Let Slip – 20.f | Pale

Kira-Lynn pulled on her sweater, then socks, and then boots.  She clomped around to the bathroom to check herself in the mirror, making sure there was no lint or stray hairs, then used her Sight to ensure the fundamental essence of her being was lined up and balanced.

She peered at herself in the mirror to see the tapestry of interlocking spirits and images.  It resembled a children’s puzzle, each piece not a puzzle piece, but a lady devil with a die in each hand, gold teeth gleaming, the horns forming the triangle shape that defined the gap between the legs of other pieces, a crow with a spyglass and a crow taking notes.  It was that way throughout, with the key, most detailed pieces at the key points of crown, brow, throat, heart, solar plexus, deep stomach, and groin.  She could view other people and things in this detail, but it took a minute of concentration to bring it into real focus.  With herself, she got the full, ruthless scoop.  The storybook character in process of pauperess to princess, rags threatening to drag her back down, the gambler with devil horns, the child in a well.  Crown, brow, throat.

Her heart was a dog, curled up into the fetal position, wary after bad experiences, sitting on a bed that was… she hated to see it.  Pieces others had thrust into the mosaic, ill-fitting, jarring, sitting out of alignment, jostling as she moved, garish pinks and baby blues in color.  Whores and sluts and eye candy.  Bra straps visible through clothes, underwear peeking up out of the back of jeans, collarbone, nape of neck.  Their dicks baby blue and misshapen and their Catholic guilt represented in snakes and apples, jammed into the mix, wedged into gaps where pieces didn’t fit.

Her pelvis the same.  Key piece there was her representation of family, past and future, a supposed shining star in a decrepit village.  It was buried beneath an ill-fit-together puzzle in those garish blues and pinks, a pelvis-shaped sea of fuck.

Fuck.  She concentrated, meditative, taking deep breaths as she searched through herself.  She adjusted her sweater, recognized and shrugged off glances she remembered seeing, and told herself she was in control of this, not the leering many.  Pieces fell away, or flipped around, or lost their stickers, revealing less garish color and design beneath.  Things fit together, bit by bit.  She couldn’t get all of it, there were some pieces that stuck, from specific memories and comments and creepy moments she couldn’t work out how to get past.  But she could get herself to where it didn’t look and feel like one half of her would shear off and break away because the infected part of her was too badly put together.

Had to be centered for tonight.  There were forces that would prey on her if she couldn’t.  Had to recognize her strengths.

Sight off.  She checked her teeth in the mirror.  Good.  Nothing stuck in them.  She went downstairs in double-time, checking the group chat on her phone on the way, one hand on the railing.

Her mom and dad were in the living room, watching the TV, her mom’s head on her dad’s shoulder.  Both with beer cans in hand.  Not fat, not thin, but softened at the edges.  Like the house wasn’t messy or spic and span, or in especially good or bad repair.  A few lightbulbs had gone out a month ago and nobody had bothered, so it was all just… dim.  Dim and soft and untidy.

They weren’t alcoholics.  Not like that, anyway.  They didn’t embarrass themselves or her, exactly, they didn’t get angry or belligerent or pee in weird places, they didn’t wake up hungover or drunk or have trouble at work.  But they got in the door and they cracked open beers, and when they finished one they moved on to the next, and they kept going until they went to sleep early.  Sometimes they fucked and the walls of the old house were so thin that Kira-Lynn would have to put on headphones, but she’d feel it in the floor unless she was in bed or the shower.  Her mom didn’t like the shows her dad did and vice-versa, so both kind of just watched shows that were middle of the road, more to fill the time than anything else.  A lot of syndicated dramas and sitcoms, brash and hollow and bad.

She’d told her mom once, in a fight she’d started for no reason, that she felt like all her mom tried for was a C- in life.  In house and home and dinner and friends and everything else.  It was the same with her dad, but that hadn’t come up in that discussion.  The response had been that she loved Dad, she didn’t mind work, they weren’t in bad health, and that that was a miracle, considering where peasants were in the middle ages.  Those peasants would have dreamed of this, her mom said.

They’d been born in Kennet and they’d met each other in school, they’d married, had her, they worked here, they’d barely left.  Their friends were here, their family was here, they’d die here and that would be it.

It was horrifying.

‘You’re the only A+ we need, Kira-Lynn,’ her mom had said.

Which was really the thing.  The point where things had started to break down.  When Kira-Lynn had gotten Christmas and birthday presents that felt C-.  ‘We finished shopping in fifteen minutes’ sort of C-.  When she’d eaten hot dogs three times in a week: hot dogs with salad on the side, hot dogs chopped up in beans, hot dogs sans bun, with oven frozen fries.  When her parents had showed up to her eighth grade choir showcase in everyday clothes, at the time most other student’s parents had worn ties and jewelry.

“Popcorn?” her mom asked her dad, as the ad break came on.

“Butter and garlic salt?  And a beer?”

“You got it.  Oh hey honey,” her mom said, seeing Kira-Lynn in the doorway.  “Are you coming in or going out?  Do you want popcorn?”

“Going out,” Kira-Lynn said.

“It’s dark.  Do you want a ride?”

“Teddy’s walking part of the way with me.”

“Oooh.  Teddy.  Cuddly name.”

Kira-Lynn sighed.  “I’m not interested in Teddy.  And he’s about as cuddly as three really annoying snakes.  I can handle myself.”

“Sure, sure.  Well, be safe.  We trust you.”

Was there meant to be more?  It felt like there was meant to be more.  The other kids needed connection blockers.  Kira-Lynn didn’t.

She heard her mom pouring the kernels into the bowl.  Popcorn.  Right up there with boiled hotdogs as a C- food.

And they got so angry if she called them out on any of it.  Saying she was ungrateful, she didn’t understand.  That she asked too much, that TV and movies gave her unrealistic expectations.  How was she supposed to call them out on a C-?  If it was an F-grade effort, an actual fail, an absence, an embarrassment, then that would be one thing.  But it wasn’t, so she ended up feeling like the bad guy.

The bad guy, but the feeling lingered: that they’d say she was their A+ child, or they’d imply it, and they kept putting in a C- effort.

Everyone let her down.  Every teacher had disappointed her at some point, being jerks, being verbally abusive, refusing to put in that extra effort.  Her friends had gone off to different friend groups or left at the start of the last school year, in the big exodus.

She heard the crack and hiss of a beer opening in the kitchen.

She pulled on her coat, got her bag, and went out, feet squeaking on packed snow.  When Kira-Lynn did the walkway, she shoveled it so it was actually a walkway.  The path her dad had cut through toward the driveway was less than a shovel width across, the snow having fallen in from either side to narrow it.  Her mom would do the same and then when Kira-Lynn did it on her turn, she’d widen it properly again.

She had discreet bluetooth earbuds she slipped into her ears, before fixing her hat.  She used her phone and put on her ‘study notes’.

Her own voice recited her bio notes to her.  As it had when she’d been in the middle of her bio exam.  She had a system, and between the two buttons on the earbud and the fact she knew where to tap on her phone through her pocket to navigate between chapters of her notes, she was able to ace the exam.

She’d started doing it last year, around the time she’d started noticing that C- life her parents were leading.  At the first hint she was into boys, they’d started joking about her finding her future husband now, like they had, she’d seen their life looming ahead of her, and she’d known she needed out.

The funny thing was, she got good grades.  She’d had the notes skip ahead to chem in the middle of a history exam, she’d tried to go to the bathroom to change it around, and they hadn’t let her.  She’d gotten an A-.  She got good grades on her essays without plagiarism, she did fine.

It was a game, in a way.  Figuring out how to cheat the system, how to wear pyjama shorts under the uniform pants so she had that second pocket, and she could turn out her pockets if she had to.  The process of organizing, condensing, and reciting notes was probably more studying than half the students did.

Every step of the way, every time, she got a bit better at it.  But even if she’d been bad at it, she was pretty sure she’d be in the clear.  Teachers weren’t allowed to touch them or do pat-downs.  They wouldn’t see the bluetooth nodule nestled in her ear canal, even if her hair wasn’t down.

It was a security blanket.  Further insulation against a hot dog, microwave popcorn, and lite beer compromise of a life.  She listened to the notes as something meditative, a reminder of control.

It was, she was pretty sure, why they’d picked her.

It further helped her center herself, keeping those puzzle pieces in alignment, and Griffin had said that was crucial.  So she listened to old class notes in her own voice, measured and quiet, until she saw Teddy.

It wasn’t far to school.  As they approached, she could see another girl smoking by the door, clothes rumpled.  Her eyes glinted red as she looked up.

“Hey Lis,” Teddy said.

“Best behavior,” Lis replied, in an ironic tone.

Then she moved her hand, and the doors banged open, like they’d been hit by typhoon winds.  The hallway on the far side of the doors was scraped up, worn down, like it hadn’t seen use in years.  A faint red tint shone throughout.

Kira-Lynn liked Lis.

Which wasn’t to say Lis hadn’t let her down like others had.  The fact so many others were letting her down here and now was Lis letting her down, because Lis had brought her into this.

That could change.  Kira-Lynn hoped it would change.

“Is anyone here yet?” Teddy asked.

“Some.  Edith is on her way.  She’s taking the long way through town, going up through downtown, then down again.  Noticing how things seem different.  The three old Kennet practitioners are getting prepared.”

“Do you know how?  What they’re doing?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“No.  I sense time, place, location, attachment to location.  They’re in the Demesnes.”

“Right.”

Lis tapped her carton of cigarettes, two sticking out the end, and held them out toward Kira-Lynn and Teddy.  Kira-Lynn shook her head.  Teddy took one.

“Gymnasium,” Lis said, remaining where she was, as they passed her.

Into the darker version of the school.  They said schools were creepy at night, but this… this was cool.

They walked down the hallway, around the bend, past the chapel, and down another hallway to the gymnasium-slash-auditorium.  Half the group was still there.

“No Joel,” Teddy commented.

The dragonslayer teacher was out, but two of the boys who’d been working as his apprentices were there.  Kira-Lynn narrowed her eyes.  Travis coughed, and it looked like it hurt, then it looked like it hurt again when he shifted how he was sitting, and Dony had a black eye and a bruise down one side of his face and neck, that was turning all sorts of interesting colors.

Some other teachers stood by, and were talking about plans, with Griffin pointing at the floor.  He nodded at her as she passed.

“You were supposed to go to Maricica for a healing,” she told Travis and Dony.

“In the Abyss?” Travis asked, like he somehow didn’t know.

“The idea was we’d put on a good face, show they didn’t really do any lasting harm.”

“But they did.”

“They got Josh,” Teddy added.

She shook her head.  She knew that already.

“Josh… that’s a win for us,” she said.

“What?” Travis asked.

“It sucks, it really sucks, but we knew it might happen.  Any of us, we go into a bad situation, we have to know we might not leave.”

Teddy, at least, was nodding.

Travis was a year younger and Dony was two years younger.  Had these guys not talked about this?  She’d talked about it with Teddy and Joshua, and with Harri and Nomi.

“Seriously.  Next raid, or tonight, even, any dangerous situation,” she told them.  “There’s a chance that’s it.  We’re gone, back home, back in our old lives.  No second try, no more magic.”

“I’m not planning on ever surrendering,” Dony said.

“Neither am I, but who knows what’s going to happen?” she asked them.  “It’s about showing they can’t do anything that sticks.  We can to them, but if they try with us?  We won’t let ’em.  But this?”

Her voice took on an angrier tone.  Turning a few heads of the teachers.

She didn’t go on.  She left her hand there, gesturing at the bruise.

“It’s done, it’s dusted, no time to get to the Abyss and back, so don’t worry about it, Kyle,” Teddy said.

“Don’t call me Kyle,” she retorted, annoyed.  It was short for K.L.E., her initials, or something.  They’d talked about using aliases before, in case they were surveiled, except some of the others had gone and fucked that up too, and then they’d fucked up again, when the three old Kennet practitioners brought the babbling doll thing to the school, and they’d fucked up again by meeting, when she really had thought they shouldn’t.

“If we’re arguing when the three witches walk in, it looks as bad as any black eye,” Teddy told her.

She wanted to say something to that, but that was a good point.

She nodded.

“Come on.”

She and Teddy went over to talk to the adults.

“What was that about?” Griffin asked.

“They didn’t go to the blood goddess for healing?”

“Joel’s too hurt to make the trip, they didn’t want to bother us.”

“Well, that’s stupid.  They should’ve.”

“You all have your weird idiosyncrasies,” Griffin said, looking like he enjoyed using the word.  “I wanted to meet to discuss tonight, but you wanted to stick to email.”

She didn’t respond.  Anyone who’d hear what she had to say about that either wouldn’t budge or already sympathized.  She didn’t accept any one-on-one meetings with Griffin.

Seth was here, talking to Cameron, and Seth was Griffin’s friend.  They were the same age, eighteen, and Kira-Lynn was very aware that Griffin seemed to want what Seth had with Cameron.  She caught the looks, she caught the phrasings, she’d overheard things.  It wasn’t a complete picture, but it was enough of a picture for her to act.

Travis and Adrian and Dony and Teddy gave her those looks too, to varying amounts and varying subtlety.  It was part of that sea of things that warped and destabilized her, as much as any of the stuff Harri was learning with Helen could warp flesh.  The weight of gazes on her warped her to some funhouse mirror dimensions, ass and chest huge, the rest of her diminished, puzzle pieces in garish blue and electric pink infecting and distorting the picture of her being.  It felt like every time she looked at herself in the mirror she had to mentally readjust and straighten it all out.  She hated it.

Maybe if they’d- she wasn’t even sure.  If they’d tried to be better, to step up, to learn more, to be reliable?  She liked boys.  She was attracted to them.  But it felt like boys, especially Kennet boys, were just too content to be lame, sitting back on pimply asses and leering.  With Kennet men, it was a toss-up.

She wasn’t even that attractive.  She’d wonder how Cameron, former queen bee of the school -worker bee, Cameron had liked to say, wasn’t it?- handled it.  How anyone did.

Others walked in, and she wished she felt like she could count on any of them.  Stefan was too young, maybe.  But Stefan was the fuck-up.  She was pretty sure that if he hadn’t been on the project, the video game Other wouldn’t have gotten free.  She was pretty sure, based on her questions to Harri and Harri’s evasiveness, that Stefan had been the one who’d slipped up when the three witches had brought the babbling Other to the school, getting Harri kidnapped.

Harri was with him, but Harri hadn’t given Kira-Lynn the full scoop on what had happened with the last raid, and was quieter than usual.

Nomi had gone to a dark place mentally.  She said she was happier, but she was diving into the necromancy stuff, talking about duality, focusing on practice, at least, but not in practical ways.  Not in ways that necessarily helped tonight.  There had been days Kira-Lynn thought the young necromancer wasn’t showering, and she really needed to be showering twice a day if she was going to handle dead things.  Clothes rumpled.  Effort not being put in.

Teddy wasn’t taking things seriously, Cameron was dazzled by her infatuation with Seth, and overall it was just fucked.

So Kira-Lynn had kind of opted out.  She’d left, gone straight to the nearest Lords, learned what she could.  Ordinary Family, Dropped Call, the Envoy Of Parity.  She studied with Griffin, but only if groups were learning, or by video call.  She’d recently compromised, studying with Cameron, Seth, and Griffin, but as much as that had been key to cramming on key stuff she’d be using tonight, she wouldn’t do it again.  Cameron and Seth had really wanted to leave her and Griffin alone.

And now, tonight, they all had to work together.

She couldn’t be let down anymore.  She couldn’t take it, couldn’t stand it.

They had to turn things around tonight.  People needed to find themselves.

Lis walked in, smoking, the patient beside her.  Edith James.  The woman was unassuming, wide in the hips, wearing a fair amount of white and cream tones in her coat, sweater, top, and boots, with black pants.  She’d pulled off her toque, and walked with it in hand.  Her eyes burned like embers.

Kira-Lynn looked at Griffin.  He was- not even a man, but a guy, a guy she hated.  Someone who’d let her down just by existing.  By being a creep.  He was good at what he did, he was a decent teacher, if she was thinking specifically about that stuff, she wasn’t alone in this.

He looked like he was thinking.  She was pretty sure he was thinking along similar lines.

Tonight would be a test.  She was prepared to cheat, and she was pretty sure Griffin would work with her while she did it.

She just hoped the others would find themselves fast.

“Nervous?” Lis asked.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Edith replied.  “There’s going to be a wait, isn’t there?”

“As soon as the old practitioners of Kennet arrive, we’ll get going,” Griffin said.  “Unless you’re okay leaving them out of this, after all?”

Edith shook her head.

“Not a problem,” he said, smiling.  He glanced at Kira-Lynn, and it wasn’t a creepy look.  Nothing jammed into the fabric of her being.

Cool.  Okay.  They were in unspoken agreement, prepared to work together to do something here.

“Let’s,” Griffin said.  “Clear out.  Let’s light the candles.  Stay clear of the perimeter.  Edith, if you’d come to the center of the room.”

The three old practitioners of Kennet were here.  They hadn’t ventured far into the gymnasium-slash-auditorium.  They had their end of the basketball court, the practitioners of St. Victor’s had their end, with Kira-Lynn and most of the kids from St. Victor’s on the stage that school events were held on.  At least, when the chapel didn’t suit.

All three looked wary.  Avery was pacing a bit at the edges of the room.  She’d pulled off her coat and glamoured it away, and she wore a whole lot of bracelets and ribbons at the one arm.  To Kira-Lynn’s sight, it was bright and intense, and she was too far away to tell one bright bit of light or sparkle from the rest.  Avery was wearing clothes that looked like they were more early fall than dead of winter, but her breath didn’t fog in the cold gym, and there was occasionally a heat shimmer around her when she changed direction too fast in her pacing.

Lucy wore a red jacket, military style, her earring caught the light, dog tags were out from beneath her top.  Faerie trained, goblin trained, Dog of War trained.  She talked with Anthem, who was in Kennet found.  That was… pretty spooky.  She’d fought Anthem and managed.  She’d gone after Joel the dragonslayer and some of the boys.  Now Joel was out sick, too hurt to go to the Abyss, and he’d be out of commission until Maricica came up to visit him directly.  It hadn’t been obvious, but Dony had apparently cut fingers to the bone trying to hold onto some dragonslayer weapon when she’d disarmed him.  There was the bruise, black eye, sore ribs…

She was annoyed all over again, thinking about it.  That they hadn’t gone to their goddess of glory and blood to get healed.  They had a goddess on tap, God damn it.

Verona was less immediately intimidating than the other two.  Avery had restless energy, Lucy was scary in a fight, and according to what little Kira-Lynn had been able to extract from the kids who’d been there, the pattern was pretty cut and dry.  Lucy would confront them face to face, Avery would flank, and they could know that and know it was coming and it would still be a lot.

Like someone saying ‘I’m going to punch you in the face.  You can block if you want’, and you’d block and you’d still be left with a black eye and a greenish bruise on the side of your neck.

Still annoyed and disappointed.

Which really spelled out the Verona situation, because while she was dwelling on the other two and dwelling on that, here was this girl, as tall as Harri, who could pass for a twelve year old, hair scruffy, black and white striped sweater, black coat, cat at her shoulder, smiling, talking to Edith, and asking Griffin questions about the candles and white paint he was putting down on the gym floor.  He ignored her.

Easy to overlook.  She didn’t seem as threatening as the other two, but she’d hang back, saving up all that intimidation she was owed, and she’d hit them with something big enough to pay it back with interest.

At least, that was the sentiment Kira-Lynn had picked up on, from talking to Seth, the Carmine Exile, Maricica, and Lis.

And what the fuck were they doing?

“You know Campa?” Teddy asked, talking to Nomi and Adrian.

“Alison Campa?  I guess you’re in the wrong grade.  Cameron?”

Cameron, sitting beside Seth, looked over.

“Alison Campa?”

“She volunteers sometimes.  She’s nice.  You like her?  Interested?”

“Nah.  She’s annoying,” Teddy said.

Cameron shrugged, then turned back to Seth to talk to him.

Teddy turned to Nomi and Adrian again, glancing at Kira-Lynn.  “Alison Campa?”

“Sure?  I know of her.”

“I figured she was pretty well known, and it’s not like St. Victor’s is big school.  But I guess you two aren’t in her grade.  Anyway, we had these projects for French, and she does hers, and it’s like, stop being so smug.  Stop acting like you’re proud.  You’re clearly from Quebec, Alison.  And the teacher’s all, oui, oui, très bien, très bien-”

“Saying it all twice, even,” Nomi said.

“-and yeah, yeah!  I hate it.  If I’m a slug then that’s my salt.  Nobody’s fooling anyone, I haven’t liked her since.  So that’s my pick.  I get to use alchemy once, consequence free?  I dose Campa.”

“To make her fall in love with you?” Nomi asked.

“What?  No, what?  Fuck that.  Why’s that the first place your head goes?”

“Someone says they’re making potions to use on a classmate, aren’t most red-blooded teenagers going to make love potions?” Nomi asked.

“Gross,” Kira-Lynn said.

“I- it’s love.”

“It’s a love potion.  It’s basically a dressed up roofie,” Kira-Lynn said.

“I… that’s weird.”

“No, roofies are weird.”

“I- didn’t really think past the love part.  Maybe there’s nice love potions.”

“Shit-yourself potion,” Teddy said.

“What?” both Nomi and Adrian asked, while Kira-Lynn sighed and looked around the room.  Nomi added, “As a love potion?  What the fuck-”

“No!” Teddy interjected.

“Then why?  What?

“Shit-yourself potion.  Dose Campa before the next presentation, so I don’t have to sit through the entire thing.  Wipe that smug look off her face for then and for the rest of the semester.”

“Gross,” Kira-Lynn repeated, with emphasis.

“We’re talking about consequence-free, use alchemy on anyone, assume you’ll dose them without getting caught,” Teddy said, like that helped anything.  “She really petted my peeves.  Can’t emphasize that enough.”

Kira-Lynn let her expression convey what she no longer wanted to waste air on saying.

“Keep making that face and I’ll dose you too.”

“Don’t even joke about it,” Kira-Lynn said, dropping the disgusted look to be as serious as possible.  “We’re not supposed to fight.”

“Sorry,” he said.  He shrugged, turning to Nomi.  “Love potion wouldn’t feel real.”

“Can I dose myself?” Adrian asked.

“If you want to dose yourself I can look into it.  We got so much stuff from the Whitts.”

What the fuck were they doing?

Kira-Lynn saw Lucy looking over.  That earring-

She hopped down from the stage, went to the bag of supplies that Griffin had brought over, and used chalk to draw a line across the floor, between them and the Kennet practitioners.

She saw Lucy scoff a bit, even though Lucy was too far away for Kira-Lynn to hear, but Lucy turned away and stopped watching them.

“They were listening in, I think.”

“Probably,” Teddy agreed.  “Does that line help?”

“I think so.”

“What does it hurt if she hears?  We won’t discuss anything important here.”

They’ve caught important stuff before, though, Kira-Lynn thought.  The fact the Kennet practitioners knew they existed was a big one.  Things would be a lot different if it wasn’t for the fuck-up with the stupid video-game monster.

And will we even discuss something important later?  In private?  Are we strategizing that much?  The best we did was the raid, and learning from the mistakes of the first… only to not get our prize.  They didn’t even pay the ransom.

What counted?

So what the fuck were they doing?  What the fuck was up with this situation, if she was more worried about her own side getting their shit together than the shit of their very dangerous, practiced rivals?

That was the thing, wasn’t it?  That Miss from Kennet found had hand-picked those three.  And she’d done a good job.

Maricica and Lis had picked them, and given them guidelines on who else to pick and bring on board, with occasional suggestions and vetoes.  The idea was that each of them had talents.  Each of them could pick up practice, diversify, teach one another, and they could draw on talents to each have a niche.

Kira-Lynn had been digging deeper to try to find hers, and it did not at all feel like the others were doing the same.

“What about you?” Teddy asked her.

“What?”

“What potion do you want?  Assuming you can use it freely without consequence, you won’t get caught, all that?”

“I… really don’t care,” she said, hopping back up to sit at the edge of the stage.

“C’mon,” he said, “It’s a team bonding thing.”

“Can I dose you all to pay more attention?”

“No boys, no secret revenge you want?”

“My parents, I guess,” she said.  “Wake ’em up.”

“Are they sick?  Double coma?” Adrian asked.

She was about to reply when Griffin turned her way.  “Kira-Lynn?”

She didn’t want to take it as a rescue from this conversation, because it was Griffin who was asking, but she hopped down again, glad to be done with this.

Nomi might give them the bullet points.

“Yeah?” she asked, looking down at the diagram work.

“I added to your list of questions for intake, reordered some.  Good,” Griffin said.  He held out a sheaf of printed paper.  “Ask her?  Take it down?”

She nodded.

He’d given her homework.  Asking her to come up with a list of questions to ask the patient, Edith, before they started.  Now they were correctly formatted, little boxes beneath for the answers to go into.  She read over it.

“Edith?” she asked.

Lucy walked over.  Verona, in the midst of talking to Avery, hurried over, hands in her pocket.

“What, you’re going to watch?”

“Every step of the way,” Lucy said.

“Some of this is our practice,” Kira-Lynn told them.  “You don’t necessarily have the right to see our notes, or copy our stuff.”

“Kira-Lynn?” Griffin asked.  He was setting down more candles.  “Let them.  But no pictures or copying down of any notes or diagram stuff.”

“Fine by me,” Verona said.  She turned to Lucy, “I have a pretty good memory for this stuff.”

“You do.”

Avery was pacing around the perimeter.

“Go ahead,” Edith said.

Kira-Lynn would have ordered them her way, originally, because it would’ve been more friendly and it would put the patient at ease.  Instead, she led off with,”How would you rate the integrity of your Self right now?”

“Seriously?” Edith asked.

“It might change how we approach this.”

“It’s fine.  Cobbled together, but it’s fine.”

“You said something,” Lucy said.  “I don’t want to share if you don’t want to share, but you told us before.”

“Told you what?”

Lucy had Edith bend down a bit to whisper in her ear.  Lucy was tall for her age, Edith was average height, so it wasn’t much of a bend.

Edith straightened.  “I’ve described myself as being multiple Selves worth of immaterial Other in a human sized package.”

“Crowded?  Overflowing?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“Yeah.”

“Has that gotten worse or better over time?”

“Worse.  A bit worse.”

She made a note in the margins.

“How would you rate the dangerousness of your Self?”

“Is the entire list of questions like this?”

“Please answer.”

“It’s a dumb question.”

“If every aspect of you was broken down into fragments and those fragments were the population of a town, what percentage of that town’s people would you not want to be alone with?” Kira-Lynn improvised.

“Assuming you’re vulnerable, without the ability to incinerate people and whatever,” Verona interjected.

Edith sighed.  “Forty percent?”

“Forty,” Kira-Lynn made a note, hiding her surprise.  It wasn’t a question, but she asked, “Of that forty, how many would you actively be afraid of or fear for your overall well being with?”

“Thirty-five percent?”

Kira-Lynn made a note.  “How would you rate your volatility?”

“Volatility?”

“If your Self was represented as the population of a town, same idea, how many people would you say you could not predict their next move?”

“Fifteen percent.”

“And how many of those overlap with the other group?  How many can you not predict, but also find dangerous?”

“Five?”

“I’m surprised it’s not the other way around, with the elemental in you.  Do you manage in society?”

“No commentary, Kira-Lynn,” Griffin said.  “We want unfiltered answers.  If you judge, she may not be honest.”

“I get by.  I don’t manage, but- I don’t work, I mean, I don’t thrive, but I also pass as human.  Isn’t everyone roughly the same?  A bit volatile, a lot of struggle and inner darkness?”

Forty percent inner darkness, thirty-five percent dangerous?  No.

Kira-Lynn avoided giving commentary as ordered.  “To the best of your knowledge, are you under the effect of any outside forces?”

“Complicated question.”

“That’s not a yes or a no.”

“Do you want yes or no answers?” Edith asked.  “I am spirit, I am echo, I am elemental, I am human.  All of those are influenced by outside forces.”

“Curses?”

“If I am cursed, it’ll be a surprise to me.”

“Compulsions?  Are you being forced to do this, by magic or mundane means?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Energies, items?”

“No and no.”

“Edith,” Lucy said.  “The Doom?”

“It doesn’t have a hold on me.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“It’s weak now.”

“There’s an omen type thing, linked to her, fed over years,” Verona explained.

Kira-Lynn made a note.  Edith looked annoyed.

“Are you healthy?  In body, mind, spirit?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve avoided emotional highs and lows for the last day?”

“To the best of my ability.”

“Anything added or removed from your immaterial self in the last twenty-four hours, outside of the usual?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“You’ve eaten and drunk Self-affirming favorite foods, and watched an old favorite movie?”

“Not favorite, but close to.  Some movies are tied into relationships… I would’ve said no to the other question.  I watched something I like, old and cozy, sat by a fire, had barbecue delivered.”

Kira-Lynn glanced at Griffin, who nodded, confirming this was okay.

“What issue brings you here to us today?” Kira-Lynn asked.  It was the question she would’ve wanted to start with.

“Surgery,” Edith said.  “Digging around, fixing whatever’s broken?  Something’s broken.”

“Can you be more specific?”

Edith sighed.  “This is a big audience for a baring of the soul.”

“It’s going to be more bare when the spirit surgery is underway,” Verona said.  “Just as much of an audience.”

“I want to go back to being the woman my husband- ex-husband fell in love with.”

“Seriously?” Avery asked, from the sidelines.

“No commentary, please,” Griffin said, using the heat of one candle to melt the bottom of another, before planting the second one down.  The smell of paint and candle smoke filled the gym.

“I’m not saying I want to make him come back to me, or that I’m doing it for that reason.  Even if he never looks at or says a word to me again, I… want to be that, still.”

“Do you understand the process you’re about to undergo?”

“No.  But I don’t care.”

“Understanding the process makes the process more likely to succeed,” Griffin said.

Edith sighed.

“Walk us through it?” Verona asked, chipper.

Kira-Lynn checked with Griffin, who nodded.  Kira-Lynn explained, “The spirits in you are symbolic of everything you are.  That’s past, family, genetics, strengths, weaknesses, personality, priorities, perspective, ummm… it’s your hopes, your dreams, it’s your ties to the pillars, it’s your ties to others.  It’s everything about you.  Normally, with medicine and first aid, you use physical manipulations to alter the physical.  Drugs, splints, bandages, CPR, that sort of thing.  We’re expanding that out to… everything else about you.  Medical treatment for every part of yourself, with diagnosis, removal, healing, transformation, addition of spirits as the main way of doing that.  Do I have that right?”

“Yeah,” Griffin said.  “Well done.”

“You probably know all about shamanism-”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “We have a good grasp.”

Kira-Lynn paused, gathering her patience again, before finishing, “-Edith.  Because you have a lot of spirit in you.”

“Yeah,” Edith replied.

Kira-Lynn went on, “That’s basically what we’re doing, shamanism but in the container that is you.  Constrained, tightly packed, lots of inter-involvement of each moving part.”

“You’ve mentioned the Carmine Exile originally worked on you.  Before he was Carmine.”

“Yes.  Years ago.”

“That’s so weird to think about,” Teddy commented.  “That he was once human.”

“No commentary,” Griffin said.  He heaved out a sigh, like he did before launching into an explanation.  “Summoning is making and calling on Others, focusing on key, broad strokes for whatever it is you’re wanting to make manifest.  There’s an aspect of it where you work on the details, you can get as pretty and detailed as you want.  Think of it like making a car, or renting one, and you have to be prepared to do some level of diagnostics and maintenance for any problem.  But sometimes you can get away with spending a little more and getting something you know is going to work and be expertly chauffeured, and it’ll look nice.  That’s the Carmine, before he was Carmine.  Arguably after.  He’s very good at it.”

“Can testify.  I helped him make one,” Verona said.

“But if what you’ve got breaks down, that skillset is limited.  That’s where I come in.  I can solve problems, reorganize and repurpose, I can transplant one engine into a new vehicle, and I can take the metaphorical car, or person, or Other, or anything with a spirit, and I can make it purr,” Griffin explained.

Verona’s cat familiar raised her head, looking at him.

Griffin folded his arms, looking down at the diagram for a moment.  “We’ll be using a multi-dimensional approach here.  Ways of getting eyes on these tightly packed aspects of you.”

Kira-Lynn thought about her Self, as viewed in her Sight.  The carefully assembled puzzle.  She said, “I think we said we’d use three complementary approaches, because that’s a good number.”

“Alcazar?” Avery asked, from the sidelines.

Kira-Lynn shook her head.  “You can, but-”

“Yes,” Griffin cut Kira-Lynn off.

She looked at him.

“It works fine, and I don’t want them breathing on the back of my neck as they look over my shoulder.”

“We want to see what you’re doing,” Lucy said.

“You will.  That’s part of the reason for this approach.  For something comprehensive, especially when it’s going to be a unique construction like a complex spirit hosted in a long-term vessel, no one approach is going to be clean,” Griffin said.  “One, first of all, I’m going to have the patient on the table, cross-sectioned spiritually.  That means I’ll turn flesh to spirit, astrally represent her, then break down that projection into layers and components I can interact with.  I can look from layer to layer, in varying levels of spiritual detail.”

Edith folded her arms.

“It’s going under the knife, but it’s in a fancy spirit way,” Kira-Lynn explained.  “He can look at you, and it will be key spirits for key aspects of you, like organs.  Or he can get down to the cellular level.”

“Exploratory surgery, I’ll ask and get permission before adjusting anything serious.”

Edith nodded.  “Fine.”

“Two, second aspect, different angle.  You’re part echo, spirit tools will struggle with those parts.  So we project.  Kira-Lynn?  That’s your job.  You’re my right hand woman.”

Kira-Lynn nodded.

“Project?” Lucy asked.

“It’s going to be messy at first.  Sentiment, echo, scene, memory.  Especially where it’s jumbled or concerning, I’ll mark it, my apprentice extracts it, and she’ll have to sequester it.  I’ve marked out seven spots around the edges of the room.”

“It’s like solitaire,” Kira-Lynn explained.  “Black three has to go under a red four.  Except instead of cards we have living scenes and personifications.  I’ve got seven cages, if I can put the right pieces together, then that can go in one cage.  There’s other stuff, It doesn’t have to be in order if it’s similar, it’s… there’s a lot to it.”

Griffin had told Kira-Lynn that his father had started out doing that.  Treating people who’d fought during the Vietnam war.  Finding memories that connected wrong in the tapestry of the Self, got too big, could get triggered too easily, hard to disassociate from.

Giving them peace.

It was how Griffin’s father had started out, so it was how he’d started Kira-Lynn out.

“If the patient’s self-assessment is correct, it will be intense.  Some projections can be as violent as any echo or wraith.  I want most of the apprentices on standby,” Griffin said.  “You follow Kira-Lynn’s orders unless you have very good reason to do otherwise.  Teachers, use your best judgment.”

There were some nods.

“Third, Alcazar.  Purely diagnostic, we turn the patient into a place that can be explored, to have direct eyes on specific areas and functions, with constant communication.”

Kira-Lynn nodded.

“If Nomi’s mentor would handle that, it would be appreciated.  You’re intuitively familiar with the makeup of Others and humans both.  The anatomical and metaphysical will have analogues in the architectural.”

Yiyun nodded.

He was avoiding using her name for the same reason he, Yiyun, and Josef were wearing masks.  They were going to teach at this school at a later point, they didn’t want three witches coming after them.

“I’m going to limit what you can do within that space.  We have the patient under the knife on the metaphorical table in front of me, we have projected echo scenes being organized on the outer edge of the room, and we’ll have people on the inside, exploring and giving insight.  But what changes in one perspective will alter the others.”

“Locking us out means we can’t interfere if you start doing something sketchy,” Lucy said.

“It also means that if you feel compelled to adjust something, it won’t- what’s a good metaphor?  Shut my fingers in the drawer as you close it from the inside?  Nick my fingers on my own metaphorical knife?”

“It means we can’t interfere if you start doing something sketchy,” Lucy repeated.

“I’ll leave you the means of calling an end to this.  Interference, but there’ll be a warning and a short delay so I can get my fingers out of the way of that closing drawer, so to speak, and that may end the session, at my discretion,” Griffin said.

“Where does that leave me?” Edith asked.

“Wherever we were at, I suppose,” Griffin said.  He turned to Lucy.  “If you interfere there, the Other Edith James must live with whatever changes have been made, however things stand, good, bad, or incomplete.  That has to rest on your shoulders.  Use your best judgment, but take care to exercise judgment.  Please.”

“I don’t like this,” Lucy said, turning to Edith.

“It’s up to the patient.  You’re here on her request.  Another set of eyes and hands, to safeguard her while she’s vulnerable.”

“It’s fine,” Edith said.

Lucy didn’t look happy.  Verona looked more interested in peering at Griffin’s notes, reading them while they were upside-down.

Avery still paced at the edges of the room, looking down at what would soon be one of the binding ‘cages’ for collections of distorted and disordered echoes and other immaterial elements.  She had her opossum with her.

Griffin went on, explaining, “Those in the Alcazar will see what I’m doing as rearrangement of features and rooms, constant renovations and changes.  It shouldn’t harm.  Or if it does, I risk harming my own allies as much or more than I harm our… guests.”

“Any risk of horror stuff?” Avery asked.  “I don’t suppose the expert on that is here?”

Helen was absent, alongside Lenard and Joel, each for very different reasons.  Helen would’ve been inflammatory, Lenard was working with Maricica, and Joel was hurt, of course.

“No risk of anything horrifying, in the practice sense, and we only have the student, not the master.”

“What a shame,” Avery said.

“The other aspects will be complementary as well.  If we’re careful.  Nomi’s mentor, if you need to do anything to prepare, do so now.  Kira-Lynn?  Rinse up, eat something, drink something, use the washroom, get squared away.  This may take hours.  I don’t want you struggling partway through.”

“I ate dinner not that long ago.”

“As you see fit.”

She left, glancing at the three witches who were talking quietly with one another.  Plotting.  She wished she could stay to track what they were doing.  She felt like she wanted to keep an eye on them, but she wanted to find the opportunity to make a play too, and that didn’t work if she was on the bench, and she’d be benched if she didn’t prep for the ritual.

She made the hike to the washroom, and found Lis there, standing at the window, which was broken, smoking.  Kira-Lynn nodded her acknowledgement of the city spirit, drank and refilled her water bottle, and pushed up her sleeves and tied her hair back before washing face and hands.  A rinse of cold water to shed loose spirits.

The door opened.  Verona.

Lis had disappeared in the same moment Kira-Lynn’s head had turned.

“Toilets work?  I’ve found it hit or miss down here,” Verona asked.

“Depends.  Not usually, but we have a boon from the city spirit.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

The presence of the hostile practitioner made the process of getting herself sorted out harder.  Spirits were clinging to Kira-Lynn, floating around, trying to work their way into her.  The effect of darkness, the mold in this place, the pressures, the cold.

The bathroom stall was really fucking quiet.  It was disconcerting, especially with the thought about how Verona would lie back and then pull something big.

Spirits of annoyance fluttered around her.  The longer she stared into the mirror, the greater the resolution of her diagnostic Sight.  She could see spirits of the mirror in the corner, framing its effect.  She could see the wall around the mirror gradually turning into that child’s-puzzle configuration.  More spirits of grossness and decay from a bathroom in a school that, in this version of Kennet, was empty and used for little except occasional parties.

She startled a little as the bathroom stall door opened without a sound.

Verona crumpled up a spell paper as she walked, and halfway between the stall and the sink, her footsteps started making noise again.  She spent a minute washing her hands, balled up paper resting by the sink.

“The others are warming up the gym.  To make Edith more comfortable,” Verona said.

Kira-Lynn didn’t reply.

“Be right back, don’t touch that,” Verona said, pointing at the balled up spell paper.

Kira-Lynn watched her, silent, as she walked back toward the toilet stall, drawing out a spell paper.

Should she react?  Anticipate trouble?

The whole plan with the three witches had been to admit that they couldn’t really put up the best fight in any one-on-one scenario.  But the witches wouldn’t kill them and if there was a situation, the ones who weren’t targeted could call on the Carmine Lords.  Who would win.

That got trickier when it was just her.

The spell card produced a blast of water, aimed, presumably, at the toilet bowl.  Presumably blasting the fluids within straight down the chute.

Holding the spent spell paper, Verona used it to prod the ball of paper to go into the sink, tossed it in after it, and then drew out another spell card.  “Might want to stand back.”

“What are you doing?”

The third paper ignited as it was drawn from the stack.  Verona tossed it into the sink and let the three papers burn to ash.  “When in hostile practitioner territory, or territory owned by practitioners who could end up hostile, it’s good to try and leave no trace.  No fingerprint, no spit, no blood, no hair.  Even if you do leave something stray behind, like shed skin cells or whatever, the measures you took to break the connection really do help.”

Depending on how things go, we should end up the only practitioners around.

“Doesn’t really matter,” was all she said.

“I gotta ask, did you guys sign some deals or make oaths to see us as enemies?  I feel like we’re doing a lot of really cool stuff with really cool Others.  The market, the arcade, building networks, the founding of Kennet found, like, come on.”

“Come on what?”

“Come.  On.  Isn’t that pretty cool?”

“Alice’s wonderland, forced on the rest of us, but you’ve got your own bureaucratic Queen of Hearts in charge?”

“Queen of Hearts is a bad comparison.  She’s not a tyrant.  She’s actually pretty cool.”

“But she’s basically a god in her demiurgic domain, right?” Kira-Lynn asked.  “That’s… it’s like you’ve got a tyrant installed, but she’s playing nice for now.  Where does that go?  I refuse to believe she’s infallible.”

“Of course she’s fallible, but there’s councils that oversee a lot of the big pieces, there’s us.”

“You three, not us.”

“If you could chill out, it could be us.  Minus the members of your group who have done some pretty irredeemable shit.  It’d be nice for them to do some kind of equivalent to jail time or restitution.  Like the horroring of a girl around your age.”

“That girl was someone who is from and supports a family that did their own irredeemable shit,” Kira-Lynn retorted.

“You were going to do it to kids, weren’t you?  Tell me you weren’t.  Tell me that the info I’ve got is adding up wrong, you had other things in mind for your ransom, than Seth, the Horror lady, and their apprentices breaking into the workshop, looting it, then entering the adjacent room to go after the kids and turn them into horrors, holding the remedy- partial remedy hostage?”

“I don’t know the details.”

“And you didn’t ask?  You want to get on their case for being shitty, you want to call Miss a tyrant by default, because of the power she holds, but you have this massive Carmine power of your own, and you’re going to do even shittier things?”

“I don’t want to talk about this with you.  There’s stuff to do.”

“Because you don’t have answers?” Verona asked.  She hurried forward, to put herself between Kira-Lynn and the door.  “Come on.  Maybe there’s a common ground.  But come on.  You’re not paying attention to what your buddies are doing?  You’re going to take any justification you can get, ignore the justification you’re giving others?”

“I don’t care about justification, not really,” Kira-Lynn said, mostly to get the girl to shut up.  “We’re going to be bastards about this.  We’re going to hurt people, we’re going to do worse.  They’re going to be bastards and hurt people and do worse.  You’re going to be bastards and hurt and worse, I’m pretty sure.  I know you have in the past.  I’ve heard the stories.”

Verona leaned back against the door, hands clasped in front of her.  “And goodness and justice?”

“Fuck justice.  There’s not enough in this world.  People get Forsworn and I dare you to tell me that’s justice, that all these case of people losing everything add up to some kind of restitution for one broken oath.”

“I feel like that’s not something you believe that strongly in.”

“So?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“So if you’re making arguments that you don’t actually believe in, just to score points, then what’s the point in me answering them?  I’m not going to change your mind with a good answer.”

“I’m not interested in if this crap is right or wrong,” Kira-Lynn replied.  “Because I know it’s all wrong.  That’s why we’re going to-”

“Drench it in blood, slaughter the rotted, cut the bad out?” Verona asked, sounding bored.

“What I care about is that you’re a fucking hypocrite.  All you three are.  You’ll pretend to be nice, but when things get bad, you are exactly as ruthless and shitty as all the rest of us.  The difference is we’re more honest about it.  You’re cowering behind this bullshit half-idea of justice and right and wrong and I’ll say what you just said.  I don’t think you really care.”

“A couple weeks ago I might’ve agreed, at least in part.  But I saw another version of my life and I’m pretty okay with how moral that was.  I think if we did the same with you, show a version of you with more opportunity and less insidious, shitty voices whispering in your ear, you’d surprise yourself too.  It’s why we’re giving Edith a shot here.  Because she poisoned her then-husband, basically, and lied to all of us, she betrayed us, she set us up to have echoes and wraiths and agitated spirits flood Kennet.  Our town.  Your town.”

“Don’t presume.  I’m not… I’m not attached,” Kira-Lynn said.

“I thought the same thing but then I set up a Demesne and I found myself pretty surprised.”

“I’m not you.”

“And I think Kennet would surprise you and some of these families have good eggs who’d surprise you, who could really make a difference and turn this around.  I think… I’m actually optimistic.  We just really need you all to stop being such bloody cock jockeys over this whole situation.”

“You built your fucking market and your stupid arcade and you’ve got this town you invested in, you’ve got a business deal with smaller markets and other families, and you’re f-” Kira-Lynn stopped partway, not even sure how to frame it.  “You’re being fucking cowards.  You’re hiding behind these other ideas, because you built these things, you want to protect them, you want others to buy into them.  And because of that you’re willing to go halfway.”

“You have no idea how far we’re willing to go.”

“You’re going to leave the Belangers like this?  I got the big rundown from Seth.  He’s certain they’re going to put Wye in charge, they’re going to go back to doing pretty much the same old thing.  Wye’s going to keep up his business, others might try to change things, the Whitts are going to be involved, they’re shitty on their own, but he thinks it’s going to go right back to what it was.  Because you got in the way.  You, when it counted, chose to back existing powers.”

“We, when it counted, chose not to fuck up a whole pile of scared, innocent kids.  We put ourselves in danger to protect them.”

“You think if you take us out of the picture, that stuff stops?  You think if you do what you’re doing, we let you, it all ends up okay?  That shit happens.  It’s happening all over, it’s happening in fucking bunkers where practitioners secure things while they’re snatching bodies it’s happening because kids are getting involved in practice way too fucking young.  It’s going to happen, probably, if you get out of our fucking way and let us do what we’re going to do.”

“What?”

“The world is fucked, and I’m more realistic than most of the others in my group.  I don’t think we’ll unfuck it.  I don’t mind it if it happens, but I’m tired of pretending we’re going to fix anything, when ninety-nine percent of the population doesn’t try.  When they’re incentivized to be shit.  Practitioners, people, Others, they’re encouraged to do the wrong thing.  So why bother?”

“So what?  You’re going to be awful?  You’re going to turn kids into horrors, you’re going to unleash monsters, you’re going to-”

“The monster that got loose-”

“Was an accident, I know.  So I’ve heard.  But?  Are you going to unleash monsters?  Are you going to use these fucked up Carmine Lords to remove your enemies?”

“Are you going to send a man to the fairies?  Are you going to free things like the Bugge?  Are you going to use the broken souls of the uncountable dead of war to remove a school headmaster from the face of the earth?  You’re such fucking hypocrites.”

“Maybe,” Verona said.  “Maybe.  But we’re hypocrites who are trying to do better, who are trying to build something, find the good people, practitioners, and Others, and turn the bad good.”

“You’re cowardly idiots who’ve gotten complacent and want to stop halfway and build your markets and arcade and everything else on tainted fucking soil, working with families that are going to go right back to doing what they were doing.  Move over, it’s our turn now.  And we won’t stop halfway, we won’t get complacent.”

“And when you’ve torn it all down and gotten everyone under your boot…”

Not that dumb.  We’ll just get rid of them all.

“…there’s just ruined mess, isn’t there?”

“If we get that far, the dust settles, and the opportunity’s there?  I’ll get on that.”

“I think if you go that far, cross the lines required, then you could take all the power that comes from ruling this area, all the Carmine’s abilities, all the Lords, all the Others, whatever you’ve looted and stolen, you could channel-”

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Kira-Lynn said.

Nomi opened the door, peering inside.

“It’s okay,” Kira-Lynn said.

“You could take all that, channel it, refine it, whatever, focus it into a Sight like we’ve never heard of before, and I doubt you’d see an opportunity for ‘good‘ if it was right in front of you, brightly labeled and shining,” Verona said.

“Everything okay?” Nomi asked.  “You’ve been gone a bit.”

“Yeah.  It’s fine,” Kira-Lynn said.  “Talking.”

“Careful.”

“I know to be careful,” Kira-Lynn said, annoyed.  You be careful.  Telling them we can’t talk about certain things.  “What if opportunity never comes?”

“Made a cool market, cool arcade, met cool people, did cool practice, hung out with my new cat and my besties, had sleepovers with cute guys and friends?”

“I’d rather be a wizard queen,” Kira-Lynn said.  “I’d rather be in a position to do something about a problem when it comes up.”

“We’re doing okay-ish, I think,” Verona replied.

“Something real.  Something that goes all the way to the roots, so the fucking weeds don’t spring back up.  I’d rather have real power.  I don’t want to stop halfway.  I refuse to stop halfway.  Right?”

She turned to Nomi.

Nomi nodded, silent.

“I don’t think she’s as passionate about that as you are,” Verona said.

“Will you get out of my fucking face?” Kira-Lynn asked.  “I’ve worked to get into spiritual harmony so I’m safe when I do my part of Edith’s rituals, you’re like mud in my water.”

“Funny thing is, I’m standing here,” Verona said, moving her hands slightly away from her body, palms up, “I’m not in disharmony.”

“Good for you.  Excuse me.”

She pushed her way past.  Verona stepped out of the way, asking, “Can I show you something?”

“No, don’t care.”

“I think it says a lot if you won’t.  Here.”

She heard the audio first.  A guttural, childbirth kind of low groan.

Then bones snapping, with more groans, that got more distorted as they went.  Nomi stopped, turning a bit, before Kira-Lynn steered her back and put a hand at her shoulder, keeping her moving forward.

“Don’t move, don’t move, don’t-“

The voice on the other side of the tinny phone speakers was cut off by a fresh bit of groaning, that became a strangled scream.  There was a rapid-fire branch-snapping sound.

The groan that followed sounded almost relieved, like there was release.  Then the breathing followed, panicked.

“Oh gods and spirits, what-“

“Don’t talk,” a woman’s voice interrupted.  “Don’t crawl.  Don’t move.”

“I thought this ritual was meant to constrain the damage-” an adult male’s voice.

“It is constraining the damage, but the effects still have to settle.  Stay still, Chase.”

More breaking sounds, another groan that became words.  “My organs.  What?  What’s with my organs.  Why are-?”

“Shhh.  Don’t panic, stay calm, stay safe.”

“There are bones.”

“Chase, listen to my voice.  Try to make my voice as big in your head as you can.  Stay where you are, let the moment pass.  You were a hero today.  You did good.”

“Nico.”

“She’s going to be mostly okay, and that’s something you need to hold onto.  Find the quiet moment you’re proud of and hold onto it, find a second where you aren’t moving, aren’t breathing.  Find that moment.  You did something heroic.  You jumped on the grenade.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, hey, there you go.  Now hold onto that moment.  Seize it, and stretch it out.  Turn that moment into two moments, then three.  Let the constraining do its work.”

“Keep your eyes open,” a younger voice chimed in.  Maybe Verona, maybe one of her friends.

“Keep them open, hold onto that moment, where you did something unambiguously good, okay?  You get that.  Seize on that.  I had to- I had to do a lot more with a lot less, when I had my head injury.”

“Are you going to follow me the entire way back to the gym playing that thing?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“I think he deserves for you to see.”

“I know who Chase Belanger is.  I heard from Seth.”

“Is that a good unbiased source?”

Kira-Lynn had turned partially toward Verona as she had the verbal exchange with her.  In the doing, with Verona’s hand thrust forward and upward, the phone was out.  She caught a glimpse of the screen.

Still human shaped, two arms, two legs, but there were intestines wreathed in skin, looped over and around arm, somehow, his stomach was lopsided and overgrown, one arm did not look okay, some scar tissue was boiling up at one side of his neck, eyes peering from the crevices, and the rest of it was lost in the movement of the camera.

“Look at it.  Face what your friends did,” Verona said.

“You’re messing with me before I’m about to help one of your supposed friends.  Making me more likely to make a mistake.”

Nomi was quiet.  She turned, saw Nomi looking at the screen, and roughly pushed her younger friend forward.  Away from Verona, toward the gym.  “Fuck off.”

“You can’t even look at it?” Verona asked.  “You don’t have the guts?  Come on.  If you’re bothered then what does that say about you?  Can you really become queen, ruthless, willing to do all this, if you can’t even look at the shit you’re doing?”

Kira-Lynn ignored her.

“Hey.  Hey.”

There were more snapping sounds.

“It’s slowing down.  Settling.”

“Good.”

“Not so bad?”

“What’s the damage?” Chase’s voice was a rasp.

“Can’t speak for your head.”

“A little fucked to begin with.”

“Hhha.  Fuck off, Zed.”

“Hmmm… trenchcoat and sunglasses, you’re good to go to the movies or get fast food?”  Another of the girls.  Avery or Lucy?

Chase’s breathing was raspy and heavy.

“Maybe not a kids movie if you’re going to do heavy breathing like that after showing up in a trenchcoat.”

“Verona!”

“Hhha!” Chase’s laugh was barely audible.

Kira-Lynn could move faster than Verona, even guiding Nomi.  Verona stopped trying to follow.  She fell behind.

Kira-Lynn, nearly at the gym, glanced back, and saw Verona with the spell cards.

Verona held out the phone, and Kira-Lynn averted her eyes, still watching those spell cards.  “Don’t try anything.  We’ll fight back.”

Quieter, she said, “Move apart.”

She and Nomi moved to opposite sides of the wide hallway.

Verona put the paper on the phone.  The sound magnified ten times over, booming down the hallway.

“-hank you, thank you.”

“So you’re alrighhht thhen.  You’ll do ohhkay?”

“Thank you.  Tell- tell Montague I said hi, okay?”

“Who?”

“The man in the suit.”

“You don’t see hhim?”

The door opened.  The noise of the booming phone speaker had drawn the attention of others.  Both Verona’s partners, Lucy with the opossum and Avery with the cat, were there.  So was Harri.  So were the teachers.

“-ly.  Shadows of what he really looks like, in the corner of my eye.  Thank you, Chase.”

Lucy was smiling, and Kira-Lynn had some sympathy for what Teddy had been saying about the girl he’d found insufferably, undeservedly smug.

“You won’t look at it,” Verona said, moving the paper away.  “You don’t seem to want to listen to it.  You’re running, to get away from it.”

Kira-Lynn wheeled on Verona, who was still approaching.  Verona tried to put the camera image in her face, and she blocked with her hand, warding it off.

“You can accuse me of doing terrible things, but I’m- I’d like to think I’m taking the lessons from my mistakes and putting them toward something good.  You seem to want to ignore any chance at learning a lesson so you can run headlong into being selfish and bad.  Just look.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Because you care, you’re better than this, because you have some conscience, right?” Verona asked.  She kept trying to move the screen.

“I’ll fucking make myself stop caring if I have to,” Kira-Lynn replied, hand gripping Verona’s wrist, keeping the phone away.  “I’m not going to let conscience get in the way of better.  Do you want me to make an oath, right now?  That I’ll stop caring, that I’ll go all the way with this, whatever it takes?”

“No,” Verona said, voice soft.  She stopped trying to put the phone in front of Kira-Lynn’s face.

Kira-Lynn pushed Verona’s hand away, hard.  The swinging arm clipped a locker, and the phone fell free, hitting the ground where it curved up to the lockers, banking off, spinning as it sailed across the floor, diagonally and back behind Verona, chased by fragments of screen.

“Dick move.”

Griffin said, “You weren’t invited to harass us and interfere.  She needs to be centered to do her part.”

“She was saying she didn’t care, more or less, so it’s confusing that she’s not actually centered.”

“If you’re going to accuse her of gainsaying, we’ll make you leave.”

“Not trying.  Just saying I’m really confused.”

Griffin dismissed that.  “Deal with it yourself.  Kira-Lynn?  You’re a mess.  Take a corner in the room, borrow a water bottle, rinse off again, take a quiet moment.  Edith?”

Kira-Lynn walked past and through the group, into the gym.

“I know what you’re going to ask.  No.”

“They’re getting in the way.”

“They stay.  That’s my call.  If that means you don’t do spirit surgery, fine.  They offered to do a search through me with the alcazar ritual.  You can leave, they stay, I’ll work with them.”

“No need for that,” Griffin said, momentarily meeting Kira-Lynn’s eyes.

“Hurt them, get more aggressive, I’ll defend them.  If they hurt you, get aggressive, I defend you.  But I invited them.  Don’t make me lose karma by turning my invitation into something bad.”

“It’s fine.  I was only going to ask,” Griffin said.  He walked over to Seth, leaning over.

Kira Lynn sat on the bench in the one corner of the gym, took a water bottle from Nomi, and drenched her head.

And Nomi was shaken, and Harri was withdrawing further into herself.  The teachers were talking, the three witches were in a huddle.

The mental image of what Chase had looked like darted through her mind.

“Did you see what Helen did?” Kira-Lynn asked Harri.

“We’re supposed to leave her alone to get her Self quiet and ordered,” Teddy said.

“No.  I only heard the bit at the end.”

The mental image darted through her mind, sticking there.  Kira-Lynn leaned back, her head bonking against the wall.

She still had her earbud in.  She put it on, hitting shuffle.

The notes.  Math.  Formulas, cheated.

Her eyes remained closed.  Her hands fixed her hair.

Edith James took the center of the diagram, crouching down.  Her back split open, and the complex spirit emerged.  A woman, covered in white wax, a candle across her shoulders with a log’s dimensions, wicks burning bright at both ends.  She had wax on eyelashes, and wax running through hair.  The light of the orange flames on both sides of her body highlighted her body and traced the wax.

Candles that had been set into the floor burned brighter, wax boiling up, getting taller.  More appeared, floating, the features of the floor fading away beneath a liquid, waxy layer.  Diagrams remained.

“How are we doing, Kira-Lynn?”

“I don’t have a mirror, but I think I’m okay.”

“Assume a station.”

She stood from the bench.  Cold water dribbled down the back of her neck.

The room was already warmer, and got warmer still as the heat from the candles and the various flames reached to its corners, the spirit-world parts of things insulating it against the outside.

She took up her station by one part of the diagram, and made hand gestures to others.  Beckoning them near.

Nomi went with Yiyun.

“I can give you more security and agency by bringing out an aspect of your self,” Griffin told Edith.  “This is my policy for certain kinds of work.  You’ll be able to watch, call a premature end, and you can inform us on what we’re seeing, when it’s ambiguous.”

The spirit that loomed above the bent body with its split back nodded.

He did the ritual work.  Parts of the diagram rose up, encircling different parts of her.  They moved as she did.  Other circles and shapes framed her, facing the walls, not up or down.  They interlinked and traced the outline of her body, That would be the framing.

Griffin touched parts of the diagram, and they turned from the white of the white paint and wax to gold as his fingers made contact.  He called up more rigid framing.  “You’ll find your movements slightly restricted.  Don’t panic.  This keeps things straight as we remove other framing.”

He handed a page to Seth.  “Clean extraction.  If you’d cross the diagram, touch that to the edge of the first magic circle?”

“Which?”

“Lowermost.”

Seth did, taking some long strides as he crossed the diagram.  He touched the paper to the edge of the circle that encircled the crouching human body, and it glowed gold too, before separating into four more sections.

The body vibrated and then separated.  The astral body of the human Edith James separated from everything else, pushed as if she was a piece of paper and the wind had picked up.  She stopped at the edge of the room.

The actual body, unlit now, went dark as it crumpled to the ground.  Still there, but she had to look for it.  Like the windows, like the floorboards.

The auditorium-slash-gymnasium had an adjacent office for the coach and gym teacher, with some kind of reinforced glass window protecting it.  Kira-Lynn stared at it for a moment, then looked away.

“Don’t worry, you can go back there after, Edith.  But you’re now free.  You can go in the Alcazar, stay in communication.  You’re some of our best information now.  Nomi’s mentor, you watch her.  You should be familiar with immaterial entities.”

“I am.”

“And the layout of how an Other may be put together.”

“Yeah.  I am.”

“Phone me if you need anything.”

He began to open the Alcazar.  With the center of the floor occupied, and the corners and edges of the room being used for the spaces Kira-Lynn would be keeping Others confined to, he used the stage, flourishing as he used a magic item to open one quickly.

It reached the edges of the stage and the curtains, and the curtains ignited, wax starting to pour down the length of them.  The space behind went dark, and became far more vast.

Avery Kelly went with them, carrying the cat.  Edith led the way, astral form floating by Yiyun.

That takes them off the board, Kira-Lynn thought.  Which was more important than it might’ve looked at a glance.  She had a sense of what they might be doing.

She looked again at the window into the gym teacher’s office.  She’d been in there a few times.  When there were checks for physical fitness, when they’d been lined up as kindergarteners to be checked for scoliosis, when there were lice inspections, there’d be thirty kids in there at a time.

“Kira-Lynn, it’s up to you.”

“What is?” she asked, stirred from her thoughts.

“They want to split up.  One of them watching each part of this ritual.  They want Verona to watch you.  But with the recent altercation…”

She thought about it.

Verona would be annoying, but Lucy…

That earring was apparently her implement.  Her declaration to the world about what she was about.  She listened.  She caught things.

Kira-Lynn didn’t want to get caught here.  She had work to do.

“You won’t pick up where you left off?”

“Said my piece,” Verona said.

“Why me?  Why are you interested?”

“Because it’s cool?  I mean, your masked mentor’s stuff is cool too, but… I’d probably annoy him with questions.  With you guys, bigger group, I can spread it around.”

Kira-Lynn sighed.

She nodded.  “I’m thinking shifts.  We’re dealing with echo-adjacent forces, so let’s do this in shifts.  Apprentices with me.  You rotate taking breaks.  Take a walk, go into the hallway, use the bathroom, go for a really quick snack run, nap in the coach’s office.  I’ll have to take a break myself, so I’m thinking after an hour or so, moment things are quiet enough on all three fronts, I’ll take a break from this too.”

“You guys catching that?” Griffin asked.  “That’s a break for you guys and me too.

There was a response through the phone from Yiyun.

“Good.  Good idea, thank you Kira-Lynn,” Griffin said.

It felt greasy, having him be so nice.  Every time.

Edith James’s complex spirit was still suspended in the air, no longer with a body to be rooted into.  Griffin manipulated the diagram, using tools he had with him, and reoriented aspects.  Magnifying, organizing…

Verona settled onto the bench behind Kira-Lynn.  Opossum in her lap.  Lucy was sitting on the stage, looking over Griffin’s shoulder with a wary eye.

“Why do you have the opossum?” Teddy asked.

“Communication.”

“Surface level skim for you, Kira-Lynn,” Griffin said.  He was relatively far away, but his voice carried in this space without real floor or walls.

Kira-Lynn nodded.

Searching through the various aspects of Edith’s spirit that were displayed across the magic circles that floated in the air.  Moving and re-angling those same circles to change the picture.  Outer rims rotated, the picture zoomed in.  Others changed their iconography as he held out something that looked like an astrolabe, finger adjusting the dials, and the nature of spirits that were most in focus changed.

Fire erupted through the room.  Echo-fire.  The heat of it made skin sting, but it didn’t actually burn.

“Highlighting…” Griffin said, voice echoing faintly.  He marked out a section on the dial.  “Next burst coming shortly, going to see tolerances…  Brace yourselves.”

She did, putting her hand out straight in front of her.

Echoes didn’t need much resistance to give up.  This was a strong echo, but she was a practitioner with a lot of power behind her.

The fire didn’t touch her, or Stefan, who was cowering  a bit behind her.

Another mark at the outer rim of the diagram.  He highlighted that entire section, filling it in, so it was gold background with empty spaces for the symbols and notches, instead of gold symbols and notches standing rigid against empty air.  His handwriting penned out in the air, marking it ‘elemental’.

He moved through other spaces.  Scenes and people, some clear, some indistinct, erupted, faded, and slid into existence.

She watched, looking.  There had to be an opportunity.  That was what she was about.  It was why she was part of this.  Why Lis liked her.

The others still had to figure that out.

She saw it.

“There,” she called out.

“What’s that, Kira-Lynn?” he asked, but he went backwards, adjusting the dials slowly.  Scenes appeared.  An attempt by Edith to work some retail job.  Family.  More family.  Her and her ex-husband, presumably.  Lots of scenes of Kennet.

This room, these same diagrams.

“That’s recent?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me,” she said.  She reached for the tools, which included something that looked like a compass for drawing out circles, with a curved set of what would normally have been rulers built into one arm.  She adjusted the sliders on each, matching runes.

“Tell me what you’re after,” Griffin said.

She didn’t want to.  Not with enemies listening.

“Scale it back.  Just now, when there was the noise in the hallway.  People went to the door-”

He moved through the ghostly scene.

“She stays in the center of the room, unsure if she can leave or if she should leave.”

“Yep.  Here you go.”

She adjusted the finer points of the measures on the tool, grabbed the scene, and carried it away.

“It’s the most recent scene we have.  My job is to make the disordered ordered, and put things back into scale.  I can frame all of this as an arc, from when she was effectively born to the cleanest moment in the now.  She’s alone, she’s not moving, the image is still, which means I can do this.”

She put the scene in the window of the coach’s office, then adjusted it to be a top-down view.  The room dark, like the window was dark, and what were effectively three inactive diagrams.

“Doubles as a nice map illustrating what we’re doing,” Kira-Lynn said.  “And that’s a working placeholder for what might be one of the last real pages in the book that is Edith James.”

Which was technically true, all of it, but it wasn’t why she was interested in it.

Just like in the idea about taking breaks, it wasn’t the real motivation.

Griffin had to know on both counts.

Yiyun was explaining what she was seeing to Griffin.  He kept dialing through scenes, trying to get that surface-level impression of things.

Kira-Lynn requested two more key figures.  Edith with Matthew.  Edith with family.

The longer the one with Matthew remained, the more it was pulling on darker sentiment from the rest of the diagram.

She secured it in one of the ‘cages’, to cut off that feed.  Then, as more Matthew scenes appeared, she stopped Griffin and caught them, moving them aside, adding them to that cage.

Amorphous, indistinct, they separated into positive and negative halves, like oil and water in a glass.  She moved them to two separate cages, sorted them, then sent the positive back to Griffin, which he slotted into place.

Yeah, there was a lot of darkness in there.  Resentment, frustration.

Feeling let down by a lot of people.

I sympathize.  I do, Kira-Lynn thought.

As they worked, they added some wardings and spell cards to things, to slow down anything outside the diagram’s trappings.  It was easiest to move them in open space, and attempts to be too restrictive with diagrams would quash the echo or see it refuse to move from its current position.

She wrote on one slip of paper, a stroke or two at a time, when Verona, the opossum, and Lucy weren’t looking, which was rare.  It took her almost fifteen minutes to squeeze in one word.

It would have to do.  She wanted to get started.

After those first fifteen minutes, Kira-Lynn murmured to Adrian, “Take a break.”

She pushed him deliberately toward the nurse’s office, passing him the paper.

Griffin was very quick to blur and fuzz out a scene that he’d dialed to.  It glowed orange.

“I’ve got a big one for you, Kira-Lynn,” Griffin announced.

“What is it?”

“Looks like a lot of fire.  Recent.  Nomi’s master?  Be prepared to put the aspect of Edith James on the phone.  Might need context on this one.”

“Can we get a view of the background?” Lucy asked.

He adjusted.

“That’s not far from her house.  Fire, burning car, fall,” Lucy said.  “Practitioners.  I know that scene.”

“Her helping fend off Musser’s people while Matthew had his ritual,” Verona said.

“Okay,” Griffin said.  “Emotionally intense, pain, lots of fire.”

He began to clarify the resolution of the image.

It animated, the same spirit as before, but more intense, moving in quick bursts that left the liquid wax stretching behind the movements, freezing in partial arcs and streaks through the air, some breaking off.  The fires at either end of the candle were bigger than most men.  It looked like she’d used them to get a few people, and to set cars on fire.

“I can’t get past this.  You’re going to have to extract, Kira-Lynn.  Prep.”

“Prepping for echo, fire,” she replied.

There were some wards built into tiles, that she pulled out of the bag Griffin had brought with him.  She used them to secure the space around herself, and to help funnel the scene into a cage.

She only had so many shots at this.  She saw Adrian in the coach’s office, looking at the diagram she’d left on the window.  Looking at her.  Barely visible, with the spirit world influence coming from Edith.  She had to look to see him.  To see his hand.

He traced different parts of the diagram with his finger.  She was careful not to let Verona or Lucy see that she was watching his finger.  Watching until that finger touched the one diagram.  Griffin’s part of it.  The direct spirit surgery part.

She nodded, as if to herself.

He’d gotten her message and intent.

He moved the finger away, but stayed there.

He was still Adrian, damn it.  Not enough initiative.

“Stefan?  This isn’t your strength,” she said.  “Do me a favor, go tell Adrian to use the time he’s in there, others will get their turn soon.  Then hunker down, wait until the scary part is over.”

Stefan looked grateful.

Leaving her with an injured Travis and Dony, a spooked Harri, Teddy, Cameron, and the teachers Josef and Seth.

“Tell me when you’re ready,” Griffin said.

She waited until Stefan had closed the door behind him.  She saw Adrian move away from the window.

It came.  An echo of an event.  An echo of Edith in a fierce, scared moment.

It escaped confinement, and no tool she had was especially great at managing it.  So she relied on basic practice.  A broken branch given to her by Joshua.  A burst of Abyssal energy.

Verona leaped up to help, supporting them.

The fire came, hot, intense, but only as real as she let it be.  It was a memory of fire, and that could still leave scars, of a sort.  Nobody experienced the process of burning to death and was okay, after.  It left the kind of wound that would need spirit surgery to solve, ironically.

It moved like a serpent, the body not anchoring it, but dangling below, a point of vulnerability.

“Don’t kill it, or you’ll damage other things linked to it!  Wound, suppress!” Griffin called out.  More for the benefit of the others.  Kira-Lynn already knew.

Verona used fire-insulating practices to shield herself and then tossed them at it to bludgeon it.  It stopped being so elemental and became more echo.  Phantasmal fire around the room swelled into real fire.

Seth used a bit of practice to sweep fire aside, shielding Cameron and Griffin.

“Shit!” Griffin called out.

She realized the shout wasn’t because of the fire.

“Why shit, Griffin!?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“It’s hooked into some bad mojo!  It’s wraith-influenced, resentment, hurt.”

It came like a force of darkness, it hit the memory from behind, and it swelled in scale, intensity, and ability to influence reality.  Like fuel on a fire.

Fire on the floor, erasing cages meant for other entities and scenes.  It moved, candle swinging, darkness surging, an echo-like wave of emotion following it-

She could take that emotion, because she felt a bit like that all the time.

She could move, even where others staggered.  So could Verona.  She used the abyssal wand and blasted at the most intense portions of it, damaging the floor in reality, while this spirit world remained mostly intact.  But she got the worst of the flame, which was key.

Because that elemental force moved, hand raised up, and it magnified and spread every flame they hadn’t managed to quench or handle, wax spitting out.  Before it lunged- reaching with a waxen hand bigger than Kira-Lynn’s head.

Verona used a spell card, and blasted the hand.  Obliterating it.  It drew back, regenerating.

Kira-Lynn deliberated a moment, then went for her bag, and pulled out three ceramic figurines, of the sort grandmothers collected.  Parents, teacher, kissing siblings.  Each small and misproportioned, with overlarge heads and cutesey expressions, each with overly prim and careful clothing and haircuts, calling back to a golden age.  The fifties, maybe.

She threw them across the floor.  “Don’t stand between them!”

The figurines didn’t break, but rolled, tumbled, and came to a stop, each one righting itself, turning to face the others.

In the triangle that was between the three figurines, the spirit world was stripped away.  There were floorboards, illuminated as if it was the middle of a sunny day, varnished to a golden glow.  Lying on those floorboards was a lock of hair that had been neatly snipped off, secured with a baby blue ribbon attached to it, and there were four white mice lapping at the edges of a chunky splattering of blood.

A gift from the Ordinary Family.  A rare glimpse at what was behind the closed doors there.

It was a slice of reality the wraith didn’t want to venture into, and that turned the effects of their combined offensive practices into something else.  A vial thrown by Josef quenched fire and turned it into flesh, Verona threw a spell card, the Other stepped back, then overcompensated, not wanting to be driven back into that slice of reality between the little figurines.

In its haste and hurry, it moved off to the side.  Kira-Lynn used the broken branch, fired off another barking bit of Abyssal force, and pushed it over the lip.

Once partially caught, the rest of it followed along the path of least resistance.

“She gave her all here,” Verona said.  “Fighting to slow the approach to challenge his ritual, feeding the Doom.  She thought she’d get more for what she gave.  Warped thinking, but… that doesn’t change how valid and real it felt to her, I guess.”

She went to the figurines, turned each one so it faced away from the other two, collected them, and sat down on the bench.

“I’m willing to bet there’s a lot more like that,” Verona said.

There was.  Not as bad, but relentless.

They had to stop at one point while the other group investigated the Alcazar and gave context on scenes, but then they resumed and it was three in three minutes, back to back.  Some caged, some returned while Griffin moved on to other things, and they knew they’d have to face that returned entity again if they were going to work this out.

Edith had executed a fair few individuals that had invaded Kennet.  Some she’d had enough of an upper hand over that she’d been able to gesture at them and set them on fire or burn them from within.

Which was a problem if they were confronting that aspect of her.  Doubly so when the individual fragments of her didn’t care, and hadn’t put a lot of consideration into it.  Someone invaded, they got burned.  If they were rejected and came back, they got burned.  Damage Kennet or prey on its people, they burned.

Meaning if she was pulled out as a projection here to be managed and sorted out, she’d immediately start setting them on fire.  They could act to prevent it, but if there was another chaser of wraith?

“So,” Griffin said.  “Kira-Lynn?  Students?”

Kira-Lynn called Teddy out from the room where he’d been ‘napping’.

Griffin had pulled enough things into alignment that they could see the puzzle before them.  He moved diagrams so they overlapped, and showed them Edith James.  The broad strokes of her being, mapped out and labeled.

Griffin explained, “She had a power source.  One that tainted her.  The rest of her was crammed into the vessel.  And yes, it was overflowing, it was cramped.  The taint of the Abyss will harden, calcify, scar.  It’s why bogeymen are so relentless and tough.  That cramped essence more or less held its shape…”

He moved something.  The diagram tilted slightly.  The space that was mostly square became a leaning trapezoid.  It didn’t become wholly square as he righted things.

“…and the void remained.  The Carmine Exile removed this power source?”

“Yes,” Lucy said, from behind Griffin.  “Charles did, before being forsworn.  It was in his summoning notes.  He used it to create the Hungry Choir.”

“Okay.  The void became an abscess.  The nature of that abscess only got worse with the treatment of her husband.  She wasn’t about to fill it with light and kindness, but she didn’t help by doing that.  Step one to restoring her to being a healthy human being?  I want to mend that.  It’s going to want to take a shape.  Lucy, I know you’re reluctant to take your eyes off me, in case I pull some sleight of hand.  I can assure you I won’t.  We’ll need your help.”

Lucy nodded.

“All hands on deck, that aren’t below decks, in the Alcazar.  They should be able to help in other ways.”

“After a break?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“Are we that far in?”

“Timewise?  Yeah.  I want to take fifteen for myself, and I need a minute or two with everyone who was with me.  Especially if there’s taint.”

Griffin nodded.  “Sensible.  Good girl.”

She went into the coach’s office.  She could see them there, dark, faint.  She had to try.

And she could see, in the back half of the room, on the other side of the curtain, they’d picked up on what she wanted.

Adrian had no grit.  He had negative grit.  Negative initiative.  But he followed orders.  He’d taken her instruction and he had the reference for what to draw on the window.  He’d even drawn it the right way around.

The spirit surgery diagram.

She took the fifteen minutes to alter it to her purposes.  She didn’t want to use it on a complex spirit.  She added some security against being listened in on, even though she was reasonably sure the spirit world’s interference would cloud things.  Then after those adjustments were made, she hid the diagram.

She checked her work, thought things through for a minute, then opened the door and offered to do a check of Verona for any taint, possession, or spiritual influence.  Echoes could be insidious, influencing behavior or finding a way to insert a kernel of themselves into someone as a false memory or sentiment.  Sometimes full-blown phobias.

Verona refused.  Making the time that she’d taken to clean up the room a waste.

But it made things a hell of a lot easier.

Stefan was next.

Because Stefan was… everything that annoyed her about the others, minus the sex obsessed boys who leered, said things behind her back, stared, acted immature, and leered some more.

Or it felt that way.

Stefan wasn’t looking after his hygiene as much as he should, he goofed around like Teddy, he got weirdly attached to people like Cameron, and he’d fucked up.  Repeatedly.  Escaped video game Other, Harri getting kidnapped.  He lied, he thought he was better than he was.

“Sit,” she told him.  “My Sight takes a minute to get used to someone and give me a deeper look.  And we’ll talk.”

He sat.  “I wasn’t there for the worst stuff.”

“Yeah.  I don’t trust you to have my back for it.  You’re kind of a crap person in general, aren’t you?”

“What?” he asked.

“Why did Maricica choose you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was for this.  Maybe it was that we needed someone who was just really shitty at everything, to get us to realize there’s no way we’re going to catch up to those three witches.  Not without cheating.”

“You’re kind of an asshole.”

“I’m tired.  I’m fed up with people sucking.  I’m fed up with expecting more and getting less.  I expected more from this group and I got less.”

“I’m not that shitty,” he said, then, doubt seeping in, he added, “am I?”

“You are.  But it’s okay,” she said, her voice soft.  “I know what I’m going for, it’ll be quick.  We were talking about the potions we’d take earlier?  This is it for you.  This is your adjustment.  Then we carry on, and in the next cycle of breaks, I’ll adjust more.  Or return you to the way you were.”

“You’re going to adjust me?”

“You can say no.  But you shouldn’t.  We had our chance to get up to speed, get caught up, a lot of us didn’t.  We have a bit of a way to go, so… let’s skip the last length of it.  I alter you, subtly, and to them, it should seem like we’re coming into our own, fast.”

A movement in the corner made her head turn.

Who nodded.

“We’re killing the patient?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“Yes,” Lis said.  “The woman dies, the flesh ceases.  The elemental, the echo, the spirits, they can be condensed down, turned loose as something more vicious than what you just fought.”

“Okay.”

“She’s close to flipping, she’s outlasted her usefulness.”

“Did you ask the others?  The Carmine, Maricica?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“I don’t have to.  And they don’t care, really.”

“It won’t go over well,” Kira-Lynn said, glancing at Stefan.  “With the old practitioners of Kennet.  The three witches.”

“No,” Lis agreed.

“We have to be ready,” Kira-Lynn said, to Stefan.  “But it’s your choice.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of trust to ask from me,” he said.

“Yeah,” Kira-Lynn said.  “But if you say no, I’m going to tell the teachers we can’t count on you.  I’m going to recommend they withdraw you.”

“What?  I’ve helped, I’m-”

“You’re not an asset, Stefan,” Lis said.

“The fuck?  What?  You’re going to take my magic?”

“Let me do this, and I promise you, I won’t let them.  For at least three months.  We can decide if you want to keep the adjustments later.”

He looked like such a scared little kid.

This was going to be a clusterfuck very soon, and she needed people who tried.  She needed this to be something more than a C- effort from most of the group, while she did her best to find her way.

“Tell me you’re willing to lose your magic.”

“I’m not.”

“Then you need to do this.  Step onto that diagram.  Let me do the rest.  We don’t have long before anyone gets-”

There was a knock on the door.

She got up and went to the door to be safe.

Stefan was still there.  Lis was gone.

She opened it a crack.  It was Teddy.  “You just made it so I have to start calibrating my Sight over from scratch.”

“Sorry.  People are getting anxious about the time.  If we’re out too late-”

“You used connection blockers, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied.

She hadn’t, but her parents wouldn’t care much.

“Come in,” she said.

He closed the door, then stood with his back to it.  He pointed at his mouth.

He wasn’t all bad.  He just didn’t take this seriously enough.

“We can talk.  I secured it.”

“What did you have Adrian start drawing?”

“Same thing Griffin is using.  Spirit surgery diagram.  Stefan was about to give me his decision.”

“Can Teddy go first?” Stefan asked.

“If I thought he should go first, I would’ve asked him to come first.  Now, Stefan.”

“What are you doing?” Teddy asked, quiet.

She didn’t reply.

Lis, smoking, stepped out from behind the curtain.  She put her hand on Stefan’s shoulder.

He didn’t let her guide him, but the hand being there sure made it seem like he wasn’t wholly responsible for his movement, either.

He stepped into the diagram, and it began to light up.

His astral body lifted away from his real body, standing about a foot above and away.  She tugged on the curtain to minimize any light show that people outside might witness.  She could explain it away, she just didn’t really want to have to bother.

Lis reached out, and it seemed like she was handing over a cigarette.  She wasn’t.

It was a fragment of black iron that was uncomfortable to hold.

“From Maricica.”

“Abyssal?”

Lis nodded, drawing on her cigarette.

Leaving Kira-Lynn to find what she needed to do with Stefan to fix him.

“He’s a weasel,” Lis said.  “A very good one that’s easy to underestimate.  Because he’s worthy of very little estimation.”

In the solar plexus.  She pushed the kernel of tainted metal in, The spirit moved, uncomfortable, but it was fixed in place.  Stefan, unaware and detached, grimaced, writhing, but couldn’t get away as she pressed it in, insistent.

He needed the right mindset, and the solar plexus was where the spirit processed things.  To process in a darker, more driven light, to feel out for opportunity with instinct.  To be a bit meaner, as a general effect.

She re-aligned Stefan.  Spirit, now with kernel inside, merged and overlapped with body.  He made faces, gasping, as the kernel wormed its way in through flesh, leaving only a scab behind.

She turned to Teddy, “You do me next.  Mercy and compassion tends to sit between the throat and heart.”

“You’re serious.  I’m not trained for this.  I barely get it.”

“I’ll run you through it.  Kill my mercy and compassion.  If we don’t like it, we can reverse it.  But I can promise you, shit is going to go down by the time we’re done with our patient, here.”

Next Chapter