Go For the Throat – 23.b | Pale

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“I thought the raid on the Whitts was a good haul,” Cameron said.  The storeroom had been well organized, once, but it looked like a lot had been pulled out, and papers were everywhere, with bits of handwriting, making notes.  She’d seen others in the library- deciding what was on loan and should be returned, what went to Nicolette, what went to the Belanger family, and what went to Wye’s circle of high-end augurs.  “There are so many doors and so many of them have stuff behind them.”

“Glad you stuck with me yet?” Seth asked.  He walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.  It pinned her arms at awkward positions at her sides, so she leaned forward and twisted a bit to give him an eye roll.

“Of course.  Wasn’t in question.”

He kissed her, then let her go, smiling.

Coppery hair, good looks, slightly older- only eleven months older than her.  He wore the Belanger uniform- he’d raided Alexander’s closet for dress shoes, suit slacks, a button-up and a vest that was blue silk on front and black at the back half.  The blue button-up shirt didn’t quite fit him, the shoulders poked out slightly, but it was still a really good look.  He’d rolled up the sleeves some, while they were doing carrying and lifting.

It was the eyes that pulled her in.  The Belangers liked blue, and for good reason- that coppery hair ran through half the family, from what she had seen, and went well with blue, but the eyes.  Belanger blue.  She didn’t know if the family had started out with those eyes and gone, ‘augury, of course!’ to match the eyes, or if the blue came with generations of being a family that could See things, but she’d read up on the various key points of Self and it tugged at all of them.  From the crown of the head- she was sure she could dream of those eyes, to the eye- she couldn’t help but stare into them, all the way through the rest of her Self.

Seth’s especially.  All the Ex-Forsworn had sad eyes.  Even Charles.  But Seth… from the hints he’d given, he’d been kind of Forsworn before Alexander had said the words, so it was deeper.

One hell of a combo.

“I worked with most of these,” he said, surveying the room.

The puffs of air that came out with the words had a faint yellow tint.

“Did you now?” she asked.  There was a cube-shaped chest of old wood, edges heavily banged up, and she did a backwards-hop up onto it, sitting.

“Mm hmm.  I think Nicolette and the Belangers were working on carting things off from Wye.  Divvying it up.  I haven’t seen it around, a quick augury didn’t turn up anything,” Seth said, and the words ran a faint pink, with those sentences.  “They must’ve taken it with.  If I could find some partial sets or volumes of books, I should be able to trace it.”

From pink to clear to yellow.

He laid hands on her thighs, then stepped between her knees, and pulled her a bit closer, until she was barely sitting on the edge of the box, stopped from falling by him being there.  “What?” he asked her.

“What’s running through that brain of yours?” he asked.

The little Seeing she’d had running wasn’t obvious from any clear light in her eyes, any glow, or anything like that.  A little fairy magic she’d found in one of the books, to help a dumb fairy or a novice augur navigate intrigue.

Her own bit of intrigue: it was easier to distract than to answer, sometimes.  She kissed him again.

There were footsteps in the hall.  Her lips dragged from his mouth to his cheek as he turned his head.

The footsteps passed.

“Stay in my room tonight,” he told her.  Red words.  “Move in.”

“I’ve already said no, not yet,” she told him.  “Repeating yourself isn’t sexy.”

“You and me together, all night?  That’s sexy,” he said.  Red, still.

“I like having my own room.  I just left home, my mom was blowing up my phone, last I saw.  It’s moving really fast.  Let me-”

He started kissing her neck.

“-let me- Seth.”

She pulled back, hands going out behind her to prop her upper body up, neither sitting nor lying down, neck out of reach.  “Let me get…”

She didn’t have the words.  She looked into those blue eyes.

“…let me stand still first?” she asked, unsure.  She lifted one leg up and ran the side of her calf against his hip, to let him know she wasn’t mad.

“Is it in the cards?” he asked.  Faint green.

“Do you mean have I done the augury?” she asked, half-joking.

“For the future?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Sure.  I won’t promise, but it-”

He leaned forward to kiss her.  Mouth, tip of chin, neck, side of collarbone, center of collarbone…

She put a hand on his shoulder, then hesitated before pushing him back.

She lived here, now.  She was with him, now.  All day, every day.  Relationships were supposed to have compromises, right?

“Hey,” she said, voice soft.  “It’s in the cards, but you stop-”

She almost said nagging.  Nagging made her think of her mom.

He’d stopped, having kissed as low as the v-neck cut of her sweater allowed, hungry to go lower.

“Stop pushing,” she said.  “There’s no rush.”

“Stop pushing here, or stop pushing on the room thing?” he asked.

Compromise, right?  “On the room thing.  We can fool around a bit, but we are in here for a reason.”

“I’ll stop pushing,” he said, and the words were green.  “So long as it’s in the cards.”

She nodded.  “Just fooling around, just a bit.  Keep it-”

“Above the belt?” he asked.

“-easygoing,” she finished.  “It’s not sexy to say it like that.”

“Confidence isn’t sexy?” he asked.  He leaned in, and she went with it.

He had lifted her sweater up to her ribs when the door opened, startling them both.

Another Belanger.  Blue eyed, not as good looking as Seth, with straight blond hair cut straight across his forehead, and a rounder face.  He was wearing a winter coat from having just been outside, cheeks red.  Redder for having walked in on this.

Seth stepped away, and Cameron composed herself, pulling clothes back into order.

“Bode, saints and sevens,” Seth breathed, still leaning over Cameron.  Red words.

“Bode?” Cameron asked.

“Boden.  Cousin.  Friend?”

Boden shrugged one shoulder.  “Sure.  More when we were kids.  I was supposed to move stuff out of here.”  From green to blue.

Cameron could see someone else behind him.  An older woman.  Same blue eyes.

“Well.  Cameron was just telling me we should get moving on some of that stuff.”

“Was she?” Boden asked.  “Huh.”

Yellow, there.

Seth stepped away from her and the box, and with the way she’d been positioned, she dropped to the ground.

“You guys handle it?” Seth asked.  “Apprentice, cousin?  Anything that looks useful.  Weapons or augury.  Check the lists.”

“Sure,” Cameron said.

He pointed at her.  “Later?”

She nodded, then found the word, “Sure.”

Which was weird, because it was a word she’d just used.

He smiled.

He left, and she couldn’t help but relate back to being in school, when the class ended before she was asked to present a thing for class she hadn’t finished yet.

Except Boden entered, and that feeling came back, different.  Because she didn’t know Boden.

Some Belangers had defected to Seth’s side when they’d attacked the building.  Boden was one- one of the lesser cousins, like how Seth had been treated, but without even the benefit of Alexander seeing something in him.

Rural.  Out at the compound they’d raided, the way Seth had explained it, there was one truck with a plow, but mostly, after things got to a certain point, or with houses on the periphery of that settlement, they used snowmobiles instead of driving.  Like, Kennet wasn’t urban, but it wasn’t rural like that.

Boden was in the space, a bigger guy than Seth, and while there was some room to navigate, it left her feeling a bit cornered.

Less gentle than Seth.

She retreated to the back end, idly checking her phone.

Mom: (41 new messages.)

She turned it off.

“Gods, that’s a lot of stuff,” Boden said.

“I know, right?” she replied.  It felt a bit like she was putting on an act.  Artificial brightness.  “I was telling Seth that.”

“Might be a good idea to ask…” Boden trailed off, turning.  “Gwen?”

The old woman standing behind him was mute.

“What do we call you?” Boden asked.

Still mute.  Still looking at the two of them like the shit on the bottom of her shoe.

“Librarians?  Curators?” Cameron suggested.

“Curators, maybe,” Boden said, giving the old woman a long look before turning back toward Cameron.

There were Belangers like Boden who’d stayed because Seth had made an impression, they’d said words, they’d agreed to be on Seth’s side.  Because Seth had power and he’d demonstrated it.  They’d been threatened with displacement twice in a short time, first from the compound, then here, and they’d taken the easier road.  Staying here instead of going wherever the other Belangers had gone.

But there were others, too.  They’d agreed to stay and they’d said words too, but it was for much different reasons.  They wanted to track and preserve things here, and to know where books and certain things went, so they’d made agreements to be strictly neutral.  It came, probably, with the same side benefits of being able to stay, eat, and be warm.  Many were older.

She wasn’t sure what needed preserving, really.  The space was free of even a speck of dust.  Everything was maintained, even the things in the bottom shelf behind a box, that had probably sat there out of sight for years.

Boden moved closer to her, and that feeling of being cornered got worse.

She eyed some of the papers that littered the place.  Inventory, from the recently evicted group.  Red case… she found it.  Like a flute case, but a bit longer.  The box was red wood, and it had been knocked around enough the corners and edges were rounded off, chipped, and dinged.  There was a coat of arms on the lid, scuffed.

She pulled it down, and put it in a position with the end sticking out, blocking Boden from getting closer.

Wands.  For combat practice, apparently.

“That’s from one of the magic schools,” Boden said, tapping the coat of arms on the open lid.  He peered over, past the lid and at the contents.  “Yeah.  Probably the one Alexander was sent to.”

“Useful?”

“Considering what’s coming at us?  Yep.”

She left the box there, a bit of a barrier.  On the list, in place of the ‘Wye’ or ‘Nicolette’ line, was one that simply had ‘discuss’, underlined, in blue ink, overlapping a part of the word ‘Legendre’.  The left-hand column read ‘Ss.O.P. / Cavalier, Armatura’.

She found a cardboard box with the same written on the side and a top flap.  The box was big enough to fit a small child in, but the contents weren’t that big.  It was like moving a box with some weights for exercise at the bottom.

Bracelets.  Or bangles, more like, two inches across, each, silver, with round seals inset in gold at the top, each seal holding a diagram.  She counted five.

It did not seem like it should weigh the forty or fifty pounds the box felt like it weighed.  She reached down to move one, and found it lightweight.  She turned it over in her hand, then put it down on the paper, tugging.  Heavy when not held or worn.

“Nice find,” Boden said.  “Don’t wear it until you find out what it does.”

“Seth might know,” she said.  “If he worked with this stuff?”

“Seth was a lackey,” Boden said.  The words were faint green.  “I think the work with this stuff was just toting them back and forth like you’re doing.  Except you might get a chance to use them.”

Faint green words, and she could think back to Seth’s yellow ones.  Had Seth been misleading her?

He didn’t have to do that.

She could smell the cigarettes on Boden.  It made the space feel smaller.

“Well, this is heavy enough I don’t want to carry a lot more,” she said.  She closed the box of wands and got sorted.  She hefted the big box, two bangles out of the box, pinned between finger and cardboard- she would have done more but it was awkward and she didn’t want to risk activating them.  The long red case was on top, where she could use her chin to keep it from sliding around.  “Excuse me.”

He was in the way, between her and the door, and gave her a long look instead of moving.

“Excuse me,” she said.  “Back out?  Let me through?”

“You’re scared of me,” he said.  Green words.

“I don’t know you.”

He gave her another long look.  Was he using Sight?  It didn’t have a tell.

Then he moved out of her way, backing out into the hallway, past the old lady, stretching.

She made it a step out the door before the old lady stopped her.  She had a paper.  “Hold that lower?”

“Can’t, really, without getting on my knees,” Cameron replied.  She glanced at Boden, who was pacing.

The woman held the paper against the front of the box, pushing it there with enough force Cameron had to shift her footing.  She scribbled something down, making a note.  “When you hand that off, you make absolutely sure that one of us knows who you handed it to, and you make sure the person who you hand that to knows too.”

“Is it important?”

“It’s all important in its way.  Some of it, if it gets lost, will mean headaches for key people down the road.  Gifts.  Things bound inside that get free if the containers aren’t preserved.  I don’t want it said that it’s because the Belangers were careless.”

“Is it strong, you think?” Cameron asked.

“I’m not here to help you or guide you,” the woman said, expression sour.

“Right,” she said.  She shifted her grip on it.  “I’m going to go.”

“Remember what I said.”

Boden, not carrying anything, followed her out.

“Um,” she said.  She flashed a smile at him.  “What are you doing?”

“Wanted to say something.”  He touched her shoulder, stopping her from walking, and she dipped her knees, turning, to move away from that hand, putting the boxes she held between them.

“You shouldn’t be scared of me,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I’d fuck you, but you’re Seth’s.”  Red words.

She felt a chill.

“Seriously?” she asked, disapproval in her tone.  Her mind raced through the answers she could give, her options for moving.  Turning her back on him with her arms full felt too vulnerable.  A ‘fuck off’ felt like it could provoke things.  The red ‘breath’ of his words was still curling through the air near his lower face.

And in the midst of racing thoughts, she said nothing.

He turned and went back.  Past the old woman who was peering in through the door, either out of earshot or ignoring this.

Cameron moved on, because she had to.  She was at the east end of the east wing and she was carrying this to the other side of the building, and it wasn’t so heavy it would destroy her arms, but it was still uncomfortable to hold.

I’d fuck you, she thought of his words.

She wasn’t totally sure that he was even factoring her opinion into the matter.  Which was scary.

It also stirred up concerns that she knew had been implanted.  The three witches from Kennet had delivered a big psychological attack, putting them to sleep and hitting them with nightmares.  Cameron had gotten a taste of what it meant to be Forsworn.  How degrading it was.  How dark, how lonely.  Where the sadness came from.

In the middle of all of that, she’d been confronted with a version of Seth that obviously drew on aspects of the real Seth, but took it to a dark place.  He’d taken her in, promised protection, and he’d preyed on her vulnerability.

Nothing had really happened, in the nightmare, but she’d had to deal with the knowledge it would.  It cast a shadow every time she was around Seth, now.  It was frustrating, because it was obviously the intent of the nightmare.  What the girls and their pet Other had wanted.  To drive a wedge.

It was weird how she really wanted to call her mom, now.  She wasn’t sure what she’d say or how she’d talk around stuff, but Boden saying that, and Seth being pushy?  Seth and Boden were friends, and she could see nothing redeeming about Boden.

But she wasn’t on good terms with her mom, especially now.

She passed the library, where four of the ten or so old Belangers that had stayed behind to ‘preserve’ were going over books and having tea and biscuits.  Mostly the tea and biscuits.

Josef was in the kitchen.  It was really only there for show, anyway, or in case the Brownies went on strike, if that was even something that could happen.  Brewing alchemy.  He would’ve used the workshop, but they’d wanted to keep everything close by.  It was too easy to get cut off.  Easier to retake a wing of the building if they lost it, than to cross snow and darkness to get to one of the buildings between here and the parking lot.

The rest of the hallway felt pretty empty.  One boy whose name she didn’t know was doing protective wards on the walls.  Some more were in the rooms, doors open, just hanging out, some playing games or drinking alcohol, others being more serious for a situation that was about to get really serious, going over books and cramming to learn what they could.

She didn’t know them well enough to talk to them, they were a year or two younger, they were the recruits from St. Victor’s, so that well was poisoned anyway, and she couldn’t really talk to them about Seth or Boden.

Past the dorm rooms, before the central building with the main classroom, there was the little indoor dining area and lounge.  Tables and chairs were in the center, couches and chairs arranged into booths at the edges.

Most of the main crew was here, notebooks out, talking.  Dony and Travis, Teddy and Kira-Lynn.  Some of the other students they’d recruited had come too.  Six girls and four boys, gravitating toward Kira-Lynn and Teddy as the leader.

Cameron idly wondered what the school thought about so many students running off.  Or the other parents.

“Whatcha got there?” Teddy asked.

“Going to find out.  We could use more help carting stuff out of the storerooms,” Cameron said, resting the box on the edge of the table to spare her arms a bit.

“You’re that girl who stole money right?” one of the girls by Kira-Lynn asked.  She was sitting over a cup of tea.  It looked like she had a cold.  “From the fundraiser?”

“It’s fucked up,” another girl said.  “You just take some bills-?”

“A bill,” Cameron said.

“And slip it into your pocket?”

Cameron didn’t answer.

“Bag,” Kira-Lynn said.  “They searched it and found it.”

“Fucked,” the second of the girls said.  The word came out yellow.  “Why?”

The ‘why’ was red.  Targeted.

Cameron answered anyway, “I felt like I deserved it.”

“Triple fucked.  I don’t know how you didn’t get expelled.”

“Her mom,” Kira-Lynn said.  She shrugged.  “If you have that privilege, use it, right Cameron?  Your mom ran all the events, got a lot of money for the school.  They’re not going to give that up if they can help it.”

She was so done with this conversation.  She’d been done with it for a long time.  One mistake chasing after her.

“Can one of you help me with carting this stuff out of the storerooms?  It’s valuable, if we find one good weapon or tool, it probably counts for way more than any beginner practice you could learn in the next few hours.”

“Drinking tea,” the first of the girls she didn’t know said.

“You can order a fresh cup from the brownies later.”

“But I want this tea and I want it now.”

The second of the girls smirked, like it was some smart retort, or some ‘win’.

“We, I’m talking Travis, Dony, Kira-Lynn, Teddy, and me, we obey the mentors.  You guys are supposed to obey me.  I’m going to drop this off, you finish your tea and cookies.  When I swing back this way, I want you ready to come with.”

The girl came very close to rolling her eyes.  She looked over at Kira-Lynn and Teddy.

“Yeah,” Teddy said.  “Finish up so you can go with her when she’s back.”

“Yes sir,” the girl said, to him, smiling.

Like it was more him saying it than Cameron.  Like her word didn’t count.

Cameron walked away.  She heard them laugh, and glanced back.

Yellow words from Kira-Lynn, the air that was used to form the words coming out like thick colored fog.  It produced some light laughter from the girls.

With a spitting of something red.  Like an insult, lining up with a momentary glance her way.  Eye contact.

The ritual let her see the slant of words.  A lie detection practice meant very little when nobody could technically lie, but this helped in other ways.  Red words were forward words, aggressive, or intentional, goal-driven, reaching forward, wanting something, doing something, pushing for something, taking something.  Insults.

Blue words were the opposite.  Backwards words.  Retreat, calming, apologizing, being conciliatory.  Relatively rare here.

Green words were connection-forming ones.  Meeting words.  Extending trust, establishing a bond.  Small talk was green, so was making a deal, or sharing a vulnerability.

And yellow, she interpreted, as sideways words.  Avoidance words.  Verbal evasion, manipulation, misdirection, things left out, secrets, deceit without lying.  Too common, from all corners.

Passing through the back of the main classroom, she could see Maricica sitting on the stage, taking up most of the front of the building that had once been a church.  Lenard was there, as was Helen, and the Oni Crooked Rook stood by, regal and suspicious.

Maricica had been dogged by bogeymen, and Lenard had bound twenty or so.  Half of those bogeymen were now gathered on one side of the central building, waiting.  The other half were out patrolling and setting traps.  Two guys from the grade above Cameron were talking to Lenard.  It creeped Cameron out that they seemed to be on his wavelength, wanting to learn that Abyssal stuff.

“Cameron,” Maricica greeted her.

Lenard, who had been saying something, stopped.

“Greetings, goddess, glorious and soaked in blood,” Cameron said, bowing as much as she was able.  “My respect and my loyalty to you.  You grace us with your presence.”

“It’s quite comfortable here.  They prepared this space to receive gods.  There are stones under the wood of the stage, I think, and they’ve called enough powers here that the sharper edges have been eroded.”

“I’m glad,” Cameron said.  “I’m also worried I’ll embarrass myself in front of you by dropping this, if I don’t hurry.  It’s heavy.  I’m taking it through to Seth,” Cameron said.

“I don’t think you’d embarrass yourself.  You’re doing well, Cameron,” Maricica said, smiling.  The upper half of her head was so bloody that hair, hairline, brow, and eyes were covered in it.

I’m doing well.

She so rarely got to hear that.

“They’re coming,” Maricica said.

“The Wild Hunt?”

“They stalk the edges.  Expect them.  But no.  Our adversaries.”

“Do I have time for another trip, carrying stuff?” Cameron asked.

“For two more, if you don’t dally too long.  But dally some.  Your Self needs it,” Maricica said.

Cameron nodded.

“We’re being attacked?” Kira-Lynn asked.  She’d come around the corner behind Cameron.

“Shortly, my child,” Maricica said.  “Be ready.”

Cameron didn’t know what to say or do in response to that.  She was doing well, but Kira-Lynn got a ‘my child’.

She turned to go, moving as fast as she could while carrying the box, bangles, and the case of wands.

The other teachers were in Alexander’s old office.

“We’re supposedly being attacked soon,” she told them, as she entered.  Griffin held the door open.

“We know,” Seth said.  “They’re organizing to leave right now.  They’ll probably transport themselves over.”

She set the boxes down on the coffee table.  “Maricica said I can make another two trips.  With a brief personal break, I think.  I’ll take some of the new St. Victor’s kids over, we’ll grab whatever.”

“Good,” Seth said.

“And you should talk to Boden.  He was being creepy.”

“Hmm.  Okay,” Seth said, as he walked up.  “Might have to wait until later.”

He looked at what she’d brought, while she looked at what he’d been doing.  The fragile little ‘board game’ model of Kennet had collapsed.  Little figures representing key players had scattered across table and floor.  A larger figure of Seth or Alexander had been dropped on top of it, lying in the broken mess with its oversized head, unfocused eyes and a goofy smile.

“It can be fixed.  It’ll need recalibrating.  Be careful where you aim your Sight,” Seth said.

“Okay.”

“These are good,” he said.

“Usable?”

He drew a wand out of the box.  “Older is better.”

“I thought wands were usually implements.”

“Anything suitable to be an implement can be a good vehicle for a magic item.  These are keyed into combat practices.  Griffin?  Aim something at me?”

“Uhh, sure.”

Griffin whispered something, then gestured, weak and limp.

A spirit manifested, small and made of swirling water.  It staggered forward, straight for Seth, becoming more liquid in the process.  A little localized wave.

Seth, holding the wand like a fencer might, swished it.

The water spirit moved in the direction of the swish.

Another, fiercer swish and it turned around, reversing direction, rushing Griffin with more intensity than it had initially used to go after Seth.

Griffin made a triangle with his fingers, whispered something else, and unmade the spirit and its water before he could get drenched.

“That would have been a lot more dramatic if you’d come at me with more force,” Seth said.

“It would’ve been, you’re right.  It also would’ve been bad if I’d come after you hard enough to hurt and it turned out there was a binding on those wands to keep them from interfering with anything else in the- you got these from the storeroom?”

“Yeah,” Cameron replied.

“Yeah,” Griffin said.

“The three witches like to use spell cards.  These would be really effective,” Seth said.  “Maybe we give them to the novices.  Good.”

Green words.  Positive, organizing.  Teamwork.  Connecting to her.

“And these.  I got the impression they were major.”

Seth looked at the bangles, nodding slowly.  “Think so.”

“Do you know what they do?”

“Some idea.  Seals of protection.  Here.  Raise an arm.  Imagine you’re raising a shield to protect yourself.”

“I was told to- I was told two things.  Not to wear them without identifying them.”

“By who?”

“Boden.”

“Boden doesn’t have practical experience.”

“And to make sure someone knew who I handed it to.  Tracking chain of custody.”

Seth made a disgusted sound.  He motioned.  “Like you’re holding up an invisible shield.”

She lifted her right arm.

“Right arm it is,” he said.  He clipped on the bangle.  Then he dug for and got the other four, so they were all in a row, taking up most of her forearm.  “They’re powerful.  What’s your read, Griffin?”

Griffin’s eyes glowed.  “There’s a time component.  I think a long one.”

“Three and a half thousand?”

“Five thousand.”

“Dollars?” Cameron asked.

“For a strong magic item?” Seth asked.  “Could be Hugh paid for part of his kids tuition with those.”

“Armatura.  You’re looking at carefully configured, balanced, layered protections, for complete coverage, each one made with others in mind,” Griffin said, arms folded, studying the bangles with glowing eyes.  “I could see a professional Sealer getting his hands on those and realizing they don’t fit in well with other protections he’s carrying.”

“I don’t have anything except these, I don’t think,” Cameron said.  “How do I use them?”

Griffin motioned, and she raised her arm.  He peered at it with Sight, and the light from his eyes made it possible to see faint lines, diagram-work and magic circles above the ‘seal’ parts centered on each bangle.  “What Seth said works.  Hold it out like a shield.  It may just protect you from anything, the next time you’re attacked, whether your arm’s raised or not.”

It was so weird, to feel this way.  Cared for, after that lonely, scary walk down the corridor, talking to the others.  Protected… for the first time in four years, about.  She’d been tall from a young age, she’d filled in a figure.  Multiple people had mistaken her for an eighteen year old when she had been thirteen.  Sometimes those mistakes had been scary in the way Boden was scary.  Earlier this year, she’d unironically been offered a drink by someone who thought she was twenty-one.

Weirdly, looking more adult didn’t make her feel more adult.  If anything, it stunted her.  It made people treat her differently.  Girls resented her.  Guys stared at her.  She’d gotten into volunteer work because it was the only way to have company.  To get a circle of people around her long enough to make friends.  From there she’d cobbled together a reputation and then it had all blown up.

It had been lonely.  Dark, lonely, frustrated.

They had taken her and awakened her because they wanted a thief.  Someone who could scheme, who wasn’t too tied into things, who wouldn’t tell about the secret magic stuff.

That hadn’t done much to dampen the loneliness.  Only Seth had.

It hadn’t answered what she’d been looking for, not really.  There had been a taste early on.  She’d liked arming herself.  But this fit better.

She met his eyes.  Blue and sad.

“What?” he asked.

“I want more of this.”

“You want more crazy-expensive jewelry?” he asked.  He looked at Griffin.  “Fuck me, what am I in for?”

“More protections.  More… more in this direction.  This kind of practice.”

“Ah,” he said.  “Hmm.  There are auguries I can teach you, that act as protections, ways to avoid danger.  It’ll have to wait for when we get through this.  To look for danger.”

That idea, just the idea, it built on this magic protection she was wearing, and it felt…

It felt like she’d been at the bottom of a well, standing in cold water, since she was twelve, being leered and sneered at from everyone passing above, a lot of people, none seeming to see her.  And now there was a hand, reaching down, with rays of light around it.

She’d gotten deeper into religion for a bit in her early teens, then she’d gotten into magic.  Maybe because she’d wanted that hand reaching back to her.

And here it was.  With beautiful, sad, dark blue eyes she could drown in.

“Please,” she said.

“I do like the idea you’re protected,” Seth told Cameron.

“A thousand dollars of protection from each?” she asked, feigning brightness, because she worried she could cry, otherwise.  She raised her arm.  “How protected do you want me?”

It felt lame, like fishing for compliments.  Fishing for those positive affirmations.  For more.

“We were guessing five thousand dollars each,” Seth said.  To Griffin, he asked, “Right?”

“I figure.”

“Five seals, that’s twenty-five thousand dollars of protection on your arm there,” Seth told Cameron.  “And I still feel anxious.  You’re one of the best things in my life right now.”

Green words with red at the edges.

She started to say something, then stopped, mouth closed, tongue lightly bit between front teeth.

As bright and warm as this felt, there was darkness elsewhere.  She thought of the nightmare.

“What?” Seth asked.

“Handle the Boden thing?  If you want me safe?  He’s your cousin.”

“Okay.  I’ll talk to him.  Do you want to hang back for now?  We’ll send someone to get more stuff?  You can stick by me.”

“I do want that…”

“I can go,” Griffin said.

“…But I also want the new recruits to respect the fact I’m-” she flailed for the word.  “-Senior to them.  And we need more.  So I’ll go, get more boxes.”

“Okay.”

“But thank you for caring.”

“I’ll go too,” Griffin said.  “Different timing.  If they give you crap, we’ll whip them into shape, make them carry something heavy.  Maybe you can be the good guy while I’m the asshole, how’s that?”

“I could do that,” Seth said.

“You could,” Griffin said.  “But everyone knows you and her are together.  It’ll mean more if it’s me involved than you.  You focus on stuff here, catch me up after?”

Seth nodded.

She turned to go, and Seth grabbed her arm, stopping her.

Griffin paused, glancing back.  “I’ll go ahead?  You catch up?  You want me to get the recruits over, or-?”

“I’ll wrangle them.  If you’ll be over there when we come?” she asked.  “Just back me up a little?”

“Can do.  Hand out the wands, before giving the orders they might be cranky about?” Griffin suggested.  “Manipulation one-oh-one.  But it works.  They should say yes.”

She nodded.

Griffin closed the door behind her.

“Have you eaten?  Do you want tea?  Coffee?”

“It’s not hard to get food here,” she replied.  “I’m okay.  I really should-”

“It’s logistics.  This matters.”

“Okay,” she said.

“What comes next is likely to be intense,” he said, walking over to the table of various auguries in progress.  Cameron walked over to the other side.  She picked up a card.  It had a drawing on it, of the same figure that had crashed into the middle of the game board.  ‘Alexanderp’ read along the bottom.  She turned it around to face Seth.

“Intense, I believe it,” she replied.

“I think if we can get clear of this, come out the other side, we win, that’s it.  And it’s very possible we can.  The cards, before they started throwing a wrench into things, they were promising.  But we’ve got to get through it,” Seth said.

Cameron nodded.

“This fight might take a while.  I want you safe,” he said, looking at the bangles.  “I want you close.  If things happen overnight, then I don’t want to be wondering where my apprentice is.”

“You want me sleeping in this wing?”

He nodded.  “My room.”

“Seth…”

“It makes sense.  The other rooms are taken.  What happens if we get attacked again overnight, and you’re at the far end of the school?  Or if it’s a fight that goes on for hours and hours, we start needing to sleep in shifts to stay coherent, and I can’t find you because you’re sleeping somewhere over there?”

Yellow words.  All yellow words.  With red at the edges.

“You have augury.”

He picked up a card, turning it around.  It had the smirking caricature of Alexander on it.  “Not a sure thing.”

She paused, rubbing her right arm, fingers running from silver to sweater to silver again.

“It makes sense,” he said.  “We don’t have to do anything.”

She dropped her hand.

“Okay.”

Summer, Last Year

“Turn out your pockets?” Dwight Frick asked.

Cameron did, turning the pockets of her jean shorts inside out.  No back pockets.

“Waistband…”

She lifted up her shirt, then did a little circle.

“This is ridiculous,” her mother said.

“The money went somewhere.”

“I will pay fifty dollars to be done with this ritual humiliation.”

Cameron let out a small scoffing sound.

“It’s about something more important than the money.  Principles,” Mr. Erly said.

“Socks?”

She stepped on her ankles to help pull her shoes off, then pulled off her socks.  The ground was damp.

The guy checked her shoes.

“Bet you’re enjoying that, Mr. D!” a guy from school called out from the sidelines.

“I heard that, Justin.  Be better,” Mr. Erly said.  He sometimes led the school through service, and he could be the kindest or the fiercest man.  “This is about all of our principles too.  How we handle this.”

“It could be tucked into her bra,” a girl said, as if to intentionally poison that statement.

Cameron glanced over her shoulder, looking for who might’ve said it.  Then, a second later, she searched for the people who might be glancing at the girl who might’ve said it.  It didn’t look like Mr. Erly spotted her either.

She felt emotionally numb, but that, the barbed comment, the fact someone there in the background was rooting against her, making this harder, it broke through the numbness.

“…Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Mr. Erly said, voice soft.

“Are you seriously going to strip search my daughter?”

“No, we’re not.  We’re asking for her cooperation, to rule things out as much as we can.  We’ll ask for your cooperation as well.  Then, once we’ve talked to everyone who had access to the lockbox, if we haven’t figured it out, we’ll bring police in.”

“Over- over a hundred?  Was it?”

Cameron suppressed a sigh.

“Fifty.”

“Fifty dollars?  I don’t understand.”

“It’s about integrity.  Look, we don’t need an audience.  Go home.”

“Are you really going to check her bra?”

“No,” Mr. Erly said.  And it started to seem like he was angrier at the other students than he was about stolen money.  “Go home.  Trust us to work this out.”

“Whose bag is this?” Dwight asked.

“Mine,” Cameron said.

He lifted it onto the chair that had been behind the booth.  They’d taken the booth apart, shaking out the tablecloth, to make sure nothing had been hidden away to be collected later.

“I can search your bag or we can talk to the police.”

“No, it’s fine,” Cameron said.  She put her hands in the pockets of her denim shorts, tucking them back in as she went.

“Hands where we can see them.  I don’t want you moving anything around from place to place on your body as we search.”

She pulled them out, and pulled her pockets inside out while she was at it.

He went through her bag.  Handing her things.

There were tampons.  She heard comments from boys.

Since I was eight, she thought.

He opened the front flap.  And pulled out a fifty dollar bill, holding it between two fingers, like he didn’t want to get direct fingerprints on it.

Mr. Erly didn’t seem to care about that.  He unfolded it.  There was a little bit of scribbling on it.  A message.  He showed it to the guy who’d donated.

“Oh my god, Cameron,” her mom said.  “I’ve never been more humiliated.”

People were watching.  Mr. Erly hadn’t managed to clear the crowd.

“This was money meant for three dead teenagers,” Mr. Erly said.  He didn’t get loud or mad or severe.  He sounded so disappointed, instead.

“What did you expect?” Cameron asked, wheeling on her mom.  On him.  “You drag me out to these things all the time, you make me do unpaid labor-!”

She felt it in her gut.  Like a shockwave that rolled out, across the Blue Heron.

She dipped her head a little to look through the window by the glass portion of the front door.  That window was occupied by others.

There was a bubble around the Blue Heron.  Veins of raw red flesh and burned black chased their way across it, finding faint lines and circles.  Nodes expanded, tumorous growths seizing on power, drinking it up, using it to feed, then exploding out into more.  More veins, more dreck, more awfulness.

The horror was becoming the barrier.

“Helen?”

“I could stop it, but what’s the point?” Helen asked.  “They’ll knock it down.  We only got it part of the way back up after breaking in.”

“When it encircled Kennet, it shut off spiritual flows,” Griffin noted.

As the horror crept its way across the barrier, it made noise.  Overlapping, terrible noises.  Radio static from broken radios, nails on chalkboards, squeaky shoes on snow, wet sounds like chewing, all building and overlapping together, some sounds that shouldn’t boom booming out, reaching them a few hundred feet away, to be felt across skin and in the depths of bones.

“Right,” Helen said.  “I guess they want to drain my batteries a bit.  You could see it as a compliment.”

“Hurry?” Griffin asked.

He sounded anxious.

Helen pulled out the black sticks.  She formed an arrangement, left hand in a painful-looking position, impossible without the sticks to brace fingers against.  Her right arm extended, bones breaking, limb jerking to move in a new direction every time something broke, which was often.  Broken bones pushed through flesh, and the arm went a surprising distance before arcing downward, smashing into snow and ice.  The rippling effect of that mild resistance made more of the arm break.

Doubly so when she smashed something harder than snow.  The hand had made contact with the barrier.

“A lesson for the apprentices,” Helen said, voice strained, back arched, lines standing out in her neck.  She manipulated the sticks, then touched them to her arm.  “Horror practices are necessarily practices about protection, constraint, barriers.  You must know and master these things before you can break the rules.

She moved the sticks.

Every break, every split in skin, became a sprouting for a new arm, some of them elongated like this was elongated.

She moved the sticks a little further down her arm, and the points the arms extended from moved, sliding out and toward the barrier.  Until it was almost like she was making an umbrella or palm tree out of arms, with a long, very narrow, several-hundred-foot-long stem.

The arms began to slide across and through the barrier.  They made contact with the horror there, and were demolished.  Demolished flesh sprouted new arms.

A tug of war ensued.

“Carmine Exile, if you’d please?” Helen asked.

Cameron could suddenly smell blood thick in the air.

“Thank you,” Helen said, perfunctory, short and polite like someone had just held the door for her.

Helen began to aggressively win.  Hemming in the horror.

The horror withdrew.  The dreck rippled, formed rolls, bunching together.

Cameron used her Sight, then held her upper and lower eyelids apart to draw on the surface of her eye.  Moon.

In her right eye, all sources of illumination became sources of darkness.  Darkness became illumination.  She couldn’t keep her left eye open at the same time, because the two inputs conflicted, so she kept it screwed shut.

She could see a faint difference in one section.  The bunching gathered around a circular bit of diagram work in the bubble’s surface, the redness in the middle of it stretched thin, then popping like a soap bubble.

Leaving a hole in the diagram.

“There’s a gap,” she said, pointing.

“Move.  Move!”

Joel pushed through them with enough force that two people crashed into Cameron.  She and they fell into a heap.

She accidentally opened her left eye for a moment in the process, and felt pain in both eyes, that radiated back from eyeball to brain, settling in as a dull pounding sensation that might eventually become a migraine.  Probably not for just a second of contradictory Seeing.

She scrubbed that Sight off anyway, rubbing the eyelid against eyeball and blinking rapidly a few times to clear out the remainder.

And he’d been gentle.  He was carrying one of his Dragonslayer weapons, a mess of twisted metal that only barely formed a complete tube shape, all the twists and sharp points pointing out toward the tube’s opening.  Something glowed a dull orange within.  If that had bumped into them it would have cut or scraped them in ten different ways.

“Move!”

“Don’t,” Helen said, a moment before he collided with her.

He stopped himself from slamming into her by smashing the end of the tube into the doorframe.

He hesitated.

“Can’t move,” Helen told him.  “Sorry.”

He paused for a second, looked past her, and then stepped over Cameron and the two people, stepping on the one guy, maybe.  He broke the window with his tool.

Cameron, by luck, could see just past his armpit to the circle.  A long, narrow limb like Helen’s, on the far side of the barrier.  Made of that red veiny dreckstuff.

Whipping something.  Something big.

“Car!” she shouted.

Joel fired.  The weapon was a cannon, and it belched out a blast of liquid flame, some of which kissed the inside of the windowframe and spilled out inside.

The car was obliterated.  It came apart in pieces.  One hit one of the workshops.  Something -maybe the engine block- hit ground and rolled until it punched into the wall of the east wing.  Cameron could feel it.

He backed up a step.  “Move.  I need better footing to aim if they’re going-”

“Cut my arm off,” Helen said.

Joel shifted, then swiped the cannon-tube of twisted metal through Helen’s extended arm.  It wasn’t a clean or pretty cut, smashing bone and tearing through flesh at five different points.  The weight of the cannon made the tears stretch and come apart.

“Thank you,” Helen said, still in that little polite ‘someone held the door for me’ way.

She backed away from the door, hemorrhaging blood from her torn arm-stump.

Cameron scrambled to her feet.

“Good call-out,” Joel said, standing in the open doorway with the cannon leveled.  His breath fogged in the air, in contrast to the still-smoking cannon.  “I might not have seen that in time.”

“We’re losing the barrier,” Helen said, idly.  She manipulated sticks, and a new arm thrust itself out of the stump, pushing pulp and torn flesh out of the way.  She kicked the worst of the mess to the side of the hallway.

“Yeah,” Joel said.  “Better to not have one than to have one that’s fucking us up, right?”

“Yeah,” Lenard said, behind them.

Joel stepped forward, then dropped to a crouch, butt end of the cannon on the ground.  As he hauled on one bit of twisted metal, other bits peeled back and planted down, clawing into the staircase that led up to the front door.  He pulled back on another bit, and the mouth widened.

He fed it something that glowed, and then hauled back on the central horn.

It spewed a glob of magma.

He kept firing.

The tint and lines of the bubble intensified.  By the ninth shot, it folded.

“And they come.  Split up like we talked about.”

They sorted into the pre-arranged groups.  One combat-ready apprentice, one noncombat apprentice, three new recruits.

For Cameron, that meant she was buddying up with Travis.  A couple of years younger than her.  Two girls, one with a red wand, one without, one of the seventeen year old boys who’d liked working with Lenard.  Who liked the Abyss, that had driven Joshua away.

She licked her finger, then drew a curved line in the condensation on a shard of the glass from the broken window.  She ran her thumb over her eyeball to get moisture and drew another curved line, curved the opposite way, ends meeting, then checked her arm.  She’d scraped it a bit when falling.  There was blood.  That was more convenient than it was a problem.  She drew a circle between the curved lines, finishing the crude picture of an eye.

She kept her finger there as she finished drawing the circle, closed her eyes, then opened them again.

She could see out of that eye.  A view of what was going on out front.

Kira-Lynn commented, “I thought you had to be careful with augury.  Or you get the-”

“The styan in my eye.  I know.  I’ve got an eye wash solution, I can clear it out once or twice,” Cameron said, as she walked over to her group.  “It’s only if I See it.”

“Whatever.”

“You know the words to say if you need me,” Maricica said, sitting at the head of the class, on the stage, windows behind her.  The blue tint had become red.

Cameron nodded.

It felt like she was on a rollercoaster.  But it wasn’t the fighting that made her lurch and go from fear and thrill to anticipation.  It was the people.  A goddess who was giving her favor and attention.  Seth.  The students she was trying to corral.

She led them out to the east wing.  They ventured in just enough that they could see past the rooms that jutted out into the hallway, to the doors at the far end.  Library rooms to their right, showers and bathroom to their left.  Rows of dorm rooms behind them.

She could see what was happening outside.  The Lords were here in force.  The star mother, the ghoul king, a folded wraith, the Black Scalpel.  She could see static on the horizon, could see as red tint tried to overtake it, and lost.  One horror fighting a technomancy Lord.

Many of the Lords were, on their own, things that would’ve taken organized, concerted effort.  That had fended off organized, concerted efforts by witch hunters and Musser’s people.

And they were working together, mostly.

So the initial wave of resistance came, people venturing in past where the barrier had been, and they were immediately on the defensive.  Ten people would come in, and immediately nine were scrambling for cover.

The stealthy, the small, and the insignificant filtered past, finding hiding places, making staggered progress.

One in ten who made it through.  Half of those who reached the front door, that Cameron could See through the eye on the window, they had to deal with bogeymen.

Some others got through.

She could estimate.  Judging by the position of the school, if some were getting to the front door now…

“Get ready,” she said.

Lenard had had them practice with branches from trees in the deep Abyss, wrapped in bindings that constrained their power, keeping it from blowing back on them.  Mostly they’d preferred the weapons Joel had given them, even if those lesser weapons ranged from basically being a handgun that shot fire to being a dagger that was awkward to hold because of the bent metal shape.

The branches did a lot more raw damage.  Cracked ground, shattered obstacles.  On contact with flesh, they exploded it and tainted what they didn’t explode.  The thing was, they felt bad to use.  Even with the bandages reducing kickback, helping to keep the darkness from digging into hand and arm.

But Travis had a big branch.  It was as long as he was tall, charcoal-black wood wrapped in black bandages.  He’d wrapped his arms up to the elbow, with bandages that were both tight and loose.  Given the size of the branch, he had to hold it against his hip to aim it, so he’d wrapped bandages against a fanny pack or hip pouch or something, making a cushion.

She figured if he was going to go that far, it would be better to learn the bedlamite screaming and rig up protections for that, but… whatever.

She pried her eye open and drew on it.  An ‘x’ shape.

Lights no longer provided illumination in her right eye.  She got some from the people gathered around her, and some shone out of the hallway the kitchen was in, but the rest of the hallway was dark.

She’d had to do a ritual, to set this up.  Every form of Sight had a practice associated with it.  The ritual involved nesting that practice inside another practice, to frame it.  Then she had to keep the Sight on and repeat the gesture or sign at specific times, and she had to do it a certain number of times.  If she wanted three types of Sight, she had to do it three times.  If she wanted seven, she had to do it seven times.

She’d gone for twelve, and slightly regretted it.  A lot of these Sights were hard to keep on for as long as she needed.

The ‘moon’ vision, inverting light and dark, she’d had to repeat the gesture every hour on the dot, twelve times, while being basically blind in daylight.

Standard ‘see the spirits’ Sight, the second instance of the ritual, she’d had to repeat the gesture of drawing on her eye every two hours precisely, twelve times.  It meant waking up in the middle of the night, constantly, being very careful.

The combat vision?  Every three hours, exactly, twelve times.

She’d only gotten that far.  When she eventually got to the twelfth, she figured it would have to be powerful Sight she codified in.  She’d have to key it in every twelve hours exactly, twelve times.  But then it would have the establishment of all the ones she’d successfully done, and she could switch it on whenever she wanted, without the annoying prep-work or ritual required.

It was annoying, though.  If she screwed up the timing once, across any of the rituals, she lost all the easy-access Sights.

Apparently Nicolette Belanger, Chase Belanger’s apprentice, had done it but had used her glasses as an implement to help it.  It gave her leeway in the timing and meant she didn’t have to start all the way over on any failure.  She’d done seven, if Cameron remembered Seth right.

There.  She could see the glow through the door.  People.  She could see their aggression as a red-tinted light.

“Fire in three… two… one.”

The doors banged open.  Travis was already firing.  The darkness ripped apart the tile of the hallway, knocked two dorm room doors off their hinges, and tore through the people in the doorway.

Two, at least, were definitely dead.

Others flooded in.  Cameron held the red wand, ready.

No practitioners yet.

But there were mice.  And pigeons.

Mice that scurried under doors.  Pigeons flapped madly about, taking cover in the wall decorations, or dipping off to the left, toward the storerooms.

They hadn’t been able to empty the storerooms, but they’d cleared out everything that looked problematic and then they’d sealed and trapped the doors.

She scrubbed the combat-vision out of her eye.  It was hurting more than it was helping.

Travis fired again.  Shooting the corner of the library.  It tore through the wall and through a bookshelf that was against that wall.  Pages from books fluttered out.

And some pigeons that had been on the other side were obliterated or maimed.

A girl in a mask came running in, full-tilt.  Travis wasn’t fast enough to get the big Abyssal branch ready again in time to fire at her.

The masked girl ducked left, out of sight, near where pigeons had gone.

Not Avery.  The mask was more like a domino mask, but rigid, hard over the nose.

She ran by again, from their right to their left.  Into the girls’ showers.  Travis fired, missing, and so did the seventeen year old boy with a smaller wand.

A bunch of mice and pigeons plunged into the hole in the wall.  The seventeen year old shot at the place they were going, killing a few, and they stopped going that way.

It wasn’t like there weren’t already other holes in the wall.  It looked like they’d pried open vents and were going in there too.

Cameron felt the throbbing of the headache from briefly mixing normal vision and a contradictory Sight earlier.  She kept a careful eye on the entrance to the girls’ showers.

Running footsteps behind her told her the masked girl had slipped past or around them, somehow.  She turned, and got pushed out of the way.

The running girl hit one of the prepared barriers.  An invisible wall.  Her nose gushed blood, and she stumbled.

The seventeen year old shot her with the smaller dark branch before she’d recovered.  Shattering her left arm.

Like Helen’s had been removed, but this girl didn’t seem to have the ability to heal.  So it was this massive, probably terminal wound.

“You,” Cameron directed the girl with the red wand.  “Bind her.”

“I think she’s actually human.  Or human-ish.”

“Then spellbind her.”

“I don’t know-”

“I’ll do it,” the seventeen year old said.  He passed the branch to the girl.  She looked at it with distaste, holding it at arm’s length.

“Hello!” a man shouted.

Travis fired.  The side door of the school had taken enough of the big branch that it was basically a hole in the wall.  No door remained.  Cold air blew through.

“Guess what I did!?” the man hollered.  There was a deranged note in the question.

The ground rumbled as something big hit it.  She saw the man stumble.  It didn’t look like he’d anticipated that.

Travis fired again, while the man was visible.  But the time it took for the darkness to get to those doors meant he had time to get clear.

She saw two goblins get into the building.  Small ones.

So that protection was down, too, then.

“I said guess what I did!?”

“Petitioner?” Cameron asked.

“No idea,” Travis said.

“Petitioner?” one of the girls asked.  She was watching the library.

“Asks questions.  You’d better answer,” Cameron said.  “Sometimes you need a very specific answer.”

“You almost got shot just now!” Travis shouted.  He glanced at Cameron, then shrugged.  “Right?”

“I did!  I did that!  I did it!  But that’s not what I’m talking about!” the man hollered.  “I raised a daughter who is very good at getting out of a scrape!”

Cameron turned, just in time to see the girl with the exploded arm and the mask sweeping the seventeen year old off his feet.

“I did that, I did it!  I’m so proud of her!”

She kipped-up to her feet at the same time she let a handful of small cherry-sized spheres roll out of her hand.  Brown, dark green, yellowish-

“I think that’s gob-”

Travis, in the process of aiming at the running girl, while trying not to smack the girl with the red wand and branch with his weapon, changed his mind.  He aimed low, firing at the little spheres before they could go off.

Two were explosive.  Not in a big way, but they might’ve hurt.  At least one was a stink bomb.

The branch obliterated the worst of it.  One stink bomb had gone off.  Cameron covered her nose and mouth with her elbow.  Brown fog rolled from the side of the hallway, low to the ground.

“Retreat,” she managed, and opening her mouth was a mistake.

The taste filled her mouth, and it seemed to roll out from her sense of smell and taste to skin, stomach, sense of balance, vision, even.  Tinting everything brown.

It was bad enough she threw up, but she didn’t even know when she’d started throwing up.  The taste of puke in her mouth was better than the taste of the air.

They clumsily retreated, closer to the center of the main building.

There was a paper tacked onto a door she passed, with a tiny fork.

We recognize this is a breach of protocol.

“What?  Who?” she asked.

Travis didn’t reply.  He was too busy suffering from the stink.

A door popped open as they carried on retreating.  She pushed it open, ready in case it was an attack.  Another note was tacked to the inside of the door, at eye level.

The mice and pigeons have come with an offer.

“Brownies?” she gasped.

Puke rolled out of her mouth at the end of that word.  Punishing her for opening her mouth to speak.  She ran faster, harder, to get clear of the worst of it.  Travis supported her.

There was another note further down.  Longer.

Yes.  Staff, as we’re often referred to.
We’re having trouble discerning who is in charge.
The Carmine Exile is away.
The Goddess is unapproachable.
Others fight.
You are most available.

There was a little arrow pointing to the side.

She opened that door.  Another note on the inside of the door.

We’re poised to turn down their offer, at which point they’ll go to war with us.  But we would like someone’s go-ahead to do so.

Fuck.  She’d heard half the information on the brownies when they’d been mobilizing to attack this place and then half the information had been shared in a very serious conversation, yesterday.

She hoped she didn’t get this wrong.

“I can’t tell you, that would upset the natural hierarchy.  I won’t thank you either if you act in defense of the building,” she managed.  She wiped at her chin.

Was the offer that had been brought to them that good?  Because if it was…

Hidden doorways and hatches all up and down the hallway rattled.  Some burst open.  Mice, pigeons, and little goblin-fairies with glowing orange ‘x’s for eyes burst out, fighting one another.

It wasn’t.

Okay, good.

More doors and hatches opened.  Floor tiles slid to the side, and there were spaces beyond.  Orange glows from fires in kitchens and things on the far side filled the hallway.

The lights went out, but the orange glows remained for illumination.  It made it hard not to step on someone or something.

There were more spaces on walls, floor, and ceiling that were hatches than not.

“Keep going,” she said.  She gagged on residual taste, like something had gotten into her mouth and she’d chewed it as teeth met.  “Fucking-”

A door burst open.  It wasn’t a brownie.

The running girl, one armed, held what might’ve been a screwdriver or toothpick.  Going right for Travis.

Cameron raised her arm, ready to let her hand be impaled if it meant Travis didn’t get it in the neck.

The seal from the bangle nearest her wrist erupted into light.

A shockwave of light expanded out.

The running girl was hurled into the wall with enough force that there was a vaguely human-shaped bloodstain and mess of webbing cracks left behind on the parts of the wall that weren’t open hatches to the brownie kitchens.

Bones probably shattered.  Skull included, from the shape of the bloodstain.

Cameron felt numb about it, but it was a shaky sort of numb she was worried would crumble.  She wished she could tap into the Abyss like Kira-Lynn had had them do, before the New Year.  To kill that feeling and turn it into something vicious instead.

“I brought her here.  I did.”

She wheeled around.

Travis aimed the big branch at the masked man.

“I came prepared to help my family if they were hurt.  I came prepared to do some shockingly awful things to anyone who hurt them,” he said, his voice low.

“Is that a choice?” Kira-Lynn asked, wary.  “Or are you going to try for both at the same time?”

He didn’t answer, looking down at the girl, who was breathing gurgling breaths.

The east wing was being overrun now.  The big thudding that kept hitting the ground was the Ruins serpent, slithering in and out of that dark realm.  Echoes flowed with it as it moved.  It was blocking the door, mostly, but that didn’t stop the group that had already reached the door.

It was fine.  They were prepared to give this up.  It was just easier if they didn’t have to.  Lenard had suggested they prolong how long their enemy was out in the cold.

“It works best if you focus on helping her.  We’ll let you if you swear an agreement to be spellbound, or bound, depending.”

“I’m Lost enough you can bind me,” he said.  “Not her.”

“She has to agree too.”

“She will.”

“What’s your healing?”

“Alchemy.  Bone-mending healing potions, potions to restore organs, potions to mend flesh.”

“You went and bought all that?” Travis asked.

“I did.  Let me help her?”

“Carry her.  Faster is better than gentle,” Cameron told him.

He scooped up his daughter without hesitation.

There was a bunch of goblins at the very end of the hall.

“Excuse me!” a voice came from one of the open hatches.

They ran down the hallway.

“If I could borrow you for just one moment!?”

There was too much to do to entertain brownie weirdness.

“If you could pass on a message!?” a human hand reached out of a hatch.  A very ruddy face peered out another one, five feet away.  Apparently the same person.  Spatial weirdness.

She couldn’t.

They entered the center building.  She told Dony, “Seal it.”

Dony used the laptop.  The way between the central building and the east wing was blocked off, the entry to the long hallway becoming a wall.

“Got a person for you to heal,” she told Maricica.  “They’ve agreed to be bound and spellbound.”

“I may not be that easy to bind,” the man said.  “I’m not sure my word counts.”

“If you make a deal with me, it will.  That’s a me thing, not a you thing,” Maricica said.  “Hurry now.  I should make an appearance, and once I do, I won’t be coming here to heal the girl.”

He carried the bloody, wheezing girl to the end of the church.  If he had any reservations about approaching the bloody goddess, he pushed those away in favor of maybe saving his daughter.

Cameron watched.

She wanted to think she was a good person, doing that.

The numbness was crumbling, and that was all she had to cling to.

Early Winter, Last Year

She entered her bedroom, and her mom was right on her heels.

“Can you give me some space?  You’re hovering.”

“I- I was going to say-”

Cameron hesitated.

Her mom’s expression crumpled.  She began to cry.

“Mom?   What happened?  What’s going on?  Did someone die?”

Her mother shook her head, but was crying too hard to get words out now.

It had been a long day, with school, after school work helping paint set decor for the drama club, then homework, she’d made dinner, because Mom was at work and Dad was away for work, driving.

And now this?  Cameron started crying too.  Her own exhaustion made it too easy.  “Mom?  What happened?”

Nervous now, she went into the other room, for the landline.  She’d call dad-

Her mom followed close behind, fingers clutching the back of Cameron’s shirt.

Late Winter, Last Year

“Thank you, everyone, for the hard work,” her mom addressed the group.  “I’d like to treat everyone.  If you’d like to head out to Heroes’?”

There were cheers.

It was dumb, it was mediocre sandwiches and poutine.  But whatever.  Free food.

“Can we afford that?” she asked her mom.

“It’s okay,” her mom said, gathering stuff to load into the van.  “I’ve got the money in my account, but because this is easier…”

She unlocked the lockbox.

Cameron pushed the lid shut.

“I’ll replace the money,” her mom said.

Early Spring

“I’ll replace the money,” her mom said.

“You don’t.  You won’t.  You seriously aren’t.  Do I need to videotape you?”

“There’s zero need.  I’m the most organized person in Kennet.  I’ve got this handled.  Now, I promised pizza, I’m going to get pizza.”

“Mom.”

“Cameron!” her mom raised her voice.  A hair too loud.  Turning heads from people who were still in the parking lot.  A tremor in the voice.  Unsteadiness.

Cameron relented.  Because the alternative was worse.

“How much are you taking?  People noticed money went missing before, when I- you didn’t put the right amount back.”

“Eighty-five.  See?  Eighty-five.”

Her mom shut the lockbox, then locked it.  Then she joined the great migration of students and volunteers toward the upper end of town.

Cameron remained by the car.  Letting herself in.  She was glad she had the key, from getting her license.  She had a spare key to the lockbox too.  Because her mom had lost hers twice.

Eighty-five.

She put her own money in.  For what was the third time, now.  Money from Christmas, all gone.

Late Spring

“It’s called sundowning.”

“She’s fine.”

“I’m fine,” Cameron’s mom said.

“You’re acting weird at night, and you don’t even remember.  It’s- every time we do volunteer work and it gets into the late, darker hours, you get generous.  You… you take money out and forget to put it in.  Dad.  This is real.”

“It’s fine.”

“She freaked out, almost hit me, a week ago.  She cries.  She follows me around, constantly asking questions, confused.  And it’s starting in the day too.  Forgetting little things.”

“I am not,” her mom said.  That little waver in the ‘not’.  Fear.  “I’m too young for that.”

“It happened to gran.”

“I am not, will not lose my mind!”

“It’s fine, Cameron,” her dad said, hands on her shoulders.  “We will handle it.  I’ll talk to the doctor.  But really, I think you’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

Persona non-grata.  The thief.  The girl who stole from boys who’d probably been killed.

She hadn’t been thinking.  She had the job of being a student, but she also ran the house, she took care of her mom.  Still mostly fine in the day, but at night she’d dip into dementia.  It was better to keep all the lights on in the house, to make sure food was regular, to not let her mom stay up.  But that only worked a little.

Her dad, she’d quickly realized, had to know what was going on.  But he didn’t want to deal with it.  So he didn’t.  He found excuses to leave for work.  She didn’t know if he was going to divorce her mom.

She’d given up all her money, trying to cover.  So it meant instead of Christmas money and money for her birthday, she had nothing.  It meant instead of getting to kick back and watch television after school, she had to take care of her mom.  No rest, no breaks.  Only dreading whether her mom would cry or throw a tantrum, or be scared and confused.

Taking the fifty had been a panicked thing.  A way of telling herself she still existed.  She’d seen all the help and sympathy these missing boys were getting and she’d acted on impulse.  She’d felt she deserved it.

In the aftermath, it was easier to be a thief than to try and explain and be the daughter of a demented person.

A thief got in trouble.  The daughter of a demented woman lost everything.  Home, reputation… the daughter of a demented woman had to face the reality that she might go the exact same way her mom and grandma had.  That her life could be over before she lived half of it.

The numbness that had carried her through this humiliation was crumbling.

Someone was staring.

“What?” Cameron asked, and there was a quaver in her voice.

“Nothing,” the girl said.  Kira-Lynn, from a grade just below Cameron.  “Just thinking.”

Mom:
Where aer you?  please call
I’m scared

She turned off her phone.

Shouldn’t have clicked that.

Cameron had called for help, to get someone to her mom.  The timing was objectively terrible.  Kennet had been torn apart just days ago.  Multiple fires, a lot going on.  So apparently nobody had gone yet.

She’d abandoned her mom.  She hadn’t been able to take it any more.  She’d needed to go and they’d asked her to stay, so here she was.

She’d pulverized another living person.  In defense of a-

Not a friend.  Just Travis.  A colleague.

None of the other students were especially friendly to her.  She’d grown up too fast.  Girls were jealous and boys leered.

She closed her eyes, and opened the eye she’d drawn on the window.

The fighting was ongoing out front.

Seth entered from the west wing, escorted by two bogeymen.  Her heart leaped.

She thought of the nightmare.  Boden.  Pressure.  Compromise constant, on one side of the equation.  hers.  Her heart sank.

“Got it,” he said.

“Paris?  Or whoever?” Teddy asked.

“No.  Not yet.  I think the idea is they call Charles or the Judges directly, somehow.  No.  Helen?”

“My family?” Helen asked.

“I passed on the message.  You’re alive, well, unforsworn, you’re set up to have a lot of say in the whole region, and world powers are looking to cede power and respect to us.”

“And?”

“They’re coming.  The Kim family is on its way, from folded places to here.  They’ll lend their aid, they’ll ask little, except that Helen be given her due for her contributions.  Which at this point includes the entire Kim family.”

“Good,” Helen said.  “You know I’m the runt of my particular litter, so to speak?”

“I’m jealous,” Seth said.

“Of me being the runt?”

“Of your family being willing to go to bat for you.”

“I had to be positioned right,” Helen said.  She glanced over her shoulder at the Oni.  “Don’t say anything.”

“I said nothing.  I gave some advice on timing, to be heard or ignored, that’s all.”

“I still don’t trust you.”

“That’s fine.  Speaking of positions, you said that stage was comfortable,” the Oni told Maricica.  “Is it that comfortable?”

Maricica smiled.  “Timing, as you said.  And position.  It’s good to have someone at the helm, front and center.  It matters to the brownies, and to certain powers looking in.”

Here and there, some hatches opened, but neither the Lost things or the brownies wanted to be close to Maricica, so at most, they hung open, shadows moving between the cooking fires and the open door, so the light they cast danced on walls and arched ceiling.

Seth joined Cameron’s side.  “Tea?”

“Herbal.  Headache.  I got bumped, I slipped up.  Conflicting Sight.”

“Ah.  And your bracelet.  Bangle.  Bracer.”

He noticed things about her.  Paid attention.

She’d never been lower than after she’d been caught with that fifty dollar bill.  There weren’t many things she could imagine that were worse.  Being hated, resented, or looked down on when anyone had to pay attention to her.  Being ignored, treated as invisible, otherwise.  Her mom wasn’t a source of love or support.  Just the opposite  Mood swings and more resentment, a constant fight.

Where could she be but here?

The one gold seal was dark and tarnished.

“I think each use takes seven years to reload.  Got four left.  If you want me to take them off or share them…”

“No.  I want you in one piece,” he said.

“Trouble!” Lenard called out.

She could see out front.  An eighteen wheeler.  Carrying fluids.

Joel was shooting.  Trying to gun it down before it got close.

The flame arced away.  Crude elemental drawings on the front of the truck glowed.  There was something else.

She saw the logo on the side as it swayed, avoiding running over goblins on the attacker’s side.

“Oil.  Fuel, that’s gas or-!” she raised her voice, rising to her feet.

“Dog Tag,” Seth shouted, his own eyes flashing.  “Flame type-!”

“The coast was too clear.  They’ve been pulling their people back, planning this!” Lenard called back.  “Shoot it, Joel!”

“There’s someone inside.  The Host.  He’s helping.  He drew the runes,” Seth said.  He pulled on Cameron’s arm.

“I could-” she said, raising her arm.

“Or it might not work and you might be a bloody, scorched smear,” Seth said.

“Girl by Candlelight?” Kira-Lynn asked.

It was close.  It had cleared the parking lot and it was by the workshops now.

“Out back,” Maricica replied.  She hadn’t lifted a muscle.  “We’re fine.”

Light swept past the outdoors, consuming everything, too bright to look at.

Cameron closed her eyes, then opened them.

Green grass.  Homes, houses.  A sprawling suburbia.

The fuel tanker was replaced by a truck.  A shift in momentum that came with the changing size made it spin out.  It corrected, kept coming.

The Dog Tag with the half-melted face and the Host leaped free of the truck as Joel hit it with his cannon, obliterating it.  Chunks of flaming pickup rolled down the hill that was now in front of the Blue Heron Institute, and dipped into grass, swallowed up.

The Blue Heron Institute remained the Blue Heron Institute.  Broken glass was fixed.  Everything was set back in place.  Hatches for the brownies closed.  The building went quiet.  Framed by forest.  But it stood on a hill, the patch of suburbia spread out around it.  Nice homes, green lawns, daylight.  Families were out for what could be mistaken for a community barbecue or festival.

Cameron could feel the effect wash over her.  Light injuries and scrapes were washed away.  Her clothes changed, to a nice navy blue dress with a white collar.  Seth, beside her, wore a full suit, one that fit, with a light blue button-up and blue tie.  Perfect.

But the Ordinary Family didn’t sink its teeth into her.  It left her Self intact.  She kept her mind.  No brainwashing.  No being consumed in other ways.

She was almost disappointed.  It would be so nice to just sink into that, one hundred percent.

“We’ve fed this particular beast quite well, haven’t we?” Maricica asked.  She slowly got to her feet.  “I should participate now.  Our Lord here is stretched thin, and they’re well equipped to push back.”

The Goddess float-walked past Cameron without so much as a glance.

Cameron’s heart sank with that.

Maricica paused to turn to look at her.  Her heart soared with the recognition.

“Our patient is well enough to be spellbound.  Her father has potions he can give her to get her back into tip-top shape, for after.”

Cameron nodded.  “Yes, goddess.”

“You’ve done well.  Carry on with that.”

Then Maricica dissolved into blood.  Blood flowed in between floorboards, disappearing.

“Carry on with what part?” Cameron asked.

“Flipping pieces to our side,” Rook said.

“Speaking of, we don’t have any great spellbinders, do we?” Seth asked.

“I started,” the seventeen year old said.  “But it was slow.  She attacked me.”

“I can,” Griffin said.  “Still slow, but… I can handle her.”

Spellbinding.  Binding humans.  Griffin did his work.  The magic circle he painted in the air was centered around the girl’s neck where it would become a collar.  The girl’s father, already bound, watched, mute, looking grim.

Cameron’s focus had to be elsewhere.  She had orders.

The pickup that had been obliterated… it hadn’t had two passengers.  It had had four.

She could see them creeping, through that eye on the window.

She began to mesh her fingers together, into the gesture for the gate of horn, like Seth had taught her.

She wasn’t good at it.  But he took her hands, helping her fingers find the right angles and position.

She showed him what she Saw.

Two Dog Tags had clung to the back of the vehicle, and used that to get close.  They were carrying rifles, ducking below the level of windows.

“Lenard?” Seth asked.  “Come here?”

“I’m watching out front.”

“Come here.”

Lenard pulled away.  Seth put a hand on Cameron’s shoulder.  Lightly pushing.

He glanced at some of the others.  Travis had his branch resting on a bench-seat beside him.

No need.  No, in fact, there was a need to not rely on Travis.

She tracked the Dog Tags as they passed the window she could see out of.  Entering the short hallway that separated the entrance doors from the main classroom, huddling there.

She decided to take the risk herself.  She pushed the other set of doors open, stepping into that same hallway.

One of the Dog Tags lunged for her.  He looked young.  He grabbed at her arm-

And she pushed her sleeve up enough to show the second of the bangles beneath, muscles flexed beneath.

The shockwave of light erupted out.  Flinging both Dog Tags back into the wall with that same devastating force.

Travis had acknowledged her more, after she’d fended off the runner, saving his neck.

But this was more of a display in front of everyone.  She smiled.

“What was even the plan?” Seth asked, as he walked over.

For a moment, she thought he was criticizing her.  But he was talking to the Dog Tags.

Seth bent down, and he reached between the men to haul out a small can without a label.  Already opened.  There was wiring and something packed inside it.

“Suicide bomb?”

“That was my fellow’s job,” the young looking Dog Tag said.  “That’s insurance against binding.”

“That’s obvious enough for an augur to see,” Seth said.  He lobbed the bomb outside.  It was swallowed up by the grass.  “What was the plan?”

“There’s Charles, there’s Maricica.  But then what?  You’ve got some new people, but really, it’s six teachers, five students, right?  If we get one of you, if we get you, Seth, you guys can’t see shit.  If we get him, you probably lose control of all the bogeymen.  You’re the weak links.  We get one of you, we leave.  Find another angle.”

“Not that weak, apparently,” Seth said.  He straightened, and he flashed a smile at Cameron.  “Who can bind these things?”

“I can,” Joel said.  “Let me wipe my hands clean.  Watch them a minute?”

Seth nodded.

“We’re coming for you, weak links,” the Dog Tag said.

“No,” Seth said.  “See, that’s not right.  We’ll bind you, now, we’ll leash you, Dogs, and then the people you’ll be going after?  They’re out there, attacking this building.”

The man narrowed his eyes.

Joel came over, wiping his hands.  He nodded at Seth, then bent down, checking the tags.  “Horseman and Mark.  Let’s begin.”

Seth joined Cameron, and they walked over to stand at the top of the stairs, looking out.

The change in landscape had pushed enemies away, scattering them.  It had bought them time.

A rifle shot went off.  Cameron felt her heart leap.  Wondering if maybe someone was out there with a sniper rifle.

The fear response was irrational.  The Ordinary Family had the sky, too.  Of course.  The intervening air.  The bullet didn’t make it that far.

Irrational.  She was dressed up like a housewife from a nice neighborhood, her man beside her.  White picket fences and organized hedgerows.  Sunny skies, and a moment of quiet, before the Ruins worm surged through the space, dipping out of it shortly after.  Screaming echoes chased in its wake.  The screaming was cut off by this altered reality.

Her phone was in her pocket, buzzing as her mom messaged her.

They’d weathered the initial attack.  They’d lost the east wing but they’d planned to give it up anyway.  They could retake it, maybe even before the next wave.

The phone kept buzzing.  Like a voice, far away and deep down, trying to say something to her.  Except she knew what it was going to say.  The questions it was going to ask.

They had some injuries, but they’d picked up some assets.  Joel was taking the Dog Tags.  She glanced back over her shoulder, and saw the hard look one dog tag was giving her, lying there with a broken body slowly mending.  The other had eyes turned inward, inside.

Taking their minds.  Liberty.  Control.

The phone kept going off.  Panicked.

I can’t deal with that emotional instability, mom.  I did my part.

Her heart sank if she dwelt on it.  The phone or the Dog Tags, the girl in the back of the church Griffin was working on.

Her eyes moved.

It might just be that with this demonstration, she’d earned some respect from the others.  If this would continue to be hard, they’d need to find a way to work together, that wasn’t spiritual surgery to get Abyss-ness in them.  This was good.

A look of maybe-respect from Kira Lynn, even.

Cameron felt her emotions swing from a confused, aimless mess to pride.

“Really?” Seth asked, as her phone kept vibrating.

“My mom.  She’s freaking out, I think.  She wants to know I’m safe.”

Seth put an arm around her shoulders, tight.  She smiled at him.

“Did you talk to Boden?”

“I did, briefly.  He didn’t mean it the way you took it.”

I got away, mom.  I had to.  I can’t sacrifice my life for you.  I need to be free.  To have control.

“Headache still there?” he asked.

He remembered.  He noticed.  She replied, “Yeah, but it’s mild.”

“Maybe this is too soon, but while it’s quiet, we could retire and catch fifteen?” Seth asked.  His arm tight around her shoulders.  Already kind of steering her that way.

The phone buzzed.  A far-away voice, calling out to her.

A detonation rippled through the suburbs the Ordinary Family had painted around them.  The fabric rippled, things shaking.  The facade nearly crumbled, then erected itself again.

Another attack imminent, this soon.

“Or not,” he said.  “Darn.”

“Or not,” she replied.  Her smile was tight.

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