Author: Wildbow

Hard Pass – 22.6 | Pale

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“You guys promised.”

Verona glanced back as the door opened.  Avery’s dad, stepping out onto the porch.  He had a view of the two of them standing in front of the house, one Dog Tag, and Helen Kim.

“Yiyun Jen promised,” Helen replied.

“On behalf of your group. Something you all agreed should be possible. It’s allowed. You’re not allowed to hurt our families,” Lucy said.

“Don’t they say that rules are meant to be broken?”

“What do I do?” Connor asked.

“Protect the kids?  Stay inside?” Lucy asked.  She sounded worried.

Verona walked across the lawn, keeping Helen in sight.  Helen was alone, or so it appeared.  The St. Victor’s kids weren’t here, Maricica was supposedly elsewhere, Edith wasn’t showing, though that ward glowed and pressed in at connection blocks, and Charles had been quiet.

What happened if they went after Helen here?  Helen as a singular target.  Was she that confident?

There were options.  A karmic call-out, maybe a magic item, to weaken whatever defenses or preparations Helen had that made her confident enough to stand there.

Helen met Verona’s eyes.

Then she said something.

“What does that mean?” Lucy asked.

Verona saw the town begin to shift.  Houses along roads began to slide one way or the other.  New roads formed in the middle of lawns, rising up, the grass pulling away on either side, curbs forming… then disappearing that same way.

Verona started to run after Helen, but a fence moved, encircling one lawn.  The road ahead of them disappeared, making the lawn that was fenced in very long, and the fence extended, rising up.

She wasn’t that mobile.  She had tricks, but she’d run thin on glamour and with her practice being weak since the Aurum attempt, it took more glamour to change.

Crap crap crap.

“Bird form?” Verona asked.

“I guess.”

Crap, crap, crap.  Where was she heading?  Lucy’s house?

Avery’s dad looked so lost.  Verona glanced back at him, as she got the glamour out.

“Any word?” he asked.

She worked on the feathers, starting from the feet and working up.  She shook her head.

“Every minute I’m worrying.  I’m afraid to call Kelsey because- it breaks my heart every time the phone rings and it’s not Avery.”

“I know,” Verona said.

“Or it’s not someone saying Avery’s found, or she’s okay, or even that she’s hurt, but she’ll be okay after.”

“I know,” Verona said.

“We’ve asked everyone we could think of, to ask.  We got word out to friends, we’ve promised favors to anyone who can help figure this out and get an answer,” Lucy said.

“Or any direction at all.  A hint,” Verona said.

“And there’s no word?”

Verona shook her head.

“How dangerous is this?  How dangerous is that woman?”

“Very,” Lucy said.

“How dangerous was the situation Avery was in?  The last you heard from her?”

Lucy looked at Verona.

Makes sense.  I was there with Avery, I knew the situation.  You were busy.

I hate having to answer.

Verona had a moment where she was doing up the glamour around her head, where she was freed from having to speak.  Cowardly, yes, but…

She finished, and she was small in size, now, dressed as a crow.  He was staring at her.

“Very,” Verona replied, speaking through the crow’s mouth.  The glamour cracked a bit.  She tucked beak into armpit to fix it.  “But she can handle it.”

“Avery’s okay, Mr. Kelly,” Lucy said.  Speaking cracked her glamour too, so Verona hopped over to pat it smooth with a wing.

“Be careful, if you don’t really know-”

“We’ve worked with her for a while now, we’ve seen what she can do in tough spots.  I trust her,” Lucy said.  “You trust her too, okay?”

“We do what we can,” Verona said, while fixing Lucy’s bird face.  “All of us.  For you, that’s staying safe, protecting her family.  Don’t stick your neck out.  Things are bad right now.”

“Okay.”

“Bangnut, Bangnut, Bangnut!” Lucy called out, before taking off.  Verona fixed her face again, aware it was costing glamour to do now, when it hadn’t before they’d been weakened, and then flew after Lucy.

Flying meant not being in or part of the city, which lessened Lis’s power.  They could see portions of the town blacking out.  There would be other issues.  Bangnut was working with other gremlins, interfering in things like power, water, and communications.

They were walking a fine line doing this.  They’d sworn to protect Kennet.  At what point did that oath get fucky, if they were doing short-term damage to increase long-term prospects?

If it came down to it, it might be a question they had to argue in front of a Judge, and considering three out of four of the Judges were against them… what were the odds?  It seemed like it was a toss-up between the Aurum Coil and Alabaster Assembly, for who would decide that whole deal.

There she was.  Approaching Lucy’s house.  The town continued to move around her.  Making it so she could walk in a straight line, and the road kind of acted like the treadmills at the airport, while fences and the short stone walls around some homes provided cover on two or three sides at a time.

The two of them swooped down.  Lucy adopted human form, and Verona flew around her, catching the glamour.

“Hmph,” Helen replied.

“Stand the fuck down,” Lucy told her.

Fuck.  Even the swear word made the glamour tremor a little.

“You can deal with me if you want,” Helen said.

“We want,” Lucy said.  “Belangers put a price on your head.”

“True,” Helen said, smiling like there was a joke only she got.

“And you’re one of the most dangerous in Charles’ camp.  Just you being there seems to make everyone worse.”

“Right now, others are converging on target locations.  You can take me prisoner, but I’m going to try and make it really annoying,” Helen said.  “And in the meantime?  There’s too many places at risk for you to save, even if you ignore me now.”

Her eyes fell on Verona.

“Your house.”

“My Demesne is protected.”

“Not the house I mean.”

There was a crash on the far side of Kennet, a crunching sound followed by a short rumble that persisted and echoed in a way the crunch didn’t, like it was the right wavelength to bounce off the hills around the town.

Lucy tensed.  “What did you just do?”

“It’s only the beginning of a wild night,” Helen said, her eyes widening a bit.

“Stand down, surrender.”

“Question is, how good do you think our intelligence gathering is?  How many things could we have possibly figured out about you?  Places and people and things that you cherish and want to preserve?  Ten?  Twenty?  A hundred?  Businesses you like, classmates you’re fond of, things you’ve built.  How many do you think we’ve worked out?”

“You’re hurting Lis too, doing that,” Verona said.  The glamour at her beak broke and she was now a crow with a human face.

“Lis should survive.  They set her up to be able to hold out and make it through, way back when you were expecting Musser to storm through.  She’ll be rewarded for her tolerance later.  Back to my question.  How many?  How many can you save?  How many can you lose?  How long is our list and how long can you watch us tear this town down before you buckle and break?”

“Thing is, you’re right in front of us, and-”

The town began shifting again.

Verona flew high, air cold against her bare, featherless face.  Lucy started moving sideways to keep Helen in view.

Lucy reached behind herself, pulling out a bottle of soda from the side of her backpack.  Twist, from the ‘Nippy’ brand of soda.  Verona had liked their Pucker soda until they’d stopped selling it all of a sudden a few years back.  Weapon ring on- Lucy transformed the bottle of Nippy Twist into a rifle, scuffed, beaten, and spray-painted in the same garish teal and yellow colors as the soft drink company.

The fence shifted directions, as it slid forward, extending endlessly.  Lucy shifted her grip, then fired as Helen started running.  Three shots, in quick succession.  Totally silent.

The fence wasn’t that much of a barrier.  One of the bullets connected, punching through Helen’s thigh.  She fell.

More walls and fences rose up out of the ground, sheltering her from any follow-up shots.  More problematic were the soldiers from Helen’s side that started coming over toward them.  Some were armed, though none had guns.

Lucy threw herself at the shifting mess, hopping up onto a fence that was extending from right to left, then jumping over to a wall that was rising itself up another foot, reeling itself out from left to right.

Walls began to rise up.  A shack?

Verona dive-bombed Helen.  The top and one more side of the shack were closing in.  Verona accelerated her fall, shaping her body to minimize the wind resistance.

Sliding in just before roof snapped into place.  Crashing more than she landed, shucking off glamour, landing atop a wounded Helen.

Sight on, in the dark shack.  Gauze and meat and enough nuance in light and darkness she could basically see in the dark.

Helen, grunting, shoved her off of her.  Size difference- Verona was shoved back into a rack of rakes and shovels, some fell.  She shifted footing, deliberately stepping on Helen’s leg, where it was shot, to slow Helen down a bit while she-

Helen reared back, pulling the knee of her good leg back, then kicked at Verona’s leg.  Verona dodged it as much as she could, heel of the kicking boot scraping the thigh of her jeans just above the knee, and then set her full weight on the bullet hole.

Bag out, while Helen twisted, turning ninety degrees to get Verona off her, kicking again at the side of Verona’s leg.  That hurt.

There were only so many bottles in her bag, and of them, one was especially dense and the others were light.

Her fingers gripping the lid full-strength, she pulled it out and swung it down.  She was tempted to throw it at Helen’s face, but threw it at the hands that were clutching the leg, instead.  Glass shattered, and the alchemy reacted to the air, bubbling and popping.  Where it popped, the reaching strands and extended bits of the ‘pop’ stuck to surrounding material, clothing, floor, and wall.

“They’re hitting other locations while you’re accomplishing nothing with me, here,” Helen told Verona, through grit teeth.

“I might gainsay you on that.  ‘Accomplishing nothing’.  You look stuck.”

“Try it.”

Verona considered.  Was that a bluff?

Didn’t matter.

There was a faint click, and Verona’s eyes scanned the shed interior.  Had Lis thought she was being subtle?  There was a thin white border between shed wall and concrete pad, now.  If Verona had her eye for details but no ability to see in the dark, she would probably have missed it.  If she’d had the ability to see in the dark, but no eye for details, she might’ve missed it.

The floor sank a fraction.

Verona hurried to use residual glamour, painting an awkward circle that went around Helen.  With Helen pressing up against the wall, three-quarters of the circle were on the floor, and the last quarter was a rainbow-style arc that rode up onto the wall.

Still a closed circle, however inelegant, and as the floor sank a bit more, another ‘lip’ appeared.

There were limitations about city magic.  Innocent awareness was one, outside of specialized practices that incorporated and worked specifically with crowds.  Practices themselves were another.  It was shamanism, by and large, manipulation of the spirits that were all kludged together to make the urban landscapes.  Spirits obeyed the rules set out by practice.  A line could be a barrier.  Something encircled was a closed, distinct space.

Lis lowered the floor more, stairs leading from that lowered floor up to the shed door, but Helen remained where she was, on what was looking more like a raised pedestal.

Verona backed away, up those stairs, opening the shed door.

Lucy was perched on top, holding a chain with a small spiked weight on the end.  Fending off the approaching thugs.  “Set?”

“She’s stuck.”

“Building on fire, now,” Helen said, lying on her side, stuck inside the circle and stuck to the wall with goo.

“How do you know?” Verona asked.

“It was planned.  All of this was planned.  Including me distracting you.  Including Maricica’s people going to your house.”

Second mention of that.  Verona tensed.

“Tags,” Lucy said.  “We need to move on.”

Verona pulled one off.  So did Lucy.  They threw them down, stepping away from the shed.

Lucy summoned Pipes, and Verona summoned Black.

“Guard,” Lucy told Pipes, indicating Helen.  “If you can pry her up and carry her off to some place we control, that’s great.”

“Black?  Cover them?”

“I can use fire?” Black asked, her voice muffled by the gas mask.

“I’m worried that the way things are going, half of Kennet above is going to be on fire soon.  If it comes down to it, get safe.”

“Don’t get bound or killed trying to hold things off here,” Lucy said.  “Retreat if it comes down to it.”

“Gotcha,” Pipes said, voice loud.

It seemed more like the thugs that were moving toward them weren’t aware of Helen, so that was… good?

Good and bad.

Less pressure for the Dogs, but more for them.

Verona crossed the yard, continually running into more fences.  Her muscles were still sore from being drenched and frozen earlier, and her leg hurt a surprising amount where Helen had kicked it.  Like, it hadn’t been that serious a kick, with a lot of leverage, but the fact her weight rested regularly on her leg just compounded it.

She arrived on her street in time to see five thugs outside, standing around the snowbanks at the lawn’s edge, and in her driveway. The driveway had been haphazardly cleared, and there wasn’t much room to get around the dingy old hatchback on either side, which led to one of the thugs standing on a tire to get a view, peering over the heavy snow on the car’s roof.  Something that would have to be pushed off before the next drive to work.

Another one swung at her dad’s car window with the rounded end of a crowbar.  It didn’t break.  There were some jeering laughs.  A woman swiped at the snow that was piled a foot high on the car’s roof and windshield, getting a handful of snow to make a quick, lazy snowball and whip it at her buddy’s face.

While they were goofing around, a hit with the pointed end of the crowbar broke the window.  There were cheers.

Lights turned on inside the house.  Top floor and basement.

Lis was letting the town resettle.

The door opened, and Verona’s dad, wearing pyjama pants, t-shirt, housecoat and slippers, looked out.  One of the skeevy tenant guys was behind him.  Verona stayed out of sight.

“You should really take better care of your car, man,” one jeered.  “Fast food, coffee cups stacked inside coffee cups.  Glass everywhere.  All over the seat?”

“What do you want?”

“Can I show you something?” the thug asked.  “Here.  Look, inside your car.”

Verona’s dad didn’t budge.

“Come on.  Don’t be a coward.  Come see.  I won’t bite.”

The power cut out.  Porch light, interior lights, and lights all down the street went dark.  There was only some moonlight, obscured by the overcast sky that was spitting down wet snow.

“Whoo!” one of the men said.  He banged the side of the car.

One of the ones near the corner of the lawn hurdled the snowbank, then began taking wide, long steps, awkwardly traveling across the snow.  Verona’s dad didn’t see him until he was halfway across.  He jumped, and moved the door more closed.

There was laughter.

“One of my tenants is calling the police.”

“Good fucking luck.  They’re busy,” the one by the car window said.

The door moved more closed as Verona’s dad turned to say something.

“Hey, Brett!” the man by the car window shouted.  “Hey!  If you close that door and run away?  We torch the house with you in it.”

The door moved to be more open, this time.  Verona’s dad peered out.

“And if you don’t?  I’m spanking you with this crowbar until you need a cast.”

Verona could see the fear in her dad’s eyes.  The heavy breathing as panic set in.

He turned to say something to the tenant.

“Brett!” the man by the car window shouted.  “Third option?  Come on outside.  Throw yourself on my mercy.  Grovel.  Beg.  Maybe we loot you a little.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Hmmmm… multiple choice!” the thug called out.  “We’ll go easier on you if you get it right, how’s that?”

Verona’s dad looked grim, and scared.

“Is it A: We’ve been watching you for a long time?”

The prying end of the crowbar dragged against the side of the car as the guy stepped away.  Verona’s dad visibly cringed.

“B: there’s something inside the car with your name on it?”

The man turned around, less playful now, his voice serious.

“Or C: Verona sent us?”

Verona shut her eyes.

“Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!”

Both these guys and the people who’d sent them here with this instruction.

“Whatever issues she has, they’re between me and her.”

“We’re between you and her, bucko.  It’s like when you don’t want to talk to someone, so you send your lawyer as your representative, except it’s kind of the opposite.  Anti-Law.  She hates you that much.”

“Yeah.”

I don’t hate you, dad.  I just wish you didn’t do, like…

…seventy-five percent of what you do.

She reached inside her coat pocket, glancing back for Lucy to see what Lucy thought.  Lucy was on the phone.

For it to work with Lis and Bangnut’s fuckery, probably had a lot to do with it being from Zed’s supply.

Lucy met her eyes.

Verona found the papers in her coat pocket, pulled them out, and began changing stuff.  Connection block, fourth iteration.  This was a block that was common when used to screen off areas for duels.  There were combat practitioners who would do a connection block like this tied to some barrier magic, and block off a whole area for them to fling around elemental magics and summon big Others, only to tidy it up and have most of the damage undo itself.

Verona wasn’t going that fancy.  What she really wanted was to put a mark between her dad and these bozos.

Just give me the chance to deal with them.

Moving snowbanks and driveways tried to push Lucy out of cover.  There were other thugs on the street, but they hung back for the main show.

The moment my dad stops looking, they collapse in.

“You have an answer for this?” Verona asked Lucy, whispering.

Lucy shook her head.

Damn.  Verona had hoped the phone call was bringing in someone useful or something.

Verona would have to handle it.

She crouched, judging that most of the goons here were focused on her dad and the house – there was one on the street itself, but he’d walked his way up the snowbank, where hard snow had been plowed off the road, and balanced precariously there, his attention on the one who’d walked across the lawn.  She waited until his focus was elsewhere, then crossed the street, while the thugs were milling around.

“Come on out.  Grovel.  Hands and knees.”

Verona approached the back of the car.  She put the connection block there.  It was more area-based.  She was pretty sure she’d eyeballed the measurement, but she used some diacritic marks that Ken had told them when he’d taught them to do up diagrams to make the city shift like Lis was doing constantly now.

She missed being able to do that.  Crossing half of Kennet in a flash.  They’d stopped when Lis had taken over.

Should they have stopped?

“Are you that scared?  Boo!” one of the thugs shouted.

Verona’s dad stepped back, flinching despite the twenty or so feet of distance, and then he shut the door.

“Well now we’ve gotta figure this out,” the main thug said.

The connection block would probably make it so there was a slight barrier between them and her dad.  But it was burning up fast.

I’ve got my arena, Verona thought.  She brought her bag around in front of her, and dug inside.  Second bottle of three?

This time, it was harder to judge consistency by weight, so she had to check, put one back, and get the other.  Though both would work.  It was a vacuum bottle.

She looked back at Lucy, who was crouched in the nook one neighbor had dug into their snowbank to put their trash cans in, with no trash cans there today.  Phone call over?

Verona put a spell card on the jar, then moved, again holding it by the lid, whipping it hard down toward the road.

The spell card went off, with a splash of water, shattering the glass.  It caught the window-breaker on the back of his legs.  But then the vacuum effect kicked in.  A void of air that called all nearby air in, to a pretty serious volume.  Verona was still working on that particular technique, but for right here?  It produced a rushing wind that pulled at the guy, almost pulling him over onto the glass jar, except for the fact that he caught the edge of the door where the window was missing.

Then the air vacuum did its other work.  The wet snow on top of the car was pulled down, as was some of the snow on the other side, where it had been shoveled off the driveway.

Ten or fifteen pounds of wet snow smacking his head and face was enough to get him to let go of the crowbar he was holding, gripping the snowbank so he had one hand on the door handle and one on the snowbank.  He brought a foot under him, but glass got caught between the underside of his boot and the driveway, which was packed ice and snow with minimal traction.

As the vacuum sputtered out, Verona swung her way around, one hand on the car for balance and support.

“Hey!” the guy standing on the snowbank shouted.  She caught the window-breaker guy by the back of the collar for more support, and grabbed the crowbar, needing two tries to do it with a gloved hand.

Then she sharply tugged him down and back.  With his position, squatting, hands out in either direction, he came down on the broken glass jar.  Ass to glass.

He screamed.

The guy on the snowbank started to come for Verona, but Lucy was there, crossing the street, whip in hand.

So Verona ignored him.  Crowbar in one hand, she stepped onto the back bumper, almost losing her footing because there was snow there, and swept her arm across the roof.  Only a small portion of the snow had come down, so she had more to work with.  Verona could see the woman on the right side of the car approach, and slid a heaping of wet snow down off the car roof, onto the woman’s head.  Almost one foot tall, piled up over the holidays, an arm’s length, wet and heavy, moving easily because the roof was slick.

Like dropping a sack of potatoes on someone’s head.

She wasn’t able to switch to a good grip on the crowbar before the woman recovered, and her first swing was a miss, dinging the car a little, above the door.  Oops.

She backed off.

“Snow down the back of my shirt, fuck,” the woman groaned, rolling her shoulders uncomfortably.

Verona tried to get a sense of things.  There was another guy further down, near the nose of the car.  Lucy had the one from the snowbank and the one that’d tried to sneak along the lawn to blindside Verona’s dad handled.

She reached for elemental spell cards.  In wintertime, she’d put the fire cards toward the middle.  Toward the one end… she backed away around the back of the car enough that the woman couldn’t clearly see her as she pulled cards out, then kept the back of her hand facing the woman while bringing it to her mouth.

“Incoming!” Lucy shouted.

“Handle ift!” Verona shouted back, the ‘it’ muffled because she cut herself off biting the stack of notecards.

“Yep!” was the reply.

She pulled one out with her teeth, the side of the card raking the hand that was holding the stack, in what could’ve been a really awful papercut if she hadn’t had a glove on.  As it was, probably cut the fabric.  Didn’t matter.  She slapped the card onto the roof.

Water gushed, picking up all the snow, plus water, and carrying all the rest of the snow out across the top of the vehicle, into the two on the driveway.  One was only barely clipped, but the woman was swamped with it, knocked over and partially buried.

The car was covered in water that was quickly freezing.  Verona reached for and hucked her last jar.  Were there better options?  Yeah.  But she felt like she owed her dad a tiny bit here.

She wasn’t heartless.

The water vacuum pulled all the collected wet and snow and other moisture around the impact site inward.  The last of the three on the driveway was drenched, with bonus snow brought in.

The woman crawled forward, grabbing at the car and the hedge to her left as she worked her way to her feet, the snow that had piled onto her falling off, and Verona was more ready this time, swinging the crowbar underhand, to connect the bent end into the woman’s face.

The woman dropped, crumpling awkwardly, lying face down with arms beneath her, hands at her face.  Blood poured out between fingers.

Just like dispatching the Stuck-Arounds at the Demesne ritual.

She turned away from that whole scene, one guy left screaming, unable to stand with glass in his butt cheeks, one frozen, one with a smashed face and snow down the back of her shirt.

Lucy had dispatched the rest, but more were coming.

“Hey,” a guy said.

Verona turned.

The drenched guy looked like a mess, unable to stand, partially frozen, partially covered in snow, but he was conscious.

“You’ve got nice magic,” he said.  “But we’ve got a goddess.”

He pressed three fingers to his lips.

Verona ran.  Lucy grabbed her arm and pulled her along faster.

Leg hurt.  Muscles hurt.  Being frozen, then being kicked just five or ten minutes ago.  Running.

Lucy’s supporting hand let her at least lean on her friend a bit.

The Abyssal darkness spilled out, warping the neighborhood.

Verona, already off-kilter, limping, struggling to make headway as she leaned on Lucy, pulled one of her remaining dog tags off.  She tossed it down.

Elvis.  Who bore no resemblance to Elvis at all.

Elvis was named what he was named because he was a ghost.  The joke was he was nowhere to be seen when there were patrols to do, or other errands.  But it also applied to the battlefield.  He was a good scout, and out of all the Dog Tags Verona figured could be in this Abyssal heck and escape getting into real trouble, well, he wasn’t number one, Horseman and Angel probably were.

Except the last they’d seen Horseman and Angel’s tags, they’d been around Avery’s neck.

Fuck all of this.

“Protect my dad?  Get him clear if you have to?” Verona asked.

Elvis nodded.

It felt like too little.  Each time, it felt like too little.

They had more ground to cover, to get out of this Abyssal shitfuckery, and there were more Abyssal zealots stalking the roads, finding their way to them.

“Miss,” Lucy called out.

“Miss!” Verona added her voice.

“Miss!” they said, together.

Things shifted- and she could feel that transition, Miss reaching through.

And then the darkness swelled.  There was a concrete on concrete grinding sound.

“Fuck,” Lucy swore.

Can’t get an easy escape to Kennet found, Verona thought.

“Getting tired,” Verona grunted.  Her calves were so swollen with exhaustion and everything else that she felt like she could flick one with a finger and make a ‘tink’ sound.  It didn’t, and Verona was offended it didn’t.

“Little further,” Lucy said.  “Can you go cat mode?”

Verona shook her head.  “I could but no.  Running low.”

Running out of supplies.

“Winter glamour’s semi-plentiful, right?”

“Not supposed to use it if you feel weak, right?” Verona asked.  They’d had that whole lesson about stances and being able to brace against it.

“Got it,” Lucy said.  “Just a bit further…”

Verona nodded quickly.

Behind the convenience store.  Down the slope.  Lucy provided some support.  The dirt had washed away where there was a pipe.  Circling under the pipe, under the bridge…

Into Kennet found.

Verona sat, leaning back, huffing for breath.

“Oakham’s house got trashed.  I don’t know how bad.  The house with the refugees got set on fire,” Lucy reported.

“That was the phone call?”

“Yeah.  I’m sorry.  About your dad.  Them poisoning him against you.”

“Didn’t take much.  He went right for C.  I can tell him I almost died, I can clean the house top to bottom, nothing, doesn’t matter.  But he has the slightest excuse to think the worst of me?” Verona asked.  “Holy fuck.  Things are fucked.  And I’m slower than usual.”

“The icewater bath from earlier?”

“Yeah, and she got a good kick at me in that shed.  Think I’m going to bruise.  My leg’s…”

Verona pulled at the leg of her jeans.  She couldn’t easily hike the jeans all the way up past her calf, with the bunching and everything, but she could get it up enough.  Her leg muscle was quivering visibly.

“Hey.  Up to you, I can stick by you, we can hash this out, figure out a plan, or I go check on Oakham, I-”

“Yeah?” Lucy asked.

“Check on her.  We have a duty.  I’ll prep.”

Lucy nodded.

All of this would be easier with Avery.  Moving around a shifting landscape?  Dealing with enemies that are super-mobile, cheating their way around the place?

A thought had crossed Verona’s mind earlier.  City magic.

If Lis was a city spirit, technically, then could they force Lis’s hand?

She had to get out a notebook to refresh herself on the particulars.  The two big approaches to city magic were to be a nomad, going from place to place, or specializing in a singular city.  Or town, in this case.  Both had similar tools for getting to the same place.

Every city had a ‘signature’, though the terms changed.  Ken had called it one thing.  The introductory city magic textbooks Verona had looked up online called it others.  Glyphs, roadmaps, delinations, city marks.

She supposed there wasn’t a big school or family compiling the different city magic stuff and coming to a consensus on terms.

If someone was a nomad, going from city to city, then they kind of worked out how to figure out a glyph, and hoped they could negotiate for the real glyph, but they usually aimed for a ballpark approximation.  The closer they got to the real one, the better their practice in that place.  Usually, bodies of water, major highways and roads, and landmarks had their own iconography, with lines and paths suggesting city roads, usually around things like the mayoral residence or downtown.

Their approach was closer to the ‘one city’ city magic type.  Ken had supplied his mark, and they just had to replicate that.  It looked like two capital ‘Y’ letters intersecting, with a small circle in the ‘v’ where middle branches crossed and triangles for the mountains.

Movement made Verona turn her head.

She wasn’t all that far from the place they’d come through, and now others were coming through as well.

Four goons from the undercity, one of them very Abyssal, and a woman who might’ve been a bogeyman, but could convincingly have been something else from the Abyss.  She had black-stained, corroded metal wrapped around her upper head, covering everything from the upper lip up, with no slots for the eyes.  Tangled black hair hung below it.  Her lower face was flensed, teeth bared, gums and the roots of the teeth blackened with heavy abyssal taint.  Scrap metal and twisted bends stuck out behind that helmet-mask, mimicking horns or wings with a loop that might have been intended as a halo behind her head.

More generally, she was more or less naked, chest thrust out, her upper body arched back because she had six different black-feathered wings stitched, chained, or belted to her arms, shoulders, and back.  The scaled, raw red, or emaciated flesh around the stumps was visible in some cases, suggesting they’d been taken from multiple sources.  Her arms looked useless, with those weights attached to them.  The tattered lower half of what might’ve been a silky black evening gown was attached to the belts and piercings and whatever else, made grody by some exposure to the Abyss.  It kind of hung around her lower half in a way that meant nothing below the belt was technically visible, but like, seriously, nah.

Verona pushed herself to a standing position.

A little different from a scrap with some goons who weren’t paying attention.

Her calf was still doing that quiver thing, from some combination of exhaustion and the damage of the day.

“Kneel,” the Abyssal angel woman rasped.  She looked stronger than a human, but had to work to bring her arms around to the front of herself, where she clasped her

“Hmmm.  Somehow I feel like that ends badly for me,” Verona replied.

“Kneel, and give yourself over to bloodiest Maricica.  Her kiss thrice upon your lips, with blood, blade, and whispers of glory, if you can see it through.  Let her embrace you, and you need not fear anything ever again.”

“She’s not my type, honestly, and I’m not into the idea of any kissy, embrace-y lifelong commitments.  But hey, dark angel lady, you do your thing, go ahead, kiss her, whisper, whatever your jam is.  And tell her to fuck all the way off, while you’re at it?”

“One way or another, I would see you transformed.”

Verona reached for her spell cards.

The woman managed to smile despite not having any lips.

“What’s your schtick?”

“I’ll show you.  Come, willingly or unwillingly, and I’ll rest you on an altar of blades, baptize you in Abyssal dreck, and you will be transformed.”

“Into?” Verona asked.  Honestly buying a bit of time.

“We’ll see, won’t we?  It depends if there’s something hard enough inside you to survive the process.  I give the Abyss one new soldier a day.”

Verona clicked her tongue.  “Bogeymen?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’m not a soldiering type either, and I have to break it to you, you can’t hurt me here.”

“But we can seize you.  Grab her.”

Verona moved to run, then forced herself to turn, grabbing her bag.

She wasn’t fast, but the surge of adrenaline helped with the feeling in her legs.  Moving away.

Already, first steps, she was forcing her body to follow the mechanical movements of how legs worked.  Trying to think of how she could change things around, rely on slightly different muscles or parts of muscles to push herself forward.  Didn’t runners do that?

Fuck, she wasn’t a runner.

She’d seen videos about how there were two ways to walk up stairs, to ‘fall upward’, putting your foot forward as you did, or to push up with feet.  She’d been pushing herself all this while, and now she tried to ‘fall away’, while keeping feet under her.

She tossed a spell card.  Earth manipulation.  She was by the water, the river-turned-frozen canal just beside her, and a thrown card served to break up the footpath that ran alongside the canal.

The guy in the lead avoided it, but the two behind him lost footing.  Chunks of footpath punched into ice, and the men followed after.

Verona knew too well how much that kind of cold hurt.

The guy in the lead managed to catch up to her, grabbing her backpack strap.  Her legs hurt in three different kinds of way as she jerked, losing her momentum.

She had to resist the urge to grab at his arm, because that wouldn’t do much.  Instead, she reached for pocket.

He jerked her, trying to hurl her into or toward the canal, for a bath just like his buddies had had, but couldn’t let go of her to actually fling her there.  The rules of Kennet found protected her.

She knew the rules better here.  Play-fighting with Mal and stuff had given her more of a mindset for working around it.  She finished digging in her pocket, getting glamour, and hoped the price wouldn’t be too steep.  She smacked her shoulder where he had her, and twisted, shrugging at the same time.  A sharp shift of colors, well, kind of.  Texture, for sure.  Black coat and black backpack strap turned into black fur, and she slipped out of his grip.

He reached for her again, and she flicked her hand out, twisting to ‘black’ again, and the winter glamour knew the courses and transformations she liked.

A hand with black cat’s claws extended, sharp points reaching.  She didn’t scratch or claw- that wouldn’t get her anywhere.  But she could hold out those sharp points, and force him to ram his hands into one if he wanted to get a grip on her.  He moved, she moved to match.  He feinted, she backed up some more.

The most abyssal member of that group, aside from the dark angel lady, was climbing out of the canal now.  Not all that badly off, considering.

Durable as fuck.  Fuck.

It made things feel like she was taking a weird martial art class, where the stakes were super high but the rules were heavily enforced.  No striking, only moving to either grab and hold or punish the other person for trying something.

A dark shadow passed over her.

The angel landed about ten feet behind her with a heavy sound, more like a dead body hitting the ground after jumping from a roof than anything else.

Black and gray feathers that were falling free of the mangled wings she’d attached to herself were flying through the air.  The woman with the mask and a macabre grin stood awkwardly behind Verona, contorted, like her spine would snap from the weights that hung behind her.  She worked to bring one arm to a forward position, and then started marching.

Awkwardly, her bones hurting, her hand resisting the change back to normal, Verona pulled out another spell card, throwing it, and hit the canal.

Ice.  To reinforce what was there.  She leaped sideways, out over onto the water, and heard the ice cracking faintly.

Moving awkwardly, trying not to lose her balance or focus her weight on any one point, she tossed down another spell card.

The practices were weaker, but the effect of the card still spread more cold, and she felt it reach through boots to her already brutalized feet.

The ‘angel’ swept one arm and its wings through the ice at the canal’s edge.  Breaking it.  Some cracks spiderwebbed out, but not all the way to Verona.

The Abyssal dude picked up and did a two-handed throw to hurl it toward Verona.  It fell short and a bit to her left, but it punched through, and more cracks spread.  One connected the damage the ‘angel’ had done to everything else.

Verona got to the midway point.  She saw a guy was coming and picked out a card from around the middle.  Either earth or fire.  She threw it.

A cone of fire.  It cut through ice and blocked him from approaching her.

Takes like a full two minutes to make one of those cards and I’m using one every few seconds.

The ‘angel’ threw herself into the canal.  Wings floated around her, and maybe even buoyed her somewhat.  She began wading, thrashing, and clawing her way forward.  Even with the awkward clothing and the metal and the limited arm movement, she was relentless enough that she was catching up.

Verona threw another card, creating water.  Water that could drench and freeze.

Didn’t matter.  The ‘angel’ didn’t seem to care about being cold.  Which, like, should’ve guessed, right?  Topless in winter, not far from a great lake.

Verona reached the far side.  Some men were trying to cross, but the big concern was the ‘angel’.

“You called for me earlier,” Miss said.  She’d appeared on the far shore near Verona.  “I wasn’t able to come.  I was barred.”

“Sorry.  Figured I’d try.”

“Was this why?” Miss asked.

“No.  Sorta?”

Miss moved, and when she did, Freak and Squeak were revealed to be standing behind her.  Or she’d used Founder abilities to bring her here.  Manipulating this space that was hers.

Freak and Squeak moved to the water’s edge, watching as the ‘angel’ crossed.

“Be careful,” Verona told them.

“They’re attacking my people,” Miss said.

“How?”

“Dragging them away.”

“You can’t outlaw that?”

“The Law of my realm is too codified.  There are gates.  You’ll know the passwords.  Use them.  It should bar the kidnappers and others.”

Verona nodded.

“They keep finding the ways here.  I’ll have to change things.  Force new ways up and into Kennet above.  Kennet below can wait.”

“You can do that?”

“It costs,” Miss replied.  “But I have to.  I’ll secure it with mechanisms.  They’ll seem obscure to you, but…”

Miss trailed off.

“But?” Verona asked.

Miss’s hair blew in the wind, and swirls of snow from nearby tree branches and architecture blocked the view of her, as she stood at the railing that looked down at the canal and the walkways on either side of it.

“Miss?  But?”

“I was going to say Avery could tell you the principles behind Paths being locked away.  Similar idea here.”

“Avery’s coming back,” Verona said.  She felt the weight of those words.  Knew them to be a statement that could so easily come back to bite her.

Except Avery’s coming back.

The angel was close to the shore now, staring down Freak, with her fuzzy white winter coat, rose gold flower pins arranged over each ear, pink dress, and white lace leggings.  Freak stood there, confident, ready to face the ‘angel’.

“Seriously, be careful,” Verona warned.

The ‘angel’ found some solid ground or whatever as she got close to the canal’s edge.  She raised herself up another six inches, picking her footing as she advanced onto dry land.

Freak pushed Squeak, hard, so the big furry Other with its bug-out eyes and ‘cartoon rat that drowned in alcohol’ face would crash into the ‘angel’.  Squeak and the angel splashed into the water, and Squeak immediately began thrashing madly, fighting to avoid drowning, or panicking because of the cold.  In that thrashing, the big, hairy Other pulled the angel down with him.  Both submerged.

“Can you help with the kidnappings?” Miss asked.

“I could.  I’m focused on Lis, or I was, until the interruption.  They’re not letting up.”

“No.  They aren’t.  Will you be okay if I tend to matters?”

“I dunno.  Hope so.  Go tend.”

“Lucy’s above?”

“Checking on Oakham.  I don’t know how bad it is.”

“It’s bad.”

Verona nodded.

She glanced in Miss’s direction, but Miss was already gone.

“You good, Freak?” Verona asked.

“The Vice Principal and I were going to have a winter play at the school.  They ruined that,” Freak said, while watching Squeak thrashing, pushing the angel down underwater.  He was almost never willing to attack or hurt, and maybe that let him circumvent the whole deal with not doing harm to others.  She looked back at Verona, and Verona could see the stress on the kid’s face.  “Kill them with fire.”

“Well, gotta figure something out.”

“Fire’s good,” Freak said, again, dead serious, forehead wrinkled.  She looked back down at Squeak.  “But it’s gotta be a fire that doesn’t knock ’em out with smoke, first.  Cook someone in an oven, they choke on the smoke of their own burning fat before they burn.  So work out a way they don’t do that.”

“Because of your Christmas play?”

“Worked on it for a month,” Freak said.  “Lot of the kids were in on it.  Was going to be very Kennet below.”

Verona sat herself down on the slope.  She got out her notes, which had been crammed haphazardly into her bag, and sorted them out.

City magic diagram.  She finished sketching it out.  Then she got out the Sanguine Stone.  It was a way to power something up, which she badly needed, and it was also a magic item that gave that powerup in exchange for a price: a vicious backlash.

Was it a good idea to have a vicious backlash in city magic, when the local city spirit wasn’t friendly?  No.

But maybe there was a way.

Stopping to rest helped.  Hydrating helped, even if the water in her eco-friendly drink container was mostly frozen now.

Her breath fogged as she huffed out a breath, and got to her feet.  Freak was dragging Squeak out of the water, holding onto his ear with two hands.  It looked like the ear was ready to come off.

The dark angel had drowned, or disappeared.   There was a deep, wide black stain in the water.

“Are you coming, or do I leave you, or-?”

“I’m helping Miss and the Vice Principal.  I’ll help if you ask, but-”

“Nah.”

Too much to do.  Verona had an idea, but it was… it got her maybe two thirds of the way.

This was all so fucked.

She forced herself to trudge forward, and made her way across the eastern side of Kennet found.  It meant stairs up and it meant stairs down.  She felt a bit nauseous, now, just from how wiped she was.

She slipped into Kennet above.

From blue twilight to darkness.  Streetlights flickered but didn’t light up.  Rows of houses were without power.  Some cars were out in the road, parked there, abandoned.  Verona wasn’t sure what the story was there.  But it was stopping Lis dead in her tracks.

Verona reached Oakham’s house.  She looked at the devastation.  Bottom floor gone.  Top floor had come crashing down at an angle.  The roof had buckled down in the middle.

No Lucy or Oakham.

Some people were outside, but it looked like the initial commotion was over.  People were going inside, or talking in groups nearer to their own homes, wearing pyjama pants and winter coats, hugging themselves to stay warm, even as they had intense little conversations.

“Truck crashed into it.”

Verona turned.

One of the neighbors, sitting on his porch.

“Cut across the lawn, crashed across the front of the house.  Hit and run, if you can believe it.  Old building, doesn’t have much to it.”

Verona nodded.  “And the occupants?”

“One in the hospital.”

“Did the cat get out okay?  Sir?”

“I thought I’d seen you.  That girl was moping around for the longest time, cat gave her life.  Bunch of kids coming over to play with the thing.”

“That’s me.  One of the bunch.”

“I hope she’s okay,” he said.

“You don’t know what happened to Sir?”

“Sorry.”

“And Oakham?  Melissa, I mean?”

“Hurt, but she should live.”

Verona nodded.

She had to move on.  There wasn’t much time before the ward would pick up on her.

She walked as best as she was able, legs sore.

“Lis, Lis, Lis,” Verona called out, as soon as she was out of earshot of the people in the neighborhood who’d been woken up by the crash.

There was no appearance, but she felt the town shift slightly.

“I figured, you don’t have to show.  You’re probably pretty weak,” Verona said.  “I hope you’re listening.”

All down the street, windows facing the street illuminated, as if a car with bright lights was driving by, and the windows were catching the reflection.  But there was no car.

“I don’t blame you for not showing.  This sucks, you’re perpetuating suckage.  And I’ve got this.”

She held up the city magic diagram, and the sanguine stone.

“I’m warning you now, we keep doing this?  I’m damn well going to try to get you to spend all your power.  I know you don’t have tons.  I know it costs to move streets and things around.  You want to have a long drawn out scrap?  You think you can get all the way down to, what, five percent of your total capacity, scrape on through, and they’ll let you rebuild?”

Verona stopped, turning around, looking at the Kennet around her.  Looking for the silhouette of Lis.

“You’re so wrong,” Verona told her.  “Because I don’t want to let you.  If you drain yourself down enough?  If Bangnut doing his gremlin crap keeps you from recharging and you get close to empty?  I’m going to use city magic, and ask more of you.  You can refuse and you can fuck around, but that costs too.  I’m willing to sanguine stone your ass while I do it.  I’ll power this shit up, and I’ll take your five-percent-left ass and I will sink it, if you give me the chance.”

The city was very quiet.  Buildings creaked and moved more than was required of them in a subtle wind.

“Second of all?  You can’t trust them.  You know it as well as I do, I think.  What happened to Edith.  We went over this, I won’t waste both our time, or the air in my lungs.  I don’t think they’ll do you any favors.  If you want something, you gotta earn it, with these guys.”

Verona paused.  She turned around again.

“Charles is a dick, Lis.  He’s not just a wang of a man.  I am talking slimy, sloppy, fat dick.  I’m talking creatine-injected, crusty-under-the-rim, too-fat to fit in a hole, gross, unappetizing, have-to-sit-to-piss, never-hard-again ruined slug type dick, Lis.”

“What are you even talking about?” Lucy asked.

“I am telling Lis about gross, awful, rare dick,” Verona said.  Lucy was with Oakham.  “Let me finish.”

Lucy frowned, with a very ‘are you okay?’ look on her face.

“I hope it’s a really vivid mental image I’ve painted for you, Lis,” Verona called out.  “I hope it sticks, and it keeps coming back to you, nagging at you.”

She looked around, looking at the windows.  Some lights reflected in the windows that weren’t there in reality.

“I am willing to bet, Lis, that Charles could find ten dicks of that awful-side-of-rare caliber before he’ll ever give you the school you dream of,” Verona said.  “Because I’m not even sure he’s capable of building.  Kennet below was a half-baked idea he spat out to get control over a town, and it was a mess we had to clean up.  Your school is going to be worse, because nobody’s all that invested in cleaning it up or bringing it up to par.  If you ever get it, it’ll be far from your dreams and I bet you’ll hate yourself for it.”

She put as much venom and resentment into her voice as she could while keeping it together.

“You can challenge me on that if you want.  I hope you do.  Let’s make it a competition to set before the judge, and we’ll really see if he could theoretically deliver that school before he found ten ruined dicks.  Challenge me and we’ll make him go looking.”

“Technically, I think they could turn the tables on you and expect you to go hunting instead,” Lucy said, filling the silence that followed.

“Enh.  I took that into account,” Verona replied.  “If I’m going to end up a badass witch with a bookstore, having obscure knowledge like hey, I used mystical powers to look in the pants of every man in the Carmine realm, that could add to my mystique.”

“Sure.  I think it wouldn’t be as fun as you’re thinking though.”

“Point is, I think Lis is dreaming, and she knows she’s dreaming.  She knows this shit won’t quiet down, Maricica won’t chill and let go of what she has.  She’s got this fucking fallen angel lieutenant – possibly plural?  I don’t even now.  But it’s over the top.  There’s one side here that has a chance of delivering on that damn school, Lis, and it’s not Charles.  It won’t be us cooperating on you with it either, not anytime in the next decade or two, but if you work with us, at least there’s a chance.”

Lis wasn’t responding.

But Verona was pretty good at talking to people who weren’t capable of saying anything

“Back off, Lis,” Verona called out.  “Stop helping them wreck our town.  You’ve got so much to make amends for, but let’s not rule it out.  Charles isn’t a builder.  If you really want this thing, you gotta stop digging yourself in deeper.  Because it’s going to make it take so much longer to get to where you can stop making it up to us and start doing what you want again.”

“I went looking for you and you were gone,” Lucy said.

“Did we pass each other?”

“I guess.”

“I got attacked.  They came through after us, with some bogeyman angel thing.”

Lucy nodded.

Verona looked at Oakham.  “I’m sorry about your house.  And whoever’s hospitalized.”

“My mom.”

“Sorry,” Verona said, again.  “And Sir?”

Oakham unzipped her coat.  Sir was there, scruffy.

Verona’s heart melted a little.

“My neighbor said you asked about the cat before you asked if I was okay,” Oakham said.

“Did I?” Verona asked.

“Whatever.”

“How’re your legs?” Lucy asked.

“Sore.”

“I leave you to rest, go to get Oakham, come back, and you’re gone.  Then I find you over here, shouting to the sky about weird dicks.”

“Making a point.”

“Valid,” Oakham said.

Verona clicked her tongue and winked at Oakham.  Oakham could be a pill but she was a valid Hooligan of Half Street.

“You think you got to her on any level?” Lucy asked.

“I think, if I didn’t, I’m going to use city magic against her.  She’s a spirit, she obeys the magic like that.  We’ve honestly been too nice about that.  So she should really think hard about her next moves.”

Lucy nodded.  “You think it’ll take her out of the running?  City magic?”

“Guess we’ll see.  It won’t be fun for her.”

“They hit Mr. Black’s store.  And the ski lift on Greensey.  Church- not Maricica’s.  Regular church.  Bangnut’s gang of gremlins from the market pulled something with the gas station, so that’s out.  Sign’s going up near the highway, telling people there’s no gas at this rest stop.  That’s on top of the refugee house, cinema in Kennet below- were you aware of that one?”

Verona shook her head.

“Just… so many places.  It’s so fucked,” Lucy said, with frustration thick in her voice.

“Just bashing at each other, hoping one side folds?” Verona asked.

“I guess.  But I was thinking about that too.  It’s not just what we’re doing.  It’s what we’re not doing.”

“Tell me more.”

“What they’re doing, I think, is they’re trying to put us on the defensive.  Get us scrambling to recover.  What they’re not doing?  No Maricica.  No Charles.  No Aurum shenanigans, as far as I can tell.  Right?”

“Right.”

“No attacking the hospital.  I think Lis finds that too vital.  Like it’s her current heartbeat or something.  But like, isn’t Charles’ whole deal that he lets someone else do ninety-five percent of the work, then swoops in and does something big and dramatic?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Hm.  Which- are we not beaten up enough?  He’s weak.”

“But is he that weak?” Lucy asked.  “Can’t he draw power from Maricica?”

“She’s busy?”

“He’s Carmine, he can fucking teleport anywhere in his realm, handle business.”

“Yeah,” Verona replied.  She shivered a bit.  Exhaustion and cold.

“I’ve got a plan, but it really hinges on whether you’re up for it.  The alternative is we retreat, lick our wounds, regroup, then pull some marvelous plan.  Maybe your city magic.”

“What’s your plan?  I might be up for it.”

“We figure they want us on the back foot?  Let’s go for the throat.  Oakham wants to rescue Bracken and Bag, Charles seems to not be jumping in to take action, Maricica is tied up, Lis is spent.”

“There’s an opening, you figure?”

“I figure.”

Verona nodded.

“I’m coming,” Oakham said.

“Might get weird.  You’re staying away from weirdness, Julette told me.”

“Whatever.  I’ll deal with whatever happens.  They’re wrecking our town, they took Bracken and Bag, I don’t like the idea of that.  You know those shitty Go Foto Yourself memes people post, with ‘if you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best’?”

“Ugh,” Lucy grunted.

“Bracken handled me at my worst.  So I’m going to give him my best shot at a rescue,” Oakham said.

“That almost sounds cool, but I can’t get away from the cringe of the original meme, sorry,” Verona told her.

Oakham punched her lightly in the arm.

“Kennet found to my place, I need another healing potion, and then we go to Kennet below, go after that church?  See if we can’t give Maricica a bloody nose?” Verona asked, quiet.

Lucy nodded.

“And Lis?  If you can hear?  Think hard before you go tattling,” Verona said.

She had no idea if Lis was.  But they headed for another shortcut, slipping down into Kennet found.  Miss hadn’t erected the barriers yet.  Lis didn’t bar their way or slow them down.

Then they had to get to the House on Half Street.  A male ‘angel’ was there, surrounded by young women from Kennet below, forming a kind of tableau.  He was similar to the woman from before, but the wings were more white-gray, and his mask-helmet didn’t cover his hair as much.

I don’t want this weird shit to be a key part of Kennet, Verona thought.

I want my own damn weird shit to be a part of Kennet.

Verona reached out to her Demesne, and concentrated.

Sounds of their voices came from behind the house.  The female thugs and zealots perked up, turning their heads.  Verona, Oakham and Lucy leaned further into trees, watching, as most of that group went to look.  Even the angel moved in that direction, arms at his sides, like he was posing for some weird ass renaissance painting.

It bought them the chance to go for the door.  As they did, it turned out Oakham was faster than Verona, and Oakham wasn’t faster than the average person.  They were slow, which meant the Abyssal angel was able to turn and face them.

He had a weapon- a whip.  But as he swung it, Lucy was able to use her weapon ring to fend off the incoming strike, turning it into a kind of small round shield with three blades at the end nearest where her hand was.

Which bought them the ability to get in through the door, closing it behind them.

Verona could sense the angel calling out to others.

There were a lot of people in the house.

“Gotta get you a fix for that ring,” Verona told Lucy.

“Can you?”

“Might take a few goes.  But magic items do break, there are ways to fix ’em.  Might get expensive.”

“I want a fix.  Please.”

“Might be a next week thing more than a now thing,” Verona said.  She winced, hurting, leaning on things as she crossed the house.  Peckersnot, Blankshanks, McCauleigh, and Anselm were all in the house.  The squire-l was downstairs, with Shoe, no Luna, and the pigeon was out.

Verona headed straight for the alchemy workbench.  She’d already partaken earlier today, to recover from being frozen, but she needed it again.

“Can’t take too long,” Lucy said.

“What are you doing?” McCauleigh asked.

“Going for the church.  We think they’re spread thin, key players aren’t playing, we might not know why, might be a mind-screw,” Lucy said, while Verona chugged, making a disgusted face as she downed the potion.  Her hand slapped the counter with increasing frequency.  Tasted worse the second time.

“Bracken and Bag,” Oakham said.

“Priorities, for sure.  They’ve done a lot for us,” Lucy said.

“Miss said they took foundlings.  It wouldn’t shock me if they took them to the same place,” Verona said.

“Okay,” Lucy said.

They did a quick check of spell cards, and sorted things out.

“Any word on Mal?” Verona asked.

“Goes between Kennet below and here, but it’s tricky sometimes,” McCauleigh said.

Verona nodded.

“Being a bit of a Luna Hare, but for Kennet below.  We can go after her if you want.”

Verona nodded again.  She collected what she could.

Supplies were getting too low.  Being away, then not really having the time to recoup, let glamour plants grow…

But leaving Bracken and Bag behind was a problem, Maricica might not be gone for that much longer.

Lucy was drawing something up.

“What’s your thought?” Verona asked.

“Distraction might not work a second time.”

“Yeah.”

“In case we have to fight our way out into Kennet below… radar.”

Lucy’s earring made drawing that diagram easier, by the looks of it.

“Need to input a sound.”

“I will.”

Verona collected more things, topped off her water, then did the same for Lucy’s.  She added a spritz of lemon to her own.

“Text your mom?” Verona reminded her.

“Already did.  Said I’m looking for some friends who got lost when things went bad.  Wasn’t specific.  But if I go missing and she goes asking, it should be answer enough.  Others can tell her.”

Verona nodded.

“This way she doesn’t worry too much.”

Verona nodded.  She thought again about her dad, and the fucked up situation there.

She wished he hadn’t said ‘C.’  Hadn’t said he really thought she’d send criminals after him.  Even with the way the tone had suggested it was C, when it wasn’t.

She went to go change her jeans into something drier and use the bathroom to whiz and wash her face.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she had circles under her eyes that would put Snowdrop to shame.

There was discussion below.  It sounded like McCauleigh wanted to come.  Some talk about how they’d fight to escape.

Verona stared into the mirror.  A little part of her was struggling with Avery’s absence.  She’d told herself she might bail if Avery was gone, and she could rally her trust in her friend, but…

Lucy appeared at the door.  She bobbed her head in a small nod, like Verona had said something profound and Lucy was agreeing.

Lucy circled around, and the two of them looked into the mirror.

Lucy looked tired too.  Worn out on a Self-y, Soul-y level.

Verona leaned forward, and blew onto the mirror until it fogged up.  A bit of a tweak with the Demesne stuff and she made the fogged up part stick longer than it otherwise would.

She drew Avery’s mask, neck, and shoulders, with the antlers above, one broken and disconnected.

“I don’t know if you’re waiting for rescue.  If you are, I don’t know where to begin.  If you’re stuck somewhere, kidnapped, imprisoned, out of Chase’s sight, sorry we’re buttheads.  Gotta save people we know we can save before we riddle out your situation.”

“Send us a clue if you can,” Lucy told the drawing of Avery in the fogged mirror.

“Would be appreciated,” Verona agreed.  “And if you’re doing something behind the scenes, keep it up, I hope we figure out what it is.  Again, sorry if we’re being buttheads.”

“Super sorry,” Lucy said, quiet.

“If it’s some test or this is all some fucked up spun-off universe the Aurum Coil created when challenged, some simulation we’re living in, I hope we’re doing you proud.  Hurting, tired, spooked, but… trying.”

“Fuck me, that’s a scary idea,” Lucy muttered.  “But yeah, trying.  And if you’re waiting for us to do something before you can do your thing, maybe this is us giving it to you.  We go after someone big, and you’re lying in wait, ready to make your move.  I hope we’re doing okay with the setup.”

“And if you’re screaming we’re doing it wrong, stop, you’re idiots, you’re ruining things, sorry.”

“Not ruling out we’re buttheads, still,” Lucy told the mirror.  “And if you’re- whatever you’re doing, if there’s no way for you to know what we’re saying or what we’re doing, and you’re frustrated, I hope you can trust us.  And… part of that trust is we get a move on now.  Because us getting this done sooner is pretty vital for like…”

She looked at Verona in the mirror.

“…Everything we’re doing.  Everything we’re theorizing Avery could be doing.”

Verona nodded.

“Your dad’s moved somewhere safe.  Kerry and Declan are confused but not Aware.  I hope we’re earning your trust.  You’ve earned ours.”

“Three of us, right?” Verona asked, looking at the Avery in the mirror, lump in her throat, then at Lucy.  “Let’s kick ass?”

Lucy nodded, quickly.

Verona left the bathroom, letting the mirror drop the fog.

“I actually came upstairs because I need an upstairs window,” Lucy said.

Verona motioned and a window slid open.  She kept cold air from rushing in.

Lucy went over and put the piece of paper against the wall outside.

Verona winked and shot a finger-gun and shut the window before Lucy could reach for it.

Her legs felt better, going down the stairs.  Her hand ached, though.  It always seemed to, after a healing potion.  She rubbed at her bare palm with a gloved thumb.

Others were waiting in the hall.

“I’ll have a sense of where people are,” Lucy said.  “Let me draw on your ear, Ronnie.”

Verona submitted to that.

She felt her hearing improve, like, ten percent.  Her ability to hear across the outside of her Demesne improved.

She digested that, counting the people that had gathered on three different levels of Kennet, standing guard and waiting for them to exit.

Her Demesne extended out to the treeline, so she had the ground around the property.  Only a few were around there.

But she could draw in the snow and cold dirt, pushing her will into that.

“We don’t need to fight.  But we’ll need to move fast.”

Oakham groaned.

“I know, believe me.”

Verona concentrated more.  Lines in dirt became simple shapes and runes.

Everyone waited, ready, at the front door.

Verona opened it, pushing through while pushing those diagrams to finish.

Dirt to dirt and mud.  Everyone in Kennet below that was close enough found their footing gave way.  They fell, sinking in to almost the knee.

Others, running over, had the same thing happen.

Runes for metal, to deflect any guns.  There weren’t many, and there were fewer gunshots.  The first bullets made the runes on the ground light up, bullets pushed up instead, or into dirt, or back toward sender, in one case, where the bullet aligned with the angle of the runework in a good way.

It bought them time and opportunity.  A chance to head down the street and toward downtown.

Toward Maricica’s church.  Toward the central point these thugs and zealots were coming from.

Hopefully toward Bracken, Bag, and the other captives.

The city creaked, and the way there straightened.  Lis acting.  She had influence on Kennet below, and she was using it to clear the way.

Had Verona gotten through to her?

Or was this the fastest way for Lis to destroy them?  Helping them on their way to a fight they shouldn’t pick?

Next Chapter