Lucy

Lucy turned on her Sight again, searching the porch area.  Nothing.

She looked back through the door and into the cabin, and saw the others.  Wallace, Amadeus, Mia, the donkeys, Jeremy, Brooklynn…

“Don’t run away, Lucy!” Brooklynn called out.  “You’re going to make Wallace feel bad!”

Nah.  About five negative interpretations of that utterance ran through Lucy’s head, and she hated herself for every one of them.  The moment had been so nice.

“What’s going on?” Jeremy asked, from the other room.

Lucy held up a finger, getting them to wait.

“What was in the bag?” Avery leaned in to ask.

Verona shook her head.  She tried to put her hands in her pockets but the black denim miniskirt she was wearing didn’t have any, so she kind of flopped her arms instead.  She murmured her response, “Spell stuff, spellbook, cards, um, ugly stick, cold tears, the second cassette player we bought.  Some goblin tricks.  My wallet.  Printouts from the BHI stuff.”

“Yeah,” Verona said, her eyes widening.  “Frig, it’s awful.”

“We should follow the trail before it gets cold,” Avery said.

“Can you?” Lucy asked.

“Such a dumb move by me,” Verona said.  “What was I thinking?  All that stuff.”

“I can try,” Avery said.

“Lucy!” Mia called out.

“What?” Lucy called back, wheeling on the room.

“Chickening out?” Mia raised her voice.

“No.  There’s an emergency.  You guys can pick out a punishment game or whatever for me to do another time.  But my friend needs help.”

“Did she drink too much?” Wallace asked.

“No.  Nothing like that, don’t worry about it.  Have fun.”

“Frig and fuck,” Verona muttered.

Lucy steered her toward the door that led outside, and down the steep wooden steps to the front of the cabin.

“Give me a sec,” Avery said.  She looked around, then grabbed Verona by the shoulders, and moved her a foot to the left.  Then she pulled off a charm from her bracelet.

“Good call,” Lucy said.  She reached up to her neck, pulled the necklace with the various keys and things on it, and opened a locket.

“What’s this?” Verona asked.

“We did some prep.  I had to convince Avery to wear nicer shoes than the grass-stained running shoes, but she wanted to bring her shoes.”

Avery tossed the charm down.  As it bounced up, it rebounded into the shape of shoes.  She quickly pulled off the loafers and pulled them on, sockless.

Lucy did the same with her sneakers, but she’d used paper instead of charms, illustrating the sneakers in her own shitty style.

Verona blocked the view from the group at the nearest campfire.

“I can’t see a trail or a tether or anything,” Avery said.

“Did you see Melissa leave?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  Remember when George and Hailey poked their heads in to ask about that weird event?  Could that be a practice thing?” Avery asked.

“Weird event?” Verona asked.

“Not a practice thing,” Lucy clarified.  “That was them asking for booze and stuff because a bunch of kids are going to sneak off and get drunk and high, and they’ve got plans to avoid the parents tomorrow, apparently.  Mia is super unimpressed with Hailey right now, so she didn’t go.  One of the Brays and Pam did.”

“And Melissa left then?” Verona asked.

“Had to.  But any of those other guys could’ve checked around for something to take,” Avery said.  “I was keeping an ear out for Verona, to make sure everything was okay.”

They turned.  Jeremy was at the screen door at the top of the stairs.  He hadn’t been there when they’d been getting their shoes out.

“It’s not-” Lucy started.

“My bag got taken.  It has stuff I might need for going away this summer.  And my wallet,” Verona said.

“Please,” Verona said.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked her.

“We can cover more bases like this,” Verona said.

Lucy felt a twinge of irritation, that Verona only seemed to care when it was her practice stuff that was threatened.

Jeremy came down the stairs two at a time.  There were guys who Lucy could say were weirdly put together, proportion wise, but they’d probably grow into it and fill out, and there were guys like Jeremy, who would probably always be a bit odd.  Like he was an awkward, gawky teenager with a bit of a slouch and an Adams apple that stuck out, and he’d be a knobby-jointed old man with a stoop, and the rest of his life would be a journey between the two.

He cleaned up okay, though.  Hair super short on the sides and back and swooping back with gel on top, button up top.

“So we need to ask around, about where Melissa, George, Pam, and Hailey went.  Assuming they didn’t split up,” Lucy said.

“How far could Melissa have gotten?” Verona asked.  “She’s on crutches.”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, picking up the pace as she walked, her shoes in one hand.  She headed toward the campfire.  “Did anyone see where George, Hailey, Pam or Melissa went?”

“Who’s Pam?” a guy from another class asked.

“Anyone?” Lucy asked.

The people she knew would recognize them, like Andre, were shaking their heads.

“Do you know who they were hanging with or talking with?  I think they were going somewhere.”

Again, those people shook their heads.

She glanced back, then around.  Verona was wearing a nearly-black top with black skirt, so she was hard to pick out of the gloom, amid other pale faces and arms and legs.  Avery was easier to see.  It looked like Verona was talking to some of the people off to the side, while Avery was talking to some older kids who were hanging around to keep an eye on things.  A little ways away, Jeremy was talking to some of the other guys from class.

“Nothing at the campfire,” Lucy said.

“Some of the older kids said a girl with crutches and a plastic boot on her foot got on one of the ATVs,” Avery said.  “They’re getting rides partway up the hill.”

“Let’s head up that way, then,” Lucy said.

Lucy kept her Sight on, because the ugly stick that Verona had gotten from Toadswallow and later gotten to keep was festooned with blades, and other stuff was stained to Lucy’s sight.  She held her nicer shoes in one hand and the beaded chain with the dog tag, ring, and some other stuff wrapped around the other hand, as a just-in-case.

They didn’t have the hot lead, which meant drawing her weapon with the ring would cost her.

With the Sight on, she could see the drama, the watercolor stain spreading out into the air and sometimes turning fluorescent, glowing brightly or reflecting the flames.  The darkness was deeper, and faces white.  She could see the blades impaling people.

Two guys and three girls were sitting on the side of the hill, barely any illumination around them, and the stain that spread around them was colorful, taking on vague shapes like faces.  The blades that had been digging into them before were now pulling away, drifting like they were underwater and swords could float.  They looked up at the night sky, and because they were on the hillside that wasn’t directly facing Kennet, there wasn’t a lot of light pollution to block off the view of the stars.  Even the milky way was visible high above.  Lucy had to turn off her Sight to see it, before she turned it back on.

“Talking to spirits,” Verona murmured, pointing at the same group.  Her eyes glowed purple, which radiated out into her eyeshadow.

Lucy was alarmed, hearing that.  Jeremy was with them.  She looked at Verona.

“High out of their minds, it looks like,” Verona said, like she was clarifying.

Changing into better shoes had cost them maybe a minute, but the fact that Lucy and Avery could walk doubletime was really helping.  Verona was slower, wincing.

“Do you want to split up?” Lucy asked.

“No.  I don’t want this to be a thing at all,” Verona said.  “Damn it.”

“This stuff’s important then?” Jeremy asked.

“Super important,” Verona said.

“We’ll find it.  People aren’t that awful.”

There were more people on the hillside.  A boy and girl were sitting, making out so aggressively that Lucy looked away.  Was that what she and Wallace would have ended up doing?  They’d got each other on three occasions across five different spins.  She’d had to check to see if Verona or Avery was messing with her.

Just luck, it seemed like.

“Did you see George Mason?” Avery asked.  Lucy turned her head to see.  A boy from the other eighth grade class.  He shook his head.

“Hailey McKay?  Pam O’Neill?  Or Melissa Oakham, with the foot cast?”

“Nah, I’ve been at the other cabin.  My big sister pre-gamed and she was the first one to puke tonight.  I’m going to go see if the other cabins have paper towels.  Or like, anything.”

“Good luck!” Avery called out.

The guy waved back in response, without turning around to look back at her.

A group of the juniors who’d come here instead of doing the same beachside thing that they’d done last year were trying to sing to music being played from their phones.  They’d all put on the same piece of music, because they didn’t have something that could blare it out, and now they sang along, with a vibe like it was a competition to know the lyrics or something.

One of the guys pushed a girl who might have been his sister or cousin or something, jokingly.

There was distant music that was too hard to make out, only the bass and percussion sounds reaching them, and there was this music, closer, where it was too close, too sharp, the one music player that was out of sync with the others too noticeable.  The surroundings had a haze of smoke from the campfires and cigarettes, a smell of the woodsmoke, tobacco and weed.  Visually, there was light from the candles and makeshift torches, the watercolor bleeding, and the blades here and there.  Lucy tried to unfocus her eyes so she could see the glimmers of the newest blades.

It wasn’t just the present.  Lucy wasn’t sure if the half of a beer she’d had was affecting her or if she’d gotten caught up in the moment, but the feeling of being in that circle of people, the anticipation, moment to moment, the act of kissing… she’d kissed maybe the cutest boy in class.  Amadeus.  And that was… terrifying.  It was great.

She’d kissed Wallace twice and the first time had been a peck, breaking the ice.  The second time had been a real kiss, she’d taken Booker’s advice and gone for it, fully aware that if she messed up and slobbered or mashed his nose with her nose or missed his lips or whatever, some of the key people in her class were watching and judging.

They hadn’t.  They’d cheered and she had no idea how to parse that.  Because it felt so good in the moment, and it felt hollow at the same time.  Nobody had voted for her in the class ranking.  Neither of the boys she’d kissed.

“Hey Ronnie?” Lucy asked.

“Feeling like an ass,” Verona said.  “I’m kicking myself so hard.”

“Are you and Jeremy pairing up?  As a thing?”

Avery gave her the smallest of head-shakes.

“No,” Verona said.  “Friends?”

“Friends, for sure,” Jeremy said.  He smiled, but it looked a little sad.  “I still need to show you the hiding spots for the kitten.”

“Verona mentioned the kitty,” Avery said.

“Are you a cat person or dog person?” Jeremy asked her.

“Dog, but… I don’t think you can hang around Verona for long without getting a bit of cat person in you.”

“George?” Lucy asked some guys that were coming down the sloped path, heading the other way.  “George Mason?”

They pointed up the path.

“Was he on the ATV?  Did you see Melissa?”

“He was on the ATV.  His cousin was driving.”

“Don’t know her!” the guy said, continuing past them and down the slope.

“We’re in the right direction, at least,” Avery said.

“Assuming it was them,” Lucy said.

“If it wasn’t, I don’t know what we’ll do,” Verona said.

“We’ll manage,” Jeremy said.  “It’ll be fine!”

“I wanted to ask,” Avery said.  “What’s the deal with Wallace’s arm?  He said his other was fragile too or something?”

“He lost the genetic lottery,” Jeremy said.  “I don’t mean that in a mean way.  He’s had to have surgery on the one elbow twice, because there’s something in how it’s put together that makes it dislocate really easy.  Same problem with his shoulder, but that’s easier to fix.  But he’s popped it in and out so many times it’s even easier to dislocate, so he’s gotta get surgery sometime in the next few years, to try to lock it in.”

“Shitty,” Avery said.

“He’s got other stuff too, right?” Verona asked.  “A nerve thing?”

“Yeah.  His mom’s got a thing that has her in a wheelchair half the time, and it looks like he’s probably going to get it.  A nervous system thing.  Passes out, gets seizures, cramps like a charlie horse except they don’t stop for hours.”

“He’s a cool guy, lives at the end of my street,” Verona said.  “It’s obvious they’re a really nice family, he loves his mom, and they do this volunteer stuff, and travel for marathons.  Wish it didn’t suck so much for him.”

Lucy looked back the way they came, searching past the trees and trying to see the light of the cabin.

“Damn,” Avery said.  “I’m out of the loop on a bunch of stuff.  I don’t know like, what everyone knows already, because you’ve been in the same classes for years, and what people don’t know, and what people have agreed not to mention or talk about.”

“I think you could ask some guys in our class and they wouldn’t have the beginnings of a clue,” Jeremy said.  “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

There were two ‘freshman’ cabins, and then the big two-hundred-plus senior cabin further up the hill, near the peak.  The cabin further down the hill apparently had milder stuff going on, and Mia had reserved it for her inner circle until people were reasonably sure the parents were clear and the bulk of the kids had gone home, after which point…

Well, Booker had said there were only a few things to do in Kennet.  Party and do drugs, or both.

The second cabin was denser, with more kids, more campfires, and more bottles, unattended and otherwise.  Most of the kids were from the other classes and Catholic school.

“Did you see George Mason around?  Would’ve been recent,” Lucy asked the first person she saw who wasn’t in a conversation.

“Why are you asking?”

“Someone might’ve accidentally grabbed a bag,” Jeremy said.

“What’s in the bag?” the guy asked.

“Does it matter?” Lucy asked.

“Is it drugs?  Booze?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t.”

“Is it a computer?  Expensive?”

She broke away from the conversation.

“Was it a nice bag?” the guy called after her.  “Did they forget their bag?”

Verona and Avery had already split off.

Music throbbed, and someone had hung Christmas lights out across the porch railing, so it gave some dull illumination to the area around them.

“George Mason?” Lucy asked a girl.  Off to the side, Jeremy asked, “Hailey McKay?  Seen them?”

“Uhhh, George went inside.”

Lucy started ducking through the crowd.  She turned and called out to Jeremy, “Tell Ronnie and Ave!”

The place was so packed it was ridiculous.  Ten people on a set of stairs that led up to the door, where there were maybe ten stairs.  Leaning against the cabin, against the railing.  A multitude of lemon-scented candles were set in these tin containers that were supposed to protect against fire, with snowflake and maple leaf patterns cut into the tin, so the lights came out in slices and patterns, flickering orange.  The Christmas lights provided multicolored illumination, and the lights from inside the cabin were bright and artificial.

Her arms and shoulders brushed against people, who made zero effort to get out of her way.  Conversation and music drowned out the sound of another ATV on the hill, and she paused only long enough to check it wasn’t any of the people they were looking for.  It looked like a trio of girls and none of them really looked like Melissa.  She was sixty percent sure.

There was one source of music playing outside, near the foot of the porch, where a bunch of people were, and inside there was… madness.  People drinking more than the one allowed beer.  There were three couches arranged so they all faced this big fireplace, which was thankfully off, because it was sweltering inside, and it looked like anyone who got a seat on the couch was obligated to have someone in their lap.  Two pairs were brazenly making out and people weren’t even noticing or mentioning it.

It was hard to breathe.  It smelled like sweat and perfume, hair product and body sprays.  Someone had puked, apparently, and she could smell that too.

It was more mellow than she had expected from a crazy party, but by the looks of it, mostly people were drinking and maybe smoking pot.  The worst part of it was people trying to talk loud enough to be heard, the smells, and the crowdedness.

She saw Xavier and got his attention.

“Have you seen George? Or Hailey?  Or Pam or Melissa?”

“Pam’s outside!” Xavier raised his voice.  “George is…”

He craned his head, to try to see past people, then pointed at a closed door.

“What about Hailey and Melissa?”

“Fight!” he raised his voice to be heard.

“They had a fight!  They came on a thingy, and then they fought and George left instead of getting into it!”

“That’s it.  Yeah!”

Xavier pointed, arm waving in the general direction of outside.

She hoped the others had that base covered.

The bathroom door opened.  Lucy abandoned her conversation with Xavier with a stated “thank you” she wasn’t sure he heard.  She had to move around people who had zero spatial awareness.

George looked right past her, scanning the crowd, even as she tried to get his attention.  It looked like he’d soaked his t-shirt, and slung it over his shoulder.  Had he spilled something on it?  He’d run wet hands through his hair, so it slicked back, and his body was beaded with bits of moisture.  Someone had signed his chest in permanent marker or something, and it had smudged.

She stepped into his way, deliberately, until he locked eyes with her.

“Did you guys take a bag from the cabin?  Striped, white and black?  Leather straps?”

He smiled, laughing a bit to himself, like something was funny.  “I don’t know.”

“Seriously,” she said.

“I really don’t know!  I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Can you think for a second and recall?  Did Melissa stop to grab a bag?  Did anyone pick anything up?”

“Lucy,” he told her, and he leaned close.  His eyes were puffy.  “I don’t know.  Mia was being shitty and refusing to give us any of the beer and stuff she got as payment-”

“-and Hailey’s been getting shit on all night because she’s not in- what’s it called?  Goose stepping?  Going along with everything else from the other Dancers.  And Hailey’s been cool tonight.”

Lucy frowned, looking around.

There was some kind of commotion.

The way the crowd moved, everyone trying to get a better view, they formed a wall of bodies at the two walls with windows and doors leading out.  Others moved out onto the porch, which extended along those same two walls, forming an L-shape at the one end of the cabin.

Lucy could see Avery on the porch, looking out and down, and she moved through people.

This was feeling more and more like a fire.  A bad situation that had so much potential to spread, get worse, compound itself, and spread from there.

Lucy had to step onto a couch and climb over it to get past one part of the crowd.  She then forcibly pushed people out of her way, to access the end of the porch that Avery was trying to get to.

She pushed the door open, getting dirty looks from the people she was pushing into with the door, in the process.

She didn’t even have to get to the railing to get an idea of what people were reacting to.

“How could you break my hearttttttt!?”

“You’ve got my atteeeeenshun!”

She made her way to the railing, and could see Avery climbing over.

On the ground below the one end of the porch, a man was dancing.  Their classmates and the people from St. Victors, aged thirteen to fifteen, were keeping a serious distance from this stranger that had showed up.

“I’m cryyyyyying… cryyyyying cold tears…”

He had a mullet, a pornstache, a day-glo tank top and denim short shorts, socks with a stripe across the top, and old fashioned sneakers with neon laces.  He was square jawed, muscular, and, to her sight, flickering at the edges.  Hearing his namesake lyrics, he turned his face skyward, beaded with sweat, eyes closed, and rubbed his hands down his body.  A tear ran down his cheek.

Hailey and some other girl from St. Victor’s was backed into a corner, nowhere to go that wasn’t walking into thick foliage, people, or the base of the cabin, and they looked transfixed, caught between laughing and being horrified.  They laughed harder at the tear.

“Who the hell are you, man?  Why are you so good at this?  Is this a prank?” Hailey asked.

“I’ve got enough troubles… I’ve heard enough lieeeees…”

Hailey and her friends shrieked as the man abruptly turned her way, fixing his gaze on her, his hands thrust down and to the sides, arms straight.

Verona was on the ground, approaching a bit closer than the rest of the crowd.  Avery made the jump from the porch railing to the ground, landing with a scuffle.

“Turn off the music!” Verona told Hailey.

“This is great, though!”

“You took something that doesn’t belong to you!” Lucy shouted down.

“Do you know this guy?” Hailey asked.  “Whose bag was this?  Which one of you listens to this crap?”

“All I can do is be braaaaaave…”

“Give it back!” Avery shouted.

“Fuck you!” Hailey raised her voice.

The Cold Tears guy turned, his attention fully on Avery.

“Who says its yours?  Answer my question!”

“All I can do is be stroooooong…”

The Cold Tears guy flexed his muscles, pressed his chest out as he stood on tiptoes, and clenched his fists.  He didn’t take his eyes off Avery, his head turning as she moved to the side on the narrow path that connected cabins.

Whoever was playing the music got to dictate the enemy.  Apparently shouting ‘fuck you’ at someone was enough.

“With all this weakness, you’ve given meeeeeee…”

He dragged fingernails down his cheek and neck, down to his collar, and then ripped his shirt off, one handed.  People shrieked at the suddenness of it, some laughed.  He had blond chest hair in a singular tuft between his pectorals.

“Is he an actual stripper?” Hailey laughed.  “Who brought this guy?”

Lucy turned, looking around.  There weren’t many eyes on her.

A bunch of people used a plate as an ashtray, and it lay in the window.  Lucy grabbed it and moved aside, so she was too far to the right for people looking out the window to see.

“I’m cryyyying… crying cold tearrrrrs!”

Lucy picked out the butts and joints.  She scratched out a rune, parting the cigarette ash.  Two air signs, a fire sign, each encircled, all connected.  She used the rim of the plate as a guide, to create the outer circle.

She cupped both hands over it, covering it, checking nobody was watching.  Every set of eyes was on the spectacle below.

“I’m bleeeeeding… Your love cut me deep!”

People shrieked, and there was enough of a sudden commotion that Lucy almost dropped the plate with the rune.

“In the service of Kennet,” Lucy whispered.  “We draw on your power.”

“I’m troubled awake, I’m tormented in sleeeeep!”

There were more shouts.  People were scrambling to get away.

The little bits of cigarette in the ash began to glow and smoulder.  To be safe, she drew insulating marks and underlined fire triangles around the outer perimeter.  To keep the heat from escaping.  The diagram dimmed while she was working on it.

Trust was as important as anything else.  She had to trust this would work.  Besides, she couldn’t hang back while there was something happening below.  Not with her friends involved.

She pushed the plate under a patio couch, then ducked under the railing.  The space to land at the very end of the porch was narrow, with only a narrow, person-width gap between the base of the cabin and foliage.

Someone saw the smoke from the rune, and people made noise.  The spectacle at the front was forgotten as people started to fight to get away.

Lucy made the jump, easing herself down as much as she could before dropping the ten or so feet.  She landed awkwardly, bumped into a heavy branch of pine needles, and felt it scrape at her skin and hair.  Her dress audibly ripped.

If she had pine sap in her hair, she was going to take it out on someone.  And the dress- it was borrowed.

She checked for the rip, butt first, then the sides.  She found the rip at the side, by her hip, about two inches long, where the sequined front half met the plain red back half.

She scowled, got her footing, and marched forward, shoes in one hand, necklace in the other.  She wished she could draw a weapon in this circumstance.

She made a beeline for Hailey, who was backing away.

“Hailey!” Lucy shouted.

Hailey looked at her.  She’d been nicely made up at the start of the night, which was less than an hour ago, maybe a bit earlier for the core group that had arranged this whole thing, but she was sweaty, her hair a bit of a mess, and her makeup affected by the heat, bugs, and the way she’d touched her face, making eyeliner and mascara smudge just a bit, around red eyes.

Lucy’s glower was maybe the last straw for Hailey, who had been straddling humor and fear with the appearance of the Cold Tears guy.  Hailey ran for it, pushing against students who were also heading away from the cabin.

“Leave me alone!” Hailey shouted.

“I’m a lover… and a fighterrrr!”

“Lucy!” Verona shouted.

Lucy turned, and saw the mullet dude coming for her.  More people screamed.

With one bloody-knuckled hand, he lunged.

“Kennetothers!” Lucy choked out the word, flicking out her hand with the keys, dog tag, and ring, sliding the ring onto her finger.

She met the lunging hand with a key, drawn out to a shape like a serrated knife.  She cut fingers, palm, all the way down to the heel of his hand.  At the same time, something was pulled out of her.  The strength she’d been using to brace herself and stop her momentum fell out of her like she was a bucket without a bottom, and she swayed.

His other hand reached out and caught the side of her face, fingers gripping her hoop earring.  She felt her earlobe stretch.

She dropped her shoes, and grabbed the wrist of that hand with the hand she’d just freed.  She knew she could stab, but she worried she would pass out if she tried.  It took ignoring every instinct she had, but she let the chain with the key and dog tags fall from her hand, dangling.  She couldn’t throw down the tags or anything because the chain was threaded through the ring, and the tags were connected.

He pulled, and she used every bit of her strength and focus to fight to keep her left arm rigid, hand at her wrist, so that when he lifted her up, he lifted all of her up, instead of tearing her earring out.

She gripped his wrist with her other hand, chain dangling, and then drew her legs back, and forward, knee to midsection.  “Don’t hurt girls, you asshole!”

It didn’t affect him nearly as much as she’d wanted it to.

This was scary.  It was scary in the same way John in that abandoned house had been scary.  A person as a force of nature, angry and violent and detached from humanity enough that he was willing to hurt her.  Smoke rolled out around her.

She didn’t want to be scared.  She didn’t want to be weak.  She had to be ready.

She thumbed the ring off her finger, to be safe, then whipped the chain, dog tag, keys, and ring included, at his face.  She did it again, then a third time, in rapid succession.  Nicks and cuts bled, and she might have gotten him in the eye.

Verona appeared at her side, grabbing his arm, tugging, and accomplishing nothing.

He strode forward, pushing Lucy through branches and slamming her into a tree trunk, hard.  The breath went out of her, so easily, leaving her gasping.

“No!” Verona shrieked, scrabbling for more of a grip.  When pulling on his arm didn’t work, she used it as a grip to climb up and get a grip on his mullet, pulling down with both hands.

Lucy kicked, feeling ineffectual, trying to keep lessons in mind.  She winced, seeing his face pulled down more at her level, and smashed the heel of her hand at his nose.  She hit his upper lip instead, three times, before he let her slide down the trunk, broken off branches scraping at the backs of her legs, dress, and her back.  She hit him one last time, while his face was close enough, and sputtered the words, without air to make them, “Lonely ass loser.”

He punched her.  It felt like she imagined getting hit by a baseball bat would feel.  Straight to the stomach.

“Avery!” Verona shouted, sounding frantic.  “Here!  Help!”

In Lucy’s Sight, the stain at the side of Avery’s face was bright red.  She ran forward out of the smoke, holding a branch that was maybe way too impractical to use as a weapon.

She held it like a lance, and drove it into the back of his leg.  She hit the back of his thigh, and seemed to scrape down until she hit the bend of his knee, where it couldn’t go any further down.  Her feet picked up off the ground momentarily, as the branch stopped moving.

His knee went down, meeting the dirt, and Verona scratched, fingers like claws, as she fought to get a grip on that mullet again, tugging.

Lucy twisted, her stomach a massive knot of pain that made it feel like her top half wouldn’t coordinate with her bottom half, and then drove her elbow into his neck, that Verona had bent down into her way.

It wasn’t really that effective.  Too small a movement, maybe.  She was too weak, sapped of strength by the ring.

She backed away a few steps, hand going to her stomach.

Avery picked up the branch with both hands, from the middle, and clubbed the guy on the back of the head just as he was starting to rise again.  His face hit the dirt.

Lucy stumbled forward into an awkward leap, driving her heel into the base of his neck, just as he rose.  “And go fellate yourself every night instead of crying about it!”

She felt her heel meet flesh, felt the impact as his face met dirt, and her foot simultaneously passed through and touched the ground.

“Ow,” she whispered, hand going back to her stomach.  Her back and the backs of her leg hurt too, and her earlobe was throbbing in a way that made her really worry it had torn and that earrings might be ruined for her forever.

Avery had a cut under one eye, and it looked like it was already starting to bruise.  Verona had skinned knees and palms.

Lucy’s eyes stung with the smoke from the cabin.  She used the Sight, and saw silhouettes like black stains against the smoke, throwing water on the couch that was over the couch.  She saw the rune get affected.

“We need to get the stuff,” Verona said.  “So maybe there’s a way we can go-”

Hailey screamed, down the path.  People shouted.

We need to get the stuff, so you can go to the magic school without issue? Lucy wondered.

Was this how far they’d sunk?  How bad things had gotten?

They jogged down the path.  The song was still playing, starting over from the beginning.  Hailey made scared sounds, and the man, beshirted again, uninjured, was stalking through the woods, pushing past branches.  Following the music.

“Rebound,” Verona whispered.

They’d defeated the summon that had been sent after them, and they’d done it soundly enough that when he’d recurred, he’d started going after the person who’d sent him after them.  Hailey.

“Stop!” Lucy shouted after him.

“It’s not ours,” Verona said.

They pushed past branches and deeper into the woods, away from the slope.  Past one of the supporting structures of the ski lift, and through bushes.  Branches and weeds scraped at Lucy’s legs.  Poison ivy too, maybe.

Hailey had finally collapsed, tripping on something in the dark and giving up instead of getting to her feet.  The music player was muffled slightly as she curled up around it.  He walked up to her, and she shrieked.

“He’s going to kill her,” Avery said.

“Call for help?” Verona asked.  “Or does that make the situation worse?”

Lucy pulled the dog tag from her chain.  She threw it down as she advanced toward Hailey and the Cold Tears guy.

Can’t make this situation that much worse.

“No guns,” she said, as she hopped over a bit of bushes.  Her Sight helped identify stains where the tree branches could scratch and the especially brambly bushes and weeds were.

“No guns,” John murmured, behind her.

The Cold Tears guy heard Lucy’s approach.  He picked up Hailey with one hand, then grabbed a branch, tearing it from a tree as he turned on Lucy.

John was nearly silent as he moved through the greenery.  He closed the distance, then stabbed the guy in the back with a combat knife.  The stabbing was quicker and more violent, the point of the knife not moving much further away than the fabric of Mr. Cold Tears’s top before sinking in again.

The guy disappeared, dropping Hailey.  Lucy rushed forward to stop her fall from being too rough.  The music skipped, and he resumed, flickering violently, the color washed out.  Almost spent.

But he tackled John, and drove John back, pushing him to the ground, keeping him from stabbing again.

Verona jumped forward, onto the back of Mr. Cold Tears.  Her eyes were wide and violet in the gloom.

“The tape player,” Lucy told Hailey.

“I was trying to turn it off, when he came back for me.  I wanted to hide and I couldn’t with the music playing-” Hailey sounded like she was begging more than anything.  “It was caught on my sleeve.”

Hailey was wearing a dress with a gauzy sleeve portion.  She held up her hand, empty, showing the fabric was torn.

The music played around them.  Lucy tried to search, but Hailey was clinging to her and trying to use her as cover from the ongoing scrap.  If she could even make out what was happening.

Cold Tears guy reared back, and Verona fell from her perch on his back.  A rune, triangular, glowed red, and smoked.  Scratched into his bare back with fingernails.  It visibly blistered in seconds.

John used the opportunity to slam the combat knife into Mr. Cold Tears’ eye socket.  He pulled it free in the same moment he rose to his feet.

The music skipped.  The silhouette of Mr. Cold Tears appeared, a few feet from Lucy.  Hailey hugged her, cringing.

Avery, ducking through the greenery, broke away from the Verona, and slid down a bit of the sloped ground.  She felt through the leaves and dead branches and came up with the cassette.

“Go!” Lucy shouted.  “Run!”

Hailey looked, saw the silhouette of John Stiles, and twisted away, letting go of Lucy and running downhill.  Not quite in the direction of civilization, but she wouldn’t go far before reaching a slope.  From there, she’d be able to find her way.

“What happened?” John asked.

“Someone stole our magic stuff,” Lucy said.

“Mine.  I messed up,” Verona said.  “We need it back.  Melissa Oakham has my bag, they said.  She went uphill.”

“A classmate,” Avery clarified, supporting Lucy as Lucy stepped over a tricky bit where a lot of fallen branches had made a kind of space without many places to put her feet.

“What does she know?”

“The guy that gave George, Hailey, Pam, and Melissa a lift said Hailey went looking for bottles and whatever in the backpack they stole.  They found the cassette player, and Hailey started fiddling with it.  Melissa kept going through the bag, and when she wouldn’t show Hailey what she found, they fought.  Melissa hobbled off on crutches with the bag.”

John extended a hand, reaching over a log.  Lucy hesitated, her heart still pounding, her body hurting, especially at the stomach.

She took his hand.  He gave her a helping hand in stepping over the log.  Then he did the same for Avery.

Verona went on, “She wouldn’t have gone all that far, but if she found something, maybe she didn’t go where there’s people.”

“Go,” John said.  “Call the others.  Do you have what you need to call the goblins?”

“I will.  Call Guilherme.”

“You can if you want, but she’s better with other problems,” John said.  “I’ll assume you don’t want this girl removed from the picture?”

“I’m so tempted,” Verona said.  “Fuck her.”

“Verona!” Lucy raised her voice.

“But what I really want is my stuff back.  I want everything to get as normal as possible, so we can get back on track.”

“Okay.  We’ll have to figure out how to handle her.  I’ll call Matthew as well.  Throw down the tags when you have her.  I’ll have reinforcements.”

“We’re going that extreme?” Avery asked.  “A small army of Others?”

“Yes.  Go and find her.  We’ll deal with her when you do.”

They reached the path again, Lucy grabbing a tree to pull herself up onto the path’s edge.  Her legs felt raw, weaker and scraped up, even if not all of the scrapes were bleeding.  She’d left her other shoes behind.

“Guilherme,” Lucy called out.  “Guilherme.  Guilherme.”

Avery pushed her hair back away from her face.  By the lights set along the path, Lucy could see that the cut by her eye had a line of blood reaching down to her lip, where the blood had smudged.  It looked like she’d have a black eye.

“This was supposed to be a nice night,” Avery said.  “Glad I came, if it’s only to bash a guy with a stick before he can bash either of you.”

“I’m so sorry,” Verona said.

“Let’s just handle this,” Lucy said.  “Eyes open.”

Avery’s eyes flashed, the mist sweeping over them, in a way that made the outline and darkness of the irises stand out in even dimly lit gloom.  Verona’s eyes turned purple.

Avery pointed.  Lucy nodded.

They took the side path.  Away from the candlelit path.  Verona was maybe the least hurt, and she could see best in the dark, so she led the way.

Lucy stared at her friend’s back for a while, silent.

“I think this is my fault,” Verona said.  “Not just because I brought the bag and didn’t watch it.”

“What did you do?” Lucy asked.

Verona turned a wide eyed look to Lucy, like she’d been stung.  Wary, alarmed.

“Just tell us,” Lucy said.

“I might’ve lied to my mom.  Tanked my karma, tanked the connection breaking stuff I laid on my bag.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “It was bound to happen sooner or later, with one of us.  Let’s get it handled.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Lucy said.  “Come on.  Pick up the pace.”

Verona winced, and nodded.

“I can see the trail.  We’re close,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded.  She pressed a hand to her stomach.  Every step hurt.  A lot of stuff that wasn’t her body hurt too.  Her heart.  Her hopes.

The path led to another of the towers that held the ski lifts aloft.  The area around it had been cleared and kept clear, and the moonlight shone down.

Melissa sat with her leg stuck out straight in front of her, Verona’s cat mask on her own head.  The hat sat on the ground, ten feet away.

To Lucy’s sight, the black cat mask was white, the white rim around the eye sockets like smudged blood.  The stain at Melissa’s foot was black in a way that made the gloom around it seem pale, threads reaching up and into her body, where the threads of stain transfixed her heart, the slashes that extended out like blades unto themselves.

“What is this?” Melissa asked, holding out a fistful of paper, covered in diagrams.  Verona flinched.

Lucy didn’t let her expression change as she saw that flinch, but if she’d reacted to it, she imagined she’d have flinched much more dramatically than Verona.

Where were their priorities?  What was this mess?

It sucked so much.  It sucked that Melissa had gotten stuck in this.

Melissa groped for and picked up the ugly stick.  A knobby bit of wood about as long as her forearm.  “What’s this?”

“Watch where you swing that,” Verona murmured.

“Why?  Is it like a magic wand?” Melissa asked.  “What is all this?  What-”

“We’re friendly, right, Mel?” Avery asked.  “We talk.  We’ve stayed in touch.”

Melissa shrugged with one shoulder, papers crumpled in one hand, the ugly stick held in the other.

They were supposed to call John, but, as if by mutual agreement, none of them did.

“Aren’t we?” Avery asked.  “I’d be bummed out if you said we weren’t.”

“We talk but it’s not like we’ve been over to each other’s houses or anything,” Melissa stated.  “We’re teammates.  We were teammates.”

Melissa had changed, in the past four or five weeks.  Not really eating right, or eating the way she had when she’d been doing dancing, gymnastics, and soccer, but as someone who was almost entirely sedentary now.  Doing nothing except periodic hobbling, with crutches.

She’d put on a surprising amount of weight.  She’d stopped taking care of her hair.  She hadn’t even dressed up for tonight.

“Or…” Melissa said, looking down at the ground.  “Not even that?  The way my life went to such total shit, so fast… and then this?  Did you curse me or something?”

“One of the pages glowed as I pulled it out for a better look.”

“Something’s up.  Just tell me, why me?  Why is it me that loses everything?”

“It’s not fair,” Avery said.

“It’s- it’s so much worse than not fair!” Melissa raised her voice.  “I lost everything.  And I try to tell people that, or I hint at it, and even my parents, who see the way my old friends are around me… they don’t get it.  Everything I loved doing I don’t get to do anymore.  My old friends pity me and they act like it’s a favor to even talk to me.  They leave me behind.  My dad never cared about my sports so how could he get what it means to lose the only things I looked forward to?  My mom used to be so proud of me and now all she talks about is her hopes my foot gets better, while my doctors say I’ll probably never be fully functional again.  My foot was attached only by a flap of skin.  No bones, no muscles, no tendons.  Skin!”

“We-” Verona started.

“No!  No no no no, don’t you dare talk, no.  Don’t.  Because there were only a few people who would even talk to me and be cool with me.  Jeremy was one, and he was sitting with me, keeping me company, when you sat down, flashed your panties at him, and then after a few minutes, dragged him off to do who knows what.”

“The skirt thing was a total accident.  And the rest of it didn’t work out.  We decided to be friends.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Melissa,” Lucy cut in, taking a step forward.

Melissa swung the club around, pointing it at Lucy.  Lucy stopped where she was.

If Melissa threw that- or if they got close and she started swinging…

It was goblin-enchanted.  None of the damage it did would heal right.  A smashed nose would be forever twisted.  A bashed cheekbone would be indented.  Lost teeth would resist replacement.  It had other effects for things that weren’t human, but it also had limited charge.  A few strikes would waste it.

“I know you think it’s patronizing, but I’ve reached out a few times.  I’ve tried to include you.”

“Did you try to include me in this?” Melissa asked, crumpling up the papers more.  Verona winced again.

“Careful,” Verona said.

“Because if you touch the wrong parts together, you get something messier than just light,” Verona said.

“Don’t tell her too much,” Avery murmured.

“You can’t keep slapping away people’s hands and then be surprised when they stop reaching out,” Lucy said.

“Fuck you!  You’re not reaching out for my benefit, you’re reaching out for yours!”

“I’m going to be really blunt,” Lucy said.  “There’s a few ways this can go.  We’ve got help coming.  If you cooperate and work with us, this can be tidied up.  Things can be fixed, or at least improved.”

“Those two did go out of our way to try to fix things for you,” Avery said.  “I don’t know why it didn’t work, but we can keep looking into it.”

“But if you make this messy, you hurt yourself.  Can you stop being angry?  Please see that I’ve been trying to help and that I mean well?”

“I still don’t believe that you’re helping me to actually help me.  You’re trying to fix this situation for yourselves!  Fuck you!”

Melissa threw the papers, scattering them into the wind.

“Shit!” Verona shouted.

Lucy stepped back, stumbling, her stomach hurting, and Verona tugged on her arm, which made it hurt worse.

The papers caught on the wind, curved in the air, and the first of them hit the ground.

Nothing.  A good three quarters of the papers hit the dirt.

“Fuck you!  Fuck whatever this is!” Melissa shouted.

A paper scraped the dirt, diagram first.

And maybe it was the dirt smudge completing the symbol, but it burst into violent flame, rolling out.  Avery scrambled back.  Verona and Lucy fell.

Melissa, eyes wide in stark terror, grabbed her crutches, then began hobbling away, bag over one shoulder, ugly stick gripped with the same hand that held the handle of the crutch.

Lucy climbed to her feet.  Avery was already circling around, giving chase.

Verona winced as she rose to her feet.

She’d been in between Lucy and the fire.

“Are you hurt?” Lucy asked.

“Not really.  Singed.  But…”

Verona cast a forlorn look in the direction of the fleeing girl and the bag of magic.

“Yeah.  You up for running?”

“I wish I had glamour, or-”

“Okay.  Stay.  I’m going.  If you see the Others, point them in the right direction.”

Lucy left her friend behind.

Avery gave a wide berth to the other papers that the wind periodically picked up and flipped over, which meant ducking into trees and emerging out the other side.  Lucy was at the opposite end of the wide clearing, taking a similar route.

Once they were on track, though, they were clear to run.  Melissa only hobbled, making her way up a set of concrete stairs inset into the slope leading up. She was able to use the railing to make more progress than she had with the crutches.

On the opposite end of the hill was a road.  The top third of Melissa’s head was illuminated by headlights.

“Heyy!” she shouted.  “Help!”

“Stop!” Avery called out.

Melissa stopped, leaned hard into the railing, and reached into the bag.

She scattered more papers.  A whole notebook was tossed down onto the stairs.

But there were pages there with diagrams on them.  Lucy and Avery paused.

“Hey!” Melissa shouted again, continuing to hobble up the stairs.

A page sparked, then flared, going off in a flash.  Lucy shielded her eyes.

As the light faded, she used her Sight to scan the surroundings, judging the slopes-

And saw Guilherme, stained a deep green-blue, approaching from the shadows.  He was in his boy form, shirtless, his only real clothing like a kilt worn over leather pants, and he had a weapon.  A long spear.

“Guil.  Please don’t-”

She leaned into the attack, reaching out, the back of her hand catching the shaft of the spear and not pushing it away as much as she pushed herself to the side.

“Not today,” she said.  “Save the training for moments that aren’t a crisis, please.”

“A crisis is the best time to learn,” he said.

Avery was scrambling up the path.

“Call John!” Lucy called out.

Melissa was at the top of the stairs, pushing through trees to get to the street where there was some traffic.

Guilherme approached Lucy, dropping down to a crouch behind her, as she knelt.  “Remember the lesson about dueling?” he asked.

He reached out, and she put a hand beneath his.

The glamour poured down.  She let it fall through her fingers in a thin stream.  A twist of her hand, and she caught the stream, now a thin blade.

She wiped at the gravel in front of her, no doubt set down here to make the base of the ski lift firmer.

She drew out the faerie rune.  It was like a letter E mixed with a zodiac sign, with a few circles drawn here and there.  Each line was florid, extending out in curves and curls.  The Duelist.

“Don’t run.  We aren’t done yet,” Lucy murmured.  “You stole from us, Melissa, and that must be addressed.”

“You must give it something,” Guilherme reminded her.  “The challenge must be something she would agree to, even if she can’t hear it right now.”

“If you hold out for five minutes, I’ll take on a share of your pain,” Lucy said.

“Hmm.  Not the way I would do it,” Guilherme said.

“Is it wrong?  Dangerous?”

“No and yes, but that’s not why.  She would agree to that only because she has to.”

She stabbed the spike of glamour into the diagram.

It was like a pale curtain swept out, all around them.

Lucy waited, watching, and pulled the spike free when she was comfortable with the boundary.  She held it, because she had to.  Part of the condition of the duelist’s arena was that she only got to use one hand.  The rest had to hold onto the arena.  Anything else was a forfeit.

Zed had mentioned the need to erect barriers and keep civilians out of things.  Lucy, Verona, and Avery had brought it up with Guilherme.  He’d explained a way to do it.  More of a Faerie way.

Melissa continued forward, through the trees, and into civilization, shouting.

She emerged from the bushes behind Lucy.  She looked around in alarm, and she looked at boy-Guilherme, with his very green eyes.

She turned around, then hobbled away.

Lucy straightened, stretched, and waited.

There was no leaving.  Any attempt to would bring her back here.

“I’ll reiterate your options,” Lucy said.

John was there, at the far side.  Avery followed him.

And the goblins, with their eyes glowing in the dark.  Few pairs of those eyes were matched in size.  Bluntmunch was absent, doing a job, but Toadswallow and Gash were there, along with Cherry, Doglick, Butty, and Snatch.

Those other goblins were permanent additions now.  They needed too much help with protecting the perimeter.

Melissa made a scared sound.  She held out the ugly stick, moving between targets.

“In less than five minutes, the thing that’s trapping you here will go away, and if it does, you’ll feel better.  I’ll take on some of your pain.  And maybe that gets you to where you can recover enough to start sports again.”

“Thing is,” Lucy said.  “I’m going to do a lot of really horrible things in the meantime, to try to get you to cry uncle and surrender.  If you hold out anyway, I’ll suffer some of that hurt.  But I’m going to feel awful for hitting you and stuff, and you… obviously you’re going to feel awful too.”

“And I can’t say what happens with… all of them.  If they let you walk away.”

A goblin snickered.  John shifted his footing.

“Or you can back down.  Give our stuff back.  Cooperate.”

The ugly stick dropped to the ground.

“I’m not strong enough to last five seconds of someone trying to hurt me.  Let alone five minutes.”

“Do you surrender?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t have any other choice.  I lose, I guess.  Like I keep losing.”  Melissa made a very awkward descent to the ground, using a crutch to help herself there.

Then she sat there, head hung.

The subtle light of the arena’s boundaries faded.

“We should take her to see Nicolette,” Avery said, from the far end of the fading arena.

“This isn’t on me,” Nicolette said.  She was wearing a nice hair ornament with a bunch of white feathers, but her hairstyle was simpler, only brushed straight, and she wore a college jacket over a tee.

“Not wholly, but you pledged better than this,” Lucy challenged her.

Nicolette looked past them to the truck.  Matthew stood by the door, and Melissa sat within, head bowed, not even really paying attention to what was happening out here.

“My hands were partially tied.  You wanted me to make restitution.  I did.  Can I talk to her?”

Avery looked over at Matthew, nodding.

He popped the truck door open.  Melissa startled.  She leaned forward, peering past the front seat and out the door.

“Did your family come into money lately?” Nicolette asked.

“Uh, yeah.  My dad got a promotion and a bunch of money.”

“And did you get any special medical help?  Someone reaching out, someone reporting a nice breakthrough or experimental treatment?”

“Um.  We’re going to Toronto around the time my boot comes off, to talk to a specialist.”

Nicolette motioned for the door to close.  Matthew slammed it, almost in Melissa’s face.

“I couldn’t do much more because I can’t set foot in or directly interfere with Kennet.  I pulled strings from the outside.  Giving her family that much money cost me.”

“Her life is still in shambles.  Because your omens destroyed her ankle,” Lucy said.

“Then… I’ll keep at it.  But I can see shadows of omens, and I don’t think she’s fighting for her own sake.  I can’t really give her better if she doesn’t reach out and take it.”

“Can you try?” Lucy asked.

“Okay,” Nicolette said.  “But past a certain point, I’ll have to argue I’ve discharged my duties.”

“You three look like you had a rough night.”

“It wasn’t quite what we hoped for.”

“Do you want a ride to the school?” Nicolette asked.

“I think we’re okay,” Avery said.

“Okay,” Nicolette said.  “Is there anything else, then?”

“You got off the Forest Ribbon Trail okay?”

“That?  Yeah.  Those guys you’ve been talking to, about the Paths?  Zed mentioned that.  They came in for the rescue.  Alexander covered the cost.”

“And the Hungry Choir thing?” Verona asked.

“They’re safely bound.  The binding was tattooed on.  That’s pretty hard to break through, especially with everything else.  You can talk to Brie again in three days, get the particulars from her at school.”

“If it’s cool, it’s kinda late, and I’ve got to drive back.  I’ve got an appointment for the morning, with Alexander.  Can we continue this conversation at school?”

“Alright,” Lucy said.

Nicolette got back into her car.  She started it up, then pulled away.

“It’s good you’re taking a break from everything,” Matthew said.  “Going away.”

“What do you mean?” Avery asked him.

“You guessed this was bad karma.  I don’t think that helped, but it looks like the blood of the Carmine Beast was really what greased the slope here.”

“Small relief,” Lucy said, glancing at Verona.  Verona looked down.  “The spin the bottle game?”

“That might be karma.  Might just be actual randomness.”

Lucy stood a little straighter, touching her bruised stomach, and looked off in the direction Nicolette had gone.

“If it really was things getting bloodier because of the Beast, it probably is good we’re going away.  Are things going to be okay if we’re not there to claim to be your practitioners?” Avery asked.

“We should manage,” Matthew said.  “When we talked about bringing in people, and Miss said she had thirteen year olds in mind, a lot of the discussion was about how we’d handle the investigation, keeping you on track, and, if I’m honest…”

“…We expected more of this.  Disruption.  Having to clean up messes.  Some of the local Others may be more comfortable, rather than less, because this happened.”

“You want us to be screw-ups,” Verona said.

“We want you to need to cooperate with us, for best results.  But Miss has a scarily good eye.  And when you didn’t need us as much, with keen talent for practice, aggressive outreach to other practitioners, and a knack for investigation…”

“We’re out of your control?” Lucy asked.

“I would say you’re getting your own control.  And to some, even myself to a small degree, that feels like you’re sliding into a position where you have control over us.  Or you were.”

“All it takes is one mistake to ruin a whole lot, huh?” Verona asked.

“This?  Tonight?  Entirely within expectations.  Don’t get too down about it.  We can let there be a story in the news about a strange man,” Matthew said. “And we can encourage a culture of silence, where your peers at the party won’t want to share too many details because they might get in trouble.”

Verona nodded, but it was subdued.

“So that girl,” Matthew said.

“Can you take her memories?”

“I tried.  She’s holding onto them.  Louise Bayer wanted her memories of things gone.  Melissa Oakham is clinging to all of this, in hopes there’s salvation or distraction here.  I can see into that darkness she’s in right now, crystal clear.”

“Then are we responsible for her?”

“Less than you’d be if you gave her the material yourself.  She invited bad karma, and she owns the consequences, especially if she continues down this path.  If it’s okay with you three, Edith and I are going to talk to Charles.  See if he agrees to take some of her pain.  Can you trust us to handle this?  It might take longer than it takes you three to leave for school.”

The three of them exchanged looks, then nodded.

“If the Carmine Beast had happened at a different time,” Avery said.  “Or if it took longer for practitioners to notice she was gone?  Could Melissa have been chosen?”

“Not with the order of events,” Verona said.

“Perhaps,” Matthew said. “I think Miss was looking for rare talent.  Maybe that girl has it, maybe she doesn’t.  But I do think the boy who handed you your shoes, before we left?”

“Jeremy?” Lucy asked.

“Miss noted him, as one of five or six considerations, to replace you three if you couldn’t see this through.”

“If we freaking died, you mean,” Lucy said.

“Geez,” Avery said.  “Wow, you actually went there.”

Matthew nodded, somber.  He looked less willing to smile than he had back when Miss had been in charge.  “Be careful, from here on out, about bringing him close to this.  He’d fall into it with ease.”

“Do you want to drive back?” Matthew asked.

In the end, they settled so that Avery would sit with Melissa in the back seat.

Lucy sat in the open back of the truck, like they had on that first weekend.  Getting in was rough, with the bruising at her middle.

Matthew started up the truck.  They rolled out.

The first five or ten minutes were… not quiet.  With the speed they traveled and no real runes to block the wind, it was noisy-ish.

But they didn’t talk.  Lucy and Verona sat within a few feet of one another, and they barely looked at each other.

“Are you mad?” Verona asked, the wind almost drowning her out.

“A bit.  But aren’t you?”

“But you’re disappointed in me, aren’t you?” Verona asked.  “I messed up.  I didn’t keep track.”

“Can we not talk about this?  We’ve got your magic school in a few days, there’s prep, healing, I guess, where we’ve got to recover and not look like we were dragged there, so we can look good in front of teachers and students who may be our opposition…”

“I mean, if you really don’t want to talk, then…” Verona started, trailing off.

A car zipped past, traveling the other direction at a reckless speed.  The wind that blew in the wake of it made Lucy’s hair touch the sides of her face.  She scrunched up her nose and tried to fix it.

“I’m glad, and I’m- do you want forgiveness, or something else?  What do you want out of this conversation, Verona?”

“I want you to say what you’re feeling because you look mad and I can’t take it.”

“I always look mad, don’t I?  I have a resting bitch face.”

“No,” Verona said.  “Not always.”

“If you want me to say what I’m feeling, then I’m really worried that if I get started, I’m going to keep going until I hurt you and… I’m too tired to go there, and I don’t want to hurt you.  I can deal, Verona.”

“I don’t want you to deal, I want you to be happy and good.  Talk, vent.  Hurt me if it means getting it off your chest.  Please.”

Lucy bit her lip, swallowed, and almost chewed on the- not on the words, but on that part of her mouth that was supposed to initiate the word, and make them start spilling forth.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised.  I don’t know- I wanted a nice night, you know?”

“No, but… for you a nice night is you getting to be a cat, or futz around with practice.  I worry, I really worry, that this whole thing was maybe some tiny subconscious bit of you that wanted this to happen.  Wanted practice and distraction and whatever else.”

Verona’s expression was blank.  Her eyes lacked the purple that had dominated them most of the night.

“I’m worried that if you start apologizing, and if I press you to tell me what you’re sorry for, or if I bring up stuff like priorities… you’re going to give me the wrong answers, and I’m not going to be okay with them, Ronnie.  I can’t remember exactly but it was like every freaking time you brought up the situation tonight, you were more scared for the collection and your chance to go fully equipped to your Blue Heron School than you were about everything else.”

“It was about your items, your items, and getting everything okay, and it was about-”

“It wasn’t,” Verona said, with some emotion.

“This was why I wanted to ask,” Verona said.  “Because it seemed like we were on such different pages, and if we’re on the same page, then you really were mad, maybe unforgivably mad.”

Lucy shifted her position, because the way her armpit pressed against side wall of the truck, it was cutting off circulation.

“I wanted to get the stuff back and get back to normal because I wanted you to be able to go back to that cabin where you were with Wallace and Mia and the others, and kiss a boy and make other friends because that’s what I really wanted out of tonight,” Verona said.

Her eyes were wet with moisture.

“Because… when you were there, when I got glimpses of your face, there were times you didn’t have that normal look on your face, where you were wary and careful, and you looked like the Lucy I was friends with before Paul left your family and devastated your mom.  You were relaxed.”

Lucy blinked a few times.  Verona rubbed tears away from her eyes.

“You were the best you when you were defending Pam.  And being brave, and I took that away from you, by messing up.”

“Mess-ups happen.  Especially with the Carmine blood and stuff staining Kennet, like Matthew said.”

“I’ve been trying so hard,” Verona said, wiping away more tears.  “Ever since you got on us after the Faerie thing.  And I tried to pick up the slack in some ways, and I wasn’t good at that, but I interviewed the goblins and I did the spell drawings, and I’ve been doing the surveillance of our suspects as much as I could…”

“I thought you wanted more chances to be a cat and stuff.”

“Duhh!” Verona retorted.  “No freaking duhh, yeah, that’s great, but also I wanted to not make you have to be the one who takes charge and manages us two.  I’ve been trying to be more focused on the investigation, and keeping tabs on things, and keeping track.  I’m not good at the direct stuff, so like… the thing where we don’t tell Alexander our personal info, and stuff.”

“It’s good, Ronnie.”

“I don’t want to be a burden.”  Verona tried to sit up, where the motion of the truck and the relative lack of friction beneath them made it easy to slump down or lie down, and Lucy glanced at her friend’s feet.

Verona’s sandals were strappy, and it looked like the edges of the straps had rubbed Verona’s feet raw, to the point there was blood.

“My dad only seems to care if I’m around because it makes him less lonely, and I can do chores for him and make his life easier.”

“And the Kennet Others are stiff and weird around us because they’re spooked and it’s only going to get worse after we go to school.  Alpeana hasn’t been around much at all and John is really dark since Yalda got…”

“And Jeremy wasn’t down for a relationship on my terms and I told myself I wouldn’t get down about that but with everything else-”

“And now I’m here and I might be ruining us, because I’m being more of a baby than ever when I want to be the one making you feel better, after you didn’t get your night with people like Mia and Wallace.”

“I got my fill.  I don’t think you’re ruining us.”

“Crying like this makes me feel like I’m my dad, and I hate that more than anything.”

“I think it’s pretty different.  Because it’s pretty obvious you’re coming from a place of caring.  I don’t think he does.  Not really.  And it’s okay if you want to have a bad day and lean on me, okay, Ronnie?”

Lucy scooted over, and pulled on Verona until Verona succumbed to the hug.

“And I’m going to have a bad day sooner or later, okay?  And maybe it’ll take some doing to get to where you can get me to lean on you.  But try.  Make me.  It’ll probably be worth a thousand times of you leaning on me, hard as it is.”

Verona nodded, head against Lucy’s shoulder.

“We’re good, Ronnie.  You don’t need my forgiveness for tonight because I’m not mad.  I’m kinda glad we got a nice big reminder of how badly a little screwup can ruin a whole lot, if anything.”

“And we’re going to magic school and it’s going to be crazy.  And I’ll have your back and I know you’ll have mine, in your own way.  And we’ll have Avery’s back and she’ll have ours.  And we’ll get into wild stuff.  We’ll hopefully figure out what we need to know about the investigation.  And fuck yeah, we’ll scare people with how on top of stuff we are.”

“You got hurt tonight, because of me.”

“I’ll mend.  No permanent harm, I’m pretty sure.”

They drove for another minute.  Lucy gave her friend a squeeze.

“I see Kennet,” Lucy said looking over, while Verona’s head was buried in her shoulder.  “Now’s the time, if you want to say anything, and still have time to dry your eyes after.  Any confessions, anything from you to me.”

Lucy checked the back window wasn’t open, and that this was private.  Avery and Melissa were talking too much to listen in.

Lucy gripped the side of the truck for stability, to keep both her and Verona from sliding, as they turned onto a ramp.

“My mom doesn’t want me,” Verona said, her voice small.

Lucy gave her friend the tightest hug she could, but she didn’t know what to say to that.

“You’re the most important person in the world to me,” Verona said.  “I don’t mean to order it like this. Like it’s because everyone else doesn’t-”

“Because even if I had a cool dad and a mom who wanted me, and Jeremy and a great relationship with all the Others, and friends, and whatever else, you’d be the most important to me.”

Lucy hugged her friend tight.