Verona

Verona flipped through pages in the textbook.  Which wasn’t really a textbook.  It looked like the yearbooks her school had mass-produced for everyone in grade eight and up, made cheaply with plastic spines that hooked into the holes.  The pages kept catching on the plastic spines.

“Stop turning pages so fast,” Avery said.  “I’m still reading.”

“I wonder if we can get another enchanting textbook,” Lucy said, looking around.

Mrs. Graubard looked like a doll, shoulder length brown hair that turned inward at the shoulders, straight bangs, stark makeup, and conservative, starched clothes.  Talia looked a lot like her mom, but was more relaxed in the hair department, with bleached strands framing her face and ordinary eleven year old clothes.  The doll was a weird middle ground, with crisper hair and old fashioned girl’s clothes.

The trio were going from workstation to workstation, and it looked like Mrs. Graubard was using the class as an opportunity to test her daughter, who was asked to clarify what people were doing and to give advice, which her mother then corrected.

They’d set up in the main building, moving some bookshelves and raising up some folding tables that were normally sunken into the floor, so they had more space.  All of the non-senior students were attending, and they were gathered into groups with four to a table.

A doll sat on their desk.  Each of the four of them had picked different parts of it from the bin that Mrs. Graubard had brought.  The end result was hilarious: a doll with fancy ringlets for her hair and a flower-ringed, wide-brimmed hat knit to that hair, a screaming baby’s face, eyes scrunched up and face contorted, only two teeth, and modern clothing.  The hair didn’t really fit the head, so Zachariah was trying to use the elastic portion of a superhero mask to pin things in place.

“Okay, done reading,” Avery said.  “Do you want to read, Zach?”

Zach shook his head.  He carefully let go of the head, backing away like he thought it might fall to pieces if he wasn’t careful, hands extended and ready to catch it if it started to fall apart.

“There’s a lot there,” Avery said.  “We’re doing a really basic doll, right?”

“That’s the idea,” Verona said, flipping through the pages to the reference.  “Squares drawn out?”

“Yes,” Lucy said, using a finger to rub a bit of a bulge where the chalk had caught on a slat of wood, tidying it up.  A square within a diamond within a square, out to the table’s edge, which they’d lined with chalk for good measure.

“Eight objects from the reference chart, placed so each square has one, and they spiral outward.  Inner diamond, north point… bowl of water for life.”

“Okay,” Zach said, pouring.

“Next step out, square, northeast, branch, for nature.”

Zach reached over to the tray, picked up the branch with a leaf on it, and then worked it so the frayed bottom end stuck into the slats between the boards on the table.

“Is that good or bad?  Does it reach over the boundary?” Verona asked, leaning forward.  Lucy put a hand out to keep Verona’s top from rubbing away a part of the chalk drawing, even though Verona was being mindful.

“It’s fine,” Zach said.

“It doesn’t form a bridge or anything?”

“‘Up’ as a direction has a lot of weird interactions with diagrams, but what they really care about is the point it meets the diagram,” Zach said.  “Trust me.  It should work better if we have a symbolic ‘tree’.”

“Okie dokie.  Next ring out, diamond, east point.  As we get further out, we get more freedom.  Second point can be the branch or candle, but let’s do the candle here.”

Lucy got the lighter from the tray, while Zach held the candle butt-end toward her.

“Get the bottom part melty.”

He pointed the candle the other way, and she lit the wick.  He placed it melty-side down, the melt helping to keep it propped up.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” Avery said.

“I’ve been doing this since I was a kid.  I got awoken at four.”

“So jealous,” Verona muttered.

Zachariah was a weird guy.  His head was buzzed to the point he was nearly bald, and he had a very square head.  Verona struggled to find anything to really mark as notable about him. appearance-wise, beyond that.  He was padded around the edges, heavy-cheeked, and a bit older than the three of them, but matched to them in height.  He wore cargo shorts and a tee-shirt with a graphic of some woman from an animated show she hadn’t heard of.  But as nondescript as he was, his attention was mostly focused, and he seemed assured about all of this stuff.

Being a practitioner since he was four made it make more sense.

“My family’s nothing major,” he said.  “We had to really stretch to even get me in.  But my best friend is attending.”

He looked over at the other table.  His friend was a really shaggy-haired kid with a bad complexion who had a bright smile that shone past the shag and skin.  He had joined a group with three girls around their age, Fiona, Melody, and Raquel.

Zach frowned at his friend, who was too preoccupied with his groupmates to notice.

Which, like… Zach was at a table with three girls, but he seemed more miffed at his buddy abandoning him than he was at having his own share of female company.

Verona rolled her eyes, flipped through the book, and asked, absently, “You’re a totemist?”

“Fancy way of saying shaman, which can be fancy.  Sal’s family does it fancy.  Not for my family.  But I’ve got good fundamentals.”

“Hopefully you can branch out after some classes here,” Avery said.  “Do something fancier, if you want.”

“Next part of the diagram, we get more into purpose,” Verona noted.  “Do we want it to have a heart?  Apparent feelings?  Could do a flower.”

“That would be disconcerting,” Avery said.  “And… maybe unethical?”

“Disconcerting, at least,” Lucy said.

“Alignment matters in stuff like this.  I bet she’s going to teach more on that later,” Zach murmured.

“Alignment like?” Verona asked.

“Like, uhhh, straights, sets, arrangements of stuff.  How you balance your diagram’s props.”

“Like not having too much on one side?” Verona asked.

“And not having, like… branch, flower, leaf, as three things in a row, unless you’re having another ‘streak’ of related items elsewhere, to balance it out.”

“Gives you combo points?” Avery asked, looking over Verona’s shoulder at the chart.

“Sure.  It’s fine if we ‘break’ that combo with the candle between the branch and flower,” Zach said.

“They don’t want to do the flower, though.  Gear?” Verona suggested.

“Makes me think of a robot.  I wouldn’t do that unless someone wanted to write out instructions in advance.  One task?”

“Oh!” Avery stood up straighter.  “I can do that.”

“Sure.  The other items should complement the task, then.”

“Feather,” Avery said.

“It isn’t unbalanced,” Verona noted, “hammer to feather?  Or do you run into the opposite problem?”

“I think, uh, so long as we get it to move for a bit, we’ll be fine for the rest of class,” Zach said.  “Should be fine.”

Lucy plucked the feather from the tray of the random stuff they’d grabbed, and stuck it into the slats, like the branch was.

“Maybe lie it flat.  Unless you want it to write?  Point touching a flat surface?” Zach asked.

“This is all so arbitrary,” Lucy complained.

“It kind of is,” Zach said.  “Just roll with it.”

Verona read the words that Avery was writing down around the table’s perimeter.  “Comb?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “And something ‘beast’.”

“Bone?” Verona asked.  “Dogs chew bones, right?”

“Too deathy,” Zach said.

“I’ll go check at the front,” Lucy said.  “Though I’m not sure I get this.”

“We’re placing things on a spiral, starting with the basic signposts for life and vitality, then working our way out to function.”

Avery kept writing.  Verona paged through the book, checking stuff, and Avery wrote.

“So what does a totemist do?” Verona asked.

“Mostly we stick to Eastern traditions,” Zach said.  “But people get the wrong ideas when we talk about statues.  You think of statues walking around, when really, we’re making big, visible signposts for the spirts to follow.  Put the right statue in front of a house, and raise the prosperity of the house.”

Lucy returned, holding a horse statue.

After some hemming and hawing, they decided it didn’t matter much and placed it in the diagram.  A spool of thread, an earring, and a spoon joined the arrangement of items.

“What about the hot girl?” Verona asked.

“The what what?” Lucy asked.  “You’re asking this out of the blue?”

“Yeah, what?” Avery asked.

Zachariah laughed, awkward.

“In the student guide, you were down as ‘hot girl totems’, right, Zach?” Verona asked.

“I didn’t realize that would get put out there for everyone to see.  They do that a lot.  Salvador says it’s so we know who to talk to when we’re networking.  I did it for fun.  I figured if I had to spend hours carving something, it’d be a babe, right?  Way better than an old dude or monk reading a book.”

“I walk away for a moment and I’m already totally lost,” Lucy said.

“His family makes statues.  Guides for spirits,” Verona clarified.

“I made one, mostly for fun, and it sold.  Other people expressed interest.  So that was what I did for most of last year.  I’m not sure if they have as much oomph as a tutelary spirit or komainu, but Salvador said I should put it down when filling out the form.”

“Salvador thinks I should go all-in on it.”

Avery had finished writing, and adjusted her coat on the bench before sitting.  She positioned her elbow carefully on the table, so she wouldn’t smudge the chalk.  She looked thoughtful.

“Where’s your head at?” Lucy asked Avery.

“Thinking about home.  The stuff we talked about at lunch.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  She checked her phone.  “No response.”

“Figured you’d tell us if there was.”

“Would you buy a statue?” Verona asked Avery.  Then, before Avery could answer, aware she didn’t want to out Avery, asked Zach, “Can you do hot boy statues too?  Are you equal opportunity?”

“I’m taking a break from making statues.  I made some to sell to help cover tuition, so… think I’m going to wait six months before making more.”

“What do they do?” Verona asked.  “And you’re dodging the question.”

“You’re asking about buying them before you know what they do,” Lucy said.

“Bachelor practitioners buy ’em, and it’s not because I’m that great an artist,” Zach said.  “They might make it easier to find a date that’s willing to come to your place, I guess?”

He looked increasingly awkward as he got into it.

“Might make it hard to get a long-term girlfriend,” Lucy observed.  “Giant… are they wood?  Naked?”

“I give them clothes.  Technically.  And I do both stone and wood.”

“Would you do a guy?” Verona asked.  “Skimpy loincloth?”

“I don’t – no.  I don’t know,” he said.  “Can we drop it?”

“Dropped,” Lucy said.

“If you can’t talk about it, you probably shouldn’t go all-in like Salvador wants,” Avery commented.  “All I’m going to say.”

“Yeahhhh,” Zachariah replied.

Mrs. Graubard was taking her time getting around to them.  It looked like she was stuck with a spoiled brat, who Verona judged was about the same age as the three of them, but acted younger.

“That would be Fernanda,” Zach said.  “My mom and her mom were kind of conspiring to have me and Fernanda spend time together, a bit ago.  Our families are on more or less the same level.  Or were.  Not a lot of power, no big library, not a lot of contacts, none of that.”

Fernanda had her hair in a ponytail.  She wore a top that left her shoulders bare, with little flappy short sleeves that extended to the arms, and skinny jeans. Whatever makeup she’d put on had a tiny bit of glitter to it, from how the light caught on her shoulder.

“She’s pretty,” Verona observed.  “Not that that’s supposed to matter, but knowing nothing else, if they’re going to try to get you to be boyfriend and girlfriend, it’s better than the alternative?”

“She is.  And it’s more like they were feeling things out before starting to talk arranged marriage,” Zachariah said.

“All of this practitioner stuff is stuck centuries in the past,” Lucy muttered.

“It really is,” Zach said.  “You’re new to it, but try living it, and going back and forth from regular high school to your dad telling your kid sister that he’s not sure if he wants the family to break tradition and bring the family’s women into the practice.”

“Yeah,” Zach said.  “Exactly.”

“It doesn’t sound like it went anywhere,” Avery said.  “The marriage?”

“It didn’t.  Her brother got a bump in status, and her family stopped talking to our family.  The talks about the two of us stopped being as frequent, then stopped all the way.”

Fernanda, hands on her nonexistent hips, tone stern, was talking to Mrs. Graubard like she was a servant, “If my family is paying tuition then I expect better than you telling me to figure it out myself.  Stop standing there and be an actual teacher.”

“I’m a volunteer, not a teacher,” Mrs. Graubard said.

“I’m paying the school and the school is paying you, and you give us this booklet that probably took less than a dollar to make, and you won’t even give me five minutes of your time.  My family is going to talk to Alexander about this.”

“I’m sure I’ve given you more than five minutes at this point.”

“That’s gainsaying, right?” Lucy murmured.  “When you call someone out on a misstatement?”

“Yeah,” Zach answered, just as quiet.  “Would be more effective if she’d been more direct about it.”

“Like, saying ‘I’ve given you five minutes of my time already’,” Verona said.

“Being talked down to by someone like that could distort your perception of time,” Lucy said.  “Thirty seconds feeling like hours or something like that.  Makes you unsure if it’s really been five minutes, if you don’t have a watch on hand.  And someone like Fern there would flip if you checked the time partway through her diatribe.”

“Can testify that you’re right on all fronts,” Zach said.  “Also, don’t call her Fern in earshot.  Unless you want to be on the busy end of that.”

“I think I could take it,” Lucy said.  “I don’t think Mrs. Graubard can.”

“Talia’s her oldest, right?” Avery asked.  “She’s maybe never had to really deal with a teenager in full teen mode.”

“Thinking of your big sister?” Lucy asked.

“Rowan too.  He had his moments.”

“No.”  Fernanda had raised her voice and got multiple heads to turn by doing so.  “I want you to come over here and show us.  Thank you.”

“I think you dodged a bullet, Zach,” Avery said.

“I’m not one hundred percent sure the bullet’s dodged,” he replied.  “Depends on how well her big brother does.  If he elevates their family, I might be in the clear.”

“Is this going to take a while?” Verona asked.  “There’s only one part left, right?”

They looked over things, passing around the book, and checked the diagram and objects.  Verona used her Sight to make sure the objects weren’t affected by something or tricky in any way.  No cursed combs or anything.

“Do we just like, try it?” Avery suggested.

“I’m figuring there’s a minimal chance of an evil murder doll,” Verona decided.  She bent down and looked at the doll.  “We picked a good face for it, if we’re going to have to deal with it going all murder-y, though.”

“We power it up, let the diagram work?” Zach asked.

“We only need as much power as we need for a basic rune,” Verona said.  “So why don’t we… here, take my hand.”

She took Avery’s hand, then jerked her head at Lucy.

“No, no, touch your hands to the table, now.”

They did, forming something of a four-pointed star around the table, or they almost did.  Zach pulled his hand back.  “We’re powering it with ourselves?”

Everyone let go of each other’s hands.

“The power we carry, yeah,” Verona said.  “It says we only need as much as an elementary rune to get it started, and we can cut it off any time, and we’re splitting it up four ways.”

“That’s not nothing.”

“That’s okay,” Verona said.  “Uhh, do you two want to do it then?  Without Zach?”

“If he’s chickening out, then I’m not sure I want to do this,” Lucy said.  “I’ve spent too much of my Self before and it leaves you feeling like garbage.  And we have stuff to focus on tonight.”

“I’m not chickening out,” Zach protested.

“Maybe a bad word choice, sorry,” Lucy said.  “My point stands.”

“Does it?” Verona asked.

“I’m okay to do it,” Zach decided.

“Are you sure?” Lucy asked.

“It’s fine.  She’s right, it’s not too much power.”

Avery gathered up Snowdrop, who was bundled up in her coat, and carried her over to a short bookshelf, placing her on top.  She returned to the table.  “How would we do this if we waited for Mrs. Graubard?”

“I think she’s giving out vials of blood, and the stuff to clean it up,” Lucy observed.

“I kinda don’t want to mop up blood and clean a bloody doll,” Avery said.

“The doll shouldn’t get too bloody.  We just put it on the diagram, so we could draw a circle,” Verona pointed out.

“A square, technically.  You don’t want to cross the lines.  It’s not a lot of blood,” Zach said.  “Are we going to-?”

“We can,” Verona said.  She looked at her friends.  “Yeah?”

Zach put out a hand, touching Verona’s, then flinched away.  “Sorry.”

She rolled her eyes a bit, took his hand, then took Avery’s.  Lucy took the hands of Avery and Zach, all of them forming a ring around the table.

“On three, touch the edge of the diagram, and say ‘awake’,” Verona said.  “One, two, three-”

She brought the hands she was holding to the table.  Lucy did the same.

She realized as she said the word that Mrs. Graubard had bailed on the conversation with Fernanda, and was speed-walking their way, picking up speed as she realized what they were doing.

It felt a bit like being punched, or huffing out a breath, or jumping into cold water, mingled together and not altogether unpleasant.  A big ‘whoof’ sensation, washing over and through her.  The diagram twisted up, spiraling, and drew up into the doll, dragging the objects together until they formed a tidy circle.

The doll cocked its head to one side, then fell over.

“Careful, careful!” Mrs. Graubard said.

Zach sat down on the edge of the bench, hard, with an inarticulate, “Bwuh,” and Lucy had to catch him before he fell from the bench to the floor.

The doll clumsily got to its feet, looking around.  It looked at its hands.

“Are you okay?” Mrs. Graubard asked.

“I’m fine, we’re-?” She checked her friends.  “I think we’re fine.”

“Zachariah isn’t,” Lucy said.

Mrs. Graubard drew chalk from her pocket and struck a line across the table between Zachariah and the doll.  The doll crumpled.  Zachariah didn’t perceptibly change.

“What did that do?” Verona asked.

“Breaking the connection, so the drain doesn’t continue,” Mrs. Graubard said.  She struck four more lines.  “You’re fine?”

An awful lot of people were looking.

Two of the girls that were a couple years older were dumping blood on their doll.  They and their groupmates touched the table to give it that extra boost.  Their doll awoke.

“What happened?” Verona asked.

“It’s a lot to take directly from your personal wells of power,” Mrs. Graubard said.

“The booklet said it was the same as an elementary rune.  Is that different from a beginner rune?”

“N- yes, but not in a way that matters for this.  Elementary runes are the most basic practices in the most basic script. Triangles and such.”

“Um,” Avery said.  She walked around the table.  Quietly, she said, “I don’t want to brag or make a big deal of it, but we do those all the time.”

“Some can.  Many can’t.”

“Will he be okay?” Avery asked.

“Zachariah?  Perhaps you should lie down?”

He nodded, sitting on the bench.  “I told them I was good to try it.  Not their fault.”

Their tutor nodded.  “I suspect it’s fine.  I just don’t want you to suffer.  Be sure you eat well, sleep well, do something you enjoy tonight, okay?  Shore up your Self.  Don’t do anything that draws too many spirits into or through you.”

Lucy touched Verona’s arm, doing the same with Avery.  Verona looked at her friend, then at the room.

People were watching, studying them.

Avery leaned in, until she was barely audible as she asked, “want to be discreet?”

“I was thinking we should do the doll thing, just the three of us,” Lucy said.

That was different.  Verona grinned.  She looked at Avery, who drew her eyebrows together.

But, in silent agreement, they returned to the table.  Between them, they drew up the diagram, arranged the objects, and wrote up the instructional text.  They had to fix up the doll’s hair and hat a bit, from where it had fallen over, and then they had to get in position.  The table was broad enough that to do the configuration with three of them, they had to press up against the table’s edge and lean forward a bit.

Mrs. Graubard watched, and as Fernanda approached, held up a finger, telling the girl to wait.

She probably enjoyed doing that a ton, Verona guessed.

“We good like this?” Lucy asked.

“If you’re sure you have the power.”

“Awake,” Verona said, in coordination with Lucy and Avery.

Again, that ‘fwoof’.  Maybe twice as strong, which was odd.

The doll stirred, then stood.  It swayed on its first few steps, then found its stride.

“The doll is a hallow, a home for the immaterial forces of our world.  Because the hallow is dressed up like a person, it is inclined to pick up sentiments and forces with strong links to humankind,” Mrs. Graubard told them.  Mostly a rehash of what they’d said earlier, but saying it like this left less room for Fernanda to butt in.  “The diagram enforces strong emphasis on structure and qualities, and the items signpost the tropes we want to follow and obey.”

Avery went to the bookcase, and picked up her jacket.  She moved it to the table, then folded back the material.  Snowdrop writhed, trying to bury her face in the dark folds.

The doll stumped her way across the table, walking about as well as someone with unbending ankles could, climbed over the hump of windbreaker material, and began to stroke Snowdrop.

Snowdrop made noises of protest, pushing back with one paw, but as the strokes continued, she surrendered, offering up her stomach for doll-pats.

“Good,” Mrs. Graubard said.

“Passing grade?” Verona asked, bouncing once on the spot.

“We don’t grade, but if we did, yes.  Well executed.”

“Ma’am,” Zach said.  “The Tedds.”

Their teacher turned, noting the doll at one of the other tables, that had been drenched in blood.  The doll, dressed in Gothic clothes, pried up the knife that had been stabbed into the table as one of the key items, and held it with both hands, breaking out into laughter.

Mrs. Graubard snapped her fingers.  Several of the spare dolls that had been placed around the room, some the size of babies, others of a similar scale to her daughter, all converged on the little Gothic doll.  The doll began stabbing them.  Students backed away.

“I’ve got-” Zachariah started, but his voice wasn’t strong.  He held what looked like a keychain, with things that weren’t keys on it.  Each of the things was a figurine, about three inches long, carved stone.  He rested his wrist on the back of the bench, figurines dangling.

“I see… bookish old man-”

“Grotesque.  It’s a gargoyle only if it has a spout.”

“And naked lady totem.”

He wrapped his fist around the charms, hiding them, and brought them to rest on his chest, as he lay on the bench.

“It’s not me,” he said.  “I did it for a joke, and to stay sane while carving my… I dunno, I’ve done easily a hundred carvings over the years.  Then my dad said I should ride the wave of success, whatever form it took.”

“If it’s funny, why not go with it?” Verona asked.

“The joke got old for me a while ago,” he said, arm draped over his eyes.  “It’s not me.  I’m not that guy.  Salvador is that guy.”

Lucy turned to look over at Salvador, who was kissing the doll his group had put together.  She walked over to the other group, leaving Verona with Avery, Zachariah, and the doll that was petting Snowdrop.

Lucy, arms folded, began to talk to Salvador.

The Tedds, teenage sisters, were cheering on their doll, who was losing its fight against the teacher’s dolls.  The cheers seemed to be encouraging it.  America Tedd had the sides of her head shaved, wore a sleeveless white tee and baggy black jeans, and a fair bit of eye makeup.  All considered, for a self declared ‘goblin witch princess’, her outfit seemed pretty normal.  Verona could only imagine what her outfit would be like if she gave the combination of Toadswallow, Bluntmunch, Cherrypop and Gashwad any say over what she wore, or if she wore stuff to appeal to them.  She’d probably come out of it looking like an extra in a post-apocalyptic film.  Liberty, America’s younger sister, was similar, but wore a tank top with an old bloodstain on it, and when she smiled and cheered for the doll it was apparent she’d filed her teeth down.  The braces that had been on those teeth were mangled.  ‘Goblin raider princess’.

Verona knew from the Kennet goblins that a practitioner of goblin arts was a goblin king or goblin queen.  To be a goblin princess meant they were probably beginners on that road.  One more focused on the practice, the other on fighting in a goblin way.  Maybe?

Nah, all of that was pretty normal.  It was the look in their eyes, and the sheer fervor with which they got into the craziness of the dolls and how things got out of control that put Verona off.

Creepy stuff?  Cool.  Scary?  She could get into scary.

Darkness?  Darkness felt comfortable, and she was pretty sure she had a leg up on the edgy kids who usually said that, with how much she’d been able to put that into practice.  She could literally see in the dark.

The Tedds made her feel like she’d felt like she’d felt in John’s house, with Lucy at gunpoint.  It felt like things when the Hungry Choir stuff had gone crazy and Brie, who she hadn’t known was Brie, was screaming and crying, convinced she was going to die.  It felt like she was in the same room as her dad, while he was melting down in the worst way.

She wondered if part of that was some effect they wore, like they’d earned their stripes and now they had a bad vibe that most people could feel, intimidating others.

She had zero idea if that was true, and her Sight couldn’t see anything on them, aside from more bloodstains, but imagining it was true helped her to deal with it.

Even if she was only imagining it, it really helped to have an explanation or escape route as a release valve for that stuff.

“Crap, I think I might actually hate this place,” Lucy said.

Salvador’s group had brought his doll to life.  It stood up in the circle, cracked, and hairy, foot-long spider legs had sprouted from the cracks.  The doll’s body dangled, suspended by the legs around it, its head bowed and its arms reaching out blindly.

Lucy walked around their table to the furthest side from the spider doll.  She sat on a bench, and put her hand out to Snowdrop.

“I think Mrs. Graubard doesn’t have great control over the class and that’s making everything worse,” Avery said.  “Would we be out of line going to talk to someone?  Like Mr. Belanger?”

“I think this might be him,” Lucy murmured.  “Same way it was us, earlier.”

Graubard had been talking to Bristow and was on his side.  Was Alexander subtly discouraging her from being a teacher?

The older Tedd sister said something Verona couldn’t hear, and touched finger to lips and moved it away like she was blowing a kiss, but her expression twisted, and it was her middle finger.

The Gothic doll the Tedds and their groupmate had made vomited onto a doll that was trying to grab it.  It seemed to break the connection between the doll and its power supply, because the doll collapsed.

America Tedd casually spat out a bit of something green, chewing what she didn’t spit out.

“Hey,” Salvador said, as he walked over.  “You’re missing the show.”

“Wiped myself out,” Zachariah said.

“If you’re done your project for the day, you want to come hang out?”

Zachariah sat up.  Salvador gave him a hand.

“Thanks for helping out, Zach,” Avery said.  “Sorry we knocked you out.”

He offered a one-note laugh by way of response.

“Cool learning about some of that stuff,” Verona said.

“I’m glad,” he said.  “Group up again sometime?”

“Maybe, if the situation comes up,” Lucy said.

Then he was gone, off to hang with his bud.

“What’d you say to Salvador?” Verona asked.

“Reminded him he had a friend over here.  A best friend should be looking after his bud.”

“Guys are dumb about that stuff sometimes,” Avery said.  “I see it a lot with Rowan and Declan.”

“That’s an unfair set of examples though,” Lucy said.  “Sheridan doesn’t really have friends, so you can’t use her as a measuring stick.”

“Hmm, maybe,” Avery said.

Girls in Salvador and Zachariah’s group shrieked as their doll walked on spider legs toward them, reaching.

“Do you want to go?” Lucy asked.  “I think this class might be pretty much over.”

“There’s other stuff to handle,” Verona said.

“Exactly,” Lucy said.  “Want me to grab Snowdrop?”

“Grab my notebook and stuff?”

Verona beat Avery to it, sticking out her tongue.

Off to the side, the Tedds’ doll seemed to run out of steam.  It didn’t look like it was cut off from its power supply so much as it was getting more and more tired, and slower.  It was pinned down by others until it sagged, fell over, and belched out another bucketful of green slime, covering its front and face.

“Mrs. Graubard!” Fernanda raised her voice.  “I’ve been really patient!”

They left the classroom behind, heading over to their room.

“Seems like Alexander is setting the stage, a bit,” Lucy said, once they were far enough away.  “Stir up a ton of chaos with subtle omens, and then biasing it against his enemies.  I’d be willing to believe this is him, and then someone else is messing with us, in the same way.”

“There are four other Belangers,” Verona recounted.  “Alexander’s right hand man and oldest apprentice, another person with the family name, the one who saw the writing on the wall and nearly got recruited by the landlord the first time around, and the dick who was giving Zed a hard time.”

“It’s so messy out there.  The things with Lucy’s class, then this dollmaking class getting so chaotic…” Avery said.

They reached their room, entered, closed the door, and settled.

Verona went to her bag, pulled out her phone, then checked the image she’d captured of her stuff.  The wrinkles, arrangement, and everything else were all untouched.

Carefully, she moved a shirt aside.  There was a notebook lying flat, glamour arranged atop it, with a rune carved into it.

One of the big issues of attending the school here was that they had to ration out their glamour.  But this?  This had been essential.  She traced her finger along the rune, working backward, and undrew it.  Then she carefully lifted the book out.

Avery already had a resealable plastic bag held out.  Verona checked the coloration and everything matched, then tilted the glamour back in.

A little nettlewisp charm, to protect their stuff.

She moved her clothes and got to the files and notebooks she’d had at the bottom of her bag.

“We need a better way of securing stuff,” Lucy said.  She plugged her phone in to charge.  “Matthew replied.”

“And he says thanks for the info.  They had a little trouble opening the pictures, but they figured it out.  They intend to take it from here, and already have John intercepting.  The goblins took him through a tunnel a while ago, and they’re going to try to slow or distract those guys, Miss style, before they get anywhere near Kennet.  We shouldn’t need to go.”

Older people and technology.  Verona lifted her bag down to the floor, then slumped onto the bed.

Snowdrop, on the other bed, turned human, lounging.  The doll crawled toward her, picking up Avery’s brush, and began combing Snowdrop’s hair.

Verona was kind of tickled that she was still active, when the Tedds’ doll had used blood and burned out fast.  It had been more active, but they did have something going for them.

“I wonder if we could get some sort of token of Kennet,” Verona said.

“What are you on about?” Lucy asked.

“Like… if we had a coin or medallion or key or something that was very ‘Kennet’, we could draw on the Kennet power source, instead of drawing on ourselves and Kennet.”

“I think that line of thought might not make them very happy,” Lucy said.  “We’re paying a little something, even though it’s minor, and that keeps us from abusing it. If we take away that limitaiton?”

“If we take off that limiter, they have to worry about us doing something big and dumb and draining them all a bunch,” Avery said.

“What if we kept it to things that were explicitly for Kennet’s sake?” Verona asked.

“I don’t think that’s as cut and dry as you’re imagining,” Lucy told her.

“Have you decided about your dad?”

“I’m not going to nag,” Lucy said.  “I don’t know what I’d do in your shoes.  But if we do decide to do something, I could see one, two, or three of us all going back home.  Just to make sure this thing with the landlord’s crew is okay.”

“Maybe I’ll call my mom and check,” Verona said.  “He said he called her.”

“I don’t want to break up our connection diagrams, because they’re way harder to set up while we’re a long way from home,” Verona said.

“The Warrens won’t work as an option, if you want to go a long way,” Snowdrop said, as the doll with the crying baby face brushed her hair.  “The other realms are way bigger than Earth but a lot of places on Earth have ways to get to places in those realms.”

“There are entryways and areas key to the Warrens on Earth,” Avery interpreted.  “Doors could be a hundred steps apart in our world, but if you travel in the Warrens, because that space is smaller, it might only be twenty-five.  Go in a door in the Warrens, walk twenty five steps, emerge from the other door and you’ve covered a lot of extra ground.”

“That’s not what I said,” Snowdrop huffed.

Lucy, sitting on the other bed, hugged Snowdrop.  The doll floundered for a bit, trying to find a way to brush Snowdrop’s hair with Lucy in the way.

“Problem is, we’d have to travel through Goblin Warrens to do that.  And they’re dangerous.”

“Safe as anything,” Snowdrop said.  “No bumpkins, grumpkins, face-eaters, skin-flayers, freaky reality show contestants, bumps, lumps, warts, snots, creeps or anything else that would want to hurt you in there.”

“Have you been?” Avery asked.  “Did your friends drag you any deeper than the shallow tunnels?  Tell me the truth.”

“I have, for a long time,” Snowdrop said.  “I’m brave.”

“Visiting gets tricky,” Verona said.  “If I call my mom now I test the connection breaking thing.  It might lead to questions.  And if it breaks, we can’t exactly draw up a new diagram and place it under our beds in a few minutes.”

“The fact your thing burned out so fast might be because of the strife things bugging us, so I’d bet whatever we’ve got back home is going to need replacing anyway,” Lucy said.

“Or maybe they’re up to something else, and they’re building up strength for one big move,” Avery guessed.  “Or they were only there for a while.  Or we’re being paranoid and there wasn’t anything.”

“I hope it’s not that last one,” Lucy said.  “I made a lot of statements about it.  Except we weren’t punished and our thing with this doll worked okay, so maybe that’s proof we were telling the truth?”

“Doesn’t work that way,” Verona told her.  “Sometimes the karmic spirits hold off, Edith told me that once.  If you mess up, they wait a day or two or whatever for a dramatic moment and then trip you up, or worse.”

“I think I do want to call my mom,” Verona said.  “But we’ll have to be careful.  I’m thinking of a diagram.  Connection stuff, but elaborate.  And I want to draw it big, so I can do it right.”

“On the floor here?” Avery asked.

Verona sat up, looking.  There wasn’t much space between the beds, and with everything else…

“Outside?” Lucy asked.

“Messy, but maybe,” Verona answered.

Avery, sitting backwards on one of the chairs by the desk, tilted the chair back, leaning closer.  “Let’s go see what our options are.  It’s something to do, and there’s a bit of time before dinner.”

It took them a minute to get sorted.  Verona gathered her stuff, including the files.

It was tricky.  Having everything they needed, at the risk that those things could become problems.  She’d brought everything she’d brought to the party with the expectation that, if anything came up, like Faerie or goblins, she could handle them and let Avery and Lucy enjoy their nights.  But then everything she’d brought ended up being the problem.

This was the same.  Did they bring the files? Other equipment?  Notes?

When going from class to class, it didn’t make sense.  Most kids didn’t even bring backpacks.  They kept a single notebook, some even keeping their notebooks on the bookshelves in the main classroom, instead of in their rooms.

If the strife thing was why Lucy had run into trouble with Ray, why Verona’s dad was calling, and why Snowdrop had had issues with the Brownies, then they had enemies.  People who could potentially come after them.  Or send things after them.

They headed out, more geared up than they’d been for class, and Avery, first out the door, nearly bumped into a serving cart.  Snowdrop in human form pushed past her, ugly doll following.

The cart had what looked like a Bonky Donk on a plate, and a one-liter carton of chocolate milk.

“We didn’t order this,” Avery said.

“Ugh.  I don’t want it,” Snowdrop said.  “Not hungry, not thirsty.  It looks awful.”

“Hold up,” Avery said, keeping Snowdrop from approaching it.  She lifted it up from the middle section of the serving cart to the top.  “Is this a peace offering?”

“Nuh uh,” Snowdrop said.

“Or a trap,” Lucy said.

Avery held up the carton of chocolate milk, and her eyes changed as she searched it.  She held it out for Lucy, who gave it a once-over.

Then for Verona.  Verona blinked, let the Sight take over, and viewed the bottle, no longer waxy cardboard or whatever it was a milk carton was made of, but something like thin, foggy glass.  A tiny skinless baby cow was crammed inside, almost drowning in its fluids.

“Looks fine to me,” she said.

Avery gave it to Snowdrop, then took the disc-shaped Bonky Donk from the plate, breaking it in half.  When Lucy elbowed her, she broke one of the halves up again, to Snowdrop’s muffled, mid-chug protest.

“Want some?” she asked Verona.

Verona shook her head.  She wasn’t into sweet stuff, and the food was a chocolatey sponge-cake with a sharp raspberry cream in the center.

They circled around, avoiding the main classroom and front doors, using the side door instead.  There was an area to the back, off to the side of the ‘stage’ of the main classroom, but there were a good ten windows around the back of the classroom that would have a clear view of them.

They headed around front.

The workshop classrooms varied, apparently, in how insulated they were.  It was sunny and warm out, and the classroom closest to them had all the doors open, to let air flow through.  On the back stairs, Eloise sat with Ulysse.  ‘With’ was a bit of an understatement, considering she had her legs draped over his lap, and was curled around him.  Ulysse was smiling.

Verona thought it seemed nice.  Not the long-term relationship thing and definitely not the early marriage, but having someone close by, like that.  A lot of the time, she didn’t know what to do with her hands or whatever, and it’d be so neat to have a boy to unashamedly touch and talk about whatever with.  Less… she wasn’t sure how to articulate it.  But it felt like she was missing out, somehow, and the one hundred and fifteen reasons why she wasn’t ready to get herself a Jeremy or a Ulysse became like a pressure on her.

That she was out, trying to find a way to navigate her dad’s situation without actually having to confront her dad was somehow right in the middle of all that.  It made her head feel noisy, trying to organize the thoughts and feelings.

She felt a jab in her stomach, like she’d eaten something off, when she hadn’t even touched the Bonky Donk, and her gut was letting her know with pain, first.  She sighed.

“Hey,” Lucy murmured, before throwing an arm around Verona’s shoulders.  “We’ll work it out.”

Verona’s head bonked against Lucy’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Avery called out.  “Sorry to interrupt, can we ask a question?”

“We’re being goofy,” Eloise said.

“You’re being goofy,” Ulysse told her.  “I came out to enjoy a bit of fresh air.”

“You were trying to bite my earlobe a few minutes ago,” Eloise told him.  “That’s goofy.”

“What’s your question?” Ulysse asked.

“We wanted to do a diagram, but the main classroom’s in use.”

“There are spare workshops,” Eloise told them.  “One was used for an enchanting class this morning.  There’s a sheet to request the space if you want to use it.  Students share, sometimes.”

“Any rules or anything we should know about?” Lucy asked.

“Can’t hurt to have a senior student with, if you didn’t get permission straight from a teacher,” Eloise said.  She leaned back, almost lying down on the top stairs, her head sticking into the classroom.  “Zed!  Your trio is here!”

“You didn’t have to bother him,” Avery said.

Zed emerged from the classroom, wiping at his hands with a cloth.  Brie was behind him.

“They want to use a workshop.”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“We really don’t want to bother.”

“I don’t mind the break.  I work better if I do a lot of different things over the day, instead of sticking with one project.  I think,” Zed said.  He flashed them a smile.  “What sort of thing are you doing?”

“A connection-guarded phone call,” Verona said, her head still tilted, resting against Lucy’s shoulder.

“I can help,” Eloise said.  She disentangled herself from Ulysse and stood.  “And you should get back to helping.”

Ulysse stood up, stretching, and then caught her in his arms.  He playfully snapped his teeth for her ear.

“I’ll catch up!” Eloise called out.

Zed led them away from the scene.

Verona looked back at the scene, the very very pretty Ulysse with his arms wrapped around his fiancee, face against the side of her head, the two of them off balance but not quite falling over.

The noise in Verona’s head was becoming dull and omnipresent, like the beginnings of a headache.

She so wasn’t looking forward to this.

The day had been so neat, to start with. Why did this thing have to be hanging over her?

Was her dad really hurt?  Sick?  Was it a car accident?

They entered the workshop.  It looked like some students had done some diagram work since the morning class, and hadn’t cleaned up.

Zed sloshed water from a bucket onto the floor, then used a giant squeegee-mop to wipe the chalk away.

“Thank you,” Avery said.

With the ambient temperature, the floor dried quickly.  Zed put the bucket into the sink in the corner and began to fill it up again.

Verona pulled her bag off, then got her notebook out.  She sketched out the basic idea of what she wanted to do.

Eloise appeared, approached, and investigated.

“So cute,” the blonde said.  Her centipede crawled across her shoulders and peered down.

“It works, but it’s as if you were building a dress out of sticks and stones.  Here.  For this, instead of drawing a straight line connecting this to this, do a really tall ‘s’ shape.”

“I dunno, it’s what I was taught and it works better.”

“They really didn’t drill you on those fundamentals, huh?” Verona asked.

Lucy elbowed her.  “She’s helping.  Let her help.”

“Instead of the Saturn sign for time, there are ways you can be more precise with cards, to signify relationships.”

“Okay, well, do you have cards?” Verona asked.

“Not with me.  And I’d need books, which I don’t have here.”

“So… Saturn sign, then.”

“If you want to do it in an inferior way.”

“We’ll do what we have with what we know and have,” Lucy said.

Giant connection sign, with a specific set of conditional symbols for a time window, location, and set of relationships.  Then a lot of reinforcement.  She placed it within a square, with a lot of ‘support’ struts within, and made it so only the carefully labeled branches extended out from the square, before curling out into a goblet or ‘Y’ shape.  Like satellite dishes, she imagined.

“It’s blunt,” Eloise said, looking down at it all.

“Will it work?  I don’t want to break up work we did in other places.”

“It’ll work.  But it’s blunt.”

“So long as it works,” Verona said.  She felt miserable, which sucked and felt wrong, when she was doing cool magic stuff.

“If push comes to shove, I can pay a visit,” Avery said.  She was sitting on a table, the doll beside her, holding and stroking Snowdrop.  “Walk a path, maybe, to get there sooner.”

“A little dangerous, that,” Lucy said.

“Warrens are bad too,” Avery retorted.

“Speaking of paths,” Zed told her.  “Those finders I put you in touch with?  They said hi.  They have stuff they promised you.”

Verona checked everything over, then pulled out her phone.

“Speaker phone,” Eloise told her.

“I won’t tell anyone what I hear, or act on what I hear, unless it directly affects me, my family, or my friends,” Eloise said.  “But if you’re receiving a call and it comes through from one person to you, it’s like a spear.  Pointed.  If it’s to multiple people, it won’t stab through this nice diagram you made and disrupt things.”

Verona switched to speaker.

The phone rang.  Her phone felt like it weighed ten pounds, as she held it out.  She wasn’t sure if it was her or the diagram influencing flows and stuff, pushing it down.

She pretended it was the latter.

“Hello?” her mom’s voice came through.

“Verona, hi.  You called at a tricky time.  Things always get really busy right before everyone leaves for home.  But it’s fine.  Did you get in touch with your dad?”

“Not yet.  I wanted to ask.  Do you know what’s up?”

“No.  No, can’t you get ahold of him?”

“I called you first.  What did he say?”

“He said he was in the hospital overnight and he was probably going back in soon.  He was really desperate to get in touch with you.”

“He didn’t say why?”

“He didn’t really communicate that, no.  The call was in the middle of the night, and I wasn’t thinking straight.  I told him that your summer camp might not have phone service and that might be why you weren’t replying.”

“It was tricky, making the call with everything else going on.  He’s going back?”

“You should call him, he’s the one who knows.  I’m sure he’d just like to hear from you, whatever’s going on.”

“Okay,” Verona said, looking down at the diagram.  Everything intact.

“I really hope he’s alright.  I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation in the car earlier this week, you know.”

“I want you to know, I don’t have any animosity toward your father.  I feel badly about the way things went, and that I couldn’t be who he needed me to be.  We simply weren’t compatible in the end.  If you need to talk to me about whatever it is that’s going on, the history between your father and I doesn’t mean you can’t.”

“Sorry, you’re on speakerphone.  There’s some people around.  It’s part of how this setup works, sorry.”

“Oh,” her mother said.  “Of course.  Sorry.  Listen, why don’t you call your dad, and get the story from him?  Then if you need to call me, you can call back in… let’s say at least an hour and a half.  I should be home from work by then, and I’ll be able to give you my undivided attention.”

“Message received,” Verona said.

She hung up, then realized she probably should have said goodbye.

She looked around, aware again that she was standing in the middle of a large diagram.  The lights of the room were off, because the light shining in through the windows, the open front door, and the open back door were mostly bright enough, and lights being on meant it was hotter.  Lucy stood off to the side, her phone out.  Avery sat on the table with the doll, a sympathetic look on her face.  Zed was at the front door, Eloise just outside, standing on the stairs.

Verona used a wet cloth to wipe up sections of chalk, adjusted the target, adjusted the time window, in case it was a long call, and verified everything was intact.  It hadn’t worn down or weakened anywhere.  Good sign.

“Calling your dad?” Lucy asked.

“Give us some privacy?” Lucy asked Zed and Eloise.

“I should observe, because you’re new students and they don’t want you blowing up the building, but I’m pretty sure this one is safe,” Zed said.  “Call me back before any adjustments?”

Zed and Eloise left, or seemed to leave.  Verona wasn’t eager to carefully tiptoe across the diagram, trying not to smudge lines on the slate tile floor, so she couldn’t find a spot where she could see and check.

One and a half rings at the home phone.  She heard the hitch as it switched over.  The following three rings sounded different.  It was so obnoxious, because the way the landline was set up, answering the phone meant she had to sprint to get to the phone in time, otherwise it transferred over to her dad’s cell phone.

Her heart sank, weirdly, as she heard her dad pick up.

“Verona.  I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.  I don’t know why I pay for your cellphone when I can’t get in touch with you in a time of need.  You-”

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No,” he told her.  “No, I’m pretty far from okay, Verona.  I’m hurting, I’m tired, and I haven’t been able to take the steps necessary to deal with either of those things because I’m sitting here, waiting for your call.  I can’t sleep because what if I sleep through your message, and I can’t take meds because I need to be coherent enough to decide what’s going on.  I really hope you’ve been having a fantastic fucking time at your summer thing, too busy to answer my calls until eighteen hours later.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“I nearly passed out from the pain, is what happened.  I got a ride to the emergency room from a coworker I am not a fan of, and I had to wait ten hours, getting told it shouldn’t be much longer, it shouldn’t be much longer, except people kept coming in, needing to use the machine before me.  And all the while, I’m trying to call you.”

“It’s not fun, wondering, is it?  Imagine how I felt, for those ten hours.  With nobody, not a single soul, to turn to.  Not even my own daughter. Especially my own daughter, who is ignoring my calls when I really need the support.  It was a partial obstruction of the small bowel.”

“You’re constipated?”

“No, Verona! No.  It obstructed and my intestine twisted.  They put a tube down my nose, and they had to give me fluids by IV, because I’ve been throwing up from the pain and everything else.  There’s a very real possibility I’ll have to go into surgery.  They’re saying it’s fifty-fifty, but every hour that passes, the odds of surgery rise, and it’s been a bit.  If I do end up needing surgery, I won’t be able to handle things on my own.  I’m going to need you to put down whatever you’re doing and come home, just in case.  I literally have nobody else who can help handle these things.”

Lucy crossed the room, stepping carefully across the diagram.

“Get a bus or a taxi if you have to, I’ll pay for it later, somehow.  Come home.  I have an appointment at the hospital later, and they’re going to evaluate my situation and decide if the surgery is needed, which it probably is.  I’m going to have to miss work, I have no idea how I’m going to stay on top of everything there.  I need help, Verona.  For once, I need you to be serious about helping me.”

Lucy, crouching, indicated one portion of the diagram.

Lucy smudged out one lower section of a ‘6’ to turn it into a ‘5’, and did the same with the left side of an ‘8’ to turn it into a ‘3’.  With a line, she turned a ‘6’ into an ‘8’.

“And keep your phone on and stay available.  I- I’m getting another call.  It may be the hospital, checking in on me.  Not even letting me nap.  Keep your phone on!  I need you there, any time, no excuses”

“Love you, Verona.  Keep your phone on!  Reply sooner.”

Her head and stomach hurt.

She wasn’t sure what to do.

“Thanks.  For the timing adjustment,” Verona said.

“It seemed like you had basically all the information,” Lucy said.  “He wanted to be mad at you, more or less.”

“It’s up to you, what you want to do,” Lucy said.

“I don’t want to go,” Verona said.  She looked up.  “I really really don’t.  But I think I have to.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “I wasn’t sure how to bring it up, if it should be before or after, but I figured I didn’t want to seem like I was biasing your decision…”

“I wouldn’t think you were, I don’t think.”

“Matthew called.  I thought you should decide how you dealt with your dad before we decided how we wanted to respond to that.”

“They can’t handle it after all?” Avery asked.  “This band of Aware?”

Lucy shook her head.  “Seems not.  Others can’t really interact with them, and Kennet doesn’t have many non-Others to rely on.”

“Feels like the strife thing again,” Avery said.

“How do we get there?” Verona asked.  “Bus?”

“I don’t think the buses come out here,” Lucy said.

“Path?” Avery suggested.  “Warren.  Ruin?  Maybe Jessica.”

“We’ll find a way,” Lucy said.

“Okay,” Verona said.  Headache and stomach-ache aside, she felt kind of numb, and not sure how to react.  Numb was usually good.  It didn’t feel good now.

“Do you want to call my mom, before we clean this setup up?” Lucy asked.  “Get the info on whatever’s going on with your dad?”

“Nah.  We’re going anyway, right?”

“Right.  Okay,” Lucy said.

“Are you okay?” Avery asked.  “How do you feel?  What are you thinking?”

“Fair,” Avery said, quiet.

“Do you need anything?  Food, something to drink?  A hug?”

“Tell me we’ll get back in time for this really important binding class we need that Nicolette said she’d try to schedule for tomorrow morning,” Verona said.  “And I think I could deal with a lot.”

“Tall order,” Lucy murmured.  She smiled.  “I offer you ‘anything’ and you ask for your magic class.”

“Let’s try,” Avery said, hopping up, grabbing the bucket.

“Lemme,” Verona cut in.  “I want to.”

With a drenching of water, she choked out most of that chalk that spelled out the deliberate, careful connection back to home.  Time, place, lines, and boundaries dissolved into chaos.

It helped a bit with the stomachache, doing something that deliberate and dramatic.

But this whole thing was still going to be one heck of a headache.