Lucy

“It’s weird,” Lucy said.  “Being home, but not being able to go home.”

Verona looked up from the notes she was doing, copying over from the textbook and using a little hobby knife to excise work from the worksheets Graubard had given her in the morning class.

“If we get caught by someone who knows us, it could cause a lot of hassle.”

“True.  But we can tell the truth and say my dad is sick and we had the opportunity to swing by.”

She checked her phone.  Avery was still out of service.

It was so unpleasant, being stuck like this, a situation unfolding out of their reach, not having a place to go, and not being able to contact Avery or know what was going on.  They were stuck here, in the southeast end of town, where the town’s industry had lived and died.  Kennet wasn’t exactly up and coming, and had a lot of spots in it which were doing pretty badly.

This was the part of a town that wasn’t doing great that was doing especially badly.  Back when weed had been legalized, there had been some chatter about turning these defunct old factories into grow sites, which would mean jobs and money and… it hadn’t happened.  Politics, according to Booker.

“I sorta get what you mean,” Verona said.  “But for me it’s like… most of the time.  I’ve only recently started noticing how bad my mood gets every time I have to go back.  I’m screaming at him a lot of the time because it’s the only way to get him to listen, kind of.”

“Careful with wording.”

“I am being careful.  What part did I do wrong?”

“The ‘most of the time’ part.”

“I think it kinda is?  And I said like most of the time.”

“Right.  Sorry.  I didn’t mean to focus on that part.  This is hard.  I hear you, about being stuck.”

“Hopefully we hear back from Ave, and then we can wrap up this thing.  We get points with the locals, then I check on dad, and we hurry back for a morning class.”

“I’m worried we’re going to be so tired we sleep through the class, if we even get that far.”

“Do you really think you’re going to stay awake longer than me?” Lucy asked.  “Every time you sleep over, you sleep in.”

“‘Cause it’s cozy and low-stress.”

“And you slept in at the institute.”

“Only kinda.  But hey, if you’re worried about sticking it out through tomorrow, or if you’re tired, you could nap now.”

“Feeling a bit wrung out after that trip through the Ruins,” Lucy said.  “And more wrung out because we sent Avery in alone and she’s gone silent.”

She adjusted her bag and stuff, and tried to use her backpack as a pillow.  She pulled her cloak out and used it for extra padding.

“Remember when we’d get up at like, four o’clock, for the time the channels went from static to these weird, badly dubbed cartoons?” Verona asked.  “We’d stay at each other’s houses, and one of us would wake the other, and we’d creep all the way downstairs to watch?  It’d be like, four forty-five or something.”

“Yeah.  There was the angry dog one we liked, and that French one that was like a fever dream,” Lucy replied.  “With weird casual nudity and a lot of transformations.”

“It was this one kid as all of the heroes in Greek myths or whatever,” Verona said.

“Was that what it was?”

“With a snake unicorn pegasus thing with rainbow wings.”

“I think they used the cartoon as a color test to calibrate as they turned everything on.  They kept cutting it off early, and then they’d go straight to the angry dog cartoon from Japan, with the same bored voice actor for all the characters.”

“Loved it, and it made next to no sense because I think they were cutting out a lot of scenes and stitching them together,” Verona said.  “I loved that time.  Sneaking sugary cereal and snacks while watching and trying to be quiet.  I kinda love that part of this, too.  One big adventure with you two.”

“I don’t love some of the stuff around the edges, or when you’re in danger, or feeling like I was dying in the Ruins back there, but I love getting to do it with you guys.  Don’t let me keep you up, if you want to try to catch a fifteen minute nap.  Or five, or thirty, depending on how long it takes Matthew to drive in.”

“I don’t think I can nap on this bag anyway.  Too hard.”

“I’d offer you my leg or lap as a pillow, but it’s too hot for that.”

“And you’d wake me up every time you moved.”

“I wouldn’t move if I could help it.  If it meant you could nap, I wouldn’t,” Verona said.

Lucy turned over on her ‘pillow’ and looked up at Verona.

“What if I, like, became a cat, and stayed a cat for most of the time?” Verona asked.  She looked skyward, up at the stars.  “You could keep me around, and every day could be a bit like those days were.  And if you got sick of me, you could dump me on Avery?”

“You might be at Avery’s a lot then,” Lucy joked.

Verona looked at her, unsmiling, and in the gloom it took Lucy a second to see that Verona looked stung.

No, not stung.  Wounded.

Lucy started to rise to a sitting position, and Verona laughed, softly, pushing her back down.

“Badly timed joke.  Sorry.”

“Nah,” Lucy said, her voice soft.  “Nah, you’re my best friend and I fully expect that to stay the case.  If something disastrous happened and you had to, we’d manage, and I think it’d be cool.  But I’d feel like you were missing out.”

“I don’t think so,” Verona said, quiet.

“You’re going to have weird relationships with boys.  I want to hear and see how that goes.  Or doesn’t go, if you really decide you don’t want to do that stuff.  Your call.  I’ve been thinking about your thing about living over a bookstore, and I keep imagining Zed’s distilled librarian Other with your hairstyle, and shorter, and that’s you grown up in my head.”

Verona sniffed.  “I’ll allow it.  But it’s petite, when you’re talking to most girls, not ‘short’.  Rude.”

“I want to see what you’re like when you’re Booker’s age.  And my mom’s age.  Are we going to be like my mom and my aunt Heather, hanging out together and with Avery, drinking too much wine?”

“You’ve said some of this before.”

“I meant it.  I really do.  I keep editing it in my head.  Are you going to become some badass witch, with this… this crazy natural ability that your very first teacher in your first class recognized, along with the passion and drive to learn?  Are you going to teach a class there, one day?”

“What if that doesn’t happen?  What if we drift our separate ways and the three of us stop being friends?  And I regret it forever that we didn’t reinforce those connections or set up an arrangement like the cat thing?  What if this is our last chance of holding onto the good-ish moments?  What if we did the exact wrong thing, with this ritual tying us to each other, but not strongly enough, so it only hurts more when we separate or we lose one of us in some crazy situation?”

“And you being a full-time cat is the answer to that?” Lucy asked.  “I’m… I’m not connecting the thought.”

“Throwing an idea out there,” Verona said, very quiet, almost inaudible.

“You don’t really want the cat thing, do you?” Lucy asked.

Verona was silent, staring up at the stars.

“Is this you worrying about your dad?  Are you worrying you might have to go live with your mom?”

“I wasn’t, but now I am.  But I don’t want to dwell on me.”

“We’re allowed to, you know.”

“What do you want to become?  If I’m going to switch to old fashioned dresses and librarian chic, teaching classes at the Institute… which is a vision of future me I’ll allow…”

“I’m glad you approve.”

“I’m allowing it, not approving.  Avery should rock those dress shirts and messy hair, with a behind-the scenes wandering duelist witch type aesthetic-”

“That’s a salad of ideas.”

“-with, I’m picturing, a girlfriend who is ten kinds of head over heels for her, who goes to every game Avery plays with her coworkers or college buddies.  Every single game.”

Lucy smiled.  “Picturing?  Shouldn’t we draw up a compact that anything less won’t do?”

“There’s a plan.  Maybe she has two girlfriends, not cheating or anything, but as an organized thing.  Or five.”

“Now we’re getting a bit over the top.”

“She’s been so lonely, I want her to get all the adoration, to make up for it.”

“Cool.  Okay.  She’s athletic but I don’t think she’s five girlfriends athletic.”

“I didn’t mean that!” Lucy corrected.  She cleared her throat.  “What does she do, when she’s not playing sports with her group, being a lost witch fencer girl-”

“Wandering duelist witch.”

“-or hanging out with her goofy head-over-heels-for her girlfriend?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think she knows.  But I think Avery’s the type who could work the most dead end boring job if she had those other things.  She could do a lot of things.”

That lined up with what Avery had said to Lucy.  “I hope she doesn’t have a boring job though.”

“Me too.  And you?” Verona asked.

“I dunno,” Lucy said.  “Guilherme’s been on my case about it.  Well, not exactly on my case, because faerie are too…”

“…There’s probably a flowing, fancy word for it.  But I dunno.  I don’t think any of it’s grabbed me to the point where I’m like, yeah, that’s super dangerous with lots of drawbacks, but I want to do it anyway.”

“Are you enjoying this?  Any part of this?  You haven’t said a lot about it since you said you weren’t enjoying it, back when you yelled at Avery and me.”

“I feel like I haven’t had the time to sit back and think long enough to enjoy it.  But I feel that way about a lot of stuff,” Lucy said, her face smushed against the surface of her bag.

“I want you to find stuff you enjoy about this.  I don’t want to be happy if you’re not happy.”

“I sorta like the training.  Learning to fight.  Even when I don’t especially like it, it feels like… good to know?  You know?  Just in case?”

“I’ll keep thinking about it.”

Lucy adjusted, trying and failing to get comfortable.

“They said they wouldn’t be that long, but they had to take a detour,” Lucy muttered.

“It’s been a good while.  I hope nothing happened.”

Lucy tried the phone again.  Text.  It took a while to process, then switched to a red tint, a warning message saying the text wasn’t sent.  Or received.  Or something.  She called.

“The number you have dialed-”

“Is there a point where we go hunting for Avery?” Lucy asked.  “Or call her name three times and see if that gives us a connection?”

“The term is ‘ping’, I think.”

“Is that from one of the books you read?”

“Eloise used it at dinner last night, while talking to Zed.”

“Huh.  I didn’t catch that, and my mom says I’m scarily good at eavesdropping.”

“You were focused on other stuff.  Like the more intense students.  It’s cool.”

“Ping,” Lucy tried out the word.  “Do we ping Ave?”

“It could be that she’s watching them and they’re doing something boring, and she can’t call without giving herself away.”

“Even if that’s true, why wouldn’t she send Snowdrop?”

“I trust her,” Verona said.  “And I remember back when she came back from the Forest Ribbon Trail she wanted time alone.  Well, alone with Snowdrop.”

“When I was there for dinner and things got hectic, I think it was her dad who was like, want to go walk to the store?  Like, get some space, let things cool down?”

“Ahhh,” Verona said.  “So it’s like a pattern thing she does a lot.”

“Maybe.  But is she really anxious or needing that right now?  There was the trip through the Ruins, walking through ghosts, but…”

“That didn’t bother her as much.  She was almost keeping up with Jessica, after the first bit.  And Jessica’s an expert.  I was the slowpoke.”

“You’re usually the slowpoke.  She’s good at that stuff.  But being good at it doesn’t mean you can’t find it rough.”

“Or maybe she’s bummed because she had her heart set on Jessica.”

“She was talking in our room about feeling out of place a lot.  While we were getting the stuff.  Not meshing, feeling like she’s the wrong age or in the wrong place.  But she doesn’t- this sucks to say, but I don’t really feel like I know her.  I want to, but I’m not sure how.  She doesn’t seem that down about it, not enough that she has to go do her own thing for a while.”

“Maybe,” Verona said.

“She’s too hard to reach and I don’t feel like those other things are it.  I’ll ping her?”

Verona nodded.  “Together.”

Lucy counted on her fingers.  Together with Verona, she said, “Avery, Avery, Avery!”

“I didn’t feel anything.  Could be the skeptic,” Verona guessed.

Lucy shook her head.  “Phone too?”

“Maybe they don’t believe in phones?”

“I don’t like that she’s that hard to reach.  Are you okay with me going, or do you want to go?”

“I think turning into a bird might be a bad idea, with the owls out there at night, and, you know, the possibility I could fly into that Griggs lady’s antimagic field a hundred miles up into the air.”

“You, you know, could walk?  And don’t immediately assume I’m talking about cat form.”

“Well, like you said, I’m a slowpoke…”

“Right.  Okay, you-”

Lucy stopped short.  She could hear an ominous growling.

She made a hand gesture, hand pointed down, fingers flicking up, then took Verona’s hand, as Verona reached up.  She hauled Verona to her feet.

The growling intensified.

Lucy gripped her chain necklace with her keys and ring strung on it, and put a finger through the weapon ring.  She breathed in, then breathed out slowly.

She flicked her phone, and it unfolded into a black fan, edge tipped with broken glass.  She held it by her leg, hidden from sight, in case there was a bystander.  Magic items and magically created items tended to get weird when innocents saw them, and things created from the weapon ring counted.

A sharp bark made them jump.

Barks overlapped, and were followed by the kind of scream that a very large, deep voiced man might manage if he’d just seen his kid get hit by a car.

Dark, yes, but it was a dark scream.

They -it was a they- came tearing into the lot with the old building where Lucy and Verona had been waiting.  They used trash for cover and circled around, approaching from all sides, ducking through darkness.  Lucy squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, turning on her Sight, and saw a mess of swords and stains.

“Cover!” Verona shouted.

Lucy covered her eyes, bringing her elbow to her eyes.

Verona used one of her cards.  The lot illuminated in a flash that seeped in around the edge of Lucy’s arm.

Lucy leaped forward, fan out, trying to spot the small figures that were still darting along the shadows.  She saw glints of blades catching the light from the distant streetlight, and kicked out.

Teeth gnashed at her shoe, pulled back, and seized at her shoelace.  It was a long-haired, feral goblin, with a slobbery tongue and weird four-legged posture.

“Doglick,” Lucy said.  She dismissed the fan and her Sight.  “Don’t eat my shoelaces.”

“Doglick!” she raised her voice.  She adjusted her foot and stepped on his neck, pinning him down where he couldn’t get at her laces.

He reached up, untied her lace, and put one end in his mouth.

“Do you want to get neutered?”

Doglick froze, shoelace still in mouth.

Lucy looked around.  Only Toadswallow had managed to avoid getting blinded.  ‘Nat’ and Butty were incapacitated, Butty face-down and limp, while Nat was using her piercing, fishhook, nail, and paperclip riddled, oversized right hand to wipe at her eye, and tearing at the skin around it in the process.

Doglick barked, once.  Lucy looked back down at him, pinned with his neck under her shoe.

Slowly, eyes locked to Lucy’s, Doglick opened his mouth, and gave one slow experimental chew of the shoelace.

Verona ducked down, opened Lucy’s bag, and grabbed Lucy’s knife.  She held it by the leather sheath, then slapped the handle into Lucy’s hand.  Lucy pulled it free.

“Booker’s torch,” she said.

The forged blade ignited, gradually taking on a red heat.

Doglick went limp, head turned sideways, arms and legs flat to the pavement.  His tongue pushed the shoelace out of his mouth.

Toadswallow waddled over, grabbing Nat’s hair and pulling on it to drag her after him.  She made inarticulate sounds of protest.  He gave Butty a hard kick, and the weirdly smooth goblin skidded about five feet along the pavement, face and belly rubbing against the ground.

Hair still held by Toadswallow, stooped over, Nat looked up at Lucy and fixed her good eye on the flaming blade.

“Off,” Lucy said.  The fire went out.  The blade continued to glow red as it cooled.

Which was kind of annoying.  She’d tried putting something on the sheath but she hadn’t figured out a good way to not have it peel off and fail.  She had to hold the knife for a bit longer.

“Our esteemed Matthew and Edith are on their way,” Toadswallow said.  “They went out of town to intercept, couldn’t hack it.  Almost went tips up.”

“I was told not to say,” Toadswallow said.  “You may have my groveling, snotty-nosed apologies.”

He said it with no sincerity.

“So you decided to scare us?” Lucy asked.

“We agreed we’d welcome you home.  You arrived early.  Think of it as us keeping you on your toes, making sure you’re battle-ready.”

“I think we did okay,” Lucy said.

Toadswallow grinned, showing off sharp teeth.

“Those were some good dog noises,” Verona said.

Doglick yipped, then barked.  The noises sounded like they came from two very different dogs.

Doglick screamed, the same sound as before, then screamed again, sounding like a woman being murdered.

Lucy leaned on his throat a little harder to make him stop.  “I was about to leave to get Avery.  We can’t get in touch with her.  We tried pinging her, but there was nothing.  It’s like she disappeared.”

“Snowdrop too,” Verona added.

“Something’s up,” Toadswallow said.  “Butty laid down a prime crop-duster earlier, the sort that makes flowers wilt and gives brain damage to babies.”

Butty, still face-down in the pavement, shirtless and sweaty, wearing only a lime green thong, giggled, high pitched, his entire body jiggling.  Nat, meanwhile, pulled her hair free of Toadswallow’s grip.  She grabbed a bit of fallen sign and tore at it with her hand, giving Lucy, Verona, and Toadswallow wary looks.

“Why does this fart matter?” Lucy asked.

“It was as redolent as it should have been, but not as lasting.”

“You keep track?” Verona asked.

“I am an esteemed expert in matters of vital expulsion.  Rest assured,” the monocle-wearing goblin told them.  “If it comes from the body and can leave stains, I know more than enough.”

“Fair enough,” Verona told him.

“Okay, if you’re right, then that’s interesting, but I’m not sure how it helps us,” Lucy said.  “And we’re getting distracted.  I’m thinking I’ll go find Avery, I don’t know if one of you wants to help, or-”

“Matthew and Edith will… they’re here.”

Lucy spotted the headlights.

“Do we split up again?” Verona asked.  “Stick together?”

“Come,” Lucy said.  “At least to talk to them.”

Verona grabbed her stuff.  Toadswallow and Doglick followed.  Butty remained face-down, giggling periodically, and Nat was off in the midst of trash, hunched over with her back turned.

“Where are Blunt, Cherry, and Gash?” Lucy asked.

“Away.  Blunt and Gash are at the perimeter, keeping an eye out for trouble.  Cherry is doing something useless,” Toadswallow told her.

“Blunt usually manages this crew.”

“Indeed he does.  But he has work over the summer that may call him away.  The sod.  He wanted to make sure they listen to me before he goes.”

“Surprisingly responsible.”

“Not how I would phrase it.”

They reached the truck, which was parked so the front half stuck through the gates.  Dust from the pavement stirred visibly in the headlights.  Edith’s eyes glowed.

“Update us?” Lucy asked.

“We had to follow behind and then we took a different road into town, because they parked by the road,” Matthew said.

“You couldn’t get close?” Verona asked.  “Did the skeptic mess with your hosting stuff?”

Edith’s lips pressed together into a tight line.

Out of the sight of the two in the car, Lucy touched Verona’s wrist, squeezing lightly, while keeping her eyes forward.

“I hope you’re okay,” Lucy said.

“We should be, given time,” Edith answered.  “We’re a bit shaken.  We thought we would overpower them with a show of force, and eat the karma.”

Edith picked up her hand, and Lucy could see that the sleeve of her jacket was burned, and the flesh beneath had blisters.

“You should get that treated.  Do you have antiseptics?”

“We want to handle this situation first,” Edith said.

“Great,” Verona said, smiling.  “Faster resolution is great.”

“Then can we start by going after Avery?” Lucy asked.  She saw their expressions change, then said, “If you can’t get close… can you drop us off, somewhere closer?”

“Okay,” Matthew said.

Lucy climbed over the side of the truck, into the bed at the back.  Verona followed.

“Ah!” Nat made a noise, scrambling on all fours to catch up.  “Ack!”

Snatchragged had been renamed by Toadswallow because he had his rules, and Avery had suggested Nat, which the goblins had accepted because it was like ‘gnat’, the bug.  She hurried forward, her proportions and way of running like a stocky bulldog, all upper body, her hair a tangled mess.

“Do not touch the side of my truck,” Matthew raised his voice.

She climbed up the side, presumably avoiding touching the tire with her modified hand, because it didn’t pop, and scraped the truck’s side on her way up to the edge of the truckbed.  She held out her work.  A twist of metal in a vague hook shape.

Verona reached for it, and Nat pulled it back, “Gaharba aabgah!”

She held it out for Lucy.

“Why?” Lucy asked.  “What is it?  Or- we need to go.”

Nat pounded a hand on the side of the truck, metal screeching as it hit and dragged against metal.

“Don’t- my truck!” Matthew shouted.

“Go,” Verona said.  Nat nodded vigorously, adding “Gah!”

Matthew turned the truck around, and they pulled out.

“What’s this?” Lucy asked.

“Ahck a iggy iggy aghin oock.”

“Itty bitty hacking hook?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Lucy observed.

“We’ve hung out since the tongue thing.”

A few weeks back, Nat had beat Doglick in a fight, so Doglick had snuck up to her while she was sleeping, hauled her jaw open wide enough that it dislocated, and then seized her tongue in his teeth, nearly chewing it off before she could knock him away.  He’d taken a good strip of it with him as he ran off.  What remained looked like a piece of bacon that had been driven over by a car a few times.

It would supposedly heal.

“Iggy iggy!” Nat raised her voice.  She sounded like a very small three-pack-a-day smoker with no tongue.

“Not itty bitty?  Then I have no idea what you mean,” Verona told her.

“Iggy iggy!  Yah yah ya hee yah ah ho iggy!?”

“I think it’s for Faerie,” Verona said.

“I- how?” Lucy asked.  “Why?”

Nat made a back and forth motion with her hand, still perched on the side of the truck, her other arm gripping the edge.  “Aghk aghk ah anh ah huurrr.”

“I think she likes your knife and wants a turn with it sometime,” Verona said.  “In exchange.”

Nat nodded with emphasis, then held out the hook.

“Fae-targeting hook of unknown effect?” Lucy asked.  She took the thing, and felt resistance.  “Okay.  Will see about giving you that try.”

Nat let go, cackled and hopped off the side of the truck, ducking and rolling.  Because she was roughly as wide as she was long, with her gorilla-like build, she was good at rolling.  She was off in the shadows of trash bins by the side of the road a moment later.

The back window was open.  Matthew had apparently been waiting for the goblin to leave before he spoke up, “How’s that school treating you?”

“It’s fine,” Lucy said, at the same time Verona gushed, “so cool.”

“What are you learning?” Matthew asked.

“Not much since we had to come almost straight back home,” Lucy said.

“I did learn this,” Verona said.  She held up her notebook, then showed Lucy.  It was a triangle, with each of the three lines marked out with five thick diagonal lines.  It was set within a circle and it looked like the circle was meant to provide a foundation for some support struts, as Lucy liked to think of it.  Because triangles were weak.

“What is it?” Matthew asked.

“Heraldric or heraldic design.  I meant to wooble search the word.  It should be okay for minor cursed items, if the Gilded Lily has some.”

“Doesn’t seem like you wasted much time bringing trouble to Kennet,” Matthew said.

“I think it was coming anyway,” Lucy said.  Verona nodded her agreement.  “Alexander came because he knew something was up.  If we didn’t stop Nicolette, then she would have told him and that probably would have happened anyway.  Once Alexander knew and started keeping it secret, this Bristow guy was going to be interested, because he hates Alexander.”

“This has been falling apart since the Carmine Beast thing,” Verona added.  “Something like this might’ve happened, whatever we did.  Miss seemed to do the most with keeping people away, and she didn’t erect walls or do anything big.  She nudged, and she dissuaded.”

“Essentially,” Matthew said.

“That doesn’t really help when they’re dead set on getting in.”

“Are you mad at us, for not being more on top of this?” Verona asked.  She twisted around to face the window.  “Do you really think this wouldn’t have happened without us?”

Lucy looked too, as there wasn’t an immediate response.  She could see, with a bit of motion as the truck turned a corner, a bit of Matthew’s face in the rear-view mirror, then a bit of Edith’s glowing eye.

Something about the looks in their eyes made her think of Verona’s expression after she’d brought up the notion of being a cat.

They’d had a bad night.

“No,” Matthew said.  “No.  I believe you when you say you think this would have unfolded anyway.”

“But you had to think about it before you could say you believed us?” Verona asked.

“Yeah,” Matthew said.

“You know, I really want to be a good practitioner for Kennet.  I want to be a good practitioner period.  I want to do this for the rest of my life.  I want to get along with you guys.  I don’t think we have any bad intentions,” Verona said.

“And Edith and I want to support you three.  It’s been nice, teaching you, even if we’ve approached the limits of what I remember being taught and what I’ve been able to piece together with Charles’ help.”

“Speaking of-” Lucy jumped in.

“He’s hanging back,” Edith said.  “He’s especially vulnerable to all six of the people described.  Though I’m a bit worried we’re all vulnerable.”

“What are they like?” Verona asked.

“We weren’t around long enough to see.  The little one is loud when she gets going.”

“The little one being?”

“Griggs, I have to assume.”

Lucy, looking through the window to the dark interior of the truck, past it, saw a silhouette that even Matthew had missed spotting.  “Avery!”

Avery disappeared as the truck reached a point where Lucy couldn’t see past the doors and Edith, then crashed into a sitting position in the truck bed, one hand on Snowdrop.

“What happened?” Verona asked.

“You’re not answering.”

“I don’t think a lot of stuff’s working,” Avery said.  “Clem- there was a watch.  Snowdrop said it was breaking things up.

Snowdrop climbed down Avery and became human.  She wore a t-shirt that read ‘Rabies Vector?  Nah’, featured a sketched possum face, and then had ‘Humble Trash Inspector’.

“It’s a really small effect, and super obvious,” Snowdrop told them.  “And before you ask, it’s the furthest thing from time travel.”

“It’s time travel,” Avery translated.

“All the way back to the dinosaur age.  Or back to anything.  Like I said, super obvious.”

“Only forward.  Slowing down patches and speeding up others.”

“That’s not what I was saying, Avery,” Snowdrop said, huffing.

“It’s all localized to that park, and nowhere else in Kennet.”

“It’s all over Kennet.  Affecting lots of stuff.”

“Oh boy,” Lucy muttered.

“Did you talk to her?” Matthew asked.  He reached back and pushed the back window open wider.

“She wants information.  She was practically begging me for something I could tell her about how all this works,” Avery said.

“You can’t,” Matthew said.

“I know I can’t.  I told her to back off and she said she would, and then her friends disappeared.”

“Moved in a different timestream, so fast we couldn’t really spot it.  Um.  I talked to Daniel Alitzer too.  Intense.  Kinda scary.”

“Are the skeptic and drowned guy together?” Verona asked.

“I think they went separate ways.  Or he went after her, but I’m not sure what that looks like.  I think Clem would cooperate if we gave her something, she seems kind, but I don’t think she’d leave the others.”

“So we’ve got three people wandering around.”

“We’ll split up,” Verona said.

“I don’t want to deal with Daniel,” Avery said.

“You’ve been doing the self-affirmation with glamour, right?” Lucy asked.

“Might be a bad idea to have you too close to him, then.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “That was part of it.  He spotted it right away, then got kinda in my face.  Turned up the dial to ten.”

“I can deal with intense,” Lucy told her.  “Or I can deal with the skeptic.  Or whoever.  Then there’s the Lily…”

“I can track her,” Avery said.  “It’s not hard.  Snowdrop can sorta do it too.  But tracking her isn’t the same thing as catching up.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Verona?  You and me, who goes after the glamour-drowned guy?”

“The faerie guy is more interesting, but… I’d rather you deal with him than the skeptic.  I think the notes had her down as ‘starkly racist’.”

“I can deal with that.”

“You can but it’s like… I think you’d get caught up in a fight with the skeptic, right?  And I’d get caught up in Daniel’s thing, probably.  I’d rather not.”

“What do you need?” Matthew asked.

“Charles, maybe,” Lucy said.  “He’s the only one who can really interact with them, right?  That weakness to their thing aside?”

“Edith and I discussed that while trying to work out the text on the tiny pictures you took of the documents.  Daniel’s glamour and Clem’s cursed items would very possibly destroy Charles.”

“Destroy like… one hit K.O.?  Worse?” Verona asked.

“Yes.  One or the other or both.  He doesn’t have any defenses.”

“We might need help with the time thing,” Avery said.  “It’s pretty crazy and it means we’ve got a lady wandering around, sometimes faster than the eye can see, and there’s a chance she could pick up another thing like the gold watch.”

“She only finds a thing every few weeks, I thought,” Lucy said.

“Exactly,” Snowdrop chimed in, “and time’s all normal and everything.”

“Get bent,” Snowdrop replied with a smile.

“We’re splitting up, then?  Where do we meet up?” Avery asked.

“The site of the Hungry Choir ritual, that first night,” Verona suggested.  “It’s far enough away from our houses.”

“I’ll talk to Charles to see if he has any ideas for the watch and containing it.”

“This diagram I have might help hold it back,” Verona said, waving her notebook.  “You’re going after the Lily?  Take this.”

She tore the page out of the notebook and handed it over.

“I don’t know where to begin with Daniel,” Lucy admitted.  “Do I go to the closest place to the Faerie, or the furthest?”

“Furthest,” Snowdrop said.

“Closest,” Avery agreed.

“What are they up to?” Lucy asked.

“They were trying to distract and deter, but the number of people poking around stopped around when your school started.  I don’t know what they’ve been up to, exactly.  Faerie business.”

Lucy grabbed her bag and hopped over the side of the truck, sneakers slapping against the road.

Avery used the black rope, jumping over to the railing of the bridge.  Verona remained where she was.

“Skeptic?  Do we know where she is?”  Verona asked.

“I think the time thing makes it so…” Verona pulled her phone out.  She checked, then shook her head.  “No service.”

“Stick with Matthew and Edith, work something out, keep an eye and an ear out.”

“If we deal with our things, we can find you.  Drive by the town center maybe every fifteen or twenty minutes?”

“Alright,” Matthew said.  “Do you want to move to the back seat, Verona?”

The back seat was a narrow bench behind the driver and passenger seats, with next to no legroom.  Even for someone like Verona.

“I’m good back here, I think,” Verona said.

“You could maybe swing by and see your dad?” Lucy suggested.

“After.  It’d distract me in the middle of things.”

“Going,” Avery said.  Snowdrop shook her head.  The two of them held the black rope, jogging down the bridge.  They slipped into the darkness between streetlights and then they were gone.

“Faerie cave for me,” Lucy said.

Lucy hated leaving Verona behind in that truck.  They were already in this weird limbo of being home but not home.  Unable to check in because of other stuff, because they weren’t supposed to be here, at the same time they had to be here.

It was one of those weird things that made their life as practitioners feel like it collided with their lives as people.  In a rough way.

And leaving Verona in that truck with Matthew and Edith?

Lucy jogged.  She didn’t want to run in case she had to run later and they’d already walked the Ruins.

They’d spent weeks doing surveillance.  A really tricky thing when they hadn’t wanted a repeat of the incident where Avery had visited John Stiles.  Like with the Augury crap, when you looked, sometimes the person looked back.  Or turned the fact that you were there and looking into a chance to retaliate.

She ran to the end of the bridge, then made her way down the slope to the river bank, scattered with loose slate stones.  A beach that was like someone had dropped a thousand panes of glass onto rock, except the shards were black stone, and the elements had worn off the sharpest edges, while leaving the fact they were all corners in effect.

Stones slipped under her shoes here and there.

As part of their surveillance, they’d watched Matthew and Edith a lot.  They lived normal lives.  They worked jobs, with Edith working only part time.  Edith saw family a few times a week.  They traveled in or she traveled out.  They’d had Snowdrop follow her on a few of those trips out of town, to make sure there wasn’t anything major.  There wasn’t.  Matthew, meanwhile, stayed closer to Kennet.  More solitary.  He saw friends, sometimes went for drinks, but it was a pretty small friend group, and it wasn’t like… nothing like what Lucy had with Verona, or like what she had with Avery.

In the off hours, the two were recruiting.  They took turns, with the person who was free handling going off into the deep woods.  Edith would occasionally hit the spirit world or go to some distant lake or petrified tree, and she’d find a spirit and coax them into helping to guard the perimeter.  Matthew did something similar, but it was a little less of a coax and more of a cattle prod.

He could use his Doom, and the further from Edith he was, the more comfortable he was in employing it.  He moved some Others around, and drove off some that were problems, but not so problematic that John was needed.

It was scary, seeing glimpses of that.  Scarier, now, with the way Verona was in the back of that truck, because she had to be, kind of, and if practice was taken out of the equation, she was in the back of the truck of a pair of people who they were considering prime suspects in a pretty major crime.

For a certain meaning of crime.

“Be careful out here,” a voice cut through the dark.  “Watch your step.”

It was a couple, older than Booker and younger than Matthew, so probably mid-twenties.  They had a husky they were walking who was panting in the summer evening heat.

It wasn’t a drenched-in-sweat heat, but it was warm.

She wasn’t far from the Faerie cave, now.  It was tricky footing in spots.  Gently sloping rocks that had been worn down when the water level was higher, littered with slate.  It was okay in daylight and dangerous at night.

In a way, the placement of the cave might’ve been intentional.  Nobody would walk up on a Faerie emerging from the cave in the evening if this path was so not fun to navigate.  The Faerie probably learned to walk this blindfolded.

Yet there were more people on the shore.

Lucy gave them a wary look, studying them to figure out if any of them were the Aware.  But the man was too old, and one of them looked to be seven or eight, and she was crying.

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

“I got turned into birds,” the child said.

“He drugged us somehow,” the old man barked out the words, angry.  “He gave us something, he poisoned us to mess with us.  I’m going to call the police.”

“I don’t think phones are working right now,” Lucy said.  She pulled out hers, and blinked a few times as she noted the time.  It was nine.  They’d left late afternoon.  She showed them.

“Reception?” the lady asked.  She was the same age as the couple who’d been on the beach a minute ago.

“I thought it was just me.  I’ve got to get back to work.  I tried to call my boss and I couldn’t get through.  I’ll take the girl.”

“My place is closer,” the old man said.  “The thing to do is call the police.  Then we reunite her with her mother, and turn their attention to that boy, who should be institutionalized.”

“He made me into a flock of birds,” the little girl said.  “How?”

“Drugs,” the old man said.

“I didn’t drink the water he gave me.  He barely touched me.  It was only the bird.”

“Then he used the trained bird to deliver it.  I don’t know,” the old man said.

“Was there anyone else?” Lucy asked.

“We got interrupted.  Big guy,” the old man said.

Would turning him over to the police help?  Would that remove one threat from the picture?

How the heck did a guy who’d had too much glamour as a kid turn someone into birds?  Multiple birds?

It was more worrying because Lucy didn’t really trust the police. Especially with someone vulnerable.  Too many people got shot like that.  Even in Canada, it couldn’t be ruled out.

And if he wasn’t vulnerable and he was dangerous… then cops definitely shouldn’t go in.

“It might be better to call mental health or whatever it is?” Lucy suggested.

“Adult protective services,” the old man said.  “I don’t think they’d answer.  I’ll call the police.”

“Don’t,” Lucy said.  “Police arrest.  They- if he needs to be institutionalized, go straight to the institution.”

The woman said, “When the phones aren’t down.  I don’t think the store even has a landline.”

“My place does,” the old man said.

Lucy looked back toward the cave, and saw a small figure.

She wasn’t making headway.

Better to try to get out ahead of this.

If she could get him out of here or get him to cooperate before anyone arrived, that would be best.  Except with time being weird she wasn’t sure whether that arrival would happen five seconds after she got to the cave or five hours.  Or whatever.

She broke away from the group and nearly slipped on rocks on her way over.

“Our tumescent faerie boy is handling the issue,” Toadswallow said.

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Faerie are idiots,” the goblin said.  “They’ll be dumber than Cherrypop is, sometimes.  They adore terrible ideas.  For the drama.”

“I guess we should be glad it’s not Shellie.  Because she goes after Faerie.”

“Oh, I think our boy might give that a shot,” Toadswallow said.  He smiled.  “It’s a terrible idea, picking a fight with a so-called warrior like Guilherme, and the boy’s got enough ninny glitter in him to love terrible ideas as much as the Faerie do.”

“Ninny glitter,” Lucy noted.  “I like it.”

She hurried over to the cave entrance, detouring through the arch of birch trees and then stepping out of sight.

“It’s why you’re staying away. It’s why you’re keeping strange company. Little else makes sense,” the voice came from the cave.  It was resonant, sad, and projected weirdly well.

“I still have adventures and tasks I must see to their natural ends,” Guilherme answered.  Calm, assured, but somehow a bit sad too.

“How many?  A handful?”

There was a pause.  Toadswallow sidled up.

Maricica’s laugh echoed.

“Please, sir, would you make me one of those tasks?  I’m a burden to my ssiter, and to dear Clementine, who shoulders so much already, however much she tries to keep it private.  I catch people’s attention and keep it, and lure them into whatever madness shines brightest.  I struggle to tell right from wrong.  I’m told I’m insufferable.”

It was good, Lucy decided, that Verona wasn’t here, listening.  Verona… probably would have been on the same page, on a lot of those things.  Sympathizing to the point she stopped listening.

“I have already taken in the drowned, as hero and as villain.  I’ve tried to mend them, and to ruin them.  I suspect the most merciful thing is to leave you alone.”

“No!” Daniel shouted.  “Not when I cost them joy.  Take me in or fix me or give me something.  But don’t- don’t tell me I have to inflict myself on them.  That is a cruelty too dark for a Bright Faerie.”

“The upper courts are so much crueler than the lower ones.  For reasons much like this.”

It made Lucy think of her talk with Verona.  She couldn’t see Daniel and she didn’t want to peek around the corner and get spotted, but she could hear his tone.  She could hear how wounded he seemed.

He was supposedly close to thirty and had escaped when he was closer to Booker’s age, twentyish.  What was that?  Ten years of being in, give or take, and ten years of being out?  And he was that wounded for that long.

Thinking of Verona, of that woundedness, it made the moment sit differently in Lucy’s head, forced her to rexamine it, to figure out how it fit, why it had played out like that.  It wasn’t just the joke.

Then Daniel began to sing.  The words were foreign, but the emotions were universal.  What he expressed and put into it wasn’t the same thing it evoked.  Anger, injustice, and again, that woundedness.

His life had been taken away from him.

How had Lucy taken Verona’s life from her?  It was an odd comment about being a cat.  That wasn’t a possibility.  It was a lark, a hypothetical.

The singing shifted gradually into something bigger, punctuated by strong words, bridging them together.  He could, in a single sentence, use pitches and cadences that evoked the child, the adult, the meek and the mighty.

The right and wrong.  A string of one-syllable notes, like a heartbeat, quickening.

Did Verona want out of that house that badly?  Was that it?  The quiet child and the domineering, self-indulgent tyrant?

So badly she’d just give it all up?  The chance of growing up together, graduating University together?  Going through life milestones together?

Tears welled in Lucy’s eyes.

She would.  She might.  She could.

That heartbeat tempo picked up, became verses, became angry, in a way that left injustice well behind, and that was an anger that Lucy had only briefly experienced, with Paul.  It pulled her away from herself and dizzied her and it made it hard to leave that feeling of realization over where Verona had been at behind.

Anger that promised things.  Anger that led to inevitabilities.  Like how there was no way Lucy would run into Paul after carrying everything and be civil in any way.  He’d hurt her mom.  Wounded her.  He’d hurt Booker.  He-

A hand settled on her shoulder.

She breathed hard, blinking, and wiped at her eyes.  She’d activated her Sight without realizing, and she was surprised at how much the emotion that bled out of the cave was getting to her, staining her.

“What will you do?” the whisper leaked out of the cave.

“We stop him,” Lucy answered.  “He put civilians in the line of fire.  People’s families.”

“What will you give me!?  This world is a sandstorm, compared to what I once had!  It chews at me, fills my eyes and nose and mouth!  It steals all beauty from things, erodes everything fine!”

“You had slavery,” Guilherme answered, succinct.

John spoke, voice low.  “I’m a killer, d-”

“I don’t know anything else,” the boy spoke.

He was way older than Lucy, twice her age, but it was hard not to picture him as a boy, or to think of him as anything but, hearing his voice.

“Look,” Guilherme said, with an unusual degree of emphasis.

She’d implored something similar of Verona.  To look forward.

“Do you want me to dispatch him?  He-”

Lucy’s Sight caught the sudden flood of crimson.

“-He just injured Guilherme.  I don’t know if it was fatal.”

“Nonlethal.  Rubber bullets if you have them.  Leg shot if you don’t.”

“I do have them.  Both rubber bullets and leg shots can be fatal, but together… it may be the best I can do.”

“I more or less trust you.  We get him to Clem, or we let the authorities grab him.  If he’s really a danger to people, then maybe a hospital where they can give him some stability.”

“Dark Fae!” the boy shouted, his voice echoing.  “Are you part of this adventure, or does this leave him only his adventure with you!?”

“If you were partner to it, he would have kept it where you could see.  I could see that tale.  The Fae of the dark fall who toyed with the lover, the Fae of high summer who loved him, keeping and protecting the memory on a pedestal.  But he kept it to himself.  Are you curious?  Do you want to see, now?  Are you wondering what it unlocks, what secrets of another court this lover might have told him?”

“The letter,” Lucy whispered.  “Trying to trade it to Maricica?”

“By offering it, he takes it from her,” John said.

“Are you prepared?” John asked.  “Or should I do this alone?”

Lucy had to dig into her bag.  She wasn’t sure if she’d kept the soda can around so long that it was no longer carbonated.

She focused on her Self, that she’d been trying to shore up as a power source.  A bit of glamour, and then the weapon ring.

She turned the can into a gun.  She swayed slightly in the aftermath of it.

“Careful,” John whispered.

“Once drowned, you may be resucitated,” Guilherme said, in the cave.  “Twice drowned… it is rare to surface once again.”

Lucy looked at John, who shrugged.

“Then I will do my best to take that last adventure from you, noble sir, and sup on what I can.  Unless your friend wishes to devour me.”

Oh, Maricica.  It was hard to picture her as Guilherme’s friend, but that might have been the intent.

“She will not.  Maricica?  You will not.  Go.  He’s dangerous for you.”

John touched Lucy’s shoulder, murmuring, “Don’t announce us.”

Lucy stepped around the corner, holding the gun without pointing it at the target.

Daniel had glossy black hair that formed very loose ringlets that drifted in a breeze that wasn’t present, and was draped in something that looked like wet silk, but it wasn’t wet.  It was fine, clingy, in deep sapphire, with what looked like white silver.  He was pretty and slender, but hollowed out.

The moment to signal John had passed a bit too long, and faced with Daniel, and everything he seemed to be, she found herself filling the silence instead of letting it hang.  “What about me?”

She took in more of the scene.  A few feet away, Guilherme knelt, a hand pressed to his chest, another reaching behind to his back.  Blood flowed around fingers, as he tried to staunch the wound with his hands.

There was something in Daniel’s eyes that made Lucy worry.  Scarier than any horror movie.

Again, it felt out of sync, and out of time.  She gave John a nod.

He pulled the trigger.  Daniel flinched back in what felt like the wrong timing, his hand brushing cloth and kicking it up.  His clothes were more voluminous than they’d appeared at first.

Within the volume of that voluminous, Daniel seemed to move.  Like he’d skipped, stepping forward on one foot with the other brought overhead, only for it to become belatedly apparent that he’d touched the ground with hand, not foot, and he was doing a cartwheel.

The bullet passed through the cloth and clattered to the floor, twenty feet away.  Daniel only expanded the prior effect.  Some of the movements of cloth suggested feet in the air, hands, and head.

John kept shooting.  Each shot stirred and tore cloth.

She held back her one shot.

Guilherme said something about shooting first.

Her ears were ringing from the bullets.  She belatedly caught up as John said, “I did say.”

What had he last said, to deliver a casual ‘told you so’?

Oh, right.  Not announcing herself.

“Theatrics matter, and it feels wrong,” Lucy said.

“It is more wrong that he is about to leave and become Kennet’s problem.  Maricica, you stay.  Lucy, John, chase him.”

She glanced to the side for Maricica and saw only darkness.

“He’s not-” she started.

Daniel dove for a wall of the cave, clothing forming a loose circular shape as it touched the wall, framing a hole that Lucy wasn’t positive had been there before.

She ran for the hole, and it disappeared, the cloth becoming a wisp of smoke and dust.  A wall remained in its wake.

She changed direction, then ran from the cave.  John joined her.

Onto the uneven, sloping rocks that were littered with slate.

Down the riverbank.  Down the water.

John’s pace was something measured, while hers felt frantic.

It felt more frantic by the moment.  She’d felt weirded out since the singing and that weirdness wasn’t going away.

“You trained with Guilherme.  You’ve touched base with the goblins.  You’ve learned tricks,” John told her.  “You’ve gathered tools.  You can do this.”

“I don’t- maybe.  But it’s messing with my head.  The singing-”

“It messed with my head as well.  Yalda was not magically good, but she had a good voice.  Many children who were slaughtered by bad chance and stray bullets in the conflict were children who’d had some experience with singing, it seems.  She got it from them.  Clarified it, as she took lives.”

“I’m sorry, what happened.”

John touched his own necklace, which had a ring on it.

“I’m not looking for sympathy.”

“You have it anyway.  It sucks.  This… this sucks.  This kid- I know he’s more than twice my age but I don’t want to hurt him.”

Lucy did a double take, looking to the side, seeing Daniel step out of the trees, then looking in the direction he’d been running.  There was only a leaf caught on a single strand of spiderweb, twirling.  Maybe in the gloom, a trick of the eyes, she’d believed it was him.

“You must be a very confused young lady.  Shooting someone is not the way one normally acts on such wantings.”

“Not wanting to hurt me and being so willing to put bullets in me.  Don’t raise that gun, sir.  I don’t want to be held responsible for where that bullet travels after it leaves the chamber.”

“I liked your singing,” Lucy said, as a stab at diplomacy.  “It got to me.”

“The talent comes and goes, matching the situation.”

“A lot of the music I’m into is pretty raw.  Indie artists getting started.  I like unique sounds,” Lucy said.  “My brother got me into it.  Want to listen?”

“The twang of it wears on me so quickly.  No.  No.”

“Can we talk?  Find a common ground?  You were sent here, right?  By your landlord?”

“I’m good at finding things of value.  People with potential, treasures, and glittering things.  He wanted me to bring him some of the most valuable things.  To take them from someone else.”

“What are the others doing?  Clem and Sharon?”

“I don’t know.  Clem is watching me.”

In the background, she could hear sirens.

Multiple sirens.  She glanced, and it looked like three or four police cars.

Sirens were curious.  If phones really weren’t working, or were only inconsistently working, someone at least managed the nine-one-one call.

She hoped the others weren’t caught up in that.

“Are you hungry?  Thirsty?” she asked.

“I had water and then I lost it.  The water here is such swill.  Even filtered.  The food is more swill.”

“Can we work something out, Daniel?  You can’t keep going like this.”

“Why not?” he asked.  “All I must do now is leverage what I have now into more.  More glamour.”

“Ninny glitter, my acquaintance called it.”

“The abiltiy to make imagination into reality.”

“A little girl into birds?” Lucy asked.  “How is that any better than how they treated you?”

“For one thing, it was moments.  For me, it was a lifetime.  I haven’t yet lived out that full lifetime, but I know I will carry it with me always.”

Lucy thought again of Verona.

“That little girl will remember that too.  Not for sure as something clear, but definitlely a terrifying moment.”

“A roller coaster of a moment.  To be birds,” Daniel said.  He smiled.  “I am far from good at manipulating animals, or at turning people into animals.  That’s a Dark Fall concern, a High Fall concern.  Isn’t that right, Maricica?”

He threw something.  It might have been a pinch of dust, but it became like a needle, aimed at a moth in the darkness.

It hit Maricica’s shoulder and became dust again, settling into a fine curl of bramble on her shoulder, incorporated into her dress.

“It was crude work,” Maricica told him.  “Terribly crude, it might not have held up for your entire performance.”

“I worried that it was so,” Daniel said.  “I know I’ve angered you, taking away one of your stories.”

“We live forever and strive to stay entertained.  When we can’t, we fall to Winter.  A story taken from us is a hastening of that end.  With our poor Guilherme, you took half of what he had.  Of his love story and mystery, he has only his mystery left.”

Lucy looked at Maricica, who smiled like she knew Lucy was looking, even though her eyes were pointed nowhere near Lucy herself.

Guilherme was… dying?  Or something approximate?

There was only a mystery?

“My court was Dark Spring. The aristocratic underground.  Crime, conspiracy, dark nobility, tyranny,” Daniel said.  “We didn’t concern ourselves with transformation, as much as I learned some.  You had to.”

“Yes,” Maricica said.  “It was a must to learn a bit of everything.  Especially once the courts allowed travel between them.”

“The glamour I’m best at is my native glamour.  Glamour I was raised in, while I was made to be a singer,” Daniel said.  “Are you familiar with the courts, little girl?”

“I’m a teenager, not that little,” Lucy said.  “And some.  I got the rundown.”

“Do you know what kind of glamour we did?”

“No.  But I feel like you’re setting up for a big moment, leading into it like this.”

John pointed his gun at Daniel.

“That bullet will miss and it will hit somebody,” Daniel said.  “Terminally.”

“Letting him talk was a mistake.”

“Then let me talk more,” Maricica said.  “To not give him too much, and to deny him his reveal.  The Dark Spring court dwells on emotion.  Dark emotion.  The High Spring court does glamour in fine art, detail, and evoking emotion like laughter, joy, pleasure.  Its inverse dwells in emotional pain, in grief, fear, and resentment.  Rather than create art for the audience, they turn audience into art.  A man made into a painting, a woman cast in bronze and left to live forever, seeing the world from the statue’s eyes.”

“I was untouched by the punishments, because I sang well, but I saw them carried out enough.  Do you wish to see the worst possible things, girl?”

Daniel moved his hand, letting dust fall as a curtain.  He swept up the curtain in one hand, then gave it shape in another movement.  A cloak.  A shroud.

Which soon draped a figure with a hidden face.

“A touch crude,” Maricica said.

“I do try,” Daniel said.  “Very sorry.”

Lucy backed away as the shrouded figure moved a bit closer.  “Can you come with us instead of this?”

“You’d separate me from what little I have and I have so little.  We’re expecting to stay two days but we’ll probably stay three or four.  If those three or four days are paid for in suffering and loss, then… I hate to say it, but it does make this feel more like home.”

The shroud advanced toward Lucy.  John drew his knife and slashed, and it cut the creature’s flesh.  Even Daniel seemed surprised.

It reached for Lucy, regardless, and John stabbed it approximately where the heart was meant to be.

The hand continued to reach.  It pushed forward, uncaring about its own wound.

She pulled out the hook that Nat had given her, and aimed to pierce the thing’s hand.

A hand seized her wrist, and at first she thought it was Maricica.  Maricica was standing to her right.

Because… he was using the gaps in time?

The shroud drew closer, and John stabbed it.  It buckled.  Lucy twisted, then threw John her knife.  “Booker’s flame!”

The knife ignited.  The shroud was cut down.

“That cost me a lot, and it’s gone so fast,” Daniel said.

“Many young faerie struggle with that reality,” Maricica told him.

“Would you take me with you?”

“Not after you spoiled my fun, no.”

“Maricica,” Lucy said, “Maybe?  It’s a resolution.”

“A shallow one,” Maricica answered.

“I’ll take shallow,” Daniel said.

“I shall not,” Maricica told him.

“Deep then?” he asked.  He moved his hand near Lucy’s hook of twisted metal, and made it disappear.  Then, a second later, hook in hand, he hacked at Maricica.

She caught him before he could drive it home.  She tittered.

Lucy backed away.  She still held the can, and she began to make it a gun.

Daniel threw another pinch of glamour, and it became a needle.  The needle penetrated the can, and it fizzed violently.  She dropped it.

“Wasteful,” Maricica said.

“What’s the harm in spending if I have no expectation of living thousands of years?” he asked.  “Or in borrowing.”

“If you’d like to deal…”

He adjusted his grip, no longer holding the hook properly, and instead held her hand that held the hook.  He leaned in, and her wings intervened, patterns peeling away and swaying like cobras before the bite.

And he didn’t care.  He bit into her arm, fended off the first cobras, and savaged her.

“Stop!” Lucy shouted.  She didn’t have hook, knife, or gun.  So she drew a weapon with the weapon ring, turning a pen into a rapier blade.

This time she felt especially weak.

John circled around, holding the burning knife.

“Stop,” Maricica said, calm, as her arm was torn down to bone.  “You know this only gives me power over you.”

“I don’t,” he started, mouth bloody and partially full.  He swallowed and finished, “care.”

John lunged in from an angle Lucy couldn’t see, grabbing him, and pulled him away.

Lucy leaped in as well, reaching- grabbing.

Only Daniel was no longer there.  She reached through mist.

And came face to face with a shrouded figure.

John hadn’t had Daniel.  John was still four paces away.  Maricica was still fallen. Daniel was there, in the background, taking advantage of the fact that everyone’s attention was on Lucy.

She had to fight, to avoid letting the thing get its hands on her.  Ducking, dodging.

She started to stab with the rapier pen.

Lucy pulled back, letting the pen fall from her fingers, because she was already so close to stabbing it.

“Touch it, and it conducts emotions to you.  Even hurling a stone at you.  I cannot easily deal with them.  We should only be glad he creates them one at a time, unlike some of that court who make dozens.”

Daniel took three long steps backward, and then one to the side.

And then, not even a blur so much as a glimpse, he was gone.  Running.

It was John who leaped forward.  John tossed something bundled up at Lucy and then he bear-hugged the shrouded figure that was dangerous to touch with even a rapier blade, then kicked the next.

Lucy ran in the direction the boy had gone, looking for and trying to find the fracture or space where time moved faster.  But because the world around her seemed to blend in together, it wasn’t easy.

The bundle was her knife, wrapped in packaging he must have had at hand.  She was glad to have it.

She turned to her Sight, and then, when she didn’t see anything, did her best to focus it.

The fractures were a kind of damage.  Her Sight showed her damage.

Slowly, surely, she could see the distinctions in the staining.  He gained on her with every second he ran.

She found the best path, and then she followed.  A hundred paces behind, but she was keeping up, now.

It was too easy to draw some parallels between him and Verona.  She worried that if she couldn’t help him or stop him, she couldn’t help or stop Verona, who might really be buying into that cat idea.  Or something else.

So she chased, dreading what came next, and worrying that the dread was him working his Dark Spring court know-how on her.

For he knew he was being pursued, and now he was painting his surroundings around him as he ran.  And she was running through a dressed-up Kennet, into a dark, dark place, after a person without hope for the future.