Pale: 9.12 - Lucy
Author: Wildbow

Shaking Hands – 9.12 | Pale

The biggest issue Lucy was confronted with was that, to begin with, the apartment complex wasn’t a place that left them a lot of places to go.  It wasn’t a big building, and on the second floor, the apartment doors mostly opened out onto a stretch of hall with railing on one side, three railings in total overlooking the lobby and staircase.  There was a back hallway on the second floor that had more apartment doors on either side, and at the tail end of that hallway was a screen door that gave a view of a black-painted metal staircase that served as a fire escape and rear entrance for residents.  That was their target.

Residents were shouting about the noise and impacts and people pushed at doors that no longer opened, making them rattle on either side.  An old woman shouted something incoherent.  Her earring picked up worried voices, people talking about what was happening, and it picked up the sounds inside the walls, as the Abyssal Beast worked, transforming their surroundings around them.  Wood splintered, metal popped and nails squealed.  All around her, inconsistent, not traveling like sound was meant to travel.

“Stay in your apartments!” a man in the lobby shouted.  Not a familiar voice.  That sound operated normally, even if it sounded far away.

It was like a nightmare.  The hallway distorted, getting longer as they ran through it.  Many of those escape routes were disappearing.  Even as they ran down the hallway, thudding impacts that might have been heavy footfalls were rippling around them, shaking flakes of paint loose, causing the dense, dark wooden doorframes to jar and sit out of alignment, and making metal squeak behind the walls.  There weren’t any lights on, but a lightbulb further down the hall still broke, shedding glass, and released a brief spray of sparks.  Melissa shrieked.

Lucy looked back, expecting to see that black dog or something else behind her.  Something that had come up the stairs, rounded the corner, and could now charge at them.  It hadn’t turned up, and that was somehow scarier.

Avery tore forward, pushed through the screen door, and glanced around, before running up.

Cop number two, at the base of the stairs.  Do we go to the roof?  Will he stop us?

“What’s going on!?” Melissa shouted.

Lucy ignored her, trying to think.  Her arm was in a sling, and Melissa was even more of a handicap than that, because yeah, she was getting a big eye-opener here, and thankfully it was something external to them, instead of a big karmic wrecking ball aimed at the three of them and Kennet, but she still felt like it would be a bad idea to show too much practice in front of Melissa.  If only there was a place to stash her.  Could they foist her off on the cop?

Lucy pushed her way through the door, stepping out onto the fire escape, taking in the new options.  There was a small landing, stairs led up, and down… the cop?

She saw the vague silhouette of the cop, wearing a black, short-sleeved uniform, vest on with ‘police’ printed on the front in yellow letters, wearing a flat cap with the badge on the brow.  Except he was sideways.

Caught in a storm of black.

It had charged straight through the bottom floor, exiting a hallway directly below.  Bowling over the cop, tearing into the fire escape, which stabbed through it…

Lucy’s thoughts went in three different directions.  Processing what she was seeing, when it wasn’t very clear, the fire escape torn or being torn.  The fact that she needed to prepare, to act, and her arm jerked in the sling, her other arm groped for the limited pockets available to her, and her backpack, slung over one shoulder because the sling didn’t allow anything else, slipped from her shoulder.

And third, that she slipped.  That metal popped and the fire escape tore out from beneath her as the Abyssal thing tore at it.

Back to the first thing: the cop hit so hard he rolled, the Abyssal Beast continuing to tear, momentum carrying it forward as it skidded, head or heads or vague black form dissolving and pointing at her and then pulling itself back together as it found shade between a storage shack at the back and the trees that clustered around it.  Teeth bared in a mess of black her eyes couldn’t organize.

Second thing- hands groping for her weapon ring, interrupted.  Lucy’s feet slid on the black-painted, rust-edged metal bars and she hit the railing with her sling-bound arm.  Melissa was behind her, reaching, and with the ground going diagonal beneath her feet, Lucy leaned hard into the railing and couldn’t even turn around to reach back with her good arm.

Melissa turning and running the other direction was the best thing she could do, stupid as it was.

About three weeks too late for that.

“Lucy!” Avery shouted.

She was on the stairs above, with John.

The Abyss beast was in the small parking lot below, railing and torn stairs forming a jagged, rusty black line between her and it.  The parking lot rippled and cracked, cracked parts bristling to point jagged ends of rocks and bits of pavement up in her direction.

All feeling in her midsection disappeared in one lurching sensation as she tipped over, falling.

This is going to annihilate Ronnie.

John shouted something, and Lucy barely heard it.

Her thumb hooked on her necklace, stuck through the ring, and tore it from her neck.  She almost used the chain itself, but hesitated, instead reaching for the torn railing.

A black spear grew in her hands, made out of railing.  She’d fall, inevitable, but she’d stab it on the way down.  She gave it barbs, spikes, and told herself she’d have to hold onto it, so it wouldn’t revert back to being a regular railing.

Arms wrapped around her as she fell, spear in hand, cloth brushing her face.

The ground hit her faster than she’d thought it would.  Her sling-bound arm was thrust into something softer than pavement, and she rolled.

Avery had caught her, carried her elsewhere.  And now Lucy’s hand was numb because the pain in her elbow was so intense.  Her knees drew toward her chest and her leg kicked.

She forced her eyes open, just in time to see the fire escape fall, torn up, welded-together bits separating, stairs stabbing out like fan blades, many sticking out in different directions from the twisted rigging of the stair.  It crashed onto and around the Abyssal thing, which was about twenty feet away.  John was nearer to the top of the stairs, and fell about as hard as a human could fall from the nearly-third-story.

The Composite Kid stood in the doorway, screen door damaged and hanging loose, a doorway with no stairs or anything extending between it and the ground.  Melissa was nowhere to be seen.

She’d softened Lucy’s fall with her own body.  And that cloth- Avery had wrapped them in the cloak while using the black rope.  The cloak fluttered in the air, drifting.

The parking lot hadn’t been this big when she’d been looking down at it.  There felt like there was more twisted, rusty metal wreathing the area around the beast than there had been staircase.  It was the same distortion effect that had lengthened the hallway.

To her Sight, it was all bloody, deep red-black staining everything.

“Where’s Melissa?” Lucy asked.

Avery opened her mouth, as if she needed her mouth as open as possible to make a big enough gasp.  Not verbal.

Lucy, wearing the weapon ring, still holding the chain with the dog tags and house keys close to her fist, turned her chain into a weapon.  A length of stainless steel with a bristling spur of key-shaped blades and plates at the end.

“Punted her on my way to you.”

“What?” Lucy asked, giving her head a quarter-turn to look at Avery, who was still out of breath.

Lucy laughed, caught off guard, a wild sound that surprised herself, adrenaline escaping.  She stood, moving over so she could stand between Avery and the beast.  Her elbow throbbed.

It was as big as a car, and vague enough in form she couldn’t even tell for sure what direction it was facing.  Four twisted legs, and a black body studded by bits of wood, teeth, and slats from the fire escape.

“Are you okay!?” a voice called out.

The bloodstained ground Lucy could see with the Sight began to recede.  The beast turned -she realized it had been facing her dead on- and it charged into the building.  The back door buckled and bent around it, almost making room.

Lucy gathered up the chain, glancing back at Avery, then over to the fence, where people from next door were looking over.  A fifty-something guy and a woman maybe ten years older than Booker.

There was only the fallen fire escape, the cop, Lucy, John, and Avery back here now.

“I’ll recover,” John said.  “The officer might need an ambulance.”

“I’ll call,” the fifty-something guy said.

“What even happened?” the woman asked.  “The fire escape came loose?  Were you on it?”

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked Avery.

Avery nodded, a small, tight motion.  She winced as she stood up, still breathing hard.

“Melissa’s still inside?” Lucy asked.

“We can’t leave her, can we?”

Avery shook her head, then coughed.

“Girls!?” the woman by the fence called out.

“Can you get up to the second floor, sneak her out?” Lucy whispered.

Avery looked over at the two people by the fence, shook her head.  “Gotta go inside.”

“Hey!” the woman shouted past the fence, as Lucy started jogging toward the building.  Avery followed, as did John.

“Let me lead,” John said, as he reached their side.

Lucy moved out of the way.  Between the ambient effect of the beast on the building and the recent scare, still unsure how she’d escaped hitting the ground headfirst, she felt a kind of vertigo with the sideways movement.  Like she was on the falling fire escape now, and this was a sequence of images and events that were flashing behind her eyes in a split second.

Avery touched her shoulder.

“Hm?” she made a small sound, looking at Avery.  She saw John moving ahead and grunted, “Right.”

They ventured into the hallway, John first, Avery and Lucy side by side.  The flooring was broken, the paint so peeled it barely looked like paint anymore.  Fluids seemed to be building up between paint and wall where there was enough paint, threatening to spray or spill, and exposed plaster and wood were badly stained.

Lucy could hear voices upstairs.

“Your friends abandoned you.”

“Not my friends.  I’m pretty sure one of them kicked me.”

“I think you need to start talking.  Who they are, what they’re doing-“

“They’re classmates and I don’t know.  They don’t tell me shit.”

“Then you’re not very useful to me, are you?  Want to take a walk outside?”

“There’s no fire escape anymore.”

“A little slow on the uptake, kid?”

Lucy heard metal bang, then creak.  A small frightened sound.

“Easy, Bridge.  She’s a currency we can spend.”

That last bit was the Composite Kid.

“She’s upstairs,” Lucy whispered.  “Bridge has her.”

John nodded, motioned, and then picked up speed, leaning to one side as he peered up and around the end of the hallway, where it opened up to the lobby, trying to look more upstairs.

Lucy heard noise in one of the apartments, heavy.

“Right!” she shouted, grabbing for Avery to pull her back.

John reversed his lean, moving the other way around, and drew his knife.

The Abyssal beast came through one of the doors, just to John’s right.  It slammed into him, jaw snapping closed as he slammed his knife into the underside.  Mouth forced closed, teeth knitting together beneath wild bloodshot eyes that swam on the surface of its face like bubbles in boiling water, it ended up headbutting him in the head instead of biting his face off.  It barreled into him and slammed him into and through a wall.

The side rooms off to the right of this hallway were apparently a big laundry room.  With the crash through and their arrival, the beast’s stain flooded into the room, taking it from already broken down and messed up, like the peeling paint and cracked floor, and making it far, far worse.

The floor was dipping as the beast clawed, smashed, and tore, with John beneath it.  Being devoured, fighting?  Lucy couldn’t tell.  She just saw the cracks in the tile widening, spreading, and the stain welling there.

“John!” Avery shouted.

Lucy reached into her pocket, now that she had the time to go digging, and found the papers slipped in there.  She paused, looking for her opportunity and timing, and saw John grope for his gun at his hip.

He seemed to change his mind, bringing his foot up to his hand, and drawing another knife from beneath his pants leg.

Lucy made her move.  The beast was moist and gritty, and her first attempt at touching paper to it made the paper stick.  It ignited.  The beast snarled, turning her way, its face boiling with the muzzle of a snarling dog and a grimacing person, and other things she couldn’t mentally place.  As it twisted her way, John adjusted his grip, dragging the knife from the underside of the jaw to its neck, down to its shoulder.  He plunged the second knife in and used his grip on the impaling blades to haul himself out from under it.

She backed away, letting the beast’s hind leg burn, while Avery also dug in her bag.

The beast rammed John into a washing machine.

Melissa’s still upstairs.

Couldn’t leave John.  Things were… weird, since Alexander was shot, but she couldn’t leave John.

Passing a pen to her hand in the sling, she quickly made the necessary marks on multiple papers, then stepped through the hole in the wall to the tile.  It cracked beneath her feet.

Lucy backed away as the beast wheeled and John was flung free.  The knives remained embedded in its neck and shoulder, weeping blood.  The floor was so stained to her Sight that the droplets seemed to disappear in the midst of the dark crimson.

It creates this heavy, condensed little area of horribleness and the blood around the city seems to settle in that depression, feeding it, feeding the beast.

It charged John while he was on the ground, and he managed to roll out of the way just in time.  More cracks spread.

Lucy put the spell cards in her mouth, then drew on her hand.  The Faerie’s duelist sign.  Setting up an arena.

The arena began to spread out around her.  She took in a deep breath, and the air flowed easily from mouth to lung to vein.

The beast ignored it, continuing its brawl with John bearing its full attention.  It charged through a table and hit another wall.

The cracks tore through Lucy’s swelling arena.  She winced as the mark on her hand came off.

To think it had probably been way more intense before it had made its nest and laid its young.

She took a hesitant step forward into the room, looking for an opportunity.  She wanted to get in, apply the spell cards, and get out.

Her arm being bound up in a sling was making this so much harder.

Her sneaker came down on tile and blood boiled up.

“Careful,” Avery said.  She was digging in her bag, but watching what was going on at the same time.  “It’s like cracked ice in the Ruins.  I think if you go through-”

The beast set a foot down and cracks spread.  Blood welled beneath it.

“-You go to where the Bathos comes from.”

The beast seemed to recognize the label, and it turned to face them.  Lucy stood in the hole in the wall, spell cards primed and warm in her hand.

I’ve fought Guilherme, and he’s faster.

I’d even say he’s meaner.

It took off toward her, and the cracks around the room all widened as it took off.  She almost second guessed her plan, then decided to stick to it.  She went into the room, letting the chain whip out and ensnare its mouth, the blades and tag-plates smacking it around the face.

She hauled herself forward, closer to it, abandoned the chain before the beast could snap it and lose her her house keys or dog tag, returning it to normal, and used the weapon ring on the sling on her right arm instead.  The sling became a net, the net caught the knife on the beast’s side, and she was able to swing herself out, only lightly touching the tile.

It turned, its sights fully on her, cloth net stretching along its side to her hand.  She pulled slightly, reminding herself of the tension of the material, so she could haul on it again and move unexpectedly.  She just had to keep her distance, buy time-

Time Melissa didn’t have.  Melissa was upstairs, she reminded herself.

She wanted to tell Avery to go to Melissa but she wasn’t sure Avery would be okay up there with Bridge.

John came running, and with the one knife he still held, he stabbed at the beast, fending it off as it snapped through the net at him, tugging at Lucy.

She turned the net back to a sling, slipping it over her arm, used the distraction, and went behind it.  She applied the papers like she was fanning out cards, the beast’s hide and the moisture of it catching on the paper.  Sliding the stack of five spell cards against its side served to stick all five cards on.

It kicked back at her, bowling her over, and then reared up, clawing at John.  As it came down, more cracks spread.

Lucy felt herself drop about a foot as the floor partially collapsed.  That vertigo feeling swelled.

And Avery was airborne.  Leaping over the beast, ball in hand.

She threw the ball straight down, and it hit the floor and it had its own ripple.

It didn’t wipe away everything, but it did take away a good share of the staining and dulled the darkness of the cracks.  Some now only appeared to be shadows, or shallow cracks beneath the thin moisture of the blood-red staining.

A deer-masked Avery hit the ground with both feet, stumbled as she twisted to keep the beast in sight, and her back bumped into the wall.

Lucy drew on her hand and slapped it against the floor.

The effect rippled out faster this time.  A little world of her own design, where she could breathe, where it was comfortably cool compared to the summer heat, leaves in the air.

The entire room changed colors, to her color scheme.  Bold reds and pinks and blacks.

The beast, cards smouldering at its hind leg, backed away from the three of them, head ducking low.

It’s definitely not the leader.  Just an animal that found its way here, who cooperates with the three invaders.

“We have to help Melissa,” Avery said.

“Can you deal with this on your own, John?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Give me a gun,” Lucy told John, reaching into her pocket.

“It would draw attention.”

He nodded, but he didn’t move.  He was moving, pacing slowly, while the beast tried to keep all three of them in its sight.  He ducked low, and it stood taller.  Its expression was vague, candle-wax melted on the side where light shone in through the foggy broken window, and it looked like three different snarling animals in the side that light didn’t reach.

John placed his gun on the floor and slid it across the floor.  With cracks mostly gone, it slid easily to Lucy.  She stopped it with care, and the beast turned toward her, following the motion.

She backed off, taking the gun, and the beast paced toward her.

John came after it, attacking the spot that was wounded by the papers, and it pulled away, lunging toward Lucy, instead of addressing him.

Avery pitched another ball.

But it hit the wall and it cracked into the wall Lucy’s arena had painted.  Lucy’s palm stung as if the ball had hit it.  The effect rippled out as the arena collapsed, and that, at least, caught the beast’s attention, making it turn to look.

John’s continued attack made it keep turning, trying to throw John off.

Lucy struggled, gun in her armpit while she fumbled with sling on, tearing paper, then scribbling out a rune.  She felt and reminded herself of the earring at her ear as she worked out the rune, then pressed it to the gun.

Stay silent, she whispered to the rune.

She slid the gun back to John.

He barely paused in the fighting as he swiped it up, paused as he glanced at it, then aimed and pulled the trigger.

The gun flashed, but there was no sound.  He emptied the gun into the beast at point blank range.

He turned, looked at the two of them, and said something.  Lucy couldn’t hear it.

But she could guess.  She sprinted from the room as the beast smacked John.  Or John let himself get smacked.  He reloaded the gun and kept shooting as they ran from the room.  As Lucy’s arena fell away, the beast’s effect crept out.

There were people in the hallway.  A family, and a boyfriend and girlfriend.  Avery pulled her mask up.

“Go inside!” Lucy shouted.  “Now!”

“Out!” a man’s voice shouted.

The people, caught between Lucy’s voice and the man’s shout, decided to listen to the man.

They ventured a little closer to the end of the hallway.  The officer was there, giving orders to those who had left their apartments.  Watch on his wrist.  People evacuated, and Melissa and the Composite Kid were off to the side, not evacuating.

People milled around, hurrying to leave, to get down the stairs, and trying to guide the less able.  One little girl with an oxygen tank and tubes going to her nose, and three older people.

“Go, go, go!” Bridge shouted.  “Come on!  Who needs a hand!?”

His eyes fell on the two of them, and his hand went to his gun briefly.

“Me,” Melissa said.  “I have a bad ankle, can I get a hand leaving?”

The Composite Kid put a hand on Melissa’s shoulder.  She shrugged the hand off, scowling.

“We should go,” the Composite Kid told Bridge.

As they stepped toward the door, Lucy stepped forward, and Bridge’s hand went back to his gun.

Lucy stopped.  “Bridge!  Let’s talk!”

Bridge turned to the Composite Kid.

“McKay did, I think.”

Bridge and the Composite Kid ‘helped’ Melissa to the door, watching their backs, the implicit warning of the gun holding off Lucy and Avery, the crowd blocking all practice.

Avery put her mask away in her bag.

There was a growing crowd on the street outside.  The noise of the falling fire escape and the commotion was drawing people out of homes and businesses.  An ambulance was pulling up, and people moved out of the way of the little driveway that led to the back parking lot so it could go around back.

“There,” Avery said, pointing through the crowd.

Bridge and the Composite Kid were at the cop car across the street.  Melissa resisted being pushed into the car.

“Is he cooperating?” Lucy asked.  “With Bridge?”

“I don’t know,” Avery said.

“Is he the type who gets influenced by the people he’s around?  Switching sides because of outside pressure?”

“Don’t know,” Avery said.

“How does that line up with the kinds of people who’d tried and failed the Hungry Choir ritual?  Do the easily influenced go for the Choir thing?”

“They’re desperate.  Desperate people cling.  I should know.”

“You’re not clingy,” Lucy said.

“Thanks, but I haven’t had the opportunity.”

What were they supposed to do?

“I overheard him telling Bridge not to hurt Melissa.  To use her as a bargaining chip.  Maybe he’s staying close so he can protect her.”

Avery nodded, watching with eyes that were foggy with her Sight.

“Or, third option, he’s taking a middle road, where whoever wins, he can claim he was on their side here.”

“Survival tactics from a Choir participant,” Avery said.

“I’m going to go around,” Avery said.

Avery ducked down the stairs, between two people.  She didn’t emerge from the other side.  Black Roping her way elsewhere.

Lucy wanted so badly to extend the benefit of a doubt, but-

She started forward, toward the car, and Bridge looked at her.  His hand rested on his weapon.

How dangerous was he?  How far was he willing to push this?  Would he shoot her, then leave the original officer to eat the consequences?

That felt wrong.  It didn’t feel like something that should happen or did happen.  The world would be filled will people who had committed violent acts and had no memory of it, and there weren’t that many.

The Abyssal Beast avoided people, had fled inside when innocents had turned up.

Was this where karma came into play?  Protecting the establishment of innocence?

Lucy had drawn a gun and threatened Durocher.  Could she turn that essential idea around now, and challenge him?  Did she have it in her to look at that gun, to walk down the stairs, and walk right at him, trusting that the practice and Others couldn’t be secrets, that the world couldn’t work like it worked, if he could pull that trigger?

There was a crash behind her.  Lucy turned, looking through the open door that the kid with the oxygen was coming through, and saw Steph with her son.

“Hey!” Steph called out.

“Hey,” Lucy answered.

“Where’s-” Steph asked, as she came through the door.

Her eye went straight to the Composite Kid.

“Reagan?” Lucy asked.

‘Reagan’ looked back from the cop car, across the crowd that was strewn across the street, front sidewalk, and stairs.  Looking at Steph.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said.

She looked between mother and ‘child’, and she decided to trust.  Trusting that the parent-child bond had something to it, that a good mom had made a good kid and enough of that was in ‘Reagan’.  In the Composite Kid.

She hurried down the stairs, into the crowd.  Bridge watched her, but he didn’t shoot.  She wasn’t moving directly toward him, wasn’t going to trust in karma to that extent.  At the very least, it felt like the sort of thing that worked like those old parables about prayer. The man in a flood, sitting on his roof, praying for divine aid, refusing the people with boats and the rescue helicopter, saying he trusted in God.  Only to drown, because the aid had been those people.

Lucy was not a believer.  She’d seen things like Metaphaos and she’d heard gods existed but to her, it felt like they were big, major league Others.  It felt wrong to her to start kneeling and praying.  But she could draw an analogy to that parable.  Karma might help, but it only helped, it wouldn’t be the whole answer.  There were other reasons for him not to shoot and obscuring herself in the jumble of the crowd added to those reasons.  She had to leave the door open for help to come and leaning too heavily on Karma alone would probably lead to a very bad surprise.

Bridge wasn’t getting in the car, even though he’d gotten Melissa to sit.  Their attention was split, heads turning.

Lucy could hear why.  Clunking, banging…

Now, just as Melissa had fought to avoid being put in the car, she was fighting to be dragged out of it.  Uncooperative every step of the way.

Something hissed under the car’s hood, and Bridge backed away from it, drawing his gun.

People nearby took notice of that, reacting with alarm.

Some people raised their voices.

“What are you doing!?  Put that away!  There’s no need for it!”

They’re panicking.  They had a big bad Abyssal thing and an escape route and now they don’t have either.

Lucy got as close as she dared.  For once, she was glad of the sling.  She could imagine a situation where he contrived to target her, and her arm being in a sling made that harder.

Bridge, gun in hand, pushed past the Composite Kid and hauled Melissa out of the car.

People stepped closer, up until the moment he raised the hand with the gun a fraction.  Then they backed off, scared.

Lucy followed alongside, keeping people between herself and Bridge as they cut a diagonal path across the street.

Toward the ambulance, which was pulling out of the driveway.  Bridge raised an arm, waving, while nudging Melissa forward.  Concerned people followed behind, watching.

Can’t let him get on the ambulance with Melissa.

“Hey!” Lucy shouted.  Heads turned.  “Where are you taking Melissa!?  What did she do wrong!?”

“We’ll let Others make the final decision on that,” Bridge said.

“You’re hurting me!” Melissa cried out, pulling back, resisting, adding resistance.

“Leave her,” the Composite Kid said, quiet.

Bridge leaned down slightly, growling:

“She’s a bargaining chip, like you said.  If they know her-“

“Leave her,” the Composite Kid said, again.

Bridge turned, heading back toward the ambulance. “Can I ride in the back with my partner?”

Is that a lie?  Or are you riding in the back with Composite Kid?  Also a lie.

Bridge started, then stopped, as Avery stepped around the ambulance, in his way.

His gun hand moved slightly.  Avery backed away a step, like she was very ready to move.

“Put that away!” a woman shouted.

“Shut up!” Bridge raised his voice.

“What are you even doing!?” Lucy called out.

“Shut up!” Bridge growled.  “My partner’s hurt, let me on the ambulance.”

“Have you told Melissa why she’s being detained?  That she has rights!?” Lucy asked.

“He hasn’t told me anything!” Melissa shouted.

“It’s not worth it,” the Composite Kid said.  “Meet up later, if you make it out?”

Bridge turned to look, but the Composite Kid ran for it.

And Bridge followed suit, letting go of Melissa, pushing his way into the thickest part of the crowd.

Avery broke into a sprint, while Lucy followed.

Bridge shoved a middle-aged woman, two-handed, off her feet and into Lucy’s way, and a purse spilled.  Lucy leaped over, nearly tripped over the fallen objects, and continued to give chase.

Until Bridge slowed, rounding a group where the crowd was thinner, and turned.

She almost danced on the spot, aiming to turn, move sideways, using the crowd.

He faced her, and he frowned slightly.

Her eye darted to his gun hand- no gun.

No watch.  No scars on the hands.

Lucy turned, realizing, and looked for the middle-aged woman he’d bowled over.

She’d run for it.  Other direction.

The middle aged woman wasn’t wearing a watch, and her top was low enough that any tattoo near the heart wasn’t visible.

Melissa was hobble-running to a car, climbing into the back seat.

Gun in left hand, watch on left wrist.

“Do you want to find out?”

How does this get covered up?  How do we smooth this over?

The car peeled out.  Lucy stopped running.  Avery didn’t.  Weaving through people, Avery ran after the car, as fast as she could.

The driver was being careful with the amount of people milling around, and people crossing the street after the ambulance passed ended up blocking the way for a few seconds.  Avery caught up, reaching the back window.

Bridge-as-Melissa aimed at Avery.

Avery ducked low, then lobbed what looked like two goblins in through the open passenger window.  One was Bangnut, tools falling out of his over-stuffed pants, and another might have been Biscuit.

Avery, trying to duck and run at the same time, stumbled, then dropped to all fours in the road as the car sped up.

“Got the gremlin into the car,” Avery said, as Lucy caught up to her.

“What does that achieve?”

“I don’t know, but gremlins are anti-technology or something?  He was tinkering under the cop car’s hood.  Biscuit was supervising.”

At least help was starting to arrive.

They gave chase behind the car, which alternated between too much gas and hard brakes as other traffic got in the way, and they hit a red light.

“Keep eyes on them?” Lucy asked.

Lucy ducked off to the side, into a driveway that was barely wide enough for a single car to pass through.  Multiple cars were parked behind that building.  She stopped in the shade there, dropped low, and slipped her backpack from her shoulder.

She had the compact, Verona’s mask, and Verona’s hair.

With the mask and hair as a starting point, she created Verona’s face, drawing on memory and letting the glamour fill in blanks.  Skin went over top of the chunk of mask.

The Verona she was making looked sad, a face with no head.

“I hope you’re doing okay,” Lucy whispered.  “My mom’s waiting for us.”

She smudged out the shape of the body, and clothes followed.  Striped top, jean shorts, sandals.

“I’m going to give you instructions,” Lucy said, drawing out a rune using the glamour.  Sagittarius’s arrow, painted in skin.  Glamour filled in the gaps and surrounding area.  She created a hand and slipped her watch off, into the palm of the fake-Verona’s hand.  Her thumb traced a line from the ‘arrow’ down the arm to the watch.  “Follow Bridge, look for the watch, listen to us if we point you to him.”

The Verona met her eyes, gripping the watch in a blurry hand of trembling, dusty motes that were settling into a solid form.

A Uranus rune for proximity.  “Stay clear of the Kennet Others.  You have the mask, the mask is tied to them, so… draw on that, for information.  But let them know you’re here.  We want to hem them in.”

Legs were forming.  Socks and shoes.

The Verona turned and Lucy had to stop her.  She was fragile enough that the hand that reached out to hold her back did a bit of damage.  Like she was more sandcastle than person.

On the back, between shoulderblades, Lucy drew the ‘Venus’ sign, then surrounded it in a diamond.  “Get Bridge’s attention.”

She gave the fake Verona a slight push.

‘Verona’ took off.  Lucy followed, tucking the open compact full of glamour into her sling.  The edges of the plastic and the hinge dug into her forearm.

Avery shouted as she emerged from the alley, pointing to give Lucy directions.

Past a little park, which had a smaller footprint than the small apartment building had, around a corner.  The car had stopped, and it was smoking under the hood.

Two of the cars Bridge had tried to take as escape routes had been disabled, and he was occupying a body that was inconveniently disabled, but armed with a gun.

He’d wanted the authority and power being a cop provided, and people speaking up had cut him off from the ability to abuse that.  Now he was just a dumb kid with a weapon, limping.

Lucy hoped that all this running Bridge was making Melissa do wasn’t hurting her ankle more.

Bridge-as-Melissa was going for a storefront.

This was an Other who lived amid confusion and doubt.  Who leaped bodies and needed those vital seconds where someone had to look for the telltale features.  A store with people in it was an easy way to do that.

Except Kennet wasn’t exactly doing fantastic, and even downtown, the businesses weren’t exactly doing great.

Bridge stopped at the window of a salon, realized there was only one employee, and moved on.  Next door was boarded up.  The place after had a big ‘everything must go’ sign up in the window, blocking the view of the interior.  It had had that sign up in various variations since Lucy could remember.

“If you want to keep tripping her up like that, Ken, it’d help,” Lucy murmured.  She knew Ken wasn’t doing this as a spirit or anything, but it was Ken helping, in a way.  She was willing to acknowledge that the more ass parts of Kennet were getting in Bridge’s way, now.  This would have been impossible in Toronto or New York.  Bridge would be thoroughly lost in the late-afternoon crowds there.

Avery was pulling ahead, and ‘Verona’ stepped out of the indented doorway of a bookstore, right in Bridge’s way.  Bridge scrambled back away from her.

From the same park Avery had been in, a group of kids ran out, accompanied by a woman who might have been a babysitter.  Bridge limp-ran toward them.

Lucy chased, aiming to intercept.

Two of the kids ran back and into the babysitter as Melissa came tearing their way, gun held low and more or less out of sight.  Two froze.  She bumped into them, grabbing one and pulling him off his feet.

Abandoning Melissa, slipping watch from her wrist to the wrist she was holding.  Scars, tattoo on the chest.

The kid dropped to the ground as Melissa sagged, looked back at the babysitter, at Lucy, at Avery…

He needs to get his bearings.

Ran.  The kid bolted, running like only a kid could, short legged and reckless, arms hugging the gun to his chest.

Could he even use it?  He was like, seven.

“What’s even going on!?” Melissa shouted as Lucy ran past.

Avery and the Babysitter matched pace, and Lucy paused by the kids who the babysitter had left behind.

“Stay,” Lucy told them, huffing for breath.

“This is scary,” Melissa said.

“Yeah,” Lucy replied, not looking at the girl.

“I couldn’t control my body.”

“Yeah.  I think everyone else forgot that part.  But you… you’re in too deep,” Lucy said.  “You don’t have protections anymore.”

“This was what all the warnings were about, huh?”

“You could have told me.”

“Telling you gets you in deeper.”

The babysitter reached the kid before Avery did, swooping him up.

Avery shouted something and she was too far away for Lucy to hear.  The earring picked up whispers better than distant shouts.

The babysitter dropped the kid as Avery closed in, and with gun in hand, took a swing at Avery’s head with the butt of the gun.  Avery dropped into a slide, landing on her back at the babysitter’s feet.

“Watch the kids,” Lucy said.

She had the ring on her thumb, still, but couldn’t use a weapon with people watching.  The fact she was tired after only this much running was probably because she’d drawn from her Self earlier, to fuel the ring.

Now she ran again, not really armed, not really sure what she could do, except try to hold Bridge down or cut him off.

She had to think like Guilherme had trained her to think.

Thrust, parry, evade.  Any move could be the vital one.

She dug into the sling for the compact, thumb reaching in, and got glamour, and transferred glamour from thumb to the fingertips of the hand in the sling.

She touched her wrist, and traced a line around.

Babysitter Bridge kicked at Avery, who absorbed part of the impact to keep him from kicking the kid he’d recently possessed.  She climbed to her feet, only to get shoved back down to the ground again.

Further down the street, people were getting off the bus. Kennet had only two buses and two bus routes, and they each ran once in the morning and once in the evening, to serve those going to work and coming from work.  One shouted, and shouted to the others.  As a pack, a random assortment of departing bus-riders were approaching.

More help from Kennet? Lucy asked.  The timing was lucky, the people stepping in to help someone being attacked was nice.

It almost gave her an appreciation for this town.  A place she loved and called home but didn’t always or even often like.

“Leave her alone!” a woman shouted.

A half dozen voices joined hers.

That same woman who had been shouting looked at Lucy, and it was a longer, intent look, the woman’s face turning serious.

Not Maricica.  Maricica would have been smug, enjoying this.  Wasn’t Ken or Nettie or one of the other Ken-offshoots.

Maybe the bus’s timing had been Ken.  That would fit.

With threats on three sides, Bridge backed up a little.

“Can we talk!?” Lucy called out.

“I am the embodiment of where trying to ‘talk’ gets you,” Bridge said, the babysitter’s voice soft and wary.  “A living false accusation.”

“Where does trying to run for it and hurting people along the way get you?” Lucy asked.

“I guess I’ll find out?”

Lucy felt a pang of sympathy, but she felt more worry for how unhinged Bridge was, in this moment.

She gave chase, Avery at her side.  “Give me your hand.”

Avery looked, then did, extending her arm.

Lucy smudged it too with glamour.

Bridge headed into that little park area, with fences on four sides, openings in the middle of each of those fences.  Within that small space were a number of small astroturfed lumps and a play structure.

And a Verona, looking off in the wrong direction.

She didn’t move out of Bridge’s way.

Bridge grabbed Verona’s hand while running by, and Lucy could see the glint as the watch loosened, slipped down from one wrist, past their hands, and onto Verona’s wrist.  Scars flared into existence on Verona’s hand, a tattoo slipping down her arm, toward her chest, another blur toward her face.

And she dissolved into dust, laughing in a very Verona way.

The parasite hit the hot sidewalk, the babysitter staggered away.

The diamond sign was one for ‘quality’, and Lucy had drawn that in the glamoured Verona.  Within she’d done the Venus sign.  It was a symbol that, tied to a diagram, reacted in response to a stimulus.  Lucy wasn’t entirely on board with that for the ‘female’ sign, but it worked and in this context, it served her ends.  Fake Verona marked with the ‘quality of’ and ‘receptive’.

Or, in short, ‘bait’.

The parasite crawled after the babysitter, but in the sunlight and in the glare of innocent eyes, it lost its momentum, and withdrew to the shadows of a nearby trash can.

Avery and Lucy cornered it.

Lis followed, with three of the people from the bus joining her.  One of them pointed at the babysitter, who looked bewildered and was moving in the direction of the kids.

“Let her go!” Lucy called out.

“It’s a misunderstanding.  A kid ran and Avery tried to stop them.  It looked… like a bad situation.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  She looked over at the babysitter.  “Right?”

The babysitter nodded, frowning.

And, hopefully, that would fill in the gaps.

The parasite, a bundle of scars, watch, tattoo, and the vague blur of a broken nose or whatever, was lurking low, considering its options.  Both Lucy and Avery appeared to have watches on their wrists.  Glamour.

“Caught it?” Lis asked, as she approached.

“Are you going to keep running?” Lucy asked the parasite.  “Or will you surrender?”

It didn’t seem to budge, except for its jittering and trembling.  The little arms on the watch were loose and jostled this way and that.

“We’ll try to be fair,” she told it.  “Even if you hurt and scared a lot of people, I don’t want to copy the system that made you.”

“Here,” Avery said.  She drew a giant ‘c’ in the walkway in the middle of the park.  “Step inside.  Like Lucy said, we’ll try to be fair.”

The parasite hesitated, then went into the circle.  Avery closed it.

Lucy looked around.  The fences and hills provided some cover for doing this.  The bystanders had retreated, the babysitter was taking the kids away, Melissa bringing the fourth kid back over, limping badly.

“We bind you here,” Lucy said.  “Possess nobody unless told to, remain with us until released, we’ll work out a deal after if we can.  Same idea as with McKay, some scenario where you aren’t hurting people.”

The parasite couldn’t speak, but she could feel the binding take hold.

“Would you carry him?” she asked Lis.

It felt skeevy, reaching into the circle, those little scar-legs like the legs of a very hostile bug on her palm, bristling.

Lis reacted much the same way.  But Bridge didn’t take over Lucy and he didn’t take over Lis, even though Lis wore no watch.

“One down,” Lis murmured, in a young voice.

Lucy looked up, and Lis was a blend of Avery and Lucy, dark red hair tied back in a ponytail, skin tanned with freckles that were almost black.

“There’s still the beast,” Avery whispered.

“Melissa!” Lucy called out.

Melissa turned, and approached the fence.

“We’re going.  You should go home.  And we’ll figure this out.”

“If what happens today gets out…  I was in a car and I pulled a gun on someone.  People in that building knew me.  Kayleigh was in that crowd.  I think she might have seen some of it.  She definitely saw me getting hauled around by a cop.  People from school are going to talk.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Avery said.  “I don’t know what people are going to say, but we might be able to smooth things over.”

Melissa shrugged, looking miserable.

“Sorry, Melissa.  We really were trying to avoid getting you in the middle of all of this,” Lucy said.  “When you didn’t go back in that apartment, and overheard… I think the gig was up.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I tried to tell you,” Avery said.  “That it’s hard to back out of.”

“Keep your head down, and hope it all blows over,” Lucy said.  “If you can convince yourself all of this is a dream, somehow, then maybe do that.”

“We should go,” Avery said.

Lucy was sick of running but there weren’t any great options.  Because the route they’d taken was a bit of a wiggly one, bending around the park, cutting through the park made for a decent shortcut.

The crowd from before was already dissipating, or had moved around to the back.

Lucy ventured closer, and she could see more of the Kennet Others.  Matthew was on the sidewalk across the street, and a short distance from him, the Composite Kid stood on grass in the shade, and a slender little girl with black hair and a very Maricica smile was standing next to him, holding two of his fingers in her hand.

Probably more secure than shackles, that hold.

Avery stopped as she reached the little driveway the ambulance had gone down.  The damaged, fallen fire escape was still lying across the parking lot, and people were standing in the midst of it.

Smiling.  Giggling to themselves.

“What happened?” Matthew asked.

“Verona helped us get Bridge.  The watch parasite.  Lis is watching it, Verona’s off helping out in other ways, and we thought we’d circle back,” Lucy said.  “Where are you guys at?  Jabber?”

“John’s fighting the beast.  We’ve organized goblins and sent them in, along with Jabber, yeah,” Matthew said.  “Nibble went in just now.  Chloe had to stay back because even this light is too much for her.”

Lucy looked up.  The sun was starting to set, and that colored the sky.

Some people walked down the sidewalk, but as they got close to the building, they stopped where they were, heads lolling back, bodies jerking as they laughed.

Jabber’s cries could be heard from the rooftop.

“This is a nasty Other, here,” Matthew said.  “I’m ready to use the Doom.  It would help if you two were prepared to hold it back, because it’ll go for Edith once it’s done, and it’s very familiar with the way to our place.”

“The Bathos is Abyssal, apparently,” Avery said.

“Yeah, so I was told.  Abyssal things tend to be tough and mean, in a different way than goblins,” Matthew said.  “Are you up to help?  Backing me up, so I can release the Doom?  You wouldn’t have to get directly involved.”

“We kind of already did.  We went after it earlier, scrapped,” Lucy said.

“Really.  Good, I’m glad you’re safe, then.  Last I heard, John’s battered but holding it off.”

Matthew looked back at the Composite Kid.  “Dealing with this monster was dumb.”

“We thought it might help me,” the Composite Kid said.  “Paint the town shallowly with a bit of Abyss-stuff, without sinking it.”

“If it helped you it would be into an early grave, perhaps,” Maricica said, her voice young.  “Abyssal things and bogeymen aren’t often diplomats.  At best, usually, you’re keeping the company of a wolf and keeping it fed so it doesn’t look at you for its next meal.”

“It had enough to eat, here,” the Composite Kid replied.  “It got stronger fast.”

“And then it made its nest, made its spawn, and went to collect more blood for its nest,” Maricica declared.  “How lucky that we caught it in daylight hours, so fresh after giving birth.  You should act fast, to address it before it recoups its strength.”

“Are you helping, Maricica?” Lucy asked.

“I’m guarding him.”

“Maricica’s still hurt from the Daniel affair,” Matthew murmured.  “It doesn’t show, but…”

“Don’t think I didn’t hear, Matthew,” Maricica called out, her voice sing-song.

“You’re allowed to say no,” Matthew told them.  “If you aren’t up to helping me.  This thing is vicious, I’m sure you know, and it’s getting darker out, and every minute that beast is in there, it’s making it more like home.”

“And the innocents are retreating,” Maricica said.

“Come on,” Matthew said.  “Be on your guard.”

They nodded.  As they’d done with John, they let Matthew take the lead.

It was bad, inside.  The cracks were widespread and ran from the laundry area at the rear half of the downstairs level to the lobby and up to the second floor.  Stairs were in shambles and walls were ripped open.

The smell wasn’t what Lucy would have expected.  Like freshly turned, deep, moist soil.  It filled her nostrils.

There were traces of goblin smells in there too.  Farts and things.

A bang shook the building and the cracks spread further.

“Does this all go back to normal?” Lucy asked.

“Mostly,” Matthew said.  “It’ll scar like any wound does.”

“Like what our teacher said about Abyssal healing,” Avery noted.  “But for buildings.”

Their progress was slow because the floor was damaged.  It felt like any chunk of floor with cracks all around it could simply drop away beneath their feet as they stepped on it.

They entered the back hallway, and they reached the hole in the wall, wider than it had been before, framed in cracks.

And there was no laundry room.  Only chasm.

“Did the ice break?” Avery asked.

“Ice?” Matthew asked.

“Metaphorical, kinda.  I saw something similar in the wintery Ruins.”

“I think it broke,” Lucy said.  “Question is… how much?”

The beast roared, and it shook the entire building. Paint flecks fell and bits of plaster crumbled or puffed out in plumes as it ground against itself.

They made their way into the part of the room they could access, hugging the wall, and they looked down.

Nibble was there, sitting on a jutting beam that stuck out of the side of the chasm.  And the goblins were all present, clinging to walls and perches, jostling one another.

John, too, was present, near the beast, which was bound in barbed wire and gobbets of snot.  Beaten, sore, still with fight in it, still snarling, but with no strength remaining.  Cherrypop was on its head, playing whack-a-mole with a condom, smacking and snapping the limp condom against eyes as they boiled up to the surface, split part into smaller eyes, and disappeared into the beast’s face once again.

“You beat it?” Matthew asked.

“Didn’t even need me,” Nibble said.

“Oh, that’s good,” Matthew said.  He almost sounded disappointed.

“Can you hoist it up?” Lucy asked.

“And stop tormenting it, Cherry!” Avery called down.  “Don’t be crummy!”

Cherry made inarticulate noises of protest, while other goblins talked over one another to assure Avery that Cherry was, indeed, crummy.

“Let’s bind it or send it back where it came from,” Lucy said.  “There’s other stuff we need to handle.”

Lucy saw Verona before Verona saw Lucy.

They’d walked home and Avery had given them a shortcut, using the Black Rope.  Circling back to Lucy’s home.  Verona sat just around the corner, back to a fence, scruffy haired, notebook in her lap, Snowdrop on her knee.  She was eating a snack and sharing it with Snowdrop.  Every part of it, pen on notebook, handling of food, all looked very absent and distracted.

Avery pulled out her phone and started typing out a text.

There was light from a streetlight, but the sky was going from sunset to a dark gray.  Houses had interior lights on, and Lucy’s was no exception.

“What are we going to do with you, Ronnie?” Lucy murmured.

Verona’s head turned.  Purple eyes were bright in the darkness.  She’d heard, or she’d noticed the connection, or something.

Lucy raised a hand in greeting.

“In one piece?” Verona asked.

Lucy nodded.  “A bit bruised.”

“Scraped up, again,” Avery said.  She scooped up Snowdrop and cradled her.

“But in one piece?” Verona asked.

Lucy walked over to where Verona was, and she handed down the piece of Verona’s mask she’d borrowed.

Verona took it in both hands.  She looked down at it.  “Good.  I was worried.  I almost came to you.”

“How was your errand?” Lucy asked.

“I guess we’ll see if my hiding spot is better than Edith’s,” Verona said.  “Ken helped me pick the location and tuck it away out of sight, and I had him forget where he put it as part of the gift.  Then I copied what Edith and her group did, but… I think I did it better, if I may say so myself.  I’ll show you later, if you want.”

“Edith came for me.  Stepped into the Ruins, really slow, while I was making vessels for the echoes to go into, so they could help carry.  I had to distract her.”

“She tried earlier, we banished her from the Ruins,” Avery said.  “Saltsplosion.”

“I guess she tried again.”

“I’m glad you’re okay too, you know,” Avery said.  “At least-”

Avery paused a bit, then decided not to elaborate.

“It’s fine.  I’m managing.  Trying to write up some practice style thoughts in my notebook but I’m drawing a whole lot of blanks, so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t show up to help.  I’m spoiling your opossum.”

“Part of what she’s there for,” Avery said.

“We used your glamour image for a play,” Lucy said.  “Technically, ‘you’ caught Bridge.  So you did help.”

“Go me,” Verona said, smiling.

Lucy nodded.  “And Lis saw you and told the others she saw you, but she didn’t see that ‘play’, so…”

“Works,” Avery agreed.

“Melissa might be in a whole heap of trouble, depending on how stuff falls out, but we got Bridge, Composite Kid is cooperating, and we sent the Abyss beast back where it came from.”

“I really missed out.”

The conversation didn’t flow.  It was like the lump in Lucy’s throat was heavy in between the three of them.  What to say, or do?

“I’m looking forward to another sleepover, and preparing for the familiar ritual, and the Path.  Then I guess we’ll figure out what we’re doing longer-term?” Verona asked, smiling a bit.

“I told my mom.”  Lucy kept her voice soft, swallowing around the lump in her throat.

“I told my parents, too,” Avery added.

“Oh,” Verona replied.

“Is that okay?” Lucy asked.

“I’ll handle it somehow,” Verona answered.  “It was an argument over chores, y’know?  Dumb.”

“You didn’t act like it was an argument over chores.”

Verona shrugged, and looked back in the direction of Lucy’s place.  “What do I say?”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure my mom will listen.”

Lucy approached, and offered Verona her hand, reaching down.  She hauled Verona to her feet, with Verona doing a characteristic ‘Verona’ lack of cooperation.

Verona shook her head again.  “Wrong mood for a hug.”

Lucy got Verona’s bag and Verona didn’t protest, just sticking her notebook in it.  Lucy carried the two bags while they walked the four houses down to Lucy’s place.  There was an unfamiliar car in the driveway.  Avery’s parents?  Lucy didn’t recognize the color in the gloom.

Avery let Snowdrop down onto the grass as they got closer.  “Meet in Lucy’s room?”

Snowdrop sneezed in the affirmative and bounded off into a hedge.

Lucy wondered how she’d get her keys, with a bag in her hand and the other arm in a sling, but it was a short lived wondering.  Her mom was at the door before they were halfway across the lawn, opening it for them.

“Come on in, hon,” Lucy’s mom said, to Verona.

“How was the interview?” Lucy asked.  “I forgot to ask, like a jerk.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Lucy’s mom said.  “I don’t mind you didn’t ask.  You were focused on Verona.  Hi, Avery.”

Avery’s parents were inside, standing in the hallway and with them standing in the way of the kitchen, the stairwell dark, it was like the only path forward was to the living room.  Verona kind of automatically went that way, pushed by a general ‘Verona’ desire to evade the crowds.  And it was crowded.

Lucy followed her friend into the living room.  Booker and Alyssa were in the backyard, beneath the porch light, which was swarming with mosquitoes.  The door was closed, and Lucy could see him through the glass.  He raised a hand in a wave.

They were sitting out of this, but staying in reach, maybe.

“Awkward,” Verona said, as everyone filed into the living room.

“No, honey,” Lucy’s mom said.  She took a seat in front of Verona, while Verona stood by the coffee table, and reached out for Verona’s hand.  “Nobody’s coming into this thinking that way.  Okay?”

“So just to let you know, it sure sounds like things aren’t great at home,” Lucy’s mom said.  Her eyes met Lucy’s.  Lucy nodded.  “I think we should figure out what’s going on and work on a way forward.”

“I don’t think there is one with my dad,” Verona answered, hands at her pockets but not in her pockets, toying with and picking at the edges. “Can I sleep over?”

“Absolutely, you can.  But can we talk about what’s going on, this time?”

Verona nodded, fingers working away at the pockets, but she didn’t say anything.

“We’re on your side, okay?” Avery’s mom asked.

“That means a lot,” Verona said, glancing back at Avery, then Lucy.  “But I’m not sure what it means.  Like, practically.”

“I wanted to say,” Lucy’s mom spoke up, “if you want to do this another way, um, I don’t want this to feel like a confrontation or an interrogation.  If you’re not comfortable talking, and if you trust Lucy to say, Lucy could tell us what she knows and you could clarify, maybe.  Or if you’d rather talk to me one on one we could do that.”

“Absolutely okay with us,” Avery’s mom said, quiet.  “We’re here for support, and for a better sense of what’s going on, but I know we don’t know each other, so if us being here makes this harder, we can go.”

“Oh, yeah,” Verona said.

“Is that a yes, you want us to go?” Avery’s dad asked.

Verona shook her head, eyes on the floor.

“Ronnie?” Lucy asked.

Lucy’s mom raised a hand, telling Lucy to ease back or be quiet.  Lucy pressed her lips together.

As if frustrated with the fidgeting, Verona hooked thumbs in the pockets of her shorts, clenching her fists.

“Verona?” Lucy’s mom asked. She reached for Verona’s hand and took it.  “What do you want or need, right now?”

Verona took a step closer to Lucy’s mom, then leaned in, hugging her.

She said she wasn’t in the mood for a hug, Lucy remembered.

Then Verona pulled knees up toward her chest, sitting almost in Lucy’s mom’s lap, face buried in her shoulder.  Curled up there.

Lucy’s mom hugged her back, and Verona made a small sound.  Then another.

“Hey, guys?” Lucy’s mom asked.  “Do you want to-”

Lucy nodded, before her mom was even done asking.

Taking Avery’s hand, and leading Avery out of the room.  She paused at the door, partway through closing it, and saw her mom holding Verona.  For all of Lucy’s earlier insistence that they were teenagers, Verona looked really small, like that.  Not at all like a teenager.  More like a little kid.

Lucy shut the door, then went up to her room with Avery, to give her best friend some space.

“Asleep?” Verona’s voice was soft.

Lucy reached for and turned on the bedside light.  She shook her head.  Verona’s head was peeking into the room.

Verona entered, and then eased the door closed.

“Yo,” Avery said.  She was lying on the bed, her feet near Lucy’s shoulders, where Lucy had bundled up sheets and pillows as part of a joke about Avery’s feet stinking.  Avery had to prop herself up to see past the little mini-dresser at the foot of the bed and look at Verona.

Verona’s eyes were red-rimmed, hair even scruffier than usual.  “I guess you heard a whole lot of me being lame?”

Lucy reached under her pillow and showed Verona the earring she’d taken off earlier.

“Want to sit?  Lie down?” Lucy asked.

Verona sat on the bed, her back to the two of them, but didn’t lie down.

“Want an opossum?” Avery asked, moving sheets to reveal Snowdrop.

“I’m good,” Verona said.  “Thanks though.”

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Lucy told her friend.

“It’s cool.  Sorry,” Verona said, smiling.  “I was all prepared for you to have overheard and started making plans.  I’m trying to sort it out in my head.  We figured, um, I should talk to my mom.  Jas was going to call her but I said I should make the call because I told my dad I would.  Kinda proud I remembered.”

“Weird priorities,” Avery said.

The kicks and stuff seemed to lift Verona’s mood slightly.

“You called your mom?” Lucy asked.

“Put her on speaker.  Gave her the basics.  She was really insistent that she’d pick me up, first thing in the morning.”

“Pick you up?” Lucy asked.

“Two weeks of vacation.  Maybe three.  Then, um, figure out a game plan or whatever, it’s dumb.”

“Oh wow,” Avery said.  “Where to?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Verona said.  “Because obviously I shouldn’t go, because there’s a whole crap-ton of things going on, and there’s a deadline with the Carmine Beast, and the familiar ritual, and the Path, and there’s organizing, and you guys are in actual danger.  So no.”

“No?” Lucy asked, quiet.

“I told my mom it shouldn’t be the morning.  I wanted time with you guys before anything. So that gives me time to get sorted.  I’ve got a shitty little house with the furs in it and I can camp out there, and if I don’t become Other I can at least hide out for a while and keep working with you guys.”

Lucy sat up some, and looked over at Avery.

“We’ve got tonight, tomorrow morning, and a bit of the afternoon before my mom catches on.”

“And what about my mom?” Lucy asked.  “You’re going to run away?”

“I can use connection breakers.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to work, Ronnie.  That’s just postponing everything.”

“Sounds good to me,” Verona replied.

“I think… I really want this to not be a postponement.”

“Connection breakers might not work,” Avery said.  “If your mom traveled all this way, and Jasmine and my parents are all this concerned?  I think that’s an awful lot of focus on you you’d be trying to divert.”

“I’m willing to try,” Verona said.

“I’m not,” Lucy said, quiet.

Verona gave her a look, upset, even wounded.

“Because I care.  Because I want things to get better.”

“This might be one of those rare cases where I have even less trust in things than you do, Luce, sorry,” Verona said.  She stood up, facing them down with red-rimmed eyes.  “I don’t think it gets better.”

“Can we try?” Lucy asked.

“And I bail?  I go futz off for weeks, and you guys are left with this?  I miss out on the familiar ritual, of my super cool fellow nocturnal-type, and my super cool new friend?  I have to worry about you guys and if you’re healthy?  Worrying that I might get a call from Jas saying you’ve disappeared, do I have any idea where they could look for you?  Or Jasmine forgetting you exist like everyone did with Gabe?  Or something else!?”

“Maybe!  Trust us!  I trust you!  But you shouldn’t go back there!  Not if it screws you up as much as we saw today!”

“When I wasn’t doing super hot around the divorce and I was lying and stuff, the teachers notified people and they checked on my dad and I and they signed off and said everything was fine.  There’s no answer here where I can move in with you, Lucy!  That’s a whole process.  So you know what happens?  They’re either going to say my dad’s doing what he needs to do and they won’t pay attention to the other stuff-”

“Our parents can argue. Ave’s parents and my mom.  They can testify that it’s bad at home.”

“And it still takes time, and most probably, you know what probably happens?  Either they force me to stay with my mom, or my mom says she can’t take me and they send me off to foster care or some garbage, and I bet you, I bet, it’s not going to be foster care in Kennet.  And I get moved out.  Those are the options!  I stay with my dad, or I stay as a runaway-”

“Which would fuck my mom up, Ronnie.  She’d worry every day.”

“If the connection blockers broke.”

“You can’t- that’s almost as bad as becoming a cat, it’s a non-existence!”

“But it’s my preferred existence!  It’s what I want, it’s my happy medium where I get to the people I care about most-”

“And the people you care about less than most?  What about my mom?  I think you’d miss her.”

“There is no perfect answer!” Verona raised her voice.  “I stay with my dad, I stay as a cat or runaway, or I don’t stay, probably.  Your mom started out by asking what I wanted and it’d be real nice if you could do the same!”

There was a knock at the door.  Lucy’s response was cut off.

“It’s about what you need, Ron-”

“Come in,” Verona said, curt, cutting her off.

Lucy’s mom leaned in through the doorway.  “Everything okay?”

“Verona’s being a bonehead,” Lucy said.

“Lucy’s being a bigger bonehead,” Verona said.

Avery, sitting up with her back to the wall, looked around, and hugged the pillow to her chest.  “I agree that Verona needs a break from everything.”

“I really think so,” Lucy’s mom said.  She adjusted position, leaning against the wall by the door.

“But what happens after?” Lucy asked.

“We’ll consider options in the meantime,” Jasmine said.  “I’ll be in touch with Verona’s mom throughout their vacation, Connor is going to talk to Verona’s dad, and he’s going to make some calls.  We have weeks to figure it out.”

“I’m not accepting any option that means leaving Kennet,” Verona said.

“We have weeks to figure it out,” Lucy’s mom said.

“I’m not,” Verona said.  “No way, no how.”

“Verona.” Lucy leaned forward, stern.  “Hey, no.”

“We have weeks,” Lucy’s mom repeated.  “Verona wanted tomorrow morning to hang out with you guys.  So let’s… try not to fight too much.  Let Avery’s parents, Verona’s mom and me work out what options there are, and we’ll try to include Verona in the process where we can, okay?  Enjoy your day together, say your goodbyes.”

Lucy’s mom hesitated at the door.  “I could make you a separate bed, if it would help you sleep better tonight.  This conversation might be better to have after a good night’s sleep.”

Lucy leaned forward and reached for Verona’s hand.  Verona, sullen, didn’t budge at first, but eventually sat back down on the bed.

“No?” Lucy’s mom asked.

Verona crawled under the covers, still wearing her clothes, and Lucy hugged her, draping a sheet over her.

“Okay,” Lucy’s mom said.  “Knock on my door if you need anything.”

They lay there.  Lucy could feel the agitation of the argument radiating off of Verona.  She was sure she could see it with Sight if she tried, but she didn’t try.

“I can postpone my things, tomorrow,” Avery said.  “I can’t remember if that would gainsay me, but…”

“No way, no how,” Verona said, quiet.

“Come do Avery’s thing tomorrow?” Lucy asked.  “Then go with your mom?  We’ll figure things out after that.  Trust.”

Lucy’s eyes roved over posters, and she thought about music.  What she would put on now, to fit the mood, or to go to sleep to.  She didn’t want to dwell on the idea of weeks without Verona, or the absolute chaos that could be weeks with Verona, if things carried on this way.

“I’m glad you’re coming, Verona,” Avery said.  “I’m pretty nervous.  It should be pretty neat.”

“Yeah,” Verona replied.

“I’ll go with my mom.  And I’ll listen to the adults, hear them out, whatever.  I’ll think about things.  But if I decide I need to go a certain way, after, I don’t want to fight you.”

“Can we talk it out?  Make that decision with us?” Lucy asked.

“Okay,” Verona said.  “But I get the deciding vote.”