Her feet were bare, the moisture of her sweat leaving footprints on the blackboard-like surface that the ambient warmth erased shortly after. She was wearing her stretch sweats, but she’d rolled up the pants legs to the knees, her top was the hooded, sleeveless one she’d gotten for Christmas and had looked forward to wearing for months. She’d folded up the bottom of the shirt inside to expose her stomach and lower back; the front door was open in one corner of the room, the back door open in the opposite corner, allowing a breeze to blow through, and her skin periodically prickled with goosebumps as the breeze got cool enough to make those footprints on the floor last another second or two.
The text had said to dress comfortably. She preferred to be cooler than to be warm, so this was a compromise to match the weather. The clothes she was wearing were about as comfortable as she could get without borrowing something, and her instincts were to go with the advice they’d gotten for awakening. Bought or given, not stolen. Not someone else’s.
She measured and marked the center of the line. Then, as if she were drawing an ‘8’, she drew out a pair of diamonds with their points meeting at the line. She knew from the lessons with Edith that framing something in a diamond signified quality. Imparting qualities of the element to something, like hardness and weight from stone.
Across those diamonds, ruler clacking and scraping against the floor as she moved it to avoid touching or breaking any existing lines, she drew smaller diamonds, this time with the points overlapping to form another diamond in the center. The interlocking diamonds were another thing they’d learned very early, signifying connections. Licking her thumb, she wiped away some of the chalk lines and bits of the central line where they crossed or met one another.
Back hurting a bit from bending over, in combination with the exertions from earlier in the day, Lucy straightened, hands at her lower back, and stretched. She walked carefully around the diamonds. She was rapidly getting to the point of no return, where leaving would necessitate more work than it saved her. She’d gone to the bathroom and sat even though she hadn’t needed to go, because even though the book said she would have reduced needs, she really didn’t want to use the bucket in the corner.
She had some food and drink set aside as well, sitting in a shelf that was more an indent in the wall than something protruding. Again, something she wasn’t sure was necessary, especially considering that Avery, Verona, and Snowdrop had committed to visiting and guarding her. They would bring her anything she needed. Probably.
Yeah. This was tricky. She really hoped Verona and Avery weren’t running into trouble. She couldn’t go much further until they got back, and there weren’t many preparations left to do.
She had candles set out, sitting on another shelf, along with matches. That was for evening. She’d had to ask, dig up boxes in the deep storage room, and found what she’d wanted. She hoped she wouldn’t regret her choice. These ones produced a heavy smoke that would sit close to the floor. Chosen because, when she’d been asked and quizzed back when they’d started the practice, she’d decided that more than water, than fire, than iron, wood, or air, the element that was most her was smoke.
Smoke warned of imminent fire, and smoke lingered after those fires had gone out. Smoke could be abrasive, could be cleansing in some spiritual contexts.
She’d picked it by instinct when talking to Edith, way back before they’d faced down the Hungry Choir, that first week. She’d picked it again when working through everything she might need for this.
She had other things. Lucy had some extra water bottles, on top of the ones she’d brought for snacks and meals, just in case, and stuff for washing up, including some hand towels and wet wipes. She’d brought her toiletry kit on a whim, and instead of setting it inside one of those indents in the wall, she’d placed it on the floor, near the edge of where the diagram would end. Two changes of clothes, folded and sitting beside the kit. A fire extinguisher, sitting on the shelf, along with some papers, including ones like they’d used during the Alcazar rituals. One dive to get the papers out. One dive to take them in and make structural changes.
A light knock on the door made her head turn.
Verona and Avery stood in the doorway, pulling off their shoes while simultaneously working out how to hold the folded silk cloth between them. They whispered.
Lucy held her finger to her lips.
The whispering stopped, Verona stepping out of her sandals while Avery kicked her shoes off to land in the grass somewhere beyond the stairs. They walked, bare-footed, across the floor, leaving those same faint, fleeting footprints, while both holding the package.
It was a little extra, doing it in this ceremonious way, but it couldn’t hurt, and the thought was appreciated. Lucy smiled a bit.
They held out the silk bundle, then peeled away the folds on top, taking turns, with some halts and hesitations before they finally uncovered it.
This was the first time Lucy was seeing it all in one piece. The loop of the handle where the fingers were inserted had been separated, made to sit inside the outermost rim of her ear. It extended to the lobe, and there was a pin there to extend through the hole in her earlobe she already had. A fine wire dangled, and a smokey, red-tinted crystal was set within a cage of the same material the scissors were made of. More crystals studded the upper portion.
They’d debated going with two and going with one. In the end, the decision had been made for them, when the preparations of the first piece had gone a bit south. Avery and Verona had been rubbing a handle against a filing surface, and a part had broken off. They’d decided that it was more trouble than it was worth to repair things.
Better to finish the construction of this one, give a little ceremony to say goodbye to the broken piece, saying a few words about mistakes being made, but it not being an ending. They saw this stuff through.
Lucy pressed the earring against her chest, over where her heart was, smiling. She really was touched.
Verona, on apparent impulse, leaned in to give Lucy a hug, arms warm against Lucy’s cool shoulders, kissed her on the cheek, then walked over to the far corner of the room, where a chair sat ready for her.
Avery, apparently compelled to follow suit, gave Lucy a hug of her own, brief and tight, then a kiss on the other cheek. Snowdrop craned her head in to give Lucy a lick, which prompted a silent giggle from Lucy.
Avery took up a seat in another corner, about ten paces from Verona, the door just to her right.
Lucy turned her back to them, facing the diagram. She weighed if she needed to go run off to the bathroom or something, figured she didn’t, considered all the other variables, then bent down and placed the earring in one diamond.
The sides of the diamonds and the line that divided the room were her guidelines for what followed. She wrote parallel to those lines, starting at one corner of the diamond and working her way toward the back of the room, well past the tip of the diamond.
Born September 23rd, 2006, in Kennet ON
She started another line at the tip of the diamond, and wrote more.
Awakened May 1st, 2020, in Kennet, ON
She straightened, rubbing her back where it was uncomfortable to stoop over, then fixed her shirt where it had become untucked.
She looked across the room, and saw that on the other half of the room, there were matching lines of text, one in two rows, the other in one.
Manufactured December 17th, 1913 in Oshawa, ON Captured March 25th and printed April 6th, 2020, in Kennet ON
Refashioned July 5th, 2020, at the Blue Heron Institute, ON
At the far end of that diagram, she could see a collection of tools. She had to look back, then forward again. Files, pliers, snips, a fine drill, all mirroring the position of her makeup kit. Matching the location of her folded clothing was the leftover material. Curls of shaved metal and some dust from metal filings. Bits of crystal and dust from the grinding and polishing of that crystal. A curl of wire.
Footprints were rapidly evaporating on that black tile floor, on the far side of the room.
A breeze blew through the room, and she felt the goosebumps again. She walked with care to one side of the room, and watched as footprints appeared, mirroring hers. She could hear them, too. A sharper sound than she could ever make.
She knelt, touched a fresh piece of chalk to the floor, and began writing on the far side of the line that divided the room.
Lucille Desiree Ellingson–
She stopped as her arm made contact with something solid.
Stretching across the line, doing its own writing, was an arm, slender, black-skinned, and prickling with goosebumps. The nails were like red-tinted crystal framed in metal, the skin had a faint smokey texture to it, and the wrinkles at the knuckle and the crook of the elbow had deeper, almost tarnished texture within them.
Her forearm crossed the other, and she took care not to look up. It wasn’t that looking up was wrong, but this was a case where every response had meaning. Even looking up.
The earring went through the ear. She didn’t want to yield.
She pushed, driving her forearm against the other arm. It pushed back, hard enough it threatened to part her flesh. It was harder than her skin was.
Something gave. Metal penetrated flesh, then found the sucking void in her arm where the bone was supposed to be. An arm extended through her own, cold, cool, and smooth, still holding chalk to the floor on her side of the line, drawing out its own message. She pulled, carrying on, and the arm pulled through, slipping through nerves, veins, and muscle, through trace amounts of fat, through skin. Goosebumps stood out all up and down her body as she continued.
-Practitioner and protector of Kennet.
She stepped into the diamond on her side and sat. She could feel the weight and presence of Avery and Verona behind her, watching her and watching over her. She could see chairs at the far end of the room that they hadn’t placed there, one with a long, narrow pair of scissors resting against the seat back, point on the seat. The other with a series of photographs pinned to it.
Sitting opposite her was herself, wearing not clothes, but an intricate and careful wrapping of the same crimson and charcoal colored banners and ribbons that Lucy had seen so many times, tied to the handles of swords she viewed with her Sight. This other her had her hair tied back, but the ponytail was wire in tight curls, ending in innumerable ornaments like the ones on the earring, grazing bare shoulders and running down her back. The other her had skin of a similar color but a different tone and texture, catching the light, her eyes were metal, and she wore the earring, exaggerated and writ large, framing one side of her head.
As Lucy had signed the far side of the line, this other her had signed her side.
Eavesdropper’s Earring, Implement of Lucille Desiree Ellingson.
Rigid and tense, the Earring put one hand as far forward as she could without crossing the line, leaned forward with fingers splayed on the ground, and then began to whisper.
Lucy took a relaxed posture, hands behind her to prop herself up, and she listened.
“As your teacher Mr. Belanger explained yesterday evening, we have a tendency to structure the classes in a way that puts the most practical and active exercises toward the end of the week. Field trips, group rituals, summonings and bindings of Others, on site and elsewhere, and, of course, competition.”
Mr. Bristow stepped back, arms spread, the corners of his mustache turning up. Behind and around him, the magic circle extended across and around the ‘blasting site’, the gouged, scarred, and repaired field that stretched behind the west halls of the school. A building was well underway in its construction at the northwest corner of the field, wooden framework looming high, stones placed around the foot, as if to help prop them up. The materials that were gathered at the northern and western edges; stacks of wood, piles of stone, and even the sheets of blue-tinted glass, standing up with spacers placed between them.
The grass, damp with last night’s rain, was taking on a glow as if lit from within, forming a perfect, vast circle, surrounded by script. Dust like pollen lifted away from the edges, but as motes drifted toward Lucy, she could see that they were letters and runes.
Mr. Bristow was wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt, vest, and slacks, his forehead shiny. Nothing too surprising, except that he was out of his element, kind of. Which was weird because Lucy had a hard time imagining him as ever being in his element. By default, the most comfortable she’d ever seen him, he had the aura of a blustery, arrogant, alcoholic teacher or principal dropped into the middle of a gang-ridden school to be the counterpoint to the protagonist’s stern-but-gentle, world-wise approach.
Man, she hated those movies.
This was that guy, transplanted out and into a backdrop of nature and vaguely rustic construction, with the magic circle equivalent of a coliseum unfolding behind him.
Off to the side, not even seeming to care or not whether he was talking, was a tall, square-jawed man with a nose that had been broken and not fixed, once upon a time. His clothes were the sort that someone who made tons of money bought if they wanted to ‘rough it’ and look outdoorsy. Good for someone who was going to camp, hunt, and hike trails, but the shirt probably cost a hundred bucks alone, the boots five hundred or more. His haircut looked expensive, the stubble on his lower face not incidental but cultivated, and his gaze was level and analytical when he looked at the students.
By contrast, Ted Havens looked like he’d picked up his clothes at a thrift shop and cut his own hair, but he wore it well. He looked confident and at ease enough that she imagined he could visit a red carpet event and not get called out for wearing a decade-old t-shirt and drawstring hemp slacks.
Mr. Bristow was still talking, of course.
“I helped to place stones beneath this field in a ring, for this very purpose. Mr. Belanger talked at the very beginning of your semester here about wanting to form connections, build networks, and be something more. It was my ideology that he so illiberally borrowed, then. To be fair, it’s a founding principle. To be less fair, he failed to mention fundamental elements about the dynamic. Much like world peace, unity among practitioners is not had by sharing, caring, and a leveling of the playing field. It necessitates some hard calls and it requires that all great powers be held in check by some meaningful measure of fear. Ensure that any altercation will end in mutually assured destruction and only the depraved will wage war. Then we excise the depraved. You must know how to defend yourselves, because there are individuals and Others who would prey on you. Even ones you consider friends today may be your ruin tomorrow.”
“How could you, Snowdrop?” Verona whispered, mock-horrified.
Snowdrop’s mouth dropped open.
“I’m harboring a legitimate kernel of worry that Bristow will talk through so much of class we don’t get around to the binding part,” Lucy murmured.
Avery made a sound of amusement.
“Our exercise today is about binding. Binding humans, and avoiding being bound. In lessons earlier this week, we covered some fundamentals. Now, drawing on our own abilities and experience, we put them into practice. Now, rather than subject you all to my own experience with human bondage, which is far more crude, we instead have my friend, Mr. Hennigar, who is willing to lead the lesson.”
The man with the bend in the bridge of his nose stepped forward. “If you’d line up, please. At the field’s edge. Arrange yourselves by your confidence level in this scenario. At the left corner of the field, I want the most confident to stand ready. If you know nothing about binding or protecting yourselves from binding, take the far end of the line.”
“While you get sorted,” Bristow said, taking the opportunity to talk more, “Standard rules for using the field are in the student guide, but I’ll remind you. No targeting or interfering with the diagram protecting the combatants and bystanders. No gouging the ground any further than three feet, unless you acquire permission first. Mrs. Durocher will sometimes perform demonstrations out here that use the entire field, but we take precautions to protect the space. No effects that can last or have influences beyond the duration of the contest. If you can’t end it when we call it, you can’t use it. Punishments for violating these precepts can and will be severe, including but not being limited to transferring all deleterious effects from the victim to you, or expulsion…”
He kept going. Lucy had stepped back, along with the others, judging the line.
This was tough. They weren’t experts or even experienced at this stuff, but they needed to make a show of strength. If they lied or faked it, it might get to be a problem later.
“Got your kits?” Lucy asked the others.
“Brought just about everything,” Avery said.
Lucy looked at Bristow, and saw Mr. Hennigar bending down as Bristow whispered something.
“Such a one sided education. More’s the pity, Alexander.”
Lucy wished she knew what they’d said. Mr. Hennigar smiled.
Lucy looked over the line again, trying to work it out. What was the game, here?
At the head of the line, she saw the three younger Hennigar children. The boys Kellen and Mccauleigh, and the girl Sawyer. Gore streaked in various arrangements. Okay, sure, if Mr. Hennigar was teaching this, then that was fine. There was also Silas, Jarvis, and Maddox. who were roommates, if she remembered right. Jarvis did contract magic and summoning, kind of like Charles, while Silas was the younger brother of the Vanderwerf girl in the west wing, who did Winter Court faerie stuff, and Maddox did spellbinding and soulbinding… that was even less surprising. The only reason Maddox seemed to not be at the very head of the line was that the Hennigars were intimidating.
Next were the Legendre boys, Milly’s younger brothers. Lucy couldn’t remember the names, but they dealt with goblins and binding and stuff, so, ok. Believable.
Then Yadira, the Kitsune practitioner, and Raquel, a soft implement collector, with Fiona the body jumper and the only member of that group who wasn’t very confident in their abilities was Kass, who took up a spot somewhere in the middle of the bottom half of the line. Daniella was up there, which was interesting because she was an ‘Abyss drinker’, whatever that meant. Bogeymen came from the abyss and they were human-ish, maybe?
Fernanda was separated from her friends and looked a bit uncomfortable, but she’d picked her position very deliberately. Emotion manipulator.
Then the Tedds, goblin princesses, not because they were goblins, but because that was what a goblin-focused practitioner called themselves. Lucy wasn’t sure how much they were taking up that spot because they were that good, and how much was because someone of a goblin-ish mindset would rather boast and pretend to be better than they were, even if it meant losing. Look big for a moment, get a bloody nose for it later.
Xerxes and Erasmus were further into that territory where the mental jump to ‘they could bind humans’ was more of a leap. Hosts.
Then Laila, Lane and Max, Natasha Scobie, Salvador and Zachariah, Corbin and Melody, and finally the youngest, including Dom, Sol, Talia, and Jorja.
Jorja was totally alone, here. Her brothers had left campus to go into town, with intentions of taking it easy over the weekend. Three day weekend.
“Ah, that’s his game,” Lucy murmured.
“What’s that?” Verona asked.
“Top end of the line. People connected to Bristow have a lot of human binders. Ten of the top twelve are in his camp. Only the Legendres aren’t.”
Bristow beckoned, indicating for them to take their spots.
“Be careful,” Lucy said, to the others.
Verona and Avery nodded. Avery put Snowdrop down.
Lucy picked her spot, toward the middle-ish. It put her by the Tedds.
America leaned in to whisper to LIberty.
“I’ve never been so insulted in my life. She thinks she’s better than me.”
Lucy tried to ignore the unintelligible whisper and the glance back her way, that was followed by a syrupy smile.
Avery took up the spot on the far side of the Tedds. Verona took the spot by Laila.
Mr. Hennigar bent down as Mr. Bristow whispered something. They exchanged words.
“You know Graubard’s daughter. The other is Jorja. Alexander likes her.”
“Talia, Jorja, to the field,”
“We don’t- can I sit this one out?”
“You shouldn’t. Don’t worry, this is a good opportunity to return to fundamentals.”
The two girls went to the field.
“Talia, you were positioned to the left, so your task is to bind Jorja. Let’s return to fundamentals. At the most basic, repetition and power. State, ‘I bind you, Jorja.’ Use her full name, weave in details if you’re confident in doing so.”
“And what do I do?” Jorja asked.
“What do you think?” Mr. Hennigar asked. “Trust your instincts. The goal is to work our way from beginner to advanced concepts. This is a learning experience.”
Jorja looked uncomfortable and intimidated.
You should have been here, Tymon, Lucy thought. Big brother’s responsibility. There’s too much going on.
“I bind you, Jorja Alexa Leos,” Talia said. “I say this for the first time. Bend to my will.”
“Good,” Mr. Hennigar commented from the sidelines. “Strong. Using the full name, the elaboration, spelling it out for the spirits.”
“Don’t,” Jorja said. “We’re friends.”
“Not in the arena,” Bristow said.
“I bind you, Jorja Alexa Leos. My friend. I say this for the second time. Bend.”
Jorja put her hand to her mouth.
“Act, Jorja, you gain nothing by staying still!” Avery called out.
“Quiet now!” Bristow called out.
“I am acting,” Jorja said. She stuck out her tongue, and there was a neon green pill on it. She tilted her head back and spat it skyward. It shot straight up.
“I bind you, Jorja Alexa Leos, friend, roommate. I say this for the third time-”
Pills began to rain down onto the arena, only within the arena. With them came a shadow from above. A long-limbed woman, twenty feet tall, emaciated and covered with painted images that looked like they’d been drawn and lit up with blacklights. Her hair was dyed, her makeup garish, and she wore a cowboy hat.
The figure reached down, emptying a pill bottle over Talia’s head. The girl scrambled to get away from the downpour, ducked left, then darted right. She and her doll began moving in different directions.
She hadn’t finished her declaration.
“My spirit and I are stronger than you,” Jorja said. “No.”
By some unspoken signal, Talia and her doll changed tacks. The doll familiar rushed Jorja, who pointed at Talia and said something in in foreign language.
“I order you bound,” Talia said. “I bid-”
The pill rain had intensified. Some pills exploded into multicolored puffs on contact with the field. Others sprouted into psychadelic flowers and light shows. And one was caught out of the air by the spirit, who flicked it at Talia.
It struck Talia in the forehead like a bullet.
Talia sat down, hard. She swayed, and looked around, her right eye a pink spiral against a black backdrop, the left a throbbing green circle against blue.
“Thank you,” Jorja said, her voice shaky, looking up. “I’ll make my payment at a later date.”
“You must remove the effect at the duel’s close,” Bristow said. “Or risk expulsion.”
“I- I can. Of course I would. She’s my friend. It just takes power,” Jorja said. She looked up. “Please?”
The spirit nodded, holding up a hand.
The pill reversed direction, shooting back to the waiting fingers.
“And clean up the battlefield of these pills, please,” Mr. Bristow said.
“That’s tougher but okay,” Jorja said. She looked around at the sea of multicolored pills that threatened to bury the grass. “It’s hard to avoid making a mess when I summon something big.”
“While you’re at it, dismiss your spirit for your next round,” Mr. Hennigar said.
“You’ll try to bind the boy. Sol. Hurry now.”
“If I dismiss my spirit, it’s expensive to bring her back. Can I sit this out?”
“Do try, this is a life skill,” Mr. Bristow said, smiling.
It went, Lucy observed, about as well as expected.
Sol was an elementalist. Jorja got about three words into the binding, got his last name wrong, and he pressed the sides of his hands together, closing a diagram he’d drawn or had tattooed on the palms. The resulting explosion ripped up and scorched the grass without really touching the dirt, and flung Jorja back, blood streaming from her nose. She crumpled to the ground.
The diagram flared bright, and the wound was undone. Jorja stood where she had a minute ago, swaying on the spot.
“Perfunctory but effective,” Mr. Hennigar said. “Staying in place while performing practice has its merits. The spirits can settle, sit, and watch. But it comes with its caveats. Moving gives you space to repeat yourself, reinforce, and keeps you alive.”
Jorja retreated from the field. The grass fixed itself as the arena’s diagram glowed bright.
Lucy could recognize aspects of the arena. Similar to what Guilherme had taught her, but far more elaborate.
Sol blew up Dom, who flipped literally head over heels, twice, then bound him while he lay bleeding and reeling. Whatever the binding did, it really seemed more like insult added to injury, because Dom wasn’t really capable of moving.
“Can you skip me until later?” Melody asked.
“You’ll only face someone tougher,” Mr. Hennigar said.
Sol nodded, turned to face Corbin. Corbin adjusted his collar and promptly disappeared.
“I bind you, Corbin Kierstaad!” Sol shouted. He blasted the field, turned. “I bind you once by my word!”
“I’d bind you first, Sol Ferguson, though no human can hear my voice, the spirits can. I stand behind you and I lay hands you cannot feel on you…”
The wind rustled. Sol blasted again, ripping up more ground.
“I bind you, Corbin Kierstaad, twice by my word!”
“By voice, by touch, I lay claim on you. I bind you over once again, Sol Ferguson.”
There was a whisper in the wind and Lucy could almost hear it.
Sol turned ninety degrees, then blasted again.
“I bind you a third time, by voice, by hand, by arrest. I lay my claim and-“
“I bind you!” Corbin raised his voice, appearing behind Sol. He shoved the boy to the ground, pinning his arms down so he couldn’t touch palms.. “Cease and surrender!”
“A counter-binding. Good. He spent himself, which makes it easier,” Mr. Hennigar said. “The power we spend to fight can weaken our resistance to binding, and the opposite is true. The threat of a binding, however thin, can force an enemy to spend power. Self may triumph in most cases, but the binding, if sufficient, can open the door to other workings or further bindings. And even if an attempt to bind on one occasion is too weak to truly take control of the target, they can be diminished, influenced, you could single out one action to prevent, or it could be the groundwork of a series of lesser bindings that do give you that control.”
Corbin had badly underrated himself, it seemed. He beat Zachariah, Natasha, and Max before Lane let a bunch of Echoes out of a box he carried, flooding the arena. Whatever Corbin was doing to hide and bind in silence, the echoes didn’t care about it.
Lane beat Laila, then Xerxes, and then went up against Erasmus. Lucy couldn’t really see, even with her Sight, what was going on there, so it was hard for her to tell if he’d just run out of echoes or the juice to pump them out, or if he just couldn’t touch Erasmus. Either way, the chubby Host practitioner won.
“Next is Verona Hayward. Alexander got to them first.”
“I bind you, Verona Hayward!”
“Which one!?” Verona called out, as she cast out some papers.
The papers became black cats. Verona followed suit, using the taller grass to confuse things.
“You bind which one?” Verona crowed. “How? Why? You don’t sound very authoritative!”
Just how much glamour are you spending here, Ronnie? Lucy thought.
Probably okay that she was, in any case. Appearing strong.
Erasmus took his own turn at appearing strong. An Other beneath his skin rippled, then changed his features. His hair grew long, and wove into braids. Broad shouldered and buxom, he became Other and Practitioner in one. Io Lucy’s Sight, he was split, overlapping, to her regular eyes, he wore the skin of some female viking, but spoke with his own voice.
“You bind nothing here! You don’t know me, to bind me!”
“I know you’re a wild practitoner, a dabbler!”
“You know the bare minimum!” Verona crowed, from one end of the arena. “You know-!”
Erasmus twisted, the practitioner and viking girl catching a cat that had been sneaking at them from the side.
“Throwing your voice?” Erasmus asked, as they held the cat.
“A little acoustic trick.”
“I’ve caught you and I’ll declare you bound,” Erasmus said. “Become human and-”
They gave Verona a shake.
There was no human beneath the glamour. Only the firecracker.
That’s a limited resource, Ronnie!
They threw it away before the fuse could touch the base. It still knocked them flat. The image of the viking girl slipped away, the features becoming Erasmus’s again.
He remained sitting. The diagram flared, cleaning him up. Verona shucked the cat form, standing from her hiding place. Cats returned to her and became papers again.
“Erasmus? If you’d leave the Arena?” Hennigar called out.
“I’m, uh, not well,” Erasmus said. “The diagram didn’t fix it.”
“Verona, if you’d undo any curses or effects?”
“Can’t undo that. It’s physical. It’s mundane.”
Bristow had to walk all the way over, leaning in to talk to Erasmus. Then he walked out, returning to his spot. He bent down, held his hand against the diagram’s edge for a bit. It flared, and Erasmus stood, dusting off his buttocks and pants before walking out.
“Avery Kelly. Same group as Hayward.”
“Don’t go doing that to me, Ronnie,” Avery said.
“I like you too much. Avery Kelly, I bind you by the names Pam, by Ms. Hardy-”
“I bind you by these facts and the secrets that I know. I bind you by the fact that you drool, you talk in your sleep. I bind you by the fact that you’re too hard on yourself when you’re super cool. I bind you by your love for shitty energy drinks, I bind you by-”
Avery sprinted at Verona. Verona became a bird. She didn’t take off fast enough. Avery leaped about ten feet into the air to catch her. She pinched Verona’s beak shut.
Verona became human. Avery adjusted her grip to hold Verona’s lips closed. She looked at Hennigar.
“I would like to see you be more enterprising in your offense than in your defense, Verona Hayward. Liberty Tedd!”
America leaned in, whispering.
“Spank the freckles off her pale ass.”
Liberty cackled, and she cackled all the way into the arena. She had what might have been a deck of cards or a collection of drawings, and she held it as a stack, doing the ‘make it rain’ gesture to scatter them. Where they landed, goblins about Gashwad’s size appeared in the short grass.
“It seems she’s begun, Avery, I would not waste time,” Hennigar called out.
“Drag her to the ground and fill her mouth with your filth,” she ordered.
“No, Liberty,” Bristow called out.
“Go fuck your dead mom! You’re not in charge of this school and you’re not in charge of me!”
Lucy glanced. Bristow’s expression didn’t even flinch.
“-you to my will, Liberty Tedd, I bind you to surrender, with this first utterance.” Avery continued. She ran, skirting around the goblins. They weren’t quite fast enough to keep up.
Liberty snatched a Gashwad-sized goblin off the ground, whispered something to it, and then hurled it.
It started to smoke, then ignited.
It detonated into a ball of fire a second later, it left the field burning. Avery had to change direction and hop over goblins.
“Slowest of you are going to dieeeee!” Liberty crowed.
“I bind you, Liberty Tedd! A second time!”
“Bind-” Liberty kicked a goblin. It exploded violently, leaving another patch of fire and a shower of gore that took a few seconds to settle. “-your mother! Tell her she shouldn’t have any more kids and use a stapler to make sure of it!”
Lucy kept stock still, watching. But Avery- she appeared stunned by that.
“Didn’t like that, did you!?” Liberty asked, cackling. “I don’t know how many of you there are, but I hope she stopped at one! She should have stopped at none!”
It bought goblins time to close in. Avery adjusted her charm bracelet, then whipped out the hockey stick. She began swatting them.
“Avery!” Lucy called out.
“No!” Bristow shouted. “Silent!”
“We awakened together, we’re connected. Advice seems pretty fair!”
“You won’t always be together,” Bristow said. “Have you fought every fight up to this point as a trio?”
Lucy shook her head, closing her mouth.
Avery seemed to get what Lucy had been wanting to communicate, by instinct or a realization that what she was doing was only a losing stalemate. She changed direction, going for Liberty.
Have to count coup, weaken her. It’s the strategy that scored people wins so far.
The stupid thing is, a lot of the time, anyone in a position to successfully bind can just knock out or beat their target.
Liberty threw a piece of paper into the air, then kicked it. It became a goblin as it met her foot, soaring up toward Avery. Avery twisted in the air, kicking out, and changed course. The goblin sailed by and detonated at the apex of its arc.
Snowdrop leaped from Avery to Liberty, and landed on Liberty’s face, claws scratching.
Liberty tossed Snowdrop aside, and a goblin seized the opossum in its jaws.
Snowdrop became human and stabbed the goblin with her fork. More goblins pounced on her.
“Don’t! Stop!” Avery shouted.
Lucy took a step forward, but couldn’t speak without breaking the rules.
Avery responded. She threw spell cards to the ground. They exploded into light and smoke.
She emerged, using the black rope, from smoke and flame, fire licking her as she came at Liberty from behind.
Goblins saw, reacted, and Liberty turned, but not fast enough to do anything about it. Avery hit her off her feet with the hockey stick, sending her tumbling into one of her own patches of flame.
“Don’t touch my opossum! Be bound, Liberty, and call off your goblins!”
Liberty didn’t reply, instead hurling herself out of the fire and past the perimeter of the circle. She was renewed as she escaped, the fire gone, clothes and hair no longer alight.
The circle pulsed. Snowdrop and Avery were healed of scratches and gouges. The fires went out.
Liberty called her goblins.
America didn’t cackle like Liberty had. She looked intense, jittery with adrenaline even before she’d approached the arena.
Avery, very still, gave Snowdrop a stroke on the head.
Avery was saying the other night, she doesn’t like the off-kilter types. The Tedds are a terrible match-up.
Avery was keeping her composure, cool, collected. She’d done okay. But Lucy could tell she didn’t want to do this again.
Lucy tried to think of a way to save her, or to distract her.
“Avery Kelly, into the arena, please. You did fine, but the binding portion of this is the critical half.”
“No. I’m going to go look after my boon companion. I trust my friends to tell me what I need to know.”
“I’m not traumatized at all,” Snowdrop said, very matter-of-factly.
“It would be better if you stayed.”
“Better for who? Not me. My friends are my priority here,” Avery said, unflinching. “Play your shallow power games with someone else.”
“Very well. Disappointnig. Lucy Ellingson, then.”
Lucy drew in a deep breath, grabbed her hat and mask, and reached into her bag for the case with the hot lead. She went in, fully decked out.
“They like bags of tricks,” one Legendre boy said to the other. “She rated herself higher than the other two. Why?” Natasha Scobie. “I don’t envy her, going up against the Tedd witch.” “What’s your thing, fox girl?” Yadira.
“Don’t get too bruised while thrashing her,” Verona murmured. “Implement ritual later today.”
Lucy pressed a finger to her lips.
Wasn’t worth revealing too much. People might hear and if they did, they could interfere, whatever measures they took.
“Outfit sucks,” America said, while wearing cut-off jean shorts that had about the same coverage as a bikini bottom, and a sheer top that made it clear she was wearing a black bra and she had some kind of drawing between her breasts.
“Save the shit talking for after you’re done picking any grass and dirt out of your teeth,” Lucy said. “It might make you feel better.”
“America,” Mr. Hennigar said. “Bind Lucy Ellingson.”
“It’s so nice of him, telling me your last name. You’re so forgettable.”
Lucy backed away a few steps, then threw her hat away.
She’d copied some of Verona’s boomerang hat diagram, and added one of her own.
Smoke poured from the brim down, as the hat caught on the wind and soared a lazy circle around the arena.
Lucy ducked off to one side, using the smoke for cover, then bent down.
“Hiding? Coward!” America called out. “Stay hidden and be cursed, Lucy Ellingson, I bear the words of Nethertide Wazoo, drowner of all who bear the red wings, she who squirts forth warlords and slurps in the feeble! I bid you, wear this dark mantle!”
Lucy drew the duelist’s sign. Arena first.
The circle expanded out from around her, pushing the smoke outward. It choked America momentarily.
“Be curs- Awww,” America said. She rubbed at her throat, tugging at a choker, then proceeded to vomit a geyser, extending a hundred feet.
But as Lucy’s arena-in-an-arena spread, the swords rose. They blocked the worst of it. She ducked off to one side, and wrapped herself in glamour.
Magnifying herself. Hair, mask, skin, clothes. All given a unifying aesthetic. Her hair billowed behind her.
Lucy pulled a sword from the ground and threw it. Before it even flew past America, she drew out a blade using her weapon ring.
“This is Faerie crap!” America shouted. She drew in a deep breath.
She didn’t even seem interested in binding so much as the fight. Cursing, whatever else.
Which, weirdly enough, lined up with Lucy’s observation.
Lucy closed the distance, pulling spell cards from her pocket.
America shrieked. It was a shrill, vibrating, painful sound, like no human could make. Doglick could, kind of, but this was that and more.
And it ripped up the glamour closest to her, expanding outward as it went.
Lucy threw the card. America caught it out of the air.
It billowed out into smoke. America stuffed it into her mouth, eating it.
The smoke was Lucy’s go-to weapon, flowing neatly from the fact she’d done up her mask to allow her to breathe more easily and see more easily in the haze. From there, she’d equipped herself with more.
She spotted her hat, caught it, and threw it again.
America pausing to chew had meant she wasn’t screaming and screwing with the glamour. Now Lucy was in close, armed.
America ripped off a bracelet, and her hand became a claw made of garbage. She tore off the other with her teeth, and her hand exploded, a ragged hook of bone sprouting out of the stump.
Stepping into the fight felt weirdly like familiar territory. Practitioners could do so much, in the way of varied tricks. This, at least, was something Lucy could mostly predict and track with her eyes.
She could watch and see the gulp, predict the vomit. Fend off the hook, step back from the claw.
In a way, the practice with Guilherme felt like it had hurt her here. He was measured, precise. This was wild, like fighting two snarling, rabid dogs at once. The giant garbage claw and hook had reach.
“Bitch!” America shouted. “I’ll make you my bitch! I’ll make you woof like a dog!”
“You’re!” Lucy raised her voice, swatting aside the hook with her pen-turned spear.
America vomited again. This time it wasn’t fluids, but a mess of bike chains and barbed wire, which pulled out her own teeth and tore at her lips. She vomited, paused, vomited again, spreading out reels of the stuff to trip and ensnare.
Lucy leaped over it, cutting through the reels with enough force that America’s head snapped to one side. It only bought her a second. “The!”
America lunged, claw and hook out.
Guilherme’s lessons had prepared her. Not for a scrap like this, but to think a little straighter and see a slow-enough movement for what it was.
Lucy dropped low, hitting the ground hard, and pulled a sword out of the ground. Handle meeting America’s ribs. The blade bent and was snapped as America was effectively pole-vaulted over and behind Lucy, onto the bike chains and crap. “Bitch!”
“Lucille,” Bristow said.
“Lucy, please,” Lucy said, standing.
“I do imagine you’re aware, the circle you created overrides some of the protections of ours.”
“I do imagine you’re not fulfilling your duties in warning me sooner.”
“I’ve got barbed wire in my spine, and it’s scratching an itch I’ve had for a year,” America said. “I think there’s shrapnel in there from an encounter I had with a blunderbuss-toting gremlin.”
“If you’d withdraw your effect, I can at least heal America.”
“And me?” Lucy asked. “I’m not too badly hurt.”
America made the first sound, like she was really suffering. It wasn’t because of the barbed wire. It was because of Lucy’s statement.
“I can, if you ask nicely.”
“Nice,” Lucy said, grunting a bit as she straightened, “is overrated. If you’re going to make me ask, I’ll deal. I’ll just call you a failure as a teacher.”
“Walk with me a moment.”
“Mr. Hennigar, can you handle things for a minute? Look after America?”
Lucy banished the effect as she walked out of the circle.
“For someone who claims to want to be neutral, you don’t seem very willing to compromise,” Mr. Bristow said.
“Ah, Yadira’s group passed that on?”
Off to the side, Verona was watching, anxious. Lucy motioned for Verona to settle. Verona nodded.
Checking if I want the help.
“I don’t…” Lucy started. It wasn’t really a line she’d planned, so she had to formulate it. “I don’t think neutral means being smack dab in the middle. I think that’s really dangerous, actually. There’s enough outright evil jackoffs out there that the middle feels pretty icky.”
She met his eyes as she said that last bit.
“What do you think neutral is, then?”
“I think it’s not explicitly taking a side. I think it’s holding onto what we believe. I think it’s fighting people like Shellie, who hurt Jessica as badly as she did, and not encouraging them.”
“Your connection to the Blue Heron Institute is threaded through Alexander Belanger. You don’t think you’ve taken a side?”
“You sent people to our town, you refused to negotiate with us because you’d rather hurt Alexander by proxy, somehow. You hurt someone we like. I don’t think you’re doing much good for the likes of Clementine, Daniel, or any of them. We’re being generous in holding back, considering. And we’re willing, I’m pretty sure, to be hands off. Let us study without interference or games. Don’t drag us into it. We have other stuff to take care of.”
“None of which answers my question. Do you think you’ve escaped being Alexander Belanger’s pawn?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But you’ve got an awful lot to take care of if you want to take all of those pawns off the board.”
“Very few are as interesting to Alexander, and the ones that are, you three excepted, have already firmly declared.”
“What do you want, Bristow?”
“I want my school back. I want Alexander to fall.”
“I don’t see how annoying us is getting you there.”
“Everything matters. I think I win, and I win soon. I don’t want to win by inches, my dear, I want to win by miles. A big unknown is ground he could use to scrabble his way back.”
“What if we swore not to help him?”
“I think the oath would soon be broken. You’d help him without realizing. Short of you three being off-campus entirely, I don’t see it being likely. Even if you were in Kennet, you’d be a variable.”
“What if we were on campus but indisposed?”
“I intend to do an implement ritual. I’ll be preoccupied. My friends will be keeping me company, to build their ties to the implement.”
“When?” Bristow asked.
“We were planning for this weekend. Apparently, Familiar and Implement rituals get priority for workshop time?”
“They do. My order, when Mr. Musser was my right hand. He felt it important, I obliged him. The rule was never rescinded. Interesting.”
“Will you interfere?” Lucy asked.
“Three days. Saturday, Sunday, Monday?”
“This evening, Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning. Will you interfere?”
“That only takes you out of the picture. Your friends?”
“From start to finish?”
“No. They were planning it between themselves. I was focused on other things. I think the intention was that one of them would be near me at all times. They’d relieve one another. They’re bringing me things if I need them. Food and stuff.”
“I’ll tell you this. You wish to be neutral. I wish for your true neutrality over the three days your ritual is underway. You wish for your ritual to be uninterrupted.”
“If you and your friends do not interfere, I will leave you and your ritual be. We’ll decide where we stand after. You may wish to be in my good graces.”
“I’d have to talk to them. I think they’d say yes. But we’d need more provisions.”
“Your guarantee. Alexander’s already sworn. I’d like you to swear too. Not just that you won’t interfere, but you will keep others from interfering too. You’ll step in in case of outside circumstance.”
“A high ask. I’d have to devote resources, take steps.”
“As Alexander would. Neutral.”
“Your intention seems to be that you’re making yourselves very prominent wild cards, and then offering to take yourselves off the table.”
“That’s essentially it. And we want to be off the table, pretty much. We just want to study. I don’t know exactly why people are so very interested in us..”
“You have easy access to a lot of power. I think you could fight a lot of fights like your one against Liberty just now. I could tell you to banish your arena and leave you to erect it again, and you’d be fine. You’re talented and sharp and you’re largely unknown, and being unknown is a sharp edge in this world. I’ll swear to take the steps necessary to ensure your ritual goes uninterrupted, if you stay out of Alexander’s reach for the duration.”
“Or you forfeit your claim to apartment building and the school.”
Bristow paused, eyebrows going up.
“I don’t have to do the ritual this weekend.”
“But I don’t have to. We don’t have to be neutral. And really, if we aren’t neutral, I think we’d be trying to kick your ass.”
Bristow smiled. “Shall we shake on it?”
“I said I’d have to ask my friends. We’ll try and get back to you. Out of curiosity, why are you so willing to have this conversation out in the open? We’re not out of Alexander’s Sight, are we?”
“We are and we aren’t. Alexander is keeping those eyes closed because Kevin Noone is on the campus. Should Alexander look, he runs the risk that my tenant with the one green eye might look back, and Alexander would lose what he values most.”
“Ah. Then, while I’m asking questions-”
“I’m happy to give answers.”
“I’m giving you my time. You invited me.”
Verona told me you use these word games, talking too much, or giving a lot in a conversation so you can get that little karmic edge, Lucy thought.
“Do you see yourself as a good guy?”
“Do you see yourself as a good girl?” he asked.
“I kind of do. I have some regrets. Some people I hate and fantasize about cursing. But I don’t act on that.”
“We all fantasize. Could goodness be whether we act on the dark fantasies or not?”
“I think there’s a lot more to it. You dodged my question.”
“I don’t see myself as a good man, my dear. But I don’t see myself as a bad man either. I am merely a man. A lawyer, a teacher, a property manager, a councilman, a friend, a boyfriend, a father figure, a repairman, a problem solver, a networker, a tech aficionado, and a connoisseur of fine dining that only barely exceeds my budget, as it may continue to do when and if I make ten times the amount I do now. But I am a man at the end of the day.”
“That sounds even more like a dodge.”
She turned to follow Bristow’s gaze.
It was Ted, approaching from the direction of the field. The man who’d lived the first thirty-something years of his life countless times.
“You were bruised in the fight,” Ted spoke, looking at Lucy. “How are you now?”
“We’ll see, I guess.”
“I devised a salve made using some common leaves in Canadian woodlands. I see three of the ingredients here, and I’ve seen the fourth closer to the school. It helps to fight infection.”
“No thank you. I’m pretty sure it’s only bruises.”
“It should be,” Ted said.
“Do you need something?” Bristow asked.
Ted leaned in close, murmuring in Bristow’s ear.
“They’ve agreed. You have the Legendres.”
Bristow looked at Lucy, the corners of his mouth turning up.
“…agreed. You have the Legendres.”
“I remember the moment,” Lucy replied, her voice soft.
The Earring leaned back, still rigid, one of the charms at the end of the curly, thick wire swinging like a pendulum.
“How do you know what was said, elsewhere?” Lucy asked. “You weren’t there.”
“Someone in this room was,” the Earring whispered. “I’m to challenge you. To get to the heart of you.”
“Asking me who that someone was?” Lucy asked.
Avery and Snowdrop had stepped out. Verona was on watch, feet pulled up to the seat of her chair, a notebook in her lap.
“Me?” Lucy asked. “It wasn’t Verona, on the edge of all those conversations. It was me.”
“You were there, you didn’t hear, but you knew,” the Earring said. “You knew Verona had said something, when your mother treated you more gently after crossing paths with her, and took your side against Bader. You know them both too well. You pay keen attention.”
“You want me to trust myself?” Lucy asked.
“Your lifelong friend took your side. She called him unreasonable, a bully. Your mother talked to him and drew the same conclusion, and she talked to your Aunt Heather about it. You know this too.”
Lucy swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” the Earring breathed, a whisper. “Do you know?”
“Yeah?” Lucy questioned.
The Earring shook her head.
The room had gotten so much colder. It was dark out. Lucy shifted position, pulling her pants legs down to her ankles. She pulled at her top, partially folded up to expose her belly and back, partially fallen down at the side.
The diamonds, separate, had drawn closer together. The earring reached out and touched Lucy’s forehead with a cold finger that could have been metal. She dropped her hand down the side, grazing Lucy’s ear, then laid the backs of fingers over Lucy’s heart.
“I am an expression of you and your Self. I am made of the care and attention from two members of your triad. I am to make you shine, my practitioner. But you must meet me halfway. You know too many things and don’t believe them and you think you believe things but can’t know them. This is like a hurt, a-“
The Earring moved a finger, touching and lifting a wire-hair, positioning one of the crystals at Lucy’s eye level.
“-flaw. At the heart of you. It threatens to shatter you. This internal war has settled and gone quiet, this far from home and familiar sentiment, but it’s not silent. It swells in your heart. It hurts.”
The Earring turned its head. Lucy looked.
Avery was coming in, silent, carrying Snowdrop and a whole bunch of stuff. The stuff went straight to a shelf.
Metal lips grazed Lucy’s ear, whispering, “She defended you against teammates. She questioned Bader. She could have pushed harder, but she pushed. You know this without hearing it or being told.”
Lucy leaned back a bit and met the Earring’s eyes. She swallowed.
“I tell you nothing you don’t already know. You have always paid attention. You know you are loved but you don’t believe it.”
Again, the crystal dangled from the finger.
Lucy nodded. Then, uncomfortable, checking everything was okay, she glanced back.
Avery was crouched beside Verona’s chair, leaning in close, showing Verona something she had written down. They were allowed to be here but couldn’t intrude on the conversation. Them speaking would be an intrusion.
Lucy’s eye fell on the shelf with all the stuff Avery had brought. Studied Avery’s expression, and how the other two were so caught up in the exchange that they hadn’t noticed she’d fallen silent and was watching.
The extra stuff was spare clothes, food, and toiletries for Avery and Verona.
“Yes,” the Earring whispered. “Listen.”
The two doors of the room were open. It was evening, but some students were outside. She could hear the conversations, distant, even if she couldn’t make out the words.
“Will you chase that, and run from the question of love?”
Lucy knew she could. Could chase that distant conflict. Listen for it. It would have its effect on her implement.
But it felt like a retreat.
“Avery, Verona,” she said.
There was no reply. There couldn’t be.
“Do you want to shut the doors?” Lucy asked, glancing at them.
Avery nodded with some emphasis.
Rather than cross the room, she left out the one door, circling around, and appeared at the far door, adjusting the lever to let it close all the way.
Lucy stood, taking care not to cross the wrong lines, and lit the first of the candles. She began to set the candles around the space. She liked the smoke that poured from them. Each candle she lit was matched by a mirror candleflame on the far end of the room, each without a candle to hold it..
When there was sufficient light and Avery was inside, Verona shut the door.
Lucy settled, bringing candles with her, and lit them, arranging them around her, with some care.
She’d face this question of love. That problem could wait.
She paused, stopping, and found herself almost regretted the choice to choose to face down love instead of distant violence.
The Earring had a phone held to one ear, glowing.
She lowered the phone, holding it so Lucy could hear the screen.
“I guess my mind skipped over her when I was going over the list, she’s pretty enough, I guess,” a boy said. It might have been Brayden.
“Zero? Nothing? Brutal.” She couldn’t place it. A boy.
“What if it’s weird? What if her family celebrates different holidays?”
That last one was George’s voice. She’d liked George, or- she’d liked his face. His hair.
She wasn’t sure she liked it anymore.
“You wanted to hear,” the Earring whispered. “You can reject me. This ends. You remember nothing except that I wasn’t the choice for you.”
“I kissed her at the end-of-year party, and I met her eyes and I couldn’t believe how pretty she was. I’ve been in the same classes as her from the start, how have I never seen her before?”
Lucy smiled, worried there was more.
“I want to kiss her again. Without a crowd. Is that dumb?”
“Me too, Wallace,” she whispered.
“I wonder if she’d say yes if I asked her to go to Killaloe Dough or to go out for a day of snowboarding.”
Lucy drew in a deep breath, eyes on the floor.
“Yeah,” Lucy murmured, in answer. She looked up and found herself looking into the dangling, decorated ‘jewel’. Her face was refracted a dozen times in different facets. In the candlelight gloom, she had a hard time differentiating her face being reflected back at her from the earring’s reflection refracting through.
This was only going to get harder. She had to face a lot of different facets of herself, her life.
And after… well. Avery had brought stuff to stay here and they’d shut the doors for a reason. Something was happening while she was here. Something that had Avery and Verona tense.
So they’d holed up here. A ritual in progress in the midst of a siege.
The earring whispered, and Lucy, tense, listened.