Pale: 3.6 - Verona

Verona

Well, apparently Thursdays were going to suck until Summer.

A matter of minutes after Avery headed off to Soccer practice, Lucy was jogging ahead, because her mom had pulled up, and cars were already honking their horns out of impatience.

Lucy’s mom wanted to be one hundred percent on top of her therapy, so she’d jumped to this frontloaded therapy session thing where Lucy had like, five therapy appointments in the first week, then scaled down over time.  Lucy had explained it as a bit of a cover-your-ass thing, in case Paul pressed charges for the damage to his car.  Which he wouldn’t, but it was good to do.

Verona kinda thought there was more to it than that.  That Jasmine was really scared for Lucy and that she’d missed out on something that major.

Yesterday they’d talked to Matthew and Edith, and the plan was that the Kennet Others would discuss and decide about some stuff, like dealing with the Choir, and some lessons on binding.  With Lucy and Avery being busy, and the difficulties of making plans after dinner, that was a thing that might happen tomorrow.  So… no big planning session or anything.

Couldn’t interview Louise either, with the other two gone.

Couldn’t go hang with Matthew and Edith because they were suspicious and it wasn’t like things were hunky dory with them.  Goblins were dangerous and hard to track down.  Faerie were easy to track down but dangerous and complicated.  Alpeana didn’t wake up until sundown and was busy for part of the night, and John was kind of a suspect.

She texted Lucy and Avery as part of a group conversation:

Verona: I want to go be a cat. Gimme permission

Lucy: You’re doing that too much.  Take time off to be a human.

Verona walked along with the crowd of students, alongside the fence that bounded the field.  She saw Avery jog out, and matched pace with Avery.

“Need something?” Avery called out.

Verona jerked both thumbs toward herself.  “Cat?”

Verona pointed at Avery with both fingers.  “Say yes.”

“No,” Avery said, “Or ask Lucy.”

Then Avery was gone, jogging over to gather up with the rest of the students.

Lame.  They could be so lame sometimes.  They didn’t get it.  That being a human was boring.

What else?  Options.  Places, people.

Jeremy Clifford was… complicated.  Because he was a boy and he liked her and if she spent too much time around him she’d get tied up into a relationship or something.  She’d talked a lot with him at the end of class yesterday so today she wouldn’t seek him out.

For his sake, more than for hers.

She wished she could reach out to Alexander or someone to get the details on something like the Demesne ritual.  A ritual to make a place hers.  She’d have to pick the right place, convenient to get to, probably with some other requirements, but then she’d have a place to go in times like this.

Alexander Belanger had one, apparently, as part of the school.  That was how they’d rescued Avery.  Charles had had one before he was forsworn and lost it.

She wanted to know so much more about that.  About the implement ritual, which she was a lot less clear on.  The familiar ritual was more complicated because the only local other she really liked was Alpeana, in terms of the power, the aesthetic, and a personality that Verona could imagine working with in the long term.  Goblins would be a pain, John was too serious, the Faerie were Faerie, Matthew had Edith and Edith had Matthew.  The Choir was a mess.

Alpeana, at least, was someone who was probably content to do her own thing while Verona did her own thing, and they could hang out, and watch each other’s backs, and that was cool.

She headed home.  Not because she wanted to go home, but because she had a full backpack.  Her dad worked late some nights, and if he was out, maybe she could sit and stream age-inappropriate movies and TV shows for a while.  Both cartoons and shows for little kids while she drew, and sci-fi epics with gratuitous scenes she could pause on, to use people as models, while trying to work her brain around some of the mechanics.

She wanted to figure these things out.  Practice, diagrams, demesnes, familiars, implements, bodies and the way bodies fit together, art, life and how to avoid getting checkmated by it, and stuff.

She wanted to figure out the Choir, unraveling that mystery when so many others hadn’t been able to, like Alexander.  She could see the appeal in that.  It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the victims like Gabe and Reagan.  Seeing Gabe disappear, seeing him later as a waif, and hearing about Reagan and the others was eerie and those things were clearer than anything in her mind’s eye, when so few things were, even with her art.

But it was a puzzle too and it was easier to think of it as a puzzle.

She wanted to solve the Carmine Beast thing, because it felt like it was the big thing getting in the way of all of this being fun and free.  How cool would it be if Lucy could stop fretting over interview questions and be cool and on board with stuff like the soda can gun?

Home, at least to drop off her bag, then streaming video and art.  Or… library.  The library was such a walk though.  Ugh.

She was across the bridge before she was free of the mass of students leaving school.  She passed by the lot where the kitty had been.  No Jeremy.  Some mom had brought over an inflatable pool and left it there.  Kids aged seven to nine had removed their shoes and socks to kick water around.

Two turns through the maze of houses on the west side of Kennet, and she was on her street.  Aside from a woman watering her garden with a hose, it was empty.

Man, she should have asked to borrow the rope.  She could have used it to get home faster in a time like this.

Her dad’s car was in the driveway.  Her heart sank.

When had that started being the case?  When was the last moment Verona had been excited or happy at the thought that her dad was home?

Or that he was right around the corner?  She thought back to birthdays, to imminent presents, and days that were supposed to be hers, like Christmas, or Halloween, and… nothing.

At least, not after the divorce.  And before the divorce, her parents hadn’t really been people.  They’d been more nebulous authority figures.  People you loved because you were supposed to love them, you were full of love, and life hadn’t ground that love out of you.

Good memories like cakes and costumes and trips and stuff helped keep it afloat.

Asking her dad to be someone she could count on just one important time and being let down?  It sank it.

She let herself into the house.  On instinct and habit, she made the opening and closing of the door quiet, so the lock wouldn’t make much noise, and so the door wouldn’t bang.

How long had it been since she’d started doing that, in hopes that he wouldn’t know she was home for a little while?

It made the moment feel heavier, and it made her feel vaguely angry, like she was gearing up for the next fight, before anything had even happened.  She hated being angry.  Because, like they’d been warned about giving the Faerie thanks, because the Faerie might take those thanks in a bigger way, being angry meant she was giving her dad something.

She unloaded her books, putting them off to the side of the front door.  Quick and quiet.

She hated this.  She hated this she hated it she hated it.

He was in the kitchen, close enough to hear her.  He carried glasses to the cabinet from beside the sink, ones she’d washed last night.

She felt like she was on the cusp of flipping out on him and nothing had even happened yet.  She hated it.

She hated this.  She couldn’t stand five more years of feeling like this.

“You there?  Hello?  Lost in thought?” he asked.

“I’m here,” she said, shifting her weight to one foot, bag dangling from her hand, brushing against the ground.  “I was thinking I’d head to the library, read up on stuff.”

“I’m heading over that direction soon.  A key on my keyboard is sticking and I’m going to buy a replacement.  Do you need anything from there?”

“A game?  Your computer’s working okay?”

“I haven’t really played video games in a few years.  My computer’s fine.”

“Well, that’s good.  Mine’s slow but I can’t replace it for a while.  Money, you know.”

“If you’re willing to tolerate my company, do you want a ride?” he asked.  “We can swing by Killaloe Dough, I can drop you off at Global Sustainable, then if you want, I can pick you up when I’m done and we can get food, or you can go to the library from there, and I’ll give you some money for grabbing food on your way back.”

Killaloe Dough made flat, fried pastries, and could be topped with sugar and cinnamon, or savory stuff.  Right now, fried dough with a spinach and cheese topping was really frigging tempting.

Global Sustainable’s whole thing was that they engaged only with countries and areas that were in need, and maintained only healthy deals that bettered communities.  Stuff from there was expensive, with a lot of tribal stuff, rugs, art, pottery, and, Verona’s favorite, some embossed, leather-bound notebooks and sketchbooks.

And it was a long walk to get to the library.

“I’m thinking,” she said.

He carried more dishes from the drying rack to the cupboards, watching her.  He was wearing a white tee with a company logo on it, and jeans.  Not work wear.  Big, hair short and greasy-spiky with whatever he put in it, his belt pulling in tight against his lower belly in a way that made Verona wonder how he could tolerate it.

This was a ploy, she knew, to get back into her good graces.  He had to be aware that things were bad after she’d spit in his face.  He hadn’t even mentioned it, or said much except that she wasn’t allowed to stay over at Lucy’s.

And now this.  This was the balance.  Back and forth.  What was normal for Lucy and Jasmine was an enticement from Verona’s dad.  Being asked, being given options.  A bit of normal.

“Alright,” her dad said.  “Want to help me put stuff away, first?”

She did.  Or, when they almost collided with each other three times in short succession, she headed over to the sink and washed some stuff while he continued putting things away.  They’d stacked up in what Verona had kind of felt was an impressive arrangement of plates and glasses, and a drying rack in the middle of the kitchen was more convenient to get plates and glasses from than a cupboard, but… whatever.  Tidying up, fine.

“Had a half day at work today,” her dad said.  “Trying to use the opportunity to get stuff done.”

“The IT team really dropped the ball.  Server isn’t connecting to anything on anyone’s workstation, and Renault said it’ll take so long to fix we might as well go home.  I don’t know why we pay the IT team, because this is the third crisis in a month.  When things are working again, we’ll have a bunch of updates, twice the work to do to catch up and meet the big deadline, and then Louis is… a constant slacker, I don’t even know how he hasn’t been fired.  You remember Louis, right?”

“He alone means I have to do twice the work.  He made a massive mess of the client lists last month and I’m still working on that one.”

“Hard to believe he hasn’t been fired,” Verona said, to entertain her dad.

“Renault has been saying he’d fire Louis for five or six months now.  He just can’t muster up the balls to do it.”

“And now my computer’s not working, it’s running so slow.  I’d ask you to fix it if I didn’t think you’d play some prank on me.”

He nudged Verona, elbow to shoulder, smiling.  She kept her expression neutral.

“You’ve done a few,” he told her.

“Yeah.”  She’d screenshotted his desktop and moved the icons, and changed his autocomplete to replace one coworker’s name with another, and put tape over the mouse laser.

She’d also used notepad, copied down code she’d found on the web, that made warning and startup sounds go off every two to fifty hours, and set the ‘code’ to run at startup.  A couple of times a week she heard it from her dad’s room, sometimes followed by cursing.  He didn’t know it was her doing.

She smiled at the thought.

“There we go,” her dad said.  “A smile.”

Her expression went neutral again.

He set his hand on top of her head, and she shrank down, lowering her head until she basically had no neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “The IT stuff at work, and Louis, and god, the company culture, with the younger coders and everything, it’s gotten to me.  I’m sorry for my part in what happened the other night.”

If I asked you, would you be able to tell me what you did wrong? she wondered.

She didn’t say it out loud.  “Okay.  Thanks.”

“I want to do right by you.  It’s why I work so hard.  For your sake.”

“I put laundry on earlier.  Let me go grab that, or it’ll get musty and the clothes will wrinkle before I can hang them up.”

She looked in the direction of the front door.

“Can you grab a laundry basket for me?  I did some of the socks and underwear.  It’ll be the last thing, I promise.”

This had to be better, right?  Walking the line of ‘tolerable’, to get to almost normal.  It was annoying and tense and she felt like she had to bite her tongue with every other exchange, but it was better than feeling like she was going to flip out on him from just seeing him.  Right?

She went down to the basement with him, and he opened the washer and dryer, transferring the dry clothes to the basket.  “Did you order those clothes?”

He wasn’t facing her, so he couldn’t see her nod.  She was tempted to grab the basket and walk away.  “Yeah,” she said.

If he could kinda reach out, she could kinda reach back.

Plus spinach and cheese at Killaloe Dough.

“When’s it arriving?”

“I dunno.  Stuff ordered from the States takes a while sometimes.”

“It’s also more expensive.”

“Sometimes.  This wasn’t.”

“Okay,” he said.  “Sock basket is on the chair.”

‘The chair’ was one of the flimsy stackable office chairs he’d brought down to furnish what was eventually meant to be an apartment for some renter.  The handle was one that Verona had intentionally dinged and banged with the door of the dryer on every passage, and was now chewed up enough it bit into her hand as she lifted it.  Small prices to pay for the small stress reliefs of yesterday.

She carried it up the two flights of stairs to the upstairs, and sorted out the laundry.  Socks were paired, and some of the more similar pairs of hers were mismatched, which she wouldn’t have cared about if she’d matched them, because who really cared if socks matched perfectly.  Her dad’s socks were all the same, so matching them was easy.

Her dad also just dropped underwear into the basket, with hers on one side and his on the other.  Gross briefs she really didn’t want to touch, and a bunch of her stuff, with some tangled-up bras.

She put her stuff away, dropped his socks into his sock drawer, and kicked the basket with his underwear so it slid over to the corner.  She wasn’t touching that.

Then she grabbed her school stuff from the front hall and took it to her room, setting it out and looking over the notes from the project for Ms. Hardy’s class.

She heard her dad ascend the stairs, and felt that dread and disappointment, like she’d felt on seeing his car in the driveway.  Then she dismissed the feeling.  It was reflex at this point.

She heard her dad putting laundry away in the hall closet.  Her door opened simultaneous with the knock her dad made.  He tossed her her ratty sweater.

She bit her tongue on the knocking thing.  She tossed her sweater onto her bed, and followed him out, just in time to see him turn on his television.

“Going to check the weather report.  Five minutes.”

She put a show on for the theme song music, spread out her homework, and made some tentative answers.

The show ended.  She ventured out of her room.

Her dad was lying on his bed, over the covers, pants and shoes on, hands folded over his belt buckle.

“I’ve been waiting for this episode.  I was thinking, do you want to do dinner instead?” he asked.

She retreated back to her room.  She put on another show, one aimed at people more like Booker and maybe Lucy’s Aunt Heather, all dramatic and dark and ‘sexy’, and tried to ignore the sounds of her dad’s comedy show, too loud, in the next room.  Canned laughter.

She watched, bored, through a makeout scene involving two women, and wondered if Avery would want the recommendation or if they wouldn’t be her type, or if it’d be offensive or whatever.  Was it really for people like Avery?

The episode ended, and the next one began, with a twenty-something guy getting out of bed in just his underwear.  She went back and forth a few times, paused, and used him as a study, drawing.

She put down her pencil and sketchpad.  When she left her room, it was in the same way she’d come into the house.  Quick and quiet.  Not making a sound.

But she did venture into her dad’s room.  His pants were lying by the door, the lights hadn’t ever been turned on, but the room had gone dark because the sun had set.  There was only the light from the TV.

Her dad had a sheet pulled up to his belly.

“I thought we were going to go out,” she told him.

“You didn’t seem that excited about it,” he said.

She hated this.  She hated this so much.  She hated it hated it hated it.

She wanted to push that television over.  She wanted to scream at him.  She hated that she’d entertained him even that little, listening to him and she hated that she was letting him get any emotion out of her at all.

“What?” he asked, indignant, as she stared at him.

This wasn’t even a plan on his part.  His plans were more transparent.  She could work around his plans and ploys and read him like a book when it came to stuff like him wanting to fix their relationship after Sunday night.  But this was the sort of things she wouldn’t and couldn’t adapt to.

“Can you preheat the oven for dinner?” he asked.  “I’ll pop something in ten minutes.  Or you can, if you want a choice over what we eat.”

“And rotate the laundry while you’re downstairs?  It’ll only take five minutes.”

She turned to go, deliberately stepping on his work pants by the door, to leave a grey footprint on them.

“Please and thank you!” he called after her, even though she wasn’t gone.

She kicked the pants down the hall so she could step on them again.  She felt the weight of his wallet against her toe, bent down, and pulled it out.  Sixty bucks.

“Oh, Verona!” he called after her.  “Can you check if there’s milk while you’re setting the oven?  If there isn’t I’ll give you money to run to the convenience store, and you can buy us both snacks.”

“I steal, and that seems to me that it’s probably karmically bad,” she murmured, holding the money between her hands, like she was praying.  “But he wronged me.  He pledged and he did not deliver.  I don’t feel this is wrong.”

She considered, then put twenty back.  She kicked the pants back to the door of his room.

Then, grabbing her bag, lighter with only her spell stuff, hat, and mask in it, she headed out, slamming the door behind her.

My mistake, she thought.  Like giving the Faerie thanks, I gave him something.  A bit of hope that things could be normal.

Now I’ve got less than I ever did.

More than half of Kennet was dark now.  But here, ‘downtown’, it was bright.  The lights were orange and artificial, the rest of Kennet dark blue.  The air was hot and the people who were out seemed to be idling.  Like there wasn’t much to do except sit in a parking lot and dick around, talking.

Verona ate her fried pastry, trying to control the paper so it caught the drippings of oil from the bottom end, while one finger was hooked into the little ventilation hole for a box of fries, dangling.

She could imagine that she felt like an Other.  When pretty much everyone who was out was out as a family, or gathering as a group, or dating, or something.

It was beautiful, viewing it as an outsider.  Bright and dark and living and it was any number of interlocked, interrelated systems that she had next to no interest in.

She didn’t even need her Sight to make it all seem strange.

Logos and brands she didn’t buy into.  Ads and bright signs that drove her away rather than pull her in.  Music she didn’t love and fashion that didn’t appeal.  If it wasn’t for Lucy, she might have already left it behind.

She’d bought a notebook with a panther or something embossed on the cover, along with braided leather at the edges and a bit more leather as a built-in bookmark.  She’d bought some school supplies, and picked up a black top with a lot of white lace at the straps and uppermost edge.  She’d worn it out of the store and now her skin faintly itched, probably because it was covered in chemicals that needed to be washed out before first wearing.

It was as if everyone in the crowd was walking left or right, except for one person that stood still.  A woman with long brown hair, wearing a red dress and sandals with straps that wound their way halfway up her calves.

She seemed familiar, and she seemed to stand outside of the flows and currents of the people around them.

Verona switched to her Sight.  The world was plunged into darkness and wrapped in cocoons.  All around her, red masses pressed against the transparent films, writhing and bustling.  The people in the crowd that were watching televisions through the window now watched a bit of red meat with a band of teeth corkscrewing down from its ‘head’ to its ankles, headbutting a bit of meat that hung from the store ceiling by stretches of tendon, like someone turned inside out and bound in their own flesh.

Verona would have loved to study and decipher that, to work out the why of it, because cool, or smirk at kids staring and acting like it was normal, but the woman…

The woman had the same hair and expression, and stood in a similar stance, but she wore a white dress, painted ninety percent red by the blood that flowed from fresh bite wounds at her chin, at her ear, at her neck, shoulder, breast, and side.  Most of one hand was missing, and blood ran freely down to the ground.  The strappy sandals were gone; both of her legs were missing, one mid-calf, one at the knee.  Replaced with splintered wooden pegs that dug into raw, gnawed flesh.  She swayed slightly, unbalanced on those feet.

The Winner.  The woman Avery had saved.

The woman turned, staggering away at a good clip.  Verona turned off her Sight, and the woman was striding, instead.

Verona started forward, weaving through the crowd.  Past a man with film wrapped around his head, the film expanding out into a bubble and sucking halfway into his mouth with each effortful breath.  Past a younger girl with film around her eyes.

If it was Avery, Verona felt like she would be able to do this well.  Avery was quick, good at navigating crowds.

Lucy… probably would have done something.  Shouted.  In a way that mattered.

Verona didn’t even know what she should say or do if she did catch up, so she didn’t shout.  When it came to navigating, she felt like groups, pairs, families were the biggest obstacles, moving slowly and moving together.

It didn’t help that she was short, or that she hated running and didn’t have a lot of practice.  She couldn’t see over people’s heads.

Sight.  When she used it, she was tricked over and over again, seeing red behind film and thinking it was the red dress, but she could see the blood that dripped off the woman.  Sometimes other blood, leaking through the plastick-y cocoon film, but usually hers, if she was willing to look down long enough to spot the trail.

If she turned it off, there was less deception, and she could navigate the crowd better.

She followed the trail, crossing the street, and had to quadruple-check to be sure the light was giving the right signal to cross, because it felt like that was the sort of thing her Sight would mess with her on.  Across the street, and the light changed before she could cross.  The woman was on the far side of the street, moving parallel.

Verona ducked through the crowd, stepping onto the road for a few paces to get around a cluster of older folks.

What was she doing here?  Was she a threat?  Something else?

Verona waited impatiently for the next set of lights to change.  Her eyes scanned the crowd, trying to find the woman.  Then she crossed.  The corner she was walking toward had a mom with a toddler in a carriage way too frigging big for the sidewalk real estate.  The toddler was screaming and flailing.

Verona used the Sight to see if there was anything going on there, and… there wasn’t, she was pretty sure.  But the wrapping around the kid was loose, and every flail was scattering fluids around.  The red stain that spread around the toddler was obscuring the trail.

Verona kept walking, scanning the ground.  An abandoned storefront had tarp over the front.  To her Sight, it was like foggy plastic sheeting, and an eyeless, mouthless, armless man rubbed his face against the sheeting, making it poke out.

“See her?” she asked him.  “Woman with the chewed feet.”

He jerked his head to one side.

She reversed course, looking both ways twice before jogging across the street.

She found the trail, but it was a minute old, trampled by passing feet.  She did her best to track it, while pulling out her phone.

“I’m here,” Lucy said.  “What’s up?”

“Here where?  Where is here?” Verona asked, a bit absently.  She searched the ground.

“My mom’s, still.  Reconnecting, why?”

“Woman from the Choir is here.  Downtown.  The one Avery saved.  She’s wandering, but I can’t track her.”

“Do you need me to come?  It’s tough for me to get away.”

“I’ll call Avery.  She could get here fast.”

“Good luck.  Want me to handle anything?”

“Call Matthew and Edith?  Let them know?”

Verona hung up, then hit the button for Avery.

“Hi, Verona.  What’s up?”

Chatter could be heard in the background.  Overlapping voices of different pitches and volumes.

“The winner from the Choir is here.  Downtown.”

“I’m downtown.  Where are you?”

“By the vet’s, heading north.”

“Right!” Avery exclaimed, then hung up.

Verona blinked a few times, then refocused.  She could appreciate that kind of brevity.  Doing away with the crap.

There weren’t any good bits of meat to ask, and no trail of blood, but she was pretty sure the woman had headed this way, by process of elimination.  Outside of a bar, a bunch of older people who looked like life had dealt them hard hands were all standing in a cloud of accumulated smoke from their cigarettes.

“A bit late to be out on your own, isn’t it?” one older man asked.

Verona ignored him, hurrying ahead.

“I can’t find her!” a kid’s voice screeched.

Avery made a grunting sound like she’d just jumped from a high place as she stepped out from beside a light-post, falling into stride beside Verona.  Snowdrop scrambled to catch up, with legs shorter than even Verona’s.  She looked up at Verona, eyes wide and surrounded with dark rings from apparent lack of sleep, biting her upper lip so that her teeth and the gaps where teeth should be were on display.  Her eyes flicked down.

Verona looked down.  She was still holding the last third of the fried dough with spinach.

She handed it over, and Snowdrop began devouring it.

“What are we looking for?” Avery asked.

“Red dress, brown hair.  With my Sight, it looked like she was bitten all over.  There was a blood trail, but I lost it.”

Avery nodded.  “Do we have anything from the Choir?  The paper?”

“Back at my place.  I’m always nervous it’ll get free of the little binding circle we did.”

“Dang.  Okay.  Eyes open.  She’s around here?”

“She’s downtown, I thought she headed north, and I don’t think she stepped into any stores, unless she slipped into the bar back there.”

“She saw you?  She’s running?”

“I don’t think so and I don’t think so.”

“Okay.  Split up?  You stay with Snowdrop?”

“Keep an eye out for the goblins.  They’re around.”

Verona gave Avery the thumbs up.

Then Avery walked the other way around a tree that was planted in a little circle of earth on the sidewalk, and was gone.

Cool.  Good to have backup.

Verona divided her attention between her phone, updating Lucy, and searching for the blood trail.

Snowdrop took in a deep breath, like she’d been eating at a pace that didn’t let her breathe.  All finished.

“One of my favorites, that,” Verona said.

“Can you smell blood trails?  Or anything else hinky?”

“I’m like a bloodhound,” Snowdrop said.

“Right,” Verona said.

They zig-zagged, and on seeing Avery on the far side of the street, Verona chose a course that covered more ground, along the other sidewalk.

“How’s Ave?” Verona asked.

“She’s great.  A bit of a wimp, though.  Such a loser.”

“You’re looking after her?”

“Nah.  Screw that.  Not my job.”

It wasn’t just that tracking the woman required her to keep up, but every time she got off course, she was taking steps away, which necessitated two steps to catch up once she was on track again.

Had she gone into a store?  What were the stores?  Would the flayed things have signaled her or reacted more if she’d gone inside?

“What were you doing?” Verona asked.

Snowdrop looked over at Avery.  “I’m keeping secrets from her.”

“Steering her away from little hiding spots and weird ways to get around.  The first one was the goblin hideyhole.”

Verona checked both ways, then jogged across the street as soon as the way was clear.

“Handprints,” Avery said.  “She was missing fingers, right?”

“The handprints are too.  And there’s some trailing bits of ribbon in the wind.”

Verona couldn’t see it, but she could take Avery at her word.

The road they were going down wasn’t a busy one.  It ran parallel to the off-ramp onto the highway, and led to some residences at the base of the mountain.  A lot of them were constructed so the rainy runoff from the mountain would flow around them, and the very base of the mountain itself was damp from the rain of two days prior, not yet dried up because of the shadow the mountain cast, or the sheer quantity of moisture.

Jaundiced yellow eyes glowed in the gloom.  Then red pinpoints.  A single yellow eye and light reflecting off of a lens.

Off to the side of the road, three goblins moved through the ditch, Toadswallow and Gashwad almost climbing over one another in their hurry and bustle.

“Snowdrop was showing you good hiding places?” Verona asked Avery.

“Uhh, ways through places.  Some ways into buildings.  The goblins showed her, she showed me.  She led me to Munch from Downtown’s place.  We were talking.”

“Nothing particular.  I was killing time, mostly.  Putting off going home.”

“Your dad?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.  The usual, pretty much.  Just… maybe the last straw.”

Verona saw blood.  She pointed, and then tracked the trail off to the side.  A dirt road.

“Nothing that major.  One more promise broken,” Verona said.  She pulled off her bag, then got her mask and cape.  “This feels dangerous.”

Avery nodded, pulling stuff off her charm bracelet, and shaking them until they grew to full size, dust rolling off of them.

“Face it head on!” Snowdrop exclaimed, eyes wide.

“Yeah!” the three goblins echoed her.

“We should be okay, Snow,” Avery said, her deer mask in place.  To Verona’s sight, the strap of the mask was a ribbon, blowing in the wind.  So was the band that held her ponytail in place, and the length of what would’ve been chain, tying the dog tag into place around her cloak, at her collarbone, “We have backup.”

She gave Verona a look, as if to communicate what she couldn’t with words.  They did have backup, but it was unreliable backup.  The local Others were nervous about things, and that could extend to the goblins.

“I can’t look my Granddad in the eyes.  I can’t sleep, but if I toss and turn then my sisters give me flack,” Avery said.  “While I was stuck on the trail, I wanted nothing more than to be back and home.  Then I got home and… I want a vacation from home.”

“I want a vacation from home every day,” Verona said.

“I kinda get it now,” Avery said.  “And I really don’t intend any offense saying this- not sure I should say it.”

“Don’t say it,” Snowdrop said.

“Say it,” Verona told her friend.

“It scares me.  I don’t mean anything bad, I don’t mean I dislike you or think there’s anything bad about you, but-”

“Nah,” Verona answered.  “Nah, I get that.  It’s good.  That’s good.”

“Don’t- I’m so worried that even if you’re okay with it now, you’ll resent me later.”

“Nah,” Verona said.  “Not wanting your family situation to become like mine is… common sense.  Reality.  I’m not Lucy, and I’m not going to get cranky.  I think I get what you mean.”

“The moments where things are good at home are… so nice.  When Grumble is telling me he’s proud of me and how I’m doing at sports, and I can barely understand him, and when my brothers and sisters are on my side against the parents, or the parents are defending me against my siblings, or there’s a thing everyone thinks is funny, like Grumble trying to play bum darts at Christmas, and dad trying to keep him from falling over while he’s laughing so hard… that’s family, you know?”

Verona scanned the area, searching for blood.  She looked at the goblins, who jostled one another.

She really, really wished she knew, or could remember a good time when she knew.

“On Sunday, when you were gone and we couldn’t get you back,” Verona said.

“I needed him to not let me down.  I think if he could’ve had my back and given me the benefit of a doubt just that once, if he could’ve considered the world beyond him and himself… I could have eventually forgiven him for just about anything he’s done.  But he didn’t.  So I left.  I cut connections and I stayed out the whole night, slept in the cabin where you were stuck.”

“I didn’t know you stayed out all night.”

“Talked to Charles, but he left.  Kept an eye on you.  Snowdrop too.”

“Thanks Snowdrop.  Thank you for worrying, Verona.”

“You owe me one,” Snowdrop said.

Verona continued, “Not looking for thanks, just… filling you in.  Lucy relieved me in the morning.  We passed the baton, so to speak, to Matthew and Edith.  Lucy made me go to school.”

Avery pointed at the ground, then pointed in a direction.

They changed course a bit.

“I think because of the connections shenanigans, my dad’s been a bit in my face.  Trying a litle harder, for a little longer… and it’s still not even trying.  Today, it was a super small thing.  A ride, and a cinnamon roll.”

“The cinnamon rolls from the dumpster are the worst,” Snowdrop said.

“Decadent dumpster rolls,”  Toadswallow said, batting his belly.

“He let you down again?” Avery guessed.

“It shouldn’t be this that gets to me this much,” Verona said.  “But the big things and the little things and… I think I might be done trying.  And I think if you want to avoid going down this road… maybe fight a little harder.  Because it was somehow really easy to let things get to this point.”

“It’s hard,” Avery said.  “The family stuff.  Like, the good moments are so good and I want those, but the rest of it is work and… I’m really tired, ever since Sunday.”

Verona looked and saw a meaty thing hanging from the tree by its ankles.  The wrapping around it was giving it a wedgie, and it thrashed, flayed skin bulging around and past the wrapping.

She ventured closer, breaking away from Avery.

“Good,” Avery said, waving over the goblins.

But as the goblins arrived, Verona motioned for them to go ahead.  “Give us a bit of privacy?”

“So we can talk,” Verona added.

“Do you want me to stay?” Snowdrop asked.

“You can stay,” Verona said.

They followed the trail for another minute.  Verona tried to work through the implications.

“I don’t want you to tell Lucy this.”

“Tell her what?  You’re making me nervous.”

“I don’t think I have it in me to stick around,” Verona said.

“Stick around, like… you’re leaving Kennet?  Staying with your mom?”

“No, no.  Like, I don’t ever want to leave Lucy.  Or you, for that matter.  You’re important to me.  But I can’t bear my dad, so much of the time.  And every time something like today happens, it gets harder.”

Avery nodded, swatting at her neck where a bug had settled.

Verona scanned the surroundings with her Sight, to make sure nothing was weird.

Just regular bugs.  They were in the woods now, and the damp runoff from the mountain made this territory for mosquitoes and blackflies.

“I was thinking of becoming Other.  Except when I hinted at it, Lucy freaked.”

Behind her deer mask, Avery’s eyes went wider, mist rolling over the surface, the edges of the irises and the black of the pupils clear in that foggy green soup.

“I thought, feeling like you do right now, maybe you’d understand.”

“I kind of do and I’m kind of geez,” Avery told her.  “That’s… a big decision.”

“And every bit we hear about what it’s like to be Alpeana and work and have to keep intact, and the scariness of practitioners, and Edith and Matthew running into roadblocks, or life being harder, I get that.  I’ve been listening so carefully.  But I’m also  like… fuck, I hate moaning about my feelings.”

“If you’re not going to do it with your friend, in a dark forest, in the company of an awesome opossum and a bunch of degenerate goblins, when are you going to moan?” Avery asked.

She still didn’t volunteer more.

Avery pointed out handprints that Verona’s sight couldn’t see.

Verona liked the idea that one of them could pick up where the other left off, with only periodic stopping to find the trail again.  If Lucy was here, would the three of them together be able to follow this trail without interruption?  Leaning on each other, each offering their own power?

She simultaneously wished Lucy was here with as much intensity as she’d wanted anything since getting Avery back, and was really, really frigging glad that Lucy wasn’t present.

“You never finished your thought,” Avery said.

“It was just that.  A thought.  I dunno.”

“It sounded like more than that.  Dish.”

“Dish.  I’ll be Lucy-like if I have to,” Avery told her, stern.

“I feel like I could go crazy, when it’s bad.  So then I think, hey, there’s a way out.  Become an Other, leave it all behind.  And it’s not always a serious thought, but it’s like… bam.  All that feeling that’s been building up has a place to go that’s not inside me.  But to keep doing that, I have to keep considering it, more and more seriously, and I don’t know what happens later.  Do I lose it and do something I regret?  Or do I snap and find myself doing what I used to just be considering?”

“I don’t know,” Avery said.  “But if it’s that serious, maybe talk to Lucy?”

“It’s so stupid, that a car ride is what’s getting to me this much,” Verona said.

“Nah.  I freaked out and left dinner over a singing show.  I think Lucy gets it too.”

“And it’s even stupider that I’m moaning about this crap, and you went through… scary stuff.  And you have to be feeling weird, walking through the woods at night.”

“I am, some.  But I can deal.  I’m trying to be braver, and chase the me I want to be,” Avery said.

“And I’m trying to be the most useless little shit,” Snowdrop piped up. “I’ll heck off and leave Avery high and dry, you can look after her, and to hell with your own problems.”

“Thanks, Snowdrop,” Verona said, then to Avery, “I’m glad you have her.  But let me know, if you need to talk or vent or whatever?  Because I don’t know how to help you handle this thing you went through, and I want to help you handle it, so let me know and I’ll be super glad to.”

Avery nodded.  “I don’t know how to handle it either.”

They chased the trail, and it was getting thinner.

They were slower than the woman was, because they had to find their way.

“I haven’t seen your shirt today,” Verona told Snowdrop.

Snowdrop unzipped her jacket.

Verona gave her a thumbs up.

“Love the shirts,” Avery said.

“Where do you get ’em?” Verona asked.

“They’re a part of her, like her hair or teeth, or the buttons on her hood,” Avery said.

“Nuh uh!” Snowdrop made a sound of protest.

They followed the trail deeper into the woods.  There was a little house or cabin down the way, and it looked a bit like the trail was going that way, but then it turned.

Verona ventured, “So, hypothetically, if I found a tv show with a cool woman-woman relationship, and probably-hot topless making out, would you want me to fire you a link, or…”

“If it’s got nudity, I think that’s blocked at my house.”

“That’s a thing parents actually do?  Frig.  Would you want to come over to check it out, or would that be weird?”

“That’d be weird.  Like watching with my siblings in the room.”

“Don’t you do practically everything in your house with siblings-?”

The conversation stopped short.  The goblins were hunkered down by trees, and Toadswallow pressed a finger to his lips.  Cherrypop was with the group now.

Bluntmunch motioned for the three of them to come closer.

Off in the distance, peeking through the trees, was a diffuse light.

“Cherrypop f- messed up,” Bluntmunch growled.  He lightly punched Cherrypop with a fist about as big as she was.

“Augh!” Cherrypop exclaimed.

“I dare say, this fetid little bit of shat was supposed to watch this last mile perimeter.  She’s derelict in her duties.”

“A mile of perimeter sounds like a lot,” Avery said.

“Yeah!  A friggin’ lot!” Cherrypop piped up.

“Quiet!” Bluntmunch snarled, swatting her lightly.

“What’s ahead?” Verona asked.

“Your woman.  And a stranger with summons.”

“Summons as in- like, a practitioner?”

“One of the ones who was nosing around,” Toadswallow said.  “It seems they’ve done away with some of the spirits we set up, and are finding their way in.  A somewhat innocent dame can go where a practitioner or errant Other might make a ward fart or a traps go off.”

“A goblin ward.  You start with a good round animal, like a hedgehog or owl, a bit of wire to tie it down, some soda, cabbage, or other gassy food, gotta treat it to make it more gassy, then a bit of gum, to plug up its-”

“Okay, okay, I think I can see where that goes,” Avery told him.

“They go off violently enough you can hear the detonations from miles away, sometimes,” Bluntmunch said.  “Especially if you have an ear for it.  They stopped before setting off one, and Cherry didn’t spot ’em.”

Cherrypop wailed until a hand was clamped over her mouth and head, pressing her down.

“You gotta deal with them,” Bluntmunch said.  “It gets messy if we do.”

“I’ll call Matthew and Edith,” Avery said.  “Verify, decide a course of action.”

Verona nodded.  She pulled out her own phone.

“We can be your backup,” Bluntmunch told them.  “You can call John.  I’ll bring some more with, so we outnumber them.”

Verona texted Lucy.  While she did, she asked, “What are they doing?”

“Sitting in the car and talking,” Bluntmunch said.

“But they’re not leaving?”

Bluntmunch shook his head.

Snowdrop pulled her head down, then ducked ahead.

“Hey, sorry to call so late.  We’re at the perimeter with the local goblins,” Avery said.

Lucy’s response was pointed.  Be Safe.

“…outside practitioner.  Cherrypop apparently messed up-”

Cherrypop made a sound, beneath Bluntmunch’s hand.

“-and they got close.  Sent the winner from the Hungry Choir ritual in.  We don’t know what she did or got.  Blunt says we should handle it.”

“The Goblins are offering backup.  We can call John.”

Avery hung up.  She gave Verona a serious look.

“I can call friends,” Bluntmunch said.

“He’s good at that.  Having dregs he can call,” Gashwad said.  “Not good at much else though, are yeh?”

Bluntmunch shifted his grip on Cherrypop, then flung her at the other two.  “Keep her quiet.”

Toadswallow and Gashwad fought each other to be the one to hold onto the smallest goblin.  Cherrypop squeaked.

Bluntmunch prowled across the area, found a tree with a decent sized hole in it, and spat in his hand.  He drew in the spit, then shoved his hand into the hole.

He brought out a goblin, kicking, scrabbling and making sounds of protest, then held a calloused mitt to their mouth.  The goblin was hairless, pear-shaped, alarmingly smooth, and wore frilly granny panties.

“You can call this one-”

“Mind your manners and keep it f’ing polite,” Toadswallow warned.

“-Butty McButtbutt,” Bluntmunch said, deadpan, and the expression on his twisted face made it look like he was dying inside.

He repeated the process twice more.

Another goblin, of Gashwad’s size, with dreads that trailed to the ground, and a chimp-like build with overlong arms.  The face behind the dreads was perpetually snarling.

And a female goblin, with asymmetric muscle that formed a ridge most of the way down her spine, twisting her upper body and head into a question mark shape.  One of her arms was twice as long as the other, and bristled with hooks and needles stuck through the skin, until there was more metal visible than flesh.

She fought the hardest, raking Bluntmunch’s arm four or five times and backhanding him across the face before she seemed to recognize him, where she retreated.  She had one eye that glowed in the dark as she backed up into shadow, so round it didn’t look like an eye in the dark.  The other was lost in the scarred mess at the right side of her face.

“So disappointing, I told you to mind your mother-molesting manners,” Toadswallow said, shaking his head.

“That was politer,” Bluntmunch said.  “These three are some regulars from my crew, when it’s not the Kennet goblins.  You’ll see them around some.”

Butty smiled, ear to ear, showing off mismatched yellow and black teeth that were at odds with how smooth and pink he was, beady black eyes unblinking.  He rubbed his belly with both hands, and it distended, like organs beneath the surface rolled over one another and pushed against skin in the process, or sat out of place until they could slide into another position.

“What’s this?” Snatch asked.

“Might be a fight.  I’ll pay you.  Double if it isn’t one,” Blunt said.

She nodded, glowing eye moving up and down in the dark.  Doglick yipped.

Verona got her cards, and pulled out the thorn, moving it to a position where it was available if she needed to grab it.

Avery pulled a hockey stick charm from her bracelet, and shook it out to full length.  Diagrams were already drawn on it.

“How many of those do you have?”

“This is the second last of two,” Avery said.  Her eyes were misty green behind her mask.  She looked out toward the light.

When they moved, it was at the same time, without signal.  Ducking through branches and beneath trees, goblins following.

It’s not out of the question the goblins attack us, Verona reminded herself.  Bluntmunch might be at odds with the deal he made during awakening, if he did, but… he might not, too.  If the non-Kennet goblins lashed out and he wasn’t fast enough.

She kept an ear out for them.  Her Sight helped with making her way in the dark.

Avery, rope in one hand, stick in the other, passed through the trees to Verona’s right, emerged at her left, then returned to the right again.

The car was at least ten years old, a station wagon with wood panel sides that had seen better years, with an antenna sticking out the top.  The headlights were bright enough to illuminate the dirt road.

The practitioner leaned against the hood.  Maybe sixteen or seventeen, he wore a wife beater, jeans, and had a denim jacket tied around his waist.  He was short, stocky, with light brown skin, and hair that had been shaved at the sides and grown longer on top, slicked back. A bandanna sat around his neck, red.

The woman was beside him, wearing the red dress.  Her arms were folded, and she periodically waved her arms to dismiss the bugs.

A radio from the car buzzed, ninety percent static, overlapping with the static from a smaller radio that sat on the hood of the car.  He reached over and adjusted the dial.  More television static than shadow, with very faint edges, a silhouette appeared by the car.  He adjusted again, and it became three.

“We’ve got company,” the practitioner said.

“Who?  What?  Where?” the woman asked.

He pointed right at Verona.

She ducked beneath a branch, fixed her hat, and stepped out onto the road, just to the side of the headlights.

Avery emerged on the far side of the road, a bit behind the pair.  She backed up as a static-y figure stepped out of the shadow, between her and the car.

“It’s them,” the woman said.  “The ones who saved me.”

“So it seems.  Unfortunately…”

“No need for anything unfortunate,” Avery said.

“They brought goblins.  You don’t bring goblins to a tea party.  You bring them to a mean fight.”

“Can we talk?” Verona asked.  “There’s a way to handle this peacefully.”

“If not, we get the car, radios,” Bluntmunch growled.  “They’re important to him.”

“Yeh,” Snatch replied.

Doglick snorted violently, walking up with Gashwad a foot to his right.

“You shouldn’t threaten a guy’s car,” the practitioner said.  “That crosses lines.”

“What’s that guy’s name?” Verona asked.  “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Zed, apprentice to Rad Ray Sunshine, and I was curious.  This sort of thing is my jam.”

“Uh huh,” Verona said.  “Verona.  Avery.  What thing is your jam?”

“Website, music, strange signals.  New-ish Others.”

“The Choir?” she asked.

“This place keeps coming up when we’re looking into it,” the woman in the red dress said.

“We never got your name,” Verona said.  She wished Lucy was here.  She liked Lucy being on point more than she liked being on point.

“Hi Brie,” Avery said, from the back.  As she paced, the static-y figure remained in the way.

More of the static figures kept between the car and the goblins.

“What will you do when you get the info you want?” Verona asked.

“Depends on a lot,” Zed replied.  He looked very casual, one hand in his pocket, the other by the radio, sitting back.  He glanced periodically at the goblins.  “I haven’t seen enough of it to know what I can do with it.  But I’d like to dismantle it for parts, so to speak.”

“We wouldn’t necessarily get in your way,” Verona told him.  “Your timing is awful though.  Why now?”

“It shifted patterns, ever so slightly.  First time that we’ve recorded that the new flyer came out and Kennet wasn’t on the list.  That makes me curious.  I think you’re at the heart of the pattern change, girls who intervened, and I know that makes the ritual weaker.”

“Zed thinks that if he can bind it, he can dampen it enough it’s not really active, but it won’t cut off the benefits,” Brie told them.

“What does not really active mean?” Avery asked.

“It means the ritual would continue, but it would be opt-in only.  It wouldn’t look for the rest of the contestants.  You might need to get eight willing participants together, to make it even work in the first place.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just stopped it once and for all?” Avery asked.

“If you did, then people like Brie who won wouldn’t get to keep the rewards.”

“Is that really that important?” Avery asked.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” Brie said.

“So’s keeping the ritual alive,” Avery retorted.

“Uh,” Verona butted in.

Zed locked eyes with her.

“This is stuff we could negotiate,” Verona said.  “But we have responsibilities.  Kennet is our turf, so to speak.  We’re the practitioners for this area, we are actually in the midst of getting a handle on this.  Negotiations really need to start with you agreeing to back off and ignore Kennet.  Then we can talk about giving you info, sharing resources…”

“Is there a chance your way of handling it ends the Choir?” Brie asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Verona admitted.  “This isn’t our full group.  We need to consult before we make any hard decisions.  And again… really need to get an agreement that you’ll ignore Kennet.”

Zed turned up the volume on the radio.  The static images clarified, the grey dots becoming stark white ones, the outlines firmer.  Now the static-y figures were making a static sound themselves.  In the midst of the static, Verona could hear murmurs, moans, and angry shouting, as if from far away, almost drowned out.

Yeah.  Verona could see how someone who collected these sorts of things might be interested in the Choir.

“Just asking for the sake of asking, right now.  Trying to get the full picture.”

“The fuller picture is that we can’t allow you to get the full picture.”

“That just makes me more curious.”

“Curiosity gets the cat dead, dear sir,” Toadswallow said, from the sidelines.

“Please don’t comment,” Avery said.  “You said you wanted us to handle this.”

“So you’re in charge?” Zed asked.  He shifted from leaning against the hood to standing.  He smiled.  “You keep implying threats, but I don’t get the sense you’re that bloodthirsty.  You have goblins but you’re not goblin queens.  You’re not carrying an assortment of nasty tricks.”

�We’ve got a couple.”

“But you’re not loaded to bear like one of them would be.  You’re not on the same page as them.  I’m so darn curious.”  He smiled, excited.

“That’s not good,” Verona said.  “We’re willing to cooperate, and I’d be happy to give you a good deal, but the big thing is your curiosity has to remain unsated.”

“Curiosity is what got me into the practice.”

“That’s great.  Me too, kinda.  But again… no go.”

“I think… my stubbornness in this trumps your willingness to dissuade me.  You’ve got some clout, but you’re not that aggressive.”

“We are,” Bluntmunch said.

“We’re the practitioners for this area, it’s our responsibility.  We’ve faced danger and hostility trying to protect it.”

“And you protect it.  I couldn’t get close for a while without something interfering.  A woman I couldn’t see, even with some really good tools.  Now she’s gone, and I still can’t get near, because there’s other layers of defense.  But she can get in.”

“I think, uh, she should stop,” Avery said.

“I rented a bed and breakfast for the week.”

“I hear bad stories about that place,” Verona said.  “Crackheads.”

“Yeah.  Saw some.  But I’m kind of stubborn too.  You don’t get through all eight rounds of the ritual without having something.”

“We helped you.  You could return the favor by backing off.”

She seemed to consider, then shook her head.

“Please?” Avery asked.

“It doesn’t feel like that chapter of my life’s ended.  My life is weird now.  Like everything’s disconnected.”

Verona winced.  “Could we strike another deal?  We’d have to consult-”

“With the third member of your group?” Brie asked.

Everyone, but- “Yes,” Verona confirmed.  “What about a deal that you could study, but you couldn’t share that knowledge, or use it against the Others here without permission?”

“Not good enough,” Toadswallow murmured, off to the side.

“I don’t operate that way,” Zed told them.  “Freedom of information is a personal precept of mine.”

“Girls,” Toadswallow said.

Both Avery and Verona looked at him.

“If he’s right, and you’re not willing to draw blood, we should think about consulting Mr. Stiles.”

“That sounds ominous,” Zed told them.  “Let’s say that if you try that, I’ll end up turning this volume knob up all the way.  And the voices in the static here will get agitated.”

“Try, and we’ll agitate your insides,” Bluntmunch told Zed.

“Let’s not start a fight,” Avery said.  “Can we-”

“We can’t,” Gashwad growled.  Doglick yipped.

“He won’t budge until we make him,” Bluntmunch said.

“Get in there, so John doesn’t have to,” Snowdrop said, off to the side.

Avery swayed on the spot, then backed up.

“We keep getting told, there’s something wrong with outside practitioners,” Verona said, as she backed up as well.  “This might be your last chance to prove them wrong.”

“Well, cat-faced Verona, that’s an interesting detail all on its own.”

“It’s not meant to be.”

“Back off?” Verona asked.

“I’m sorry too,” Avery said, off to Zed’s right.

Zed turned to look, but Avery was gone.

She was in the woods on the other side of the road, almost behind Zed.

And John emerged shortly after, striding forward, gun in hand.

Zed didn’t even see, but Brie did.

“Zed!” she shrieked, before lunging forward, grabbing Zed’s arm, and pulling him to the ground, as John fired three times in quick succession.

“Cassette!” Zed kicked the bumper of the car, and the car radio kicked on, blaring the opening sting of some old music.

“Crying…!” the radio blared, top volume.

John dropped his gun to point at Zed or Brie, when he twisted.  He was tackled by a man with a mullet, a wispy mustache, a tight shirt, and short-shorts.

“…cold tears!” the radio continued.

They hit the ground, and the gun went off, pressed against the attacker’s chin.  The bullet seemed to take the top of the man’s head off.  John put two more bullets in the man’s chest as he rose to his feet.  The car’s cassette player skipped.  Returning to the opening sting.

Verona put her hands to her ears, too late to matter, because they were ringing painfully.

“Crying cold tears!” the cassette player was still audible.  The song playing over from the beginning.

The man with the mullet was gone, reappearing, resuming the attack.  The foggy air around the car headlights had taken on a sunset tint.

The goblins swarmed, attacking the car.  Static silhouettes met them, wrapping arms around them and then blurring in shape, like they were amoebas trying to swallow them up.

Doglick was ferocious, snarling and clawing like he was on a video being played at double speed.  Snatch raked one with her messed up hand, snaring its ‘arm’, with Gashwad following up by biting the arm and nearly tearing it off.

John fired a bullet, dispatching the mullet man, which prompted the car’s cassette player to skip, and the mullet man’s reappearance.  He couldn’t find a free second to aim at anything else.

The gunshots seemed to make all of the static figures flicker or fade a bit.

Verona drew a card from her pocket, a marker from the other, and pulled the cap from it with her teeth.

But Zed had grabbed the radio, and cranked up the volume.

A static figure manifested out of nowhere, bright, and loud with static.

“Wartime, people everywhere scared, loss of life, and fear, panic-” the static man whispered at her.

The figure grabbed her wrist.

“We’re cut off from everyone, we’re surrounded by darkness, it’s hopeless, and this message can’t get out,” it whispered.

She dropped the marker, reached into her pocket with care, and pulled out the thorn.  She jabbed the static figure.

It dimmed, weakening, and all the others dimmed too.  The static quieted, just a bit, the voices becoming less distinct.

“A distress call, from anyone to everyone, it doesn’t matter when we’re all gone,” the figure whispered, quieter.

She was able to pull her hand free.  She kicked at it, which pushed her back more than it pushed it away, then shouted, “Card!”

John and Avery both covered their eyes.  Zed and Brie didn’t.  The card flashed, lighting up the area.

It served to incapacitate the mullet man, giving John the opportunity to twist around and fire bullets into the hood of the car, apparently aiming at the cassette player from the outside.  The bullets bounced off the hood, hit the windshield, and sparked there too.

He aimed at Zed, who was already taking cover behind an open car door, radio tucked under one arm.

“No killing!” Avery called out.  “Incapacitate, then we try negotiating again!”

The mullet man tackled John again.

It was chaos, so much noise.

The flash hadn’t affected the static figures, but it had affected the goblins.  They were being overwhelmed with the static radio at full volume, swamped and swallowed.

Avery cut through them with the hockey stick, weakening them enough that the goblins could fight free.

“Cherry!” Avery called out, lowering her stick.

Once the goblin had grabbed the stick, Avery used it to fling her forward, into the open window.  Or at it.  She clipped the side, grabbed it, then jumped into the back seat.

Verona reached for her cloak, finished the circle to drench herself in darkness, and stepped around the light, holding the thorn, still.  There was a chance it could hit the car’s protection, or if she could stick it where this ‘Zed’ practitioner couldn’t see it, it could be a way of getting him to back off.

More of the static rose up in her way.

“Here!”  Toadswallow, beneath the car, tossed something Verona’s way.  “A loan!”

A gnarled and knobby stick.

It was something she could use to swat at the static figures.  Zed and Brie were in the car, and it looked like their whole setup was a nigh-indestructible car exterior and a whole bunch of gizmos that produced Others.

John reloaded.  The mullet man came after him, and John shot him without looking.  The man reappeared, and John shot him again, picking up speed as he jogged, then ran toward the car.

The car squealed on the road, backing up.  It looked like Brie was trying to catch Cherrypop, who was rampaging around inside beneath the seats, and Zed was reversing, to keep some distance between them and the Dog of War John Stiles.

Except the car made it about a foot before stopping.  Tires squealed and the car fishtailed, fish-headed?  The back tire caught.

It was Butty, the pear-shaped goblin, lying down behind the tire.  His face contorted as the tire skidded against his side and hip, finding no traction against his flesh.  It did catch the frilly granny panties the goblin wore, and made them ride up, never quite making them tear.

Goblins are chaos.  They make a controlled situation messy.

Bluntmunch jumped onto the hood.  He began pounding.  Two of the other goblins soon followed, so that the car itself was their high ground against the massing static.

Verona backed away from more of the static, trying to find an angle to get through.  She wasn’t good at this.

At the car, John had caught up.  He got to the window, which was rolled up, and said something to his gun, touching his dog tags.

He pressed the gun to the window.

“Don’t kill them!” Avery warned.

The car headlights, the static, and the blaring noise of the cassette player all stuttered at once.  Many of the static figures disappeared.

An advantage?  Had someone figured out something to do?

The gun made a dull sound as John pulled the trigger.  He looked down at it, then cast it aside.

Avery, still swinging her way through the newly emerging static figures on the far side of the street, perked up, looking at Verona, then ducked behind a tree.

“What?” Avery asked, behind Verona

“Thorn.  Get the car,” Verona said, passing her the thing.

That left only the issue of the static.  She backed away as the figures began to surround her.  She moved her thumb over the notecards she’d written diagrams on.

If the flash didn’t bother them… maybe the bang?

She threw a card, aiming to get it as far from her as possible.  The wind caught it, and it didn’t fly perfectly straight.

She threw herself sideways into the ditch.

The card exploded into a ball of flame.  Static figures flickered and paused.

Free of the interference of the static men, Avery had reached the car.  She pushed the thorn into the side, with some resistance.

The goblins who were pounding and scratching began to get some traction.  Gashwad tore away the rubber insulation around the window, and dug claws into the gap.

But Zed wasn’t idle.  In the background, flickering like a bad VHS, was a tall man, muscular, with a ruined face filled with splinters and bits of wood, until it looked like an explosion in progress.  He carried a serrated saw, like the kind two men would use in concert to bring down a giant tree.

Verona had some glamour, but glamour was a risk.  She could draw an image, but what did Zed care about?  What would make him pause?

The car?  It was already under attack.  Answers?  She wasn’t sure how to make them a thing.

Avery could step into the fray and swing her stick around, and be fast and cool and collected, in situations like this.

Verona glanced at her friend.  The stick-swinging was furious, angry.

Maybe not cool in the ‘calm’ sense.

Which was beside the point.  In the Hungry Choir encounter, Verona had kept her head down, questioned Brie, and made a few decisive actions.  Right now, it felt like she couldn’t think.  Every time she tried to get her bearings or string two thoughts together, the static figures would take steps toward her, whispering and babbling.

“…war was lost a long time ago, and they’ve kept it from us because the oppressors are here and have been here all along and we know, we know they’re here and we know we’ve failed ourselves and…

The VHS flickering extended from the man with the saw.  The side of the road began to look like a cabin interior, with tools on the wall.

He reached up, grabbed one, and gave it to a static figure.  A giant, gently-curved spike.  The next one got a mallet that had been smashed through a skull, part of the skull still intact around the head.  It came away as the static figure gave it a shake.

Verona looked through the window at Brie, who stared back at her.

She stared and she tried to convey some emotion, some message.

The flickering man who was arming the static disappeared.  So did the growing area of the wooden walls and workshop.

Except the goblins also backed off, all in concert, and that felt… not goblin.

John backed off, stepping off the side of the road, while reloading his gun.  Verona took his cue, and motioned for Avery to do the same.

Cars came down the dirt road.  Two cars, and a big truck that had tarp over its load in the back.

They slowed as they reached Zed’s car, then stopped, the lead car’s passenger side window lined up with passenger side window.

“Problem?” one called out.

“Getting by,” Zed answered.

“Ow!” Brie cried out.

“Everything okay there?” the driver asked.

“Something under the seat.  Ow!  Bugger!”

“Parked for now.  Got stuck a bit ago,” Zed told him.

The procession of cars continued.

“It’s normally good manners to set up a barrier or connection blocker so that doesn’t happen,” Zed said, while rolling up his window.  It looked like a crank handle.  Some of the goblins emerged from under the car, climbing up the side.

“It would be good manners to listen when we say you’re trespassing,” Avery told him.

Verona remained silent.  She looked at Brie.

Brie said something to Zed, and Verona couldn’t hear it with most of the windows closed up.  The woman winced as she picked up her feet from the floor of the car.

Gifts.  What options did they have?  Verona thought of the still images, but she was stuck on what to do on short notice.  Another car?  Too complex.

Hot lead, no.  Ring was with Lucy.  She didn’t have any great spell cards.

“Moment one of you dings my car, I’m cranking the volume to max again,” Zed warned.  “Brie says she wants to talk, but I’m not sure what there is to talk about.”

“Are you a student at the Institute?” Verona asked.

“Might be.  What’s it to you?”

“So are we,” Verona told him.

“And students are forbidden from attacking and harming one another.  I see your angle.”

“I’m going to tell you now, we’ve made promises to protect this area.  If you intrude,” Verona told him, “then you do so knowing it provokes violence.”

“But it provokes violence.  That seems against the spirit of things, if not the letter.”

“Nah,” Zed replied.  “It’s against the letter.”

“Guess we have our compromise,” Zed told them.  “I can’t enter-”

“You can’t dig, either,” Avery said.  “We’ve outlined the restrictions.  If you go looking, we have to stop you.”

“And if you go talking about Kennet, or sending others here-”

“Yeah, yeah, got it,” Zed said.  “You realize this only makes me more interested?”

“You owe us one, Brie,” Avery said.  “I hate saying that, because it makes the good deed we did into something we’re using, but…”

“I owe Zed too,” Brie said.

“Just… don’t make this harder?” Avery asked.

Brie pursed her lips, then nodded.

John was stiff, gun in hand, barely visible at the very edge of the headlights.

“You know others are interested, right?” Zed asked.  “Eventually someone’s going to find the hole in your defenses and get the answers.  If they don’t, they’ll get frustrated enough to hire the Belangers to look into this.  There’re too many dangerous or uncontrolled things out there that need to be managed, or watched, or prevented.”

The Belangers were handled, but Verona didn’t want to give that tidbit away.  Handled for five years, at the very least.

“Get your goblins off my car?” Zed asked.  “I’ll leave.  At least for tonight, we can put this to rest.”

Verona stared at him.  He smiled.

“Down,” Avery told the goblins.

They hopped down.  Snatch dragged her hand down the window, producing a metal-on-glass sound, and then the car door.  Other goblins tried similar things to less effect.

Verona jogged up, walked over to the car door with the thorn in it, and reclaimed the thing.  Then she backed off, letting the station wagon reverse and do a three-point turn, before heading down the dirt road.

“He intends to send the girl in again,” Toadswallow said.

“Maybe,” Verona said.

“He’ll arm her with tools, tricks, trinkets.  Things like what he used.  Ways to cloud the trail and keep her out of sight,” John said.

“What do we do if he does?” Avery asked.  “And don’t say shoot her.”

“Keep her, maybe,” Verona said.  “Prisoner.  Treat her well, but… maybe we make it so she can’t leave until we’re sure things are okay.  If she insists on coming in and looking for more answers.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the bed and breakfast,” John said.  “I’ll quietly arrest her if I see her.”

“It doesn’t feel like a good guy move,” Avery said.  “Kidnapping.”

“Except, y’know, the alternatives are actual bad guy moves,” Verona said.

Avery pulled off her mask and hat as a single motion.  Strands of hair were stuck to her face with sweat.  She looked like she was going to say something, then shook her head.

“I want Lucy with us if this happens again,” Verona said.  “That was more intense than I pictured.”

“It will happen again,” John said, as he put his gun away in the holster.  He drew in a deep breath, reached for his neck, and pulled off a dog tag, handing one to Avery to replace what she’d used.

“This, my dears, is the friggin’ opening salvo,” Sir Toadswallow said.

“If we can’t get ahead of it,” John intoned, in a voice both weary and dangerous, “It will be a daily occurrence, if not multiple times a day.  Until we lose.”

“Then we, the Others, will be the kidnapped ones,” Toadswallow told them.  “Or jobless and in violation of oaths, or dead.  And you’ll be the competition they want out of the way.”

“Most won’t call for their summonings and allies to hold back from killing as you did,” John warned.

Verona swallowed.  She pulled off her stuff, and distracted herself by putting it away.

“It’s late,” Avery said.  “And we should update Lucy.”

Verona looked up at the moon.  Her ears were still ringing from the earlier gunshots.

“I think you did terrible,” Snowdrop said, from the treeline.

“You did well enough, in a pinch,” Toadswallow said.  He pointed a clawed fingernail at the stick he’d passed Verona.  “You can keep that for a little while if you want.  Just in case.”

Verona checked the weight of the knobby stick in her hand.  She wanted to ask what it did, but frankly, she was way too tired.  Which said a lot.

The situation was bad enough now that all three of them needed to be properly armed.

“About the meeting earlier,” Avery said.  “The Choir, and the binding and stuff.  Did you talk?”

“We should wait for Lucy before getting into that,” Verona said.

“Yes.  We can discuss that tomorrow,” John said, setting a hand on Avery’s shoulder.  “For now, rest.  Recover.”

Verona didn’t consider herself a great reader of people.  But John didn’t seem to be any better a liar or schemer than her dad was, really.

But John seemed weary and a bit sad.  And maybe a part of that was that he knew Avery had spied on him, and he knew they were suspicious.  But a part of it, she was pretty sure, was that the conversation hadn’t gone in a way the three of them would be happy with.