Author: Wildbow

Hard Pass – 22.3 | Pale

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Home but not home, Lucy thought, as she lay spread-eagled on the bed.

Her mom bustled, getting herself sorted.  Nurse scrubs, winter boots, winter coat, scarf.

“I can’t get you to stay here all day?  Stay safe?” her mom asked.

“Pretty sure that would cause more problems in the long run.”

“It feels like there are always more problems in the long run.”

“Mmm.  Yeah,” Lucy said.

The room was small-ish, with two beds separated by a nightstand, a dresser that served as a TV stand, running along one wall, with a hollow portion at the end just in front of Lucy’s bed where a pair of chairs sat, to be an eating spot or work desk.

Mostly, there were a ton of mirrors, arranged on ceiling, floor, as decoration, and near the window.  When Lucy sat up, crossing her legs, hands gripping her ankles, she could look forward and see herself from the side, on one of the mirrors on the long dresser.  She could look at the window and see down both lengths of the street.

Every room in this Kennet found motel was similar, with a theme.  It seemed like any foundlings coming to stay would pick a room and there’d be interplay between any gimmicks or special circumstances.  Kettle headed individuals would fog up the mirrors, creating an effect, and the foundlings that were more two dimensional than three dimensional would appear different here, even to the point that they could be interacted with in three dimensions.

Lucy watched as her mom got sorted, going through her purse to make sure she had everything she needed.  She paused, huffed, and looked straight at Lucy.

“I can’t get you to stay and be safe, for one day?”

“You already sort of asked that.”

“I asked, and then you said it would make things worse later if you didn’t.  And I said it’s always worse later.  You agreed.  That brings us back to square one.”

Lucy leaned to one side, shoulder and head resting against the wall beside the bed, where the quaint little bathroom was on the other side.  Annoyingly mirrorless, with no great surfaces to put or hang any mirrors that were carried inside.

“I’m thinking I’m going to scout today.  Get a sense of what’s going on.”

Her mom considered that.

“I’m- we’re in more danger if we don’t know, I think.”

“Don’t go around alone?”

“Probably have a few Dog Tags with me.”

“And check in every hour?  If you wanted to check in more often, I wouldn’t mind.”

“I can’t promise I won’t lose my focus or slip with the timing, but I will try.”

Lucy’s mom approached her and kissed her forehead.  “Kelsey called first thing this morning.  Six thirty.”

“Yeah, I sorta overheard,” Lucy said, tapping the earring.

“You wear that to bed?”

“It’s as much a part of me as my ear, basically.  Can’t really poke or hurt me.  I- yeah.  I wanted to hear when people came down the hall or talked outside.”

“I’m glad you’re being careful, I hate you have to be.”

“Yeah.  You be careful too, okay?”

Her mom nodded.  She paused.  “I got the impression Kelsey didn’t sleep, and waited until it was as early as she could excusably call me, for a call with no new information.  Only questions.”

“I talked to Verona last night, but uh…”

Lucy was lost for words.

“Yeah,” her mom replied.  “I told her what you told me when you came back.”

“I hate not knowing,” Lucy said, gripping her ankles tighter.  “I hate not knowing if she’s hurt or something else, I hate not knowing if she’s in a situation like she was- way back.  When she was on the Forest Ribbon Trail, when she needed rescue, and Miss went.  I hate not knowing-”

She had to take a second to catch a breath.

Her mom bent down to hug her.  Lucy hugged back hard.

“I hate not knowing in general.  I hated not knowing way before this.  But it’s Avery.  One of my best friends.  That makes it worse than any of it.”

“I wish I could afford to stay with you, take the day.”

“I’d get too restless anyway.”

Her mom broke the hug, and stood over Lucy.  “Okay.  Just make sure you’re not alone.  Make sure you don’t ever, ever, ever dare to put me in that situation where I don’t know.”

Lucy nodded.

“I should go.  They said we should start early.”

“Okay.  Mom?”

“What?”

“Thanks for catching that hint, when we let Barbie and Ran catch a glimpse of me.”

“Thanks for doing that.  But a text is better if you can manage it.  I don’t like wondering and second guessing myself either, you know.”

Lucy nodded.

Her mom stopped to look in a mirror, checked her appearance, then walked to the door and knocked on it.

Lucy moved to the end of the bed, dropping feet to the floor, and leaned forward to look past the bathroom and little hallway to the front door.  Dog Tags were standing outside.

“Ready?” Horseman asked.

“Yeah.  Thank you.”

“We’ll cut through to one of the shortcuts in a borrowed vehicle, drive to the hospital, and see you in with a relay.  That means none of us leave the car except you, but the people who walk near you on your way to the door will be ours, and others are keeping a lookout.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll be forty minutes early, but it’s good to not have too predictable a routine, or be too predictable if they get a look at your schedule.  Once you’re inside, we can keep an eye on things.  They don’t seem to want to start things inside the hospital, at least.”

“I wonder why,” Lucy said.

“Want those of us who aren’t on duty to swing by, so we can have a conversation about that?”

“I don’t know what I’d say.  This afternoon, maybe?  Let me go poke around and get my head around things first?  I’ll talk to Verona, too.  The discussion of protected spaces came up in the moot.”

“I read the stuff.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “It’d be cool to do a little ritual, declare the hospital a safe place, protect it from attacks.”

“I’d love that,” her mom said.  “Can you protect the whole town?”

“I’ll see about talking to Verona for that.  I think we spent a lot of what we were given for the sword moot.  We’re apparently a bit weaker.  I hope that’s why we’re weaker.”

“All the more reason to bring people when you go out?” her mom said.

“I will.”

“Okay.  Love you.  I promised Kelsey I’d tell you to call her at the first hint of information.”

“Message received.  Love you too.”

Her mom left.

Lucy sighed.

Wet snow drummed against the window.  Kennet found was just outside- removed from the issues that were happening in the other layers of Kennet.

This wasn’t home.  Home wasn’t safe, so this was a place that they could retire.  The effect was that it felt like a halfway point.  She’d gone out of her way to secure a way home and defang Charles some, so that if he wanted to gainsay them, or gainsay anyone, he’d have to pick a good one and make it stick.  Or have others do it on his behalf.

He hadn’t immediately gone around that.

Lucy didn’t know.  About Avery, about Charles, about the situation.

The place offered a complimentary breakfast, so she ordered and worked on spell cards and reviewing notes until the food came.  Breakfast pizza with eggs, bacon, sausage, scattered hash browns, a french-toast-like taste to the bread part, and a drizzling of maple syrup and butter.  Sure, whatever.

The system for television channels felt like it was meant to be operated by a foundling or a Lost- there were four directional buttons and a dot in the center.  Pressing down took her away from an educational channel, onto a channel where elevator music played over panning camera shots of what looked like Paths.  Which was fine, okay.  Again, sure, whatever.

Except pressing up to go back again took her somewhere entirely different than the educational channel, onto a steady camera shot of a woman with a mask that made it look like a bird had flown into her face, standing on a rooftop, book in her hands, wet snow pelting her, hair and pages trying to flutter around as she did a dramatic reading of some adventure story.

Lucy channel surfed until she found a channel where three Lost teenagers were tuning instruments, playing experimentally.

She was glad she’d eaten before showering, because she got some syrup on her pyjamas and her hands ended up sticky- it was pretty unavoidable with breakfast pizza, really.

Except she then walked into the bathroom, which was cut in half by a pane of nonreflective glass, looked at the shower controls, and found herself lost all over again.

Large marble inset behind something that looked like a waterproofed camera shutter, two rods sticking out of curved slots around the marble’s perimeter, opposite one another.

She checked the sink, which had the two rods, and experimented.  One for temperature, one for water amount.  Okay.  She washed her hands free of syrup, then cleaned the rods after.

So what was the marble?

She went to the shower, then turned it on, using the rods.  The spray came out as a mist, hotter than room temperature, but so fine it was useless as a shower.  If there was any dirt on her, the moisture would sit over top of it, instead of being washed away.

“So you control stream, is it?” Lucy asked.

She pushed the marble in deeper.

The mist stopped, and the shower began producing actual clouds.  Right temperature, wrong effect.

“So how do I pull you out?” she asked it.  She tried getting a grip on the marble, but the shutter got in the way.  She pushed it in deeper, and there was a click.

It bulged out, almost escaping the housing, and with an ear-splitting screech, the shower turned into what looked like a laser, the water temperature so hot that the droplets that reached her made her jump, leaping back to sit on the toilet, towel and bathrobe around her, the glass divider between her and the water.

Her ears rang from how sharp the squeal was.  So she made herself stand, avoiding the stream as she found a rod and shut it off.

Her heart thumped in her chest.

There was a set of washcloths set out at the far end of the shower, and one of them had a hole in it, circular, except for the runoff, which had gotten most of what was below the hole.  The circle was about the same dimensions as the stream had been.

“Hey Ave,” she said, to the empty bathroom, which was now so full of skin-pricklingly hot steam she couldn’t see the door.  “I really hope you’re okay.  Because I love you, because we need you, and I’m just gonna say, partially because I really want to smack you upside the back of the head for choosing this stuff as a practice instead of something less terrifying, like goblin queen stuff.”

She went into the hallway, letting the steam out, and debated her options.  She’d be out, wearing winter stuff for most of it, but…

Just a thing for her.  Anxiety tended to get to her if she didn’t prepare for the incoming day.  She could hide her hair under a hat, she could hide a bit of dirt or blood under winter clothes, but she’d be constantly conscious about the fact she might smell, or have something on her face.

Still wearing towel and bathrobe, she opened the door to the hallway of the hotel, then immediately closed it.

She got her mask on, then opened the door again.

Doe was beside the door, standing guard.

“Hey.  I don’t suppose you know how to work the showers here?”

Doe shook her head.

“You can come in if you want.  Might be less obvious.  I can hear anyone coming with my earring.”

“There’s others in less obvious places outside.  They’ll signal me if someone comes, I can decide how to handle it then.”

“Oh.  Okay.  Do you want to come in anyway?”

“Sure.”

“You could order coffee.  Just be warned that stuff is a bit odd here.”

“I’ve noticed.  Your mother said something similar.”

“Did she happen to know how the showers work?”

“I don’t know.”

Lucy debated calling, but it was about time for her mom to start her shift.  A personal call right then…

Besides, the shower had been set to something weird.  She wasn’t sure, but her mom might’ve just found something she could work with, like the mist setting, and then stuck with it, maybe getting wet enough and then using the hand towel.

Lucy wasn’t quite willing to brave the shower with settings that included ‘murder by water laser’, but she wasn’t willing to go out to face the day if she hadn’t gotten her shit together, either.

She went to the door, peeking out, and saw a Lost out in the hall.  She looked like a fashion model, with a masquerade-style mask on a stick, and trailing coattails that went down the hall and around the corner.

“Excuse me?”

The woman looked at her, yelped, then hurried into her room.  Lucy watched as the coattails took twenty seconds to get dragged in behind her.  The door slammed.

“What-?”

She looked down at the other end of the hall, hearing footsteps, and saw another foundling rounding the corner.  They stopped dead in their tracks.  They wore a casual suit and scarf, and their head was a wasp’s or praying mantis’s, with a layer of paint across the front, depicting human features – a dash of red for the lips, white circles with blue circles and black pupils painted onto compound eyes.

“Hi,” Lucy said.  “Is there a problem?”

“Oh,” the foundling said.  “Are you related to Snowdrop’s Avery Kelly?”

“Yeah.  Partner.”

“Spooked me,” the man said.  “I’m Mr. Ichneumonidae.”

“Lucy Ellingson.  I’m sorry if I mispronounce your name.  I don’t suppose I could get any tips in getting the shower working?”

“You can call me Mr. Ick, and let’s see.  Do you mind if I come in?”

“Don’t think so.”

“I pledge you no harm, and couldn’t do it if I wanted, with the Law here.  Excuse me.  Hello.”

“Hi,” Doe replied.  “No harm can be done, but people can be restrained and carried away.  Or they can apply for a license to do harm.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Ick said.  “Shower is through… here.  Yes.”

“Be careful.  The last time I used it, I got an intense blast of water.  I think I could’ve died if I was standing inside the shower.”

“Why’d you do that?” Mr. Ick asked.

“Because… I don’t know how it works?  It just happened?  I think you might need foundling senses to figure it out?”

“Could be.”

“Can I write you a note, recognizing you were a help?  I-”

“I’m not a foundling.”

“You’re- what?  Can I ask what you are?”

“A visitor.  A guest.  You call us Lost, I think.  See here?  The rods control temperature and quantity.”

“Wait, you’re form the Paths.”

“I am.  They told me to come, recommended this place.”

“Avery.  You saw her?  Or Snowdrop?”

“I did, as a matter of fact.  See here?  The sphere is how you adjust for preference and need.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Lucy said.  Her hand clutched the top of her bathrobe tight.  “Avery.  You saw her, you talked to her?  Recently?”

“Recency is in the eye of the beholder, and my eyes, however good my mask is, are made up of hundreds of individual lenses.”

“No, I- Avery’s missing.”

“An unfortunate thing that happens to those non-native to the Paths, when they travel its courses.”

“From Earth.  But if you’ve seen her?  Can you give me some clue, or anything?”

“I’m technically on vacation from any kind of Path roles which might ask me to give out clues.”

“Please,” Lucy said, a bit strained now.

“My memory gets foggy.  I thought about coming right away, but we checked and there was no snow on the ground.  The skiing on the hill over there would be much of our reason to stay for any length of time, once we’ve seen the sights.”

“No snow on the ground?” Lucy asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“So it would’ve been closer to fall.  A while ago.”

“I do suppose you’re right.  I’m sorry if that’s not the answer you wanted.”

Her heart sank, disappointed.

“She was promoting this place while she crossed the Comb Over, telling anyone who wasn’t dangerous about it.”

“And you found your way down, huh?”

“There are ways.  Through the old Stuck-In Place.”

Lucy nodded.

“The shower?” he asked, indicating.

“Please.”

“In and out are intensity.  Rotate for nature.”

“Nature?”

“Blood, water, mud, swampwater.  Do you do dust baths on occasion?”

“Okay, well, if you change your mind, you’d rotate it in the direction of elemental earth, down, of course, and if you’re gentle you can feel the clicks. see?”

“Just need clear water.  Like tap water.”

He adjusted.  “Intensity?”

“Like a regular shower?”

“Everyone’s regular is different.  The setting dangerous to you is a setting that others find comfortable or necessary.”

“Who would?  Oh.  Someone with a pot for a head?  I saw one earlier.”

“There you go.”

“I don’t know why it happens so suddenly.”

“Hotter water faster.  And if you’re taking your first shower for the stay here, it’s a way to clear the pipes of whatever the last guest set.  Then you find your own setting, and lock it in, see?”

He manually adjusted the shutter, touching a finger to one of the overlapping black metal pieces, straightening it from its prior angle.  Then he put it back again.

“Right.  Just gotta know to stay out of the way, I guess?”

“Yes.  Adjust for yourself?  Staying clear?”

She tentatively did so.  The water gushed, and she found a stream that approximated a real shower, or a real shower with a kind of glub-blub output in the center, like a very large bottle was being emptied with inconsistent pour, but she could ignore that, or use it if she wanted a lot of water for a quick rinse.

She locked that in, then shut off the shower, turned it back on to verify it worked, then shut it off.  Good enough.

“Thank you, Mr. Ick.”

“Glad to oblige.”

“If there’s anything you need, if you go to a permanent resident that’s not with the nastier faction and say Lucy Ellingson owes you a favor, they can come to me later, I’ll pay it forward.”

“No need.  You’ve set up something good here, and Snowdrop and Avery were charming.  I’m mostly just glad you haven’t bound me on sight.”

“That’s a concern, huh?”

“On the Paths it can be.  We become an obstruction, a riddle they can’t solve, or they need what information or gifts we give to move forward, they bind us.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”

“I’ll let you be.”

“If there’s any word of either of them, anything you know of, anything you overhear, and it leads to us finding them, that would be a bigger-than-normal favor.  A lot of us are worried.”

Mr. Ick laid a hand on Lucy’s shoulder.

Then he left.  Doe lingered in the hallway, watching as he went, then locked the door.

Avery lingered on Lucy’s mind.  How did one person forge so many connections, that someone like a wasp-headed Lost from some Path Lucy hadn’t heard of could run into Lucy and want to help out?

She hated every inch of this.  Avery being gone, being a stranger in a strange place, so close yet so far from home, the hostility coming in at every angle, that she couldn’t do anything about.

“Doe?” Lucy asked, leaning into the doorframe.  Doe had moved to the end of the little foundling motel room, and stood by the window, looking out the window and at mirrors that gave a view of the outside from multiple angles.

“Yes?”

“Which Dog Tags are free?”

“Free in what sense?”

“Not patrolling, not guarding my mom, or Avery’s family, or Verona’s family, or whatever, not keeping the peace, not doing something else they need to do.”

“None.  Unless you count me.  I’m watching out for you until you say you don’t need me.”

Had to insert a little bit of anxiety on that front too.

“Let’s tap other help.  Can you get out word now?  I’ll shower, get sorted, then we’ll see what we can figure out here.”

Lucy had followed Doe up toward Kennet above, and now they were in the woods at the perimeter, near the point that Kennet found bled out into Kennet above.  Doe was off around the corner, keeping an eye out, and Lucy had met up with her squad for this particular expedition, standing in a copse of trees.

There was a shed between them and where they were going, and a trash area that was uncovered.  That wouldn’t work in Kennet above, because it would’ve attracted all the animals, but here it was fine.  There were only foundlings and apparently the visiting Lost.

“Look at me,” the old woman whispered at Lucy, combination demand, voice of childlike awe, and hoarse, breathless excitement.  The old woman looked up at Lucy.  “I’m so big.”

“You are.”

“So big,” the old woman said.  She was a combination of the style of old that could double for a wicked witch of the west, sharp-nosed, crone-ish, broomstick thin, slightly hunched, and the style of old that shrunk old ladies down to a fraction of their one-time height.  She was shorter than Lucy.  She wore a very low cut tiger print top that showed that her breasts were more like socks without feet in them than anything else, under a coat that a thrift store wouldn’t have accepted.  She smiled at Lucy, grinning like a maniac.  “Amazing.”

Lucy looked past the old woman to the others.

The kid in the ski helmet and winter jacket with the uneven smile that widened whenever the old woman sounded happy.

The kid of ambiguous gender with buzzed hair, who had a winter jacket styled after some cartoon cat, but so worn that the original image was barely there as an outline, with ‘cat’ earmuffs that had a band that poked up into two points, with rust where the plastic coating on the band had worn off.  The look on their face wasn’t one of ‘resting bitch face’, something Lucy was too familiar with already, but more of a faintly disgusted, ‘who farted?’ face, eyebrows down, nose wrinkled, upper lip pulled slightly back into a sneer.

And the last member of this group was a teenager, chin-length hair parted at one side, kept out of her face with a hairclip that looked like a doll’s head.  She looked a lot like some teenager had gone the same direction Melissa had after her injury, but where Melissa had gone down that path, this girl had fallen down the stairs, picked herself up, and then did her best to get gussied up to go to a club. Or maybe it was more accurate to say she’d gone to a club and then fallen down the stairs.  A bit messy, makeup hastily reapplied over old makeup, overweight, and a bit dazed looking.

As she realized Lucy was taking it all in, she posed a little, sort of a curtsy, with hands forming curves, backs of fingers on cheeks.

“You guys,” Lucy said.  “You stand out.”

“The world’s so small,” the old woman said.  “Our plans have to be bigger.”

“Okay, you guys, you gotta… Toadswallow’s got you all in on his human disguise stuff, huh?”

“Huh?” Biscuit asked.  Her voice was higher than her frame would’ve suggested.  “Who is Toadswallow?  What a strange name for another human.”

“I know it’s you, Biscuit.”

“Biscuit?  What a cute name.  Is that a name for a dog?  It must be a cute dog,” Biscuit replied.

Lucy put her hands on her hips.  Biscuit mirrored the gesture.

“I walked down the street and so many people got out of my way.  No more hiding for me!” Tatty exclaimed.  “I’m big and scary!”

“You look old,” Lucy told Tatty.  “Are you old for a goblin?”

“Nah.”

“Okay, but Toadswallow glamoured you up that way?”

“Good match.  It’s easier to use the goblin magic to change us if we keep stuff the same.”

“What is all this talk about glamour?” Biscuit asked, looking side to side.  “Imagine how weird all this sounds to an Innocent human.”

She gestured at herself.

“Biscuit, that’s going to get real old real fast,” Lucy told her.

“Is Biscuit the name I saw on a wanted poster out there?” Biscuit asked.  “The goblin that’s not allowed in Kennet found, because that Other called Miss got mad?  If you were calling me Biscuit and ruining a disguise, you’d be a narc, and a narc isn’t a good thing to be.  I’d guess Biscuit doesn’t like narcs.”

“You’re so obvious,” Lucy told her.  “All of you just… you’ll get weird looks.  You’ll get second glances if you’re alone in a crowd, and a lot of second glances is a problem, but if you’re all together and you all look this odd, the best you’ll probably get is people wondering if there’s a costume party.”

She reached forward.  Her hand pulled back as Cherrypop popped up out of the back of Tatty’s coat, snarling, “Glamour!”

“Hey Cherry.”

“Is glamour, hiss!” Cherrypop growled.  She poked a pointed little fingertip at the side of Tatty’s neck.

“If you break it I’ll put you in a bag of wet dog poop and freeze you until spring,” Tatty threatened.

Cherrypop narrowed her eyes but put her clawed hand down.

“We changed Cherry and she tore it off.  She thinks it’s glamour,” Tatty said.

“So dumb,” Ramjam said, from the sidelines.

“Should I know who that goblin is?” Biscuit asked, craning a head to make sure nobody was coming.  “If she thinks goblins would be using glamour, she doesn’t know how things work.”

Cherrypop shrank down, eyes narrowing, looking around.  Then she made a hissing sound, probably copying Snowdrop.

“What did Toadswallow say it was?” Lucy asked, diplomatically.

“Goblin gunk.  He said lots of fancy stuff.”

“Clever stuff,” Biscuit said, nodding.  She offered up a smile that was more tugging the corners of her mouths sideways than anything else, like she didn’t know how humans smiled.

“Din’t understand it,” Cherrypop muttered.  “But it’s glamour!  Boo!”

I can’t tell if Cherry’s actually clued into something and didn’t catch enough of Toadswallow’s patter to buy into it, or if she circled around so far in ‘being wrong’ that she actually landed on the right answer, Lucy thought.

“I’ll get you looking proper, while keeping you you,” Lucy said.  “Let me see…  Tatty… hm.”

Tatty had a narrow silhouette, a pointed nose, and scraggly hair.  Lucy worked on the coat.  Long coat, matching Tatty’s silhouette with the boob dress, but black faux-leather.  “Let’s make you a queen.  Regal but fierce…”

“Yas,” Tatty replied.

Overlapping straps of the coat’s exterior material, light padding.  Lucy quickly fixed the hair.  For extra effect, for two of the more prominent front straps, she added two buckles to be the nipples.

Cherrypop crawled around on Tatty throughout, narrowing her eyes and watching.

“I miss my tiger print top,” Tatty said, standing on her toes while craning her head forward, almost falling onto Lucy as she tried to look down at her front.  She grinned as she pushed a toe into the front end of the dress to make the bit with the nipple-buckle stick out.  “I want it.  It’s important.  It’s the day we broke into a zoo to steal a tiger.”

“You failed.”

“But we did it!”

“You- you didn’t do it, you failed.  You tried-”

“Yas.”

Lucy sighed.  “Here.”

She worked at Tatty’s collar, and created a scarf with tiger print.  She held up one bit.

“You’re good at this,” Biscuit said, “Did Toad show you how?”

Ramjam… she took off the helmet.  He protested, reaching up.  She created a bandage for his forehead.  “Your head is hard enough.”

He smiled like that was a huge compliment.

Kittycough… needed to look less like a wasteland warrior from a post-apocalypse movie.  Lucy avoided the goblin’s front as Kittycough horked and hacked, before doubling over to cough out a ball of pubes the size of Lucy’s fist, slick with saliva.  Tidied up, worst wear and tear removed, graphic that had been reduced to an outline removed, moved to a backpack, which could sport the animal graphic and concentrate some of the wear and tear, like this was a kid that had slid down a snowy hill sitting on their backpack.

She stopped in front of Biscuit.

“Why are you looking at me?”

“Look, stop playing, let’s get this done, I won’t tell.  We’ll get out of here sooner.”

Biscuit stopped, thought for a second, then did that smile again, like she was straining the limits of her disguise, corners of her mouth going sideways, eyes not pointing in the same direction.  Lucy took that as permission to go ahead.

“Be careful about doing that when you’re in public.”

“I’m cute.”

“You’re going to creep people out.  You look like a fish pulled onto a boat and stunned with a paddle while they try to find the knife to finish you off.”

“Hee,” Biscuit made a noise.

“That sounds so fun,” Ramjam said.  “Hey fish, having a nice day?  Whack.  Then you get to eat ’em.  Then you end up with all the cool fish bits.”

“Okay guys,” Lucy said.  “Cherry, you’re going to need to hunker down and hide.”

Cherrypop pulled the tiger scarf down around her.

“Rest of you, we’re on reconnaissance.  We’re getting the lay of the land.  Kennet below is apparently dangerous, but we’re going to poke and prod around the edges, see who’s coming from where.  Part of that, we want to see if there are any weaknesses or gaps in their schedule.  That all sounds complicated, but it’s what you guys do all the time, when you’re getting up to trouble.”

The goblins nodded.

“Big thing?  We’re looking for any signs of Bracken, Bag, or the Family Man.  And we don’t want to cause trouble in a way that kicks up that Abyss stuff and sees them attacking or hurting anyone nearby.”

The goblins looked at her with suppressed manic energy, an unreadable smile, a disgruntled look, a dazed, unfocused look, and suspicious confusion, for Tatty, Ramjam, Kittycough, Biscuit, and Cherrypop, respectively.

“Here.  Fists out,” Lucy said.

They touched fists together.

“For Kennet,” Lucy said.

“For Kennet!” was the chorus, totally uncoordinated, with Cherrypop saying the line after everyone had finished.

Lucy motioned, and the goblins filtered through the space between shed and chateau, which let them slip through to Kennet above.  Doe was there, and nodded, falling into step beside Lucy as she joined them.

Verona was out there, doing her own thing- she’d started her morning later, and was going to set out later and meet with Lucy.  Dog Tags were on duty, keeping tabs on things, and it felt like everything else was in a weird kind of suspension.

Avery chief among those things.

The sky was bright after the perpetual twilight sky of Kennet found, and it made the snow brighter too.  The chateau – the rest stop where skiiers could stop in for hot chocolate and concessions, or prepackaged sandwiches and coffee was still cordoned off, as was the Killalloe Dough.  Windows were broken and plywood had been put up, with posters on the plywood to make it less aesthetically bad, maybe, though plywood still peeked through.

The parking lot was only one third full.  The stragglers of the ski season were on the hill, but it wasn’t great.  A row of bright yellow porta-potties was set up by the trees, out of plain view from the road.  Probably a good thing they were there, when the cordoned-off cabin was the usual best option and that was out.

There had been stories in the past of there being insufficient bathrooms and people being turned away at places downtown, only to then pop a squat in the woods, creating a health hazard when snow melted, or going in the vicinity of people’s houses in Matthew and Edith’s neighborhood, which wasn’t far from the valley or ski hills.

Or Matthew and Edith’s old neighborhood, anyway.

“Spread out, stay in each other’s sight, if you can’t see at least two of the other people in our group here, you’re too far out,” Lucy told them.

There were nods.

“Doe?  Can I talk to you?”

“Yeah.”

The goblins headed out towards where people were denser- some near the foot of the ski hill, and others .  They looked a bit like weirdos, but not so bad.

Lucy could see some people who might’ve been Maricica’s.  She wished there was a better way to identify them.

“What did you want?” Doe asked.

“Were you involved in the attack that happened here?” Lucy indicated the cabin.

“Did you guys talk about it?”

Doe nodded.

“Cool.  This was where police were called?”

“There was police tape.  They took it down.”

Lucy nodded.  That made sense.  It went back to appearances, and Kennet being dependent on its image as a tourist town.  Not that the cabin being like this was great.  Police tape was worse, though.

“Do you know if there were any delays?  Did they move to another area?”

Doe shook her head.  “Parking lot.”

The parking lot out front.  There would’ve been a huge lineup for Killaloe Dough, and the cabin was usually pretty packed as well, with families out on the picnic tables around it, because there wasn’t enough room inside.

“Keep an eye out?” Lucy asked.

“Always.”

She reached down to her ankle, and undid the anklet.  She got out a spell card, and after winding up the anklet to fit on the little notecard, she held it down with a thumb and drew out the circle around it.

This was something her earring could pick up on, to a limited degree.  Communication, display, spying.

She didn’t have a great foundation in technomancy, but she knew some markings to put down.

“Don’t give it away that we know, but there are eyes on us,” Doe said.

“Already?”

“Yes.  Did you do something?”

“With this?  Only setup.”

“This fast a response, they might be looking for you.”

“Yeah.”

Lucy glanced up and Doe murmured instructions.  “Nine o’clock.  By the school.”

Two men at one corner of the fence, smoking.  “I see ’em.”

“And seven.”

By the railroad tracks.

Walking in their direction.

“Feeling like some practice or ward is at work here,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Doe replied.

“I show up in my hometown, and Abyssal soldiers start converging on my location?”

She kept making notes.  Gate of Horn…

“What are you doing?” Doe asked.

“Trying to get information.”

“I wouldn’t normally ask, but with a situation unfolding…”

“Yeah.  Good to know if I’m preparing to hit back, run… I might need you to buy a minute.”

“Okay.”

Lucy grabbed her spell cards, holding the partially complete spell card and bracelet in one hand.  She sorted through, then pulled one out.  A sound control diagram.

She tapped it to her earring, then whispered, “Tatty Bojangles, Ramjam, Biscuit, Cherrypop, Kittycough.”

All of the goblins looked her direction.

“Trouble incoming.  Buy time, be prepared to interfere.  But don’t go too hard.”

Ramjam immediately started sprinting for the valley south of the ski hill.

“I know I said not to go too hard, but… that’s not what I was after, Ramjam,” Lucy muttered.

“No guns?” Doe asked.

“Would probably cause as many problems as it fixed.”

“Figured.”

“Use your judgment,” Lucy told her.  She picked out a card.  “Silencing rune.  No guarantees though, and my practice is weaker.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Sound transmission card held aside, she worked.  The incoming people were trying to look casual.

What happened when they got close?

The diagram activated.  Her bracelet squirmed inside the circle she’d drawn, and began clicking.  Markings at the edge of the diagram on the card began changing, numbers and little arrows traveling along its perimeter.

As the lit up portion of the diagram reached the gate of horn, she used her Sight.

The ‘watercolor’ of her Sight became something scratchier, almost pixellated.  She could see streaks of color, highlights, a darkening of everything that wasn’t technology…

And she could see the various security cameras and other cameras around the city, that were aimed her way.

She made a marking by each security camera that was pointed in the right direction.

The diagram flickered, almost fading.

“Come on, come on,” Lucy muttered.

It resurged, and she quickly reached into her back pocket, got the centipede card, and swiped it through the phone case, same as if she was paying for snacks with her bank card.

“Download the marked ones,” she told the centipede, as it slithered off the card, over her hands- at least in her modified Sight, and partially into the phone.  It settled into a position where its head dipped into her phone and its tail end dipped into the diagram she’d drawn.

This, at least, wasn’t weaker.  Magic items drew on their own power sources and dynamics.

Problem was, she’d just tied her hands.  The card and phone occupied her hands, and the centipede had entwined around both hands, essentially handcuffing her.  Her Sight was bound up in this too.

How much of that was the effects of overspending on setting the stage for and pushing the Aurum contest?

She could have broken free, or dropped her Sight, but she didn’t want to interrupt the download.

“Let’s move,” Lucy said.

Doe put a hand at Lucy’s shoulder, putting herself between Lucy and the incoming men from the more southern direction.

They made it about five steps before they saw more people coming from the opposite direction.  A woman and a teenage boy.

Something about them-

“Trouble?” Lucy asked.

“Concealed weapons.”

Lucy nodded.

A howl made her look back.

It was Ramjam, coming down the hill on a sled, running alongside the trees- the valley was a valley, and it was an uphill climb to the road, but the trees had held up the soil, and there was enough flat ground that he didn’t lose speed or momentum.

With a gleeful look on his face, he grabbed a branch, changed trajectory, and hit the sidewalk at an angle, putting him on a straight trajectory for the two men coming that way.

One jumped free.  The other got clipped in one leg by Ramjam and his sled.

That was the direction Cherrypop’s slide was, right?  The sled must’ve been from there.

Ramjam carried on across the road at an angle, hopped off the sled, and sprinted for the buildings, glancing over his shoulder.

Doe redirected Lucy more toward the chateau and Killaloe Dough stall.

Download halfway done.

Tatty ran out into the road, and a car served, running partially onto the sidewalk.  Which stopped the woman and teenager coming from the north end of town in their tracks.  It also put Tatty in the way of others.

One rough-looking guy grabbed her, one hand in his pocket.  That coat that Lucy had put extra attention into tore easily.

It was still glamour, even if it was goblin glamour.  Ramjam had let the sled do the work, but Tatty didn’t have that.  Besides, Ramjam was closer to his regular size, while Tatty was blown up to five times her original size.

Tatty shrieked, calling for help.  Which brought people closer.

Chaos.  Just- right away, total chaos.

Someone intervened to help the loopy and very loud old lady who was being held by a thug of a guy, and Tatty broke away, crossing the street.  Which put her closer to the car on the sidewalk and the two people who were coming.

“I should’ve known this wouldn’t be simple or easy,” Lucy said.

“They’re running interference pretty well.”

“Yeah.”

It was a unique thing to John and the other Dog Tags, that they had the affinity for a variety and type of Others that they did.  Like, it wasn’t unusual for an Other or individual to sort of vibe with or understand Fae, and it wasn’t unusual for an Other or individual to sort of vibe with or understand goblins.

But John had been able to joke with Toadswallow, and duel for fun with Guilherme, no big issues.  Like he occupied a safe and workable middle ground.

Doe recognizing how the goblins operated seemed to be similar.

Lucy was trying for that, but it wasn’t always easy.  Goblins weren’t easy.  Fae weren’t easy.  Not in the way John had made it seem.

“He touched my boob when he grabbed me!”

“I grabbed you around the middle and at the shoulder!”

“I’ve got boobs at my middle, I’m old, you creep!  Loser!  Do you like that, feeling up old ladies!?  Is that what gets you going, you freak!?”

Tatty was good at being loud, at least.  And it was the kind of messed up situation that she thrived in.

It probably helped the glamour too.  Getting attention.

Tatty seemed to be sensitive to the limits of the glamour, which meant Toadswallow had done a good job of explaining.

Kittycough was at the edges of that crowd, moving around like they wanted to do something but the chance wasn’t there.  Lucy’s Sight let her see the blade.

She glanced down at the download.

Hands bound together and very full, awkwardly moving the transmission card to where she could talk to it, she touched it to her earring, then said, “Pull back, regroup.”

Tatty was already escaping the crowd, hand at her arm.  Kittycough stayed in.

Biscuit was off to the side, near the porta-potties.

“Guys-” Lucy started.

Two movements divided her attention.

First, some pushed through the growing crowd on the road, near the traffic Tatty had stopped.  Kittycough discreetly stabbed one of the aggressors, then awkwardly threw the knife at another of them.

The moment there was something that looked incriminating, Kittycough screamed.

Second, behind Lucy, at the passage they’d come through to go from Kennet found to here, her earring caught four people muttering.  Telling each other to be quiet, be still, and wait.

“Four at our exit,” Lucy said.

Doe betrayed nothing in expression or eyes.  She’d told Lucy not to give anything away, and when it was her turn to not betray anything to their pursuers about what they knew or didn’t know, she did well.

“I thought Kennet found was ours.”

“It is.  But there are some there.”

“They didn’t follow or my anklet would’ve caught them, pretty sure.”

“They’re responding to whatever detection practice has them all stirred up.”

It was very quickly starting to look like the enemy would catch up to Lucy just as the download finished.  Or just before.  Meaning no prep, no easy use of practice in the lead-up.

Could she handle it?  She wasn’t sure.  Technically, she was pretty sure she could win the fight.  But it was the same problem that came with dueling the Hennigars – they didn’t lose.

Turning all of this into a multi-layered puzzle.  This overarching detection ward…

“Doe?  My bag.  My hat.  As soon as this download finishes…”

Lucy turned to give Doe access to her bag.

Doe pulled out Lucy’s hat and held onto it.

Six people incoming, armed but hiding their weapons.  Four more in the trees by the closed chateau for the skiiers, blocking their exit back through the way they’d come.

“There’s their detection system.  Then the system Maricica’s using to reclaim her dead.  Some divine link or pledge she’s made to them, in exchange for their devotion.  And there’s the threat of Maricica bringing all of Kennet down into the Abyss.”

“Mm,” Doe grunted, her focus elsewhere.

“For each of those, they’re serious problems, but they’re also things that like… why haven’t they found us before we stepped over here?  Why haven’t they attacked the hospital or just gone all out and razed half of Kennet to the ground with guys that get called into the Abyss and spat back out uglier and meaner?  Why haven’t they dragged Kennet into the Abyss already?”

“I’m more worried about the bullets right now,” Doe said.  “If I get gunned down and they get me before I get back up, or if you get shot…”

“Yeah,” Lucy whispered.

They didn’t have the full picture, and as oppressive as this situation was, they hadn’t lost yet.  Which meant she needed to identify the spaces they each occupied – what were the limits of the enemy?  What were the limits of original Kennet’s side?

The first of the men reached them, running over snow trampled by over a hundred skiiers.

Lucy backed off and let Doe intercept that one person.  The guy had a knife but seemed aware of and worried about the crowd seeing.  Doe held the hat in one hand and used her free hand to catch the wrist of his knife hand and push him away.  She got cut in the process.

Both she and the knife wielder were avoiding letting anyone see.

Innocence as this constant factor, pushing in.  Being seen would change minds and create a karmic debt.  That would mean a shift of fortunes, a chance that the circumstances of the fight would somehow turn against them.

But they were able and willing to hit the Chateau and Killaloe Dough.

Lucy retreated toward the cordoned off chateau, heading around the north end of it, using it for cover while avoiding the south end, where the group of four waited by the escape point to Kennet found.

More reached them.  Some slowed, communicating with others about how to cut her off.  She heard the whispers, but there weren’t many full sentences in there.

The download finished.  The centipede binding her hands broke apart.  Her phone lit up, showing images of the recent attack that had closed the chateau.

Something to get into later.

She quickly edited the diagram on the paper, crossing parts out.

The Sight change was dizzying, and Lucy stumbled.

It took precious seconds to clarify, too.

Removing the technomancy part, changing everything to give her a view of the surveillance in general.

And there it was.

She could see the ward stretched over Kennet.  It was tied into the perimeter.  It glowed like Edith’s eyes glowed- the flickering orange-yellow of a faltering candle flame against the blue sky.

“Hat!” Lucy called out.

Doe, still dealing with the guy, swatted out with the hat.  Lucy ducked her head and positioned herself to catch the hat with her head, more than Doe caught her head with the hat.

Connection blocking runes glowed.

Lucy put the anklet on around her wrist as she stepped in, kicking at the guy.

The crowd in the street found excuses not to look their way and see her being violent.

“Stay in my shadow?” Lucy asked Doe, as they backed up a few steps.

Doe repositioned.

Lucy still had an eye on the guy Kittycough had stuck with a knife, and the crowd reacting to the violence and the guy that Kittycough had passed the knife to before drawing the crowd’s attention.

What a fucking mess.

Lucy’s connection blocker burned out under the weight of the all-seeing ward above them.

Four people, including the teenager and woman Tatty had stalled with the swerving car, the guy from the south, and one guy from near the school, were all right there in their face.  Two more were on their way, four more blocking their escape.

They’ve studied us.  They know how we operate.  They know we use connection blockers a lot, pick and choose our fights.  They’ve responded with something that tracks us meticulously, powered by the Girl by Candlelight.  Enemies that don’t let up, that we can’t pick off.

The man Ramjam had hit with the sled was silently swallowed by the Abyss.  Lucy Saw the darkness, and Saw a flicker of a tall gold light.  But she’d been focused on the one Kittycough had stabbed.

She’d wanted to see as Maricica claimed them, here, to see if there was any glimpse of what was going on.

The one in the middle of the street with the stab wound wasn’t being claimed.

She needed and wanted to see how that worked, but for now-

She avoided use of the weapon ring, using hands against reaching hands.

Lucy had expected punches and kicks, but while one person had pulled out a knife, others were coming at her like they wanted to grab her.

And she suspected she knew why.

If they could get their hands firmly on her and then call for Maricica, they could go to the Abyss.  And they could bring Lucy with.

Guilherme had always been a striker.  Any time he was in position to grab, he’d be in position to take her out in a single blow… so why bother dealing with the multi-part process of grabbing her and figuring out what to do with her after?

It was Bubbleyum who’d gotten into the training with grabs and stuff.  Hands reached for Lucy, and she punched out, meeting reaching fingers with blunt force-

A woman, a grown man, and a teenager came at Lucy from three directions.  Lucy applied a principle she’d learned with use of the weapon ring against Guilherme in their earlier sparring, back in the spring and very early summer.  There, she’d used the weapon ring, meeting the furthest targets with whip, then switching her weapon to the spear as they got a few steps closer, then switching to a blade, then something shorter range- always enough that the enemy had to walk into a waiting weapon swing if they wanted to close the distance.

Here, as fingers reached for her, she punched, connecting knuckle to finger.  As she focused on one set of hands, others got closer- so she met them with elbow.

And then forehead, for the last set.

Buying herself a moment.  She shoved one toward Doe, tripped up another, and then turned and went after the teenage boy, using the side of the building and porch that were providing cover from watching eyes to get a bit of height before kicking him square in the face.

As others closed in from further away, the goblins closed in on them.  Kittycough and Tatty from behind, Biscuit above.

Ramjam running along the snow to bowl over the one guy who’d just crawled back up from the Abyss, hidden from view from Innocents, tackling him at the knees.

Which didn’t stop him.  None of this stopped any of them.

“In Bloody Glory,” one man whispered, touching fingers to lips.

Lucy reached for Doe, catching her sleeve, and pulled, running.

The Abyssal explosion occurred just by the chateau.  A fissure, a swell of darkness, and that reality distortion.

Lucy wasn’t fully clear of it.

Running like they had put them at the fringes, but it wasn’t nothing.

Cabins, and water that wasn’t Kennet’s river.

It made her think of some fucked up camp with cabins and water from a horror movie, but instead of it being one serial killer to a few hundred campers, it was a whole slew of serial killers.  And her.

At one of the cabins, Lucy saw, there were fires, and there was a flayed body mounted to the front of the cabin, above the door.

A bunch of Maricica’s people were there, worshiping outside the front of the building.

Some took notice of her and started running.  One of the bogeymen did as well.

All she could do was run.  And here, running was hard.  The ground was muddy, the tripping hazards many.

Doe shoved Lucy to one side.  Pushing her off her feet, into mud and snow.

Lucy looked up, betrayed.

“Bear-”

A gun went off.  A rifle, maybe.  Doe stumbled.

Doe, hunched over, considered a moment, then drew a gun and opened fire back.

“Bear trap,” Doe said, emptying her gun now.

Lucy looked back and saw.  Right in her path, well hidden in dead branches, was a rusty old bear trap.  Large.

If she’d carried on she would’ve lost a foot, easy.

It was all so messed up.

Doe’s reaching hand pulled her to her feet, and she followed.

Out, toward the periphery, out of this darkness, away from those crowds, away from the bogeymen, and the cabins, and whatever slice of Abyss this was.

Back to the foot of the ski hill.  To the woods.

Biscuit was by the porta-potties still.  Not a fighter.  Kittycough ambushed one man who went after Biscuit, stabbing that man repeatedly, and he fell.

And that man was swallowed up by the Abyss as well.

Lucy got a better view this time.  She could See the practice.

That would be another layer of what the enemy had been building here.  That flicker of a tall gold-touched light and the practice that made her think of the Judges.  Like Charles’s side had arranged something to protect Innocents.

So these guys could explode, and by whatever rules they’d arranged, the Judges would go the extra mile to keep them from getting in trouble or getting caught.

Getting a fuller picture.

The goblins scrambled, but the guy was being raised up from the Abyss.  There was less levitation, more light.  But still-

Biscuit lobbed something chemical into the open porta-potty.  Tatty and Ramjam, on the far side of it, pushed it over, so the open door fell over top of the guy who was crawling out of the Abyss.

Filth churned up by goblin chemicals frothed up and exploded out around that fissure, which was spreading its effect.

The guy who was on his way up went back down the ugly way, chased by the contents of the porta-potty.

And the Abyssal effects nearby faded just a little bit.

And we can push back, Lucy thought.

That would have to be it.  Their takeaway, the details they got here.

“Let’s get clear,” she told Doe.

“We can’t use that one way in and out of Kennet found anymore,” Doe said.

“I know.  Figured.  I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, so long as you know.”

Lucy tried to take stock of all the people her anklet was reacting to.

And she could see them.  They’d been alerted too.  The St. Victor’s practitioners.  The Red Heron.

Taking stock, deciding how to move in.

Lucy didn’t want to give them the chance.  This was testing the waters, getting a feel for things, getting a sense of it all.

Lucy used the paper.  “Tatty, Kittycough, Biscuit, Ramjam, let’s get outta here.”

Reagan, the one-eyed contestant from the Hungry Choir ritual, watched Lucy.  She’d drawn an eye on the void where skin stretched over an eye socket, and the drawn pupil moved to track Lucy’s movement as Lucy walked.

A boy with tattoos.  Reagan’s friend.

Gabriel, her old classmate.  Eaten by the Choir.

Laila Throop, from the Blue Heron.  Killed by Kevin Noone.

Bristow, standing off to the side, the orange-red glow of a hellish kitchen behind him.

Alexander, standing tall and arrogant in a blue-tinted suit with a head that had been shattered by a large caliber bullet.  Just splayed out, chunks of skull gone, like some macabre crown.

Several Witch Hunters she couldn’t name.

Reid Musser, face badly scarred, bandages not doing a very good job of covering those scars.

That serial killer, beheaded by Guilherme, with Lucy’s help.

The Alabaster Doe.

It didn’t work like it should have.  It should have been that it was blurrier as she got further away, but instead, as she got close to the present, the dead, destroyed, and murdered became fuzzier, harder to count.

Heavier, in a way.

John Stiles, arms folded, was right there, waiting by the path as Lucy walked over.  Wearing the same style coat she did.  Wearing Yalda’s ring, like she did.

“Yo,” Verona said.

“Heya,” Lucy replied.  “There’s a chance we’re being watched.”

“Figured.  Would’ve been better to have the sexy dream.  You know, hint hint, Alpeana?”

“Kin ainlie work wi’ what ah’ve got, lassie.  Ye’ve made it easy, yer due nightmares aplenty.”

John loomed over things.

Lucy reached Verona, in this place of shadows and the dead.  Those dead and shadows formed a ring around them, Bristow beside Verona, Alexander beside Lucy.

A death-shadow of Avery, eyes downcast, stained with blood, forming the third part of their trio.

“Can you get rid of that, Alpy?” Verona asked.

“Ah could.  But yer barely asleep, havin’ an efternoon nap, ye dinnae sleep much last night.  Ah remove one thing, ye might wake up.”

“Avery’s alive,” Lucy said.

“Lassie-”

“Avery’s alive,” Lucy said, insistent, focused.  She met Verona’s eyes.  “I know I’m gainsaid if I’m wrong, and I know that’s a weakness… but I’m not wrong.  So take what I’m saying, reinforce the dream with that…”

“Aye.  Say na mair.”

Say no more.

The Avery disappeared.

“You were busy earlier,” Verona said.

“I’ve got notes.  I’ll send you the files.  I thought maybe the reason they weren’t exploding up the hotel and going all Abyssal in there was the surveillance cameras.  Like, an extra layer of resistance, having to rewrite recordings… but I don’t think that’s it.”

“Do you know what is it?” Verona asked.

Lucy shook her head.  “It might be automatic, and it might be time limited or based on proximity to the goddess.  Avoiding saying her name.”

“Yeah.  Good call.”

“Could be… without her as close by as she was when you were after the Aurum, it’s path of least resistance, or path of most claim.  And the hospital is high resistance.”

“I hear you.  I’ll look over the notes.”

“Downloaded all the surveillance camera stuff I could for the attack at Killaloe Dough.”

“Cool.  I’ve mostly been poking around the Undercity, getting info from people.  Bitterstreet Witch is there, but she’s not holding that much territory.  Her brothers are being buttheads.  Family Man’s there.”

“Bracken?  Bag?  I was hoping to prod more from other directions, see if we couldn’t find him, but…”

“Working on it.”

Lucy nodded.

“How’s your mom?” Verona asked.

“Stressed.  Hiding it well.  It’s so fucked we can’t go home.  It’s like… we’ve got Kennet found, mostly.  They’ve got Kennet below-”

“Mostly,” Verona threw in.

“Yeah.  And then they’ve got Kennet above… kinda?”

“Kinda.  Yeah.  Superficial hold,” Verona confirmed.

“Charles, two other Judges, and Maricica, as our biggest enemies right now.”

“Yeah.”

It was a lot.  Almost too much.

“Dae ye girls want me tae keep putting ye th’gither like this?” Alpeana asked.  “Doesn’t seem like th’ nightmares will stop anytime soon.”

“Lots more to strategize and do,” Lucy said.  She looked around, in case there was any indication Charles was listening in.  He could probably catch a lot of this without being blatant.  Not that subtlety was his strong suit.

“We’ll give up on the big targets, focus on fixing Kennet?” Verona asked, meeting Lucy’s eyes.

Lucy nodded.

Verona smiled, softly.

Yeah.  Bullshit to that.  But it was good to throw it out there, to maybe lower the defenses of anyone listening in.

“There was something Avery and I talked about before we went to enact our plan against the Aurum,” Verona said.  “That Avery and I, our deal is games, playing, whimsy, it’s why we connect to Kennet found.”

“Makes sense.”

“I guess it’s up to you and me to make our dynamic work.”

Lucy nodded slowly.

She looked at Bristow, then at Alexander.  At the serial killer whose name she couldn’t remember- the one that had worked with the Songetays.

Avery didn’t have anyone quite like that.  That wasn’t Avery’s deal.  Which wasn’t to say Avery wasn’t badass.

But it was Lucy and Verona who went hard, when the situation called for it.  It was Lucy and Verona who went too far.  Lucy and Verona who connected to Kennet below.

If you assholes have temporarily removed Avery from the picture, I think it’s time you realize how much a mistake it is to sideline the member of our group who reminds us to be kind.

Next Chapter