Pale: 9.5 - Verona

Shaking Hands – 9.5 | Pale
Flying was pretty awesome, even if Verona itched try doing the shadow-split thing Lucy had done.  Probably a bad idea when airborne.  They swooped in to land by Matthew and Edith’s house and Avery did a little maneuver that circled around Verona.  The maneuver only finished as they touched ground, and the glamour came away.  Avery’s sideways momentum carried her into Verona, and they nearly fell.  Verona laughed despite the tension of the patrol and the new threat, fresh off the road.

“I love birds, they’re so cool and nice,” Snowdrop said.  “Love flying.”

“Our girl’s getting more opinionated,” Avery said.

“You’re right, I’m way more opinionated than I was when we met on the Forest Ribbon Trail.”

“You’re more opinionated than you were for a lot of the Blue Heron stuff.  We should talk to the Others?  Get that help?”

Verona looked at Lucy.  The good mood and smile that had come with the laughing fell from her face.  Flying was awesome, yes, but the look on Lucy’s face was most decidedly not.

“Lucy, what are you-”

“We shouldn’t listen in, that’s a betrayal of trust,” Avery said.

“So’s this,” Lucy said.  She shook her head and took a step forward.  “Let’s go and-”

“You’re not invited.”

They stopped, and followed the sound to look up.

On the top of the streetlight was a woman, hair white, back ramrod straight, head, neck, and arms the only skin that was visible with everything else she was wearing, her skin with all the colors of a sunset at the edge of becoming evening.

She wore a black dress that was layered in panels, more at the lower body than the upper, each panel decorated at the edges.   More decoration was mounted at her back with crescent blades and a birdcage, scrolls were pinned to her sleeves so they hung down with the fabric, and an assortment of items were dangling from her belts, all like they were supposed to be there.   One of her hands rested atop an asymmetrical walking stick coated in so much black lacquer that the wood only remained in the shape of the branch it had once been.  It had been a nasty branch too, straight, with bits sticking out all down its length, almost like wide thorns.

Her other hand held a mask at her lower face.  The face of a demon, narrow, eyes narrower, cheekbones like razor blades, all framed by the white hair that she didn’t tie into any visible ponytail, so fine, light, and uncombed it was like a halo around her head, extending down her shoulders.  The bone-white mask of a serene human grandmother’s face was held up, covering the lower half of that face.  The light that shone from the streetlight below her feet had the same effect as that thing where people would shine flashlights at their face to highlight the shadows.

Crooked Rook.  Their new resident Oni.

“We were sent,” Lucy said.

“Why?” Rook asked, not moving the mask away from where it blocked her mouth.

Lucy answered, “Patrol stuff, we’re supposed to tell Matthew and Edith-”

Rook moved, and it was a lunging movement that tricked the eyes, the angle of stick and panels of the dress all suggesting an imminent movement one way.  In the middle of that ‘imminent’ she leaped the opposite direction, away from the streetlight and into surrounding darkness.  Verona’s eyes tried to find her in the moment after and they couldn’t.

“What was that thing, Lucy?  The-”

Lucy held a finger to her lips, then dropped her hand.  “She didn’t say she was going inside- no, there she is.  I hear her.  She’s talking to Matthew and Edith, I think.”

“What did you hear?” Verona asked.

“I’ll tell you soon, be careful for now.”

The door opened.  Matthew held it open and ushered them inside.

The arrangement of locals was looser than it had been for their meeting with them.  Less goblins, this time around, and no John either.

“John sent us,” Lucy said.  “A New Other came from the tunnel under the highway to the government buildings and stuff downtown, the trail abruptly disappeared.  I think they may be hiding within the police station, and John agrees enough he sent us to bring help.”

“The police station?” Edith asked.

“Mostly non-locals, maybe all non-locals,” Lucy said.  “Ever since the switch to the province’s police about two years ago.  And they just brought in more in response to trouble, which is pretty good cover for any Others who show up looking like police.”

“And if the situation escalates and crime rates rise, they could bring in more,” Matthew said.

Verona nodded her agreement.

“Ken?” Edith asked.  “Gut feeling?”

“About that?” Ken asked.  “Nothing’s saying no.  I’m not feeling this new Other, but there’s a hollow feeling, like… I just ate and I’m hungry.”

“Something feeding on Kennet?”

“Or something, maybe.”

“You need to tell us about these feelings, Ken,” Edith said.

“I’m not the kind of guy who complains about every ache, pain, and strange sensation.  Trust me, if I did, you’d never hear the end of it.”

“It sounds like something to look into,” Matthew said, looking annoyed.  “This is good.”

“John suggested we bring Montague and Jabber,” Avery said.

Jabber lifted his head.  “Bista?”

“I won’t argue with John,” Matthew said.  “Jabber needs a handler.  If-”

“Biscuit,” Bluntmunch said.  “She’s training to manage a Barney, she should steer a Jabber.”

“Yes!” Biscuit cheered, voice small.  She climbed up Jabber to perch on his head.  Jabber rocked his head from side to side, and it was unclear if he was reacting to the stimulus, bouncing his head to a song only he could hear, or trying to shake her off.

“She’ll need help,” Bluntmunch said.  He looked over the goblins who’d attended the meeting.

“Can-” Verona started.  “I’m interested in the gremlin stuff.  Isn’t Bangnut a gremlin?  Different group, I know, but I figured there might be door locks or camera systems…”

“Take him,” Toadswallow said.

Bangnut was just a bit bigger than Biscuit and not equipped to climb in the same way.  His upper body was skinny and his lower body was heavy and made triply heavy by little overalls that were stuffed with rusty tools and bits of metal.  Bristling even, to the point that Verona had to wonder about the state of his junk, amid all that junk.  He carried a hammer in two hands and when he found he couldn’t climb up Jabber with one hand and two feet he used the hammer, hooked it on the shoulder of the little alchemical creation, and used that for leverage.

“Do you need more?” Matthew asked.

“John only asked for them.  There’s no guarantee I’m right,” Lucy said, frowning.  “But it feels worth looking into.  I think this is fine for most purposes?”

“Maybe if we don’t report back in thirty minutes, assume we’re in the middle of trouble and send help?” Avery asked.

“Alright,” Matthew said.  “Montague prefers the radio.  I suggest handing him off so one of you isn’t holding him for too long.”

“He’s sworn to do you no harm, but if you hold him too long it could be argued it’s his nature doing you harm, not him,” Charles growled.

Montague occupied the radio.  It spat and sputtered, antennae twitching.  Something like a spider’s leg coated in gore instead of hard shell twitched and pawed blindly at the top of the television set it was sitting on.  The point was sharp enough it left a line scratched into the plastic.

“Hey Montague,” Verona said, when the others didn’t leap to the occasion.  She reached out, pulling back when that spidery leg reached up.  She extended her hand and gently took the limb, shaking it like she would a hand.  “You okay being carried?”

The radio sputtered, and there was a string of words, overlapping, maybe playing backwards, but they didn’t sound angry.  They resembled the babble of conversation or a news broadcast.

She rested a hand on the casing, and it felt like when she’d touched something with a static charge.  As if something bit or reacted.  It didn’t stop, either, and forced a kind of reaction where she had to hold on too tight or dropped him.

“Come on, Jab, come on goblins,” Avery said.  “Can we get a shortcut, Ken?”

“Yes.  I’ll arrange it.”

That meant they weren’t flying, but not flying was probably a good thing.  Avery had wrapped one bird form around herself and Snowdrop and that had worked, but Verona worried what would happen if she wrapped a glamour around herself and Montague and that seizing feeling took hold of the entire glamour.

“Good luck,” Matthew said.  “You have my phone number.”

Lucy nodded, mute.  The group of them headed out the front door.

“Follow the yellow line!” Ken called out after them.

They stepped out onto the road.  Verona found herself looking up to see if Rook had somehow moved to the streetlight, but she hadn’t.

Sure enough, a yellow line was struck through the road, faded as if it had been painted long ago and worn down by weather and tire treads.  It was the kind of thing that could have been there all along, just never seen in the right light or noticed by non-drivers like them.

It led east, not north, but they followed it.  Jabber clunked and clomped with every step, the goblins chattered, with Biscuit at the top of his head, leaning forward and pointing this way or that.  Bangnut sat on his shoulder and gripped one of the metal braces that kept the white mask clamped against his face, thrusting it this way and that to force Jabber’s head to turn, which made him veer in one direction or another.  Helping steer.

He was not fast and Avery and Lucy put hands under his armpit, lifting him.  He seemed heavier than the small frame would suggest, but them carrying him was faster than not.

The yellow line led to a path between two fenced in yards that Verona was pretty sure hadn’t been there before.  The trees of each yard crowded in overhead and bins of garbage or compost were reeking from the warmth of summer.  It was sensory assault and maybe that assault made it easier for them to slip between locations.  When they escaped the overhanging branches, the taller buildings and signs of the west end of town were around them.

They’d traveled east and turned north and ended up at the far west of Kennet.  The line continued.

“Hand Monty over,” Lucy said.

Verona looked down and jumped a bit.  Monty’s spidery limbs had extended up her hand and partially up her forearm, branching and turning flexible.  She hadn’t noticed.

He withdrew from her as she let go, and there were more points of contact she hadn’t realized, as finer bits had pressed their way under her fingernails, and at the underside of her arm there were veins of Monty’s that were mapping over the veins of her underarm, almost to the armpit.

They slurped up into the radio housing, and her entire arm prickled with pins and needles as she fully released him.

Helping to carry Jabber instead was a relief of sorts.  He had a cute face, and a kid-like nature overall.  He also weighed enough that she kind of needed two hands to carry him, but using both hands made it hard to make forward progress.

They managed, though, and they jogged past a woman who stood at the corner of her backyard, arms limp at her side, head lolling backward, grin stretched so wide it looked like she’d hurt herself.

“Renda hebag!” Jabber called out.

She twitched, convulsing, and coughed out a laugh.

Verona kept watching the woman as long as she could, looking back over her shoulder and trusting Lucy and Avery to watch their path forward.

Another odd side path, between two buildings.  A man lay awkwardly on his front steps, beer spilled, while his friend or brother sat beside him.  Both were smiling that same grin as before, eyes vacant.  The one who was sitting upright was drooling badly, or leaking the beer he hadn’t managed to swallow before the effect had swept over him.

“Netizi qualibag!” Jabber called out, and he clapped, which made carrying him about ten times harder.

“Stop that,” Avery said.

Off to their right, the men on the stairs awkwardly joined in with the clapping.  The one who sat upright dropped his can of beer as part of it.

The little goblins cheered.

There was no light for an entire length of the side path.  They’d traveled about three blocks this way, one east, one northeast…

Old fashioned, decorated buildings of the downtown core most tourists would drive through just a little bit away.  Many of the buildings here were boring, brick cubes with dark windows and a row of houses that included a house retrofitted to be a dentist’s office.

And the police station, a blending of the two, with an exterior that had probably been remodeled at some point, because the gray outside that could have been concrete blocks didn’t fit the fancy, copper roof that had turned green a long time ago.  The windows had vertical grilles protecting them, that jarred a bit with the horizontal blinds.

There were cameras mounted on the outside, looking down at the relatively small parking lot – maybe twelve cars, and the street in front of the building.

“How do we do this?  We go inside and see if anything seems off?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know,” Avery said.  “Pretty ominous.”

“Should we have Bangnut take care of the cameras?” Verona suggested.

“Monty can,” John said, as he stepped out of the shadows.

The other goblins followed John.  The little one-eyed guy, Fishmittens, Doglick, and Kittycough.  The little guy came to Verona, and the other two immediately went over to where Jabber was.

Verona lifted the little guy to her shoulder.

The radio jerked, and then there was a wet sound as the radio leaked, the contents becoming more liquid.  Lucy moved her shoes away from the splash, holding it out more.

The liquid pool congealed, gathering up some chunky matter that hadn’t been part of that miniature waterfall.  More spider legs and vague groping limbs reached out to help it pull itself along the edge of the road, through the periodic trash, pollen, and stray leaves that had collected there.  It was shadowy so the full extent of what he looked like and how he moved wasn’t clear.

“How does he work?” Verona asked.

“He can occupy things, but he works best when he can take over systems.”

“Biological, circuits, diagrams,” John said.

The chain link fence shook as Monty crawled across it.  Apparently he trusted the cameras weren’t high fidelity enough to see the thick, chunky ooze crawling along the wire.

It reached the wall, flowed up along the cracks between the broad gray bricks, and reached the camera overlooking the parking lot.  Spider legs reached out, up and penetrated it.  Wires running from the camera up to one of the windows bulged and took on that weird Monty texture.

“Let’s go take a look inside,” John said.  “Be good, Biscuit, Bangnut.”

Bangnut held his hammer up near the metal head, and gave a single bang of hammer to pants, producing a metal clacking.

The Monty security camera followed their movements, the lens replaced with a crimson eye that drooled blood from the gaps where it didn’t quite fit into the rectangular aperture.  A jagged, vein-draped leg raised and waved.

“He should get the rest of the cameras and all footage,” John said.

The side door had an electronic lock, but no obvious keyhole or card slot.  Verona reached down for Bangnut and lifted him up.

“Gremlin, huh?” Lucy asked.

“Goblin subcategory,” Verona explained.  “Technology focused.  Used to be rare but they thrive more in the modern day.  They can get deeper into cities.”

Bangnut appeared to be mute, so he didn’t volunteer anything.

“First started cropping up when humanity took to the air with airplanes.  ‘There’s a monster on the wing!’ and conspiracies about why planes were running into problems in the second world war.  Maybe goblins took it as a challenge and stepped up to make it happen.”

“No traps, no wasting time doing more than we need,” John told Bangnut.  The goblin had reached his skinny arm between the electronic lock and the wall and fished out a wire.  He touched a wire from the mess he’d stuffed into his overalls against it in a pattern, experimenting.  He looked up at John, scowled, and then changed the pattern to something simpler.

The door popped open with an audible clank.

“We can’t have fun later, either,” Snowdrop told Bangnut, picking him up and moving him back to Jabber’s shoulder.

They stepped inside.  The lobby on the side of the building was more for the cops than for the civilians.  A broad up-stairwell led to the left and turned right, stairs disappearing around a corner, while another stairwell went down.  Vending machines and some business-ish notice boards were on either side of the passage that led to glass doors, and the brighter interior of the police station.

“Watch the door, Doglick,” John said.  “Let us know if anyone suspicious comes to our rear and doesn’t stop for Jabber.”

Jabber, meanwhile, used the fact that John was distracted by goblins, ran forward a few steps and crashed into an indoor trash can, bowling it over.  It made a ridiculous amount of noise.

Then it rolled a few feet and hit the stairs, and made about five times the amount.

“Bahhhhhh aaauuuggggh!  Ahahajabba!”

“This is meant to be a covert operation,” Lucy told him.

“It was Biscuit!” Bangnut cried out.  “Biscuit’s fault!”

“I think we’ve lost the element of surprise, anyway,” Verona said.  “With Jabber even before that.”

There was a pause as they sorted themselves out.

“Bangnut,” Biscuit whispered, pointing an accusatory finger.  “Was Bangnut.”

“What’s this noise!?” a man shouted.

The goblin on Verona’s shoulder ducked behind her hair.  Others didn’t try so hard to hide.

He came from upstairs.  He wore a crisp black shirt with the ornamentation of an officer at the shoulders and breast, ‘O.P.P’ printed on the front pocket.  He had a badge at his waist and mustache and hair both with shocks of grey all throughout it.

He looked them over, smiled, and then chuckled.  The smile grew wider, exposing teeth that had probably had too much coffee, until his face strained.  He laughed, but it wasn’t a normal laugh.  The ‘ee’ of any ‘hee hee’ were strangled squeaks, the ‘ah’ of any ‘ha’ like coughs, the deeper sounds guttural and choking.

The little goblin on Verona’s shoulder peeked his head out.

“Ah jabba!” Jabber thrust his arms in the air.

The man laughed harder, one hand gripping the railing as he leaned into it, eyes unfocusing more.

Jabber laughed in the same hollow way he spoke, and the officer laughed harder, doubling over.

Avery rushed forward, supporting the man and pushing him back until he sat on stairs, so he wouldn’t tumble face-forward down them.

“Come,” John said, ushering them away.  “We need to look to see if these Others are around.  Eyes open.”

Jabber was less shrouded than most things, a silhouette shorter than her with an oversized head, barely any gauze or wrapping for the bulging, dark mass that had been crammed within.  It coughed, barked, and scraped against the housing and sprayed fluids like mist all around them, painting the area.

And Jabber’s face remained clearly visible even in this form.  Two hollow eyes, a hollow nose and a over-wide mouth with occasional and irregular teeth.

The officer was drenched in the fluids.  More painted the walls and floor.

“Others are immune to Jabber.  So look for anything like that.”

“Watch my back,” Verona murmured, to the little goblin.  He reversed his seat, sitting so he faced everything behind her.  She added, “Good,” and he nodded his response.

John pushed the glass door open.  Jabber nonetheless banged into it on his stumbling way through, goblins following.

Avery followed Verona in, leaving the officer behind.

She turned off her Sight to see past the mess Jabber was making.

Drop-ceilings with lights above fogged panels, adjustable tables, computer chairs, and lots of paperwork across the space.  Less computers than Verona had expected, but this was Kennet.

And the people.  Which might include the Others.  Roughly sixteen officers smiled in strained ways and turned their heads to track Jabber.  Five youths aged eleven to seventeen sat on a bench by the door, smiling and disconnected from reality.  Another three people who might have been staff or might have been witnesses or criminals were scattered around the room.

Two more people in civilian clothes lay crumpled on the floor, giggling in that squeaky, strained away.

A computer clunked and Verona turned her head.  Montague was inside it and the monitor.  Another computer two desks over jarred as if someone had hit it, and Montague made his appearance there too.  Two computers of the same network.

The air felt dense and hot in here, like a breeze really needed to blow in through those open windows.  It was night, so it wasn’t that hot outside, and maybe that was why they’d turned off the air conditioner, but it felt like the heat of the day had stuck to the walls and was slowly radiating in now.

“This is weird,” Avery said, quiet.

“Be on your guard.  If they make a move it may be fast,” John said.

“We have reason to believe you’re in here!” Lucy called out.  “I’m not going to act like the fact we’re here is any secret!  Can we talk?”

The only noise were the chorus of choking, strained noises from the people Jabber had affected, against a background of humming fluorescent lights, computer fans, and maybe general air circulation without the air conditioning as part of it.

“I can’t get hurt too bad as part of this,” Lucy whispered.

“My mom has something really cool and important tomorrow.  I can’t get hurt in any way that messes that up for her.”

“You can leave, Lucy.  Matthew made that clear at the last meeting you attended.”

“Properly attended but yeah,” Verona said.  “We won’t blame you if you want to do something else.  We can handle this.”

“You’re supposed to come over for a sleepover so I don’t want you to get hurt either.”

“So demanding,” Verona joked.

Lucy’s expression was dead serious.

“Yeah,” Verona said, more serious now.

“You can go, Lucy,” Avery said.

“It wouldn’t feel right.  If they’re pretending to be cops or doing something to or with the cops then that’s a lot of power they have over people in Kennet.  I don’t like that.”

Computer monitors were flickering, showing employee profiles, each up for only a moment before distortion with an awful lot of red in it wiped the screen clear.

The screens went all black.

“Nothing in the profiles stands out, then,” John said.

“Annnabob famat!” Jabber cried out.

People across the room reacted, a little more enthusiastic in their ‘laughter’, if that squeaking, gasping, grunting, and gurgling could be called laughter.

The three of them fanned out, walking around tables and down aisles, keeping a distance from anyone who could lunge or… Verona had no idea.  Transform?  Spit fire?  They didn’t know what they were dealing with, or even if the Others were here, or here right now.

John hopped up onto a table and his weight made the adjustable table drop an inch.  He had his gun out and ready, but kept it pointed down at the base of the wall to their left.

Snowdrop trailed behind Avery, keeping roughly halfway between her and Jabber, who was standing a few feet past the glass door, the goblins pulling and pushing at him in efforts to get him to move.  Verona frowned, but Jabber seemed fine.  Just content to be part of this crowd with an audience, maybe.

She wondered what his brain was like.  How did he think?

Montague took over a desk and the desk jolted about a half-foot toward a woman standing in one aisle.  She didn’t react.

Avery had stopped and Verona stepped onto a chair without wheels to get a view of what she was looking at.

An officer stood by the bathroom, back against the wall, and was wetting his pants while continuing to make that choked laughter at nothing at all.  A puddle of urine spread beneath his shoes.

Avery looked over at Verona and looked very concerned.

Verona wasn’t sure how she felt.  More and more, she was getting the impression she was naturally packing away all the emotion to digest for later  Or so she could have a surprise blow-up where it all came out at once, depending.

“Quororum pessssst!” Jabber babbled his nonsense.

“Jabber,” Verona said.

“Jabba!”  His head turned to face her.

She stepped around to where not many could see, her back to a cubicle wall, and then silently ‘clapped’ her hands together three times, turning her head to look at the people around them.

The entire room picked up the cue, starting to clap as well, laughing harder, a woman on the ground arched her body, chin stretching up, like she could put more effort into the smile.

There.  One person who’d been a second too late to clap.  An officer with sandy blond hair, who looked barely out of high school.  She used her Sight and saw him- a silhouette wrapped in gauze like plastic film or cocoons, something meaty within… not really any different from a regular person.

With regular vision, she stared at him, searching.  Why had he been late?  Too far from Jabber?  No.

His eyes flicked left, just a bit.

“John!” she shouted, scrambling backward, pointing.  The little goblin on her shoulder almost lost his balance with the suddenness of the movement.

John pointed the gun, and the person ducked low, throwing themselves to the ground, behind the cover of filing cabinets.  It was a narrow avenue, a concrete wall to one side of them, the filing cabinets on the other, the course to the bathroom to his right, a course to the proper front of the station with the civilians to his left.

“Can you talk to us?” John called out.

“Who or what are you?” Verona called out.

“Why on earth would I tell you!?”

Lucy and Avery were watching.  Verona motioned to her eyes and pointed to others.

Keep an eye out for more.

John leaped from one table to the other, and it was on wheels, so it slid a bit beneath him.  He dropped to a crouch, straightened, and then walked onto a desk.  Drawing closer to those filing cabinets.  A matter of steps from standing on them and looking down at the Other.

Montague surged, flowing out of computers and power bars and taking over a desk, then the desk next to it, and then the next.

Closing in from another direction.  Blocking off the way to the bathroom.

Verona pulled spell cards from her pocket and blocked off the one remaining escape route.  She had chalk in her pocket too, and struck it across the floor in a straight line.  Just in case.

“If I were in your shoes, I think what I’d want to do right now would be to talk, delay us, buy time for your friends to act,” Verona said.

“Who said I have friends?”

“Tell us you don’t.”

Verona glanced at her shoulder, checking the little goblin was being vigilant, then checked for herself.  Nobody was maneuvering to come at her from behind or the sides.  At least, nobody visible to the naked eye.

She couldn’t get hurt either.  Injuries sucked, for one thing.  And she couldn’t play any part in ruining things for Jas.  Even if she bailed on the sleepover, if she was hurt enough her dad noticed and she couldn’t get a good connection block up in time… he might call Jasmine for advice, no matter the hour.  And Jasmine would care enough to help, probably, even if it cost her in the long run.

Jasmine was one of the coolest adults she knew.  Double no.

It would devastate Lucy.  Extra double no.

“It’d be really cool if we could talk,” Verona called out.  “I’m not sure what you’re expecting right now.  To stick around, fighting us for the next few weeks?  Isn’t it easier and safer for everyone to just… skip to the part where you either make a deal with us or you leave Kennet?”

She had a glimpse of him, and remained where she was, ready to mark and throw a spell card if she had to.  Further down that passage, Montague had reached the first of the filing cabinets.  They rocked and knocked, drawers popping open, fluids and flayed spider legs flowing out from within, flowing into and stabbing into the next filing cabinet, as he groped his way toward the Other.

John reached the filing cabinets and cocked the gun.

The officer with the sandy blond hair looked up.

His head lolled back, a rictus grin spreading across it.  Jabber laughed in the background as goblins chattered, and the laugh reached across the room.

The officer they’d pinned down was in sync with the rest.

“What the hell?” Verona asked.  “He’s not an Other anymore?”

“We knew they were subtle,” John said, turning, keeping one eye on the officer while scanning the room.

Verona approached, drawing closer, and was glad to see they didn’t carry guns inside the station.  She used her Sight, examining him.

He was bleeding through the gauze.  At the bridge of the nose, the wrist, and the hands.  At the chest, less pronounced.  It was crimson from the meaty thing within him that leaked out as if from a cut, spreading into the exterior.

“Is it a parasite?” she asked.  “I don’t think it’s good for the host, the way this… I dunno, spirit is bleeding?”

“Jabber!” John called out.  “We need more activity.  Change it up!”

Verona straightened, looking, still watching the one officer they’d pinned down.

Jabber laughed, and the room laughed with him.

Jabber clapped, and the room clapped alongside.

Jabber stomped, and legs jerked in clumsy responding stomps.  Two people fell.  Which didn’t make it easier to keep tabs on them.

“Are you sure?” Verona asked him, indicating the gun.

“If they’re parasites then anything I shot would hurt the host, and it wouldn’t do much to the Other.”

The racket Jabber was making and the crowd was making in automatic responses was filling the station.  The humming of computers and ventilation carried on.

Some of the cops had guns, Verona noted.

That was scary.  Had this guy escaped?  Turned immaterial, an echo with the ability to possess, maybe?  Could he leap into the body of any cop and turn a gun on them, if he felt desperate enough?

But why the bridge of the nose, why hands, why wrist?  It was a weird assortment.

“The guy who had the Other weirdness has something around the face, especially the nose,” Verona said, loud enough the other two could hear her.  “Hands, a lot around the hands.  And the wrist, something at the chest.”

“You need to be clearer!” Lucy called out.

“I don’t know what it is!  But the guy looked normal to my Sight while he was Other and now he’s bleeding in those spots and he’s apparently not an Other anymore so it looks like something tore free or something!”

“Malfaca, calfaca!” Jabber cheered, arms thrust over his head.

Lucy reacted, turning a bit toward the civilians on the bench.  Verona wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been talking to Lucy.

Lucy glanced at Verona.  Verona, in turn, snapped her fingers to get John’s attention, and pointed him at Lucy.

The woman who’d been on the floor arching her back lunged into action as John turned away.  Straight for Jabber.  Verona watched her with Sight and she could see something clinging to face, to hands, to wrist.  Like the red meaty things on the inside were bulging out through the wrapping.  Gradually slipping in.

“I will shoot!” John called out.

She didn’t stop, charging forward.

Off to the side, Avery broke into a run.

John pulled his gun and fired, but the woman didn’t seem to care.

It was Snowdrop, closer, who took a try at tackling the woman, going low.  She leaped over Snowdrop.

And Avery, black rope in hand, had ducked low to slide behind a cubicle off to Verona’s right, and emerged fifteen feet away, sliding into the woman’s feet as the woman landed.

The woman sprawled, only barely bumping into Jabber, as the goblins tried and failed to nudge him out of the way.

The entire feeling of the room changed as Jabber fell over.

No more strained laughing, no more choked giggles.

Moans and groans.  Some people picked themselves up, others sat down, all seemed out of it.  The officer who’d been standing in his own urine slipped and fell into the puddle.  Someone made distressed sounds.

Verona, not wanting to get too many questions, took a step to the side, sat on a computer chair, and slid so she was in a corner, able to peer through the door at the woman.

It looked like a pencil scribble, it was so thin.  Peeling away from face, from upper chest, from wrist- a flash of something reflective, and from hands-

Hands covered in a multitude of tiny pink scars.

Her hands became normal as those scars joined the scribble-like mass.  It moved like an insect, darting across the floor on legs made of scars, slipping into a gap between computer and cubicle.

Avery picked up Jabber and stayed low as she dragged him beneath a desk, hunkering down there.  She gave him a shake.

Verona leaned further into the corner as two officers found their feet and walked by, talking.

“Ughh.  I’m too tired for this.  What were we talking about?”

“Thursday’s schedule.  They’re doing an event at the Arena, we were going to shift things around.”

“Did you fall, Anna?”

“I’m fine.  Got lightheaded, I think.”

“It’s this stupid heat.  They should let us run the air conditioning longer.”

Biscuit reached into her hair and pulled out a cookie.  Avery saw something Verona didn’t, because she recoiled, and she flinched as Biscuit tossed it into Jabber’s gaping mouth.

“I think I’ve been clenching my jaw, my face hurts.”

The bathroom door slammed.

A veneer of normalcy, except that thing was still out there.

“Can I help you?” an officer asked John.

“Ottaborga!” Jabber exclaimed, making Verona wince.

The conversation died down noticeably.  There were some stifled laughs.

Then no conversation at all.  No footsteps, no rustling of papers.

Verona poked her head out, assessing the situation.

Lucy was on her feet, back to the wall.  One of the youths that had been on the bench faced her.

The meaty red stuff inside that youth resembled Edith’s.  Frankensteined together.  The oldest person who’d been on that bench, with badly cut blond hair and sunglasses pushed up to the hairline.

Verona could hear the parasite moving around the cubicle.  She put distance between herself and it.

Two different kinds of Other.  Avery climbed out from under the desk where she’d dragged Jabber, and stood guarding the entryway to that space.  Guarding the awkward clay doll.

Verona ducked low, watching as it navigated the power bars and wires beneath desks, weaving through cubicles.  It was easier to see with the sight.  There, it was red and gory, like a crimson growth that had been cut away.  Without the Sight it looked like a broad, flat bug with a wide metallic spine, the rest of it about as clear as a plastic bag got, while dragging a small deflated jellyfish.

It disappeared from view.

She listened more than she watched.

“Right!” Avery shouted.

Verona moved her arm before she looked.  A strike of chalk against floor to her right.

The parasite hit the air above the line like it had hit a glass wall.

She lunged forward while it was a bit stunned, to try to encircle it.  But it wasn’t stunned- only flipped over.  She could see the watch, a nice watch, the small pink and crimson scars, and the jellyfish, which looked more ghostly than anything, like it was supposed to represent something.

It reached for her hand that gripped the chalk, and she yanked it back.  It encircled her wrist- almost completely, before she pulled her hand across the chalk line.  The hand moved freely through the barrier, while the parasite stopped at the line once again.

This time it darted off right away.

There was a crash.  Verona turned her head.

There was smoke, as if Lucy had used a spell card.  And her back was against the cubicle wall that she’d been retreating toward, as she avoided the Other from the bench.

Backing right up into the clutches of the third.  A big cop who had her in a headlock.

John was charging in, and the cop noticed.  He didn’t want to abandon his hostage or release the headlock, so he dragged Lucy over the top of the cubicle, swinging her around to act as a shield against John.  Lucy fought and struggled where she could, but most of her focus was on alleviating the stress on her neck.

Which was where things stood now.  The big Other with his back to a short, fake wall, holding Lucy with her feet off the ground, arm around her neck, John facing him down.  The younger Other was off to the side, apparently blinded, sputtering.

Maybe the Nettlewisp residue, picked from her fox fur by Guilherme.

Verona checked, looking for the crawly thing.

“Why don’t you want to talk?” John asked.  “Ease up on her, let’s have a conversation.”

“Things like us don’t get fair negotiations.”

“What are you?” Verona asked.

“Officer McKay has a substance abuse problem, and there I am, a huge, ugly asshole who gives him a lot of product and buys him a lot of drinks for very little in return.  He starts finding he isn’t himself when he drinks.  Gets into fights, I’m there to back him up.  I give him three chances to go, to say no, to take the better path.  Three.  A little while after the third time, he gets in a car accident.  One version of him carries on into town, to pick up the job he was supposed to do, see his family, live his life.  Me.  Another version is so hurt in the crash they can’t even identify him.”

“A doppleganger?” John asked.

“I dunno.  I don’t pay attention to the labels or terms.  I just carry on.  He’ll eventually get better.  Partially.  And for every bit he gets better, I’ll get bigger and uglier until it’s time to move on, find my next ride.”

He still had a stranglehold on Lucy.  She reached up and pulled her fox mask down around her face, then wiped her hand on it, streaking trace amounts of glamour down her front.  Fur appeared where she touched skin.  She reached Verona’s way.

The Other noticed, and looked at Verona, while tightening his grip on Lucy’s neck.

Verona raised her hands and backed off a bit.

“Don’t give away too much, McKay,” the youth said.  He’d apparently cleaned up his face enough he could talk.

“Let her go.  Ease up,” John said.  “Come on, she’s just a kid.”

“She’s a kid I need a good grip on, in case you raise that gun and start shooting.”

“I don’t plan to.  Hurting Others like you can hurt the person they’re linked to, can’t it?”

“No idea,” McKay said.  “Sounds good.  I’m the rolling byproduct of a lot of bad decisions, a bullet as a solution would be too easy.”

There was a noise to Verona’s right.  She readied another chalk strike.  Except it was Biscuit, very interested in McKay now.

Another noise, a clunk and a rustle.  She backed up from it, but it was Bangnut, dragging a bag with two pairs of handcuffs and a thing of pepper spray inside it.

A third noise- by process of elimination, Verona threw herself back about twenty feet in the span of one second.  She had to catch the little goblin so he wouldn’t fall.

Holding him, she tried to track the sound and watched his head turned to do the same.

It was the Other, on top of a desk, navigating the office.

Verona made a mental note of its closest potential hosts.  Plus-size officer and old officer in one aisle, laughing without making much noise.  Then the woman who’d been the last host sitting on the floor near Verona.

She didn’t remember there being many lying on the floor over there or anything.  There was the one in the bathroom…

She motioned for the goblins to wait.  This was only two of them.  The others…

“Your goblins should stop right there,” McKay said.  “Or the kid gets hurt.”

Verona sidled to the right, placing her little goblin friend on the upper edge of the cubicle wall.  His head turned, tracking the sounds.

She let him do that, Avery watching her back and watching over Jabber at the same time, and put a slip of spell card against the wall of the cubicle.  She began to draw out a diagram.  Wind, direction, focus, targeting.  Directed, balanced as a diagram, but more like a sword was balanced than a spinning plate or top was.  It was a long diagram.

She got her glamour, kept in a bag, and tapped out a quantity.

She stopped moving as something rustled.

A small pile of glamour balanced on the card, which she held horizontally.

“Stinks,” Biscuit said.  A monosyllabic creature, it seemed.

“Who’s a goblin I can trust with this?” Verona murmured.  “I need someone to get close and not spill it.”

“Will it be cool?” Bangnut asked.

“Seriously,” Verona interrupted. “I call on your oaths to us, to protect and help.”

Her goblin on the cubicle wall and Bangnut both pointed to Biscuit, who pointed to herself.

She handed over the card.  “Be sneaky.  Get as close as you can, then blow.”

The parasite had stopped making as much noise.

“We’ve brought on some dangerous Others, you wouldn’t be alone,” John said.  “Look at Montague.  Look at Jabber.”

“The laughing doll doesn’t seem so dangerous, just real creepy,” McKay said.

“I’m going to go,” the youth said to McKay.

“Getting our new friend?”

“Stop giving away information, you oaf,” the youth said.

“I’m not stupid, I’m a maintenance alcoholic having a bad night, that’s all.”

“Stop giving them info.”

“Stay and talk,” John said.  “If you leave or escalate then there’s a good chance you don’t survive our next encounters.  It’s easier to stand down, or swear to leave Kennet and never return.”

“Be good, McKay,” the teenager said, “I’ve got to go before that red thing gets close enough that it can seal the doors shut.”

Montague was creeping along the walls and ceiling.  Verona hadn’t really noticed with her Sight up.

The youth opened the door, Montague reached over, surging in the direction of the door, and the youth slipped through the gap, running away before Montague could take over the construction.

One had escaped, one was cornered with a hostage, and one was lurking somewhere nearby.  She was assuming there were three.

She glanced at the little goblin, who looked up at her.

It had apparently lost track of their sneaky little parasite.

A scraping made Verona turn quickly, stepping to put the line between herself and the sound.  It wasn’t the parasite.  Bangnut was on top of the woman who’d tried to get Jabber, who was now fully under Jabber’s sway.  He’d handcuffed one hand and dragged the arm across her body, toward where her other arm lay.

Verona stepped over and nudged the hand.

That limited the parasite’s options.  Good.

She saw Biscuit edging along the inside of a cubicle wall, out of sight of Lucy and the man.

Lucy was managing, at least.  Not happy, held firm, but not choking to death either.  Both of her arms gripped his forearm, which was bigger around than Verona’s thigh.

“Hey, buddy!” McKay shouted across the room.  “Did you get yourself bound?  I’ve been waiting for you to flip the tables on these assholes again!”

There was no noise or answer from the parasite.

Biscuit blew.  The glamour billowed out.  And the breath activated the reversed ‘meet the sky’ rune, which followed the patterns and targeting that Verona had laid out.  It looked aimless at first, but then it narrowed down, flowing straight to Lucy.  Lucy put her hand out and the dust formed a pile there, despite the fact her hand was in more of a ‘stop’ position.

The man reached around, gripping her chin like he was ready to snap her neck, while she ran her hand across chin and face- slipping down.  He caught her.  She did it again, to her chest and body, and the glamour took hold.

A shadow fox form, slippery to touch, clambering up him and around his shoulders, ready to leap off-

He caught her, and he hurled her down to the floor.  The glamour shattered and Lucy made a pained noise.

John threw himself at McKay, charging him through the cubicle wall he’d dragged Lucy over earlier.

Avery was there in a flash, delivering a pretty brutal running kick to the side of McKay’s knee.

Verona turned to focus on the other threat.  One other had fled, one was wrestling with John and Avery, Lucy lying on the ground near them.  That left the parasite.  The woman was bound, only two others were reasonably close to Jabber, and Jabber was a weak point.

It would turn the tables to shake Jabber out of it.  This thing with McKay would quickly switch to a bunch of random civilians attacking a cop in a station.

But the other two men weren’t affected.

Verona took John’s cue from earlier and climbed up onto a desk to get a better view of surroundings.  Anyone lying on the ground?  Creeping along the aisle?  No?

The woman who’d tackled Jabber earlier pushed herself to her feet with cuffed hands, scrambling.  She made a beeline toward Jabber-

She didn’t need free hands to get him.  She just needed to hurt him.

Verona hopped down from the table, but it was awkward, the woman was already running, and even though the woman hobbled, turning toward Verona with her face half-slack, like she’d had a stroke- no chance she’d catch her.

She threw a spell card instead.

The flash illuminated the room, bright and blinding.  Right in the woman’s face.

And Avery was there, stepping out from a cubicle door, tackling the woman a few paces away from Jabber, black rope around her hand.

Jabber cheered, laughing, “Strobamonma!”

People across the room laughed.

“It got away,” Avery said.  “It’s like ghostly or something.”

“It’s a collection of traits,” Verona said.  “Scars all across the hands, a fancy watch, something wrong with the nose, something at the upper chest.”

“A tattoo,” Avery said.  “I saw.  It peeled away from her collarbone.”

“Looking at her cleavage, Ave?” Verona asked, standing on the spot, slowly turning.

“Don’t start.  Not now.”

“So it puts those things on someone and it pilots them, maybe.”

The little goblin leaped to Verona’s shoulder, pointing.

In Lucy’s general direction?

“Lucy!” Verona called out.  “Put on the watch!  Left wrist!”

Lucy hesitated, then pulled out the watch they’d taken from the Transient camp.  She slapped it onto her wrist.

“Why?” Lucy asked, before taking a few steps away from John’s ongoing brawl with the cop.

“The parasite needs to be worn!  I don’t know if it helps, so protect your other wrist.”

Avery darted to one side, leaped out of another cubicle, and slammed the Ugly Stick down at the ground.

“Almost!” Avery called out.

“Running from Lucy!  I think the watch trick works?”

“Good!” Verona called out, backing toward Jabber, trying to assess the situation.

“Take it, Avery!” Lucy called out, pulling off the watch.

“We need you moving!”  Lucy threw the watch.  Avery caught it, slipping it on.

Leaving Verona and Lucy vulnerable.  But she was okay with herself being vulnerable.  Lucy-

Lucy dropped to her knees.  Drawing at her feet in chalk.

“She’s protecting herself!” McKay called out.  “Get the one with black hair or a bystander!”

He shoved John over someone who’d slumped to the ground, and John tripped, falling.  He managed to drag McKay to the ground with him.

Lucy’s circle that distorted as she drew it, spokes appearing.  She abandoned it.  Feint done.  It would probably provide some protection.

“Keep drawing!” Verona called out.  She nearly tripped over Biscuit and Bangnut as she retreated.  Kittycough and Fishmittens had joined in with John’s fight against McKay, and John shouted something about not hurting him too badly.

That was their handicap here.  Bystanders and everything.

Lucy was breathing hard, using her left hand to rub at parts of her neck that would be easier to touch with her right.

Snowdrop pushed a computer chair out of the way as she tried to follow the movements of the parasite.  Avery took the high ground, while Snowdrop crouched.  Verona nudged goblins their way with a toe to get them to help.

The diagram had distorted.  Lucy paused, poised over it.

The circle had grown spokes on one half of it and the rest had degraded.  Lucy struck a diamond next to herself with lines of chalk, finished the spokes, and added more runes.  Fire and-

Verona had to stop watching to focus on the parasite’s movements.  Every time she looked at someone, she double-checked for a watch.  Scarring on the hands like they’d nicked themselves fifty times while making dinner.  The tattoo- nobody was showing that part of their chest, really.  Nobody had the tumorous growths trying to creep beneath the wrappings, in her Sight.

She tried to spot the red mass crawling across the floor and she couldn’t.

Smoke billowed out around Lucy, and it billowed toward McKay and John.

She stood straight, one hand at her other arm, supporting it, glaring, and her earring glistened.  Smoke rolled off of one side of her body, too.

Goblins sputtered and choked, backing away, but John stayed in the midst of it.  His eyes were visible in the rolling smoke even when little else was.

A sudden movement, a crash, one man shoving the other.

“Stop the smoke, Lucy.”

Lucy did, swiping a foot across the floor, streaking chalk.

The smoke lingered around her for a bit longer.

John had a bit of Alexander’s eyes, now, maybe.  He got something from everyone he killed.  Clear sight, even in conditions like that.  It made sense.

Montague had crept along the wall and taken hold of McKay, and McKay was pinned there, arms bound by spidery limbs.

Verona turned her attention to Avery and Snowdrop, who were pushing at a desk.  They pulled it away from the wall, and Avery sagged.

Verona walked over to look, careful and ready to jump aside if anything pounced at her.

A gap where the base of the wall met the floor.

“Slippery little bastard.”

“Something like that,” Avery said.  She looked over at McKay.  “Oh, we got him.”

Avery huffed out a breath, breathing hard, and nodded.  “One out of three?”

“Better than none out of three, and we have some idea what one of them is.”

“And they’re running scared,” Lucy said.

“Banged it, I don’t think I broke it.  Don’t tell my mom.”

“We need to sort this out, or they’ll know something went really wrong here.  Pick up the mess, clean up the chalk…”

“Ward the building, maybe,” Verona said.  “Or the doors, at least.  So that watch parasite doesn’t come back.”

“You know how to ward?” Avery asked.

“Only a bit.  I read some books when we were at the library.”

Lucy had relieved McKay of his gun- Verona hadn’t seen that part.  A smear of glamour to distort the shape.  He hadn’t known a firm knock against a hard surface could have shattered that.  John took the weapon, and then stood guard by McKay until Lucy could approach.  Verona and Avery cleaned up, putting furniture back and sorting out the bullet holes as best as they could with bits of glamour.

Alpeana appeared at the window, and Avery walked over to chat to her.  Verona kept cleaning, picking up spell cards.  She made a face as she saw the puddle of urine on the floor.

She looked back and saw Jabber, having a merry old time while goblins steered him in circles.  A roomful of vacant eyes and strained smiles.

She grabbed paper towels from the bathroom and dropped them on the puddle until they stopped absorbing anything, then laid a waste bin on its side and nudged the mass of paper towel inside.  She emptied a water bottle on the floor and repeated the same process.

“Alpy says the Kennet Others showed up outside,” Avery said.  “They think the parasite slipped away.”

“Damn,” Verona answered.

She nudged the wet paper towels into the bin.

Handcuffs off the woman, filing cabinet drawers closed, monitors re-angled.

Leaving only the captive Other.  Verona walked over as Lucy seemed to be ready to address him.  Lucy hadn’t done much cleaning, but Verona was happy to do the brunt of that when Lucy had been the most up close and personal with the Other.

And if Lucy felt some catharsis in doing this binding, Verona wasn’t about to push her out of the way and take over the task.

“Are you related to Hailey McKay?” Lucy asked.

Their classmate, one of the popular girls.

“She’s his niece,” McKay said.  “But no, technically I’m not related to anyone.  It’s a question of persons and individuals and Selves, you know.”

“I order you to be bound, then, my first declaration,” Lucy told him.  They were heavy words.  “I really wish you’d cooperated.”

“Others like us are the first to get thrown under the bus when we get inconvenient.  Body thieves, life thieves.  Practitioners don’t like that some of us can take over a practitioner and use some of their arts, and neither do a lot of Others, for that matter.  And those Others who set up places like this will discard us if it’s a question between protecting us and making nice with those practitioners.”

“You might be surprised,” John said.

“I might not, and that’s reason enough to stand my ground and fight to the last.”

“Then I name you bound again, second time,” Lucy said.  “Do you accede?”

“Fighting to the last,” the Other repeated himself..

Verona looked around.  The officers and citizens looked on, grins stretched too wide, almost pained.  Shuddering with periodic chuckles.  At their feet, Jabber did much the same, goblins on and around him.

“Intruder of this town, coward, you ran and hid because you knew you had no right to be here.  In the name of Kennet, as Kennet’s practitioner, for the third time, I order you bound.”

He made a face, then pulled experimentally at Montague’s grip.  No use.  His hand clenched.

Verona reached out to Avery’s arm.  “As three, for that third time, we order you bound.”

“We order you bound,” Avery said.

He slumped a bit, then nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Release the real McKay,” Lucy said.

“I can’t do it now.”

“Swear to do it, as soon as you’re able,” Verona said.

“Fine.  I swear it.”

“Tell us about the others,” Avery said.

“I think you’ll have to twist my arm using those words of yours.  Force me.  I think you’ll hate doing it, from all that yammering you were doing about cooperation and not wanting to fight.  You’re too nice,” he said, chin jutting forward.

“Obey John’s instructions,” Lucy said.  She rubbed at her neck, wincing.  “I don’t know what we’re going to do with you, but go with him for now.”

Lucy folded her arms, then walked over a bit.

Sitting on the bench were people ranging from their age down to eleven, up to fifteen.  The other Other had been on the bench.

“Recognize her?” Lucy asked, indicating the youngest person.

“Vaguely?” Avery said.  “She was a few grades below us, right?”

“Peyton.  Friend of Gabe.”

Montague released McKay.  John guided the intruding Other, one hand on his shoulder, and Montague flowed forward, over, to a filing cabinet.

A drawer banged open with enough force the cabinet almost tipped forward. A file, streaked with blood.

“What’s this?” Lucy asked.

Juvenile file.  Incidents… every three days.  Same group of kids.  Same charges of loitering, causing a commotion, light vandalism…

“I don’t remember Gabe’s group being that out there,” Lucy said.

“I don’t remember Gabe’s group so I can’t help you there,” Verona told her friend.

“We should move on, so Jabber’s not influencing everyone here,” Avery said.  “And maybe we bring her?  Maybe she knows something?”

They parted ways with the goblins, Jabber, and Montague, who took the back way out.  They took the front door, and led Peyton by the hand, Peyton’s face in a macabre grin.

That grin faltered by the time they reached the front door.  A small group had gathered outside, at the base of the steps.  Matthew and Edith were in that group.  A woman stood beside them and that woman might well have been Lis.

“What are you doing here, Peyton?” Avery asked.

“Huh?  Where- we got in trouble,” Peyton said.  She looked like she was shaking off a fog.

“Did you fall asleep?” Verona asked.

“I guess, is everything okay?  Can we go?”

“I think so.  We had a bit of trouble here too,” Lucy said.

“What were you doing with those guys?” Avery asked.

Peyton shook her head.  “I- they invited me out.  I couldn’t bring myself to say no.”

“Who’s the oldest one?” Lucy asked.

Peyton shook her head.  “I don’t remember.  How embarrassing is that?  It was a bit weird, that they wanted to hang out with someone young like me, but kinda cool too?  But we keep getting into trouble and I keep telling myself I should stop spending time with them.”

“And you keep doing the same thing and getting in trouble, and ending up at the police station?” Verona asked.

Peyton nodded, looking miserable.  “My face hurts.  I feel awful.”

“Maybe go home?” Avery asked.  “Do you live far?”

Peyton shook her head, then kept shaking it as if in answer to something else.  “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

She hurried on, pushing the door open, then jogging in a direction like she knew where she was going.

The crowd awaited.  The Kennet Others.

“We came, in case there was something we could do,” Edith said.  “Alpeana peeked in and said you had it handled?”

“We talked briefly,” Avery said.  “One out of three.  One slipped into the walls and got outside, another escaped earlier.”

Verona looked the way Peyton had gone.  “It sounds like it’s locked into patterns.  I wonder if we can get out ahead of that pattern.”

“And you have a captive?” Matthew asked.  “Bound?”

“Are you okay working this out tomorrow?” Matthew asked.  “Questioning him, seeing if we can’t get on top of this?”

Lucy didn’t answer, so Verona did.  “Sure.”

“Sleepover time?” Avery asked, with a bit of forced cheer.

“Yeah,” Lucy said, smiling a bit.  “And trying not to look as sore as I feel, with Booker and my mom.”

“Blame it on roughhousing?” Verona suggested.

“That’s one way to put it.  Are you guys okay with us leaving?”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.

“You should know,” Edith told them.  “We held the vote.  Counting Montague, John, and Jabber’s votes from before tonight’s events, the majority decided it’s not in Kennet’s best interests to invite in other practitioners, even with select oaths.”

“That seems short sighted,” Avery said.

“We can revisit the issue for specific scenarios,” Matthew said.

“You girls did well tonight,” John said.

“Thank you,” Lucy said, frowning a bit.

Verona eyed her friend, trying to read her mood, the responses.

“We’ll take custody of this fellow,” Matthew said.

“McKay, kind of,” John said.

“Um,” Lucy spoke up.  “One request?”

It was a break from how reserved and quiet she’d been with the Kennet Others all night.  And that was interesting on its own, but there was also a kind of guardedness that Verona couldn’t help but notice.

“What do you need?” John asked.

“Can we postpone Montague’s shift at the perimeter tonight?  My mom’s out of town.  She may be driving in or awake when Montague does his thing, and that apparently gets hairy.”

“Easily doable,” Matthew said.  “Let us know if you need any other adjustments on that front, in the future.”

Lucy pursed her lips, then said, “Swear my mom will be safe?  That you’ll make sure it’s okay?”

“We can send an escort to protect her tonight, if you need.  I don’t know about the long-term,” Matthew said.  “Guarantees are hard to come by.”

“Okay, please do,” Lucy said.

“We’ll arrange it,” Matthew said, glancing at Edith, who nodded.  “So sworn, we’ll send protection to guide your mother home and postpone Montague an hour.  Let me know where your mother is traveling to and from.”

“I’ll check and message you.  Thank you.”

Verona was glad when they broke away, leaving the Others behind.  Walking back to Lucy’s.  Ken shortened the path.

“What did you overhear, at the house?” Verona asked.

Lucy pressed a finger to her lips, looking around.

It made sense, even if it drove her crazy.

The alarm went off, and Verona stirred.  It was way too early, which was excuse enough for her to sink her face back into the pillow.

But Lucy rose from the bed the four of them were sharing, it was a huge bed so it wasn’t too much crowdedness, and Lucy’s movement made her lift her head.

“Everything okay?” Verona asked.

Lucy was kneeling on the floor, chalk in hand.  Drawing a symbol.  That made Verona lift her upper body from the bed.

Lucy had messaged Matthew to ensure he could send the escort, but getting that info had required checking with Booker, which had led to a bit of chit-chat with Booker, and then Avery had fallen asleep.

The two of them had followed suit, as much as Verona wanted to nag about the eavesdropping.

The rune Lucy drew was a privacy rune, to block outside ears.  Connection block and augury protection.

Verona climbed out of the bed and bent down, taking up some chalk to help.

Outside the window, the sky flushed blood red.  Kennet distorted, a wave closing inward.

The sky roared, screaming, and twisted, and the things she’d seen with her Sight were visible with her third eye closed.

Verona had seen it before, so she finished the circle.

“There’s a reason they had Charles tell us what the barrier does,” Lucy said, watching.  “So he could leave stuff out.”

The city resembled the Storm from Mrs. Ferguson’s lesson at the Blue Heron.  Everything in black and white.  Even their room was getting flushed with it.  Power lines and the wiring inside houses turned white hot, and animals scattered, birds taking to the air, dogs barking, and smaller animals scampering around.

The barrier Lucy had just mentioned, damaged, a glowing ring around Kennet, broken like an abandoned castle wall might break, was slowly orbiting the town.  Montague’s influence crept along it, and it was like changing simple print to a violent cursive, keeping the same things in place, but altering the style and the lines.

“There are other functions.  Not fully intact, but they can fix that or put power into that.  Maybe Montague could make it happen.  Shutting off the natural of spirits and things within Kennet.  It would limit our practice pretty badly.”

“And other practitioners, but they were talking about us,” Lucy said.  “She- it was a woman, it might have been Edith, but Lis’s voice sounds like hers sometimes, and Maricica can be tricky, and I don’t know…”

“What did they say?” Avery asked.

“She also said that they don’t need to worry about us in the long term,” Lucy said, watching the spectacle, while Avery ignored it and watched Lucy.  She changed the tone of her voice, intoning,  “Rough quote, we can’t keep them from living long, full lives, with the oaths we swore, but one way or another, if it takes the barrier or something else, we’ll either manage them or be rid of them, so be patient.”

“I don’t know, Avery,” Lucy said, rubbing the sleep out of her eye, wincing as she moved her arm.   Her tone was uncharacteristically harsh.  The stress of it catching up with her.  “I only know what I heard.”

“No- I… don’t be sorry.  I’m sorry,” Lucy said, gentler.

“Did you hear the response?” Verona asked.

“No.  Rook showed up, but I was keeping an ear out.  Nothing.  But that’s telling, isn’t it?  That nobody spoke up against it?”

Verona didn’t have anything much to say to that.

So she watched with her friends as Kennet twisted and screamed beyond the window, little hairs on her arms and neck prickling, hands fidgeting as the rest of her was still.