Crossed with Silver – 19.17 | Pale

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Avery reached out, her left hand taking hold of Lucy’s right.  Lucy reached for Verona’s hand.

This felt like a Path.  Maybe it kind of was.  The Page of Suns had described a leap of faith involved in any Path.  Then, aesthetically, the glass of the greenhouse had a tint to it, droplets of moisture catching light from different sources.  With the angles of the glass and a bit of creative reinterpretation to fit the weight of the four Judges, the light on one side was brighter, moisture on the window like stars on the night sky.  At another window, it was dark, and the light that was there in the area was dimpled with the shadows of the droplets.  At a third, it was gold, glittering, and changing as steam left a duct at a nearby restaurant, making them not just shine, but glitter, lighting up and fading.

Each cast a shadow from their window, the shadows intersected at the midpoint between the fire escape with the glass door keeping the cold out, and the fine, wrought-iron table Rook had set up for the meeting.  Standing where the shadows intersected, Charles stood over the table.  The windows didn’t reflect him, but instead, he was so red that it seemed to tint everything else just a tiny bit.

Three of the judges conferred, while Charles stood there by the table.

“Can you hear what they’re saying?” Avery asked.

Lucy shook her head.

“Abraham Musser will be called back,” Charles told them.  “Things that were said were assumed to be true, or they may have fallen to a middle ground and tipped his way due to the precedents he’s already established.  If you wish to call him out, ask the judges to weigh or test the validity of a statement.”

“It’s like when you’re playing Babel and someone puts down the letter tiles trying for one of their three words that aren’t made up, right?  You challenge it?” Verona asked.  “If you’re right about it being a real word, you get to take their word off the table and get a point, and if you’re wrong, they get another point.”

“Yes,” Charles said, with a tone like he was humoring Verona.  “It’s like Babel.  Except the consequences are more severe.”

“What-” Avery’s dad spoke up.  “What are the consequences?”

“A long gainsaying.  Coup.  He could ask for a prize.  He could weaken your overall claim to Kennet, asserting power and control with ease.”

Avery thought of the Promenade.  The Garricks expecting her.

If she got gainsaid and couldn’t help at all, they’d probably forgive her, but…

“The higher the stakes of what you’re challenging, the higher the cost if you’re wrong,” Charles said.  “And you challenging everything Musser is?  He may retaliate to a failed challenge with a claim against everything you are.”

“Yeah,” Lucy whispered.

Avery nodded.

“Lucy,” Lucy’s mom said.  “I’m sorry, I have to speak up.”

Avery glanced to her left, and saw Lucy shut her eyes.  Avoiding eye contact with her mom.

“It’s a town.  I know it’s a town that’s special, it’s a town you’ve fought for, it’s a town you’ve worked for- you talked about bleeding for it, sweating for it, crying for it.  I know- I know it’s horrible of me to say it, here, at this table, with people who don’t have great alternatives on where to go.  I know it’s horrible when we’ve talked and I’m trying not to-”

She sighed, like the words wouldn’t come.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“I’m trying not to be a negative force here.  I don’t want to distract or hurt or weaken what you’re trying to do by speaking up, but…”

“This feels like a long shot,” Avery’s dad finished the thought.

“It’s not just Kennet,” Avery said.  “I’ve been all over the place.  You’ve- you came with me sometimes, Dad.  Everywhere that was dangerous to drive through, it used to be Musser’s.  Those were all places where they couldn’t or wouldn’t fight.  Some of those places were places where I bet there were people like us who had to decide if they’d try something like this, or if they’d leave, and they left like you’re wanting to.”

“And those places used to be a place with a man in charge, basically, who’d do what he was saying earlier.  Using girls and women as bargaining chips.  Killing people who he disagrees with.  He said he’d burn Kennet.  If he can’t take stuff, he’ll destroy it.”

“I know, but it’s not your responsibility-” Avery’s dad started.

“But it’s-!” Avery interrupted.  Even though she didn’t have a full thought ready to go out.  “-It’s, it doesn’t stop there, you know?  People talk about practitioners doing this kind of take over of areas as being inevitable.  Like Musser’s organized takeover of Ontario was something that would eventually happen everywhere.”

“There are other places it’s happened,” Verona pointed out.

“There are, but this still matters.  If he makes another try at it and we just accept it, or we leave, or if we fight back but end up retreating, because two of us are hurt from the Wild Hunt, and Musser’s pulling out all the stops, like calling in Durocher… that’s allowing it.  That’s…”

Avery trailed off.

“It’s accepting it,” Lucy said.  “It’s like Booker- my brother. It’s what he talked about, about having to vote, having to protest, having to fight back against evil and ignorance.  Because they won’t stop there.  Besides, we said it, right?  There’s no backing out?”

“No,” Charles replied.

“There are ways to mitigate it,” Miss said.  “If you wanted to retreat, or if you had second thoughts, you could adjust the line of argument, set the stakes of the challenge low, lowering the cost by equal measure.”

“This is true,” Charles said.

“I don’t want to mitigate it,” Lucy said.  “I think we touched a nerve, we got close to something there, and- you told me to trust my instincts, mom.  That they’re good instincts.  Dr. Mona told me to trust my instincts.”

“I want you to trust your instincts when it keeps you safe.”

“Is this less safe?” Lucy asked.  “Isn’t it worse if we- if we’re so-called ‘safe’ now, but then in fifty years, or twenty, or ten, we’re living under a tyrant?”

“Or we move, we try to get out of reach of that tyranny, but the boulder’s started rolling downhill and there’s no stopping it?  Crushing everything eventually?” Avery added.

“I wanna see,” Cherrypop roused, pushing up to a sitting position where she’d been lying on Snowdrop’s belly.

“If we’re wrong, we eat the consequence.  It’ll probably be bad,” Verona said.  “But it’s worse if there might be an actual shot and we don’t take it.”

“Say yes,” Lucy told her mom.  “I think if you’re behind me, that helps.  That matters, that’s as good as ammunition for our guns, metaphorically, in this world.  I get you’re concerned, but I need you behind me.  It matters if we have people behind us.  Convincing the spirits.  This is like a popularity contest, and that’s crappy, but it matters.”

“Okay.  I trust you.  I believe you.  What I said before, it’s not that I think you’re wrong.  It’s that I love you and I know the stakes are high.”

Which worked.  If spirits were listening, clarifying that really did matter.

“Dad?” Avery asked, nervous.

“I’m behind you.  One of my biggest regrets in life was letting you down, last year, start of this year, then doing it again, this summer.  Not seeing you, not being there for you, not supporting you.  I’m here, and I see you.  What you’ve done, what you’re doing, who you are, what you’re building and becoming?  It’s good.  I trust you.”

Avery closed her eyes for a few seconds, moisture gathering to where it felt tremble-y between her eyelashes.  She nodded and turned before she could embarrass herself.

Lucy was looking at Verona, who looked-

Maybe a bit drawn-in.

Oh, they’d set up a stupid three-beat.  Like when the other two would just improv a stupid mini-ritual and Avery would have to scramble to think up a rhyme to tie it together.  She’d hated that.

Except this was worse.  Because they’d invoked their parents, got support and…

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.  Peckersnot thrust a fist into the air.

Verona clicked her tongue, firing finger guns at them.

Which was nicer than nothing at all, but…

There was a bang.  Mal, sitting on a counter, with hands in the pockets of her open coat, put her foot out, heel of her boot striking the edge of the wrought metal table.  Dangerously close to the Vice Principal, as Lucy saw it.  “Hey.”

Verona turned.  “Heya.”

“We’re all with you, dumbass.  You’re a good witch of the town, you’re pulling off cool tricks.  You pulled off the Founding, and I guess that was a big deal.”

“You guess?” Lucy asked.

“It was a thing, pretty big, maybe, I don’t have any point of reference-”

“Mal,” Verona said.  “I know you’re joking around, but words matter right now.”

“Fine.  You did good,” Mal said, shrugging.  “It was badass, you’re pretty bad- you’re badass.  You guys got these three sitting next to each other-”

Mal angled her foot so the toe of her shoe pointed more in the direction of the Bitter Street Witch, Stew Mullen, and the Vice Principal.

“-and working on projects together, you’ve dealt with problems inside and out.  You’ve got your shop, you’ve got cool stuff going on-”

Verona coughed, mumbling through the cough, “Demesne.”

“-And a Demesne?  Heck yeah.  You want to say this is your town, you’ve got claim, you’re legit, you’re leading shit?  Sure, yeah.  That Musser guy seems like a dildo.  Fuck him.  Fuck his claim.”  She got louder.  “Fuck!  Him!  That’s what you threatened right!?  Fuck Musser, words matter and you wanted to make that a big thing!?  Fuck him in his handsome smugfuck face!”

There were some voices piping up now.  Goblins joining in.  Some from the undercity.  Ramjam banged something as he shouted, and that got Stew Mullen paying attention, banging his hand to punctuate statements.

“Fuck Musser!”

“Fuck Musser!”

Avery wondered if that was pinging Musser and what he thought might be happening.

“He wants to claim Kennet,” Verona said, pitching her voice to be heard.  “He’s made plans to come back in a month, he thinks he can burn it down between now and then and he can claim the ashes?  No.  He doesn’t get to claim even that!”

The voices were louder now.  The glass around them helped the sounds bounce around.  Some Dog Tags were stomping.

“Fuck his claim to the market,” Toadswallow said.

“Fuck his claim to Kennet found,” Miss said.

Avery was pretty sure that was the first time she’d heard Miss swear.

It went around the circle.  Kennet below.  Kennet above, from Louise, their rep from the human end of Kennet.

“We got to him, I think, we scored a win, we need to use it,” Lucy said.  She didn’t try to pitch her voice as much, but she didn’t need to.  She had a bit of volume, and she wasn’t addressing the room.  She was addressing Charles and the Judges.  “It feels off, I don’t buy it.  Enough-”

She paused, looking at Verona, then Avery, then down the table to her mom, who was joining her voice to the others.

Then to Charles.  “-Enough that I want to call his bluff.”

“We,” Avery added.  “We want to.”

Charles smiled that mean smile again.  “You did get his goat, didn’t you?  Fun to watch.”

“Gotta make it count though,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Charles said.  “You do.”

Avery turned to look at Snowdrop, who was holding Cherry up over her head, so Cherry could see and participate in the commotion, punching at the air and hollering.

Charles briefly met Avery’s eyes, then looked away.  “Then let’s see you do this.”

He turned to the other three Judges, who’d finished talking among one another a while ago, and who were now waiting.

The glass of the greenhouse cracked abruptly, making Avery jump.

She watched as the cracks spread, each with blood wedged in the gaps.  The interior of the greenhouse was bright and the outside dark, so it was hard to see through, with reflections getting in the way.  Those reflections changed, showing Musser and his group.

The weirdness of that quarter-second of eye contact pulled Avery out of the moment, even with the energy coming from Snowdrop.

What he’d said.  Not the ‘let’s see you do this’…

Avery’s hand tightened at Lucy’s, squeezing.

The cracks traced outlines around Musser, Durocher, Graubard, and Hall.  They moved as the four people turned around, looking straight at them.  The familiars were in the background.

“What is it?” Lucy asked.

“Musser’s heroic?” Avery asked.

“What?” Verona asked.  She was on the other side of Lucy, and her coming over, still holding onto Lucy’s arm, turned their talk into a huddle.

Behind them, the image was resolving, turning from a reflection to something real, framed by the cracks.

“I think Musser’s not immortal, but he’s doing something with heroic practice.  That might be the shenanigans-”

“The bullshit,” Lucy said, not like she was correcting Avery, but coming to the same conclusion.  “How sure are you?”

“Maybe eighty percent?” Avery replied.

“Okay, so what is it?  What clued you in?”

“I don’t know, but-”

She didn’t want to say it out loud.  Because the hint came from Charles.

“When I beat Easton,” Verona hissed the words, leaning in.  “He gave me a practice.  It’s bullshit, it’s super high tier War summoning that expects me to have a bunch of specific summons of specific lines already done and ready, a full workshop with high-end devices, expensive-ass spell components, and like, three other rituals already done and locked down.”

“Your point?” Lucy asked.

“Really now, Charles?” Musser asked, behind them.  He’d resolved enough to peer through.

“It’s not me, it’s the Kennet practitioners,” Charles said.  He turned, and saw them huddled, whispering.  “Are you with us?”

“Yeah, you can bring him through.”

The glass broke, and Musser, Durocher, Hall, and Graubard came through.  The window remained open, a portal to the street, where Graubard’s doll and Musser’s familiars gathered.

Durocher walked over to Charles, and put a hand at his cheek.  “You aged well.  You look good.  Better than you did when we had you at the Blue Heron.”

“I’m still worn out as shit, Marie,” Charles said.  “What the fuck are you doing with Musser?”

“You don’t know with all the power at your disposal?”

“I know.  I want to hear it.”

“You create all these huge, interesting Others for him to fight, and you’re wondering why I’m taking interest?”

“This is more than that…”  Charles turned toward them.  “Ready?”

“Let us finish talking?” Lucy asked.

“You have moments, not minutes.”

Okay.  They couldn’t afford to keep listening in.

Snowdrop joined the huddle.  Avery put an arm around her.  Cherrypop was perched on Snow’s head.

“The thing,” Verona whispered, her one hand clutching Lucy’s sleeve near the shoulder, her other hand balled up into a fist and resting on Avery’s.  “It was about heroic summons, the components were heroic relics, and it was a practice partially authored by the Mussers.  Went looking, couldn’t find anything elsewhere, including the prerequisite bullshit.  I think it was given to the Songetays as payment.”

“Okay,” Avery said, “I’m about, ninety percent sure now, I guess?”

“What was the practice?” Lucy asked.

“Something to support a heroic spirit, summon a dang solid spirit castle complete with siege weapons out of nowhere.  But you had to be right in the middle of it.  Basically so close you’re molesting your big hero spirit.”

“Bahahahahaha!  Molesting!” Cherrypop cried out.

“What are you discussing?” Durocher asked.

The goat, it hadn’t looked special.  Avery snapped her head around to look at Musser, her Sight flashing.

He looked back at her, past gold-rimmed spectacles.  He didn’t look special, there was no hint, but there didn’t have to be.

“Or you’d have to be the hero, right?” Avery asked the others, breaking eye contact with Musser.  “That would work?”

“Doesn’t solve it,” Lucy whispered back.  “He wouldn’t have the right to claim anything else his family did, still.”

“Are you done?” Charles asked.

“Channeled power,” Verona said.  “Read about it while looking to see if I could pull the practice off, out of spite.  Channeled power of the bloodline, brief strength, um, um.”

She snapped the fingers of her good hand.

“Channeled experiences?  Channeled responsibility?” Verona suggested.  “Channeled credit?”

“I move to break the challenge and take recompense,” Musser said.  “If they’re delaying instead of following through.”

“Good enough,” Lucy said, turning away, clapping hands onto Avery and Verona’s shoulders before walking between them and stepping forward.  She faced Musser and Charles.  “No need.  We’d like to narrow the focus of our challenge.”

Musser replied, “If you’re approaching me as three, backed by your unofficial council, I’m in my rights to have a group with me, and the assistance of my familiars.”

“We awoke together, we’re a trio together,” Lucy said.  “Nah.  But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Lucy had energy that practically rolled off her, following the backing of the council, the cheering, the swearing, and everything else.  Like fire inside now.  Mal had spoken up because of Verona, but people adding their voices together for what had felt like months and months of frequently thankless bullshit- that mattered to Lucy too.  Backing from the community.  Validated as fuck.

Hell, Avery kind of felt it still.  Some of it thrummed through to her from Snowdrop, like raw excitement.  A nervousness that made everything feel like it had gone more still.  Like being in the zone, in the middle of a game.

And Verona- Verona gave nothing away.  Or barely gave anything away.  But Avery thought about the Verona she’d glimpsed when she realized she and Lucy had both asked their parents for backup, and Verona had nothing.  She could imagine a similar Verona who was a little dead inside, gone cold, shut off, like she’d seen after hearing Verona’s dad bitching at her, in that weird, dark, cold house.

And then she looked at Verona now and- it was a difference of the eyes being more receptive, taking things in, a difference of fractions of angles, maybe.  But it was a different Verona.

“Abraham Musser,” Lucy said.  “Those present soundly refute your claim-”

“Doesn’t matter.  I’ve made my statements.”

“-and with Judges present this time, we challenge you.  I challenge you on leadership, I challenge you on legitimacy, let them interrogate your word, and only your word.  Let’s leave the rest of the Musser family bloodline out of it.”

Musser smiled.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Avery thought.

They were really doing this.  They were doing this and Musser was smiling and oh shit she’d brought up this idea and they were doing this and was this how everything got fucked over?

“What did you tell them, Charles?” Musser asked.

Oh shit.  They were on-target?  Oh shit.

“I thought it was fun they got your goat.  You were irritated.”

“What is this, Abraham?” Durocher asked, she sounded a bit amused.  “What did they find?”

Maybe Musser had thought that he’d gotten Charles, because Charles had pulled something, but he didn’t seem to now.  He looked confused, and the smile he’d had moments ago fell.

“Your involvement makes any proceeding biased,” he told Charles, ignoring Durocher.

“Oh shit,” Avery said, before she realized she’d said it.  “Are you scared?”

“Only acutely aware that one of the judges of this contest has a grudge against me, and that, based on Verona’s cooperation with him, you may be in league with him.”

Musser had already refuted their efforts to turn the tables on him when they’d pointed out his involvement in putting Charles on the Carmine Throne, back when Kennet had been attacked in fall, and after talking with Harless about the kinds of arguments and things that could go into contracts and things like this, they’d agreed not to lean on that.  It would be weak.  Useful as a finisher, maybe, but a bad foundation for any actual argument.

It was so tempting though.

“I can agree to act as a vehicle for the others.  Let them act through me, limit my speech and action only to what they’re unified in doing.”

“With all respect, Charles,” Musser said.  “I don’t trust you for even that.”

“I’m fine as long as I get to watch,” Charles said.  He turned to the other Judges.

“We will test the accused to determine the validity of the challenge.  Any statements?”

“I move that I and the Musser family are inexorably intertwined,” Musser replied.

“I move for a test of leadership and legitimacy,” Lucy said.  “Musser- Abraham Musser, if you deserve leadership, the contacts you’ve made, all of that?  If you’re legit?  Earn it again, on your own merits.  Only on your own merits.  Starting from a station like us three, without family money, without family books.”

“An unreasonable challenge.  The points of comparison, the minute factors… no.”

Charles glanced in the direction of the Aurum a moment before the Aurum spoke.  “An amendment.  The question is about leadership, character, and merit.  The three challengers will participate.”

The centipede rasped as it grazed floor and glass.  It let the man who’d been seated on the gold centipede’s head down to the floor, but remained in constant contact with him as it slid by, reaching.

For Avery, Verona, and Lucy.

“Us against him?” Avery asked.

“Each of them alone,” Musser said.  “I must insist.”

Avery felt a bit of trepidation.

“We awoke together,” Lucy said.

“It’s a fair adjustment, to keep to the spirit of the challenge,” the Aurum said.

“This won’t-” Verona paused, as the centipede’s long body slid between her and Lucy.  She rubbed her palm.  “It won’t Worold us or whatever the term is?  It won’t screw with our heads?”

“No more than briefly experiencing being Carmine did,” Charles said.  “Your conscious and present mind doesn’t need the challenge.  You may retain the highlight reel.”

The coils kept gathering, meshing.

The Sable spoke as darkness deepened.  “Two out of the three of you must surpass him in leadership and legitimacy.”

The darkness became deeper than anything.

“Avery.”

Avery turned, both hands gripping the right strap of her bag.  Ms. Hardy.

Oh gosh, she was beautiful.  Her hair was dyed white and her makeup was always stellar and she was right here.  Gosh.

Avery raised her eyebrows, shoulders drawing together a bit.

“You’re not in trouble, don’t worry.  Do you have a minute?  Can we chat in my classroom?”

Avery nodded.

“Leave the door open?  Sit wherever.”

Avery left the door open.

She was going to break her streak.  She’d had a good run.  Fifty days without speaking up in school, except to answer questions when asked by teachers.  She wasn’t in soccer because they didn’t really have a soccer team, and hockey was over… not that hockey had been better.  The Kennet team didn’t have enough interested girls in her age range because the Dancers stole so many and only, like, Melissa was really willing to go that extra mile.  So they had people from Tripoli come over, but that meant there was less coaching, less socializing…

So she’d gotten to fifty days.

Home was a bit different.  The rules for home were that her streak ended if someone asked how she was and meant it.  Or if they asked for her actual opinion, or gave her a choice for what to watch on TV or what to get for dinner, and she wasn’t immediately drowned out.

Home hadn’t broken the streak either.

And being the quiet, weird homeschool girl who hadn’t spoken up or talked to anyone for fifty days meant that less people wanted to even try to talk to her and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I wanted to ask, are you okay?”

She felt like she was drowning.  Like she had a lump in her throat that had been there for weeks, and she could barely breathe around it.

She shrugged.

She wanted to reply, she was supposed to reply, being asked if she was okay was one of the things that could break the streak.

But she couldn’t.

She’d heard about how an athlete could get the yips.  Like a golf swing that would get a weird quirk in it that the athlete couldn’t get around, or a gymnast’s flip or whatever, where they’d self-sabotage and whatever they did, it was stuck like that.  They’d have to retrain from scratch.

She felt like she had that, but for words, her voice.

“Not sure, huh?” Ms. Hardy asked, sitting on the edge of her desk.  “Okay.  No pressure, for the record.  Like I said, you’re not in trouble.”

Her tattoos were so cool, but Avery didn’t want to stare.  She felt like she could start crying but she didn’t want to do that either.  Not in front of the cool teacher.

“I noticed in your education plan, it said you were homeschooled.  How was that?”

Avery shrugged again.  It wasn’t the homeschooling’s fault, not really.  It’s me.

“And home?  It’s okay?”

She was studying Avery.

She felt like she was at the bottom of a pool, every day that had passed since she’d last talked a stone on top of her she now had to get out from.  To get up, get out, breathe again.

The tears, they felt like they could come.  Like she could crack and-

“Ms. Hardy?”

Ian Dobson, with Noah Sauve, in the doorway.

“What do you need, Ian?  I’m with a student.”

“It’s an emergency.  The kind only you can deal with,” Ian said.

Avery stared at the floor.

“An emergency emergency?”

“A run emergency,” Ian said.

Ms. Hardy started toward the door.  “Avery, is this okay?”

Because she felt like an emergency too.

She nodded, opened her mouth to speak, then swiped a hand toward the door.  As in ‘go’.  Nodded again.

“If you stay- no, I don’t know how long this will take.  Can we talk in the morning?  You could come in a bit early.” Ms. Hardy lingered for a second in the doorway, checking.  “Mr. Lai is in his classroom, actually, if you’d check in with him?”

Avery nodded quickly.

Then Ms. Hardy was gone.

Avery sat on the desk, her back to the windows.  She watched as straggling students left.  Gabe whatshisname was with three slightly younger students.  There were older boys out on the soggy grass of the field, running relays.

When nearly everyone was gone except the janitors, she made herself get up, hop down from the desk, and go to her locker.

She didn’t have homework, didn’t need her bag.  She shoved it in, and it got wedged inside.

She kicked it, hard.

A panel at the back of the locker caved in.  Something fell.

Avery leaned in, hand on her bag for support, and peered through, best she could.  A book?

She reached for it, blew off the cobwebs, and then pulled back into the waning light of day.  A notebook, fat, with papers taped or glued in.

The cover.  Tell no one, do not share.  This book contains magic.

Well.  Those instructions would be easy to follow.

She pulled her bag free of the locker, stuffed the book inside, and then pulled it on.

She didn’t go to Mr. Lai, she didn’t go to the guidance counselor.  She didn’t go to see Ms. Hardy in the morning.

“Tell no one, do not share.  This book contains magic,” Verona read it aloud.  “Cool as hell.”

She grabbed some of the sweaters she’d picked out, a taxidermied rat, and the book, and took them over to the counter.

“And the book?” the woman there asked, with her fake Scottish accent.

“Not yours.”

“You didn’t come in with it.”

“No, but I know who it belongs to,” Verona lied.  “And it’s not tagged, so it’s not yours either.”

“If someone left something behind, we should keep it in lost and found.”

“I come in here all the time, do you not trust me?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know you.  Can I see the cover?  Or the book?”

“No.  Man, you’re annoying,” Verona replied, as she backed away from the counter.  She fished a twenty out of her pocket.  “For the sweaters and the rat.  Do you want the sale or not?”

The woman seemed to debate whether to pursue things.

But that was the trick.  It was possible to get away with a lot of things in life if you made yourself a big enough pain in the ass.

The woman reached out.  Verona closed the distance, passing the bill over, before stepping back.

The sweaters and rat were bagged, Verona popped the book into the bag, and then she got on her bike to head home.

How cool would it be if there was something to it?  Random magic book, hidden in a box of stuff that hadn’t been unpacked yet?

She leaned back, hands off the handlebars for a brief while, seeing how far she could push things.  She got to the bridge, had to make the turn, tried to do it without touching the handlebars, and ended up having to put her foot out to stop herself.  She biked normally the rest of the way.  Back to the house.

“Where were you?” her dad asked.

“What does it matter?” she asked.

“It matters because I needed you for something.  Where were you?”

“With friends.”

“You don’t have friends, Verona.  You take after me like that.  Come downstairs.  I want to get started on the floor, but my back’s a mess right now.”

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” she lied.

“Come right back down when you’re done,” he called over, already on his way downstairs.

She rolled her eyes, went up to the bathroom, and locked herself in.  Sitting on the toilet, she opened the book in her lap.  Pages from other books had been taped inside.  Essentials…

“Verona!”

She bit back a swear word.  “I’m in the bathroom!”

“I can’t find the box cutting knife!  I think you took it!”

“I didn’t!  Keep looking!”

Fundamental conceits.

Awakening.

Jeremy put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him.

A big thing of whiskey or something was being passed around.  Jeremy took it, gulped down some, then passed it to her.  She passed it on.

“Are you the designated driver?” Mia asked.

Verona rolled her eyes.  “Not sixteen yet.  How drunk are you?”

“Not drunk enough.  Pass it.”

George had tipped the bottle back, and bubbles were rising as he guzzled.  He held up a finger.

“Dude, go easy, it’s not beer,” Bryson said.

“I’m fine,” George said.  He tried to burp and it didn’t really happen.  “I’m good.”

“My uncle let me get supervised-drunk a couple years back,” Hailey said.  “Figured if I’m going to do it, and obviously we’re going to get drunk he should be there to supervise.”

“Isn’t your uncle a cop?”

“No comment,” Hailey said, in a slow-motion drunk voice, with a look on her face like she thought she was being more clever than she was.  “But what I’m saying, here’s what I was going to say.  I’m saying you learn your tolerances.  He believed, he thought, you need to know how far you can go.  I think that’s smart.  I think that’s how things should be and kids- right from the time you’re a kid, you should know how much you can take.”

“Hey,” Jeremy murmured.  “You good?”

Verona nodded.

“You!  You’re not sensible, Verona Haywood.”

“Hayward.”

“You’re pulling a Weagle on us, you weasel.”

Alayna Weagle was their religious, rather uptight classmate.

“Okay.  I think we should cut you off.”

“Weagler!”

“Alayna’s not that bad,” Verona replied.  “She’s uptight, but I was doing group work with her a lot, and she can be funny.”

“She’s a Weagler,” Hailey said.  “And you’re being a Weagler.”

“Okay.  Just saying.  Parents can suck and if she got stuck with hyperreligious parents, and she’s dealing with being the odd one out, I’m going to-”

“Weagle.  You’re going to Weagle.”

“Okay, Hailey,” Verona grunted as she stood.  “I think you’re done and you need to sleep this off.”

“You good?” Mia called over.

“Uhhh…”

“Want help?” Jeremy asked.  “I should watch out for Wallace, but… maybe I can find someone-”

“I will manage.  I think Hailey can stand and walk mostly straight.  I think I’ll just steer.”

Hailey accepted Verona’s help in getting to her feet, before leaning in.  “Weagler.”

“You look after your boy.  I will look after Hailey because I don’t trust most of these losers to.”

“You are the designated driver,” Mia said.

“With feet, not wheels.  Oh.”

Jeremy was leaning in for a goodbye kiss.  Verona kissed him.  He tasted like whiskey.  Interesting.

“I could do that a few more times,” she told him.

Hailey leaned into her.  “You’re not a Weagler like this.”

“That’s not a thing, I think you’re the only one here who gets it, and it’s mean to our classmate.  Stop.”

Hailey smiled, then she started, “That’s a Wea-”

“Stop.  No.”

Verona had to stop her a few more times before Hailey gave up.

“See you tomorrow?” Jeremy asked.

“Maybe let’s make plans for the afternoon.  I’m guessing you’ll have some hangover.”

“You think?”

“Drink water,” she ordered him.  “And go find your boy.  He went off to pee, what, five minutes ago?  If he’s still peeing after five minutes I’m really worried about how much he drank.”

“More worried about food allergies than the drinking, but yeah.  See you, girlfriend.”

“See you.”

She steered Hailey in the direction of Hailey’s house.  Hailey brought the whiskey she’d brought to the party, and Verona had her hands full keeping Hailey moving while also trying to keep the bottle from being in easy view of nosy neighbors and passing cops.  And stopping Hailey from taking any more swigs.

“You have a boyfriend.  How cool is that?” Hailey asked.

“I dunno, Hailey.  I really don’t,” Verona replied, and she couldn’t lie, either.

“Are you good?  Is he good?  Is he secretly sexy?”

“He is unsecretly sexy in my metaphorical books.”

“Your books are weird.”

“Maybe they are.  I’m happy being weird.”

“That’s weird.”

Verona looked at Hailey as they walked down the street, dark, without even streetlights.

“You’d be the perfect person to confide in, huh?” Verona asked.  “I’m willing to bet you won’t remember any of this.”

“What?  I lost track.  What?”

“Yeah, exactly.  It’s okay.  Jeremy’s okay.  It’s boring, kind of, you know?  Do you get that?”

“No.  Maybe because it’s Jeremy.”

“Can’t see what another boy would do better.  It’s just dull sometimes.  Kissing?  Good.  Talking cats or art or books?  Good.  But I dunno.  I thought I’d feel more attached after a while.”

“Have you boned?”

“No comment.  Also, I hate the word ‘boned’.”

“Boned boned boned…”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

“Boned Weagle.”

“Yeah okay.  I walked into that one.  I think the thing that eats at me is like, he’s super into me.  I don’t know why.  But he is.  And I’m not that into him?  At all?  Like something’s broken or disconnected.  So it feels like I’m being unfair.”

“Bone it to make it up for it.  Him.  Bone him for him.”

“It’s like… okay?  He’s fine, he’s cool, I enjoy his company, but I’m not excited for his company.”

“Maybe you’re gay.”

“Maybe.  I dunno!  But it’s like… alright, I guess?  And if I’m going to be bored anyway, I might as well be bored with a guy to talk cats with and to fool around with and bone.”

Hailey’s mouth opened into a shocked, accusatory ‘o’.

“You’ll forget I said that, I bet.  Anyway, it’s fine when it’s fine and low key, but if I’m too emotional, I feel like my dad, and if I’m not emotional enough I’m like my mom so what the fuck do I do?  Or is that my dad’s just such a constant meltdown, everything more adult and mature feels dead and dull to me?”

“You-”  Hailey raised a finger, waving it through the air.  “-bone him.”

“Okay, should’ve guessed the punchline there.  That’s on me, I guess.”

Hailey started silently laughing, leaning harder into Verona, making Verona work to keep her upright for a minute as they walked.  When Verona had to stop them and focus wholly on keeping Hailey from punching the road using her face, that ended the laughing fit and got them back to where they could walk again.

“You should-” Hailey said.

“Are you going to repeat the punchline?”

“Use a medium amount of emotion,” Hailey replied.

“Oh yeah?  Huh.  Why didn’t I think of that?  It sounds so easy.”

Hailey patted Verona on the back.

“It’s not easy though.”

Hailey’s cheeks bulged out.

It took Verona a second to realize Hailey wasn’t making a face to try to get a smile out of Verona.  “Did you-”

Hailey’s eyes were watering.  A look crept across her face, cheeks still bulged out.

“Oh god.  Over here-”

She had to work to help Hailey bend over the ditch to throw up, and keep her balanced so she wouldn’t drop face first into the ditch to punch the vomit and ditchwater at the bottom with her face.

Hailey ended up bending down, periodically throwing up.  “It went into my nose.  I nose vomited.”

“Okay, honey, okay.  I don’t know what to do about that-”

Hailey leaned back abruptly, and Verona had to haul back to keep her from falling over.  Because it was so much work, she missed what Hailey was doing at first.  Unbuttoning her jeans.

Hiking her jeans down to mid-thigh, standing on the yellow line by the side of an empty road.

“No, no, no, you’re not at all okay or positioned for a number one, and that’s-”

It was not a number one.

“Oh god, oh no-”

Hailey vomited as well.  For the leverage, and because Hailey was starting to cry, Verona managed an awkward hug-slash-chokehold around Hailey’s neck and shoulders, stabilizing her.

“Oh honey, oh no, oh, that’s- oh that is a full-body rebellion against what you drank tonight.  Oh, that spattered my shoes.”

Hailey sobbed, ass hanging out, right on the side of the road, snot and vomit on her face.

“Yeah, I know.  Poor you.  Okay,” Verona told her, smoothing her hair back.  “You owe me so much for this.

Hailey moved abruptly, trying to thrust a hand between her legs-

Too late to adjust anything.  There was the number one.  A stream, when she was not positioned for a stream.  It hit the back of Hailey’s pants as she squatted there.

“Oh no.  Well.  There’s no real way of salvaging this.  That’s- Hailey!”

The bottle had pressed against Verona’s thigh as she crouched by Hailey, and Hailey had inadvertently tipped it out all over Verona’s right leg.

“Fuck off, come on, fuck you Hailey.  You owe me so much.  Double for not telling anyone at school this.  I think your parents are going to have to find out.”

“I’m sorry!” Hailey wailed.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too for yelling.  I’m sorry.”

They got caught in a few cycles of looped apologies, which Verona went along with mostly because Hailey got distraught without the feedback.  Verona avoided all hazard zones as she helped Hailey hike up gross pants, then got Hailey moving back toward her house, a lot slower than before, with Hailey’s complaining and whining throughout.

She wished she could see an Other, but there weren’t many local ones.  Some really dumb and hostile goblins, some spirits.  But nobody major.  Trust Kennet to be boring.

She dropped Hailey off, led her upstairs to the bathroom, and ran the shower.  That woke up the parents, Verona gave them the rundown, she washed her hands, and then she skedaddled before there could be any questions.

Maybe she could use magic to forget this.

She let herself inside, and she was quiet as she climbed the stairs, knowing just where to step and how to step on a stair to avoid creaks, even when the stairs were old.

She shut the door quietly, changed, and went to the bathroom.  Only to find her dad there in the hallway, just to her left.

“I could smell the alcohol on you from outside your room.  You reek of it.”

“None of your business.”

“You are my business, Verona!” he raised his voice.  “And when you’re not my business, you’re the reason I do what I do.  You’re the reason I work hard, you’re the reason I try.  And you’re wasting your life.”

“I’m thirteen, what do you want from me?  Should I go invent something?  Run for Prime Minister?”

“I want effort, Verona.  I want you to help me, I want you to connect more-”

“Oh god,” she groaned.  She passed him and went into the bathroom.  He followed her in.

“Excuse me.”

“Excuse yourself, walking away while I was talking to you.”

“I’m going to take off my pants and wash off the alcohol that was spilled on me, and I think I have someone’s whiskey diarrhea spatter on my shoes, and maybe my pants too, which I’d love to wash off and hang up to dry so they’re dry for tomorrow, so excuse me, get the fuck out.”

“It’s my house, my bathroom, and you can wait one minute, explain what my thirteen year old daughter is doing coming home drunk.”

“Not drunk, got spilled on.”

“Yeah, sure, I don’t believe you, ladder girl.”

“Do you want me to do a breathalyzer?  Try me.  Actually try me.”

“You know I don’t have one.  I should, if this is the route you’re going down.”

“I’m not going down that route!  I was good!  I helped someone, I hung out with my boyfriend, and I was good!”

She started to pull off her shoes, careful to touch only safe zones.  She tossed them into the sink.

He shut off the tap.  “I.  Don’t.  Believe.  You.  Ladder.  Girl.”

“Then fuck you, you’re an idiot, fuck you!  Now get the fuck out so I can pull off these pants before they stick to me or whatever!”

“I wiped your ass for so many years, ten times more than your mother ever did.  And you’re worried about taking your pants off in front of me?”

“Okay, get the fuck out of my way then, let me out, let me- I can change in the laundry room, I don’t care.”

He blocked her.  “Let’s talk.”

“Well, you can stay there and wait and be uncomfortable and you can wait until I’m done, and if you-”

She covered her ears.

He stopped, arms folded, waiting, blocking the doorway.

She pulled her hands down.

“Thank you, that didn’t take long, I can wait every time you do that, I’m not going anywhere.  Now, sit, let’s talk.”

She contemplated her options, and then she shrieked.

“Okay, Verona-”

She shrieked again.

“Verona, stop.”

She did it again.

“Verona-”

She shrieked, and he covered his ears this time.

She tilted her hips, folded her arms, and waited, breathing hard.

He pulled his hands down, and she started it up again.

“Verona, stop,” he said, covering his ears.  “I have a stress headache, you’re making it much worse-”

She kept going.

“Verona, stop.”

She pushed it further.

“Verona-”

It came out of nowhere.  A swipe of the hand.  A few cosmetics, some containers of hygeine stuff, empty ink bottles and glass mason jars for painting that she’d rinsed out.

They went from being lined up behind the bathroom sink to the far wall, hitting tub, curtain rod, and falling across the floor.  Shattered glass from the ink bottles littered the floor.

“Okay.  You’re acting like a child,” she said, talking as normally as she could as her heart hammered.  She was legit scared.

“Let’s talk,” he said.

She looked down at the glass on the floor and her bare feet.

She reached for her shoes, with the tiny brown flecks on the upper halves-

He grabbed them, pulling them from her hand, because she’d already had a partial grip on them.  He threw them into the tub too.

Two paces away for her.  Across a sea of glittering glass spikes and flecks, getting closer to him, they might as well be in space.

“Let’s talk,” he repeated.

She bent down, and she picked up the biggest piece of glass.  A triangle of glass, that she held between thumb and index finger.

“I can call the police if you don’t stop.”

“You’ll want to rethink this,” he said.  “There are camps that taken in troubled teens.”

“You’re my only real trouble.”

“Wilderness, no internet, no phone.  Only the fires you make yourself for heat.  Give you discipline, get you on track again.  No alcohol-”

“I didn’t drink, so fuck you!”

“Stay civil, I’m being reasonable here.  If you can’t treat me like a daughter should treat a father-”

She shrieked, brandishing the glass.

“Stop fucking screaming, Verona, stop!  Stop!”

She swiped at his reaching hand, that was grabbing for her mouth.  He pulled back, and she kicked the mat in the middle of the bathroom, flipping it up and over, giving herself a bit of ground to stand on, lunging forward.  He seemed to think she was going to stab or slice him, and tried to fend her off, which gave her an avenue- she stepped onto his foot for another place to get footing, and leaped for safety, out of the bathroom.  She still got glass in her foot, somehow, a sting of pain.

She stumbled, fell, twisted around, and brandished glass again, breathing hard.

He didn’t push things further as she retreated into her room, glass stabbing the sole of her foot with every step.

She closed and locked the door to her room.  She’d stolen the doorknob from the bathroom in the basement downstairs, because it had a lock.

Her dad banged on the door.

Breathing hard, she put the glass down, sat in her chair, and used tweezers from her art stuff to get the glass sliver out of her foot.

Okay, she thought.

Okay… time to pull the trigger.

Time to deal with her dad, because she couldn’t do this anymore.  It was too much.

She looked at her magic stuff.  Protected with connection blocks.

She checked the time, then put the numbers down in sequence.

She stared down at the numbers for a long time.

She released those numbers into the aether.  Reaching out.

Her dad pounded on the door.

It was done.  Just had to wait.

“Verona!”

The call was answered.

She put her cell phone to her ear.  “Mom.”

“Verona!  I need you to come out here right now!”

“Can I come to stay with you in Thunder Bay?” Verona asked.

“Is this for a job, or for another thing, or…?”

“An opportunity,” Florin told her.

“So is this like, student athlete gets scouted and this is the next step?” Verona asked.

“It’s not not like that,” Florin told her.  “But frankly, I think it’s much better.”

“I’m down.  Sure.”

“Alexander?” Florin asked.

Another man joined them, walking through the water to the clearing the Lord had made and left intact for them to meet.  Narrow, orange hair, gray streaks by the temples.  Solid nine out of ten in the looks department, if she ignored the old, and the wrinkles around the eyes as he studied her.

His eyes went to the Others she had with her.  “I’m Alexander Belanger.  Augur.”

“Verona Hayward.  Don’t know what to call myself.”

“I see you have friends.  A bogeyman, I gather?”

“Sounds about right.  That’s Foodtruck.  My bodyguard and chauffeur.”

Foodtruck was a bogeyman, or bogeywoman, like most women in their thirties, but she’d had her jaw torn off at one point, along with her cheeks.  She kept her hair long and hunched forward.  She stuck around to be a bodyguard, but Verona kept her around to be a friend.  If she’d just left it at ‘friend’, Foodtruck wouldn’t have stayed.

“A fairy, hm?”

“Tooth fairy,’ Verona clarified.  The Other was as tall as an ordinary adult woman, but about half the weight, dressed in a gauzy dress Verona had dug up.  Her lipless mouth was crammed with small teeth.  There was something almost insect-like about her, and it wasn’t the narrow dragonfly-like wings.  It was the dark eyes, the way she spoke, the frame of her.

So cool.  Verona smiled at her.

The tooth fairy chattered her teeth at Verona.

Verona replied with clicks of teeth and tongue.  She knew she was butchering it.

The tooth fairy laughed.

“What did she say?” Florin asked.

“That I have a cavity,” Alexander replied.  “It’s the food at the school.  And sugar in my coffee, I’m sure.  Even if it’s a small amount, with the amount I drink…”

“School?” Verona asked.

“First…”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a skull with markings engraved onto it.  The skull, smaller than a normal skull seemed like it would be, was yellowed with age.  The markings etched in past the surface layer had gone brown.

He handed it to Verona.

“What is it?” Verona asked.

“What do you think it is?”

“A test?” Verona replied.  “To get into the school?”

Alexander raised his eyebrows, but didn’t volunteer much.

She examined the skull, turning it around in her hands.  Then, hearing a click behind her, she turned, passing it back to Dentienne.

Dentienne examined the skull’s teeth, then passed the skull to Foodtruck, who sniffed it, deep.

“Gluck,” Foodtruck said.

“Want to write it down?”

Foodtruck accepted the writing material.  In violent pencil slashes, she wrote out: Girl.  Young.  Killed by is wrong.  Alchemy.  Acid 2 Prisoner 2 slow death 2 still a little alive.  Rinsedeath 2 Butchered.

“Killed by is wrong?” Verona asked.

“Uckuh.”

Verona used her Sight as the skull was handed back to her.  She glanced between it and Foodtruck, who periodically gestured.  To her Sight, cats were moving in line with various flows and triggers and activations.  But the spirit cat that was inside the skull, nestled in the bowl of it when she turned it upside down…?  It was sleeping, waiting.

“Sleeping spirit cat,” she whispered to it.  These things worked best if kept private.  “What are you about?”

It didn’t respond.  But it stretched, claws exposed.

She whistled sharply, then she nodded.  Deaf.

She handed it back to Alexander.  “Alchemy, I think.  The skull rouses on its own.  When it feels like it.  Whispers about alchemy, I assume.  Young girl born to an alchemist family a long time ago, something happened.  Acid was thrown in her face.  I’m guessing by the family.”

Dentienne chattered in that obscure tooth fairy tongue.

“Special acid.  Didn’t stop slowly burning her face away.  Didn’t kill her.  Couldn’t.  Her father kept her locked up after.  Killed her father, escaped, was taken to a hospital, they rinsed her wounds clean, she died.  Body was returned to the family for burial, they took it apart for parts, I guess.  Including this.”

“Anything else?” Alexander asked.

“There’s a dangerous side to it.  The spirits inside it tried to scratch at me.  Or scratched at me by accident.  I think whatever power in it is sleeping, or doesn’t hurt.”

“The Alchemist’s Daughter is a story much like you described.  But she identifies items and their value, at a cost of making you see other good things as bad, potential potions as poisons, and bad things as harmless or desirable.  It’s been tempered somewhat, the side effects reduced.”

“Did I do okay?”

Alexander turned to Florin.  “Her experience?  Mentor?”

“Discovered text.  Self taught from there.  She has a good head for it.”

Alexander gave her an appraising look.

“Can you afford the tuition?”

“I can ask my mom.  How much is it?”

Kass Knox turned to Verona as Verona walked by.  “Decide on a specialty yet, newbie?”

“Why would I want to specialize in anything?  I want to get good at just about everything, so I can pull off whatever strikes my fancy.”

“Everything is a lot of stuff.”

“Ergo me, library, devouring all the knowledge I can.”

“It loses its shine after a while, you know?”

“Then I’d better read more, and I’d better do it fast.”

“That’ll burn you out faster.”

“Don’t go moving the goalposts.”

“I’m not moving goalposts, I’m trying to communicate reality to a butthead.”

“Manners,” Nina murmured, as she passed by, bapping Kass on the head with a book. “And volume.  Thank you.”

Kass sat down by Verona.  “Hey.”

“This is the dinner reminder?” Verona asked, craning around.  “I think I’ll keep reading and get a snack from the kitchen later, to tide myself over.”

“How do you not appreciate food?”

“I eat when hungry and I’m not hungry often.  I want to keep reading.  Without interruption.”

“You’re so rude.”

“Who’s rude?  You’re interrupting my reading.  I’ll play with you when my eyes get tired.”

“Play?  We’re not kids.”

“Okay, then that’s all the more reason to dive into these books.  Because fooling around and being immature is one of the few things that’d get me away.  When my eyes get tired.”

“Gods and spirits.  Okay, listen.  Important.”

Verona sat up, put the book down, and gave Kass her best bored look.

“Civil war imminent.”

“Oh that.  I think I’ll camp out here, read.”

“You won’t be able to.”

“Then I’d better spend the time I can reading, hadn’t I?”

“If it was possible for a human to become a Librarian Animus, I think you might manage it.”

“Badass.”

“No.  Ugh.  Okay, look, basic reality?  Dinner is soon.  Battle lines are being drawn.  If you are not seen, both sides are going to think you were with the other side.  You get me?”

“You can tell them I wasn’t.”

Kass sighed.

She was nervous, Verona realized.

“Fiiiiine.  Fine.  Am I taking a side by being with you?”

“No.  Yes.  But we can handle that.  There’s kind of a ‘neutral’ table you can sit at.”

“I want to sit at the table with the Others.”

“Leave them alone.”

“They’re cooler than people.”

“Come on.”

Verona got up, and let herself be dragged away.  She whispered, “Nina?”

“Yes?”

“Can you hold onto that book for me?  I really do want to finish it.”

Nina winked.

Outside, Verona navigated the battle lines.  She watched, she saw the staff patrolling.

She sat at the neutral table and wished she’d brought a book.

She watched as people navigated different groups.  She made sure to talk to both, to be noncommittal.  She watched Bristow’s seven Aware- Clem, Daniel, Shellie, Kevin, Kevin’s girlfriend, Sharon, and Ted.

A faint screech drew her attention.

She got up, walking over, down toward the woods.

There, by the path, she saw Milly Legendre.

She’d set a bowl from the kitchens down.  It was filled with water and ice cubes, with a wreath of flowers within.

A small goblin, about the size of a hot dog bun, was sitting in the water, shivering, shrieking.

“What are you doing?” Verona asked.

“Shit, you scared me.”

“What are you doing to him?”

“Sealing him.  The flowers cover the ‘running’ portion for the water.  The cold just makes him miserable.  He got further than goblins are supposed to.  I’m trying to figure out if he’s one of the goblins with special infiltration tricks, or if he was sent.  So I’ll let him sit and shiver.  Goblins can’t rescue him, there’s nobody and nothing else that’ll get it done.”

“Did you pick a side?”

Verona shook her head.  “Don’t plan to.”

“You’re not Durocher.  You might not be able to get away with that.”

Verona shrugged.

“If you’re gone too long, people will think you’re on my side, conspiring.”

Verona sighed, and she walked away.

Quietly, she slipped outside.  A bit of practice got her through the doors, that were locked.

Some teeth from a woodpecker in hand, with a bit of tooth fairy practice- she became a bird.

Flying past some wards and things.  Her Sight and some ritual practice she’d set up prior helped her avoid the worst of them.

Kids really weren’t meant to be out at night, and if she tripped the wrong wards, she’d get attention, and attention meant problems in this climate.

She landed past the big wards, and became human again, spitting out the teeth.  She glanced around, and saw some people outside, talking.  By Bristow’s building in progress.

They didn’t seem to see her, so she ducked down toward the path.

The hot dog bun of a goblin was still sitting in the water, shivering.

“I bet you’re all pruned up.”

He turned to look at her, eyes reflecting light in the gloom.

“Like a ballsack,” she told him.

He smiled, but it was a feeble smile.

“I’m probably making enemies doing this, but… let me check the wards…”

She poked around, her Sight representing the wardings as cats.

A benefit from picking cat themed items for skull, knife, timepiece, coin, and so on.  For personal item too.

She went to draw a line through one, and something that she hadn’t been able to see in the dark reacted.  It sparked, bright and sharp, burning her hand.

“Fucking- fuck.  Fuck ow,” she swore.  “She really didn’t want you free, huh?”

The goblin didn’t respond.

“Yeah.  Let’s see… deciphering this, gotta deal with this, gotta handle this first, so there’s an order.  It’s cyclical.  Daisy chained.  Then…”

She fed power into it, from a trinket she’d gotten from Deb for running an errand.  She didn’t have much power of her own, so everything was a chore.  But still.

Power to feed it, illuminating the diagram.

Which made it easier to see the side parts.  And one side part was meant to trigger, feeding something into the rest of the diagram.  She could modify it carefully, remove the reference, the Legendre family seal being used to feed family power into it… and she put a fragment of a broken abyssal knife she’d gotten from Foodtruck down into that circle instead.

Feeding Abyssal energy into the ward, which corroded and…

It popped, sizzling, ground cracking.

She used her toe to tip over the bowl.  The goblin fell out.  Water sloshed out around it, probably draining it a bit more.

If it could be drained more.

She picked it up.  “Hey guy.  Got a name?”

“Squirt.”

“Hi Squirt.  Is that the goblin equivalent of being a John or an Eric?”

He started to shrug, but he didn’t look like he had the ability.  It was like he’d been brought to the cusp of death and held there.

“What do you need, Squirt?” she asked.  “Food?  I could grab something.  Water… that feels like adding insult to injury.”

“Warm.”

“Need to get warm?  Come on.  Body heat.  Don’t poke me, don’t make me regret this.”

He didn’t look like he had it in him to make her do much.

“Ah, people suck, don’t they?” Verona murmured, pacing, hugging him close.  “Others are more interesting.  You know I thought about being an Other?”

He sighed.

“By the time I found out I could, I’d mostly gotten away from the reasons why.  I figure I’ll flirt with the possibilities, practices in that direction, and if the universe sees fit, I won’t complain.  How’s that?”

He was asleep.

“I was hoping for a bit of conversation, but it’s okay,” she told him.  “Gets a bit lonely, is all.  Being the odd one out, not really clued into everything going on with this war or practitioner families or whatever.”

She scratched his back with her fingernails and he stretched out as much as he could, pressing against her stomach.

“Sorry it took me a while, I wanted to make sure-”

A spark from the diagram made her head turn.

It was powered again?  Despite-?

Her Sight told her that spirits were flowing.  And so were shadows.  A chance flow, maybe, a random bit of spiritual weather, flowing this way.  The diagram, even ruined with cracks, still had something active, and the power that was running through it-

That part she’d triggered before kicked off at full force.

“What the fuck?” she asked, backing away.

But there were still spirits and shadows.

She turned, and she saw a man in the field.

A green glint in one of his eyes, visible in the gloom.

Taking her as a target because she was easy?  Disconnected?  Because he didn’t like her face?

The world groaned and moaned, cracked and-

She turned just in time to see a tree falling.

She tossed Squirt clear.  He hit the grass, bounced, and rolled.  She did try to move, hoping branches would catch on neighboring branches on their way down, or that something would make up for the fact she was slow on her feet.

I hope I become a badass wraith, she thought, going to that quiet, emotionless place she’d been trained to.

The coils of the Aurum centipede pulled away.  She was back on the rooftop.  The memories were vague like a dream.  Enough she could piece it together.

“And?” Toadswallow asked.

She shook her head.

While shaking it, she saw Avery, sitting.  Snowdrop leaned on her.

“Ave?”

“Heya.  You okay?” Avery asked.

“I died in a pretty bullshit way, way too early to build anything.”

“I made so many mistakes,” Avery said, quiet.

“It would be best,” Miss said, “to avoid saying anything that would be read as a declaration of defeat, before the judges can decide.”

“We’re our own worst critics,” Louise said.

Verona didn’t want to say some of it out loud anyway.  Because if she did, she felt like she’d be gainsaid.

Jasmine came over, bringing tea and things.

I didn’t do the assignment.  I didn’t grow anything.  I didn’t kick ass.  I didn’t show leadership.

She watched the winding and unwinding tentacles, that enshrouded Lucy and Musser.  Charles stood by, watching nothing in particular, and she could imagine him tracking what Musser was doing, seeing Lucy.

He wasn’t smiling.

They were still in there.  Still alive, in an alternate world, where-

“That was us, in a world we never met each other?  Never had the Kennet council?”

“It was you, in more than one sense,” the Alabaster replied.

“What do you mean?”

“You, and lessons you’ve learned readied as opened doors, circumstance, favorable changes in chance and randomness,” the Alabaster replied.

And I got a bad luck tree falling on me, so I guess that says a lot?

The Sable went on, adding, “Enemies made, the risks taken, the investment, the seized opportunities, the points of personal growth.”

“Have to admit, that seemed pretty B.S. to me.  Not much of a test when it was cut short.”

“You have your talents as a leader, but in a world where you forged forward alone, your natural tendencies left you vulnerable.  You took risks along the way, you had immense potential and enough ambition to take chances here and there, but risks, vulnerability, and a lack of people make for a poor leadership, if the leader ends up dead.”

“So I would’ve died, without them having my back?”

“It’s likely.”

Miss shifted position.  Not clearing her throat, but trying to communicate something.  A reminder.  Not to get too deep into her own failings.

Verona wasn’t sure how to process it all.  She felt dread, because this was a contest, and two out of their three needed to surpass Musser, and the two of them were sitting out here, feeling defeated.  At the end of the day, Avery had been isolated, once, disconnected, and Verona hadn’t been the biggest fan of people.

As a result here, it was terrible.

Thing was, she had expected to be an ambitious villain and she’d been a mediocre good guy instead, and that felt weird.  Weird in the same way she’d been willing to let Alpy put her dad through a nightmare up until it happened, and she’d surprised herself by caring.

Except this time, it wasn’t her dad.  It was herself.  Caring about herself.

Here, she’d shocked herself, and she wouldn’t dare say anything about it, because in all the months she’d been condemning herself, convinced she’d have turned out awful, she’d made a lot of statements that would count against her.

“Well, I might be thinking about that for the rest of my life,” Verona murmured.

Avery nodded with emphasis, and then hugged Snowdrop tight enough Snow’s head moved down, and kissed the top of Snowdrop’s head.

“Is Lucy okay in there?” Jasmine asked.  She hadn’t left after delivering the tea.  She just hung back.

“I sure as heck hope so,” Verona replied.

“That’s it then?”  Booker asked.

“That’s it.”

“Protective wards.  Might as well use the last of the magic items.”

Lucy nodded.  “You draw on me?  I draw on you?”

“I’ll draw,” her mom said, as she came downstairs.  “Show me the pages you’re referencing.”

“Yeah,” Lucy agreed.  She stretched.  “Huh.”

“What?” her mom asked.  She moved Booker into a seating position on the arm of the couch.  Lucy plopped herself down in front of Booker, and adjusted her top so he had access to the nape of her neck and her shoulders.

“I just realized – I think I’m as tall as you.”

“Bit taller,” her mom murmured.  “I noticed months ago.  You’re grown up.”

“Damn.  Where did the years go?” Lucy asked, twisting.  Booker made her turn back around.

“What a question to ask.  You know, I remember sitting a lot like this.  Doing Booker’s hair, him sitting in front of me, you sitting in front of him.  He’d comb out your cornrows.”

“I hated those.”

“I loved those moments though,” her mom said.

They kept working for a bit.  Lucy paged through one of her notebooks as Booker drew on her.

“Be bulletproof, my son,” her mom whispered, instilling power with practice.

“The bulletproof line is mine, not Booker’s.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Do you want me to suit you up, mom?  Runes, diagrams?”

“I may hang back.  Old injuries.”

“Yeah?  You sure?”

“I want so desperately to be there.  But I’d slow you down.”

Lucy nodded.

“Stop squirming,” Booker told her.  “One more minute.”

“You’re so slow.”

“I’m a perfectionist,” Booker murmured.

He stopped drawing.

“You done?  Can I move?  Sitting twisted around like this is making my back hurt,” Lucy told him.

“Be bulletproof, baby sis,” he told her, quiet.

The runes flared to life.

She shrugged the straps of her top back into place.

She stood, stretching.

Then Lucy stood there.  She, her mom, and her brother, with nothing to say.

When there weren’t witch hunters, there were dangerous Others, or calamities, pressures from Lords.

As practitioner families went, they were small.  Novice.

It felt like she needed to say something, but there were no words.  She would’ve preferred Booker to say something, because he was good at that.  She did angry, outraged words, and he did the speeches.

But today… no speech.

She’d spent her power sources and all she’d be drawing on today would be her Self.  Until the last.

For now, at least, she could get some stuff done, using power from the Demesne sanctuary.

“Hear me,” she said.

Her implement activated, paying attention.

It was only then that she realized she’d broken the silence.

“From every curse laid, something taken.  Let that something be a seed.”

Booker was casting too.

“Let the seed be planted, and let it grow to be a shell, and let the shell be a vessel,” she murmured.

She had a little something from every curse she’d cast, just about.  And she’d cast a lot.

Each became a soldier.  Vestiges.  Partial people.  Gradually, they filled the ground floor of the house.  Some appeared on stairs, sitting.  All were uniform.  All wore outfits in her magenta and smoke.

Booker was preparing summons.  Bigger, more solid, the heavy hitters.

Her mother would be the backup.

Trouble always came home.  It invaded the home, so they’d made the home a sanctuary.  They’d done it in Kennet, and they’d done it here.

If they made it through today, they’d do it in the new place.  A third Demesne ritual, the other Demesnes left behind.  Because that was the kind of circumstance and choice they made.

Booker’s head turned.  “They’re here.”

She could hear helicopters.

The enemy on their doorstep.  Again.

Them against the world.  Or so it would feel.  Again.

She used a spear to draw a circle in the floor.  Gouging it.

Personal power flowed through the spear, past runework, and carried the messages down to that circle.

The nearest vestiges collapsed in, merged, and became her arena.  A space for her.  A giant head that was cracked like dropped pottery and reaching arms formed a protective three-quarter circle around her.

She sighed, and then she opened the door.

The enemy attacked, and they broke into the Demesne with the force of their first wave of attack, past natural protections, past her arena, past wards.

The Aurum Coil retreated.

Lucy’s eyes went immediately to the last places she’d seen Avery and Verona, didn’t see them, and looked for them.  They were sitting at the table.

They didn’t look happy.

She accepted a hug from her mother as soon as her mother reached her.

“You took my family away?” she asked the Sable, because he was nearest.

“To even the scales, so you all started from roughly equivalent positions,” the Sable replied.  “You gained them back, by the same tracks and choices that led you to make your mother Aware.”

“And he’s still in there, when you cut mine short?” Lucy asked.

“He’s finishing a conversation,” Charles replied.

Lucy walked back to the table, feeling disoriented.  She didn’t sit, but instead stood behind the chair, forearms braced against the high back.

“We’re not discussing too much,” Avery told her.  “In case anything we say could be read the wrong way.”

“Good policy in courts and with cops, I guess, and I guess this is kind of a court.”

“Weird ass court,” Verona replied.

Weird ass scenes, and moments.  Something extending into the future.  Enough things had been moved around or redacted, she wasn’t sure how prophetic to take it.

She had so many things she wanted to ask or say.  A life without her friends.  Without her family, even, to start with.  Her mom hadn’t coped after her dad had died so Barbie and Ran had taken her in, and they’d been cold.  Removed.  Aunt Heather had taken Booker.

It had taken work to get out of that.  Learning magic to find some kernel of strength and then using strength to reconnect with her mom and brother.

The coils released Musser.

“My army would’ve won,” Musser said.  “You didn’t have to end it early.”

“It was done.”

Army.  He’d had an army.  He’d managed to forge something?

She’d built up a family, and loose alliances.

And the others-?

“I can tell from a glance.  This is over.”

“This only gives us a fair, balanced set of tools to work with.  To represent and build a greater picture,” the Aurum Coil said, as he sorted himself out.  “Images-”

The images appeared, gold and bright, on the windows. Lucy and her family, herself summoning the vestiges.

Musser, in a school very like the Blue Heron, surrounded by students.

The scenes aligned against one another.

And it was Lucy and her family against Musser.

“-that can crash together.”

The scene resolved in a bloody fight.

Lucy and her family cut down.

“That we can turn to, when answering questions like the ones asked before Musser departed this rooftop the first time.  What can someone build, when they start a step behind?” the Alabaster asked.  “It’s hard.”

“I managed,” Musser replied.

The scenes shifted, changing.

At the Blue Heron.  Verona, with a tree atop her, so badly wounded she couldn’t move.

A goblin tugged on her hand.

And the building across the field emptied.  The various students who emerged were similar to the students that had been at Musser’s school.  The scene froze, those people in the exact same position they’d been in before they’d attacked the image of Lucy and her family.

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

“Bad luck.  It’s easy to fall a long way when you’re alone.”

And a scene with Avery.  A very different Avery, who looked washed out, and tired.  The brightness wasn’t there.

She was with Jessica.  And other similar people, and scattered Others.  Echoes.  Ruins Others.

“I didn’t get my feet under me like I wanted to,” Avery murmured.  “Got caught up in Ruins stuff instead of Lost stuff.  Met Jessica.  Saved some people.”

But, Lucy could finish the thought, almost reading Avery’s mind.  Didn’t get very far.  Didn’t grow.

“Gave me an appreciation for you guys.”

“I actually kinda kicked ass at not being a horrible person,” Verona remarked.  “I made good calls, got away from my dad…”

That stung.  The idea that Lucy was part of the reason Verona was suffering with her dad, still, instead of leaving.

“…But my life didn’t have much life in it,” Verona murmured.  “I’d choose this any day, and not because a tree fell on me in that version of my life.”

Lucy smiled.

The smile fell away.

Avery’s scene was surrounded by Musser’s army.  They appeared like echoes, but the conceit was the same, again.  The scenes collided.  Avery’s side was outnumbered.  Outdone in strength.

Zero for three.

Lucy’s mother rubbed at her shoulders.  Where she’d have the bulletproof wardings in place, in another circumstance.  But tonight was about words, not weapons.  Leadership and legitimacy.

“There’s more to it, isn’t there?” Miss asked.

The Aurum nodded, flowing around the room.  “The question raised earlier was if people would have support.  Would their followers choose to back them?”

The scene displayed in windows went to Lucy at the house.  The images flared gold, igniting with some energy within.  Herself, her immediate family.

Verona’s scene, on another window.  A few odd people.  The little goblin.  Other goblins from that neck of the woods.  Kass.  Laila.  Nina the Librarian.  Alexander, even.  Weirdly.  Nicolette.

Verona, dopey and a loner, had still won over some hearts, pursuing her passions.

Avery’s scene.  With Jessica.  With the other rescued.  Easy flares, counting up.

Then Musser on a fourth surface.  He’d built something big, he’d created a school.

And roughly sixty percent of the students were with him.

Outnumbering the three of them by far, even if they joined their forces.

The scenes kept going.  Starting at the end.  Rewinding.  Verona with her mom.  A few weirdos she befriended in Thunder Bay.

Avery connecting with some family.  She’d found a familiar.  A Ruins other.  She got to keep that, in some fashion.  Scattered people along the way.  She’d gone to therapy at one point, after shutting down.  Ruins stuff combined with life stuff.

And Musser made contacts.  Outnumbering them all by far.

Scenes rewound.  To earlier in school.  Early practice.

“When legitimate.  When your strength is your own.  We stated our terms for the contest.”

Lucy missed what had happened – as scenes fast forwarded backwards, Musser’s was live for only a moment.  But it was like poison had been injected.  The poison coursed up and forward, through scenes, fast forwarding to the endpoint.  About a fifth of the students in Musser’s contingent that had been lit up went dark.

“I know what you speak of,” Musser said.  “But the ability to take strength is vital.”

“Abraham,” Charles said.  “You don’t want to litigate this.  We’ve taken a generous slant.”

“Why the fuck are you being generous to him?” Lucy asked.

“He defends against a challenge with little warning.  It’s convention.”

Lucy shook her head.

Such bullshit.  Every damn game was rigged, even one meant to be made fair.

She saw as Verona took care of a sick classmate.  She saw herself, standing up for someone at a party a lot like the one with Pam.  Avery helping her grandfather.

Minor things.  Counting by single digits.

Musser pursued multiple at each step.  Matching or exceeding their combined numbers.  And it wasn’t about their numbers combined compared to his.

“Speaking of convention,” Musser said.  “Earlier, Mr. Hall noted some points of order and civility.  I cite those now, and call them in.  To move the needle.  If we’re to weigh the value we put in myself and those three girls as leaders, generals, and decision makers, then wherever the spirits lie undecided or in the middle… let’s nudge that over.  For each slight.  Phones and reading material at the table.  Raised voices.  Breach in hospitality, with threatening delivery of wine… Mr. Hall?”

“I can’t say,” Mr. Hall murmured.  “Sorry.”

“Of course.”

“Yes,” the Alabaster said.

Three movements of the so-called needle.  Students who were apparently in the middle now fell on a side aligned to Musser.

“If it’s about leadership and legitimacy-”

“You’ve lost,” Musser interrupted.  He turned to the judges.  “There’s nothing else?”

“No,” Charles said.  “That was a representation of your Selves laid bare, put to the question of leadership and legitimacy, and compared.”

“I would argue-”

“You should stop talking,” Musser interrupted again.

“Are you afraid of what I’ll say?” Lucy asked.

“It’s done,” Musser told her. “You tried and you failed.  Judges?  I’m due a prize for overcoming the challenge.  I ask they be gainsaid.”

“Agreed,” the Alabaster replied.

Musser looked over at the three of them.  “Together you may be able to cobble something together, but it seems you defeated yourselves by trying to separate me from my family, allowing me to separate you three from each other, at the same time.  Even at my weakest, I was capable of doing what needed to be done.  You three?  Less so.  So it was decided.”

“Did good things,” Avery said.

“It’s not a question of good.  It’s a question of capable.  Leadership and legitimacy.  That was the challenge.  Perhaps you let good be the enemy of perfect.”

There were quips Lucy might’ve given.  Easy responses, but she didn’t want to fall into his tempo.  She had to think.

He turned to go, his final line spoken.

Lucy looked across the table.

At the local Others.  At Connor.  At Louise.  The Undercity denizens.  The scattered Foundlings.  Goblins.

“I think he’s coming.”

Lucy turned her head.

From the far side of the portal.  Distant, faint.

She turned her head, looking at Charles.

Of course.  Charles had a modus operandi.  Sweeping in at the last moment.  With complete and total bullshit.

The practitioners he’d prepared would fit the bill.  The St. Victor’s kids.  And they were apparently there, while Musser was distracted?

They’d either die, and it would change the tenor of everything happening here- maybe even provoke Durocher.  Or they’d succeed and take the win.

Lucy wasn’t sure what that meant, but it felt important.

“Trust me?” she murmured.

“What’s this?” Avery asked.

“Yes,” Verona said.  “But tell us-”

“The St. Victor’s kids are out there.”

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a spell card.  With three lines, she changed it.

She broke into a run, as Musser stepped toward the portal of broken glass, back toward his familiars.  And the St. Victor’s kids.

She stepped onto the table, leaping, card drawn from her pocket.

“Lucy!” her mom shouted.

“Arena!” she shouted.

It was her habit to reach for a weapon ring.  Her hands were full, but she could trail her thumb along the chain to the weapon ring and slide it on, as a practiced maneuver.

She didn’t.

Her bad arm gripped the spell card, feeding power to the Arena.  Setting its terms.  Musser reacted, turning, his glove implement protecting him from the incoming object.

He grabbed paper.  Contracts.

She’d replaced the line that was the sword or spear in the duelist rune with lines to make it a rectangle instead.  A square, for paper.

“You want to fight?” he asked.  He sounded incredulous.

“I want to make my argument on my terms, without you interrupting, without you leaving,” she told him.

And without them interfering.

She saw glimpses of them.  Heard footsteps.  Some of Musser’s familiars were turning their heads.

Local Others had risen from their seats, approaching.  Durocher, Hall, and Graubard stood by the sidelines.

Musser reached for her, then stopped.

“A noncombat duel?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

Maybe stronger, because of the influence of Kennet found.

Before, she’d been Lucy, with the fox mask, Lucy with the goat mask, and then a false Lucy, for the one that didn’t exist yet, with Guilherme in her place.

Maybe this could be something else.  An unmasked her, tied to Kennet found by paperwork and pacifism.

She straightened.  She’d hurt her ankle a tiny bit by jumping like that, and the way her blood was pounding made her arms hurt where they’d been sliced open.

“You left, ready to pursue a claim against Kennet, even if you had to burn it first.  We had too great a setup for you to overcome.  Too big to eat.  Too tangled up with contracts with various markets.  You left, irritated,” she said.

“And yet you undermined your slight advantage, by pursuing a challenge.  Bringing me back for a test of leadership and legitimacy, the advantages given us our starting positions stripped away.”

“Leadership and legitimacy,” Lucy said.  “From the looks of it, you failed one.  It was called into question, you screwed up, you didn’t seem to like that.  If a test is split into two parts, and you get a zero in one, best you can do is a fifty percent.”

“You made a double-pronged allegation.  If you fail to connect with both prongs, that’s it.  That’s the end of it.”

“We just keep running into times you seem scared, Musser,” Lucy told him.  “Times you’re quick to leave, when you back down and it doesn’t make sense.  So I challenge-”

“I counter your right to challenge,” Musser replied.  “You already had a challenge tonight.  You were refuted.  If you start to abuse the system, I’ll start calling in favors, things to even the scales.  Punishments, for frivolously abusing the ability to challenge rulings.”

“Such is your right,” the Aurum Coil replied.  “You may pursue nonetheless, Lucy Ellingson, but at a disadvantage.”

This was already hard enough.

There was a tap on the arena’s wall.  It wasn’t a hard tap, but the arena shivered, spirits turning unsteady.

Durocher, at the edges.  Her lips moved, and no sound reached them.

This was meant to be the arena for the two of them.

She debated the risks.  If she dropped the Arena, Musser could act, and so could the St. Victor’s kids.  Swooping in.

Lucy canceled it anyway, dropping the paper.  Musser turned to go, and stopped, because Durocher was in the way.  She’d act if he got violent against Lucy now too, Lucy was willing to bet.

“She won’t need to make a challenge to get the truth,” Durocher said.

She’d heard.  The arena was one way.  That wasn’t a catch or a trick or anything.  Just reality.

“I know what Lucy’s after.  The same point I’m stuck on.  The Judges are obligated to keep things quiet if a challenge is made over a point of fact.  The truth may be revealed, but someone like Lucy would be unable to use the information gained.  To protect secrets from being uncovered using wanton challenges.”

“What are you doing?” Musser asked Durocher.

“The timing.  You were young, you had a turnaround.  I’m not a scholar, I don’t write many books.  The ones I do write are more about my celebrity than my ability to string words together.  But I remember things.  I must.  I can share the secret you want to keep, and there is no compact or Law that means it must stay in bounds.”

“What’s the secret?” Lucy asked.

“That Musser did something to steal from Timothy Crowe.  A friend of his.  He left Timothy with nothing, and Timothy died.  Brain damage.  His head emptied.”

“He stole someone’s brains?” Verona asked.

“Heartless practice,” Matthew said.  “My father did something similar.”

“Something like that,” Durocher said.

“On the point of goblins- on the language issue, I do the slight thing.  They tried to call it out, it failed, the rules about failed challenges… it turns around.  Counts against them for trying.”

“It’s minor,” Musser said.

“If spirits are divided on whether Musser is legit, based on the fact he stole someone else’s brains… if that happened?”

“Say it definitively,” Durocher murmured.

“When and where spirits are divided, let that failed challenge of his lawyer count, or ask for reconsideration.  Musser was not legitimate because his strength was Timothy’s.

“His power was his family’s,” Verona added.

“You’re beating a dead horse,” Musser said.  “That’s one side of a two pronged argument, you need the other to land.”

“I’ll make my own request for consideration,” Durocher said.  “In the school?”

The scene behind them changed.  Reflected in the window was the school.  The hypothetical one that Musser might’ve built, if he’d started from nothing.

There were less students on his side now.  A consequence of calling him out on the lack of legitimacy?

“I’m there, aren’t I?

The scene shifted.  She was a teacher or something at the school.

“Guest teacher,” Musser said.

“I ask to be removed,” she said.  “And all the support that would have come with me, the growth, the contacts.”

“It’s a simulated reality,” Graubard spoke up.  “The course he chose, he won you over.”

“With deceit.”

“But he won you over.  He had you on his side, he earned that, he may count it.  You can’t rewrite history you weren’t a part of.”

“I deal with forces that predate history.  I have my own clout, I have cachet with spirits.  I have karma stored from my work to protect the world from primevals, binding and subjugating them.  Powers that can take multiple communities cooperating to merely slow down.”

“You do,” the Sable Prince replied.

Lucy glanced at Charles, who was in the background, at the part of the roof that was furthest from this conversation.  He was smiling.

“I would remind the Judges that simulations are imperfect.  I would ask them to reconsider, and analyze my part in things in more depth.  Take what you consider fair from my stock of karma, consider my clout, and consider my place in the greater picture, with everything from spirit to the oldest things of the cascus wilds.”

“We can,” the Aurum replied.  “What would you ask us to focus on?”

“He, in this other timeline, beginning from nothing, he still took, didn’t he?  That’s the thread that runs through to the end, wounding his standing at the end.  Would I not have an inkling of how false a man he was, if I were working more closely with him from an earlier time?”

“You’re being emotional,” Musser said.

“We wined and dined, fought, worked, cried, and some of us even slept with Luisa Crowe.  You’ve worked with Timothy’s brother.  They were friends.  The best of us.  Too good to be around us.”

She looked between Musser and Charles as she said it.

“She always disliked you.  Did she suspect?” Durocher asked.

“Yes,” Charles commented.

Durocher nodded.

“Sometimes, she came with us, hoping for truth.  She’d be open and excited from the start, studying us, but by halfway through the night, she’d realize it wouldn’t come.  There would be no answers this time.  After enough times?” Charles asked.  “She stopped altogether.  She condemned us all for what we were doing.  Many different things.  Being criminal.  Worse, turning a blind eye to evil in our number.”

“Are you done?” Musser asked.

“Analyzing the role Marie Durocher’s recruitment played,” the Alabaster said, pacing around.  “If she spent time in your company, she may have realized.  If we take a portion of her support away…”

Scenes flickered.  Moving.  Without Durocher’s full support, there weren’t other elements.  Things changed.  Crumbled.

All at once, there was no school.

“I don’t do things by half, it seems,” Durocher mused.  “I withdrew all support?”

“He showed weakness and you abandoned him.”

Durocher nodded.

Lucy studied the scene.

Musser and a handful of criminals from organized crime.

If she weighed that against what she had built?  Her leadership role in her family, some scattered allies, against what he had?  Criminals?

As she looked, she could see that scene playing out.

Her family coming out ahead.

Avery’s group against the ghosts, similar number and strength.

Fending them off.  Pushing them back, binding them.

And Verona, laying under a fallen tree, broken.

The lesser goblins defending her.  The Tooth Fairy guarding her where she lay.

A draw, maybe.

The totals kept adjusting, as it went backwards.  Musser had whole courses he’d gone down that changed, and were poisoned, by badmouthing, by questions and doubt, as people paid attention to Durocher’s leaving.

“I would never have known if you hadn’t done the exact same thing you did to Timothy in this simulated reality, to some other poor soul,” Durocher said.

The scene shifted.  Musser and a kidnapped student, who lay sick and limp in a cell of some kind.  A young Musser there.  Harvesting… brains, Lucy guessed.  Not even the goons he’d used to help with the kidnapping liked him.  They were innocent, by the looks of it, just thugs, and they weren’t on board.

“If I hadn’t, I might have been legitimate, but what else?  Not all of us are blessed as you are, Marie.”

“I knew your family had done something, to infuse you with their strength.  You changed, from A.J. to another man, between one of my encounters with you and the next.  But to think you’ve been this hollow for this long?  Even when I met and knew you as A.J., you were cobbled together?”

He shifted position, like he was thinking of storming out.  Graubard stepped away from him, then kept stepping back.

“Really?” he asked Graubard.  “You’re taking moral high ground?”

“No, I’m actually concerned Marie is annoyed enough at your lies that she’ll summon something that will swallow up a portion of this rooftop.”

Musser glanced at Marie.

“We’re allowed a prize, right?  We win, woo,” Verona chimed in.

“I would not get in the middle of that, for the same reason Graubard’s talking about,” Lucy whispered.

“What are we asking for?” Verona asked.

“Making him give up implements and familiars?” Avery suggested.

“You’re not paying attention,” Lucy told her friends.  “Either of you.”

“That would be a delicate extraction,” Graubard said.

“What?”

“The removal of familiars and implements.  He has things arranged to cause harm should they be sprung.  And some will remain with him, even if the bonds are dissolved.  Let others handle that.”

“You too?” Musser asked.

“Then we push him out,” Avery said.  “The shrines.  The perimeter.  Let Musser be denied Kennet.  We won with the contracts, we won here.  He has nothing except threats, so… take away the threat.  Let no practice of his and let him be stuck outside the perimeter.  Forbidden from access.”

“When Durocher is done,” Lucy quickly added.

“Thank you for that courtesy,” Durocher said.  “I won’t kill you, Musser.  But I will see what you’ve built broken.  What you see unfolding in that scene is a preview of reality.  I will make sure that everyone that matters knows that if they support you, I will not cooperate with them.  I will not warn them before I practice near them.  I will not answer their calls.  If you create something, I will send something to level it.  A house, a business, a group of practitioners.  I will make sure people know what you are.  And what you aren’t.”

“That’s way better than an eviction,” Verona murmured.

“Even if it means the Carmine thrives?  I seem to be only one trying to stop a reckless greater power from taking control.”

“That’s the wrong argument for me, Musser,” Durocher told him.  “A reckless greater power isn’t a concern for me.  It’s a point of interest.”

He shook his head.

“I’d ask if you truly planned to send students away to be married or if it was a threat, to put them on the defensive,” Durocher said.  “But I see a boy chained in a basement, while you let him vent his brains out, for you to gobble down.  I can only imagine you doing that to Timothy, then lying to Luisa’s face for decades.  You’re capable of anything.”

“Something most of us have in common,” Musser said, turning to glance at Charles.  “We were great and terrible people, world class, and we found each other.  For a brief moment, we were almost friends.  The things we did and the things we could have done.  Then we crashed into one another, again and again, until we destroyed each other and ourselves.”

“All too common,” Rook said.

“Are we done then?” Lucy asked.

“I am,” Marie said.

Verona and Avery confirmed.

Lucy reached for her friend’s hands.  They gripped her hands tight.

“You have no claim here, Musser.  No power, and what you have is going to be in shambles, later.  No claim to Kennet.  No claim to us.  No claim to victory.”

“You don’t deserve what you do have,” Verona said.

“You couldn’t even hack our market, you can’t hack it here.  We’ve beaten you three times now.  With it, you and any familiars or workings of yours lose your claim to be here,” Avery said.

“Agreed,” Sable said.  “Merciful, considering.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Charles said.  “His car is here.  He can’t send anyone in to get it.  It’s cold out… Durocher is unhappy with him, and there are many unkind Lords between him and the next place he can truly stop.”

“If I don’t level it before he reaches it,” Durocher said.

Charles moved his hand.

And Abraham Musser was gone.

Another movement-

Lucy heard the chatter and rustle of familiars disappear.  The open gate of broken glass that had acted as a portal between street and rooftop no longer had the familiars in it.  Only Graubard’s doll.

There was a pause, some conversation she couldn’t get the words of.

Then the St. Victor’s kids fled.

Durocher pulled her coat on, stretching.

“Good students.”

“We were barely there for a few weeks.”

“I hope you get a chance to return.”

“I hope we can do that too,” Verona said.

“You may age out by the time it happens,” Durocher said.  “Charles would have to finish doing what he’s doing, or he would have to be finished off.”

Charles made a low sound in his throat.  Almost amused.

Graubard followed Durocher, wordless.

Hall paused.  “Thank you for not turning some of that gainsaying and consequence against me.”

“Doing your job, right?” Verona asked.

“That is the idea.”

“Doing your job, but I do think you’re a scuzzball,” Lucy told him.

He sniffed, put the tea he’d been offered aside, and then walked away.

That was it.  That was Musser.

Lucy glanced over, looking for Charles, and she saw him, still there at the back.

But the other Judges were gone.  Challenge asked, managed, and answered.

“How’s your blood sugar?”

“Could be better, I bet.”

Matthew, talking to Louise.

Lucy felt exhausted.

“Are we done?  Because this meeting went long before they showed up,” Matthew said.  “I know we should have a meeting to debrief, plan, but…”

“It makes sense,” Miss said.

Rook spoke up, “Dog Tags?”

“Guards for the girls and their homes?”

“Please.”

Charles was still here.  Lucy wasn’t sure how many people realized that.

“Charles?”

Some heads turned.

He didn’t reply.

The silence was contagious, the contagion spread with his presence.  People sorted things out.  Luna Hare poked her head in to gather fallen papers and contracts, mostly the ones Lucy had wielded against Musser as her ‘weapon’ in the arena of Law she’d quickly put together.

Lucy took them, put them away, and got help putting her backpack on.  Her arms hurt.

Her mom put an arm around her.

“Charles?” Lucy asked.  “Is it the St. Victor’s kids?  Who were going to sweep in and take the credit?  Are you here to watch that?”

“The Wild Hunt?” Verona guessed.

Charles didn’t reply.

“Musser sent them, didn’t he?  Or, indirectly, through Estrella?” Lucy asked.

“Be careful,” Miss urged.  Then she was gone.  Snapping back to Kennet found.

Be careful.

The broken portal was gone, so they headed for the door, reaching the fire escape.

The first of them -Luna and some goblins- stopped dead in their tracks.  Others in the group were gathered at the top steps or landing of the fire escape.  More were at the window, looking.

They were invisible at first glance, dark shapes against a dark background.

Disguised too, because they were gathered in enough numbers that they were almost camouflaged against one another.

It was the Wild Hunt.

“You’ve finished your business with Musser.  Now we can address you without you being distracted.”

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