Lucy kept her Sight on, watching a woman with fragments of metal gouging her in ten different places walk with glacial slowness through the parking lot across the street.
The music store was one of those places that kept going because it kept going. Just enough people would come past Kennet, along the highway, see downtown and the big, faded music sign, and buy enough stuff to keep this place scraping by. People who bought vinyls. People who still had and used CDs.
Lucy was at one of the stations at the end of the aisle, where a metal stand had been erected with a panel that might have been a set of buzzers for an apartment building, for selecting songs from a catalogue. The big, old-school headphones with crazy sound canceling were probably really gross, but she was putting up with them for now.
The woman shambled like a zombie, clearly hurting, and called out to someone on the sidewalk. There was no response. She looked concerned, mournful, and dark blue watercolor stained the air around her.
Lucy didn’t want to agree with Verona, and dismiss the world as a place where every adult was unhappy, but she’d made decisions for her awakening, bringing a knife, using a knife to declare herself. That seemed to be a big thing that determined how her Sight had started working, right off the bat. Looking for pain and seeing pain, like how Miss had described Nicolette’s omens working.
There was a lot out there. Everyone had something they were dealing with.
The lyrics of the song matched the sentiment, but the tone didn’t. It was peppy, upbeat. It was the faintest cry. In a sorry place. In the faintest times, I will never forget why… I always liked you and I.
A car pulled into the parking lot. Lucy watched it, and watched the driver. A man with a dark watercolor blotch obscuring much of his face.
Verona was by the rack of old merchandise, which was mostly stuff like lighters and belt buckles, probably bootleg, with names of old rock bands on them. She leaned into the window, peering, to try to see the parking lot from another angle.
Lucy shook her head at Verona as Verona looked back, quizzical.
I just lost my head, I couldn’t stay. When you find that you were lost in the fray. I will hold my breath another day.
It was faintest cry, in a sorry place In the faintest times, I will never forget why… I always liked you and I
Lucy pressed buttons, trying combinations. Some of the buttons had jammed a long time ago, with erosion from oil and fingerprints, probably, helping to crust them into that jammed position. She experimented to remind herself which jammed buttons could transmit a signal if enough pressure was applied, then worked out which songs were playable.
The last time this thing had been updated was like, five years ago.
“Do you smoke?” the guy at the counter asked Verona, loud enough to be heard with the headphones on.
Verona’s reply wasn’t, but it looked like a ‘no’.
“Then leave the lighters alone. Don’t waste the gas.”
Verona went neutral, set the lighter back on the little display thingy, and walked over to the clothes rack, where a bunch of t-shirts with band names on them were hanging on the ring.
Neutral was Verona’s ‘problematic’. Lucy gave her friend a warning look, and mouthed, ‘be good’.
Lucy listened to two more songs, before checking the time. Across the street, in the parking lot of the bed and breakfast, there was only the shambling woman and some agitated dude who’d left the property and come back three times in the time Lucy had been in the store.
Class had only gotten out an hour and a half ago. And they’d taken a bit to get here. So maybe three comings and goings in the last hour.
Nothing Other about them. Just stains and swords, a bit more than most people had.
A wave of teenagers passed in front. Lucy cocked her head to the side to try and see past them. It would be very practitioner-y for a sudden intervention to block her view, like a tree branch or whatever blocking Miss’s face.
She wondered if she could learn to do that. Getting the universe to provide that kind of help.
Nothing in the parking lot, but the door opened.
Lucy lowered the headphones.
He had a red mop of hair, he was tall, and he had a really intense cheekbone to cheek line and freckles, which felt like a weird combination, somehow. He wore a v-neck tee and skinny jeans that made it clear he was really skinny but he wasn’t an athlete like his middle sister. He had his arm around some girl with straight brown hair, who left him behind to go straight to the counter.
Rowan lazily walked up to the halfway point between the door and the counter, raising his hand in a wave.
“Can I put these papers up in the window?” the girlfriend asked.
The man at the counter took some of the papers, looking at them.
“Laurie’s really into social issue stuff,” Rowan told Lucy, too quiet for Laurie to hear. He widened his eyes a bit as he said it.
“Huh,” Lucy answered. “Good for her.”
“It’s just a lot sometimes, y’know?”
“I like it when people are passionate about stuff,” Lucy answered.
“Like Avery and her hockey?”
“Yeah, sure. Verona and her art.”
Lucy indicated Verona over by the clothes rack.
“Ah, she pointed you out from a distance when we picked her up once. You should come over some time.”
“Uhhh,” Verona answered.
“Can’t go worse than your friend here getting Avery to spill ice water onto the floor.”
“Onto Sheridan,” Lucy clarified.
“Funny,” Rowan said, absently. Laurie was returning. “Lucy and Verona. Avery’s friends.”
“Verdict?” Rowan asked.
“He said no,” Laurie answered, looking perturbed. She glanced back at the guy, who was vaguely goblin-ish. He had more hair sticking up the back of his shirt toward his neck than he had on top of his head, and when he was looking down at the papers strewn across one portion of the front counter, it looked a lot like the line of his chin meeting the flab of his neck was a second mouth.
“What’s the paper?” Lucy asked.
Laurie perked up, peeled away a page from the stack, and handed it over. “Elder care, and trying to have a forum to discuss alternative options.”
Verona snorted. “I’ve been thinking that if I got old and helpless, I’d want to do the thing where I get put on an ice floe and pushed out to sea.”
“If you do half the stuff you’ve talked about doing, you’re going to lead a really weird life,” Lucy told her friend.
“Like I’m not going to already? Look at the last week and a half.”
“The ice floe thing isn’t that far off,” Laurie chimed in. “We’re so dangerously close to a point in time when the boomer population is going to be in senior care, and we don’t have the staff for it, we don’t have the capacity, we don’t have the other resources. Rather than a cold and lonely death, wouldn’t it be better to give more options to someone who’s old and in pain? Let them pass, surrounded by family?”
“You’re going to have a steep uphill battle bringing that up in Kennet,” Rowan said.
“You think I don’t know?” Laurie asked. “I grew up here.”
“I would rather have a harder conversation somewhere like here, where I’m changing one mind, than go somewhere like, I don’t know, Toronto? And have a hundred people who already agree with me nodding their heads and giving me a thumbs up.”
“I like that mindset,” Lucy said. “Cool.”
“I’m worried this ends in tears,” Rowan added.
“Only if you’re the one crying,” Laurie said, giving him a poke in the chest. She was a fair bit shorter than him, so it was mostly her poking him at her eye level.
Feeling like this was heading for a spat, Lucy interrupted, “My mom does work with older people. Do you mind if I take this? I want to pick her brain about it.”
“I think I’ve seen her around,” Rowan said. “And I had a class with your brother, I think. When the elevens and twelves had a combined class.”
“We’re eights and nines,” Verona said.
“Ah, yeaaahhh. I remember that now. Yeah, no, I remember Booker. He was cool. Really cool guy.”
‘Cool’. “He’s great,” Lucy said.
“Great,” Rowan said, to his girlfriend. To Lucy, he said, “If you’re going to influence Avery to do stuff like dumping water on Sheridan, do you think you can pass on that energy to her? Get her to call me great?”
“No, I don’t know that I can,” Lucy replied. “You gotta earn it.”
“You didn’t know she was in a combined grade,” Rowan’s girlfriend said, smiling.
“I did, I just forgot for a while. He was cool, though. How’s he doing?”
“In school. Political science.”
“Damn, good for him. Huh! I’m not even sure I know what political science is.”
“I suspect it’s the science of politics,” Verona told Rowan.
Rowan made a face. “I’m guessing you’re going to be a bad influence on Ave too, huh?”
“It’s likely I already have,” Verona replied.
Lucy looked past Rowan to the bed and breakfast. Nobody new, no new cars, nothing.
Her Sight still active, she looked at Rowan and found him relatively pristine, except for a shadowing of watercolor at his sides, gripping his body. Dark purple.
His girlfriend had a shadow all the way around her neck. No corresponding darkness or marks on Rowan’s hands.
Nothing Other. The rest of it wasn’t Lucy’s business. She dismissed the Sight with a blink of the eyes.
“Poli sci, though, that’s cool. I thought about applying, but I thought it was better to take a year off, save money, decide what I’m studying.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” Lucy told him.
“And Laurie’s graduating soon. It’s not impossible we end up going to the same school.”
His girlfriend gave him a one-armed hug, smiling.
“What do you think? Try the next few stores?” Rowan asked his girlfriend.
“How are you guys? Want a ride back? If you wait, hm, fifteen or twenty minutes, we’ll be headed that way.”
“We can go back on our own,” Lucy said. “Thanks though.”
“Avery gets out of soccer soon, doesn’t she?”
He nodded, and it looked like he was going to go. “She’s okay, right?”
“Why do you sound unsure?” Verona asked. Not a beat missed.
Verona could be the biggest pain sometimes, but there were times Lucy really admired her.
“Just wondering. She seemed sorta down.”
“Isn’t that the sort of thing you should ask her?” Lucy asked. “If you want that ‘great brother’ cred? Booker would ask, I think.”
“You don’t have fifty other siblings, though,” Rowan said. “I’d have seen them around.”
Lucy raised her eyebrows.
“I mean, I remember when I tore my ACL. I had Sheridan, who was actually cute and sweet back then-”
“-and little Avery, Grumble, that’s my grandfather, remember? And mom and dad, and even bite size Declan, all giving me one hundred percent of their pity, their attention, cooing over me, and all I wanted was to be a grumpy preteen, and they wouldn’t let me. Now Avery’s about that age, and she’s even more, like… off doing her own thing.”
“Is she?” Lucy asked.
“Isn’t she? It’s just like… mom and dad are handling the school stuff and making sure she’s cool, and Grumble’s all buddy-buddy with her, and I ask her how her sports are doing because I’m giving her a ride half the time. And Sheridan… keeps her in check? I guess? Everyone needs a pain in the ass big sibling. Splitting the load, I think? Which has to be better than a fifty person pile-on.”
“So why ask?” Lucy pressed him, a little more aggressive, and even a bit annoyed. “You seem like you’ve decided all this. She’s not your responsibility? If you’re that sure she’s okay, why bring it up?”
“I’m just curious, I dunno, it’s not like mom and dad will sit me down and give me the low-down on whatever’s going on. I heard there was an app thing but I don’t know how she did, or if she’s into a boy or…”
Lucy realized she was shaking her head at him and had been since at least the ‘just curious’.
“There’s a real easy way to get the low-down on Avery,” Lucy said. “Ask Avery. She’s the expert on Avery.”
“I’ve got a bunch of other siblings, and if I was going to be fair to them I’d have to ask them, and that’s a whole hassle, and-”
He sounded like he was joking, but Lucy couldn’t help but think back to how he’d opened the conversation talking about Laurie’s thing. Like maybe he was revealing some buried sentiments, and it really was that much of a hassle.
“You’re not asking if your other siblings are doing okay though, right?” Verona asked.
“I’m actually worried about all of them, if I’m honest, but that’s a whole thing, and I don’t want to keep Laurie.”
“If this really is the year where you’re working and getting sorted out before college, it might also be your last chance to be a big brother. Maybe… get that handled?” Lucy asked, shrugging.
“Maybe,” he said. He looked at Laurie. “Want to head out?”
“Good luck with your…” Lucy checked the paper. “Symposium?”
“Thank you! It’s stuff we should have been talking about twenty years ago, and you know, the next best time after twenty years ago is…”
“Nineteen years and three hundred and sixty-four days ago?” Verona asked.
“Today!” Laurie said.
Rowan stuck out his fist. Lucy looked down at it, realized what he was trying to do, and gave him a fist-bump. He seemed to hesitate at the last second, like he was going to switch to a handshake, and fucked it up.
He gave Verona a pat on the shoulder as he walked by.
Lucy narrowed her eyes at him, watching him leave, then watched him through the display window as he walked off, hugging Laurie.
“He’s got a long way to go before he’s a Booker,” Verona commented.
“Thank you,” Lucy said. “Poor Laurie.”
“Poor Avery,” Verona said, chuckling as she said it.
“What’s Laurie even doing, though?” Lucy asked. She indicated the door, got a little nod from Verona, and they exited the store. “Where’s the appeal? Tall, sure, but…”
“I don’t get the appeal of tall. It seems like a pain. Always craning your neck to look up? If you spent the rest of your life with someone like that, you could have a permanent crick in your neck.”
“Maybe you see it that way because you’re short?”
“Petite! And I’m not ridiculously short.”
They walked away from the front door, traveling along the sidewalk, keeping an eye on what was commonly termed the ‘bed and breakfast’. They’d been keeping an eye on the parking lot, and the walk-up to the rooms themselves. Now they could see more of the rooms and the office building where people went in to actually pay for the rooms. It was a bed and breakfast in name only, pretty much. In reality, it was more of a motel, with more tea cozies, really fluffy, floral curtains. Like, if a bed and breakfast was a person, that person had done some hard drugs and physically aged fifteen years from the hardships she’d been through.
Brie hadn’t showed. They had other eyes on the motel further up the road.
There were short-term rental services through Bedsurf and whatever, but they tended to be expensive, and most people who did that were the ones with nice houses who went away on vacation for winter and put their places up for the holidays so people could come ski on some cheap, C-tier hills. That wasn’t really a thing people did for summer.
Lucy pulled out her phone to check. There weren’t any listings, open or closed.
There wasn’t an actual hotel, either. Just the motel and the ‘Bon Journee Inn’, depressed crack addict of places to stay.
That agitated guy had made his trip back.
“Would she camp out, do you think?” Lucy asked, folding up the paper and sticking it in a back pocket.
“She didn’t look like the type to,” Verona said.
Verona turned around, walking backwards for a second, and nearly tripped, looked up at the rooftops of the buildings-
Lucy looked too. With Sight and without.
The ‘downtown’ area was a smattering of stores and fast food places. The shopping core of Kennet. A lot of it was pretty depressed. The furniture and mattress store that was always going out of business. The music store with its huge painted sign that was peeling. The beer and OLCB stores, which did good business. Most buildings were one floor, or two floors with apartments above them. One of the apartments had an American confederate flag in the window, used as a curtain.
Odds were good the person who had hung it would be happy to know she was as bothered and bewildered by that as she was. Assholes.
“Snowdrop!” Verona called out. “Snowdrop! Snowdrop!”
Snowdrop didn’t appear.
“Worth a try,” Lucy said.
“Goblins, goblins, goblins!” Verona tried.
“If only it was that easy.”
They walked to the corner. Past the shorter buildings, Lucy could see the top edge of the cinema. It too had seen better days, she knew. A lot of the places at this end of ‘downtown’ felt like they remained because if they disappeared then Kennet would collapse, even if they weren’t that important to the day to day. The music store, the theater, the motels.
They’d tried to revitalize or decorate core ‘downtown’ at one point, making it look endearingly rustic, with old-fashioned black lampposts with lightbulbs instead of gas lights inside. The paint had peeled.
A half-block down the street was a rainbow Canadian flag, which gave her a bit of faith in humanity, and in Kennet.
A bottle went skidding across the sidewalk, into the street, as Snowdrop accidentally kicked it. “Wah!”
“You came!” Verona cheered.
“Sorry! Were you watching the motel?”
“I was! Goblins were messing around, sleeping, like losers. Just me on the job.”
“Any luck?” Lucy asked.
“Right,” Lucy said, sighing. “Thanks for coming.”
“It’s a one time thing,” Snowdrop mumbled, pushing her hood back and rubbing at her eye with the heel of her hand. She had bedhead, and raked at it to try to get it in order. Her shirt was bright red, with ‘Poss’d Off’ on it.
“I brought candy!” Verona said, pulling off her bag. “Payment, for your hard work, and for looking after Avery.”
“This is lame,” Snowdrop mumbled. “Having to help Avery, and being given stuff all the time, with expectations I gotta eat it, and Avery’s hugging and snuggling me all the time, and you rub my head and stuff-”
Lucy reached out to muss up Snowdrop’s hair some. Snowdrop grunted.
“-Awful. I can’t go on like this.”
Lucy switched to using her fingernails to comb through Snowdrop’s hair, fixing the bedhead.
This would all be easier if Brie did show up, but until she did, she remained a threat, a possible invader, possibly equipped with weird retro techno-magic, who knew just enough to really mess with them, or find out stuff she shouldn’t.
“I’m here, I’m-” Cherrypop huffed. “Here!”
Snowdrop turned, pumped both fists in the air, almost hitting Lucy, who was right behind her, and shouted, “Aaaaaa!”
“Aaaaa!” Cherrypop returned the gesture and cry, despite being out of breath. She looked like she might even pass out. She gulped in air as soon as she was done, head jerking back. “Aaa!”
Snowdrop picked the little goblin up, and flipped up her hood over her recently fixed-ish hair, before setting Cherrypop down on top.
Other goblins appeared, sticking to the alley. Bluntmunch, and a new one, with proportions like a gorilla, but only about three feet high. Female, muscular, with a ton of hooks and sharp piercings sticking out of one arm, until it was like a gauntlet, held together with bands of her own flesh. Her one eye was very round, bright, peering through a curtain of matted hair.
“Trying to cover more of the bases,” Bluntmunch growled. “Got the whole perimeter, now we’ve got possible people inside. Snatch is good. Behaves.”
“Are the others around?” Verona asked.
“Some. Mostly the perimeter.”
“We’ve got to go attend a meeting,” Lucy said. “Can we leave the bed and breakfast to you? Keep an eye out for her? Snowdrop?”
Verona handed over the candy.
“And get bent! I hope the meeting goes terribly!” the sleepy Snowdrop called out.
Lucy and Verona turned the corner and walked down the street, back south toward school and Edith’s house and everything else.
“Heya! You look friendly!” Snowdrop called out.
Lucy looked back. It was the agitated dude from the parking lot. He walked past Snowdrop like he didn’t see her. The goblins, Cherrypop included, were gone.
The dude was making a beeline right for Verona and Lucy.
Until an empty cigarette carton bounced off his head, thrown from a window.
He turned, his attention elsewhere, no longer following.
“Want to take a faster way back?” Lucy asked. “I was thinking we could use glamour here.”
“You were, huh? Animal forms?”
“Or the other thing. My thing.”
“Hmmm, Lucy,” Verona said. She put her hands on her hips. “Do you think maybe you’re using it a little bit too much, and maybe you should take some time off and get more time in as a human?”
Lucy smiled. “Do you ever want permission to be a cat again?”
Verona gasped, hands over her heart. “You took that right to eleven. That’s cruel.”
“I don’t get why you like it so much. Being a bird made me super paranoid, and I picked a bluejay the last two times around. Bluejays are dicks in the bird world. They’re territorial or brave enough to repeatedly dive-bomb housecats and rottweilers.”
“You picked a bluejay because it would be braver?”
Verona snorted, looking very amused.
“I felt so small and weak,” Lucy complained.
“Want to try being a horse? Gallop our way back?”
“I don’t think we have nearly enough glamour. Want to try being something less physical?”
“Are there really that many ‘want to trys’ in the practitioner world that I’m going to say no to?”
“Want to try the Forest Ribbon Trail?”
Verona laughed. “Kinda? But I don’t want that to be my thing. Because it’s Avery’s thing.”
Verona nodded, with vigor. “And I figure it’s sorta like the awakening diagram, you know? Or any diagram. Each of us brings something, right, and we should each put in roughly the same amount of effort, and contribute stuff that’s more us, and… yeah.”
She looked so animated, into things, in a way she really wasn’t when at school or at home. Which was an unfortunately large proportion of her day.
“Yeah. Makes sense.”
“It’d be too lopsided to have two Path-walkers or whatever.”
“Finders, I think Miss said.”
“What element are we going to become?” Verona asked.
Lucy looked up. The sun was peeking through heavy cloud cover. The light reached the ground, dappling it in some intense beams while other areas remained dark. It was on the pleasantly warm side, maybe twenty degrees out.
Verona laughed. “What?”
“Part of it is looking for an existing thing that’s around that you can borrow and mimic and ‘ride’, right? So you want to get from point A to point B, and you look for the most consistent thing that’s between you and there. I got through the window by doing something like this with moonlight. Align yourself to the beam, really simple. Straight line. Rain was the down, down, down.”
Verona nodded. “It’s not really… I don’t know the word. Connected? Con… com? There’s a g in the middle. -Guous or something.”
“Neither is rain, exactly. or smoke. Or whatever.”
They headed down the street until they reached the point where there was a steep slope beside the road. Car passed every ten or fifteen seconds Way down the way, there were some people.
“Walk me through this one. You hogged the materials.”
“Because it’s mine?”
“But it was given to me. I wanted to figure it out first.”
“Which you’ve done. I think we should share everything and each have spellbooks and whatever of everything, so we each know everything.”
“I mean, yeah, but you’re crazy good at so much of this. It’d suck if I spent the last week and a half learning to do this and then you pick it up in five seconds.”
“I guess we’re going to find out, huh? How concerned are we about traps?”
“I love that you’re asking,” Lucy said. “I really, really do. I’m going to text Avery to get her ok.”
She pulled out her phone.
“Dodging the question? Someone might say you’re overeager and irresponsible with the practice,” Verona said, hands on her hips. “Like me, saying it just now.”
“Are you really that annoyed about me saying no yesterday?”
“Do you have a problem with the practice, Lucy? Are you too into this? Hogging glamour thingys-”
“My glamour thingy. That was given to me. That I’m sharing with you shortly, unless Avery says no or whatever.”
Avery: go for it. I’m on my way over. will prolly beat you there
“I think we’re clear,” Lucy said. “And if there is a trap, the fact we’re heading to the meeting means it’d be…”
Verona mimicked the gesture. “I don’t know much sign language.”
“Complicated. Undignified. Inelegant.”
“Like Miss saying Avery should guess what Other she was. And Avery guessed, and it showed she got Miss and she got the Path, she was listening, she was serious about this, and that maybe was why Miss went to sacrifice herself and save Avery.”
Lucy nodded. “I like that, because this would feel like the opposite of that, if Maricica’s messing around screwed up an appointment between us and the local Others, and nothing came of it, and it just made her look like a butthole.”
“So maybe that means the traps are things that come about at more specific times? Or when the stars align?”
“When it makes for a better story,” Lucy said.
Verona nodded, her eyes widening. She smiled.
“That’s not a smiley thing, Ronnie,” Lucy said. “That’s a terrifying thing. Because we don’t want to be on the losing side in a Faerie story.”
“I love you, Luce. I love your brain, I love your seriousness, I love that you’re doing this with me, I love that we’re about to become light-”
“If it works. So we gotta try it. Together, best friends becoming light. Show me, show me.”
“I will if you stop rambling. Glamour.”
Lucy pulled out the little packet from her jeans pocket. She wiped her hands dry of any light sweat on her jeans, dried them further on her crop top, and then opened it up. She gave herself some, then gave Verona some.
“I’m really tired, after last night,” Verona said. “The fight happened late, then I got home, and my dad cried at me for a while. I lay in bed, and my thoughts were all over the place.”
“If you need anything… staying over, even if your dad said no, or I can ask my mom, or… I dunno. Practice stuff?”
“Nah. Just distract me. Show me this.”
“Find the negative forces. Draw the void between, in this case, the rays of light. If you were becoming a cloud, you’d look for the dark spots in it. And you position your body to line up with it… find a good spot, where it’s more, or where the eye is drawn, and center yourself there. Glamour tends to reach forward, right? It finishes what you start. So if you draw the shadows, and leave the rest of yourself to become…”
Lucy showed Verona, copying the mottled shadows on the sloped ground, painting her bare arms, while she figured out the pattern of hand motions, then did parts of her body that she couldn’t see with her eyes, like her face, using the same hand motions.
“Could we help it along? If I paint myself with white, along the ridges?”
“We want to meet the light, nothing in the way.”
“Makes a lot of sense. No highlighting, then.”
“I’m not sure I one hundred percent get it,” Lucy confessed. She had to admit, her heart sank when she saw how good Verona was at getting that pattern of mottled shadow on her skin.
They covered enough of themselves that the glamour bled out to cover the rest. Crawling over clothes. Lucy’s crop top and jeans. Verona’s too-tight v-neck tee from yesteryear and denim shorts. The shadows blurred the line between flesh and clothing, and between them and their surroundings. Like really good camo paint.
“Keep yourself in the light, so the glamour knows what it’s copying…”
Verona nodded with enthusiasm. She put out her own arm, letting the light catch and reflect, until it looked like it was passing through her arm to touch the ground.
“Then you find the motion, the wavelength, be patient if you have to… and step into it.”
Verona moved her arm left and right, the light catching a little more each time, as clouds rolled overhead and the sunlight shone through in beams, shafts, and curtains.
Verona made the leap before Lucy did. The light caught, she blurred, and a brighter bit of shaft of light darted south.
Lucy was a bit more patient, giving it a few seconds.
She followed. A leap forward, exhaling slowly, letting that light that shone through her shine through all of her. Becoming that dappled, rolling light over Kennet. Riding it.
Not being herself, for fleeting moments, being only environment, awareness, aesthetic.
That fleeting, dashing awareness made her cognizant of Verona, lying on the ground. She looped back around, shaking herself free of the light, and dropping two feet to the sidewalk.
“That sucked, that sucked, ow, this sucks, this-”
Lucy could feel it. Pinpricks, like a really violent pins and needles feeling, running along her body.
“Aaa,” Verona protested.
Red marks ran down Verona’s skin. Lucy could feel her skin responding in a similar way. Maybe not as debilitating. She wasn’t crying out in pain or distress.
Maybe that was practice, or something else.
She checked over Verona, making sure the red marks didn’t get too red, or open up and bleed.
The effect extended to Verona’s clothes. Streaks of white, like a really fuzzy bleach stain, on both shorts and top.
Her own clothes had a similar effect.
“I guess that’s not a regular thing we can do,” Lucy said.
“On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?” Lucy asked. A thing she’d picked up from her mom, she remembered. A nurse thing.
“Two, but it’s a lot of twos.”
“Okay, then stop being a baby.”
“Aaa. I’m not usually a complainer, I hate people who complain, but ow ow ow ow.”
“The Faerie will be there. We can ask them what went wrong.”
Verona laughed at the same time she was clearly in pain, taking Lucy’s helping hand to get to her feet.
“Maybe better for really short trips, like through a window, or around to behind an enemy,” Lucy said.
Verona mixed half-fake-sobbing with chuckles.
“I’m sorta glad you sucked at it more than I did,” Lucy said. “You’re not the best at everything practice related.”
“I’m in pain, and you’re gloating!”
“Ow ow ow. It’s like a patchy sunburn.”
They’d made it about three-quarters of the way. Which was cool, and something to keep in mind. It took time to prepare and do, it took glamour, but… maybe it was an escape route. A way to deal when cornered.
It was nice, getting into a practice and getting a shoddy escape route out of it, rather than a thing that needed to be escaped from, in one sense or another.
Avery was waiting for them, standing on a chimney in full gear, where she had a vantage point to see most of the neighborhood.
“What happened to you?” Avery asked.
“Mishap,” Lucy answered.
“We became sunlight and we got singed,” Verona said.
“I feel left out, and also real glad I got left out.”
Their destination was a wide grassy area a little ways from the base of a ski hill. A parking lot for overflow parking, not conveniently close to the hill itself or the main buildings, but not impossibly far either. The area was framed with trees, that blocked off the view of the ass end of Kennet, and the sound of traffic, and other stuff.
Many of the Others of Kennet were gathered. Toadswallow, Matthew, Edith, Charles, John, Maricica, Guilherme, and Alpeana, awake before sunset, in the shadows beneath a tree.
“Was there a problem downtown?” Charles asked.
“No,” Maricica said. “They smell like Glamour and sunlight. Did you use my glamour for something related to sun?”
“I’m a Faerie of the court below. Rain, darkness, cold water…”
“Got it, got it. Also, ow.”
“It will pass. Try not to pay attention to it,” Maricica said. “Or the glamour that still dusts you will take that attention and use it to make the harm more lasting.”
Verona straightened, wincing.
Lucy did her best to go still as well.
“So,” Lucy said. “Meeting. Some serious stuff.”
“This is neutral ground,” Matthew said. “No Other of Kennet has any particular attachment to this place. Helps make it more democratic.”
“And we don’t either. Fair,” Lucy said. “But do we really need neutral ground, like this is a battlefield?”
“Yesterday’s and today’s discussions were more of a battle than anything I can remember having in a while,” Matthew said. “Neutral ground was good.”
He looked tired. He was normally this guy who like, carried a huge darkness inside of him, but seemed to express a gentle warmth and inner strength, like he knew exactly who he was, his place in life, he’d found his true love, and that gave him a kind of protection from the ravages of the day to day.
And he didn’t look so much like that right now.
“We discussed a few points of order yesterday,” Edith said. “Whether we’d teach you binding. Whether we’d help you with the Choir. You indicated you knew we’d met, electing Matthew and me as leaders. You may also know we discussed you.”
Lucy remained still. Verona and Avery flanked her, doing much the same.
“I’ll be frank,” Matthew said. “Eleven of us made informal votes, to figure out where we stood, and decide a way forward. Even Cherrypop and Charles.”
“I’m apparently on the same tier as the creature who eats walnuts shell and all,” Charles grumbled.
“Did the Choir vote?” Lucy asked.
“No. They roam sometimes, and they’re gone now. They can’t speak or indicate much either.”
“Eleven of us voted on the subject of teaching you binding. Three voted in favor of it.”
“Eight voted not to teach us.”
“You’ll learn in the summer. The time between now and then will, ideally, let you bond with the local Others more. Give us room to prepare, adjust for the possibility that the local practitioners could enslave us.”
“We could make deals,” Avery said. “Say we won’t.”
“You could,” Matthew said. “Will you?”
“We promised to protect Kennet, not to harm you without due cause,” Lucy said. “Isn’t that fair enough?”
“Not enough for eight of the local Others,” Matthew said. Again, he looked so tired. Weary.
“Can we know who those eight were?”
“There was some sentiment that it would promote hostility.”
“You know,” Avery said, “You talk about wanting us to bond with you, but… this isn’t the way. Treating us like we’re hostile, when we’ve really done a lot here.”
“I’ll get to that in a second, if you’ll let me?” Matthew asked.
Avery huffed air out her nose.
This all felt so familiar. Being stared down. Being judged. Dismissed. Lucy glared at the Others.
Verona touched her arm, accidentally touching one of the light sunburns. Lucy flinched, and in the doing, realized she was holding her breath, or breathing so shallowly she might as well be holding it.
She sighed, but the intensity of her glare didn’t fade.
“The second vote was about the Choir,” Matthew said. “Seven voted yes. Four voted no.”
Lucy drew in a deep breath. That was good.
“It’s a problem,” Matthew said. “And we can’t let you intervene.”
“Wait,” Verona protested. “Wait wait wait wait wait. What?”
“Seven voted yes,” Lucy echoed Matthew’s earlier statement.
“To intervene, we’d need unanimous consent. Anything else would make the relationship between Others in Kennet too unstable.”
“You…” Lucy started. Anger flared. Disappointment. “…jerks. You know people are suffering. You’ve already tolerated and entertained way too much from the Choir, I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that.”
“We have rules in place for a reason. I don’t always agree with them. I don’t like that the Choir is now bringing attention to Kennet-”
Maricica shifted position.
“-and I have to abide by the rules, I can’t and we can’t act against it. It’s protecting Kennet in some ways. It’s empowering Kennet. You three are getting a single-digit percentage of power from each of the Others of Kennet and it makes you strong. A single digit percentage of what the Choir is providing is a good share of your strength.”
“Did we ask for that?” Avery asked. “Do you think we’d be glad, knowing our power is fueled by something that’s killed people and turned others into starving ghostly children for who knows how long?”
“No, and no,” Matthew said. “But when push comes to shove, and if Kennet becomes a battleground, some feel we need that power. Not all of us or even most of us agree on that, but…”
As he said that last bit, Edith reached out, taking his hand.
“And the last bit?” Lucy asked.
“We were wary, and we decided to be careful, witholding any judgment or action regarding you as practitioners. Whether we cut you off from further teachings or power, we discussed rationing the glamour we provided, and maintaining a distant and professional relationship. If it was necessary. Depending how things went from there, there was the possibility we had to discuss, about how we’d handle you falling under Alexander Belanger’s influence, or playing fast and loose with the protection deal we made.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Avery said.
“It wasn’t fair or unfair. We had to seriously discuss every avenue, even the worst case scenarios. A major practitioner with a penchant for finding a weak point and destroying individuals and Others is now in the picture,” Matthew said.
“For what it’s worth,” Edith told them, “We’re extending collective trust to you. That you fought for Kennet last night was something that put a lot of uneasy hearts and minds to rest. We’re grateful.”
John spoke up. He had a grim tone that was really hard to not think of as resentful, but it was kind of his voice. “I’ve discussed the decision that was made, your asking for Zed and the ritual’s winner to be left alive. I had some stern words about that, at the end. I’ve been convinced that killing the practitioner or leaving them alive each have their issues.”
“This was easier when we could call Miss in by saying her name three times, and get her opinion on a subject,” Edith said.
“The good news is, little britches,” Toadswallow said, “We’re happy, we’re pleased. We’ll teach you more if you want to learn. Unanimous.”
“But not binding?” Lucy asked. She was still stiff. The unanimous approval hadn’t changed that a bit. “Not the means to deal with the Choir?”
“No,” Matthew said. “At the very least, five more weeks, until the school term ends and the summer term begins, and you can learn from Alexander.”
“How many lives is that?” Avery asked.
“Any is too many, but we made deals a long time ago. I can’t speak for others, but I didn’t foresee something like the Choir taking root in Kennet, and I don’t know that any of us did.”
The three of them stood there, faced with seven Others. The sun continued to shine down in its dappled, ever-shifting way, like light on the sand beneath the water, on a sunny day. The wind was too light to move the grass.
“You had all of these discussions without us.”
“By their nature, we had to,” Edith said.
“Can I speak? Can I address you all, with my own argument and statement? And you can make your own decisions, after?”
“If you want. If you want to propose something,” Matthew said.
Lucy paused. She looked left, then right. At Verona, at Avery. “May I? Do you want to confer in private?”
“I trust you,” Verona said.
“I think we’re on the same page about the big stuff,” Avery said.
Lucy gave them a grateful smile.
The smile fell away as she looked at the Others.
“I want to challenge the Choir’s right to receive these protections, then.”
“The right to the protections extends to every Other that settles down in Kennet,” Maricica said. “It’s not a contract, verbal or written. It’s implicit. The idea was we could eject the Others who were a problem. Or we’d have to leave if they were too big to eject, because they’d make us.”
“The Choir is both too hands off and too big to eject,” Matthew said.
“On the day we awoke, they took the meat.”
“They did,” Edith said.
“What did they give?”
“Nothing,” Maricica said.
“They gave no word, they gave no gesture, they came, they took, they left. The deal we made with the Choir wasn’t made implicitly or otherwise. They were just there.”
“Crashing our awakening party and stealing the food, so to speak,” Verona said.
It was nice to have some verbal backup.
“You made promises to us collectively,” Matthew said.
“With. Conditions,” Lucy said. “I was careful about that, you know? Because I’ve been betrayed by someone I thought loved me. And I don’t think all of you love us.”
“Och, yer arright, lassies,” Alpeana said, from the sidelines.
“I was careful,” Lucy said, her voice hard. “Careful about leaving the door open for justice and whatever else was necessary.”
“We are still bound by implicit-”
“Are you going to stop us?” Lucy interrupted Matthew. “If we pursue this? Are you going to get in the way? Are you going to revoke favor, power, lessons, or goodwill?”
“Are you going to pursue it?” Edith asked.
“Some of the Others of Kennet might interfere,” Edith said.
“How would you interfere?” Matthew asked. “The choir is strong.”
“It’s Yalda,” Lucy said, her voice firm.
There were a few surprised looks. Matthew. Edith. Charles.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Lucy asked John.
“After Alexander brought up the timing of it,” John said. “I realized.”
“That’s why you were agitated,” Avery said.
“What about before Alexander?” Verona asked. “No verbal tricks.”
“Before…” John trailed off. “I thought of her a lot, on nights the Choir sang. My heart was heavy. I thought it was because I was thinking of her, not because of anything heavier. A part of me always knew, I think.”
“Did the whole of you always know?” Verona asked.
“No. Because I didn’t let it,”
“Or most of you? Did you do this on purpose?” Verona pressed. “No verbal tricks. C’mon.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t know or let myself know. Only deep down. A nagging feeling and reminder.”
“We can call her out, right?” Lucy asked. “She’s a weak point, one that we can isolate, surround, and potentially bind, without having to bind two hundred plus waifs.”
“Closer to a thousand,” Guilherme said.
“Yes. You could,” John said. “You’ll have to be careful. Of the curse, if it’s her.”
“Or… or someone here used whatever curse she left behind after her death as power or a central point to build the ritual around, right?” Lucy asked. She set her eyes on Charles.
“I can’t practice,” Charles said.
“But you can use tools. You can bring others in who can practice. You can-”
“Charles didn’t handle the curse after,” Matthew said.
“I did,” Matthew said. “John bore it first. The entirety of it was moved to Charles. Then we contacted some people.”
“A jockey that my family warned me about- an Other that takes over bodies. Like the Girl by Candlelight did with Edith, but hostile. They prey on those who take Others into their bodies, or innocents with vulnerabilities. It gave us a black straw doll to absorb the curse from Charles. I handled that. I buried it.”
“What became of that Other?” Avery asked.
“The jockey? It stayed with its host too long. Became too intermingled. It died It was a relief when it did, especially considering how Edith James is the kind of vessel it would have loved. It was the kind of thing that we had to constantly keep in the backs of our minds. I made triply sure it was dead and gone.”
“Is it still buried?” Lucy asked. “No, actually, I want to ask each and every one of you. Did you dig up the doll?”
“No,” Edith said. “But it doesn’t matter. If someone did tap into it, there would be other ways to use it. A ritual circle drawn around the burial site, siphoning power into a receptacle…”
“Did you interfere with the doll or its energies, after?” Verona asked. “Come on.”
“Pony up those answers,” Lucy told the group. “I need those nos again.”
“No,” Edith said. “I couldn’t do so with my power being restricted to fire, heat, and smoke, regardless.”
The rest of the group, including Alpeana, Maricica, Guilherme, Charles, and Toadswallow all confirmed ‘no’.
The Choir didn’t count. Bluntmunch, Gashwad and Cherrypop could be asked later.
Which still left the question who. Or if there were other ways.
“We’ll need to know where the burial site was,” Lucy said.
“I have one,” Lucy said. She shrugged out of her bag and put it down, then pulled it out.
“You’ll see the darkness of it with the Sight, if it’s still there,” he told her.
“Is that it then? Intent declared?” Edith asked.
“I think, given the options available… we have to discuss that if the Kennet Others won’t help… we might need to go elsewhere.”
“Alexander?” Matthew asked.
“Does it matter?” Lucy asked. “You’ve promised noninvolvement. You’ve said the local Others may interfere? Does it make sense for us to give you that information?”
“Doesn’t earn goodwill,” Charles said.
“Do you deserve our goodwill!?” Lucy raised her voice. Verona touched her arm and Lucy shrugged past it. “You’re letting people suffer!”
“I hope you’ll understand,” Matthew said. “Our hands are partially tied. We- or at least, I don’t want this.”
“I don’t think any of us do, except maybe the Faerie,” Edith said.
“No,” Maricica said. “I don’t like this outcome.”
“Nor I,” the giant Faerie Guilherme rumbled.
“Thank you for your time. And for letting us know where things stand,” Lucy said, her voice stiff.
“I hope we can continue to have a good relationship, this aside,” Matthew said.
“So do we,” Verona said. “But it’s going to be a lot harder.”
“Yep,” Matthew said. Weary with the burden of leadership.
The three of them left, leaving the Others behind.
“Oh! Hey! So, uneventful night.”
Avery bent down and swept up Snowdrop into a hug, Snowdrop’s feet dangling.
“Nothing important. Sucked. So sorry I’m useless.”
“What did you get?” Lucy asked.
“Well, the chick didn’t show up, but I only really looked there, at the place you said to watch,” Snowdrop squeaked, as Avery hugged her tight.
“Where was she?” Verona asked.
“Not the town center, where you said the ritual happened.”
“Did you get her?” Lucy asked.
“All me, not the goblins. She took a while to surrender.”
“Do you think you can distract them?” Lucy asked.
“The goblins. So we can get her clear of Kennet.”
“I’m loyal to the goblins, not to you three losers.”
“Great,” Verona said. She looked at Lucy and Avery.
All three of them were in agreement.
“We’ll try it their way. A partial binding is better than nothing at all.”