“It’s too hot for this,” Lucy said.
“As much as I appreciate a duel that is distilled down to the two combatants, all other things removed from the field… reality rarely obliges,” Guilherme said. He wore his hot boy look, matching her in size, though he had the lines of muscles down his body. “It’s good to learn how to fight effectively when you have sweat in your eyes and the sun beating down on you.”
They were a ways down the river from Kennet, with shale rock all around them. Their ‘arena’ was a large bit of flat rock, with the last fifth of the rock overhanging the shallow river below. Lucy kicked one of the loose, flat, straight-edged stones, and it clattered over the edge.
She was wearing an athletic top and shorts, sneakers, and a coating of sweat that had picked up a fair amount of dust. There wasn’t enough of a breeze to give any relief. If the river had been deeper, she might have kicked off her sneakers and dove in. The sweat traced rivers down her.
The hot lead was uncomfortably warm against the back of her hand, held there by bandages she’d put some inscriptions on. The inscriptions fed power down to her palm, which let her comfortably hold a spear. Guilherme was unarmed, wearing a kilt with long pants and sandals strapped to his feet with leather thongs. He was sweaty too, but it looked like he wanted to sweat, because of the accent that sweat gave, and how it traced his body. He had a faint smile, like he was enjoying himself, or he knew what he was doing with the sweat and he was smug about it.
She felt unreasonably irritated at that.
On another, larger rock nearby, Verona lay on a towel, wearing a swimsuit top and shorts, chin on her hands, watching. She’d been reading earlier, and wading in the water, while Lucy had been suffering.
“It would be nice to switch it up, then,” she said. “Bit of cold rain, maybe? We could practice fighting in that.”
Drench Verona while we’re at it.
“Then what are you going to do about it?” Guilherme asked.
“She’s going to complain!” Verona called out. “Lots!”
Lucy felt the urge to go on the offensive, just for the chance to deal with that smile, but every time she indulged in those urges, Guilherme handily smacked her down. More than usual.
“Something to build on another time, maybe,” Guilherme said. “You’re favoring the spear, I see.”
Lucy twirled the spear, letting it become a pen, then a spear again. “And?”
“Because it’s easy? Hammers and stuff make my arm hurt if I hold them too long, swords are similar, but they’re harder to swing than you’d think. Axes are similar.”
“Daggers and fans and stuff are too short. Spears are awkward if you get in close enough, but if you’re that close I lose anyway. I feel like as long as I have the spear, I lose in five seconds instead of three.”
“You had another style when you dueled me, distracting the goblins from Brie Callie. Changing weapons.”
Lucy shrugged. “Is there a point?”
The boy smiled. “To a spear?”
“Don’t ignore your instincts. They’re better than most. It would be interesting to chase those instincts, and see how your style as a fighter and practitioner develop.”
“If it means I’m not losing as much.”
“You put a lot of emphasis on that. On not losing.”
“A few years ago, I got the talk with my mom.”
“Ooh,” Verona chimed in. Lucy immediately flipped her the finger.
“Not that talk,” Lucy said.
“My dad just gave me this book from the 90s and told me to ask if I had any questions,” Verona said. “I didn’t ask, I just wooble-searched stuff.”
“The racism talk,” Lucy said. “What you do in a bad situation.”
“I was told the best defense is not being in the situation in the first place,” Lucy said. “Run away, because the best way to handle a fight is to not be in that fight in the first place. Defend yourself. Be loud, get help. Get eyes or a recording on the scene, because cowards don’t like being seen.”
“All sensible,” Guilherme said. “Except?”
“Except you can’t avoid all the fights, can you? I can’t, trying to protect my friends, protect Kennet.”
“No. You’re right, and that’s not the whole answer,” Guilherme said.
“You. You specifically, there’s something else there. You should run, you should call for help, you should be visible, you should defend yourself. Except, for Lucy Ellingson in particular…”
“I feel like this is one of my therapy sessions.”
“Except… if you always run or walk away, if you always take that sensible course, if you defend yourself, and they, the worst people, they’re always on the offense? Looking for fights? It feels like I’m, we’re, ceding too much ground.”
Verona shuffled around a bit. She had sat up, sitting cross-legged on her towel in the shade.
Lucy looked up and around.
There was no tree or cloud overhead to cast that shade.
“Lucy,” Guilherme said.
“I’ve talked with Avery at length about who she wants to end up becoming. Do you want to be someone who holds her spear, point turned outward, to keep the enemy at bay? To buy a few more seconds? If you do, I won’t argue, and I’ll help you with that.”
“I want to win, but I’m thirteen and I’m inexperienced. I’m up against a few hundred or a few thousand years of experience and history here.”
“But you’re still ceding ground. You’re tired, and you’re no closer to a win.”
“You’re mixing up the two things, now.”
“Yes, but it was mixed up before. Many experts at fighting will say their weapon is an extension of their body, and it moves accordingly. For a true warrior, I believe the weapon and fighting style should be more than an extension of the body. It should be an extension of Self.”
“So coooool,” Verona said. She adjusted her posture, arms extending out over the edge of the rock she was lying on.
Lucy felt a bit of sweat roll into her eyes, stinging. She blinked it out.
“Yes?” Guilherme asked her, when she was done.
“I’m not against it, I don’t think. What do I do? I’m supposed to decide if I want to be safe or…?”
“You do what you want to do. Do you have a goal? A you that you want to chase? Avery does.”
“I haven’t given it a lot of thought. Mostly… picking clothes out to be, I call it bulletproof.”
Guilherme nodded, like this made sense, which it didn’t, really.
“Takes time, energy, thinking, trying to be a few steps ahead. My clothes, my hair. How I act, being ready with something to say before someone says something subtle. Maybe I have less energy to think about that stuff.”
“Your hair is special,” Guilherme said. “To Other eyes, to the Sight of your friends.”
Lucy shrugged. Comments like that were very close to being the sort where she would’ve liked to have something to say, to push back or call them out, but like an annoying Faerie, he hadn’t made that easy.
Her hair took time and effort. It couldn’t be bulletproof in the same way as her clothes. Or it could, with more chemicals, heat, and straighteners, but she didn’t want to do that. Because to a certain degree, it was her. Something she reserved for herself.
“What does it matter?” she asked.
“If we had the summer, I would have made your training into something that helped hone you into something authentic,” Guilherme told her.
“I think Lucy’s authentic,” Verona said, rolling over onto her back, arms stretched out over her head.
“Do you think you’re authentic?” Guilherme asked Lucy.
“Are you accusing me of being something else?” Lucy retorted.
“I’m not accusing. I’m remarking that in fighting style and in other respects, you’re held back.”
Verona laughed. “Lucy doesn’t hold back when she has something to say. I love it.”
Guilherme didn’t move, standing on the other side of the rock, with a bead of sweat running down his cheekbone and cheek. Staring at Lucy, daring her to respond.
“But I hold back in other ways,” Lucy said. “Sure.”
Lucy glanced at Verona, and saw that Verona’s smile was gone. There was just a searching look, maybe a bit sad or surprised. Like Verona had thought she had all the answers and had just found herself bereft.
“I’m not sure if I’m more annoyed at this pseudo-therapy or at my actual asshole therapist’s therapy,” Lucy said.
“If we had the summer I’d annoy you into breaking loose, or use the sparring as a way for you to search yourself, forcing you to dig deeper until you found your answers and found a way to match me. But we don’t have the summer, and in a short while, you will leave for hostile territory. I think you’re annoyed by these matches, more than you feel immediately empowered by them. You come because you’re worried and you want to be ready for any inevitable confrontations.”
“Then we don’t have time to waste. If we’re to match your fighting style to your Self, I want your help, to speed things along, and we can’t afford to travel too far down this road of your Self following after a fighting style. This… reserved, careful fighting.”
“Reserved and careful can be good, can’t it?” Lucy asked. “I mean, if there’s a good chance I’ll end up fighting some pretty big and scary things? Ghosts and goblins and eyeball-stealing shadow monsters.”
“It can. As I said, if that’s what you want to do, I can help you. But is it what you want? Think, because you’ve already shown us all bits and pieces of yourself. You’ve made declarations, you’ve dressed yourself up, and you’ve been dressed up by forces that reflect the true you.”
“You’re thinking of the awakening ritual. I brought two knives.”
“The fox mask. The announcement I made then. Sure.”
“Verona,” Guilherme called out, not taking his eyes off Lucy. “Any input?”
Verona was sitting up, digging through her bag.
She wrapped her beach towel around her waist, then jogged down, book under one arm.
The patch of shade followed Verona.
Lucy poked at the towel, moving it so she could see what was scrawled on it. A darkness rune with some controls, elaboration, insulation, and corresponding writing.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“If I go home with a tan or a sunburn, my dad will be like, ‘if you have time to sit in the sun, you have time to help with the basement’.”
“Show us what you were going to show us, Verona,” Guilherme said.
She opened it, showing Lucy.
A picture. Lucy with the fox mask on, surrounded by rolling smoke. There were swords and daggers lying around. It had been done in watercolor. Her hair had pink to it.
“My Sight? The swords aren’t usually like that, though.”
“I wasn’t sure if they’d be stuck in stone or lying around,” Verona said.
“Stuck in stone, and they look older, like-”
Lucy stopped as Guilherme drew closer. He held out a hand.
She’d lifted her spear, unconsciously.
“Show me,” he told her.
Wary, she held out a hand, and she accepted the glamour. It was like dust, but heavier, and it felt like cold metal that had just the edges heated by sun.
“I’m not very good at this.”
“Act confident, let others be the judge of that. And if you don’t want to be judged, then deny them the opportunity.”
She moved her hands with care, drawing out a sword. It was crude and lacked detail, and the edge was wobbly. But it more or less lined up.
Guilherme walked between her and the sword, which made her step back.
When she looked down, the sword was refined, accurate, detailed, with touches of rust and cracks here and there.
There were others in the background, too.
“What else?” he asked.
“Keep going. I’ll help. I’ll supply the glamour necessary.”
She drew out more swords. A knife. She had to try the hand movements to change colors a few times before she could wipe glamour on rocks and turn it into watercolor.
Every time she looked up from her work, Guilherme had extended it. Out to the river, to trees.
“Is this a trap?” Verona asked.
“I have no interest in trapping you. It’s amusing, to teach the three of you. It’s useful, to protect Kennet and protect myself through Kennet.”
“Okay,” Verona said. “It might not be something you’re interested in, but you’re Faerie, does that mean you’ll try to trap us on an instinctual level? Without even meaning to?”
“I won’t. I’ll be mindful.”
“Is it something that could be used against us?” Verona asked.
Guilherme met Lucy’s eyes. Lucy wanted to play off of that, like the moment called for her to take charge, declare that this was her sparring, her lesson…
And she wasn’t sure where that want came from.
“Is it?” Lucy asked Guilherme, acting in contradiction to the feeling.
“It would be a Faerie who used this against you, and if they were strong enough to do it in a quick manner, you’ve likely already lost. For most purposes, this is something good to set up, if you have the time. It gets faster to set up each time you do it. If you don’t like the arena you’re fighting in, decide the arena.”
“It’s too fricking hot,” Lucy said. “Can I change that?”
“You can do what you want.”
“I could, maybe, but I don’t know the hand motions.”
He touched her wrists and manipulated her hands. His arm looped over her head as he turned her, full body, like they were dancing. The dust drifted from her hands as she did a full turn. She stepped away from him.
He moved his hands, and she moved hers.
It was like blowing air over hot soup. Cooling it momentarily. It washed out.
Verona moved the beach towel to her shoulders, wrapping it around her upper body.
Lucy felt the chill, too, especially with the sweating from the walk over and the early sparring. But she’d much rather be cold than be hot.
“There’s an advantage to lining up a concrete image with something abstract. It gives you more power and influence over that abstract. If this lines up with what you See and the lines become blurry, you can make small, careful adjustments. Keeping in mind, of course, that glamour is fragile.”
“Can this be used against her?” Verona asked. “I’m wanting to be careful of traps, here, and we know Augury can be turned back on the Augur. If they look, the target can look back, or strike out through that view-window.”
“This is a reflection of what she sees. The artist paints a picture, the canvas gets attacked. It’s not a window that a fist could come through to punch the person on the other side. The danger is that she puts power and time into this and it could break with one decisive move.”
Lucy looked around. “Can I make snow? How-?”
Guilherme raised a hand, index finger and thumb meeting to form a circle. He made the hand gesture for ‘brighten’ within the circle. it created a blurry point of white that started drifting with the wind as he pulled his hand away.
More fat snowflakes drifted out across the space, also following the wind’s course.
Lucy mimed the action, making fat snowflakes, then, with a much smaller circle made with her fingers, a pinpoint bit of blue. She hurled it down, and it splashed against the ground.
A light, cold rain began to fall.
“I’d call you a dickwad if I thought I could get away with it,” Verona said, huddling more in her beach towel, as the light sleet and snow touched her. She pulled one leg up, like she could stand like a flamingo and keep more of her body within the towel.
Lucy smiled. Worth it. She wiped at her face and arms, using the rain to help get some of the dust off, from the mid-sparring falls and stuff.
Verona, already shivering, put her hands out to catch some of the rain and snow. She pinched the moisture, then began to do the twirly dance. Lucy swept her friend up in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her side.
“No! Let me warm this up!” Verona protested.
“Good,” Guilherme said. “A space like this is fragile and easily manipulated, but you’ve already connected to one of the ways to protect it. Don’t give them the opportunity. If they take the time to answer it, take that same amount of time to target them. Using the environment and choosing where you stand is as important as a weapon thrust.”
Lucy nodded, still holding Verona.
“There’s a dude walking down the shore with his dog,” Verona said. “I’m guessing this is a protected space from innocents, but I think you should drop this glamour.”
Lucy twisted. Verona wriggled, bringing Lucy’s attention back to her, and keeping her pinned, arms against her sides, towel wrapped around her. Lucy gripped the towel to pull it tighter, like a straightjacket.
“A reflection of your Sight is only one part of you,” Guilherme said. “There are other things to decide, before we return to the sparring.”
“Do we need to worry about the guy on the shoreside?” Lucy asked. Verona wriggled harder.
“Damn it,” Verona muttered.
Lucy contrived to look, with Verona struggling.
The ‘dude’ and the dog were John Stiles and Doglick. Lucy wasn’t sure who was supposed to be the ‘dude’ and who was supposed to be the Dog.
“Let me go, fix the temperature, and I’ll do you a solid,” Verona said.
It was getting a bit chilly, and Lucy had already been both sweaty and lightly dressed. She took a bit more glamour from Guilherme, then started to do the careful twirl. She paused. “Do I do it in reverse?”
“What do you think? Follow your instincts.”
She mimed the effect from before, reversing it.
The wave of warm air seemed to pass like lapping waves on a shore, pressing up against her. Thing was, the temperature fluctuated. A ‘lap’ of pleasantly warm air, a lap of cold, alternating. The wind picked up.
Guilherme made adjustments, smoothing it out. The temperature leveled out as something closer to room temperature. Lucy shivered, her skin prickling as it changed. “We can discuss the particulars of layers and environment later. For now, you.”
Verona wriggled, and Lucy released her. Verona adjusted her beach towel, turning it into a skirt, then began using the glamour-rain she’d grabbed earlier to start fashioning a spare fox mask. She painted it with traces of pink, rather than orange-red.
“I thought about tweaking your hair, to match up with what it looks like to my Sight, but I thought the mask would be a better bet.”
“Good call,” Lucy said. “A mask is probably better if I’m… what are we doing, here? Dressing me up for battle?”
“Emphasizing you. A similar idea,” Guilherme told her. “Why don’t you touch up your own hair?”
“If this space is a reflection of your inner Self and gaze, then try dressing yourself up. Experiment.”
Lucy wiped her hands on her pants, then reached back for her ponytail. “Remind me of the gesture for extension?”
Verona showed her, while Guilherme stood back.
John caught up with them, going to Guilherme’s side. Doglick, the feral goblin, followed along on all fours, tongue lolling, bug-eyes peering through hair. Lucy worked on her hair, drawing out its length and scale. Something more elaborate, that she wouldn’t be able to maintain with a team helping her.
She adjusted her clothes, and dressed up the spot where the hot lead felt like it was burning a hole in the back of her hand, making the lead and the wrapping that held it there a bit more pronounced.
“John will spar with you,” Guilherme said.
Lucy’s eyebrows went up. She took the mask from Verona.
“No guns,” Guilherme told John.
“And for the sake of fairness, no guns for you either,” he told Lucy.
“I didn’t think that was an option.”
“John wouldn’t die from gunshots, but it changes the fight if you have the option and he doesn’t.”
Lucy nodded. Her hair had a different weight, her ponytail drawn out large, framed in glowing pink highlights. She wore the pink fox mask with the bright eyes and she drew out her pen, flicking it out into spear form.
“You’re almost out of power for that,” John observed.
He drew his combat knife.
Which, Lucy thought, was a good reminder of the lessons her mom had been trying to instill in her before. To run away, call for help. In a real fight, both people got hurt or, very often, it would be the disadvantaged party that got hurt. The smaller person, or the girl, or the minority. Sometimes the hurt wouldn’t be obvious or immediate. If Lucy fought with a classmate, like she had with Logan not that long before ‘the talk’, her reputation would suffer more than his, whether she won or lost, because she was black.
That talk had been when Paul was still around. A bit of a loss of innocence. A time she’d started to really see the world as something else. She’d laid a lot of that at Paul’s feet, but it wasn’t all him.
She sighed, rolling her shoulders a bit. She was still stiff from the earlier sparring.
“Lucy?” Guilherme stated.
“You still have glamour on your hands and feet. This territory is painted up as yours. It’s paying attention to you.”
Before she could process that, John was moving, striding toward her.
She almost defaulted to her earlier habits. Holding back, spear ready.
But she didn’t want to do that or be that. She’d felt guilty doing it for the Hungry Choir night, with Avery jumping into the fray while Lucy hung back. She wanted to be able to protect her friends, to handle stuff instead of being scared.
She felt her heart skip a beat as her brain touched on another memory. John coming at her, grabbing her, and putting a gun to her head.
Now he came at her again. She stepped forward, and twirled the pen. Turning it into a whip.
She flicked it, her whole arm moving with the motion. John tried to catch it and failed. She struck out again, aiming low, where he couldn’t grab it. Then again-
He seized it out of the air.
She twirled the pen, making it a spear, to match how far John was from her. She poked, more to keep him from advancing any further, and he swiped.
Pen cut in half, spear destroyed.
She shifted footing, moving to the side. Could she pick up a stone, or-
She grabbed a rusty sword out of the ground, then a stone.
John lunged, picking up in speed all of a sudden, and she turned the rock into a mace, flanged, like a fleur-de-lis. She swung, and he met it with his palm, wincing a bit. He stabbed, and she brought the sword into the way.
“Easy, John!” Verona called out, with a note of anxiousness in her voice.
He was way stronger than Lucy, and she had to adapt. She let go of her weapons, stumbled back, and then fell.
“Don’t hurt my friend,” Verona added.
Another bit of shale rock, another stone mace, same style.
The rock behind Lucy was sloped down and away, and it made it hard to get herself propped up or back to a standing position.
She still had glamour on her hand. A swift hand motion- she raised up a bit of rock, to grab, prop herself up, and help push herself to the side as John bent down to grab her.
To some limited, fragile degree, she could play with the rules here. She made a more general motion, like she had when she’d created the warm breeze, to push-
John’s boot scuffed the rock, kicking little flecks of shale and grit at her. She winced, squinting, and flopped back down, landing hard. He bent down, and she swung the mace. Again, he caught it, backhanded this time. Again, he winced. But he was free to bring the knife down toward her, probably to hold it at her throat.
Her heart skipped again. She didn’t want to be at his mercy again. Not like when they’d met at his place. She drew a sword out of the ground where there’d been none, and met the knife blade with the sword blade.
He pressed, and the blade shattered like glass, but she was able to pull out another weapon, using the weapon ring. A knife, this time. She brought the point out toward John, and struck at the combat knife, caught the handle-guard, and knocked it from his grip. He was willing to abandon the weapon to avoid getting cut.
“You were almost out of power, and after several uses of the ring and hot lead, you’re still almost out of power,” Guilherme said. “Why?”
Because I’m being more me. There’s more Self to draw on. Feeding the battery with a bit of hot lead, a bit of Lucy.
She’d declared the knives on awakening. Blade. Edge. Offense. She scraped her fingers against the ground, and pulled up another weapon using glamour. She had, with Guilherme’s help, decorated this battlefield with blades. I was easy to just believe that there were weapons scattered around, waiting to be scooped up. She found the handle and it came out of the ground as a knife.
She didn’t want to cede ground.
He backed away a few steps and she leaped, and turned while moving her hand through the air, like she’d tried to do before. To create that wind, to help augment her movement.
Belief played into glamour and she had to wholeheartedly buy into what she was doing, for this to work. Covering more distance, knives aimed at John, hair billowing and beautiful behind her, her face that of a glaring fox.
John caught the knife blades, letting them sink into his palms. His fingers wrapped around to the backs of her hands.
“I gave you this,” he told her. “It was mine originally, I earned its power, and I’ll take some of that power now.”
She looked. His fingertips grazed the hot lead. His eyes glowed a faint orange.
She felt the pull against her Self as the weapon ring began drinking other power. She still had the glamour rock, but-
They landed in water, her atop John. His hand, bloody from a knife wound, cupped her head, which wasn’t positioned to be cushioned by his body. She felt the force of it hitting the rocky riverbed. Warm water splashed her.
He pushed her over, into the water, and for a moment, she couldn’t breathe. He lifted her out.
The glamour had been washed away. He’d thrown the two of them into the shallow river for just that purpose. Leaving her with a drained weapon ring, with him right beside her.
“Kay,” she said, by way of surrender. “Alright.”
He pulled back, sitting in the water, and then stood. He extended a hand for her. The wound was already closing up.
She accepted it, standing, dripping wet.
“Did you get hurt in the fall?”
“Frig,” Lucy muttered. Water dripped off of her. It looked like the battlefield, her mask, and the minor alterations to the colors of her clothes had been lost in the splash.
“John can match me in serious confrontation,” Guilherme said. “And you lasted considerably longer than four seconds against him there.”
“Everything okay?” Verona asked.
Lucy nodded, huffing a bit for breath. “Annoyed at being wet, but…”
She took a second to recover her breath.
“Okay,” she said, to Verona, to John, to Guilherme, who was using a foot to nudge Doglick so the goblin wasn’t so close to him. This works, kind of. “Okay.”
They entered the school and headed for the student lounge area. People were eating, and Lucy couldn’t decide if she was ravenous because of the energy the morning had required, or if she was too stressed out to eat.
It looked like some were having a brunch, others were having a proper lunch, and others were just hanging out. It sort of made sense, since it was eleven thirty. Not quite noon.
A few of the older students, who Lucy guessed weren’t quite old enough to be in the Western wing of the school were actually taking tea. It weirded her out that that was actually a thing people did. ‘Take tea’, exchanging thank-yous while being served by one of their number.
Some of them had books open. It looked like some of the materials from the enchanting class. Verona had walked her through it, but Verona had read some of this book and been there for the first half hour of class, so a lot of it went over Lucy’s head.
It was irritating, passing through the classroom where Ray had been a dick to her. Irritating, a bit, that Verona was good enough at the enchanting stuff that her teacher was apparently super into it. That Avery had her niche.
Lucy’s grades were better than either of the other two when it came to regular classes. She even had the same grade as Avery’s in phys ed, because all you really had to do was show up and try, and probably because Lucy’s mom had given Mr. Bader flack.
A topsy turvy world, when Verona was the good, engaged student, and all Lucy wanted to do was lie down in bed and listen to music.
“Are you tired?” Avery asked Snowdrop.
“No,” Snowdrop said, sullen. “I didn’t have any milk or snacks earlier, and that definitely doesn’t make me sleepy. I’m totally diurnal now!”
“Come on. Go small,” Avery said, taking Snowdrop’s hand and lifting.
“Pain in the ass, I want to stay awake. You’re so mean to me.” Snowdrop became a small opossum, and allowed Avery to lift her up into her arms. She kept making noises, like she was rambling.
“She okay?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah,” Avery said. “Think so.”
“Do we want to eat, or wait to eat? I’m not sure what we’re doing this afternoon, if we’re seeing Alexander soon. There’s more enchanting classes, right?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah,” Verona said. “Covering different stuff. Dolls and moving hallows.”
“It might be nice to take a class all together,” Avery said, stroking Snowdrop, with one hand partially covering her eyes. The opossum pup was already asleep.
“I’m more focused on Alexander,” Lucy said. “Who might be watching us right now.”
“Creepy. Hey, Alexander,” Verona said. “If you can hear this, you’re creepy.”
“Saying his name might be plucking the cord of connections,” Lucy said. “I ran into that earlier. He may have actually heard you say that.”
“Hey,” Avery said. “What was with the phone?”
Snowdrop made a sneezing sound, before chittering.
“Can’t understand you unless you’re human, Snow,” Avery said. “And it’s not your story to tell.”
Snowdrop put a paw up and pulled Avery’s hand down over her head, to ward off the light.
“My dad’s been in the hospital,” Verona said. “CAT scan or something. He wants me to call.”
“Are you going to?” Avery asked.
“I dunno,” Verona said.
They walked down the hall toward the library.
“It seems like a complicated relationship,” Avery said.
“It’s…” Verona started, floundered, and stopped. “Not so complicated.”
“I’m just remembering you not wanting him to have the nightmare, and it seems not great-”
“I love my dad,” Verona said. “I do. But I don’t like him, most of the time. I don’t know what to do about him. I don’t think that’s complicated. He’s the dad, I’m the kid, and that gives him all the power. He’s big, I’m small.”
“Unbalanced,” Lucy said.
“Mostly. The only thing I do get is that I don’t have to play his game. I don’t have to do chores, I don’t have to spend time around him. I don’t have to listen to him. It’s not like he can kick me out, and he’s too lazy to really punish me. Worst he can do is-”
“Trash your stuff?” Lucy asked.
Verona made a face. “I keep forgetting about that.”
“Sorry to remind you. But maybe be careful with the magic stuff.”
“So he wants me to go back. I feel like that’s playing his game, even if logically I know that’s not really how it is. He’s not that manipulative, that he’d make that up, I’m pretty sure. And I love him and I don’t want him to be sick or hurting or anything.”
“Do you want me to reach out to my mom?” Lucy asked. “She’s a trained nurse. She knows all the terms and stuff.”
“That screws up connection blockers and stuff, and it raises questions, and I dunno. No.”
“I’ll decide after. I’ll stew on it for a bit. Alexander first.”
“Don’t stew on it so much that you get a headache or a stomachache again.”
They walked the rest of the way down the hall to the library. There were two parts to the library, and they checked both before finding the section that Alexander was in.
He had Nicolette with him.
“Sit, please. We were thinking of getting tea. Do you want some?”
“Ehh?” Lucy made an uncomfortable sound. She looked at the others.
“Wouldn’t mind,” Verona said.
Enghh. “You guys drink tea?”
“With extended family more than at home,” Avery said.
“Oh man, the Kelly family extended,” Verona said.
“Twenty-two siblings and cousins under one one-storey roof,” Avery said.
“Horrifying. I haven’t had much tea but on an aesthetic level, I would rather be a tea drinker than a coffee drinker,” Verona said.
“You’re so weird,” Lucy said, as they walked up to the long table, taking chairs. She didn’t voice her own concerns, that taking the tea was making this more Alexander’s comfort zone than theirs.
Alexander leaned back into his seat, pulling up an ankle to rest on one knee. “I’m well aware the problems in my backyard have started to edge closer to your backyard. I’m willing and wanting to help you in all things relating to my colleague.”
“And your follower is here because…?”
“Apprentice more than follower, I’d argue,” Nicolette said.
“My apprentices are my eyes and my hands, when I’m tied up with the Institute. I’m going to be tied up with affairs here soon.”
Snowdrop, eyes half-open, made sounds of protest and tried to climb up Avery’s front to the cradle of her arms, while Avery tried to gently transfer her to her lap.
“Is she okay?” Nicolette asked, leaning forward. She adjusted her glasses, and they changed tint, like the light shining through them was more yellow than any light in the room.
“She’s nocturnal,” Avery said.
“We’re talking about Bristow?”
“If you’d avoid using his name, I’d appreciate it,” Alexander said. “It’s a quirk of our world, and he has reason to be keeping his ears particularly open right now.”
“What’s his deal?” Lucy asked. “He’s a landlord in Ontario, and from what my Aunt Renee says, being a landlord in Ontario is a really bad idea. The tenant protections can make it a nightmare.”
“He keeps strange tenants. Some are complicated. A gilded lily, who stumbles on magic items by accident on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Many are cursed. Someone who saw something so bent and broken it drove him around the bend. A child of a witch hunter who survived the rest of her family, who knows something is afoot in the shadows of this world. The pattern of that family seeks to wrap her up in its flows.”
“Why does he do it?” Lucy asked.
“To the best of my knowledge, the entire building is laid out as a diagram,” Alexander said. “The people draw power into and through it.”
Nicolette leaned forward. “Imagine your awakening ritual. The skull, the knife, the timepiece, the living thing, and so on.”
“Ours were different,” Avery said, before Lucy kicked her beneath the table.
Volunteer nothing, Lucy used telepathy to tell Avery.
She didn’t really have telepathy, but she really tried, with a look.
“It’s like that. He moves people between rooms to balance the diagram out. Maybe restructures the building to add or remove rooms. He feeds it into his demesne, so that’s one thing.”
“Is there a ritual he’s setting up, or does he do it regularly?” Lucy asked.
“No,” Alexander said. “It’s an ongoing effect.”
“It seems like a lot of hassle,” Verona said. “One resident bringing in a cursed item that causes havoc, or another resident starts carrying a crossbow around…”
“Many are passive,” Nicolette said. “Some are problems, but there are residents like the old man who has fallen so deep into the pattern of watching television all day every day that he’s stopped sleeping, stopped eating, stopped using the washroom. The most hassle he causes is that another resident might see his reflection in their televisions when they’re turned off.”
“He can’t be helped?” Avery asked. “They all can’t be helped?”
Alexander shook his head. “In the case of the couch potato… no. Too long gone. Others, maybe. But their landlord, my colleague, he has a claim to them. You’d have to get past him to figure out how much help they need or don’t need. Then you would have to figure out the solution. Most don’t get past him to even begin to address the other points.”
“I visit two of them,” Nicolette said. “Less often than I should. The boy who went mad. He’s so sweet. He has an apartment. It’s seven hundred dollars a month in Winnipeg for a one bedroom. It’s not especially nice, but with rent prices being what they are in the city, he’s paying half of what he might otherwise be spending. It’s not overly unkind, at least.”
“It might be if he’s being used,” Lucy said.
“It might be. But he’s getting therapy, with money he’s saving on rent. He’s close to family. This isn’t to excuse the landlord, but…” Nicolette shrugged with one shoulder.
Alexander spoke, “A lot of the residents have something intrinsically different about them. The Gilded Lily has always been a Gilded Lily, dating back to early childhood, when she was drawn to the antique store. She led a chaotic, confused life until practitioners stepped in to offer counsel, and take things off her hands. She will, by virtue of the stars she was born under or a pattern established in long-running bloodlines, either find magic items or have magic items find her. I don’t know if you could retrieve what the couch potato has lost.”
“Maybe going to the Ruins?” Avery suggested.
“You talked to Jessica,” Nicolette said. “That’s a quest she’s been on for years and I don’t know if she’s close to achieving it. Not so easy. I appreciate your sentiment, but what Alexander is saying-”
“Is that they’re lost causes?” Lucy asked.
“Or they’re too far removed to be causes,” Alexander said. “Another apartment draws all the pests in the building to it. They pile up into a roughly human shape, go through their day, boot up a laptop, work an eight hour shift as tech support. They call an unlisted phone number at roughly seven o’clock, watch a movie and some episodes of a TV series, then go to bed, where they slump into a less human pile. If someone goes to the apartment and spends any time there, they often act like a host, serve food, give them the remote to choose the show to watch. They only get disgruntled if they get interrupted during their work day. They don’t get lonely if ignored, they don’t mind the company so long as it’s timely. They pay rent, pay bills, occasionally forget the rent but pay up when the reminder email comes in. They don’t need anything except deliveries of food and a twice-a-month apartment cleaning.”
“Cool,” Verona said. “What are they?”
“I don’t know,” Alexander said.
“That must bother you,” Lucy said.
“It would if I’d looked into it and failed. I haven’t looked into it in more than a cursory way. They’re one specific part of an overarching diagram,” Alexander said. “Some of them remain and are power sources. I imagine that swarm tenant is both steady income and a trickle of power. Others balance out the other tenants. A skeptic that dulls practices around her to help take the bite out of the worst cursed items. An elusive man to keep the witch hunter scion’s attention without ever bearing fruit.”
“Elusive man?” Lucy asked.
Nicolette rose from her seat. She crossed the room to the little set of double doors that split the library into sections, and picked up a serving tray. She brought it through, and began handing out the tea, leaving a little pitcher of milk and a dish of sugar cubes with tongs.
Sugar cubes? A woman serving the tea? What was this, the nineteen fifties?
“The elusive are Aware and dangerous people who fell partway through the cracks. The one here is only ever glimpsed in passing. Always uncomfortable to come across, with a twisted grin and an intense look in his eyes. The harder you look for him, the harder he is to find. When you stop thinking about him, he can remind you he’s there. As the brownies of the Blue Heron do, he invites people to misstep or breach the rules, unnerving them until they go looking for answers, break into his apartment or try to challenge him, and then he drags them into his apartment or locks the door to the apartment if they’re already inside, and they’re never seen again.”
“Holy crap,” Lucy said.
“He does errands for his landlord in exchange for a cut on rent. One of a few that do.”
“So is that his strength?” Verona asked. “A bunch of people that run errands, and then the rest are just there, pumping power into his place of power?”
“There are other things. He buys interesting items from the Gilded Lily, who runs an online store. He maintains relationships with powerful practitioners and problem solvers. With Witch Hunters, with secret societies of non-practitioners, who use him and his facilities as a trash receptacle for human problems they don’t know how to deal with. He holds out-of-season holidays at his apartment complex, and uses these days as rituals to bring tenants closer together, stir the pot, lets them ping pong off one another or allows problems to flare up, and then uses the power to make big moves. Often opening doors.”
“You said he had a school?” Lucy asked.
“Past tense. He started the Blue Heron Institute, but I became headmaster after a time. He also tried to start one centered around the young Aware, like his apartment complex, using the power to make it a bigger draw for other, similar Aware.”
“Tanner, one of Alexander’s other apprentices, was supposed to be a student there,” Nicolette said. “Tanner was aware, after he entered a neighbor’s house after a fire. He saw words scrawled on the wall, telling the neighbor he was going to die in the hospital.”
“And he did?” Lucy guessed.
“He went back after he heard about him passing, and the words had changed,” Nicolette answered. “He took an axe to the wall and took it home. After he’d moved up in life, using the words, got into a good school, got a nice paying internship at sixteen, at a big headhunting and talent sales company, the words started getting vicious. Telling him scary things that would come to pass a day later. The landlord and head of the small private school found him.”
“And I took it upon myself to talk to Tanner about opening up his ability to see the future,” Alexander said. “Awakening him. Unfortunately, with a centerpiece of the diagram occupied elsewhere, the house of cards that was the second school became unbalanced and collapsed.”
“Gee, and you say this guy doesn’t like you?” Lucy asked.
“For the time being, his attention is divided. He doesn’t think it is, and he is in the midst of making a play for the Blue Heron Institute while simultaneously reaching out for Kennet. He thinks I have something secret and essential to my power there. A power source, a key contact, or whatever else. He will make a two-pronged strike, and he thinks it will split my attention. It won’t work.”
“You said you’d help. You’ve outlined who he is and how he operates, but unless we trash this building…” Lucy ventured, trailing off.
Nicolette bent down. She unzipped a bag, then lifted some files onto the table. She pushed them across. Each file had a portrait or picture clipped to the front.
“I suspect he’ll send his Aware to Kennet. I’d guess at least three of these six. The Gilded Lily is a kind girl who he’s helped out a lot, so he might ask her to deliver something to someone in the city. She may very well literally trip over something you’ve forgotten about or weren’t even aware of, if she doesn’t bring something into the city. She’ll pick it up or unwittingly bring it with her, and disaster frequently follows from that, forcing Others out of hiding or forcing local practitioners to handle the crisis.”
“Supposedly dividing your attention?” Verona asked.
“Except I’ve pledged not to directly interfere in or investigate your affairs, so it can’t, beyond me taking half an hour to talk to you today. You should know, some of these individuals would be given more explicit missions. To find things out, to seek trouble. To zero in on things you’d rather keep private.”
Lucy sat back. She looked at Verona, to her left, then at Avery, who held Snowdrop in her lap, hands cupped around her to keep her from sliding off.
“Fuck you,” Lucy told Alexander.
“No, seriously, fuck you, Alexander. Fuck this. Are we supposed to be grateful? No. You haven’t given us anything except a problem. You’ve wronged us. You’ve created this mess, and I in no way accept that you’ve taken every step you could to mitigate this. We’re not your pawns. We’re not going to be okay with this.”
“I approached Mr. Bristow earlier this morning, after he made his first insinuations about Kennet. I tried to assure him-”
“Did you swear?” Lucy asked.
Verona jumped in, “Did you try to assure him in a misleading way that led him to this?”
“No. Are you going to let me finish a statement?”
“Are you going to be straight with us?” Lucy asked. She leaned over the table, hands flat on the surface, fuming.
“I took steps to check before approaching him. If I told him that you were mere students and it was uninvolved with me or my power sources, he’d note that I care for some reason, that I feel some responsibility for it. Then he would still target Kennet, to target something I have some responsibility for, and he wouldn’t be gentle. As it stands, if he thinks there’s power he can take, he won’t set fires or cause widespread damage. It’ll be subtler.”
“Are you going to make this up to us?” Lucy asked.
“I will make some efforts.”
“You wronged us,” Lucy said.
“I will thank you not to say that a third time, because I’m going to make some amends for it. Carry on saying it, and you’ll make it clear you’re more interested in lashing out than in justice. That has a way of backfiring on you.”
“What amends?” Avery asked, quiet.
If Avery wanted to be ‘good cop’, that was fine.
“I can arrange private lessons-”
Verona laughed, abrupt. “I wish I’d written it down. Because I called it. That you’d say that.”
“Private lessons serve you as much as they serve us,” Lucy said. “Whatever we request, it gives you information on what we want and what we’re doing.”
“Frankly, the fact you’re here gives me more than enough information.”
“Because you spy on underage kids?” Lucy asked.
“Because we keep tabs on our student’s progress.”
“And spy,” Verona said.
“I’m interested in hearing the amends,” Avery said.
“Part of being in power and making judicious use of power is that it’s very hard to avoid benefiting. A big company that gives money to charity will get positive attention for their generosity.”
“Find a way to help that doesn’t hurt us as much as it fixes a problem you gave us,” Lucy said.
“Or,” Lucy cut in, talking over him for a second until he stopped. “Or… we’re going to go around to the rest of the student body to discuss what’s going on. I’m sure they love gossip.”
“As I see it, Snowdrop’s like a mascot,” Verona said. “Chaos and fire and unpredictability. I’m totally okay with trying to learn what I can, and making a mess of things here.”
“It’s nice to be on the other side of this, as an observer while someone else is dealing with the threat of things being metaphorically set on fire,” Nicolette said.
“Shush,” Alexander told her. “Or take your leave.”
“I’ll stay,” Nicolette said.
It was nice, having Verona backing her up. Lucy just wished this kind of out-there-ness didn’t coincide with Verona having other, real-life, dad distractions.
“You may make enemies of students from powerful families, if you take your mascot’s approach,” Alexander said. “You may draw attention to Kennet.”
“There’s the tuition thing,” Lucy said. “I don’t know if we really have a reason to not side with Bristow, if it gets him off our backs and keeps him away from Kennet. We can tell students you’re a manipulative douche-canoe that dropped a problem in our laps to use us. Give your reputation a few licks.”
“And I can expel you. I’ve technically kept my end of the bargain, bringing you into the school. I’m allowed to enforce school rules and kick you out promptly.”
“I think we could challenge that as a move made in bad faith,” Avery said. “Not keeping the deal.”
“The letter of the deal wins out over the spirit of the deal, when the two are in contention,” Alexander said.
“It’s an awful lot of distraction and fighting on multiple fronts, isn’t it?” Lucy asked, glaring at him. “Sounds like a multi-pronged mess at a time something you care about is at stake. Seems like it’s a better idea to make peace and be fair. It’s your job to make the sacrifice and balance these scales.”
“What do you want?” he asked. “Anything I could offer, I think you’d see it as manipulation.”
“Time, to start with,” Avery said. She gave Snowdrop a stroke.
“Five more years,” Lucy said. “Five years after the Carmine Beast situation is resolved before you can get involved.”
“No,” Alexander said. “I can’t, as I’ve made pledges and told people timelines.”
“Did you make those pledges and tell people timelines specifically to get out in front of something like this?” Verona asked.
“In part, yes,” Alexander said.
Lucy’s eyebrows raised.
“Three months after you’ve answered the problem,” Alexander said.
“Gifts,” Verona said. “Power sources, tricks, magic items. Books.”
“The school provides those things.”
“Not on loan,” Avery said. “Not tied to the school, or through the school, because I feel like the connections would be… tangled. Entangled.”
“Gifts, from you, specifically,” Lucy said. “We’re being forced to deal with your enemy for you. Because of you. And we want to pick some classes for private lectures, and we want you to swear you won’t extend any interest or use that information against us.”
“We’re probably missing classes because of you,” Verona spoke with an intensity that Lucy rarely heard in her. “We might have to leave and handle that and come back.”
“It’s too broad a condition, that I can’t use it against you. There are too many small cases in common conversation and interaction. I might have to ignore you altogether. I can’t do that while you’re students.”
“You’d have to ignore Kennet,” Lucy said.
“I’ll arrange it so that Raymond Sunshine, Durocher, Bristow, and Musser have the ability to select classes and I will avoid digging into what classes you’ve taken or how the schedule is adjusted. Nicolette can take your choices for classes. She can pass it on. I’ll be giving up some power over the Institute, doing so.”
“You’re asking for a lot already,” he said.
“You’re putting things we care about at risk, making enemies and failing to steer them away. Maybe even our families, depending on how bad this gets. No,” Lucy said. “Last term, here. It sure feels like we’re being dogged by strife or something like it. And I know you specialize in that.”
Alexander’s eyebrows went up.
“If you were, they’re not there now,” Nicolette said, adjusting her glasses. “I see the traces of some dark shadow passing you by, but that’s only the aftermath.”
“Did you have any hand in it?” Lucy asked. “Say it now.”
“No,” Alexander said. “It’s actually a concern.”
“No,” Nicolette answered. “I like you. Especially after the last half of this conversation.”
“It’s concerning,” Alexander said, straightening. “That would likely be one of my apprentices.”
“Defector?” Nicolette asked. “To our would-be headmaster?”
“Excuse me,” Alexander said. He finished his tea, then set the mug down, and strode from the room.
Once he was gone, Nicolette stood, picking up her bag in the process and setting it on her chair. “That was fun.”
“What happens next?” Avery asked.
“Alexander will win in the end. Maybe with a few more enemies than he had before. A few key people left by the wayside. But in the wake of it, his grip on the Institute will be firmer.”
“You say that so confidently,” Verona said. “Like you’re not afraid of lying.”
Lucy sighed. She straightened, realizing how tense she’d been.
But she was happy. Not backing down. Not ceding ground.
People like Alexander were everything she wanted to rail against.
“I’ll take your class preferences to Raymond, if you’d like,” Nicolette said. “I could drop off something at your doors, so you could give us your skill levels and he can fill out his program.”
“We might have to leave for a few days,” Lucy said. “I really don’t want to.”
“Frig. I might have to,” Verona said.
“I’m going to go get lunch. I don’t know if you want to talk it out over meals,” Nicolette said.
“I think we have to talk a lot between ourselves, actually,” Lucy said. “Put me down for… I’ll pick something I’m interested in. Faerie stuff.”
“Okay. Alexander had you pegged as Faerie related.”
“I’m not. But I’m interested.” It lets me study up on Maricica, who may be a problem, even if she’s not a culprit. And on Guilherme, who I’ve come to trust too much for a Faerie.
“Ruins,” Avery said. “We ran into your eyeball collector in the Ruins.”
“I do remember. Do you want to spend more time around Jessica?”
“Yes, but at the same time, I don’t want to bother her.”
“The school brought her on board as an expert that covers a base we don’t have a lot of expertise in. We could pay her in power or favors if she’d teach. You could get your help that way.”
“Binding, I guess,” Verona said.
“I was wondering just what this patron or these patrons of yours weren’t teaching you. Makes sense.”
“Please don’t infer,” Lucy said.
“I think there’s room for the binding lesson to happen tomorrow. Or would you be gone by then.”
“Frig!” Verona cussed. “I don’t want to go.”
The librarian shushed them from the other end of the Library.
“Come on,” Lucy said. She scooped up the files they’d been given. “We should take photos of these files with our camera phone and pass them on. Get lunch while we’re at it.”
“Hey,” Avery said, to Nicolette. “How much are we playing into his hands, here?”
“Some, I’m sure. He’ll have contingency plans. But you’re giving him a headache and you had him on the back foot. It’s like you’d learn in your beginner bindings class. Negative bindings. Hit them with something diametrically opposed to what they are. You guys are awfully opposed to Alexander, on most things. It’s great.”
Lessons from Guilherme put into practice, on an abstract level. Being forward, turning the battlefield to her favor. Pulling on her Self.
She hoped that with this whole Bristow headache, she wouldn’t have to put them into practice on a physical, violent, drawing-blood level.