Author: Wildbow

Hard Pass – 22.4 | Pale

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Harri leaned over the sink, spitting a few times to clear the toothpaste from her mouth, and then wiped her mouth.  She’d worn a band to keep her hair out of her face while washing it, and pulled it off, using her thumb to hold one end as she pulled the other back, slingshotting it into the bathroom.  She wore old man pyjamas, a bit baggy on her, but cozy-looking, in magenta and dark purple checks that made her look even paler than she normally did.

She checked her phone and hitting the power button didn’t bring it to life.  Frowning, she plugged it in, sitting on the side of her bed and waiting until it had a tiny bit of charge before booting it up.  The brand logo appeared on the boot-up screen.

It abruptly died.  No logo, no lights, no charging indicator.

“No, no no no,” she muttered.

“Harri?”

She jumped a little, then turned.  Her mom was in the doorway.  Harri’s mom resembled her, with the straight blonde hair, the colorless complexion, and the small build.  Even the sleep clothes- lavender pyjamas with the buttons down the front of the top, but she wore a bathrobe.  Harri looked younger than she was by a year or two, when she was actually thirteen, and her mom looked younger than she was by a decade, looking like she was barely out of her teens when she had an actual teenager of her own.

“Bed?” her mom asked.  “You need to get back into a regular routine before school.”

“Yeah.  My phone’s not working.”

“Don’t tell us that just after Christmas.  Your birthday isn’t for a while.”

Harri deflated, letting out a small moan.

“Can you hold out for a week?  We can drive out to the city to their phone store, see what’s doable then?  Get a bit of delayed shopping in?”

“There’s a lot going on.  Me not having a phone is really not good.”

“You’ve been hanging out with Adrian?”

“And others.”

“Okay.  You’re being good?  I know your cousin is slightly older, and that crowd, that age, town like this?”

“Mom, geez.  What do you think I’m doing?”

“Don’t ‘geez’ me.  That’s short for Jesus and we don’t talk like that.”

“Sorry.”

“And I’d worry you’re drinking, or being pressured to drink.  Older teenagers fool around.”

“Nothing like that.”

Her mom nodded.  “Charge your phone, we’ll try and call in tomorrow, see if there’s anything we can do to troubleshoot.”

“Okay.”

“But sleep.”

Harri nodded.

“Love you, good night.”

“Love you,” Harri said.

“Tell your dad you love him.”

“Dad!” Harri hollered.

“Wha!?” was the answering holler.

“Love you, good night!”

“Back at you!” he shouted back.

Harri’s mom rolled her eyes, then shut the door.

Harri waited a moment, tried her phone again, then got out a book with a vague connection block on the cover, protecting it from tampering parents.

She flicked on the light at her bedside table, went to the main light switch and flicked it off, and walked back to her bed.

Lucy reached out, and turned off the little lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

Harri yelped, throwing herself back.  She saw red eyes, and collided with the door, hand slapping at the wall, trying to find the light, catching on the wet towel drying on the back of her door, instead.

“Let’s talk,” Lucy said.  In the gloom, she was a dark silhouette with red eyes.

Harri hit the switch.

The room illuminated.

The door moved, bumping into Harri.  She looked between her dad, who’d just come in, and the space where Lucy had been.

“What’s wrong?’

“I-” she didn’t seem to know what to say.  “Got spooked.”

“Are you okay?” her dad asked.  He put his hand on her forehead.

“Can you leave the door open?” Harri asked.

“Sure.  You sure you’re okay?  You don’t have a boy in here, do you?”

“Dad,” Harri replied.  She couldn’t fully shake the alarm she was feeling.

He laughed, and he left, leaving the door open.

Harri left the light on, and got her bag, putting it on the bed, one eye out-

“Bangnut, Bangnut, Bangnut-“

“Shit!” Harri swore, reaching into her bag in a rush.

The lights in the house all went out, all power, everything.

Harri started to pull something out of her bag, with a wooden handle, if it wasn’t entirely wood, but stopped as steel caught the light.

A broken rapier and the hand that held it extended across the shaft of light coming in through the window.  The only light in the room.  Lucy’s eyes burned red in the shadows.

“Put it down.  Hands empty and raised.”

Harri dropped the bag and whatever she’d been grabbing from inside it.

Harri breathed hard.  “There are protections.”

“I helped write the Law, I know how to circumvent the protections,” Lucy said.  “It’s your parent’s house, not yours, and you haven’t taken any proper steps to protect it.  Some charms and trinkets, looks like.”

“Dad!?” Harri called out.  “Mom!?”

Lucy adjusted her grip on the rapier.

“There’s a paper with a connection block on the door,” Lucy replied.  “I put it there as I closed it.  Your parents are downstairs.  Dad is going for the fusebox.  Your mom’s finding candles and flashlights.”

“You’re violating protections.  There are people who are going to be coming for you.”

“Sit,” Lucy said.  She moved forward, and let Harri feel the very tip of the blade graze and rake against skin, catching in the smallest way on the skin.  Probably leaving a line that she’d be able to feel if she reached up to rub it with a finger, but not breaking the skin.

Harri sat on the bed.

“Lie down.”

“Why?”

“This isn’t really a situation where you get to quiz me on the ‘why’,” Lucy told her.

“You’re really going to slash my throat?  Kill me in cold blood?  That’s really the kind of person you are?” Harri asked.

“I’d slash your throat but I wouldn’t kill you.  In that situation, I figure I’d let you pass out, then pour a healing potion over the wound.  Which gets us to the point where you’re lying down in your bed.  Same end.”

“You’re really that bloodthirsty?” Harri asked.

“You guys have been leaning really hard on our good sides.  You pull shit, expecting us to play nice, you pulled shit knowing you have the fallback of being able to undo your Awakening.”

“Which you removed.”

Lucy nodded.  “My mom’s being threatened.  My home- I can’t go home, because of your soldiers.”

“Not mine.”

“Your side’s.  Don’t be pedantic.  Being pedantic in this case is attacking me, trying to gainsay me, and you should be able to picture how that goes.  You make your argument, I slash your throat, I make my counter-argument back while you pass out, healing potion over the wound, you wake up in bed.  Lie down, Harri.”

Harri warily pulled her feet up onto the bed.  As the rapier pushed in, she shifted to a position where she was lying down.

Lucy kept the rapier steady, and threw the covers over Harri, jerking them to get them past and over Harri’s feet.  “Avery’s gone.  Don’t suppose you know where?”

“Nah.”

Lucy nodded, eyes dropping a bit.  Harri could’ve made a move then, but Lucy’s eyes went back up.

“What did you expect?” Lucy asked.  “You take things away from us, you push us, you go to extremes.  You’ve got this dark, bloody, twisted army taking over the region.  What did you think we would do?”

“Charles was in charge of this area and he served a role, he built the perimeter,” Harri said.

“Sure, and?”

“And he got taken out.  You got put in.  Now you’re getting taken out, we’re getting put in.  It’s how it goes, right?”

“Why would you want to live in a world where that’s the pattern?  You realize you get removed?  Charles lost everything, you’re threatening to take everything away from me, Verona, and Avery.  What do you think happens next?”

“I know what happens next.”

“Do you?”

“Pretty much.”

“Charles lasted years.  We got months, not even a full year.  What do you get?  How is that something you want?”

“Because…” Harri hesitated, shaking her head.

“You don’t know?” Lucy pressed.

“No, I- I know.  I just haven’t put it into words before.  Isn’t it better to be on top of the world for a little while, than to go my entire life being-”

Harri moved her hand, gesticulating, and Lucy moved the rapier, touching point to wrist.

Harri put her hand back down.

“Being what?” Lucy asked.

“Harri.  Being regular old Harri.  Being some blah looking girl with blah grades-”

“And parents that love you, and that feed you and buy you decent things.  So many people would dream of more.”

“I bet if you asked people, if you really gave them the same choice, they’d choose a year of being powerful, being on top, of being able to make changes, over a lifetime of being…”

“Blah.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you feel powerful, knowing what you did to Gillian Belanger-Ross, how she was horrified?  What Chase lives with?”

“Do you feel on top of the world, taking over Kennet?  Fucking up the ski weeks?”

“No.  Sort of, if I’m being honest.”

“Did you feel like you’re in control, making the choices, at the moot?”

Harri shook her head.

“Or right now?  Lying in bed in a dark room at swordpoint?” Lucy asked.

“Guess not.”

“Are you willing to reconsider your stance, then?”

“I mean…” Harri said.  Her fingers clutched her covers.  “…no?  I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not all great, I know that.  But I still feel closer to power, to control, to all that, than I did before.”

Lucy sighed.

“I still feel bad.”

“Freeman.  Were you there?  When we called?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember how that went?”

“You sent something he’d sent after you back to him.  He used it.  Some old man.  Things went crazy, Freeman ran for it.”

“You remember how that conversation went?”

“Yeah.”

“I overheard you at the moot.  Saying you couldn’t run for it, because you’re worried about your master.”

“Mentor.”

“Tell me you’re done, you want out.  I know you’ve made deals to not side with us, but I also know Yiyun and Nomi were able to walk away.  There’s wiggle room.”

Harri’s eyes flicked around the room.

“Same deal as with Freeman,” Lucy told her.  “It’s a shit deal, you’ll be on Helen’s bad side, but if you don’t accept, you’ll be on our bad side, which is just as bad, really.  So what it comes down to is… are you willing?  If the scales are balanced and you have two shit options, it’s down to you and your character.”

“But-”

“No ‘buts’, Harri,” Lucy told her.  “This is an offer with a very short shelf life.  Give me some cue, any cue at all, I’ll find a way.  We get you out, we get you to Yiyun.  By my count, it’s the third time you’ve been given a shot.  At Edith’s surgery, you got a chance to go with Yiyun.  You can tie in the whole thing with Yiyun meeting with you to make a pitch.  Then at the moot, we gave you the option of backing out, before the Law went into place.”

“And now here?”

“Yeah.”

“Except Freeman’s kind of a crappy example, isn’t he?” Harri asked.  “Because he ended up dead.  Or- not even dead.  Wiped out, gone, erased.”

“Harri, I’ve got others to talk to.  If you need to lie there and think about it, I can wait.  But if you’re throwing ‘buts’ at me and arguing and pushing back… no.”

“You’re going after the others?”

“Harri,” Lucy said, in a warning tone.

“What if I call your bluff, I-”

The power came back on in the house, furnace, television in the other room, light in the hallway, and an outdoor light all coming on.  The room didn’t illuminate.

“I hit the light switch just in case,” Lucy said.

There were footsteps out in the hall, Harri’s mom calling out to her dad.

Lucy startled as Harri brought her pillow from behind her head to the rapier, hugging pillow around it.  She screamed, “Mom!”

The paper on the door flapped.

Harri screamed, top of her lungs, to the point that her calling out for her mom wasn’t even a word anymore.

Lucy turned the rapier into a gauntlet, withdrawing it from the pillow, then turned from gauntlet to damaged knife.  The knife hit Harri’s chest, just below the collarbone, point striking bone.  The damaged weapon had a wobbly bit.  Lucy pushed, the point raked Harri, still not slipping past bone -not that Lucy wanted it to- and pushed Harri back down.

“Mom!” Harri shrieked, kicking out, at covers, then at Lucy, pushing Lucy away.

The paper came away.  Footsteps approached.

A shadow-clad Lucy turned her weapon into what it had originally been.  A glass container with the cap off.  She sloshed it onto Harri.

The door opened, light swept into the room, and Lucy moved with the darkness, off into the corners.

The door opened in the same moment the dark liquid on Harri slithered in, flowing into the open wound.  Harri clutched at her chest, trying to get rid of it.

The liquid disappeared in the same moment Harri’s mom hit the light, lighting up the room properly.

“Harri, what on earth?”

“There was someone in my room,” Harri said, clutching her pyjama top over the injury, white-knuckled.

“What?  That’s crazy.  I didn’t see anyone.”

Harri breathed hard.

“Honey, I-”

Moving quickly, Harri bent down, reaching for her bag.  Her fingers clutched her chest tighter, and she seized up.

“What are you doing?  What’s wrong?”

“Noth- I don’t know.  I- can you get out of my room?  Leave the lights on?” Harri asked.

“You’re acting so weird.  Someone was in your room, you say, you call for me, you ask me to leave?”

“Mom.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?  Are you feeling hot-”

“Mom!  Get out!”

Her mom hovered around the door, concerned.

Harri reached down, grabbed her bag and things, and lurched off the bed, giving a wide berth to the shadows under the bed.  She rushed past her mom’s reaching hand and into the adjoining bathroom, slamming the door.

Harri’s mom went back out into the hall.  Lucy moved through the shadows between the back of the door and the wall, past furniture, past the odds and ends on the floor, getting as good a look as she could at the bathroom.

“Bangnut, Bangnut, Bangnut,” Lucy murmured.

The lights went out.  Darkness filled the room.  The inside of the bathroom became pitch dark, and Lucy slipped through the darkness, wearing a body of darkness, rushing Harri as Harri pulled papers out.

“Illuminate!” Harri shouted.

The papers lit up.  Lucy broke the glamour around herself, tackling Harri, and shoved her over the toilet, into a partially standing, partially lying down position, across closed toilet seat and the edge of the tub.  She controlled Harri’s one hand, holding it back, where it held a branch that was wound around a nugget of twisted metal.  Pinning her.

She didn’t need to control the other hand.

“What did you do to me?” Harri asked, forlorn, terrified.

“Your side horrified Gillian Belanger-Ross.  Chase absorbed some of the worst of it.  I don’t think your master expected us to be able to get a handle on that situation.”

“We reduced the damage, stopped it.  The way some curses work, you prevent harm, or protect someone from something.  Sickness.  Losing conventional beauty with age.  Mental illness.  Puberty.  Wounds.  But you have to give it away.  Sometimes it’s as simple as putting the curse on a button and giving that button to someone.  Sometimes it’s a little more involved.”

Harri’s fingers clutched at her pyjama top.  There, the wound was a few inches long, only really skin deep, but with some bone exposed.  And there, blood-slick fingers reached out of the edges of the wound, and gripped Harri’s fingers with enough force and tenacity that they threatened to break.

“I feel it in my bones,” Harri whispered, her voice thin.  “I feel fingers and tongues inside my bones.  I feel other things.  Like my lungs are clenched fists.  My back- something’s wrong with my back.  It won’t straighten.”

“It’s a bad idea to move around a lot when it’s taking hold, or so I hear,” Lucy said.  She let go of Harri, taking the wooden stick with the nugget of metal.  She moved the bag away.

Harri remained where she was, lying awkwardly across toilet and tub.  She winced in pain as fingers reached out from inside her to clutch at her hand, some fingers bending backwards.  Maybe breaking under the grip.

“For what it’s worth, that’s a small dose,” Lucy told Harri.  “It’s possible you can get ninety percent better.  Maybe you’ll feel the ugliness inside you, but you could get back to where you appear normal, like that.  From the outside.  I wouldn’t go getting any x-rays.  It’d be a good reminder of what you did, and what Gillian Belanger-Ross and Chase Belanger have to live with for the rest of their lives.”

“Please.”

“The fact you didn’t immediately say ‘fuck this’?  The fact you haven’t grown a conscience?  What, you want your moment of being powerful and in control?”

“It was- carrot and stick,” Harri whispered.  “There was that, but I was also scared.  Of what they’d do.  So I can stay and I can keep the good and avoid the bad or-”

“Or you can show some humanity.”

“Please,” Harri whispered.  She stopped.  “I can’t speak above a whisper.  I can’t let my parents see me like this.”

“I agree.  That’s why, when we’re done, I’ll use the same glamour trick, slide through shadows, take you somewhere secluded.  Protect their Innocence.”

“Done?  Done what?” Harri whispered.

Lucy held out the container of black fluid.  Harri’s eyes widened.

“I said that you being a little bit horrified under the skin would be a good lifetime reminder of what you did to hurt those two.  But you guys have attacked us, you killed Edith.  You’ve attacked our town and threatened people we care about.  Drove some away.”

“But-”

“I gave you your shot, Harri,” Lucy said.

Then she emptied the rest of the container over Harri.

It all slithered into the wound.  Harri fought, pushing back, reaching for the vial, and her fluid-drenched arm subdivided.

“Put your phone away, Teddy.”

“I can’t get ahold of my friends.”

“It’s the holidays, what if they’re with their families, say, shopping for their Christmas present?  But instead of fiddling with their phones the entire time, they’re showering their parents with gratitude and affection, they’re having fun, they’re laughing at all their mom’s very excellent jokes…”

“Ha ha.”

“Your jokes are adorable, honey.”

“See, Teddy?  Your father thinks so.  I bet they’re saying things like ooh, mom, you’re so kind, offering to buy me a new winter jacket, can I wash your car for you, just as an extra thank you?  Can I make dinner?”

“You want me to wash your car in the dead of winter?  I might be laughing at your jokes then, Mom.  But I figure it’ll be a maniacal laugh and your car might look like a block of ice.”

“There are ways to do it that don’t cover the car in ice, believe it or not.”

“Do I dump antifreeze onto the paint job and leave it to sit?”

Teddy rounded the corner of the aisle, checking coats, and stopped in his tracks as he saw Lucy, flipping through the clothes on one rack further down, on the girl’s side.  She gave him a level glare.

“Giving you a shot, Teddy,” she murmured.  “Back down.  If you need to get away, if you’re scared, we’ll take you to Yiyun.”

He looked over his shoulder.  “Fuck you.  You know there are people coming for you right now?  Moment you show your face here…”

“I know.  I took measures.”

“We know your duplication tricks and connection block crap.  Won’t work.”

“I guess we’ll see how it goes.”

His parents caught up with him.

“Oh, hello.  Do you know her?”

“We’ve crossed paths,” Lucy said.

Teddy’s expression hardened as he stared her down.  Very, ‘I know what you’re doing’.  Then as his dad touched his shoulder, he managed to change to a very innocent expression as he looked up, flashing a small smile.

“You’re Teddy Kilburn, right?” Lucy asked.

“Dad, Mom, you want to loop around?  Or go find Mom’s gloves, and I’ll find you?  I want to talk to her, privately.”

“Do you know what Teddy did?” Lucy asked them, before they could obey Teddy’s request.

Teddy’s expression did that hard thing again.  Teddy’s mom, almost gleeful as he asked for privacy to talk to a girl, had her face drop.

“What he did?” Teddy’s mom asked.

“Him and a group of others he’s been hanging out with raided this family’s place.  The Whitts.  Trashed it, stole, hurt people.  I know them.  They’ve apparently talked to police, insurance, it’s a whole thing.”

“You sound crazy,” Teddy said.  To his dad, he said, “she’s been after me for a little while now.”

Lucy got out her phone.

“Can we go before this becomes a scene?” Teddy asked.

Lucy found the photo.  “That’s you, right Teddy?”

She held it out so Teddy and his parents could see.  A black and white image of the St. Victor’s kids in the front hall, surrounded by broken glass.

“You’re pretty recognizable, even with a bit of blur on the image.  Skinny build, you take after your parents.  You were wearing the same coat you are now.”

“Did you photoshop that or manipulate the image?” Teddy asked.

“Big house, wealthy people, cameras inside.  But wealthy people make bad enemies.”

Teddy’s mom gripped Teddy’s shoulder hard.

“What are you doing?” Teddy asked.

That should be obvious.  “There’s a bounty on your head.”

“Did you put it there?  You’re clearly after me.”

“Can I see your phone?” Teddy’s mom asked.  “Is that the only picture?”

“No, you can’t, I don’t know you or trust you and Teddy seems like a fucked up kid, so you might be fucked up parents.”

“Is there a problem?” a store employee asked.

The swearing and the sharpness of Lucy’s tone was drawing attention from others.

Teddy looked like he wanted to take a swing at her, shaking his head slightly.

“You stole thousands of dollars worth of things, broke more, I think that’s an indictable offense, like a felony in the States.  You guys hurt someone along the way, I hear that’s potentially a life sentence.”

The employee started motioning for someone.

“You’re not serious,” Teddy’s dad said.

A man approached.  “Can I see?”

Lucy recognized him, but played dumb.  “Who are you?”

“Police,” he said, leaning hard to his right so he had access to his left pocket.  He showed her the I.D. in his wallet.  “Special constable Blauvelt.”

Lucy swiped left a few times to reach the start of the black and white surveillance images, then handed him the phone.  “You can go right from there.”

He immediately swiped left, landing on a picture of Grandfather and Horseman, then went right, into the images.  He reached for and put on reading glasses to get a better look.

“Can we go?” Teddy asked his parents.

“Don’t move,” the constable told him.

“Are you even on duty, are you allowed to detain me?” Teddy asked.

“Teddy, honey, shut up,” his mom said.

“Did you arrange for people to be here?” he asked Lucy.

“I was shopping for family,” the constable said, not looking up from the phone.  “Fire?”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied.  “There was a fire.  It got put out but it did damage.”

“You know who these other kids are?”

“Listen,” Teddy said.  His mom tried to interrupt him and he talked over her, “Lis-Lis-Lis, listen to me, this situation doesn’t make sense.”

Working that Lis call-out into your statement while you’re pretending to stutter or trying to be heard?

“It doesn’t make sense!” Teddy shouted, pulling out of his mom’s grip.  “There’s a bounty, she says?  And she comes to bother me instead of something else?”

“I was standing here and you appeared.  I recognized you,” Lucy told him.

“Why not take the bounty money and profit?  This is a setup.  It has to be set up.”

The constable asked Lucy, “Can I email these to my work email?”

“If you let me, I’ll do it.  Pass it to me for a sec?”

The constable handed her her phone back.  She navigated to her email, putting in the password, and then passed it back, email form open, so he could type it in.

“This is bullshit,” Teddy said.  He turned and saw a guy about his age.  Lucy didn’t recognize the guy as a student of her school, but the way Teddy paused momentarily suggested he knew or recognized him.

Social life screwed, relationship with family screwed.  Future prospects… now you’re facing arrest for multiple indictable offenses.

“What’s going on?” the store owner asked.  “Hi Lucy.”

“Hi Mr. Black.  Sorry for the hassle.”  Mr Black was her classmate’s dad, and someone she’d worked with on the market.

“It’s alright.  What’s-?”

“Thomsen,” the constable said, his own phone at his ear as he returned Lucy’s.  “I’m at the sports store downtown.  One kid is accusing another of some pretty heinous stuff.  Yeah.  Good.”

He hung up.

“You know her?” He asked Mr. Black.  “She’s credible?”

“She helped set up the midnight market.  And the rooftop concert around Christmas.  Very credible.”

That was touching.

“Wasn’t a fan of that second thing.  Happened without us knowing,” the constable said.

“Already talked to the Mayor about being more organized and giving forewarning for the next event,” Lucy said.  Not that we will, necessarily, but we talked about it.

“My subordinate is coming by, he’s going to bring you guys in for a conversation.”

“I’d like to attend with my mom, can I come in this afternoon?”

“Send us those images, put us in touch with the people who were attacked?  Where were they?  Here?”

“Ha, no.  House is too nice for Kennet.  Manitoba.”

“Okay, give us contact details, and come in this afternoon?”

Lucy gave him a nod.

She stepped back, letting the constable turn his full focus onto Teddy.

“I can’t get Harri to answer.“

“Then we move with a smaller group.”

Lucy stalked the shadows.  Silhouettes of Dog Tags moved with her.

Adrian was Harri’s cousin.  They didn’t seem to have a strong bond, but Adrian didn’t seem especially happy at the inability to get an answer on the phone.  He held it up, as if looking for service.

Joel the Dragonslayer, Lenard the Bedlamite Abyssal practitioner, and Josef the Alchemist were with Adrian.

“And Teddy?”

That was Josef asking Adrian.  Adrian fiddled with his phone.

“No answer… and my phone just died.”

Lucy nodded to herself.  Good.

“Try yours?”

Lenard asked Josef.

“You still don’t have one?”

“My last one broke, in one dive through the Abyss.”

“You told me about that.  Weeks ago.”

“Why buy a new one when it’ll break in a few days?”

Josef tapped on his phone a few times.  He put the phone to his ear.

Adrian looked up, hopeful.

“Who are you calling?”

“My apprentice.  Same situation.  Teddy’s not answering.  Let’s see…”

Lucy waited.

“Nothing from Kira-Lynn.”

“What the hell?  We have wards set up so we know if someone’s taken out.  Don’t we?”

“Wards can be interfered with.”

Lenard had stepped away from the group, and he looked through the darkness of Kennet above at night.

“We’re being interfered with right now.  We’re not alone.”

“They know,” Lucy whispered.  Not that it mattered.  The Dog Tags were already moving on to the next phase of things.

Josef said something.

“Lenard?  With me?  You can loop back for Joel and Adrian.”

“We’re going into the Abyss?  Wait, why am I not coming with?”

Adrian sounded nervous.

“Because you need to learn.”

Josef delivered the line in a cold way.  Lucy tried to read Adrian’s expression from afar.

“Josef.”

“Lenard?”

“I was promised that when I joined this group, I’d get an apprentice.”

“And?”

“Mine quit.  You and Joel go.  You can get through to the Goddess’ realm through the church.  Rally the troops, see if you can get answers about the phones.  I’ll break Adrian in, we’ll discourage pursuers, and then we’ll follow.”

“Break me in?”

“Eventually, all of you kids will know how to scream so everything from Abyss to the Moon hears you.  You’re next.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Then you walk into this next part unarmed.”

Two of the three men left.  Leaving the vaguely disconcerting, creepy Lenard with Adrian, who had light blond, straight hair like Harri, glasses, and clothes like he’d just come from a holiday party where he’d dressed up nice for Christmas photos.  Except he always looked a bit like that.  Either school uniform or ‘looking nice for grandma’ presentation.

Lenard and Adrian weren’t alone in the one-way street.  In the same way that Lucy kept to the shadows with the shadowy Dog Tags, the pair had a group of people from the undercity with them.  One of them looked like they’d been to the Abyss a few too many times.

Lucy reached out, placing a vague silence rune on a long gun barrel.  Then she whispered, “Now.”

The gun fired, barrel flashing, but there was no sound.

Dropping Lenard.

There were shouts, and the people from Kennet below started running toward them.  Adrian followed, but not really running.  He had a glass jar with him, and lobbed it, so it shattered on the ground.

A figure swirled out, forming into a human-ish shape that flickered briefly.  Lucy couldn’t figure out what it was.

But when it was shot, it didn’t stop.  It reeled for a second, the wound closed, and then it flickered and disappeared.

“Go, go, go, go, go,” Lucy whispered, before darting to one side.

Flanking, in a way.  Playing the Avery-ish role.

Lenard had part of his face missing, cheekbone, ear, jaw, and skull damaged by the high-caliber rifle shot.  But he was able to lurch to his feet, the whites of his bulging eyes visible all the way around.

Adrian called out another Other.  Lenard started to scream, and was immediately shot again.

Dog Tags engaged with people from Kennet below, and the sound of guns firing, shouts, and screams from Lenard and Adrian’s soldiers filled the air.

Lucy ventured closer.

“Adrahhn!” Lenard shouted, jaw unhinged at the one side where it had been shattered with a bullet.  Black ichor leaked out from the wound.  “Lihhe I haughh you!”

Like I taught you.

“That was for emergencies!”

“Noaah!”

Lenard was healing.  “Ah’ll take away your prahice!”

“You can’t anymore, can you?”

“I’ll take your damn life, you-”

And Lenard was shot again.  Not that it really stuck.

Adrian was huddled down, back to a mailbox.  The Dog Tags weren’t trying to shoot him.

He looked terrified.

Adrian swallowed something.  Hands went to head, his knees bent and drawn in close to chest, and he drew in a deep breath.

To be safe, Lucy drew a circle around herself, letting it naturally form as the earring required, which was fine because she was countering sound.

The scream ripped out, faltering at first, then stopping- like Adrian had felt some repercussion and hesitated.  Then he looked at Lenard, and saw the ugliness in the man’s eyes, the promise that he’d be killed if he didn’t perform.

And he screamed for real, now.

The Dog Tags stopped fighting and started retreating.  The people from Kennet below kept going, mostly, with the most Abyssal of them getting more intense, not less.

The big threats were two Others that looked like hybrid Hero-spirit-technomancy bullshit, maybe pulled from another video game, and the almost-a-bogeyman captain of the Kennet below soldiers.

Not that it mattered.

Something in Adrian broke.

The scream stopped.  Adrian fell forward, hands on head, elbows and knees on the ground.

“You stupid twit,” Lenard snarled.  Lucy was close enough to hear without her earring.

“My Sight,” Adrian said, as if he was somewhere far away.  “It changed.  I can’t turn it off.  Shadows, flickering, in the corners.  I…”

“That’s not your Sight, you simpleton,” Lenard growled.  He checked the coast was clear of Dog Tags, bent down, and grabbed Adrian by the hair, jerking his head up and back, to look him in the eyes.  “You’ve gone mad.  You’ve gone more Other than human now.”

“What?”

“There’s no coming back from that.”

“No, that’s-” Adrian jumped at something that wasn’t there.  His voice became plaintive.  “No.”

“Yes.  Did you make any unscheduled trips to the Abyss?  Something weakened you, or ate at your defenses.  Drinking some stupid potions?”

“Kira-Lynn gave us something Abyssal-”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I thought I did.  Didn’t I?  I can’t- my memory.  My thoughts, nothing’s ordered…”

“You’ve lost your head, and now you’re useless.  Go home, or get shot.  I don’t care anymore.  Can’t get a fucking-”

“Please help!” Adrian shouted.  “Please!”

“Can’t get a damn apprentice worth a damn,” Lenard growled.

He wasn’t like that when I overheard him before.  Does he have a mean streak?  Lucy wondered.

Lenard called the others back, and started walking toward the church.  When Adrian tried to follow, Lenard gestured at one of the men, and they shoved Adrian onto his backside.

Lucy waited, watching them file into the church.

Adrian lay there, mumbling to himself, jumping at shadows.  Even as he seemed to get used to that, on some minor level, the dawning horror of the situation seemed to be setting in.

Lucy knew she’d have to talk to him before he was too far gone.

“Adrian,” Lucy said, venturing out of the shadows.

“Did you do this?  Make this happen?  Curses or something?”

“Something,” Lucy answered.

“No.  I’m broken and I’ll never be fixed?”

“Maybe there’s medication,” Lucy said, to soothe.

“Maybe he’ll be in a better mood tomorrow.”

“Adrian,” Lucy said.  “It’s up to you if you want to gamble on that.  Or if you want to come with me.  We were able to help Gillian Belanger-Ross some, with some obscure knowledge.  Maybe we could help you.  Then we’d send you to Yiyun.”

He sobbed without tears, on the verge of panic now.

“Adrian,” she said, voice soft.  “Charles, Maricica, the mentors, I don’t think they really give a damn about you.”

“They don’t.”

“Come with me then.”

“Nobody gives a damn,” he said, meeting Lucy’s eyes with wavering ones that couldn’t sit still.  “My parents divorced and they both tried to push me on the other one.  They didn’t fight for me.  They fought to not have me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I never had a teacher that really cared about me.  Never had a friend who stuck by me.  And then they tell me I can be powerful?  I can have more?  I can do this?”

“It’s not because they care.  I’m sorry.”

“They told us you three were picked over us.  I hated you.  I still hate you.  They say you were close to being Other, so you’d connect more… but that’s true for me too.”

“Sounds like,” Lucy replied.  “Yeah.”

“But you were also smart and talented and you’d work together well?” Adrian asked, voice shaky and broken.  Lucy’s age, but sounding much younger.  “So what does that mean if you were picked over me?  It’s like you’re a walking, talking fuck you, to my face.  You’re better?  That’s not fair.  I thought if I could remove you or stop you, it’d be like telling the universe to go fuck itself.”

“I’ve felt that urge myself sometimes.  To say fuck you to all of them.  Sometimes I have to do it to get prepared to meet the day.”

“I thought if I could stop the big practitioners, change things, a big revolution, maybe there’d be a new world where people like me don’t get so disappointed by literally everyone that’s supposed to care about them.  But mostly there wouldn’t be this world where it definitely happens.”

“Did you hope Lenard or Maricica or Joel would be that someone?” Lucy asked.

“I stopped hoping a long time ago,” he said.  “I thought maybe that was why Charles liked me.  You can want to change things for reasons that don’t have anything to do with hope.”

“I think you might’ve missed someone who did actually want to back you up.  Yiyun.”

“Too late now, huh?” Adrian asked.

“Not necessarily.”

Lucy moved over to stand next to Verona, who peered down from a high vantage point.

Kira-Lynn was having a quiet conversation with Maricica, deep in Maricica’s lair.

“You good?” Lucy asked.

“How are you doing?”

“Getting info, but she’s a tough one.”

“Yeah.”

“And I don’t want to get too close to Maricica.”

“Valid,” Lucy agreed.

“I’ll stay, if that’s okay?”

Lucy nodded.  “You saw Cameron?”

“Yeah.  You should check on her, but move careful.  She almost saw through me.”

Lucy nodded.

Moving on.

Travis was not one of the most outspoken members of the group.

“Travis!” Lenard screamed the words, hand at the bullet wound at his neck.  “Like I taught you!  Now!”

Travis hesitated.  “No.”

The Dog Tags were winning.  Getting an edge.

Bullets kept hitting the ground or the fence that was stone on the bottom half and railing on the top half.  Travis crouched low.  He had some potions with him and seemed to be debating them.

He downed one.  Lucy, creeping around, still hiding, saw his veins bulge out and orange light lanced through them.  His eyes flashed.

He grew more brutish, but he didn’t really grow.  It was like his features were puffing out, or becoming scars.  Veins visibly pumped like they were pushing milkshake through him, not blood.  They’d swell to five times their size one second and shrink back to a smaller size the next.

He surprised Lucy and the Dog Tags by throwing himself into the fray.  Fast, not especially strong, but he had a weapon from Lenard, closer to a partially melted weathervane made of twisted metal than anything else, or a trident with weird prongs and a very short handle.  It seemed to be magnetic enough to pull bullets aimed in his general direction to it.  Electricity arced.

He barreled forward and where most would get slower or tire out as they pushed themselves, he seemed to accelerate.   Lighting flashed like a lightning strike as he brought the full weathervane weapon thing down on a shadow-cloaked Dog Tag.

“Travis!” Lenard shouted.

Travis, frothing slightly at the mouth, turned to look.  Lucy didn’t have the right angle to see, but his eyes were wide.

“Scream,” Lenard ordered.

And whatever the alchemy had done to Travis, making him stronger, more intense, more able to push forward, it diminished whatever part of him would refuse the order.

So he screamed.

Lucy protected herself.  She watched the Dog Tags retreat.

She watched as something in Travis broke.

She watched as Lenard insulted and dismissed Travis, in much the same way he had Adrian.

“Same nightmare?” Lucy asked.

“Aye, Lassie,” was the quiet response.  “Et works, eh?”

“I guess what Joshua went through as Lenard’s apprentice caught them off guard.”

“Thar’s a firm foundation tae build on ‘ere,” Alpeana replied.

Lucy waited, and then she ventured forward.  Same offer.  It wouldn’t be fair or right to do without giving them this one last chance.

Like she’d told Harri…

First at Edith’s surgery.  Then at the Moot.  Now here.

A final wake up call, a worst case scenario.  This also served multiple interests and ends.

“Travis-”

Travis’s eyes widened.  It wasn’t the drug… the drug had worn off as he’d lost his ability to practice, here.

Just something deeper inside of him.  Maybe he’d been exposed to too much Abyss.  Maybe something else.

His mind in shambles, Alpeana’s nightmare manipulations making him feel like he’d lost his mind, every symptom, every sad, painful detail, he still fought Lucy, swinging that weathervane thing around.

She fought back, best as she could, avoiding the incoming hits.

“Need help?” Alpeana asked.  “Want me tae handle it?”

“No,” Lucy replied.  “Make sure Verona’s okay.  Travis!”

He fought, not seeming to listen.  He fought like someone who’d lost everything, who seemed to think that if he kept fighting like this, despite all evidence, there’d be a chance.

“There are options!” Lucy shouted.

He didn’t hear or see them.

“Lis, Lis, Lis,” Travis called out.  Maybe wanting to close the gap or trap her, by calling on the city spirit.

Nothing.  There was no response.  He looked confused.

Lucy smiled.

“Lucy, Grandfather, Horseman, meet the Hooligans of Half Street.  Hooligans, meet Lucy.”

“We’ve met,” Lucy said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.  She indicated Anselm.  “Except him.”

“I’m here for the atmosphere,” Anselm replied.  He wore a black sweater with no shirt beneath, which made Lucy’s skin sympathetically prickle.  The sweater hung off him in a way that really went with his long uncombed black hair.  Effortlessly complimentary.  He looked like a fashion model off the runway, who a designer could drape clothes on and he’d wear an intense expression and it’d work.  Except he was a bit on, all the time, even when longing on the couch.

“It’s a nice spot to hang out, for sure,” Lucy said.

“No, I mean I’m here to convey atmosphere.”

“These guys have been gathering details while we’ve been gone,” Verona said.  “Tracking what’s happening with the takeover.”

“Except me,” Anselm said.  “I’m a prop.  I lounge around in the dark, write poetry, and model for drawings.”

“Okay, Anselm.  Serious faces, now.”

“I’ll make tea,” he said, “Pigeon’s out.  Want to come, P.S.?”

Peckersnot accepted the offer and rode on Anselm’s shoulder as he walked to the kitchen.

“To start us out… any idea if the Crimson Judge is listening in?” Lucy asked.

“I dunno,” Verona said.

“Is that a thing your Demesne can sense?”

“It could be something I can make it do, but that might take time to work out.  Slower to inch that way while we’re weaker, with weaker practice.”

Lucy nodded.

“Let’s assume nothing’s a secret.  They’ve got the augur, they’ve got the Judge, they’ve got the city spirit,” Verona said.  “But it’s not like we can leave and come back now that we don’t have Avery with…”

Lucy swallowed and nodded.

“So if our choices are to either do nothing or push forward with a plan that may be known to the enemy…”

“Right.”

“Here,” Verona said.  She turned the table’s surface into a map of Kennet.  She tapped a spot and raised up an inset bit of wood in the form of a church.  “New church downtown, not all that far from here, but it’s mainly rooted in Kennet below.”

“The Church of Bloody Glory, Kennet above, was the last place I saw Bracken and Bag,” Oakham said, leaning over her cane.  “Before they were carted off.”

“You sticking around for this discussion, Oakham?” Verona asked, using the name she’d coined for Melissa, because of the mess of M-names in her group.  “We’re going to get technical.”

“Nah.  I don’t want to be tainted with knowledge.  Got plans.  I figured you guys would want to keep an eye on the St. Victor’s kids, and so I focused on what they were doing while they were in Kennet above.”

“Nice,” Lucy said.

“I think so.  Step one of eventually becoming a badass private investigator, getting good at keeping tabs on people.”

Oakham handed over her notes.  “Bye.”

“Bye,” Lucy and Verona said.

Oakham left.

Mal, frowning, looked over things.  “What we’re dealing with is pressure.  From within.  Our enemy doesn’t stop fighting.  They get taken out?  They do that dip into darkness thing, get revived.  They get healed at the church if they aren’t dipping, and they’ve got lots of numbers.”

“Definitely run into all of that,” Lucy said.

“It’s more than just that though,” Mal said.  “Dog Tags do okay, but there’s only a few of them.  Every night, they form these hit squads, it’s like they pick the top five priority targets, and then we get a small army of zealots backed by a practitioner or two, maybe a few Others, and they hit that target.”

They all looked so tired.

Mal went on, “We can’t sleep.  Can’t keep defenses up all the way all the time.  Can’t be ready for everything.  They change things around on us.  Practitioners are bags of tricks, and they find the tricks to mess with us.  You weren’t even gone that long, but every night they’d hit five places, and we’d hold one if we were lucky.”

“Sorry,” Verona said.

“Nah,” Mal replied.  “…And so they got the factories, scared off the ghouls and removed Stew Mullen.  They hit Rook’s rooftop and she folded to them.  So now they hold meetings without us, which makes everything worse.  They’ve got a presence in the hospital, all hours, they’ve got a good chunk of downtown, the Oldbodies are working for them, Bitter Street Witch is holding a corner of downtown, but it’s a really small corner.”

While Mal talked, Horseman reached past Verona to get some push-pins, and began pushing them into the table, marking out the boundaries.  As he surrounded one area, Verona brushed fingers along it, and the wood tinted crimson.

“Got it,” Lucy said.

“So these kids from St. Victor’s are sleeping during the day and then active at night?” Verona asked.  She moved the notes Oakham had left behind to turn some pages and see.  “Or mixed, or…?”

“They’re awake all hours,” Mal said, crowding in next to Verona to look at the same pages.  “During the day they’re shopping, hanging out with family, celebrating holidays.  Then at night they’re raiding us.  I know more about the raiding stuff.”

“When do they sleep?” Verona asked.

Mal shrugged dramatically.  With the way one tattoo scrunched up, Lucy wondered if Mal was trying to do a ‘I move my arm this way, the tattoo at the place where neck meets shoulder becomes something else’, but there was so much going on with Mal’s tattoos that maybe it was just playing tricks on her.

“Hmmmm.  That’s interesting though,” Verona said.  “Halflight stuff, they talk about how core needs get wonky.”

“Is that the official term?” Lucy asked.

“Nah.  Official terms are all over the place.  It’s a problem you run into with some of these texts like Halflight stuff, Peddler stuff… they don’t communicate with one another and they aren’t accepted by the wider community,” Verona said.  “Anyway, sleep, food, water, sex and affex, the balance of safety and shelter against fight-flight-freeze-fawn, uhhh, yeah.  Once you knock one of those out, it’s very easy to spiral.”

“Can we make them spiral?” Lucy asked, leaning over the table.  “What do we think they’re doing?”

“We know they did some sort of spot surgery the night of Edith’s surgery, to drop in something dark, probably Abyssal, go all edgy…” Verona said.

“But they’ve avoided spiraling?  They have normal day-to-days?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, which doesn’t line up with what the books warn about, exactly.”

“Alchemy?” Lucy asked.  “We know they have a pretty decent alchemist.  Josef.  With Teddy as his apprentice.”

“Alchemy could mean deferred or deflected consequence,” Verona said.  “Like, I make a healing potion, and someone swigs that, they heal, but then they suffer somewhere else.”

“In the butthole,” Lucy said.

Mal grinned.

Verona nodded.  “Can also be Halflight too, where you get the backswing and the deferred consequence, being a Hyde.  Making the consequences a problem for tomorrow, in the form of an alternate version you that ends up trying to take you over.”

“Sounds like it beats out Path stuff for ‘why the fuck would you ever?’,” Lucy said.

She could see Verona’s face change at the mention of Path stuff.  The reminder about Avery.

“Hey,” Lucy said.

“It’s okay.  But yeah, I get you on the Hyde stuff.  Ha.  Maybe because it’s cool?  You get to be your dream self, at least as long as the alchemy and internal balances hold up?” Verona asked.

“I thought you didn’t like drugs,” Lucy said.

“I don’t.  Because I can see the appeal.  Happiness on demand?  I can see the steep cliff that leads off of.  Ideal me with an alter ego eventually trying to murder and take everything from you?  Same deal.”

“Huh, I wasn’t paying one hundred percent attention,” Julette said.  “Were you talking about me?”

Lucy looked over, frowning.

“I’m kidding,” Julette said, lounging on the couch in the other room so her head was against Anselm, who’d just come back in.  Anselm put an arm around her shoulders.

“So maybe Alchemy,” Lucy said, reorienting.

“Out of the practices they have, Bedlamite, Horrors, Alchemy, Dragonslayer magic item maker guy, spirit surgeon, and Seth the augur…”

“Yeah.”

“They haven’t seen Seth,” McCauleigh said.  “While I was getting the lay of the land, I asked, asked people to keep an eye out.  So he’s either camped out somewhere, communicating with those guys, or he isn’t in town.”

“Where would he be?” Verona asked.

“Belangers,” Lucy answered.  She looked at McCauleigh.  “Right?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You’ve probably spent more total time around Seth than us.”

“Kennet isn’t the only place they’re applying this crazy pressure.  Yeah.”

“Belangers are near the Blue Heron.  They’re hard to sneak up on.”

“But Seth might have ideas on how to,” Verona said.  “When Alexander died and all traces were removed, there was some fuzzling of the Augury and investigation by using more, different Augury.”

Lucy remembered.  She nodded.  “I only knew a tiny amount, mostly Sight stuff, so I kind of just made bad wards against Augury and pushed against them with Sight until I’d kind of crapped over everything.  John rinsed stuff in water.  All super basic.  Seth probably knows ways to get an army to their doorstep without tripping too many alarms, yeah.”

“Call them?” Grandfather asked.

Lucy nodded, getting her phone out.

“If they were taking the route of hollowing or halflighting themselves, cutting out the need for sleep like Matthew cut out parts of himself, I’d say we should go for those weak points,” Verona said.  “If it’s alchemy… I dunno.  I don’t see any other great options for avoiding sleep.”

“Same deal?” Lucy asked.  She texted Nicolette.  Texts were easier than getting through the barrage of busy signals or being put on hold.  Nicolette read texts right away.

“Same deal?” Verona asked.  “What do you mean?”

“Like, let’s pretend our issue is we want to hurt them, but they have a supply of healing potions.  Consequence of the healing potions you make is it makes going to the bathroom a pain after.  Assuming that same sort of deal, if we hurt them enough, then eventually they hit the point where the consequences are too bad to deal with.”

“Pushing until they break,” Mal said.

Lucy nodded.  “So… what if we do that?”

“With sleep?” Verona asked.

“And whatever price they’re paying to avoid sleep and maintain this constant pace.”

“Tranquilizers?” Grandfather asked.

“Easiest to do a curse, I figure,” Lucy replied.  “Classic sleeping beauty stuff, maybe.  Contagious drowsiness?”

“We wanted to be meaner about this,” Verona said.  “Make them pause and reflect.”

“Well, let’s see if we can push them enough that the consequences show up, and then we adjust,” Lucy replied.

“Okay.  So that’s the broad game plan.  Which brings us to issues like… we’re weaker.”

“We are.”

“So we need power.”

“Jabber?  He acts like a power source.”

“Let’s hold onto him.  What about Tashlit?” Verona asked.  She turned, “She’s still around?”

Mal replied, “She withdrew some.  She comes through, heals our guys sometimes.  But this isn’t her vibe.”

“Really isn’t,” Verona agreed.

“I think she’s thinking about leaving.”

“Valid, honestly.  I really hope she doesn’t.  Let’s see if she can help us out before she goes, I’ll try to make sure she knows she’s loved, even if we’re not totally meshing.”

Lucy nodded to herself.

Felt a bit like the Wallace situation, honestly.

“Second issue… they may see us coming,” Verona said.  “What we talked about before.”

Lucy nodded.  “Might be a bit of ping-ponging on the curse stuff.”

“Can you win?  You’re weaker, remember?”

“Let’s assume I can.  Or that we can work around it.  I’ll read up on some stuff before we make a move.”

“Okay, well, that ties into our third issue.  Maricica.  Ex-Fae, from a court that really liked curses.”

Lucy nodded to herself.  “Let’s put out feelers?  If Maricica starts making moves somewhere else…”

“She said she was going to focus on things that weren’t here,” Verona said.

“Good,” Lucy said.  “We use our contacts, if she turns her full focus somewhere else, we make a move against the forces here.”

“Even if it’s a decent plan, identifying a weakness and attacking it with a well-placed curse,” Verona mused aloud.  “If we’re weaker, if they’ve got a real asset giving them info…”

“We assume we lose,” Lucy said.  “We assume they can get out ahead of this.  We handle this like a Fae would.  Remember how we talked about Maricica and her planning going into the end of summer?”

“Nope,” Mal said.  “Because I didn’t technically exist then.”

“Fill us in?” McCauleigh asked.

Lucy supplied the answer.  “A Fae like she was juggles so many things so well that even if they aren’t actually on top of the situation, they twist a failure into a win on some other front, and you feel like you never had a chance.”

“So that’s what we do?” Verona asked.

“We tried to cooperate, across Edith’s surgery,” Lucy said.  “They turned around and tried to stab us in the back.”

“Yep.”

“We then met them on a neutral, moderated field.  The moot.  They didn’t meet us halfway.”

“I’m with you.”

“So here we are.  Whatever we decide, however we pivot, let’s respect what Avery brought to the group, we stay ready to accept a hand that reaches back to us, but if they don’t… let’s keep the trajectory in mind.  From nice to neutral to now.”

Lucy opened her eyes.

“You good?” Grandfather asked.

Lucy nodded.

The ritual circle was active and glowing faintly.  Dog Tags and Snatchragged were on guard.  Alpeana was inside the nightmares but would pop out now and then.  And Tashlit was here, sitting cross-legged in arm’s reach of the glowing ritual circle, with a sleeping Verona lying there with her head on Tashlit’s lap.  Tashlit had molted a bit, and the skin of her upper body was hanging around her waist, leaving head, shoulders, arms, and torso clear of that loose skin.  She was just sleek black and yellow eyes on a slender body.

Whatever debt had been accumulated with the anti-sleep alchemy, the ones they’d hit with the sleeping curse had folded hard.  The moment they’d realized how it was working, they’d called Alpeana, met a token ward, pushed through that, and dove into the kids’ dreams to twist them into nightmares that they could be confronted in.

If the curse was cast off or rebounded at them, the Dog Tags were under orders to get them out of there.

Seven known practitioners of St. Victor’s, plus four more they group recruited who were more on the sidelines, still getting preliminary training.  Seven to deal with.  Harri, Dony, Adrian, Travis, Teddy, Kira-Lynn, and Cameron.

That group had met to start their midnight raid, and working from a distance, Jabber at the ready to screw up anyone who came in response to the ward, spell circle drawn up to send out omens and agents of sleep.

The way the omens had worked that well, Verona had a theory that the sleep stuff was being concentrated into smaller time periods.  So the kids took the potion, or they’d modified something with practice, and when they stopped sipping at the potion, there’d be a short delay, and then they’d pass out, and they’d be vulnerable, in a kind of coma-like deep sleep, unable to wake.  Concentrating eight hours of sleep into an hour or so.

It was a lucky break, which made Lucy suspicious.

She watched as Maricica’s zealots came down the street, responding to the ward.  They stopped just outside what they’d found to be Jabber’s range.

One of them murdered one of their friends.

The Abyss-stuff went off, swelling.  The guy died, and was reborn again, darker and uglier.

He ventured a few more feet into Jabber’s domain, before eventually succumbing.

So his buddy shot him with another arrow- not enough to kill.  He was tougher, after one or more dips into the Abyss.  Another arrow to the base of the skull killed him.

And he was reborn.

Tougher, hardier.

Taking longer to succumb to Jabber’s influence, because he was less human.

Constant pressure, Lucy thought.

“Holding out?” Lucy asked Grandfather.

“For now.  I think they’re figuring out who’s willing to do this.  More of them are lining up.  They’re going to start murdering them over and over again, until they’re so twisted up with that Abyss shit that they can ignore Jabber.”

“Can you hold out a bit longer?” Lucy asked.

“Can we?  Yeah.  Can we get you out of here if that curse starts backfiring at you and you get the brunt of it?”

“Sleep curse on seven kids, split two ways,” Lucy said.  “Probably knocks us out for a good day or so.”

“It comes to that, we get you out of there, I’m pretty sure.  Get you somewhere safe, apologize to your mom.  But the question is, can we hold back those assholes who’re pushing through and get you clear while you’re cursed?”

“Yeah.  And maybe Tashlit too.  A sleeping curse shouldn’t hit you guys because you don’t sleep, but Tashlit might get knocked out.”

“Three of you to carry off.  Yeah.  You ask Horseman, I think he’d say we could do it.  But that’s who he is.  You ask me?  I’m not as confident.”

“Let’s be careful,” Lucy said.  She considered.  “I’ve got to dip inside again.  Communicate with Verona.”

“Is it worth it?” Grandfather asked.

“We might not be breaking them, emotionally or mentally,” Lucy said, looking out over the distance to where the St. Victor’s kids were grouped up near the chateau, sitting in the light, guarded by a group of zealots.  They were behind cover, fast asleep.  “But we’re getting information.  Fears, weaknesses.  They’ve got wards against Alpeana, but they let their guards down, thinking they’re unable to fall asleep as long as they’ve got their trick.  What we’re thinking is the alchemy.”

“Protected their bedrooms, didn’t have anything with them here?”

“Right, well, they had minor trinkets and wards, but that was more like an alert system that failed when they passed out.”

Grandfather and Tashlit nodded.

“We’re seeing the routes they take, the ways they talk to one another.  Phone is a big one.”

“Aurum’s still around.  He can watch the phones, right?”

“He is, but the technomancer isn’t.  And it’s a similar deal to Charles intervening in conflicts.  Aurum has to keep up a sliver of impartiality.  Charles, same deal.  The St. Victor’s stuff can’t be his.”

Verona woke up.

“Hey,” Lucy said.

“Whoo!” Verona exhaled.  “What’s the screaming?”

“They’re murdering their own people to send them to the Abyss, to build up immunity to Jabber.”

“Damn.”

“How’d it go?”

“Kira-Lynn saw me.  Alpeana tried to create this scenario, like, taking Kira-Lynn to a dark place, then taking her down further.”

“Right.”

“Into Maricica’s embrace.  Maricica telling her that now she’s fallen that far, been tainted that much, she won’t ever leave that… womb?  That little space where Maricica rests?”

“Like the Alabaster, but more twisted.”

“Sure, yeah,” Verona said.  “And that’s supposed to be like… bad.  But Kira-Lynn embraced it instead.  Then Alpeana couldn’t really find a way in, Kira-Lynn saw, realized she was in a nightmare.”

“Teddy was realizing too, I think.”

Verona nodded.  “I think we pushed them as far as we’re going to push them.  Can you undo the curse without it snapping back at us?”

Lucy approached the diagram, crouching beside it.  “They’ll wake up.  A lot of them will be pretty freaked out and upset.”

“That’s the goal,” Verona said, looking out toward the chateau.

“That means retaliation, on some level.  And it means they go running for security.  To things and people they trust.  Maybe they give something away along the way,” Lucy murmured.

Verona nodded.

“If they’re angry maybe they’re reckless.  If they’re going to somewhere they find strength and security, we take that away.  Put them on the defensive.”

“Make it so,” Verona said.

Lucy paused, frowning.

“Make it so?”

“I feel like we’re missing something.”

“Good instinct to have, if you’re feeling that, we should trust that gut feeling.”

“Mm,” Lucy grunted.

“Would be nice to know what that something we’re missing might be.”

These kids.  They feel like an afterthought.

They belong to Lis.  I heard Kira-Lynn talking to Lis in the bathroom before they turned on us at Edith’s surgery.

“Did Cameron, Dony, or Kira-Lynn call for Lis?” Lucy asked.

“Dony did.”

“They’re hers, aren’t they?  Lis’s.  Or they were.”

“Creepy private school kids serving under an ex-wallflower doppleganger turned city spirit,” Verona said.  “Yeah.”

“Except now they’re really more Maricica’s.  Running her hit squads and army.  Leaning hard into the Abyss stuff.  In the nightmare, Lenard said all the kids were learning the Bedlamite scream.  That wasn’t coming from us.  That’s fact, I’m pretty sure.

“Huh.  Plus the Kira-Lynn hollowing stuff.”

Lucy nodded.

The ritual circle flared, and lines began to move.  Destabilizing.

“Imbalanced,” Verona noted.

“One of them’s trying to wake up.”

“Probably the girl whose name we keep saying.  Miss K-L Everett.”

“Yeah.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed as she considered.  “She’s been reduced to a fallback.  She’s a tool, a name they can call in a pinch.  But they’re not hers, feels like.  And you add on what we saw at the moot, and how Maricica was threatening to swallow up Kennet…”

“I wouldn’t love that if I was Lis.  Even if it was tactically sound, that’s a shitty position to be in.  When you represent the town?”

“Grandfather, you think you can hold out a bit longer?”

The diagram twisted again.  Curved lines representing connections got so curved they threatened to snap.  More pushback, more people fighting their way back to wakefulness.

“Do you think you can?” he asked.  “Yeah.  We’ll manage.”

“Let’s call Lis,” Lucy told Verona.  Edith was the throwaway sacrifice for them, before.  I think Lis is on that same track, now that Edith’s dead.”

“I resent that notion,” Lis replied, appearing on the edge of the rooftop, dressed like a private school student, illuminated from below by the strained diagram that managed the sleeping curse.

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter