Avery

Avery watched as Lucy got boxed in by card-thin stone walls, each just tall enough to hide Lucy.  One fritzed with a jolt of electricity.  She leaped to her feet, and Ray put out a hand.

The walls dropped away.  Lucy was gone.

“I put her outside.  Please take your seat, Ms. Kelly.”

Avery didn’t move.  She was aware of all the eyes on her.

“We kindly ask that students not leave a class in session unless asked to leave,” Mr. Sunshine said.

Avery looked back at Jessica, and saw Jessica make a subtle motion with her hand.  To get down or sit down.

Avery sat down on the bench and sat back.

“As I was saying… the Ruins are a power source that draws on things that are hard to grasp.  Emotion, principle, and spirit.  The power drawn from here is hard for us to easily judge, as a result.  This is a delicate power, and in the same way that you could feed a flame with a soft breath or a bit of tinder, but extinguish it with a sharp breath or a heavy mass of wood, Ruins power changes what it does based on how much you use.  These things make it hard to use.”

The rain continued to fall around them, the floor layered in water, with dark things swimming in it.  Avery moved her foot and sloshed the water.  The things moved.

She looked back toward the door, wondering if Lucy was okay.

“When creating a ritual, we feed power into it.  As stated, our presentation and the symbols, language, and phrasing we choose help to shape the end result, but most often we use diagrams to control the end result.”

Ray typed on his keyboard.

A glowing circle appeared over his head, with a triple-layered border, the center circle filled in, and symbols at the north, east, south, and west.  It looked like a dog, an old fashioned axe, a comb, and a skeletal fish.  An ‘x’ was drawn through it, faint.

“This is a circle, with nonsense symbols randomly generated by my computer just now, but it does have a purpose.  For our practical exercise, let’s assume you don’t know the language, but it’s a repeated chant, shouted.  And the power source for this ritual is this.  A bound Other.”

He clicked a button.  At the stage of the church, an Other appeared, bug-eyed, mouthless, tall, gaunt, with arms stapled to its ribs, like a perpetual straightjacket.  Its flesh was slick and wet.  It struggled, flinging itself against the invisible barrier of the circle around it.

“I’m not necessarily looking for correct answers.  Imagine I am a rival practitioner, and you’ve found me working on this ritual.  A shouted chant, I’m wearing what I wear now, and I’ve got this circle in front of me, with this Other as a clear power source…”

He hit some buttons.  A faint light began to drain from the Other to the big circle in the air.

It thrashed, fighting harder, then collapsed.  The circle above Mr. Sunshine glowed brighter.

“What am I doing?  Is it dangerous?  Split into groups of three and discuss.  I want to hear your thought processes.  Take a few minutes, write down your notes and brainstorming so I can review them later.  Again, you don’t have to give me a right answer, just show me an effort.”

People rose from the benches, beginning to form their groups.  Jorja, Talia, and Dom formed a trio almost immediately.  Older students did much the same.

Jessica didn’t stand, and watched, her expression blank, as students grouped up.  Maybe to try to spot the people who were groupless.

“Do you want to group?” Avery asked.

“I wonder if I should go look for Lucy and make sure everything’s okay.”

“If you did, I’d assume he would lock the door behind you,” Jessica said, indicating Raymond.

Avery frowned.  She pulled out her phone and dialed, but there was no service.

“We’re in a simulation.  Far from reality,” Jessica said.  “It’s a good mock-up but it doesn’t feel like the Ruins.”

“I guess,” Avery said.  She put her phone away.  “Any thoughts?”

“I’ve seen a similar circle before.  It was an empty circle, filled in like that, with writing around the border.  But there wasn’t an obvious power source.  It was like… a hole that you could drop into.”

“A door.  Where did you go?”

“The Forest Ribbon Trail.  I’m thinking it’s like a door, and the message around the edge is like the passcode or number plate for that particular address, kind of,” Avery guessed.

“He said that power from the Ruins was subtle,” Jessica said.

Avery frowned.  “Are you going to help?  Or give me hints?”

“Giving hints is helping.”

“You should know what I mean.”

“Zed told me I need to work with others better.  I’m used to working on my own, and I’ve already decided on the answer.  I could say it, but then I’m not working with the group, am I?”

That wasn’t wrong, but… it was frustrating, and it was that frustration that seemed to extend from Jessica.  Because Jessica was queer and casually cool, and she explored places.  And she was harder to engage with than the weird magic circle with the fish skeleton.  And when Avery tried to reach across that gap, which was a lot of reaching, then Lucy told her she needed to wind it back.  And Zed was saying, straight-up, that Jessica wasn’t good friendship material?

And like, okay, Jessica had a girlfriend and she was a few years older, and maybe that got a bit weird, so she was off limits relationship-wise, which just hammered home how small the number of available, eligible girlfriends was, and that sucked, especially when people in that small number could so easily not match Avery in personality, or life, or whatever.

But she just wanted a friend and it was this hard?

She felt like she had, pining after Pam in class, during that lonely stretch after stopping with the homeschooling.  Except she didn’t pine for Jessica, and that made it worse.

It just… hurt.  Rejection when rejection wasn’t even intentional or effortful.

Avery pushed her hair back behind her ear, so it wouldn’t be in the way as she turned to look at the limp, drained, Other, slumped against the confines of the magic circle.  Touching her hair reminded her that she was trying to build a better her.  She’d stopped wearing her hair in a ponytail, a few weeks back.

Fine.  She’d meet Jessica on another front.

“He says subtle, but there’s this really loud chant, and a lot of power, and it doesn’t feel subtle that way.”

“Sure,” Jessica said.

“Isn’t it… what’s the word?  Ironic?  No.  Oxymoron?”

“Contradictory,” Jessica said.

“Is the real test if we can find the trap?  And call him out on it?”

“What if it’s not?”

“You think it’s not?” Avery asked.  “A shouty chant is subtle?”

“Have you done a ritual like this?”

“No.  There are other ways.  I don’t really have that kind of power to push into rituals or anything.”

“So there are other ways.  So when is a big shouty ritual with a drained Ruins beast subtle?”

“Or faint, or small, or…”

Avery thought of Zoomtown.  “When it’s noisy?  When the thing you’re talking to is big and you’re small?  When your destination is far away?  Can’t blow out that made-up fire with a huge breath of air if the breath is far enough away.”

Jessica shrugged and nodded.

“So it’s a door to someplace big, or far away, or noisy?  And we’re putting a subtle, Ruins-y power into it?  Does that mean the destination is also in the Ruins?”

Jessica nodded.  She studied Avery’s expression, and Avery felt… it was hard to put the idea into words, except maybe… seen?  Like Jessica had been half-here and now she was all here, paying full attention to her for the first time.

Avery got her notebook and began writing down the thought process.

She paused mid-sentence, looked back toward the door and the windows, and really hoped Lucy was alright.

“Why was Mr. Sunshine like that with Lucy?” Avery asked, quiet.

“He was like that with you, briefly.  He likes things predictable.  You’re both… ‘wild’,” Jessica murmured.

“I don’t think that makes it okay.”

“It’s the fastest I’ve seen someone press all his buttons.”

“He pressed my friend’s buttons.  Even touching her hair.”

“It feels like more than that.”

Jessica shrugged.  Her gaze roved around the room.

Like she was further away.

Avery didn’t want to be desperate, but she did want to pay attention and maybe leave the door open for that friendship later, so she dropped the topic.  “The way the runes around the outside are arranged.  Dog and axe, you can have an attack dog, and both can be aggressive, right?  And then axe to comb, hair-cutting?  Or you use the axe to cut off heads and the comb is used on heads too?”

“You may be overthinking it.  He said it was random.”

“But random can mean things.  Does it hurt?”

“He wants to see effort.  Probably not.”

“Then comb and the dead fish have those fine-toothed ribs, and then dog and bone?”

“Sure,” Jessica said.

“I was always terrible at English class, and so much of this stuff is like being asked to read something and figure out what it really means,” Avery noted, as she wrote.  “But I like puzzles, and figuring stuff out.  It’s why I like the Path stuff.  As scary as a lot of it is.”

“I don’t really ‘like’ the stuff I do.  This.”  Jessica indicated the walls and the rain.

“Did you get into it because of… family, or Anshi- I forget how to say it.”

“You can say Ojibwe.  We call ourselves Anishinaabe in Pic River, at least, because it’s, hm, encompassing.  The good people.  Most tribes around here are Anishinaabe.”

“Like I call myself a Ontarioian and a Canadian, but…” Avery hesitated as she saw Jessica’s expression change.  “I feel like it’s more profound for you?”

“You can just say Ojibwe,” Jessica said, more curt than before.  “And no, they didn’t teach me.  I’ve used some ceremonies and things my grandfather taught me before going on an expedition, but that was for me, more than it was the practice.”

“Mostly they don’t understand, but they support me.  I lost someone important to me, and I went chasing after his echo, to try to bring it back somehow.”

“I’m sorry.  It’s been a while?  Does it get harder as time passes?”

Jessica looked up at the ritual circle that floated in the air.  “Yes.  But I was going in circles before I was invited here.”

“What I said before, about wanting to help.  I’ve done two rituals as a Finder.  That’s supposed to make me better at finding things.  So I don’t know if that helps, but the offer is real.  It can be as a friend or it can be a business arrangement, where you teach me about the Ruins and I’ll lend you good finding-thing eyes, maybe.”

Jessica studied her face again, a slight frown on her face.

“Perhaps the deal,” Jessica told her.

Okay.  Well, ouch.  Friendship rejection again.

But, Avery thought, and she didn’t have the glamour to give herself a checkmark, she felt like she’d been fair and adult and reasonably respectful?

“Anything to add?” Avery asked, showing Jessica the notebook.  Avery had opened it to the point the last bit of World Studies homework had ended, taken a box cutter to the spine, and cut away the front, bringing the last third of a notebook with her.  She kind of liked it that way.

Jessica read it, then shook her head.

“Good luck, anyway, with your cousin.  I hope you can resurrect him soon or whatever.  However that works.”

“Not a resurrection,” Jessica said, leaning back.  She sat on the bench behind Avery, and Avery could feel Jessica propping up a foot on the back of the bench.

“He’s not dead.  Something happened, and a piece of him broke away.  I need to get it back.”

Avery was- she just wasn’t equipped to answer that.  What did you even say?

“Good luck?” Avery offered.

Mr. Sunshine walked around the classroom, kind of dour and serious.  He began collecting the papers.

“So this Lucy thing,” Avery said, while he was off in the other corner of the class.  “Is that normal?”

“Happened once last year, but he was only part-time.  He spent chunks of time away.”

“If you have an issue, you can go to Durocher or Belanger,” Jessica said.  “But Durocher is intense.”

“If you show weakness in front of her, she might always think of you as weak.”

“I don’t know.  He bothers me more than the other two,” Jessica said.  She leaned back, taking the book.  “When I look at Canada’s government and what it’s done over the last one hundred and fifty years, or when I look at police, education, business, any of that, and think of what’s wrong there, and how much awful there is, I imagine the awful comes from people who resemble Alexander.”

“Except I think the people who I imagine being awful there are only halfway to being what Alexander is.  Or two-thirds of the way, at most.”

“He can, um, hear you, can’t he?  Alexander listens in?”

“Zed says so.  I believe him.  I don’t care.”

Jessica took the notebook page as Avery tore it out.  She held it out for Mr. Sunshine.

“Good,” he said, on reading it.

“Is there any chance Lucy could come back in?”

“She’ll have found something else to do.  It’s how the school is structured,” Mr. Sunshine said, shuffling through the pages as he arranged them into piles.  “If she wants to attend more of my classes, please tell her she should remain levelheaded and if you three won’t give me data to work with in structuring my lessons, please sit back, be quiet, and don’t engage until I signal it’s okay.  The programs I use for the adaptive lesson plan are sensitive.”

“You could have told her.”

“I am not interested in arguing the point, Ms. Kelly.  This works for me and it works for the majority of my students.  The school offers many other learning opportunities for those who don’t like how I teach.”

Avery started to say something, then defaulted to nodding.

Ray walked away.  He held up one trio of pages.

“Ms. Kelly and Ms. Casabien, good.  Very close.  They suggested this is a door to another, bigger part of the Ruins.  Songetay, Martin, and Staples, I like the direction of your reasoning. Those three argued the Other’s power was bait, the worm on the hook, to bring something through the ‘hole’.  Similar logic to Kelly and Casabien, but they saw this as bringing something here, instead of going somewhere else, and they surmised the target was big.  Again, same logic.”

He indicated a trio of boys.

“Sutton, Austin, and Leos, good effort in drawing comparisons to the pillars of the awakening ritual, fishbone as skull, axe as blade, dog as element of nature, and comb as thread.  I would have liked to see more thinking about the power source and what that does.”

He put the papers down in three piles by his laptop.  Then he typed.  “Let’s demonstrate the ritual.”

Jessica shifted position, untying the heavy yellow raincoat with the cracked exterior, and pulling it on.  Gold light flashed out from the cracks as she finished zipping it up.

The church rumbled.  The rain momentarily stopped, and bits of brick fell from where the tops of the wall met the parts where the roof was missing.  The sounds were very realistic, even for a simulation.

The rumbling intensified, the circle shifted in color and texture, the symbols rotating around and the power intensifying as everything grew dark.

They were swallowed.  The closest approximation that Avery could think of was a blue whale suddenly emerging beneath them, mouth open to swallow up the entire church.  As the mouth closed around them, everything went dark, and there was a violent falling sensation.  It put her in mind of the entry to the Forest Ribbon Trail.  She gripped the back of the bench.

They splashed on landing.

Then the rain resumed, twice as intense as before.  There wasn’t much light, now, and the water was cold and felt wetter, simulation or no.

“Many realms and slices of reality have depths,” Mr. Sunshine told them.  Only one edge of his body was illuminated by the light from the computer screen.  “The ritual is a simple one, to get deeper into the Ruins.  Necromancers and incarnate practitioners will have their own ways to travel here.  It could be a ritual like this, or an Other they regularly use, summoned or found.  This route is fast but expensive, and requires a controlled amount of power and presentation.  Continuing to use routes like this to go even deeper requires more power, using one Other as bait to be swallowed up by something larger, then using that as foundation to be swallowed up by something yet larger.”

Avery shivered as cold water ran down her neck.

The rain stopped.  The darkness leeched away.  There was a rooftop over them again.  The blue tint of the windows and the light that came through seemed way more intense than before, but it also corrected.

“Three rituals you’re likely to consider,’ he addressed them.  “Are the Implement, Demesne, and Familiar rituals.  Would you stand, Ms. Casabien?”

She stood, pushing her hood back.

“Yeah.  A few months ago, I did the ritual.”

“The item we choose is indicative of a lot about who we are.  How we approach the world.  It’s a decision we make only once, one object that can be held in our hands and comfortably lifted, and it works better if it’s not already magic.  Would you care to talk about yours?”

“Every object has a function.  Choose a shield as an implement, and it will tend to gather any benefits and spirits that gather around you, to better serve its function of protecting you from harm. The shield offers a different kind of protection than the raincoat.”

“Can I sit?” Jessica asked.

He motioned with a hand for her to sit, and she took a seat on the bench, heavy.

He went on.  “But that’s not all an implement is.  It is, like a magical diagram, a kind of series of signs, that tell the practice how to act around you.  Spirits will sit up and pay attention, standing at the ready to protect the shieldbearer.  Or the raincoat wearer.  And as the user practices, they will flow in a way that works with the implement.  Imagine that you yourself are a magical diagram, and the implement is an extension of that diagram.  Its messaging is very clear, and it colors every practice that flows through and around you, from the time of the ritual until the day you die.  It can make some practices weaker, at the same time it strengthens others.  Some, like me, choose not to commit to one, because they prefer to be more flexible.  But they are very powerful.  Our own headmaster uses a wand.  It can be used to point, to direct, and his practice leans that way as a result.  It can be held up a sleeve or used to make fine motions, and his own practice becomes subtle and finer to the touch.”

He hit a key, and the air around him filled with various objects and items.  Medal, dice, axe, glasses, dog collar, wallet, shoes, a hairpin, a fan…

“A side effect of the ritual is that what you choose is, even if kept out of sight, a badge of sorts, indicating who and what you are.  The implement tells Others what to expect of you.  Ms. Casabien makes no secret she works with Others of the Ruins, which we just visited, in a way.  She’s protected against the worst of that environment, she bears some of the benefits that Ruins others enjoy, and they’ll recognize her as one of their own.  It makes it easier, but makes dealing with non-Ruins Others harder.  Be careful when picking something that has power before it’s made an implement, or you may find yourself pulled more into that realm or power source, than the power source is drawn to you.  The ritual is a simple one, conducted over three days, where you become intimately acquainted with the object in question.  This too gets harder if the object is already carrying power.  It can be more complex if the object has a long and complicated history.”

He walked back to the laptop, and clicked.

“The Demesne.  A place of power.  It can be a room, a building.  It’s rarely more than that.  The Demesne is a tough clay to mold, but the advantage is that you can be a small god in its domain, while you’re there.  Everything and anything can be altered.  You can choose, with some restrictions, where the doors take you when you leave.  It can be a place where a curse does not progress and you are safe from its ravages.  A place where the abstract becomes real, and you can monitor, say, the value of stocks, as physical things.”

The room went dark, the lights going out, then the windows turning dark.

Other things lit up.  Buildings without windows or doors, as rough three-dimensional creations.  Advertisements played.  Roads as black as anything, with markers and lines in neon yellow.

The world kept expanding, buildings appearing.  The landscape at the horizon turned upward, then kept going.

“My Demesne.  I created it as a tool.  It became a place with twice the surface area of Earth.  Less populated, but all the same.  Every website, tool, and device has its analogue here.  Locations both mundane and, for example, like the Abyss, have loose analogues here.  Here, if I wish to do my programming, I can do it in five different ways, shaping the corresponding buildings and machinery, using consoles, among other things.”

He raised a hand, and a pillar rose up.  It had something that looked like a laser-traced engine block encased within it.  He rotated segments and moved parts.

“The Demesne can be a place to store power, to invest in it, to translate, for example, power from the Faerie into something analogous, like Visceral power.  It wouldn’t be an efficient translation, but I could do it.  Others, with preparation, could do it efficiently.  Others can be bound and brought to stay.  Whether they thrive will depend on how you’ve shaped your space, if you choose to have a Demesne.”

Avery did too. It might have been twice the surface area as Earth, but there weren’t any details.  Many objects were simple polygons, with only the edges and outlines traced in bright colors.

“I’ve spent more time on my demesne than most,” Ray observed.  “As big as it is in here, it’s only a large room in a building elsewhere.  The scale and versatility of this building are a product of time and power invested.”

He touched a wall.  A panel appeared, and circuit-like lines spread out.

Everything went dark.  They were back in the church.

“Familiars.  Mrs. Graubard, would you stand?  And bring your familiar to the front?”

Talia stood from her seat.  Her doll went with her.

“A bond to an Other.  Lifelong, inviolable.  A connection is drawn between practitioner and familiar.  This can be a controlling connection, picking a weak familiar and dominating it.  For a long time, this was the only way things were done.  It can be another kind of domineering relationship.  Picking a familiar with no true mind of its own.  Often, the familiar will be raised up, rounded out, until it is on a roughly even keel.  An echo or ghost could develop a full personality, instead of being a stuttering replay of events.  A vestige, or a broken shadow of an existence?  It could patch itself up.  What it pulls in is often consciously or unconsciously influenced by the practitioner, who has the power in the relationship.”

Avery felt a bit of a sick feeling, hearing that.

How much of Snowdrop was really Snowdrop?  How much was there because she’d been empowered as Avery’s boon companion?

She had other thoughts, like Matthew and Edith, and Matthew raising Edith, but Mr. Sunshine was still talking.

“Here we have what looks like a balanced relationship.  Now, every type of familiar relationship has its benefits.  A domineering one can turn the familiar into a target.  The familiar can be made to absorb the hurt, harm, or part of a curse that the practitioner has to endure.  They are, when beneficial, one and the same, for purposes of the power they have at their disposal, but the domineering practitioner retains control.”

He walked over to where Talia and her doll were.

“In an even relationship, Talia is filled to the brim with humanness.  With vitality, and power, and self.  Her partner, Effy, is a canopic doll.  Can you tell us why you chose it, Talia?”

“My mom made Effy on the day I was born,” Talia said.  She didn’t look so bothered to be in front of the class.  Avery only liked to be in front of people when playing sports.  “She said if I wasn’t satisfactory as a daughter, Effy would drag out my guts, put them inside herself, take my blood and skin to seal up the doll joints, and replace me.”

Avery looked around the room, to try to judge why people weren’t freaking out, but the most she saw was serious concern here and there.

“Hmm,” Ray made a sound.

“The way a canopic doll works, especially if it’s raised alongside someone, given a birthday every time I had a birthday, with parts replaced to match my height and shape and stuff as I grew up, ummm, when it harvests, it can become human, after.  She could become me.  I awoke on my own, secretly, then I talked to Effy, and neither of us were sure if my mom would keep me or Effy.  So we agreed she’d be my familiar.  That way my mom would have to keep us both or destroy us both.”

“Very clever,” Mr. Sunshine said.

Talia smiled.  “My mom thought so.  Things have been so nice ever since.  I think she was proud I thought of it.”

“The focus on blood, guts… that’s something you’ve noticed?” Mr. Sunshine asked.

“With the more equal bond, the pairing can exchange power.  Talia could give Effy a bit of her humanity as a boost, or personal power, to help her heal, or dig up that bit of extra strength.  That flow can work the other way.  Effy could give Talia some of her power as a doll, with that emphasis on blood, guts, and dollness.  If Effy gave Talia a lot of her personal power, let’s say half… what happens over the next day, or week?”

Some people raised hands.

“The power finds its balance.  Talia would naturally give Effy some of her power over time, until they were even.  Then they would recover together.  Eating well, sleeping well, and taking care of needs as human or Other help that recovery.  Can Effy become an animal?”

“The partnership of master and familiar is often a reprieve for the Other.  Temporary freedom from needs, demands, work, or anything else.  If Effy required a regular supply of blood and oil, as some dolls do-”

“But if you did, Effy, then you wouldn’t require it while you’re a familiar.  You get your sustenance from your master or partner.  If you had a lifespan, it would be put on pause.  Of course, needier others have a heavier drain on their master.”

“Humans still age, at roughly the same rate, but they often find they age easier while they have a familiar.  They may also find that they are more Other, in subtle ways.  The edges are rounded off in the need for sleep and food.  Some Others are better at that than others.”

He hit a button.  The air was filled with monstrous silhouettes and corresponding animals.

“The animal form is mortality.  For many Others, it’s a strong enticement.  To have a heartbeat.  To have warmth, the ability to taste food, and the ability to engage with the world.  An Other in animal form can, unless especially wild, go without too much remark in civilized society.  A dog can be walked, a mouse or snake kept in a sleeve, and a bird can fly overhead.”

Avery watched as Jorja’s familiar, which had been the floaty guy with the backwards baseball cap, now a terrier, followed the movement of birds through the air.

“There is a third type of practitioner-familiar bond.  Not the master, not the partner, but the subservient.  Frankly, if you want to pick a familiar that’s much stronger than you, the Blue Heron Institute can counsel you, but we’ll be doing it with a mind to discouraging you and making sure you’re fully equipped with the necessary information.  We would be dealing with the familiar as an Other, and you as its slave or servant, and we have no interest in doing that.”

Ray hit the button on his laptop, then closed it.  Above him, various magic circles with subtle differences floated, changing color and texture.

“Something to think about.  Imagine these big rituals, and what would happen if you used various power sources.  What’s the impact of feeding raw glamour, Faerie magic, into a Demesne ritual?  Or Ruins energy into a Familiar ritual with an Abyssal Other?  If you want to do this as a homework assignment and bring it to tomorrow’s class, I should get back to you with my response and notes by dinnertime.  Strictly optional.  Questions?”

Some hands went up.  Avery put her hand up.

“Why not do all three, all the time, right away?” someone asked.

“Because each has its drawbacks.  Each requires a close attention to who you are and what you want out of life.  Some families choose to give their child a firm push in one direction early on, forcing the decision.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I think many practitioners who get to old age will eventually pick up more options.  But to take all three is for the power hungry, desperate, and rushed.”

“With how cushy a hangout a Demesne is, do practitioners just, like, never leave?”

“It happens.  They can become Other.  More problematic is that a demesne without the practitioner tying it to reality may drift, in the sense that it stops being attached to any one place, and settles in one realm or another.  It can also drift in another way; if you never leave, you lose perspective on what the world and things are like.  It becomes loose, dreamlike, and self-referential.  It’s hard to say what happens when we don’t have a lot of material on the subject, but I would guess it can collapse.”

Avery waited, hand up, as he answered two more questions.  One about being forsworn.  She’d already heard that Charles had lost his Demesne.  Another about forcing Others to be familiars.  Already sort of covered with the ‘master’ type of practitioner-familiar relationship.

She still felt weird, thinking about Snowdrop.  Was she obligated to help Snowdrop live longer?  She’d made Snowdrop into this, and it had been self-serving.

But Snowdrop had personality traits, qualities.  Things that were very far from being Avery.  Maybe she should encourage that.  Except that might mean encouraging hanging out with goblins and stuff, which- that was complicated.

“Thank you, everyone,” Ray said.  “Go enjoy your lunches.  This afternoon Mr. Belanger and I will be available for lessons, questions, and handling any issues that have come up about the school, or anything you might need.”

She was being ignored, it seemed.  Avery dropped her hand.

Avery packed up, slipping her notebook into her bag, then slung it over one shoulder.  As people got sorted out, she hemmed, hawed, and tried to decide if she should deal with Mr. ‘Talking to a Brick Wall’ Sunshine or go find Lucy.

She decided on Lucy.  Verona was out there too, and there was a chance that class was already over, and Verona was taking the class with the mom that made a doll that might’ve killed her kid.  Which was freaky.

Verona was probably okay with it or something.  Like, she’d think it was cool, maybe.

“Thanks for- for stuff,” Avery said, by way of farewell to Jessica, stumbling.

Avery headed out the front door, blinking to switch to her Sight.  The sun was very bright for a second, and then the fog of her Sight dulled it.

She looked for and found Lucy and Verona’s tethers, and traced them to the back of one building.  She blinked to get her vision normal again, ducking into the shade of the building while her eyes adjusted to the sun and outdoors.

The class had ended, it seemed.  Mrs. Graubard was walking across the campus, closer to the side door at the right wing, with nine ceramic dolls in various clothes following behind, moving in sync, each four feet tall.

Lucy stood as Avery approached.

“I couldn’t leave class without breaking rules,” Avery said.  “Sorry, if that wasn’t right.”

“It’s good you stayed,” Lucy said.  “Can you tell us what was covered, later?”

“There might be stabbings if you don’t,” Verona said, holding the small pair of scissors she’d used during the awakening ritual.

“Of course,” Avery said.  “Apparently he’s pretty particular about stuff.  Sensitive programs that adapt to the students and stuff.”

“And he’s a jerk,” Lucy said.  “According to Zed.  Who may like Mr. Sunshine more than most.”

“Zed said there’s some story there.  Stuff with his son.  I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “I guess it’s lunchtime, or…?”

“There’s stuff to talk about,” Lucy told her.

Verona turned to one side, pulled her collar down, and slipped the scissors into position, held there with the bra strap.

“What’s this about?”

“They’re cleaned out of crap, hardened exterior.  Now I decide what fills up the space I cleaned out,” Verona said.  “Gonna be a bit of me.  Might repeat it a few times.”

“That’s cool.  We covered a lot of familiar stuff,” Avery said.  She looked back in the direction of the eastern wing of the school.  Where Snowdrop might still be sleeping.  “Also rituals, the Ruins, Demesne and Implement stuff.”

“Damn,” Verona said.  She frowned.

They walked down toward the road, rather than to any of the big student hangouts, like the bridge or anything.  A few older teens had climbed into cars and were heading out, so they stuck to the roadside.

“So,” Lucy said, once they were far enough away.  “Bristow and Graubard were talking about us.  And Kennet.”

“After I got kicked out of class, I went for a walk, sorta thought I’d cool off, then I felt that connection twinge.  Heard them saying my name.  Heard a bit of what came after.  Kennet.”

“We know Alexander used some tricks with his place of power, tying it to the school, to have more claim over everything.  And Bristow got the boot.”

“I was close enough to hear stuff,” Verona said.  “Standing with Graubard.  Bristow wants to teach some classes, and to be a more or less full time teacher, like Sunshine, Belanger, and Durocher.”

“Which is a play right?” Avery asked.  “Jessica told Lucy and me that there was something going on there.  That people would have to take sides.”

“Starting to teach, talking to guest teachers.  Maneuvering,” Lucy elaborated.

Verona nodded, enthusiastic.  “It sounded like he wasn’t told that there would even be summer classes.  And there’s some families that Alexander hasn’t been involving as much, in the same way, not telling them about the classes.  A lot of them stopped coming because of tuition hikes.  Bristow was saying they can have the staff build and stuff without too much disruption over the summer, and lower tuition, to better serve the community.”

Lucy frowned.  “What’s Bristow’s deal?  Ex-headmaster, and?”

“You know how people can figure out there’s weird stuff going on?  And become victim to it, like Brie almost was, and Gabe and the others?  People on the border?” Verona asked.

“Yep,” Lucy answered.

“He collects ’em.  The Aware.  People who get caught up in urban legends, who get caught up in routines like channel surfing and playing video games until they lose their humanity, people who get mixed up in Other stuff more than usual.  Owns some apartment buildings and just has like, one building with fifty apartments, each with one weird person.  Or whatever.”

“Crazy,” Avery said, making a face.  “Must be a weird atmosphere.”

“He apparently tried to get a different kind of school going, and it failed,” Verona said.  “He likes running schools.  But mostly he does property management, with select renters.  There’s a lot of balancing of karma and stuff, as part of it.”

“I noticed there’s not a lot on karma in the class selection,” Lucy commented.  “Um, but getting more on topic, he was talking about me, about us.”

“And Kennet?” Verona asked.

“Because that’s way different,” Verona said.  “If it was talking about us, they could just be shooting the shit.  Mrs. Graubard liked how I came to her class, I knew what I wanted to do, I knew what materials I needed, and I had good questions for her.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “But that’s a problem, if we got their attention and they have information on us, now.”

“We could let the Kennet Others know,” Avery said.  “Keep that line of communication open, and let them decide how to deal with it?”

“I don’t have my phone with me,” Verona said.  “Dodging calls from my dad, kinda.  Thought maybe it’d be easier if I didn’t have it close to me for the connections and whatever.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “I’ll call?”

Verona nudged Avery. “You mentioned Jessica.  She knows about the Ruins, right?”

“Can she help us any?  Tell us what to look for, or how we might go hunting for the bits of the Carmine Beast?”

“I don’t know if she’d be willing.  She’s pretty closed off.  But I asked again about maybe getting Ruins lessons from her in exchange for me helping her look for her cousin-”

“Matthew,” Lucy said.

“Update.  Some practitioners named Graubard and Bristow were talking about us and about Kennet.  I think they might be digging for info, separate from Alexander.  You know them?”

Lucy looked at the two of them.

“You know Graubard.  And of Bristow.  Okay.  That’s great.  Uhh, middle aged.  So probably the same guy.  Not the son.”

“Thanks.  No problem.  Yeah.  Getting the feeling, yeah.  Yeah.  Alright, bye, will do.”

“Well?” Verona asked.

“Matthew is going to talk to some people he used to know.  Which gets complicated because he apparently dropped off the map after everything.”

His dad being Heartless, then Edith and the Doom.

Avery guessed Lucy wasn’t elaborating in case there were eavesdroppers.

“Jessica might not be willing, but the demonstration in class included a ritual to dive deeper into the Ruins,” Avery said.  “You can apparently do it with other types of realm.  But it’s expensive, messy, and more dangerous.”

“We might want to save that for when we know exactly where we’re diving then,” Verona said.

“We also need to figure out bindings, and how to protect ourselves against Fae and complex spirits,” Lucy said.  “Can we use Alexander’s type of practice to answer a question?  It would be really useful to be able to write some names out and get a firm yes or no about whether we have the right culprits.”

“Except they’d look back,” Avery said.

“There is that,” Lucy admitted.

“That’s our big problem.  We don’t just need to be able to put up a fight, if they get vicious,” Verona jumped in.  She looked animated.  “We need to put up a fight in a way that doesn’t let Edith or Matthew wear the furs and make a claim to the name.  Or Maricica, or Charles, if that would even work.”

“That’s hard,” Avery said.

Verona nodded, animated.  “It’s crazy hard.  We’d have to not only figure out who did it, but also develop a master-stroke that can cover a bunch of different kinds of Other without giving them the ability to press this… you can call it a big red furry button.”

“Big red furry button, ugh,” Lucy said.

It was weird that Verona, for once, was super worked up about stuff having to do with the case, if it could be called that.  Except Verona seemed worked up about a bunch of stuff.  Bouncy and hyper and…

“It’s awful,” Lucy said.

The dirt road wasn’t seeing much traffic, now that the older kids had driven off to go elsewhere.  Probably picking up supplies or getting food.  One car was passing through, though.

“There’s other factors,” Lucy said.  “It’s not even just that we have to figure it out.  It’s-”

“Alexander,” Avery cut in.

“Absolutely.  The deal we struck was that when we solved the case-”

The other two girls turned, following her gaze.

The car slowed, then stopped.  Black and sleek, though the dirt road meant it had kicked up a ridiculous amount of muck around the wheels and undercarriage.  The windows were tinted blue.

“Do you want a ride?” Alexander asked.

“I think a ride with a strange, manipulative older man would be creepy and weird,” Lucy said.

Alexander smiled, then, without rolling up the windows, pulled ahead and off to the side of the road, kind of blocking their way forward.  Not that they’d been going anywhere.  They’d been walking and talking.

He got out, closed his door, and leaned against it, one ankle crossed over the other, arms folded.  “I wanted to talk.”

“Apparently,” Verona said.

“First, about Raymond.  He’s surprisingly anxious, as personalities go, and today was his first class with more than five students at a time, since some heavy personal events.  It took him a while to figure out a way to teach without his stomach or tongue tying themselves in knots.  He’s attached to his students and loves imparting knowledge, but he struggles to convey himself at the best of times.  His adaptive, computer-planned lessons help with that, but you three are wrenches in that machine.  Big unknowns.  Wild practitioners.”

“You seem very pleased Mrs. Durocher figured that out for you,” Lucy said.

“I am.  But that’s another topic.  Raymond is a kind soul, but not an especially adroit one.  If you waited, approached him with a level tone, and told him how you felt, I think he would surprise you in a good way.”

“Okay,” Lucy answered.

“I’ve pledged to make myself available to help solve student problems this afternoon,” Alexander said, “But I’d like to block out some time to have a serious discussion with you three, today.  I’ve kept to my pledge, about staying hands off from Kennet, and keeping others hands off, until five years pass or the mystery of the Carmine Beast is solved.  But I find myself in an awkward position with one aspect of it.”

“Bristow?” Avery asked.

“So you know.  He would like to start a civil war, here.  To make his second bid to reclaim the role of headmaster.  I recognize that you’re capable of giving him a monumental advantage in that, if you so choose.  You haven’t, as far as I know, sworn not to share that information.  I haven’t threatened or extorted you to make you agree to, and I wouldn’t.”

“It might have the opposite effect,” Lucy asked.

“It might.  My predecessor and would-be successor is antagonistic toward me.  And that’s putting it lightly.  He’s aware of how I operate, and he has a diverse toolbox and an amazing tendency to be a headache and a thorn in my side.  That is something I remain equipped to deal with.  I can deal with the civil war.  But Brie asked questions online before Zed found her, and my would-be successor, who I’m being careful not to name, found one of those dangling threads.  He thinks the silence and secrecy is mine, to my own ends, and anything reasonable I could try to use to deter him would only encourage, instead.”

“This seems a lot like your problem is becoming our problem,” Verona said.

“Thank you for saying that, because I definitely had that feeling,” Lucy added.

Avery nodded, eyebrows knit together.

“He would have found the dangling thread and investigated, whatever happened.  But the situation being what it is only exacerbates it.  He thinks my power base is there, and I don’t really have a power base like he imagines it.  He seems to think I do, but that’s because that’s how he operates.  I prefer a lighter hand.”

“We’ve already taken some preliminary steps to handle things.  But thank you for the information.”

“You’ll need more.  About who he is, how he operates, what to expect.  In the interest of keeping the spirit of our deal, and doing what I can for the letter of it, I can tell you.  We could do it here, by the side of the road, or in a spare room, now or some time this afternoon.  When to expect him, ways you could handle him.  Measures.”

Avery thought of all of that, and of juggling lunch, which was imminent, and- her stomach growled.

“You can put your request in for lunch at the kitchen.  Then we can see about hammering this out.”

“Can we have a second?” Avery asked.

“I’ll get a sip of water.  Excuse me.”

He stepped away from his car, opened the door, and climbed in.  He shut the door and rolled up the windows, giving them some privacy.  They still walked a distance away.

None of the three of them said much.

Mostly, they took it in, thinking about the implications.

“We kind of have-” Lucy started.

“-We should,” Verona said.  “Because of the deals we made.  To protect Kennet.”

“But he’s so dangerous,” Lucy said, in contradiction to the aborted sentence of a few seconds ago.

Avery turned, looking at the car with the blue tinted windows.  She could only barely see Alexander’s face.  With her Sight, he stood out more, especially when he turned his head to take a gulp of water from a bottle.

Zed had said that Jessica was someone they could trust, if not necessarily befriend.  That much had been spot on.  Jessica seemed to know what she was talking about, on the rare occasion she said more than a few words on a subject.  And she’d had words about Alexander and people like Alexander.

Was this how it went, with all the types of situation like Jessica had described?  Government and police and big business and whatever?  Stuff like police and schools probably meant a lot of different stuff to Jessica than to Avery, even based on the little Avery had learned in school, but she had a general sense of it.  She was kind of dealing with it now, and she could imagine it playing out all over the place.  That one guy who was crazy smart, driven, and essential because of other stuff that was going on?  Or untouchable or inevitable?

Every dealing with him felt like you were at a disadvantage, and felt like you were losing a bit.  And before you knew it, a whole war had happened and you’d lost too many of the battles.

“I don’t want to,” Avery said.

“Neither do I,” Lucy said.  “But do we really want to go back to Matthew and Edith and say, like, this one practitioner with a good bit of clout and connections is about to drop a huge mess on Kennet, sorry we can’t help more?”

“Is it so bad if we trust them to handle it?” Avery asked.

“It’s bad if we trust them to handle it and one of them panics and presses the big fuzzy red button,” Verona noted.  “If it’s any consolation, we can be a pain in Alexander’s butt for a bit.”

“Small consolation,” Lucy said.

They had to go and say yes, they’d have that appointment with him over lunch or sometime this afternoon.  Yes, they’d get some notes on strategy and stuff.

And Alexander would be super unsuprised that they were saying yes.  He’d probably known before rolling down his windows to offer them a ride.  That was what made this feel so awful.