Pale: 7.x - Interlude
Author: Wildbow

Gone Ahead – 7.x | Pale

“Ray, sweetie,” Durocher said.  “Don’t spend all night with your nose in your computing machines.”

“Computing machines?” Ray asked.  He leaned back, closing his laptop.  “Really.”

“I’ve had a few drinks, and I don’t understand half that stuff when I’m sober,” she told him, before laughing.

“Be careful,” he told her.  He sighed.  “For others’ sake, if not your own.  Especially after a hard day like today.”

“I’m not really very drunk,” she told him, sitting down beside him, and laying a hand on his shoulder.  “I’m other things.  If you’re tapped out, you and I could retire upstairs.  Work out the leftover restlessness and adrenaline of the day.”

He shook his head.  “I’m attached.  You know that.”

“It wouldn’t mean anything.  You know that.”

She sighed.  “Should I go find some other hapless gentleman?”

“If you like.  I wouldn’t mind catching up, though, without the chaos of everything getting in the way.”

“If I stay, will you stop peeking at that laptop of yours?”

“I have to keep tabs on things.”

She shook her head, then shifted position draping herself into the space next to him, head on his shoulder, leg against his.  There wasn’t anything to it, no intention or anything, and her attention was clearly elsewhere, but that was the kind of person she was.  Especially after a couple drinks.

Larry Bristow laughed at something.

A slightly strained laugh, like he’s trying to inject the humor into things by force.

Larry was short, haircut simple but tidy, parted, lifted up at the brow.  He’d worn a blazer with a t-shirt, but his clothes had been torn and taken the brunt of a tide of centipede blood, as had his slacks.  The man had been able to change his pants and t-shirt, but hadn’t had a replacement blazer.  It looked better, him wearing a t-shirt.  It looked better.  His body was a bit muscular, a bit padded.

The best he’d ever look, maybe.

Durocher, by contrast, hadn’t changed her clothes- a black lace top that was probably meant for someone a bit larger around the chest.  It worked for her, on the same level that let her lounge beside Ray so casually.  Her hair was a bit shaggy, by accident rather than by design, the upper edge of her ichor-stained top sagged perilously low across her chest, and her dress, a lighter material, had more of the blue-black stains that caught normal light a bit like there was a blacklight.  She’d kicked off her sandals and the strapping of one of those sandals was being idly toyed with by her toes.  She’d washed off her face, hair, arms, and legs, but had done nothing about the clothes; the metallic and ammonia-like tang of the insect blood hung around her as a perverse sort of perfume.

More like a wild animal than a person, in many ways.  Here, in a bar, late at night, the group of them gathered, her slightly inebriated, tired self was akin to a tiger stretched out in a sunbeam.  The claws so easily protruded as she stretched.  A hand flexed, multiple joints popping.  A long thumbnail had been split in two, cuticle to fingertip, blood crusting the gap, and she examined it.

“You’re stronger,” Ray said.

“I sure hope so.  All that time away.”

“Seems like every time you go away, you get twice as strong.  Anything interesting come of this trip?”

“Yeah,” she said, and she smiled about as wide as was possible, while her gaze was vacant, like her mind was very far away or she was looking at something that wasn’t in that bar.  “We got bored.  We went into its den.”

She nodded, still smiling, gaze unfocused but generally aimed at her thumbnail.  Her gaze clarified, and she met Ray’s eyes.  “Itty bitty one.  Type seven-E, about.  Complex.”

“The locals were wondering where their local goddess got off to.  My suspicion is that it found her or she went after it.  They got embroiled in a battle to the death, and it subsumed her.  Bit of goddess mixed in with a carrion beast from aeons before aeons existed.”

The seven-E was a shorthand, initially joking, that Durocher had started to take seriously.  Elephants.  Each E was about six and a half tons of mass.  At seven E, a little over forty five tons.

A sliver of primeval with the mass of a bull could kill a lot of groups of practitioner.  Primevals sat comfortably at a tier where gods, angels, demons, and the highest spirits dwelt.  Things that could be contained, but never truly defeated.

Ray put up a hand.  She looked at it, bewildered.

“You know what a high five is,” he told her.

“I feel like decades have passed,” she said, grunting as she sat up.  She gave him a high five.  “I want to get high, get drunk, drag some guy back to my den so I can demolish the hardest parts of them with the softest parts of me-”

Luisa Crowe choked on her drink.  Musser laughed.

“I’m noticing you use the same terminology for your lair and the lair of the beast you were hunting,” Alexander commented.

“I have no comment on that specific coincidence,” Durocher said.  “Some people ask not to be bothered until they’ve had their coffee.  Well, I don’t want to be bothered until I’ve had my vices and deciphered my new find.”

“I don’t know if I should feel sorry for this hypothetical guy you’re dragging back to your den, or if I should be envious,” Alexander said.  He leaned forward to stub out a cigarette.  Alexander wasn’t local, but he was at peace here.  Mellowing out after a triumphant day.

“Not hypothetical, Alex,” Raymond said.  “Ree gets what she wants.”

“I want to study my new find but I won’t be able to think straight until I’ve had a bit of what I’ve been missing all this time.”

“All this time?” Raymond asked.  “It’s been less than a year.”

“In a land before time.”

“Isn’t that a movie?” Larry asked.

“And a place beyond defined physical boundaries.”

“That’s not a movie,” Larry said.

“Make it,” Musser said.  “I have some funds if you need startup.”

“At a high markup,” Larry retorted.  “No, no thank you.  And I’d have to move, just when I’m getting things underway in Winnipeg.”

“Too bad,” Musser said.  “I’ve been looking for a creative project.  “Luisa?”

“Only if I get a part in the film,” Luisa told him.

They were all so different.  Raymond wanted to relax, but he wouldn’t feel secure until everything had been checked over.  The Deus Ex Machina they had defeated and captured was still in holding, being filechecked, and the power would have to be parceled out.  Or, better yet, Raymond would work out a system to ensure that each person got something equivalent in power.  Trying to butcher something like that into its individual pieces was a task.

Musser and Luisa looked like they held themselves a bit above this space, and may never have normally come to a bar like this.  Musser was well-dressed, his clothes and accessories expensive.  The dynamic there was almost entirely the family he came from.  His dad had delegated him to act on behalf of the family, and Musser had been happy to get a chance to escape.  Even if this wasn’t his scene, he was prolonging going back home where he’d war with brothers over the imminent turnover of the family, and now that he was here, weariness was softening him around the edges, enough that he could fit into the conversation, instead of being upright and off to the side.

Luisa Crowe wouldn’t stick around, for entirely different reasons.  She’d become a mother young.  She had to get back for the kids.  Her entire life was divided into stark roles.  That she was relaxing here was a thing she was doing, that would have no relevance at all to her place in their dynamic.  Or her lack of place, really.

Durocher was physically exhausted but mentally, she tended to come away from encounters with the scariest and largest Others energized, wanting more.  Just a week or two off of her latest hunt, she was willing and wanting to track down this Blue Heron Throne god, while Alexander did the legwork to bring them all together.  She would sleep only with the help of drugs, drink, and more physical exhaustion, and she would wake interested and alert, wanting to research.

The least human human any of them knew.

Larry barely seemed to care.  That was his strength and weakness.  Every challenge was something fleeting, before the next thing.  It took a lot to get him to flinch, and it had worked for him up until this point.  A danger when facing a god was that any respect afforded was power handed to the god, with a direct connection to the person giving that sentiment.  Larry and Durocher occupied a similar space in refusing to cede any ground.  It had mattered.  And now, for him, it was a night like so many others.  Drinking, being a touch boorish, wheedling for attention, respect, and gratification.

And Charles, he hadn’t even gone into the structure, he had only sent help and promised to look into rescue if they couldn’t leave.  But they’d invited the man to celebratory drinks.  Thoughtful and lost in thought.  He was hard to get to know, and much of that had to be done not by reaching out or studying him, but by studying what he offered and what he asked, when he finally decided what he could ask that might be a good question.  Seeking validation and respect in the opposite way to how Larry did.  Too subtle, instead of too forced.

“Charles,” Larry said.  “What would your role be, if we collaborated to make a film?”

“Ah, well, you know I’m a crook,” Charles said.  “I could supply actors and actresses. Others.”

“Don’t discount the crookedness.  The closer you get to high society, the more you realize how many of those are there,” Musser said.  “Crooks make things happen, because systems are so broken and convoluted that they logjam, otherwise.”

“I’m not that kind of crook, and I don’t have any desire to be a part of high society.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Larry asked.

Charles looked bewildered.  “I mean I’m not a threat, I’m willing to help but… I know how cutthroat practitioner society can be, and I imagine hollywood or any other high society is the same.  I’d rather keep my throat intact.”

Bristow laughed again, forced.  “What about being wealthy?”

“No.  Seems like a hassle.  That’s not very high on my list of priorities.”

“I wonder if you just broke poor Larry’s brain,” Durocher said.

There was light laughter.

Charles wore a rumpled men’s overshirt over a black tee, was relatively clean shaven, considering they’d had a long day, and didn’t really style his hair.  The man was quiet, and looked simultaneously older and younger than the group here.  Chronologically younger, maybe, but he had an attitude and atmosphere that conveyed more.  A bit more melancholy.

Which seemed to work for some.  As others had come through the bar, two ladies had started up conversations with Charles.  Two had done so with Alexander, and none with Larry.  Raymond hadn’t received offers either, but his proximity to Durocher was probably a factor in that, as was the t-shirt with the cartoon character on it, and the headphones he had around his neck.  Musser sitting next to Luisa probably played a part in the man only getting one offer; on another night, without the false signaling, he would have beat them all.

“What do you want?” Musser asked Charles.

“If you’d asked me a year ago, my answer might have been the same as Larry here,” Charles said, eyes downcast, gaze sinking into his drink.

“I’ve got a little trinket for time travel in my collection,” Larry said.  “Given a great deal of time, I could maybe finagle getting a question back to you.  Question is, is it worth using it?”

“Hush,” Luisa said, smiling.

“Not by me.  I’m a minor player, very much on purpose,” Charles said, his voice taking on a bit of a grumble, until he sat up straighter.  “There’s a more comfortable territory that a practitioner can sit in, no greed, no ambition, not so minor they’re vulnerable, not so big they have others wanting their position.  I’ve tried to stay in that general area, as of late.”

“There’s something wrong with you,” Larry said.

“Part of flying under the radar might mean me leaving before there’s too much attention pointed my way.”

“Stay, stay!” Alexander said.  “Really.  I’m sure you have stories to tell.  Or anecdotes to share.  These things are important.”

“I’m not sure what I could share.  I’ve- you guys know my history.  But actually sharing parts of it…”

“Share,” Alexander said.  “We’re open minded.  War stories, perhaps?  First big wake-up call.  First Other that was out of your league, or closest to being out of your league.”

“This sounds like a trick question,” Durocher murmured.

There were some chuckles.

Alexander leaned forward.  “I’ll start.  Before our recent machine god, the blue heron on his throne, it would have been a Hangmaiden.  This would be your specialty, Larry.  Or Mrs. Crowe.”

“I’ve seen two,” Larry said, more serious.  “A Fisherwoman and a straight Aranaea Hangmaiden.  Yeah.”

Luisa Crowe shook her head.

“I stay out of trouble for the most part.”

“One Other, three forms,” Alexander explained.  “They hew close to Fate.  The maiden, the matron, the crone.  Each form has different abilities.  One to do the luring, one to trap, one to reveal the spider and do the devouring.”

“They often hang around clubs,” Larry said.  “Or anywhere people go to find dates.  Always glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, taking a lot of time to pick their targets.  They get in close and then ensnare.”

“She was strong,” Alexander said.  “Love at first sight, when she wanted it.  And that’s dangerous when you’re an Augur, and you See a lot.  She knew that.  She made a sport of hunting us.”

“Brave,” Charles said.  “Stupid.”

“She got away with it for a long time,” Alexander said, his expression serious.  “Invited herself over.  Flirted but put off consummation.  Her ‘snare’ was to find things valuable and important to you and mark them.  Keepsakes, things from childhood, projects you were neglecting because you were so infatuated with her.  A childhood stuffed toy in the back of a closet, now festooned with biting spiders and throbbing clusters of eggs.  Cobwebs growing on that pile of paperwork in your study you can’t even bear to look at.  A letter from a first love has handwriting get more and more spidery until it grows legs and crawls from the page.”

“And signs, I’d guess?” Luisa asked.

Alexander nodded.  “Every hint she can give you without you pulling away is another tether, tying you to the fate she wants to hand you.  Dreams about being bound, for example.  Or they’ll even unnerve or reveal glimpses of their true self to neighbors, family, and friends, with the intent that you’ll ignore those hints and be drawn deeper into it.  In the end, she reveals her third form, and it’s half-woman, half-spider, and you look around, realize you haven’t eaten in five days, you’re weak, and you couldn’t go in your kitchen if you did have the strength, because your apartment is filled with dense webs and small biting spiders.”

“You survived,” Raymond said.  He lifted his beer.  “Cheers.”

“My cousin passing gave me the opportunity to lead the family.  Ambition won out.”  Alexander clinked his glass against Raymond’s.  “She had my heart on a platter, for all intents and purposes.  So I told her I didn’t care.  I wish I hadn’t had to kill her.  I would have liked to question her.  In the aftermath I found a trove of little trinkets and scraps from other Augurs she hunted.  I could have gotten more.  I carved her eight eyes out, used the last one today, for our machine god, as a matter of fact.”

“Feeling melancholy about that?” Charles asked, staring down into his drink.

Alexander smiled.  “Weirdly so.  The end of the post-Scarlet chapter of my life.”

“Her name was Scarlet?” Larry asked.  “That’s a tell right there.”

“In my defense, I was a teenager,” Alexander said.  “And that’s my war story.  The one that almost got me.”

“Raymond?  I’m curious,” Musser said.

“It’s embarrassing,” Raymond said, dropping his eyes.  “You know the saying, the brighter the light, the sharper the shadow?”

“I got a tip from one of the men who taught me.  A student of one of his colleagues went down into the digital aether and didn’t surface.  I knew I should be wary, if it was going to be easy, they would have gone after him themselves.  Navigating a foreign technomancer’s systems… it’s like entering a dungeon.  Winding corridors, spaces, folders, subsystems with their own purposes, security… and other hazards that move in when you have any sufficiently dark, empty space.”

“And then you have your man,” Durocher said.

“The target, the apprentice who didn’t end up coming up for air.  Crazed, on edge, and very familiar with the space.  I was so fixated on those things, and so nervous, I missed a step when turning on the metaphorical lights.  I cast myself in sharp shadow, and unbeknownst to me, something seized on my digital silhouette.  I plumbed the rest of the depths, I seized systems, evicted residents, gathered data that I could sell.  My loot from this digital dungeon, if you want to call it that.  Dealt with the apprentice.  All in all, about forty five real seconds passed.”

“And the silhouette?” Musser asked.

“Had enough of me and my life to emulate anything and everything it wanted.  Passwords, security, contact information for everyone I cared enough about to keep in touch with.  It knew my history, the music I liked… and I’d been careful.  A lot of that was air-gapped, or obfuscated.  Didn’t matter.  What it didn’t get or decipher in those forty-five seconds, it got in the next few days, through agents it hired or unwitting people who answered a voice that sounded like mine on the phone.  It started to materialize physically.”

“Doppleganger?” Charles asked.

“No, not exactly.  Data vampire, more like.  Started applying for name changes, creating new bank accounts and moving funds, using my reputation and my word to create the image of a new person with a new name.  If what it was doing wasn’t enough, the time I had to spend in there, chasing after it, looking for digital fingerprints, seeing if it had laid groundwork to pop back up again in the future… that did damage of its own.  Hector was an infant.”

“This wasn’t all that long ago, then,” Alexander said.

“One stupid mistake, cost me months,” Raymond said.  “I hit the big red button nineteen times. The big red button is-”

“Nuke everything nearby,” Alexander said.

Raymond nodded.  He looked frustrated.  “Except everything nearby was a good chunk of my life.  I thought this would be a good diversion.  A bit of beer money, pot.  And then… so much empty space.  So many ways things can be streamlined, or needs can be filled.”

“Raymond’s work is getting international attention,” Durocher said.  “Lords of Paris, London, and Moscow.  They’re pleased and they’re willing to pay if he’ll give them more.”

There was some cheering at that, some excitement.  Raymond protested all of it, as glasses clinked.

“I don’t even know if I want to pursue it.”

Charles met Ray’s eyes, nodding.

“You’re mad if you don’t,” Larry said.

“I want to curl up with my wife and kid and watch cartoons.  Put Heck to bed, then smoke up and bore my poor wife about technology, and pretend to be annoyed or bored while she tells me about teaching kids.”

“A life that stops at that sounds like it could be more of a bullet to dodge than the identity vampire,” Larry joked.

There were a few chuckles at that, more from Larry’s friends.

“My war story isn’t an Other,” Musser said, “Practitioner.  Stupid fucking kid.  Became my apprentice on a trial basis.  Wanted to know more, faster.  The more he pushed, and the more he disrespected me, the more I slowed him down.  My hope was that he’d start listening, or he’d match my pace.”

“You don’t want to hand an apprentice the keys to the proverbial kingdom in the first little while anyway,” Alexander said.

“Yeah,” Musser agreed.

“Wait, was this Yellowston?” Larry asked.  “Wondered what happened to that kid.”

“This happened,” Musser said.

“He kept giving me the stink eye, that one time I was over,” Larry said.

“He gave me two years of stink eye.  Doesn’t help, when you’re trying to make a bid to be head of the family, being ground down from above, sniped at from the sides, and you’re getting crap from below.  He never did shape up.  He snapped instead.  Turned on me.”

“Was he smart about it?” Alexander asked.

“He almost got me.  I tasked him with drawing a diagram.  Standard grunt work for an apprentice, but you do have to be careful.  I did the intricate runework in the center, tasked him with the rest.  Easily two hours of putting chalk to floor.  The design at the end was thirty feet across.  It was a major project, and the biggest I’d given him.  I thought he’d be eager enough to move forward and move up that he wouldn’t make mistakes.    He put intentional flaws in the border.  Aimed at the lectern where I was prepared to stand.”

“You spotted it?” Durocher asked.

“I’m betting it was the human element,” Charles said.  “He gave something away in body language.”

“Humans are frequently the weakest part of any system,” Raymond said.

“Nerd,” Durocher whispered.

Musser shook his head.  “Maybe he did give something subtle away.  But for me… it was supposed to be symmetrical.  But as I walked around the room, looked out over the diagram for anything obvious, something felt off.  I lit a candle and cast a shadow to check.  With an even number of studs at the border, the shadow should have cut between two details, stretched directly through the middle of the diagram, and passed through two matching details on the other side.  It was lopsided.  From there, other things jumped out at me.”

“Imagine if you’d been the type to never pay mind to chalkwork again, after teaching it to your apprentices,” Larry said.   “You have to stay brushed up on the basics.”

“That was a factor, I suppose,” Musser said.  “He rotated the exterior border, moving the chalk on the floor to point it at me, while pushing power into the diagram.  I asserted my ownership over the space, stopped it just in time.  Pushed it back toward him.  He broke at the last second, ran, and I put my fist into his throat.  While he sputtered and choked, I pointed the diagram at him and let him have what he planned for me.  Now he’s a stain on the wall, a vestige of his former self, aware of things but… dim.”

“You should go right home and let him go, Musser,” Luisa said.  Her expression was troubled.

“I don’t like to discard resources.  I could have use of the vestige later.”

“He doesn’t deserve that.”

“The powers that be do like eyes traded for eyes,” Larry intoned, looking at nobody in particular.

Luisa looked troubled, like she was going to say something, but she was interrupted.

“What do you even say to the boy’s family?” Alexander asked.

“That he made an error, he paid the price.  I noted it looked intentional, suggested there might be justifiable reason for retaliation or sanction if we looked at his phone and did some investigating, and found he’d been given orders.”

“Now you know an investigator, trained in these matters,” Alexander said.

“I already know.  Keeping the who, when, where, and why up my sleeve until later lets me eventually re-establish contact with the Yellowston family.”

“Smart,” Alexander said.  “I don’t think I’d have it in me to hold back on revenge.”

“You have to, don’t you?” Larry asked.  “To make the revenge effective?  Make it so that no matter what they do, even if they escape the specific fate you have planned, they’re still ruined.”

“I prefer to look forward just enough to ensure my fates are inescapable,” Alexander answered.

“Do you have one, Charles?  A close call?  A war story?”

“Mine were human,” Charles said.  “Well… technically, it was a revenant.  She came after us, licked with flame like she’d just been set on fire.  This was… I was barely over sixteen, I think.  A gang in Toronto was on the rise, and whenever they got stumped or ran into something strange, they’d come to me.  I’d tell them, hm, you know, I’m thinking of one particular asshole, he’s a real monster.  If you want to leave an indelible mark in their minds and hearts, this would be just the bastard.”

“Or a vestige with a bit of elemental nestled inside.  Or a ghoul, if I want the crime scene cleaned up.”

“You’re a scary man, Charles.”

“I was scarier then, even if I didn’t realize it.  Revenant came tearing through.  Horror movie stuff, custom endings for each of us, starting with the lowest rank guys, then moving up.  Attacked our business, our alliances, stock, money, revealed secrets.  Crucified one guy with rebar she’d hooked up to a heat source, took the bones out of a woman’s arms and legs and left her in a shallow hole in the rain, to drown.  She had a vendetta in the way only the vengeful undead can.  And the thing that got me was… we had no idea who it was.”

“Each death is a hint,” Alexander said.  “But you know that.”

“Yeah.  The revenants need to stay anchored in this world.  They do it with keepsakes, which means you’ve got to look for the places they hit before they start coming after people.  Reach the start of the trail before they get to the last of you.  And we couldn’t.  The guys I was working with cooperated, I told them to investigate and they did.  We contacted police, we were everywhere.  We narrowed it down to a certain neighborhood, a select few people, and couldn’t get any further than that.”

“How’d you get out of it?” Raymond asked.

“I didn’t.  She got the third, second, and the top guy.  I pulled out all of my tricks.  A few of my monsters, and she still got me.  Decided I wasn’t directly involved enough to die, so she’d leave it up to fate.  Handcuffed me in the electrical room of an abandoned warehouse with a lot of the evidence.  Cops eventually came, and I got my first stint in prison.”

“What’s the moral to this story?” Ray asked.

“If you’re going to kill, don’t kill with prejudice?” Musser asked.  “Just ticks them off.”

“You say that but what happened to the Yellowston apprentice?” Larry asked.

“He offed himself, really.  There was justice in it.”

“Or don’t kill at all?” Luisa asked.

“There is no police force governing us.  We’re still, generally speaking, in a wild west of practice,” Alexander said.  “If you don’t act with prejudice, you’re setting precedent.”

“They were civilians,” she said, her voice was sharper.  “Innocents.”

“And Charles wasn’t involved.  The revenant gave him a pass, pretty much,” Musser said.  “Don’t blame the man.”

“I won’t argue with all of you here, me outnumbered.  Not after two beers.  Consider me thoroughly unimpressed.  Excuse me-” she said, her voice rising with that last bit, anything but polite.

“You’re leaving?” Larry sounded aghast.

“I’m using the facilities.”

Luisa navigated her way to the back of the building.

“Don’t go killing her anytime soon or you’ll have another vengeful dead to deal with,” Alexander joked.

Larry laughed.  “You were asking about the moral, Ray.  I think the moral is that Charles deserves a drink.  If she’d had a bit more fire in her, he wouldn’t be here with us today, to regale us with… what was it?  Petitioners, edicts, and covenants?”

“Among others,” Charles replied.  “No drink for me, thanks.  If I lose half my power for the next while by being gainsaid, I won’t have much of anything, unlike some of you.”

“Drinking and keeping to your word is a cultivated skill, Charles,” Larry said.  “You train it.”

“If you can trust him on anything it’s that,” Musser said, smiling.

Alexander leaned back. “Seeing him tonight I wonder if it’s his rule of discourse.  If you’re always sloppy with your word and a bit inebriated, it might blunt the impact.”

“Blunts the power too,” Musser said.

“Is this how you see me?” Larry asked.

Charles was staring into his drink, and he looked morose.

Ray nudged his leg with a toe.

Charles looked up.  “I made mistakes.  Should have paid more attention to what I was enabling.  They deserved those ends, more or less.”

“Don’t be a downer, Charles,” Larry said.  “The only mistake that matters is the one that ends you.  The rest are chances to learn.”

Luisa emerged a bit too fast to have actually used the facilities.  Her face was wet, like she’d rinsed it.  She paused at the bar.  Alexander watched her.

“Charles,” Larry said.  “When we were mid-job, you mentioned these special Others.”

“Loose category,” Charles said.

“Are we really going to talk shop?” Musser asked.

“Please!” Alexander cut in.  “Unless Marie wants to share her horror story?”

She shook her head.  “None I think worthy of sharing that you don’t already know the details of.”

“Then I’ll share what I know,” Charles told Larry.  “Others, bound by rules, get certain leeway.  If they must ask questions or must do certain things, like a revenant having a very specific path laid out before it, that’s… in our analogy of a bank heist, it’s the drill.  It’s more solid, it has more force.”

“Can that apply to people, then?” Larry asked.

“Certainly does,” Alexander answered.  “Practitioners as well.”

Luisa returned, taking her seat, but her phone started ringing almost immediately.

Alexander, situated so Musser was between him and Luisa, sat back, his eyes flashing gold as he turned on the Sight.

Raymond, too, opened his laptop.  Checking again.  God still bound, and the nearby phone call… yeah.

“Yes, okay.  Thank you,” Luisa said.  She hung up.  “I’m going to go.”

“What a shame,” Musser told her.  “Back to the kids?”

“That’s the intent.  Good work today, everyone.  Raymond?”

“Your dues will be delivered soon.”

“We need to do this more,” Alexander said.  “Did you notice the catch in our stories?”

“Is this important?  I’d like to return to my children,” Luisa said.

“It’s that we’re very strong when we’re united.  It’s when we’re alone and interacting with dangerous forces, be they practitioner, Other, or man, that we find ourselves at risk.  Which is a roundabout way of saying I’ve enjoyed this, more than I’ve enjoyed myself in a long while, and we should do it again.”

“No hard feelings if you can’t get away from the kids,” Raymond said.  Alexander arched an eyebrow at him.

“These things get harder and harder,” Luisa said.

She wasn’t talking about getting away from the kids.

“The age difference is too much for a playdate, isn’t it?” Raymond asked.

“I will.  You too, Raymond.  Give an extra kiss to-”

“Hector.  Or Heck, affectionately.”

Luisa nodded.  “Kiss Heck for me, then.  Bye all.”

They said their goodbyes.  Luisa pulled on jacket and scarf, then ducked out into the cold.

“I suppose we scared her off,” Alexander said.  “That call wasn’t from her family.”

“She asked the bar to call,” Raymond said.  “It’s fine.  Let her go, let her enjoy her family.”

“She’s a resource that may yet be tapped,” Musser said.  Larry nodded.

“But for what?” Alexander asked.

“You’re lined up to become head of the biggest family here,” Alexander told him.

“And you’re already heads of your own families, or once-apprentices, now free,” Musser said.  “I have no designs, outside of silly ideas for movies or other vanity projects.”

Larry laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.  “Carry on?  Tell me about these others?”

“Or maybe I should take over,” Musser said.  “To keep Larry from going on at length about his passions.”

“Still awake?” Raymond asked Durocher.

“I’m overdue on sleep too,” she admitted, reclining in that tiger-in-a-sunbeam way, arms draped out over the back of the cushioned bench.  “Somehow that rarely make the list of priorities.”

“You tend to fold drugs into the mix.  Tranquilizers.”

“I do.  You’re a very smart man, Ray.  I don’t suppose you can oblige?” she murmured.

“Be careful,” he said, reaching into his bag.  As he was bent over, he also flipped up his laptop, checking.  The god was still bound, security was still within normal levels.

He straightened and passed her a packet.  She went to take it, and he held onto it.”

“In exchange, tell me about how this place was laid out?” Raymond asked.  “With the god-primeval?”

“If I must,” she told him.  She laid a hand on his cheek, staring at him.

“I’m attached, Marie, and you’re tipsy.”

“I’m not looking at you like that.  Don’t worry.  You’re quieter tonight than usual.”

“Scary business.  I’ve got people to go back to.”

“I could never do that.”

“I would fear for what your child’s life would be like, if and when you were to have one.  I’ll face down a god for the sake of my intellectual curiosity, get some power I can hand down to Hector when the time comes.”

“You can work with London, Moscow, and the other powerhouses.  That’s security and power surer than anything else.”

“You talk so casually about facing down monsters bigger and more enduring than dragons.  I’ll think on it.  For now, tell me about this space the complex seven-E was in.”

Durocher sighed.  “Netherlands.  Veluwe.  As mankind grows, its territory shrinks.  It held onto a pocket, accessed by taking a certain path…”

Alexander exhaled a cloud of smoke through his open car window.  The inside of the car was hazy, and glimmers of the scene of years past were cast out into the smoke.

Outside the car, in the woods, there were no crickets, no animal sounds, no sounds of traffic.  The only noise was smoke rubbing against smoke and producing whispers.

“Accessed by taking a certain path.  The way is harsh and troubled.  The bog asphodel decorates some areas.  Look for a bushel.  Seven on the left side, three on the right.  Then walk past.  The peat bog will swallow you.  Let it, and wait four minutes.  You’ll drop into a deep cavern of thick mud and bog plants.”

“How do you bind such an entrance?  Especially to- you can call on it?”

“Her.  We sank figurines into the muck around the portal.  Figures for each of the seven ages of mankind.  Others are doing more.  But yes, I can call on her.  She’s not very big, only a seven-E, but I think she’s very pretty.”

“It’s hard to imagine, the way the others have looked.”

“Oh, it’s not so different from that.  No solid form, just everything you’d hope to see in a carrion-eating animal, and then some, twisting through itself in a way that’s never the same from moment to moment.  But it’s got an elegance you wouldn’t expect to see in something that devours the dead.”

“It’s that goddess, I bet.”

Even taking his time, he couldn’t keep it alive forever.  He’d burned his cigarette down to the filter.  He stubbed it out on the car mirror.

He saved one from every pack he smoked, and he liked to smoke in important meetings and negotiations.  He kept meticulous notes, using practices that recorded things for him, and the cigarettes were a backup.  He changed his brand every year, which helped with keeping track.

Eyes half-lidded, one arm extended out the window, still holding onto the smashed cigarette butt, he picked up his phone and dialed.

“I heard you had a bit of trouble, Alexander.”

“Word travels fast.  I don’t call for the commentary.”

Alexander discarded of the butt, and made a one-handed cut of a deck.  He checked, cut, checked again.

“Veluwe national forest.  I want a hold on certain action.”

“You’re going to make me send some poor apprentice into the deep woods to get eaten alive by bugs?”

“A peat bog, not a forest.  And don’t send anyone you value.  It might be better if they aren’t practitioners at all.  Just make sure they follow instructions without fail.”

“Find flowers, they’re called bog asphodel.  They can have red or orange fruit at the right time of year.  I have no idea if this is that time of year, over there.  Seven on the left side, three on the right.  They walk between those points, in until they start to sink.  They should let themselves sink, grope in the mud until they find something.  Figurines were soaked into the muck.  I want one, but failing that, I want it gone.”

“At the time of your choosing.  I get the impression this is more complicated.”

“It is.  Don’t leave a trail between you and whoever you send.”

“Expensive, Alexander.”

“Then I’ll send someone.  Soon?”

“I’ll arrange it.  I’ll contact you shortly when they’re positioned.  You know the drill.  Text when you want us to act.  If it’s not ‘cancel’, we treat it as a cue to go.”

He lit up another cigarette.  Not one of his ones from the past, this time.

Just a regular cigarette.

Sitting in his car like this, figuring out his next moves to get the desired results, it felt like he was young again.  Still learning under his uncle, still doing the private investigation and petty criminal work.  He picked up a collection of large photographs, each nearly as large as the folder he’d been keeping them in.  He peered at them through the haze of smoke.

Raymond was in his office.  The meeting between Raymond and the major powers was over.  Raymond was still alive.  He was checking things on his computer.

It was so tempting to target Raymond in this.  Zed would be the easiest target, if he wanted to utterly destroy Ray.  Zed was…

Zed and Brie, sitting on the steps outside the west entrance, Brie on a step below Zed, Zed behind her, his arms around her.  Zed had a bruise on his face.  Brie had been scuffed up, and one of those scuffs interfered with her binding.  A few waifs from the Devouring Song were lingering in the area.  Zed and Brie ignored them for the time being.

He touched a pen he kept in his dash.  It was no larger than an ordinary pen, but it might have weighed fifteen pounds.  It twitched in his hand.

Defenses were down, they were still being careful, but not careful enough.

If he had it in his mind to bring the full bearing of his wrath down on their heads, then he could.  A stroke of the pen, to turn that vulnerability into a critical flaw.  Brie would break, and the devouring song would be free, Zed would be at the epicenter, close enough to be pulled into it.

And Ray would be destroyed.  Alexander would have to act while Ray was still reeling.

His preparation with Durocher’s peat bog was a multi-layered attack.  On its own, if he were to use it, he would be putting Durocher and Ray at a disadvantage.  Durocher because she had taken responsibility for it.  Raymond because Alexander could let word slip that he knew and had exploited it because of Ray.  Minor, but it was something, and a furious Durocher was something to behold.

But it was a critical tool in case he ended up facing other enemies.

Raymond was the enemy that had the most focus.  Raymond hadn’t let him take his school back.

He checked on his other enemies.  Bristow- the picture was distorted, stretched out, like a misprint.  He tossed it onto the passenger seat.  He’d had to push hard to force that outcome, but he’d wanted it to be his.

Bristow’s followers.  Clementine was with the other Aware.  Most of them.  Kevin was off on his lonesome.  Ted Havens was gone.

He exhaled cigarette smoke he’d been holding onto, directly onto the black and white photograph.  He turned it over, while it was still obscured, and touched his hand to it.

“Inscription,” he said.

The smoke cleared.  There was writing on the back.

Clementine Robertjon and the Sargent Hall Aware discuss how they weren’t truly themselves.

He gave it a shake, and the inscription disappeared partway through.  The scene changed slightly too.

He tossed that onto the passenger seat, where it joined Bristow’s.

Sargent Hall.  The picture was distorted.  Another misprint, but it was more like two photographs had been taken in quick succession, or one photograph taken in the midst of an earthquake.

He couldn’t use too many calls for inscription, and he already had some information from Wye.  The residents were agitated and didn’t know why.

It would get worse before it got better.  But they lived there, and there they’d remain.  Low rent had its own traction, even if Bristow was gone.

Putting that photo away, he had another glimpse of the one with Raymond.  Raymond looked into the camera, so to speak, meeting Alexander’s eyes, even though he barely seemed to realize it.  Durocher stood beside him.

There was a faint growling, as if from far away, but from something very large.

Augury didn’t like Durocher.  Watching her by any kind of Sight was like swimming in shark infested waters.  There was no guarantee the bite would come immediately, but it would come eventually.  Even Shellie had mimicked the effect while pretending to be Durocher, apparently.

He didn’t want to do more than dip his toes into those waters, and Raymond could retaliate if he didn’t like being watched.  Not that he was really that personality type.  More likely, he’d retreat behind defenses.

Alexander withdrew, putting the photo aside and turning it face down.

He’d act soon.  It was a payback of sorts to make Raymond twist in the wind.  He knew retaliation was coming, and he was an anxious, introspective man.  Driving him into his own mind where worry could eat at him would be fair spice for Alexander’s retaliation.

A few things remained True.  Alexander had a seat of prominence in the building.  Raymond could wall in that space with concrete and Alexander would still belong there.  A vote was easier because it required a half dozen to a dozen nudges.  But he would find his way.  That was the guarantee the demesne provided, its true purpose, beyond being just a study or a place to work in.

He’d then have to tap resources.  New staff.  New structure.  Lawrence had wanted to shrink the school, distilling it down to its key, loyal, and effective players.  Alexander would have to find a way that made it feel natural and right that he resumed power.  Pushing Raymond over the edge would be a punishment of sorts, and it would be Just.

Next photograph.  Nicolette lay in bed, fast awake.  Seth was in the room, sitting so he could look out the window.  He looked diminished.

“Having doubts about your chosen path?” he asked the photograph.

Cigarette smoke swirled around it, hazy within the car.  As a whorl passed over the picture, the image changed.  She was looking at him.  Seth was looking at her, like she’d said something.

One curl of smoke later, she lay with her back to him.

The trio from Kennet had played a big part in stealing his victory out from under him.  He picked out a photograph.  Taken by Seth during the first day of school, it now showed them inside the school, instead of just outside the doors.  They were in the woods, talking to various Others.  Goblins, the many-eyed god-begotten, the nightmare, the opossum companion.  Some he’d seen in his visit to Kennet, others he hadn’t.

“Inscription.”  He exhaled the word with a mouthful of smoke, washing over the photograph.

The Kennet trio send friendly Others home.

He waited, studying the photograph for details.  The inscription was telling.  The phrasing.  Not unsummoning, not releasing.  Just… sending them home.

After so much fighting, tension, and bitterness, so many were relieved the worst was over.  Bristow was gone, and even to those who had liked or loved Bristow, however that was possible, there was no denying that things were stable again.

Now people rested.  They let their guards down, they unsummoned Others.  They were all on the same page, they thought.  All tired, all relieved to have stability.  It helped to put enmities aside.

Alexander gave the photo another look.

The Others were gone.  Only some scattered local goblins and the opossum Other remained.

Lucille Ellingson was walking away, rubbing at her arm.  Going for a walk in the woods?

They were too unguarded.  All of them.

It’s my school and I have eyes everywhere.

And Alexander had, with purpose, chosen to stagger out his moves.  He’d taken his time, conserved his energy, and let them exhaust themselves fighting each other.

Picking up the heavy pen again, he touched it to the photograph.

Black ink bled into the photograph, taking on three dimensions in the scene.

“Abandonment,” Alexander said.  “A connection severed.”

The ink took on a sharp smell, then began to eat through the photograph.  He tossed it aside before it could burn his fingers.

This was the time to strike, that he saved energy from.

Some of the most powerful practitioners and families in the world were strict with Raymond as they were because information was power, and Raymond had made it a project to disseminate and share information.  Taking the power of practice from textbooks and paper to the digital space.  The moment he suggested a stance, or looked as though he might withhold that kind of power from certain groups while supporting others, the balance was shattered.  He could play kingmaker if he chose.

It didn’t matter that Raymond had little interest in such.  It mattered that he could.

Alexander would destroy the man, by suggesting impropriety to the right ears.

There was only a heavy silence on the other end.  No buzz or static in the line, no disruptions in the signal.  Nothing.  As if the phone was off.

“Alexander Belanger,” he announced himself.

The weight of the silence on the other end was heavier, somehow.  Like there was an implicit ‘we know’.

“Raymond Sunshine defied established order and precedent when he didn’t hand the school back to me.  I have a claim.  It’s concern-”

The line clicked again.  He looked at the phone.

He had the sense that if he’d upset them, he’d already know it.

Maybe it was too trivial for their tastes.  They would discuss it internally, hand it to certain people lower in the internal structure, and it would make Raymond Sunshine’s week far worse.

Ray had to know what he was doing.

The bell that hung from Alexander’s rear-view mirror dinged.

He had to reach up to touch it and silence it.

The heavy, cricket-less, wind-less silence pressed on, outside.

Only a few enemies remained unaccounted for.  A few out in these woods, like Lucy Ellingson, who was going for a walk, now severed from critical connections.  They wouldn’t renew.

If only he was in his office.  He’d have a better view than he had out his car window.

He climbed out, still smoking, and slammed the door behind him.

That chime hadn’t felt like a chime that fit the Kennet trio.  Too sharp, and too heavy.

One enemy remained unaccounted for, and he didn’t have a good photo of the man.

The world was see-through, if he wanted it to be.

The trees provided little cover.

Ted Havens ducked under a branch, rounded a copse of trees, and emerged from foliage.  He was unscathed, unlike so many others.

“Saw me coming?” Ted asked.  “That’s not usual.”

“We’ve met many times before, I’m sure.”

“Less than you’d think.  You, like Lawrence’s colleague Durocher, you kept out of the way.  As if you saw me coming and slipped away before I could do more than glimpse you.”

“What are your intentions?” Alexander asked.

“I don’t know.  But this feels like the most important place to be.”

“I’m touched.  To help me or to stop me?”

“I don’t know yet.  Why does it feel like you’re similar to me?”

“Because you have experience.  You can look to the past, and there’s more to your past than in many family lines, start to present.”

“Ah.  People are usually more shy about outright telling me these things.”

“There are loopholes.  Lawrence went to great lengths, behind the scenes, to keep all of you innocent.  He made it hard for details to stick in your mind.  You in particular might find that frustrating.”

“Deciding what memories and experiences to hold onto when a brain can only store so much was… it was difficult.  You’re right, I hate the idea of that being tampered with.”

“You do know that Bristow latching onto your idea about saving the world in the future, that was only bitterness, an effort to get people to care about his passing.”

“Yes.  But I think he would have come to believe in it with the right guidance.”

“You would have found it hard to guide while directly under his boot-heel, I think.  I’ll tell you now, I can’t do what he did and keep you innocent.  Not as easily.  I don’t think I’m your vision of a saved future.”

“I came to see.  Your eyes are too cold.”

Alexander pulled on his cigarette, then exhaled.  “The world is full of monsters, Mr. Havens.”

“I know, believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you know of some.  I just don’t think you know the extent of it.  You don’t want to, because then you might falter.”

“Some of these monsters, despite deals and arrangements, rules set down from on high, they prey on people.  They steal children and butcher people who stray too far from civilization.  And they do it, they can do it, because of certain loopholes.  Dead men tell few tales, and the tales they do tell don’t reach the people that matter.  Leave no witnesses and the deed will be forgotten.  Some of them are very good at this.  The ones that aren’t have been pruned away.”

“This is your loophole, Alexander?  You intend to try and kill me?”

“Remove, not kill.  I made deal earlier.”

“About a place outside of your reckoning.  By your own admission, you weren’t able to get a bead on Mrs. Durocher.”

“No.  Something about her always unnerved me.”

“Sisyphus,” Alexander said, pulling out his phone.  “I have another rock for you to push uphill.  Smaller, but complex.”

“What are you doing?”

“She caged one, Mr. Havens.  She toys with it, uses it.  And I…” Alexander touched a button.  “Am prepared to release it.  I have other countermeasures and plans.  You can try to fight me and stop me.  I don’t think it will go the way you wish.”

“I don’t believe it could be that easy to free a thing like that.”

“It isn’t.  It’s expensive.  But I see it as an investment.  By threatening this, I can give a dangerous man like you pause.”

“And I can, I think, rock you to your core, by telling you that if powers that be go looking for a way to stop or slow this thing, they might do what has worked before.  With someone who has achieved it before.  Ted Havens, the sequel.”

Faint emotion touched Ted’s face, as much as he tried to hide it.  Alexander could See through that too.

“It might take a nudge to get them to look at you, but it might not.  The powers that be over there are different from the ones here.  Just like how the people who condemned you in the Maritimes aren’t the same ones that hold sway here.  With my finger hovering over this message, ready to send a text, you stand on a precipice.  Will you risk doing it again?  Or condemning someone else to it?”

Something slight in Ted changed.

How many thousands or tens of thousands of years had he lived?  If all those years were placed in a chart, then the time he’d been free was slight, an imperceptible sliver or change.  That made for a lot of weight behind Ted, and little ahead of him. It was why Bristow found him so easy to snare.

“You believe me,” Alexander said.

Ted didn’t deny it.  “What are the options?”

“The first option is that you tell me everything I want to know, then die by your own hand.  The second option is that you Awaken fully to this world and swear undying fealty to me in the process.”

“You’d have me be a servant?”

“Right hand man.  Or die, if you think your character couldn’t withstand fealty.  I’ll take what Lawrence had, keep the items and people that are valuable and cooperative, and let the rest go free.  Unless you think you can get to me before my thumb can hit the button.”

Thirty paces separated them.  Trees obscured the view some, though Alexander’s Sight helped with that.

“What if giving someone like you, that is willing to do that, any information, power, or help is too much of a price?  What if I’d go back to that life?”

“Or risk someone else doing the same?” Alexander asked.  “Some poor man, woman, or child, who might get flung into similar predicaments?  To lose their mind and regain it again, to put their original self so far behind them that they can’t even imagine what that person might have been like?”

“Yeah,” Ted said, and the words were heavy.  He didn’t stand as tall as he had.  “I’d risk it.”

“Even if I sweetened the deal?  I have your diaries, Ted.  Retrieved from oblivion.  A glimpse of the man you once were.  Meaning given to the journey, rather than the end.”

“I do.  I can’t lie to you, Ted.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ted lied, but he diminished a fraction more.

“Then that brings us to option three,” Alexander replied.  He closed his eyes and opened them again, and they were gold.  “We fight.  I press the button early on in that fight.  Then you’ll try to beat me, get me to take it back or take measures.  Except it doesn’t work.”

“Because I won’t lose the fight, Ted.  I’ve been anticipating having to deal with you since before you arrived.  Hindsight may be twenty-twenty, but it’s the people who look forward who win.”

Alexander’s eyes, gold, started to flake and peel.  They revealed a burnished red.

With each fallen flake and revealed bit of red, his vision took on a red tint.  He could see the entirety of Ted Havens, inside and out.

With his free hand, he drew his wand, and he tapped his pocket, before tapping his eye.

White text began to flow into the backdrop of blood red and dark shadow, and the expanding image of Ted Havens, analyzed in full, in motion, in stillness, in emotion.

A little bit of fate, a little bit of strife.

Invisible to Ted’s eyes, they began to gather between.

Moments of hesitation, of doubt, of recollection, of dismay.  Frustration at Bristow, even.

Little landmines that would slow the man down and create openings.

This wasn’t going to be a drawn out fight.  It was one pass.  One exchange.  Lesser ‘landmines’ would pave the way for the big one.  Which would be when Alexander struck.

He had many forms of awareness, many Sights, many tools.  He fixed them on defeating a man who had seen tens or hundreds of thousands of years on this Earth.

That left one last measure, to secure this fight before it started.

He jerked, and for a moment, saw only stars, heard only raucous noise.  His eyes rolled up and his head turned skyward.

“What are you-” Ted started.

The man wasn’t at his best.  Having just lost Bristow, faced with what might be his worst fear, he was prepared to throw it all away, and that kind of preparation could give a man an edge.

Here, it only added to bewilderment.  The incomprehension.

“You’re-” Ted started, stopping.

Alexander’s head dropped, and he knelt.  Ted remained where he was.  No, Ted took a step backward.

He trudged through grass and fallen branches.  Toward Ted.

Worn out Ted.  Spent, defeated Ted.

“What now?” Ted asked.

“Go home,” John Stiles told him.

“I don’t think I can.  Or should.  If people want to get me under their thumb like this, it might be better if I disappear.”

“Then travel.  I used to go from ghost town to ghost town with- you can think of her as my daughter.  And my friend.  It was nice.  You don’t have to choose ghost towns.”

“Consider yourself free.”

“I don’t like freedom,” Ted answered.  “So much bigger than the life I used to live.”

“I knew men like that.  I fought men like that.  It’s hard to leave it all behind.”

“What about him?”  Ted gestured.

John didn’t turn to look.  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention my part in this.”

“According to him, you saved my life.  He was going to beat me and then kill or enslave me.”

“Yeah.  I won’t say anything.  I could help with the body, and the crime scene.”

“Go, Ted.  While you still can.”

“It’s a warning.  About them.  Everyone who would chase you.”

Ted remained where he was.  He took a deep breath, staring, then sighed.

John remained where he was, watching Ted, until Ted finally looked away.  His head turned away first, then his body followed, as if the scene had a hold on him.

John didn’t move until the man was gone.  He wiped his gun down with a cloth, then holstered it, wet the cloth with his water bottle, and then wiped his hands.

“Which one of you is out there?” he asked the woods.

Branches and leaves rustled.

“His head-” Lucy said.  “It’s gone.  Cracked open.”

She sounded so much like a kid.

John walked, long, quick steps, until he stood between her and the body.  He put a hand out to steady her, to keep her from pulling away or moving to a point where she could keep looking.

“You didn’t need to come.”

“Didn’t I?  Toadswallow – he asked me.  He asked me if I knew what summoning you to the BHI meant.”

“He asked and I nodded because I knew it might be a thing.  And Avery nodded but I don’t think she got it.  And Gashwad said it would be violence but… you said, back when we negotiated with Alexander the first time, to free Avery…”

“Lucy,” he said, firm.

“You said you’d need to shoot Alexander.  Before the deadline came up.”

“Yes.  But that’s my duty, as a part of this.  I was always going to do it.  He was always going to come after you.  You summoning me did nothing to make this happen, it only let me act to stop him before he could retaliate against you in any meaningful way.  And it let me protect you in the meantime.”

“I don’t really believe you,” she whispered to him.  She was shaking a bit.  “Sorry.”

“And I can’t believe you, that I have so little responsibility, bringing you here when I knew deep down that this was possible.”

“I know.  I really do.  I-” she broke off.  Her voice, already shaky, became a tremulous whisper.  “John, I think he’s still alive.”

John pushed Lucy behind him as he turned, drawing his gun.

He stared for long moments, at a man with a head that had cracked like an egg.  Large caliber bullet.

He’d waited, used extra senses, about war and conflict, to determine the moment Alexander might be most distracted, or have the most senses turned away.  Then he’d fired.

“His awareness.  He set powers into motion and extra forms of sight and analysis.  Observation.  It’ll keep going until the power runs out, even though the man is deceased.”

“Oh,” Lucy’s answer was a shake breath with a word sort of in it.

“You should go, Lucy.  Go, distract yourself, get the mental image out of your head.  Put the entirety of yourself into music you never want to listen to again, and try to crowd out the visual.”

“I should stay,” she said.  “They’re probably going to find this place eventually, if they go looking.”

“But they have augurs.  Alex-” she stopped, staring like she could see through John to the body.

“Alexander taught us that if you use augury a lot, it gets harder to get a signal the more times you try.  If I get some stuff off of him and from his car, I can create a lot of noise.  Hide that you were here.”

“Not your responsibility.”

“It protects Kennet,” she said.  She was still shaky, but she stepped back so she could meet John’s eyes.  “That’s my responsibility.”

“I wouldn’t have shot him if I’d known you’d end up here.”

“Don’t look any more.  Sit with your back to a tree.  You can do a lot of what you need to while there.  I’ll bring you whatever looks useful.”

“Verona would want to keep it, but we shouldn’t.”

He reached into his bag and he got a cassette player.

The music began playing.  A light, sad rock ballad.  Lucy sat, and John remained where he was, watching her, until her head started bobbing.

“You need me?” Musette asked.  The ghoul, called by the cassette player.

“Cleanup.  If you’re up for it.  I know it’s not your usual meal.”

“I was talking to her,” Musette said, pulling off her leather jacket.  She tossed it to the ground beside Lucy.

“I’ll get to him after,” Musette said, sitting on the jacket.  “Heya.  Want company?”

“Am I next on your list?  Slated to die?”

“Nah,” Musette said, settling in.  “Not as far as I can tell.  But this is familiar ground for me.”

“Talk to me,” Musette said, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Lucy.

“I was thinking about him being my familiar.”

John remained standing where he was.  He wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear this, but…

“…Not so much anymore.”

The air filled momentarily with the smell of acid and ink.

He nodded, turned, and got started with cleanup, fishing in pockets for car keys, apparently content to miss the remainder of the conversation.

Musette finished her talk with Lucy, and sat for another fifteen minutes before rising.

She cracked her jaw, then set to work.

The last practices that gave any awareness of the scene to the body ceased to function, and all went dark.