my life.  She shook her head, finding her steam.  “You stormed in here, intruded, triggered the-”

Her phone rang.  It sounded more high pitched than usual, with the way her entire body and every sense was tensed.

The Fae turned its head, looking down at her bedside table.  “The shrill device has words.  Call: Verona Hayward.  Oh.  The words disappeared.”

The phone went silent.

Lucy tried to pick up where she left off, saying, “Intruder, you-”

“You named two things,” the Faerie cut her off.  “The home as a sanctuary, karmic caretaking.  If you name a third, the Wild Hunt will have to assume this is a challenge.  A challenge we will answer.”

The words were a threat.

He stared her down.  Inviting her to continue.

He paced over to the hole in the wall, and the faint light that shone over from the ski hills highlighted the images in the three panels.  They looked like Winter Court nobles, each bearing a weapon.

Lucy started to stand-

A panel flew her way, stabbing through the upper end of her dresser and embedding itself in the wall on the far side.  The shattered drawer broke, slumping, depositing socks, hairbands, hair ties, scarves for sleeping, and other hair accessories on the ground near Lucy’s feet.  The makeup and jewelry on the top tipped the other way, one case hitting the plastic trash can and sending it spinning.  Lucy could see the bullet hole in the wall from when she’d used the ring to make a gun.

She gave serious thought to using the weapon ring to make a weapon now.

Stay down.  The implication was clear.

She started rising to her feet again.

The one panel jerked, hauling itself backwards, to return to the Fae’s side, while another plunged outward, right at Lucy.

She didn’t flinch, and didn’t move.  The panel grazed by her, the coldness of it making the fabric of her sleeve stick to it.  She jerked, turning almost ninety degrees sideways, as it effectively tugged on her sleeve, then released it.  It crashed into the wall, and the lights sparked and went out.

She shivered, trying to control her breathing, while giving the Fae a level stare over her shoulder, now.

“Lucy.”

The voice came from the yard.

Guilherme.

Guilherme hopped up to the hole in Lucy’s bedroom wall.  She hadn’t seen him outside the cave much, these past few weeks, and there’d been other stuff going on when she had.  He had an intensity around him, like a percentage of his body fat had burned away, drawing out the edges in his bone structure and the lines of his muscles and veins.

“Aralu,” Guilherme addressed the Fae.

The floating panels changed angle slightly.  Two of them fixated on Lucy.

Every instinct she’d trained, every lesson she’d learned from scraps, fights, chases, they told her that there was no dodging this.  Guilherme could stop one, but she could try to dodge, and it wouldn’t work.  She knew.

So she didn’t position herself to dodge.  She positioned herself to take it.

The Fae smiled.

“In the future, if the Wild Hunt or any other Fae authority is in the midst of investigating you, do not obstruct, connive, or hide.  We will finish things off when we are satisfied the standards of the Winter Court are being met.”

Guilherme stepped out of the way to let him leave through the hole in the wall.

She waited until she was pretty sure the Fae was gone, then let out a shuddering breath.  She met Guilherme’s eyes.

“Mind your manners with the court,” he said.  “I warned you about the need to be meticulous before I introduced you to winter glamour.”

“What?” she asked.  She was shaking more now that she was cold and coming down from relief, and him doing this now was not helping stabilize her any.

“I shouldn’t need to repeat myself.”

“Guilherme,” she said, pushing on the dresser to steady herself.  Wood creaked, and she pulled back.

“A movement of one of his allies led me here.  He was ready to kill you in front of me.  You may have rallied in the last moments, but you need to improve by vast measures, and you need to do it fast.  Even if you eke out a victory against Musser, they’re likely to finish you off if you waver or falter for a moment, after.”

She swallowed hard.

“I should go before someone else decides to carry out that lesson,” Guilherme said.

“Guilherme,” she said, to his back.

“Do you have anything to say that isn’t repeating my name?”

“You’re better than this,” she told him, relief dropping out of her like her stomach on a rollercoaster, to let a heavy sadness take its place.  She hadn’t known what she was going to say until she said it.

Guilherme hopped down to the snow below.  When she walked over to look down, he was gone.

Shivering, she turned, her back to the ruined wall, and she looked at her bedroom.  Papers and posters from Booker’s music subscription had fallen and littered the floor.  Bits of wood.  Ice.

She had to pick her footing carefully- her feet were bare.  She walked over to get her phone.

“Lucy.”

She turned to look at the laptop.  The angle of it meant he’d only seen her when she’d stepped next to the bed.

“Hi, Sebastian.  Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.  I messaged your friend.  The local one.”

“Thank you,” she told him.  “I guess she’s not home, or she’d be here already.”

She put her phone into her lap, then went to unlock it.  Her hands shook enough she couldn’t input the waggle to unlock it.  She clenched her hands into fists, instead, but that only made the stitches in her arms hurt.

“Can you message Verona?” Lucy asked.  “Or call her?  Make sure she’s careful on her way over?  I don’t want her hurt.”

“On it.”

She heard his chair creak as he stood up, phone to his ear.  She looked through the screen of her laptop to a place that was hours away, warmer, and not destroyed.

He sat back down.  “Do you have a parent there?  A guardian?”

“My mom’s at work.”

“Your dad, then?”

“Dead, for a long time,” she said, quiet, eyes surveying the damage.  “Next closest would be… Guilherme, I guess.  And he just left.”

“From what I overheard, that doesn’t sound like a guardian.”

“My friend will be here,” Lucy murmured.  “Or she should.  They might’ve- Verona, Verona, Verona.”

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.

She shivered.  She’d caught the nuance in the reply, the tone, the tension.  Worry, but Verona wasn’t worried for her own sake.

Not that she ever was, not enough, anyway.

Verona was coming, she hadn’t been intercepted yet.

“Do you want me to go?  We could resume tomorrow morning.  I have an appointment, so it would need to be early, or close to lunch.”

She hesitated.  “If it’s okay, would you…?”

She looked at the glass, the splinters.

The huge hole that every connection blocker was working overtime to help the rest of the world ignore.

Posters she’d liked.  Socks torn.

“…Stay on the line?  Talk to me about contracts?  If you’re not busy?”

“I’m not busy.”

It took nearly ten minutes for Verona to show up.  Lucy got the dirt on wording, intent, and Mr. Harless even gave her the short form of some of the points of precedent and citation, that looked more important.  Verona let herself into the house, then called upstairs.  “Lucy!?”

“Here!  My room!”

“Shall we end this here?” Sebastian asked.

“Okay.  Thank you.  I appreciate it.”

“Let me waive my fees.”

“You don’t have to,” Lucy told him.  “Don’t.  That sounds weird when it’s Avery paying.”

“It’s fine.  I’ll waive my fees this time.  There, it’s said, it’s done.”

“That doesn’t seem like a good way to run a business.”

“It’s not about business.  I’ll let you go, I’ll be available tonight until eleven or so, and then I’ll be available from about six fifteen until eight tomorrow, and then after ten o’clock, if you have more questions.  Emailing you and Avery my schedule so you know.  If you’d like, I can send another update tomorrow around noon.”

“Okay.  I’m… I’m honestly not going to turn down help.  I’m not sure I’ll be in a position to call, but I appreciate it.”

“Good luck, Ms. Ellingson.”

He ended the call.

She sat on the bed, listening to Verona’s running footsteps.

The angle of approach to the house hadn’t given Verona a view of the damage, made more obvious when her first reaction was, “What the hell.”

“I don’t suppose you know a good repair magic?” Lucy asked.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll be more okay if I know there’s a repair magic in your back pocket.”

“I’ve seen one.  I think I could find it again if I dig in my browsing history for a few minutes,” Verona remarked.  “I don’t think it’d replace some of the one-of-a-kind things.  More walls and windows.”

“Walls and windows is good.  I don’t want to stress out my mom.”

“Let me get looking.”

“I’ve got to visit the shrines tonight,” Lucy said.

“Take the Dog Tags.  For that matter- why aren’t you calling on the Dog Tags now?”

“I don’t think they’d have made the situation any better.”

“They’re pretty chill, Lucy, they’re not going to make it worse.  They can follow my cues, and I’m a weirdo… they can definitely follow yours.”

“I always feel like I’m bothering them.  Big and time consuming asks, guard duty, when I don’t have much to give them.”

“You do realize that a big chunk of why they’re in town is to back us?  They’re just awkward about it.  And now you’re being awkward about it.”

“I can ask for their help when I go on patrol.”

Verona walked over, then smacked Lucy lightly across the head.

“Ow,” Lucy said.  She felt Verona’s hand at the back of her neck, fumbling, tugging on the chain there-  “Stop.  Stop it.  Verona-”

She poked Verona’s stomach, then poked it twice, then poked it three times, harder-

Verona collapsed on top of her, manhandling her, until she’d pulled the chain over Lucy’s head.  She threw it back over her shoulder, across the room.

Lucy went limp, huffing for breath.  Verona pressed her hands down against the bed, avoiding touching the injured part.  It still hurt a bit.  “Fuck.”

“Is Lucy possessed?” Grandfather asked.

“She’s possessed of tha dumb,” Verona said, moving the laptop aside before sitting at the head of the bed.  Lucy had a view of Grandfather, now, standing by her bedroom door.

She pulled a blanket around herself.  Verona and Grandfather were wearing jackets.  Her room was cold, like this.

“I didn’t want to- it’s no big deal,” Lucy said.

“It looks like a big deal.  There’s open fire.”

“It’s still warded.  I don’t think you could set fire to my room if you tried.  Verona can fix the hole where my window used to be, apparently, Wild Hunt is going to do what it’s going to do.  I might need backup for the shrine visits.”

“I’ll stay with you now, you can call in more help for the shrine visits.  Where can I find a broom?”

“Oh, you don’t have to.  It’s my room, my house.  I can.”

“You’re injured, and you’d better believe they make sure we know how to get stuff tidy and keep it that way.”

“They?” Verona asked.  “The nebulous people who trained the people who ended up becoming you?”

“Yeah,” Grandfather said.

It felt like they were trying to strike a lighter tone, to make up for how absolutely shitty things were.  “The hidden talents of Dog Tags, not covered in the texts.”

“Where is your broom?” Grandfather asked.

“There’s a closet down the hall, by the bathroom.  Should have one in it.  I’m going to feel like an ass if I’m just sitting here watching you both clean and fix my room.”

Grandfather was already leaving on his broom hunt.

“Did you do the call with the contract guy?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.”

“Talk me through your notes, get things sorted, magic talk to give me energy.”

“It’s boring magic stuff.  Contracts and rhetoric.”

“I love magic rhetoric.  I’m good at magic rhetoric.”

“You’re good at improv magic rhetoric, but this is dry magic rhetoric.  Citations, like in those bibliography things you hated.”

“Magic citations!”

“Dry, legal magic citations.  And distinctions between an agreement that weds two parties, and one that binds-”

“We’re talking about magic still, right?  Not, you know, uh…?”

“Magic stuff still.”

Lucy began to read through the highlighted comments, when Verona cried out, “Shit!”

“What?”

“Stop sweeping, stop sweeping, don’t move anything.”

Grandfather raised his hands, the broom held in one.

“Everything you move is going to resist going back where it should.  Crap.  I had a gut feeling.  Uhhh… okay, hold off.  Let’s see how intact we end up, and I think there’s other stuff I can pull out.  I read a book on demiurgic domains while researching how to fine tune my Demesne.  I think I can use that to patch and spackle anything that got swept that isn’t going back.”

“You’re tapping into the same kinds of power that a god uses to make their personal realm of Creation to patch and spackle a broken wall and window?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah!  And that dresser, and the wall.  They’re not always a god.  Can be any big power.”

They went back to work, Grandfather holding the broom but not using it, Lucy reciting the contract, and Verona using the spot Grandfather had cleared to draw out a celestial diagram.  Like the basic diagrams they’d started doing, but ratcheted up to ten times the complexity, with math and geometry worked into it.

Avery sent an alarmed text, which told Lucy that she’d gotten a message from Mr. Harless.  Lucy sent a reply, saying she was putting her room back together.

Then Avery made a video call.  Lucy accepted, and then filled Avery in, with a view of the room.

“I’m coming to Kennet soon,” Avery told them.  “Stay alive?  Please?”

“Yeah.  Will try, obviously.  Hey, Verona, changing the subject, remember the octopus picture you drew me?  Way back in spring?”

“Yeah.”

“It triggered today.  I liked the picture, even if it was a weird fit on my wall.”

“Was it cool?  Was it useful?  Wait, it wasn’t what blew out your window, was it?”

“Explosion came inward,” Grandfather remarked.

“True.”

“It was cool.  It was as useful as anything.  Made him stumble.  I was ready to use that against him, but I decided against it.”

“I wondered, ’cause it was one of the first really tight, dense elementary diagrams I did, that’s awesome.  I’m glad.  Do you want another?  Another octopus picture?”

“I mean… I won’t say no if you give me art.  I like anything by you.  But maybe something else?”

“Boys?  Wallace?”

“My mom would be weirded out.  I’d be weirded out if you drew a picture of my boyfriend.”

“A fox?” Verona asked.

“A fox would be cool.  I like foxes.”

“Awesome.  I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Nora seeing the pictures you drew of random places around Kennet was how the subject of her coming for Christmas came up,” Avery said.  “I’ve got the friendship bracelet, the antler jacket, Lucy recommended music I showed Nora and she took it to her band, because they were being snarky, and Sophy said she’d sing a cover for whatever song she picked.”

“Which?” Lucy asked.

“Humpwump.”

“Oh.  That was not what I was expecting,” Lucy said.

“The drumline, the bass!  Making Sophy sing those lyrics!  It was great.”

“The lyrics, the style,” Lucy replied.  “I was going to suggest putting it on to change the vibe, but I’m not sure that’d be the kind of change we want.”

“If you’re holding back on my account, don’t,” Grandfather said.

“Well now you have to,” Verona told Lucy.

“I warned you,” Lucy said, before opening up her PlaylistR.  She connected to her bluetooth speakers.

The music came pounding out, with lyrics that were gobbled more than they were sung.

“I regret this,” Grandfather said, in the one second of silence while the singer caught their breath.

“This is what goblin music would be like,” Avery said, excited.

“Ramjam would dig this so hard!” Verona exclaimed, bobbing her head with the rhythm.

“He did.  I showed it to him.  But he has a short attention span, so he gets excited every time I put it on, like it’s the first time.”

The gobbled lyrics got explicit.

Grandfather looked at Lucy.  “You like this?”

“I like unique sounds.  This isn’t regular listening, though.”

Lucy looked at the connection blocks, checking they were okay.  Blaring music out through the hole in her wall was probably not the way to go to keep those diagrams intact.

Verona started wiggling with the music, dancing some, while holding her phone to see what she needed to put down in chalk.

It felt a lot like Verona had started out trying to manage an upbeat, excited tone, to counter how shitty a lot of this felt, and then got so into it she forgot what she was doing.

Grandfather put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder.

“Don’t sit there like a lump.  You can’t use your hands so well, but you can dance,” Verona urged Lucy.  “You too, Ave.  Being on the wrong side of a computer screen hours away from us isn’t an excuse.”

I liked sitting here with Grandfather being supportive, Lucy thought.

But she relented, standing, blanket still wrapped around her.  She liked Verona being upbeat and fun, too.

It reminded her of how things used to be, years ago.

“Lucy!” her mom called up.

Lucy hurried down the stairs, snatching up her coat, where she’d hung it on the post of the railing at the bottom of the stairs.  She grabbed her bag from the bottom of the stairs, and opened the door.

Grandfather.  He stepped inside, glancing at the Dog Tags who loitered outside, and shut the door behind himself.

“Verona got attacked this morning,” he told them.

Lucy felt a chill run over her.  “What?”

“During the shrine visit.  She had three Dog Tags and ghouls with her.  It didn’t matter.  The Wild Hunt came.”

“What happened?”

“They changed the weather, she tried to use practice to fight back and resist, it didn’t work.  The group was overwhelmed, then confronted when too cold to fight back.”

“But is she okay?  She didn’t text, she-”

“She didn’t want to bother you.  She has a stab wound, arm.  It bled a lot.  But there was a medic with them.  Some of the parts that were frozen are still numb and swollen.  She gainsaid herself, thinking they would back off so long as they made their point.  She was right.”

“She should have called.  Someone should have called,” Lucy’s mom said.  “She’s still at the House on Half Street?”

“She wanted to use alchemy and Tashlit.”

Lucy glanced at her mom, who looked hurt.

“She called Louise, Louise picked them up, took them to the House on Half Street.  Tashlit met them there, healed the worst of it.  She fell asleep pretty quickly.  From what Angel said, she didn’t sleep last night, she visited the shrines early this morning, she was tired.”

“Can I visit?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“She’s sleeping, but I don’t think she’d mind a visit.”

“This is ridiculous.  Fuck this,” Lucy said.  “Fuck.”

“That seems to be the take,” Grandfather said.  “Shared by most in the know.”

“Are the ghouls okay?  And the Dog Tags?  Sorry, I didn’t mean to put them last, I just assumed the Dog Tags recovered.”

“They did.  The ghouls are mending back at the factory.  We’re having another council meeting later.”

“Fuck.”

“You wanted to go out?” Grandfather asked.

“No,” Lucy’s mom said.

“I’m not any safer at home.”

“Can they even attack you at home?” her mom asked.

“Probably.  Will they?  I don’t know.  They might think there could be too many wards and protections around the house,” Lucy said.  Not that it matters, but it slows them down and makes them look bad, and that does matter.

“They might,” Grandfather said, playing along.

“And if we don’t get out there and handle some stuff… one, my mental health will suffer, and two, we need every last bit of advantage we can get.  We can’t let this slow us down.”

Her mom was shaking her head.

“I have an idea,” Lucy said.  “And I think it might be what makes the difference.”

“What idea?”

“We pay a visit to- what’s her name?  Mrs. Schaff.  I’ve told you about her.”

Lucy hadn’t even known her name until recently, when she’d come up in the context of Kennet found.  There were black sheep who were of a particular type that fit well enough into Kennet below and wandered their way in.  George, heavily drunk, had done that.  The Trenchcoat mouse, apparently, had done it too.

But now they had a first lost sheep.  Someone out of it enough that they’d entered Kennet found without bouncing off or anything too weird.

“Louise was visiting her, if I remember right?” Lucy’s mom asked.  “Why her?”

“Doing multiple things at the same time,” Lucy said.  “It’s better if I don’t say it out loud.  It really is better if I’m out there, staying active, getting stuff done.  Lying low didn’t work.”

“What can I do?” her mom asked.

“Check on Verona?  Give her some mom-age?  Let her handle her injuries her way, but make sure she’s okay?”

Her mom reached out.  Lucy accepted the hug.  The very, very tight hug.

“I hate this,” her mom whispered.

“I am not the biggest fan either.”

“Be safe.  Constant messages.  Don’t you dare keep any emergencies or secrets from me.  I will cancel Christmas.  I’ll tell Booker not to come.”

“You might have to, if we can’t clear this up.  So I really, really want to clear this up.”

“Can you?” her mom asked, breaking the hug.

Lucy shrugged.  She turned to Grandfather.  “You good to go?”

“Absolutely.”

He opened the door for her.

Lucy stepped outside, saw the Dog Tags.  Grandfather behind her, Horseman sitting on the bottom stair, Doe standing closer to the driveway, wearing a scarf but no hat, jagged scar on her head, and Fubar as the only one without a dark look in his eyes, because he wore sunglasses.  His lips did all the work of conveying the appropriate attitude, mouth set, lips pressed together in a way that made a notch of a scar that crossed one lip to the other stand out.  All wore winter jackets, heavy and capable of hiding the hardware and kits they carried with them.

“I want to talk to Mrs. Schaff.”

“Why the fuck do you want to talk to her?”

Because it’s interesting.

“Gut feeling.  Come with?”

“Of course,” Grandfather said, behind her.  “Doe?  Lead the way a bit?  Keep an eye out?”

Doe immediately broke away, crossing the lawn.

The other three accompanied Lucy, Horseman standing and matching her pace as she reached the bottom stair, hands in his pockets.  Grandfather followed behind, and Fubar almost fell in step to her left as she passed him, paused, then caught up a moment later, as if he was making a point.

She’d hoped to see Wallace as she passed his place, simultaneously dreading the idea of overhearing his mom.  Neither were home.  Mrs. Schaff wasn’t that far from Avery’s, so she had to cross the bridge.

“I’d offer to stop in at the convenience store, buy you guys snacks,” Lucy said.  “But I’d rather keep on target.”

“We don’t have to eat anyway,” Grandfather said.

“But you can eat.”

“Yeah.”

They crossed the bridge, waited for cars, then jaywalked across the main road, heading over to the houses in Avery’s dad’s neck of the woods.

The Wild Hunt lurked.  One stood by the shore, watching, looking like a shepherd dressed in white, staff in hand, but with wolves milling around their feet instead of sheep.  Another was a woman underdressed for the cold, who seemed to not be looking at her at all, but she felt watched by them anyway.

They weren’t attacking her, though.  She’d been worried they’d ramp up.

Some houses in Kennet were old, and Mrs. Schaff’s was of that type, surrounded by denser trees than a lot of the ones in the neighborhood, inset a little further back from the street than modern zoning would probably allow.  Doe waited for them at the edge of the driveway.

Branches snapped and broke in a sudden commotion as Lucy and the other three Dog Tags caught up with Doe.

The noise made Mrs. Schaff look out the window to check, at which point she saw what Lucy belatedly realized would be a pretty intimidating image, of Lucy and the Dog Tags just looming there, looking at the house.

Ramjam had been up in the branches, had gotten excited as they turned up, and then started to climb down, before his spiraling horns caught in the branches and he ended up getting caught in a kind of limbo.

He couldn’t descend while Mrs. Schaff watched, so he had to cling to branches to hold himself in a place where he was covered by the pine branches, but he was stuck and uncomfortable while he couldn’t move.  He grunted.

“What are you up to, Ramjam?” Lucy asked.

“Hi!  I’m standing watch!  Tatty’s paying me!”

“Mrs. Schaff is off limits, Ramjam.”

“I know!  But Tatty said she’d pay if we kept watch and took notes, and she didn’t take back the offer!  I can get money to spend on things for people for Christmas!  It’s great!”

“That is great.  Serves Tatty right for bothering Mrs. Schaff, huh?”

“Yeah!  Unh.”  Ramjam looked like he’d snap his neck, horns caught on branches, body twisting, claw-tipped fingers and toes clinging at branches and trunk at weird angles.  “There’s a market!”

“I know there’s a market.  It would be very weird if I didn’t,” Lucy said.

“It’s great!  I can buy stuff!  Do you want something?  I can buy you something.”

“That’s okay.  Do the gift exchange, maybe.”

Mrs. Schaff moved away from the window.  Ramjam twisted, jerking his head this way and that, until branches broke and he could fall, bouncing off a branch, hit the hard-packed snowbank, and slide out into the road.  He hurdled the snowbank and jumped into snow as Mrs. Schaff, now wearing a coat over her housecoat, and a bright yellow scarf, stepped outside.

She was maybe sixty, hair tied back into a messy bun, white hair with a shock of black that hadn’t changed with age yet, running to the back.  Pretty, but no makeup, with a look about her like she could be a schoolmarm in some movie, ready to smack kids knuckles with a ruler.  A natural glare and distrustful look.

Maybe Lucy came off that way to others.  Or a way she might’ve ended up if she’d never had Avery and Verona, or if she’d never had practice.  If instead of being bulletproof, she’d stopped caring a bit.

And- Lucy saw past the woman to the house.  In the gloom, house lit only by the light coming in from the windows, she could see the reflection of various eyes of cats.  Yeah.  In the recipe it’d take to create this woman from elements of herself and people she knew, she’d have to add in a love for cats that surpassed Verona’s.  If that was possible.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Schaff asked, putting a foot out to block a cat from running outside, before closing the door behind her.  She hugged her coat closed.

“To talk?”

“Can you tell whoever or whatever it is that’s been in the trees and sneaking around the property to stop bothering my cats?”

“We did.  We can try again.”

“I see your driveway could use a shoveling,” Grandfather said.

“I see someone needs to mind their own business.”

“I’ll shovel it, if you’ll hear Lucy out.”

The woman looked between them then jerked her head toward the house.  She hit a button by the door, and the garage door automatically began creaking its way open.  “Shovels are by the trash cans.”

“Thanks,” Lucy whispered.

She hurried down the driveway and waded through the calf-deep snow to the front door, stepping inside to a house that smelled really bad.  Like five dead cats had been soaked in pee, left out to get stale, and strapped to her head and face.  Horseman followed her in, but didn’t even flinch.

Lucy had regrets.

“The monkeying around in the trees, that’s been going on for a long time,” Mrs. Schaff said.  “Worse in summer.”

“A lot of things were worse in summer, yeah,” Lucy agreed.

“Lately, though.  I had that sleepwalking daydream I don’t think I was sleeping for.  The girl with black hair, that’s your friend?”

“Yeah.”

“She talked to me after that.  Lots of weirdness.  Lately, the cats will react, I’ll see someone walking down the street.  Someone I don’t think I’m meant to see.”

“Yep.  If they’re who I think they are, I wouldn’t go out of my way to talk to them.”

“Animals sense things.  A booming, eerie howl this spring, my cats watching out the window- I go to look, the moon’s bleeding.  Meanness in the air this summer.  A bleeding moon again this fall.  Now a waking daydream into a jumbled version of Kennet, and strangers I shouldn’t talk to?”

“About right,” Lucy replied.

“So what do you want?”

“Business opportunity.”

“What makes you think I want an opportunity?”

“The sort of people who notice what you notice… they don’t tend to thrive in society.  I guess what I’m offering is a chance to do a little better.”

The woman studied her, then nodded.  “I’ll come to the living room in a moment.  Sit or don’t sit, I don’t care.  There’s blankets on the high shelf.  Throw one over any surface you’re going to be sitting on, tan side up.  I’m making tea.  Do you want some?”

“No, uh,” she looked at Horseman, who shook his head.  “No thank you.”

“Through there.  Mind the cats.”

Holy fuck, there were so many cats.  Lucy had heard how Tatty and Peckersnot had invaded this house, but just realizing that there wasn’t a single piece of furniture without a cat on it, virtually every surface occupied- half the stairs on the staircase occupied, almond-shaped eyes peering past or under railing… she kind of had a bit of respect for the bravado they’d shown in picking a fight with this.

If she were less than a foot tall, wading into an arena like this… it’d be a lot.

She debated sitting on the blanket, but decided to stay standing.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to be sitting on some of the piss-stained furniture even with a blanket between her and the stains.

Besides, she wasn’t sure how she’d get the cats that were currently lying on the furniture to move.

As she stepped through the door, a cat threw itself at her, all four claws out, aiming for her face.  She deflected it, it hit the wall, dropped, leaped less than a half second after touching the ground, and came at her again.  Horseman caught it out of the air.

The cat screeched and yowled, clawing madly at his jacket sleeve, failing to find purchase in the heavy material.  It tried to twist to bite his hand, but he had index finger at one corner of its chin and middle finger at the other, gripping its neck.  Big freaking cat, too.

“Oh, that’s Timberwolf,” Mrs. Schaff said.  “She’s protective.  Wild soul.”

“Are you sure she’s not half Lynx or something?”

“It’s something.  Timber!”

The call made Timberwolf stop.

Something rattled, and Timber wrestled her way free, dropping to the ground and darting off.  About fifteen other cats roused, hurrying in the direction of what Lucy assumed were treats.

“With you in two,” Mrs. Schaff said.

Other cats remained.

“I don’t suppose any of you talk?” Lucy asked.

“Couple of us do,” one cat replied, quiet.  It reached for the table by the couch, picking up a letter opener.  “You smell like blood.  A recent injury.  Depending on how this goes, you could smell a lot more like blood.”

He transitioned into a purr as he finished talking, eyes looking at her in a very un-catlike way.

“No.  It’s fine.”

“What’s your angle?  You’re offering her money?”

“Chance to do business,” Lucy told him.  “Money means more for you all.  The smarter cats helping would make this a lot easier.”

“Not a cat,” the talking cat said.  “But close enough.”

Another cat, white and very pretty, had roused from the couch, and stretched between Lucy and the couch, front paws on the former, back paws on the latter, making it hard for Lucy to move away.  It nuzzled her side.

She snatched her hand down, stopping it before it could finish picking her pocket and take her wallet.

“Drat,” the cat said, in a quiet, masculine voice, pulling away.

“I’ll buy you a bit more time,” Horseman murmured, before going to the kitchen.

“I’m guessing that pickpocket there isn’t really a cat either?” Lucy asked.  “I didn’t think there were so many… odd ones?”

“Things have changed.  She’s gotten stronger.  And if you give her this deal, she’ll be stronger still.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No.  So long as she stays.”

“Why is that important?” Lucy asked.

“This is a training ground.  Not-cats like me and Blankshanks over there, sometimes we need a refresher on how a cat’s meant to act.  It’s a resource.  The right cats, the right things, useful.”

“Are you aiming to use that resource?” Blankshanks the pickpocket cat asked.  “Steal it?  Drain it?”

“Use it,” Lucy replied.  “Like you said, she could get stronger.  She’d have more money.  What happens if she gets a bit older, gets sick?  Consider it an investment.  Get a little less today, get more in the long run.”

Blankshanks hopped up to where the cat with the letter opener was.

“It’s not the worst offer.  We’ve talked about what the future holds.”

“Or doesn’t hold.”

“It’s a chance to offload some of our more noisome residents.”

“Which?” Lucy asked.

Both cats looked at her, startled.

“Castleberry.  A goblin-ish thing.  Looks like roadkill.  Violent.  She coddles it.”

And these two cats were Fairy-ish things.

“Okay.  There might be a home for Castleberry.”

“There’s another upstairs.  Died, went unclaimed, spirit found its way back to the body.  Undead now.  Could get messy in the wrong circumstance.”

“Messy how?”

“If it bit another cat, there’d be two undead cats.  If it bit a human, it would be two undead cats and an undead human.”

“Ghoul?  Zombie?  That sounds like a problem.”

“One or the other or both.  Only reason things haven’t gotten worse is it’s doing what it did while it was alive.  Lies in a sunbeam all day.  Only difference is it doesn’t eat, drink, make waste, doesn’t have to move.  But it stinks and we have to work to keep others from trying to share the sunbeam.  All it would take is a reflex bite.”

“We can put someone on that.  Things are a bit messy right now.”

“The Wild Hunt?  Yes.”

“Yeah.  How many special cats or cat-like Others are here?  It hasn’t always been this way?”

“There’d be one or two, before.  And a few cat that had special talents or skills.  Like being very good at dealing with bad little goblins, or sensing and fending off ghosts.  Now?  Five to twelve.”

“Jesus,” Horseman swore.  “How do you not trip over them every five seconds?”

Good signal.

The cat put the letter opener back, then started acting like a cat again, bounding off.

“Being good?  I don’t have much worth stealing.”

“Not stealing.  I was talking to your cats.”

“They act like they know more than they’re letting on.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some answered me someday.  They never do, though.  You should know, I don’t have many talents for business,” Mrs. Schaff told Lucy.

“We do.”

“You and your scary hit squad?” Mrs. Schaff asked.  “Is this a protection racket?  I don’t make a good target.  I don’t have much to spare.”

“We’re running a side market, we’re not broadcasting it, but it’s odds and ends.”

“A flea market?”

“More accurate than some guesses you could make.  But what we’d want is maybe special cats who could use a home, potentially… if you’re open to that?”

“They find me more than I find them.  I won’t ever turn one away, but if one had a better home to go to, I’d welcome it.”

“I guess that’s what I’d want to do too.  And besides that there may be…”

Blankshanks leaped onto the coffee table a few steps from Lucy, depositing a hair comb there.  A moment later, the cat that had had the letter opener leaped onto the coffee table, putting down a mangled mousetrap.

“…those,” Lucy finished.

“Odds and ends?  I don’t know where some of them come from.”

Lucy used her Sight.  She could see the staining, spreading like watercolor where the items rested on the table.

“You could bring those.  Random things cats like.  If they have instincts that let them sense trouble… they might have instincts that let them find those things.”

Or they’re not-cats cooperating with me to get you better set up, Lucy thought.

“What’s so special about these things?” Mrs. Schaff asked.

“I don’t know, but they might’ve picked up some special-ness from being around special cats.  In our market, there are people who pay attention to that sort of thing.  Even look specifically for it.  I can’t promise a fortune, exactly, but…”

Lucy looked at the two not-cats.  “…something to get you better set up.  Which can get your cats better set up too.  And honestly, I know someone who does housecleaning, she’s looking to earn.  If you helped us by working with us, we could subsidize her coming in.”

“It’s not as bad as it seems at first glance.  Things are mostly tidy, they just aren’t clean.  Needs a few days.”

“She could give you a few days.  We can help cover it.  If you work with us.”

Mrs. Schaff looked at the two not-cats.

“If Spades and Blankshanks like you, that’s enough for me.  We can talk.  Then you can tell me why the cats are so interested in what’s outside the window.”

Lucy looked, and saw that cats had stirred, gathering near one window of the house, almost crawling over themselves to see.

Timberwolf was hissing and spitting.

The Wild Hunt.

Lucy could only hope her plan was working here.  Yes, they were Wild Hunt.  They were of Winter, but they were Faerie.

Maybe, she hoped, they could stand a little entertainment.  If what she was doing was puzzling, interesting, finding uses and niches for oddballs like Mrs. Schaff, maybe they’d hold off.

And she just needed them to hold off for a little bit longer.  At least until they could deal with Musser.  Maybe.  If it was even possible.

Just… all she could hope for, was that she could solve or postpone one problem.  Get Musser out of the way, maybe she could free up enough brain cells to riddle a way past the Wild Hunt.  Or Verona could.  Or Avery.

Or something.

There had to be something, which was why she was in this house with air stained watercolor yellow with piss under her Sight, trying to find new angles and approaches.  Racking up tiny advantages.

One more vendor for the market.  One they’d have to work around, to keep her remaining Innocence intact, but… one more.

Mr. Black rubbed his chin.  “I- I just don’t get it, I think.”

She’d known it was going to be a hard sell, and what made it worse was she wanted to make the sale fast.

Because this wasn’t as interesting.  If they’d attacked her midway through her talk with Mr. Harless because of boredom, talking to her classmate’s dad wouldn’t be much better.

The store was an outdoor wear place, and it was busy with the ski season.  But Mr. Black had been kind enough to hear her out.  She felt like she was rambling, giving a bad explanation.

“Let me make sure I understand you,” the man said.  “It’s a special event?”

“A regular event.  But special, yes.”

“This is like the Arcade?” Brayden asked.

Lucy nodded.  “But way bigger.”

“Dad, you have to.  You really have to.  You.  Have.  To.  People have been going nuts over this, trying to figure out who started it, and you’re being invited in!”

“I don’t even know what this is I’d be agreeing to.”

“Look, Mr. Black, it’s simple.  Think of it as a midnight market.”

“Is this for Halloween next year?”

“Every weekend.”

“I don’t see the interest in something like that.”

“You’d get your old stock.  Winter jackets that didn’t sell, gloves, whatever, take them a few blocks over, set up in a stall.  We can have one ready for you.  I can pretty much guarantee you’ll sell out.”

Kennet below was suffering for a lack of winter wear.  They wouldn’t care that stuff wasn’t the latest new brand.

“I don’t see how or why that makes any sense at all,” Mr. Black said.

“Dad, oh my god, this thing went viral, except not online.  None of it makes sense, that’s why it’s so great!”

Brayden was really not helping.

“I’ll make you a deal.  Do this once,” Lucy told him.  “We’ll have someone show you where to go, or show a trusted employee-”

“This feels like we’re being invited to unload a car full of winter clothes we could sell, and we’ll get mugged- I’m not accusing you, but I’m worried you’re being misled.”

Lucy shook her head.  “Limited stock, then.  Maybe only a few items, first night.  If you’re worried it’ll get stolen.  If it sells out, then come the next weekend.  Same deal, maybe you bring more.  Keep the prices reasonable, we all win.”

“If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”

“Dad!” Brayden pleaded.  “Come on!”

“Why?” Mr. Black asked.

“Because it takes this project we’re working on, and it ties things back to Kennet.  Supports the community.  Gets the stuff from one of the nicer businesses downtown, and gives it out to people who wouldn’t normally come to buy.”

“But they’ll come to a market at midnight on a weekend?  All year ’round?”

“I’m almost positive, yes.  Winter at the very least.  I don’t see what you have to lose except a bit of sleep.”

“Is this the point you tell me that Kennet has a secret population of vampires who can’t come out in the daytime?”

“No.  But you’re not that far off the mark.”

“Is that the theme?” Brayden asked, excited.

A shadow passed the window.

Lucy glanced over, and saw Horseman, who was standing guard, had tensed.

“I’ve got to go.  We’ll send someone to escort you and help you out later.  If you don’t want to, that’s okay.”

“I’ll think about it.  I’m sure Brayden will do his best to convince me.”

“Don’t pester your dad too much, okay?  You’ll scare him off if you’re annoying.”

Lucy left.

The group of three Dog Tags came with.  Doe was out there too, but she roamed, scouting for trouble, signaling back at Grandfather or Horseman.

“What’s next?” Grandfather asked.

“Another Aware, they live in the apartment building up that way,” Lucy said.  “It’s a long shot, but maybe they have stuff.  Then there’s a white sheep from Kennet found.  Foundling that migrated up here, ditched the mask.  They’re weird, but they might know or have stuff.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Grandfather replied.

She was keeping an eye out for the Wild Hunt when she saw Wallace, in the midst of his Christmas shopping, his mom at his side.

Traffic moving down the street was going just fast enough Lucy wouldn’t feel comfortable crossing or trying to run through, but not fast enough that it looked like it would clear up and leave gaps.

She raised her hand in a wave.  He waved back.

He got his phone out.

Wallace:
who are they???

The Dog Tags.

Lucy:
Friends.  Can’t stop to chat.  Stuff to do.  Really want to spend time together when things aren’t so hectic.

She saw him nod with vigor.

Wallace:
is your arm okay??

She gave him an exaggerated shrug and nod.  Because it was easier than finding words.

He nodded back.

But with the gap between them, and the sheer amount of shit on her plate that she had to deal with… it didn’t feel like there was a fast route to closing that gap.  It felt like not closing it was letting it widen, at the same time.

She wasn’t sure if she’d fallen out of like with Wallace, or if she just didn’t have the spare emotions to devote to it.

Mrs. Davis looked at Lucy, and Lucy could feel the weight of that gaze.  Knowing she was insufficient, she somehow didn’t qualify.  It didn’t matter she was okay looking, or that she got good grades, or that she came from a good and decent family.  It didn’t matter that Wallace apparently liked her and enjoyed their projects together, like sharing horror movies and tie-in games.

The Wild Hunt watched her from rooftops and from the trees at the end of this southeastern corner of downtown.

She was getting used to those stares.  She had to be careful and aware of that feeling.  Because it felt more and more like she was ready to snap, and she wasn’t sure they’d allow her to survive whatever it was she did on impulse.

Verona sat at Rook’s council table.  Lucy hurried over, and Verona stood, awkward, like something in her midsection hurt.

“I’d hug you but I can’t raise my right arm,” Verona said, “and my left hand has been cramping.  And I know your wrist is bad.”

Lucy gave Verona a careful one-armed hug anyway.

The moment the hug ended, Verona collapsed back into her seat.

Connor was talking to Louise.  Lucy’s mom was working the afternoon, but she’d be over if she could get away.

Miss came over.  She was stretching an elastic band behind her, that tied her to Kennet found, and she might have to leave early, pause, and come back.  But she was here now.

“How was your expedition today?”

“Two contracts.  Maybe a third.  I think Mr. Black from the sports store will give us a shot.  We’ll have to take precautions.”

“Separate area,” the Bitter Street Witch said.  She’d come back, and was already seated.  She looked healthier, if still very crooked.  “One block reserved for the more innocent.  Black sheep.  We’ll keep the weirdos at the opposite end.”

“Why the sporting goods?” Louise asked.

“Winter coats, gloves, hats.  Stuff that gets hard to find when the supply from Kennet Found’s factories and things aren’t that consistent.  Or get stolen, or whatever.”

“I love that store,” Avery said.

Lucy twisted around.  Verona, sore in the middle, couldn’t twist, and didn’t have it in her to stand unsupported, so she just struggled, up until Lucy grabbed her under one armpit and lifted her up.

“You’re here,” Lucy said.

“Gotta be, don’t I?  To get stuff sorted, make sure you’re all okay?”

Lucy went to hug Avery.  Verona walked up, and unable to lift the one arm, or let go of the hand she was rubbing, she sort of headbutted her way into the hug-huddle, letting Lucy and Avery put their arms around her.

“You got two more contracts?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.  Made the deals around noon, went home, printed, brought the stuff over to sign.  One more possible deal, but that doesn’t count for much.”

“Mr. Harless was useful?”

“He’s great,” Lucy replied.

“Awesome.  I’m glad.”

They broke the huddle.  Melissa, coming up the stairs with Bracken, punched Avery lightly in the shoulder as she passed.

People gathered.  Goblins stormed in, and found spots at the fringes.  Cherrypop was already with Snowdrop, talking a mile a minute about the slide she was building in Kennet found.  Which was probably why they hadn’t seen as much of her.

One face was conspicuously absent.  They were on Rook’s rooftop, gathered at the table, protected by glass above, heated by stoves at the edges that Reggie, or Hollow Yen, was tending and feeding wood to.

But Rook… short of someone like Lucy’s mom, who was bound to be late, Rook was the last to arrive.

“You were delayed?” Miss asked, a string of masks hanging, covering her face.

Rook took the seat next to Miss.  “Following up on details.  Musser is coming.  He’ll be here within the hour.  Before our meeting is done.  He has a group with him.”

That was it, then.  There wasn’t much time to gather more assets, grow the market, or organize.  They had magic items, tools, resources, reserves, they’d talked things over for probably a hundred hours since fall, about what tonight would probably bring.  Strategy, what a solution would look like.

“Well,” Lucy said, as she digested that.  “Let’s invite him to the council meeting for a chat, then.”

Next Chapter