Pale: 3.4 - Lucy
Author: Wildbow

Lucy

“Can you keep a secret?” Alexa asked.

The desks in Mr. Lai’s class were arranged in twos, so that everyone was sitting next to someone else, and seating had been assigned alphabetically, starting with Brayden Black and Mia Campbell-St James in the front left seat, and Alayna Weagle and Bryson Whitehead in the back right. The seating put Lucy next to Alexa in the front row, Verona was a row back and at the far left of the class with Caroline, and Avery sat a row behind and a column to the left of Lucy with Amadeus Kent.

Because they were in the front row, Mr. Lai wasn’t that far away.

“I can,” Lucy murmured.  “Do I want to?”

“The seniors do this thing at the end of the school year,” Alexa said.  She glanced over her shoulder, and Lucy did too.  Sharon and George were leaning in a bit.

“What thing?” Lucy asked.  She kept taking notes as Mr. Lai talked science.

“They’ll rent a cabin, and hold this big party at the end of each school year.  It’s this big thing, right?”

“My brother mentioned it once,” Lucy said.

“Well, Hailey’s going around trying to arrange a similar thing for kids who aren’t seniors.  Some of the cool parents and older siblings know and are helping out a bit with everything.  One of the groups that manage the ski hills and stuff say we can rent a cabin if we cover rental, cleaning, and insurance.”

“It’s a deal for him,” George said.  “Cabins are a money sink when the hills aren’t open.”

“Sounds cool,” Lucy said.

“We’re getting twenty bucks from every student who’s coming,” Alexa said.  “Or ten bucks and you bring stuff we need.”

“Like beer, but only a very little bit.  We’re keeping it to a strict one drink per person.  It’s part of the deal we made.”

“You can have other stuff if you bring it,” George whispered from behind Lucy, leaning over his desk.  “But you gotta keep it secret and if you get drunk or get caught and it lands on the rest of us, everyone’s going to hate you until the end of high school.”

“This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen,” Lucy said.

“It’s going to be great,” Sharon said, from behind her.

“Who’s going?” Lucy asked.

“Everyone in eighth and ninth grade.  Some of the guys and girls from the Catholic school.  It could’ve been the tenth and eleventh graders, but they’re going down to the lake for fireworks and stuff.  They did last year too, when they were our age.”

“How many are you thinking?”

“Like… about a hundred.  Maybe a hundred and fifty.  We’re still working out how many cabins we need for this many people, but we’re thinking of getting two cabins that are a really short distance from one another, and we’ll have battery powered lanterns on the paths between them, so there’s space, and a whole bunch of lemon candle torches to keep the bugs away.”

“A hundred and fifty people paying ten dollars each?” Lucy asked, incredulous.

“It used to be cheaper but last year Logan’s older brother was part of the senior party and he set a fire,” George whispered, “So they ask for more now.”

“It’s a rite of passage,” Sharon said.

Mr. Lai was pacing down the rows.  He came closer, and the conversation terminated.

“…would be abiotic,” he said, his voice fairly heavily accented and placing a lot of emphasis on syllables.  He pointed to the lights overhead.  “And the lights…?”

“Biotic?” Kyleigh asked.

“Explain your reasoning.”

“I, uh, because lights are important to photosynthesis?”

“Sunlight is important to photosynthesis, and some U.V. lights will do too.  It’s good reasoning but give us a good excuse to go over this again.  Light, temperature, water, and gases can all be abiotic factors aboveground.  Underwater we have factors like salinity, currents, and pressure.  Now… Wallace here.  Biotic or abiotic?”

“Very biotic,” Brayden joked, coughing and gagging.  The class laughed.

Mr. Lai’s expression changed, Lucy saw, upset.  But the class was laughing and Wallace was laughing with them, as hard as anyone.

It was like she could read his mind, and the thought process.  He wanted to be on top of bullying, but how could he be on top of it in this situation, when Wallace was laughing and Mr. Lai had inadvertently set up the situation?

“We are talking about ecosystems.  Pressures on ecosystems, factors in ecoystems.  Our classroom is an ecosystem too.  Closed, four walls.  It needs balances.  It has variables.  It’s miserable to be in when it’s hot like it was last week.  We couldn’t thrive if it was like that all the time.  Yes?”

There were some nods.  Lucy added hers to the group’s, a little hesitant.  Was the Wallace thing going to-

“And it’s a much nicer system to be in when we’re good to each other and we cooperate.  We don’t want to make mean comments, even in jest, right Brayden?  Yes?  Confirm or deny?”

“Yes,” Brayden said, sounding annoyed.  “Sorry Wallace.”

B+, Mr. Lai, Lucy thought.

“You in?” Alexa asked Lucy.

Lucy thought of Booker’s recommendation.

Socializing, joining these groups, it was a different way of protecting herself.  Becoming bulletproof, in the same way she did by dressing a certain way and doing her hair up in a way that was nice to look at.  A few hours spent in a cabin at the end of the year were nothing compared to twenty minutes spent on her hair in the morning, or the careful selection of clothes.

“Cool,” Alexa said.  “Tell Verona and Avery, if other people don’t get to them first.  If you think they can be trusted.”

“I think so.  They can keep secrets.”

It was, if nothing else, an excuse to talk to Booker, get some advice on navigating these things.  It would make him happy, even if the night ended up being a long pain in the ass, a babysitting job, or a bore.

She couldn’t really imagine it being fun, exactly.

“…ecology,” Mr. Lai said, indicating words on the blackboard, and the flowchart that followed from it.  “Biosphere, with abiotic and biotic factors-”

He indicated himself this time, not a student.

“You’re not biotic!” Logan leaped out of his chair at the back of the class.  He struck a pose, finger extended.  “J’accuse!  You’re a robot!”

“Sit down, Logan,” Mr. Lai said, clearly annoyed.  The class was laughing or chuckling.  Including Alexa, to Lucy’s left, and Sharon and George behind her.  “I want to go over this one last time, and I’ll keep you all a few minutes after class if I have to.”

Logan didn’t move until Andre pulled on his arm.  He sat.

“Under biotic, we have biological communities.  A diverse set of populations all interacting with one another.  Someone define population for me.  Anyone?  I want to go home as much as you do, but I want to make sure I’ve taught you well, too.”

Mia put her hand up.  When he indicated her, she said, “A scientific word for group?”

“What makes it a particular group?  Are we in a population with mosquitoes?  When we decide a population, do we consider ourselves part of a population with people in, say, Uruguay?”

“Wallace is part of a population with mosquitoes!” Logan jeered from the back of the class.

Lucy looked through the assembled students, giving Logan an annoyed look.  About half of the other students were laughing.  The other half didn’t seem to care.

“Stand outside the door, please, Logan, I want to talk to you after class,” Mr. Lai said. Then as students made ominous sounds and Logan answered them by strutting through the door with a ‘funny’ walk.  “Come on, let’s hurry through.  What makes this general grouping a population?  What separates them out?  Mosquitoes and humans?”

“Species,” Alayna said.

“Wonderful.  Yes.  A population is made distinct by species.  And?  Uruguay and Kennet?  Anyone?”

“Yes.  A group of species in a given location is a population.  We could track the number of Caribou in Ontario and record their population, for example.  Multiple populations together make an ecoysystem…”

“We’ll expand on this tomorrow.  No homework.  Go, you’re free.  You listened well at the end there,” Mr. Lai said.

He was drowned out by the commotion of students packing up.  Lucy dropped her books into her bag, then got them to sit straight so they wouldn’t jab her back.

“Are you doing anything, Mr. Lai?” Pam asked.  The first students were heading out the door.  Lucy would be following them or catching up, but some students were packing up bags and blocking the aisle.

“Trying to revive my herb garden.  I planted too soon.  Then homework.  So much homework.”

“You have homework?” Jeremy asked.

“I have your homework.  You can complain and whine, but remember, whatever you do, I have to do times twenty-eight, in addition to what I do for two other classes.”

“I hope it’s not too bad,” Pam said.

Being at the front of the class meant being the last ones out.  Lucy rolled her head back, then side to side, taking small steps as the other students filed out.

“Hey, Lucy?” Alexa asked.

“Why don’t you ever laugh or smile?”

“Not in class.  Logan was being funny and you were being a-”

“Stick.  In the mud.”

Lucy opened her mouth to say something, but George commented, “You should smile more.”

He smiled as if to demonstrate.

“But hey, come to that party,” Alexa said, smiling, giving Lucy a push on the arm.

Avery had joined them.  Verona was in the other aisle and didn’t have a good path to them, apparently.

“You heard about it?” Alexa asked Avery.

“Shh,” Sharon said, pressing her finger to her lips, glancing in Mr. Lai’s direction.

“Mr. Lai!”  Alayna called out from the front.  “Logan’s gone!”

The procession to the front was stopped as Mr. Lai made his way to the front, navigating the crowd of students until he was at the door.

“Logan’s running!” Brayden crowed, from the window.

Even from her vantage point, Lucy could see the first students leaving school for the day, and well ahead of that pack was Logan, carrying his stuff, jogging away, looking back furtively every few seconds at the window.  He picked up speed when he saw people looking.

Alexa, smiling, shot Lucy a look.

“I laugh when I find stuff funny,” Lucy said.  “This is more annoying.  I want to get out of here.”

Alexa threw up her hands in surrender.

Students gradually filed out.  The placement of the classroom put the exit right by the stairwell that led down to the ground floor, which was by the side door of the school.  All of those places, including the area just past the door, were points of congestion.  They’d missed the window to start filing out and now they were blocked.  Because of Logan.

Lucy watched Alexa get gradually more annoyed with the lack of forward progress.  Alexa looked back at Lucy, and made the same ‘surrender’ gesture as before, before mouthing ‘you’re right’.

“Mr. Lai,” Lucy said.  “Can I ask you a question about what we were just learning?  Or would you rather not be bothered after school hours?”

“I certainly didn’t get into teaching because I wanted to sharpen young minds,” Mr. Lai said.  “No.  Ask away.”

She thought for a second, then asked, “Say we’ve got a contained system… an ecosystem, maybe.  And there’s a bunch of overlapping areas, and adjacent areas, and they’re all contributing.  You have, I guess, populations in each.”

“Biomes?” Mr. Lai asked.  “In one ecosystem, you could have, for example, birds in the air and trees, squirrels keeping mostly to a tree-filled area, fish in a river.”

“Okay, yeah, that works,” Lucy said.  “And let’s say we have a single thing that’s really important to it.  And we take that away.”

“Something like… an apex predator?  The top predator of the area,” Mr. Lai said.

“I don’t think it was,” Avery said.  “Custodian?  Or… what’s the word for the people who keep the balance of an area?  Conservationist?  The guys in uniforms who patrol parks and stuff.”

“Something like that,” Lucy said.

“I think it could lead to a collapse of the ecosystem, or a disruption.  But I don’t like the word collapse,” Mr. Lai said.

“Why not?” Lucy asked.

“Because much like with global warming… things don’t often collapse.  The world will keep turning, and life will find a way.  Our lives?  Humans will have a harder time once the environment is no longer one they adapted toward.”

“Except for the rich and the privileged,” Lucy mused.

“It would help if I knew what you were talking about.”

“Secret project,” Avery said.

Borrowing a cue from Verona, who was… talking to Jeremy, it seemed.  Half of the class had escaped out the door now.  It got slower, though, as students opened up their lockers and the space outside the door got more congested.

“I find myself thinking- do you mind if I talk about something not related to school?” Mr. Lai asked.

“I bought my first house here in Kennet, and I put a lot of attention into making it as nice as I could.  The gardening was what I really wanted to do well, but I struggled.  It turns out that the gardens we tend to make, they are very artificial.  They need the gardener, because the soils we use don’t make for good long-term sustainability.  They need watering, because the layouts and setups don’t hold water well.  We have to weed constantly, because weeds are often better suited for the environments we make with lawns and garden plots with flowers, than the grass or the flowers are.  They reach deeper, get more nutrients in soils we inadvertently leave barren.  Is this too much?”

“I like sustainable gardening,” Mr. Lai said.  “Designing things in a way that can last, that retains water, and encourages soil diversity.  Mushroom cultivation to feed nutrients across the plot.  I think if we were all scooped up and everything was left alone, my lawn and garden would thrive.  I would have to ask… does your secret project need the gardener?”

“I think the gardener is and always was going to be there,” Avery said, looking at Lucy for validation.

“If the wrong so-called gardener ends up in place, or if it takes too long for someone to pick up the job, we might end up kinda barren,” Lucy said.

“Ah.  Now I’m picturing something closer to a family.  A key figure leaving?”

Lucy made a bit of a face.  “I could see that but the garden one is probably closer.”

“How do you fix a messed up garden?” Avery asked.

“You can do what I’ve done, and try to plant the seeds for something long-term, that doesn’t need a gardener.”

“I don’t think we have the authority to do that,” Avery said.

“Probably not,” Lucy said, folding her arms.

“Then figure out what’s been done so far, what didn’t work, and adjust.  Be careful about adding new biodiversity, or removing any.  There are a lot of horror stories from times when governments added new animals to an area and they took over because there wasn’t enough competition.  Rabbits in Australia.  Lake Trout, European Starlings, and Nutria here in North America.  Many of them were added on purpose.  The trout were a food source, meant to restock a single river, and spread from there. The nutria were to be fur trade for the Hudson’s Bay Company.  The Starlings were added to the ecosystem by a fan of William Shakespeare who wanted all of Shakespeare’s birds brought over.”

“Any cases of it working out?” Lucy asked.

“Some, I’m sure.  Domesticated animals have done better, I think.  Horses spring to mind.”

“Are you thinking of the thing six weeks ago, or the thing last weekend?” Avery asked Lucy.  “Our missing, uh, ‘gardener’?”

“Six weeks ago,” Lucy said, her eyebrows drawing together.  “But I’m thinking about last weekend too.  Taking something out of a system… or something taking itself out.”

Lucy looked up at Mr. Lai.  “Thank you.  Sorry, um.  Thinking out loud.  Thanks for letting us bounce ideas off of you.  I’m going to read up on some of this stuff. I’ve already got some ideas and I think if I keep going, I could get more.”

“Wonderful,” Mr. Lai said.  “And confusing.  But wonderful.”

Avery gave him a thumbs up as they headed to the back of the classroom, where Verona was waiting.  The hallway was still a bit congested.

“Get the party invite?” Avery asked Verona.

Verona nodded.  “Jeremy asked if I was going.  I’m not sure.  Not really my thing.  People.”

“Feels like people are generally a pain,” Lucy said.  “I feel like I’ll be tense all night, waiting for stuff to go wrong, and I don’t trust half this class to handle it right when it does.”

“Emerson made it sound like the main plan was to hook up.  I already know there’s no point.  I wonder if that’s the long-term of Mari’s ‘gift’.  A warning about a party.”

“Ah ah ah!” Lucy made a warning sound.

“Right.  No talk about Mari and G or their gifts.  Can’t go down that rabbit hole,” Avery said.  She sighed.

Jeremy was in the hallway.  The conversation went quiet as they headed into the stairwell, downstairs, and out the door.  They walked down the sidewalk.

“Jeremy asked you, huh?” Avery asked, smiling.  “Huh?  Huh?”

“The stupid app tipped him off that I voted for him.  Then we ran into each other.  Now we’re talking semi-regularly and stuff.”  Verona made a face, like she’d stepped in something.

“Poor Jeremy,” Lucy said.  “Why’d he have to pick you to like?”

“Poor me.  Who has time for this stuff?  Like, why can’t we cut straight to the end bits?”

“Marriage?” Avery asked.  “You want an arranged marriage?”

“I don’t.  I was talking about other stuff,” Verona said.  “But if I had to get married, I could see it being an arranged one, I guess.  Cut past the crap.”

“Your dad would be the one picking your partner in most of those situations,” Lucy said.

“Send me to hell first,” Verona said.  “No arranged marriage for me, if that’s true.”

“I’m still stuck on how you’re seeing what I presume is the rude stuff as the end part,” Avery commented.  “That’s just part of how you figure out if you’re compatible for the real end goals.  Getting together and being comfortably boring with one another, growing a big family.”

“I don’t think I’m ever having kids,” Verona said.  “Because that sounds awful.  Especially kids-with-an-s-on-the-end.  I feel strongly enough about it I could swear it right now, but I’m not going to set myself up to fail the moment I get an accidental pregnancy or whatever.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  “For not making it an oath.”

“Three or four kids feels like a good number to me,” Avery said.  “Maybe I’d stick to three, because I guess we’d have to introduce our kids to the practice, huh?”

“Weird thought,” Lucy said.  “I mentioned looping in our significant others, too.  That’ll be a weirdly high-stakes conversation when it comes.”

Verona huffed.  “It’s just… ugh.  Jeremy’s fine, but I’ve got spells to learn, school, mysteries to solve…”

“Friends to save…” Lucy added.

“Thanks again,” Avery said.

“Dad stuff…” Lucy added another one.

Verona’s eyes went very wide, even as her face was normal.  It somehow conveyed a lot more than the disgusted face of a moment ago.

“How is that going?” Avery asked.  “You said you had a fight?”

“It’s going,” Verona said.  “It’s… always going.  Why should it change because I spat on him?  One more grudge for the pile, and he wants my attention more now, like he thinks he can make up for stuff that’s gone wrong.”

“Want to stay over?” Lucy asked.

“Can’t, really.  He said he’d call the police and report me missing if I did.  He wants to fix things, apparently, and he can’t do that while I’m gone.”

“Want…” Lucy winced.  “Me to stay?”

“Yes,” Verona told her.  “But that’s not an option either.  But thank you.”

“Sorry it sucks,” Avery said, making a face.

They stopped on the street corner, then backed off the sidewalk and onto grass to let some people by.

“What’s the plan?” Avery asked.  “Last night we talked about-”

Lucy held up her hand, gripping her thumb with her whole hand wrapped around it.  “Big thing is Matthew and Edith interview.  Last big one we need to do.”

She gripped her index finger.  “The Witness.  Unpowered, but she saw things play out from a distance, she overheard stuff.  She’s our big fact check.”

“Probably doesn’t give us much,” Verona said.  “Might have been better if we did her first, to get the basic outline.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “But we know some stuff we didn’t.  The Ruins, for example.  It sounds like the Beast was dragged there.  Then apparently moved on the night Reagan lost her other eye in the Hungry Choir ritual.”

“And we know who was where and who was supposed to be where.  And we know, um…”

Lucy looked around to check.  No goblins in bushes.  No moths in spiderwebs.

“Rope says there’s nobody paying any specific attention to us, but it’s not perfect,” Avery murmured, her hand in her pocket.  “I don’t think it’s meant to be used for that, so there’s a lot of wiggle room for it to mess up if I try to use it for that instead of actual skipping around.”

“Thanks.  We now know that someone like Nicolette can swear to Guilherme to forget stuff.  Which means the Others we’ve been interviewing who say they don’t know stuff or that X detail is true… aren’t one hundred percent.  Maybe.”

“How would we even work around that?” Avery asked.

Lucy shrugged.  “Look for discrepancies.  Or cases where someone was somewhere and should know something but didn’t.”

“You know what I wish?” Verona asked.  “I know we can’t because it’s not summer school yet, and I get that they’re assholes who hurt Avery, but I wish we could contact other practitioners, get the dirt, and learn some more tricks and stuff.  Imagine how useful some of that seeing-eye stuff would be.  Or if we could do something funky and get something to answer one question and have the answer be true.”

“I feel like that would be costly.”  Avery’s voice dropped a bit as she said that.

“You managing okay?  Was today better than yesterday?” Lucy asked Avery.

“I think so.  We haven’t gotten all the way through today though.”

“Good answer,” Verona said.  “Talking like a practitioner, and I like that you think you’re doing better.”

“I want to hug my trashy hobo child,” Avery said, “but she’s sleeping.  I had her on a mission last night and she needs the extra rest.”

“Who was she watching?” Verona asked.

“Hey,” Lucy exclaimed.  “Good for you.”

“I thought we should be impartial, and if we’re going to continue to talk or joke about taking Alpy as a familiar…” Avery drifted off.

“I respect that a lot,” Lucy said.

“I respect it,” Verona said.  “And I can call it out as a possible clue that your heart really isn’t in it.”

“Did you know there was an old wives tale about grabbing a cat by the tail and swinging it around your head nine times to ward off evil?” Avery asked.  Her eyes narrowed.  “I know your favorite form for glamour and you have been nagging me to experiment more.”

“Again, you could ask her.”

“But this is fun,” Verona said.

“Snowdrop couldn’t keep up the entire time, even with the rope, but she was pretty sure Alpeana didn’t go to the spirit world, ruins, abyss, or warrens.  She says there’s a smell or a trace of something that follows after you’ve stepped into those places.”

They were still standing in the grass by the crosswalk.

“Who do I send her to watch next?” Avery asked.  “She’s going to get caught sooner or later.”

“Maybe Matthew and Edith,” Lucy said.  “But we’ll decide for sure when we’ve interviewed them.  No use making a call now.”

“So they’re next?” Verona asked.

“They’re next,” Lucy said, “but… we hesitated at first because we wanted them to teach us more runes, and because the couple dynamic makes it harder.  And now they’re our main suspects.  According to Gashwad, Edith wasn’t where she said she was going to be.”

“How do we even bring that up?  Do we bring that up?” Verona asked.

There wasn’t a really good answer.

Lucy asked, “Is that a now thing?  A today thing?  If it’s not, what do we do today or this week that prepares us for it?”

“What was that you were asking Mr. Lai?” Avery asked.  “Gardens and gardeners?  Custodians?”

Lucy looked over the town, her eyes turning red as she used the Sight.  Red watercolor and blades everywhere.  There was a woman standing at the crosswalk with a thin knife blade sticking out of her butt.  She spoke aloud, her eyes scanning.  “We’ve got a contained ecosystem here, that’s been very carefully tended.  Miss handling the nuance and subtle parts of it.  The Carmine Beast as one of the figures keeping things in a certain kind of balance.  Now both are gone.  There’re enemies at the gates, the new Leaders are apparently sending spirits as soldiers to hold a perimeter, and things here are getting worse in a subtle way.  What Mr. Lai said about invasive species kind of lines up with the invading practitioners. Once they’re in, they breed, there’s nothing really higher than them to ‘feed’ on them.  Even the black, gold, and white judges wouldn’t be able to, I don’t think.”

“See, this is exactly what I meant,” Verona said.  “Jeremy talks to me for five minutes about cats, and I miss this whole thing.”

“I think he might bring some of it up in tomorrow’s class,” Lucy said.  “You could get some recap then.”

“That would require me to pay attention in class instead of breaking connections and reading a book.”

“Maybe don’t do that,” Avery said.

“He said a few things that put some thoughts in my head, but I haven’t fully worked through those thoughts to see where they go,” Lucy said.

“Good thing he was teaching about ecospheres and stuff today,” Avery said.

“I think there’s a lot of other topics he could have brought up and they would have put my mind on the same track, since I’m thinking of this,” Lucy answered, a bit absently.  She thought hard.  The gardener, the missing pieces…

“Give us some of those starter thoughts?” Verona asked.

“Want to hit the convenience store?  Then we can go wherever we’re going?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded with some vigor.

They walked, crossing the crosswalk primarily because it separated them from the people on the sidewalk.

“If the garden is cultivated, and I do think the Kennet Others did control things to get them looking like this, having John go after outsiders, and keeping things secret from practitioners, then who cultivated it?  How did all of this start?” Lucy asked.

“Could be half and half,” Verona said.  “Happened naturally, then people organized to ensure it stayed that way.”

“Who made that move, then?” Lucy asked, quickly enough that she felt like it might have come across as aggressive.  “I mean… we fell into a kind of quick template of questions to ask, about means, motive, opportunity, the lives the Others lead and how they go about their business.  We got their alibis, we got the details on what they can do, and an idea of their power, especially as it relates to the Carmine beast.  I kind of wish we could go back and ask everyone another really basic question.  Why are they here?  Why did the Carmine Beast come here?  Why did the Hungry Choir set up shop here?”

“We could go back and ask,” Avery said.

“We could, but it’s awkward, and I’m worried that if it matters, then going to them with one follow-up question is going to be what tips them off.  Then our target will be running scared and we’ll be… I guess an inch further along the path.”

“I had a thought too,” Avery said.  “Based on what you said a few minutes ago, not what Mr. Lai said.”

“Share,” Verona told her.

“About the invasive species.  Lucy, you said outside practitioners could fit that mold, and I don’t think you’re wrong.  But… multiplying out of control, no clear force that preys on them, and apparently created or brought here… you could draw a lot of comparisons to the Hungry Choir.”

Avery sighed.  “Every time I mention them, I’m worried I’ll see some creepy kid standing around the corner, or get a ring on my phone and it’ll say I”m signed up for the next night.”

“It really feels like this ecosystem doesn’t know how to deal with the Choir,” Verona said.  “They kind of shrug and work around them.  They warn us not to mess with it, but they really don’t know.  When we act like we might have a plan, some even seem a bit relieved.  Nobody’s complaining or happy they’re gone.  They’re just this… really messy thing that was introduced here nine years ago and they’ve gone out of control ever since.”

“Leaving the question…” Lucy trailed off a bit.  “Introduced by who or what?”

“Possibly something in Kennet,” Verona said.  “It’s rooted here, and here isn’t a ghost town.”

“Possibly,” Avery said.  “Maybe Kennet and ghost towns have something in common?”

“No real Others or practitioners?” Verona suggested.  “No competition.”

“That’s one thing,” Lucy said.

They crossed the bridge.  Rain drizzled down around them, and the clouds were heavy above, blocking out the sun and the worst of the temperature, so things were just a bit gloomy and cool.  She preferred it to many of the alternatives, but she would still look forward to winter, when she could bundle up.

“Shelter,” Avery said.

Lucy shook her head.  “The Hungry Choir doesn’t need shelter.  You mean the Other or force or whatever that made it.”

“Yeah,” Avery confirmed.

Lucy made a face.  “It’s weird to imagine something that strong, that it can just poop out a Hungry Choir, and still be like… boo hoo, it’s raining, it’s cold.”

Verona added, “It’s also a lot of ghost towns.  A lot.  The website listed a bunch.  There’s something like sixty-eight.”

Avery suggested, “Maybe they didn’t go there for shelter, but they went there to get something?”

“Like an incarnation of… something, picking up on the leftover essence of whatever happened?  Poverty and sickness?”

“Or they went there to put something down,” Verona suggested.  “We draw circles and triangles and stuff to frame diagrams, because it makes it easier to give them structure, and have all the bits sticking out or through or inside the circles… but that’s definitely not the only way to do it.  Look at what Edith did with the trees at the edge of the glade.”

“The whichwhatnow?” Avery asked.

Verona sounded more excited now.  “Before the Belanger negotiation.  She put papers on the trees to burn things that passed through.  A ring of fire in case it became a fight, where the papers weren’t connected, but they influenced the area.  Imagine putting down a bit of something at each ghost town, and then having that be just this huge ritual that encompasses a province-wide area.”

“Mark against Matthew and Edith, again,” Lucy mused.

“Isn’t it?” Verona asked.

“But there’s a few problems with that.”

“Tell me,” Verona said.  “Let’s break it down.”

“First off, people from the website have scoured some of the locations, haven’t they?  Looking for clues?  Anything that might help them unravel what’s going on, or clue them into the upcoming night.  And they found nothing like this.”

“Sometimes little things can be hidden,” Avery said.  “The Forest Ribbon Trail had the axe as an etching on bark, and the woven basket was hidden under paint.  The coin was under dirt.”

“Or invisible,” Verona said.  “When Edith did the thing with the paper on the trees, the papers became invisible.”

“But,” Lucy said, holding up a finger.  “Practitioners have looked into this.  Alexander has.”

“Practitioners were turned away,” Verona argued.

“They were turned away from the details, figuring out what the Choir or its origin was,” Lucy said.  “But I’m like, ninety percent sure that was Miss distracting outsiders from looking into Kennet, and the Hungry Choir being protected incidentally.  That wouldn’t cover a ghost town.”

“We don’t know for sure that they went to the ghost towns in the way the participants and website guys did.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “Second part is that complex diagrams that interconnect, link, wait for triggers or whatever else tend to burn energy every second they’re active.  Sixty eight little diagrams set out all across Ontario, sometimes a sixteen hour drive away, all burning energy?”

“Could be a group,” Verona said.  “Or… or we go back to fundamentals.”

“I’m listening,” Lucy said.

They were off the bridge and just outside the convenience store now.  They didn’t go inside.

“Patterns make expectations, which become rules.  But practices aren’t always neat and tidy.  They expand, they adapt, they touch things they’re not supposed to.  Glamour can run away with us, breaking too many connections can cut us off from people who weren’t the designated target,” Verona said.  “Even a badly drawn diagram can break and spill out, and diagrams are some of the basic stuff.”

“You think this spilled out?” Avery asked.

Verona nodded.  “Could have!  Like, if it was just ten ghost towns at first, and then expanded out because there was so much power?”

Lucy replied, “Alexander said it hasn’t really changed or adapted since it became a thing.”

“In execution!  But maybe the starting point is like a drop of food coloring in a cup of water.  It starts out as a drop and expands out.  It’s still the same amount of food coloring, just… diffuse.”

“But shouldn’t the starting point influence the end point?” Lucy asked.  “That feels thin.  I can’t imagine drawing a big messy diagram that bleeds out to include small towns, and getting a really stable ritual at the end.  And that still leaves out the Kennet factor.  Why is it rooted here?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  She sighed, but she didn’t look unhappy.  “Damn.”

“You actually like this.  This… you and me, going over stuff.”

“Yeahhh!  This is what it’s about, Luce.  And I want you in this too, Ave.”

“This is a lot of thinking so soon after school,” Avery said.  “Sugar?”

“Sugar!” Verona said, with energy.

They raided the convenience store, buying drinks and striking up a deal to each get something they could share.  Shrunken head gummies, licorice spears, and chips.  Lucy bought some green tea soda, Avery got some apple soda, and Verona got cola.

“What if it’s not competition?” Avery asked, as they paid.

“We wondered why they settled here in the end, right?  What if they were scared of… interference.  And then they came here because it’s the biggest way to avoid, you know, interference?” Avery asked.

The cashier handed them the receipt.  Verona stuck it into her pocket with the change.

“You’re sharing that change, right?” Lucy asked.  “Since we pooled money together just now?”

“Practitioner interference?” Lucy asked, once they were out.

“Assuming Miss didn’t mean to protect them, because yes, we were suspicious of Miss, but she hasn’t given us any blatant signs she was a baddie… what if they came here as part of the mojo or to leave something behind because they knew about this situation and thought they’d be safe?” Avery asked.

“Keeps going back to origins and beginnings.  Why was this garden made, and why did the later arrivals come to it after?” Lucy asked.

The others nodded.  Verona was squinting with one eye as she bit into a shrunken head gummy.  Sugary blood came out the stitched eyes and mouth.

Lucy counted on her fingers as she said, “So to recap… ghost towns could be because of concern over competition, maybe over claims to power.  Easier to do big stuff if people aren’t looking over your shoulder or stealing your power.  Could’ve been shelter, but that’s a lot of shelter to be taking.  Could be setup, could be taking something away, could be putting something down.  But at the end, they came to Kennet.  Why?”

She batted at Verona’s shoulder with the chip bag as she asked.

“To leave power behind?  Or because it was the best long-term hiding spot for a secret weakness or key to unraveling the Choir, or a place for the Choir’s creator to hide, among other possibilities.”

“A creator with enough power to create the Choir, hiding incognito?” Lucy asked.  “That’s asking a lot.  Especially if they’re hiding it for a long time.  Who would it be?  Alpeana?”

“No,” Avery said.  “And that makes almost no sense.”

Lucy swatted Avery with the chip bag too.  Avery stuck her with a licorice spear.

“Leave her alone.  Really.  At least until we have enough evidence to actually consider her,” Avery warned.  “We have enough enemies.  Let’s not go taking the few friendly Others around and making them to be big horrible threats.”

“Alright,” Lucy said.

They made their way back over the bridge.  The water beneath the bridge flowed so slowly that the individual droplets of rain could be seen on the surface.  Cars whizzed by along the road.

“It feels like this would be hard to disentangle from what happened to the Carmine Beast,” Verona said.

“All roads lead to Kennet?” Avery asked.  “Miss talked a lot about entanglement.  Is this a really big snare?”

“Or something big that someone wants to keep secret?” Lucy posited, before eating a chip.  “Kill the judge-cop-and-executioner in red who would finally investigate it?”

The wind went from being blocked by the mountains to the west and east of Kennet to coming straight through it, and each time it came straight through, the rain came down harder.

“I feel like these are some things that Alexander could answer,” Verona said.  “He said to bring our questions to him when we enroll, but… that doesn’t help now.”

“Not to mention, if we brought this stuff to him, the locals would crap houses… metaphorically,” Lucy said.

They stopped at the midpoint on the bridge.  Verona clinked her can against the rusty metal railing.

“Interview with Matthew and Edith, interview with the witness.  We still have gifts to collect.  Some experimentation to be done with the gifts.  A road trip to a ghost town isn’t out of the question.  Then what?” Lucy asked.  “If we can’t figure it out from that much, what do we do?  Wait until magic school, hope to get a neat trick or tool we can use?”

Avery answered, gesticulating with the red licorice spear, “Watch the locals.  See if anyone’s acting funny.  The Carmine Beast is a big power source, right?  So maybe we hint that we’re going to go search the Ruins again.  See if anyone makes any moves.  Or we check out the Warrens, or the Abyss, same idea.  It’s like criminals with a huge haul.  They’ll want to protect it, right?  Keep it out of sight?  Possibly two hauls if these events are connected.”

“Two hauls?” Verona asked.  Her arms were up on the railing, and she leaned her head sideways, resting them on her arms.

“I was thinking maybe it’s not a person hidden from practitioners in Kennet, but a power source.  They might need one for the Choir, right?”

“Two massive power sources hidden in our town?”  Lucy asked.

“Well, for one thing… wouldn’t that be noticeable?”

“I don’t want to come across like a jerk, shooting down ideas.  I’m trying to suggest some, but I don’t want to go on a road trip to some rando ghost town if there isn’t a good basis for it either.”

“All good,” Avery said.  “I wouldn’t mind another road trip, but I get what you mean.”

“Where are we tripping to today though?” Verona asked.  “Because I really don’t want to go home.”

“Me either,” Avery said.

Lucy felt compelled to be the one to suggest it, even if she felt a bit wary about it.  “Matthew and Edith’s?  I don’t know how they’d take a sudden visit, especially considering the current climate.”

“That we’re not so trusted anymore?” Avery asked.

Matthew and Edith’s house was painted wood, with cedar chips instead of grass in the garden and a lot of trees.  The more time Lucy spent around here, the more she felt like it was layered inside jokes between Edith and Matthew.  The spindly bushes, the three willow trees, and the wood all kind of suggested the place could go up in flame like nothing.  It was a dark aesthetic, and a wood heavy one, which seemed to suit Matthew, who worked at an outdoor shop and housed a dark spirit.  Even from the outside, it seemed like there was a comfortable amount of clutter.

They were walking to the foot of the driveway when a horn beeped, making all three of them jump.  Avery managed to turn one hundred and eighty degrees as she jumped, stepping back as she landed, and didn’t fall on her ass.

It was Matthew, pulling up.  They had to step back and onto the red cedar chips to give him room to get his truck onto the driveway.

“What brings you here?” he asked.  He smiled.

He was a good looking guy, in a way that made Lucy think that he’d been a stellar looking guy once, and being his age or maybe carrying the doom spirit had made him look really tired.  His chin was similar, telling a history, like maybe he’d been overweight and shucked the weight, but it hadn’t quite left his face.  Or he’d always had a bit of babyfat.  His smile cut through the tiredness and always seemed really genuine.  He was still wearing his work apron with the hunting and fishing logo on it and ‘Buckheed’ printed below, dark brown print on the medium brown canvas.  Knife in a sheath in the pocket.

“We figured we’d wrap up our interviews with the local Others.”

“Already,” he said.  He puffed out his cheeks.  “Give us an update if you’re close?  Or- if you don’t trust me and Edith, update someone?  Just so we aren’t blindsided.  The deal you made gives the augur permission to start interfering when the crime’s solved.”

It felt tense and it felt awkward that it was tense, because Matthew could notice and then what?  In their meanderings, they might have been avoiding this feeling and situation.

“Edith’s out.  She’s visiting family.  I have a bit and then I’ve got to go pick her up.  Do you want to put this off?  Tomorrow?”

“I’ve got an appointment tomorrow,” Lucy said.  Therapy.

“Practice,” Avery said.

“I don’t have anything that gets in the way, I’m pretty sure,” Verona said.  “But I think we have enough questions about things that I couldn’t solo it like I did with the goblins.”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.  “Well, if you don’t mind a twenty minute break right in the middle of this, we could do it today.  Do you want to stay for dinner?  That makes it easier.  Barbecue?”

“Possibly.  We’d have to check,” Lucy said.

“Not a problem,” Matthew said.  “We had a sense of what we were getting into when we decided to awaken three girls who still had school and parents to worry about.  It’d be awful of me to complain now.”

“Sure would,” Verona said.

“Do you want to head around to the backyard?  I’ve got to drop some stuff inside, and run upstairs to change.”

“Pull the string to open the latch.  I put it there for the goblins, it works for someone who can’t reach over the gate.”

He let himself into the house, going back to the car to get some bags and groceries.  They let themselves into the back yard.

The backyard was nice.  They’d seen it just yesterday, from the rooftop.  Telephone pole for Avery.  It did have grass, and it also had a sprawling wooden deck with two different barbecues in it, and an inset pit that might have been for a campfire.

They found spots to lounge, favoring the deck and the steps that flowed from different tiers of that deck.

Lucy swatted Verona with the chip bag.

“Stop that!  Are you going to make that thing your implement, swinging it around like that?”

“Why’d you have to drop that ‘sure would’?”

“I wasn’t really thinking that deeply about it.  We’re fine.  Being intense and weird is what’d be a problem.”

“I wonder if he’s going to mention the meeting yesterday.  Or the fact he and Edith are in charge now,” Avery said.

Lucy reached for and took a shrunken head.  She bit into it and then spit it into her hand.  “Sour.  I didn’t expect sour.”

“You know I don’t love sweet,” Verona said.

“You’re drinking cola.”

“It’s the least sweet one I’ve found available.”

Verona took the slobbery shrunken head from Lucy’s hand and popped it into her own mouth.

“That’s so gross.  Don’t be that gross.”

Verona smiled, showing the ‘blood’ from the shrunken head over her teeth.

The door rolled open, and Matthew stepped out onto the deck, pushing a chair in at the patio table.  “So.  Where are we at?”

“Mostly we’ll go over a standard set of questions, I think,” Lucy said.

“Sure.  I did ask others what kinds of questions you guys were asking.  It’s good.”

He dusted the little bits of guff from the willow tree off a patio chair, then sat down, the chair creaking under him, like he was heavier than he was.  He looked casual and unbothered, and Lucy was left to wonder if he could divert his anxieties or negativity into the Doom to appear this comfortable if he were guilty.

“What brought you to Kennet?” Lucy asked.  “Were you born here?”

“Ah.  No, I wasn’t.  I found the Girl by Candlelight.  Nurtured the flame, if you want to put it that way.  I noticed the doom and followed it to her.  She was fending it off, but the way a curse, an omen, or a sending works, if you can’t bounce it back at the sender, or if there’s no sender, it can magnify.  The doom had swelled, going away for a time, picking up strength, then returning.”

“Is there a way to tap into it as a power source?” Avery asked.  “Drain it?”

Good question, Lucy thought.

“Not much.  A little bit at a time, when I need to do stuff for Kennet, but it mostly sits inside of me and I try not to stir it up much.  It grows faster than I can drain it.  But I grow too.  I’m managing, and I’ll grow for a long time.”

“Why Kennet then?” Lucy asked.  “Is Edith’s family here?”

“No.  They’re passing through today.  Mostly, each town we passed through had practitioners.  Kennet didn’t.  The city itself became something of a hallow.”

“Explain that to us?” Verona asked.  “It’s been touched on, but…”

“There are three ways of binding something.  I’m not going to tell you the others, because it would make me enemies with the locals here.  A Hallow is the most pleasant.  You make a space into a home for something.  Usually something without a strict body.  Goblin no, they’re too solid.  Alpeana is a maybe, she’s not as solid as she seems.  The Doom in my body isn’t physical.  You couldn’t hold it.  It’s an easy candidate.  Mark out the location and make it as suitable as possible.  You can do it like you’d build a birdhouse.  The birds come to roost.  Imagine the markings or specific treatments you give that birdhouse to be the way you attract a specific bird.  Or Other.”

“Like how if you draw a square with tape on a floor, a cat will sit in it,” Verona said.  “And if you put a cat’s favorite toy by it, it’ll be the cat you want.”

“Yeah,” Matthew answered.  “You can also do it as a specific treatment for a specific abstract force.  Kennet kind of ended up being that.  Just as you might purify a hallow, waving incense around it to clear it of problematic forces and attract spirits of fire or air… Kennet was purified.”

“Miss was keeping practitioners away.”

“And then some of us settled.  The Faerie were already present.  Alpeana was.  One of the goblins.  We helped keep the practitioners away, gave her a bit of power or assistance if she needed it.  Reinforced the hallow, made it more attractive.”

“More moved in,” Avery concluded.

“I think that’s a big part of why,” Matthew said.

“How old were you?” Lucy asked.

“Nineteen or twenty.”

“And you’re currently?”

“Thirty.  Edith’s thirty-four.  Why?”

Because timing, Lucy thought.

“The thing that happened with John and Yalda wasn’t that long after?”

“It was… sad,” Matthew said.  “Really sad.  But it also told me that we could stand together when we needed to.  Support John, support the town.”

“It wasn’t long after you came?” Lucy asked, again.

“So… nine or ten years ago.”

“You said you were with Charles when the thing with the Carmine Beast happened?” Verona asked.

Verona went on, “And you can’t tap into the Doom.  You don’t have any other tricks or powers?”

“I know some things, but practicing is dangerous for me.  It doesn’t take much to shake this Doom loose and if it escapes it hurts me or Edith.  I can take being hurt but I can’t take my own stupidity hurting Edith.  I remember each and every time.  I mostly stick to using tools; items are something you can use, even if you’re technically innocent.”

The questions continued.  Stock, ones they’d been over with each of the Others.  Means, motive, opportunity.  He didn’t have the strength, he didn’t have the motive.

All of that was background.

Lucy stewed in thought, considering the variables.

The wind blew north-south through Kennet, and the droplets came down more intensely.

Matthew offered to let them come under the umbrella, but it really wasn’t much in the way of rain.  They refused.

And Lucy didn’t want to break her train of thought.

The chair squeaked as it slid across the patio, metal dragging across wood.  It startled Lucy out of her head and brought her back to the backyard.

“Going to go pick up Edith.  I don’t know if you guys want to use the time until now to call and check about dinner.  You’re totally welcome.  You can keep interviewing me while I barbecue.”

Lucy nodded along with Avery and Verona.

“I’ll leave the back door open so you can use the bathroom.  I’ll extend you guys that trust.”

“Bad karma mojo if we violated it anyway, right?” Verona said.

“Be good,” Avery said, thwapping Verona with the chip bag.

“Matthew,” Lucy called out.

There were about five questions she wanted to ask, and she couldn’t ask most of them.  If he really was involved in something deeper here… these might indicate the way.

She decided to ask the least offensive one.

“We got different people giving us different info, and with Miss gone and Bluntmunch being a goblin, it’s hard to get good info on this, it’s bugging me… is Yalda a Sick Dog or a Black Dog?”

“I don’t honestly know,” Matthew said.  “The thing happened pretty soon after we arrived.  I didn’t see her or interact with her much.  I think Sick Dogs are a subcategory under the broader category that is Black Dogs, but you can have standalone Black Dogs too.”

Lucy nodded.  “Who could we ask?”

“John?” Matthew asked, making a bit of a face.  “That’s a touchy subject, though.”

Matthew ducked out, grabbing his keys from inside.  They could hear the front door close on the far end of the house, and his truck starting up.

“So do we scout the house for trouble?” Verona asked.

“If she can booby trap the clearing, she could booby trap evidence and stuff,” Avery said.  “And it’s bad karma to violate someone’s hospitality like that, you just said.”

Verona nudged Lucy.  “Hey.”

Lucy looked at her friend.

“Normally you’d bug me to be good.  I know I promised not to make you manage us all the time, but… what’s up?”

“You were asking about John more than you were asking about the Carmine Beast,” Avery pointed out.

Lucy looked down, then she stood up.  She held a finger to her lips.  She had to fish in her bag for something suitable.

She walked over to the concrete path that led from the backyard to the driveway, blocked at one point by a gate.  It was the only area that wasn’t broken up by grass, cedar chips, leaves, or wooden slats.

She drew out a circle, and drew the connection symbol to frame it.  Extensions to block it out.

“This is serious,” Verona said, once it was drawn and they all stood within it.

“Might be,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, maybe other things,” Lucy said, her eyebrows drawn together.  She nodded, mostly to herself.  “What if the events are connected?  In the same timeline?”

“Charles and Yalda getting shot?” Avery asked.

“Charles and Yalda getting shot and the Hungry Choir,” Lucy answered.  “Charles said John would be hard to bind because…”

“Because he’s tapped into a massive power source,” Verona said.

“And then they go on the run.  They’re avoiding practitioners, they’re wary, they’re careful, and Yalda can’t be around people, and…”

“And they go to ghost towns?” Avery asked.

“Maybe.  Before eventually settling in Kennet,” Lucy finished.  “He said something about being drawn here.”

“Where Yalda gets shot.  Or… not shot?” Verona asked.

“Something,” Lucy said.

“Why ask about the sick dog, black dog discrepancy?” Avery asked.

Lucy frowned.  “Because… someone’s not right.  It’s not out of the question that Charles is lying to us, or that someone’s misleading us about the timing.  What if she was the kind of Sick that leaves people ravenous?  Or a Famine Dog, and Charles was lying about the Sick part?”

“She sings,” Verona said, out of nowhere.

“John mentioned that Yalda would sing.  He sings too, with the guitar and everything maybe out of memory for her.”

“Do you think he knows?” Avery asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, quiet.  She felt acutely disappointed.

A part of her had been thinking about John as a familiar.  Strong, competent, serious.  The incidents with the gun and the Hungry Choir had told her she didn’t enjoy fighting, so having a familiar that could handle that would make her feel whole.  Maybe.

“What do we do?” Avery asked.

“Snowdrop should tail him.  And we should check in.  See if he’s acting weird.  He’d have to know we’re focusing on this and zeroing in, after Alexander mentioned the nine year timeline.”

“After she was allegedly shot, but not long after,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded, with emphasis.

“Do you want me to check on him?” Avery asked.  “I could swing by with my rope.  Connection blocker.  See if he’s agitated, calm…”

“Be back before Matthew is?” Lucy asked.

Avery wrapped the rope around her hand as she walked backwards, out of the connection breaker diagram.  She grabbed her hat and scarf, leaving her mask in her bag, and then stepped past a tree.  Lucy could hear scuffling as Avery made her way up the roof to the peak, slipped past the chimney, and was gone.

“Let’s clean this up,” Lucy said.  She indicated the wide broom that was used to sweep the back patio of leaves, judging by the leaves speared on the bristles.  “We’ve still got to deal with Matthew and Edith, and they’ll have had time to confer and coordinate on what to say while driving over.”

“I’ll put this stuff away,” Verona said, taking the chalk.

And Matthew wasn’t upfront about the change in leadership, or the new policies and attitudes being aimed at us, Lucy thought.  Something she couldn’t voice now that she was outside the connection breaking circle, and they were in what could easily be enemy territory.