Let Slip – 20.z | Pale

“What are you-?” Avery said, before rolling her eyes.

“What?  Oh, do you want to hold hands?” Julette asked.  “Is that what we’re doing?  Are we five years old?”

“You’re here to make my life easier.  We’ve got a tricky patch ahead of us, it’d be nice to have support, if the footing gets bad.”

“Dudette,” Julette said, eyes widening.  “If you think I’m support if things get bad and we suddenly need to be nimble, hate to break it to you, you’re getting more of an anchor than a life preserver.”

“You spend how much time as a cat?”

“I spend how much time as a girl working on a case of deep vein thrombosis while curled up in a chair with drawing supplies or spellbooks?”

“I don’t even know what trombon- whatever that is.  You’re exaggerating.”

“It’s an art.  Do you really want me to hold your hand?  Are you feeling that insecure?”

“Shut up,” Avery said, but she smiled a little, shaking her head.  “If you fall and I’m not there to catch you, it’s more your fault now.”

“Let me fall, let me break, just put me back together again.  I’m sticks and twigs, glamour and sass.  You’re okay with using glamour, right?”

“Yes, but don’t fall,” Avery said.

The alcazar of Edith sprawled out around them.  A partially Ruined version of Kennet was on fire.  Cracks and crevices spanned the town, some ten feet across, and many roads had dropped away into pits too deep and dark for the bottom to be seen.  The water from the river had diverted into most, filling them, and they were topped with a layer of black ice that had the faintest of flames licking the surface.

The ones that didn’t have water had wax, sourced from the effigy of the Girl by Candlelight in the center of the town.  The titanic figure stood there, head bent, leaking wax.  When she moved or reacted, the flames of the candle she held magnified, and so did every fire around Kennet.

Buildings crackled with fires roaring within them.  Figures too deep in the flames to make out stood there, sizzling.  Some were vaguely recognizable as faces Julette and Verona had seen around town.  Most were overcooked hamburger, charred to the point they’d shrunk to half the thickness they should be.  Some jittered as they moved.

“Okay,” the Necromancer said, phone at her ear as she approached.  “One second.”

“What’s up?” Avery asked.

“They’re done with their break.  They needed an extra minute to get sorted and check for taint or echoes.  They’re going to get organized and then they’re going to start.  Any questions, requests, ideas, observations?”

“We’re zoomed out right now,” Avery said.  “It’d be cool to know what the next target is.”

“Did you catch that?” the Necromancer asked.  She put the phone down.  “The vigil.  It’s less hostile, we think, it’ll be a good way for the people outside to ease back in after the break.”

“That’s- one second,” Avery said.  She bounced on the spot three times, then leaped onto a rooftop nearby that wasn’t burning as much, catching a chimney to keep from sliding off the slick shingles.  She looked around, then called down, “Valley!”

The Necromancer nodded.

“Something’s happening!” Nomi called out.  She’d been trailing behind.

The spirit in the center of town was moving.  Fires roared tall, and Avery hopped down before the ones on the building she’d found reached her, landing in snow.

The fires died down as fast as they’d grown, then kept dying, the biggest flames becoming mere licks of flame, and what had been licks of flame a second ago became the occasional trace of orange-blue on the surface of the ice.

The lights in the city that had gone out came on, or most did.  The lights on the ski hill illuminated.

The candle spirit had gone still and dark.

They regrouped, moving over for a better vantage point.  The body of Edith James was quiet, slouching faintly, hand rubbing at her wrist.  Like she’d hurt herself when separated from the rest of the greater whole.  She talked when spoken to, but didn’t volunteer much.  She stopped when she’d gotten as close as she could to the group while still being able to be near a fire.  She put her hands out, warming them by a bit of burning fence.

Nomi the necromancer’s apprentice was some brunette fourteen year old girl, wearing a choker that clipped around a heart shaped bit of stainless steel piping at the center, two necklaces, and some bangles at her wrist.  She was wearing the same sort of jacket a lot of the St. Victors kids wore- a navy blue peacoat, open at the front, with a black sweater beneath.

She looked painfully uncomfortable in every way.  The way the outfit was put together, or wasn’t.  Navy blue and black, the choker, the hair that was parted in the middle and hovered at that point between medium length and long, just enough that it kept catching on the choker.

The adult Necromancer hadn’t given away her name.  They were pretty sure she was Yiyun Jen, from the rundown provided by Miss, but they were playing it safe until they could verify.  Wouldn’t do to get gainsaid.  The woman had straight black hair, a long black coat, and a red top with a repeating pattern in blue on it.  Her mask was wood painted a blood red, with gaps for the eyes and mouth.  Unlike the mask Julette was wearing, it did muffle her voice when she did talk.

Avery kept her eyes on the distance, walking sideways as she picked her way through snow.  She put a hand out toward Julette.

Julette high fived her.

“You’re- stop that.  You’re doing that on purpose.”

“You put your hand out like that and Snowdrop grabs it and pulls on it?”

“Of course?  It’s weird that you don’t.  Are you going to leave Verona hanging in a situation like that?”

“I don’t plan on being in a situation like that, where we have to push and pull on each other to get places.”

“Okay, but-” Avery frowned.

“They’re starting,” the Necromancer said.

The motes of light began to collect, gradually becoming more intense.  The red-tinted lights illuminating on the hill overlooking the valley were producing a disintegrating lens flare effect, the little orbs and motes of light drifting over Kennet.  Fires spat up sparks, and snow glimmered.  Until they were wading through a shower of it all.

As the world around them was obscured, too dark to be seen past the drifting lights, it shifted and closed in on them.

“Stay close, keep pace,” the Necromancer said.  She moved a hand, and brought some of the undead she’d brought with her closer.  Mummified dogs, it looked like.  They’d been circling around them, looking for trouble.

The burned hamburger people were moving closer, many carrying candles.  Mouths cracked open in heads like matches that had burned and been quenched.  Broken moans overlapped.

“Alcazar’s shifting,” Avery said.  “We should keep moving.”

The Necromancer blocked their way.

Julette drew the rasp out of a pocket.

Snow made running footsteps nearly silent.  One of the candle-bearers had come dashing toward them, mouth yawning open.  He raised the candle high, then smashed the candle-wielding hand down on the forearm of the other arm, shattering the limb to expose broken bone points sticking out of the charcoal-like tissue.

Shouts of warning came easy and fast, overlapping.  Action and moving out of the way was harder.  Nomi fell on her back in the snow, and Edith’s body stumbled into Avery.

The Necromancer gestured, and a mummy-dog pounced on the charcoal figure with wooden stake feet and a wooden stake attached to its head.

That had not been a stylish handling of a sudden attacker.  That had been a desperate, lucky finish.

Still, she’d reacted faster than any of the rest of them.

“You’ve fought before?” Julette asked.

“Not much.”

“Good instincts.”

“No, it told us.  The moan was different.  There are others.”

Julette listened.  She glanced at Avery, and the two of them exchanged a mutual look and shrug.

Julette tried to hear, as did Avery.

The Necromancer was more ready for the next two- intercepting them with controlled mummy-dogs.  Less ready for a third who came from behind them.

“What is this, even?”

“Shh!” the Necromancer shushed them, tilting her head slightly.  She motioned for them to move forward, and they did, trying to stay ahead of the narrowing scope of the Alcazar.

“Cat?” Avery whispered.  The Necromancer twitched, like she was about to sic a dog on Avery for talking, stopping herself before following through.

Julette took a step back, took a few running steps, and reached inward for the glamour and cat hair there.  It was mostly winter glamour, so it was very good at doing what it had done before, and the transformation was snappy, scooping up clothes and things to bind them into a tight, lithe package.  She managed it so it took place from foot to head, buoying her and carrying that leap’s energy.

She landed on Avery’s shoulder, then stopped, listening.

She didn’t hear a difference in the moaning as another paced around.  Bigger, carrying a weapon in one hand and a candle in the other.

“That’s the taint.  Traces of the Abyssal influence,” the Necromancer said.  “It won’t get better from us standing here feeding it.  Move fast, stay alert.”

They picked up the pace, and Julette was glad to be riding.  Nomi was the one who struggled a bit.

From her perch at Avery’s shoulder, she could see Edith’s body, trudging forward, a look on her face like she was concentrating.  “You okay?”

“I’m not used to this being this hard,” that part of Edith said.

“Hold on,” the Necromancer said into the phone.  “Let us get situated.”

The reply was barely audible.

“What’s hard?” Avery asked.  “These attackers?”

“Moving.  Coordinating.”

“Is there something wrong?” Avery asked.  Julette watched as Avery glanced at the Necromancer.  “Influences?  Someone messing with you?”

“No,” the Necromancer said, a moment before Edith’s body started shaking her head.

“It kind of felt like you were puppeteering her there,” Avery said.

“She’s not, she wasn’t,” Edith’s body said.

“It’s how she’s built,” the Necromancer said.  “The composite parts of the complex entity have spent years working in concert.  Years being one another’s crutches.  You see the same thing with undead.  History matters.  Wherever you’re pulling them from, there’s a prior context, prior patterns of behavior.  Even the bestealcian are used to moving certain ways.”

“The dogs,” Nomi supplied.

“Poor dogs,” Avery said.

Almost as she said that sentence, one of the charred figures lunged out, whipping burned and lumpy electric cords at one of the bestealcians.  There was some kind of lump of electronics on the end of the whip, and it smashed the dog’s head.

Didn’t stop it, but bought that charred man time to lunge forward, leaping atop the dog before it could find its balance again.  More took that as an excuse to rush in from other directions.  The Necromancer wasn’t able to save the dog that was being attacked, because she had to use others to stop the attackers.

Julette leaped from Avery’s shoulders, becoming human, and used the rasp to rake one, stripping off charred flesh to reveal the red, raw flesh beneath, melted and deflated eyes like pale raisins in eye sockets, teeth nubby and rotted.  Dark vapor escaped from gaps in the raw flesh and from the mouths that were fully uncovered, as if the charred-ness had coated even the insides of their mouths.

“What’s that in them?  What are they?” Julette asked.  She backed away from the flayed figure, who screamed a strangled scream at her.

Avery kicked the flayed figure.

“Something Abyssal, and I don’t know,” the Necromancer replied.  “I’d call but-”

She gestured, apparently using rings on her fingers to direct the dogs.  The kicked, flayed figure was pierced in the neck.

“I can grab your phone from your pocket,” Julette offered.

“Uh, no.”

Oh.  Julette had already been moving closer, ready to reach inside, but with that, she backed off.

“There’s a gap. We can go this way,” Avery pointed.

The motes of light were showering down now.  Like a heavy snowfall, but each snowflake was bright.  Light on raindrops on a window, out of focus.

There were more figures holding candles.  More hostile ones here and there.  The deeper into the scene they got, the less the hostile ones moved.  They lurked, paced, and glowered, but didn’t chase or charge.

All of them were left panting for breath.

No apparent danger coming from the Necromancer, Nomi, or the dogs.  Avery was fine, but annoyed by snow in her shoes- she’d worn her running shoes with the runes.

The body of Edith James reached over, and a member of the vigil handed her an extra candle.  She ended up holding it with the heels of her hand pressing against the stem, hands cupped around the flame.

“You okay?” Avery asked.

The woman nodded.

“She won’t be wholly okay until everything’s back together,” the Necromancer said.  “The best thing we can do for her is to hurry this to a fast and healthy conclusion.”

“Here,” Julette said.  She put the rasp away, carefully, before reaching into an inside coat pocket.  She had lots of spare stuff there, bulking it up, but among that stuff was a bunch of cigarettes.  She started to search for a lighter, then thought twice.  “Want?”

Edith’s body, hands full with the candle, leaned forward.  Julette popped the cigarette into her mouth.  Edith used the candle to light the cigarette.

“Reinforce that Self.  And here… if you need it for a bit more Self there.”

She gave Edith a chocolate bar.  “It’s caramel sea salt, but it’s saltier than it’s sweet.”

“Thank you.  I like salty.”

“I remember,” Julette said.  “I have half of a memory from Verona’s head, I think, of eating your barbecue.”

“I have half a memory of being there while you ate it.”

“I’ve got protein bars,” Avery said.  “If you want something more substantial.”

“Oh, uh… keep that.  I don’t need much,” Edith’s body said.

“I don’t think she wants your protein bar, with…” Julette leaned in.  “Peanut meat?”

“It’s meat flavored without having actual meat in it, and it’s chocolate covered.”

“You haven’t been giving those to anyone else, have you?” Julette asked.

“I’ve- don’t imply they’re bad.  They’re tasty, and surprisingly filling.  I gave some out to, uh- practitioner friends-” Avery glanced at Nomi, who was close enough to listen.

“-and they liked ’em.  Bought some.”

“Are these the same guys who, if you took their granny out back and gave her a spanking, they’d walk up to-”

“What are you saying?”

“-you and their teary-eyed granny, and they’d be all thank you, Avery, could our granny have another?”

“No, they’re not the same group I’m thinking and talking about, or-?”

“What are you- Julette.  Why did you put that mental picture in my head?  Why-”

“Because it’s funny.”

“Why are you so weird?  You’re going to out-weird the person you’re supposed to be a credible decoy for.”

“Pfff.  I’ve got a head of paper, twigs, and twine.”

Avery shook her head.  She looked past Julette to Edith’s body.  “You’re quiet.”

“Enjoying this cigarette.  And the conversation.”

“The one you’re not joining?” Julette asked.  Avery pushed lightly at Julette’s arm.

“Yeah.”

“Cool,” Avery said.  “Glad you’re happy.”

They’d gone into the valley but the vigil took place by a road.  Heavy snow and light masked it all.  Emotions leaked out, heavy in the air and thick in the mind, like smoke could fill a room and be thick in the lungs.

A shaft of light like a big car had turned on its high beams, cut across the crowd.  That slice of things moved, and in the wake of its absence, the scene changed.

That would be the Surgeon sorting through things.

“Any input you can give us helps,” the Necromancer said, watching out for trouble.  A rearrangement could put threats right in front of them.  The Surgeon was usually good about moving them away.  “Two big ones.”

Julette could see.  Wraiths, maybe.  Ghosts or echoes with a lot of badness bound up in them, giving them a vicious edge and the tools to do more harm than an echo could.

“Charles once said-” Edith’s body remarked.

Charles’ voice echoed through the space, continuing from Edith’s unfinished sentence without missing a beat, faint.  “-Constructing a more complete personality means doing multiple things with each piece.  You’ve cobbled something together, but it staggers, it’s missing what you need to be a complete and whole entity.  The echo of the vigil can be grief and attentiveness, memory, reflection.  I’ll take further measurements, figure out the balances, and we’ll find a configuration…”

“That gives us a clue about where we are on the map.  Most living things have a similar geography, but recognizing the landmarks can be hard.  Now we have an idea where this landmark is, but no real points of reference.”

“And the forces linked to this scene?  Do you recognize those?” Avery asked, looking at Edith.

“The big ones,” the Necromancer said.

“Two of the biggest tragedies of my life.  Losing my husband and losing my home,” the body of Edith said.

“A lot of things tied up in that, I imagine,” the Necromancer said.

“Things?” Edith’s body asked.

“Other frustrations, negativity, complicated feelings?”

“Oh.  Definitely.  Enough that it’s hard to think straight sometimes.”

They were coming closer.

“Surgeon,” the Necromancer said.  Phone at her ear again.  “We have two incoming.  They look dangerous.  Can you take at least one of them off our hands?”

Julette could barely hear it.  “Kira-Lynn’s group has their hands full.”

“Empty them.”

“Stand by,” the voice came through, barely audible.

“Surgeon, this is serious.”

It didn’t sound or look like there was a reply from the Surgeon.

“Do you girls have any summons?”  the Necromancer asked.

“Summons?  Like, summoning magic?  Nothing here, but-”

“Bound Others?”

“We don’t really… do that.  Binding living, breathing things.  Only if it’s like, temporary and willful, binding a goblin into weapon form for a short time, releasing it.”

“Would that we all could have that luxury,” the Necromancer said.  She was eyeing the wraiths.

“I think if you got to know an Other and spent some time with them, heard them out, you’d think it was kinda shit to be kept captive for however long,” Avery said.

“Mmm.”

The wraiths were moving closer.  They looked very solid, dark, with what looked like black smoke filling them- as if their skin was transparent and the smoke was trapped within it.  Only heads, shoulders, and heart were really textured or colored past the smoke.  One was multi-headed, the heads standing up in a ring around the shoulders like the points of a crown, and the other head a sequence of heads, starting with a black haired, black-bearded one, with artificial heads of Avery, Verona, and Lucy running from chin to collarbone, like decoration.

“They don’t look weak,” Avery said.

“No,” Edith replied.  “They aren’t.”

“They may replay parts of the traumatic moments,’ the Necromancer warned.  “What considerations are there?  What do we need to worry about, in the replay?”

“When we notified Matthew about her, we reached out to the Sable Prince.  A Judge.  And he oversaw the… you could call it a trial, I guess,” Avery said.  “Matthew, her now-ex-husband, got angry, left.  She was bound.  By the Judge.”

“By a stand-in for an Incarnate power?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s an issue,” the Necromancer said, as the wraiths moved over the crowd at the vigil.  “A wraith can tap into those same ideas.  They’re twisted memories, they have access to that knowledge and power, weaker, obviously, but…”

“It can bind us?” Nomi asked.

“Treat it like you would anything echo.  Does that mean anything to you two?”

“Yeah,” Avery replied.  “We’ve done a lap around that block.”

“Don’t let it finish what it’s doing.  It may only be an emotional impression of a binding, but it’s backed by power and it’ll hold some power even now.  Edith?”

Edith’s body turned her head, but her eyes were focused on the vigil.  “Yes?”

“I don’t suppose you figured out a good way to deal with the grief, the frustration, the anger?”

“No,” Edith’s body replied, subdued and apologetic.  “No, I loved him, I loved that home.”

The wraith that was a mess of interlocked echoes with the ‘crown’ of heads went high, its lower body snakelike, moving to a point directly above them, far out of reach, like it could crash down on top of them.

“Damn,” the Necromancer said.  She put the phone to her ear.  “Surgeon, please tell me they have whatever they’re dealing with handled.”

The other, an arrangement of heads, stood tall in front of them.  It began to form the square binding circle the Sable Prince had created to imprison Edith in Matthew’s basement.

The Necromancer threw out a handful of salt, banishing the circle and the hand that was touching it.  “No!  Cease!”

As her hand moved away from her ear, the voice on the other end of the call became more audible.  “-you on standby.  Postpone and endure for now.  If there’s trouble, we’ll extricate you.”

The binding diagram continued to spread, finding any avenue it could to try to encircle them.

The bestealcian hounds attacked the wraith.  The moment they moved away from the group, a charred figure with tracings of wax on him came running at them from the edge of the crowd, plywood sign on a stick in its hands.

Avery moved to intercept.  Wind shoes and a kick-

But there were already more.  Avery dealt with one.  Julette moved into the way of the other, and darted forward, becoming a cat to go between their legs, becoming human, and reached up to slap the rasp up between the legs, running it in a ‘u’ from front, taint, and ass crack as the charred person’s momentum carried them forward and did the raking for her.

Technically not that much worse than using the rasp anyway, since the damage happened down there wherever she hit them, but the overall damage seemed a mite more intense and the end result more ragged, so… that worked.

The figure collapsed.

One of the ones that had rushed forward ended up getting in the way of a good ninety percent of the salt the Necromancer was flinging at the diagram.  They reacted like they’d been hit by a car, but them accidentally getting in the way let a portion of the diagram close and self-reinforce, a triangle enclosing the corner.  A second throw of salt by the Necromancer didn’t really put much of a dent in it, and the damage that was done was closed before she could pour more salt from the container into her hand to throw.

“Move back, out and away!” the Necromancer shouted.

Retreating, trying to get back far enough the memory of the Sable Prince’s diagram couldn’t encircle them.

The wraith above them, representing Matthew blocking Edith from their home, came down on them like a house falling out of the sky.  They scrambled, Avery helped Julette, and the Necromancer scooped up her apprentice, practically carrying her, as the collision happened.

Dust, snow, ice, and other things were knocked flying into the air with the meteoric impact.  The aftershock wasn’t wind, though, but devastation, emotional.  And then a deep, profound sadness.

As the dust cleared, they realized they were encircled by walls.

“Nomi,” the Necromancer said.

“They’ll come, right?  The Surgeon will?”

“Let’s assume they won’t, and if we get captured-” the Necromancer was hurrying, gesturing for Julette and Avery to move.  The diagram was at one end of the room.  They moved to the other end, toward the door-

The space blurred, echo-like, and the orientation of the room changed.

They were at the wrong end of the room, now, the diagram half done.  The wraith’s influence extended it into the partial walls, the floor, and the figures at the other end of the room, three girls, John Stiles, and past the doorway, Tashlit.

“Nomi, call in the big guns.”

“Which one?”

“Not the wraith lord.  Wraiths intermingle and mesh together.”

“He’s loyal though.”

“Not him.  Another.”

Avery looked at Julette, and the two of them were already moving forward.  By unconscious agreement- backed by Avery gesturing a second later, like she didn’t trust Julette would know the cue, they moved in different directions.

They nearly collided with one another as the room shuddered, then put them back at the end with the closing binding circle again.

Sixty percent.

In the moment of frustration, where she wasn’t sure she could come up with ideas, Julette felt the emotional influences get their footholds in her.

“We’ve got the escape ropes,” Avery told Julette.  “Probably cuts this short.”

“Don’t,” the Necromancer said.  “If you leave, the balance of this all changes, it can…”

“Flip the boat?” Avery asked.

“Adult getting off the picnic table when the kid’s on the one side?”

“Yes.  Essentially.  Nomi can do this.”

“Yeah,” Nomi replied.  “Star-Mother, Lord at rest, vassal of the Carmine Exile, I call on compacts made…”

The lights grew more numerous and beautiful.  The falling lights appeared again, but more intense, like shooting stars now, falling all around them, with no more impact than snowflakes settling.

Past the partially intact stairwell at the far end of the scene, the vigil was still there.

“Beautiful,” Edith murmured.  “I’d almost forgotten that scene, the importance of it.”

The diagram reached seventy percent.

Then eighty, as Nomi worked.  The scene began to shake.

The wraith or wraiths pushed back.  Sorrow, disappointment.  Loss.  Paralysis.

There was a groan, low in the throat, and a faint shuffling of movement.  Icicles on the ceiling broke and fell, spearing the stone floor and remaining there.

“For a moment,” Guilherme’s voice came from deep inside the cave.  “I thought you were a certain detestable fae that once dwelt in this cave.”

“That fae, was his name Guilherme?” Julette asked.

“You dare?” he asked.  He emerged from the dark, tall, white-haired, and intense, a giant, muscular.  The frost patterned his skin.  Cold air stirred around him.

“I do not dare, but I jibe, about a High Summer fae of that name I never really had the opportunity to know,” Julette said.  “Distinct from you.”

“Do you think me a fool?”

“I think you a Winter Fae, great and terrible, and me a fragile thing of sticks and twine, dressed up like a girl, who would appreciate company for a walk to visit shrines.”

“You speak of greatness, and describe yourself as fragile and insignificant, why should you deserve my company, a mere fetch?”

“I’m a fetch who acts much as she was designed to act, and I pretend.  And you, great and awesome Fae Lord that you are-”

“Great, yes, but barely a Lord.”

“A Lord all the same, you have agreed to certain responsibilities with the three practitioners of Kennet, to protect them.”

“Responsibilities a Fae of bright summer agreed to.  If you’re arguing I’m distinct from him enough I shouldn’t take offense at a jibe, it’s foolish to turn around and claim I’m close enough to him to be bound to the same responsibilities.”

“I have dry leaves, twigs and twine and writing on paper for a brain.  You may expect too much of me.”

“I expect exactly the right amount of you, fetch.”  He approached the entryway of the cave, and his nose wrinkled.  “If you are saying that I should escort you to protect them, you might as well say I should sweep their doorsteps for them, and darn their socks.  What other ways should I lower myself to do them some insignificant convenience?”

“I am a pretend thing, I do as the instructions inside me insist I must.”

“We all do, do we not?”

She shrugged, hands in her pockets.  “The Wild Hunt of Winter may still be watching.  We have other enemies.  What better way for a fetch to be convincing as a nascent sorceress than to be in the company of a Fae Lord?”

“That is sufficient to explain your motivation, but what is it for mine?”

“A chance to serve this town, as you’ve sworn to?  To assist the three?  To get out and exercise your legs?”

“I have no need to do so.  I will not atrophy.  You are attempting to manipulate me.”

“Am I?”

“To such a pitiful showing that it not only threatens to eclipse any joy your company could give me, but threatens to quench the flame and gutter the light entirely.”

“All conversation is manipulation.  Is this the worst conversation you’ve had in recent memory?”

“I haven’t had many conversations in recent memory.  But no.  Goblins have strayed close to the cage.  Gashwad has taken unusual interest in me and this cave.  He stops by to see if I’m awake, thinking he can figure out my routine and come when I’m asleep, to pollute my living space.  That would be the worst conversation, when he whispered his queries into the darkness of the cave.”

“Could this be the best?”

“I’ve talked to my students, who are training, but they were distracted of late.  Perhaps.”

“Then I’d say, to serve this town, as you’ve agreed to, and to protect the interests of the three witches, as you’ve agreed to, and to continue the most stimulating conversation-”

“Perhaps.”

“-perhaps, that you’ve had in some time, you should accompany me.  It costs little and you stand to gain something.”

“I must ask,” he said.  His nose wrinkled again.

“Is that a change of topic?”

“It is.”

“To avoid coming with me?” she asked.

“No.  Topics must change or we’d carry on having the same conversation until one of us was no longer of this world.  That is an occurrence in the interior courts of Winter I would not replicate here, if I could help it.”

“A change of topic then.”

He wrinkled his nose again.  “I thought you were of Maricica’s court at first, because there was something foul behind the fair.”

“And something fair behind the foul, possibly.”

“Is there now?”

“There is.”

“What of this world or any other realm have they made you of, poor Fetch?”

“Some glamour, twigs and twine, as I have already mentioned-”

“You have.”

“-and goblin stuff.  For balance.”

“To add anything goblin for balance is akin to throwing yourself onto a sword for the practice in defending yourself.”

“Shitting on a plate for your second helping,” she said, throwing one out there.

He didn’t move or react.  She smiled.

“It’s not that bad is it?”

“The less I say, the better.  I must be diplomatic, considering.”

She pulled her coat and sweater sleeve down closer to her elbow, then licked her wrist.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She held up a finger.

“What?”

“Wait.  Give me a bit… let’s wait… let’s see…”

She sniffed her wrist.

“I have waited, I have seen, and I am singularly unimpressed.  What are you doing?”

“See, you can’t normally smell your own breath.  But you can lick something, like your wrist, and then you wait, let it dry, and you give it a whiff, and it’ll tell you if you’ve got ass breath.  I think my breath smells pretty normal.”

He stared at her, unimpressed.

“It’s a cool trick.  I think if the goblin stuff in me was a problem, I’d have goblin breath.  Seems like one of the places it’d come out.”

“I trust the glamour in you has done a sufficient job of covering it up.”

“Great.”

He stared at her, still unimpressed.

She shifted her position, hands in her pockets.

“Have you tainted that winter glamour within yourself with these noisome elements?” he asked.

“I believe they are keeping those things distinct.  I think there should be a mix between snips and snails and sugar and spice.”

“That belief may be a casualty of a snail resting on the wrong twig or snip related troubles for the wrong piece of twine.”

“Ooh, playing hardball.  Does this mean you won’t walk with me?”

“We will walk.  The spirits of shrines could use more attention and if we leave them to the attentions of the goblins, without any beauty to counter whatever it is they’re doing, then we may all have to live with the consequences, down the road.”

“I think the Dogs of War are the most disciplined about going.  Besides Verona and Lucy.”

“I am entirely unsurprised.”

He adopted a human shape, maybe reminiscent of a Dog of War, white-haired, strong-featured, and muscular, wearing a simple winter coat.  He joined her, and they turned left, toward the southern perimeter of Kennet.

“When you shrink like that, where does the rest of you go?  When I become a cat, where does everything end up?”

“Why this topic?”

“We’re discussing what I’m made of.  It’s tit for tat, Fae Lord.”

“Hmm.  To some schools of thought, it’s about perception, and an event entirely unobserved does not occur.  To take that a step further, if observation has this power, an alteration in the observation, if wholly effective, may change the result.”

“So it works because you see it?  We all exist in the eyes of the beholder?” Julette asked.  “What about the blind?”

“That takes us to other, older meanings.  When English was different, the words that would eventually become ‘behold’ meant to have, to keep, to remember.  You can keep a song in your ears and mind by listening, and discard it by ignoring it.  You hold someone in your gaze.  We, all of us, exist because we are held here.  With nobody holding us, in eye, in ear, in hand, in mind’s eye, in memory, we would fall away.  To darker places, perhaps.  Or to places that are not held.”

“A Fae more than any?”

“And a fetch not far behind.  You are meant to be held, to make yourself be held, in place of another.  To fetch, at its root, meant to grasp.  In its current meaning, to grasp, then return.”

“Huh.”

“And here you have come, little fetch, to grasp at me.  I do not think you’re here because you’re afraid of the Wild Hunt, or other enemies.”

She didn’t reply.

The true answer would sting his dignity more than her earlier jibe.  It might even get her or Lucy killed.

The Wild Hunt’s concern had been Guilherme, a Winter court fae who could potentially embarrass the court, as he found his footing, or failed to.

So they’d agreed to keep tabs on him.  And while she was visiting shrines, well, it made sense to.

He seemed so sad, sitting in that cave alone.

“Have I answered your question to your satisfaction?” Guilherme asked her.

“You have.  Thank you.”

“Then would you answer mine?” he asked her.  “I’m curious why you’re curious.”

She was surprised he didn’t seem to know.  It was obvious.

So she told him.

“There are some Star Fathers on a Path I read about,” Avery explained, for the benefit of Edith and Julette.  “Rituals tend to involve spirits, and a big ritual involves a lot of spirits.  Spirits that, to varying amounts, are aware or capable of responding to prompts.  More so when there’s more.  If a practitioner tries to do something too big, then there’s a chance it collapses.  And if it collapses and there’s enough intelligence among the forces inside?  It can gain an awareness.  Like a ritual incarnate, but, hmmm, singular.  Personified with more person.”

“Very cool,” Julette said.  “I like this.”

“It’s terrifying.”

The Star Mother, which was apparently just a Star Father of a different gender, was tearing through the scene.  A smaller entity was moving in concert with her, guiding her.  The Star Mother was creating pocket worlds, folding space together and unfolding it into landscapes that stretched out for a few city blocks, with movement on the far side suggesting it was doing more, and then folding them back together again.  Taking an arm, a leg, or a head of the wraith with it.  The wraith would heal, drawing on different memories, but it would be diminished.

The smaller figure was at the center of every manifested pocket world, and wielded its forces as the titanic woman with a dress of stars fed massive amounts of power into her.

“Most of the time, when a ritual goes bad like that,” Avery murmured, “the Star Father or Star Mother or Star Parent will recognize that Innocence and the other forces of the world around it, like Judges and Lords, will push back, senses that resistance, and puts power into secluding itself in a pocket world or escaping into some convenient realm with a lot of elbow room.  Sometimes they’re places between realms, the gaps when two adjacent realms don’t fit well together.  But the Paths are a pretty convenient option too.  I guess Charles alleviated the pressure and gave her a spot with the elbow room she needed.”

The Star Mother carried on creating mini-universes where the small figure was a localized god, they’d bloom like flowers around her, and then collapse just as easily, the contents recycled and carried forward.

They followed after, cleaning up, searching the landscape around them for any signs or clues about what was wrong with Edith.  Lots of those charred people were around, alongside echoes of people Edith had killed, who haunted her.

Those echoes were worse here, close to the vigil.

And the Star Mother was slowing down.  The smaller half of it landed near Nomi, and the pair had a conversation.

“Did the Surgeon collect the other wraith?” the Necromancer asked.  “For Kira-Lynn’s group to deal with?”

“I didn’t see,” Avery replied.  “Maybe it backed off.”

The Necromancer shook her head.  “It didn’t seem like the kind that would.  There’s too much going wrong, there’s too much latent negativity.”

“That might just be Edith.  She’s a mess.  Sorry,” Avery said, looking at Edith’s body.

Edith’s expression was hard to read as she took a long drag on her cigarette.

“We need a better vantage point here.  To see the connective tissue, and figure out what we’re digging into,” the Necromancer said.

“Up the hill?”

The Necromancer nodded.

Both Avery and the Necromancer turned to look up at the Bowdler ski hill, illuminated with the lights of the vigil.

“Carry me?” Julette asked.

“You won’t help me get over a snowbank to get to the road, but you want to be carried?” Avery asked.

“I did help.  After a delay.  But yes.  Carry me.  Keep me warm.”

“You’re lucky Verona’s my friend and I said I’d look after you.”

Julette nodded, then became a cat, leaping into Avery’s arms.

“Nomi!” the Necromancer called out.

Nomi was throwing salt at lesser wraiths, driving them off.  She realized they’d moved a short distance away and were doing their own thing, and hurried over.

Nomi, with the slightly mismatched clothing, hair a bit greasy, like she’d missed a shampoo day.

Every person was a puzzle like that.

The attackers weren’t very competent, and a sharp eye or a sharp ear meant they could answer each one.  But they were constant, and the margins for noticing a sudden attack out of nowhere and reacting in time were narrow enough to start with that any fatigue threatened to turn this into a situation where they were getting hurt, which would move things into a situation where reaction times became too slow, fast.

One of the bestealcian undead was already struggling, so the Necromancer kept it close to Nomi, as more of a personal guard.

“…does Kira-Lynn have the wraith with the house?  No?  Okay.  Keep a close eye out.  That’s one of her biggest traumas.”

“One she called on herself, to be clear,” Avery said.  She looked at Edith.  “Sorry.”

Edith seemed content to take whatever, so long as she could puff away on that cigarette.

The forest path led toward the hill.

“Careful,” Avery said, hand out to bar the Necromancer’s approach.

There was a cabin by the path.  Stairs at the side led up a bit to the screened-in porch, currently shuttered for the winter.  The porch in turn led into the main cabin.  But there were steps more at the front of the house, beneath the lip of the porch, that led down to a door.

“What’s the relevance of this cabin?” the Necromancer asked.

“It was when everything felt most in control,” Edith explained.  “And then it was ripped away.  Violently.”

There was a faint and feeble toilet flushing sound.

“By a toilet?” the Necromancer asked.

“That was when it started.  A feeling that something was wrong.  The toilet didn’t flush, the tank didn’t refill.  I went to go look…”

The door to the porch opened, as if blown by the wind.

The basement door didn’t.

“It needs a sacrifice,” Avery said.

“Nomi?” the Necromancer asked.  “Ideas?”

It sounded more like a teacher seizing on a teaching moment than a real ask.

“Echo?  We’ve got a whole slew of them but with the wraiths we haven’t wanted to use them.”

“No sign of the house trauma echo?” the Necromancer asked.

“Not seeing…” Nomi trailed off.

“Nor am I,” Avery replied.

“Worrying.  Wraiths tend to be relentless.  Okay.  Maybe this will bait it out.  Use the weakest you can.”

Nomi released an echo, then gave it its prompt.

They remained where they were, watching as the echo trudged through snow, approaching the house, went down the stairs, and opened that door.

There was an explosion.  Fire roared out, obliterating the echo, not even touching snow so much as it overwrote snow with a world where it wasn’t winter, and then set patches of it on fire.

The entire landscape shifted, turning a tint of red.  Blood spattered and stained everything.  Trees broke, echoes that had been complacent stirred.

“…And everything started to get worse after that.  Everything went downhill, out of control.  My allies didn’t work with me as much.  Matthew started to wonder, I had to…”

She trailed off.

“Poison him more?” Avery asked.

“In a sense.  Feeding the Doom, weakening him, keeping a balance.”

The world around them was creaking.

Blood kept spreading.  More troubling Others kept gathering in the shadows.  Charred men, echoes, lesser wraiths.  Everything bad in Edith’s experience boiling up.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” the Necromancer said.  “Not like this.  Surgeon?  We need adjustments.  Move us back and away a step.

The changes to the landscape reversed.  Blood gone, fire diminished, lights fading.

The fire billowed out, exploding in reverse, moving back into the door down there.

“If only it was this easy to undo it,” Edith murmured.

“Nomi?  Another echo, but don’t open the door.   Just go down the path.”

Nomi said a few words, calling a name, and the echo manifested.  It jogged down the path.

The path twisted, everything around it shifting as the jogger got further down.  Putting the cabin in front of them, so the path forward was a path down the stairs-

The echo damaged itself going down when it hadn’t expected or been made in such a way that let it go down.  Without much leg beneath the knee, it crashed awkwardly into the door.

The explosion obliterated it.  Everything began to go bad again.

Blood staining snow.  Fires.  Others.

“Surgeon?  Again.”

“I set things up so you guys wouldn’t have that much agency, without asking,” The Surgeon said, over the phone.  “But that’s doing a lot to taint our efforts.  Even Kira-Lynn remarked on it, and she’s two steps removed.”

“Yeah.  I don’t think she’s equipped to get past it, and there’s a lot that’s happening unconsciously.  This shouldn’t be prompting this much damage.”

“We need a better view of things,” Avery said.  “I’d try using practice, teleport past it, or jump over it, but I think this would be like the Paths, where navigation gets wonky.”

“I think you’re right.  You’d end up crashing into and through that door and you’d be burned.  An echo of a burn, but that’s still enough to do harm.”

“Then I’ll do what I can here.  Bit of surgery, remove and set aside…” the Surgeon said.

“It’s volatile,” the Necromancer warned.

“You don’t say.  Augur?  I’m going to move slowly, warn me if it’s about to blow up in our faces?”

Seth’s response was inaudible.

“We know his name is Seth,” Avery said, raising her voice.

“They’re close enough to listen to the call?”

“Yes,” the Necromancer said.

The call went silent.

“I didn’t think it was a problem,” the Necromancer added.

Another headlight beam sliced across the scene.  The cabin shuddered, bright, and then it was in summer, in daylight when everything else was night.  No snow, only brown pine needles scattered across the ground around it.

“Careful.  That wraith may be stirred to action.”

“Especially because this is a place,” Avery said.

“Very true.  Good observation.”

Nomi seemed annoyed by Avery’s interjections.  Maybe more annoyed by the Necromancer praising Avery.

Then it slid out of existence, slowly.  Other aspects of the surroundings and of Kennet were moved, smaller things sliding away in different directions, at different speeds.

“Is Kira-Lynn handling it?” the Necromancer asked.

“No,” was the reply.

“So it’s still here, but moved.”

“Yes.  I changed the orientation and priorities.”

“Be careful if you have to run,” the Necromancer said, quiet, not into the phone.  “That cabin could suddenly appear.  It’s rooted in surprise, the sudden downturn in everything, with minimal warning.”

They advanced up the hill.

“Surgeon?” the Necromancer asked.  “I think we’d all be happier if this was excised.  It makes me nervous, it’s tied into a wraith that’s a key aspect of Edith’s trauma, something dark inside her that she’s been unconsciously feeding.  A memory she keeps going back to.  And it’s liable to catch any of us by surprise.  If you make the wrong move and it’s under your metaphorical scalpel, if we turn the wrong corner, or if something’s sent to Kira-Lynn and it’s pulled in after that something?”

“There are two ways to do this.  This can be a surgery where we move deftly, we know what we’re doing, we know what we’re navigating, we have a sense of what we’re dealing with,” the Surgeon said.  “That’s three hours of intense work, including breaks to relieve that intensity.  Or we can move slow, removing every major problem or potential problem with the care of disarming a bomb, and it takes fifteen to twenty hours, and we’ll get tired, even with breaks, and we’ll make mistakes that end up being just as dangerous in the long run.”

“So you want us to deal with this?”

“I will keep an eye out for signs of the wraith and the exploding door.  Seth’s on it too.”

They kept trudging up the hill.  Sparkles and light showered down around them.  A burning, ruined Kennet glittered, lights flickering.

“Notice the spirit’s position?” Avery asked.

Julette shifted position, upper body resting on Avery’s shoulder, back half draped around toward the back of the neck, back paws resting on Avery’s bag.  She nodded.

The candle spirit in the center of town was right in the middle of town, in an area that didn’t technically exist here.

Avery murmured, “Is that where Charles is at?  I remember seeing the upside-down version of the layout, when visiting the shrines, peeking into the spirit world.”

Julette nodded.

“So Verona’s been?”

Julette bobbed her head in a nod again.

Avery’s lips came toward the side of Julette’s head.  Julette stretched her head away, ears askew, eyes wide.

“Mreh?”

“I’m not gonna-” Avery muttered.  She cupped a hand, thunking it against the side of Julette’s head, cupped there as she whispered, “Snowdrop’s warning me about bad vibes.”

Julette relaxed her posture.

“Agitation, some movement.  Something subtle’s happening on the other side.  It’s quiet and I think Verona and probably Lucy know too.  Be ready for trouble.”

“No scheming,” Nomi said, pointing at them.  “No whispering, no planning to take us down or trap us or whatever.”

“Not what we’re doing,” Avery said.

“Okay, well, don’t.”

They reached a point where a rocky outcropping divided two courses of the ski hill.  The rocks formed a flat surface to stand on, and they could stand there and look out over Kennet.

A distorted, damaged Kennet.

“It’s warped,” Avery noted.

“It’s natural for someone to emphasize certain areas they’re more familiar with.  Home and the home neighborhood becomes bigger, the way to work becomes broader in scale.  There can be areas you aren’t familiar with that are dropped or shrouded in fog.”

“It’s more warped than that.  And there are places I know she’s familiar with that aren’t… look.  At the base of the hill, end of that row of cabins?”

Julette looked.

The darkness and ruin was so bad there that it looked like a sinkhole had eaten it up.

“That’s Buckheed.  Hunting and fishing supply.  That’s where her ex husband worked.  She’d go and bring him lunch a lot of days.  You remember that, Edith?”

“Of course.”

“Every clue helps,” the Necromancer said.  “That’s an interesting one.”

“I’ve been in a few Alcazars and they didn’t map out a place like this,” Avery remarked.  “The Carmine Judge, a newly awakened practitioner, a goat.”

“A goat?” Nomi asked.

“A very special goat.  But a goat.”

“She may have invested a lot of herself into this place.  It’s scaffolding for who she is,” the Necromancer said.  “Where’s her house?”

“It’s harder to see but around there…”

Julette had better night vision.  The area was unlit.  She leaned forward, stretching out a paw, and pointed.

“I’m not as good at the nonverbal communication as-” Avery grunted as Julette hopped off her, back paw at the side of her neck for more horizontal distance.

Julette handed in a crouch.  “Sinkhole.  It’s ruined too.”

“Is it the wraiths?” Avery asked, alarmed.  “They’re coming out, they’re doing damage?”

Julette straightened.

“This gives us a fuller picture,” the Necromancer said.  “Center of town, candle spirit.”

“On an island surrounded by river, that doesn’t exist,” Avery clarified.  “Except in the Carmine’s domain.  It’s where his throne is.”

“Good to know.  Then in the valley, stretching up the side of the hill, roads…”

“Louise’s house,” Avery mentioned to Julette.  “Buckheed.  Charles’ old cabin.”

“The vigil.  That is downtown?”

“Yeah.”

“Echo or wraith there.”

“The pyromaniac.  Young,” Edith said.

“There’s less on the other half of town.  It’s indistinct, darker, smokier.”

“Some churches, homes, not many people I knew,” Edith said. “Some of Matthew’s coworkers.”

“The other ski hills are there,” Avery added, indicating the hillside where there weren’t many lights.

“We didn’t have much cause to go over there,” Edith said.  “I didn’t ski.”

“Okay,” the Necromancer said.  “There are ways to look at this.  She’s built like a summoning, with key spirits and forces bent and fit into her design so they can touch what they need to touch.  Vigil touching throat, root-”

“The woohoo,” Julette clarified.

“-and some stomach.  Woohoo?”

“The woohoo.  The fun bits.”

“Right,” the Necromancer said.  “The nethers.”

“The fun bits.”

“They can be, I suppose.  They’re the legacy, what we leave behind.  Even waste.”

“The pooper,” Julette said.  “Can be a fun bit, I hear.”

“We’re getting sidetracked,” Avery said, arms folded.  “Is this important?”

“No,” the Necromancer said, at the same time Julette said, “Very.  Vitally.”

“Why is it vitally important, Julette?” Avery asked, with a hint of restrained patience.

“It’s how we’re put together.  It’s how she’s put together.  And if we’re zoning the town that is Edith, according to what’s useful where, I think we should zone appropriately.”

“Okay, I get it, I think.  Let’s… not rule anything out?” Avery asked.  “Including fun… fun bits?”

Julette nodded, serious.  She was pretty sure Avery didn’t get it, but hey.

“Oh my god, if we don’t beat you guys, I don’t know how I’m going to cope,” Nomi said.

“Do you have to beat us, do we have to be enemies?” Avery asked.

“Now we’re getting sidetracked,” the Necromancer said.

“Right.  You were saying, before?” Avery asked the Necromancer.

“It’s about organization.  Zoning, if you want.  There are different ways to look at this, and this is how Edith James defined a lot of things.  She’s at home at different parts of this town, aspects of her are highlighted or diminished, depending.  We can dive deeper or explore from different angles or in different kinds of organization.  We could have the Surgeon make this linear.  A trip from crown to brow to throat to heart, and so on.  We could define this by other systems.  But I really don’t want to do that when there’s a wraith we can’t keep tabs on and there’s other unknowns.”

“Like the sinkholes,” Julette said.

“Yes.  In this puzzle, we’re trying to figure out the organization, what’s wrong.  The Surgeon mentioned an abscess, a place where power was hosted and then removed.”

“I don’t see it,” Avery said.

“The wraiths, the abyss-touched, they’d come from there.  That’s what we want and need to handle, to make her healthier and better,” the Necromancer said.

“I don’t see it,” Avery repeated.  “Julette?  Can you see in the dark?”

“Some.  I don’t think I see it either.”

She looked up at the moon.  Nothing.

Ski hills, homes, school, downtown… nothing.  Faerie cave south of town?  No sign.

Horizon?  She stared at a dark cloud.

Avery noticed.  “That?”

The Necromancer ended up having to do a bit of practice, for herself and then for Nomi, to see.

A dark cloud at the horizon, behind the other ski hill.

“Where did you go, besides home, downtown?” Avery asked Edith.

“I didn’t.  I led a quiet life.  I saw family.”

“Could family be where you mentally placed the abscess?” Avery asked.

“They’re not local.”

“I know they’re not local, but maybe… I don’t know.  That thing on the horizon?”

“That’s the Doom,” Edith said.

“Right.  Of course,” Avery said.

“Weak, it doesn’t matter.  Not that it was ever the threat it was portrayed as.”

She sounded sad as she said it.

Avery gave Edith a sidelong glance.  Then she looked at the Doom again.  “That’d be tied into the abscess, right?  There should be a connection?”

“I don’t see one,” the Necromancer said.

“Making a cut and reshuffle.  Hold on.  Shouldn’t move you much,” the Surgeon interrupted, his voice coming through the speaker phone in the ongoing phone call.

“Don’t fall down the hill and roll into their clutches,” Avery said, stepping away from the edge of the cliff.  Julette followed suit.

A beam of light cut near Edith’s home.  The landscape shifted.

“What was it?” Julette asked.

“A lantern,” Edith replied.  “From a dark place, deep in a pit.”

“Abyssal lantern,” Avery added.  “It was a power source, the surgeon was saying she got reorganized by Charles, everything packed in tight.  So tight that when the lantern was removed, there was a lantern-shaped hole left behind, the surrounding… immaterial stuff, it held its shape.  And that was a hole inside her, taint around the edges.”

“Like mold?” Julette asked.

Avery nodded.  “Kind of.  Spreads.  And the hole filled up with toxicity, I guess, especially as Edith did worse and worse things.”

Edith didn’t respond, and just looked across the magical representation of her inner self.

“Did it get cut out already?” Avery asked the Necromancer  “The abscess?”

“If it did, we wouldn’t have those things springing up,” the Necromancer replied.

All across the ski hill, some echoes and abyss-touched were gathering.  They didn’t advance or climb, but spaced themselves out, as if to promise that the descent would mean fighting.

“I think I know.  Can we reorganize?” Julette asked.

“One moment,” the Surgeon replied.

“We’ll need to be ready if the Surgeon is changing the orientation of things,” the Necromancer said.  “Turn dark soil over with a shovel, it turns up the worms and the bugs.  Turn this tortured an inner Self over-”

“It stirs up the wildlife,” Avery concluded.  She looked at Julette.  “You sure you figured it out?”

“I have an idea,” Julette said.

Avery leaned over, whispering, “Snowdrop’s still concerned.”

Julette nodded.

“Hey.  No conspiring,” Nomi warned.  “Seriously.  Give me the phone.  G- Surgeon.  Nomi here.  Do not adjust anything, don’t move.  They’re whispering, I want to make sure nothing’s about to get sprung on us, before they-”

She was interrupted as the voice came over speakerphone.  “I’m moving forward.”

“Surgeon,” the Necromancer said.  “You asked me to come here as an expert.  I and my apprentice are giving you input.  You’ve ignored us before.  There are wraiths, there are unknowns, my apprentice is worried about sabotage or-”

“A trap,” Nomi said.

“No trap,” Avery replied.  “Not from us.  Or our friends.  Nothing planned.”

“Something, then,” Nomi said.

“All she said was she’s getting bad vibes,” Julette said.  From Snowdrop.  “Both times.”

The area began to shift.

“Surgeon!” the Necromancer raised her voice.

“Me too, honestly,” Nomi said, frowning now.  “Necromancer?  What’s-”

“He’s not listening.  He shouldn’t, we’re in a bad position for this.”

“Vibes just got way worse.  Something’s happening outside.  They’re being held back.  By- I think we’re being held hostage.”

Julette flipped up the bottom end of her sweater, grabbing the rope, and looked at Avery.

“Tuck your chin in, don’t get whiplash,” Avery said.

She pulled.

The ropes did nothing.  But the sky flashed.

Julette pulled as well.

The sky flashed again, and this time, she was looking up at an angle to see.

A seal.  Drawn against the sky.

“We’re sealed in,” Avery said.  “And he’s in control of the Alcazar.”

Julette looked around, backing away as the ground began to tilt.

“It’s my fault,” Nomi told the Necromancer.

“What is?”

“The second raid.  I wasn’t in support, I hesitated.  The stuff they were talking about doing… the fact they said we shouldn’t include you in the discussion.”

“Discussion of what?”

“Horrifying kids,” Avery said.  She dropped to a crouch as the ground shifted again.

“That was one, it was described as… a teenager interfered, they hadn’t planned for it to happen like that.”

“They were in the midst of breaking into the community center to turn a bunch of kids into horrors so they could ransom the partial fix,” Avery said.  “Gillian Belanger blocked them, so Helen did it to her instead.  Cold blooded.”

“I guess the moment you stopped being convenient, you two outlived your usefulness,” Julette said.

“Tell me what you figured out, fast,” Avery said.

There wasn’t any time to.

The wraith made its move, attacking while they were in the midst of shifting between locations.  To bring them to its location.

Julette placed the mannequin head down in the chair by Verona’s worktable and mission desk.  The heavy table with its reconfigurable top was situated in what would normally be the dining room, and some chairs were arranged around two sides of it.

“Hey,” a voice came from the front hall.  Julette looked up from the process of putting the mannequin together.

“Hello?” Julette called out.

“It’s me.  I’m stopping in, we were trying to figure out the plan for the sparring schedule…”

Melissa, walking around the ground floor, angled her head to look around the corner to see if anyone was there.  She spotted Julette.

Melissa had tied her heavily crimped hair back into a ponytail, her mass of hair almost a mess of frizzy, sometimes ethereal zig-zags of varying sharpness.  She walked with a cane but didn’t seem to need it much, at least right now.  There was something in how she stood, she looked like she’d copied down some notes from Rook, some from Lucy, some from Verona.  She’d found some of her own style, but she was still very Melissa.  Or post-injury Melissa.  Just… confident now.

She stopped a second later.  “You’re the other Verona.”

Julette nodded.

“I kind of rolled with it when I saw you, last couple times.  You were attending in her place for a while, before she dropped out.”

“Yeah.”

“Weird.”

“You’re weird,” Julette retorted.

“Won’t argue with that.  What’s with the mannequin?”

“In case a friend drops in.”

“A friend who really likes Mannequins?’

“A friend who needs a body.  Unless you’re volunteering?”

“Uh, no.  No.  So what’s the deal, huh?” Melissa asked.

“With?”

“You.”

“We’re not supposed to tell you everything.  You didn’t want to know it, so you can do stuff later, in the future.  So you can fit into society.”

“Some.  I’m thinking less desk job Melissa, more private investigator, blackguard on the side Melissa.  If the world doesn’t end or the town and everyone in it wiped off the map, or whatever it is the others are trying to stop this week.”

“Pretty badass.”

“Half my motivation for this brutal-ass sparring we’re doing is thinking how cool it’d be to be this cripple detective, hobbling around, someone underestimates me, and I destroy them with my cane.  Give them a few new bellybuttons with my cane.”

“Not a new asshole?”

“Nah.  Too many people have those.  Bellybutton’s like, what the fuck, this is annoying.  Why’s my body so weird now?  It’s because I crossed this girl with a cane.”

“And it’s like, bellybuttons, they come from the umbilical cord,” Julette said.  “There’s that idea you were born again, right, except literally.”

“After some young fucking lady with a limp made you call her mommy.”

Julette grinned.

Melissa stabbed the end of her cane into the edge of the very solid table, in Julette’s general direction, and leaned forward into the handle.  “What about you?”

“Without giving too much away…”

“Thank you.”

“Body double.  Cushy gig, mostly.  Boys.  Lazing around.  Art.  I get to look over her shoulder while she’s doing the magic stuff.  I’m involved, without all the hassle.  She bounces ideas off me.  I’m just different enough from her, I don’t tell her exactly what she already knows and thinks.”

“Yeah?  Huh.”

Julette picked up the mannequin head, and turned it around.  “I’ve been getting into sculpture.  I help with the building.  I really like seeing how things are put together.  How people are put together.  Clothes, sometimes.  How Others are.”

She’d noticed that a while ago.  She’d mentioned it to Guilherme, after asking about how he changed himself with glamour.  She’d seen it with goblins, she felt it with fashion and seeing how people put themselves together in a style sense.  In the sense of how they presented themselves to the world.

Because she herself was something constructed, built, presented to the world.

Darkness swallowed them.  Then, one by one, the setpieces made an appearance.  The group.  A collection of people, that ‘crown’ of heads standing up.  A ring of people outside the house, talking.

Edith, expecting victory.  Expecting to get her husband back.

The wraith slithered through the darkness, fully in control of this corner of the Alcazar.

Julette put out a hand, reaching, and hit a window.

The walls of the house.  The house enclosed them.  The darkness melted, highlights of features becoming clear in the shadows, then manifesting, pushing inward.  Furniture, wall features, windowframe.

And the block of slate.  Black-gray stone, a single mass, a cube, almost, but rough-hewn, not straight, not smooth.

The scene shifted, everything sliding into place.  Julette flipped around, chest facing the slate, and turned her head.

It pushed her between wall and stone.  Enough that she couldn’t easily turn her head, because the end of her nose rubbed against the stone.  Couldn’t exhale fully, because that made her chest expand, and she was already smashed against stone.

Existing in the space between wall and stone.  Trapped.

She became a cat, dropping to the floor.  Close to the ground, barely any light reached her.

Avery, she saw, was in a similar situation.  She could breathe more, just by virtue of physical dimensions.  Nomi had a bloody nose- it looked like she’d smashed it into the wall when the slate had come in.  The Necromancer was much bigger, but could kind of worm around to where she was in the corner, where there was slightly more space.  When she finally managed, she panted for breath.

Edith looked like she was in the roughest shape, in every respect.  Mentally, in this place, and physically… Verona had more chest than Avery, but Edith’s body had way more junk in her trunk than any of them, except maybe kinda Yiyun.  That was how she was built.

Julette hated to spend the glamour to do it, when she had a limited supply to last the night, but she spent it to say, “The lantern?  It was in the abyss.  In a pit?”

“Yeah,” Avery grunted.

“The sinkholes.  The pits, the holes, the cracks.”

“That’s ruins-” Avery grunted, “-influence.”

“It’s both, isn’t it?”

“Can be,” the Necromancer said.

Edith was trying to get up toward the window, where the distance between slate and glass would afford her a few more inches.

The house wraith slithered through the darkness above them.  In its wake, she could feel the emotions, the loss.

Edith whimpered.

Julette hopped up onto Avery’s pants leg, and climbed, claws out, hooking into denim.

“Ow, ow,” Avery winced.  “Julette, you’re such an asshole sometimes.  Owowowow!”

Julette scaled Avery’s top too, where there was less fabric to keep nails from pricking through to flesh.

“Put up with it.  Gonna-”

She rubbed her body along Avery’s chin in a ‘see, I can be nice too’ way, before reaching Avery’s shoulder.  She leaped onto the windowsill by Edith, who had her eyes closed, her breaths shallow.

She stuck her head into Edith’s pocket and pulled out the chocolate, moved it to the windowsill, peeled the end, and then leaped up onto Edith’s shoulder, chocolate bar in mouth.

“Here,” she said, with the chocolate bar still in her teeth.

“How can you talk with that-?” Avery asked.

“How can I talk with a cat’s mouth anyway?” Julette asked.  “It’s perception, it’s fucky.  Have chocolate.”

“Is good,” Julette told Edith.

“I- no.  If I gain another millimeter around the hips, I might die.”

Julette passed around behind Edith, rubbing body against shoulders, and dug her snout into her shoulder region.  She pulled out a cigarette.

“I’ll take that.”

“In this enclosed a space?” Avery asked.  “It’s hard enough to breathe.”

“Put it in my mouth,” Edith said.  “I won’t light it.”

Julette did.  “Anything that helps, in bad times.”

Edith nodded, eyes closing.  She grunted as she struggled to raise herself up a short distance.

“The lantern was the heart?” Julette asked.

Edith nodded.  “After, fire and light.”

“I smell smoke,” Avery said.

The wraith moved through the dark.

“It’s manipulating the space,” the Necromancer said.  “Fire and smoke, ruin, disaster, the abyssal taint, they’re things everything remotely sapient in Edith James has access to, if they know how to.”

“It’s burning the house down with us stuck like this?”

“Something like that.”

Yiyun’s eyes glowed momentarily.

The wraith made a low, guttural sound, almost like mocking laughter.

“It’s pushing us out of the Alcazar.”

“It can do that?  With the seal?”

“Not out of the reach of the seal that’s locking us in,” the Necromancer said.  “The Ruins, the way they’re overlaid over reality, there are real-world references to most things.”

“Emotional things,” Julette said.

“Yes.  Based on emotional impressions, different things get more weight and solidity.  It’s going to move us more into a Ruins version of this.  Maybe with some Abyss in there too.  If we get out from there, we’ll be right back in the Alcazar, still stuck.”

“If I can get to a door, I might be able to get out,” Avery said.  “No guarantee, depends on the seal they put on this Alcazar.”

The smoke was definitely filling the narrow space they occupied.  Nothing to do with Edith’s cigarette.

Edith thrust an elbow into the glass.  It boomed with a hollow sound, but it didn’t break.

“Can we get Edith to manipulate this space?  It’s hers, right?” Avery asked.

“No,” Edith said.

“It’s your trauma.  It’s something you could get a handle on.  Remember their pre-surgery questions?” Avery asked.

“I asked you before too,” the Necromancer said.

“I can’t- break this.  If I could break this I would have.  If I could deal with this I wouldn’t have nightmares about it,” Edith said.

“Manipulate it.  It’s you,” Julette said, pacing along the windowsill.  “Don’t fight the dark.  Embrace it.”

“You’re so-” Avery grunted.  “Emo, sometimes.  Or goth, I don’t know.”

“I come by it legit,” Julette replied.

“You definitely do,” Avery groaned.

“I know where we can go, and there might even be a way out,” Julette said.

“What?” Avery asked.  “I’ve explored a lot of spaces…”

“We’re exploring a person.  I say-”

The smoke was thicker now.  Enough it was visible.

“-We go down.  Into the dark, toward the abscess.  The heart.  The heart connects to and supplies everything else.  It’s why the taint is everywhere.  We follow one of those connections, we look for the biggest line.”

“The biggest?” Avery asked.

“Think.  What about Edith needs more control, more power, more abyss than any other part of her?”

Avery shook her head.  “The brain?  No… the body.  Which is outside the Alcazar.”

Julette the cat clicked her tongue, raising a paw to point it at Avery.  To Edith, she said, “Down.”

“I don’t-”

This wasn’t the Edith they knew.

“This is one time it’s okay to embrace the dark, to feel that despair.  Recognize what you lost,” Julette said.

The space shook.

The wraith came.  It slithered through the gap in the space, above them, out of reach but capable of reaching them.

The Necromancer moved, flicking a beaded string out.

It snapped out, and it made contact, string looping around the Wraith’s neck.

She tried to hold on.

“Release us from this space and I release you!”

It roared, making a sound like a hundred house sounds, creaking and breaking wood and building resettling, and a whole bunch of grating, groaning stone sounds, like something being dragged.

“Release us from this space and I release you!” the Necromancer called out, fiercer.

It roared again, pushing, moving toward Nomi-

Who had a paper ready.  She held it up, arm at an awkward angle, and warded the thing off.

“Release us-” the Necromancer called out, fiercer than ever-

And a beam of light shone.

Like a car’s hi-beams.  A shaft of light, a movement, and then the wraith was gone.  The beaded cord fell, slapping the tops of Edith and Avery’s heads.

“Damn you!” the Necromancer swore.

Fire burned above.

“We need another way, then,” Avery said.  She made a face as she turned her head.  “Can Edith manage it?”

“Edith,” Julette said, tone insistent.  “You lost Matthew.  By your actions.  By your cowardice, by ugliness.  Accepting that, facing that, is the clearest course you have to finding your way to the other side.  A life without him.”

“There isn’t…” Edith grunted.  She really was in a squeeze.  It looked like her back could snap, pressing against the jutting windowsill.  “…what sort of life would it be?”

“If you survive, if you try, you could find someone you love just as much or more,” Avery said.

Edith coughed out a laugh.

Nomi coughed as well.

“Not possible,” Edith said.

“I’m a pretty bad cat to ask about the romance stuff,” Julette said.

“Yeah,” Edith replied.  “Like I’m any better.  You know I really wanted kids?  And here you girls are, and you’re bickering here and there and poking each other, and annoying each other, you’re being scarily sexually aware, you’re… if I were your mom, I’d be terrified.  It makes me really miss- I would’ve liked to see that, even the not-great parts, with-”

She kept stopping.

“I wish I’d gotten to be a mom.”

The Necromancer’s crimson mask scraped against stone as she turned her head, facing the direction Edith wasn’t.

Edith coughed again.  The cigarette fell.

“Smoke bothers you?” Nomi asked.  “But-”

“It’s not the Girl by Candlelight,” Julette said.  “It’s Edith James.  It’s the girl who vacated the premises, mostly.  The body.  The humanity that was the foundation, the vessel.”

It was why she’d been stooped over, lopsided, it was why she’d been so quiet, so withdrawn.  She was used to the backseat role.

“Oh,” Avery said.  “I had a feeling, but…”

Avery coughed.

“We need a way out,” Julette said, resting her chin on Edith’s shoulder.  “We need down.  So we need you to figure out…”

She coughed, squeezing her eyes shut, and they stung as she opened them, with the ambient smoke.

She could hear the crackle of fire.

Parts of the house creaked.

“I wish we’d been a better mentor,” Edith said.

“Would’ve been nice,” Avery said.  “But that wasn’t you, was it?”

“Partially me.  I was there, I was… feelings, here and there.”

“She said she felt you, satisfied, that she was keeping touch with your family, and everything.”

“Would’ve been nice if it ended a bit better.”

“It’s not ending,” Avery said.  “But it’d sure be nice if you helped make me right in that.  We need out.”

“Something this big,” Edith said, hand flat against the stone.  “Broken floorboards…”

She moved a foot, until wood shifted.

Making stuff true by manifesting it in the Alcazar.

“This is exhausting, somehow.”

“He’s locked the space down, he didn’t want you interfering from the beginning, remember?” Avery asked.  Julette looked at the Necromancer and Nomi.

They worded things so these two couldn’t interfere either.

“Did they swear oaths to not hurt you?” Avery asked.  Apparently following the same line of thought.

“Can’t say,” Nomi said, resting her forehead against the wall.  Blood ran down the painted surface and had formed a small collection on her coat and top where her chest was pressed against the surface in front of her, her back against the slate.

“Then can’t you gainsay them?  Or forswear them?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It’d be really damn helpful.”

“It doesn’t matter for the same reason we talked about being able to break the truce with you,” Nomi said.  “We discussed this.  What we’d do in an emergency.  Before the second raid, before they started talking about ransom, and horrors, and excluding my mentor, we talked about it.”

“What, exactly?” the Necromancer asked.

Edith kept kicking downward.

“That if we have to break the truce and be-” she coughed.  “-gainsaid, the Judge is on our side.  And we have one big card up our sleeves, if we need it.  If we need to break an oath, we can.  And we’ll know we can be unforsworn.  Or we’ll at least get away without… I can’t say it all.”

“Any of you guys might break an oath and then pull a Joshua?” Avery asked.

“We think…” Nomi grunted, voice nasal.  She coughed and blood shot out her nose, which looked painful and left her gasping for a second.  “…if it really matters, and if it really helps the Carmine, he’ll let us keep magic, instead of the Joshua thing.  He’ll forswear us and then unforswear us.”

Edith stomped on the floor.

“That alone will do so much damage to the practice,” the Necromancer said.  “Even talking about it as a reality.”

Edith’s foot broke floorboards.

“Shitty-ass magic world we-” Nomi coughed “-wouldn’t have been invited to?  Pulling-” cough “-shitty strings and may-” cough “-be occasionally a monster eats one of us?  What the fuck do any of us care, really?  What good’s it doing most of us?”

More floorboards were breaking.

“I don’t wanna,” Nomi addressed the Necromancer, voice strangled, like she was holding back more coughs.  “Don’t- don’t want to lose magic.  I don’t want to be kicked out.  Don’t want to lose you.  You make this crazy world make sense.”

And the floor dropped away.

Most of them slid.  Avery more than anyone- but Avery was able to put arms and legs out, pushing against the stone that didn’t fall as the floor had, for more traction.

Her arms shook from the exertion of pushing and keeping herself against the wall, so she wouldn’t drop into the darkness below.

Nomi slid too.  And the Necromancer, by roughly equal measure.

Edith less.

Julette hopped down onto Avery, then down onto Avery’s leg, where her thigh was more horizontal, knee pressed against the stone.”

“Damn it, Julette.”  Then down again.  Then down further.  Onto the broken floorboards and metal pipes, out of the light, until night vision was required.

Darkness swirled.  There were elements of the Doom, and there were charred figures in the dark, too.  Abyssal influences, clinging to the ruined walls of the pit that existed where there should have been a basement.

She navigated her way down, then down further.

Here and there, there was a burst of light or a flickering of lights from the Vigil.  Or flame from the candle spirit, or sounds from the pyromaniac.  Elemental fire streaked the darkness and illuminated everything, like meteors, fire leaking through cracks to fall into…

This.  The deep interior of Edith James.

The vertical face of the pit’s side stopped, became a corner, then became a horizontal expanse.  Julette stepped carefully, walking along a pipe, the fur of her shoulders and back rubbing against the surfaces above her.  Here, the ‘ceiling’ was the same kind of broken-wood, pipe, duct, packed soil and wire of the vertical face.

There was no floor.  Only a groaning, echo-infested darkness.  It felt way more ominous below them than the massive, nearly-house-sized block of slate that was suspended above them.  Even when there was nothing keeping that slate up there besides how it was part of that traumatic scene impressed in Edith’s memories.

There was a deeper darkness where the heart had once been.  When things illuminated, that place stayed dark.

“It’s here!  I think this is the best shot we’ve got at getting out!” Julette called up.

Avery relaxed a bit, to slide down.  Slid down some more.  Then she checked the coat was clear, dropping.

Hitting a pipe on the way down.  It rippled, not hurting her foot.

Avery fell too fast, too far, without managing to grab onto a handhold or foothold, after that, intentional or accidental.

She caught a grouping of loose wires.

Avery swung, nothing but pit beneath her.  She swung more, moving her legs to control the direction, then grabbed a hanging pipe that jutted out of the ‘ceiling’.  She dangled, arms over her head, hands on the pipe, legs and body hanging.

“Should start hitting a climbing gym,” Avery grunted, moving a bit.  “Monkey bars.  Do pullups.  Not even the first time in the last little while I’ve had to do this.”

Avery dangled by one hand, reached into her jacket, and flipped through spell cards with the other hand.  She lifted the spell cards up, and Julette stuck her head out, gripping the one Avery had flipped to in her cat teeth.

It flared bright.

Nomi had already descended a little ways.  The ability of people to escape the space between wall and slate block had a lot to do with their physical dimensions.  Julette was a cat, and had gone down first, easy.  She doubted she’d have been able to stop herself from falling like Avery had.  Avery was athletic but reasonably slender, and had gone down first.  If Julette had been human, she might’ve been next.  Tits did not good traction make.

Nomi was next.  The Necromancer followed.  Both looked glad to have more light.

Edith… was a struggle.  Every inch of progress seemed both hard and terrifying, because she’d slide an inch or two, yelp, feeling like she was about to drop away into nothing, and then she’d have to get her bearings again.

Julette put the light down, then navigated, looking.

“Snowdrop says bad stuff’s going down.  I’m not tracking a lot of it, but I’m a bit preoccupied.”

Hanging off pipes on the underside of a fucked up lady’s Self, with oblivion thick and ominous below you.

“Fair,” Julette said.  “There’s a better path this way.  You can kind of crawl.”

“I’m good here, I think.  Show the others?”

Julette did.  She worked her body through the morass of ducts, pipes, and wires, picked up the light, then led the way.

Avery monkeybarred her way across.  Others crawled, sometimes one by one on a row of connected-together pipes, with gaps between them.  Looking through those gaps, there was only dark oblivion below.  Void.

Toward the heart.  They were able to climb up, accessing a narrow hallway.

Filled with the charred people.

Here, for whatever reason, the Necromancer was more willing to use echoes.  Here, Avery had the freedom of movement to use spell cards, and the charred representations of abyssal taint didn’t have the freedom of movement to get away from waves of fire, ice, water, or blasts of lightning.

They were able to bulldoze their way into the main area.

It reminded Julette of the Arena.  Seats and viewing areas for looking at… something.  But that something was missing, ripped out, and gone.  Abyss taint grew on things like black cack on a frying pan that had burned whatever was cooking.  Cementing everything together.

“My heart?” Edith asked.

“You’ve got another heart,” Avery said, reaching up to knock knuckles against Edith’s collarbone area.

Nomi turned to the Necromancer.  “Do we need to worry about G- the Surgeon slicing us up here?  A beam of light, a removal?  Or not us but something… he could make us fall, right?”

“If he could find and manipulate this aspect of Edith’s taint and the void within, I think he would have already,” the Necromancer said.  “But it would be a good idea to move fast.”

“It’s like he’s got a rolodex of business cards and he’s trying to find the right card?  With us on it?”

“With us on the back.  More or less,” the Necromancer said.  “This looks like the main way.”

There were more abyssal influences.  And there were elementals here and there.  Echoes moved through corridors and had to be salted, or caught with the Necromancer’s beaded string and then salted.

The body of Edith James distorted as she got closer to the end of the tunnel.  It was bright, dark and blurry shapes moving across that brightness.

Julette became human, reached up, and grabbed fingers.

Twisting a hand back and sideways.  Touching the rasp to wrist.

They emerged.  Traveling along the faint and narrow connection between the Alcazar, Edith’s Self, and her body, which lay on the floor of the gymnasium.

“What the hell?” the Surgeon asked.

Julette had the rasp touched to the wrist of one girl, hand gripping fingers in what had to be a painful way, to keep that wrist turned the right way.

The girl -Kira-Lynn- backed up, as Julette advanced, until her back hit a wall.

“You don’t have the balls,” Kira-Lynn whispered.

“I don’t have any balls.  I’ve checked,” Julette whispered back.

Kira-Lynn’s stare was intense.  Fearless.

“They said they’d hurt you in there if we didn’t back off,” Verona said.  “Wanted to help, really.”

“It’s okay,” Avery said.  “Figured.  Snowdrop told me something along those lines.”

“Little shit took my bag,” Lucy said, pointing.

Julette could see one of the youngest students, a boy, with curly hair at the brow, was hugging Lucy’s bag to his front.  He smiled.

Creepy smile, creepy stare.

“What happened?” Avery asked.

“They pulled something when we weren’t looking.  I figured it was like what Matthew used to do, cutting out parts of themselves.  To be more ruthless, to be sneakier.”

“Close but no cigar,” Kira-Lynn said.

“Everyone did?” Avery asked, “Or-?”

“The kids.”

“You were going to leave us in there?” the Necromancer asked.

“No,” the Surgeon said.

“What was the plan, then?  You drop shit on us, you force us to scramble.”

“I knew you could take care of yourself.  But you went in willingly, it ended up being dangerous.  I took no direct action to harm you.  I even removed a threat.”

“You removed the Wraith who we could’ve forced to let us out.”

“And in the doing you would have let them out, and them getting out is a problem.  I protected you, but I did so while keeping control over this situation here.  I would have kept protecting you.”

“And if we’d fallen?” the Necromancer asked.  “If we’d succumbed to smoke?”

“Spirit surgery attempt to bring you back?” the Surgeon asked, shrugging one shoulder.

“I don’t consent, for the record.  I don’t trust you,” the Necromancer said.

“Good to know for the future.”

“Sometimes shit happens,” Seth remarked.  “Go to a dangerous place, meet a bad end.”

“Yeah,” the Necromancer said.  “You would’ve let my apprentice die, because shit happens?  No.  That’s everything we’re trying to stop.”

“More or less,” Seth said.  “Stand down?”

“You horrified a kid?” the Necromancer asked.  “Harri?”

The youngest of the girls laughed softly, as if to herself.  She ran fingers through blonde hair, then smiled.  “Helen did.”

The Necromancer said something in Chinese.

“No incantations,” Seth warned.

“I’m fucking swearing, you fucker,” the Necromancer said.  She shook her head.  “What are we doing?  What are you doing?”

“Winning,” Seth said.

“Ending the truce?” Lucy asked.  “You already fucked it, making the first move, but ending it is something else.”

“So that’s what you were doing,” Seth said.  “I was wondering why you approached it that way, at first.”

“Ending the truce,” the Surgeon said.  “Sure.  If there’s trouble, I’ll apologize, act contrite, and the Carmine will forgive me.”

“I really wish there’d be a sign that you were gainsaid for that.  That Charles had something redeeming going for him,” Verona said.  “Because this ain’t it, eh?  Eh Chuck?”

There was no reply.  No appearance from the Carmine.

“Coward,” Verona muttered.

“So this is war?”

“Yeah,” the Surgeon said.  “We discussed it beforehand.  Close enough to the new year.”

“Families and friends off the table,” Avery said.  “No hurting them, threatening them, cursing them, no touching houses, homes, jobs…”

“Why would we-”

“Yes,” the Necromancer cut in.  “So sworn, on behalf of our side, as long as you return the same favor.”

“What are you doing?” Seth asked.

“We agreed, we’re equal in this, as mentors, approaching this, you left me out of one discussion, while you were talking about threatening kids?  Fuck off.  If I get equal say I’m going to say yes, families off the table.”

“We could kick you out.”

“Let’s do that.  Try.  Start that, you need Helen and Joel and the others-”

“Don’t say their names.”

“Already knew their names,” Verona said.

Seth rolled his eyes.

The Necromancer, incensed, said, “You need the others involved to kick me out, it has to be a majority vote-”

“We can vote without them and if there’s enough votes to confirm your removal their wouldn’t matter…”

“I’ll challenge it, I’ll drag this out.  And in the space between sentences I will fucking swear enough oaths that we’re all fucked,” the Necromancer said.  “That there’s no way we can mentor these kids through any kind of fight, let alone this one.  Or you agree.  Families off the table, we have a long and hard talk about things.”

“Can’t do that while we’re dealing with this.”

“Families off the table, Surgeon.  And you give me the chance to talk to these kids, without the influence of whatever drug or ritual they’re under.  You can undo it?”

“It’s designed to be easily undone.  So long as they don’t stay that way for too long, there won’t be much taint.”

“Agree to the terms of war, let me talk to our students, uninfluenced, let me take any of them who want to get away from this away, you agree to not hurt them or me, I’ll recuse myself…”

“Necromancer,” Nomi said.  “Before you finish?”

“What is it?”

“They can agree and then be forsworn, ask to be unforsworn.”

The Necromancer fell silent.

“You’ll have to take our word for it,” Seth said.

“I might.  I’ll make my own assurances.  I remain on the team, but I’ll be hands off and a distance away.  The moment there’s any sign of dealbreaking, or if any of you teachers are forsworn or gainsaid, or if you remove me, I go all out.  You might be able to undo the forswearance or gainsaying, but I will have a karmic edge, to help me on my way.”

“And if we agree to the truce, agree to let you take any kids who want to go, agree to not hurt you or the students who go, agree to let you talk to them with clear heads, to check they want to stay or leave, you back off?  You swear to not get involved?” Seth asked.

“No pithy twists of wording like saying they’re such good friends they’re practically family, or the opossum’s a familiar, she’s a part of the family.  No protecting each other like that,” the Surgeon said.

“Yeah,” Seth said.  “That.”

“What are you doing, that we need to do this like this?  We were on a good track,” the Necromancer said.

“We’re on a bloody track.  We’ve got a Carmine ex-Forsworn, we’ve got a blood goddess with Abyssal influence, we have a city spirit tied into an undercity.  We’re up against the world, we’re up against a system, and right now we’ve found a chink, we’ve got the chisel poised at that chink, and we need to drive it in.  You’d better believe our hands are going to be bloody when we’re done hammering.”

“They’re kids,” the Necromancer said.

“You see kids, I see young ladies,” Seth said, glancing at one girl, who smiled, “and men, strong enough to change things.  To cut out the rot, burn out the entrenched awful.”

“To replace it with what?” Lucy asked.

“Us.  Or maybe the Carmine Exile will turn around, say, hey, surprise you fucks,” Seth said, voice taking a darker edge.  “All I needed was someone to cut and burn and find a way through to this point, you’re being retired.  Or executed.  Or whatever.  Maybe he’ll turn around and fling us into hell, or something equivalent, and he’ll defer to the Alabaster to put someone nice in charge.  I don’t fucking know.  It’ll be a good, decades-long effort, better than anyone’s managed in a long time, we’ll have tried, we’ll have had a really fucking good time along the way.”

“I’m kind of surprised Chuck hasn’t shown up,” Verona said.

“It’s so cute that you refer to him like he’s human,” the girl near Seth said.  “It’s like you don’t want to recognize he’s practically a god you’re in no way equipped to deal with.”

“He’s Chuck,” Verona said.  “And if we or he loses track of his humanity-”

“Or loses track of it more,” Lucy supplied.  “We know he condoned this on some level, because he didn’t intervene.”

“-Yeah.  Yeah, good point.  But if that happens, if he slips, this gets way uglier way fast.”

“Truce ends here, tonight, and you’ll find out fast,” one of the boys from the student group said.

“Maybe so,” Verona said.

“Kira-Lynn?” Seth asked.

“Seth,” the Necromancer cut in.

“What?”

“Agree to the terms before you say or do anything more, or I will screw you all over.”

“Could we set some more, actually?” Avery asked, hopeful.

“No,” the Surgeon said.  He looked at Seth.  “Alchemist?  Thoughts?”

Another teacher in a mask closer to Verona’s end of the room shook his head.

“I say yes,” the Surgeon said.  “Consider me sworn in once the others are.”

“Yes,” Seth added.  “So sworn.”

“So sworn,” the Alchemist said, in a slightly accented voice.  He added, “That goes for you students, too.”

“Deal’s made,” Seth told the Necromancer.  “Swear.”

“I swear to my end.  I want to talk to the students before anything.”

“Too bad,” Seth said.  “Later.”

She tensed.

“Tomorrow.  But if you take anyone out of the room, or compromise them by doing whatever it takes to undo what they’ve done to toughen up and sharpen their edges for this, here?  It compromises us.”

The Necromancer paused, then hesitated.  “If you hurt them in the interim…”

“We won’t.  But they might,” the Surgeon said.  He pointed at Julette, who still held the rasp to Kira-Lynn’s wrist.  Kira Lynn’s fingers were crushed in Julette’s hand, and the hand was trembling from what had to be extreme discomfort.  But the girl’s expression wasn’t changing.  She didn’t blink, either, staring Julette down.

“Okay,” the Necromancer said.  “Nomi?  You’re of reasonably sound mind, right now, aren’t you?”

“I think?”

“Would you like to go with me as I leave?” the Necromancer asked.

Nomi hesitated.

“Please.”

Nomi nodded.

Then she crossed over to where the Necromancer was, and the woman put a hand at her shoulder.  Walking to the door.

“Thank you,” Avery said.

The woman stopped there.  “I probably could have done more.”

“Could’ve done less,” Avery said.  “Appreciate this.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t hurt the students too badly.”

“Will consider it,” Lucy said.

Julette considered it, then pressed the rasp harder against skin.  All across Kira-Lynn’s body, the faint indent of the little metal triangles that could shred her skin formed a texture on her skin.  Pressing in without cutting or shredding.

Still at the doorway, the Necromancer said, “If a necromancer makes an undead with tools that were used to murder, uses the heart of a wrongdoer, however well-intentioned, and does the work on bloody ground, is it really a surprise if things turn out this badly?”

“Nothing’s turned out yet,” Seth said.  “We’re only partway.”

The Necromancer looked like she wanted to say something more, but then she pushed the door open, holding it for Nomi as she passed through.

“Give her a moment to get clear,” Seth said.

“Clear of what?  You going to blow everything up?” Lucy asked.

“No, but don’t underestimate these students.  They were pretty fierce even before the adjustments,” the Surgeon replied.

The youngest girl present was laughing softly to herself.  Her head was bent forward, hair dangling, and she kept pushing and running fingers through her hair to comb it back, only for it to fall forward again.

“Kira-Lynn?” Seth asked.

“Yeah.  You wanted something earlier.”

“You’re their principal hostage.”

“Am I a sacrifice you’re willing to risk making?” Kira-Lynn asked.  Fearless, too casual.

“My best friend’s cute apprentice?” Seth asked, his eyes flashing with Sight.  “No.  But that girl, that fetch?  You were right.  She won’t do it, not on purpose.”

“That so?” Kira-Lynn asked.

She pushed Julette away hard.  Kira-Lynn was taller, stronger, and that amounted to a lot of leverage.

Julette stumbled, fell, became a cat, and scrambled.  Kira-Lynn was moving, reaching behind her back.

Wherever she wanted to go, Julette wanted to stop her.  She reached out with the rasp, not even sure if Seth was right, and one triangle of it nicked Kira-Lynn.

Resulting in a thousand or so short paper-cut style nicks across her.  The girl stumbled, making a sound that seemed like it wanted to be a groan or a scream, and ended up being a coughed out halfway point between the two.  She fell.

Julette turned, spotted the smallest boy, who had the one bag.  She approached him, holding the rasp-

And he ran, dropping the bag.

“You useless shit!” Kira-Lynn shouted, as Julette scooped it up.

“Get safe!” Lucy shouted.  “Get Edith safe!  We said we’d try-”

Kira-Lynn had managed to pull out what she’d been going for.  A wand, crooked, with a splintered, stained end.  Or just a broken branch from somewhere bad.

Julette moved into the way, to shield Edith.  The black lightning coursed out, jumping to the wall to tear out paint and crack the surface beneath.  Jumping out to Julette, to shatter a good chunk of her.  Arm and right chest.

Stumbling, pulled off balance by the bag in the one hand, she went through the door.

Another blast followed, before the double doors could swing shut and be a barrier behind her.

Small of the back.  But trace taint in the shattered part of her carried some energy, and the black lightning danced across her.  Shattering everything between, and stuff around.

What wasn’t destroyed hit the ground at a running speed, and scattered apart.

Edith stopped in her tracks, looking at the scattered sticks and twine.

Go, thought the pile of sticks and twine.

“What do I do?” the representation of the body of Edith James asked.  Representation of the girl who’d been occupied by the everything else.

She reached down for the sticks and branches.  “You should have let me get hit.  If I can’t be a mom or a wife, I can at least-”

The door was blasted.  One side was left with a hole in about seventy percent of it.  The other side came off the hinges.  Kira-Lynn, bloody from the various nicks, stepped forward.

“The Carmine Exile and Lis are fond of you,” Kira-Lynn said.  “But the sentimentality and obsession over a marriage that never was going to happen in the first place is… counter to certain plans.  They need more people they can count on.  The whole will still be Edith, and still be the Girl by Candlelight, but… less inconvenient humanity.  Lis’s idea, and the fact the Carmine Exile hasn’t stopped this is… pretty telling of how sick he was of your ‘poor me’, ‘I don’t want to fight’ shit.”

Edith leaned forward, arms folded, her body a dome over the pile of sticks, twine, and glamour.

“Thank you for illustrating my point.”

The stick barked out Abyssal power, and Edith was flung back, along with a good amount of the sticks, twine, dust, and ruined clothing.

She lay there, badly wounded, breathing hard.

“I’m not doing this out of mercy.  I’m doing it to be thorough,” Kira-Lynn said, before finishing her off with another blast.

She leaned against a row of lockers, then exhaled.  “This really hurts.  Where’s that fucking magic tool?”

She pushed her way through the twigs, twine, and clothing.

She straightened, hissing with the pain of a thousand or so light papercuts, and looked at the rasp, turning it around.  “How do you carry this without accidentally nicking yourself on it?”

She turned back toward the double doors, weapon in hand.

There were running footsteps.

The partially damaged door banged open.  Lucy, Avery, and Verona came running through, Snowdrop on Avery’s shoulder.  Lucy had her eyes shut, hand at her face.

“-rinse it off or- frig!” Avery shouted, as she noticed Kira-Lynn.

Kira Lynn used the broken branch.  The group managed to avoid the worst of it.

“Let’s jounce from this grocery store!” Avery shouted, flinging a ball.

“The fuck?” Kira-Lynn asked, as the ball bounced to her left.

A whole mess of very full cardboard boxes came flying from the left turn of the hallway, smacking her into the lockers.

There was a brief scuffle.

“Fuck, fuck.  That’s Julette,” Verona muttered.  “That’s Edith.”

“What happened?” Lucy asked, eyes shut.  “Fucking Seth, fucking-”

Avery used something to seal the door.

Immediately, the main group of St. Victor’s students and mentors began attacking the spaces on either side of the door.  Going through the wall.

“Get me to her, get me to her,” Lucy repeated.

“Fuck you,” Kira-Lynn hissed.  She had the broken branch, still.

Verona caught her arm, body-slamming it into the lockers and holding it there.  She pried the weapon free of her hand, dropping it to the floor.

The rasp came around.  Verona turned her focus to that.  Snowdrop turned human to scoop up both weapons, before backing off, eyes on the door and the breaking wall.

Avery, meanwhile, was guiding Lucy.  Putting her square in front of Kira-Lynn.

“What do you need?” Avery asked.

“She’s right in front of me?”

“Yeah.”

“Directly?” Lucy asked, eyes closed.

“Yeah.”

Kira-Lynn spat on Lucy’s face.

“Curse transfer, from Seth to me to you,” Lucy said.

“What?” Kira-Lynn asked.

Lucy headbutted her.  Kira-Lynn turned her head at the last moment, but that meant the headbutt hit her temple.

Lucy’s eyes opened.  Kira-Lynn’s shut, and she slumped down.  The boxes were piled up tightly enough around her that she couldn’t really fall to the ground, and sort of flopped onto them, hands at the side of her face.

“They got Edith,” Verona said, as the three girls backed up as a group.  Snowdrop jogged over to be at their side.  “And Julette.  Fuck.  Fuck!”

“I’m sorry about Julette,” Avery said, “and I’m sorry about Edith.”

“Do me a favor and don’t say their names in the same breath?” Verona asked.

“That was the actual Edith James.  Edith sensed her general awareness.  There… wasn’t a lot there.  But there was good.  And bad.  And complicity, and… it’s complicated.  But…”

“I hear you both, but… this is it isn’t it?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“Without giving anything away to Charles… we have plans?”

“Angle of attack,” Verona said.

“I have one idea, not a curse but… pretty good way to trip him up,” Lucy said.

“No… plan exactly,” Avery said.

“Okay, that’s okay,” Lucy said, voice soft.  “Bit discouraging but-”

“I want to run.”

“What?”

“Truce is broken, we know what happens next.  We’re up against-”

“Someone far far away,” Snowdrop said.  “That sure ain’t the Carmine Exile.”

He was there.  The hallway had a T-intersection, the same turn that the cardboard boxes had come tearing down.

Charles stood there, looking sad.

“Hey Chuck,” Verona said.

“I gainsay you three-”

“I counter!” Lucy shouted.  “Conflict of interest.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“I call for other Judges to stand in, because you’re clearly fuckin compromised!”

“When that’s implemented, it’s a kindness, but there’s no rule that it must be so, so it won’t be so here.  No.  They’d be fine with this anyway.”

The concrete surrounding the door to the gymnasium cracked, grit cascading down to the floor at the base of the door.

“We leave,” Avery whispered to Verona.  “We go, we can’t be in his jurisdiction.  We have to trust that what we’ve built, what we’ve made here, it’ll be strong enough.”

“We have obligations,” Lucy muttered.

“I gainsay you three-”

“Objection!”

“There are no objections in this court of law.  For statements made in joint by you three, be gainsaid for fifteen-”

“List them!” Lucy shouted.

“Guilherme,” Verona whispered.  “We swore we’d watch him.”

Avery pulled off her bracelet.

“You three agreed you’d watch each other, and when-”

“When?  Date and time!” Lucy shouted.  “Be specific, because we’ve said similar things at different times, I-”

“I’ll answer-”

“I’m entitled to make my damn challenges!  What was the phrasing!?  What language was it spoken in!?  Were there witnesses!?”

“That-”

“Is there video footage!?”

Locker doors changed around them, slamming noisily.

“We’ll send for him, we’ll get word to family,” Avery said, looking.

She pulled a door open.

“I’ll hold onto that then,” Charles said.  “Since it looks as though you’ll be gone before I’m allowed to finish.”

The concrete around the gym door continued to break.

Avery led Verona and Lucy through the locker, then slammed the door behind her.

“Out of my jurisdiction?” he asked.

He walked slowly to where the cardboard boxes were, looking down at Kira-Lynn.

Then he looked down at Edith’s body.

“It would be nice if they didn’t come back, don’t you agree?”

Kira-Lynn grunted something.

“What a terrible thing it is to be my friend,” Charles said.  “You, Matthew, John.  The girls.”

He reached for the remains of Julette.

A nugget of goblin-ness burst right in front of him, his hand shielding the worst of it from spattering against his face.

As Guilherme had observed, there was goblin-stuff in her.  A trick like Toadswallow had taught.  Hiding something.

In this case, hiding some winter glamour.

Not mixing.  She hadn’t lied to Guilherme.  But layering.  Something fae inside something goblin inside something fae.

She was a student of how Others were put together.  Herself most of all.  It was important, as this very scenario illustrated.

As a cat, incapable of becoming something much larger, at least without help, she dashed the length of the hallway.

“Tell them what the girls wanted to tell them,” he said, as Julette reached the far end, his voice booming, backed by the damage being done to the wall behind him.  “Communicate where they are to people who care.  Tell their family members they’re safe as long as they’re uninvolved.  Tell Guilherme to find them.”

She glared at him.

“I don’t think I’m a monster, not really,” he said, still looking sad.  “But there’s no way to do something as comprehensive as this, without being monstrous.”

She didn’t, couldn’t respond.

“An angle of attack, a non-curse means of tying me down, and an escape plan.  I suppose I’ll be seeing them, and you, soon?”