Author: Wildbow

Let Slip – 20.1 | Pale

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

A brain tumor.

With that, her hopes and dreams, her big plans, her idea of romance, it all stopped, it was all cut short.

Avery Kelly, she ran pretty fast, then she stopped running forever.

Wouldn’t that be nice?  Being able to stop?  To stop struggling against the insurmountable?  Being able to put it all to rest?

Avery had been okay, not that long ago.  Then that stretch of loneliness, start of high school.  She’d found magic.

Magic that taunted.  Ways to collect specific, special flowers, dry them, and grind them up to make fairy glamour.  Ways to use that glamour to make herself loved.  She’d even collected the flowers.  She hadn’t ended up using it.  It felt skeevy, and it felt like if it had gone wrong, she’d have broken down entirely.  So instead, she’d taken the route of breaking down entirely, but slowly.

The connection blocks had been part of that.  She’d used the connection blocks on family, because being around but being ignored was worse than being out on her own.  Or so she’d thought.  Like the not-speaking thing, she’d closed a door and found it too hard to open again.

She’d skipped her meeting to talk to Ms. Hardy and then found it harder to go the next day, which made it harder the day after, and when faced with Ms. Hardy’s obvious growing concern, facing the weight of all of that, she’d connection blocked her teacher and left.

Olivia’s friendship bracelet braided into her hair at the side of her face, a token, the last thing she had that resembled a connection, she’d gone wandering, exploring cool areas.  The spirit world.  The ruins.

She ran, hurdling a chasm.  Echoes of people who’d met horrible fates moved past her, or she moved past them.  Each one gave her an impression of what fates they’d met.  Brain tumor.  Burning alive.  Injury.

She wished she had an excuse.  A big reset button, especially if it would give her a pass for everything going on up until now.  She could blame being weird and cowardly and distant on a tumor.  People would care about her again.  They’d have to pay attention.

The echo was following behind her, matching her footsteps.  It fed details into that line of thought, made it feel real.  For moments at a time, she was in the hospital, surrounded by family.  Then those moments became minutes.

And as more gathered, even the space between those minutes-long stays were filled in with other impressions, other events.

She stopped as she saw someone.  An older teenager with light brown skin, hair in a black braid that trailed down over one shoulder, wearing an old fashioned yellow raincoat, with cracks in the material.  She stood by a small blue fire.

The echo reached into and through her.  Putting her back on the ward, walking, hobbling down the hallway.  The teenager was put out of sight.

“No,” Avery said, pushing echoes away.

They flocked back to her.  Like she was in the ocean, trying to push the water around her away.

“Let me-”

She staggered forward a bit.

“Go away!” she shouted.  Pushing the echoes away with something fiercer.

The girl with the raincoat turned her head.

Avery waded through the echoes who hadn’t yet recovered, then walked over to the teenager.

“Can I share your fire?”

The girl studied her.  “If you fuel it.”

“With?”

“Here?  Good, mostly-forgotten memories.  You reach out to the fire, push it out-”

Avery reached.  The teenager pushed her hand down.

“Not yet.  When it runs low.”

Avery nodded, staring down into the flames.

“Sit,” the teenager told her.

Avery sat.

“Do you have food?”

Avery shook her head.

“Can you talk?”

Avery opened her mouth, and her voice was a creak.  “Yeah.”

Streak broken.

“You don’t have food?”

“Not- um, not much.”

“Next time, bring more.”  The girl handed her a protein bar.  “What are you here for?”

“Getting away.”

“Not a very good reason.”

Avery shrugged.  “Um.  What about you?”

“Looking for someone.  A piece of someone.”

“Oh.  Do you want help?”

The girl gave her a long, searching look.

Rejection again.

“Taking something for nothing creates debt.  I don’t want to be in anyone’s debt.”

“Tell me more about things like the blue fire?”

“I don’t know many people that would help with something like this.  It’s suspicious.  Are you with the Belangers?”

“Um, are they Others?”

“No.  Practitioners, who were asking about me.  Came by my place.”

Avery shook her head.  “I’m not.”

With shaking hands, she brought the protein bar to her mouth.  The echos were staying out of the fire’s light, gathering in a mass at the edges.  Avery twisted around, looking.

“I want to help, that’s all.  It’s, uh, something to do, I guess?  Something good to do.  It is good, right?  They want to be found?”

The teenager nodded.

Avery had finished her chocolate-covered protein bar and was putting the wrapper away in her inside coat pocket when she heard the teenager say, “Okay.”

Avery leaned over the old dresser, which was now littered with Kerry’s things.  It had once been divided into threes, with some nudging and jostling for space, like three kids crammed into the back seat, elbowing at one another.  Sheridan’s jewelry, Kerry’s odds and ends, and maybe a few things of Avery’s.

The dresser had a mirror built into the back, flush against the wall, with a crack in it from when she, Kerry, and Declan had shared the room, pre-puberty, and had banged the dresser while roughhousing.

She leaned forward, so she could see into that mirror.  A bit of glamour created a hazy image- hazy because she used High Summer glamour to tweak it, and it wasn’t a very High Summer image.  That Avery she’d seen in the challenge.

In my worst life, in a life when I hit my lowest point, found magic, and then used that as an excuse to push everyone away?  That version of me that ran away, instead of running toward?

Still helped people.  Still found people.

She’d helped Jessica, she’d forged a loose friendship.  Jessica had taken Avery back to her place, so her girlfriend could give Avery advice Jessica didn’t know how to give.

The image in the mirror- Avery tweaked it, and the other her raised her head slightly, meeting Avery’s eyes, before instinctively glancing away.

With the tweak, there were streaks of Ruins-dreck on the other Avery.  Blurrier, but that kind of worked, because it was echo-ey.  Fingerprints from echoes and from her own hands.

Standing in opposition to that image, she could let the checkmarks stand out.  She pushed hands through hair, like she was going to do a ponytail, then let her hair drop.

Snowdrop was crawling on her dad, who tried to hide her as he walked by the living room, where Declan was playing a game.

Go easy on Dad, Avery thought.  Come up?

Snowdrop, midway through crawling on her dad, turned human, thumped the floor, and ran up the stairs.  Declan asked a question, but Avery didn’t know what the question was.

The door to Avery’s room opened.

“Did Declan see you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.  Be more careful?”

“Nah.  He’s a jerk, I gotta keep him in his place.”

“Uh huh,” Avery said.  She put out an arm, and Snowdrop kind of collided into her, for a one armed, side-hug.

There was no Snowdrop in the mirror.  Just a blurry echo near Avery.  She moved, flexing, then flexed some spirit-muscle, pushing something more Opossum-like into the scene.  Until it was a ghostly opossum in the corner of the scene, tinted blue by the fire.  She moved her head around, tongue lolling out, teeth bared, trying to find the best angle for the reflection.  “Aaaaa.”

“Speaking of ‘aaaa’, did you get what you needed?”

Snowdrop wriggled, reaching back, then pulled the rusty fork out of her back pocket.

“Sure.  And you checked out Cherrypop’s slide?”

“It’s terrible.  Doesn’t even go through the different parts of Kennet.”

“Wait, really?”

“I didn’t even have to help her.”

“That actually sounds cool, though.”

Snowdrop stuck the fork into her armpit, pressing down, to muffle what she said so the fork wouldn’t hear.  “It’s way less cool than I’m making it sound, and we know just how we’re going to make it magic.”

“We’ll figure something out.  Maybe asking Sootsleeves.”

“Ugh.”

Avery shifted the hug, mussing up Snowdrop’s hair a bit in the process, which made Snowdrop fight back, reaching up to mess up Avery’s.  Avery responded by pushing the tip of her chin into the top of Snow’s head, while hugging her tighter to pin her arms against her side.  Snowdrop bit her lightly through the fabric of her sweatshirt.

Then Snowdrop pulled back, turning.

Avery borrowed senses, heard the incoming footsteps-

Her dad, by the weight of the steps.  He approached the door.

“Come in,” Avery said.  The knock on the door started when she was halfway done.

Her dad opened the door, stepped into the room, then closed the door again.  He stood with his back to it like he was guarding it.  “Kerry’s at her friend’s.  Declan’s so fixated on his game he won’t move for hours.  Grumble’s napping.”

“Thanks for sneaking me around.  Easier to do stuff from home.”

“This is it, then?”

Avery looked at the mirror.  The image there had been destroyed by the contrary images of her and Snowdrop play-fighting.  “Yeah.”

“Do you need anything else?”

“No, I think I’m prepped.  I guess the only thing I might want is… you?”

“I should be around in case Grumble rings his bell or Declan needs something.  Or if Kerry calls.”

“This Promenade business is a pretty big deal, by the sounds of it.”

Avery nodded.  “It would mean a lot to me if you were there.”

“It’s tricky.  I’d like to be there.”

“I wonder if we can rig it.  I think we can have the door stay open.  Then- can you bring me Grumble’s bell?”

“I can do it,” Snowdrop said.  “But I don’t want to.”

“Is this going to be okay?  It’s nothing too weird?”

“It should be fine,” Avery told her dad.

He went to get the bell.  Avery set about handling the rest of the prep.  Connection-sensitive alarm, minor seal… Kerry had an old toy she’d grown out of with a bell as part of it.  She used an erasable gel to draw a series of runes on it, wrapping up with a Pisces rune, and adding the word ‘pair’ for extra measure.

Her dad returned, and she set up a simple rune on the inside of the bell.

“What is this?”

“When Grumble rings his bell…” Avery rang the bell experimentally.

Kerry’s toy rang.

“Oh.  Huh.”

“Plus some extra range, bit of supporting practice.  And the ring… stand at the other end of the room?” Avery asked.

Her dad backed off, while Avery carried Kerry’s toy to the opposite corner.  This should be ok.

“Ring it?”

He rang Grumble’s bell.  The toy went off.

“I see it flash,” her dad said.  “But-”

“But the sound doesn’t reach you.  It won’t weird Declan out or anything.  Now I’ve got an alarm for the door, if anyone but me or Snowdrop comes with intent to find you or come into the room, it’ll activate.  And that’s your notice to step through.  You pull a paper out, and the door will go back to normal.  As far as they’ll know, unless something goes horribly wrong, you were just in the room.  Making the beds, maybe.”

“And my phone?  If Kerry calls?  She’s had some fights with friends before.”

Avery popped the case off, drew a rune, and put the case back carefully.  “Should extend it for you.  The Garricks use this for their walkie-talkies and stuff.”

“Okay.  Hm.”

“Hm,” Avery replied.  “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.  I guess I prepared myself to see you leave, and to worry, and it feels different, somehow, if I’m…” he trailed off.

“You’ll still be seeing me leave.  But closer.  Just don’t step out of the shade of the building on the main platform,” Avery said.  “You good?”

“Let me check on Grumble and Declan first.”

“Okay.”

Avery took the time her dad was out of the room to triple-check everything.  Rope with weird knot at her waist, she had her magical tools, she had her bag.  She put her cape on, then her mask.  Her hat she left on the charm bracelet, loaded with runework, in case she ended up in a tough spot in reality.  Dark green sweater, jeans, and her old running shoes with the air runes.  She pushed the mask up onto the top of her head, the ribbon and her attachment to it keeping it roughly in place.

Snowdrop wore a necklace with opossum teeth on it, looped around her neck a few times, a gray sweater-dress with ‘This cat is weird’, and leggings with holes in them.  Her headphones with the ear-shaped rims at the edges were around her neck, and she had heavy eyeliner on her lower lids, in a way that drew out the perpetual circles around her eyes.

“You with me, guys?” Avery asked, tapping her charm bracelet.

The fireflies flew out, drawing a circle around her.

She touched the spot she knew she had a golden checkmark on her arm, and then gestured, connecting it to the fireflies.  Her fingers twisted as she did the gesture necessary to draw out some color and adjust the hue.

“I’d like that back when you’re done, but just to make things more clear…”

The checkmarks pulled away, and trailed behind the fireflies, each firefly with a two-foot line of sparkles behind them.  One did a little twirl, like it was playing with the effect, before falling back into formation, circling around her.

Her dad returned.  “Okay.”

“Okay?”

He nodded.  “Declan’s good.  Grumble’s sleeping.”

Avery texted her friends, checked the time, and then started getting things ready.  Folded invitations and tickets in the doorframe… wedging it until it was closed.  The Garricks had confided in her about how they’d tweaked the entry to the Path.  This would be what Wonderkand had to work out if they wanted to break in.  If they couldn’t find another way to get to the same Path, anyway.

White invitation, green, white, white, blue, white, green.  She arranged them, judged the door, and then decided to do another repetition, same pattern.

They’d chosen this for a reason.  It made experimentation hazardous.  Wonderkand would have to work out the Path entry requirements, which, okay, unfortunately they had the tools to sort of figure out the right ballpark.  But even if they got in that ballpark and their magic items and practices told them “hey, right idea, just gotta be more specific”, they had to figure out the combination.  If they wanted to brute force it, they ran the risk that they’d choose a red piece of paper, which would take them to another Path entirely.

She finished, double-checked the pattern, then backed up.

“Charles, I’m not conspiring against you here.  Just trying to follow through with the Garricks.  Don’t screw me over here.  It doesn’t help anything,” she spoke out loud.

No response, of course.

The silence felt heavy with the implied.  Like a lot of things were being said by her saying that and Charles’s silence after.  The feeling made her think about the Avery of the Ruins.  Of the challenge.

We got this.

She looked at her dad, took Snowdrop’s hand, then, together with Snowdrop, kicked the door hard.

It slammed open, even though the doorframe didn’t go that way.  But it didn’t open the way to the Promenade.  Instead, it opened into a storeroom, or an attic.  Items were everywhere, boxes were stacked up, and the box-tops and edges where they were stacked improperly were home to odd things and knick-knacks.

The pilot’s cap atop one box was her starting point for navigating the space.  There was something under it, but it was a red herring.  She had to go with the direction the pilot’s cap was facing, track it to one obvious item on top of a box… a music box.  There would be something reflective here… She popped the lid open, and music started playing.  A mirror, inset in the underside of the lid.  She looked in the reflection, moving left, then right, turned-

Snowdrop was already there, standing with her hand on an old boat motor.

“Hit it.”

Snowdrop yanked the pull.  The engine roared to life, and the room shook.  Things fell, pieces of wood hanging on the wall dropped away, landing in haphazard piles, and the view of cloudy landscape on the far side of the window began to move sideways.

They were in a vehicle.  By the feel of it, a train car.

Delivering them to the Station Promenade’s entrance.  Nothing fancy, just another small barrier to entry with some traps hidden among the odds and ends, but doing something fancy would’ve taken more than the Garricks had.

The train car of odd items pulled into the Station Promenade.  Double doors slid open to either side.  Avery hurried to put pieces of paper on the door and double check- the way back led straight to her old room.

“Snowdrop!” a Lost called out.  “And her Path Runner partner.”

“Screw off,” Snowdrop told them.

“You had the ceremony here?”

“Lies,” Snowdrop replied.

“We did,” Avery confirmed.

“Lovely.  More should do that.  Do you have something else going on today?”

“Just trying to get to the other end of the Promenade.”

“Good luck.”

“Thank you,” Avery replied, adjusting her bag clips at her collarbone and mid-ribcage so it wouldn’t jostle much.  She stretched as she walked, glancing back at her dad, then looking out toward the mouth of the Promenade itself, where a smaller team of Garricks waited.

The clock thudded.  Train cars had no engines, but were pulled by various mystery animals that had arms, legs, and parts of heads sticking out of broken parts of ceramic kettles, teapots and things.  Where there had been zeppelins or hot air balloons, there were now baskets with wings sticking out the sides.  Steam from the kettles flowed skyward, creating a heavy haze above.

The sun and moon were a giant firefly and moth moving in a set pattern across the sky, rotating slowly.

“You see that, guys?” Avery asked her fireflies, one arm straight over her head while her other arm pulled on it.

“Here, here, we’re here!” Verona called out.

Avery turned, walking backwards, and smiled as Verona and Lucy caught up.

“As witnesses to greatness, we hope,” Lucy said.  “Hi, Mr. Kelly.”

“Hi Lucy.  You guys can show me the way back if we get turned around?  I feel pretty far from home right now.”

“For sure,” Verona replied.  “I like your toy phone.”

He held it up.  “Magic, I think?”

“Runework.  The phone itself isn’t magic,” Avery pointed out, still walking backwards.

“Got it.”

“We’re just going to go just-” Avery pointed at the Garricks.

“Go.  Kick ass,” Lucy told her.

Avery jogged the rest of the way, Snowdrop following.

Into the thick of the discussion, a whirlwind of details and particulars about counting the hours that had Avery second guessing herself.

But the fireflies were there, circling around her, and the golden trail that followed them was something she’d built and earned.  A hundred tiny victories.

“Cliff Garrick, uniformed as an officer of the law, with one subject apprehended!” the voice crackled through the walkie-talkie that was clipped to Avery’s belt.

“Two alternates!” Peter Garrick ordered, his voice overriding the end of Cliff’s.  “You’re clear to take a job.  Keep count!”

They had twelve ‘plays’ on the clock.  That made for twelve engagements with the Promenade’s special features before the Wolf came.

The Garricks had worked out the counting system.  If they all left the Path at the same time, which included roping out or taking a train to another Path, then the count would reset.

Four core people doing jobs for coin, a big pause to figure out best moves and timing, then the team maneuvering to simultaneously exchange coin for a ticket at one of the key vendors, and finally, the team departing, that handled the core team.  Allowing for weirdness, that could use up half of the ‘plays’ available to them, or nearly all of them.

They were really riding the wire, but according to the head of the Garrick clan, they could get away with some of the alternates getting on board too.

Avery wasn’t about to complain or point out the issue, especially when they’d done her a favor by waiting, but the core team had started out as Peter Garrick, patriarch of the Garrick clan; Cliff Garrick, Jude’s dad; Reece Garrick, lesser brother of the Garrick clan; and Clay Garrick, the one who’d helped with the negotiation over the Promenade info.

The alternates were there to replace those who had to drop out, if it was possible.  They had the contradictory job of both being in position to drop in as replacements, but also to prioritize helping out the core team.

Avery, carrying Snowdrop as Snowdrop assumed regular opossum form, leaped up onto the roof of a store.  Zed had used a program to figure out the pattern that made the special shops and vendors stand out.

Above the store was an apartment.  A Lost was freaking out.

“What’s wrong?” Avery asked.

“My man, my lad, my sir, he’s leaving on the train,” a Lost replied.  She was an earthworm, body holding a position roughly similar to a human’s silhouette- a loop for the head, a twist for the arm, ‘wearing’ a dress and floral headband.  “I’m blind, or I’d go after him.  I’m so useless without him, but together, we have enough eyes between us.  Do you know a messenger?  Are you a messenger?”

Avery gave Snowdrop a nudge. Time to see…

“I can’t,” Snowdrop replied.

“Oh no, what will I do?” the earthworm asked.

Darn.  Was really hoping Snow could take the role without me.  The Garricks had been hoping it too.

Avery passed the walkie-talkie, her bag, and everything except her hat, scarf, and mask to Snowdrop.

“I can,” Avery told her.

“Will you?”

The curtain at the woman’s window was already billowing out, past the window and onto the ledge Avery stood on.  It pressed against her, lifting her up, turning her around.

“Number sixteen train,” the earthworm woman told Avery.

Avery’s things were tucked away.  She rotated in the air, surrounded by billowing curtain, her clothes exchanged for a fresh outfit.  They wanted to take her bracelets and ribbons, her cloak, hat, and mask.  She clapped a hand over them.  “No.  They’re part of my Self.”

“You’ll know him when you see him,” the earthworm woman told her.

Avery reached for the High Summer rose, drew a checkmark down the line of bracelets and things – Sheridan’s bangle, the wooden bead bracelet for detecting pursuers, the friendship bracelets, the ribbon, the charm bracelet, the black rope… okay, that last one could go.  She hooked her thumb on it and passed it to Snowdrop, best as she could.

With that same glamour, twisting in the aether of billowing cloth, midway through a role change, her feet not touching the ground, knees at her chest, hands at her shoulders and head, Avery shrunk mask, hat, and cloak.  She passed them to the charm bracelet, where they hooked on automatically.

The transition finished.

Avery landed in a crouch.

Flat cap with a brim, white collared shirt, pants that were faded and made soft from travel, a jacket matching the cap, with patches on the sleeves, and old-fashioned black shoes.  And the messenger bag at her side, heavy with the weight of her things.

No equipment, no protections.  Wearing an outfit for a job meant not having the black rope, no shoes with air runes, no escape rope for if the Wolf came.

The end of the earthworm tail had enough stick to it that it could hold onto paper.  The earthworm woman extended a limb out of the window, toward Avery.  Holding an envelope.

“He leaves in a minute.”

Avery tucked the letter into an outside area of the messenger bag, took Snow’s hand, and broke into a hard run.

Her look was old-fashioned.  Or a bit hipster-y.  But everything fit, and it was comfortable.  Even the shiny black shoes that would’ve normally made her worry her feet would get torn up by running with them on.

Avery reached back for the walkie-talkie, and Snowdrop was already passing it forward, reading her impulse.  Snowdrop went small, and Avery brought the walkie-talkie to her ear at the same time she lifted Snowdrop forward.

“Avery Kelly, messenger, running an errand.  One minute!”

“Heard,” was Peter Garrick’s response.

There were no movement restrictions while she was on the job, delivering the letter.  She didn’t have to worry about tiles, and she only had to worry about going as fast as she could while avoiding the smiling Lost.

“Adorea, temporary firefighter.  I guess I’m looking for fires to put out.”

On a lower level, hard to miss, Avery saw one of the Others from the familiar ceremony with Snowdrop.  It was a girl who was followed by constant chaos and destruction.  Midway through dodging the collapse of a stall’s overhang.

“I remember you!” the girl called up, smiling.

“Yeah,” Avery replied.  A canister of what looked like cooking gas rolled away from one street stall and under another.

“Sorry about this!” the girl called up.

“It’s okay!”

The canister exploded under the stall, sending the contents skyward.  Avery saw glints of light in the middle of the flying objects.

One hand raised to block the glare from the firefly sun, she looked skyward.

Not that baseball was ever my game, really, it’s like trying to catch a fly ball.  Except it’s the exact opposite, Avery thought.

Snowdrop sent a sensation of amusement through the familiar bond.

“Adorea,” Avery reported.  “Smiling disaster girl near platform eight.  And one fire, I think.”

“I heard the boom.”

It took a bit, but the shadows came down just about as fast as they’d gone up.  Avery scrambled back, pushing at the railing to her right to get a little boost of backwards momentum.  The knives and one sword came down point-first, embedding in the surface.

Snowdrop became human and tugged, and Avery went with the tug, careful with foot placements-

More of the knives and things came down in the spot she’d just been.

Fire burned in the damaged stall.  Fireflies were out, looking, and they zoomed to Avery and forward.  Avery went from a forward jog to an all-out run.

The stall exploded, more gas or whatever detonating.

The disaster girl bounced off an incoming train, and was launched forward.  Onto the bridge that ran down the middle of things.  She looked alive, but wounded.

Pieces of debris landed around her- still face-down and trying to pick herself up, she instinctively put one foot up and back, stopping a wall panel that had just speared down from falling over top of her.  A potato landed in a pipe that was acting as a chimney, plugging it.  It began to bulge.

Avery kept running.

Schoolchildren.  Of course.  Girl with a metal ruler, sharpened, boy with a craft knife.

Esme Garrick, Jude’s mom, was ahead of Avery, dressed up in a long coat, carrying an umbrella, holding the hand of a Lost, in what looked like a procession line of Lost kids in school uniforms.  Teacher, or nanny, maybe.

She hadn’t announced it.

Avery put the walkie-talkie to her mouth.

“Esme Garrick is on the job of what looks like nanny or schoolmarm.  Didn’t report in, which I think means she can’t… talk?”

Esme, looking over at Avery, nodded.

“Thank you for letting us know.  Adorea, Leona, Jude, Lance?  Hold off.  Help the others.”

Couldn’t have the alternates doing too much.

The pipe that had been bulging finally gave- but not in firing that potato or whatever skyward.  Whatever was below the pipe gave way, spitting flaming oil over Lost customers.

Flaming Lost spilled out of the store in question.

It looked like Esme was trying to lead a procession of kids from point A to point B, but the kids trailed behind her, each occupying one space.  Like a game of centipede, but it was a game of centipede played on a chessboard, where various pieces were moving around willy-nilly, each by their own rules.  Friendly Lost ‘bounced off’, so to speak, but the smiling ones didn’t, and the smiling ones were converging.

She was having to work one-handed, because the umbrella was a part of the uniform.  Folding paper against her body, while also navigating the squares and keeping up with the pattern.  Red, yellow, white, black, pause, red, yellow, white, black, pause.

It looked like maybe Esme Garrick hadn’t chosen a pattern that covered enough ground.  Except she’d gotten this far out without Avery.

The flaming Lost were making the process that much harder.  Esme didn’t seem willing to put children in harm’s way of them.

“Is that your way clear!?” Avery called down.

Esme looked up, held a finger to her lips, and then said something Avery couldn’t hear.  Maybe if Avery had pulled on opossum senses… but what she really wanted was Lucy senses.

“Okay!” Snowdrop called down.  “I’m good at being quiet!”

They moved.  Avery moved to one side, watching what was happening below.

The schoolkids seemed to hate the nanny with the uniformed kids in tow.  They’d converged like sharks to blood.  Esme’s tightly contained movements had the kids bunched up.

And the disaster girl-

Avery looked just in time to see one of the winged basket zeppelins crashing into the bridge they were on.  Connectors snapped, broke, and debris scattered.  A bunch of cables and connectors snapped, part of a store collapsed.

Worse, a bunch of new triggers for connected disasters were set in motion.  The girl had managed to avoid the worst of the crash, but things were smoking, going wrong.

Avery kept an eye on her, reaching over to Snowdrop, who passed her spell cards out of her bag.

This was against the spirit of the ‘do your job without your usual stuff’, but… Avery picked one and tossed it in Esme’s direction, before hurrying on her way.

It exploded behind her.  A paste-wielding schoolkid was tossed into the empty aether between the train platforms.  The girl with the metal ruler who had sliced Jude’s butt cheeks open was thrown sideways into a shop.  Avery couldn’t see the angle, but Snowdrop kind of could, with her weird Lost sight, and the girl was stuck in a store sign.

Avery knew from the last visit to the Promenade that Lost -and Others like John- would be fine whatever happened.  They’d reappear.  But not for this visit.

She still had to make it to her destination.  She’d had a minute and she’d spent most of that.

Trusting Snow to watch the coast ahead of her, a second set of blurry, awkward eyes, Avery glanced back again.

Esme finished folding the paper into an origami pattern, tossed it, then led the kids through.

To the far side of the Promenade.  Away from the worst trouble that was converging on her.

The girl with the ruler pulled herself out of the sign and closed in on the kid at the tail end, a girl in a different school uniform who only seemed to exist while moving.

Avery prepped another spell card, running backwards, glancing back to check the coast was clear, before hopping up onto the railing for the height and clearance it gave her.

Snowdrop brandished her rusty fork against a smiling Other that was coming for Avery’s ankles.

Avery threw.  A dart of red hot heat, optimized for dishing out the hurt and setting fires from a distance.

A smiling Lost schoolkid threw himself in the way of the dart, getting caught in the arm, while blocking the dart from reaching the girl with the ruler.

She caught up to the kid at the end of Esme’s procession, paused, then waited until the girl started moving, before slashing her back savagely, over and over.

Others all around them turned their heads, looking.

Avery paused.

The Others in Esme’s area had taken offense, and were now getting upset at her, all of them closing in, now.

“Snowdrop, spare escape rope to her.”

Snowdrop nodded.  Avery ran and Snowdrop- less ran, more scampered, if human bodies could scamper.  Both of them in opposite directions.

Avery had lost time here and there, trying to help, and the timing was meant to be tight, she figured.

But she trusted her legs.  Training at school had only helped, along with all the practice stuff.

She sensed Snowdrop pushing her way past.  Hopefully avoiding smiling faces in the crowd.  The Promenade Lost were noisy, Avery could tell.

She had to avoid her own smiling Others.  She hurdled them, leaping the railing and landing on the roofs of little buildings along the Promenade, even hopping down to the rightmost concourse at one point, before scaling a stack of boxes and rising again.

A family in swimsuits was running down the concourse below Avery.  They wore colorful swimsuits, but the patterns of the swimsuits extended onto skin, blurring the line between the two.  The adults and oldest son carried an inflatable pool filled with water, the daughter carried a fishbowl over her head.  All of them were smiling.

And their pet, a goldfish sized shark, leaped from goldfish bowl to inflatable pool, becoming briefly shark-size, mouth open, triangular teeth primed, then shrunk down to something scaled to size for the inflatable pool just before splashing in.

Avery saw a boy with a glass of water, similar swimsuit deal, red and yellow swoops on the swimsuit extending up onto his bare chest.  His mouth had matching slashes and swoops around it, painting a macabre smile.  He carried a glass of water.

“Esme Garrick has left,” the voice came through the walkie-talkie.  Esme’s.  “Thanks for trying, Avery.  Thanks for delivering the rope, Snowdrop.”

Avery moved to avoid him, but he moved the other way.

The shark came leaping about two hundred feet, from inflatable pool to glass of water.  Avery avoided it.

The shark went back, with enough force the boy had to brace against it.

Explosions marked some more of the disaster girl’s work.

Avery had to run this errand, then run back.  She’d have to navigate that wreckage.

A spark of alarm from Snow made her glance-

The shark.  Returning, going for the cup of water again.

The boy hurled the cup through the air.  The contents sloshed out.

But it was a good throw.  The shark was right on trajectory for Avery as it curved through the air, moving towards the water that was its target.

Avery dropped down, sliding down the sloped roof of one storefront, landing awkwardly, almost hitting a Lost, and saw more smiling Lost waiting for her.

Tamer ones, at least.  No massive accidents, fire, or explosions, no surprise shark attacks.

These ones just wanted to come at her and stab her.

But they were timed.  She ducked between two before the clock’s movement let them move again, then broke into her fastest run.

The train at the sixteenth terminal was leaving.

She ran, full-bore, ascended the stairs, and leaped onto the back end of the train.  She had to duck low because the station framework that the trains passed through was going to knock her clean off, then she climbed up, running down its length.

“Guys, go find the letter’s recipient,” Avery said.

The fireflies emerged.

“I think it’s a spider wearing a business suit and bowler hat.”

The fireflies zipped off, chased by golden trails.

The trails were calming.  Reassuring.  A reminder of her strength and successes.  Avery moved down to the side to avoid being swatted over by station infrastructure.

The train was picking up speed.

The fireflies emerged, one car down.  Avery climbed up, ran, ducking low, slid- and slid off the curved topside of the train car.

She grabbed the open windowframe on her way down.

“Mr. Spider?” she called out.

The spider in the business suit was on the far side of the train car.  The fireflies highlighted him.

He stood, approaching, reaching with two spider limbs crammed into one sleeve of a suit shirt and suit jacket.  He took the paper.

And left Avery a coin.

She shifted her footing, glanced, and then hurled herself backwards.

Her left foot touched solid surface- some more of that metal infrastructure that supported the platform and helped it stand out, with loops that the trains and train cars passed through.  The metal rippled slightly, absorbing the full impact.  Avery pushed off, then landed on the platform.  Again, it rippled.

A tablecloth ripped its way free of a nearby table, catching Avery, leaving her momentarily blind.  She felt that weird brush of cloth against skin, the shift in weight, the impossible-to-put-a-finger-on-it adjustments, and then the tablecloth blew away.

She was left as Avery again, wearing Avery clothes, minus what she’d handed off to Snowdrop, and she carried a bundle with the messenger outfit.

She was surrounded by smiling faces.

The deeper they went in, and the more time that passed, the more smiling Others would appear.  Hostile, denser in their movements, more tricks coming along with them.  It quickly became impossible.

Which was why they needed the reset.

“Avery Kelly.  I’ve got payment for my ticket.”

“Come, bring it to Clay, so he can pay for his ticket.”

She’d lost a lot of good graces by not being as willing to help with the prep and testing.  They still wanted her talents and insights, but her road to glory with the Garricks wasn’t quite as straight and clear as it had been.

Felt bad.  Not just the fact she was putting in the work to support others.  There was the fact that the core group was four men and the supporting group was four women -now three- and another guy.

The original organization had changed a bit.  Clay, they thought, had earned a spot on the core team of four.  He’d gone the extra mile with the prep, study, taking risks, including sticking around to keep an eye out for the Wolf as they tested, knowing how much could go wrong.

Which, like, okay.

But then the other three slots were taken up by three brothers.  Presumably because leaving any of them out would be a disaster for family relationships.  Family relationships in tense times, even.  Because they still hadn’t caught the culprit who had leaked info to Wonderkand.

Avery moved in accordance with the rules again, now.  She’d chosen the long knight’s move.  Three forward, one over, or one over, three forward.

It at least thinned out a little as she got back to the Station Promenade’s beginning.  There were some tricky moves, but she got clear of the worst of it, then kept moving ‘long’, as far as she could toward the entrance.

Disaster girl was focused on Jude’s cousin Adorea, who was putting out fires, dressed in a stylized fireman outfit, with thick material and rose gold, flame-shaped bits around the catches that closed the coat, collar, and where the tank attached to the coat.

“Get yourself in sight of platform four.  That’s where the Other we’re bartering with is.  We need to know where you are when we pause things.”

She had to navigate the disaster, still.  Broken, sloped ground made it hard to land on the right tiles.  Fire and destruction just took a whole swathe of the Promenade out of contention.  Twice, Avery was forced to move fast, and only saw trouble coming when she got that far.  She used wind-based spell cards to blow some Lost out of the way, then dashed through.

Snowdrop was waiting for her with a high-five.  She became an opossum, riding on Avery’s shoulder.

Avery.  Avery.  Avery.

“My friends are trying to signal me,” Avery told the teams, on the walkie-talkie.

“Yeah.  Something’s wrong,” Peter Garrick said.

Avery scaled her way back up to an intact portion of bridge, checking on Adorea.  She chucked a spell card at Disaster girl.  Adorea had a backpack with a hose attachment that gushed water, and was using it to keep Lost at bay.

“What’s wrong?” Clay Garrick asked.

“I don’t- Wonderkand is on the Promenade.”

Avery looked, as far as she could see.

They were there.  People gathering, studying the situation.

“It was Shane and Kimber,” Cliff said.

Two Garricks stood off to the side.  It looked like Lucy and Verona were saying something.  Avery wasn’t anywhere near close enough to hear.

Poppy’s parents.  Avery had received Poppy’s stuff.

Resentment, disconnection, all sorts of reasons- the road had been clear for betrayal.  Add in money, maybe…

“I’m sorry,” Avery said, over the walkie-talkie.

“Keep the line clear for business only,” Cliff said, voice harsher than Avery had heard it before.

Shane Garrick stepped up onto the Path, scaling the archway that divided entrance from actual path.  Toward the clock that was mounted on it.

“Shit,” Cliff said.  “Someone get to a clock!”

Avery looked.  “I’ve got one in three moves!”

She moved closer to the clock.  Then she had to pause.

Shane was pretty spry for a middle-aged guy.  A lifetime of Path Running.

He reached the clock first.

Stopping time.

Screwing up their entire organization and plan.

The ticking across the Promenade resumed, Avery moved closer to the clock, reaching-

And Shane Garrick beat her to it.  His hand was right there.  He just had to catch the minute hand of the clock.

“What do we do?” Avery called out.  She was close enough for others to hear.

“Organize, get ready to hop on the train.”

Avery moved back toward the platform.

Shane stopped time again.

A basket with wings sticking out the sides veered wildly to one side, zig-zagging across the sky as it came down.

“Do we bail?”

“And leave the Path to them?” Peter asked.

“Yeah!”

He looked back.

“They still have to figure it out right?” Avery asked.  She moved closer.

“They’ll camp out here, interfere with us, screw things up.  They won’t leave until they’ve solved this.  But they’re blocking us from a solution too.

The descending basket touched ground.  It was as if the occupant had become a statue in the moment they made contact with the ground, but the basket didn’t.  The effect, given the speed it was coming down and scraping the ground, was that the basket was demolished.  The Wolf stood in the middle of it, slouched, fragments of basket flying off at high speeds, her ragged dress and the graying hair that had been badly dyed white flapping madly in the wake of it all.

The Wolf’s breathing- it was a low, raspy, death-rattle sort of sound, a growl by another name.  It cut past all the other sounds of the Promenade, the shouts of people, the noises of trains.

Snowdrop drew closer to Avery.

“Rule is if we get the Wolf, we run, right?” Clay asked.  He sounded nervous.

The Wolf was fixated on Avery.  But maybe to every person present, the Wolf was there, facing them down.

“Bail!” Shane hollered, top of his lungs.

Peter Garrick gave the man the finger.

The Wolf smiled at Avery.

“It’s the Wolf, don’t be stupid!” Shane shouted.

“Is that the deal you made?” Peter called out.  “You get us out of the way by any means necessary!?”

The Wolf started towards him while his focus was elsewhere.  He was slow to react.

She dropped low, then lunged.

Peter scrambled out of the way, keeping to the colors he had to meet.

She kept coming at him.

“Get your tickets, whatever combination works!” Peter hollered.  “Don’t let them twist this into a win!  Keep going!”

“You will always be a loser, Peter Garrick,” the Wolf snarled, before letting out an off-kilter, addled laugh.  “You only got control of the family because your older brother couldn’t hack it.  You only married her because your first two choices laughed at you.”

Avery glanced at Peter’s wife.  She looked hurt by that.

“Peter, what a good name,” the Wolf growled the words.  “What a good name for a loser like you.  When’s the last time you saw Janell or Andrea, and didn’t furtively, violently squeeze out your dribbles of seed within a matter of hours, cooped up in a bathroom?  Sometimes even with your wife in the next room.  Hauling off on your crooked, uncircumcised peter, fantasizing about the life you could have had with them?  About their bodies, better than your wife’s, their charm?”

“Peter,” Peter’s wife called out.  “She’s trying to distract you.”

“I’m not trying anything,” the Wolf replied.  “When I act, he plans to pull on that rope.  He’ll leave, but he’ll leave with a parting gift: knowing that I and everyone listening now know that Peter Garrick hauls off on his crooked peter, obsessing about the bodies and charms of women he couldn’t have, imagining their lips on his manhood.”

“That’s just life,” Peter’s wife replied.

“Don’t engage!” Cliff shouted.

The Wolf wheeled around.  “It’s a loser’s life and you’re no better for accepting it from him.  Did you know he spills his seed while imagining them laughing at him?  Rejecting him?”

Avery eased her way around.  She wanted to study the surroundings.

“Run!” Shane hollered.  “Pull the ropes!”

He sounded more nervous now.  He didn’t seem like he’d considered that they might not bail the moment the Wolf showed.

Maybe if Wonderkand wasn’t right there.

The Wolf went on, “He thinks it’s an intrusive thought, but it’s not.  He doesn’t even enjoy the humiliation for humiliation’s sake.  It eats at his soul, but that man, your husband, is willing to force out his seed while obsessing on that soul-eating, unhappy humiliation and shame they piled on him.  Do you know why?”

“Don’t answer!” Avery shouted.

“Because the worst from women like that, beautiful women, is better than the best you’ll ever give him,” the Wolf grolwed the words, more intense now.

“Don’t listen!” Avery shouted, continuing to move.

Too late.  The Wolf started forward, mocking like she was going to lunge.  And Peter’s Wife pulled on the rope.  She didn’t even look like she regretted falling for the feint.

The Wolf turned on her, and it felt like the air was squeezed out of her lungs, collapsing them in her chest under the weight of that stare, that uneven smile with drool crusting in the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t listen?” the Wolf asked, pacing toward Avery.

Avery moved again.

“Shane!” Cliff bellowed, top of his lungs.  “You could get that girl killed if you touch that clock again.  Do Not!”

She kept moving back and around the Wolf, as she paced closer.

“Don’t listen, okay,” the Wolf said, smiling a lopsided smile, because crusted drool sealed one corner of her mouth closed.  Her eyes were rheumy, but fixed on Avery’s Soul.  That was how unerring and intense it felt.  “Don’t listen as I tell you that your every success, even in the challenge last night, was because you got lucky.  You chanced on the right people.  Your friends, pushed on you by Miss.  Jessica in the dream.  You’re a cheat, Avery Kelly.”

Avery circled around, hopping up to the bridge, moving toward Jude, who watched from above.  She didn’t respond, didn’t break eye contact.  Watching for the slightest movement of an eye could be more of a cue than trying to watch the Wolf’s body.

“Get tickets!” Peter shouted.  “If you don’t have any, bail!  Time it best you can.  Four is best, three will do!”

The Wolf stomped, then picked up a tile.

Avery moved carefully, ready to jump if she had to.

“You don’t deserve anything you have-” the Wolf growled.

The Wolf whipped the broken tile around, holding it by one corner.

Avery ducked, but it wasn’t aimed at her.  Or Jude.

The way it was whipped around, the Wolf released it only at the very last second.  It went flying toward Peter Garrick.

“-loser.”

He pulled his rope too.  He disappeared before the tile could make contact.

Avery dashed.  Long knight’s move toward the ticket vendor at platform four.

“Shane!” Cliff hollered.

“Just go!  Leave!” Shane shouted, emotional now.

“As bad as this feels?  You’ll carry it the rest of your life!” Cliff shouted.  “If any of us die!?  It’ll feel worse.  You might have money, or power, or a job, but you’ll die inside!  When Reece and I had to leave our older brother behind-”

The Wolf turned her attention to Cliff, and he stopped talking.

“Avery Kelly has lied to you,” the Wolf growled.

Cliff had something origami in his back pocket, that he teased out and then held out of sight.  He moved across the tiles, walking backward.

He turned as a smiling Lost came at him, fending it off.  The Wolf broke into a run, rushing him while his focus was elsewhere.

Adorea used her fire hose, spraying.  She caught the Lost first, spraying it toward the edge of the platforms.  Then the Wolf.

Avery could see twenty different faces of the Wolf as she walked into the spray, like the refraction in the water droplets changed the entire scene.  Scary men, pleasant men, beautiful women, children, all with black hair, all wearing red.

It barely slowed the Wolf at all.

Avery threw some spell cards, pulled out the stapler, and fired off some shots- each one flew through the air and delivered hits with punch.  Jude had a wooden box that he popped open.  A torrent of bits and bobs came flying out, pelting the Wolf.  Acorns, whittled wood, old, tarnished coins, pressed flowers.

He hit a lever on the side, and the torrent increased.

“What is that!?” Avery asked.

He didn’t respond.  His focus was on suppressing the Wolf.

She dropped to all fours, head bowed with chin pressed to collarbone, crooked back bent so the the individual segments of spine stood out against papery skin with its burst blood vessels and other flaws.  With her head tucked in and away like that, the water and knick-knacks didn’t stop her from talking.

“Max Garrick.  You stand by family, Clifford?  She knew about Max’s death and said nothing.  The other you’re cooperating with?  She set it up.”

“Avery told me!  I told her what to do to make it up to us!” Jude raised his voice.

Confirming what the Wolf had said.

Avery wanted to clarify the point, and say something about how it wasn’t ‘set up’.  But she felt like speaking would only feed into whatever distrust or problems were at hand here.

“Let’s-” Avery started.  She froze as the Wolf raised her head in the face of the water stream and Jude’s faltering onslaught of bits.

“She and her familiar even helped Jude to mislead you.  Hints she could marry into the family-”

“Shut up!” Avery raised her voice.

“You led them to believe it, and you didn’t say what could have put the issue to rest, Avery Kelly!” the Wolf growled.  Her eyes were wide, her face distorted by the spray of water.

“I said no!” Avery raised her voice.  “Listen!  Let’s get Garricks to the Promenade’s end!”

Trying to rally them to a cause.  Remind them of the goal.

“Woo!” Jude whooped.

“At the same time you were getting cozy talking about possibilities and bringing her into the family, Clifford Garrick?  Avery Kelly was eating candy jewelry off her girlfriend’s neck.”

Cutting right through that enthusiasm, to shake things.

Adorea looked at Avery- it was just a glance, but Avery was struck by a recollection of Declan playing at a carnival, spraying a water gun into a clown’s mouth, filling up a gauge.  He’d been winning, but he’d glanced over to see how the next kid was doing, and started missing, and then he’d lost.

Adorea lost just like that.  The Wolf was able to sidestep the torrent, and move just ten percent faster.  Straight for Adorea.  Others scrambled to get away, obstructing Adorea’s way clear.

Lance Garrick, on the far side, hollered something, and shoved on a wall.  He was wearing a yellow hard hat with a Lost rune on it, a vest, and gloves.  He grunted, groaning-

But the wall moved.  Rusty steel slid into the Wolf’s path.  The Wolf slammed a fist into it, then clawed at it with her nails, gouging metal and peeling off strips and flecks.

Lance had already done one job, and he’d donned a costume for another, just for the ability to manipulate the environment and mess with the Wolf.  But that meant he had to finish his job before departing.  Problem was, he was stuck on the Promenade without his rope, because changing into a costume meant leaving stuff behind.  Unless there was someone like Snowdrop to pass stuff onto.  Or maybe he could drop stuff and-

“Do you have a rope!?” Avery called down.

Lance shook his head slowly.

Avery undid hers from her waist, then threw it down.

“Are you sure!?” he asked.

She had options, at least.

She had to get away.

The Wolf punched the part of the wall she’d gouged, punching through it.  She began to tear it.

“Get him to pull when I’m done, then get ready for the ticket vendor,” Avery murmured to Jude.

“I couldn’t get a job.”

“You have a rope?”

He nodded.

“Okay.  Good luck.”

“You too,” he said.  “Sorry.  For pushing you to keep quiet.”

“Is your family going to hate me?” Avery asked.  “Am I in danger?”

“I don’t know.  Some will get weird-”

Her heart sank.  She took a step back.

“They say stuff.  Some.  Others don’t say anything either way.  I don’t think you’re in danger.  Not from my family.”

She nodded.

Then she took another step back, lower back hitting the railing at the one side of the bridge, she tapped her shoes, and then she leaped forward, stepping onto the railing in front of her, leaping from there.  A lazy, long frontflip over the Wolf’s head.

“Bad Wolf!  Stay!” Avery hollered.  She threw the Jounce.  The ball stored aspects of Lost places she’d been.  She’d borrowed from Kennet found.

A bit of stuck-in.  It came in as a patch of shadow and accumulating snow, then a surge of black grasses and fronds, weeds and other things stabbing their way up from the patches of snow.

Avery landed on train platform number three, which didn’t have any trains.  The ground rippled, absorbing her landing.

The Stuck-In Place had been a tar pit.  Avery spread the tar, like this.  Maybe weaker, because it came from Kennet found and not the Stuck-In Place.

But it helped catch the Wolf where she’d been casually scratching and tearing through the wall.

Jude signaled, and Lance hauled back on the wall, using the permission for construction he’d obtained with his uniform.  Pulling it back in, a divider between shops.

Until the Wolf, partway through the hole in the wall, was trapped and held there.

Adorea collected a coin as she ran.  A cover from one stall blew through the air, hitting Adorea and then blowing on.  She’d reverted back to Adorea proper, but with a neatly bundled up, stylized firefighting outfit dangling from a cord.

The Wolf fought her way free, Lance pulling back.

Cliff Garrick caught up with them.  He’d chosen a way of moving around that covered a lot of ground, so he skipped forward, positioning to be ready to meet the vendor.

The original plan had been to stop time, assess where everyone stood and who needed to move where, and work out the best way to get four people to stand on four sides of the ticket vendor at the same time.

Clay looked scared out of his mind as he navigated between shops.  He’d been on the far side.  Keeping shops and bridge between himself and the Wolf, cutting through a shortcut.  His eyes were wide.

He didn’t deal well with the Wolf.  It hadn’t even paid much attention to him, and he looked like he was far from his best.

They needed three tries to land the vendor, which took something like twelve moves.  On the first two, there were color combinations that didn’t work.  Avery needed a yellow, but the spot left to her was red.  She moved three times, then Clay needed a white.

The Wolf tore her way free.

“Lance Garrick out.”

They got the combination right, and Avery accepted her ticket.  They were by the fourth gate, but they needed the tenth.

There were so many smiling Others down that way.

And they were barely even the big concern.

The Wolf was free and moving toward them at a pretty decent speed for an old lady.  And behind her, in the distance, barely more than silhouettes, she could see various members of Wonderkand.  A few elite members in old fashioned ‘tea party’ clothing, and the rank and file in business suits.

“Is Shane going to cut off our retreat?” Clay asked, as they wove around one another.

Cliff shook his head.  “But as long as they’re there, we don’t reset properly.  For now, get on the train.  I hope the damn payday was worth it.  Nearly getting family killed.”

Avery pulled out her rune-decorated lacrosse stick.

“Railing!” Adorea called out.

The Wolf had grabbed the railing further down.  Hauling on it, she tore the metal beam free from its mounts.  She jerked it, and it swung left.

Avery stumbled out of the way, missed her color, and was immediately attacked from one of the nearby stalls.  Her lacross stick knocked the Other down, and she held it out front, ready against anything that came after her.

Disaster girl had set off something like fireworks by accident, crashing through a store, and was scrambling her way up and away from the area of the Promenade where the sparks were really flying.  She went up onto the bridge, but the fireworks were shooting at the flying baskets.  Shooting them down.

Three came down almost at the same time, smoking where the rockets had hit.

Disaster girl ducked and covered.

The rest of them couldn’t afford to.

The Wolf, quickly catching up, didn’t care.

Avery turned, running backwards, and shot concussive staples at her.  Buying moments of time.

Moments she lost when a smiling Lost grabbed at her, lifting her overhead, throwing her to the ground.

The ground rippled with the collision, but it didn’t absorb all of it.  Avery got to her feet, shot the Lost, and struggled to catch up to the others, resuming her pattern.

The train was pulling in  Lost were getting off.

Avery reached for her bag.  Snowdrop turned human, holding the bag so Avery could use both hands.

“This is going well,” Snowdrop said.

Avery didn’t even want to think about all the ways this wasn’t going well.

“Watch for the Wolf!” Avery warned Lost.  “Wolf ahead!”

She grabbed a sheaf of papers.  Then, as Lost departed, she began handing them out.

“What-”

“Wolf ahead!” Avery pointed, as more got off.

“-are you doing?” Cliff asked.

“Marketing.  Ski vacation to a founded territory, quiet, peaceful, easy to access if you can get off the Paths.  If you have skills or talents, there may be jobs for you.  Plenty of room,” Avery said, running through the pitch she’d practiced earlier, as explanation and to just convince some Lost to hold onto the papers and not bail.”

The Wolf closed in.  There were Lost who’d ignored warnings, who saw the Wolf too late.  Picked up and thrown aside.

They squeezed past the last few stragglers, got onto the train, and then backed into the train car itself, watching to make sure the Wolf didn’t follow.

The Wolf remained on the platform for a short while, then walked down stairs.  She fast-walked away, smiling, toward a point further up the Promenade.

“She’s going to where we’ll end up,” Clay said.  He looked nervous.

“Yeah, probably,” Avery replied.

“When we get off the train, she’ll be waiting.  Do we have a solve for the Cakewalk?”

“Just clues,” Avery replied.

“Then we’re stuck going back and forth between a Path the Wolf is waiting for us, or a dangerous-as-fuck Path we don’t know how to solve.”

“Um, excuse me,” Avery said, to one of the last stragglers.  She put one of the papers down on the table between the bench seats.  She quickly scribbled down a note for Lucy.  She turned the page over to the pitch they’d had for Kennet found, and scribbled in the margin- Favor, AKelly.

“If you just run this to the Promenade entrance, find Lucy Ellingson.  Fourteen, fox mask, brown skin, pretty.  Give her this note, you can get the VIP treatment in Kennet found.  Favor for a favor.  We’ve got a varied market.  It’s neat.”

The straggler considered.

“There’s a Wolf on the Promenade, so be careful,” Avery said.

The straggler nodded agian, then hurried off the train before the doors closed.

“Ski town, super great,” Avery told more Lost, passing papers to those who were sitting down, waiting for a future stop.  “Visit before the new year.  Probably gets dangerous after.  Warnings on the pages.”

“Lost are bad at that sort of thing,” Snowdrop said.  “Timing and ‘turn into a pumpkin after midnight’ stuff?”

“Yeah,” Avery replied.  Saying that Kennet got dangerous later with the Charles situation was more workable than it would be with humans.

They found an empty seat and sat together.  Avery noticed a couple of glances, from Cliff and Adorea.

“What was the note you wrote?” Clay asked.

Cliff’s relative silence felt like a lot right this moment.  But maybe he was out of breath.

“To my friend Lucy.  She has an earring implement.  She’s good with signals, communication, listening in.  She might’ve caught some Wonderkand details.  And if I have this drawn-”

Avery started to draw the mark.

“-and we reinforce it like this…”

“That’s from our books.”

“The walkie-talkies even,” Avery said.  “And if we set that up, and she sets something up on her end…”

Avery finished.

It took thirty or forty seconds before the answer came.  “Hello?”

“Hey,” Avery said.

“Hey,” Lucy replied.  “Verona’s here.  And also a lot of weirdos.”

“Wonderkand, I think.”

“Think so, but with disguises being what they are?  I’m not going to guess for anyone I don’t know enough to see tells in.”

Avery folded her arms on the table, leaning hard on them.  “Can you find someone to negotiate with?”

“What are we negotiating with?  What are the terms?  What’s the offer?  They seem to think they have this set.  As soon as you’re out of the way, they’ll reset things and take it.  They seem pretty confident.”

“They’re assuming we’ll be out of the way.  What if we succeed?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said.

“I’ve been negotiating a lot of trade deals,” Avery said.  “We’re out of sight, and if Lucy isn’t tipping them off, or if Shane and Kimber don’t have info-”

“They don’t,” Cliff said, curt.

“Then they have to wonder.  Can we offer them something?  A slice of this?  With a lot of contracts to protect it from tricks?  Because they seem tricky.”

“They’re not the only ones.  You misled us?”

“About being gay?”

“About Max.  But that too.  Feeling a whole lot like a fool.  Cousin’s selling us out as we speak, son lied to me, you lied to us.”

“It’s complicated.  I feel like this is a conversation that goes back to Jude so much- too much of what I could say, it’d be bad if said wrong, and I’d probably say parts wrong.  Jude should be a part of this conversation.”

“So we carry on?” Cliff asked.

“Let’s get Garricks to the end of the Promenade.  I promise, my intentions were good, or dumb, but not evil, not too selfish.  That’s not me.”

Cliff stood from his seat, restless, annoyed.  “God.”

“I’m not good at this, I’m fourteen, I screw things up sometimes.”

“My son’s in love with you.”

“I- really can’t do anything about that.”

“You could marry him for the family, add your strengths to ours, make up for Max.  Have some kids, however you want to figure that out.  Marriages don’t have to be about love.  They can be business.  Reconciliation.”

“I won’t,” Avery answered.  “No.  That wouldn’t be fair to Jude, or me.  Again, I’d rather have any conversations where Jude might come up while Jude is here.  Can we focus?  Can we do this?  Can we come up with something?  Because if the Wolf is there at our destination, waiting, if Wonderkand won’t move to let the Promenade reset, and if we can’t leave by another way, if the Cakewalk doesn’t allow any detours or side routes-”

“It doesn’t,” Clay confirmed.

“Then talking about marriage doesn’t even make sense.  Because we’re stuck.”

“Rope?” Clay asked.

“I gave one to Esme, and my spare to Lance,” Avery said.

Cliff looked at her.

Avery shrugged.

“Dumb,” Cliff said.

“Yeah.  But they were in a pinch and they didn’t have theirs.  Costumes override ropes.”

“Lance put his rope down, Lost stole it with some other stuff while he changed,” Clay said.  “Esme’s role- we thought it was the homework helper role, but she got nanny or something.  Hands occupied holding the hands of little kids, couldn’t talk.  Bad luck.”

“It was dumb to give up your rope,” Cliff reiterated.  “But thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” Avery told him.

“Then we leave?” Adorea asked.  “We figure out something for Avery, or put her somewhere safe, come back with more ropes, we rope out, get organized again…”

“No,” Cliff said.  “No, if we leave, Wonderkand takes over the Promenade.”

“Then we need to talk plans,” Avery told him.

There was a special kind of frustration reserved for when someone was on the same side as you, and they refused to take the steps necessary to realize.

Then again, he was only just finding out about Max.  Plus, he was coming to terms with the idea the marriage wasn’t going to work.  Hopefully.

“Getting Wonderkand to back off would make everything easier,” Verona said, over the phone.

“We need to give them something.  We offer them a bird in the hand over the two in the bush.”

Cliff sighed heavily.  “I’m not Peter.  He’s family head.  If I give the wrong answer…?  We won’t be okay after.”

“We can share the load,” Clay said.  “Agree unanimously?  That to get the Wolf gone and secure this thing, we make an offer to Wonderkand?”

Cliff Garrick, standing over the table, Adorea, and Clay were all in agreement.

“Access rights, provided there’s a ton of contract work to make sure it doesn’t become something they use to take over.  We’d hire someone,” Jude’s dad said.

“First look at magic items the family isn’t taking for themselves?” Avery suggested.  “Came up in one meeting.  Small discount?”

Jude’s dad sighed heavily.

“Lucy?” Avery asked, leaning over the diagram on the paper.

“I’m here.  Got it on paper.  Bullet form list.  I’m going to find someone to discuss it with.”

“Be careful.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell Kimber and Shane to fuck themselves,” Cliff added.

“I don’t think we’ll do that,” Lucy said.  “You hold onto that and deliver it yourself.  It’ll mean more.”

Cliff huffed.  A Lost came down the aisle of the train, and Cliff moved aside to let them by, before plunking himself down in a seat.

Avery stroked Snowdrop, who she held in her lap.

The dynamic felt different.  Worse.

Maybe more honest.  Like she wasn’t being put up on a pedestal anymore.

But worse, too.

Or maybe the Garricks had taken enough of a beating they didn’t have the strength to lift anything onto pedestals.

I need this to matter.  I need this to work.  We’re up against Charles, in the new year.

“I’m back,” Lucy said.

“That was fast.”

“They didn’t waste any time.  They said no.  No deal.  It’s all or nothing for them.  They’re pretty convinced you’ll fail, especially with the Wolf waiting for if you finish at the Cakewalk and return to the Promenade.  After you’ve lost, they’ll sweep in to take the Promenade for themselves.”

“They already started setting up shop at the entrance,” Verona reported.

Cliff Garrick buried his face in his hands.

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter