They nodded, listening. They’d retreated to the Drooling Cow, and the little fast food place barely had enough seats for them. There was a single person in the kitchen, and a bored middle-aged guy at the counter. Light rain fell outside.
Brie went on, “Amine and Ulysse can’t really go their separate ways from Durocher. She’s strict with her apprentices, and they didn’t really say it, but I had the impression that if they left, they wouldn’t be invited back.”
“Yeah,” Corbin said. He and Melody sat at the table next to them, with Talos and Jorja. “Basically. It helps, I think, that Durocher is very neutral.”
“I hate that word. Neutral,” Lucy said.
“I think it fits here, maybe?” Verona suggested. “It’s not necessarily her taking a middle stance between iffy and awful. It’s her taking her own independent stance.”
“Are you an apprentice of Durocher?” Avery asked. She was sitting between Brie and the window, and had to lean forward over the table to get Brie’s attention.
“Me? No, geez, no,” Brie answered. Avery sat back in her chair. Brie explained, “Mrs. Durocher was teaching me about the hosting and harbinger work that might be involved with the agent of the Devouring Song bound inside of me. But she did that as a favor to Mr. Sunshine, who asked for that at least partially as a favor to Zed. The big question is how the binding holds up over time. Will I be a person who holds this immense power inside of me as a host for that power, or do I have to vent it constantly in order to maintain some abilities as a practitioner.”
“Vent?” Verona asked.
“If you can’t host the power, sometimes you can become a focused point or lens for it. Lots of new and raw deity-type powers do this, getting an agent by careful selection, accident, or sending something out in the world. And their agent becomes the harbinger of the deity’s power, a walking mess of that deity’s or deity-level Other’s influence that leaks out around them. Usually it’s subtle so long as they keep moving. We looked into one that came from a South Korean urban legend. It would promote trends where kids would get caught up in hyper-competitive games, like violent games of truth or dare or competitions over grades, the murder rate would skyrocket, and then it would all snap together into some broad last-man-standing death game.”
“I can see why it would come up,” Lucy noted.
“So if you went that way, it’d leak out as the storm? The children?” Verona asked. “You’d just be wandering around and there’d be singing cannibal kids popping up?”
Brie nodded. “Maybe. We haven’t really decided for sure. There’s a chance it could try to sweep people up in it. But we’re months off from seeing that. I’m in a middle state while we see what that power does inside of me, if it starts fighting to get out, or if it builds up pressure or inevitable power over time.”
A child appeared at the table next to her. Melody, at the next table, jumped a little. The kid was a girl, skinny, wearing a baseball cap with a ponytail pulled through the opening at the back, with her mouth slit open from the corners to the ears, multicolored yarn crudely holding the clotted-over gaps partially closed.
There were humming sounds. Not from the girl, but close. Verona leaned over to look for the source and saw another kid huddled under Melody and Corbin’s table. A boy with adult teeth still growing in, except the teeth that were growing in alternated perfectly. Adult tooth, tooth-in-process, adult tooth, tooth-in-process. The teeth meshed together as he closed his mouth.
As quickly as they’d appeared, they slipped away. The eye movements that put one out of focus never brought them back into focus, and looking away and then back saw them disappear.
“Do they listen to you?”
“Kind of. Durocher says the Other at the heart of the Devouring Song might be biding her time, looking for an opening. But because of that, I can’t really go far. In case of emergency with the binding, I have to go to her for help. And at the same time, Zed was angry, he wanted to take action against Bristow and he’s not exactly happy with how Alexander handled Jessica’s thing, but Raymond told him to stand down.”
“He asked me if I wanted him to stay. I told him to do what he needed to. So he left. He took two of the devices used for Jessica’s ritual. I think he’s technically not getting directly involved, but he’s going to try to convince Jessica to return to campus. Which, you know, you can connect the dots.”
“So Ulysse and Amine stayed, but they can’t get involved. You’re here, against Bristow?” Lucy asked.
“I’m here, but more for the kids with nowhere to go. I’ve seen too many people caught up in the messed-up side of engines and dynamics they couldn’t control. Alexander scares me.”
“It’s hard to be a major practitioner and not be scary,” Talos said. “My mom and dad? Scary. Mr. Sunshine? Scary. Durocher? Scary.”
Brie shook her head. “Durocher is scary like there’s a bear in your house. Raymond is… I imagine a wealthy, connected computer hacker who could dismantle your life, but won’t. I don’t know your mom and dad. But Alexander…”
“Serial killer scary?” Avery asked.
“When things get bad, or scary, or awful, and life really messes you up, I think people show you who they really are. The violence or awfulness scrapes away the stuff at the surface and you see sides of people you wouldn’t, or you see what priorities they drop. Zed’s hurt and mad as I’ve ever seen him and he still asked if I needed him. Then he immediately went to go try and help Jessica. Others have shown their true colors when they helped me. I don’t know if they regret doing that…”
Brie trailed off, glancing at Avery, then Verona.
By silent agreement, they didn’t comment. Not because they did regret it, but because they had to protect all information about Kennet.
“The only other senior student who could be a factor is Eloise,” Brie said. “She’s on Alexander’s side, but she left. She’s too dangerous to Bristow, because he focuses on arranging things, and she’s an expert at manipulating those arrangements. Schartzmugel can even poison them on a really deep, scary level. If she stayed, she’d get targeted. So she left. Zed says that her being out there in the wind is almost as helpful as her being directly involved while trying to dodge those guys.”
“Because Bristow and his Augurs have to constantly keep an eye out for her and her involvement.”
“It’s a mess,” Talos said. “All of this, it’s a mess.”
“Who are we missing? Who’s a factor, then?” Lucy asked.
“The eastern practices kids,” Talos said. “Not Yadira- she’s the strongest of them, from a good family with a lot of coverage and resources. But Reese, Steyn and Storey are really firmly in Alexander’s camp. And they might actually be players in this.”
“What’s their deal?” Verona asked. “They’re into the Oni stuff, right? What do they do?”
“I seem to recall you rolling your eyes at the history part of class signup,” Avery commented. “Including the Oni Wars part.”
“Shush! Someone tell me, what do they do?”
The front door to the little fast food place opened. Zachariah and Salvador came inside, looked around, and found their table.
“Problem?” Brie called out.
“We should get ready to go in for dinner.”
“No!” Verona raised her voice, standing from her seat. “No, no, no! Enough. Just about every time we try to get the details on this, we get interrupted! I’m starting to think there’s something weird going on.”
“Calm down,” Lucy urged, tugging on Verona’s arm.
“Miss!” the middle aged guy at the counter called out. He had a full beard, very tired eyes, a red hat with blue horns on it, and a red polo shirt with blue sleeves and a nametag. “Please don’t cause a commotion.”
Verona looked around. “There’s nobody else in here.”
“It’s annoying me.”
She threw up her hands in surrender and sat.
“When you three joined the school, we thought you’d be like those guys,” Talos explained. “When you first showed and you were secretive -are still secretive- about who your patron was, we discussed for a bit if it might be an Oni. Practice didn’t line up, though. You’d be a lot quirkier than you are.”
“No comment,” Verona said. She looked at Avery.
“You had that disorganized, offbeat approach that they did. Wide eyed about certain stuff that’s everyday for us. Except then you started throwing around power like it was nothing. These three? They’re not strong, two of them aren’t even from a family dynasty.”
“I wouldn’t call Steyn’s family a dynasty either,” Melody chimd in.
Talos nodded as he continued, “They found a box, fancy and locked. One of them, Mike, is a lockpicker. He grabbed the box with the idea he’d use it for practice and see what was inside. But when he looked through the keyhole, an eye looked back at him. It whispered things to him. It promised to teach him ancient ways of fighting. And it did. Oni style.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Verona said, settling in.
“I’ll get to that in a second.”
Verona squirmed. Lucy put a hand on her leg.
“It could only teach him so much, apparently. To unshackle its own knowledge he was asked to free some other unfairly trapped Others. He ended up recruiting Reese, because one of the projects required getting onto someone’s property in a minor heist type thing. And they did that for a year. Steyn was a dabbling summoner before, from a super minor family practice, and he stumbled onto them and got onboard. They transferred about twenty Others and moved them to the box, and for each success they each got taught a new trick. Box eventually broke, the Others escaped, and they were all different. Practitioners had to step in.”
“The East has always had a very different approach to Others. Most of the time, treatment of spirits and Others is better and more accepted, Others can navigate human society more, so they mingle a bit, pop up pretty easily here and there, typically pretty inoffensive, didn’t get in the way, so people didn’t get in their way. Different stuff going on at the top of the Other food chain, too. More organization and politics in the spirit world. Almost more intense than the practitioner stuff. Don’t paint it all with one big broad brush, by the way. Different countries, cultures, even cities can be very different from one another. I’m talking generally.”
“Sure,” Verona said, frowning a bit.
“But there are longstanding traditions of practitioners seizing as much control as they can, over there, in the big families. To leave zero room for error, they wouldn’t have conversations with their Others like you do with Snowdrop. The big families would just bind her and turn her into a tool. Change her, infuse her, tie her to an item so she can be put on a shelf when she isn’t needed.”
Avery visibly shuddered. She moved a hand to her lap, where Snowdrop snoozed.
“As humanity surged and the families expanded into branches and sub-organizations, it got pretty oppressive for the Others. It brewed for a long while, around the mid eighteen-hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, Others really kicked off on fighting back. They organized and started to try to subvert the practice and all conventions. They devised their own contrary practices and counter-practices. Stuff like their faerie trading glamour for goblins to dress up in, until the ‘goblin’ label stopped fitting. Or a goblin edging into the spiritual to make itself more immaterial, or an echo being led to realms to get a bit of Abyss in it, or a bit of elemental.”
“Step one of binding is usually to identify what you’re binding, and they confused labels enough to make that next to impossible. The Oni thing was more of a uniform than a typing that could be used for binding, as were the masks, old weapons and other recurring visual motifs they adopted. They worked hard to devise answers to everything. We rely on truth, they used the rule of discourse to shape their language, so every Other in an area would agree to accept that every third statement from a powerful Other would be accepted as a falsehood. Then they’d keep that Other in the background until a crucial negotiation. They actively set out to create more Others that weren’t bound to the Seal of Solomon, which never had as much traction there as in the West, shaped themselves to be dangerous to various practices.”
“Like Jockeys?” Avery asked. “I’ve heard about Others that go out of their way to be dangerous to Host practitioners or whatever.”
Matthew had mentioned that at one point. Some Other he’d dealt with.
“Like Jockeys. Or poisonous blood that they offer to power a ritual, or disturbances for the Sight, explicitly, or Others that naturally complicate bindings,” Talos said.
“Which makes them a background danger,” Corbin added. “We’re about as far as you can get from the epicenter of that stuff, and a lot of the bigger groups have either been disbanded or started cooperating with us again- like Yadira’s family. But it’s still like… one in a thousand chance that you might think you’re dealing with something and then wham, it’s one of the Oni that fled after the war ended. Or wham, that ghoul you’ve been trying to track down for a year? Traded for a token that flips a binding onto the binder. Then you’re ghoul food. They worked with practitioners, but they’d pick out the people who were as far from traditional families as they could get, and make them into Others, or get them to make complex cursed items, or teach them tricks to make them assassins specializing in countering practitioners”
“So our three students- four, if we count Yadira, they know this stuff?”
“A small handful of tricks. Standard practice gets stronger with repetition, establishment, and investment. Oni practices get a lot of power and attention put into that… it’s a metaphorical blade you keep up your sleeve. A lot of power, by the way, to give it the impact it needs. What matters is the surprise, the timing. Every time you use it, it’s weaker. If it’s expected, it’s weaker. And the more Oni practices you know, the worse your regular practice will be. It’s tricky, striking the balance that gives you access to both. Yadira’s family succeeds at it. The three guys we’re talking about? Don’t, really.”
Talos added, “That thing in the box? It was like a spirit surgeon. Took the time to modify all the Others into Oni while they were stored in the box. And those Others? A lot of them had been properly bound or quarantined. It caused a lot of harm, letting them loose on this Oni’s say so. Harm that Oni wanted.”
“Did it work?” Lucy asked.
“The war. Escaping this horrible dynamic. Did the Others get what they wanted?”
“Dunno,” Talos said. “Never looked into it.”
“I think it depends how you look at it,” Corbin said. “Things are a bit gentler. Practitioners have to move more slowly, do more due diligence instead of binding whatever. But I dunno. The practitioners at the lowest level had to start to be harsher with those regular Others who used to be free to integrate or exist at the edges, to protect themselves. I think the war hurt more than it helped, on both sides. It escalated things, made them nastier. A few leaders of families got offed, but it didn’t really change how those families operated, except to make them even more controlling, by necessity.”
“So is it like, ‘Darn those Others for fighting back’?” Lucy asked.
“I’m not saying that-”
“Then what are you saying?”
“That open warfare and subterfuge is a heck of a jump. The Others had other options. Like retreating to their very organized spirit world or wherever else and putting that same effort into erecting defenses.”
“Do I really need to break down why that is far from okay?” Lucy asked.
“Okay, okay,” Avery said.
“Is it?” Lucy asked her. “Is it okay?”
“Interrupting here. I agree with you, Lucy. I do.”
Lucy gave Avery a wary look.
Verona looked between the two. She added, “I do too.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said, while looking decidedly uncool and not especially thankful about this.
Avery nodded. She was agitated enough that Snowdrop had stirred to partial wakefulness. “But can we deal with what we’re dealing with today in the here and now? And save the discussions about a place that’s literally on the other side of the world and history from a century ago for, um, after things are closer to normal? ”
“To me, this is more about wanting to know who exactly it is we’d be allying with, if we took a side,” Lucy said.
“I’m picturing us taking a Booker approach to this,” Avery said.
“You haven’t even met Booker,” Lucy said.
“I saw him on cam one time, and you talk about him lots.”
“Boyfriend?” Talos asked.
“Brother,” Lucy said.
“I just picture him taking this really chill approach, debating with a classmate with opposite views to his while they have coffee or beer or something,” Avery said.
“I don’t think my views are opposite to Lucy’s,” Corbin said.
“Am I way off base here?” Avery asked Verona.
“I can see Booker doing that.”
Lucy heard Verona say that and seemed to concede, sighing, nodding.
“Can we put this off? And revisit it later, in the student lounge, when things are safe and okay again? Please? Because we’ve got the dinner thing Zachariah came in to talk to us about…”
“In a few hours,” Zachariah said.
“…And I don’t know how we handle that. Or how we even sleep tonight, with the way things are back there.”
“I worry,” Lucy said, making a visible effort to try to chill out. Or Booker out? “Because if this thing about Alexander forswearing his family member is true, and we know how Bristow operates, and it’s awful.”
“Super awful,” Avery echoed.
“What are we even doing if we step in here? Are we making this situation worse, like the Oni War allegedly did? Why should we even get involved?”
“Because this is different?” Corbin asked.
“Because we have a right to the school. We paid dues. We made the effort to come here.”
“And the Others didn’t have a right to be in the city?” Lucy asked. “They didn’t play their own roles? They should’ve just gotten out, holed up in their own ghettos? And if they can’t protect themselves well enough, well, that’s their own fault?”
“Kingdoms, not ghettos, and I’ve never said the actions of the big practitioner families out there are good, or that it’s the Others’ fault. I know you think this is some allegory for stuff that’s happened between humans, but it’s different,” Corbin said, clearly testy. “Human cities are the province of humans. It’s part of what was spelled out by Solomon.”
“Okay,” Lucy said, putting both hands flat on the table. She stood up from the bench. “Put me down for a ‘big disagree’ on just about everything you said, Corbin.”
“If you don’t accept the facts as they happened, Solomon’s law, and all that, then you’re going to hurt yourself somewhere down the line,” he said. “This is fundamental.”
“Oh, believe me, I know that stuff’s fundamental. Thing is, I don’t like it enough to support it. We can debate this for hours, I’m sure.”
“Corbin,” Talos said.
“It’s reality, though,” Corbin said. “What are you going to do? Give Solomon and his laws the big middle finger? They pretty much saved humanity.”
“At that point in time. According to that version of history, which I’m betting was written by Solomon.”
“And so what are you going to do about it? Tens of thousands of Others tried their hands at banding together to reject it and they failed. Are you and you alone going to do what they couldn’t? Because if you’re going to try and stand up for them, you shouldn’t start by belittling their efforts and puffing up your own ego. And I don’t think you should be standing up for them to that degree. They were vicious and they crossed all sorts of lines.”
“I’m done,” Lucy said, to Verona. “Let me out?”
Verona moved out of the bench seat to give Lucy room to extricate herself. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going outside to stretch. I’m pissed and I don’t like being pissed,” Lucy said.
“Are you conceding that I’m right, by not responding?” Corbin asked.
“Shut your talky hole, Corbin,” Avery said.
“Easy,” Brie cut in. “Let’s not get heated.”
Even the guy at the counter at the far end of the little restaurant was standing up straighter, like he was about to intervene.
Lucy tugged her top down where it had ridden up at her back, then fixed a strand of loose hair by her ear. “I’m leaving because yes, other stuff’s more immediately important. And we’ll get nowhere while debating this. We can continue this later, Corbin. For now, I trust my friends to talk about stuff while I take a second to cool off.”
“Want me to come with?” Verona asked.
“Nah. Stay, be smart about practice stuff, work with Avery. Update me in a few minutes. Don’t get sidetracked for fifteen minutes with the next mention of cool Others or rituals or whatever.”
“Already got my fill for now,” Verona said, smiling. More seriously, she said, “I’ll try and cover for you.”
Lucy mock-punched Verona in the cheek, super-slow motion, then walked away.
Zachariah drew a little closer, Salvador following after. They sat as Lucy stepped outside, crossing the street to talk to Laila, who hadn’t come in.
“Any chance you’ll make up with Laila, Melody?” Verona asked.
“Hmm? I was waiting for her to make up with me. If I go to her it implies I forgive her and I really don’t. If she comes to me, even if she’s not actually apologizing, then it’s a bit apology-ish.”
“Right,” Verona said, frowning. She wanted to make up for Lucy’s absence in this conversation, and she felt like Lucy would have said something to that. “Think about it?”
“I think Lucy’s right though,” Avery said. “We should at least decide what we’re doing, on the most basic level. Because some of you guys, you’re for Alexander? And then people like Brie and us, less so?”
“Bristow’s group is all united behind him,” Talos said. “They want him to stay in power at the B.H.I. We’re divided. We’ve got people like Zed and Brie who are, I think, mad at both. There’s you three, the wild practitioner trio.”
“And I get the same vibe there?”
“I can’t say exactly for Avery and Lucy, but we’re here to learn,” Verona said. “And all this crap? Bristow ruining our day and making us have to go home because he thinks it’ll bother Alexander a bit? Nah. Alexander not handling his crap and leaving us to deal with the mess not just the once, but twice now? Fucking nah. No, screw that, and screw him.”
“The world is ugly enough, with enough monsters out there and awful stuff going on,” Avery said. “I don’t even think they’re trying to fight that, or fight becoming that. They may even be playing into it, for that little bit of power or advantage it gets them. Can’t we just, like, vote as a student body to reject them?”
“I think if we voted right now, student body split like it is, Bristow would win,” Zachariah said.
“What Lucy said about the treatment of Others, and this whole Oni War thing, I really do agree with her,” Verona said. “I’m way worse at articulating it and if left on my own I think I’d probably spend a while thinking about it, miss some important interpretations she’d catch in half a second, but I do agree with her. Should we get involved, if that’s the attitude?”
“It’s different,” Corbin groaned the words.
“Let’s not keep this debate going,” Talos said. “What are you going to do? Because a big part of the reason we’re doing this rundown is because you’ve hinted and rumors have hinted that you had a skirmish with Bristow. You know how he operates.”
“Yes,” Avery said. “We did and we have some idea.”
“And we’d really like the help,” Talos said. “You too, Brie.”
“I’m not confident enough in anything practice-related to really dive into this,” Brie said. “I want to make sure that kids like Dom and Jorja are heard and that things aren’t getting too out of control.”
“We could really use the help,” Corbin said, still sounding a bit annoyed.
“I don’t trust the power I have at my disposal. Not entirely. Durocher likes really big, scary, hard to control powers, and she’s interested in me, so…”
“Good argument,” Melody said.
“I think keeping an eye on the kids is helping in its own way,” Avery said.
“We need to destabilize Bristow. Alexander may be waiting for us to do it.”
“Or he may be doing what he did to us, leaving Bristow to attack us and people we care about,” Avery said, “While giving us a bare minimum of help, only some reading material on his guys. I want to help, but I want to help us, the wild practitioner trio. Our people. Our future, and I want to help people like Jessica. And you guys, to an extent.”
“…That’s diminishing as you argue with my friend,” Verona murmured.
“What was that?” Corbin asked.
“Avery wants to help you guys more than I do and I want to help you less and less as you make some really sketchy arguments around this Oni thing. But okay. When we go to dinner, what happens?”
Talos leaned back and the dingy plastic bench he was sitting on creaked. “Bristow will expect us to pledge loyalty. He may make it part of the class signup process.”
“We go, we have to pledge, we have to sign for classes, he gets his validation as headmaster?”
“More or less. Raymond could, but I don’t think he wants the job,” Talos said.
“I think he thinks it’d be keeping the peace more if he doesn’t fight Bristow on it,” Brie said.
“I imagine we’ll eat then,” Avery said. “And they’ll take up the good benches or do some stupid, petty power play to split us up or pressure us.”
“Or make us eat last?” Melody asked. “Table one, grab your dinners…”
“Oh man, I can see him doing that,” Corbin said.
“Nice one,” Verona told Avery.
“I was thinking of day one of high school.”
“It’s a good line of thinking. Stuff to expect. So,” Verona addressed the ramshackle gathering. “Alternative?”
“Alternative?” Brie asked.
“Alternative one: Why go? What if we skip dinner? We’ve got food here.”
Avery made a face, looking in the direction of the counter.
The guy with the beard and cow hat made a face back.
“What happens with signing up for classes?” Talos asked.
“I may be the student here who most wants to go to class,” Verona said, with dead sincerity. “And I don’t want to go to class on those terms. Not with a guy like that in charge, messing with us.”
“De-legitimizing Bristow?” Talos asked.
“Sure,” Verona said. “Sure, yeah, screw him, what if we said we won’t go to class on his terms? Let him have a smaller, weaker school and be a crummier headmaster for it. We could even weaken his hold, claiming he’s not fulfilling his duties.”
“Until Alexander comes back?” Zachariah asked.
“I don’t want him to come back,” Verona said. She was doing her best to make up for Lucy’s absence in the conversation. “Nah, screw him too. Or, to rephrase that, let’s put the screws to him too. He can’t keep his own house in order? Maybe he has to make amends when he comes back. We’d get everyone here to agree we’re not okay with Alexander coming back and ruling the roost again, maybe even more powerful if he de-legitimizes Bristow or takes Bristow’s power for himself. Whatever he’s doing.”
“Seems like he’s the type to come out of a fight with more,” Avery said.
“I’m not sure I’m on board with this,” Talos said.
“With knocking Alexander down a peg?” Verona cut in, eyebrows raised.
“My family works with him. That gets messy.”
“It may be our terms for being an active part of this,” Avery said.
“Okay,” Talos said. “I guess I gotta ask my brother about that.”
“What happens after dinner?” Brie asked. “Are we sneaking into our dormitories?”
“I don’t know,” Verona said.
“On Sunday, they terrorized us,” Corbin said. “The implication was pretty clear, that teachers would be slow to step in if it was Bristow’s side taking action, fast otherwise. And if we retaliated or fought back, the idea was that they’d expel both parties. The guy or girl on Bristow’s side would be sent home, probably with some sideline offer from Bristow to make up for the inconvenience. And they’d probably get invited back. Practices were being thrown around, kids were using language like preludes to curses. So we cooped up in our rooms. They… they had a pretty great Sunday, I guess, swimming, hanging out, doing a weekend exercise.”
“That’s going to happen tonight, you think?” Brie asked. “I didn’t experience that but I was seeing Zed off.”
“You’re under Durocher’s implicit protection, probably,” Talos said. “Look, I’m going to go use the phone, I’ll call my brother. We’ll see what we think about the proposal, about making demands of Alexander.”
“If he can’t be a good headmaster, we should get someone like Ray for the job,” Verona said.
“Ray really doesn’t want the job,” Brie said.
“I really don’t- no, actually, I do care that he doesn’t want it. I care because it’s a good thing. The people who want the job are awful. If he doesn’t want it, then that’s good too.”
“I’ll call my brother. If he doesn’t like this idea, and I gotta say, I’m really on the fence about it, then maybe we’ll do something different.”
“Okay,” Verona said. She looked at Avery. “Want to talk it over with Luce?”
Avery nodded. “Except… one more thing?”
“Oh no,” Verona said.
Avery kicked in her direction under the table. “Melody.”
“If Laila doesn’t reach out, we need you to. If you guys can’t put stuff aside… is it really fair for us to jump into things? We need to be better, less petty.”
“I know it sucks. She was awful to you, for no apparent reason. But stuff was going on, like strife, I think.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
Everyone who was sitting got up. Trays of eaten food were moved. The connection blocking diagram that they’d put down using crayon, drawing on the back of the insert sheet for the food tray, had mostly worn away. Only the basic diagram and the names of their allies and everyone at the table were really intact. Verona tore the paper sheet that it had been drawn on in half, then balled it up. “No connection break, be careful.”
Avery lingered behind. Verona saw why; Avery was cleaning up the rest of the stuff.
She joined in, finding the stray napkins, french fries, and wiping up the salt from fries. She wet the napkin with a bottle of water and wiped things down.
“We might need help,” Avery said, as everyone else left.
Verona indicated the lack of connection-breaking diagram, tapping the table where it had been. Avery nodded.
“Call home, you think?” Verona asked.
“It’s a big ask. I don’t know. But it would make me feel better.”
“I don’t think there’s much harm in asking.”
They headed to the door. Avery held Snowdrop so the guy at the counter couldn’t see her.
“To let you know, I wasn’t making a face at you,” Avery said, to the guy at the counter. “I was reacting to something someone said. I’m a vegetarian and they were saying we’d have to eat here and there’s not a lot of options that aren’t fries.”
“Ah, I see, in that case, uhhh…” the man said. He pulled off his plastic glove to rub at his beard, like he was thinking. Then, over about three long seconds, his features gradually transformed into another ‘face’, tongue sticking out, eye squinting, mouth pulled back at one side.
Avery seemed a bit taken aback.
Verona pushed Avery a bit out of the way, then gave the man her own messed-up face.
Avery tugged on Verona’s arm, pulling her after her as she opened the door.
“Guess I know why that place is so empty, now,” Avery said
“What the hell? Is this a strife thing?”
“If it is, it’s great. I wish all customer service was that honest.”
They crossed the street to where Lucy, Laila and Dom were. Elizabeth was a bit off to the side, talking to Talos, who was at the pay phone but hadn’t started using it.
“Thank you for backing me up,” Lucy said. “And not apologizing for me or whatever.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said. She hugged Avery too.
“You heard?” Avery asked.
“Geez, okay,” Avery said, hugging back, then pulling away. “Good to know it’s working that well, I guess.”
“Are we summoning help?” Lucy asked. “We need backup for tonight, which is one thing. And protection.”
“Elizabeth has ideas for tonight,” Talos said, “kind of. A place to sleep for those who don’t want to go home.”
“What place?” Lucy asked.
“I requisitioned a workshop earlier this year. I can put stuff away, people can bunk down on the floor. School rules are pretty protective of the space and the stuff I get to request around it. I can ask for people not to interfere.”
“Okay,’ Lucy said. “Not as good as having our own rooms, but that helps. We might still feel better with guards, or protection against subtler interference, in case some students think they can get away with it or risk expulsion by messing with us.”
“Good,” Elizabeth said. “I have historical entities I can call.”
“What about goblins? We could recruit the goblins here but they’re not very strong,” Avery suggested.
“Or John?” Lucy put it out there. It sounded like she’d been thinking about it before she’d even brought up the topic.
“John,” Talos said, from the sidelines. “Oooh, isn’t that scary? John.”
“Not winning us over here, Talos,” Lucy said.
“Sorry, sorry! I’ll stop.”
Brie looked up from talking to Dom. “If it’s the guy I’m thinking of, he’s- I’m not actually allowed to say. Gotta be careful.”
“Mysterious,” Talos said.
“The question is,” Verona mused. “Do we really want to go there?”
“We should ask,” Lucy said. “Maybe there’s no point in worrying about if he’s already occupied with stuff.”
“Ah, run into that a lot, especially when sharing resources,” Talos chimed in.
“Without others chiming in,” Avery whispered.
They moved to a more private spot to discuss.
“It’s close to nine o’clock now,” Avery said. “Matthew hasn’t called back?”
“No,” Verona said, checking. Her phone was the only one with charge.
They’d settled down at a grassy bank behind the gas station, which overlooked water, hiding out a bit. Some of the boys were sitting by the water, the ones who’d worn pants had their pants rolled up to their knees, feet in the water. Others wore shorts.
John was doing one final patrol before offering them his services, with a reminder that they could call on him if things went bad. They’d given him a few hours, waiting until sunset.
“Which direction is the B.H.I. again?” Lucy asked. “The road here curved and it’s messing with my sense of direction.
“John Stiles,” Lucy said. She threw the tag down, stepping up the bank. The charm hit grass and kicked up a plume of dirt, like something had gone off.
At the bank, the heads of the boys turned.
John, ducking his head down, emerged from the plume. He wore a tee, green army pants, and black boots. His skin was tanned with a few marks here and there, and his hair bleached by the sun, freshly shorn.
He turned weary, distant eyes toward the boys at the bank.
“We appreciate this,” Lucy said. “I know you’d rather not be around here, doing this stuff.”
“I might have to go back. We’ll see how Matthew and the others fare.”
“Alright,” Lucy said. “Glad to have you here in the meantime.”
“How are our favorite Others doing?” Verona asked, sitting down.
John walked up the hill, looking around, before walking off to the side. “Tired. I can’t say much because we’re being overheard.”
“We could take a bit of a walk away from these guys,” Avery suggested.
“I think this kind of overhearing is the kind that would follow us wherever we went. Small hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end, birds aren’t singing, and the insects aren’t chirping.”
“Is that a thing?” Verona asked, listening.
“I don’t know how often it happens, but I remember it happening once. Shortly after, a group of practitioners came for us. Our group shrank by one, that evening. I think there’s an effect when the powerful listen in, where the little things avoid making sound, so they won’t interrupt.”
“Okay, hey, good to know,” Avery said.
“I’d like to learn how to listen for that,” Lucy said.
“I would teach you if I could. If you figure out a way, I’ll try. For the time being, keep your eyes open and your ears open wider.”
Lucy nodded. “Is a nettlewisp charm in order?”
“Use it when you’re calling the others. So the observers don’t learn how to call them and call them in our place.”
“This is dangerous territory we’re in.”
“Again, we appreciate it.”
Snowdrop was stirring awake. She jumped up into human form as she saw John. “Oh no!”
Snowdrop, hair shaggy from oversleeping, wore a light jacket with a strapless dress. The jacket was in a punk style, and the big feature was a ‘Ticked off’ script on the back. Badges and buttons had stuff like ‘half a tick’ with a grisly bisected bug on it, ‘ticking time bomb’, and ‘The things that make a girl tick’.
“That is a very nice dress, Snow,” Avery observed.
Snowdrop made a face, looking down. “That was on purpose. Except John doesn’t deserve bringing out the nice clothes.”
“I’m touched,” John said, putting a hand on her head.
“You’re awful,” Snowdrop jeered. “You’re mean to me and you play bad video games and whenever I come over my timing is terrible.”
“Timing?” John asked, bemused.
“Your lawn? It’s the worst. I always go home hungry and despairing of how you take care of it.”
“Ohhh, thus the jacket?” Avery asked.
“The huh?” Snowdrop checked, pulling the jacket partially off. “Oh. Nah. Not that.”
“How do you not know what you’re wearing?”
“I’ve been awake half the day!”
The sun was setting, and the sky was taking on a reddish hue. It suited John.
They’d skipped dinner. Bristow hadn’t turned up or sent anyone. But Verona knew her blustering bullies and she was pretty sure something would follow, as soon as he was ready.
The mood, all considered, was deceptively restful.
John wasn’t settling down, though. He paced the sloping hillside with its scattered trees, or as much of it as he could cover without venturing close to Talos, Tymon, and Zachariah.
“He’s nervous,” Verona whispered to the others. John turned his head, a flash of concern on his face.
“We’ve got your back, John,” Lucy said, louder.
“Thank you, but sometimes even that isn’t enough.”
“You gave Matthew the means of calling you back?” Verona asked.
“We could call him. If you’re that uncomfortable.”
“I’d rather ensure you four are alright tonight. I don’t mind it something happens to me, if it means I can protect you. Were you going to call the others?”
“When it’s a touch darker. I guess we could use the goblins.”
John pulled out what looked like a can of beans or fruit with the label ripped off. Rusty blisters covered it.
“Nettlewisp first,” Lucy said. “Starting with ears. Pick up?”
Verona nodded, pointing at Avery, holding up two fingers.
She was better at improvising, and when Avery picked up the tail, it was often a bit of a stilted thing.
“Don’t look!” Lucy called out. “Don’t listen! You may well regret it!”
That line reminded Verona of the outstanding ‘regret’ with Bristow.
“Nettlewisp, nettlewisp, nettlewisp,” Lucy intoned, as she drew in the glamour she’d gathered into her palm. “Turn your barbs to enemy eyes or ears…”
“Bring about a fate that every spying Augur fears…” Avery joined in.
“And do lasting harm to sight and Sight, that would bring the bravest Augur to tears,’ Verona finished.
“Take the power of our hometown,” Lucy said, as the drawn diagram in dust became like a flower, thorns growing and bristling. “On behalf of us three. We shield ourselves against our enemies and those who would harm the places we protect. Drink, to make this punishment real. Drink to make it sting enough.”
The flower reached its full dimensions.
A bird trilled in the woods on the other side of the water, and it was followed by others, staking their own claims.
“That’ll do?” Lucy asked.
“They know how it works, they saw what happened to Nicolette, didn’t they?” Avery asked.
“Yeah,” Verona answered.
John took a knife to the can, as the three girls covered their noses.
The smell wafted past them, making Verona’s eyes sting. Snowdrop, who hadn’t covered her nose, doubled over.
Even the boys on the edge of the water a hundred feet away recoiled.
Lucy couldn’t take the can, because her hand was occupied, so Verona did, turning her face away and holding it at arm’s length, downwind. It didn’t help much.
She poured it into the mud by the water, where it bubbled noxiously.
They’d done a few trial runs of this in the weeks before leaving, but it hadn’t been this gross.
She plunged her hand into the muck. There was no resistance.
The back of her hand scraped against something fleshy.
She wiggled, struggling to find a grip. There was flesh in front of her hand too. She went up and her hand pulled free with a sucking of mud, gross, and flesh.
She reached down again, and again, her hand slid into a tube of meat.
She reached down, further, until she found a bend in the tube, dug her fingernails in, and lifted. The mud fought her. Her feet found little traction, and he was heavy.
Her feet slipped, and Verona sat down hard on the muddy bank of the river.
“Don’t sit in it!” Avery protested.
“I frigging know! He’s- ugh!”
“Don’t get it on your shorts at least!”
“Get bent! Fricking fragging fugging-! Toadswallow, stop being a pain and work with me!”
She suspected the swearing helped more than calling him, specifically. The mud stopped resisting as much.
She hauled Toadswallow up and out of the gunk. Her arm was down his throat to the elbow, her fingers gripping some bend in the intestine. It came free with strings of slime nearly as long as her arm was, and he rolled down the bank into the water. She shook the gobbets off.
“Ahem!” he cleared his throat, lying on his back. He floundered for a position where he could sit up. “Ahem. I’ve had a literal frog in my throat for days now, little blaggard has been fighting to avoid being swallowed. You cleared me right up, and he’s swimming in the old digestive juices now, kicking up a storm. Good show.”
“You could have helped me more with that whole process,” Verona said.
“I could have and I might have, dear girl,” Toadswallow said. He splashed with hands and feet. Verona stood up, gave a wide berth to the goblin hole she’d just made, now a fresh entrance to the Warrens, and waded into the water to grab him, dragging him to shore. “But it was too much fun to imagine the look on your face.”
She pushed him back down the bank, letting his face sink into the mud. With the way he was built, when his face was in the mud of the shore, his legs were left up in the air, kicking. He floundered, found his grip on her wrist, and then wrestled his way back to a better position.
“Ahem!” he said, licking his broken-glass monocle before setting it back in place. He smiled. “That was fun too. What do I need to know?”
“Augurs, gore streaked, eastern practices… an awful lot of practitioners are out there. We’re going to chip away at his claim to the school. He might get ticked enough to retaliate. John’s going to be our bodyguard in the physical. We’ll call in others for the metaphysical. So… sow chaos? Distract them? Don’t get bound?”
“I can do that. Will I have help?”
“There’s some locals, but they’re minor. We could bring others from home if you want.”
“Well, don’t call Blunt, because they need him. But any mix of the others will do. I can try to wrangle the locals.”
“The main buildings are secured against goblin intrusion. I’m not sure where things stand with the new building that’s going up.”
“If it’s not complete, there are ways. Gashwad can help with that. So can Snatch.”
Verona winced, looking at the hole.
“We could take turns?” Avery suggested.
“I’m going to spend a while scrubbing this arm anyway. Might as well keep the damage to one body part,” Verona said.
“I’m so glad I was the one who’s holding the Nettlewisp,” Lucy observed.
“You’re tense, my boy,” Toadswallow said.
“I am,” John replied.
“It’s not good for you, being all tense and muscular. I much prefer a fatty, fleshy layer that jiggles as it absorbs abuse. It has the benefit of being much more comfortable to rest on.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had much body fat.”
Verona stuck her arm into the hole. “Gashwad, you loser, don’t you dare bite me.”
Sucking, fetid mud slurped around her arm as she dug around in the void.
She found his tongue, and gripped it with her hand. It snaked around her wrist.
She really hoped it was his tongue.
She found teeth, which, considering he was a goblin, did very little to assure her of the tongue-ness, then hauled.
He didn’t make himself as much of a pain in the ass as Toadswallow was. She shook her hand off as Gashwad crawled through the mud.
“There are protections for the big houses.”
“I wanted to hurt stuff,” Gashwad growled.
“There’ll be room for that too. We’ll need to herd the little goblets together, get them sorted.”
Verona plunged her hand into the gunk again. “Nat!”
She found hair. She also found the sharp, jagged piercings. She had to navigate around the latter to get a better grip on the former. Her fingers hooked in tangles and ‘decorations’ that had been woven into the hair.
Some of the boys had taken notice. Talos and Tymon approached, standing at a bit of a distance. Tymon had his arms folded.
Nat came out of the gunk thrashing, fighting for a grip. She snarled as she came free enough to have air.
A second later she snarled, vicious. Verona hauled her arm back.
“Be good!” Toadswallow barked.
Nat stopped, pausing, then snarled again, in a more conversational tone.
“Snatch, we’ll need you to handle any locks or other mechanical things. There’s a building in progress. You should like that.”
Nat smiled behind the curtain of mud-slicked hair.
“Is she a gremlin?” Tymon asked. “A techie-goblin?”
“She beat up a gremlin a while back, took his stuff,” Toadswallow explained.
Nat smacked her piercing-riddled fist into her open palm.
Lucy and Avery were already working out the kinks on the Alpeana thing.
Verona was a little miffed to not be a part of that, but her focus was more on cleaning up her arm and making sure she didn’t have gunk on the rear of her shorts that was far fouler than any other stains that could be found on rear ends. She ended up just submerging herself and using grass with the mud from a cleaner part of the riverbank to scrub her arm down.
Talos and Tymon at least didn’t stare. But they were watching the other ritual.
“If you’re going to watch and listen in, you need to swear,” Verona told the boys. “It’s not information we’re sharing.”
“So sworn,” Tymon said. “Won’t use this.”
“So sworn,” Talos said, a bit more reluctant.
A circle was drawn in the hillside, in the shade of a tree. Moon and darkness motifs.
John, the goblins, Alpeana.
The darkness around the circle intensified. This was more of a symbolic circle, one of the types of magic circle that was more of a shout out into a particular realm and space, asking for an answer.
Alpeana emerged, the darkness around her enough that even her pale flesh was barely visible. Her hair trailed on the ground as she retreated into deeper darkness.
And she had company, holding onto her hand.
“Tashlit!” Verona cheered.
Tashlit was more comfortable stepping out of the darkness, glancing around to make sure she wasn’t seen, pausing as she saw the boys. She’d changed her clothes, to a t-shirt with the Illuminati symbol, and jeans with tears in them. Some of the tears coincided with tears in her flesh, which made the eyes behind them visible, capable of peering out. Beneath the loose covering of flesh was a body that was thinner than the thinnest living person in the world, like eyeball-printed skin stretched over a skeleton. The skin, meanwhile, looked like it belonged to a girl that had weighed two hundred pounds, and thus it slopped over and around Tashlit.
Lucy and Avery gave Tashlit a wide berth.
“I’m wet and gross but hey, hi!” Verona said, cheery.
Tashlit put out a hand. The effect of the loose skin was a very pronounced high-five. She pointed to herself.
“You are not that wet and gross.”
Tashlit made a sign, like ‘little’.
“The tish has been keekin’ ta see ye, lassie.”
Tashlit looked surprised, every single one of her eyes going wide, then twisted, grabbing the backpack she’d worn. She pulled it around, reached in, and sorted through pages of what might have been magazines.
“We need to get you set up with tech,” Verona said. “I bet you’ve read those magazines a dozen times.”
Tashlit nodded vigorously, skin slapping. The eyes blinked together hard, skin wrinkling where one eyeball met the other.
“More than? Hundreds?”
“Well, we have a project then,” Verona said. “We’ll get you set up with a phone and you’ll have the whole wide internet to occupy you. Cat videos and-”
Tashlit’s eyes widened. She shook her head.
“No? What, the cat video thing?”
Tashlit widened her eyes again.
“You don’t like cats!?”
“I met an Other similar to her, once, overseas,” John said. “It didn’t like cats either. The common cat was anathema to the Other. Inborn.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect,” Verona said. “What a shame. I’m curious what that’s about.”
“I think there was something about that in one of the books I took out of the library,” Avery said.
“Was it a thing before you, uh…?”
Tashlit nodded, still fishing in the bag. She had the benefit of being able to search the bag and still make eye contact with Verona.
Tashlit pulled out clothes.
Tashlit nodded, then held back a bit. She mimed touching the clothes to her face.
“It’s touched your eyes? Is that a problem? Mystical or anything?”
“It really doesn’t bother me.”
Tashlit passed her the clothes.
“Aye, ye already ken her better than I dae, ‘n we’ve bin talkin’ in dreams.”
“You’re really taking this in stride,” Lucy observed. “No offense.”
“This is a great aesthetic!” Verona said, putting an arm around Tashlit, so they were side by side. “And she’s not like, evil or anything, right Alpy?”
“I meant more the communication,” Lucy said. “It’d be nice if we could get Tashlit that phone so she can type out messages.”
“I’ve gotta change,” Verona said. “Let’s uh… hm. I don’t want to track mud through the bathroom of the gas station. Gimme a second of privacy.”
“Remember we’re being watched. If you get too far from the Nettlewisp…”
“Oh yeahhh. Yes, okay. And Chase is out there.”
“I’ll come with,” Lucy said, holding the Nettlewisp.
“I do hope that triggers at some point. I remember we were talking about the traps,” Verona said. “And there’s the possibility that thing might need to be triggered.
“We’ll have to be careful,” Lucy said. “I’m pretty sure I can wash it off.”
“It’s a big waste of glamour.”
“Be right back!” Verona called out. “Barring exceptional circumstance.”
She stepped out into the woods, until she was far enough she couldn’t see the others, then changed into the clothes Tashlit had provided. They were about two sizes too big, and smelled just a bit like fish, but that was okay.
“Should we regroup, or head back before it’s too dark?” Lucy asked, her back to Verona.
“I dunno,” Verona said.
“We have to consider the kids!” Avery called out. “Some are pretty young, with early bedtimes.”
Verona touched Lucy’s shoulder as she made her way back out of the foliage, carrying the bundle of her wet clothes.
As a collected group, they made their way up toward the gas station. Alpeana, Tashlit and the goblins remained behind.
“We’ll do a jolly bit of recruitment and skullcracking,” Toadswallow said. “And we’ll catch up with you lot after.”
“I will, I will. We’ll circle around, see how the buildings look.”
“That way,” Avery said, pointing.
As they made their way toward the other group, Brie stepped forward.
Some of the children of the Hungry Choir appeared around her. They kept their eyes down, wary, almost slinking forward.
Verona looked around, wondering if any of the locals were watching.
“I- I think she might be. She’s been quiet up until now.”
“Can she communicate?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I see,” John said. “Can she come out?”
“I think the bindings are meant to prevent that.”
The children came up to him.
He touched the hair of one.
It disappeared promptly. The other faded too.
The look in his eyes was so sad.
Lucy and Avery aside, and maybe her mom and dad when she was smaller, Verona wasn’t sure she’d ever liked anyone enough to look that way if they were gone.
Everyone had gathered. It included some of those who hadn’t come to town, like Reese, Steyn, and Mike, and Xerxes and Erasmus. Laila was standing off to the side with Melody and Corbin. Some summoned Others were around as well. And Liberty was here, even though America wasn’t.
Liberty took a step, then broke into a run. She leaped into the space between the gas station and the house next door, tackling Toadswallow. She planted a kiss on his cheek.
“Toadie, it’s been forever! Where did you come from!? Have you been here all along, somehow?”
“I was called. By a certain trio.”
Liberty looked, hugging Toadswallow with enough force that it looked like his eyes might bulge out, or his monocle might come free.
“You’ll need to look after them, my girl.”
Well, that was a certain side benefit.
John found a place at the furthest end of the crowd from Brie.
All of this, to muster forces to go back. To find a place to sleep, all hunkering down in one building.
But at least they were together.
Back toward campus. The more monstrous Others keeping to the trees. Moving with surprising ease through denser foliage. Sometimes they stepped out, only to disappear back into the wood that the growing night was consuming.
A ways down the road, a single man stood.
Not even flinching at the size of the group.
They stopped walking. He didn’t budge.
“Are you going to make this difficult?” Tymon called out.
Ted didn’t move a muscle, didn’t respond. He stared them down.
“You’re supposed to be a good guy!” Avery called out.
Again, Ted didn’t respond.
They’d explained the Aware and how they worked, with the exception of Kevin Noone’s girlfriend, Rae. The group here knew what Ted was. The clout he had with the universe. The fact he could face off against the sort of thing Mrs. Durocher summoned and survive.
Nobody wanted to be the one to step forward.
John had his gun out, but he didn’t raise it.
It felt like fifteen minutes but it was probably closer to two. A car came down the road, and Verona worried it was Ted’s backup. Not that he necessarily needed it.
The approach of the car made their assembled group break up, stepping off to the side or into the other lane. Ted didn’t move, letting the car pass him by. It wasn’t backup. It was just a person.
But the fact they’d moved and he hadn’t, it was like he’d somehow won. He turned and he walked away.
They didn’t resume moving until he was out of sight.
Back to the school and the tyrant who wanted to claim it.