Table of Contents

Bonds 1.1

Bonds 1.2

Bonds 1.3

Bonds 1.4

Bonds 1.5

Bonds 1.6

Bonds 1.7

Gathered Pages: 1

Damages 2.1

Damages 2.2

Damages 2.3

Damages 2.4

Damages 2.5

Damages 2.6

Gathered Pages: 2

Damages 2.7

Histories (Arc 2)

Breach 3.1

Breach 3.2

Breach 3.3

Breach 3.4

Breach 3.5

Histories (Arc 3)

Collateral 4.1

Collateral 4.2

Collateral 4.3

Collateral 4.4

Collateral 4.5

Collateral 4.6

Collateral 4.7

Collateral 4.8

Collateral 4.9

Collateral 4.10

Collateral 4.11

Collateral 4.12

Gathered Pages: 4

Conviction 5.1

Conviction 5.2

Conviction 5.3

Conviction 5.4

Conviction 5.5

Conviction 5.6

Histories (Arc 5)

Subordination 6.1

Subordination 6.2

Subordination 6.3

Subordination 6.4

Subordination 6.5

Subordination 6.6

Subordination 6.7

Subordination 6.8

Subordination 6.9

Subordination 6.10

Subordination 6.12

Histories (Arc 6)

Void 7.1

Void 7.2

Void 7.3

Void 7.4

Void 7.5

Void 7.6

Void 7.7

Void 7.8

Void 7.9

Void 7.10

Void 7.11

Histories (Arc 7)

Signature 8.1

Signature 8.2

Signature 8.3

Signature 8.4

Signature 8.5

Signature 8.6

Signature 8.7

Null 9.1

Null 9.2

Null 9.3

Null 9.4

Null 9.5

Null 9.6

Histories 9

Mala Fide 10.1

Mala Fide 10.2

Mala Fide 10.3

Mala Fide 10.4

Mala Fide 10.5

Mala Fide 10.6

Mala Fide 10.7

Gathered Pages (Arc 10)

Malfeasance 11.1

Malfeasance 11.2

Malfeasance 11.3

Malfeasance 11.4

Malfeasance 11.5

Malfeasance 11.6

Malfeasance 11.7

Malfeasance 11.8

Malfeasance 11.9

Malfeasance 11.10

Malfeasance 11.11

Histories (Arc 11)

Duress 12.1

Duress 12.2

Duress 12.3

Duress 12.4

Duress 12.5

Duress 12.6

Duress 12.7

Duress 12.8

Histories (Arc 12)

Execution 13.1

Execution 13.2

Execution 13.3

Execution 13.4

Execution 13.5

Execution 13.6

Execution 13.7

Execution 13.8

Execution 13.9

Gathered Pages (Arc 13)

Sine Die 14.1

Sine Die 14.2

Sine Die 14.3

Sine Die 14.4

Sine Die 14.5

Sine Die 14.6

Sine Die 14.7

Sine Die 14.8

Sine Die 14.9

Sine Die 14.10

Histories (Arc 14)

Possession 15.1

Possession 15.2

Possession 15.3

Possession 15.4

Possession 15.5

Possession 15.6

Possession 15.7

Histories (Arc 15)

Judgment 16.1

Judgment 16.2

Judgment 16.3

Judgment 16.4

Judgment 16.5

Judgment 16.6

Judgment 16.7

Judgment 16.8

Judgment 16.9

Judgment 16.10

Judgment 16.11

Judgment 16.12

Judgment 16.13

Epilogue

Bonds 1.1

Damn me, damn them, damn it all.

There was a car, my parent’s or my uncle’s, no doubt, parked in the middle of the gates, at the foot of a long driveway, leading up to Hillsglade House.  Symbolic, really, of everything that had gone on for most of my life.  Symbolic of everything I had walked away from.

My uncle… I was guessing it was my uncle, had parked the car at the entrance of the driveway to force everyone else to find a place to park.

I looked down the length of the street.  The property was framed by a short stone wall, shoulder height, along with an elaborate iron fence of roughly the same height, shaped into curling vines with metal points at set intervals.  It had been covered in some black paint or coating, but rust and peeling paint made for a mottled texture.  ‘No parking’ signs, a good distance in every direction.  I was already regretting coming.  Damn me, I thought, not for the first or second time.

Further down the street, a few of the locals had stopped on a corner to talk.  Odd, how they kept looking at me.

Their eyes on my back, I pushed my motorcycle, guiding it through the gap between car and fence.  I set it on the lawn, leaning against the inside of the fence.

I wasn’t in a rush.  I had made promises to myself.  I wouldn’t get caught up in their tempo.  Taking my time, I removed my helmet, wiped the sweat from my forehead and scalp.  Putting my hands in my pockets to be sure I had my keys, I felt paper crumple.  I went through my pockets, sorting out the change, bills and receipts I’d hastily pocketed at a rest stop along the way

Procrastinating.

Looking up at the namesake hill, I could see the house.  Not big, but it drew attention because of the way it looked down on the two-theater podunk town.  It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t ominous.  Barring a slightly overgrown garden, trees that had grown well beyond the quaint, tidy little decorations they might have been when the house was built, and the railing, it was nothing more than a nice house.  I’d dated a wannabe-architect at one point, a brief-lived fling.  I didn’t remember much, but I didn’t feel confident labeling the place as Victorian.  Three stories, with a one-room tower standing one floor higher, off one corner.  Gray-painted wood siding, decorative ‘lace’ in carved wood beneath the eaves and around the railing on the porch, tall, narrow windows with open shutters.

I pulled off my jacket, then my sweatshirt.  Unlocking and lifting the seat of the motorcycle, I retrieved the shirt I had stowed away.  Leaving the other clothes behind, I buttoned up the shirt over a black t-shirt while I made my way up the driveway.

If my uncle had parked nearer to the house, he could have spared himself and his family the walk.  But no, the inconvenience he could pose to everyone else was apparently the top priority.  I wasn’t surprised.  I would have been stunned if there hadn’t been anything like this.

My boots were heavy on the floorboards of the porch as I approached the front door.  I stopped to wipe them on the doormat.  No ‘welcome’ was printed on the mat.  Instead, there were stencil images of roses and thorny stems, as well as the initials ‘R.D.T.’

It fit, somehow.  No consideration to the guests, only self-aggrandizement.

The door was unlocked.  I kicked off my boots and made my way past the front hallway and into the actual house, tucking my shirt into my jeans as I went.

My lingering impressions of the house were soon banished.  Only a house.  Books lined shelves in nearly every room with an available wall, some old with cracked spines, some new, recent bestsellers.  It was all sorted more like a library than a home, clearly by some arrangement of age and alphabetized.

Anachronistic.  That was a good word, to describe it.  Old and new.  A box of colorful cereal sat between the toaster and television in the kitchen, across from a small table with a crimson, lace-edged tablecloth.

A litterbox, with a toy.  Not a dirty litterbox, to look at it, which struck me as odd.  I couldn’t imagine my family had emptied it.  It didn’t fit them.

I reached the end of the hall, and I could hear voices from upstairs.  A crowd, angry, not shouting, but saying hard words, loaded words.  I sighed, putting my hands in my pockets, and made my way up.

Photographs.  Not a single family picture, I noticed.  Instead, there were pictures of nature, blue and green to contrast the dark-lacquered cherry floorboards and furniture, the burgundy curtains.  It made for a startling intensity, but it was jarring, overly saturated.

When I crested the top of the stairs, I saw them.  One family, divided into four factions, all dressed in black.

“Jesus fuck,” Paige said, her eyes going wide.

“The prodigal son returns,” Uncle Paul said.

That was the last coherent thing I made out before it devolved into a mess of bickering.

“Ten to one he needs the money for drugs.”

“If you want to talk about that sort of thing, Steph, we could talk about Ellie.”

“Fuck you, Irene,” Ellie practically spat the response at her aunt.  “You don’t know anything.  Uneducated bitch.”

Hard words, drawing lines in the sand, striving to establish new ground rules, to hold on to perceived advantages, to garner new ones, or strike at weak points.

For three years, I had been gone.  All of this, it had been going on when I left, and it was continuing now.

It never stopped.

Nine cousins, spread into three camps.  Uncle Paul, his ex-wife, and my Aunt Irene.

My Uncle Paul had a wealth of kids, four by his first wife, two by his second. The oldest of my cousins had a child of her own, while his youngest was twelve.  Six in all, with Paige and her twin brother Peter in the middle.  Those two would just be partway into college, I was pretty sure.

Paige looked like she wanted to approach me, but doing so meant getting between Uncle Paul and Aunt Irene, as they pointed fingers, digging at each other.

I tuned the words out.  It had been a while, but I knew this refrain already.

Aunt Irene had kids, but I only saw two.  Molly was close to me in age, and I’d known her well, once upon a time, but I hardly recognized her now.  She was so preoccupied she barely seemed to notice me, her fingers twisting into one another in her lap, her leg bouncing a nervous rhythm that her mom tried to still with a touch.  It seemed to be rubbing off on her little brother, who was looking equally anxious.  They all had brown hair, and Molly was paler than usual, and the black dress she wore only made it worse.

Uncle Paul’s family, his first wife Stephanie, my Aunt Irene, each with their respective kids.  Three groups, three factions.

The fourth group would be ‘mine’, for lack of a better word.  My cousin Paige had recognized me before they did.  My parents.

They approached, and I saw that my mom was holding a baby, swaddled in a blanket.  I wasn’t good at judging the ages of babies.  I’d left three years ago.

“Everything alright?” my father asked.

“S’alright,” I responded, not taking my eyes off the baby.

“You’re not in trouble?” my mother asked.

“No trouble,” I said.  “You’d be surprised.”

“Except for leaving to spend the night with friends and never coming back?” my dad asked.  I responded with a glare.   He changed the topic, “I can’t help but notice you got tattoos.”

I looked down.  The shadows of my tattoos were visible through the sleeves of my dress shirt.  I pressed my sleeve down so it was flat against my arm, making the tattoos, clear.  “Watercolor tattoos, by friends.  An artist friend I owe a lot to offered to outline them, another friend inked them.”

I had set rules for myself, to avoid getting caught up in this energy, yet I was baiting my father.  I could see him squirm, wanting to say something.  Question was, would he be willing to criticize the tattoos so soon after my homecoming?

“What?”  I asked.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” he said, with almost no affect.  “You know I never harbored any ill will.”

“I know you didn’t.”  I held my tongue before I added anything else.  That wasn’t ever the problem, was it?  I shrugged, my hands in my pockets, and looked at the baby.  “Who’s this?”

“Ivy,” my mother said.  “She’s one and a half.”

“Hi Ivy,” I said.  She responded by pressing her head against our mother’s shoulder.  “Busy soaking it all in, kiddo, so you have some good stories to tell your therapist, ten years down the line?”

“Blake,” my dad said, the word a warning.

Without looking away from Ivy, I kept my voice calm, the tone almost light, so the vibe wouldn’t upset her.  “How hard did you look, Dad?  Mom?  I got in touch with some of my old friends, you know.  Seeing what happened.  My friends, the only ones you actually called, said you stopped asking about me after a month.”

“You were almost an adult, and the police weren’t interested or helpful.  We called around, trying to figure out where you were staying, but nothing turned up.  I’m not sure what we were supposed to do.”

I smiled a little as Ivy reached out for my offered hand.  Her hand seized my index finger, and I wiggled it, ‘shaking’ her hand.  Besides, why devote any more attention to your son, when you could just start over?  Have that beautiful baby girl you wanted, right?

“You’re quiet,” my mother said.

“Nothing to say,” I said.  “Is it okay if I send Ivy some presents for the special occasions?  Birthdays, Christmas?”

“You don’t get to pick and choose,” my dad said.  “Family isn’t a halfway thing.”

“Nevermind, then.  If it’s one or the other, I’m out.  Again.”

“Blake!” my father said, raising his voice.

Ivy recoiled at the sudden shout, withdrawing her hand from my finger as her face screwed up.  Tears imminent.

Damn it.  It was too easy, to lash out, to retaliate, to get sucked into this atmosphere.

“Sorry, Dad.  Sorry, Mom.  My bad, Ivy,” I said, my voice soft.  I didn’t wait for a response.  I walked past them.

I stopped in my tracks as a door opened and Callan stepped out of the nearest room.  Aunt Irene’s eldest.  A man in white scrubs followed him.

“Ellie?” the man asked.

Callan was Irene’s eldest, second oldest of the cousins.  If Ellie followed after him, then they had to be going down the list, seeing the cousins in order of eldest to youngest.  I watched as Ellie stood, looking out of place and deeply uncomfortable in a dress that didn’t suit her.  Her eyes had thick eyeliner, her lips had lipstick too red for her complexion.  Her slouched posture and narrow, flat-chested figure evoked mental images of a weasel.  She was visibly nervous, but not in the same way Molly was.

The door wasn’t the hollow plywood door that you saw in most homes.  It was wooden, through and through, and it closed behind Ellie with a heavy thud.

“No kidding.  Blake?”  Callan asked, as I started to walk around him.

“Hey,” I responded.

“You’re wearing jeans?  Paint-covered jeans?  Now?”

I looked down at the jeans, the lap striped with narrow streaks in various colors, then met his eyes, shrugging.  “Doesn’t matter.”

“Why the hell did you come?” he asked.  “Most of us thought you were dead or something.”

“Got a call,” I said.  I glanced back at my parents.  The lawyer found me, alive and well, without much trouble.  “I was wondering how the family was doing, and figured this was maybe the last time we’d all be together.  Thought I’d check in, see how things were, say what needed to be said.”

“If you think you’re going to worm your way in-“

“If I was, do you think I’d be wearing these jeans?” I asked.  More exasperated than anything, I told him, “Fuck off, Callan.  Save your energy for attacking the others.  I’m a non-threat.  Promise.”

He scowled a little, then summarily fucked off.  He took a seat on the deacon’s bench, beside Molly.  His hand settled over hers, and he leaned over to murmur in her ear.

I made my way out of the small crowd that had gathered around that heavy wooden door.

Paige fell into step beside me as I walked to the end of the long hallway.  I stopped by the narrow window, where the dim light of the setting sun filtered between the curtains and through the sheers.

“Jesus fuck,” she said, for the second time.

“Hey, Paige.”

She reached out, arms extended for a hug, and I flinched.  I stepped back, and nearly knocked a picture off the wall behind me as I bumped into the wall.

She looked stricken.  Her arms dropped to her side.  Her hair was done up in a french braid, and she looked as comfortable in her clothing as her older sister hadn’t.  It was how she’d always been.  Prim, proper, preppy.  She was almost into her twenties, now, but I could see where she could easily be at home in the world of ties and pantsuits.

“No, I just-” I said. “I… reflex.”

I made myself reach out to hug her.  It was clumsy, not natural in the slightest.  Her head banged against my ear hard enough to be painful, her arms squeezed me in excessive care.

“What happened?” she whispered, as we parted.

I knew what she was asking, but I answered a different question instead.  “I didn’t see any reason to stay, so I left.”

“You ran away.”

“I always think of little kids leaving with a bundle on a stick, when I think of ‘running away’.”

I shrugged.  The shrug was getting to be habitual, to the point where I felt like my attempts to take all of this in stride were more acting than reality.

“Not a word, not a call?  I mean, I know we weren’t close, but I thought maybe you’d say something, let me know you were okay.”

“I didn’t make it hard to find me.  I figured I’d go back or whatever if anyone bothered enough to track me down.  But they didn’t, so I didn’t.”

“Did you go someplace, or…” she trailed off, as if afraid to broach another boundary, as she’d done with the sudden hug.

“I was on the streets, just for a bit.  It was worse than you’d think.  A bit ago I met people, and I got help.  I know how lucky I am, that I made it this far.”

It was odd, talking about it with someone who didn’t know the story already.

I could see a look in her eyes that I was familiar with.  Pity, but not quite pity.  An attempt at understanding that couldn’t succeed.  There was no explaining just how bad it had been without having to explain why I hadn’t gone home.  Pride, of an odd sort that drove someone down instead of raising them up.

To distract her, to end that inquisitive look, I commented, “I’m doing okay enough that I treated myself to my first big nonessential purchase.”

I had to lean against the wall, to angle myself so I could see it, leaning against the inside of the fence.  I pointed, then stepped out of the way.

“A bike?”

“And the license and insurance.  It’s about the shittiest, smallest, cheapest bike ever, and it’s used, but that doesn’t matter.  It’s mine.  What are you up to?  University?”

“Second year.  Business, hopefully law a bit down the road, if I can finagle it.”   She showed me her crossed fingers.

“You still keep in touch with the people from high school?  Shannon?  Miracle?”

“Mira.  She’s finally going by a different name.  No longer a testament to why immigrants shouldn’t let their kids choose their English names.  She still asks about you, you know?”

“At least someone did,” I said, smiling a little.

Paige looked like she was going to punch me, then stopped short.  Remembering the issue with the hug.  “I did, you jackass.  Fuck.”

Molly stood from the bench and approached us.

“Here we go,” Paige said.  She smiled, quirking her shoulders as she showed an uncharacteristic excitement.  A little bouncy, even.  “Us three, back together after… nine years?”

“Ten,” I said.

Paige was a year older than me, Molly a year younger.  We’d always hung out, back in the days when the family had gotten together.

Molly didn’t look happy, though.  She hugged her arms against her body.  She still looked almost ill.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I want this to be over,” Molly said.  She leaned against a doorframe.  A moment later, she stood, shifting position.  Restless.

“I remember how we used to make up stories about this place,” Paige said.  “Gruesome ones.”

“Yeah,” Molly said, hugging herself tighter.  “They weren’t all made up.  That bit about great-grandpa and great-grandma being related?”

I shivered a little.  “Thanks.  Thank you for that reminder.”

“The duel where one of our ancestors murdered someone?”  Molly asked.

“Killed,” Paige said.  “I don’t think it counts as murder if it’s during a duel.”

“Semantics,” Molly said.

“I love arguing semantics,” Paige said, smiling mischievously.  “Don’t get me started.”

The murmur of conversation further down the hallway dwindled.  Silence, and the sound of footsteps.

Ellie, making her exit.

“Paige and Peter,” the man in scrubs said.

Paige’s eyebrows went up.

“Lumped in with the twin,” I noted.

Paige forced a smile to her face.  “I’m a little terrified.  Here goes.  Wish me luck.”

“Paige,” Molly said.

Paige hesitated.

“Don’t.  I can’t explain it.  It would sound dumb if I did, but don’t take the offer.”

Paige frowned.

“Paige?”  the man in scrubs asked.  Peter was standing next to him.  Blond, like Paige, the same height and build, even the same general shape to his face.  But when Uncle Paul and Aunt Steph had split up, each one had taken one of the twins.  Peter was rougher-edged, at a glance, somehow older, and very much like Ellie, who had joined him in going to their mom, in how uncomfortable he looked in more formal clothes.

He and Paige entered together.

Molly and I were left alone, at the end of the hallway.  The volume of conversation in the hallway gradually rose.  Whispered words to allies, barbs directed at enemies.

When I spoke, my words were closer to a whisper, a murmur.  “Hey, Moll?  What’s going on?”

“Don’t know if you remember, or heard, but my mom moved us here.  So we’d be closer.   Trying to get an advantage.  So Callan, me and Chris, we’ve actually been here regularly.  Usually when mom invited herself over.”

“I figured it was something like that,” I said.

“I don’t think Callan really gets it, but he moved a few years in.  Chris and I have gone to school here.  There’s a vibe.  Too many things that don’t fit.  Strangers knowing who I am and not liking me right off the bat.  Does that make sense?”

“Sure.  It’s about the property.”

“More than the property.  It’s about old ladies glaring at me.  Kids going after Chris on the playground, and it’s too quick and too mean for me to feel like it makes any sense.  Feeling like I’m surrounded whenever I’m outside.  Like a third of the people around here have decided we’re their mortal enemies.”

I could remember my nights on the streets.  Finding a place to set up camp, out of anyone else’s way.  Even with the city lights, it was hard not to feel like danger was lurking just out of sight, waiting until my eyes were closed.  In quieter areas, where the glow of the city hadn’t been there, where deeper shadows could have hidden anything, the feeling had been all the more intense.

Twice, I’d even been right.  Both times, it had been people.  The worst types of people.  I still had scars.  Some were physical.

I could imagine how Molly might feel, facing a watered down version of the same situation.  Being bullied by a whole community, being somewhere where anyone could be hostile without the slightest provocation.  Being a focus, even.  I could remember the looks the people on the corner had given me as I’d pulled up.

“You are their mortal enemy, Molly.  We are.  It’s a small town, people obsess over the smallest things, and this is a big deal to people.  When you’re alone, feeling vulnerable to begin with, it’s scarier.  I don’t want to make it out to be less than it is-”

“That’s not what I mean,” she interrupted.

“It’s… what it is, Molly.  Trust me.  Small communities have done scary stuff before, with little rhyme or reason.  You’re spooked, you have a reason to be spooked.  It’s legit.  But don’t lose sight of the issue at the root of this whole business.”

She looked so abjectly miserable, standing there, restless, nervous.

“It’s almost over,” I tried to reassure her.

“I’m-” she started, then she stopped.  She glanced back.  “I’m going to go sit.  I need to get my head clear before my turn comes up.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m really glad you’re okay, Blake,” she said.  She managed a smile.

“Thanks,” I responded.

I watched her make her way back to her seat.

Damn them.  Damn it all.

I could feel the anger stirring, again.  Anger at my uncle and aunts, at my parents, at everything here.

It got worse instead of better, as I waited.

When the door opened and both Paige and Peter stepped out, the arguing started right away.

“Fuck you, Peter.  Fuck you!” Paige said.  Even from the far end of the hallway, there were tears in her eyes.

Peter smirked.  “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

“You don’t know anything, you asshole.  Fuck you!  I needed this.”

“Ellie needs it more.”

“Ellie needs it because she’s a fuckup that hasn’t worked a day in her life.  I’m trying to go to school, Peter!  You make up lies, to sink me?  You’re supposed to be my twin!”

Her voice went a little shrill at the end there.

“What?  You thought I’d be on your side?  You only need money because Paul had too many kids to take care of any of them.  Isn’t that right, Dad?”

“I think you and Ellie have demonstrated you aren’t worth the effort,” Uncle Paul said, his voice low.  He’d approached Paige, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder.

She stepped away, instead.  She was crying, now.  “I thought you’d at least play fair, Peter.  Maybe you have to be loyal to Ellie because you grew up with her, but I thought you’d be fair, with me.  We’re supposed to have a connection.”

“You hear about twins eating one another in the womb,” Peter said.  “Maybe I got some of your brains, huh?  Because that’s fucking stupid.”

Paige stared at him, incredulous.  Then she slapped him, hard.

It was the catalyst for this entire thing to become a full-on fight.  Not sniping one another, not lacing casual statements with words meant to cut.  Shouting, Aunt Steph trying to grab Paige, and Paige ducking out of reach, running instead.

I was already running, myself, trying to catch up.

The man in scrubs, the bystander, stepped in, getting in my way.  He bellowed a single word.  “Stop!”

All fell momentarily silent.  There was only the sound of Paige’s feet hitting the stairs as she made her way down.

I made my way through the group, and Molly did too.

“Molly,” the man at the door said.  “She’s asking for you next.”

Molly and I both stopped.  She looked paler than before.

Paige was emotionally wounded, Molly deathly afraid.

All of the rest of them, too, bristling, on edge.

“It’s my turn,” I said.  “I’m Blake Thorburn.  Go after Paige, Molly.  I don’t think I’ll be long.”

“Cutting in, Blake?”  Callan asked.  “I think you were lying, about not wanting any of this.”

I gave him the finger.  When I looked, Molly gave me a nod, before breaking into a run to chase Paige.

The man in scrubs ducked behind the door to say something, then reappeared.  “She says it’s fine, Blake.”

I made my way into the bedroom, and the door slammed shut behind me, more because of the weight of the solid wood than any intention on my part.

Grandmother doesn’t look like someone who’s about to die.   The room smelled of flowers and fresh air, from the windows that opened just above the garden.

She had been propped up in a sitting position in her bed, leaning against an arrangement of pillows.  She was dressed in an old fashioned nightgown that extended to her broomstick-thin wrists, her hair tied back in a tight bun.  Her eyes were sharp as they studied me, and her hands were steady as they raised a teacup to her lips.  Her nurse stood to her left in his scrubs, her lawyer to her right was an Indian man in an immaculate suit.  Her cat, maybe the largest housecat I’d ever seen, gray and well groomed, lay with its head in her lap.

She studied me, judging me, with a cool, calculating gaze.

“Well, this is refreshing,” she finally said.  Her voice was clear.  Not an old person’s voice.  Certainly not a ninety-year old’s.  “It feels like all the rest of them are dressed like they can’t wait for my funeral.  Or maybe they’re too cheap to buy two outfits for the occasion.”

“With all due respect,” I said, picking my words carefully, “I don’t give a flying fuck, you disgusting, evil, rancid cunt.”

I could see the nurse tense, though the lawyer didn’t react.  The feigned politeness disappeared from my grandmother’s face.  Again, she raised the teacup to her mouth to sip from it.  She handed it to the nurse, who turned away very reluctantly, to prepare another cup on the trolley beneath the window.

“Are you done?” she asked.

“I’m thinking both of us are very lucky you have these two men here,” I said.  I put one of my feet up on the wooden chest at the foot of the bed, pointing at the trolley.  “Because I’m angry enough I wouldn’t be above throwing that pitcher of water in your face.”

“I think that’s crude,” she said.  “A more civilized person would use words to attack me.”

“What words are going to matter?  What am I going to say that’s going to make an impact on you?  Honestly, what am I going to do that’s going to make you recognize even an iota of the pain you’ve caused everyone out there?”

“And the pain I’ve caused you?” she asked.  “You’re most likely right, I suppose.  There’s very little that someone could say that would shake me.”

“You don’t deserve to die with dignity, you bitch,” I said.  “And none of them are going to say it, because you’re playing them.  Since I’m the only one that doesn’t give a fuck about the money, I figure I’m the only one that can come here and say it how it is.  You’re scum, and you’re the one thing at the root of everything that’s going on out there.”

I pointed at the door.  I could almost hear the shouting on the other side.

“I would argue they are at the roots of their individual problems.  I didn’t make them petty, I didn’t make them greedy,” she said.  She sighed a little.  “This ridiculous money business.”

“You took advantage of those things, making all of this one big fucked up game.  Laying down the rule, that only one person gets the property and the millions from selling it.  Then you say it has to be a grandchild-“

“My children are useless,” she said.  She was so dismissive and casual about it.

“-And then you drop the bomb that it has to be a girl.  You broke up this family, you did it strategically.  You set us tooth and nail against one another, and now you’re enjoying tearing the others down, ruining their hopes.”

She sniffed, but she smiled.  I almost wanted to hit her.  I wouldn’t, but I wanted to.

The nurse handed her the cup of tea.  She smiled up at him.  “Thank you, Rich.”

‘Rich’ turned my way.  “I can offer you a cup as well, if you promise not to throw it at her.”

“Don’t offer me anything, then, thank you,” I said.  I looked at my grandmother.  “I don’t want anything she has to offer.  Not tea, not the inheritance-“

“To clarify,” she said, “I’ve stressed repeatedly that it’s a female grandchild that will get the inheritance.”

“I’m not about to rule out the fact that you’re messing with us, grandmother.  I could see you handing something over to Callan just to see our reactions.  Not to mention the trouble I’m having with the ‘I’m dying’ bit, which you’re doing a really bad job of selling.”

If anything I’d said had an impact, it was that.  I could see the faint amusement drop away from her.  “Are you accusing me of being a liar, Master Blake?”

I’d never heard anyone say something archly, but she pulled it off.  She even said ‘Master Blake’ like it was nothing, as though she used titles as a matter of habit.

“I’m saying there isn’t anything I’d put past you.”

She sighed, a faint sound, and her cat reacted to the movement.  “Close to the truth, I admit, but I consider myself honest, if nothing else.”

“Weren’t you a lawyer?”

“I am a lawyer, Master Blake, and I expect to be one until I pass on.  I’m disappointed that you would make assumptions about a whole profession.”

I didn’t have a ready reply to that.  I glanced at the nurse, who was shifting from foot to foot nervously.  Was he uncomfortable with the friction?

“Well,” she said, “I take it you’re not going to apologize?”

“You first,” I told her.  “It’s going to take you a while, so you should start early.”

She sipped her tea, winced at the heat, licking her thin lips with her tongue, and then leaned back against the arrangement of pillows.

“You remind me of my father,” she said.  “He had passion, and an interest in justice.”

“He also fucked his cousin, if I remember right.”

She smiled a little.  “You heard of that?  Yes.  That would be him.”

“What are you doing, Grandmother?  You want to build a rapport?  Form a connection, when you’ve ignored us from the beginning?”

“I only want to understand my grandchildren before I make my decision.”

“Too bad.  You’re not going to figure us out in the next day or so.  What you should do is sell the property.  Let the town knock down the house, level the hill, drain the marshland and expand like they need to, make them happy.  Split the money between your kids and grandkids, make us happy.  You want to light a fire under everyone and get a reaction?  That’s how you do it.  Then, maybe just a bit, you’ll earn a measure of forgiveness.”

“Not an option,” she said.  She stroked the cat, scratching him at the lowest part of his back, just in front of his tail.  “The house stands.  I’m picking the young lady who I feel can look after it.”

“Then pick Paige,” I said.  “She’s smart, she’s hard working, she’s independent.  If you’re looking for a clone of yourself to inherit the place, to look after it, I’m betting she’ll fit the bill pretty well.  She’s not a bitch, but I imagine you’ll have to make some concessions.  Besides, if anyone can squeeze a few dollars out of this stone, without breaking the rules you set, it’s her.  Get bribes from people, maybe, or figure out a way to keep the house while still draining the marsh, so she can go to law school.”

“Paige is out of the running,” my grandmother said.  “Who else?”

I stared at her.  Brushing aside an argument, just like that.

“You’re enjoying this.  Playing us,” I finally said.

“I wouldn’t recommend jumping to conclusions, Blake.  Dangerous business.”

“Look me in the eye, then, if you’re so honest, and tell me you don’t.  That you don’t get some measure of glee or satisfaction out of this.”

She looked me square in the eye.

Yet she didn’t say a word.

“Thought so,” I said.  “Bye, grandmother.  When you do die, I hope it sucks.”

I turned to leave.

“Blake,” she said.

I stopped, my hand on the doorknob.  I regretted it the moment I paused.

“When you first spoke to me, you said, ‘All due respect’.  Did you mean it?”

I didn’t look at her.  “All due respect, you’re a festering old cunt?  One hundred percent.”

That said, I opened the door, and I slammed it behind me with enough force that pictures rattled on the walls.

My family was there, staring.

“If anyone needs me,” I said, very deliberately looking at Paige and Molly, who were standing together at the edge of the group, Molly’s arm around Paige’s shoulders.  “I’m going to be outside, by the entrance.”

I made my way out of the house, down the long driveway, and settled with my back to the wall beside my bike.

I couldn’t bring myself to nap.  A good night’s sleep in my place with the doors and windows firmly locked was hard enough.  But I dozed, my eyes half open, a bit of a burden lifted from my shoulders.

■

It was well after dark when someone stepped outside to talk to me.  I closed out of the puzzle game I was playing on my phone.  The brightness of the screen made for a dark patch that lingered in my vision as I looked up.

Eleven-fifty at night.

“She wants us all together,” Paige said.

“Do you want to give her what she wants?” I asked, not moving.

“I’d really like some backup,” she said.  All of her confidence from before was gone.  “If it’s Molly that’s picked, then I can’t get the support from her, you know?”

“I know,” I said.  I stood, stretching.  I was pretty sure that I’d feel stiffness in a spot or two tomorrow.  “No explanation needed.  I get it.”

“Thanks,” she said.

When I turned to look, the streets were empty.  Odd, that I’d felt like we were being observed.  No doubt the entire town was waiting to hear how this played out.

We made our way back up the driveway.  I wished I had an idea of what to say, but nothing sprung to mind.  Paige was too much of a stranger, in some ways.  Three years was a long time.

This time, everyone had gathered in the bedroom.

Paige and I joined Molly.  Paige and Molly held hands.

“I have to say, I’m painfully disappointed,” my grandmother said.

Nobody had words to reply.

“Don’t worry.  The feeling is mutual,” I said, because someone had to.

My aunts and uncle, along with several of the older cousins, stared at me.

“Molly,” my grandmother said.

“No,” Molly responded.

“Until you’re twenty-five, the estate and all materials herein, my accounts, and all other pertinent materials enclosed in the documents,” my grandmother tapped the papers the lawyer held, “will be managed by Mr. Beasley and his firm.  For that time period, you retain control over those assets, with free access to the full funds, modest as they are, and full access to all things relating to the property, excepting the ability to sell it.  When you turn twenty-five, you may do with it as you wish.”

“I don’t want it,” Molly said, stepping forward.

“Molly!  Don’t be rash!” Aunt Irene admonished her.

“I don’t want it,” Molly said, again.  She grabbed the footboard of the bed.  “No.“

“Molly, don’t be silly.”

“If you don’t want any of it, then you remain free to ignore it,” my grandmother said.  “Mr. Beasley?  Is everything in order?  Provisos, follow-up?”

“Everything’s signed and arranged.”

My grandmother nodded.  “Rich, you’ve been wonderful.  I set aside some money already, to thank you.”

The nurse looked stunned.  He looked at my family.  “No.  It’s not allowed.”

“I insist.  Take it and give it to a favorite charity, if you must.”

Even then, he looked a little taken aback.

He probably thinks my family’s going to come after him if he accepts.

She probably plotted this.  Hurting us by favoring the nurse over us.

“If Molly doesn’t want it, I’ll take it,” Callan said.  “She can sign over the rights-“

“Fuck you,” Ellie said.

“Granny?  Why didn’t you pick me?”  Little Roxanne piped up.  The youngest, next to my new baby sister Ivy.

I felt Paige clutch my hand tight.

“You okay?” I murmured.

Grim, her mouth set in a line, eyes on the floor, Paige nodded.

“Granny!” Roxanne raised her voice, more than a little shrill.  “You don’t love me enough to give me anything?”

So that was her angle.  Everyone was making a play, and the youngest of the grandchildren that could speak was making the ‘sweetheart’ play.  Or the entitled brat play, depending on perspective.  Misdirected, considering who my grandmother was, but that hardly mattered now.

My grandmother hadn’t reacted.  I frowned.

“Blake?” my dad asked.  “Where are you staying tonight?”

“Going home,” I said.

“If you wanted to have a late dinner and stay over-“

“No,” I said.  “I don’t want that.”

“Alright,” he said.

I watched as the nurse approached the bedside.  He touched my grandmother’s hand.

Things went quiet very quickly.

Nurse Rich looked at his watch.  “Two past twelve.”

The arguing had distracted him.  The time was off by two minutes.

My grandmother and her cat were both dead.

“I need to go make a phone call,” the nurse said.  He strode from the room.

Silence followed, broken only by the footsteps of the nurse in the hallway, and the shuffling of papers as the lawyer put things away in a messenger bag.

“Listen,” my uncle said, broaching the near-silence.  “We should have a sit down, talk about the sale of the property, when the time comes, a division of the funds-“

Aunt Irene barked out a laugh.  “Oh, now you talk about dividing up the proceeds?  I seem to recall, only a few hours ago, that you told me it wouldn’t work.”

More arguing, more stupidity.

Why had I told myself it would be over?

“Get out,” Molly said, her voice hard.

“You heard my daughter,” Aunt Irene said.  “Out.  It’s her house and her say.”

“You too,” Molly said.  “Everyone out.”

Aunt Irene looked shocked at that.  Uncle Paul, for his part, smirked.

When I had talked to a friend about what I’d hoped to say, she’d asked me if I’d regret not saying goodbye.  Now, in the aftermath of my grandmother’s passing, I felt anger more than regret, along with a wish that I’d spent a little more time swearing at her.

So much needless stupidity.

“She can’t kick us out,” Uncle Paul said.  “We were invited here.”

“I could call the authorities, Miss Thorburn,” the lawyer suggested.  “For the time being, I’m at your service.”

“There wouldn’t be a point,” Uncle Paul said.

“Just go,” Molly said.  “Go.  You’re not going to scheme your way into any deals here.  You’re not going to get some advantage or screw me out of my deal.  Not tonight.  I’m done talking, I’m done listening.  Go, and leave me alone, and when you’ve figured out a plan of attack, run it by my lawyer first.  Not me.”

Slowly, the aunts and uncles, my mother and father, and the various grandchildren filtered out of the room.

Paige squeezed my hand, and then broke contact, leaving the room.

“Molly,” I said.  “Hey.”

She looked up at me.  She looked spooked, even now.  Pale, vaguely ill.  Almost as if she were in shock.

“Why is the cat dead?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  Maybe it was dead all along, and she was fucking with us.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Listen, Molly, family’s supposed to support each other.  I figured I’d offer some support.  I don’t have anywhere to be, no obligations.  If you’re worried about locals giving you a hard time, whatever you need, I can stick around.”

“Uh huh,” Callan said, from the doorway.  “Clever bastard.  You don’t want the property.  You want to scheme your way in with whoever else gets the place.”

“Fuck off, Callan,” I said.

But I could see the expression on Molly’s face change.

Doubt.  Only a little doubt.

“I don’t want to deal with any of this.  With any of that.  Of this.”

“Okay,” I said.  “The lawyer has my number.  Ask him, get in touch, anything you need.  Okay?  Please?”

She nodded.

I was the last one to leave.  Molly followed me down, and stood in awkward silence as I pulled on my boots.

“Bye,” I said.  “Good seeing you.”

“Bye, Blake.” she said.

The door swung shut.  My view of her and the lawyer in the background narrowing, then disappearing entirely.

I made my way down the path.  My Uncle’s car pulled out, and I saw the younger kids in the windows, staring at me.

I stopped short as I saw my bike.

Tipped over in a way that had scraped it hard against the stone wall.  Headlight and taillight broken.

Trying to think of whether I had seen any garages nearby, or whether they’d even be open at this hour, I started the agonizingly slow journey to downtown Jacob’s Bell.

■

Four months later.

I tossed and turned in my bed, fighting to kick the covers off.  It didn’t help.  I felt a pressure on top of me, pressing me down.  My movements were sluggish.

I was supposed to be asleep, but this relentless weight pressing in on me from every direction had dragged me from that rest, and it hadn’t quite brought me to the point of being awake.

I opened my eyes, and I didn’t see my bedroom.  I could feel my body in one place, sheets still hooked over one foot, my chest heaving, and I could see in another place.

Glances were exchanged down both lengths of the table.  On one side, women and girls of varying ages, all blonde, in matching shades of green, white and blue.  On the other, appearances varied.  Men and women, old and young.  Hair color and appearance varied, but there was little doubt they were a family.

“Huh,” the man at the one end of the table said.  A member of the family.  “I’d hoped she would slip in her old age.  A shame, she made other arrangements.”

The blonde woman opposite him folded her hands in front of her.  “That was… noteworthy in scale.  Kind of her to point the way, but she was never crude.  We’ll need to know what she did before we move on.”

“Agreed,” the man said.  He opened a pocketwatch, glancing inside.  “For now, let it be.  There is enough at stake here that someone is bound to make a play.”

The blonde woman nodded.  She turned her attention to the pair on either side of her, a blonde girl and a dark haired boy.  reaching out for their hands.  “I believe we were talk about wedding plans?”

I realized I’d been holding my breath, trying not to be heard.  When I did breathe, it was a small gasp, not enough to bring air into my lungs.

I closed my eyes, trying to shut it out.  When I opened them, I saw a room, everything turned to a right angle.  A house, messy, with pizza boxes and garbage here and there.  Two twenty-something individuals, a boy and a girl, approached, getting so close their faces filled the field of vision.

A lurch, and the view was righted.

“The metronome?”

“Something big just happened,” the girl said.  “Told you.  Just now, I told you.”

“You’ve been ‘telling’ me for a while now.  This doesn’t mean we should do anything.”

“You’ve got no balls, no balls.  We should investigate, and, just to be safe, we should investigate with weapons in hand.”

“I don’t- no, Eva.  This is dangerous, and-”

“And what?  We should ignore it all?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“So are we, little brother.  So are we,” she said.  She opened the ledge beneath the living room window, hefting a crossbow.  She threw it at him.

“Fuck!” he shouted.  “Eva!”

“It’s not loaded, dink,” she said.  She picked up a revolver, then spun the chamber.  “What should we bring?  Silver bullets, inscribed bullets, incendiary bullets…”

“Cold-forged iron,” he responded, a little sullen.  “Bone.  Paper.  Every other follows different rule.  What looks like a goblin could be a demon, or a wraith, or a glamour.  I mean, you remember those ‘vampires’ from out west.”

“The faerie?  Sure.”

“You’re not getting what I’m saying.  If they can fool themselves into thinking they’re vampires, and believe it to the point it becomes sort of true, sparkly skin aside, then they can fool us.  This is what bothers me about all this.  You can’t make any guarantees, you can’t slap on convenient labels.  It’s why we call them others.  You can’t plot-”

“We can try.  And if we can murder self-deluding faerie, we can murder whatever this is.”

“Even if it’s human?”

“You’re supposed to be the smart one in this partnership.  Anything that can knock the metronome over isn’t human anymore, or it won’t be for long.  Let’s assume I’m going out anyways, what do I need?”

He sat down, leaning back, and sighed heavily.  “Bring everything?  Might as well bring me.”

“Now we’re talking,” Eva said, smiling.

I turned my head, and gripped the mattress.  Like someone trying to come up for air, I pushed myself to an upright position.  Still, I couldn’t see.  When my vision started to clarify, it was a third location, outdoors this time.

“What the drat was that?” A girl asked.  She stood in the snowy field, her checkered scarf frozen hard where the moisture of her breath had crusted it and solidified.  “It felt like something moved.”

“Someone moved,” a young man responded.  “Come on, now.  You know better.  Everything has a price when you’re dealing with this world, Maggie.  Even answers to stupid questions.”

“Right.  Thanks,” she said.  “I’ll figure it out myself, Padraic.  I hope it’s a noob.  Be nice to not be the rookie on the block.”

“Funny thing, Maggie,” Padraic said, and when he smiled, the expression extended further than it should have.  The smile too wide, the eyes too long and narrow.  “When something momentous occurs, it can be the equivalent of lighting up the night sky, scattering fog and clouds to the horizons.  You can see more clearly… but when you look, they can look back, too.”

Maggie went stiff.  “They’re watching.  And listening.  Darn it.  Now I’m going to have to do something.”

“I’ll give you that one for free.  It was worth it, to see that expression on your face.”

He reached out, to touch her face, and she slapped his hand aside, hard.  The small impact banished the scene.

There was no relief before I saw a fourth picture.

A girl or a woman, swaddled in winter clothes.  Shouting, pointing.

The individual on the receiving end was a rabbit, sitting on a snow-covered rock.

The rabbit turned, and the girl turned to look in the same direction.

Bending down, she reached through the snow until she found a stone.  She threw it right for the center of the ‘image’, breaking the ‘picture’.

Another, quickly after the last.  They were starting easier and finishing easier.

A weathered aboriginal woman, brushing a young girl’s hair with a broad-toothed comb.  It might have been an ordinary scene, except it was the dead of night.

She picked up a chain, then shackled the girl at the wrist.  She noted the observer, then scattered the image with a wave of one hand.

And now a man, sitting on a throne, a tall, long-nosed, long-haired dog at his side.  The room at the top of the tower was subject to strong winds, and his long hair blew as the dog’s did.

A still scene, quiet, the visions slowly stopping.

Below him, the small village sprawled.  Jacob’s Bell.  Except things were different.  A twisted reflection of the buildings, with embellishments and decorations.  Arches, steepled roofs, pointed roofs that curled and bent in zig-zags.  All lit up in crimson sunset.

The other scenes had been at night.

The dog looked up.  It spoke, “Johannes.”

“Mm,” the man in the throne said.  “‘Lo, stranger.  Listen, I don’t think you should believe what any of them say about me.  If you need help, I can offer it.”

“For a price,” the dog added.

“For a price.  Resist the urge to dismiss what you just saw, you’re in a bad enough situation as it stands.  Now do yourself a favor and wake up.”

I did.  I was sitting on the edge of my bed now, panting, gasping.

That feeling Molly had described, four months ago?  Being surrounded?  I could feel it.  It was as bad as the strangeness of the visions.  Or whatever those things were.  Had I been drugged?  Poisoned?  Was I ill?

My hands were shaking.  If they’d belonged to someone else, I would have thought they were acting, it looked so exaggerated.  Impulsively, I looked over my shoulder.  Nobody and nothing in my studio apartment.  No hallucinations, no strangers, nothing to explain.

I felt like I had when I had been homeless, sleeping under the bridge, where there weren’t any lights to break up the oppressive darkness.

Resist the urge to dismiss what you just saw.

I stood up from bed, staggering for the bathroom.  I stopped, the tremor in my hands gone.  Every inch the startled prey animal, where a sudden crisis leads to utter stillness.

My heartbeat felt slow, my gaze was no longer darting here and there.  I was making eye contact.

It wasn’t my face in the mirror above the sink.  Nor my body.  A girl looked at me, her forehead creased in worry.  She was wearing a camisole and pyjama bottoms.  She looked strangely familiar.

I had to touch my own chest and face to verify it wasn’t my reflection.  I was shirtless, wearing different pants.  Her movements didn’t follow mine.

Instead, her fist struck the other side of the mirror.  When she spoke, it was only a little muffled.

“Run,” she said.  “Get to the house, now.”

“Which house?  Who-”

“Molly’s dead,” she said.  “You’re next.”

The conviction in her voice left me with no doubt she was telling the truth.

My voice was thin as I responded.  “Molly’s dead?  She was supposed to call if there was trouble.”

“Blake, I get it.  I do.  But you’re next, understand?  Grandmother made other arrangements, and those arrangements just came into play.  The house is in your custody now, and so are all of Grandmother’s enemies.  Understand?  She has a lot.  The house is sanctuary, Blake.  Molly died because she panicked, and she left the safe ground.  Don’t make that same mistake.  Move.  Run.”

“But-”

“Run!”  She hit the mirror, and it cracked from the point of impact.  Pieces on my end fell, landing on the countertop and sink.

I ran.

About                                                                                           Next Chapter

Bonds 1.2

I was dressed and heading out the door in less than a minute, a plain black toque pulled over my hair.  I had to fumble around for a moment to manage the coat I was getting on, the backpack I’d stuffed with spare shirts, sweaters and underwear, and the keys I needed to lock my apartment.

I reached the stairwell and took the stairs three at a time, descending each half-flight of stairs in two steps.

Mirror people, visions of talking dogs and stretched faces, vampire hunters or witch hunters or whatever they were.  It was unbelievable, impossible to wrap my head around.  So I didn’t believe it, didn’t try to understand it.  I didn’t disbelieve it either.  I was processing it, really, filing it all away for future consideration.

It was stupid, maybe, crazy, to dismiss it.  By all right, my worldview should have been turned upside down by this.

Except other things were taking a kind of priority, demanding consideration, turning my life upside down.

Molly was dead.  I’d heard it, and I believed it.  Taken alone, the statement might have meant little, but I’d had an ominous feeling since leaving the inheritance gathering.  Right here, right now, I felt like it fit.  I didn’t want it to, but it fit.

The gathering had been the first time I had seen Molly since we were kids.  I could barely guess what she was like now, as a near-adult.

What she had been like, as an almost adult.  I felt a twist of worry, and a fair bit of anger.  Why hadn’t she called me?

For all the impact my family had had on my life, there were very few people I had ever had a connection with.  I had never been mistreated, exactly, but there hadn’t been a lot of love to go around either.  Molly and Paige had been the ones to greet me with smiles on their faces, to hug me instead of offering an informal handshake.  We’d played together, laughed, and bridged the gap between being family to being friends.

When I thought of Molly, I thought of the child she had been ten years ago, not the young woman I’d briefly met at the end of the summer.  When I reminded myself that she could well be dead, I felt like I’d lost something from a relatively small pool of happy family memories.

I reached the bottom of the stairwell, and as I hurried down the length of the hallway, past the elevators that would have taken too long to use, I was still trying to frame it all in my head.

Molly’s death wouldn’t have been random.  There had been a reason, and that reason had driven my grandmother to do what she’d done.  All of the fallout from that, the divide in the family, the animosity that had driven me from home to a cold, hostile, unfriendly world, shared that same root cause.  It was hard to pin how much of my haste was self preservation and how much was my desire to get answers.

Molly was dead.  I believed it.  I could figure it out, I could get the world in alignment again, so things made sense.

If it was even possible for things to make sense with talking animals and twisted mirror-cities.

I stopped at the doors at the end of the lobby, paused, then knocked.

It took time for the door to open.  I worked on getting my scarf on and making sure my backpack was buckled shut, keys stowed away.

The door opened, and my bear of a landlord stood in the way, leveling a stare at me.  He wore an undershirt that strained across his stomach, and pyjama pants with pink and magenta stripes, with thick-frame glasses and thick caterpillar eyebrows on an otherwise hairless, unadorned head.

“Blake?  It’s five in the morning.”  He had a trace of a Quebecois accent.

“Joel.  It’s an emergency.  I need your car.”

“Yeah?”  He switched from annoyance to concern in an instant.  “Need a ride?”

“Out of town emergency.  I’ve got to steal your car for a bit.  Please.”

“How long?” he asked, turning away from the door.

I could see the mirror that was opposite the front door, wide and tall, with an ostentatious frame.  The mirror girl was on the other side, staring at me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He turned back to me, holding keys firmly in his fist.  His bulk blocked my view of the girl in the mirror.  “Work with me here, Blake.  I need something, if I’m loaning you my car.”

“I don’t know,” I repeated myself.  “But I’ve got to go, I can’t ride my bike in this weather, and there isn’t any other way to get there.  I’m stuck, and I don’t know how to handle this.”

“Slow down.  What happened?”

“I think my cousin died.  It’s two hours away, so if you needed the car, I could bring it back in a pinch, figure a way to get back, or-”

“Shhh,” he interrupted me.  I made myself stop.  Very calm, soothing, he said, “It’s fine.  I’m so sorry about your cousin, baby.”

I shrugged, breaking eye contact.  I wasn’t good with people being kind to me.  Not without some warning.  “I’m not sure it’s true.  It doesn’t make sense.”

“Go, do what you need to do,” he said.  He extended his hand, keys dangling from the ring that was now around his middle finger.

I took the keys, then fumbled with my own.  I held my bike key for a moment, weighing it in my hand, then handed it over.

“You don’t need to,” Joel said.

“I do,” I said.  “For me, as much as for you.  I’m- it’ll make sure I don’t forget your car back to you soon, because I’ll miss it, and that’ll remind me.”

He nodded, then took my key.  “I got you.”

“Thank you, Joel,” I said.

“You have my number, if you need it.”

I nodded.  “You’re a good friend.”

“Speaking of… weren’t you going to set things up for Goosh’s show?”

I winced.  My job.  “I didn’t think.  I don’t- shit.”

“It’s fine.  I’ll explain to the others.  We’ll use the Sisters.”

“Goosh told me she wanted to kill them, the last time she hired them.”

“She’ll find a way to cope, after I explain what’s up.  Don’t worry.  You focus on what you need to, and trust us to have your back.  Okay?”

I nodded.

“There’s a hug here if you want or need it.”

I hesitated, but he knew that I would.

The lights went out.  We were plunged into darkness, the hallway and lobby lit only by the moonlight that reflected off the snow.

I could see movement behind Joel.  The girl in the mirror, moving her arms.

“Power outage?” he asked, stepping further into the hallway to look around.

“Looks like,” I said.  My eyes were on the mirror.  If he turned around, would he see her?

“I should go make sure everything’s okay,” he said.  “Might be the breaker.”

The girl in the mirror raised her arms.  Forearms crossed against one another, forming an ‘x’.

“Do me another huge favor?” I asked.

“What’s that?” Joel replied.

When he looked at me, I had trouble meeting his eyes.  I wasn’t used to omitting the truth when dealing with friends.  “Go back to bed.  Sleep.  I’ve got a bad feeling, and I’m not sure if it’s just because I feel like you’ll never get back to bed if you go now or if it’s something else.  But I’ve got to go, and I feel like I’d be a lot happier if I knew you were in bed, instead of wandering around a dark building alone.”

“Gut feeling?” he asked.  “That’s not like you.”

“Gut feeling,” I said.  “Instincts.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Sure.  For your instincts, I’ll be lazy this morning.  Until I get the first irate phone call.”

I nodded.  Then I accepted his offer for a hug, reaching out.  He folded his arms around me, warm.

The girl in the mirror looked nervous, pacing back and forth, occasionally peering around, as if she could get a different perspective.  A moment later, she strode out of view, stepping beyond the boundaries of the frame.

I took that as my cue to go.  As I broke the hug, Joel rubbed his hand over the toque and then gave me a little push, an urging to get going.

I got going.

His car was in the garage, a few steps away, through a heavy door.  I hit the button to raise the big garage door, and watched as the wall of snow that the wind had driven against the door tipped over, breaking into chunks as it hit the damp pavement.

I unlocked Joel’s Corolla, a car old enough that the only way to open the door was to actually put the key in the lock, and then stopped.

I moved the rear-view mirror until I had a view of the girl in the back seat.

“Answers,” I said.

“Go, and I’ll give you answers,” she responded.  She sounded even fainter and more muffled than before.  “You think the lights went out by coincidence?”

If I went, I’d get answers from her.  I’d get answers from the house, about Molly…

Answers were good.  I took a second to familiarize myself with both the car and with cars in general, where things were and how to operate the things.

In moments, both me and the car were traveling down the near-empty streets.

“Okay,” she said.

“Your name?”

“Rose.”

“Rose… who are you supposed to be?  My grandmother?”

“No.  I think I’m you.  Your- our parents named me after her.”

I was silent, taking that in.

“I know I’m supposed to say something witty here, make a quip, but I’m barely thinking straight,” I said.

“I’m you, with one fundamental difference,” Rose elaborated.  “I’m a girl.  I think grandmother is trying to game the system somehow.  A failsafe or trap or something, that kicks in when Molly dies and the inheritance turns over.”

The reminder of Molly’s death was a slap in the face.  “How did you know, that Molly’s dead?”

“That’s complicated.”

“Two hour drive, Rose.  We have time for a complicated explanation.”

“Not the time consuming kind of complicated.  This stuff was explained to me.  I crashed into existence, with only a few places I could go.  I’ve got a lifetime of memories, but I get that I’m a fake.  If I were real, I wouldn’t be sitting here, surrounded by an awful lot of darkness.  I’d have a proper heartbeat, instead of this slow motion thump every few seconds, staying the same even when I’m freaked out.  I see a bit of a glimmer of an outline here or there, where the light’s really strong on your end.  But there aren’t many places I can go, Blake.  Patches of light, where light passes through the mirrors.  Only the mirrors in the house, and the mirrors around you count.”

I glanced up at the rear view mirror.  She looked upset, her knees drawn up to her chin, feet on the seat in front of her.  Was she cold, sitting there in pyjama pants and a camisole, barefoot in a car where my breath fogged up?  Or were the lack of breath and response to the temperature the same as her heartbeat?  Something false or simplified?

I couldn’t look at her for too long, given the need to focus on the road.  I pulled onto the highway, double and then triple checking there weren’t any cars coming.

Rose kept talking.  “The lawyer, Beasley, he was cleaning up.  Picking up books and stuff that Molly left lying around.  When I asked what was going on, he said you were next in line, for custody of the house.  After you, it’s Kathy, then Ellie, then Roxanne, then Ivy, then Paige.”

“Paige is last?”  I asked.  Okay, I got that maybe Kathryn would fit.  She was a mom, a professional.  A serious personality.  Maybe a bit cutthroat, but I could get that.

“Paige is last,” she said.

Placing the two and twelve year old in the list before Paige?  Placing me in the running?

“Doesn’t make sense,” I said.

“Yeah.  I don’t know.  I didn’t stay for explanations.  Depending on how things went, he said, we could run down that list really quickly.  He said it depends on how fast people can get to the house, and how fast they can get to grips with all this.  He said I should find you, and I found you.”

Far less in the way of answers than I’d hoped for.

I drove in silence for a few minutes.

The answers only raised more questions.  How did Paige fit into this?  How did I fit into it?  Most confusing of all… Rose.

“What I’m wondering is… you,” I said.

“I’m wondering about me too,” she said.  “Trust me, if you’re wondering if I’m suspicious, if there’s a catch here, I’m wondering too.”

“How do your memories line up?  Molly got picked, but… you were at the house?”

“I was home, with mom and dad.  They’re mad, you know, obviously, because I didn’t get Hillsglade House, and they thought it was as close to a given as you could get.  Mad at me, especially.  I was in bed, mostly asleep, and then I was at the house.  I remember everything about my life, but I don’t feel like I experienced any of it.  You know?”

“Not really,” I said.  I watched the tail lights of a truck ahead of me disappearing into the snowy fog, further down the arrow-straight highway.  I was driving slower, because I didn’t have much winter driving experience, and I didn’t want to total Joel’s car.  Noting a silence that had followed my response, I tried to keep the discussion going.  “You still live with mom and dad?”

“While I’m going to school,” she said.

“You didn’t leave?”

“No.  Why?  When did you move out?”

Move out.  She didn’t know about me leaving home.

“A bit ago,” I said, noncommittal.  No use volunteering unnecessary information.

What’s the magic loophole?

If Rose was a failsafe, who or what was it trying to work around?  If it was a trap, then who was the supposed victim?  Was there an enemy?  Or was it a trap aimed at me?

Was there a chance this was all a lie?

I could wonder if I was losing my mind, but… I felt lucid.

While that wasn’t a guarantee I was sane, I knew, but I felt lucid, and it was hard to sell myself the idea that I was insane, if there weren’t any clear symptoms.

I was seeing things, but having two points of reference would have made it a lot easier, giving me a kind of perspective on it all.

My hands were clutching the wheel so hard that it was painful.  I had to consciously will myself to relax.

“Rose, talk to me,” I said.  “There isn’t nearly enough information to piece things together, and I’m not going to make it through this drive if I’ve only got my own worries and paranoia to fill the time.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“You seemed to know something was up, with the power going out.”

“There was a presence.  Like… almost as if there was a patch of something lighter in the darkness, or a sound I could barely hear, or a movement of the air, here, where the air doesn’t move at all.  Something was there.”

Something.

“This isn’t helping the paranoia,” I said.

“I’m not any happier,” she said.  “If something chases us, you can run.  Where can I run?  There isn’t much room, on this side.”

“Yet you broke the mirror.  Speaking of, how did you know you could break it?”

“I didn’t.  That was an accident, and I wish I hadn’t done it.  It hurt, and I feel drained, and I feel tired.  It took something out of me, doing that, and I’m not sure I have that much to give.”

“Rose, are you understanding what I’m getting at?  There’s a few things here that aren’t making sense.  Crazy hallucinations or whatever else.”

“You had the visions too?”

“Rose,” I said, speaking a little firmer, to keep her on track.  “The more time I have to think about all this, the less I feel like I can trust you.  How did you know how to get from the light at the house to me?  Considering that this all supposedly started less than an hour ago, you’re picking it up pretty damn fast.”

“It’s not- no.  Blake, the lawyer told me to go.  He pointed in a direction, and told me to take a leap of faith if I wanted to help you.  I did what he said, and now I’m here.  I’m jumping from mirror to mirror, and I’m worried I’m going to jump and I’ll miss, and I’m not sure what happens when I do.”

“You left out that part,” I said.  “About him telling you how to jump.  That’s context I could have used.”

“I’m not your enemy, here,” she said, and her voice was harder, angrier.

If I was planning to press the subject, the plan had to go on hold.

I saw a figure standing in the middle of the highway, in the distance.

I slowed the car.

“What is it?” Rose asked.

It was a person, tall, dressed in a long cloak or layered garment of some sort.  Right in the middle of the road.  The cloth had been white to begin with, it looked like, but it was badly stained.  He –or she– wore a mask or a helmet shaped like an overlarge bird’s skull, with a pair of antlers.

I didn’t have a lot of time to take it in.  Even though I was driving slowly, even though I was slowing down, I was closing the distance.  I didn’t want to stop, but…

I turned to go around, giving the white thing as much clearance as I could.  It stayed where it was, standing in place.  There were no other cars on the highway, coming or going.  Woods on one side, field on the other.  Not that I could see all that far.  Snow flurries made vision past a point a little difficult.

“I can feel it,” Rose said.  When I glanced up, she was looking over one shoulder.  “I can see it, almost, standing between the patches of light.”

We flew past it.  I could see its head turn to follow us.  The drape it wore had no sleeves.  It wore hides, almost white, except where the slush and dirt had marred it.

I had to move the rearview mirror to get a better view of it as we left it behind.

A sign of things to come?  A harbinger?

My heart was pounding.

“What was that?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  Something wearing a bird skull mask and tanned skins.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked, with a note of panic in her voice.

What am I going to do, you mean, I thought.  You’re on the other side of a mirror.

“It’s gone,” I said.

“What?  No.  No it isn’t,” she answered.  Panic was now highlighted by confusion, incredulity.  “It’s close.”

I looked back, but the figure was nearly impossible to make out against the backdrop of falling snow.

“We left it behind,” I said, firmer.

“You got close, and it latched on,” Rose said.  “Believe me on this.”

Again, I turned around, trying to see where it might have done so.  Nothing outside the windows, nothing in the mirrors.

When I returned my attention to the road, my eyes darting up to the mirror, she insisted, “It did.  It still feels like it’s here.”

I set my jaw.  What was I supposed to do if it was?  If it could reach out and grab the car with some invisible hand, or if there was something screwed up going on, then what options did I really have?

I didn’t have weapons.  I didn’t have much of anything.  Even information was scarce.  How was I supposed to label the bird skull thing?

It was only when I settled down, returning my attention to the drive ahead of me, that I saw the trouble.

The fuel gauge was dropping steadily.

It had been three quarters of the way full when I’d started driving.  Now it was at the twenty percent mark.

The orange needle dropped faster with every passing second.

It had latched on, but not physically.  Something else.

“The car’s dying,” I said.

“Gas station?” Rose asked.

“There’s a rest stop,” I said.  “Restaurants, gas, bathrooms, stores.  I think that’s what the sign said it was two kilometers away.  Might be a bit further.”

Ten percent.

“Can you make it?”

Eight percent.

“No,” I said.  “Not with the car.”

I watched as the needle stopped descending.  No further to go.

The car shuddered, and the gas pedal quit on me.  I saw the lights on the dash and the radio dim, then go out entirely.

I switched to neutral, hoping to coast, but there was nothing.  I pulled over, instead.  I tried to activate the hazard lights.  No luck.

When I got my cell phone, a cheap non-smart phone, I found it dark.

I saw one car zip by on the other side of the divider.  I hopped out, flailing my arms, but it was useless.  Too little, too late.

“Guess I’m walking,” I said.  I drummed the steering wheel for a second, thinking.  In front and behind me, the snow looked a pale blue in the moonlight, broken up by the dark shapes of trees.  Here and there, the street lights tinted things orange.  The road was a stripe of black in the gloom.

“Bring a mirror,” Rose said.  “Please.”

I looked around.  Nothing.  Joel kept a neat car.  Aside from an abundance of paperwork in the drive compartment, and between the front and passenger seats, it was tidy, and tidy meant it was easy to see there wasn’t anything like that nearby.

“Sorry, Joel,” I said.  I reached up to grab the rear view mirror.  There were tabs I needed to depress.  I had to pull off my gloves to get a good grip.  I fumbled with it some more.

“Blake,” Rose said.  “Blake!”

I moved the mirror to look at her, and saw her pointing.

I turned.

Behind us, beyond a point where the snow obscured the road, I saw the dim orange of the street light flicker, then die, swallowed up by the swirl of white.

“No time to get the mirror, Rose,” I said.  I made sure I had the other essentials.  Hat, scarf, gloves, backpack, coat…

“Break it off?”

I reached up and pulled.  It didn’t budge.  I hit it with the side of my arm, with no more effect.

“I can’t,” I said.

“You cannot leave me here!”  There was a note of hysteria in her voice.

I pulled out my cell phone.  An older model I could slide open to get at the keyboard.  The screen was scuffed badly from sitting in my pockets alongside change and my keys.  “Does this work?  There’s a reflection in the screen.”

“No,” she said.  “Barely anything coming through”

I hesitated, then used my bag, looping the strap around the mirror.  I hauled down with almost all of my weight.

It snapped off.

“Good,” I said.  “With me?”

“With you,” she said.

I hopped out of the car, heading into the back seat to search for anything I could use.  There were a pair of skates, a bag laid out flat with a suit inside, clearly Joel’s.  When I lifted up the panel at the back of the car, I found the spare tire and a slot for the tire iron.  I grabbed the iron.

I left the car behind, pausing one second to lock it, and then got moving.  I maintained a speed that was faster than an ordinary walk, not quite a jog.  Busy walking, I jammed the mirror in the front pocket of my coat, so one end stuck out.  My hands went in my pockets, one end of the tire iron finding the inside pocket, the length resting against my forearm.   I hunched over to help shield my face with the collar of my coat, preparing.  Conserving strength, conserving heat.

I was a fast walker.  Two kilometers… that was about twenty minutes?

I didn’t want to go so fast that I’d have to stop before I got to shelter.  So long as I kept moving, I was warm.  When I stopped, the cold would set in.  Twenty minutes of brisk walking.

When I finally broke and glanced back, I saw there were less lights than before.   The thing was following me.  I couldn’t be sure of the speed it was moving, given how it was out of sight.  I couldn’t tell, either, if it was catching up.

“Talk to me, Rose,” I mumbled, past my scarf and the collar of my coat.  “Can you feel it getting closer?”

There was no reply.  I drew my free hand from the pocket and pulled the mirror free.

Fat, wet flakes of snow had clustered against the surface.  With one hand, I rubbed it against my thigh.

Beads of water still obscured the surface.

“Rose?”  I tried.

There was no response.  Already, the mirror was fogging up from the momentary warmth and the moisture.

If the cell phone hadn’t worked because it was scuffed, then this might be having the same problems.  I needed a clear reflection, apparently.

I picked up the pace a little.  I placed the mirror inside my coat, in the slot where I was supposed to stick my phone.  Closer to my body, warmer, where my shirt and the pocket could maybe dry off the moisture.  The ‘arm’ of the mirror rubbed against my chest as I marched.

The snow that had piled up at the edge of the road, before the ditch that divided the highway from the nearby fields meant I had to walk out on the road itself.  Walking through the snow would slow me down, and I needed speed.  I was in a dangerous position, ready to be clipped by a car in the cruising lane.

My heart thudded in my chest.  A short walk, I reassured myself.

I looked back, to look for cars, and to see the thing’s progress.

It was close enough for me to make it out.  It was making long, powerful strides, at a speed I couldn’t have maintained without risking collapse.  The hides it wore flew out to the side as the legs moved, but I couldn’t make out the legs themselves.

I pushed myself a fraction faster, but I knew it wasn’t quite enough to make a difference.

Still, there were no cars on the road.  I needed one passerby.  One person to stop and offer me a lift.

Except I couldn’t be sure it would work.  They might find themselves running out of gas in some inexplicable manner.  Then the good Samaritan would be caught up in this.

I glanced back.  It was closer, closing the distance with every step.

The wind picked up, and I had to close my eyes in the face of the headwind.  There were tears in my eyes when I opened them.  Totally the wind.  My army surplus boots squeaked against the soft snow and crunched against the harder snow as I marched.

I heard a fluttering noise.  Turning to look, I saw that one of the flaps of hide were whipping around in the wind.  The footsteps, by contrast, were nearly silent.  No squeaks, no crunches, no cracks of ice being broken or scuffs of salt and pavement underfoot.

It was close enough for me to hear.

Better now than never.  I turned around, drawing out the tire iron.

“Fine!” I roared the words against the wind.  I drew the tire iron from my pocket, gripping it with gloved hands.  I could feel how cold the metal was.  “You want me!?”

It closed the distance.  Two feet taller than me, and I was a notch taller than average.  The point of the giant bird mask came dangerously close as I swung the tire iron, bending my legs as I swung low, to strike it in the knee.

I had only a moment to register the fact that it wasn’t reacting before it drew a hand out of the layered covering of hides.  A mitt of a hand, gray-skinned, with knobby knuckles, and fingernails that were just long enough they were starting to curl, almost rectangular.  Dirty, uneven, frayed.

I swung again, a two-handed grip on the iron, aiming for the hand.

I might as well have struck another tire iron, for all it mattered.  The weapon bounced off the hand, the hand was knocked back, and then it clawed at my face.  I twisted partially away, keeping it from getting my eyes, and felt the pain in my cheek, instead.  I backed away, and my scarf stayed.  Caught in the ragged ends of the nails.

The wind was cold against my face as I backed up.  I started to head back in the direction of the rest stop, but the thing circled around me, moving past me, until it was positioned to cut me off.

My scarf was caught by the wind, flapping mercilessly, until it tore free, disappearing over the dividing line of the highway.

I raised the tire iron again, drawing closer.  It, in turn, drew one arm out from beneath the hides.  I drew back a step, and it kept the hand out a moment before returning it to shelter.

“Rose,” I spoke, “Hey, Rose.  You gotta help me out here.”

The mirror was silent.

I backed away, and it moved, approaching with long strides that covered the distance with surprising speed.

I stopped, and it stopped.

“Don’t want me to go to the rest stop,” I murmured.  There was a hitch in my voice.  “Don’t want me to go back to the car.  Where am I supposed to go?  This way?”

I checked the way was clear, then took a step out onto the highway.  It reacted, but only barely.  Tensing.  When I took another step, it followed.  Letting me go, but not letting me escape.

“No way,” I said.  Taking a step to the side, so I was as off the road as I could get without standing in the snowbank.  “I get what you’re after.  You want me to get hit by a car or something.”

The thing remained silent.  Waiting.  The perfectly round eye sockets stared at me.

I swung, aiming for surprise, directing the iron at the skull.

It caught the iron mid-swing.  I tried to wrench the weapon free and failed.

Another hand emerged from beneath the hides.  I had to let go of the weapon and back away before it could claw at me.

It took a half-step forward to follow.  It dropped the tire iron onto the road, where the snow muffled the sound.

Standing still, waiting for this thing to make a move, I could feel my legs getting colder.  I wasn’t wearing long johns.  Boxer briefs and jeans, leaving my legs as the least covered part of my body.  The cold highlighted the tension in my legs, where my earlier pace had stressed muscles I tended to leave unused.

“How does this end, then?” I asked.  “We wait out here by the side of the road until I freeze to death?”

I paced, watching how it followed.  The knobby, long-fingered hand came out as I drew too close.

There was a hint of hysteria in my voice as I spoke, “Can’t go forward, can’t go back.  I won’t go left.   Will you let me go right?”

I edged towards the snowbank, to test.  A ditch, then fields.  The strong wind had blown the worst of the snow away.  It wouldn’t be too deep.

I took another step.  It moved to follow, though it let me create a bit of distance.

Slowly, I climbed over the snowbank.  It continued to let me build up a bit of distance.

I hit the ditch, where some stubborn tall grass stuck up here and there, and hopped over the shallowest part, where the wind had driven snow off of the ice that had frozen in the recess.

The hop hadn’t inspired a sudden attack.  Briefly turning my back, too, seemed like it was fairly safe.

That in mind, when I found flat ground under my feet again, I ran.

The field was flat, the ground hard, and the snow only ankle deep.  The deep treads of my boots gave me the traction I needed to find my pace.  When the spaces filled up with snow, the snow-on-snow traction was still sufficient for me to maintain a good pace.

I slipped, but my other foot was already coming forward.  I felt a twang in my back as I used the leg to thrust myself back up to a fully upright position.  I wasn’t unfamiliar with the feeling.  I’d feel it tomorrow, if I made it that long.

A quick glance back indicated it was following with those same long, steady strides as before.  Running was letting me create some distance.

Across the field, away from the highway, away from the car and the rest stop.

I was fully aware of what was going on.  I knew it was intentional, and that this was as good a way of having me die in a perfectly plausible manner as keeping me in the middle of the highway, where a car could clip me.

Thing was, I’d never been able to sit still while under stress.  I couldn’t bring myself to stand beside the side of the road and get cold.

Fear was taking my breathing and heartbeat up a few notches, which was hurting more than it was helping.  There was a frantic note to my breathing as I panted, my legs ached, and my thoughts were a jumble.

“Rose,” I gasped out the name.  I fumbled for the mirror, but my hands were frozen.  I got a grip on the bar that was supposed to fix the mirror to the ceiling and pulled it out.

“-here.”

Her voice was faint, tiny, and muffled, cutting off as though someone had reached out to muffle her.

Not someone, but something.   Fog, again, had clouded the mirror.  I wiped it with my glove.  I saw only a momentary glimpse of her.

Letting it get damp, then letting it get warm, both were mucking it up.  I held it, letting it cool off, and tried to keep it facing down, so snow wouldn’t settle on the surface.

I kept running.  I prayed for a side street, a side road, a house.  Shelter.  Something to indicate I wouldn’t keep running into the wilderness until I could no longer move.  The snow got deeper as I approached tree cover, where the wind wasn’t as strong.  My pace began to slow, with nothing of import in sight.

I could feel a sick feeling in my gut, a combination of fear, despair, and the exhaustion of running.

I saw a figure up ahead, through the tree cover.

A quick glance back showed me the other one was still following.  Closing the gap.

“Hello!” I called out, and I was surprised at how hoarse my voice was, my throat made raw by the heavy breathing of frozen, dry air.  “Help me!”

The figure pushed through the cover of branches.

A bird skull, a covering of overlapping hides, bleached white and stained, and a heavy wreath of branches around the neck and shoulders, like a nest.

I stopped in my tracks.  When I took in my surroundings, my vision swam, struggling to make the adjustment from the narrow focus on where I was going and where my feet were landing to the broader environment.

There, in the distance, in a gap between neat rows of trees.  A third, with the hides forming a hood over the bird skull.  Shorter than the others.

I turned to head for the widest gap I could make out, and they all moved, not to close the distance to me, but to cut me off.  The calf-deep snow didn’t slow them down.  Even if it did, they had a longer stride, and they weren’t getting tired.

I pushed on, moving towards the gap, forcing myself to run.  They continued to follow, but I made it between the ones with the antlers and the wreath.

Backtracking, almost.  I needed to devote a second to getting my bearings, but I had to keep running.

“Rose,” I said.

I heard only a whisper of a noise.  I wiped the mirror against the side of my leg, mid-run.

I came face to face with another of the bird-skulls, not looking carefully enough for the white skull and white hides against the snowy background.  It clawed at me, backhanded, and dashed the mirror out of my hands.  I fell, a result of the combined impact, pain and surprise, landing just beside the flecks of blood he’d clawed from my hand.  My glove was cut, the skin around it exposed, and a line of blood was nestled in the center.  Bewildered, I watched as the skin parted and joined together, as I opened and closed my hand.

The wind blew, and I heard the flapping of the hides moving.  Others were drawing closer.

The one that had just attacked me wore cords strung between hides, each with a long, narrow bone hanging from it.

The others were approaching, with some coming from a distance.  All around me, there were clusters of evergreens, branches hanging heavy with ice and snow, and there were patches of grass.  One clearing, where a pond had frozen over.

Slowly, I made my way to my feet.

I tested different directions, to see how they would react.

This time, they weren’t keen on letting me move towards any open ground.  Clusters of trees, the pond, and areas where the snow had piled higher.

The pond, then.  I made my way over, my wounded hand pressed to my chest by my other hand.

No mirror, no Rose.

Frozen earth crunched under my boots as I made my way to the frozen pond.  Every footstep hurt.

Were they wanting me to try to cross?  Was that the plan?

I sat by the bank instead.

I looked at the bird masks that had gathered formed a loose three-quarter circle around me.

“This okay with you bastards?” I asked.  “Can I sit?  You like this?”

The hides flapped in the wind.

“Motherfuckers,” I said.  I moved my hands up to my armpits, squishing them beneath my arms.  I could feel the pain in my wounded hand.  My cheek felt tight where I’d been scratched.

I kicked at the ice on the pond.  Methodical, careful strikes delivered with the heels of my boots, to break up the surface.

It took a good fifteen hits before the cracks spread.

I used the toe of my boot to flip one large, two-inch thick piece of ice out of the way.

“Please tell me reflections in water work too.”

“Yeah,” she responded.

“You see them?”

“Yeah.”

“I went to a lot of trouble to talk to you,” I said, trying to ignore the looming individuals who were standing behind me.  “I need more than one word answers.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re not in immediate danger.  You’re not in pain, I hope.  They’re after me, not you.  So I’m hoping you’re thinking a little clearer than I am.”

“Not- not really.”

I sighed.

A minute passed.  I could feel the chill creeping in.

“I don’t think they’ve got brains in those skulls,” I said.  “Someone gave them orders.”

“Makes sense.  Who?”

“Does it matter?  I think those orders are why they’re behaving this way.  Barring my path to keep me from certain areas.  Driving me away from shelter, wearing me out.”

“They want plausible deaths.”

“Yeah.  Newspaper runs an article on page seven about the poor  idiot who broke down by the side of the highway, wandered into the middle lane and got hit, or got lost in the woods.  No mention of eerily patient bird-masked antler horrors.  They interview my landlord, he mentions I was acting funny, and cousin Kathryn is the one who wakes up with spooky visions, a few hours later.”

“Go for an implausible death?”

“Not sure how I’m supposed to do that,” I said.  I sighed, and my teeth chattered as the air passed through my lips.  “All I can figure is they don’t want to claw me to death.”

“Molly was clawed to death,” Rose said.

I closed my eyes.

“They don’t want to kill two of us the same way,” she said.  “Molly was partially eaten, too, but I don’t think these guys are the type.”

“You can see them?”

“End of the pond,” she said.  “There’s a reflection.”

I looked.

Another one had joined the ranks at some point, where I hadn’t been looking.  Taller than the others, with two more bird skulls worn on sloped shoulders.  He stood on the ice.

I bowed my head again.  “How many?”

“No idea.”

“Is this where everything ends for me, Rose?  Do I die here, an ignoble death, with the mantle passing to Kathryn?  Do you carry on?”

“As a ghost?”

“As a whatever.”

“I don’t know.  I think I’m bound to you, somehow.”

“Right,” I said.

I forced myself to my feet.  I was shaking, now.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I’m not,” I said.  “I just hate sitting still.”

“You need a plan.”

“Any fucking ideas?” I asked.

There was no response.

I moved, and they moved as well.  Organizing, spreading out.  I backed up, and they advanced.

I sat down again, regretting it instantly.  Standing would be harder.

The three-masked one slowly removed one mask from its shoulder.

It dawned on me.

That mask was going to be mine.

My mind warred with my body.  Every last part of me hated to sit still, was restless in the face of stress.  But my body was starting to give up.

I was so tired, I felt like I had gone two straight days without sleep.

“No glimmers of light nearby?”

“Not really.”

“Define really.”

“I see patches of light.  I think… even regular surfaces, they reflect light to some degree.”

“Sure.  Listen, what I need to know is… which direction do I run?”

“Run?”

“I’ll take a guess, if you have to give me one, Rose.  Just lie convincingly.  I’ll lose heart if I don’t buy it.”

“Your three o’clock,” she said.

Nothing more.  No details.  No explanation on why it was the right direction.

Right.

I needed to run, but there weren’t any meaningful gaps, now.

If I assumed these things were stupid, that they were programmed or strictly following orders… if they’d been ordered not to hurt me unless it was in retaliation or because there was no other way to get past me…

I looked back at the one that stood on the ice.

Slowly, carefully, I stepped back onto the frozen pond.

The ice cracked.  I drenched one boot.  It was waterproof enough that only a trace of the freezing water touched my foot.

Too close to the break I’d made to talk to Rose.

“Blake?”

I circled around a bit further.  The bird-masks  at the leftmost edge began to take longer strides, to move around and cut me off.

This time, I stepped onto the ice with care, a distance from the break I’d made before.

I backed up, towards the one with three masks on the far end of the pond.

I watched as others stepped forward, maintaining a roughly even distance.  I saw as the one with the wreath avoided the crack in the ice.

Each step was a careful one as I made my way towards the middle of the pond.  I transferred my weight with care, doing my best to avoid putting too much weight on one point at once.  The three-masked one moved to cut me off, keeping me on the ice.

I heard the faintest cracking sounds.  Around me, not them.

I made a beeline straight for three-masks.

I saw the hands come out.

Woman’s hands, oddly enough, with flecks of nail polish still on one.  Wizened, worn, abused, with bits of nail splintered off where they had maybe scraped violently against something.

The faint cracking sound intensified.  The stress of my weight was going to break the ice right beneath me.

Right.

I ran, and the ones behind me ran to follow.

The ice didn’t break beneath them.  My heart sank.

I collided head-on with three-masks, and felt her stab at my shoulders through my coat, clawing through fabric with no heed for her own well being.  Frenzied, violent and noisy after the almost tranquil quiet.

I broke away, as best as I could, and she followed.  I tried to find a path that would get her to back off, give me two seconds, and she refused to give it to me.

Up until I stepped onto the ice at the edge and it broke, soaking my boot.  This time, it lapped around the skin at my calf, soaking my jeans.  A glance back verified the others had stopped when I had started fighting.

Three-masks began stalking around, cutting off my retreat.

I didn’t care.  Reaching down, I grabbed a snow-covered rock the size of my head, heaving at it.  It was half-frozen into the earth.  Prying it loose put it into the water, forcing me to get my uninjured hand wet to pick it up.

In one motion, full-body, I managed to heave it about three feet.  I watched it bounce off the ice and slide, uselessly, towards the middle of the spread out bird-masks.

It lay there for a good ten seconds before the ice broke.  I watched as the things plunged into the water.

Leaving me with only two to deal with.

I ran, fueled by desperation.

I ran, fueled by the adrenaline that pain was dumping into my body.  Through shock and fear.  Nothing conserved, nothing saved.

Thick trees tore at me, costing me my toque.  My frozen hand and foot were throbbing, now, and my injured hand was so cold I couldn’t open my fist.

Every footstep hurt, and the only thing that kept me putting one foot in front of the other was the idea that one more of those things might appear to bar my way if I slowed down in the slightest.

I found the end of the trees.  A strip of snow.  A line of road.

Squat, short buildings, and a sign reading ‘truck inspection area’.

Headlights flared in my field of vision, blindingly bright.

I staggered forward, collapsing onto my hands and knees.  I could hear a vehicle’s door open.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.  If they came-

But there was nothing.  The wind stirred swirls of snow across the road,

“Good god, man,” a deep voice said.  “What the hell did you get yourself into?”

I thought about explaining, about the others.  I’d sound crazy.

I thought about making an excuse, saying I was chased by some delinquent kids.  It would get the police involved, and it would delay me.

“Car broke down,” I said, a little numb.  “I thought I’d take a shortcut, got turned around.  I- I- panicked.  I started running and got hurt.”

“We’ll get you an ambulance, not to worry.”

“No.  No, it’s not as bad as it looks.  I’d be embarrassed,” I lied.  I wasn’t sure where things stood.  If they came after me while I was in the hospital, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk, let alone run.

“You look nearly dead.”

“I need to warm up.  That’s all.”

I glanced over my shoulder, nervously.  The things still hadn’t made an appearance.  They should have caught up by now.

“If I don’t get you to a hospital, and you die-”

“I’m not going to die,” I said, not sure if I was lying.  “Drop me off at the rest stop, I’ll warm up and get food.  I’ll hitch a ride to where I need to be.”

“If you’re positive,” he said.  “I don’t want you haunting me or anything, and I don’t want lawsuits either.  I don’t make that much money.”

He nodded.  “Sure, then.  You need help getting up?”

“Just a bit,” I admitted.

We made our way around, and I climbed up into the passenger seat.  The heating was already on, and I held my hands out to warm them.

Looking out through the windshield, I could see a trace of pink in the sky.

Was that a rule, here?  No monsters after sunrise, or no monsters when others could see?

The truck pulled away, moving down the long road.  I could see the rear half of the rest stop creeping into my vision.

I made eye contact with Rose, in the side-view mirror.

She looked drained, haggard.  Almost worse than I did.

She’d broken the mirror, and it had taken something out of her.  To look this drained… she’d broken the ice, or she’d helped it along.  A bit of an extra push.

The truck driver circled the long way around, pulling into the eighteen-wheeler’s spot for the rest stop.  We climbed out and made our way to the shop opening, where employees were setting up at the fast food places.

As the truck driver talked to some employees, negotiating a way to get me to my stop, I saw a man in the corner with an oddly crooked stance, leaning against the wall as if his limbs wouldn’t hold him up, the whites of his eyes too white as he tracked us with his gaze.  Staying out of the way, almost out of sight.

We’d have a relatively safe way to the house, soon enough.  We couldn’t get there fast enough, for the shelter or the answers we could find there.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Bonds 1.3

It was hard to sum up my feelings as the van drove up the long driveway to Hillsglade House.  It was supposed to be sanctuary, but it felt like the opposite.  Layered in snow, branches of the overlarge trees bent with snow and ice, the house was pale against a dark gray background.  The light siding only accented the effect.  If I closed my eyes enough to let my eyelashes blur the view, it looked almost like the windows were floating there.

It was ominous, and it was a symbol of everything messed-up that had just happened to me.  Maybe all the bad things that had happened to me from the start.

“You going to be alright?” the woman in the driver’s seat asked me.  She had a weariness to her that made me suspect she’d been getting up too early for the majority of her life, but she had been kind and exceedingly gentle, and her idle questions and conversation had helped ground me, distracting me from the possibility that the bird things could catch up and stop this car like they had mine.  With the snow, it looked to be a slow day at the rest stop, and she’d asked her boss if she could give me a ride.

“I don’t know.  Probably not,” I said, honestly.  I felt indescribably weary, and it had little to do with the exhausting run or the fact that I’d woken up four hours after I’d turned in.  Rose, in the rear-view mirror, didn’t look any better than I felt.  I fished for my wallet.  “But that doesn’t have much to do with my getting lost in the woods, or a few scratches.”

“No money, it’s not necessary,” she said, as I pulled a twenty out of the wallet.

“For the cost of gas,” I said.

“I did it to get out of the prep work, that’s enough for me.”

“Then buy yourself and your boss a few beers after you’re done for the day, tell him thank you for letting you drive me,” I said.  I tucked the bill into the cluttered space in the dash, by receipts, crackers and kleenex packages.  Before she could give it back or argue, I opened the door and grabbed my bag.

I was closing the door when she said something.  I had to open it and poke my head down.  “Sorry?”

“Do you want me to wait, make sure you make it inside okay?”

Could I make it inside?  I didn’t have a key, and there was the possibility that something could happen to me in the distance between here and the house.

“Yes please,” I said.

I closed the car door, making my way up to the front of the house.  There was something like a bike lock attached, with a container built into it.  Four digit combination.

I kicked at the doormat until I found a plastic bag with a thick manilla envelope attached, a pad of paper within.

The first sheet had only a simple message, penned in a curling script I almost envied.  ‘Birth date’.

I tried the year I’d been born.  It didn’t work.

Day, month?  One-eight-oh-one.

The container opened.  Two keys rattled within.  One was older, the other a standard door key.

I opened the door with the usual key, then waved at the good Samaritan.

I stood inside the house, watching her pull down the long driveway.  When she was gone, I closed and locked the door.

It didn’t feel like enough of a barrier.

“Molly!” I hollered, loud enough I should have been audible throughout the house.  “Anyone!?”

No response.  Somewhere, in my general confusion and the mess of stuff I didn’t know or understand, I’d hoped that Molly being alive would be one of those things that caught me off guard.

When I had first visited, the house had been my grandmother’s.  She’d marked every surface with some token of her particular tastes and personality.  Molly, it seemed, had been systematically dismantling those touches.  Boxes sat by bookshelves, filled with books, paper-wrapped knick-knacks stowed away in the spaces between the books.  Pictures were gone from the walls, neatly packed into more boxes, some stacked and shoved into the spaces beneath the few bookshelves that weren’t built into the house.

It wasn’t yet done, and it wasn’t an organized process, either.  Some books here, some books there.  A few shelves on one bookcase, another shelf across the room.  Most seemed to be centered around the living room.

Near the center of the living room, Molly had set up blankets and pillows on one couch.

“Blake,” I heard, so quiet it was barely even a whisper.

I looked up.  In this quiet, mundane setting, free of the delirium of sleep, I was a little unnerved to see Rose’s vague shape reflected in the black screen, instead of my own.

“There’s a mirror in the bathroom at the end of the hall,” she said.

I let my bag drop to the floor, then tossed the pad of papers and envelope onto the coffee table.  I pulled off the hat I’d been lent, running my fingers through sweat-soaked, unwashed hair.  A rub of my chin suggested a light scruff.

I hated being unshaven and unwashed.

I hated the feeling of being overwhelmed.  Of feeling like I was out of the loop.  There was too much to take in, here.  I felt more than a little confused as I made my way back to the hallway and figured out the direction I needed to go.  I moved slowly, taking everything in.  The things of my grandmother’s that Molly hadn’t put away, the things that Molly had left behind.  There were clues here, stories, and I didn’t want to miss any details.

The layout of the books made me think of a ruin.  The layout of the books that remained were like the weathered remains of a brick wall that only partially stood.  Patches.  There were only traces of the personality that had once infused the place, like any ruin might hint at the people, culture and purpose that it once held.

I found the bathroom, but I left the mirror where it was, above the sink.  I could see Rose there as I dug through the medicine cabinet and found a few things I needed to take care of the cuts.

“Is it bad?” she asked.

“Been hurt worse,” I said.

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

I slowly opened and closed my hand.  The cut throbbed in the wake of the movement.  “I can move my fingers.  It’s not the injury that’s spooking me, here.  Those things were dirty, their fingernails especially, and they got me a few times.”

“What can I do?” she asked.

I began unbinding the setup that was supposed to keep the bandages in place.  I got the needle and thread out of the kit and set them aside.  “I don’t know.  You helped, didn’t you?  With the ice?”

“I tried.  I’m not sure it mattered.  I wish I could help more.”

“Do me a favor, then.  Keep an eye on me.  If I get a fever, or if I start to look ill, let me know.  Make me go to a hospital.”

“It didn’t hit me until I saw you back there,” Rose said.  “How different we are.  I wasn’t even in any direct danger, and I couldn’t think of what to do.”

“If I learned to deal with bad situations, you will too.”

She didn’t respond right away.  I opened the packages.

“You know how to do sutures?”  She asked.

“I’ve done it once.”

“When did you need stitches?”

I didn’t feel like answering that one.  “They weren’t for me.  It was for a friend.  This’ll be the first time stitching myself up.”

My good hand shook so much I couldn’t get the thread through the hole.  I swore under my breath on the fifth failure.

“Blake-”

“Shh.  One second,” I said, and my frustration made my response more curt than I’d intended.

I ended up having to rest the sides of both hands against the edge of the sink to have something concrete to rest against, minimizing how much the thread and needle shook.

Once I had it threaded, I took my time disinfecting the area and the needle both.  I was rough with myself, all things considered, searching the wound for any fragments.  I didn’t want any trace of those things in or on my body.  When my hand throbbed and involuntarily jumped at the pain, I grimly assured myself I was at least getting the infection out.

I had told Rose ‘one second’, but she remained silent while I worked, and I didn’t break the silence, except to swear.  I used pretty much every curse word I knew, almost every step of the way.  It helped.

I raised my hand.  “How’s that look?”

“Better than I could ever do.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” I said.

“Ha ha,” she said, humorless.  “It looks good.”

“Good,” I said.  “I’ll be right back.”

I slowly patrolled the house.  The ground floor consisted of an expansive living room, a generous dining room, a smaller kitchen with only the basics, the hallway and a half-bathroom the size of my regular bathroom.

One floor up, I found my grandmother’s bedroom, the same as I’d seen it, though the bed was stripped bare, a small bathroom, a little tea room that might have been a bedroom at one point, and a narrow guest bedroom.  Molly had barely touched anything on the second floor, by the looks of it.  She’d used this bathroom, with a handful of items littering the counter, but that would be because it was the only bath and shower.

She’d been cooped up in this house, and she’d barely touched anything?  The living room, kitchen and this bathroom suggested she’d spent some time here, but how had she managed without losing it?  It had been four months.

The third floor had only three smallish rooms, though ‘small’ was something of a misnomer, with a house of this scale.  Two bedrooms on the right side, with little more than beds and a dresser each, and a small sewing room that was apparently assigned to storage.

A staircase took up the rest of the space, curving up and around to the fourth floor, but the door was locked.

I fished in my pocket, found the old key, and weighed it in my hand.  I hadn’t found a single locked door in the house.  The key was of the old ‘skeleton key’ variety, a round bar as thick around as any of my fingers, with an ornate head and a tab on the end with the teeth.

I knew just by looking at it that it didn’t fit the keyhole.  I tried anyways.

No such luck.  I hadn’t seen anything that needed opening, which raised one big question.  Why was it important for me to get the key, without any lock to go with it?

I made my way back to the ground floor, stopping by the bathroom to lift the mirror free of the wall, then carried it back to the living room, for Rose.

I fiddled until I found I could use the mounts to hang it off the bookcase.  It was just tall enough that it fell between eye level when I was standing and eye level when I sat.  I pulled a cushion from the armchair and placed it beneath, in case it fell.

When I’d finished, I did another look around the ground floor, peering out the windows to see if there was any sign of trouble.  The town was starting to come to life, with cars and a few kids with backpacks on the road, heading to school.

Though a sidewalk ran alongside the outer wall below the house, it seemed to be habit for people to walk on the other side of the street.

No bird masks, no crooked men.  I moved back to the living room to look out a different window for a different angle.

“Well?” Rose asked.

“It’s too ordinary,” I replied.  I rubbed at my face.  “God damn, I’m tired.”

“Ordinary?”

“It’s a house.  A boring, ordinary house that my grandmother lived in for her entire life.”

“Our grandmother,” she replied.

“It’s soulless, sorta.  Our dad and aunt Irene and Uncle Paul were raised here, but there are no toys or mementos left around for the memories.  Even my mother and father left some of my stuff around.”

“I really don’t want to be pedantic,” Rose said, “But they’re our mother and father.”

“Are they?” I asked.  I leaned back, propping one foot up on the corner of the coffee table, looking over at the mirror.  “Because I think the dad you got was very different from the dad I got.”

“Same person, different circumstance,” Rose said, her voice firm.

“Sure.  Fine, let’s go with that,” I said.  I dropped my foot and abruptly leaned forward, grabbing the envelope with the pad of paper.  I took a look.

“What is it?” Rose asked.  “I don’t have a copy, here.”

“Legal documents.  Let’s see… forty-one pages.  The transfer of Rosalyn D. Thorburn’s estate from custodian Molly Walker, grandchild, to custodian Blake Thorburn, grandchild.  The first page outlines the terms of the contract.  The property is mine in a general sense only.  The lawyer manages it until I’m twenty-five, at which point the custodian label is removed and the heir is appointed.”

“Rosalyn D. Thorburn senior,” Rose said.  “I remember him saying something like that at the gathering.”

“I do too.  The second page… is going out of its way to outline that the notes accompanying the text ‘aren’t binding nor are they intended to be read as such’…  looks like the rest is about a fifty fifty split between legalese and explanations for the legalese, for us plebs.”

“No answers?  About the monsters?”

“Not on the surface,” I said.  I paged through the papers, noting the headings  “Times of effect, terms, stipulations…”

“Stipulations?”

I went back a page.

“Taking care of the house, paying upkeep from the account accorded to the custodian of the property to ensure the driveway, lawn and gardens are looked after, attending meetings with the firm, ummm,” I paused to look over the next bit.  “Right at the end, a note saying possession of the property can be revoked if the custodian doesn’t meet the requirements noted by the client, Mrs. Thorburn.”

“What requirements?”

I shook my head.  “No clue.  Something to keep in mind.  After stipulations, there’s a section on stipend, with a regular allowance, notes on how often the lawyers can be called without incurring a debt.  Oh, right here.  A mention of the bird-skull monsters.”

“What?”  I could see Rose move, standing from her seat.

“I’m joking,” I said, with zero humor in my voice.  “There’s nothing.  A few pages with pictures of the property and the boundaries, some stuff on the adjacent woodland and marsh, a blurb on council meetings, nonsense on contacting the lawyers, and-”  I stopped.

“What?”

“A means of opting out.  Not joking this time.”

“Somehow I don’t imagine it would be that easy,” Rose said.

“It’s pretty easy.  Phone or email the lawyer, and custodianship transfers to the next available candidate.”  I reread the legalese and the plain-text to be sure.

“That’s not what I meant,” Rose said.  “This whole situation is a trap, right?  She’s got some goal in mind, she basically, what, let the world know that she picked Molly as her heir, so all of her enemies come crawling out of the woodwork… and then she does the same for you, even going so far as to set up me for some kind of loophole.  She used the situation to force us into this.”

“Right,” I said.

“Does it make more sense that we’re really truly free to walk away, or that there’s a trap waiting for us if we try?”

“A trap,” I said, sighing a little.  If I’d let myself hope just a little, that hope was dashed.

“Just off the top of my head, maybe she announced that she picked her heir, but she doesn’t let everyone know that the heir has stepped down.  Meaning we’d lose all of the protections and resources we’d have, but we’d still be in just as much trouble.”

“It’s a way to weed out anyone too stupid to consider the ramifications.”

“Or anyone too weak to face the situation,” Rose said.  “Knowing her, it fits.”

“You do know her, huh?” I asked.  “All this while, you were immersed in this.”

“All this while,” Rose said.  “Except I didn’t know this part.  Um.  Give me a minute.  I’m wearing pyjamas, and I feel grungy.  I’m going to change, if I can figure out how.”

With that said, she disappeared from the frame.

I remained where I was.  Big key, legal pad…

I rifled through Molly’s things.  She had kept a duffel bag with her things in it, but it was only clothes and a few cables and a set of headphones for a smartphone.

I felt guilty and more than a little creepy going through her clothes, so I stopped there.

Was I damning myself, with fingerprints and the like?  Would the police find her dead and then find that I’d moved myself in, already aware that she was dead?

It was a daunting thought.  Another trap?  Was grandmother testing me?

It raised another question.  Why?  Why had she pit us against one another, picking through us for some candidate that could meet some specific, crazy standard?  Why was she testing us by putting us through this gauntlet, where we were unprepared and ignorant when these monsters came after us?

“You look pensive,” Rose said.

I looked up.  I saw her in the mirror.  Wearing a decidedly old fashioned women’s blouse with pearly buttons up the front and a bit of lace on the collar, and a pleated skirt.  Her hair was mostly straight, with two lengths from the sides drawn back and pinned with something.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t say a word.  There are only so many places with mirrors in the house.  What were you thinking about?”

“Traps.  Tests.  Somehow, I imagine this is about more than looking after a house.  You don’t get enemies from property alone.  Well, you do, but not really in this era.”

“No, you don’t, but this is a world we don’t fully understand.”

I nodded.  “We’re left in the dark.  Let’s assume this is a test… you said the lawyers were picking up books?”

“I only glimpsed it, because the light was hitting the windows at the right angles.  There were books piled on the table.”

“Describe them?”

“Old books.  Like those on the bottom shelf, below me.”

I got up and picked up the book.  It had a hard cloth cover, and the spine had been abused by wear and age, cracking and fraying.

“The ones I saw looked like they were in better shape,” Rose said.  “I think.  It was hard to make out, but he saw me looking, and he approached, and I did get a look at one.  There’s a lot of books in the house.  We’d be talking about needles in a haystack, here.”

“Why would he clean them up if he was going to put them on the shelves?” I asked.  “They deserved his time and attention.  Let’s go back to the idea that this is a test.  Grandmother’s not holding our hands here.  She never did, I don’t think.  I mean, mother and father never really got that whole ‘support your kids’ thing either.”

When Rose replied, her voice was quiet.  “I have to disagree with you there.  They support me.  Supported me, past tense, I guess.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, pushing that idea out of my head.  “Point is, she’s not coddling us.  There are books, they’re important, and the only two options are that the lawyers have them, and the test is as simple as ‘figuring out how to get in contact, or they’re hidden.”

“Hidden?”

I held up the big key.  “Took a look around, no idea where it goes.  Except I’m not even sure where to begin looking.”

“She’s harsh, cold, but I wouldn’t say she’s unfair,” Rose said.  “If she expects us to figure it out, then we have the information we need.  Information Molly would have available to her too.”

I looked up at the mirror, but Rose was looking down.

“The documents,” I said, as I realized what she was looking at.  “You think Molly got a copy too, along with the key?  Or a key?”

“It’s possible,” Rose said.

I picked up the document.  This time I flipped through to the image of the property boundaries.  Square footage, notes on utilities, restrictions on renovations…

In the midst of the briefs and warnings regarding renovations, I saw a floor plan.  Room layout.

I hopped out of my seat, the map in hand.  “One second.  Can’t take the map and the mirror with my hand like it is.”

“Okay,” she said, but she didn’t look happy.

I got to the third floor and stopped.  I held the map up.

Map: Three rooms on the left, one room and the stairwell on the right.

What I saw: Two rooms on the left, one room and the stairwell on the right.

I looked at the floor plan, then made several very deliberate paces down the length of the hall.

I stopped.  About twenty-one.

My friends were artists and artistic types.  I had the unfortunate distinction of being a less than stellar artist.  But I’d owed them for the help and support they’d given me, and in helping them with their jobs, I’d stumbled onto a bit of work.  Setting up their work, installations, as well as all the other grunt jobs.  Sure, they could go to a carpenter to get something put together in the way of a display stand, but that carpenter wouldn’t necessarily know what was at play with the art.

Along the way, I’d settled into being a go-to handyman and delivery guy in the local art community.  I knew the gallery owners, I knew who was who, and if I couldn’t do a job myself, I knew who to call.

Not so glamorous or fancy, not exactly stellar pay, but I had stupid little skills that I could use here.  In a pinch, I could use my stride or my arm length to help me figure out measurements, thirty three and a half and thirty-two and a half inches, respectively.

Mostly, I tended to eyeball things, and maybe that was a factor in what had kicked my instincts into motion in the first place, when the rooms had felt small, despite all evidence to the contrary.

From one outer wall to the next, the map said the house measured thirty-seven feet in length.  My estimate put it at twenty-one feet in length.

I tried again, going in the other direction, and I got the same estimate.  Houses were supposed to expand and contract with temperature and the like, but not that much.

To experiment, I crossed the hallway and tried once more.

One hallway, with right angles at each corner, twenty-one feet in length down the north side, thirty-seven down the south side.  The ends were each an equal six feet across.

I narrowed my eyes, looking down the length of the hallway.  There was no distortion in the floorboards, and every bookshelf on one side somehow had a bookshelf opposite, of matching dimensions.

I began moving books aside on the shelves down the ‘short’ hallway.

It took me two tries to find the keyhole.  Tucked in the corner just beneath one shelf, at bellybutton level.

The key required a fair bit of effort to turn, and rewarded me with an audible, heavy click.

The bookcase swung inward.  Oversized hinges managed the heavy burden as it swung all the way around and sat flush against the wall.

“Fuck me,” I muttered.

The room was a study.  A library.  There were two parts to the room, suggesting it took up two floors in the house.  The upper half was a ring, looking down through an opening, bordered with bookcases on the four exterior walls, with a wrought iron railing keeping people from falling through the hole in the middle.  Soft, mottled light shone down from a dust-caked window in the ceiling, lighting both halves of the library better than lightbulbs lit the rest of the house.

I slowly circled around, taking it in.  Each wall had ornate stepladders on wheels, which could coast along rails that had been inset in floor and ceiling.  Another stepladder led from a gap in the railing on the far end to the floor below.

I looked at the books, noting the differences from the ones in the rest of the house.  They were better taken care of, for one thing, and they tended to be narrow.

Cassandra’s Gaze.

Deleterious Craftings

Draoidh.  The book had a little ivory mask inset in the spine, with round staring eyes and a very curly beard.

Glamour.

Poppets.

Shamanism: ‘Animus’, volumes one through six, and Shamanism: ‘Umbra’, volumes seven through ten.

Vestige: Glimmers and Gasps.

Wū zhěn: Eastern Vodun Practices.

I finished reading spines along the one wall.  I traced spines with my fingertips as I passed on to the next wall.

Blessed Wrongs.

Dryads, Varieties.

Jokes from the Faerie Folk.

Lilith’s Children.

Maddening Things.

Observations on Bacchae interacting in Modern Society.

On Others.  Editions from 1964 through 2012 were lined up on the shelf.  Thicker texts.

Pitiable: Transcriptions from informal dialogues with Vampir.

The next shelf seemed to be a continuation from O to Z, in the same theme.  The bookshelf adjacent to that one seemed to be in a variety of different languages.  French, German, and a language with characters formed out of triangles.

The barrier to understanding was a reason to stop, where I might have kept walking and reading indefinitely.

Here, in this library, were the explanations and the rules.  It was, theoretically, a way to make it all make sense.  Except there was so much here, I couldn’t begin to take it in.  Where did I even start, when it came to trying to look up bird-skull undead things?  I’d gone from having no answers to having too many.

I felt a little cold, despite the general warmth of the room.  I rubbed my hands against my sleeves.

Feeling restless, I reached the ladder that led down to the first floor and climbed down.

A desk and chair, a cozy armchair, a leather psychiatrist’s couch, a book stand with a book on it, and cabinets.  There were more bookshelves, but many were smaller, squat, set on top or beneath the cabinets.  More private, with personal books.  A blackboard on wheels that could be flipped over to write on either side.

A blanket was thrown over one piece of furniture.  I had any number of reasons not to touch it, but there was a shape to it, tall, narrow, and flatter than the blackboard.  I could see the metal feet…

I walked around to the side, then lifted up a corner of the blanket, where it wasn’t facing me.

Because in this fucked up situation, with all this, I wasn’t going to trust anything.

“Rose?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Sense anything funny?”

“No.  Except for light appearing from nowhere.”

“Covered mirror,” I said, as I threw off the blanket.

I sat back while I watched her take it all in.  In the frame of the mirror, she turned and walked over to a bookcase, picking up a book.

No effect on my end, I noted.

I turned my attention to the desk.  The wood had brown leather inlaid into it with big brass buttons.  I saw pens and inkwells, regular pens, pencils, a calculator, a brush and scalpel and other tools in jars and cases in the corners.  A mug held what might have been tea or coffee, though it had sat for long enough that the milk had congealed into a cloud of white on the surface.  There were books and papers, too.

The papers included one pile of legal documents, virtually identical to the ones I’d left downstairs, only they were addressed to Molly, with some changes in wording here and there.

What caught my eye, however, was the letter.

“Rose,” I said.

“What?”

I grabbed the pages of the letter, then walked around until we could see each other.  I stood by the mirror, holding it up so we could both read it.

Molly et al,

Please accept my graceless apology.  At this juncture, you’ll likely be frightened and confused.  Chances are good you’ll see outside parties at work, if you haven’t already, helping you to conclude that this isn’t nonsense.  That helps us move on to business.  If you find yourself here and are already injured in body, mind, heart, spirit or other more esoteric departments, you may need to jump straight to instruction number one in the list below, sacrifice sleep to see it through, and then move on to a great deal of research.  The Index is a catalogue of all things found in my library, which I penned myself, and will help direct you to solutions to whatever ails you.

I could explain, justify, and make excuses, but that is very much not my manner or style.  You have a library of explanations sitting around you.  With study, perhaps, you’ll see how I justified what I did.  We can do without the excuses entirely.

I’ll be succinct.  The family line is a long one, and we have had some involvement in more anagogic sciences since the early 1800’s.  We have resources touching on the craft, the arcane, or whatever you wish to call it.  Magic.  However, all things have a price, and it is impossible to become rich, powerful, wise or strong without paying in some form.  For this reason, among others, practitioners rarely ascend to any great status and remain there.  But our predecessors tried, they accrued a karmic debt, and they have passed it on to their children, and their children’s children, and so on down the line.

“You caught up?”

“Yeah,” Rose said.

I turned the page.

Perhaps this seems unfair, but modern standards of fair and unfair are just that: modern.  In this world I’ve imposed on you, there are very old things, and there are very old traditions.  Here, the sins of the father are visited upon the son.  Or mother and daughter, rather.  Beings as long-lived as powerful Others have trouble telling us apart, when we live and die so quickly and when we often look the same, and it helps to establish a pedigree or pattern.  Some have ornaments of office, others carry on with seventh sons.  We use daughters, and we keep to a smaller community.  If they call you Rose, Elizabet, Frances, Esther, Ruth, I recommend you take it in stride.  You are, as of now, simply one piece of a long thread.

My diaries can be found on the shelf behind the desk.  I welcome you to read them if they might shed light on matters.  Perhaps my own realizations will help you find a way to your own.

Now, I charge you with tasks.  To demonstrate the gravity of this, know that you may lose custody of the property if you do not address these tasks.  On a graver level, you may well doom yourselves and the bloodline with your failure, depending on how it plays out.

1.  Read Essentials.  It sits on the book stand.  A novice’s guide to the most basic things, it outlines the steps to awakening yourself.  Be warned, these steps open the door to becoming Other, in a respect.  The oldest of them made agreements in times well beyond us, to guarantee safety and maintain a kind of peace.  Foremost among these agreements is truth.  Should you lie, you may well forfeit your power for a time.  Break a promise or an oath, and you will be forsworn, and you will be stripped of every protection afforded to even the common, ignorant people that decorate this Earth.  On finishing Essentials, awaken yourself.

“Oh fuck me,” I said.

“Oh hell,” Rose echoed me.

Conduct the remainder of these steps in any order.  Monumental as these steps are, you must be suitably armed against your enemies.  You will be asked about your progress with some frequency, and failure to make sufficient progress in the next five years will see your rights and access to this house terminated.

2.  Study and enact the ritual noted in Famulus.  The familiar is your greatest ally, and will serve as a tool, a wellspring of power, an ambassador to dealing with more abstract things, and will be a lifelong companion.  Make this choice with the same respect you would with undertaking marriage, only know there is no form of divorce.  The Familiar is to be a part of you for life.  You gain their services, and they gain a chance to be mortal, even if it is a small mortalhood, in addition to whatever other terms you negotiate.  Do not allow your familiar to take the form of a rat or dog.

3.  Study and enact the ritual noted in Implementum.  Your choice of tool will shape how you interact with this world, your craft, and will be your badge in the eyes of many.  The book is dreary, page on page of examples, but study it thoroughly, for there are many meanings, and a poor choice of tool may well cripple you.

4.  Study and enact the ritual found in Demesnes.  Baba Yaga had her hut, I have my room.  Unfortunately, the rest of the house has been claimed by our predecessors, and while it is a haven, you will need to find your own place to make your own, where the rules bend as you need them to, and where your power is greatest.  The three rituals noted here are fundamental in determining how you access, hoard and focus power.  Note, however, that your real power will be in how you act with others and Others.

5.  Find a good man to marry.  By this, I don’t mean that he should be decent and kind.  Such may be a detriment.  You will need an ally in this, and a man who can support you in more mundane matters will give you strength in this world.  I reckon many of the best partnerships in the recent past came about when our family married bastards rather than gentlemen.

6.  Attend the council meetings.  Second Saturday of every month, at the park, in the twilight hours.  In a five year term, there will be sixty such meetings.  Miss six in total, and your rights to the property will be forfeit.

“I think I’m faced with an issue, here,” I said.

“You can’t sit through meetings?” Rose asked.

I shot her a look.

She giggled a little, and it was an uncharacteristic, unfitting, nervous sound.  “I… I don’t know how to react to this.  I tried to make a joke.  It’s laugh or cry, right?  And I was awfully close to crying before I read any of this.”

“I’m supposed to marry a guy.  I’m getting the impression this isn’t the first obstacle I’m going to run into.”

“Gay marriage is legal,” she said.

“I’m not gay.” I said.  “I wonder if the lawyers will allow me any leeway, here.”

“The lawyers?” she asked.  She gave me a look, eyebrow arched.  “Think about it.”

I sighed, and then I did.

“They’re involved in this,” I thought aloud.  “Cleaning up after Molly, they know enough to move the books… they’re setting all this up, so things are prepared for each heir-to-be.”

My voice took a more serious tone as I finished “…and the legal documents made less than specific references to debts.”

“They’re not friends, Blake.  Resources, maybe, but not friends.  We should think long and hard about when and why we contact them.”

I fidgeted, biting my lip as I thought.  Unwilling to dwell on it, I turned the page.

7.  Finish three out of four of the books in this library.  You will need some assistance with foreign languages.  Making a bargain with an Other to learn Sumerian may be novel, I know, but it is easier to ask for it to be translated aloud by a servant or summoning.

8.  See our bloodline to the end of the fifth year with less of a debt than we had at the start of your custodianship.  I’m hoping you can see this through until the end of your lifetime, but I can only focus on these next five years and hope you are on the right road.

Remain out of the north end of Jacob’s Bell until you have completed two rituals and developed a foundation.  Stay out, perhaps, even if you have.  Some individuals are not to be trifled with.

Make no major deals or bargains.  Until the end of the custodianship, you’ll need to run any major deals past Mr. Beasley (including the three major rituals.  He will protect you from other decisions, or lend his aid if he can’t, but he will exact a price.

Mr. Beasley, as well as individuals you’ll find in Jacob’s Bell and the surrounding area, is described in a little black book I playfully dubbed Dramatis Personae, when I was younger.

Our family has made enemies, and I confess that I have turned allies into more enemies.  I will not compel you to read this book, but I impel you to.  It may well be a deciding factor in your survival.  Use all tools I’ve bestowed on you.  We are powerful, we hold a noteworthy position, and this is much of the reason we have the enemies we do.  Chances are good you will need to use everything at your disposal to survive them.

As the sins of the mother pass to the daughter, I’ve passed my enemies and the debt on to you.  I won’t ask forgiveness or understanding.  I suspect you may find those things when the time comes for you to bear an heir and visit these wrongs on them.

Yours, R.D.T.

I was never good at sitting still when stressed.  Now that there were no more pages to go through, I found myself pacing.

“We have answers,” Rose said, as if reassuring me.

“I don’t like these answers,” I said, raising my voice a little.  “That old bitch.”

“It doesn’t sound like she had a lot of choice,” Rose said.

I spun around to stare at her.  “You’re awfully sympathetic to the old woman who has your name,” I said.  “Can we verify, again, that you’re really a female me?”

Her face settled into a serious expression, as cold as mine was heated.  I was breathing hard, and my sutures were hurting where I clenched my hand.

“Ask me anything,” she said.  “Anything about growing up with mother and father.”

I didn’t respond, scowling and looking away instead.  I was fidgeting with my good hand.  She was right.

“We’re allies, Blake.  Allies, understand?  Look, the letter said a magic user can’t lie, right?  I’m a unicorn from outer space, and I can’t speak English.  See?”

I broke from my pace, crossing the room to the bookstand, where I snatched up the book that was open on it.  I tossed it down on the desk.  Essentials.

Another series of books, in a stack in the corner, where the lawyers had left them.  Famulus, Implementum, Demesnes.  Orange, purple and green cloth covers, respectively, they all matched otherwise, in size and the script on the spines.  I glanced each one over, then tossed them onto the desk, where they rewarded me with a series of satisfying impacts.

I found Dramatis Personae.  I flipped through it.  There were tabs.  One for ‘allies’, which was virtually empty, with only the lawyer’s number.

Enemies…  they took up almost all of the remainder.

It didn’t make a sound, much less a satisfying thud, when I added it to the pile.  I was left without anything more to throw.  Nothing I wanted to risk, in any event.

“Are you mad at me?” Rose asked.  “We’re supposed to be allies, Blake.”

“I’m not… no, I’m mad at this,” I said.  “Look at this.  How many books do we need to read, here?  How many books do we need to read a day, just to keep up?”

“Maybe that’s the cheat?  If we’re both the same person, technically, can we argue that the eldest child of Brad and Christina Thorburn has read half the books?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“There are answers.  See?  Look…”

She turned away from the mirror, heading to the nearest bookshelf.

I saw her stop.  She remained where she was.

“Rose?” I asked.

She didn’t move.

I felt a bit of anxiety, and turned away, walking over to that same shelf, on my side of the mirror.

The Worst of the Others.

Devils and Details.

Dark Contracts

Classifying Others: Fiends and Darker Beings.

Hellfire: Bindings

Infernal Wrath

Pacts and Prices

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.  I didn’t know much, but I knew this was a bad idea of the worst kind.

These were the books that held a place of prominence on grandmother’s bookshelf.  These were the tools she expected us to employ.

No small wonder she’d made the enemies she had.

These books?  They each had the same set of initials on the spine.  R.D.T.

She’d written them.

Bonds 1.4

I finished toweling myself dry and wrapped the towel around my waist before I opened the shower curtain.  I used my fingers to comb my damp hair away from my face before approaching the mirror.

I could see Rose’s reflection, her hair pressed flat where the back of her head pressed against the other side of the mirror, looking the other way.  The mirror in the upstairs bathroom was a part of the pedestal sink, surrounded by florets.

It was an uncomfortable setting, with unfamiliar things in unfamiliar places.  Having someone, something like Rose nearby.  Strange smells and tastes, with even the water having a taste to it.  It was drawn from a local well, according to Rose.  I had been forced to use the only shampoo available, and the smell of it was thick and cloying in the humid air of the bathroom.

All of this was helping me to get a sense of why Molly had been so driven to empty shelves and remove pictures from the walls.  My grandmother had a presence here, and it was a presence that felt like it could override my own.

Especially when my own presence seemed somewhat limited.  When I looked in the mirror, I saw only the bathroom, and I saw Rose, her back turned.

No reflection, using different soaps and shampoo that made me smell different, no longer having the little trinkets and touches I’d surrounded myself with over the past year or two, it all made me feel less like me.

Each of those things had a flip side, seeing a reminder of our grandmother’s work in the mirror, smelling our grandmother’s lavender-scented shampoo and soap, seeing her trinkets and small touches wherever I looked, I felt like she hadn’t quite left.  Her presence was still here.

Which it was, kind of.  We had stumbled onto one lingering threat.  The books my grandmother had written, left untouched, still waited in that study.

How deep did that particular danger run?

“Hey,” I said.  “Did you ever share scary stories with Molly and Paige?”

“A little,” Rose answered, without turning around.

“You remember the stories we told about the house?  Some made up, some real?”

“Kind of,” she said.  “We weren’t all that close.  I mean, we were the same ages, give or take a year, but we weren’t friends.”

“Really?” I asked, and there was a note of surprise in my voice that seemed to startle her.  She half-turned, caught a glimpse of me, naked but for a towel around my waist, and turned away just as quickly.

I hiked up the towel to be sure I was safe, made sure it was secure, and then said, “It’s fine.  I’m decent, and it’s not like we’re not related, right?”

“Right,” she said, but she took her time.  I caught her giving me a glance, bottom to top and back again, before she frowned a little.

“Was it that you weren’t friends after grandmother announced the whole ‘granddaughter only’ thing, or-”

“Before,” Rose said.

“Before,” I said, considering the idea.  “I considered them good friends.  We exchanged emails, we looked forward to seeing each other…”

I trailed off.  Rose was already shaking her head.  A strand of blond hair had come loose of the pin behind her head.

Rose said, “I know Molly about as well as I knew Callan or Roxanne, which isn’t much at all.  Then the ‘granddaughter only’ thing came up, and that was that.  We were rivals.”

“It doesn’t upset you that she’s dead?”

“It does!” she said, “Really, it does.  But… if you told me Mrs. Niles died, I’d be about as upset.  Someone who was a small, peripheral part my life is now gone.  It’s sad, it’s a reminder that we’re all very mortal, and there’s obviously a lot more going on besides that, with you as the heir for the property and me as… this.”

“But Molly doesn’t rate much higher than an elderly neighbor who you say hi to if you happen to see her,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Rose said.  “There are nice memories, but there are bad memories too.  Over and over, stuff would come up.  If we weren’t dealing with a situation, we were reeling from the last one.  Ways to weaken me, to take me out of the running, mom and dad sort of keeping it going.  It kind of soured all the rest of it.”

“Soured it?,” I said.

She gave me a funny look.  “Aunt Irene pulled strings to screw up Paige’s chances of getting into University, and she almost succeeded.  Uncle Paul went crazy, Paige went crazy, and we had four straight months where I was genuinely afraid.  My car got vandalized, and they emptied a can of orange juice concentrate under a seat.  The frozen pulp you mix with two cans of water.  By the time I realized what was going on, the smell was so bad I couldn’t drive the car, and no amount of cleaning would make it any better.”

“Doesn’t sound like Paige.”

“That one was Ellie, I’m pretty sure.  She made a comment, then alluded to my brake lines, and I basically stopped driving after that.  When I think of family, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”

I couldn’t imagine giving up that independence.  We were supposed to connect as we interacted, but I could only feel the differences between us getting more pronounced.

She continued, oblivious, “Those are the memories I have, which didn’t really happen, apparently.  But they’re part of what make me me, whatever I am, and so I don’t have any lingering fondness for the extended family, real memories or fake.”

I nodded.  “I remember sharing the stories about the house, even seeking them out, so I had tidbits to share on future visits.  We’d laugh, be suitably horrified, and whatever else.  Paige and Molly had it easier, because they had siblings to tap for stories.  But it’s like… I could tell them how our great grandfather was a robber baron, kind of?”

There was no recognition on Rose’s face.

“He ruthlessly cut out the competition, scared people, beat them, stole from them, up until the day he hired a few goons to go beat someone up and they got caught.  He ran and came to Canada, where was approached by a widow, our great grandmother.  Grandmother Rose’s parents.”

“I didn’t hear that one.”

“The letter she wrote us told us that bastards tend to do better as husbands in this family than the gentlemen do.  So I can’t help but think… how far back does this business with the demons and devils go?  There’s a bit of bloody history tied to this family and this house.  Was grandmother the first to go down that road, or has it been at play from the beginning?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said.  “I don’t want it to be a big thing, because our bloodline is apparently in a kind of debt, and I don’t want to be in debt to anything like that.”

No longer comfortable with the topic, I bent down and rummaged in the cabinet beneath the sink for basic toiletries.  One drawer revealed a narrow can of shaving cream with a woman’s silhouette on it.  It had been there for so long it refused to budge when I tried to lift it.  Further back was a plastic packet of the cheapest disposable razors around, pink.

I opted to shave anyways, tearing the can off the bottom of the drawer.  Sure enough, the razor nicked me no less than five times.  They had been there for so long that temperature had bent the blades.

I preferred to bleed and be clean-shaven over the alternative.  Without a reflection to go by, I had to be meticulous.

It was disconcerting to see Rose standing there, studying me, when I tried to look to see if I’d missed a spot.  I ran my hand over my face, searching for the roughness of scruff, then washed my face to get rid of the remainder.

“Bit of shaving cream at the back there,” Rose said, pointing to the nape of her neck.

I fixed it.

“Putting the more dangerous stuff aside, we should get to studying,” she said.

“Know what we’re up against,” I said, while drying my face.  I tended to the small cuts, but it didn’t make much of a difference, with the cut already on my cheekbone.

“Exactly.  Having information can’t do any harm, can it?  How were you as a student?”

“Horrible,” I said.  I could see her face fall.

“But I can do this.  I have a good memory.  I struggled at school because I don’t have a lot of patience.”

“How far did you get in Essentials?”

“The introduction,” I said, preparing my toothbrush.  I’d managed some before fatigue caught up with me, and I’d napped.  I’d woken, mid-afternoon, and decided to shower to clear my head.  I didn’t function that well when I was grimy and unshaven.

“Only?  I’m nearly done,” she replied.

I looked up at her in surprise.

“Apparently I don’t sleep,” she said, and she sounded somewhat distant, even disconnected.  “I don’t get hungry.  I don’t really breathe.  I barely have a heartbeat.”

“You were up all night reading?”

“More or less.  My focus sucks right now, because I still feel drained from earlier, but I read where I could, then wandered, looked over the library, trying to get a sense of what books are there.  Or at least the books the mirror’s facing.”

I nodded, toothbrush in my mouth.  On a level, I was glad I had an excuse to stay silent.  I was bothered, that she was ahead of me, that she would likely stay ahead of me, without a need for sleep.

How could I even articulate that?  On a level, I wanted us to be on the same page, so we could cooperate, play ideas off each other.

On another level, well… All of the most foolish and brutish Others have been captured, slain, consumed, driven off, or tricked away.  Recognize all Others for what they are, and know that they, by a process of elimination two thousand and six hundred years in the making, are cunning by nature, they are slave to those who are, or they were made to be cunning to better serve in their duties.  Wit is the greatest defense and the sharpest weapon, on battlefields such as these.

Essentials, chapter one, the introduction, on Others.  Laying down the ground rules, the most basic stuff we needed to know.  Others were liars.

What was Rose, if not an Other?  New enough she wasn’t bound by the old rules that forbade lying and mandated oaths, but still an Other.  Not of mortals or the mortal’s world.

“I’m glad you’re up,” she said.  “Three hours alone in this house was too much.  I don’t know how I’m going to get through a whole night.  Dealing with being what I am.”

For all that time had done to heal her weariness, it had made her emotions more pronounced.

In my case… well, it would have been easier to say if any emotion was showing if I could see myself.

“I really like your tattoos,” she said.  She fumbled for words for a second, which caught me off guard.  “I’m… actually envious.  I couldn’t pull that off, but it’s the sort of thing I’d get if I could.”

I looked down.  Small birds perched on tree branches, in pale grays, whites and yellows, against a backdrop of reds, in watercolor hues.  “Thank you.”

Were we similar in some respects?  In tastes?

Or was this a manipulation from a cunning Other?  What was there to guarantee that she was really me, with one not-so-small change?

I left the bathroom, making my way down to the living room.

“I take it you didn’t get to chapter eight,” she said, reflected in one of the glass picture frames along the stairwell.

“No.”

“Take a look,” she said.  Or it was all she could say, before there weren’t any surfaces for her to communicate through.  I made my way into the living room, and saw her there, waiting for me, in the mirror I’d taken from the bathroom.  The book lay on the coffee table.

Essentials, chapter eight.  Dangers a practitioner faces.

I pulled on pants under the towel as I leaned over the book, reading the headings aloud.  “Being forsworn, betrayal within the coven, betrayal by familiars, covens, crusades, death, demesnes, execution, exquirere…”

“Skip ahead.”

I did, picking up the book to better flip through it.  “Lords, loss of implements, loss of sight, loss of soul…”

“Towards the end.”

“I’m not patient enough for that.  Give me a letter?  Or, better yet, point me to the section you want to talk about?”

“W.  Witch hunters.”

I flipped through until I found it.  “‘Witch hunters are markedly different from inquisitors.  Where an inquisitor is organized by an outside party, the witch hunter is in the employ of practitioners or Others.  Oft used to guard a Lord’s power, maintain a balance or hunt down rogue parties.  Witch Hunters do not use faith or innocence as tools, but use gifts provided by those they serve, alongside the protections the uninitiated enjoy, as well as the ability to circumvent defenses that would ward off practitioners and Others.'”

Rose was looking at me, expectantly.

“I’m not sure I follow your line of thought.”

“I want to see if you reach the same conclusion I do,” she said.

“You’re thinking of that pair of siblings we saw.  The ones who were getting all geared up to come after us.”

“I’m less focused on them than on the path.” she said.

I thought for a minute.  “Yeah, I’m not reaching the same conclusion as you, I don’t think.”

She looked a little agitated, nervous.  “I think we can go this route.  Avoid getting into the ugliest stuff, the books on demons and whatever else.  If witch hunters and inquisitors can survive this sort of thing, maybe we can too.”

“Borrowing power instead of using it?”

She nodded, too much, too quickly.  She was talking faster.  “Kind of.  Not getting in the thick of this.  We learn what we need to learn in order to survive.  We circumvent this whole situation.”

“While meeting her demands?  Getting a familiar, getting a tool, carving out a little world for ourselves?  Rose, I get what you’re going for, I almost get why, but that’s not going to work.”

With that, I seemed to have upset her.

Rose leaned closer to the mirror, “Why not?  We can do it, while avoiding everything else.  We need workarounds.”

“I get that, but the most basic, number one step?  The one I’m supposed to use to awaken myself… there’s a cost associated with it.  I give up the ability to lie.  What that one guy said in the vision?  There’s always a price.  Become a Witch Hunter, and you face obligations.”

Rose was getting more into it as she argued.  “We can minimize the effect.  Follow the letter of the law, instead of the spirit.  We get a familiar, but we go with the smallest, weakest spirit possible, something small, that won’t demand anything of consequence or challenge us.  We pick an inoffensive tool.  Carve out the smallest possible piece of land for our demesnes.  That only leaves us the problem of some reading, which is a good idea anyways, and getting married.”

“And the debt?  We’re supposed to clear the debt.  How do we do that if we handicap ourselves?”

“If that’s the one problem we have, I think we can find a way around it with some research.”

No, I wouldn’t convince her that way.  Better to get to the root of this problem, first.  “Where does the witch hunting factor in?”

“We figure out how they protect themselves, and we do the same things.  They have sponsors, sources of energy and tools.  So do we.  Kind of.  It’s what we inherited.”

“I don’t want to shoot you down…” I started.

“You don’t need to.”

“I know what you’re feeling.  I felt a  bit of it, when I saw the escape clause in the contract, if we wanted to back out of this.  That there was a way out.  Except I think this is a trap too, in a different way.”

“No, Blake.  We can do this, we just need to do it safely.”

“I don’t think this is a situation where we can do things in half measures.  We can’t be half-heir and half-witch hunter.”

“What’s the alternative?  You really want to do this?  Follow the path grandmother set before us, making infernal bargains to deal with our enemies, while somehow trying to get out of debt with whoever our ancestors got in debt with?”

I stood, making my way to the kitchen.  “I’m not saying I want to deal with devils or any of that.  I’m saying I don’t want to pay a price like the one we pay for ‘awakening’, if we’re not going to use what we paid for.”

She spoke to me from the toaster.  “I get a say in this, you know.”

I moved through the kitchen, looking for something easy to make foodwise.  Bonus points if it didn’t leave me feeling like crap afterward.  In the heat of the conversation, I was making more noise than necessary with the cupboards and drawers.  “You get a say, but it’s ultimately me making the decision and paying the consequences, isn’t it?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of attached to you, metaphysically.  You die, I’m going to be a goner too.”

“You think.  Either way, I’m the one who got injured,” I said.  “I’m the one who has stitches in my hand and a cut on my face.”

“At least you’re alive,” she retorted.

We were interrupted by a pounding series of knocks on the door.  Rose turned her head so quickly that the loose strands of hair flew out to either side.

I remained where I was, staring at the door.

The knocking repeated.

“Whatever this is,” I said, “I might need help.”

She took her time responding.

A third set of knocks, harder than last two others.

“Like I said,” Rose told me, “We’re attached to each other.  I’ll back you up.  Go.”

I nodded.

I grabbed a t-shirt from the backpack and pulled it on as I approached the door, stopping to peek out through the glass at the side.

Relief hit me in a wave, even in the moment my heart sank.

As the door opened, I saw two men in uniform.

One of them was very familiar.  I’d glimpsed him in the odd dream I’d seen, just before meeting Rose.

Police.

The other man spoke first.  “I’m RCMP officer Pat Macguin.  This is Chief of Police Laird Behaim.”

“Hi,” I said, guarded.

“Would you give me your name, please?” Laird Behaim asked me.  He had an intense gaze.  Pale blue eyes to go with very dark, straight hair, just starting to gray at the sideburns.

I’d seen him in the vision.  The man with the pocketwatch at the table with all of the blonde women.  I needed a moment to get my mental footing.  I searched for a response  “Um.”

“It’s not a hard answer to give,” the RCMP officer said.

“I just woke up from a nap, a little bit ago,” I said.  “Sorry.  I’m a little muddled.”

“Your name?” he asked.

There was no dodging the question.  “Blake Thorburn.”

Laird Demill raised his eyebrows.  “Paul’s son?  No, wait, that would be…”

“Peter.  He’s my cousin.  My dad is-”

“Bradley Thorburn, by process of elimination.  Yes.”

The RCMP gave Laird a look.

“I’m fairly familiar with his family,” Laird said.

“You’re alone, Mr. Thorburn?”

“Only person in the house,” I said.

“You’re injured,” the RCMP officer said, to me,  “A cut on your cheek?  Can I ask what happened?”

The sudden change of direction caught me off guard.  It didn’t help that this Laird guy was staring at me, studying me while the officer quizzed me.  He would be weighing my answers.

There was a danger here.  I felt a chill, and it wasn’t just the cold air from outside.

I couldn’t get arrested, or I’d get dragged out of the house, far from any protection it afforded.

But this man, here, Laird Behaim, was an enemy.  Would I be worse off if he realized I wasn’t yet ‘awakened’?

I couldn’t get caught in a lie, and I wasn’t too sure I wanted to look like I was trying to word things too carefully.

“Car broke down by the side of the highway.  I tried to take a shortcut through the woods, because I could have been hit in the highway.  Something cut me.”

“Where were you at four o’clock this morning?”

“Sleeping, I think.  I kind of woke up early, so I’m not sure.  Can I ask what this is about?”

“In a minute.  Can anyone or anything confirm your location?”

“Joel Monte, my landlord and friend.  I woke him up to borrow his car, maybe around five.  He’s going to be upset, the car broke down and I had to leave it behind.  I haven’t even had time to think about getting a tow, if it hasn’t been towed already.”

“You said.  His number?”

I gave it.  The RCMP officer glanced at the chief of police, who walked down the stairs, phone up to his ear.

“That’s a different area code than the one in Jacob’s Bell.  You woke up early, borrowed a car from your landlord at an unholy hour, and decided to drive to another town to visit…”

Laird was nearby, in earshot.  I wasn’t sure the RCMP officer was safe, either.  “My cousin Molly inherited this place.  She isn’t here.  I’m not sure where she is.”

“You can understand where I’m a little confused about this sequence of events,” he said.  He sounded unimpressed.  “Why?”

There was no good answer to give.  “Can I ask what this is about?”

“Answer my question, first.”  He wasn’t playing ball.

Damn it.  What was I supposed to say?  I didn’t have time to think.

When in doubt… honesty.

“The car broke down, and coming here seemed like it was less hassle overall.  Molly wasn’t here.  I thought I should stick around.”

All true.

“Which doesn’t explain why you were driving in the first place.”

“It sounds stupid.  I had a bad dream.  I decided to go for a drive, get away.”

He gave me a look that conveyed a whole idea.  ‘That does sound stupid‘.   But he was too polite to say it out loud.  The inconsistency of my actions, he must have thought I was on drugs.

Laird returned to the porch.  The look he gave me, too calm, too casual, made me shiver.

“Landlord confirms the time,” he said.  “And a car was found on the side of the highway.”

I jammed my hands in the pockets, where the cold was starting to numb my fingers.  “If you visit the sandwich shop at the rest stop, just a little up the road from where the car was picked up, the manager and a middle aged blonde woman can confirm.  She gave me a ride here.”

“We’ll check,” the RCMP officer said.

“What’s this about?” I asked.  I knew, but I wasn’t supposed to know.

“Can we step inside?” Laird asked.  “You look cold.”

“Not without a warrant,” I said.  Better to seem unfriendly and overly emotional than risk letting an enemy inside safe territory.  “What’s this about?”

The RCMP officer answered, “Molly Walker, the owner of this house, was found mauled in the woods.”

If I’d harbored any concerns about seeming too blasé, they were gone in the instant I heard those words.  “M-mauled?”

“Brutally attacked by a human, if the tracks are any indication,” the officer said.  “We’re not offering any particular details at this point.”

“I- uh,” I said.  I stopped, then tried to start again, but the words didn’t escape my mouth.  It didn’t help that I didn’t know what to say.

I’d known, but to hear it like this, from very human sources, minus all of the mystic crap?

“You what?” the RCMP officer asked me.

“She has family in town.  They moved to be closer to our grandmother.”

“We know.  We’ve spoken with them,” the officer said.  “They pointed us here.  We’d like to come inside and see if there’s anything that could explain the attack.”

I shook my head.  “No.”

“Irene Walker gave us permission to investigate the premises.”

Which meant letting this Laird Behaim person into the house.

“It- no.  It’s not her call,” I said.  “I’m sorry.  I can give you the number of the lawyer.  The way I understand it, the house would pass on to me, if Molly was dead.  It’s my property, it’s my say.  Not without a warrant.”

“This isn’t reflecting well on you, Mr. Thorburn,” the RCMP officer said.

“I know,” I said.  My mouth was dry, and my eyes were tearing up from the cold and the recent announcement.  “Yeah.  I- I’m sorry.  I need time to process the news, and I’m not going to make good calls, as tired and confused as I am.  It’s better if you talk to the lawyer.”

“Mr. Beasley?” Laird asked.

“Mr. Beasley, right,” I said.

“I’m familiar with him,” he said.  When the RCMP officer looked in his direction, he said, “There’s a great deal of concern over this house, in local circles.  The town is booming with the addition of the train station and the proximity to Toronto, property prices are soaring, and the amount of good land that can be bought is somewhat limited, due to certain geographical concerns rooted in this property.  The last time I paid any attention to the money, this property was worth twenty million dollars.”

“It’s worth more now,” I said.

“I imagine.  A great many locals are very interested,” Laird said, his eyes fixed on me.  “Mr. Beasley has been handling the bulk of the disputes for the family.  I know him.  With your permission, I’ll talk to him and see what we can’t figure out.”

“Please do” the RCMP officer said.

“I’d like to have a moment to talk to Mr. Thorburn here, if that’s alright.  If he’s telling the truth and he has inherited the property, I wouldn’t mind the chance to talk this through with him.”

The RCMP officer didn’t seem happy with that.  “You’re aware of the time constraints?”

“Of course.  I’ll talk to Mr. Thorburn, then the lawyer, and we can meet for dinner?  I’ll fill you in.”

The RCMP officer took that in.  “Alright.  I need to make some calls.  Call me when you’re done.”

Laird nodded.

Together, we watched the RCMP officer trudge away through the snow, his boots squeaking.  When he was gone, Laird withdrew a pocketwatch from his coat.  He popped it open, looked, and then closed it, holding it in one hand.

His implement?

“I admit, thought it was a girl, here.”

“No,” I responded.  “I’m just as surprised to be here as you are to see me here.”

“Well, if it helps, I think you’re innocent,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Here’s the honest truth; I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to discuss things with you.”

“You’re a pretty honest guy, huh?” I asked.

Stupid.  Stupid question.

“I suspect you and I both know why,” he said.  “Can we do away with pretense?”

I sighed.  “Sure.”

“I believe you’re innocent because I know who killed Molly Walker.”

“Who?” I asked.  I was getting colder, now.

He only shook his head.  “I can’t say.  It will probably go unsolved, the media will report it, but it won’t be sensationalized.  Good officers will most likely put in a genuine, honest effort and find nothing.”

“Doesn’t this kind of conflict with the oath you swore, when entering office?  Or are you faking the police thing?”

He smiled.  “Rest assured, I studied for my position, I earned it, and I’ve maintained it in good conscience.  I’d rather talk about you.  Would you be up for a walk?”

“A walk?” I asked.

“If you’re worried, I can promise you my protection for as long as you’re in my company, I’ll take you somewhere where we can talk, then bring you back, as safe as I can manage it.”

“Which is how safe?”  I asked.  “I don’t know what your protection is worth.”

“You’re thinking I’ve limited myself somehow?” he asked, clearly amused.

“I’m thinking anything is possible.”

“If positions were reversed, I would trust my own daughters, who I care about deeply, to the care of someone of equivalent power.”

“This isn’t a trick?” I asked.

His smile faltered a little.  “This line of questioning is getting a touch grating.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“This is not a trick,” he said.  “My primary aim here is to find out who you are.  You’re an unknown quantity in a very delicate ecosystem.  But we can talk about that more after.  I suspect you’ll gain more information than you give up.”

“Right this minute, with everything that’s happening, I’d rather be safe and warm than have information,” I said.  “A bit of time to grieve might be nice.”

“What if I offered to help streamline matters on the legal front?  You’ll be safer and warmer here than in a prison cell, awaiting a trial,” he said.

I considered the idea.

“I’d find that a little more tempting,” I admitted.

“If you’re interested, I’ll wait while you get your coat and whatever else you deem necessary.”

“Give me a minute,” I said.  I shut the door.

I made my way to the living room.

“Don’t,” Rose said.

“It’s answers,” I said.

“It’s dangerous,” she responded.  “We can go the safe route.  Like I was saying before.  There’s too much we don’t know.”

I found my jacket.  “We’ve skimmed the little black book.  Behaim… they’re one of the covens.”

“There’s a better word than coven, but sure.  They’re a local institution, maybe the oldest here.  All the more reason to stay.”

“He’ll fix the legal situation, which is maybe the biggest concern right now.  I don’t know if we can do anything against ordinary people, if the cops decide to kick down the door.”

“Blake!  I don’t get a say?”

“You do,” I said.  “But… you were saying how you were going kind of crazy, alone?  I’m going to lose it if I’m cooped up.  I have to keep moving.  I had to before I left home, and it only got reinforced after.  If there’s an opportunity to stretch my legs and get answers, while preserving my sanity, I’m going to take it.”

“Blake, no.”

“Yes,” I said.  “Come with, as much as you can.  I wouldn’t mind the backup.”

I pulled on my coat, then rummaged in the closet to get a new scarf and hat.  There were two that were plain enough to wear.  The nurse’s?

I stepped across the threshold, half-convinced I’d get shot or something equivalent.  When I didn’t, I carefully locked the door.  I stood there, hand still on the handle.

“You promise to smooth over the legal issues?”

“I’ll make this as stress free for you as I can.  Nobody will enter the house, if I can help it, which I can.  I promise you this.”

“The house is safe?” I asked.

He sighed.  “You don’t know very much, do you?”

“I’m a fast learner, but not as much as I’d like to know.”

“I assure you, the house is safe.  I don’t know of anyone who could or would damage the house or property.  If it was that easy, we would have removed it already.”

I turned, joining him in walking down the long, snow-covered driveway.

“Let me cut to the chase.  I’d like to talk about a hypothetical scenario with you,” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Global politics, if you don’t mind?”

“I don’t really mind.”

“In this scenario, we’ve got a situation involving a number of countries. If you will, there’s America.  I’m rather interested in America for the purpose of this discussion, but that’s just me.  Powerful, perhaps overly proud, large, keepers of the peace.”

I glanced at his uniform.  “Sure.”

“Then a European country.  I would say they are very traditional, seductive, beautiful, very prone to holding grudges.  More history, more set in their ways.”

I thought of the blonde women I’d seen at the table with him.  “I can picture it.”

“There are others.  Imagine a small, very old, and somewhat backwards nation.  We’d then have a broad swathe of nature with very few settlements, as well as a very vibrant country that has just come into an inexplicable amount of wealth, which is liable to burn out quickly on its excess.  As well as other bit players who shouldn’t be ignored, but who aren’t of import in our discussion, here.”

I tried to put faces to the descriptions, but it wasn’t easy.  Perhaps the man in the twisted tower, with the talking dog, for the latter?  The girl with the checkered scarf…  If I went by process of elimination…

“I’m picturing an aboriginal woman,” I said.

“I can imagine such a woman leading this very old nation, yes.”

“A young woman, in heavy clothing, with a rabbit, in the middle of the uninhabited, natural setting?”

“Mm.  Quite right.”

“And… a long haired young man, for the wealthy country.”

“Yes.”

“If I were to add to this scenario, where would you fit a teenaged girl with a checkered scarf?”

He frowned, “I’m at a loss.”

“So am I,” I said.  The girl who had been talking to the Other, with the face that stretched.

He thought for a second, nodding and smiling a greeting at someone who apparently recognized him in passing.  When we were clear, he said, “Ah.  Someone who intruded on important meetings, perhaps.  A new arrival to the scene.”

“Is that so?”

“Too new and too small to be a serious threat.  Self deluding, even, dealing in things she doesn’t fully understand.  A complicated situation.  I’d call her a terrorist before I called her a local power.”

“Fair enough.  Can we call her Maggie, or is that mucking up the metaphor?”

“We could call her that.  Maggie Holt, I believe.”

I nodded.

He took in a deep breath, opened his watch, then closed it, without looking at it.  “In this imagined scenario, we have a country in, say, our equivalent of South America.  This hypothetical country is unpredictable, has a history of being aggressive, and it just so happens they are the only one in this imagined scenario who have nuclear weapons at their disposal.”

Nuclear weapons.  It seemed an apt descriptor for the books I’d seen.  Dangerous to handle, dangerous to use.  Once they were brought to the table, everyone would lose.

“In this little story, the dictator died, and a successor was assassinated in short order, let’s say.  Now another one has taken the helm, and nobody is entirely sure what type of person the young man is… which is very concerning, considering the weapons he has at his fingertips.  He could be reckless, he could be mild mannered, he could be a merchant, a politician, or a student, but he’s an unknown quality, and appearances can be deceiving.”

“I can picture that,” I said.

“Should this small southern nation cease to be a concern, everyone else profits, and the nukes being removed from the picture is only a small part of that.  The other countries would be elevated to a new age… and the country who is most powerful will take the helm, quite possibly forever.”

If Hillsglade House was the small country…  Jacob’s Bell the region…

“Is it so important?” I asked.  “The… resources or whatever you’d gain?  A few acres?”

“When things develop to a certain point, it takes on a different tone.  Population, wealth, whatever else, they attract attention from everyone.  With the current status quo, our little world here is small enough to be left alone.  Understand, our little metaphor here falls apart when we cease talking about the area that falls within, say, a thousand kilometers around us.  I could start talking about other planets with their own drama and politics, if I really wanted to maintain the narrative, but those thing really aren’t our focus.”

“I understand,” I said.  I also understood that the ‘metaphor’ was making it very easy for him to outright lie, but that was a given.

“When our little world here grows, everyone with an established power base can ride the cresting wave.  Prestige, fortune, status, with others visiting, or attempting to get in while the going is good, and paying a good price to do so.”

“Alright,” I said.  “I’m starting to get a sense of this.”

“The trouble is, when the road block,” he half-turned to gesture back at the house, “Is removed, and when things start developing, there will be a very small window of opportunity in which one of the local powers I just described might take the helm.  If one doesn’t, it’s liable to be a more distant entity, and it’s likely to be someone we couldn’t hope to stand up to.”

Halfway across the world… in this analogy… someone from outside Jacob’s Bell?  Another, greater power.

The families here were small in the grand scheme of it all, and before the city grew and drew attention, they wanted to solidify their positions.

He opened his pocketwatch, then closed it without looking down, like a nervous tic, then continued.  “America rather likes the status quo, and if we were to see this small hypothetical country fall right now, it would be bad for America.  America wouldn’t take power, nor would the European country.  It would be left to the newcomer, with all of his wealth, excess, and arrogance.”

I thought of what I’d read.  The warning to stay out of the north end.  “This hypothetical wealthy country wouldn’t happen to be to the north?”

“Yes, to the north, Mr. Thorburn.  I would like to see the small southern entity with the proverbial nukes be a very stable, calm, country for the time being.  America would protect it, and things would be very calm and very peaceful for long enough that the wealthy newcomer might fade in his glory.”

“So it isn’t really friendship, is it?  It’s… buying time.  Then there’s nothing to stop America from crushing the little country.”

“It would be a temporary alliance, I’m afraid.  I don’t believe there’s a way around it.”

“What if the nukes were… given up to greater authorities?”

“Who would you trust to handle such things?  The southern country and any country that received these goods would, in this scenario, become immediate targets, because nukes that are changing hands are far, far more dangerous than nukes that are sitting idle in one place.”

“What if the nukes were destroyed?  In exchange for certain concessions, to protect the southern country?”

“Impossible.  In this scenario, I’d describe it as radiation.  Ugly elements would be let loose.  Elements that are contained so long as the nukes are intact, you understand.  If it’s even possible to destroy those things.  The person who put the things together was very, very conscientious.”

“They can’t be given away, because they’re too dangerous.  They can’t be destroyed, because they’re too dangerous,” I said.

“In the best case scenario for our hypothetical little world,” he said, “our little southern country remains dormant for some time, and is cleanly, quickly wiped out of existence, in a matter of weeks, months or years.  I’m sorry.”

Analogy aside, he wasn’t sugarcoating it.  Somehow that made me feel better.  I had my hands jammed in my coat pockets, and I kept them there, but I pressed my arms tighter against my body.  “The nukes?”

“The nukes are left where they are and everything is paved over, with numerous measures taken to ensure it remains that way.”

I felt cold, and I wasn’t sure how much of it was the fact that I’d stood in the open doorway for long enough to let it soak into me, and how much was emotion and physical reaction.

We walked on for a bit.  People greeted ‘Chief Behaim’ as they passed him on the sidewalk.  He greeted them warmly in turn.

“No consideration to the poor bastard who didn’t even want to take over?”  I asked.

“I suspect the poor bastard is as good as dead already,” Laird Behaim said.  “I am sorry.  If it helps, I don’t think I’ll enjoy the part I play in it.”

He sounded sorry.

“Would you like a coffee, Mr. Thorburn?” Chief Behaim offered.

I looked for a mirror and found one, meeting Rose’s gaze.  I still felt numb, cold, a little less like a complete person than before.  Slowly, surely, this situation was chipping away at me.  A little warmth in the form of good coffee would go a long way.

“Sure.  Please,” I said.

Bonds 1.5

I’d expected a homey ‘small town’ coffee shop for Jacob’s Bell, but Laird guided me to a franchise instead.  A small crowd had gathered within, teenagers done with the day of classes and adults done with work.  Taking shelter from the cold.

I didn’t miss the sheer number of eyes that fell on me when I entered with the local chief of police.

“Hi Laird,” one of the twenty-somethings behind the over-lacquered wood counter said.  A narrow guy with an apron and a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows.

“Hi James.”

A middle aged woman, lines in her face worn deep, otherwise fairly well dressed, asked, “Who’s this?  Bringing someone in for the wedding?”

One of two blonde teenagers at a table by the line said, “He’s not one of ours, and there aren’t any Behaim sorts with that hair.”

I touched my hair.  Wavy and dirty blond, in contrast to the straight blond hair these girls sported.

I could connect the dots.  Blonde girls… they might have been among the ones I saw while tossing and turning in bed, before waking up to all this.

“Wedding is a few months away,” Laird said.  “As for who he is…”

He turned to me.  Letting me make my own introductions.

“I’m Blake Thorburn.  One of Rose’s grandkids.”

There wasn’t any shock or surprise, no outcry nor any particular reaction.  I could see people shifting their weight.  The middle aged woman folded her arms, legs set apart.  A few people who’d been idly looking my way were staring now.

“Something’s happened to his cousin, Molly Walker,” Laird said.  “The RCMP are looking into it.”

“The Walker girl is dead?” James asked.

“Murder?” one of the blondes asked.

“She was savaged by something in the glade behind the box store.  There were bites, claw marks, as well as evidence of tools being used.  We’ll know more when the coroner gets back to us tonight.”

Tools?

“Oh my gosh,” a heavyset man at the far end of the counter said, going white.

“It was murder then?” the older of the blonde girls asked.

I wasn’t sure what color I was going, but I could feel a sick feeling in my chest.  The smells of the coffee were getting more intense.  Too intense.

I’d known she’d been mauled.  I’d known she’d been attacked, and that she’d been scared, but this was the worst bit of all.  Tools?  How did one use tools?

“Do you need to step into the washroom?”  Laird asked.

“No,” I said.  “But give me a second.”

“Someone was murdered?  In Jacob’s Bell?” the heavy man asked.

“We don’t know if it was intended as a murder” Laird said.  “At the very least, she was attacked, and she did die that same night, possibly from the cold or blood loss.  For the time being, it’s a good idea to stay safe, don’t stay out too late, and tune into tonight’s news.  I’ll be giving an announcement to fill everyone in.”

“And him?” the blonde girl asked.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of doubt about why someone might have gone after Ms. Walker,” Laird said.  “Others might come after him.  We were having a discussion regarding his safety, and we might talk about the house as well.”

“Are you selling it?” the employee behind the counter asked.

“Good Christ, James,” the middle aged woman said.  “His cousin just died, and you’re asking about that?”

“Everyone’s going to ask,” James said.  “People are in debt, and once that house sells, property values-”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” she said.  “I’m saying it isn’t the time.”

James frowned.  “Can I get you something, Laird?”

“Coffee, black.”

James had it ready in seconds.  “Blake, was it?  You want anything?”

“No, thank you,” I said.  I still felt a little ill.  Tools had been used?  What did that even mean?  Knives, scalpels?  Or hammers and saws?

Laird reached for his wallet, to pay, and James refused him.  The ease with which Laird accepted that suggested it was a regular thing.

“Corner booth?” Laird asked me.  I nodded.

The booth in the corner situated us away from any people.  Laird was in the lead, and he took the seat that placed his back to the corner, which meant I had my back to the rest of the room.  I sat down, hands clasped together in front of me for warmth, breaking the grip only long enough to turn around the napkin dispenser, so the reflective surface wasn’t facing the wall.

Rose wasn’t there.

Laird opened and closed his pocket watch.  I could see the interior, a backing that had enough openings to reveal the complicated inner workings.  The entire thing looked like it was made of gold and ivory.

He’d grabbed three little paper packets of sugar, and tore two open.  I watched as he tore them open, then emptied them.  They missed his drink entirely, forming a little dune onto the table, with grains dancing across the slick, not-quite washed surface.

He moved his cup, placing it onto the pile, and sliding it across the table.  When he lifted it, the sugar was left in a crescent shape where it had been dragged by the underside of the cup.  He emptied the remaining packet, a smaller pile in the center of the crescent, and then three lines, fanning outward, on the other side.  The edge of the paper packet helped give the three lines form.

Almost half of a typical ‘sun’, as a child might draw it, with the rays fanning outward, and a dot in the middle.

I could see the blonde girls turning in unison, glancing at Laird.

“A signal?” I asked.  My heart was pounding.  I had no idea what this meant.

“Just the opposite.  Keep an eye on the people.”

I did.  Twenty or thirty seconds passed, enough time that I almost spoke up.  Then people stood up.  The occupied booth nearest us emptied.  A group of people entered the shop, and situated themselves at the far end.

“That should provide a bit of privacy,” Laird said.  He sipped his coffee.  “We tend to learn a few tricks, because it’s expedient.  This one is a bit of shamanism.  Many of the circles here and there will look down on someone for dabbling.  It’s dangerous, and it leads to more mistakes.  It’s better, many say, to specialize, do one thing well.  The Duchamp family there seems to hold to this idea.  The Behaim family doesn’t.””

“And my grandmother?  I know she had an area of expertise, but the library is pretty comprehensive.”

“I think your observations are apt.  She may well have been a rare talent, helped by a generous heaping of time.  I chose to work, to have this be a definitive part of my life.  There were periods I was more serious about it, points where it faded into the background, and I raised a family.  I suspect your grandmother made it her life.  I find it impressive, if I leave the particulars aside.”

“Hard to imagine her like that.”

“I imagine you have questions.  About her, about all of this.”

“Lots.  Very few I’m comfortable asking.”

“You don’t want to show how little you know, perhaps.  I wouldn’t worry.  Most of us were novices in the beginning.”

“Most?” I asked.

“Most.  We have a local exception, even.  Others almost assuredly exist.  It is generally a bad habit to use absolutes, even outside of certain circles.  None, all, every, always, and so on.”

“Right,” I said.

“You’re in a dangerous situation, Blake.  The natural inclination is to be the cornered rat, to lash out, biting, in a frenzy.  One would understand if you wanted to throw caution to the wind and fight us.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” I said, “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

He raised his heavy eyebrows.  “Besides the obvious?”

“Besides the obvious.”

“Do you know the reason we discourage people from owning guns?”

“Guns are dangerous,” I said.  A glance to the side indicated that some more people had come in.  A group of kids started to drift towards the empty tables near us, then changed their minds and headed for the door.  Taking their coffee and snacks to go instead of sitting in.

“Well, we’re talking about dangerous things.  Guns are more dangerous when in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use them.  Not to whoever poses a threat to them, but to themselves and to their loved ones.  It’s much the same here.”

“If I’m going to die anyways,” I said, “What’s the harm in self defense?”

“An attacker can take your gun from you.  The idea is the same here.  When we work, we’re dealing with outside parties.  If they don’t succeed in their tasks, your opposition can make a better offer, or simply frustrate them to the point that whatever you sent comes back at you, angry and blaming you for the failure.”

I nodded slowly.

He gestured down at the diagram in sugar.  “This idea recurs in any dealing with Others.  Always, there is a risk.  Here, I make a meager food offering, create a sign to indicate what I want, and draw from the reputation I maintain with local community spirits.  A bonus of my position.  The spirits play along, because they know it keeps people safer and helps to keep the community safe, and because they know I’ll make a better offering later, a habit I’ve established.  The end result?  They turn people away before they sit nearby, and we can talk without fear of eavesdroppers.”

“And these benign spirits can turn on you.”

“Always a concern, with any Other.  If something goes wrong, if I allow too many people to go out into the cold instead of sitting here and someone gets hurt, or if the business starts to suffer here due to a lack of customers, my credit with these same spirits might become strained, and they might take issue.  At the very least, I’d get less free coffees.  At worst, I might find events conspiring to take my position from me, or I might even get drawn and quartered in the streets.”

More grotesque imagery.  It made me think of Molly’s fate.

I leaned back.  “Wouldn’t practitioners be making those sorts of mistakes more often?”

“It happens from time to time.  A handful of occurrences a year, for a given area.  But these things are rarely sudden, and they can take a variety of forms.  As it’s rarely a single monumental mistake, errors like this tend to cause a long series of events that can be tied together, telling very plausible stories.  Building racism or intolerance in a sub-community, peaking in a mob assault.  A high-risk investor’s accounts bottom out all at once, causing financial ruin.  You’d be surprised at what’s believable, when looked at from outside, or how easy it is to let this happen.  One can unknowingly offend one subset of Others while trying to please another, or spend too much credit and overdraw their accounts.”

I nodded.  “And the… bigger events?  We were just talking about the equivalent of nukes.”

“Most areas are stable.  A lord or lords sit in power, well situated, unlikely to change more than once every fifty to a hundred years, if that.  In smaller areas, things are typically enforced within the community, and it’s too much effort for too little gain, to cross too many lines and take such risks.  The only places where you’re liable to see anything dramatic are places that are on the brink of great change, or places undergoing that change… places where people see an opportunity to seize greater status or better positions.  That change helps to hide things.”

“Like a girl being beaten and tortured in the woods might be explained away as a side effect of the Hillsglade House dispute,” I said.  My tone was a bit harder than I’d intended.  Though we were out of earshot, I could see the blonde girls glance my way.

“Yes,” Laird said, just as calm as he’d been before.  “Getting around to your question, things that are hard to explain away tend to end in people disappearing, rather than bodies being found.  The locals will then clean up, and they will be upset with the culprit for the inconvenience and the risk.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

“I want you to trust me, Blake.  We may be enemies, but that doesn’t preclude trust and respect, much less an open dialogue.”

I glanced again at the metal side of the napkin dispenser.  Rose was still absent.

Laird finished off his coffee, then set it down on the table.  He opened his pocket watch, then closed it.

“I take it that’s your implement,” I said.

“And my familiar,” he said.  “After a fashion.”

He opened the pocketwatch to show me.  As before, I saw the openings that revealed the inner workings.

After two seconds, however, other hands slipped out from beneath the hour, minute and second hands.  One went backwards, while the other went slow.  He rested the end of the pocketwatch on the table, and I could feel the steady tick of it being transmitted across the surface, akin to the beating of a heart.

“Implements can be familiars?” I asked.

“Unconventional, but a police dog was off the table, and I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life dealing with any Other that would need to take such a large and inconvenient mortal form.  Not that this one is so weak.”

“So… it’s talking to you?”

“It can, but just now it was doing me the service of telling me the time.  I can’t take too long, I’m expecting a call from the coroner and a meeting with Macguin,” he said.  “We might have some room for conversation before I go, but first I’m going to need to top up my coffee.  Can I get you anything?”

I shook my head.

“I was thinking we could talk about a deal.  Something to keep things safe and calm for everyone involved.  If we went that route, I could protect you and buy you time to find a way out, if one exists.  Maybe ruminate on that, so we can jump straight into the conversation at the first opportunity.”

“Sure,” I said.

He stood from his chair, empty cup in hand.

I turned in my seat to watch Laird join the line.  With the crude little diagram in sugar, there was a bit of a crowd at the other end of the coffee shop, with people gathering and waiting for their coffees at the one end of the counter, the general line, people finding seats and people coming and going.  Twenty or so people in all, but still a good number.

“I don’t trust him,” Rose said, the words distorted.

I glanced at the dispenser.  Sure enough, I could see her blurry reflection.  I murmured my reply, “I don’t either.”

Word had apparently gotten around.  People were glancing my way, gathering around Laird.  I withdrew my cell phone from my pocket and raised it to my ear.  I’d get enough stares without talking to myself.

Rose said, “I went to go get the little black book.  Dramatis Personae.  I’ve got others in a grocery bag.  I didn’t like how incomplete our knowledge was, so I did more digging.  Behaim’s Circle, a gender-neutral term for covens, specializes in chronomancy, with a secondary focus in augury.”

I could recall reading that, but I’d been skimming, to see where the real threats were, and my focus had been on Essentials.  “Chrono… time?”

“And omens.”

“Explains the pocketwatch,” I replied.

“The little black book says that grandmother thought the watch was a zeitgeist.  Not in the pop culture term, either.  A literal zeitgeist, a spirit of time.  Those are his tools, the means he uses, so if he’s going to try something, it’s going to work in a way related to them.  Both concretely and abstractly.”

“Keep going,” I said.

“With implements, the shape it takes is an indicator in how the practitioner works.  A wand is very direct, pointing to things, aimed at specifics.  A staff is more dramatic, cumbersome.  A fan might be more personal, an accessory, directing things inward.  Pens are focused on labels and premeditation.”

“It’s symbolic,” I said.  I watched Laird order his coffee.  “Abstract.  I can work with that.  I’ve spent enough time around artists, I think I can do ass-pull interpretations.”

“A watch.  It’s less direct than the objects Essentials gave as examples.  It doesn’t suggest anything particular.”

“It’s a… way of seeing how the world works on a fundamental level.  For someone who does the omen thing, I can sort of understand that.”

“Right.  But what’s he pulling here, if he’s pulling anything?”

“He might be getting more information out of us than we’re getting.  Which I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’ve got an ugly feeling,” Rose said.  “Like he’s playing us.  You know?”

“Yeah,” I said.  I didn’t take my eyes off Laird.  “It doesn’t feel like it’s just a little bit of information gathering.”

“No,” Rose said, very much on the same page with me.  “No, it doesn’t.”

“Something else, then,” I said.  “Time… I’m thinking about what he could pull on that front, but I’m not coming up with anything time related.  We don’t have any major appointments… no.”

I saw the blonde girls get up, and I tensed.  I couldn’t say what I was tensing up to do, but I wanted to be ready for anything.

They glanced my way, unsmiling, before stopping to talk to Laird for a second and then leaving.  Not long enough to plot something.

“He has other tricks up his sleeve,” Rose said.  “Having a focus doesn’t mean you can’t do something else.”

“He said he dabbled in a variety of things,” I said.  “But there’s too much we don’t know on that front, I’d go crazy trying to figure it out.”

“There aren’t many options,” Rose said.  “We don’t know much.”

Pocketwatch, familiar, implement.  Who was he, how did he operate?

A keeper of the peace, a police officer, a family man invested in community.  He was a figure, a pillar in the community.

I looked down at the pattern in sugar.

“What are you thinking?” Rose asked.

“I was thinking he could use those spirits from before to make these people lynch me.”

“Could he?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “But… it doesn’t fit.  I mean, yes, he sort of lured me here.  But… he seems too orderly.”

“It could be a mask,” she said.  “A deception.”

“It could be,” I said.  “Except the watch is orderly.  Overcomplicated, maybe, but it’s orderly.  For a personal icon of who he is, for a badge, it doesn’t fit that the guy holding that item in particular would turn around and incite a riot.”

“True,” Rose said.

I could see Laird at the station at the far end of the counter, getting sugar packets, no doubt.  People had mobbed him, with questions about the murder, the house, and me, no doubt.

I spoke my thoughts aloud.  “A badge.  It’s a really nice watch.  Maybe there’s more to it?  Nuances?  It’s old fashioned, which ties into the whole ‘mucking with time’ idea.  It’s beautiful, attention getting, a status symbol.”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “How does that affect how he applies his magic?”

I glanced down at the diagram in sugar.

“Influencing crowds, people, and perceptions,” I said.  I stood from my seat.  “With time at the heart of it, as his primary focus?”

“If I read something like that in one of the books,” Rose said, “I’d buy it.”

I crossed the room to reunite with Laird.  I had to make my way through the local flavor.  Girls in ugg boots with vests and backpacks, no doubt commuters from Toronto colleges; too many flannel shirts; a couple of truckers in baseball caps who were blithely ignorant to the fact that the headwear was ill suited to the season; and some middle-aged women who looked like they’d smoked far too much.

“Hey!” Barista James called out.

I turned.

“Do me a favor?” he asked.  He jerked a thumb towards the door.  “Maybe clear out?”

Ah, the hostility that Molly had alluded to.  “Clear out?”

“Get going.  I’m going to kick everyone else out soonish, but those guys are actually buying stuff.”

I still felt lost, and it didn’t help that I was splitting my attention between James and my search for Laird in the crowd.  “Kick everyone out?”

“Closing,” he said.

I was no longer searching for Laird.  With that one word, he had my attention.  Very carefully, I said, “Early to close.”

“Small town,” he answered.  “Eight’s late enough.”

Eight.

My eyes searched the crowd.  The college girls, the truckers.  An entirely different group from before.

I’d just lost four or five hours.

Laird was nowhere to be seen.

He’d stranded me.

I pulled my hat and scarf from my pockets and had them on before I was out the door, taking long strides.

The light outside the window was a streetlight, not daylight.  As I glanced up at it, it seemed to decrease in intensity.  Almost as if it were apologizing for the deception, or as if the light was one of the last things to catch up with the new status quo.  It was night.

It wasn’t a jump.  It was a blurring.  Me, the other people, environment and all other things sort of sliding along to a new time at their own paces.  No comment was made that I’d been at the coffee shop for four or five hours.

The snow crunched under my feet.

I had questions.  He’d promised this wasn’t a trap, but… what had his wording been?

Could I even worry about that right now?  If he’d lied, it was on his head.  Either way, this was my situation to deal with.

People here and there were on the street.  A man, smoking, staring at me the entire time I walked down the length of one block.  A woman sitting on the porch, doing the same.

Cold looks.

Were any of them Others?  Practitioners?

I felt the hollowness of an empty stomach, despite the anxiety.  My mouth was dry.  Was my body belatedly catching up with me, in terms of the lost hours?

A man, bundled up in winter clothes with hat, scarf, jacket, slacks and boots all in black stood in the middle of the sidewalk, at the end of the block.  His eyes were fixed on the snowbank in front of him, his breath fogging with the slow, steady breathing.

He didn’t move at my approach.  Unnerved, I crossed the street, triple checking for cars.

“It smells like a rose,” a man announced, “It’s as beautiful as a rose.  I dare say it’s as fragile as a rose, once you get past the thorns.  But is it really our Rose?”

I turned.

Three twenty-somethings, if I went by appearances, were approaching me from behind.  I might have been off.  Each had alcohol in brown bags.

I recognized one of them from the vision.  He was the one speaking, his arms thrown out to either side, for the drama of it.

“Padraic,” I said.  The one who had been with the girl in the checkered scarf.

An Other.

“I prefer Patrick in polite company,” Padraic said.  “Good grief, little rose, where are your thorns?  You’re defenseless.”

They kept walking, not slowing as they drew closer to me.  I backed away a step, then another.

Behind Padraic was a beautiful, willowy young woman in a long black coat and a man with a very fine bone structure on his face, his fine brown hair expertly styled, shining with the snowflakes that had gently alighted on it.

I might not have given them a second glance, except their faces weren’t flushed with the cold.

“This rose has no eyes, which is only natural, but it’s usually sharper,” Padraic said.  I had to back away a step.  “It has been cast away.  Denuded.”

My instincts were screaming at me to act.  The problem was that they were telling me to do things that would make this go very, very badly.

When the woman spoke, her voice was almost more musical for her drunkenness, rapt in her fascination, “There’s a vulnerability, isn’t there?  Like seeing a king without his clothes.  A movie actress howls in fear, nothing held back.  A chieftain begs like a craven coward.”

“The beauty of a thing with all the protections stripped away,” Patrick said.  He pulled off his hat, holding it to his chest, as if in mourning.  His bright red hair was cut to a length just above a buzz-cut, carefully cultivated ringlets framing his face.

“Except the skin,” the other man whispered.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” the woman said.  “So fragile.  Won’t you dance with us?”

She reached out, and her smile was a timid one.  All the scarier because of how obviously calculated it was.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I said.  I slapped her hand away.

The realization of just how bad that one kneejerk reaction was settled in so quickly I suspected I’d seen it coming.

But I didn’t like being touched.

“I’ve been rebuked,” she said.  The back of her hand found her forehead, face turning skyward.  Her playfulness belied the glitter of anger in her eyes, when she glanced down at me to gauge my reaction.

“The rose is usually better at the verbal jousting,” Patrick said.  He swayed a little, then caught himself with a hand on the woman’s shoulder.  She reached up to lay her hand across his, as if it were all choreographed, an act.  “It’s brutish to fall back on physical violence.”

“It’s almost insulting, to see a creature that so resembles us, acting so basely,” the woman said.

“It is, isn’t it, Ev?  An affront.”

His male companion stepped around me, alighting briefly on a snowbank that my foot would have plunged into, before coming to a stop just behind my left shoulder.

When I looked, Patrick was to my right, back to the wall.

“But moods do shift so dramatically from generation to generation,” Patrick finished.  “It adds a liveliness to the proceedings, breaks the patterns we so easily fall into.  It’s why we love you, my rose.”

I wanted to cut in, to speak, but I wasn’t sure what to say.  The confusion of being cast five hours into the future wasn’t helping, nor was being surrounded.  It was all I could do to avoid a repeat performance that would get them really offended.

“I’m sorry for that,” I said, looking the woman in the eyes.  “It was crude.  I regret it.”

“Then will you let me touch you?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

She pouted a little.  “You’re afraid.  That’s okay.  You’re so small, so fragile.  A petal adrift in the wind, that will soon dry up and do nothing more than feed the bugs and return to the earth.  I can fix that.  Give you life, like you’ve never imagined it.  All of the best things you could ever experience, in tastes, touches, music and song.”

“It’s like cheating,” Patrick said.  “We both know there’s nothing good waiting for you at the end, my rose, not while your bloodline has this weight pulling it down.  You and your children and your children’s children, all down the line, there’s only one place you can go.  But we can give you the paradise you and yours are denied.  Two, three centuries.  Sublime things, everything you thought you might enjoy, and everything you never even considered.  There’ll be so little left of you when it’s all done that it won’t even matter where you’re going.”

“I can flense your skin,” the other man said.  “But without pain.  The movement of air as someone enters the room will have you arching your back, whimpering in anticipation.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline,” I said.  I couldn’t hide the tremor in my voice.  I felt more than a little backed against a wall, here.  It wasn’t just being surrounded.

Patrick wasted no time in seizing on that weakness.  “Are you sure?  No more fear, no concerns.  If you’re worried about the bloodline, I’m sure we could round up someone to make it happen, allowing you to do your duty.  You can be as specific as you like, whatever your preferences in body, hair, personality.  Keller here might even enjoy hunting them down.”

Keller.  The male companion, almost avian in features, with the bone structure, the gaze.

Somehow, it was easy to imagine him as a hunter.

“We can even make the birth painless.  An exercise in joy, rather than pain, without blood or sweat or tears,” Ev said.  “Something beautiful that could be the centerpiece for a party.  Architecture and dances and music, all around one singular event, with a moment of crescendo-”

“This rose is male,” Keller said.  “Men don’t give birth.”

“Male?” Ev asked.  She gave me a closer look.

I was pretty sure no humans had made that mistake since I was five or so.

Patrick, for his part, mused, “I forgot that detail.  I’m sure we could make it happen.  Do you want to try, my rose?”

I took advantage of the momentary confusion to cut in, “I have other obligations.”

“Well,” Patrick said.  He shifted position, coming damn close to brushing up against me.  “That leaves us with a problem.  You’ve offended Ev, and decorum demands that things be made right.  If you won’t accept our invitation, then how will this be resolved?”

“It’s all right,” Ev said.  She wobbled a bit, and then stepped to one side to lean against the wall.  She took another drink from the bottle.  “I’ll settle for him giving me his apologies.  Perhaps a kiss on the cheek?”

My heart thudded in my chest.

A kiss?  Was there a trap here?

“No.”

It wasn’t my voice.

Rose.

All three of the strangers backed away from the wall, until they could see the window where Rose was reflected.  With the curtains drawn, the streetlights reflected her well in the glass of the window.

“Ah,” Patrick said.  He glanced between us.  “I like this.”

“We can’t take your deal, Essylt.  I hope we can arrange something else,” Rose said.

“We can, we can.  But first, I must insist…” Patrick hopped up onto the four-inch window sill, taking a knee, somehow without falling or touching the glass.  He reached through the glass and put a hand on the back of Rose’s neck, then drew her forward, his head passing into the window to plant the lightest of kisses on her forehead.

He hopped down, giving me a plain view of a very startled Rose.

Ev, or Essylt as Rose had called her, looked between Rose and I with a somewhat drunken amusement, her movements languid.

“Whatever happened?” Patrick asked.  “Now we have two roses, but they’re so vulnerable.  Thornless.”

“It makes you just want to break them,” Ev said.  “So you can have those last beautiful moments all to yourself.”

“And a mess,” Rose said.

“Messes can be cleaned up,” Ev said.  “Memories are forever, and forever is a very long time.”

“Hear hear,” Patrick said.  He, Ev and Keller each tipped their bottles back to drink.  Patrick licked the corner of his mouth.

“The breaking will have to wait,” Rose said.  “Until we’ve resolved this issue of Blake’s manners.  I’m afraid he can’t give you his apologies.  It’s too high a price.  If he needed to make amends to someone else in the future, what would he do?”

“But that’s half the fun,” Ev said.  “Watching the dance that follows the exchange.”

“We’re in an awkward spot,” Rose said.  “We didn’t intend to be out after dark, but Laird Behaim pulled a trick on us.  He promised us his protection while we were in his presence, and then he disappeared on us, and turned the hands on the clock forward.”

“A rose is safe in the company of other mortals, and a rose is safe in daylight, but a rose with both is safest, and a rose without bereft,” Patrick said.  He drank a bit more.

“I don’t think we’re safe even in crowds and daylight combined,” Rose said.  “It’s  a bad time.”

“An eventful time,” Patrick said.  “A shame.  We’ll have to leave.”

“Will you?”  Rose asked.  “There’s still a topic of us needing to make amends.  What if we promised something?  Not a deal, but to consider a deal, at some point in the future?  It leaves the door open to your staying.”

Patrick seemed to be oblivious to the question, as if he hadn’t heard, but I couldn’t help but notice how still the other two were.

“The problem with that,” Patrick said, “Is my merry little band here is forbidden to make deals.”

“You were dealing with Maggie Holt,” I said.  “Weren’t you?”

“That,” he said, raising a finger.  He let his arm drop, “Wasn’t one of the things you saw.  I’m positive.”

“But?” I asked.

“But yes,  Little Maggie and I, we were breaking rules, my lovely rose.”

“You could break rules with us, too,” my counterpart said.  “If you took our offer, and if we considered your offer and found it sensible.  We’ll even throw in a promise to keep your secret.”

“That is a deal I’ll take, then,” he said.  “You aren’t awake, so I’ll take you at your word.  Disappoint, and I’m sure we’ll find a suitable punishment.”

“We’ll endeavor not to give you a reason,” Rose said.

“Then I’ll take the debt this Blake owes my Ev, and make it my own.”

“I can think of ways to make you pay that,” Ev said.  “Fox hunting?”

Patrick made a face, but he didn’t respond.  Ev smiled again, a shy smile that rang false.

“Carry on, then, little roses,” Patrick said, as Ev brushed her hand over his short red hair  “We’ll be in touch.”

I turned to go, feet crunching in the snow.  Rose was to my left, reflected in the windows where the lights weren’t on.

It took me five or ten minutes to get my heartbeat under control.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m glad to do something,” Rose replied.

“Damn it, just how much reading have you done?”

“None, for them.  I had a minute to read their entries in the little black book, but I was winging it.”

“Good winging.”

“I hope so,” Rose said.

We rounded the corner, and the house was in sight.

Another person’s footsteps fell alongside my own, as I approached the crosswalk.  He stopped when I stopped.

I looked and I saw Laird.

“You bastard,” I said.

“Oh, I’m a little bit of a bastard,” Laird admitted.

I clenched my fist.

“I’m also a cop.  I did agree to escort you home, though I didn’t say from where.  It’s your choice, whether you want me to escort you back and leave you alone, or escort you back and then haul you to the police station.  It’s not, for your information, a safe haven.”

I stuck my hands in my pockets.

“Then why didn’t you arrest me?” I asked, my voice still hard with anger.  “If you wanted to leave me hanging out to dry, for Others to pick off?”

“Because I was telling the truth.  I was interested in learning more about who you were.  Whether you were someone who could become dangerous or if you were someone I could trust to be passive for as long as we needed you to.  It may come down to picking you off until we get one of the young ones.  Roxanne, I believe?  Twelve?  Or even your little sister Ivy, if Roxanne is uncooperative.”

“And the talk of a peace treaty?”

“I never promised anything concrete, I only expressed an interest.”

“Saying you’d trust your daughters to someone like you, if positions were reversed?”

“To someone as strong as me.  If positions were reversed, I wouldn’t know any better than you did, by definition.  I double checked beforehand.”

“And the promise about there being no tricks?”

“I said it wasn’t a trick.  Which it wasn’t, at the time.  I came up with the one while we were talking.”

Why wasn’t Paige in this position?  She’d love this quibbling over semantics, if nothing else.

What if I attacked him right here?  What if I denied him the chance to escort me back & fulfill his oath?  Would he be forsworn?  Would he lose his power?

He opened his watch, then closed it.  His breath fogged heavy around him as he sighed.

“You have protectors,” he cut in.  “The exiled prince, Padraic.”

“I didn’t ask for protection.”

“It would be fleeting, whatever the case,” Laird said.  “They’re distractible.”

I didn’t want to engage him in conversation, but curiosity niggled at me.

“Faerie?” I guessed, eyes straight forward.

“Once upon a time, they would have fallen under that label.  I think they’ve dallied in the very courts that have exiled them now, as a matter of fact.  They even have some of the same tricks.  But classifying Others is a dangerous thing.  Better to call them what they are.”

“Which is?”

“Men and women who are desperate to entertain themselves over the course of a very long, long time,” he said.  “They get bored as easily as you or me.”

We reached the gates, and started treading up the driveway to the house.  We were silent up until I reached the door.

“If it helps,” Laird said, “The reason I decided to have you walk most of the way back alone was because I suspect you could be dangerous.”

“Yet you make yourself my enemy by tricking me.”

“I would say that I am, along with my circle, the least of your worries.  I’m sworn to do no direct harm to others, and I won’t.  My family is interested in securing our position, and we’re thus interested in having you, or one of you, secure in this house, until the North End Sorcerer is unseated.  You can’t afford to have your back turned to the others while you deal with me.  I’m also best equipped to deal with the sorts of things you might send after me, if you deign to go that route.  I’ve been preparing against Rose for my entire life.”

“And now you walk away, after this?  We’re supposed to be civil?”

“In your position, knowing what I know, I would,” he said.  “I would also make haste and awaken sooner than later.”

I managed to hide my shock.

He tapped his eye.  “We can see things at work, once we awaken.  Tell your companion I said hi.  There’s no need to hide.  Council meeting is in two days.  For three hours prior and three hours after, there is a ceasefire.  I hope to see you then.”

I stepped into the house, then slammed the door.

Rose was waiting in the living room.  “Hey.  We came out of it okay.”

“Not okay enough,” I said.  “That could have gone far worse.”

I kicked the footstool over.  It crashed against the grill that protected the fireplace, making a very dramatic sound.

“You can’t get so angry,” she said.  “Be calm, we approach this with strategy and a level head.”

“No,” I said.  I grabbed one of the books from the coffee table.  “Anger is good.”

“Good?”

“It keeps us moving.  You read the book on implements, I’ll read up on familiars when I’m done Essentials.”

“Okay,” she said.

The quiet outrage kept me reading through the night.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Bonds 1.6

I paced.  The Demesnes text in hand, I walked from one end of the living room to the other, then walked back.

Another trip back and forth, and I stopped by the window, using the edge of the book to push the curtain back.  It was dusk outside, just past sunset, day two, and some of the locals had emerged.

If I didn’t know better, I might have thought the locals were trying to put pressure on me.  Men and women, some children, simply staking out the perimeter of the fence.  Some of them paced like I was doing, like tigers in their cell, while others were patient, smoking or holding phones to their ears.  A number of the ‘children’ were standing on the short stone wall, hands wrapped around the metal curls and spikes of the railing, eyes on the house.  Some talked, others were silent.

Most were normal enough I wouldn’t have looked twice.  A handful weren’t.  One little boy, separate from the others, kept scratching at his head, face, neck and arms, his fingers coming away black with his own blood, or so it appeared in the gloom.  I could see the gouge marks, dark lines cut into his skin, he would turn away, and they would be gone the next time I got a chance to see.  There was a woman with hair, hat and coat covering much of her face, but when I did get a glimpse, I saw only vague, black smudges where her eyes and mouth should be.  She held a cigarette up near her face, but never inhaled from it.  The others seemed rather intent on avoiding her, giving her a wide berth as she paced.

A car passed down the length of the road.  I tried to use the headlights to get a better look at the things, but the headlights revealed a mostly empty sidewalk, no Others but a small group of the ‘children’ that had hopped down from the fence and were simply walking as a group, heads covered by hats and hoods, hardly worthy of a glance.

My eyes had to adjust from focusing on the headlights.  The Others appeared from dark spots, and stepped out from behind the pillars that framed the gate.

I let the curtain drop, then resumed the pacing.  I’d read the same page five or six times.

“You’re making me nervous,” Rose said, startling me.  “You’ve been pacing the entire time I’ve been gone?”

Her hair was wet.  She’d left to go shower, but she still wore the same clothes as before.  Apparently she had running water, on her side.  That was interesting, considering there wasn’t necessarily anything for the pipes to connect to.

“I’m nervous,” I said.  “I ordered pizza, but I didn’t think they’d come crawling out of the woodwork like this.  There’s a good ten or so out there.”

“Why did you order pizza?” she asked.

“Because I’m hungry?”  I responded.  “There’s nothing more than the most basic stuff in the kitchen, I’m going to go crazy or get sick living off flour tortillas, canned beans and tuna, and since I’ve got to figure out a way to keep myself supplied, I might as well start sooner than later.”

“Pizza isn’t supplies.”

“Pizza is a way of testing the waters,” I said.  “Will anyone in this town do business with me?  If I can’t order a pizza, I might have trouble getting groceries delivered.  If I can’t get groceries delivered, then I need to find a reliable, safe way of going outside.”

“So you put a pizza guy in the line of fire?”

“There wasn’t a line of fire when I called,” I said.  I looked outside again.  “It’s hard to keep track of time.  My sleep schedule’s all over the place, my eating schedule’s off track, and the days are short.  It’s dangerous, and it’s going to fuck me up.  Need to get back in the habit of sleeping at night and eating on time.  As is, I didn’t figure it would get dark so soon, and I didn’t figure they’d appear like this.”

“I know,” she said.  “Except I don’t even have the physical needs to gauge by, and it’s awfully dark in here.”

I peeked outside.

Two Others had joined the group.  One was very talkative, engaging with the eyeless, mouthless woman who had the cigarette, even venturing into the four or five foot bubble of personal space around her that the rest seemed to be respecting.

I reached for the phone.  Mind changed.

“Bell Pizza.  What can I do you for?”

“I’d like to cancel my order,” I said.

“You’ve already paid for your order.  The food is made and is on its way.  We can’t provide a refund.”

“It’s fine.  Keep the money.  Just call back the delivery guy so he doesn’t waste his time.”

There was a pause.

“I’m sorry.  We can’t refund your pizza, because we already prepared it.  It should be there in ten minutes or less.”

He was feigning ignorance, with a touch of a bad accent, but he couldn’t hide the smugness.

“You’re being intentionally dense,” I said.

The guy on the other end hung up.

“Fuck,” I said.

“So… now what?” Rose asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I doubt he’ll give me a fair hearing if I call back.  I don’t really know what to expect, here.  Even reading up on the basics, it doesn’t get into much depth about this.”

Rose nodded, “Essentials and Famulus were more focused on Other-practitioner relationships than general Other-human relationships.”

I could see her fidgeting.  I leaned forward.  “Earlier, you said you were nervous.  How does that work?  You don’t breathe any harder, since you don’t breathe.  Does your heartbeat pick up?  Does your body flood with the stress hormones, making you fidget?”

“That’s a no on every count,” she said.  I turned away from the window to look at her.  She elaborated, “My body’s always the same.  Stable, steady, there, but not doing anything except… I dunno.  Maintaining appearances?”

“But you get nervous.”

“My brain gets nervous,” she said.

“I’m not sure that makes sense, but okay,” I replied.  I looked down at the page I’d been rereading for the past twenty minutes, then tossed the book down onto the coffee table.

“You’re onto Demesnes,” she observed, craning her head to peer down.  “Me too.”

“It’s a fitting thing to read up on, here,” I said.  “Making your own sanctuary, while we have enemies gathering at the gates.  It seems like a pretty simple ritual.”

“Deceptively simple,” Rose said.

“Yeah, deceptively simple,” I agreed.  “You stake out the area, the magical equivalent of drawing out your borders and planting a flag, you say a few words, and you invite anyone, everyone and everything that objects to come and challenge you.  Trial by combat, riddles, placating them with deals, whatever you agree on.  The bigger the area you try to claim, the bigger the invitation you broadcast.  They each get to confront you the once, and the ritual ends when there are no challengers left, or when a set amount of time passes.  Claim a space the size of a closet, maybe get five to ten objections.  Claim a house, get fifty.”

“I’m thinking that’s one of the last things we want to do,” Rose said.  “When we have a familiar, and when we have an implement, so we have some ability to fight.”

“Except,” I said, “It’s a bit of a catch-22, isn’t it?  The demesne gives us a steady supply of power, with bigger spaces giving us more power.  It’s a sanctuary, and a place where we can bend the rules in our favor.  Right?  So we need a tool or a familiar to lay claim to as big a space as we can pull off.”

“Yes.”

“But we can’t infuse our tool until we have some power to infuse it with,” I said.  “Except…”

“That power would ideally come from the demesne,” Rose said.

I nodded, “Or the familiar, in terms of strength and shaping how the tool functions.  And we can’t start talking with Others about bringing them on board as a familiar until we have some established power already.”

“Necessitating a tool and a claim to some land,” Rose finished for me.  “Each of the three things requires the two others.”

I nodded.  “Or it necessitates a compromise.  We pick one front, we make it easy, like you suggested, go with the bare minimum.  Do one thing badly, use the leverage we gain to do the next thing in a mediocre way, and then use the two things to do really well with the last ritual.”

My pacing resumed, though I had my hands free, and I could stick them in the pockets of my wool hoodie.

“How do the others do it?” Rose asked.  “The Behaims and the Duchamps?”

“They have backup, I imagine,” I said.  “A mom and dad who are willing to sit in on a meeting with a familiar and vouch for them, or maybe even have a familiar arranged from early on or before the kid is born, things ready-made, a space set aside.”

“Magical trust fund kids,” Rose said.

“Basically,” I said.

“What about the North End Sorcerer?”

“What about him?”

“I take it you didn’t read the little black book from cover to cover?  Look him up.”

I shuffled through the tomes to find where I’d put the book. “I was going to read it later, after the major four were done, before the council meeting.”

“You don’t need to make excuses to me,” Rose said.  She had her own copy.  “Um.  Page thirty-two.”

I opened the tiny book.

Johannes Lillegard, believed to be an adopted name.  Practitioner.  The newest arrival in Jacob’s Bell as of August thirteenth, ‘ought-nine, he arrived at the council meeting of said date.  Johannes appears no older than twenty-five, but all facts suggest he claimed his demesne six or more years ago, a region spanning all of Jacob’s Bell, west and north of the hospital as well as the entire expansion north of the bridge.

I paused in my reading there, to ask, “The bridge?”

“The highway,” Rose said.  “It becomes a bridge where it passes over the marshland here.”

I pictured it, then stopped short.  “Wait, the commercial area north of the highway?  With the train station, the shops-”

“-The condos, the mall, the prefab houses, yes.”

“As his demesne?  The book talks about it in the context of rooms, of houses at the most.”

Rose didn’t reply.  When I glanced her way, she was nodding, a serious look joining the general exhaustion on her face.

“There’s a catch there,” I said.  “A drawback.”

“Oh, right, you’re only partway through,” Rose said.  “Demesnes are like trademarks.  Periodically, people are going to test them.  You need to respond, but you have the home court advantage.  The law’s on your side.  But if you claim something that broad, and if you can’t or don’t defend it when someone else puts one foot over the line, that weakens your stance.  But he’s defending it.”

“How?”

She pointed back at the little black book.

I read.

In conversation with Aimon Behaim and Sandra Duchamp, we mutually agreed that Johannes must have claimed the territory prior to the expansion appearing, though we’re unsure of when this might have been, for none of us to hear the claim or be able to respond to it, nor how he was able to do this at what might have been the age of thirteen or fourteen.  Mara has declined to answer any questions, being more taciturn than her usual,

Johannes seems to bear harsh wounds, no doubt tying back to his ambitious claim, with no use of one eye, one hand and one leg, though the tissues appear undamaged.  He bears a set of antique pipes as his implement, and has a Gatekeeper of the Seventh Ring (ref Astral Bodies: vol 3, and Prime Movers) as his familiar, named Faysal Anwar, which takes the form of a rather large Afghan Hound.

Note:

Johannes has made his second appearance at council meetings, February sixth, year two thousand and ten.  Occasion to expand my notes.  Arrogant, and justified in it.  Enigmatic.  He spends almost all of his time within his demesne, stepping outside only to defend his claim and attend occasional meetings.  This makes gathering information hard.  Favors manipulation of space.

Note:

Touching up all of my notes, for my soon-to-be heiress.  He is a manipulator, content to bait people and lure them to their doom.  Fitting, given the implement of choice.  He safeguards his demesne by making it a fiefdom, with neighborhoods held by Others and a handful of lesser practitioners.  Stay clear, this is a threat you do not need to face down.

I looked up at Rose.  “He’s powerful, then.”

She said, “He doesn’t have a family.  He had nothing given to him in advance, as far as we know.  But he managed something.”

“Okay,” I said.  “So there are obviously other options.  Approached directly, the situation is filled with contradictions and obstacles, but maybe there’s an oblique answer, like Johannes found?”

“Like what I was talking about with the witch hunters,” Rose said.

That again.  I shook my head.

“You’re refusing my ideas too fast,” she said, and the emotion in her voice caught me off guard.  She was irritated, upset.  “Have you even read up on witch hunting, Blake?”

“No,” I said.  “Have you?”

“I can’t.  I need you to rotate the mirror in the study.  Damn it, listen, there are things we can learn to do that don’t rely on familiar, implement or demesne.  Like Laird’s shamanism.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I’m very on board with that.”

“But you aren’t on board with getting the protections witch hunters have?  If anything’s going to get us killed, it’s a knee-jerk reactions and making stupid assumptions.”

“It’s not that I don’t like the idea of protection,” I said.  “But when someone says ‘witch hunter’, it makes me think of hunting things.  Fighting, instead of defense.  And I think that any of those protections we might use as practitioners are going to be found in books for practitioners.  It’s hard enough without overcomplicating it, sifting through all the stuff we can’t use for some tidbits we could find elsewhere.  Can we compromise?  Maybe focus on getting this wizardry crap down, and we’ll look at the witch huntery stuff later, as the side project it is?”

When I looked at Rose, she was frowning, eyebrows knit.  tapping her hand on some surface in front of her.

We were similar in other ways.  Prone to anger.  But something told me that Rose wasn’t one to actually show or exercise that anger.

Something to watch for, if she was bottling up her stress.  What outlets did she have to vent it, and how would she react if she couldn’t?

“Fine,” she said, in that way that girls were so very good at.  She took a deep breath, then sighed.  Purely for effect, I imagined.  Calmer, she said, “We shelve that idea.  We can use trickery, deception, manipulation, to get our foot in the door, get one of the three major things we need.”

“Agreed,” I said.  “Harder than it sounds, because Others are naturally deceptive and are probably looking out for those tricks.”

“What else?  We could try marshaling forces, like he is.  We need a good rapport with Others to figure out who we might pick for a familiar, right?”

“There’s a problem with that,” I said.  I reached for the mirror, then stopped.  “May I?”

“Yes.”

I lifted the mirror from where I’d hooked it onto the bookcase, then carried it to the window, pushing the curtains apart.  I set the bottom end of the mirror on the windowsill.

There were five more Others than before.  All clustered around the fence.  The rest were still there.  Waiting.

Rose was turned away from me, so I couldn’t see her, and she was silent, leaving me to stand there, presenting our situation.

“That’s the issue, right now.  That’s the biggest complication we’re facing with the rituals, with life in general.  Someone’s done the equivalent of putting a price out on our head, or they said that the usual rules for going after someone in an inhabited area are on hold, for me, or for us,” I said, my voice low.  “We can’t conduct any rituals, because those guys are waiting to fuck us up.”

“That-” Rose started.

She stopped short as a car appeared, parking at the far end of the street, a sign perched on top.

This time, seeing the vehicle approach, I could see how the Others moved out of the way of the headlights.  Stepping literally into shadows, or stepping to a position where they were out of sight.  In the latter case, it looked like they were stepping out of my field of view, to where the fence or columns on either side of the gate were blocking my view, but I felt like they were doing it for everyone that might be looking.  Finding a universal blind spot.

A guy stepped out of the car, holding the insulated bag with the pizza inside.  He crossed the street, and approached the gate.

“Stop him, Blake,” Rose said.

“I want to, but how?”

“I don’t know.  Shout?”

I strode to the front door, hauled it open, and bellowed, “Hey!”

Others appeared from the shadows by the gate, a ‘child’ with his back to the stone column, glancing my way.  Further down the street, I could see the faceless woman with the cigarette appear behind the delivery guy.

He didn’t stop walking.  When he shouted back, I couldn’t make out the words.

“Stop!  I don’t want it!  Go back to the car!”  I hollered.

Again, I couldn’t make out his reply.

I watched as the Others closed in.

The ‘little boy’ who’d been scratching himself walked down the street, so short I could barely make him out over the stone wall which bordered the property.

He approached the delivery man head on, not moving out of the way.  When it looked like they might collide, the ‘boy’ hopped up onto the short stone wall.  His hand around the man’s wrist.

A moment later, so fast I couldn’t see it, the boy slammed the delivery guy’s hand down on the railing.  The man screamed, dropping the pizza, hand impaled on the spiked railing that ran along the top of the short wall.  He tried to pull it free, but the ‘boy’ still had a grip on his wrist.

“Hey!”  I shouted.  I stepped out onto the porch.

A girl hopped up, using the man’s knee as a foothold, grabbing the delivery man by the jaw.  She was more monkey than child as she swung up onto the wall.  The momentum of the swing brought his head down and forward, driving it into the top of the railing.

I could hear the sound it made on impact, which said a lot, considering how I hadn’t been able to hear his words.  There was no saying how much was the upper row of teeth breaking on impact with the railing, or the sound of the jaw breaking as it was wrenched down with a sudden weight of the not-little-girl.

The girl let go, walking along the top of the railing, her arms extended to either side, pigtails swinging, the grin the only part of her I could make out beneath the winter clothes, too wide, filled with very white teeth that didn’t match each other.

I could hear his continued screams, now more strangled than they’d been.

I felt cold, paralyzed.  Had I just killed a man, simply by inviting him here?

The faceless woman caught up to him.  Her free hand reached into the back of his head, and I could make out the fingers reaching out the front, moving just beneath the skin, closing together into a fist over one of his eyes.  She moved her hand, leaving the skin bound shut in a knot of flesh, and she closed the other eye in the same manner.

Another movement, nearer the mouth and throat, and the screams were cut off.

Knitting, molding his flesh, almost casually.

My concern was no longer that I’d killed the man.  My concern was that he might live.

“Blake!”  Rose’s voice, from the living room.  “You have to help him!”

I took a step forward, then stopped as the faceless woman continued her work.  Her fingers wriggled and crawled across the man’s scalp, just beneath his skin, burying his hair, reaching down to cover his ears.  Trapping him in his own skin, so his own flesh was a hood over his face.

“Blake!”

I thought back to one idle thought I’d had in the past hours.

The house was a sanctuary against Other and practitioner both.

I glanced around me, then very carefully took a step back through the door, past the threshold and into the house.

Laird had come to the front door.

“He’s dying!”

There were rules.  I couldn’t know which ones still held, here, which ones the locals had called off, while I was a problem.  But there were rules.

I remained where I was, watching.

She held the cigarette aloft, poised as if she might take a puff at any moment, while her other hand pulled free, then plunged into his chest cavity.

The muffled grunts and violent jerks he made in response were worse than the screams.

The talkative one kept chattering, nonstop, the ‘children’ making little sounds of amusement, laughing and cooing.  The others who’d joined in seemed content to watch, standing silently on the fringes.

I watched a car appear, traveling down the street from the opposite direction the delivery guy had come.  The talkative one practically leaped, taking hold of the faceless woman.  His momentum turned her around, and he leaned forward, simultaneously leaning her back, so they were pressed together, their bodies covering their victim.  I could see the talkative one’s face stop an inch from the smudged blur of hers.

The car passed, the headlights illuminating what the people in the car would see as two embraced lovers, kissing at the side of the street.  The remainder were hidden.  I watched as the car reached the end of the road, stopping at a stop sign.

“Blake, salt is a purifying material, cleansing.  It can work against certain Others,” Rose said.  “There’s a ton in the study, if you can’t find any in the kitchen.  Go and throw it at them!”

I didn’t move.

“Blake!  Please!”  She sounded desperate, now.

The car turned and disappeared out of sight.  The two Others broke apart, and the faceless woman clawed at the talkative one.  Vicious, angry, almost feral.  He gave her only laughs in response, as he ducked out of the way.

The faceless woman gave up and turned back to her victim.  I could see where she’d reached through his chest to grip the railing, fixing him to the metal.

Rose was screaming, now.  “Damn you, Blake!  Damn you!  God!  Fuck!”

She hit the mirror.

The noise Rose was making seemed to get attention.  The talkative one looked up at me.

I slowly shook my head.  I felt physically ill, all expression and utterances choked from me by the feeling of my heart in my throat.

But there was no fucking way I was going out there.

The talkative one said something to the others.

I saw the delivery guy lurch, tearing free in a mess of blood and ripped skin.  His dislocated jaw hung down his teeth a bloody ruin.

He laughed, and it wasn’t a human sound.

When he joined the ‘children’ in cavorting about, I allowed myself to believe it.  He wasn’t human.  He had never been.

An Other, joining the faceless woman in some psychological warfare.

I could hear them laughing, in the two or so seconds it took me to slam the door.

“It was a trick?” Rose asked, as I crossed the room to where I’d left the mirror in the window.  “They-”

I saw a movement immediately before Rose shrieked.  I grabbed the mirror, pulling it away from the window.

The little ‘girl’ with the toothy mouth and the pigtails peeking out from a hat that hid her eyes, hair and ears had appeared just outside the window.  She now scratched at the glass with long fingernails.

“They wanted me outside,” I said.  “The house is a sanctuary, the property isn’t.  Staying behind the railing like they were, it was meant to mislead us.  I might have fallen for it, if Laird hadn’t come all the way to the front door.”

“They’re clever.”

“The book warned us they were.”

“How sure were you?” she asked.  “That he wasn’t human?”

I didn’t answer.  Rose was staring at me, and I avoided her gaze.

Others were scratching and tapping on windows, now.  I heard a scrabbling, as if something was on the porch overhang.

“God,” Rose said.

“This is what Molly was dealing with,” I said, quiet.  My heart was still pounding, my mouth so dry I needed to try three times before I could speak again, but the fear and helplessness were disappearing.  I clenched my fist.  “All on her lonesome.  Hearing things just outside the house, all night.  Nowhere good to go for help.”

“We’re not in a great place either,” Rose said.

“No.  But we have each other,” I said.  “You had my back last night, with Padraic.  I might not have made it home in one piece without that.  Thank you, by the way, if I haven’t already said.”

“You have, twice, but it’s okay.  We’re figuring this out.”

I nodded.  My thoughts were going a mile a minute, but I had trouble saying just what the destinations were.

“What are you thinking?” Rose asked.

“I’m thinking…” I said, trying to sum it up.  “I think we’re almost ready.”

“Ready?”

“We’ve seen what kind of games the practitioners will play.  We’ve seen how the Others function, in part.  We have a sense of what we need to accomplish, and an abstract sense of how.  And maybe it helps a little that I’m a bit scared and a lot angry.”

“You want to awaken,” she said.

I nodded.  “Before the council meeting tomorrow.  Getting a familiar, the tool, and the demesne is something that can wait.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.  “I think we should.  You want to do it now, or do you need to eat first?”

“Two things, first,” I said.  “Eating isn’t one of them.”

I dialed the pizza place again.

“Bell Pizza, what can I do you for?”

“Hi-”

“No,” he said.  “Not doing business with you.”

“It’s about the pizza guy.”

“We never sent anyone.  I asked a driver if he wanted to go, he said he wasn’t delivering to a haunted house.”

The irony being this house was maybe the least haunted locale in Jacob’s Bell.

“I say it isn’t haunted, but it’s owned by you fucks, isn’t it?”

“One of us,” I replied.

“You’re Assholes, all of you, holding all the rest of us back.  You know my brother bought a place here, because this place was supposed to grow?  Except you’re not selling, and it’s losing value every year, needing more repairs.  You-”

“I just wanted to check the pizza guy wasn’t going to show,” I said, but he was talking over me.

“-off on the power, I think, bullies.  Knowing you’re driving the rest of us into ruin.  You want a fucking pizza?”

“I changed my mind a while ago, remember?”

“Fuck you.  Fuck yourself!  I already talked to the other pizza place.  Don’t expect a thing, until you’ve sold that place.  Fuck you.”

“Fine,” I said.  “It’s just pizza.”

But he’d already hung up.

It’s just pizza, I told myself.

“Fuck,” I said, as my annoyance bubbled to the surface.

“You can’t be surprised.  I mean, you knew people hated you here.”

“The woman at the coffee place was surprisingly respectful of the idea that I might be in mourning,” I said.

“Being a decent person and hating our guts isn’t mutually exclusive,” Rose said.

“Fuck,” I said again, still annoyed.

“It can’t be that big a deal, compared to what just happened outside.”

“You took a shower just a bit ago,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry to ask, but do you even get dirty, on that side?”

“No,” she said.  “Pretty sure I don’t.  Some dust, but I don’t sweat.”

“I’m guessing you needed to shower to enjoy a mundane comfort,” I said.  “Feel a bit more human.”

“Alright,” Rose said.  “Point taken.  Sorry about your pizza.”

I shrugged.

“I could do with more human comforts myself,” she said.

I nodded, “Something to figure out.  I’ll help any way I can.  But first-”

“Awakening,” Rose said.

I nodded.  “Meet you in the study.”

I took the stairs two at a time.

I’d opened the second secret door on the second floor, which made for a quicker arrival at the lower floor.  The room was far darker without the sunlight from above.

I twisted the knobs of the two lamps that sat on and beside the desk, respectively.  When the room was still too dark around the edges, I lit the oil lamps at the edges.  Each lamp illuminated a slice of the bookcases, cabinets or shelves to either side of them.  Where the lettering on books had been done in foil or a reflective material, the lamplight caught it, highlighting the scripts in a soft orange-yellow, while the books themselves remained dark.

By the time I’d finished, Rose had lit up the room on her side.  The light from behind her made the edges of her clothes and hair glow.

She held a wrought-iron compass, with a spike in one end and chalk embedded in the other.  I watched as she stabbed the floor, then walked in a circle, using the other arm to draw the wide circle in chalk.

She had the curved ruler that she used to measure the distance, then erased a spot.  She was reaching for the compass again when she looked at me.

“Blake?”

“You’re doing the ritual too?”

“If I can,” she said.  “Aren’t you starting?”

“I said there were two things I needed to do first,” I said.

“Phoning the pizza place and…”

I crossed the room, lifting a book free of a shelf, then walked back into Rose’s field of view.

“No, Blake.”

I hefted the book.  Diabolatry, R.D.T.  The black cover was surprisingly flexible and soft, the lettering on the spine and cover were done in gold, catching the lamplight.

“No,” she said again, as if saying it over and over again with increasing intensity might drive it into my head.

“What was it you said?” I asked.  “Stupid knee-jerk assumptions are going to get us killed?”

“I’m all for stupid knee-jerk assumptions when we’re dealing with that.  Laird said they were the mystical equivalent of nuclear missiles.”

“I’m not proposing we use them.  But I want to know what we’re dealing with.”

“Blake.  You know that moment in the horror movies, where you’re screaming at the actors?  ‘Don’t go up the stairs’, ‘don’t touch the glowing skull’?  Don’t read the book.”

I frowned.

“What are you even thinking?”

“That the things outside were horrifying, the faceless woman, the pseudo-faerie we ran into.  So… why are these things so much worse?  What makes them ‘nuclear’?  We’re walking into that meeting, and I can’t help but think that everyone there is going to know exactly what’s going on here, and we’re going to be in the dark.  We can’t afford to look weak or stupid.”

“We are weak and stupid,” Rose said.  “We’re untrained, ignorant, out of the loop, and we don’t have any of the good stuff that practitioners bring to the table.  No tools, no familiars, no demesnes, no tricks or any of that.

“We can’t afford to let on how badly off we are.  Having one tidbit of info we can allude to, to scare the pants off them if we need it-”

“-Is liable to get us killed,” Rose finished for me.  “I get it, wanting to know just what we’re sitting on, but handling the dangerous goods is not the way to find out.”

I hefted the book, feeling its weight.

“Come on,” she said, lowering her voice to be gentler, “I compromised earlier.  Can you do the same?”

“Damn it,” I said.

“Is that a ‘yes’ damn it or a ‘no’ damn it?”

“Yes,” I said.

I moved to put the book on the bookshelf.  A flap of paper caught on the shelf, keeping me from sliding it into place.

When I pulled the book back, the paper dropped.  Fragments of dry wax and a small key danced across the floor.

Folded into thirds, it had been sealed into an envelope of sorts by wax.  The key had apparently been melted into the wax, only to be freed by the impact.

“Leave it,” Rose said.  “Nothing good comes of that.  Sweep it under the desk, ignore it.  Please?”

“I would,” I said, “But wax makes a seal, and that seal just broke.”

“That’s reaching,” Rose said.

“Okay, maybe,” I said.  “But tell me you can’t imagine a drawing of something coming to life and crawling free of that page.”

“Now you’re being manipulative,” Rose said, “Playing to my paranoia.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“Yes, I can imagine it.  Yes, are you happy?”

I wasn’t.  I picked up the page.  On the backside, there were only two words.

My heiress.

I turned it around.

My heiress,

If you’ve come this far, there must be a pressing need.  You’ve been driven into a corner, or the situation is otherwise dire.  I imagine time may well be paramount.  Remember that haste makes waste, and you must step with utmost care from this point on.

I’ve left you something, or perhaps it is more correct to say I’ve left you someone.  I refer to him as Barbatorem, making a small joke, as I tend to do, but he is an older one, bearing some status and a few stories from years past, with no name of any meaning that has survived the passage of time.  You should be able to find those stories and notes on that status in Dark Names, p. 38.

You’ll find him waiting in the tower room, which you will need the key to enter.  Staying outside the circle is first in your list of things to keep in mind, which I list here because there are no better places to put the warning.  I should hope such obvious things don’t need to be stated.

Cast aside all notion of manners.  Do not greet him, do not ever say please or thank him.  Do not ask him if he would or could do something.  Give him no food or succor.  There are older meanings in these things and they will either free him or give him power over you.  Sometimes it is very little power, and sometimes it is all the power he needs to achieve his ends.

Put aside all metal and reflective things before entering the tower room, and ensure the space remains dark.  He exists in a more abstract capacity, whatever physical forms he takes, and if his image is cast in a surface, he will exist in that surface, allowing him to step free of that surface and the confines of the circle.  For these same reasons, do not ever look directly at him, even for a moment, lest he be reflected in your eyes.  Rest assured, he will not ever step free once he dwells there.

He perceives the passage of time differently than we do.  He’ll be content to sit in the circle I drew out until the sun grows cold.  For him, the conversation is ongoing, and you’ll need to see the notes on his page in Dark Names so you can continue from where I, and each member of our line, left off.  Failure to do so may confuse or irritate him.  In any case, you can come and go, and he’ll see no difference in it.  He does not speak, which led me to use the shorthand for gestures you’ll find on the final page of his entry.  Please maintain those notes consistently, for those who come after you.

If you intend to deal with him, use one of the templates outlined in Dark Contracts, which I left to the right of the desk.  Page 15, 17, 29 and 77 are good places to look, if you find yourself in a hurry.  Do not improvise, for words must be chosen with utmost care.  The final third of the book has recommended terminology with examples, which you can insert into the templates as needed.  Do not trust Mr. Beasley or his firm for assistance.  They are, quite naturally, unreliable on this front.

Failing all else, keep your eyes on the painted circle, stay silent, and keep to the contracts found in my books.  You can consult my texts if you have any further questions.  I regret that I am unable to assist you here,

R.D.T.

“What is it?” Rose asked.  “The look on your face scares me.”

The look on my face?  I touched my face.

“You look like someone just died.”

“No,” I said.  “No.”

I moved to put the letter down on the desk, and it slid off.  I picked it up again, tried to put it on the desk, and the corner of the paper caught, bouncing it out of my hand and back onto the floor.

On the third attempt, I turned it over, examining it under the light.  Sky blue ink on white, barely visible, outlining a script that was reminiscent of the rune that Laird had drawn in sugar.

Holding it firmly in both hands, I set it down on the table, pressing it down in place.  It stayed.

A moment later, as I turned to make sure I’d put the book away properly, I generated a brush of air that sent the letter to the floor again.

Once disturbed, apparently, it was insistent on staying disturbed.

Experimentally, I tore it, a little tear to cross the sky blue symbols.  When I put it down this time, it stayed down.

“You’re scaring me, Blake.”

“She left something behind,” I said.

“Something?”

“Something Other.  Fitting to her particular specialty.  It’s upstairs.”

“No.”  Seeing Rose, I had a sense of how I probably looked.

“I need to check,” I said.

There was no argument this time.  Chances were good she was too stunned to say anything.

The black-painted key in hand, I made my way up the ladder, out the door to the top floor, and then up the staircase to the tower room.

I checked everything, then pulled off my sweatshirt, in case the tab on the zipper counted as reflective.  I swept my hands over my entire body to double-check.

The key clicked in the lock.  I let the door swing open.  When I moved my eyes, I did so with care, keeping to the periphery of the room, then inching closer.

The round window jutted out to my right, with a cushioned bench beneath for sitting on.  Once upon a time, it would have been a good spot for reading.  Now, it was shuttered and locked, with old books stacked on the bench like bricks.  A table sat to my left, stacked with papers that were securely weighed down.

The floor… I saw the circle, painted in white.  ‘Circle’ was perhaps an understatement, given the concentric circles and lines that sprawled across the floor, burdened with embellishment, scripts and geometric shapes, as well as other smaller circles hosting more of the same.

It didn’t take long for my eyes to see it.

A pair of shears, no doubt fallen from the table, impaled a line in the innermost circle of the diagram on the floor.

Nothing stood within.

Bonds 1.7

Damn it.

Very slowly, with exaggerated care, I closed the door.  My eyes were fixed on the outermost edge of the circle, my peripheral vision covering the shears and the interior, up until the closing door blocked my field of view.

I couldn’t say why the closed door made me feel more secure.  Whatever was supposed to be in that circle probably wouldn’t be stopped by a door.  But the fear I’d felt before opening the door had broken up into a general sense of disquiet.  My heart wasn’t racing, but was pounding, with very slow, heavy beats.  Absently, I grabbed my sweatshirt on the way down the stairs.

Rose was waiting for me on the third floor.  “Blake!  You idiot!”

I didn’t want to hear it.  “I can barely hear you.  Meet you in the study.”

I passed into the secret room, circled around to the far end and climbed down the ladder to reach the area with the mirror.

“What the hell were you doing?”

“I take it you read the letter,” I said.  I was almost relieved to have the distraction of a conversation with Rose.  I wanted to think on the circle, the possibilities there, but what the hell was I even supposed to do?  I couldn’t even think straight, let alone read.

“Upside-down, but yes.  You don’t go talking to demons or whatever elses without preparation.”

“It was prepared,” I said.  I turned the letter around, then tapped it.  “This was an emergency measure.  A ‘you’re-fucked-and-you-need-the-big-guns-now’ measure.  Grandmother outlined the key instructions.”

“You don’t go running off to check if you haven’t read about it in depth.  There’s material on this guy.”  Her voice was rising as she talked.

“I had to check,” I said, feeling more grounded.  Feeling a little more sure of myself, I said, “I was thinking it might have killed Molly.”

“What?”

“What Laird said… I had the impression this thing might have killed Molly, and that Laird was misleading us when he said he knew what killed her.  By saying that, he leads us to think the threat is from out there, and that way we have our backs turned when the threat from within comes after us.”

“So?  You read up on it, so you know what to say to it-”

“I wasn’t going to say a thing, if it was there.  No need to track the conversation if we don’t interact.  I only needed a glance, and that glance showed me that there wasn’t anything in the circle.”

“I- huh?  What do you mean?”

“A pair of scissors apparently penetrated a circle drawn on the floor.”

“It’s free?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “The door was locked, Molly didn’t use that key, unless the lawyer resealed it in wax when they reshelved the books.  It doesn’t fit.  Maybe grandmother betrayed her own rules and brought something reflective into that room and then positioned it to where it might interfere with the circle, before locking everything up, but it’d be crazy to do that.  If the thing can jump into our eyes, it can jump into the metal on scissors.”

“You’re right.  That doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t,” I said.  “Which puts me in the funny spot of feeling more sure that it’s in that room, than I was before.”

“I don’t know how you can jump to that conclusion,” Rose said.  “It’s better, now that it looks like it’s gone?”

“I don’t know.  Which is why we’re going to do a little bit of reading, now,” I said.  I felt more centered.  Somewhere between ‘explaining is the best way to learn’ and ‘misery loves company’, explaining to Rose had helped me to find my mental and emotional footing, clarifying my thoughts so I could argue them.  “Let’s meet Barba-whatsit.”

I found and picked up Dark Names.

“This is the sort of thing we need to read before you go to places like that.”

“Rose,” I said.  So much for that bit on emotional and mental footing.

“I don’t want to let this opportunity go by, because it needs saying.  First you go off with Laird, and I have to pull your ass out of the fire, and now you go-”

“Rose!”  I said, louder.

She shut up.

“We can’t do this,” I said.  “You second guessing me at every turn.  This arguing.  I’ve been through some shit-”

“So have I, in case you haven’t noticed,” she said, bitter.

“Nearly getting killed?”  I asked.

“I was there!  We’re connected, Blake.  You die, I probably die.”

“Before,” I said.  “Before any of this.  I’m talking about when I was seventeen and newly homeless and picking the wrong spot to settle down for the night, only to find out that a local gang thinks you’re staking out their stash or drop point or something, and you get beat down by a group of six or seven people?  Or having a group of teenagers with BB guns come after you because they want a live target and you’re pretty much subhuman to them?  The pellets don’t go very far beneath the skin, but one of them hit something, because my arm bruised purple from the bicep to my hand.”

“You never said anything about that,” Rose said.

“There were worse days.  Days I’m probably never going to talk to you about.  Or tell anyone about, even if some people close to me maybe put some of the puzzle pieces together.  I’m not aiming for pity here, I don’t want it.  I don’t want to use this for leverage to win an argument.  What I was going to say was that I’ve been through stuff, before any of this, and I made it this far with my instincts.  I can’t and won’t abandon them.”

“I’m going to be a bit of a bitch here,” Rose said.  “I don’t think your instincts are that good.”

“They weren’t good when I was first on the streets, either.  But I honed them, I stayed alive and mostly whole, I refined those instincts, found people I could trust, and with their help I got to a point where I was surviving on my own.  Which is something I’m proud of.  I can do the same here, but I need time to get a handle on it all.”

“We don’t have time,” she said.  “At this rate, you’re going to make a mistake, and we can’t afford mistakes.”

“Then help.  Continue helping, please.  We’re the same, the only difference being that I walked a different path.”

“And you’re still walking it,” Rose said.  “It’s a lot to ask, for me to trust you as an extension of me, when I’m not sure I trust myself.”

“I’m going to ask it anyways,” I said.  “That you trust me, and that you trust yourself.  I’ll talk to you about this stuff more, but I need it to be a talk.  Don’t second guess everything I do, or it’s just going to become noise, and the doubts are going to fuck me up as much as anything.  I need cooperation, collaboration.”

“You want me to cater to your unique needs, but is there any consideration to mine?  I’ve been dealing… I’ve got the memories of dealing with our family for years.  It doesn’t exactly build up a team player mentality.”

“My experiences didn’t either,” I said.  Barring the last year or two.  “But I’ll try if you do.  Please.”

She was glaring at me, practically bristling with frustration.  I probably didn’t look happy either, now that I thought on it.

Without saying anything more, I turned my attention to the book, until I found the page.

No image.  Only text.

I looked up at Rose, and she was gone from the frame.  She reappeared, holding her own copy.  I could hear the thud as it hit the desk on her side.

“Page thirty-eight,” I said.

“Thank you,” she responded.

The being I have named Barbatorem is an entity falling under the classification Insolitus Nex.  This author does not believe in stricter classifications, and leaves it to others to label him a devil or goblin as they see fit.  It is difficult to impossible to guess as to his origins, but one can speculate that it came about after the dawn of human civilization, given the common elements and the trend in appearances.

The entity was first bound by this author on April 23rd, 1953.  The binding was a difficult one to tackle, with a little more than a share of guesswork going into the execution.  In the end, this author used an Ut Vires approach pointing to Contrarium methodology.  An abstract entity bound in a rule-defining diagram of geometric lines and Byzantine notation.  Twenty years after the fact, this author stands by her reasoning at the time.

Should another practitioner need to bait him again, know that this author used: a pile of festering boar carcasses, six feet high, each carved with his name when well into their state of decay, the decay timed using refrigeration to be roughly parallel; seven jars of burning hair, resupplied keep the flames perpetually alight; and the crest of this offering was an innocent and a virgin in the form of a one year old innocent, placed at the height of the pile.  For more on the reasoning behind this methodology, please see my other work, Dark Contracts, chapter four.

This author cannot say whether he was attracted to the virgin aspect or the innocent, but this author was nonetheless happy to have an option at hand to serve both purposes.  The child was unharmed and largely unaware of what occurred.

Given Barbatorem’s nature, this author would recommend another means of baiting him in the future, as he will remember, anticipate and adapt with each means used.  He agreed to be bound by the seal of Suleiman bin Daoud four months after the initial capture.  See the Others volumes, book one, chapter one, if unfamiliar with the seal.  The diagram this author used for entrapment, necessitating only one line to open or close, can be found on page five of this entry, followed by the means of summoning and the recommended diagram for imprisonment.

Signing Barbatorem to the Standard remains the proudest accomplishment for this author, at that particular date and time, marking her first feat in this particular field.

Those looking to interact with Barbatorem at any length should see about precautions against abstract entities in Classifying Others: Fiends and Darker Beings, chapter four, and the texts on means of attack and defense against Others, in Infernal Wrath, chapter two.

Rose was already looking up at me when I finished.  A bit faster than me when it came to reading.

“A baby?” she asked.

“Option at hand,” I said, as I turned the page to get a look at what came next, “I guess Uncle Charles or Aunt Irene get offhand mentions in the books.”

“I still hate them, but I’m maybe getting a sense of why they’re a little fucked up,” Rose said.

“This is the second mention of the Suleiman dude I’ve seen.”

“Suleiman bin Daoud,” she said.

“Want to do some side research while I get caught up on Barbatorem, here?  Look up the chapters in those other books, and maybe get some info on the seal?”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “Working together?”

I nodded, then I looked up at the second floor, where the bookshelves line the walls.  I tried to remember, voicing my thoughts aloud as I pointed to each in turn.  “Types of magic, shelf one, shelf two.  I think it then focuses on Others, two or three shelves.  Can I turn the mirror?”

“Sure.”

I turned the mirror, so Rose had access to the ladder and the bookshelves in question.

I resumed reading.

Barbers were once surgeons, in addition to their other roles.  The red on a barber’s pole is a reference to bloodletting.  Barbatorem is both, a warrior of sorts, acting with surgical precision on whatever target he is directed at.  A recurring theme in earlier stories suggests that he was sent against the summoner’s enemies, almost always powerful figures, and he brought them to ruin in the worst ways.  He does not seek out mischief with those who summon him, but he takes advantage if one is offered.  For this reason, he is a reasonably safe entity to summon if one takes care to follow instructions.  He serves as a better deleterious sending against an enemy than he does as a boon-giver.  This author and three acquaintances have summoned and used him without issue.

Barbatorem, before being sealed, tended to visit small settlements and sites of war, either during or after the altercation.  Given his nature, it is hard to get eyewitness reports that corroborate his involvement in events.  The unawakened tend to note a stench of rot, blood or burning hair, or a crude but exceptionally sharp and sturdy cutting instrument found in the aftermath of a grisly event, invariably lost a day or two later.

Physically, he rends his victims, and the surgeon aspect becomes evident in how he inflicts the maximum damage possible without ever killing them, though the methods change as his form does.  He will mend the damage with an expert level of care that exceeds typical modern standards, if it means keeping the victim alive.  Despite the blood shed in this process, his victims typically die by other means like starvation or dehydration, unable to move under their own power or communicate a request for aid, due to a lack of limbs, missing tongue and teeth or a lack of working sensory organs, and the isolation that follows an attack.

On a more abstract level, Barbatorem deals a deeper form of damage that is hard to encapsulate in this text.  Rather than state the myriad ways he might harm his victims, this author would suggest a few key points to note, suggesting the wider variety of feats he can accomplish: It is believed that he can sever his target’s ability to access any higher plane, forever and irrevocably denying them whatever good things might await them after death, and he can remove any ability a practitioner has.  He can pass into a demesne without needing permission, though he cannot enter an ordinary home owned by a non-practitioner (see Classifying Others, chapter four).  He can evade barriers and typical practitioner’s defenses.  This in mind, he obviously serves as a suitable weapon if directed at a practitioner.

Barbatorem takes no one shape, but tends to favor a particular form for several years at a time before unknown events prompt a change.  Previous forms include: a bipedal sheep, largely bald but for sparse patches; a bloated man disfigured to a monstrous point by lash-wounds; a pair of children hand-in-hand; and a legless man on a horse.  In every form, however, he carries a bladed instrument of some kind.  He has been known to carry scissors, clippers or shears in more than half of the recorded cases.  Death, mutilation and a lack of hair figure into each form in one way or another (see descriptions in individual entries for notes on these fronts).  Ergo, the barber reference.

“The shears are a part of him,” I said, more to myself.  A glance in the mirror showed me that Rose was on the floor above, a book resting on the railing as she turned a page.  Did he leave them behind?  Would he?

Barbatorem is mute, making dealings hard.  He will see a contract up to seven times before refusing all further contracts.  In this event, one can dismiss him and summon him again, but it must be to offer something else.  In a dealing, he will offer expert skill in medicine, in exchange for enough blood to make the practitioner pass out – take care to avoid spilling any on the circle.  He will offer to extend a practitioner’s natural lifespan by half-again or by twenty-five years, whichever is less, at the cost of the practitioner forever smelling blood, rot, and/or burning hair.  He can offer to ensure that one’s blades never dull, in exchange for enough of the practitioner’s flayed skin to fill two cupped hands.

There were two diagrams drawn out in black, with measurements along each face, and a ritual for summoning him.  The rest of the pages had stories.  Mutilated men driven to madness, without a thing left.  Limbless, suckling fruitlessly on the teats of livestock.  Blind men frantically scratching out endless letters to loved ones lost to this ‘barber’, using stones on cobblestone, using their fingernails when no tool was at reach, then their blood, and then the uncovered bones of their fingers.  That last one was a practitioner that tried to bind him and failed.

I reached the last page.  Lines were drawn out, with words, followed by a shorthand cipher.  ‘I have changed the contract.’  ctuvag  ‘I have changed the contract.’ cvtuaa.

“So?” Rose asked, behind me.

“He has to be in the circle, still,” I said.  “Or I wouldn’t still be here.  Apparently we can’t sense him until we’re awakened, which might explain why I couldn’t see him.  This guy’s spooky.”

Rose nodded, solemn.  “The bit on abstract entities is basically elaboration on what’s in the note.  The bit on attack and defense only matters if he’s loose.  There are a lot of charts.  Describing what aspects to pay attention to, what elements and objects are most effective.”

“Blood, burning hair, rot,” I said.

“Not like that.  Like in Essentials, malignant Others are going to react to purifying substances and patterns, like salt and running water.  Fresh wood against dead things.”

“Iron against things that are born from nature,” I said.

“Right.  But he’s not entirely physical, so you need something prepared in advance, meeting a few prerequisites at once.  Like, this isn’t the right answer, but drawing out a pattern on a baseball bat and hitting him with it.”

“So you’re working past the abstract bit,” I said.  “No, I get it.”

She lifted another book, turning it around so I could see a painting of a brown-skinned man with a funny little golden hat and a magnificent beard.

Rose explained, “Suleiman.  Sorcerer king.  He was the first practitioner who really worked for the betterment of mankind and actually made headway.  He established rules and contracts, and he systematically worked to challenge the biggest, baddest Others out there that he could, then used them to help get others.  It brought about an age where humans could stop being the playthings of Others and start developing as a civilization.”

“Okay,” I said.  “And the seal?”

“A formal acknowledgement on the part of an Other, that they won’t interfere with mankind without excuse, they’ll obey certain rules, and the practitioners will leave them be.  Typically an Other bears some symbol or token of this bargain.  Over time it’s gained a power of its own.  Being sealed physically alters the Other, but it also affords them certain protections against us.”

“Essentials alluded to that same deal,” I said.  “It was pretty vague.”

“It was because it is,” Rose said.

I glanced at her, waiting for elaboration, but she only shrugged.

“We know what Grandma was dealing with now,” I said.  I didn’t add ‘which I wanted to do in the first place, before you stopped me from reading that book.’

Instead, I said, “We can’t know if he’s inside that circle or not without awakening.  Which we need to do anyways.”

“On to the next part of the game plan?”

I nodded.

“My circle is drawn out,” she said.  “Want help?”

I didn’t, but I was happier if she was on my side. “Please.”

Together, we walked through the steps of drawing out the chalk circle.  Circle first, then measuring it out so that there were five circles at set distances around that circle, the line running through the middle of each before I carefully erased each with a damp cloth.  One symbol in each little circle.

Another circle, larger than the last, around the entire thing, with six circles at set intervals.  I carefully set out each one.

And then a third, bounding the others.  Seven circles.

“You’re a lot quicker at this than I was,” Rose said.

I shrugged.  “You’re faster at reading.  Next?”

“Cabinet,” Rose said.  “Bottom shelf, far left.”

I opened the cabinet.  Bottom shelf, far left… the space as empty.

I looked back at the mirror, shaking my head.

“They were on my end.”  Rose lifted a bowl with crystals in it.

Once she showed me, I was able to find it.  Bowl, crystals… ah, and a bag with other components, middle shelf, off to one side.  It was all clustered together.

Each circle on the innermost and outermost ring got a little gold-rimmed bowl.  I spoke aloud as I got each set up.  “Crystal… myrrh… oil… spice…”

“Holly and holly berries,” Rose said, at the same time I said, “raw iron.”

We exchanged glances.  I stood up and checked my book.

“Why?” Rose asked.  “Mine says holly.”

I approached the mirror, book held out.  We each held our books out so her book was almost a reflection of mine.  Sure enough, the text, the symbol for the inside of the little circle in question and the art for the token were all different.

“Grandmother?” Rose asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I get that Molly would have moved the components, but… I don’t think Molly altered the book.”

“The question is, what do we do about it?” Rose asked.  “Do we each do a different ritual?  Do I do your ritual, assuming it’s right?  Or vice versa?”

“If it’s sabotage,” I said, thinking aloud, “Which of us was sabotaged?”

We sat there for a good minute, thinking.  Rose flipped through her book as I flipped through mine, as we searched for more discrepancies.

It was the only one we could find.

I hated doing nothing, being stalled like this.  It was in the quiet moments that I felt like trouble would start breathing down my neck.

I turned to the bags, searching them.  Not the contents, but the bags themselves.  Holly… Iron…

The Holly bag had a different knot.  Tied tighter, more neatly.  Full.

“Let me see your ingredients?” I asked.  “Show me the ones you haven’t touched?”

Rose did.

Her iron ore nuggets were tied the same way my holly was.

“Molly used the iron,” I said.  “I think I will too.”

“Blind faith?” Rose asked me.

“Grandmother…” I said, trailing off as I struggled to find a way of putting it, “I didn’t get the feeling she’s actively trying to fuck us over.  It’s more… collateral fuckery.”

“Collateral fuckery,” Rose echoed me.

“She’s not going to sabotage us, and I can’t think of anyone else who could or would.”

“You want to trust the woman who summoned a demon that’ll jump into our eyes, and left it in the attic for us to use if we needed?”

“I don’t want to.  I think I have to.  I won’t force you to do anything,” I said.  I got the lamps around the edges of the room and brought them closer to the circle, before using them to light tall candles.

“I’ll do the holly, then,” Rose said.

I could hear the faint sounds as she dropped individual berries in her bowl.  My nuggets made a clatter.

“More abstract things for the middle ring,” I said.  Rose gave me directions to find each object she’d already set up on her side.

A dagger.  An hourglass.  A dreamcatcher.  A small silver skull.  A coin.

“Which catches you up to where I was,”  Rose said.  “I got stumped.  A rose, and something personal.”

“Kitchen for the former,” I said.  “I can’t help with the latter.”

“We need the token offerings for the Others.  I’ll need a mirror in the kitchen to get that stuff, with the rose.”

It wasn’t a fast process.  Molasses, milk, vegetable matter burned into a clean ash, honey, meat, and alcohol.  I plucked a rose from where it sat in water.  A touch limp, but it didn’t matter too much.

“My food is looking pretty sad,” she said.  “Am I going to offend them if this milk isn’t any good?”

“Did it go bad?” I asked.

“No, but I’m not even sure it’s milk.  It could be an illusion.”

“It’s the thought that counts, right?” I asked.

“I’m not so sure,” she said.  “Not here, with something like this.”

I put the wine aside for later before going upstairs, my arms full.  Everything went into a bowl, except the rose.

The basic stuff in the inner ring.  The dagger, hourglass and all the rest in the middle ring… leaving me with one empty circle.  The personal touch.

I hadn’t brought much with me.  I could probably dig a paintbrush or something out of a cabinet, but… it didn’t feel like that was exactly it.

I checked my pockets, and I retrieved my keys.  Joel’s keys were still on them.

I felt the weight of them in my hand.  They weren’t my motorcycle keys, which would have been my first choice, but… they sort of fit.  Keys opened doors.  There was a freedom.  They represented ownership, protecting things, and the fact that my friend’s keys were on there…

I didn’t like to owe people things.  It was why I tended to insist on some reciprocation, paying back the woman who’d given me a drive here.  Giving Joel my bike keys for his.  I felt it was important to acknowledge those debts.

It would do.  The keys found their place in the empty circle.

I set out the food as well.  One offering to each bowl, for the outer ring.

“Oh, this next part is fun,” Rose said.

I checked the book to see.

Clothes off.

“One at a time, or both of us at once?”  Rose asked.

I didn’t know.  But when I opened my mouth to say so, I felt myself leaning one way, and pushed myself the rest of the way.  “Both.”

We stripped down, then sat in the center of the circles, backs turned to each other, with the mirror between us.  I had to get up again a moment later, to get the book and lay it across my crossed legs.

Then the ritual itself.  Looking around, I was aware of how dark the room was, with the oil lamps closer.  I’d heated the wax on the bottom of each candle before fixing it to the floor around the circle, and reached for one now, along with a pair of tongs.

Incense, lit.  Metal ore, heated.

Metal ore, heated some more.

Okay, it took a while to get to the point where I could see the heat in it.  I quickly set it down, quiet, and moved the candle out of the circle.

This was it.  I glanced over my shoulder, and I saw Rose, the edges of her shoulder, hair and face lit by the candles and lamps.  Our positioning made it hard to see anything else, which was sort of the point.

I nodded a little.

We began in unison, reading the text.  There were three translations for each line, one in a foreign language I couldn’t place, one spelled out phonetically, and another with the English translation.

Our voices faltered some as we stumbled here and there.  For the first four or five lines, one of us would reach the end before the other, pausing a fraction to let the other catch up.

We finished one line, almost chanting now as we sounded out the syllables with a kind of rhythm.

The circle moved, the bowls sliding across the floor, the diagram moving beneath them.  Putting another bowl in front of me.

Another line.

Again, the circle moved before me.  I didn’t even dare look back at Rose.  We’d found a stride, now, and the words were flowing more easily.  The space outside the circle seemed to darken, as my focus on the inside of the circle deepened.

I was in the ‘zone’, so to speak.  My eyes passed over the phonetic guide, but my peripheral vision caught the English words transcribed below, and the meaning became clearer.  Not the entire meaning, but the big words, the emphasis.

These were the little things, the fundamental things.

The bowl of incense slid from its position in front of me, but it slid down and to the right, as if it were sinking into the floor.  I didn’t look, convinced that I’d lose my stride and break the illusion if I did.

The dagger slid into place.

There were no words in the book to recite.  I could have sworn they’d been there before.  The silence rang, heavy.

“War,” I said, if only to keep the momentum going.

I could hear Rose behind me, taking my cue.  “War.”

The circle moved, giving me a sense of relief, and a view of the hourglass.

“Time,” I said, in unison with Rose.  Something we didn’t have enough of, something dangerous, foremost in our thoughts, with its association to Laird.

The dreamcatcher, a hoop with a network of threads within.

“Dream,” I said.

But Rose was speaking at the same time, and she said, “Fate.”

The circle moved.  The little silver skull.  Deceptively small, no doubt valuable.  It glittered in the light.

“Doom,” I said.

“Death,” Rose said.

The coin, an old one, from an era before coins had been pressed with exact images.

“Fortune,” I said.

“Ruin,” Rose said.

The lifeless rose.

“Family,” I said.

“Myself,” Rose said.

Then the personal token.

Somehow, this seemed more meaningful.  Weightier.

I wasn’t being presented with a surprise, something to associate an idea to.  This was something else entirely.

“To everyone and everything that’s listening,” I said.  I heard Rose start speaking behind me, but my words drowned hers out.  “To me, and to nobody in particular, I’ve gotta say, I didn’t choose this.  I’m doing this for family, to respect them as they were in the past, when my cousins were also my friends, so the others don’t face what Molly did.  I’m doing it to respect stuff in the present, because even if I dislike my cousins, I don’t want them to have to face this situation and get killed off.  I’m doing this for the family that comes in the future, so my kids and all our descendants don’t have this debt hanging over our heads.  Above all, I think I’m doing this for my real family.  For the friends I made who gave me support when I needed it most, so I can demonstrate what they taught me.  Past, present, future, and… more abstract.”

I thought for a second, and then I said, “And I’m doing it for me and Rose.  Because I won’t be trapped like this, and she shouldn’t be either.”

The circle passed on, carrying the keys forward, more like it was going down a spiral staircase I sat in the middle of, than around in a loop.  I couldn’t even see the floorboards, now.  Only the lines and bowls.

I could hear Rose behind me, still talking, as if she were very distant.  “-than a vestige.”

The circle stood before me.  Honey.

I looked down at the book, and I started into the phonetic pronunciations again.

Each of the dishes passed by me as I recited the lines.  More than ritual, I was getting the sense that this was a means of breaking bread.  Leaving gift baskets for the neighbors to let them know you were in town.

The circle carried the dish onward.  There was only the line.

I kept reading.  More words.  I could pick up the English more easily, now.

My word is bound and binding.  I ask you respect it as such.

My actions are my own, but have an equal amount of weight.

So I pledge.

The line shifted, until the white line was no longer encircling me, but crept towards me, like the divider in the middle of the highway, with my bike veering off course.

The ‘divider’ hit me, passing under my knee, then my legs.  It was a matter of seconds before it was passing directly beneath me.  A quick glance behind me showed me that it wasn’t carrying on.

Darkness, one straight white line, and me.

More lines appeared.  From the other circles that had disappeared, from other directions.

My legs shaky, I stood.

I nearly fell as a line coursed forth from high above and caught me in the shoulder.

I was glad I hadn’t fallen.  I wasn’t sure if there was a ground beneath me to catch me.  My feet weren’t on solid earth.

The lines were larger, more meaningful, and I could see further.  I could see the circles attached to each line, like planets in orbit around things I couldn’t make out.  A system all around me, that I was now a part of.

I felt like Rose must feel all the time.  Being there, but not quite alive.  My body was only there because my sense of self required it.

I opened my eyes, and I came back into my body.

Chalk lines crossed the floor, the circles still evenly spaced around them, but they had expanded, decentralized from around me.  The lines now intersected at points, and the spaces between bowls were five to ten times as far as they had been before.

The bowls, as a result, were scattered around the room, each upright.  The incense still smoked, but the bowls that had held food were empty.

I was standing, the book on the floor in front of me.  I reached down to see if there were any other instructions, and stopped.

I could see birds, flapping their wings, against my skin.  They moved, and the branches they were on bobbed lightly.  The watercolor background shifted.

“You okay?” Rose asked.

I started to speak, and then stopped myself.  I had to be careful.

“I… may be seeing things,” I said.  I glanced her way, and saw her sitting in front of the mirror.  Her legs were bent, knees almost up to her chin, arms around them, protecting her modesty.  I turned and stepped around the desk, where the furniture would protect mine.  I grabbed my boxers and jeans and pulled them on.

I heard a page turn.

“The book says you need to learn to manage your extra senses.  If you don’t, they can swallow you up, and you won’t find your way back to reality.”

“I think I remember.”

“It suggests techniques, but you have to find what works for you.  Closing your eyes, but not moving your eyelids.  Or try refocusing them, and find that point you reach to where you’re trying to refocus your eyes but you’re doing something else.  It becomes as natural as anything else about your body.  Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s easy.”

The bowls were still moving, I noted.  The lines still drifting.  One bowl made a ‘clink’ as it reached the wall, tapping the foot of one cabinet.

“How did you do it?” I asked, as I buttoned my jeans.

But Rose wasn’t in the mirror.

I looked around me.  There were other things that were catching my eye, now.  The lettering on books glittered a bit too much here and there, where the light caught it.  The script on the letter I’d torn stood out in bright blue where I’d torn it, while the other half remained nearly invisible.

I closed my eyes, exhaling, and then opened them.

But for the chalk lines and bowls in strange places, the room was normal.

I reversed the process.  Eyes closed, inhaling, eyes open.

Again, there were the hints of life.  I could see something faint, like dust motes, spraying lightly where the room ended and the hallway began.  As though the space warping effect was creating a kind of friction between spaces.

When I focused on the motes, they stood out in my vision, and I could see more of them in the room.

I cupped my hand to catch one.

It turned, doing a small somersault before darting between the fingers that tried to close around it.

I did what I’d done before, but I didn’t close my eyes.

The effect faded.

I turned it on again, but without doing anything with my breath or eyes.

Natural.

I checked to see if Rose had appeared, verified she hadn’t, and picked up the book.  I finished the chapter, rereading the bit on being awakened and the sight.  Now, as agreed on by men and Others, long ago, I’d see what was normally hidden from people.

Practitioners fell into categories, depending on their focus.  Some carried on this route, learning ways to influence the world that were naturally in tune with their bodies and will.  Some practitioners manipulated spirits, getting them to obey or infusing them into objects.  There were some who dealt with Others.  Many cultures, a long, long history of arts being invented and refined, it made for a wealth of possibilities.

I felt more equipped, now.  I couldn’t do anything but see, but I felt calmer, without as great a weight on my shoulders.

That would inevitably end when I got to the council meeting.

“Rose?” I asked.  “Are you getting changed?”

I approached the mirror.

Her diagram was still on the floor.  It hadn’t scattered like mine had.  It was still in place.

I realized I hadn’t checked what her personal object was.

I searched the outer rim.  Coin, skull, dreamcatcher…

“I don’t think it worked right,” Rose said, stepping into my field of view before I could spot it.  She was dressed, now.

“What?” I asked.  “You didn’t?  Why not?”

“It did something.  I…”

“What?” I asked.

She looked upset, met my eyes briefly, and then looked down.  “I… felt something, when I pledged my word.  I can see things.  But I don’t think it worked for me like it worked for you.  I may have fucked up.  Pledging something in exchange for nothing.  Losing the ability to lie, and getting nothing in exchange.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

“I’m not.  But… nothing ate my offerings like they did yours.  Nothing moved, as far as I can tell.  I… don’t think I can see anything on this side, because there’s nothing really to see.”

“Let’s check,” I said.  I walked over to the desk to put the book down, stepping over the dagger.  I flipped through it.  One page with an image dominating half of it.  A symbol was outlined, with arrows suggesting directions for drawing it.  A spiral, drawn from the outside in, then a triangle, with one point at the center, all as one motion.

“First workings?”

I heard her flipping through pages as well.  “Yeah.”

“Shamanism, movement,” I said.

“You have to spill blood,” she said.

I bent down to get the dagger, hesitated, and then cut the tip of my middle finger.

“Jesus,  Blake.”

I drew out the sign on a cup that was being used to hold pens and pencils.

When I looked, I could see the motes floating around and through it.

I gestured, a flick of my hand, and they reacted.  The cup jerked about two inches and crashed to the floor.

When I walked back to the mirror, I saw Rose there.

She gestured, and the book she’d chosen didn’t budge.

“Try something smaller?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, quiet, “because it’s not blood.  I’m not offering anything worth taking, and there aren’t any spirits here to listen and obey, are there?”

“There are other options, maybe?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, again.  “I don’t care anymore.”

“Careful what you say,” I said.  “Our word is binding.”

Her voice sounded like it was on the brink of breaking with emotion.  “Good night if I don’t run into you before you go to bed.  I’m going to take a bit to myself.”

I wanted to say something to console her, but I wasn’t sure what.

“Rose,” I said, but she was already gone.  I turned the mirror, following her, and she startled a little, almost stumbling as she nearly walked into a wall.

“What?”  She asked, clearly annoyed.

“I’m going to check on the barber again, if that’s okay?  I won’t say or do anything.  I just think it’s good to check.”

She nodded, mute.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I know you are,” she responded.  She smiled back, a tight, joyless expression.  “You can’t exactly lie now, can you?”

With that, she stepped out of my field of view.

I shucked off everything, as I’d done before, and opened the door to the tower.  This time, I looked, using the sight, keeping my eyes trained on the floor, using only peripheral vision to take in the circle.

It was still empty.

I felt a quavering in my stomach, a kind of fear.  He’d seemed so vague, in the books, but now that vague thing, capable of inflicting unspecified horrors on me, it was free?

I stood there, eyes on the floor, thinking.

When he appeared, it was so sudden I very nearly looked out of instinct.

He was crawling out of the shears.  Out of the reflective surface, and into the middle of the circle.

A brown-skinned man, his pale hair scraggly and long, inconsistent here and there, more baldness than hair.  He was old, wizened, with a potbelly, and spots all over his skin.

I couldn’t get more specific details without looking at him, and I wasn’t about to look.

An old Middle-Eastern or Indian man, malnourished to the point that his stomach was swelling.

He bent down, hauling the shears out of the ground.  I could see the painted circle the shears had penetrated disappear, as if it were only a coincidental light effect the shears had cast.

He sat down, his back to me, bony rear end on the hard floor, and then plunged the shears into his leg, like a gardener might stick a shovel in the dirt so it would stay upright for when he needed it.

Barbatorem leaned over, resting one narrow arm in the space between the two arms of the shears, forcing them open and gouging his leg open wider.  A foul stench filled the room.

He wasn’t acknowledging me.

Which I was fine with.  I eased the door shut, eyes still fixed on the floor.

There was a council meeting to prepare for.

Gathered Pages: 1

February 6th, 1931

These words are my own for me alone and nothing I write here is meant to be binding.

Dear Diary

I am supposed to start with dear diary but daddy is very strict about what I say and how.  Daddy said writing this diary would teach me to write better and that is very important but I have to write that at the top of every new part.  Daddy said he would never read my diary but if I did not write that part at the top for every new part then he would whup me.  I asked how he would know if he never read it and he said he would just know. I believe him.

I was very very very careful when I asked daddy if it would be a bad whupping or a regular whupping and he asked me if I remembered when I got whupped and peed pink.  I said yes I did and daddy got a really mean and angry look on his face and said the whupping I got this time would be worse if I did not remember to write that every time.  Then he said he was not sure if it would work and I should tell no lies even when I write things down.

I should explain what happened the other time because you are my diary and you do not know anything except what I wrote here.  It was when I was playing with Pearl even though I was ixplicitly told I mustnt.  She kept telling me she knew a fun game and she gave me one of her toys to hold, then she took my hand and pulled me along.  Part of the game she said was that we had to go into her familys shed.  Her sisters and older cousins were there and they all had sticks and things.  They started hitting me over and over and kept knocking me down and would not let me leave.

I was lucky that everyone in Pearls family that isn’t a daddy is a girl and they were not very strong.  I bunched up into a ball and I shouted what daddy told me to shout if anyone every hurts me and I do not think I can get away.  WITH THIS BLOOD SHED I PAY YOU FURFUR.  EXACT MY REVENGE.  Daddy said it sounded convincing and if it came to that and Furfur listend I would not be much worse off.  I rememberd it because Furfur always sounded like an awfuly silly name.

Pearl and her sisters and her cousin ran when I said that and I went home.  I cryed and cryed the entire way and I fell down a lot because my leg hurt where I got hit.  I even scuffed my bottom lip and chin on the road when I fell on the path up to the house because its a hill and its steep in places.

When I got home I told daddy what happened and he got really really really angry.  I was scared he would whup me but he cleaned me up and wiped up the blood instead.  He asked me lots of questions about what happened like had I played with Pearl before and how did I get away.  Then he asked me about Pearl and where we would play and if I ever saw Pearl playing after sunday school.  Then he put me to bed and told me I did not have to go to Sunday school the next day.

I forgot I wasn’t going to sunday school and I woke up and daddy was sitting in the living room with a drink looking out the window.  He looked scary because he had that mean and angry look he has sometimes when he whups me and he was wearing the clothes from yesterday and he hadn’t shaved his face.  He left without saying anything except to tell me I had to stay home.

Then he came back and he changed and shaved and we ate and daddy told me that whatever came next I was forbidden to cry.

There was a knock on the door and then Pearl’s Mama came inside dressed in her sunday best.  Daddy made tea and gave Pearl’s mama a cup and gave me a cup and made a cup for himself and they talked about everything except me and Pearl.  He looked and sounded danjerous and so did she but in a diferent way.  Then Pearl’s mama asked about hair and he reached into his pocket and he pulled out all this blond hair tied into a knot in the middle and he put it over his knee.

She asked for it and he asked for her to promise he wouldn’t get in trouble and that I would be safe from her daughter.  They shook hands and then he gave her the hair.  She asked if it was all there and he said yes.  Then she asked if she could trust him and he smiled and said no but she had no choice.

I didn’t know where the hair came from until I went to school the next day and I saw Pearl with her hair cut shorter than most of the boys.  Mrs. Packman said it was because of bugs and we shouldn’t laugh but I knew the truth.  Even though Pearl and her family hit me with sticks I felt really bad because Pearl always loved her long hair.  Even when braided it was long enough to touch her bottom.  She won’t even look at me now and she acts scared.

It was only after that was over that daddy whupped me.  It was almost as bad as being hit with the sticks because I was already sore.  I peed pink after.  The peeing hurt and I would stamp and drum my feet on the stepstool in front of the loo to distract myself until daddy belowed for me to stop.

He asked me if I learned the lesson and I said yes.  He asked me what the lesson was and I said it was I needed to listen.  He asked me why I needed to listen and I said if I was disobedient and did not listen then everyone would hurt me.  He said that was close enough.

If I have to be truthful then I need to say my feelings hurt almost as bad as any of it.  I wish someone would explain this better.  Daddy said it was a trick but I said I did not think it made sense that someone my age could plan a trick like that and plan ahead to have people waiting in the shed like Pearl did.

Daddy said the members of the Duchamp family could and they would do worse because they were scared of me so I could never ever never ever be friends with them.  I asked him not even when I was an adult and he said when I am an adult I will know better or I deserve what I get.

I think I started having the bad dreams around then.  Every night for a long time.  Then one night daddy came and picked me up and he carried me to his bed.  He told me the deal was I was allowed to cry but only so long as it was night and my head was on the pillow.  In daylight I cannot cry or show weakness.  He held me and he stroked my hair until I started to fall asleep and I felt safer.  I cryed myself to sleep and I felt better.

After the bad dreams went away, I went back to sleeping in my own bed.  Daddy had me pick a special object to me and sit naked in a circle while I read from a book.  He said it would be better if mommy was here but I need to learn to defend myself sooner than later.

I don’t know how to defend myself yet.  I do know that I was really worried about being lonly forever.  My mommy is away buying a book and she has been gone since winter and she should have come back by now.  I am not allowed to make friends if they belong to certain families and I am not allowed to make friends if they are already friends with someone from one of those families.  Because most people here are like that I cannot make any friends my age.

But there are things that aren’t my age or my daddy’s age or even the age of the house that want to be my friend now.  Tricky things and scary things and things that offer me gifts like Pearl offered me the toy before she took me to the shed.  I have to be very very careful but I do not feel as lonly anymore.

This took me a real long time to write.  I am still learning and I have to stop and think before each thing I write to make sure I am not lying.  It made me feel better and I think it was a good idea.

I am going to go give my dad a hug now for letting me write this diary and then I am going to go talk to tricky things.

Yours,

Rose Thorburn

■

March 9th, 1932

These words are my own for me alone and nothing I write here is meant to be binding.

Dear Diary

Arsepint lives up to his name.  The dirty rotten bastard.

I played a game with Arsepint and his followers today and he cheated!  He wanted a lot of things and the only thing I was willing to give him was a kiss.  I am still tasting bad eggs and garbage from the peck I gave him on the cheek.  He said a lot of very rude things to me after.

I asked daddy for advice and he told me I had to earn a victory or none of the goblins around here would respect me.  I asked him how to win a victory and he took me to the library and helped me pick out books.

Some of these books are so thick I can put my hand down flat on the spine and have room on either side.  I asked and daddy said that being good at books is not always about reading a lot but its sometimes about knowing where to start looking.

He also said I needed to stop asking so many questions.  He said I have answers and I need to look for them on my own.

Wish me luck Mr. Diary.  I will let you know how I am doing.

Rose Thorburn

■

June 18th, 1932

These words are my own for me alone and nothing I write here is meant to be binding.

Dear Diary,

I did it!

Winning was easy.  Now I have a Arsepint in a cage.  I have to bring him food and water once every day or he is allowed to let himself free.

The hard part is punishing him.  How do you punish a Arsepint?

How long would I have to lock him up before he agreed to do a song and dance about how mangy and pathetic he is in compirison to me?  I could make him do it every time he met another person for a whole year!

He wont like it but I didnt like having to read all those books.  I was so bored I nearly cried.

I told daddy, but he didn’t seem to understand.  He gave me a pat on the head and told me to go read some more, so I would know good ways to use Arsepint.

Victoriasly yours,

Rose Thorburn

■

September 15th, 1939

These words are my own, for my eyes alone, and nothing I write here is binding.  You know the routine.

Dear Diary,

I am in a bind.  I am so sorry I ignored you these past two weeks, dear diary, but much has been going on.

I am in Montreal now, in a different school.  They put me in a private school so I could learn more useful languages.  It is a very religious school.  There’s something witty I’m supposed to say about that but I’m too upset.

Daddy let me bring some books, giving me a special suitcase that could hide them.  It has been so dull, and the school is so strict, I don’t have much to occupy myself with.  I would explore the school and meet the goblins and ghosts in the darkest corners, but they watch us like hawks watch mice.

I’ve only been here a week and something happened. I could see the other girls spending time together, girls who have known each other from kindergarten.  I couldn’t thrust myself into the middle of them, so I took a book outdoors.  I told myself I would enjoy the crisp weather before the cold shuts us inside for months on end, walking away from the school to make sure I could read in peace.  I was approached and told a teacher wanted me, and I had to stow the book away inside a hollow tree, because I certainly wasn’t about to take it into the school proper.  I made sure there wasn’t anyone around to see, but someone figured it out.

Of course it was a ruse.  I’ve been so on guard against trickster spirits and goblins, I’ve forgotten to keep my guard up around other humans.  The book was taken, then turned over to the head office in quick order when the taker found out what it was.

I thought I had it settled when I threatened and spelled the girls who took and handed over the book, ensured that nobody knew it was them or me.  Things are only getting worse, now, with the faculty on a warpath, hunting for the real owner of the book. They are threatening to take away privileges, to punish the entire school, and it’s only a matter of time before one of them bends to the pressure and points her finger at me.  I’ve hidden my books with one working, and I can play innocent, but I fret.

I need the book back, but I have only a few tricks at my disposal, and no creatures of any worth that I might bargain with.  Ancient ghosts with little power left, and lesser spirits.

We have been given time for self study.  I’m using the chance to write and collect my thoughts.  I need a strategy but I’m not sure what doors are open to me.  Some religious grounds are benign but others are dangerous.  What if someone asks along specific channels and an inquisitor is alerted?

The school, as well.  There is so much talk of the war, and so much emphasis placed on making the school proud.  The faculty keeps saying they want goodness and success to come out of this dark time, and they will see the subject of this book as a dark thing.

If they trace this back to me and come to see me as the source of this great disappointment and a stain on their pride, the hate might be even greater than what the inquisitors might direct at me.

Above all else, I fret about my mother.  She spends so much time and effort collecting her books, I worry about what might happen if I lose one.

I must find a way in.  If the ghosts are almost useless, I will simply have to use a great many of them.  There are other lesser spirits, as well.  They will have to do, as allies go.

I must say I thought being at a new school with no reputation would help.  Its worse.  Now, just a week in, I feel more pressure than I ever have, but I have nobody to turn to, not even to argue with or vent on.  I wonder if being hated may well be better than being a nobody.

Rose D. Thorburn

■

September 20th, 1939

These words are my own, for my eyes alone, and nothing I write here is binding.

Dear Diary,

Disaster, but not disaster of the kind I expected.

In their quizzing of the students and their gentle and not so gentle probing, the interest of the faculty spurred the interest of the students.  Word got around about the book, and I ended up being one of no less than three groups aiming to get into the headmaster’s office and get a better look at the book.

I bid the ghosts to scare the others, but a braver group pressed on.  Minnie from the year above me, her friends, and her cousin Herb.  I think they were almost thrilled by what I sent their way.  Herb might be the one who kept talking about joining the fight and being a hero.  Maybe that drove him to fight past fear.  Maybe he’s a moron.

With a measure of help, I slipped into a cat’s body to spy on the new owners of the book.  With learned tricks, I joined the shadows in slipping beneath the door.  I thought I could snatch up the book and run.

I did not expect what I saw.  They were doing things that proper boys and girls shouldn’t do until marriage.  Herb with one of Minnie’s friends and Minnie with one of Herb’s friends, and another two friends pairing up nearby.

Dear diary, I don’t know how to name or explain the feelings that found me then. There was a kind of anxiety, warm, low in my belly, very real disgust.  Surprising, when I’ve dealt with the most vulgar of goblins.

My father has an eye for justice, or an eye for a lack of it.  In a way, I might have viewed the world through his eyes when I saw that scene.  I saw something unjust that outraged me and wounded my pride, compelling me to act.

I feel wretched when I think that the action I was compelled to was fleeing.

The Lord of Montreal reached out to me last night, communicating through my dreams.  He has heard whisperings, as Lords do, and now I have a greater merchant spirit turned mortal turned god breathing down my neck.  He would like for the book to be found, and will forgive me my error if I retrieve the book and ensure the ones who took it don’t pursue such things in the future.

I have to confront the mundane humans, and I must do it while feeling as if they are somehow more distorted and unfamiliar than many of the beings I read about in my books.

I have been born into a world that one in a thousand people have the slightest idea on.  I know of goblins and boggarts, ghosts and elementals, demons and draiodhe.  Yet I feel as though I’m the ignorant one, here.  They are the ones who have been inducted into alluring, forbidden wrongs.

This writing was meant to help me clarify my thoughts, but I don’t feel clarified.

Rose D. Thorburn.

■

September 25th, 1939

These words are my own for me alone and nothing I write here is meant to be binding.

Dear Diary,

I don’t know what to do.

I had no chance to write, for I was watched closely, and I had no privacy until now.  I tried, but I couldn’t secure the book before they had a chance to use it.  They called a goblin to them, and the ritual gave it power to attack.  Minnie suffered the brunt of it, and the rest of us were caught.

The police seem to think Herb and his friends as responsible.  I was confused at first, but now I think it makes a kind of sense.  Boys, a fraction too young to go to war.  They intruded on a girl’s school, and they make for ready suspects when Minnie is hollowed out, left with only a vacant stare, unresponsive and unmoving but for the monotonous rocking of her body.  Her body was untouched, but that doesn’t count for enough.

When the books do tell of evil things being loosed, they often make it exciting.  The mission is a rescue, a race against time.  Here, three or four lives were utterly ruined, and they may never find out why.   They were given no chance, except to leave dangerous things be.  A practitioner could have done more to help, but I am more a novice than a full fledged wielder of power.  I caught the goblin, I kept the scene clear.  I was there when police arrived to answer the screams, and now I am a witness.

I still I don’t understand it, and I don’t know what my place in this is supposed to be.

The books say the ignorant may rewrite their own memories.  Perhaps they will blame themselves.  Perhaps Herb and his friends will convince themselves they were responsible. That strikes me as being nearly as horrifying as anything that happened to Minnie.

They may instead choose to let their recollection of what happened to Minnie fade from their minds, a curious incident they don’t let themselves dwell on.

I just sat with my pen poised over paper for long enough I needed to dip my pen again.  It’s more horrifying still, but it’s horror I feel on Minnie’s behalf.  I think it’s the scariest thing I can imagine.  Dying and having your existence erased from the world.  To be painted over and forgotten.

It’s my first time facing the aftermath of a situation like this.  Removed from the books.  It gnawed at me every day the girls and I were confined to the rooms on the top floor of the dormitory, while I waited to talk to police, and the entire way home.  It eats at me still.

A small blessing that it was a goblin of no particular status or power.  It could have been far worse.

I expected the usual sort of punishment from my father.

I did not expect my mother, returned from a year-long trip, to meet me in front of the house.

Her first question was after my welfare.  I told her I was well, but that the police might reach out to ask more questions, and that I might be asked to Montreal to attend court.

Her second question was about the Lord of Montreal.  I assured her I left things on good terms.

Her third question, of course, was about her books.

I assured her the books were well, showing her each of the texts I’d taken with me.

With that, she left to return to her study, leaving me with her detestable snake and with Father.  Even now, as I write this, the house has a smell, very like the aroma in that scene I stumbled on with Minnie and the rest, that had unsettled me so much.

Ampelos was staring at me, and even though that snake face doesn’t show a damned hint of an expression, I could tell he knew, as though he read my mind.  His every movement mocked me.

It feels like there’s always the group, and then there’s me, standing apart.

Ampelos is my mother’s familiar, so he is her ally.  My father is, of course, my mother’s partner.

And then there is me.

I think, writing this, I have settled on how I feel.  Mortified.  It’s a good word.

I cannot make another mistake like I did, but I can’t cover every avenue by myself.  I’m too young to take a familiar for life, and I have no friends here.

I was home, and I felt more homesick than ever.  I still do, writing this.

Ampelos knew all this, and he silently mocked me.  My father was in a good mood, but I didn’t hear his words and I think my silence annoyed him.

He was upset over the girl that the goblin attacked, that I’d let the book out of my sight.  He said it was my responsibility.

I was angry, and I think both of us were a little surprised at how much emotion came out.  I said a lot of things, and I was careful to keep my word, but I don’t remember much of it.

I blamed him, because making friends was hard before, but impossible once I became a practitioner.

I told him the truth.  That I was given the responsibility too soon.  Other families don’t let children have powers.  I’m sixteen, but I’ve had powers for almost half of my life.

And then I swore.  I swore I wouldn’t ever make my children go through this.  I would let them lead lives untouched by all of this.

Never have I seen him react like he did.  As if he’d heard me and he actually listened.

Ampelos was still there, smug.

I don’t know why I did it, but I took hold of Ampelos’ tail, seized a letter opener from the nearest shelf, and I stabbed him, fixing the tail to the arm of the loveseat.  I ran, before my father or mother could catch me.

As I said, mortified.  I know I have responsibilities.  I’ve done irreperable damage by swearing an emotional oath.  One I’ll have to keep or be forsworn.

I know I’ll have to go back and bow my head, accept my due punishment.  It’s well after dark, and writing is getting harder as even moonlight is harder to come by.  I’m sitting out of sight, using my bookpack as a seat, but trouble is sure to find me.  I almost hope it will.

I don’t know what to do,

Rose D. Thorburn.

■

September 25th, 1939

Dear Diary,

I’m not going to write the bit at the beginning.  I know there is no use in it.  It doesn’t protect me or do anything.  I’ve known for a good while, and right now feels like a good time to make a change.  I’m fairly certain I never made a promise, more because my father wouldn’t have exacted one from me than because I remember anything that well.

I’m not sure if I should write this down, but when I sit here, muddy and bleeding in spots, scuffed and bruised, I think of Minnie, and I think I want to preserve as much of myself as I can.  Even the gory bits.

I found trouble.  Aimon Behaim.  Years older than me, visiting home while an injury heals.  An enemy.

He mocked me, following me, and it took me minutes to realize why he wasn’t doing more.  My mother was back, and he was scared.

I called him on it, and I offended his pride.  He teased me, a working of spirits to bring raindrops down from leaves overhead, and I retaliated by throwing down the clay doll I keep Arsepint inside, giving an order to attack.  Something of an overreaction.

I didn’t think that a soldier might be carrying a firearm.

I had to order Arsepint away before he could kill my oldest servant, and Aimon closed the distance, and pressed the gun to my head.  I spat in his face, he grabbed me by the hair, and we fought.  I dug my fingernails into his bandages, he tried to throw me over the edge of grass so I might fall in the lake, and I pulled him after me.

Like my argument with my father, I can’t say everything that happened.  It was stupid, ignoble, and animal.

I look at him now, lying still beside me, and I think maybe Aimon was just as scared and frustrated as I was.  A different kind of fear and frustration, but it was there.

Somewhere along the line, he decided to let me win.  I ended up above him, pinning him.

He didn’t expect me to call Arsepint back, and have the lesser goblin bring me the dropped firearm.

With a gun to his head, he refused to say uncle.  To relent in the simplest, smallest way.  I think that was when I realized we were the same.  There was only us.

And Arsepint.  But allowances must be made.

He kissed me, and I kissed him back.

Things went to natural places from there.

I’m enjoying sitting here, watching Aimon’s bare chest rising and falling.  He has a bloody nose and it’s making him snore, and I like that.

When I’m writing, dear Diary, I sometimes like to think that you’re communicating with me, when my thoughts clarify and I can jump to new ideas.  It’s sad, that I give you an identity, when you’re only one of a long series of notebooks, but I’ll hold to the idea because it makes it easier to put pen to paper.

If you were communicating with me, I’d think you just pointed out how Aimon and I were connected in the heat of the moment.  You might be telling me I could have an ally in this.  A way to make up for the damage I’ve done to my family with a careless oath.

But Minnie is still fresh in my mind.  Trusting the wrong person is a telling mistake, with consequences and damage.

And I think of my first diary, your predecessor.  Of Pearl, who offered me an enticement before dragging me off to where I could be beaten.

I don’t know what to do, but it’s a more comfortable sort of doubt.  At worst, I have an enemy I know and that’s better than having and knowing nothing at all.  My predecessors will have to bear with me.

R.D.T.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Damages 2.1

The pen scribbled across the paper.

Weapons.  A knife, a larger weapon if I could manage it.  A gun would be ideal but hard to find.  Different Others had different drawbacks and weaknesses.  Ideally I’d be able to pick up an assortment of weapons in a variety of materials.  The problem was, I wasn’t sure where I could get those things.

That raised several more questions.  I needed a better way to get information.  Internet.  I needed a way to buy supplies, if my cash reserve ran out.  Money.

I switched to another piece of paper, this one headed with the word ‘Needs’.  Beneath clothes and a brief shopping list of food staples that would last me a while, I added the two new points about internet access and needing to contact the lawyers.  I hesitated, then added other points.  Joel’s car and keys, which I had borrowed, needed to be returned, if they weren’t already.  Rose needed assistance.  I needed allies.

The council meeting was this afternoon.  Three hours before sunset and three hours after, I would be free from interference.  I needed a way to get some control over this situation.  Enemies at the gates, I’d phrased it.

I tried to write down everything I could possibly need or need to do.  Stumped, stalled, I put the pen down and stood from the couch, stretching my back where I’d been hunched over the coffee table.

The mirror beside me was empty.  My reflection was absent, as was Rose’s.  I saw only a living room where the books weren’t quite so scattered, where the shelves were full and no cardboard boxes sat beneath.  There wasn’t a pile of dishes in the corner where I’d left them on my side of things.  Oatmeal, again.  If I didn’t manage a good shopping run, I’d be moving on to wild rice and cans of black beans.

The house felt a little more claustrophobic than it had, before.  As large as the house was, it was old fashioned with a very closed concept, every room separated from other rooms by walls and doors.  Were it the furniture and furniture alone, I wouldn’t have a problem.  But Molly had made a long series of messes in packing up grandmother’s things, leaving the job half done, and her things were still here, untouched.  Navigating between furniture and over the boxes and piles of books made me constantly aware of the space around me.

When I had some time, I could do some tidying up.  For the time being, though, I had too much to do.  I settled for a breather.

I stood in the window, my back against the windowframe, helping to hold the curtains and sheers out of the way.

With my newly acquired second sight, I could make out the spirits that infused everything.  Just as I might focus my eyes, I could focus this sight.  I could train it.  According to Essentials, some practitioners would train their sight to focus on things better suited to their talents.  Imagery would take hold.

Spirits were the most basic and oldest option when it came to manipulating the physical world through the esoteric.  One object as simple as a pencil could have a host of spirits inside it, representations of the purposes the object had, its nature, its elemental makeup, ownership, and many, many other qualities.

Shamans, then, were practitioners who worked more or less exclusively with spirits.  They would be able to find and interact with more powerful spirits.  Not simply the spirit of one particular stone, but the spirit of all stones for an area.

I was thinking along those lines because I couldn’t help but wonder if what I saw was one of those shamans at work.

A boiling cloud of what might have been vapor, a haze, sat over the city.  It was as though stormclouds were rolling in, and they were doing it at ground level.  At times there was a fluidity to it, as though the nearby lake had swelled and swamped the area, waves rising and falling, only periodically allowing buildings to be seen, where they dipped low enough.

This wasn’t water or water vapor.  It was spirits.

I shut off the sight.

The scene I saw without magical aid was an ordinary one, a simple snowfall, with clouds in the proper places.  My view of the buildings was still limited, periodically obscured, but only by snow.

There were things outside, as there had been last night.  Daylight wasn’t safety.  It only meant that the Others without human forms had to stay out of the public eye.

I sighed.  I wasn’t big on plans.  I wasn’t the type to use lists or keep to them.  It helped to frame what I was doing in my head, but it wasn’t me.

Better if I figured out the high points I needed to hit and then winged it.  I’d figure out what I needed to shop for when the time came.

I sat down with what I saw as the little black book.  I filled myself in on the local practitioners.

When I got to the Others, however, I found the entries got a little more complicated and short form.  Latin classifications, short form that necessitated I look it up, measures and linking to reference material instead of explaining them outright.

Grandmother, it seemed, was more interested in Others than people.

“Rose!”  I called out.

There was no reply.

I made my way through the house, searching each of the mirrors.  I found her in the library.

“Rose,” I said.

She sat on the floor.  Her hair had pulled free of the brooch, and she was surrounded by books.  Damn, she looked worn out.  Not tired, per se, but like she’d been through the wringer.

“What do you want, Blake?”

“First of all, I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Let’s say I’m not,” she said.  She carefully set books aside and climbed to her feet.  She didn’t seem willing to meet my eyes, biting her lip, thoughts clearly elsewhere.

“What can I do?”

It wasn’t a hard question, but it seemed to bother her.  “Survive the meeting?  We survive, there’s always room for things to get better.”

“I’m on board with that,” I said.

Why did it look like I was upsetting her more?

“Listen,” I said.  “I’ve done the reading.  The sections on the Others in the little black book are kind of dense, but I got the gist of it, and I think I can put names to most of the important faces.  I know the practitioners I’m up against.”

“That’s good,” she said.  “I read through all of that too.”

“I’ve also memorized a few of the basic sigils.  Driving people away, like Laird Behaim did in the coffee shop, moving things like I did with the mug, and protecting objects.  I’ve got salt and chalk if I need it.”

“I wouldn’t rely on that, if I was in your shoes,” she said.

I frowned, “Why?”

“The books say that generally, spirits aren’t that smart.  They’re more like small animals, in terms of their capacity to understand things.  Like animals, you can train or bait them.  In an area trafficked by people who use spirits a great deal, you can trust they’re going to listen.”

“This is that type of area.”

“But who are they listening to?  Remember how Laird said the spirits of community listen to him because of his role?  Out there, they aren’t just listening to you.  Their loyalties are divided.”

“I think I follow,” I said.  “What’s the end result?  What happens if they aren’t all in the same camp?”

“I think it’ll be slower, or fuzzier.  You might get nothing, or it might backfire.”

That took some of the wind out of my sails.  “I’m still powerless?”

“Powerless until you get enough clout to bully them or convince them to play along.  It might be that grandmother’s name gives you some of the oomph you need.  But if you reach for their help in a bind,” Rose said, “It’s going to be-”

“-a crapshoot,” I said, in the same instant Rose did.

I smiled a bit, but Rose didn’t.  Her eyes dropped to the ground.

I sighed.  I could hardly blame her for not being in a smiling mood.  Rose had her own concerns.  Ones I couldn’t even wrap my head around.  We didn’t have enough information on what she was or why grandmother had gone to the trouble of creating her.

Problem was, I didn’t know how to fix this.  When in doubt, the strategy was to empathize.  As a rule, people wanted their feelings recognized more than they wanted fixes.

“I can’t imagine how you feel,” I said.  It was the truth.  “You’ve been put in a horrible situation, with-”

“Don’t do that,” she said.  “Not if you’re using it like they taught it to you.”

“Huh?”

“Dad taught us that.  How to get on people’s good side.  Which may be something he picked up from grandmother.”

“Grandfather,” I said.  “It fits what we know of him.”

“Don’t manipulate me, Blake.  Don’t use strategies to deal with me.  I was raised the same way you were, up to a point, I know the tricks.”

“I do care, Rose.  I want to help you.  If I’m drawing from what I know to try-”

“Blake,” Rose said.  “It’s fine.  It’s done, you’re in charge, I’m the backup.  You want me to keep the criticisms to the most vital points?  Fine.  You want me to do the research and supplement what you’re doing, fine.  You win.”

“I don’t want to win.  I want us to be on the same page.”

“The same page?  You got the power, I got… this.  How do you have a partnership if things are this unequal?  Let’s face it.  Look at what happened to Molly.  Grandmother is willing to use us as expendable assets.  I’m nothing more than a piece in a greater puzzle.  I’ll serve my role, and the road ends there.  I’m the most expendable one of us.”

“I don’t think she made you as some expendable asset,” I said.

“I’ve been reading.  Everything referencing diabolists says they’re dangerous lunatics, except for the stuff that was written by grandmother and other diabolists.  The temptation to offer pieces of yourself for obvious gains sucks all of them in eventually.  The guys who unleash some of the worst stuff out there?  The guys who meet the worst ends?  They’re in the same category as her.  Our grandmother.  Over and over, they become monsters.  Literally, or generally monstrous people that might use their kids or grandkids as sacrificial pawns to get what they need.”

“I don’t deny that they’re fucked up.  But grandmother lived.  She hit the ripe old age of eighty-five, and I doubt you do that while messing with stuff like this if you’re dumb.  Besides, dumb people aren’t the type to spend the kind of power it takes to make a sapient being, only to throw it away like you’re talking about.”

That actually seemed to help.  Not that she looked happy, but maybe the way didn’t look so dark.

“There isn’t a book we can read to figure out why I was created,” Rose said.  Her eyes were still downcast.  “I looked at the earliest diary entries, and the most recent.”

“Anything useful in the most recent?”  I asked.

She shook her head.  “No.  Nothing.  The early ones… I sort of skipped past the earliest diaries, because a child’s writing is hard to read in big doses.  Some stuff on the relationships between the different groups here.  But if you’re looking for tips on where to focus our studies, we may have to look a bit further.”

“Relationships,” I said.

“It wasn’t all friendly or peaceful, though it sounds like there was more of an equilibrium a while back.”

“Like Laird said,” I thought aloud, “It’s starting to change.  If the house sells, Jacob’s Bell grows past a threshold.  It’s thrown things a bit out of balance.”

“You’ve got the two big circles joining in marriage, maybe rebuilding that balance.”

“Status quo for the Duchamp family, it sounds like,” I said.  Which was a reminder of the matter at hand.  “Listen, The council meeting starts in three and a half hours.  I wanted to check you were up for it.”

“I’m up for it,” she said.  She met my eyes, but that only made it clearer how worn out she was.

“Be careful,” I said.  “If you lie-”

“I know,” she said.  Nervously, she started fiddling with her hair, trying to get it sorted out.  “I might lose my powers, or be forsworn.  And I don’t want to lose any protections I might have, if things like Padraic can reach in here to get me.  Not that I have much else to lose.”

I nodded.

“Don’t worry about me if you’re not going to worry about yourself,” Rose said.  “You look as tired as I feel, and since you’re the one making the big decisions, like when to go out and-”

“Woah,” I said.  “Woah, woah.  You’re talking about this?”

“About going out with Laird.”

“I thought we weren’t fighting.”

I could see her expression change.  Barely restrained frustration, slowly but surely being covered up, hidden behind a mask.  “We’re not.  Nevermind.  I got carried away.  I’ll meet you downstairs in a bit, and then we’ll go?”

A big part of me wanted to argue.  To press the issue.  To air grievances and get things on a more even keel.  To convince her that I didn’t want her as a slave or a servant.

Except we had more pressing matters.  Better to find a way to show it to her rather than tell her.

“Sure,” I said.

■

The spirits parted.  I knew when it was time, because of the way the surroundings changed.  A moment of rest, where the snow wasn’t so hard, the spirits were settled, and an entire area was almost clear, in magical terms.  In regular terms, the snowstorm let up a touch.  It was dark, but that was more to do with cloud cover than time of day.

I was on the move the moment the coast was clear, but I didn’t go to the meeting.

I headed for the downtown area, backpack empty, pockets full.  Everything I could think I might need on hand.

Fireplaces and stoves.  No.  Dollar store?  No.  An old-school ice-cream shop complete with the benches and the tall glasses for fondues and ice cream floats.

I settled on a general mens store.

Knives were on sale, but I didn’t like the idea of using them.  Too short a reach, against the sorts of things I would be fighting.

I did like the look of the ice picks and hatchets.  Prices on the picks hit the hundreds, while I could manage a hatchet for as little as forty.

Wooden baseball bat, a touch less expensive.

I added the weight of a loop of chain to the cart as well.

Then I stepped into the corner of the shop where they handled bicycle stuff.

Cheap side-mirrors were about four dollars for a pair, round mirrors about six inches across.  I checked that I could see Rose inside and grabbed twenty.

I think she might have actually smiled, when I glimpsed her.

I did another circuit of the store.  There were rifles and guns, but those started at a hundred and fifty dollars, and I had little doubt they’d stop working in a pinch.  Many Others would be immune or too hard to kill with a regular gun.  In terms of cost benefit, I’d rather have more mirrors.

If I couldn’t get a gun at this point, the bow and arrow set stood out as a tempting alternative.  It helped that there were Others who were vulnerable to wood and not metal.  There were problems in terms of cost, though.  At ninety dollars minimum, it was just outside of the range I was willing to pay.

And, when I thought about it, it would be hell to practice if my movements were limited to the interior of Hillsglade House.  It would take too long to learn.

I had basic weapons for self defense, plus a few tools, which would have to tide me over until I got further in my studies over the magic stuff.

When I approached the counter to pay, I got stares.  It made me wonder if the process of awakening had changed anything about me.  Or if they were enemies.

I made my way to the next store.  A general catch-all bargain shop, a little better than the dollar store I had passed.  Expanding beyond the one pair of jeans would go a long way for my sanity.  So would having decent soap and shampoo.  Even different laundry detergent would help.  I grabbed all of the toiletries, a few spare t-shirts, a sweatshirt and added a thirty dollar pair of jeans, just so I had something besides underwear to wear in a pinch.

It made me feel better, knowing I had the stuff, feeling the weight of it in the shopping basket.  It left me roughly twenty bucks to get food, but I could stretch a little money a long way on that front.  I was happier having permanent things, new things.  Even if they were cheap shirts for 75% off.  If I had more money in general, I would be a shopaholic or a hoarder.

When I headed to the front of the store, a young boy got in my way.  Just past the brink of entering adolescence, pale and brown haired.

My first thought was Other.  The memories of the things that had attacked the fake delivery man were fresh in my mind.  It wasn’t.  Very much human.

“You’re Blake, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Do you recognize me?”

I nodded again.  Molly’s younger brother.

When he didn’t say anything, giving me a death glare, I said, “Christoff.  Hey, listen.  I’m sorry about your sister.”

“Why are you sorry?” he asked.  “Did you do it?”

God damn, the way he could say it as if I had…  with a hardness in his voice?  That had to have been something that the family had imbued in him over the years of fighting.  Something he would have picked up.  It was the kind of accusation that had enough weight to it that even an innocent target could be put off balance and made to consider the question.

“No, Christoff.  The police already cleared me.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.  Did you kill my sister?”

“No,” I said.  Not unless murder by omission is possible.  “I didn’t.”

I could see Callan approaching, giving me a bit of a wary look.  His mother wasn’t far behind.

Callan was almost thirty.  His mother was forty and looked ten years older, by the condition of her skin and hair, her arms full with a bundle of shirts with superheroes on them.  I couldn’t help but see Aunt Irene as the type of person who had faced hardships every day and had emerged just a fraction weaker from each crisis.  Worrying about money and work and all of that tended to eat you up inside.  I knew, even if I had lived it for only a short time, what that was like.

All that said, it didn’t mean I was a fan of her as a person.

Callan frowned as stopped behind Christoff, putting his hands on his little brother’s shoulders.

“I was just saying to Christoff,” I said, “I’m sorry about Molly.  You have my condolences.”

“But you still didn’t waste any time in taking the house,” Callan said.  His glare matched those of Christoff and my aunt.

“Ah, someone told you?”

“It’s in the papers,” he said.  “Every day, talking about Molly, talking about you.  Who’s the new heir, that sort of thing.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice in any of it,” I said.  “I don’t want the house or the baggage that comes with it.  At this point, I’d be pretty happy give up all the money and walk away from all of this… without anyone getting hurt.”

“But you’re living there,” Callan said.  “So you must want some part of it.”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“Your parents said you were homeless.  I bet you fucked up, and this is the only place you have to live.  Squatting in my sister’s house before her body’s even cold.”

I expected his mother to rebuke him, to respond to the callous comment about Molly.

She was cold before she died, I thought.

What I said was, “She was one of the very few family members I ever liked, honestly.  She was a friend to me.  I meant it when I said I’m sorry.”

“She wasn’t your friend,” Aunt Irene said, and her voice had that accusatory hardness that Christoff had picked  up.  Her eyes narrowed, an expression to match her tone, “Every other second I look at you, I wonder how you’re responsible.”

How, not if.

“You keep saying you’re sorry, and I believe it a little less each time,” Callan said.  “Tell you what.  Go.  Don’t ever fucking talk about my sister again, just go, and we won’t have a problem.”

I didn’t say anything, out of concern it would be taken as binding.  Instead, I circled around to walk past him.

He took a step to the side, getting in my way.  “I didn’t say pay and leave.  I said leave.”

“You said go,” I said.  “I’m going.”

“Not this way,” he said.  “Not with this shit you need to keep squatting in my sister’s house.”

Heads were turning.  We had the attention of every shopper and employee in the store, now.

I thought of Rose’s recent surrender.  I didn’t agree with it.  It wasn’t what I wanted… but I didn’t want an issue here, either.

“Fine,” I said.  “Let me give the basket to the cashier-”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Callan said.  “Go put it all back on the shelves and racks.”

I dropped the basket.  “No.  But I’ll leave, without buying, without incident.  You win, Callan.”

He smirked, but when I turned to go around him, he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder, maybe to slow me down so he could get in my way again.

I shoved him, hard enough he stumbled three steps back.

Before anything further could happen, I headed for the doors.  More for his sake than mine.  I wasn’t forgetting the consequences of missing the council meeting, as I thought that.  I was-

The sound of running footsteps made me stop.  The expressions of the cashiers to my right clued me in.

I reacted, half-turning, bringing my arm up.  The arm wasn’t in position to deflect the worst of the hit, but I was more or less ready as Callan did his damndest to sucker-punch me.  It hurt, but it was only pain.  No disorientation, no loss of consciousness.

My retaliation was automatic.  I hit him, fist to face.  He reeled, bending over to the point that I thought he was going to do a somersault.  But I was already swinging the follow-up strike, waist-level.

He hit the ground, rolled onto his back, and he didn’t get up.  His mouth was open, lip split, and he stared, blinking hard, looking in a different direction each time he opened his eyes.

Fuck, my hands hurt like a bitch.

Employees came running, as well as one or two male customers.  I backed away, hands raised.

But when they reached us, two employees dropped to their knees beside Callan, and the rest of the intervening bystanders put themselves between us, forming a protective half-circle around Callan.  Six of them, and another fourteen or so bystanders.

“He hit me first,” I said.

“You shoved him,” a man said.  He looked fifty or so, but had a walker, oddly out of tune with his age.

“That’s not how it happened and you know it,” I said.

The man said, “I know you’re that guy in the Hillsglade place right now.  You selling it anytime soon?”

“No, the contract-”

“Then I think I know what we’re telling the police,” he said.  He looked around, and slowly, each other member of the small crowd started nodding in agreement.

Too coincidental.  Too much fuckery, for this to happen now.  I switched to my other way of seeing.

Nothing stood out, no strange glows or images that weren’t supposed to be here.  No Others were in the area.

When I turned to more basic elements, I could see how active the spirits were.  Nothing too unusual, though this was my first opportunity seeing how the spirits traveled back and forth between people, maintaining relationships.  If I unfocused a bit, they almost looked like ribbons or cords, connecting people throughout the area.

Three of the ribbons stood out from the rest.  Too straight, too narrow.  They were like spears that had penetrated Callan, Aunt Irene and Christoff and plunged into me.

Forced connections between us.  Too direct to be natural.  Someone had aimed them at me.

Fuckery.

There were rules, though.  No interfering with or attacking anyone else in the time leading up to, during, or after the meeting.

Had this been done beforehand?  Had things been set up so that they’d get in my way at the first available opportunity?

Or had someone found a loophole?

I wasn’t sure I had a chance to debate it.  A cashier was dialing on the phone, her eyes on me.

In that moment, I saw Laird enter the store, not in uniform, but wearing a long coat, cheeks red from the cold.  He surveyed the situation.

“Mr. Thorburn,” he said.

“Officer,” I said.  “Pretty prompt response to a call that hasn’t been made yet.”

“Are you getting smart with me?” he asked.

I shook my head.  “Only stating the truth.”

He gave me an appraising look.  “Yes.  I imagine you are.  Katie, you can put the phone down.  He’s right, there isn’t a point.”

“He had a few harsh words for the fellow there,” the guy with the walker said, “Then shoved him, they exchanged blows.”

“That so?” Laird asked.  He surveyed the room very slowly.  His eyes settled on Katie.  “I’m asking.  Is it, Katie?”

She looked at the crowd.

“Katie?”

“No, sir.”

“No.  I didn’t think so.  I’ll tell you what.  You guys go on about your business, and I’ll see that Mr. Thorburn gets to his destination.  Deal?”

“Yes sir,” a few nearby people mumbled.

“Mr. Thorburn?” he asked, giving me a sharp look.

“Sounds good,” I said.

“I don’t think I heard that clearly enough,” he said.  His stare was a level one.

Right.  He wanted to play this game.

I wouldn’t be buying clothes, toiletries or groceries, it seemed.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“Good,” he responded, smiling.

We went on our way.  I hadn’t turned off my second sight, and I saw how the spirits were shifting.  People were milling around the area, which was more like an extended strip mall than a true downtown, but the spirits diverted them from taking one side street.

We turned down that street, and were soon joined by Andy and Eva.  The witch hunters.

“I assume they aren’t bound by any neutrality rules,” I said.

“No,” Laird said.  “But if they wanted to kill you, they could enter your home and murder you in their sleep.”

The girl smiled, giving me a look.  Confident, brash, if I remembered right from the vision.  Her brother kept his eyes straight forward, watching the ground for slick patches and lumps of snow he might stumble on.  He was burdened down with bags of stuff, while she strutted.

I’d read up on the locals.  What had the little black book said?  They were witch hunters in service to Jacob’s Bell.  Killing or punishing any Other or practitioner who strayed too far from the rules and made life inconvenient.  Half of their payment came in the form of hard cash.  Half was in either trinkets they could use on their job or knowledge.

We approached a church.  The area was desolate.

I saw the woman with a blur for a face pause outside, waiting for a man to hold the door open.  She was the one who’d molded the other who’d pretended to be a delivery driver.  I saw her deliberately put the little ever-lit cigarette out before entering.

A church wasn’t my first guess for a meeting place.

Inside, Laird walked me to the front, where his family sat in the front row of pews.  He paused, bending down to talk to his wife, and I walked on, my eyes taking it in.

All eyes were on me, in turn.  It made for a kind of pressure.  Like all of the bad parts of public speaking without the ability to say something and give off a better impression.

Behaim Circle, chronomancers.  Demesnes situated in scattered residences across the city.  I was familiar enough with them.

Sitting in the aisles opposite the Behaims was the Duchamp Coven.  According to the little black book, their line was purely female, and their craft was taught to women only.  Easy enough, when any Duchamp woman would give birth girls only.  A large family with strong ties to many of the surrounding areas, the family had earned a measure of prestige and power by marrying off their daughters and cousins to others in Ontario, Quebec, and the Northeastern States.  Enchantresses.

What were enchantresses?  Essentials had filled me in on the basics.  They would be focused on altering relationships.  Influencing people, influencing things.  An object could have its owner reassigned, so it might find its way into someone else’s hands, or be tethered to a location, so it would continually end up there.  On the higher end of things, people could be altered, with an enchantress literally stealing someone’s love.  On the very high end of things, familiars could be claimed by an enchantress that didn’t already have one, among other general bends and twists in more fundamental rules.

In short, they were the most likely culprits for sending Aunt Irene’s family my way.

A middle-aged aboriginal woman sat alone, and nobody sat near her.  Mara Angnakak.  She straddled the line between practitioner and Other.  When Jacob’s Bell was first settled by colonists, she was already here.  The notes had marked that she was very reserved, but she harbored a horrendous amount of hatred for the rest of us.  Grandmother had written out suspicions that she was illiterate; arguing it would explain why her talents seem to be limited to what she could teach herself.  Centuries of such teaching and experimentation, but limited nonetheless.

Being a practitioner inevitably meant losing a bit of your humanity and becoming a bit more Other.  My new eyesight was a part of that, one step along what could be a long journey.  Mara Angnakak had nearly finished that journey before stopping.  Or she had to have, if she was that old.

She was here before Europeans came to Canada and chances were good that she intended to be here well after we were gone.

A girl slouched in a seat.  Her familiar wasn’t in its mortal form, but was ethereal, with all of the mass of a grizzly on the front end, and a tail end that looked like that of a fish, the features an incoherent blend of different animals and plants, different features being emphasized as I looked longer.  Her stick tapped the floor with no rhythm at all.  She’d seated herself nearer the Others at the back than the two big families.  I recognized her as the one who’d been shouting at the rabbit.

She would be the Briar Girl.  No other name.  A recent addition to the local population, as of six years ago.  She apparently lived full-time in the woods and marshes behind Hillsglade House.  Grandmother’s suspicion?  She had contracted with a familiar too powerful for her to handle, creating something that was less a partnership than a practitioner dominated by the spirit.  The bear-thing would be the familiar, the stick her implement.

Johannes, the sorcerer from the north end, was already sitting, but he’d chosen to sit among the Others, near the back, rather than anywhere near the two families.  His dog sat beside him, a breed that could easily look silly, given the chance, but it managed to look noble.

It helped that the lights behind the dog seemed somehow brighter, the rest of the room darker by contrast.

Others continued to appear, and it seemed as though they had been arriving for a while.  They avoided the pews and stood around the edges.  Where they clustered, their bodies blocked the wall-mounted lights behind them, and the room darkened.

I found an empty row and sat.  I put the backpack down on the pew beside me and fished out a pair of bike mirrors.  I adjusted the zipper, and zipped up around the prong where the mirror was supposed to fit into the bike handle.  It stuck up, facing forward.

Easily an hour passed before the influx of Others started to taper off.  My mouth was dry, my heart pounding, my face hurt where I’d been hit, and my hands hurt more.

Above all else, I was realizing what I was up against.  These weren’t pages in the little black book.  They were enemies of mine.  Virtually all of them.

A lot of them would kill me.

A good few would probably do worse things than kill me.

This wasn’t quite what I had expected.  I’d expected a few practitioners.  Not everyone.

“Blake,” Rose whispered.

“What?” I asked, leaning closer.

“Don’t tell anyone that I did the ritual,” she said.

I nodded.

Keep cards up our sleeves.  That was how we needed to think.

But we couldn’t be wilting flowers, bowing over if someone so much as looked at us the wrong way.  I could do that for Callan, but not here.

A woman from the Duchamp family was talking to Laird, off to the side.  She might have been the one who was talking in the vision I’d had.  Not the oldest Duchamp woman here, but she had a kind of presence.  They both cast glances my way as they talked, making me the obvious topic of conversation.

I went out of my way to look like I wasn’t terrified.

All of these people were my enemies.

“Beautiful Rose,” Padraic purred.  “Both of them, here.  A good night, I’m sure.”

He’d entered alongside his two regular companions, two other companions of similar attractiveness, and Maggie Holt, the girl with the checkered scarf.  She was a teenager, making her slightly younger than the Briar Girl, and her eyebrows made her look perpetually angry, helped by a swift, graceless manner of walking.

She sat to my right, across the aisle.  Padraic and his group sat around her, instantly and automatically settling into comfortable seating positions that could have doubled for poses.

“Padraic, as usual, is the last to enter,” Laird said.  “We can begin a little early tonight.  Please, Mr. Thorburn.  You’re at the center of attention.  Would you please step up to the front and introduce yourself?”

Every set of eyes in the room

“Say no,” Rose said.

“I said I’d run impulsive plans by you, right?” I asked.

“Blake?”

“Mr. Thorburn?” Laird asked, his voice ringing down the length of the church.

“If I had a way to divert our enemies from us and to each other?” I asked.  “Yes or no?”

“Blake, you can’t expect me to-”

“Blake Thorburn, grandson of Mrs. Rose D. Thorburn, Diabolist of Hillsglade House,” Laird said.  “I would like a response.”

Making someone repeat themselves, in some cases, would make them look weaker.  Laird was getting more intimidating each time he spoke.

“Yes,” she said.

I stood.

There was no murmur of conversation as I walked down the aisle.  There were hundreds here, but most were Others, and they were all exceptionally good at being quiet.  Goblins, disgusting to look at, as though they were distilled versions of human ugliness, squat and all of them armed with weapons forged together from scrap.  Ghosts, etheral and exaggerated in appearance, forever marked with their causes of death, twisted by an imperfect recollection of what they looked like and who they were, before.  Faerie, in myriad shapes and forms, and spirits.  The other half of the Others were impossible to identify.

Funny, how many others with the appearances of children were around Johannes.

Andy and Eva sat on the stairs to the right of the stage, facing down everyone.  Like bailiffs or guards, a reminder to keep the peace.  The other set of stairs was blocked by the crowd.  I stood at the very end of the aisle, and gripped the railing.

In the midst of the faces, of the twenty or so members of the Duchamp coven and thirty-ish members of Laird’s family, all of the Others, I had to search to find the tiny round mirror that Rose would be peering out of.

“I’m Blake Thorburn,” I said.  “I doubt you really care about that, or about who I am.  I imagine Molly Walker did her own speech here.  I can’t even guess how she handled it, or what she said.  I’m an obstacle for you to remove, to get power.  I know this.  I know you might see me as one number on a countdown clock, with prosperity waiting when there’s nothing left.  When there are no successors.  But you need to know, that thing so many of you are terrified of?  That I might learn enough to summon something problematic?  It’s already summoned.”

I could see Laird react to that.  A shift in the crowd.  Some of the kids went pale, in the Duchamp family.

Johannes smiled.  Mara the immortal, for her part, didn’t say or do anything.  Most Others didn’t seem to care one way or another.

“Not my choice.  I also didn’t choose the arrangements my grandmother put in place,” I said.

I was thinking of Rose, but I didn’t need to elaborate on that.

“Some of you have been baiting me, trying to get me to retaliate.  I don’t know why, but I imagine there’s something at play.  I’m not going to do what they want.  I’m going to make you guys a deal.  I’ll make three deals.  If you approach me and offer a ceasefire, an agreement you won’t attack me or help anyone who might, if you make a good offer, I’ll take the demon off the table for you and yours.”

I could see people exchanging glances.

That was a maxim, right?  A rule of war?

Divide and conquer.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Damages 2.2

I could see the looks on their faces.  The adults had damn good poker masks, but even they were showing that my words had had an effect.  A woman in the Behaim circle reached for her husband’s hand, without taking her eyes off me, as though she thought she were the only one reaching for a measure of security.  Except almost everyone had a little clue like that.  The kids most of all.

I’d give three groups safe passage.  Somehow, with the how of it to be negotiated when I’d done more research.

It was interesting, to see how they all reacted to that tidbit.  I tried to take it in, taking note of who’d reacted the most.  Who was most insecure?  Who was more secure?  The responses they offered and the scale of those responses told me a lot.

The Duchamps were good at hiding their emotions.  Even down to the eight or ten year old girls sitting beside their mothers, they showed less of a reaction than many of the Behaim adults did on the other side of the aisle.

Johannes was still smiling, and the girl Maggie was leaning forward now, clearly interested.

The girl Laird had referred to as a terrorist and the guy I wasn’t supposed to interact with under any circumstances.

“Hey, that sort of sounds like a threat,” a girl said.

I turned my head to see the witch hunter.  She held a gun.

“No, Eva,” the boy said.  “It wasn’t.”

She pointed the gun at me.  I was so focused on the forces arrayed on the benches and around the edges of the room that it took me a moment to process what that meant.  A slight pull on the trigger, and I was gone.

Fuck, she had her finger on the trigger.

“Someone say the word,” Eva said.  “Threatening people, could be out of control.  Say the word, tell me he’s too dangerous to leave alive.”

“No,” Laird cut in.  “Not with the things Rose might have put in place.  If there are special measures at work, we can’t act.”

Eva dropped the gun to point it at the floor.  She smiled at me when I looked up at her face.

“Are you assuming he’s telling us the truth,” the Duchamp family’s leader said.  The blonde woman I’d seen talking to Laird.  She looked like the sort of person who would be the queen bitch at PTA meetings.

“I can’t lie,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean you’re telling us the truth,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what it means,” I said.

“What you’re saying and what you’re telling us are very different things,” she said.  “Why are you focused on your seat?  You left something behind.”

Right.  Enchantress.  She could see the connections between things.

“I have help,” I said.  “Help my grandmother left me.”

I could see her eyes studying me.  Roving over my body, my clothes, and very pointed locations around me.

“Yes.  A companion.”

“A vestige,” Laird said.

Vestige?

“Of Rose?” the North End Sorcerer asked, his eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” Padraic spoke out loud, at the same Laird said, “I don’t think so.”

I could see a few glances being exchanged at that discrepancy.

“There is something else out there,” she said.  “Back in the house.  It’s not cooperating with him at this point in time.”

Damn.

“That’s not reassuring,” Johannes said.  “Just the opposite.  A mad dog running rampant is often scarier than a dog on a leash being set on targets.”

“It depends on who’s holding the leash, doesn’t it?” I asked.

The Sorcerer dipped his head in a single nod, “It does.  Which is why I said often.  At this point, from the sense I have of you, I would be more concerned about an unleashed dog than an attack dog at your control.”

I was very, very aware of all the eyes on me.  Many of which were inhuman.  One small disparaging remark, but there were a lot of ears to hear it.

“I’ve said most of what I needed to say…” I told them, trailing off as I tried to collect my thoughts.  I thought of what I’d seen in the visions.  The way Laird had talked about sitting back, there being no need to act.  In the end, it had been someone else that had set those bird-skull things on me.

They were cooperating.  Taking turns, negotiating with each other.

I needed to put a stop to that.  Or throw a wrench into it.  And I had to think of Molly.

“…I’m making one more offer.  An altered version of the deal I just gave you.  I’m willing to do what I can to protect you against any of my grandmother’s demons that happen to run rampant, and I’d still give you free reign to come after me.  I’ll protect an enemy, if my condition is met.  Identify the person responsible for my cousin’s death.  This deal, obviously, is off the table if you did it.”

Cops in cop shows liked to do the whole thing where they’d put two perps in different rooms and let them sweat over whether the other guy would turn them in.

Maybe I was disarming myself, on a level, but I still didn’t want to use the devils.  If I could ratchet up the paranoia or turn them against one another, it was worth it.

I took in the crowd.  Now that the alarm was fading, my chance to see any more tells was gone.  I could only lose out by standing up there any longer.

I walked down the aisle, and I took my seat on the pew.

Laird took his position at the front.  He was still wearing the longer coat, hands in his pocket as he half-sat on the stage or chancel or altar or whatever it was supposed to be called.

“Well,” he said.  “Let’s get this out of the way.  Who’s interested in taking the deal?”

Wait.  What?

“Not seeing any raised hands,” Laird said.  “It’ll be good if we get this out of the way, before it gets messy.”

Negotiating here?  Now?  I’d hoped for more backstabbing, a little more chaos.

“Maggie, was it?  You perked up when he made the offer.”

“I sort of am,” she called out, from beside me.  She glanced at me, but she looked a little concerned.  “I’ve seen how things go bad, if you let them.  And that was only goblins, I think.  So how bad are these things?”

“They’re very bad,” Laird said.  “There have been cases where small towns disappeared after one got loose.  Outsiders were called in, the offending Others were dealt with, and the areas were written off.  One big symbol was drawn out in each area, to drive away the surviving locals and any visitors.  They made some efforts to erase the areas from the books, and they became the towns you pass by on road trips, but never visit.  Presentable when seen from a distance.  When this happens in bigger cities, well, you can erase a great deal of evidence with a large enough fire or a natural disaster.”

That was a little more serious than anything I’d read about.

“I’ve seen something like that happen before,” Maggie said.  “But it wasn’t… whatever you’re talking about.  Small spot, bit of a disaster, everything cleared out.  Now there’s an entire area of town people avoid.”

“I believe many of us know what you’re referring to.”

“Well, why is this so much worse?  That’s a rhetorical question.  I get that it’s a big deal, from the way you’re acting, and because I can sense that much.  But I’m curious about the why and how.”

“Let me help you understand.  Many of us here have discussed options, with the Thorburn family in mind.  We’ve grown up with this danger in mind.  I’ve talked about it with my wife,” Laird said.  He paused for a second, glancing at his wife.  I could see her move, her arm going around her children or relatives.  Two boys, two girls.

Laird drew in a deep breath, then told Maggie, “If it came down to it and Blake Thorburn sent something like that after my family, if I didn’t have measures in place, or if I didn’t feel my measures would hold, then I would use gun, knife, bludgeon, or whatever I had at my disposal to kill my family before that thing could reach them.  Because I love my family too much to do otherwise.”

There was near-silence, punctuated only by some sniggering from some of the things I took to be goblins.

“It’s a big deal then,” Maggie said.  “Why aren’t you taking the offer?”

“Because I do have measures that should be effective.  I told Mr. Thorburn as much.  Successfully managing this situation and ensuring that things progress smoothly means safeguarding the bit players.  I have the means to protect myself, I can give some to the Duchamp family as a pre-wedding gift, if they’re willing.  If Crone Mara, you and the woods girl take the deal, most of us are protected.  Blake Thorburn is rendered impotent, or he makes a mistake and removes himself as a threat.”

“And destroys us all?” Mrs. Duchamp asked.

“That is something we can work on, but it’s a risk nonetheless.”

Maggie sat back, propping one of her winter boots up against the book-holder on the back of the pew in front, where the bibles and hymn sheets or whatevers were held.  “This sounds an awful lot like a trap.”

“It is,” Laird said.  “Primarily for Mr. Thorburn, removing all possible leverage he might hold.  I feel the risk to you if you take the deal is far smaller than if you don’t.”

“But it’s still a little trap for me.  For us,” Maggie said.  “And I’m betting that when all’s said and done, you come out ahead.”

“Yes.  Alongside the Duchamps, in keeping with our alliance.  But we’re all better off, Mr. Thorburn excepted, and he would be largely removed as a threat.”

“No.  Drat that,” Maggie said.  “Drat you.  I’ll do what I want.”

Her way of swearing seemed odd.  It had in the vision where I’d first seen her, too.  I felt a measure of relief and concern.  She wasn’t an ally, per se, but at least she wasn’t playing Laird’s game.

Laird said, “I thought I was being polite, including you.  Johannes, Crone Mara, and the girl from the glades, then?”

“I seem to be your last pick among the local practitioners,” Johannes said.  When I craned my head to look, he was smirking.  “I’m mildly offended.”

“Offended or not, are you interested?  We might as well settle this now.”

“I’ll hear what the Briar Girl and Mara have to say, before I make any decision.”

The Briar Girl shifted position.  She was plain, her hair a mess, with a twig stuck in the back somewhere.  Her winter clothes were layered, a little scuffed at the edges of the sleeves and pant leg.  She was wearing pyjamas beneath the jeans.

The spirit walked along the back of the pew with a coyote’s legs, until it stood directly behind her, leaning in to whisper in her ear with a beaked mouth.

“When the house’s occupants are gone, the woods and marshes there are mine,” she said.

“In what sense?” Laird asked.

“In every sense.  I want it like Johannes has the north end.”

“You want it uncontested as your demesnes, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“A bit too steep of a price, I suspect.  You’re not paying attention to the context of this situation.  We need to drain the marshes to let the city expand, which is something we require to further all of our interests, yours included.”

“I am paying attention.  I don’t care,” the Briar Girl said.  The spirit’s beak was partially open still by her ear, serrated with sawlike teeth.  One of its large yellow eyes were fixated on Laird.  “The city will expand all the same, but it will expand slower.  More expensive for you.  It’ll still get where you want it to get.  When it does, I’ll have all those woods and marshes.  One way or another.”

“I see.  Then there’s no use in asking the others,” Laird said.

“I doubt I would have accepted, in any case,” Johannes said.  “Just saying.”

I glanced at Mara.  She sat alone, eyes fixed in front of her, hands in her lap, very still.

Nobody had really talked to her yet.  Did she say or do anything?

Laird was nodding, frowning.

“My rose has done what she aimed to,” Padraic said.  “You’ve offended two of us, Aimon Behaim.  Johannes and me both.”

“I’m not Aimon, my name is Laird,” Laird said.

Padraic looked a touch annoyed at being corrected.  “Aimon, Laird, Lame Airhard, no matter.  You’ve wounded me, ignoring me in this critical moment.  I have far more to lose than you, don’t I?  An immortal lifespan, against, what, thirty more of your years?  Twenty of your wife’s?  Sixty two of one daughter’s, fifty one of another, one of a son’s life?  Add them together for your family as they are now and you have, what?”

One of his companions I hadn’t yet met said something under his breath.  The numbers Padraic had given were eerily specific.  Laird didn’t even flinch, hearing them, didn’t glance at his children.

“Eight hundred and seven years, for your extended family?  Paltry,” Padraic said.  He made a face, “In terms of the years I’m expected to live, I’m much more important.  Yet you dismiss me.”

“I’d planned to make offers to you and many of the remaining Others, to ensure everyone was on stable footing before proceeding,” Laird said.

“Well,” Padraic said, leaning back, “What would you offer?  I’m going to be insulted if you don’t make a good suggestion, now.”

“Despite the fact that we’re no longer negotiating?”

“Exactly so.  It’s a question of my pride.  How do you value my remaining lifespan, Behaim?”

“I’d thought I might offer to talk to the Queen that exiled you, and see if I could offer to make you a familiar to one of my grandchildren.  I could fund him or her, so they could travel, freeing you from your imprisonment here for a time.”

“She wouldn’t accept, and the offer is weak at best,” Padraic said.  “Putting the rest of my life at risk for a mere forty or so years of mild adventure?  Try again.”

I clenched my hands in my lap.  Had I set Laird back, here?  A small success?

“Your kind aren’t in my realm of expertise.  Sandra?  I apologize for asking, but-”

The Duchamp’s leader nodded, all the way in the frontmost pew.  The blonde PTA-bitch woman stood as Laird sat down beside his wife.  She composed herself, then said, “What would you ask for, Patrick?”

“That’s cheating.”

“I’m still asking.  I’ll try to make you a counteroffer.”

“One of Laird’s generations.  Grandchildren, grand-nieces and nephews, and the children of his cousins.”

“That has the unfortunate consequence of ending his line.”

Padraic smiled.  “I could return them, more or less in one piece.  Let them age up to twenty or so, educate them.  It would be novel, and if we kept some in reserve and staggered out when and how we returned them, we could amuse ourselves for hundreds of years.”

“I see,” Sandra Duchamp said.  “Here’s my counteroffer: what if I offered a messenger?”

“The Queen won’t listen,” Padraic said, sighing.

“To other banished Faerie, in other cities and towns.  Until our family line ends or the Queen is replaced and the court dynamic changes up once again.”

“Springtime,” Padraic said.  “Mm.  That would have been a good offer.  Paved the way for an insurrection of sorts.”

“Perhaps,” Sandra Duchamp said.  “That would be dangerous for my family.  I was thinking of maintaining some connection to the courts, in a peripheral manner.”

“Nonetheless, I’m pacified.  I no longer feel slighted.”

“Then,” Sandra Duchamp said, “Thorburn’s offer remains open, I will know who accepts it, if anyone does.  Let’s set that matter aside so we’re free to move on.   The murder of Molly Walker?”

Laird responded without standing, “It’s largely under wraps.  The investigation will hit a dead end on its own.”

“Any assistance needed?”

“No.  I’ll keep an eye on things.”

“Good,” Sandra said.  It seemed like she was leading things, now.  Was leadership exchanged so easily?  “In terms of more mundane business… Toronto is currently in the dark.  Provided there aren’t any further interruptions, my family should be able to divert attention for the time being.  I’ve had a short discussion with the Lord of Ottawa, and she is on board, keeping her subservients at bay.”

“The smaller towns in the GTA?”  The Briar Girl asked.

“Stable, expressing no interest and exerting no pressure.  I see only three or four individuals or groups that might make make an active play, and they are doing no such thing.  The remainder would sell us out to Toronto’s Lord or try to sell us out to Ottawa and inform us.  For the time being, we’re the only individuals in play, here.”

There were nods all around.  I saw some of the Others leaving.  Apparently those were the only major points they were interested in hearing.

“Next order of business.  I’m obligated to call it to a vote.  Flagrant use of one’s practice in public, acting against the local powers.  Maggie Holt.”

The witch hunter girl at the front perked up at that.  So did Maggie.

“Excusable use,” Maggie said.  “Nobody even thought it was anything suspicious.”

“To sanction the use of the Jacob’s Bell witch hunters to execute Maggie Holt, please vote,” Sandra Duchamp declared.

The Briar Girl raised her staff.  One member of Laird’s family, a teenage boy with brown hair, raised a golden disc, held between crossed index and middle fingers.  He looked back at Maggie, and she rolled her eyes.

Nobody else in the room raised their implements.  Not even the woman who called the vote.  What was the proper course of action if we didn’t have implements to raise?  Raising our hands?  Or were we not allowed to vote?

“Two yeas, the remainder of the votes are nay.  The execution is not passed,” Sandra Duchamp said.  “Be careful.  You have very few friends here.  When we’re not following so soon after one execution, we may prove more willing to vote against you.”

I saw Maggie sit back a little.  She was a little relieved, or she’d hidden the tension well.

The discussion continued, along the same lines.  Outside players, minor internal disputes over who was doing what, and all of the other details that went into maintaining the balance of power.

■

“…And with that, the meeting is called to order,” Laird Behaim said.  He’d taken over again when Sandra’s voice had started to give out.  He opened his pocket watch.  “Seven forty-four.”

That seemed to be the end of it.  The remaining crowd picked up and got ready to leave, pulling on winter clothes, gathering implements and tools.  I was among them, getting my jacket on before pulling on the backpack of weapons and tools.

Many of the Others were gone.  Most of the ones who remained were still human in appearance.

Nobody seemed interested in talking to me, so I made my way outside.

“Not exactly the result you wanted,” Rose murmured, as we passed outside.  The mirror was still sticking out of the top of my backpack.

“Not a bad result either,” I said.  “Do you object?  Bad plan?”

“No.  I would have liked more time to consider it, but there are worse ideas.  What was with that bit at the end?  You won’t use devils to attack someone, but they can attack you?”

I nodded.  “I needed some incentive.  I didn’t have time to stand there thinking about it, so I went with the most obvious thing.”

“Right.  Well.  Thoughts?”

“Getting home, seeing if anyone expresses interest, get more reading done.”

“Shopping?  Food?”

“Stores close in twelve minutes, and I don’t want to dally.  If it comes down to it, I can live off what’s in the house now, at least until next month.”

“Grim,” Rose said.

“Tell me about it,” I said.  “Remind me of this idiotic call, a little while from now.”

“Will do.”

“Something else we need to talk about,” I said, “Is this vestige thing.  It’s the… second or third time I’ve heard it, and I’m pretty sure you referenced it, one of those times.”

“Talking to yourself, Mr. Thorburn?”

I wheeled around.  Rather than stop, I kept walking backwards.

Johannes and Maggie.  North End Sorcerer and the girl with the checkered scarf.

And, I had to note, a small contingent of goblins.  The dog walked alongside Johannes, through slush and snow, the long hair not getting wet or dirty.  Johannes wore a white coat, and it was pristine.

Maggie, by contrast, had specks and spots of gray-brown grime on her leggings, with circles of wet spreading around them.  Her skirt and hair blew around in the wind, and she hunched over, hands jammed in her pockets, as she trudged on.

Most of the goblins were children, paying very little attention to us as they hopped onto nearby cars or walls.  Two were large.  Gorilla-like things, ugly as hell, stark naked, their faces bent in permanent scowls.  A child-like goblin jumped on the shoulders of one of the larger ones.  A moment later, it was seized and smashed against the nearest lightpost.

“I’m talking to my companion,” I said.  Might as well admit it.

“Yes.  You are,” Johnannes said.  “I’m liking how quickly you’re picking this up.  The language, turns of phrase used to redirect, to mislead.  You’re talking to your companion, yes, but you’re not denying that you’re talking to yourself.”

He knew?  Even Laird hadn’t made any obvious connections.

“You’ve been watching?” I asked.

“Yes.  Everyone has, to some degree.”

“You up for the deal?”  I asked.

“Didn’t you hear?” Johannes asked.  “Behaim wants us to take the deal.  It leaves everything in the hands of the two more powerful circles in Jacob’s Bell.  Chaos is minimized, and they can take whatever action they need to in order to remove you.”

“Why not call an execution against me?” I asked.  “Seems easy enough.”

“Laird promised you safety.  He’s walking a fine line, trying to keep you in a position to threaten others while ensuring you’re manageable and that the situation stays stable,” Johannes said.  “It’s most advantageous to him, because it lets him present traps to Maggie, the Briar Girl, Mara and me like he did tonight.  He’s secure enough that any trouble you cause will set others back more than it sets him back.  If you fail in that role, he kills you and finds an equilibrium with the next heir.”

Maggie said, “It’s like he lives his life by the ticking of that clock of his, orderly, tidy, neat, but he thrives on controlled chaos.”

“If-” a voice started behind me.  It cut off when I turned.  Rose.  “If the execution was only stayed today because of the promise he made, what’s stopping him from doing it next month?”

“A very good question, miss…?” Johannes let the question hang.

“I don’t know if I should answer that.”

“Miss Mirror.  A good question,” Johannes said.  “The obvious answer is that he won’t call for an execution if you’re useful to him.  He can use the threat you pose as a distraction or a tool, apparently.  He’s not worried, because he seems to think he has an answer to whatever you might send his way.  How is that?  How would he know what you have at your disposal and how to respond?”

“Aimon,” Rose said.  “She was close to Aimon, once?”

“Well, that’s one idea,” Johannes said.  “You can then give some thought to a way around it.  If you were to get your hands on a dark Other of horrendous power, is it possible that Laird might not have an answer to it?”

“Depends on what the answer is,” I said.  “Could be some contract she made with every Other in her books.  Could be a tool, or some excerpts from the books.”

“Very true,” Johannes said.  “So?”

“So,” Rose said.  “I’m wondering why you’re ‘helping’ us.”

“Are you wondering?” Johannes replied.  “Mr. Blake Thorburn, why do you think I’m helping?”

“Maybe because it’s a danger to Laird, and you lose nothing if I fail.”

“If you fail badly enough, I could lose everything.  In order of severity, there’s failure where you’re ineffectual, failure where you get yourself killed, and greater failure still where you might get everyone here killed.  But yes.  I lose nothing of substance by helping, and I could see Laird Behaim unseated, removed or disconcerted.  I like that,” Johannes said.

“Which brings us back to what we were talking about before,” Maggie said.  “How do you mess with Laird?  I’m thinking, if he’s got his protections, he either has them on his person, which is unlikely since he’s protecting his whole family.  They could be more abstract sorts of protections, or he’s set them up somewhere.”

I nodded slowly.  “Abstract meaning something like my grandmother made a promise to Aimon that the Behaims would all be safe, then signed deals to put it into motion.”

No.  It didn’t make sense that she’d leave me something like that if there was no way to use it against Laird.  I didn’t say that out loud.

“And?”  Johannes asked, cutting into the silence that had followed my statement.

“The prepared protections,” Rose said, “Are protections that are arranged already.  Safe ground?”

Johannes nodded.  “It could be barriers, weapons, wards, or other safeguards.  He prepares them in advance, then pulls his family back to safety if he expects you’re going to attack.  It’s likely it would be somewhere accessible.”

I said, “That means I’d have to find his place.  If I disposed of the safeguards and prevented him from erecting any more, he loses his bargaining chip.”

“That would be the natural conclusion,” Johannes said.  “Getting into his place to do anything would be the real difficulty.  His home is his demesnes, and any protections he has against demons, devils and infernal things might be supplemented with protection against the practitioner that might command them.”

Over and over again, there were these dead ends.  Couldn’t get a familiar, implement, or demesnes without other assets.  Couldn’t attack Laird.

“You’re not really thinking about doing this, are you?” Rose asked.  Asked me.

“No,” I said.  “I don’t think it’s doable.”

“I don’t either,” Johannes said.  “Returning us to the question of how you protect yourself.  From a vote of execution or otherwise.  You most likely can’t scare him into submission, you won’t be able to maintain the balance he wants indefinitely.  Which would only be delaying the inevitable, by the by.  That leaves you two options, as I see it.”

He had a tone to his voice.  As though he was waiting for me to ask what those options were.

Why?

I’d ask and he would…

“You want payment, in exchange for you sharing what those options are?”  I asked.

“Or you can name them yourself.  I’m not picky,” he said.

We walked on in silence, boots squeaking and crunching in the snow.

“When we first saw you, you offered help.  For a price,” Rose said.

“That’s one of the two options,” Johannes said.  “I’m suspicious that any price I ask would be minor at best, compared to what you’d have to pay one of Rose Thorburn’s Other acquaintances.  If you know what I mean.”

There was a moment of silence as we considered.  Johannes seemed content to enjoy the silence.  Maggie was quiet in general.

I asked, “They’re both allied against me?  The Behaim Circle and Duchamp coven?”

“Most likely.  They’re united by the marriage that is coming to pass.  It makes them powerful.  Not as powerful as me, but powerful.”

I nodded.  “And I can’t stop the marriage?  Split them apart?”

“I don’t imagine you could.  The idea I had was a simpler one.  Think.  What’s the issue you face?”

The issue?  Me being in Maggie’s shoes, seeing those hands go up, and the witch hunter with awful trigger etiquette.

“If the danger is a vote of execution,” I said, “We could theoretically win over enough people that they couldn’t get the majority.”

“Do all members of the family count?” Rose asked.  “There’s no way, if they do.”

“The senior member of each family unit gets one vote,” Johannes said.  “All put together, that is three from the Duchamps, and four from the Behaims.”

“Seven,” I said.

“Myself, Maggie, The Briar Girl, Mara, Padraic, two Others, at a minimum,” Johannes said.  “You might want more, in case any Others decide to vote against you.  A slim chance, but you have one month.”

“Except I can’t step outside for that one month,” I said.  “I do, I have to face down whatever spells or traps they’ve laid for me.”

“I’m hated,” Johannes said.  “Why am I free to roam?”

“You’re powerful,” I said.  I glanced back at the goblins.  “And you’ve got help.”

Another catch-twenty-two.  Get powerful so I could go outside, but I needed to go outside so I could get more powerful.

It all came down to power.

“If it’s not a vote of execution you face, having any or all of the named individuals helping you would still protect you against the family.  Win each of us over, use us.”

“Be used in turn,” Rose said.

“Naturally,” Johannes said.

“Speaking of.  You have the one measure that was put in place,” Rose said.

Measure?  I turned my head.

Oh.  She was talking about what I’d brought up at the meeting.  I’d been talking about Rose, but I’d let them think I was talking about something else.  Something that could release the barber if I was hurt or killed.

Would fear work?

“I do,” I said.  “I’m not really a fan of any option that works only after I get brutally murdered.”

Leading Johannes and Maggie to believe that there was a safeguard in place.  But the truth was, I wasn’t a fan of that sort of option.  Generally speaking.

“Food for thought,” Johannes said.  He pointed at a busier road, though ‘busy’ was a misleading term, when one referred to sleepy Jacob’s Bell.  A car every minute or two.  “I’m going this way.”

“You’re not taking the deal?” I asked, again.

“We’ll see.  There’s no rush,” he said.  “We really should talk again.  You know where to find me.  Ask politely before you come, and there should be no issue.  Miss Mirror?”

“Yes?” Rose asked.

“You would find yourself in good company, should you visit.”

With that, he walked off, his familiar beside him, goblins following, darting into shadows as cars passed down the road.

Leaving me with Maggie and the two largest goblins.

“Good company?” Rose asked.

“You’re an Other,” Maggie said.  “That place is like an Other’s amusement park.  There, it’s like the old days, before the Seal of Solomon.  Before humans were really able to fend for themselves.”

“This is sanctioned?” I asked.  Hard to imagine there hadn’t been a vote against Johannes.

“No,” Maggie said.  “What does it matter?  The area is his.  Purely his.  The only person who gets a say is him.”

“That doesn’t sound like my kind of company,” Rose said.  “Killing people, picking them off…”

“Maybe he meant something else?” Maggie asked.  She shrugged in answer to her own question.

“We’re walking this way,” I pointed.  “You?”

“Same.  Straight all the way down to the lake.”

“Same direction for a bit, then turning off to one side,” I said.

Maggie looked back at her giant goblins, said, “Come on.”

We walked together.

“You’re friends with Johannes?” I asked.

“Not really.  I mean, some common ground.  Acquaintances, but not friends.  Neither of us are big fans of the old guard.  But, you know, you can’t really interact fairly with someone when there’s this big an imbalance in power.”

“No,” Rose said.

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

“Blake is a member of the old guard,” Rose said.  “Just so it’s clear.  Old family, old knowledge.”

“But you two are clueless,” Maggie said.  “You don’t know jack.  You just got awakened, you just got introduced to this whole shebang.”

“Give us time,” I said.  “We’re working on it.”

“The rest of those guys out there?  They don’t want you to have time.  They’re going to use you, get you killed, then do the same for all the rest of them.”

“And you?” I asked.

“And me.  I might be happier if you stay alive.  That way there are more chances to use you.  I don’t get much from offing you.  Bit of a boost in raw power, but that only puts the grand kibosh on all of this.  The guys in charge stay in charge, and us runts stay on the bottom.  What’s the point of moving everyone up five rungs on the ladder, if you’re still going to be three rungs below the next pleb?”

“I think that depends on your motivations,” I said.  “If you’re trying to achieve something, then it’s good.  If you want power for power’s sake, then no, it doesn’t help.”

We had reached the street I turned off at.  I stopped, and Maggie stopped too.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I thought back to the oath I’d made while awakening.  “Freedom, safety, I want to help my family, past, present and future.  I want to help my… companion here.”

“Yeah?” Maggie asked.  “Huh.”

“What do you want?” Rose asked.

“I can’t put it to words.  I feel dumb if I say it out loud.  But power helps everything.  Knowledge is power.  I want knowledge and power.”

“Where’d you get knowledge in the first place?”  I asked.

She reached for her bag, rifled inside, and retrieved a small binder.

“All here,” she said.  She hugged it against her stomach with both hands.

The way pages stuck out, how some of them seemed like newspaper, some like printer paper, and some clearly lined, it seemed more like a scrapbook than what it really was.  A tome, a spellbook.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.  “Or… how did you make it?”

“Started off with a bit.  Long story.  Gathered the rest myself, piece by piece.  Dealing, trading, competing for it.”

“Want more?” I asked.

She raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve got a whole library of books,” I said.  “But I need help.”

“You want to deal?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said.  “If my companion doesn’t object and-”

“I don’t object,” Rose said.

“-and if you can clarify what Laird was talking about, when he referred to you as a terrorist.”

“I hate that word,” Maggie said.  “It’s so overused.”

“Is it inaccurate?” I asked.

“No, but that’s because it’s vague.  Using fear to achieve political aims?  Define ‘using fear’.  Define ‘political’.  That Behaim guy is a terrorist.  So is Sandra Duchamp.  So is Johannes.  So are you.”

“I’m using fear so I can survive,” I said.

“You’re raising your status in people’s estimation.  That’s political.”

“That’s pushing the definition,” I said.

“So is Laird!  You want my answer, on why he’d call me that?  There you go.”

I frowned.

“What?” Maggie asked.  “It’s the only real answer I can think of.”

“I need more information before I can make a call,” I said.  “But I’m going to get back.”

“There are still hours of safety,” Maggie said.

“There are.  But my bag is getting pretty heavy, and I’m not sure I trust the general definition of hours, with Laird around, or the definition of safety, with, well, just about anyone I’ve met here.”

“You’re leaving me hanging?”  Maggie asked.  “If I could say anything crude, I’d say it now.  I… can’t even allude to it.  Blue.  You’re leaving me blue.”

“Sad?” Rose asked.

Maggie groaned in frustration.

“We’re going to meet again,” I said.  “For now, though, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m overly cautious.  I seem to recall you saying something about the noobs being easy marks.”

“You heard that,” Maggie said.

“We can meet sometime this week, maybe negotiate a deal.  After… my partner and I have slept on it.  My info for your backup,” I said.  “If I can find a way to safely leave Hillsglade House, and if I can feel a bit more confident about working alongside you.”

“How bad could I be?” Maggie asked.

I looked at her, framed by the two monstrous brutes that were following her.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “Let’s not find out.  I’ll talk to you later?”

She shrugged.  “Maybe.”

I turned to go.

From the main road, it was only a little ways to get to the Hillsglade property.  The only hassle was the uphill nature of the walk.

“Watch my back?” I asked.

“Sure,” Rose said.

I trudged along until the house came into view.

“We okay?” I asked.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” she said.  “Generally?  No.  I don’t think we’re okay at all.  We’re probably going to die.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Are you okay?  No.  Am I okay?  No.”

“Now you’re intentionally misunderstanding me,” I said.  I added a quick, “I think.”

“I am.  Are we okay as a pair?  No.  We aren’t.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I get that.”

“The mirrors are nice.  I appreciate the mirrors.”

“Good,” I said.

“But we’re still not in a good place.  Could a black slave be friends with his master, back in the day?  Sure.  I imagine there were some slaveowners who were pretty cool, didn’t beat or punish their slaves, were generous and kind…”

“That analogy is pretty damn unfair,” I said.  “I didn’t choose for you to be like this.”

“Child of the slaveowner, then?”

I would have reminded her that she was supposedly playing ball.  At the same time, I was glad she was arguing with me.  It beat the utter defeat she’d showed me earlier.

“I want to do what I can to free you from your prison, my metaphorical slave,” I said.  “I swore it when I did the ritual, just like I told Maggie, back there.”

Rose was quiet, now.  I didn’t hear a response from the mirror.

“What was that bit, before, about vestiges?”  I asked.

“We were interrupted,” she said, quiet.

“What was it?” I asked her, again.  I didn’t want to get distracted from the topic.

“Vestiges.  They’re… like shadows.  A simulacrum is an effective double of another individual, a near-perfect simulation.  You’ve got dopplegangers, Others that copy a person’s appearance, hiding inside a simulacrum.  A reflection of a person, but with something different and frequently malevolent at the core.  Erasing a person so they can take over their lives.  Usually ending in disaster and murder.”

“Sure,” I said.

“There are glamours and illusions.  Images, but little more than that.  Living, alive, pretendings.  Ghosts, which are usually emotional or mental impressions made on the world.  Trauma, powerful ideas, they leave something behind, that you see out of the corner of your eye.  Tied to some glimmer of the person that was, at the time of death, twisted by time and a degrading memory of their self.”

“And vestiges?”  I asked.

“Fit somewhere in the middle.  A flawed simulacrum, or a ghost that left a deep enough impression in reality that you can use that impression as a mold.  Memories, complex thought, they’re flexible.  There’s a book on vestiges in the library.  They’re interesting to work with because they can be altered.  Strong enough that you can mold them, without them being too rigid.”

“Molded?” I asked.  “As in… changing a gender?  Memories?”

“Exactly,” Rose said.

“You know what you are, then.”

“Not even a copy.  You want to know the reason for my big turnaround?  Why I’m accepting my fate as a tool?  That’s it.  I know what I am now.  I know the built-in limitations.”

“Limitations?”

“Read the book,” she said, from the mirror, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I had an ugly idea of what she was referring to.

“Rose,” I said.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.  “Later, Blake.”

“I wanted to ask about-” I said.

But something told me she wasn’t there.  Except for the crunching of my boots, there was only silence.  She was gone.

I made my way up the driveway.  Once safely inside, I locked the door, checked the windows, and then headed for the library.  I didn’t see Rose in any of the mirrors.

I searched the shelves until I found the book she’d been talking about.

Vestige:  Glimmers and Gasps

The title only reaffirmed the ugly feeling I had in my gut.

I scanned the table of contents.  The title of one chapter pretty much gave it away.

Duration.

I read the entire chapter, first leaning against the railing, book in hand.  Then I read some sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Vestiges were flexible, like Rose had said.  They could be molded.

But Vestiges were impermanent.  Sand castles.  Given time, given external pressures, they started to degrade.  Over time, the degradation got worse, to the point that it took more and more effort and energy to keep them intact.

What was the power source that was driving her?

How much time did she have?

I finished the chapter, then closed the book.  The cover had a silver image of half a mask, pressed into the leather.  The other half of the mask was black, without any eye, nose or mouth.  Half real, half shadow.

When I looked up, my eyes roving over the room, I saw Rose in the mirror, sitting in the chair at the desk.

I joined her on the lower floor, book still in hand.  Next on my reading list.

“Before we left for the meeting, I thought you said there wasn’t a book to explain you,” I said.

“I said there wasn’t a book to explain why Grandmother summoned me.”

“Ah.  Why didn’t you say any of this before?”

“Because you were focused on the meeting?  Because there were two ways this could really go?  You’d either get upset or distracted, and that would throw you off your game, or you wouldn’t, and that would throw me off mine?”

“If it helps,” I said, “I’m feeling pretty off my game.  I feel pretty horrible.”

“Yeah?  Well now we’re more on the same page,” she said.  “Question is, what do we do about it?”

“Can I just spend a minute or ten feeling like a shitheel?” I asked.

“You can, but we’ll need to figure something out after that.”

“We will,” I said.  “Fuck.”

I stood there for a minute, in the middle of the room, so I could see where Rose sat at the desk.  I felt the weight of the book in my hand.

“I’m here for a purpose, Blake,” Rose said.  “And I’m only here for a little while.  We need to figure out what that purpose is.”

“Fuck that,” I said.  “I made a promise I’d help you.  That doesn’t mean using you and throwing you away to fall apart.”

Again, looking at her, I could see her withdrawing, a trace of anger in her expression.  As if me speaking out on her behalf was somehow worse than me being a jerk.

I didn’t get it.

“What, then?” she asked.  She was managing to hide the expression, now.  “What do you do, if you’re so bent on helping me?”

“Like Maggie said, knowledge and power.  They’re one and the same, and they go a long way.  Let’s figure something out.”

“I don’t need rescue, Blake.”

You do, I thought.  But I said, entirely honest, “I need help.  I meant it, and I need your help above all else.  I’m going to do what I can to keep you around.”

“That’s just selfish enough I can believe it,” she said.

“Good,” I said.  “So, let’s talk strategies.”

“Strategy?”

“Tell me how this sounds.  If you like the idea, we’re going to hit the books, and we’re going to make sure it won’t come back to bite us in the ass.  Dear Mr. RCMP Officer, you should know that Laird Behaim was at a function at the church last night.  He has admitted in earshot of several people that he knows something about who murdered Molly Walker and how.”

“There are a hundred ways that could bite us in the ass.”

“We’ll double check each one,” I said.  “What are they going to do?  Try to kill us more?  He wants to use us as leverage?  We throw something other than horrifying hell-beasts his way.  Question is, what do you think?”

“I think it’s something.  Provided we double check the rules, make sure we’re not getting ourselves executed.  You want to attack his position?”

“Throw him for a bit of a loop,” I said.  “We can build on it.  Get some people pulled in for questioning.  Put them on the spot, see how they do when they’re interrogated and can’t lie.”

“Kids,” Rose said.  “Get the kids in that interrogation room somehow.  They won’t be as savvy.  They’ll let something slip.”

I thought of how the Behaim kids had done a poor job of concealing their fear and surprise.

“It’s dirty,” I said.  I smiled some.  “Dirty is good.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Damages 2.3

“Two more books for our reading list,” Rose said.

I groaned a little, grabbing one of the fancy fountain pens from my grandmother’s desk.  It was still dark outside.  “It’s too early for this.”

“You wanted to go on the offensive while he was otherwise occupied.”

While Laird was sleeping.  “Right.  Titles?”

“Title is Standards, subtitle is ‘A history of practices for dealings between the gifted’.”

“Which shelf?”

“Ummm… Bookshelf seven, shelf five.”

I looked at the sheet I had sitting beside me.  I’d drawn out two octagons, with numbers at each side, excepting the sides that opened out into the second and third floor hallways.  I identified bookshelf seven, looked, and was pretty sure I could see the book she’d mentioned.  I wrote it down.  “Standards.  Sounds like a thrilling read.”

“The second book, bookshelf six, bottom shelf, right at the bottom, we’ve got ‘Deaths in the Eastern Realm of the White Tailed Deer.‘”

“Not sure I follow,” I said, even as I wrote the name and location of the second book down.  I put the paper and pen down beside the folded letter Rose and I had written the previous night.

“It’s not about deer.  It’s about the general area.  A straight list of practitioner deaths, times of death, and causes of death since we settled in the new world.  It’s only as recent as twenty-eleven, but I think it covers a list of executions and reasons for execution.  You can skim it for the executions and see if there are any trends.”

“Me?” I asked.

“What?”

I glanced at Rose.  “Me?  You said ‘you can skim’.  You usually say we instead of you, unless we’re arguing.  You’re assuming I’m reading this list of deaths?”

“I’m going to get started on Standards, since you’re already looking through… what was it?”

I double checked the cover of the book that now lay across my lap.  “…Prominent Feuds.”

“Right.  You’re reading that.  I’ll start on Standards, you get started on the deer book when you’re done reading what you’re reading.”

“I’m already pretty fed up with all this.  How long is this death-ledger?”

“Long.  But like I said, you can skim down the one column.  Will you go over it?”

I craned my neck, but I couldn’t see the bottom shelf on the floor above us.  “Can you show me?”

There was a pause.  “I could.”

I turned to look at Rose in the mirror.  “Please?”

She sighed.  “It’s too heavy to lift.”

“You were trying to con me,” I said.  “Trying to get me to commit to reading over some ridiculously huge tome.”

“I was.  Just a little.”

She managed to look suitably guilty, all things considered.

“Damn it, Rose,” I said, but I couldn’t help smiling, but I wasn’t exactly amused, either.  She’d almost gotten me.  “We can’t mess with each other when we’re so busy watching our backs against everyone else.”

“I really don’t want to have to read all of that thing,” she said.  “And I thought it would be a little funny.”

“There isn’t anything here I want to read,” I said.  I tossed Prominent Feuds to the floor.  “This plan isn’t working.”

“We’ll find something,” Rose said.

“We haven’t found anything that gives us an exact answer,” I said.  “We probably won’t.  Nothing modern.  All research does is eliminate possibilities.  We get through all of these books, read them backwards and forwards, and we’ll be able to say that we probably aren’t breaking the rules and getting ourselves executed if we mess with Laird’s job and family.  Not definitely.  Just probably.”

“Local powers probably like leaving people a little uncertain,” Rose said.

“Well, it works.”

“We could ask someone.  Which is probably how everyone else figures it out.  They attend meetings and sit back and they figure out what they can do and what they can’t do.”

“Unless the entire town wants to murder you,” I said.  “Kind of throws a wrench in the whole ‘ask a friend’ option.”

“Yeah.”

“Which raises the question.  Who do we ask?”

Rose dragged the chair on her side over to a spot beside the mirror, so we could see each other.  “Maggie?”

“I don’t trust Maggie.  I’m not sure I wholly distrust her either, but I get the feeling that if she could profit from misleading us, she would.”

“If you’re being that selective about our allies, we’re going to be very lonely,” Rose said.

I sighed.  “Maybe.”

“The lawyers?”

I nodded slowly, doing my utmost to avoid rejecting the idea out of hand.  “Maybe.  I don’t like it.”

“I don’t either.  But they’re there, and we do need to talk to them sooner than later.  You need the allowance if you’re going to pay for what we need, and we have questions they could answer.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Which brings me to my next set of questions.  First off, how do we get in touch with them?  How do we mail this letter without cluing anyone in to the fact that we did it?”

“The legal documents give a phone number for the lawyers.  The little black book says we just need to say the firm’s name three times.  Same idea, I think.”

“Which isn’t ominous at all.”

“Not in the slightest,” Rose said, solemn.

“Should we get it over with, then?” I asked.

“We need to do it,” she said.  “Downstairs?  Feels strange, inviting anyone else here.  Even if we know they were here to set things up after Molly died.”

“No,” I said.  “I get what you mean.  It feels wrong.  Downstairs?  Living room?”

“Sure,” Rose said.  Then she cut in, “Wait.  One thing, first.  Can you grab a book on your way down?”

“Which?”

“Bookshelf two, third shelf from the bottom.  It’s by the same author that wrote the book on Vestiges.  Valkyries.”

Meaning I had to climb the ladder up to the next floor, then walk around to the third floor hallway and make my way to the ground floor.  A pain.

I bit my tongue before I said as much.

“Sure,” I said.  I gathered up the books I needed to have on hand, then made my way to the shelf in question.

The book was easy enough to find.  The image on the front was similar to that of the Vestiges book.  A woman’s face in profile, complete with a winged helmet, pressed into the leather cover.

“I-” Rose started.  She stopped when I jumped a little at hearing her voice.

Right.  I had a bicycle side-mirror hanging from a cord around my neck.

“Keep going,” I said, as I made my way downstairs, arms full of books.

“I read it because I thought maybe it was related to vestiges like me.  And it is.  But this one focuses on ghosts too, on historical elements, and some more practical applications.  You’ve got practitioners who specialize a hundred percent on ghosts and vestiges.  A kind of necromancy.”

“Death magic.”

“Right.  In this case, you’ve got practitioners convincing warriors, usually dying soldiers, that there’s an amazing afterlife of parties and respect for their deeds waiting for them, so the warriors agree to give up their spirits after death.  Use that agreement to help make a vestige or create a ghost, a representation of their skills or their knowledge, their strength, whatever else, and imbue all of that into a vessel.”

“Do you want to be imbued into a vessel?” I asked.

“No.  That would be worse than being inside these mirrors.  Not moving ever.”

“Right,” I said.  “But?”

“But I like the concept.  I like the author.  The book talks about working with ghosts being an option for a practitioner without many resources, in an area where practitioners have already taken hold of everything worth holding, or where the Lord forbids certain practices.  You take a ghost, you imbue an object, and you’ve got…”

“A magical item?” I asked.

“A tool, yes.  I don’t think every Other in Jacob’s Bell is beholden to one practitioner or another, and we don’t really have a Lord here dictating rules, but in our situation, we don’t have a lot of options.”

“So we use ghosts?”  I asked.

“We can.  They can be violent, but that’s only a small subsection of the categories they fall into.  We know how to protect ourselves.”

“And what makes ghosts easier to contact than any of the other Others?”

“Those woods behind this house?  The marshes?  All grandmother’s property. Ghosts, like any vestige, don’t hold up that much to poking and prodding.  They’re remnants of horrible or inspiring events.  Psychic impressions, right?”

“So you said, last night,” I told her.

“They function best in enclosed spaces, especially any enclosed spaces they have connections to.  Houses, houses with bodies still in them, lurking near their murder weapons, and so on.  But that’s not the key bit.  They also function in places with very few humans to mess with them.  The wilderness.”

“The woods and marshes,” I said.

“Exactly.  There aren’t many places where you find intact ghosts, and they aren’t really sought after, because they’re unreliable to work with and they tend to burn out if you draw on them for power.”

Like a vestige does.

“Too much expenditure for minimal gains.”

“So we’re supposed to go looking for them in the woods, a good distance from this sanctuary?  Put life and limb at risk, for a minimal gain?”

“We could.  Or maybe grandmother has a book where she wrote down notable ghosts and their locations.  We call them to us, instead of going their way.”

I stopped midway down the staircase.  I had to shift the books to one arm before I could pick up and move the makeshift mirror-pendant I wore.  I could see Rose standing a short distance up the stairs.  When I had her in my sights, and vice versa, I gave her a disapproving look.  “You mean I’ve got to trek back to the library and go look for some hypothetical book of ghost names?”

“Nope,” Rose said.  She lifted a book so it was visible to me.  “See?  I’ve already found it, and I’ve got it.  Nothing needed here that I can’t recite aloud for you.”

“Alright,” I said.  I started making my way downstairs.  I found Rose waiting for me in the living room.  “Sounds like a plan.  Sounds like we’ve got some disturbing, soulless freaks of nature to summon.  When we’re done that, we can take a break and summon some ghosts.”

“What do- right.  Har har.”

“Seriously though, lawyers or ghosts first?”  I asked.

“Lawyers.  We can’t keep putting it off.”

I found grandmother’s phone.  When I picked up, however, there was no dial tone.

“Fuck!”  I swore.

“Nothing?” Rose asked.

I shook my head.  “Someone must have cut the line recently.  Or the service was disconnected.”

“Repeat the firm’s name, then?  Everything seems to indicate it gets the same result.”

“I have trouble buying that,” I said.  “I can’t help but feel the ominous repetition has a little more weight than a phone call.”

“You said it yourself, we can’t keep putting it off.”

I nodded, looking for and finding the little black book in the pile of books I’d collected.

“Mann, Levinn, and Lewis.”

My words seemed hollow and small in the crowded living room with its books and the lingering mess.

“Mann, Levinn, and Lewis.”

My eyes roved around the room, looking for some sign that something was happening.

“Mann, Levinn, and Lewis.”

The third utterance.

We stood there, quiet, waiting for a response.  I couldn’t shake the notion that the moment I relaxed and heaved a sigh of relief, there would be a knock on the door to startle me, a ring of the phone.

But I did relax, after a few minutes, and there was no knock.

“Nothing?” Rose asked.

I shook my head.  “Maybe I have to be outside.”

“They came in from outside once already.  The lawyers are the only ones this house doesn’t protect against.  Them and the witch hunters.”

I frowned.

“There’s no rush, Blake.  We find another way to contact them, or we keep researching, and we figure out if it’s safe to send this letter.”

“There is a rush,” I answered.  “If we don’t do this soon, they’re going to figure out a trick to throw at us.  A way to get us out of the house, like they got Molly, or the witch hunters, or something else.  What if they come after us and there isn’t an opportunity to do anything like this for days or weeks?  The whole idea is that we’re taking the offensive, to put them on the defensive and distract them to buy ourselves some breathing room.”

“Okay, no, I don’t disagree.  I’m fine with going on the offense, so long as we’re smart about it.”

I nodded.  I placed my hand down on the Valkyrie tome.  “Since lawyers are off the table, and I’m done with the research for now… You’re thinking ghosts, then?  Equipping ourselves, experimenting.  This is smart?”

“I hope so.  We’re going to have to go outside if we’re going to call one and trap it.  Grab salt on the way?”

I nodded.  “Okay.  Okay on the ghosts, and okay on the salt.  I’m open to this.”

She nodded.  I saw a glimmer of that doubt and anger in her expression, but she said, “Thank you.”

I grabbed my winter stuff, the hatchet and bat, then picked up a box of salt from the kitchen.  I passed under the stairs to the back of the house, pulling on the coat and gloves as I went, and stepped outside.

It was still in the early hours of dawn.  The sun had only just started rising, and it was dark.  I’d slept, then woken up early in the hopes of catching Laird off guard, while he was deep in sleep.  If anyone was watching for connections while they were awake, then this was the hour to act.

Hillsglade House was situated on a hill, naturally, but the hill wasn’t a single round hump.  There was a tail, and the tail disappeared into a sparse tree cover that gradually got thicker as it got further away from the house.

It put me in mind of my fight to escape the bird-skull things.  Disappearing into the trees, getting turned around, not being sure of where to go.

The back porch was covered in snow, grit, and piles of leaves that hadn’t quite been cleared.  Snow had piled up around a short wall that enclosed the area.  Stairs led down onto the snow-covered ‘tail’ of hills that gently sloped down into the trees.

Not that gently, when I thought about it.  With the snow and ice, the path would be treacherous.

“Since we’re outside… Mann, Levinn, and Lewis,” I said.  “Mann, Levinn, and Lewis.  Mann, Levinn, and Lewis.”

There was only the sound of the wind whistling through the trees.  Eerily quiet.

We looked around, but there was no sign of anyone being nearby.

“Worth a try,” I said.  “We need a phone, which is another catch-twenty-two.  We need the phone to get hold of the lawyers to figure out when and where we might be safe enough to go get access to a phone.”

“Well, having ghost help might make a difference, in terms of being able to defend ourselves if we’re making a run for it.  If you’re ready?” Rose asked.

“Unbroken circle, I’m assuming,” I said.

“In salt, yes.  You’ll want to clear the snow.”

I looked around, half-convinced an Other was poised to leap on top of me the moment my back was turned.  But it was approaching daylight, and the back of the house was in view of some of the town.  If there were Others near, they were of a sneaky sort.  I grabbed a shovel from beside the back door and began clearing the patio, revealing frost-crusted brick tile beneath.  I had to scrape the shovel against the brick to chip off the ice where it was more stubborn.  Touching the metal handle, I could feel the chill seeping through my gloves.

I caught a glimpse of something at the periphery of the property.

Which would get to me first?  A clever Other or the cold?

“I’m feeling less confident,” I said.  “Being outside.”

“We’re a few paces from safety,” she said.

I frowned.  “Let’s make it fast.”

“Give me a second.  Trying to wrangle two different books.”

I could hear her turning pages.  I fidgeted, partially to keep warm.

“Salt,” she said.  “Is a pure substance, and any ghosts that actively want to hurt us are going to be naturally impure.  Tainted by anger and hatred.”

“I’m following.”

“Easiest way is to bleed,” Rose said.  “If you’re okay with cutting yourself again?”

I looked at my hand.  I still hadn’t healed from the cut that I’d made in my finger so I could draw the sigil on the mug, after getting my power.  Blood didn’t bother me, but I didn’t want my fingertips buried under calluses either.

“We chant the spirit’s name.  This should establish a tenuous connection.  You put power into that connection.”

“How?” I asked.

“Blood.  Draw a symbol, like you see in the book, the median line running parallel to any line of connection you see between yourself and the ghost.  Blood is power, basically the most distilled and direct form you can offer.  The caveat being that when you deal with some Others, you give an inch, they take a mile.  And you don’t want them taking a mile of your blood or personal power.”

I shook my head.  “No danger of that with ghosts?”

“There shouldn’t be.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Anything else?”

“We chant, you draw the line, feed just enough blood into things to bring the ghost into earshot.  After that, we can try communicating with it.”

“Communicating with the ghost.”

“They’re not real beings, they’re echoes of major events that happened.  Typically painful, sad, or angry events.  Sometimes moments of sheer brilliance.  Sometimes other things.  Chances are pretty good that the ghost is going to have a limited script to work with.  They’ll be single minded.  But you should be able to negotiate something.  Remember that every second that you’re using your blood to keep it here, you’re making yourself just a bit weaker.  There isn’t time to hit your head against a brick wall.  Don’t argue with them if they aren’t listening.  But if you find leverage, then use it.  Roll with whatever happens.”

I nodded.

“Another thing?  Misery likes company, and ghosts tend to try to bring others down to their level.  Whatever grips them, they spread it.  Anger, pain, sadness, madness…”

“Fuck,” I said.

“It shouldn’t be so strong that it overwhelms you.  Especially not with the salt circle.  But just in case, I want you to keep listening to me,” Rose said.  “Even if you’re so angry you can’t see straight, even if you want to hurt yourself.”

“Right.”  Listen to Rose.  “Roll with it, except for the big part of this where I shouldn’t roll with it.“

Rose ignored my quip.  “Let’s start with a ghost that isn’t too new and isn’t too old.  The new ones are stronger, and the old ones have generally held on only because they’ve connected to other spirits or power sources, which is complicated and dangerous.  June Burlison.  She died in the forties, somewhere in the glades back there.”

June Burlison.

I drew out the salt.  Slowly, with care, I layered it in a circle around me.  By the time I finished closing the circle, the ice beneath the first bit of salt was melting.

I could see more shadows in the fringes of the area.  I was fairly sure I could make a break for it if it came down to it.  The door was only two paces away, I had the axe.

“Watch my back?” I asked.  I moved the bike mirror around until it hung between my shoulderblades.

“Will do.”

And the wind, though blocked by the short brick wall, had blown a few stray grains in my direction.

We had to be quick.

I set my bag, hatchet and bat aside.

“Hi there, June,” I said.  “June Burlison.”

I switched to my other sight.  “June Burlison.”

I could see the connection.  Frail, spirits reacting between me and the book, me and Rose, and between me and something out there in the woods.  Too general, indirect and fleeting to point the way to anything.

“June Burlison,” Rose said.  I could see the same connections forming.  The connection passed to me, then out to the woods, like the aftermath of lighting that darted between conductive targets.

Would this same strategy work for finding people?  Objects?  If I wanted to find Laird, could I call out his name until I could make out the connection?

“June Burlison,” I said.  I was having an easier time making out the connection.  Was she drawing closer, even without the blood being offered?

Of course.  The connection wasn’t a one-way street.  There was an exchange.  If I tried to find Laird by establishing some kind of tenuous relationship, he’d know.  He could probably use it against me.

This was the same thing as the lawyers.  Calling their names until they took notice.

“June Burlison,” I said.

The line was clear enough, now.  I used the hatchet’s blade and sliced a fingertip that didn’t have any cuts on it.  I reached past the border of salt and drew out the symbol, copying what was on the open page in the book.

As if lured in by the blood, I could see the Others drawing closer.  Slipping in through my blind spot, popping their heads up around terrain features.  Every time my back was turned, they closed the distance.  Since they were surrounding me, there were some approaching with every second.

“Might have to make a break for it,” Rose said.

“Might,” I said, but I started on the diagram.

“Blake,” Rose said.  A little more urgent.

I glanced back.  “Is it something that the salt circle will stop?”

“Can’t make promises,” she said.

I clenched my teeth, then set to drawing out the rest of the diagram.  When I drew the line of blood against the edge of the salt line, I got salt on the cut.

“Fuck, ow,” I said, swearing under my breath.

I could feel the connection momentarily flare, with that.

June appeared, down at the tail end of the hill, near the treeline.

It wasn’t a fluid appearance.  She stuttered, like a film feel with missing frames.  Her movements were jerky, following the same repeated pattern, as she crawled towards me, clawing in the snow for purchase as she pulled herself forward with one hand and pushed herself another foot or two with one foot.  She was half dressed, her clothing old-fashioned.  The one hand she wasn’t using to crawl was clutching at her collar, the fingers black.

The cold cut deep into me.  She was moving slowly, and I wasn’t dressed warmly.  Much less standing still in the cold.

Except there was more to it.  The onset of cold seemed to match her approach a touch too evenly.

Where June didn’t have the ‘program’ for how she was supposed to look or act while climbing the steeper portion of the hill, she simply disappeared.  A second or two later, she was back, as if she hadn’t left at all, and she’d managed to close the ten or so feet in the meantime.

For all that the image was imperfect, it was remarkably clear.  She wasn’t translucent, as ghosts tended to be in film.

And, mercifully, the shadows of Others were dropping away as this ghost drew nearer.

“June Burlison,” I said.

She stuttered again, then closed half the distance in a single leap.  The remaining Others disappeared in that same moment, ducking away.

The warmth I felt caught me off guard.  That warmth proved short-lived.  It became a prickling heat, with a burning sensation in my extremities.  She’d covered half the distance, but the intensity of what I was experiencing had increased ten times over.

“She’s… affecting me,” I said.

“On two levels,” Rose said, her voice quiet.  “She’s drawing power from the blood you’re using to forge the connection, and she’s giving off a kind of radiation, related to whatever impression she made on the world.”

“Cumulative,” I murmured.  Louder, I said, “June Burlison, I want to talk.”

The burning was getting worse.  It was getting to be too much, to the point that I couldn’t stand still.

June spoke in a voice that was barely above a wheeze, oddly childlike, given her apparent age.  “I fell asleep too close to the fire.  I’ve burned myself.”

What was I even supposed to say to that?

June spoke in an alarmed voice, her voice feeble considering the intensity of what she was saying.  “I was cold, and so I curled up near the fireplace.  I’m burning.  Oh god, it’s so hot.  I’m burning.”

Fingers so frostbitten that they could barely be called fingers clawed ineffectually at her clothing.

She stuttered, disappearing for a moment, then reappeared.  A small whimper escaped her lips as she fumbled at the ruined, muddy, and damp clothes with fingers that were so ruined they couldn’t cooperate..

I could feel the heat.  Worse with every passing second.

“It-” I stopped myself.  I’d almost said ‘it is hot‘.  But that could have been a lie.  I wasn’t sure if it really was hot or if I was just feeling an illusion of heat.   “It does feel hot, yes.”

As if my words were a kind of fuel, the heat increased a fraction.

“Make it stop.  I’m done with this.  Make it stop,” she said.

Her words did the same, ratcheting up the heat.

“Rose,” I murmured.  My voice was a touch hoarse. “I don’t know if I’m up for this.”

“If it gets to be too much,” Rose said, “Break the line of blood.  You can also dash salt on her.  It ends the moment you do.”

June Burlison screamed, sudden, disappearing in one moment and reappearing in the next.  I might have called her movements thrashing, but they were too feeble.  She was playing a different image for me, one of her in the throes of helpless agony.

I realized I was screaming, too, at the wave of heat that rushed past me.  The screaming only seemed to make it worse.

When she started flickering and disappearing again, I had a moment’s relief.  The pain didn’t linger in the slightest, though the pounding of my heart did.  I was left cold, instead.

“Blake?”

I shook my head a little.  It was Rose talking to me, I reminded myself.

“Get answers.  Open a dialogue,” Rose said.

“June,” I managed, panting for breath after the screaming.  I tried to stay calm, even as speaking her name seemed to fan the fires.  But June wasn’t responding.

Rose tried, instead.  “June Burlison.  Do you remember what happened before you went to sleep by the fire?”

Abruptly, she was standing.  Hugging her body with her arms.  Her injuries had taken a leap backwards in severity, and her clothes were more intact.

I experienced a wave of cold emanating from her instead.  It didn’t make the memory of the fire I’d experienced any better.

Rose spoke.  “Do you remember?  What happened before you went to sleep?”

“I’ve been left outside in the woods.  I fought with my husband, and I demanded he let me out by the side of the road.  I couldn’t be in the car with him any longer.  Now I have to walk home.”

“It’s cold, isn’t it?”  Rose asked.

“It’s so very cold,” June agreed.

“Do you fight often?” Rose asked.

“Yes.  Nobody agreed with the idea, but I married him.  They were right, I was wrong.  Soon, I’m sure I’ll pick up the courage and admit it to my mother and father.  It is shameful, but I don’t want to fight all the time.”

“Did he hurt you?” Rose asked.

“No.  But we fight so much.  We’re so different.  It’s so cold.”

“It is,” Rose said.

She wobbled, then fell to her hands and knees.  There was a stutter, and the injuries were worse.  Fingers devoured by frostbite.  “I’m almost home.  I can’t walk anymore, but I can crawl.”

The cold was starting to get to me.  Enough that I wondered if I risked frostbite myself.

How much was she taking through this blood connection?  Was Rose wrong?  Was a ghost capable of taking this much from me?

Did it have something to do with getting salt in the wound?  Was the circle compromised?

Or, the idea dawned on me, am I already being drained by another source?

When I thought of what other sources might be out there, the only thing that sprung to mind was Rose.

“Stay focused, Blake,” Rose said.

Momentarily, I wondered if she was reading my mind, answering the thought.  But it didn’t fit.

“It’s cold, you’re almost home,” I said.

Nothing.

“Are you?” Rose asked.  “Almost home?”

“I’m so cold.  But my husband will be waiting.  I’ll apologize, and he’ll have a fire going in the fireplace, our little electric heater running.  The house will be warm, and I’ll be able to rest easy.”

“But that isn’t the way it happens, is it?” Rose asked.

I could see the look of sheer bewilderment on June’s face.  The dawning look of betrayal.

Over long seconds, I watched her expression twist in slow motion, beyond the bounds that people were normally capable of, to show a monstrous kind of despair and betrayal, so deep it altered her very being.  For many of those seconds, I thought the emotion was directed at me.

I was seeing her as she had been in the moment she’d opened the door and found her home empty and cold.  An imperfect replay.

The wind picked up around me.  My fingers were throbbing now, almost numb.

“June,” Rose said, her voice gentle.  “Was that it?  You started a fire in the fireplace and went to sleep?”

A disconnect, a jerk, and June Burlison was writhing in pain again, crippled and bent low by it.  I staggered, nearly stepping outside of the circle.

Heat and cold.  But why the disconnect?  Why wasn’t the narrative more complete?

Did it only include the moments she was awake?

I flexed my numbed fingers.

Or was it something else?

“Was the fireplace on?” I asked.

There was no response.  I clenched my hands into numb fists.

“The fireplace was on,” Rose said, “You were asleep…”

“Rose,” I said.  “The fireplace wasn’t on.  I think maybe she doesn’t want to talk to a guy, because of the issue with her husband.  You’ll need to ask her.  Did she get the fireplace going before she fell asleep?”

“June,” Rose said.  “Did you start the fire before you fell asleep?”

“No,” June said.  “I dozed off.  The house was cold, but I couldn’t focus, and my heart was beating funny.”

“And,” I said, “All the blood that your body withdrew from your extremities went rushing back, trying to rescue them.  A sudden, painful warmth.”

But she didn’t hear me.  Not really.

“What are you talking about?” Rose asked.

“I read about it, after hearing a joke once.  About some idiot sitting naked in a snowbank.  Dying by cold, you experience an intense rush of warmth in the end.    June was never burned, exactly.  She was in the last stages of freezing to death.”

“It wasn’t the heat, June,” Rose echoed me.  “It wasn’t your fault.  What you were feeling, what you’re feeling now… it was only the cold.”

“I’m burning.”

I could feel the heat again, but it was somehow diminished.

“You’re freezing, not burning,” Rose said.  “You’re listening to me, right?  You’re hearing me on some level, I think.  Listen, it’s only the cold.”

“It’s so very cold,” June said.  But she was in a state of dress matching the scene where she’d been burning before.

“It’s not your fault,” Rose said.  “It’s only the cold.  Will you make a deal with us?”

“It’s so very cold,” June said.

“If you agree, I guarantee you my partner in the circle right there will keep you warm as best as he can.”

June flickered, writhing in agony for mere heartbeats, limbs flailing, cold-blackened fingers clutching for relief from somewhere, anywhere.

Then she was standing again.  “I don’t want to fight all the time.”

“I have no reason to fight with you,” I said, uselessly.

“He’s not a bad guy,” Rose said.  “His heart is in the right place.”

“I don’t want to fight all the time,” June echoed herself.  Not taking it in.

Rose said other things, trying to convince June, but it only got the same replies over and over again.   While I listened, my mind ran through the conversation.  The unhappy wife, walking home.  The cold, her body failing her…

What would stick with her?  With everything but this one scene stripped away?

“Ask her if she daydreamed about other men, while she was walking home,” I said.  “Other husbands she might find, after she left the current one.  Refer to it in the present tense.”

Rose considered, then said.  “Listen, June.  Are you fantasizing about the men you might marry?”

“Yes.  I can imagine being held.  Being warm.  But then I feel the cold again.”

“When you’re imagining being with those men,” Rose said.  “Do you imagine you’re fighting all the time?”

“No.  I can imagine being held.  Being warm.”

“If you agree to help, my friend can hold you.  Keep you warm.  And you don’t have to fight all the time.”

There was no reply.  June was only standing there, flickering.

I wasn’t feeling any cold except the ordinary cold of winter.

My heart was pounding, my hands throbbing.

I stepped beyond the bounds of the circle.

Still, I didn’t feel the cold.

I reached out, arms extended.

“Blake,” Rose said.  “No.”

I stopped.

“If you do that, you might resolve the dilemma, cancel out the impression.  She isn’t aware enough to fight against that and keep her end of the bargain by helping us.”

“What’s the alternative?” I asked.

“The alternative is giving her a vessel to reside in.  You can fulfill the bargain.  Keep that vessel warm, and she helps us.”

“So… she keeps suffering?” I asked.

“She is suffering,” Rose said.  “As in, that thing you’re looking at is an embodiment of a moment of suffering.  What you see there is all there is.  The real June went on to the afterlife.  This is an emotional event that hit the world hard enough to make a dent shaped like ‘dying of hypothermia’.  If you take away the suffering, there’s going to be absolutely nothing there.  And maybe the balance of the world is a little better off, things are a little nicer without this memory of one bad moment wandering around the woods, but we aren’t any better off.”

I looked at June.  Despondent, shivering.

“It feels wrong,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “But it’s necessary, and whatever else it might look like, you’re not hurting it.  It’s not even a person.  Just… an impression.”

“I’m having trouble buying that.”

“Why?  Because it looks like a damsel in distress?”

“Because it is a ghost, only one step removed from being a vestige, remember?” I asked.  My tone of voice might have been a little too harsh.

In the silence that followed, I shivered violently, my teeth chattering together briefly.

When Rose replied, her tone of voice had changed.  “I think it’s nicer, accepting this deal, instead of just canceling her out.  You can hold her and keep her warm, and except for the moments we need her to be a spectre of hypothermia, she can exist as that one fragment of a memory where she daydreamed about a man holding her.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I can buy that.”

I searched my person, but there wasn’t anything I could really use.  I didn’t want her to imbue the keys I’d chosen before, rescued from the bowl I’d used for the awakening ritual.  I didn’t have much else, besides spare chain and the mirror around my neck.

Looking down, I saw the hatchet beside the bag.  I picked it up.

“I hope he’s chopped enough wood for the fire,” June murmured behind me, barely audible.

As I turned around, she disappeared, and something hit the hatchet.

My already numb fingers froze as cold creeped up the handle.  In the span of one or two seconds, they became so stiff I couldn’t open them to drop the hatchet.

“Done,” I said.  “Inside, now.”

“It’s a little more complex,” Rose said.  “If we-”

“I’m going to be a ghost soon if we don’t get inside,” I said.  I grabbed the bat, stuffed book and salt into the bag, and looped it over one shoulder.

“If she gets loose inside the house, sanctuary won’t help us.”

“We wrangled her once,” I said, heading for the door.  “We only need to keep her content, right?”

“We need to bind the axe with something.”

“Hatchet, and we will.  Inside,” I said.  I unzipped my jacket and slid the hatchet underneath, so it sat between my coat and my sweatshirt.  I held it there, stiff fingers still gripping the wooden handle.  “Better, June?”

The cold didn’t feel as intense as it had.

“Good,” I said.  To Rose, I said, “Inside.”

I made my way indoors.

The cold in the hatchet was noticeable, but growing less intense by the second.

“We’ll need a way to inscribe the handle, or she can leave any time she feels like it, and she’s liable to go out in one big intense shot of cold the moment you hit something,” Rose said, as I made my way into the hallway.

“That could be useful,” I said.

“It would almost definitely kill you,” Rose said.

“Less useful,” I replied.

“You could have chosen a better tool.  That handle looks like some kind of textured rubber, and I don’t know how we’re going to engrave anything into the steel, either.  ”

“She chose it, not me,” I said.  I pried my hand away from the hatchet’s handle.

“Well, this works as a kind of stopgap measure as a half-implement and half-familiar,” Rose said.  “Not sure how you’re going to conceal that hatchet all the time, but it works.”

“It does.  A step forward,” I said.  My hand was throbbing now.  I could feel the cold in the core of my bones.  “We need to do it a few more times, in a few different ways, and we’ll have a passable power base.”

“There aren’t that many good options,” Rose said.

“We can try the less-good options,” I said.  “And hopefully I don’t lose any hands doing it.  Ow.”

“Hopefully,” Rose said.  “Let me go over the inscriptions, and I’ll walk you through it.”

“I’m going to keep our new friend nice and warm like we promised, and see if I can’t warm myself up too,” I said.  “Anything that involves the stove and kettle.”

I stepped into the kitchen to dig through the cabinets.  I’d overlooked the hot chocolate before, dismissing the unpalatable mix of chocolate powder and water, but it suddenly seemed like the best idea I’d had in a long time.

In terms of hot food…

I grimaced and put the oatmeal aside as well.  The only thing I could make in a reasonable span of time.

“Damned oatmeal,” I muttered.  Louder, I said, “Remember that bit I said last night?  About how you had to get on my case and remind me that I could have gone shopping but didn’t?  Now’s the time.  I feel like I’m going to cry.”

“Blake?” Rose called out.

Something in her voice caught my attention.

I turned around and came face to face with a scene.

A gray haired man, a twenty-something man, and a thirty-something woman sat on the couches and chairs in the living room.  All wearing suits, all with nice, utilitarian hair styles.

Rose, for her part, was visible in the mirror.  I couldn’t even process her expression.  Even for this sudden appearance, the level of dawning horror on her face that I saw seemed like it was too much.

Was she seeing something I couldn’t?  Or had she glimpsed something before I turned around?

“The lawyers of Mann, Levinn, and Lewis, I presume?” I asked.

“More specifically, we are Mann, Levinn and Lewis,” the young woman said.  Blonde, with a tidy ponytail and a lock of hair strategically draped over the corner of one eyebrow.  One of her pantyhose-covered legs was crossed over the other, her hands folded over her knee.  “Please, don’t cry while we’re here.  I can’t speak for my partners, but I’d be embarrassed on your behalf.”

Damages 2.4

“You took your time,” I said.

“We were prompt,” the older man said.  Unlike my grandmother, he had the roughness of old age in his voice.  Somehow more human than she’d been.  “But if it helps, we can start the timer from the moment we made eye contact.”

The brown-haired young man, good looking enough to be an actor, but for the tiniest scar on his lip, looked at his watch.  “Twenty nine minutes and forty seconds left on the clock.  For that period of time, you have the benefit of our advice and knowledge, and you can make requests, though we can’t promise we’ll grant them.”

“If you want,” the woman lawyer said, “We can cut it short, and save the time for later this month.  Once the month is over, we’ll be limited to short conversations for each month thereafter.”

“Are you devils?” I asked.  “Demons?”

The older man chuckled.  With the coarser voice, he did sound a little sinister in that moment.  “Some would say that.”

“What would the rest say?” I asked.  I looked at Rose, praying for some backup, but she still seemed out of sorts.

“The remainder would call us practitioners,” the woman lawyer told me.  “Practitioners like you, even.”

“Well, we’re a fair bit different from him,” the older man said.  He arched one thick eyebrow.  “Question is, does it matter?”

I glanced at Rose, but she didn’t volunteer an argument.  “I think it does.  When I know what you’re doing, I can adapt.  Why are you here?”

“Your grandmother willed it,” the young man said.

“Why?” I asked.

The blonde woman responded, “Because matters were too complex for her to handle on her own, it was an economical route to take, she needed power that she wasn’t willing to spare, and we offered.”

“Why?” I asked, again.

“Because we’re in the business of dealing with diabolists,” the older man said.

“Why?” I asked, once again.  There wasn’t any sign that I was bothering them with this particular line of questioning.

“Because we are and were diabolists, ourselves,” the young man said.  “Once upon a time.  We were offered a contract.  Call it bankruptcy.  It fits on more than one level.  Which brings us to you.”

“How?” I asked.

“We’re hoping to include the heir of the Thorburn estate in our number,” the old man told me.

“You want me to work for you?  Did my grandmother take the deal?” I asked.

“Madam Thorburn didn’t, bless her,” the older man said.  He smiled, as if he was acknowledging how odd it was for him to say that.  “She took a harder road.  She needed power, as we said.  I can’t say what for, but I’m sure you could figure it out.”

“I probably could,” I said.

She’d needed the power to create my alter ego.  To bend the rules enough to let me inherit the estate.

The woman leaned forward.  “More to the point, if she had taken the offer, you wouldn’t be here.  At least, not in the same capacity.”

My hand was hurting, the hatchet pulsing cold that was reaching through my clothing.

The pain and discomfort might have made my tone a little more pointed than I’d meant it to be.  “The world would be swallowed up in a sea of hellfire and brimstone?”

“Nothing of the sort.  Before our firm existed, it was an Otherworldly entity that reached out to our forebearers.  The deal was simple.  Our slates would be cleared, in every respect.  We would assume a new role, new names, new responsibilities.  Our old lives and every part of those lives would be left behind.  Perhaps most importantly, most relevant to this discussion, our debts would be cleared.”

“Karmic debt?” Rose asked, suddenly paying attention, jumping into the conversation.

“Karmic debt,” the older man said.  “Have you done your reading?”

Rose said, “I started, but…”

I was already shaking my head.

The old man continued, “I’ll explain, then, so there are no mistaken assumptions.  The world seeks balance in all respects.  Whenever a practitioner works, they pay a price.  Sometimes the price is overt.  A soul for someone’s love.  An eye for the service of a powerful spirit.  The life of a companion to triumph over one’s enemies.  Sometimes the price is less of a direct transaction.  A favor to be paid later.  Conversely, an oath given, with nothing expected.”

“Which raises problems, hm?” the young man said.

The old man met my eyes.  “What happens when a debt isn’t paid?  If you take, then die before you can give?  Or the inverse?”

“You pass it on to your kids?”

“In some cases, yes.  But those children might incur more of a debt.  Over time, the debt accumulates.  Perhaps two generations improve matters, working it off, and then the third undoes their hard work and adds more to the burden.”

“The problem is never resolved?” I asked.  “Until some lawyer-practitioners show up and offer a deal, something that wipes all debts clear?”

“That is one option,” the woman said.  “But I wouldn’t say the problem is never resolved.  The universe rights itself.”

“How?” I asked.  Why was the axe acting up?  It was almost as bad as it had been outside, now.

The old man answered, “The cogs that operate in the background take to grinding you up instead.  Funds, treasured belongings, friendships, love, they are all harder to find and easier to lose.  Enemies, danger, chaos, and disruption find you more readily.  In looser terms, all Others, spirits and practitioners get the sense, innate or otherwise, that they can and should work against your interests.  Things start to fall apart, and the pieces fall down in the least convenient arragements for you.”

“The universe,” the young man said, “conspires against you.”

“Ah, hell,” I said.  “That would explain a few things.”

The old man continued with the explanation, “It would cause as many problems as it solve if the universe did it in an obvious manner.  It would raise suspicion and disrupt the smooth operation of things if every coin you flipped turned up with the unwanted side, if every corner held an enemy.”

The young man said, “It’s a stopgap measure.  Sufficient for the non-practitioners who stumble on ways to give themselves bad karma.”

“But,” the old man said, “In cases where the debt continues to accumulate, or it reaches a size that one person can’t pay off, we sometimes see survivors carry on.”

“Survivors?” Rose asked.

“Some dynasties manage to thrive despite the ill fortunes that are visiting them.  There are individuals who are reclusive enough or tenacious enough to carry on.  The universe doesn’t like to act overtly, so it might give you the coin flip that serves you the least, until you start counting the number of times the coin turns up head versus the times it turns up tails.  In any case, the practitioner can live if they’re attentive and clever, and the debt can keep growing.  This is when we start running into problems.”

“Problems being?” I asked.

“Being the dice all turning up snake eyes, or enemies appearing behind every corner.  Once or twice, generally, but that’s all things typically need.  The universe is elastic.  If you push, it bounces back.  If you pull, it pulls against you.  If you pull too hard, too long, and it snaps, with violent consequence.”

He seemed content to stop there, letting that sink in.

“Okay,” I said.  “I might have a general sense of the problem.  But what do we do about it?”

“Well,” the woman said.  She offered me a smile.  “Option one is the simplest, easiest and most obvious.”

“Joining you?” I asked.

“That’s option two.  Option one is that you die.  Violently,” she said.  The smile didn’t even flicker.  “The elastic snaps, and you two find yourself in an ugly situation.  If you’re lucky, you can find the time and opportunity to call us, and we’d arrange a prompt solution.”

“I’m not lucky, though,” I said.  “And Molly wasn’t lucky either…  She…”

I trailed off.  They waited, apparently content to wait while the gears fit together in my head and started turning.

I finished my sentence, along a different line. “…Eats a bit of the karmic backlash, pays a bit of the price for the universe not getting what it was supposed to, and the baton gets passed to me.  If I die, the same thing happens.  Each of us absorbs a bit of the brunt of it, until one of us finds our footing and carries on.”

“Very likely to be a factor in her reasoning,” the young male lawyer said.  “She was clever.  But the danger in this plan is that the backlash you face could wipe out your family altogether.  It would be more a backup or a side benefit than a true plan.”

“And,” Rose said, “like you said before, there’s no way she would spend that much power to put me here for that.”

“Right,” I said.

“Karma has very little to do with good and evil,” the blonde woman said.  “It has a great deal to do with right and wrong.”

“Can you have a surplus?” I asked.

“You can.  It’s equally problematic, in many ways,” the woman said.  “Such individuals have good fortune, find life conspires to do them well, all leading up to a moment where an opportunistic Other manages to work around this good fortune and brings about their downfall.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking.  “And… if it has to do with right and wrong… then can you get bad mojo for, say, going after a local practitioner’s livelihood?”

“How?” the young man asked.

I started to reach for the note, then realized I couldn’t without moving the hatchet.  I did it awkwardly with my other hand, handing it to them.

While he read, the woman asked, “Has he acted against you?  Done unprovoked harm to you?”

“Directly?  No.  Indirectly?  He tricked me and left me for the monsters to eat.  We’d only just met.  Unless the whole history of my family counts as a provocation.”

“You’d be secure.  It would even benefit you.  You should be able to find all of this information in the textbooks of the library.”

“I looked,” I said.  “We looked.  There was nothing about what justifies an execution.”

“Executions are a formalization of what we just talked about.  You’ll find more on them in books relating to karmic debt and the manipulation thereof.”

I groaned a bit.  Looking in the wrong place.

“Damn it,” I heard Rose muttering.

“You offend the community, the community retaliates, and the balance is maintained.  If the community acts against you and it’s unjust, then there is imbalance, and this weighs heavier than matters between individuals.   Clever individuals with some knowledge on how to use and manipulate karma could theoretically survive and ride the backlash to a position at the top.”

I rubbed my chin.  “And if I contrived to get them to punish me for a crime I didn’t commit?  Get an order of execution against myself?”

“Blake!”  Rose said.

“Theoretically,” I said.

“There are any number of factors to consider,” the older man said.  “If they offer you a chance to speak for yourself and you don’t, they would face little backlash.  Are they brash?  Too stupid to do so?”

I didn’t even have to think about it.  The way they’d shut down my attempt to divide them was still fresh in my memory from last night.  “No.”

“There is also the matter of the debt weighing on you,” he said.  “Nearly seven lifetimes worth of unpaid karmic balance.  You could work hard your entire life and only make up one of those.  Devote yourself wholly and singularly to that one task, and you could maybe make up a second lifetime’s worth.  Reality is not of a mind to assist you in ascending to greatness.  Far easier to help the execution along and take what it can from the aftermath.”

“The universe sounds a bit like some kind of asshole loan shark,” I said.

“Make of it what you will,” he said.

The hatchet wasn’t as cold as it had been, but with the chill it emanated, my hand couldn’t warm up.

I was distracted by the pain, stumbling as I tried to find what I was trying to say, “And… I haven’t read anything explicit about the reason this is all secret.  There are rules Others follow, with stiff penalties, and they generally keep to hunting what they’re allowed to hunt… but what’s to keep me from appearing on TV tomorrow and showing off my magic?”

“Responsibility,” the old man said.  “It started as an ethic; you don’t initiate someone into this world without teaching them the proper way things are done.  That ethic became a rule, and the rule became a part of the fabric of things.  If you introduce someone to all of this and they make a mistake, then some of that karma weighs on you.”

I nodded slowly.

“These are the sorts of things Rose should have taught you.  Any more questions?”

“I’ve probably spent way too long asking about stuff I could read in books,” I said.  “But this is useful grounding to have.”

“And we probably wouldn’t have gotten around to those books for another few weeks,” Rose said.

“Right.  But I should to ask about other stuff.  I’ll start with an obvious one.  Can I trust you guys?”

“No,” the woman lawyer said.  “But you can trust that we won’t sabotage you.  Our interest is in bringing more people under our wing.  We can achieve that by offering you good service.”

“And by helping maneuver me into a corner,” I said.  “So I end up saying your names three times and using the escape clause?”

“We could use those tactics,” she said.  “For the time being, we won’t.”

“That’s vague,” I said.

“Then I’ll be specific.  We’ll tell you before we maneuver you into a corner.”

“Explicitly?” Rose asked.

“Beg pardon?” the woman lawyer asked.

“Tell us explicitly, please.”

“If you wish.  I or one of my partners will look one of you in the eyes and inform you exactly what we’re doing, when it comes up.”

“Why do you want me?”

“We don’t.  Quite frankly, you’re useless to us at this point,” the young man said.  “But things do change.”

“And… the cost is a few thousand years of servitude?  To clear my entire family’s debt?”

“That is part of the cost,” he said.  “Any true mark you made on the world is painted over.  If you want to rise in the ranks and become partner, you’ll need to give up your name, possibly aspects of your identity.  Easier than it sounds, after a few decades or centuries of long days, your past life well behind you.”

“I see,” I said.

“Any other questions?” the old man asked.

Something was bothering me.  I had doubts, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Okay, I had a lot of doubts, but there was one that seemed fresher in my mind, elusive.

“The money?” Rose asked.  “Our allowance?”

“If I may suggest we deduct the necessary expenses for the upkeep of the property?” the young lawyer asked.

“No trick?”  Rose asked.  “If it’s not a trap, then yes.”

“No,” he said.  “No trick.”

He pulled two envelopes from his suit pocket, checked them, and then tossed one onto the table.

Okay, that was handled.  Good.  I picked up the envelope and pocketed it.

“Um.  Important point number two.  Going outside,” Rose said.  “How do we do it?”

“Know how to defend yourself,” the old man said.  “If you wish, we can arrange for an errand boy, to handle groceries and purchases.  You’d be limited to the house all the same.”

Rose glanced at me.  She still looked out of sorts, but she was thinking now.  Which was good, because I was preoccupied.

I nodded absently.  I couldn’t quite figure out what had bothered me.  Something elusive one of them had just said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then we’ll take out the cost for the errand boy from next month’s allowance,” the young lawyer said.  “If that’s all right?”

“Yes,” Rose said.  “If it isn’t a trap or a trick.”

“We’ll see to it.”

“And the question of marriage, in the instructions?” Rose asked.

That got my full attention.  I’d nearly forgotten.

“What of it?” the lawyer asked.

“Blake has to marry a man?” Rose asked.

“Mr. Thorburn has to do no such thing,” the older man said.  “It has been left up to our discretion, to evaluate Mr. Thorburn’s progress and evaluate him regularly, keeping the intentions of the departed Mrs. Thorburn in mind all the while.”

“That seems too easy,” I said.

“It isn’t easy at all,” he replied, “Rest assured.  I do recommend you marry, and I’d even recommend you marry a man, because fulfilling an obligation is an advantage that can help you survive.   Still, I can’t imagine it’s at the forefront of your mind right now?”

I shook my head.

“Then we can leave it for another meeting at another time.  Speaking of…”

“Fourteen minutes remain,” the younger lawyer said.

“Two more questions,” I said.  “Then I think we’re done, unless Rose has something to say.  You said the cost of working for your firm… a few hundred to a few tens of thousands of years of service?  A loss of identity, a loss of a name?”

“If you rise through the ranks, you might even take the name of Mann, Lewis or Levinn,” the young man said.  Distracting me.

“And what happens to you?” Rose asked.

I bit my tongue before I snapped at her.  She was interrupting my line of questioning.

“We’re done,” the young lawyer said.  “Early.  Not easy, I assure you, but it’s an option.”

“Which is why you want to recruit,” she said.

“A part of it,” he said.

“But there’s something else, isn’t there?” I asked, before I could get interrupted again.  “Hundreds or thousands of years of employment, a loss of identity, a loss of our name.  But you didn’t say that’s everything.”

“No.  We didn’t,” the blonde lawyer said.

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

She frowned.  “In the process of signing the contract, you agree to give them a foothold.”

“Them?” Rose asked.

“Them.  You should know who I mean.  You hand over things of value, and they take them.  Footholds.  To help them climb forth from where they’ve been banished or bound, or give them a foundation to better leverage their strength.  A room, a house, a pen, a sword, a companion.”

A pair of shears.

“I could go into detail about the benefits, the why of it, but I would be frittering away your time.  There is more on the subject in the library.”

“I think I get it, even without the books,” Rose said.  Quiet.  “We make that deal, to save our hide, and they get stronger, making life harder on the rest of humanity.”

“Theoretically,” I asked, “what would happen if I swore, right here and right now, that I was never going to take the deal?”

“We would conduct business as the contract with Rose D. Thorburn mandates,” the older lawyer said, “But you would find that we, like the universe, had far less goodwill towards you.”

I nodded.

She shifted position.  Her tone somewhat softer than it had been, she said, “I can’t speak for the others, but I would respect you for it, I would understand.  In the end, however, business is business, and we have our obligations.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Is there more you would like to ask along those lines?” she asked.

I shook my head.  “No.  But I’d like to ask if you could deliver this letter.  Unless there’s a flaw in this plan I’m overlooking.”

“There are complications,” the young lawyer said, “But there will be complications with any route you take.”

“If you were to take it yourself,” the woman lawyer said, “Or have a more direct hand in it, you reap a greater reward.”

“Personally restoring balance to the grand scheme of things… I can’t help but feel like this is dangerous.  Karmic retribution.  Promoting eye-for-an eye thinking.  How do you know if things are balanced?”

“You pay attention,” the old man said.

“Right,” I said.  I frowned.  To have the lawyers deliver the letter or go myself?

“I think I might have to ask you to deliver the letter,” I said.  I couldn’t ignore the hatchet, or my hand.  “I’ve got something else to take care of.”

“If I may suggest a compromise,” the young woman said.  “I’ve been working for several days, and I’m due a break.  I could spare an hour, if you can see to that something else and find time for the errand.”

“The escort didn’t work out so hot for us the first time,” Rose murmured.  I could see from movement of the lawyer’s eyes that she’d heard, but the woman gave no other sign.

I shook my head a little.  “It’s-”

“The object under your coat demands your attention.  May I?”

I withdrew the hatchet, but I didn’t hand it over.

“I’ll help,” she said.  “No trickery or sabotage.  I can guarantee you’ll be better off than if you saw to it yourself.”

“You’ll see us safely the entire way there and back?” I asked.  “And while we’re there?”

“As safely as you allow,” the lawyer said.

Rose chimed in.  “You promise not to carry out any tricks or traps at least until the next time we meet?”

“Yes,” she said.

“This won’t count against our time?” I asked.

“No cost, insofar as something can have no cost.”

The other lawyers were standing.  The younger one looked at his watch.  “Then we’re done, with just over ten minutes remaining on the clock.  Thank you for the hospitality.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, feeling wary.

The older lawyer extended a hand.  I hesitated, then shook it with my numb hand.  He didn’t react.

“You should only be seeing one of us at a time, now that introductions are done,” the older lawyer said, letting my hand go.  “Barring exceptional circumstance, or a request to join the company.”

I nodded.

“We’ll see you later in the day, Ms. Lewis,” he said.

“You will,” the blonde lawyer said.

I’d expected the two men to disappear, but they left through the front door, collecting outdoor jackets along the way and pulling them on as they made their way down the front steps.

Leaving me in the company of Ms. Lewis.

“May I see it?” she asked.  “The imbued object?”

“I promised it I’d keep it warm,” I said.

“Not exactly true, is that?” she asked me.

I frowned.

“I’m fairly well versed in seeing the nuances of karma at work.  You’ve come very close to lying a few times in a short span of time, and you’ve each outright lied at least once in the half hour prior to our arrival.”

“Oh hell,” I said.

“It’s easy to slip, at first,” she said.  “In this case, you’re bordering on a lie, but you’re still telling the truth.  Rose here promised you’d keep it warm.  Your promise was implicit, and because Rose is an extension of you…”

“It’s borderline,” I said.

“Being more honest means you stock up more goodwill with the universe and any others you meet.  Borderline dishonesty is useful, lying by omission is better yet, and unvarnished honesty is better still.  I can’t quite interpret it, but perhaps you were joking?  Sarcasm?”

I thought back.

“Shit,” I said.  “So… what?  I lose my power?”

“You lose some.  And a mere ghost gains more influence over you, even through a circle, or when bound into an object.  It’ll take at least a week to wear off.  Luckily, there aren’t many things in this house to hear, hm?”

“And me?” Rose asked.

“It matters for you too,” Ms. Lewis said.  “For the time being, you are connected to Blake.  Tell me, Blake, did you feel weaker?  More vulnerable?”

“I felt tired,” I said.  “I wondered for a moment if Rose had done something.”

“A vestige is fragile.  Defy the natural order, and the vestige suffers.”

“And a damaged vestige drains energy,” I said, glancing at Rose.

“Just so.”

“I’d kind of expected a… clap of thunder?” I said.

“Barring the exceptional moments of idiocy, such as the breaking of an oath, you typically only discover what you’ve done when you reach for power and find it gone.”

“So stupid of us,” Rose said.

Ms. Lewis smiled and shook her head.  “I will keep the ghost contained.  To do otherwise would put a client at risk.  May I?”

She extended a hand.

I handed the hatchet over.  She didn’t flinch as the handle touched her hand.

“You’ve worked with tools before,” she said.

“Hm?”

“Your hands have that look about them, and you handed the hatchet to me handle first.  It’s the sort of thing you learn on the job, or you’re taught it as a matter of course, becoming a gentleman.”

“Blake, not a gentleman?” Rose asked.

“That is the sort of sarcasm you can get away with,” Ms. Lewis said.  “A gentleman would have offered guests something to drink.  As would a lady, Ms. Thorburn.  Shall we go see to your errands?  I can attend to this tool in the meantime.”

A little unsure, I still nodded.

She’d left a winter coat folded over a chair in the front hallway.  She draped it over her shoulders without putting her arms through the sleeves.

I, for my part, did what I could to warm my hands by rubbing them against one another, before we stepped outside.

“Ground rules,” Ms. Lewis said.  “This isn’t business.  Anything I say or do should be taken in the capacity of an acquaintance or teacher.  I won’t give you answers I think you should pay for”

“I understand,” I said.

“Good response,” she said.  “Not committing to anything.  All that said, I’d like to help you if I see the chance.”

“Somehow I anticipated you guys would be scarier,” I said.  “Or, and I hope I’m not being offensive, more professional.”

“We adapt to the client,” she said.  She didn’t flinch at the cold as we made our way down the driveway.  Something a little more Other about her, like the old man’s laugh.

“You’re being awfully helpful, running this errand with me for no benefit.  Or is there something I’m missing?”

“Let’s just say it’s me establishing a relationship with a potential new client.”

“We can say that,” Rose said, speaking from the mirror I wore in the open ‘v’ of my jacket collar, “But what is it really?”

“It’s largely selfish,” Ms. Lewis said.  She drew in a deep breath, then sighed.  “As clients go, you’re quite endearing, compared to our usual.”

She withdrew a spool from an inside pocket of her jacket.  Thin silver wire.  “And this is not something I usually get to do, in the course of my duties.  Nostalgic.”

Ms. Lewis unwound the wire, then began winding it loosely around the foam handle as she walked.

“Who are your regular clients?” Rose asked.

“They vary, and they are confidential,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Speaking in general terms, a rare few are like your grandmother.  A great many aren’t.”

“And what are they like?” I asked.

“You’ve met the barber.  They are the sorts who would use him and sleep that night.”

“Ah,” I said.  “You’re using your sight to see the connection between me and it?”

“Yes.  I would recommend using it more.  Try it now?”

I switched to my sight.  The connections weren’t very clear.

“Look to your three o’clock without turning your head,” she said.

I did.

Something that might have been a raccoon scampered down from the top of the garage to the far side.  It probably wasn’t a raccoon.

“It’s gone,” I said.

“It’s there, it’s just out of sight.  Keep looking.”

I did.  I searched for the connection, but I couldn’t make out much.  The world was buried under a haze, and the wind was blowing in too many directions at once.

“Trace your eyes along the paths that things run in parallel, the straightest lines.  Good place to start, and good places to avoid if you think someone’s searching for you.”

I looked harder.  The saturation and contrast seemed exaggerated, the world painted in a impasto style with coarse brush strokes, animated with life and constant motion.  I followed the areas where the strokes and lines met, so I could see the flow of it, not stopping at a dead end but naturally sweeping my eyes along the straighter paths where the particles danced.

I caught it a second or two faster than I might have if I wasn’t already focused on the area.  It looked like the slop that you dug out of a gutter after a rain.  Leaves, branches, twigs, and a bit or two of trash.  There were only shadows where eyes were supposed to be, and a few pieces of stone, some teeth, and a bird’s beak where it was supposed to have teeth.

It stopped in its tracks, seemingly startled, as if my vision had transfixed it.

A moment later, it bolted, disappearing around the corner at edge of Hillsglade House.

“You looked too hard,” she said.  “You made a connection, and it noticed.  A lesser elemental.  Now keep looking.  Softer.  Relax, and try to see where the longest lines are.  If you don’t focus too hard, it’s easier to see them.”

I looked, relaxing my focus on the spirits.

It very deliberately avoided the railing of the fence as it perched on the stone of the wall, glancing my way.  It seemed bothered that I’d spotted it again.  Leaves and twigs stood up like an irritated cat or a dog with the hackles up.

My eye traveled over the splash of minor spirits that danced around it, seeking out the areas where they were traveling in the straightest lines.

One, blocked by the house.  I eyeballed it, figured out the direction, found it on the other side of the house, faint, disappearing into the woods and glades.

The Briar Girl, I thought.  The Others I’d seen before June showed up… I suspected they were hers.

“She wants your attention, and very possibly wants your help.”

“You know her?” I asked, looking at Ms. Lewis.

“No.  But I can tell.  What does she want?”

“The woods and marshes.”

“She can’t have the woods and marshes, Mr. Thorburn.  She’ll be upset when you tell her.”

“Probably,” I said.

She took a moment to wind the wire around, hooking it through one loop, then adjusting the tightness of each segment in turn.  It was biting into the foam grip, but not so much it was ugly or unnatural.  The end result was more like something between a Celtic knot and a chain-link fence.

“You’ll have some confrontations soon.  You’ll need to be stronger.”

“I know,” I said.

“Are you aware enough to know you’re in danger right now?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“How?  Who?” Rose asked.

“A car, behind us.  Ignore it.  We’ll take an alley the car can’t pass through, forcing them to circle around.  We can stop partway, forcing them to turn around again or stop and wait for us to emerge.  We’ll decide what we do then.”

“This is more passive than I expected of you,” I said.

“I have my hands full, for one thing,” Ms. Lewis said.  “And there are other reasons.  Consider this a lesson.  The first step is getting a bead on them.  As we turn to enter the alley, you’ll have a glimpse of them.  Look for the connection and hold on to it.  Fixate on it without identifying yourself.”

“Sure,” I said.  “You make it sound so easy.”

“It’s moving.  A straight line.  It’s also isolated.  There are few cars on the road.  It’s too early in the morning, and the city sees little traffic.  It’s easier to spot a car alone than a car in the crowd, with your sight just as much as with your eyes.”

“Right.”

“Holding on is going to be harder than finding it.  Now.”

We turned.  The car passed behind me.  I had only a glimpse of the electric blue sedan.  Stuffed animals on the ledge by the rear-view window.

Sure enough, I found the connection, thin.  Holding on… I wasn’t even sure how.  I focused my attention on it.

“It’s turning, and turning again, going around the block,” she said.

“We stop?” I asked.

Ms. Lewis nodded.

We stopped in the middle of the alleyway.

I could see as the car slowed, then stopped.  The connection became far less focused.  Diffuse on one end, tighter on the other.

“There are options, now” Ms. Lewis said.  “The first step would be identifying them.  I’m not going to give you the answer.  Find it yourself.”

I had only the clues to go by, the color and make of the car, the fact that it had been a bit dingy.  Not new by any stretch of the imagination, the stuffed animals…

The wrong track.  Not enough to put any name to it.

The connection itself… I examined it in more detail, as the end closest to me got more and more broken up.  If I had a better eye for this sort of thing, I might have been able to see where they were focusing their attention.

That would be a useful tool.  To know where your enemies senses were directed and to act elsewhere.

I wondered if the Others I’d seen darting out of sight of people had been doing the same.

The spirits that made up the connection took all sorts of shapes.  I couldn’t focus enough to make them out.  They seemed to dart out of my view when I tried to look at them, like the dust that settled on the surface of the eye.

“I’m not sure I can,” I said.

“You would have more focus if you hadn’t lied,” she said.  “Be glad you were in the house and it wasn’t more severe.  Try harder.”

I tried.  Interpreting what the spirits were supposed to be was hard.  They often had arms and legs, sometimes in vague human shapes, sometimes not, and most were transparent.  The shape, the colors, the aesthetics, they all pointed to the ideas and elements these things supported.

I couldn’t decipher them before I felt something shift.  The connection solidified on the one end.  In a heartbeat, they had both focused on me.

Yet they hadn’t moved.

A second later, they were taking some sort of action, moving, and very deliberately, they scattered my perception of where they were.  Disappearing somewhere.  I could tell they had a bead on me, but I had no idea where they were.

They had deftly flipped the tables on me.

“Duchamps,” I said.

Ms. Lewis nodded.  Her attention was on the hatchet, as she scratched at the metal with what looked like a needle.  “Details?”

“Enchantresses,” I said.  “A coven.”

“One of them is calling family,” she said.  “She hasn’t gotten through, probably because it’s so early in the day.  But she’s using an implement to focus the connection.  She will get through, given another minute or two, and you’ll have more enemies to deal with.  Very possibly the entire coven.”

“This is the point where the whole ‘escorting us safely there’ thing comes into play.”

“It is,” she said.  She kept scratching at the hatchet.  When she saw me looking, she said, “Oh.  This will be another minute.”

“You’re not going to fight them?  Or stop the call?”

“No.  I’m not permitted.”

“I… what?”

“I can only make explicit use of my power while I’m working.  As I said before, I’m nothing more than a teacher and an acquaintance while I’m taking this break.”

“You misled us,” Rose said.

“I was very clear.  Don’t start crying now.  We’ve made it this far.  Now face them head-on.  Can you see it?  One coming right now.”

I looked, and I saw something.

A bird made its way into the alley.  Not a hawk or anything like that, but one of the tiny ones that tended to bob up and down in the air more than it actually glided or flew.  A chickadee or sparrow or some such.

It unfolded, feathers sweeping across a space five feet long, a momentary curtain.

Putting me face to face with a woman so beautiful she looked artificial.  Her ears had a slight point to them, and she had an eerie sort of confidence to her step.  Snow settled on platinum-colored hair and bare shoulders, exposed by clothing that seemed more ornamental than anything else.  Something between a revealing variant on a Japanese yukata and a high-fashion dress I might expect to see on a runway in France or Italy, inspired by a flower in bloom.  Any time I thought it might belong to one culture, some aspect of it dismissed the notion.

Her eyes were pale from corner to corner, the eyelashes long and dark in a way a makeup artist would struggle to achieve.  When she smiled, she showed a bit of her teeth.

She drew a sword slowly, with second after second of the clean sound of the weapon leaving the scabbard.  I wasn’t sure what kind of sword it was.

The damned weapon was easily twelve feet long.  Her arms outstretched in front and behind her, she bent the metal until it bowed in a ‘u’.  When it came free, it did so in a shower of sparks, the blade practically dancing as it recoiled, returning to its straight length.  The sound of metal singing filled the air.

She held it pointing straight up until it stilled, then lowered it so the point was aimed straight at my heart, her position very much like a fencer’s.  If I looked past the movement of the wind that made the length of thin metal sway, the blade didn’t shake or waver in the slightest.

Ms Lewis placed a hand on my shoulder, making me jump a little.  When she spoke, it was a murmur in my ear.  “Now, shoulders square, chin up.  Take a deep breath.  Get some oxygen to that brain of yours.”

“What- why are you saying that?” I asked.

“I’m going to walk you through this, and I’m going to hope that you follow my instructions to the letter.  Now pay attention.  The less guidance you demand from me, the faster I can hand this hatchet to you.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Damages 2.5

The swordswoman wasted no time, stepping forward.  Bare foot on snow-crusted pavement.  I backed away; to do otherwise would mean standing still while the point of that giant sword would simply slide into my heart.

Ms. Lewis, however, stepped into the space I had just vacated.  She put her hand out, and as the blade approached her chest, she pushed it to one side.

“I’m supposing your master told you to kill or harm him,” Ms. Lewis said.

“What of it?” the swordswoman asked.  She had a strange accent.  Less like a person who had grown up fluent in one language and was carrying things over into the next, and more like a French, Russian, and one or two other accents were all layered onto one another, compounding each other.

“You shouldn’t harm me without her orders,” Ms. Lewis said.

The Other narrowed her eyes.  “I can do as I please.”

“Go ask,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Ask your master who I am, and whether you should carry through.”

The Other didn’t budge.  Instead, she made a face, and then quickly came to a decision.  She drew her hand back, ready to plunge the weapon through Ms. Lewis’ chest.

Ms. Lewis didn’t move.

The Other sniffed and transformed, wings unfolding and enclosing her in the span of a second.  She disappeared down the far end of the alley.

“Familiars can’t go outside their master’s orders?”  I asked.

“Master feels young,” Ms. Lewis said, taking hold of my arm.  She led me in the opposite direction the Other had gone.  “No older than thirteen.  You generally don’t get inducted into this world until you’re about that age, these days.  It means the familiar is new.”

“So you misled it.”

“Yes and no.  It shouldn’t attack me, but that’s independent of everything else.  Can you open locks?”

“Not a trick I know,” I said.

She drew a small notebook from her pocket.  She drew out an image.  An hourglass shape with a circle in the middle.  She drew a small pad of sticky notes from another inside pocket.  “Draw something like this, put it on the doorknob, and empower it.”

I did.  I copied it out, stuck it against the doorknob, and then stabbed the back of my hand with the pen.

“Fuck,” I said.  “Ow.  That hurt more than I thought it would.”

Still, I used the blood that welled around the injury site and smeared it across the image.

“You need a power source,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Blood won’t do for the long term.”

“I know,” I said.

The knob was rattling, internal mechanisms moving with excruciating slowness.

“I’d hoped for something quicker and more effective.  You’re weak, and that is going to hold us back, Blake Thorburn,” Ms. Lewis told me.  “Tell me, can you identify the Other we just saw?”

“Name it?  No.  Stick a label on it?  I could maybe say it’s a Faerie, but that’s only a guess.”

“It’s an accurate guess.”

“My grandmother didn’t like putting labels on Others, or so she wrote.  She wrote it was dangerous to do it, because they could lie or blur the lines, and making assumptions could get you killed.”

“Very true.  In this case, I think it’s a safe assumption.  You’ve read Essentials, I assume?  Standard reading for most new practitioners.”

“I have,” I said.

“Then you know what Faerie are weak against?”

I thought, but I couldn’t connect it.  “Something about raw iron, but…”

“Crude elements,” Rose cut in.  “Things that have been worked, refined, or crafted are less effective against them.”

“Which puts us in an awkward position,” Ms. Lewis said.  She was leaning against the wall by the door, scratching symbols into the metal with the needle.  “In a city, they thrive, because just about everything is worked and refined.  They find us interesting, and ennui is to them what death is to us.”

I was busy scribbling down another symbol.  I looked up to ask, “Is that something we can use?”

The doorknob clicked.  Ms. Lewis opened the door, leading the way inside.

When we were inside, I removed the paper from the one side, closed the door, locked it, and then stuck the other sticky note to the inside.  Again, I smeared it with a thumbprint of blood.

“Protection?” Ms. Lewis asked.

“I figured it might help,” I said.

“It might,” Ms. Lewis said.  “This way.”

We made our way down the hallway.

It was a residential building.  Maybe an bottom-of-the-barrel old folks home, judging by the smell.

“Sorry, but I gotta ask, is it really going to help?” Rose asked.  “He doesn’t have much power.  It might have been more useful to spend the time running.”

“Probably,” Ms. Lewis said.  “It also expended power.  A small drop of blood, but there’s a larger share of personal power invested in that than you might think.  Doing that too often is dangerous.”

I felt a sting of annoyance.  “Then tell me that.”

“It doesn’t really matter, and I want you to be confident more than I want you to be entirely accurate and efficient in what you’re doing.  You’ll be safer if you familiarize yourself with the tools at your disposal and act with conviction.”

“Okay,” Rose said.

“I want you to tell me if I do something wrong,” I said.  “Please.”

“Then I’ll tell you we should be talking strategies and tricks.  The first… have you learned to strengthen and break connections?”

“Yes,” Rose said.  “Some of it.  We did it to lure in the ghost.”

“And breaking connections?”  Ms. Lewis asked.  “Case in point, they’re tracking your every step.”

They were.  I could feel their eyes on the back of my head.  The connections were there, too, fuzzy on one end, to the point that I couldn’t trace it back to them, but unerringly focused on me.  The Other was making its way back to the alley, meandering.  No doubt looking for a trace of us.

“No, I don’t know how to break connections,” I said.

“Clench and unclench your injured hand.  Get the blood flowing from the wound.  Now, instead of supplying power to the conduit, you want to block it.”

If I’d had to draw a line parallel to the connection I was feeding, then to block it…

“I draw the line sideways?”

“Perpendicular.  Think of it as a wall or a dam to block or divert the river.”

I stopped, ready to bend down and draw the line.

But Ms. Lewis took my arm, pulling me along and keeping me moving.

“What?” I asked.

“Wait one moment.  This is about symbolism and effect.  A great deal of what any practitioner does is draw on the power of Others.  Connections, pacts, bonds, borrowed power.  You can be dull and methodical about it, but that’s only going to impress a specific kind of Other.  If you use presentation, however, timing, flair, showmanship…”

“It matters?”

“You do have an audience, after all.  It’s marginal as benefits go, but if I’m going to teach you, I’m going to teach you to do it right.  Gesture and statement can go along with power.  Saying the right thing, doing the right thing, they can add a modicum of power to anything you do, for very little cost.  Understand?”

“I… think so,” I said.

“Draw the line of blood a moment before we round the corner.  Take the stairwell, downstairs.”

There was a bang on the door, loud enough to carry down the hallway.

“We’re on the ground floor,” I said.

“I’m aware.”

“We’d be cornering ourselves, going into the basement.”

“Not if this works.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then I’ll find another way to keep you safe as I’d promised.  Now.”

There was a bang on the door, and the sword speared through the wood.  It cut down in one swift stroke, severing the top three-quarters of the door from the lower hinge.

I bent down, using the blob of blood on the back of my hand as a palette, to draw one thick smear of blood across the top of the stairs, between us, the other, and where the two Duchamps were.

In that same movement, as I drew my arm left to right, I took a step down to the right, heading down the stairs.

“Good,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Everything you do has meaning, and informs your practice.”

Getting further away hurt the connection, as did rounding the corner.  Evasive actions.  Was it confusing the spirits, and thus making us harder to track, or was it the other way around, with the spirits recognizing that we were trying to slip away and acting in accord with it?

Whatever the case was, the effect was pronounced.  I didn’t feel their eyes on me any more.

I heard the door coming to pieces in the hallway above us, as we quickly and quietly descended the flight of stairs.

The basement.  The paint was old and the plaster on the drywall was still visible in spots.  There were no doors.  We passed by a room with washing machines and dryers inside.

I stopped at the foot of the stairs, reached into my back pocket, and withdrew one of the small bike mirrors.  I propped it up in the corner.  “Keep an eye on things?”

“Padraic could reach through to get me,” Rose whispered.

“I don’t think a hand is going to reach through there,” I said.

“The sword could.”

I heard a faint scrape.  Was the sword dragging along the floor?  I hurried down the hall to catch up to Ms. Lewis.

“No obligation, Rose,” I said.  “But it’d be handy.”

Rose said, “I’ll keep an eye out.  I can pop in and look, then come back.”

I nodded, realized she couldn’t see me from her angle, and said, “Thanks.”

To Ms. Lewis, I asked, “What are we doing down here?”

Ms. Lewis said, “For now, I’m hoping you’re learning.  Now, Faerie often use glamour,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Do you know what that is?”

“Like mirages,” I said.  “Things that aren’t really there?”

We passed a room filled with large, bulky equipment.  Vacuums, a pressure washer, steam cleaner…

“You’re wrong,” she said.  “The things they conjure up are there.  They’re fabricated, and it’s this affinity for things that have been crafted that helps the Faerie avoid being touched so easily by fabricated things.  With glamour, the Faerie might create an image of a flower.  It’s an image.  But as they put power into it, it gains substance.  As people see it and recognize it, they feed power into it.  Plant that flower in a garden, leave it be, and it will grow as any flower might.  It becomes a part of the garden, and the garden adapts.  It adapts to the viewers, becoming what they want and expect to see.  A two way street. Given opportunity, it becomes as much of a part of things as if it was always there.”

“Could you-” Rose started.  She stopped as we did – Ms. Lewis had peered into a room and stopped in her tracks.  “Could you do something like that to fuel a vestige?  To make the false copy more real?”

Ms. Lewis smiled a little.  “Theoretically.  But there is a fragility to it.  An idea is an idea, after all, and if you dismiss it or if you challenge the lie and win, then it is liable to fall apart.  This is in addition to the fragility a vestige already has.  I can say with conviction that this would do you more harm than good.”

“Oh,” Rose said.  A little disheartened.

Ms. Lewis didn’t hold back,  “Glamour thrives on attention, on interacting with our senses and being validated.  A vestige is like gossamer, and any interaction does damage to it.  It’s a contradiction, and that makes for an exceedingly dangerous balance to strike.  Damage one element and it all might collapse.”

We had stopped at one doorway.  Ms. Lewis led the way inside.

It was a workshop, complete with a massive box of breakers, tools hanging on the wall, water heaters, and an old trash can filled with bits of concrete and plumbing.

I bent down and drew out a line of blood to break the connection again.  Their focus wasn’t anywhere near us, at this point.

Ms. Lewis continued.  “A glamour is most effective if it can insinuate itself into your subconscious.  The Faerie manipulate things to distract, to addle your senses so you aren’t paying attention to the fact that it doesn’t fit with reality.  You’re more afraid for your life than you are concerned with the ridiculous length of her blade, and the fact that she couldn’t possibly be strong enough to hold it.”

“You challenged her.”

“As your partner Rose already said, they’re weak against the unrefined, against crude things.  That includes attitudes.  Their court is one of dancing around subjects, allusions, games, masquerades, and complex plots that unfold over decades and centuries.  They shore themselves and their reality up with glamour, and they use these illusions-made reality to fool even themselves.  It catches them off guard when you are blunt.  It offends them on a fundamental level, because they thrive off of belief, real or otherwise, and they don’t like for those beliefs to be challenged.”

“And this one?” I asked.  “Any clues on what she’s about?”

“The swordswoman.  The Faerie go through trends, fashions of a sort.  Mixing notions, styles, and past ideas into new forms until they’ve run completely out of ideas.  Then they rebel, they overthrow the court, and a new season begins with a different foundation.  Light faerie versus the dark, for example, or a court with a true king and queen and a dynasty that they’ve glamoured up to extend back through the centuries.  The ‘duelist’ would be one idea that might have caught their fancy, as of late.”

“I’m not sure I get it,” I said.  “They’re just playing?”

Ms. Lewis used the tools to finish the hatchet.  “It’s a very serious sort of play, when you get down to it.  Dress it up in the glamour of possible true death, using a rapier can kill even Faerie.  Build up stories of an unbeatable duelist, fights for pride, fights for the idea of romance.  See what ideas and adventures emerge.  Something as brutal, violent and sudden as this is far more dramatic and interesting when the ‘death’ of one individual in a duel might throw two hundred plots into disarray.  A Faerie cannot afford not to watch.”

“She’s dangerous, then,” I said.  My eyes roved over the tools.  Anything I could use?  Crude, unrefined…

“She’s dangerous, though I should stress that she’s here.  She wasn’t so good she could become part of the story they were telling in the court.  It’s very possible she lost an important fight and walked away.  Or she broke a rule for this particular set of games and was exiled for her trouble.  It is very telling when a Faerie becomes a familiar.  Going out of her way to experience mortality, to form a bond with a person for decades, doesn’t it seem like a desperate grasp at occupying herself or filling her time?”

“She’s staving off boredom?” I asked.

“She’s most likely clinging to the last few scraps available to her.  It’s hard to say where this leads.  Some lose their minds, others throw away their minds, carving away their personalities and memories so they might start fresh..  Some defy the court and try to change the game in another way, trying to bring about a larger change, and they get banished when they fail.  The question is, why is this information important to you?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“That was an awfully fast answer,” she said, sounding a touch annoyed.  She handed me the hatchet, handle first.  “I explained a great deal.  Surely one of you two can pull something out of it.”

The pattern of the silver wire continued on with the pattern scratched into the metal.  Faint, but noticeable where the light caught the rough patches versus the smooth patches.  The silver wire in the grip didn’t dig into my hand.

It wasn’t nearly so cold as it had been.

“She’s trapped,” Rose said.  “At the end of her rope.  It’s… a weak point?”

“You’re thinking along the right lines.  Beg pardon, but Mr. Thorburn, I recommend you keep your third eye open.  Train that sense of yours.  They’re still looking for us.”

They were?  This wasn’t a hiding place?

I reached for a connection.

I couldn’t feel much at all.

“Not feeling it.  Might be that she’s gone, or I’m not doing fantastic, or my power’s weaker than it was.  Rose?”

“I’ll check,” Rose said.

I thought maybe I could feel her absence.  Another connection?  That was useful, in a way.

I could feel some connection to the Faerie.  I went out of my way to avoid feeding it in any way, lest I strengthen the bond.  I’d seen with the ghost June, that sympathy, saying the wrong thing, or anything of the sort could strengthen the connection in the smallest ways.

“Why did we come down here?” I asked.  “You haven’t really explained.  We’ve cornered ourselves.”

“Isolated places are almost always better for a practitioner.  Places where people don’t tread, where delicate things like ghosts and vestiges aren’t torn apart by passing people and their perceptions, and where you can bend rules and there are less people to see and challenge it.”

“But we’ve cornered ourselves,” I said, repeating myself for emphasis.

“If it comes down to it, I will give you a name, and you can call it.”

“A name that I wouldn’t regret calling?” I asked.

“I would take on the cost,” she said.  “I swore to keep you as safe as you allow me to.  Subjective as ‘safe’ might be, I would take the cost.”

“And would this thing I called then go on a rampage, murdering people or setting Jacob’s Bell on fire?”

“Some could, if you were of a mood for that sort of thing,” she said.

“Right,” I said.

As if to echo my thought, Rose reappeared, saying, “The Faerie just started coming down the stairs.”

“Our next few actions will need to be decisive,” Ms. Lewis said.  “I’ve told you what you need to know, I can answer questions.  Have I taught you how to fish, or do you need me to give you a fish?”

“I kind of wouldn’t mind just getting the answer,” Rose said.

“It would be more accurate to say I gave you the answer, and I’m waiting to see if you need me to walk you through it as well.”

“You gave us the clue?” I asked.

“I gave you several.  It’s up to you to decide what to do.  Or ask me for help.  Get in the habit of thinking out loud.”

“She’s faerie, she’s weak to crude things,” I said.  I was aware that talking about her was increasing the strength of the connection, but she was going to find us down here anyways.  To keep the ideas flowing, I threw out another comment, “She’s all dressed up in illusions.  Or illusions made real, anyways.”

“She’s arrogant, dressed up like a duelist-”  Rose said, as if my ideas had spurred her own.

“-And she failed,” I added.  “She hooked up with this kid in a familiar deal to stave off boredom.  She’s been cooped up in this bird form, and I doubt there’s a lot of opportunity to do her thing.  She’ll be eager.  Rushed.  Impatient.  She wants drama, and this is probably her best chance she’s had at it since she agreed to become a familiar.”

“Can you capitalize on it?” Ms. Lewis asked.  “Or leverage it?”

“We could challenge her to a duel,” Rose said.

I could see Ms. Lewis’ eyebrows raise a fraction at that.

“You mean you want me to duel her,” I said.

“She’s going to try and kill you anyways.  Might as well set some ground rules.”

I could hear the scrape of the sword against the floor.  When I spoke, I whispered, “Why?”

Rose hissed her words, “It’s an idea.  I don’t know why.  She’s proud, she wants something interesting.  Let’s give it to her and see what you get.”

We had only seconds left.

My eyes looked over the room.  The tools…

No.  I was looking in the wrong place.  The tools were things that had been made.

I looked to the trash can.  Filled with debris and broken things, yet to be hauled away and thrown out.  I started to reach into it, and saw how my hand was caked in the blood that had welled out from the wound.

Probably giving myself tetanus.

I reached inside, tried to find something, and came up with a handful of bent, rusty nails, rocks and splinters.

I kicked it over.

I made my way over the stuff I’d scattered along the floor, checking each thing I was stepping over while making sure I didn’t step onto a nail or a piece of metal that might pierce my boot.  I kicked some stuff out into the hall.  Two gross-looking pipes of different lengths, a pile of rust-caked nails, bits of crushed concrete and a shaft of rotted wood.

Hatchet in hand, I stepped into the hallway.  The Other had stopped at the sound of the impact.  A short distance up the hallway.

“Found you,” the Faerie said.  She held her sword so it dragged behind her.  “Slippery prey.  Hiding from prying eyes.”

Ms. Lewis stepped into the hallway as well.  She stepped around me, stopping just behind my shoulder.

“Three to kill,” the Faerie said.  She smiled, and the smile touched her pale eyes.

She still didn’t look real.  There were less wrinkles than I’d expect to see on a child.

“We challenge you to a duel,” Rose called out.

The Faerie stopped.  “I would sully my blade.”

I held out the hatchet, ready to use.

Her expression didn’t change in the least.  Did she not know how ineffective the hatchet would be against her, or did she know and was she exceptional at hiding her tells?

If she had spent centuries in some court of lies and illusion, I could buy that she was a good liar.

But she was impatient, proud…

“Are you reluctant because you’re scared of me?” I asked. Direct attacks, I thought.  “I think you’re a coward.”

“Never,” the Faerie said.  There was a flair of the dramatic to the word.  As if she’d timed the statement to play off mine, that her earlier reluctance was solely to enable this interplay.  “I’ll see you pay for that insult.”

A small oath.  I felt my heart skip a beat, hearing that.

But I was dead if I failed, whatever happened.  What did it matter if I raised the stakes?

Okay, dumb question.  There were plenty of things worse than death.  But everything had a price, didn’t it?  You couldn’t win something if you didn’t stake something.

“Then,” I said.  “How about a wager?”

“A prize to the winner?” she asked, in that strange accent of hers.  She smiled.  “I don’t think you know how good a swordsman I am.”

“You say that, but aren’t all Faerie liars?” I asked.  “I mean, lying is at the core of your being.  You’re just really good fakers.”

“I was going to humiliate you, mortal, but now I’m going to make it bad.  And believe me, I can make it bad.  I was the consort and protector to the High Queen’s Torturer.  The woman taught me a great deal.”

“So sayeth the liar,” I said.  I slapped the upper half of the hatchet’s handle into my other palm.  My heart was pounding, but that hardly mattered.  “I think you’re all just a bunch of idiot practitioners who started deluding yourselves so you could lie despite the rules.”

“Changing how you look at the world so the subjective changes?” Rose asked.  “It makes an awful lot of sense.”

“And it would make just as much sense if you made the fucking stupid mistake of using that glamour trick of yours to convince reality you can’t die.  Look young, be young.  Look like you can’t get sick, you can’t get sick.”

Look like no weapon forged by man can kill you, no weapon forged by man can kill you.

“You insult me, you insult my people.  Shall I take you to my Queen and tell her what you said, so she can devise an appropriate punishment?”

“I think you should take the offer for a duel,” I said.  “Or you might just be a sad, pathetic little excuse for an Other who’s more bluff than anything else, you’re hiding behind that ridiculous, flimsy looking sword, and the only way you can prove you aren’t is by accepting the duel and winning.”

If they thrive on belief and perception, can I attack her on that front?

She cocked her head a little, a birdlike gesture.  I saw her glance momentarily over one shoulder.

“I’m not trying to distract you from something else or throw some big plot at you,” I said, “As hard as that is to believe.  What I’m saying is what I mean.  I want a duel because I think I could win.”

“Enough.  What are the terms?” she asked.

“We duel you,” Rose said.  “Winner gets to claim a prize.”

“Careful,” Ms. Lewis murmured.

“Too late.  I accept.  For my prize, I will have your obedience, for one year, one month, one week and one day,” the Faerie said.  She smiled.  “I am sworn to Mademoiselle Duchamp, but I would still like to keep you in a place just outside this world, and with my spare moments, I could amuse myself with you.  Perhaps I could make the first day you spend with me worse than any day you’ve experienced.  I could challenge myself to see if I could do the same each day thereafter.”

“I think,” I said, “I might take some of your power.”

“Good,” she said.  She leaped back a solid fifteen feet, her feet skidding on the floor.  “Let us begin.”

“Ms. Lewis,” I said.  “Would you happen to know the name of that something nasty that might come if I called it?”

“Yes,” she said.  “Ornias.  He once placed stars in the firmament, but he now calls them down to earth.  Say his name seven times.”

“Perfect.  Ornias,” I said.

“Jesus penis fuck, Blake, no,” Rose said.

I saw the Faerie’s eyes go wide.

When a fucking Other who had lived and breathed deception for thousands of years was still provoked into giving away a tell, I knew I’d struck home.

“Ornias,” I said again.

She dashed towards me.

Trying to stop me before I finished.

I clenched my fist.  I still held the nails, rocks and splinters I’d grabbed from the barrel.

Words and gestures had power, right?

“Take this!” I shouted, hurling the fistful at her as if I were throwing a baseball.  A left-handed throw, but still.

The sharp, heavy, coarse bits of debris were coated in my blood, from the wound I’d made with my knife.  Was there maybe a bit of extra power in there?  Was that expenditure of power why I staggered a little, as I released them from my hand?

I didn’t even get to see if it inflicted any damage or if it simply bounced off of her.  When I stood straight again, she had stopped.

Raising my hatchet, gripping it in both hands, I met her eyes.  It was too much to hope that I could see a glimmer of fear, a hint that my instincts were right.  Her face was unreadable.  She used one hand to brush gingerly at the tops of her breasts.

“Ornias,” I said.

She went on the offensive.  Sword still behind her, narrow space, she still brought it forward, letting it gouge and scrape the wall, bending like it had when she’d pulled it from the scabbard.

I could envision it springing free, flexing back to its normal straight length, simultaneously piercing me.  Every bit of her body language pointed to that same conclusion.

Glamour would help things to that conclusion.

I hurled the hatchet at her, overhead, two handed.

She wasn’t in a position to hit it with her blade.  She was in a position to strike it out of the air with the butt-end of her sword.

I saw a flash of a smile on her face.  I’d disarmed myself.  She had her victory.

My focus, however, was on grabbing the longest bit of pipe that I’d kicked out into the hallway.  Moving towards her, bending low to grab it.

The thing was so rusty and grimy that the actual pipe itself was hard to make out.

The hatchet couldn’t be my weapon.  Ghost inside it or no.

Could this?

She’d stopped moving to strike at the thrown hatchet.  I had the pipe.  I tried to read her expression, to see if there was any glimmer of fear, any sign that this weapon could hurt her.

Nothing.  Her expression still held that faint smile that suggested she was utterly confident of her victory.  She started approaching me.

“Yes, Mr. Thorburn,” I could hear Ms. Lewis from behind me.  “I think that’ll suffice.”

With those words, the Faerie stepped back.  Her sword had somehow found its way in front of her.

The point leveled my way.

No reason to play fair.

“Ornias,” I said.  “Ornias.”

She lunged, and I ducked into the room we’d vacated, hopping over the mess.  I landed awkwardly, stupid for such a little jump.

“Ornias!” I called out, in her direction.

Damn me, I could feel it now.  Once more, and he’d come.

The Faerie entered the room, sword first.

“Blake!  What are you doing?”

Rose.

“Ambush,” I said.  There was a bit of a waver in my voice.

“Draw a line, then!”

I didn’t even think.  I ducked low, scraping the back of my bloody, gritty hand against the concrete floor.  Blocking the connection.

I immediately regretted it.  Would it matter, when we were this close?  Would it help obscure her perception of me?  I had to climb to my feet-

I staggered, dropping onto all fours instead.

Dizzy.  Drained.  I’d given too much of myself, for too little.

She’d entered the room.  Through my peripheral vision, I could see her hesitate, losing her forward momentum.

The stuff from the barrel I’d kicked to the floor.  I’d almost forgotten.

Before she could get her bearings, I managed to find my feet.

She would be harder to hit.  She was nimble, already setting her weight to spring back.

“Stupid, fucking, impractical sword!”  I hit the weapon instead.  As she leaped back, she couldn’t  move it out of the doorframe.  One downward swing, and the pipe struck the blade.

It broke in four different places along the length.

Nevermind, I thought, that it had withstood worse impacts over the course of this skirmish alone.

I looked at her, saw her staring at the short stump of a sword that still stuck out from the hilt.

She moved her free hand over, and I could see the blade growing, repairing itself.

Fragile?

I struck out at it.  Not fancy, no style.  If she was the stylish, fighter, I was the brute, the barbarian, the madman.  Swinging with little caution or sense.  Picking a target, then swinging at it with all the strength I could spare.

I hit the weapon, and I hit her hand.

She dissolved, breaking down into sparkles, specks, and dust.

A trick?  An illusion?

When?  Where?  How?

No, it didn’t matter.  I needed to bring her out of hiding, and I knew I had only one thing that would get her to.

“Orn-” I started.

A hand reached around me, fingers jammed into my mouth.  Stopping me from speaking in the most base, simple way possible.

I bit, turning so I could see her.  In the doing, I wrenched the fingers I was biting, forcing her to partially bend over, arm twisting.  She still felt pain, apparently.  Quick and nimble as she was, there wasn’t a lot she could do once I had my teeth in her.

She still held the sword, and was drawing it back to thrust into my gut, delayed by the pain and imbalance I was causing with my teeth on her fingers.

I still held the pipe.  Except I was already bringing it around, driving it into the side of her stomach.

The weight of her falling down pulled her fingers out of my mouth.  I hit her prone body with the club.

I did it a few more times for good measure.  Hitting her sword-hand, head, shoulder, leg.  Meaty sounds.

“-nament,” I finished.  “Ornament.”

No fucking way was I ever saying that name a seventh time.

I dropped the club, staggering away.  When I dropped to all fours to throw up, it was equal measure exhaustion and revulsion.

Too many bad memories.  Fights that had gone very much like that one had, at the end.  Base, violent, ugly.

“I think I see why she might have picked you,” Ms. Lewis said.

“Blake was picked, then?”  Rose asked.  “It’s not just him being the second heir?”

“I already said too much.  Take your prize, Blake.”

I looked up at her.  She held a box in her hands.

“What’s that box you’re holding?” I asked.  I wiped at my mouth with my clean hand.

“Safety measure.  For your sake.  I did promise you would walk away unharmed, but for harm you brought on yourself, and that little brawl of yours could have gone either way.”

I closed my eyes.  Opening them took some effort.  Not because I was that tired, but because the way my head was swimming made me feel like I would like to keep my eyes closed and be still and quiet for the next few hours.

“I would hurry,” Ms. Lewis said.  “The others are outside, there is another familiar there.  They’ve called help, and the help will arrive within the next few minutes.  We’ll start running into the first of them as we leave the area, and if we get slowed down, the rest are going to catch up.”

I mumbled a reply.  I wasn’t even sure what I was saying.

“You okay, Blake?” Rose asked.

I could still hear that meaty sound of pipe hitting flesh.  I looked at the Faerie.

She was breathing, still.

“She’s not dead?” I asked.

“No,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Like most Others, the Faerie are very resilient, and she’s drawing a kind of power from her master as well.  Take your prize.”

“What?  What do I take?”

“Go with your instincts.  I might take the heart, in your shoes, but I’m not in your shoes.”

“Just carving the damn thing out?” I asked.  “To do what?”

“Eat it.  But it hardly matters.  Let’s hurry on our way.”

“No,” Rose said.  “The agreement was that we would duel the Faerie.  What if I challenged her now?”

“She’s not able to accept,” I said.

“She already did,” Rose said.  “So… if I declare it’s my turn… can I take a prize?”

“That’s sketchy,” I said, “And it feels like it’s begging for heaps of bad karma.”

“Some,” Ms. Lewis said.  “But you reaped some as well.  The question would be whether you could defeat someone who is already defeated.”

“Oh,” Rose said.  “Right.”

“I’m not saying it’s impossible.  It’s very doable, actually, but it requires time, and it requires you to come up with other ways of defeating her than physical.”

“I don’t understand,” Rose said.

I ran my hand through my hair.  “She’s talking about torture, Rose.  Torture the Other I just bashed until you beat her on some mental or emotional level, then claim a prize.”

“I don’t- how can I even, being inside the mirror?”

I ignored her.  I grabbed a piece of the broken sword, weighing it in my hand.

Sharp edge.  Good enough.

“If the Faerie can reach you, we could theoretically pass her hand or arm into your realm,” Ms. Lewis said.  “A tight fit, but if we broke the hand first…”

“No,” I said.  “Sorry, Rose, but no.”

“I don’t- I don’t want to.  I’m bothered we’re even talking about this.  I didn’t think I’d have to do something.”

“S’alright,” I mumbled.  I squatted beside the fallen Faerie.

“What are you thinking, Mr. Thorburn?”

“I’m thinking we give her back.  Is it doable?”

“It is.  Invoke the duel, make an argument, give off the right impression, a degree of fear…”

“Maybe,” I said.  “If it’s alright, can I use you to scare them?  I’m kind of done with that for right now.”

“As you wish.”

I nodded.  I reached down and cut away a lock of hair, then jammed it into my back pocket.  I tossed the piece of broken sword aside.

“Hey, Faerie.  If you’re paying any attention, turn into a bird, and I’ll see about giving you back.”

There was a long pause.

A broken flutter of wings, and the Other was a chickadee.

I picked her up as gently as I could.  I headed for the exit, stopping to get the hatchet and stowing it away in my jacket.

“Sorry, June,” I murmured.  “Thanks for the distraction.”

As I passed the line I’d drawn at the top of the stairs, I could feel connections unfolding around me.  Not between me and the practitioners, but between me and everyone else in the building.

A door slammed somewhere.  I could hear footsteps.

I used the Faerie’s blood to break the connection and buy myself time.

Emerging outside, I headed to the end of the alley.  I had to break more connections that were attaching to me from every direction.

Two girls.  One eleven or twelve or so, was sitting on the car hood, bundled up in a winter jacket, hat and blanket.

The other, twenty, was leaning against the driver’s side door.  Smoking.  But for the age gap, they were very similar in appearance.

They recognized me, and the older one stepped away from the car.  A canary sat on her shoulder, spreading it’s wings.

“Letita!” the younger girl called out.  Recognizing her familiar.  She moved the blanket.  What the fuck was she wearing?  Shiny skintight leggings?

I could see the fear in her expression.  Her hands clutched a golden plate that had been sitting in her lap.

No.  A small shield?  What did you call a shield like that?  Her implement.

She’d barely hit puberty, and she already had an implement and a familiar?

The older one didn’t attack.  She was staring at me.

“We dueled,” I said.  My voice sounded a little hoarse.  I wondered if I’d fall again here.  “Your… Letita and I did.  I won, I took my prize.”

“And?” the older girl asked.  “My turn?”

She didn’t look eager.  But she looked like she might be willing.

“It could be,” I said, but I raised my good hand, to stop her before she could do anything.  “But I want you to know two things, before you make that judgement call.”

“What two things?”

“First off, this woman with me is one of my grandmother’s lawyers.  She’s staying hands off, but she probably will intervene if it comes down to it.  She would have, if Letita here had taken the upper hand.  You get my meaning?”

“I felt something,” the little one said.  “Building up in fits and starts.”

“I called out a name,” I said.  “Letita might tell you that.  Six times out of the seven times I needed.”

“It felt bad,” she said.  Her eyes didn’t leave Letita.

“I’m telling you right now.  I had no intention of saying the name the seventh time.  I so swear.  I only needed to push Letita to act, use her impatience against her.”

The two nodded.

“The second thing I want you to know, is that we had every right to challenge her two more times and take two more prizes.  We didn’t.  We fought, I won, and I took what I’d earned.  Now, if you’ll allow me…” I said.  I very slowly approached.  I extended my hand, the little bird inside.  “…I’m giving her back.”

Once she took the Other from my hand, I backed away.

“You didn’t have to do that,” the older girl said.

I ignored her.  “Now, my question is, are you going to cause me more fucking problems, or are you going to let me get on with my day?”

“We were told to stop you,” the little girl said.  “You’re dangerous.  You don’t even realize how dangerous you all are.  We’re supposed to do anything and everything we can.”

“Hush, Joanna,” the older girl said.

“Well?” I asked.

“I should give my life to stop you,” the girl said.  “Joanna doesn’t know everything, but she’s essentially right.”

“I’m not talking about the past, or any of that,” I said.  “I’m talking about this, right here, right now.  Are we going to have a problem?  Do I need to handle you so I can deal with your family too?”

Somehow?

I must have looked less threatening than I had since I was little Joanna’s height.  Haggard, swaying on my feet, a little roughed up and dusty, hair a mess.

She reached into her pocket, and I tightened my grip on my hatchet.  On June.

She retrieved a phone.  She dialed and raised it to her ear.

“Mom?”

A pause.

“I know.  I see them.  But look at where he is.  He’s right in front of me and Jo right now.”

Another pause.

The connections around me were filling with power.  A spider web of interactions, waiting for something to start drawing the snare inward.

“Let him go, mom.  Tell Auntie to pass on the message to the cousins as well.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She raised a hand, one finger extended.

“I’ll explain later,” she said.

Another pause.

“No, you won’t like the explanation.  Call it a favor to me.  Call it- fuck, mom, listen- mom!”

Another pause.  She shut her eyes in frustration.  Her breath billowed out in a white fog as she sighed.

“Mom!  Fine!  Stop- stop and listen, don’t call it a favor, then.  Call it a repayment of the favor you owe me for taking Jo to her six-in-the-damn-morning dance lessons for the last half a year.”

I could hear her mother’s voice this time, faintly emerging from the phone, three paces away from me.

“Yes mom, I know that means I can’t whine about having to take her anymore.”

“I need to get back home before Ms. Lewis’ break ends,” I said.

“No, I don’t think that hell on earth is balanced out by six months of early morning car trips and boring waits in the gym.  But maybe ask me in half an hour.  Unless you want to take her today?  Since you already happen to be up?”

She smiled a little, as her mother responded, then hung up.  Her cheeks were flushed red with victory and the cold as she looked me in the eye.  “We’re even.”

“Thank you,” I said, again.  Weren’t thank-yous dangerous?  Or was that just with barber demons?

“I’m Penelope, by the way,” she said.  “My friends and family call me Penny.”

I felt something wet on my lip.  I thought it was maybe a snowflake, but when I rubbed it off, my finger came away crimson.

Blood.  Not mine.  The Faerie’s.

I spat it on the ground.  Spit and trace amounts of blood.

I looked up to see her looking a bit disgusted.  “Okay.”

I left Jo and Penelope behind as I went to go deliver the letter, Ms. Lewis one step behind me.

Damages 2.6

“Stop,” Ms. Lewis told me.  “Look.  Our destination.”

The building sat across the street.  Squat, unimpressive, with some large windows showing bookshelves on the other side.

“The library?”  Rose asked.

“A government institution.  If you find a lost driver’s license, you can leave it in a mailbox, and the post office will take it where it needs to go.  Leave a note clearly labeled for the police at a library…”

“And they’ll take it to the police,” Rose said.

“Why did we stop?” I asked.

“Two reasons.  Both having to do with attention.  First of all, I think it would be a damn shame if you were to put all this time and effort into this, only to see it shoved into a drawer and ignored because it is inconvenient, or thrown into the trash.  Give some thought to how you label it.”

I nodded, but my mind wasn’t feeling as sharp as usual.  I didn’t think it was blood loss, I hadn’t bled nearly that much, stabbing my hand, but I had suffered from blood loss before, and the symptoms weren’t so different.

“Something blatant? Rose asked.

“Something blatant.  Remember, presentation is tied to effect.  Be dramatic.”

“Something like, ‘For the eyes of the RCMP only: Contains information about the Molly Walker murder‘?”  Rose asked.  “Get the library people talking, word spreading, people asking about it?

“That’ll do,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Mr. Thorburn?”

I hesitated.  “Am I missing anything?  We’re about to leverage the supernatural stuff to try to ruin his non-supernatural life.  There’s no way this doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass.”

“We’re declaring war,” Rose said.  “But there’s nothing special there.  They declared it first.  We’re just responding.”

“Ms. Lewis?  Is there a factor I’m not paying attention to?”

“The rules about secrecy were established for everyone’s mutual benefit.  Inducting too many people into this world carries too much danger, too much weight.  There are no hard rules about doing this, but there are very, very few people who would be willing to, knowing the kind of enemies it makes, and the confusion and chaos it causes.”

“So…” Rose said, pausing for a second, probably to gather her thoughts.  “This isn’t one of those situations where a rule becomes law and law becomes natural law?”

“No.  I must say I’m wondering why you returned the familiar to its master and showed some restraint, only a few minutes ago, but you are responding in this fashion to a more indirect threat.”

I sighed.  I wasn’t in a state to offer an articulate response.

“He’s fucked up,” Rose said.  “Laird is.  He’s crazy, and he seems to be spearheading this whole thing against us.  Those kids, they were acting like they were following orders.  Going to some dance class, they saw us, they attacked.  I get the impression we changed their minds a bit.  I don’t think Laird is ever going to change his mind about us.”

“That’s a fair assertion,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Is this going to do enough damage, for the kind of response it’s going to get?  He is going to retaliate.”

“Probably,” I said.  “But how much worse can it be than him trying to kill us?”

Ms. Lewis said, “Individuals like him, typically, have effectively stocked up on good karma, so they might spend it in times of crisis.  I have a good idea about what’s happened, even if my information is incomplete, and I think he may have been holding back.  Acting upfront, informing you as to why he’s attacking you, being honest and helpful.  Inviting compromise.  Tempering himself.”

“And he’s going to stop?” Rose asked.  “Start going into debt to take us out?”

I glanced back the way we’d come.  Nobody following.  “He’s been holding back because he’s trying to decide if I’m a threat or someone who will happily sit back and wait until he’s ready to actively kill us.  I’m not sure if he’s made that decision yet, but I have to assume it’s sliding towards the latter.”

“Is it?” Rose asked.  “If you take the Duchamp thing just now into account, word is going to spread about what we did.  Shouldn’t we seem less threatening than we did?”

“You’re making that a question, and not a statement,” Ms. Lewis noted.

“It feels like a question,” Rose said.

“I agree.  It doesn’t feel like a certain thing,” I said.  “I’m more inclined to be paranoid, I’m betting they won’t tell the full story.  If only half the story gets told, then people in the Duchamp family are going to notice that the familiar is injured.  They’re going to know there was a fight.  That is going to reflect badly on us.”

“I agree,” Rose said.  “Yeah.  Well said.”

I nodded.  “Yeah.”

“So it’s settled.  You’ll send the letter, clearly marking it for what it is, so they can’t ignore it.  That raises the second point of interest.  The anonymous note loses its impact if Blake Thorburn, new to the area, is seen on a security camera, dropping the letter off.”

“I don’t see a camera,” I said.

“Are you looking?” Ms. Lewis asked.

Right.  I looked.  Connections.  Where was attention being devoted?

I couldn’t see anything.  Things were unfocused and unclear.  I could barely make out the spirits against the gentle snowfall.  “I think I’ve spent a bit too much of my personal power.  Rose?  Can you see?”

“I don’t think so,” Rose said.  Too fast a response.  I looked down to make sure that the mirror was dangling outside of my jacket.

“How come?” I asked.

“I just can’t.  I… don’t think I can see spirits, after all.  I was confusing it with something else.”

I frowned.  “Need more info than that.”

“…Later.  We’ll figure it out?”

“Right.”  I was too tired to argue.  “Fine, but that still means we have to figure this out.  Or we just ignore the cameras and deal with it.”

“You can do it,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Take your time, Blake, don’t focus too much on the particulars.”

I wasn’t happy, shouldering the burden here, but I did as she’d said.

Rose’s voice interrupted my observations.  “How much longer before you have to go?  We can’t take too long or we’ll wind up walking back without you.”

“We can’t,” Ms. Lewis said.  “But I did promise I would see you home, as safe as you allowed me to be.  I feel confident Blake can get a good grasp of this.”

“But you won’t do it for us,” Rose said.  Still talking when I was trying to focus.  “You can’t… except you had that box, and you were prepared to do something.”

“I do.  I was willing to violate the spirit of one oath to keep the letter of another.  I’m glad I didn’t have to.”

I tried to focus on the spirits, letting my vision blur to help ignore the snow.  Focus on the things that were rising.  I could see little clouds of fog around vents, where buildings were being heated.

Was I looking at it wrong?  The snow had its own spirits, as did the vents.

I relaxed a little.   The walls had their own spirits.  The cold air did.  I was trying too hard to see past things, and in the doing, I was missing the forest for the trees.

Taking it all in was easier, when I was as tired as I was.

The world had a pulse of its own.  Things flowed.  If I let myself get swept up in it, then I naturally saw the various things at play.  The direction the wind moved, the temperature, the weather…

Every time I got a grip on what I was sensing, I was already feeling my attention slip to the next.  There.  Cameras.  I could see the focus they were devoting to an area.  Almost like spotlights, as if I could see the outline of their field of view.  Some more focused than others.  A traffic camera here, a static and blurry image there.

I could see the areas people traveled, when the day was at its height.  The aftermath, the lingering emotions, almost like the community left a ghost in its wake.  A mood.

“Blake.”

I stirred.

“You haven’t been responding.  You okay?”

“My vision is swimming,” I said.

“Don’t get too deep,” Rose said.  “That’s dangerous.  Maybe you’re more vulnerable because you’re tired.”

“I think I am,” I said.  “I’m going to turn it off for now.  Keep from draining whatever charge is left in the battery, so to speak.”

“Were you successful?” Ms. Lewis asked

“I think I saw it.”

“Then please lead the way,” Ms. Lewis told me.

I did.  I didn’t have the benefit of the sight to make out where the cameras were, but I did remember their general locations.  I crossed the empty street, tracing a lazy ‘s’ on my way to the library.  The drop-off box was similar to a dumpster, only half the size, and had a sign in a plastic sleeve inside, explaining what it was and the pick-up hours.

“May I suggest saying a few words?” Ms. Lewis asked.  “Gestures and words can both lend weight to actions.  There is always something listening, after all.”

“I’m not up to much,” I said.  “I’m feeling pretty drained.  Is this usual?”

“No.  No it isn’t.  But your situation is a unique one.”

“You mean Rose.”

“I mean your relationship to Rose, yes.”

“I have questions,” I said, “But we should get this over with.”

“If you’re not feeling up to it, I can try saying something,” Rose said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Laird declared himself our enemy when we first met, acting against us, misleading us into thinking we had safe passage, and abandoning us.  His actions were in accord with the letter of the law, but not the spirit.  We now tender our retaliation, in keeping with letter and spirit of law, to the best of our knowledge.  Those who are witnessing us, beings of law, justice, and right, help guide this to the right hands.”

She glanced at me.

“Help guide it into the right hands,” I said, feeling just a little lame, that I couldn’t expand on the flowery, stately language.

I dropped the letter into the slot on the side of the book return box.

“Well said, Ms. Thorburn,” the lawyer said.

“Thank you,” Rose replied.

“You just pulled that out of your ass?” I asked.

“I’m not bad when it comes to that stuff,” Rose said.

“Most definitely not,” I said.

“The letter is delivered” Ms. Lewis said.  “You’ll want to be returning home, I expect?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I feel like I could sleep for hours.  This is the vestige thing, right?”

She smiled, “‘The vestige thing’, yes.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Cool.  Which raises a few questions I’ve been meaning to ask.”

“Keep in mind I’m here in a teacher capacity, not as your lawyer.”

“Sure,” I said.  “But this vestige thing-”

“I can’t tell you the particulars of the deal we made with the late Rose Thorburn.”

“Speaking hypothetically?” I asked.

“I won’t answer questions about a hypothetical situation so close to my real-world knowledge, lest I give up some information I shouldn’t.”

“Okay, speaking generally then, what advantages are there, to having a vestige partner?”  To making a close copy of someone?  Can you use that to get around contracts?”

“You can.”

“Rose can’t use magic.  Is that usual?”

“That’s more of a question of environment.  If Rose wanted more details on that, we could start billing you, and see what we could arrange.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.  “Environment?  She’s stuck in the mirror, but she’d have power elsewhere?”

“She’d have more power in virtually any other situation, if you’re talking about faculty, the ability to act.  If I wanted to say more than that, I’m afraid, again, I would need to bill you.”

“Again with the billing,” I said.

“Everything has a price, Mr. Thorburn.  Even a leisurely walk and talk with me.”

“What’s the price there?” Rose asked, a note of alarm in her voice.

“It gives me time to convince the latest diabolist of the Thorburn line, in ways both subtle and overt, to join us.  You two are growing to like me, just a touch, because I’m one of your only allies in a sea of enemies.  You’re growing to trust me, because I’m more or less trustworthy.  My knowledge can be granted in exchange for your trust.  Knowledge I deem valuable enough to exact more of a cost comes with a price tag.”

“You’re not going to share the knowledge on vestiges,” I said, “because you know it’s something big?  Something we need to figure out if we’re going to survive?”

“In part.  But, as a suggestion, perhaps we could go for a walk.  We’ll take a detour on our way back.  If I give you material you can use to find your own way, instead of giving you the complete, more costly answer.”

“A walk to where?” I asked.

“A bit up the main road here.  We’ll make it back in time.”

“No trick?  Nothing conniving here?” Rose asked.

“No.  Only an illustration.”

“Sure,” I said.

She smiled, pointing the direction.

It was only half a block before we reached the main road.  One four-lane street that ran north-to-south down the middle of Jacob’s Bell.  The buildings on either side were typical for any of the regular places between one of the major cities.  Fast food places, a big gas station that stood out as much as anything, a strip mall set off to one side, with a parking lot as large as all of the collected stores put together.  Here and there, there were other businesses, more for locals than people stopping in for a coffee and donut or to fill up their gas tanks.  A vet’s office in a repurposed old residence, fitting in the same general era as the Hillsglade House.  I made out a hospital off to the side, just off the highway.  One of the largest buildings here, and Hillsglade House was visible on the other end of the small town, looming over things.

We approached the highway.  The road dipped in a very deliberate way as it passed beneath, like someone might be overly cautious in avoiding hitting their heads on an overhang.

“The north end,” Rose said.

Right.  The expanded city, above the highway.

“The notes said we shouldn’t come here,” I said.  “Explicitly forbidden.”

Ms. Lewis said, “You’re with me, and I’m not going to let you enter the dangerous area.”

“The dangerous area?” Rose asked.  “Johannes’ area?”

“Yes.”

We made our way up the inclined that followed after the dip in the road.  As we crested the top of the rise, Ms. Lewis said, “What do you two see?”

It was the upper end of Jacob’s Bell.

“I’m not seeing anything special,” Rose said.  “Maybe I’m missing something.  Things get indistinct as they get further from the mirror Blake is wearing.  There are some reflective surfaces, but it’s kind of muddled.”

“Rose, I would suggest you look beyond the scope of the mirror.  Focus on the city in the distance.  Blake, use your sight.”

“My sight isn’t much better than my regular sight,” I said.  “I burned myself out during that fight.”

“Try.  This isn’t very hard, as these things go.  Fact is, I suspect it will be hard to ignore.”

That was ominous.

But I looked.

Through the sight, it was all different.  The sky was cast in red light, and I could see the crimson highlights on the clouds, as if the sun was in the midst of setting.

At five or six in the morning?

The buildings were twisted, the street more winding and narrow, the rooftops changing.  All towards one peculiar, oddly cramped aesthetic.

I could see people there.  Vaguely, from a distance, but they were people.

“It’s all lit up,” Rose said.  “How did we not see this before?”

“This is an illustration,” Ms. Lewis said.  “I can give you answers, but-”

“We’d have to pay for them,” I cut her off.  “Right.  You want us to reach our own conclusions?  I think it’s based on proximity.  We get closer, we’re stepping more into… there.”

“Well said.”

“It’s all lit up,” Rose said, again.  “Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“You don’t get it, Rose?”  I asked.  “Remember what Johannes said?”

“Yeah,” Rose answered me.  “He said I’d find myself in good company.  Maggie said it was because I was an Other, and this is some kind of amusement park for Others.  But that’s not it.  All of that stuff we’re looking at…”

“Vestiges,” I said.  “Or it’s one vestige.  A big one.  How’d he do it?”

“That is a very good question,” Ms. Lewis said.

“One that would be very costly to buy an answer for, I’m betting,” I said.  “Right.”

“He took over an area,” Rose said.  “He made it a demesnes… and this vestige is some kind of reflection of that demesnes.”

“Or he made the vestige,” I said, “And made that vestige some kind of territory he could base his demesnes on.”

“More likely the former than the latter,” Ms. Lewis said, “But I don’t think you’re too far off base.”

Rose spoke up, “He took over an area and then copied it.  But it’s different.  A vestige degrades with attention and stress, so maybe he’s shoring it up with something?  Some kind of power source that would twist it by association?”

“Or,” I said.  “Like other amusement parks, there’s a cost to visit.  A lot of little power sources.  Each one has a general influence, twisting things in a certain way when it fills in the cracks and gaps.”

“Oh god,” Rose said.  “Oh.  Maggie said it was a place for Others to relive the old days, before mankind got its footing.  I thought maybe it was scaring people, picking off one every few months or so.  But it isn’t.  If the people were copied over too, if they aren’t real people, then what’s to stop Others from hurting them all the time?  Openly hunting them down and eating them?  Making it a constant, daily thing?  Those people would be stuck there, like I’m stuck in the mirror.”

“Except they have company,” I said.

“I think we’ve gleaned enough from this little case study,” Ms. Lewis said.

I nodded, a little numb.  Rose didn’t say a thing, and I couldn’t see her to know what she was doing or how she was reacting.  Going by her tone of voice just a moment ago, I was guessing she was horrified.

We collectively began our trek back to Hillsglade House.

“What do you think I wanted you to take away from that?”  Ms. Lewis asked.

“A place can be a vestige,” I said.

Ms. Lewis smiled, “True, but that isn’t the answer to my question.”

“Vestiges can be twisted into something else,” Rose said.  “And… I’d have power there?”

“You have power anywhere,” Ms. Lewis said.

“I mean I can have magical ability there.”

“Again, you can have magical ability anywhere, Rose,” Ms. Lewis said.  “But that’s not the issue you’re trying to address.  Your concern is the here and now.  Right now you’re in a world of mirrors, largely powerless.  Blake was asking how you could achieve more faculty.”

“And now we know,” I said.  “You can go to a place with more people and things to interact with, Rose.  I’m not sure you’d want to, given what’s going on over there, but you could.”

“I could,” Rose said.

A short answer, noncommittal.

“So this psycho guy builds up this huge demesnes, converts it into a kind of feeding pen for Others,” I said.  “But how do we do the same thing?  I’m getting the feeling we’re in dire need of these three big power sources.  Tool, familiar, demesnes.”

“You do what you did today,” Ms. Lewis said.  “You claim power where you can, then you make a play, using that power.  Look at what you’ve accomplished already.”

“An ice-hatchet and a lock of hair,” I said.

“The hair was an interesting choice,” she said.  “Why did you choose it?”

“Because I didn’t want to hurt her while she was down, I didn’t want to mess with her clothing because that’s a little creepy, and I don’t want to carry around some broken piece of metal from the sword… there aren’t any other things I could grab.”

“There are a great many other things you could have taken.  Many more abstract than the physical things you’re focusing on.  But you chose the hair.  You said you’d take some power, when you talked to her.  Did you break your oath?”

“I… honestly don’t know,” I said.  “I said a lot of things, right then.”

“If you lie,” Ms. Lewis said, “You’ll suffer for it.  You’re already drained.”

But she said it with a small smile.  As if she already knew the answer.

“I don’t think I lied,” I said.  “I didn’t feel like my vision got that much worse between when the fight started and when we dropped off the letter.  When I said that stuff, I spoke from the heart.  No deception, being direct, being blunt, like you said.”

The smile widened a small fraction.  “And?”

“And… I said I’d take power.  I thought, taking the hair, well, if a Faerie uses glamour all over the place, where are they going to use it more than in their personal appearance?”

“You thought all that through?” she asked.

“No.  I barely thought.  I was focused more on the fact I’d just puked, and barely being able to stand.  I mean, my actions make sense to me, looking back, but it wasn’t a big thing where I outlined it to myself step-by-step.”

“Well, your instincts were good.  Some Faerie give tokens to their favored humans and practitioners.  Little objects, trinkets, scraps of cloth.  Objects infused with glamour.  These objects carry a kind of charge, an influence.  A coin infused with a glamour that it’s lucky.  An earring that’s infused with another sort of glamour, granting an ability.”

“And the lock of hair?” I asked.

“Is only a lock of hair, infused with a small glamour to keep it lustrous and pretty.  But it’s infused with glamour, nonetheless.  In the old stories, there are tales of people given gifts, to use at certain times.  Throw this hairbrush down, and it becomes a forest of trees.  Throw this ribbon down, and it becomes a river.  One big glamour, expending an item.”

“This is the same thing?” I asked.

“It can be either.  A simple object with a simple benefit, or a charge of glamour to be spent.  Whatever you do with it, you’ll want to cultivate it.  Give it your attention, make it a part of your routine, and it will gradually get stronger.  Be careful, however, that you don’t get used to it.  Glamour is innately elusive, subtle, and misleading, images striving to slip from the conscious attention to the unconscious attention.  There is a reason we don’t have troves of these infused objects lying about.  In the majority of cases, they become a part of the scenery and routine, they lose importance, and they seize on that to become unimportant.  The fortunate coin is unfortunately lost, you see.”

“You said everything has a cost,” I said.  “What’s the cost, here?”

“A very good question,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Tell me, how does it go in the stories?  A woman gets the favor of a family of brownies, provided she rubs ointment on the brownie child’s eyes once a night.  She’s warned she should never use it on herself, but she does, and she gains the ability to see the brownies as they go about their business in the city.  She is discovered, and as punishment, they strike her blind.”

“Ironic punishment,’ Rose said.  “Karma.”

“The universe seeks balance, and it can be heavy handed.  You might earn the earring that gives you an uncanny ability to listen, and this is tolerable, because you earned it.  But when the earring is lost, balance is restored, and-”

“You might go deaf,” I said.  “Or you could lose the ability to hear kind words, or you could get the ears of an ass and your ass-ears can’t understand everyone’s mocking whisperings behind your back.  I think I get the drift.”

“You do.  Think of what you’re willing to lose before you turn that lock of hair to a purpose.  Should you misuse it or treat this little thing of power poorly, you’ll pay a price equal to what you gained.  But for the time being, I recommend you take time for it.”

“If nothing else, it’s a hair grenade,” I said.  “Pull the pin, throw it, make a spiderweb or something.”

“I don’t think it’s a suitable thing for fighting,” Ms. Lewis said.  “You won’t get as much effect out of it there.  It could even backfire.  Keep in mind that it was and is hair, and it lends itself to similar purpose.”

“Right,” I said.  Hair’s purpose?

We were approaching Hillsglade House.  Only a few minutes away, now.

“Where do I go looking, for a familiar?” I asked.

“Where do you go looking for a date?” Ms. Lewis asked me.  “You’re looking to make a long-term commitment.  You don’t leap into it, you put yourself out there, in the sort of place that you might ordinarily like to spend your time, doing what you do best, or doing what you enjoy most.  You introduce yourself to those of similar interests.  Get to know them.  See how compatible you are.  Only after some time do you make the investment.”

“That kid just now found a familiar at thirteen or so,” I said.

It was Rose who answered me, not Ms. Lewis.  “Arranged marriages exist even today.  Even in Canada, they’re happening.  Not so hard to believe a family would set something up with familiars, given how backwards this community seems.”

“Exactly,” Ms. Lewis said.

“Okay, then forget familiars.  Implement?  I mean, we read the books on this stuff, but-”

“But you’re lost.  The implement requires a more intimate knowledge of yourself.  Who are you, and how do you address the rest of the world?  Some people find this an easy decision to make.  They know they are warriors at heart, or thinkers.  For others, it’s a very nuanced choice.  A small few rush into it, and they find they’ve crippled themselves.”

“Haste makes waste,” Rose said.

“Hm?” I asked.  “That sounds familiar.”

“Romeo and Juliet?” Rose asked.  “Last year of high school?”

“I didn’t have a last year of high school,” I said.  “I left home.  Still sounds familiar.”

“One of the things we read,” Rose said.  “Idea’s the same.  We rush into this thing, getting one of the big three power sources, we could wind up crippling ourselves.”

“Except the Duchamps are giving kids this stuff.  Setting them up with deals.  Aren’t they kind of making waste with haste?”  I asked.

“Making waste with haste?” Rose asked me.

“It sounded better before I said it out loud,” I said.

Ms. Lewis said, “They’re making a sacrifice on one front for assets on another.  Children raised in that fashion may struggle in some respects, but they’ll have a foundation of having grown up in this world.  Experience and knowledge.”

“Well, I don’t have experience,” I said.  “I don’t have time, either.”

We reached the block where the hill and house sat inside the short wall and fence.

“I don’t have the time, ability, or inclination to go into too much detail about why,” Ms. Lewis said, “But I would recommend you hurry, Mr. Thorburn.  Haste might make waste, but as you say, you don’t have time.”

Rose asked, “So what do we do?  We can’t afford to spend too many days doing what we did with the ghost or picking fights.  We won’t make it.  We can’t get real power without having power to start with.”

Ms. Lewis said, “To clarify, you do have power.  You simply aren’t willing to use it to its full effect.”

“I don’t want anything like the barber as a lifelong companion,” I said.

“It isn’t as grave a thing as you’re imagining, Mr. Thorburn.  I’ve tried to equip you with what you need to defend yourself and defend Ms. Thorburn in the mirror there, but taking on a lifelong companion you don’t have any fondness for is a very small compromise, when your life expectancy is as short as it is.”

“I…” I started, but I found myself lost for words.

“I’m telling you the truth, Mr. Thorburn.  Look at me.  You’ll see I don’t hesitate, I won’t glance away, my eyes don’t waver.  You know I can’t lie, but I am telling you an utter truth.  You are not long for this world.  Barring exceptional circumstance, and I do mean exceptional, you are going to be replaced by the next heir.”

The words hit me hard enough that I reeled a bit.  I wasn’t quite up to par, I was a bit wobbly.  Still, it still said something that I found myself stepping back, reaching for the painted-iron railing so I could hold on and keep from landing ass-first on the sidewalk.

She continued, relentless, “Maybe in weeks, maybe in months, and maybe in years.  There is a good chance it is going to be horrible.  It might be violent, and if it is, that will be merciful, because the other sorts of horrible are worse than mere violence.”

“I-” I started, but the words weren’t coming out.  “I- You’re kind of less likeable than you were ten minutes ago.”

“You might not like me for saying this much, but you’ll respect it, and I think that, provided you last long enough, you’ll see the honesty in it.  You have options.  Our firm is one such option. You’re callow, you’re new to this, and your value to us is particularly low.  But we can negotiate with you and Ms. Rose here, and I think we can find a way to keep you both on board.  Reaching out to things like the barber is another option, power at a high price, power you could use to live.”

“I’m not so sure those are options,” I said.  Giving something that evil and fucked up a foothold in reality?  Letting them prey on others?  Or making deals, and risking a mistake that resulted in the very thing the Duchamp and Behaim families were worried about?  Hell on earth?

“The third option, the most noble of your options, would be to make the most of your time, fight every step of the way as you fought with that Faerie, and come to accept your reality for what it is.  Make decisions, hurry, make errors in the process, but take the power you need, and use that power to pave a way for your successor, remove her enemies from the world, and pray that your work means she doesn’t have to do the same for her successor in turn.”

I thought of Kathryn.  The next in line.  The oldest of us cousins.  A woman with a husband and newborn kid.

I couldn’t see it.

“Is this some trick?  Some fancy wording to scare me, kick my ass and get me into gear?”

“I can’t lie, Blake Thorburn,” Ms. Lewis told me. The words were uncomfortable, heavy, and they took the wind out of me.

“That’s… not fair,” I said.

“I can only tell you how things stand.  No, it isn’t graceful or pretty.  You aren’t liable to be as happy or powerful as you would be in a world where your grandmother and the ones who came before her weren’t diabolists.  You need to complete those rituals, because the fourth option, meeting a stupid, pointless end?  It’s a very real, very likely option.”

“And me?” Rose asked.

“Your future is tied to his.  His success is your success.  His failure is your failure.  Work with him, find a balance, and help him, so he might help you.  Now, I’ve given the two of you a great deal of information and a great many answers.  Hopefully that sets you on a more productive path.  I’m hoping that path is one that leads to us, when you’re stronger, more knowledgeable, and more useful to us.  If it supports your family, however, I’m nearly as content with that end result.  But please, don’t die a pointless death.”

“Sentiment?” I asked.  My voice was a bit clipped with anger.  I’m not sure if I would have toned it down if I’d known it would be before I’d opened my mouth.

“Yes, sentiment.  I’d hate to think my time here accomplished so little, helping two novices who summarily got themselves murdered.  That’s a large part of the sentiment, if not the largest.  I did, I admit, enjoy your company, and I enjoyed having some time to relive my earliest days as a practitioner.  New to this world.  That’s another part of it.  But it’s mostly business, not sentiment, and I can’t do much work with dead clients.  One of us partners will see you shortly, to see how far you’ve come.  With my advice here in mind, I’m going to hope that you have one of the rituals complete, Mr. Thorburn.”

“You’re setting a deadline?” I asked.

“I am.  Decide for yourself.  Do you know where you want to be for the rest of your life?  The kind of place you would make your home?  The kind of place that is as comfortable with you as you are with it?  Find a Demesnes.  Fight for it, and if you’ve picked the right place, that fight won’t be so hard.”

“There isn’t a place I want to be,” I said, “Except somewhere that isn’t here.  There’s my apartment in Toronto, but even that’s more about the people than the place itself.”

“Do you know the company you’re willing to keep?  You need to know who you are to know who or what you might spend the rest of your life with.  Do you have interests?  A passion?  Find an Other in keeping with those ideas, and make them your Familiar.”

We’d stopped by the gate.

Lifelong companionship?  I couldn’t even wrap my head around that.  I was only barely learning to trust friends, and they were adapting to me in turn.  Those were friends.  Exceptional, rare, people.  Finding a familiar, among a sea of cunning and conniving Others who wanted to murder me?

“No,” I said.  “I don’t think I can do that.  Not in a month.”  Not in a year.

“Then it’s a question of direction, of focus, figuring out how you’ll address the situation you’re in, how you address any situation.  A cup, a container, to store power?”

Useful, but no.

“A weapon, to fight back?”

I thought of hitting the Faerie with the pipe.  The sound of meat on flesh.

I shook my head.

“A defensive object?  A symbolic one?  A personal one?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I’m sorry.”

“You have a little under a month to find out.  Now, I should be going about now, and I think you have a guest waiting for you.”

I turned to look.  A girl in a checkered scarf, sitting on the stairs by the front door.

“Maggie,” Rose said.

“Shall I walk you up to the door?”

“I don’t think it could hurt,” I said.

We made our way up.  Maggie gave Ms. Lewis a wary look as we reached the bottom of the steps.

“Problem?” Ms. Lewis asked.

“Nope,” Maggie responded.  “Who’re you?”

“An acquaintance of the late Mrs. Thorburn,” the lawyer said.

I could see Maggie’s eyes widening.

“Oh…” she said.  She made a face, like she was trying to get something out and couldn’t.  A stutterer mid-stutter.  “…Golly.”

“Golly,” Ms. Lewis responded, deadpan.

I let myself into the house, then turned around, standing just inside the doorframe.  Safe.

“Is that all, Mr. Thorburn?”

“I think so,” I said.  “Um.  Ms. Lewis.”

“Yes, Mr. Thorburn?”

“I’m not feeling too articulate.  I’m a little wrung out, metaphorically speaking.  But… thank you.  Sincerely, thank you.  All of that information, even the talk about me dying, it helps.”

It helped, but it didn’t make it easier to swallow.

She smiled a little.  “Good on you.  Manners matter.  I’m glad if my advice helps you, even the less pleasant bits.”

I watched her walk away.

“You okay, Blake?” Rose asked.

“I nearly forgot about mirror-girl,” Maggie said.  “Hi there, mirror girl.”

Her lighthearted tone was very much in contrast to what I was feeling.  Ms. Lewis had waited until the last minute or two to lay the heaviest stuff on me.

I sighed, running my hand through my hair.  I wanted nothing more than to shut the door in Maggie’s face and then collapse and sleep for the next ten hours, but I couldn’t offend a… whatever Maggie was.  Not an ally, but not wholly an enemy either.  At this point I was willing to settle for an enemy pretending to be a friend.

“Hi, Maggie,” Rose said.  “We might have to talk to you another time, if possible.”

“Sure,” Maggie said.  “I just woke up extra early so I could see you guys before school, but whatever.  No pressure.”

Only a teeny bit sarcastic.

“We were just talking about some pretty big stuff, and we nearly got killed in a fight,” Rose said.

“Sure.  I get it.  I’ll bug you another time.”

She hopped to her feet, rubbing at her legs and rear end where she had been sitting on the cold stairs.

Before she could go, I called out, “Maggie.”

She turned.

“You have an implement?  Familiar?  Demesnes?”

“Yes, no and no.”

“Can I see?”

She bent down, reached into her boot, and withdrew a small knife in a sheath.

When she pulled it free, though, I saw it wasn’t a knife.

The little dagger had a funny blade, wavy.  It looked more decorative than useful.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Kriss-style athame.  It’s used a lot in Wicca, but that’s more because this one guy was a blade aficionado.  I like it more for its roots as a sacrificial blade.”

“You do much sacrificing?” Rose asked.

“Nah.  But I like the old stuff, the mysteries, the biblical stories about God as a deity of sacrifice and blood.  It resonated with me.”

“That’s not reassuring,” I said.

“I’m not the reassuring type,” Maggie said.  “Why do you need reassuring, anyway?”

“I was thinking-” I started.  Then I stopped.  I didn’t quite have the wherewithal to say everything that needed to be said.  To outline the key points, to make sure we were careful.

“You want to invite her inside?” Rose asked.

I felt a measure of gratitude.

“Yeah.  But I need you to do the wording thing.”

“Do you agree to do us and our property no harm?”

“Heck yeah.”

“You enter with no ill will in your heart?”

“I’m loving the old-school wording.  You guys are inviting me inside and maybe giving me a peek at something new?  You’re my new best friends.  No negative intentions to speak of.  No cunning, hostility, tricks, traps, lies, deceptions, distractions, violence or any of that intended.”

“You’ll take nothing of ours unless you have express permission, and take nothing you learn inside these walls to our enemies?”

“Heck with those guys, your secrets are yours, and I’m not stupid enough to tank my karma by betraying hospitality and stealing.  No, if you need me to actually say it, I won’t steal and I won’t tell anyone.”

“You accept that this invitation is this one time only?”

“I accept.  Except I gotta leave in, like, twenty minutes.  School.  I kind of promised the dads, and they know about this magic stuff, even if they aren’t into it, and they aren’t above squeezing promises out of me.”

Rose had gone silent.

“Alright then,” I said.  “The house is getting cold with the door open like this.  Come on in.”

Maggie practically skipped in her hurry to come indoors.  The door shut heavily behind her.

Gathered Pages: 2

Famulus: The Familiar

Chapter One: Preface and Introduction

Famulus is a result of many years’ teaching in private circles.  As it became vogue to hire tutors around the year 1785, powerful members of the community gained a certain prominence, not-insignificant profits, and found themselves wrestling with a great deal of frustration.  This frustration stemmed from the fact that one tutor would teach one thing, which the next tutor would have to correct or account for.  They exchanged correspondence, to find out what had been taught and why, and opened discussions on how things might be done better.

No subject had quite held much importance or drove more heated discussions than the familiar ritual.  A lifelong bond between a human and a spirit, a connection forged between them and fed with power to be made permanent.

The word familiar comes from the Latin famulus, meaning servant.  It came to refer to household and family, and over time, transitioning to the French familier, it came to mean ‘intimate, on a family footing’.  In all of these meanings, description, ritual and word are linked.  The familiar becomes family, the bond is intimate, and there is an implication of servitude.

Even after two hundred years of discussion and refining of this material, several ideologies and approaches stand out.  These details are discussed in separate chapters.  Each chapter that follows is preceded by a set of case studies.

In chapter two, we discuss the familiar itself.  What it is.  The limitations.  The diversity in approaches, which will be expanded on in subsequent chapters.

In chapter three, we discuss the bond.  The key points, early approaches, modern approaches, universal constants in the human-Other relationship, and the shape of the relationship before and after the ritual is enacted.

In chapter four, we look at the social contexts and environment.  Differences in familiars by region, microsocial factors, macrosocial factors, and cultural factors.  Both the practitioner-familiar relationship to the outside world and the outside world’s relationship to the practitioner-familiar relationship will be discussed.

In chapter five, we look at the familiars themselves.  Corporeal and non-corporeal beings, beings from a delineated subtype with a pedigree or subcuture and Others who are unique and standalone.

Case Study for Chapter Two: Annabelle and Tromos, Steed of Enyo.

The penthouse apartment is dark and quiet.  The rain traces streams down the windows, and despite the gloom, neither occupant has made an effort to turn on the lights or ignite one of the lanterns that seem so prevalent in the space.  There are no walls in the apartment, and everything from the bed to the kitchen is visible, decorated in a clear, distinctive style.  In other homes, there are signs of things that don’t fit; gifts that were received which do not match the owner’s style, or things that were bought because they were inexpensive.  Annabelle has made no such concessions, and everything in the space matches, with a motif of wrought iron, crisp linen and very solid oak fixtures for the furniture.  Chains are visible, hanging from the bedframe, and there are various instruments of war mounted on racks and walls, both typical spears and swords, shields, and the less typical meteor hammer, Eastern weapons and a wicked mancatcher that sits just above the chair she has chosen to sit in for our interview.  Viewed under the Sight, every one of these objects vibrate with power.

Annabelle herself is stately and elegant, wearing a simple black dress that wouldn’t be out of place in a business setting, her hair styled upward, but her feet are bare.  As she sits in her chair, Tromos lies under her feet, his head just under one of Annabelle’s bare feet, which moves periodically to stroke him.  The familiar wears the guise of a great black battle-scarred tibetan mastiff, with three different spiked collars ringing its neck.

Interviewer M. Saville (S):  The tape recorder is on.  Good evening.  Thank you for agreeing to this.

Anabelle (A):  Your offering was adequate.

[Note:  The Interviewer brought a Macallan 1949 Single Single highland malt as payment for the hospitality and interview.]

S:  I’m glad.  Shall we start with the basics?  Who are you?  Do you have any focus to your craft?

A:  I am Lord of this city.  Conventional wisdom calls me a Valkyrie.

S:  A shaman, imbuing objects with power and incorporeal Others.

A:  Yes.

S:  And Tromos, Steed of Enyo?  I know who and what you are, but I’d like to have it on the record for the benefit of our readers.

Tromos, Steed of Enyo (T):  You may call me Tromos, we can do without the title to hurry this along.  I was the steed of a goddess of war and ruin.  The gods I served, fought beside, and fought against have grown weaker in recent years.  While my gods withered and grew small, their worshipers few, I turned to creating dreams of utter terror, and I have survived the centuries.

A:  Conventional wisdom would call my Tromos a Nightmare.

S:  How did you meet?

A:  An enemy of mine sent him against me, to deny me sleep and weaken my position before negotiations.  It worked.  An unfamiliar battlefield, a powerful foe.  Terror dreams so bad that they gave me nightmares for weeks after the fact.  My enemy took the upper hand.  They decided to use Tromos again.  I suspect to weaken my position, because I was a contender at the time for Lord of the city.

S: And?

A: It worked the second time, but I held my seat.  On the third time… you do know the rule of three, don’t you?  Third time’s a charm, so to speak.  There’s a bit more power in it.  That third victory matters more than the first two put together.

S: In some areas.  It has power because we give it power.

A: My opponent gave it power, then.  On the third attempt, I beat Tromos, and there was an advantage in that, more than I might have had if I’d won on the first or second time.  I turned Tromos against the one who set him on me, then I turned him on the co-conspirators, and I directed him to a handful of the people who tried to take advantage of my diminished faculties.  We came to like each other.

T:  She has something of the poise of the gods I used to serve.  She was ruthless in dealing with her enemies, which is good.  When she showed that she could become Lord by her own merit, I accepted the deal.

S:  Can I ask what the balance of power is between you?

A:  I take power from Tromos.  He shores up my weaknesses, as I’m focused on physical applications.  Objects I can hold.  His power lies in emotion, in dreams, and he is a divine being.  When I need strength against something I can’t chain down or impale with a spear, I borrow power from my familiar.  He herds the spirits so I might bind them into objects.  Through my connection to him, everything I do and touch conveys a trace of fear to others.

S: What does Tromos get out of the bargain?

T:  Were I to ask you if you could take four years without having to eat, if you did not feel like it?  Four years where you did not suffer any if you did not sleep?  That is what this is to me.  I am anchored in this world.  So long as I am bound to her, I will not degrade, I will not hunger.  Any power I take can make me stronger, and so long as she does not fritter it away, which she will not, I will be in a better place than I was before.

S:  What happens after?  Annabelle isn’t immortal, I presume.

A:  We’ve talked about that.

T:  I enjoy her company.  If she is strong enough, she will join me in the dreams.  When I visit nightmares unto others, I ride them down.  The great black wolf, the bull, the horse, the brutish man.  They flee, tripping and injuring themselves, climbing to their feet, only to trip again, until they are too battered to stand.  Or they run out of strength and hear my footfalls as they lie there, panting, and then they feel the injuries.  They feel pain, they know terror.  I could see Annabelle there.  A rider astride me, a taunting voice, someone to trip them up one final time, to bar their way.  When we were not riding down our prey, we might roam, visit realms, domains and demesnes freely open to Others.

A:  That sounds like a fun way to spend a few decades or centuries.

S:  She would be subordinate to you, then, Tromos?  A passenger you carry with you through the world of dreams?

A:  As much as Tromos is subordinate to me now, by which I mean not at all, not in practice.

T:  I would not have it.

S:  Regrets?  Things you didn’t expect?

T:  You learn a great deal about humans, being mortal, spending so much time around them.  I’ve grown better at what I do.  Knowing the physical responses, what it feels like to have a heart thudding in the chests.

A:  It opened up a whole world for me.  Dream, fear, a bit of the divine.  I’ve taken a more old-school path, Valkyrie-wise, with a little bit of worship in there.

S: No regrets, then?

A:  None worth speaking of.  I mean, I probably won’t ever marry.  Or have friends.  Anyone who interacts with me too much has bad dreams.  But I’m at peace with that.

S:  Anything else to add?

A:  We’re wrapping up already?  No.  Nothing else.

■

Implementum

Chapter Five: Symbol of Office

This chapter, like previous chapters, has a dual purpose.  The first is on a new subject: the effects on personal presentation and the status afforded by one’s implement.  Second, by examining the role of the implement on a symbolic, social level, we can review the major elements of the implement covered already in this text and view these things in another light.

When addressing the relationship between the implement and the context we find it in, we aren’t interested in the implement that just so happens to be found in a particular context.  Rather, we are concerned with how implements of a particular type form trends and patterns as they find their ways to certain types of individual, and the status and ideas they present to others.

To these ends, we will be using some of the twenty-one example implements we used in previous chapters to illustrate.

The Stone is, of course, not an implement anyone would choose.  It is empty, base, simple and unrefined.  However, as in previous chapters, the stone can serve to introduce and illustrate ideas.  Fitting, perhaps, given the stone’s already stated nature as the ‘zero’ of implements.

What is the stone’s relation to others?  There are three dimensions we can study:

The Declarative.  What does the stone convey to others, in terms of what it is and what it says about you?  In every case, every obvious aspect about the object itself will say something about the wielder.  If the stone is rough, it may convey the wielder is rough.  An ornate object might convey the wielder has a certain prestige.  When you read the second chapter and imagined the type of individual who might wield a stone as an implement, did you think of a cave man or thug?  Someone earthy?  Someone crude?  Someone stupid?  Certainly possible, if the stone is so heavy it cannot be readily carried, and the practitioner still chose it.  This is the implement’s declarative aspect.  From the manner that the object must be transported or carried, displayed or hidden, we can determine certain things about a practitioner.

The Authoritative.  What does the stone convey to others when it is used?  In chapter three, we discussed the effect of the implement on the practice.  This is a related element, but our concern is on others, and others will find the stone and any workings utilizing the stone to be blunt, direct, unrefined, and hard to ignore once it comes to bear.

Socio-cultural. What groups use this implement?  Why?  What is their focus?  From here, we draw statistics from communities around the world where implements are used.  We don’t have hard data on who might have used the stone as an implement or where, as it isn’t in common or uncommon use.

The remainder of the implements, Declarative, Authoritative and Socio-Cultural:

The Wand

Declarative – The wand is not in common use in the world, barring stage shows.  However, it is easily hidden, indicating a balance between the two worlds.  It can easily be decorated or high quality, and is distinctly of practitioners and the practice.  As such, the wielder can be assumed to be focused on practitioners and their workings.  The result might be an ease with altering or adjusting the work of others, defense against workings, and especially offense against workings (see the notes on the Authoritative, below).

Authoritative – The Wand is short and readily hidden.  It is adroit, easily flourished, stylish and not without some small versatility.  It lends itself to creativity and movement, but is phallic and direct in demeanor, implying conviction and a more aggressive nature when brandished in seriousness.

Socio-Cultural – The Wand is predominantly used in London, with a surveyed sixty-three percent of practitioners carrying wands there.  In the practitioner schools in the United Kingdom, wands are provided to the students by default, for their convenience, easy portability, and a prevailing sentiment that the wand is the strongest implement of choice for practitioner dealings against hostile practitioners.

The Talisman

Declarative – The talisman indicates an idea or object of importance to the wearer.  It can be readily worn in plain sight, but indicates a manner of symbolism and power that isn’t evident at first sight.  The wearer might be assumed to be more intuitive than direct, more wise or focused on the abstract than brash or real.  The nature of the talisman, once it is recognized as an implement, might indicate a great deal about the wearer, leading to fast conclusions.

Authoritative.  The talisman is subtle and readily hidden, but unlike the wand or knife, it isn’t inherently threatening.  The emphasis might be on symbols and depictions, secrets and bindings, but not necessarily traps, as well as elements of larger fixtures.  As something worn, it tends to relate to the practitioner and their being, and to the practitioner and things they can touch or touch the talisman to.

Socio-Cultural.  Talismans used to be worn by sects in what would become Ireland, but they have fallen out of favor, given their naturally passive nature.  It is interesting to note the recurring rise and fall of talismans as implements in sisterhoods, with some appearing in small covens, even in modern times.

The Scepter

Declarative.  The scepter is bold, brilliant, almost always dramatic in appearance, and is impossible to ignore.  It is not readily hidden, and with its natural link to presence, station, and organization, suggests a kind of personal power and aspiration on the part of the wielder.  Despite the phallic shape, the scepter is rarely pointed, but is instead held, prominent and visible.

Authoritative.  The focus of the scepter is not necessarily on striking, nor does it flourish so well as the wand.  The scepter is focused, instead, on presentation.  The wielder of a classic scepter might be more focused on the manner of things, not alteration, but on granting and lending effects to things.  As the king wields a scepter to represent the royal family, the scepter wielder’s reach may also extend to their organization or family.

Socio-Cultural.  Few organizations make use of scepters en masse.  Instead, the scepter is chosen in isolated cases as a statement, a subtle challenge that indicates a desire for power or station in some form, or one’s representation of their family.  The largest group that might be said to make regular use of the scepter would be the Anglo-influenced Japanese families of practitioners, who have taken on the Western traditions of choosing implement, familiar, and demesnes for their personal power.  The proposed head of a household of practitioners bears a symbol of office that resembles the scepter in execution, though it is typically a blade that never leaves its sheath.

The Sword

Declarative.  Few implements are so obvious as the sword in their declarative purpose.  Phallic in every respect, direct, obvious, impossible to hide, it is a declaration of war while drawn and implies a readiness for battle while kept on one’s person.

Authoritative.  The sword is used to attack above all else, and can puncture all but the strongest defenses, and it lends the same to the workings its practitioner uses.  Better at deflecting than defending, the sword remains predominantly concerned with war and offensive and defensive uses.

Socio-cultural.  In the United States and England, the Sword as an implement has an unfortunate tendency to come about when young men decide what their implement will be.  At this time in their lives, their hormones are at the highest point and their ‘maleness’ is most pronounced.  Nearly nine percent of male practitioners under the age of eighteen pick the sword, only to find it serves less of a purpose as they reach adulthood.  Some have suggested that this is linked to the same trend where youths are introduced to the practice and largely abandon it later in life.

The Chalice

Declarative.  The chalice is a hard item to carry about day to day, though it can be kept in a purse or bag.  At the same time, it is not explicitly out of place in the world.  More often, however, the chalice is ornamental, found in a home or on a table or desk rather than outside that home or room.  The chalice is explicitly female, in shape (note the profile of the chalice itself), in the link to water and wine, and the passive, receptive nature of the piece.  The chalice is not the province of women alone any more than the sword belongs to men alone, but a man wielding a chalice might be viewed in a light very similar to a woman holding a sword, especially by the more traditional.  As a drink is rarely taken alone, the chalice might be declare something on a social level.

Authoritative.  The chalice is a container, and as such, can be used to hoard a measure of power, but unlike the box, it does not contain or store it long-term.  Many will use the chalice to hold blood from a sacrificed individual or being, and as such it becomes a battery for power.  As the chalice holds liquid, the implement allows the wielder to hold or sustain effects, using the aforementioned battery.

Socio-Cultural.  The use of the chalice wanes in almost perfect accordance with the rise of women’s rights and female independence.  Once a traditional and even expected implement for woman practitioners, the chalice is being replaced by things more personal, dropping from a fifty-nine percent usage in Europe to an eleven percent usage at the time of this text’s publication.

Exercises for the Novice

Take time to consider how the other fifteen iconic implements might be viewed and exercised in a declarative, authoritative or socio-cultural light:  Tome, Ring, Chakram, Plate, Staff, Coin, Emblem, Chain, Skull, Knife, Standard, Lens, Mask, Lantern, Trumpet, and Coffer.

■

Demesnes

Chapter Nine: First Steps in one’s Place of Power

In chapter nine, we introduce a new example.  Fionna is one of the Draoidh, a priestess, alone.  She has blood, family and the woman as her personal totems, a drinking vessel crafted of her brother’s freely given skull as her implement, and no familiar.

She bought the building her apartment is in, made her claim, fought for the property, and won it.  After weeks of effort and days of challenges, she has a place of power.

For so many practitioners, the question is simple: ‘now what’?

It is easy to be caught up in the hectic and thought-consuming task of staking one’s claim, making the claim and dealing with the challengers.  In Fionna’s case, she incurred several debts, but lost nothing of substance in negotiating matters when the challenge was lost.

In the quiet that follows the storm, it is easy to make the simple, damning mistake of thinking one must maintain that pace.  Practitioners must remember that once the final challenge is past, they have a lifetime to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Fionna forces herself to step away from the demesne for a time, to better ensure her perspective is fresh and unsullied by recent events.  She sees to the small debts she can in the practitioner community, works at her day job as a nurse in obstetrics, and takes the time to meet with friends she has neglected while seeing to her side project.

Remember that the demesne is a reflection and an extension of the self.  The practitioner should remind themselves of who they are and reacquaint themselves with forgotten interests, hobbies, connections, and matters of taste and style.

When Fionna does return to her place of power, she finds herself disappointed.  There is little doubt this is her place of power, but the effect is minor at best.  The spirits and entities that have not been driven away by the challenge are few in number, and she finds herself less powerful in her domain than she is elsewhere.

After the monumental investment in time and effort, and the debts incurred, initial reactions can be devastating.  This, in itself, can be damaging, because one’s mood and ideas can influence the demesne, and the demesne at this point in time is in a fledgling state.

Fionna is more or less at ease, thanks in large part to the time she took to herself.  She focuses on the details.  She sees how the very air in her demesne cooperates.  It tastes cleaner, it does not bar her movement, but buoys her.  The ground accommodates her footfalls.  She tries to manipulate the environment, by combinations of touch, word, and will, and finds it easy.  The aesthetics are the easiest part of it to change, and she takes her time altering her surroundings.

Fionna makes wall and floor into flesh, the place of power becoming a womb of sorts.  All things in her place of power are moist, and the ticking of a clock becomes the dull, distant thud of a heart.  Veins on every surface throb in time with the sound.

There are no wrong answers with how one customizes their place of power, but one should keep in mind that they may want to invite another into the area, and make the necessary arrangements.

The area is very easy to influence, and this can prove problematic, if one has other power sources in play.  The biggest and most obvious issue is when the familiar enters the picture.  As an extension of the practitioner, they have a claim to some of the place of power.  If the practitioner and familiar are in accord, the issue is a minor one.  If they are not, it can be a source of friction that compromises the demesne. In any event, the familiar’s nature, background, mentality and power will affect the demesne.

In other cases, the practitioner may be drawing personal power from another source.  To use a metaphor, this may add a dollop of color to the paintbrush, leaving streaks on the demesne as the practitioner paints.  If they draw power from death and decay, they might find these elements alter the surroundings.

A typical solution is to focus this power.  If the familiar cannot be reconciled with, the practitioner can focus this other power into an area.  The familiar can be given a dedicated space, so that their power does not bleed throughout the remainder of the demesne.  These hypothetical powers of death and decay could be focused into a single ornament or object decorating the area.

The draoidh briefly laments the mess caused by the blood in her demesne, pools of sanguine humor and warm trickles from the roof.  As she cleans, she discovers that she can remove the mess while retaining the blood.  A small contradiction, but possible nonetheless.

With testing, she finds she can alter the other rules of her surroundings.  Even a small demesne can be larger inside than it was on the outside.  Laws of gravity, physics, rules of magic and more can be bent or broken entirely.

Any rule can theoretically be broken within the demesne.  Should every rule be broken?  No.  Everything in moderation.

Stories abound of practitioners who never left their demesnes.  A place that is entirely theirs, where they are a step below a god, and a place where they are safe.  The issue arises when the practitioner loses their connection to the outside world.  With nothing tying them to people or things, they stagnate, growing weaker, and as they grow weaker, so does the place of power.

The effect is a cyclical one, prompting some desperate practitioners to devote more time and attention to rescuing their domain, failing to see the problem at the root of the issue.  In other cases, the practitioner is so attached to their demesne that they become a part of it.  When it fades from the world, so do they.

When the practitioner’s demise coincides with that of their place of power, the end result is typically a ghost, and/or a location saturated with power.

When Fionna leaves her domain, she finds more time than expected has passed.

This is a typical thing.  Intentionally or instinctively, a practitioner often manipulates time within their realm.  When they leave, however, time hurries to catch up with them.  The end result is often not intuitive, and can lead to some confusion.  Adapting to this eventuality is a part of learning to use one’s place of power.

Whilst outside of her place of power, Fionna finds the connection to the location remains strong, wherever she is.  She can deposit power there and rest assured it is untouched.  She can also use the location to transmute power, turning personal power into karmic assets, draw from one kind of power to better influence a connection.

As one can determine the rules within their realm, they can use the place as a form of esoteric moneychanger, changing one kind of power for another.  Some find that they can draw on their continual connection to their place of power to access it from remote locations.  This typically requires a fair amount of power, and may be rooted in certain rules or restrictions.  One might use a key in any appropriate lock to access their demesne, for example.  Others might draw a door in chalk, or step through a pool of blood left around a slain enemy.

As she’s made her place her own, Fionna finds that she can use power more readily in the area.  She notes, in a matter of fact way, that simply holding a demesne generates good karma, bettering her position in the world so long as she tends to the space.  The problem, however, remains, she isn’t stronger there than she is in the outside world.

Having driven away spirits in the course of the challenge, our example case finds that the spirits and beings that remain are conciliatory.  How, then, does the practitioner build up a power base?

Fionna finds that as she draws and manipulates power in and around the demesne, its power extends into the real world and vice versa.  Spirits in alignment with her draw like spirits with them, and on a more complicated level, intelligent beings who visit her demesne and find it to their liking may contact others.  Word of mouth spreads, for lack of a better term.

Herein lies the heart of the demesne dilemma.  The greater the claim, the greater the power that is reaped.  But an area where there are no beings to challenge the practitioner will have few beings of any import occupying or neighboring it, almost strictly by definition.  It proves useless to the practitioner.  Worse, it is stagnant, refusing to grow, for one needs power to gain power, and such spaces have no inherent power to start with.

It is a canvas to be painted, but nothing more.

She settles into her new role as ruler of this demesne.  As she forms contacts with Others, the demesne becomes a meeting place and even a home to some beings, who give her tribute in turn, by way of power, gifts, or service.

A subject that leads us into our next chapter, on the rules and dealings of others within the demesne.

■

Famulus: The Familiar

Case Study for Chapter Two: Lacey and Vic.

Vic is clearly nervous.  He fidgets, and in the minute before the interview begins, downs a beer, gets up to get another, and nearly downs the second.  His clothes have stains that indicate they haven’t been washed in some time, and his beard growth and the state of his hair suggest the same.  His hygiene and condition excepted, the only remarkable trait about him is his height.

Lacey, by contrast, is motionless, staring at the interviewer.  She wears only a sleeveless t-shirt and underwear as she sits beside Vic on the couch.  Her hand never leaves her weapon.  An engraved gun.

The house is very similar to the couple that own it.  As they haven’t taken much care of themselves, they’ve let the house languor.  The front yard is overgrown, mess litters every surface inside, and bottles are predominant in that clutter.  There are children’s toys, but no sound or sign of a child in the house.

Interviewer U. Roike (R):  You’re sure this is alright?  You don’t look very at ease.

Lacey (L):  We’re never at ease.  You have that?

R:  Yes.  I’ll give it to you when the interview is done.

L:  Fine.  Then get us started.

R:  You’re the practitioner.  Vic is the Familiar?

L:  That’s right.

R:  We decided the interview questions in advance, so we could compare and contrast for the book.  If we deviate, it’s only going to be a little.  Can I ask?  Who are you?  What’s your background?

L:  I’m [insert pause] I don’t know.  A girl.  A woman, I guess, even if I don’t feel like a grown-up, and I’m almost thirty.  Grew up in the next town over.  Went to school, had friends.  I guess the only thing that set me apart was that my mom and dad knew some of this magic stuff.  They taught me it, told me they wanted me to gain an edge.

R:  Did you?

L:  Yes.  Popular, did okay in my classes.  Cheated every step of the way, using the tricks I’d been taught, but yeah.  Someone made a problem for me, I’d put them down hard.  Ended up on top of the heap.  Dated the captain of the local basketball team.

[Note:  Lacey pauses to indicate Vic, beside her.]

R:  And you, Vic?  Who are you?

Vic (V):  I was on top of the heap, like Lacey, but I didn’t cheat to get there.  Natural talent and hard work.  Met Lacey, she introduced me to this stuff.

R:  You’re getting ahead of me.  Can I confirm?  You’re human?

V:  Am I?  I was.

R:  You were human when you met Lacey.

V:  Yes.

R:  Alright.  You were telling me how you two met.

V:  She was there.  At a party.  I said hi, she said hi back.  The longest we’ve been apart since is when we slept.  Phone calls, meetings before school, meeting between classes, meeting after school.  Parties.  She was there for the games.

R:  You were successful?

V:  Yes.  I mean, not like I was going to be going to the top school in the country on a sports scholarship, but there was a damn good chance a college was going to invite me to play for them, you know?

R:  You use the past tense.

V:  It’s an old story, isn’t it?  Stupid kid starts using performance enhancers, only it goes bad.  Side effects take over.  Except they weren’t drugs.  Not steroids or any of that.  Lacey had another way.  Warpaint, a few words.  Some of the other guys on the team got into it.

L:  My mom always called it riding.

R:  Possession.

L:  Controlled possession.  A spirit of something fierce, to make him move a little faster, make him a little stronger, give him that edge he needs to spook the other guys for a second when he looks them in the eye.  Surface deep stuff.  Stuff that can be explained away by placebo effect and some cosmetic stuff for the team.

R:  What happened?  It went wrong?

V:  We’re not sure what happened.  The stars aligned wrong, or it was a full moon, or whatever it was got a foothold somewhere along the way.  I put on the war paint and I wasn’t me anymore.  I came to, and I was violently ill, soaked in blood.  Someone else’s.  Adam Chelt.  Kid we’d picked on in school.  While I was out of it, I’d gone after him.  Ate my fill of him, threw up, ate more, woke up while throwing up.  I slip in and out, now.  The wind blows the wrong way, and I’m not me.  Even when the wind isn’t blowing, though, I’m not the me I used to be.  I breathe different.  React different when stressed.  I don’t get sick, barely eat.

L:  It’s a nature spirit.  A predatory one.  The hawk, the wolf, the fox, the wild cat, all bundled up into one thing.  I baited it, I leashed it, and I contained it.  There was no way it should have become as strong as it was.  No way the boundary between Vic and the spirit should have broken down like it did.  But they’re one and the same, now.

R: I note that Vic wears human form.

L:  Most deals allow familiars to go back to their regular form.  Human form is Vic’s regular shape.  We modified the deal, so there wouldn’t be any changing one way or another.  Way we figured it, we’re trying to get Vic to be less like a spirit and more like a person.  Turning him into a mouse or cat or whatever doesn’t help things on that end.

R:  Taking a small form helps to conserve power, but I suppose that wasn’t a concern.  No reason to believe he is slowly losing power?

L: No.  Maybe he is, but not like that.  No.  Stuff like his eyes and hair change back and forth day by day, depending on how much of a hold the spirit has.  His behavior too.  The bond stabilizes things, anchors it all in place, but the spirit is still getting more leverage.  Creeping in around the edges.

R:  Which gives me an excuse to get back on topic.  You say it stabilized him.  Was that the reasoning behind forming the bond in the first place?

L:  No.  We didn’t even realize it was a problem, back then.  We did know he was a little more Other than he should be, which gave us the idea.

V:  I went to court.  I mean, I’d murdered someone, and nobody was backing me up.  Lacey went to the local practitioners, but they told her I was shit outta luck.  Police said it was drugs, and I couldn’t argue, not without saying something that’d get me sent to a psychiatric hospital.

L:  He got out on bail, which kind of didn’t surprise me.  Local sports star, you know?  We tried to remove the spirit, might have succeeded if he hadn’t spent the days and night he did in jail, in the meantime.  Too long, too much chance for the spirit to get its claws in.  Came down to it, and we decided we needed to resort to other means.

V:  Getting ourselves in deeper.

L:  The thing with familiars, it’s like, you’ve got a cord between you and the familiar.  A tether, or a channel with stuff flowing both ways.  And you’ve locked it in.  You always know where the familiar is, and they know where you are.  It’s a hard thing to break.  Your familiar won’t die like they otherwise might, but they might borrow a chunk from you to keep themselves going, if they want.  Part of any connection between things is proximity.  Not many situations where a master is going to get separated from their familiar.  So we did the bond, sealed it, whole shebang.  That bond’s a leash, tying him to me and vice versa.  But if you keep a grip on things, that leash isn’t going to stretch any.  The distance between us is set.  No way he was going off to prison if I didn’t.  We’re one unit, right?

V: One unit.

[note: at this point, Victor leaves to get another beer.]

L:  Once we had the bond, the system couldn’t get hooks into him.  It tried.  People pointed fingers at me, but since we weren’t going to be going to the same prison, that didn’t get much traction.  There was a pregnancy scare.  I imagine the world was contriving to put me in some shitty hick town just outside the prison, regular visits.  I dunno.  Once I fixed that, things settled down.  Probation.  We moved in together.  So it worked, I guess.

R:  What is the balance of power is between you two?

L:  What do you mean?

V:  She wants to know who wears the pants in this relationship.

R:  More nuanced than that.

L:  Yeah, no, I get it.  Thing is, it isn’t just us two.  You’ve got the spirit in there.  You want to know who wears the pants?  It’s the spirit.  It’s the spirit that makes Vic restless, so he can’t be in a car or a city without feeling like he’s in the wrong place.  Spirit that’s made it so he can’t touch metal without it hurting him somehow.  Knives go out of their way to cut him, scuffed patches on metal catch at his skin to make him bleed, cars won’t start if he’s inside.  So we’re here.  Middle of fuck all nowhere.  Fifteen minute drive to the nearest shitty convenience store where I can buy cigarettes, beer, and bread.

R:  In terms of power, do you draw power from him?

L:  Nah.  No, I tried.  Tried to siphon as much as I could, every way I thought I could.  See if I couldn’t weaken the spirit so he could beat it.

V:  Like radiation, shrinking a tumor before surgery.

L:  He was always clever like that.  Yeah.  Like radiation.  Except radiation’s bad for you, right?  We pushed, the spirit pushed back, and the spirit won in the end.  That’s when we had to move out of the city.  It got a foothold in there, and he’s restless all the time, now.  So I back him up.  He takes power from me.  Because he is losing his Self, in a way.  Capital S.  Takes a chunk out of me, but I try to back him up, so he stays Vic and doesn’t become something halfway between Vic and the spirit.

V:  Or the spirit eats me.  Because that’s what predators do.  They tear chunks out of their prey and they eat them.

R:  I suppose that answers my question.  What happens after.

L:  Been a long, long time since I gave any thought to ‘after’.

[Note: Victor nods at this.]

R:  Were there any elements you didn’t expect?  Regrets?

L:  What kind of question is that?

R:  The last question, before I give you the talisman.  Same question we’re asking all of the interviewees we’re considering for this chapter.

L:  Do I have to answer?  Will you not give us the talisman if I don’t want to respond?

R:  I think you’ve already answered.  Thank you for your time.

L:  Not like we’re going anywhere.

[Note:  The talisman, intended to help Vic manage his control over his Other half, was given to the couple, and the interview ended there].

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Damages 2.7

Maggie glanced over the books.  First Famulus, then Implementum, Demesnes, and then Famulus again.

Rose was watching Maggie, but I had still taken the time to collect the medicine kit and a damp towel and bring everything into the living room with me.  More stuff in the way, a more crowded space.

I took my time disinfecting my hand, cleaning it up where I’d stabbed it.  The blood had trickled out and into the palm, collecting with the bits of rust and dirt where I’d reached into the trash can.

“Alright,” Maggie said.  “You’ve got good stuff, and I admit you’ve got me hooked.  You want me to be an unofficial ally, in exchange for free access to your books?  I’d be down.”

I glanced at Rose.  “Did you do any negotiating in the twenty seconds I was in the bathroom?”

“No negotiating.”

“We didn’t propose anything like that,” I told Maggie.

“Are you trying to pull a fast one on us, Maggie?” Rose asked.

“Nah.  I just figured I’d put it out there.  See if it got any traction.”

“You said you wouldn’t try anything,” I said.

“No bad intentions in my heart, really, but I’ve gotta get the best deal I can for me.”

I sat there, glaring at her, but she only smiled.

“This is exhausting,” Rose said.  “Watching every word you say, watching every word others say…”

I nodded.  I felt a bit weary myself.  Maybe having company when I was this worn out was a problem.

But an ally was an ally, so to speak.  Even if that ally was grubbing for any advantage she could get.

“I guess it’s not so bad when everyone’s not trying to take you out of the picture,” Maggie said.

“Guess not,” I responded. I looked my hand over, and then set to bandaging it.  I was collecting a lot of small wounds.  The cuts from the bird-skull things hadn’t yet healed, and I had sliced at my fingers once or twice to draw blood.

“You’ve got something I want, I’ve got something you want.  So… I can propose another deal.  You loan me out some reading material, and I promise not to kill you.”

There was a pause.  Maggie looked at me and Rose with a kind of expectant look on her face.

“You still have no bad intentions?” Rose asked.

“Huh?”

“Threatening to kill us if we don’t comply?” Rose asked.

“No!  No.  I worded that badly.  I mean, I’ll take the deal.  Agree to the ceasefire you proposed at the meeting.”

“Meaning that on top of the gift of reading material, we’d be giving you the other parts of that deal, with protection from whatever might come out of our grandmother’s books.”

“Darn straight.”

“That doesn’t seem very even,” Rose said.

“Supply and demand, my dear friend in the mirror.  You have a demand for not being murdered.  I can supply that demand.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I said.

“Why not?  Look, you want lots of a product I’m offering, called ‘not being horribly killed’.  You want it badly enough that I can raise the price.  You benefit, because you get lots of ‘not being horribly killed’, I benefit because, hey, I get stuff.”

“No,” Rose said, “I’m pretty sure the two of us understood that.”

“And, on the plus side, if you’re wanting to put the squeeze on the other guys, then you can get them to panic just a little when you tell them there are only two deals left before they’re outta luck.”

“Three,” Rose said.  “If someone wants to take the deal where they can still come after us if they tell us who killed Molly.”

“I forgot about that,” Maggie said.  “You won’t have much luck.  Couple of the Behaim kids met me at school, told me that they’re going around, talking to everyone and making sure that they weren’t giving you information that might start something none of us want to start.  Most people are sworn to secrecy, at this point.”

“Most?  What about the others?” Rose asked.

I was sitting on the edge of the couch, elbows on my knees, hunched over.  I  met Maggie’s eyes.  “What about you?”

“The ones who swore to secrecy also agreed to go after the people who blabbed,” she said.

“Did you agree?” I asked.  I was getting damn tired of people who didn’t answer the questions they were being asked.

She shook her head.  “No.  But it doesn’t matter, now, does it?  I could tell you what happened, but then I’m probably going to wind up with some rather angry people coming after me.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I get it.”

“We’d do something similar in her shoes,” Rose said.

I grunted noncommittally.

“That’s her stuff, there?” Maggie asked.

I had to raise myself up off the couch a bit to see where she was pointing.  The duffel bag and pile of clothes was still on the floor just beneath the arm of the couch.

I collapsed back onto the cushions.  “Yep.”

“Didn’t really know her that well.  Saw her a few times.  She didn’t show at the council meetings until the last month, and I don’t think she was game.  Took her longer than it took you guys to realize you can go out and maybe not die.”

“We’ve had escorts, and promises of protection in one way or another,” Rose said.

“Still.”

“Still,” Rose said.  “It’s dangerous.  We’ve gotten hurt every time.”

“I’ve gotten hurt, you mean,” I said.

“Yes.”

“More than your predecessor did, oddly enough,” Maggie did.

“Did she do any of the practitioner stuff?”  Rose asked.

“She did.  Yeah.  She knew some tricks.  Mostly defensive.  Warding things off.  Knew the essentials of how to deal with every one of the creepy crawlies out there.  But knowing what you’re doing doesn’t make life easier when the Others scare the wits out of you, y’know?  You don’t think straight, you make mistakes…”

“I suppose,” I said.  I was trying to visualize it.

“Did you talk to her?” Rose asked.

“Once or twice.  She was kind of freaked out,” Maggie said.

“You didn’t try to help?” Rose asked.

“That’s… I dunno.  I’m not sure how I would’ve or could’ve,” Maggie said.

“I’ve been trying to put myself in the heads of the other locals,” Rose said.  “Yourself included.  I understand that they are scared.  I understand that our family has a history of meddling in pretty dangerous things.  But then I look at the difference between the Duchamp kids and the Duchamp parents, like we saw earlier…”

“Maybe better to not say anything there,” I commented.

“What do you mean?” Rose asked.

I rubbed at my eyes.  “Might be they don’t want their actions broadcasted or gossiped about.”

“I’m sworn to secrecy about anything I discover inside this house, aren’t I?” Maggie asked.

“You are,” I said.  “But betraying confidence, implicitly or otherwise, it seems messy.  Bad karma, maybe.”

“Point,” Maggie said.  “Change of topic then.  I don’t get a lot of what’s going on, politically.  I have to trade for every tidbit of information I get.  Even about the obvious stuff you read about in those books.  I’m kind of new here, though.  New to this, to everything.  I’ve only been at this for half a year.”

I nodded.  My stomach was burbling just a bit.  Maybe a factor in why I felt so drained.  I’d given up blood, skipped meals, missed sleep.  Those things had to be fundamental to personal power.

I stood up.

“I’m going to get something.  You want anything?”  I asked.

“Beer?”

“Something I can legally give you.”

“Nah.  I’m alright.”

I made my way to the kitchen.  “Can I ask, Maggie?  What’s your story?”

“My story?” she asked, calling out from the living room.  I glanced, and saw she had picked up Famulus again.

“You got started somewhere.”

“Didn’t we all?”

“No games, please,” Rose’s voice came from the living room.  “If you don’t want to say, you don’t have to say, but I’m on the same page with Blake about being horribly fed up with this doubletalk.”

Maggie didn’t respond to that.

Searching the kitchen for foodstuffs, I found some bread in the freezer.  A little freezer burned, and showing signs of what might be mold.

Well, no use wasting it.

I cut the mold off, buttered it, cut up the remaining chunk of cheddar and layered it between the two slices before throwing it in a frying pan.

Maggie appeared in the doorway, leaning against it with her arms folded, so she had both me and Rose in her line of sight.  “What do you know about goblins?”

“Ugly,” I said.  “Brutish, warlike, twisted, brimming with all sorts of emotional negativity.”

“That’s essentially it.  You know their weak point?”

“Iron,” I said.  “They’re creatures of nature?”

“Iron.  But they’re warriors, understand?  They use iron.  They make weapons.  They’re of nature, but so is snake venom, so is cancer, understand?  They’re the ugly bits.  The savage, primitive, visceral, neanderthal bits.  Once upon a time, it was pretty standard for goblins to give humans a hard time.  Steal unattended objects, suck a cow’s udders dry before the farmer could milk them, spread plague, tangle hair, gobble up anyone who got turned around in the woods and passed by the same place three times…”

I nodded.  I used a fork to lift the corner of the bread and see how it was browning.

“A few reasons they stopped.  The first is that practitioners started going after their leaders.  The dumbest, meanest, most savage of them got snapped up and jammed into objects or they got sealed, stuck in holes and covered up with rocks, yadda yadda.  And there aren’t many powerful goblins who aren’t kind of stupid and savage.”

Rose asked something I couldn’t make out.

Maggie nodded.  “Yeah.  There are some scary ones out there.  Even now.  Real monsters.  But I’m getting off topic.  The second big reason that the goblins stopped picking on humanity was that we went and got ourselves modern plumbing.  You know that bit, about how vampires can’t cross running water?  Water is life, it’s natural, and it naturally draws out the deathly energies.  Well, for goblins, metal does the same thing, and it takes a bit out of them when they pass over a place where metals are buried.  More so if that metal is charged with any power.”

“Pipes under the streets?” I asked.

“The flowing water gives it some basic elemental power.  They don’t like it, saps their energy when they do a little hop, skip or jump over the barrier.  So they lurk around the city instead of inside it.  In rural areas, other places where water service is more inconsistent.  Or smaller towns, where the local infrastructure taxes them a little less for getting from A to B.”

“Like Jacob’s Bell,” I could hear Rose.

“Yep.  Among other places.  Redneck scumholes are sort of scumholes because goblins hang around there, you know?  The little twits have their fun making paint peel prematurely, stealing a little money here or there, pulling stuff apart, making it so cars break down, and so on and so on.  People who wind up in slums and scumholes find it just a little bit harder to get out, when things refuse to pick up and run smoothly.”

Rose said something.  I only caught the tail end, “…fair game.”

“Open season,” Maggie agreed.  “Once you fall far enough through the cracks, you start losing the protections most of humanity enjoys.  The kid that locks himself in his room and never comes out, the antisocial couple, the poor schmo who loses his house and business.  If the goblins manage to help someone down that path, drag them down a little further, and some other Other doesn’t go after the unfortunate soul, they get to enjoy the reward.  Goblin SOP.  Standard operating protocol.  Making everyone’s bad days a little worse”

A memory crossed my mind.  Being woken from my sleep by a beating.  The mocking laughter.  Never seeing their faces, because I had to cover my head, because I had blood in my eyes.

One of them had called it off.  Let me limp away, crawl away when the limping proved too difficult.

They let me think I could maybe get to a busier street where I could beg for help, then kicked me one last time, hard enough to prove me wrong.

And another memory, one I had told Rose about, not long ago.  Being shot with BB guns.  The bruises, the way my arm had changed colors, and the fear I’d felt, wondering if I needed to go to the hospital.

There had been no laughter that time.  They had lurked in the shadows, firing until they had no more ammunition, watched me struggle, then feigned like they’d reloaded and were going to shoot me again, just to see me flinch.  I’d gone still for a time, and they had moved on when I looked up again.

Both memories had distorted.  Spend too long without revisiting memories, and they had a way of twisting.  When I remembered the laughter being a little too much, a little too high pitched from some, too deep from others, I’d told myself it was just my memory playing tricks on me.

When I remembered the mix of heights and body types of the ones with the BB guns, just one half-step outside the bounds of what one would expect from a typical crowd of people, I’d told myself the same.

Tricks of memory.  Easy to believe, especially when you didn’t want to think about it.

I didn’t like it.  I was already feeling like half a person, using the wrong soaps, being in an unfamiliar place, acting like someone entirely different in the heat of a fight, beating a woman -a something– to the point that she couldn’t move.  This was one more straw on the camel’s back, and I wasn’t sure what was going to give.

I grabbed my sandwich.

“…aren’t immortal,” Maggie was saying.  “They die like you or me.  But they breed.  I’d be really interested in reading a book about goblins, to see how that’s linked to their personal power, or see what keeps that in check.  I’ve become something of a goblin queen.”

“A what?” I asked.

“Someone works with spirits almost exclusively?  Shaman.  Work with time, you’re a chronomancer.  Fire?  Pyromancer.  The future?  Augur, predictomancer, something like that.  Work with demons, you’re a diabolist.  Work with goblins?  Goblin queen.”

“Johannes would be a goblin king, then?” Rose asked.

“Johannes is Johannes.  He works with anything and everything.  Others call him a sorceror, so that’s what I’m gonna call him.”

“Making you the resident goblin queen.  Is that by choice or happenstance?” Rose asked.

“Yes,” Maggie said.  “Former and/or latter.  You wanted to know where I come from?  I came from a place that was falling through the cracks.  And just like goblins might go after someone who’s slipped through civilization’s secure embrace, they’ll go after a location.  And it was bad.  Bad enough that not all of us made it out.”

“And even though goblins did this sort of thing to you, you’ll keep their company?  Work with them?” I asked.  My food sat on my plate, untouched.  I wasn’t that hungry anymore.

“Seal them, bind them, enslave them,” Maggie said.  “You gotta own the past, don’t you?  Own the bad parts as well as the good.  Let it make you stronger.”

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” I asked.

“Yes.  Exactly.”

“I always hated that phrase,” I said.  “No.  What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.”

“Weren’t you telling me the other day that you survived some bad stuff, and so you’ve got keener instincts?” Rose asked.

“I said something like that,” I said.  “I’m not sure I’m stronger as a whole, though.”

My eyes darted in Maggie’s direction.

I added, “Maybe we can have this conversation another time.”

Rose nodded.

As if it was some way of fixing the unease I felt, I picked up the almost forgotten sandwich and took a bite.

“I dunno why,” Maggie said, “But it’s kind of eerie seeing you two disagreeing.  I thought somehow that mirror girl was some sort of subservient vestige thing, but she’s got a real personality?”

“We’re not giving up too much information on that front, either,” Rose said.  “It’s kind of a sore point.  Sorry.”

Sore point?

“No prob.  I’m not going to tell you guys my whole story, you don’t have to tell me yours.  I gotta go soon, though.  School, promises.  If we’re going to hash something out, we shouldn’t waste time.”

“We could invite you back,” I said.  “Same rules.”

“I could accept,” she said, matching me in terms of how noncommittal I was being.  “We sort of dropped the first bit of conversation we were having.  Figuring out what sort of deal we were negotiating.  It’s not so bad.  Apply a little pressure, get one person on board.”

I really wasn’t up to negotiating.

Rose, however, jumped into it, “We’re giving you a fair bit.  Not to be rude, but you seem to have an awful lot of demand too.  For knowledge, for books.”

“I’ll live if the deal doesn’t go through,” Maggie said.  She left the other half of her statement unsaid.  We might not.

“You’re really big on the unreasonable bargain,” Rose said.

“I would say I’m really big on not getting the short end of the stick.  Had enough of that, thank you,” Maggie said.

“Throw us a bone,” Rose said.

“What sort of bone?”

“You’re taking knowledge out of our hands every time you walk off with a book, and you’re putting us at risk and some small inconvenience every time we accept you in, assuming you might want to do your reading here.”

“I was kind of hoping we could be friendly-ish,” Maggie said.  “Give and take, in terms of enjoyment of one another’s company.”

“I’m flattered,” I said.  I hadn’t meant it to sound as morose as it did.  I was tired.  Not functioning.

The food might have been helping, though.  I felt a fraction better, having eaten.  Even if it was stale bread and a bit of cheese.

“Let’s not count on friendship,” Rose said.  “Take the friendship out of the equation, and we’re the ones with the short end of the stick.  Having someone show up unexpectedly, occupying our time when we could be focusing on something else…”

“We need allies, Rose,” I said.

“We do,” she agreed.  “But let’s call this what it is.  Maggie wouldn’t be here if she didn’t think she could get something.  She’s going to take a bit of our hospitality, she’s going to make use of our books.  I’m thinking we ask for a little something each time.”

“A little something?” Maggie asked.  She raised an eyebrow, giving me a very deliberate head-to-toe once-over look.

“A small favor, a token gift, a bit of power, some knowledge…” Rose said, trailing off.

“As what?  Payment for access to a given book?”

“Essentially,” Rose said.  “Everything has a price, doesn’t it?”

Maggie nodded.  “It does.  So.  You get someone accepting your deal.  Nonaggression from me.  You get a little something any time I get your book.”

“Or visit,” Rose cut in.

Maggie made a face.  “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

“I like you fine,” Rose said, in what were maybe the least friendly sounding words I’d heard out of her mouth.

“Uh huh.  So you get the ceasefire from me, a gift of some small to moderate value for allowing me access to this house or access to your stuff.  Unless you waive it?  Like, if I have something really good, and you decide it’s worth a bit more than usual?”

“I think that’s fair,” Rose said.

“Good.  Um.  I get access to knowledge, as you permit, though I get something.  I get a guarantee, too, that you’re going to do something to keep your demons from hurting me.”

“To be frank,” I said, “I dunno how.”

“What Blake means is we’ll find a way.  You’ll have definite, distinct protections against anything we contract with.”

“Good enough.  You’re not planning on summoning anything bad, are you?”

“No,” Rose said.  “If we do anything, it’s going to be accidental.”

“You swear?”

Rose glanced at me.  I nodded.

“I so swear that we have no intention of summoning anything of the nature you’re talking about,” Rose said.

“Then promise you’ll protect me when and where you’re able, using the knowledge and tools you’ve got,” Maggie said.  “I’ll settle for that.”

Vague.  I wouldn’t have settled for that sort of protection.

I was too tired to look up, so I only gave a thumbs up.

“Should the deal go through, I promise that will be the case,” Rose said, again.

“Good enough for me.  Yeah.  That sounds pretty good.  Is a verbal contract okay?”

“No,” I said.

“No?”  Maggie asked.

“No,” I repeated myself.  “No verbal contract.  We can hash it out in writing.”

“Written contract.  Isn’t that more dangerous?  Room for traps and loopholes?” Maggie asked.

“Not if we keep it simple,” I said.  “Which we can.  After I get a good night’s sleep and talk things over with Rose.  But the interior of my skull is feeling a bit slow, I’m tired, and I’m not focused.  Tomorrow, or the day after.”

Maggie groaned, flopping back in her chair.  “Yeah.  Except it never works out that smoothly.”

“I don’t think anything is going to change in the next day or two,” Rose said.  “I’m sorry, but I sort of agree with Blake.  We should be careful and deliberate in anything we do.”

“You don’t think anything is going to change.  What?  You want a chance to spy on me?  Run a background check on the local?”

“Are we going to start fighting?” Rose asked.  “Because that’s a bad sign, if we descend into animosity so readily.”

“Animosity?” I asked.  “Readily?”

“I’ve been reading too many of these old books,” Rose said.

“I don’t want to be animostic,” Maggie said.  “I just want power.  And everyone’s keeping it to themselves and making me pay out of the nose for it.  I get teased with it, and it never gets delivered in full.  Padraic, the North End Sorcerer…”

“Dangerous guys to be associating with,” I said.

Maggie was up and out of her seat in an instant.  “I don’t have a choice!”

Wrong thing to say, wrong time.  I hadn’t realized how upset she was, how its barely restrained.

“Not if I want to do something!  And I don’t not want to do something because I did that when I had to watch my old neighborhood go up in blood and fire!”

“Calm down,” Rose said.

Maggie switched to a more sarcastic tone.  “Oh, yeah, How often does that work?  Tell someone to calm down and they chill out?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said.  “But I think, given that this is Blake’s house, and he can ask you to leave at any time, and we do want to work with you, we’ll all be happier if this conversation doesn’t escalate into something ugly.”

Maggie deflated a little.  “Crumbs.”

“Well put,” I said.  “Do me a favor?  Take a minute, we can enjoy a bit of silence, I’ll try not to fall asleep, and we start again when we all have our thoughts in order?”

“I gotta head to school in a few minutes,” Maggie said.  “Don’t have a lot of time.”

“Please?” I asked.

“I’m really not a patient type, but sure.”

“Thank you,” Rose murmured.

Maggie collapsed into her chair.  I took my time getting up, cleaning off the plate and putting it away in the drying rack.

I debated coffee, checking the tin.  Just enough grounds to tantalize me with the possibility, but leave me short of a decent brew.

I settled for tap water, instead, and felt suitably depressed over it.

I set a glass in front of Maggie before taking my spot on the couch.

“Cool?” I asked.

“I’m alright.”

“Alright,” I said.  “You understand that we have to be careful?”

“Yeah.  And… I did use the moment of silence to think.  As apology for my outburst, and maybe a bit of incentive to get you on board…”

She reached behind her back, and she put a piece of intricately folded paper on the table.  She used a flick of her index finger to send it sliding across the table.

I didn’t touch it.  “What is it?”

“One tidbit I was able to pick up these past few months was about Eastern styles.  India, some of Japan.  See, they aren’t big on familiars and implements and demesnes.  Well, the Western-influenced ones are.  But they prefer to remain hands off, delineate pretty severely.  Their preference is to contain, bind, leash.”

“Okay,” I said.

“We walk around with the metaphorical equivalent of a canine companion.  They work with us, they help us hunt or they get our food, they get the benefits of cozy mortal living, we get the benefit of their talents.  In the East, in the places I’m talking about, they prefer to leash the things.  They tie their dogs to trees.  Or keep them behind fences.  You get my meaning?”

“I think so,” I said.

“That right there is an ofuda.  Your metaphorical dog in a cage, and it’s not a big dog, but it’s still a dog.  It barks, it bites.”

“A goblin.”

“A little bundle of mean.  He’ll come out gnashing and snarling, so point him away from you and at whoever you want to hurt.”

I picked it up.  “Amassing a bit of a collection of trinkets today.  Hatchet with a ghost inside, a lock of a faerie’s hair, now this.”

“Yeah?”

I had to stand to move my sweatshirt and draw the hatchet from where I’d jammed the handle in by my hip.  I needed a better way of holding it close to me.

I put it on the table beside the slip of paper.  Still standing, I removed the lock of hair from my back pocket.  It was only after I’d withdrawn it that I realized I’d managed to get it all in and out of my pocket without losing any.  If it had been my hair, I’d be finding hair in my back pocket for weeks.

“May I see the axe?”  Maggie asked.

“Look, but don’t touch,” I said.  “And it’s a hatchet, not an axe.”

“Semantics.”

“Do you not live in this world?” Rose asked.  “Semantics are important.”

The phrasing made me think of Paige.

God damn, I needed to interact with a familiar face so badly right now.  Heck, even an unfamiliar face… it would make a world of difference to ground me, to give me a solid injection of reality and sanity.

“Admittedly true,” Maggie was saying.  “They are important.  And people who argue over semantics are still a pain in the bum.”

“You’ve got to explain how you lost the ability to swear,” Rose said.

“I don’t got to do anything,” Maggie said.  “Unless we arrange that deal, and you agree that tidbit of knowledge is worth the loan of a book.”

I could follow the conversation, but wasn’t quite feeling up to joining in.  I looked at the piece of folded paper with letters scrawled on it in ink, then slipped it into the little mini-pocket of my right jeans pocket.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

“Gotcha,” Rose said.  To Maggie, she said, “That sets a bad precedent.  You’ll be more inclined to hold details back just so you can sell them to us.”

I didn’t hear the rest, as I headed up the stairs.

I entered my grandmother’s room and paused, taking it in.

Nothing had changed since our conversation.  The bed was made, maybe a little dusty, everything was in order.  As though she had just left yesterday.

I could feel her presence here.  Not in a ghostly way, but in a general way.

I looked over the top of one dresser, where her old jewelry was arranged in boxes and on stands.  Modest stuff, not ostentatious.  Relatively little jewelry, all things considered.

My plan was to grab a fine chain, if I had to settle for the bare minimum.  Something stronger than cord or thread.  I didn’t have to settle.

A locket dangled from one of the racks.  Simple, unembellished.  Only a rectangle with rounded-off edges.  I had to move other necklaces to grab it.  When I popped it open, I found a sprig of some herb, dried up long, long ago, inside.

I sniffed it.

Lavender?  I could see my grandmother wearing it as a precaution against something specific.

I could also see her wearing it for the smell alone.

Very carefully, without touching it, I tapped it against the side of the dresser.  It wouldn’t do to poison myself with something I was misidentifying.

I made my way back downstairs, open locket in hand.  A classic container for a lock of hair.

When I reached the door to the living room, however, I found both girls looking in one direction.

The front door?

I went, then peered through the window.  A moment later, I opened the door.

It was Laird, in plainclothes.

“Hello, Officer Behaim.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t realize it was you?”

“I thought you might,” I answered.

“A declaration of war, Mr. Thorburn?”

“Call it what you will.  Retaliation?”

He sighed.  The lines in his face seemed a little deeper.  A tell?  Was he hiding anger or other sadness?  Or was he not a morning person?

“I’m disappointed,” he said.

“You sound like my dad used to, when you say that.”

“I’d hoped you would accept the temporary peace I was offering.  We didn’t have to be enemies in the strictest sense.”

“But I can be the dimwitted buffoon that you can abandon for the Others to get, after you’d promised me safe passage?” I asked.  “You can conspire against me at the meetings?  You want me to accept the meager kindness and peace you offer?”

“It would be smarter,” he said.

“That’s called shaking the hand you’re offering in friendship, while knowing your other hand is balled up into a fist and you can’t wait to use it to punch me in the balls.”

“Very colorful, Mr. Thorburn.  I’m not, I should stress, in a joking mood.”

“Oh?” I asked.  “Did I inconvenience you?”

“Marginally.  I’m more inconvenienced by the knowledge that we now have an ongoing dispute.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” I said.  “You fucked with me, I fucked with you.  We can leave it at that.”

“Leaving things be fails to resolve anything.  You’re dangerous.  Your continued existence puts my family at risk.  I no longer believe you’re going to abstain from the darker subject matters your grandmother freely dabbled in.  I have no reason to expect you’ll be as discreet or careful as she was.  Finally, we do need things settled before the paradigm here changes.”

It might have helped that I was as tired as I was.  I was disconnected enough that I was able to look like I didn’t give the slightest shit.

I saw his expression change a fraction, the lines deepening some.  “I’m forced to take action.”

“Action?” I asked.  The super-apathetic no-shit-giving attitude was still going strong.  “You put yourself in an awkward position, setting the bar at ‘killing me’ with our first meeting.  Now you’ve got to top that, which means jumping straight to fates worse than death.  But where do you go after that?  I mean, it’s hard enough threatening fates worse than death without sounding like a deranged fuckwit.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“I’m tired,” I said.  “I’m not talking tired in the sense that I’m exhausted because I’m fighting for my life.  I’m tired in the sense that I want to go take a nap.  I woke up early to deliver that letter, and I spent some power along the way.”

I’d very nearly mentioned the fight with the Duchamp girl’s familiar, but I’d decided against mentioning that in case it got around and bit her in the ass, then bit me back on the karma front.

“Well,” he said.  “Far be it from me to keep you from your nap.”

“Thank you,” I said.  “Is that all, then?”

“Two or so things, if I may?  First of all, you can expect me to respond.  It should be tomorrow, and you’ll notice it, even if the impact isn’t immediately clear.  I’m rather confident you’ll regret getting on my bad side.”

And here we went.

“That’s a shame,” I said.

“Second, I see you have a guest.  That would be… hm.”  He tilted his head a little, then spoke loud enough to be heard in the living room, “Maggie Holt.”

I heard noise.  Footsteps followed, with Maggie coming to stand beside me, hands jammed in her pockets to ward off the cold that was blowing in from outside.

“I wasn’t sure if it was clear,” Laird said, “But when my nephews met with you, they were supposed to hint that you should abstain from any contact with Mr. Thorburn and his vestige.”

“They hinted.  You could say I didn’t get it.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Ms. Holt.”

“I seem to,” she responded.

He took that in, taking his time with it, as he might digest a very profound statement.  His eyes found mine.  “Mr. Thorburn.”

“Can we wrap this up?  Unless your big plot to remove me from this world involves running up my heating bill.”

“I tell you this with no expectations.  I do not want or desire what you have offered in any deals you’ve proposed, and I have sworn not to accept any such offers.”

The words had a bit of substance to them, a care that woke me up a little from my general exhaustion.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Maggie Holt is the one who orchestrated the attack on your cousin, Molly Walker.  She had command of several goblins and ordered them to strike her and leave her alive.  She did it at our behest, in exchange for small favors, gifts of power and offers of knowledge.”

I was glad for that exhaustion.  It kept me from doing anything.

Maggie had gone very still.  Eyes wide.

“I see,” I said.

“You swore you wouldn’t tell,” Maggie said.  “Everyone did.”

“We swore we wouldn’t take his deal and give him that influence.  I’m keeping my word,” he told her.  To me, he said, “When it went as poorly as it did, we were upset.  The public had taken notice, and they had alerted authorities.  We fulfilled the letter of the deal, but did so by offering Ms. Holt the bare minimum we could.”

“Including a lesson on how to use… what is it, paper seals?  Japanese name or something.”

“Ofuda would be along the lines of what Sandra Duchamp might know,” Laird said.  “I think that was what she offered Maggie for the murder of Molly Walker.”

“Thank you for clarifying that detail.”  I reached into the little pocket and retrieved the bit of paper.  “With all due respect, Maggie, I’ll be returning this.”

“It was a gift, freely given,” she said, not making eye contact.

“It’s a gift with my cousin’s blood on it.  Maybe in it, if the goblin in here is one of the ones who participated in the attack.”

She didn’t respond, which was answer enough.

“Take it, or I’m going to free it.  Hospitality be damned.”

She hesitated, and then she seemed to realize I’d just made a statement.  No maybes, no ‘I thinks’, no hedging.  I was going to follow through.

She took the paper.

“It’s complicated,” Maggie said.  “If I could have a minute to explain-”

“You can have five,” I said.  “Ten minutes, if you need them.  I’m-”

I stumbled over my words a bit.  A bit of emotion, slipping through the exhaustion, and a bit of exhaustion, winning out over my body.

I drew in a little breath, composed myself, then said, clearer, “-I’m eager to hear this.”

She stood there, silent, staring up at me.

“Okay,” she said.  “I thought I’d say that and you’d say no, but I could think it over and say something convincing later, but I can’t explain.  Not on the spur of the moment.  Like I said, it’s complicated, there was more going on.  I-”

“Maggie,” I interrupted her.  “You should be off to school.”

“I promised I’d go, I didn’t promise I’d be there the whole day.  I can stay, we can talk this over, hammer it out.  I don’t dislike you.  I meant it when I said I was entering with no ill will.”

“No shame?”  I asked.  “No guilt?”

“Not then,” she said.  “Some now, that I’ve gotten to know you.”

“You lied to my face,” I said.

“I can’t lie.  I’m a practitioner.”

“A lie by omission.”

“Doesn’t count, or we’d be lying every passing second.  Blake, she wasn’t even a person to me.  They talked her up, big bad diabolist who didn’t know what she was doing.  I only really talked to her after I ordered the attack, saw how she wasn’t doing anything except defending herself, and I realized what I’d done.  I tried to call it off, but it doesn’t work that way.”

I could remember being beaten, the people kicking me, using weapons… and the connection to what had happened to Molly made it feel doubly real.

Maggie chose that moment to reach out, and I grabbed her hand, crushing it inside mine, hard enough to hurt her.  I could see her reaction run through her entire body.  Pain, fear.

“I’m sorry,” she said, despite whatever else she was experiencing.  “That moment was when I decided I was done working with these guys.  I sorta kinda wanted to be your ally, make it up to your family, somehow.”

I shifted my grip on her hand, so I held only the fingers.

Karma, hospitality…

I raised her hand to my mouth, and I kissed the knuckles.

“Thank you for visiting, Maggie,” I said.  “I appreciated your company, even if I don’t, right this second.  I appreciate the information you shared, and the gift you offered.”

“I want to make this better,” she said, quiet.  “I’d really like a chance.  If not now, then later.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” I said.  “But first, I’d like you to look me in the eye and tell me that your visit here was more about making genuine amends than getting your hands on some more knowledge or power.”

She met me in the eye, then looked down.

“Can I say it was fifty-fiftyish?  That that’s an awful lot of wanting to make amends, when you’re as power hungry an idiot as I am?”

“I don’t think so, Maggie.  That’s not good enough.”

“Ff-f-f,” she struggled.  “Fluffernutter.”

“Fluffernutter,” I said.  “Please leave now, before I do something I’ll regret.”

“Yep,” she mumbled.  I waited while she stepped into her boots, zipped them up, and made her way out onto the porch.

“You two have a good day,” I said, monotone.

“You too,” Laird said, smiling just a bit.

I slammed the door.

Histories (Arc 2)

Friday

The bell tolled.

End of a day.

Metal on metal as locker doors banged shut.  Textbooks making surprisingly loud bangs, as they were closed.  Zippers whisked open and closed.  Voices babbled.

Maggie shut it all out, putting her earbuds in.  The various sounds were muted.  Fiddle, violin and drums stepped in to drown out the world.

The earbud was tugged from her ear.

“Mags!” Heather greeted her.  “Friend.”

Heather was smiling.  She was round-faced, but not fat, freckled, with hair dyed black.  The girl was one year younger than Maggie, in an earlier grade.  Sometimes good company, sometimes annoying.  Maggie’s gut reaction was that Heather was leaning towards the annoying side today.

“What’s up?” Maggie asked.

“That’s what I was going to ask you.  Got plans this weekend?”

“Going into the city to shop for clothes with my mom.”

“Aw, I’m jealous.  And I wanted to hang out.”

“Sorry.”

“Another day?  Tonight?”

“Maybe tonight,” Maggie conceded.

Heather smiled.

They made their way outside.  Two schools were placed side by side, grades one through eight at one building, grades nine through twelve at the other.  It was usual to see the kids from the younger school meeting up with parents in waiting cars.  The older high school students would be retreating to one of the areas out of sight of the school office to congregate and smoke.

That was usual.  Today wasn’t usual.

Parents were ushering the children away, getting out of cars to use their bodies and hands to keep the children moving in one direction, keep children from looking.

Some teenagers had lit up cigarettes as they left the school, fairly usual, but the usual spots at one end of the high school were empty and unoccupied, free of the curling smoke.

She turned around, approaching the end of the elementary school where people were alternately clustering and herding children away.

It was an art piece.  Grotesque, vile, violent.  At first glance, she saw it was a fat man, adult and naked, leaning against the fence, ass on the ground, legs crossed.  Torn to pieces, rigged up with chains, boards and nails, mouth yawning open as though his jaw were broken or something huge had been rammed through his mouth and throat to open it wide.  He smelled like shit and blood that had been sitting in the sun for ten minutes at a minimum, maybe as much as an hour.

At second glance, she could see it wasn’t really a man.  Meat, bone and other bits had been fixed together in a crude semblance of a person.  Nails, wire, and other boards held bits in places, and strips of meat had been wrapped to bind other strips in place.  A haphazard grid of wires and woven strips of meat held the intestines in place, where they had been balled up and left at the midsection.  Bits of the organs bulged through the gaps.

At third glance, she saw the maggots that were already starting to festoon the thing.  Whoever had worked on it had done so without the benefit of refrigeration.

She turned away, her stomach twisting.

It’s only art.  Just something for show, she told herself.

It didn’t really help to convince her.  It didn’t help with the children, the smallest of which were openly crying.

Maggie carefully kept her eye off the thing as she watched teachers and janitors emerge from the school, many carrying black garbage bags.  They hesitated a moment before closing the distance, to cover the thing.  One or two backed away, recoiling bodily from the smell of it.

The crowd shrieked, and the alarm on the teacher’s part scared the children, prompting a spate of crying and some screaming.

Maggie looked, and she could see the mock thing moving, the chest moving in, out, side to side.  Flies took flight from it as it jerked.

It was making noises.  High pitched squeals, more like those of a baby than a person.  Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth, clamped down over it in case she puked.

One teacher, an older, heavyset man, leaped forward, even as everyone else was backing away.  He clawed at the mass of meat, using his fingers.

A medium sized dog, it had been stirred awake by the first physical contact.  Bound in the middle of the meat thing, still alive, wire wound around its throat, propping it up to a standing position, the ends tying it to the fence.  It still wore a collar, the tags jingling against the fence as it struggled.  Blind, caked in filth, it fought against the man who was trying to free it.

Maggie turned away.  She didn’t want to see any more.

The location had to have been strategically chosen.  Out of sight of any of the windows, but in plain sight once the school had finished for the day.  That was all it was.  Art, aimed at scaring the most vulnerable people the sickos could find.

She wasn’t the only one leaving.  Parents were fleeing the scene with their children in cars.

She could see the expressions.  The anger on parent’s faces, the fear on the faces of children.

As she looked, she could make out one car.  A man, bedraggled, more like a homeless person than a lower-middle-class parent, was waiting to pull out onto the street.

The only person parked outside of the school who hadn’t picked up a child.

She pulled her phone from her pocket, bending down, and she took his photo.  No flash, no noise, but his head still whipped around.  He made eye contact with her.  No older than thirty, his eyes were heavily lined.  More like Maggie’s mental picture of someone who’d gone to war or someone who hadn’t slept in days than a parent.  Any suspicion she’d had were confirmed in that moment she made eye contact with the man.

He pulled out, almost as if he was in a hurry to get away, and she took another picture of his license plate.

He disappeared, leaving her with only suspicions.

■

Sunday

“What did you talk about?”

“Stuff,” Maggie said.  She shifted position so her legs were stretched out across the back seat.  “Dreams, her idea of family, my idea of family.  Careers.  Stuff I might do after school.”

“What are you thinking you might do after school?” her dad asked.

“I’m thinking I might have no idea.  I’ve been telling myself, you know, a few months left until the end of the year, then a year left until I graduate.  Then I’m done.  Now it’s like… wait, I’m going to University?  Three to six more years of studying?  I’m not that keen.”

“We’ve talked about the role High School plays in life, remember?”

Maggie sighed a bit.  “I remember.”

“The things you learn are a very, very small part of it.  You’re learning how to learn, and you’re learning how to socialize, how to deal with people and problems.  University is the same way.  Studying is a very, very small part of it.”

“I know.  I get that.  The rest of it is partying.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know, dad.  It’s a few years off.”

“It’s the sort of thing you need to think about in advance.  What do you want to study?”

“What’s easiest?”

“Maggie.“

The conversation was cut off as the ads stopped playing on the radio.  Her father turned up the volume on the car radio.

“…believed to be the work of a group of high school seniors, celebrating the end of their final year, taking the pranks and activities several steps too far.  When we inquired, the police stated they have no leads on culprits, but will be talking with schools in the area.  The police chief stated, ‘It would be fitting and appropriate, if we did prove it was the work of out-of-control students, to hold back their diplomas until restitution could be made.’  Other sources speculate that the spate of attacks has to do with the changes in environmental policy, which prompted the Ontario government to rehouse nearly two thousand residents…”

He turned off the radio.  “We’re into speculation.  Nothing more worth hearing tonight.”

“Still going on, huh?” Maggie asked.

“What a shame.  Cruelty to animals, attacking the elderly, scaring children…  when you told me about what happened a few days ago, I’d hoped it would be one isolated incident, that they would realize what they did went a step too far, and leave things be.  Or if it is people angry about losing their homes and workplaces, maybe that anger could get burned off.”

“But they’re getting more riled up,” Maggie said.

“They are.  Which means I want you staying close to home.  I’ll drop you off.  I’ll talk to some parents.  Maybe we can arrange a system, where you come and go in groups, each group can spend the afternoon at someone’s house, doing homework-“

“Oh god.”

“What?”  Her father asked.  She could see his smile in the rearview mirror.  “Social suicide?”

“You can’t kill that which does not live,” Maggie said.

“You have friends.”

“I don’t like my friends.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

“You were just reminding me how high school is meant to instill lessons in all of us.  ‘People suck’ is lesson number one.  Weren’t you paying attention, way back then?”

“I was too busy being miserable,” he said.  “Way back then.”

“How to be abjectly miserable is lesson two,” she answered.

“Ahh.  See, I must have missed a lesson along the way.”

Maggie smiled.

“But, you know, one of the first lessons that University hammers into you is that you have to let go of the past.  Let go of who you were, and let yourself be who you need to be.  Let go of being miserable, let go of hating people.”

“Yeah.  I can see that.  Getting sloppy drunk, getting high, partying.  Artificial happiness and friendships.  It’s kind of like the inverse of the high school lessons, but it’s kind of messed up in its own way.  A good way.”

“I’m kind of hoping you find genuine happiness and friendship, Maggie.  I’m hoping you can unlearn all of the less happy lessons and retain the good stuff.  But yes, maybe you’ll need to unteach yourself some of the more cynical lessons you’re learning now.”

Maggie grinned.  “Lesson ten of High School is ‘sex is horribly overrated.’  I’m gonna look forward to unteaching myself that one.”

“Is that so?”

Maggie’s grin dropped off her face.

“Chris and I promised each other and promised you that we’d have an open dialogue about these things.”

Maggie flopped back in her seat, hitting her head against the car window.  “Regretting saying it already.”

“We want you to be happy and safe, and we have focus on steering you clear of any mistakes that are going to follow you for the rest of your life.”

“Oh god.  I haven’t done anything, and I most definitely haven’t had sex so awful it’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“I meant pregnancy, or illnesses, or-“

“Oh god,” Maggie said, again.  She looked to the passenger seat, where her father’s husband was unconscious, reeking of too much wine.  He and her mother had been borderline competing, towards the end of the night.  “Chris, wake up and rescue me.”

Her father continued, “If you’d like, we could make an appointment to get you some birth control-“

“Nope,” Maggie said.  She shifted position so she could cover her ears with both hands.  “Nope, nope, nope.  Done with this topic.”

In the rear view mirror, she could see her father’s smile.

“You jerk.  You’re totally messing with me.”

“If you want to almost give me a heart attack, making me believe you’ve been up to something, I can pay you back three times over.”

“Shouldn’t be allowed.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m not done.  Maybe I will call the other parents to arrange groups for safety.”

“You’re evil.”

“And we can see how badly we can embarrass you.”

“Oh god.”

“Pyjama pants with hearts on them, and dorky old-person music…”

“Mercy.”

“We have the power, baby girl.  Whatever you do to us, we can repay three times over.”

“That’ll change.  One day, I’ll be all-powerful.”

“You will be, when Chris, your mom and I are pushing seventy and rotting away in some old folks home.  By then, you’ll pity us too much to do anything too bad, and you’ll have kids of your own to lord over.”

“Mebbe,” Maggie said.  “You guys and mom in the same old folks home, huh?”

“Why not?  I can’t think of anything better, being with loved ones and friends, making peace with a life well lived…”

“Unlearning the last of the not-so-fun lessons life taught you,” Maggie said, closing her eyes.

“That’s a nice thought.  What sort of lessons are those?”

“I dunno.  Maybe some of the first lessons we learned are the last ones we unlearn?” Maggie asked, half asleep.  “Bashfulness, caring about what others think?  Being angry at people?  Worrying about what comes tomorrow?  Holding on to yesterdays?”

“Keep that up, and I’m going to second guess your angry teenager facade.  That sounds dangerously like faith in the inherent goodness of people.”

“Oops,” Maggie mumbled.

A piercing scream stirred her from the twilight of near sleep.  Sirens.

As her father pulled over, fire trucks and ambulances raced past them, the pitch and tone of the sirens shifting as they started moving away instead of coming closer.

Chris had been stirred awake.  The three of them didn’t make a noise as they pulled back onto the road and made their way down the main street.

Rubberneckers had slowed traffic to a crawl by the time they approached the scene.  Several homes were ablaze in a single fire, but in the chaos, she could only make out one of the families, standing on the other side of the street, huddled together in a group.

Three houses ablaze, one family of survivors.

■

Tuesday

“This sucks, this sucks, this sucks,” Ben said.

“Chill out,” Jeremy responded.

“It sucks,” Ben said, for emphasis.

“We know it sucks,” Maggie said.  “Doesn’t need to be said out loud.”

“At least we’re going to your house,” Jeremy said.  “I’ve got a game I’m itching to finish, and now I won’t get home for another hour or two.”

“If you think you’re going to play my games, you need to get real,” Ben said.  “My save files are sacrosanct.”

“I can tell this is going to be fun,” Maggie said.

“Your dad’s idea,” Heather said.

Maggie whipped her head around, glaring at her ‘friend’.

“What?” Heather asked, confused and wounded.

“Utter lies,” Maggie said.  “Complete and utter lies.”

“We know it was your dad,” Lor said.  “We don’t blame you.”

“Speak for yourself, Holy Lor,” Ben said.  “I blame her.”

“Yeah, just a bit,” Jeremy said.

“I like you, but this is kind of annoying, and your dad suggested it,” Heather said.

“You guys suck,” Maggie retorted.

“Yeah,” Ben said, “But we suck in private.  We don’t let our suckage leak out and mess up other people’s plans.  Like poor Jeremy, and his games, and my house being my house and not some random meeting place for a bunch of kids, like we’re six years old and on a stupid little field trip.”

“Yeah?” Maggie asked.  “I gotta ask, do you make sucking in private a regular thing, Ben?”

There were a few chuckles from the group.  ‘Holy Lor’ included.  Maggie allowed herself a smile, while Ben gave her the finger.

“I’ll take your silence for a yes.”

“Take my silence for a fuck you, Maggie.  Any time I’m not talking, you can pretend I’m saying ‘fuck you’ every few seconds.”

“I’ll give that a try.  Ought to lighten things up.  I can’t help but notice you’re dodging the question about the sucking-in-private thing.”

“Fuck you,” Ben said.

“Now you’re being repetitive.”

“Fuck you and we’re turning right up ahead,” Ben said.  “Into the cul-de-sac.  My house is at the end.”

“Fancy words,” Maggie said.  “Is Ben Meredith getting uppity?”

“It’s a fucking cul-de-sac.  Do you know a better term for it?”

“A street?” Maggie asked.  “A dead end street, if you want to be extra specific?”

“Or,” Ben said, “You can go fuck yourself, and I’ll call it what I want in the meantime.  Jesus Christ.  This whole ‘go everywhere in groups’ bullshit is annoying enough.”

Maggie only grinned.  The group turned right.

And Maggie found herself looking at the same car as before.  A blue beater she might have completely missed if it weren’t for the recognizable dent on the door.

Without thinking, she drew her phone from her pocket and took another picture.

The car door opened.

He was as she’d seen him before.  Thirtyish, with lines of weariness around his eyes, a dead stare, and scruff on his face.  He was wearing a v-neck t-shirt, gray, with a few smudges here or there, nothing blatant, but signs of dirt or something like that.  His jeans, by contrast, had even more stains.

“Oh shit,” Jeremy said, when he saw the man striding towards them.

Ben put himself to Jeremy’s left, interposing himself between the man and the three girls of the group.

“Girl,” the man said.  His voice was ragged.  “Who said you should take my picture?”

“God damn it, Maggie,” Ben muttered.

“Who said I couldn’t?” Maggie called out.

“Why are you taking my picture?”

“I take pictures of lots of stuff?”

“You’re lying,” the man accused her..

“Okay, maybe I took pictures of you because you looked kind of creepy and you were just hanging around where someone hung some rotting sculpture off a fence outside a school?”

“Delete those photos.”

“You heard the nice man, Maggie,” Ben said.  “Delete the photos.”

“Why should I delete them?” Maggie asked.

“I’m asking you to delete the photos.”

“That’s not answering my question,” Maggie said.  “That’s restating the thing you just said in a different way.”

“Hey, Maggie, you ever wonder why nobody likes you?” Ben asked.  “This is why.  He doesn’t like you because you’re not deleting the photos while he’s still asking nicely, and we don’t like you because you’re not deleting the photos while the guy is asking nicely.  Seeing what I’m hinting at?”

“I like Maggie,” Heather said.

Ben scowled, glancing back.  “You like everyone.  You’re like a dog with no conception of strangers.  But let’s not get off topic.  Maggie was about to delete the photos.”

“I was doing no such thing, you lying liar,” Maggie said, not taking her eyes off the man.

“If you don’t delete those photos,” the man said, “There is going to be an issue.”

“if I do delete those photos,” Maggie asked, “Am I deleting evidence of someone who’s involved in this whole mess?”

The man glared at her.

Answer enough.

“Oh… oh no,” Holy Lor said.  “Really?  Oh no.”

“Give me the camera, and your life goes back to a semblance of normal,” the man said.

“Oh, see, now you’re negotiating,” Maggie said.  “I like negotiating.  Let’s hear a better offer, though.  I’m not convinced.”

“Give the nice man the camera,” Ben said, through clenched teeth.

The man spoke.  “If you’re smart, you give me the camera and leave.  Leave this town.  This is a dying place, and soon it will become a place of dying, of fire and violence and darkness.”

“Give the nice lunatic the camera,” Ben said, quieter, through clenched teeth.

“I’m still waiting to hear a better offer,” Maggie said.  “He’s awfully insistent, he’s got to have something to offer if he wants it that bad.  I want to hear the offer soon.  Going once…  Going twice…”

“This is not the way you want to play this,” the stranger said.

“Hey, Ben!”

A voice, from the nearest house.

An older man, wearing a plaid shirt and suspenders, was leaning over his railing.

“Hi, Mr. Richmond,” Ben called out, eyes darting from the stranger to his neighbor.

“You got a problem there?”

Maggie kept her eyes fixed on the weary looking man.

“Maybe,” Ben said.

“Hey!” Mr. Richmond called out.  “Step away from the kids!”

The strange man did no such thing.  He stepped toward Maggie and the kids.

Toward Maggie.

He grabbed for her arm, gripping it hard, and reached for the phone.

Collectively, the group fought him.  Collectively, they found him oddly strong.  He bodily shoved Ben and Jeremy away, then pushed Lor to the ground with enough force that she shrieked on impact.

Maggie kicked in his general crotchular region, but failed to land any hit that mattered.

When Mr. Richmond made his way down the driveway, however, and Ben stood up, ready to rejoin the fray, the man backed away, hands raised.

“Stay put,” Mr. Richmond said.  “I’ve already called the police.”

“You’re lying,” the man said.  “Phone lines are down.”

“Yeah,” Ben said.  “You do that?”

“No.”

“You stay,” Mr. Richmond said, stern.  “These kids are going wherever they were going, and you and me are going to stay put until we can have a chat with someone.”

“No,” the stranger said.  “No we aren’t.”

He turned to leave, striding away.  Mr. Richmond didn’t even try to stop him.

But the stranger puased and looked back.  His eyes met Maggie’s.  “You’re going to regret this, little girl.”

“I’m kind of a teenager,” Maggie said.  “Big girl, at the very least.  Little lady would do, too.”

“You’re a child,” the stranger answered.  He turned, walking back to his car.

He said something else under his breath.

“Wait, what did he say?” Maggie asked.

“He said you’re a child,” Lor answered.

“I heard that bit.”

“And you’re going to bleed, was the second bit.”

“Oh,” Maggie said.  “I’d thank you for clarifying-“

She paused, as the man’s car door slammed.  He pulled into the street, then disappeared around the corner.

“-But I’m not sure I’m that thankful.”

“We need to get in contact with the police,” Mr. Richmond said.  “Attacking a child, that can’t go unanswered.”

“Maggie thinks he’s one of the bad guys from recently,” Heather said.

“Then we definitely need to talk to the police.  Where were you going?” Mr. Richmond asked.

“My house,” Ben said.  “My mom’s waiting.”

“Good.  Go.  Stay there.  I’m going to see if I can find someone.”

“I love how everyone’s pretending we aren’t all one to three years off from being adults,” Maggie said.  “We can fend for ourselves.”

“I dunno about you,” Heather said, “But I’m kind of glad to have someone’s mom around, after something like this.”

“He hurt me,” Lor said.  She showed her hands, skinned and bloody.

Maggie frowned.  “Whatever.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to find a cop,” Ben told his neighbor.  “Sirens are going by every ten minutes, it feels like.”

Mr. Richmond nodded, glancing towards the street where the stranger had left.  “You kids take care.  I’m standing right here until you’re safe inside.  You lock the doors, now.”

“Yessir,” Ben said.

“Big Bad Ben, being all nice to the adults,” Jeremy commented, when they were out of earshot.

“It’s ‘Big Ben’, what people call me.  You added the ‘bad’ part.  And Mr. Richmond is boss.  He gives me money, just ’cause he doesn’t have grandkids to spend it on.”

“That sounds more like a pedo thing than anything else,” Maggie said, under her breath.

Ben shoved her.  “Hey.“

“What?“

“You don’t fucking joke about shit like that.  Ruins people’s lives.”

“I didn’t say it to anyone who’d care.”

“You don’t ever,” Ben said.  “And you don’t say it about guys who just saved our asses from a crazy person.  A crazy person that might be setting fires and torturing animals.  I’ve known Mr. Richmond my whole life.  He’s nice, and he went out of his way to help.  You want to give me a hard time?  Fine.  But you don’t talk shit about my neighbors behind their backs.”

“Fine.  That’s fair.  You’re the guy that’s sucking in private.”

“That was funny once, Maggie.  You can’t milk it any more.”

“Milking it,” Lor commented, straight faced.

The entire group burst into laughter.  Some of it was nervous laughter, after the close call.

“The most prudish girl in school just made a funny!  A naughty funny!”

“I’m not the most prudish.”

“You’re close.”

Ben opened the door to his house, locking the door behind him.  “Mom!”

“Upstairs!”

“Group’s come by.  What can I feed them?”

“Anything but the carrot cake in the fridge!”

“Kitchen,” Ben pointed to each place in turn.  “Dining room, if you want to do homework.  Bathroom, if you need to-“

“Milk it?” Heather cut in.

There were a few chuckles, but she was forcing it just a bit.

“-And living room.  Consoles are off limits.  But you can watch the TV.”

“Great host,” Jeremy commented.

“When I invite you, you can do whatever.  But when Maggie’s dad invites you over to my house, you get only the… nuts and bolts.”

“Bare minimum,” Maggie said.

“That’s the words I was looking for.  I’m going upstairs.  I’ll be down in a bit.”

The group migrated over to the dining and living room.  Heather and Jeremy took the couch, while Lor and Maggie sat opposite each other at the table.

“Never thought we’d be sitting together like this,” Lor said.

“Yeah?  Why’s that?”

“Your parents?”

“My parents have no issue with you,” Maggie said.

“I meant, who your parents are, they’re… our families are very different, don’t you think?”

“I think I know what you’re getting at,” Maggie said.  “Are you wanting to make this a problem?”

“No.  I’m just-“

“Because we can make this about doing homework, fighting off crazy people, and passing the time as fast as we can before we can get back to our everyday lives, or we can make it about your family having an issue with my family.  Note how I’m stressing that.  Because my family has no issue with yours.  It’s one sided.  And if you want to keep pretending you’re all about tolerance and goodness, you’re going to have to reconcile that sort of thinking with this sort of acting.”

“I can get over it, Maggie.  I can look past what your parents are.”

“That’s great.  Good.  Grand.  Speaking of, I’m going to need to give them a call, let them know I made it okay.  Maybe scare my dad to death, if I mention a crazy man attacked me and then hang up before he can get details.   Because I’m so going to get back at him for this ‘going places in groups’ garbage he set up.”

“Phone lines are dead in this area,” Jeremy said.  “Asshats knocked down a telephone pole.”

“Fuck,” Maggie said.  “Fuck.  Internet, maybe?”

“No phone, no internet,”

“Fiber?  Cable?” she prodded.

“No idea,” Jeremy said.  “I’m here because I live near-ish by, not because I’m friends with Ben.”

“We’re all here because of that,” Maggie said.  “Fuckballs.  I’m going to ask.”

She stood, then made her way back to the front hall and up the way Ben had gone.

Ben’s door, clearly marked with road signs, was closed.  She made her way to the end of the upstairs hallway.

Ben and Mrs. Ben were lying on the bed, face down.

A man was standing in the room.

Maggie felt her heart leap into her throat.  Didn’t fit.  Wasn’t right.  Could be an older brother, but why would they be like that?  Why would Ben and his mom be lying so still, there?

She backed away, then nearly jumped out of her skin as a hand pressed beneath her shoulderblades, an immovable object, stopping her progress.

A person, not much older than her, judging by the style of dress.  The face was hidden by a hood and the poor lighting in the upstairs hallway, but she could see some of the mouth, snaggle teeth.

The knife.  It moved, pointing it at her pelvic region.

Her front pocket.  The phone.

“So he’s your ringleader?” she asked.  “And he wants me to delete the photos?”

No escape.  The only routes she had available to her were a hard right into the bathroom, forward into the knife guy, or a retreat into the bedroom with the other guy.

“Phone,” the figure said.  She couldn’t peg the gender, but it sounded like a heavy smoker.

“Right.  I’d argue, but knife wins arguments.”

“Mm hmmm,” the figure said.  Drawing it out a fraction too long.  Somehow, for some reason, she pegged it as a boy.

“Are… Ben and his mom okay?”

“As okay as you are,” he said.  He sounded so normal.

“…That doesn’t answer my question.”

He stepped closer.  She could smell him now.  Like the meaty thing on the school fence had smelled.  “Tell me.  What’s the worst thing I could do to you, using this knife?  I do want you to think, then I want you to describe it to me.”

A dozen ideas flickered through Maggie’s mind.

She managed to keep her voice from tremoring.  “Cut something off?  Cut off a finger?  My nose?”

He shook his head.  “I’m talking about the bad thing that appeared in your mind’s eye, that you didn’t let yourself think about, not completely.  The real worst thing you imagined.”

Maggie shivered.

“What I’m going to do is worse than that,” he said.  “Something you can’t imagine.  Not yet.”

She moved, ducking into the bathroom.  He lunged, following, knife in hand, and she reached out to grab the bathroom door, slamming it into his body.

She reached for the only thing she could.  A drawer from the cabinet under the sink.  She pulled, and it came free.  Nothing inside but combs and hairbrushes.

Maggie hit him, swinging the drawer into his hand, into the knife that was sticking out, that he couldn’t move while she was pressing her weight against the door.

He didn’t let go, didn’t grunt or give any indication he was in pain as she swung a wooden bludgeon at him.

His weight shifted, and the door moved with enough force that she stumbled back.  Stronger than he looked.  On something?

She searched the area, looking for something she could use as a weapon.  A towel rack… but if she pulled, would it come free?

She lifted the lid off the top of the toilet, nearly dropping it.

It wasn’t a fight like on TV or in the movies or in the books about superheroes.  Not an exchange, no trade-off, nothing like that.  It was ugly, stupid, nonsensical.  One of them would swing.  The person they swung at would be seriously, maybe even lethally wounded, or the swing would miss.  If the swing missed, they’d be leaving themselves open for one equally serious, equally fatal wound.  A skull cracked open, a knife in the belly.

She had to alert the others.  A noise?

Two thoughts connected.  She hurled the toilet lid through the bathroom window, a crash, a noise that might give the others some clue something was wrong.  She jumped, feeling a hot flare of pain where the plate glass cut her side on the way through.

A one story fall was less scary than a knife.  Glass was less scary than the knife.

A thousand people with knives was less scary than the knife, when it was that guy holding it.

The landing hurt, but it didn’t hurt in a way that kept her from finding her feet, running.  She held her side.

Dead end street was a more appropriate label, she thought.  Praying that he wasn’t coming after her, that she wouldn’t get a knife in the back in broad daylight.

She reached the main street, waving, trying to get the attention of a car.  Removing one hand from her side, she used her bloody hands to get someone’s attention.

The rest was a blur.  Shock winning out over anything rational.

■

Thursday

No school.  No phone.  The sirens seemed more frequent now.

It didn’t fit.  Nobody seemed willing to admit it, that it was bad.

Two days of intermittent visits to the police station.  Giving them the photos, getting the sense they didn’t care, that they were filing it away in the same folders and drawers they stuck all the ‘old crank’ stuff.

There was only fear.  Concern that their place would be the next one.  Chris was worried, and it was why Chris didn’t want to leave.  Didn’t want to rent a car and leave with what they could pack up, like so many people were.  The houses that were left unattended were soon occupied by others.  By the drug gangs or the crazed seniors or whoever those people were.  When the parties and general vandalism were done, the houses were torched, and oftentimes neighboring houses were caught in the blazes.

She hadn’t had any clarification on what had happened to the others.  To Ben and his mom, to Lor, to Jeremy and Heather.  She’d tried calling them while her neighborhood still had working phone lines, but all she got were dial tones.  Her dad reassured her, told her they had to be okay, or they would have heard something.  Chris said they had probably packed up and left to be safe.

Were others joining in?  Was it a cult thing?  Was it out of towners?  There were more grotesque decorations in places.

It was getting worse, and nobody seemed to be connecting the dots.

They always heard sirens, but the police weren’t doing anything.  They hadn’t done anything about what had happened at Ben’s place.

It was the worst.  Being powerless, not knowing.

She felt physically sick, wallowing in it.

Doubly so when she let herself slip.  She never stopped that constant, internal mantra, that Ben and his mom were okay, that the other kids had escaped the house.  But sometimes she slipped, and she didn’t believe what she was saying.

“Do you know how long we looked for this house?  How long we took to find just the right place?  A place the three of us could live?  If we leave it behind, we’re not going to get it back.”

“If we don’t leave, we’re just being penned in, waiting for another kind of disaster.  Have you looked at Maggie?  I don’t know what to tell her.”

“Tell her to be strong.”

The voices continued, from the other side of the wall.

Not so long ago, they’d talked about dreams.  About possibilities, passions, about what could be.

All she knew now was that she had a direction, not one borne of any of that passion or possibility, but of the process of elimination.  She could never, would never let herself feel like this again.

■

Monday

“Don’t go,” Maggie said.

“Someone has to,” her dad said.

“You go on this neighborhood watch thing, and you’ll disappear.  Something will happen, and you won’t come home tonight.  People will tell themselves things.  We’ll tell ourselves things, but we won’t believe it,” Maggie said.  She was pleading now.  “Dad.  You know what’s going on.  People are blocking off streets, and we tell ourselves it’s to protect ourselves from them, but you know they’re the ones doing it.  They’re blocking any path we could take to drive out.”

“It’s hysteria,” her dad said.  “People overreacting, and a lack of communication.  That’s why tonight will be good.  A big group, talking with one another, figuring out how things stand, what the priorities are.”

“Convincing each other of the lies,” Maggie said.  “Reassuring, when we need to be doing the opposite.  Digging for the truth at the heart of all this.”

“Maggie, calm down.”

“I’m not going to calm down.  Not when you’re going to go out there and you’re not going to come freaking home!”

She had tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Then bring me with you,” she said.  “Bring me with you, and bring Chris, and we go, together.”

“No,” Chris said.  “If we leave the house empty-”

“Chris,” Maggie said, wheeling around.  “Come on.  Please?”

“It’s dangerous, leaving the place unoccupied.  It’s like they’re watching.”

“I’d rather lose the house than leave you alone, Chris.  Please?  Pretty please?”

“Maggie-”

“Please, papa?”

“Now you’re playing dirty,” Chris said.  “I haven’t heard that one in a long time.”

She couldn’t bring herself to speak around the lump in her throat.

“We go to the meeting, then go for a short patrol?  Make sure there’s no fires nearby?  All together?”

She nodded, relieved enough she let out a bit of a sob.

They left the house as a group.

The meeting was at one house in the neighborhood.

The first set of speeches were very much what she’d expected.

“Lock your doors,” one of them was saying.

Ben had locked his doors.

“Leave lights on.”

If you have power.

“Stay in touch with your neighbors, and let them know where you’re going and if you’re leaving.”

And brush it off with excuses and justifications if they disappear and don’t leave a message.

“We think they’re lurking in the area where all the occupants were displaced.  Angry locals who didn’t want to leave, who had all of their services shut off.  Teenagers and drunks, who got carried away once they got started.  Any day now, the police should have a handle on this.”

“Where are they now?” someone asked.

The discussions went on.

No real answers.  Nothing definitive.

Maggie looked back just in time to see a man make his way in through the front doors.

The ringleader?  The stranger with the blue car and the weary eyes.

She clutched the two hands she was holding as hard as she could, ducking her head down.

Her dads looked, and she indicated with a tilt of her head.

“It’s him.  The crazy guy who attacked me.  Who sent those guys to Ben’s house.”

“This will all blow over,” the guy at the stage was saying.

Every time the man had shown up, there had been something.  The grotesque art show, the invaders at Ben’s house…

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

She looked, and she saw him staring right at her.

She watched as he beckoned.

With her dads, she stood from her seat, and they left the meeting.  By the time they reached the front door of the house, the man had stepped out.

Outside, it was dark, and it was quiet.

“Delete the photos,” the man said.  “Now.”

“What are you doing here?” Maggie’s dad asked.

“Damage control,” the man responded.  “Please.  The sooner you do it, the better for both of us.”

Uncertain, Maggie said, “I can’t tell if that’s a threat, or-”

“It’s reality.  If I explain, I endanger you.  I could tell you I’m not your enemy, but I suspect-”

“I wouldn’t believe you,” Maggie said.

“I know,” the man said.  “I got that sense.  What I can tell you is that you’re nearly out of time.  As it stands, you may not make it out alive, even if you delete the photos and leave this city now.”

“It’s dangerous out there,” her father said.

“Very soon, it’s going to be dangerous here,” the stranger said.  “Within minutes.  You should leave now, on foot. The cars are sabotaged and you can’t use the roads.”

Maggie withdrew the phone from her pocket.  She set to deleting the photos.

“Good.  That buys you time.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked.  “If you’re not the bad guy?”

“Helping.  Failing to help, too.  Right now, I’m trying to decide.  Do I let things hit rock bottom, or do I fight now?”

“What’s the difference?” Maggie asked.

“If I wait until a handful survive,” he said, “Then try to save them, when I know they’ll believe the truth, I might save more than if I go in front of that house full of people and lie.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“If you’re lucky, it never will,” he said.  “Go.  Take nothing, keep nothing.  But go.  And pray they haven’t ferreted you out.”

“Why were the photos so important?”

“Go.”

Chris was the one to jerk into motion, driven to move by the force in the stranger’s tone.

With every block they walked, taking shortcuts between houses, they saw how bad it was.  Cars had been taken apart and left dismantled in the road.  Houses were burned husks.  There were pools of blood on the streets, largely dried, flies clustered on them, flying into the air when they drew near.

“Psychological tactics,” Chris muttered, at the cars.  At the pools of blood, he said, “Animal blood.  There are farms nearby.”

Maggie wondered if he believed it.

She wondered why she couldn’t believe it.

It all came back to those photos.  To the stranger…

Her thoughts were interrupted.  Figures stepping out of the shadows.

They hadn’t made it.

When she looked, she found they were surrounded.

How could so many of them be so sneaky?  How could they walk in near silence for minutes, and not hear a single scrape of a footstep?

The people formed a ring around them.

Too many were too short, too young, too fat, too tall.  Almost none were normal… and those ones looked the most wrong when she looked too close.

She settled for staring down at the road at her feet.

“What… what’s going on?” Chris asked.

“I think you know,” her father said.  “It’s… not normal.”

Which summed it up.  Normal rules didn’t apply.

Maggie clenched her hands.

“Wee birds,” a woman’s voice.

Maggie turned her head.

“You had him a moment ago, the slippery man,” the voice continued.

Maggie looked, and she saw the figure in the crowd.  Some of the people parted to give her a better look.

The woman’s teeth had been filed down to points.  She wore contact lenses that reflected funny in the light.  Her entire facial structure… implants?  The shape of her ears?  The too-pugnacious nose  Surgery?

Maggie couldn’t come up with excuses as fast as she noticed all the things that didn’t fit.  Too much, all together, that made the buxom woman look wrong in a way that simple makeup and cosmetics couldn’t manage.

Her feet were a big part of that.  More like a lizard’s.  The fingers on her hands were too long.  But the most noticeable thing was her hair.  It was wet, soaked crimson, and only a blood-soaked headband kept it out of her face.

She toyed with a skull.  Not a bleached skull.  It was dark, with bits on it.

All of the illusions and self-delusions fell away.

“Oh.  God,” Maggie muttered.

“You had a tie,” the woman said.  “To him.  You know the one I’m talking about.”

Maggie thought of the man.

“Yes.  Him,” the woman said.  “You met recently, he confided in you, you know what he looks like.  That is enough points of reference.”

“Who is he?” her father asked.  “What’s going on?”

“He’s slippery one,” the woman said.  “He’s lurking, trying to spoil our fun.  Hunting me.  Because I found a way to cross through your cities.  Bridges of bones.”

“I don’t understand,” Maggie said.

A man’s voice cut in.  “Her kind can’t walk easily inside modern cities.  She found a way, and she’s been waiting for a chance to use it.”

The stranger.

“I was just about to look for you.”

“I know,” he said.  “I’m sparing you the trouble.  You’re letting them go.”

“Giving yourself up.  Are you worth so little?”

“I warned them.  The largest group I could find.  I told them how to fight you, and they’ll think I’m mad, but maybe they’re scared enough to listen.  But some of their sins and their mistakes are my sins and my mistakes too.”

“Ah.  You’ve given them all your luck and fortune.  All of your slipperiness.”

“I’ve tried.  And now I’m hoping you’ll let this family go, and promise to stop for three days and three nights.”

“You’re worth so little now.  Luckless, feckless, sad little wretch.”

“Blood is power, and I do have some power.  You’ll bathe in it, you’ll make some of that power yours, as you have with Faerie and Hags and all manner of other things, and you’ll be even more fearsome, when next you attack.”

The woman smiled, showing her pointed teeth,  “Or we could keep doing what we’re doing.  I’ll find others like you in time.”

“Others like me will come after you.  Stronger people.  This is the best option you’re getting.”

She considered, head turning this way and that, as if she thought differently with her head at different angles.

“Break him,” she said.

Her subordinates attacked, grabbing the practitioner, pulling his arms out to to either side, making him kneel.  Maggie turned her head before the makeshift weapons came down on his arms.

She still heard the sounds, the strangled scream.

The bloody-haired woman prowled forward, bending down near the broken stranger.  Deftly, she pulled things from his pockets.  A short wand, a set of large, fat gold coins, a piece of chalk, a book, falling apart, with symbols on the cover.  Each fell to the ground, pages of the book coming free with the impact, the coins ringing impossibly loud in the scene.

The woman turned her attention to Maggie and her family.

“Which one?”

“No,” Maggie said.  “All of us.  Let all of us go.”

“If I were to let two of you go, which two?”

“Them,” her father said.  “My daughter, my husband.  She… Chris will give her better support.”

“No,” Chris said.  “N-no.”

“You can take her to her mom.”

“Let them go,” Maggie said.  “Please.  I- you can’t take my family.”

The voices overlapped.

The bloody-haired woman approached, placing her hand on the cheek of Maggie’s father.  “You argue best.  I believe you, when you say you’d sacrifice yourself for them.  You love them that much.”

He shuddered, bowing his head, unable to maintain eye contact.

“You, I’ll let live, then.  You’ll feel the lost most.”

“No!”  Maggie cried out.  “No!”

And, somehow, it was that idea, her dad, alone, that fed the emotion into her shouts, more than any self preservation.

“Take them to pieces, slowly.”

“No!”  Maggie shrieked.  “No!  All of us live!  All of us!”

“Her first.  So the adults can watch.”

Maggie had to raise her voice to be heard over her fathers.  Her voice was so loud and high it was ragged.  “I’ll do anything!  Just let us go!”

“Anything?”

“Just- just let us go.”

“Agree…  Let me think.  You’ll experience what you experienced here, twice more.  The rule of three, to make this stronger.  Perhaps it will be me again.  Perhaps no.  But you will experience blood and darkness and fire, like you experienced it here.  If you agree, it will be so.”

This?  Again?  Maggie hesitated.

“Yes?  No?  I am impatient.”

“I said anything,” Maggie said, defeated.  “I- I think I meant it.”

“Then keep walking, child.  Walk with your parents, and wait.  Twice more.”

Maggie stepped forward, and she saw the goblins part, stepping out of the way.

Then she stopped, and she walked over to the stranger.

“Fool,” he muttered, through the pain.  “Fool.  She was to rest.  She had to agree, or she had to finish here, and once she rested for three days, three nights, she would have to sleep centuries before acting again.  Now she can keep going, come back with your oath.”

Numb, Maggie picked through the things the woman had taken from the stranger.  Coins.  The wand.

“The wand- no.  Won’t help you.”

She picked up the book.  Symbols, magic circles, script.

“No.  Walk blindly, pay no attention to this, forget.  It’ll make things easier, when the blood and darkness come, next time.  Your power is the oath’s power.”

“I’m not looking away,” Maggie said.

She picked up the book.  She’d need a way to stick it all together.  She hugged it to her chest.

Nothing stopped her or her family as they walked free of their town, leaving it all behind.

■

Two months ago

“Yes, I do actually know a thing about prophecies,” Laird said.

Maggie frowned.  Her ice cream was melting.  She licked the biggest dribble from her hand.  “And?”

“And it’s up to you.  We can manage this, or we can leave it be.  It could be bloodier, darker, more dangerous, with each repetition of the three, or it could be quieter, a controlled chaos we can both benefit from.”

“What do I have to do?”  Maggie asked.

“Her name is Molly Walker.  That will be the first part.  The only part of any importance, to you.  You can leave the remainder to me.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Breach 3.1

“Your name is Leonard Harlan.  Come.”

I had a small iron mortar and pestle in front of me.  I tipped it over, very carefully depositing the contents so they formed a straight line in front of me.

Two fires burned, one on either side of me.  Running through each fire, I had a ring of salt and a loop of chain.  I was grateful for the warmth of the flame.

“You made a mistake, Leonard.  The memory has faded to the point that nobody necessarily remembers, it was so long ago.  The doctors and nurses who witnessed it have left the world or left the city, your family all deceased.”

I picked up the folded page I’d laid across my lap.  I read it, taking my time.

Others were lurking around the area, but they hung back in groups.

The Briar Girl’s spies, more than an attacker of any sort.  There weren’t many Others who would be wandering the back of the property, and the circles I’d set out would help ward against them.

Even so, I was glad to have Rose watching my back.

I looked at the page.  My grandmother’s description of what had happened.  Outside of a microfiche of some newspaper article from years ago, this would be one of the last memories of what had happened to Leonard.

“I summon you, Leonard.  I know who you are, I remember your story.  I don’t know where you rest, but that place will have changed and moved on.  It will have forgotten.  The memories are here.  Let go and answer me.”

There was a long pause.

“You knew it would be a long shot,” Rose murmured.  “The last ghost you tried to call didn’t come.”

“Because it was closer to the North End.  It probably got swallowed up by Johannes.  This one shouldn’t be far.”

“There isn’t much tying Leonard down,” Rose said.  “Maybe he’s gone.  Reabsorbed into the ether, or whatever place memories go when they’re gone.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“We’re zero for three, Blake.  One ghost that’s apparently a slave to someone else…”

“One of the Duchamps, probably.  Or someone with a solid ability to manipulate connections, judging by the feelers they sent back in my direction.”

“Another that probably got swallowed up by Johannes’ Demesne.”

“Something like that.”

“And now another no-show.”

This one was a ghost grandmother had captured.  Leonard Harlan.  She’d bound him for a ritual, hence the notes, and he’d returned to his former haunting grounds when the ritual was done.

“Maybe you could stop?  Take a break, eat?”  Rose suggested.

“Soon.  I’ll eat to build up my strength, but I’m not feeling too hungry.”

“You’re not feeling tired either,” Rose said.  “That’s not a good thing.  That’s you being in such bad shape that you’re not registering your basic needs anymore.”

“I know.  I get it.  I’ll eat a full meal in just a few minutes.  I refuse to believe there aren’t any damn ghosts left in this town.”

“Lots of practitioners.”

“Who aren’t supposed to find ghosts of any worth,” I said.  “Too short lived, with a permanent expenditure of power.”

“That’s what the book said.  Maybe they’re gathering power in preparation for the shift of power.”

“Maybe.  But these last two weren’t connected to anyone or anything.  Hm.”

“Maybe strengthen the connection?” Rose asked.

“I think I’d have to.  I don’t want to overdo it, though.”

“Yeah.  Don’t use blood.  You’ve done too much of that already.”

I removed my left glove.  The locket was wound around my hand, the chain running between fingers and across my hand, holding the locket itself more or less in place.  It was uncomfortable, and the chain rubbed against the bandage I’d put over the self-inflicted stab wound, and the thing required constant adjustment so the chain wouldn’t rub the skin between my fingers raw.  Which was sort of the point; it ensured I couldn’t forget the thing.

It was, I was almost certain, a big factor in why the faerie hair I’d so neatly packed into the locket was growing enough to start slipping out, winding around the chain like climbing ivy.

I doubted it was as powerful as blood, but still, I used a small swiss army knife to snip the hair free, cut it up, and then put it into the small iron pot.  I grabbed some snow and squeezed it until the warmth and friction produced water, and ground up the moist hair with the mortar and pestle.

Some powdered herbs joined the mixture, and I crushed it up until I had a thin black-brown liquid.

I reached beyond the confines of the circle I’d created and I wiped away a section of the line I’d made.  I drew out a circle with the hair-ink, then placed the paper with Leonard’s history within the circle.

After some consideration, I put an empty wine bottle atop the folded paper.

The general idea was the same I’d used to set things up for the awakening ritual.  Adding something to the diagram.  In this case, an accounting of what had happened to poor Leonard.

“Fire’s getting low,” Rose said.

I reached for the firewood I’d stacked behind me and put a fresh log inside each ring of bricks.

“Leonard Harlan.  Father of Nathan Harlan.  Factory worker.  An unassuming man.  Leonard Harlan.”

How many reference points could I name, to give the connection more grounding?

“Leonard Harlan.  Killing himself with drink.”

I felt the connection appear.

“There we go.  Leonard Harlan, murderer.”

It strengthened.  I had something, and I could feel it growing in intensity.

He didn’t seem as strong as June had been.  That said a lot, because I’d used blood for power and weakened myself a fair bit in the time since I’d talked to June.  If June had been strong enough to penetrate the salt circle before, and I could barely feel Leonard, he was little more than a wisp.

An overgrown beard that splayed out, a receding hairline, a very tall face with a brow creased by worry.  He’d distorted quite a bit since his demise, I assumed.  Bug eyed, neck too thin, facial features out of proportion.  He had a bad slouch, and he carried a bottle, even as a ghost.

His eyes, when he met mine, were dead in a way that went beyond his current status.  The only thing I could make out in them was pain.

“It was a mistake anyone could make,” I said.

I felt the connection weakening.

“But you don’t want to hear it.  You don’t believe it, and it isn’t a part of what you’ve brought with you to… wherever you are now.  If I want a stronger connection, I need to validate you.  I’d have to call you a murderer, a thoughtless idiot, a drunk, a loser.”

Sure enough, those words alone were strong enough to clarify the connection.  I could see the spirits running along the ink I’d drawn out.

“I can’t do that, so I’m only going to say the truth.  You were a single father, without much help, without advice or support.  You worked and did what you could to ensure that your baby son was okay.  You cooked, did laundry, worked, washed him, and cleaned.  It was when you were cleaning that you killed your son.  Caustic fumes, maybe a mix of chemicals, and he was a baby that wasn’t even old enough sit upright.  He suffocated, right there, on your kitchen counter.  You damaged your own lungs, too, and some said that was why you never said another word.  But my grandmother wrote that it was more likely to be grief.”

I could smell something in the air, now.  Stringent, like strong urine or bitter vinegar.  The wind was still, but we were outdoors, and that helped, but I knew something was getting past the salt circle.

Where June had flickered from form to form as we’d walked her through her story, Leonard wasn’t capable.

All that was left of his ghost was a single drawn out moment.  Standing there, mute, staring off into space, lost inside his own head.

He coughed, a small, painful sound, then resumed his former position.

“Come with me, Leo,” I said.

He didn’t move.  I could see him fading, and I could see how disconnected he was from the rest of the world.  If I lost him, he’d be gone.

“Leonard,” I said.  His identity is tied to the full name, not any short form.

It helped, but not much.  The connection was weaker than it had been when he’d first appeared.  Leonard was too.

“I’m losing him, Rose.”

“Leonard,” she said.

I could feel her connection to him.  Was it stronger than mine, or was she piggybacking off of what I’d set up?

“Help me out,” I said.  “I can help you find peace.”

Leonard looked at me.  I felt like I was being drawn out, as if his eyes were a well that could suck me into it.  He was fading, but the smell he’d brought with him was getting more pungent.

I coughed.

“Leonard, come,” Rose said.

The smell momentarily tripled in intensity, and then Leonard was gone.

The bottle wobbled precariously.  I reached across the circle to catch it before it fell and cracked open on the patio.

Lacking a stopper, I put the folded paper in the neck of the bottle, jamming it in with one finger.

“There we go,” Rose said, very quiet.

“Welcome back to the family, Leonard,” I said.

I kept one thumb over the end of the bottle while I picked up the various items that now littered the inside of the circle.  Bags and bottles of herbs, the mortar and pestle, the swiss army knife, some scraps of paper and three books.

I left the cord of wood, chain, and the two small fires, making my way into the kitchen.

The rest of our stuff was laid out on the small table below the window, the Valkyrie book open already to a relevant page.

With black painter’s tape, I began encircling the bottle, using the tape to draw out lines and patterns.  I watched the fires from the window.

“You don’t look good, Blake,” Rose said.

“You don’t know how close I just came to a sarcastic response,” I said.  “I know I don’t look good.  Why does this need constant restating?”

“I’m noticing it more.  You look bleached.  Even the clothes you wear, they look washed out somehow, faded.  Your hair and eyes are lighter, you don’t have the dark circles under your eyes…”

I ducked down to get a look at myself in the side of the toaster, the remembered I couldn’t.  I pulled some hair down in front of my eyes to see. Was my hair lighter?  It had been blond to begin with, but more the sort of blond that was tending towards brownish with adulthood.  Now… less so?  I might not have noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it.  If I had noticed, I might have dismissed it as a result of odd lighting.

I glanced back at the fires, my hands working with the black tape.  “Maybe.”

“You gave up a lot of yourself, when you gave up blood.  That power, it comes from somewhere.  From your substance.”

“Lesson learned,” I said.  “I’ll finish binding Leonard into the bottle, put out the fires, and then eat.”

“The fires seem like they’re more hassle than they’re worth.”

“I wasn’t about to freeze to death a second time,” I said.  “And I don’t mind having a nice barrier of iron, on top of that.”

“Maggie,” Rose said.

“Yes, Maggie,” I confirmed.  “Metal fed with power by way of the elements, to protect against goblins.  I’m assuming conducted heat counts.”

“I can’t imagine her attacking you.”

“Wasn’t long ago you were being the voice of reason, telling me to be careful in dealing with her,” I said.

“We talked to her though.  I’m more comfortable dealing with people when I know what they’re gunning for.  I spent a long time dealing with our family, with the schemes and plots.  Figuring out the why of it, you figure out their weak points.”

“Were you the type to attack weak points?”  I asked.  I continued with the tape, glancing up at the fires.

“Only when I had to.  Mostly, I tried to scare family away when they were getting too bloodthirsty.”

“Yeah?  What were you doing, outside of that ‘mostly’?”

“Panicking.  Lashing out.  You know what they say about a cornered rat, right?”

I thought of my brawl against the Faerie swordswoman, yesterday morning.  “Yeah.  I guess we’re the same, mostly, in that respect.  I don’t like confrontation, but I’ll do it when my hand is forced.”

Rose seemed to pick up on my line of thought.  “You handled it pretty well.  Both times, Faerie and the bird zombie things.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I couldn’t do that.  I mean, not in an up-and-up fight.”

“How would you handle yourself outside of an up-and-up fight?” I asked.

“I did okay, before.  Now?  I dunno.  Not many chances to get into confrontations, in my private little mirror world.”

“It might be worth getting yourself prepared,” I said.  “We know some Others can reach you in there.  Padraic did.  Get yourself a weapon or two, to start with.”

“Blake-”

“And we need to figure out what your capabilities are.  What can you do, what does it cost you?  You awakened, right?”

“Why does it feel like you’re preparing for a fight, more than you’re preparing for fights in general?”

“Because I am?  Because we know Laird is making a move later today?  A kind of revenge?”

“Okay.  But Maggie was a concern, when you were setting up your circles?  With the chain?  Are you sure this isn’t a response to her?  To the betrayal?”

“It isn’t.  Not directly.”

“But there’s a connection.”

“Maybe,” I said.  I was about to rub my eyes, then stopped.  I still had spatters of faerie-hair juice on my fingers.  And my hands.  And on my wrists, beneath the cuffs of my sleeves.

The hair was my go-to power source for the moment, so I didn’t have to use my blood, but I’d splashed some when using the mortar and pestle.  Not something I had a lot of experience using.

Was there a book out there with a list of expected side effects from this sort of thing?  What happened if you got faerie ink in your eyes?

I set to washing my hands, pulling off my jacket and shirt, removing the hatchet from where I’d hooked it into my belt so it wouldn’t cut me.  I was careful to get all of the ink off with soap and hot water.  “Yeah.  Maybe there is a connection.  It feels more real than it did.  Rooted in what we were doing.  It’s not like I’ve seen Molly’s body, the idea of her being murdered was abstract.  Real, but abstract.  Now I know I’ve looked in the eyes of the person who ordered it.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “I get that.  But are you talking about looking Maggie in the eyes, or Laird?”

“I was thinking of Maggie when I said it.”

“Maggie’s the middleman.  She didn’t commit the murder herself.  And she did it because Laird pushed her to.”

I glared at Rose.  “Are you defending her?”

“No.  I’m not,” Rose said.

“It sounded like you were.”

“I’m trying to put it all in perspective.  It was goblins who did the deed.  Laird who put everything in motion.  Can you honestly say, seeing what Laird has pulled already, that you couldn’t have ever made a mistake like that?  If Grandmother hadn’t warned you what was out there?  If you weren’t vulnerable, with Laird going all-out?”

I finished washing my hands, drying them by running them through my hair.  “I don’t want to forgive her.  I think that’s fucked up, kind of, if I’m dismissing the death of someone I cared about so easily.  For what?  For an ally?  A bargaining chip?  Is it really worth surviving, if that survival requires that kind of compromise?”

“Okay.  I’m not going to ask you…”

Rose trailed off.

“What?”

“Your arms.”

I’d moved into her field of view.  I looked, turning my arms over.

It took me a second to realize what she was talking about.  I was so used to them, my attention didn’t tend to linger on them.  The tattoos.

The birds and the background colors were more vivid and distinct than they’d been the day they’d been finished.  Which was worse?  Rose being right when she had said I was fading in color, with the tattoos being that much more colorful by contrast?  Or the tattoos being infused with color by some outside means?

“You bit a Faerie.  Maybe you caught something?”

I moved my hand, so the chain and locket rattled a fraction.  “Faerie thrive on attention.  Why would there be any glamour affecting the tattoos?”

I could see Rose’s frown.

I looked, using the sight, and I could see the innumerable connections that spread out from me to the outside world.

Friendships… thin, barely perceptible.  I’d neglected them, I supposed.  Family bonds, some local, some not.  Magical bonds, and bonds of ownership, of home and emotional attachment.

Nothing that suggested a big, complicated working.  No conduit of power that could be feeding this strangeness into me.

“I don’t think it’s anything Laird did,” I said, my voice low, talking more to myself than Rose.  “The Duchamps… it’s more their style, maybe, and they’d be subtle about it, but I don’t think so.”

“No.  Doesn’t seem like something he’d do.”

Numb, I said, “Back when I first awakened, I saw my tattoos moving.  They were almost alive, then.”

“I don’t know, Blake.  I can start reading some stuff, but… I don’t know.”

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“If I had to guess?”

“I’ll take a guess,” I said.  I didn’t take my eyes off the birds and branches that marked my arms.

“Maybe it’s just an extension of the idea before?  You’re drained.  You gave too much of yourself, at a time not long after we’d sort of fudged the truth?  Something could have filled that void.”

My blood ran cold.  “I’m possessed?”

“I don’t know.  I’m guessing.  We know any practitioner becomes a bit more Otherlike when they get into anything more than the surface level magics.  You’ve-”

“I’ve barely waded in the damned pool.  If it was that easy, every practitioner would be freakish.  Grandmother got into hairier stuff, and I didn’t see much that was unusual about her.”

My hands were shaking, as much a response to the thudding of my heart that rocked through my entire body as anything else.  My body was… it was supposed to be sacrosanct, in a way.  I was twenty; I was hardly expecting any big changes.  A scar here, a wrinkle there.  Not my tattoos turning against me.  They were supposed to be mine.  Good things, things I liked looking at, things that invoked memories of my friendships.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Blake.  Except-”

I looked at Rose.  She’d stopped.

“Except what, Rose?”

“Except… if you think of all of the things that set you apart from the typical practitioner…”

“The thing I almost summoned, the one the lawyer told me to call.  I almost called it.  I can still feel the connection now.  Weaker.  I probably wouldn’t have to call it seven times to get it to come… but maybe I’d have to call it more than the once.”

“Let’s not gamble on that.”

“Of course not,” I said.  That would be something.  Accidentally summoning a horrible demon into the world.

“And… that wasn’t what I was getting at, Blake.  There’s an Other you do have a strong connection to.”

“Which?”

“Me.  We’re connected.  Maybe… maybe you filled that void with some of the vestige.”

“I’m not sure I like that,” I said.

“No,” Rose said.  “That’s bad on a lot of levels.”

“A lot of levels,” I agreed.

“A vestige is like a house of cards.  You take out one piece, and it folds into itself.”

“And if you didn’t fold,” I said.

“No,” Rose said.  “And I get what it could mean.  Us being enemies.  You fighting me, because I’m moving in?  Taking over?”

“Involuntarily,” I said.  I very nearly made it a question.

“Yes.  Involuntarily.”

I looked down at the tattoos.  I had to admit, I was relieved to hear her say it.

“Let’s not pretend this is a surprise.  Grandmother wanted a female heir.”

“I guess it isn’t a surprise,” Rose said.  “If this is what’s happening.”

I gripped the edge of the table, staring at the surface.  Cognitively, I knew I should be finishing the bottle, that I should be preparing against Laird.

Emotionally, though…

“Rose,” I said.  “We’ve been cooperating more, haven’t we?  We’re more or less on the same page?”

“More or less.”

“Tell me, straight up, that you aren’t my enemy.”

“I- I’m not your enemy, Blake.  But please, can we not do this?  Demanding proof, I don’t want to get into something this emotional and sensitive if you’re like this.”

“Like what?”

“Fragile?  No, that’s the wrong word.  You’re… perched in a precarious spot.  Where a push or a pull could send you over the edge.”

“I’m… feeling more grounded, actually,” I said.  “Can I trust you?”

“I don’t like this, Blake.  You’re implying you don’t trust me, if you have to ask.  I’m not so weak that my feelings would be hurt, but this is the sort of attitude that builds resentment.”

“Please get the fuck over it,” I said.  Still staring down at the table.  “This is how this stuff is played, isn’t it?  Oaths and truths.”

“But if you start second guessing me until I start making statements, it’s only one small step to second guessing those statements, thinking about the wording…”

“Can I trust you, Rose?”

“Yes, Blake.  We’re connected, maybe to a dangerous degree.  Your survival is mine.  Like Maggie said, I harbor no ill will against you.  I’m your ally.”

“And you’ve never harbored ill-will against me in the past?”

“I’ve… I’ve hated you, honestly.  I’ve been angry at you.  I can’t answer that question.”

“Have you ever conspired against me?  Sabotaged me?”

“No more than you have against me.”

“That is not an answer,” I growled the words.  “Fuck, Rose, that’s the sort of non-answer that makes me paranoid.”

I heard her take a deep breath, sighing audibly.  When she met my eyes, she looked angry.  “No, Blake.  I have not sabotaged you or conspired against you in any meaningful way.  No way except the little things you’re already aware of, like trying to get you to read that dull ledger of deaths.”

“Okay.  Thank you.  That’s what I needed to hear.”

“Why, Blake?  I thought we’ve established this stuff.  What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking the stakes are high and they’re getting higher.  Laird’s about to mess with us, and he seemed confident that it would be a real problem.  I know, now, that there’s no way I can be strong enough to tackle all of this alone.  That’s part of the reason I was quizzing you.  I need to know for absolute sure that you’re in my camp.”

“I just wish you hadn’t had to ask,” she said.

“That’s not a reflection of you.  It’s this situation.  I’d be a fool if I trusted anyone.  Maggie proved that.”

“You can’t harbor resentment like that.  We have enough problems without grudges.”

“No.  Not resentment.  Just… caution.  Listen, Rose.  I hereby swear-”

“Stop,” she interrupted me.

“No.  I hereby swear that I’m going to help you, in exchange for your loyalty and support.  We’re going to find a way to get you out of that mirror world.  I will make sacrifices if I have to, short of actually standing by to let any transition happen.  I so swear, to you, and to anything that hears.”

I could feel a connection forming.

“You did not need to say that,” she said.  She looked visibly upset.

“I’ve already said something similar.  But I need you to feel, in your heart, that I’ve got your back, that I’m an ally.  I won’t expect reciprocation.”

“Damn you, Blake.  How am I supposed to not say something?  Yes.  I will help you.  I will do what I can to protect you from whatever’s going on with you, good or bad.  I swear.”

“If you can’t, if this is really a one way street, can you do me a favor?”

“I think I could.”

“Pass on word to my friends.  Let them know I’m gone, and that I was thinking about them.  They’re really the only family I’ve ever had, and I kind of owe them a great deal.  Not in a mystic way, but a very mundane, very important way.”

“I so swear,” she said.

It sounded a hell of a lot more like a heartfelt oath than the one she’d just made.  I exhaled slowly.  The relief I felt was palpable.

There were some horrifying things out there, but the thing that had weighed on me, lurked in the back of my mind, was the fear that I wouldn’t be able to cover that one base.

In a way, the threat of being replaced was less scary than death, however torturous the transition might be.  Because if I were replaced, at the very least I’d be remembered by Rose.

I picked up the bottle, and started getting the tape down.

When I finally broke the silence, “This ‘cannot lie’ thing is a weakness, it’s a drawback, a complication, a mess of traps.  But it’s also a tool.  You can achieve a lot with just words.  Swaying people, making an alliance stronger.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.

Odd, that she seemed so diminished, when I felt more energized.  Was there something to that?

I continued, “…and even for ourselves, knowing the words have a certain weight, an oath is a constant reminder.  It shapes how we think and how we’re going to handle things.  Heck, oaths have held a lot of weight in the past, when they weren’t arbitrarily magically binding.”

“You’re wanting to shape how we think?”

“I’ve made an oath.  I’m going to hold to that, because I have to.  We need the goodwill it gets us with the universe, for one thing, and I can’t afford what it costs me if I don’t follow through.  Anything I read, now, I’m going to view in the light of your situation.  Maybe, hopefully, you’ll do the same for me.”

“This isn’t how I would have done things,” Rose said.

“The time for being careful is done,” I said.  “We tried doing what you’ve done in the past.  Lashing out, trying to scare them off.  It’s not working.  I’ve gotta tell you, there weren’t many times where it came up, but I’ve been here.  Dealing with some freak who wanted to rob me, when I was on the street, dealing with the family.  There’s a point where you have a chance to act, and it’s a choice between fight or flight.  Experience has taught me that the only real way out is to absolutely destroy the other motherfucker.”

Rose didn’t have a response to that.

My hand hurt where the locket’s chain was rubbing against the skin, as I made the repetitive loops and tears in the tape.

I finished, and then grabbed a can of spray paint I’d liberated from the cabinet in the library.  I sprayed the bottle, top to bottom, and then stripped away the tape.

“There you go, Leonard,” I said.  I moved the hatchet next to the bottle, and pulled my shirt and jacket back on.  “Leonard, June.  June, meet Leonard.  You two should know we’re going to war.”

“War,” Rose said.  “Absolutely destroying our opponent?”

“Best we can,” I said.  “And we start by making the proverbial deals with devils.”

“We promised we wouldn’t.”

“Proverbial, Rose,” I said.  “Proverbial deals with devils.”

“I don’t follow.”

I pulled the chain tight around my hand, securing the locket in place.  Was the hair just a fraction of an inch longer than it had been when I’d cut it from around the chain?  I pulled my glove on over it.  Uncomfortable.  Perfect.

Bottle in one had, hatchet in the other, I opened the door, stepping outside.

The last logs I’d thrown onto the fires had burned down into coals.  I’d neglected to pay attention to them.  Nothing too serious.  I kicked snow over the smouldering logs until they were fully quenched.

I picked up the chain, gingerly avoiding the bits that had been in the fire, as I gathered it into a loop.

“Blake?  Please don’t tell me you’re going to call out a name you shouldn’t call out.  Because I can’t think of a good reason for you to be outside, after saying what you did.”

“I am going to say a name I probably shouldn’t,” I said, “But not like you think.”

“Does this run against the oath you just made to me?”

“No,” I said.  “Not so much.  But I think maybe, just a little, you can hold to your oath, by trusting me here.”

“Do you trust yourself?” she asked.

“Eighty percent, maybe?” I asked.

“Then I’ll strive to match you with eighty percent trust,” she said.  Her tone was deadly serious.

I stretched my arms out to the sides, then shouted at the top of my lungs, “Briar Girl!”

My voice rang through the area.

“Briar Girl!” I screamed, again.  I could feel the connection, now.

The Others at the periphery of the area reacted.  Some retreating, some drawing closer.  Messengers and warriors.  Plant and animal spirits, elementals, and dark, gnarled animal things with an overabundance of teeth and claws.  I couldn’t help but think of the poem Jabberwocky or the hunting one.  Bandersnatches and whatevers.  I only knew about it through acquaintances.  No doubt I’d run into references in my grandmother’s books.

“Briar-”

A bird landed in front of me, a storm of wings and feathers.

Black and white, instead of a beak, it had a very human face on a tall head, pale, with features reminiscent of one of the statues on Easter Island.  Exaggerated, stern, any eyes hidden beneath the shadows of a heavy brow.

“Thank you for answering,” I said.

“What are you doing, calling me?” the thing asked, speaking in her voice.

“I want to deal,” I said.  “I know what you want, you know what I want.  We’re going to talk sooner or later, so let’s talk.”

“Follow the homunculus,” she replied.  The bird-thing turned to prepare to fly away.

“I’d like a promise of protection,” I called out.

“Too bad,” the thing replied.

“Blake, this doesn’t strike me as the wisest course of action.”

I set off after the homunculus-bird.  “You want to play this safe, to be cautious, to deliberate and pick the best course of action.”

“Ideally.”

“Then we’re in complete and total agreement.”

The Others around us parted to let us through.  I didn’t miss the fact that they were closing ranks behind me.

“You’re not making sense, and you’ve got me genuinely worried.”

“We’re in agreement.  I would love to be logical and rational about all of this.  But so long as we’re playing this safe and making steady, deliberate, smart moves, we’re never going to catch up.  We’ve established this.”

“Yes.”

“And even in controlled attempts to change things up, put Laird in a bad spot, we’re still in a disadvantageous situation.”

“I know.  Yes, I agree.  I don’t understand this, though.”

“Let’s say you’re playing chess against someone who’s got more pieces on the board and decades more experience than we do.  How do you win?”

“You don’t,” Rose said.  “Unless you cheat.”

“We already tried cheating,” I said.  “Getting him in trouble, risking his job.  He’s apparently planning a response tonight.”

“Change the game, then,” Rose said.

“Again, we tried that.  There’s no winning.  Not really.  So what I’m proposing is pretty simple.”

“Do tell,” Rose said.  “Also, you do know that we’re being followed?”

“We’re surrounded,” I said.  “But she wants to deal badly enough that she’ll hear us out before she murders us.  Nevermind that.  Our analogy here.  I’m proposing the pigeon strategy.  Knock over all of the pieces, shit on the board, and then strut around like we’re the victors.”

A brief period passed.  I could hear something growling nearby, fighting another member of its kind.  Already fighting over who would get first dibs, no doubt.

“Can I ask you a genuine question, Blake?”

“Of course.”

“Have you lost your mind?  I don’t mean that in a funny way.  I mean it in the sense that being really truly crazy is really truly sad.  Have you, I don’t even know how to phrase it…”

“Am I lost?” I asked.

“Lost… maybe.  Like being six and getting separated from mom and dad in a crowded place, experiencing that stark horror of not knowing where you are or that you might not be able to ever go home?”

“Yeah.  I get what you mean.  Aren’t we both lost, in that sense?  Hasn’t it been that way for a little while?”

“I guess it has,” Rose said.

“We can’t rise to their level, not like this,” I said.  “We have to bring them down to ours.”

I trudged through the snow, while the homunculus-bird circled back to keep me in sight, allowing me to follow.  The cold was so brutal it went straight through my boots, and made my skin physically ache where it was exposed.  My hands were getting cooler, too, where I had them out of my pockets, holding bottle and hatchet.

The Others were following.  Just out of sight, as we moved through trees.  We reached a downhill slope and our progress slowed by half, my legs plunging knee-deep into snow.

“That happened to you too, huh?” I asked, to distract myself.

“Hm?

“Being six, getting lost in a crowded place.”

“Oh.  Yeah.  We do have some shared memories, huh?”

I nodded.  “Apparently.  Maybe because mom and dad were careless enough they had to screw up a few times before they started keeping better track of us?”

There was a pause.

“Once,” Rose said, quiet.  “They only lost me the once.”

I gnawed on my lip for a moment.  “Fuck them.  They lost me three times.  That I can remember.”

I could hear Rose laughing, on the other side of the mirror I wore.  A kind of nervous laughter, or a laughter borne of relief.

Could she see them?  The Others that were lurking in the very fringes?  If she could only see what came through the mirror, they wouldn’t be in her field of view.  Taller than most, moving effortlessly through the snow.

We reached a clearing.  I thought I maybe recognized it from the vision I’d had.

The Briar Girl sat on a fallen tree with branches still sticking up from what had once been the upper end.  Her feet were buried in snow, and she was sitting in snow, but she didn’t show the slightest sign of discomfort.

“Bad manners,” Briar Girl said, “Coming into someone’s space with a weapon drawn.  Two weapons.”

“We’ll put our weapons away if you put yours away,” Rose said.

The Briar Girl let go of her rabbit to raise her hands, showing them empty.  Her fingers were exposed in fingerless gloves.  The rabbit remained in her lap.

Rose continued, “The homunculus, I recognize that word.  Manufactured life.  You made it.  A lot of these Others are tools, aren’t they?  Hand crafted Others?  They’re weapons as much as that hatchet is.”

“Well said,” Briar Girl responded.  “Fine.  I’ll send my creations away if you put away your weapons.”

“With all due respect,” I said.  “I’m not putting my weapons away until you’ve dismissed every Other here, creation or not, and you’re not about to do that.  Can we skip the niceties and accept that you’re not being very hospitable, so I’m going to be a terrible guest?”

I could see the Briar Girl deliberating.  She stroked her rabbit.  Her familiar.

The thing was whispering.  Not speaking, per se, but I could see it communicating, speaking a language only it and its master could understand.

The Others that had been flanking Rose and I while I trudged through the snow were drawing into the clearing, gathering around the Briar Girl, her court and congregation.

I heard a sound from Rose, as one collection of the Others arrived.  Dressed in layered, bleached skins, each wearing an oversized bird skull atop its head.  They stood in a neat row behind the Briar Girl, one shorter one perching on a larger branch of the fallen tree, legs bent.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“To offer you a deal.  You want property.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t offer this to you.  Not yet.  It’s not mine.”

“I know this,” the Briar Girl said.  “You’re useless to me.”

“I’m more useful to you than any of the ones who come after me are liable to be,” I said.  “You want a share of this land, you can’t establish a demesne because it’s technically owned by another person.  Can’t stake out the territory to even begin making the claim.”

“I know all this,” she responded.

“In a few years, I could give you a share of land.”

I bent down, drawing out a square, one and a half feet by one and a half feet.  “I’ll give you that much land, for letting us leave alive, if I live that long.”

“You insult me.”

“No,” I said.  “I’m opening negotiations.  We’re going to work together.  You’ll do favors for me, and I’ll give you parcels of land, so you can expand that square.  I’ll do favors for you, and you’ll give me things I need.”

“I could kill you,” she said.  “Kill the next one, and the next one, until your line ends, and nobody has claim.”

“Devils have claim,” I said.  “If our line ends, lawyers could take it over, since the have partial or complete custody even now, and that means it probably passes into the hands of immortal Others.  Devils could get a foothold into the world, and it’s a big foothold.  You probably won’t even recognize this place.”

I saw her eyes narrow.

“This is your only option.  Best deal you’ll get.  Any chunk I give you is a chunk they can’t take.”

“And what do you want?” she asked.  “To live?”

“Living is nice,” I said.  “But right now, I want to utterly destroy the Behaim and Duchamp families.”

Breach 3.2

The words were barely out of my mouth when the rabbit Briar Girl held leaped from her arms.  By the time it hit the ground, it was ten times the size.  A wolf, almost as large as a horse, but with feathers instead of fur.  The patterns, length, and direction of the feathers were reminiscent of flames curling in the air.

Rather than the wolf’s ferocious snarl, however, the demeanor was more fitting for a bird of prey or a reptile.  Cold, still, and emotionless.

When I looked at the individual details, they weren’t fitting, either.  The wolf’s claws were more like talons.  The teeth too narrow and clean to belong to a real wolf.

“Saying that was a mistake,” the Briar Girl said.  “My companion thinks we should kill you now.”

“Let’s talk it out first, and then we can mutually decide one way or the other,” I said.

She looked at her familiar, and then seemed to come to a decision.  “Perhaps.”

“Behaim is the local powerhouse, with the Duchamps not far behind.  You, Johannes, Maggie and I, maybe even Mara, we’re stuck on the fringes.  Conservation of ninjitsu isn’t in effect here.  Those families are big.  Lots of practitioners, who’ve grown up into power, who have been handed everything they have.  They’re scary.  A fucking kid, half my age, give or take a couple years, tried to off me, just yesterday.  I get it, if you’re too scared to go up against them.”

The Briar Girl smiled.  “You’re so transparent.  Appealing to my pride?  I have little.  Look at me.  I forage in the snow for edible plants.  I hunt for my food, and I clean it myself.”

She thrust her hands at me.

“With these hands, I’ve cleaned a deer.  Hung it, bled it, removed its hide.  I washed the shit from its guts with my hands and freezing water from a creek, so I could use them.”

She gestured towards the bird-mask things.

“For the feorgbold, I had to dig up and barter for the corpses no one would claim.  I walked from here to Toronto and back, a full day and night to get there, longer to get back, dragging the body in a suitcase behind me.  I purified them, I washed them utterly clean, I decorated them with care, and I gave of myself to bring them forth.  Are you so power hungry that you imagine all of us are itching to depose the current powers?”

I didn’t really have a response to that.

Rose did.  “More accurate to say every practitioner we’ve seen has been power hungry.  Laird may have misled us on that front.”

“You’re bargaining from a position of stupidity. Ignorance.  That does not bode well for you, Thorburns.”

“Thorburns, plural?” I asked.

“I know who she is.”

“How?” Rose asked, without hesitation.

For an instant, I thought maybe she’d given it away.  Then I remembered that the Briar Girl couldn’t lie.  That was one obvious trick from the playbook that didn’t work in this world.

“I live here?” Briar Girl asked.  “In these woods.  I’ve watched the Thorburn family for almost six years.  Hoping, waiting.  I can see the ties that bind you to the house.  If you are not one of the Thorburns, you’re of the Thorburns.”

“I’m guessing she can probably smell it on you, too,” I said.

The Briar Girl smiled again.  I noticed her teeth weren’t stellar, and there might have been one missing among the back molars.  “Now it’s my turn to ask how you might know that.”

“If I were living in the woods, hunting and foraging for my food, probably selling what I could to buy creature comforts like clothes, I might try to wrangle the same thing,” I said.  “I can’t help but notice the cold doesn’t bother you, either, so you’re doing some things to make life easier for you.”

Not to mention that your familiar might demand something along those lines.  I glanced at the thing, and it huffed hot breath into the air, where it fogged around the snout and the intense yellow bird’s eyes.

If I didn’t have experience through Rose, I might not have even considered that the hot breath was purely for show.  A spirit didn’t need to breathe any more than a vestige did.

“I’ve made a good few changes,” the Briar Girl said.  Her attention flickered to her familiar, as well.  “Not enough, it seems.”

“Your… partner, wants you to be stronger?” I asked.

“You’re back to discussing power,” Briar Girl said.  She spread her arms.  “Look at me, Thorburn.  I gave up my power for this.  What are you going to tell me that might change my mind?”

I don’t know, but I’d better figure it out before you decide to have me torn limb from limb.

“What’s ‘this’?” Rose asked.  “What did you give your power up for?”

“A place in the world,” Briar Girl said.  “This place, specifically.”

“Why this place?” Rose asked.

“Because this is where my friends are.  When I left civilization, I came here first, and this is my home, this is where they are.”

“What if we moved them?” I asked.  “Hypothetically.  Would you and I be able to get along?”

“Try it.  Try to move every spirit, elemental and Other to another forest.  I would like to see it.”

Rose said, “To move the spirits, you’d have to move every single one of the trees and animals here, that the spirits are attached to.  You’d lose ground if the animals returned to their old habitats or if trees started sprouting from the ground.  I don’t even know you’d begin to move the elementals.  You’d probably have to bargain with the Others on a one-on-one basis… it would be a lifetime of work, if it was even possible.”

“The voice is clever,” Briar Girl said.  “And she’s right.”

“Would it help?” I asked.  “You seem poised to treat us as enemies so long as we own this land.  Would we be able to get along if this wasn’t an issue?”

“No,” Briar Girl said.

I sighed.

“Your kind is dangerous.  Even you… you stink of something foul.  I can smell it and they can smell it.”

“When I’ve barely interacted with anything?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Briar Girl said.  “Can’t you see it?  The animals don’t like you.”

I looked over the crowd of spirits that had surrounded me.  The animal spirits… they were bristling, alternately retreating and advancing, trying to look aggressive.  Their snarls were small, barely audible, but constant.

“Once upon a time, when humans weren’t much more than animals, we relied on our dogs to scare off the Others who wanted to prey on us and do mischief.  Cats hunted and fought with the lesser Goblins, returning to owners with torn ears or small injuries.  They still have those instincts.  To destroy things of darkness, foulness and blight, before rot can set in.”

“Rot?” I asked.

“The way I was told it,” Briar Girl said, “Many of the worst of them were architects.  Call them spirits, or divine servants of the god or gods who put the world together, or lesser gods.  Doesn’t matter.  They put things together.  Stars in the sky, mountains, oceans, they gathered the animals and gave them the instincts that each species would pass on to others of their kind, and to the species that came about, later on.  But things reached a certain mass, and a counterweight was needed.”

“Some of these builders switched roles,” Rose said.  “Doing the inverse of what they’d done before.”

“Like the one the lawyer mentioned to us,” I said.  “Put the stars in the sky, now calls them down.”

“Meteor showers or something,” Rose said.

“Meteors?”  Briar Girl asked.  “No.  The stars are sources of light and energy.  A being like you describe would be powerful.  A leader of others of its kind.  Meteors?  With one action, he might bring fiery death down on your enemies, but the world would pay a cost.  Every light humanity uses might be dimmer.  Every source of fuel and energy might be a fraction less effective.  Food, fuel, electricity.”

“People would notice,” I said.

“Never when they were looking,” she said.  “No.  A general or a duke, whatever he might be, this being you speak of, he should be a commander.  Imps, you might call them.  If he brought a darkness to the world, he would do it by scattering imps across the world.  These imps would work as spirits do, but with intelligence.  Ensuring that a flashlight grew dim when it might reveal a murderer or rabid animal.  That a car ran out of gas where it might carry a sick man to a hospital, spelling his death.  One action on your part, fire and devastation, but you never see what comes out of it. Hundreds of incidents a year, for decades or a century, before the imps are dealt with or spent of their power.”

“The rot sets in, so to speak,” Rose said.  “Humanity fights back, maybe unknowingly, by having dogs beside us, or good luck charms, or other things.”

“Which is why your kind is dangerous,” Briar Girl said.

“The books went into some detail about the origins you just talked about,” Rose said.  “They also said that particular story was disproved.”

The Briar Girl shrugged.  “It’s what I was taught.”

“And some of the things that are in the books aren’t devils and demons, or anything that devours the world.  Some are particularly nasty goblins, or other things we don’t have labels for.”

Another shrug.  “Close enough.  It’s about taint, about rot.  Once those things get hooks in the world, the world starts coming apart at the seams.””

I frowned.  “Says the girl who takes homeless people’s bodies and turns them into…”

“Feorgbold, life vessels,” the Briar Girl said.  “Recycling.  Death, consumption and rebirth are parts of the cycle of nature.  Some of my favorite parts.  I could do what I do a hundred thousand times over, and there would still be balance.  Your things, they are not balanced, not in any way we want to deal with.  Never simple death, but oblivion, annihilation.  Helping the universe to reach zero, with screams, darkness and pain every step of the way.”

The nature spirit bristled.

“Which is why,” Briar Girl added, as if she were translating, “You should give me this territory.  If someone will use it to give them a foothold, don’t give them the chance.  Give it away, at least the parts you haven’t already tainted by association.  Curl up into a ball, make yourself insignificant, and don’t touch a thing.”

“Laird said something similar.”

“Laird isn’t wrong,” Briar Girl told me.

I frowned.  “Those aren’t words I want to hear out of anyone’s mouth.  Negotiation has to be possible between us, or you wouldn’t have agreed to hear us out.”

“Agree to give me the territory, and I won’t kill you right now.  There.  Negotiations done.”

“You know it’s not that simple.  I’ve already gone into why.  I don’t own the property yet.”

“You want flexibility from us, you flex on that,” the Briar Girl said.  “We can start with you signing an oath by bloodline.  If you die, one of your line gives me territory here.”

“That’s asking for a lot,” Rose said.  “I don’t think anyone is pretending Blake is long for this world.  Giving you a guarantee?  Or as close to a guarantee as you can hope for?  That’s big.  Making a promise that might not get fulfilled, one that could easily be beyond our power to fulfill?  That’s bad karma we’re taking unto ourselves and giving to our family.  Not to mention the biggest thing, which is that we’re removing any incentive for you to help keep Blake alive.”

“I’m pretending I’m long for this world,” I protested.

“We need guarantees,” the Briar Girl said, “If we’re going to put ourselves out in the open and risk retaliation from Laird.”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “Let’s turn this around.  Blake, tell her what you want.”

I could see what Rose was doing.  I silently approved.

“I want a helping hand,” I said.  “Some specific knowledge, some power.  You’re at no risk, and it shouldn’t really point back to you, so long as we cover our tracks.”

“What knowledge?  What power?”

“To start with,” I said, “perhaps some information about the bonds between Others and practitioners.  Controlling it, using it.  You have a close connection to your familiar.  I’d like to use your expertise and example to prevent dangerous connections to Others.”

“Ah.  Keeping the rot out?”

“Among other things,” I said.

The Briar Girl was an example, to be sure, but she was a bad example.  I wanted to figure out what not to do, among other things.  Like I’d told Rose, I believed the Briar Girl might have some sort of information we could use.  Information that might be invaluable, if Rose was infecting me somehow, taking me over or transforming me.

By phrasing it this way, I hoped to make it hard for her to refuse without admitting weakness.

“What else, Blake?  Let’s lay it all on the table,” Rose said.

“I’d want some tricks, and I don’t see myself making these Feogrund things.”

“Feorgbold,” the Briar Girl said.

“The Vessels,” I corrected myself.  “But a lesson or two, or a gift I could use more than a few times, I think that’s S.O.P. for practitioner dealings?”

“It’s how most have traditionally gathered knowledge,” the Briar Girl said.  “Apprenticeship, servitude, favors, or being born into the right family.”

“Gotcha,” I said.  “We already talked about you changing yourself, but I’m leery of that.  I don’t want to weaken myself if some rot sets in and starts changing me.”

Or if this change with the tattoos continues.

“Depending on the effort you put in,” she said, “It could make you stronger.  Learn to control your body’s shape, and you can flex that muscle when something else tries to.”

“That so?” I asked.  “Thanks for the info.  It could weaken me, too, I presume?”

“Anything could,” the Briar Girl responded.  “It looks like something or a lot of somethings already have.”

“It’s been a rough few days,” I admitted.

“My partner thinks we should let you die, or help you along on your journey,” the Briar Girl said.  “No deal is going to see fruition, when you’re this weak.  You have very little power, for the most recent member of a very long, very learned lineage.”

It kept coming back to that.

“The ones who come after me aren’t going to be any better,” I said.  “Do you want to know why?  Let me think.  What was the order?  Kathy was next.”

“Kathy’s the oldest of the possible heirs.  She’s hard as nails, mean, ruthless and greedy.  A chef in a restaurant, ex-businesswoman, a parent of one, best described as a ‘mother bear’, with helicopter tendencies,” Rose said.

“That’s pretty much it,” I said.

“I don’t see the problem,” the Briar Girl said.

“If she were here instead of me,” I said.  “I think the home would have been turned over to the lawyers already, or she would have struck some deal to try and return to her everyday life.  The only way it wouldn’t work out that way would be if my grandmother put some measures in place to twist her arm.  In which case she’d be stubborn, mean, and she’d never give up the territory.”

“I agree,” Rose said.  “I know her better than Blake does, and it’s true.  Briar Girl, if you got five words out of Kathryn that weren’t insults, I’d be surprised.”

I waited.  Let the Briar Girl sit on that.

“So we kill her before she gets a chance to sell the place.  Move on to the next.”

She was so casual about it.  She’d raised her hand to vote for Maggie’s execution, hadn’t she?

“Probably,” I said.  “Which brings us to…”

“Ellie,” Rose said.

“Career criminal, and not in an impressive way.  Never worked a day in her life, she was staking everything on getting the house, I figure, because it was the only way she’d be able to get by.  Zero impulse control, hates everyone, especially those who give any clue they’re smarter or better than her, which winds up being pretty much everyone,” I said.  “Not because she’s dumb, but because she interprets anything as an attack.”

“She’s not dumb,” Rose said.  “I remember her getting up to an awful lot.  Surviving on schemes, jobs.  There’s a certain cunning that comes with living the life she’s lived.”

“Right,” I said.  “But I don’t know if she’d need a good excuse to send demons after people.  She’d need any excuse, even one she made up.”

“She’d be one of the scary kinds of diabolists you hear about,” Rose said.  “Bringing us to Roxanne…”

“I actually don’t know her that well,” I said.  “Only that she’s spoiled, she’s twelve or so, and comes with all of the problems that entails.”

“When Callan’s girlfriend wound up in her classroom as part of getting her teaching certificate, Roxanne made accusations that ended the woman’s career,” Rose said.  “No telling if her mom and dad put her up to it, but she doesn’t strike me as the moral and conscientious character who’d be polite and reasonable in dealing with devils, or neighbors.”

I could only imagine Rose’s face in the mirror that hung around my neck, giving the Briar Girl a pointed look.

“My sister,” I said.  “Is two.  Good luck with that.  You want to wait for access to the territory so you can get the Demesne?  Waiting for Ivy could mean a seventeen year wait, if not longer.”

“And Paige would be your last chance,” Rose said.

“Another amoral person, to help me build a picture of who you are?” the Briar Girl asked.  “All set to call demons into this town on a whim?”

“No,” I said.  “She was my friend, I respect and trust her.  And I honestly think you’d have a harder time negotiating with her than you would with me.  She’d see the long line of deaths that preceded her, and she’d play it smarter than I could, I think.  I don’t think she’d give you anything, especially when you tried to kill me.”

“But you’ll cooperate with me?”

“I’m not in a position to hold grudges,” I said.  “I meant what I said.  I want to remove Laird and the Duchamps from their positions of power.  I want to hit them in their powerbase, I want to scare them, I want them to suffer for Molly’s death.  I’ll hurt them physically, if I have to.”

“That doesn’t matter to me,” the Briar Girl said.

“What if, theoretically, I could remove them from power, and I could move away?  If I could shift my powerbase to another location.  I could try and see if it’s possible to move the house or the essential contents to another location.”

I could see the interest, even as she tried to hide it.  “Not possible.”

“Who knows?” I asked.  “Let’s open negotiations with that.  You agree to help me against Laird, I agree to take the time to verify whether it’s possible to move away.  It’s information you want, and it’s something you could use against any of the ones who come after me.  Trick them, deal with them, whatever.”

“I let you walk away alive, you agree to take the time to investigate,” the Briar Girl said.

“I walk away alive and unharmed,” I clarified.

“With no deleterious magics, workings or malfeasance at play,” Rose added.  “We leave freely and unaccompanied, unmolested in body, mind, possession or emotion.”

The Briar Girl thought, then nodded.

“Deal,” I said.

“Deal,” she said.

I felt a wave of relief.  With those simple words of agreement between us, the Others seemed to react, dropping away from the vantage points where they’d been poised to attack me.

“Give me some tools or knowledge I might use,” I said, “Instructions on how to perform shapechanging, or give me a power source, and I’ll cede you this square of territory right here, if and when I’m able.”

“Double the size,” the Briar Girl said.  “And promise to double it again if Laird discovers my involvement.  I don’t want any trouble from him.  He’s a bastard.”

“If he discovers your involvement and it’s because I made a mistake,” I say.  “Nothing from you.”

“Or yours,” Rose added, quickly.  “No summoning or orders to a minion to tell him so he finds out.

“Nothing from me or mine,” the Briar Girl said, frowning a little.

She was totally planning something like that.

“And if you can’t give me the territory?” she asked.

“I’d promise a good faith effort to give some other form of repayment for the gift,” I said.

“There’s only one form of payment I want,” she answered me.

“Take it or leave it,” I said.  “This is the closest you’ve gotten in a long time, I’m betting.”

She considered, then looked at her familiar.  “Okay.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Okay,” I said.  “So… what can you give me?”

“Before we get into that, I want to suggest something else,” the Briar Girl said.

“What?” I asked.

“In exchange for me not alerting Laird about what you’re planning… double the territory, to start with.”

I stared at her.  She smiled, her teeth just slightly yellow, strands of hair having escaped her hood to brush against her face.  In that instant, she looked more animal than her familiar.

I didn’t have a ready answer to that.  I was already short on bargaining chips.

“What do you think, Rose?” I asked.

“I’m thinking about Demesnes, the book.  The rules.  Since it’s related to what the Briar Girl wants.”

I thought about the book, my mind running through everything it had said.

“We should claim the forest,” Rose said.  “Or part of it.”

I could see the Briar Girl visibly tensing.  The familiar bristled.

No rush.  We’d been promised safety.  I allowed myself a smile.  “We could take something smack dab in the middle of it.  Once it’s taken, it’s taken, right?  You can’t have something for your demesnes if someone else has already claimed that ground.”

“It’s the most convenient location.  Close to the house.  Secluded…

Briar Girl’s familiar growled.

“If you keep talking like that, there won’t ever be another negotiation between us,” the Briar Girl said.

The words had a power to them.  It was damn close to being an oath.  It was a statement.

I shut my mouth, stood straight, and waited.

It was good to let the idea hang there, terrifying to her, a way to interrupt her plans.  We could take a part of her territory from her forever.

The wait extended.  I could see the Briar Girl shifting her weight.  Periodically glancing at her familiar.  No doubt communicating by some means.

“Agree to rescind the threat,” she said, “and I won’t tell Laird.”

“Excellent,” I said.  “Deal.  It’s good to do these things in threes, isn’t it?  Makes it more powerful?”

“Close enough.  So I’ve got to teach you to change your form.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Get the still-warm blood of an animal, as much as possible.  Strip yourself of all clothes.  Douse yourself, slowly, to allow yourself to feel the power instead of having your wits dashed from you.  Put power into the parts of it you want to keep.  Gorge the spirit, and draw the spirit into you.  Fail to exert enough will and focus, and the power inherent in the blood will bleed over into other parts of you, you might physically change, you might experience other side effects, or your mind might slip away until it fades.  If you don’t exert enough power, you’ll get far less effect for what you have spent.  With practice, you learn how much to put in, and where your attention needs to go.”

That was… somewhat more perfunctory than I’d expected.

“Where do I draw the power from?” I asked.

“There are hundreds of possibilities.”

“How do I apply it to the shapechanging rite?” I asked.

“Depends on where you draw the power from,” she said.

“Can you give me an example?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered, “But I’ll demand other things before I do.”

Meaning she considered her end of the bargain met.  She’d told me what to do.  Given me instructions.

“That’s unsporting,” Rose said.

“No,” I said.  “Nevermind that.  Look, Briar Girl…”

I pulled off my glove.  I held up my hand, showing her the locket.

I could feel the attention the locket got.  As the eyes of a number of Others and the Briar Girl fell on it, the hair extended, winding around the chain and pulling it tighter.

It’s fragile, I reminded myself.

“Can you at least tell me if I power it with glamour?”  I asked.

She frowned a little.  “Glamour isn’t the province of humans.  It must be freely given.  It is too fragile to handle otherwise.  Too personal to each Faerie.”

“That so?” I asked.  “Huh.”

“Who gave it to you?  The only unbound Faerie here are the exiles.”

“Answer my question first.  Can I use it?”

She frowned.  “Give me the power, and I’ll give you another power source.”

“I’m partial enough to this that I can’t see myself giving it away,” I said.  “Answer my questions, I’ll answer yours.  Otherwise, I think I’ll be leaving to go plan against Laird.”

“Yes, you can use it to power the shaping, but you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” I asked, momentarily concerned.

“If you want to change your form, using the glamour itself is enough.  More flexible.  More fragile, but I don’t see you fighting each and every member of Laird’s family, and if you’re in a position to have a glamour broken, you’re also in a position to have your shape stolen from you, leaving you in your ordinary form, helpless and naked.  I would use glamour by itself, in your shoes.”

“I don’t have much of the glamour,” I said.  “It grows, but not fast.”

It’s growing now, though.

“Use all you can.  Layer it on thick.  Render it into a form you can handle, dilute it, powder or paint yourself with it, mold yourself, and avoid letting that mold break. It’ll wear over time, as it’s challenged.  Every doubt is a crack, and you can repair the cracks with power.  Good illusionists can wear the same glamour for years, if they attach it to some power source.  Some never change their clothes, only changing the glamour.”

I made a mental note of that.

“Who gave it to you?”

“It was fairly taken, after a duel.”

“What would it take for you to give the original piece to me?”

“I want to ask a question, before I answer that.  What are the limitations?”

“There are few.  My teacher told me many Faerie take refuge in audacity.  Keep the rules of the change simple, without too many twists and turns, and you can paint any sort of picture.  Your power and the glamour’s power is only truly expended if the glamour breaks.  Cracks, frays, fades, peels, or breaks entirely.  You’re deceiving reality, and reality can only make you pay for the sheer difference in forms when it finds out.”

“Okay,” I said.  “That sounds far more workable.  Can someone look at the connections, break it that way?”

“Not if you’re careful to mold those as well.”

“Okay.  Opposite question, then.  What if I deceive reality too well?”

“You don’t.  You leave a tell.  A key, if you will.  Something deliberately wrong, often something that calls back to you, specifically.  Anyone who notices it will see through the glamour, but you can notice it to do the same.”

“Like?”

“Eyes the wrong color, or you’re flipped left to right, like an image in a mirror, or you keep an old scar.”

I nodded.  “To answer your question, it would take a hell of a lot for me to hand this over, but ask me later, and we could maybe negotiate.  I have ideas on what I want to do with it, right now.  That is, assuming we can negotiate in the future?”

“Don’t threaten me, and it’s possible,” the Briar Girl said.

“Excellent,” I said.  But no promises.  “On the subject of questions and answers… can I ask who or what your teacher was?”

There was a reaction to that.  Surprise.  Annoyance.

“No,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.  “Do you have another question you’d like to ask?”

“None that I’d be willing to exchange an answer for.  We’re done,” she said.  She waved her hand, and the remaining Others began leaving.  She paused.  “I hope you fail.  But I hope you don’t fail so badly you die.”

“Thank you,” I said.  “I’m going to aim for one of those two.”

She frowned a little, but she walked off.  I turned to trudge through the deep snow to get back to the house, pulling my glove back on.

When we were well out of earshot, I groaned.  “I can’t believe I washed that ink off my hands.”

“You didn’t know what to do with it.  It could have been dangerous.”

“But it was useful.  Fuck me, I left the mortar and pestle sitting on the bottom of the sink while I washed my hands, I rinsed away the remaining ink.  I could have used that.  Maybe done my hands.”

“Why?  What are you thinking?  And please don’t make this one of those things where you only explain things at the last second, in general terms, and leave it up to me to say yes or no.”

“I’ve only done that once, haven’t I?”

“Just now, you mean?  Or when you were dealing with the bird-skulls and you threw the stone onto the ice?  Or when you went up to the front of the church and announced your deals?”

“Damn it,” I said.

“Given the state you’re in, I’m betting you want to swear you won’t do it again.  Don’t.  But keep it in mind, especially if something comes up, and the tables are turned?”

“I think I could do that,” I said, speaking slowly and carefully.  “Why do I feel like you already know what that something is?”

“Because I do.”

“That’s ominous,” I said.

“How does it feel, Blake?  Not fun, is it?”

“When I do it, it’s not intentional,” I said.

“This was.  But we’re aiming to trust each other more, and this is one step in that.  It’s something we need to test, and that test might distract from whatever you’ve got going on in your head right now.”

“It might,” I said.

“So let’s hammer this out, first.  No more sudden announcements about what we’re doing.  Where does all this lead?”

“We’ve got Briar Girl on our side, pretty much.  She doesn’t want to kill us.  We could probably negotiate for a vote against execution, in a pinch.  The door’s open.”

“Yes.”

“In terms of Laird, well, I’m thinking we need to pay a visit to Maggie next.  You’re right.  She was the middleman.  Talking to Briar Girl was a bit of a test, as it wound up.  Dealing with the girl who tried to kill me.  Kill us.  I’d like to think I handled that pretty amicably.”

“Better than I might have,” Rose said.  “I never had many friends.”

“Well, now we can deal with another person who’s done a reprehensible act against us, only this one deceived us to our faces.  We’re going to get Maggie’s help.  Then maybe we talk to Mara or Johannes, if we can wrangle it.  I don’t know where they are or how we could get in contact with them, and I’m not sure they’re the types where I want to shout their name and see if they answer.  My gut tells me that’s the wrong way to go about it.”

“You’re talking to the outliers.  Why?  Where does this lead?”

“Laird said he was aiming to do something tonight.  I’m aiming to stop him.”

“Stop him?”

“Somehow.  Interrupt the ritual, distract him, I don’t know.  But this glamour thing is useful, because it’s a way we could maybe navigate the city.  No connections tracking us, a different face… maybe I get closer to Laird.”

“Oh boy,” Rose said.  “There are so many ways this can go wrong.”

“Which is why the next step is getting my face on,” I said.  “Then we talk to Maggie.  We need soldiers, and those paper goblins are sounding awfully good right now.”

“You’re expecting a fight?”

“I don’t know what to expect.  How does a guy like Laird get revenge?”

“He doesn’t seem like the type for violence,” Rose said.  “Is violence the answer?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “But I wouldn’t mind dealing with him outside of his element.  He probably knows his way around most of the scary stuff we could throw at him, but you don’t try to out-scheme the schemer.  You do something like send twisted midget psychopaths to stab the schemer and leave him unable to think straight.”

“Midget is offensive.”

“I don’t think political correctness matters when you’re talking about goblins.”

“Point,” she admitted.  “You really want to murder Laird?”

“Something like sending goblins to kill him.  I’d settle for a little bloodletting.  Or something to remove him from play.  But we need him out of the picture.  We need to destroy him, on some level, and we need to do the same for his family.  You get that, right?  We’re on the same page?”

“I hate the word ‘destroy’.  But yes.  It’s destroy or be destroyed.”

“Well said.”

“Hm,” Rose answered.  “While you’re figuring out the glamour stuff, I might get to reading a book on it.  Go in with our eyes open.”

“Good idea,” I said.  I opened the door, and, without thinking, I held it open for Rose.

Nevermind that she wasn’t here.

“You keeping up with the reading?” she asked, apparently oblivious.

“Pretty well.  I’ll need to sit down tonight to get more done, or devote a full day to it tomorrow.”

“Good,” she said.

Back in the kitchen, I went through all of the tools, getting the mortar and pestle, and emptying the residual, very diluted ink over my hands.  I rubbed it into my arms.

I cut off all of the hair that had reached beyond the confines of the locket itself, and ground it up before creating a fresh batch of ink, but I balanced it out with more hair, rendering it thicker.  I rubbed it into my face and rolled up my sleeves to get it along the length of my arms and get full coverage on my hands.

“I just realized I’m going to need your help on this, Rose,” I said.  “I can’t see myself in the mirror.”

She was gone.  Finding the book, no doubt.

I ran my hand along my arm, so the skin that stretched between thumb and index finger dragged along the surface.

I willed it to change.

The effect was minimal at best.

What had Ms. Lewis told me about the Faerie?

Self delusion.

I did it again.  This time, I relaxed and let myself believe it would change.  A leap of faith.  I visualized my hand peeling away the paler skin, revealing my normal skin tone beneath.

It was eerie, seeing it take hold.  My tattoos as they’d been before, less beautiful, but still gorgeous and entirely mine.

I’d heard two things from two people.  The Briar Girl had told me I could use shaping to teach myself to deal with any hostile incursion or infection.  Ms. Lewis had said something else, warning Rose about the fragile nature of glamours.

If this broke apart, would I lose ground in this war against whatever was going on with my body?  Some spirits or some part of Rose that was bleeding into me, taking advantage of the personal power I’d spent?

I ran my hands along my face and over my hair.  I couldn’t see the change, but I didn’t doubt it had worked.

That doubt could be dangerous and costly.

I checked the closet, and started rooting through it for anything I could wear.  My grandmother’s coats, spring jackets, rain jackets, umbrellas…

Nothing.

I was debating wearing my winter jacket when I heard Rose.  A yelp.

“What?”

“You startled me.”

“I look different?”

“About ten years older, dark haired?  Yeah.”

“Good stuff,” I said.

“It’s supposed to be harder than that,” she said.  “Pretty sure.”

“Good thing you didn’t tell me before I tried anything,” I said.

I ran my hands along my arms.  The skin color changed to black.  I left the tattoos intact.

I did my face and head.  When I ran my hands along the top of my head a second time, I found my head shaved as I’d imagined it.  I scratched it and found all of the nerve endings responded.  I could feel the stubble, the tiniest details.

“Crazy,” I commented.  I ran my hands down the length of my throat.  Then said, in a different voice, “Crazy.”

“Definitely supposed to be harder than that,” Rose said.

“Stop saying that,” I said.  “If I believe it, it might become true.  Ignorance is power, in this case.”

I could see her frowning at me in the reflective side of the toaster.

“Maybe it’s an advantage,” I said.  “I’ve expended personal power, there’s more spaces for it to get traction?  There’s less of me to modify?”

“I don’t buy it,” she said.  “Remember, all power has a price.  What’s the price for that little tidbit?”

“I’d like to think nearly getting killed by the faerie swordswoman and beating her in a duel was a pretty fair cost,” I said.

Rose seemed to internally debate the idea, before saying, “Maybe.  Point taken.”

I started spreading the stuff over the rest of my neck, shoulders, and beneath my shirt.  “But if this proves to be more useful than that duel was dangerous, I agree, we should be suspicious.”

■

The glamour was really fucking useful, as it turned out.  Damn it.

I waited outside of the school as the students filed out.  All grades, kindergarten through twelve, were present.  Children who still wet their pants and young adults who were working their first jobs, all in the same general mob.

Behaims and Duchamps of various ages passed me without a first glance, let alone a second.

I joined the parents who were waiting for their kids.  An ordinary, unassuming guy.

Maggie came out, headphones on, a bag slung over one shoulder.  The checkered scarf was in place.

I walked over to the exit and fell into step beside her.

She stopped right away.

“Sorry,” I said, in a stranger’s voice.

“No need to be sorry, Mr. Stranger Danger.  Why don’t you walk away?” Maggie suggested.  “Go find a nice middle aged woman to sleaze on.”

She was so casual, so everyday.  I wondered if she’d lost any sleep after ordering her goblins to tear Molly to pieces.

“You don’t hold back,” I observed, burying the surge of emotion.

She jammed her hands into her jacket pockets, shoulders hunched forward, defensive, one glance going over her shoulder, as if she were checking her escape routes.

I knew full well that she was getting her hands on a weapon of some sort.  The glance would be to see if people were looking, which they were.  Kids and teenagers still milled around us and between us.

“I mean you no harm,” I said.  “Please don’t stab me.  Or throw a goblin at me.”

I could see her studying me.  Was she identifying flaws or tells in the disguise, picking it apart with her eyes?  Or was she reinforcing it, feeding into it?

“Who the drat are you?” she asked.

Yay, I thought.

There was a freedom to this, a high, almost.

Her eyes moved to something or someone behind me.

I turned before they could touch me.  A man, dark haired, heavyset, wearing a flannel button-up shirt.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

I looked and I saw the connection between him and Maggie.  For someone who’d just moved to this city, for that connection to be that strong…

“You’re Maggie’s father?” I asked.

“Yes, and you know my daughter how?”

“We have a mutual friend,” I said.  “I believe Maggie knows of a girl with a thing regarding mirrors?”

I saw Maggie go still, surprised, confused.  Her eyes darted over me.

Trying to find connections?

“This is funny business, isn’t it?” her father asked.

“Yeah,” Maggie said.  “Funny.”

I glanced at her dad.  He knows.

That made things simultaneously easier and more tricky.

“I have a message for you,” I said.  “Forgiveness won’t be particularly easy, nor fast, not for either of us, but help is needed.”

“No need to be impossibly cryptic,” she said.  “I tell my dads almost everything.”

“Almost?” her dad asked.

“So dish,” she said.  “You want to mess with the Thorburns?”

I hesitated.

“What if I did?”

“I’d tell you I’m done with that.  Fool me once, and all that jazz.”

“If you’re trying to embroil Maggie in something else like-”

“No,” I said.  “No.  Because I have… I won’t say I have no quarrel with the Thorburns, but I’m looking to help the family.  If Maggie wanted to make amends for what happened to Molly Walker, I could use a hand.  A loan of resources.”

“The dead girl?” her father asked.

So he didn’t know.  I could see concern on her face.

I decided to pull her ass out of the fire, here.  Karma, if nothing else.  Or did it not count if I recognized it?  “More about what happened yesterday, when we last talked.”

I saw a glimmer of a connection.  She was figuring it out.  Only so many people I could be.  Maybe she suspected me of being the lawyer in another guise?  Easier to figure out, easier to explain?

“This would be a hell of a lot easier if you told us who you were,” her father said.

“Can I walk you to your car?” I asked.  “I could explain there.”

“You can explain right here,” her father said.  “Or you can walk away.”

I sighed.

Hopefully I’d reinforced the glamour enough it could take a hit.  If not, I could derail all of my plans.

Glancing around, I verified nobody was looking, and then unzipped my jacket.  I revealed the bike mirror pendant I wore.

Maggie’s eyes went wide.  “Blake?”

“A mirror?” her father asked.

“It’s Blake,” she whispered.  “Blake Thorburn.”

Each time she said my name, I could see the connection striving to appear, hammering at my glamour, like a battering ram slamming into a heavy door.

Her father’s continued confusion helped.

“Stop,” I said.  “Enough.  Can I walk you to your car?”

Maggie nodded, pulling on her dad’s sleeve.

As we walked in silence to the car, I tried to gauge the damage to the glamour.  I could use blood to fix it, but that was suicidal, at this point.

Better to let it mend on its own.

“Don’t say my name,” I said.  “Do let me know if I can borrow some goblins.”

“They’re work to get under control,” she said.  “Not easy.”

“I’ll settle for goblins in paper prisons I can’t control,” I said.  “I’m making a move against Laird.  Soon.”

I saw her chew her lip.

“Maggie?  I’ll need you to explain,” her father said.

“I’ll try, I promise,” she said.

I felt the impact of that statement, saw the connection form.

I blinked to clear my field of vision.  Couldn’t rely on it too much.

“Three paper goblins,” she said.  She pulled her hands from her pockets, depositing three folded papers in my hand.  “And a whistle.”

“A whistle for who or what?”

“He’s called something I’m not allowed to say,” Maggie said.  “It’s written on the whistle.”

Dickswizzle.

“Here,” she said.  She took the whistle back, then blew.

Something hit the car.  Heavy.

A goblin.  Hairy, bearded, lurking in the shadows.

“He obeys the holder of the whistle,” Maggie said.  “Try.”

“Crud,” Rose said, a murmur.  I could see Maggie’s father react.

“Dickswizzle, come,” I said.

He didn’t budge a muscle.

“Dickswizzle, come,” Rose said.

Dickswizzle approached a few paces.

“That thing I wanted to talk to you about…” Rose murmured.

Breach 3.3

Now

The neighborhood was a nice one, as the local neighborhoods went.  Big houses, old-fashioned, with large yards.  Many, including the house in front of me, had additions or garages that came close to a small house in size.  It wasn’t up to par with the two million dollar homes in the better areas of Toronto, but it was the sort of place I could see myself living, somewhere down the road.

If I got that far.

It had always been a sort of ‘if I got that far’ thing, but it had been about money, before.  Now it was more the living part that was under question.

Cars were parked along the length of the street.  Families were leaving the vehicles.  The Behaims, with brown and black hair, leaning towards the stockier side, with a few who were fat.  The Duchamps, men and women, all blonde.

I looked at the card in my hand, then at the point where the people were converging.  A meeting at Laird’s house, it seemed.  I could see the spirits moving.  A rune was being used to ward off curious civilians, which meant I had to look otherwise occupied.

I stayed where I was, out of sight, trying not to focus too hard on them, while doing what I could to pick up details and information.  The connections that spread out from around them were ties of family, of home, of friendship.  Rays of light radiating out from each of them.  Connections to this town.  Others had connections to another, distant place, matching some of my connections, the ones I’d covered up with glamour.

They were from Toronto, I realized.  Others, those connections might be to Ottawa.  Out of town members of the Duchamp clan?

Huh.

I turned to leave, heading around the corner.  More guests had parked further up the street.  Two Behaim womenfolk helping an old man to make his way down the frozen sidewalk, supporting him from either side, and further up, a cluster of blonde kids milled around a mother and father.

Right now, I was the unassuming neighbor.  Brown hair, middle aged, unremarkable in every respect.

With my eyes on the map of connections between people, I could tell when I was relatively free of scrutiny, then bent down, as if I were fixing my boot.

Still bent over, I moved my hand under my hat to run it along my hair.  From dirty blond to platinum blond that had been lightened by age.  Another pass, to change it from wavy to straight.

I rubbed at my face, and worked in wrinkles, a ruddy complexion to go with the light hair.  Beneath the scarf I’d wrapped around myself, I added a mustache for good measure.  Bushy and blond.

I didn’t dare glamour up any connections to better the disguise.  Not with so many Duchamps around.  Not without some help or a tool of some sort.

I straightened, leaving the card on the ground.  Wouldn’t do to have a suspicious connection active.  The family with the kids passed me by.  I could see another car pulling into a spot at the side of the road, more Duchamps climbing out.  Teenagers this time.  Three girls.  Enchantresses, I had little doubt.

I couldn’t panic.  I had glamour, they shouldn’t see anything strange.

Where the other car had been small children, the process of getting out long and arduous, the three teenage girls wasted no time.  I fell into stride between the two groups, where I could be easily mistaken as a member of one or the other.

Somehow this fit me.  I could tap into my memories or my history, being a face in the crowd, and I could figure this out.  It was instincts, it was building, it was an art of a sort, and those were things I did pretty well.

There was a bit of recklessness in it too, which fit well with my current mental state.  What was one more thing where I didn’t have all of the information?  One more thing where I had to wing it, sink or swim?

I was quietly terrified, but I’d promised myself I’d do this.  Take control, act.

All of that, the quiet terror, the leap of faith, relying on instincts, it was what I’d been doing since meeting Rose.  I followed the family up the front steps, the teenagers right behind me.

“Hi, come in, welcome, welcome, hi Beth, come in,” Laird’s wife was talking to each new guest.  She gave me a polite, distracted smile as I passed through the threshold and into Laird’s house.

If I didn’t feel as panicked as I should, I told myself it was because I was going with the flow, adapting to circumstance.  I didn’t want to believe it was some deeper flaw.  Another, deeper element at play.

■

Earlier

“What the fuck are you talking about?”  I asked Rose.

Maggie and her father exchanged a glance.

“You haven’t noticed?” she asked.  “Both times, the ghosts reacted to my voice, not yours.”

“This is kind of important,” I said.

“It is.  I know.  But I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it.”

“When did you figure it out?”

“The lawyers.  They came when I said their names.  You were in the kitchen, and I said it, and boom, there they were.”

“I tried, I failed, and you succeeded,” I said.  “You just succeeded in calling…”

“Dickswizzle,” Rose said.

I glanced down at the goblin.  The size of a chimp, maybe, but generally flabby.  He was hard to make out, because his bristly black fur tended to blend into the area between the car and the snowbank.  His eyes stood out, widening as he heard his name.

I shivered a little.  I wanted him to stop looking at me, but I knew he’d react if I gave him any leverage.  He would be pieced together with the worst parts of animals and humans, including a predatory, maladjusted personality.  That made him somewhat more predictable.

“Dickswizzle,” I said.  Who the hell names these bastards?  “Fuck me, it wasn’t just the ghosts, was it?  When I went up to the room, the barber turned his back to me.  Rejecting me.”

“Barber?” Maggie asked.

“It’s a female line,” Rose said.  “That’s how Others see the Thorburn practitioner.  The simplest Others, the ones who can’t really think, or who think in an alien way, I think they look for the female part of it.  Ones like Padraic, they can maybe work their head around it.”

“If they even realize what genders we are,” I said.

“I think it’s more basic than that.  Something like Dickswizzle or the Barber looks at us, and they see something completely different from what we see.  Gender’s tied up in something intrinsic about our being.  I think.”

“Gender’s a mutable thing,” Maggie said.

“It is today, but Others are old fashioned,” Rose said.

“I’m still trying to work my head around this,” I said, shaking my head a little.

“You gave the goblin an order, but you don’t have the whistle,” Maggie said.

“No,” Rose said.  “But he does.  And we’re sort of one and the same.  By the letter of the law, the Thorburn practitioner is holding the whistle, and the Thorburn practitioner is giving the orders.”

“Yeah?” Maggie asked.  She lowered her voice as a group of kids approached from the direction of the school.  “That’s… complicated.”

She pointed, and we collectively moved away from the street.

“Am I even me right now?” I asked.  “As far as the whistle is concerned?”

“I hope you are, at your core, at least,” Rose said.  “There’s one possibility, that you’re the body and I’m the voice.  You can obviously do some material things.  Drawing circles, some shamanism.  Glamour, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I said.

“But our line’s supposed to have some power, some history, and maybe I got that,” Rose said.  “Maybe that’s why I’m here?”

“You’ve got the clout?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said.

Which raised questions about the idea that she might be tapping me for strength or merging with me.  Would she gain clout, or borrow from my abilities over time?  Until she had all of the power?

“We have a lot to talk about, it seems,” I said.  “But not with company around.  Not when we only have a few hours to get ready.”

“You were making a move against Laird?” Maggie asked.

“Before anything else happens, I’m going to need answers,” her father said.

I met Maggie’s eyes.  She shook her head a fraction.

What was that ‘no’ for?

“I’m in trouble,” I told him.  I touched the pendant, “We’re in trouble.  A lot of that trouble has to do with some locals.  Laird Behaim among them.”

“The police chief,” her father said.

“Yes.”

He glanced at Maggie.  “You said this place was safe.”

“Relatively… relative to home,” Maggie said.  She smiled.

He gave her a very good ‘I am not amused in the slightest’ look.

“I’m the one who’s really in danger, sir,” I said.  “I’m hoping Maggie is going to help me.  That’s all this is.”

“I don’t want her getting embroiled in fights.  She told me that she’d do this for defensive purposes, to protect herself and protect me.”

“I did agree to something like that,” Maggie said.

“I don’t want to get Maggie into a bad situation.  I only needed some help, and there aren’t many people to ask.”

“And… uncontrolled goblins are an appropriate sort of ‘help’?”  He asked.  He looked at his daughter, speaking to her.  “We’ve talked about what you’re doing with the goblins, we didn’t talk about lending them out to others.  You’re containing, trapping and controlling, so you can stop things before they start.”

“Right now, sir,” I cut in, “I’m trying to stop something.  It’s probably big, it might be ugly, and even though it’s directed at me, I’m not sure it won’t do any collateral damage.”

He looked genuinely upset.  One hand flew up to the zipper on his jacket, stopped, and then dropped to his side.  Fidgeting.  “This place was supposed to be safer.  More stable.”

“It is, dad.”

“I’ll rephrase.  It was supposed to be safer.  Stable.”

“The more I think about it,” I said.  “I’m not sure any place is.  You find out about stuff like this, and… I guess normalcy is beyond your reach.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“If there’s a way to get things back to normal for you guys,” Maggie told him, “I want to find it.”

“And you?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  I like it,” Maggie said.  “I like being able to protect myself against bumps in the night, see the underpinnings of things.”

“Even if those underpinnings aren’t pretty?” I asked.

“They are,” Maggie said.  Her face brightened a bit.  “It’s like looking at the workings of the human body.  It’s messy and gross and bloody and mucked up and imperfect, but there’s an art there.”

As if to punctuate the statement, Dickswizzle made a loud, wet, sputtering sound.

“You look at the cells through a microscope, it’s beautiful,” Maggie said.  “It’s the same with the balance of things, karma, and spirits.  Even if that balance and those spirits like to mess with us more than they help us out.”

“I feel like I’m going to lose you if you continue down this road,” her father said.

“I don’t ever want to lose you, or have you lose me,” Maggie said, sincerely.  “But I think stopping me from helping Blake is going to do more hurt than help, as far as us going down that road.”

Her father frowned.

“What do you need?” he finally asked me.

“I needed the goblins, which I just got,” I said.  “And now all I need is to know where Laird is.”

Maggie reached into her pocket and withdrew a business card.  “Like this?”

I could see the connection to Laird.

“That’ll do, thank you.”

■

Now

“Hey!”

The barked word startled me, as did the connection I felt.  The certainty that it was aimed at me.

I turned.

A cluster of men had gathered at one end of an expansive living room.  There was a minibar there, as well as a stylish wood-paneled cooler filled with ice cubes, beers standing within.

Kids milled around, some running, chasing others.  Adults were in clusters, with couches and chairs given to the elderly.

The men at the alcohol station waved me over.

I mentally prepared my story, best as I could.

Fuck me, getting into a situation like this when I couldn’t lie.

“What’s your preference?” one asked me.

I could see the connections that so many of them had to the alcohol.  Drinkers?

All six of them, I noted, were from the Duchamp family.

“I’ll take a beer,” I said.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” the guy who’d waved me over asked.  “First time?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“We’ve got a selection,” one of the other men said.  “Dark?  Light?  Lager?  Wheat beer?  Stout?”

“Lager,” I said.

“Ah, let’s see here… here.  One from England,” he said.  He glanced at me, bottle held up in the air, and I gave a nod of consent.

He cracked the top off and handed me the beer.  I tipped the bottle up, but controlled the amount that actually made it to my mouth.

“Only reason I tolerate these things,” the first guy confided.

“What finally got you to come?” one of them asked me.

I had had an answer ready, but I’d only just let my guard down a fraction.  The answer I managed was a neutral, “Seemed like something was going on, tonight.”

I drank, then rubbed a bit of moisture from my mustache.  Fun.  I’d never had a mustache before.

“Wedding thing,” one of the other guys said.

“Wedding thing,” I said.  I shrugged.  “I dunno much about it.  I’ve only been paying attention to things for a few days now.”

“Yeah?  You new to the family?”

“Sort of,” I said.  If you mean being here, disguised, included in the group.

“Wife?  Kids?”

“Neither,” I answered.  “I went my separate way from my particular family unit, not long ago.  Stuff came up with a cousin of mine, I came into town for her sake.  I thought tonight was a good occasion to see how all this works.”

“Eh,” one guy said.  “With the wedding coming up, it’s going to be a lot of awful speeches.  Not such a good occasion.”

“You know the drill for these things?” one of the guys asked me.

“I don’t know much of anything,” I admitted.

He leaned closer, lowering his voice, “They’ve got some secret society bullshit or whatever going on here.  Keeps things lively in a town this small, I think.  So we get good drink, good food, good drink-“

“Good drink,” another guy chimed in.

“-And some long winded speeches, before they kick us out or stick us somewhere and see to their own business.  We’re nonentities, so the only real rule is you don’t get so drunk you cause a fuss, and you don’t poke your nose where it doesn’t belong.  If you aren’t attached, which you aren’t, you might even get some not-so-subtle hints about marrying in.”

“Marrying me?” I asked.  I affected a tone of voice and demeanor much like his.  “Nah.  I have an apartment.  I barely made a living wage, these past few months.  I don’t even know if my job’s going to be there when I go back.”

“You’d be surprised,” one of the guys said.  “Listen, ah, this is hard to say gracefully, knowing your cousin might be one of these girls.”

“What Adam’s getting at,” one of the other men cut in, “Is these kids get a metric fuckton of pressure from their family to marry certain people, walk a certain line.  Make connections, improve the family’s collective lot in life.  You get me?”

“Suppose I do,” I said.

“Well, some want out.  And the easiest way out is to get married before their folks marry them off.  Even if that guy’s twice their age, living in an apartment, with a cruddy maybe in the way of employment prospects, some prefer that choice to the alternative.”

“Yeah?” I asked.  I tried to put myself in the headspace of the character I was playing.  The lonely, estranged, less-than-successful uncle of some far-flung Duchamp connection.  “Twenty year old, wanting me, you’re saying?”

“Not unheard of,” Adam told me.  “But don’t fall for it.  They reel the kids back in when the grandkids come around, or your loving wife decides to come back on her own, and then you’re stuck coming to these godawful meetings and whatnot, stuck on the fringes.”

“And,” one guy groused, “It’s not like they’re your kids, you know?”

“Hear hear,” a few of the guys echoed.  There were some clinks of beer bottles and glasses of stronger spirits.  A few women glanced back at us, giving us annoyed looks.  Not so happy their husbands were openly drinking, it seemed.

“It’s a trap,” Adam said.  “Just do what you need to do for your cousin, but you walk away as fast as you can.”

“But… some twenty year old, and me?” I asked, again.

There were some chuckles.

“You keep saying girls,” I said.  “Do the boys run into the same thing?”

“You’re really new,” one replied.  “Yeah, the boys do run into some of the same pressures, but you tell me, how many boys are in this room, compared to the girls?”

I glanced around.  In the Behaim family, it was a fifty-fifty split, but the little Duchamps were all girls.

“I think I get it,” I said.

“More likely,” another one of the men said, “One of the widows is going to make a play.  Get their hands on you before one of the younger girls do, to remove you from the picture.”

“Or grill you,” Adam said.  “Get all the dirt they can, to make sure you’re a viable candidate for their daughters.  Descend on you like a flock of harpies if you aren’t, humiliating you.  And they’re good at the harpy thing.”

“Now I’m worried,” I said.  If they start questioning me in detail, I’m fucked.  This conversation is hard enough.  “Wondering what I got myself into, coming here.”

“Tell you what.  We’ll run interference,” Adam said.  “Buy you time to run.”

I smiled, then clinked my bottle against his.  “A fraction less worried now.  But it’s best if you don’t try to look like you’re running interference.  Maybe you could promise to step in if I can’t dislodge ’em?”

“I think we could do that… What’s your name, by the by?” he asked.

That gave me pause.

“Less I tell you guys, the less anyone can get out of you when they start asking the questions,” I said, quirking one eyebrow.  “I mean, you don’t really care, do you?”

He laughed.  “Not really.  Well said, well said.”

The conversation switched away from me, outside of the periodic question about smartphones or hockey.

It afforded me the chance to look around the room.  There were certain lines drawn in the sand.  The very young children of the two different families seemed to mingle, but as the ages rose, they seemed to segregate more into groups.  Very few of the adult Behaims were talking to adult Duchamps.  Outside of a few out-of-towners, the only real intermingled group in open discussion was…  Laird’s.

I’d spotted him, in a group with Sandra Duchamp and a few other members of the family.

How was I going to play this?  I couldn’t do anything if I was kicked out.  But if the group shrank down to only the practitioners…

How were they going to play this?  Did this family reunion factor into what he was going to pull against me?  An order of execution?  A massed army?

No, it didn’t fit their styles.  They weren’t aggressive.  They weren’t vicious, per se.

What, then, could a few dozen practitioners pull?

I saw Sandra Duchamp break away from the group.

I saw, too, the connections that formed between her and anyone.  She smiled, and did a somewhat poor job of smiling in a genuine way, greeting this person and that.

Heading in our general direction.

I could see it in the connection strength.  She was connected to people.  The one who sent out the invitations, or the orders.  If she focused her attention on me, there would be questions.  If I was lucky.  If I was unlucky, she’d tear right through the glamour as if it were tissue paper.

No.  I had to believe in the glamour.  Confidence.  The glamour was stronger.  Having an audience helped.  I’m stronger, I’m not that easy to break.  She won’t see through it.

I wasn’t entirely able to convince myself.

I took a drink.  Because the man I was pretending to be would drink, and I deliberately looked away, so she wouldn’t see that I knew her.  I definitely didn’t want her to see any connection.

She looked right past us.  No recognition, not even an attempt at recognition.  She paused to shoo one cluster of kids away from the fireplace, which was burning with a low flame.

No, her focus was shifting elsewhere as she moved towards our end of the room.  To the front hall-

The door opened.

There was a cry, a cheer that built in volume as more people caught on and joined in.

A boy in a suit, a girl in a knee-length dress and tights, each about twenty-five.  Holding hands.

“Hey!”  Adam called out, joining the cheer.  The other men joined in, and I joined in with them.

The bride-to-be smiled, but it was a polite smile, very small.  The groom didn’t change his expression in the slightest.

I allowed myself to relax as the evening progressed.  With so many unwitting bystanders around, there wasn’t much to be done.  There was no fucking way I was going near Laird.

Dinner was served, buffet style, and the various rooms of the house were soon filled with people eating. Most of the little ones sat at the table, the elderly ate in the living room, and the adults without children to feed ate standing up, holding their plates with one hand and using forks with the other, putting wine glasses, beer bottles, and glasses of soda on any available surface.

Ordinary.

I took it for what it was, eating genuinely good food for the first time in a week or so, and going back for seconds, just so I could take a different route across the ground floor and get a sense of what was where.

When I didn’t get a good enough sense of things doing that, I stopped by the kitchen for some salt.

Behind the kitchen, I noted, there were a set of double doors.    Closed, no doubt locked, with a sign taped down.  ‘No Entry’.  From the spirits that flowed through and around the paper, I had little doubt there was a rune there.  Less a deterrence rune, I suspected, than a rune that would punish prying Duchamps.

Or a prying Blake Thorburn, for that matter.

A space they didn’t want the ungifted to see was a space I very much wanted to access.

I had the goblins, stowed away in one pocket in paper and whistle form, and I had other tricks, but I doubted the glamour would hold up if I tried something and they started looking.

No.  This wasn’t an occasion for brute force.  I couldn’t put Maggie at risk, in any case.  The goblins were a last resort.

I needed to get inside that room, but Laird was the gatekeeper.

If I left the house, could I get in another way?

I thought of how Laird’s wife had been inviting people in.  Was invitation required?  If I left, would I be able to get back in?

Probably, but I didn’t like the other complications that were liable to pop up.  Were they alerted when someone passed the threshold?  Like the bell on the door of a twenty-four-seven convenience store?

Dressing up like Sandra Duchamp seemed like a horrible, horrible idea.

Even Laird’s wife… no.

I reluctantly left the kitchen.

Maybe if I found a mirror and had a discussion with Rose?

In a way, I was glad to be striking out on my own.  She wouldn’t be popping her head in, out of fear of being seen, and it was something of a relief to not have her second guessing me.  We’d hammered this out, agreed that infiltration would be the only way to stop Laird, and settled on this.

She was probably going crazy, waiting for a report or confirmation that things were okay.

I made my way back into the living room in time to hear the close of a toast.

“…for the betterment of our families, putting old grudges aside.”

“Hear hear!”

Uniting the two groups.

Oh man, it would be nice if I could split up that couple.

If some of the Duchamp girls were that desperate for a way out, could I dress up like the groom and get them somewhere secluded?

No.  Because the Duchamp girls weren’t pawns.

The problem here was that pretty much anyone and everyone who was a practitioner here was a stronger practitioner than me.  They would be on the lookout for shenanigans, especially if the groom was reported to be in two places at once.

Besides, they weren’t getting more than a few feet apart.  There was a connection between them, I noticed.  A crimson line of spirits stretched between ring fingers.

Was it like I’d read about in one of the books?  A tether?  A leash of some fixed length, keeping them together?

I felt my skin crawl a bit at that, and the crawling of my skin made my blood run cold, in turn.  I could almost let myself think that it was the glamour fading or breaking apart.

But the glamour was strong.

Desserts came out.

I knew I was running out of time.

Time, ironically, being Laird’s weapon of choice.  He and his family were chronomancers.

What were my options at this point?

Sticking a paperclip in a light socket, to blow the power?

It would only stall the inevitable, and it could still get them looking for me.

No.  There was no grand stroke I could employ.  Not until I knew more.

As dessert wrapped up, I saw the spirits shift.

The rune that had been drawn to keep neighbors from coming in had changed somewhat.

Adam’s wife approached him, their two kids following her.  “Can you take the kids out for a movie?  It’s going to be a big group thing.”

One of the men in the group gave me a telling look.  This was it.  The non-members were getting driven out, both overtly and subtly.

Adam glanced at me.  “Coming?”

Direct questions were so hard to answer.  “I’m not in the mood for a movie,” I said.

“Understandable.”

“But thank you for the company,” I said.

He gave me a little salute, and then ushered his kids off.

The small handful of people who were leaving were, with the help of the rune gently urging people to leave, starting to clear the house.

“Am I going, mom?” one six year old asked.

“Nope.  We’re staying.”

“But I want to see a movie.”

She had to hold him to keep him from joining the steady flow of people leaving.  He wasn’t immune to the rune.  “Stay and play with Leanne, alright?  We’ll see a movie this weekend.  We’re doing some important things tonight.”

“Aw,” he said.

“Go find your cousin and play.”

“Pee first,” he said.

“Alright,” she said.  “Go.”

He ran upstairs.

As the crowd thinned, I could make out Penelope and Jo.  The ones who’d tried to kill me, just yesterday.  The practitioners were the ones who remained.

I was lagging behind, and that meant more eyes that might start wondering about me.

But I couldn’t leave.  Not knowing that something was happening.

I waited until the general focus shifted to some more boisterous farewells for the bride and groom, and ducked upstairs.

Nobody followed me or objected.  That bothered me some.  Unmarried middle aged guy who lived in an apartment, waiting outside the bathroom for a young boy.  I even had the ‘stache.

What the hell was wrong with me and the choices I was making, for glamours?

More concerning was the fact that this was a gamble, and I didn’t like my odds.  There were too many things that might not work, here.

“Hey,” I mumbled.  “Fate gods, karma gods, whoever.  I’ve been trying to play fair, be nice.  I cut Mags some slack.  Can I cash in some of my chips?  Or at least buy some relief from the bad luck my family is due?”

There was no answer.  Obviously.

I heard the toilet flush, inhaled slowly, and then exhaled.

The door popped open, and I saw a chance.  He stopped in his tracks as he saw me standing outside the door.

“Did you wash your hands?” I asked, knowing the answer.

He looked momentarily guilty.

I put my hand on top of his head, moving it so his head turned toward the sink.  He obediently turned and went to wash his hands.

I plucked a hair from his head.

He stopped, looking at me.  “What?”

“Soap and water,” I ordered.  Playing up the authority figure role.  “And hurry, please.  I’d like my turn.”

He gave his hands the shortest, most perfunctory scrub he could, and then zipped downstairs.

I took my turn in the bathroom, closing and locking the door.  I leaned over the sink.  No reflection faced me.

“Rose,” I said.  “Rose, Rose.”

A moment passed, and Rose appeared in the pane.

“Are you sure you should call me?” she asked.

“No,” I said.  “But this is your chance to tell me if I’m being an idiot.”

“Are you being an idiot?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I crashed the party, no problem, but very little gain, outside of seeing the family units at work.”

I placed my fist against the wall, and pushed hard.

“What’s next?” she asked.

“Being a face in a smaller crowd,” I said.  I looked at the hair, and I could see the connection to its owner, like a vague shaft of sunlight filtered through the air in a dusty room.  Moving downstairs, slowing as he entered the living room.

Good.  It worked like I’d hoped.  I now knew I had a minute.

I grabbed my elbow, pushing harder.

“I sense… something,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s like when I saw the… Feorgbolds or whatever they’re called?  There’s only darkness where the mirrors don’t let me see through, and I don’t dare show my face when they could look back at me.”

“No,” I said.  “Definitely don’t take that risk.”

“But I see something, almost.  I feel them.”

“The familiars are probably coming out,” I said.  “Maybe they’re doing some tricks to clean the dishes, I dunno.”

I pushed harder one last time, then changed hands to do the same for the other.

“Set the house on fire?” she suggested.

“There’s a thought,” I said.  “But no.  This many practitioners, this being their territory, the fire would go out if they asked politely.  I don’t think there’s anything I can pull, outside of poisoning them, that would do any serious damage.”

“Don’t poison,” she said.  “Being a guest means there are rules.  Even if the host has expressed an intent to murder you.”

“I know,” I said.  “And there are kids here.”

“Yeah.  Definitely don’t kill kids.”

I shifted my stance, bracing my knee against the sink.  I bent down to grab my foot with both hands, forcing my knee against the sink.

“What in the fuck are you doing?” she asked.

I stepped back, and I fell.  I reached for the towel rack for balance, then stopped before grabbing it, covering my head instead.  I didn’t want to make a racket by pulling it out of the wall.

I hit the ground, my head coming within an inch of the toilet.  If I hadn’t fallen at an angle, I might have knocked myself out.

I stretched my legs out in front of me.  One was almost a foot shorter than the other.

“You… look genuinely disturbing,” she said.

I turned myself ninety degrees and braced myself against the wall, pushing out with my longer leg.  With the exertion, I managed to squeeze it down to a matching length with the other leg.

“Blake… you need to go back to your regular ‘Blake’ shape.  It’ll root you better in this shape.  If you aren’t careful, it’s going to be time consuming or painful to go back to normal.”

“No time,” I said.  “I can deal with problems later.  Right now is what I want to focus on.”

I stood, and found the sink was at a level with my collarbone.

Bracing my feet against the floor, my head against the edge of the sink, I squeezed myself down just a little more.

I looked up to see Rose in the mirror, practically climbing over the sink on her side to look down at me.

I ran my hands over my hair.  Dark brown hair with just a tiny bit of curling to it.

“Your face,” she said.

“I know.”

I ran my hands over the face.  Away with the lines, away with the age, the larger nose and ears, the mustache.  I handled my throat, then my body and arms.

“Eerie,” she said.

I pushed up my sleeves.  Tattoos still there.  But the clothes…

The clothes had shrunk with me.  I hadn’t even thought about it, which would be a benefit of sorts.

My sweat, I realized, would be permeating the clothes.  Sweat with glamour-ointment on it.

Would that dilute it?  Make the glamour weaker?

No.  If the glamour was weaker, I wouldn’t have been able to compress myself down to a height of three and a half feet.

My hands were damp with the sweat of my exertion.  If I…

I brushed them off on the clothes.  It took a few tries to get the colors right.

“I’m done commenting on this,” Rose said.  “I have no words.”

I turned around, arms out to my sides  “Convincing?”

“Yes.  Definitely convincing.  If I hadn’t watched it happen, I wouldn’t have known.  I’m having trouble reconciling it even now.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“You realize, if you let this break, it’s going to recoil like crazy?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I realize.  Wish me luck.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m praying you have good luck,” she said.  “Please don’t get us killed.”

“Will try,” I said, smiling, an abundance of exuberance in my voice and expression.  “You keep an ear out, in case there’s trouble.”

As a six year old boy, I descended the stairs.

The hair pointed me to the boy I was replacing.  I spotted him from the other side of the room, playing with his cousin.

I ducked into the hallway, where the others were filing through the kitchen into the extension on the back of the house.  A few familiars had come out, and cats stood on owner’s shoulders, the air alight with various birds.

One accusatory birdcall, and I was done for.

Someone mussed my hair in passing.  I looked up and smiled wide, then ducked between legs to get away.  I didn’t want anyone keeping track of me, human or familiar.

Nearly sixty people in all made their way into the back room.  I was more focused on getting lost in the group than on the room itself, until people started settling on positions.

“I’m impressed, Laird,” a woman’s voice.

A whistle.

“Beatrice helped,” Laird said, on the other side of the room.

“Derivative, or-”

“My own invention,” Laird said.

“You used paint?”

“For the permanence of it,” Laird answered.

I could see bookshelves, each protected by a pane of glass with hinges and a lock.  The locks, I noted, each had a rune on them.

Nothing I could mess with.

As I made my way to the back corner, I found a foosball table covered by a tablecloth and shoved into a corner, the telltale handles sticking out.  A pool table sat a short distance away, similarly covered.

The crowd started to settle, and I dared a look at the room proper, peeking between legs.

A magic circle, if that was even the term.

Fifteen feet across, it was complex.  Diagrams inside diagrams, mathematical notation towards the center, astrological symbols at the outermost edges.

The hair told me that my counterpart was heading my way.  I reversed direction, keeping the crowd between us.

His cousin with him, they ducked under the foosball table, watching events from their new hiding spot.

Hopefully they wouldn’t cause a commotion and let someone realize that there were two little boys with the same face and clothes.

“Let’s talk about Blake Thorburn,” Laird said.

“The diabolist,” someone else said.

“You each have some idea of what the Thorburns involve.  Just yesterday, Blake Thorburn attacked my reputation, putting me and my family in awkward positions.  Sandra Duchamp was able to pull some strings, and things look like they will settle, but it’s clear Blake Thorburn isn’t on the same page as us.  He poses a grave risk to our families, to our place in things, and to this town.”

“He’s a novice,” Sandra Duchamp said.  “He’s new to this, and he’s finding his way.  Laird told me he was dealing with Maggie Holt, no doubt exchanging knowledge.  Laird did what he could to put an end to it, but the young man is desperate.  I wouldn’t bet on anything right now.”

“What can you tell us about him?”  one of the out-of-towners asked.

“The situation warrants delicate handling,” Laird said.  “He’s the equivalent to a keg of nitroglycerin.  Too much of a jostle, and he blows up, and he takes us with him.  I’ve made some initial forays into dealing with him.  Maximizing the karmic balance, in the hopes that any explosions are destructive to the Thorburn line than to us.  In every interaction, I perform an augury to ensure that it won’t lead to disaster, but the window for seeing these things is narrow, and I’m primarily looking out for the worst case scenarios.”

“Fire and brimstone,” an older woman from the Behaim family spoke.

“Exactly,” Laird agreed.  “Thus far, I’ve aimed to push him out of his comfort zone without pushing him too far.  Keep him off-balance.  Others made some forays, but nothing came of it.  I think we’ll need to stop that, to be safe.  Limit it to certain powerful Others, increase the bounty we’re offering for any killed Thorburn, and step very carefully with a plan in mind the entire way.”

There were nods around the room.

“Answering the question from earlier,” Sandra cut in.  “We did some readings.  A reading of Blake Thorburn drew the Fool card with the right hand, the High Priestess with the left.  A reading of his vestige companion drew the Hanged Man and Chariot, respectively.”

First of all, I resented that.

Second of all, ominous.

“We can assume that with his removal, the other Thorburn descendants will each have a turn as heir.  We’re already doing background checks on everyone involved,” Sandra Duchamp said.  “It would be interesting to possibly remove one individual from the line of succession before we get that far, to see if we can’t throw a wrench in the works.”

“But our paramount concern,” Laird said, “Is him.  He’s not as passive as his predecessor was.  We’ll all sleep easier when he’s dealt with.”

“Let’s not mince words,” a man said.  “You’re talking about his death.  About murdering him.”

“I was mincing words, as we do have children in the room,” Laird said.  “But no, I do not want either option.  Particularly now.  This is my proposed solution.”

Various people looked down at the diagram.

“You’d better explain,” Sandra Duchamp said.

“Of course,” Laird said.  “Bertram, would you?”

I heard rustling papers.

In the narrow segment of the crowd that I could make out, I saw people passing a pile of stapled papers around.  Each took one and handed it to the next person.

“I’m not sure I follow.  It’s been a long time since I studied any of this.  There’s no risk of backlash?”

“No.  We’re not targeting him,” Sandra said.  “He’s not even in our sights.  He spends much of his time ensconced within the house, where every demesnes has been turned inward.”

“If you’d each clear away from the diagram?” Laird asked.  “There should be room.  We’ll get prepared while you each look over my notes.”

As one, the crowd backed away to the edges of the room.  I found myself with my back to the glass cabinets.  I also had a better view of what was going on.

“Timothy, here,” Laird said.  He indicated an empty circle within the diagram.  “Rhea, here, please.  Grace, here.  Talbot, yes, right there.”

Fuck me.  This wasn’t just Laird pulling something with people looking in.  He was involving them.  A coven -a circle-, getting involved.

“Sandra, I need you at the ‘crown’ point.  Isabelle, the ‘sword’.”

Two circles, I thought.  I was frozen.  What could I do?

“Clustered so close together,” Sandra commented.  She was almost shoulder to shoulder with Isabelle.

“That’s the realm.  The space.  See page four.  If you could stand with your backs to each other, please… yes, good.  Cordelia, you’re the cup.  Anne, the coin.  Gail?”

“Tome.”

“Yes.  And, almost done, we have Layton, Donald, and myself, for the stations here, here, and… here.”

He stepped deliberately into the last open space.

The Behaims arranged around the edge, the Duchamps in a tight circle in the middle.

There was a respectful silence.

Fuck me.

Maybe I should set the house on fire.

“Finally,” Laird said, dropping to one knee.  He drew his pocketwatch out, then tapped it gently on the circle, like someone might if they were cracking an egg.  “I’ll need your help, my friend.”

Light flared, reflected off the open ‘door’ of the watch, and when it passed, a stooped, sun-wizened old man stood before Laird, practically wrapped around the staff that was keeping him standing.  Hair slicked back, no beard, his eyes pinched to slits by the wrinkles and folds of his face.

The old man advanced, teetering, using the staff for balance.

When he reached the center of the circle, he tapped his staff’s end against it.

In the doing, the old man folded like a house of cards, collapsing into the space where the staff met the circle.  Reflected rays of sunlight flashed out, much as it had with the lid, racing around the length of the circle at different speeds, and he plunged into the space.

I felt a shudder.

Heard a thud.

Another thud, then another.  The vibrations continued, in time.

The diagram was moving.  An ellipse, pointed at either end, whatever I was supposed to call that, was making its way around the edge.  The various people standing on the circle began moving, glacially slowly, but moving.

I saw the movement of another ellipse.  Like the hands of a clock.

The thuds were a ticking, as if we were in a great clocktower.

“With one stroke,” Laird said.  “We can remove the entire Thorburn family as a threat.  I’ll get us started.”

He began chanting.

Breach 3.4

The steady ‘tock, tock, tock’ of the diagram was joined by confident voices, speaking in time with the ritual.  Each jerking movement of the ‘hand’ of the diagram was accompanied by a ‘tock’.  Less a sound, I realized, than a vibration, reaching through the floor and house.

I needed to know more.  What was the ritual, what was the goal, and how the hell was I supposed to disrupt this without revealing myself or getting them to hunt for a culprit?

I searched the room.  All eyes were riveted to the scene.  As I circled around, pretending to be in search of a better look at what was going on, I looked at tables, cabinets and shelves.

One glass case had an assortment of trinkets, wands, a staff and a spike-studded scepter.  Primarily, though, there were watches, hourglasses, and other timepieces within.

“Al mamlakah,” Sandra Duchamp spoke, startling me a bit.  A loud, clear woman’s voice in the midst of the more baritone chanting.

“Al mamlakah,” the other Duchamps inside the circle replied, in unison.

Past the gaps in between people and in between legs, I could see the diagram shifting, as if it were an intricate device, tumblers falling into place, gears turning, components interlocking.  A ‘tick’ joined the ‘tock’.  Higher, faster, jarring my concentration.  I could see the connection Sandra Duchamp had made.  One word, an agreement or affirmation, leveraging some tie she already had to the grand scheme of things.  She’d been the ‘crown’.

If each of the Duchamps had a part to play, that meant they were one fifth of the way through already.  If I was lucky, there would be more tacked on at the end, or the Behaims might have their pieces to add.

If I was lucky.  I didn’t want to stretch my luck.  Not with this much on the line.  My well being, the family…

How to deal with this?  Priorities were information, tools I could employ, and getting out with my skin intact.

I looked up at all of the adults who held the pads of paper outlining the ritual.

The simplest solution was often the most effective.

I selected my position carefully, so I could be sure to be out of sight of anyone who saw the two kids playing under the foosball table, and I walked up to one of the Behaims.  I tugged on her sleeve, insistent.  She looked down at me.

“I wanna see the paper,” I said, loud enough to be annoying.  One of the Behaims and two of the Duchamps in the circle gave me a dirty look.  Apparently they didn’t appreciate the interruption.

The woman shushed me, simultaneously dropping down to a crouching position.  She held out the paper so I could see.  It was already turned to the second page.  Words were written out like a sermon, written out in what I presumed was Arabic, with a phonetic transcription.

Being a child, I was allowed to be a little graceless.  I moved the first page, very deliberately rustling it, and held it straight up so I could read it with my head tilted to one side.

An illustration of the diagram, minus the clutter in between the key parts, with lines drawn out from each section to the respective labels.  Crown, coin, tome, sword, and cup.  There were points of power on the outer rim, where the Behaims stood.  Other labels marked the diagram as sectors and rings.

Further down, there was elaboration.  The rings were marked with terms like ‘clockwise’, ‘counterclockwise’, ‘influx’, and ‘corridor’.

I could get the gist of it.  Power of a particular type, directed inward, given direction by the inner circle.  Astrological symbols on the outer rim, and then, as Laird had said, the realm, the space.  Community at the center.

The picture of the circle didn’t have all of the details.  When I looked, however, I could see a grid of lines, each with words running along them.

Sydenham.  Glade.  McArthur Crescent.

Street names.  The ones around the house.

Temporal distortion, centered on the house?  No.  Not the house, exactly.

The rings alternated from clockwise to counterclockwise, counterclockwise again, then clockwise.  Feeding into other diagrams, with the endpoint forming a ring-

“Where’s Leanne?” the woman whispered in my ear, interrupting my thoughts.

Leanne?

Oh.  ‘My’ cousin?

I couldn’t lie, but I was pretty sure there weren’t any rules about gestures.  I shrugged and pointed at the far side of the circle.

She turned the page, and in the doing, pulled the page I was holding up out of my grasp.  I couldn’t read the page with the details and the opening of the ritual without looking strange.  At my age, I wasn’t even supposed to be able to read it.

“Husam,” one of the Duchamps spoke.  The first word at the top of the new page.

“Husam,” came the chorus, from the other four.

The vibrations that were emanating from the circle took on a harder, harsher quality.  Where I’d felt it against my body before, like a speaker with the bass turned up, I could feel it running through me, now, resonating in my bones.

Laird’s chant continued, a background noise, intense and constant.

The lights above us were more intense, but that light didn’t reach nearly so far.  The room grew dimmer, but the lines of the circle remained as bright as they had been, effectively standing out.

The ticks and tocks continued incessantly, shuddering their way through me, resonating in my bones for the one and a half seconds it took before the next one hit me.  I was left just a bit breathless.  The woman next to me had to shift her position to keep from falling.  I had the advantage of a lower center of gravity.

But, at the same time, I was smaller, and that informed my perspective.

Okay.  More than a little unnerved, now.

I played the part, wringing my hands in front of me.  I was a little boy, insecure, and without filters or guile.  It seemed like the thing to do.

A hand settled over mine.  The woman next to me.  She leaned closer, whispering.  “Go and stay with Leanne, okay?”

She shifted the paper to one hand and started to rise to her feet.

I acted without thinking.  An opportunity sighted, a weak point I could target.

“But I’m scared!” I cried out.  Loud, again, to distract.  To justify the other thing I was doing.

I threw myself bodily at one of her knees, wrapping my arms around her thigh.

She teetered, struggling to catch her balance or stand upright, center of gravity thrown.

I released my hold, just as she tipped toward the circle’s perimeter.

A Duchamp woman standing next to her caught her by the upper arm, holding it high.  They very nearly fell into the circle together, but the Duchamp woman was taller, strong, and managed to plant one foot in front of her, not a half-inch from the edge of the animated circle.  Swinging from her rescuer’s grip, the Behaim woman very deliberately pulled her hand back and away from the circle, avoiding contact.

One strong jerk back on her arm sent her falling back onto her rear end, safely away from the circle.  The Duchamp woman straightened, and remained there, stone-faced, vaguely condemning of her rescuee and me both, not offering anything further in the way of a helping hand.

The chanting continued, Laird doing the lion’s share, but all of the occupants of the diagram were directing dirty looks this way, now.  Those looks, however, were focused on the woman who’d very nearly fallen.  She climbed to her feet, successfully this time, her face red with some mix of anger and humiliation.

Before eyes could turn to me, I put my hands to my mouth, my eyes wide, and scampered from the room.  The kid who knew full well he was in deep trouble.

Damn.

I’d failed.  If I got up to more shenanigans, they might get curious about the errant little boy who’d interfered with the ritual a second time.

I found myself in the living room, still littered with empty wine glasses and plates.  Nobody was hurrying to follow, which was good.  I wondered if they’d be making whispered excuses to one another, that the little boy was scared, it was an accident…

It didn’t matter.  I didn’t have long.

I felt like a weight had been lifted from me, now that I was clear of the room.  Every step away from the circle had diminished the volume of the ticking as if I’d taken ten.  Being in the living room, I could barely feel it.  With the second sight, I could make out the movements of the spirits, as if they were caught up in a current, fighting a headwind.

Okay.  Interruptions were bad.  The ritual was relatively delicate.  The participants could be distracted, and the diagram could be interfered with.

Which didn’t make this easy.  It was an exercise in problem solving.  The problem being that I couldn’t interfere directly.  Even being one step removed from the interference would be dangerous.

What was S.O.P. for being a guest?  If I couldn’t poison them, what was I allowed to do when they were trying to fuck with me?

I might have to bite the karma bullet, I thought.

Fire alarm?  No.  Breaker?  No.

I needed help.

I had the goblins, but… they were a dangerous kind of help.  Help I couldn’t count on as being untraceable.

Rose couldn’t act.

Couldn’t get Maggie involved.

My eyes traveled over the room.

I spotted the phone in the front hallway.

With a child’s fingers, I hit the numbers.  Nine, one, one.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

The cordless phone in hand, I made my way up the stairs and out of earshot.  I nearly tripped on the stairs.  Nearly tripped, mentally, trying to figure out how I was supposed to tackle this.  “I- um-“

“Honey, did you mean to call nine-one-one?”

“Yes.  It’s where I’m supposed to call when there’s something bad happening?”

“Yes it is.  Are you in any danger right now?”

“Not unless they find me.  I’m scared.”  Which was truth, if I admitted it to myself.

“Where are you?”

Where was I?

I kept my voice quiet, sitting at the L-bend in the stairs where I could see downstairs, while remaining mostly out of sight.  “I don’t know the address.  But I’m in Laird Behaim’s house.  He’s in charge of the Jacob’s Bell police.”

“I know, honey.  What has you this scared?”

“I don’t know who else to call.  I came for this family party and a lot of people left, but the people who are still here are talking about getting rid of somebody, and I think it has a lot to do with the girl who got murdered.”

“At Laird Behaim’s house?”

“Please send police,” I said, injecting some emotion into my voice.  “Please?  With sirens on?  I want them to stop now.  I don’t want to listen to any more-

“Dahab,” one voice spoke out from the back room, just loud enough for me to hear.

“Dahab,” four other voices answered, muffled by the intervening walls.

“-any more of this,” I finished.  Balls.  What was that?  Three out of five?

“What’s your name, honey?”

Double balls.

“If I tell you, I’ll get in trouble.  You can’t tell them I called, or they’ll hurt me.  Please send police.  Or fire trucks, ambulances?  Anything loud?”

“They’re already on their way.”

“If they knock, and people don’t answer, it’s because everyone’s in the back room.  It’s Laird Behaim and Sandra Duchamp, and other family members…” I thought for a second.  “And one of them was saying… he said Mister Laird was talking about killing somebody.  Murder.  And now they’re all being grim and scary.”

“I understand, honey.  Help is on the way, don’t worry.  Why do you think they would hurt you?”

“Because…” I paused.  What to even say?

“Honey?  It’s okay.”

“Before, a few days ago, he said he’d get rid of me.  He… said he wouldn’t enjoy it, but I was dead already.”

A fractional pause.  “Are you somewhere safe?”

“No.  But if I hide, won’t they realize I called?”

“Maybe, honey.  But if you wait until the police come, they can make sure you go someplace safe.”

Problematic, in a way, but a good escape option.

“Some man was saying they make some of their kids get married to people they don’t want to marry, for favors and to get in good with the right people.  Maybe- maybe if the policemen come, they can ask the girls?”

“Maybe,” the woman said.  I wondered how she was parsing all of this.

“And the room they’re in is weird.  It’s at the back of the house, and…” I thought for a second.  “It’s got this glass case with all these sticks and things inside.  One of them had spikes on it.  I know he’s going to try to keep the policemen away from the room and convince them it’s not important, I’ve seen him do it before.”

“What happened before?”

Restless, I stood.  I made my way to the bathroom, and I saw Rose in the mirror.  “…He took me out and then he threatened me a little and left me to walk home in the dark.  Some Other people stopped me and they would have hurt me, but a friend of mine made them leave me alone.”

What the hell did it say, that even with the oaths we’d made, the one thing I’d told the emergency dispatcher that felt closest to lying was the bit where I called Rose a friend?

“This is Laird Behaim?”

“The head policeman,” I said.

I could hear the sirens.

“They’re coming,” I said.

“Stay near the door.  When the policemen answer, I want you to go to them, okay?”

“If you ever let them know I called,” I said. “They’re going to try and do bad things to me.  Please.  I’m safer so long as you stop them and you don’t say there was a call from this house.”

“We need to get you somewhere-“

“-If they find out I called and something happens to me,” I said, injecting a bit more emotion into my voice.  “It’ll be your fault.  Make them hurry.  There’s no time.  Hurry.”

That said, I hung up.

My heart pounded, even in the aftermath of the call.  I could hear the sirens drawing closer.

“Hell of a gamble,” Rose said.  “You never said you could act.”

“I-” I started.  My voice hitched with emotion.

A moment passed, Rose and I both silent.

“You’re not acting.”

“I’m… I don’t know,” I said.  I did what I could to get my voice under control.  Fuck, fuck… couldn’t afford to let something slip, to show my distress to the Behaims and Duchamps.

“You’re drowning in glamour,” Rose said.  “The act is becoming real.”

“O-okay,” I said.  I was unnerved at how much I sounded like a little boy, when I wasn’t putting on the act.

“Hey, you wanted a partnership?  This is your partner telling you to get out.”

“I can’t leave right away,” I said.  I cleared my throat, then said  “As soon as I’m able.”

I wasn’t able to keep the full tremor out of my voice.

“Soon, Blake.  If it’s rooted deep enough in you to sway your emotions, it’s going to be hard to change.  If the glamour breaks it’s going to hurt.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And don’t layer anything on top of it, or you’ll have to dig deeper to get to ‘Blake’.”

“O- okay,” I said.  “No more changing?”

I turned my head.  I could hear the siren, trace it back to the cars… and see the cars arriving.

“That look on your face.  They’re here?” Rose said.

“The ritual might have finished,” I said, whispering the words.  “That took too long.  It’s still taking too long.”

“Did you feel the ritual finish?”

“No.  But I’m not feeling much of anything, outside of that room.  Is Granny’s- grandmother’s house safe?”

“Let me get back to you on that.”

Then Rose was gone.

I left the phone where it was, covering up the connection with glamour.  That wasn’t using glamour on me, right?  I descended downstairs.

There was no chanting.

The quiet was eerie.

There was a pounding knock on the door.  I jumped.

I was physically shaking.  I felt nauseous.

Why the fuck did it feel like I was vulnerable to everything?  Giving too much blood had spent far too much of myself, June had chilled me even through the protection of the circle, I’d totally fallen for Laird’s trap…

The knock came again.  I could see police officers circling around the house through the bay window in the living room.

A moment later, there was a knock on a window at the side of the house.

Behaims and Duchamps emerged from the back room as a group.

I still had the hair.  Where had I put it?  The boy’s hair…  I’d had it in my hand.

I found it in one pocket, with the paper goblins, sensed the connection, and found the boy.

He was taking the same path I had.  Back room to kitchen to living room.  I ducked into the hallway and headed towards the dining room, so we were at opposite ends of the house.  Being seen at the same time and place as him would be disastrous.  More than just about anything else.

At the same time, however, it meant I was moving in the general direction of the incoming Behaim and Duchamp family members, I was shaking, I was about five seconds from bursting into tears, and I looked guilty as fuck.  Try as I might, I couldn’t tap into the stuff I was supposed to know, about hiding guilt and acting normal.

Worse, I still couldn’t lie.

I came face to face with the woman I’d nearly shoved into the circle.

Well, face to bellybutton, but the point stood.

They loomed around me.  Doubly imposing for the size difference.

Think, Blake Thorburn, I thought.  Fucking think.

“Are you mad?” I asked, in a hushed whisper.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“The police came, and it’s because of me,” I said.  I felt the tears welling out.  “I almost knocked you over and ruined everything.”

Both statements true, but not as connected as I was implying.

“Police?” Laird asked.

“I saw them outside the window,” I said.

He brushed past me, his wife and Sandra Duchamp in tow.

I very honestly thought I might throw up, I was so…

What the fuck label did I stick on this hot mess of emotions that were filling my six year old frame?

So discombobulated?

“The police aren’t your fault,” the woman said.

I nodded.

I stepped back to get out of their line of sight as Laird opened the door.

“Mark,” he said.  “What’s going on?”

“Chief Behaim, sir.  Listen, something’s come up.  It’s awkward.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t want to make a fuss, especially not with your family here, but-“

“There’s been another accusation?” Laird asked.

“No, sir.  Not exactly.  It’s more serious than that.  If you come with me, I can explain.”

“Explain now.”

“We’ve been led to believe that a crime was or is in progress.”

“Where?”

“Here, sir.  Please understand, we’ve got to do this by the book.  All indicators suggested we needed to act immediately, which is why you got us.”

His own police officers, arresting him?

I suppressed my smile, best I could.

“I think I see,” Laird said.  “Can I ask-“

“Sir?  If you could please come with me right away, without any questions?  The RCMP has been called, but I need to bring you into the station, without delay.”

“No delays,” Laird said.  “Alright.”

“We’ll also need to see… Sandra Duchamp?”

Peeking, I saw Sandra momentarily purse her lips, then nod.  “I’ll come.”

“And, with permission, Nathan and Ed are going to take a look through the property and talk to a handful of your guests.”

“Mark, we were having an engagement celebration.”

“I understand, sir.  But…”

Mark trailed off.

“But you’ve got to treat me like a suspect,” Laird said.  “I’ll be very interested to hear the background to this when it’s all cleared up.”

It took a minute for Laird and Sandra to get ready.  Two officers came into the house as they got jackets and boots on.

I caught Sandra gesturing at people I couldn’t make out in the living room.  A moment later, I could see the spirits around the cops being manipulated.  Distracting the cops.

Two girls, roughly my age, or the age I was supposed to be, passed through the kitchen to the back room.

There was no way to control this.  No way to really counteract the cover-up.

I watched Laird and Sandra leave, saw the cops head in the direction of the room with the circle.

A murmur ran through the collected group.

“The Thorburn boy?” a man asked.

“Very likely,” another Behaim practitioner commented.

“Is it okay?  The circle?”

“They’re the best of the new generation, when it comes to glamour,” a Duchamp matron said.  “Not to worry.”

“So… does that make this two points for Thorburn?” I heard someone ask.

“I think it’s safe to say it’s two points.  Another point in this department, and he’s earned three.  A great deal more profound.”

A point for me… but the ritual?

The murmurs quieted as the door opened.  Another officer.

“Mrs. Behaim?” he asked.  “I’ll need you to write down every guest you have here.  Sort them by family unit?”

Identifying the children?  Trying to find the caller.

My counterpart was at the front of the house.  I slipped back towards the kitchen, peeking to see how things were going in there.

The diagram was gone.  There was faint music playing.

Glamour?  So fast?  Masking an area like that?

It’s not real, I thought.  It’s fake, it’s a trick.  There’s a circle under there.

I could have blown things up, shattered the glamour, with just a few words.  I could have gotten away with it.  Theoretically.

But I couldn’t get over the fear that had seized me.

Fake fear.  Glamoured fear that I didn’t dare mess with, lest the entire thing fall to pieces.

I watched Penelope and Jo talking.  Low voices, looking concerned.

“The RCMP is going to need to talk to some people,” the officer said, “Quite a few, really.”

“We won’t be able to continue with the party?” someone asked.

“The evidence we received was serious,” the officer said.  “We could do this by sending people home as we scratch them off the list, or we could bring the family units in question to the station, so those who remain could carry on.”

I backed away, sticking close to the woman from before.

“It depends on how many people you’ll want to talk to?”

“The families of Layton, Peter, Donald, John, Andrew, and Annabelle, please.”

I saw heads turn.  Connections forming.  The people at the center that I could make out…

All families with little boys.

“It sounds like you need to go with your mom and dad, okay?” the woman told me.

Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.

I headed towards the kitchen, rounded the corner, and stopped.

Wait… wait… catch my breath.

I needed to figure out what the fuck I was doing next.

A girl my height came to a stop right in front of me.  Auburn curls, a nice satin dress with a lace collar…

Leanne.

It took a second for something to click, for the mental gears to shift and click.

When they did, when she met my eyes, I felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my face.

Couldn’t see. My vision was distorted, as though I needed glasses to see and they’d shattered.

The rest of me…

Unchanged.

“Huh?” I heard her say.

“Shh,” I shushed her.  “If you keep it a secret, I’ll show you later.”

I saw her head move.  I could only assume it was a nod.

Stupid, stupid.  Promising.  I reached out, fumbling, and grabbed her hand.  I pulled her in the direction of her waiting mother.

I was pretty sure it was her waiting mother.  What had just happened?

“Back already?” she asked.

“Can I spend the night?” I asked.

“The night?”

“Sleepover,” I said.  My heart was in my throat.  Still couldn’t see.  “Everyone might have a long wait at the station with lots and lots of questions.”

I stopped there.  I was speaking too excitedly, not breathing in enough.  I was a hair way from hyperventilating.

I could see the doubt on her face.

“Please,” I panted.  “Please, can I come?”

“Please?” Leanne joined in.  “Please can he?”

“This is a mess,” she said, to the nearest Behaim.  She looked at me.  “I’ll need to talk to your mom.”

“I can go ask,” I said.

“Go ask, then.”

I headed for the kitchen, rubbing at my eyes.

I felt the glamour rub away, instead of shifting into place.

I could see, but I was seeing out of a different set of eyes.

My own.  Were they the wrong color?

Were they too old, as eyes went?  Did I have bags under my eyes from recent nights with no sleep?

I touched the hair, found the boy.  Through him, I found the parents.  All in a tight group, two parents, son and older sister, the dad’s hands on the son’s shoulders.

“We’ve decided what we’re doing!” Laird’s wife called out.  “I’m sorry, but we’re wrapping things up for tonight.  If your name wasn’t called, we’ll have to bid you farewell.  We’ll have another event, sometime next week.”

What did that mean?  Had I bought myself a week?

Had I stopped the ritual?

People were heading for the front hall, to collect boots and jackets.  When the mass formed a kind of traffic jam, the various families broke into clusters, to have hushed, intense discussions, eyes on the police and the front door.

I waded through the traffic jam, head down.

I was no less than ten feet from my double, the view of the two of us obscured by only a thin collection of people.

Through the connection, I could see that ‘Mom’ was more preoccupied, talking to another, heavy woman from the Behaim family.  I wrapped my arms around her leg, and her hand settled on my head.

“Do you love me?” I piped up.  One child’s voice in the din of conversation.

“Yes, of course,” she said, without even looking down.

With that done, I half-ran, half-skipped away, ducking between people’s legs to get back to Leanne and her mom.

“She said yes,” I said.

I received a tolerant smile in exchange.  “Alright.  We’ll make do.  Come on, let’s get you ready.”

It was slow going, wading through the crowd, staying out of sight, but I reached the piles of boots and shoes at the front door.

Through the boy’s connections to his belongings, I found the right stuff and got myself ready.

I could feel something else break as I tested the glamour.  Suspicion?

It dawned on me: I’d been too quick.  Too competent in getting myself ready.  I’d even done up my shoelaces with the kind of ease that came with twenty years of practice.

Reaching for my gloves, I saw the other telltale issues.

Cuts.  Scrapes.  A wound from a pen-stab to the soft bit beside my thumb on my left hand.  A strategic cut where I’d drawn blood.

And there… a dark hair, and then another, near my wrist.  Then five.

Dark, thick, adult body hairs on my hands and arms.

Time was up, it was all coming to pieces.  Rose had warned me it would be ugly.  Painful or drawn out.

I wasn’t sure how that would work in execution.  I’d been momentarily blind, and in rubbing it away, I may well have accelerated the breakdown.  What was next?  What did I face, in being disabled, inconvenienced or hurt, as the glamour fell apart?

I reached into my pocket and grabbed a paper goblin, then pulled on mitten with the paper nestled against my palm, ready in case something came up.  I yanked my hat down to help hide my eyes.

“I might have to duck inside,” Leanne’s mother said.  “Ask your parents if one of them can get your car seat out of their car.  Darn it, that’s going to take a while.”

“I don’t need a car seat,” I said.

“I think you do.”

“I was in a car a few days ago, and I didn’t have a car seat,” I said.  Pretending to be proud as punch.

I fucking drove a car a few days ago and I didn’t have a car seat.

“Your parent’s rules aren’t my rules.  And with my brother being chief of police…”

Was I going to be done in by fucking car seat laws?

“What if you drive real careful?” I asked.  “It’s not far.”

I saw her frown.

“It’s going to take a long time, with everyone there,” I said.  “If we have to go back in there and ask, we’re never going to get to your house.”

I saw her hemming and hawing for a moment.

“You look bigger.  Have you grown?”

I managed to stay stock still as I felt another hit to the glamour.  Another crack.

Bigger?

“He is!” Leanne said.  “It’s the first time he’s ever been taller than me!”

Ah, frick frack fuck.

“Yep!” I said, plastering a proud smile on my face.  “I’m all grown up!”

“You’re getting there,” she said.

“I’m a big boy,” I added, for good measure.  “I don’t need a car seat.”

“Okay.  Let’s get you two going, or you’re liable to be intolerable tomorrow.”

“Yay!” I cheered.

“Yay!” Leanne joined me.

As we climbed into the car, I could feel my shoulders straining against the stolen winter jacket.

I could feel the growing pains, now.  The extension of my limbs, the shifting of my spine.

It was like the Glamour had soaked into me, and the change back was affecting me from head to toe.

I was sweating bullets, and this time, I could feel the sweat wiping away the glamour as I sat there in the back seat, behind Leanne’s mom.

“Did the thing work?” I dared to ask.

“The ritual was stopped,” I heard.

There was nothing else volunteered.  We drove in silence for a few long seconds.  I tried to keep from smiling.

“I’m going to show you the house I made for Elsabelle,” Leanne told me.

“What did you make it out of?” I asked.

“Magic, of course,” Leanne told me.

“No fibbing,” her mom called out.  “You know the rules.”

“…cardboard boxes, mostly.” Leanne amended.  “And I put all of my favorite music in there, and I put up pictures I drew, and I’m going to learn to sew and do dresses, so it’s all ready when she comes.”

Oh man, this was starting to hurt.

“When… when does she come?” I asked.  Keep her talking, keep her excited with her focus elsewhere.

Or she might notice that I had stubble on my face.

“You know when I get to meet Elsabelle.  I told you!”

Thwack.  Another hit to the glamour.

“In six years, four if I’m extra super good, I get to have a magical friend like Donny and Ian and Heather, and she’s going to be a fairy princess, and I don’t know who she is or what she’s a princess of, and I’m only calling her Elsabelle because I don’t know her name yet, but she’s going to be perfect and nice and sweet and beautiful and she’ll be my best friend forever.  Because all Faerie are noble and pure and Faerie princesses are extra special in all those departments.”

“Four years only if you learn not to fib,” her mother said.  “Even a little.  And you need to read the books.  And she might not be noble, unless you work hard enough to earn the attention of someone special.”

“Yes!  I will!”  Leanne pronounced.

“And no making promises!” her mother rebuked her.

It was all I could do to sit still, to avoid groaning.  This sucked.

Not everything was fixing itself in the right order.  My stomach was twisting, and my breath was short because my lungs felt too large for my ribcage.

I didn’t dare speak, because I was pretty sure it would be my voice that came out.

“Are you okay?” Leanne asked.

What did I even say to that?

“Need to…” I strained the words, to mask my voice.  “get to your bathroom.”

“I’ll hurry,” her mother said.

She was a practitioner, I knew.

If I fell to pieces here, I was screwed.  I’d be incapable of moving, and I’d have an angry practitioner looming over me.

We stopped, and I had my seatbelt off in seconds.  I yanked on the door handle.

Childproof.

A solid fifteen seconds passed, with me waiting for Leanne’s mother to get herself untangled and open the door.

I nearly fell as I climbed out of the car.  One leg shorter than the other.

She glanced left, then right, looking down the length of the neighborhood.

“House!” she said, in a stern voice.  “Open!”

I saw the connection, straight to the front door.

A demesne?

“Do you need help?”

I shook my head.  “I can go in?”

“Of course you can go in.  We’ll be right after you.”

I hobbled for the front door, praying she wouldn’t notice how my pants legs were two inches two short for one leg, a good four inches short for the other, or how I’d kicked off the small boots and I was walking through the slush in socks.

But her focus was on getting Leanne out of the car.

I went inside, searched the rooms, and found the bathroom.  I could barely move my arms, with the jacket being so small.

In the end, I tore off my shirt, sweater, and the jacket, pulling from the bottom of each and turning them inside out.

I dug my fingernails into the edges of my tattoos, and scraped.

Slowly, systematically, I clawed off the remainder of the crumbling glamour.  I could only hope it would be easier if it was deliberately removed rather than crumbling.

It wasn’t.  I spasmed, felt more things shift into their natural places.  Muscles tensing and stretching out.  Bones, too.

Connections appeared.  My connections.  And a prying eye would be able to see them, identifying me.

As I’d done with the line of blood to ward off Jo’s connection to me before and after fighting the Faerie swordswoman, I used the nearest power at hand to ward off the connections that emanated from me.  With palsied, twitching fingers, I surrounded myself with a loose ring of the shed glamour skin and glamour infused clothes.

When I was done, I collapsed onto my side, twitching, dry heaving, doing all I could to avoid pissing myself.

All I could think was about whether I’d fucking overdosed on the stuff.

I just needed to bounce back.  To get over this, and get out of the house.

Dimly, I heard a knocking on the door.

Leanne’s higher voice.  “Are you okay?”

No?

I gasped.

“Do you want me to get my mom?”

“N- no.” I managed, trying to keep my voice higher.  “Out soon.”

Another damn promise, in a moment of desperation.

Shit.  I’d even told her I’d show her what was up, if she kept my secret.

I waited.  Praying that the mother wouldn’t come in and find me.  Could she use a command to open the bathroom door, like she’d done with the front door?

I’d traded one dangerous prison for another.

It was a little while before I felt strong enough to stand.  I gripped the sides of the sink and used it to pull myself up.

Fuck me.  I looked even more drained.

I’d pushed this too far.

I reached out and grabbed the two toothbrushes from beside the sink.  One small one, pink, with a fairy on it.  One larger one, purple.

The circle I’d drawn out blocked the connections.

Tentatively, I stepped out.

The mother was upstairs with Leanne.

Reaching down, I grabbed my shirt and sweatshirt and pulled them on.  I grabbed the tatters of glamour and dragged it behind me like a limp jumping rope, keeping it between me and them.

I didn’t have much strength as I walked down the length of the hallway.  Not the front door.  Too much risk they would hear or see.  The side of the house… a sliding door.

I stopped halfway there.

Bookshelves, this time without glass doors.  Another glass case, showcasing trinkets and instruments.  From the look of them, they were from past generations.

“Blake,” Rose said.  A whisper.

Rose looked at me from a mirror over the fireplace.

“Dangerous here,” I responded, my voice matching hers in quiet.  “Demesnes.”

“Only the front of the ground floor, I think.  Just like it was only the ground floor of Laird’s house.  They section them off, so different family members can have different areas for their demesnes.  I can’t enter the mirrors there.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Right.”

“You look fucking terrible,” she told me.

“Feel worse than fucking terrible.”

“Just leave, Blake.”

“They attacked us,” I said.  “They attacked our home.”

“I know.  But you can’t fight.  The woman who owns this house, you know she’s strong.”

“She’s Laird’s sister,” I said.  “I guess each member of the family gets a little trove like this.”

“I guess.  Why are we even discussing this?  Get out of here.”

“They attacked us,” I said, again.  “Tell me, do you think any of these books are originals, or are they all copies?”

“I… some look old.”

“Some look old,” I agreed.

I drew the whistle from my pants pocket.

I blew.

Rather than a high pitched noise, there was only a low wet sputter, and Dickswizzle was spat out onto the floor.

“Destroy the books,” I said.  “Destroy the treasures.  Do it quietly, and you’ll manage more destruction.  Start with the oldest things, you’ll hurt them more.  Run if she takes notice.  Under no circumstances are you to harm anyone before returning to the flute,” I said.

Dickswizzle eyed me warily.

“Blake.  If you’re inside her house, because of hospitality-“

“I’m repaying their hospitality by sparing them.  They were… not unkind,” I said.  “But their family attacked our house and possessions.  We can attack theirs.  Eye for an eye.”

“If we took some of it, we could ransom it back?”

“It’s not quite an eye for an eye, and I don’t want them using it to track me.”

“This feels wrong.”

“But it’s fucking right.  Two very different things,” I said, my voice a harsh whisper.

I let Rose deliberate while I headed for the side door.  There was a boot rack, complete with a set of rubber boots.  I managed to squeeze them on.

I heard a tearing sound behind me as I unlocked the door.  I could see Rose’s reflection, faint, in the glass.

I walked out, dragging the tattered skin behind me.

Breach 3.5

The rubber boots weren’t well insulated against the cold.  It was fine at first, but the cold gradually seeped in.  Or, perhaps, the warmth gradually seeped out.  Unjustly snatched up from where they belonged, in the wrong environment, while I tried to figure out the fastest, tidiest way of getting rid of them.

They were a good metaphor for me, really.  Or for me and Rose.

It said a lot that I was thinking in crazy, abstract metaphors like this.  I was tired, wrung-out, and emotionally drained.  Just as the warmth had seeped out of the boots, something had been leeched out of me, leaving me… not cold, but whatever was left behind when personality, identity and one’s position in the world were taken away.

I was a little cold, too.  I’d weathered worse temperatures, sleeping outdoors at this time of year, or in the late fall, I knew I was better than some when it came to enduring the cold.  But even then, I’d been bundled up.  Keep the heat in your hands, feet, and keep a hat on, and a little warmth could be stretched a long way.

As I made my way across the city, my footsteps a little clunky in the inflexible, ill-fitting boots, I had a hood, but no hat, no gloves, and only the boots.  The torso was the least important part of the body to keep warm, really, but even there, I had only the sweatshirt.

Parts of me ached, alternately from the cold and the recent transition back to becoming Blake Thorburn.  I felt stiff, and I didn’t have much confidence that I’d be able to handle myself in a more serious situation.  Couldn’t run that fast, wasn’t sure I could throw a punch, and I’d suffer more than any opponent would if I tried to buy time.

When a short, shadowy figure got in my way, all of that meant I was a little more concerned than I might usually be.  Given that it was an Other, the usual added up to ‘pretty damn concerned’.

Fuck.

I tensed as it drew closer.

“Dickswizzle,” I said, as I realized what it was.

It unceremoniously dumped a pile of stuff onto the sidewalk.

“Carefully!” I heard Rose.  “Ugh, Too late.”

Dickswizzle stepped back and scratched at its dangling genitals, looking very unconcerned with Rose’s frustration.

I rummaged through the things.  A scarf, a hat that passed for unisex, two pairs of gloves, June’s hatchet, Leonard’s bottle, one of the bike mirror pendants, and a pair of socks.

Thanks in large part to being hugged against Dickswizzle’s body, the things had a smell to them, not unlike garbage.  But I still pulled my feet out of my boots and donned the second pair of socks.

“Back in the whistle you go,” Rose said.

I dropped the gloves to get the little whistle out in time for the dark-furred goblin to climb back into it.

“How did you lose your boots and jacket?  You didn’t leave them behind, did you?”

“No,” I said.  I looked at the tatter of glamour that still remained.  “I think my glamour soaked into them and I lost them when I changed shape… I tore them up when I shed the glamour.”

“Inconvenient.”

“I didn’t even think about it,” I said, “Which, I suppose, was the problem.”

I bundled myself up as best as I could.  It helped, but bundling up when you were already cold didn’t do so much.

“Speaking of problems, I’m starting to see how you can fall into a trap, dealing with goblins,” Rose said.  “They’re so naturally unpleasant they make you unpleasant by association.  You can’t deal with them without sounding like a vicious lunatic.  No, Dickswizzle, you can’t wipe your ass with those pages.  No, Dickswizzle, no vomiting or depositing any bodily fluids.  Stop that, Dickswizzle, don’t shove that hourglass up your rear end.  Fuck it, Dickswizzle, no fire.  Listen to me, you little motherfucker, you can’t shove that wand up any orifices, understand?  It was all I could do to keep from screaming, and that was in the span of five or six minutes.”

Up… orifices?  His nose?  There weren’t many that you could shove something up.

I didn’t ask.  I didn’t want Rose to tell me it wasn’t the nose.

I was too focused on that to think before I asked, “Why was he shoving things up places?  He was supposed to destroy the books and implements.”

“He did.  He’d get something lodged in, then break it in half.  I’m really not keen to replay the scene in my head.”

I let the image appear in my mind’s eye, despite myself.  Damn it.

“You got away without being seen?”

“Yeah.  She might have heard me, but she came downstairs, and Dickswizzle scampered off.  I left.”

I nodded.

“I still don’t feel so happy about it.”

“I know,” I said.  “But she did take part in trying to ruin us and kill me.”

“Leanne didn’t do anything, and you betrayed her and invaded her home, where she’s supposed to be safe.”

“I know,” I said, again.  “But if I can get roped into this because I’m of Thorburn blood, maybe Leanne falls into the same purview.  I don’t know.  As far as I know, we don’t have a way of measuring that karma in concrete terms.  It’s something to read up on.”

“Noted,” Rose said.

“Did Dickswizzle wind up listening to me, or did you-”

“I told him to do what you’d said, except for the part about going back to the whistle.  I had him go back to the house, gave him one-time permission to enter, and got him to collect some things for you.”

I nodded.  “We need to get you a servant.  Something better than a goblin.  A homonculus, a bound Other, or something, so you can do more in this world.”

“So I can back you up?” Rose asked.

“That’d be nice,” I said.  “But I was thinking more like, well, it’s the only damn thing I can think of that would convey how goddamn thankful I am right this second.  For these clothes, for the sentiment, all that.  And I don’t like leaving debts unpaid, even before all the rest of this got started.”

“I’m not going to object.  You okay?  You’re shaking.”

“A bit cold,” I said.  “Gloves and socks help.”

“It’s just the cold?  Or are you doing that half-truth to dodge telling the whole-truth?”

I started heading towards Hillsglade House.

“I’m worn out,” I admitted.  “As bad as I was after spending my blood.  Maybe worse.”

“Erosion of self via. glamour,” Rose said.  “Imagine pouring water over a rock.  It seems into the cracks, the rough bits, and the pores, covering it.  It changes states, from water to mist to ice and back to water again.  It expands or contracts, shifts and generates friction…”

“And I changed states a few times,” I said.

“Tear away the ice while it’s set deep into the rock, you might take away some rock with it, or see some bits splinter off.  And when that rock isn’t very sturdy to begin with…”

“I’d rather say the rock’s integrity has been weakened by recent abuse,” I said.

“We can say that,” Rose agreed.

“Good explanation, by the way,” I said.  I picked my way carefully past an icy patch of sidewalk.

“I cheated.  Borrowed that explanation from the book on glamour.”

“Ah.  Fuck,” I said, “Briar Girl didn’t say anything about this.”

“She might not have known, or she might have been speaking about a more general case.”

“I’m so fucking tired of deception and lies,” I said.  “And I am aware of how hypocritical that sounds.”

“Did it work?” Rose asked.  “Getting into Laird’s house?”

“I think so.  They said the ritual was interrupted.  They’re having another gathering in a week… which leaves me the task of figuring out how to fuck with that plan.”

“Leaves us.  I’m on your side here, Blake.”

“Right.  Yeah.  We’ve got to figure this one out.  I have a sense of what they were trying to do.  Targeting the property the house is on, but not the house itself.  Something time based, a vortex of some kind.  Powerful, requiring nine or so practitioners to shape.  Drawing, I think, from some sort of store of energy that Laird’s zeitgeist familiar was managing.”

“I glanced through a reference book on Chronomancy.  It’s pretty standard practice to bank time,” Rose said.  “Give up an hour of your day, hold on to it, make use of that time elsewhere.”

“That sounds insanely powerful,” I said.

“The rate of return is pretty abysmal.  Give up an hour, gain a minute.  But I guess you can get better results if you have more hands on deck, a whole circle handling the working.”

“And a lot of power stored up?” I asked.  “I wonder if any of that power was spent… I mean, the circle was glowing and stuff was moving.  I could feel power.  Did that drain Laird’s reserves?  If we stop the ritual again, or a third time, will he or will they run out of stored power?”

“That’d be nice,” Rose said.  “But he’s going to be on guard.  He’ll be wary.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Meaning we need to get more tricks.”

“Trick number one is figuring out when and how to recuperate, Blake.  You keep on tapping this well of personal power when it’s nearly dry.”

I nodded.

“You’re actually listening to me?”

“It’s sage advice.  I need a goddamn power source.  Not just a bit of hair.”

“You need a demesnes.  Or a tool that can make any use of power more efficient,” Rose said.  “Or a familiar.”

“It all comes back to that,” I said.

“At least now we know you have a talent,” Rose said.  “Glamour.  Maybe it would be a good idea to have a Faerie as a familiar.”

“Maybe it would be a terrible idea,” I said.  “Because we know how easily glamour can fuck with me, and that would be leverage the familiar could use to take me over.  And we know how shoddy my defenses against this magic stuff are.  Look at the Briar Girl.  Can you not see some familiar getting a hold on me?  Fucking me over worse?”

I tapped my connection to the house and used it to find the general direction I needed to go.

“I can see that, yeah,” Rose said.  “So?  What do we do about it?”

“We make the familiar less of a thing,” I said.  “If we’re going to stagger this, use one of the three rituals to get leverage on the next, and use the two established power bases to get leverage for the third ritual, maybe I do the familiar first, after all.  An Other that isn’t so strong that she’d be able to mess with me, one that might be able to get us some outside knowledge or power.  From there, we start looking at implements, which we’ve already agreed was the easiest call to make.”

“You’re not going to be able to get a Faerie familiar,” I heard a voice behind me.

I turned around, startled.

I didn’t feel a connection.  My initial impression was that it was a disembodied voice, a ghost or something in that vein.  But he wasn’t.  He was very much real.  Very alive.  Very human.

“Andy, was it?” I asked the witch hunter.

He nodded.  “Yes.”

He was unassuming.  Bigger than average, but the way he was bundled up in his coat and scarf made me think he wasn’t good at the cold.  Hardly a ‘tough guy’.  Thick eyebrows, dark brown hair under a hat with earflaps, and a large backpack that seemed stuffed to the brim.  He kept shifting his shoulders to adjust the weight distribution of the straps.

No weapon in hand.

I glanced around.  I couldn’t feel any connection to anyone nearby, but I still didn’t feel any connection to Andy.

“Eva’s not around,” Andy said.  He stared at me, his gaze level.  Cold without being harsh or unkind.  It was more like he was uncaring.

“Laird sent you?” I asked.

“I’m not trying to reap any extra karma by sharing details with you,” Andy said.  “Those other guys are doing the whole ‘play fair’, ‘see the whites of your enemy’s eyes before you doom them forever’, and that ‘announce your intentions before seeing them through’ garbage.  If and when I come after you, Thorburn, I’m not doing any of that.”

“What,” I said.  “You’ll shoot me in the back?”

He shook his head.  “I’m a terrible shot.  If there was a magic bullet with your name on it, Eva would be the one to shoot it.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“She’d also be the type to molotov your house, or shiv you from behind while you’re walking down the street.  I mean, if I can sneak up on you…”

“She’s a little more talented in that department, huh?” I asked.

“Yeah.  Yeah, she is.”

He stayed there, silent, not volunteering any more information.

“How did you even find me?”

“Trinkets and some very, very basic investigation techniques.”

“And how are you going to take me out?” I asked.  I was tense, and all too aware that even this guy was liable to give me a run for my money.  He didn’t seem like a fighter.  “More trinkets?”

“Right now?  I’m not aiming to take you out,” Andy said.  “Take that for what it’s worth.  If I was here to kill you I wouldn’t say so.  I can lie, after all.”

Another brief pause, as I waited for him to elaborate.

“What do you want, if you’re not here to kill me?”

“Right now, I’m keeping an eye on you.  Don’t worry, nobody else is coming.”

“Keeping an eye on me?  You going to report on me to Laird?”

He shrugged.  “Does it matter what I tell you?  I’m just going to lie.”

“You’re clearly not interested in talking,” I said.

“I can talk, if it helps,” he said.  “You were talking about Faerie.  Court Faerie deal with prominent families and powers.  Around here, you’re not getting a Faerie familiar unless you’re a member of the Duchamp family.  You could get a fairy, that’s F-A-I-R-Y, but then you’re talking about the witless, minor denizens of their realm.  Foot high things with butterfly wings.  Going that route would be dumb.”

“You’re helping me, now?” I asked.

“This is more self serving.  You’ve already dealt with a head-on attack.  If they called Eva and me in to deal with you, I’d probably take point.  And I don’t want to kill someone with a fairy -that’s with an R-Y at the end- for a familiar.  I’d feel like I was picking on the vulnerable.  In this case, it would be the equivalent of murdering the mentally handicapped.”

“People keep going on about that sort of thing.  I’m supposedly Blake the fool, the unsturdy rock, the guy that’s going to die within the next five years, no questions asked.  Now there’s some implications that I could fit in the same box as the mentally handicapped.”

“If you pick a fairy for a familiar,” he said.  “Just to clarify.”

“I was just comparing myself to a rubber boot in my head.  But the moment it comes time to decide how dangerous I am, oh, I’m the biggest threat that Jacob’s Bell has ever seen.”

“You can be an idiot and a threat at the same time,” Andy said.  “When you’re dealing with these kinds of forces, an idiot is the bigger threat.”

“Unless they’re exceptionally smart,” Rose cut in.

“Oh, it’s the vestige.  Hello vestige.”

“Hello Andy.”

“The geniuses are an even bigger threat, yes,” Andy conceded.  “And the geniuses are so few and far between they don’t really warrant mentioning.  Your grandmother was good.  Scary good, but she wasn’t a genius.”

“Is there a middle ground, here?” I asked.  “Can I at least build up enough respect for people to start saying, ‘hey, that guy isn’t so dumb and reckless after all’?  ‘Maybe he isn’t the bombastic idiot that’s going to retaliate and accidentally plunge Jacob’s Bell into sulfur and hellfire?'”

“If you stand by and let them kill you, you’re clearly crazy,” Andy said.  “Maybe dangerously so.”

“If I fight it, I’m reckless,” I retorted.  “That’s a catch-22.”

“It sounds like you’ve answered your own question,” Andy said.  “About finding the middle ground.”

Not a hint of condescension in his tone.

“Who do you serve?” I asked him.

“The council.”

“Laird and Sandra, primarily, then?”

“Essentially.  But if Johannes had a job for me and there weren’t any conflicting orders from the real powers, then I’d obey those orders.”

“Would you obey me?” I asked.

“You’re not on the council, not technically.  When Molly turned up, or when she moved into the house, sometime around then, the council held a meeting, and they agreed to remove the Thorburns from the list of affiliated powers.”

“Johannes is feared and despised, isn’t he?”

“Johannes is strong enough to have some sway despite the fear and hatred,” Andy replied.  “You aren’t.  Maggie isn’t.  The rules apply to you, but you don’t get to decide what those rules are.”

“Theoretically,” I told him, “I could be in charge of you one day, couldn’t I?”

“No, you’re not going to make it that far,” Andy responded.  “Sorry.”

“I’m getting really sick of people telling me I’m going to die,” I said.  “That decision’s up to me.”

“I’d put more of the choice in your would-be murderer’s hands,” he said.

“Who?  You?”

“It’s very possible.”

“Your sister is the one with the killer instinct,” I said.  “The itchy trigger finger, almost eager to shoot someone.  She’s the killer, and you’re the bookish guy who keeps her on track and on target, researching the target, right?”

He nodded.  Not even an iota of surprise that I might know this.

“And you’re the one who’s afraid, who doesn’t want to hurt a human being.  Well fuck that.  I have a mother, a father, a little sister.  And we’re not close, I admit, but that’s because I’m too fucking human to tolerate the monstrous shit my family was doing to each other.  I did okay in school, and had the craziest crush on a girl in grade seven.  I dated girls and fumbled my way through it all, and some of it was so fucking poorly handled that I cringe when I think about it, even five years after.”

“You’re trying to humanize yourself.”

“Damn straight!” I said.  “I lived on the street for a while, because all of the fighting and conflict over fucking Hillsglade House and the money we’d get from selling it.  I didn’t want it then.  I don’t want it now.  The stress from it ate me up inside.”

“I hear you.  We could probably compare histories on that front.  Though there weren’t millions of dollars at stake for me.”

He was deflecting, or something.  It was eerie, that he was going out of his way to compare us.  Was he distracting me after all?

I glanced over my shoulders, checking the darker streets around us.

“Eva’s at home, I promise,” he said.  “There’s a chance she followed me, but I’m honestly not trying to set you up to have your throat slit or to get you shot, and neither of us are about to murder someone without the council to cover it up after the fact.  I don’t have any other help, no big plots at work.  You would probably be able to tell if anyone but me or Eva came.”

“Assuming I believe you.”

“Assuming you believe me, yes.”

I sighed, “Listen, I’m a regular, average guy who loves art but can’t draw, who’s still figuring out how to be a friendly, decent human being, because his parents never bothered to teach him that stuff.  That thing you were saying to your sister, not wanting to hurt someone?  She told you it was fine because we’re practitioners, we’re not really people, right?  Something like that?  Well, at this stage, I think I’m still more person than practitioner.”

“I hear you,” Andy said.  “Yeah, I even believe you.”

God damn it, I wanted him to argue.  At least then I’d feel more right than if he agreed with me.  The guy who could potentially come after me with his sister and some plan to execute me shouldn’t be on the same page as me.

It was fully possible that my annoyance and frustration was part of his game plan, but he didn’t seem to have that guile to him.

“I just want to be left alone,” I said.  “I want to deal with this, kick Laird in the metaphorical ass until he stops coming after me, get Rose into a position where she’s free, happy and healthy so I can fulfill my oath to her, and handle the crap I’ve got to handle, like a stupid pair of promises I made to a little girl, and a deal I made with someone else.  I want it all to stop, because the only thing that’s keeping life from going back to normal is them.”

“I understand,” Andy said.  “But it doesn’t work that way.  You’re the threat, and you’re an obstacle to this town evolving to a different state and reaching a new kind of stability.  I’m the guy who takes care of threats.  When and if the order comes down, I’m going to remove you from the picture.”

He said it so easily.  Remove me from the picture.

“Without guns or fire or any of that?” I asked.  “Because that’s Eva’s job, apparently.”

“I find a little distance helps.”

“Right.  When removing me,” I said.  “Come on.  At least have the balls to say what you mean.  You’re talking in this quiet, calm, monotone because you’re trying to detach yourself from this shit.”

“Killing you.  Executing you.  Putting you down,” he said.  His eyes dropped at that last bit, then raised up to meet mine again. “Yeah.  I don’t use the guns or knives or any of that, because even when it is a monster?  One of the bad ones I shouldn’t be able to sympathize with at all?  I can’t help but feel like shit after, and looking in your eyes as I do it makes it ten times worse.  The detachment does help me deal with it.  Sorry if it’s frustrating.”

“I’d accept your apology, but it’s kind of hard to when we’re talking about me being murdered at your hands.”

“You?  If we get that far?  If it helps, I’ll feel horrible.  I’ll remember all that stuff about you having a crush on some girl and I’ll lose sleep.  I’ll remember the look in your eye, I’ll think about how much this all sucks.  But I’m still going to do what I need to do.”

“Why?  If this is all some big, fucked up situation, why not change it?  You aren’t sworn into anything, and the rules don’t bind you.”

“Because I made promises, and even if I’m not in a position to be forsworn, I still can’t break them.”

“Despite the sleepless nights?  The fear that eats at you?  The fact that you’re killing innocent people?”  I asked.  My voice was low, and anger was seeping in even when I wasn’t raising my voice.  “I have a hard time buying that.”

“Despite all of that.”

“Family, is it?” I asked.

“A little bit of family.  Obviously, or I wouldn’t be working with Eva.”

“Because family isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I said.  “It isn’t fucking half of what it’s supposed to be.  See, there’s a big, big fucking difference between someone being your relative and someone being family.”

“Then I guess I’d say Eva is my relative,” Andy said.  “And ‘family’ plays a very small part in this.”

“What’s the rest?” I asked.

“The rest is private.  It wouldn’t matter, would it?  There’s nothing I could say that would reach you and your specific perspective.  Because we come from very different places.  Having people you owe everything to, who you could never ever pay back.”

“It sounds a hell of a lot like we come from similar places,” I said.

“These people you owe?  Are they dead?” he asked.

“No.  Very much alive.”

He nodded.  “You’re lucky.”

I frowned.  “Am I?  Because it’s a quiet sort of hell, knowing you owe someone everything, and once in a while you have to look them in the eye.”

He nodded.  His expression didn’t change.

I shivered.  “Well, this was fun.  Another death threat onto the pile, and I can’t even bring myself to hate you.”

“I appreciate that,” he said.

“Don’t,” I responded.

He didn’t flinch.

I wanted him to retaliate, to fight back.  I didn’t want to fight, but I needed goddamn cues to find my way through the conversation.

In a way, he seemed just as inhuman as some of the Fae I’d encountered.  The swordswoman had been more animated, had at least had an iota of passion.

Andy wasn’t even pretending.

“I’m cold,” I said.  “I’m leaving.”

I turned to go.  I heard his footstep behind me.

Following me.

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re hearing me,” I said.  “I’m going this way.  I’m not keen on having you tag along.”

“I’ve been asked to keep an eye on you.”

“Why?”

“Because Laird Behaim and Sandra Duchamp are interested.”

“Is he trying something?” I asked.

“He’s preoccupied,” Andy responded.

I reached for my hatchet, touching the handle.

“Bound spirit?” he asked.  “Wraith?  Ghost?  Elemental?  I’m actually pretty good at dealing with those.  I’m kind of shit when it comes to fighting, but if you try using that, then you’re going to be down one trinket, and that looks like pretty intricate work.”

“Blake,” Rose said.  “No fighting.  It’s not the time, and we can’t lose June when we haven’t even used her.”

“Assuming he’s not just lying to our faces,” I said.  I can’t fight even if I have to, I thought.  I wasn’t entirely sure, but I felt almost like I’d retained some of the negative qualities of the six year old.  I didn’t feel strong.

“I’m not a threat,” Andy said.  “Take this for what it’s worth.  Laird sent me to keep an eye on you.  I only do so many favors for him a month… and doing this harmless favor means I’m not taking a job to kill you.”

“But you’re still reporting back to Laird,” I said, as I turned and started walking.  I tried to keep my stride going, despite the fatigue I felt.  He was shorter than me, burdened with that backpack, and I didn’t remember him being particularly fit.

If I could leave him behind, all the better.

“Keep an eye on him,” I told Rose.  I flipped the mirror pendant around so it hung between my shoulders.

“How log have you been doing this?” Rose asked.  It took me a second to realize she wasn’t talking to me.

“Two years,” I heard Andy behind me.

“Not long.”

“Feels like a while,” he replied.

“Can we not talk to the assassin in the funny hat?” I asked.

Rose ignored me.  “What gets someone like you working for someone like Laird?”

There was no answer.

“Power?  Wealth?”

“Responsibility, I already said.”

“Is there a finite amount of responsibility, Andy?  Is there a point where you’ve paid your dues and you’re free of all this?”

“That’s the second question you’ve asked that I already answered.  No.  I could go my entire life and not pay them back.”

“That’s a hell of a burden,” Rose said.

“Yeah.  I’m not dumb, you know.  I’ve faced down worse manipulators than you.”

“I’m not trying to manipulate you.  I’m trying to figure you out.  Do you think your departed acquaintances would want you to do this?  To spend your life indentured to them?”

“I know they wanted it.  They said so.  That they needed me to handle it, for their sakes.”

“Uh huh,” Rose said.

I trudged along, doing my best to leave him behind.  My leg was already raw where the boot was rubbing my jeans against my leg.

“If the tables were turned, knowing what you know, would you ask them to don the mantle?  Kill people and feel horrible about it?  Have nightmares?”  Rose asked.

“No,” Andy said.  “But that’s me, my personality.”

“If they’re asking you to commit your life to something you couldn’t imagine yourself asking someone to do… it doesn’t sound like they were really your friends.  It sounds like they were using you.”

“Hey, Thorburn,” Andy called out.  “Your pet is starting to irritate me.”

“Good,” I said.

“What I’m thinking,” Rose said, “And I don’t know enough about Blake’s situation to say for his case, but if you’re that indebted to someone, and you devote your life to staking vampires and burning witches-”

“You’re oversimplifying,” Andy said.

“Simple is good.  That stuff isn’t the point.  You’re devoting your life to this stuff… what if you die?  I mean, it’s inevitable, right?  What if you die, and you find yourself in the afterlife.  You meet these people again.  You obviously didn’t pay them back for whatever they did for you.  Do they look at you with disappointment?”

“Probably,” Andy said.

“That’s sad,” Rose said.  “Do you have Eva’s support?”

I thought of the vision.

“No,” I said, automatically.

“No,” he agreed.

“Is anyone backing you up?” Rose asked.  “Do you have a listening ear?  A confidant?”

“No,” Andy said.

I glanced back.  His eyes were downcast, his expression serious.  Was he bothered, or was he more focused on not stepping on ice and losing his footing?

“That’s awfully hard,” Rose said.

“Spare me the false sympathy,” Andy said.  “I’ve said it before, I’ve gone up against better manipulators.”

“And none of them have tried to see what’s going on in your head?”

“Some have.  Some have looked.  Doesn’t matter in the end.”

“Did any offer to be that listening ear?  The confidant?”

“Hm?”

“Hey, Rose,” I said.  “Don’t you think befriending the dorky witch-hunting kid should be a collaborative decision?”

“You can make friends and decide who you do and don’t want to forgive,” Rose said.  “But I’m still a free being, more or less, and I can decide who I do and don’t want to interact with.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” I said.  My legs were burning now.  I wondered if he was getting tired.

“I’m not looking to make friends,” Andy said.

“I’m not looking to be your friend either,” Rose responded.  “I am offering to hear you out, if you need it.  There have to be points where you’re feeling lower than low, Andy.  Where you want to cry or go crazy or something.  Now, instead of getting to that point and having nowhere to turn, you can turn to me.”

“And I have one more reason to feel bad when and if I have to kill your master, removing you from the picture as well?”

“Ahem,” Rose said.  “I’m a free being.  Present stuck-in-a-mirror circumstances excepted.  And if you feel horrible, then good.  You deserve to.  I said I’d hear you out, I didn’t say I’d lie to you or go easy on you.”

Andy shrugged.  “I can’t and won’t take the deal.”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “But the offer’s out there.”

Andy didn’t respond.

The remaining fifteen minutes of our slow and not-so-steady walk over snow and ice were undertaken in blissful silence.

We made our way to the neighborhood, the dark structure of Hillsglade House looming against the pale evening sky.  The light from the moon and city lights was reflected off of white snow, cast onto the overcast sky above, making it seem almost as bright as it was during the day.

I heard a jostling, and turned to see Andy hurrying to catch up.  My hand flew to my weapon.

“I’m not a threat,” he said.  He wasn’t really out of breath.  Was he more fit than he looked?  Simply uncoordinated?

“You keep saying that, as if saying it over and over makes it true.”

“It is.  And it doesn’t matter.  You’re home.”

We’d nearly reached the block the house was on.  My eyes flew over the premises, then went back to Andy.

“This feels like a trap,” I said.

“It is and it isn’t,” he said.  “It wasn’t really explained to me, so I don’t really know.  My focus is supposed to be on you.”

“Why?” I asked, glancing away to look back at the house.

“To pass on word to Laird,” he responded.

There was an eerie conviction in his gaze.  An intensity that I hadn’t sensed moments ago.

“Blake,” Rose said, “This is going nowhere.  Let’s get you back in the house and resting.  We still need to plan and do some reading.”

“Doesn’t it feel wrong?” I asked.  “Why not send Fargo here to kill us?  He’s only here to gather info and take it back to Laird.  Why?”

“It’s trivial,” Rose said.  “Our priority is getting you in fighting shape, and I wouldn’t mind that servant.  There’s a thousand things we could dwell on, outside of the head games the witch hunter is playing with us.  No offense, Andy.”

“None taken.”

“Come on, Rose,” I said, my eyes fixed on Andy.  “You and I aren’t so different.  Reach deep, dig for those instincts, and tell me you don’t feel this is something serious.”

There was a pause.  “I can’t tell if it’s because you’ve psyched me out or if you’re right.”

“I’m right,” I said.  “Laird’s pulled something.”

There was a pause.

“The something?” Rose asked, quiet.  Her question was partly a statement.

My head snapped around, looking over the house.

The ritual?

No.

A kind of horror settled in me.

No, no, no.

Where was it?  The symbols I’d seen drawn on the floor… they would have covered a certain area, here in the real world.

My leg stung where the boot was rubbing it as I strode around, moving closer to the gate.

A circle, like the one I’d seen as part of the diagram, barely perceptible.  The spirits on and above it were brighter.

I could hear the tick and tock sounds I’d heard in the room, now.  I wasn’t sure if it was real or imagination.

“We stopped the ritual,” I said.

“You did,” Andy responded.  “You called the police, and both Laird and Sandra were carted off, I hear.  But sending Sandra with Laird was a mistake.  I doubt they even made it to the police station before she was able to get the leverage she needed.”

“Just like that,” I said, absently.

“When dealing with people without defenses, enchantment is incredibly potent, and Sandra is very good at what she does.  People are like playing pieces on the board for her, to be moved as she pulls the right strings, puts power in the right connections.  The two of them would have stopped at the station only to get the incriminating evidence and start to piece together what happened and the approach you used.”

“But… they finished already?”

“I expect he started right away, as soon as he got back,” Andy said, “And you’ve been walking for a while.  You might have earned yourself a reduced effect, but I’m not sure what that amounts to.”

Now that I knew what to look for, I could see signs of the circle stretching around the house.

No, not a circle.  A ring.

“What does it do?” Rose asked.

“It makes accessing and using your resources in Hillsglade House so inconvenient it’s pointless,” Andy answered.  “The unawakened might notice something when they walk down this sidewalk, but nobody does, do they?  Surely you’ve noticed how the locals avoid the property.  Mail doesn’t come here, restaurants won’t deliver food to this address.  You’re isolated.  They can’t target the house, as it was once a demesne, so they target the space around it.”

“To do what?” I asked.

“Waste your time,” he answered.  “Something you already have in short supply.”

I reached into my pocket and found a quarter.  I flicked it over the circle.

It slowed as it flipped over the line, growing slower with every passing second.

It looked like it would take minutes to hit the ground.

I looked at Andy, trying to read his expression.  It was as placid as ever.

“I’m not sure what you’re seeing, Blake,” Rose said.

I looked, and I saw the quarter in the air, spinning in slow motion.  When I looked without the benefit of the sight, I saw it on the ground.  Different views for the awakened versus the unawakened.  Different effects.

The Duchamps had been a part of the ritual.  Had it been more than targeting it at this particular neighborhood?

“Slowing time,” I said.  “The quarter is still in the air, to my eyes.”

“The long driveway,” Rose said.  “How long do you think that walk would take?”

“Weeks?” I asked, quiet. “A month?”

“Meaning we’d miss council meetings,” Rose said.

“Yeah.  The wedding would go ahead, and so would the plans for establishing a Lord for the city, while we make the excruciatingly slow walk up to the house.  Tying us up until some time when Laird’s ready to deal with us,” I said.

“And that,” Andy said, “Mostly wraps up my end of things.”

I snapped my head around.  “Your end of things?”

“This is what he wanted a report on,” Andy said.  “A description of your face and actions as you realized, making sure you got the full message.  He hired me to observe, to make sure he wouldn’t have to wait months for you to come after him.  Assuming you might only realize when the season changes.  He’d like you to know that for now, he’s hands off, until you give him an excuse.”

“And the rest?” Rose asked.

“Remains to be seen.  I know there’s a bounty on your head, a prize of three favors to any Other that catches you.  That might take a few days to revoke, if they decide to go that route.  If an Other kills you, though, and the new heir heads for the house, they’ll lose a great deal of time, and they’ll find a trap waiting for them when they next leave the property.  It’s done.”

“He won,” I said.

“Oh, you did win,” Andy told me.  “You embarrassed him, you counted coup, you probably cost the Behaims more than you know, when you damaged those books, and it would have cost Sandra to tidy up that mess.  But…”

“He won more?” I asked.

“He won more decisively,” Rose murmured.  “A more targeted, devastating strike.  But then again, he’s the guy with the big guns, the power, the soldiers…”

I shook my head a little.  What the hell were we supposed to do now?

“It’s not a kid’s television show,” Andy told me, “Where the antagonist makes the Machiavellian plan and then abandons that plan completely the first time it fails.  People fail, they revise, they adjust parameters, they you achieve victory through persistence and hard work.”

I turned to stare at the house.

“It was nice meeting you,” Andy said.  “I hope I don’t have to kill you.”

Our sanctuary is sealed off, I thought.  We might not be around long enough to give you the chance.

“Hey,” I said.  “Do me a favor, Andy?”

“Maybe.”

I pulled off the rain boots, then stood on the sidewalk with two socks on each foot.  “Take those boots back to their owner?”

“Will do.”

I could hear him walking away.

“Rose?” I asked.

“What is it?”

“Do me a favor, and call the lawyers?  Like you did before?”

“I’d say that’s only for emergencies, but I think this counts.”

“Yeah.”

I barely even heard her reciting the names.

I didn’t turn my head as a man came to stand behind my left shoulder.

“What can we do for you, Mr. Thorburn?”

“Can you undo this?”

“I think you know the answer,” he said.  He wasn’t one of the ones I’d met before.

“Is it a price I’m willing to pay?” I asked.

“Most likely not, given Ms. Lewis’ notes.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Anything else?”

“What about safe passage to Toronto?” I asked.  “There’s no reason to stay here.”

“That can be arranged for a very small cost,” he said.

“Putting me in contact with the local Lord, so I don’t step on toes?  I’ll need some things, as well.”

“Clothes and supplies.  Yes.  Shall we negotiate?”

“I think we have to,” I said.

Histories (Arc 3)

“Back straight.  And for the love of god, stop sweating.”

“I’m sorry, Auntie,” Sandra murmured.

Her aunt stalked around her, fingers prodding, adjusting.  Raising the chin a fraction, moving the shoulders back.  When Sandra allowed her chin to drop again, the second adjustment was made using fingernails, in the soft flesh just behind the jawline.  She barely flinched, but she could sense her familiar bristling.

Sandra had a view of her auntie as the woman took a step back to look Sandra over.  They were all dressed elaborately in forest green, their outfit appropriate for a dinner party more than a formal dance or cocktail party.  Her auntie’s age had been obfuscated by a touch of glamour, so she might appear to be a woman in her late twenties.  Carefully masked.  Long term use and overuse with glamour led to complications.  As in all things.

Sandra herself didn’t have the benefit of any glamour.  She remained stock still as her aunt stepped close and adjusted her neckline.  Redistributing flesh at the top of the corset as if she were fluffing a pillow, until she was satisfied with the presentation.

It’s the eighties, and I’m wearing a corset.  There’s something wrong with this picture.

Nevermind the fact that her aunt was adjusting her assets as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Her aunt met her eyes.

“Don’t look so angry, Sandra,” the woman said.  She adjusted a strand of Sandra’s hair, tucking it behind Sandra’s ear.

“I’m not.”

“You look angry.  Missy, tell me, what expression does your cousin have on her face?  Tell the truth.”

It’s not like we have a choice.

Missy stepped away from the door to take a look.  Missy wasn’t nearly as made up as her mother or Sandra were, but that was intentional.  A very non-magical effect and tactic at play.

Missy took her time studying Sandra.  When Sandra shifted her weight in impatience, the movement prompted another half-dozen small corrections from her auntie.

“Now, Missy.”

“You look pissed, baby sister,” Missy said.

“Language.  We are guests,” the rebuke was sharp.

Missy looked suitably chastised.  Then again, she’d always been the best actress in the family.  Everyone found freedom where they could, and Missy had found hers in doing one thing while pretending to do another.

“I’m not angry,” Sandra said, as diplomatically as she could.  “This is the expression my face naturally settles into.”

“My sister should have corrected that,” her aunt said.  “No reason you can’t teach yourself to hold a different expression.  I hope this won’t be a problem.”

Sandra nodded, glancing down to one side before she reached out for Hildr.  In the form of a stoat, a short tailed weasel, her familiar hopped up to her hand and climbed up to her shoulders, clawed toes pricking her bare skin there.  She could see Auntie raise a hand, ready to adjust her posture and with fingernails, and quickly resumed the ‘perfect’ posture, now with her familiar draped over one shoulder.

Her aunt paused, verified that Sandra had found the appropriate position, and lowered her hand.

“There’s only so much I can do.  Give you a proper first impression,” her aunt said.

“Yes Auntie.”

There was a noise on the other side of the double doors.  Three heads turned.

No, he wasn’t coming through.  The connections weren’t there.

“Can I ask?” Sandra murmured.

“About?” her auntie responded.

“Him.”

“What about him?  We’ve told you who he is.”

“A hermit?” Sandra said.

“Inaccurate.  A hermit doesn’t live in the big city, with a coterie close at hand.”

“He doesn’t have any human contact with the outside world.”

“Nonetheless.  Try to think of him in a better light.”

“Why him?”

“It’s a gamble, Sandra dear.  A gamble.”

The three of them turned their heads as the connection strengthened.  This time, there was clarity, direction, a thrust to it.  Motive.

They were ready as the door opened.  Sandra smiled.

He arrived, but he didn’t arrive alone.

The bottle was the first thing to catch her eye.  His clothes were the second.  Rumpled, a gray flannel shirt over another shirt, jeans with the bottoms of the pant legs in tatters, over brown boots with gray dirt layered over the badly scuffed toe.  His dark hair was unwashed and long, his face unshaven, and not unshaven in a calculated way.  His neck was hairy.

His contingent followed.  Men and women, all appearing roughly ten years younger than him.  She might have described them as hippies, but there was nothing peaceful or hopeful about them.  Many were tattooed, dressed in blacks, browns and grays, with only a splash of color here and there.  Three women to every man, most attractive, but not always in a conventional way.

Not in the Duchamp’s way.

Under the artificial lights, the trickeries and shaping slipped, here and there.  A hairpin appeared to be a leaf in the false light, before the woman stepped into the light that beamed in through the uncovered window.  A curl of brown hair at the forehead showed itself to be a curved horn.  A woman paused, while one of her female companions caught up to her, leaping up to throw an arm around her shoulders, and Sandra could see eyes with red irises, clawed fingers, and a mouth filled with jagged teeth, dark red stains in the flesh around the woman’s mouth.

They collectively smelled like sex.  Not that Sandra knew from experience, but she had little doubt, and she could infer from context.  There was a thicker, skunky smell that she couldn’t pin down or infer from context.  They also smelled like warm hay, wine, fur, grass after a rain, and faintly, lingering in the background, they smelled like blood.

They were here, in so many senses.  Assaulting the senses, even.  The smells were so thick and varied she could taste them on the back of her tongue.  There was the view of them, their languid movements, the occasional flicker of their real forms that she could see in certain lights, if she was using the Sight.  There were the sounds they made, whispering and giggling amongst one another.

He was backed by his people, a contingent, very much alive and active.  Almost defined by activity.  They moved from one side of the group to the other, jostled one another, touched, surreptitiously groped.  Their every action and reaction amongst one another was an invitation or a response to an invitation.

Her auntie had gone to so much effort to present her body just so, but what did it matter?  He clearly didn’t care for appearances.  Why would he care for a nice set of breasts, modestly and carefully presented, when he clearly had all he could ask for?

“Dominus Autem Ebrius,” Auntie said, smiling  “Forgive me.  I’d say it in Greek, but my pronunciation is atrocious.”

“Your Latin pronunciation is atrocious too,” he said.  “But I’ll forgive you your failings.”

There wasn’t a smile on his face.  Even as his group leered and smirked, offered sly smiles and teasing glances, he was stone-faced, very still.

“Very gracious of you,” Auntie said.  Her smile, Sandra noted, managed to stay in place, but the note of warmth was gone from her voice.

“I won’t pretend to be gracious,” he said.  “I’m not that guy.  But holding grudges and holding things over people isn’t worth my time.”

“I see,” Auntie responded.  “A wise way of looking at things.”

“Not many people who’d call me wise,” he said.

Auntie composed herself.  “I’m Nicole Duchamp.  This is Sandra and Missy Duchamp.”

“Jeremy Meath.  My friends call me Jerry, you can call me Jeremy.”

“I… yes.  Thank you for agreeing to the meeting.”

“Welcome,” he said, almost automatically.  “Only one of them I’m interested in looking at, isn’t there?  Waste of time to bring two, unless you’re not that confident in what you’re selling.”

“I’m confident she’ll do.”

“I’m not putting any stock in that confidence.  You’ll have to tell me which one am I’m looking at, by the by, unless we’re just going to stand here dicking about.”

Auntie used her hand to point to Sandra.  Apparently she’d decided to stop speaking, given how intent he seemed on arguing every point.

Jeremy looked at Sandra.  Nothing held back, no reticence.  His eye looked over everything from head to toe, taking his time.

A man in the crowd stepped forward a bit, with shaggy dark curls and a broad aquiline nose.  “She looks-”

“Shh,” Jeremy’s rebuke was quiet.

The other man stopped.  His eyes, however, didn’t leave Sandra.

When Jeremy met her eyes, Sandra smiled, just as she’d been instructed.

“Young,” he said.

“Nineteen,” Auntie said.

“Not really my type,” he said.  “Either of them.”

“If it’s about appearance, appearances can change.  The Faerie give us donations of glamour as payment for our services as ambassadors.  There would be more than enough, if you’d prefer a different body type, hair color, bone structure…”

Sandra felt her heart beat a little faster at that.

It was scary in a way that the red-eyed women with the sharp teeth weren’t.

“That’s not the kind of ‘type’ I meant,” he said.

“Is it a matter of style?  She’s adaptable, knows a little something about everything, she’s capable of holding her own in any situation, smart, and well learned.”

Jeremy tilted his head to one side, then the other, as if trying to see her in a different light.  “Yet you’re offering her to me?”

“We’re introducing the two of you.  The family will discuss it with Sandra later, but if you take a liking to each other, or if you don’t actively dislike each other, we could arrange something.”

“There aren’t many people I dislike,” he said.

“Perfect,” Auntie said.

“Which doesn’t mean I’m accepting.  Educated, you said?”

“She’s-”

“I’d like to hear from her.  Assuming the blonde has enough brains to speak.”

“I can speak,” Sandra said, biting back her temper.

“And?” he asked.  He’d asked it in a way that made it feel like he was making a point.

“And I completed a degree.”

“In?” he managed the same tone.

She managed to avoid stuttering or stumbling.  It would only play into his hands.  He was shaping the conversation to put her off balance and reinforce the ‘brainless blonde’ idea.  “I majored in English, minored in theology.”

“At nineteen?”

“At nineteen.”

“Why English and Theology?”

“If you’re destined to grow up to be a scientist, you study sciences.  If you’re going to go all-in as a practitioner, you have to focus on the esoteric.  Symbolism, myth, ideas, and structure, among other things.”

“You’re not the only girl they’re marrying off, are you?”

She glanced at her aunt, but didn’t get any cues.

She met his eyes, then said, “No.  No I’m not.”

He stared into her eyes.  No glancing around for connections.  His way of looking at things sought out something else altogether.  “You didn’t choose those degrees, did you?”

“No.  The family set out several options, saying they would pay for my education and work harder to find a good match for me if I followed their plan.”

“Meaning you’re interchangeable.  If I wanted it, I could pursue this other one.  Which is it, Missy or Sandra?”

“That’s Missy, I’m Sandra.”

“So?” he addressed Auntie.  “If I asked, could I have Missy instead?”

“Missy’s my eldest daughter, my first choice for taking over the household.  A different case.”

“Ahh… a hierarchy.  One girl worth more than another.”

“I wouldn’t put it so crudely.”

He snorted, “I don’t care how you’d put it.  That’s the way it is, isn’t it?”

Auntie paused.  “Yes.  I suppose it is.”

“Where do we stand, little Sandra?” he asked.  “How do I rate?  How do you rate?  I take it you aren’t the smartest, most beautiful, most talented of them?”

“No.  But I have my strengths.”

“Don’t we all?  Meaningless words.  Don’t waste your time on them.  More importantly, you shouldn’t waste mine.  I’m not one for patience or delayed gratification.”

“Fine,” she said.

“Where do you stand?  Your family is whoring it’s daughters out in bids for power-”

Stung by the choice of words, Sandra glanced at her aunt.  The woman hadn’t flinched in the slightest.

“-and I’m asking, what am I worth, and what are you worth, do you think?”

Sandra collected herself.  “There are a lot of practitioners we could have contacted.  Out of all of them, my aunt chose you.”

“Very diplomatic wording,” he said.  “Still ambiguous.”

“Do the other practitioners you deal with speak so honestly?  I’m surprised,” Sandra said.

“I don’t speak with many, and no, they aren’t entirely honest,” Jeremy said.  “But I’m not being asked if I want to marry any of them.”

The word marry hit Sandra harder than she might have expected.  She’d grown up with it, had known it was in the cards a decade ago.

Her stride broken in the simplest, most minor way, she found she was further put off by the animal gazes, the smiles and smirks and the pacing movements that framed Jeremy Meath.

She looked to her aunt for reassurance and didn’t find it.

“The honest truth,” Sandra replied, “Is you’re seen as a gamble.”

He smirked.  “A gamble.  An incarnation of Conquest, with no conquest to be had, our Lord of Toronto is dying.”

“That’s a large part of it.”

“And you want to tie yourself to me, in hopes I’ll take the seat.”

“No,” Sandra said.  “My family wants me to tie myself to you, in hopes you’ll take the seat.  I don’t play so big a role.  This is between you and them.”

He tilted his head, looking between her and her aunt.

“You wanted honesty,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.  He turned to her aunt.  “Why should I bother?”

“Because you might have reasons to pursue power,” the woman said.  “Maybe you want it for yourself.  Maybe your god wants you to.  It could be your way out of a bad situation, should you be in one or find your way to one.  Every powerful man has had a great woman behind him.”

Jeremy scoffed.

“Platitudes aside,” Sandra cut in, “If our husband proves to be a natural manipulator, a player of that game, we can play to their strengths.  We make them stronger.  If they aren’t, and you don’t strike me as someone who is, we can account for the weakness.  Shore you up where you don’t have the knowledge or experience.”

“Ah.  You would help me wage war against my peers, should the opportunity arise?”

“My family would help you win any wars against your peers,” Sandra said.

“Dangerously close to being a promise,” he said, “I didn’t miss the other meaning.  You might argue you have no part in the losses, instead of being indebted to help find the victories.  Nevermind.  What do you get?”

Auntie spoke, “Any daughters are ours.  We teach them our way, in addition to anything you teach them as you raise them.  We swear them to our manner of doing things.  We also get a share of your power.  One token offering, every three years.”

“You play a long game.”

“That is the nature of dynasties, Jeremy Meath,” the woman said.

“I didn’t plan to marry, nor did I plan to have children.”

“Plans can change.  You would dictate the nature of your marriage with Sandra Duchamp.  We know practitioners have different demands, and we can adapt.  If you don’t want to raise children, then don’t raise them.  You could sire them and involve yourself only as much as you wish.”

“Children and a small offering from time to time?”

“You could say that.  If you had no plans for leaving a legacy-”

“I do have plans, a shrine, and establishing a place for the subjects my god in slumber placed into my service and care.”

“But no legacy as far as a bloodline.”

He shook his head.

“Then you lose nothing.  You could raise one of your children to look after your shrine and subjects.  We have familial ties to Japan and the shrines there, resources you could draw on.  Through us, you stand to gain a great deal.”

“Assuming I care so much about what happens after I’m gone.  Earlier, I think I said I wasn’t much for patience or delayed gratification?”

“You did.”

“There you have it.  What does this cost me in the now?  A dreary, carbon-copy Barbie doll tied to me for life?”

He took advantage of the shocked silence to take a drink from the bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You insult me,” Sandra said.

“Yes.  I believe I did.”

“You insult us,” Sandra said.  “My family.  My sisters and cousins, my mother and aunt, who are doing the same thing I am now.”

He scratched at the back of his neck, and one of the women behind him reached out to scratch the spot with her clawed fingernails.  He stretched his neck out to one side to give her more room.  “Yeah.  Just a little.  You’re boring, and I hate boredom.”

Boring.

“Hildr,” Sandra said, reaching out.

Her familiar darted along the length of her arm, four legged.  It sprung from her hand.

While it was still in the air, she brought her chalice from the pile of spring jackets to her hand.

Hildr touched ground, eliciting a rumble, sending Jeremy Meath stumbling back.

Sandra dipped fingertips into her chalice, wetting them, and then drew her fingertips vertically down.

Putting stored power into connections, feeding that power through Hildr for the added strength and connection to the earth.

The impact of Hildr’s landing and the added help of the manipulated connections served to bowl over the entire group of Others.  Jeremy Meath’s bottle crashed against the floor, the remaining contents and shards of glass spreading out from the point of impact.

“Sandra!” Auntie rebuked her.

“It’s fine, so long as she doesn’t attack,” Jeremy said.  He took his time finding his feet.  He had to half-walk, half-crawl to get back from Hildr, who loomed above him, breath visibly steaming.  “Point taken.  That was a three hundred dollar bottle, but I suppose good lessons should be expensive.”

Dark skinned, white furred, Hildr was more wart and scar than clean flesh where flesh was visible, her hair and fur were long and tied into braids as thick around as Sandra’s arm, the longest braids locked into place with iron shackles that could be used to dash a man’s skull to pieces.  Her arms were disproportionately long, with lines and cords of muscle visible even beneath the long, brushed fur.  All in all, she was of a size and bulk that suggested she could catch a charging rhino and wrestle it to the ground.

He looked the thing over.  “An ogre?  No.  Not an ogre of any type I’ve read about.”

“No,” Sandra said.  “A troll.  Scandinavian.  My family offered to pay for a trip, to reward me for completing my degree early.  I took the time to go looking.”

It took eight months, two more to successfully bind her.”

“There aren’t many trolls nowadays,” he said.  “They don’t hide themselves well.”

“Most have been hunted or bound already.  The ones who have remained are either exceptionally strong, or they are very strong and very cunning.  Hildr is more the latter.”

“I see.  And it takes an exceptionally strong and cunning individual to bind one that has survived alone these last few centuries.  I didn’t expect that of you.”

“There’s more to me, more to us, than you might see on the surface.”

“And a… stoat?”

“More fitting a form for a troll than you might think.  Foul smelling, tied to the earth due to their inclination to live underground, large for their species, predatory, with a voracious appetite.  Surprisingly vicious in a fight.  Not well liked.”

“I see.  Well, count me corrected.”

Sandra gestured, and even though her back was turned, Hildr obeyed, sensing the connection and moving aside.  She came to stand beside Sandra, who rubbed at the fur on her arm.

He dusted himself off, gesturing for his coterie to relax and back away.

Sandra stood facing him, cup in one hand, other hand on Hildr’s arm.

“With your main cause for complaint already covered, I assume you would be open to further negotiations?” Auntie asked.

“Send her to my place in a week.”

Sandra felt her heart skip a beat.  In her fit of pique, her pride and anger, she’d nearly forgotten what she was negotiating for, what she was proving.

Jeremy Meath would be her husband.

The three watched Jeremy Meath and his coterie retreat from the room, leaving them to show themselves out.

They gathered their coats, folding them over arms rather than donning them, and left the apartment.

“It’s your choice,” Auntie said, quiet.

Sandra looked at the woman in surprise.  “I didn’t think it was.  I swore oaths.”

“You did.  When you were twelve, when we’d built up your excitement for power enough that you weren’t looking to the future. It was the same for Missy, for me, your mother.”

Sandra exchanged a glance with Missy.  This was out of character, and it sounded like a dangerous admission.

Her aunt continued, “We deceive, and we tell ourselves it’s so our daughters can learn a lesson that will weigh on them all their lives, make them more cunning by necessity.  But what we’re really doing is manipulating them to get them into our power, and hoping they’ll come to learn the same thing we did.”

“Which is?” Missy asked.

“This is the only way we’ll survive as a family.”

“As a dynasty,” Sandra said.

“You get a choice, Sandra.  Do you want to marry him?”

No, not at all.

“You’ll marry me to someone worse as punishment if I don’t.”

“We reserve that for the girls who turn down good matches.  Jeremy Meath is… what he is.  It worries me that he wasn’t more willing to pick apart the deal or define terms.  Seeing you in there, I think we can find you better, if you want it.”

“But the family wants him?” Sandra asked.  “They want to take the gamble?”

“Yes,” her aunt said, and it was said in a way that suggested she already knew the answer she’d get.

■

Twelve years doing this, and she still felt out of sorts.  It was worse, if anything.  Which was the point, she supposed.

The landscape had been sculpted.  More a painting come to life than a real place.  Every tree and stone had been strategically placed, with the whole in mind.  The placement of every branch… it was art.  Sandra could stand virtually anywhere and see how the elements complemented each other, find hidden images and decorations in the layout of things.  She had taken art classes as her electives, she knew what to look for.

But it was hollow.  The beauty was forced.

Sandra sat patiently as her goblet was overfilled.  Wine spilled out, flowing along the outside of the goblet, down the stem and onto the gold-inlaid table, where it found grooves and drew a brief image before filtering out through holes in the surface.  The candlelight, even, seemed to play off the image.  A nude woman with her back arched.  Suggestive, heavy with implication and accusation.  No doubt entirely intentional, directed purely at her.

The Faerie at the table shifted position, their expressions placid and slightly interested.  She couldn’t help but feel as though they were silently mocking her for the spill.  Which they were.

But it was a fairly important rule, that one didn’t eat or drink here.  Even if it meant being mocked, pressured from every direction.

The entire place was a kind of pressure.  She knew the techniques at play.  Get someone hungry, get them tired, get them stimulated.  Create a need and then fulfill it, to build a kind of dependence.  Cults did it.  The Faerie did it better.

There was no reprieve, in the short term or the long term.  Everywhere she looked, everything she smelled or touched was art.  Everything she heard was music to distract the attention, or were exceedingly dangerous words that demanded it.  The simple scene of a patio with wine, crackers and cheese served in the center, a short ruined wall and numerous statues was a complicated piece of machinery, where every single thing around her was working against her or working for the ambassador.

One mistake was all it took.  Being here was a horror and an honor, because of it.  She was trusted to handle matters.

She pushed the goblet to one side, and Hildr grasped it and tossed it back with one singular motion.  The goblet crunched between teeth.

One of the Faerie in attendance managed to look horrified.

Another cleared its throat, saying, “Then, if we shall sum up the first part of our bargain, Aifric, Lachtna, and Gearalt will accompany you and guarantee safe passage to you and your Hildr, guiding you out of the Faerie and into your city and your world.  There, you’ll be able to pair them up with the young ladies you described, and they’ll enjoy an adventure in mortal form.”

“So we hope,” she said.  The wind was making its way through the grove of trees, and the rustling formed almost-words, as if a slight change in direction might make sense of it all.

Had one of the Faerie given a subtle signal to the trained wind spirits to cue the distraction?  Was it meant to distract her from something?

“We’ll need confirmation,” the Faerie ambassador spoke.  “Do you agree?”

Did she?

“Let us talk about that in a moment,” she said, deflecting the promise.  “There is another subject I must raise, and it’s hard to do so in a polite way.”

“Rest assured,” the Faerie to her left told her, “Mavourneen and I are some of the least polite Faerie you’ll ever meet.”

She was all too aware.  Riordan and Mavourneen were mercenaries in the court, known for their uncharacteristically brutal natures.  If the Faerie were all playing a complicated, multilayered and interconnected game of chess, then Riordan and Mavourneen made themselves out to be knights that any side could use to make plays.  Which wasn’t to say they weren’t making plays of their own, when nobody was looking.

They’d befriended her, offering her their services, which she had taken, because the wildernesses that stood between any Faerie-inhabited space tended to be dangerous, and she wanted Hildr in tip-top shape in case something happened.  She had already uncovered one planned betrayal, and she was already betting that this wasn’t only a cover-up for a deeper, more subtle betrayal that she wouldn’t uncover, but that the whole interplay with Riordan and Mavourneen and the ambassador was part of a greater scheme.  Each of the three could have practiced this play in various forms until it became second nature, and she was the latest fly to step into the web.

“My husband.  Four of his satyrs seem to have gone missing.”

“You’d like our help in locating them?”

“I’ve located them already.  I’ve been led to believe they’re in your employ, ambassador.”

“Are they?  My staff will have to answer for this.”

“I’ve heard tales that you were the one that expressed interest in it.  To have a different kind of danger lurking in the labyrinthine corridors around your tower, and a decoration at your evening parties.”

“Mad,” he said.

She sat back.  Hildr leaned forward, planting one meaty hand on either side of the surface, leaning over Sandra.

Sandra reached out to toy with one of the dangling braids and metal shackles.  “Mad indeed.”

“You asked me if you could come here, expressing good faith.  If you do violence-“

“I asked you to visit Toronto in good faith.  My husband and I didn’t expect to find ourselves missing four satyrs.”

She could see the weave of connections at play, she could pluck, pull and break connections if the situation demanded it, but some connections were false ones.  Others were bait, strands that were sticky enough she wouldn’t be able to free herself if she tampered with them.

“You act above your station,” he said.

She couldn’t help but feel she was following a script.  No doubt the Faerie ambassador had stolen people before, had played out dozens of permutations of the same scene, learning to account for all the possible variables.

She gestured, and saw the Faerie’s eyes go wide.

Hildr lifted the metal patio table, tearing it from the ground, where it had been worked into brick and tile, alternating patches of grass and flower, in a very strategic and stylized ‘ruin’ layout.

The female troll pushed the table’s edge against the ambassador’s throat, toppling him backward in his chair.  The table was held down, pinning him.  It was large enough and heavy enough that if the troll saw fit to let go, it would pass through the Faerie’s neck and likely sink a short distance into the ground.

‘Her’ mercenaries were standing, now, a distance away, hands on their weapons.  One with a sword, one with a handgun.  They seemed a little out of sorts.

“They were not yours to take,” she said.

“He had no claim to them,” the ambassador said, voice strangled.

“His god did.  Dionysus gave a contingent of his servants to my husband for looking after.  If those satyr are not returned, the god will be very upset.”

“We can bargain.  I’ll pay you generously for the creatures.  My generosity is worth more than a dead god’s wrath.”

“Not dead.  Some still worship him.  My husband included.  Dionysus remains a god who can make his displeasure known.  You crossed us.  Me, my husband, my husband’s god.”

And here was the conundrum.  The tangled weave.  Killing the ambassador was easy, relatively speaking.  But even a low-ranked Faerie like this ambassador was embroiled in a thousand different schemes.  The Faerie were very invested in their houses of cards, and they felt a genuine kind of upset when they couldn’t see things through to the epic moments that had been decades in the planning.

That upset had a way of finding the individual who upset the house of cards.  Worse, it fed into what the Faerie really wanted.  A break from the pattern.

When that happened, they tended to get creative.

“Arms and legs only,” she said.  “He lives.”

“Wait!” the ambassador cried out.  “I can-“

The table came down like a chef might use a knife to dice a vegetable.  Wrist, elbow, shoulder, ankle, knee, hip.  The impacts were heavy enough to toss the Ambassador into the air like a rag doll, but the table still struck unerringly at the key points.

The Faerie screamed.

Touching her implement, she found and extinguished the torches and candles around the patio.

“We’re here to protect you,” Mavourneen said.  “There’s no need to extinguish any fire.”

They were so good at lying.  It took her a few seconds to figure out how they might be misleading her.

“The satyr,” she said.

The ambassador, huffing for breath between screams, turned his head.  She saw the connection he’d previously masked.

“I suppose that concludes our second piece of business,” she said.  “Returning to the first subject… the three Faerie I was going to introduce to the Duchamp children.  I assume I have permission to invite them?”

“I…” he huffed, he paused to grimace and grunt.  “Hereby grant you and your troll safe passage… along with Gearalt, Aifric… and Lachtna, to exit my realm uncontested.  Those who sat at this table and those named, will face no trial, tribulation or trickery by my hands.  I promise”

“Include the satyrs,” Riordan said, growling the words.

“…I name the satyrs… unf… to be included… in the deal,” the ambassador reluctantly added.  He was red-faced now, and sweating bullets from pain alone.

“Let’s go,” Riordan said.

Sandra didn’t budge.

“A problem?” Mavourneen asked.

Too easy.

What was the trick?

“No,” Sandra said.  “Not good enough.”

“Your way is clear,” Riordan said.

“Yes,” Sandra said.  “So is Hildr’s.  So are the Satyrs, and the Faerie who are going to see the children…”

The Faerie had been very clear about who was free to leave.

Why?  Why be so specific?

Was there anyone who was ready to leave, who hadn’t been named?

Someone here, who mattered on some level, who, by the wording, hadn’t been sitting at the table?  Had her husband sent someone or something to keep an eye on her?

It took a few long moments of heavy consideration before the answer dawned on her.

It wasn’t a good answer, the sort that made things make sense.  Just the opposite.

When she spoke, however, it was with the practiced ease that the Duchamp family had instilled in her.  “No… let’s be more general.  Promise me that, until sunrise, everyone is free to depart unmolested.”

The ambassador stared up at her.

Hildr hefted the table.  It didn’t seem to be enough, so she stepped on the Faerie’s sternum.  The added pressure made his arms shift, which renewed the pain of the shattered joints.

He had to huff for breath before he could speak.  “I so promise.”

“Promise you won’t artificially manipulate the sun’s rise or fall,” she said.  “It’s your little kingdom here, I don’t know what rules you can make or break.  We get at least twelve regular Earth hours, without tricks.”

“I would have to disable too many-” he was cut off as she shifted her weight, jostling him.  He screamed again.

“Try again?”

“Yes.”

She turned to leave.  The mercenaries fell into step on either side of her.

Of course, they were a problem unto themselves.

“I’d appreciate it if my words could find their way to certain ears,” she said, to one of them, or both of them.  She wasn’t entirely sure.  “The Duchamps bring a lot of benefit to certain groups in the Faerie.  We have longstanding relationships, and it would be a shame to end it because the ambassador was careless.  If another Faerie of rank were to reach out to fill the void the ambassador has left, it would be very much appreciated.”

“We can get word out,” Riordan said.

“Thank you,” she said.

She spread her arms, then swept them together.

Hildr did the same, reaching out to either side, then drawing her hands together.  Except she seized the two mercenaries’ heads along the way and cracked them together.

Sandra paused to examine the fallen mercenaries.  “They’re alive?”

Hildr nodded.  She could speak, but it was often easier and clearer to gesture.

“Then let’s go.”

She found the connections to the Faerie and tugged.  Easy enough; they were waiting for her.

She manipulated the connections between herself and the lost satyrs.  A standard connection formed a straight line.  She loosed it, giving it slack, and let the currents the spirits and other forces of the world were traveling carry it out.

Ariadne’s thread.

Once she found the right elements, she gave it more structure.  The line formed a path.  A guiding line between her and the Satyrs in the labyrinth.  A traditional maze was little problem, but this was a maze meant to confound intruders who might surreptitiously explore the ambassador’s realm for a few hours every week for centuries.  There were twists, turns, down stairs, up stairs, Escher devices and portals that could lead to entirely different areas.  There were also denizens.

Some would kill you.  Others would be like the satyrs.  Creatures of sexuality, fertility, and animal instincts.  Satyrs could take in these traits to be lighthearted and simple, warm sources of raw affection.

That hadn’t, Sandra knew well enough, been what the ambassador had wanted them for, as creatures lurking in the maze.

All things had their darker sides.

The three Faerie and the satyrs found her at roughly the same time that she found the exit.  They had been twisted by glamour, the uglier aspects of their nature exaggerated.  They smelled bad, now, had hunched backs, twisted, furtive faces.  Their horns were far larger, wicked.  Natural weapons.

They would go back to normal, given time.

“Any others I should know about?” she asked.  “Stolen property?”

“No,” one replied.

“That’s no ma’am.”

“No, ma’am,” he said.  He didn’t look happy about it.  He looked angry.  Slighted.

As creations went, they were simple.  Two dimensional.  It was so easy to change them.

She led them through.  From a holly-encrusted gate to the big city.  No heads turned at her sudden appearance.

In downtown Toronto, the satyrs took different shapes.  Even there, they were different from their usual.  Where they might be handsome, flirty young men in their teens and twenties, unabashed in their attraction to any woman they saw on the street, they now looked like the sorts one might cross the street to avoid.  Not because they were large, but because of the menace they radiated.

It wasn’t a long walk to the condo.  She let herself in.

The statue was easily two stories tall, sitting in the center of a pond of deep red wine.  Food, fresh, sat at its feet.

Littered around that pond were the various servants of Dionysus, gathered in heaps and piles, using each other for pillows, where there weren’t enough blankets and cushions strewn on the floor.

“Stay,” she ordered the satyrs.  Without checking to see if they’d obeyed, she picked her way carefully through the assorted servants.

Satyrs, boys and men, smiled up at her, some reaching out, as if she’d fall into their arms.  The fur on their legs was soft, the curls of chest hair and chin-scruff inviting.

Fifteen years, and they still tried.  Fifteen years, and she still imagined herself giving in.

The nymphs were what the satyrs were, in a way, holding to an ancient ideal of womanhood and female sexuality as the satyrs held to manhood and male sexuality. There were differences, but the simple description served.

She’d discovered a maternal affection towards the nymphs over the last decade, but there were more uncomfortable implications in their makeup that still rubbed her the wrong way.  The fact that they ‘played’ with her husband wasn’t one of them.  Such was a partnership with a cultist of Dionysus.  No, it was the fact that the ideal beauty as of 200 BC was… younger than was appropriate.  Or legal.  Not distressingly so, but still true.

But appearances were only that.  She knew as much.  Technically, most of them predated the bible.

The bacchae, on the other hand, were living allegory, the dangers of drink given form.  Alluring on the surface, they had adapted better to modern convention and ideas of attractiveness, and they had changed in terms of the dangers they posed as well.  She wasn’t fond of them the same way she harbored a reluctant fondness for the other beasts, but she understood their place in things.

Her husband sat at the top of the stairs leading up to the burgundy pond, a bottle sitting on a step between his knees.

“You’re back,” Jerry said.  He slurred his words slightly.  “Any trouble?”

She sat down beside him.  “Some violence, was nearly killed three times over just before I left, that I could tell.  I cut right through any other murder attempts by dealing with all Faerie I could get Hildr’s hands on.  That, and all of the trouble that comes with stepping into the Faerie’s realm.”

“Did they have the satyrs?”

“They did,” she said.  “I’ve brought them back.  They’ll take time to recuperate and return to normal.  Right now, they’re hazards more than anything else.  They’ll need to be kept separate from the rest.”

Jerry nodded.  “Thank you.  It’s appreciated.”

“How was the council meeting?”

“I’m very nearly drunk and physically spent,” he said.  He gestured at the servants.  “They’re drunk and spent, and you know how much effort that takes.  Make of that what you will.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice soft.  She felt her heart sinking.  A slow drop, as she took in the magnitude of the statement.

Jerry Meath walked a fine line as a cultist of Dionysus.  To be inebriated was a part of his worship, but to be drunk senseless, it was the sort of vulnerability that the bacchae preyed on.

For him to be ‘very nearly drunk’ was the equivalent of another man being in the hospital for alcohol poisoning.  Treading a dangerous line.  He usually played things safer, smoking and eating things he couldn’t overdose on, things that wouldn’t rob him of too much in the way of faculties.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Ah, right.  You haven’t heard.”

“Heard?”

“Some men in service to a far less entertaining god have done something very ugly,” he said.  “Just a year and nine months into the new millenium, our Lord of Conquest gets his second wind.  Our city and our nation has already committed forces.”

“No,” she gasped.  “Every time.  We were close.”

“I don’t know what will come of it, but for the time being, he’s keeping his throne.  I’m sorry.  I don’t think your gamble paid off.”

“We’re fifteen years into our marriage,” she said, “And you still haven’t learned to distinguish between my family’s interests and my own.”

“You’re not interested?”

“I am, but not so much as you like to imagine,” she said.  She reached out and put a hand on his knee.

Odd, that a man who worshipped a god like he did could never allow himself to be drunk, and the only physical contact between them would be perfunctory and strangely disappointing on both ends.

But then, that was the trap, wasn’t it?  The price?  She’d known right from the start that she would never be able to live up to what he enjoyed daily.  She was only human.

They played different roles in each other’s lives.

His hand settled on hers, gripped it.  It was the smallest contact, but she could see how his body language changed.  Easing.

That was what she offered, such as it was.  To be a man was a lonely existence.  Friends, family, they couldn’t reach out to share feelings or find refuge.  Even with the chilled and complicated relationship between her and her family, she had always been able to seek out a measure of support from them.

Not so with men, with Jerry.  It was only with a girlfriend, with a wife, that they could invest themselves.

He had all of the nubile, willing women he could ask for.  An abundance, even, but he had no validation, and for a long time, he had been in freefall.  He had allowed himself to believe he didn’t need anyone.

That was where their marriage had begun.  In the end, she’d found that all he really needed was a touchstone.  Once she’d centered him and given him an outlet, he’d come into his own.  From there, they’d worked their strategies, divided tasks between them.

Now he believed it was all for nothing.

“I’m here,” she said.

“I’m not sure what that means,” he said.  “We were going to make a play.”

“We still can, sometime, somewhere.  But I’m okay with things as they are.”

He looked out at the landscape of white tile strewn with burgundy blankets, pale flesh and body hair.  “Really?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I won’t ask if you love me,” he said.  “I don’t think there’s a point.”

“We work well together.  Balance each other out,” she said.  They’d never had infatuation, but again, how could he?  How could she offer intoxication of emotion and spirit that his god couldn’t?  “We’re better together than we are apart.”

“This… it’s not what a marriage is supposed to be.”

“So?”

“It’s fragile.”

“Let it be fragile, then,” she said.  “Weren’t you always the one who lived more for the present than the future?”

“Fifteen years spent plotting demands a kind of vision for the future,” he said, glowering a little.

“Even so,” she said.”

He seemed to deliberate for a few long moments before he asked, “What’s the point?”

She didn’t have a ready answer for that.  She had an answer, but it was a hard one to bring up.

She sat with him, instead.  A distance separating them, but the simple holding of hands more meaningful than all of the joys that his servants could bring him.

Sandra was almost certain.

Still, that one note of uncertainty was enough to make her nervous.

“Something came up, while I was tracking down your Satyrs,” she said.

“A good something or a bad something?” he asked.

“That’s the question,” she said.  “But you asked what the point of us was, didn’t you?”

“That sort of something?” he asked.

“The Faerie figured it out before any of us did, I think,” she said.  “They wanted to let a select few individuals leave their domain.”

“And?”

“I think there was one more member of the group I wasn’t aware of at first, they wanted me to leave her behind.”

“Her?”

She touched her stomach.

He looked, then his eyes widened.

“Those bastards,” she said.  “I might have a bit of mother bear instinct in me after all.  I was more vicious than I should have been.”

He smiled a little.

“I’ll handle the child as I have everything else,” she said.  “But there’s meaning in bringing life to the world.  I have no idea how they might react.”

“The nymphs and satyrs should be kind to innocents,” he said.  “The bacchae won’t be, but I can make arrangements.”

“I can’t imagine bringing a little girl up in this environment.

“If it is a little girl,” he said.

She went quiet.

“I do know the trick your family employs,” he said.

She frowned.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fairly common knowledge now.  Even as disconnected from things as I am, I know that much.  Ask for custodianship of the girls, ignoring the fact that you intend to bear nothing but.”

“I might have mentioned it, but-”

“No,” he said.  “There was no need.  That’s not what we have.”

“Openness and honesty?”

“Having to ask for forgiveness,” he said.  “I trust you do what you have to, and I think you trust me the same way.”

Sandra nodded.  She fidgeted.  “Gods, the idea of childbirth scares me.”

“I can imagine,” he said.  “If it helps, a blessing from my god can allow you to enjoy drink throughout, with no harm to the child.”

“Through the labor too?” she asked, smiling.

“Of course,” he said.

“We’ll need to make space,” she said.  “As nice as your… personal temple is, we’ll need a more suitable location for a baby.”

“That can be arranged,” he said.  He stood.

He took her hand, and led her down the shallow steps.  Together, they stepped over and around the piles of naked bodies.

“What about names?” Sandra asked.

A whisper.  “A boy’s name.”

Sandra stopped cold.  She turned and saw a nymph reclining, a lazy, sleepy smile on her face.

“What?”

“A baby boy,” the nymph said.  “Swimming in warm darkness.”

“Not possible,” Sandra said.

But when she looked, Jerry wouldn’t meet her eyes.  He stared down at the floor.  Not guilty, but lost in deep thought.

She let go of his hand.

“How?” she asked.

“My god is a god of drink, of madness, of hedonism and sex,” he said.  “And he is a god of fertility, in his way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I suppose that wins out over the working your family has crafted,” he said.

“No,” she said.  She reached out, clutching him.  “Undo it.”

“It’s done,” he said.  “And it will no doubt be done over and over again, should we make the attempt.  My god’s will, it seems.”

“You know they won’t let me keep it.  One boy, and the line is broken, the working unravels.”

He nodded.  When he stepped away, she could feel the gulf between them widening.

“I don’t-” she said.

“My god and his brethren are fond of their tragedies,” he said.

■

“Hello?”

“I wasn’t sure if your cell phone would still be in service.”

“Always.  It’s been a long time, Sandra.  Five years?”

“Seven.”

“Seven years.  You only call when you need something, these days.”

“I wish it were different, but-“

“But it’s what it is,” he said.  “No asking for forgiveness.  We do what we must.  It was a fragile connection, and it broke.”

There was a long pause, as the two of them wrestled with the irony of their reality.

“Someone’s coming your way.  You’ll know him when you see him.”

“What do you want done?”

“I need him to not come back.”

“I’ll see to it.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Collateral 4.1

“We’re nearly there, Mr. Thorburn.”

I startled awake.

My heart rate had jumped into high gear with the sudden voice, the realization of where I was and what I was doing kept it going at the same pace.

“Do you have any questions, Mr. Thorburn?” my driver asked me.  He was a thirty-something man with a stylish, tidy haircut and a nice suit that fit him well.  He hadn’t said a word from the moment he’d shown up with the car, bags situated in the back seat with a new set of boots, three changes of clothes, a jacket, and a bag of toiletries.

I hadn’t asked how they knew my boot or shirt size, the waist and leg measurements for the jeans, or my brand of shaving cream.  I was happy in my ignorance, right now.  Happy to have nice boots on and know that the rubber boots I’d ‘borrowed’ were on their way back to the owner.

I tried to get my brain into gear.  I was tired, and my body was now apparently trying to get what it needed by force.  I was ravenous, my emotions more raw, and slumber had crept over me with a surprising speed and very little fight from me.  My head ached where I’d pressed it too hard against the window of the car as I’d slept.

Going by what I could see in the rear-view mirror, Rose wasn’t in the car with us.  I didn’t have her to turn to.

“I am under the impression,” I said, very slowly and deliberately, buying myself time to think while I tried to structure my thoughts, “that by asking questions, I’m agreeing to pay for the answers.”

“Some answers, yes.  But some answers come part and parcel with the bargain you struck.”

Fuck me, what were the exact terms of the deal?  I struggled to recall, but I’d been too busy looking out for danger, too tired.

“What answers are those?” I asked.  “Or is that cheating?”

“Right now we are engaged in a transaction.  As a client, a customer or a contractor, however you might want to look at it, you’re entitled to any assistance we can reasonably give.  There is no ‘cheating’,” he said.

“I see.”

“Before I say anything else, we have reached out to the Lord of Toronto on your behalf.  He does not know who you are, and views you only as a new practitioner who wants to abide by the rules.  He has agreed to let you return to your home and that agreement will give you some security.”

“Okay,” I said.  I couldn’t remember him talking.  Tired as I was, I was pretty sure any noise along those lines would have woken me up.  “That some kind of magical communication?  Lawyer telepathy?”

He turned his head and tapped his left ear.

Right.  Bluetooth.  Obviously.

He said, “The offer he made, does not mean that he is offering you protection.  If a resident of Jacob’s Bell or a local tries to hurt you, he won’t do a thing.”

“But he’s not going to come after me?”

“Not for the time being.  Others will be seen as presumptuous if they go after you in the meantime.  I would expect the least significant players and the allies of the Lord to wait for a cue or an excuse before they act.  When it’s convenient for him, he’ll reach out and arrange a meeting.  The meeting will decide his stance towards you, and any stance the lesser powers can and will take.”

“What does one typically do, for these sorts of meetings?” I asked.

“A token offering.  Deference.  Depending on the local power dynamic, the other powers may expect something small.  Respect will often do, and it will serve here in Toronto.”

“Any idiosyncrasies?” I asked.  “Who is the Lord and how should I approach him?”

“The Lord is an incarnation of Conquest.  He’s a sapient embodiment of a concept, and he’s been here for some time, in one form or another.”

“I wouldn’t imagine Conquest is a great fit for Toronto,” I said.

“It was, once.  The English presence in North America is young, and Others can be very old.  For some, it wasn’t long ago at all that we wiped out the Aboriginal people and took their land.  It wasn’t long ago that there was war over what European country would claim sovereignty over this land.  Toronto was a site in the war of eighteen-twelve, and Conquest continued to gain power after it was released, with immigrants coming in to reaffirm the invader’s claim to the land.”

“A living manifestation of conquest?” I asked.

“I would hesitate to say ‘alive’.”

“He’s the horseman?  One of the four riders of the apocalypse?”

“Yes and no.  There are other Conquests, who take different forms based on their history and the eras and events they drew power from.  For all intents and purposes, you can consider incarnations to be powerful spirits, often ones with human hosts or an attachment to an object of particular design, an implement without an owner.  Some agencies contrive to bring these incarnations into being to suit their devices.  Is there an agency invested in the apocalypse and Conquest’s part in that?  Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.”

“What way, then?”

“The apocalypse is an idea with some traction, as are the four horsemen.  Some want to use that traction.”

“Ah,” I said.  “I think I get what you mean.”

“Such agencies want a narrative, and an Incarnation of Conquest arising from Toronto is a weak narrative at best.  If such things come to pass, speculation suggests that another, greater Conquest would find, best, and absorb all its lesser kin for strength before taking action.”

“And nobody’s about to remove the local Conquest from the picture, to keep that from happening?”

“There are bigger things at play, and an Incarnation isn’t a monster you defeat with a sword or gun.  It is an idea given life.  You support it and feed it through certain ideas, and you defeat it by taking the strength from that idea.  Most often, you accommodate them.  But anything powerful enough to become sentient and sapient isn’t something that’s going away anytime soon.”

“But if there’s no war-”

“He isn’t War, but Conquest.  Massed forces, takeovers, forced change.  He continues to find power in other ways. Yes, he prefers warfare and bloodshed, but he can draw power from the steady expansion of civilization into nature, from real estate, from business takeovers, government, law, and other small forms of tyranny.  As an Incarnation, he can invest his power.  Where Death might bring death to things by touching them, or Love might strike a couple through their hearts with a metaphorical arrow given form, Conquest can do the same.”

“So he’s like a god.”

“He is like a god,” my driver said.  “And we could go into a deep discussion of the common elements between gods and incarnations, the abstract versus the straightforward, but that’s outside of the bounds of your agreement with the firm, and I believe we’re on your street.”

I turned to look.  Sure enough, I was home.

Hopefully Joel hadn’t evicted me.

“In terms of safety, after I’m in my apartment…”

“I’ve got that handled,” Rose piped up.  “I think.”

I turned to look to my right, stupidly, then looked at the mirror.  Sure enough, she was situated in the back seat, next to where I’d be if I had a reflection.

There was a stack of books beside her, I noted.

“I’ll take you upstairs,” my driver said.

I gathered up the bags, while Rose grabbed her books in the mirror, and the driver opened the door for the both of us.

He had a book tucked under one arm.  I felt a moment’s trepidation.

This favor the lawyers were doing me wasn’t free.

“After you,” my lawyer told me, opening the front door of the building.

“Do I open the door to something ugly if implicitly invite you into the building?” I asked.

“No,” my driver said.  “Even if you did, it would be too late to do anything about it, as you implicitly invited us into the building when you asked for an escort to your apartment.”

I nodded.

“This is a stable area, Toronto is,” my escort said.  “I wouldn’t worry too much about trouble.  You know who your enemies in Jacob’s Bell are, and you should focus your efforts on those fronts.  You wouldn’t go amiss with a border around the apartment.”

“A border?”

“Something geometric.  There are two schools of thought in binding.  There is like binding like, and then there’s binding with the antithesis.  The former requires more raw power, but you generally won’t upset them so much.  I say generally, but some beings like conflict, and there are any number of other rules.”

It was kind of eerie, to see that the driver had personality.  Even to the point of geeking out about something.  I said, “I think I saw something about that in the Barber’s entry, in my grandmother’s books.”

“I read that.  Yes.  Good memory.  It’s easier to bind them with something that naturally opposes them.  In this case, you’d want something geometric and man-wrought to oppose beings that are more disordered and natural by their intrinsic natures.  Which is most things out there.  The more powerful they are, the more you’ll want and need in terms of protections.”

“Okay,” I said.

“That takes care of one of the local threats.  I might suggest a protective sign on the ceiling, for another.  And a ritual sprinkling of water at the perimeter of your apartment, on a regular schedule.  Doesn’t really matter how often, but it should be at a set time or set times every day, and you can’t miss a day or it won’t have an effect.”

My eye fell on the door to Joel’s apartment.  I really had to let him know I was okay.

But I focused on the man who was guiding me to safety.  “Is there an explanation for any of this?  Who or what it might be that I’m protecting myself against?”

“I’m already bending the rules by saying this.”

“Why?” I asked.  When he didn’t give me a response, I asked,  “Why tell me this?  You don’t have to help like that.”

“I’m new to this.  I’ve only been at it for- for a little while.  I’m bound to make mistakes.”

“Why did you pause there?” I asked.  “How long have you been at it?”

“I don’t know.  I’ve lost track of the years.  Smart phones weren’t a thing when I started, though, if that’s any clue?”

I nodded.  “More than five years, then.”

“Five years,” he said, nodding slowly.  He looked up at me, “You wanted to know why I’m sharing details?  I like you, Mr. Thorburn.  I feel bad for you, we haven’t exactly talked much, but I think you’re one of the good ones.  Me taking you for a one-and-a-half hour drive into Toronto, getting stuck in traffic?  It’s a nice break.  It puts me in good spirits.  I think they know it puts me in good spirits, and they divvy up jobs like this to keep the newbies sane.”

“During your centuries or thousands of years of enslavement to the firm,” I said.

“Yeah.  From the clients who aren’t so fun.  Clients who hoard and have places packed from floor to ceiling with knick-knacks and body parts, clients who deal in pain and suffering like a banker deals in cash, or who do things that would have turned my stomach, back when I had compunctions.”

“I see,” I said.

“You really don’t.  But you might,” he said.

“You’re assuming I’ll take the offer your firm is making?” I asked.

“I honestly don’t know if you will.  That wasn’t what I was saying.  There are a good few people out there who try dealing in the real powers, the scary ones your grandmother trafficked in.  Maybe a third survive, like your grandmother did.  Another third, they meet bad ends and they probably take people with them.  The last third, they get offered a way out, and they take that offer.”

“Like you did,” I said.

“I dabbled, I got in just deep enough to get into trouble, and get into debt,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter.  What does matter is the firm would like me to tell you the bill for the next deal you make with them.”

“The next deal?  They’re looking into the future?”

“Nothing so complicated.  This,” he said, handing me the book he held, “Is your payment for the supplies, the ride, the guarantee of safety and the arrangements we’ve made with the local Lord.  This is how you’ll pay us, the next time you make a deal.”

He handed me a piece of yellow paper.  Carbon paper.  I read it over.  A duration, a name, a two day duration, as well as notes made for any expenses being covered…

“An errand,” I said.

“Call it an internship,” he said.  “Carrying out the sort of job you would be doing if you accepted a deal with the firm.”

“Like you did, driving me,” I said.

“Very possible,” he said, smiling a bit.

“Or like one of the jobs you regularly do for the messed up ones, the real diabolists you and Ms. Lewis seem so damn relieved to get away from.”

“That is also very possible,” he said.

“So you don’t even know what the favor I’d be asking is, and you’re telling me how I’ll pay you back, in exchange?”

“They are, yes.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I stayed silent, folded up the paper, and stuck it in my back pocket.  I stopped walking.

“This is your apartment?” he asked.

“It is.”

“There’s no particular rush to finish the book.  I believe the threat of a deal ignored and the impact to your karmic balance is enough incentive to follow through.”

I looked down at the book he’d given me.  Black Lamb’s Blood.

From the goat’s skull on the cover, the black leather and the script in shiny gold lettering, I knew it was a book on diabolism.  This was my payment for the services the firm had rendered me.  I had to read it, nothing more, nothing less.

“No traps?  No deceptions or situations where reading the wrong word will harm me or cause demons to leap out of the page?”  I already knew the answer, but I had to ask again.  The situation worried me too much.

“It is plain text, nothing more,” he assured me.  “You may or may not like what that text says, but I don’t think you’ll suffer.”

“It’s propaganda,” I said.

“Perhaps a little bit.  Your grandmother knew the author and was quite fond of her.  Had she been alive as the book was released, your grandmother would have paid for a copy to be delivered to her, and it would have a place on her bookshelf.  She would have no cause to warn you about anything inside.  It’s even one of the tamer books.”

I nodded, frowning.

A gateway book?  The thought made me think of some dumbassed campaign like ‘don’t do drugs, read!’.  Except books were more dangerous than drugs, in this world.

“Once you’re inside, I’ll be on my way,” he said.

I let myself into the apartment, feeling a secret relief when the key turned successfully in the lock, and I turned to face my escort.

“Goodbye, Mr. Thorburn.  Best of luck.  Remember what I recommended, protection-wise.”

“You seemed decent enough,” I said.  “Thank you for the tips on self-protection.  I hope you get more easy jobs.”

“So do I, thank you.  Five hundred and seventy three years, four months, and four days to go, if I don’t make partner at some point.  I’m bound to get some of the easier jobs.”

His smile made it look like he might chuckle at his own joke.  Caught off guard by the sheer volume of years he’d presented, I couldn’t bring myself to match him smile for smile.

He gestured, tipping his nonexistent hat, and then turned to go.

Leaving me alone and relatively unprotected.

Move, I thought.

I headed for the dining room, which I rarely used for dining.  Set beside the kitchen, it served as storage for all the boxes and kits I had no space for elsewhere.

I found my toolbox.  A loaner-turned-gift when a friend’s boyfriend had gone overseas and decided never to return.  Actually two toolboxes stacked on one another, with two rugged wheels for all terrain at one side, like luggage, it held all of the bits and pieces I’d collected while working.

Top toolbox was tools.  Hammers, saws, awls, hole-punches and far too many screwdrivers.  Not what I needed.

The lower toolbox was knick-knacks and materials.

Three rolls of painter’s tape and… there, a drywall t-square which had been abused and coated with plaster to the point that I could barely make out numbers.

I ripped a section free, then went to work.

I set to drawing out a border around the edge of the apartment.  Turning the apartment into a magic circle, or a magic rectangle, whatever.

I wasn’t sure how far my tape would go, so I went the simple route.  The t-square let me quickly define triangles, which I taped out.  Triangles were a sturdy shape, right?  Architecturally sound?  Three points, three sides.

I was winging this.  Doing what I could.

Who were the other threats?  Laird?  I wasn’t sure what he’d throw at me.  Sandra?  That meant Faerie.

Too many possibilities to consider.  I’d collapse in a nervous heap if I considered all of the threats arrayed against me.

One thing at a time.  I was good at working mindlessly on a task.  I enjoyed it, even, being able to set my body to something repetitive and easy, while letting my mind roam.

Something crude I could use against Faerie.  Assuming the building didn’t count as something crude and roughshod, where could I get a natural sort of barrier untouched by human hands?

What other trouble could I run into?  There was enchantment, enchantresses.  If the Duchamps wanted to screw me over, they could do something with the connections to me.  One of them had already done something to sic Aunt Laura and Callan on me.  How easy would it be for them to attack me here and drive me out into the cold again?  Causing trouble for Joel until I had to get kicked out?

I moved my futon, dragging it across the floor, and set up the tape at the base of the wall.

Steadily, I made my way to the far right of the living room, taping as I went.

“Blake,” Rose called out, from the other room.

I stood, stretching where being hunched over had made my back kink up, and I passed by my bedroom to reach the bathroom.  There wasn’t any glass on the counter or the floor, but some lingered at the edges of the frame.

“Hey Rose.  We need to get you some mirrors.”

“He was playing you, you know.”

“The lawyer kid?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what my gut says,” she said.  “All of that, even the information he gave you, it’s part of a long term scheme to win you over.  They’re obviously doing this with some strategy in mind.”

“Obviously.  Making me read the book, setting me up with a young lawyer I can identify with.”

“They’re looking forward enough to figure out what they’re going to ask you for next time, and letting you know now so you can convince yourself it’s not so bad, and maybe ask for help a little more quickly next time.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I get that.”

“You okay?” she asked.

“Tired,” I said.  “But I want to get at least one layer of defenses up before we go any further.”

“I’ve been bringing some books over, trying to do my part.”

“From the house?”

“Yeah.  No problem getting past the barrier.  I either don’t pass through the barrier, or I move so fast that being slowed to a fraction doesn’t make a difference.”

“Bring some books,” I said.  “Not too many, okay?  We know some Others can reach into the mirror, and besides, we don’t want to lose access to the books if we can’t get to this apartment again.”

“Shit.  Good point.  Maybe if I carry them with me?”

“Maybe,” I said.  “Did you hear that bit in the car?  About the safeguards we’ll need?”

“Some.”

“We’ll need a protective sign on the ceiling.  And this wasn’t his recommendation, but it’d be good to find a way to stay off the Duchamp’s radar, and deal with any Faerie they send our way.”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “I can get on that.  We’ll need something crude?”

“Mm hmm,” I said.

“And we’ll need-”

A sharp knock interrupted me.

“Conquest’s messenger?” Rose asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “That’d be a pretty fast arrival.”

“Go,” she said.

I went.

It wasn’t the Lord’s herald or anything like that.  It was my landlord.  Joel.  Heavy without being fat, bald, with hipster glasses and bushy eyebrows, he had a way of looking perpetually worried.

He looked especially worried right now.  With me.

“Hey you,” he said.  “I thought I heard furniture moving, and I couldn’t think of who it might be.”

“Just got back,” I said.  “You get your car back?”

He nodded.  “Police returned it.  I’m sorry it broke down on you.”

I shook my head.  Not your fault.

“What happened?  I did a search online, you were local front page news, there.  You inherited a house?”

“A very valuable house, yes.  And the town’s residents summarily evicted me,” I said.  “For all intents and purposes.”

“You look like you’ve been through hell.  It’s only been a week.”

“Has it?” I asked.  “Damn.”

“I can’t help but think of the pictures of U.S. presidents before and after they take office.  They look drained, aged by years.  You look like that.”

“Probably fitting,” I said.

“Some of the others have been asking about you.  They’ll want to see you, hear about what’s happened.”

My first instinct was to leap at the chance.  My second was to say no, to take the time to prepare.

“Great,” I said, going with my first and third instincts.  “I’m exhausted, though, I won’t be very good company.  If you want to invite people over, maybe we can keep it short, keep numbers down?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “We can definitely do that.”

“Also, I don’t have much, except what I had in the fridge.”

“When you didn’t show after a few days, I cleaned out the perishables, and I cleaned up your bathroom while I was at it,” he said.

Had it been anyone else, I might have been offended.  “Thanks.  Did you keep the glass?”

“It’s in a bucket under the sink, why?”

“I’m in a strange frame of mind,” I said.

“Does that include talking to yourself?” he asked.  When I gave him a look, he said, “Thin walls.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Talking to myself, I guess.”

“And taping up the floor?”  he asked, pointing down the length of my apartment hallway to where I’d abandoned the taping project.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I don’t know if I could explain, even.  Something for peace of mind.”

“I’m not judging,” he said, “But your reaction before you left, talking to yourself, this tape project just after you got home, the damage you did to your bathroom-”

“One mirror,” I said

“One mirror,” he agreed.

We let the silence hang in the air for long moments.

“I’d like to think I can roll with the punches,” Joel said, in response to my silence.  “And you know the others can too.  When Natty had trouble-”

“I know,” I said.

“We adapted.”

“I know,” I said, again.  “I hear you.  I’m thankful, but it’s mostly stress, and it’s me dealing the way I have to deal.”

“You’re not going to put paint on those hardwood floors, are you?”

“No paint,” I promised.  “Not if I can help it.”

“Okay,” he said.  “Lemme call up the others.  You want me to tell them to show for a specific time?  Have you eaten?  Should I bid them to bring snacks, drink, foodstuff?”

“I ate, but I could eat a live horse right now,” I said.  Against my better judgment, I added, “They can show whenever, bring whatever’s easy to bring.  Just let them know I might have to run.”

“Run?”

“Appointment, could happen at any time.  Five minutes from now, or a week, I don’t know.”

He nodded, then extended a hand, keys in the palm.

“Thanks Joel,” I said, as I grabbed my bike keys.  “You saved my life, giving up your car like that.”

“You shaved a year off mine,” he answered.  “Showing up like you did.  Freaking out when the lights died.  Take care of yourself, eh?”

“Eh,” I said.  “I’m trying.”

Joel left, and I took ten minutes to rinse off, get myself shaved and get presentable, changing clothes so I wouldn’t smell of sweat.  I stowed the diabolism book in a drawer of clothes, then set to getting dressed in the clothes the lawyer had brought.  Fresh outfit, minus the sweat and bits of Glamour.  Nicer than anything I owned, but it suited my style.

Eerie.

I pulled the locket from the pocket of my jeans and, after a moment’s debate, wound it around my hand as I had before.  Positioning it so the locket itself was bound in place, the thin chain uncomfortable.

I stuffed June Cleaver’s handle down my pants leg, so the side of the blade pressed against my hipbone, the blade itself pointing forward, and pulled my shirt down around her so it was covered.  Leonard-in-a-bottle found a spot on top of the fridge, out of easy reach.  But if I wanted him, I could hop up and grab.

I found blue-tack, and I found the bucket of mirror-shards, and I began setting them up, sticking the larger pieces to walls at Rose’s eye-level.

“Who’s Natty?”

I kept my voice lower, this time.  “Was a friend of the group for a while.  Split off when she dated and broke up with certain people, found another group of friends.  See her from time to time, no problems.”

“Were you one of the ones she dated?”

“No,” I said.  “I haven’t dated or done much of anything since high school.”

“Since before you ran away.”

I nodded.  “She started hearing voices.  Joel’s not-so-subtly telling me that if I’m in the same boat, well, precedent says they can deal.”

“Oh.”

“Which is cool,” I said.  “Might be easier to let them think I’ve lost it, so long as I can assure Joel that the rent will keep getting paid.”

“I’m sorry, that you’d have to do that.”

I shrugged.  I put up another piece of mirror.  “How’s that?”

“It’s okay,” she said.  “Not great, but okay.  Is this wise?  Inviting people?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “No clue at all.  But I’m drained, and if I’m supposed to recover personal power, reaffirm my identity and refuel myself where I was drained, well, getting my bike keys back made me feel a hundred times better than any night’s sleep I’ve had this past week.  Maybe seeing my friends will help.”

“I can get behind it, if that’s your reasoning,” she said.  “Since I’m obviously not socializing, I can sit and read.”

“Sure,” I said.  “Please do.  But if you happen to want to look up from a book, and if you maybe want a bit of a clue about who I am and where I come from… at least now you can peek.”

“Alright,” she said.  “That’s… really nice of you.  But maybe we should get the defenses up.”

I looked at the unfinished border of tape.  I was tired enough I wasn’t connecting dots.  Doing too many jobs, leaving each one unfinished.  Getting ready, preparing things for Rose, the defenses, trying to get my story straight in my head, and talking to Rose.  It seemed so natural while I was doing it, but I was fucking up.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Rose asked.

“Blake!”  The cry was followed by a squeal, or a ‘squee’, as the slang went.

Amanda.  My least favorite member of the group of my favorite people.  Which wasn’t to say I disliked her.  Only that she didn’t ‘get’ boundaries and I liked my boundaries.

I’d left the door open, and both Amanda and ‘Goosh’ had let themselves in.  Goosh was busy restraining Amanda with one arm around Amanda’s shoulders, so Amanda wouldn’t throw her arms around me in a violent, sudden hug.  If she did, it wouldn’t be the first time.  And if she did it with enough force that her head cracked into my ear, that wouldn’t be the first time either.

Goosh was a little taller than me, which put her above average height for a full-grown male, her blond hair cut short, cut badly, and tousled, her lipstick a little too red for her complexion.  She was also a perfect counterpoint to Amanda, in personality and frame.  Amanda, petite, was like the little dog that absolutely adored everyone and everything, her enthusiasm bubbling over to infectious degrees.  Goosh was more like the mama bear.

Where Amanda would crumple at the slightest criticism, Goosh would tear heads off.

“You’re a millionaire!”  Amanda said.

“Ah, you read the news.  No, I’m not.”

“Almost-millionaire!” Amanda squealed.

“Not even,” I said.  “I would be if I could sell the house, but I can’t.”

“Soon?  Eventually?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “Hi Goosh, sorry about the show setup.”

“It’s okay.  I one hundred percent understand,” Goosh said.  “Joel told us about your cousin, my condolences.”

“Oh yeah,” Amanda said.  “Shit, I’m sorry.”

I nodded.  “Thanks.  Your show went up without a hitch?”

“Small job.  I wound up hiring the Sisters.  Every time, I tell myself it won’t be so bad.  Every time, they convince me otherwise.”

I nodded.  I’d had to work with the Sisters several times on bigger projects.  Stage setups for a play, a framework for an full-room art installation… they meant well, but they were people who couldn’t take criticism, and who acted like they sought out reasons to be offended.  Worse, they played off each other.  Get one a little upset, she’d turn to her sister, who would build up that negative emotion until it reached a critical point.

Friend or enemy, you walked on eggshells around them, and you dealt with a minimum of one nervous breakdown or tantrum per project.  But they were one of the only resources we had on hand.

“Blake!” a guy greeted me from the door.  He was black, hair cut short to the point it was barely a shadow on his head and wiry, and he didn’t try to hide or take shame in his body type.  He wore a suit jacket that was a bit tattered and skinny jeans with gray smudges on them.

“Hey Ty,” I said.

I was right, it was right.  Friends, familiarity, faces I knew.  I felt more at ease.

More like me, even with that big fat ‘practitioner’ piece jammed in the middle of the puzzle that was me and my identity.

“Beer?” he said, holding up a case so I could see over Amanda’s head.

“Beer!” Amanda’s eyes lit up.

“Fridge,” I said.  “Should be lots of room.  Thanks.”

Goosh let go of Amanda so Amanda could go get beer and talk to Ty.

“While they’re busy,” Goosh said, stepping closer, without intruding into my personal space.  “Want me to run interference?  Fill people in on anything, so you don’t have to keep answering the same question?”

Did I?  Yeah.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m not a millionaire, not like that.  I’m stuck looking after a house that I can’t sell, a house that a lot of people want me to sell.  And it’s ugly.  There was talk, I’m pretty damn sure, down at the police station down there, that my cousin’s death wasn’t an accident.”

“No,” Goosh said, her voice a hush.

I shrugged.  “Like I said, I don’t know.  But for now, I’m laying low.  I’ve got to go back in a few weeks, maybe sooner, to wrangle some stuff.  I-”

“Hey, Blake,” Tyler interrupted me, from across the room.  Amanda had attached herself to him.  “What’s the tape thing?”

“It is what it is,” I said, too tired to come up with better.  “I was doing that, it was sort of meditative, I stopped halfway.  Was going to do all around the apartment.”

“Can I finish it?” he asked.

“Yeah, if you use the t-square to get the lines perfect,” I said.  “And if there’s enough tape, maybe you could do triangles inside of triangles?  If there’s enough.  It’d look ugly if only half was done.”

And it would disrupt the border’s effectiveness.

“Eyeballing it, I’d say there’s enough tape.”

“Go for it,” I told him.

I heard him tearing tape free from the roll.

Hooray for artist friends.

“You’re going back, you said?” Goosh asked.

“And I’ve got stuff to wrangle here, and… I dunno,” I said.  “Honestly, my life’s been turned upside down, and I barely even feel like me.”

“You know we have your back.”

“I wouldn’t want to involve you, get you embroiled in the ugly parts of it.”

“I don’t think many of us would mind.”

“I think you would, once you got the full picture.  A lawyer I was speaking to… she told me that she thought I was a goner.  The police chief hates me and my family, biggest most influential families have it in for me, a lot of people want the house sold so the town can expand, and I couldn’t even go shopping without getting in a fight.”

“So you get more bodies on the ground.  They’re not going to go after you if you’re in a group.”

“Wanna bet?” I asked.  “They hate me.  For no reason.”

“Heyyy!” someone cried out, behind Goosh.

“Hey Joseph,” Goosh said, smiling.

I couldn’t match Joseph’s enthusiasm, but I did smile, and it wasn’t forced.

“The carpenter resurrects, only it takes him a week,” Joseph said.

“Says ‘Joseph’?” Goosh asked.

“I’m more a handyman than a carpenter,” I said.  “And I’m not middle-eastern.  But I’m damn glad to be back, whatever I am.”

“No worries,” he said.  He bowed his head, presenting a plastic container.  “I humbly offer cupcakes as a token of worship.  You saved me from diabetes, because I was totally going to eat the entire tray myself.”

“Beer and cupcakes,” I said.

“You don’t want?”

“I’m not having beer,” I said.  I had to fight to avoid being negative.  “And I am more than happy to help save you from diabetes.  I’d love one.”

“I am having beer,” Goosh said.  “And I’d love one too.”

Joseph cracked open the container and provided each of us with a cupcake.  I wasn’t sure what the figures on the top were.  I supposed they were video game characters, but I hadn’t really played a video game in years.

“Lemme fill you in,” Goosh told him.

I took the opportunity to break away, taking it all in.  Amanda and Ty working on the tape, Goosh talking to Joseph.  More people coming in the door, waving at me, before listening to what Goosh was saying.

I took in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly.

I felt at ease.

Standing in the corner, the mirrors lining the walls to either side of me, I nibbled on the cupcake.

“I’m jealous,” Rose told me.

“Sorry,” I murmured, holding the cupcake up so people couldn’t see me talking to myself.

“I don’t really have friends.  You have this.”

“A lot of them are odd,” I said.  “Some are more acquaintances than friends.”

“I don’t even have acquaintances.  But you have connections, ties.”

“I hear you,” I said.  “But I meant what I said.  We’ll get you out, and maybe I can introduce you to my friends and acquaintances.”

“That’d be nice,” she said.  “Are you worried?”

“About?”

“Getting them involved.  If some Other comes in…”

“Don’t even talk about that,” I said.  I took a bite of cupcake and waved at Joel as he made his way in.

I glanced at Rose, and I saw her staring at the group.  She was barely blinking, her eyes on the people who were coming and going.

I looked, too.  Used the Sight to make sure that there weren’t any connections to things that there shouldn’t be connections to.  No objects on their person that might point to something odd.  Sure, they could hide it if they wanted to, but short of Laird trying to do to me what I’d done to him, I had trouble imagining a situation where one of my friends would be an Other or practitioner in disguise.

“You think it’s likely?” I asked, after I’d swallowed.

“The families are going to be mad.  Behaims, Duchamps, the bit players who wanted you dead.  Maybe Mara, maybe Johannes.  I don’t know.  They’ll send trouble your way, somehow.”

I nodded, taking another bite of cupcake.

“You need a third win.  Three strikes, Laird’s out.”

“You don’t think he broke my streak, pulling this?”

“Different battlefield, that.  But in terms of public perception, in terms of the murder, and reputation?  He’s struck out twice.  One more time, you’ve got him out.”

“I feel like I need to make a bigger play than I have, to make it count,” I said.

“Probably.”

I saw two more people enter.  One strange looking girl I didn’t recognize.  Her eyes were small, her nose broad, shoulders drawn in.  I looked at the connections, and she had a very odd connection to me.  Nothing like any of the connections I had to my friends.

She stopped at the edge of the cluster where Goosh was, on the other side of the apartment.  She only opened her mouth to say something small, maybe ‘hi’, and then Goosh pointed.

Her eyes fell on me, and I saw the connection fill in.

It had looked odd because there had been no recognition.  She knew of me, recognized me, but she didn’t know me?  I didn’t know her?

My hand went to my waist.  The hatchet.

Why the hell was she in my apartment?

She broke away from Goosh’s group, very awkwardly making her way through the crowd, avoiding eye contact, apologizing for every accidental bump.

Then I saw the person who had brought her, and it made sense.

The shortest person in the room, faint red dots of acne at the edges of her hairline, despite the fact that she was two years older than me, and the telltale bumps where she’d covered other spots with makeup.  She wore her jacket indoors, and I wondered if she did it because it made her look bigger than she was.  Her black hair was in dire need of conditioner, and the winter hadn’t been friendly to it.  I suspected it had been wet when she’d left her place and it had frozen.

I liked the little flaws.  I could somehow look at an attractive girl, someone like Amanda, or that Penelope Duchamp girl, and on some basic level, they didn’t rate as high in my estimation.  They didn’t look interesting, their dark blue eyes didn’t have more of a hold on me because I spent every second I looked into them wanting to study their faces and figure out what it was that made me find her attractive despite the imperfect details.

She knew everyone, everyone knew her.  She held her friend’s hand.  Her girlfriend’s hand?  Led the girl to the futon, where people automatically made room for the pair.  She smiled easily, but went out of her way to cover her teeth with her lips, bit down to keep her lips in place, even, as she turned her head away to hide what she was doing.  When she laughed at something Joel was saying, she almost doubled over, in part because she was really laughing that hard, in part because it meant nobody could see her face.

I was relieved to see that she was safe, her friend was safe, and they weren’t part of this whole business with Others and magic and whatever else.  A glance at their connections told me they were safe.

“Blake, you going to stand in a corner for the entire night at your own party?” Joel asked.

“Was thinking,” I said, approaching the gathering of people at the one side of my living room.

“Think less, drink more,” Joseph told me.

“I’m not drinking tonight,” I said.  “Already said.  I might have to run.  I’m all tied up in this bullshit drama that’s been going on this past week and a bit.”

“Are you going to be able to manage?” Joel asked.  “I know people.  Lawyers, mostly tied up in renter’s rights and tenant-landlord disputes, but it’s not a big jump to real estate.”

“Real estate’s only a bit of it,” I said.  “It’s fine.  I’ve just got to handle my own stuff.”

“Goosh was saying you didn’t sound fine about it,” he said.  “You sounded pretty down.  You still sound down.”

“It’s-”  I very nearly said ‘it’s fine’, but it wasn’t, and a lie here among friends was still a lie.  “I am.  I’m going to strive to avoid being a wet blanket, though.”

“If you need to vent, or gripe-”

“I do,” I said, “But I also need to pretend I have a semblance of a normal life, and I don’t want this to be a pity party.”

“Come on, give us a taste of the griping.”

This from the shortest girl in the room, smiling wickedly even as she tried not to smile.

“Leave him be, Alexis.”

“A taste?” I responded.  “I’m seriously wondering if someone’s going to try to kill me.”

I saw the shock on their faces, the stunned silence, but for Alexis’ sputtering coughing.

“When Goosh said you’d said your cousin’s death wasn’t an accident, I thought you meant it was a suicide,” Joel said.

“I’m almost certain it wasn’t,” I said.

“Because of the house?” Joseph asked.

“Because of what the house is, and power plays, and… I don’t even know all of the motivations at work,” I said.  “But I’m spooked.”

“You should talk to someone,” Joel said.  “Police?”

Police are part of the problem.  “I’m waiting for a word from someone on the subject of my personal security.  Local guy, knows who’s who, can probably point things in the right direction.  Or leave me fucked.  Which is why I might have to run any minute.”

There were nods.

“Whatever you need to do,” Joel said.

Still coughing a bit, Alexis asked, “Hey, Blake, can I smoke?”

“You most definitely can not,” Joel said.

“Who’s bright idea was it, inviting the landlord?”

“The landlord invited you,” Joel replied.  “I have a hard enough time resisting giving you noogies, don’t tempt me by being a brat.”

“Give me a noogie and you die,” she said.

The brief silence that followed was pointed and awkward.

“Sorry, Blake,” she said, wincing.  “That was in bad taste.  I haven’t even had a drink yet, so I don’t have an excuse.”

“None needed,” I said.

“Go out on the balcony,” Joel said. “Have your smoke.  You’ll be less irritable.”

“It’s cold out there,” she groused, but she stood.

“Want company?” I asked.

“Yeah.  But before I go… Blake, meet Tiffany.  Tiffany, Blake.”

“Hi Tiffany,” I said.  I offered my hand for her to shake.  She shook it.

My surface impression was that she was the least ‘Tiffany-ish’ Tiffany I’d met.  Shy, awkward, quiet.  I usually associated Tiffanies with blonde cheerleaders.

“I really like your tattoos,” she said, looking at my arms.

I smiled a bit.  “I do too.”

“Color’s odd,” Alexis said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You get them touched up?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I haven’t had a chance to get a decent bit of shopping done this past week, let alone go to a tattoo parlour.”

“Damn,” she said.  “That’s going to bug me.”

I opened the patio door for her, and she hurried through, with me right behind her.  I shut it quickly before the people inside could get too cold.

The snow had piled up on the balcony outside my apartment, in uneven heaps, packed against one side.  I took the spot that left me standing in a foot of snow, so she would be clear.

She lit the cigarette, used her jacket to wipe the railing of snow, and folded her arms over the top of it, resting her rather pointed chin on the back of one hand, cigarette in mouth.

“Tiffany seems nice,” I said.

“Yeah.  She does splatter paintings.  Mostly figures.  She’s good.”

“Is she homeless?  Or was she?”

“Lacks a home, but not homeless,” Alexis said.  “Bad time of it, back there.  Abuse.  You know you don’t repeat any of this.”

“I know,” I said.

“Never had family, never had friends.  So no, she didn’t have a home, even if she had a roof over her head.  She’s in the building, now.”

I nodded.

“She saw a picture of you, on my phone.  She thinks you’re devastatingly handsome.”

“I’m not,” I said.

“You’re not.  But you’re handsome.”

“She thinks I am, which is apparently what’s important,” I said, so I didn’t have to agree.  “Are you trying to set me up with her?”

“Sorta.”

“You know where I come from.  You’re the one who got me from there to here.”

“Yeah.”

“You know I have… hang-ups.  You probably know better than anyone.”

“Yep.  I know.  I have some too.”

“It presents an obstacle,” I said.

“She and I have obstacles too.”

She and I?  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Just putting it out there.  We’re beautifully fucked up people, and sometimes it’s only the fucked up sorts who’re going to understand, you know?  She has a thing for you.  I know you had a thing for me, not so long ago.”

“Now I’m really not sure what you mean.”

She puffed on her cigarette.

“I’m not a therapist or any of that.  But she needs to break out of her shell, and this is the first thing I thought of.  I’m doing the relational equivalent of banging stones together until stuff works.”

“You want us to… bang?”

“I want- yeah.  That sums it up.  It’s up to you, with your hang-ups in mind, obviously.  Knowing you’re going through a lot of crap.  But if it’d help you unwind more than it wound you up, that’d be cool.”

“Me and her?”

“And me,” she said.  “I figure she needs a bit of hand holding, and we’re reasonable, adult human beings.  We put jealousy aside and… it’s so dark I can’t make out your face and I can still tell you’re blushing.”

I did what she was doing, folding my arms on the railing, except I rested my forehead against my arms.

“Fuck, aren’t you cold?  Do you need to go inside and get a jacket?”

“I feel cold,” I said, “And my face is hot, and I feel awkward, and all of that’s a hell of a lot better than I’ve felt this past week, feeling numb and terrified.”

“Well, if you say it’s good, it’s good,” she said.  She puffed, looking out over the city.

It dawned on me that I wasn’t within the boundary of tape, but that wasn’t enough to drive me inside.  Being here was good.

“If I didn’t accept the deal, would you find someone else?”

“Probably not.  I’d figure out another way to get her more comfortable with people, break her pattern.”

I nodded.

“You’re thinking no?” she asked.

“Hang-ups,” I said.

She nodded.  “Damn.  But you know yourself best.”

“I want to, I-”

“You don’t need to apologize or explain.  I know where you came from.  You know where I came from.”

“-I still like you,” I finished.

“Ah… crap.  Now I feel like shit, offering you that, knowing-”

“No,” I said.  “Putting it on the table.  So believe me when I say I want to.  If circumstances were different, I’d take that leap.  I’d trust you to… if circumstances were different.”

“But they aren’t, and I’m piling more garbage on your plate,” she said.

“It’s fine,” I said.  “The offer is appreciated, on a lot of levels.  Maybe another time, if things somehow quiet down.”

“I dunno, knowing how you feel about me makes it weird.”

I turned to look at her, and I could see her in silhouette, smiling, holding back her laughs.

Not hiding her fucked up teeth from me.

I elbowed her, and she elbowed me back.

“Say the word,” she told me, “and it’s a done deal.”

“For once, it’s a deal I’m happy to have on the table,” I said.

“Hm?”

“Nevermind.”

“You really okay?” she asked.

“In terms of the big picture, I’m less okay than you can imagine.  And-”

“You impugn my creativity.”

“Even with your amazing, brilliant creativity and your amazing tattoo abilities, I’m less okay than you can imagine.  But this, right here, talking?  It helped.”

“Yeah?”

I stood, stretching, and nodded, “Yeah.  But I’m also cold, so I’m going back inside.”

“I’ll be in in a minute.”

I nodded, turning to the patio door.

Rose’s reflection, faint, was visible there.  She was pointing, looking deadly serious.

I let myself back into the apartment, and then ducked into the bathroom.

“There are nine people in the apartment,” Rose said.

“And?”

“I watched people come in the front door, trying to commit names to memory, figure out who your friends were.  Nine people came in.”

“And?” I asked.

“Ten people in all, if you count Alexis out there on the balcony.  Every time I count heads I see nine, but when I go from person to person and count names, the total comes up eight, and I can’t find the person without a name.”

I nodded, stepping out into the apartment.

I did as Rose had done.

Joel, Goosh, Ty, Joseph, Amanda, Nick, Tiffany, and Stephen.

Then I counted heads.

Nine people, spread out through the apartment.  Ten if I counted Alexis, smoking on the balcony.

I used the Sight, and I found the man with no name, sitting on a chair he’d turned around at the end of the dining room table.  Older than anyone but Joel, light haired, wearing a white coat.  A polished, silver-platinum gun rested in his lap, where he occasionally picked it up or turned it around.

I approached him slowly, then leaned against the table.

“I didn’t want to interrupt anything,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Is now a good time?  The Lord would like to see you.  The other local powers will be in attendance.”

“Just give me one second,” I said.

He nodded.

“Tiffany?” I asked.

She looked up at me.

“How much for one of your paintings?”

“Two hundred?” she asked.

I thought of the allowance the lawyers had given me.  “I’ll pay you five hundred for your best one, but I need one now.”

“Y-yeah,” she said.

I looked at Conquest’s messenger, “We can pick that up on the way?”

He nodded.

Tiffany at my side, oblivious to the man with the gun, we strode from the apartment.

Collateral 4.2

Conquest’s place was the sort of place that looked like it was or had been a government building, fifty or a hundred years ago.  A courthouse, a government office, or something.  In my day to day, I might think it fit into that general category, but there was no sign, and I’d never have cause to try and figure it out.

White exterior, pillars framing the front door, and broad stone stairs.

I climbed out of the car that the practitioner with no name had brought, bringing the rolled up image.  I couldn’t help but note the two men to either side of the double doors.  Both stood, and they had a vague military bearing, with their clothes not really being a uniform, but still sort of playing into my impression of what a hitman or an ex-veteran might wear, if they couldn’t leave the work entirely behind.  Boots, bulky jackets that hid guns, shaved heads.  One wore a shapeless, dull sweater, the other had his coat open, showing a suit or vest with a row of shiny brass buttons.

They also gave off a hostile impression.  The sense that they would attack me at any second, justified or not.  More like the Others I’d seen prowling around the perimeter of Hillsglade House.

I couldn’t say for sure if they were Others or not.

The nameless practitioner gestured, and I led the way to the door.  The men on either side looked at me, up and down, as I ascended the stairs.

“No weapons,” one said.

“Hm?”

“At your side.  A blade?”

Ah.  June.

“I promised the spirit I would keep her close and keep her warm.  Is there room for compromise?”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” the nameless practitioner said.

“Yes sir.”

To me, he said, “You don’t touch her, unless you give us warning, or you’ll get shot.”

“Noted.  Thank you,” I said.  A part of me was a little surprised that he’d jumped so quickly to calling it a ‘her’, but I supposed that was a part of living in this world.

“Know that whatever you leave behind is lost, past that threshold.”

“That rule ends when I’ve left?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And if I decide I don’t like the rule?”

“You’ll displease everyone in attendance, the Lord included,” he said.  “And your stay in Toronto will be a very short one.”

“Gotcha,” I said.

“You’ll want to use your Sight to watch your step.”

“My step?”

“Yes.”

I used my Sight as I opened the door, continued using it as I walked down the hallway.  Had I been using my regular vision, I might have found something off with the surroundings.  The furniture was old, everything was nice, but it didn’t really fit together.  It looked nice, when I took any room or area all together, but when I looked at it in more detail, the short table and mirror by the front door had nothing in common with the furniture at the end of the hallway.

Viewed through the Sight, there was another oddity.  Nothing was connected.  No object had a strong tie to anything.  Not to the room, not to any owner, not to events or ideas.  They were isolated, stranded.

Ghosts, if I could even call them ghosts, lingered here and there.  They were so faint I could look straight at them and I wouldn’t necessarily be able to make them out.  Psychic echoes of people who had been slain or defeated, many bearing grievous wounds that stood out, tied to the pieces of furniture, the decorations, and the objects collected on walls.  The tethers binding them were short enough that some were contorted, bent over tables, reaching for but unable to claim swords that rested on stands, clocks and candlesticks.

I got it, now.  This wasn’t a house that had been lovingly, if eccentrically decorated.  It was a large, sprawling trophy case.  Every enemy the Lord had vanquished, he had taken something from them, a piece of their home and a piece of their selves.

“Up the stairs.  Watch your step.”

I made my way up the step, avoiding one section of step that had badly splintered.  I noted the hole in the surface.  Something had penetrated the stair.

As I rounded the corner to continue up the staircase, I realized it was somewhat more involved than that.

The staircase existed in shambles.  A staff had been thrust into someone’s open mouth, continuing into the join between two stairs, punching through tile, concrete and wood.  The skull of the victim, jaw open, was still on the stairs.  The flesh had long since rotted away, the remainder of the body carted off.

A colonial-era sword had bit so deep into the stone railing that it had stuck.

My foot nearly slid on the stairs as I ascended.  I paused, picking it up, and I saw finger bones and shell casings.

I could smell the gun oil, a chalky, burnt smell that might have been the odor of old gunpowder.  Blood.

As I crested the top of the stairs, I saw the walls on either side of me were in ruins.  Open, snow-covered fields spread out to either side of the ruins, the clouds hanging low in the sky, to obscure my view. There were humps in the earth, that could have been shallow graves with the earth still heaped over them.  The alternative was that they were bodies buried by only the shallowest covering of snow.  Weapons of all sorts stood out from the plains like an eerie sort of grass.  There were a surprising number of religious symbols among the weapons.  Crosses planted in the earth.

It was dark, clearly night-time, but the sun hung directly over the long hallway in front of me, blood red and large enough to fill a quarter of the sky.

It was cold, and the sun afforded no more warmth than it did light.  It did, however manage to leech the moisture from my mouth.  It was both hot and cold at the same time, with one not taking away from the other.

“Huh,” I said.

“We’re in the fallow season within the Lord’s domain.”

I looked back at the nameless practitioner.  The moon hung over his head, far smaller than the sun, but still imposing and somehow artificial in how big and imposing it was.

“Fallow?”

“Please watch your step, and do keep moving.  Lingering can expose you to other effects here.  So can a misstep.  Things broken here do not always mend as you hope they would.  You can hastily patch up a wound that may take a lifetime to heal, or you can allow things to become something else altogether, after the breaking.  I doubt you want to do either, if you happen to fall through the floor and break a leg.”

“Point taken,” I said.  I picked my steps carefully, avoiding the increasing number of weapons that littered the area, the parts of the floor where damage, holes, or fire had left the footing unstable.

I elected to pull off my jacket, because I preferred being too cold to being too hot, and it seemed I wasn’t going to get a middle ground between the two.

“To be in Conquest’s domain is to be in a constant state of transition.  Emotions rise and fall, there is fire and rebellion at first, then we make peace with the state of things.  Broken things erode away, and then there is only defeat.  But to be the Conqueror is not a simple thing either.  They either take on a different role, which my lord cannot do, or they find new territory to seize, people to subjugate.  The territory changes as he finds new ground.”

“I didn’t know a demesne could be this… out there.  I mean, I read about apartments covered in flesh, but…”

“This isn’t a demesne, as you understand the term,” he said.  “Some beings are strong enough to influence their surroundings simply by residing there.”

“Ah.”

I continued forward, leaving ruined walls behind me as the hallway continued, unsupported by anything beneath.  A bridge of broken stone and tile, slow going when I had to pick my way around skeletal remains.

It wasn’t a long fall to the ground.  Fifteen feet or so, maybe sixteen if the snow was deeper than it looked.  But somehow, I didn’t get the impression I would be able to get back up if I did tip over.

The bridge reached a hill with more ruins at the perimeter, walling it off from the surrounding region.  The sun, somehow, was now directly above me, pressing down.

The light, however, seemed to come from the snow that dusted everything.

Conquest stood across from me, sitting on a stone.  He had a bit of a mullet, a white colonial-style jacket with a fleece collar and several belts, a rifle with a bayonet resting against one leg, and a badass beard with a waxed mustache.  Two aboriginal men were kneeling beside him, shirtless, with heavy collars shackled to their necks, chains leading up to his hand.  His other arm was outstretched, resting against one knee, hand open, with large green beetles crawling around the palm.

His eyes didn’t look human.  When I let my brain draw the connection, my first thought was ‘painting eyes’.  They were the sort of eyes I might expect to see in a really well done painting… every detail in place, but lifeless and flat.

When I looked him over again, I saw the entire thing fit.  I could have seen something similar on a tarot card, the posture, the very careful arrangement of elements.

A composition, a living symbol.  And somehow, this landscape was an extension of him. It was like he was ink, bleeding out onto the paper around him, and this… diorama was the end result.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

“My lord,” the nameless practitioner said, “he holds a weapon.  I agreed to let him carry it in.”

Conquest nodded slowly, then turned his painted eyes to me.

“I would offer you a seat,” he said, “But the only seat available is the ground, and I have no reason to make you debase yourself.  You may continue to stand.”

“Then I will do so…” I almost said sir, then reconsidered.  “Lord of Toronto.”

That seemed to do okay, as far as acknowledging his position.  I wasn’t dead yet.

“Hello, little morsel,” a voice murmured, just to my right.

I broke eye contact with the Lord of Toronto, and I very nearly jumped out of my skin.

She was big.  Maybe, if she’d been human-proportioned, she would have been two or three times my height, going by the size of her head and upper body.  But her body from the waist down was that of a great cat, the rise and fall of the muscles beneath the short fur very distinct.  Great feathered wings were folded against her body, the snow piling on them.

“Hello,” I said, my attention now caught by this new figure.  She might well have been the biggest living thing I’d seen in person.

She wasn’t beautiful, but she wasn’t hideous either.  Her hair was well-tended, falling in dark ringlets over her breasts, where the hair obscured the nipples.  Her fur and wings were pitch black.  Between pale flesh and dark fur, I’d completely failed to see her where she reclined.  Her human arms were folded beneath prodigious breasts, one of her feline front paws were folded over the other, and all of her sparkled with the moisture of snowflakes that had fallen onto her and melted.

I looked away, before I could break some rule, and I saw the others.  A man, bedraggled, in rumpled clothing, with two handsome men and two attractive women attending him.  He sat on the trunk of a tree that had grown horizontally, low to the ground, stump to his left, sparse branches fanning out to his right.  A bottle dangled from his fingers, the contents swishing as he tilted it one way, then the next.  His gaze was hard, penetrating.

The other local was a woman sat on a fallen chunk of masonry, her legs folded beside her.  Her hair was blonde, and she held a golden spindle.  I might have pegged her at thirty.  I almost thought she was a Duchamp, but the facial features didn’t fit the general mold I’d seen before.

“Allow me to introduce Isadora, apocrypha, sixth daughter of Phix,” Conquest spoke.

The sphinx smiled.

“High Drunk Jeremy Meath.”

Jeremy didn’t move an inch, but his underlings did bow their heads, flourishing some.

“And Diana Thompson.  Astrologer.”

“I hope we can get along,” I said.

“Your name?” the Lord asked.

“Blake,” I said.  I wasn’t sure if I had another answer.

“Blake,” the sphinx said.  “From English.  The name means ‘the pale, blond one’, also ‘black’.  A name of contrasts, hinting at duality.”

“Hush,” Diana said.  Her eyes darted from Isadora to the Lord, who was looking a touch irritated.

“Not in attendance is the Sister of Torches, the Shepherd, the Knights of the Basement, the Eye of the Storm, and the Queen’s Man,” Conquest said.

As I looked, I could see the other spots around the perimeter of this space that others might have found ‘seats’.  Stumps and bits of rock that might serve as chairs in a pinch.  Better than sitting on the ground, in any event.  It seemed this place was more like the government, where attendance wasn’t mandatory, and only certain seats were filled at certain times.

Between Conquest and the sphinx, I had the general feeling that I was well out of my depth.

“I’m hoping I don’t violate any protocol,” I said.  “I don’t know the particulars of this sort of meeting.  But I was told to bring a gift, and I would like to present this to you, Lord of Toronto.”

I held out the rolled up piece of art.

The nameless practitioner stepped forward from behind me, snatching the image from my hand.  He carried it to Conquest, handing it over.

Very strange, to see an otherworldly being like Conquest Given Form rolling the elastic down the length of the rolled up paper.  He unfurled it.

The image in the center was a man in a long coat, sketched out and filled in with watercolor and ink, the painting done in high detail.  The edges of the coat, and the edges of his indistinct weapon, which could have been a sword or a gun, were explosions of paint, spattering outward.

“What did this cost you, to bring to me?”

Somehow, saying ‘Five hundred bucks’ sounded inadequate.  “More money than I should have spent.”

“You should know, Lord,” the nameless practitioner said, “he artificially inflated the value, paying two and a half times what was asked.”

Fuck you, Mr. No-name.

“I would ask that you not take that to mean it’s inherently low in value,” I said.  “Art and artists are fickle creatures, and it’s the nature of an artist to undervalue what they create.  Once I saw it, I knew I was right.  Had I been able, I would have paid more.”

“Explain to me why I should value this art as a gift.”

Enough with looking gift horses in mouths.  How the fuck was I supposed to answer that question?  Art was art.

“Art is culture,” I said, speaking very slowly while thinking very fast.  “Taking a piece of culture for yourself seems very fitting for you, given what I know of you.”

“There are two kinds of taking,” Conquest said.  “When one gives love, love is not subtracted from a total.  Love can be taken a thousand or a million times over from the same individual, and that individual will not be bereft of love, if that love is genuine.  I am a taker of the other sort.  The sort to leave things bereft.  I ask you a second time, why should I value this as a gift?

Balls and fuck.  I hadn’t expected to be grilled.  I’d been told that it was a token gift.

“If a man hoards all of the art from a particular era, from a place or person, the world is bereft,” I said.  “That art is gone from the world, given over only to the man.”

“Then the gift becomes an obligation.  If I am to keep to my nature, I must aspire to collect all of this artist’s work.  If I own one piece, then I must own all to take from society and the world.  For the sake of expedience, I should kill the artist, so they can create no more art.”

I was so shocked I laughed a little.  “No.  No, not at all.”

“Then tell me, and I ask you a third time, a final time, why should I value this gift?”

I stood there, a number of eyes fixed on me, thinking.

Dangerous seconds passed, my mind ticking over everything I could think of.  The money, the deal, the friendship… I was reaching for one connection, one seed of an idea I could use to start making my argument.

I thought of Tiffany.  The strange looking girl who apparently had a girl-boner for me.  A damaged person, like me.  Like Alexis.

“Because the artist will mourn the loss of the piece, even as she takes away a profit from the transaction.  She will want to reference it in the future, to inform her future works or to chronicle her past, and this will forever be a missing link in her history.”

“If she didn’t take a photo or scan it,” the nameless practitioner said.

Fuck you, I thought again, more intensely than before.  I vividly imagined killing him, as he was very nearly setting me up to get killed.

Conquest looked at me, raising his eyebrows a fraction, inviting a response or counterargument.

“Nothing will hold up to the original.  She came from a place of pain and struggle, as many artists do, and that pain and struggle informed the work.  She put… something of herself into it.  You don’t do work that good and not miss it when the piece is gone.  In the future, if or when she finds her way to happiness, she’ll view that painting and the sale as a step on the journey to the happiness, and she’ll feel a pang.  There’s an energy in that, I’m sure.  I’ll feel a pang, because I’ll miss the money I could have spent elsewhere.  For the artist and for me, the loss will shape our futures.  She’ll do work without this piece to reference, and our destinies change.”

“Assuming she values the work,” the nameless practitioner said.  “And that it isn’t something she did on the spur of the moment.”

“I am assuming,” I said.  I managed to keep my tone civil.  “I’m awakened, I speak truth, I saw a variety of pieces, I’ve seen a lot of art in my life, and I can make that assumption with confidence.”

“It is best to be safe,” Conquest said.  “Isadora?  You’ve interacted with the art students at your University.”

The nameless practitioner took the image and held it open, facing Isadora.

She nodded once.  “It’s good work.”

“Jeremy.”

The nameless practitioner held it open for the drunk.

He nodded, but said nothing.

“Diana?”

Diana tilted her head one way, then the other.  “I can’t give you a verdict, I don’t know art.  But it looks nice.”

“Then I am satisfied,” the Lord of Toronto told me.  “The gift is received, and I’ll accept your presence in my domain until you give me reason to do otherwise.”

“I’m glad.  I appreciate the consideration, Lord of Toronto,” I said.  I didn’t want to thank him, so I chose my words carefully.

“I open the floor,” Conquest said.

“Abstaining,” the drunk said.

“For once,” Diana said.

“Ha ha,” he said, with zero humor.  “That hasn’t gotten old in the past twenty years.”

“We need to get it out of the way, whenever somebody new arrives,” Diana said.  “Are you new, Blake?”

“I only started a little while ago.”

“You brought a weapon,” Conquest said.  “You’ve Worked it?”

He made it sound like ‘worked’ had a capital to it.  An emphasis.

“If I may do so without offending anyone or inviting harm, I can show you,” I said.

He nodded.

Slowly, with two fingers, as if I had a cop looming over me, I drew the hatchet from my side.

Isadora smiled.  “Novices are so darling.  It’s a mass-manufactured tool, but you put so much effort into the binding.”

“Not me.  A… short lived mentor figure,” I said.

“Nonetheless,” she said.

“I would see the weapon,” the Lord of Toronto said.  “Will you give it over to me?”

I opened my mouth to agree, then stopped myself.

“With all due respect, Lord of Toronto, I’ll lend it to you,” I said.  “But this is, in many respects, like the painting.  An early achievement for me in what I hope will be a long and uneventful career as a practitioner.”

Even if all signs point to the opposite.

“I rescind the request,” he said.

“Sharp for a newbie,” Diana said.

“Once bitten, twice shy,” I said.

“Ahh,” she said, smiling.  “Poor you.  You came out of it okay?”

“I’m here,” I said.  “Not too badly bitten, metaphorically speaking, but shy.”

Her smile widened a bit.  “Shy is good.  A new driver needs to crash to learn a healthy respect for the road.  The same is true for one who practices.”

Oh, hey, practitioners who didn’t want to kill me.  I was getting a sense of how someone could get into this life and lifestyle and not be abjectly miserable.  Cool scenery, neat monsters, a thrill of danger…

“Who bit you?”

The question came from the drunk.

“Nobody local,” I said.

“What non-local bit you, then?” he asked.

“A circle and a coven,” I said.  “Who were looking to establish and secure their territory.”

“Oh,” Isadora said.  “Now you’ve got me curious-”

Damn.  Curiosity was bad.

“-and I’m thinking about all the places where there might be a circle and coven in the same place, ill-disposed to a new practitioner.”

Could I turn that around?

“Then, if it pleases you,” I said, “I won’t say, so you can enjoy the riddle.”

“That’s-” the drunk started.

“What?” I asked.

“A very foolish thing, to make statements like that.  A promise, an oath.”

“Oh,” I said.  “I’m new.”

“Clearly so,” he said.  “I had hoped, for the sake of my interests and yours, to hear your answer.”

In my interests?

“In my… good interests?” I asked.

He smiled, but he didn’t answer.

“I dare say, Jeremy” Diana said, “That you’re more lively in this meeting than I’ve seen you in over a year.  I mean, you showing up is a rare treat, but you participating?”

“A degree of attraction, perhaps.” Isadora suggested.

“I would like him to attend one of my parties,” Jeremy said, allowing himself the smallest smile.  His eyes, though, remained fixed on me.

If I’d allowed myself to relax a fraction, that comment and smile ripped it from me.  It wasn’t the gay or bisexual thing.  It was the vibe of it, the vague hostility I sensed from him, contrasted by the attraction, the fact that he was clearly sixty and that I could smell the booze and pot on him from where I stood, twenty feet away…

Bad memories boiled to the surface, unbidden.  I clenched my hands, and dimly realized I still held the hatchet.  I distracted myself by sheathing it.  Which meant jamming the handle into the side of my pants, so it sat against my leg.

Conquest seemed content to preside over this in silence, while the other three engaged in banter, putting the new guy on the spot.

“What’s your sign, Blake?” Diana asked.

“Can I tell that to an astrologer without putting myself at risk?” I asked.

“You can,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “Let me rephrase.  Will I open myself up to any risk by sharing it?”

“I promise you no harm from me and mine, along this vector,” she said.  “I’m curious about your compatibility, nothing more.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “I’d need that sort of promise from everyone present, and I don’t want to offend the Lord of Toronto.”

“We only want to get to know you better, but we can ask more innocuous questions.” Isadora said.  “Answer me this, who are you?”

Who was I?

I thought for a few seconds, trying to sum up an inoffensive answer, one that wouldn’t out me as a Thorburn, something that would put me in a good light, while remaining honest.

“I-” I started.

I stopped as I noticed the silence.

They were all very still, watching me.

Had they figured me out, somehow?

No.  It wasn’t hostility.  Not from anyone except the drunk.

I looked at the sphinx, and I saw how she was more still than any of them.  A friendly smile on her face.  But her body…

Rabbits went still when they sensed danger.  Predators, too, went still, when they were on the prowl, preparing to pounce.

What was going on?

A question?

No.

I had to remember what I was dealing with.

A sphinx and… a riddle.

Did that even count as a riddle?

I seemed to recall that the Greek or Roman myth of the Sphinx involved the murder of those who gave the wrong answer.

Who was I?

How close had I come to giving a simple, casual answer?  Had they collectively maneuvered me into this, or was it Isadora doing what her kind naturally did, timing the question so I might slip up and give the wrong answer?

As for answers, I deliberated for a moment.

“I’m the Fool card, drawn with the right hand, the High Priestess drawn with the left,” I said.

Just like that, the tension was gone.  I could see the others, Conquest excepted, shifting position.  The drunk took a swig from his bottle, looking somehow disgruntled, the astrologer changed position, so she sat with her bare legs dangling over the edge of the large stone block that served as her chair.

And Isadora changed the way her forepaws were folded in front of her, so the paw that had been beneath was now on top.

“Someone told you,” she said.

“I honestly figured it out myself,” I said.

“And you chose the answer that served to sum up who you were, while not giving any points that could be argued.”

“Honestly,” I said, “I chose the most bullshit answer that sprung to mind, because even if I was wrong, I thought it would buy me time to think or to argue the point.”

She broke into laughter.  Loud, and eerily human.  I could see Diana smiling, too.

But the Lord was grim and ‘painted’ as ever, and the drunk didn’t seem any less creepy.

“Most people simply don’t answer when she asks any question,” Diana said.

“Don’t tell him,” Isadora said.  Her paws uncrossed, and one hit the ground with a surprising amount of force as she shifted position to look at Diana, stirring clouds of dry powder.  “I was going to throw some more questions at him, see how easily that bullshit flows.”

“I appreciate the tip, Diana,” I said.

“You owe me one,” she said.

“A little one, maybe?” I suggested.  “I would have figured out that was allowed, sooner or later.”

“Whatever you wish,” Diana said, with a shrug.

“What other answers were you going to give?” Isadora asked.

I opened my mouth, then shut it.

Isadora pouted visibly, “No fun.  Okay, then I’ll rephrase.  I would like to know what other answers crossed your mind.”

I glanced at Diana, who gave me a dismissive wave.

“You’re safe, like that,” she said.

“I was going to tell you an abridged version of who I was and where I came from,” I told the sphinx.

“Ah, but that doesn’t answer the question, does it?” the astrologer asked.

“No,” I said.  “I guess not.”

“Nobody truly understands themselves, and figuring out who we are is an ever-transforming journey,” Isadora said.  “A riddle is merely a question that demands a thoughtful or clever answer.  Do you understand?”

I smiled a bit.

“No fun at all,” she pouted, again.

“Sphinxes are creations and natural Others with a heavy tie to the karmic balance,” Diana said.  “They’re often used as divine guardians for temples or sites of power.  Different sphinxes follow different rules, gaining certain rights and powers from karma and destiny, provided the other party deviates from a code, offers a mistruth, breaks from tradition, or something in that vein.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” I said.  So even here, in Conquests domain, she might have the ability to murder me with impunity?  Or she would gain another kind of power?  One tied to destiny, fating me to die at her hands and paws if I ever gave the wrong answer?

“You seem quick enough,” Isadora said.  “Tell me your other thoughts.  I would like to know how your mind operates.”

I glanced at Diana, who nodded.  Safe?

“The other answer I was going to give,” I said, “Would have been ‘a man’.  But I figured bullshit was better than being a smartass.”

“Yes,” Isadora said, and I could hear something dangerous in her tone, growing in strength as she continued speaking.  “When dealing with creatures such as I, virtually anything is better than being a smartass.”

Somewhere along the way, as she’d said that, her claws had emerged from their sheaths.  Her wings were spread, now, and I hadn’t even noticed, as I focused on her face and her words.

Wait, what?  I’d upset her?

My confusion must have registered on my face, because Diana felt compelled to give me an answer.  “Her mother was Phix, the original Greek sphinx.  ‘Man’ wasn’t the real answer, but it does serve as a reminder that the myth traditionally ends with Phix dying.”

Ah, balls.

“If I hadn’t asked for your thoughts, I would have torn you apart, hearing that come out of your mouth,” she said.  “I remain tempted.”

Double balls.

“I’m genuinely sorry,” I said, as soon as I thought I could talk without interrupting her.  “No offense or disrespect was intended.  Considering that you just tried to manipulate me into a situation where you could kill me, I think you’re pretty damn cool, as Others go.”

I watched her expression, watched the tension in her lower body, the individual claws on her paws flexing, as if her body was telling the story of how much she wanted to tear me apart.

“Flattery is cheap, morsel,” she said.

“But it’s affected you nonetheless?” Diana asked, sounding entirely too cavalier, given the situation.

Slowly, with a note of deliberateness and attention to drama, Isadora folded her wings and sheathed her claws.  I saw her tap one paw against the snow, as if thinking.  “Yes, I suppose it has.  I like him, this Blake.  Sharp enough to be interesting.  Reckless enough to be potential food.  I would not object to having him around.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Diana said.

Conquest glanced at Jeremy, the drunk.

“I abstained,” he said.

“An informal response, then,” Diana said.

“I abstained for a reason,” he said.

“What reason?” Isadora asked.

I saw him roll his eyes.

“Why should your fat fuck of a god care?” she asked.

God?

“I care, as a matter of fact,” Jeremy said.  “This Blake hasn’t given us any straight answers.  He’s clever, but we don’t know where he got his power, do we?  He’s the lowest value power and the highest, in Dexter’s hemisphere.  You don’t find that curious?”

“Tarot was never my thing,” Diana said.

“I think our boy here has a story, and I think madam professor isn’t paying it any mind because she likes his mind.  And you, astrologer, are into him because you’re a cougar and you like his body.”

“Cougars are generally older women,” Diana said.

“Your point being?” Jeremy asked.  Two of his attendants giggled at the jab.

“Can we return to the days when you ignored us and we could ignore you?” Diana asked.

“Soon enough.  But I’d like to have some answers, first.  I have reason to suspect he is not what he appears to be.”

Conquest shifted in his seat, leaning forward.  His slaves, chained up at his feet, looked up at me with eyes that were just as painted.  An extension of him.

“He has wounds on his hands,” Conquest said.  “As a man, he is diminished, hollow.  A woman stands behind the throne, in his architecture of the self.”

“Duality,” Isadora said.

Okay, now I was in the middle of very unfriendly territory with two, maybe three powers I really didn’t want to be on the wrong side of.

“Yes, I am inclined to agree with you, Dionysian,” the Lord of Toronto said.

Dionysian?  Dionysus… right.  God.  Greek or Roman, I was horrible at telling the difference between the two, and I was a little too freaked out to take the time to figure it out.

“We could interrogate him,” Jeremy said.  “Or, if you wanted to be especially pointed about it, we could have Isadora interrogate him.”

I watched Isadora’s claws come out.  “I do not exist at your bidding, drunkard, and I do not, especially, exist to be the pawn in your god’s schemes.”

“But,” the Lord of Toronto said, “If I requested it, you would be the pawn in mine.”

I saw Isadora smile, but it was a very dangerous sort of smile.  The sort of smile that would be on a person’s face while they pulled a man’s guts out from a hole in his stomach, if they were the type of person who really enjoyed pulling guts out of stomachs.  “We were getting along so well these past few years, my Lord.  It would be a shame to spoil that.”

Okay, fuck.  Now I was in the middle of something.

Could I use that?

Probably.

My instinct was to set them against one another, as I’d tried to do in Jacob’s Bell.  But, thinking two or three steps ahead, I couldn’t envision many situations where that worked out to my benefit.  Looking one step ahead, I could envision a few scenarios where it didn’t work out at all.

So, the question in the end was whether I should use that.

No, probably not.

But what were my other options?

“Let’s not fight,” I said.  “I’ve already come to like a couple of you, and I respect… I suppose I respect all of you.”

Their eyes fell on me.

I swallowed.  Have to keep control of the situation, because chaos and infighting is not to my advantage when so many of the combatants are this powerful.

“I’ll try to answer your questions,” I said.  “Can’t promise I’ll give an answer to all of them, but you can try to figure me out before you come to blows.”

“The newest member of the family is upset because mommy and daddy are fighting,” Diana said.  “It’s darling.”

“We have little spats all the time,” Isadora said.  “But most of us on this hilltop predate the invention of paper.  We’re not about to jeopardize that, much less over you, no offense.”

I was a little offended, but okay.  I looked at Conquest, but he was stone still.  Unreadable.

“Okay,” I said.

“Now, earlier, you posed a riddle for me.  A place with circles and covens, where could you possibly be from, hm?”

I would have answered, to distract and divert, but she’d phrased it as a question.

“Jacob’s Bell,” the sphinx said.

“I see a connection,” Diana said, sing-song.  In a more normal voice, she said, “Hidden by glamour, even.  I do think you’re right.”

“Which opens the way for another riddle,” the sphinx said.  “Where did you pick up the practice?  A place like that, the circles hold tight to their power.  Are you a refugee from the goblin’s festival of blood?  Easy to imagine a practitioner who wandered that way might have lost their belongings.”

“No connections,” Diana observed.

I looked over the group.  Saw the drunk leaning back, murmuring something to one of his attractive companions.  When he looked at me, he looked just a little bit pleased.

This shit was all intentional.  He knew who I was, or he had some idea.  He was throwing me to the wolves without getting directly involved.

And these bastards were big wolves.

“Something else,” the sphinx said.  “Too refined to be self taught.  Crone Mara wouldn’t teach him, as amusing as he is…”

“Thorburn,” Conquest said.  “It would have to be Thorburn.  She was getting on in years.  It’s due time.”

“Connection,” Diana said, her voice barely above a whisper, carrying across the clearing.

“Female heirs only,” Isadora said.

“A thief?  A very good disguise?” Diana said.

“Ah,” the sphinx said.  “And I actually liked you, morsel.  What a pity.”

“Wait a second,” I said.  I tried to look each of them in the eye, but I couldn’t do it without looking frantic.  I appealed to the Lord, even as he seemed the least inclined to back me up.  “I haven’t made any…”

I stopped myself.  I couldn’t actually say that I hadn’t dealt with demons in good conscience.  If the lawyers were representatives of the demons and devils and darker things, then I had.  I’d agreed to read the fucking book.  I’d… fuck.

“I’m doing my damndest to avoid going down that road,” I said.  “The universe is conspiring to push me that way, because I inherited bad karma and it’s probably the easiest route to fuck me over wholesale, but… I don’t want to, I’m fighting it, and I’ll gladly take any help that makes the fight easier…”

I saw the sphinx’s claws come out.

“…provided that help doesn’t involve killing or maiming me on any level.”

Conquest rose from his seat.  Which made for one hell of an understatement.

The landscape changed, as if conquest were attached to each and every thing by drawstrings.  The sun descended, in one smooth motion, as he rose, burning hotter, whiter, as it drew down, while the crimson bled out into the sky around it.  The walls around the hill washed away, like waves that had crashed against a cliffside and were now returning to the sea below.

His flesh pulled back, straining into something macabre as he swelled in size, as if simply standing involved an exaggerated change in size.  The sun, burning white now against a blood red sky, seemed more an extension of him, an accessory.

“If,” he said, and there was a tremor to his voice that resonated through all of the metaphysical strings that tied him to this world, “you would gladly take any help that will keep you from that road, you will have to unhappily take a push down that road.  The beings that diabolists traffic with bring defeat and pain wherever they tread.”

Each other attendee of the meeting was tense.  Even Jeremy, who had set this in motion.

“I could do with a calculated measure of defeat and pain,” the Lord of Toronto told me.  “You can stay here, safe from your enemies, and I will use your knowledge.  I can conquer you, subjugate you, own you, and you will find a peace in surrender.  All do, given time.”

I felt a kind of despair, and I knew he could tell.

I’d walked right into a trap.  Fuck no.

“I don’t know much at all,” I said, “I barely touched the books.  I’m… I’m not a female heir.  I didn’t inherit the respect or the power over Others that comes with the family name.  I can’t get to the books.”

“Then look at me, practitioner, meet my eyes and swear you do not know one dark power’s name.  That you do not know a single one you could summon.“

Had the lawyers set this up?

Had this been a factor, ever since Ms. Lewis told me how to summon Ornias?

I looked down at the ground.

“Then we will start with that one.  Then we will find a way to access the rest of your family’s knowledge.”

“Lord,” the sphinx said, “You must realize this puts us at odds with you and your new pet.”

“I act in accordance with my nature,” Conquest said.  “And I realize it makes you a very small problem, compared to how much I stand to gain.”

I saw the sphinx scowl.  “We’ll oppose you.”

“No,” Jeremy said.  “You’ll oppose him.  Lord, promise me you won’t touch the city, me, mine, or the Duchamps of Jacob’s Bell, and I’ll sit on the sidelines for this one.”

“Grant me one token favor,” Conquest said.  “To aid me along the way.”

“Granted,” Jeremy said.

“Traitor,” Diana muttered.

“We’ll be taking our leave,” Isadora said.

I watched her take flight.  Diana held up her spindle, and light from the sky swept over her.  She was gone a moment later.

“I’d like to take my leave,” I added, my voice sounding small, even as I tried to sound courageous.

“You stay,” Conquest said.  He reached, and I saw him touch connections with his broad fingers and hands.  “You-”

He pulled.

“And yours.”

Rose was hauled into plain view by the tug on the connection.

She dangled for a second from Conquest’s grasp.  He dropped her into the powder beside me.

“Let us begin,” Conquest said.

Collateral 4.3

Conquest turned his back, pushing a tree aside.  Where another tree would have been uprooted, his simply moved over the earth as if it were on rails.  The movement stirred cold air, and I flinched.

Rose stared up at him, then down at her hands.

“Hey, Rose,” I said, my hands in my pockets, my arms tight against my sides, trying to stay warm without being too hot at the same time.  “Let me start by-”

She heaved herself out of the snow, flinging herself at me with enough force to almost knock me over.  She wrapped her arms around me.

All of my fight or flight instincts were in high drive already.  Being grabbed suddenly didn’t help.

I would have hit her, but swinging a punch in self defense was different from trying to hit someone who was clinging so closely to me.  I would have had to deliver an underhanded punch to the gut, and… no.  The fact that it took me a second to get my bearings meant I had time to resist impulses.

It wasn’t helping, though.  It was a twist of a knife in an old wound, bringing back pain, shutting down my mental processing centers as every station went on alert.

She squeezed a little too hard, painfully, one arm over my shoulder, another at my side, head buried against my chest.  She was also warm, her heart pounding so hard I could feel it.

She was a real, physical person, here, it seemed.

A real physical person who was digging her nails into my back.

“Fingernails,” I croaked.

She didn’t respond, even if she did relax with the fingernails.  The intensity of it, coupled with the madness that surrounded us, was enough to rob us of any further communication.

“Fell,” Conquest spoke.  “See Mr. Meath out, then stand guard.  Nobody comes or leaves without my word.”

“I’d like to ask that you keep me updated, Lord,” the drunk said.  “On him and what you do with him.”

“I can,” was the reply.  “Why?”

“I have further business with him. In exchange for my continued cooperation, can I ask that he be kept within the city, for the time being?”

“You can ask,” Conquest said.  He seemed to consider.  “You take no actions to work against me in this endeavor.”

“Done.”

“That is all I need.  I will see to it.”

Why the fuck did Jeremy Meath have business with me?

Fuck, what did it even matter?

The nameless practitioner, who now had a name, glanced at me and Rose, and then left, Jeremy Meath and the small contingent of attractive men and women following.

I wanted freedom to move, but Rose was still clinging to me, and it was doing everything a hug shouldn’t.  Stirring ugly feelings of fear and unease, making me less calm, making me feel like I stood completely alone and adrift.

“Let go, Rose,” I said, quiet.

She didn’t move, holding me tight.

“Rose,” I said, under my breath.

“Hm,” Conquest made a sound.  My heart nearly stopped.  Had I accidentally gotten his attention?

My eyes moved to him, and I saw him looking down, pensive, but not looking down at us.  He’d changed subtly, and was still changing.  The line between clothing and skin was fading, the individual elements that had made up his outfit and appearance were dissolving, while retaining the bits that still let me think he fit with the idea of ‘Conquest’.

He had overlarge hands, now, plated in iron and what might have been bone, or a very pale metal, effectively gauntlets, but I could also see smaller hands, grasping, scrabbling out as if they sought to claw their way free of his coat sleeves.  Or his rolls of loose skin.  Or chainmail.  Whatever it was that wreathed his arms, now that it was ceasing to be a coat.  I could see it changing, sloughing away from an endless source, taking on a new texture and form as it layered over itself.  Hot wax, melting flesh, layers of dust settling atop one another.  All those things and none of them.

His flesh was stretched taut around his face and neck, pulling his mouth into a hollow, perpetual grin.  Except his smile wasn’t really a smile, whatever label I might stick on it.  Like the eyes had been ‘painted’, the smile was symbolic.  Just looking at it put ideas in my head: the rictus grins of the defeated; the expression of a general who had just won the war, caught between the joy of victory and the dawning horror as he left the battle behind and came to terms with what he had done.  Twisted into a frozen mask that he wore.

His beard and hair were longer than they had been, paler.  He was half again as tall, so broad in the shoulders it was bound to be symbolic in some fashion, and his coat trailed around him like a cape, now, the tips billowing and snaking through the snow as if being moved by a wind that I couldn’t feel. His slaves were hidden by his coat in one moment, gone when the coat flapped open again in the next.

He held the rifle with its bayonet, but the weapon was sagging too, not falling apart, but drooping like the materials were at melting temperatures.  When he shifted position, the sun remained behind him, as if the corners of it were anchored to his shoulders.  A pale halo.

The painted eyes, at least, were gone.  There was only darkness there.

Taking him in helped to divorce my brain from the invasion of my personal space, and I managed to get my thoughts on track, taking in our general circumstances.

Fuuuuuuuuuck, I thought.

His little movements were making the landscape change, and I found myself adjusting my footing, to ensure I could move if I had to.  That was Rose’s cue to loosen the hug and look up at Conquest.

“Fuck,” she whispered, echoing my thought.

“The meeting didn’t go so well,” I said.

“You don’t think you’re understating it a bit?”

“I’m understating it a lot.  See, the thing is-”

The Lord lowered his weapon, letting the butt-end of it hit the ground, interrupting me.

The stones and snow had moved and resettled, in the wake of the impact.  He was molding our surroundings.

I glanced at the exit.  No way we could just run out.

“I did not mean to disturb you.  Take a moment to yourselves,” Conquest said.

“Really?” I asked, before I could stop myself.  “Why?”

“Blake,” Rose said.

I could feel the fingernails again, and that was excuse enough to push her hands away and distance myself.  She let me.

“Let’s not question his… generosity,” she said.

“Giving succor to the weak is a tool for control,” Conquest said.  He turned, and with a sweep of his hand, he dashed away the snow from the hilltop, leaving only flat stone floor.  I winced as trace amounts of the snow hit the walls and came back my way, stinging, cold, and wet.  Rose ducked her head down, and I used my hand to help shield her face.

Steam and mist were rising off of us and the newly exposed floor.  I wasn’t sure if it was the cold freezing the moisture in the air or the ambient heat evaporating it.  At the same time, the air was dry enough that I had to try twice to clear my throat.

The hilltop was now more of a dais, a raised, flat circle of cut stone.  The drop down the sides seemed more precarious now.

Conquest continued, “…Break a man utterly, and he may well adore you for the simplest things, like bread, water, and relief from torture.  He will hate you too, but one can control them while the heart is swayed by love, and chain them away in darkness when it is controlled by the hatred.”

“Doesn’t it kind of defeat the point if you tell them how you’re manipulating them?”  I asked.

“Not at all,” Conquest said.  “Allow me to demonstrate…  If you remain calm and quiet, I will allow you a moment to talk amongst yourselves.  If you do not, I threaten torments that would haunt you for the remainder of your life.  Which do you choose?”

“The former,” I said.

“And do you like me more, because I gave you the choice, rather than choosing the latter myself?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“This is the first step on a journey.  At the end of these journeys, I have turned men into beasts, groveling for my favor, debasing himself for my mercy.  You are fortunate, in a way, because you are an admitted novice, of limited use.  I will use you up for the little knowledge you have, and then I will kill you once that knowledge is exhausted.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, trying to get my thoughts together and sound confident.  “I’m not a good groveler.  I think I’d lose it or snap before I got that far.”

“I am very good at what I do, diabolist, for I am the embodiment of what I do.  See to your companion.  Be happy for the succor and choices I do give you.  We begin in a matter of minutes.”

He turned his back, striding down the length of the hallway-bridge, arms at his sides.  I watched as the landscape shifted on either side.

“What are we beginning?” Rose asked, her voice a hush.  I watched her fold her arms tight against her body, moving restlessly.

“That’s what I was going to say.  I was understating it when I was telling you this didn’t go so well.  He wants me to summon something.”

“Something?  A something-something?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t agree, did you?”

“He’s not giving us much choice.”

“Fuck,” she said.  She seemed to turn the idea over in her head, eyes roving over our surroundings, then said, with a little more emphasis, “Fuck.”

“Well put,” I said.

“I don’t even know what to think,” she said.  “One second I’m reading, then…”

“Then this.  I know.  I was here, and I’m a bit stunned.”

“I’m cold,” she said.  “And hot?  I’m sweating, and it’s not because I’m scared.  The sweat’s making me colder.”

She was wearing a button-up blouse with a dark stone at the collarbone, and a very simple navy blue skirt that sat at the waist and ended at the knee.  Her shoes were an older fashion, too hard and black, with a single strap.  Grandmother’s clothes, borrowed from the mirror-verse.

But it didn’t really matter.

“It’s this place,” I said.  “It’s an extension of him, not a demesne.  It bends rules, to be generally uncomfortable.  To conquer us physically and mentally, by steadily wearing us down.”

“No, when I said I was cold, I meant I’m cold.  I haven’t felt anything except numb for… ever?”

“And you’re fragile,” I said, remembering.  “We don’t know how much damage this did, pulling you here, we shouldn’t risk you taking any more damage now.  I’d offer you my coat, but-”

“Please.”

“-It’ll only make you hotter.”

“I can deal with the heat.  I just… I guess I want more standing between me and the rest of this world.  A coat is pretty crummy armor, but I’ll take crummy armor.”

“Then you can most definitely have it,” I said.

I unfolded my coat from my arm, and I helped her put it on.  She didn’t slide her arms through the sleeves, but instead clutched at the opening with her hands, wrists crossed over one another.

“Thank you,” she said.

I nodded.

“Sorry about hugging you.  I only just realized.”

“It’s…” I started, I trailed off.

“What?”

“I was going to say it’s okay, but… yeah.  It’s okay.”

“Been a while since I had any human contact.  I just realized, and I wasn’t thinking.  It’s like I- I’ve been dealing with everything and there hasn’t been much support, and, even that…”

“I get it,” I said.

I did get it.  I knew what she was talking about.  To be alone and cut off for so long, and then be offered a hand… it fit with my own experience.  A drowning man could make a bad situation worse if he clung too hard to his rescuer.  A homeless boy might have to hold himself back, if an emotional connection was offered after years of loneliness.

“The jacket does help.  Thank you,” she said, again.  She wasn’t meeting my eyes.

I only nodded.

She looked so small.  Not that she was, but the coat enveloped her, and this landscape would have made the tallest man in the world look small.

I looked at the hallway bridge.  Our only exit, and Conquest was standing at the far end of it.

I had the locket, I had the hatchet.

Hardly enough to go up against this guy.

“I don’t think we have many options,” I said.

“Call the lawyers?” Rose asked.

“Let me clarify my earlier point,” I said.  “He wants to summon demons and whatever else to the world to leave whole areas devastated and suffering.  Introducing him to lawyers who have bosses that want the same thing?  Not a good idea.”

“We don’t have many allies.”

“We don’t have any,” I said.  “Maggie’s… sort of questionable, and she’s hours away.  The others people who were at this meeting aren’t on their Lord’s side, but they’re just as likely to murder us as help us.  Maybe more likely.”

“It’s just us, then?” Rose asked.

“And June,” I said.  “She’s… minor, but she’s still here.”

“Us and June, against an incarnation.”

“Did you… happen to be reading about incarnations?” I asked.  “Given where I was?”

“I was reading up on glamours,” she said.  “I’ve been getting through a book on glamour.”

“At least tell me you’ve picked up a few useful tricks?”

“Just theory, tips, ways to make it more effective.  Half of which I think you were doing anyways, by blithely going with the flow.”

“Until I crashed and burned,” I said.

“I read about that too.  But that doesn’t help us here,” she said.  She shifted uncomfortably beneath my coat.

“You okay?”

“Hot,” she said.

“Told you,” I said.  I snuck a glance at Conquest.  He had his arms raised, and the snow that was pouring down around him was gray.

“Fuck,” she said.  Rose turned around, taking it all in.  “Fuck.”

“Don’t panic,” I said.

“You-” she started.  She stopped, shaking her head a little.  “You know when you’re in the dark for a while, and then you step outside into the sunlight?  Or you’re enjoying the air conditioning, and you walk outside and it’s hot?  It’s worse than it would normally be.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like that, on every level.  Fuck.”

“But you’re out,” I said.

“I don’t know that I am,” she said.  “I’m… not there, but I’m here.  The rules are different.  There are spirits here.”

“His spirits.  I get that it’s a bit of a shock to the system, I do, but-”

“Wait.  Spirits.  Give me June.”

I glanced at Rose, then drew June.  I reversed her and passed her to Rose handle-first.

“Hi, June,” Rose said.  She had to adjust the coat to reach far enough, but she ran one hand along the blade, where patterns had been scratched into the metal.  Her hand was shaking, in the moment before she set it on the solid metal.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I’m thinking… no, I didn’t get much useful info out of the book on glamours.  But I did check out Valkyrie before I recommended it to you.  Binding spirits of the dead to objects.  Using their power… um.  I just need to remember how to do it.”

“Is this useful?”

“It’s… empirical data, one way or the other.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“It’s what it is.  Unless you have better ideas?” Rose asked.

I shook my head.  “No.  Go for it, whatever you’re doing.”

“June,” Rose said, more authoritarian in tone, raising the hatchet overhead.  “Come forth.”

Rose swung the hatchet down.

Cold air blasted the two of us, and when the dust and snow cleared, June was on her hands and knees in front of us.

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“Adjusting the temperature,” Rose said.  “June?  The cold of the cabin, with the door closed.  The cold of the room when you tried to get the fire going.”

“Hey,” I said.  “You’re-”

I felt it.  The cold air.  Unpleasant, biting at my exposed flesh.

You’re going to make it worse.

Except she wasn’t.  This cold didn’t exist in an eerie, impossible unity with the heat and dryness.  It was what it was, and it replaced the pre-existing weather conditions.

At the far end of the bridge, Conquest turned his head to look at us.

“Stop,” Rose ordered.  “Rest, like you did when you couldn’t get the fire going.”

June looked up, and the cold started to fade in intensity.

“Return,” Rose said.  “Firewood, remember?”

June disappeared into the hatchet, much as she had entered it in the first place.

Conquest was making his way back to us.  He was at no risk of falling from the bridge, because the bridge was essentially an extension of him.

“You’ve pissed him off,” I said.

“Okay,” Rose said.  “Thinking…”

The Lord had long strides, and he was able to move with confidence, despite the shaky nature of the bridge, the unsteady bits and the parts with weapons littering them.  When he strode forward, spears and swords were kicked free, to flip over in the air until they disappeared into the darkness below.

“Did you plan to piss him off?” I asked.

“I planned to study the effect on the area.  Which, if you’re right, is an effect over him.  Can it be influenced?  Can we arrest control over it?  Which is why we need to think and figure something out.”

“And?”  I asked, but it was too late to get an answer.  He was in earshot now.

We weren’t about to discuss strategies against him while he was here.

Wait, if this place was an extension of him… could he hear us all the way along?

That was a daunting thought.  Had we said anything damning?

Was that why he’d left us be?

He stepped past the threshold, and he brought the gray-black snow with him.

Volcanic ash, not snow.

“This will do,” he said, surveying the area.

I felt strangely okay, better than I had before he’d left.

It wasn’t just having had the chance to talk.  I felt okay because the weather wasn’t bearing down on me.

June had broken the effect, and the heat was taking its time to bleed back into our surroundings.  It was still cold, but it wasn’t cold and hot.

That said something.  I just wasn’t sure what.

“Can I assume you’ll cooperate?” the Lord asked.

“No,” Rose said, in the same moment I said, “Yes.”

We exchanged looks, annoyed with each other.  Saying no did nothing except give him an excuse to act against us.  The only option was to say…

“Yes,” I said, again, “You’re free to assume whatever you want, but I may rescind my agreement at any time.  I presume you’ll punish me at that point.”

“Then I’ll discuss this with you,” Conquest addressed me.  “What do you need, to summon a dark power to my realm?”

I thought, hard.  Not about what I actually required, but the nature of the question.

“A hell of a lot more courage,” I said.

“Fear of me will have to do in a pinch,” Conquest said.  “Do not be facetious.  You are in my realm and under my thumb.  I do not think you want to fight me.  In terms of resources, materials, time, and location…”

Maybe…

“Books,” I said.  “If I were to do this, I’d need books.”

Rose snapped her head around, looking at me.

“Which?”

“Texts from a building protected by a magic effect,” I said.  “With names, rules for rituals, words for the contracts…”

“There is no need for these things,” he said.  “You will summon the entity, and it will attack indiscriminately.  Let me change my question.  What is the bare minimum you require to bring one of these beings forth?”

Fuck.

I kept my mouth shut.

“You will answer, or I will punish your companion,” he said.

I glanced at Rose.

“You gave her your coat.  You’re attached to her.  I must assume you would be upset if she were disfigured or crippled.”

Fuck.

I clenched my hands at my sides.  The locket’s chain bit into the webbing of my hands.  But it wouldn’t be any use here.

“This is another step on your journey, diabolist.  You will do as I say, and you will do as I say hereafter.  Everything you do will reinforce my power over you.  If you obey, then you will continue to obey.  If one of you refuses, I punish the other, and that punishment resonates.  Accept what is, and this will be relatively painless for you.”

“Not so painless for the bystanders,” I said.  “The people you want to sic a demon on?”

“I am patient.  I am effectively immortal, and torture is a part of my power and domain.  Decide, one way or the other.”

“Can I have a private word with my colleague?” I asked.

“You’ve had your chance.  Decide, or perhaps I will make both of you suffer.”

So we did talk in private after all, or was this another word trick?  “When you say we’ve had our chance, do you mean here, just now, or do you mean in general?”

“Blake!” Rose called out.  “Not the fucking time to quibble!”

He reached down and picked up Rose with one hand, gripping her wrist and hauling her into the air..

“Hey!” I hollered.

“You aren’t grasping the gravity of your situation, diabolist.”

“I’m grasping it,” I said, “I’m trying to adapt to it, and that means figuring shit out!”

“The only adaptation I require is your bending to my will.  The only things you’ll want to figure out will be how to serve me.”

“Okay,” I said, “Fine!  Cutting past the shit and the figuring… you can hear anything in your realm, so there’s no real point to me whispering and conspiring with Rose, is there?”

He tilted his head slightly.

“Got any bright ideas, Rose?  Because I’m running pretty dry, here.”

“I don’t have a lot,” she said.

“Because the alternative is that cliche line like, hey, you know what’s at stake, so you’re okay with making the sacrifice, in exchange for my silence.”

“Fuck that, would you say that?”

“No,” I said.

“Neither would I!  Unless you’re saying that I’m a vestige, so I don’t count!”

“I’m not,” I said.  “I’m saying I don’t know what the fuck to do.”

“You obey,” Conquest said.

I envisioned it.  The flow of events, giving him Ornias’ name.  The summoning…  Conquest would become mightier, and as an Incarnation, he could deal with the fallout.  Probably.

No.  Wait.

“No,” I said.  “How does this play out?”

“I believe you are stalling, diabolist.”

“I am not stalling,” I said.  “Or I’m not just stalling.  I’m raising a legitimate concern.  You promised the safety of Toronto, its citizens, and the Duchamps of Jacob’s Bell.”

“Yes.”

“If I call something here…”

“It is sealed.  This is my realm, and I can contain an entity.”

“Even when you don’t know the exact rules?” I asked.  “The nature of the binding that’s required?  The special qualities of these beings?  I know of at least one that can tear through connections and enter a demesnes no problem.”

“They were bound once, they will be easier to bind again.  I can expend power, shape my domain into a prison.”

“Right,” I said.  “Except… I’m not sure the one I’d be calling has been bound before.”

He stared down at me with the black orbs in the midst of his pallid face.  He wasn’t smiling that horrible rictus smile, now.

“The one I’d be calling would be strong, and the people who gave it to me, well, I can’t guarantee that any being they put me in contact with was necessarily bound at any point.  From the description, this being could be one of the big names, someone who sits on a throne and bosses the others around.  Looking for a way to get here.”

“You can’t guarantee that is the case,” Conquest said.

“I can’t guarantee it isn’t,” I said.

“Which means,” Rose said, still dangling from his grasp, “That you’d need the books as much as we do.  Blake said he needed the books-”

She shot me a glance.

“I said I needed them because the extra rituals and precautions would keep me safe,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “And those rules and precautions are probably necessary to keep you safe, Incarnation or no.”

“Unless you really want to get straight into a one on one brawl with a dude that fucks with stars,” I said.

He remained very still.

“Can you put me down?” Rose asked.

“I could break you for your impertinence,” he said, hauling her up until her face was level with his.  “To give me orders?”

His breath in her face was enough to stir her hair.

She had the hatchet, still, but… god damn, I hoped she wasn’t dumb enough to swing it at his face.

In her shoes, I probably would have, but I processed things differently than most, when it came to personal space.

“I humbly request that you put me down, sir,” she said.

He let go, and she dropped a few feet to the ground.  Not a horrible drop, but still alarming, and the stone underfoot was hard.

When she’d recovered, while Conquest paced, I met Rose’s eyes.  I could tell we were thinking the same thing.  If we could get him to enter the circle…

“I am older than swords,” Conquest said.  “Older than man.  I have existed in countless forms, evolving and changing.  I rise to power, fall, and then find another environment, shape, and host.”

“As Conquest does,” I said.

“Yet you think I’ll fall for a simple trick?  A petty trap?  Things such as these do not go unguarded.”

“Actually,” I said.  “We didn’t really leave any safeguards.”

“Your forbears,” he said.

“The standard demesne protections,” Rose said.  “We can give you permission to enter the building, I believe?”

“Your allies, your enemies?  I refuse to believe it would be so easy as that.”

Enemies, well, there was the rub.

He looked between us.  I saw the realization dawn on his face, as we couldn’t deny it.

“You toy with me,” he said.  He visibly changed, skin stretching tighter.  His face shifted to that rigid grin, teeth bared.  “I should mutilate you right now, so you remember the mistake of such insults.”

The fucking sky was changing in tune with his emotions.  Plunging us into darkness.  Black rage.

“If you’re immortal,” I said, “Then yes, there is a trap our enemies set before us, but it will barely affect you, while it could have some pretty grave consequences for us.  You can go, get the books, bring them to us, and we could summon whichever sort of being you required.”

“You’re scheming, diabolist,” he said.

“At this stage of things, I’m just scheming to buy us some time.”

“To work against me.”

“More to get the two of us out of this predicament.”

“That is enough impertinence,” he said.  He looked to Rose, “You, stay.”

A cage rose up around her.

“No,” Rose said.

“And you,” he said, looking at me.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I said.  I backed away a step, and I found a wall behind me.  The wall hadn’t been there before.  “I’ll come willingly.”

“Not when you see our destination.  You forget what I am.  If it’s a choice between your cooperation and your tears, dragging you behind me while you dirty yourself in fear, I’ll take the latter.”

A kind of horror hit me, right in the gut.

Not cold horror, not a chill.  Horror as in a horror, a nightmare, a beast that might lurk under a small boy’s bed, wrong and disgusting and bad, as a feeling, slithering around my insides.

Because I knew he was probably right.

Because when it all came down to it, push to shove, I wasn’t really much of a man.  Not when someone or something bigger and stronger than me had their hands on me.  Not when I was unarmed and certain there was nothing I could do.  I had precedent for that.

Once he grabbed me, I was as good as dead, because I’d stop thinking until I was free again, and there was nothing thoughtless I could do to get out of this situation.  I wouldn’t listen to reason, and it wouldn’t be me fighting like a cornered rat.  I’d maybe manage to lash out, fail, then I’d shut down one hundred percent.

“Fuck you,” I said, moving laterally along the wall to try and put distance between myself and him.  But the wall was his.  “Piss-poor excuse for an Incarnation.  What the fuck is an Incarnation of Conquest doing in Canada?”

“Stop, Blake!” I heard Rose, as if far away.

“I find it interesting, to see what is revealed of people, when they are broken down,” the Lord said.  “With things relatively stable here, it’s been some time since I had the chance.  You’ve defaulted to scheming, impertinence, then aggression.  But it’s only when the pressure is increased, your very being challenged, that we’ll see who you truly are.”

“Fuck you and your fucking philosophy,” I said.

“God fucking dammit, Blake!  I am not sitting on the sidelines again, while you cross another fucking line!”

“Then help!”

She did, or she started to.  She said something, but my focus was wholly, entirely on the Lord.

There was a crash, and I saw her, free of the cage, hatchet in hand, June at her side.

“If I’m to steadily break you down and reveal facets of your being, which of the two should I break first?  Your companion said kind words to the bound ghost.  Do you feel a kind of fondness for it too?  I could scatter her to the Ether with a swat of my hand.”

“You don’t touch either of them.  You don’t touch me, either.”

My hands were shaking.

“I can do both, and I can bend you to my will, acquire the powers I wish to acquire,” the Lord of Toronto said.

“Wait,” Rose called out.  “I’ll tell you what you want to know.  All of it.”

“Your words have no weight, mirror-dweller,” Conquest said.  He didn’t take his eyes off me.

“My words are those of a Thorburn descendant, with all of the power of a daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter.”

“Words with power, but nothing I care to hear.  I’ll take what I need to know from him.”

“The barrier is one that slows time.  You’re immortal, it’s insignificant to you!” she cried out.

“Significant enough.  Time is always a valuable commodity.”

You can’t tell him, I thought.  Don’t tell him you can go and get the books, or we’re all fucked.

Then I cursed myself for even thinking that.  Because I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t blurt something out in panic.

He was everything I couldn’t deal with.

“Can you knock down the barrier?” Rose asked.

He half-turned to look at her.  “Potentially.  But I’m wondering why I shouldn’t send one of you to fetch the books and return to me.  A few months or years of your time are meaningless to me.”

“If too much time passes,” Rose said, sounding a thousand times calmer than I felt, “We lose ownership of the books.  They pass to the next heir, and you lose the advantage of having the Thorburn diabolist in your grip.”

She was skirting the truth, and he was buying it.

“Fine.  I am a patient being.  I will figure out a way to negotiate a path through the barrier, and torture each of you in the meantime.”

It kept coming back to that.

He had us, he knew it, and at this point, anything here was him amusing himself.

“If we don’t give permission to enter the premises?”

“I think you will,” he said, with confidence.

His focus was on Rose, and I could actually think.

We had no bargaining chips.  Nothing on the table.

No, we had one little thing.  Twice now, June had damaged the environment.  Breaking the cage, and dispelling the heat for a time.

It had been almost easy.

What else?  I had to pull together all of the little things I’d noticed.  What didn’t jibe?

I’d called him out on the strangeness of him leaving Rose and I to talk.  Why had he done it?  To give us succor and manipulate us?

No, it had been strange that he’d even explained that.  I’d called him out on that too.

Why had he done it?  To change the landscape?  To change it so it snowed black?

What had been the point of that, when he could have started squeezing us for what he wanted right away?

“We could compromise,” Rose said.  It sounded feeble, even to me.

“I am not one for compromises.  I take everything I want.”

“The idea of conquest is rife with compromises.  Cities get annexed, puppet governments and political figures stay in place, a broken populace can still riot, a-”

“I know what I am,” he said.

I wanted to signal her, to push her to keep going, but I couldn’t do it without potentially alerting him.

I could only use what she was inadvertently giving me.

Think.  Why had he taken the time to adjust the area?

Did it require constant maintenance?  No.  I didn’t get that feeling.

But maybe he’d wanted to strengthen it at the core level, in anticipation of the arrival.  He’d been fairly confident he could control a creature that had already been bound, which fit, given that he was Conquest.  Or a Conquest.  But maybe he hadn’t been entirely confident.

With that thought, other things fit into place.

“Then compromise with me!”  Rose said.  “With us.  Why torture us to death when you could have all of our power?”

“Because I take everything I want.  I can torture you within a hair of death and have your power at my disposal.”

The conversation continued, but I was thinking, scrambling to put everything in context, and I didn’t even hear it, now.

During the discussion with the other local powers, he’d stayed in the background, had remained mute, except to cut in and occasionally stop the discussion.

He’d only acted to seize at the opportunity I presented, making a hell of a lot of enemies along the way.

And, I couldn’t help but note, again, he’s a fucking Incarnation of Conquest in Canada.

I’d just invaded the Behaim household under the cloak of glamour.  Why the fuck was I putting so much stock in appearances?

If I stripped it all away, if I looked at everything he’d said as if he had no power at all…

This bastard was the fucking Wizard of Oz.

A small, insecure, relatively powerless being, and a whole lot of pretending.

Maybe a dangerous amount of pretending, if he didn’t actually have the power to follow through on the threats he was making, when he said he could do horrible things to us.

I was panting, still trying to get my body and thoughts under control, while my emotions had the helm, but there was a note of triumph in that mess of emotions, now.

It wasn’t a realization that won this for us.  We were still in his domain, he still had power, and not everything was appearances.  If I’d realized this, one of the other powers had to have a glimmer of the same idea.  Chances were good they knew.  They had other reasons for backing off, and many of them weren’t small fry.

But it was one series of thoughts that shed light on the monster under the bed and made it just a bit less scary.

It was a desperate monster we were dealing with.  One that was tormenting and scaring us because, maybe, it was clutching for power where it could find it, even if that meant threatening hostages.

“Is-” I started.  He turned, focusing on me, and I momentarily lost my train of thought.

Easy to think something, but hard to act as if it were true.  Which fit with what Rose had been saying about my glamour, not so long ago.

“Is… there another option?” I cut in, as Rose was about to speak.  “Is there another option that might allow us to show you all the respect you’re due, Lord of Toronto?  All due supplication?”

“You grovel after all,” he said.

“I suppose I can,” I said, eyes on the ground.  “It beats the alternative.”

I knew what he wanted, now that I had a sense of him.

If he wanted the scraps of power he could obtain, then I’d give it to him through obeisance rather than tortured screams.

“How are you imagining you might show me respect, diabolist?”

The first thought to cross my mind was the deal the lawyers had offered.

“A favor?  Favors?” I asked.

“I have subordinates.”

“Surely a Lord as great and powerful as yourself must have use for expendable assets?”

“You offer your lives?”

“I offer to risk our lives,” I said.  “But I beg for tolerance.  We’re new to this, our repertoire is limited.  We’ll need time to prepare for any task.”

“Again, you scheme, you plot.”

So close.  We were so close.

“I ask your forgiveness.  When dealing with one as great and powerful-”

“Your flattery is painfully transparent, as well.”

“Can we call it awe, instead?” Rose jumped in.  “We were talking about what it meant, to be Conquest.  Surely awe is Conquest’s due.”

“You take turns trying to manipulate me,” he said, and there was a note of anger in his tone.

“What other choice do we have?” I asked.  “In this, you can see our surrender.”

“Can I?  I ask, do I?”

In me, no.  I was only just starting to fight.

I wasn’t one to pray, so I merely closed my eyes and hoped.  Hoped Rose would-

“Yes,” Rose said.  “I don’t like it.  Not even a little bit.  But I don’t see another choice.  I guess we’re surrendering.”

“Then we have the groundwork for a deal,” Conquest said.  “I will find a way to shatter the barrier and access the house.  You will give me access and lend your presence as the Thorburn heir to command the beings you summon.  You will also do me three favors.  Do them in any order, but I expect one done a day.”

“What favors?” I asked.

“Doing what diabolists do,” Conquest said.  “There are three entities in my domain that I have not yet bothered with.  Two are lesser, and one is problematic on other levels.”

“Entities being…”

“Being the sort that diabolists deal in.  A human twisted by a mote of diabolic power, left in the wake of a being that passed this way long, long ago.  A twisted goblin that even other goblins steer clear of.  And an abstract sort of devil, not so powerful that it is worth the trouble of binding it, unless you have an expendable diabolist to attempt the deed.  I want each bound, captured, and brought to me.”

Okay, fuck.  A little more than I was expecting to have on my plate.

“We accept,” Rose said, “With the proviso that we may need some things, and some more information.”

“Hold on,” I said.

“We surrendered,” she said, and she sounded angry.  Or frustrated, I couldn’t tell which.

“You’ll have some limited resources and information.  Do you accept, diabolist?” Conquest asked me.

Fuck, this was not what I wanted to deal with.  I’d hoped for simpler errands.  Less delineated errands.

This threw a wrench into things.

“Why do you even want them?”

“Because power over others is achieved in steps, through footholds,” he said.

“I guess I have to,” I said.

“I’d like to hear a yes.”

Fuck.  I’d cornered myself.

“I will strive to carry out my end of the deal,” I said.

“It is nearly midnight now, outside of my domain,” he said.  “You have from midnight to midnight to accomplish one task.  The same goes for the next day, and the next.  By then, I should have the means of accessing your house, or we can negotiate for further errands to buy you a stay of execution, in a manner of speaking.”

“Got it,” I said.

“And I’ll need a certain guarantee.” he said.

He turned his hand over, and a metal cuff dropped halfway to the ground, where it then dangled from a chain.

Fuck.

“What guarantee?”

“If you want to leave my domain to carry out these errands, you’ll wear it,” he said.

I felt that ugliness worming its way through my gut once again.  Horror, nausea, unease ratcheted up to eleven.

I looked at Rose, and I saw her expression change.  Concern?

How wary did I look?  How green around the gills?

“We accepted,” I said.  “We had a deal.  A compromise.”

“No, I had your surrender,” he said.  “If we don’t still have that, then I don’t see a reason to let you leave.  Twenty four hours can pass, I can say you failed to carry out your end, and punish you accordingly.”

Fuck.

But there was no way I was letting him set his hands on me.

I couldn’t really surrender, not like that.

As if on an impulse, Rose stepped forward, extended an arm, and forced the shackle shut around one wrist.

The chain disappeared, and her arm dropped to her side.

The connection, however, between her and the Lord, took an entirely different shape.  A connection that wasn’t a cord, but a chain.

“I wanted the diabolist.”

“Through me, you have the diabolist,” Rose said.  “There’s a strong connection between us.”

Conquest deliberated for a moment.

“I tire of this.  Begone, both of you.”

“Both of us?” Rose asked.

“You’ll have what you need to begin the hunt in a few hours.  Take the time to sleep, in the meantime.”

With that, a door rose from the ground.

Couldn’t leave anything behind.  The hatchet, Rose…

Rose and I both walked to the door.  I grabbed her hand, then for safety’s sake, I grabbed June too.  In my hurry to leave, I pulled her behind me.

As we passed through the doorway, I felt Rose’s wrist crumble in my hand.

When I looked behind me, there was no door, and there was no Rose.

When I looked in front of me, I saw a parked car.  Rose stood in the window, where my reflection should have appeared, faint.  Wearing my coat.

She raised one wrist, showing me the shackle and the seemingly endless chain that trailed off to some far-distant point.

I looked at the car, trying to get my thoughts in order, but emotion boiled to the surface.

I kicked, hard, denting the door of the car.  Then I kicked again, this time striking with enough force to dislodge the mirror from the side of the car.

Ow.  My foot.

I picked it up.

“Jesus, Blake.”

“That did not go according to plan,” I said, as I strode away from where we’d been dropped off.

“No kidding.  Can- can you keep that mirror steady?  You’re not leaving me much space to work inside.”

I tucked it under one arm.

“Better.”

“I’m sorry, for all that,” I said.  “And thank you.”

“For what?” she asked.  I wasn’t sure which that was in reference to.

“For… everything there.  It was a clusterfuck, I fucking nearly melted down, and I only managed because you bought time.  And that shackle…”

“We support each other, eh?  It didn’t look like there was a snowball’s chance in hell that you were going to accept that.”

We walked in silence for a few seconds.

“Let’s not bring up hell, okay?” I asked.

“Right.”

“You did a fuckton of the supporting there,” I said.

“But you found a way to get us out.  That gives us a chance.”

“I didn’t plan for us to be dealing with demons and scary-as-fuck goblins,” I said.  “I would have negotiated, but you jumped on it so fast-”

“I started to read Black Lamb’s Blood,” Rose said.

Those fucking lawyers.  Giving us the book, having things play out like this.

“What the fuck could that book say that would make this a good idea?” I asked.

“Its not a good idea,” Rose said.  “But… I saw an out, and I knew you hadn’t read it, so you wouldn’t see it as an out.  So I jumped on it.”

“Meaning I need to read the book,” I said.  “On top of everything else.”

“It’d be a good idea.  But… we’re getting away from the main topic of conversation.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah.  You said you didn’t plan on errands dealing with demons.  What did you plan on?”

I debated for a minute.  I could tell her that I didn’t think Conquest was nearly as strong as he let on, I could tell her that Conquest was insecure, desperate…

“Blake?”

“I’m not sure what I can tell you while you have that shackle on you.”

“You think he can hear?”

“Just by the look of it, I’d guess it’s more so he can bring you to him whenever he wants.  And if he tortures you for information…”

I trailed off, and Rose apparently didn’t have anything to say in response.

“Fuck, I shouldn’t have let you wear that.”

“What’s done is done,” she said.  “If he tortures me for information, at least, can you give me a good reason to keep my mouth shut?  Tell me your plan is good enough that rescuing me is a possibility?”

“It’s not great,” I said.  “But it’s a start.”

“Am I helping?  Are you telling me the particulars?”

“You are, and I am.  Between running these errands of his, binding the demons and the Über-goblin, we’ve got to wrangle a mutiny, and get some of the other locals and powers on board for unseating Conquest from his throne.”

“That’s it?” she asked.

“That’s all I got,” I said.

“That’s not a very good plan.”

“I know.  It’s only a start.”

“Fuck.”

“I know.”

Collateral 4.4

What did it say about me and my situation when my first thought when I got dressed wasn’t what looked good, but what would serve me best in a bad situation?

I grabbed a pair of cargo pants from one drawer and frowned a bit.  Not my first choice.  Free clothes I’d gotten at a shelter, I hadn’t liked the pants then, I didn’t like them now.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful.  It was more… well, as Joel had gently put it, not long after I’d moved in, they had probably been out of fashion for a few years before their previous owner had bagged them up with a bunch of other clothes and dropped them off at a shelter.  But they would have been out of fashion in Ontario, which put us about two to four years behind the times.

By the time I traced it back to a time when it would have been in fashion, I was thinking the late nineties.

Bleh.  They were canvas, and consequently durable, and the extra pockets were what I was looking for.

T-shirt.  Knit hooded sweatshirt to get the two added pockets.

I slid the hatchet down the side of my pants leg, and found it didn’t sit nearly as well as it had with my jeans.  Too much room, the handle swung as I walked.  I held on to it instead, and I grabbed two spare belts from the hook in the back of my closet.

What else?  The locket was still uncomfortable.  Looking at it, I noticed the small wound on the back of my hand where I’d stabbed myself.  It wasn’t scabbed over, but it wasn’t bleeding either.  Tender.  Infected, or had I just washed away the scab while showering?

The Faerie hair was, I noticed, winding along the chain, maybe a little closer to the injury than elsewhere.  Closer to the wounds on my fingers where I’d sliced myself than it was to my arm.

“You okay, Blake?”

Hearing her voice coming from nowhere didn’t startle me anymore, I realized.  “I’m okay, generally speaking.”

“You look pensive.”

“I’m trying to shake the idea of this Faerie hair crawling into the hole in my hand and winding its way through my entire circulatory system.”

“That’s grisly.”

“It’s not impossible to believe,” I said.  “And if I let myself think it’s possible, then it’s going to become more possible, and once I get hair threading its way through my bloodstream, pain, physical changes, well, there’s no way I’m just going to meditate and convince myself it isn’t real.  So how would I stop it?  Even if I pulled it out, could I be sure I got all of it?”

“That’s… darker than I’ve come to expect of you.  Letting your imagination run wild.”

I looked over to see Rose in the mirror I’d stuck to the wall, an open book in front of her.

I sighed and turned my attention to my toolbox, putting things aside as I dug through the contents.  A box knife found its way to the kitchen table.  I found a set of small glass jars of acrylic paint, and weighed them in my hand before setting one aside.  Hole punch, good.  A few smooth-headed bolts, nuts…

I paused, before I could get lost in the mindless busywork.  “I guess I kind of woke up this morning and the plan doesn’t seem so hot as it did after way too much intensity and too little rest.  I’m thinking in terms of worst case scenarios.”

“Well, we’re stuck with it, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “We’re committed.  Give me a sec to think this stuff through, then I want to hear what you’ve been reading.”

“Deal,” she said.

I took the small jar of paint to the sink and washed out the little paint that remained, making sure it was clear.  Then I took a pair of scissors and removed all of the hair that was crawling free of the locket.

Lighter, spoon, burning hair, some water…

I emptied the resulting ink into the paint pot and placed it in my pocket.

Box knife into the other pocket.  Handful of hook screws in a sealed plastic bag, some string, pencils, a compass and protractor from a math set, a marker and two pens.

I found a small knife with a sheath, put the knife aside and used the sheath for a pair of scissors.

It took me a minute to arrange things so it was comfortable, and so I didn’t have too many things that would rattle or click as I walked.

I put the belts on the table, and propped one foot on the chair.  I wrapped a belt around my leg, up the thigh, then marked the point where it crossed over.  I did the same halfway down.

Using the box-cutter, I cut up the belts.

“Don’t look, Rose,” I said.  “Taking my pants off.”

“M’kay,” she said.  “Not asking why.”

I pulled my pants off, took the sections of belt and looped them around my now-bare leg, then used the hole punch to get through the leather.  I had to force the bolt through, with the smooth side pressing against my leg, to fix it in place, but I didn’t apply the nut.

I used a remaining length of belt to form loops, slid the hatchet through a few times to make sure they were a good fit, and attached the upper and lower portions together.

I screwed the bolts on tight to fix it in place, pulled my pants back on, and experimentally slid the hatchet in and out.  In a resting position, the axe pressed against my hip.

In a pinch… I caught the underside of the hatchet’s head with two fingers and pulled it straight up.  I caught the handle.  A shift of my grip, and I slid it back into place nearly as smoothly.

I tried walking around with it, and it didn’t swing at all.

I donned the bike mirror pendant that had come with the stuff Rose had given me.

“Probably going to chafe the hell out of my balls,” I muttered.  Boxer briefs or no.

“I said I wouldn’t ask why,” Rose said, raising the book so it blocked my view of her face, and her view of me.  “I’m not asking.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Then tell me.”

“About?”

“Motes.  Or abstract demons.  Or goblins,” I said, as I headed over to the hall closet and pulled a jacket on.

“If devils are fires, motes are sparks,” Rose said.  “Best comparison I can come up with.”

“Works.”

“Most of the time they just drift.  They’ll burn you if they make contact, but they’ll also burn out.  That’s probably not the sort we’re talking about.”

“It’s lodged in a person,” I said.

“Something like that.  If a spark happens to drift to a person or place where things are more… combustible, you can wind up with a blaze that’s nearly as bad as the one that set the fire in motion.  I don’t think this is that sort, either.”

“No?  It’s bad enough he wants it dealt with.”

“The Lord of Toronto wouldn’t be content to leave things to unreliable and untrained diabolists, if things were at that point.  That leaves two options.  It’s either an organized mote, which one of the three books I glanced over call imps, which means it’s still linked to the one that made it, or it’s independent, a blaze in the making.”

“I assume they need to be handled in different ways.”

“The organized ones have a mission,” she said.  “The independent ones don’t.”

I thought about how I’d figured out why Conquest was operating the way he was, how things had fallen into place.  Knowing about the motivations driving my enemies made it a hundred times easier to interact with them.  It put everything into context.

Was it strange that I hoped the thing was part of some organized group?

“And the host?” I asked.  “I learned my lesson last night.  Fuck of a lot easier to deal with something that’s human at the core.”

“Conquest was human once,” she said.

“I almost forgot,” I said.

“Kind of similar, really.  Let a mote get carried away, you end up with something that isn’t recognizable as human.  Our advantage is if this thing isn’t that far gone, there might be something human at the core.”

“Can they be saved?”

A knock at the door turned both of our heads.

Conquest’s man, Fell?  With all the info we’d been promised?

I headed to the door.  Not a practitioner.  Joel.

“Hey,” he said.  “How are you doing?”

“Honestly, I don’t really know how to answer that question.”

I gestured for him to come in, and he made his way into my front hall as I headed for the dining room.

“I just wanted to check in.  You sorta disappeared on us last night.”

“I said I would.”

“You did.  I sent everyone home as soon as Tiffany got back, locked up your place, but I waited up a bit to see if you’d show, and you were late.”

Time apparently flew when you were in another world.

“Yeah.  Thanks for that.”

“I was talking with some of the others.  Goosh, Alexis, Joseph.  This fear you have, that someone’s going to kill you?”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“I’m just wondering, where do you feel you’re at, mentally?”

“That is a hell of a question,” I said.  “One I’m not sure I’m prepared to answer.”

“Because I’m going to be upfront.  I’m worried about your mental health.”

“You hinted as much before,” I said.

He nodded slowly, and I could see how he was watching me, studying me.  “Do you think you’re getting sick?”

“Mentally?” I asked.  I sighed.  “I’ve wondered, but no.”

“No,” he said, more of an agreement than a counter to what I was saying.  “You don’t fit many of the symptoms.  You’re not irritable, you’re not distant.  You know that’s sort of why I said I’d invite people over?  To see how you fared?  And because it looked like you really needed people?”

“I didn’t, but it makes sense in retrospect,” I said.

“It usually starts with something bad happening, like the death of a family member.  Which got me thinking.  But you didn’t seem too distant.  Alexis said you seemed pretty together when she talked to you on the balcony.  You didn’t get angry when I raised the idea that you might be losing it.  So when you say that people might want to kill you…”

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s not really an answer, baby,” he said, very gently.

“No, I guess it isn’t.”

“Family stuff?  I know you aren’t close to your folks.  If it’s people you feel you have to protect…”

“It’s… more that I don’t want you guys embroiled in it,” I said.

I could tell that saying as much annoyed him.

But he bit back the annoyance and asked, “Did you talk to someone last night?  Did you get help?”

“Less than I’d hoped,” I said.  Did massive understatements like that affect my karma like outright lies did?  Probably not, but it felt like they should.

“Police?”

“I don’t think that would achieve anything,” I said.  “And right now, I just need to do what I need to do, and try to find my own way through it.”

“You don’t need to do this alone.  Do you want backup?  We’ve got flexible schedules, for the most part.  If you need company, someone to watch your back, we could set it up, so you don’t have to go anywhere alone.”

I knew why he was being so persistent, I just wished he wouldn’t be.  “No backup, not right now.”

“Do you need anything?  Don’t jump to saying no, either.  Think about it.  Because if you’re right, and this is as bad as you’re saying, somehow, you can’t leave us feeling like there was something we could’ve done to contribute.”

I tossed all the extra stuff I’d placed on the dining table into the toolbox.  “I’ve got a bunch of… I guess you could call them errands, these next few days.  A few people I need to see, to try and make sense of it all.”

“Accountants?”

“In the loosest sense, maybe,” I said.  “I’m liable to be out late.”

“You want something in the fridge, for when you get back?  A waiting meal?”

“That’d be excellent,” I said.

He smiled.

“I owe you guys,” I said.  “Really.”

“You’ve always been too uptight about making things equitable.  Giving me your bike..”

“You gave me your car.”

“Lean on us, Blake,” he said.  “You’ve damn well helped us out without getting paid back in kind.  If you’re in trouble…”

There was another knock on the door.

“Another favor, if you can, Joel?” I said, as I headed for the door, “If people are saying they’ll drop by, maybe tell them I’ve got my hands full right now.  Odds are good I’m going to be in the middle of something or I’m just plain not going to be here.  I don’t want to sound like you’re not welcome, but-”

“But you’ve got your hands full.”

I opened the door.

The nameless practitioner with a name.

I glanced back at Joel.  There wasn’t the slightest bit of curiosity on his face.

“The details you requested,” Fell said.

“Thanks,” I said.  “Hey Joel?”

“Yeah?”

“What if I told you this guy was one of the people who might be trying to kill me?”

He frowned a little, but it was very little emotion for what I was telling him.  “Is he?”

“I don’t know yet.  But maybe remember his face, and if something happens to me in the next few days, assume it’s him?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, frowning a bit more.

Fell reached out to put his hand on my shoulder, and I stepped out of his reach.

“Enough nonsense,” he said.

“Whatever,” I said.  “Lock up my place, Joel?”

Joel nodded.  “Of course.”

I popped into the kitchen, found the plastic container and grabbed a cupcake.  I offered one to Fell, and he shook his head.

I headed down the hallway with Fell.  When we were out of sight of the apartment, he reached into a pocket and threw a full handful of white sand onto the ground behind us.  It made a small cloud as it hit the ground.

I saw the connection between him and Joel disappear entirely, in the midst of it.

He glanced at me, clearly irritated.  “Don’t do something like that again.”

“Seeing what the limits are,” I said.

“You invite someone into our world, the costs are on your head,” he said.

“I wasn’t inviting him to our world.  I was telling him you might try to kill me, which you might.  If you use magic to fuck with him, then the costs are on your head.”

“Mm hmm,” he said.  “Do you really want to tempt me to go after your friends?”

“I’m thinking,” I said, “That if I already haven’t, I’m going to take steps to protect my friends postmortem.  You don’t want to see the sorts of traps I could set up.”

“I can see the connections around you,” he said.  “And I know bluster when I see it.”

“How does a guy like you wind up working for Conquest, anyways?”

He didn’t reply.

“Shadowy guy, going almost completely unnoticed, apparently good at manipulating connections.  What’s the rationale?”  I asked, before taking a bite of the cupcake.

He gave me a look, but again, he didn’t reply.

I swallowed, then responded, “Alright.  None of my business, maybe.  What is my business, is this info.”

He handed me a piece of paper.

C. Dowght.

1412 SunnydriveEtobicoke, ON

“That’s… not terribly helpful,” I said.

“This and this as well,” he said.

He handed me a large splinter of wood and a bone.  I held both in one hand and used the other to raise the cupcake to my mouth for another bite.

While I examined the items and chowed down on cupcake, the only noise were three sets of footsteps and the sound of a chain dragging on the floor.

The connections between the wood and bone and some distant location were rather strong.

“No details on what the enemies are?” I asked.

“I know very little,” he said.  “But I can answer questions.”

“C. Dowght.  The possessed guy, I presume?”

“Possession is the wrong word, but yes.  He’s cut himself off from friends and family, and neighbors have started to complain about smells and pests.”

“Pests?”

“In the past, the mote has touched other individuals.  Trash collected around them, and animals were drawn to the trash.  Stray dogs, raccoons, rats…”

“Other individuals, plural?” Rose asked, speaking from the mirror pendant.  “The mote hasn’t built up strength?  Catalyzed?  Become something more dangerous?”

I finished eating the cupcake while she took over the questions.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What does the mote look like?  What are its behaviors?  Powers?”

“I don’t know.  The Lord kept an eye on matters, which is his responsibility, but things never reached a dangerous point.  It grew to a certain strength, then moved on, starting over.  We never had cause to act.”

“That’s all you know?”

“Essentially.  He’s been abusive, threatening neighbors, they’ve complained numerous times, but the mote travels, distracting, and intercepting communications.”

“Sounds more like an imp,” Rose said.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“And it’s interesting that it’s roaming.  That suggests something about it,” Rose said.  “It doesn’t need to micromanage whatever it’s doing.”

“So… it acts, and then it leaves things alone, focusing on damage control?” I asked.  “Keeping the authorities from stepping in?”

“Something like that,” Rose said.

“What are the other two?” I asked.

“The splinter is from an old factory you’ll find on the outskirts of the city.  You should phone me when you’re ready for me to drive you there.  The abstract entity resides there.  The same is true for the goblin.”

“Please tell me you have a better description for this thing than you have for the mote.”

“An imp, not a mote,” Rose cut in,  “I think.”

“Imp, right,” I said.

“It was identified by context alone, and it is very possible it has been in the general area for some time.  It was brought to our attention by a local group of practitioners, a collection of dabblers more interested in socializing than their practice.  They were looking for a place to set up shop, where they might be able to establish a set of demesnes well out of the Lord’s dominion.  You understand, I’m sure, that he doesn’t like demesnes being formed inside his city.”

“I can sort of see that,” I said.  “Conquest’s territory being claimed?”

“Exactly.  The unfortunate group shrunk to three quarters of the size before they started connecting dots, realizing that there were inconsistencies.  Gaps.”

“Gaps?” I asked.

“They scheduled people to check out certain possible locations on certain dates, while they were investigating.  One group exploring each weekend.  One weekend, they found they had nothing scheduled.  They repeated their research to find buildings they might explore, and the factory turned up, matching with the gap.  In further investigation, they found a very small, closely-knit urban explorer’s group in the area, but that group hadn’t logged any visits, despite the ease of finding the abandoned building.”

“Meaning people aren’t getting there,” Rose said.

“Or,” I said, “They’re disappearing.  Not just them, but all records of them?”

“And both groups that were intending to explore it had members walk unwittingly into the trap,” Fell told me.  “The practitioners, the Knights of the Basement, took every possible precaution and visited the location.  They found a being they identified as a demon.  We believe they may have lost more members in the ensuing retreat, but there’s no way of knowing.”

“Annihilated in every respect,” Rose said.

“You said this fucking thing was minor,” I said.

“It is.  A greater devil or demon wouldn’t have let someone escape.  There would be less limitations binding it.  It could move quickly, but had to draw close.  We assume.  All reports suggested it was more animal than anything else.  Feral, unthinking, acting according to its particular pattern.”

I nodded, frowning.  Erasure.  The idea sat uncomfortably with me.

But, I remembered, I couldn’t get distracted.  I had to remember our second objective.  Reaching out to other groups.

“We’ll need to talk to these guys,” I said.  “The Knights.”

“That’s inconvenient.”

“Direct eyewitness reports,” I said.  “You can’t expect us to go in blind.”

“No, I suppose we can’t.  How soon would you need to talk to them?”

“Tomorrow, maybe,” I said.  Give Rose some time to read up on entities like this.  “We’ll handle one of the other two today.”

“Very well.  I’ll let them know and arrange a time.”

“This bone belongs to the goblin, then?”

“Perhaps the most straightforward of them all,” he said.  “Locals call it the hyena.”

“The hyena?”

“Just as serial killers form patterns, many Others do too, and they find power in those patterns.  The hyena is a big enough threat that our Lord believes he could fit in among the demons and devils.”

“Why?” I asked.  “What’s the pattern?”

“It eats spirits and Others.”

“I assume that’s not the whole story,” I said, as we exited the stairwell and stepped into the lobby.

“It doesn’t eat all of them.  By which I mean that it doesn’t finish eating anything.  The park where the goblin resides is littered with elementals, spirits, ghosts, and other beings that have been maimed, left half-devoured.  They’re lashing out in blind pain, and everything they touch is being twisted in turn.  Their pain is causing them to attack fellow Others, which only perpetuates the problem.  Dealing with the hyena would be tricky enough, but it has goblin followers, and it’s a treacherous road.”

“Sounds like a whole lot of what Conquest was looking for,” I said.  “Not just this guy, but the pain and general suffering around this… Dowght’s place?”

“We’re not looking for commentary,” he said.  “You either resolve the situations or you fail, which suits my Lord fine.”

“Right,” I said.  “Forget I asked.  Who do I reach out to, if I want to do some research?”

“We would like you to remain in contact with us alone.”

“You have books?  Because I did mention that I don’t have access to my grandmother’s stuff.”

“We can provide you with the knowledge we have.”

“That’s not good enough,” I said.  We stopped at the front door of the building.  “We were promised resources.”

“You were, but we’ve already provided some.  He holds them.”

“Wonderful,” I said.  “Fulfilling the letter of the law, here?”

“Essentially.”

“Is this at your master’s bidding?” I asked, getting just a little angry.  “Should I pity you for having to serve an idiot or pity you because you’re one?”

“I’ll be reporting this to my Lord,” he said.

“Fine,” I said.  “Report all of this.  He put up a fucking big show, last night.  Lots of threats, an awful lot of time and energy into getting my partner and I to do as he asked.  So… is he too dense to realize he’s going to get us killed and lose everything, or are you the idiot who thinks he’ll let it slide if you don’t tell us anything?”

“You don’t know him as well as I do,” Fell told me.

“I- Isn’t sharing a fucking name with us bound to serve him better than shortchanging us?”  Have to stick to questions, rather than statements.  “Tell me where I can find someone with some damn knowledge.”

“I do not take orders from you, diabolist,” Fell said.

“No?  Because you take orders from him, and I can’t help but feel that it’s kind of pathetic on some level.”

“Keep this up, and I could leave you bleeding to death in this lobby.  A sprinkle of sand, and your body will sit here and rot.  Your friends will hold their noses and step over your corpse, but you’ll remain here until the animals take you to pieces.”

Touched a nerve.

But I couldn’t back down.  I needed to reach out to others, and there was only one person to ask if I was going to find some to talk to today.  The apparent second in command of the guy I was preparing to confront.

“You could,” I said, “But will you?  No.  Conquest wouldn’t let his second in command make calls like that.  It would make him look weak, having to rely on you, deferring to your judgment like that.”

Which the Lord of Toronto might well be.  Weak, delegating instead of taking action himself.

If Fell knew how weak Conquest was, he couldn’t risk cluing anyone into that fact.  If he didn’t know, he couldn’t risk his own hide.

The only snag was a third possibility.  That he knew, that Conquest knew he knew, and successfully killing me would keep anyone from figuring anything out.

I was tense, waiting for an attack.

“And letting another person make demands?” Fell asked.

“Requesting information and assistance that would allow me to better assist your Lord,” I said, trying to sound as respectful as I could.

“I’ll talk to my Lord and get back to you,” he said.”

“It’ll have to be fast,” I said.  “There are only so many hours in the day, and I’m working with a deadline.”

The look he gave me was a cold one, impassive.

Why didn’t I think he’d hurry to give me an answer?

We parted ways without any sort of farewell.  Fell climbed into a car he’d illegally parked in front of the building, while I headed for the subway.

“You aren’t making any friends, doing that,” Rose said.

“Making friends isn’t generally the point when you antagonize people,” I said.  “He had it in for me, throwing me in front of the bus a few times while I was dealing with the Lord.  Before the Lord decided that, hey, demon summoning might be a good idea.”

“You know I could go to Grandmother’s and get her contact book?”

“I… had almost forgotten about that,” I said.  “But maybe it’s better that we play by the rules, and avoid letting on that we have access to more books.”

“Unless we run short on time.”

“Unless we run short on time,” I agreed.  “Might have to pull an all-nighter to meet with some of the others.”

“Might.  You up for it?”

“I don’t have a choice,” I said.  I flipped up my hood to help against the cold wind that blew from behind.

“Where’s our next stop, if we aren’t talking to any of them?”

I held up the paper so she could see through the mirror.  “We’re catching a ride on the subway, so we can visit Mr. Dowght, the unfortunate imp-blighted man.”

“We’re not actually doing anything, are we?”

“Looking,” I said.  “If we’re going to talk to someone and talk mutiny, we might as well ask informed questions.”

“Sounds good.”

I heard the faint sound of a page turning.  I guess she didn’t need to worry about bumping into anyone as she walked down the sidewalk.  She was reading as she went.

I resented here just a little.  I knew she was helping, but the fact that she could sit back, relax and read kind of sucked, when I was the one watching out for trouble, my Sight in overdrive as I peered at connections for everyone around us.  I stopped at a ‘don’t walk’ signal, and half-turned to glance back at the people behind me.

Not that there was any guarantee that I’d be able to see the connections of anyone hostile that might be following me, but I had to do something.

I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and turned my head, but it was already gone.  A glimpse, a flicker.

A group of people crowded in a bus shelter, a flock of pigeons, all puffed up against the cold, a couple getting in their car…

Someone walked through the flock of pigeons, and they took off, scattering into the air.

Except for one, which lingered for a half-second before taking off.

I watched it as it flew, joining others in the air, weaving in and out, focusing my Sight.

No connection to me, but there was a cord that stretched between it and a distant location, some distance to the east.

Someone in Jacob’s Bell was keeping tabs on me.  Via Pigeon?  I couldn’t imagine it was Maggie.  It didn’t fit Laird, and it didn’t seem like it would be the Duchamps.

Mara?

Briar Girl?

I descended the stairs to the subway, paying and then pushing my way through the turnstile.  The train arrived quickly, and I braced myself, closed my eyes as the crowd pressed in, pressed close.

When the opportunity arose, I pushed through the crowd and moved back to the most open space, in a corner, bracing one foot against the wall so my knee jutted out.  A subtle discouragement against pressing against me, unless someone wanted a knee pressing into their thigh.

The doors whisked shut, the car kicked into motion, and we were on our way.

I checked over the car, found nothing suspicious, and let myself relax for a moment, watching the barely-lit tunnel pass by through the dark window.

The person nearest me bent down to grab his bag off the floor just as the car pulled to a stop.  He lurched, off balance, planting a foot on the ground, and banged against my knee.

I bristled.  I didn’t want to, but I tensed, bothered.

“Sorry, miss,” he said, as he caught himself, standing.

He straightened, then glanced at my face, and there was genuine surprise there.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Sir,” he said.  He looked genuinely embarrassed, but he smiled, showing me bad teeth, very white but in dire need of braces.  He glanced at the window, then back at me, and I saw momentary confusion on his face.  “Sorry sir.”

He hurried to make his exit from the train before he missed his stop.

No sign of anything suspicious, with the Sight.  An ordinary person.

I looked at the window, the same spot he’d just glanced, and I saw Rose, standing in the same spot I was standing, an open book in her hands.

Had he seen her?

■

It wound up being a bit of a hike from the bus stop to the street we needed.  Suburbs, extending this way and that.  Row and row of residential areas, dotted by the occasional park, patch of woods, or school.

Right away, I could tell that something was wrong.

Crows gathered by the dozens in nearby trees, making their characteristic unpleasant cries.  The homes were big, the cars in driveways undeniably expensive cars, as a rule.  But things looked just a bit unkempt.  Driveways weren’t shoveled, I noticed two broken windows, one BMW that had been plowed in and abandoned for the spring.

In several places, branches had been torn from trees by the snow, and they had been left there.

I passed a car where a pair of forty-something women were unloading bags of household stuff, having just finished a shopping run.

“Excuse me,” I called out.

If looks could kill.  I only got glares in response.  They shuffled back.  Almost afraid.

I pressed on.  “I’m looking for…”

They turned to leave.

“Fourteen-twelve?  C. Dowght?” I called out.

I got a look of disgust mingled with the fear and the abject dislike I’d seen in those glares.  “Craig Dowght?  You’re his friend?”

“No,” I said.  “No.  I’ve been asked to look into the situation there.”

That earned me a critical once-over, as she looked at me and apparently deemed me unsatisfactory.  “You’re with the city?”

“I was asked to handle this by someone who is,” I said.

“We already told them everything.”

“Tell me,” I said.

One of the women turned to the other, “My hands are getting cold.  I’m going inside.  Can you talk to him?”

“No, I’ll come with you.”

Ignoring me, the two women turned to head for the door.

“Hey,” I said, raising my voice.

They didn’t even turn to look.  Furtive, hurrying.

“Hey!”  I shouted.

That got a response.  They turned, obviously alarmed.

Too alarmed.

Even the way they held themselves, heads ducked down…

Was that the case with everything here?  With everyone?

The cawing of the crows carried through the general silence.  The roads here weren’t active.

One mote, or one imp.  Whatever it was.  It was up to something here.

“He’s left his place a mess, as I understand it,” I said.  “Some animals?”

“No, a lot of animals.”

“Rats, raccoons?”

“Stray dogs, cats.  Mangy things.  He feeds them, you know.  He’s a hoarder, but he hoards animals.”

“And, what, it’s getting to be enough of a problem that people won’t leave their houses?”

That earned me irritated looks.  A bad guess?

Something was keeping people from leaving their houses, abandoning their nice cars under several feet of snow.

They weren’t volunteering anything, here.

“Any specific incidents?” I asked.

“Incidents?”

“Attacks?  Strange behavior?  Anything about Dowght himself?”

“I wasn’t lying when I said I was cold.”

“If you help me,” I said, raising my voice, stern, “I can maybe fix this.  But it gets a lot harder if I’m flying blind.”

“We’ve reported it for months and nothing’s come of it.”

“We think someone’s pulling strings,” I said, “Stalling investigation by dealing with stuff behind the scenes.”

I saw them exchange glances.

“And,” I said, “You should know that if I don’t deal with it, there’s a good chance this will keep getting swept under the rug.  At least until it gets so bad there’s no choice but to address the problem.”

“It’s already bad,” one woman said.

“How bad?  Tell me.”

Another set of glances.

“Or tell me why you don’t want to talk about it?”

“You aren’t with the media?”

“No.”

“If this story gets out, nobody benefits,” the second woman said.

“If it gets out, they’re forced to take action.”

“And property values plummet, we get embarrassed, and they do the bare minimum necessary, procrastinating until someone else takes over and foots the expense.”

“Ah,” I said.  “But it’s the embarrassment, really?”

“Now you’re being rude.”

“What incidents?  What happened?”

“Someone, and I’m not naming names, had their baby attacked in its stroller, back in the fall.”

“By?”

“Mice.”

“Mice in a stroller,” I said.

“It’s not that we’re afraid to leave our houses.  You get attacked once, and you learn to be careful from there on out.”

“Attacked?”

“It’s that man.  He feeds the animals, and they get dependent on him, but then he stops, or he starts feeding different animals, and-“

“I’m getting the picture.  You wind up with a lot of hungry mice, stray dogs, cats, and whatever elses who are collecting in the area, dangerously hungry, and a human looks like a good target.”

“And bears,” the second woman said.  “No attacks, thank God, but I’ve heard they’ve been lurking.  We stopped putting out trash, stick it in the back of the car and take it to the dump ourselves.”

The other woman added, “The birds too, they attack.  Nobody talks about it, but you see the exterminators.”

I didn’t follow her segue?  “For the birds?”

“No,” she said.  She looked like she was caught between humiliation and annoyance.

“For the rodents?” I guessed.

“For the bugs,” she said, whispering the last word.

“For the bugs, I see.”

“They’re in the basements, the pantries.  If you seal it, the mice get at it.  If you don’t, the bugs get in it.  I can’t turn my back on a glass of orange juice without finding a fly drowned in it.”

“I’m starting to see the problem.  Alright.  I’m going to see what I can do.”

“There’s no easy fix for this,” the first woman said.  “Even if you deal with him, the infestations, and the upset to the ecosystem…”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, again.  I paused.  “Is he violent?”

“I don’t know.”

Have to assume he is, then.

My momentary deliberation seemed to be their excuse to make their exit.  I couldn’t think of another question before they disappeared inside, bags rustling.  The door slammed shut.

I checked the house numbers, identified the direction I needed to walk, and trudged in the slush along the side of the street.

The crows croaked, shuffling on branches, roughly half of them staring down at me.

A woman screamed, a bloodcurdling shriek.

Turning, I saw no woman.

A hare, or a rabbit, charging me.

Mouth opened wide, incisors ready to bite-

I shifted my weight and kicked.  It sailed over a snowbank and into a driveway.  Crows on nearby trees flapped wings and shifted to different branches.

“Rabbits scream?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “Startles predators.”

I moved around the snowbank, wary.  “I’m not the one who was attacking there.”

“No,” Rose said.  “Hm.”

I saw the rabbit lying there, on its side, breathing fast.

I thought about using June, then settled for using my boot instead.  “I know it’s not your fault, bunny.  Sorry I have to do this.”

I stomped on its head full strength, twice, then backed away, scuffing my boot in the snow and slush.

“Graymalkin, Paddock,” Rose said.

“Hm?”

“Macbeth.  Twelfth grade English?”

“I didn’t take twelfth grade English.”

“Act one.  The three witches call out an invocation.  They call out the names of Graymalkin and Paddock.”

“Demons?”

“No.  A cat and a toad.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Humans paying obeisance to animals.  Back then, the natural order was that god ruled over all things, the king served just under god, all the way down the line to the lowest order of mankind, but mankind was given dominion over the earth, power over the animals.”

“Right, okay,” I said.

“But the witches, well, it’s a sign that they’re something twisted and wrong, that they reverse the natural order of things.  Animals on top, and the king brought low, as in Macbeth’s case.”

“You think that’s what’s happening?”

“Yeah.”

“And Dowght is at the center of it.”

“Has to be.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Not the word I’d use for it.  A rabbit just tried to hamstring you.”

I glanced up and around, taking in the crows.

Were more looking at me than before?

The caws had stopped.

I’d had feelings like this before.  Where my instincts told me nothing good was coming.

I bent down and picked up the rabbit with gloved hands.

“Blake?”

Crows took flight, a handful at a time.  This time, they didn’t just settle down on the closest branch.  They were flying around me, keeping a certain distance.

Coordinating.  Lovely.

“And here we go,” I said.

“Blake?”

“I saw this on TV, a bit ago,” I said.  I gripped the rabbit in both hands, one hand around the ribcage, the other at the base of the ribs.  The mangled head drizzled blood on me.

“What the fuck are you doing, Blake?”

I squeezed, forcing the contents of the rabbit’s lower body down.

The rabbit’s internal organs burst from its anus with explosive force.  They landed in a single mess on the driveway, steaming.

The first birds descended, swooping down.  I ducked low, shielding my head and face, and stomped on the organs, hard.

Turning around, I used my boot to drag them on the surface of the driveway.

When I’d turned a complete circle, returning the tattered remains, blood and rabbit shit to the point where they’d landed, I straightened.

The birds were veering off before they reached me.

“A circle,” Rose said.

“Like repelling like,” I said.  “Blood, fur, shit, freshly sacrificed life… holy fuck, I’m glad that worked.”

“We’re still in a bad spot,” Rose observed.  “You can’t leave the circle.”

“No,” I said, “Suppose not.”

The fluttering of wings filled the air.

“I’m open to ideas,” I said.  “Maybe using June?  Freeze them out?”

“I’m not sure we can freeze them before we freeze ourselves,” Rose said.  “They have feathers, you don’t.”

“I guess,” I said.  “I’ve got a hell of a lot more body mass.”

“They’ll just fly away and keep watch.  We need to address the source of the problem.”

“Source?”

“Imp!” Rose shouted.  Her voice rang out.  “I, Rose Thorburn, bid you to announce yourself!”

The tone of the fluttering changed.

“My line has dealt with others of your kind.  Announce yourself, or be diminished!  You are not so strong you can ignore me!”

I heard a growl behind me and turned.  A dog, so thin I could see its ribs sticking out.

A cat appeared at the edge of a gutter.

More dogs appeared on the fringes.

And, after the birds collected for a moment, then parted, the Imp made its appearance.

Two feet tall, proportioned like a baby, it was lipless, its mangled double row of fangs exposed.  The eyes were pale, like a blind man’s, the skin somewhere between ashy gray and black.

“Pauz, of the fifth choir, feral and foul,” he said, in a deeper voice that didn’t fit his frame.

Oddly cute, in a fucked up way.

“You hear what I said about Macbeth?” Rose asked.

“Uh huh.”

“Want to help take down a king?”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Collateral 4.5

“A king?” Pauz asked.

The birds settled, landing on the snowbanks all around us.  The dogs sat.

Fuck.  I didn’t want to see him listening.

“Ix-nay the ealing-day ith-way evils-day,” I muttered.

“Thirty languages of mankind,” Pauz said, his voice far too deep for how small he was.  When he stood, he used the claws on his hands to perch.  When he moved forward, he used the claws to keep his balance, with the oversized head and heavy slouch.  His blind eyes were heavily lidded, as he glared at me.  “I have learned from each host that I have taken.  But I do not know this tongue?”

“For real?” I asked.

“For real,” Pauz said, deadly serious.

“My companion doesn’t want me to deal with you, Pauz,” Rose said.  “He thinks it’s dangerous.”

“Then he is right,” Pauz said.  “I am a danger to you.”

Was it bad that a very small part of me wanted to laugh in response to that?  Rationally, I knew he was in no way harmless, but… so tiny.

“You are,” Rose said.  “You’ve made that clear, here.  But you have a goal, don’t you?  Standing orders?  I wasn’t too far off when I assumed you were acting against the natural order?”

“Mm hmm,” Pauz said.

“Upheaval, disorder, sowing seeds.  Doing damage that won’t ever be repaired.  The animals here are never going to act completely normal again, are they?”

“No,” Pauz said.  “They are mine, and so are the people.  I have my claws set in them, and already, I rend these people, strip things away, and change them.”

“Building a foundation,” Rose said.  “So you can climb the ladder, access the greater powers, and more important people.  Turn them upside down as you have with the animals.”

How would that work?  A politician or CEO made feral?  Savage?  Falling from power, doing as much damage on the way as they could?

Pauz’s head turned.  A car was approaching from the end of the street.  The animals all moved simultaneously, crows alternately flocking closer or flying away, dogs slinking into the shadows or recesses where they could hide between cars and snowbanks.  The birds descended on the disemboweled rabbit carcass I’d discarded, then took to the air, flying with the carcass carried between them, rending it, tearing, savage.

The car slowed as it approached the airborne flock, which only made it easier for them, when they dropped the dead rabbit onto the windshield.  The glass cracked but didn’t break.

The car skidded to a stop.  There was a pause, where the driver and passenger looked at me, the whites of their eyes showing.  They started moving again, crawling forward, and then turned into a driveway.

Were they going to comment?  Wonder why I was standing in their neighbor’s driveway?  Force me to leave, and abandon the safety of my improvised circle?

They backed up, accelerated, then braked hard.  The tattered rabbit corpse slid over the hood and onto the driveway, just in front of the garage.

They fled the car, glancing at me, then hurried into their home, leaving the corpse where it was.  The car locks were activated after they were inside.

Pauz climbed up the side of the car, onto the hood.  One strike of his claw punctured the window where the cracks already spiderwebbed out from the impact site, leaving a hole I could maybe have fit my head through.

The imp hopped onto the roof of the car, while a skeletal dog climbed up and wormed through the hole in the window, the edges of the glass slicing it here and there.

I could see the dog through the car windows, moving in between the driver and passenger seats, into the back seat of the car.  Not sitting there, but hiding on the floor of the car.

Something told me it wouldn’t act until the car was well in motion.

No.  I had to pay attention to the birds, the dogs.  It was a fundamental problem, a change in the overarching dynamic of how they operated.  They were cooperating, acting in sync, according to Pauz’s more malign interests, but working against the system that was our ecosystem.

If a politician was brought under the influence of Pauz the way the animals here were, then they might do as Pauz wanted them to do, while working against civilization and society.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about what kind of damage someone could do, given zero compunctions, an imp on their shoulder, and a powerful position.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about what Conquest would do, given the same.

Fuck.

“This isn’t going to work the way you want it to, Rose,” I said, speaking under my breath.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” she said.  “And we’ve got him listening.”

“Remember the nuke analogy?  He’s the equivalent of fallout, the radiation, pollution, whatever you want to call him.  Handle with fucking care, Rose.”

“I know.  Back me up?  Trust me?”

I had to think about it for a second.

“Blake.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I’ve demanded the same of you too often to do anything different.  “I’ll hear you out on this.”

“Pauz!”  Rose called out.

“Mm?”  Pauz responded.  He was watching crows tear apart the rabbit.

“You’re not getting very far, are you?  You’re seeding your malignancy here and there, but something’s going wrong, isn’t it?  You keep changing hosts.  You’re not getting traction.  I’m offering you a shortcut.”

“You’re offering me a king.”

“Yes.  Someone with power, with clout.”

“Who?”

“The Lord of Toronto.  An Incarnation of Conquest.  He thinks he can use you.”

“Does he?”  Pauz asked.

“We can set you up with him, so you’re in a better position than ever.”

“How?  Why?”

“The why is easy,” Rose said.  “We’re not exactly on good terms with the local Lord.  As for how… I’m going to need you to play along.  We’re going to bind you.”

“Trickery,” Pauz said.  He made his way across the roof of the car, his claws scratching and poking through the metal as he did, eliciting nail-on-a-blackboard screeches.  “Deception, lies.”

“A little more subtle than that, Pauz.  I’m thinking… If we simply bind you and release you, it’s too obvious.  He’ll bind you himself, whether you agree or not.  But if we give the contract a time limit.”

“Hm?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m on the same page as the Imp here.  Hm?”

“If we did the binding now,” Rose said, “and I’m not saying we should, we’d give it a time limit of sixty hours.  Then you’re free.  No fanfare, no announcement, nothing overt changes.  We could even mock up a fake connection or binding to hide it, in case he bothers to check… but I don’t get the impression Conquest knows the ins and outs of demons and devils.  He wouldn’t be dealing with this or relying on us if he did.  You’re in our service and in our power when we turn you over to Conquest, as payment, the time limit runs out, and you’re free to do as you see fit, positioned right next to him.”

“With him there and listening,” Pauz said.  “Easily swayed.”

“And,” Rose said, “If we can manage it, you’d have distractions.”

“You’re thinking about the other two,” I said.  Fuck me, Rose.  This isn’t playing with fire.  This is playing with the big red button.

I’d almost protested out loud, but she’d asked me to play ball.  I’d asked her to play nice enough times… I supposed this was where we really were the same person, or were siblings.  It was only natural the tables would be turned, that she’d reflect my own personality traits.

“Yeah, I’m thinking about the other two,” Rose said.  “We have to deal with them one way or another, anyhow.  Let’s use them.”

“I’ll need time to consider,” Pauz said.

So do I.

“We can give you that,” Rose said.

“You can return tomorrow,” Pauz told us.  “The Dowght home.  My realm.”

“No,” Rose said.  “Tonight, not tomorrow.  We’re on a schedule.”

“Tonight,” Pauz conceded.

“Neutral ground,” I added.

“My realm,” Pauz said, his eyes narrowing.  “You’re ‘on a schedule’.  It is where you’ll find me, diabolists.”

“We’ll also need a promise of safety, for my companion, when he leaves this circle,” Rose said.

Pauz didn’t reply.

“The deal is off the table if you don’t,” Rose said.

“If I don’t,” Pauz said, “You die.  You’ll get colder, others will ask you to move.  Something will force you from that meager defense.  Then the crows take your eyes, and the dogs eat the softer bits of you.”

“Not me,” Rose said.  “My companion?  Sure.  But you’d only really get one of us.”

“Hey,” I said.

“I suppose it’s up to you, imp of the fifth choir,” Rose said.  “One more death at your hands… or a chance to manipulate Conquest itself, possibly affecting this whole city.”

“Or,” he said, “I ask what you’re willing to give me.”

“You’re trying to extort from me?” Rose asked.

Pauz didn’t reply.  He left his question hanging in the air.

“My name is Rose Thorburn,” Rose said.  “Your kind knows of my blood.  Demons greater than you have dealt fairly with us, insofar as there is ever a fair deal.  What will they think, if a mere imp were to disrupt that arrangement?”

“Depends who you asked,” Pauz said.  His voice was a low growl, tense and wary.

“I’d ask the big names,” Rose said.  “Shall I say them?  Shall I speak the names of the higher members of the fifth choir?  I’d need only say them once, and we would have their attention.  Say them five times, and I could negotiate with one of the entities you answer to.”

Pauz was tense.

“You’re not even a pawn to them, Pauz,” Rose said.  “You’re not even a pawn on their pawn’s chessboards, so to speak.  You’ve been largely forgotten, and I don’t think you want to be remembered.  Not when you’re in the act of spoiling a longstanding working arrangement.  Not when I could ask them to remove them from the picture as a bargaining point they wouldn’t even think twice about.”

“Brave words, from the woman in a mirror inside a very fragile circle,” Pauz said.

I had only a split second to think about it.  I stepped out of the confines of the rabbit-gore circle, passing the threshold, moving closer to Pauz.

Radio static.  Outside of the circle, I could feel his presence.  It was like radio static in my head.  White noise that wasn’t pleasant to listen to, fuzzing around the edges.  Prickling at my skin, making me irritable, hypersensitive to everything that might bother me otherwise.  The nip of the cold, the discomfort where the hatchet’s holster bunched up my boxers beside my balls, and the feeling of sweat-soaked clothes pressing against my shoulders and back.

Senses in overdrive, distracting white noise.

I could smell him, now.  Feces, hot garbage, and blood.  More of the same, a physical representation of a presence that was radiating into the area.

I wondered how different this would have played out, without the circle.  Would the meeting have opened with a hit of static and stench that would have rocked my senses, kept me from maintaining my senses?

Despite the distractions, I still advanced closer, kept my shoulders square, chin up, my gaze level.  I couldn’t react to anything I was experiencing; I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get my bearings and remain stoic in the face of it all.

I had to move around the snowbank that separated the two driveways to draw closer.  My hand involuntarily clenched as the sense of distortion built up.  The noise of it steadily increased, dissolving my thoughts now.  No longer did I have that one concrete line of thoughts, all the other thoughts at the edges, cross-checking, comparing, searching for ways to expand or elaborate the thought.

Just one, one idea plodding along, and everything outside of that one line of thinking was noise and chaos, working against instead of with.

Dimly, I was aware that what I was doing was stupid, walking headlong into the radiation.  I heard flapping nearby, the crows drawing nearer.

The idea became an action, singular, an impulse.

Rose spoke, and I wasn’t entirely able to make it out.  The flapping continued, but they weren’t drawing nearer, now.

Somewhere along the way, I crossed another ten feet, reaching the car at the end of the driveway.  I had the hatchet in my hand as I looked up at Pauz.

I thrust it out, into the side window of the car.  The top of the hatchet’s blade punched through the glass, and frost spread out from the impact site.

Pauz moved back a half-foot as the frost spread along the car’s exterior.

I stayed there, arm extended, hatchet sticking through the shattered window of the car.

I wasn’t able to do much else, besides fight the pressure.

Rose said something else.  “Do I need to say a name?  Baph-”

“No,” Pauz interrupted.  “There is no need.  Go, diabolist.”

The word was enough.  The order, almost.  Still stiff-necked, back straight, I turned to leave.  I fought the urge to stop when I saw the animals waiting, clustered on the snowbanks, at the edges of driveways, lurking in the shadows beneath and beside cars.  Dogs, crows, rabbits and cats, all in ill-health.

“Blake,” Rose said, when we’d left the imp behind.

“No,” I replied.

“No?”

I could still feel the effects of being so close to the Imp.  It was hard to piece two and two together, much less string multiple words along.  “No… not now.”

Not with the animals still here, watching.

We were almost at the subway station when I started to feel like I was getting back to normal.

My heart was pounding, I realized, my mouth was dry, and the adrenaline was making my hands shake.  I felt pumped, but it wasn’t a good kind of pumped.

It was the rush that lingered after the flight or fight instincts had kicked in.  I’d experienced it enough times.  If I could go my entire life without ever experiencing it again, I’d die content.  Fat chance.

Well, maybe not, now that I thought about it.  The way things were going, with the estimations people kept making about my life expectancy, dying soon might not be out of the question.

“Okay,” I said.  I took a deep breath, as if that could help with the vaguely sick feeling and the way my heart was still beating out of sync with what my body, mind, and emotions were doing.

“Okay?” Rose asked.

“I’m… up to talking, and I don’t think he’s got any animals that close by.”

“Okay,” she said.  “Thoughts?”

“Still reeling,” I admitted.  “That last bit was unpleasant.”

“I don’t think either Pauz or I expected it,” she said.  “Why?”

“Because my mind turned off, and because… I don’t know.  I was sort of trying to show we weren’t to be trifled with, and I wanted to break the car window.”

“Huh?”

“When they see the damage, they’ll look,” I said.  “It’s… close as I can figure, the only way they’re going to see the dog that’s inside the car.  Maybe they’ll shit themselves when they walk over to the second broken window and the dog starts barking and snapping, but at least they won’t find out about the dog while they’re driving on a busy road and it bites their arm or throat.”

“You were thinking about all that?”

“I was going with my instincts,” I said.  “Which is apparently the only thing you can do when you’re face to face with him.”

“Until he starts perverting your instincts,” Rose said.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Him?  That?  That was not what I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Something more feral.  Something more like the barber.  That was more like a goblin, and… it wasn’t stupid.  There were times it seemed eerily human.”

“The books warned against using labels, putting things into tidy category of goblin and demon and whatever else.  So maybe Pauz is more on the goblin-ish side of the spectrum.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “Except goblins, as far as I know, don’t involve the metaphorical radiation we’re talking about.”

“And it’s a parasite.  Remember what it said about the languages?”

“It knows thirty, but somehow it skipped Pig Latin.”

“It’s moving from host to host.  And it’s taking something away from each one.  Bits of personality, bits of knowledge.  Piecing things together.  It’s growing, I’m sure, with each one.  Remember, it’s a spark.  It’s trying to become a fire.  Consuming, devouring, growing to a point where it’s out of control.”

“Which is why it’s been stopping and starting again?” I asked.

“No.  I don’t think that’s why,” Rose said.  “We won’t know for sure, until we meet this Dowght person he’s infected, but I think he’s killing them by accident.  Think about what the women described.  Dowght is feeding wild animals, drawing them to the area, then abandoning them to remain here, starving and vulnerable to Pauz’s influence.  He’s living in filth, hoarding…”

“He’s maybe starving at the expense of feeding the animals?” I asked.  “Or he’s getting bitten, or scratched, or diseased… so he dies in a little while, of an infection he’s not taking care of because Pauz has sway over him.  Pauz moves on, starting the cycle anew, a little stronger each time, a little more human, as he collects bits of his hosts.  Fanning the flames, until the blaze you’re talking about finally takes.”

“I think so,” Rose said.  “It’s what I imagine, when I picture the situation and the relationship between the imp and its current host.  That thing doesn’t seem like it would take good care of someone it’s using, not if it’s not taking care of the animals.  If we extrapolate… I don’t think it considers events beyond the present.”

“Which is why you’re offering the deal you are?”

“In part,” Rose said.  “It might be easier to deal with the two of them than it is to deal with Conquest and Pauz separately.”

“Unless they get along,” I said.

“Let’s hope they don’t,” Rose told me.  “Because this is the closest thing I can come up with to a backup plan.”

“Next to orchestrating a mutiny?” I asked.

“Next to a mutiny,” Rose said.

I trudged on in silence, resisting the urge to fidget and burn off more of that lingering adrenaline.  I pulled my gloves off and wrung my hands, then cracked my knuckles.

“Heads up.  I won’t be able to reply in a few seconds,” I said, “Approaching the subway, don’t want to be seen talking to myself.”

“If we got a phone,” Rose said.  “You could hold it up to your ear.”

“Kid on the subway saw you,” I said.  “I’m not sure people wouldn’t hear you, too.”

“There was one thing that bugged me, by the way,” Rose said.

“Hm?” I grunted.  I was uncomfortably close to a bystander, a guy standing just inside the subway entrance to smoke.  Which was illegal, but still.

“You ask me to trust you, cool.  I’ve made that leap, knowing a hell of a lot less going in than you knew going into this.  But I ask you to trust me, and you hesitate?”

I rounded the corner as I descended the stairs.  There were people on the platform below, but not in earshot.

“Dealing with demons,” I said, “A little different.”

She didn’t reply.  I supposed it was because the mirror pendant gave her a view of the people in front of me.

We need to find a way to pull all this together, I thought.

A growl behind me made me whirl around.

It was an older lady, carrying a small dog that wore a jacket.  The dog snarled, as my eyes met his.  Or hers.

“Shhh, honey,” the old woman said.

The dog yapped, lunging in an effort to get out of its owners arms.  Never mind that it probably would have hung itself, the way the leash was coiled up.

“I’m so-” the woman said, stopping as the dog tried to lunge again.  “Sorry!”

The yapping, growling and struggling grew more intense.

“He never does this!”

“It’s-” I started.

But the sound of my voice seemed to tip the balance.  The dog bit its owner, tiny white teeth disappearing into the meat of her fingers, exposed gums meeting flesh as blood welled up.

I fled, backing up, moving to the far end of the platform.  There was nothing I could do.

Only distancing myself.

“Man,” a guy standing near me said.  He smiled a little, “You always wonder about those owners who put their dogs in little jackets.”

I couldn’t bring myself to react, nor respond.

No doubt in my mind.  This was our metaphorical radiation.

I could only hope it wore off soon.

I caught the train, not in the direction of home, but the University.

■

Crows in nearby trees called out as I walked down the broad footpath.  Taunting me.  Maybe threatening me.

The buildings were old, or as old as buildings got, in a country that only dated back a couple hundred years.  Stone, stately, majestic.

The Sphinx’s domain.

I’d received no help from Fell or the Lord, but I did need to reach out, and this was the only place I could think of to start looking.  Problem was, the university was probably two or three times the size of Jacob’s Bell, especially when the various residences and student buildings were taken into account.

It was a starting point, but it was damn nebulous as starting points went.

Well, the most obvious solution was often the correct one.

I headed straight for the visitors center, entering a building with a stone exterior and great white pillars framing the glass turnstile door.

Students milled this way and that, most in winter gear.  A desk at the back had staff waiting, but it also had lines.

My eye fell on the table with campus calendars, and the two computers that stood on either side.  Each computer, it seemed, was set up with a basic search engine for campus information.

Isadora, I tried.

Nothing.

I looked for a list of professors instead.

Phixopolous, Isadora, Professor of Ethics

Not even trying to mask it.  She apparently wasn’t concerned about other practitioners finding her.

I dug a piece of paper from my pocket and wrote down the name and then found the building for the Ethics department, and a map to get my bearings.

I left the visitors center and headed for the building in question.  Odds were good that she wouldn’t be there, but that was ideal.

Trouble presented itself before I was halfway there.

One at first, then – I saw him wave over some others out of the corner of my eye.  A whole group of college-aged guys peeled away from a cluster in the open area just beside the university center.  Following me.  They moved in twos and threes, but they formed a general group of about eight or so.  The connections between them and me marked their interest in me.

A few seconds after I’d noted the connection, some girls joined the group. I got a glimpse of them all as I rounded a corner, doing my utmost to keep from tipping them off.

The girls hadn’t joined the group after all.  Instead, they walked on the very periphery of it.  Each girl was independent, while the guys were a herd.

The Sphinx’s people?

No.  The connection seemed fairly feeble, as such things went.  As far as I could tell, without looking over my shoulder and letting them know I was on to them, they had no tie to the ethics department I was headed to.

“Rose,” I said, under my breath.  “People following me.”

“What can I do?”

“Get a feel for them.  Hop to any nearby reflections, see if you can’t get a better look at what I’m up against, come back and fill me in?”

“I can.”

It was a long walk, one that gave them chances to catch up.  The girls were pulling ahead, more athletic in general, more given to the pursuit.

“I don’t know who or what they are,” Rose said.

“I’m wondering if they’re just susceptible to whatever effect is sticking to me after that talk with Pauz.  Drunk people, more in tune with their baser instincts…”

“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think that’s it.  I don’t really have any senses, outside of sight.  I can look at them, and they’re boys from college, talking, bumping shoulders, joking around, walking with arms around each other’s shoulders.  Some drinking surreptitiously.”

“But?”

“But… I feel like there’s an energy there.  I don’t know if I feel it or if I’m seeing stuff I can’t put my thumb on.  Like, they’ve got a vibe, good looking, they’re high-energy, naturally outgoing people, and they get people swept up in their attitude?”

“And the girls?” I asked.  I didn’t even care that some people gave me quizzical looks.  The guy talking to himself.

“Girls?”

“Yeah, Rose.  There are girls there too.”

“Be right back,” Rose said.  She sounded as if she were saying it while in the process of making her exit.

“Okay.”

A few seconds later, Rose reported in.  “Yeah, there are girls.”

“I know there are girls.”

“They’re more predatory somehow?  They remind me of Ellie.”

“Our older cousin,” I said.  Rose’s comment was on the mark.  From what I remembered of her, Ellie could play at being charming, if she wanted money or favors.  Ninety percent of the time, however, she defaulted to a low intensity glare, like she hated you and hated life, and she needed no excuse to switch to a more intense attitude of ‘I hate you and I’ll hurt you if you get in my way.’  No filters, no impulse control.

“They’re with the boys, but not with them.  Yeah, they’re the ones you want to worry about.  Not quite so harmless looking as the boys.”

“The ‘boys’ didn’t look harmless to me,” I said.

“It’s part of that vibe I get from them, I dunno.  Like, the air they give off.  The friendly, slightly immature sort of guy who wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Yeah?” I asked.  “You’re, like, saying ‘like’ a lot.  Twice that I remember, in the last minute.”

“Am I?  I am.  Fuck,” Rose said. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Try to hold off regressing to your hormonal teenage years,” I said.  “Because I’m pretty sure they’re closing the distance.”

Was there a point where I’d need to break into a run?

Could I outrun them?

I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with.  Nice guys with a more pleasant sort of energy, and more dangerous girls?

I was in the middle of trying to figure out a game plan, when I saw someone raise their hand.  A small wave.

No.

A guy I didn’t know, heavy and sporting the sort of beard that had been grown for length more than style, and a girl I did recognize.  Tiffany.  Alexis’ latest rescue, the artist who’d put together the gift I’d given Conquest.

She said goodbye to the guy and walked over to intercept me.

“Hey, Blake.  I didn’t know you went to University,” she said.  She smiled.

“I don’t,” I said.  I stopped in my tracks, knowing how dangerous it was.  “Hey, can we talk while we walk?  Or brisk stride?  I’m in a hurry.”

“Um, sure,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Meeting someone?” she asked.

“Hoping to,” I said.  I turned to look at her, offering a little smile.  My motives were twofold.  Putting her at ease was one fold, getting a glimpse of the group behind us was another.

They’d slowed down, but they were fanning out.  One of the lead guys and two of the girls were talking, and something about the intensity of their looks and the changing nature of the connection between us said they were adjusting their approach.

I could hear crows cawing at me, mocking me, reminding me of what was going on.

Fuck.  Between the radiation and the heaps of bad karma my bloodline had, I was a walking disaster area.

How could I tell Tiffany to get the fuck away without really upsetting her?  Without upsetting Alexis, too, and my other friends in the process?

“I’m not walking you away from where you need to be?” I asked.

Say yes.

“No.  I’m- I could do whatever.”

Damn.  I glanced at her, and saw she was averting her gaze, looking down at the ground as she walked.  It wasn’t just the here and now.  It was the way she was.  No personal confidence.

“You’re going to school here, huh?”

“Alexis helped me apply for a scholarship.  I have no freaking idea what I’m doing next year, but even one year of University is more than I ever thought I’d do.  My family doesn’t have a lot of money.  Or any money, really, and I kind of have a little learning disability, not a big one but I actually have been postponing a visit to the disabilities center to talk about my exams and… I’m saying all the self-pitying stuff that I’m not supposed to tell people the first time I meet them.”

I looked at her, and I was able to see the group in the reflection in a window.  Rose was there too, looking about as worried as I felt.  Which was a lot.

“You know all that helpful, well-meaning advice they’re giving you?” I asked.

“Hm?  Yeah.”

“I’m really bad at following it, personally.  So I want you to know that with me, you don’t have to sweat it, okay?  I’m absolutely going to take it in stride, or I’ll try to.”

“Alexis said you’d be like that.”

“Alexis is pretty awesome,” I said.

That earned me my first really wide smile.  Common ground, a safe subject.

“She really is,” she said, followed by, a second later, another unprovoked hit to confidence.  “I feel like a bit of a pet project sometimes.”

“Take it from another pet project of hers,” I answered, “Don’t sweat it.  Joel was just telling me earlier, it doesn’t all have to be equivalent.  Take the good, don’t question it, and be glad to give what you can back.  They’re a good bunch of people, just… enjoy them.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, just take it in stride, relax,” I said.  “Speaking of giving, the painting you sold me might have saved my life, last night.  Thank you.”

“Really?  You paid too much for it.”

“I truly believe it was worth what I paid.  More than, even,” I said.  “I needed a gift, for a… very eccentric guy.  A bottle of wine wouldn’t have worked, and I needed to get in his good graces.  It got a good reception from just about everyone present.”

“Really?”

“Really.  Like I said, a lifesaver.”

“The eccentric guy liked it?”

“He wasn’t sure he liked it until everyone else started saying it was good.”

“So he didn’t like it.”

Another look at Tiffany, more pointed, another chance to see where the group was by way of peripheral vision.

They were flanking me.  Two of the girls, one on each side of me.  Like lionesses working together.

It caught me off guard enough that I forgot to say what I was going to say.

“He really didn’t like it?” she asked, taking my silence for something else.

“I meant what I said,” I told her, my eyes straight forward now.  “If I were to judge solely by the decor of his front hallway, I might say he doesn’t have a real sense of aesthetic, taste, or consistency.  He needed other people to chime in before he could decide for himself, about your painting.  But it did end up doing what it was supposed to, and a good number of people did like it.  Really.  Many of whom know what they’re talking about.  Take that for what it’s worth.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the ground, but I saw her expression soften, tension disappearing.  She unconsciously reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear.

I was so busy looking I nearly missed it.  Right there, to Tiffany’s right, the ethics building.

The group following seemed to be expecting me to go further down the path, to have more time to flank me or cut me off.

“This way,” I said, quickening my pace, “Sorry.”

Tiffany, however, slowed.  “I might have to catch up with you another time.  You’re obviously in a hurry, and I’m not a fast walker.”

If she stopped, however, the other guys would catch up with her-

They, I noticed, were reacting to my change of direction, realizing they wouldn’t be able to catch me.

“Coffee,” I blurted out.

“What?”

“One errand, I’ve got,” I said, walking backwards, mixing up my words in the hurry to get the idea out, “And I’ll treat you to coffee?”

She looked startled, deer in the headlights.  For a second, I thought she’d back up, fleeing my presence, right into the approaching group of eight or so guys.

But she nodded, quickening her pace to catch up with me again.

Still too slow.

The two of us reached the front door of the building.  I side-stepped to open it for her, and a hand stopped it from opening.

I turned, and saw the group was clustering around us.

“Hey!” one guy said.  Brown haired, wearing a dark green scarf, a letter jacket and skinny jeans.  He smiled wide, and made it look genuine.  “Been a little while, huh?”

A little while?

Oh.  He was one of the guys from last night.  One of the ones who’d been with the drunkard.

Followers of Dionysus on a University campus?

Fuck.  I could start to put two and two together with that.  The predatory women at the fringes of the crowd…

In my catch-up reading last night, I’d read about women that drank wine and blood both.  Tore men to shreds in violent, drunken revels.

“I actually have somewhere I’m aiming to be,” I said.

“Don’t be unfriendly, man,” he said.  “Come on.”

The guy was uncomfortably close.  The smell of him was too.  Weed and booze and guy smells and sunshine and hay.

“Who’s your friend?” another guy asked.  “Hello, miss.”

“Hi,” Tiffany said, her voice quiet.  She looked as if she were caught halfway between her complete lack of self confidence and the presence of the guys.

“Want to come to a party?  We’re pretty damn easygoing.”

“I was just at a party last night,” she said, glancing at me.

“Perfect,’ he said, not missing a beat.  “Parties every night, it’s how University is supposed to be.”

“Hey, man,” the guy in front of me said.  I could feel his breath in my face.  “You don’t need to worry about her.”

Then, under his breath, he said, “Worry about yourself.”

Worry about myself?

Fuck that.

“I gather your cult leader has a problem with me?” I asked, loud enough for Tiffany to hear.

“Cult?” Tiffany asked, her eyes widening.

The guy I was talking to gave me an annoyed look.  “That’s not exactly fair.  Or appropriate.”

“Yeah?” I asked.  “How would you describe it?”

“More like a frat,” he said. “Minus the initiations and douchebag stuff.  Very laid back.”

“With an emphasis on the laying?” I retorted.

His eyes narrowed.  “See, now you’re upsetting me a little, and I’m a really hard sort of guy to upset.”

“Great,” I said.  Trying to sound upbeat, not nearly as intimidated as I felt.  “Your fault, really.  You’re the one who approached me.  You’re keeping me from leaving.”

“Now you’re being argumentative,” he said.  He flashed another winsome smile.  “Don’t do that.”

“Where’s this discussion going?” I asked.

“We’re chatting, friendly-like,” he said.

“What’s the goal?” I asked, “What are you after?”

“Well, I figure maybe your friend could come with us, and you, me, and some of my lady companions here could go have a private chat.”

The lady companions.  They weren’t even trying to look like any private chat we had wouldn’t end up with me bleeding or dead.

“I don’t know,” Tiffany said.  “We were having a nice chat, and we were going to go out for coffee.”

“Coffee with friends can happen any time,” one of the guys said.

“Tiffany,” I said, “Cult.”

The idea seemed to knock some sense into her.

“I’d like to say we’re more like a frat minus all the stuff that makes frats unpleasant,” another guy chimed in.  “Question is, how often do you have a number of rather attractive young men expressing interest in you?”

I could see Tiffany trying to process the idea, as if it was a first-ever.

Fuck them, toying with her.  Tiffany seemed pretty cool.  I was not going to see her thrown to the wolves.  Or whatever animals these guys were.

“I don’t think you’re getting the message, here,” I said.

Physical contact was not a thing I really did, but I reached out and found Tiffany’s hand.  I gripped it, then pulled her closer.  When she was beside me, I put my arm around her shoulders.

She kind of froze, more than anything else.

“We’re going out to coffee soon, because I think she’s cool, and I’d like to get to know her better.  You’re being exactly the kind of douches you’re professing not to be.”

“Let me at him,” one of the girls said.

The lead-guy looked at me, “You know who she is?”

“I think I know what she is,” I said.

Which sounded pretty bad without context.

“I’m having a really hard time thinking of why I shouldn’t just let her at you,” he said.

Fuck.  With Tiffany right here?  I couldn’t do anything with her nearby.  I-

The window five feet to my left shattered violently.  Then another.

The group reacted, and the guy with his hand on the door moved it.

My arm still around Tiffany, I hauled the door open, forcing his gloved hand to slide rather than hold it shut, and hurried inside.

Coming face to face with Isadora.  Human, but her face and hair were very much recognizable.

“Hi,” I said.

“Bringing trouble to my doorstep, Mr. Thorburn?” she asked.  “And… female guests?”

“She’s the one who painted the thing you saw last night.”

“Mmm,” she said, “It was good.  Not my style, but good.  One moment.”

She walked past me, approaching the group of young men and women, who were on the other side of the door.

They backed away a bit as she stepped through.  The door clicked shut.

I could only barely hear her.  “Certain oversight at this University has been gracious enough to allow you to prowl on this campus.  If you would like to make an issue of it-”

“No, ma’am,” the lead guy said.

“Behave, and don’t overstep your bounds,” she said.  “Or privileges can be rescinded.”

They scattered.

The door opened.  “A window was broken.”

“Wasn’t us,” Tiffany said.  “It just happened.  I didn’t see how.”

“I’m sure,” Isadora said.  “I know what you’re going to ask, Mr. Thorburn.”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have a sense of the big picture.  Or just what it means when you come to my doorstep, smelling like… something foul.  I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“He… doesn’t smell,” Tiffany said.  “You don’t have to be such a bitch.”

Wait, what?  This wasn’t the Tiffany I’d been talking to just seconds ago.

“There’s an irony in those two statements being paired together.  Nonetheless, I’ll cut this short, so you can be on your way.  No.  Not with the sort of business your family has done.  If you try anything, I’m going to work against you, if anything.”

“If you could put me in contact with some of the other locals-”

“No, Mr. Thorburn, and goodbye.”

With that, she was gone.

All for nothing.

“What was that about?” Tiffany asked.  “What a bitch.”

I sighed.

“I’m not sure why she reacted like that,” I said.  “It doesn’t matter.  Sorry about all that.”

“It’s okay.”

“The arm over your shoulder-”

“It’s- that’s more okay than the rest of it,” she said, eyes dropping to the ground.  She stammered a bit.  “I don’t- I’m not sure that makes sense.”

“It does,” I said.  “Listen, I did promise coffee, and it looks like I’m clear.”

“Yes,” she said, and she smiled in a shy way that made her eyes squint.

I could see why Alexis had connected to her.  Tiffany and I were similar in some ways, different in others.  Alexis hadn’t been completely off her rocker when she’d considered introducing us.  Only just a bit off her rocker in the how of it, maybe.  This wouldn’t be an obligation coffee, or a rescue-coffee.  I was pretty confident in that, now.

I just wished I could feel half as confident about the radiation and its momentary influence on her.

Or about Rose, who might have suffered for those two windows she’d broken.

Or the deadline, and the Imp we had to figure out how to bind.

Or anything, really.

Collateral 4.6

I’d seated myself so the crowd was at my back, with the idea that I’d be able to see the window, hopefully spotting danger, or seeing if and when Rose turned up.  I felt the absence, and I felt a bit of mounting pressure alongside it.

“So,” I said.  “I dunno about you, but I’m wracking my brains, trying to think about what to talk about, and I have no idea.  Family’s off the table, we talked about occupation, I don’t think either of us are really in a place to look beyond the immediate future…”

“I’m doing the same thing.  Except maybe not thinking about it so much as not thinking clearly about anything particular.”

“Sorry,” I said.  I couldn’t say if it was because of her just being the way she was or if it was because of my influence.  It was too similar to how I’d felt near Pauz.  Radiation?

“But I don’t mind just being here.  Having company.”

“No?”

“No,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

“I, uh, don’t think I’m very good at this,” I said.  “Generally speaking.”

“I think this is the first time I’ve ever been anywhere with a guy.  Unless you count the time I was in fifth grade and I had a boy friend I liked to imagine was a boyfriend.  And I made a fool of myself and his mom was there and… I don’t know why I’m saying this.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Is this your first?  Erm, your first time being out with a girl?”

“No.  I’ve been out a few times.  Some back when I was in school, friend of my cousin.  Some later, there was a girl I hung out with on the streets, until she decided to steal my stuff.”

“Oh, oh wow, I’m sorry.”

“No worries.”

“Did that scare you off dating, or- no, stupid question.”

“I don’t think I’d even care, if I ran into her now.  Sucked at the time, but I’m glad she broke it off, so to speak.  Um.  There have been a few girls that Alexis introduced me to, after I started putting my life together.  The singer, the architect, the big sister.”

“Big sister?”

“I’m still not sure what was going on.  Whenever we spent time together, it was always revolving around these kids, her little brothers and sisters that she was taking care of.  She had her hands full.  We never even broke up.  We just… kind of made less and less dates until I realized it had been two months since we’d last connected.”

“Oh.  How old were the kids?”

“Three and five, if I remember right?”

“Maybe they were hers?  She could have been lying?”

The thought caught me off guard.

“Damn it,” I said.  “You’re probably right.  I didn’t even think about it.”

“I shouldn’t even be asking about this.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

“I mean- um.  This is a date, right?”

I shrugged, hunched over my coffee and the table, so the steam was in my face, and my face was closer to her, allowing me to hear her in the general noise of the University coffee shop.  I was covering one hand with the other so the locket wouldn’t be the first thing she saw when she looked down.  “Yeah.  Kind of?  Let’s call it the best of both worlds.”

“Can we do that?”

I smiled.  “Why the hell not?  If it works out, then we call it a date.  If it doesn’t, we were just out as two people with a mutual friend, who might become friends.”

“I’m doing it all wrong, either way.  I shouldn’t be asking about exes.”

“I don’t mind.  I think it should be allowable, provided there isn’t any dwelling on the subject, unresolved love, or any of that, and there definitely isn’t, here.  Talking about it lets us share some horror stories, break the tension, maybe even subtly hint at what not to do.”

“What not to do?”

“Well, now you know not to bring your kids if we have a date in the future.”

She laughed, a short, surprised, nervous ‘ha’.  “Not a problem.  No kids.”

“Well that’s a relief.  See?  And I could say the thing with the singer was a horrible comedy of errors, including me having an ear infection for the better part of the so-called ‘relationship’, meaning I couldn’t really hear her when she did a show, and I tried to bluff my way through it.  Then she wasn’t considerate when I wanted to take things really, really slow, on the, er, intimacy front, and I got upset.  Maybe ‘comedy of errors’ is the wrong term.  It wasn’t funny, now that I think back on it.”

“Alexis sort of mentioned some things.  I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up, or how to ask, or if I should.”

“See?  The ex topic isn’t a bad thing, since it lets us gently bring up this sort of thing, right?”

“Yeah.”

I wasn’t able to maintain eye contact, so I looked down at my coffee instead.  “If we were doing something date-ish here, I might say that that thing about me wanting to take things slow is still true.”

“Sure.  I… kind of figured, already.”

“Figured?”

“I mean… even your posture, before?  Here?”

“If you’re talking about those… guys, before, that’s something more complicated.”

“I’m talking about the party, and the way you’re sort of tense now.”

Tense?  I looked at what I was doing, leaning over the table, both arms resting on the surface, coffee in front of me.  I could maybe see how it might read as guarded.

I shifted position, pulling my chair closer to the table, sitting up straighter.  I forced myself to relax some, though I remained very aware of the people going this way and that behind me.

“Don’t- please don’t change what you’re doing, on my account.  I’ll feel bad.  Do what makes you comfortable.”

“It’s cool.  I’d rather not look like I’m being defensive, because that tends to make people think they can pick on you.  Might explain a few things, really.”

“The stuff that’s going on with your grandmother’s house, that you haven’t really explained?”

“That stuff,” I said, “along with the stuff related to it.”

“Which you don’t want to go into detail about,” Tiffany said.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said.  “You aren’t hassling me about it, or prying.  I’m not looking forward to when the other guys start losing patience.  Joel’s already sort of frustrated with me.”

“Who else is the type to pry?  I don’t really know everyone that well.”

“Alexis.”

“Really?”

“Alexis is cool.  She can be pushy.  She’s a nice pushy, a well-meaning pushy.  I love her for it, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t push things.”

“I haven’t run into that.  She’s helped me out lots.”

“Because she’s helping you get from a bad place to a good place.  Both in terms of where you actually are and in terms of you physically, mentally, emotionally, even spiritually, if you buy that stuff.”

“I don’t, really.”

I nodded some.  “But things change when you’ve reached that good place, and she keeps wanting to help.  Get you from that good place to a better place.  Which sounds awesome, except, you know, it can be awfully nice to just enjoy that good place for what it is, after so much bad.  Sometimes you don’t want that extra push.”

Sometimes, I didn’t say, you didn’t want to be matched up with some singer or architect, or you don’t want that offer of a casual three-way.

Tiffany was nodding, but she looked concerned.  “I think I see what you mean.  Are you- are you angry with her?”

“No.  We’ve had fights, some of the most intense arguments I’ve had in my life, and I’ve had some good ones, believe me.  But elaborating on that means talking about family, and I don’t feel like talking about family.”

“Me either.”

“We were talking about Alexis.  I’ve had moments where I was angry at her, after those crazy intense arguments and it took me a while to realize why I was so upset.  She wants me to emerge from my shell, but shells exist for a reason, you know?”

“Yeah,” Tiffany said.  “I definitely know.”

“Don’t get me wrong.  Alexis is in the running for my favorite person in the world.  I owe her… pretty much everything I have that’s good.”

“Yeah.  I know,” she said.

Was that an agreement, because she felt the same way about Alexis, or something different?

Tiffany continued, “She- I’m afraid to ask, in case it’s embarrassing or private between you two, but-”

“Did we date?”

“No!  God, no, that’s not what I was asking.  I don’t… I’m not even sure if I want to know or if I don’t care.”

“We didn’t,” I said.

“Oh,” she said.  The nervous energy or anxiety dissipating in a flash.  “Okay.”

“What were you going to ask?”

“I… just wanted to know if she did your tattoos.”

Without thinking, I rolled up a sleeve.

My heart might have skipped a beat.  I’d been too caught up in this, too caught up in the normal.  I was being careful not to lie, but I was forgetting the things that were different.

The birds that were perched on the branches on my forearm were… a little worse for wear.  Feathers sticking up, dirtier, the glint in their eyes was glintier.  The background had more red to it than it should have.

“It’s more intense than I expected,” she said.  “The detail is beautiful, though.”

I changed tacks, to distract myself, and to distract her.  “I think you’ll probably have some kind of conflict with Alexis.  Take it from someone who’s been there, she means well.  Take that for what it is, take it in stride.  In my case, I try to give things a shot, let her help now and again, but I have to establish the boundaries with some regularity.  Remind her where I stand, nice and assertive.”

“I’m not very good at taking things in stride.  Or being assertive.”

“How do you handle things?”

“Not… well?  I tend to crumple, or do stupid things.”

“Well,  in an ideal world, I’d say I’ll be there to keep an eye on Alexis and help out if she gave you a hard time, but I don’t-”

A crash nearby startled me.  I was out of my chair in a second, back to the wall, as two guys wrestled.  Trays had scattered all over the floor by the door, knocked off the top of one of the trash cans.  A shove or an overly aggressive friendly bump between two guys in hoodies had started it, and it looked like violence was going to finish it.

I’d hoped the animals would be the only things affected by the radiation, had told myself that Tiffany’s outburst against the Sphinx was a reaction to an authority figure, but this…

Dismissing it as a coincidence seemed dangerous.

Some people around us looked a little too upset at the fighting, at being bumped and having their meals disturbed.

“Tiffany?” I asked.

“You want to go?”

“If we can duck out without getting caught in this,” I said.

She nodded.

I stood by, waiting, watching as someone got bumped a few too many times by the two guys and stood.

Heads were turning.  The brawl had everyone’s attention.

My attention, however, was on the door.  I watched them struggle, slightly back and forth, convinced that the moment I tried to head for the door, they’d stagger back, hitting me or Tiffany, and getting us caught up in the chaos.

I saw them lurch one direction, waited to make sure it wouldn’t switch to another crash into the trash can, and hurried past, getting the door, holding it for Tiffany.

She ducked under my extended arm.

Damn.  Two incidents.  I could only hope that I hadn’t made the University donut shop the site of a brawl, just by being there.

I really hoped I hadn’t started a riot.

I really, really hoped this would end soon.  I’d stepped in shit, I was tracking it everywhere.

“That was crazy,” she said.  “Man, I do not like that sort of thing.”

“I can understand that,” I said.

I glanced at a shop window, half-expecting to see Rose there, sharing some silent commentary on what had just happened.  She still wasn’t there.  How easy it was to get used to mirror-dwelling people-figments.

“You were sharing some personal stuff, about the ‘bad’ we’re trying to move on from?  That’s my sort of ‘bad’.”

“Fighting?  Violence?” I asked.

“Yeah.  It… really makes me feel like I’m seven again.  Helpless, frustrated.  Really… I’m not an angry person, you know?”

I started to respond, then forced myself to stop, reconsidering.  Saying something like, ‘I didn’t think you were’ would be a lie, since I had thought it.

“It wasn’t my impression of you,” I finally said.

“I’ve never been in a fight, not… not that sort of fight.  But it makes me angry.  Makes me want to hit them, beat them senseless for being so stupid that they’ll beat each other senseless.  And now I’m worried I sound like a freak, or an idiot.  I’m not sure which, or if it’s both.”

“I’m not here to judge you, remember?” I asked.

“Sure, it’s easy to say that, but then I say something stupid like that, there’s no way you don’t judge me a little.”

“A good rule of thumb is to assume that people aren’t nearly as fussed about anything you’re doing as you think they are.”

“I keep hearing that, but that doesn’t make it easier.”

“It will.  Look, without getting into detail or treading on sensitive territory, I assume you’re looking to change yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“How many years did you travel down to this point?”

“My whole life, so… nineteen?”

“Nineteen years.  Okay.  Why expect an overnight change, then?  Isn’t that being unfair to yourself?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m… I know I’ve frustrated some people, by being slow to change.  But I think it’s worse to betray myself and expect too much of myself in undoing a solid lifetime of bullshit.  Excuse my French.”

“Ce n’est pas grave.”

“Ah, a French speaker.”

“It’s a bilingual country.”

“I’ll rephrase.  Someone who seems remotely fluent, and who didn’t forget the little they learned in High School.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, but she smiled a little as she said it.  A little praise going a long way.  Praise, perhaps, that she couldn’t deny.

It didn’t hurt to try taking it a step further.

“Take this for what it’s worth, Tiffany… I think I can see why Alexis likes you.  I’m starting to like you too, insofar as I’ve gotten to know you.  I think you’re pretty cool.”

“Oh god.  Don’t start saying stuff like that, or I’ll die right here.”

“Go easy on yourself,” I said.  “I think I would continue to enjoy your company if you didn’t change from the way you are now.  But if you are going to change, give those changes time, to work against nineteen years of history.  Yeah?”

“I’m- I’m sort of worried I’ll get lazy and fall back on old habits if I don’t work at it.”

Which was an indirect, unintentional stab at me.  Criticizing my way of handling things.

“Do what works for you,” I said.  “That’s all it comes down to, once I’m done making it complicated.”

“Okay.  I can do that.”

I saw another window, absent my reflection or Rose’s.

The worry was reaching a critical point.

“Listen, I’m sorry for doing this-”

“You’ve got stuff.  Serious stuff, from what you were hinting at last night.”

Serious stuff.  Yeah, that summed it up.

“Yeah.  Is it alright if we do this again, in the future?”

“Maybe,” she hedged.

“Maybe?”  I hadn’t expected that.  She was interested in me.  I had a hard time grasping why, beyond our common ground, but she was so nice and generally passive that I hadn’t expected anything other than a yes.

“Maybe…  But I need some promises,” she said.

“I’m sort of leery of promises, at this point.”

“Okay.  Well, hear me out, first.  The first promise would be that you have to forgive me for mucking this up and making it into more of a therapy session for me than anything.”

“That’s not what it felt like to me,” I said.  “Sorry if I made it into that for you.”

“No.  I don’t know.  Yes.  But I didn’t mind.”

“Well, I already said I would strive to look past any of the minor snafus, or something in that vein.  I have no problem with that promise.”

“Okay.  The second is, well, I need you to not demote me to some label like ‘the singer’ or ‘the big sister’.  Because I’m really afraid of what that label would be.”

“That’s not- I didn’t do that to demote anyone.  Not intentionally.”

“That’s- I don’t think you’re the sort to do that in a mean spirited way, and it didn’t feel mean, but I don’t want to be the Weird Girl or the Shy Girl or the Girl Who Takes Way Too Long To Eat A Donut Because She’s Nervous.”

“Did you?”

“I felt like I did.”

“I didn’t notice.  I hereby swear that you will not, should I be able to help it, become the Donut Girl in my estimation.”

“Oh god.  Donut Girl,” she said.  But she was smiling.  “That statement sounded so important and meaningful when you said it like that.”

“It is,” I said.  “Hey…”

I reached out, hesitated, then took her hand.  I held it between both of mine.  “I’m not very good at this part, but… I enjoyed this.  It did a lot more for me than I can safely put into words.  I’m, uh, not really the sort to make that leap to kissing a girl after a nice first date, and I’m not sure if we’ve agreed it was one, but if I were, and if we did-”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes dropping to the ground.  “You’re back to saying these things.”

“-I’d give you a chaste, quick kiss right now.”

She turned pink.

“Sorry,” I said.  I squeezed her hand, then let it go.  “Another time?  Something I don’t have to cut short?”

She nodded, very quickly, unable to maintain eye contact.

We parted ways.

Immediately, I shifted mental gears.

This had been silly, mundane.

But I’d needed this, much as I’d needed the party the previous night.  I’d eaten, I’d touched base with me, in a way, done as much as I could to recharge that supply of personal power.

I was getting more of a sense of what was going on with my tattoos, though.  They were a barometer of sorts, a kind of representation of what was affecting me on a mystical level.

I wasn’t sure if that went anywhere, if they could keep going down that road, or if there was more to it, but there was no way that the tattoos and Pauz’s effect weren’t related on some level.

Rose had told me that I was pale, before, that I’d been diminished, when my personal power was drained, my defenses low, at the same time my tattoos were brighter and more intense.  My defenses hadn’t yet recovered, so Pauz had been able to affect me all the more.  Had I changed here as well?  How would I change, under a demon’s influence?

I could picture my hair sticking up, like the birds were, my face settling into a natural glare…

Hm.

Hard to link that to the dialogue with Tiffany.  She’d been nervous, but no more than her usual self.

I rolled up my sleeve again, checking the bird closest to my wrist.

It was hard to say.  I hadn’t been paying attention to this particular bird… but maybe it seemed a bit less ‘intense’ than it had?  Was that because I was bleeding off the conflict and radiation, donating it to innocent dogs and people in donut shops?

Or was it because I’d bolstered my personal power on a level?

The other possibility, I couldn’t deny, was that it boiled down to wishful thinking coupled with imagination.

I headed for the apartment.  Not far from the University.

Rose would be recuperating, hopefully, while grabbing and researching the various books pertaining to diabolic bargains.  My job would be figuring out how to draw up a quick, effective circle, using the tools I had at hand.  I’d also need a way to protect myself.

No way was I letting this radiation get worse.

Thinking about tattoos gave me other ideas.

I debated the ideas until I’d reached the apartment.  I let myself in, and made my way up to my place.

With the walls being somewhat thin, I didn’t want to shout, so I did a patrol, walking around the perimeter, my eyes on the various mirrors.

No.  She wasn’t here.

Okay, that wasn’t a huge shock.  What were the rules?  She could only be around me or be in the Hillsglade House.

I checked the time.  The idea was to be there ‘tonight’.  Our deadline was midnight.

We still had to take the bound being to Conquest.

Rose and I had hours to get ready.  Hours to hammer out a good contract.  But too much of it was up in the air.

I fished in my pockets for the subway tickets I’d bought, placing them on the dining room table.

I’d been on the subway at eight fifty, I’d arrived at nine forty.  Thirty minute walk factored in…

Roughly an hour and a half, once I added additional walk time or other distractions.

What was the latest I could possibly leave?  How long would the negotiation over the contract and the following ritual take?  How long would it take to get to Conquest afterward, with Pauz in tow, without having him declare the deadline past?

I ran through the numbers in my head as I pulled off my sweatshirt and t-shirt.

I got bleach from under the kitchen sink.

Zero idea if this would work, but I was operating without books.  Rose was the one with the reading material, and she was AWOL.

I laid out the shirt flat, smoothed out the wrinkles, and set to work.  A droplet of bleach on the underside of a glass, a nail, and gentle scratching of the fabric.

The bleach marked lighter lines in the fabric.  Lighter lines were joined by other lines, carefully measured, geometric patterns, shapes…

Pauz was an imp of things foul and feral.  A being of wanton chaos, of overturned order.  He was weak enough that he could be subdued by ‘like’ elements – fur, blood, and shit, in his case.  It was why the rabbit circle had worked.  But Rose had told me, essentially, that the preferred way to go was to fight with opposing qualities.

Bleach, I hoped, or the aftermath of bleach, was ideally a material that opposed him.  Man made to contrast the focus on the natural, purifying, to contrast the focus on rot, foulness and stagnation.

I stuck with triangles bounded by circles, to lay out the design across the shirt.

It took time, but that was okay.  Time meant Rose could get back to me, find me and give me the lowdown.  If she wrote up a contract to bind Pauz, I’d have to copy it over, which was more time.

When did I start worrying?  Seven thirty seemed like a safe time to leave, but how long did I have to take to copy the contract?

I didn’t really want to think about what happened if Rose didn’t show up.

I was starting to regret not figuring out more about the mirror world, or Rose’s interaction with it.

I finished etching lines in the shirt, bullshitting something that looked like a magic circle, then started on a pair of black slacks.  The clock ticked on.  An early lunch with Tiffany and a short walk back had put the clock at twelve thirty as I’d made my way back.

I watched the clock hit two as I put the slacks down, the inside of the pants etched with an even denser image.  The coarser, thicker surface gave me more freedom, and I was getting a hang of the task.

I had no idea if it mattered or if it did any good.  I’d imagined that the framing of it and the way that the lines and triangles pointed towards the openings at the bottom of each leg would make it stronger, but now I wondered if it would only serve as a weak point.

When building a bridge, was it better to simply use the strongest elements available, or did one try to anticipate the stresses, accommodate the terrain?

No.  I was overthinking it.  Besides, it was done.

My hands hurt.  My knuckles were white and standing up against the skin where I’d been holding my hand in the same position, clutching the nail.

I clenched my fist, and felt the joints pop.  Still shirtless, chilled where the cool air had touched the sweat on my back, I headed for the bathroom, cranking the shower to ‘hot’.

While it heated up, I grabbed my one dress shirt from the closet and hung it up by the shower.  Humidity, steam, heat.

Hot water didn’t really kill germs.  Water hot enough to kill bacteria would generally be scalding.  But hot water could be symbolic, and as long as I was pulling countermeasures out of my ass for the upcoming confrontation with Pauz, I was going to treat myself to a second hot shower for the day.  Wash away the filth and radiation.

Maybe.

When I was done the shower, I shaved for a second time.  I took my time grooming, trimming my nails and body hair, brushing my teeth, flossing, then taking far too long trying to tame my generally uncooperative hair.  The mop.

For long moments, I debated just shaving it off.

I reconsidered.

My enemy was all about challenging the natural order.  I embraced the trappings of civilization.  I used the file on the back of the nail clippers to fix up the rough edges of my nails as I paced nervously to the back of the apartment, then returned to the kitchen.

Grooming was baseline.

But the rest of the trappings of civilization would have to wait.  In boxer-briefs only, I headed for the toolbox.

Acrylic paint, watercolor?

No.  I didn’t trust the effects of the paint, didn’t trust that I wouldn’t have an allergic reaction.

I gathered up every pen in my place.  The clock on The Shitty Little Stove, as I’d come to unfondly regard it, told me it was three.

Keep it simple.

The pens in a pile, I drew a series of lines beside the still-angry wound on my hand, working around the chains of the locket.  One line for each pen.  I very carefully laid the pens down in order.

I waited a minute, taking the time to sketch out what I wanted to do.  My figures were horrible, but I only needed a basic sketch.

No time for anything complex…

Have to work in physical limitations…

Wetting my thumb-tip with my tongue, I ran it along each of the lines.

I picked out the winning pen.  The one that had dried most effectively, streaking the least.  Bold black lines.

Compass, protractor, some finangling to get the pen into the compass, and a pink nub of eraser ripped off a pencil

I drew a circle around my heart, off-center in my chest, using the eraser-nub with the compass so the little needle wouldn’t prick me.

Liver, pancreas, bellybutton…

Lines joined it, helped by a set-square, and each line was subsequently joined by an impression of cold metal against skin.

Three twenty in the afternoon.

Still no Rose.

She’d shattered two windows.

One frozen pond had taken the strength out of her.

Two windows, though… one after the other…

I hadn’t seen anything suggesting she was still there.  And if she’d destroyed the windows, she’d destroyed the very reflection that was allowing her to be there.  The way she’d described shattering the pond’s ice, she’d been shunted to another location.  Forced to the nearest safe ground.

So… why hadn’t she found her way back to me?

A triangle, carefully measured, not with right angles, but still very carefully drawn.  The lines didn’t match up, forcing me to make the ensuing line thicker and avoid it being broken up.

The line across the small of my back was harder, slower.  I cheated, leaning against the dining room table until I’d left an impression in my skin, then using the set-square to keep it straight.  Spent far too long trying to get the ruler in place again when the line wasn’t a hundred percent there, after I moved it.

The diagram called for a triangle across my back, pointing up at the nape of my neck.  I debated if I’d have time…

Then, seeing the residual ink on the set-square, I gutted the pen and soaked the edge of the metal ‘L’.  Very carefully, I pressed it against my back, rolling it back and forth to get it into the grooves and recesses.  I checked the end result, then did it again.

Four o’clock.

Legs, arms, hands, feet, including the soles.  Faster due to their location, but my speed at figuring out the process was balanced by the awkwardness of some of the angles, and the fact that I needed the use of the very limbs I was working on.

Rose hadn’t appeared to demand to know what the fuck I was doing to myself.

She hadn’t shown up, shrieked at seeing me in my underwear, drawing on myself.

I was now well past the point where I was worried.

Clothing…

I donned the t-shirt, smoothed out the wrinkles on the button-up shirt, and buttoned it up over the t-shirt.

No horrible burning.  Good.

I put on the hatchet-holster, then pulled the slacks on.  I’d placed open spaces at the knees, so I wouldn’t rub away the image or transfer too much bleach on my skin, but I still worried about the other areas where it might rub.

Not exactly top notch, but it felt like a step in the right direction.

Tie, yes.  I picked a red one.

I wished I had the goblin flute and the paper goblins, but they hadn’t been mine to keep.

I had to be selective in terms of what I brought, this time.  Only so many pockets.  I chose the basics.  Pens, cord, the hook-screws.

Five o’clock.  Five o’clock and I would take action.

I cooked some pork chops, brussel sprouts, and grilled up thick slices of sweet potato, more to keep myself busy than anything else.  Healthy body, covering all of the bases, to counteract the demon that upset the natural balance of things.

Four twenty.  I’d hoped it would take longer.

I fidgeted, then decided to bite the bullet.

The drawer in my bedroom whisked open.  I collected the book.  The only one I had.

Black Lamb’s Blood.

Fuck.

I opened it, and I started reading, book open in my hands while I paced.

Halfway through the introduction, I stopped to go to the fridge and rescue another cupcake from the plastic container within.

I resumed reading, finishing the introduction.

I didn’t read the rest of the book.  I skimmed, looking, hoping for charts, for something concrete.

But it wasn’t a magical tome.  Not really.  There were no rituals within.  No charts, nor ingredients or diagrams.  No proper terminology for bullshitting contracts in an hour.

Not what I needed, even in the slightest.

I needed Rose.  I needed her help to establish a game plan.

I watched the last few minutes tick forward on the analogue clock of The Shitty Little Stove.

It ticked past five o’clock.  I watched until five oh one.

“Rose Thorburn,” I intoned.  “I summon you.”

Nothing, not even a flicker.

That disquieted me.

A vestige was fragile.

Rose had already been abused, hauled into a strange Conquest dimension, chained…

I fidgeted briefly, messing with the chain on my locket-hand.

“Rose Thorburn, by the tie that binds you to me and vice versa, I call you.”

Nothing.

“Rose Thorburn, you are me and I am you, one step apart, I call you.”

I’d had more luck with Leonard, my drunk ghost in a bottle.

“Rose Thorburn, by all your frustration with me, by the oaths I have sworn to you and the oaths you have sworn to me, I bid you to return to my side.

“Rose Thorburn…”

I didn’t know how to finish.

“God damn it, Rose, I need your help.  Don’t leave me hanging.”

I picked up the tome, started reading it again, then put it down.  Ten minutes later, nervous, I picked it up again.

I debated calling the lawyers for help.

Had they expected this?  Had they helped it happen?

It would be so fitting if they were somehow in league with Conquest, if they were orchestrating this entire thing to put me on this road.

I had to obey Conquest or he’d murder me and Rose.

Obeying Conquest put me on this road, forced me into a situation where I had to beg for help, accept the deal.  Working for another diabolist.

Where would that path take me?

But if I didn’t take the offer of help?  Where did I wind up?

Dead, probably.

Would the diabolists step in to save me?  They wanted me on board.  They were going to lengths.

I pulled on my gloves with care, the ink and locket in mind, alongside the cuts and gouge that hadn’t yet healed.

The coat was next.  Not quite a suit, but the coat was meant to be worn with a suit, and it looked good.  Suitlike, only it hung longer.  Only closer inspection would see the absence of the suit jacket underneath, or the t-shirt beneath the dress shirt.

I smoothed down some of the curls of blond hair that were escaping  their prison of hair styling glue, knowing they wouldn’t stay down.  I moved my mouth around, stretching my skin to make sure I didn’t have any patches of hair where I’d missed shaving.  Never mind that I’d shaved twice today.

If I was going to armor myself in my own self and identity, I’d damn well stick to my preference of being clean shaven.  I’d spent too many weeks with wispy teenaged beard growth while I’d been on the streets.  I was going to be the best Blake Thorburn I could imagine.  The sort of Blake who could look good in an almost-suit, but still pull off his button-up shirt and start working on framing a new art installation, or do prop work for the theater, or something.  I’d armor myself in my personal ideal, hold it up to give myself courage in a situation where I had very, very little.

The inked out magic diagrams across my skin couldn’t hurt either, as armor went.

Probably couldn’t hurt.

I adjusted my tie.

I was procrastinating.  It was seven.  I had no idea what the evening had in store for me, now.

Rose had removed herself from the picture, Conquest was fucking with me by using that chain to remove her from my company, or something else entirely.

I filled my nicer backpack with essential supplies – the tome, the papers, some of the working pens, and other basic tools that it didn’t hurt to keep, slung it over one shoulder, and left.

No dogs barked at me while I made my way to the subway.  I heard crows caw, but I couldn’t say if they were taunting me or just being ordinary crows.

On the subway itself, no fights broke out.  No disasters happened as a result of the radiation.  There was only the crowd, the late rush of people who had been working until dinnertime.

I hesitated as long as I could, waiting for the telltale Blake in Rose’s voice.

When the doors started to slide shut, I hurried through them.

I walked down suburb streets until I started seeing the telltale signs of Pauz’s influence.  Crows, and watching animals.  Every house had curtains drawn, every light on, otherwise.

The Dowghty house was the only one that had no lights at all.  Flocks of crows took off as I approached, but they didn’t attack me.

I reached into the backpack for the yellow lined paper and the tome, drew out a pen, and then tossed it aside before stepping onto the driveway.

The door opened as I knocked.  The inside was as cold as the outside.

Filthier, oddly more wilderness.

Stray branches, dirt, trekked in mud and snow, frozen in tracks.  Dung and offal, bones.

The smell was enough to make me want to gag.  Cloying, animal, dominating the senses until it felt like throwing up would be a relief, cleaner and less gross than enduring this.

I used the back of the tome as a surface to rest the paper on, making my way through the house.  Store-bought meat and the packaging for meat littered the floor in adjacent rooms.  Cats and rodents hissed and growled as I passed too close to their food.

He was in the room opposite the front door, at the far end of the house.

A broken old man, clearly malnourished to the point that he should be in a hospital.  His reactions were delayed as a cat hopped up into his lap to nibble at something that really didn’t look like it belonged on a dinner plate.  Not cooked, barely taken care of.  His arms were pocked with injuries where animals had nibbled on him and he’d been too slow to react.  Some looked infected.

He smelled like he’d shit himself, sitting there.

A table laid out for a banquet, except the banquet had gone to rot.  The guests remained, lurking at the edges of the room, on and under furniture, staring.

Pauz perched on the back of the chair, just behind Dowghty’s shoulder.

“It looks like it’ll be just me today,” I said.

“I know,” Pauz responded, confirming suspicions I hadn’t even allowed myself to voice.

Collateral 4.7

The smells, the little movements as trash in the corner was nudged by rodents, the noises and scrabbling sounds, and the heaps of filth all made the space seem smaller than it was, almost as if it distorted around Pauz and his host.  The dust, moisture and dead bugs on the sliding glass door to the backyard made even the light seem dingy and insufficient.

But, I noted, the effect of Pauz’s self wasn’t as powerful as it had been before.  I felt the pressure around the edges of my thoughts, the gradual dissolving of my peripheral thoughts, but I didn’t feel as though I were being swept away in it all.

Which in no way diminished how fucking scared I was, or how gross and intimidating this space was.

I was going to fuck this up on some level.  It was practically inevitable.  I just hoped I could reduce it down to a level I could manage.

I needed Rose here.  I was flying fucking blind.

I wanted to ask if he knew what had happened to Rose, but I couldn’t afford to look weak.

“Am I talking with you, Pauz, or am I talking with Mr. Dowght?”

“Me,” Pauz said.

He traced a clawed fingertip along Dowght’s cheek.  The man, sixty or so, reacted as if he were underwater, as if every action faced resistance.  He slowly raised a hand to stop the imp, but Pauz was gone well before the hand reached him.

I realized, belatedly, that the man wasn’t old.  He was withered.  Atrophied.

I wanted to tell Pauz to leave the man be, but I knew I didn’t have the ability to actually follow through if he kept going.  If I was going to bargain, I couldn’t demand things that I couldn’t force or convince the imp to give me.

“I’m assuming he’s aware of… our business?” I asked.

“He’s not aware of anything,” Pauz said.

“Is that true, Dowght?” I asked.

He barely reacted, only lowering his arm gently to the table.  He clenched his fist for a moment, and I wondered momentarily if it was a reaction, a sign.  But he was only working out the kinks that came from sitting in the same position too long.  He was oblivious to the ragged looking rabbits, stray dogs and cats that were perched on and around the table.

Dowght was gone, mentally, a shell.

“Guess so,” I said.

Pauz wasn’t letting his hosts die out of some cunning plan.  He was all about disruption of the natural order, and the power power he had over someone, the more he disrupted their natural functioning.

That raised questions, as well as some general concerns.

I approached the table.  The animals didn’t budge.

The chair at the foot of the table was already occupied.  A cat, a squirrel and two field mice sat on a pile of what looked to be clothes, junk mail and meat packaging, torn up and soaked with urine and trampled shit.  The cat was mangy, not having cleaned itself, and one of its eyes was the same milky white as Pauz’s.  The squirrel climbed halfway up the cat to get closer to me, incisors bared, eliciting a hiss from the cat.

I dropped the tome on the table, aiming for impact, hoping to scatter the animals.  It made a very satisfying ‘bang’ with the landing, stirring dust and various papers across the table.

The animals, however, went straight for the ‘fight’ instinct.  Bristling, teeth bared, poised to jump on me.

Gloved hands on the back of the chair, one foot on the leg, so I wasn’t simply tipping it over, I slid the chair away from the table, simultaneously turning it so the chair back blocked the animals from reaching me.

The animals hopped down from the chair, scattering to the edges of the room, where their bodies disappeared into the shadows, their eyes catching the light to glow in the dim.  I heard the cat snarling and fighting with something in its way as it settled beneath a decorative chair.

Dowght hadn’t even reacted.  The man looked like he was on his last legs.  It got me thinking about what would happen when he died.

Pauz found another host.

Who would Pauz pick?

Someone vulnerable.  Someone weak.

I’d already fallen prey to magical influences with very little warning, not to mention how being forsworn was technically losing the rights to defend oneself against spirits. Pauz could probably take advantage of a small falsehood or karmic foothold, much as the Sphinx could leverage a false answer to justify murdering someone.

It would be very easy to slip up and give ground to Pauz.  Ground I couldn’t afford to give him.

Easier still when Rose wasn’t here to back me up, and I didn’t have a contract in hand for him to look at.

“Have you come to a decision?”  I asked.  Questions were safe.  It was very hard to frame a question in such a way that it could entrap me.

“I have,” he said.  His eyes were on the tome beside me.

“And?”

“And your companion was supposed to be here to discuss it with me,” he said.  He didn’t look away from the book.

“Are you refusing the offer we suggested?” I asked.

“What happens if I do?” Pauz asked, as he used all four limbs to move along the chair back, before moving forward, onto Dowght’s shoulders.  Dowght winced as the claws pricked his skin, but did nothing.  “Wild animals kill you and rip you apart.”

Fuck.  If I screwed up here, I was dead.  I had only the protective diagrams I’d worked into my clothes, but that didn’t include my head, hands, or feet.  If I offended him, or if I let him start to think the deal wasn’t worth it on his end, he could easily sic the various rodents and animals on me.

“You would miss an opportunity,” I said.  Safe assertion.

“I can hold on to this opportunity,” he said.  He stroked Dowght’s face with the back of one clawed hand.  Dowght closed his eyes.

“A dying man?  Until he dies or gets devoured.  Then what?  You start over?”

“Stronger each time, I’m patient,” he said.  He poked Dowght with a claw.  “I find stronger people, find a crack and worm my way into it, climb the ladder.”

“Can you afford to be that patient?” I asked.

“Immortality has a way of allowing it,” Pauz said.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said.  Be firm.  “I’m asking if you can stick to the path you’re on.  You won’t ever succeed, if you keep going down this road.  You might make a dent in the grand scheme of things, do some damage, but I have trouble believing you’ll survive.  If you get to the point of being a meaningful threat, powerful people and entities are going to stamp you out.”

There were so many distractions.  Noise, smells, movements in the corner of my vision…

I could only keep my eyes forward.

“Stamp me out?” he asked.  “They can try.”

“They can succeed,” I said, knowing I was taking a risk with a brazen statement, “Could be Conquest, could be someone from out of town, or it could be all of them.  They could kill your corrupted animals, invest time, money, energy and other resources into containing or cleaning up this area, and you’re done.  You’ve missed a chance.”

“Mm,” he said, “But I’ve done damage.  Diminished mankind and the world, hm?  That’s all my kind seeks.”

All that his kind sought.  Maybe that was true, maybe it was only true when his kind were described in abstract.

He was different from the commonplace demon, on a level.

He was an imp, a parasite, occupying people and then moving on to others.  A mote, a spark looking to ignite a blaze.

What sort of person lived in this upscale sort of suburb where all the cars were nice?  Not lowlifes.  Successful or successful-ish people.  These were his victims.

Pauz took a bit of each person.  Those pieces, as I understood it, formed the sum of his human side.  He took pieces of lawyers, doctors, computer people, businessmen, bankers and whoever else.

He seemed to be enjoying the silence that had followed his statement, letting it sit.  Watching me squirm.

I wasn’t squirming, though.  I was thinking.  Pauz took over the weak, people who gave him an in.  They might be successful people who were down on their luck, or people with a vice that made them weak.  Or they could be people with enough of a problem, karmically, that he could make a bid to get a hold on them, even when they weren’t practitioners.

“Is that really all you want?” I asked, emphasizing the ‘you’.  “A dent in reality and an ignoble death?  Let’s not pretend you’re uninterested in the possibility of what we’re offering.  Don’t you upset the natural order of things?  You could theoretically have access to an Incarnation.  To something fundamental.  You could upset something monumental.”

I studied him, looking for a tell, but I was getting distracted by the subtle ugliness, the way his entire body looked like worn callous, stained gray-black, the teeth, the eyes, the glare…

I continued, “You’ve had time to consider the option.  If you have doubts, we can talk about those doubts.”

“Hmm.  Discuss and compromise?” he asked.

The word ‘compromise’ sounded very strange coming out of the imp’s shark-toothed mouth.

That made me think for a second about what he meant.

Compromise… both sides giving ground?  If I agreed to discuss and compromise, he could be unreasonable, and still demand concessions.

“We’re capable of discussing, certainly,” I said.  “Compromise… naturally depends on how this goes.”

“Mm hmm,” he said.

“Let’s start from the initial deal my partner proposed.  You would be bound until… shall we say five minutes after midnight, two nights from now, as a starting point?”

“Hm.  I haven’t accepted.”

So little time.

“Then let’s talk in terms of the hypothetical, and discuss when we’re done.  We could say that no term or written word shall be considered binding until both of us agree and sign.”

“Outside of the inviolable rules,” Pauz said.  He hopped down onto the table, picking something out of a piece of raw meat.  He opened his mouth, let it dangle and wriggle for a second, then dropped it into his mouth.

“Which rules?” I asked.  “The rules of binding oaths?”

“Those laws, which were established in the emergence from void and chaos, and the fundamental structures and forces of existence your practice, my power, or practice and power combined can’t alter,” Pauz said, chewing far too much, considering the small size of the thing he’d popped into his mouth.

If we’re talking about rules my practice or your existence can’t alter, why even mention them?

I thought about it for a minute, turning the words over in my head.

Trap?

No.  Couldn’t see a trap.

Not unless the trap was to throw so many terms and ideas at me that I’d stop being careful.

“I could accept that,” I said, finally.  “With further consideration.”

“Then we agree to talk about terms,” he said.  “With nothing binding until we sign and verbally agree.”

More words, more terms and ideas to complicate matters.

I was making the wish to the genie that was hellbent on twisting the terms of the wish to screw me over.  More than that, I was dealing with something very inhuman, in a context I didn’t fully understand.

Here we went.  Dealing with a devil.  “Sign by putting pen to the very set of pages I’ve outlined the terms on?”

And not scrawling your name on Dowght or the underside of the table?

“Yes.”

“And your statements can be considered verbal agreement, even if you aren’t human, or if you aren’t technically there and speaking in the conventional sense?”

“Point conceded.”

“Then we agree to define anything you say as verbal?  Anything you write as written by you?”

“Agreed.”

Circular reasoning, to agree to the terms of ‘agree’, but fuck it.

Where to start?  How did a contract normally go?

Basics first.

“The terms of this contract exist between me, Blake Thorburn, and…”

“Pauz, given of the Marquis Andras, both of the fifth choir, feral and foul.”

I scribbled it out, leaving the names blank.  “Spell.  Your name?”

“In the Dutch tongue-”

“In English,” I interrupted.

“P-A-U-Z,” he said.

Huh.  Not the spelling I’d anticipated.  It rhymed with ‘ooze’ when heard.

“And your…”

“My sire, my lord, the metaphorical tree that bore me as fruit.  Andras.  A-N-D-R-A-S.”

“I bear no risk by inscribing his name or yours?”

“No.  Andras is bound, and only those bearing the saber he was bound to may call him forth.  I am a lowly imp, and my name has no power, spoken or written.”

I scribbled out the paragraph defining myself and Pauz as the individuals the contract referred to.

I used the spine of Black Lamb’s Blood to push the various dishes and bits of food to the floor, clearing the table in front of me, then tore that half of the page off the pad, tore it so the section of paper with the paragraph was the only thing on the page, and slapped it down onto the table.

“What are you doing?”

“Outlining,” I said.  “Conceptualizing.”

If I was going to write a contract, I’d do it like I was putting something together for work.  Start crude, confirm direction, refine, polish.

I needed to bind him, I needed to bind him very fucking carefully, and I didn’t have the background of hundreds or thousands of years of trial and error in diabolism to back me up.

“The goal of the contract,” I said.  “Is that we bind you for a term ending five minutes after midnight, two nights from now.”

“At which point I am given over to the Incarnation’s possession,” Pauz said.  “Or you are forfeit.”

“Forfeit what?” I asked.

“Your word, your being.  Whatever I desire,” Pauz said.

To hell with that, I thought.

“Firstly,” I said, “I am absolved of responsibility once I bring you, bound, to the Lord.  I’m not going to suffer consequences if he or you do anything after that point.”

“You give me to him,” Pauz said.  “A transfer of possession, with no intent to immediately reclaim me.”

“I’m not under the impression he’d give you up once he had you,” I said, looking up from the paper I was writing on.  “But yes.”

“And you make some attempt, overt or otherwise, to ensure he keeps me until such a time that the contract’s terms end and I am free.”

“Unless such an attempt would work against your goals and mine?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“If he obviously intends to keep you, and pushing him further would look suspicious.”

“Granted,” Pauz said.

I wrote it down.

“Second point,” I said, returning to the larger block of text above.  “I’m not okay with that penalty for failure.  Giving you all of me?  Forfeiting my very existence?  No.”

“I stake my being on this, what other penalty would suffice?” Pauz asked.

Meaning the imp wasn’t so happy with the idea of making a small scar in the universe and then dying ignobly.

Suspicion confirmed.

“I have two other beings to bind,” I said.  “My existence and other aspects of my being are at stake.  If I fail because I’m dead, we can say there’s no penalty clause.”

“Consider it incentive to fight a little harder,” Pauz said.

My eyes fell on Dowght.

Demons want a foothold in the world.  What happens if I give all of myself, if Dowght is what happens when Pauz finds a crack?

Too little knowledge, with the stakes far too high.

Something else.  I needed to cover my ass, while offering him something he desired.

“Property,” I said.  “I’m custodian to a property, that I believe will come into my hands.  We can arrange for a section of that property to fall into your possession, if I can’t meet my end of the contract, and if that property is mine.”

“I would need to see that contract,” he said.

“Too bad,” I said.  “I don’t think I can get access to it by any reasonable, sane measure.”

Not without contacting the lawyers or walking through Laird’s time field.

“I’m left to accept a tenuous offer, or face tenuous reward?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Mortals pass property on to heirs, if they die.  If you die before you meet your end of the bargain, the property isn’t yours to give me.”

“It’s what I’m offering you,” I said.  The only thing I can reasonably offer you, if it’s even that reasonable.

It could be too much.

Oh god.  Wind was blowing in through open windows and the crack in the sliding glass door.  Fresh air was not my friend.  It only made the stench of this place worse.

I had to hold utterly still, fighting the urge to gag, while Pauz deliberated.

“How much space?”

“Fifteen square feet, parceled out as I deem appropriate.”

“Small,” Pauz said.

“Yes,” I said.  “Small.”

You little bastard.  I know this is gold to you, and I’m probably betraying humanity by even offering it.  Take it.

I kept myself outwardly calm, or tried to.

“Offer a larger area,” he said.

“If land isn’t what you want,” I said, “We can discuss other terms.”

Just as he was looking to achieve absolute control over me, in contrast to the tiny hold he had on Dowght, I knew I was offering him absolute ownership over the land.

I had a dim idea of what that meant.

He took his time deliberating.

“Why don’t we cut the crap and stop pretending you don’t salivate at the idea?” I asked.

“Presumptuous,” he said, the gravel of a faint growl in his voice.

The growl was echoed by the noises the animals in the corners made.

“I’m a novice,” I said, “But I know some things, and I know what you want.  Take it so we can move on, or I’m going to start having second thoughts.”

He didn’t respond right away.  He stood straighter, peering at me, then sat down on the table.

I got a nod.

“Verbal confirmation, please,” I said.

“Yes.  That penalty will suffice.”

Which gave me the option of giving him the space inside Laird’s trap, promising to screw over either Pauz or Laird, or, ideally, forced them to deal with one another.  I could take other precautions, too.

Worst case scenario, that.

I took a deep breath, the immediately regretted doing so.  “I have some terms to stick onto this part of the deal.  From the time I bind you, you don’t harm me or mine.”

“Until such a time as I am released?”

“Period.  Ever.  All things with any connection to me, my family, my friends, or my possessions are protected from you, across the board.”

“Hm,” he mused.

“What’s the issue?”

“Merely considering.”

“I need the guarantee that, once we set you on the Lord of Toronto, you aren’t going to harm me, my family, or my friends.”

“I can affect the remainder of the city?  The region?”

“You wouldn’t accept the deal if I forbade it,” I said.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he said.  “I shall prevent harm to you and yours, from my hand, my power, my word, and my servants, to the best of my ability.”

He pointed at the paper.  I bent down to scribble it out, paused.

“You… and any other being you work with,” I said.  I didn’t want him bringing another demon in to hurt me.

“Granted.”

I hesitated.

“Any other power you interact with must agree to the same, and they must agree to bind anyone they work with to the same, in turn, ad infinitum,” I said.

“Hrm,” he grunted.

“Yes?”

“Granted,” he said.

I thought of Tiffany… “Tell me you haven’t done harm to others.”

“You’re delaying.  Write.”

“So are you.  Delaying, I mean.  Are my friends okay?  You didn’t send your animals to harass anyone or hunt anyone down?”

“I’ve done nothing direct.  As for incidental damage?” he smiled.

“As for incidental damage?”

“I couldn’t say for certain,” he said.  “I would have to visit the people, objects, or locations in question.”

Worrisome, but the only real solution would be to hurry through this and check on my friends when all was settled.

I wrote it out, tore up the paper, so each paragraph was a separate block, then spaced it out.  Sub-clauses and stipulations were effectively indented.

A field mouse limped closer.

“If they interfere, I’m liable to consider it a sign of your disinterest,” I said.  “We got this far, let’s not spoil it.”

“Mm,” he said.  “Git!”

The mouse scampered off, running off the table.  The thump it made as it hit the ground caught me off guard.  Mice were light enough they wouldn’t necessarily make a sound like that.  I leaned to one side and saw that it had broken its neck in the fall.  Head first.

Was this it?  It didn’t feel like enough.

“Rather than suggest a penalty,” I said.  “We say the contract takes effect the moment you are bound.”

“Yes.”

“The terms do not end when the binding does.”

“Hmm, yes.”

“My binding will be weak, in addition to being temporary.  You will not take any action to free yourself in the meantime, nor will you take actions before or after to work against the contract’s terms, or you will be considered to be acting in bad faith, with a penalty I’m free to designate,” I said.

“No,” Pauz said.  “We’ll stipulate a penalty now.”

“Fair enough,” I said.  “If you act in bad faith-”

“Clearer,” he said, sounding annoyed.

“If you free yourself, if you bend or abuse the terms in such a way that suggests you are not acting with the intent of being bound and delivered to Conquest, and subsequently freed-”

“Clearer.  Narrower.”

I almost refined the terms further, then stopped.

That was interesting, that he wanted it narrowed from that.

That was very, very interesting.

“Are you telling me that there’s a loophole you’re already planning on abusing to slip from your duties?” I asked.

“I’m telling you I want clearer, narrower terms,” he said, growling the words.  “And defined penalties.”

Which wasn’t a no.

I leaned on the table, trying to ignore the greasy film on the surface, looking down at the paper, reading over everything.  The parties involved, the objective, the responsibilities of each party, my penalties for failure… I shifted the remaining papers down to leave an obvious gap where his penalties for failure and ill-faith could go.  Protections for me and mine-

“You define the penalties first,” he said, interrupting me.

“I will,” I answered, “After.  Right now you’re trying to distract me.”

“Right now I’m trying to get you to define the penalties,” he said.  Talking more for the sake of distracting me than to add something to the conversation.

“Where was the trap?

Harm?

He would prevent harm to me and mine, by his hand, his word…

Wait.

Okay, I was pretty sure I saw it.

His hand?  Archaic language, or was he justified in using his foot, his teeth?  Even his claw?

I made a mental note.  Something I could use, maybe, and something I would have to come back to in a minute.

“Alright,” I said.  I looked down at the scraps of yellow paper, bright in the relative gloom of Dowght’s home, covered in my scrawled print.  I’d never had tidy handwriting.  “Let’s talk penalties.”

He seemed satisfied with that.  I was backing down.

“If you fail to keep your end of the bargain,” I said, “You forfeit every hold you have in this world.  Every person, every animal, every place, idea, every whatever.  You undo it all.”

“I am starting to think,” the imp said, his eyes flashing in the gloom on the far side of the table, “I should kill you after all.”

From relaxation and satisfaction to a death threat in a matter of seconds.

I stared across the table at Dowght.  The wretched man.

I wasn’t sure what he’d done to give the imp an in.  Good and evil apparently didn’t have much weight in the grand scheme of things, it was about right and wrong.

Had Dowght committed some wrong?  Some betrayal to himself or some personal code?

Whatever the case, if I could free him of his burden through some side-clause… he probably wasn’t going to have much of a life, whatever happened, but hopefully the burden wouldn’t drag him down to some horrible afterlife.

“I take it you don’t like the terms,” I said.

“No, I do not.”

Okay.

I knew he wanted me to miss the ‘hand’ thing.  He wanted to slip it through.

Could I use that?  Divert his attention, then resolve it later?

“There’s the question of the actual terms,” I said, staring at him, “What justifies the penalties.”

“Too broad, mortal.  The penalties too weighty, considering the very small parcel of land you offer for your own failure.”

“Seems fair to me,” I said.  “Hell of a lot at stake.  I’ll tell you what.  I’m going to read over what we have so far, look for any sneaky issues in wording, and you can decide what you’re willing to offer as a penalty.  Take your time while I read, come up with a good offer, and I can give it a serious listen.”

“Or,” he said, drawing out the word, “We can talk it out.”

“I’m doing most of the suggesting, you’re dismissing my suggestions, and I really should be reading this over to look for mischief,” I said, knowing full well that there was mischief, and he didn’t want me to look.  “Take a minute.”

I started to pick up the papers, carefully ordering them.

“We define the conditions for penalties,” he said, interrupting me.  “I break free of my own will, or I take action that interferes with the goal, or I take action to harm you or yours, as we covered in the other part.  Connect it.”

Suspicions confirmed.

“And… you agree to the penalty clause, then,” I said.  “Forfeiting all that you have claimed and corrupted?  Undoing the damage?”

“Yes.”

I exhaled slowly.  Better than drawing in deep breaths, with the reek of this place.  The cold made smells easier to handle, but it was still filthy.  I laid out the pages again, then started writing it out.

The lingering animals, I noticed, were gone.  They must have started slinking away when the mouse was killed.

A part of me wanted to think it was ominous, but… I felt pretty damn relieved the beasts weren’t around.

My gut told me he was getting rid of them to put me more at ease, in the hopes that I’d let my guard down and let the loophole slip.

“Two more things to cover,” I said, “Unless you have ideas on what goes into a contract?”

“If I had specific knowledge,” Pauz said, “I would not be free.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I would like to say that, should there be a grievance in the contract, mediation goes to a third party.”

“Who?” he asked.

“A neutral party, or a party professional enough to be neutral and unbiased with both a mortal human and an imp.  Someone we both agree on, with further stipulations to prevent one party from simply refusing every suggestion.”

He cackled.  The little bald, shark-toothed, clawed baby was surprisingly good at cackling.  “Fine.”

“With further rules against the number of complaints,” I said.  “To be defined in a few minutes.”

“Granted,” Pauz said.  “Amusing thing to imagine.  I don’t think neutral parties exist, in the midst of this, but yes.  We can try, or form another compromise.”

“Yes,” I said.  “Which brings us to the last part of sketching this out, before I write out a draft.  We need to clarify terms, which means footnotes.  Let’s start with the definition of harm.  We can rewrite it to be clearer.”

“That portion is done,” Pauz said.  He wasn’t hostile, not tense, but the response was a fraction too fast.

He crossed the table, viciously kicking and flinging dishes, bits of trash, and dried pieces of shit off to either side as he walked.

He stopped a few feet from me, tilting his head a fraction past normal human limits to read the paper.  I felt the intensity of the effect from him increase.  Wearing me down at the corners of my mind.

The stink of him.  There was a sound that rolled off him too, faint and grating, as if he were a radio, generating the opposite of calming, soothing white noise.

I could feel my skin crawling, and I had an awfully hard time convincing myself that I didn’t have lice or fleas, just being in this house.

Too cold for lice, I told myself, not sure if I was right.

“That portion is fine,” he said, again.  He looked up at me, glaring.  “Resolved.”

“We redefine harm,” I said.  “Something simpler.  Implicit and explicit harm.”

He paused, taking that in, then scowled.  “Why?”

“Cover more bases.  Unless you’re admitting you’re not acting in good faith?”

How hard would he fight me?  He would have agreed to the penalty with the idea that he could get at me this way.

If he was going to attack me, it would be now.

Long seconds passed, his eyes roving over the scattered paper.

“What if I said I had other issues?” he asked.  “Other grievances.”

“Keep them in mind, we focus on this one first.  Defining the clauses.”

“What,” he said, his voice low and dangerous, “If I threatened to have you devoured alive, right now?”

“Then we’re just about back to the same point we were at the beginning, and we’ve made almost no progress,” I responded.  “And, again, it’s up to you to decide whether you want the Lord of Toronto in two days or me right now.”

“I don’t have much patience, diabolist,” he said.

Rose had surmised as much.  My heart was pounding, my mouth dry.  I was still leaning on the rather gross table, staring down at the imp.  I didn’t want to be the first to back down.  We’d decided our last conflict when he’d backed away from June’s frost.

“Maybe you don’t,” I said.  “But if that’s true, if you’re that shortsighted, you may well be doomed to being small fry forever.”

“You think me small?”

Well, there I went, insulting him and turning a bad situation into a worse one.

The intensity of the radiation was growing.

“It would be more correct to say,” I said, very carefully, “I think that you could be bigger.”

I saw a smile spread across his face, the very tips of his teeth visible just past his thin lips.

Thank you, Rose, I thought.  It was always so much easier when I had an idea of the motivations at play.  You’re helping even when you’re not here.

Might as well drive the point home.

“I’m not stupid, Pauz.  I know you’re trying to screw with me in this clause.  Bluff me, distract me, mislead, I’m still not going to let it slide.  No harm, implicit or explicit,” I said, tapping the paper.

“Hm,” he grunted.  “Curses.”

“Well?”

“Damnation.  I will, to the best of my ability, prevent you from coming to harm, that implicitly or explicitly derives from me in any way or form.”

I wrote it out.

“You’d damn well better be able to deliver,” he said, clearly perturbed.

“It’s up to you to decide how you’re going after Conquest,” I said.  And it’s up to me to decide how to deal with you both.  Rose had suggested this and then disappeared on me.

“Agreed,” he said.  “I’ll find a weak point.  I always do.”

“Now,” I said, “We go over every single word to make sure there aren’t any hidden meanings.  We define or reword everything, until there are no questions.”

“Hm,” he said.  “I thought you were on a schedule, diabolist.”

“I am,” I said.  “Were you calling me diabolist, before this?”

“No,” he said.  He smiled.  “Because you weren’t.  But you are one now, hm?”

The smile and the idea both disturbed me.

“Let’s begin,” I said.

It was tedious work, slow going, with me taking my time over every word, thinking in abstracts, in terms of symbols, and in terms of the very literal.

Knowing all the while that I was probably missing something vital.  Something that could get me killed or spell horrible doom for everyone and everything.

I didn’t own a watch or a phone, which made it hard to track the time.  The long-faded light did make life harder, as I stared at the paper in the gloom, in a house without power.  I was glad for the light that did filter through the windows, and I was glad I’d left earlier than I had to, that I hadn’t folded and waited for Rose to show up.  This was proving to be time-consuming, tedious, and we weren’t even done.

Time would be running short.

We finished looking it over.  He was pacing, now.  Eating more.

He saw me looking.  “If you fuck this up, mortal, you’ll find how small I am.”

The imp was anxious?

“I’ll make a mental note of that,” I said, being careful to do so.

I had it laid out across the table, footnotes included, and I began copying it out, skipping parts I’d crossed out, rewording even as I went for elegance’s sake.  Seven pages, when it really felt like it should be more.

But the language was tidy and clear.

I could feel the pressure as the clock wound down.

There was also a mounting sense of worry.  The idea that I’d overlooked something.

It wasn’t helped as Pauz got more agitated, watching the contract near completion.

I stopped at the end.

“By signing, Pauz, you agree to be bound, by both me and by the terms of this agreement.  By signing, I agree to bind you by the terms of this agreement.  Neither signature has a hold without the other.”

“Mm,” Pauz said.  He was barely able to keep still, now.  The noise was worse, as was the fuzzing around the edges of my mind, and the sounds in the walls were more intense than ever.

Even the maggots that writhed on the plates of food were more lively.  A reflection of Pauz’s state?

I read it over, looking for spelling errors, for any word I might have overlooked.

“Sign,” I said.

Pauz reached out, scratching with his claw.  He left a dark, brown-black stain where claw touched paper, and he scrawled out his name.

I reached for the pen.

“No,” Pauz said.  “Blood.”

I glanced at him, eyebrow raised.

“I know this much.  To give it power.  Almost always, when contracting with my kind.”

I drew one of the hook-screws from my pocket, pushing the point into my fingertip until I drew a bead of blood.

Signing in blood proved to be harder than most things.

“It’s done,” Pauz said.  “Sealed.”

“Yes it is,” I said.  “Now to figure out the binding.”

I drew the hook-screws out of my pocket, along with a flexible measuring tape, and began screwing them into place, spacing them out evenly.

“Can I ask, now, if you had anything to do with Rose?”

“I’ve had something to do with almost everything that has happened to you since our last meeting,” Pauz told me.

“Did you have anything to do with Rose?” I asked.  “Outside of subtle influences?”

“Yes.  The fact that you noticed, diabolist, means my influences weren’t all subtle.”

“You’re saying you influenced something, made this come to pass?”

“You’re inferring more than I’m saying,” he said.  “Your partner is asleep, in more ways than one.  Think about why.”

“Why she’s asleep?” I asked.

“The wrong word,” he mused.  “Coma?  Why does someone go into a coma, diabolist?”

I couldn’t come up with a ready answer.  “To heal?”

“My biggest regret in accepting this bargain,” he said, looking up at me with an intense expression on his tiny round face, “Is that I won’t be able to see the look on your face when you realize.”

“When I realize?”

“Yes.”

“Realize what?” I asked, knowing I wouldn’t get the answer.

He only smiled wider, showing more teeth, his tattered, bitten tongue visible in his mouth, and turned his back on me, looking at Dowght.

Fuck.

But I didn’t have a choice.  Not really.

I turned each hook so they all pointed inward, then drew the cord from my pocket.  I fed it through the hooks.

Ten hook-screws.  The five outer ones allowed me to make a pentagon, with a five-pointed star within.

The five inner hooks allowed me to develop it further, making a five sided star that overlapped with the other.  I left it incomplete.

As far as actually binding him…

I needed something to bind him into.

I placed the tome in the center.

“Pauz?”

He stepped over the cord, until he stood on the book.

I drew the final cord into place, and tied it.

Blood still beaded at my fingertip.  I drew it along the rope at the outside of the cord diagram.  Faintest traces, but blood nonetheless.

“Pauz,” I said, holding the contract up, “By the terms of this contract, I bind you.”

The wind turned, the contract flapping violently in my hand.

The outer circle of the diagram collapsed, the cord snapping into the center, until Pauz was well and truly bound up, in a series of very careful knots and shapes, ten times more intricate than I could have managed, all connected to the inner diagram that still remained.

Bound as he was, I didn’t miss the pale eyes staring at me.  Smug?

Easy.  But the hard part had been drawing up the contract.

“Pauz,” I said, again, “I bind you.”

The second line of binding snapped inward.  This time, it bound Pauz down.

The book rocked, spinning slightly with the force of the cords that now bound it shut.  A hundred knots, forming a five-pointed star on either side.

Dowght looked up at me, his eyes meeting mine.

It took me about two seconds to realize just how badly I’d fucked up.

The sounds in the walls intensified.

That fucking imp had tricked me, misdirecting, distracting.

He’d do everything in his power to protect me, from the moment he was bound on.

Just like he’d said… I couldn’t transfer property to him on my death if I had no property the moment I died.

He couldn’t protect me while he was bound.

The birds began to congregate outside the window.  Feral animals began to emerge, where they’d disappeared into hiding places.

He had been lulling me into security.  I’d just been wrong to assume.

A chair tipped to the ground.  Dowght stood.  More a zombie than a human, given his state.

A crazed shell of a man, half-snarling, half sneering, but mostly baring his teeth.

I drew June, slowly, to avoid spooking any of them into action.  Squirrels, mice, cats, dogs.

I saw a dark shape moving outside.  It might have been a bear, not heading for me, but a nearby house.

Pauz was bound, and the connections that allowed him to control his creatures were severed.  Taking no overt, direct action, he’d let me trap myself.

Collateral 4.8

No sudden movements.

June was in my hand.  With my other hand, I reached out for Pauz.  I hooked my fingers into the cords that bound the outside of the book, my thumb encircling the spine.

In other circumstances, I might have tried to make a circle like I did with the rabbit guts, but these were these circumstances.  I needed to make this special delivery before midnight.  I couldn’t stall.

Animals were faster than me.  Couldn’t run.

Fighting them?  If it came down to pure numbers, they won.  A hatchet and a heavy book could only deal with so many at a time, and even a withered, diseased, half-dressed guy could catch one of my arms.

I glanced at Dowght, moving my head slowly so I didn’t provoke anything.

I saw him picking up a steak knife from the table.  There was still food crusted on the blade.

Okay, he could do worse things than catch one of my arms.

“Dowght,” I spoke, my voice low, calm, soothing.

He didn’t respond.  He didn’t seem certain about his grip on the knife, so he shifted position, holding it in two hands.

“It’s done.  You’re free,” I said.  “All the things that have been hurting you, the confusion, all the parts where you feel horrible, they can stop.  Work with me, leave this house behind, get healthy again, stop being so cold and hungry…”

He was already shaking his head.

“I’ve been there,” I said.  “I know what it’s like.  The-”

“Mine,” he rasped.  His expression was twisted in anger and fear.

I hadn’t really thought it would work.  But I’d had to offer.

“I have to take care of them.  You want me to leave?”

He transitioned to more fear than anger, from the point he started the sentence to the point he ended it.

“Hard to imagine, huh?” I asked.  “I’ve been there too…”

The animals were creeping closer, where my back was turned.  I shuffled around, changing position, so the animals were to my right, Dowght to my left, table behind me.

“…a shitty status quo seems awfully damn good, when life has conditioned you to think that nothing better might ever come your way.”

The new perspective didn’t help.  I could hear papers rustling as things started approaching under the table.

“You want to take them away?” Dowght said.  “They’re all I have.  You… bastard.”

He sounded more plaintive than accusatory.  His hands shook as he held the knife.

“I’m sorry, Dowght,” I said.  “I don’t think there’s a way that this plays out, where it all works out okay.”

“I’ll kill you,” he said, unwittingly offering some truth my statement.  “They can eat you and they’ll be happy and fat, and everything goes back to the way it was.”

There was no way he’d come back from this.

“You won’t be happy, if things go back to the way they were,” I said.

“I’ll have them,” he responded, his voice not even a whisper.

Which wasn’t a rebuttal.

I had nothing to say in response, and silence lingered in the ensuing moment of quiet.

Quiet?  The rustling behind me had stopped.

I couldn’t shake the notion that something was poised, ready to pounce-

I threw myself backwards, onto the table, hauling my legs up and out of the way.

My coat, my nice coat, was mussed up by the leftover plates and garbage on the table.  It was sticky, meaning I didn’t slide as much as I’d expected to.  I was left with my legs in the air, nowhere to put them that didn’t mean dropping back to a standing position.

A rather large cat leaped onto the table, making a low snarling sound as it lunged straight for my face.

I hit it with the edge of the book.  It had to weigh twenty pounds at most, but forward momentum on its part and an awkward angle on mine meant I wasn’t able to knock it from the table.

The animal went on the offensive, scratching, clawing at the book.

Bad.  If it cut the twine-

I dropped the book, caught the far end of the table with my hand, and swung my legs around.  With the leverage, I was able to stab the very end of the hatchet at it.  No awkward angle there.  I struck it, knocking it to the ground.

A cur of a dog lunged up at one corner of the table, but didn’t succeed in getting up.  It stayed there, huffing out barks, snapping even though I was several feet away, two legs on the table’s surface, chest pressed against the side, with one leg coming up, failing to get high enough to find purchase.

I was so busy watching it that I nearly missed Dowght.  The only hint that he’d moved was the shift in the light and shadow of the room.

I turned my head, to see him rounding the table.  The dingy light from the sliding glass door lit him up, highlighting how pale he was, reflecting his pallid skin, the thin hair on his head, his open eyes focused solely on the knife and where he intended to stab it.

He didn’t bring down the knife in a two handed motion, nothing dramatic.  Knife held in both hands, he simply pointed it at the side of my stomach and pushed out.

I still held the edge of the table, and I hauled on it, half-turning, half-rolling, to get away from Dowght and the knife.

My feet touched ground, my shoulder hit the sliding glass door, and my balance was thrown.  I felt a delayed burst of pain as my body informed me that Dowght hadn’t missed.  Not completely.

I was now, as it happened, on the same side of the table as the cur.

It dropped, all four legs on the ground, hackles up, pacing a little left, a little right-

Something under the table bit me.  Just like Dowght had, subtle, no forewarning.  Teeth sinking into my calf.

No protection from the outfit here.

I buckled, involuntary, and the cur took that as a cue to attack.

In my head, the course of action seemed simple.  Swing down with the hatchet, to stop whatever was biting me, then a backhand swing to hit the dog.

One-two.

Except, as it turned out, a fatal blow to a squirrel that had its teeth buried deep in your leg made the head move, twisted head and jaw, shifted teeth.

I buckled more, gasping out a sound that might have been a swear if I’d had a full breath of air in my lungs.  Reflex, or simply not having the strength in one leg to support myself, I bent over.

All it took was one impact to knock me over.  The cur was on top of me, jaws on the space between my shoulder and neck.  Crushing more than piercing.  Leaving me on my back, without purchase on the trash-littered ground.

With the dog so close to me, hampering the movement of my shoulder, I couldn’t get a good swing in.  The pain made it all too easy to imagine my shoulder was being pulverized, sent rays of pain shooting down my arm, until I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to hold on to the hatchet.

One small movement, a leap of faith.  To release my deathgrip on June, shift my grip up-

I punched more than I swung, driving the metal head of the hatchet into the cur’s face.  Once, twice-

Something bit my ear, hard.

More claws scrabbled at my scalp.

Mice.  Rats.  Something in that vein.  I felt pain, and the pain intensified with further contact, joined by other sensations.  Blood welling.

The fear I’d felt even before I’d entered this house, that had built up as I’d written the contract, it now took on a note of panic.

These things were diseased.  Filthy.

Covered in fleas.  Lice.  Other things.

I ‘punched’ the dog again, hard, and it released its grip.  Not because it had chosen to- the axe’s tip had cracked something in its jaw.  It withdrew a fraction.

This time I swung, taking advantage of the animal’s retreat, the added distance, the fact that I could reach.

Blade met flesh, and the cur died.

More animals were collecting on me.  Cat’s claws pricked through my slacks, and mice scampered across me, biting at flesh where my t-shirt and dress shirt had pulled up to reveal a strip of skin above my waistline.

I used my hand to knock them away, felt pain flare where I’d torn my own flesh, forcibly separating them.

I was halfway to climbing to my feet when the one-eyed cat pounced, scratching at the back of my neck.  A small weight, but the footing was absolute shit, some literal, some just trash.

I struck it with June, a backwards swing, hitting with the blunt end.

Blood hit the sliding glass door behind me and froze on contact, frost curling out from the spatter.

I used my free hand to strike the mice from my scalp, shook my head for good measure.

“No,” Dowghty said.  “My dog, no.  Oh no, no.”

I very deliberately avoided looking at him.

“No, no, no.  He was a good boy.”

If I could get through the sliding glass door… it was cracked open.

But the footing would be worse.  The movement through the snow in the backyard slow.  I’d still have to get past the fenced-in area, over the fence or through a gate.

I wasn’t sure I’d be in a better position.

The animals were closer now, shoulder to shoulder.

Hm.

Scratch that.  There weren’t many positions worse than this.

I reached out, ready to push on the door, where it was cracked open.

Cue enough for the animals to attack.

I kicked at the largest ones.  Cats, dogs.  But that did nothing against the rest.  Squirrels, mice, rabbits.

Teeth like inch-long blades, more, smaller teeth, half an inch, a quarter inch long.  Biting.  Scratching.

I did not know that rabbits had claws.

“No, the dog, no!”  Dowght cried out.

I kicked swinging the hatchet to dislodge one of the larger rabbits and scare off a cat that was getting braver.

“No!  Stop, you bastard!”

I could barely stand.  I was one good bite away from losing all strength in my legs.  My back against the glass door, I swung the hatchet at Dowght’s hands.

I’d expected him to recoil, to draw back or protect himself.  He didn’t.

The hatchet’s blade clubbed its way through flesh more than it cut, forming more depth between the middle two fingers, and frost sealed the wound.  The knife dropped, forgotten, and Dowght stumbled forward, raising his hands to flail blindly at me.

Reflexive, not wanting to be touched, my mind still lingering on ideas of disease as I saw his blood, I caught his injured hand with my free hand mid-swing.  I could feel how cold the wound was, beneath my fingers.

With that alone, the pain of the wound being crushed in my grip, he crumpled.  Strength had gone out of him.

The larger animals attacked him.

Biting the hand that feeds.

I batted away the smaller ones, shoved at the sliding door.

Accumulated snow and ice made it simply tilt to one side, the top moving while the bottom remained in place, rather than slide.

The door made a crunching sound as it settled back in its previous position.

With the noise, every animal looked up at me, going still.  Some had their mouths on or teeth in Dowght, muzzles bloodied, as their focus moved to me.  Whole clusters of them were on or immediately behind the table.  The light from the window made their eyes seem brighter than they were.

Dowght, for his part, wasn’t even fighting in self defense.

I was panting, and each beat of my heart was soon followed by a throb of pain from the various cuts and bites across my body.  The mauled shoulder was a different kind of pain.  Not throbbing, not stabbing, but a dull, grating sensation, like something wasn’t working on a mechanical level.  Shifting my posture made something mechanical go very wrong, and I was nearly blinded by the pain that followed.

Two or three dozen animals still staring up at me.

Angry, frustrated, scared, I dug into a deeper, animal part of myself.

I bellowed at them, arms spread, weapon in hand, looking big.  As intimidating as I could manage.

They dogpiled me.  All attacking, all at once.

I swung the hatchet, three, four times, hitting multiple animals with each swing.  Their mass making every action harder, more tiring.

Animals I hit and injured recovered and rejoined the swarm.

One swing clipped a little too close to my leg, and I felt my shin freeze.

The animal smell, the weight of them, the lack of any personal space, to the point that I could scarcely breathe without risking that a mouse would find its way into my mouth, it all built up to one moment, the connections forming.

Not good connections, not a good moment.  Only the sort of moment that made me turn down an offer like Alexis’.  Like the moments where I turned down an offer for a hug from Joel, who I trusted as much as I trusted anyone.

I dug deeper, for something more primal, drawing from reserves I shouldn’t.  Blind, furious swings.  I threw them off, kicked, struggled, wasted far too much energy shaking off animals that weren’t even there.

In the midst of it, they backed off.

I didn’t stop.  I fought to get rid of the littlest things that swarmed me, first, then swung the hatchet at the glass door, blunt back end first.

It bounced off.

Again.

“Fuck!”  I swore, as if the heat and the ferocity of the utterance could somehow empower the hatchet to shatter the thick glass.

Why couldn’t glass break like it did in the movies?

A smaller dog was drawing closer, ready to take advantage of the distraction.  I swung at it, knowing I’d miss.  It backed away a step.

I panted, but I couldn’t breathe.  The air was so filthy, it was like there was no oxygen left.  My head swam, and I felt like I might throw up, from mingled revulsion, panic, and exhaustion.

So few of the animals were truly dead.  I’d injured a great many, but their bloodthirst was apparently overpowering it.

I backed up until I stood in a corner, a large cabinet to my left, hatchet held out and ready.

I was shaking like Dowght had, holding the axe much like he had his knife.  Except my left hand was injured, a scratch along the back that had only been interrupted by the locket.  I couldn’t close the hand with enough force to hold onto the weapon.  Instead, I used it to hold the weapon steady.

The sensations of the animals crawling over me, the presence, invading my space, it flashed through my mind.

I gagged, coughed to try and clear my throat.

I was bleeding from a hundred small wounds, and maybe a dozen bigger ones.

My head nodded, a bow, a dip.  A sudden and unexpected exhaustion, trying its hand at getting a hold on me.

My head still bent, eyes on the ground between me and the animals, I felt a single tear roll down my cheek, stinging as it ran across scratches and bites.

I was, I realized, standing about three feet away from where Dowght had been sitting, at the head of the table.

This was it.  There was nobody coming to my rescue.  Even Rose, if she happened to show, could do nothing.

Pauz had made his play, and it had been a clever one.  Short sighted, but clever.  Distracting me at pivotal moments, keeping my eyes off his prize.

I had no idea how the property transfer worked.  If Rose would disappear when I did, if Pauz could get the property through her, or if the next Thorburn would inherit the debt, as I’d inherited Molly’s, and Molly had inherited Grandmother’s.

Or, perhaps, if Pauz was simply content to have me here, a ghost he could manipulate and use, infect, so a piece of me could relive this end for a few decades or centuries.

I looked at the animals.  The dogs had their heads low, ears down, the cats were slinking away, avoiding eye contact.

I almost smiled, as I turned my eyes back to the ground.

As ends went, I supposed, being torn apart, piece by tiny piece, by various wild animals, it wasn’t the worst possible end I could face, given the way my life was going.  Kind of funny really.

Except for the part where there was anything remotely humorous about this.

All I had to do was relax.  Let my guard down.  Stop fighting.

There would be pain.  Or more pain, and then… whatever end I had in store.

I sank, my legs relaxing, my back sliding down the wall.  Half-inch by half-inch.

Easing myself down gently.  Feeling every hole and scrape on my body send its insistent, signal to my brain, a signal that peaked, vying with the others for the whole of my attention.

Halfway down, I stopped.

Forearms had come to rest on knees as I lowered the weapon, lowered myself.

The hatchet still sat in my hand.

June.

I blinked, slowly.

June had gone out like this.

Hurting.

Hopeless.

Letting herself relax and accept oblivion.

As if I were moving in slow motion, my eyes moved to the ice, the blood that had frozen in place on the window.

Then I looked at the animals.

Heads down, ears down, afraid.  Subdued.  Not even attacking as I let down my guard.

Ahh.

So ice and cold hadn’t been the only thing I’d been dashing all over the place as I’d fought.

There was the emotion that June carried with her, too.

Double-edged sword, that.

I didn’t raise myself, but I did brace my feet against the floor so I wouldn’t sink any further.

Whatever state the animals were in, I didn’t believe they’d let me walk out.  I didn’t believe they’d let me take one step out of my corner before they resumed tearing me to shreds.

Fuck, the pain wasn’t letting up.  I could imagine sensations as the wet spread of blood, but when I looked at my legs, I saw there was blood in places I hadn’t felt it, and places that had felt wet were dry.

I was able to push through the encroaching despair, now that I recognized it for what it was.

I dug for the things that drove me.  Rose.  Promises.  Molly.  My friends.  Even the rest of the world, as abstract as that seemed.  Or my fucked up extended family, which was very not abstract but simultaneously hard to justify on a rational level.

God damn it, I’d been lower than this before, and I’d fought my way back.  I was not going to diminish my past triumphs before by giving up now.

Maybe that was a lie.  Low in a different way, maybe.

Yeah.  Low in a different way.

Right.

Which brought me back to the question of what the hell I was supposed to do.

Call the lawyers?

No.

Maybe I would have, if I’d thought about it before, while in the throes of despair, but right now it felt too much like admitting defeat.  Giving up.

I could reach out to Briar Girl, knowing she was watching me, but for what?  She couldn’t really help.

I could call Ornias, but… that would only worsen the situation overall.

I had small options, and I had the disastrously strong options, but very little in between.

Getting from here to Conquest seemed insurmountable.  Stepping outside meant facing down all the animals out there.  Crows.  Bigger things.  I was working with a time limit, and I still had to get there.  Knowing my luck, I’d get refused access to the subway for looking like a murder scene.

Too much.  Too hard to form a plan.  Too much to do, too many obstacles to overcome.

Discouragement loomed, despair, and this time it wasn’t June.

How?  Any one of these things was doable, but knowing the obstacle that came after, it was hard to figure out a direction, a way to connect ideas into a plan.

I could see the animals building their courage.

“June,” I said.  “I need your help.  Come forth.”

No luck.  That was Rose’s power, not mine.

But… right there, I felt like I was on the brink of something.

Ideas.  I raised my head some.

First of all, I was thinking in the wrong direction.  I needed to work backwards.  I realized it as soon as I worked out the second point: that there were names I could call.

Technically, I could call any name to forge a tenuous connection.  I could use those connections.

Third of all, a completely unrelated idea… I had the means to cheat.

“Fell, servant of Conquest, servant of the Lord of Toronto.  I summon you,” I said.

I shifted my weight, planting my feet to raise myself up some.

“Fell, you creepy-ass gun-toting bitch of Conquest, I summon you,” I said.

A mongrel growled at me.

“Fuck you too, dog,” I said.  My heart was pounding.  It hadn’t really calmed down, but I was acutely aware of my fear.  I could see a way out.  I just needed to not die right now.

“Fell, I call you again, errand boy, connection manipulator, the practitioner with no name.  Get the fuck over here.”

I reached into my pocket.  With two fingers, so I didn’t need to bend down and dig deeper, I drew the jar free.

I couldn’t unscrew it without dropping the hatchet, and I couldn’t drop the hatchet without opening myself up to attack.

The animals were feral, acting well outside their normal rules, but they weren’t stupid, and I had a bit of an edge as long as June’s presence affected them.

Paint jar still held between my index and middle fingers, held there more by the traction of my gloves and the shape of the fingers than the strength of my hand, I held it out against the cabinet, lid facing forward.

I swung the hatchet.

Jar shattered.

The animals were moving.  I moved too, lunging forward.

Kicking, hard enough to send one of the larger dogs sliding into other animals, making each injury on and in my leg sing with hot agony.

Not using the hatchet.  Not June.  With my injured left hand, I touched fingertips to the mingled ink and blood on the blade.  It hadn’t all frozen.

I drew a line of the liquid across my throat, as if I were slitting it.

There was no room for doubt or hesitation.

“June!” I cried out.  Not in my voice.  Not in Rose’s either.  The Thorburn voice.  “Come!”

I nearly lost my grip on the hatchet as she leaped forth.

Cold.  A pulse of despair.

A tattered, frostbitten woman, head bowed.

She seemed fainter.

I touched the blood and ink still on the hatchet, and spread it across the blade, visualizing the effect I wanted.

Glamour filling the scratched-in inscription.  Sinking in.

When I looked at June, she seemed less faint than she had.

Still faint, though.  The animals seemed vaguely wary of her.  They weren’t looking at her, but they were a little less eager to advance on me on the

“Remember the cabin, June?” I asked.

“So cold.”

“It is.  Did you think about food, while you got the fire ready?” I asked.

“I’m hungry,” she whispered.

“A feast,” I said.  “Are you dreaming of a feast?”

“I’m hungry,” she said, with the exact same inflection as before.  “But there isn’t much food in the cupboards.”

“There isn’t much food in the cupboards because…” I prompted her.  My eyes didn’t leave the animals.

“There isn’t much food in the cupboards.  It’s winter.  It’s hard to make it to the market, and hunting is slow.”

“Hunting,” I said.  “Did you hunt?”

“It’s cold,” she said.

Defaulting to pattern.  Nothing to connect to, to answer the question.

“Why is hunting slow?” I asked.

I needed an in.  A connection.

“The animals sleep during the winter.  I’m so tired.”

“It’s cold,” I prompted her.  “The animals are asleep for the winter.  It’s winter.”

She echoed me.  Caught up in the words.

“It’s cold,” I repeated.  “The animals are asleep for the winter…”

It became a chant.

“Walk down the path, June,” I said.  “Walk home.”

She advanced, still repeating the words, her physical form jerking between the times she’d said or thought each phrase.  But she walked.

“Fell,” I said, as she got into the flow of it, a rhythm.  The temperature in the room was dipping precipitously.  “I summon you.”

I could feel the connection to Fell.  I touched the residual blood on the hatchet, and found only what was frozen there.  I scraped off what I could with my gloved fingertips and cast it out, at the connection between Fell and me.

“Come, Fell,” I said.  “I fucking order you to come.”

I advanced further, following in June’s wake.  Animals backed away, circling around, looking for an avenue of attack.

The cold affected me too, and it was all the more intense where I was hurt, where teeth had pierced clothing.

I saw Dowght, in far worse shape than me, almost mangled, cringing in the face of the freezing temperature.  He would be feeling it ten times over.

I wasn’t strong enough to carry him, even if he was malnourished.

I touched the hatchet to his face until he moved his head.  His eyes fell on me.

“Bastard,’ he mewled the word.

I didn’t have time for this… he’d rejected my earlier offer for help.  He’d had to, but he’d rejected it.  In moments, June would advance out of my reach, and I didn’t quite have breath to shout out orders.  The animals would finish circling around and attack us from behind.

That was if they didn’t decide to brave the cold and attack regardless.

“Look,” I said.  I used the cold of the hatchet’s metal to make him move his head, then touched it to his temple.  “Eyes forward.  Look at your animals.”

I could see his eyes open.  One was nearly unable to open, with the way his eyelid had torn.

I spoke, “They’re going.  Follow them.”

“But…”  He started to turn his head, looking down.  Looking towards the animals that were circling around.

I touched the cold hatchet to his chin again.  He raised his chin out of the way, looking more in June’s direction, looking in the direction of the animals that were in front of June, steadily retreating as she advanced, uncomfortable.

“They’re leaving,” I repeated.  “Come on.”

I offered the handle of the hatchet for him to hold.

“They’re going,” I said.  “Hurry.”

Hurry because the animals will get us if you don’t.

“Bastard,” he whispered the word.

But he took hold of it.  I hauled him to his feet.

He was lighter than I’d thought.

More unstable, too.  He stumbled.  I used my left forearm instead of my arm to stop him from outright colliding with me.

I didn’t like touching.  Especially someone I didn’t trust.  But… this was what it was.

I took a half-step in June’s direction.  Without the pressure of my forearm, he nearly fell, stopped as he came to rest against the arm again.  I tried again, praying he wouldn’t fall.  I didn’t have the power to haul him to a standing position a second time.

Once he found his stride, though, he only needed my forearm to steady him, not to support him.

I’d nearly forgotten, in the chaos.

I switched arms, bracing him with my hatchet-arm, and I reached for the table, struggling to reach without dropping my charge.

I hooked my baby finger through the twine that bound Black Lamb’s Blood.

Half-blind, tattered, Dowght followed June and his animals.

“Turn in the path, June,” I managed.  Easier, without the burden of a man’s weight, malnourished or no.

She veered towards the room to her left.

“Cabin door, June,” I said.

She paused, recognized the front door for what it was, and approached it.

We emerged into the outdoors.  Animals scattered as we passed through the door.

The cold that June emanated was intense.  My breath was freezing as it left my lips, crusting around my nose and mouth.  I couldn’t feel much of anything, which was almost a blessing, given my injuries.

“Come on, Fell,” I said.

Birds filled the air.  No longer Pauz’s eyes in the sky, they winged this way and that.  A storm in motion, unpredictable.

A larger animal slowly paced into the middle of the street.

Ominous as fuck.

A deer, antlers fully grown, a dozen points that could pierce a heart or an organ.  A crown of points.  Promising danger more than it promised self defense.

There was blood around its mouth and nose.  Tatters of flesh and fur hung from the blunt teeth I could see.

“What the fuck happened to Bambi?” I asked.

“He’s beautiful,” Dowght said.  “Majestic.  A tyrant, a despot.  My third favorite.”

“You’re going to a mental asylum,” I said.  “Just to be clear.  I don’t think you’re fit for ordinary society any more.”

“Handsome.  Noble,” Dowght muttered.  Oblivious.

I couldn’t run without abandoning Dowght, couldn’t deal with three hundred fucking pounds of muscle with more speed, strength and weapons than I had.

“Fell,” I said, using the Thorburn voice.  “Come on.”

The deer shifted position.  Mouth slightly agape, teeth showing, it lowered its head.  Points aimed at me and Dowght.

Not a mating thing.  Not self defense.  Just murdering me with its freaking horns because it could.

“June,” I said.  “Turn left.”

She veered closer to the deer.  It didn’t seem to care.

It scuffed the snow-covered road with its hoof.

Preparing to charge.

I would shove Dowght in the way, if it came down to it.  I just didn’t think it would make a big difference.

“June,” I said.  “Remember the end.  When the pain went away.  Slipping into the deepest sleep you’ve ever experienced.”

She flickered, and she was curled up on the ground, a blanket around her.

“Deep sleep,” I intoned.

She flickered, then disappeared.

No.

The impact I felt to the hatchet was feeble at best.  Almost imperceptible.

The cold still swirled around me, but I could feel its effect weakening with every passing second.

Not what I’d meant for her to do.  Experiencing her death so deeply that she died a little.

But it hadn’t been for nothing.  The deer staggered.  It shook its head.

I let go of Dowght, letting him fall.  With quick, hurried strides, I crossed the distance.

The deer began to rouse.  I broke into a run.  The bite in my leg seized up, I stumbled, slipped-

I could see the deer recovering.

I found my feet, closing the last few feet, just as the deer lowered its antlers, points aimed at me.

I blocked the points of the antlers with the book that dangled from my hand, huffed out a gasp at the impact.  Stupid, I knew, to use the book like this, but accidentally freeing the imp from his bondage was still better than dying.  I was pretty sure.

I was able to stop the deer for just one instant.  Any longer, he’d rear up, kick, trample me, or just try again and succeed in stabbing me.

I planted the hatchet in his neck, blade grinding against bone.

The deer collapsed like a puppet without strings.

“No!” Dowght hollered.  “No!  No!”

He crawled more than anything, closing the distance.

I only backed away.  The temperature was normalizing, going from ‘cold’ to ‘still pretty damn cold’.

The animals were closing in.

Not just the animals that had managed to get inside the house.  Every single damn creature in the neighborhood.

Dowght reached the deer, and he embraced the corpse.  Openly weeping.

My hand throbbed where I’d used it to brace against the antlers.  My leg throbbed from the running, and the various injuries.

All of me hurt.

The protection the ghost afforded was fading.

I looked around, at the animals that were poised on snowbanks, beneath cars, slinking forward.

In the houses themselves, I saw only drawn curtains, the lights on…

No.  One person was watching.  A boy.  Eyes wide.

He’d probably seen the deer murdering scene, from the shock I could make out.  I looked, taking in the scene, imagining how he might see it in the gloom.

Oh.  Maybe that’s why he seemed so alarmed.  There was a bear in the shadows between two houses.  Hard to make out, but most definitely there.

“Fell,” I said, again.  “Fell.  Fell.  Fell.  Fell…”

I saw headlights at the far end of the street.

“Fell, Fell, Fell…”

The car approached.  Stopped.

The door opened.

Fell stepped out, glancing around.  I saw him throw a handful of sand around himself.

He drew his gun, pointing it at me.  He paused.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” I said.

“I’d shoot you right here, but you look bad enough it might be a waste of a bullet.”

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“In many circles,” Fell said, “Calling a practitioner that way is considered terminally poor manners.”

“Noted,” I said, eyeing the encroaching animals.  “I’m new to this, I’ll keep it in mind.”

He didn’t lower the gun.

“I have the imp,” I said.

“Do you know what it’s like?  When someone calls you like that?”

“Not so much.”

The bear was emerging from the alley.

“A jerk at your very being.  Small jerks, but jerks all the same.”

“But you can’t shut off the connection because your master ordered you to help me.”

“I can’t use that connection that’s being formed against you, either, no.  But if you think I’m his slave, you’re making a very dangerous assumption.”

“Slave, servant, lieutenant, I don’t know,” I said, my voice low.  “All I know is I’m bleeding, I need a ride, and he wants this imp.  I’m not sure what time it is, but-”

“Ten twenty.”

I’d thought it was approaching midnight.

“It’s ten thirty, he wants this imp by midnight.  Give me a ride, and we can both enjoy the rest of our evenings.  You go back to… watching late night TV, I don’t know.  I go tend to my wounds and prepare for tomorrow.”

“Not my responsibility.”

“It makes it look like you went above the call of duty,” I said.  “Show Conquest-”

“This base sort of manipulation is beneath even you.”

“Fair,” I said.  My voice had a roughness to it.

Okay, the animals were dangerously close right now.  If he got back in his car, I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do.

“I’m going to deliver you to Conquest,” Fell told me.  “But I need you to understand one thing.  The slight?  Abusing my name?  I can take my revenge, when all is said and done.”

I nodded.  Too weary to speak.

“Come.”

“Him too,” I said.  I pointed the hatchet at Dowght.

“Him?”

“Leaving him here means he dies.”

Fell looked at the broken man.  “We won’t bring him, but we’ll secure his safety.”

I watched as Fell approached Dowght.

“Fucker,” Dowght said, sobbing.  “Fuckers!  Bastards!”

Fell cast sand around the man.

“Ahh!  Fuck you!  In my eyes!  Fuck you, you crab-dicked fucker!”

Fell turned and left.  He passed right by me, returning to the car.

I hurried to follow.

“He’s safe?” I asked.

“He will be,” Fell said.  He tapped his phone, mounted on the dashboard.  “Car.  Dial nine-one-one.”

“The imp is deterring all emergency response,” I said.

“Stop talking,” Fell told me.  “Unless you’re talking about your diabolism, I either know already, or I don’t care what you have to say.  This is what I do.  I clean up and handle details.”

The voice came through on the other end of the phone.  “Toronto emergency services.  What is the nature of your emergency?”

■

Not one word from Fell, the entire trip to Conquest’s lair.  Which was nice in a way.  It let me shut my eyes.

Fell led the way through the front door.  I clutched the tome to my stomach, partially for the security.  Partially to stem any ongoing bleeding there.

“Am I putting myself in danger?” I asked.  “Bleeding out onto his rug?  Can he use my blood against me?”

“It isn’t blood given.  Could he take it?  Yes.  But he could do that regardless of your wishes, if he had a mind to.”

“Gotcha,” I said.

We ascended to the second floor.  The decor was different.

A continuation of what he’d been doing before.  A tower, white, as if hewn from a single, gargantuan piece of bone.  Floors alternated between ones open to the outside world, ringed by pillars, and ones that were entirely closed in.

Conquest was in a half-human, half-monster form, when we reached the top.

A green crab sat in his hand, its legs perched on his splayed fingertips.  He had three slaves at his feet, now.  None of them were Rose.

I threw the tome to the ground between us.

I need that back, I thought.

No use dwelling on it right now, though.

“Hm,” Conquest said.  “You appear to be worse for wear, Diabolist.”

“I do,” I replied.

“And that task could have been handled much more gracefully.”

“Not when you give the job to me,” I said.  “That was handled exactly the way it was going to be handled, with Blake Thorburn on point.  Don’t you like chaos and conflict?”

“I have no feelings either way.  I am an entity of conquest, a very distinct thing.  My ends were not furthered by any significant measure, there.”

If he was complaining, did it mean he lost power?

“I understand, Lord of Toronto,” I said.  I bowed my head a little.  “I’ll aim to keep your interests in mind for the future.”

When I raised my head, though, he was looking right at me.  Right through me.

Maybe I wasn’t being as subtle as I should have been.  Fuck it.  I was too tired, too hurt.

“You’re free to take your leave,” He said.  “I will see you before midnight tomorrow.”

No thank you, no acknowledgement.  Just that.

Dick.

“I need contact information for the Knights,” I said.  “Research for the Hyena.”

Conquest signaled Fell, who handed me a pad of paper.

“There’s also the astrologer,” I said.

“Why her?” Fell asked.

Can’t you just agree and make life easier?

“I’m going to have to deal with an abstract entity in the next two days.  I’m thinking the astrologer could be useful.”

Anyone could be useful, given how little I know and how little I have.

“Still not seeing it,” Fell said.

“Make do for the time being,” Conquest ordered me.

Fuck.

I nodded slowly.

“I said you could take your leave,” Conquest said.  “If you would like to stay the evening, we could see to the torture I mentioned the other night.”

“One more thing,” I said.  “A request, Lord of Toronto.  It… very much relates to my ability to handle these tasks.”

“What request?”

“Rose.  You chained her?”

“I did.”

“Can you bring her here?  Gently?  I’m… somewhat concerned about her.”

“I’m not inclined to obey the requests of underlings.”

“Even when those requests serve your interests?” I asked.  I dropped to one knee, grunting in pain as injuries opened.  “Please, Lord of Toronto.  I ask this, knowing you are among the only ones who can help me like this, knowing it puts me in your debt.”

He took his time.  I didn’t budge.  Head bowed, body aching, kneeling.

“Diabolist,” he said.

I looked up.

Rose dangled from the chain.

Unconscious.

“She’s sleeping,” Fell observed.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

Conquest spoke, “Your previous worries have been resolved.  You may have new ones, but I will not stoop to answering every single concern you have.  You will be handling tomorrow’s task without her help, it seems.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, again.  To Fell, this time.

He smiled a little.  “Consider my silence a fair repayment for the summonings.  And, perhaps, the blood on my car’s upholstery.”

“And the fleas, I imagine,” I answered him.  “And the lice.”

I saw his expression twist.  “You’re not doing yourself favors, diabolist.”

Still kneeling, I stared at the three of them in grim silence.  Conquest, Fell, and Rose.

Neither volunteered anything more.  They seemed to be waiting for me to do something.

“Thank you, Lord of Toronto, for bringing Rose here,” I finally said.  Conquest didn’t seem like the sort to cave and break the silence.  Like Pauz said, being immortal made you patient.

“Your presence grows tiresome, Diabolist.  Your stench doubly so.  Take your leave, before I become irritated.”

I stood.

“Lord,” I added.  “In terms of the imp I’ve delivered to you-”

“If I have not been clear enough, we can return to the subject of torture.”

“Will you be giving him to another?”

“I do not readily release my hold on that which I have claimed.”

I nodded, turning to leave.

Contract terms met.  Making some attempt to ensure that Conquest kept Pauz.

Hurting, sore, worried, and above all else, pissed, I made my way back to the real world.

A little worrisome that I didn’t have Rose’s advice on what to do next.  I’d finished one big step in her scheme.  I had Pauz and Conquest in one place.

For better or worse.

Collateral 4.9

Nobody was waiting for me when I got back to my apartment, which was probably a good thing.

I didn’t want any questions.

Not about the countless lacerations, scratches and scrapes.  Not about my general level of exhaustion, or the countless things I just couldn’t shed light on.

No people.  There was, however, a note on the door.

Food is in the fridge.  Your cousin stopped by.

-Joel

P.S. Your cousin came by again, 10:30pm.  I checked for you, you weren’t back.  Left her number inside.

I owed Joel something.  I wasn’t good at this.  Taking without giving back.  He’d been upset when I’d insisted, but I didn’t like this imbalance.

No information on which cousin it was, and no phone number.

I opened the door, standing there as it swung open, feeling all of the cuts and scrapes making themselves known, the bruise at my shoulders, and the bruise on my stomach, where I’d only barely avoided being gutted by the deer.  All of me hurt.

Worse, I felt filthy.  I could still feel the little claws scrabbling on my skin.

I checked the length of the hallway, then pulled my clothes off at the door, leaving them outside my apartment.

I headed straight for the shower and cranked it on hot.

The water that ran off me was pink-brown, and it wasn’t the lines I’d drawn on myself that made it brown.

When I bent down, I saw that the brown was composed of specks.

Bugs.  Thousands, so small I could barely make them out with the naked eye.

I shivered, even under the near-scalding water.

I turned it up hotter.

Soap, shampoo, rinse.

More soap, shampoo.  As if I could simply drown them in chemicals.

The hot water ran out long before I was absolutely sure that I wasn’t seeing any more fleas in the runoff.

I stepped out of the shower to dig through the cabinet.

Pills, pills…

Antibiotics I’d been given by Ty after a bad bout of coughing.  I hadn’t taken them because it was a fucking stupid idea to take antibiotics when you didn’t have to.  Good.  I popped one in my mouth.

As for cleaning myself…

There was paint thinner, which I used sometimes after work, but I suspected it would be a bad idea to pour it on myself with the number of open wounds I had.

Rubbing alcohol… same issue.

Hydrogen peroxide?

Fuck it.  It should kill the fleas, and I needed to disinfect the wounds.

A minute later, I was standing in the shower, hissing through my teeth as each of the minor wounds bubbled.  I made sure to brace myself before pouring it on the more severe gouge in my leg.

I patted myself dry with my shittiest handtowel, then stepped out of the shower, still damp.

I had no idea how bad I looked as a whole.  I did know I was covered in marks.  Enough that I’d draw attention in public.  Enough that I might even scare people.

One of my eyelids was torn, and was promising to swell up.  My ear was tattered at the edge, going by touch.  The bruise at my shoulder was ugly, already purple in spots.

I’d suffered harm on another level, too.  The tattoos.  My best gauge to more metaphysical harm I’d sustained.

The birds were… somehow better than they’d been.  A few less feathers sticking up, less hostile, feral, less beady.  But the birds were vivid in color and definition, the branches seemed a little more wicked, more angular and sharp, and the watercolor was a darker cloud, more like the bruise at my shoulder than the lighter hues I’d had before.

I had the eerie sensation that the cloud of watercolor behind the birds was shifting, like clouds moving across the sky.  But when I looked, I couldn’t see it.

A little disconcerting.

I’d need to touch myself up.

I reached for the locket, and paused.

Bit of a problem.

The hair was more like wire.  Augmenting the chain, adding to it, mimicking it.  Where it cut into my hand, the glamour was giving the chain a sharper edge at the seams where metal had joined metal.  Spurs and barbs.

The imp’s influence, or was the glamour simply adapting to circumstance?

I used a nail file, and scraped, clipped or gouged away what I could.

Once I’d brewed together a bit of ink, I began touching up the worst of the damage.  Face.  Ear.  Hands.  The gouge on my leg.

I hesitated, my hand still wet with ink, poised over another set of scars.  Narrow ones, years old now.

There was only so much ink to spare, and there were dangers.  But the idea that I could cover them up, remove one more reminder of the bad old days…

I wiped it away.  Photoediting real life.

I couldn’t say what the backlash would be, but I told myself the alternative to the glamour was me not being able to function or show my face to my friends.

Or my family, as it happened.  I thought of the note.

I found the number inside.  No doubt he hadn’t wanted to leave it on a paper visible for all the others to see.  Respecting privacy.  There was only a Toronto number.

It was one in the morning.  The hour told me I shouldn’t call, but he or she had come by twice.  I questioned whether it was urgent, or if more repeated visits would prompt more questions from the people around me.

In the end, I was too tired to really care about social norms.  I wanted answers, not more things hanging over my head.

I called.

“Hm?  Hello?”

A girl’s voice.  I narrowed it down to Ellie and Paige.

I almost thought Molly, but Molly was gone.

“You dropped by?” I asked.

I heard a hushed, “Blake,” followed by a rustling sound.

“Yes.  Unless you dropped by to talk to someone else?” I asked.

“No.  One sec.”

I heard clumping noises over the phone, more rustling, and then the sound of a door closing.

“I didn’t want to bother my roommate.  Late call.”

“I was out late,” I said.

“The police were asking around, looking for you,” she said.  “They got in touch with everyone.”

Fuck.

“Oh?” I asked.  “Any particular reason?”

“Molly died, then you disappear?  It raises questions.”

“Ah,” I said.

Was Laird trying something?

“What’s going on?” she asked.  “You have the house now?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Fuck that,” she said.  “Why?  What did you pull?  Did you strongarm Molly?”

“No.”

“God, I haven’t been able to think straight, I’m so fucked up over this, and I’ve got exams coming up.”

“When you say you’re fucked up, you mean you’re fucked up over Molly’s death?” I asked.

“Over this.  All of it.  You.  The inheritance.  Molly.  I thought that I’d look into it, get in touch with you, get some concrete answers, settle my thoughts.  Then you weren’t there, which made things worse.  I wound up going back, and you still weren’t there.  Your landlord said he’d seen you…  I need answers, Blake.  None of this makes sense.”

While she talked on the phone, I got the meal Joel had prepared from the fridge.  Lasagna.  I put it in the microwave with a small glass of water.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.  “I don’t know what answers I can give.”

“Why you?”

“That’s an awfully good question,” I told her.  “I wish I knew the full answer.”

“Things were just settling down, then something happens to Molly, and that’s bad enough, but you get the house?  Molly just decides to give it to you?”

“Grandmother decided.”

“She did?”

“It’s already set up.  If something happens to me, then it goes to the next person in line.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Do I- Do I want to know where I stand on that list?”

I sighed.

“You’re not jumping to give me an answer.”

“No,” I told her.  “You don’t want to know.”

The silence was painful to listen to.  “Do you know how hard I’ve worked?  To get where I am?  You ran away.  Molly… I don’t even know what happened, but she apparently fell apart before she even had the inheritance, then got worse after.  Ellie and Roxanne never deserved that money, too spoiled, in very different ways.  Your little sister is obviously too young, and Kathryn was the worst of us when it came to tearing down everyone else to get her hands on it.”

“And you?” I asked.

The microwave beeped.  I left it alone.

“I… damn it, I worked for it!  I did some stuff I’m not proud of, but not against Molly or Ivy.  Only against my sisters, who were already playing dirty.  But I didn’t make it an obsession.  I made myself my own person, worked hard at school, and I made it something that could be.  Not something that had to be.”

Except somewhere along the line, it sounds like, you let yourself believe you were the only one who deserved it, and you pinned too many hopes on it.

I didn’t say that, though.  “When she asked, you know, I said you should get it.”

There was a pause.

“I’m sure you understand if I say I don’t believe you,” Paige told me.

She was wrong.  I didn’t understand in the slightest.  I asked, “Why not?”

“Why would I?  We don’t know each other.  You don’t know me.”

“We did, we were friends.”

“We were family who saw each other because we had to.”

That stung.  More than it should have.

“We were friends,” I said, again.  Firmer.  “Back when we were kids.  Then we got along at the inheritance meeting.  We ran into each other at school.  Talked in passing.”

“In passing.  Nothing more.”

“Why are you so dead set on denying any connection we had?”  I asked.

“Because we didn’t.  We weren’t friends, Blake.  We just moved in some of the same circles, and you’re pretending the past has more significance than it does.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but then I thought about the scars I’d erased.

I couldn’t deny that I gave history an awful lot of weight.

“I think you’re a genuinely good person, Paige,” I said.  “So I’m going to assume that it’s the late hour and pressure that are making you obsessing more over the inheritance than Molly’s murder.”

“Murder?” she asked.  Seizing on entirely the wrong point.

Hadn’t she said-

No.  Fuck.

I was too tired.

“That’s how I understand it,” I said.

“The police didn’t say anything about murder.  If anything, it was apparently an accident.”

Someone was revising history, just as Paige was accusing me of doing.  Washing over the murder, turning it into an ‘accident’.  However they managed that.

“I don’t know exactly who said what,” I said.  “What did they say?”

“If you’re looking to get your story straight-”

“Paige,” I said.

“…The police said it looked like she shut herself in, because she was scared of backlash from the locals, Aunt Laura seemed to back that up.  She supposedly got cabin fever, fled, and got a little too far out into the cold.  But you said murder.  Which isn’t an idea you throw around lightly.”

Laird’s work?

“Paige-”

She steamrolled over me.  “It’s a little fucked, Blake.  Either you know something you’re not sharing, or you’re fucking with me, or-”

“It was damn suspicious,” I said.  Which it was.  “And clues were dropped.”

“Is that why they’re looking for you?  I thought they wanted to find you because you’d be the second person to disappear.”

“I don’t know why they’re looking for me.”

“But you thought that there was a murder, and you left the area?  Even if you’re a suspect?”

“As I understand it, one of them confirmed my alibi.”

“Did they?  Which is it, Blake?  Were they looking for a murderer or not?”

This was Paige.  She’d always been sharp.

She was a problem, and if she kept along this line of questioning, then it was very possible she’d get the wrong idea and take that wrong idea to legitimate authorities.

I needed to look at her as the threat she was, and that meant treating her as I’d treated Conquest and Pauz.  Figuring out what she wanted and utilizing that knowledge.

What she wanted was knowledge.  Understanding.

“What I know,” I said, speaking very slowly and carefully, “Is that grandmother was involved in something pretty messed up.  Some of that relates to the police chief back in Jacob’s Bell.  Some of it ties to what happened to Molly.  Molly died, I got a message saying as much, I walked right into the middle of it, and the whole reason I’m here is because I can’t do anything there.  I need to wrangle some help from above if I’m going to deal with this, before anyone else in the family gets wrapped up in it all.”

“That’s a little hard to swallow.”

“Is it?” I asked.  “Tell me that, with all the stories we shared between us about the family, that it isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that they were caught up in some hinky town council secret society bullshit.”

She didn’t reply immediately.  I took a forkful of lasagna.

“…Is that what it was?”

“A small few people with too much power, trying to get more power.  It relates to the house, to the whole inheritance thing, and a lot of the stuff Molly was talking about, when she sounded as paranoid as she did.”

“I’m trying to remember what she said.”

“Don’t.  Don’t worry about it, don’t get involved.”

“How am I not supposed to get involved?  Either you’re lying to me, telling me something convenient… or you’re telling the truth, and this does make sense, and I’m supposed to do nothing?”

“Do nothing,” I said.  “Okay?  You’re furthest away from this, out of all of us possible heirs.  You’re, aside from the little ones, the cousin with the best shot of coming out of this okay.  Take your exams.  Spend time with friends.  Enjoy life.  And if this does come-”

I stopped myself.

“If it what?”

“Nevermind.”

“If it does come…”

I frowned.  I was too tired.  Saying things I shouldn’t.  “I’ll see about leaving you a few notes.  The stuff I’ve figured out, tips.  Maybe make sure that Ellie and Kathy can add to it, if they move fast enough.”

“You’re not making a lot of sense, here.  You’re saying you’re in danger too?  That Ellie and Kathy might go the same way?”

“I’m saying… it’s complicated.”

“That’s a pretty terrible answer.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Why not tell us what’s going on, if I’m going to have to wait until three of my cousins are dead before getting some big surprise about murderous cults or something?”

“Because it’s the sort of complicated that messes up everything it touches.”

“What’s to stop them from coming after us now?  Before we’re in the know?”

“Ros- Paige.  I can’t get into it.”

“Who’s that  Ro-something?”

Rose.  “Someone with a voice that sounds like yours.  I’m really tired, Paige.  I’ve had a long day, I’ve got another one in front of me.”

“Can you guarantee that we’re safe?” she asked.  “Somehow I don’t think you can.”

“No,” I admitted.  “I can’t guarantee it.  But the threats that are involved here, they’re more interested in using the Thorburn family than they are in hurting us.”

“You’re being useful to the people who killed Molly?”

“Yes and no.  Not the way you’re imagining.  But it’s complicated.”

“Blake,” she said.

“Paige.

Why not tell the police?  Oh, wait, you said the police chief was a problem.”

“And there’s more going on,” I said.  I was too tired to navigate this conversation.  “Go take your exams.  Ignore me, ignore all this.”

“What if I don’t believe you?  What if I say this is too implausible, and I tell the police everything?”

“Then I forgive you,” I said.  I crossed the room to get a glass, and filled it at the sink.

“Forgive me?”

“I get it.  It does seem implausible.  Whatever happens, after you spread the word?  I forgive you if your conscience tells you to talk to the police instead of listening to me.”

“You sound odd.”

“I’m just really, really tired, Paige.  I have to go to bed.  Big day tomorrow, stuff to deal with.  Thank you for telling me about the police.  I’m sorry I can’t give you more concrete answers to your questions.”

“…Sure?”

“Good night, Paige.  Good luck with your exams.”

“Blake?”

“What?”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Was there?

“Just the fact that you’d ask helps,” I told her.

“Okay.”

I hung up.

I could have handled that better, probably.

My eyes roved over the tattoos, the locket, the scrapes and bites I hadn’t covered up.  The pain was fresher, now.

I felt very, very mortal.

I collected the glass and lasagna, and I moved over to the dining table.  I almost never ate at the table, preferring to stand, but I needed a surface to work with.

I grabbed the same pad of paper I’d used to sketch out the lines I’d drawn on myself and began writing.

Rose.   Kathryn.  Ellie.  Roxanne.  Ivy.  Paige.  Whichever of you is left at the time you read this.

Blake here.  I’m liable to be dead if you’re reading this.  Pretty much everyone I’ve talked to has given me a life expectancy in the single-digits.

You’re in for a rude awakening.  You’re going to find out some stuff.  What I’m going to do here is try to ease you into it.  Warn you about some of the pitfalls.  I’m going to try to do it in a way that doesn’t screw you over:

Don’t stress over the name ‘Rose’ being up there.  It’s a just-in-case.  Consider her an illegitimate grandchild.  But mainly don’t stress about it.  There are enough other things to worry about.

Don’t go past the wall around the house unless a mark is painted at the foot of the driveway, or you see someone walk up there first.  It’s a trap, and it would be too easy for each of you to walk into it one by one.

Laird Behaim is the enemy.  He’s the one directing the Jacob’s Bell contingent.

Sandra Duchamp will surprise you and spoil anything you set in motion.

As enemies go, neither of them even come close to comparing to the real danger.  You’ll realize what that danger is when you see the books on the shelf to the right of the desk.  Resist the temptation.  I’ve had to interact with things in that domain, and nothing good comes of it.

The lawyers count as part of this real danger.

Maggie is an ally.  This doesn’t necessarily make her trustworthy.

Johannes isn’t an ally or trustworthy, according to grandmother and my gut, but you know what they say about the enemy of your enemy.  Tread carefully.

Sarcasm is tempting, don’t.  You’ll understand what I mean.

Those are the bullet points.  Get somewhere safe, then read on.  I’ll explain what’s happened thus far, to put it into context…

■

Fell was waiting outside when I emerged, standing on the driver’s side of the car.

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“I take it you’re acting a little more civil this morning,” he commented.

“Trying,” I said.  “No promises I’ll stay that way.  I wound up falling asleep at my dining room table.  I’m tired, and you’re working for Conquest, who is trying to enslave me and fling a small share of humanity into infernal ruin… I might get grumpy.”

“Passenger door is open,” he said.  “Upholstery is clean.  Fleas exterminated.”

I pulled open the door.  Sure enough, it looked like I hadn’t been in it the night prior.

Taking my bag off, I settled it on my lap as I sat down.  Fell climbed in and set us on our way.

“The goblin?” he asked.  “Or the demon?”

“Goblin should be easier than an abstract demon,” I said.  “Goblin first.”

“Mm,” he grunted.  Not a confirmation, not a refutation either.

“Kind of hoping Rose wakes up so she can help me with the demon,” I added.

“No comment,” Fell said.  “And I won’t comment.  Don’t even try to weasel it out of me.”

I almost responded, then I stopped short.  When he said he wouldn’t comment, he’d effectively made a promise.

Bastard.

“So noted,” I said.  I watched as a faint patter of wet snowflakes hit the windshield, melting almost immediately.  The worst aspects of rain and snow both.

He drove just a little fast, for my comfort.

“You expressed interest in meeting the Knights.  Conquest reached out to them,” Fell said.

“That so?”

“It’s your choice.  I’m to take you to each location.  Would you like to see the Knights first?”

I thought of how Rose and I had handled things yesterday.  We’d checked out what was going on, figured out what we’d needed, handled other stuff, and then returned.

Or I’d returned, in any event.  Garbed in magical diagrams.

My clothes were so filthy I hadn’t been able to bring myself to wear them, and I had fallen asleep before I’d thought to launder them.

For now, I was in clothes with pure utility purposes.

“Can we swing by?  I’d like to see what it’s like, then see the Knights, so I can think about the oblivion demon while I work on the goblin problem.”

“They aren’t too far from one another,” he said.  “That’s doable.”

“Thank you,” I told him.

It took a few minutes before we passed onto a road with barely any cars at all.  It had been plowed, but snow had layered on the pavement since.  As confident as he was in his driving, Fell was compelled to slow down some.

“What gets a guy like you to serve a guy like Conquest?” I asked.

“Why would I share that?” he asked.

I started to say something that might have been construed as rude or provoking, insinuating that Conquest might have something to offer someone who had trouble with sexual conquests, and shut myself up instead.  I couldn’t think of a quippy way to word it, in any event.

“I don’t really know what would motivate you,” I said.  “But silence sucks, and you haven’t cranked up the radio, so…”

“You expect me to share details with you, diabolist?  For nothing?”

I almost protested against the label, but it was accurate.  “An alternative is that I share my life story, filling the endless minutes or hours in the car with personal details, either boring you to tears or getting you to sympathize with me.”

“It might be amusing to see you try and fail,” he said.

“It might,” I acknowledged.

“But you’re right.  It’s more liable to be irritating, and there’s an aura around you.  Infecting everything you have contact with.  I want nothing of it.”

“Aura?”  I looked down at my hand.

“The imp’s ambiance.  A light, a pattern, a smell.  The form it takes depends on the individual, and how they choose to see these things.  Right now, you are passing on traces to everything you touch.  Depending on the distance, the infection may be stronger or weaker.  But you always leave traces.  My car will stink when you are gone, cleaning or no.  You leave fingerprints behind, infect people, who infect other things in turn, until the energy is used up, fueling things that should not be.

Radiation.

“Right,” I said.  “So…”

“Don’t talk to me, Diabolist.  Do not interact with me.”

“Are you cool with what Conquest is doing?”

“You’re talking to me,” he said.

“I’m just saying.  For someone so touchy about imp ambiance, you seem remarkably cool with your lord and master doing what he’s doing.”

“No,” he said.  “No, ‘cool’ has nothing to do with it.”

“That so?” I asked.  “Huh.”

“You’re prying,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Knowledge is power, and it’s a kind of security too.”

“A novice mistake,” Fell commented.

“Hm?”

“Are you really more secure than you were before you learned about how this world works?”

“Depends what you mean,” I said.  “I was more secure before I learned about magic and demons existing, sure.  But the moment I began to teach myself stuff, well, whole different ball game.  Yeah, I’m more secure.”

“That same knowledge led to this issue with the ambiance, diabolist.  Had you known nothing, then Conquest would have had nothing to demand of you.”

“So being ignorant is the way to go, huh?” I asked.

“For billions of people on this Earth, yes,” Fell said.  “It affords a kind of protection.  Not immunity.  But on the whole, the average person is better off for being unaware.”

The car briefly fishtailed on ice.  He corrected it.

Still driving a little too fast, all things considered.

“I’d delineate,” I said.  “Break it down into awareness and knowledge.  There are a lot of things where being aware is shitty.  Being aware of how many kids die in Africa is one thing.  Being knowledgeable about it implies you know enough to do something about it.”

“Or,” Fell said, “Your knowledge empowers you to make others aware, and you make their existence a less happy one.”

“Somehow,” I said, “I’m getting the vibe that you’re speaking from experience.  Did knowledge not do you any favors?”

He was speeding up on a long, straight stretch.

“No,” he said.  “Neither knowledge nor awareness did me favors.  Both were snares, of a sort.”

“Snares?”

“Given your circumstances, I’d think you know, diabolist.  No sooner do they tell you, than the shackles slip around your neck, your wrists and ankles.  You’re bound.”

“By circumstance?” I asked.

“Or other means,” he said.  “You’ve seen the connections that surround us.  They appear as threads.  Can you name one that couldn’t be used to bind you?”

Familial ties, ties to a place, ties to a thing, to ideas, even.

“Rose wears a chain,” I said.  “Another kind of connection being used to bind?”

“Obviously,” Fell said.  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Here in the car.  Seeing to task number two.

He still wasn’t slowing down.

We zipped past an isolated car.  The shift of wind in the other car’s wake made us wobble.

“You’re talking about Conquest,” I said.

“My father served him, as did his father, and his father before him.  As did my brothers and sister.  On our twelfth birthday, we each received a gift.  Knowledge.  But it isn’t a gift we can return, and it’s a gift that burdens.  The Lord of Toronto acts according to a certain pattern.  He takes, and he doesn’t let go.  I notice you didn’t fight to take your companion with you when you left.”

“She’s already his, isn’t she?”

“Shackled.  Much as I am.  It is perhaps a good thing that she sleeps.”

“You have to obey him,” I said.  “I suspected you’d sworn to serve, I used that against you, forced your hand, even.  But I didn’t think…”

“That my father would have been forced to lure his sons and daughter into the trap, as his father was before him?”

I didn’t miss the slight acceleration as he spoke.

“You’re kept from acting against him.  From hurting yourself or breaking the terms of the agreement?”

“Yes.”

“But not, I gather, from taking certain risks?”

“It is the only rebellion afforded to us.  I didn’t take the out that my family did.  I have only a sister, who ranges far afield in Conquest’s service, and an uncle who watches over the neighboring areas.  My brother died at the hands of goblins, trying to save a small town.  My other brother went after one of Conquest’s enemies, who took mercy on him and killed him.”

“And you just drive fast,” I said.

“That’s less a rebellion than a freedom.  Different things.”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry, Fell,” I told him.

“Hm?”

“Being a dick, before.  Toying with you.”

“We’re not friends, Thorburn.  I’m hoping you die quickly, sometime in the next two days.  It would make a lot of things simpler.”

And if I defeat Conquest?  Where does that put you?

But I couldn’t ask, because he was no doubt sworn to obey Conquest.

I could feel the car shudder as he accelerated.  Tires grinding down ice and snow.

I leaned back and closed my eyes.

“You aren’t worried?”

Not giving you the satisfaction.  I said.  “I ride a motorcycle, and I’ve ridden it in rain and snow when I’ve had to.  Four points of contact with the ground?  A steel cage all around me?  Air bags?  Hardly safe, but I’m used to worse.”

I felt the engine ease up as he took his foot off the accelerator.

He’d wanted to make me uneasy.  He might as well have admitted as such aloud.

“He was bad enough before,” Fell said.  “Since you came here, he’s worse.”

“Conquest?  Yeah.”

“He’s not built to stop when he’s on a course like this.  To steer clear of something like this.”

“Kind of a bad choice for a Lord,” I said.

“A long story.”

“It doesn’t fix anything, you know, if I die,” I said.  “There are more following me.  I’ve taken a small measure to ensure they won’t fall into the same traps, but that’s hardly a guarantee, and I can think of one or two of them who are liable to make some godawful mistakes along the way, even with my warnings.  The sort of mistake that concerns people like you, perhaps.”

“My family has long dealt with major threats.  We serve in a role similar to witch hunters, evading attention, disarming and misdirecting the greatest Others.  If my family hadn’t lost to Conquest and been subsumed, then I might be hunting down the remaining members of your family right now.”

“Yeah?” I asked.  “That’s kind of shitty.”

“Do you not see the kind of damage a mere mote causes?  An imp?  What happens when something greater follows?  Do you think you’re going to come out of your dealings with the abstract devil in one piece?”

“Given that I didn’t come out of the thing with the imp in one piece, no,” I said.  “I admit, I’m a little spooked about what I’m in for.  Feeling woefully underequipped.”

“You should be.”

“You know, my little sister’s two?”

“Oh?”

“She’s one of the followers.  Does that mean you’d kill her?” I asked.

“Personally?  No.  Easier to interrupt her before she sets foot on the path.  Kill her parents, burn any resources your family holds, manipulate her destiny.  If that failed, then I’d wait until she came of a certain age, six at a minimum, where she’s self-aware, or twelve, when she’s about to be indoctrinated, I would likely kill her then.”

“Oh?” I mused.  I considered.  “Pretty shitty, still, but that’s… fairer than many alternatives.”

“Oh?  Have I met your standards, diabolist?”

Fell slowed.  He turned down a side road.  There were only trees on either side of us now.

A woman stood in the middle of the road.  She turned to face us.

I caught a glimpse of the damage that had been done to her.  One shoulder and most of her chest torn away.  The meat around the wound glistened with blood.

Fell drove right through her, and she dissipated.

I craned my head around to see her reforming behind us.  Walking awkwardly in our direction, before disappearing into the drift of snow.

“Ghost?” I asked.

“Close enough.  Term, I think, is a spectre.  Damage or disrupt a ghost like that, you break its pattern.  It spirals out, unbalanced, unable to maintain continuity, and tends to drag a few people with it before it’s spent.  Normally only seen around an area with another presence at work, or if it’s tightly bound to something and you destroy the focus.”

“Huh,” I said.  “I didn’t read anything like that in the book about binding ghosts.”

“Too volatile to bind,” Fell said.  “Just like you don’t handle old explosives.”

I nodded.

We passed a stretch of dead trees.  Skeletal, pale.

I saw a group of tall men and women standing in the midst of the trees.  Half again as tall as normal people, naked, their skin mottled, they were almost camouflaged.  They simply stood there, arms at their sides.

Each one had been wounded the same way.  Their heads had been bitten off, leaving only the neck and a lopsided lower jaw with teeth pointed skyward, tongue lolling.  One of the men had a very small erection.

“What were those?” I asked.

Fell shrugged.

We passed another cluster of ghosts.  All standing stock still.  All maimed.

As we passed, a few of them took tentative steps or crawled in our direction.  They gave up after we were gone.  Responding more to our presence than anything.  Like they were magnetic, but it wasn’t magnetism that had pulled them to us.

“Why so many ghosts?”

“I suppose his victims can’t go on while a piece of them rests in his stomach,” Fell said.  “He’s been around a few centuries, moved over this way when people began to settle the new world.  The spectres follow after him when he moves on.”

We passed a burning tree, half the branches torn away.  It only dawned on me a moment after we’d passed that it was another Other.

A bloodstained patch of snow.

A tree with gore strewn around the branches like streamers, an animal that had no right to be alive at the heart of it.  Another Other.

I drew out the objects I’d been given, for finding the hyena and the abstract devil.

“He’s more to the right,” I said.

“I know,” Fell said.  “I’m not taking you to him.  I’m moving around the perimeter.  You wanted a view of the area.  An idea of what to expect?  This is it.”

“The Others are maddened by pain, insensate, out of place and out of sync,” I said.

“Yes.”

“How do I even protect myself against them?”

“Not my concern.  As I said-”

“You’re happy enough if I die.”

“It means Conquest isn’t able to use you.  At least not to the same extent.  With the hold on your companion, he’ll likely have possession of your ghost, but the impact isn’t as strong.”

“Huh,” I said.

My eyes passed over a rock with snow layered on top of it.

In the same instant I saw a flash of blood and realized it wasn’t a rock, but something big, we’d passed it.

What in the fuck was that?

More ghosts.  A smattering of children, all wounded.

Centuries.

Maybe one to three people a year?

“Would the ghosts collect nearer to roads?  They’re bound within a certain proximity of him,” I said, “But…”

“Most would be on roads when they were killed.  They would gravitate towards the road in death.  Familiar ground,” Fell said.

“Then what’s deeper in the woods?”

“Things that don’t linger near roads,” Fell said.  He made it sound so obvious.

“Alright,” I said.  “I think I’ve got the gist of it.”

Fell turned, letting the car spin out, then turned the wheel into the spin.  It fishtailed more, then settled on its new course, going in the opposite direction.

Okay, it wasn’t a bike, but that was a touch nerve wracking.

“That was more reckless than ‘free’, I think,” I said, as diplomatically as I could.

“You don’t want to stop moving in a place like this,” Fell said.  “Too many things in too much pain, no longer aware of the rules and treaties.  They invite disaster, breaking oaths in blind attempts to distract themselves from their agony, and the malign spirits cluster around them as a consequence.  Everything spirals down to ruin, here.”

“And nobody’s stopped it?”

“The gain isn’t worth the risk.  Too many ask why they should risk getting bitten, if it only gets them a mad dog on a leash.  Leave that mad dog in the wilderness.  Mark trees and stones with wards, to keep people away.  More runes to keep the roads intact.  Let it have the woods for itself.”

“But Conquest wants it.”

“Conquest wants everything.  But yes, Conquest wants this in particular.”

“Why?”

“I would be betraying my master if I answered that.  Simply see to your task.  You have until midnight.”

“Right,” I said.

Again, my eye caught a glimpse of another spirit in the Hyena’s woods.

A ghost, I was pretty sure.  A child in a long hooded jacket, running between the trees.

I wasn’t sure, but I hadn’t seen any wounds.

I shivered, settling in for the drive to visit the Knights of the Basement.

Things settled down when we hit the proper road, without the crust of ice.  I was left with only my thoughts.  The items I’d need, the precautions I’d need to take…

I’d torn the front off a pad of paper, and I pulled the folded paper from my pocket.  I began taking notes.

Time flew.  Fell didn’t volunteer anything.

“Here,” he said.

A convenience store, with far too many cars parked out front.  I was put in mind of a biker gang in some pitifully small town.

With no empty spaces, Fell had to block one car in as he parked.

“Would you like me to wait, or would you prefer I pick you up at a later time?” he asked.

I debated, then said, “Wait, please.”

“They’re expecting you,” he said, gesturing.

I got out.

Not two seconds later, Fell peeled out, tires crunching on snow.  He revved as he disappeared down the road.

He’d asked what I preferred, but… hadn’t committed to it.

And he’d promised to deliver me to each location in turn, but… hadn’t promised to bring me home.

Well, at least he hadn’t left me in the goblin’s woods.

I wasn’t halfway to the front of the convenience store when a man sauntered out.  A large cat leaped onto the snow-covered railing, then the top of the ice box.

I could see the connection between them.

“Diabolist?” he asked.

“I prefer Blake,” I said.

His saunter had hid the object in his other hand.

He leveled a shotgun at me.

“You have two seconds to keep me from shooting,” he said.

“Stop Conquest?” I asked.  No hesitation.

Which amounted to half a second.

He deliberated for a long second.

The shotgun dropped back to his side.

“Come in.”

Collateral 4.10

The Knights weren’t quite what I’d expected, as far as practitioners went.

I wasn’t sure what I did expect, or why my expectations were high.  Laird was… a cop.  Sandra was a well dressed, prim woman.  Maggie wouldn’t draw any particular attention.

Maybe when I started looking at the likes of Briar Girl or Fell, I could start pointing out odd stuff, but that was more along the lines of Briar Girl not wearing clothes a hundred percent suited to winter, or Fell’s penchant for wearing white.  Not something that would turn heads, but it raised an eyebrow if one paid too much attention.

These guys… they were pretty much exactly the sort you’d imagine would be spending their time in a no-name convenience store on a side road in the middle of nowhere.  Four of them.  Three guys and a woman.  Very casual, slouching and entirely at home in their individual seats, a young man behind the counter, man and woman at a table beneath the front window, and Mr. Shotgun standing beside me at the door.

“Blake Thorburn,” I introduced myself.

“Not interested in pleasantries,” Shotgun said.  He was thirty-something, with a scraggly mustache and beard, longer hair, jeans, misshapen sweater and lumpy jacket.  The large cat lurked near him.

The others were similar.  Large t-shirts, jeans, a little tattered.  More comfortable than fashionable.  The guy sitting by the window was rather heavy, and unshaven, wearing a baseball cap even though it was winter.

“Names make things easier,” I said.

“Names have a kind of power, don’t they?” the youngest of them said.  A boy, about fourteen, with a resemblance to Shotgun.  No mustache or beard, though, a t-shirt instead of a sweater.

“As far as I’m aware,” I said.  “But I suspect there’s a difference between having power and having power over something.”

“How does that work?” Shotgun’s son asked.

“Hush,” Shotgun said.  “You’re the enemy of… not an enemy, but a problem.  That fair to say?”

“I suppose it is,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean you’re trustworthy.  I can’t say I know much about demons or diabolism or any of that, but I’ve got a good eye and a good gut instinct, and one or both are telling me there’s a reason I really wanted to pull the trigger on you, back there.”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re lucky I’m a level headed guy, Blake.  Able to check myself, question what I’m feeling and why.  But if I had to describe it, I’d say I feel like my wife acts when she has P.M.S., being around you.”

“Lovely,” the woman by the window said, rolling her eyes.  I took it that she wasn’t his wife, from the tone and attitude.  “Does she pull a gun on you?”

“She’d be tempted to pull the trigger,” Shotgun said.

“You’re irritable, twitchy?” I asked.

“A bit.”

“I bound an imp yesterday.  He was making animals and people feel that way.  Act in ways they normally wouldn’t.  Now… well, now he’s not affecting them anymore, though traces linger.”

“You stopped it?”

“For now,” I hedged, “I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring.”

“Ah.  Like I said, I don’t know much about diabolism.”

“I don’t either,” I said.  “I wouldn’t be too surprised if you knew about as much as I did.”

“If you’re binding imps, then you know more than we do.  I’m afraid we’re not sharing names.  Call it paranoia, if you must.”

“I might have to,” I said.

“Can we trust you, Blake?  I think that’s the bigger question right now.”

“I can’t lie,” I said.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m going to be blunt and honest here,” I said.  “And I’m going to hope you don’t all fuck me over too badly, as a result.  Conquest is twisting my arm, metaphorically speaking, to get me to clean up some of the local messes, and he’s sent me your way to get some answers on one of those messes.”

“We know this, Fell said as much,” Shotgun said.  “Skip ahead to what you said to me outside.”

“Well, that’s only a small part of why I’m here.  I’m thinking you probably don’t have a lot of answers about that demon in the factory.  The real reason I’m here is that I’m looking for some allies.  Because I’m not sure anyone wants Conquest to finish sending me on errands and start using me for something more serious.”

“Demon stuff,” Shotgun said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What if I shot you?” he offered.  “You could stop worrying about being used.  You’d be dead.”

He said it in such a friendly, casual way.  Like he was offering me a ride.

“Conquest wouldn’t be too happy with you.”

“He’s sending you after that demon,” the guy sitting under the window said.  “I don’t think he cares a whole lot about your well being.”

“Point taken,” I said.  “But there’s a difference between me dying because I wasn’t able to hack it, and his subordinates interfering.”

“You’re big on making distinctions, aren’t you?”  Shotgun asked.

“Don’t we have to be?” I asked.

“How’s that?”

“You know… dealing with Others?  Avoiding getting snared in a verbal trap?”

He shrugged.  “Or you can just minimize contact with the things.”

I frowned a bit.  “I’m going to need a few more details on who you guys are.  And names would really help.”

“We’re the Knights,” Shotgun said.  “Can’t call ourselves just ‘knights’, or we’d be treading on toes, so our full title is ‘Knights of the Basement’, kind of an in-joke.”

“Makes me think of board gamers or something.”

“Close enough.”

“And?” I asked.  “You focus in?  You do…”

“We dabble.  All of us dabble.  We’re with the council, because it means we don’t get blindsided if something comes up or changes, easier access if we want to check it’s okay to grab a certain demesne or get a familiar.  Maybe once in a while we can do a favor for a bit of knowledge or a trinket.”

“You’re dabblers,” I said, “As in… you don’t have much firepower?”

He glanced down at his gun.

“Firepower that’s going to matter to someone or something like Conquest?” I clarified.

“Not so much,” Shotgun said.  “Not against someone like… that.”

The way he’d avoided Conquest’s name made me think it was maybe better to not keep saying it.  I could call Fell, just by establishing that connection, and maybe I didn’t want Conquest to know I was talking about him.

Damn it.  I couldn’t help but feel a profound disappointment, with a hint of panic.  I’d found an in, possible help, and they didn’t have any muscle.  I was running out of time, and I didn’t have any meaningful allies.  I was actually losing progress in terms of allies, if I counted losing Rose.

“But you have a grudge against the man in charge?” I asked.

“Grudge?” Shotgun asked.  “Not so much.  But, well, he’s… what he is.  Not exactly looking out for anyone’s interests.  Has a way of demanding things and not giving anything back.”

He glanced at his buddies, as if looking for confirmation.  I saw some nods.

Mostly, I just saw glares leveled my way.

Shotgun continued, “Part of why we attend the meetings, from time to time.  Gives us a chance to see how he’s acting, if we need to clear out for a bit, keep our heads down.  Sometimes all it takes is a periodic visit to bow our heads, show proper respect.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Then… I’m guessing you’re not exactly willing to put your lives on the line?  He’s an inconvenience, as you said, not an enemy.”

That got me a slow shake of the head, and a very casual, “You’re pretty much on the mark there.”

I sighed, leaning against the counter.

“Can I offer you anything?” Shotgun asked.  “Very possible we don’t have anything to offer, but I can offer food and water.  Tuna and egg sandwiches aren’t bad, in the fridge over there.  Or candy bars and coke, if you’re wanting a snack.”

“A sandwich would be great,” I said.  “And a coke, sure.”

The guy sitting by the window got up from the table to walk over to the fridge and grabbed the stuff.

“On the house,” Shotgun said.

“The hospitality is recognized for what it is, thank you.”

He nodded a little, circling around the counter to take a seat by the register.  He glanced up at the television on the wall.  Sports news.

Not many straight answers to be had here, as far as names or capabilities went.  They were small fry.  Dabbling practitioners.

“Is it normal, to be…” I searched for a word.

“Low level?” the kid asked.

“To work within such a small scope,” I said, a little more diplomatically.

“Not sure,” Shotgun said.  “We only have the locals to compare ourselves to.”

“Can you tell me about them?  It might help me figure out where to concentrate my efforts.”

“We’re new, so I don’t know much of the history.  Sisters of the Torch, as I understand it, they were a sorority or club at the University, got their hands on something.  Built themselves up.  Each new year the group would select a few worthy members of their club or whatever to join the core group.  Nine parts secret society to one part practitioner.  They’re more likely to give you a special discount on real estate or help you ask for a favor in local government than do anything fancy, if you get me?”

I nodded.  “Any specialty?”

“Elementals.  Most basic kind of spirits you get, dealing with nature.  Rain, sun, fire, harvest…”

“Where do they stand with Conquest?”

“They don’t.  They’re in the council in name only.  They’ve maybe struck a deal with Conquest, because they only send one representative a year with a gift.”

I made mental note of that.

“The Sphinx-”

“I’ve met the Sphinx, the Drunk, and the Astrologer.  And Fell.”

“Ah.  Okay.”

“Sphinx wasn’t a big fan of me,” I admitted.  “Not big on the diabolism thing.”

“To be honest, neither are we,” Shotgun told me.  “But you don’t seem to be an immediate problem, and we’re not really types to pick fights.”

“Except when it comes to pulling a shotgun on a complete stranger.”

“That’s called being ready when the fight comes to you.  Not knowing anything about you… hearing only casual mention of what a diabolist does?”

“Fair,” I said.  I tore into the sandwich wrapper and took a bite.

“Sphinx is old, and maybe it’s more personal for old things.  Teaches at the University.  Periodically goes for the kids who can’t hack it.  Once every decade or so, maybe.  Failing grades, depression, panic, a downward spiral everyone recognizes, and then their rooms are cleared out one night and they’ve up and disappeared.”

“Didn’t know that last part,” I said.

“She is what she is.  She occasionally takes a student under her not-so-proverbial wing.  We’ve talked it over, and the general consensus is she finds the stragglers and tests them.  Winners get mentored.  Get a natural glow about ’em, you know what I mean?”

“No, not so much.”

“Stuff starts going their way.  Lucky.  The right people start gravitating towards them.  Things falling into place.”

“Good karma,” I said.

“Yeah.  That.  Girls stick around for two or three years and then take their leave, wiser, talented, brimming with confidence.  We’ve seen, what, two?”

“One left a few weeks after we first joined the council,” the woman sitting under the window said.  “Another one wrapped up earlier this year.  Left before Summer.”

“I could do with some of that good karma,” I said.  “But I don’t think even the Sphinx’s ministrations are about to help me with the massive debt my family’s incurred.”

“If she doesn’t like you, I can’t imagine she’s going to change her mind.  Old dogs and new tricks, you know?”

“Suppose so.”

“Um, who else?  You mentioned the Drunk?”

“Yeah.  He’s, again, not a big fan of me.”

“Cultist of Dionysus.  Orgies, parties, and a collection of satyrs, nymphs and other beings with a connection to fertility, hedonism or both.”

“Any story there?”

“Lots.  Word is he was trying to make a play, some time back.  Offered favors here and there.  One of the Sisters wanted a baby, he delivered.  Baited the Astrologer into falling in lust with something more spirit than person, and she wasn’t happy when that spell was broken.  Even started collecting more vicious things to keep in reserve, we’ve heard.  Then it all fell apart around the start of the ‘oughts.  He’s mostly flying solo now, a little more inebriated a little more often.  We’ve mostly steered clear.  He and we march to the beats of very different drums, so to speak.”

I took a swig of coke to clear my throat.  “You dabble, you’re interested, but you don’t want to stick your neck out for anyone to swing the axe at.”

Shotgun nodded.  “Astrologer?  Powerful.  Doing a succession thing.  Every time they get old, they find an apprentice, teach them, and pass on the title and the knowledge.  I never really got what she did.  Future sight, sure.  Connections?  Yeah.  Summoning things from the sky?  Yep.  But never directly, there’s some underlying system of rules and relationships she has to navigate.”

“She’s not a fan of the… guy in charge.”

“Nope.  Her old mentor offered himself up, to be one of those tragic ghosts in the Lord of Toronto’s manor, buying her safety with his afterlife.  She doesn’t pay any tithe, and she mostly has free reign, so long as she attends enough meetings and doesn’t act directly against him.”

“Does that mean she’s not on my side?  I can’t get her to do something?”

“No.  I think she’s eager to stop Conquest, and she’s been looking for a chance for some time.  I’m not sure if she can’t or if there’s a reason she won’t, but it is what it is.”

I nodded.

“Shepherd, not of much use to you.  Guides the dead.  Deals with ghosts, cleaning up the bad and collecting the good.  Tends to stay away, but is on pretty good terms with Conquest when he’s around.”

“That sounds like a problem.”

“It’s the local landscape.  Nothing more.”

“Landscape matters lot when you’re talking battle,” the woman under the window said.  “Terrain?  Strategy?”

“True,” Shotgun said.  “Fine, we can agree it’s a problem.  Who else?”

“Eye of the Storm,” Shotgun’s son said.  “Queen’s Man.”

“Queen’s Man isn’t a concern.  Goes between here and England.  Serving a spirit of Crown and kingdom,” Shotgun says.  “Not here now.”

“Good to know.”

“Eye of the Storm isn’t human.  And it is a servant of our local Lord.  One you’ll need to worry about.  Our Lord needs something done, he asks Fell.  He needs something destroyed, he gives an order to the Eye.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“A fire alarm going off at midnight,” Shotgun said.  “All the exits blocked by flame.”

Cryptic.

“I meant, more, what type of Other is it?”

“Don’t know.  We’re not the people to ask if you want clear answers about that sort of thing.  But mankind and fire have a long working relationship.  A relationship that extends to times when you sacrificed things to gods and spirits.  Most big cities have at least one bad fire in its past, and in cities that do, you can usually find something like the Eye, a memory of that fire and sacrifice.”

“That explanation is a bit too vague for my tastes,” I said.

“What I do know, and I’m welcoming any of the rest of you to jump in and correct me, is it’s a thing that tends to change as humanity does.  We start to use wires and electricity, and the Eye became less fire and more storm, you know?  It’s a living reminder that whatever we were given, whatever we took or learned, energy-wise, there’s still a danger there, if we don’t show proper respect.”

“And it serves at the whim of the Lord of Toronto?”

“Arms, legs, torso, head, but nobody’s going to look at it and think it’s human.  Keeps to its own until it’s called.  If you’re going up against the Lord of Toronto, don’t give him a chance to call.”

I nodded, even as I was thinking about how Conquest had brought Rose to his domain.  How could I prevent him from doing the same with this ‘eye’?

“Sounds like I need to get in touch with the Astrologer,” I said.

“Could be.”

“And if I do want help going up against the Lord of Toronto,” I said, speaking very carefully, “Can I offer you anything in exchange for a hand?”

Shotgun exchanged looks with everyone else that was present.  “Probably not.”

“He’s wanting to use my knowledge for something ugly,” I said.  “You kill me now, he’ll be mad enough to do something to you.  Leave me alone, and I might be forced to do what he wants, and that could mean issues for you.”

A very, very small ‘could’, given the deal the Drunk had struck, but still theoretically possible.

“So we have to help you, is that it?” Shotgun asked.

“No,” I said.  “But helping me would do us both a world of good.  I can even sweeten the deal.”

“We don’t set our sights all that high,” he said.

“I’ve got something in the works,” I said.  “Tomorrow night, at midnight, it comes to a head.  You help me, and I’ll give you access to my family’s resources, minus the… troubling books.  The books I don’t particularly want to read.”

“Meaning we wouldn’t be dabblers,” he said.  “We could be…”

“A lot of things,” I said.  “I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t at least one good book on every major subject and discipline.”

“I can see the appeal,” Shotgun said.

“It’s an option,” I said.

“But, and I’d have to talk to the other Knights for their opinions, I’m quite comfortable being a dabbler.  A group of low-key people who lucked into more mysterious things.”  He glanced at his familiar.  “Don’t have to stick our noses in too deep, don’t have any pressure.  No enemies, not a whole lot to fear, outside of our one big fuckup to date.  We get to be excited if, a couple of times a year, we get a new book, a new doo-dad, and we can explore it together.”

“Then…” I said, reaching for an answer.  “You want less?  Not access to a whole library, but maybe a guarantee of a book once in a blue moon?”

Shotgun looked at the others.  I saw one or two shrugs and some nods.

“You’re speaking closer to our language now,” he said.  “But the risk is still too high.”

“The risk is already high,” I said.

He slowly shook his head.  “We walked into a bad situation once, thinking we had no choice.  It didn’t go well.”

“I was aiming to get around to that topic,” I said.

“Makes for an awful lot of wondering, you know?  Oblivion.  Knowing we maybe had friends or family, people we had as friends, people we loved, and they were devoured.  Eaten so completely that we can’t even remember them.”

I nodded.  I put the coke down on the nearest shelf.  “I’m sorry for your losses, whoever they might have been.”

“Thank you.”

“If you have any thoughts, or if you can let me know what precautions you used that didn’t work, it would help a great deal,” I said.

“Precautions?  Half the ones we used, it ate.  We can’t remember if we tried something and it didn’t work.  Can’t remember what the others tried doing that didn’t work out.  We tried circles, I know, but maybe it never got far enough to try eating those.”

“What kind of circle?”

“Same type you usually see.  Lines and reinforcing shapes, all of us at the center.”

The same kind that had been used on the Barber.  That had worked, ostensibly, because he was abstract, just like this oblivion demon.

Huh.

That would have been my first guess and one of the few educated guesses I could make, and it was wrong.

How did one ward against a being of nothingness?

“Anything else?” I asked.

“We went in armed.  We do okay, at trinkets.  Swords, knives, wands.  Whatever the others brought, it didn’t work.  That’s… just about all I can tell you, on the weapon and self-defense front.”

“Better than nothing,” I said.  But not by much.  I didn’t have the resources to research and figure out a good path to take, and the fact that the evidence and memories had been ‘eaten’ meant I couldn’t even work by process of elimination.

“I lie awake thinking about it,” Shotgun’s son said.  “The thing.  The near-miss.”

“We shouldn’t have brought you,” Shotgun said.

“I’d lie awake thinking about it even if you hadn’t.  Who did we lose?  What place did they have in our lives?  Then you think about what happened to Marcie…”

Shotgun glanced at me.  “My son’s ex-girlfriend.”

“She’s still my girlfriend, I think,” the young man said.  “At least, that’s what I think she was.”

“Yeah,” his father said.

“You’re going to have to fill me in,” I said.

“She disappeared,” Shotgun said.  “Few days after that afternoon.  We’ve talked about it, tried to figure it out, actively tried to find her.  But there was nothing.  She wasn’t eaten, or we wouldn’t even know, but…”

“I can’t really remember her face,” the son said.  “Or her last name.”

“I think,” Shotgun said, “The people around her were eaten.  Mother, father, maybe a sibling or two, a friend.  There wasn’t enough connecting her to this world, so she just…”

“Went,” the son said.

“Went away,” the father echoed him.  “To wherever people go when they fall through the cracks in this world.  Makes you wonder.  Were we something different, before?  Did we have more dreams?  More aspirations?  Did we lose important people that were supposed to prop us up, and settle into a different position when we tipped over, without them?”

“As in, maybe you weren’t all a bunch of dabblers working within a small scope, before?” I asked.

“I look back at the places we were investigating,” Shotgun said, “And they were big.  A factory?  An old farmstead?  Far too big for our sad little group.  Too big for a group twice our size.”

The guy sitting under the window spoke, “It eats away at you.  Wondering what we had, before it was taken away as thoroughly as something can be taken.  We can’t do it again.  Can’t go up against something big and lose.”

“Can’t take the risk,” Shotgun said.

I finished off the sandwich I’d been nibbling on, thinking.  Nobody volunteered anything further.

“You’ll back me against the Lord of Toronto, if there’s a zero-risk way of doing it?” I asked.

“Yes,” Shotgun said.

“Will you take on a small risk, if I offer a book, once in a blue moon?”

“What risk?”

“Not sure yet,” I said.  “Still trying to pull pieces together and form a game plan.”

“Then we’re not sure either,” he replied.

“Fair,” I said.  “Will you hear me out if I want to contact you with a request?”

“Number’s on the phone,” he said.  He gestured, and his son reached over to grab the phone on the counter, turning it my way.

I wrote it down.

“Dealing with that thing is tomorrow, so I should have time to talk to the Astrologer before then,” I said.  “Today, I’ve got to deal with this goblin called the Hyena.”

“We’ve heard of it in passing.”

“Give me a hand in dealing with this thing, any tips, trinkets, knowledge, it means I’m in better shape for dealing with the Lord of Toronto.”

“You’ll need a small army,” Shotgun said.

“I’m going in alone.”

“Then you’re probably going to die.  Too many nasty, angry things in those woods, I’d give you low odds even if the Hyena wasn’t there, if you just had to go in and out, dealing with the flora and fauna in there.”

“And the Hyena?” I asked.

“The Hyena caught and mutilated each and every one of them.  Think about that.  Think about how long it’s been around, the number of fights it’s been in.”

“It’s a fighter, then?”

“It’s a goblin, so yeah.”

“Then why name it after a scavenger?”

Shotgun shrugged.  “Wasn’t us that named it.  Might be the association with death and carrion, might be the fact that it’s closer to being a beast than a man.”

“Quadruped, then?” I asked.

“Yep.  Fast, big, strong, and about as mean as you get.”

“Don’t suppose I could borrow one of those weapons you were talking about?”

“If you get into a fight in there, chances are pretty good that whatever you’re fighting is going to make noise.  Noise brings other ones down on your head.  After that, it’s a matter of time before you’re dealing with a crowd.  I don’t imagine there’s any weapon I could give you that would let you do that.  If you were good enough at fighting, I think you’d have a proper weapon already.”

I nodded slowly.  “So fighting isn’t really an option.”

“It’s an option.  It’s just a damn shitty option.”

“Stealth, then,” I said.  “More my style, maybe.”

“You do know that a lot of Others have different senses than we do?” Shotgun’s son said.  “Not just sight and hearing and smell, but other ways of detecting people?”

“I assume so,” I replied.

The son shook his head a little.  “You’re just… what, you’re going to sneak in and do what?”

“Try to bind the Hyena,” I said, “or die in the process.”

“You know what happens when he kills you, right?”

“I know,” I said.

“I don’t think your chances would be that much worse going up against the Lord of Toronto on your own,” the son said.

“They’d be a great deal worse,” the fat guy by the window said.  “The Lord is an Incarnation, and the goblin is still a mid-tier goblin.  Mid-tier or not, it’s still a bad idea to go up against the Hyena.”

“Yeah,” Shotgun said.  “I’m thinking the same thing.

I took a deep breath.  “I don’t have a choice.”

“Run.  Whatever the Lord sends after you, I can’t imagine it’ll be as bad,” the son said.

“I’ve got someone who I can’t leave behind,” I said.  “Conquest shackled her, and… yeah.”

“How attached are you to her?” the son asked me.  “Do you love her?”

That was a good question.  Did I love Rose?  Was it borderline narcissism if I did?  Familial love?

“I don’t have a lot of experience with love,” I said.  “There are people I think I love, who I owe for what they’ve done on my behalf, the support they’ve given me, and maybe she fits in that same category, kind of, but…”

I trailed off.  I couldn’t put words to the thoughts.

“If you have to think about it, maybe it’s best to just walk away,” the son said.

“Can’t,” I said.

“You swore an oath?” Shotgun asked.

It hadn’t even crossed my mind.  But it was an easy answer to give.  “Yeah, well, I made promises to her that I can’t fulfill unless she’s free.”

“Fair.  We all do stupid things from time to time,” Shotgun said.  “What do you need?”

“Chain,” I said.

“How much chain?”

“How much chain do I want to bring, or how much chain do I need for this situation?” I asked.  “Two different things.”

“There you go again, with your distinctions.”

“I want miles of chain,” I said.  “But I can probably only bring a few loops, before it slows me down too much.”

“Twenty feet?”

“Should work,” I said.

Shotgun glanced at his fat friend by the window.

“We have more than twenty feet there,” the guy said.

“Use the bolt cutters, trim it down to size.  But leave the lock connected to the end.”

“Sure,” the guy said.  He heaved himself out of the chair.  His gait was funny, not quite a limp so much as stumping.

I realized he had only half a foot.

Shotgun looked at his son.  “Go find the bolt cutters and help out.”

His son left.  No injuries there.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You don’t seem like a bad sort, whatever you’re doing with the demons.”

“Like I said, it’s not by choice.  I inherited the title, entirely against my will, and the Lord of Toronto wants to use me for access to my family’s reputation and power.”

“Then, given the chance, you’re not going to touch the things?”

“I can’t promise that,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I read some propaganda, just yesterday.  Justifying what diabolists do.  It wasn’t… completely wrong.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“You have to ask, if the diabolists don’t bind the demons, who will?” I asked.

“The powers that be band together to deal with them.”

“Do they?  Look at what’s happening here.  Three minor threats, too much trouble to deal with.  They get ignored until they can’t be ignored.  Then what happens?  Yeah, maybe the local powers do gather together.  And all of them suffer like your Knights did?  Lots of damage?  Powerful figures brought low or infected with taint?”

“What’s the alternative?”

“I’m not sure it is an alternative, but maybe people like me and my grandmother deal with them.  Shouldering the cost ourselves.  Dealing with the karmic burden, the more abstract costs, too.”

“So nobody else has to?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I don’t know how much of it was legit or not.  Maybe it means taking on a burden that sinks us, and we inevitably take other people down with us. That it’s too messy for anything else to be possible.”

“If that’s true,” the woman who now sat alone by the window spoke, “Then I worry about us being involved.”

“I wouldn’t blame you.  But I don’t know.  Maybe it’s possible to shoulder the cost and live an otherwise good life that makes up for it, and leave the world better in the end… if our children don’t get greedy and try to use it or take on more debt for short term gains, leaving certain grandchildren with catastrophic amounts of debt.”

“You’re talking about your family, I take it?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Or maybe it’s all just a lie, and there’s no way out from under this.”

“What if that’s true?” Shotgun asked me.  “Maybe we should keep our distance.”

“That seems to be the safe bet everyone else is making,” I told him.  “I wouldn’t blame you much.”

“Much?”

“You’d still be retreating at a time I think the locals really need to be mustering their forces.  Conquest is fucking dangerous.  I’d blame you for ignoring that.”

Shotgun didn’t respond.

I polished off the sandwich and coke.  “Can?”

Shotgun pointed.

I dropped both wrapper and coke bottle in the can.

“What do you know about shamanism?” Shotgun asked me.

“I know… maybe three symbols, off the top of my head.  Dealing with the smallest spirits.”

“I’m going to show you two more.  One for quiet, for the chain.”

“Quiet is good,” I said.  “And the other one?”

He showed me the shotgun.  The butt-end of the weapon had a symbol inscribed in the wood, so it sprawled all over the wooden surface, curving around to the other side.  I turned to look, but my view was obscured as he pushed it closer to me.  Against my chest, into my hands.

He didn’t let go of the weapon, though, holding it with one hand.

“I thought you said a weapon was a bad idea,” I said.

“It’s a bad plan.  As contingencies go, it’s something.  Consider it a loaner, not a keeper.  You don’t use this on my family, and you don’t use it in any way that leads our local Lord to think we’re against him.”

I could have argued, pressed for better terms, quibbled over intent to hit his family, to cover for the slim circumstance where I accidentally clipped one.

Not worth it.

“I swear I’ll do my best to get it back to you,” I said.  “I swear I won’t use it in a way that harms your family or informs the Lord where your allegiances lie.”

He nodded, letting go.

“That symbol is one for wind.”

“Wind?”

He shrugged.  “Mess with other elemental forces, and you risk disrupting the mechanism.  Weapon is maybe a little lighter, pushes a little harder.”

I nodded.

The other two returned with the chain.  They laid it out on the counter.

Shotgun grabbed the lock, turning it over so the side opposite the dial faced us.

“Your blood will work best,” he said.  He began sketching out the symbol.

My blood.  I was leery, but I had only so much of the glamour to spare after I’d touched up my injuries.

A noisy chain could lead to far more blood being spilled.

I pricked my finger and began drawing out the mark he indicated.

“You gave me your gun,” I said, while carefully copying it.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t suppose you’ll give me your name?”

“Nick,” he told me.

“Thank you, Nick.”

“That thing in the factory fucked us up so bad we can never even fathom what it did to us,” he said, his voice low.  I could see him glancing over at his son, at the other end of the room, as if verifying the guy was out of earshot.  “I think we had actual lives before.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“If you want to stop it?  Or something like it?  I’m not getting in your way.”

“Right on.”

■

The truck pulled to a stop.

I shifted the chain’s position at my shoulder.  Coils looped over one shoulder and across the body, held close by my jacket.  It barely made a noise as I adjusted it.

Hatchet at one hip, flare gun at the other, shotgun at my back, strap cross-wise with the chain.  I had a box knife in one pocket, pens and twine in the other.  Nails and other construction stuff in one cargo pocket, a small paint jar with far too little glamour inside in the other.

I was painted in the glamour-ink, but I’d had only so much to spare, not nearly enough for full coverage.  I’d gone for a hodgepodge job on skin and clothing both, instead.  Streaks, that I might match the colors of it to the background.

“I’d drop you further in, but…” the fat man, Teddy, trailed off.  He had an explanation, he just didn’t want to give it.

He was scared.

So was I, frankly.

“Wish me luck,” I said.

“Good luck.”

I made my exit.

Ghosts were already emerging from the trees.  Some ethereal, some so real I had to look twice to see where they weren’t quite real.  Feet a little hard to make out, or faces a touch too contorted.  All bore ghastly wounds where the goblin had bitten them.

Some veered my way.  I backed away at the same time the car pulled a ‘u’ turn, and the ghosts chose to follow after the car rather than me.

That wouldn’t remain the case.

I’d inscribed my boots with quieting runes, and the crunching of snow and branches were muted.  More blood spent.  I could have used glamour, but I valued the versatility the small tin offered me over the cost that the blood payment involved.  Being a little bit more me wouldn’t keep me alive in a pinch.  Being able to change my voice or features could.

Overhanging pine branches had caught the snow, meaning it wasn’t so deep that I was sinking in knee-deep, as I’d feared.  With the quiet the runes afforded, I could move reasonably quickly.  Not running, but not walking either.  I had to conserve strength.  This was a hike, a marathon, and chances were good that I’d need to run at some point.

A glance behind me indicated that a ghost from that initial pack had followed me.  A man, missing an arm, a mess of gore around his knees, floating as much as he staggered.  He didn’t care too much about the intervening obstacles.  Slow, steady progress.

I sped up a fraction.

Another being a distance away.  Something bigger and Other.  Huffing, panting in what sounded like quiet agony.  I couldn’t make it out beyond the intervening branches and the shadows that the overhanging needles and snow afforded.

It didn’t notice me, and my steady forward progress left it behind soon enough.

In a slow moment where I needed to find a way past a fence of crossing branches, the pursuing ghost drew a little closer to me.

I could hear him speaking.  “It hurts.  Why does it hurt so much?  The car…”

I scanned the area.  I had a choice of either pushing through the branches in front of me or going around.  Pushing through the branches meant noise.  Going around meant looping closer to the pursuing ghost.

“I’m… my arm wasn’t crushed.  What happened to my arm, Day?  Day?”

I circled around.  Couldn’t waste time debating, or I’d only corner myself.

He grew more agitated as the distance between us closed.

“Day!  It’s- the car hit your side, Day!  It’s supposed to be your arm!”

We were no more than fifteen feet apart.  I rounded the thicket of trees and started to make more distance between us.

“Your arm, Day!”

With the surge of anger, the irrationality, I could feel the distance between us closing faster.  He was running, or whatever the equivalent was when one floated.

I picked up my own pace.  Get far enough away, and he’d calm down.  He was only reacting to proximity.

“Your arm, my legs!”

His legs.  The idea and the words carried a certain power with them.  Pain.

Incapacitation.

Someone might as well have hit me across the knees with a baseball bat.

I collapsed.

“Your arm, my legs!  You don’t get to do this to me, Day!  You never played fair!”

Talking more as he drew ever closer.

I crawled, fighting past the pain.

It’s an illusion.  Pretend.

Nice words, but it was hard to convince my body.

I hauled myself forward.  My eyes fell on a tree with low branches.

I wasn’t silent as I ascended, hauling myself up with arm strength more than my legs.  It didn’t help that the ghost was still screaming.

Something reacted to the noise.

When I did get high enough to tentatively try using my feet to climb, I found I moved quieter.  Climbing, seizing higher branches, climbing the tree.

Cornering myself already.

I was scarcely ten feet above the ground as I brought my legs up out of reach.

The ghost approached, stopping right beneath me.

“Day!  Fuck you, Day!“

The other thing approached.  Big, shadowy, lumbering.  It left a trail of blood in its wake, a wound that never stopped bleeding.

Fuck.

One great hand settled on the trunk of the tree, not two feet from my foot.

It was blind, face savaged.  Such was the wound.

And it wasn’t moving.  Fuck.

“He knows.  He’s coming.“

A whisper.

I looked, and I saw a ghost perched in the branches.  A little boy with a hooded coat.

No blood, no bleeding.

“Who knows?” I whispered back.

“The wolf-thing.  The worst of them.  He knows.  Run.  Have to run if I’m going to get home.  Keep running, keep hiding, and I’ll be able to go home.”

With that, he leaped down.  Both ghost and lumbering Other turned, but both were too slow.

He disappeared, like the wind.

Little fucker.

I was stuck where I was.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Collateral 4.11

Congratulations, Blake Thorburn.  You’ve successfully reverted two or three million years.  You’re an ape in a tree, hiding from the scary things.

“Day!  It’s your arm that’s supposed to be fucked up!  Day!  You’re the one who died, Day!”

Shut the fuck up.

“God, my legs!”

Again, that wave of pain.  An illusory sort of pain, something that might have knocked me out of the tree if I hadn’t been wrapped around a branch.

The big thing that loomed beneath me, it seemed, wasn’t any more a fan of the ghost than I was.  This wasn’t a bad thing.  Wasn’t a good thing either.  It was just a thing.

It lashed out, striking blindly at the air with thick, heavy arms.  The ghost didn’t have the sense to get out of the way, but the Other didn’t have the ability to hit the ghost.

Nothing accomplished.  Only a brief distraction for the blind Other, a bigger threat beneath me, and a bit more nervousness on my part, when one large clawed fist came a little too close to the tree I was perched on.

It wasn’t calming down, either.  The pain it suffered, the wound, it was driven out of its mind, unable to calm down or relax.

I wasn’t sure how to label the thing.  Yeti?  Troll?  Ogre?  It was big, strong, and somewhere midway between human and animal.  The books had said that the more brutish Others hadn’t survived the years without being enslaved or killed, but it could be argued that this one wasn’t exactly alive.  Or free.

The Hyena was apparently coming my way.  That was, if the ghost wasn’t simply repeating a stock phrase.

“Day!  Oh god, Day!  Oh god!”

The big thing lunged.  Its shoulder brushed against the trunk of the tree, and I swayed briefly.  I heard a faint cracking sound.  Ice breaking, or wood splintering?

“Please, Day, wake up!” the ghost cried out.

Speaking of stock phrases.

Mr. ‘Legs’ here was a car accident victim.  One nearby.  He’d hurt his legs, his girlfriend or wife or sister or something had been in the passenger seat, dying.

Could I reason with him?

Probably not, I decided.

Could I do something, given the chance to talk?  Maybe.

But I couldn’t afford to make too much noise and give the ogre-troll thing a chance to home in on me.  I didn’t trust the shotgun to work, and I did believe that a missed or ineffective shot would get me killed.

Besides, I suspected I’d need what I had for the Hyena.

Well, I was camouflaged in glamour.  Whatever that was worth.  It wasn’t helping much against these Others, but it was very possible they were using other senses to track me.

Was that my bias at play?  I was human, so I thought in human terms when camouflaging myself?  My own bias would influence the glamour, in turn…

Alright.  Moving very slowly and very carefully at my position on the branch, I ran my hand along my arms, across my face and over the top of my head, raised one leg to sweep my hand over the glamour I’d painted there…

I could see a brassy highlight here and there, where I’d made contact, deeper shadows.

I had no idea if it would work.

I whistled, a small, tentative sound.

The big thing turned to face me, drawing one hand back.

The whistle echoed, faint sounds a short distance away, bouncing off the trees.

The thing turned, first one way, then the other.

It wouldn’t fool anyone or anything that was thinking straight.  The false sounds were too faint, the sound I made still too distinct.  But this thing wasn’t thinking straight.  It was purely reactive, every action undertaken with blind aggression.

“Tires squealing,” the ghost said, but he didn’t move his mouth.  A thought uttered aloud?

The ghost was still directly beneath me.  He was the real problem.

More problems, I could tell, were on their way, attracted by the voice and by the violence of the big ogre-giant thing.

They weren’t here yet, though, meaning I had a moment.

Was I supposed to rationalize with this very confused spirit?  Or take a different tack?

No time to waste.

“You killed Day,” I said.

Whispers of my voice echoed through the area.  The brute snorted and grunted, lashing out at air, before stepping a little bit away from me.

“Day!  No!”

“You fucked up,” I said, injecting a note of anger into my voice.  “Day’s dead.”

“Please, Day!  My arm, it’s not supposed to hurt like this!”

“Why are you talking?  Who’s listening besides yourself?  Day is dead.”

The ghost went momentarily quiet.

Which only made it easier to notice that other spirits were drawing nearer, some murmuring.  I could see glimpses of them through the trees.

“My arm, it’s not supposed to hurt like this.  Hurts more than anything else.  It’s your fucking fault, Day!”

More volume meant more attention from the locals.

I needed to think simpler.  I needed to break this pattern, and the way to do that was… what?

Get him back to his usual pattern?

“Your arm isn’t supposed to hurt like this, and you’re not supposed to be here.  Think,” I said.  “Think, where are you supposed to be?”

“I… the car.”

“There isn’t a car here.”

“I… I’m trapped.  My legs are crushed.  Nobody’s coming.”

The mention of his legs made pain emanate outward.  The brute lashed out, but the different sources of noise were confusing it.

“You were in an accident,” I said.  “What are you going to do?”

Move it along.  Push him to follow the script.

“I’m… need to get my phone, call for help.  But it’s not where it’s supposed to be.  Day’s dead.  Oh god.  My arm hurts.  Why?”

I wasn’t sure, but he seemed a fraction fainter than he had.

He was coming to pieces.  Every time he mentioned his legs, he reaffirmed the imprint he’d made in the world.  Every time the arm came up, though, he was running headlong into dissonance, into something that didn’t fit him and his existence.

Question was, would his anger and restlessness drive him to keep pursuing me, despite everything else, or could I get him back on track, using some metaphysical survial mechanism?

“You can’t reach your phone.  What’s the next step?”

“My arm, it hurts.”

Not a bad thing, if he was unraveling.  But it was taking too long, and I only had thirty seconds to a minute at best.

“What’s the next step?” I asked, again.

“Get out, get away, the car might blow up.  Have to get up, get away.”

Cars didn’t really blow up, but that was the narrative.  The image that was Mr. Legs here.

“Then hurry,” I said.

I could see the image distorting, a gap, a flaw.  A scene trying to play out and glitching on some fundamental level.  An interruption in the script.

“Hurry,” I repeated.

My voice echoed through the trees.  The giant punched a tree where the sound had bounced off it.

Not necessarily a good thing.  More were coming.  I might very well have cut off my head to spite my face.  Or whatever the appropriate metaphor was for attempting to solve one problem and creating a bigger one.

If I couldn’t handle two Others, how was I supposed to handle four?  Or ten?

He was replaying the script, stuttering.

“Hurry,” I hissed the word, pushing him to try again.  If he broke down enough, I could slip free.  But I couldn’t jump down to the ground if he was right there, to grab me, or hit me full-on with whatever he was made up of.

He tried again, a little more distinct.  I could hear him now.

“I can do this, I just have to push hard enough, squeeze myself free-” glitch.  “-My arm, it’s not there.”

“Try,” I said.

“Where’s my arm?”

“Try,” I said, once more.

I was nearly out of time.  Others were now drawing closer, getting caught up in one of the same tangles of branches that had slowed me down.  Except they didn’t care about making noise.  Not ghosts.  Men and women in white, features bland and blanched by pain, their clothes stained red around gouges where sharp blades had penetrated the cloth and flesh beneath.  Intelligent enough to be distracted by the sound.  Perhaps intelligent enough to look for me and find me.

The ghost began to struggle, jerky movements, replays of scenes.  This time, however, he simply skipped the scenes where he’d used one arm to help pull himself free.

He screamed, an agonized sound, somehow folded over or partially wrapped aroud something that wasn’t present here, and blood began to pour, flooding the snow around him.  His legs were tearing, his wound where the arm had been torn off joined them in how it bled openly.

I felt the same pain in my own legs.  Each time I’d felt his power, I’d felt like something was being used to pulverize my kneecaps.  Now I got to experience what it was like to try and heave those pulverized limbs free of a vise.

My vision swam.  It was bad enough that I nearly let go of the branch.

I could hear a growling echoing around the area.

The Hyena.

No.

When I managed to heave in a breath, gasping for air like I was drowning, I heard that same sound echoed.  The noise had been my own, echoed.

I saw the ghost pause for rest, and fragments of bone slid out to protrude once more through the flesh around his knee.  He screamed.

Three or four stab wounds made themselves felt around my own knees.  Illusory, not real, no real harm done, but I still felt it, still screamed, a strangled sound.  I closed my eyes, to shut out everything else, to keep myself from losing my lunch as my vision wavered.

Adrenaline flooded my body.  Again, not real adrenaline.  Only an illusion, the desperate sort of energy one got when they had no other choice but to face terror head-on.

No doubt in my mind: destroying one’s own body in a desperate attempt at freedom and escape was terrifying.

He wrenched himself free, tumbled over some invisible barrier, and collapsed in a heap, radiating agony.

The old spatters of blood from his earlier theatrics faded as the new ones appeared.

He wasn’t moving.  I didn’t, however, trust him to stay still when I hit the ground.  Not with how my own mobility might be suffering.

“You’re free,” I said.  “What now?”

“I’m- I did it,” he said, without rising.  “My… my arm.  I’m supposed to have an arm.  Day!  Day, can you hear me!?”

He was barely there, his voice faint.

“What now?” I asked, again.  “She’s not responding.  She can’t respond.”

My real voice was enough for the pale Others in the woods to turn my way.

I wasn’t exactly sure what they were, but they moved as a flock.  Pale haired, pale skinned, dressed in white, bleeding from their ragged Hyena-inflicted wounds.

I got a bad vibe from them.  Of all the Others here that were in pain, they were in a eerily quiet, bottled-up sort of pain.  They were solemn.  They were different, cold, and I liked them less than I liked anything else I could make out.

Now they were headed my way.

“You’re free of the car, Day isn’t listening.  What do you do?”

I couldn’t keep the desperation out of my voice as I asked that last question.

Maybe the desperation was what he paid attention to.

“Wait by the car.”

“The car isn’t here,” I said.

Just like that, he was gone.

I couldn’t say whether it was one more straw, to break the camel’s back and unravel him or if he’d simply gone back to where the accident happened, but he was no longer beneath me.

I dropped from the branch.  Half hopping down, half letting go.

The snow crunched under me, and my ‘wounded’ knees didn’t hold my weight.  I fell, the snow crunching again, beneath my weight.  Both crunches echoed around the space.

The brute and two more ghosts seemed to react to the ghost noises, but the pale ones weren’t so foolish.  They were heading for me, moving with a quiet sort of insistence, heedless of branches in the way, to the point that they got caught, branches scratching their faces and digging into their chests and guts.  But each branch in turn broke, and they were making headway.

The phantom pains in and around my knees faded swiftly, now that ‘Mr. Legs’ was gone.  I found my feet, assessed the general dangers around me, and headed for the nearest gap, the same direction the ghost boy had gone.

The false adrenaline faded, and I made myself slow down, take stock of where I was going, where I was coming from, and what I needed to do.

Branches were broken here or there.  Had I not seen the Others, if I were viewing all of this in blissful ignorance, I might have dismissed it as the casualties of winter.  Ice and snow tearing weaker branches from the trees.

As it was, I was aware that these were more wounds, of a sort.  Something big had come this way, and its mass had knocked healthy branches free, scattering them to either side.  The clearest, most open path available to me was also the path that it traveled.

More things were veering my way as I made my way through the woods.

I shouldn’t have been making that much noise, but…

I was multiplying the amount of noise I did make.

As much as I wanted to keep moving, I made myself stop, and I manually altered the glamour.

How were they finding me?  There were too many variables to cover.

Rather than dwell on it, I chose a simpler concept, focusing on it.

Insulation.

Hold in the heat, hold in the sounds, the smells.

Abstract.  But the Hyena seemed to be a very concrete being.  One that dealt directly with the world, gouging it, biting it, leaving it ruined and in pain.  I had to work against its basic nature, and that meant being a little less direct.

In a simpler sense, there was no fucking way I was going to fight it on its turf, using weapons of its choice.

I started off again.

Quieter.

I could make out a stream through the trees.  No more than ten feet wide, it had largely frozen over.

A cluster of ghosts sat by the water.  A family, it looked like, haggard, maybe homeless.  All but the youngest child were bloated, drenched and wet.  All had been wounded by the Hyena.

I circled around them, giving them a wide berth.  They paid me no mind, only sitting there, shuddering, occasionally exclaiming in pain.

Reaching the stream, I saw another ghost by the water’s edge.  The hooded boy.

“Water in my boots,” he said, with that peculiar affect ghosts had.  Maintaining the emotions they had at the moment of death.  “Wet socks.”

I judged his outfit.  The hooded coat wasn’t really meant for the worst of winter.  The boots were closer to rain boots than anything else.  Not the simple rubber sort, a little warmer, but not that warm.  When had he died?

Fall?

“Cold water, huh?” I asked.

He spoke, but it sounded more like he was talking to himself.  “Feet are cold, but I have to keep running.  Have to.  If I keep running and keep hiding someone will come and find me and I can go home.”

That said, he took off.  No snow crunched under his feet.  There was only the sound of wet socks squishing.

I looked back at the family.  Too many ghosts for one area.  How many of these guys had followed the Hyena from its last haunt?

Or did it have a way of engineering these deaths?  Spook a car into going off the road?  Drive a homeless family into the water?

Doing whatever had been done to this boy?

If I’d had any hesitations about setting foot on the ice, that idea was one more reason to stay back.

Taking risks was a bad idea.  If this thing was cunning, it was all too possible that it was capable of something more devious.

I traveled alongside the stream.

Another ghost squatted on the far end of the stream, face impossible to make out, pants down, hands holding nearby branches for balance.  It was shitting an endless stream of liquid shit and blood at the edge of the stream.  Claw marks criss-crossed its back, having gouged flesh, shattering ribs and spine.

They apparently hadn’t been having a good day before the Hyena appeared to savage their ghost.

I could hear the intermittent grunts and groans well after the ghost was out of sight.

“Sorry, ghost,” I murmured.  “If my life wasn’t what it was, and if this wasn’t what it was, I might come back to put you to rest.”

Alexis had once given me a hand to help me up from the lowest point in my life.  Or the lowest point before I inherited the house, in any event.  Even if this was a ghost, a psychic echo, I felt like it deserved the same.  I knew it wasn’t real.  It was merely a replay, a bad recording.  There wasn’t anything to it beyond the scenes it lived out in perpetuity.

But I still felt like I should be doing something.

I started hiking up a steep hillside with large rocks jutting out.

I could imagine the Hyena running up, knocking the rocks from where they sat, crushing me.  Knocking me ten feet to the right, so I hit the ice and broke through to hypothermia-inducing water.  Doing something.  I was vulnerable while climbing.  But I wasn’t about to backtrack.

The savaging at the Hyena’s hands that would inevitably follow, to defile my corpse and ruin me after death…

I picked my course carefully, with attention to where I put my hands and feet, and where everything was.  No icy patches to slip on, no areas where the ground wasn’t really solid.

I was focused enough on the navigation and my thoughts of the shitting ghost that I was caught entirely off guard by what waited at the top of the hill.

The little boy stood there.  His eyes technically on me, but looking through me.  From my angle, I could see his face beneath the hood.

Large eyes, with exaggerated dark circles under them, a thin mouth, hair plastered to his forehead by sweat.  Hands in his pockets.

His eyes moved this way, then that.  Searching his surroundings.

“We keep running into each other like this,” I said.  “Is that because you took good paths, or because you want to run into me?”

“The slaves sang songs,” he said.  Voice high.  Prepubescent.

“What?”

“…a secret way to spread the word.”

“That so?” I asked, not really looking for a response.  Riddles.  I climbed to my feet, walking around him.  There weren’t as many spirits over here.  But then again, most of the spirits had come in response to the noise.  I’d chosen the path with the fewest of them, in an indirect way.

Which made sense, sort of.  The stream was blocking ones on the other side from coming over here.  It was only natural there would be less lurking around here.

Was this a good battleground?  If I were to lay a trap…

“Wade in the water,” he said, drawing out the words slightly.

“What’s that?”

“Wade in the water, children,” he said, a lilt to the words.  “Wade in the water.”

Singing?  Halfway between a whisper and a song.

“Something, something, trouble the water…” he murmured.

I heard hints of a chorus.  They could have been an echo, but there were different tones, different cadences.  Some were more song, others more whisper.

“Rest assured,” I said, “You’re doing a fantastic job at being creepy.  As ghosts go, you’re first rate.”

He turned his back, then hopped along the biggest rocks that sat at the upper edge of the short, frozen waterfall.

A moment later, I saw him doing it again, the opposite way.

A half-dozen flickering replays all at once.  Back and forth over the river.

While the scenes played out, he appeared again in front of me, still very alert, watching the surroundings.

“Not your average ghost,” I said.

I had a very bad feeling.  A sense of pressure.  Foreboding.

Was this the trick?  The trap that saw me tumbling over the waterfall to become a ghost?

“Are… you the Hyena?” I asked.

“The wolf,” he whispered, in response, eyes wide and staring.

Not reassuring.

A moment later, he turned, running.  Scrambling away.

I heard a frightened noise escape his mouth as he scrambled over the rocks, interrupting his whispers to himself.  “Wade in the water.”

I turned to look, and I saw it.

It stood in the thickest patch of trees.  The way it was obscured, I could only make out bits and pieces.  Fur, matted and stained with mud and dark bodily fluids.  It breathed hard enough that I could see its chest expanding with each intake of breath.  Fog appeared with each exhalation, and it took a moment before the fog faded enough to reveal a deep red eye that I could make out through the gloom and intervening branches.

All in all, the thing was big enough that its shoulders rubbed branches I couldn’t have touched if I reached overhead and jumped.

Silent.  I hadn’t heard it approach, hadn’t heard branches break or snow crunch.  Its breathing didn’t make a sound.

It moved forward, cutting off my retreat.  Not that I was particularly capable of running from it. I had the creature to my ten o’clock, the river to my right, and the steep hillside behind me.  Walking forward would mean walking to the same destination it was heading to.  Walking to my left would only require the thing to turn around.

I saw its limbs.  Scrawny fore and hind limbs, narrow enough for me to make out the bones and tendons.  I could see gaps where the flesh sucked in around the ribcage, its dangling, twisted, knotted genitals, and the broken, splintered claws on each foot.

For all that it was gaunt and broken, it was more scary, not less.  Those claws wouldn’t cut me like a scalpel.  They’d tear me like the uneven end of a broken bottle.

This thing was mangy, malnourished, and it was still strong enough to beat me in any contest of strength, no question.

I owed that little boy ghost an apology, for the accusation.  No mistaking what I was looking at.

“Hello,” I said.  “You’re the thing they call the Hyena, I take it?”

It moved through the trees without a noise.  When it was visible again, I could see its muzzle pulled into a leer, revealing teeth that were every bit as broken and disgusting as the claws.

Hatchet wouldn’t do a thing.  Shotgun… assuming it was vulnerable and not weak to the iron, and the bullets would hurt it as much as they would hurt any other non-Other thing, I couldn’t imagine the shotgun doing anything substantial.    The chain was too fucking short to surround the bastard.

Maybe this was a suitable battleground.  But I sure as fuck wasn’t ready to fight the thing.

It stopped pacing forward, now at my twelve o’clock.  Standing by the bank of the frozen stream.  Two red eyes stared at me.

Seeing it more clearly, where I could make out any feature, I could see that it didn’t resemble a hyena.  It didn’t resemble a wolf, either.  Everything fit together wrong.  Proportions were off, if even, muscles overlapped in odd ways.  This was not a creature crafted by years of evolution.  It had been made wrong, more like a humanoid thing that had once walked on two legs and then been twisted and wrenched into a four-legged shape, everything torn apart and rearranged and regrown until it was this.

If anything told me that, it was the expression it wore.

I shook my head a little.

It was a goblin.  A big, bad sort of goblin, twisted into a monstrous shape.  It wanted to tear me apart and then tear my ghost apart.

That was the reality I needed to focus on.

“Do-” I started.

I stopped because he lunged.

Crossing the distance between us.

Stream to my right, steep hill behind me, thick trees to the left.

Wade in the water.

I took the same path the ghost had.  Over the jutting, ice-slick stones.

I got about two steps over before I fell.  Foot slipping, shin slamming into the space between two rocks, chest hitting another rock dead on, knocking half of the of air out of me.  All in all, I came a matter of inches from simply bouncing off the rock and tumbling down the ‘waterfall’.

I heard a crash.  I looked down and to the right, and I could see one of the big boulders from the hilltop tumbling down, tearing out chunks of frozen earth and ice on the way, sending smaller stones skidding out onto the frozen stream’s surface.

When I looked up, the thing was no longer there.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to call it the Hyena anymore.  It felt off-target.  A bad name for what I was dealing with.  But what fit?  The Goblin-beast?  A bit wordy inside my head.

The beast?  That had connotations.

The monster?  That would have to do.

Moving more slowly, more carefully I dug my fingers into the craggier spots on the rock, where the snow didn’t cover it, found my feet and made my way across, slipping twice more, though not so badly.

It was gone.  It hadn’t simply followed and pounced on me.

Why?

The water?

The little boy had apparently found a way to evade the monster he called ‘the wolf’.  Crossing the water.  Not explicitly an anti-goblin measure, but… well, labels were dangerous.

Distant murmurs and shouts suggested I wasn’t alone.  The boy wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but the noise of the falling boulder had attracted attention.

I could make out the shitting ghost, way down the way, staggering in zig-zags, blind and clutching its stomach.  More were visible in the trees.  They walked around trees, but they passed through branches that had been lowered closer to the ground by snow and snowfall.

This was how the goblin functioned.  Take the prey it could, use the remains of its prey when it couldn’t do it itself.

I headed into the trees, and the cries of the ghosts carried sensations.  Illness, an inability to breathe, pains here and there, disorientation, blindness, weakness.  Few lasted for more than a second.

Doubts harried me much as the ghosts did.  The fact that there were ghosts on this side meant the monster could and would travel over this way.  The stream wasn’t a barrier, not completely.  It moved in near-silence, and it could find me.

I was following the boy, after a fashion.  Taking his advice on paths and on that escape route.

Problem was, well, he’d died.

His advice wasn’t perfect, or he’d be alive.

I moved the shotgun around my body until I had it in position and ready to fire.  More for the security than out of any belief that it would help.

The murmuring of ghosts fell behind me as I moved on.  I saw an Other to my right, something more wooden than anything, doubled over in pain, but it moved too slowly to pursue me.

Moving was making my injuries from last night felt.  The scrapes and gouges I’d left alone, because I simply didn’t have enough glamour.

There weren’t enough assurances here.  The rules for this goblin were a little different than the usual.  I had to bind it, and I had almost no experience on binding, let alone binding goblins.

The kid had figured something out, or he’d been awfully lucky.  I could use that knowledge or luck.

“Little boy,” I said.

Not even a glimmer.

“Wet boots,” I said.

If there was a connection, I couldn’t make it out.

How to connect to him?

“The little survivor, trying to make it until he can go home,” I murmured.

There.

A connection, faint.

Through that connection, I saw something else.  Not just a thread or a line between me and the boy, but a bolt of lightning, arcing off.

I focused on other things near me, on trees and stones.

I could tell, now, there was a conflux, a well.  A star at the center of this small world of trees and hills and frozen streams.  Something powerful and scary enough that every other thing in these woods related to it in some fashion.  The monster.

Through the connections that surrounded me, I could see it.

No sooner did I try, than I felt it looking back.  Far away.  Navigating around the stream.

I felt it change course, making its way to me.

Instinct told me to make a break for the stream.  If this was how he functioned,  I could cross each time he came over to my side.

Instincts were not my friend, in this particular circumstance.  He’d called things to that location by knocking the stone over.  They would get in my way.

Besides, I needed to make progress.  Backtracking over and over would be safe, but it wouldn’t get that monster bound and over to Conquest’s custody.

I headed in the direction of the kid ghost.

A kind of conviction settled within me, as pieces clicked into place.  This was how he operated, how he hunted.  The territory was his, almost like a demesne.  All spirits fled from him, because there was no denying what he was and what he did to Others and mortals both.  Thus, the rules of the world were bent.  He made no sound, because there were no spirits to be found.

He littered the area with wounded spirits.  His spirits.  Maybe he held parts of them in his stomach.  Maybe he had a kind of ownership of them because he’d traumatized them.  But he maintained a kind of power over them all the same.

When a connection did form, when something did reach him, he was sensitive to it.  Easy enough to be sensitive, when the only spirits that maintained any connection to him were the ones that had to.

Any maimed ghost I had contact with, in turn, contacted him.

As if the forest was littered with strings and bells.

Too many different types of Other to avoid contact with all of them.

It also meant that interacting with the little boy’s ghost would bring the monster down on my head.

I didn’t have enough chain to make a ring that would encircle him.

I found the boy in a tree.  He’d made a makeshift treehouse.  Chickenwire stretched across a ‘v’ of branches, forming a hoop overhead, with openings on either end.

I could see the fence posts the chickenwire had been taken from.

He simply sat there, twenty feet above the ground, arms around his knees.

“What’s your name?” I called out.

Stupid question, dangerous, given the fact that any connection to him would help the monster find us.  A ghost could only give answers from its particular script.

“Evan,” the hooded ghost said.

“You’ve stayed alive all this time?” I asked.  I could feel the connection, sense it drawing closer.  ‘Close’ being relative.  The monster had rounded the far end of the stream some time ago, though.

Not just the monster.  It was causing noise, and the Others were following in its wake.

“It’s been days,” he said, high above me.

When he looked at me, eerily enough, he looked at me.  Not through me.

“Trying to stay alive long enough for help to come?” I asked.  While I spoke, my eyes roved over the area.  The wire fence was up there.  There wasn’t anything down here.  “Have you eaten?”

“I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept.  I’ve barely drank.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Not sure you want to drink the water from that stream.”

“I’m seeing things,” he said, his voice small.  “The wolf was there from the beginning, but there are other things.  There’s a fog.  And the hungrier and tireder I get, the thicker the fog gets.  I see things in the fog.”

I touched the chain from around my shoulders, but I had no idea what to do with it.  Couldn’t form a ring big enough… clothesline the thing?  It wouldn’t do anything.

The thing was getting closer, and my priorities were changing.

“Where do you run, when you need to run from here?”  I asked.

I didn’t hear a response, so I looked up.  He’d shrugged.  “If they’re down there, I wait.  But they have to leave.  Or they leave so they can try to trap me.  I go down, and then I go that way.  Climb over the short fence and bushes.  He doesn’t follow that way.”

“Can you show me?” I asked.

He didn’t climb down.  He disappeared, in something between a flicker and a fade, and he appeared at the bottom of the tree, letting go of a branch and stumbling a bit.  So exhausted he could barely stand.  He took a step and nearly tripped.

I reached out to steady him, and my hand passed through him.

“I’ll be okay,” he said.  “Have to wait.  Be brave.  Help has to come.”

“You’re awfully lucid for a…” I stopped before finishing the sentence.

“Are- are you calling me something bad?”

I was so caught off guard by the direct response I couldn’t put two and two together at first.  He wasn’t drawing a conclusion.  He was responding to the word ‘lucid’.

“Lucid is good.  It means you’re… awake, aware.  You’re making a lot of sense.”

“Oh,” he said.

The thing was getting closer.

“Where’s the short fence?” I asked.

He didn’t respond, but flickered and traveled a good ten feet away, already walking as he arrived.

Still moving a little too slowly.  I wanted to be running.

We reached the fence.

I’d hoped for metal.  I’d hoped for barbed wire, or more chainlink or chicken wire.  But it was short, plastic, and from the height, apparently meant to keep rabbits or other pests from spilling over to another section of the park.  The cheap look of it was disguised by a hedge.  I couldn’t see with the snow, but my gut told me there had once been a walking path here, when this area of the park was more traveled.

All it was now was a stupid, pointless boundary, in the middle of the woodland.

“You couldn’t go home, huh?” I asked.  The monster was close, but I couldn’t find him, scanning the trees.  “How’d you get stuck out here?”

“I got lost.  My backyard opens out onto the park.  I saw something… someone?  I went to look, and I got turned around.  Scary noises, and growling.  I wanted to leave, but there was always something.  I tried following the paths, but then I’d see the wolf standing there.”

“He let you go?”

“I… I don’t think so.  This bush is how I escaped the first few times.  I’d follow the hedge, and if I saw or heard him, I’d climb over and hide on the other side.  I- I use the water to hide my scent, washing my boots, like I learned about in school, but yesterday, he was there, and he saw me.  He attacked, and I ran over, and he didn’t follow.  There are two places I can use to escape, like that.”

“The stream and the hedge?” I asked.

“When I can, I go to the road.  I follow the hedge, and I have to leave it behind to peek.  I look for cars.  Then trouble comes and I have to run harder than I ever run.  There’s nowhere else I can go where I have a place to run to if I need to hide.”

“So you wait,” I said.  “Getting hungrier, more tired, thirsty…”

“And cold at night.  But I’ll be okay,” he said.  He said it like he was reassuring me.  “I’m tougher than I look.  And smarter.  Did you see my treehouse?”

“I saw.”  I kind of want that chickenwire.

“I’ll be okay,” he said.  There was more of the ‘ghost’ to his voice, as he said it.  “I just need to wait.  Help will come.”

“Hasn’t it come already?” I asked.  “I’m here.”

“You’re not really real,” he said.  He started to reach out, then dropped his hand.

I looked down, and saw the streaks of glamour, turned into insulation.

Mucking with his senses?

He was capable of rationalizing, but not entirely capable.  He remained a ghost.

My eyes moved back up to the line of trees, searching for a large form moving through the woods.  I couldn’t pinpoint our stalker with the meager connection.

“What year is it?”  I tried.

“Twenty-thirteen, I think.”

“Twenty-thirteen,” I responded.  “Right.”

Just last fall, then.  No small wonder he was so lucid.  He’d practically died yesterday.

Help was never going to come for him.  There were wards, to keep people out and away from the monster in the woods.  He’d been lured or spooked into entering the area, and there hadn’t been a way out.

Now that he was a ghost, he’d retained all of the prey instincts and tactics and desperation that had kept him going, up until he’d stopped.  Such was the imprint he’d left.

It didn’t explain why he’d been so typical a ghost before, though.  In the tree, by the river, looking through me.

There was more to this particular riddle.

I investigated the fence.  Sure enough, it was plastic.  Faux picket fencing, waist height, churned out by machine, with interlocking panels.

No reason it should stop the monster.

The bush… I had to push off the snow that layered over the top, to get a better view.

Holly.

“Run.”

“Run?”

“Over the fence, over the bush.”

He had to climb over the bush, passed through the snow that layered it, as if it wasn’t there.  Which it wasn’t, for him.

I simply leaped, rolling over the top of the edge, and landed on the other side.

I had to look twice before I saw it, lurking.  I could make out the red eyes, glowing in darkness.  It was breathing hard, from the long run.

I looked down, and the boy was shivering.

Evan spoke, “He wants to eat me.  He won’t let me sleep, growling and sending things.  He won’t let me stop.  Then he grins.  He smiles.  Because I’m not happy and he enjoys it.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “That’s… what he is.”

“It’s never going to end,” Evan said.  “Help’s never going to come.”

“Hey,” I said.  “I-”

The Other lunged.  Evan screamed, backing up, as the goblin-beast ran towards us.

The reaction had to be a replay, the movements were too natural.  The ghost tried to retreat, and he fell instead.  He screamed.

The goblin, the Hyena, Evan’s Wolf, the monster… whatever it was, it stopped short of the hedge.  It paced there, on the other side, looming, looking down on a child who had been reduced to stark terror.

Petty.

Vile.

The hedge served two purposes.  It hid the shotgun, for one thing, which let me pull the trigger, with less than ten feet between me and the monster.

It also meant that when the shotgun did fire, there were shreds of holly mixed in with the shot.

The monster reacted, rearing up, flinching, shaking his head as if to get the offending materials loose.

I could have raised the shotgun, to get a better shot, but I kept it where it was, firing again through the hedge.  Further away, less direct.  But there was the wind rune, and that counted for something.  A little more oomph.

He still flinched, reacting.  He growled, breaking the perpetual silence, and backed away to a safer distance.  One open eye glowered at me.  The other squinted.

I fumbled with the shotgun until I managed to open it up.  I reached into one pocket for ammo, and reloaded rather clumsily.  I could have managed better, but I wasn’t about to take my eyes off the Other.

Evan stepped closer to me.  He’d stood up without traversing the space in between.  Switching too rapidly to another state, another piece of script.

Wonder and fear both.  Awe?

I imagined it was the same expression he’d had on his face when he’d discovered the water was a boundary the Other couldn’t cross.

“Like I said, kiddo, help already came.”

The ghost was kind enough that he didn’t disagree.  Script or no.

I watched the thing, looking for a response.

If it could talk, I imagined it would have just now.  But it didn’t, which posed problems.

Everything I’d bound thus far, I’d negotiated with.

How the fuck was I about to bind this thing?  It was a big, nasty, cunning animal, beast in every respect that a ‘beast’ was a problem for me, and it wasn’t stupid.

Not stupid, but petty.  It was content to taunt.

Except it wouldn’t be in a taunting mood, now that I’d shot it.

I’d embrace the fact.  It was angry?  I’d have to find a way to use the anger.

“Your move, little goblin,” I said.

He stepped back again, and then he roared.

Howled.  Screeched.  It wasn’t a natural sound.  It was a broken, crackling, painful sound, one that made my skin crawl.

That done, it disappeared, fleeing into the thick of the woods.

“Move, Evan,” I said.  I hopped over the hedge much the way I’d come.

“What?  It’s dangerous.”

“It’s about to get more dangerous.  I’m ninety percent sure he just called out to all the other bumps and spooks and ghosts in this forest,” I said.  I watched Evan slip over hedge and fence, struggling a bit, helpless to help.  “No more stealth.”

“Shouldn’t we go the other way?”

“No,” I said.  “Can you tell where he is?”

“He’s hiding.  Far, but not that far.  Watching and listening.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“It’s… easier to tell.  I guess, and I’m right.  I went to sleep this afternoon, too tired to keep moving, too hungry… I woke up feeling… not better, but it’s easier to tell.”

You died, I thought, and just like the monster more sensitive, with connections only to his half-devoured prey, you’ve got less flesh in the way of sensing things.

“Alright.  He’s sorta far, and he’s watching.  Not the worst case scenario,” I said.  “There’re just a few moments.  Let’s see…”

I drew June, and hacked off a few of the biggest clusters of the holly hedge.

“What’s the worst case scenario?” Evan asked.

“Him running.  Getting as far away as he can.”

“That’s not right.”

“Let’s move,” I said.  “We gotta get gone before the little guys close the net.”

“Him running is the best thing,” Evan said.

“Not when you’re hunting him,” I said.  “Come on.”

Collateral 4.12

By and large, asking an American how far away something was tended to get an answer in terms of miles.  The gas station is a quarter mile that way.  Ask a Canadian?  Time.  The highway is a ten minute drive thataway.  Or so the idea went, with exemptions for more civilized areas of the States and less civilized parts of Canada.

When I tried to parse how big the park was, the number of Others present, I thought in terms of time.  Time to get away.  The amount of time that had passed between each encounter with a ghost or some other Other.

I’d passed maybe one spirit every two to five minutes.

Judging by the number of spirits I could sense by way of connection, now, extrapolating?  This park was as big as fuck.  A good hour or two on foot, if I didn’t backtrack to where I’d started out.

The net was drawing closed.  Not a circle, enclosing me, but a general shape that followed the contours of terrain, streams, hills, cliffs and other stuff that might impede travel.

Not that I could extrapolate anything from the patterns I saw.  I wasn’t that smart, for one thing, and there were too many different kinds, following different rules.

Not to mention that the trees were thick enough that I couldn’t make out much twenty feet ahead of me.

I ran, shotgun in hand, branches of holly held to my back by both the coils of chain and my jacket, pricking at my shoulder, neck, and ear.

The first ones to reach me weren’t ghosts, but Faerie.  Mangled, savage Faerie, who had made themselves beautiful, used Glamour to change their shape and conform to ideals of beauty, only to find themselves in the Goblin’s clutches, maimed and somehow trapped in his realm.  Hair grown long, dirty, clothes in tatters, where years of abuse and survival in the woods hadn’t removed them entirely.  Eyes stared at me from behind long greasy hair, the faces and forms I could make out were attractive.

Were it not for the look in their eyes, the fact that they’d been harrowed by years of pain and degradation, the resentment and hate, I might have dismissed them as Hollywood savages.  Actors playing roles.

I turned to take a different route, and one broke away from the group, blocking my path.

I remembered what Fell had said.  This was a bad place to stop moving.

“The tree people,” Evan said, his eyes on the Faerie.

“Yeah?” I asked.  I almost reached out for his hand, then stopped.  I took a hard right, pushing through the branches.

“There weren’t many who bothered to climb the trees and come after me in my treehouse,” he said.

“These guys?”  I glanced back.  Only one chased, now, but she was running.  Faster than I was.  Closing the distance.

“I climbed out onto a branch that wouldn’t hold them.  They tried and fell.  I went out onto another branch…”

He trailed off.

“Evan?”

“Stop trying.  Please.  I just want to sleep.”

There it was.  The cadence that suggested I was talking to the echo, not the consciousness that had somehow remained.

I looked to confirm, but the act of looking meant I ran headlong into a branch.  Not a thick one, but something that could scrape against my face.

The glamour was torn away, where I’d covered up the bites from the vermin.  A light scrape on the cheek was matched by a smattering of gouges and scratches, just as raw and painful as they’d been when I’d covered them up.  One glamour taken away.

Not just that glamour.  The branches scraped against my coat, my pants, and the stripes of glamour I’d painted all over myself were snatched away.  Very easily.  Dangerously so.

Something told me it was by design, not bad luck.

I turned and aimed behind me as I ran, and saw a glimpse of the savage Faerie, one long-nailed hand pressed to the bloodstained strips of cloth that bound her stomach, the other clutching at a branch.  She caught a gossamer strip of something, and the stuff flowed over, across, and into her hand and arm like smoke or water.

Was it imagination that she seemed a fraction faster, a little more Faerie and a little less savage and broken?

I raised the shotgun with one hand and fired back at her.  The blast knocked her clear off her feet.

I turned my attention forward, trusting my ears to catch the sound of body hitting snow.

Instead, I heard the continued sounds of her footsteps behind me.  Not as close, but still there.

I might have wondered if she’d landed on both feet or all fours like a cat, only to resume running, but I didn’t have the luxury.

Two more Faerie were flanking me, running just a matter of feet to my left, shoulder to shoulder with one another.  Both men.

I shifted my shotgun to a two-handed grip and winced as another branch whipped my face, punishing me for not paying enough attention.  A little less glamour, and a taste of blood where my lip had been cut.

I didn’t remember blood in my mouth when I’d been attacked by the imp’s animals.  Was the universe charging me interest?  Making the wounds just a little worse?

The distraction interrupted me from aiming at the pair and hitting both with the shotgun.  A waste of bullets, maybe, but they were too close for comfort, and I didn’t have a wealth of options when it came to shaking them off.

Instead, I reacted a little too slowly as I moved the shotgun.  One hand settled on the barrel, catching it before I could aim it.  He pushed it away with a deceptive ease.

His hand was broken, but not bleeding.  Where index and middle finger had been shattered rather than broken, reduced to spears of splintered fingerbone, he jabbed the hand at my face, aiming to thrust them into my eyes.

I pulled back, still holding the heavier end of the shotgun in both hands, and my forward momentum was interrupted by the thick branches of a large tree.

I was no longer moving.  Not a good thing.

I was cornered with someone pressed up against me, clearly intent on hurting me.

Less good thing.  Worse thing.

I pulled the trigger, fully aware I wasn’t about to hit him, much less anything else.  The savage Faerie barely reacted.

He reached back, then stabbed at me again with the shattered ruins of his hand.

I caught his hand, more out of fear and reflex than anything clever or skilled.  Because putting my hand in front of the stabbing wound was better than leaving my face in the way.  The splinter of bone tore through the webbing between two fingers.  Blood flowed freely down my hand and into my sleeve.

I felt stabs of pain on my injured hand.  Where the blood flow from the cut webbing didn’t obscure it, I could see my hand changing.  Once-covered wounds opening up, the holes appearing in my gloves.  As if the interest I was paying extended to what I wore and carried, indiscriminate.

“Evan,” I managed.

But Evan was backing away.  “I’m lighter than they are.  Perch on a branch.”

I wasted precious seconds fighting with the Faerie, struggling to keep those bone points from reaching my eye sockets, while my mind turned over his statement, tried to figure out the trick.

No trick involved.  In his ghostly little head, he was retreating to the thinnest branches that wouldn’t support the Faerie’s weight.

The other Faerie arrived, stopping a short distance away.  The woman Faerie with the gut wound and a male Faerie with his arms cut up into ribbons.

Others drew a little closer.  Ghosts.  Everything else.  The net closing tighter around me.

“The wolf’s watching me,” Evan said.

Watching us.

“Hope it’s a good… fucking show,” I grunted, pushing against the Faerie’s hand.  It was all I could do to avoid losing it and letting myself drop to the ground.

The fabric of the glove gave way, tearing away.  Turning to rags.  The flesh that was revealed was dirty, stained, riddled with scrapes and wounds.  Only a few were from the animals.  Some was interest, and a lot of it was…

I felt stabbing pains in my fingers.

Saw his fingers changing, in kind.

Lesson learned.  Trying to use glamour was a bad idea, if I was going toe to toe with Faerie.  It was like opposing like, and they were too well versed in glamour and trickery to lose this tug-of-war.

He was transferring the wounds to me, along a medium he was very well versed in.

Blood flowed from the wound, a little thicker now.

Drenching chain and locket.

His eyes moved down to our joined hands.  There was a glimmer of confusion on his face, or curiosity, or something else entirely, as he noticed the thin chain that criss-crossed my hand, the locket that was pinned to the back of it.

Had I been of sound mind, less paralyzed by the sudden contact, I might have been able to use the distraction.  As it was, I fumbled for purchase and failed, my mind filled with steel wool and white noise, putting me on the defensive and keeping me there.

“Comhroinn liom,” the woman rasped.

The male Faerie didn’t respond.

“Comhroinn le linn,” the other male Faerie echoed.

The pain in my fingers intensified, until I felt like it was reaching a crescendo.  A critical point where it felt like they would explode or be torn away, leaving only slivers of bone.

This wasn’t the pretend sort of pain that ghosts caused, either.

I groaned, and the groan transformed into a scream as the pain built up.

I raised a foot, kicking at his hand, where he gripped the shotgun.  Then, rather stupidly, I swung it at his head like a club.  It moved a little faster than it should have, and wind stirred his hair as the barrel hit his ear.

But he was Faerie, and this wasn’t the sort of thing that was useful.  He caught the barrel with his good hand, his eyes staring into mine.  His ear wasn’t even bleeding.

“Evan,” I said, but it was only a whisper.

“Through the squeeze,” Evan said.

“Need… useful…” I grunted and gasped the words, hating how small my voice sounded. “input.”

The pain built again, faster, harder.

A crack sounded through the area, like a gunshot, and my fingers leaped into the next category of agony.

Lesson learned, I thought, which was ironic, because I could barely think.  How was I supposed to learn when I couldn’t think?

“Comhroinn!” the woman shouted, over my scream.

Angry.  The thought barely connected.

She was angry.

Not at me, either.

So I did the second-least intuitive thing I could do, here.  Short of actually letting him stab me in the eyes, I moved my face closer to said stabbing implements, where my hand gripped his.

I could feel his breath on me, feel the weight of his body.  As with the Imp, when I’d stepped outside the rabbit-gut circle, I felt like every iota of movement in his direction came with a corresponding loss of sanity and courage.

But, just as I’d pushed through that with one singular goal, I acted with a goal here.

I kissed the back of my hand, getting a very up-close view of the way his hand was regenerating, piecing itself together with the glamour he was taking, and all of the bits of my hand that he was scraping up along the way.

Then I spat.

Blood from the back of my hand, where it flowed from the stabbed webbing, sprayed onto and over his shoulder, in the direction of the Faerie woman.

She reacted, angry, no longer willing to hold back.  Her face contorted with anger, glamour helping to twist her features a step further.  For a moment, she resembled the sort of faerie that cursed newborns to die from a pricked finger.

She didn’t attack me, though.  She attacked my assailant, blood feeding the connection between them, leading to the natural conclusion.  Jealousy, anger, frustration, a desire to have some of the relief he was finding.

I was free, as they tumbled to the ground.  Flight instincts took over.

I didn’t make it one step.  My flight was interrupted by a minor snag.  Literally.  The branches of holly that stuck out of the back of my jacket caught on the tree branches.  A velcro attachment of hook to hook, in a dozen places.

I tore free with a roar.

Without the Faerie in my face, I was able to take in my surroundings.

A little ghost boy with a hooded jacket.  Two fighting Faerie.  Another Faerie lunging for me, getting pulled into the fight instead.  Trees.  And a whole lot of Others.

They came with a kind of fog, standing behind and between trees, surrounded by the moisture and the rolling snowflakes.  Not zombies, despite the glistening, angry wounds that each sported, the sometimes shambling gaits.  As with the Faerie, I saw resentment here and there, glares, anger, hope.  A mix of emotions, a wariness about the Others they stood next to.

Many heaved and panted for breath, some whimpered or moaned.

It wasn’t so much that they were on the same side, as the fact that I was on the side of the healthy, the unwounded.  That made me something to be torn down, in their twisted perspective.

“Through the squeeze,” Evan said.

“I don’t object,” I said, trying to take in the numbers and find a gap, failing.  “What squeeze?  What are you talking about?”

“Just over there,” he said, very quest.  “Just- just- through the squeeze.”

I had an eerie sensation of someone with a stutter, trying and failing to communicate.

Was he lucid-ish, right now, but forced to communicate through riddles?

He was looking in one direction.

“Over there,” he said.  “Just over there.”

On the other side of the ring of Others.

This wasn’t a situation where I could deliberate.  Standing still was bad.

I charged.

Red rover, red rover.  Send the stupid-ass diabolist over.

I jammed my hand into my pocket as I broke into the all-or-nothing run, intent on getting ammo, and I felt the agony explode in my hand.  I was mid-stride, and very nearly forgot to bring my left foot forward again.  As it was, I stumbled, lost momentum.

Broken finger, at the very least.

I pulled my hand out of my pocket, my index finger bent in a place it wasn’t supposed to bend, a single shot clutched between ring and pinky fingers.

I had a better sense of what I was doing this time around, as I popped the shotgun open and fumbled a shot inside, butt of the weapon jammed under my armpit.

The ghost ran alongside me.  Flickering, keeping pace, showing different images of him standing still as he paused mid-stride to let me keep up, let me forge the way.

Too many big Others in the way, here.  Not as big as the Hyena, not as big as the blind brute I’d run into before.  Still… big enough.

I wasn’t about to be pinned down again.  I fired off to one side, aiming to catch them off guard, then made a sharp change of direction, springing off of one toe.  I swung the shotgun like club at the one I’d hit hardest with the shot.  Not a big one.  A smaller thing, with wood armor or wood skin or something.  A bit more wind power, a bit of an impact.

He stumbled back into others, and I hurried through the gap.

Finding myself face to face with others.  Five feet away, ten feet away, twenty feet away.  Still approaching the source of the Hyena’s cry.

Were they obedient, or had they come to attack the thing that had hurt them so badly?

Both?

“Through the squeeze,” Evan said.

Through the squeeze.  I looked to see him, and he was gone.

Trouble was drawing closer, and I didn’t trust myself to reload.

Scanning the surroundings, I found myself making eye contact with a woman.

Blonde, with one eye that sort of bugged out, the other joining three quarters of her face in being covered by blood-stained bandage.  The bandage bound her tightly enough that I could tell her face wasn’t the normal shape, or she’d had a lower jaw and she didn’t anymore.  The damage to her neck meant her head hung at a cocked angle.

I’d made eye contact, and I couldn’t break it.  I could see the connection, hard, unyielding.

I staggered to the left, blind, and I had to turn my head to keep my eyes fixed on hers.  I had little doubt that if I’d been moving, or driving, the connection would have held fast enough that I might have snapped my neck turning my head as I passed her.

She had to fight the others to get closer to me, while I blindly ran to one side, unable to look where I was going.  I hit branches, trees.

I had only seconds before I got surrounded and swamped by bodies.  The idea terrified me.  Even with everything I’d seen, it rated as one of the worst ways to go.  For me, anyhow.

She wasn’t a ghost.  Something else.  One of the unique sorts that urban legends were based around, like the hook-handed murderer who scratched at car handles or the murderess who appeared in mirrors in dark rooms.  She was simply Other.  A siren call for the eye alone.

I tried to move my hand in the way, to block the eye contact.  My wrist bounced off the connection as if it were something solid, and my various injuries made their displeasure known as the impact rattled each of them.

“Through the squeeze,” Evan said, a little to my left.

I headed his way, stumbling, my feet sinking into a deeper patch of snow, hitting a rock.  I was hoping that some other bastard would get far enough ahead of the eye-woman that they might block the view.

They weren’t being so generous.

“Through the squeeze,” Evan said, again.

I followed the sound of his voice, Marco-Polo style.

My foot moved over, and I hit nothing at all.  Open air.

I fell.  My back hit more solid ground.  I was left with one leg down a hole, arms splayed out, shotgun in one hand, my head wrenched at a dangerous angle as my eyes insisted on holding contact with that woman-Other’s single orb.

If I’d fallen in a different manner… snap?

I swept my good hand forward, through snow, bringing the shotgun with it.  An augmentation to the wind, a push…

The connection was strong enough to push snow out of the way.

But not all of it.

For a brief moment, the link was broken.  I turned my head, looking away.

Only to become aware of how close the rest of the Others were.  Lying on my back, I could see them creeping around my peripheral vision.  Some closer than five feet.

Evan was among them, standing through my leg.

He flickered, looking concerned, then jumped.

Jumping right into my stomach.

Through my stomach.

My ass and left leg weren’t touching solid ground.  I drew my right foot back…

Gravity had its way with me, dragging me into the same hole that the little ghost had slipped into.

I landed on my back, and was momentarily blinded by the snow that had followed me down.  My heart pounded, and my hand throbbed in time with each beat.

Others would be following.  Pain aside, I needed to move.

I flopped over onto my stomach.  There was barely any light, which somehow made it easier to make out my little companion.

It was… not a cave, but a collection of stones and roots that had made a kind of tunnel.  The ground beneath might have eroded away, or it had simply grown like this.

“Through the squeeze,” Evan said.

“You’re a little less lucid,” I said.  “How come?”

“Through the squeeze,” he said.  He passed through me on his way to the tunnel.

I wasted no time in following, crawling after him.  Was it weird that I was less bothered by the fact that he passed through me than the alternative?  Probably.

I crawled on my elbows, shotgun in my right hand, barrel resting in the crook of my other arm, unable to even rise up enough to put weight on my knees.  Every brush against the overhanging roots brought puffs of snow down.

“Squeeze for a, what, an eight year old?” I muttered.  “What’s this to me?”

There was no response.  I was talking to Evan the projection, the echo, the replay.

I stopped as the branches on my back snagged.  I had to crawl backwards a distance, then shift them around so they were pressed between my body and the ground.

I pressed forward again, and I made it about two feet further as the chain caught.  A quick check suggested it wasn’t the chain itself, but the bulge it made where my jacket covered it.  More snow filtered through the overhang as I jerked to a stop.

The space didn’t look like it got any more open from here on out.

I backed up again, tried shifting my coat around, pulling it tight against my body, holding it like that with the shotgun-

I heard a growl behind me.  A very inhuman growl.  It was too cramped a space for me to turn around, to even look behind myself.

No time to waste, I tried again.

I stopped short at the exact same place, for the exact same reason.

“Fuck,” I swore, under my breath.

A snarl was followed by rustling, and snow raining down on me yet again, in larger clumps.

Whatever was behind me was strong enough to move the roots and stones, to push past them.

“Fuck,” I said again.  Was an understatement like that bad enough to count as a lie?

Had I already wondered that?

What did it say that I even had to ask that last question?

I heard another snarl, felt another lunge shudder through Evan’s ‘squeeze’.  Snow fell down on top of me, making my job harder.  Some even landed in the crook between my face and arms, atop the holly branches I was squishing down with my body.  For a second, between fear, snow, holly and the confined space around my body, I couldn’t breathe.

“I don’t want to die like this,” Evan said.  He was sitting further up the tunnel, hugging his arms to his body, legs propped up.  “Not like this.  Not here.”

“Thank you,” I muttered, “For the commentary.  I’d say it was doing lots for my morale…”

I struggled to make headway, failed.

I huffed out a breath, because the struggles were making me hold my breath to the point I might pass out.  “…But I’m not allowed to be sarcastic anymore.”

I heard whatever it was behind me scrabbling for purchase on stones.  Claws or something scraping.

Another movement of the roots overhead and more snow suggested it was succeeding where I was failing.

I didn’t have many options.  June?  No use.  Too slow, maybe counterintuitive, with the ice thing.  Loading and firing the shotgun?  I could clear the snow out of the tunnel, maybe, but I could also kill myself with ricochet, and I’d have an audience if and when I made it to the other side.

I reached down, squeezing to one side, until I couldn’t breathe, to get my bad hand down past my pelvis, past my pocket.

Cargo pants pocket, reaching in while trying to keep from bumping my broken finger, failing.

A little jar.

I had to move closer to the thing that was behind me in order to get the room.  The contents of the jar were cold as I jammed my three good fingers into it.  I smeared the stuff along the chain, pulled on it until it rotated around my body, smeared more on, squeezing it down flat.

Not enough of a covering to be as meaningful as I maybe hoped.

The thing behind me pushed forward again, and I heard wood splintering and breaking.  Snow rained down, twice as much as before.  I could feel hot, fetid air waft past me.

Not the Hyena.  The Hyena’s breath would smell worse.

Still not a good thing.

I heaved myself forward.  A third attempt at that same snag that kept catching on the chain.

A little bit of metaphorical butter made the difference.  I squeezed through, squeezed through the next bit, which was every bit as bad.

I was holding my breath, because I couldn’t afford to take up any more space.  I forced myself forward, jamming my hand against something hard beneath the stone, and I very nearly gasped.

If I had, I might have expanded enough that I wouldn’t get back through.  I might have lost the scarce forward momentum.

My vision was starting to act up, my head pounding, from the lack of air.

Last leg.  I used my elbows rather than my hands to get leverage on the roots and stones, pistoning myself forward.

To freedom.  An open area.  Snow, trees, and a surprising lack of Others.

They wouldn’t be that far away.  I was glad for the silence effect on boots and chain both as I ran over the snow, joined by my companion.

“Thanks,” I said.

He flickered.

Not the usual flicker, where he jumped to another part of the script, then jumped back.

Flickering as in a flame that was dying or going out.

“No,” I said.  “No way.  Stop.”

He stopped.

“I’m so tired,” he said.  “They won’t let me sleep.  I’m so hungry.  I can’t stop to eat, and the only things I can find are things I know I’m not supposed to have.”

He sounded faint, in both senses of the word.  Or were those two sides of the same sense?

“I just… I need to sleep.”

I knew I was hearing the words he’d spoken before he died.

“A little nap.  To save up energy for when it’s brighter out.”

A nap, to conserve energy?

I thought of Rose.

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the fact that I’d just crawled through piles of snow, or the fact that I was drenched head to toe in sweat in the dead of winter.

Was Rose out of energy?

No.  It had to be more complicated than that.  Pauz had expressed a kind of glee.

He’d wanted to see my face, when I found out.

Why?

Rose had spent energy to break the mirror and the ice, back when we’d first met.  She’d taken her time recuperating.

Just yesterday, she’d broken the windows.  Same thing, closer together.

She was in a coma of sorts.

Conserving energy.

What was different?

I was asking myself the question, but I knew the answer.  Ergo, the chill.

Me.

I was different.

I was stronger.  I was able to talk to ghosts like Evan.

Why?  What was the dark, sick joke that Pauz would find funny?

He was an imp that subverted the natural order.  He’d affected me.  Instead of me feeding power to Rose…

Rose was feeding power to me.

I could imagine the imp’s laughter, mocking me.  His glee, if he could see me now, deep in the woods, knowing that every second I was operating like this, I was taking from Rose, helpless to do anything about it.

I shivered again.

“Thanks, Evan,” I said.  I looked down at the ghost.  “Good tip.”

“A little nap,” he said.

He was in pure echo mode, now.

Which was a riddle unto itself.

“Come on,” I said.

I led him forward, taking the time to very carefully reload the shotgun without hitting my finger.

He flickered again.

“This way, then” I said.

Every interaction was alerting the monster, the goblin-beast.  But I could live with that.  This was a hunt.

Moving at a right angle to the direction we’d been going didn’t elicit any more flickers until we’d walked for about a minute.

Right.  It was a question of territory, then.

Well, this could be a staging ground, then.  I would have liked to get further away from the other Others, but this would do.

I drew the holly branches from where they were tucked against my chest by jacket an chain, and I tossed them to the ground.

The chain was my other tool.  Still slick with glamour.

“Thing to keep in mind, Evan,” I said, talking to him as I threaded the end of the chain through the loop of the dial lock at the far end, “Is humans have been hunting things bigger than them for a very long time.  We’re built for it.  Most of us have pretty good brains in our heads, we’ve got a natural endurance, and the ability to use tools.  We can hold water, and in a sheer endurance run, we can cover more distance than a deer, a gazelle, or a mammoth.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever going to come,” he whispered, eyes down on the ground.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, affecting fake cheer.  “I came.  And so long as we keep talking, our guest should come too.”

I jammed a twig through the chain, then checked my handiwork.

“A little nap,” he said.  Hearing it for the Nth time, I wondered if he was trying to convince himself.

“No time for napping,” I said.  “I need you alert.  I know you’re not up to a lot of thinking like this, but I’m relying on you for a hint that he’s coming.”

Hard to climb a tree with one hand, but I did it, just to get to a better vantage point.  I made it up as high as I could, then wound the end of the chain around a thick section of trunk, higher up.

“By the way,” I said.  “Introductions may be in order.  June, meet Evan,” I said.

I drew the hatchet, then buried it in the trunk.  I wound the end of the chain around the handle and blade.

I hopped down more than I climbed down, crossed a short distance, then climbed a nearby tree.

“The wolf,” Evan said.

“Fuck,” I said.  “Excuse my language.  Probably not appropriate around an eight-year old.  How close?”

No response.  But when I looked, Evan didn’t look like he was afraid.  More an observation.

Close-ish, then?

I didn’t say it aloud.  If every word I said reeled the Other in closer, I’d have to control it.

I  used the tip of the shotgun to catch the dangling chain and dragged it over my way until I could hook it with my thumb.  I hooked it around a branch.

Before I climbed down, I ran my hand along the chain I could reach.

Cold.  Conductivity.  Hidden.

I tried to push ideas into it.  To change what it was.

For now, it was simply a very elaborate clothesline, about twelve or fifteen feet above the ground.  A metal clothesline charged with the cold from the hatchet.

I hopped down.

This time, I didn’t interact with Evan.  No use bringing the goblin closer.  Not yet.

I tramped in the snow, stomping.  Following a set path.  Here and there, I glanced at Evan, who was curled up and trying to stay warm.  Replaying a memory.  I suspected it was from that same night he’d failed to stay warm, or he’d been too dehydrated, or something else had happened.

Sorry, little man, I thought.  You didn’t deserve this.

Let’s fuck up that wolf.

I tore the bluish holly leaves from the branches, depositing them into the circle I’d stomped into the snow.  I was careful to layer them so the leaves all touched.  The little red berries were spaced out at even intervals.

I was so engrossed in the task I nearly forgot about the other thing I was supposed to be paying attention to.

Or was it more accurate to say the Other thing?

“The wolf… have to run,” Evan said, more agitated.

It was here.  The circle wasn’t a circle.  It was a ‘c’.

Which was by design, more or less.

I cocked the shotgun, winced in pain at the pain that caused my finger.

Such a little thing, so much pain.

He appeared in the woods, almost as if the shadows were binding together to give him a shape.  One caked in filth and blood, but a shape all the same.

“No, no, have to run,” Evan said.  He turned.

“Evan,” I said, sounding as authoritarian as I could.  “Come to me.”

“Have to run,” he said, but he didn’t move.

“Safety, right?  Think about safety.  The treehouse?  The hedge.  The stream.  I’m a kind of safety for you.  Come here.”

“I-”

“Evan.  Surviving ghost.  I swear to you, I will help you.”

The words had power.

Evan listened.  He came to my side.  I reached out for him, and my hand passed through.  I would have wanted to hold him, to crouch by his side, and protect him, or simply rest my hands on his shoulders.

What did it say, that I was willing to have contact with him?

I saw a leer on the wolf’s face as it paced around the clearing.  Mocking me.

I kept Evan with me, walking around the edge of the circle of holly.  Keeping the opening in mind.

He was a bully.  He taunted.  He’d charged Evan earlier just to see the ghost cower.  He couldn’t speak, so he taunted with actions.

Would he do the same here?

Yes.

But not the way I’d planned, not the way I’d hoped.

He charged, but he did it at an oblique angle, bypassing the clothesline entirely.

Great, filthy paws stopped short of the barrier.

He didn’t step through the opening in the circle either.

Instead, using his paw, he struck at the snow.  Snow and the dirt and grass from the ground below were cast atop one of the branches I’d left by the opening.  Branches with holly still on them, that I could maybe throw across the opening once he’d passed inside.

The other branch wouldn’t cover the whole opening, either.

He wasn’t stupid.

The Other’s toothy grin widened, showing teeth.  It would have seemed cartoonish if… well, if he wasn’t fucking terrifying.

“Stay close, Evan,” I said, as I circled the incomplete ring of holly.  My voice shook a little as I said it.

“I don’t want to be eaten,” he said, and his voice shook a lot more.  A replay of something he’d said to himself, once.

“Neither do I,” I said, without taking my eyes off the Other.

He was faster than Evan and I.  Covered more ground.  I tried to keep the ring of holly between him and us, but it was futile.  If he really wanted, he might have lunged, changed direction and lunged again.  I wasn’t sure I would have been able to move fast enough.

But he didn’t.  One ear twitched every time Evan made a sound.

I reached the point where I’d left the other holly branch.  Not enough to close the circle, if I wanted to hide within.  Which I didn’t.  I bent down to pick it up, not taking my eyes or the shotgun off the goblin.

I didn’t want to let go of the shotgun, or take my finger off the trigger, so I hooked my good fingers into the crooks of the branches and bit.  Tore.

Giving me a mess of holly leaves in my mouth.

“Run!” I screamed, around the leaves in my mouth.

I bolted.

The Hyena chased.  Silent, but I could feel the impact as his great paws hit solid ground.

I cast the branch down between him and myself.  There was blood on it from my wounded hand.  I hoped that counted for something.

It did.  The Hyena dodged, leaped off to one side, then corrected course, closing in on me.

No.  On Evan.  On the ghost of the child that had eluded him.  The ghost who had eluded him.

For one second I couldn’t afford to spare, I took in the scene, tore the holly from my mouth.

“Evan!  Come!”

I screamed the words, as if volume could impart some measure of power, commanding the ghost.

Evan came.

Not fast enough.  Not far enough to get away.

I jammed the bloody holly into the end of the shotgun, aimed, and fired, haphazard.

A distraction, repelling the Hyena for one precious moment.

Evan ran past me, flickered, and disappeared.

The Hyena shook its head, looked at me, and lunged.

Into the chain-clothesline I’d rigged.

The branches holding it taut broke like they were nothing.

There was only slack.

I fired a second time, without holly this time.

The Hyena pounced.

A tiny something snapped.

It was like time stood still, as I lost my balance, and landed on my ass in the snow.  The Hyena loomed over me, forelimbs outstretched, claws ready to tear into me.

Back legs on the ground.

I panted for breath, saw the Hyena there, its legs struggling, futile, in an attempt to touch ground.  It did a short tip-toe dance on the ground, rear limbs only.

The tree swayed, where I’d tied the chain up higher.

As nooses went, it wasn’t a conventional knot.  A simple loop, prevented from drawing closed by a twig jammed in the intersection.  The twig broke when enough force was exerted on it, force the Hyena was definitely capable of bringing to bear.  Simple forward momentum pulled the loop closed around the Hyena’s neck.

A choke-collar of metal charged with glamour, with blood, and power.

He snarled, lunging again.  The tree shook, and snow drifted down on us.

“Fuck you too,” I said.

Still sitting in the snow, I pulled my legs around into a cross-legged position.  “Now, I think, we can have a chat.”

He retreated until he could have all four legs on the ground and growled, a long, low sound.

“This is the point where you’re supposed to call all the spirits and ghosts you have at your command, isn’t it?” I asked.  “When you realize you can’t win on your own, you call them, and you cower like the miserable little fuck you are, hiding until your prey is worn down or dead.  So why don’t you call them?  Do that howl thing again.”

He growled, quieter this time.

“No?” I asked.  “You’re not going to call them, huh?  Could it be that you’re scared?  Are you worried that they might want to take back what you took from them?”

He didn’t make a sound, this time.

“Yeah, fuck you,” I said.  “Look, it’s not even sunset.  How many do you think I could call here before the sun’s down?  How are they going to take it back?  Do they just carve pieces out of you, eye for an eye style?  Or would they actually try to recover what you have in your stomach?  Cut you open like the woodcutter did for little red riding hood?  Sew you back up with stones inside you, and toss you into a river?”

No reply.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.  “Which one do you think I’ll find first?”

Still no reply.  Only a malevolent glare.

I left him behind, watching out for Evan.

Hoping he wasn’t gone forever.

He’d been a help.  I felt like I owed him.

I did owe him.  I wasn’t sure I’d fulfilled that oath I’d made, back there.

I probably had, but-

I heard a crunch.

Realized what it was.

I ran back the way I’d come.  Back towards the Hyena.

I saw him biting the trunk of the tree, splintering the wood.

Fuck, fuck, fuuuuuck.

I dashed past him.

He let go of the trunk, lunged for me instead.

I rolled, he kept going.  I heard a choking sound.

But my focus was only on the branch I’d thrown to the ground.

No sooner did I have it than I was heading back for the Hyena.

When I’d left his reach, he’d turned back to the tree.  Biting again.

I threw the branch, and he recoiled.

As with the circle of holly, I kept the branch between us, drawing closer to it.

I tore off bits of holly and distributed them in a wide circle around the trunk.

Cast off more bits and the remaining berries in his direction, until I was sure he wasn’t about to approach the tree again.

“Fucker,” I said.  “Fuck you, you fucker.”

I was learning all sorts of useful lessons.  Like not leaving a haphazardly-bound Other unattended.

“Now, what do you say?” I asked.  “Should I go find your pets?  Tell them that you’re not in good shape?  Or should I find some holly?  Surround you until you have nowhere to go?  Until you have to sit still while they take you to pieces?”

He growled, very different from before.  Head as low as he could get it.

“Or do I use a bit of power?  I can see the connections radiating from you.  Wouldn’t take much.”

I drew out a line in the snow.  “There’s one.”

I drew out another line.  “There’s another.  There’s a lot of blood on my hands.  I don’t imagine it takes much to bring them running.  They’re probably pissed.”

Another growl, head low.

“The alternative,” I said.  “Is that you agree to be bound.  Which is probably loads better than you deserve.”

He didn’t move or make a sound.

“If I don’t get an agreement of some sort, I’m going to bring the others.  I’ll protect myself and watch.  I’d tell you how that kid you just tried to get?  He was actually pretty awesome.  He in no way deserved this… but you don’t care, do you?  It’s not what you are.”

There was no grin on his face.  He was only a mangy cur, now.  Big, but still a mangy cur.

“Ten,” I said.  “Nine.  Eight.  Seven.  Six.  Five-”

He spoke.  A language I couldn’t understand.  Something guttural, with more sense in the silences than in the utterances.

It was, I suspected, a language so basic that most could understand it.

I submit.

The tree, no longer bent by the weight pulling down on it, rose to its full height, casting the remaining snow into the sky.

And somehow, with just the movement of that one tree, it seemed like the sun was able to reach the area around me, making everything brighter.

A sword hung from a point partway up the tree, the chain looped around blade and handle.  It swung from the movement of the tree, blade ringing each time it banged against trunk and branch.

My entire body protested as I climbed the tree, but I made it up to where I’d tied the chain, collected June, and unbound the chain.

I was careful to bind the sword in chain before I headed for the ground.

The thing was ornate, but in a very odd, unpleasant way.  An ugly face of the Hyena’s head in profile, a ragged claw at the pommel, and the blade itself was uneven, with terrible weight.  I didn’t miss the fact that the grip had spikes sticking out from it, so anyone who held it would gouge their palms and fingers.

A pretty fucking reluctant binding.

I looked to connections, and found the way I needed to go to reach civilization.  Trudging through the snow, shotgun slung over one shoulder, chain-wrapped sword in hand, resting on one shoulder.  Uncomfortable and heavy.

But I wasn’t in a rush.

The forest was peaceful, bright.

Here and there, I saw ghosts flickering out of existence.  Their wounds widening, tearing them into pieces, leaving fragments to drift out of existence.

The remaining Others were already gone.  Finally healing, maybe.  Or something.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, if it was something.

I was nearly to the wood’s edge when I saw him.

“Evan,” I said.

He wasn’t fading.  Wasn’t disappearing.

He was the Hyena’s, but not in the same way the others were.

“The wolf is defeated,” I said.  “He shouldn’t bother you anymore.”

“The wolf leaves,” he said.  He flickered.  He had that tone that ghosts did when they were repeating scenes from the past.  Part of a riddle I hadn’t answered, though I had a pretty good idea now.

“The wolf leaves,” I said.  “Yeah.  I’m taking him away now.”

“The wolf leaves,” Evan said.  “But the wolf will come back.  I have to keep running, until help comes.”

He looked over one shoulder, a flicker of fear on his face, and then bolted.  Running, faster than I could follow.

“Yeah,” I said.  I rattled the sword.  “Fuck you, goblin.”

There was no response

I approached the roadside.

“Nick of the Knights,” I said.  “Because Fell will kill me if I call him like this.  Nick of the Knights.  Nick of the Knights.  Shotgun guy.”

I felt the connection appear.

“Great,” I said.

I sat back and waited.

■

“You look a little worse for wear,” Fell said.

I didn’t comment.  I only waited.  I ached, I was scabbed over in a dozen places.  People stared when I passed them.  At least I’d had a good container for the sword.  A cylindrical case for holding posters and artwork.

It was fucking heavy, which didn’t help the weight of it.

Conquest’s manse loomed before me.  Not too bad a walk from the subway stop.

“You’re quiet, too,” Fell said.  “Don’t tell me you traded away something like your voice.”

“Was a pretty unilateral deal,” I replied.  “I think I scared him into submission.”

“All with hours to spare,” Fell smirked.  “I thought you’d have another last-minute finish.”

“I hurried this one, because I need time to plan and prepare for the next.  It’s the ugliest one, far as I can figure.”

“Probably.  Come on, then.  Let’s get this over with so you can keep preparing.”

I followed him inside.

There was no illusion of a ground floor when we entered.  Only a vast open space, and a tower.  Lopsided, elaborate, so impossible to ignore that it commanded attention, reminding me of the Other with the eye.  There were decorative features that would have been impossible on another structure.  Gravity would have torn it to pieces.  Spires jutting off like blades in scabbards at a man’s hip, points facing skyward.  A pale white halo surrounded the top floor, reminiscent of a crown.

I did not appreciate the long walk up to the top.  Floor after floor, with screams of the tortured muffled by closed doors, dark, facing scene after scene where Conquest paid homage to himself.

I reached the top, where Conquest waited.  But I supposed he didn’t sleep.  He just was.

He was still in his halfway-form, half man, half monster, flesh stretched, beard, the eyes more whites than anything, wearing clothes that were part skin, part coat, part robe.  He held no animal, but I saw that the rooftop was bordered by a moat, where large silver fish swam in perpetual rings.  The only light was a pale reflection from Conquest himself, and from the halo-crown that surrounded the tower.

There were five points of interest around the tower top, besides Conquest himself.  Rose was one.  Asleep, her back to the wall, with a short chain trailing from her to Conquest’s hand.

I looked, and I saw the connection between us.

Suspicions confirmed.  Something was wrong with the flow of it.  Too much coming my way.  It was twisted, never straight.

There were also three altars, behind and to either side of Conquest.  The book sat on one.  The other two were empty.

“You have one more day,” Conquest said.  “Then we get to business.”

“I understand,” I said.

I drew the sword from the container, then laid it on one altar, chain and all.

“I assume I can’t take Rose with me?” I asked.

“No,” Conquest said.

“With your permission, I would like to leave now,” I said.

“Leave?  To prepare for your next task?”

“No,” I said.  “Yes.  Both.”

“Both,” he said, with a tone that suggested he was pointing out the inconsistency.  The almost-lie.

But all three answers were true.

“There’s something I need to do,” I said.  “With your permission?”

“Granted,” he said. “You’ve done well, servant, being so prompt, bearing scars from service to me.”

I could have argued, but I was too emotionally weary.

And I needed his cooperation.

“Fell,” I said.  “Do you have a phone?”

“You don’t?”

“I’m poor,” I said.  “Please?”

Conquest gestured, and Fell frowned a little.  He stepped forward and handed me the phone.

One search.

Another.  For a map.

I stared at it for a while.

“Thank you,” I said.  “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

When all of this comes crashing down.  I hope.

■

Peaceful.

I luxuriated in the quiet, the isolation.

Time to myself, in a way.

To put thoughts in order, plan, strategize.

I was functioning on a higher level because I was more me.  Because I was borrowing from Rose.

I couldn’t even feel proud of what I was doing, knowing that it wasn’t all my success.  I had to figure out a way to repair the connection, before I took too much.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t do good.  I… I was glad, for what I’d managed to do, clearing out the woods.  Not proud, but glad.

It was as if a deep-seated worry had less of a hold on me.  I could do good.

I would do good.

Snow crunched underfoot with each footstep.  Periodically it squeaked.  I couldn’t make out much, but the moonlight reflected off the snow, and it let me see the essentials.  Ground, tree.

I’d tended to my wounds, and I’d seen the tattoos.  I’d given a lot of blood, and I’d suffered for it.  I was paler.  but the tattoos weren’t more vivid.

Things were starting to make sense.

The pattern of my boots crunching through snow stopped as I came to a halt.

I saw the ghost.  Evan.  Running from something that was no longer chasing him.

“Evan,” I said.  I thought of the internet search.  “Evan Matthieu.  Stop.”

He stopped.

“Can we talk for a bit?” I said.  “I promise I’ll do what I can to keep you safe.”

He looked over his shoulder.  A flicker.

Something of an echo.

“Come on,” I said.  “I know where we need to go.”

He nodded.

I would have held his hand, if I could have.

But I just walked alongside him.

I saw how furtive he was.  There was nothing left in him that could really relax.  It had been easy to miss when we were together, because there had been no reason to relax.  But now that there was peace of sorts in these woods… it stood out.

“Your mom and dad looked for you,” I said.  “It was in the news.”

He looked up at me.

“You were trying to go home?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You said you tried the road, but that didn’t work.  Did you figure out the direction you needed to go, to go home?”

“I have figured it out,” he said.

“Present tense,” I said.

“”I… I almost forgot?  But yeah, I saw an airplane!” he said, with a note of excitement.  “I saw… and I know it’s going to the airport, which means home is… that way!”

He pointed.

“Were you in the treehouse?” I asked.

He frowned, then nodded.

“That makes it easier,” I said.  “You saw the plane, and left the safe area behind.  The treehouse, the hedge, the stream…”

“Uh huh.”

“And you thought you could just find hiding places along the way, right?  You didn’t need the hedge and stream if you knew where you were going.”

“I think, not thought.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Come on, we’ll be able to tell when we’re closer, because you’re a little more you, I think.”

“More me?”

“Yeah.  Come on.”

We walked together.  It wasn’t a fast walk.  I knew the minutes and hours were ticking on.  I knew this was an imperfect science.  Time I should be sleeping, preparing for something that was pretty fucking scary.

But like I’d said, I had something to do.

“Do you remember my name?” I asked.

“Blake?”

“Yeah,” I said.  We’re closer.

Somewhere between his home and the treehouse.

It was an hour before we got far enough.

He flickered.

“I… I need a nap,” he said.  “I’m so tired.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “And… I don’t think you were here.  But we’re close.  Come on.  Let’s look.  Look for good hiding places.”

He nodded.

It didn’t take that long to find, now that we were close.  He started to break up when we reached places he never had, and places where he was too far away, like he had when I’d fought the Hyena.

We wound up by a series of rocks.  I had to crawl to get far enough in.

Evan’s expression was solemn.

I was careful, brushing away the snow.

I touched something that wasn’t earth.  Not snow, not dirt, not wood.

Gently, I dusted off his face with the back of my good hand.  Cold to the touch.

When I looked at Evan, he was crying.

“You found me,” he said.

“Yeah.  I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

He shook his head.  “I- I-“

He stopped, crying openly.  He hiccuped.

I waited, patient.

When he could finally speak again, he did so through more hiccups.  “I wanted someone to find me.  So I could go home.  But I can’t go home, can I?”

“Not like this,” I said, my eyes on the ground.

He took another moment, a brief wail cut short, a whimper.

I saw a flicker in my vision.  But when I looked, there was only darkness.

“It’s your choice, Evan,” I said.  “If you want to move on, go wherever you’re supposed to go, I can try to help.  I don’t think it’ll take much.”

He shook his head.

“Whatever’s supposed to help you on to the afterlife, I think the Hyena scared it off.  It’s why you’re so… whole.”

“I don’t… I can’t.”

“There’s another option,” I said.  “I… I think you’re pretty amazing, lasting as long as you did.  And, I think there’s something to you, that maybe resonates with me.  Being scared, being alone.  I had a long series of bad days, too.  We’re similar, kind of.”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have to answer right away, but… well, it’s maybe not the best idea, it would mean you’d have to help me in some pretty ugly stuff.  But would you want to be my familiar?”

“What?”

“Like the witch has her black cat, kind of.  You could be alive again.  And I think you’d be you, because you’d take a little bit from me to stay whole.  I’d… I’d like to think I’d take from you too.  Because helping you, like someone once helped me?  It might nourish my soul, my being, if that makes any sense.”

“Not really.”

“Is that a no?  You’re totally allowed to say no.”

“You… you stopped the wolf, didn’t you?”

“The Hyena.  A goblin.  Yes.”

“I don’t know what I could really do.”

“Show me escape routes,” I said.  “Help me move faster.  We’d figure it out.  But I’ve dealt with a lot of ghosts and goblins, and…  it sort of feels right?  To be honest, this thing I have to deal with next?  I could really use help.  But please, don’t feel pressured to say yes.  I would… hate myself forever if you did.”

He nodded slowly.

But he didn’t get a chance to give me an answer.

Lights flickered on, all around me.  Dots.  Beams.

Flashlights.

“Toronto PD!  Slowly raise your hands over your head!”

I looked at the corpse, then at Evan.

Police?

Of fucking course.

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Gathered Pages: 4

Black Lamb’s Blood

Introduction

What got me into the darkest practices was a desire to do good.  First as the youngest child of an evangelist and templar, then as a purveyor of dark texts and a colleague to men and women who perpetrate crimes against the world, each time they deal with that which is Wrong.

This text will not find its way to many on the side of Right.  I itch, already, to get into minutiae, to argue the meaning of Right, just as I know many of my contemporaries and peers are already telling themselves that they do not Wrong.  They tell themselves they are the exception.

The others, the unrepentant, the ones who have given up on the delusion, I suspect they have already put the book down, tossed it aside.  They equate Right and Wrong with Good and Evil, and they have already dismissed conventional morality.

I am not an expert practitioner.  My bindings, such as they are, have all been minor ones.  Careful ones, a very small number when one considers my age and my long career.  I am alive now because I am deliberate, because I move with excessive caution, not because I am good.  Certainly not because I am Good.  That particular quality is up for debate.

It is with this cautiousness and deliberation that I approach my first work.  This cautiousness and deliberation does not pay particular heed to the consequences of this writing.  I might, for example, say that it is unusual to wait so long to write their first work, that my fellows are narcissists by nature who write and write early out of ego and self-congratulations.  In saying this, I make enemies, dangerous ones who are liable to act on this insult.

I have always been honest to a fault.  Child of a preacher, an evangelist and templar.  Nothing else would be permitted, even before my siblings and I were invited to see what lies behind the curtain.  I’ve known since I admitted I was a diabolist, that anything I wrote would have to be something that would offend certain parties, march to a different rhythm.

When I say that I approach Black Lamb’s Blood with care, I mean that I chose my topic only after a great deal of thought.  Writers are told to write to fill the empty space on a bookshelf, the book that has yet to be written, but practitioners, narcissistic practitioners in particular, are prone to a kind of masturbation.  Self congratulating drivel, with crumbs offered to the peers as incentive to buy and read their texts.  These crumbs come as knowledge of demons and means of summoning, but not the truest means of controlling the things.  Such knowledge is retained by the one who bound them.  Nothing meaningful is offered.

Other texts are written with a quiet desperation.  The writers aim to unravel the mysteries and plumb the depths of knowledge.  The reasoning is similar to that of the compulsive gambler.  One more roll of the dice, one more answer, they tell themselves, and they’ll have a way out from beneath the debt that has piled up around them.  They will have an escape from the unbound beings that bay at their heels with every waking and sleeping hour.  This writing is too focused on immediate answers, or on big ones, and tends to the myopic.

What are my motivations for writing?  Look to the title of this text.  I am the black sheep of my family, but I am still new to this world, relatively speaking, relatively innocent.  The black lamb, perhaps.  The blood?  That of a martyr.  The conceit of a preacher’s get, to romanticize martyrdom.

I researched not the binding of demons, but the aftermath in the wake of these bindings, and in the wake of their actions.  I researched karma, the paths my peers took, I look at the lies we tell ourselves.  I mock my peers where I think they deserve to be mocked, call them repulsive when they act repulsive.  I curried favor, played to their love of themselves, the wide-eyed student eager to pay them homage.

They will, I think, be less than pleased when they see what I actually wrote.

I write this because I feel the field is largely ignored.  All of the rest of us, it seems, even the greatest of us, are focused on the present.  What happens in the future?  What happens when the binding is done?  What happens to us?  To the ones touched by the Wrongs?

Is there, I ask, a way out?  A methodology that might allow us to deal with evils without a sum loss for our world as a whole?  I would suggest there is, though I do not yet know what it might be.

I write this knowing that my audience will be small, if it exists at all.  Years of interviews and analysis point to the same conclusion.  My work will not be read, not as it is intended to be read.  The solutions I posit, and the questions I want others to answer, will each be ignored.  The unrepentant will refuse to challenge their own world view, moderate diabolists, my target audience in this, will feel uncomfortable with the emphasis on the future and dismiss me.  Lesser diabolists will not be in a position to read my work.

Beyond diabolists, I expect others will see it as self pity, which it is.  Failing that, they’re liable to see it as a kind of manipulation.  I wouldn’t blame them.  I have far too little to say in concrete terms, and talk around subjects, raising questions.  In their shoes, I would say the same about this text.

I write with a goal in mind, but perhaps it will solely for my own benefit, a masturbatory exercise in the end.

Masturbation or martyrdom, I chose my path in life, and I pray to God that this is a final destination that leads to a greater Good.

Chapter One: The Nest

I remember the first demon I encountered. My eldest brother was studying Religion, my sister enjoying a brief flirtation with freedom, partying and men, before her return to the family and assumption of her responsibilities.  I was an older teenager, I’d studied the books my father provided, and the task was one that needed as many hands as possible.  I was conscripted.

Our community knew my father as a local preacher.  He was more beneath the surface, privy to things beyond the curtain.  Practitioners called him an evangelist, a summoner, a man powerful enough to sway the world with words.  He called angels forth, cherubim, Madonnas carved of ivory to give others shelter.

That night, I saw him take off the mask he wore with his wife, his family, and his congregation.  He was always stern, but I saw him grim.  I saw old companions, others who had once been taught by the same teacher as my father, a man who taught them to use angels and guns both.  Men and women, wearing armor beneath clothes, long coats to hide their weapons, not one span of their body unadorned by tools of their trade.  Water, poisons, incendiaries, scrolls.

It would take me long decades to learn what proper diabolists already know.  Most practitioners count themselves unlucky if they have to deal with one of the darker powers.  Diabolists make such dealings their stock and trade.  My father and his fellow templars walked a middle road.  They had irregular contact with the Wrong things, but the only things they dealt out were fire, bullet, and death.

Were this another text, I would spell out the fighting, the measures taken, in hopes that others could use that knowledge and better survive.  My focus lies elsewhere.

The being we sought that night was more powerful than we had anticipated.  It was intelligent enough to hide the bulk of its activities from the outside world.  We expected an imp.  We found something evolved enough to be birthing its own imps, to have a form and its own symbolism.

A devil of the sixth choir.  The choir of man’s evils.  A weaker choir, and the one most personal to all of us.

She had collected inhabitants of a small town into a cult and church, and she had done it long enough that her initial followers had descendants.  Mother, father, child, grandchild.  All rutted on the floors and pews of the devil’s church in a grand, senseless, ceaseless orgy, the devil herself presiding above all in naked, Wrong splendor.

A devil of incest, she had made her own monsters even before she began creating imps, by way of inbreeding and birth defects.  There was only horror there, enough to sear its way into my eyes.

I will sum up that night by saying that each of us who walked in there with guns at the ready walked away alive, but we did not walk away intact.

When I think of what drove me to write this work, this event was one that remained with me.  I spent some time wondering about the aftermath.  It was my first eye-opening experience, and it was the last incident where I researched the long term effects.

It was only when I’d researched the events that are covered in each chapter that follows, that I let myself look into this one.  I looked at the numbers, and I want to point to statistics, the increase in birth defects in that town and county.  To the rise in the divorce rate, or the rates of abuse.

I want to, but I can’t.

It’s an event that touched me, personally, and started me on a different path in life.  Allow me, instead, to open my first chapter with the reality virtually all diabolists are cognizant of.

By the time my siblings returned the following April, almost a year later, my parents had announced their divorce.  My father said two words to either of my siblings.  Which was about as many as he’d said to me in the month prior.  That first night my siblings were home, I dreamed, and I realized why my father had been keeping his distance.

The morning before I left for that fight with the young devil, I was seventeen years old, doing the sort of thing seventeen year old boys are particularly inclined to do when locked in the bathroom.  An activity flavored with that uncomfortable mix of guilt and rebellion that is unique when your father preaches every night of the week.

That was the last time I found pleasure in my own body.

Scars and aftermath.  I imagine this particular type is familiar to all diabolists.  To lose our humanity piece by parcel, or to give it away.

This is not a reality diabolists often discuss.  The sacrifices that don’t involve the murder of a lamb or a virgin strapped to an altar.

I intend to open with this topic, a reality we all acknowledge and keep secret.  It was the start of my own journey, a motivation for me to start looking into matters.  I sought a way to fix what had been made Wrong in my own heart and mind.

The push to leave my home and family came about after a late night discussion with my siblings, my brother and the sister I could not look in the eye.

My sister called my father a charlatan.  My brother, set to be a templar after my father’s footsteps, did not disagree, but argued for the benefit of symbolism.

The idea of angels with wings was not situated in record or text, my sister argued.  Take away the invented things, the cultural aspects and art, stick to the written word alone, and the world was left with a deity who focused all efforts recorded in texts on a relatively small section of the Middle East.

My brother argued for the benefit of symbolism, for the power of ideas.  In the heat of battle, ideas and iconography could lend strength to those who needed it.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it hadn’t.  It didn’t.  Not for me, and not for our father.

In the end, with many beers shared between us, sitting on the roof of our house in that warm springtime, it dawned on me that my siblings had lost their faith.  The irony was, I’d retained my own.

I liken my realizations to the evolution of a child in their early adolescence, learning that their parents are indeed not perfect.  The subsequent realization is one many don’t make until they are in their twenties.  That their parent is still their parent.

Such was my relationship with God.  Such was the nature of my faith.

It was with that faith and little else that I gathered my things and struck out on my own a week later.

That was the start of my journey.  I would ask, to those who are still reading, to come with me.  Start with your eyes open to the most basic scars we wear.  We move on to the subject of Balance, to debts, prices, and the question of how one might better manage dealings with creatures who take from everything.

Chapter two: Tower

I would like to say I moved with direction after I left home, but I did meander.  I was hesitant, and I took too long to break some naive promises I had made to myself.  Foolish, I expect, to think one can get answers without paying some price.

When I did finally allow myself to look for and converse with diabolists, I found myself making rapid progress.  I hated myself for the prior years, telling myself I had wasted time, but I value them in retrospect.  I needed to exhaust all other options before I could walk this path and learn what I knew, or my self-loathing and doubt would have been too much to bear.

At the time, I weighed morals.  These days I debate questions of Balance.  Some call it karma.

I remain a careful man, these days, but it is human nature to make mistakes in youth.  I remember classmates racking up credit card bills in the tens of thousands, before reality caught up with them.

For a practitioner without parents to watch over them, it is easy to do the same with one’s Balance.

Frustrated, tired, and well traveled, I was twenty years old before I reached out to other diabolists.  I found Lucrezia, who identified herself to me as Lucy.  She, in turn, introduced me to her master and teacher, Jeffrey.

I remain unsure as to why I was invited to their home and presence.  My agreement to join them was a cautious one.  I spent a full night and two days awake, writing and revising the written contract.  Jeffrey barely skimmed it before agreeing.

Among those terms were measures meant to protect my Balance in the universe.  I’d come from a good home and an honest life, I’d been generous and given back more than I’d taken, and I held to the rules that God gave to mankind.  It was in holding to those rules that I bettered my Balance, rather than God himself, but I remain thankful for opportunity He gave me.

I remained free to refuse any task given me, with the caveat that I would have to pay for my own food and shelter any day that I did, or leave.  He agreed to never bind me or limit my freedom.

Even with the terms of our deal, I was uncomfortable.  For a long time, staying with Lucrezia and our mutual master, I slept with one eye open, convinced I would be sacrificed.  Instead, I got room and board, and frequent menial work, including illustrating for Jeffrey’s texts, which he wrote as short volumes, bound in nice embossed leather and sold at premiums.

He played to the shallow narcissism of other diabolists, fanning their fancies and indirectly flattering them.  Each volume was written with specific customers in mind, holding the relatively little substance he’d managed to dig up or barter from others.

Such was my existence with him.

I was there, but did not assist, when he summoned Agares.  A duke among the seventh choir, one that brought great beings low.  A corrupter and agitator.  He could compel a king to march to war, or stop that same warhost in its tracks.

Jeffrey’s efforts were not guided at men.  This was, I later learned, one step in my new master’s lifelong quest to quash and vanquish the gods of mankind.

Even in times of quiet, the gods are busy, fighting and holding on to their assets.  There is a delicate balance.  Jeffrey and Agares both sought to disturb it.  To start a war that included gods, incarnations and spirits, and make the deaths that resulted true deaths, ones that left the world bereft of those forces and the structure they gave to our reality.

Many of the choirs are focused on tangible things, but the seventh is an abstract one.  Not one that we are able to grasp in concrete terms.  Many call it the weakest choir.  It is one we are liable to underestimate or lose sight of, and thus the one that gets the furthest in its endeavors towards the Wrong.

By way of my contract with Jeffrey, I was forbidden from direct interference, so I turned to compelling my friend and fellow apprentice to stop Jeffrey.

Had Lucrezia and I succeeded, I might have returned home to be a templar, bottled up my passions and faced the horrors with the same grim expression my father wore.

My master and the Duke won.  Lucrezia died in the fight I urged her to take part in.

This text isn’t for the stories of battle, for exchanges of blows.

Ultimately, the world kept turning, a little less bright, less spiritually whole.

I was angry, passionate, protective of my sole friendship from the past three years.  As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer…

I sought revenge and I did it by way of the tools I’d accumulated, studying and watching diabolism.

I failed, and I was lucky enough to avoid the worst of the backlash when my own bindings failed to hurt Jeffrey and came back to me to exact the required prices.

Many diabolists maintain some means of tracking their Balance.  I use a wooden ring.  For a long time, the changes in that ring and the perpetual reminder that I was in debt bothered me.  A lifetime bringing up my Balance, a few moments of outraged stupidity to spend it and subsequently plunge myself into debt.

My first big question, then, is whether we can manage the karmic balance.  Is it possible to walk away free and clear?

Most will say yes.  There is the slow growth.  Regaining an even or positive Balance by fits and starts, small oaths and large ones, through Right, maintaining and keeping to a code.  The Universe will periodically seek to re-establish balance, and the practitioner, succeed or fail, will find a portion of the debt spent to bring this about.  Bigger oaths and restoring balance to reality can counteract the karmic weight that burdens the practitioner.

It is possible to escape this burden, yet time and again, diabolists fall into the trap and fail to escape it.

It is human nature, to treat the world as a series of nails, when all one has is a hammer.  Even when the use of the hammer comes with a grave price.

It is human nature to take the easy road.  To resolve the dynamic, there are two simple options.  Let me return to this in a moment.

In chapter one, I focused largely on myself.  The individual.  In this chapter, I look to people one step removed from me.  Jeffrey and Lucrezia.

Let me ask a broader question, then.  Is this a question we can solve?  Is it one we want to solve?

Let us put aside the unrepentant, the ones who would never read this text, because it does not feed directly into their need for power.  Let me ask, can we better the world?  Do Good in some fashion?  Can we remedy the cosmic Balance as a whole?  Minimize the Wrongs?

I emphasize ‘we’.  As I write this, my Balance is not so terrible.  There are certainly non-diabolists who have worse.  I believe I have done some Good, in the face of it all.  Were a jury to be convened, there would be much argument over my overall contribution to humanity, and perhaps that would have to suffice.  Being questionable in my standing Balance is better than being unquestionably Wrong.

My concern is not with the self, or with the individual, but diabolism as a whole.  We are hated because we do Wrong.  Not evil, but we do a disservice to reality as a whole.

Yet, at the same time, we serve a useful function.  What better tool to use to bind the greater threats than one who is already doomed?

Many diabolists do this out of selfishness.  The very good and very bad diabolists excepted, many stay alive long enough to bind a few minor entities and accrue a horrific Balance before reality asserts itself and they die a miserable death.

I might argue that the average diabolist betters the world, for having been in it.  Not in the short term, but perhaps in the long.

If problems exist in our number, it is undeniably the short lived failures that bring about disaster with nothing to offer, and the long lived practitioners who leverage their knowledge to bring about the greatest Wrongs.  The net gain for mankind is lowest.

To bind Others and leave them bound is the best thing we can do.  Because of their nature, we inevitably do so at a cost to ourselves.  For Diabolists, these others are devils, demons, imps, and they are ghosts, goblins, faerie and other beings so Wrong that practitioners who devote themselves to their study will often shy away.  Were this our pattern of behavior, we might be acceptable in the eyes of others.

This is one answer, one solution, but it begs more questions.  How might we bring this about?  Could diabolists as a whole be convinced to take this path?

The answer is no.

My old master Jeffrey was targeted by local practitioners not long after Agares was returned to his realm, but he lives.  His enemies saw fit to lock him in his body, mute, unable to practice.  I visit the man from time to time, the both of us many years older.  I have not forgiven him for what he did to his student, nor have I forgiven myself.  When we meet, now, I drink tea while he drinks beer with the assistance of a nurse and a straw.  We talk, about balance and the aftermath of demons, and I painstakingly transcribe what he struggles to express.

Jeffrey, in my eyes, is a manifestation of the problem that plagues us.  Any attempt to restore diabolism in the eyes of others and to get their help would raise questions about Jeffrey’s like.  He is not so insane to be dismissed entirely.  A man who held a grudge and saw only one way to see that grudge done justice.  Jeffrey is not a true Scotsman.

I confess, I write here in the hope of inspiring questions among a group that is prone to forging forward without accepting any answer but the one that serves them.  I do not labor under the illusion that enough will read my work to have heated discussions over what the answers might be.

But I must ask.  I hope to raise questions among the individual, and I dream of a circumstance where we might look deeper at ourselves as a group.

Earlier, I suggested there are two simple options.  We’ve already discussed the obvious, that the archetypical diabolist must cease to be and become something more selfless.  It isn’t possible, because the typical diabolist won’t break from the pattern of taking the easy road, even when it is demonstrably self-destructive.

If there is a solution, and this is purely food for thought, the easy road must become the road that serves us best.

In pursuit of answers, I lead you on to chapter three, where I talk about the sociology of Diabolists, and the negative patterns we perpetuate amongst ourselves, and how one might attempt to reframe society instead, in an attempt to provide an easier road.

Chapter Five: Swords

The years after the loss of my family were something of a blur.  Somewhere in the midst of it all, I began to take a harder look at what I was doing, at my Balance, and my repeated failures.

I was a wretch, I admit, and if ever I’ve come close to suicide or embracing Wrong, I came close then.  I was in ill health, and I might joke I had more alcohol than blood in my veins, if I could write such statements without being forsworn.

My hair was shaggy, my facial hair growing in, my thoughts clouded by drink and depression, and I knew a great deal I shouldn’t.  I knew rituals to summon things that would have made me stand tall, handsome, in good health, and above all else, happy.  I knew many more rituals to call forth things to act against my enemies, and I was short enough on self respect that I didn’t care nearly enough about what might happen to me if my targets successfully fended them off.

Jeffrey and all the other individuals I sought to target in violence had been parts of a greater pattern.  The forces of ‘Right’, if you can call them that, saw fit to apply pressure and purge society of diabolists.  This was not a good thing, because it failed to stop the worst kinds, types I’ve touched on twice now.  By seeking out the organized, largely quiet diabolists, this purging demanded retribution and self defense.

Remember, when all one has is a hammer…

Diabolists who might have gone out in unspectacular manners after successfully binding a handful of imps and maybe an intermediate being were now perpetrating Wrongs.

I, by virtue of itinerant means and a lack of any real connection, managed to slip away before the doors were kicked in and diabolists rounded up for execution.  I sustained myself for years, simply selling my knowledge to individuals who desperately sought to patch the holes that had appeared in their libraries and in the collective knowledge of diabolists.  I then drank much of those earnings away.

Many of those sitting at the middle section of the totem pole had been destroyed, and only those on the bottom, such as myself, and those on the top, individuals much like Jeffrey, remained in one piece.

I’ve brought up the individual consequences, karma, and the diabolist’s place in society.  I’ve talked about the opposition the diabolist faces, and the tools the diabolist must employ versus the tools they don’t have to employ, but are liable to.  Each of these observations are conducted through the lenses of what should be versus what actually is.

I’ve raised the topic of the individual, about those who are one step removed, about the groups, and society as an abstract.  The scope ever widens.

The world.

Will Earth cease to be tomorrow, if the greatest demons were to be called forth?  No.  Not definitively.  The Balance would be disturbed, and the universe would naturally exert an opposing pressure.

If such threats were likely or possible, perhaps we would see something concrete occur.  Perhaps all diabolists, myself included, would be scoured from the earth.  I would not expect this to end the problem.  Some knowledge can’t be destroyed absolutely, and I suspect many Wrong things collect tomes and texts to disseminate among the public, in case of such an event.  I know some lesser beings have asked for copies of my writing, and diabolic organizations will collect or order research.

Instead, it is a long series of Wrongs that are too easy to ignore.  The world and everything in it erode.

We have established a problem of binaries.  On the one hand, we have the diabolists who contribute to the greater Wrong and the diabolists who don’t.  On the other hand, we have the restrictions of society, accommodating and not.

Draw out a grid, and three of the four possible answers are disastrous.  Either society and diabolist are both working against our mutual goals, which they are, and we speed towards an ugly end, the diabolist alone works towards Wrong while society attempts to accommodate, or society forces the diabolist’s hand while the diabolist attempts to conform and serve the greater good.

The sole remaining option, harmony and the best chances at righting that which is Wrong, is a difficult one to accomplish, for reasons already stated.

The question remains: how do we achieve something that requires this kind of concordance, this kind of cooperation?

I would say the ‘how’ is simple, if unpleasant.  Sacrifice.  In particular, forms of sacrifice that don’t require the cooperation of all parties.

One option is that we could turn on our own.  Oh, I’m sure that statement got attention.  A few of our kind are so vile that they sour our ability to deal with the world at large.  Is it possible that we could form a call to arms?  To set diabolist against diabolist, five moderates against one of the worst of us?  If they band together, then destroy them as a group.

Conflict breeds desperation, and desperation in diabolists breeds Wrongs, but we are well versed in the tools our kind employ.  A demon properly warded off will return to its master, and many conventional protections will cease to have effect.

Knowledge will exist, it must exist, but a group of moderates can store and treasure knowledge.  If we were to reach this point, we could set rules that discourage passing that knowledge on.  All of the knowledge in the world, stored away, an enclave who might work to find the knowledge that industrious imps and devils might distribute in hopes of maximizing chaos.

It isn’t nearly so simple, of course.  Our world is a close-knit one, not always in healthy ways.  We depend on one another for advice and research, for the right summonings and enough favors are owed that the wrong death at the wrong time could doom several attached individuals.

Achieving cooperation in this would be difficult.

The other option would be to sour this relationship.  Very few non-diabolists know enough about our work to properly safeguard themselves, their property and their loved ones.

I wonder what might happen if one were to sell the templars, witch hunters, and various Lords of major cities the necessary tools for protection against demons and other Wrong things?  Not the darkest knowledge, but the ways to turn an attacking demon aside, if one knows their general type.

What would they be buying?  Their own security.

Suspicion would be rife, chaos endemic.

Yes, Wrongs would be committed, but I can’t help but wonder if it is possible to create a rift deep enough to separate diabolists for centuries to come.

The problems here are that, again, desperation breeds Wrongs.

In writing these words, I doom myself, because others will act to keep any of this from coming to pass.  But I hope I have illustrated the severity of the subject and shaken those dabbling diabolists.

I intend to posit another answer.

Chapter Six: A Last Chapter

Sacrifices must be made, the metaphorical lamb must be bled.

I’ve suggested murdering our own.  Cain’s crime.  I’ve suggested betrayal.  Judas’.

I would offer a third suggestion.  It’s relatively easy to accomplish, and many non-diabolist practitioners would likely be willing to help bring it to pass.  Of the two major issues that plague diabolists, one is handled.  It also falls in step with my earlier suggestions, that it pave an easier road for the diabolist to follow, one where the diabolist is driven to cooperate.

I believe in this enough to sacrifice myself.

Enslavement.

Let’s talk history.

We don’t know where the oldest demons came from.  Some suggest they are an antithesis to those same forces that created the world, and they are laying the groundwork for the world’s demise, while the creator forces are still at the far-flung edges of reality, expanding our universe.

Others say they are all devils, at their root.  Collections of malign power that take root in people, swelling and transferring from host to host, until they have sufficiently defined themselves.

We don’t know.  Some argue we can’t know.

What we do know is that they can be bound.  They harbor fears of a sort.

At some point in history, all the forces of the world gathered, recognizing that there could only be chaos if they continued fighting amongst themselves.  Gods, incarnations, and other powers realized that with the power they could each bring to bear, certain actions couldn’t be permitted.  Trust was impossible to maintain.

Laws were set in place.  Those same laws are the ones that a practitioner agrees to abide by, in order to broker access to what lies beyond the curtain.

My suggestion is simple: We amend the laws.

We make adhering to greater goods the easier path to take.  Power would not be obtainable through the old awakening ritual, and the new ritual would limit and control diabolists.

To be a diabolist, one would need to shackle themselves.

If calling diabolists narcissists at heart didn’t damn me, suggesting infighting or betrayal should see that one diabolist wants to murder me.

Writing this is another thing altogether.  I described two kinds of practicing diabolist, those who self-aggrandize, and the desperate.  You could divide these further into minor practitioners, moderates, and the extremes.

Each would find the idea of enslavement repugnant.  I expect many are already plotting the worst possible fates for me.

I have changed details about myself, changed major personal details, taking extreme steps to protect myself in these regards while avoiding falsehood and forswearing myself.  I’ve masked my location with the practice.  I know how little all of this will ultimately help.  I’m not young, and I’ve spent much of my life around diabolists, studying them.

I know what I’m in for.

But I’ve lived some time, now, and I believe in what I’m doing.

This lamb goes as willingly to slaughter as one can go, knowing what awaits.

My book will go largely unread, I think, but I have to believe I do Good, in writing it.

Even if this were widely read, I do not think change would happen in one year.  Or twenty.  This is but a seed, something to be brought up and forgotten until it becomes a subconscious thought.  Many who read it, many who I have arranged to get the book, are immortal.

But the fear and anger many experience will be real, in the end.

Words and knowledge are power.

I give my life in hopes that this seed of an idea finds fertile ground.

I hope my few friends will support me in this.

Should that not be possible, then I hope they forgive me this indulgence.  I’ve had so few.

God help me.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Conviction 5.1

Policemen surrounded me, flashlights sweeping over snow and tree until they fell on me.  Haggard me, still bearing some small wounds from my previous outings.

They had to have been following me in the dark.  A dozen officers, some wearing different clothes, implying different rank or duties.  Crime scene guys, maybe?  A local police chief, on top of regular officers?

I hadn’t seen the connections, but I hadn’t been looking for them.  Not really.

Fuck.

Could I run?  Yeah.  Could I run and actually get away?  I couldn’t imagine doing it without hurting someone along the way.  There were too many cases where I might get shot.

And even if I did succeed, I couldn’t say for sure if whoever had tipped them off had given them my name, specifically.  No use running if they could find me sleeping at home in a matter of hours.

Fuuuuck.

I slowly raised my hands over my head.

“Turn to face the rocks!”

I did.

“What do I do?” Evan asked me.

I glanced at him, pursing my lips, and shook my head a little.  Couldn’t talk to him, not without raising more questions.

I heard the officers shuffling closer.  The lights became brighter.

“Place your arms straight behind your back.”

“Yes sir,” I said.  I spoke as clearly as I could, “Before I cooperate, I’d like to make it clear that I’m something of a specialized handyman by trade.  I have one bladed tool at my left hip, and several small, sharp objects in my pockets.  You may unwittingly hurt yourself if you aren’t careful.  I can and will try to tell you what is where, given the chance, while you search my person.”

“Hands behind your back, now.”

I placed my arms straight behind me.  “Was I understood?”

“You were heard.”

I felt cuffs settle in place around my wrists.  They pulled off my gloves.

“I am presently arresting you on suspicion of the first degree murder of one Evan Matthieu.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“You have the right to retain and instruct any counsel without delay.  You also have the right to free and immediate legal advice from duty counsel, by making free telephone calls.  We are presently outside of ordinary business hours, so the phone number you’d call would be…”

He rattled off a telephone number.  I was in the midst of trying to commit it to memory when another officer stooped down not far from where I’d been crouched, and saw the body.

“Christ,” the man said.  “Boy’s here.”

“Do you understand?” the arresting officer asked me.

“What was the number again?” I asked.

“Anyone in the Toronto PD can and will provide it on request, at any time from this point onward.  Do you understand this and everything else I told you?”

“Yes,” I said.

I understand this has to be Laird fucking with me.  Third time is a charm, and Laird may have won this round.

“Do you wish to call a lawyer?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then we will provide a phone and phone book to call a lawyer at the nearest opportunity, as there’s no cell service here.  Is this understood?”

“Yes.”

“You also have the right to apply for legal assistance through Ontario’s legal aid program.  Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” I said.  I felt like every question hammered a nail into this particular coffin.

“I’m going to give you this formal warning.  You need not say anything.  You have nothing to gain from any promise or favor and nothing to fear from any threat whether or not you say anything.  Anything you say can be used as evidence.  Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I said.

“I’m going to search you.  You said there were needles?”

“No needles.  At my left hip, there’s a decorated hatchet.  The blade is uncovered and facing forward.  If you raise my jacket and shirt, you’ll find it.”

He did, withdrawing June.  “One concealed weapon.”

I bit my lip.  Given a chance, I would have tried to argue the point, justify it… but speaking wouldn’t help me.

He handed it to someone I couldn’t see.  I heard the rustle of a bag.

“In my right pocket, there’s a box-cutting knife with the blade retracted, and several loose hook cutting screws.”

“Another concealed weapon,” he said.

He took his time checking my pockets for the hook screws, pulling it inside out and letting one or two of the remaining ones fall into the snow.

“Aside from the keys in my left pocket, I think that’s the only thing that could cut or stab you,” I said.

Without a thank-you, he switched to a rougher form of frisking me.  I bit my lip and stared up at the snow-covered branches above me, resisting the urge to flinch at or react to the rough contact.  He relieved me of the pretty-much-empty jar of glamour, twine, a black magic marker, the locket that had been wound around my hand-

He popped the locket open, and my heart nearly stopped.

Between the gloom, with the flashlights being angled elsewhere, and the direction I was facing, I couldn’t see if the hair happened to fall out.

Fuck it all.

“If it’s alright, sir, I’d like to start walking him back,” the arresting officer said.  “Get back to my car, where it’s warm, get him to the station so everyone can do what needs to be done here.”

“Yeah,” an older man said.  “Take some with you.  Thomas?  Max?  Eyes on him, and on each other.  Talk to the chief when you get back, I’ll phone in whatever we’ve got soon.  Be good.”

Be good?  What happened when they were bad?

They started me walking.  Here and there, the ground dipped, but the snow didn’t, causing me to sink in to knee-depth.  We forged on as a group, moving in a straight line.

After the brighter flashlights, the woods seemed particularly dark.

“Murdering a kid?  That’s about as fucked as it gets,” one of the other officers said, after we were out of earshot.

“There are other possibilities that are more fucked,” the arresting officer said.  “But I’m not ruling that out, either.”

I didn’t rise to the bait.

I did, however, note Evan standing nearby.  Eyes wide.

The going got a little rougher, and I wasn’t talking, so they shifted focus towards moving forward and keeping a firm grip on me so I wouldn’t tip over.

I saw Evan flicker.  He stopped in his tracks.

I moved on, and Evan remained in the forest.

We were taking a much different route out than the one I’d taken in.  We descended a steep hill, and reached a road where police cars were lined up.  Very possibly parked in Evan’s neighborhood.

They opened the car door, and I flinched at the contact of hand on head, as the officer pushed me down, simultaneously protecting my head from hitting the top of the car.

I thought I could maybe see Evan standing at the top of the hill, watching me go.

■

I’d been booked, everything entered in the database.  Phone calls had been made made, my free legal counsel was en route.

The room was smaller than those shown on television.  A desk, like a broader version of a student’s desk, took up the majority of the long, narrow room.  A beaten-up metal folding chair was in one corner.  The other chairs looked far more comfortable, padded and all.

I wasn’t surprised when they uncuffed me and indicated the metal chair, seating me so I faced the door.  It was cramped, claustrophobic, which I assumed was the point.  I could lean left, and my shoulder would touch the one-way mirror to my left.  Lean right, and the front of the long desk would dig into my elbow.

One officer sat to my right, the other situated across from me.  I was cornered, quite literally, back and shoulders to walls, effectively surrounded.  The mirror made it feel like there were more people to my left.

I looked to confirm, and realized there were people in that room.  Didn’t help the ‘surrounded’ feeling.

It was the one that faced me that was apparently going to do the talking.  He looked young, no older than thirty-five, maybe as young as thirty.  He had dark, curly hair that was cut to an almost crew-cut length.  He left the door open, standing by his chair as he took his time removing his jacket, shaking loose moisture from his gloves before putting them in his jacket pockets, and hanging it up on the back of the door.

Standing over me.  A broad shouldered, older guy, in better shape than I was.  Not that I was in bad shape, fitness-wise, but he was in better shape.

He shut the door, then took his seat, facing me head on.

“I gotta ask, what the fuck happened to you?” he asked.

I just dealt with an imp and a giant goblin beast thing.

I wanted to make a crack, to say something like, ‘I got arrested and brought here’, but I didn’t want to be one of the idiots on TV who got reamed out by their lawyer for trying to be smart or help themselves.

“Is it just poor quality of life?” he asked.  “You said you were a specialized handyman, right?”

“Right now, I’m nothing more than a guy waiting for his lawyer,” I said.

“Fair enough,’ he said.  “I can do most of the talking.  I wonder what a ‘specialized handyman’ does.  Something that involves screws, a fancy axe with wire around the handle.  What else?  See, I’m trying to put the pieces together, figure out who I’m going to be talking with for the next little while.  You called one of the freebie lawyers, right?  I guarantee you it’s going to be a while, he or she might even have to see someone else before they get around to you.”

There was nowhere good to look.  If I met his eyes, I felt belligerent.  if I looked at the floor, I looked guilty.  Looking left or right meant I was, indirectly or not, looking at the other cops.

I shut my eyes, instead, shifting position until I could lean my head against the wall behind me.

“Hey,” the officer said.  “Hey!”

Shouting just a bit louder than was necessary or expected.

Sending me straight into that ‘fight or flight’ mode, where I was ready for danger, ready to react and move.

He hadn’t moved.  He was smiling, as if he was the friendliest guy in the world.

“Now’s not the time for that,” he said.  “Looks pretty fucking bad if you’re so relaxed you can fall asleep, with murder charges pending.  Looks sociopathic.”

My heart still pounded.

I could bind goblinoid monsters, but people could still put me on edge.

“What else am I supposed to do while I wait for my lawyer?” I asked.

“You can chat with us,” he said.

I gave him a look.

“Or whatever,” he said.  “Listen while we talk.  Twiddle your thumbs.  Think up a good story, if you need one.  Do all three at the same time.  But you don’t want to go to sleep when you’ve been accused of murdering and maybe doing worse to a damn kid.”

The shift of topic, the reminder of Evan, it wasn’t helping.  I was tired, I was on edge, and I didn’t have any ready answers.  He kept forcing me to shift mental gears.

Just like the cramped space was designed to make me feel the pressure.

Problem was, this wasn’t a situation where piecing A, B, and C together relieved any of that pressure.

He spoke, “I do some reno work myself, when I have time.  But time’s hard to come by, you know?”

When I didn’t answer, the other cop murmured, “Oh yeah, definitely.”

The other cop was a bigger, balding guy, busy taking notes, a pen scribbling away on a pad of paper, constantly moving at the corner of my field of view.

“I like working with my hands.  Frees my mind to do other stuff,” the interrogator said.  “I swear a lot, get frustrated, but I usually come away feeling accomplished, like I did a good job, and feeling refreshed.  As if it’s meditation, but without the yoga bullshit, you know?”

“Why are you hating on the yoga, Dunc?  Maybe our guy here likes that stuff.”

‘Dunc’ shook his head, his eyes moving over me, head to toe.  “Doesn’t strike me as the type.  You’re not the type, are you, bud?  Or maybe you’d do it to win over a girl, but you wouldn’t do it for yourself?”

My mouth stayed shut.

“Maybe he’s a fag,” the older guy chimed in.  Short sentences that cut in, jerking my attention away, much as the constantly moving pen did.

“Are you a fag, buddy?” the interrogator asked.  “Do you prefer sausage to the taste of fish?”

Rationalize it, Blake.  Figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing.  They wouldn’t stick these guys in a room with you if there wasn’t a very clear, concrete reason for every single action.

They were nettling me.  Obviously.  If I were gay, I’d be hurt or annoyed at the use of ‘fag’.  If I wasn’t, they’d be provoking me to defend my sexuality.

Thing was, I was in the middle.  I wanted to protest the use of ‘fag’ for the sake of my gay friends, for Joel, but not so much that I’d speak before my lawyer arrived.  I was straight, but I wasn’t exactly practicing straight.  I liked girls, I liked the way girls looked, but I didn’t actively pursue sex, didn’t invest a lot of my own identity in my sexuality.

I was able to relax, get my bearings, knowing they were on the wrong track, the nettling wasn’t working-

A hand settled on my knee.  I jerked, pulled out of my thoughts, moving my leg to break contact, my hands bracing themselves against the mirror to one side, the desk to the other.

The room was still for a few pounding heartbeats.

“He didn’t like that,” the guy to my right said.

Dunc moved his hand back to his lap.  “Nope.  I was just going to say, if you are gay, it’s cool.  No judgement here.”

“Say anything you want,” I said.  “But say it without touching me, please.”

“Kind of cocky, giving orders in your situation,” the guy behind the desk said.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Dunc said.  He smiled that ever-so-friendly smile of his.  “Here, let me move closer, so I can hear you better.”

He scooted his chair forward, until we were sitting with one of his feet planted between mine.  Invading my personal space, making it impossible to move my legs the way I wanted to without bumping into his.

I’d just given them an in.  Stupid, stupid.  A crack in my defenses, so to speak.

“I’m not gay, in case you were worried,” Dunc said.  He let the statement hang in the air.

More bait.  More stuff said to invite a response.

“I’ve got a wife and kid.  You?” he asked.  “Anyone we could call?”

“He didn’t say anything about dependents, when we were filling out the arrest sheet,” the other officer said.  “I listened to it all, while you were talking to the captain.”

Each time Dunc asked a question, it was left out there for a moment before the other guy formed a response.  It made for a kind of stilted dialogue, one that someone might have itched to fill in.  I had little doubt that if I started talking, I’d be rewarded with a very natural conversation.

“Doesn’t sound good, then,” Dunc said.  “A single guy, when you’ve got a dead kid in the woods?  Our guys looked at the tracks in the snow, traced them back.  You meandered a little, but you seemed to know where you were going.  If you stopped and changed direction, well, it looks an awful lot like it was because you were looking for landmarks.”

“Telling,” his partner said.

“Doesn’t like being touched?  That’s a story unto itself.  Another point against the man, as far as I’m concerned.  I wonder what the hatchet and knife were for.”

“Twine too.”

“Cut up the poor little dead kid, tie it all up with twine?” Dunc asked, leaning forward, further into my personal space.

His gaze didn’t waver as his eyes locked with mine.  Cold, accusatory.

“I think that sort of fucked up speculation suggests an awful lot more about you than it does about me,” I said.

He smirked, then leaned back.  “You’re not joining in on the small talk, so I don’t have much else to do to while away the time except try to figure out what you did, what you were planning, and why.”

“Speculations like why are you out walking out in the woods tonight?  Woods a long way from home?  Woods that just so happen to have a dead boy crammed in under some large rocks?”

“Coincidence,” Dunc said.  “Eh?  Just random chance?”

I needed a way out, and they weren’t giving me a chance to string thoughts together.

I had… quite possibly less than twenty four hours to get the last demon bound and handed over to Conquest.

I needed more time to talk to the astrologer, to get my ducks in a row so I could actually do something once the demon was captured and handed over.

“They found blood on the hatchet.  Five second test to do, not a good result,” Dunc said.

“Yeah?” his partner said.

“Captain said so,” Dunc said.  He stood, which put his body a foot or so away from my face, and stretched.  Well inside my personal space.

Blatant, but it worked.  It bothered me.  More than a little.

“Don’t fidget,” the cop to my right said, his voice low.  “Doesn’t look good.  Makes you look guilty.”

I was bouncing my knee.  I stopped.

“You really need to calm down,” Dunc said.  He sat down, shifting his seat.  A jerky, sudden movement that prompted me to do the exact opposite of what he was recommending.

Didn’t help that being told to calm down was one of the most enraging things that someone could tell you.  Doubly so when that person was an asshole.

“Still bugging me,” he said.  He leaned closer, “Scars, marks, bleeding… how does a guy get injuries like that?”

“Stand in front of the ‘out’ end of a wood chipper?” his partner suggested.

“Tell you what,” Dunc said, looking at me.  “I’m dying for a coffee.  Tell me, even make something up, so long as you make it convincing enough to satisfy my curiosity, and I’ll go get my coffee, and I’ll get you anything you want out of the vending machine.  Or out of the break room, if you’re in the mood for something warm.”

I shook my head.

He moved, sudden, in my space, and I flinched much as I had before, hand gripping table’s edge, so I wouldn’t hit him.

But he was only standing, a sudden, forward movement, right when it had looked like he was settling in for a long sit.

“Relax,” he said.  “Jesus, I’d thought you’d ease up a bit after the first few times.”

“PTSD?” his buddy asked.

Keep your mouth fucking shut, Blake Thorburn, I told myself.

“Might be, but as far as I’m concerned,” Dunc said, “He could be nervous because he’s worried about what’s going to happen to him.  Hurting a kid?  You’re in for absolute misery.  A long, long sentence, nothing good for you in there, nothing good that comes after.”

“Law says we need reasonable doubt,” the other guy said.  “You know what that is?  That’s where anyone who’s not an idiot would be able to say you did it.  We’ve got that.”

Dunc nodded, still standing so he loomed over me.  “You think you’re playing this smart, but this doesn’t matter.  It’s formality, rounding things out, answering some questions.  TV, movies, they tell you all this stuff about how you’re supposed to play it, but they don’t touch on how it really goes.  The reality is that your average cop isn’t a twenty-something actor with capped teeth.  I’m about as good looking as they get.”

Every smartass, sarcastic, petty part of me strained at the bit to throw in a remark in response to that.

“Real cops?  Real cops are mostly old men.  Baby boomers, crammed into the real jobs, while the rest of us struggle to get by.  I had to work my ass off, I had to be smart, get a proper education, get strings pulled, and I only barely squeezed in.  You worked hard, maybe, and you weren’t so lucky.  Was that it?”

I shrugged.

“This is where I’m supposed to tell you I’m one of the clever ones.  That I’m one of your only shots at being listened to.  But I’m not.  If you want to be heard, get your story out there, then you’re going to have to work at it, even with me.  Every moment you wait, all those old and stubborn sons of bitches in this building are going to be telling themselves one thing.  They’re probably going to decide what the answer is, search out evidence that connect the dots, and things will start building momentum.”

“You always hear about the people who go in for decades, when they’re completely innocent.  Pattern’s the same,” his buddy said.  “Cops want a conviction because of racism, or because the crime’s serious.”

“Dead kid serious,” Dunc said.

“Yeah… and you’ve got an overworked lawyer who’s not really making money, who’s too busy to show up for a few hours, who fucks up, or who just can’t argue whatever it is that needs to be argued.  Guy goes in, and they don’t get out until it turns out the DNA tests were fucked up, or the Judge was a lunatic.”

“Tragedy,” Dunc said.

“You’re making it sound like your average cop is pretty shitty at their job,” I said.

“Honestly?” Dunc asked.  He leaned against the wall.  “The average cop is pretty darn good.  But average is average.  You think about what average usually gets you, and then you figure that half the people out there are below that average.  That’s anywhere.  Even here.  And you can be better than average, while still having a trend that isn’t so good.  Like having an awful lot of good cops who are still guys.  Guys with families, wives, girlfriends, kids, guys who just want to work and go home at the end of the day.”

“I get what you’re saying,” his partner said.  “Good guys, but you spend too many years on a job, you’ll start to take shortcuts, move things along…”

“Human nature,” Dunc said.  “You don’t look like the sort that puts an awful lot of stock in the inherent good of human beings.”

Truth be told, I believed what he was saying.  That people would be inclined to take shortcuts, that this sort of thing happened.

I met his eyes, but I didn’t agree.  “Swing and a miss, Dunc.  I-”

A knock on the window interrupted me, loud enough to make me jump.  Right next to my ear, no less.

It wasn’t so much the surprise that bothered me as being ganged up on.  Two guys in the room was bad enough, but the reminder that the other guys in the building were poised to throw me off balance?  It got to me.

For a moment, I was back under that bridge, being attacked by a group, being thrashed, too many to protect myself against.

Yet my answer didn’t change.

I thought of the Knights.  Of Maggie.  Of Paige.  Of Joel, Alexis, Tiffany, and my other friends.  Hell, of Evan that tenacious little boy who’d held out as long as he had.

They outweighed the bad.  They’d helped me out.

I did believe in the inherent goodness of humanity.

“One second,” Dunc said.  He had a smug half-smile on his face.

They’d called him, and they’d timed it to interrupt at just the right moment.  No doubt there was a procedure for interrogations, and putting me off balance was part of it.

Dunc opened the door, blocking it with his body so I couldn’t see out.

I only heard bits.

Lawyer.  Coffee.

Behaim.

As that last word was spoken, he looked over his shoulder at me.

I looked, and I saw the connections that emanated from him.  Nothing strange, nothing that suggested anything special.

But, still, there was a connection, one that moved in the same direction one of my connections did.  Right in the direction of Jacob’s Bell.

A moment passed, and he returned to the room, a large mug in hand, something topped with foam.  A latte.

“Your lawyer’s here,” he said, stirring his latte.  He took a seat, smiling.  “Be just a second.”

My lack of response this time was a wary one, not a sensible one.

“If that’s the case, I’m going to pop out and get myself something to drink,” his partner said.

“Sure, Max,” Dunc replied.

I tracked the connections, saw the people moving.  Reorganizing.

I saw the focus drop away from Dunc and me both, from the other side of that mirror.

I saw the sole remaining connection flicker and die.  Something digital.

There were the two of us in the room, and nobody was looking.

Dunc picked up his latte and rested it on one knee, scooting back a little, respecting my space.

I could see the foam.  He’d drawn a rune into it, so it floated on top of his drink.

I was reminded of the first time I’d seen a rune.  In a coffee shop, no less.

“Dunc… Behaim?” I asked.

“Duncan Behaim,” he confirmed.  “Officer Duncan Behaim, to be exact.”

“Laird’s your dad?”

“Uncle,” he said.  “He’s my uncle.  The family likes to have a few key people in spots around the town, to keep an eye on things.  People who can fly under the local Lord’s radar, for the most part, keep an eye on important business.”

“You know I didn’t do this,” I said, “don’t you?”

He nodded.  He smiled some, “I kind of wish they hadn’t let that slip.  This next part would be far more effective if you were in the dark.”

“What goal does this serve?” I ask.  “Hurting me for the sake of hurting me?”

“You’re a diabolist,” he said.  “You’re a threat to the family, you went after Uncle Laird, you’re a threat to everything.  I don’t even have to get you sent to jail.  All I have to do, apparently, is keep you in custody for the next twenty-four hours.  Anything else is extra.”

“You hate me,” I said.

“I don’t.  Honestly.  I do think you’re dangerous.  I think you’re even the unwitting sort of dangerous, which you get when you have too much knowledge and not enough information.”

“And if this goes sour?  If you push me a step too far, and I say the wrong name a few too many times?”

“Oh, I’m going to stay close.  I can bend certain rules, ensure that nobody thinks too hard about my presence somewhere.  If you start, then you prove we’re right, that you’re a monster that needs to be put down.  I fill you with bullets, and then the family, our new allies included-”

“The Duchamps.”

“-The Duchamps… they all help to bend more rules, shift things to a satisfying conclusion.  Altered memories, altered focus, a bit of rewriting and pressure in the right places.  I walk away free and clear, having served my family and all of humanity.”

I nodded.

“The extras I talked about?  Putting you away for a long time?  It’s sensible.  It means things like what happened in Etobicoe don’t happen again.”

“I bound that thing,” I said.

“And you gave it away.”

“There’s more going on than you understand.”

“I know just about everything that’s gone on.  I know that this is one situation where crippling you, reducing you to something smaller, it’s for the best.  We already have officers talking to your friends, who may well not be your friends after this.  They’re turning your apartment upside-down.  Above all else, we’re going to keep you for the day.  Your lawyer isn’t magical.  When it counts, I can shift things one way or the next, and you’re not in a position to stop me.”

“Cheating the system you serve,” I said.

“Serving the system with a little cheating,” he said.  “Nudges, but nudges are all we need.”

“Nudges like the ones you used to keep me from noticing the eyes on me, or that you were a practitioner?”

He smiled, but he didn’t answer my question.  “A friendless, homeless diabolist is easier to keep track of.  If we dismantle you, then your actions reach only so far.  They’re easier to contain.  This is doubly true if you’re forsworn, or you’ve upset the local Lord through an inability to carry out the tasks you were set.  If you die, our family can deal with the next member of your family.  If you don’t… if you’re reduced to a husk of a man in a cell, well, the family gets its peace and quiet until we do need you to die.”

“How do you know everything?”

“Simple,” he said.  “I asked.”

Asked.  Asked who?

I didn’t imagine he’d tell me.

He shifted position, looking from latte to door.  “The effect is weakening.  Breaks plausibility if we delay them too long.  Best I break the rune now.  On your best behavior, diabolist.”

He dropped the full latte into the trash can.  Breaking the rune in the process, I supposed.

A moment later, the door opened.

“Mrs. Harris,” my lawyer introduced herself.  I had the impression of a forty year old who looked fifty.  Her hair was bleached platinum blonde, her roots showed.  That aside, she looked more crisp than I’d expected of a free, crown-appointed lawyer.  Not attractive, her face wrinkled by years of stress, but she wasn’t frumpy or rumpled.

“Hi, Mrs. Harris, I’m Blake Thorburn,” I said.

“I’ve got your file here,” she said.  She took the chair that had been previously occupied by Duncan’s partner.  “Given the severity of the charges arranged against you, may I very earnestly recommend a lawyer you’re actually paying?”

“You can, but unless you’re giving me the cash to do it with,” I said, “I don’t really have the option… the only lawyers I could pay would be one I really don’t want to be in debt to.”

I saw Duncan smile a bit.

“Even with a murder charge?”

“Even with,” I said.

She twisted in her seat, looking at the two officers.  “Give us some privacy?”

Duncan smiled some, but he joined his partner and left.  The door clicked shut.

The recording device in the other room clicked off, very deliberately this time.  Not a rune-induced flickering out.

“Do you have property you could sell?” she asked.

Did I?  I had my bike.

I couldn’t help but feel like selling it would be like giving up my last vestige of hope for a normal life, after all this was said and done.

A faint, stupid, silly hope, but I couldn’t imagine a scenario where I put this whole Diabolist, Thorburn, Laird, Conquest, Demon thing to rest, and I didn’t have the opportunity to ride.

“No,” I said.  “I’m basically one step below a starving artist.  I’m the guy who lives off the generosity of the artists.”

“And a recently acquired property worth a considerable amount.”

“Can’t sell it, can’t really do anything with it.  If I could have, I would have already.”

“I’m not going to be able to do a very good job for you,” she said.  “This would actually be my first murder trial.”

“I appreciate anything you can do, Mrs. Harris,” I said.  “But quite frankly, I think I’m pretty damn screwed.”

“Did you talk to them?”

I shook my head.  “Not really.”

“Good,” she said.

All that effort, and all I got was a ‘good’.

She fished in her bag, then pulled out a notebook.  “Blake Thorburn.  They’re accusing you of murdering a little boy.  What can you tell me?”

I finally had a moment to think, and the thoughts weren’t coming together.

“I… was told to go to that location, earlier.  I did, except the police were told something else.  They arrived at the same time.”

“You think you were set up?”

“I most definitely think so,” I said.

“Why you?”

“I can’t say for sure.  What I can say is that I have custody of a property worth a surprising amount of money.”

She nodded.  “You think it was a family matter, then?”

“I think it was a family, two families in particular, but I don’t think it was mine,” I said.

■

The two cops entered the room.

“Your superior officer, too?” Mrs. Harris asked.  “I know he’s watching.”

I turned my eyes to the mirror.

An older man with peppery hair and a mustache entered our already cramped interrogation room.

“My client alleges that Officer Behaim here has been influenced by an outside party, a Laird Behaim of the Jacob’s Bell Police Department?”

“My uncle,” Duncan said.

“This same Laird Behaim was apparently questioned recently about the circumstances surrounding the death of a Molly Walker?”

“And it comes full circle,” Duncan said.  “Your client’s cousin.”

“You were aware of this?” the older man asked.

“Not entirely.”

“Whatever the justification or explanation, whether it’s true or not, I think it’s sensible to remove your Officer Behaim from this particular case.”

The older man frowned.  “Yes.  Of course.”

“And, further, my client is concerned because your officer threatened to shoot him, only moments before we entered the room.  If we could check the recording device?”

“Of course.”

“If there’s any such threat-“

“Or sign of tampering,” I cut in.

I saw Duncan roll his eyes.

My lawyer gave me a sour look.  “Yes, or sign of tampering, then we feel it would be best if Officer Behaim here were removed from the vicinity entirely.”

“You want me removed from duty?” Duncan asked.  “I’m a damn good interrogator-“

“From the building,” Mrs. Harris said.  “Whether you’re removed from duty is up to your superior officer.”

“Fair enough,” the older man said.

“Borrow your pad?” Duncan asked his partner, as they left the room.

Fuck.  A rune?

No.  Probably something damning, though.

This was all I could do to defuse the biggest threat.  I didn’t expect we’d really be able to get rid of him, but… well, at least he wouldn’t be interfering or working magic mojo on me.

He’d wanted to play it up, to get smug, lord it over me?  I’d use it against him.

I was left alone, door locked, while they all shifted to the neighboring room to look at the device.

When they returned, Duncan Behaim wasn’t with them.  No mention was made of him.

But, I noted, his partner Max held the pad of paper.

“Let’s get you on record about what happened,” the older man said.  He looked to Duncan’s partner.  “Max?”

“What brought you to those woods tonight?”

“I was told to go there earlier today.”

“By?”

“I don’t think I could give you a name if I wanted to,” I said.

“And you went?  No name, just a request, and you traveled halfway across the city to a very specific destination?”

“Yes,” I said.  There wasn’t really a better answer available.

He glanced down at the sheet.  “This evening, when you found the body, that was your first time seeing Evan Matthieu?”

Fuck.

That one fucking moment’s hesitation probably felt ten times longer than it actually was.

“That was the very first time I saw him in the flesh,” I said.

“Have you seen him when it wasn’t in the flesh?” he asked.

“I had no contact with him online,” I said. Deflect, deflect.  “Or by phone.”

“More specifically… yes or no?”

“That’s a very odd question,” I said, buying time to think.

“To be entirely blunt,” Max told me, “My partner wrote down the word ‘schizophrenic’ with a very large question mark.  He’s noted the signs he believe point to this… disheveled appearance, question mark.  Hoarding objects and tools, question mark.  Self inflicted damage, question mark.  Duncan Behaim has an uncanny knack for being right in his assessment of people.  Do you see things, Mr. Thorburn?”

“We all see things.  It’s why we have eyes,” I said.

“Don’t try to be clever,” my lawyer whispered to me.

“I’ll try to be clearer.  Do you see aliens?”

“He wrote down all those questions, huh?” I asked.

“Yes.  Do you see aliens?”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” I said.  He was reading questions off the paper, and I knew what was coming next.  I had to lay groundwork.  “But I’m open minded to possibilities.”

“Do you see ghosts, goblins, grumpkins or anything in that vein?”

“I’m open minded to possibilities,” I said.

“Try to be specific.  Yes or no?”

“He insisted on yes or no answers, didn’t he?” I asked.

“I find it curious,” Mrs. Harris said, “That you’re relying so heavily on the input of an officer we asked to leave the area.”

“He’s one of our best interrogators, if not the best,” the older man said.  “I’m more curious that your client is so disconcerted by this line of questions.”

“You’re implying that I’m crazy,” I said.

“We’re implying nothing at this stage,” the older man said.  “We’re only asking simple questions.”

He indicated for Max to continue.

“Yes or no, do you see goblins or anything in that general neighborhood?”

“Do I… have to answer?” I asked.

“You don’t have to do anything,” my lawyer said, “You have the right to not have to give testimony against yourself.  But yes, it might be a very good idea to answer.”

“In that case. I exercise my rights, and I don’t answer,” I said.

I could see the change in expression on the officer’s faces.

“Pursuant to section eleven,” Mrs. Harris said.  There were nods.

“Do you see goblins every day?  Going about their business?”

I sighed, leaning back.  “I exercise my right to not self-incriminate.”

“Do you see demons?”

“I exercise my right to not self-incriminate.”

“Do these goblins or demons ever tell you what to do?”

Yes, Pauz had.  “I exercise my right to not self-incriminate.”

“Was it these goblins or demons, or something in that general neighborhood, that told you to seek out the boy in the woods?”

That’s a pretty broad neighborhood.  “I exercise my right to not self-incriminate.”

This was going to keep going?

I looked at my lawyer, but I only saw a note of pity.

“Earlier, you said you were told to go to those woods.  By someone or something without a name.  Was this someone or something a person you can identify?”

“I exercise my rights, section eleven.”

He looked down at the page, as if reviewing the questions.  After a pause, he asked, “Let me return to my earlier question.  Did you have contact with Evan Mattheiu prior to that point we found you in the woods?”

I could feel the tension in the air.

“I exercise my rights not to self-incriminate.”

Silence yawned on.

I fidgeted.  I didn’t care, at this point.  I was brimming with a sick kind of nervousness.  The sort of nervousness that went beyond the nervousness of ‘what if I get fucked/hurt/ruined’ and into the ‘when‘.

I was the one driving nails into my own coffin, now.

“Do you need to talk to your client?” the older man asked Mrs. Harris.

“Yes, but… maybe in the morning, if you’ll accommodate me?  I need time to prepare, and… yes.”

“That works,” the older officer said.

I nodded.

“You’ll be taken into custody,” Mrs. Harris said.  “Nothing more should follow until I’m contacted first?”

The officer nodded.

“For now, stay put, say nothing more, and we’ll see what options we have.  Unless you’d like to reconsider your options, as far as legal aid or who will represent you?”

Mundane options wouldn’t get me anywhere better.  Well, maybe a slightly better place.

But my time and energy were better spent working outside the box.

On that note, magical options for aid?

It might well be sheer stubbornness at this point, but no.  I knew what those lawyers would ask for, and somehow that bothered me more than if it were up in the air.  They were planning something, trying to subvert me, and it seemed like too easy a road to take.  I couldn’t play along.

Even if it meant jail, or, worse, an asylum.

“Why don’t you take him downstairs, Max?” the older officer asked.  “By himself, so he’s safe, with supervision.”

‘Max’ reached for me, and instinctively Ieaned away from his hand.  Which probably didn’t hurt the ‘crazy as fuck’ image.

He remained stock still, not reacting to my flinch.  “Turn around.”

I did.

“Hands.”

I gave him my hands.

“I’m not going to touch you,” he said, “Since you don’t like that.  But that’s only so long as you cooperate.”

“I’ll cooperate,” I said.

He indicated the door.  The older man opened it.

There were so many eyes on me, as I was guided out of the interrogation room.  Duncan Behaim’s among them.

Fuck, to put it lightly.

I saw two adults, and a little boy.  The adults stared at me with red, puffy eyes.

The little boy broke away from the pair of them.  He passed effortlessly through the people and objects in the way, before falling in step with me, walking just to my right.  I glanced back at Duncan, and I saw him glance down at the little boy and raise eyebrows.

Evan’s body, it seemed, was somewhere in the building.  Somewhere close, in any event.

Good.  I needed all the help I could get.

If there was even a chance at getting out of this, much less getting out of this with my life intact, it was a damn slim chance.

I’d done everything right, near as I could figure, and I’d still been screwed.

The natural answer was that I’d need to do something wrong to get out of this.

Fuck that.

With all sincerity, fuck that idea backwards and forwards.

I was not going down that road.

I’d need some more help than just Evan, if I was going to get out of this and seize that slim chance.

ast Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Conviction 5.2

“Boots off,” the officer said.

“Huh?”

“No boots, no belt.”

I frowned, but I removed the boots.  The lawyers had given them to me, after I’d lost my last pair, before my return to Toronto.  I lifted  up my shirt to show the lack of a belt.

He slid the iron-bar door into place.  The clang joined the cacophony of voices, shouts and drunken howls.

I’d been placed in the last cell in a long row.  Many of the others had three to five people in them.  My cell and the cell opposite were empty.  A single desk and chair sat at the end of the hall.  The officer placed my boots on top of the desk, then sat down.

I looked down at Evan, then up at the officer.

“No way out,” Evan whispered, in his replay-of-a-memory voice.

There was no need to whisper.  He couldn’t be seen or heard.

“Have to escape,” Evan said, as if to himself.

A skip, because he couldn’t tap into a part of himself that referred to a ‘you’.  He’d been too isolated.  He’d learned ‘you’ since, or he could tap into his memories when he was close enough to his body, but not like this.

I couldn’t reply without the cop hearing me talk to myself.

Instead, I scratched at one of the scabs on my arm until blood welled out.  I sat down on the cot and bent down, making it look like I was adjusting my sock.  I drew the thin line of blood on the ground, between myself and the cop.

Breaking the connection between me and him.

Nothing happened.  He remained where he was, ignoring the jeers and complaints of the other people in the cells.  They seemed to be drunks, by their behavior and smell, which made them a bit more loud and complain-y than the typical sort.

I waited, wracking my brain for options.  I needed a break.

The cop took a drink of his coffee, grimaced, and then stood, coffee in one hand, boots in the other.

Without even looking at me, he headed down towards the door at the end of the hall.  The noise level rose as he passed, then fell as the door banged shut, well out of my view.

We had a moment.

“Trouble?  Did-” Evan flickered, “-do something wrong?”

“Yes and no,” I murmured.  “They think I killed you.  I’m being set up on that front.  Other stuff… well, it’s mostly to do with my family.  My grandmother was a person of ill repute, and I’ve inherited that reputation.  Kind of.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to be here,” I said, and my voice was nearly drowned out by the noise from other cells, “not with me.  You helped me against the Hyena, against the so-called wolf, and this is only my own thing.”

“You don’t want my help?”

“I really want help,” I said.  “But I don’t want to force you to help.  I don’t want you to help because you think there’s no choice, or because… I dunno.”

“Okay,” Evan said. “I-I.”

I waited.

He seemed to come into himself.  He spoke quietly.  “My body.  Tear-cut- things after I die…”

“What?” I asked.

“Right now.”  Flicker.  “Right here.”

“Oh,” I said.  I leaned back.  “Yeah.  Checking you for evidence, and then the autopsy.  Are- are you weaker?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Mom and dad.  I-” flicker, “-don’t-” flicker, “-want my mom and dad.”

“No?”

“Please.  I- help come.  Thank.”

“You helped against the Hyena.  You, in absolutely no way, owe me anything, understand?”

He was silent for a moment.  The room remained noisy.  One guy was shouting out cuss words with a peculiar sort of rhythm.  One of the homeless mentally ill.  I felt a pang of sympathy.

When Evan spoke, it was with more focus and direction than he’d had a moment ago.  He’d been summoning up strength.  “You found me.  I can’t go home.”

“Why not?  I mean, I get that you can’t go home, conventionally, but… can’t you be with your mom and dad for a bit?”

Rather than give me a straight answer, he replayed a scene.  “It’s- my fault.”

“You’re not to blame for what the Hyena did.”

“I got lost.  I saw something… someone?  I went to look, and I got turned around,” Evan whispered.

I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him, to give my words more weight.

“You’re not at fault,” I said.  “You have no reason to feel guilty, okay?”

He didn’t move a fraction.  Not even the slight movement of breathing.

“When I was younger,” I said, “Not as young as you are… but younger… I ran away.  Bad things happened to me too, after that.  I blamed myself.”

He was still frozen.

“I can’t remember if I said, but… well, there’s two things I want to say to you, but I feel like each of them is the thing I say first.  I’m not doing this well.  Um.  One of the rules, if you want to use magic like I do?  It’s that you aren’t allowed to lie.  Bad things happen.  You understand?”

Evan nodded.

“The other thing?  I don’t think I ever said this out loud.  Even to myself.  I’m kind of unsure… not sure if I should say it, even, because I might be breaking the rules, and making bad things happen.”

“Don’t- have to.”

“Evan… Neither of us should feel guilty.  The bad things that happened to us are not our fault, understand?  And if you tell yourself that it is your fault, then you’re kind of saying that what happened to me was definitely my fault.  Because you were lured out, but I made the choice to run away.”

“No,” Evan said.

Not the answer I’d expected.

“Don’t do that,” he said.  “I… listening- that- I’m so tired.”

Weaker?  My reassurances were making him weaker.

“Evan, you could move on.  I declare your debt to me paid.”

“I don’t… I can’t.  I want- I want to…” he trailed off.

“Evan?”

He only shook his head, adamant.

He had nowhere else to be.  He couldn’t be with his body, and he felt too guilty to be around his parents.  He didn’t want to move on.

“Okay,” I said.  “Okay.  I’m not sure I get it-”

“I don’t want to die,” he said.  An echo of a memory.  “I don’t want to die like this.”

But you’re already dead.

Or was moving on another kind of death?

He’d survived on raw tenacity.  He’d struggled so he wouldn’t die, isolated and undiscovered, a riddle unsolved.

Now, it seemed, he carried that desire and tenacity forward.  It applied, perhaps, to the great unknown that waited beyond.

Nevermind that.  I had other pressing issues, and I wasn’t going to devote more time to figuring out how to turn down and get rid of the only help I did have.

“Okay, Evan,” I murmured.  “You’ll help?”

He nodded.

“Thank you.  Here’s the deal… I’m on something of a quest.  The Hyena was the second out of three monsters I’m supposed to stop.  I have until midnight to bind the third one and bring it somewhere.  My enemies figured this out, and they’ve framed me for your murder.”

He nodded again.

“I can use magic.  Not much, but I can use magic.  My enemies can use better magic.  They’ve stuck me in here, and they want to keep me here until my time is up.”

“-Need to get away,” Evan said.

“Ideally without the cops after me,” I said.  “So I can go back to my friends when all is said and done.”

“-Want to go home,” Evan said.  A statement echoing a memory.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What- can’t go home,” Evan said.

Was he telling me?

No.  I was just having trouble reading his tone.  He was asking me a question.  What if I couldn’t go home?

“If I can’t go home, if the bridges are burned and there’s no way to get away, then… I guess I have to settle for getting away.”

He nodded.

“I don’t want to do that, though.  I don’t want to be a fugitive.”

“Yeah,” Evan said.

“If I use a trick, my enemies are going to use better tricks.  They manipulate time, and I don’t really know how that works when they don’t have big rituals going on.”

“Okay,” Evan said.

“Can you start by scouting the area?” I asked.  “Stay out of sight of the… there’s a cop with black hair.  He’s the guy who put handcuffs on me.  Remember?”

“Yes.”

“Escape routes, places to stay away from, places the cops don’t look, and just where different things are, so I can find my way around.”

“Okay.”

That said, Evan was gone.

I needed help.  Evan wasn’t enough.

Couldn’t call Fell or Conquest.  Not without risking some kind of retribution.

The Knights?

I rested my forearms on my knees, sitting on the edge of the cot, and stared down at the concrete floor.  Moisture had stained it with overlapping, misshapen rings of brown and rust-red.

Probably not water.

“Knights of the basement,” I said.  “Knights… Knights… knights…”

I was going to try and stop the monster that had ruined their lives.  I had one monster under my belt – they already knew that.  They’d given me a ride to see Evan after dark, so I could ask if he wanted to be my familiar.

I hadn’t asked, because I didn’t want to ask for favors only to not need them, but the plan had been to borrow their books, their know-how, or both, if and when it came time to bind him.

I’d figure something else out.  For now, I needed to cash in any favors they might be willing to grant.

With luck, they’d reach the station, realize what happened, and piece together a strategy.

With less luck, they’d get here, decide I wasn’t worth it, and turn around.

“Knights,” I murmured.  “Knights of the basement.  Nick with the wind shotgun, shotgun’s son, the knights of Toronto…”

I shifted position until I was lying down.

I was tired.  Drained.

For a moment, I felt alarm surge through me.  The same momentary panic that came with a sudden sensation of falling, lying in bed.  Was I being manipulated?  Enchanted?

I checked for connections, and found nothing.

I pushed up my sleeves and looked at my tattoos, instead.

Still pale, with a vivid background.  No sign of anything suspicious affecting me or the tattoos.

I let my head rest on the too-thin pillow.

“Knights,” I murmured.  “Knights…”

I was too tired to stay awake.  I’d given up blood, paid a price, I’d been out running through the woods for however long, and even with the power that Rose was feeding to me, I was out of gas.  A seductive part of me told me that I’d be woken up for my lawyer, or if anyone came.  That I needed to recharge, before tomorrow rolled around, if I was going to put up a fight.  If I was going to sleep before dealing with the demon, if I even got the chance, then I might as well use the otherwise wasted time here.

My last thought, before sleep took me, was about Rose.  If I was out of gas, how was she faring?

■

Blake Thorburn.

I sat upright, nearly smashing my head into the cot above mine.

Connections.

A group of them, outside.  One coming closer, faintly connected to me.

Blake Thorburn.

One of the ones outside was saying my name.  The connection was the strongest, suggesting it was Nick.  The guy who’d had the shotgun, the leader of the Knights.

“Shotgun guy,” I said.  “Nick.”

I felt the connection solidify.  He reacted on some level.

Verifying my location?

I looked around.

Evan sat in the corner.

I looked.  The cop wasn’t at the table next to me.  The cell opposite was occupied by two girls who looked rather sloppy, their makeup streaked by sweat.  Both slept, despite the ongoing noise in other cells.  Less shouting, more conversation.  One girl snored.

“Sorry, Evan,” I murmured.  “Didn’t mean to leave you waiting.”

“…Tired,” he said, after a momentary struggle.  “Need to sleep.  I can’t sleep.  Tired… won’t let me sleep.”

“What’d I miss?”

He shook his head.  “Tear me up after I die…”

It took me a second to make the connection.  Before I’d drifted off, he’d use the same term.  His autopsy had apparently finished.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to distract you.”

“Tear me up…  I’m tired.”

“I know,” I said.  Your body is less intact, and your body is… some kind of vessel that’s keeping you anchored here.

The lone Knight was entering the building, approaching the front desk.

“Evan.  Would it help if I gave you something to do?”

He nodded.

“Front desk.  Some, er, colleagues of mine, they sent someone to the front desk.  Hurry, look for them, listen for my name.  If you can’t find them, come back to me, and I’ll try to point you in the right direction.  Get as much information as you can, then come back?”

He nodded, then disappeared through a wall.

“Good job,” I said, even though he was already gone.  “Thank you.”

I had the vaguest sense that it was sunny out.  My general awareness, in the most basic sense, was too active.

I’d slept through the remainder of the night.  I was now working with limited time.  Sixteen hours at most, before my deadline hit.

Sixteen hours.  Fuck.

There were too many bases to cover.  How did I protect myself from something that attacked existence?  How did I bind it?

How did I get out of here?

How did I help Rose?  Was it a question of wrapping up the job and asking Conquest?

Could I preserve my real life?  My connection to Joel, to Alexis, to Ty and Tiffany, and all the rest?  Get my bike?

The Knights were here.  They were, I could only hope, helping.  But here I was, stuck in a cell.  Not just that.  I was stuck in a cell, all too aware that Duncan Behaim was out there.  Fucking with me, attacking my efforts.

Had he been working on plans and countermeasures while I’d been resting?

I felt good.  A little too good.

I paced, thinking, but the number of problems made for a muddle I couldn’t decipher.

The change in ambient volume told me someone was coming.  Some conversation stilled, while some of the periodic shouting got louder.

It was Duncan.

“Good morning,” I said.  Please don’t tell me it’s afternoon.

“Good morning.  Up early, are you?”

“I have company, huh?”

“Your lawyer.  And a witness has come forward.”

“Fantastic,” I said.  “I didn’t think you were allowed to talk to me.”

“Apparently my supervisor is no longer concerned about that,” he said.  He smiled a little.

“Ah.”

The door was open in a second.  I was tense as I stepped out into the hall.

He didn’t look worried.  Was the person at the desk not one of the Knights?

We passed by desks and officers in cubicles, and I managed to sneak a glance at the bottom-right corner of a computer screen, seeing the time.  Nine in the morning.

I was led back to the interrogation rooms and sat down in the same room and spot I’d been in before.  He shut me in.

I had no way to track the passage of time.  Evan didn’t turn up, and I worried he’d returned to my cell to find me absent.

He and Duncan Behaim were a little too close to one another.

This was hell.  Being made to stay still, being confined, trapped… it was everything I loathed.  I’d run away from home to escape a kind of pressure very similar to what I felt right now.

A sick feeling welled in my gut, as I imagined being sent to prison, facing this each and every day, knowing I had ten or fifteen years before I would get out.

I knew this was about mind games, tricks, manipulations, to make me look more guilty, or to put me in a position where I’d maybe make a mistake.  Just as they’d done when they’d pressured me in terms of my personal space, the very layout of this room.

I knew it, but I was having trouble distancing myself from it.

It didn’t help that every single second that passed was one second that I theoretically needed for tonight.  For taking on the lesser demon, the abstract thing.

By the time the door opened, sneaking suspicion told me it had been a minimum of an hour, on top of my wait in the cell.

“Good morning, Mr. Thorburn,” Mrs. Harris said.

“Good morning, ma’am,” I said.  “I appreciate your coming.”

“No choice in the matter, not really.  But you’re welcome,” she said.  “I’m hoping you’re a little more helpful to the officers and yourself today.”

“Exercising my rights,” I said.

“Just because they’re there doesn’t mean you need to exercise them,” she said.

She was followed by Duncan and Max.  I could tell that people were filing into the other room, on the other side of the one-way mirror.

I wasn’t sure what was going on.

“A few questions, if you will,” Max said.

“Questions?”

“It’s fine,” Mrs. Harris said.  “Answer to the best of your ability?”

“Maybe,” I said.  “I still have the right to remain silent?”

“Section eleven,” she said.  “Yes.  You still have all rights and privileges afforded by the law.  Nothing has changed.”

Evan appeared, walking through the wall.  He stopped beside me.

He seemed clearer.  Were we closer to his body?

He saw Duncan, on the far end of the table, and his eyes went wide.  An expression that was recorded from his time in the woods.

“It’s fine,” I said.  “Alright.  Let’s do this.”

I glanced at Evan.  “Let’s all do this.”

He stayed.

I could see Duncan frown a bit.

“Yesterday, you were asked to visit the woods.  By who?”

“The lady said her family asked you to go,” Evan said.

What?

She’d lied?

“I believe I refused to name them?” I asked.

Buying time, time to think.

“Perhaps a night in a cell has given you a chance to reconsider?” Max asked.

I made a bit of a show of sighing.  “A family at a convenience store a little bit away wanted my help.  I maybe got one partial name, nothing useful to you.”

I saw Duncan’s expression change.  A deeper frown.

“Elaborate?” Max asked.

“Let me think,” I said…

“I needed some advice from them, for a project I hoped to tackle today… a project I still hope to tackle today, given the chance.  I’m… I’m not sure exactly what happened to them.  I do know that they lost someone in their family.  The man I talked to, his son lost a girlfriend, maybe?  It was vague.”

I was thinking a hell of a lot more clearly than I had the night prior.

I had an advantage here, and Duncan didn’t like it, going by the look on his face.

Trick was figuring out how to get the most out of it.

They were all looking at a single piece of paper.

“What’s going on?” I asked, trying to buy time before the next set of questions.

Mrs. Harris said, “Someone came forward to give you an alibi.  We’re making sure the details match up.”

“Okay,” I said.  “What do you need to know?”

It was Duncan who spoke.  “Last night, you suggested you see goblins and demons…”

“I didn’t say that,” I said.

“You answered all questions, until you adamantly refused to answer questions pertaining to that,” Duncan said.

“Can we get back to my alibi?” I asked.

“I don’t see the point of this,” Mrs. Harris said.

“Mr. Thorburn,” Duncan said, ignoring her.  “Do you believe that particular group of  people you talked to last night are affiliated in any way with the supernatural?”

“Do you?” I asked.

“Don’t be combative,” my lawyer said.

“Yes or no?” Duncan asked.

“I think they’re-”

“Yes or no,” he interrupted.

“Now who’s being combative?” I asked.

“You’re not doing yourself any favors,” my lawyer said.

Fuck you, I thought.  I couldn’t let him control the flow of this discussion.  I continued, heated, “The family said something about being involved in board games or something like that.  Maybe it was a Dungeons and Dragons or Weaver Dice thing, maybe it was an Ouija Board thing.  I don’t really know.  But you could probably stretch the definition.  Yes, if you have to ask.”

“Do you associate with the supernatural in other ways, Mr. Thorburn?” Duncan Behaim asked me.

“What’s with this line of questioning?” I asked.  “I thought we were talking about my alibi.”

“My suspicion is that there was a supernatural or pseudo-supernatural element in young Evan Matthieu’s death-”

“So you do believe in crazy stuff like that?” I cut in.

“Quiet,” Officer Max said, a little hostile.

“I believe that errant teenagers can and do get involved with such nonsense, leading to the harm of unwitting bystanders,” Duncan said.  “We searched your apartment and found ritualistic drawings on clothes and at the border of the apartment.”

Balls.

But I was a little more mentally agile than I had been last night.  Enough that it worried me.  There was only one good source for the power I had at hand, and it boded ill for the donor.  “Much of what you saw on the floor was done by artist friends of mine, and not by me.  The building landlord can put you in touch with the guys who did the tape thing.“

If Duncan was taken aback at all, he didn’t show it.  “And the clothes?”

“My.  Friends.  Are.  Artists,” I said.  Hostile, firm.  “We dick around.  We experiment.  I blue-tack mirror shards to the walls and nobody bats an eye.  It’s how I am.  It’s how my friends are.”

“I don’t know that they’re so friendly anymore,” Duncan said.  “They seemed genuinely taken aback that you’d been arrested for the murder of a child.”

I stiffened.

“Let’s return to the subject of the alibi,” my lawyer said, as if she was reading my posture, changing the subject for my sake.  “We can cover these points after.  It’s moot if he had a reasonable excuse for being where he was.”

“You ate lunch there yesterday,” Max said.  “What?”

“Sandwich and coke,” Evan supplied, somewhat pointlessly.

“Sandwich and coke,” I said.

“The store’s owner helped you out,” Officer Max said.  “What did he give you?”

“A chain,” I said, “and rides here and there, including a ride to the park where you found me.”

“And tips,” Evan said.

“He also gave me a bit of advice,” I said.

There were nods from Officer Max and my lawyer.  Duncan frowned.

He shifted position, and when he settled again, he had a little salt packet in hand.  One of the paper ones that you found in restaurants.

I didn’t wait for him to make a maneuver.  The only Other in the room was Evan.  I glanced at him, and gestured with one hand.

He disappeared through a wall.

“What advice did they give you, out of curiosity?” Duncan asked.

On runes?  Abstract demons?

I couldn’t say that.

“Some stuff on a project I’m supposed to get done today,” I said.  “A few tidbits about language…”

“What’s the project?” Duncan asked.

Fuck.

“Does that have anything to do with the alibi?” I asked.

“Could,” Duncan said.

I glanced at my lawyer, but she wasn’t jumping in.

I wished I had a better lawyer, if only because I wanted someone with more of a spine.  Someone who would have my back, instead of me having to stand up for myself and keep Duncan from dragging the conversation off track.

“Quite frankly,” I said.  “It’s very complicated, and I could be here for some time, trying to explain the ins and outs of it.  On a very basic level, though, the project I’m doing has to be kept discreet for a number of reasons-”

“You’re meandering,” Duncan cut in.

Interrupting my flow of thoughts.  Hard enough to pick the right words without outright lying.

“I’m doing favors for the sake of a very… eccentric person.”

“Who?” Duncan cut in, again.

“An eccentric, powerful person who most likely wouldn’t appreciate the attention he’d get if I shared his identity.”

“Why?” Duncan asked.

I saw a chance, but stumbled over my thoughts in my efforts to answer the question while getting to my point of attack.

“He’s who he is,” I said.  “It’s related to-”

“He is who he is?” Duncan asked.  “What kind of answer is that?”

I talked over him, “-the house I inherited.  The very same house that has your uncle, Officer Behaim, making my life miserable.  Police Chief Laird Behaim of Jacob’s Bell.  I thought you weren’t permitted to be here?”

Pressing him on the subject, I saw the connections shuddering within their confines.  Him to me, him to this room.  Firmly set.  Gilded.  He’d manipulated something, fixed it all in place.

Nobody picked up on the question.  Nothing came of it.  I was pushing against a brick wall, here.

“Nevermind that,” he said, dismissive.  Maybe a little smug.  “Does Evan Matthieu speak to you, Mr. Thorburn?”

“We’re on this again?”

“You’re not answering the questions, necessitating that we ask them again.”

“As I understand it,” I said, “You wanted to know why I was there, with the body.  Someone asked me to go there.  They also asked you to go there.  They-”

He interrupted again, his tone insistent.  “Does Evan Matthieu speak to you?  Are you involved with occult practices, like speaking to the dead or binding demons, Mr. Thorburn?” he interrupted me.

“Quite frankly,” I said, staying calm, “I’m wondering if this is on the up and up.  You’re pressing rather hard on this supernatural thing-”

“You haven’t denied it,” Duncan said.

“-and,” I said, pushing on, “We know you’re Laird Behaim’s nephew, and he’s involved in something hinky, with charges against him for my cousin’s murder, and-”

The connections rattled again.  A little harder than before?

“And you’re here right now.”

“With an alibi,” I said.  “Why am I still here?”

“It’s thin at best,” he said.  “Very little is explained, the woman who came in on your behalf has not named the person who passed on the message.”

“Can you name the person who gave you the tip to walk in the woods and find me there?” I asked  “Because as I told my lawyer, this reeks of conspiracy…”

It was thin, a contrived, glancing blow at best, but I wasn’t about to waste time, and I needed to hit his weak point.  “… conspiracy like one shady-as-fuck police chief getting his nephew to incriminate someone.  How is this okay!?”

Mrs. Lewis had told me that theatrics were important.  How you said something could have an impact on the power of a statement.

So I raised my voice, and I slammed my hand down.

With the impact, the bindings around the connections shattered.  Ones binding me to the center of the room, me to Duncan Behaim, me to my cell…

And one on the underside of my chair?

Either way, the third time’s a charm.

I saw a dark look cross Duncan Behaim’s face a moment before there was a knock on the one-way mirror to my left.

Duncan stepped out.  A moment later, the older police chief came in.

They’re off balance.  Take the advantage.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked.

“No need for foul language,” the older man said.

“I have an alibi,” I said.  I turned to my lawyer.  “Don’t I?”

She moved as if stirring from sleep.  “Not quite.”

“You remain a prime suspect,” the older man said.

He was delayed in responding.  Slightly confused.

Was this a backlash?  A price paid, or some kind of penalty?  Duty might be compelling him to keep me here, but now the scales that had been tipped in Duncan Behaim’s favor, keeping me here, were helping to drive me out.

“No,” I said.  “I think what you mean to say is that I’m the closest thing to a suspect you have.  Is it even murder?”

“Those details are private,” he said.

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  A place I have an excuse to be in.  You’re doing sketchy stuff by sticking that guy in a room with me, when you know there’s something questionable about his uncle and my cousin.  There’s the camera, and nobody told me, but I believe it was tampered with, with a suspicious amount of footage missing?”

“Enough,” the older man said, sufficiently firm to put me off my stride.  “This is us talking to you, not the other way around.”

I looked to my lawyer, “Can I be held like this, on grounds this sketchy?”

“You can be held for twenty-four hours on suspicion.  If you’d like, I could reach out to the Crown Attorney.”

“How long would that take?”

“They have busy schedules.  I imagine it would take a little bit of time.”

Fuck.

“There’s a bail hearing in the early afternoon,” my lawyer said.  “You’ll meet with a justice of the peace, and at that point in time, you can waive or pursue a bail hearing.”

Early afternoon.

Even if it worked and I was able to get bail from somewhere, while charged with murder and alienated from my friends…

That left me very little time.

It all came down to time.  I needed out now, and I needed to use the tipped scales, while the winds were still blowing in my favor.

I frowned, staring down at the table.

“Do you have more questions for me?”

“None.  You can return to your cell.”

“I have a solid alibi, don’t I?” I asked.

“No,” he said.  “The woman hasn’t explained who supposedly asked them to pass on instructions to you.  It seems to me that you have an individual, or a group of individuals, who might be complicit in a boy’s disappearance and death.”

“You’re avoiding the word murder,” I said, seeing a chance.  “Was he murdered?  You have evidence?”

“The animals got to his body,” the police chief said.  “We looked it over-”

“Anything?  I think the term Officer Max there-”

“Officer Vargis,” ‘Max’ said, his response delayed slightly.  He was just as out of it as the others.

“-Officer Vargis, he used the term reasonable doubt.  If this goes to the justice of the peace this afternoon, are they going to uphold it, or are they going to hear the basic evidence and throw it out?  Are you holding me out of spite?  Because-”

“Enough,” the older man said.  I bristled, ready to press the attack.  “The charges may well be dropped.  However, I trust Officer Behaim’s-”

“You’re bringing up the guy who may well be conspiring with his uncle,” I cut in.  “Again.”

He bristled this time.  “That’s-”

“Maybe you could contact the Crown Attorney after all?” I asked my lawyer.

“No,” the older officer said.  He shook his head, as if trying to clear out cobwebs.  “There’s no need for that.”

“No need?” I asked.

“For now, we can drop the charges.  However, as you remain a person of interest, a possible witness or potential suspect, with the possibility of another arrest if new evidence comes forward, we’ll be in contact with you on a regular basis.”

My heart soared, even as I kept my expression stern and still.

I glanced at my lawyer.

“It sounds acceptable,” she said.

“Good.  I’m sorry for the, um, confusion, Mr. Thorburn.”

“Okay,” I said.  I wasn’t about to accept his apology.

They opened the door to the interrogation room, then froze.

I pushed my way out past them.

Officer Behaim stood in the hallway, head hanging, arms limp at his sides.  His fingers had black blotches on them.  Everyone in the area was lingering at the edges of the room, staring.

More alarming were the spirits that stood around him.

A child, a matron, an older woman, each holding one part of a length of thread.

A giant with gray skin and a veiled face.

A tin man with a clockwork body, his head rotating around three hundred and sixty degrees, moving a set distance each second, like his overly pointed nose was a hand of a clock.

A man that bore a startling resemblance to Laird’s familiar, but fainter, slightly more tattered.

Duncan held something in one hand.  A container?

What was it?

“-completely lost it, sir,” someone at the edge of the room was saying.

“Behaim,” the older man said, his voice steady, gentle.

Behaim moved, and I realized what the container was.  A spray can.

I saw the wall beside him, the doors, bulletin board and wall painted with black lines.  A diagram.

“Fuck,” I breathed.  I searched the room for options.

“Can’t let you go, Thorburn,” Behaim said.

I saw a cop with a coffee in hand and bolted.

I seized the coffee from the officer’s hand and flung it, coffee and all, at the diagram.

Duncan Behaim and each of the spirits around him moved in sync, reaching out, placing their hands on sections of the diagram.

He said something in a language I couldn’t understand, then he said my name.

The coffee cup didn’t get halfway to the diagram.

■

Blake Thorburn.

I sat upright, nearly smashing my head into the cot above mine.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck,” I swore, long and loud.

Blake Thorburn.

The Knights, outside.

Me, back in the cell.

“No, no, no,” I said, standing.  My complaints joined those of the other prisoners in the holding cells.  “No, fuck, shit, fuck, balls.”

Everything was moving in the same direction, except for one individual.

Duncan Behaim.

I could sense him converging on the woman, the Knight who could lie.  The both of them moved in the direction of the other Knights.  Duncan having a bit of a chat with them.

“Knights,” I said.  “Nick.  Nick…”

The connection broke as quickly as I formed it.  Blocked.

I wasn’t sure if it was Nick or Behaim that broke the connection.  The Knights, however, turned to leave.

I sensed them go.  Getting into a car and driving away.

A threat, a deflection, a distraction.  I couldn’t say.

Behaim headed back to the building.

Where was he going?

He stopped in one room, paused for a moment, then changed direction.

A connection flared between Duncan Behaim and Evan.

He was after the ghost.

I looked at Evan, sitting in the corner.

“Sorry you had to go through that again,” I said.  “They… tore you open?”

The look of confusion on his face was enough for me.  He didn’t remember the last few hours.  Still, he said, “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “Just me and Behaim, then?”

He stared at me, uncomprehending.

“Nevermind,” I said.  “You want me to give you something to do…”

He took it as a question, and he nodded.

“But I’m kind of stuck,” I said.  “Maybe… are you good at finding things?”

“Not so much.”

“You found the fencing.  Surely you found a little bit of food?”

“Barely any.”

“Okay… but… you were good at figuring out where the wolf was, weren’t you?”

He nodded.

“I need you to go looking for other things.  There might be spirits somewhere in the building.  I don’t think they’re bad spirits.  Some might be animals, but they’d be the wrong sort of animal in the wrong sort of place.  Others might be attached to objects, like watches.  There’s a giant with a covered face, three women in the same dress, holding a thread, a mechanical man with a spinning head, and a faded old man with an amazing beard, okay?”

He nodded.

“It’s too many animals and objects for one person to have with them at one time.  If I happen to leave this cell and get to them first… it’ll help.  Go look around the building, but keep your distance from any policeman with black hair, okay?  I’ll call your name if I need you.”

With that, Evan was gone.  Duncan stopped in his tracks, then changed direction.  A different target, this time.

I paced in my cell, feeling time yawn on.  I had nothing to occupy myself with except vague worries.  The knowledge that Duncan Behaim was borrowing power from his family, from his circle.

Using that power, he had reset my day, and he’d turned away my chance at victory.

“That asshole,” I muttered.

The girls opposite me woke up.  One proved to be very hung over while the other was still drunk, even after a partial night’s sleep.

It was later in the morning than it had been when Duncan had come for me, the last time around.

Much later.

The lawyer wasn’t coming.  She’d been diverted.

Something told me I wasn’t about to get a meeting with the justice of the peace.

He was diverting any help that might come my way.  If he saw Evan, he’d probably banish or divert the ghost using salt or some other binding.

Sticking me in a fucking groundhog loop, I thought.  Countering my plans in advance.  Motherfucker.

Threes.  He was working on Laird’s behalf, using Laird’s assets, among others, to best me.  Already, I was pretty fucked.  Then I’d broken the simple connection manipulation by way of three rejections.

But this loop…

I was willing to bet my eye teeth that he was holding his trump cards for a third round.  He’d pull out all the heavy weapons to make the third loop a success, and get Laird his third win at the same time, while removing me from the picture… it seemed like a good strategy to have in play.

I wasn’t sure what form that maneuver would take.  Unleashing the full power of the borrowed spirits and powers, perhaps.  Or simply shooting me.

There was no fucking way I was doing another loop.

Option one was removing the spirits from play.  Take away the power sources he needed.  Evan was on task.

Option two… well, I needed help.

All things had a price.  This would be pricy.

I bent down, searching my cot.  Metal frame… wire mesh beneath the thin mattress.  I ran my hand over it.  Nothing.

That was a problem.

Problem number two was more vague.  I wasn’t sure I’d get a response when I called.  Even with the price I was paying.

Toilet.  I searched it as I had the cot, running my hand over every surface.

There.  Almost what I was looking for.  The tank of the toilet had a recessed area that served as a sink of sorts.  Where it fit into the tank proper, there was something of a lip of metal.  Raised enough I could feel it.

“Excuse me, ladies,” I said, gesturing at the toilet.  “Would you give me a moment’s privacy?”

The hung-over girl groaned and turned over, pulling the pillow down over her head.

“You want some privacy so you can fondle the toilet?” the drunker of the two girls asked.  Apparently she had been watching me.

“The opposite,” I said.

“That…” she paused for far too long before making a decision, “…That doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m worried it doesn’t,” I replied, meaning it.  If this doesn’t work…

I was going by instinct here.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

“What I’m about to do is definitely crazy,” I said.  I gestured, asking her to turn around.

“Don’t want to know,” she said.  She sat down with her back to the cell door.

I unbuttoned my pants, then thrust my pelvis forward, using the edge of the button to pry at the raised lip, drawing it further out.  I ran it back and forth, eliciting a metal on metal screech.

“God!  What the fuck are you doing?” she asked.  She must have turned around, seeing me wiggling my hips left and right with my pelvis pressed against the side of the toilet, because she squeaked, “I don’t want to know!”

I used the edge of my jeans, a bit fatter than the edge of the button, and did the same.  It was quieter.

I’d raised the metal lip away from the toilet itself.

My hand swept over my forehead, catching the moisture there.

I was hoping I had some glamour still there.

I was hoping a lot of things.

I ran the sweat along the edge of metal, visualizing.

Sharp.

Then I placed my forearm against the ridge and slashed the back of my arm.

It worked.

I did the other arm.

I wanted to grunt, to make noise, but I couldn’t afford the attention.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, my back to the girls, I moved my fingertips to where the blood fell on the concrete floor.  I drew a line.  Except this time I drew it from myself outward.

“Rose Thorburn,” I murmured.  “I give of myself to you.”

I let more droplets fall.

“Rose Thorburn,” I said.  “I give of myself to you.”

Pauz had apparently screwed up the connection.  I was drawing from the vestige I was supposed to be powering…

This was me giving back, in the crudest form possible.

I eyed the connection, watched it change with each repetition.

It had been flowing one way, the wrong way.  Now… that altered flow was being remedied.

At something of a cost.

Could I cancel the Imp’s effect if I put in enough power to match its flow?

Minutes passed.  I kept feeding blood into the connection.  The blood ran down my fingers, sticky.  A dangerous amount to give.

“Rose Thorburn,” I said.

My vision wavered.

Not Rose’s arrival.  I’d slipped some.

Disorientation, perhaps, or a loss on some other front.  Disconnection?

I spoke again.

“Rose Thorburn, I give of myself to you.  I call you from the clutches of Conquest to my presence.”

My vision wavered again.  A little more intensely.

Not all of it was me disconnecting from reality, giving up my very being to work against an effect.

The connection had altered.

“Blake.”

I couldn’t focus enough to look.

“Blake,” Rose said.

“Glad to have you back,” I said.

“Oh- oh wow.  You’re bleeding… in a jail cell?  What happened, Blake?  Did the Sphinx-”

“Rose,” I said.  “You missed…”

I swayed, very nearly losing my balance.  Odd, when I was sitting cross legged.  A hard position to lose one’s balance in.

“You need to staunch those wounds,” Rose said.

“I need no such thing,” I said.  I sounded drunk.  I hadn’t given that much blood.

I mean, yeah, the cell looked like a murder scene… I smiled at that image.  Duncan’s face when he looked in and saw.

“You need to stop the bleeding,” Rose said.

“Nope,” I said.  “Nope.  Need to keep giving.  Take all you can.”

“Blake?”

“If I… if I happen to be incapacitated… There’s two bound, gotta get the abstract demon.  Kid named… named Evan.”

“Stop the bleeding!”

Rose’s scream somehow got attention.  Or it was coincidence.  The girl behind me turned, and she screamed.  She screamed a lot.

“Ghost named Evan,” I said.  “Good kid.  He’ll help.”

“I can’t do anything without you, Blake!”

“You’re going to have to do something,” I mumbled.  “I’m going to be less useful here.”

I looked down.

Probably enough.

I fumbled for the mattress, tried to stand, and failed.  I managed to find my feet the second time, and leaned over, pressing my arms down with my body weight.

“He wants to trap Blake Thorburn?  I… give of myself until Blake Thorburn almost isn’t there,” I said.  “Evan.  Evan Matthieu.  Come.”

No response.  No connection.

“Call him,” I said.

Someone came to the cell and threw the door open.  An officer.  “Medic!”

I dragged the toe of my sock against the blood that pooled on the floor, drawing a line.

Breaking the connection.

When I staggered out, he didn’t notice me.

“Blake-”

“Call Evan.”

“Evan…  Evan?  Ev-”

The ghost appeared.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Rose said.

I lurched. “Rose, meet Evan.  Evan, Rose.”

“Hi,” Evan said, “The monsters got you.”

“I got me,” I mumbled.  “Show me the way.  And hurry.  Only get one chance, like this.”

Conviction 5.3

Who was Blake Thorburn?

Who was I, in the grand scheme of it all?  What did I amount to?  When I bled the essence of Blake Thorburn onto the concrete floor of a jail cell, what was I giving up?

Presence.  I couldn’t communicate effectively with Evan.  The loss of presence was part of the aim, though.  To put myself in a situation where maybe I could slip the metaphorical noose.

Strength.  I couldn’t stand straight.  Kind of a problem when I needed to be running.  I didn’t have balance.  When I pushed on a door to let myself into the next section of the building, I found it hard to do.  Hard to say how much was blood loss, how much was a loss of personal power, and how much was my disconnection from reality.

My awareness of the world was fuzzier.  Flickers appeared and lingered at my peripheral vision, like radio static, rain, or falling leaves.  I was hearing phantom sounds, only to realize they were real sounds, badly filtered.  I couldn’t pick out what I was supposed to hear and the background noise of the police station.

My thoughts, too, were fuzzier, disconnected from events.  Which was why, really, I was dwelling on what was happening to me more than on my surroundings.

“-Have to go that way,” Evan said.  He said it to Rose.

“Okay,” Rose said, before glancing at me.

She was clear enough.  So was Evan.

They were easy to focus on.

We headed down the hallway to the stairs.  I missed the first step and came down hard on the next.

Feathers rose into the air, touched with blood.

I looked down for the source of the feathers, and I saw my tattoos.  Three of the birds were beheaded or partially beheaded, the cuts intersecting their faces and necks, the other parts of their bodies already gone.  The blood that still bled out from the wound was thicker around the stumps, and the matted blood where I’d pressed my arms against the mattress to staunch the flow was caked around their bodies more than anywhere else.

Huh.

“Blake,” Rose shouted, from somewhere far away.  “Pay attention!”

I’d stopped.  I looked around for her.  I wasn’t carrying a mirror, and if I had been, it would have been confiscated along with my various tools.

“Don’t look for me, move!”

Move.  Right.

I headed down the stairs.

“They’re coming,” Evan said.

They?  Who were they?

“Blake!”  Rose said, trying to snap me to reality, maybe doing the opposite.

But I focused.  Bloody feathers on the stairs and the landing before the next flight…

Again, I used my toe to draw a line.  Residual blood from standing in the pool of it made it easier to do.

Officers and a man with a first aid kit came running up the stairs, running right past the disoriented guy with sliced up arms.

I smirked.

“Get moving.”

I wasn’t sure if it was Evan or Rose saying that.  I listened all the same.

As I set foot on the landing, I saw golden diagrams spiral out from scribbles on the wall.  I’d mistaken them for gang tags, but they were runes.

One connection fixated on me, all the more noticeable because my connections to everything else were so thin.

An alarm.  Duncan Behaim was on his way to intercept me.

“The front door is one floor down,” Evan said.  “Very close.  But you have to pass through a gate to get there.  If you go that way, there’s a back door to the parking lot.”

He was more lucid.  Because we were closer to his body?

“The parking lot has a fence, but you can climb on a car to go over.”

If I’m strong enough.

“Okay,” I said.  “Did you find the objects I told you to hunt for?”

No response.

“Objects?” Rose asked.  I saw her face reflected in the glass of a framed award, hanging in the stairwell.  Odd, that it was as easy to make out as it was.

“Duncan Behaim.  Nephew.  He’s borrowing spirits or something,” I said.  “Chronomancy tricks.  Reset my day to keep me here until I’m out of time.  I sent Evan out to see if he could find it.”

“Did you find the things Blake asked you to find?” Rose asked.

“It’s in the basement, I think.  Behind a fence, a man sits there.”

I rounded the end of the stairs, and made my way down the next flight.

“Evidence lockup,” Rose said.  “That’s kind of clever.  We can’t get to the stuff without drawing attention.”

Her voice got further away as I got away from the nearest reflective surface only to jump in volume as I got to the next spot.

“I could do with going to evidence,” I said.  “They have June’s hatchet and supplies.  I think.”

“I still don’t know what’s going on,” Rose said.

“I’m being framed, I said.  “For murder.  Laird’s aiming to win round three, and he’s set his nephew on me…”

More feathers, as I hit the ground a little too fast.  I was moving a little quicker, talking a little more coherently, yet something else was giving way.  It was my focus that was narrowing, a kind of tunnel vision, but it seemed like a damn good deal.  Being able to function, just a little more, for some loss of peripheral vision?

“…backed by all the power the Behaim circle can provide at range,” I said.  I caught some feathers out of the air, jamming them in a pocket.

I had no idea if they were useful or abstract, but I liked having something on hand.  I felt naked without my tools and trinkets.  Exposed, oddly enough.

“Okay,” Rose said.  “Let’s think rationally about this.  Is the hatchet really that useful, worthy of the time and effort?”

Duncan Behaim was closer now.  I was still making my way downstairs.  Time.  That was the question.  If I made my way to the basement, I could very well run into him.  Maybe before I found my things, maybe after, as I made my exit.  It depended on how easily I could find my way through the area, get past the man at the gate, and all the rest.

“What did you bind Evan to?”

“I didn’t,” I said.

“He died in the police station?”

“He died in the woods, where the goblin-Hyena-wolf-thing was.  He survived it.  Escaped,” I said.

“Are the woods close?”

“Evan came with- with his body,” I said.  “Cops brought it.”

“That still doesn’t make sense, Blake.  He’s apparently aware.”

“I know,” I said.

“He’s not a ghost, then?”

“I don’t know what he is.  But he’s a help, and I’m not about to second guess that,” I said.  More feathers came loose as I made my way down to the next landing, taking stairs two at a time and hopping down.

“It kind of matters.”

“Getting out of Duncan’s way matters more,” I said.  “I… tell me what I should do.  I’m compromised.  Not thinking straight.  Do I go for the exit or-”

Duncan turned.  No longer making his way to me.

“-nevermind.  Okay.  Evan.  He… he’s still there.  The echo, yes, but there’s the consciousness, and he’s still got the consciousness.  It never moved on.  He doesn’t want to move on.”

“He’s a soul?”

I winced.  “Don’t know.”

“Actually using and leveraging a soul is a little different than using a ghost, Blake.”

As before, Rose’s voice fell away as I made my way down the steps, then resumed at full volume as I passed another frame.

I stopped in my tracks, quickly enough that more bloody feathers stirred.

“Blake?”

The cadence, the timing of it… something was wrong.  I said as much.

“Something’s fucked up,” I said.  I was slurring my words a bit.

“What something?”

Rose, too close?  Too clear?

I stopped to focus on my environment, and I felt other things slipping away.

I was incomplete, broken up.  Focusing in one area meant sacrificing in others.

I felt that tunnel vision focus begin to fall away, but I also felt weaker, as if I was feeling all of the exhaustion of the last day and all of the effects of the blood loss hitting me at once.

The recovery of my overall awareness was slower, going this way.  I was losing strength and gaining awareness at less than half the speed things had changed, going the opposite way.

Was there some prevailing wind, metaphorically speaking?  Was I working against some general effect that was meant to confound me?

“You’re giving me a really screwed up read, Blake.  I can’t really make things out, especially as they get further from you and the mirrors.  I’m supposed to use you as an anchor, and I don’t think there’s nearly enough tying you down.”

Or holding me up.

The stairwell looked just a little bit distorted, and it wasn’t my perceptions being twisted.

“Something’s wrong with the stairwell,” I said.

“I don’t think- ever get home,” Evan whispered, agreeing.

“Yeah.  It’s a trap,” I said.

“You’ve been heading downstairs for way too long,” Rose said.  “What floor were you on?”

“Third,” I said.

“I thought it was the sixth or something,” she said.  “Shit.”

My progress down the stairs was slower, this time.  I tracked my location relative to Duncan’s…

One section of stairwell, connected Escher style, top to bottom.

“Find-” I winced at the pain in my arms.  That pain joined my hearing and eyesight among the things that were getting muddled, hard to compartmentalize or stop focusing on.  “Find the rune.”

I was dimly aware of the feathers in the air.  All the ones I’d loosed, while repeating the same descent down the stairs, so disconnected from reality that I wasn’t realizing what was happening.

“There,” Rose said.  “On the other side of the wall.  It’s… glowing in the darkness, kind of.”

I pressed my hand against the wall.

Unreachable.

Unreachable by humans.

“Evan,” I said.  “Go find it, see if you can do something?”

Rose repeated my instruction for Evan, pointing.

He was back in four seconds.  “Can’t.”

“Why not?” Rose asked.

He shook his head.  “Can’t.”

“This isn’t the time to start acting more like a ghost.  Why can’t you?” Rose asked.

“F-frostbite?” Evan asked.

He held up one hand, showing us fingers that were frayed at the tip.  More ghostly than they might otherwise be.

“Salt,” I said.  “This is all very deliberate.”

I was aware of Duncan Behaim making his way across the building.  “Rose?  I guess this is connections 101, for you.  Look.  Can you sense Duncan Behaim?”

“Oh god,” Rose said.  “Blake-”

I winced, and shut my eyes.  Firm, I asked, “Can you?”

“No.”

My heart sank.

“Blake-”

“If I give you more power, then-”

“If you give me more, you’ll die.  Don’t.  I didn’t ever imagine you’d try to do something like this.  Or… get stuck in prison.  Or any of this.  But I’m not capable, even with a bit of a boost.  You shouldn’t have assumed like this.”

“Was going with my instincts,” I said.

“You really shouldn’t trust your instincts if they’re telling you to carve yourself up.”

“I needed backup,” I said  “This kills two birds with one -ow- stone, so to speak.  Bringing you back, and reducing my profile.  This is serious.  We’re in trouble if we can’t deal with Duncan here.  Right now, I think he’s busy setting up more traps.  Sealing us inside the building.”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “I’m trying to think.”

“Good,” I said.  “We need it to come together.  Because I just gave up almost everything I have to bring you back and give you some muscle, and apparently you can’t get muscle.  I need you doing what you can, because I’m not up for more than getting from A to B, and mid-level problem solving.”

“I think you’re putting an unfair burden on me,” Rose said.  “I don’t have the ability to do much of anything, here.  I can’t affect the world.”

“You couldn’t, but that was before,” I said.  “That doesn’t mean you can’t now.  You might be able to talk to people, or distract them, at least.  Figure something out.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

With that, she was gone from the frame.

I wandered down the stairs, then up a few flights.  There was no ‘snap’ when I passed the boundary.  Duncan remained one floor below me at all times.

Rigging traps at the exits, binding me in place.

He hadn’t hurt me, though.  Laird hadn’t either.

That was a good thing to keep in mind.

What were the other options?

Thinking outside the box… I could theoretically break the rune by taking the most direct route.  Rather than walk around to the other side, I could try attacking it from here.

Punch through the wall until I could break the section of wall the rune was painted on?  Even if I had the raw strength, I didn’t want to do that to myself, and I wasn’t sure it would work.  Tearing the railing from the wall somehow and using it as a battering ram?  Same problem.

Besides, my ability to easily alter and affect the world was apparently one of the things I’d lost when I’d spilled my own blood.

I looked down at Evan.  “It looks like we’re stuck here until Rose figures something out.  Unless you can figure out some kind of escape route.”

He turned around.

I followed his line of sight.

“Very funny,” I said.

Much of the light in the stairwell came from a single large window, just above one landing.

He shrugged.

“We’re still on the third floor,” I said.

He shrugged again.

“Right,” I said.  I glanced around.

No other brilliant ideas were presenting themselves.

Staring at the bright window, turned gold by the sunlight, it disoriented.

When I looked away, I couldn’t help but feel that the stairwell was a little more crooked than it had been.

“Fair enough,” I said.  “We’ll do it your way.”

I kicked the window and it didn’t break.  Not a huge surprise; I’d controlled my kick so my leg wouldn’t keep going, only to get sliced up by the remaining glass, but I’d held back in the process… not that strong.

I tried again, moving back so my position would keep my leg from going too far, kicking harder.

Nothing.

Rose returned, her silhouette dark, the light shining from behind her.  “Duncan’s drawing runes by the front entrance.  We need to use the other exit if we’re going to run for it.”

“Any progress on getting me out of here?” I asked.

“I can get reactions from people, speaking, but there’s nothing I can use anywhere near the rune on the wall.”

“Can you break this window?”

I saw her look, craning her head around to take it in.

“Even a little,” I said.  “You have a lot more power to devote to the task.”

“I also lost almost two days of time,” Rose said.

I kicked the window again, to no effect.  I hurt more than the window did.  My arms, my head, my general disorientation…

Fuck.

But that time, I noticed Duncan reacting.

A connection.  Between him and the window?

Of course.  It was an obvious way out.  I hopped up to search the surface.

There.  On the surface of the window, a rune.  I recognized it as one that enhanced durability.

This was the Behaim style, apparently.  Big chronomancy, using the family and the circle, bits of shamanism, enchantment and other tools here and there.  Binding, augmenting, distracting…

I scratched at it.  Permanent marker.

Nothing in the stairwell to scratch at it, my pockets had been cleaned out.

“I can’t think of another way out,” I said.  “I can’t force you, but… well, look at it this way.  It’ll take something out of you, but it’s going to exact a price from him too.  Quite possibly a greater price.  He said he’d keep me here.  Let’s make him lie.”

“And if I spend something and I can’t deal with the abstract demon?”

“Spent or not, we can’t do anything about the abstract demon until we’ve dealt with Duncan here,” I said.

Rose heaved out enough of a sigh that I could see her shoulders move.

“Get back,” she said.

I nodded, retreating partway up the stairs.

I heard a heavy thud, a shuddering of the window within the frame.

“Fuck,” she said.  “Ow.”

Duncan had noticed.  He was approaching now, running.

“A crack… and it didn’t take that much out of me.  One more try…”

The window shattered.  I saw glass fly.

Then Rose’s voice from further up the stairs.  “I am stronger.”

I heard footsteps.  Duncan approaching.

I wasn’t interested in a direct confrontation.  I took a moment, touching my sliced right arm, raised my shirt, and drew a symbol on my chest.

I hoped I had it right.

I got a running start, one hand on the wall for balance, and I jumped.

Tired as I was , the jump still gave me enough air that I could clear the row of jagged glass points at the bottom of the frame.

I didn’t touch the glass, but I didn’t land on the row of parked cars beneath the window, either.

The wind rune I’d inscribed on my chest was one part of it.

The other rune Duncan had drawn on the windowframe, hidden, was the other.

The same kind of rune, apparently, that connected one part of the stairwell to the other.

The sun flashed in my eyes, and I was back in the stairwell, ten feet above the ground.

Ten feet above stairs, rather.

My landing was a rough one.  I was lighter, but not so much that I made it past the entire flight of stairs.  I hit the stairwell, and I didn’t have the balance or wherewithal to catch myself.  I tumbled, and I hit the ground hard.  Pain lanced across my arms, following the tracks of the cuts, reopening them.  My elbow hit floor hard.

“That’ll do,” Duncan Behaim said.

I flopped over, still lying on the ground, a matter of feet from the broken window.

He stood at the top of the flight that led up from my current position.  He leaned forward to correct the angle of a framed plaque on the wall.  “I think we can count this one as a second win for me.  In a moment, we can move on to round three.”

“What if I surrender now?” I asked.

“What if you do?” he asked, sounding very unimpressed.

I spoke, coughed partway through.

“It would help if you were a little clearer,” he said.

I repeated myself, about as loud, then rested my forehead on the ground.  My arms hurt.

“Shall I get a little closer?’ he asked.  “I’ll need to watch my step, lots of glass to slip on…”

A moment passed.  I looked up.

He hadn’t moved one tenth of an inch.

“Uncle told me about your mirror-dwelling companion,” He said.  He touched the frame in front of him, moving it so it was askew.  “I’m not an idiot.  You’re going to need to try a little harder than that.”

The frame exploded, all the same.  A hand thrust out with the glass, faint, feminine, with nails poised to strike like claws.  It grasped blindly for Duncan’s face.

Duncan caught Rose’s wrist.  Already, that faint hand was fading.

Before it could, he twisted it, and drove it hard against the side of the frame, where ragged glass still jutted out.

Rose screamed.  Duncan let go, and the hand became smoke.

Glass around me shifted as if something was moving through it, until Rose appeared in a larger fragment that rested against the wall, clutching her wrist.

Duncan held up a taser.  A spark danced around one of the two prongs at the end.  “Need to get a few things in order before I can turn back the clock again.  I can’t have you running around while I get ready, so I’m going to have you take a short nap.  Your choice.  This or I throw down the cuffs and you put them on.”

“How do I know you won’t use both to be safe?  You guys like your overkill,” I said.  “Looping areas, turning back the clock, slowing time around an entire property…”

“I guess it’s just the taser, then.  As for your observation, it’s hard to dedicate your time to appreciating and studying something as vast and powerful as time, without feeling a need to throw your metaphorical weight around,” he replied.  “I’m sure you understand that, this in mind, we’re rather concerned about you wielding something approximately as vast and powerful, and rather more dangerous.”

I shifted position, trying to back up some, but apparently an inability to bounce back easily was a consequence bleeding myself out.

He was halfway down the flight.  He lifted a picture frame off the wall and tossed it further up the flight of stairs, in my general direction, before Rose could make use of it.

“I have nothing against you, Evan,” he said.  “What happened to you was a tragedy.  I’m genuinely sorry it happened.  But I will banish you if you get in the way, here.  Send you to your final rest by force.”

“I wanted someone to find me,” Evan said.  “I wanted- help.”

“I know,” Duncan said.

“Evan-” I said.

He was summing up his strength, to break pattern.  “He came.”

“I know,” Duncan said.

“Evan,” I said, again.  “Rose, please tell him.  He shouldn’t make it for nothing, here.”

“Kid,” Rose said.  “Blake doesn’t want you to get banished for his sake.”

Evan turned.  Duncan paused partway up the stairs, waiting.

“Tell him to go.  That I said he should.”

“You should leave, Evan,” Rose said.

“But-” Evan said.  He clenched small, immaterial fists.

“Go!” I said.

I saw Evan react, just a fraction.

“He insists,” Rose said, as calm and quiet as I’d been loud.

Evan ran, disappearing down the stairs.

“Thank you,” Duncan said.  He resumed his approach, kicking glass off each stair before setting his foot firmly down on top of it.  “That was decent of you.  If it helps, I don’t have any hard feelings.”

“But you’ll pull out all the stops, huh?” I asked.

“I’m not evil,” he said.  “I’m not doing evil.  I’m only doing what I can to keep this situation contained, and quite frankly, it’s kind of a rush to do it with the family’s backing.  I go years without doing anything on even half this scale.”

Evan reappeared, at the top of the stairs.

Following the circuit, from the bottom stair to the top.

I averted my eyes, and started to struggle to my feet.

“Stay put,” Duncan said.

Evan descended to a stair two steps above Duncan.

Then Evan screamed.  Blood-curdling terror distilled, an echo of a memory.  All without warning, in the ear of a man who’d thought he was alone with me and Rose.

A man standing on stairs.

Duncan half-turned and tipped over in the process.

He fell down the stairs much as I had.

I moved, reaching for the taser.

Duncan moved faster.  He hadn’t spent his blood.  He didn’t have gashes running from wrist to elbow.  He was athletic, and in peak fighting shape, recent fall excepted.

I caught his wrist, stopping him from jabbing me, but he got one hand around my right arm, and he dug his fingers into the cut there.

I bit back the scream, groaning instead, doing what I could to put up a fight.  Which didn’t amount to much.

He pinned me, and panic started to win out.  I craned my neck away from the encroaching taser.

Having Evan close helped, somehow.  It was hard to define why.  He’d fought so hard, and he was counting on me, on a level.  I didn’t want him to erode away into becoming another haunt.

I managed to gather up enough presence of mind to twist my head away and scream, “Rose!”

One pane of glass that still jutted out from the window shattered.  Duncan let go, and I pushed him off me, scrambling back.

I briefly considered grabbing a large piece of glass and slashing the man while he was distracted.  But Evan was close, and my right arm throbbed badly enough that I wasn’t willing to let go with my left.

“That one took something out of me,’ Rose said, from somewhere nearby.  She sounded weaker.

Duncan was holding one side of his face.  He had a dark look in his eyes when he looked over at me.  He wiped one hand at his eye, and it came away with blood on it.

He lunged, taser in hand, and I threw myself back.  Weak as I was, I moved a little too far, a little too fast, and I hit the wall hard enough that it hurt, cracking my head on it.

My hair was waving like I was in the midst of a strong breeze.

The wind rune.

He was fueling the runes with something on his person.  I’d seen the connection earlier.

I’d already given so much.  A little more…

I let go of my right arm, and my hand was so sticky it pulled at the open wound.  With my bloody hand, I reached over to the window, planted my hand down on the second rune, smeared until I broke the connection, and vaulted over.

This time I made it through.

Something, a lot of somethings, broke, all through the building.

My exit was followed by an spray of glass, bloodstained feathers, and dust.  The wind rune’s wake, perhaps, or the change in pressure that came with the breaking of the effect in the stairwell, releasing the pent up energy and whatever else.

I hit the ground.  I was lighter, buoyed by the wind, but it still wasn’t the most graceful landing.

I gripped my right arm and staggered to my feet.

Not in Kansas anymore.

I hadn’t landed in the parking lot.  Not exactly.

There, in the distance, I could see Conquest’s tower.

The buildings around me were subtly distorted, the streets largely empty.  Where there were people, they were far away, more twisted than the buildings.

Evan jumped down from the shattered window, landing on the roof of a car with an audible thud.

“Um,” I said.

“Blake?” Rose spoke up.  Reflected in the rear window of a parked car.  The car looked like it had been sitting there for years.  Other cars were only partially there.  Derelicts.

“Something’s wrong,” I said.  Did Conquest make a move?

“You look like hell,” Rose said.  “Does that count?”

“Maybe,” I said, my voice low.  “I’m… seeing things.”

“What things?”

“Conquest’s tower-”

I had to stop.  I hurt.

“-A world that’s sort of like Johannes’ demesne.”  I turned my head, looking around.

“You’re sinking,” Rose said.  “Something like that.  There are different terms for it in different books.”

“Sinking?”

“Losing your footing.  I can’t say, since I don’t really see it, I can’t see much at all, frankly, but it could be you have one foot in the spirit world and one in the real world.  Maybe it’s both feet.”

Losing touch with reality.

Too much me given away.

“What… what happens?” I ask.

“You go where anyone goes, if they slip through the cracks.”

“Vague,” I said.  My heard hurt.  My body hurt more.

“It changes from place to place, urban area to rural.  But it’s the spiritual equivalent of rock bottom.  It’s where people like Dowght might go or be chased off to by locals when the imp is done with him, or where things like the goblin you fought might dwell, if they weren’t quite strong enough to hold a territory.  Dark places, dog-eat-dog, unpredictable, hard to navigate.  The spirit analogue to the deep wilderness.”

“No shit?” I asked.

“Sometimes there’s shit,” she said.  “Sometimes fire, sometimes a garbage dump or a lightless pit or it’s a frozen wasteland without any light to go by… like I said, it varies from place to place.  It’s a place defined by the misery and self loathing and desperation of those who dwell in it.”

My arms were throbbing, and I was cold.

“I already had a taste of rock bottom before,” I said.  “Before this.  I don’t want to experience the practitioner-hell version of it.”

“Then don’t use more blood for power,” she said.  “Because I don’t want you to go there, especially if it means you drag me there with you.”

I nodded.

“He’ll come after us if we don’t run,” Rose said.  “That Duncan guy will.”

“Probably,” I said.

“Half the day has passed already,” Rose told me.  “We need to get moving, start planning.”

“We do,” I said.  “But we also need to be ready.”

“You want to go back in?”

“I… think we have to,” I said.

“For June?  For the locket, I presume?”

I ran the edge of my thumb along one of the sore spots where the locket’s chain had rubbed me raw.  “Those things too.”

I turned and headed for the side door that Evan had mentioned.

Duncan was making his way down.

Evan led the way.  Passing through the door.

I couldn’t move it.  Either it was locked, or I was just that weak, now.

I saw Rose’s face in the small, chicken-wire covered window.

The window shattered, glass scattering into the building.  I saw a glimpse of her arm, reaching inside-

I heard a click.  I pulled on the door.

I didn’t have the strength to open it, not completely.  It might as well have been ten times the size.  I had to leverage all my strength to haul it open enough to fit my body between it and the frame, the cuts on my arms screaming with pain.

The walls were stark, cracked to the point that I could see through them.  The stairs were too steep, and I had to catch one railing with both hands to keep from falling.  Every door was barred.  Ghosts… if they could even be called ghosts, lurked in places I couldn’t access.  Shadows of high emotion and desperation, despair and rage.  It was an exaggeration.  A police station as drawn by spirits that were drawing from memory.

“I want to see you, Evan,” I said.

He didn’t react.

“Are you sure, Blake?”

“Do you really want to second guess me, with Duncan bearing down on us?”

She made a face.  “Where’s your body, Evan?”

He didn’t respond, but he turned.  A sharp left.

I saw staff members, police officers, but they were as abstract in this world as some Others were in ours.  Blurry, indistinct.

I’d dug myself in too deep.

That boded ill.

“Rose-” I started.

“Him?”

“Feels right,” I said.

“It feels wrong to me,” she said.  “He’s a soul.  A person.  For real.”

“He’s a person that’s said he wants to stick around,” I said.

“You don’t have to like it,” I said.  I was too tired, too insubstantial, to pick my words carefully.  “-have to decide.  Either call him back, tell him to take us to the inventory lockup, or go get the book.”

“This is something huge for both of us.  I’m attached to you, and I’m attached to him by association.”

“Are you saying you don’t like him?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.  I don’t know him.  This is something that takes time.”

“Time’s a luxury we don’t have,” I said.  My voice was ragged, came off harsher than it otherwise could.  “I just carried out your plan, binding the imp, giving it to Conquest.  I fought the Hyena, and that was a bitch in its own way.  I’m spent.  Say no, say yes, but don’t fucking dither when every second counts!”

“You can be a real asshole sometimes, Blake.”

“If it helps,” I said, my voice still ragged, worse for having shouted, “I’m not really me right now.”

“Is that it?  Or is it the opposite?  Is this Blake Thorburn with all the flesh and mortal warmth bled away?

She was gone a heartbeat later.

Shaking with exhaustion and anger, I joined Evan in the morgue.  Dozens of ghosts, so insubstantial that many didn’t have faces, faded in and out of existence, lighting the otherwise dark room like so many dying candles.

Evan stood by the wall, brighter and clearer than all of the rest put together.  I didn’t even need to ask.  The connection was clear enough.

I opened the hatch and pulled on the drawer.  It took me three good tugs to get it out, and it was on rollers.

“Did you decide, Evan?” I asked.  “The answer to my offer.”

“To be your partner?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not that girl?”

“It doesn’t feel right,” I said.  “I don’t want to pick her because she’s there.  I want to pick someone who feels like they fit.”

Duncan was in the basement, but he didn’t come for me.  He went to another room, then stopped.

He couldn’t see me, nor could he see the connection between us.

“What do I do?”

“You only have to agree,” I said.  “I… I’ve heard this described as a kind of marriage, which is kind of creepy when I think too hard about it.  But I suppose some principles apply.  If I had to make vows, if I wanted to extend a promise to you while letting you know what you were in for, I couldn’t say that it’d all be happy, or safe.  I could give you a taste of being alive again, but there would be a lot of scary stuff.”

“I’m not a happy person anymore,” he said.  “I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again.”

“I think you could, if you moved on.”

“I can’t do that most of all,” he said.  Nonsensical, but I got the gist of it.

“I can say that I’m probably going to go up against some scary things.  Things like your wolf.  I’m going to try my damndest to stop them.  To catch them or kill them.  I want to be a force for good in the world, and helping you, stopping the Hyena?  That’s the first time I felt like I was doing that.”

“I want to help people too.  It’s not so complicated when I think about it.  I don’t want people to feel like I did.”

I nodded.  “So… as far as vows go… I’m going to say that if you agree, and you don’t have to agree, really, I’m going to try and be the kind of practitioner that you can be proud of helping.”

“I’m supposed to say something too?”

“If you want.”

“I don’t know what to promise.  I want to help.  I want to stop the bad things, and you’re saying I can help that happen.”

“I can think of a good promise,” I said.  “When this is done… when I fail, somewhere along the line, and something stops me instead of me stopping it?  When I die and the bond between us is broken?  I want you to promise that you’ll say you’re okay.  That you did help.  That you did what you were supposed to and you can move on.”

I saw him stiffen.

“The promises aren’t supposed to be easy,” I said.  “If you really want to stick around, hanging around me might not be the best way to do it.”

“I’ll… I’ll stay.  I promise I’ll go when you do.”

I glanced to my right.  Rose was there, reflected on the inside of the door.  She looked pensive.  Not quite like she was reconsidering her former stance, but… pensive.

“He needs to agree to the Other’s oaths,” Rose said.  “Then we can do the ritual.”

Duncan was still in the basement.

I saw a man enter the room, indistinct and dark, pick up some things at a table, then stride out.  Faceless ghosts watched his every move.

“Can you read?” Rose asked.

Evan nodded.

“You’ll need to read this.  I can’t have you repeat after me, or I might bind myself,” she said, holding the book where he could see.  “The words will be backwards, but try to hurry.”

“I…”

“Your name.”

“I, Evan, agree… to… be… bound… by… the…”

“Strictures,” Rose said.

“Strictures…”

He continued.

Breathing hard, hurting all over, leaning on the drawer, I stared down at the body that sat between us.  The centerpiece for our little ritual here.  A portion of my attention rested with our adversary, the remainder was split between Evan’s recitation and trying to figure out what time it was, how much time I had left

Duncan Behaim would get his round three after all.

With luck, he’d also get something of a surprise.

Conviction 5.4

We made it three-quarters of the way through the ritual without any sign of the fanfare or effects that had accompanied Rose and my mystic awakenings.

Of course we did.  The world surrounding me was already touched by craziness.  We had an audience of psychic echoes.

Then I, _____, by the old rules, invite you into the world of man and mortal, I read.

“Then I, Blake Thorburn, by the old rules, invite you back into the world of man and mortal,” I improvised.  “Let this be the port and gate by which you enter, the destination and arrival, passing through the border…”

I briefly wondered if I could really invite Evan into the world of man and mortal if I wasn’t really there.

“…Now, or when we arrive there,” I added, just in case.

I drew a circle on the floor in soap, retrieved from the dispenser above the sink.  Surrounding Evan, and the body.  He stood within, I stood without.  As icons of civilization went, hand soap was… it was something.  At least it was distinct enough in the gloom, with the lights catching it.  All we’d really needed was a circle.

“As the willing guest, I… Evan Matthieu, accept your hospitality,”  Evan said.  “By… by our compact, I agree to share of my power and share in yours.”

“By that same compact,” I said, “I agree to shelter you, whatever form of shelter you might require, my home and hearth are yours to share, in the brick and mortar, the demesne and the spiritual.”

“I accept the offered shelter, and I agree to guard that territory as if it were my own.”

The walls were falling away.  Not fading, not collapsing… they were already hard to make out, dark in a room lit only by the glimmers of ghosts.  Light snow fell on Evan’s side, rain and wind on mine.  Shadows congealed into trees behind him, dark, barely lit by the moon.  Leaves were falling along with the snow.  They landed in darkness, settling on a surface that was well beyond the walls of the morgue.

I glanced over my shoulder.

The city, under rainfall, lit by flickering, dim streetlamps.  Each time a streetlamp flickered out, it resumed flickering somewhere else, as if the city were changing in the moments it was dark.

Some of the ghosts fell away, as if they were actors playing a role on this stage we’d set.

Angrier ghosts, I suspected.  Ones who’d died in pain.

They occupied the landscape, which intersected at some vague point I couldn’t define, where it was unclear where I was looking at wet leaves and snow lit by flickering streetlights or wet city streets lit by the moon.  They were shadowy bystanders in my world, monsters in his.

This… wasn’t really what I’d wanted or hoped for.

But it was a common ground, I supposed.  Evan seemed to take it in stride.

“I offer you sustenance,” I said.  “Whatever form of nourishment you might need.”

“I accept your sustenance, and I agree to lend you the strength I gain in return.”

I remembered a whole section in the book that had gone into detail about that one exchange.  It went both ways. It could mean I fed Evan my personal power in exchange for his muscle or talents.  Sustenance for a powerful being, conversesly, could be attention, or praise, while the being supplied strength in the form of personal power.

“I give you reprieve from the forces that hold you, as the old laws permit.”

“By the compact, I guard you against those…”

“Selfsame,” Rose mumured.

“-selfsame forces.

“I give you asylum from the forces that follow you, as the old laws permit.”

Death, the usual ‘force’ this line referred to, wouldn’t claim Evan’s soul for the time being.

“By the compact, I follow you.”

The connection between him and his body flickered, moving until he and I were connected.  It looked thin.  Insubstantial.  That was a little worrisome.

Duncan had noticed what was going on.

That was concerning.  I could understand him noticing me even with the amount of myself I’d bled away.  I was asserting myself here.  But he shouldn’t have that kind of power at his disposal.  I’d won.  I’d turned his promise into a lie, and that came at a cost.

“Blake,” Rose said.  Stirring me back to the matter at hand.

I read the book.

“I give you this with no expectation of secret knowledge or revelations,” I said.

“I- I-”  Evan stuttered.

I glanced over.  There were two options, common answers for the Familiar.

His eyes scanned the words, trying to make sense of them, reading backwards.  He’d done remarkably well so far, stumbling only on some oddly constructed and very long words.

He looked to Rose

“I can’t tell you what answer to give,” Rose murmured.

Duncan was approaching, making his way down the hallway.  I crossed the room, forging my way through the insubstantial images, found the door there, a little more real than anything else, a little more out of place, double doors in the midst of my background.  I barred the handles.

“Then, um.  By the compact, I share what I have, regard- regardless,” Evan said, behind me.

I nodded, smiling as I turned around.  He wasn’t an Other with knowledge he had to safeguard.  It made sense.

There were options and suggestions here.  This part was more freehand, more personal.  I didn’t really have to dwell.  I definitely wasn’t giving Evan my body.  I wasn’t serving as his mortal hand for a quest.  There were no big terms to stipulate here.

“I, Blake Thorburn, give my friendship to Evan Matthieu.  I offer from a place of shared history, and I give it willingly, with no expectations.  I give my mind and spirit, my body and power, and agree to defeat evils, so I might give him a satisfaction he might carry beyond.”

Evan stared at the book.  He’d proven good at improvising and problem solving while on the run.  Could he do alright here?  Especially as a ghost-ish soul or a soul-ish ghost, who might suffer a bit in the imagination department?

“I, Evan Matthieu, give… my protection?  You asked me to show you to safety, and I’ll try.  You asked me to find things, and I’ll try.  I’m… I’ll do my best.”

He looked like he might say more, but the door banged.  Duncan was on the other side.

“I’ll take your watchful eyes, Evan Matthieu,” I said.  “I accept your company as scout and guardian, as companion, and I offer you a mortal body, as our mutual power allows.”

A pause.  When I glanced at him, he was looking to Rose.  She nodded.

“I accept,” Evan said.

He ceased to be a ghost.  He became something else, a form no larger than my fist, shrouded in the gloom.

The double doors were decaying.  An offensive use of time magic, apparently.  Paint peeled with accelerated speed, cracks formed in the fiberglass, and the little glass windows began to crack, warping slightly as the door distorted around them.

“Then I, Blake Thorburn, bind myself to my words and I swear to give that which I have promised to give,” I said, glancing away from the door to check the book.  “Take what you will, Evan Matthieu.”

Evan’s tiny form hopped over to get closer to the lid of the drawer, to Rose’s reflection.

When he spoke, it was with the same voice.  “I, Evan Matthieu, will take, and I give in return.  I accept, and I likewise swear.”

The connection between us went from insubstantial to solid, dim to bright.  It was like a breaker had been thrown, and the dark backgrounds surrounding us were cast away.  The room returned to what it had been.  Not quite normal, but a ways there.

The door began to come apart.  I backed away, so the wall and counter would help keep me out of Duncan’s immediate line of sight.

I felt better, in a way.  Very much like I’d come up for air after being underwater.

Evan took to the air, settling on my shoulder with a flutter of wings.

Our heads turned in the same moment, looking to the window.  We were in the basement, but the window looked out onto the pavement.  Snow piled halfway up the window’s surface.

I could see him in the corner of my field of vision.  White, speckled with brown.

I grabbed the soap from the end of the drawer that Evan’s body laid on, then pushed the drawer shut.  It only took two good pushes.

Then I tossed the soap down onto the ground in the middle of the floor.

By the time I reached for the window, Evan was there.  Beak and clawed toes on the complicated latch.  There was a keyhole, and we didn’t have the key.

It clicked open, regardless.

I pulled it open, while Evan hopped down, wings flapping.  He achieved the angle he needed, passing through the gap between the top of the piled-up snow and the top of the windowsill, heading outside.  The snow scattered as if something a little larger than a sparrow had passed by it.

Creating a bit more room for me.

I hopped up, putting one foot on the counter, starting to make my way up.

I heard a gun click.

No longer moving, I said, “Why not shoot?”

“Is that really the question you want to be asking me?” Duncan asked.  “I might reconsider and actually pull the trigger.”

“Right,” I said.

“Close that window and lock it,” he said.

I let the window close.  I flicked the lock around.

“I already called for help,” he said.  “You and me are going to stay here until others show up.  You’ve made a mess, and even the fact that you’re here will raise questions.”

“Probably,” I said.  “The door too, I imagine.”

“Turn around,” he said.

I did.

He looked a little ragged, a few cuts on his face, a little dusty. He wore his scarf and a heavy coat with large pockets, no doubt carefully chosen to keep implements and tools out of sight.

He was glaring at me.  Behind him, the deterioration of the door was reversing itself.  The cracks in the glass shrunk, and the damage to the fiberglass gradually healed.

“How?” I asked.  “You said you’d keep me in the building for the day.  You lose access to your magic if you lie.”

“And you aren’t really you, are you?  It’s why you were able to slip my fellow officers so readily.  A portion of you is still occupying the floor of that jail cell.  The man who jumped from that window was… well, I imagine many spirits had trouble figuring out who he was, just as the others did.  I did take a hit, but a lot of the power I’m using right now is borrowed power.”

The spirits and implements the circle had loaned him.

“You managed to escape, and you came back here.  Why?  You did something, didn’t you?” he asked.  “A ritual?”

I looked down at the floor.  The circle had been scattered somewhat when the connection had solidified, as if an explosion had gone off in the middle.

“Yes,” I said.

“To do what?”

As if to answer him, a bang sounded on one of the hatches to the drawers.

Duncan raised an eyebrow.

More bangs.  Steady thudding.  Almost knocking.

“Necromancy?” Duncan asked.  He seemed rather unconcerned.

“I don’t really know what qualifies,” I said.  “I improvised some.”

“Better toying with the dead than diabolism,” he said.  “But instead of my going to check, closer to those very reflective surfaces, why don’t you tell me exactly what you did?  No hedging it, no half-truths.”

There was more knocking.

“Or?” I asked.  “Maybe I don’t want to reveal the cards I have up my sleeve.”

“Or I shoot you in the leg?” Duncan asked.  He reached over to grab a glass vial from beside the sink, then dropped it on the ground.  “If someone asks, there was an altercation.  You tried to hurt me.  You had a… let me see.”

He opened a drawer, found a scalpel, and tossed it onto the ground.  He met my eyes.  “Let them infer that you had a weapon.  I can tell them I briefly and sincerely believed my life to be at mortal risk.”

“I’m flattered,” I said.  “I didn’t think I put up that good a fight, upstairs.”

“You’ll be suffering from a bullet wound too, if you don’t start talking.  Necromancy, yes or no?”

“I don’t-”

“Yes or no, Blake Thorburn?  Don’t test me.”

“No.”

“What was the ritual intended to do?”

“Settle Evan where he was supposed to be.  I’m hoping,” I said.

“He’s gone?”

“As far as I’m aware,” I said.  Evan had flown out the window.

“Ah.  Promises?” Duncan asked.

“There were quite a few promises,” I admitted.  Then, to throw him off the trail, I added, “He helped me deal with one monster.”

True, but a bit of a non-sequitur.  If he wanted to weaponize half-truths, so could I.

“And the banging… ah.  She can shatter glass, but not metal, I take it?  Come out, mirror-dweller.  Unless you want to see Blake shot.”

Rose appeared.  She crossed the room, until the drawers showed her reflection, standing at roughly the same point I did inside the room.

“You went to some lengths,” Duncan said.  “Your arms, your… current condition.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m surprised a diabolist would do that to themselves.  I’d think a diabolist would know as well as anyone.”

“I’m not a very good diabolist,” I said.  “No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Demons and devils do ask for people’s souls.  Or they make Faustian promises.  They don’t put any particular value in the soul, though.  That’s not to say the soul is useless as a commodity, it does have some power to it, but my understanding is that most such Others are more interested in the soulless than the soul itself.”

“I met an imp a few days ago, who was very interested in finding chinks in the defenses, so it could wedge itself into them,” I said.

“Exactly,” Duncan said.  “It’s not demons and devils alone that want that kind of opportunity.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and you’ve cracked yourself like an egg, emptying out the contents and allowing anything and everything else in.”

“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

“You polluted yourself, and you’re going to get rather sick, given time, Mr. Thorburn.  The initial effect, when the foreign bodies take hold, it’s disorienting.  When they make themselves known, the effect will be very similar to injecting dirty water in your veins.  Our bodies reject foreign entities, and our spirits will do the same.  I don’t even need to do anything.”

He paced a bit.  “I’m going to, don’t get me wrong, but only to secure this.  Ah, I hear my coworkers.”

Running footsteps.

“Don’t suppose I could get you to turn back the clock?” I asked.  “We could have a round three.”

“Wouldn’t matter.  You remain fundamentally the same.”

“Damn,” I said.

No sooner had I said that, than the other cops burst into the room.

“Damn,” I repeated myself for good measure.

Duncan spoke to the new arrivals, “Watch your step, don’t trip.  He tried to bar himself in, in the room with the boy’s body.  Watch for the mess on the floor, too.  He was throwing soap around.  I think he’s a little disconnected from reality.”

“Drugs?” one of the officers asked.

“I wouldn’t definitively rule it out,” Duncan said, without taking his eyes off me.  “There’s only so much we know about him.”

“How much do you really know about anybody?” I asked.

“Just as I said,” Duncan asked, deadpan.  “Irreverent, disheveled, disconnected.  Self-harming, apparently.  He was threatening violence earlier.”

“So were you,” I said.  It sounded feeble.

“Looks like he got you,” one officer said.  There was something dangerous in his tone.  He didn’t look pleased when he looked at me.

Aw fuck.  No police officer liked it when one of their own was attacked.

“I know the usual protocol,” Duncan said.  “But he’s clearly troubled.  I looked at his sheet.  He was homeless for a stretch.  A few near-misses with the law, hospital records suggest he was the victim on more than a few occasions.  Go easy on him.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Duncan said.

I’d hoped Duncan would approach and slip on the soap at the pivotal moment.  But he hung back while the officers carefully made their way over the soap.

I glanced at Rose.

Sorry.

She started to reach for the drawer, hand in a fist.  To knock?

I shook my head.

She moved her hand away.

When I looked at Duncan, he nodded a little.

Evan stood behind him, in ghost form.  Duncan was oblivious to the little boy.

“Hands behind your back,” one of the officers said, as he carefully made his way over the sea of soap.

I obeyed.

“What were you doing, huh?” he asked.

I kept my mouth shut.

I heard fluttering.

Duncan had half-turned, still holding the gun.  Evan-in-sparrow-form was halfway inside his coat, wings still flapping violently.  I heard rustling plastic.

“What the fuck?” one of the officers asked.

Duncan pressed one hand against his coat, holding it against Evan, only for Evan to move, slipping higher up.  More rustling.  For an instant, it was like something out of a cartoon, Evan dodging every time Duncan’s hand moved.

It wasn’t for good, though.  Duncan moved his gun-hand to help block the bird’s path and then reached into his coat.  He came out with a bird in hand.

“Oh,” Duncan said.  He looked at me, clearly displeased, then back to the bird.  “Enough of that.”

“What the hell is a bird doing in here?” the officer asked.

“Rifling through my pockets,” Duncan said.

What did he have in his pockets?

The tools the Behaims had lent him?  He’d stopped by the lockup.

Evan was still seeking out the items I’d sent him to find?

Now he was caught.  The officers moved my arms, and for a moment, I could only see Duncan and Behaim out of the corner of my eye.

Evan tried to turn back into boy-form, Duncan held on, and Evan was forced to revert to being a bird.

The officers turned me around.

One on each side of me, they marched me down the hallway, Duncan and Evan following.

“You’re going to let the bird outside?” one asked.

“Yeah, I’ll get it outside,” Duncan said.

They didn’t seem to catch the distinction between let and get.

“If I happened to want to complain, again, about the issue of Duncan being involved, here,” I said.  “A third time, no less…”

“I was downstairs,” Duncan said.  “I had words with Ellis, at inventory, and I heard a commotion.  It would have been remiss to not check and see what was going on.”

We ascended the stairs.  Things weren’t as odd as they had been at their worst.  I still wasn’t absolutely sure about what was real and what was the natural wear and tear of the police station, though.

Duncan stepped out of the same side door I’d entered after dropping down to the parking lot.

His back to the officers as they led me further up the stairs, he twisted and snapped Evan’s neck.

To say the strength went out of me wasn’t right.  I felt like everything that was holding me upright was gone.  As if all the contents of my torso just bottomed out and hit ground.  Muscle sloughing from bone, brain liquefying…

The only things keeping me from hitting the stairs face first were the two officers who held my arms.

I wasn’t really disintegrating.  But I felt like it.  The sensation of my toes and shins banging against stairs as they hauled me forward felt out of place given the immensity of what had just hit me.

The deal I’d struck with Evan, the de-facto deal, was to keep him from Death.  Death, even with outside intervention, wouldn’t claim him.

But that deal, holding to that deal?  That took power.

I was dimly aware as the dead bird was tossed at the side of the building.  I felt it like a physical blow when salt was tossed onto the body.

Duncan shut the door, bringing in a brief draft of cold air, equally discordant in terms of the sensations on my skin and how they jarred with the pain and general devastation that simple act had wreaked.

Cold air…

Something clicked.

“…Feel ugh,” I said, almost incomprehensible, even to myself.

“What’d you take?” the officer asked.

“Need fresh air.”

“You’ll have to make do with this air,” he said.  “There’ll be a toilet you can puke into if you need it.”

I need the door open, I thought.  It’s one of the things I need.

I looked for Rose and found her reflection reflected in a black LCD screen.  One glance told me she’d felt the effects of Evan’s second death just as much as I had.

There was no way I was going to put up a fight.  I could barely move.  Rose couldn’t affect this world.

Evan… Evan was lying in a snowbank with a snapped neck, until he pulled himself together.

If I was going to win this, we needed to achieve it with this alone.

“I’m sweating, I don’t feel good.  I need some cold air,” I said, stressing the word cold.

All true, on each individual count, taken separately.

“Deal,” the officer said.

My eyes didn’t leave Rose’s, as I was dragged further along the path between cubicles.

“Maybe Officer Behaim can interrogate my ghost a few hours from now,” I said, trying and failing to sound angry enough to fit the line.  It was forced, it was obvious enough that Duncan would twig to what I was doing, and I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not.

Nothing seemed to change, though, and I was short enough on resources that I suspected I’d be able to tell if I burned any more.

“You sound a little-” Duncan started.

Rose interrupted him.  “June.”

She’d caught my hint.

Duncan had gone straight to the inventory room, where all the crime scene evidence was locked behind a caged door.  I’d thought he was collecting his trinkets, the ones the Behaim family had given him, but that wasn’t it, or it wasn’t the whole story.  He’d anticipated that I would come back for my things, and had waited for me there.

He carried my hatchet because it was the best way to ensure I wouldn’t find my way into that locker and claim it the moment he had his back turned.

“June,” Rose said.  “Make your presence felt.”

Rose’s plan was apparently different from my own.  I’d hoped to get the door open, to flood the place with cold… Rose was going more direct.

But if the room temperature here dropped, then it would bode ill.  We’d be reaping bad karma for bringing people into the fold, if anything bad happened to them as a result.

“June, you’re colder than you’ve ever been.  Feel how cold your fingers and toes are.”

“I’m going to go report about what happened downstairs,” Duncan said, giving me and Rose the briefest dirty looks.  “Talk to you guys later.”

He almost ran, heading away.

“June,” Rose said, louder.

“You say something?” the officer asked me.

I only shook my head.

Duncan was pulling off his jacket, folding it over one arm-

Rose raised her voice.  “June!  Remember that moment!  You remember that moment when you realized you were going to freeze to death!”

Duncan dropped his coat.  He shook his hand a little, as if it stung.  He didn’t bend down to pick it up.

The officers were walking me out of the area.  In a few seconds, I wouldn’t be able to influence events.

I looked for Rose, to ask for help, to pass on a message, and I couldn’t see her.

When I looked, using the sight, I found her in Evan’s company, outside the building.  She was talking to him, I was dimly aware.  Convincing him that he wasn’t really dead.  That it was only a broken neck.

That all he had to do was turn his head and fly, because I needed him.

A moment later, she was breaking a window, to give Evan a way in.

The sparrow came flying through the police station, in from the stairwell, making a beeline straight for the fallen coat.

I resisted the two men who had me by the arm, which didn’t amount to much.  Looking, straining to see…

The bird had revealed the contents of Duncan’s inside pocket.  It was barely visible, but for the edge of the hatchet’s handle and a plastic bag sealed with deep red tape.  Tape that, I was sure, if I viewed it up close, would read ‘evidence’.

“Officer Behaim!” I raised my voice.  I sounded drunk, I was so out of it.

“Shut up,” the officer that was hauling me off said.  “You hurt an officer, but even if Dunc-”

“Why is that evidence in your pocket!?” I shouted, ignoring him.  “In that jacket pocket!”

Heads turned.

“I was right!  You’re screwing with me!  You have no reason to have that!  You’re not supposed to be touching my case!”

I saw Duncan, head bowed slightly.  A moment passed.

He bent down to pick up his jacket, grabbed the hatchet and tossed it to the ground.  I saw pink on his hand where skin had stuck and torn away.

I was too focused on that to notice that he had drawn his gun.

The other people in the room were moving a fraction slower than they should.

He’d done something, in that moment his head was bowed.

I was moving slower, or I would be, if what had happened to Evan hadn’t left me more or less paralyzed.  No moving out of the way.

The bird flew past me.  As with the snow, he gave me just a bit more of a bump than he should have been able to.

The two shots missed.

Others were drawing their weapons, but Duncan was moving, retreating.

Disappearing into a room, shutting the door.

I was hauled in the opposite direction, away from confused shouts and bellows.

Evan came to me, settling clumsily on my shoulder, nearly falling.  His wings fluttered violently until he found his balance.

The officer seemed a bit taken aback.

“I collect birds,” I said, glancing at him.

“Keep quiet,” an officer that held me said.

He dragged me into the hallway with the cells, depositing me in the one opposite the cell I’d occupied prior.  Drunk-girl cell, harboring trace aromas of puke.

“What do we do with the bird?” the other officer asked.

“I’m not touching it.  Leave it be.  We need to go see what’s up with Dunc.”

“You keep that bird here,” the other officer told me as he undid the cuffs.

The door slammed shut.

I settled on the bed.

“He’s resetting time,” Rose said.

I glanced at the door, unable to reply without sounding like a lunatic to my neighbors in the next cell.  I shrugged.

At least it buys me more time to plan for the abstract demon.

“You collect birds?” Rose asked me, appearing on the stainless steel surface of the toilet.  “Or was that a lie?”

I rolled up my sleeve.  Silent, not wanting to be overheard, I tapped the birds.

“Oh,” Rose said.  “I guess that counts.”

Evan flew down to my hand, then lifted one foot.

He let go of the locket, letting it fall into the bowl of my cupped hand.

I smiled.  I murmured, “I had a feeling you were a good pick.”

I popped it open.  No hair.  But there was a black crust to it, a patina, like silver in grievous need of polishing, or copper that had gone green.

Maybe.

It took me far too long to wind the locket’s chain around my wrist, tightening it until it was uncomfortable.  Evan hopped around on my sleeve, one leg still raised, wings flapping.

The other leg raised.

No wonder he’d had trouble landing.  I held out a hand, and Evan deposited another object into it.

I grinned, feeling relief wash over me.  “Definitely a good choice.”

I showed Rose, and I saw her eyes widen.

I wasn’t so worried, now.  All I had to do was wait, uncomfortable as it was.  I was still aware of the deadline that loomed.  I had a demon to find and bind, and it was already early afternoon.

Evan hopped up to my shoulder.

“Can I speak?” he whispered.  “Or will they hear me?”

“I’m not sure,” I whispered back.

“You introduced me to June earlier,” Evan said, in my ear.  His voice was hoarse.  “You were saying you needed more help, before.  She was the first person I thought of.”

I nodded and gave him a silent thumbs up.

Evan flew over to the cell door, settling on the bars.  He pecked twice.

The door popped open.

I stared, then leaned over, using my foot to hook the door.  I shut it, glanced at Evan and shook my head.

“Are you sure?” Rose asked.

I leaned over the other way, to speak to Rose.  “If I’m going to get out of this with my life intact, I have to play by the rules, at least a little.”

Confiding in a toilet, I thought.  Maybe I have gone mad.

“What Duncan was saying earlier,” Rose said.  “It’s true for any ghost.  A fractured echo of a person, it gets filled in with the relevant pieces.  Evan’s… he’s a little bit bigger than a ghost.  I’m guessing we’re seeing one thing that filled in the empty spaces.”

“I guess so,” I said.  “What filled me up?  What’s going to happen when my body decides to reject it?”

“I don’t think it was so simple.  How many different effects did you use?”

I shook my head.  How many runes?  How many lines to break connections?

“Let’s hope we get you out of here while you still feel okay,” she said.  “That power you gave me?  I lost it when Evan’s neck got snapped.  I don’t think Duncan there realized you’d transferred the power in-house, if you know what I mean?”

He’d thought I’d given the power away, that I had no reserves?

Yeah, that was the kind of surprise I’d hoped for, in an abstract way.  Rose, Evan and I were interconnected, it seemed.

“When you assume,” Rose commented, “You make an ass of you.”

“That particular barb cuts both ways, given how fast and loose I was playing it there,” I said.  I leaned back.  “I’m going to try being very still and very quiet, in the hopes that I can delay the inevitable.”

“If you can’t go after the abstract demon,” Rose said, “That’s okay, isn’t it?  You only promised you’d try to bind the three things.  Conquest only really wanted you to do it so you’d be weak and pliable when it came to his big plan.”

“Well, he achieved that,” I said.  I lifted a hand, then let it flop down.  “He had altars, Rose.  Three altars, for three prizes.  I think it’s a little more complicated than that.  And besides, I told Evan I’d help him stop other monsters from preying on people, and, seeing what Pauz and the Hyena did?  I’m not so keen on letting another thing run loose.”

“Yet you’re really okay with waiting?  With trusting the system here?” Rose asked.  “Duncan is out there, manipulating it.”

“That’s three wins for me,” I murmured.  “Three times I’ve successfully woke his boss up to the fact that he’s gaming the system, gunning for me.  I’m thinking maybe this time, it’s going to stick.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “But I’m not unsure either.  Gonna conserve energy for now.  We wait.”

“Then I’m going to read,” Rose said.  “I want to actually help for this one.  And I’m saying, for the record, I’m hoping they keep you, just a little longer.  Because I don’t think you’re up for it.”

“That’s fair,” I murmured.  I shut my eyes.  “Good plan.”

■

“Blake Thorburn!”

I opened my eyes.

It was Duncan’s voice.

“Dunc, stop.  You’re not doing yourself any favors.”  His partner’s voice.

“Thorburn!  You took something from me!  Give it back!”

He was shouting, and something or someone was keeping him from entering the hallway.  Maybe he was being led away in cuffs.  Didn’t matter.  He was pissed, and the day hadn’t reset.

“Good job Evan,” I said.  I smiled, shutting my eyes again.

I moved my hand, to ensure the object was still there.  A short silver chain with the charms on it.  A bracelet, with little silver etchings of the individual components of Stonehenge.  Evan’s second retrieval from Duncan’s jacket pocket.

If Duncan hadn’t broken his promise to keep me contained, I still might have worried, because he had the items.

But he didn’t.  Not all of them.

Leaving me reasonably satisfied I was safe from another reset.

I shut my eyes again, smiling at Duncan’s fading shouts.

■

“Mr. Thorburn.”

Not shouting, this time.  I raised my head to look.

My lawyer was in the hallway, on the other side of the barred door.  Mrs. Harris, with her badly bleached hair and crisp suit.

“What time is it?”

“Six in the afternoon.  You had a pet bird?” she asked.

“More a friend than a pet,” I said.  I rubbed at my eyes.  “I’m becoming very eccentric.”

“Apparently so.  I’d ask, but I’m in a hurry.  The apparent malfeasance in your case has raised enough reasonable doubt.  I got in touch with a justice of the peace, and she had words with the police chief here.”

I nodded.  “I can go?”

“They raised some questions about your activity in the morgue-“

I heard her prattle on, saying nothing of consequence.  The lack of time was getting to be more of a problem.  I had six hours to bind the demon and get it to Conquest.  I needed time to prepare.

“Can I go?”  I cut her off.

“It’s complicated,” she said.  “There’s the question of charges against Officer Duncan Behaim, the allegations against Laird Behaim, further charges possibly being pressed against you, and paperwork.”

“Yes or no?” I asked.  “Can I go?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Can I talk to someone in charge?” I asked.

“I can ask.”

“Please,” I said.

That was it.  Things were falling into place.

The officers showed up to escort me to the police chief’s office after a ten minute wait.  Those ten minutes stung worse than the first hours had.

When they helped me to my feet, though, I was surprised at how weak I was.  No more strength than a baby.  I staggered rather than walk, my leg muscles failing me.

This might be phase one of the rejection process.

Worse, it was phase one of the possession process.  I’d read about what happened when too big a spirit took up residence.

“You wanted to have a word?” the man asked.  He left me standing while he sat, which was kind of a reverse power play, or he was trying to make it clear he wasn’t trying to intimidate me.

“What happened there… it’s going to be ugly, when the media gets ahold of it.”

He didn’t sound surprised.  More weary.  “Ah, that’s your approach?”

I shook my head.  “You know that what you have arranged against me is thin.  It’s clear there was something going on with Behaim there.  You made a mistake, letting him get close to me after what I told you, when you first brought me in.  If I wanted to make a fuss, I could make a big fuss.  But I don’t want to make a fuss.”

He nodded.

“All I want is out.  I have important stuff to do.  You can handle this incident however you want to handle it, I go away, except to come in and say what you need me to say, at my own convenience.”

“We have questions.”

“You can ask those questions.  But in exchange for my complete and total cooperation, I’m asking you to save those questions for a day or two from now.”

“I can’t imagine it’s wise,” he said, “To compound one breach in procedure with another.”

“I’m thinking it’s going to look bad no matter what you do,” I said.  “I’m offering.”

I’d seen it before.  The forces that had been keeping me in were now disrupted.  Balance sought to restore things, and that meant pushing me out.

I just had to leave the door open for it to happen.

“I have no intention of leaving Toronto in the near future,” I said.  “You’ll have my full cooperation, you know where I live…”

“Check in first thing tomorrow.”

I was eager enough to jump at the chance.  “Of course.”

“I would send an officer to give you a ride back to your residence, but with the mutters going around the department, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I have errands to run, of a sort,” I said.  “That’s fine.”

He gave me a look.  “Whatever condition you’re in, I expect to see you tomorrow.”

I nodded.

“Thank you,” he said.  A dismissal.

Triumphant, I made my way out, one hand on the wall for balance.

I made my way outside, and leaned against the wall.  My legs were shaking.

“He thinks you’re an addict,” Rose said.

I raised an eyebrow.

“You look like you’re in the throes of withdrawal.”

“Ouch,” I said.  Evan hopped from one of my index fingers to the other, then back again.  Some passerbys stared.  My locket dangled from one wrist, the Stonehenge charm from the other.

“You’re not in any shape to do this.”

“This isn’t going to be a run-around binding, or I’m not going to be able to handle it,” I said.  “Even without… this, I’d be too tired to do anything of the sort.  This one is one we’re going to have to tackle with our brains.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m counting on your brain.”

“I hope I’m up to the task.”

“Rose?  I talked to the Knights.  This one scares the fuck out of me.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’m not sure you can,” I said.  I drew in a deep breath.  “Can you follow the chain back to Conquest?  I need you to send Fell, so he can give me a ride.”

With that, Rose was gone.

“Let’s fly,” I said, flicking my finger.  Evan took to the air, and I limped.

The abstract demon wasn’t the end of it.  Five minutes after midnight, tonight, Pauz was free.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Conviction 5.5

It was already dark.  Heavy snow was falling, making it feel darker, even if the snow was white.  The lights that shone through windows felt oddly small, and headlights offered fleeting flashes of brightness.

Conquest’s tower still loomed in the distance.  A hint that I was seeing glimmers of the spiritual.  It was probably altering my perceptions, the balance of light and dark, the shape of things.

It was probably visible from anywhere in the city, to Others and reckless practitioners who were struggling to hold on to their humanity, like myself.  Conquest’s symbol of power.

Either way, things weren’t nearly as distorted as they’d been when I’d re-entered the police station and made my way into the morgue.  It was hard to say whether I was recovering or whether I just wasn’t zig-zagging between the real world and the spiritual.  Maybe things were simply leveling off, and I was viewing things through a faintly spirit-tinted lens.

I’d gotten out.  Not out free and clear, but out.

I moved my arm until the locket itself reached my palm, and then popped it open.  I rubbed my thumb on the inside of the lid.  “June.”

Evan made his way back to me.  Surprisingly few people noticed as he descended and made his way onto my shoulder.  I moved my hood.

I felt the connection.  I drew a smudge on the wall, to feed that connection.  “June.”

“Do you want me to get her?” Evan asked.  The hood of my jacket was up, and Evan was nestled in the space between my hood and the side of my face.

“I don’t think you can, June being as heavy and unwieldy as she is,” I said.  I looked over my shoulder.  “Fuck.  I said I’d keep her warm.  I don’t think she’s cold where she is, but… I’m worried.”

Nobody paid any mind to me as I talked to Evan, crazy and bedraggled as I might have looked.  My presence in the world was pretty damn low, and it was very possible that anyone who did see me talking thought I was using bluetooth or drunk.  As for the actual words being spoken, I was moving slower than just about anyone on the sidewalk, and nobody was around long enough to hear what I was muttering, if they cared enough to listen.

I was tired, and I was far enough away from the police station.  I swept snow off the bus station bench, very nearly falling over as I bent forward, and took a seat.

“What can I do?” Evan asked.  “About June?”

“Nothing.  This is… it’s awkward.  Kind of screwed up on a lot of levels,” I said.  “If I feed the connection, though, she might find her way to me, or I’ll at least be able to keep her from slipping away and getting lost before I get back to the station.”

Evan shivered.

“If you’re cold, you could go back to being a ghost.”

“I’d rather be alive and cold,” he said.

“That’s allowed,” I said.  “You’re okay?”

“I feel okay.  My neck hurts.”

“A lot?”

“Some.  I’d go back to being dead if it hurt more.  It feels more better than before.”

“Good,” I said.  I nodded.  “Good.  I don’t want this to be a bad thing for you.”

“I don’t either,” Evan said.

We sat there, not having much more to say.  Evan’s head turned this way and that, watching the city going through its motions.

It had probably been a while for him.

A car slowed on approach.  I felt the connections tying the occupants to me, and tensed.  A drive-by?  Or whatever the practitioner equivalent was?

It was Fell, with Rose in the backseat, not really there so much as reflected in the windows.  He stopped in the middle of the lane.  An illegal park, I noted.  A car honked at him, as it had to change lanes to keep heading down the street.

I tried to stand and failed..  I was like an old man, too stiff to move much, not enough strength to make much of the movements I did make.

I was getting looks from passerbys.  Did they think I was an addict or drunk, as Rose had observed?  A crazy hobo?

It wasn’t something I liked to admit, but the judgments of others did matter to me.  My judgment and perception mattered to, as far as how I could and would view myself.  I didn’t like being bedraggled.  I’d promised myself I’d move forward, that I’d make constant, consistent efforts to be a better, stronger person, both in general, and in terms of who I interacted with and how.

Fell stepped out of the car, ignoring the incoming traffic that very well could have slammed into his open car door, and walked around the front of the car to approach me.

He had a gun in his left hand.  Momentarily I wondered if I’d made a mistake, asking for Rose to summon him.  People weren’t freaking out as they saw the gun.  Fell himself barely registered.

He offered me his right hand.  I caught it, and Fell hauled me to my feet.

He didn’t support me, though.  When I was up, he let go, and I was left to stagger forward to the passenger side door of the car, where I leaned against it.

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Fell said.  He paused.  As a tangent, he said,  “You’re cutting this one close.”

“Can we get moving, then?” I asked.

I tried the door handle.  It was locked.

I had several pet peeves.  That was one peeve of note.  Few things got me so pissed as when someone made me ask.

“Can I?” I asked, gesturing towards the door.

“I was instructed to bring you to the factory building,” Fell said.  “Turn around, look at me.”

I did, leaning against the car door for support.

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t have to bring you if I have reason to believe you’re not you.  You look like you could be possessed.”

“You’re fucking with me?” I asked.

“If your head turned around three hundred and sixty degrees,” Fell said, his tone placid, “and you started spewing projectile vomit everywhere, I wouldn’t be particularly surprised.”

“Cute,” I said.  “Can we talk instead about how a police officer practitioner at the station was flaunting his power, working against Conquest’s aims?  That I dealt with him?  That’s got to be worth credit.”

“To another lord of a city?  Quite possibly.  To Conquest?  Less possibly.  To me?  Not at all.”

“What do I have to do to prove I’m me?”

“That question is for you to answer, not me,” Fell said.

“Do you want details from our past meetings?” I asked.  “I’m tired as fuck, but I could come up with something.”

“If you were possessed, the being that possessed you would have access to your memories.”

“Can you or Rose tell me, then, how one usually identifies the possessed?”  I asked.

“Request the aid of an expert,” he said.  “Or use one’s common sense.  No expert available, and my common sense is telling me something is wrong.”

“I just dealt with an imp, a crazed goblin-beast and a practitioner with a vendetta, all in the span of two and a half days.  If things were right, that’d be a pretty good sign something is pretty damn wrong.”

That had sounded better in my head.

I turned to the side, “Rose?  Help me out here?”

“Blake, don’t fight this.”

“Rose-”

“It’s a bad idea, to go forward.  I’ve been reading the texts.  We don’t know enough.  We aren’t ready, not for this, not for tonight.”

The stress she put on that word… she was referring to our ability to deal with Conquest.  To use Pauz and enact some plan.

I worried Fell would catch it, but he just looked generally annoyed, standing there with the gun in hand.

Rose continued, “It’s hard to protect against something as abstract as this, especially when you don’t have the information.  You can barely move.  Just… accept that Fell isn’t going to give you a ride.  That you can’t go and stop the abstract demon tonight.  You tried, you failed.  You met your end of the bargain with Conquest.”

“But not my bargain with Evan.  I told him I’d work against the real monsters,” I said.

“You can.  Your promise to Evan has nothing to do with your promise to Conquest.  The odds are very, very low that anyone is going to get hurt in the meantime, waltzing into the abstract demon’s lair.  It’s isolated, by all accounts,” Rose said.

“It is,” Fell said.

Rose went on, “Take the rest of tonight to recuperate.  We meet with Conquest tonight, as we arranged, we deal with that.”

Again, the thinly-veiled reference to dealing with Conquest.

I was already shaking my head.

“Blake, you can do it another day.  Tomorrow, or the day after.”

“With the way life keeps coming at us hard and fast?  With all the other shit that’s liable to come up?  I’m not so sure,” I said.

“There isn’t a lot I can do,” Rose said.  “I can’t really affect the world you live in.  I was… I was put here, and I’m supposed to be the figure on your shoulder, guiding you, but you don’t listen to me.  You picked a familiar without my input.  You blithely stride forward, trusting your instincts.  Can you understand how this impacts me?”

“I understand,” I said.  “But with all due respect, I’m the one who’s sliced up, I’m the one who almost got shot, who almost got devoured, who fought off a swarm of fucking squirrels, housecats, and other animals, including some murderous relation of Bambi…”

“Careful,” Rose said.  “Lies.”

“…So to speak,” I added, even though I was pretty sure I was in safe territory.  “I’m the one in the line of fire, Rose.  I’m the one who’s doing the binding.  Work with me.  Don’t work against me.”

“I am working with you.  I’m trying to keep you from taking a path that’s going to get you killed.  Maybe, maybe you’ll lose a bit of power, if you don’t meet your obligation to Evan.  But you lose everything if you die.”

“I’m coming out of every altercation a bit stronger,” I said.  “With more tools.”

“You’re coming out of every situation in pieces.  I don’t even think you’re running on metaphorical fumes anymore, you’re running on borrowed fumes.  Power borrowed from me, and now power borrowed from Evan.”

I glanced at Evan, as far as I could make him out.

“What I think,” Rose said, “Is you’re falling into the same trap most diabolists do.  The same trap grandmother did.  An inability or unwillingness to look forward.  You’re too focused on the present.”

“Present is kind of important.”

“I’m sure grandmother thought the same thing.  Except you’re liable to run into a situation like she did.  You reach the end of the line, where you’re cornered or all the problems and consequences you’ve been postponing start catching up with you, and you’re forced to make a big compromise, or you make a mistake, or something.”

“Or something,” I said.  I sighed.  “You’re probably right.”

“Grandmother hit the end of the line, she had to pick an heir… she admitted, at least to me, that she had waited far too long to do it, that she didn’t prepare us enough.  But I can’t help but wonder why she set the rules that she did.  Going to meetings, reading for the future.  Forcing us to make plans and lay groundwork.  Do you think, maybe, she wanted us to do better?  To not repeat her mistake?”

“Do as I say, not as I do?” I asked.

“Look forward,” Rose said.  “Think beyond today.”

“Bringing us back to the issue of today,” I said.  “The problem at hand.  Kind of hard to ignore.”

“Then focus on it.  But… can’t we find a way to work together?  Compromise?  Let me focus on the future, you focus on the now, and we find a way to make it work together?  Except you need to fucking listen to me when I give you advice.”

The anger was uncharacteristic.

For a moment, I wondered if Rose were the possessed one.

“Okay,” I said.  “Alright.  Compromising, then.”

“Thank you.”

“If you two want to hash this out,” Fell said, “I’ll go.”

“No,” I said.  “I… I think whatever happens, we’ll be helping you out.”

“Do you?” he asked.

I didn’t answer.  My thoughts were muddled.  I was thinking about Rose, about the demon.

I couldn’t tell Rose in front of Fell, not without raising problems, but we needed more firepower to deal with Conquest.  We definitely needed firepower to deal with Conquest and Pauz at the same time.

At the very least, if we could do something about the demon, we could get the Knights on our side.

What would Rose say?  She would say that risk wasn’t worth it, and we should push forward with what we had.

If I had to trust my gut on this, though, we couldn’t.  Even as a mockery, as a being that wasn’t really as powerful as he made himself out to be, he was too strong.  I could see the tower now, I’d seen the other practitioners, I’d seen Conquest within his domain, after Rose had passed out.

“Rose, do you have ideas on what to do about this demon?” I asked.

“Some, but they’re incomplete, unverified.  If it slips past your defenses, you’re gone.  I don’t know where that leaves Evan and me, but I don’t think it’s good.”

Slipping through the cracks.  The first ones to mention that concept had been the Knights, if I remembered right.  if they didn’t outright disappear, they’d go where things went when there was nothing to hold them up.

“It’s a scary idea,” I said.  “Let’s… let’s talk compromise.  What if we found a way to do this?  If we hashed out enough of a plan that we could be reasonably certain, using Fell’s term here, that I wouldn’t get eaten?”

“I don’t think anything would make me feel that certain,” Rose said.

“Not certain.  Reasonably certain.  There will always be surprises.  There’s nothing we can do about them.  But if we ignore random happenstance and bad luck-”

“Which are a factor, with our bloodline’s karma.”

“Fuck karma.  Life sucks, it’s always sucked a bit.  I’ve fought for everything I have, and I’m still fighting for everything I have.  Nothing’s changed, as far as I’m concerned.  Here’s what I’m saying.  You and me get in this car.  We drive to the factory.  We talk.  We hash out a plan.  You treat it as if we were deadly serious about it, no quibbling.  If we’re not on solid footing by the time we arrive, we turn around and go.  Or we walk back, if Fell insists, or I call friends and get a ride.  I don’t know.”

“Forgive me for saying so, Blake, but I can’t help but imagine we’ll get there, I’ll say we aren’t ready, and you’ll go in regardless.”

“I swear I won’t, so long as you’re saying so in our mutual interest, go against your word.  The power is in your hands, Rose.”

An oath.  The inability to lie was a handicap, a bad one, but the truth had power too.

Rose hadn’t replied.

“All I need from you, Rose, is for you to give me Rose Thorburn’s best showing, from the moment we get in that car until we arrive.  Until we get back, if we actually go in.  That’s the end of the compromise I’m asking you to meet.  If I can’t argue it well enough to go in, we shouldn’t go in.  That’s my end of the compromise.”

“Okay.  Just… just give me a minute to get some things together.”

I nodded.

“I don’t seem to recall giving you permission to enter my car,” Fell said.

“Some practitioners have barometers, to measure where they stand in the grand scheme of things,” I said.

“Implements and the like, yes,” Fell said.

I started to pull off my coat, Evan fluttering loose, and I very nearly fell.  It took me far too long to make any headway in pulling my arms from my sleeves.

I was left standing on the street, the snowfall heavy enough to have piled on the shoulders of my coat, cold, my sliced arms and tattoos exposed.

It was almost too dark to see.

“I hope you’re going to treat that bird on your shoulders better than you treated these ones.”

“I certainly hope to,” I said, trying to catch my breath.  The struggle with my coat hadn’t helped.

“This?  It’s not quite good enough.  It almost works against you.”

“Probably,” I said.

“Man, you really cracked yourself wide open, didn’t you?”

“I guess so,” I said.  “Needed to make myself small.”

“You may well have done that,” he said.

He unlocked the car door.

I opened it, and I didn’t sit down so much as fall down.  Evan fluttered down and landed on my hand, while I took a humiliating amount of time to catch my breath after the brief exertion.

Duncan had been right.  I was sick.  It just wasn’t fever and cough sickness.  Something more insidious, sneaking up on me.

Fell started the car, pulling out.

When I couldn’t catch my breath fast enough, I coughed, trying to pull more air into my lungs.  I waited for Rose’s jab, a reminder that I wasn’t capable of doing what we were talking about.

“Ready?” Rose asked.

No jab.  I was genuinely grateful.

“If you are,” I said.  “Get us started.”

“Demons and devils fall into choirs.  Choir of dark, choir of chaos, choir of ruin, choir of madness, choir of the feral, choir of sin, and choir of unrest, in order.  What we’re dealing with… I think it’s a demon of darkness, by all descriptions.”

“Darkness,” I said.  “Didn’t we hear something different from somewhere else?”

“Maybe you did.  But we don’t know where demons come from, but they exist as a sort of counterpoint to the forces of creation, civilization, growth, and order.  The choirs aren’t real things… only an idea that some have clung to, some demons and devils included.  They’re a handy way of categorizing.”

“A dangerous way of categorizing,” I said.  “Like calling something a goblin, when it could be something else entirely.  You prepare to deal with a goblin, and you get surprised.”

“Yes.”

“Or,” I said, glancing down at Evan, “If you’re open minded, you can figure out that the goblin has another weakness you can use against it.”

“It’s the thing I have the hardest part with,” Rose said.  “I feel like there’s a science here, a rationale behind it all, and then we run into something like time magic or some other garbage, and it doesn’t fit.  I want to figure out the underlying rules, so I keep reading, I keep hitting the books.  If we can figure out the internal logic of this world, we can start to nail some things down.  I don’t like the Others that straddle or ignore categories.  Especially the scary, demon-tier Others.”

“My view on it,” I said, “Is that there aren’t hard and fast rules.  This isn’t a science, exactly.  It’s not like math, where you can decode it and figure out the system.  It’s more like English class.  Or art theory.  You interpret, you divine the symbols and commonalities, you inject your own voice, views, and apply your own labels and rules, given the chance.  Math is just there, waiting to be discovered.  With English, with art, you can forge your own way.”

I saw Fell looking at me through the rear view mirror.

“No comment,” he said.

“I hated English class,” Rose said.

“So did I,” I said.  “Mrs. Gazo?”

“Fuck Mrs. Gazo,” Rose said.

“I hate a lot of this too, for that matter,” I said.

“Fair point.”

“If figuring stuff out is your strength, then let’s move forward, and you look at things in that light, and I’ll look at them in my own way.”

“But the important bit of what you just said is that you want to get this discussion moving again,” Rose said.

I nodded.  “Only so much time.”

“Okay.  For our purposes, let’s look at the demon we’re after as a creature of darkness.  Virtually every creation myth touches on certain key ideas.  Light is the most common.  The sun, fire, something in that vein, it’s intrinsically linked to creation in the human consciousness.  To the birth of the universe, the planet, society, and other things.  Water and earth tend to follow in general popularity, but those aren’t choirs we need to focus on.”

I nodded.  “Choir of darkness.”

“The antithesis of creation.  You could say it’s the most powerful choir.  Entropy distilled.”

“I hear you,” I said.  “I’m hard-pressed to think of a good way to ward off something like that, though.”

“I had ideas.  My concern is that it isn’t enough.  There’s too many questions.”

“We ward off creatures with their antithesis, unless they’re weak enough that related elements can repel them,” I said.  “What idea did you have?”

“My idea is that we ward off darkness with fire.  Prometheus, Khepri, the sun.  Fire keeps figuring into myths.  It holds a key place in culture and myth.  I mean, mankind survived, back in the day, and Others presumably preyed on us then.  Fire was a staple.”

“Lighter fluid, then?” I asked.  “A burning circle in the earth.”

“Maybe,” Rose said.  “If you stepped into a room with that demon today, it’s what I’d suggest.  I don’t know if it would work, but burning to death would be better than anything that demon did.”

It would probably get my soul anyway, I thought.  I didn’t volunteer that tidbit.

“You’re thinking fire,” I said. “But?”

“But fires go out, Blake.  Fires spread, raising questions of what happens if we burn down the factory.  I’m not sure which choir Barbatorem figures into, but he’s an abstract entity, and grandmother bound him with rigid, defined lines.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How do you do rigid, defined lines with fire?”

“That’s a bit of a problem,” I said.

“There’s also another question… and this is more in your camp than mine, if we’re talking distinctions between diabolism as a science and diabolism as an art.  Look to the stories, evil creatures of this caliber, and fire tends to be their bailiwick.”

I sighed.  “Yeah.”

But this was about finding ideas, not just about shooting them down.  “What if I were to create a flaming diagram using glamour?  Work around some of the inherent problems? ”

“That’s fine if you’re doing it, Blake, if it’s you alone.  Except you’re bringing another individual into the picture, bring the demon into the picture, and maybe it believes in the flame enough to make that flame act like fire.”

“Bringing us back to square one,” I said.

“Or it doesn’t believe the fire, because it’s not exactly in the same realm of experience as we are, and we’re back to square zero,” Rose said.

I raised an eyebrow.  “Square zero?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Glamour doesn’t work,” I said.  “Okay, something else then.  What about… something glowing?  I’m picturing a length of chain, red hot.”

“Or fluorescent lighting, to be a little more down to earth?”

“Or that,” I said.

“It’s an option,” Rose said.  “I’m not sure how we’d make it work.  Your idea and mine both have problems.”

I looked in the rear view mirror, meeting her eyes.

“They’re ideas,” Rose said.  “A step forward.”

“What other forms of light exist?” I asked.  “Lightning?  I don’t know how we’d do it, but lightning is… unpredictability aside, it’s kind of ordered.  There are rules electricity follows, and we need something ordered to counteract the being’s abstract nature.”

“Lightning would be… impressive if we could pull it off, but I’m not sure where we could find a Tesla coil at this late hour.”

“Moonlight,” I said.

“How do you clarify moonlight?” Rose asked.  “How do you give it enough order that it’s going to stop something like the abstract demon?  A lens?”

“How do you define anything?” I asked.  I leaned my head back against the headrest.  “Boundaries.”

“Boundaries?”

“Without boundaries, nothing has shape.  You shape light with darkness.”

“I think you’re a little delirious,” Rose said.

“Fell, do you happen to have a flashlight in the glove compartment?”

“I have a flashlight.”

“I would be much obliged if you’d give it to me.”

“Give, not lend?”

“That, or we stop by a Canadian Tire on the way.”

Fell pulled over by the side of the road.  He stepped out of the car, and I heard the trunk pop open.  Outside, people came and went.  I saw a figure that wasn’t human.  A ghost, distorted to the point that it was a few feet taller than anyone else on the street.

The passenger door opened.  Fell handed me a roadside kit.

“Can I say-” I started.  He closed the door in my face.

A moment later, he opened the driver’s side door.

“-I really respect a man who’s always prepared,” I said.

He started up the car again, looking over his shoulder before pulling onto the road.

“I can even overlook you slamming the door in my face, because I’m perfectly happy getting to where we’re going,” I said.

“We’ve already talked about where I stand,” he said.  “Right now you’re helping Conquest get his hands on another one of these creatures, and you know my feelings on that.”

“I do,” I said.

“Return to your conversation.  The only help you’ll get from me is either assistance in getting yourself removed from the greater picture, or assistance I’m obliged to give.”

“He doesn’t like you,” Evan commented.

“Very few people do,” I said.  “Of those few people, I think more than a few are going to have an awful lot of questions about the murder arrest.  But that’s beside the point.  Let’s keep brainstorming, Rose.”

“Sure.  I somehow feel like solid barriers aren’t going to hold up against this entity.”

I dug through the kit Fell had given me, finding the flashlight and setting it aside.  There was a first aid kit as part of the thing.  I began patching up my arms, using my glamour to touch up the spots where the tattoos had been distorted, and bandages to bind the rest closed.  “The Knights tried some staple protections, and they didn’t work.  Or some worked and those are the reason they’re alive.  A big part of the problem in dealing with this thing is that we can’t figure out what worked in the past because of luck and what worked because it worked.  Trial and error doesn’t work when the errors get erased from existence and memory.”

“A circle drawn on the ground may not hold up,” Rose said.  “But in the interest of being more positive than negative, putting my best foot forward, there’s another direction we could go, if we wanted to brainstorm.”

“Another direction?”  I asked.

“Rather than light, maybe creation?”

“A circle that grows?”

“Putting it out there.  I don’t know how you’d do it, but… my concern with fire was that it would destroy more than it created.  Fire grows, but that’s a short lived growth.  If we could find something that expands, while maintaining an intrinsic order…”

“Fire doesn’t destroy,” I said.  “It changes.”

“We’re talking magic as an art, aren’t we?  Not science?  Wasn’t that what you said?”

“What does it take to get you on board?” I asked.  “When do you start thinking this might work?  That we might be able to go in there and bind it?”

“I’d want to go in with a few options that make sense.  A few ideas that are sound, given what we know about demons and how they operate.”

“Three?” I asked.

“Okay,” Rose said.  “Three good ideas.”

Three ideas to hammer out.

“Can we count fire as one idea?” I asked.  I held up a pack of matches.

“What are you burning?”  Rose asked.

“I’m hoping our very prepared Fell here has a can of gasoline in the trunk.”

“Planning on blowing yourself up?”  Fell asked.

My eyes closed, I said, “Might incinerate myself, or burn the place down with me inside it.  That a good enough reason to give it to us?”

“Yeah,” Fell said.

“I’ll count fire as half an idea,” Rose said.

“Need two and a half, then,” I said.

“Objects associated with growth… plants?” Rose asked.

“A wreath?”

“Hard to find something that really grows year-round,” she said.

“Evergreen plants,” I said.  “Holly?”

“Hmm.  Or just pine.  I’m not sure you’re in a condition to weave anything complicated, and I’m not sure how ordered it could be.  Put it in the maybe pile?”

I nodded, grabbing the flashlight.  “Light… if I may demonstrate…”

I moved the flashlight, covering it with one hand, so only a sliver of light escaped between my fingers.

A line.

“Darkness,” I said, pointing to an area where the light was blocked, “Light, then darkness again.”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “That’s one idea.”

“One and a half, if we count moonlight?” I asked.

“Maybe.  Okay.”

“If we take Fell’s car battery-”

“No,” Fell said.

“Was worth asking,” I said.  “If we steal someone else’s car battery…”

“That’s more like it,” Fell said.  “If you want to get arrested again, please, be my guest.”

“Let’s consider that another option,” I said.  “Are we on the right track, Rose?”

“If I’m allowed to be negative, I’m not feeling quite ready, even with this in mind.”

“But it’s a step forward?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s keep at it,” I said.  “Protections somewhat covered, we can improvise or come up with something else, if we don’t stick with the plants.”

“We need weapons,” she said.  “Protections mean jack squat if we can’t do anything to the demon we’re supposed to take down.”

“We can talk weapons,” I said.  “How long do we have?”

“Half an hour,” Fell said.

“It’ll have to do,” I said.  “Same ideas apply?”

“Light, fire, energy, creation,” Rose said.  “Can you put together a torch without setting your head on fire?”

■

The oil factory.  The building was ominous.  Blocky, with large windows that hid more than they revealed.  A lonely chimney stack stood off to one side, the trees around the building were thin and badly bowed by snow and ice, like overgrown saplings more than trees,  Graffiti covered the structure, hinting at how many people had once come here to explore and leave their mark on the isolated building before the demon had taken up residence.

Here and there, parts hung away from the factory itself.  A fire escape, half-collapsed, an overhang for a carport, only the rusted skeleton remaining.

Fell had stopped the car five minutes ago.  I surveyed the factory without moving a muscle besides my eyes.  Taking it in.

I couldn’t help but feel that if I asked, Rose would say no.  That she was contrary, on a level, that if I said white, her first impulse would be to say black.  On a level, that was fine.  It was good to have something to keep me in check.  Tiring, frustrating, but good.

But I still wasn’t going to budge or comment.

“We don’t know enough,” Rose said.

“We’ll never know enough,” I said, before I could remember to keep my mouth shut.

Maybe I was the one who was contrary, now that I thought about it.

“If you want to argue a point, Blake, this would be a good time.”

“I think this thing needs to be stopped,” I said.  “There are an awful lot of reasons.  Some personal, some relating to Evan, some relating to Conquest, and some general ones.  Maybe, if we wait a day or two, it’ll be the same.  Someone’s not going to make their way out here and stumble on the demon.  But a week?  Two weeks?  Then it gets a little sketchier.  We have to wonder.”

“So we wonder,” she said.

I continued.  “Black Lamb’s Blood suggested it’s the diabolist’s responsibility to handle this shit.  We had that responsibility thrust on us, in a way.  If we’re going to do any good in our short, violent existences, this is one way.”

“Not if you’re giving that bound being to Conquest,” Fell said.

Not helping.

“Black Lamb’s Blood said a lot of things,” Rose said.

“What I’m asking is just… if we don’t stop it, who will?  And is anything really going to change if I wait until the day after tomorrow?  Do a little more research?  Or is it going to be what it is?  Something scary and unfathomable, where we can only make educated guesses in how to deal with it.”

“A little more education can go a long way here, when we’re relying on educated guesses,” Rose said.  “Hell, we could find a Tesla coil or something, spit out electricity.  Or get a neon sign maker to do a diabolic circle.  We could have better resources, too”

“That sounds marvelously tacky,” Fell said.  “I’d be offended on behalf of practitioners everywhere, if you tried it and it actually worked.”

“Not helping, Fell,” I said.

“But if you’re asking whether we’ll actually make strides worth the risk of waiting?”

“I am,” I said.  “Let’s say we have to do this.  I can’t speak for us, but I can speak for me, and I kind of do have to do this.”

“If you’re asking,” she said, repeating herself a little, “and if we have to weigh it against the chance that we might not get another chance, and all the consequences that would entail?  I guess it comes down to you.”

“Me?”

“I don’t know if you’re in good enough shape to do this,” she said.  “Prove you are.  Get out of the car, without Fell’s help, without Evan’s, and get the gas can out of the boot.  Walk to the treeline, so we can start on our evergreen protection circle.”

I reached for the door handle.

“Blake.”

I stopped.

“Start by telling me you’re up for this.”

“I think I have to be,” I said.

“That’s not an answer.  Think carefully before you open your mouth again.  Because if you say yes, and you aren’t… this is over before we begin.  You can’t afford the loss that comes with a lie.”

I sighed.

“I think I can do this,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.  “You’re hedging it a bit there.”

“I am,” I admitted.  I didn’t waste any more breath.

I prayed I was telling the truth.

I opened the car door, and I forced myself to move.

My legs barely budged.  Stiffness had set in.  It was more like I occupied a corpse than a body.

I used my hands to lift my right leg, moving it over to my right, then did the same with my left.

I slid out of my seat more than I climbed out.

“Don’t forget the kit,” Rose said.

I winced, then bent down to grab the roadside kit.  Flares, matches, emergency candles for setting on the road, a teepee, a blanket… it was heavy.

I held it with both hands, my arms straining against the bandages.

I reached the trunk, and let the roadside kit fall to the ground.

“Shh,” I told Evan.  I popped the locket open and drew a ‘wind’ rune on the gas can, then rubbed my finger against the lid to get more of the dark grit that had accumulated, and did the same for the roadside kit.

“Shh?” he asked.

“I’m cheating a bit,” I admitted.  “Don’t tell.”

“Okay.”

I moved the gas can over to the side of the car and filled it with some gas from Fell’s car, using the squeeze pump.  I shut the trunk and began my long trudge over to the treeline.

The factory loomed there, pale and heavily decorated, the windows ominously dark.

Even the moon seemed to shed less light hereabouts.  The snow typically reflected light, illuminating an area, but we were far from the city, there was less light to go around, and even the movement of a cloud over the moon made a huge difference.

I swayed a bit as my feet sunk a bit too far into the snow.

My hands were shaking, even as they gripped the bag and the half-full can.  I wondered if one or the other would just slip from my grip.

But I still reached the treeline.

I set the kit down, and I got out the deflector mirrors that had come with it.

“You did it,” Rose said.

I nodded.

“Fell just said something, and I’m going to take his word on it.”

“Yeah?” I asked.  The word was curt, cut short because I didn’t have a lot of breath to spare.

Reduced lung capacity?  I thought of the ‘wind’ rune I’d drawn on my chest.  Fuck.

“If you are cracked, if spirits are taking up residence, maybe your spirit needs a bit more encouragement than usual.”

“I wouldn’t complain,” I said.  “But you’re taking advice from the guy that wants us to fail?”

“Does he?” she asked.  “He wants this thing stopped.”

“But he doesn’t want Conquest to succeed,” I said.  “Fine distinction.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “We don’t want Conquest to succeed either, do we?”

“No,” I said.  “And we’ve missed out on an awful lot of planning time on that front.  We’re going to need to use what we have.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “You want to get us started on the evergreen protection circle?  We’ll need the torches too.  I guess I’ll get us started on the whole plan against Conquest.”

I began to free branches from the tree and wind them together.

“The plan, the thing I read about in Black Lamb’s Blood,” Rose said, “We need to turn them on each other.  One way or another.  It was one of the big options presented.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I caught that when I skimmed it.”

“Can we do it?”

“I think we could,” I said.  “It’s not going to be easy.  Conquest… he’s weaker than he lets on.  If Pauz realizes, that’s going to give Pauz the clear win.  We need to strengthen Conquest, but we need to do it in a way that puts him on an even playing field with Pauz.  We need to do it and we need to get away alive.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “We have the goblin?”

“He has the goblin.  But… it’s not very comfortably bound.  Very reluctantly bound.  I suspect we could unbind it rather easily.”

“Okay,” she said.

“And we have the Knights on our side.  If we get this thing, and only if we can make headway against this thing.”

“Okay” she said.  “Give me a minute to think while you work.  First things first.”

I nodded.

I looked towards the factory.

First things first.

My hands shook so badly I could barely weave the branches together.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Conviction 5.6

“Scared?” Rose asked.

“Yep,” I said.  I moved the wreath, and checked it over.  I pulled some tape from my pocket to fix a spot where a branch had come loose.  Four feet across.  I wasn’t sure how to make it fit any geometric principle, so I’d simply repeated a simple pattern.  One large circle, one smaller circle, and y-shaped branches filling the space between, all taped together.

“Me too.”

Evan descended, setting down on my shoulder.

“It’s an old building,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied, still pushing the wreath forward.

“Plants growing all over it.”

“Yeah.  Did you see anything?”

“No,” Evan said.  “I looked in windows, but you said not to get too close.”

“Don’t want anything lunging out of the window to eat you,” I said.

“There’s nothing in a lot of the windows.  No people, no things, no walls, no floors.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “Only emptiness.”

“A little more afraid, now,” I said.

“Good,” Rose told me.  “Fear keeps you alive.  Just don’t panic.  There are rules to follow.  It’s abstract-”

“Can’t look straight at it,” I said.

“No.  You’re going to have to put my mirrors away.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I still carried the little stand-up mirrors that had been in the roadside kit.  I began to put them away.

“We’re close,” Rose said.  “Let’s get geared up.  You know what your number one priority is.”

“Staying alive,” I said.  “You and Evan are the scouts, you’re the voice.  I’m the vulnerable lump of meat that you two are stuck with.”

I worked while I talked.  Only two hands.  Four things I really wanted to carry into the building.  Gas can, emergency kit, torch and wreath.  The torch slid into the holster I’d left for June, a plastic bag over the head, where I’d soaked a strip of bandage in gasoline.

“Evan, whatever happens, you can’t look at the monster, okay?” Rose asked.

“Okay.”

“It might try to trick you.  Just look away, and stay away, alright?  It might be best if you stay outside the building, unless you absolutely have to come in.”

“Okay.”

I put the emergency kit down on the edge of the wreath, and grabbed a few items, preparing.  More tape, right pocket.  Jumper cables, around my waist, clamps tucked into left pocket.

Box knife?  I looked at the reflective surface.

“You heard what we said in the car?  You know what tools we use here?”

“Light, fire, and growth?”

“Yes.  If you see something, let us know.”

I removed the blade, sprayed it with the spray sealant, and scratched it with the bottom of the sealant can until the blade itself was uncovered.  Blade replaced, knife in pocket.

“Can we have signals?” Evan asked.  “In case we’re far away or something happens?”

“Signals are a fantastic idea,” I said.  “Signal number one?  Screaming?  Screaming means something bad is happening.”

“Don’t be a jerk, Blake,” Rose said.

“I’m not,” I said, at the same time Evan said, “He’s not.”

“Ugh,” Rose said.

I tested the weight of the sealant in my hand.  It wasn’t any heavier than a typical spray can, but my arm strength was practically nil.  It was like the morning after my first day at work, feeling the impact of nine straight hours of physical activity.

“Can you sing?” Rose asked.

“No,” Evan said.

“Tweet?  Chirp?”

“Dunno how.  Maybe.”

“You’re a song sparrow,” I said, as I stuck the sealant can in the pocket further down my leg, “I think.  You’re not rusty enough to be a swamp sparrow, not red enough to be a fox sparrow.  Maybe a Le Conte or Savannah sparrow?”

“You know birds,” Rose commented.

“There was a point where life sucked.  Then life became okay.  Good, even.  When I think about the between times?  Two memories stick with me.  There’s the time Alexis reached out for help, and there’s the time I was in my first apartment.  No furniture, aside from a few things I’d borrowed.  Living on the street, you have to deal with boredom.  You watch people.  Deal with them all the time, but not really dealing with them.  They’re there.  No television, no computer, needed to occupy myself, stay sane and keep from backsliding and missing out on the opportunity I’d been given.”

“Bird watching?” Rose asked.

I nodded.  Talking while I prepared myself.  Emergency blanket?  Why the hell not?  It was small.  Back pocket.  Flashlight went in my other cargo pocket, further down my leg, along with two batteries.

“I try to rationalize it now, but I dunno if it makes sense.  I wanted to be away from people some.  I paid attention to the birds outside my window, even fed them until Joel got pissed off.  My landlord.”

“I know who Joel is,” Rose said.

“Evan doesn’t.  I’m explaining this to him too.  I got my tattoos because I needed to do something to make what I had permanent.  I would have done the moment Alexis helped me, but I dunno how I’d even do that.  The birds… above it all, I like the aesthetic, and I liked the idea of the detail contrasted with the vague watercolor… I’m yammering on, here.  You gotta stop me before I do that.”

There was a noticeable delay before Rose said, “No harm done.  Does it help you to feel more grounded?”

I felt like the delay said more than what had actually come out of her mouth.  “Yeah.  I guess it does.”

“How are you physically?”

“I feel like I got gently rolled over by a few cars,” I said.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Only to me, I guess,” I said.  I checked everything was secure in my pockets.  All of the stuff would make running difficult, but I wasn’t in any shape to run.

I made my way to the fence that enclosed the area, leaving the kit behind, hand on can and wreath.  Weather-worn signs were bolted to the fence.  No trespassing.  A man in a circle with a line drawn through it.  Barbed wire ran along the top of the fence.

In a way, the ‘no man’ thing seemed ironic.  Or prophetic, depending on how I looked at it.

“Evan?” I asked.

He flew forward.  The locked gate in the fence swung open.  I kicked the door open wider and passed through.

There were tools here, abandoned so long they had gone rusty. Had a crew come here at some point to revitalize the place, only to disappear?

Shovel, not so useful.  Hedge trimmers, same.  Both were so rusty I doubted they would serve their purpose.

The building loomed.  Graffiti covered every surface that humans could reach without the use of ladders, paint peeled from red brick.  The windows were dark.

Wasn’t even good graffiti, I noted.  Big, bulging letters, scrawled letters.  People making a mark on the world, showing that they’d been here once upon a time.

That, too, was ironic in a way.

Fucking up here meant being forgotten, being erased.  There would be no legacy.  No mark left behind.

My existence, recent events excepted, had been a quiet one.  I hadn’t made a huge impact in my parent’s lives.  I hadn’t done anything so defining that removing me from the picture would make the world a noticeably different reality for anyone.  No angel would be getting his wings from showing me some Blake-less world.

Practitioner bullshit aside, I couldn’t see myself having kids.  I’d yet to see any good parenting, and it seemed better to be safe than sorry.  I had Evan now, but Evan would leave the world when I did.  I had friends that would mourn me.  I hoped they would mourn me.  Being accused of child murder might have hurt me on that front.  But mourning was temporary.  Those wounds healed.

I wanted to make a disturbance.  If the universe maintained a balance, then I wanted to leave something of an imbalance in the grand scheme of things, to be big enough that the world would hurt a bit for my passing.

I clenched the handle of the gas can and the larger branch of the wreath.

Evan’s parents had cared.  That much had been obvious.

“You think mom and dad will miss you, Rose?”

“…The fake mom and dad from fake memories?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, of course.  Why?”

“Nothing,” I said.

My number one rule here was that I wasn’t allowed to die.  The others relied on me to be some kind of pillar that fixed them in the world.  Refining that rule… I wasn’t going to go quiet or gentle.  Most certainly not into oblivion, as this demon would have me do.

The thought gave me the extra strength and grit I needed to scrape up a bit more energy from the bottom of the barrel, to move forward and ascend the metal stairs to the front door.

Someone had blocked the graffiti-painted door with a two-by-four to keep it from fully closing.  Snow had blown against the front of the door and made it into the factory through the gap.

I moved the door and stepped within, my feet touching down on a cloud of powdery snow.

Darkness.  Oppressive.  I quickly tossed the wreath down onto the ground and limped into the center of it.

I reached for the flashlight and clicked it on, eyes on the ground.

The inside was very much the same as the outside, though the graffiti was more pronounced here, where the urban explorers had been able to take their time.  I’d always been under the impression that graffiti artists had a code, and wouldn’t paint over each other’s work, but this stuff overlapped.

With my eyes fixed on the ground, picking up details from peripheral vision and stolen glances, the vague, nebulous shapes and colors that the graffiti left on the walls all seemed like they could be the demon, lying in wait.  They were grimy, painted with the illusion of three dimensions, sometimes given three dimensions where leaves or architecture allowed.

The light the flashlight provided was seductive.  I could feel the demon’s presence here.  No connection I could make out, nothing obvious or apparent enough for me to put my finger on it.  When the light was cast on more distant objects, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the demon was just behind me, or to the side of me.  So close it could caress my cheek.  When the light was closer, it was out there.  Watching.

My eye wanted to follow the light.  Human nature, common sense, a desire for security.  Knowing had a way of making things better.

Distant or close, there was no sign of my demon quarry.  I kept scanning my surroundings.

The plants had grown into the structure in patches, in much the same way weeds grew up from cracks or slats the sidewalk, but they were stunted, meager, and blighted.  Places where the elements had been able to enter the building were littered with debris, the other places so clean and clear that the factory might have been open days ago.  The room just inside the entrance was broad and empty of any fixtures.  Stairs on the far side led to a catwalk that overlooked the bigger room beyond.

The ceiling had collapsed at one corner.  More debris, more snow, and a fairly large barrier to progress.

Something moved at the edge of my field of vision.  Not the demon.  Evan, flying by and looking in.

Here and there, there were holes on the floor.  Cracks, deep enough for me to lose a foot in them.

I knelt on the cold floor, and put the can of gasoline down.  I drew the torch out, and removed the plastic bag that kept the gasoline within from soaking into my clothes.

I painted a circle on the floor with the torch, soaked it again, and continued painting.  A more complex diagram, very similar to the one I’d seen used against Barbatorem in the house’s attic,  but with a wide enough space to spare the wreath within.

I wasn’t even done when the light subtly changed.  Rose doing her thing at the window at the far end.  Covering things up on her side of the window, leaving space uncovered to let faint light through.  It was… it was feeble and weak, I had to admit.  It had seemed clearer in my head.  But I had a dim oval of moonlight surrounding me.

Something moved in my peripheral vision.  Not Evan.  Not Rose.  A stirring.

“Hurry,” Rose said.  Faint and far away.

There was nothing to do but press on.

It took only a second to get the diagram burning.  All of my surroundings were dimly illuminated, now, cast in faint yellow and orange.  The shapes on the walls seemed to move back and forth as the flame did.

I saw it to my left.  It was barely visible in the shadow before it retreated to further darkness, vague and nebulous when I looked at it without really looking.  It moved like a hand without an accompanying body, of its own volition, using fingers to drag itself along the floor, perhaps.  A bulky, multi-limbed, asymmetrical body, with limbs that moved so quickly they might have been flickering.  Matte black.  It might have been a spider gone wrong ten times over with some full-body cancer, or a giant hunchbacked man with a dozen arms that were stretched long enough to reach over and under one another.  But it wasn’t.  It was a demon of the choir of darkness.  Something that had been given life in counterpoint to creation.  It was aged limbs, withered ones, from every species and no species in particular.

It was nearly silent.  There was only a shuffling, the faintest scrape of body against floor.

The front of the body disappeared, and some form of lower body or tail dragged behind it, like entrails trailing behind a man that had been bisected, a spine without the accompanying stomach, or a naked tail.  The trailing flesh was bent in places, as if it had been broken badly and bones had reset improperly.  A kind of detail that teased, invited me to look, as if it were a clue I could use.  But looking was a trap.

The thing didn’t stop moving.  I could make out the larger body shuffling forward to my right, and the ‘tail’ was still being dragged along the floor to my left.

Staring into the fire made my view of the darkness less clear when I moved my eyes to stare at a different section of floor.  Afterimages danced in their wake, spots in my vision, and imagination filled in the gaps to tell me that I was looking at was a part of the demon.

There was no end to it.  It thinned out, leading me to think its tail would pass me by, but then the tail turned out to be dragging something like a fleshy version of an ant’s abdomen, teardrop shaped, moist enough to leave a wet, slick on the ground.  It smelled like bile tasted.  More tissues dragged behind it.

There were now three places around me where the tissue was dragging along in a continuous, snake-like mass.  There were features on parts to my right that didn’t match what I’d seen on my left earlier.

The shuffling could be heard from every direction.  Something was knocked over and the collapse prompted more collapses.

“Demon,” Rose’s voice echoed throughout the space.  “I am Rose Thorburn of the Thorburn line.  All of the choirs know who we are.  We are not to be trifled with.”

I heard spattering behind me.

I couldn’t see without taking my eyes off the ground within my circles, but I could infer from the black spatter that was falling down onto the floor.

Some landed just beside my flaming circle, spatter sizzling in the flame itself.  The flame’s intensity dropped.

If he was close enough to do that, the circle of moonlight wasn’t doing enough.  Couldn’t say whether that was because moonlight didn’t work or it wasn’t clear enough as diagrams went.

“Demon, I compel you to tell me your name!  Tell me, or I will claim the right to name you!  I will repeat myself thrice times thrice.  Prove your weakness by refusing to provide an answer, and I will prove my strength by giving it!”

She hadn’t gone into any detail on this trick.

The demon stopped.  All of the coils and cordons, the segments and limbs, they froze.

The only movement was the distortion in my field of vision, where my eyes had gotten used to movement.  The darkness kept moving, even as the demon remained still.

There was silence, still enough that I could hear my own heartbeat, the creak of the open front door being moved by wind, and the periodic drip of fluids falling from the demon’s body overhead.

It moved.  Faster than before, from zero to fifty in a heartbeat.  It took me a half second to realize why.  Even if I had realized, even if I had been in perfect shape, I might not have been able to move fast enough to dodge.

It lunged.

Maybe it was a small grace that I couldn’t.  I remained where I was, within the circle, not falling into fire or passing beyond any little protection it afforded, and I froze in stark terror rather than look at the massive shape that was now airborne, leaping my way.

It had doubled back, perching above the front door.  It landed a matter of feet from me.  Inches from the circle.  The impact of the landing dashed pitch fluids from its body, a lopsided mouth yawned open, then snapped shut.  The blade of a guillotine.

Blood poured forth, and the demon shook its head like a dog might with caught prey, the movement distorting its features further.

The gore that flowed forth dashed out the flames of half of my circle, giving me only a fleeting glimpse before the darkness made it impossible to see, and the demon’s clutching limbs snatched at morsels.  Where the light touched it, flesh sloughed away, showing muscle and bone, ill-fit together.

It reared back, to draw much of the main body away from the remaining flame, but the periodic spatter was now a downpour.  Flesh falling away in pounds and gallons.  Wet and smelling so violent that I doubted I’d be able to breathe, if I hadn’t already been holding my breath.

I was intact.  Time seemed to go still.  With the flames flaring and dying, the creature closer to the light than it had been, I could make out the fine detail, even with peripheral vision.  I could tell that it had eyes that were less eyes and more slits in the darkness.  Bright without being light.

I was already turning to run, feeling how uncooperative my body was.  How slow.

Limbs caught me.  Fat, brutish ones, like fingers that could bend in any combination of directions, and being so disproportionately long didn’t make them any less fat or brutish.  They hooked between my legs and into the flesh of my belly, trapping one arm against my side.  Clutching my body.  My feet were lifted clear of the ground.

A flutter of wings.  Evan flew right between the demon and me.  As he’d cast the snow aside at the morgue window, the movement had an uncharacteristic force to it.  Enough to dislodge the fingers, to lift me momentarily free.

I fought, and there was too much to fight off to allow me anything but flailing, weak flailing with my current state.  I managed to get loose enough to slip my head free, and I toppled and dropped to the floor, my face mere inches from the ignited gasoline.

I flipped over, grabbing at the gasoline can.  I didn’t bother with the wreath.  The creature’s limbs and bulk were crushing it.  Decimating it.  A waste of time, putting that together.

It was clutching, limbs grasping one after another in Evan’s wake, reaching in awkward ways to stay out of the light and away from the flame, zig-zagging around the barrier with bends in places that shouldn’t have bent, as if it was breaking arms so those arms could work their way past the barrier.

I averted my eyes.  I was coming dangerously close to looking, and it was all too easy for this demon to sinuously slide into my field of view.

When Evan was clearly out of the reach of the hands, coils fell away from the walls where the demon had suspended and hung them.  A falling curtain, the closing portcullis.

Evan found his way through the gaps between the coils, segments and half-formed limbs, momentarily ceasing all flapping and continuing forward with momentum alone, so he could make himself small enough.

I was already moving.  Sluggish compared to Evan and the demon both.  I hopped over the flame, meager as it was, stumbled and crashed to the floor.

It loomed to the side, and I twisted my head away before I could look, twisting my arms around as well, can in hand.  The contents sloshed out, touching the short patch of dying flame that still remained.  It exploded to life with light and violence.

The demon was burned as if the flames themselves had touched it.

It recoiled, more like a snake than anything.  The silhouette wasn’t so different from a cobra, top heavy, supported on too small a lower body.

The darkness consumed it.

I wasted no time in working on my new circle.  Another splash-

It reacted.  On the ceiling, trying to slip by, it recoiled once more, rearing back like a horse might, limbs flailing.

My gaze fixed on the ground, I wasn’t ready or aware enough to see what it was doing.  It lunged again.

This time, it simply crashed into the wall of flame.  The fire did far more damage than it should have.  Incinerating mountains of flesh, torching bent limbs and digits.

In its death throes, it clutched.  One claw blindly reached a foot over my head, me, only to disintegrate as it passed further into the space.  A ‘hand’ reached out to the side, then jammed itself into the thing’s yawning mouth.

Guillotine teeth severed the hand.  Blood flowed forth.  Not the demon’s.

This time I was ready, repairing the barrier with splashes of gasoline.

A naked, jawbone lined with yellowed, uneven fangs clattered to the ground, gums included.

I couldn’t wrap my head around any of it, and that wasn’t helping my mental state.  My hand shook so violently from fatigue and fear both that I dropped the gasoline.  Depositing a pool right in front of me.  Dangerous and wasteful.

It was destroying itself, feeding more and more of itself into the fire.

If there were hints or clues as to why in the creature’s behavior or body language, I couldn’t see it.

I grabbed the gasoline and righted it, then mopped up what I could with the torch’s head, drawing out more of a line.  Two splashes of gasoline closed the circuit, setting the flame alight.

This wouldn’t burn forever.

My eyes fell on the ruins of the roof, on lengths of what had to be too-damp wood.

But still wood.

Outside of the circle.  Beneath reams of the demon’s flesh that had yet to be fed into the fires.

“Blake!”  Rose screamed.

I turned, but all I experienced was disorientation.  I couldn’t search for Rose, because the demon was leveraging its sheer mass to make it impossible to look anywhere without risking looking at it.

“Rose!”

My careful and furtive glances around me showed that the demon had cut itself off.  This part of itself that it was feeding into the fire was dead.  Like a worm cut in two, it had grown another head.

That head had thrust its way into one window, high above.  Nothing in the neighboring windows suggested that it had left that same windowframe.  It had gone in, it hadn’t gone out.

It was in Rose’s domain.

Rather than risk moving my eyes across the intervening space, I closed my eyes until I was looking straight down.

“Blake!  Please!”

I struggled to find my feet, swayed, and nearly collapsed into the fire.  Or, worse, over the other side of the circle.

Was it a trick?  I couldn’t imagine it was.

I dropped the gas can and torch, reached into my pocket and withdrew the small mirror.  I held it straight overhead, covering it with my other hand, and faced it straight down.

“Here!”  I shouted.

I moved my eyes along my body, a safe territory, up my arm, and to the mirror.

Reflected in the mirror, safe within the circle, was Rose, curled up on the ground, so she could remain small enough to be entirely within the reflection.

The demon’s strategy and form had both changed, though it remained a sinuous thing, a centipede of spidery, grasping limbs at the top end and an endless snake body fashioned of oversized intestine, spine and segmented insect parts at the bottom.  A bulbous, tumorous mass three times as wide as a window hit the wall, squeezing through with enough force that fluids leaked forth, streaking the wall beneath.  The fluids encroached on my circle of flame, but stopped short of interfering with it.

The demon’s reflection was it, as much as any part of it.  It passed in and out of windows and unrusted patches of metal without traveling the intervening space.  It kept extending, spreading, claiming all of the darkness.  Becoming the darkness.

It chose only the windows shrouded in enough shadow that I couldn’t see if there was glass or not, metal in the gloom.  At times it bubbled before it erupted forth, seeping in.  Other times, it simply lunged out.  When the clouds shifted and a window saw more light, the demon simply abandoned that section of itself, letting it blister, boil, and die.

I could only hope there was no angle or means by which it could enter the mirror I held.

I heard a scream, and my thoughts turned to Evan.

No.  Trickery?

Not trickery either.  Blood spattered windows, and the creature used the resulting gloom to occupy more territory.  The light that filtered through the stained glass was red.

There was the light of the circle, faint moonlight that came in through some windows and around the collapsed section of roof, and darkness.

This time, when I saw spots and blotches in the darkness, phantom movement in my peripheral vision, it was real.

I could not look directly at the dark here without looking at the demon.  At cords and sinews rubbing against one another, columns of flesh grinding against limbs.

It finished eating whatever it had caught and murdered in order to stain the windows crimson.

“It dawns on me,” I whispered, feeling somewhat numb, “That we really should have hunted this demon in daylight.”

“We’re in over our heads,” Rose said.

The demon’s movements continued.  I was put in mind of a boa constrictor drawing tighter.  Parts rubbing against one another, locking in.  Crushing our little patch of fire-circle light tighter.

I looked to the window, and what had been a gap between the windows uncoiled.  My eye moved a fraction, and I was looking at the demon.

I looked away, and I saw that ‘s’ of bent, broken tail, or arm, staying in my field of vision. creeping out.

I fumbled for and grabbed the flashlight, raising it to my eye.  I held it there, half-blinding myself.

It helped, but not enough.  I couldn’t light the torch without dropping Rose-

I dropped the flashlight, reaching to my back pocket.  The blanket…

I opened the zip bag, clawing it with my fingers more than anything else.

I was going blind in one eye.

I unfurled the blanket, swept it across the patch of unlit gasoline, then into the flames.  I reached up, grabbing too close to the flame, and thrust it at my face.

Not into my face, but enough to fill that one eye’s field of vision with fire and light.

The fire extended to cover the rest of the blanket, and I was forced to keep shifting my grip.  My arm jumped as flames licked it, and I moved the blanket, only to give the remaining tendril ground at one side of my field of vision.

I reasserted my grip, moved the flaming corner of blanket, and burned the rest of the tendril away.  I tossed the blanket into the sea of darkness, where it continued to burn.

Was this measure enough?  It had only been a slim fraction of the demon.  Maybe a bit of the demon’s power rather than the demon itself.  Unintelligent…

No.  There was nothing I could say to convince myself fully.  I could have an expert look me over, and I wouldn’t be convinced.

But this thing didn’t seem to be that intelligent, to be that cunning.  It would take over if it could, and it had tried.  Now it had stopped.  That had to be good enough.

Had it been both eyes, I might not have been able to do what I’d done here.  I laughed a little, heady with relief and nervousness.  I was all too aware of what else was in this space with us.

“You okay?” Rose asked.

“No,” I said.  But the upside is this thing is apparently minor.  Or was it moderate?”

“Being a smartass doesn’t help, Blake.”

More serious, I said, “You’re right.  Um.  I think three of our allies just died.”

“What?”

“Three others.  Maybe more, but I only saw three.  At least one was a goblin.”

“We didn’t bring help.”

“We don’t remember bringing help,” I said.  “If we don’t remember bringing any help, there’s none left, so I have to question how much it matters.  It’s a moot point.”

“Moot point doesn’t mean it’s not a point.”

“It means it’s up for heated debate.  And this is,” I said.  “Just so you know, my arm is getting tired.  I don’t have any stamina, Rose.  I can’t hold this mirror overhead forever.”

“If I don’t have room in this circle, I’ll get shoved out there.”

“I know,” I said.  “Can you jump to grandmother’s house?”

“I don’t think I can without crossing the space in between.  She’s in the space in between.”

“Is it a she?  I thought of it as more of a he.  Or an it.”

“I don’t know, Blake,” Rose said.  She sounded tired.

“Might as well try that binding again,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rose said.

A moment passed.  She apparently needed to compose herself.

My hand was shaking so badly I thought I might drop the mirror.  I felt more hollow than scared, but my body acted scared all the same.

“Demon!  For the second time, I compel you to tell me your name!  Tell me, or I’ll claim the power to name you!  I will repeat myself thrice times thrice, all in all.  Will you give your name, or will you let it lie fallow, all the weaker for being unused?”

“Sounds awfully good,” I said.  “Will it work?”

“Supposed to,” Rose murmured.  “But she can best me in a contest of her choosing, to claim the right to keep the name a secret.  This is kind of a last ditch thing.”

“What if she can’t talk?”

“I don’t think she can’t not.”

“Why not repeat it seven more times, all at once?”

“Theatrics.  It becomes a gimmick instead of a power play.  Have to show confidence.”

“We’re not confident,” I murmured.

“Still have to show it,” she said.  “Demon!  You have not answered my last two entreaties!”

Good word, entreaties.  If I were a demon, I’d give more weight to words like that.

I reached up and very carefully shifted the mirror to my other hand, to give my right hand a chance to relax.

“Name thyself, or forfeit that right!  Nine times, I’ll say this, and I’m saying it for the third time now!  I call you coward, for refusing me this nicety!”

Our entire world had been reduced to a space no more than five feet across.  For all intents and purposes, the only thing beyond that circle was the demon, unfurling and unfolding, slithering against and through itself, the occasional mess of grasping, scrabbling, flailing limbs appearing in the molasses sea.

The fires were steadily dying.  Gasoline could only burn for so long, and fluids were encroaching on our space.

I splashed out more gasoline to replace what was missing.

“Four times, I ask you, demon!  Four times you decline to answer!”  Rose’s voice was loud in the relative quiet.  “Are you a mere beast?  No better than a dumb spirit!?”

The coils constricted further.  Our available space shrunk.

A shadow passed over one window.  More of the demon’s mass occupied the area in between.

If I squinted and unfocused my eyes, the factory was only what it was.  A dark factory.  When I didn’t, when I looked clearly, the demon filled the space. Slithering, endless.  Infinite.

“You have the torch,” Rose murmured.

“I do,” I replied.

“And how much gasoline left?”

I swished the can.  “Not enough.”

“Light the torch?”

“I was waiting until we had a game plan.  There’s a chance we can forge a path, use the torch to stay mobile-”

“Splash gasoline in our way?”

“Fire burns me too, Rose.  That’s… I’d rather burn myself than let that thing get me, but I don’t think I can walk on fire long enough or fast enough to make the gamble.  I’d fall and it would be over.”

“Okay,” she said.

I switched the mirror back to my right hand.  It wasn’t only my hands that were failing.  My legs didn’t feel strong.  I swayed.  The morass of demon in the space around us was making me feel seasick.  Another ploy on its part?

“What game plan were you thinking of?” Rose asked.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” I said.

“What makes you think I have a plan?”

“I don’t think.  I hope.  Because my plan sucks moose balls.”

“What we saw, before she took over the factory… she didn’t touch the plants.  She stays to the shadows, as a rule.  Plants in places where the sunlight usually reaches were mostly okay.  Patchy in other places.  She’s staying in this building, when she could roam.  She needs a den,” Rose said.

“A den.”

“A hiding spot.  Probably the darkest place in the factory.  If we can find and penetrate that place, maybe we could find the demon itself.  Its heart, its head, its source.  I dunno.  It’s a gut feeling, I guess?”

“It’s a good plan,” I said.  “Better than mine.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Get over there, to where the roof fell in, and get to the wood.  Use it for a longer-burning fire, if we make it.”

“And then?”

“I didn’t get that far.  But maybe you could ask for a name a couple more times?  Speaking of?”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “Demon!  This will be the fifth time now I’ve asked for a name.  Five times, you’ve proven the coward.  Name yourself, or-”

The demon rumbled.  A groaning sound, as if the entire building were straining with the demon’s mass.

“Urrrrrr-” it whispered, a sound from very far away, off to one side.

I wasn’t sure, but I suspected maybe the ‘head’ was there.  Be it the many-limbed head I’d seen earlier, or the actual source of the thing.

The guillotine teeth slammed shut, cutting off the prolonged syllable.

“Name thyself!” Rose called out.

“Urrrr-”

Again, the guillotine teeth.

“It’s name is Ur?” I asked.

“Too short,” Rose said.

The teeth, slamming together…

I shifted the mirror to my other hand.  I almost, trusting my body’s demands, sat down.  I remembered I couldn’t, and shifted my weight instead.

“He’s eating it,” I said.

“Eating what?”

“He’s giving the name, and he’s eating most of it before it can reach us,” I said.  “He’s technically obeying.  It’s not going to work.”

“I guess that decides what our plan is going to be,” Rose said.  “Your plan, it would only buy time.  My plan, it’s a possible win.”

“Getting to the heart of the demon,” I said.  “Probably that way, if it isn’t tricking us.”

“There’s a door and a stairwell leading down.  Maybe a boiler room or something?”

I nodded.

“I don’t think you can keep that mirror clear of the demon when you leave this circle,” Rose said.  “If you get me to the window, though, I can slip outside.  Two paces out of your way, but it’s safer for all of us.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.  The window wasn’t far.

Looking at the window, my eyes fell on Evan.  He was there, perched on the far side, his wings spread.

A shadow had fallen over the window earlier.  It had been my familiar.

“It sounds like a plan… but I think Evan has the better plan.”

“What’s that?”

“Forfeit.  Like you said, we’re in over our heads.  We run.”

“Run?”

“It’s… we can’t beat this.  Not here, not on its turf, not in its medium.  In the dark.”

“We burn the place down,” she said.

“Concrete and brick?” I asked.  “I dunno.  Maybe it could slip away in the darkness of the smoke.  It’s not going to work.”

“Guess not,” Rose said.

I searched my pockets for matches, for a lighter…

A kind of horror hit me.

“I forgot to bring something to light the torch with,” I said.

“No,” Rose said.  “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t have anything.”

“You lit the circle.”

“I-”  I stopped.

“She ate it,” Rose said.

I sighed.

The thirty or forty feet to the door seemed far too far away.

“I can’t run,” I said.

“I know.”

“That’s… that looks like the longest walk I’ve ever had to make.”

“I know,” Rose said.

I closed my eyes, and turned to look to the window.  I saluted Evan, who still remained there, perched on the snow that had accumulated on the window ledge, his small wings outstretched high and wide.  The moon was above and behind him.  He wasn’t so big that it mattered that much, but I respected the idea and the effort.

I bent down and ignited the torch by touching it to the flames below me.

I strode away from the door.

“Blake!  Don’t be dumb!”

Torch slashing low, close to the ground.

Claws grasped at me, only to let go as the torch got closer to them.

Hands gripped at my ankles.  I used gasoline to splash at the circle, eliciting flares of light and fire, and they let go.

Most did.

Only a short distance to the nearest window.

“They’re in here!”  Rose screamed.  Then, “In the Thorburn name, I compel you to leave!”

I had no idea if it worked.

The main body of the demon was drawing closer, if my peripheral vision wasn’t lying to me.  Flanking me.  The head, complete with a mess of grasping limbs around it.

I grabbed the can of sealant and heaved it through the window.  I was weak enough I thought it might bounce off.  I had bad luck with breaking glass.

Glass shattered all the same, and without the grime obscuring it, it made the interior brighter.

I threw Rose’s mirror through the gap.

Hopefully she had a safe escape to Grandmother’s house, from the factory outskirts on.  Nothing barring her path.

The demon’s proper body lunged, and its body constricted around me.  I held up the torch and it fell back a fraction.

I nearly threw myself through the window, but I remembered the tendril that had hidden themselves in the space between windows, only to jump into my field of vision.  If the panes of glass there were two feet by two feet across, was there something lurking in the meager space between?

I waved the shoddily-made torch around, coals falling off, and the constricting body fell back.  I turned around.  I now had a fifty foot trudge to the front door.

I started, pulling against claws and other limbs that scratched at my feet.  Some weren’t shying away from the torch.  I didn’t want to chance a look, out of fear that I’d blind myself permanently this time.

Evan used his trick, closing his wings, moving.  The meager amount of moonlight that he’d been blocking flooded into the factory, and limbs and body all pulled away, overreacting.

The demon got its bearings.  It closed the distance, moving faster than I could move my arm and the torch.

Evan came through the hole in the window, and tendrils and cords snapped shut just behind him, as though the window had hidden a net.  He darted close to the demon, and the demon grasped for him.  Dumbly pursuing the closest available target.

It bought me time.  As the demon moved in pursuit of my familiar, the coils and limbs that moved and constricted around me weren’t moving with me as the target.  They got in my way, but I could stagger over them, stumble through, and use the torch to scare away the worst of them.

I used the last of the gasoline, drawing a line from the the dwindling circle to my left.  More tendrils moving and lurching, this time at Evan’s benefit.  I let go of the empty can, letting it fall somewhere near the thin trail of fire and burning demon.

Fifteen feet.  I staggered forward, nearly losing my balance.  I could barely make out the door, had to shut my eyes for terrifying moments when the light began to fade, a cloud passing over the moon, because I couldn’t let the demon in.

Something barred my way.  Like an arm in my path, pressing against my chest.

Evan flew close, and jarred it enough for me to slip past.

The head of the demon was drawing closer, shuffling, near-silent, and I heard teeth slam shut.

Evan turned, clearly intent on distracting it.

I caught Evan out of the air.  “No.”

Let go.  He took another path.

Something told me Evan wouldn’t escape a third time.

I ducked  under the next limb to bar my way.  Between fatigue and the activity of the demon, the increased shadow closer to the far wall, I felt like it was getting twice as hard with every handful of steps.  As I bent low, the stretches of demon nearest to the floor shrunk away at the sudden approach of the light.

I saw one of the demon’s arms that didn’t shrink away.

Dead, severed.  It had cut the arm off when it had been snatching up a goblin.

I grabbed it.

As I staggered to an upright position, though, my idiocy became apparent.

My torch hadn’t been made that well.

The wood branch that held the burning coil of gasoline-soaked bandage burned before the bandage did, and the head fell to the ground.

Ten feet to the door.

I kicked the torch’s head.  Limbs and body shrunk away, and I broke into a shambling run, off-balance, so slow a person that was walking fast might have outrun me.  The torch head bounced off the door, leaving a small, lingering flame.

Evan soared forth, through the gap of the partially open door.

I reached the door and Evan came back inside, forcefully enough to blow it open a fraction.  I saw the approaching connection, moved  my hand-

Dropped the useless torch-branch and caught him, instead of letting him continue forward, back inside.

We stepped out of the factory.  The door banged against the two-by-four that still held it partially open.

I collapsed on the snow.  I saw the limb shriveling in the light, and shoved it into the cold snow where the light wouldn’t find it.

Evan settled onto my stomach.

We’d failed.

Only a detached limb to show for it.  Three allies gone.

How were we supposed to face down Conquest like this?

Histories (Arc 5)

The streets were thick with people.  Men in bowler hats, with long coats.  The streets had both automobiles and horses and carriages.  Joseph glanced around, wary of attack from any direction, tales of pickpockets made him anxious.  He couldn’t shake the idea that his wallet would disappear at any moment.

“Rest easy,” the man’s companion said.  “You have me here.”

“You’re right,” Joseph said.

“Is it worth it, this trip?  These extremes?” his companion asked.

“I’m offended that you even have to ask,” Joseph said.

“Hm,” the familiar responded.  “Chalk it up to differences in how we look at the world.”

Joseph turned to regard his familiar.  The man was dressed as well as anyone else on the street, his hair cut short, neatly parted, a long coat over a suit with a tie, and over-the-ankle boots with slight heels.  The only oddity, one that no passerby seemed to take note of, was the face.  The familiar’s face appeared to have been carved off and pulled free, only to be haphazardly nailed back into position, with nails all around the edges.  The skin hung loose in places, was stretched too tight in others, and he had a permanent leer, exposing perfect white teeth that looked like they had never touched food.

The nameless bogeyman had adopted this new role and familiarhood with a surprising ease.  Then again, he was a stealer of faces by trade.  An actor.  Toronto was very much his sort of city.

A boy in a cap came running down the street, jostling the familiar.

“Careful, my lad,” the bogeyman said, clapping a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the boy said.

Then the boy looked up, and his eyes widened in fear.

The boy was still young enough to be innocent, it seemed.

No matter.  The boy was already running away, releasing only a small, incoherent, frightened noise before he was gone from view.

“I’m getting turned around.  I’m not used to wrapping my head around this sort of place.  Would you find us the way?” Joseph asked.  He passed his sheathed knife to his companion.

The face-stealer drew the blade from its ornate sheath, then held out the sheath, arm outstretched.

They passed a gaggle of young women.  One glanced at Joseph, then looked away, suddenly shy, demure.  No attention paid to the bogeyman with the knife and reaching arm.

The companion found the point where he could balance the sheath on one extended fingertip.  A tap of the thumb made it spin.

It came to a stop.  Joseph took note of the direction the sheath’s end pointed.  “Thank you.”

“It’s your trick,” the companion said.  He let the sheath fall, extending the knife, and the sheath slid into place over the blade.  “I’m only borrowing it.”

But you can do it without anybody noticing.  “Thank you all the same.”

The sheath was handed back to Joseph.  He put it away before anyone could take notice.

“What do we do when we find them?” the companion asked.

“Them?  Who was it you just looked for?” Joseph asked.

“I assumed you wanted to find him before anything else.”

“I thought we’d find her, talk to her, and leave.” Joseph said.

“Did you?” the familiar asked.  “Yet you brought me.  You bound me as your familiar knowing full well what your mission here would be.”

“Yes.  Rescuing her.  Your… talents, they’re a just-in-case measure.  Nothing more.”

“I am a murderer, Joseph.  I can pretend to be many things, but when you take off the mask-”

The bogeyman raised a hand to his face.

“Don’t,” Joseph said.  “Not here.  People will notice.”

“As you wish.  Take off my mask, and I’m a monster.  Your mind is sound, you knew what I was, you knew what you were doing when you reached out to me and offered a position as familiar.”

“I liked you.”

“You’re telling the truth, of course, but who was I, then?  You knew that the complete picture was monster and mask.  I was playing a role, in part.  I was a factory worker with gentle hands, genial, a father.  You knew my friendliness was borrowed, the natural charm and kindness taken with the face, and you could peer past the act when even his family couldn’t.  You still made the offer.”

“I suppose I did,” Joseph conceded.

“But now you waver, my friend.  You lack conviction.”

“No.  I have never felt more certain about what I do.”

“You feel certain about why you do,” the companion said.  “You follow your heart.  But what you do?  You bound yourself to a murderer because you knew you might need a specific someone murdered.  Let’s not pretend we aren’t going to run into him.”

Joseph frowned.

His stretched expression as placid as it could be, hands folded behind his back, the companion walked alongside him.  He’d said his piece.

“Does it bother you?” Joseph asked.  “The idea of returning to murder?”

“Not at all.”  As if to reassure, his companion smiled.  It had the opposite effect.

“You didn’t take any compunctions or guilt when you took the man’s face?”

“I don’t know if I can.  It hasn’t ever come up, frankly.”

“I see.”

“You’ve decided that you’ll be using me, then?”

“I suppose I have.”

“Excellent,” the companion said.  “I was wondering if I might need to coax you into it.”

“Are you eager?”

“No.  But I made promises to assist you.  If it comes down to it, I’ll force your hand to see those promises through.”

“That so?”

“Just so, my friend.”

“And how would you coax me?  Or force my hand?” Joseph asked.

“By telling you that she and he are in the same place,” his companion replied.  “Nothing has changed.”

The news hit Joseph like a slap in the face.

“You’re a right bastard sometimes,” he said.

“Yes,” the companion said.  “You asked, I answered.  When I agreed to the deal, I agreed to be your servant and confidante.  The only lies I tell you will be for your own good.”

“That’s all I ask for,” Joseph said.

His companion smiled, a contrast to Joseph’s own stoic expression.

“Shall we point them out again?” the companion asked.

“No.  I can sense them.”

“Very good.”

The building was a proud one.  White, with columns at the front, gardens well tended, trees trimmed.  No single individual could have looked after it alone, much less look after it so well.

They kept walking until they had crossed the street.  Joseph reached into his coat.  When he withdrew his hand, he dashed blinding powder in a half-circle around him.

The powder expanded rather than dissipate.  A rolling cloud.

Along the length of the short side street, people coughed.  They would see it as smoke from one of the nearby factories, fumes from the automobiles, or something of the sort.

One by one, they found a reason to leave.

“Expensive magic,” the companion said.  “Manipulating people to this extent.”

“I’ve been preparing for this day for some time,” Joseph said, not taking his eyes off the door.  He drew his knife-sheath from his pocket.

Nobody emerged from the house.

If it weren’t for his third eye, Joseph might have thought they weren’t inside.

“Will you go knock?”  Joseph asked.

“Of course.”

Joseph remained where he was, knife in one hand, sheath in the other.

His companion knocked.

The door swung open, and a violent noise sounded.  The blast of a gun.  The bogeyman was lifted off his feet by the force of the shot, knocked down the stairs.

The creature rolled on the ground, groaning in pain.

The man from within the house stepped outside, a rifle in hand.  He wore a vest with no jacket, his mustache was curled, his hair graying.

“Ah.  The boy,” he said.

“Where is Hester?”  Joseph asked.

“Inside,” the man said.  “Where she’ll stay.”

“It’s not right, you… what you do with her.”

“What do I do?”

“Keep her prisoner, possess her.”

“I do what men have done since time was first recorded.”

“That doesn’t make it right, Mr. Canfield.”

“It makes it reality,” Canfield said.  “It seems you’ve brought a knife to a gunfight.”

“Are we fighting?”

“You tell me.  Maybe I have the wrong idea, boy.  Could be you’re holding on to that knife because you have another use for it.  Loose thread on your jacket need a slice, hm?  Are you going to tell me it’s something like that?  That you were just stopping by to ask how my daughter was doing, and then you were going to skip along and do whatever boys your age do these days?”

“I was, but I was intending to leave with her.”

“I’m older, boy.  More learned.  Better armed.  I have more power, more contacts to lean on.  I’m in good with the Lord of Toronto.  This isn’t the fairy tales.  This damsel isn’t in trouble-”

“She is,” Joseph interrupted.

Canfield shook his head.  “No.  She’s safe.  She’s in my care, where she’ll stay.  Any misguided hero who arrives to carry her away is liable to get filled with pellet.  If they live, they get a beating too.  The hero doesn’t win by any rights, boy.  There are no happier ever afters.”

“I never aimed to be a hero,” Joseph replied.

“No?  Is that why you’ve bound yourself to this… thing?”

The older man nudged the bogeyman’s head with the toe of one boot.  The creature recoiled, writhing in pain.

“It’s a part of it.”

Canfield stepped over the bogeyman’s body, gun pointed at Joseph.

Not a moment later, the bogeyman rose to its full height behind Canfield.

With the sight, Joseph could see a protection flare.  An ornament that warned of imminent danger.

Before he could shout a warning, Canfield whirled around, firing a second shot.

The bogeyman collapsed on the stairs.

“Persistent fellow,” the man said, aiming his gun at Joseph.  “Not too pretty either.”

Joseph didn’t know what to say in response.

“If you want to scurry off with your tail in between your legs, I understand.  My daughter is watching from the window.  You do that, and that’ll be the end of it.”

Joseph didn’t dare look, in case it was a trap.  But he felt the connection.

Courtney.

“You’re not running.”

“No, I suppose I-” he almost slipped into ain’t.  “I suppose I’m not.”

“If you want to pick a fight, you should know you’ll lose, and if I do you the grace of leaving you alive, you’ll have some lifelong reminders of what it means to cross me.”

He stopped at the far end of the street.

Joseph chanced a look.

Courtney was indeed in the window, blonde hair falling across her shoulders, hugging herself.

Another stolen glance.

The bogeyman was gone.

“Are you going to fight me?” Canfield asked.

“I’m not much of a fighter.”

“What are you, then?  You practice, clearly.  What do you practice?”

“Illusion.”

“Glamour?”

Joseph shook his head.  “Only illusion.”

“Hardly a fitting match for my daughter.”

“Nobody can be a fitting match for your daughter.”

“You and I might agree for the first and last time on that,” Canfield said.

“We agree for different reasons.  You think it’s because no man is worth her.  I think it’s because your perspective is so twisted that you love her.”

“Are you insinuating something?  I’ve never touched her in an inappropriate manner.”

“I believe you.  But you love her in an inappropriate manner, and so you lock her up so nobody but you may have her.”

“We crossed paths for mere hours, a year ago, and you’ve come to such wise decisions?  You must be a genius, boy.  The next Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’ve asked around.  People talk about it.”

Canfield scowled a little.  “Spreading ideas behind my back?  If you’d come at me head-on and been polite about this whole rescue nonsense, I might have let you off easy.  But you’re running short on my mercy, acting as cowardly as that.”

“Your colleagues talk about it as if it were a charming quirk.  Your enemies talk about it like it is.  An ugly thing.  Your family… it hoards.  You collect and make trinkets, you decorate yourself with them, and you’ve twisted that, turned it backward.  You’re hoarding her.”

Canfield fired the rifle.

The bullet felt hot as it tore through Joseph’s knee.  It was the sort of pain that carried a kind of finality.  The knowledge that things wouldn’t be right again.

Joseph screamed and dropped to the street.

“You little pissant.  You letting your cock lead the way, spin you tales?  You’re the one who is twisting things around in his head.  You want my daughter, but there’s no way that could ever happen, and you blame me?”

Joseph struggled to move so he could reach into his jacket, all the while striving to avoid moving his shattered knee.  He found the powder, then flung it out.

Masking his location, a veil.  Altering connections, as well.

“Illusion, you said,” Canfield told him.  “You haven’t moved.”

He leveled the rifle in Joseph’s general direction.

“Sir!” Joseph heard the voice.  Deep.  “I heard a shot?”

“Ah,” Canfield said, his voice pitched to carry across the street.  “You removed the effect you’d erected moments ago.  Attempting to make me look bad in front of my servants?”

“Sir?  What are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain later,” Canfield said.

As the powder cleared, Joseph remained out of sight.

But Canfield had donned a monocle.  Another trinket.

The man aimed the shotgun-

Then half-turned as his heavyset manservant strode down the stairs.  He could sense the danger, but he couldn’t move fast enough.  The heavy man stabbed him.

Nothing artful or honorable.  The manservant thrust the knife into Canfield’s gut over and over as if he were punching rather than holding a knife.  His face was fixed in place by four small kitchen knives.  A man had died to give him that face.  The effect had been fresh and strong enough that even Joseph hadn’t been immediately aware of it.

Canfield shoved him away, then fired the rifle.  The ‘manservant’ collapsed, then immediately began to stagger back to his feet.

Canfield, unwilling or unable to reload, used the rifle as a club to bash at the familiar.

Joseph reached into his pocket.  Cards.  Bound creatures.

Illusion wasn’t all he could do.

He tore the cards, and the creatures lunged.  Three dogs, noble hounds that might have served as companions to divine hunters once upon a time.

Joseph drew further effects from his repertoire.  Things he’d collected.  A rusted old ring- he raised his hand up, then slammed the ring down on the street.  He didn’t succeed in breaking the ring – only hurting his hand.

He did it again, and something minor came loose.  The older books hadn’t ever described a moderate spirit of this kind, but they were becoming more of a thing with the turn of the century.

As the ring had been destroyed and spent, the spirit would be released only the one time, here.

The hounds were leaping into the air when Canfield used another trinket.  A child’s toy, with a handle at the side.  Everyone present, spirit or otherwise, was bound where they were, hounds held in mid-air by green threads.

“Ironic, in a way.  Courtney made this one, believe it or not.  It was meant to be a gift, but the child it was intended for died.  I keep it on my person as a reminder.”

There was no good way to go on the defense.  Canfield had an answer to everything.

Better to wait and react, counter.

“No smart response?” Canfield asked.  He grunted, wincing.  The stab wounds were hurting.

Have to get him talking.  He’ll die of that stab wound before I die from this injured knee.  He’s older.

“I swear I’m going to watch you die,” Joseph growled the words.  “By my name, by my blood, I’m going to do what’s right and I’m going to free that girl.”

The words carried power.  He felt stronger, the pain was less.  His mental clarity improved.

“Yet you say I’m the one twisted by love,” Canfield said.  “What will you use to kill me?  A moderate rust spirit?  Clever.  Let’s do away with it before it becomes a problem.”

Canfield bent down as best as he was able with his feet trapped in position, and began drawing out a line of chalk.

Joseph, not feeling half the pain he had, reached into his coat for chalk of his own.  A box, with a symbol inscribed on each piece.

He drew out a line, and a dozen other lines scrawled along the length of the road.

He drew out a more dramatic scribble, and scribbles spanned the length of the street, interrupting and confounding Canfield’s circle.

But Canfield continued drawing.

No.

Another trick, then, taking advantage of the pieces already on the board.  Dust, thrown out.  Illusions.  One for the hounds, to make it seem like they were more.  One for the rust spirit, to narrow its focus to Canfield alone, and one for the companion, the bogeyman familiar.  Another illusion for Courtney herself.

Canfield rotated the handle of the toy box, and the lid sprang open, a clown bouncing out of it.

Everything resumed moving.

The circle was complete, and the illusion did nothing to break it.  The hounds landed and stopped.  The rust spirit halted.

Canfield was reaching for a whip.  Something to facilitate turning summonings back on the one who had sent them?

“Father!” the familiar screamed.  Courtney’s voice.

Canfield turned, then went white.

The familiar held the skin of the manservant’s face dangling from one hand.  Courtney’s face was the one that it wore, his body matching hers.

Canfield turned to look, and he saw Courtney in the window, slumped down, her flayed face having left a smear where it had dragged against the window.

It was an opening.  The familiar strode forward and broke the circle.  Canfield blocked the knife before it could strike home.

Joseph allowed himself a moment to try and shift position, so he wouldn’t have to struggle so much to access his own collection of tools.

The movement of his knee momentarily blinded him.

It was the mistake that would decide the engagement.

When he could see again, Canfield had turned the tables.  Canfield had a scrap of white cloth in hand, and he had company.

A man in a white jacket, with a thick handlebar mustache.

The Lord of Toronto.

The illusions had faded, Courtney was fine, as was the familiar.

“You will die soon, Canfield,” the Lord spoke.  “It will be a suffering death if and when it happens.  It is not my place or my way to stop that from coming to pass.”

Canfield nodded.  He wasn’t able to stand straight.

“Hey!” Joseph shouted.

“I prefer subjugation over death.  I surrender my self,” Canfield said.  “It’s my understanding that an incarnation needs to root itself in humanity from time to time, to stay relevant and rooted in the doings of man.”

“Yes.”

“All I ask is that my daughter is taken care of.”

“You’ll have it.”

With that, the Incarnation stepped forward until it intersected Canfield.

For an instant, Canfield was the one wearing white.

Then, a moment later, the one wearing white had a trace of Canfield’s features.

Those features were soon swallowed up in a greater ocean.

The Incarnation brushed at a few traces of blood at its stomach.

“I asked permission to attack,” Joseph said.

“You did,” the Incarnation said.  “You were just.  Not right, but just.”

Joseph grunted as he tried to raise his head.  “If you allow me to walk away, I’ll look after her.  I can guarantee that she will be taken care of, so you can meet your obligation to Canfield.”

“You will marry her,” the Incarnation said.

Joseph nodded.  Hope soared.

“You will not walk away,” the Incarnation said.

Joseph’s eyes widened.

“I name you forsworn, Joseph Attwell.  You did not see the girl’s father meet the end you promised.  You cannot.”

“I…”

“If you would argue your own defense, then do so.  Name the actions you would undertake, and I will grant my assistance in allowing this to come to pass.”

Joseph hung his head.  “I spoke while drunk with pain, and love.”

“Pain is something I know well.  I assure you this is no defense.  Love is something I’m not familiar with, but it is no defense either.  Would you make another defense?”

Joseph shook his head.

“Then I bind you by that which you swore by.  I bind you by name, by your entirety.  I bind you by your blood, to bind all of your kin that follow after you.  I bind you by your word, to claim your obedience for myself.  I offer you a second chance to gainsay me.”

“I can’t,” Joseph said.

“With my claim, I offer you the protections you would forfeit.  It is your choice, whether to accept or refuse.

To be at the mercy of anything and everything, all of the vulnerabilities of mortal and Other both, or to be in Conquest’s service?

“I’ll obey you to the best of my ability,” Joseph said.  And he knew he was, in a way, swearing fealty to Canfield.

“You and yours,” Conquest said.  “All the ones that come after.  You won’t need your familiar.”

He felt his bogeyman slip from his grasp.

“Your children and children’s children, all down the line, are mine, from the moment they learn the practice.  You will not bar them from it, after they’ve come of age.”

Somewhere in the haze that followed, Joseph heard Courtney’s voice.

“I didn’t ask for your help.”

It was then that he knew he was lost.

■

A hard shove sent the boy sprawling into a chair.

He looked up to see his father glaring down at him.

“What are you going to do about it?” the man asked.

The boy clenched his fists.

“You have no tricks.  You have no power.  I have magic, you don’t,” the man said.  He kicked, and the boy scrambled out of the way.  The man kicked a chair instead, and the boy yelped as the chair tipped over, striking him.  “You’re weak!”

“You want to learn this?” the man asked.  “You want my power?”

A sweep of the arms sent dishes flying off the dining room table, crashing to the floor.

“I have never been more disappointed than I was when I first set eyes on you,” the man said.  “That disappointment, that shame?  It eats at me.  Get out of my fucking sight!”

The boy scrambled away.

The man made his way to the kitchen.  His wife stared at him, accusing, holding a child to her shoulder.

“Not a word,” he said.

There was only disgust on her expression as she set a beer bottle down on the counter in front of him.

He swiped at it, grabbing it, and found his seat in his sitting room.

One beer bottle became two, then four.  His nightly routine.

The click wasn’t routine.

He opened his eyes.

It was the boy.  Gun raised, held in both hands.  There were tears in the boy’s eyes.

“You hate me,” the man said.

The boy nodded.

“Then pull the trigger.  Your mother will clean up the mess.  She hates me too.  She’ll be glad to have me dead.  Or are you a coward?”

“You’re the most horrible person I’ve ever met,” the boy said.  His voice was hoarse, his words a whisper.

“If you want me to be scared, you’re in for a sore disappointment, boy.  I haven’t been less scared in a long, long time.  And you know I’m telling the truth, don’t you?”

“I could shoot you, right here, right now.”

“Why are you talking to me, you little fool?  You’ll never work up the courage, doing that.  I’ll even tell you how to do it.  Think back to everything I’ve done to you.”

He could see the boy’s hands shaking.

“I did other things you don’t even know about.  I laughed when I buried Red.”

He’d never shared that tidbit.  He could see the reaction.  The tension that took hold of his son’s whole body.

“God, the way I treated your mother?  I’d shoot me.  And you don’t know the half of that.”

“She never loved you, she said,” the boy said.

“Yeah.  Loving her was my second biggest mistake, after making you.”

He could see the shock on the boy’s face.

For an instant, he thought the boy would pull the trigger.

Then he saw the cold take hold in the boy’s eyes.

“I’m going to shoot you,” the boy said.

“You keep saying it, but you haven’t done it.”

“After,” the boy said.  “First… I want the books.”

The man shrugged.  “I can’t stop you from taking them.”

“Show me where they are.”

The man lurched, then stood.

The books were in the simplest of hiding places.  On top of the bookshelf.

Drunk, he threw the books down rather than hand them over.  He slumped over.

The boy, still holding the gun up with one shaking hand, grabbed at a book.

The moment that hand touched book was marked by the sound of a shutting door.

The boy turned.

A man in a white coat, with cold eyes, and two figures in chains trailing behind him.

“Oh gods, I’m so sorry,” the boy’s father said.  Tears welled and streamed down his face.  “You should have pulled the trigger.  I deserved no less.”

“You’ve done your duty, Joseph,” Conquest said.

“Please,” the drunk man said.  “Please.”

“Your son’s name?”

“Matthew,” Matthew said.

“Matthew,” Conquest said, noting it.

“What’s going on?” Matthew asked.

“I’m so sorry, my son,” Joseph said.  “I… I thought you’d run away, out of his reach.  That you’d hate me enough to kill me.  I left the guns in reach… none of what I said, I didn’t mean it.  The disappointment I felt was in myself.  I made myself laugh when I killed Red…”

The boy’s eyes widened with each statement.

“Oh gods, I’m so sorry, my son.  It was the only way out that I saw for you.  The only path.”

Conquest intoned the words, “Matthew Attwell, as I bound your father, I bind you.  By your forsaken blood, you are bent to my will, your well-being is purely at my behest…”

“I’m sorry for everything I’ve done, and I’m sorry I pushed you as far as I did.  I’m sorry I didn’t push you far enough.”

“You will serve me unto the end of your days, Matthew,” Conquest said.

■

“A riddle, if you will,” Matthew said.

“Turning the tables?” Isadora asked.

Matthew smiled.  He was tall, pale blond, with round glasses and a tweed jacket.

“You’re looking at turning the tables,” the sphinx said, making it a statement.

“Is there an escape from my current circumstance?”

“If I told you, you would be compelled to fight against it.”

“If it were direct enough, yes.”

“I would also earn the enmity of Conquest himself.”

“Is that so bad?”

“Bad enough.  My kind is few enough, without getting ourselves killed.”

“Fair.  Is there an answer?”

“There are several,” Isadora said.

“That’s good to know,” Matthew said.  “Is the answer obtainable?”

“Yes.  But not in your lifetime.”

“No?”

“No.  You’ve studied this a great deal.  Approached it as a puzzle.  I respect that.”

“Thank you,” Matthew said.

“You tried the logical, you also tried more free answers.”

“Hm.  Not sure what you’re referring to.”

“Your wife.”

“She’s a lovely woman.”

“She’s unfaithful.”

A wide smile broke across Matthew’s face.

“You chose her because you knew she would be unfaithful.”

“She’s a brilliant person.  She must have figured out what I was going for.”

“You looked for these qualities in her.”

“She’ll teach my children well.  Well, ‘my’ children, even if they aren’t my blood.  Enchantment works well with illusion.  Maybe that’s what we need, in terms of different approaches.”

“You’ve defined yourself by those games, by these studies,” Isadora said.

“Books and deception.  An illusionist’s prerogative.  An Enchanter’s too, now that I think about it.”

“What good is misdirection if your subject finds their direction a moment later?  Don’t answer that.  Rhetorical question.”

“Fair question.”

“I don’t have many of those.  A boxer who only feints achieves nothing, Matthew.  You must feint and then deliver the blow.  If only to have scored the points when the round ends.  Fail to deliver that hit, and your opponent very well might.”

“Conquest will?”

“Your opponent isn’t Conquest, Matthew.  It’s fate.”

“Ah.  Fate’s something of a bitch, isn’t it?”  Matthew smiled.

“A young girl is born in Egypt.  The odds are good that she will be mutilated and sewn up.  A child born in Africa may spend their life in poverty, starving, if they are unlucky enough to be born in the wrong region.  Another child might be born with a disability.”

“And members of my bloodline are doomed to be slaves to a greater power.  Fate deals a harsh hand.”

“Yes,” Isadora said.

“But a child born to poverty can fight their way to success.  A disabled child can overcome their limitations,” Matthew said.

“An uphill battle.  For every one that succeeds, there are many more who simply live with the hand that life dealt them.”

“That shouldn’t stop them, or me, from striving for that success all the same.”

Isadora frowned.

“What?” Matthew asked.

“I’m sorry, Matthew.”

“Sorry?”

“Your wife is unfaithful, Matthew, but the children she bears will be yours.  They’ll be Conquest’s, too.  Your struggles to date have been fruitless.”

The smile fell from Matthew’s face.

“I’m sorry.”

“Damn,” he said.  “Damn, damn, damn!”

Isadora waited patiently.

“Damn!” Matthew shouted.  He kicked the chair to his right.

He hated being this angry, even when it was a real anger, and the anger he’d grown up with had been partially an act.  He forced himself to stand still, calming down.  It wasn’t very effective.

His back to the sphinx, he stood there, head bowed.  He moved his glasses to wipe at his eyes.

After a few moments, Isadora asked, “Would you like more tea?”

Matthew nodded, his back still turned.

“I’ll brew up another pot.  In the meantime, let’s talk about your research.”

■

Fell closed the car door.  The diabolist was staggering away, gas can and emergency kit in hand.  Hooded jacket, tousled blond hair, and a general look that was more Other than human.  Hollowed out.

The little familiar had taken to the air, circling around a few times, while three maimed goblins with chains around their necks trudged behind, dragging bundles of halogen lights and wires.  A quick glance suggested that Rose wasn’t in the mirrors here.  Good.

He checked the route on his phone, then mounted it on the dash.

Fell wasted no time in leaving.

His own bloodline had fallen prey to bad circumstance.  The thing in that factory was worse.  Worse than a force that had altered the lives of generations.

He needed to prepare.  The Lord of Toronto, if left unimpeded, aimed to summon things that should be left alone and forgotten.  But they weren’t forgotten, as Blake and Rose were demonstrating, and Conquest was already demonstrating that he had no plans to leave them be.

Fell’s father had turned an analytical mind to the problem their bloodline faced.  He knew that there was leeway. The shackle that bound them was not perfectly fit, and one could wiggle within the confines of the rules and stipulations.  His father had demonstrated as such.  When Conquest had given an order that Fell’s father hadn’t wanted to obey, the man had carried it out with such recklessness that he’d died.

The window of opportunity had passed, resources that Conquest had invested into that particular bid for power remained spent, and Conquest grew weaker.

Their family was no longer growing, and Conquest had less pawns in play as a result.  This had coincided with the Lord’s waning power.

They’d win through nicks and patience, with one eye open for opportunities.

Except the Thorburn had arrived, giving Conquest a convenient way of getting the power he wanted.  Inadvertent, but still a problem.  Still unforgivable.

Fell had little pity for those who’d been doomed by circumstance.

The first step would be getting access to his books.  Too many things simply didn’t make sense.  Conquest’s decisions, the methods, the aims.

The speed limit sign said fifty kilometers an hour.  Fell hit ninety.

A horn blared as he rounded a corner.

He shifted gears, reoriented, and hit a hundred on the next stretch.

Even if he died, there were others in the family.

But it would weaken Conquest, and a death colored by spite wasn’t such a bad thing.

Defeating and removing Conquest would be better still.

Tonight and the events that followed would decide things.

The GPS in his phone told him that it should take an hour to get home.  He made it in thirty-nine minutes.

Powder from his pocket on the car ensured it wouldn’t get stolen or ticketed.

He reached his apartment.

“Uncle!”

He wrapped his arms around his niece as she ran up to him.

“Thank you for picking her up at the airport,” he said to his mother.

“My pleasure,” the woman said.  “How is the situation?”

“We’ll talk later.” He talked to his niece. “For now, I want to hear how my niece enjoyed the last few weeks at the castle.”

“It was amazing!  The very first day there, Jaclyn showed us all of the friendly others!  There’s a merman in the basement, where it flooded, and a giant in the hills, and there’s…”

He only half-listened, hugging the girl close as he kicked off his boots and made his way to the kitchen to get a drink.

Her father, Fell’s older brother, had gone the way Fell’s father had.  A reckless death.  Suicide by Lord, simultaneously causing trouble that put Conquest on uncomfortable footing.

Making her his.

His to look after.  His to doom to subservience, when the time came.

His grandfather had tried to use anger and hate to drive his father away.

His father had tried to misdirect, to game the system.

Fell only used distance.

“I didn’t do any magic,” she said, a little breathless as she finished.

“I know,” he said.  “I’d know if you did.”

“They showed me so much!  There’s an old shrine with a god who people used to worship.  And the merman, every time you go to talk to him, he goes under the water, and he comes up with a present.  Real gold, sometimes.”

“That’s amazing,” he said.  He glanced at his mother.

“Emily brought me back a present,” the woman said.  Showing off a necklace that had maybe suffered for decades spent underwater.

“And they let me sit there when Jaclyn met with her class.  They practiced, and I sat on my hands and kept my mouth shut.”

“Perfect.”

“I really want to start doing the stuff they did.”

“Maybe one day,” he said.

She smiled.  “On my next birthday?”

“We’ll see,” he said.  “That depends on a lot of things.  Some are important things I need to talk to your grandma about.  Which means you should be getting to bed.”

“But you just came back!”

“We can talk in the morning, Emily.  But you know I can’t like, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What I’m going to talk about with grandma here has something to do with whether we’ll let you learn magic.  If things work out in the next day or two, we won’t have to wait.”

We won’t have to wait until Conquest forces me to indoctrinate you, like my father was forced to do with me.

Though the way that Emily was going, she’d probably ask some time after she came of age, and he’d have to obey regardless.

“Go on, honey,” Fell’s mother said.  “I’ll be in to tuck you in soon.”

The little girl pouted, but she left.

Fell and his mother sat at the other end of the apartment.

“We can send her back to the castle after the school year is over.”

Fell nodded.

“I know some people.  They’ll be visiting for the wedding in Jacob’s Bell.  We can send her with them when they go home.”

“She’ll be well-traveled, if nothing else.  Can you manipulate the connections?  Enhance the attachment between them and her?”

“Not without making dangerous enemies.  We’ll find one place to tie her down that’s out of reach.  That reach has been getting smaller.”

“It might not stay small if things start catalyzing here.  Thorburn is dealing with the abstract demon.”

“Will he succeed?”

“That’s the question.  If he does… and if he doesn’t have a plan, then all hell might break loose.”

“Careful about hyperbole.”

“It’s not hyperbole.”

“Be careful all the same.  Go on.”

“If Thorburn fails… something tells me that my understanding of what should happen differs from our local lord’s expectations.”

“He wouldn’t be so reckless with Thorburn, given what the diabolist is to him.”

“No,” Fell said.  “It’s… eight thirty.  Thorburn’s deadline is midnight.  I don’t think things are going to settle down then.  The other local players will make moves, our Lord will respond, potentially bringing out the big guns.  Thorburn is his own camp.  The major players are another camp entirely.  Allied but not friendly.”

“And where do we stand?”

“With Conquest, unfortunately, unless a good opportunity comes up.”

“I’m not quite so beholden to Conquest as you are,” his mother said.

“That reality relies on you staying under his radar.  If you’re going to abandon that position, we should make sure it’s for good reason, with optimal timing.  Tonight, given the chaos that’s likely to unfold, the timing is far from optimal.”

“In enchantment, we pay particular attention to degrees of connection.  There tend to be figures who serve at the heart of the intricate webs of connections.  People who have far more connections extending from them than your typical person.  Social people, players of the game, catalysts…  You most certainly are not this kind of figure, Malcolm.”

“Few illusionists are.”

“Putting aside the fact that you’re an enchanter, not just an illusionist, we should give thought to who the lynchpins are in this tangled web.”

“The Lord of Toronto.”

“Yes.  Who else?”

“Thorburn.  Though I say that with caveats.”

“Which caveats?”

“He’s severed his connections with the rest of the world.  Very nearly bled himself dry.  He’s now straddling the line between human and Other.  I genuinely wondered if he was possessed, earlier.”

“My family doesn’t particularly want him to do well here.  My own feelings… well, I feel fairly lukewarm about my family’s wishes, given how things have played out in the last decade or two.”

“Understandable.”

“He’s a tool.  Is he a tool we can use?  You need to give me the answers.  You’re the one with eyes on the scene.”

“Yes, but… well, Blake Thorburn was having a discussion on the way over to visit the demon.  He and his partner talked about the dangers of using fire as a diagram.”

“Not very conventional.”

“That’s just it.  He’s… he is fire, metaphorically speaking.  Hard to predict, hard to control.  Even as a useful tool, he’s dangerous.”

“And if that fire were put out?  If we cut the few connections that remain?”

“He’ll be lost.  Potentially to Conquest.  Do we want to, though?  Conquest seems remarkably at ease with the idea that Thorburn might get devoured by the demon, soul and everything else about him cast down into oblivion.  Why?”

“Logic suggests that the demon would eat him, his companions would be lost as well, and the next Thorburn would find themselves heir to the property, powers, and dangers.”

“Yes,” Fell said.  He leaned back.

“The Lord of Toronto clearly feels something else would unfold.”

“Apparently.”

Fell’s mother affected a smug tone, “What could that be?”

“We don’t have time to play games.”

“Not games.  I will always expect you to stay sharp, Malcolm.  Give me an answer, instead of complaining.  Your grasp of the answer will be better if you achieve it yourself instead of me giving it to you.”

“The mirror-companion is heavily tied to Thorburn.  The Lord of Toronto is tied to the companion.  Does he think he can somehow rescue Thorburn if it comes to it?”

“Possible.  But let’s look closer at the mirror-dweller.”

“She’s a bit of a riddle,” Fell said.

“Is she?”

She was maintaining that same smug tone that had driven him batshit insane when he was a teenager.

“What else could she be?” Fell asked.  “If she isn’t the riddle… she’s the answer?”

His mother smiled.

“Thorburn gets removed from the picture and… the mirror dweller is the one who takes up the position as heir?”

“It answers questions.”

“It raises more,” Fell said.

“It’s progress.  A step forward in understanding.  We can illustrate the connections that extend between everyone present,” his mother said.  She reached for her purse, withdrew a tablet, and began drawing on it.  “Everyone is a sun, with rays radiating out from them, attaching them to the world around them.  Mr. Thorburn is a bright star, if one that might burn out soon.  He’s eliminating those rays by his own actions, or circumstances might snuff him out.  Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Conquest is perhaps the brightest star in this city.  He’s connected to virtually everything.  This is one of the factors that make him hard to remove.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“I’m illustrating.  Who, then, is Ms. Thorburn?”  His mother touched the pad, leaving a dot.

“Companion to Blake,” Fell said.  “Bound by Conquest.”

“Yes.  Remove Blake, assume she doesn’t disappear, and she’s…”

“Still Bound by Conquest.  With no other ties to the world.  His and only his.”

“A pet diabolist.  With everything that entails.  It might be in our best interest to look after Mr. Thorburn.”

Fell frowned.

“We can’t help him now.  Trust Mr. Thorburn to manage for the time being.  Let’s arm ourselves for the conflict that’s about to erupt.  Go get the books, I’ll tuck my granddaughter in.”

Fell nodded.

He reached the bookshelf, but he got no further.

He felt a tug, and he was in Conquest’s tower.  He caught himself before he could stumble or fall.

Conquest was here, monstrous, massive.  Expending more power for pure theatrics.

On another day, he would be glad Conquest was expending power so readily.  This day was different.

“Thorburn has escaped the demon’s lair,” Conquest said, his voice a low rumble.

Fell had no idea how to feel about that.  He remained still.

“Is that a good thing?”

“Good enough.  Trouble’s brewing.  The locals are stirring.  I may ask the novice diabolist to help me manage it.”

Setting him up to die.  Again.  Stirring more trouble, creating chaos.

“Shall I assist him?”

“Your choice,” Conquest said.

“I’ll go meet with him shortly, then.”

“Do.”

No mention made of the fact that he’d hauled Fell from his day-to-day.

Fell turned to go.  A disturbance made him pause.

Conquest had brought the mirror-dwelling girl here much as he’d brought Fell.  More expenditures of power.

“Now,” Conquest said, to the girl, “You will tell me everything you don’t want to tell me.  Starting with Mr. Thorburn’s plans.”

“No- I-”

“There is no choice in the matter,” Conquest intoned.

“I-”

Fell paused.  “Miss?”

Conquest turned.  Ms. Thorburn ceased stuttering.

“It goes easier if you just obey.”

Ms. Thorburn’s voice cracked.  “I- he’s setting the imp on you.  It’s already scheduled.  He was calling in the Knights, and he’s releasing the Hyena too.  I think they figured out how.  They want to trap you in your realm with the monsters, and use the demon’s appendage to lock the door.”

Conquest nodded.  “This is a start.  Keep talking.”

Fell took his leave.

Subordination 6.1

I was still lying in the snow when the Knights found me.  I’d called them, they’d answered.

Headlights shone through the wire fence.  They didn’t want to get closer.  I heard the truck’s doors slam, followed by the murmur of conversation.  Men and at least one woman.

I dug in my pocket with my free hand to get a mirror.

“Rose?”

“I’m here, Blake.”

“You got out in one piece?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said.  “You maybe want to say hi to the Knights, then?”

“You can’t?”

“Give me a minute and I’ll see if I can stand,” I said.  “But we need to make the most of the time we have, so maybe if you could get us started?”

“Sure.  Be right back.”

I made myself move, and it was harder because I was cold, harder still because I’d spent just about everything I had. My first course of action was to cover the demon’s arm, which had joined the rest of me in sinking into the snow.  Harder to do than it should have been, because I wasn’t willing to look directly at it.

The Barber was evidence that demons could be tricky.

I managed to get my jacket off and wrapped it around the arm.  It was only then that I felt confident enough to try to stand.

Movements happened in fits and starts, every part of my body either numb with exhaustion or tight with pain.  I turned over, then got on my hands and knees, then rose to a kneeling position.  From there, it was a matter of getting from a kneeling position to a standing position.  I’d maybe taken a solid minute to get this far in the process.

“Need help?” Evan asked.

I nodded.  I wasn’t quite sure how useful he would be, but I wasn’t about to turn down help.

One foot under me, good.  Another under me, using the demon’s severed arm as a cane, and I still lost my balance.  Evan tried to catch me and failed.

I landed face first in the snow, arms to my sides.  Every single one of my injuries felt like they’d just inflicted on me a second time.  I felt Evan land between my shoulderblades.  He said something, but I couldn’t hear with the snow muffling the sound.

I lay there, trying to sum up the strength for a hands-and-knee crawl through foot-deep snow, my exhausted brain somewhere else entirely, trying to piece together a plan using the tools I had.

I heard footsteps shuffling through the snow.  I raised myself up a fraction.

A woman.  Someone I didn’t recognize.  Not old, but not young either.  She looked like the sort who would have been the really cute girl next door, but some lines had reached her eyes.

She bent down, offering me a hand.  I took it, grabbing her upper arm while she grabbed mine.  More leverage and help than I’d get simply by holding her hand.

She straightened, offering me the strength of her legs and arm both.  She caught me when I stumbled into her, one hand on my shoulder.

I stiffened at the physical contact, but I didn’t have the ability to do anything about it.  We settled into a position where she held one of my arms with both of hers, steadying me while still holding me up a little.

Her expression throughout was grim, a little sad.

“They said you failed?” she finally asked.

“They?”

“I’m the Knight’s blackguard.  Priss.  A lot of groups have a member like me in them.”

“A blackguard?”

“The designated liar,” she said.  “Sometimes you need someone with the protections ordinary people have, or you need a person who can bend the truth or lie, when questions start getting asked.”

Ah.  I’d read about witch hunters and the like.  Priss would be the same thing, minus the witch hunting part.

“It was you in the police station?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“Time got turned back, and in a previous timeline, a member of the Knights stopped by the police station to give me an alibi.”

“Oh.  That would have been me.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I didn’t do anything in this timeline.”

“Thank you all the same.  The only reason you didn’t was because a police officer intervened the second time around.”

“Someone stopped us.”

“What did he say?”

“That there were wards and runes in place for a specific purpose, and if we entered, it would be as good as a declaration of war against him and his people.”

“I take it you guys weren’t willing to fight that war,” I said.

“It’s not just that.  We asked if he was on the local Lord’s side, and he said no.  We briefly talked it over, and we thought we’d play it safe.”

“I get it,” I said.

“We didn’t want to interfere if you were doing something convoluted, and no, we didn’t want to pick a fight without knowing what we were getting into.”

“You really don’t have to explain,” I said.  “I’m not… I guess I’m not expecting or demanding anyone to go against their nature or take risks.  I get it if you’re shy of getting into any more messes.  I just had a taste of what you guys went through, way back when.”

“My husband said you failed?”

I nodded.  “I’m sorry.”

“Looking at you, I don’t think we can say you didn’t try.”

I huffed out a bit of a laugh.

Evan alighted on my shoulder.

“Hi there, bird,” Priss said.

“Hi,” Evan said.

Priss didn’t even flinch.  But it wasn’t the non-flinch of being unsurprised by the unusual.  It was obliviousness.  She hadn’t heard.

“He’s Evan,” I said.

“Same name as the boy you were accused of murdering?” Priss asked.

“Yep,” I said.  I didn’t volunteer anything more.  I wasn’t sure what the rules were.

We reached the door in the chain-link fence.

We reached their truck.  Nick, who I’d dubbed ‘Shotgun’, was standing by the truck, his overweight, one-footed buddy beside him.  Both had their guns, and were talking in murmurs to the truck’s side view mirror.

When I got close enough, I let go of Priss and hobbled forward until I could lean against the front of the truck.  My leg briefly blocked the headlight, and the sudden darkness made my heart jump.

“What’s in the jacket?” Nick asked.

“Demon arm,” I said.

“You got a piece of it?” Nick asked me.

“For what it’s worth,” I said.

He nodded.

“I was just telling them we had to run,” Rose said.  “We went in with ideas, only one really worked.”

“Fire,” I said.  “When we do this again, we use more fire.”

“Huh?” Priss said.  “I’m missing something.”

She doesn’t see the girl in the mirror.

I pointed at Rose.

Priss turned, bending over.  “Oh.  Huh.”

She squinted some.

“Huh,” she said, again.

“You’re going back?” Nick asked, stepping forward to wrap one arm around Priss.  Priss wrapped one arm around him in turn.

“It needs to be bound or eliminated,” I said.  “But it won’t be tonight, I don’t think.  Probably not even tomorrow.  We figure out how to trap it inside, we burn it out.  Or we burn it until it’s small enough to bind.”

“I can’t believe you want to do this again,” he said.  “God.”

“To be fair, I’m sort of thinking the same thing,” Rose added.

“I don’t want to go back in,” I said.  “But I’m more sure than ever that that thing needs to be stopped.”

“I wouldn’t object,” Nick’s male friend said.  If I’d been given his name, I’d forgotten it.  “But getting this close is about as much as I can manage.  Scares the everloving shit out of me.”

“Yeah,” Nick said.

I nodded.  My eye roved over the jacket-wrapped demon’s arm.  I’d seen it with my peripheral vision, and my impression had been of a human-sized arm with clawed fingertips that managed to be brutish, fat, and disproportionately long at the same time.  The end of the limb where the teeth had bitten things off, had been bitten off at an angle.  The cut had been more or less clean.  I flexed it as well as I could, and found it rigid.  I suspected it could cut anything a butter knife could.

“We’re not ready,” I said.  “We need to deal with the Lord of the city, but we don’t have the assets.  It’s ugly, and it’s about to get uglier.”

“When you say ‘we’-” Nick started.

“I’m saying Rose and I.  Evan.  You said you weren’t willing to do more than offer token assistance, low risk assistance.”

He nodded.  He’d only wanted to stress the particulars.

“I’d hoped to win you over and get you on our side by stopping this demon.  Getting a kind of revenge on your behalf.  I’m sorry I couldn’t.  But circumstances allowing, I’m hoping to try again.”

Nick nodded.  “That’s something.”

“I’m not asking you to fight, or to do anything.  But can I hitch one more ride?”

“It’s why you called, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s get the fuck out of this godforsaken place,” he said.  “You take the back seat.  Bit of a squeeze, but my front seat doesn’t really slide anymore.”

The heavyset man gave me an unsolicited hand in climbing into the truck, then walked around to the far side to climb in.

A moment later, we were moving.

I leaned my head back, wanting nothing more than to sleep.

“I have books on hand,” Rose said.  “Incarnations, binding Greater Others…”

“Is he a greater other?” I asked.

“He’s Conquest,” Rose said.

“That’s a name we don’t want to be throwing around willy-nilly, Rose,” I said.  “Sorry.  I sort of picked up on that during my last big conversation with the Knights.”

“Right.”

“He’s not the C-word,” I said.  “He’s a C-word.”

“Well put,” Nick said, from the driver’s seat.

“He’s an incarnation,” Rose said.  “A being tied to the intrinsic workings of the world, at least on an abstract level.  They have no technical beginning or end.  They just are.  What we see is kind of a crystallization of that essence.  Some jackass decided to invoke a force and absorb the force in question into themselves and fucked up, they gave themselves over to the force for some reason or another, or a big event helped it come into being.  Now it’s autonomous.  You can weaken it, but you can’t really kill it.  He’s… major enough to count, I think.”

“Right,” I said.  “Can you bind something like him?”

“Can I?  Probably not.  But binding anything is theoretically possible.”

“Right.  That’s vague.”

“It’s all I’ve got, until I can get more reading done.”

“Then let’s talk plan of attack,” I said.  “The Imp’s binding-”

I couldn’t say too much around the Knights

“-won’t hold,” I finished.

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “I really sort of hoped for us to have more of a plan of attack by this point, so it could serve as a distraction.”

“But we don’t have a plan,” I said.  “C-word has few friends, and a good few enemies.  Except none of them want to play ball with us.  Which means we’re doing what we can with the very limited resources we have.  Two bound ghosts, Evan, you, me, maybe the Knights giving us another ride if they’re feeling particularly generous, and a few small tools.”

“That’s essentially it,” Rose said.  “We do have other allies, but-”

“But they’re allies who ask a heavy price,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I nodded.

Nick spoke up, “Do we know these allies you’re talking about?”

“Lawyers,” I said.

“Lawyers?”

“An association of diabolists in suits,” I clarified.  “I think they want me to join.  They kind of offered me a get out of jail free card.”

I could see him glance at his wife, a look that probably conveyed an awful lot I wasn’t privy to.

“I’m not particularly keen on accepting said deal,” I said.  “There’s that saying, out of the frying pan, into the fire?  We could easily be talking about the hottest fire there is.”

I pointed straight down for emphasis.

“You really are a diabolist, then,” Priss said.

“I know names I shouldn’t,” I said.  “Names I don’t want to know.  Yeah, I guess, on a technical level.  Not at heart, though.”

Priss turned around to look over one shoulder.  “You kind of look like what I expected of a diabolist.  Kind of.  In two very different ways, put together.  But you don’t act like one.”

“I’m not quite sure what a diabolist is supposed to look like,” I said.

“Sunken eyes, gaunt, lanky, thinning hair, clearly not taking care of yourself, with a crimson and black robe and hood, and some flesh-bound tome in your hands…”

“I look like that?”

“Dark circles around your eyes, your hair is greasy-”

I touched my hair.  “I spent the night in a prison cell, no showers offered.”

“Hood?”

I touched the hood of the sweatshirt I wore under my jacket.  “That’s reaching.”

“The other image I had was some goth teenager who was in over their head.  You’re kind of a middle ground between the two.”

“Between an old, deranged man in a wizard robe and a clueless goth teenager?” I asked.

“A slightly deranged, clueless young adult?” Rose chimed in.

“Exactly.”

I leaned back, sighing.  “Well, this clueless, deranged-looking twenty year old needs to figure out a way to defeat a centuries-old entity, because time’s running out.”

Rose spoke up, “When time’s up, there’re three eventualities that are liable to come up, without us stepping in.  The Imp finds a way to manipulate the Lord, and we’ve got a deranged, dangerous, warped Incarnation in the area.  The Lord finds a way to leverage the Imp, and he’s stronger, or there isn’t a problem, and we’re forced to obey C- Toronto’s Lord as he demands access to all our family’s power and knowledge.  That last one being our worst case scenario,” Rose said.

“I’m not so sure,” I said.  “Just about every time someone says ‘worst case scenario’, I immediately think of a bunch of ways that things could get even worse.”

“Pessimism?” Priss asked.

“I like to think it’s the creative side of me more than pessimism,” I said.

“It’s a very fucking bad scenario, if he gets what he wants,” Rose said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. Getting back on track.

“We could fight fire with fire,” Rose said.  “I mean, we bring out the big guns by, well, calling in the big guns.  Summon and bind something from one of Grandmother’s books.”

“How is that any better than calling the lawyers?” I asked.

“It’s cleaner.  The demons are technically safe to use, if we make absolutely no mistakes.”

“There will always be mistakes,” I said.  “Human nature.”

“What’s messier in the end?” Rose asked.  “We risk Toronto’s Lord getting what he wants, and he unleashes uncontrolled demons on the world, we give him what he wants and he uses controlled demons to achieve the aims and ends that he exists to pursue…”

Conquest.

“…Or we use controlled demons to achieve our aims, for the good of everyone in this city?”

“I think that’s a pretty slippery slope,” I said.

“I think you’re exactly right,” Nick said.

Priss glanced at him, confused.

I glanced up at Rose while Nick gave the ‘twenty words or less’ explanation to Priss.

Rose had a counter-argument waiting, “We only have… two and a half hours to get something in place.  I’m not hearing anyone come up with better.”

“Demons don’t make anything better, as far as I can tell,” I replied.

“Then make up a plan.  Give me any plan.  You talked about the Hyena, I talked about how we’d sic our enemies on each other…”

“And we have a demon’s severed arm,” I said.

“What are we going to do with a demon’s severed arm?”

I looked over the coat-wrapped arm.  The tapered edge…

I’d thought of a knife, but the shape, it invoked another sort of thought.

“It’s like a chisel, a wedge.   A doorstop?”

“A doorstop?” Rose asked.

“Let’s work backwards,” I said, leaning forward, the demon’s arm in my hands.  “Evan’s good at escaping, yes?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the last step of our plan.  Escape.  Getting away intact.  The step before that… let’s say we find a way to bar the door to the C-word’s personal realm.  We’ve never seen him outside of it, and we can safely assume he’s going to be there when he calls us.  I think he’s setting a stage, almost, in that tower of his.  We get in, do our thing, whatever we need to do to distract him…”

“How?”

“Imp gets loose, and we release the Hyena, too,” I said.  “There are more than enough ghosts in there for it to use against C-word, and it’ll weaken him.”

“The plan was to strengthen him.”

“If you have ideas on how, I’m open to them.  For the time being, I’m thinking maximum distraction, a broad-strokes plan to throw him off balance.  We use or make the opportunity to escape and wedge the door shut behind us.  Maybe, if we can find a way to do it, we tap the demon’s abilities and make it so there’s no door at all.  We contain the damage, we contain the threats…”

“And me?” Rose asked.

“Evan can break locks.”

“Normal locks.  No guarantee on this sort of lock.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “So we have two things that could break the lock.  Maybe if we can get enough muscle behind it, we could use this demon arm to break the chain.”

“Muscle.  You’re as weak as a baby, Evan weighs, what, an ounce?”

“I’m stronger than I look,” Evan said.

“You are,” Rose said, sighing, “But I’m not so confident that you’re strong enough that it’s worth this risk.”

“You have a material form in there,” I said.  “You could do it.”

“If you’re close enough to see me while you’re in there, he’s close enough to take the arm from you,” Rose said.  “Maybe Evan could slip close enough to break a lock, but taking the time to chip at the chain with one end of an arm?”

I sighed.

“We could teach you a rune or two,” Nick said.

“No power to supply to said rune,” I answered.  “And we’d need a lot to counteract his stores of power.”

“That’s a bit of a problem.”

“Thanks though.”

“Sure.  So this is your friend that you said was in trouble.”

“Yeah.”

“His nearly useless friend,” Rose said.  “I can read, and I can argue, and I can’t do much else.”

“You can give awfully frightening suggestions,” Nick said.

“That too,” Rose said.  “For all it’s worth.”

She sounded so much like me sometimes.

“This part of things sucks,” Priss said.  “Not hearing a good bit of the conversation.”

Nick leaned over and began updating her again

“Let’s not forget, you got shackled in the first place for my sake,” I told Rose.

“He was gunning for it from the beginning,” Rose said.  “To get me in chains.”

“Was he?” I asked.

“Yeah.  I’d bet on it.”

“Fuck,” I said.  I hadn’t realized how badly we’d walked into that one.  I’d thought it was a lose-lose situation at worst, and we’d picked the lesser of two losses.  Rose could be freed, but I couldn’t be put back together if Conquest tore my mind, body or heart apart.  Hearing that he’d wanted this particular end result sucked.

“If you’d like,” Priss said, “I could pay visits to a few locals.”

“Priss.” Nick said, with a warning tone.

“Not taking sides.  More like I’m doing my job as a good citizen of the community and conscientiously informing the locals of exactly what’s going on.  Of course, I’ll probably only be able to visit a few over the course of the evening.”

Visiting only the ones she thinks she can convince.

“I don’t like this,” Nick said.  “You never wanted to get into all this.  You were probably right, too.”

“I want to get into it here and now,” Priss said.  “I’ll be careful.”

“Careful enough?”

“I can call in the others, too,” Priss said.

“I’m not sure I agree with that either, for other reasons,” Nick said.

“It’s a moot point, if the kid doesn’t want us to,” Priss said.  “Might mean word leaks.”

“I appreciate the offer,” I said.  “Thank you.  Please do, if it’s possible.”

The words didn’t feel like enough.  It was a note of hope, when I was feeling pretty hopeless.

Priss glanced back at me, offering me a small half-smile.  Nick said something I couldn’t make out, and they started a whispered conversation.

Two hours, twenty minutes and change, to try to figure out how to unseat a ruler who’d been in charge of this city for a very long time.  One who’d made a lot of enemies, yet still sat atop his metaphorical throne.

But that wasn’t the sum of the problem.  He was a stubborn, single-minded entity.  He…

“He isn’t human,” I thought aloud, interrupting the conversation between husband and wife. “He follows a set of rules.  There are things he can do, but there are an awful lot of things he can’t.”

“Yes,” Rose said.  “But any Incarnation will tap the ranks of humanity for fitting subjects and sacrifices, to give themselves a reservoir to draw from.  Pride might be able to perform actions that don’t raise its standing or gain the ability to bow to others in a pinch.  If they go too long without sacrifices, they start to become more… I don’t know how to phrase it…”

“Mechanical,” I said.  “They become more mechanical.”

“Basically.  Parts of the overarching machine of reality.”

“Well,” I said, “That’s a weak point.  How often do they need sacrifices?”

“Depends how often they break their own internal rules.  Once every thousand years?  Once every hundred years?  Daily?”

Time, again.  “It’s too bad we can’t tap the Behaims for help on that front.  I could do with that number having less zeroes on it.  What other weaknesses do Incarnations have?”

“They’re fairly rigid.  Something like the sphinx could theoretically learn some magic to a degree.  Like, shamanism, the source might differ, but she could learn the runes, still appeal to the spirits, and make an offering, hoping to achieve a small effect.  But Incarnations… basically are what they are.  No more, no less.  One that’s absorbed a lot of people might be flexible enough to bend the rules, and a human that’s absorbed an Incarnation successfully could, too, but they’re mostly just going to do what they’ll do.  For the Toronto Lord, he has a narrow repertoire.”

“Okay,” I said.

“The book says that within that repertoire, well, an Incarnation can approach a god in terms of sheer power,” Rose said.

“Right,” I said.

Of course, I knew that Conquest wasn’t quite that powerful.  He was a dying incarnation, and his power as a local lord wasn’t real so much as it was feigned.

If he was killable, I might try my luck at killing him.  But he wasn’t.

“Alright,” I said.  “What about binding, then?”

There was a pause.

Priss glanced over her shoulder.  I, for my part, looked up.

Rose wasn’t in the mirror.

“Nick?  Pull over,” I said.

Nick pulled over.

I rose from my seat, looking in the mirror.

Rose wasn’t there, even as I looked at a different angle.

I stood up in the back of the truck, until my head touched the roof of the truck.  The book was there.  Lying on the street, dropped.

She’d been abducted.

I settled back down into a sitting position.

“Fuck,” I said.

“I’m not following,” Priss said.

“She’s gone,” Evan said, though Priss couldn’t hear him.

“My friend has just been abducted,” I said, feeling very weary and a little afraid.

“Do you need to run to the rescue?” Priss asked.

“We should,” Evan said.

“No,” I said.  “I… I don’t know what to do, exactly.  But this is the second time.  He has a habit of taking her and keeping her, and she was someone I really needed at my side.  The last time he held onto her, she was unconscious.  I… he likes threatening people.  He threatened me.  I don’t like the idea that he’s putting the screws to Rose like he threatened to do with me.”

“If he has that strong a hold on her,” Nick said, “Might not be pretty.”

“It won’t be,” I agreed, “And it isn’t.  Fuck.”

“What are you going to do?  If you want a ride to the Lord’s place…”

“No,” I said.  “I’m not really capable of doing anything if I go there.”

“Then what?”

“I need to… arm myself, somehow.  Build up my strength, in more ways than one.”

“Weightlifting,” Evan said.

“Not fast enough.”

“Magical weightlifting?”

“You got a familiar between the time we dropped you off at the woods and today,” Nick said.

“It’s too soon to get an implement, I don’t have Rose to talk me through it, and I don’t know what I’d take.  Demesnes, same thing.  I don’t think there are any other shortcuts out there that would give me a concrete enough power boost.”

“We have a few basic texts, if you need them,” Nick said.

“Though we’re pretty fucked if you borrow them and lose them,” the other guy said.

“Maybe,” I said.  “I dunno what I’d do.  But I appreciate anything I can get, really truly.”

“We can’t drive you around all night.  Gas is expensive, and I’m not sure that it’s going to get you anywhere,” Nick said.  “Where can we drop you off?  We can hang out a bit, if you need a bit of company.”

“My place.  Near the University, you’re close.  You don’t have to stick around.  You’ve helped a lot already.”

“Not a problem.  What’s your next step after you get home?”

“I don’t know,” I said, again.  “You asked me where I wanted you to drop me off.  That’s where I want.  I have no ideas when it comes to need.”

“You’re aware that the local Lord controls people, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “He’s got some sway over… F-word.”

“I wouldn’t worry about throwing his name around,” Nick said.

“He got ticked the first time I called for a ride, repeating his name,” I said.  “But yeah.  He also told me he’s sort of under C-word’s sway.”

“Your friend might be too.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“If I’d connected the dots right off the bat,” Nick said, “I might have warned you.  But he might know what she knows.”

I let my head drop forward until my forehead rested on the back of Nick’s headrest.

Very gently, he asked, “You’re not going crazy or flipping out.  Was this all part of the plan?”

Without moving my head, my eyes still closed, I said, “The plan was scary, flimsy and incomplete enough that I’m not devastated to realize our enemy knows what it is.”

“No?”

“I’m more spooked at the idea that he might think to ask Rose if she can access the books he wants.  If she can bring mirror-world variants to C-word, then it’s all over.”

“How long would it take to set something up?” Nick asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” I said.  “He’ll want sufficient protections.  Protections would take a little while, especially if they were thorough.  The summoning itself requires calling out a name.”

“So you have time.  The situation isn’t too much different.”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “Might be twenty minutes, might be hours.  The only constants here are that I’m pretty much powerless, and C-word pretty much has to follow his rules.”

“Wish I had ideas,” Nick said.

“What happens if he doesn’t follow his rules?” Priss asked.

“He loses ground, I imagine,” I said.  “Maybe it’s like Monopoly.  You lose money you don’t have, so you give up assets you’ve claimed until you’ve paid up.”

“That’s something,” she said.

“I’m not sure it matters.  There’s no way to compel something like him, so at best I’m putting him in a situation where he either follows his nature and conquers others, or he suffers a small loss.”

“I don’t really get it,” Evan said.  “Who’s he conquering?”

“Rose,” I said.  “Very probably.  He’ll be breaking her down, making her miserable, making her obey him by exercising force and being scary.  He ruins stuff, takes…”

“Can we make him take something he shouldn’t?” Evan asked.

“Maybe,” I said.  “I’m not sure what that would be, and that’s probably the sort of circmstance where he draws from his reservoir of humanity and bends the rules.”

“Alright.”

“I like the line of thinking, though,” I said.  I made a mental note.

There was another rule, but I wasn’t eager to say it out loud, because it was the sort of information that was very dangerous to have.  Conquest was weak, but he had to look strong.

Right.

“When he’s done with Rose, he’ll turn his attention on anyone he can, with the exception of the people he promised he wouldn’t.  He told the Drunk he wouldn’t,” I said.  “Toronto, the Drunk and the Drunk’s acquaintances are safe, if I remember right.”

“The Drunk is on his side?”  Nick asked.

“The Drunk is on the sidelines.”

Nick nodded.

“He’ll come after me at some point.  Doing whatever it is he does.  Conquering, subjugating, sowing despair, taking control,” I said, thinking aloud.

I turned that idea around in my head.

“Which isn’t a bad thing,” I added.

“Huh?” Evan asked.

“He’ll bring us to heel.  He won’t kill us.  It might be he can’t kill us.  He can only set us up to die by other hands.”

“‘Might be’ is pretty thin,” Nick said.

Pretty thin was at least something.

These were the rules of the game, so to speak.

“There are a lot of one-way streets around my place.  Take a right, then a left,” I said.  “Or if it’s too much hassle, just drop me here, and I’ll walk.”

“You’ll hobble.”

“I’ll stagger forward like a zombie,” I said.

He took the right-hand turn.

I wasn’t much of a planner.  It wasn’t in me.  When I’d worked, I’d outlined the stage layouts, display cabinets and mounts for the various pieces, but I’d improvised throughout, bent and adjusted my outlines.  I was good at that.

Thinking ten steps forward wasn’t in me.  Rose had proposed that she’d be the long-term thinker in all of this, and she’d leave the moment to moment strategy to me.

It had almost worked against the abstract demon.  Ur.  It was very possible that I might not have made it out without our synergy on that front.

That situation could have gone worse.

Except maybe it had gone worse.  Fuck.

Now Rose was in Conquest’s clutches, and she was no doubt working overtime to try and convince him not to hurt, torture or get the wrong info out of her.  If he found out she could get the books, or if she divulged any other telling secrets, then this might all be over.  If she didn’t, or if Conquest proved suitably distracted, then we maybe had time.  It depended on how well Rose could improvise and if she could use those distractions.

On my part, the planning was left to me.

We arrived in my neighborhood.

Home.  It felt awfully far away, considering the fact that I was there.

“Right here,” I said.

There was no room with the long row of parked cars, so he stopped in the middle of the street.

“Want us to drop by?  I’ll bring our books, we’ll check on you, maybe get you somewhere you need to be?”

“Please,” I said.

“Maybe an hour, then,” Nick said.

“Right,” I replied.  “Thank you.”

“You going to be okay?”

“Honestly?  Probably not.”

“Figured as much.”

He opened the truck door for me, climbing out so I could get out, giving me a hand.

I still didn’t like the feeling of hands seizing me so firmly, as well intentioned as it was.

I managed a smile of thanks all the same.

Evan landed on my shoulder.

It was all I could do to keep my balance, so I didn’t turn when I waved my free hand in a farewell to the Knights.  The other hand held my coat-wrapped demon arm.

I used my key to get through the door at the front, but stopped in the lobby.

I made a sharp left, then headed through the hallway.

The garage adjoined the building.  Joel’s car, the same one I’d borrowed, was there.  That meant he was home.

My bike was also there.

I really wanted to go for a ride.  It would be suicidal, given the local weather, but I really wanted to go.

I ran my hand along it.  “Put a wind rune on you, maybe?  Or maybe I can dig up something like a balance rune?”

“You’re talking to the motorcycle?” Evan asked.

I’d nearly forgotten about him.

“Yeah,” I said.  “My motorcycle.”

“You have a motorcycle?” he asked.  The enthusiasm was so clear I couldn’t help but smile a little.  It was like a perfect reflection of the little boy inside me who had first given me the push to consider the thing.

“I guess I’m introducing you to my life,” I said.  “This is my bike, and this building is my home.  I count many people in here as family.”

“You’re related?”

“Not by blood.  But we’re good friends.  Family supports, back each other up.  Accept the inconveniences.  Sometimes that means a mom wipes a baby’s ass, even though it’s gross and boring.  Sometimes it means you give a brother-in-law a place to stay.  Sometimes it’s just a listening ear you wouldn’t give to a friend, but you have to give to them because the bonds are that tight.”

“Yeah,” Evan said.

Fuck me.  I was rambling, and I was probably making him miserable.  He was whatever the opposite of an orphan was.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“It does.  But it’s okay.  It’s interesting to think about, and it makes me miss my parents.  But not in a bad way.”

“That’s sort of what family is, isn’t it?  It doesn’t always feel great, but that feeling of connection kind of helps fill a hole, doesn’t it?”

“Sorta.”

“Well, these guys backed me up when I needed it.  They’re more family than my family-by-blood were.”

“Can they back you up now?”

“Maybe a little.  But I can’t tell them about magic without putting them in danger.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “The tour… apartment lobby.  My landlord and good friend Joel’s apartment is down here on the ground floor.”

“Uh huh.”

I limped to the elevator.

I’d come here for a reason.  It was only dawning on me now what that reason was.

I needed more strength to go up against Conquest.  This was it.  Nourishing me.  Building up the reserves I’d spent when I’d spilled my own blood and sacrificed a part of myself to revive Rose.

“Third floor, my apartment.  A friend helped me get set up-”

I stopped short.

Said friend was there, sitting by my apartment door, back to the wall, legs crossed, phone in her lap.

“Stay out of sight a bit?” I asked.

A light flutter of wings, transformation into a ghost while midair, and Evan disappeared through the wall.

The flutter seemed to get her attention.

“Blake,” Alexis said.  “Holy shit.”

“Hey,” I said.  “What are you doing here?”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“The police arrested me.  I thought they quizzed everyone I know.”

“I know,” she said.  She climbed to her feet.  “You’re bleeding?”

I looked down.  I’d taken off my coat to wrap the arm, and my sweatshirt sleeves were brown and crusty with blood.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I only kept looking down.

“Let me text Joel,” she said.  “He’s been worried sick.”

I nodded.  I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak around the lump in my throat.

A part of me had believed that I’d come back to find only an eviction notice.  That radiation of some sort might have caused me to lose my ties to friends and home.

“There.  Are you okay?”

I shook my head a little.  My voice came out hoarse with sudden emotion.  “No.”

“You didn’t tell me it was that serious.  Holy fuck.  They framed you for murdering some kid?”

No doubt in her mind?

I’d been playing subtle mind-games with myself, falling into Duncan’s trap, believing that my friends might abandon me.

“Yeah,” I said.  “They tried, anyway.”

She was closer now, looking me over.

“But your arms,” she said.  She reached out, as if compelled, then stopped.  “Can- can I see?”

I knew that the images wouldn’t line up, that they wouldn’t fit.

But I couldn’t say no.  Not really.

She stuck her hands in her back pockets while I rolled up one sleeve.  My right arm’s sleeve, so I could hold the jacket and demon arm without making the locket too obvious.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

I looked.  The heads were attached, the images distorted, and the blood that had crusted over masked the colors.

But long cuts still marked the backs of each arm, and some, despite my efforts with glamour, intersected my tattoos.

“We can fix that,” she said.

I nodded.

“Was it police brutality?” she asked.

“It was just one of them that was a real bastard.”

She glanced at me, then at my apartment door.  “Your apartment, they totaled it.”

“Yeah.”

“We put what we could back in place.”

I nodded again.  “Thank you.”

I heard the elevator ding.  Joel.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

Where had I been?

I’d had thoughts on want and need earlier.  This was the flipside.  I needed this, but I didn’t want it.  The genuine caring about how I was doing.

I wasn’t sure how to answer the question.

“Trying to survive,” I said.

“People do crazy things for money,” Alexis said.

“Power more than money,” I said.

She nodded.  Taking it at face value.

Taking me at face value.

“You look like hell,” Joel said.  “Why are you bleeding?”

“Police did it,” Alexis said.

While Alexis got Joel up to speed, I stepped to one side and opened my apartment door.

Sure enough, I could see things out of place.  Damage.  My sanctuary disturbed.  One of the closet doors had been taken off the roller mount, set to one side.  Things in the closet were out of place.  There were stacks of paper on the coffee table that were supposed to be in a box in the other room.  Scattered by the police, no doubt, and set in place by my friends.

I needed to plan, to prepare, to get my ducks in a row and my weapons out and loaded.  Whatever those weapons were supposed to be.

I needed to recharge my personal batteries.

I needed the emotional support, at a point when I felt lower than ever, and damn hopeless.

I needed to act, to help Rose, to help myself.

There wasn’t any clear path in front of me.

I thought of what I’d just been saying to Evan.

“Joel?”

“Yeah?”

“Before, you were telling me that friendships didn’t have to be even.  That sometimes they were lopsided.”

“Yeah.  I was being hard on you.  I didn’t realize you were in the middle of something this messy.”

“How do you know which side the scales should tip?  When it’s lopsided, how do I know if I’m serving the friendship or serving myself at the expense of the friendship?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, but… trust your gut?”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I need help,” I said.

“What kind of help?”

I leaned against the wall.  I couldn’t look at them, so I looked the same way I had with the demon.  “The selfish sort.”

“Be selfish if you need to,” he said.

I nodded.

The silence lingered.

“Blake?”

“I’m in a bad place.  So much worse than you can imagine.  So I’ll start you off slow.”

“Sure?”

“Evan!”  I called out.

Evan appeared.  Sparrow form, alighting on my reaching finger.

“Blake?”  Alexis asked.

“This is the kid I was accused of murdering,” I said.

“Sure?” she said, sounding very unsure.

“The diagram taped around the apartment is a really shitty magic diagram, for protection,” I said.

“You’re worrying me.”

“You’ll be more worried when I’m done,” I said.  “Can you call some of the others?  I’ll explain what’s going on, I’ll suffer the consequences, but I’ll explain.  Then, when some of my other friends arrive, you can decide if you want in.”

Subordination 6.2

I took my time changing clothes, then stepped into the washroom.  No time to shower, but I wiped down with a wet washcloth, got my hair damp and got it as tidy as I could manage.  When I made my way to the living room, they’d already settled in, Alexis looking impatient, Joel typing.

I sat on my futon, elbows on my knees, hands sticking out.  Evan hopped from one finger to the next.

“This waiting is killing me,” Alexis said.  She leaned on the back of the armchair that Joel sat in.  She was short enough that the back of the chair covered her from the chest down.  “Give us a tidbit?  Something to assure us you haven’t gone completely around the bend?”

“Easier if we wait for the others,” I said.  “Once I get started, there’ll be questions, and it’ll be too easy to get caught up in explaining myself.  Better if I explain the once, give you an out, and then give proof to anyone who stays.”

“I know you’re not a murderer, Blake,” Alexis said, “But this is harder to buy.”

“I know,” I said.  “But if it was easy, I might have done it already.  There are costs here.”

“Uh huh.”

Joel was still focused on his phone, texting, looking up only to check on me, to gaze at the small bird.

“They’re your friends?” Evan asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I consider those two family.  Joel’s my landlord, and he’s one of the nicest guys I know.  Alexis saved my life.”

“I’m not sure if I should interrupt your conversation, if you can call it that,” Alexis said, “But I really didn’t.”

She looked so worried.  I hated worrying her.

“You did,” I said.  “I don’t think I would have lasted any longer out there.”

“You don’t give yourself credit.  You’re tough.”

“She’s the person you were talking about when you talked about your tattoos.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “But let’s maybe not get into something that intimate.”

“Non-sequitur much?” Alexis asked.

I smiled a little.  “I’m sorry.”

There was a knock on the door.

Alexis answered it.

Tiffany.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

How bad did I look?

“I’ll explain when everyone’s here,” I said, once again.  I was surprised they’d called her, but couldn’t ask why while she was here.

The others arrived.  Goosh, Tyler, Joseph.  No Amanda.

Two hours until midnight.

“Okay,” Alexis said.  “No more stalling.  Explain.”

“When my grandmother passed, she made my cousin Molly Walker her heir.  Molly inherited a trove of magical knowledge.  The other locals arranged to have her killed, because they thought that knowledge was too dangerous.”

“Magic?” Tyler asked.

“Magic.  Spirits, ghosts, goblins, monsters… all real,” I said.

“Is this a game, or an A.R.G., or-”

“No,” I said.  “It’s real.  In the past few days, I’ve almost been killed maybe a half dozen times.  In two hours, maybe more, maybe less, everything starts going to pieces.  Disaster.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but it’s bound to be pretty ugly.”

“What, specifically, is going to happen?” Joel asked.

“The less I say, the better.  One of the reasons this stuff isn’t common knowledge is that there’s a possibility for collateral damage.  If I provide all the info, you’re a part of it, and you might be in danger because of your relationship to me, or I might be in trouble if you slip up, when I have responsibility over you.”

“It’s… kind of hard to buy,” Tyler said.

“I know,” I said.  “But I’ve only got two hours to get ready.  If this is going to be two hours of me convincing you, or two hours of explanation while I hold your hands, then it’s not going to be enough.  I guess I’m asking for a leap of faith here.  A willingness to leave your old life behind, if it comes down to it, and lend me backup.”

“Leave our old lives behind?” Alexis asked.

“If this gets messy enough, might be I and everyone associated with me need to leave Toronto.  There might be danger.”

“Do you know how you sound?” Joel asked.

“Crazy,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “It would sound even crazier if I told you everything.  But I guess I need you guys to trust your instincts.  Decide if it’s possible for you to believe me, and decide if you’d want to make this sacrifice.”

“Without you telling us what that sacrifice is?”

“It’s dealing with the kind of horror you usually only read about in fairy tales.  The sort of thing you were afraid of when you were little.”

Evan nodded.  I saw eyes turn his way.

I added, “It’s being in danger.  Though I don’t necessarily want you guys in the thick of it.”

“Assuming this is for real, making this leap of faith?” Alexis asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’d try to back you up.”

I nodded.  I hadn’t expected any different from Alexis.

“Turning the tables,” Joel said,  “Can you do us the favor of maybe accepting that you’ve gone around the bend?  You’re in bad shape, and there are treatable things like thyroid problems or manageable stuff like mental problems that could explain a lot.”

“If you’re willing to entertain the idea that I’m not completely off my rocker, just for tonight, I can return the favor later,” I said.  “I can do what I can to accept that I’ve maybe lost it.  Tomorrow.”

“If it involves leaving life behind, or the possibility that something could happen to me,” Joel said, “I don’t know if I can.”

I wasn’t surprised.  “Your mom?”

“My mom, yeah.  A couple years ago?  Maybe.  Another few years?  She won’t last that long.  But right now?”

I nodded.  I understood, and I didn’t want him to lose ties to his ailing mother for my sake.  It still stung, just a little.

“I can give you help in other ways,” he said.  “Lend you my car again…”

I shook my head a little.  “No need, not really.”

“Okay,” he said.  “The offer’s open.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “I dunno if you want to leave, but-”

“No way,” he said.  “I’ll hear you out.  Never let it be said I wouldn’t, baby.”

I nodded.

Four more people remained almost silent.  Goosh, Joseph, Tyler and Tiffany.

“I’m thinking of Natty,” Goosh said, when I met her gaze.

“I know,” I said.  “Joel brought her up not long after I showed back up in Toronto.”

“I was close to her.  We’re still in touch.  The bad days from that… it wasn’t all fun.  The bad days sucked, more than I can say.”

“You don’t want to get involved if I’ve lost it?” I asked.

“That is not what I’m saying,” she said, stabbing a finger my way.  Goosh could probably beat me in a fight, on a good day, so it was a little intimidating.  “You know that if you’re in trouble, you can come to me, just like I came to you back then for help with Nat.”

I nodded.

“That said, I’m having trouble believing you’re coming from the same place as her.  I don’t know if that’s Natty being so fresh in my memory, coloring my expectations, or if you aren’t crazy…”

“But?” I asked.

“I’ll hear you out,” she said, as she stuck her hands in her pockets.  “Even if you’re not for real, I’d really like to know more about where you stand and what’s going on.”

It kept coming back to mental illness.  I wasn’t sure how much resistance there was when introducing the unawakened to this world, but I could worry that, no matter how hard I tried, they might keep going back to that.

At the same time, it was rooted in them caring about me, and nobody had said or done anything to suggest they wouldn’t have my back if I had lost my mind.  It wasn’t just lip service, either.  It was being offered with full knowledge of how much that stuff could suck.

That was gratifying.

“Tyler?”

Tyler was black, skinny, his hair cut short, with a toothy smile.  He wore thrift store clothing that was badly out of date, but put together with an eye to color and style.  The thrift store aspect of it wasn’t so much that he was poor – he was, kind of, but even so – he just preferred to buy more, cheaper clothes to mix and match over having a few top notch outfits.  Sort of a metaphor for Ty as a whole.

Ty was one of the artists I worked for, a challenge of sorts.  He had a hard time sticking with things, meaning I had to constantly adapt to whatever new thing he’d picked up.  Thing was, Ty had a way of taking on something totally new and foreign and then abandoning it not long after he’d started to make money off of it.

There had been a time when I would have lopped off a foot for his talent at any one thing.  It was painful, sometimes, watching him struggling to get by.  A part of me wondered if he loved the process of learning something more than he loved being good at that something.  Another part of me thought that he might be addicted to the rush that came with uncertainty.  Anxiety wore on some people, but it very possibly drove people like Tyler to flourish.

The same part of me that worried about his addiction to anxiety wondered if asking him to help me out here was the right thing to do.

“I’m in,” Tyler said.  “A part of me wants these monsters to be real.”

Case in point.

“You wouldn’t really want to, if you knew the full story,” I said.

“Wanna bet?” he asked.

“Not on that one point,” I said.

“Well I’m in.  There’s no way I don’t want to hear more about this.”

“Okay,” I said.

“How are you going to prove it?” Joseph asked.

“Do you believe me?” I asked.  I was a little surprised.  Joseph’s critical eye was easily the sharpest in the room.  He had a way of swinging between what looked like unfailing good cheer and deep, dark moods.  Sometimes it was little things that set him off.  The inability to get one detail right on a project.  Other times, he could toss a project aside without a care.  Though he wasn’t as talented as Tyler or Alexis, his ability to fit what he did make to the ‘scene’, making it applicable and different enough to get noticed, made him perhaps the most successful of us here.

“I don’t not believe you,” he decided.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

He shrugged, smiling a bit.  “It means only that.  Like Goosh says, you don’t give off the right vibe.  I’ll listen.”

I nodded.

“Tiff?”

Tiffany’s expression was worry more than anything.  Not directed at me so much as herself.  “I’m not sure why Joel invited me.  There were others the other night that have known you longer.”

I’m kind of wondering that myself.

“Because I trust you,” Alexis said.

Going with her gut?

“Okay,” Tiff said.  “I don’t feel like it’s my place, but I’ll listen.”

I nodded.

It would have to do.

“Evan,” I said, addressing my familiar.  “Maybe you want to write a letter?”

“I need paper,” he said.

“End of the hall.  On top of the short bookcase,” I said.

He took off.

“You want a trained bird to write a letter?” Goosh asked.

“Evan there is the ghost of the boy I was accused of killing.  Last fall, he was lured into the woods.  A monster called the Hyena stalked him.  He survived until he died of exposure.  Yesterday, I ran into his ghost.  Earlier today, I bound that ghost into familiar form.  He retains his wits, and as far as I can tell, a few minor powers.”

I heard a thump.

A moment later, Evan returned, flying very close to the ground.  He was having trouble flying, with the way the paper caught the air.

I reached out to catch the paper the moment he was close enough.

“I bumped into the wall,” he said.  “The paper got in my way.”

“I heard.  Sorry,” I said.

I made my way to my feet.  “I’m this feeble because I drew too much from my personal reserves.  I bled myself out to power effects.”

“Self harm?” Joel asked.

I crossed to the cabinet by my dining table.  One shelf had wine glasses.  The shelf below was crammed with all the minor crap that tended to accumulate on the table, with nowhere specific to go.

I grabbed a bottle of ink for filling fountain pens.

I unscrewed the cap.  I placed it by Evan, then held it down.  There was a trace of ink on the underside.

He hopped up, stuck his foot down, then hopped onto the paper, resting on one leg, fluttering briefly to catch his balance.

He began drawing out letters with one toe.

“No way,” Tyler said.  He grinned.

Joel was a little less amused.  I saw a frown cross his forehead.  The other seemed to fall into a middle ground.  Confused.  Staring at Evan, or just plain silent.

“Thoughts?” I asked.

“That’s pretty impressive for something with a brain the size of a corn kernel,” Joel said.

“Can I peck him?” Evan asked.  He’d stopped mid-letter.

“No pecking Joel,” I said.

I waited for him to finish  I held up the paper.  The words were a bit of a scrawl, disjointed, but he’d done a pretty damn good job.

‘Its all true.’

“You forgot the apostrophe,” Joseph said.

“I’m a bird,” Evan said.  “I’m a kid.  I’m dead.”

“The mistake is excusable, given the circumstances,” I said, as I put the paper down.

Still, Evan seemed somewhat offended, and he made his way to the cap from the small bottle of ink, stuck his toe in the ink, then flutter-hopped over to stick his foot down, depositing a dot of ink.

“Okay, that’s a little uncanny,” Joseph admitted.

“That’s not proof enough?” I asked.

“It’s easier to accept that a bird might be exceptionally well trained, and that you or whoever trained it might have expected the apostrophe thing to come up,” Joseph said.

Nobody was arguing that point.

Fuck me.  If cool, intelligent people who trusted me were going to be this fucking dense, I could probably get away with using magic in public.

Not that I hadn’t used it in public, but I’d at least been discreet.  Maybe there wasn’t even a need.

Was this the natural resistance to the unknown?

Why hadn’t I run into it when Rose first showed up?

I reached into my sleeve and retrieved the locket.  I had to twist and unknot it a bit to get it free from where it uncomfortably encircled my wrist.

There wasn’t much here.  The hair was gone, but the dark crust on the interior wasn’t.

I got my finger thoroughly smudged, then drew a diagram on the top of the coffee table.

“By doing this,” I said, as I drew, “I’m introducing you to this world.  Your mistakes from here on out are mine, in part.  The consequences can be heavy, and I’m not in a position to be able to afford mistakes.”

I wasn’t sure how well this would work.  Glamour fed on belief, and there were a number of disbelievers here.

But I might kill myself if I used blood, and I had no idea how to use the Stonehenge charm that Evan had taken from Duncan.

I moved my hands back.

The coffee table slid a solid two feet, and the diagram disappeared.

“You kicked it,” Joseph said.

“He didn’t,” Goosh said.

“Nope,” Alexis confirmed.  “I watched.”

“Magnets, then,” Joseph said.  “Strings.”

“That would only make sense if he wanted us to think he’s crazy,” Alexis said.  “And he’s not that kind of guy.”

“Thank you,” I said.  Joseph seemed flustered as he tried to reconcile very conflicting ideas.

“This is for real,” Joel said.  “There’s no way you set something like this up when you’ve been gone.”

“And because he wouldn’t,” Alexis said.

“You’ve known him longer than the rest of us have,” Joseph said.  “Forgive us if we’re a little slower to buy something this insane.”

I nodded.  A fair argument.  I’d been running into Alexis since almost day one on the streets.  I’d only really gotten to know her a few months in.  The rest of these guys, I’d known for a year, year and a half.  Tiffany?  For a week.

“You’re forgiven,” I said.

“This shit is real?” Alexis asked.

I nodded.

“The people you thought were trying to kill you are part of this?”

“Among them, the Lord of Toronto, a circle of time-manipulators that include one cop in the police station, very possibly a group of enchantresses.  In the past three days, I dealt with an imp that made the local wildlife go violent, the goblin-thing that caused Evan’s death, the aforementioned cop, and I tried and failed to deal with an honest-to-god demon.  Each of which tried to kill me, or managed to take a piece out of me.”

“Is that the way it always is?” Goosh asked.

“No,” I said.  I hesitated.  “It’s because of who my grandmother was.”

“Who was she?”

“An eminent diabolist,” I said.  “Someone who trafficks in the really bad stuff.”

I saw some eyes go wide.

Not wide enough.  They didn’t get it.  Not yet.

“Basically,” I said, “I’m spent.  This is why I need some backup.”

“What could we even do?” Joel asked.

“You should do nothing,” I said.  “You have your mom to look after.”

“What you’re dealing with sounds important.”

“It is important.  If the Lord of Toronto gets what he wants, the world is liable to become a less pleasant place to live, putting it lightly.  But if you don’t look after your mother, Joel, the world still becomes a less pleasant place, get it?”

“It’s a question of scale,” he said.

“I was just dealing with a group of people who have someone in their group that isn’t a part of any of this.  She’s part of the group because being able and allowed to perform magic means you aren’t able or allowed to lie.  Oaths become binding.  She’s the group’s liar, for when they have to interact with other parties.”

“Joel couldn’t lie to save his life,” Goosh said.

“I’ll take what I can get,” I said.  “You in, Joel?”

He nodded.

I contemplated for a moment.  “None of you guys have run away screaming, which might mean I’m not doing my job at explaining this.”

“It’s not that we’re not a little freaked out by what you’re throwing at us.  It’s more that we’re on board,” Alexis said.

There were nods from everyone but Joseph.

He seemed to be having a harder time getting into this.

“Joseph?” I asked.

It seemed to be all the cue he needed.  “I’m gonna head out.”

“Hold on,” I said.

“I’m not saying I don’t believe it,” he said.  “I’m… it just doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of how it all fits together.”

“I can’t say it’ll make more sense after I explain, but it won’t magically start making sense on its own.”

“Give me a bit to wrap my head around it,” he said.

“How long is that ‘bit’?” I asked.  “The next two hours are pretty vitally important.”

“I’m not so good with stuff that I don’t get,” he said.  “I’d be more liability than help.  Check in with me in a day or two.”

“You’re running?” Tyler asked.

“No.  I’m not scared.  I’m unprepared.”

“I’ve been unprepared since day one,” I said.  “I know remarkably little, and I’ve had to face down some big problems.”

“That’s you.  I get it, I respect it, and I don’t envy you at all.  But you gave us a choice about whether we’d get into this, and I’m exercising that choice now.”

“You’re running,” Tyler repeated himself.  A statement this time.

“Don’t stop him,” I said.

“Maybe I am running, I don’t know,” Joseph said.  “I don’t want you to feel like I’m abandoning you, Blake.  Is there anything you need?”

“Sure.  Supplies,” I said.  “Tools.  Stuff I can use to draw.  Possible weapons?”

He fumbled with his keychain, then got his key.  He tossed it my way.  My reactions were too slow to catch it.  I picked it up from my lap.

He explained, “My place is yours.  Raid it for whatever you want.  But I’m going to stay out of this for now.”

“Where are you going?” Joel asked.

“I don’t know.  I’ll figure it out.  No hard feelings?”

“I’m sorry to see you go,” I said.  “But I’m glad you’re going, if you feel the need.”

“I’m sorry to be going, too, but…”

He trailed off, leaving the sentence for someone else to pick up.  Nobody did.

“Raid my place,” he said.

He made his exit.

It was bewildering and it hurt.  It was all the worse because I could see why it was happening.  Joseph wasn’t someone I was overly close to, but I’d considered myself closer to him than I was to my own parents.  I’d worked for him and with him, we’d confided in one another.  I respected him.  No shenanigans seemed apparent with a glance, no connections or other meddling.  He was doing this of his own volition, as far as I could tell.

Joseph was the most successful of us in the broad sense.  Yes, Alexis had steady work, but Joseph had garnered attention as an avant-garde artist, and was making it at a job that very few people did well at.  He succeeded because he was keenly aware of what his broader audience wanted.  He kept his finger on the pulse of the community, identified what would work, and made it happen, with a somewhat perfectionist manner.

I’d really wanted him on my side, in the midst of this.  To have his observant eye reading the situation would have made a world of difference.  I felt like he would have been an exemplary practitioner, given the opportunity.

I looked at the others.

“I’m in,” Ty said.

Alexis nodded.

Goosh hesitated.

I could read her expression.

“No?” I asked.

“If it was mental illness, I could get that.  But… you’re talking about something I’d have to keep secret from Amanda.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Or, admitting that she’s only a new relationship… that we probably aren’t in it for the long haul, it’d mean cutting myself off from future relationships.”

“I’ve found,” I said, “That that’s maybe the hardest part.  And that’s what I’m trying to fix here, reaching out to you guys.”

She nodded.

“That’s a no, then?” I asked.

“For now?” she asked.

Now was the most important time… but the thing that was going on with Conquest was just words to them.  The meaning and gravity of it wasn’t clear, and it wouldn’t be.

“I’ve got your back,” Goosh said.  “If that counts for anything.”

I nodded.  “Thanks.”

I saw eyes turn to Tiff.

“Don’t feel pressured to say yes because others are saying yes,” I told her.  “I asked you how you handle stress, a few days ago.  You said you don’t generally manage it well.”

“No.”

“It’s okay if you’re not into this.”

“Is there any part of this that isn’t horribly stressful?” she asked.

“Very little.”

She frowned.  “But this is major.”

She was trying to convince herself to move forward.

Why had Alexis invited her?  Tiffany liked me, and I liked her too, but I didn’t trust her on the same level I trusted the others.

“This is major,” I agreed.

“Then I’ll try to help, and I’ll do that very little that I think I can do.”

“Are you sure?”  I asked.  “I had arguments with a companion, not long ago, and I don’t think this is the sort of thing where half measures will do.  It might be better to back off.”

“I’m sure,” she said.  She sounded more confident, and left no room for argument.

Damn it.

Well, I wasn’t going to turn down help.

“Okay.  Three people.  There are things we need,” I said.

“What things?” Alexis asked.

“A dagger,” I said.  “An hourglass.  A skull.  A coin…”

■

By the time the Knights arrived, half an hour later, I’d given the others a brief idea of everything that had happened to date.  I had stayed out of the way while they moved furniture in my living room, and we had a set of circles drawn.  My visual memory was strong, and it was stronger still when it came to stuff I’d worked on with my hands.

I already had the bowls set out along the diagram.  We had stuff for most.

Ty was at work using a hacksaw to take a chunk off an iron poker from Joel’s place.  Joel, for his part, was going from apartment to apartment, trying to find Myrrh and an old coin.

“Hey,” Nick said.

“Hi,” Evan replied.

“Hi,” I said.

“You’re up to something,” Nick said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Nick, meet Alexis, Tyler, Tiffany, and Goosh.”

“Goosh?”

“Yep.”

“You’re awakening these guys?”  Nick asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’re aware that it’s typically very important to ask the local Lord for permission for this sort of thing?”

“Is it?”

“Failing to do so gets you in hot water.”

“Are they in hot water, or am I?”

“You, I’d think.”

“Then I can deal,” I said.  “He’s probably going to be ticked at me later tonight, whatever happens.”

Nick nodded.  “Here.  I brought the books.”

I looked over the texts.  Basic Protections.  Possibly useful.  Runes: Natural.  Very useful.  One text that had apparently been torn in half.  Only the latter half of the book remained, and…

Essentials.

Perfect.  It wouldn’t have made sense if they didn’t have a copy, short of the demon eating it.  This was the book a practitioner needed to have in their library.  The farmer’s almanac.  This one was an older version, at a glance, compared to my grandmother’s, and the spine was tattered, held together with clear tape.  I took a minute to double check I had the circles right.

Joel returned.  He had what looked like an American silver dollar, rather tarnished, and he had myrrh.

I flipped through the book, reading up on the symbolism.  Our coin wasn’t gold.  Did it matter?  The book was vague.

“We’re… fudging a few things,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud.

“Iron isn’t raw ore,” Nick’s son said.

It wasn’t until he mentioned it that I thought to check.  This text, like the one I’d read from, had iron as one essential component.  Rose’s text had had holly.

“Does it matter if we bend the rules some?” I asked.  “I’m… my perspective is that the magic stuff is bullshitting.  Symbolism.  That the spirits really want to hear the right words and see the right steps being taken.”

“We fudged it too,” Nick said.

“Did you fudge it this much?”

“No.”

“Right,” I said.  I sighed.  Addressing my group, I asked, “Everyone has their personal items?  Something of significance to them?”

They each nodded, with the exception of Joel.

Alexis’ hands were empty, though.  I had to wonder what she’d picked.

“Who’s first?” I asked.

Tyler.

“I’m gonna step out, then,” Priss said.  “Keep my eyes virgin and innocent.”

I raised an eyebrow.  “Goosh?  Joel?  Go with her.  She’s your model.  Get advice from her on being the designated liar, what you can do, what you can’t, what to stay away from, and when to step in.”

“Okay,” Joel said.

“Can I stay?” Goosh asked.  “Maybe I don’t want my eyes to be virgin or whatever.”

I shook my head a little, but I said, “Sure.  Go with your gut.  That’s what I’m doing here.”

Joel paused.  “Are you doing the right thing?”

“No idea,” I said.  “But I need help, and… it means a lot to me that you guys are following through with this.”

He nodded.

I took the chunk of sawed-off poker iron from Tyler.  I gave him the book, open to the right page.

The remaining Knights stepped into the kitchen.  Around the corner.  Giving Tyler and the rest of us some privacy.

While he began reading, I held the iron with pliers and heated it up with the small acetylene torch I kept under my sink.

I dropped the iron in a bowl.

Tyler’s ritual.  The rest of us stepped back to the edges of the room.  I leaned on the dining table for support, the various food items behind me, the demon arm still wrapped in my jacket on the table.

“You need to strip,” I said.

“No way,” he replied.

“Open yourself up, make yourself vulnerable, show you have nothing to hide.”

“Really?  Or do you want the girls naked?”

“I offered before,” Alexis commented.  “He said no.  He wouldn’t go this far now.”

“Fuck,” Ty said.  “No peeking.”

He began chanting.  I closed my eyes, thinking and listening.

“Oh my god.  This is really for real,” Tiffany murmured.

“Shh,” someone else said.

She was seeing things change, the bowls and lines move, the light change.

Somewhere along the line, the pink of light shining through my eyelids became black.

I opened my eyes, my hand raised to block my view of Tyler’s bits, and I could see Tyler in the midst of an oasis.  Light streamed in through the balcony window in thin rays, making it seem like we were in deep space.  Said light faded as the diagram and Tyler grew more pronounced.

I hadn’t clued him into this part of the ritual.  I would let him figure it out much as I had.

The knife appeared, sliding around until it was in front of him.  Something Ty had made himself when he’d been into metalworking.  Our ‘dagger’.

“Severing ties to the old Tyler,” he said.

Not quite a one-word response like I’d given.

The ‘hourglass’.  We’d found an hourglass, but it was cheap, chintzy, something small from a board game.  On impulse, I’d included the Stonehenge charm I’d liberated from Duncan.

“Makes me think of phases of the moon.  I like being out and about at times when I’m by myself more than I like places where I’m by myself.”

It was an odd fit.  Was it too far off?

The dreamcatcher, one of the things we’d found that actually wasn’t fudging it.

“I don’t want to be a salaryman.  The idea terrifies me.  I want to be on the other side.  Be an artist, be a wizard, be inspired.”

The skull moved into place.  A cat’s, bleached.  A paperweight from my bedroom.  It had sat on my stacked copies of tax returns before the police scattered everything.  A kind of personal joke.  Death and taxes.

“Until death, I suppose,” Ty said.

The coin.

“I get this is serious,” he said.  He was rambling as much as anything.  “There’s a weight to it.  Price to everything.”

I nodded.  He’d caught that in my broad-strokes explanation of what had happened thus far.

The rose.  It was more lively than the one Rose and I had used.

“It’s all interconnected, I guess?” Ty suggested.  “Life, death, time… yeah.  Saying I’m buying into this until the day I die is meaningless if I’m not in it when I’m alive.  I’m devoting my life to this.”

I winced.  I harbored concerns about Ty’s ability to devote himself to anything.  But, as I allowed myself to think it, maybe he could be something else.  One could devote themselves to music without devoting themselves to a singular instrument and style.  Ty was the type who, if they were a musician, they’d try every instrument and get the sense of every style they could find out about.  That took a devotion unto itself.

The personal item.

A USB stick.

Like I had, he seemed to feel this needed more explanation.

“My sister is twenty years older than me.  I saw life wear her down.  Debt, a marriage that became loveless, kids.  She did everything right and it did her wrong in return.  That stick is my journey.  The poetry I wrote when I was twelve, photos of the stuff I made last week.  It has my email archive, and I’m pretty sure my emails to and from my sister are there.  It’s… it’s me trying to find my way to where I need to be.  Blake’s done right by me, and maybe I don’t need to be there long term, but I think I should be at his back in the short.  But this stuff seems too interesting to not investigate.  That’s who I am… and maybe with this, there’s no way I can fuck up and wind up like my sister did.”

The bowl carried the USB stick away.

There were only the lines to be recited over the food.  Offerings to the various major types of Other.

Then the pledge.

Tyler looked happy.

Fuck me, I hoped that happiness wouldn’t give way to something else entirely.

The ritual finished.  The bowls were scattered around the apartment.

I threw Ty’s sweatshirt and boxers to him.

“Holy shit,” Ty said.

“No kidding,” Alexis said.

“No, I mean… wow, holy shit.”

“He can see,” I said.

“Like you explained,” Alexis said.

I nodded.

“Holy shit,” Ty said.  He looked at Evan with eyes that were too bright.  A lingering, very personal effect, like my tattoos had been.

“Hi,” Evan said.

“Shit on me.  Hi, bird.”

“Evan,” Evan said.

“Evan, sorry.”

“Be careful,” I said.  “Hyperbole is bad.  You can’t lie now.  Might want to cut back on the swearing.”

Ty nodded.  “Did I do that right?  The bit where the objects came up?”

“I used one word answers most of the way through.  I think it’s flexible.  You’re… I dunno, making yourself known, on a fundamental level.  The ideas are more important than the words.  It worked, so it probably wasn’t wrong.”

He nodded.

Eye on the clock.  There wasn’t a lot of time.  I glanced at Nick.  “Can you take Ty out?  Give him a rundown, or take him where you know there’s something he could bind?”

“Not really our thing, binding on the fly,” Nick said.  “But I could teach him the basic runes.”

“Please,” I said.

“Sure.”

“Rest of us clean up, set things up anew, and then the next person takes their turn,” I said.

■

I watched as the knife came up for Alexis.  I leaned against the wall, so the corner by the kitchen meant I couldn’t see her, but I could see the area in front of her.

“Sculpting.  Carving,”

The Stonehenge charm.

“Stonehenge was for keeping track of phases of the moon, right?  Female, I guess?”

The dreamcatcher.

“Bondage.”

The cat skull.

“Violence.”

The tarnished coin.

“Pride.”

The rose.

“Pain.”

Her personal item.

I hadn’t seen when she put it in the bowl.  I saw now.  Three molars, attached to a plate.

Dentures?

“This one feels important.  If I’m supposed to clue the supernatural world into who I am, make my signature as I step through the door, then… this is pretty fitting.  We’re flawed, people are.  We’re damaged.  We come into the world nearly perfect, naked, and happy and then life delivers the beatdown.  It kicks our asses and makes us feel like shit.  It does permanent damage.  Bad luck, people, our own mistakes.  I want to work hard at things I love, find the good, be one of the people who fix instead of break.  Who loves instead of hates, in my twisted manner of loving, I guess.  I want to make as few mistakes as possible… and I say that as a smoker.  So maybe stick a small ‘hypocrite’ label on me too, while you’re at it.”

The bowl rotated out of view.

“Yeah,” she said, as the next bowl rotated into view.  “That’s about right.”

Words said to greet and pay respect to the Others.

Then the pledge.

The room brightened.

Alexis took her time before she gave the ok.

I looked.  She was mostly dressed.

She took more time to find the bowl with the teeth.  She picked them up, then opened her mouth wide to set them in place.

Her coarse hair shifted as if in a gentle breeze.  A juxtaposition of the supernatural and very natural.

“Hi,” Evan greeted her, as she approached me.

She smiled and raised a hand in a wave, then came to my side, leaning her head back against the wall, eyes closed.  Taking it all in.

Tentatively, I took her hand and squeezed it.  I saw her smile, her eyes still closed.

■

Only Tiffany remained.  I had more reservations about her than anyone.

I was growing more and more aware of the time limit.  I felt anxious as she went through her paces, for several reasons.

I was glad to see the items find their place.  The knife.

“Dangerous if not handled with care.”

The charm.

“Deceptively simple, has history.”

The dreamcatcher.

“Need to think outside the box, sometimes, to find your dreams, or to find the right ones.”

The cat skull.

“Frightening when laid bare… or beautiful?  I can’t decide.  Both.”

The rose.

“Symbolic, pretty, almost useless.”

The personal item.

An AA chip.

“Not mine.  But my entire life, I’ve been defined by other people.  I’m hoping this is when I can define myself.  Get a little power, when I’ve always felt so powerless.  I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with my new friends, find some courage.  This is… it’s a reminder of broken promises.  That reminder shaped me into who I am now.  Flawed and broken, like Alexis said.  But there’s a certain strength in rules, and I can feel good about myself when I swear to myself that I won’t drink, that I won’t do drugs, that I won’t betray my family.  I like that I’m sticking to these rules now.  If you… if whoever is listening now was listening before, maybe I didn’t sound certain.  But now that the rules are setting in place, I’m feeling more sure.  I want to become reliable, and I will, with your help.”

The bowl moved on.

I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled.

She paid homage to the Others, then said the words that sealed the deal.

The indicators of power were short lived, explosive.  A rush of light as the circle spent itself, then illumination for the entire room.

By the time she was dressed, which didn’t take long, the effect was long gone.

“Hi!” Evan called out.

“Hi,” Tiffany said.

It was done.

I had a circle now.

And I had no more time.

“There’s no time to teach you guys,” I said.  “Which means strict, simple tasks.”

“Strict and simple sounds good to start with,” Ty said.

Forty five minutes.  Discounting the time it took to drive…

“Nick, want to help me out?  My friends need a fifteen minute crash course in magic.”

“I’m not that knowledgeable.”

“Me either,” I said.  “But it’s going to have to do.  We gotta deal with Conquest.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Subordination 6.3

“Power comes with a price.  Believe me on that,” Nick said.  “Now, speaking as the owner of a shitty little store out in the middle of nowhere, that means the power has value.  What we do, we’re bartering with that power.  Sometimes you come out a little ahead, sometimes you don’t.  You can change it around, work in different currencies, different kinds of power, you can give currency for goods or services, or give up goods and services for currency.”

The city seemed darker than it should have been, as I watched out the window with half-lidded eyes.  My allies were in the back seat, Evan was perched on the dash, watching the road.

“You can invest it, and you can be in debt,” Nick said.  “Blake here is in debt, in more ways than one.”

“How come?” Alexis asked.

“My family dug themselves into a deep, deep hole,” I said.  “By inviting you guys in, I may have dug myself a little deeper.”

“I was going to say you cut yourself open and bled your currency out to pay someone or something,” Nick said.

“That too.  You’re close enough,” I said.

“You did that to yourself?” Alexis asked.

I turned around in my seat to look at her.  Tiff wasn’t here, so it was only Alexis and Ty in the back.  The other Knights were in a car that followed behind us.  Alexis had the book on protections in her lap, while Ty had the Essentials tome, his attention apparently on the very last few pages.  The appendix?

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“You said the police did it.”

“You did,” I said.  “I didn’t correct you.”

“You lied to me.”

“I can’t lie,” I said.  “And neither can you.  Be fucking careful.”

“Wait, did I just fuck something up?”

“You were technically correct, because I have lied to you in the past.  But be careful.  I misled by omission, because it was probably going to make things worse if I started rattling on about rituals and ritualistically reducing my personal footprint to evade the cops, or about Rose, who I mentioned just a bit ago…”

“Yeah.  I get it.  But it kind of sucks to hear that you played me.”

“It sucked to have to play you.  Which is why I told you,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

Evan piped up, “She understands but she’s still mad?”

“Evan,” I said, “It’s cool.  Subject handled, more or less.”

“I’m not mad,” Alexis said.  “I’m disappointed.”

“But you understand why he did it?” Evan asked.

“Evan,” I said.

“Yeah, I understand,” Alexis said.

“But-” Evan started.

“Evan,” I said.  “We don’t have a lot of time.  Drop it, please?”

“Okay,” he said.  He turned around to look out the front windshield again.

“I need a smoke so bad right now,” Alexis muttered.

“You were talking about power, Nick?”  I asked.

“Yeah.  It’s a gamble.  People like me and my family, we don’t play with a lot at stake.  You could say we did, once upon a time, and we paid the price.  The rules here, they’re old.  They predate modern society.  Reach back to days when you had kids because many wouldn’t make it to adulthood.  When girls were bartered off in marriage.  People are currency, and we lost our people.  You be careful with yours, Blake.”

“You’re supposed to be helping them figure all this out, not me.”

Nick raised one eyebrow, but he went on.  “Three ways you build up power.  Blake has one, maybe two?”

“Just the one,” I said.

“You buy a property, demesnes in our world, and you hope it’ll appreciate in value.  You cross your fingers that the shelter and comfort it offers you, the status and recognition in the eyes of your peers will add up to the investment paying for itself.  With me so far?  Good.”

Leonard-in-a-bottle rested between my feet.  I also had a hammer I’d marked with a wind rune, as a dim replacement for June, and I had the demon’s arm.

Nick went on.  “You can pick an implement, too.  Your tool of the trade.  There are no takebacks.  Everything matters, when you make your choice.  The style of it, the history, the type of item, the purpose it’s meant to serve, the symbolism…”

“An object?” Alexis asked.

“Like a wand,” I said, “Or a dagger…”

“Any restrictions?”

“Has to be something you can hold in your hand, or hands,” I said.

“I know what I want to use,” she said.

“This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that it’s a major commitment, that you don’t jump into something like this.”

“Yeah?”

“But I’d be a hypocrite,” I said.  “After jumping into this with Evan here, and I think I know what you’re talking about.”

“The custom iron,” Ty said, looking up from his book.

“Yeah,” Alexis said.  “It’s had a place of prominence on a shelf over my home kit for the last while.  It’d be great to put it to use.”

I nodded.

“Custom iron?” Evan asked.

“Old-fashioned tattoo gun,” I said.

“Oh, cool!”

I’d be worried about corrupting the kid with the smoking, swearing, tattoos and motorcycles, but he’s already dead, and it sort of pales in comparison to the terminal violence, demons, and the magic ritual bullshit.

“That’ll have to wait,” Nick said.

“Okay,” Alexis replied.

“And,” I added, “It’s something that needs more research.  What does the gun imply, and all the rest of that jazz.”

“Sure,” she said.

“These are life-altering calls you’re making,” Nick said.  “Like I said, the rules are old.  You don’t backtrack, you don’t get to decide on one option here and then backtrack.  We talked about setting down roots.  There’s the tool, the choice of vocation, how you want to face down the world and how you want the world to look at you.  Finally, we have the familiar.  Kind of like marriage, but with one of the monsters.”

“I’m getting really sick of that comparison being made,” I said.  “Can we call it something else?”

“A business partnership,” Nick said.

“Much better,” I said.

“One being you tie yourself to.  The demesne, it’s a safe ground.  A place you can call your own, where you can defend yourself far more easily.  It’s a reflection of you and the choices you’ve made.  The other things?  Familiar and implement?  Might be you have less options on some fronts, and more on others.”

“Can you have more than one familiar?” Ty asked.

“Not so much,” I answered.  “It’s more of a commitment than that.”

“Some circles over in Asia do,” Nick said.

I glanced at him.

“Different expectations, different rules.  The ritual’s different, too.  It’s less like a partnership and more… hostile takeover.”

“Like the Lord?” I asked.

“Maybe.  They tend to emphasize having more Others, bound into object forms.  Said Others don’t have to be cooperative.”

“I’d be into trying something offbeat like that,” Ty said.

“Tradition has a power,” Nick said.  I nodded.

“I’ve never been much for tradition.”

“What about respect?” Nick asked.  “Having a familiar earns you some.  Go off the beaten track, it’s going to change people’s perceptions of you.”

“I’ve never put a lot of stock in that either,” Ty said.

“It’s an option,” I said.  “But it may be an option that has to wait until we have access to my grandmother’s library.  Look, we’re running out of time, so let’s not dwell on ‘what ifs’.”

I was anxious, impatient.  I wasn’t entirely certain I’d helped myself by bringing these guys on board.  It had felt right, but in practice… there was no way to get them up to speed.

“Summing it up, all kinds of power are currency, and anything you do from here on out costs,” Nick said.  “Sacrifices, even small ones like being polite, or taking a risk by making a promise, they pay you back.  Politeness forges stronger connections, and connections keep you upright in the grand scheme of things.  Making promises and keeping them buys you favor from the underlying forces that drive things.”

I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the headrest.  “Nick sees things as a broad sort of business.  Rose wants to view it as something in the same vein as science or math, with an internal logic.”

“And you?” Ty asked.

“I described it as a kind of art,” I said.  “There’s some bullshitting, a lot hinging on trends and abstract rules, vague elements you can’t pin down.  Things don’t fit neatly into boxes.”

“I’m not one to talk,” Nick said, “given how I barely practice and how badly the Knights have fucked up when we tried our hands at it, but doesn’t that make you the stereotypical starving artist?”

“By your definition, with power as currency?”

“Yeah.”

“By that definition, sure,” I said.  “I guess it kind of does.”

Nick nodded.

“There’s a lot of different ways of doing this stuff,” Ty said.  “I’m looking at the short descriptions here, and it’s interesting, but I don’t think there are any ways I can figure out in the next half hour.”

“I’m not expecting you to,” I said.  “I’m… fuck.  I’m doing this backwards.  Rose is supposed to be the long-term planner, I’m supposed to handle the short term.  But here I am, shooting myself in the foot in the short term for hopeful long-term gains.  We could call you guys my insurance.  You maybe back me up, make it so the other guys are scratching their heads and wondering exactly who you are and what you can do, but you should stay out of the thick of things.  If things go sour-”

“We bail you out,” Ty said.

I nodded.  “Maybe.  If you can do it without putting yourselves at too much risk.”

“Okay,” Ty said.

“There are some basic circles and ideas for protections in here,” Alexis said.

I spoke up, “Rule of thumb, you make a circle oppose whatever it is that drives the Other you or magic you want to ward off.  You can make it similar if they’re weak, but I’ve had fairly limited luck with that.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’m not an expert by any means,” I said.

“Most practitioners don’t get in any real fights except maybe a conflict over their familiar or demesne,” Nick said.

“Really?” I asked.

“You might be more experienced than most.  Not very knowledgeable, but from what you said about your library, you have a way of fixing that problem.”

“Trick, then, is staying intact until I can make the fix,” I said.

Nick nodded.

There was a moment’s silence.  I felt the pressure descending in moments.

“Would be fantastic if we could try pulling off a binding in the next half hour,” I said.  “I could do with a little more power.”

“Don’t know where you’d go.”

“Sites of recent murders?” I asked.

“The Shepherd claims all local ghosts, spirits, spectres, phantoms, wraiths, poltergeists, and apparitions.”

“Damn.  Goblins?”

“Not anywhere near the heart of the city.  Fringes only.”

“Fuck,” I said.  “What about… I dunno, the local folk tales, the things that go bump in the night?  The miscellaneous monsters?”

“Is the thing we really want to do before you go up against an enemy is to fight another enemy?” Ty asked.

“I want to feel more prepared,” I said.

“I don’t think there are any perfect solutions,” Nick said.  “I doubt there’s much of anything you can do to be prepared for tonight, whatever you’re doing.”

“Having more of an idea what I’m doing would be one thing,” I said.

He smiled without humor, my expression was comparatively somber.

“You feel that?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure what he meant.  Feel?  I felt… tired.  In pain.

No, he was referring to another kind of sensation.

“No fucking way,” I said.

“What?” Ty asked.

“Listen up, you two, here’s your first lesson in the field.  I want you to pay particular attention to all the weirdness going on around us.  Start with the immediate stuff, the connections between each of us, things being carried back and forth.  Over time, you’ll visualize it into something like cords, strings, ribbons…”

“It’s more a feeling for me,” Nick said.  “Physical.  Everyone sees it differently.”

Interesting, but I didn’t respond.  I didn’t want to complicate things.

“I can see a pattern between us,” Alexis said.  “Like a cat’s cradle?  I see the firefly things-”

“Spirits,” I cut in.

“Spirits moving around.  They leave trails in their wake.  It almost looks like strings from my hand to your arm, and from my head to your mouth…”

“That’s essentially it,” I said.  “Ty?”

“I see something.  Yeah.”

“Look beyond it.  Same idea.  Hold your focus, but move that focus.  Like crossing your eyes by focusing on a finger that you’re moving closer to your face, but in the other direction.”

“There’s… a lot of noise,” Ty said.

“A whole city filled with connections,” I said.  “Look for the big stuff.”

“Big?” Alexis asked.  “There are blotches, but they could be the spots on my eyes from looking at lights.”

“Like I said before, a mix of bullshit and confidence go a long way,” I said.  “Trust that it’s right.”

“Okay, trusting… what am I looking at?”

“You’re looking at maybe ten of the major players in one place,” I said.

“Ten?” Ty asked.

“There are ten major players?” Alexis asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Something’s wrong.”

It took us another five minutes to get close enough for Nick to drop us off.  He stayed where he was, waiting to reunite with the other Knights, minus his buddy, who was tutoring Tiff in some basics.

From there, it was another five minutes of walking.

I could see it, using the sight.  More clear than before.  The tower.  It overlapped with the manse.

The rest were gathered on or around the steps leading up to the manse.

“Diabolist,” Isadora said.  She stood there on the street, in full sphinx mode.  I glanced down the length of the side street.  Nobody present.

“Greetings, Isadora,” I said.  It seemed like a safer bet than ‘good evening’, because I wasn’t sure this evening would be.

“Hello,” Evan said.

“No shitting way,” Ty said.  Under his breath, he said, “She’s beautiful.”

“Shh,” I said, under my breath.  My mind was working overdrive.

Alexis was silent, which I was grateful for, but I did hear the scratch of her lighter.

Conquest was inside with five others.  Fell was liable to be one of them.

Outside, I could see the sphinx and a number of women with white masks and rings that blazed red.  The Drunk stood a distance away, beside a man with a long, crooked stick, who was busy feeding a carrot to a large gray horse.

Diana the Astrologer wasn’t here.

“This is the one?” one of the ring-wearers asked.

“The Thorburn heir, yes.”

The woman with the mask and glowing ring stepped to one side, as if trying to get a better look at me.  “I remember the last Thorburn diabolist to visit Toronto.  Your grandmother?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I was just a child, watching through a crack in the door while she talked with my mother.”

“Talking about what?”

“Something about her children and the University.”

“Did it go well?” I asked.

“No,” she said.  “No, it didn’t.”

I nodded.  That was vague, but I didn’t want to look ignorant, and if she wasn’t going to volunteer details there, she probably wouldn’t if I pressed her.

“I’m Blake Thorburn,” I said.  “I’d like to ask your name.”

“Names are dangerous to give, and it’s impolite to ask when we’re already taking pains to protect our identities.”

“Okay,” I said.  “My apologies.”

“Apologies taken and accepted.  You can call me Elder Sister, or elder for short..”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.  “And… the horseman is the Shepherd, I take it?”

“You won’t get much out of him,” Isadora said.

“He have something against me?” I asked.

“Vow of silence,” the sphinx told me.  “Some believe it gives you more power.  If you don’t say anything at all, outside of rituals, then you don’t leave room for even the smallest breaks in the truth.”

I nodded.

“He’s apparently vexed with you,” Isadora said.  “Any particular reason why?”

I saw the connection flicker into being, raised a hand to cut it and Ty off before an answer could be given.

I knew the answer, regardless.  The Shepherd collected the dead.  I’d collected Evan.  Stuck one foot in his territory.

I glanced at the horse.  It wasn’t an Other, but it wasn’t quite a normal horse either.

“You have friends,” the sphinx observed.  “And a familiar.  You’ve been busy.”

“I have been,” I said.  “You’ve been working behind the scenes.  Forming a coalition?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m suspicious things are about to get messy,” I said.

“We’re here to keep that from coming to pass,” Elder Sister told me.

“Then cooperate with me,” I said.

“We already received one appeal to cooperate with you.  We said no,” she said.

That would have been Priss.

“I wonder if your new helpers know the danger you pose,” Isadora said.  “Do you know the dangers of being in a diabolic cabal, strangers?”

I remained silent.

“If you aren’t one now, you’ll become one.  The forces we’re talking about, they insinuate themselves into the fabric of reality.  They forge new connections, to draw themselves to people.  I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve seen it happen again and again.  The book consigned to vaults finds its way to mortal hands.  The beast we hoped to leave alone in deep waters is stirred by a wrecked ship.  When you gather in groups, you give them more opportunities.  More flaws to reach for and exploit.  You reek of it.  That wrapped thing you hold reeks of it.  Filth.”

She managed to inject a surprising amount of force into that last word.  She paced closer, until she was a claw-swipe away from us.  One heavy sweep of a forelimb and she could end all of us.

There wasn’t a lot we could collectively do when faced with something that was easily ten times our size, but I managed to stand my ground.  Fifty percent courage, fifty percent me not being steady on my two feet.

“You are tainted by association, diabolists.  Each of you throwing off more taint with every step and action you take.  But when more are tainted, and they interact, they taint each other, and the effect lingers.”

“One diabolist is more agreeable than a group?” I asked.

“Zero is more agreeable than one,” she said, her voice low, her eyes glaring.

Ouch.

“Good thing those guys aren’t diabolists,” I said.

“It is a good thing,” Isadora said.  “If that changes, we will eagerly do what others have done in recent history.  Remove you from the picture before it becomes a problem.”

“Irony is, there aren’t many other actions you could undertake that would make me snap and cut loose,” I said.  “I won’t threaten you and say ‘Leave them be or else’, because that would be dangerous and crass.”

“Yes it would,” Isadora said.

“I won’t say it,” I said, emphasizing the ‘say’.  I stared up at her.

There wasn’t a single identifiable movement to her face.  Not a twitch of eyebrow, nose or mouth.  She didn’t move a fraction, but I could sense the shift in her attitude.  The tension of her muscles changed.  She was danger distilled.

“Things were stable before you came, diabolist.  They are now far from stable.”

“I want things more or less stable, too,” I said.  “But you’re letting the diabolist label lead you to conclusions.”

“Do you have any conception of how old I am?” she asked.  Her voice was more dangerous now.  She was big enough and her voice had enough low notes that I could feel the vibration of it in the air.  “How few of the mortals alive today are able to trace their ancestry back to the day I was a cub breaking free of my egg?  When the first thing I did after that was devour my weakest siblings?”

Her wings had unfolded somewhat, making her silhouette larger.  In the gloom, her eyes caught the light.

“The works which wrote of my mother have largely yellowed with age.  I have seen events play out time and again, and I have grown tired of the patterns I see you mortals repeat, time and again.”

She said tired the way I imagined a serial killer might talk about murder.  With a hint of danger, but a suggestion that it was very matter of fact for her.

“The pattern of the cults, the cabals, the secret societies, it’s one I see again and again.  The only reason I do not say it with certainty, to tell you that you will fall to corruption and ruin, is that I’m not certain you’ll live long enough to get that far.”

“That’s fair,” I said.  “Alexis, Ty, I need you to do all of us here a favor.”

“What’s that?” Ty asked.

Alexis didn’t speak, but I saw a puff of smoke to my left.  I didn’t turn to look at her, in case i started to lose my balance and wobbled on the spot.

“Swear.  You won’t tou- you won’t open or read from any of the darkest tomes.  None of the demon stuff.”

“You said we shouldn’t make oaths lightly.”

“This isn’t light.  This is one sphinx with a lot of experience and a number of concerns, wanting some reassurance.  One way of getting that reassurance is by devouring us.  Another way is for you to make a promise.”

A puff of smoke.  Alexis.  I heard her say, “I promise, I’m not going to mess in the dark texts you and Blake are talking about.”

“Okay,” Ty said.  “I promise.”

I looked up at Isadora and spread my arms.

“I have seen this play out before, Thorburn,” the sphinx told me.  “The oaths.  Oaths can be broken, consequences or no.”

“Then I’ll swear too,” I said.  “I’ll take all reasonable measures to keep the contents of those books out of the hands of my, er, disciples.”

“You would do better to swear not to touch those texts yourself, Thorburn.”

“I can’t make that promise.  I have other responsibilities, and other entities leaning over me.  Were I to promise, I’d earn the enmity of other forces.”

“Forces related to the greater evils.”

I nodded.  The lawyers would stop playing ball if this went any further.

“This does not please me,” she said.

“My motives aren’t to side with those forces.  I speak from my heart when I say that I believe I am one of your better options.  I have no intent to use the knowledge in those tomes in any way that could spread the taint, only to bind the beings and save innocents from their touch.  I did it with the imp, and I tried with another evil.”

“You gave the imp to Conquest,” she said.

“Largely because I had no support to draw on, Isadora, daughter of Phix.”

Her head moved, and her eyes flashed as the light left them, then caught the surface again.  “You blame me?”

“Some,” I said.

She pursed her lips, then turned her head to glance back at the others.  The Sisters of the Torch, the Shepherd, the Drunk and others.  As she moved her head, her hair moved from where it draped over her left breast.  I avoided looking, in part because I was more captivated by the way the ambient light caught her high cheekbones and the frown-creased brow, making her appear more like a lion or a raptor than I’d ever seen her.  In part because being caught looking seemed dangerous.

She looked down at me.  “So be it.  This promise doesn’t remedy the situation, but if you fail in this, you and yours will suffer for it.  There is justice in that.  I believe in justice.”

I nodded.

“You will exact promises from your other disciple.  I smell one on you.  She was there when you came to my office.  She is warm for you.”

Warm for me?

Alexis coughed, just behind me and to my left.

“I’ll extract the same promise from her, if and when a convenient hour arises,” I said.

“And any disciples who follow.”

“Yes,” I said.  “In exchange for this amenity, I would like to ask a favor.”

“Ask.”

“Let us end the conversation here.  Allow me passage inside.  Don’t slow me down or get in my way.  I have a schedule to keep, and it will do more harm than good if I can’t.”

“If we stopped you here,” she said, “What would the consequences be?”

I remained silent.

“You should give me an answer you know is wrong, feed yourself to me.  With every ending, the cosmos reorders, the geometry settling into new patterns.  At the hands of a goblin, such as the one you bound, the reordering is an ugly thing.  Consequences persist.  The skein tangles.  I am a creature of the balance, and death by my tooth and nail, talon and claw is the cleanest death you could be offered.  The new order would be a better order, for you having left it.”

“I’m almost insulted,” I said.

“You have my leave to go.  I cannot speak for the others,” she said.

She couldn’t speak for the others, but she had enough authority that I suspected her permission would count for a hell of a lot.

“Are we coming?” Ty asked.

I glanced at him.  I opened my mouth to say no.  That the Knights were close, and they should stay behind.  That I needed the backup outside.

“They remain safer with you than elsewhere,” Isadora said.

Seven words to dash my plan to the winds.

“That doesn’t mean it’s better to take them with me,” I said.

“It is better,” she said.  “I’m not a prophet, but I have an eye for the ways of things.  You have help elsewhere, but you’ll need help inside.”

I hesitated.

“I appreciate the advice, but ‘better’ is vague.  Better for me, for them?  For the world as a whole?”

“For all things.”

“I’m too used to having everyone turn on me, everything be a trap,” I said.  “This… I’m having a hard time trusting my recent fortune.  No offense intended.”

“You did a good thing.  A right thing, and you recently transferred some of the negative karma from yourself.  Three separate events.”

I frowned.  “Then the reason I’m free to put a circle together-”

“That has nothing to do with it,” she said.  And her expression went a little cold.  “I cannot speak for the particulars.  Maybe there was some good in it.  But I meant what I said earlier.  The cosmos gave you a rope.  You have neatly knotted it.  I hope you are the only one who hangs, but as I said before, I have been around long enough to see the patterns.  I am not so optimistic.  I suspect things progressing smoothly there was not karma being kind.”

That might have been the cruelest thing she could have said to my face.  I was left momentarily breathless.

I pulled myself together.  There were only minutes.  “Yes, you two are coming.”

Ty nodded.

“I appreciate your hearing me out, Isadora,” I said.  “I get the impression something in our relationship isn’t reconcilable, due to history that precedes me by some time, but… I appreciate that you’ll reach compromise with me all the same, and I appreciate the advice.”

She dipped her head in a nod.  “Die cleanly, diabolist.”

With that unnerving farewell, I turned to go.  Alexis and Ty followed.

Passing up the stairs meant passing the other group.

I saw each of them staring at me.  The Sisters glared, the twenty-somethings shifting their weight.

The Drunk remained very still, except for the wine bottle he held and tapped on his knee.

The Shepherd barred my path by stepping forward, directly into my way.

He didn’t look at me.  His eyes were on Evan.

He brimmed with negativity.  The feeling made me think of the shelters in the dead of winter.  The general ambiance, suspicion, loathing, anger without a target, anger with a target, discomfort, pain, hopelessness… he radiated it.  When his eyes moved over to me, it became more intense.

“You had months,” I told the man.  “You didn’t.  He needed someone to find him, and I found him.  Don’t fucking blame me for your cowardice.”

Much as I’d seen in the morgue, ghosts appeared.  Vague, damaged, insubstantial.

Some were a little less ghost and a little more spirit.  Some were so real I might have mistaken them for people.  Others were only fragments of ideas, stirrings of snow suggesting the vague outlines of people.

He had a small army at his disposal.  A collection of Junes, Leonards, Evans and others.

“He’s not one to care about right and wrong,” the Drunk observed.  “The ghost was his, he thinks, and you took it.  Context doesn’t matter.  Doesn’t help that you’re dangerous.”

“You get to be a shepherd by shepherding,” I said.  “Giving shelter and care to your flock.  Evan needed that care, and that man didn’t give it.  The name doesn’t fit.”

“Attacking a man’s name is bad form.”

“I don’t hear him complaining,” I said.

The Drunk smirked.  He raised his bottle, then drank.  More than anyone except maybe the Shepherd, the look in his eyes was dark as he looked at me.  The humor was only a thin, ineffective facade.

I made a mental note.  He was more of a threat when he was being vaguely friendly, over the top, and uninhibited.  It kind of fit.

But he still stepped aside.

As he left, the sisters stepped in.  They’d hesitated before, but they were able to gather some confidence from the sheer numbers and the power that were arrayed here, between the Shepherd and the ghosts.

“If you bar my path, you’re liable to get on Conquest’s bad side,” I said, very deliberately using Conquest’s name, “I don’t want to work under him, but I am, and you’re making the task he assigned me harder.”

“We’ll be on his bad side anyway,” one of the older Sisters of the Torch told me.

“You’re standing against him.”

“And against you,” the Elder Sister said.  “The blackguard was convincing, but not quite convincing enough.”

“We’re on the same side,” I said.

“Not right here we aren’t,” she said.

“That’s unfortunate,” I said.

“It really is.  You messed up a great many things by coming here.  I don’t think you can even fathom how.”

“I dunno,” I said, meeting her eyes with a level stare, “I’m getting a pretty good idea of how fucked up things can get.”

“You’re a threat,” she said.

“No he isn’t,” a voice piped up.  Evan.

She glanced at him, only briefly breaking eye contact with me.

“Blake helped me.  And he promised me he would stop the real threats.  He cares about his friends, and he’s honest, and he’s smart and he’s cool.”

“You don’t know enough to understand,” she said.  “He’s one of the real threats you’re talking about.”

“No he isn’t.  I’ve seen some of the monsters.  One of them sort of killed me, by trapping me until I was too tired and hungry and cold to keep going.  Another one of them was in the factory.  He tried to stop them.  He stopped one.”

“I’m not going to argue with a child.”

“You’re going to lose, by the sounds of it,” Ty commented.

“Did you try to stop the monsters like the one that sort of killed me?” Evan asked.

“We’re not that strong.”

“You’re elementalists, aren’t you?” I asked.  “You deal with spirits of nature, and going by the name and the glowing ring motif… you deal with spirits of fire?”

“Yes,” she said.

“The demon in the factory is vulnerable to fire and light.  You could have done something.”

“It’s not what we do,” she said.  I couldn’t see her face past the white mask.

“It’s what I do,” I told her.  “Tell me again how I’m one of the real monsters.”

“You serve your ends and the Lord’s.  Your family has long dealt in forbidden things.  I know.”

“All I know,” Evan said.  “Is he tried.  You didn’t.”

“Well,” the Elder Sister replied, “I’m trying now, if it means you don’t deliver that thing to Conquest.”

“You’re done trying,” a man said from behind her.

She moved to look before I did.  Winning the staring contest wasn’t much, but I’d take any victories I could.  Evan could have probably beat me in an actual fight.

Fell.

“Step inside, Mr. Thorburn,” he said.  “Shepherd?  Put your grudge aside.  Sisters, you do not want to cross Conquest right now.”

Reluctantly, the group parted.  Many ghosts faded as they joined the Shepherd in moving to my right, while the Sisters drifted off to the left.

I stepped inside.

I gave Alexis and Ty a moment to get acclimatized.

“I didn’t think you were in this deep,” Ty said.  His eyes roved over the tower interior.

My eyes fell on the clock.  Five minutes to midnight.

“I’m in pretty deep,” I said.

I glanced at Alexis.

She, for maybe the third time in all the years I’d known her, put out one cigarette, then lit up another.

“You okay?”

“Mm hmm,” she said.

“That’s not really an answer, and if it is one, it sounds like a lie,” I said.

“They’re not words.”

“Vagueness and bullshitting,” I said, “remember?”

“I remember,” she said.  “No, I’m not entirely okay.  I can scrap when I have to.  I can’t scrap against something like that.”

“Like the sphinx.”

“Right.  I’d be way happier if I had… I dunno.  Anything?  Some power, some tools…”

“We are most definitely on the same page, there” I said.

“Stupid question, but why is everyone standing outside?”  Ty asked.

It was Fell who answered.  “Preparing for war.  They all have their ways of finding out what’s going on.  That one of your Knights is going around trying to recruit allies for you has helped fill in others.”

“They’re taking sides,” I said.

“Isadora and the Sisters opposing Conquest, though Isadora is keeping secrets.  The High Drunk and the Shepherd are loosely affiliated with Conquest.  The Knights and Astrologer are nebulously affiliated with you and your new circle,” Fell said.

The Astrologer is in our camp?

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Conquest isn’t one for Pyrrhic victories.  He plays for keeps,” Fell told me.  “He’s just about won.”

I had a hard time putting a name to the feeling in my gut.  It was kind of like the abstract demon in that regard.  Too horrible.  Paying too much attention to it would give it more power.

We approached the top of the tower.

“Oh… wow,” Ty muttered.

Conquest was in full monster mode.  A giant, skin stretched over his muscular, warped frame, wearing gear that resembled both armor and a robe, with a halo that made me think of platinum.  A sword twice as long as I was tall was slung across his back.  A rifle with a bayonet attached was also slung over his back, going the other direction.

While my companions were awed at the sight of Conquest, my eyes fell on Conquest’s companions.

A man with rags draped over him from head to toe.  Burly, tall, the sort of guy that’d be a top of the line defenseman on a hockey rink.  Hair stuck out from the midst of the rags, scorched, standing up in sharp tufts.  His skin was blistered and burned where I could see it.  I could smell the smoke and ozone from the other side of the broad tower top.  He burned away the air merely by being here, and I wasn’t in good enough shape to be breathing properly to begin with.

One of his eyes was visible.  It burned so bright I couldn’t meet his gaze.

The Eye.  An unliving, monstrous counterpoint to the notion that fire and energy are man’s tools to be harnessed.  A disaster waiting patiently to happen.

Duncan Behaim.  Not in uniform.  He sat on the wall, slouching a little.  Glaring.

Laird Behaim.  Not in uniform, but he wore a long jacket with a badge on the sleeve.  He didn’t slouch.  He held his head high, his expression placid, pocket watch in hand.

Rose.  Arms limp at her side, her head hanging.  She didn’t even look up as we approached.

Conquest bent down, and he picked up a black-covered book that looked positively tiny in his massive hand.

“Three minutes before midnight,” Conquest spoke.  His voice echoed in his alien realm.

“Yes,” Laird said.

I threw the arm down.

“Eight minutes until the imp frees itself.”

“Close enough,” Laird said.

“I imagine you have a strategy,” Conquest said.

Rose raised her head.  I saw her eyes widen in surprise as she saw my friends.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I do.”

I just wished it was a better one.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Subordination 6.4

“I expected as much,” Conquest said.  “Every man is someone’s son, and very few men have been born to fathers without some sanguine humors.  To give up without a fight would mean going against thousands of generations of fathers who had the courage, adoration, and aspiration to find a woman, as well as the strength to survive to adulthood.”

“Are you planning on filibustering until the time’s out?” I asked.

“No,” Conquest said.

“Good,” I said.  “Because I really don’t care all that much.”

“You’re being disrespectful.”

“I think actions matter more than words.  I’ve listened, I’ve done as I was ordered.  Three quests, three monsters fought.”

“If you think actions matter more than words, you may not be paying attention,” Fell said.  “Words are very important in our world.”

Conquest spoke, his voice a low rumble that reverberated in an uncomfortable way, as if the deepest rumbles gave way to a nail-on-a-chalkboard screech that I couldn’t quite hear.  “You’ve brought me an arm, but not the demon proper.”

“I still tried,” I said.

He seemed to consider.  “I believe you.  When the younger Behaim reported that you had bled yourself out, I thought you were trying to make yourself so weak as to be useless,” Conquest said.

“I still beat him.  I couldn’t have been that useless,” I said.

Duncan glowered at me.

“You have a familiar, and a cabal,” Conquest observed.

“I prefer ‘circle’ to ‘cabal’.”

“Your concerns matter little to me.  You are a diabolist, few would deny that.  The diabolist’s circle is traditionally called a cabal.”

“Cabals,” Fell commented, “are traditionally exterminated by witch hunters or similar means.  There are inquisitors in Montreal who would be very interested to hear about this.”

“What?” I heard Ty say.

Fuck.

“What are you doing here, Laird?”  I asked.

“My nephew failed to defeat you and ran afoul of the Lord of Toronto,” Laird said.  “I’m smoothing things over.”

“Clever subversion can be overlooked, as it raises my status further when I triumph regardless,” Conquest said.  “To have someone undermine me and fail, they cannot get away with it, or Toronto would seem weaker as a whole in the world’s eyes.  The elder Behaim is offering me some assistance for the time being.”

“Uncle bails Dunc out, huh?” I asked.

“Family looks after family.  Or it should.  Ah, here we are.  Midnight,” Laird said.  “Five minutes until the imp is free.”

“Changing the subject?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter enough to be worth discussing,” Conquest said.

It matters if I can remove two of your allies from the picture.  Turning Conquest’s allies against him had been a plan for some time now.

“I think Laird wants to steal your throne from under you,” I said.

“I know what he wants,” Conquest said.  “The elder Behaim, however, will take a sure thing in claiming Jacob’s Bell over the great risk of seizing and attempting to hold Toronto.  What he wants and what he will do aren’t the same thing.”

“Yes,” Laird said.

“You would do better to focus on what’s going on here,” Conquest said.  “On yourself.  I know what you were planning.  Your companion was kind enough to inform me.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said.

“It’s okay,” I said.  “Did he torture you?”

“No.  He made me say it.”

I nodded.  “It’s okay.  Not surprised.  I’m sorry.”

“You went and got other people involved?”

“Yes.”

“Without asking me.  Stupid.  So many things wrong with that plan.”

You’ve been through a lot.  I’ll let that slide.

“Four minutes,” Laird said.

I was out of time.

Having Alexis and Ty here made me feel more vulnerable, not less.

“Then I should put my plan into action, I guess,” I said.

“You might want to try sounding more enthusiastic,” Laird said.  “Give the impression of confidence where none exists.”

“Conquest,” I said, ignoring Laird.

“Yes?”

“The Seventh Seal.”

“Hm?  Ah, yes,” Conquest said.

This was the moment of truth.  He knew what I meant.  I only had to let him consider it.

“Rose Thorburn,” Conquest said, taking hold of the chain that led to Rose’s shackle.  “In the time we have remaining, I would like you to draw a circle.  Bind the Imp’s book and its contents.”

Rose hesitated, then lurched to her feet.  She moved like she was a puppet, not a person, fumbling through the books, clumsily pushing them aside, her fingers only dextrous when they found a book she could use.

“I’m not familiar with that particular terminology,” Laird said.  “The seventh seal?”

“It’s not magic.  It’s a movie,” I said.  “A man challenges Death to a contest.  I’m formally challenging Conquest.”

“That challenge will have to be quick,” Laird said.  “You’re short on time.”

“I’m afraid you’re working from a flawed assumption, diabolist,” Conquest said.

“I’m afraid of that too,” I admitted.

Fuck, my heart was pounding so hard I wondered if he could hear it.

“It is the nature of humanity and, in fact, all living things, to vie against Death.  Those contests occur every day.”

“And?”

“And thus Death may very well accept such contests.  It fits with the natural order of things.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“For Conquest, however, well, it is the nature of mankind to struggle against bondage.  It is also the nature of man to ultimately yield to it.  The forces that would control man are more tireless than the individual man.”

“You would argue there’s no point?  It’s a foregone conclusion?”

“Yes,” Conquest said.

“Three minutes,” Laird said.

“Conquest is also about change,” I said.  “Revolutions occur, dictators are toppled.  It’s in human nature to change our reality as much as it is to go head to head with Death.”

“Change by triumph is the province of another Incarnation.  Liberty, perhaps.”

“When one tyrant takes over from another, that’s not Liberty at work,” I argued.

“You’re talking about War, now.  About Conflict.  I am despair, loss, subjugation and pain, all made incarnate.  I am not the battle, but the one who seizes that which lies in War’s wake.”

I clenched my fists.  “You fucking know-”

“You would do well to show me respect, Thorburn.  I have nothing to lose by saying no.”

“But you’re not going to, are you?” I asked.  “You’re right.  It’s in human nature to wage war against Death.  That makes that contest possible.  But it’s in your nature to crush people under your heel.  Are you going to go against your nature and pass up the opportunity to crush someone?  Me in particular?”

“I am not a slave to my nature.  Many of my kin are, but few of my kin are lords of a city.  I have resources they do not.”

This was the gamble, and I’d lost.

Necessitating a riskier gamble.

“What if I said you were a coward?” I asked.

“If you did, I would respond by subjecting your Rose to the worst I can offer, then turn my attention to your cabal, then to you,” Conquest said.  “You would regret those words.”

“Oh shit,” I heard Ty mutter.  “Torture?”

I didn’t begrudge him that, but I was kind of really glad that Alexis was staying quiet through all of this.

I had.  If I could have said something to him without tipping Conquest off, I might have pointed out that torture here was entirely different from the kind of torture we might experience in the real world.

In the real world, there was only so much pain you could take before your mind or body gave out.  In this realm, Conquest made the rules.

I tried to tell you guys what you were getting into.

“Are you calling me a coward, Blake Thorburn?” he asked, stressing the ‘are’.

I had to be very, very careful what I said.

“If you don’t accept my offer for a contest, I’ll call you weak,” I said.  “Not a coward, since you’ve promised to go after my allies if I call you that.  And if you threaten to go after them again, I’ll call you something worse.  Because something as strong as you’re supposed to be should be content with doing your worst to me and me alone.”

He stared down at me, massive, as intimidating as fuck.

A lie.  A delusion.  I was banking everything on that, on the insecurity I’d guessed was at the root of him.

“I can and will make you regret those words, if you insult me,” Conquest said.

“If you do, at least have the guts to make me and me alone regret them.”

“If I accept, I will see this contest through, I will win, free to take my prize.  If I refuse, you’ll follow through with the light oath you’ve made, insulting me, and I will be compelled to torment you in retaliation.”

My mouth was dry.  I tried to swallow and failed.  I hoped I wasn’t giving up a tell.

Or maybe he took it as his due.

“That’s essentially it,” I said.

“I am inevitable, much as Death is.  Eternal.  You can’t expect to win.”

“I don’t,” I said.  “Not really.”

I was attacking him on three fronts.  Or trying to, in any event.  Attacking his nature as Conquest, giving him a chance to crush me.  Attacking his insecurity, using the fact that he couldn’t let on how weak he really was… and I was hoping that there was a little something human in him, something that struggled against the boredom that came with eternity.  Would he find this interesting?  A riddle or a mystery?

I looked at Rose, who knelt on the floor, drawing a circle around the bookstand in chalk.

“One minute and thirty seconds,” Laird intoned.

“We will decide the terms before the time is up,” Conquest said.

He was game?

He was willing to play ball.

I couldn’t bring myself to be happy.  Or I could, but it was a dim thing, lost in the midst of the tension and quiet terror.

“Let’s,” I said, my voice tight.

“What form shall this contest take?  Chess?  A musical duel?”

“I was thinking something more fitting for you, Lord of Toronto.”

“Dispense with the flattery.”

“Fine.  The contest… two sides.  One king, five champions.  First king to topple the other wins.”

“You would go to war against me?”

“Neither king can make deliberate use of power while fighting in Toronto.  We can’t retreat to our personal realms.  This should be a more even contest, more about our leadership and the ability to use our Champions than about the power we wield.”

“You want to cripple me, while negating the effect your own weakness has on things.”

No.

“In a sense,” I said.  “This contest is about leadership, using the resources we have available.”

“Very well.”

That was the gravy.  The tidbit I offered to him as bait.

I knew full well that he had power he could leverage that was intrinsic.  Ambient.  He knew it, and he perhaps thought he was getting one over on me.  He was Conquest and he used power just by being.  I handed him this advantage because it got him on board, and it paved the way for future discussion.

I knew there were a dozen ways he could bend the rule.

But I had him listening, playing ball.

“A king must either surrender or be slain by the hand of the opposing king or that king’s champions,” I said.  “When it’s done, the contest is won.”

“Agreed.”

More gravy.  Conquest couldn’t die.  I could.  He had two ways to win, I had the one.  He was also very good at getting people to surrender.

“We pick our champions.  Taking turns.”

“If the champions don’t agree?” Conquest asked.

“Then they don’t agree, and you have an uncooperative champion,” I said.

“Fair.  I will pick first as the challenged.”

Damn.

“Agreed,” I said.  It wasn’t worth fighting over.

“Thirty seconds until the imp is free,” Laird said.

“You don’t impede my exit, nor my champions, before… let’s say one hour from now.”

“Very well.  What of the others?” Conquest asked.  “The ones outside?”

“You forfeit your power over anyone who isn’t one of your champions.  You don’t have to announce it, because a mutiny wouldn’t be keeping with the spirit of the contest, but you can’t order the supernatural residents of Toronto either, directly or by proxy.  Only your champions can be commanded, and only the champions or you can seize victory, or it’s not your victory.  Everyone outside remains in play, and can be convinced to join one side or the other.  Neither of us are liked, so it effectively levels the playing field.”

“A little extreme,” Conquest said.  “If you fight me without the forces at my disposal, are you truly besting me?”

“It’s the metaphorical chess game,” I said.  “We have the board, we each have the same number of pieces.  It’s a question of how well those pieces are used.”

“I cannot forfeit all of my power over others, diabolist.  It is a part of me.”

“You can decline to exercise it,” I said.

“I am not one for even contests.”

I know, but this isn’t as even as you’re pretending it is.

“Then pick your champions well.”

He stared down at me.  Then lowered his head a fraction.  “I’ll accept with a condition.  When I’ve won the contest, I can demand what I want of you.”

Fuck me.  I was expecting that, and it still almost knocked the wind out of me to hear it.

Fuck me.  Fuck.

It was scary, and it was almost as bad as falling victim to the lawyers.

“When-” I found my mouth dry.  The Eye was still here, the air was hot, and I was nervous.  I couldn’t speak for a moment.

“Time’s up.  The imp is free,” Laird said.

On cue, the book’s bindings opened.

Had Rose finished the circle?

She had.  A simple one.

The book unfolded, and Pauz rose out of it, tearing his arms and tiny horns free of the tendrils of ink that stuck to the book itself.

He looked around.

“Hm,” he said, in the voice that didn’t fit his small body.  He perched on the edge of the bookstand and looked down.  “Hmm!?”

“The circle was the Lord’s action, not mine,” I said.

“The circle was drawn by your hand.  You betrayed your word when your mouth spoke of my secrets to Conquest.  I can see, and I am aware.”

Rose’s hand was my hand, her words my words?

Damn it.

“The hand was forced to move.  It was the Lord’s action,” Rose said.  “The mouth was forced to speak.

Pauz hopped, turning.  It pointed an accusing finger at Rose.  “It speaks!  I might call you forsworn, Thorburn.  Mere excuses.”

He looked at me, pointing with his other finger.  He screeched, “Are you forsworn!?  Defend yourself!”

Fuck me.  I hadn’t expected this angle.

I managed to hold my composure.  “By the terms of our contract, you can take this dispute to a neutral third party.  Your argument would be a hard sell, I think.  I’m not responsible for what the Lord of Toronto does, after I brought you to him.”

“You are if you led him to this path,” Pauz growled.

“I speak honestly when I say I didn’t plan for or want this.”

“Why am I bound?” Pauz asked, his eyes falling on Conquest.  “Why take me if you would bind me fast?”

“You are of little interest,” Conquest said.  “I had no real plans to release or use you.”

Conquest spread massive arms with draping sleeves knit of his own skin, as if embracing his realm, the scene.  “This is a tableau.  I will use the Thorburn diabolist to summon dark powers to my realm, and I must set the stage accordingly.”

“You had me fight those fucking things so they could be props?” I asked.

Conquest’s voice was deep, imperious.  “I had you fight them for many reasons, diabolist.  They will put all visitors into a particular frame of mind.  I did it to weaken you, to distract while I made use of your Rose.  I did it to better secure my realm from rogue agencies, and for other reasons besides.”

“They’re props.  The metaphorical equivalent to animal heads mounted on a hunter’s wall.  Except you didn’t even do your own hunting.”

“They are sources of power, too, trophies won with my abilities, even if those abilities were used to send others to hunt on my behalf.”

I bit my tongue so I couldn’t say something I might regret.

“You did well, Rose,” Conquest said.  “It seems to be an effective circle.  Tell me, did you subvert me?”

Rose made a face.  I could see the momentary strain, as if she were about to have a stroke, then relief that came with obedience.  “Yes.”

“Tell me, how?”

“The chalk circle is weak.  It won’t hold.”

“I want you to repair it.  Can you do it now?”

“No.  I need materials.  Animal entrail or animal blood.”

“Then it can wait.”

“You deceived me,” Pauz accused me.

“I did, but not on purpose.”

“I will not have what I want, like this.  Forever bound, a decoration?  A well of power to be tapped.”

“No,” I said.  “I guess not.”

I’d hoped to destabilize and distract Conquest and contain the taint, or to make him more powerful in a manageable way.

This was the worst of both worlds.  Conquest had power, but it was tainted power.  He was entirely in control, stronger, in a very hard way to manage.

Well, I had other ideas, but I wasn’t sure if I should use them.  There were consequences.

“I name the Eye as my first champion,” Conquest said.

Quite possibly, by all accounts, the most powerful being in the city.

If I’d had first pick, I’d feel twice as confident as I did. There were traps here.  Ideas that could so very easily fall through.

“I name Rose as my first.”

Rose perked up at that.  “Why me?”

“Come on,” I said.

The chain dragged along the floor as she approached me, a little bent, almost weary.

I found her hand with mine, and made myself hold it.

Physical contact wasn’t comforting to me.  Just the opposite, really.  I could deal – she needed it more than I did.

“The Shepherd, as my second champion,” Conquest said.

Another more powerful figure, and arguably a strategic choice.  The Shepherd was a practitioner specializing in ghosts, and, well, many of my assets were ghosts.  Evan, Leonard.  June, who I didn’t have access to.

If we were kids in gym class, he was picking the power players, and I was picking the geeks.

I couldn’t delay longer.  This would be my first gamble, among my picks.

“Fell,” I said, turning my head.

Fell’s eyebrows raised.

“You would take my own subordinate?” Conquest asked.

“He knows you best.”

“He does not have to agree,” Conquest said.

His words had weight.  A latent menace.

Conquest couldn’t use his hold on Rose or Fell to subvert them while this contest lasted, but he could take revenge for any perceived betrayal after the fact.

Fell looked at me.  “There are things I need to say that I can’t, because I am forced to obey him.  If I joined you, I would be free to say it, but it would be too late.”

“I’m asking all the same,” I said.

“Damn you, Thorburn.  You couldn’t make this simple?”  Fell asked.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” Fell said.  “Fuck you, but yes.”

I nodded.

He saw what this was.  A chance to fight back against Conquest.  He didn’t like it, but with all I knew about who he was, I knew he couldn’t say no.

Conquest’s voice was deep, brimming with latent anger.  “For my third, I take the elder Behaim.  He owes me a service for my mercy in regards to his nephew.”

“I do, and I’ll do as you wish,” Laird said.

Great.  Time manipulation.

I could only hope that the Behaim batteries were running low after the recent shenanigans.

Right.  My third pick…

“I pick the Hyena,” I said.

“What!?” Evan piped up.

“Relax,” I said.

“The Hyena is not yours to take,” Conquest said.

“It’s not your place to stand in my way, by the terms of this contest,” I said.  It took all the confidence I had, but I crossed the tower’s top to collect the sword form the Hyena had taken.  I held it gingerly in both hands, so the spikes in the thing wouldn’t stab me.

As I returned to my group, I could see the fear in Alexis’ eyes.

I had three friends who were practitioners now, and only two remaining slots.

Thing was, I wasn’t taking any of them.  I didn’t want them on this battlefield.

“I could take one of yours from you,” Conquest said, to my back, as if he were reading my mind.

It was very possible.  I didn’t take my eyes off Alexis.

He had two options.  He could assert his power, picking safe, strong options, or he could gather power by taking someone like Alexis from me, cowing and breaking her.

I was gambling everything that he wouldn’t.  I was gambling that he was insecure, that he couldn’t afford the loss, that he would favor stomping on me and winning this unequivocally, over taking one of my friends from me.

“Hmm,” Conquest murmured.  The little hum reverberated through his realm.  “The imp and the Hyena are there for the taking, so you seize the Hyena, thinking I might take the imp.  Do you want to trap me, diabolist?  Impel me to take the imp, a being you know how to deal with, that your Rose can deal with?”

I didn’t flinch, managing to keep my expression level.  The best poker face I could manage.

“I will take the Astrologer as my fourth,” he said.

One of my allies, all the same.

Did he know?  Was he aware that Diana was on my side?  Fell was aware.

Damn.

He had some degree of sway over Diana by virtue of being Lord of Toronto.  He apparently thought he could bully her into falling into line.

“Then I take the imp as my fourth champion,” I said.

“I expected as much,” Conquest said.  “I’ll take the one in charge of the Sisters of the Torch for my last champion.”

Great.  The zealots.

He was picking assets that came with forces of their own.  The Shepherd had his ghosts, Laird knew other Behaims, and the leader of the Sisters came with a little bit of clout, some manpower.

The ones who remained, not yet elected to be champions, were the Sphinx, the Knights, my cabal…

Either I didn’t trust them, or I didn’t want to bring them into this fight.

“I name Maggie Holt,” I said.

“I do not know this one,” Conquest said.

“A Jacob’s Bell resident, my King,” Laird said, with a trace of sardony.  “A novice Goblin Queen.  No doubt intended to help with the goblin sword he called the Hyena.”

“Very well.”

It was done.

“You may take your leave, as we agreed.”

I stepped towards the imp.  Conquest didn’t stop me.

“Are you going to play ball, Pauz?”

“What?”

“I can leave you here.  You can spite me.  And you might stay here for the remainder of your existence, an immortal prop for an immortal being.  Or I can bring you with, and you can give me your obedience.”

“Three days of obedience,” Pauz countered.

I turned to leave.

“Yes!” he cried out.

“Tell me you’ll go back in the book, and you’ll return to the book at my order, any time from here on out.”

He glared.

“I’m not fooling around, Pauz.”

“I so swear,” he said.

“All of you.  Including your essence and power that you would cast out.  I don’t want to carry a book that’s shedding your power.”

He remained silent, glaring.

I spread my arms.

He sat down, and the book closed itself, the cord winding around the exterior, the same weird bondage-style knot around the black leather tome that I’d seen before.

I collected it.

“You have what you need.  At ten minutes past one this begins in earnest,” Conquest said.  “Leave.”

“You have to relinquish your power over my Champions, by the terms of this contest.”

“Do I?”

“The terms were that you couldn’t command or assert control over anyone who wasn’t a champion of yours.”

“Very well.  I will exercise no power over them.”

“Not good enough.  Release Fell from the deals that hold him, for the duration of this contest.  Rose too.  The shackle has power over her, a weight on her mind and conscience, a reminder, it links you to her and her to you.”

I could see his expression change.  It was quite dramatic, given how monstrous his face was, the skin stretched.  The movement of a brow made skin slip and snap into new positions, baring more teeth incidentally.

“I see.  You not only sought to undermine me, but to unshackle that which belongs to me?”

I nodded.

“Rest assured, Thorburn, when I take my victory, you’ll regret this contest of yours.”

I was already sort of regretting it.  The forces arrayed against us were pretty ugly.

I had two assets that I was loathe to use, and one that might not answer the call.

“You are hereby freed,” Conquest said.  “Let it be known, what I have claimed, I will reclaim.”

That done, he released Rose.  The shackle came off.

She looked at me, wide-eyed, rubbing at her wrist.

Fell stood a little straighter, as if a burden had been lifted off his shoulders.

That done, I took the first step down the stairs.  When I teetered, Rose used her grip on my hand to keep me from falling.  Alexis, on my other side, caught me.

“Fuck you, Thorburn,” Fell muttered, behind my back.

“What the fuck are you saying?” Ty asked.

“I’m telling Blake Thorburn that if he thinks he’s done me a favor here, he hasn’t.”

“I guess I haven’t,” I said.

“I don’t need a rescue attempt,” Fell said.

“You’re getting it anyway,” I told him.

We passed down only one flight before we reached the base of the tower.  We’d climbed four to six, easily.

Fell pushed open the door, and we didn’t pass into Toronto.

Not exactly.

We were in the spirit world that layered our own.  The same caricature of a world that I’d seen outside the police station, when I’d very nearly slipped through the cracks and ceased being Blake Thorburn altogether.

A heavy fog hung over everything, and a dense falling snow made it harder still to see things.

The only cars were parked.  There were no people.

“Um,” Alexis said.  “Okay, I need another smoke.  Ty?”

Ty took over in helping keep me standing.  “Shit on me.”

“Careful,” I said.  “Lies.”

My eyes were on the forces arranged around us.  The Sisters, the Sphinx, the Shepherd, the Drunk, the Knights.

I felt a tug on my hand.

I looked, and saw Rose’s feet lifting off the ground.  She was fading, eroding.

I let go, and she disappeared.

I felt the connection move.  She’d returned to the reflections.

A bit less of a gap between the mirror world and this spirit world than it was between the mirror world and the real one.  Rose wasn’t contained quite so strictly to the mirrors.

Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  Vestiges were fragile, and she’d taken a beating lately, on a number of levels.

“You’re using the Hyena?” Evan asked.

“I’m keeping Conquest from using the Hyena,” I said.

“But-”

“I’m so lost,” Ty said, talking over Evan.

“Evan, Ty… All of you.  I know you have questions, but… not now.”

I had questions, myself, but I was keeping my mouth shut.

I didn’t want to debrief or fill in the blanks while staring down the Sphinx and the rest of Toronto’s finest.

I made my way down the stairs, Ty at my side.

The Shepherd and the Elder Sister made their way to the door we’d just left, giving us sidelong glances as they walked.

“You entered through one door and left through another,” Isadora commented.  “You’re standing on the other side of things.”

“War,” Fell said.  “It’s not unusual for a Lord to do this, to minimize the effects to the real world.”

“I would argue which world is ‘real’,” Isadora said.

“The mortal world, if you will,” Fell said.

“I will.  Things will bleed over.”

“They will,” Fell said.  “Five champions to each side, and the rest of the players may pick their sides or sit this one out.  With the kind of muscle he has, I don’t think things are going to be pretty for the residents of Toronto, even with this measure in place.”

Isadora nodded.

“It’s an arena,” Ty said.

“Essentially,” Fell said.

“He’s doing this so he can fight with no holds barred.  It’s an advantage to him, but… this is something that’s in his rights as a Lord?”

“Yes,” Fell said.

I nodded.

“That book you hold offends my senses,” Isadora commented.

“There shouldn’t be taint spreading from it.”

“The book is tainted.  Nothing spreads, but it is perverted, fouled,” Isadora said.  “Please don’t move so much.  You’ll spread the smell around.”

“Sorry,” I told her.  “It’s still less offensive than letting Conquest hold on to it.”

“Perhaps.  I’m not sure I like what I see.”

“You told me to go in there with my friends.  I think you were right.  Conquest maybe expected me to protect those friends, and he let his guard down, giving me the goblin and imp.  Thank you.”

The sphinx shook her head.  It was quite dramatic, all things considered.  “Don’t thank me.  You’ve started something, and I’m concerned that it’s the sort of war where there is no victor.”

“With all due respect, Isadora, daughter of Phix,” I said.  “You didn’t help me before.  If you don’t participate, you don’t get to complain when they don’t go the way you wanted.”

“I’m participating, Mr. Thorburn, rest assured.”

That said, she turned to leave.

Her wings folded around her, and she simultaneously stepped out of this world and into the other, adopting a human guise.

I squinted, using my sight, and I could peer into the real world.

“She left in a snit,” Alexis said.

Nick had approached while we talked to the sphinx.  As a practitioner, he straddled this world and the mortal one.  The ignorant were relegated to that other world.  If I focused, I could make them out as silhouettes in the drifting snow and heavy fog.

“I think I need a debrief,” he said.

“I know,” I answered.  “Just… give me a second.”

A few seconds passed.

“Blake,” Evan piped up, cutting into the silence.  “What are you doing with the Hyena?”

“I’m kind of wondering what he’s doing with Ty and me,” Alexis said.  “We made this leap, and-”

“Guys,” I cut her off.  I came across a little more intense than I’d hoped.  “Take… take a few minutes, get acclimatized.  Talk amongst yourselves.  I just need a bit to get my head in order.”

“What you mean is you want us to leave you the fuck alone,” Alexis said.

“For five or ten minutes,” I said.  “You’ve… A good few of you have been involved in this for a day, for hours.  I’ve had day after day of it.  There isn’t anyone here, Pauz and the Hyena excepted, who I don’t either deeply respect or feel very fond of.  Really.  Just give me five or ten minutes.  Please.”

There was no reply.  Awkward silence stretched on.

The awkward silence became a merciful silence, punctuated by whispers between others in the group.

My eye fell on a cracked window.  I could see Rose on the other side.  Hugging herself.

Rose hadn’t even said hi to my new recruits.  My circle.  My cabal.

I kind of missed the point where I could talk things out with her.  We kind of needed to return to that point.

Need being the operative word.  I wasn’t sure we’d survive if we couldn’t.

■

The sword was heavy as I set it down on the dining room table.

This spirit world was a representation of our world, but the forces that had affected it were very different.  I was only just barely beginning to wrap my head around it.

In the mortal realm, things were maintained by care, regular cleaning and maintenance.  Here, things were maintained, I suspected, by caring.  Things that were neglected were neglected, while cherished objects were well looked after.

The parts of the road where cars traditionally traveled were in pristine shape.  Some of the other parts were so pitted and ruined they might as well have been ditches or chasms.

It was eerie.  An entire city, desolate.  When I did see something, it was an eerie thing, a phantom image of a person in the other world who made a deeper impression, a lesser Other, like some faerie equivalent to a rat or a child’s nightmare that had slithered out of a dream and into this world, where it now hid in the cracks, scratching out some kind of existence I might never wrap my head around.

Even my apartment was an eerie twist on its real appearance.

Evan.  Rose.  Ty, Alexis, and now Tiff, who’d stayed at the apartment.  We also had Nick, his one-footed friend, and Priss, as tertiary allies, Fell as a questionable ally and information source, and the imp and Hyena were… mostly just questionable.

“Can I have your phone?” I asked.

“You don’t have a cell phone?” Fell asked me.

“I… no.”

“I’d like to know how you get by in this day and age without a phone.”

“I just do,” I said.  “I never really thought about it.”

He gave me a funny look, but he handed over his phone.

I searched online.  Finding a phone number was hard.  Finding an online profile wasn’t.  I sent Maggie a message over social media.

I returned the phone to Fell.

I drew in a deep breath, then sighed.  “Okay.  One at a time.  In order of introduction.  Rose?”

Silence.

“Rose?”

I looked, and she wasn’t anywhere near us.

Where other connections were either smooth and fluid, or weak, occasionally jerky and flickering where they snapped into place one moment and disappeared the next, Rose’s connection to me was something else entirely.  Inconsistent, jumping here and there, but most definitely not weak.

She appeared at one of the shards of mirror that I’d tacked to the wall.  My head wasn’t the only one that turned to look at her.

“Rose,” I said.

She dropped some books, making a noise, glanced at me, and said, “Gimme a minute.”

Then she was gone.

“Okay,” I said.  “We’ll touch base with her later.  Who’s next?”

“If it’s order of introduction, shouldn’t we be before her?” Ty asked.

“You were only introduced to this today.  Um.  Fell?”

“I’m the second person you ask?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “You had something you wanted to tell me?”

“It’s too late to make a meaningful difference.  I might say you’ve already shot yourself in the foot, but that’s understating it.”

“Explain, please,” I said.  “Because as far as I can tell, this is the only way I’m going to get one over on Conquest.”

“A contest that overwhelmingly favors him?”

“He wouldn’t accept if it didn’t,” I said.

“He could have taken us,” Alexis said.

“He could have, but he wouldn’t have,” I said.  “I… I sort of understand him.  He’s more machine than man.  He follows certain rules.  If we know what those rules are, on top of the underlying motivations, we can predict him.  Maneuver him.  I don’t think this is as unwinnable as it looks.”

“We, the people at this table, just have to get past the coven of elementalists, the time travelers, the ghostmonger, the astrologer, and a flaming force of nature that could theoretically bring mortal Toronto to its knees,” Fell said.

“Exactly,” I said.  “I didn’t say it would be easy.  But it’s not unwinnable.”

“You also have the Drunk out for your blood, for reasons inexplicable to me and Conquest both,” Fell said.

“There’s that,” I admitted.

“And the Sphinx is going to try to kill you.”

“Wait, what?”

“There’s been animosity towards you from the outset, the moment it became clear who you were and how you played into Conquest’s hands.  Can you wrap your head around why?”  Fell asked.

“I’m a diabolist.”

“No.  That’s part of the problem.  That label means anything that goes bad can potentially go catastrophically, but it’s not the whole problem.”

“You’re going to have to explain,” I said.

He frowned, leaning back.  “You’ve upset the balance.”

“Things were stable, now they aren’t.”

“In a nutshell… but there’s a complicating factor.  Conquest isn’t as strong as he appears.  Strong, to be sure, he can protect Toronto from outside forces, and he can hold his ground, but he isn’t as strong as he appears.”

There were murmurs from our assembled allies.

“I know,” I said.  “I’m… I guess I’m not surprised you figured it out too.

Drawing more murmurs.

“You don’t see the problem?” Fell asked.  “We all know, for the most part.  Maybe the Sisters don’t.  The Knights don’t know, I know.  But it’s common knowledge.”

“He’s a figurehead,” Nick said.

“He’s a figurehead,” Fell confirmed.  “He’s predictable, he’s something we can manipulate in a pinch, and he’s got the job that nobody here wants.  If Conquest fails, someone else has to take the job, and unlike Conquest, the rest of us aren’t immune to the thousands of very creative means of assassination that the practitioners of the world might employ.”

He looked around the table.

“When I say things are stable, I’m saying that people are either on board with the figurehead idea, or they’re under Conquest’s thumb, by virtue of being enslaved or being weak.  You coming in here, you’ve spoiled that… and that’s why you’re not going to find one more ally in this city.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Subordination 6.5

We had no allies.  We probably couldn’t even hope for allies.

The people gathered around this spirit-world version of my apartment were silent.

Damn it all.

I’d known we’d be against ugly odds, especially since I was foregoing allies for the chance to subvert Conquest, to steal his assets out from under him.  He had the muscle, he had numbers, and he had… very possibly centuries of experience.

I’d known that, but I’d gone ahead anyway.  I’d counted on being more indirect.  Fell had demonstrated an ability to avoid notice, some kind of enchantment.  Evan was good at escaping.  Rose was… well, she existed on level that was one step removed from reality.  She might very well be hard to pin down.  I had the Knights and my cabal to back me up.

I figured we could work around Conquest’s muscle, maybe rally some help, and attack from some oblique angle.

That didn’t work if all of the potential help was just as against me as Conquest was.

“You sided with me,” I told Fell.  “Knowing this?”

“I think you know why.”

“You had no other choice,” I said.

“No.  The others don’t see the full effect of what it’s done to me and my family, being enslaved, they don’t pay too much attention to it,” Fell said.  “Yeah… I had no other choice, not really.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He shrugged.  He stood up and crossed the room, looking out the window.

My eye swept over the apartment.  Not everything was in place.  It was almost as if it had stepped back in time a little, my belongings scattered much as they might have been after the cops ransacked the place.  There were other spots where it looked like it had aged, where the paint peeled and the carpet was grungier at the points where it met the wall, cleaner towards the center.  The simple contrast between clean and dirty made for starker contrasts.

My eye fell on the table.  The sword lay in the middle of it.  Ugly, unwieldy, painful to hold, and bearing the Hyena’s features on the hilt and pommel.

“Evan,” I said.  “When I took the Hyena, I did it to take it away from Conquest.”

“I thought you got it.”

“I did.  He’s caught.  And I don’t have plans to do anything with it that will let it go back to doing what it was doing.”

“But it can get free again?”

“Theoretically, but only if given permission.  He’s a dog on a leash now,” I said.  “I’d rather we held the leash, instead of Conquest holding it.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I know.  It’s honestly a little scary for me, too.  But it beats the alternatives.  Make you a deal?”

“What?”

“I won’t unbind the Hyena without your say so.”

“Hmm…” Evan said.

“Don’t make that decision too quickly,” A woman’s voice.  I turned my head to see Rose in the wall-mounted mirrors.

“You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Rose said.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Evan asked.

“Blake made me a similar offer, before.  A few times, really.  Promised to take my counsel.  To give me a chance to offer my input, to decide before he went ahead with anything big.  Do you know how many times he’s actually followed through?”

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“I agree,” Rose said.  “It isn’t fair.  You got a familiar, you got your… circle thing.”

“Cabal,” Fell said.

“Yeah.  Cabal.  Adding more fuel to the fire.  Inquisitors, even.”

“To be fair,” Ty said.  “They say nobody expects the Inquisition.”

“We could forestall trouble by telling them that Alexis and Ty have sworn not to touch the diabolism stuff.”

“I’m just sort of wondering what we’re here for,” Alexis said.

“I know,” I said.  “We’re going to hash that out.  It means more to me than I can say, that I have you here.  Really.”

“You could forestall trouble,” Rose said, “Or maybe they play it safe, you guys go to sleep one night, and you don’t wake up.”

“That seems sketchy,” I said.

“Because everything else here has really been on the up and up, hasn’t it?”

I leaned forward, leaning over the table.  “If it’s a problem, I’m not going to assert any kind of control over them.  Maybe that makes it less of a cabal and more of a circle that has a sort-of-a-diabolist guy as a member.”

“Two sort-of-diabolists, if you count me,” Rose said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Though you don’t really fit the definition.  You haven’t done anything.  You sat out for the imp thing.”

If I maybe made that a bit of a barb, the fact that she’d been so useless, it was because I felt a little bit cornered and a lot betrayed after the lengths I’d just gone to in order to free her.  She was undermining me more than she was helping.

“I’m more of a Thorburn than you are,” Rose said.

I’d been poised to reply, to fight back.  That caught me off guard that I mentally stumbled.

“Be careful you don’t lie,” I said.

It came across as a little wimpy.

“The diabolist of the Thorburn line is supposed to be a woman, or a girl,” Rose said.  “Who got the voice?  Who gets the respect, of the two of us?  You want to talk more abstract points?  I stuck with the family, for better or worse.  I don’t even know how much was intentional, but in my recollection of the conversation with Grandmother, talking with her on her deathbed?  She pretty heavily implied that she wanted us to fight tooth and nail.  But you left.”

“You’re blaming him?” Alexis asked.

“No.  I’m just saying, I’m the girl that’s stuck in the mirrors while Blake’s flesh and blood, but I’m pretty confident when I say that I’m more Thorburn than he is.  He left the family, I remained a part of it.  But that doesn’t mean, Evan, Alexis, that he didn’t take something away from it.  He can apparently be as manipulative as any of them.”

“I don’t agree,” I said, “and maybe this is the sort of thing we should discuss in private.  It’s not really relevant.”

“It’s very relevant,” Rose said.

“To this.  To the fight against Conquest,” I said.

“Ah,” she said.  “Can’t say for sure.  I’m going to go get more books and tools, or I won’t be so useful as one of your champions.  I only want the rest of you to think twice before you accept an offer like that.  What was it he said?  Actions matter more than words?”

“That wasn’t the context,” I said.

But she was already gone.

I leaned back, sitting a bit straighter, and sighed.  “Fuck me.”

“She’s you if you were a girl, huh?” Alexis asked.

“Apparently.”

“Female you is kind of a bitch,” she said.

I didn’t have a response.  I didn’t want to just slap a convenient label on Rose and demonize her.  I’d had that done to me often enough, even in the past few days.

“Just what happened to her, in Conquest’s realm?”  I asked.

“She already explained,” Fell said.  “Conquest made her do what he wanted.”

“Which was?”

“Which was inconsequential, really.  The part you should be focusing on is the fact that the Lord of Toronto made her act what he wished.  He bent her will to his and took all volition from her.”

I felt ugly feelings stir at the idea, and pushed them away, along with the images that accompanied them.

“He’s done the same to you?” I asked.

“He’s done it to me, my family, my father’s family, my grandfather’s family.  He’s done it to others, and when they broke, he tossed them away.  If and when you lose this contest of yours, he’ll do it to you.”

“If I win, I’ll earn the wrath of every local.”

“Yes,” he said.

I nodded.

“There’s no tidy, neat way to do this,” I said.  “So we’re going to do it in an untidy way.  Alexis, you’ve asked a few times, you deserve more of an answer.  You want to know why you’re here, and not one of the champions?”

“I think I kind of understand.”

“Having contact with you guys helps me.  I don’t need you to be a champion to do that.  I don’t want you, Ty or Tiff to be in the line of fire.”

“What do we do, then?”

“I don’t know how long this is going to take.  It could be over in hours, it could take a few days-”

“Faster than shorter,” Fell said.  He still stood by the window.  I’d only managed to get one light working in the kitchen, and the light from the window was all we had.  It was good, enough to make faces visible, but his presence by the window cast a shadow over everything.  He added, “Conquest prefers short, one-sided fights over long, drawn-out ones.”

“Okay.  Thanks, that’s useful.  Changes it up, then,” I said.  “I was going to say Alexis, Ty and Tiff could set up spaces for us to retreat to, places to sleep, acquire food.  Novice or not, you guys can still draw defensive circles.  But if this is going to be fast… think less about food and sleep, more about the defenses.  The knights lent us a book.”

“I have it,” Ty said.

“Good,” I said.  “We can’t fight them head on.  It’s suicidal.  What we’re going to do is split up.  Rose can find and communicate with our different groups.  We keep moving, we communicate, and we share our assets.”

There were nods around the table.

“Ty, Tiff, Alexis, I’m going to try to stay close to you.  I can’t move very fast or very far, really.  Fell?  Can you do something about their ability to track us?”

“Hiding is hard.  Costly.  It’s a lot of people to protect, and there are a lot of forces arrayed against us.  Each one needs different countermeasures, or we take one measure that covers all the bases.”

I nodded.  “What if we don’t hide?”

“What are you thinking?”

“Distractions.  Misdirection.”

“Yeah.  I can work on something.”

I nodded.  “Knights?”

“We’re sitting this one out,” Nick said.

No.  I was short enough on allies as it was.  “I’m not asking for you to fight.  Only that you maybe help my circle get around.  A ride here and there.”

“It’s too close to the fighting,” Nick said.  “I’m sorry.  I told you from the beginning that we couldn’t and we wouldn’t.  We’ve already pushed it.”

I winced.  “Can’t really stop you.”

“Probably could,” Nick said.  He extended a hand.  “Thanks for not making a fuss.”

I reached out and shook it.

They took a moment to grab their jackets.  In another moment, they were gone.

That hurt.  I understood, but it hurt.

“Your friend just replied to the internet message,” Fell said.  “You’ve convinced her.  She’s got to get her things, sneak out, and she’ll be here soon.”

I exhaled.  We got Maggie.

‘Soon’, however, translated to one hour at a minimum.

I looked for a clock and saw it lying on the ground, not mounted in its usual place.

That meant we had a bit of time to prepare, the better part of an hour to endure the hostilities and contest, and then we had Maggie.

Maggie wasn’t a big gun, unfortunately.

It wouldn’t be a game changer.

“Okay,” I said.  “Everyone has a weapon?”

Nods all around.

“Do we need anything before we move?”

“Access to that toolbox,” Fell said.

“Go for it.”

He did, opening it.  He lifted off the top half to check the bottom.

“And, since I’m not seeing them in here, I need scissors,” Fell said, rummaging.

I fished in the kitchen drawers.  All disorganized.  As if my apartment had been taken apart, destroyed, and then put back together and cleaned, with an emphasis on sentimentality and how frequently I used things.

I had five pairs of scissors and they were all at the very bottom of the drawer,

I handed him my best pair.  He’d already laid a hammer and some nails aside.

“Stand still,” he said.

He snipped off a lock of hair.

He proceeded to grab one of my dining room chairs by the back, lift it overhead and dash it to pieces.

Not the real chair, the spirit-world equivalent.  Cheap stuff from a furniture store where the stuff had unpronounceable names.

It still grated.

“Burning off nervous energy?” I asked.

“No,” he said.  He grabbed the hammer and nails.

No further explanation.  He was helping, but we weren’t buddy-buddy.

One long piece of wood, propped against the wall.  He used duct tape to stick the lock of hair to the top.

One horizontal bar, a third of the way down, nailed in place with two deft strikes of the hammer.

Another, at the base, to help keep the thing balanced.

He drew some powder from his pocket, and drew a series of solid lines, forming a triangle around the thing.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It…” Fell said, licking his thumb, then dragging it across the hardwood floor, “is a distraction.”

I could sense the connection shift, and I saw facsimile connections appearing between it and my friends.

Fell’s back blocked my view of the stick thing.  When he was out of my way, I saw a Blake Thorburn sitting inside the powdery pyramid.  He was so beaten-down that I almost expected to see fraying around the edges of his clothes.  He had circles under his eyes, stubble on his chin, and the lines of his face and neck were more defined than they should have been.

His blond hair was almost long enough to cover his eyes, and the only reason it wasn’t was the natural wave, but it was dirty, and it did the same thing my hair did when it was the least bit greasy, twisting away from my head in fat curls.

He looked like I imagined myself looking when I thought of the times I’d been homeless.  If I’d been walking down the street and I saw him sitting on a flattened cardboard box, I wouldn’t have thought twice about him.  Except for the looking like me thing.

I reached up and touched the part of my head where his hair curled.  I felt the hair there, where it had sprung out of place.

“I really look like that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Alexis said.  “Wow, that’s creepy.  Does it have to stare off into space?”

“It’s a bit of wood from a chair, not a person,” Fell said.  “Yeah, it does.”

It was me if I were brain dead, maybe.  Sitting with one back against the wall.

“Can we do something with it?” I asked.

“We could,” Fell said.

“Booby trap it?”  I asked.

“How?  I’m not really a shaman, and I don’t want anything like fire or explosions to burn down your apartment.”

“This version of my apartment, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not?”

“What happens here happens there.”

Meaning it would be fire or an explosion of sorts in my apartment.

“Something nonlethal?” I asked.

He rubbed his chin.  “Okay.  Let me think… do you have ribbon?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Let me figure out where.”

It took only a minute to find.  Colored birthday ribbons were sitting in the bottom half of my toolbox.

He unfurled a bit, then handed it to me.  “Tie it to the biggest, most inconvenient object you think you could carry.  Tie it securely, so they can’t untie it, or break whatever it is you’ve tied it to.”

I headed straight for the kitchen.

Stove?  Dishwasher?  Too big, too heavy.

Fridge?

They were options, but there wasn’t anything I could tie the cord to.  The handle on the stove door was loose, and the fridge handle was recessed into the side of the door.  The hinge… it was such a reach I wouldn’t be able to get more than the simplest knot on it.

The microwave, though, was closer.

One loop of cord going vertically around the microwave, another going horizontal.

I tied it firmly.

By the time I was done, Fell was entering the kitchen, scuffing the floor with one toe.  Where he scuffed at the ribbon, it effectively disappeared.  The part I could see stuck out from the gaps in the tile as if the tile had been laid out over the ribbon.

“Neat trick,” I said.

He used his fingers on the part of the ribbon that stretched up to the microwave, turning it until I was looking straight on at the thinnest side.  When he was done, he threw powder at the microwave itself.

“What does this do?” I asked.

“One circle around the effigy, one snare around that.  If they get close enough, the snare will attach to them,” Fell said.  He led the way back into the dining room.

I felt a little creeped out, looking at my double.

Sure enough, words were written on the hardwood.  Simple ones in a foreign language.

“The words?”

“Conditions,” Fell said.

“To?”

“It doesn’t matter.  Don’t touch.”

Fell headed to the front door of the apartment.  I heard the closet door slide open.  A little rougher than the sound I was used to.

Alexis was writing on the same pad of paper I’d used to write up the contract with the imp.  I looked over her shoulder, and saw that she was copying the wording Fell had used for the inscription on the floor.

She explained, “He told me it would bind the person to the object on the far end of the ribbon.  The snare releases them only so long as they carry the object on the other side.  If they put it down, the snare seizes them again.”

I considered it.  I could imagine Laird lugging a microwave around.

“Like I said before,” I commented.  “I do respect Fell, even if I don’t always like him.”

“I might say the same of you,” Fell commented.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“Might.”

I winced.  I’d walked into that.

“If it helps,” Tiff spoke up for the first time since we’d walked into the apartment.  “I respect you, and I like you too.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Yeah,” Alexis said.  “I respect and like you too.  Let’s keep it that way?”

“Please,” I said.  I turned to address the room.  “Alright.  Let’s go!  Get your stuff!”

I grabbed three mirror-shards off the wall, pocketed them, then got the goblin-sword and imp-book.  The imp-book went in my backpack, along with the bottle and a few of the other stuff.

Leave the creepy Blake-doppelganger alone.

Don’t think too hard about why it bothers you so much.

Fell walked through my apartment with boots on, still wet from being outside, not long ago.  He collected the wood from the destroyed chair, using the pieces to fill a trash can, deposited hammer, scissors and nails within, then left the apartment with the can under his arm, not even waiting for us.

We were still only a few steps behind him.

The elevators were out of order, so we used the stairs.  Tough for me, but doable.

I did feel better, having Alexis and Ty close.  I felt stronger, I was bouncing back… it still sucked, but it could have sucked more.  I could be faceplanting like I had outside the factory.

Better or not, I still needed to stop partway down.

Rose appeared in the reflection of the door.

I turned to Ty, who was helping to support me and make sure I didn’t fall down.

“Go ahead,” I told him.

“You sure?”

“Need a private word with Rose, I’ll be right out.”

He nodded.

“You too, Evan.”

“I can’t fly that far away.”

“I know.  Just… out of earshot, please.”

“‘Kay.”

A flutter, and Evan was gone.  Sometimes he flew so gracefully, and then there were times like this, where he’d start flying, then flutter violently to reorient himself before he could hit a wall, fly a bit until he was out of sight, below us, followed by another audible flutter.

“You okay?” I asked Rose.

“Not really.”

I nodded.  “I’m sorry.”

“I need actions, not words.  I’m sorry too, but I need reparations.”

“What do you need?  I freed you.  That has to count for something.”

“I was only caught because of you.  I’ve seen you go out of your way to try to balance the scales with your friends, with the bystander that gave you a ride to Jacob’s Bell.  Always fair.”

“Yeah.”

“Why does it feel like you and I aren’t balanced?  Like I’m the only person you’re not trying to balance the scales with?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Yeah. I don’t know either.  You’re not denying it seems that way?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Well, keep it in mind, maybe.  Weigh it in your head, and if and when you feel you’re sorry enough to act on it, that’d be cool.”

I nodded.

“You should go.  It’s almost time, and you don’t want to be near the apartment when this contest starts.”

I nodded.  “Are we okay?  As a unit?  A pair?”

“No.  Third time’s a charm, remember?  This is the third major time you’ve undercut me when I was helpless to fight back, and it’s making it really hard for us to be allies, Blake.”

“But we’re allies?”

“Yeah.  I really don’t want to be enemies.”

“Do you think that’s in the cards?”

“I worry that it has been from the start.”

“We did pretty damn good going up against the abstract demon.  We didn’t win, but, I mean, fuck me, we could have done a whole lot worse.”

“Yeah.”

“Why can’t we work together like that again?”

“We can try.”

So many noncommittal answers.

“Communicate with me,” I said, my voice low.  “There’s no way we can fix this if you’re leaving stuff out.  I’ve… I know I’ve maybe shortchanged you here and there.  And it’s not equitable, but I’ve consistently tried to be…”

I grasped for a word.

Honest would be pushing it.

“…Straightforward.  To act in our mutual interests,” I said.

“Sure,” Rose said, with a tone that was unreadable.

“You’re not being straightforward.  What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s… complicated.”

“What is?”

“Conquest.  While he had me, he made me tell him everything I didn’t want him to know.”

“You told him about the books.”

“Yes.  And when he ordered me to, I brought them to him.  He would have made me summon something.”

“The contest here stopped him, right?  You got the books back?”

“I did, but this only stalled him.  If he wins, he gets you, and he gets access to the books all the same.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Blake, there was more.  I told him other things.”

“Blake!”  A shout from further down the stairs.

“Trouble?” I called down.

“No.  But don’t take too long!”

I started to head down the stairs.  I grabbed a mirror from my pocket and held it for Rose.

I was down half a flight before Rose spoke again.

“I told him your weaknesses.”

Balls, balls, balls.

“You explained how I don’t like physical contact.”

“I explained a lot of things, Blake.”

“My patterns?  Habits?  Mindset?”

“Blake,” Rose said.

“What did you tell him?”  I asked.

“I’d explain, but I’m really, really worried that if I brought it up here, you’d either never forgive me, or it’d affect your mind and emotions, and fuck you up in this thing that’s happening right now.”

“What did you tell him!?”

My voice rang through the stairwell, echoing off the walls.

“I- I speculated.  I told him things that I wasn’t sure on, about why you were the way you were, on a lot of levels.  The fact that you don’t like being touched was a part of it.”

There they were.  The dark, ugly emotions, settled in the pit of my stomach.

The betrayal was a new one, separate.

I didn’t blame Rose for telling Conquest.

Or maybe I did.  Maybe I would be lying if I’d said I didn’t blame her out loud.

But I didn’t blame her that much.  I couldn’t say until I experienced it for myself, but a part of me wondered if she could have resisted more.  And I knew that was horribly unfair.

No, it was that she hadn’t been upfront about it.  That she’d felt like she couldn’t tell me.

That was the part that really got to me.  That she could very well have let me walk into this without my eyes open, for Conquest to hit me with some custom-made flavor of fuckery, all of the horror and madness that an incarnation of Conquest could bring to bear, designed specifically for me.

I was a flawed person.  I knew it.  Had someone asked before all this started, I would have admitted it.  But one of the places I felt most flawed, one of the least comfortable things for me to admit, was just how weak I was at my core.  Some people could turn to the ugly incidents in their past and find a kind of strength there.  An anger to drive them forward.

When I touched that part of myself, even around the edges, I almost always felt like all the strength went out of me.

I wanted to be angry enough for it to matter.  I drew my arm back, ready to throw the mirror, gripping it so hard that the sharp edges bit into the meat of my fingers.

I stopped there, lowering my arm.

The tension went out of me, the feelings remained.  My arm hung limp at my side.

“Blake!” a voice from below.  Ty, I was pretty sure.  “We need to move!”

Rose had wanted equity.  For the scales to be balanced, and me to make the effort.

Fine.

She was angry at me, too.  She felt betrayed.  I kept moving forward without her, and she was there, stuck in reflections.  She was struggling to deal, but she was playing ball.  Mostly.

I could do the same.  Or I could try.

I was breathing hard, and my body wasn’t in good enough shape to handle the anger well.  I was like an old man, my body going well before my mind did.  Or maybe I was like a demented old man.  Body and mind going, and all there was was the confusion, the anger.

Fuck.

The others were in sight, half a flight below me, when I spoke.  “Rose?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to set up a spot we can defend and regroup at, then split up.  Are you okay with coordinating?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Thank you.  You can move faster than any of us, so do what you can to keep an eye on things.”

“I can do that.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We left it at that, by some mutual agreement.

The others were gathered in the building lobby as I descended.  Evan made his way to my shoulder.

“Ghosts across the street,” Fell said.

“What does that mean?”  I asked.

“The Shepherd fosters psychic echoes in an area around him.  Rouses things that have gone still, for one last action.  He’s close.”

“Will he come alone?” I asked.

“Usually.  But with Conquest giving orders?  I wouldn’t guarantee it,” Fell said.  “We should go.”

“Not complaining,” I said.

“Too many of us for one car,” Ty said, “Unless people want to ride in the trunk.”

“Knights were our rides,” Alexis said.

Losing them sucked.

“Does anyone feel brave?”  I asked.

“You mean suicidal?” Alexis asked.  “I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

“You should say think you know,” Tiff said, her voice small.  She wasn’t so confident in the midst of the group.  “Be careful.”

“No,” Alexis said, meeting my eyes.  “I know.”

■

Holy hell, I’d needed this.

My friends were one thing, a connection to me.  Like ties that bound me to the rest of the world.

This was another.  When I was miserable, when I wanted escape, or relief, or if I wanted to stop doing something and do something else entirely, this was my go-to.

An escape to myself.  My escape from myself, too, if I needed it to be.

The light snow covering on the roads flew behind me as my bike tore down the dimly lit city street.  There were no lights in the windows.  Only the moon above, filtering through the fog, the dim glow of white snow catching the reflected light.

I saw not by the light, but by the dark.  The road was only a yawning stretch of black speckled by white.  My eyes scanned the surface, watching for any dark areas without a faint covering of snow.

Riding in winter wasn’t the hardest thing in the world.  If the roads were mostly clear, then it wasn’t impossible.  The big concern, inevitably, was the other drivers.  People were stupid, people in winter conditions were stupider, and the guy on the bike was the guy who got the short end of the stick in those cases.

Here, at least, there were no other drivers.  The roads were empty, the sidewalks mostly clear.  No pedestrians running out from in between parked cars.  No being cut off.

Tiffany was riding behind me.  It wasn’t the romantic sort of ride she’d maybe anticipated.  I’d told her that she couldn’t wrap her arms around me, so she leaned back instead, holding the bars behind her seat.  I suspected she’d come with me to avoid having to be with the crowd in the car.  I also suspected she was regretting the decision.

Evan, for his part, was tucked into the ‘v’ where my coat’s zipper parted at the collarbone.  He periodically screamed something that might have been spelled with a few dozen letter ‘A’s, lost in the rush of wind and noise of my bike, and periodically laughed, a noise that was easier to make out.

I was cold, tense, and I knew I wasn’t as strong or coordinated as I could have been.  Visibility could have been better, with the mist and the snowfall.

But every second I was on the bike was a second I felt better, recharging my personal batteries, leaving my argument with Rose and the tensions of the night well behind me.

I accelerated, and I felt myself feeling better faster.  I heard the engine’s volume increase, felt the bike beneath me, reacting.

I was leaving the others behind.  Rather than slow down, I zig-zagged from one side of the street to the other, tentative at first, then a little more aggressive, reminding myself of how the bike handled, how it handled with a passenger, and getting a feel for the road, all at the same time.

Getting closer to the sidewalk, I saw the ghosts.  Greater and greater numbers.

The Shepherd was closing in.

One in the middle of the street, blocking my way.

I gave it as wide a berth as possible.  A quick glance, then I rode up on the sidewalk.

It lunged for me.  Flickered, crossed a distance far greater than it should have.  An exaggeration of what the person who’d hit him must have experienced.  A misjudgment of distance.

A moment later, I heard a loud crash.  I slowed, glancing over one shoulder.

He’d reversed directions, throwing himself into the car with the others.  The windshield was cracked, the hood dented, the ghost gone.

With every passing second, there were more ghosts on the sidewalks.  More psychic echoes.  A few were lingering images that seemed to trail after the gaps in the mist.  Echoes in the process of being engraved on the fabric of reality.  The most miserable, angry, lost individuals.  People who might only need a push to leave a mark behind, a ghost.

The way the numbers were increasing, I took it to be a sign.  We were moving straight toward the Shepherd.

I saw a car on the road, meandering.  A psychic echo of a vehicle.

If it was anything like the ghost who’d thrown itself into Fell’s car, I didn’t trust my ability to avoid getting hit.

I flashed my blinkers, signalling for good measure, my arm bent at a right angle, hand up.

I turned.  Going the wrong way down a one-way street.

Had to lead us further away from the Shepherd.

It wasn’t the Shepherd that made the first appearance.

A dark silhouette, easily six feet tall, broad at the shoulders, dressed in rags.

The Eye.  Given birth in the 1904 fire of Toronto, a reminder to man that the elements weren’t entirely under our control.

It raised its arms, and I saw reality distort.  A glimmer of light, an artificial Aurora Borealis.

The lights, however, weren’t any natural effect.  They were very real city lights.  A bright flash lit up the space behind him, showing just how wide the effect was opening.

There weren’t many lights on in this spirit world.

We weren’t looking at the spirit world.

I slowed, pulling a U-turn to put the Eye behind me.

The bright flash behind him only got brighter.  Headlights.  Multiple sets.

I was looking over my shoulder, and my focus was partially on getting the bike moving away from him without toppling or driving straight into one of the larger potholes.  I didn’t see exactly what happened next.

The collision, however, put the impact of one human body against Fell’s car to shame.  It was easily two or three hundred feet away, but I could feel it like a punch in the gut, a noise and vibration that momentarily tore my thoughts from my brain.

The aftermath wasn’t much prettier.  One car, virtually airborne, followed by chunks big enough to dash my brains in, flipped halfway-over in midair, then hit the road, roof-first.

No illusions about what might have happened to the person inside.

The other car squealed, fishtailing before running up and over a bike rack that was bolted to the sidewalk, half-turning to skid back onto the road.

Another flash, like a stroke of lightning, except this flash, too, was headlights.  Not from behind the Eye, this time.

A squeal, and a car, coming the opposite direction, hit the car that had run over the bike rack.

I saw flickers, brief psychic echoes of pedestrians who had been hit.

The gap yawned larger, and I could see the people on the other side.  I could hear the screams, shouts of alarm.  See people running towards the three-car pileup.

Oblivious to the Eye, who walked down the length of the road.

Approaching the second crashed car.

It might have been the least damaged of all the cars.  The bike rack had gutted it, torn into the underbelly.  It would need work, but…

…But the Eye was moving toward it with purpose.

“Off, Tiff!” I shouted.

“What?”

“Get off!  Now!”

Rather gracelessly, I pushed her to get her off faster, simultaneously turning myself around for the second time in ten seconds.  Back toward the Eye.

“Evan, clear the way!”

He said something, but I didn’t hear it over the sound of the engine coming to life.

I saw him circle, and pointed.  Used my arm to point, so there was no doubt.

The bike soared toward the crashed cars and the Eye.

My eyes roved over the scene, trying to see the very real woman who was in the driver’s seat, trying and failing to open the door.

As I got closer, I could see the pedestrians.  Evan flew through them, darting left, then right, and pushed them to the side with the weight of a small boy, the speed of an unladen sparrow.

I rode onto the sidewalk, shifting to a one-handed grip, letting go of the clutch.

No way this would work.

No.

The Eye didn’t give me a chance for a sudden rescue.  He touched the car before I could grab the driver and pull her out of the window.

The gutted underbelly had leaked gas, against all odds, and the Eye had ignited it.

The rolling eruption of flame knocked me over.  I could hear the screams.  The driver and many of the bystanders who’d tried to help were caught, and onlookers experienced pain of another sort.  Horror.

Another small eruption, the car rocking to one side, partially rolling over.

I tried to get to my feet and failed.  I was stronger than I had been, but that didn’t count for much.

No.  It wasn’t pure coincidence, that second eruption.

The Eye was in the midst of the flame, wading through, using one hand to push at the flaming vehicle, rolling it out of the way.

He was coming for me.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Subordination 6.6

My senses were consumed by images of fire, the sound of screaming, and a six-foot-something brute of a man that looked more at home walking through the flames and wreckage than he had outside of it.  The rags that bound him together were dark, the rest of him burned like it was made to, skin sizzling and popping like meat in the frying pan, but not being consumed.

The big hulking threats in the movies didn’t move fast.  When the main characters were up against the three-hundred pound chainsaw-wielding maniacs, they could at least scramble away and outrun the motherfuckers.  The Eye didn’t move that slow.  Longer legs meant longer strides, he was standing and I was on the ground, and I was a very tired human, while he was some kind of otherworldly abomination.

Evan swooped low, between the Eye’s legs.  Without looking, the Eye reached back, grabbing blindly at Evan.  Evan was in the process of ascending, avoiding the burning wreck, and managed to escape both the grasping hand and the flames.

It was a horrible risk for a negligible effect, nearly getting caught, which would toast Evan and me, and the bird passing by while the Eye was mid-step didn’t even make the thing stumble.  The grab at Evan was more of a delay than anything.

It was a delay I could use.  My progress was impeded by the silhouettes of the rescuers and fleeing bystanders.  They were only partially there, and the further I got from the Eye, the easier it was to fight through them.

I was able to get to my motorcycle.  Getting it up off the ground was another thing.  It wasn’t a big bike, but I wasn’t strong.

Evan appeared, giving the bike a bit of a nudge as he settled on the handlebars.  It was the helping hand I needed.

I could feel the stinging warmth of the Eye on the back of my head and neck as he got closer.

Gunshots rang out.  I could see the flashes.  Fell stood by his car, driver’s door open, gun in hand.  He emptied it at the Eye, and all but one shot hit.

Buying me a chance to get away.

I climbed on the bike.

Normally when riding a motorcycle, the engine needed to warm up first.  Fuck up and move too soon, and the engine could sputter or die.  With the Eye closing on me, the consequence would be me dying a sputtering death.  I couldn’t even trust the temperature gauge.

Staying meant the same thing.  Death.

I could only hope that the engine was still warm from the earlier ride, and that the ambient temperature wasn’t taking hold on the thing.

I was moving a moment later, stopping only long enough to give Tiff a chance to climb on.  While she got in position, I looked back.

The Eye had shrugged off the bullets, but wasn’t giving chase.  It remained near the flames.  Reality continued to distort around it, alternating between showing glimpses of reality and the spirit world.

Distant sirens filtered into this world from the other, moving to the scene.  The Eye was quick, but not fast enough to follow on foot.

He thinned out the border between our world and this one, freeing him to affect both.

But how had he found us?

As I rounded the corner, putting the Eye behind us, I saw more ghosts accumulating.  Maybe it was better to say that I saw them more clearly.  There were no silhouettes, no dark, faceless figures representing the people in the real world.  These were ghosts, wisps, apparitions and specters.  Where the silhouettes were faceless, the expressions on the faces of these guys were exaggerated, their features taken a step too far.

The ones who smiled smiled too wide, the angry expressions twisted their faces into something monstrous.  The wounds that marked how they died were taken a step too far.  A woman with black veins stretching around lower half of the face and throat.  A man with a tumor grown wild, emaciated but for the fleshy lump that stood out from his sternum.

The Shepherd’s servants.  Was he doing something to bring out their more unusual qualities?

Was he the one that was tracking us?

Each of these ghosts could be reporting back to him.

The car caught up to me.  Fell was driving as recklessly as he had when he’d dropped me off with the Knights.

The ghosts all watched us as we streaked down the carless road.  Macabre faces turned as we passed.

How many years had the Shepherd been active?  How many people had died in Toronto in that span of time?  How many of those deaths had been violent or painful enough to make an imprint in reality?

Did he have a mechanism to handle it, or did he simply do it full time?  Collecting the echoes?

The number of ghosts didn’t decrease, even as minutes passed.  If anything, they only got more numerous.  I saw the same ghost twice, then three times.  As if they were being moved ahead of us as we left them behind.

He was with us, even if we couldn’t see him.

I looked for a connection and didn’t find one.  I couldn’t take my eyes off the road or the ghosts nearby to look up or behind us.

Fell drove in the incoming lane, pulling up to my left.  I could see Alexis in the passenger seat.  She was talking, saying something to Fell.  Reporting on my condition, maybe.

The car abruptly slowed, dropping back from my left.

I could see why.  Ghosts were streaking across the street, more like flashes of light than people.  All towards one central point.

They congealed into a form.  The Shepherd.

As the other ghosts had, he watched us, his head turning to track us.

He raised his staff-

We passed him.  He disappeared behind us.

I turned a corner, and Fell turned to follow.  Break from the pattern, maybe catch him off guard-

No such luck.  More ghosts.  More streaking lights.  One or two passed through me.  I could feel it, cold, flickers of emotion so brief I couldn’t pin them down or even react.

I wobbled a bit before righting myself.  I heard Tiff yelp, a brief sound that the rush of wind tore from us.

I moved away from the point where the ghosts were converging.

It wasn’t the Shepherd making another fleeting appearance.  It was a ghost.

A man, older.  I couldn’t make out anything else.

We approached, then passed it.  My focus went to the road, watching for potholes.

An explosion rocked the space behind us.  My heart skipped a beat as the shockwave swept past us.  I experienced a brief, paralyzing terror, a sense of something unfinished.

I wobbled more violently than before in the wake of it.  I slowed, focusing on getting control.

There weren’t half as many ghosts on the sidewalks now.  They watched as I steered the bike around.  I checked over my shoulder, and I saw smoke rising from the point of detonation.  It had images etched in it, the man’s face, repeated over and over.

Fell’s car slowed, continued forward in neutral, then stopped.

I huffed out a breath.  I’d had moments where I’d worked so hard I’d been out of breath, and I’d tried to suppress it instead of make a lot of noise panting and recovering.

This was like that.  It came with a general feeling of unpleasantness, almost but not quite nausea.  Throughout my entire body.

When I felt it starting to concentrate in my left hand, I fumbled with the clutch and slowed.

It got worse fast.  Strength going out of my hand and arm.  More nausea.  A cold sweat.

My heart had skipped a beat, and it hadn’t started up again.  Not properly.

I managed to stop the bike, but I didn’t get the kickstand down.  We wobbled, and Tiff had to brace us with one leg to keep all three of us from tipping over.  I leaned over the handlebars, gasping like a fish out of water.

Fuck me, this hurt.  I felt like something heavy was sitting on my chest.  Big and dense enough that the force of the crushing was enough to take the strength out of the rest of my body.  The limbs couldn’t work if the core didn’t.

“Blake,” Tiff said.  “The Eye, it’s at the end of the road.”

I closed my eyes, because absolute darkness was better than seeing spots and sparks across my field of vision.

“Blake?”

“It hurts,” Evan said.

I forced my eyes open.  I was breaking out in a sweat.  All the little things your body did that pointed to something being very, very wrong.  Evan was on the headlight, looking up at me.  He was lopsided, and his little hop to one side was clumsy, obviously debilitated.

Sympathetic pain?

“That really sucked, whatever it was,” Tiff said.  “Did it get you harder than it got us, little guy?”

“Got Blake most of all,” Evan said.  “He’s really hurting.”

“Blake,” Tiff said.  She got off the bike, holding it and me up, fumbled for far too long to get the kickstand down.

The ghosts around us were drawing closer.  I heard the report of Fell’s gun.  Shooting ghosts?

No.  The Eye.

“They aren’t coming to help.  I don’t know what to do.”

“Get help.”

“I can’t leave him.  If he falls over- can you go?”

“Can’t fly like this.”

“Hey!”  Tiffany yelled.  More sparks exploded across my field of vision at the loud noise.

I was deflating, getting weaker and more numb from moment to moment.  My hands, head, and feet felt heavy.  I’d bled myself out, but this was my heart giving out.  When you died, the doctors used the moment the heart stopped to mark the time of death.  This was… kind of backward.  The heart had stopped, and now the rest of me was swiftly moving from ‘okay’ to ‘dead’.

“They’re occupied,” I heard Rose say.  “Trying to stall the Eye and ward it off so it can’t follow.”

“Should I give him CPR?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  But CPR isn’t a fix.  It’s something you do until better help comes along, and I don’t like the look of those things I’m sensing over there.”

“Ghosts,” Tiff said.

“We need a fast fix.  Do you have something to cut yourself with?”

“Yeah.”

“Do it.  Hold Blake’s hand… his right hand.  Put the blood in his palm.”

Such an ignoble, anticlimactic way to go out.

“Yes, like that.  In his palm.”  Rose said.  “This is my fault,”

I was only peripherally aware that she was touching my hand.

“Why?  How?”

“I told Conquest that Blake was weak.  That he’d been giving up too much blood, and he was tired.  I didn’t know he’d bleed himself out in the prison, to get me back.”

“I think anyone could look at Blake and tell that he had problems,” Tiff said.

I could feel the moisture in my palm.  It was surprisingly warm, when my hand felt so cold.

“I still hate that he’s using information I gave him against us.  Blake’s fragile, and if we lose him, we lose this.”

“We lose, period.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “That’s enough.  Cover the cut.  Close his hand.  Ball it up…”

Tiff closed my hand into a fist.  There wasn’t a lot of blood, but with my hand clenched as tight as it would go, it squeezed between my fingers.  More warmth.  When my hand felt nearly normal, it made its way up my arm.

“The ghosts are getting closer.  The salt on the road is hampering them, but they’re finding their way through.  He’s probably burning power to make it happen.  You’re going to need to take action.”

“I’m not good with fighting,” Tiff said.

“Don’t look at it as fighting.  Look, position his hand so it won’t open…”

I managed to raise my hand, clenching the fist, to show I could manage it on my own.  The warmth was spreading through my upper arm to my shoulder, but my feet were almost completely gone, and my vision was going black, lost in a sea of sparks and blots.

“He can hold it up.  Good.  In his bag, there’s-”

“A book, some tools, twine-”

“Box of salt?”

“Yeah.”

“Get it out.  Use the salt.  Don’t worry about wasting it.  Just dash it out.”

“Oh god.”

“Don’t worry.  They’re more a force of nature than people.  It’s like taking shelter from the rain.  Or throwing salt on the sidewalk to prevent people from getting hurt later on.”

“Okay.”

“Good.  Like that.  Stall, keep it up.  I’m going to go help the others.”

The warmth in my arm and shoulder reached my heart, and things quickly returned to normal.  I gasped, and this time the gasp was more like a breath of air after being underwater.

As my vision cleared, I could see how close the ghosts were getting.  They staggered, left and then right, trying to find patches where the salt wasn’t as thick.

When they did stagger through, they visibly weakened, flickering and fraying.

Each one radiated a particular emotion or idea.  If I didn’t feel one hundred percent yet, it was because they were radiating sickness and malaise, weakness and general pain.  Even with the salt as a barrier, it was noticeable.

“I feel better.  You feel better?” Evan asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Thanks to Tiffany.”

Tiffany glanced back at me.  Her smile was fleeting.

I fixed the kickstand, then stood.

Fell’s gun went off a few more times.  The Eye was closing in.

I took the box of salt from Tiff.  She stepped back until she was behind me.

“Evan, fly closer to the ground.  Stir the salt into the air.  Loop by the others, report back.”

“‘Kay.”

A ghost with needles sticking out of it drew closer.  I cast salt out.  It was weak, crossing the salt already on the road, and the salt I used was enough to banish it.  It wasn’t gone, but it was dissolved into its constituent echoes.  Wisps, ectoplasm, flickers.  Whatever snips and snails went into making a ghost on the fundamental level.

I dealt with another.  I could feel how light the box was.  This wasn’t a permanent solution.  I glanced over my shoulder.

The Eye.

Especially not with him around.

“Evan just asked me to come back?”

“What’s holding us up?” I asked.

“Alexis had the same symptoms you did,” Rose said, from the motorcycle’s side mirror.  “Ty’s helping her.  Fell’s stalling.”

“Why her?” Tiff asked.  “Blake’s weak, but Alexis…”

“I don’t know,” Rose said.

“I do,” I said.  “Her dad had a heart problem.  She used to always complain about the food she had to eat as a kid, because her mom made super healthy food with zero cholesterol.”

I threw salt to deal with another ghost.  The needle ghost was already starting to reform, complete with transmitted bursts of desperation that was really fucking with my ability to stay calm and assess the situation.

“She always liked eating crap,” Tiff said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And she smokes.”

“Yeah,” I said, again.  “Shit, I hope she’s okay.”

“Even if she makes it through this…”

“She will,” Rose said.

Evan returned, flying close to the ground.  He wasn’t flying fast, but snow and salt were stirred in his wake, and the ghosts retreated.

I took the chance to get on the bike.  Tiff climbed on behind me.

I headed back to the others.

The Shepherd wasn’t far from the Eye, standing by a corner, ready to duck behind cover if Fell pointed the gun his way.

The Eye had stopped.

Fell, with his focus on the targets and the encroaching ghosts, wasn’t seeing what the Eye was doing while it was stopped.

The hood of his car was smoking.

Ty and Alexis were in the vehicle, Alexis lying on the back seat, Ty squeezed in between the two front seats, holding her hand.

I knew why.  I knew what they were doing, but I still felt a little uncomfortable seeing it.

“Fell!”  I shouted.

“What!?”  he called out.  He didn’t even turn.  He changed targets, aiming at the Shepherd.

The Shepherd ducked out of the way.  By some unseen signal, the ghosts around us drew closer.

I shook the box, using the last of the salt to drive some ghosts back.

The nearest were half a block away, but I could still feel them, and it was only a matter of a minute or two before they got close enough.

“You’re okay?” Fell called out.

“Fake heart attacks suck balls, but they’re still fake, I’m feeling better every second,” I said.  “The Eye is cooking your car.”

He looked.  “Motherfucker.”

“Alexis seems okay.  We should go.”

He nodded.

When he turned, though, the ghosts took that as a cue.  They approached, a little more quick and intense than before.

“Out of salt,” I said, as Fell climbed into the car.  Ty moved out of the way, climbing into the passenger seat.

“Me too,” Fell said.  “Used most of the stuff I had in the back to make a barrier, keep the Eye back.”

“There’s a fuckton of salt on the road,” I said.  “It’s not stopping the ghosts like it should.”

“Shepherd’s implement is the shepherd’s crook.  Guides things,” Fell said.  “Normal rules don’t apply for his ghosts.”

“Why is the Eye not approaching?”

“I bound it, kind of.  It won’t hold.”

He slammed the car door.  I saw the headlights flare as the engine started, then stopped short.  Smoke billowed from the hood.

The ghosts were getting closer.

Fell rolled the window down.  The car was old, and he had to manually crank a handle to roll it down.

“Slow them down,” he ordered.

“How?  No salt.”

“Figure it out!”

He scrawled something on the dash in chalk, tried the car again.  It didn’t start up.

Evan swooped by the ghosts.  More snow and salt moved, a delay.

“I need something more,” I said.

“I’m trying to concentrate, Thorburn,” Fell said.

“This isn’t working.  We need a tool.  Do you have anything?”

“Can’t help you,” he barked out.  He adjusted the rune, another failure to start.

“The Eye is making it worse faster than you’re making it better,” Rose said.  “Leave the car?”

“I don’t need one of you fucking up my concentration, let alone the two!” Fell shouted.  “Without the car, we won’t all be able to keep running!  They will catch us!  They don’t ever stop.”

I looked at the Eye of the Storm.  It stood there, still, still burning in places from the fire earlier, eye glowing.

“Give me that powder?” I asked.

Fell glanced at me, annoyed, then grabbed a handful from his coat.  He slapped it down into my hand.

I turned the bike around and accelerated, lurching as Tiff moved the wrong way and we went less than gracefully into the turn.  I looped around the back of the car, towards the Eye, and I let the powder trail from my hand as I went.  A thin cloud of Fell’s dust between the car and the Eye.

Trying to break the connection.  A line of power to block the flow of things.

The effect was negligible.  The car didn’t suddenly start, the smoke still billowed.

I used what remained to bar the path of the nearest group of ghosts.  It was weak at best.

A woman-ghost screamed at me.  Not the usual sort of scream, but the kind of howl that threw all caution and social grace to the wind.  The kind that usually preceded an accident.

Fell’s powder seemed to dampen the effect.  Pain still rocked through me, and Tiff slipped, hurling herself forward, her chin driving into my shoulder.

This was messy, stupid, and we were dealing with nigh-on inevitable forces.  An immortal abomination and a whole lot of things intrinsically linked to death, which was about as inevitable as it got.

The spirits were crowded at the sidewalk, to the point that they were shoulder to shoulder.  Only the strongest seemed able to make it over what was very hostile terrain to them.  It was good we only had a few to deal with, it sucked that they were as potent as they were.

“Didn’t work!”  I called out, as I pulled up to the passenger window.

“I know it didn’t work!” Fell shouted.

It was Rose who spoke, “How’s he doing this?  The Shepherd?”

“I asked myself the same question,” I said.

“Still concentrating!” Fell said.  His rune was now sprawled almost all the way across the dash.  Interconnecting images.

“He’s got to have a weakness,” Rose said.  “You don’t control this many Others this easily, even if they’re weak ghosts.”

The ghosts drew nearer, and as they did, they lowered our level of functioning.  Distraction, disorientation, pain, panic, all flashing through our minds.  It only ratcheted up the level of panic.

I could see Fell struggling, his hand shaking as he drew one line, licked his thumb to erase it, and drew it again.

“Uneasy departed!”  Rose called out.  She spoke from the car and bike mirrors.  “In the name of the Thorburn Bloodline, with all the respect and history that name commands, I order you to cease!”

The ghosts around us stopped in their tracks, no longer drifting left and right to navigate a path.  They were still, and the area was silent.

One even disappeared, frayed and worn enough that it couldn’t stand up to simple words.

“Was worth a try,” Rose said.

“It worked,” I said.

“It was still worth a try,” Ty said.  “Keep going!”

But the Shepherd did something, eliciting a loud clack, and the ghosts resumed their movement.

“Stop!”  Rose commanded.

They didn’t listen this time.

“Almost,” Fell said.  “Almost done.”

I looked at the engine.  If someone had raised the hood to reveal that the engine block was literally on fire, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

What the fuck was he doing?

“By the name of the Thorburns, by my ancestors, greater than me, I order to to be still!”  Rose cried out.

I could see the momentary hesitation, as if the spirits were people who’d stepped out of an air conditioned house into oppressive heat, but they resumed movement all the same.

“Different tack,” I said.

“Okay,’ Rose said.

“What you did when you tried to bind the Abstract-”

“I know!” she said.

The vibration of my bike shifted.  I looked down.

The temperature gauge was rising.

The Eye had set his sights on me.

“Four times, I will bid you to throw off the shackles your master has used to bind you!” Rose called out.  “Let this be the first, spirits!  I, Rose Thorburn, urge you to rebuke him!”

The Shepherd wasted no time.  He dismissed the spirits.  One by one, each ghost that that might have been in earshot disappeared.  It only left one.

An apparent cancer victim.  Bald, shirtless, with only pyjama bottoms on, staring at the ground.

Light began to streak towards it.  Ghosts all being used to supercharge this one.  To get it to explode, and visit us with it’s essence and means of death.

“For the second time, I rebuke you!  Let my words have more power for the repeating!”

It’s not going to work fast enough.

The effect the spirits had on us was ratcheting up.  I was hurting everywhere, but they were phantom pains.  I felt like shit, but it was phantom feelings at play.

I knew because my feelings tended to hit me harder, a little more unforgiving.

I’d wanted to experience the kind of anger I could fight through and use it to fight harder.

This was as close as I’d get.

“Ty,” I said.  “Sword.”

“That sword?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He had to twist around and reach down to the floor of the car behind the driver’s seat to grab it.  He maneuvered it through the window.

“Tiff, off.  Ride in the car.”

I pulled off my backpack and turned it around.  Sword lying across my lap, salt-box over the handle so I didn’t gouge my thigh, my backpack at my chest instead of my back, pressing the flat of the blade down against my thighs as I leaned forward, hands on the handlebars.

“Look after Alexis,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

The moment she was off, I revved up and peeled out.  I suspected Alexis had been in the middle of saying something when I left.  If she had, I didn’t hear it.

It was cold as fuck, the snow had soaked my coat and clothes from the outside in, cold sweat had soaked them from the inside out, and the wind just cut straight through it to bite deep into me.

I passed the line that Fell had described.  Salt plus snow to make something approximating water.  Water to oppose the Eye of the Storm, or so I supposed.  Salt plus water?

The moment I passed the line, my bike kicked.  More smoke, more complaints from the engine.

“Evan!” I shouted.  “Guide me!”

“Yeah!” he cried out, a small voice lost in the rush of wind.

I turned, steep, and steered right for the alley where the Shepherd was taking cover.

I shifted the position of the sword with one hand, steered with the other, and sailed within a hair of the Shepherd, blade’s point sticking out.

A jouster’s run, in a way.

I stopped at the far end of the alley and turned around.  I nearly lost the sword as it came close to slipping from my lap in the midst of my using the clutch, but I caught it and fixed the position.

The Shepherd had turned into a ghost.  Or adopted ghostly defenses for himself.  Untouched, untouchable in the conventional sense.

Ghosts were emerging from the walls.  Slower ones, less material.

The Eye was closer to the mouth of the alley, and a newspaper box was blazing nearby.  I suspected that it could and would combust at the worst possible time.

It was narrow, as escape routes went.

Rose made her third bid, and the ghosts hesitated.  The Shepherd struck the wall with his staff, and the ghosts surged forward again.

Low quality, high quantity bindings, it seemed.

“Another go.  Help keep the way clear,” I said.

“Yep!”  Evan said.

My engine popped.  More smoke.

Fuck me.

The Eye would pay for messing with my bike.

But first, the Shepherd would pay for fucking with my friends.

I left the sword the way it was, shifted gears, then raced for the mouth of the alley.

One hand on the sword, again, and another jousting run.  This time with the Shepherd to my left, the blade’s point to my right.  I didn’t look at him.  My eyes were on the exit.

He moved his crook, apparently planning something.  To catch me around the throat as I passed, possibly.

He wasn’t watching for the sword’s pommel.  It was only when I stuck it out that he saw what I was doing.  I’d focused on the exit only to mislead.

There was magic, and there were magic tricks.  Sleight of hand.

He turned ghostly.  It didn’t help that much.  I still had the box of salt over the handle, and even largely empty, there were trace amounts of salt inside.  Enough to fuck with a ghost.

Enough to fuck with him.

I felt the impact this time, and came very close to both crashing the bike or having the sword’s blade lever over to cut me in the side.  I managed to just barely avoid both.

He felt it too, and he folded over.  A punch in the gut at thirty kilometers an hour.

Ghosts disappeared, one by one.  Ones on and around the car, on the sidewalk, and elsewhere.  I couldn’t say whether it was Rose’s words or my actions that had done it, but we’d banished them.

Rather than risk trying to slip by the Eye and the burning box, I hurried to turn around, riding over and past the fallen Shepherd’s spectral body, hoping there was salt on the tires.

No such luck, as far as I could tell.  He was dissolving much as the other banished ghosts had.  He, too, would reappear somehow.  If I’d had more salt, and if the Eye hadn’t been in the immediate area, I might have tried to bind or disrupt him.  But I didn’t, and the Eye was close enough to get in the way.

I rode through the alley, exiting the far end.

“They’re going,” Rose said.  She was on the back of my bike, looking at me through the side-view mirror.

How did that even work?  Was there someone on the bike in her version of the world, or was it moving without a rider?

I put the questions out of my mind.

“Yeah, ghosts are gone,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the wind.  Easier than it might have been, because I was slowing down to turn the corner.

“I meant Fell and your cabal.  They’re moving.  The Eye is following you, but it’s slow.”

“Good.  Good job,” I said.

There was no response.  She’d already moved on.

I rode down the empty street, parallel with the others.  Evan moved forward to the headlight, perched there, but with his wings spread.

Had we been able to hear each other, I might have asked if he was lending his abilities to our escape from the Eye, or if he was just doing it because he enjoyed it.

■

I hadn’t been exercising, exactly, but I was still exhausted when we finally managed to stop.

Fell did what he could to break the connections between us and the others.  He set up a few more stick figures and partially masked them, to confuse the trail.

In the end, we pulled into a garage, because Fell loved his car and I loved my bike, and we wouldn’t be able to get by if either one broke down.

Rust, frayed wires, melted insulation…

I’d taken extensive classes on maintaining a car or a bike.  When I set to work repairing some of the damage, I sensed a grudging respect from him.

“You’re an asshole, Thorburn, for dragging me into this,” Fell said, banishing the idea from my head.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  My eyes fell on Alexis.  “I really am.”

“Guess that’s a wake up call,” Alexis said.  “I can’t keep ignoring my heart, if I’m as vulnerable to a heart attack as Blake is when he’s this weak.”

“Not entirely a bad thing,” Ty said.

“No, it isn’t,” Alexis said.  But she looked a little shaken.

“It isn’t, but… it kind of sucks when you have to grow up,” I said.

“Yeah,” Alexis said.  “No more garbage food for me, I guess.”

I looked at Tiff.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m not the type that can deal with pain or anger, or being scared,” she said, quiet.

“You did good,” I told her.

“I don’t, um, I don’t want to be good at it?”

“You mean you don’t want to fight?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I sighed.

“The original plan stands?” Fell asked.

“Yeah.”

“She should stay here, then.  Secure building, I can secure it further, and if we need to fall back to a location, we fall back here.”

“I don’t want to be alone in the middle of all of this,” Tiff said.  “I’ll go crazy, thinking every sound is something dangerous.”

“Rose and I will stay here for the time being,” I said.  “Take it easy, rest, catch your breath, and we’ll fix up the vehicles.  Fell, Ty and Alexis can secure another area to retreat to.”

“Then what?” Rose asked.

“Then… well, we’re going to need to hash out a plan of attack.”

“If we run into the Eye and the Shepherd again, we’ll need firepower,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“We could let Pauz loose.  I know we couldn’t do it back there, but…”

“But it’s dangerous,” I said.  “I’m not saying no.  I’m saying… we need to be careful.  Let’s talk it over when I don’t have my hands full.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.

I applied electrical tape to the wires I could salvage.  Or spirit-world electrical tape, as it happened.

I had so many questions about the relation between this world and that one, but the only person present who might have been able to answer was Fell, and Fell was being a grouch, more than the usual.

When I crossed to the workbench to see what might be available, Evan was there, perched on the toolbox lid, looking down at the Hyena’s sword.

“It’s smiling,” he said.

I looked.  Sure enough, the engraved face was leering in a fanged smile at the hilt.

“It liked the violence, probably,” I said.

“I hate it,” he said.  “I hate it and I can’t do anything to it.  I can’t hurt it or make it stop smiling.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Sorry.”

“If I could crap on it, I would.  See if it smiled when I dropped a big white and black blob on its face.  But I can’t crap.”

“You probably could if you ate something,” I said.

“Really?” he said, with a note of hope.  Then he changed moods, “That would take too long.”

“If it’s any consolation, goblins are messed up enough that they would probably enjoy it.”

He made a small, frustrated sound, fluttered down to the sword, and pecked at its eye a few times.  When that didn’t do anything, he muttered, “Whatever,” and flew away.

“You’re so blasé,” Alexis commented.

“Me?”

“You, yeah.  You’ve totally adapted to this.”

“Barely, if at all,” I said.  I found the wire snips and started stripping the most damaged wires of insulation.

“You’re talking to a bird about a smiling sword not twenty minutes after we almost died.“

“Numb more than blasé, I think.”

“You’re rolling with this in a way I couldn’t imagine myself doing if I had a year.”

“Are you regretting the choice?  Getting on board?”

Alexis frowned.

“You don’t have to answer.  Having to tell the truth doesn’t mean you have to respond to every question.”

“Yes?” she said, as if unsure.  “Yes, I regret getting into this.  I’m scared, and I’ve sort of made a point of not being scared for my own welfare, the past few years.”

“Yeah,” I said.  Alexis had always focused more on the welfare of others than on herself.  She had been thrown into the deep end of an awfully big, deep pool, and it didn’t help that she was out of her element, being scared on her own behalf.

“But I don’t regret helping you,” she said.  “Or, I don’t regret doing this to help you… even if I’m not sure what I’m doing, yet.”

“It’ll take time,” I said.  “Get grounded.  Fell will take you somewhere, you do what he says, set up defenses.”

“I’m not a strategist,” she said, “But you don’t win fights just by running away and defending.”

I saw a motion out of the corner of my eye.  Ty, bobbing his head in agreement.  Tiff sat on the bumper of Fell’s car, just beside him, watching Alexis and me, listening.

“Not normally,” I said.  “This fight?  I think we can.  In fact, I’m more confident than I was.”

That had their attention.  Fell shifted position, still ducked under the hood of his car, but keeping an eye on me too.

“The Lord of Toronto is an incarnation.  He’s… I don’t want to say his name, but you know what it is.  C-word.  He’s… the occupying tyrant, ruin, subjugation, the victor ruling over the defeated.  Look at the word, at what it means.  There’s the past tense and the present.  He’s drawing power from past victories where he utterly trampled the loser.  We can’t do much about that, except to take away the trophies and subvert the win.”

“My father wrote a great deal on this subject,” Fell said.

“Yeah.  Well, there’s the present tense too.  C-word in progress.  So long as we’re defying him, keeping our spirits up, staying focused, we’re winning.  We’re making it so he can’t be that.  He can’t be C-word in progress if we’re even or if we’re winning.  We can ride this out.  I’m betting that if we do, it’ll make him hurt, on some fundamental level.  He’ll react to it, and he’ll get impatient.”

“Even if he does,” Fell said, “We don’t have the forces to capitalize on any mistakes.”

“We can get them.  Or we work out a situation where we don’t need them,” I said.

“It sounds thin,” Fell said.  “Too many enemies on the board here.”

“It is thin,” I said.  “But it’s a way through.  More importantly, it’s a way through that we can pursue, with the people and forces we have here.  We seize territories, just like this.  We keep moving.  Maybe after Alexis and Ty take over some other spot, we leave this behind, some big fuck you bit of graffiti on the wall to lay claim to the space.  Take territory from under his nose.”

“Not much territory,” Ty said.

“No,” I said, “It’s very little in the grand scheme of it all.  Thing is… Laird there once compared himself to America, and Conquest isn’t so different.  If someone invaded the States and seized a small town, it wouldn’t be much in terms of square footage or overall population, but you can bet the Americans would be pissed.”

“Tell you what,” Fell said.  “You’re thinking along the same lines my dad did.  Why don’t I grab some of his work while I drop these guys off.”

“Sure,” I said.  “I’m actually kind of itching to read something, so to speak.  Rose is the only one with free access to our library right now.”

“Right,” he said.  “You have wire cutters?  My battery’s fucked.”

“Wire cutters,” I said, “Yeah.”

From planning to the practical.

■

Movement stirred me from sleep.  I wasn’t sure when I’d drifted off, or even when I’d taken a seat by the wall, but I had.

Alexis was standing, and in the doing, she was jostling Tiff, who sat next to me.

I could dimly remember the bit from before we’d fallen asleep.  I’d finished fixing up the bike as much as I could, and Fell had been only partially done, giving me only a glare in answer when I offered help.  I’d seated myself against the wall, offering some murmured words of reassurance to Tiff, who had been uneasy even in sleep.  When Tiff had leaned over, resting her head on my shoulder, I’d stayed where I was.

There were things I’d wanted to do, preparations to make, but… fuck it, I hadn’t wanted to disturb her sleep.  I’d fucked up her life enough as it was.

Joel had told me to be selfish sometimes, and I’d listened.  I kind of regretted that now.

Somewhere along the line, sitting still, exhausted enough to not care about the immediate presence of another person in my personal space, I’d joined her in dozing off.

Now Alexis was heading out.  Ty and Fell were already in the car.

Alexis raised her hand in a wave.  I raised mine.

The car moved on, leaving on Tiff and I in the dark garage.

A good ten minutes passed, my mind whirling, trying to piece together events.

Tiff stirred, then mumbled, “sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“‘Lexis said you don’t like touching,” she mumbled, barely understandable.

She moved her head away.

I took that as my cue to rise.

Evan was on the workbench, looking down at the sword.  He looked up at me as I passed.

“Tell her where I am if she wakes up?”

“Okay.”

I headed into the back office, searching the space.

I found Rose in the women’s bathroom.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She was silent.

“Are we still… in a bad place?”

“No.  Yes.  Kind of.”

“Aren’t you guaranteed to lie if you answer like that?”

“I’m telling the truth.  All three are true.”

“Ah.”

“Blake… I’m scared as fuck.  I’m paralyzed, trapped, and being caught by Conquest, made to talk, you constantly doing stuff when I’m not there… I’m helpless.”

“I know,” I said.

“You don’t.”

“I know more than you think,” I said.

“Blake… you need me strong, and I need me strong.”

She moved a book so I could see it through the mirror.  A black cover.

“I want to summon something.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Subordination 6.7

I was too tired to be surprised.  I’d managed to grab some rest, and I was feeling more together, more connected to me.  Having my bike and my friends at hand made all the difference.  I didn’t want to let this sudden piece of what-the-fuckery screw that up and leave me confused and frustrated.

I made my way to a chair and sat.

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll hear you out.”

“You told me that when you got a familiar, it would open doors for me.  That I’d have the ability to affect the real world, and it would be something for the two of us.  It didn’t really work out that way, did it?  Evan’s yours.”

“I suppose he is.”

“I don’t have agency, Blake.  I can make a difference, but it’s always filtered.  I can break glass, and I can maybe stall a crowd of ghosts, but I’m… I’m just so frustrated, because I can’t take action A to achieve result B.”

“You want to summon something from one of Grandmother’s books, to give yourself that agency?  To have hands in this world?”

“Yes.”

“While Tiff and I were napping, you’ve been… what, pacing?  Reading?”

“Both.  And talking to Evan.  I can’t ever sleep, he can’t either, I guess we’ll keep each other company when the rest of the world rests,” Rose said.  She touched her head, seemed to notice hair that had pulled free of the braid, and started to unwind it, starting over from scratch.  A nervous habit.

So she’d been talking to Evan, getting an idea in her head, seeing my familiar, wanting an approximation for herself.

“You were able to check on the others while you did all that?”

“Kind of?  It eats away at me, to be away from ‘safe’ sources like you or the house.  But I can move more easily here.”

“Okay, good.”

“Are you changing the subject?”

I shook my head.

“Well?”

“Well, I can sort of follow your line of thinking,” I said.

“I’m not saying I like this idea, but I want to do it,” Rose said.

“One very careful summoning and ritual,” I said, “And you have a pair of hands in this world, and you have some muscle.”

“That’s the idea.”

I nodded slowly.

“I didn’t expect you to actually hear me out.  Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said.  “I’m hearing you, but I don’t know that I agree.  This sounds like fucking lunacy.”

“It’s crazy, but you picked me as a champion.  You’ve got two champions you’re afraid to let loose, and probably with good reason.”

“Leery of, not so much afraid, and I’m leery with definite good reason,” I said.

“You need firepower.”

“Nukes, you mean?” I asked.

“No!  No, look, listen!”  Rose was more agitated.  She flipped the book open.  “Grandmother wrote some stuff saying that back in the day, before studies in diabolism had come so far, people had a bad habit of chalking up any particularly nasty Other as a demon or something infernal.  There was a whole period of history where almost every bad Other was thought to be a demon or demonic, and the classification was harder for some to shake than others.  So I’ve been researching, and looking at the criteria.”

“What criteria?”

“For what I need, for what we need.  The summoning would need to have a physical form.  I know Evan’s… he’s a good kid.  He wouldn’t have been my first pick, or even my second, but he’s served you well, and I can see the fit.  But he can’t move a book or turn a mirror if I need him to.”

“He can, sort of.”

“Without risking breaking it and leaving me high and dry?  Blake-”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Yeah, I admit it.  He’s not a good manservant.  But is there anything in that book that’s going to fit?”

“Maybe?”

“We’re biding time, Rose, waiting this out, hoping that Conquest gets reckless enough to make a mistake.  If you want to talk this out with me, I’m game.  But please understand that’s not a yes.  I just want to know what direction you’re thinking of going.”

“Then, um, let me see here, I’ve got it in one of these books, I color coded the bookmarks.  Except I didn’t have a bookmark for the sixth, so I used a sprig of herb.  Here.  First option.  She’s Mary Frances Troxler.  Origin unknown, but she may have been a wraith, a ghost that took on other qualities.  Mediums used to call on her to help women find their husband to be.  The ritual was tainted, too much negativity, maybe it got blamed when the marriages didn’t work out.  Calling her a demon or a thing of darkness, and the label starts to become true, in a roundabout way.  She started showing up when she wasn’t called, was eventually bound, and she remained a minor tool of diabolists for some time.”

“What kind of tool?  Finding husbands?”

“The ritual used a mirror.  She’s been summoned in ways since before zero A.D., and she only went bad recently, a hundred and twenty years ago, about.  When she did go bad, she started crawling out of mirrors and carving up the women who inadvertently summoned her.”

“I can see why she piqued your interest.  The mirror theme.”

“Yeah.  She’s one of something like nine different entities that are related to the whole ‘Bloody Mary’ urban legend.  Even has the name right.  All stemming from the same roots: vanity, mirrors, and women.”

I nodded.  “She’s the sort of Other you’d want on our side?  Keeping us company for however long?”

“Don’t think I don’t hear the tone there.  No, I don’t know if I’d want to have her around long-term, but she has uses.  Pros: she’s tied to the mirror thing, and if there’s a complex answer to be had with my… I guess current predicament, maybe we learn something from her.  She’s dangerous, a killer, capable of striking at our opponents from an unexpected place.”

“You want to kill our enemies?” I asked.

“They want to kill you, Blake.  Killing me by proxy.”

“I know,” I said.  “I’m… I guess I’m okay with going after the Eye, or the demons, or any of that.  But when you think that it might be the Sisters of the Torch?”

“What about Laird?” Rose asked.

“I… I don’t understand Laird, I don’t even remotely like him.  I even hate him, because he’s every inch the kind of holier than thou motherfucker that’s made my life miserable since day one.  But no, I don’t want to kill him.”

“He might really be holier than us, if we’re diabolists, Blake.”

“Fuck that, and fuck you for saying so,” I said.

“He’s dangerous, and he’s not going to stop.  Okay?  Listen, I’m not proposing outright murder.  I’m saying we should use something that can murder, so they know we aren’t playing around.  We then rein it in, to keep it manageable.”

“That sounds slippery,” I said.  “I’m not going to use the words ‘slippery slope’, but I think it sounds like there’s a lot of room for something ugly to happen.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  I heard a book close.  “I won’t say you’re completely wrong.  I was about to get to the cons, and it’s a longer list.  She’s evolving, and just like you don’t want to mess with a virus that’s constantly changing, I don’t know if we want her around if we can’t predict her exactly.  Besides, my suspicion is she’d only target women, even under orders, and that’s limiting her to going after the Sisters.  And maybe it’s a bit selfish of me to say so, but I don’t like the idea of utilizing something like Mary Francis Troxler if she’s going to bounce off the protections they have in place and come after me.  In my mirror world, even.”

I nodded.  “Starting to get a better idea of what you’re wanting to do, though.  Other options?”

“Tallowman.  Originally thought to be possessed, modern thought points to him being a revenant.  Died, or suffered some gruesome injury, but didn’t go down.  Soul couldn’t rest, too hungry for revenge, basically a serial killer zombie.  The spirit didn’t leave the body, and the body came back for unfinished business.”

“How’d he die?”

“Loner, as the story goes, a talented candlemaker who scrimped and saved to buy a woman’s love.  He was betrayed by greedy brothers and their families who wanted the savings.  Multiple stab wounds, left to die, he filled them all with candle wax, then lurched to his feet and kept going.  He got a few of the peripheral family members, others severed his head, then left it be.  His body kept going, as the story says, driven by hate, it separated the body fat of the ones he’d killed to make more wax, stuck his head back in place and patched the other wounds.”

“Resourceful fellow,” I commented.  “Would have helped if the family didn’t keep leaving the body behind.”

“Yeah, well, that was the pattern.  Multiple attempts at stopping him, bludgeoning, trapping him, severing limbs, and each time, he got a few of them, used the fat to fix himself, patching up the wounds and replacing the missing parts, and he kept going, until it came to the brothers.  He was stopped when the brothers took refuge in a church, repenting.  Coincidence or no, the church candles melted some of the wax holding him together, and he burned up.  The priest had heard them repenting the murder and theft, they went to jail, yadda yadda.”

“Weak to fire as the big con?”

“Something like that.”

I nodded.  “That’s a problem, when we’re talking about the Eye.  Pros?”

“He’s described as diligent, before he went all monster.  The book that records his history suggests he’s been summoned with some regularity, and not just by diabolists.  Maybe he’s the kind of guy we can keep on hand to do some of the mundane stuff for my sake, and if trouble comes up, we light his wick and point him in their direction.”

“I’m not entirely sold.  If we’re going to dig into the sketchy stuff, I’d rather get something of value.  Again, presuming we even do this.”

“Sure,” Rose said.  She smiled.  “Next option… well, you like your birds.  What does it mean to you if I say James Corvidae?”

“Corvidae… crows, mockingbirds, ravens, rooks.  Do I want to know?”

“Long thought to be a member of the seventh choir, chances are good he perpetuated the myth himself, to make himself scary even to the practitioners who had some idea what was up.”

“Oh, so this is a clever one.  Fits, with the corvidae motif.”

“Yeah.  Aside from deciding what he isn’t, nobody’s really stepped forward to say what he is.  I guess, if you had to stick a label on this one, I’d say ‘Bogeyman’.  Which seems to be a convenient practitioner label for ‘loner Other with a penchant for terror or murder’.”

“With a bird theme?”

“Peripheral.  Names tend to find him.  James Crow, Jamie the Rook, Jay Chough, and so on.”

“I’m seeing the theme.”

“Always the same general appearance.  Slouch, black hair slicked back, hook nose, nice clothes that have seen too much use.  Word is he came to the New World with the settlers, but there’s no record of him in the old world.  There’s been theorizing that he was a curse bestowed on us from the First Nations, over some slight.”

“What does he do?”

“He forges connections between things.  Very inconvenient connections.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“He takes that which people most love, then gives it to another.  Your favorite possession finds its way irrevocably to the hands of your best friend.  You can’t fault him for having it, but resentment builds.  In a year or two, you’re mortal enemies, and you’ve lost both your favorite thing in the world and your friend.  Except it’s not always an object.  It could be your soulmate.  Your mother or child.”

“That would suck.”

“Putting it mildly.”

“It would suck a lot,” I amended.

“I’ve thought about it, and I’ve read some of the side stories… I can’t help but feel it’s almost worse than what the Barber or the demon in the factory could do.  If you go mad, or if you get erased, that’s… it’s horrible, but you’re still gone.  James Corvidae, he leaves you completely and totally intact, but missing that one thing or person that gives it meaning and purpose.”

“I’m having a hard time picturing him helping you out.  In fact, I’m having a hard time picturing us using him at all.”

“I’m not.  He fits into a middle ground where he’s too scary to summon when he’s almost too weak to use.  But I think we could use him.”

“How?”

“We talked about setting our enemies against one another.  Corvidae is a tool we could use.”

I tilted my head to one side, then the other.  “What about ‘too scary to summon’?”

Rose shook her head.  “Grandmother had a note in her book.  She summoned him once, and he was grateful enough to finally see some of the outside world that he was willing to play along with her needs.”

“Grandmother was good at what she did.  We’re novices.  If other people think this guy is too scary to fuck around with, I’m thinking that’s a pretty good indication to go by.”

Evan fluttered as he entered the room.  I reached out a hand and he settled on the back of it, tiny bird feet hooking on the locket chain.

His head and mine turned to the door in the same moment.

Trouble?  I tensed.

“Hey, Blake.  Do you maybe want to tell your friend here to drop their weapon?”

She came into view.  Jeans under a skirt, mismatched top under a long navy blue coat, a checkered scarf and wind-tousled black hair.  Tiffany was behind her, holding a set of bolt cutters like a club, two-handed.

“Maggie,” I said.

She grinned wide enough to show her teeth.

“She’s Maggie?” Tiff asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.  “Are you Maggie?”

“Oh boo on you, Blake.  You do not want to hear the trouble I went through to be here.  Yes, I am Maggie Holt.”

I relaxed some.  “Are you compelled?  Otherwise enchanted?”

“No and yes.  I’m dressed up in my finery, so to speak.  Ready to fight in your war.”

“I honestly didn’t expect you to come fight,” I said.  “I though maybe a phone call, you could share your expertise on goblins, and if you felt particularly adventurous, you might do something to force Laird to head back to Jacob’s Bell.”

“Well, I’m here.  Very curious for details.  Starting with whatever the heck you were just talking about.  Too scary to fudge around with?”

“Don’t worry, we haven’t gone off the deep end.  We were talking about enlisting the aid of a bogeyman.”

“You’ve been big on the recruitment drive since I last saw you.  Some underlings, a familiar, even…”

“Hi,” Evan said.  “I’m Evan.”

“Not a very imposing name.  I was hoping for Blake’s familiar to have a name like Melmoth the Skull-Fu-”

She stopped short, then frowned.  “Melmoth.”

“Nope.  Just Evan.  I’m dead.”

“A ghost, Blake?”

“An exceptional ghost,” I said.

“A ghost.  Bit of a bummer, but it’s better than the other extreme.  You haven’t gone over the deep end?”

“Our local opposition twisted my arm, I wound up binding a demon,” I said.  “Technically, I can’t say I’m not a diabolist anymore.”

“Ohhh man,” Maggie said.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“Makes me look bad for associating with you.  But I’m here, and that ship has sailed already.  Our usual deal is still on the table?”

“You help me, I give you access to material at a later date.”

She nodded.  “Everything has a price.  Doing it this way, it’s more polite, and it’s safer.  Like selling something for one dollar.  Maybe you’d normally give it away, but doing it like this means you have a receipt.  Generosity doesn’t stretch too far in this world.”

My eyes met Tiffany’s.

Should I have arranged for more of a transaction with my friends?

“Come on in, Tiffany,” I said.  I glanced at Maggie.  “Maggie’s an ally I made in Jacob’s Bell.  I had a library of books and a need of backup, Maggie was willing to give me backup for some knowledge.”

“Serendipitous,” Maggie said.

“Tiffany’s a recent friend of mine.  Another friend introduced us, and Tiffany got on board with the whole magic thing.”

Maggie extended a hand.  Tiffany shook it.

“A champion?” Maggie asked.

“No,” I said.  “Supporting cast.”

“I met one of your champions at the bus station.  Guy in white with a handgun?”

“Fell.”

“He pointed me this way.  He told me to tell you they’ve set up in two more locations, and we should distribute our firepower, emphasizing escape routes.  He’s going to go check on the others, then try to steal some rest before things get hairy.”

I nodded.  “Right now, we’re using guerrilla tactics.  We’ve got the entire spirit-world version of the city to hide inside, and our opponent gets weaker so long as he’s being opposed by equal or superior opponents.  Rose and I were just discussing additional options.”

“Summoning something non-diabolic,” Rose said.

“Just the one something?” Maggie asked.

“When we’re talking about things this nasty?” I replied.  “It makes sense to limit it to one.”

“Well,” Maggie said.  She grinned.  “Speaking as the resident expert in the nast-”

She stopped short.

“Really!?” she asked.  “I did not mean anything rude!  Not even close!  And how does that count!?”

Tiff looked at me, eyebrow raised.

I shook my head.  “I’ll try to explain later.”

Maggie took a deep breath.  “Rephrasing, I deal with goblins.  Not so far removed from bogeymen and bandersnatches, or whatever it is you’re dealing with.  Guy in white-”

“Fell,” I said, again.  “At least I hope it was Fell.  The alternative is that he’s the Lord of the City, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Fell, right.  He said he was Fell.  He described the situation.  We’re outnumbered and outgunned?  You got me, your enemy got Mister Behaim?”

“That’s the gist of it,” I said.

“Then we need raw power.”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” I said.  “But I’m leaning towards a more defensive strategy.  It means my friends don’t get killed.  You included.”

“Aw,” she said.  She reached up toward my cheek.  I flinched.

“Oh, oops?” Maggie said, her hand still in the air.

I shook my head.

“You were calling me a friend?  That makes me feel things.  I don’t have many flesh and blood buddies, you know.”

Maggie belatedly lowered her hand.  I glanced at Tiff and saw an alarmed look on her face.  From the familiarity?

“Well, don’t like to break it to you,” Maggie said.  “But Maggie Holt doesn’t have a history of doing things halfways.  You asked for me, you got me, and you got someone who knows their way around this sort of thing.  Dealing with the ugly things.  Tell me more about them?”

Down to business?

“We’ve got a Bloody Mary,” Rose said.

“What’s that?”

“A boggart or a wraith, not sure.  A ghost loaded with enough negativity that it went off rails.  Built with echoes that aren’t its own.  Lurks in mirrors, carves up women if they spend too long looking.”

“I don’t think I’m ever going to sleep right again,” Tiff said, her voice quiet.

“You know how to summon and bind it?”

“Yes and sort of.  But it’s unpredictable.”

“I can deal with the unpredictable.  What else?”

“I didn’t tell Blake about this one, it was a subhuman, before.”

“Elaborate?  I don’t know the fancy terminology you people with the books have.”

“What you get when a collection of feral children grow up and breed for a few generations, or when you have that small branch of the population that lives off in the middle of nowhere or on some mountaintop, left with nobody but their own family.  Less human trappings to tie them down to reality, a lot of energy, lust, or bloodlust to stir up the spirits, and you wind up with whole families of inbred, messed up almost-humans.”

“You can summon something like that?”

“If they become Other enough, and certain conditions are met.  This one is called Midge.”

“Midge,” I said.

“She’s the sort of thing you call on when you need to knock a house down.  Not subtle, but not so inhuman that the authorities can’t explain her away.”

I nodded.

“That’s one more,” Maggie said.

“Tallowman,” Rose said.  “Told Blake about him.  Revenant.”

Maggie nodded.  “Zombie?”

“Zombie with a theme and a grudge.”

“Cool.  And the one you were too scared to deal with?

“Corvidae.”

“Bogeyman?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I think I might have to put my foot down on that one.”

“Some ghost, an inbred human-turned Other, and a candle man.  Sounds like a way of evening the odds, if we’re clever,” Maggie said.

“Someone recently accused me of being the equivalent of playing with fire,” I said.  “This sounds more dangerous than fire.”

“Have to be dangerous if we’re going to win,” Maggie said.

I glanced at the others.  Evan’s expression was unreadable, Tiffany looked spooked, and Rose…

“Blake,” Rose said.  “Please.”

“I’ve dealt with goblins, I’ve seen what they’re capable of,” Maggie said.  “You don’t get much more intractable or unpleasant than goblins.”

“I’m kind of surprised that you’re okay with this,” I said.  “The danger, the fact that Rose is talking about monsters that are bad enough they were almost classified as demons, not so long ago…”

“A lot of things about me would surprise you,” Maggie said.  “I’m here, I’m helping for the time being, and I’m raring to go.”

“You’re excited,” I said.

“For this?  Yeah,” she said, smiling.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it.  “Why?”

“Because this?  The contest?  Predefined rules, boundaries, minimized damage, a lot to gain?  I’ve been hoping for something like this for a long time now.”

I nodded slowly.  I wasn’t sure how to take that.

“Don’t suppose you could give me more details?” I asked.

“Right now, with the possibility that something could kick the door in and come after us?  I think we should get ready.  Help me help you,” she said.

I didn’t respond.

“There’s as many holes in the ‘be patient’ plan as there are in this one,” Rose said.

“I suspect that comes perilously close to being a lie,” I said.

“I said it, I stand by it.  I’m asking for this, Blake.”

“Alright,” I said.  “You two handle it on your own.  Better if I’m not directly involved, since I swore not to use any magic for the duration of this contest.”

“Alright!”  Maggie said.

“Do whatever you’re doing quickly.  If Fell thinks the others need backup, let’s not delay too much.”

“Quickly then.  Now, my dear mirror-dweller-”

“Rose.”

“Yeah.  Let’s talk methodology.  Can you follow me over this way?  We’ll need open space.”

“Yeah.”

“The idea is simple.  If you’ve got a mad dog, you want to minimize contact with it.  Keep it in a cage until you need someone mauled.”

“Like you stored the paper goblins, and the goblin in the instrument.”

“Exactly.”

I watched them make their exit, Rose shifting between the various reflections in the windows looking from the office to the garage.

“I need fresh air,” I said.  “Or… whatever we have in this version of Toronto.”

“Alone?” Tiff asked.  She looked fidgety.

I glanced at Maggie and Rose’s retreating forms, then shook my head a little.  “No.”

When I was sure Maggie and Rose weren’t looking, I grabbed the bag with the book and the sword, carrying both.

Tiff, Evan and I made our way outside.

“Why are you bringing the sword?” Evan asked.

“Because I feel like I should,” I said.

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said.

“Would make less sense if I felt like I should and I didn’t.”

“Yeah, but it would make more sense if you had a good reason,” Evan said.

The street was dark.  It was technically nighttime, but time passed in a funny way here.  The sky overhead was dark, hard to make out with the falling snow.  The only light from the sky came from above Conquest’s tower.  Pale light, as if the moon were only feet above the tower, hidden by the clouds.  It made the contours of the clouds stand out, and it illuminated the tower, as if it were declaring Conquest the ruler of the city.

There was other light.  Red-orange flames, elsewhere in the city.  The Eye was doing what it could to root us out.

How did the regular people see it?  How had they interpreted the Eye’s activity when he’d caused the crash?  A freak accident?  A slick patch of road and driver reactions causing a three-car pileup?  Ugly happenstance leading to the explosion thereafter?

When fires started up across the city, did they invent an excuse to keep it convenient?  People could convince themselves of extreme things when threatened with dissonance; reality challenging their fundamental understanding of the world.

It bothered me a little that people were going to those extremes, twisting their minds around things to sell the idea that there was a flaw in the power grid or an arsonist at work.  That they’d sleep a little less easy at night because of what was happening tonight.

It bothered me a lot that people had died.  That Conquest had let the Eye loose specifically because of my challenge, and I hadn’t been able to save those people.

Alexis was naturally heroic.  I wasn’t.  I wanted to be a good person, but being a hero wasn’t really in my makeup.  At the end of the day, I was more focused on just trying to repay the debts I owed and make sure that I left the world better than it was when I’d come into it.

Even before the whole magic thing had come up, that had been my philosophy.  Nothing grandiose, but if everyone could keep to that idea, then maybe we’d all be in a better spot.

I could, if I listened to the wind, hear the explosion and the screams.  I couldn’t say if it was because of the way this spirit world worked, carrying impressions more easily, or if it was just in my head.

Flames, low in the car, not even merciful enough to burn away the oxygen before it burned the person, as was more common in house fires and the like.

I blinked hard as a snowflake flew into my eye, with enough force to sting.

“I thought you were going to give the sword to Maggie,” Evan said.  “Didn’t Fell say something like that?  She’s a goblin wizard or something?”

“We were,” I told him.  “Fell did suggest that, and yeah, Maggie is the sort of practitioner who deals with goblins, and who, if she were very good, would deal with goblins like the Hyena.”

“But you’re not giving her the sword?”

“No,” I said.  “I’m suspicious that may be a bad idea.”

“Why?” Tiff breathed the question, as if afraid to ask it.  “You asked her to be one of your champions, but you don’t trust her?”

I had to double check to make sure Maggie wasn’t in earshot.  “I trusted her about as much as you can trust a relative stranger, facing a situation like I was.”

“You just used the past tense,” Tiff said.

I nodded.

“Why?  What changed?”

“She did,” I said.  “Maggie did.  Something’s happened since I left Jacob’s Bell.”

“But you’re letting them go ahead with it?” Tiff asked.

I looked in the direction of Rose and Maggie.

“Right now, I’m focusing on preserving my relationship with Rose,” I answered.  “I don’t think she’d forgive me if I shot her down now.”

“I know I shouldn’t say stuff like this, but that’s really not a very good reason,” Tiff said.

“It really isn’t,” I agreed.

■

Fell came to get us, not running into a soul on the way from Alexis’ hideout to the garage.  On the way back, however, we did run into problems.

The Sisters had mobilized, making a play.  In retrospect, we maybe should have moved earlier, before they had time to prepare.

They’d built an army.

Dolls, lifesize models, and a variety of mannequins, staggered through the streets.  Some had faces, others were blank.  Many were undressed.  Ten or so were gathered around Fell’s car en-masse, hugging it, standing on it, or steadily bashing it with hard plastic hands.

Each one had a rune inscribed on their forehead.

Our cover was poor at best – a short fence around a patio for some place called ‘Miss Panda’s’, but the things were largely blind to us.  Ones without line of sight moved as steadily toward us as the ones who should have been able to spot us.

“Vessels,” Fell said, with a note of annoyance.  “This isn’t my specialty.”

“I thought you said that direct attacks like the Eye’s weren’t your specialty,” Rose said.

“Those either, if I’m on the defensive.”

They were breaking away, spreading out a bit.  Mostly in our direction.

“I’ve seen something like this,” I murmured.  “Dead bodies, infused with those who’d died to the elements.”

“The good news is they have a weak point,” Fell said.

“Glowing runes?” I asked.

“Yes.  Even a scratch or a smudge will disable them.  The bad news is that it isn’t sensible to go after them individually.  The very bad news is that the Sisters are elementalists.  They specialize in natural forces.  Not every rune there is the same.  Pay careful attention.”

I looked.

The dolls and mannequins moved as their individual joints allowed, many clustering around Fell’s car, which was idling a block away from the garage.  Some moved on all four limbs, like spiders, some facing the ground, others facing the sky.  It was hard to keep track of ones I’d looked over and ones that were just moving in particularly awkward ways.

I was more than a little put off by the fact that they seemed to be moving steadily in our general direction, in fits and starts.  It made me feel like taking the ten seconds to look over the things would cost me somehow.

Sure enough, though, the runes differed here and there.  Each was outlined in the same way; they were drawn inside a circle with rays extending outward.  What was in the middle fell into four or five different sub-groups.

“The one in the red dress, that looks like it walked out of a display case?  The rune in the center of its face is a variant of the fire rune.  I would not be surprised if it happened to violently blow up if you got too close to it.  There are a lot of them around the car.  There are others with breeze runes… they move a little faster in general.”

“Can I use presence to try to stall them?” Rose asked.  “If I had enough power behind my words, could I order them to blow up, all the way over there?”

“Maybe,” Fell said.  “I doubt it.  They aren’t being controlled by anything except some very basic impulse.  Not words.”

“What then?” I asked.  “Does it have something to do with that sun shape the runes are drawn inside?”

“Ah.  Yes.  Reaching out,” Fell said.  “You make something warm and you drive it to seek out other warm things.  In this spirit world, there aren’t many things that are truly warm.  It’s only a reflection of the physical world.”

“Breeze runes,” I said.  “Could that also mean breath?”

Fell glanced at me.

Silently, we turned to look at the mannequin-vessels.

Only a handful were moving with any meaningful velocity.  Slowly and steadily.  The detonation runes.

“What is it?” Tiff asked.

I watched as the things staggered and crawled forward.

I held my finger to my lips.

We watched as they gradually slowed, until they were moving at a glacial pace.

“Shhh,” I said.

The vessels roused once more.  A few seconds of movement.

Fell gestured, and we took a collective step back.

Another subset of dolls moved toward us as a mass, faster than any of the rest.

Easily twenty steps for, what, five of ours in total?

I took one step back, independent of the rest of the group, and each of the dolls and mannequins from that group moved four or five steps in our direction.

How long ago had they deployed?

Why hadn’t they segregated more?

Much like the elements that had been used in the awakening ritual.  Breath, explosion, ground… air, fire and earth.

Air-imbued vessels to pursue us by a half-step for every breath we took, two or three steps for every word we spoke.

Fire imbued vessels to steadily seek out our warmth.  Slow, inexorable, and Fell suspected they would blow up if they got too close.

Earth-imbued vessels to track us by our footsteps.

There were two other kinds.

The ritual had used a representation for water.

I could make them out, now.  They were limp, arms dangling at their sides.  When the wind blew harder, they shifted slightly, willows bending in the breeze.

It was ominous.  As a general rule, the ones that more often didn’t move so far.

When those ones moved, how far would they go?

There was also the fifth group.  They moved steadily, but not toward us, as a rule.

“Metal or wood?” I asked, pointing.

The question bought us a moment’s pursuit.  Had the vessels been uniform in size and shape, I imagined it would be a march, a dozen hard feet hitting ground at the same moment.  But they weren’t.  It was a shuffle.

“Metal,” Fell said, quiet, “Never wood, post-industrialization.  Dying element.”

Did Rose notice?  Had she drawn the same parallel?

Her attention was elsewhere.  Focused on Maggie.

What was going on there?

“Move carefully,” I said, keenly aware of how much ground each word cost us.  “Strategically.“

“Drat that,” Maggie said.  “Cut the Gordian knot.”

I glanced at Fell.

“How hard can you cut?” he asked.

“Pretty fucking hard,” Rose said.  “Ready?”

Each word was another three feet of lost ground.

It sucked, but this was the closest thing we had to training wheels, to see just what she and Maggie had put together.

“Go,” I said.

Rose went.  She released Midge with a loud cracking sound.  A breaking window.

Three hundred pounds of inbred muscle and fat appeared on the street, amid the shower of shards.

And with the act of magic, the water vessels woke, closing the distance to us in heartbeats

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Subordination 6.8

My gut told me that Evan was a good fit for me.  We meshed, we worked together, we complimented one another’s strengths.  Even on an aesthetic level, maybe, we didn’t look out of place, Evan perched on my hand.  Maybe that was vanity, my self-image, my liking of birds and Evan’s given form.

Maggie, too.  I could picture her with goblins standing in a small group around her.  It was like the way pets came to resemble their owners.  Maggie’s hair stuck up in places, her clothes were slightly mismatched, and her forward attitude was one that could leverage goblins.

I could see Rose, reflected in a cracked window, and I could see Midge, meeting the water-runed dolls head on.

Whatever it was, that same gut feeling told me that Midge wasn’t a good fit for Rose.

I had a suspicion as to why Rose had gravitated towards Midge as a summoning, but it wasn’t a suspicion I was free to think through.  We had more pressing problems.

Tiff and Fell did what they could to stop the two that reached us.  Fell kicked the one, while Tiff swung her bag like a flail at one that was only waist high.  All things considered, the dolls went down easy.  Fell planted his foot on the neck of the one he’d kicked over, stomping hard enough to sever head from body.  No more avenues for the mystic energies to flow through the thing’s body.

Of the rest, Midge grabbed the two vessels closest to her and used them as bludgeons to strike down the next three to pass within ten feet of her.  They weren’t really for fighting.  Plastic, and many were hollow plastic.  They couldn’t deliver many hits, but they could latch on, smother, or simply deliver their relatively weak hits over and over again.  It enraged her more than it hurt her.

She took a step forward, oblivious to the fact that it would bring the earth dolls closer.

Midge was easily a few hundred pounds, more reminiscent of a Neanderthal than Homo Erectus.  She smelled, she had bad teeth, and her dress was some old fashioned thing that dated to an era when very few people had been obese, or nourished enough to grow above six feet in height, a draping of cloth with a too-small flower print that looked like bargain bin curtain material, her large, misshapen nipples standing out like golf balls beneath the thin fabric.  She walked through snow on dirty, bare feet.

Her hair was thin, coarse, and lanky.  But her eyes… yeah.  I could see where the ‘subhuman’ label had been applied.  Or even where people might have thought of her as a demon.  Not only a glare, but a hard stare that held hatred for every last thing in the world, shifting to suggest a nuance to that hatred, for each and every thing she looked at.  Resentment, disgust, loathing.

It was very possible that someone or something like her might have been called an ogre, once upon a time.  Fix the hair and clothes and keep her eyes hidden, and she might not turn many heads on the street.  Leave her as she was, and she fit among the monsters just as easily.

She was big, red in the face, and her blood had been practically boiling from the moment she’d arrived.  She grunted with every swing of meaty fists, breathing hard, roaring wordlessly.  She didn’t walk, but stomped.  She was magical by virtue of the fact that she’d been summoned here.

She was hitting all the marks to draw the attention of the dolls and mannequins.

Even swamped, bogged down under their combined weight, she was managing.

But even if they were thrown off or torn in half, they came back.  Not putting themselves together, but crawling, lurching, or otherwise flailing in an attempt to close the distance.

They were drawing closer to us.

“She’s not hitting the runes,” I said.  “Rose, tell her.”

“Midge!” Rose called out.  “Get the-”

Barely even sparing a glance, Midge caught one by the middle and hurled it.

“-Symbols-”

The thrown doll sailed through the Rose-occupied window.  We collectively flinched as shattered glass flew past us.

Our retreat and our gasps had brought more of the dolls toward us.  Many included the ones that Midge had broken.

“Might be better to leave her alone,” Maggie commented.

An explosion erupted as one of the dolls got too close to Midge.  I saw two more twisting, contorting, their limbs bending in impossible ways as they turned their ‘faces’ skyward.

I shielded my face in anticipation of the explosions.

Two more.  Not as bad as I might expect from a grenade, but still enough, I imagined, to leave a serious injury.

Midge lowered her arm, where she was covering her face.  Her other hand was outstretched, reaching.

Fire had scorched her, leaving the skin discolored and split, angry black-red scorch marks visible on the flesh, even from a short distance away.  Two meaty fingers dangled backward, waggling from the thin bits of tissue that attached them to her hand.

She used the damaged hand to cave in one hard plastic head.  A finger came loose as she did.

The elbow of that same arm drove another back into the crowd.

Not even slowing down.

Her face was burned, I saw, as she turned to one side.  The pain seemed to encourage her.  It made sense in a way, if raw anger and hate were the only things that fueled her, then pain would motivate, not debilitate.

It reminded me of my own train of thoughts, not so long ago.  Pain and emotions and the impact they had on us.

“Talk some,” Fell said.  “She’s got their attention, we can drag a few of the least dangerous ones away and deal with them.”

“Right,” Maggie said.

“She’s not listening to Rose?” I asked.

“Experience tells me you gotta wait for the right moment” Maggie said.

“Blake said you were a novice,” Fell said.

“I’m a firm believer in making up for a lack of quantity in experience with quality.  Quality experience says that you either get the bad Others who-”

She stopped as the next batch of dolls arrived.

I participated this time, guarding Fell’s left side.  I had the sword wrapped up, to keep Maggie from noticing the particulars, and I’d paid particular attention to binding up the handle, where the three-quarter inch spikes were just dense enough that I couldn’t comfortably hold the thing.

Even though it was wrapped in cloth, the top end far too heavy, I managed to jab one with the sword, driving it back.  I hit it in the leg, aiming for the joint, and belatedly realized it was the most durable part of the mannequin.

Fell kicked it in the chest in the same way someone might try to kick in a door.  The chest caved in and weight did the rest.  The mannequin folded in half, pulled down by the weight of arms and its head.

There were only a scattered few left.

“I hope the right moment comes soon,” I said.  “This is one metaphorical genie that needs to go back in her bottle.”

Maggie nodded.  Her eyes were on Midge.

More explosions, doing more damage to the other mannequins than they did to Rose’s new pet.

“This is how the sisters operate?” I asked.

“No,” Fell said.

“Then how?”

“The Lord of a City often imposes rules of conduct.  In Toronto, as you’ll find in many places, the very first time you go to ask the Lord of the City for something, you’ll be asked to agree to certain terms.  One of those terms is that you need to be ready to stand in defense of the city.  These vessels would be the token offering from the Sisters of the Torch.”

“In case some aspiring Lord comes and decides to unseat Conquest?” I asked.

“More or less.”

I nodded.

The snow made it hard to tell which ones had which rune.  The metal-runes had barely moved from their meandering circuit through the area, and the others were largely engaged with Midge.

Two, I saw, were twisting and shriveling like ants underneath the microscope.  Fire runes.

“Heads up!”  I called out.

But Midge grabbed them, one in each hand.

The left-hand one was shoved right into the midst of the other vessels.

The right-hand one was a doll, the same size as a five year old child, but hairless.  Midge turned, heaving it like someone might throw a shot-put.

In our general direction.

“Shit!” I shouted.

“Crumbs!”

We turned, putting distance between us and the flying doll.

Midge wasn’t throwing at us.

Not at the mortal humans, no.

At Rose.  The doll was flying toward the same building where Midge had thrown the doll through the window.

I looked at Rose.  “Move!”

She moved, darting off to the right side of the window.  I didn’t see her in any of the adjacent windows in the half-second before I covered my face and eyes.

The explosion shattered a series of windows on the ground floor, and cracked a few on the second floor.

The explosion went off a few feet from Midge, too.  She stumbled, but didn’t lose her footing.

Midge was in the process of going after the ‘metal’ vessels.  They didn’t fight back as she tore them to pieces.

When they started to go down, the struggling remains of the other vessels ceased.

The metal ones had been, what, transmitting a signal?  Providing structure?

Maybe a factor in why they had all arrived around the same time.  The ‘metal’ vessels were the generals.  Vulnerable on their own.

Well, the others hadn’t put up a big fight.

In the midst of the half-circle of flames and burning plastic limbs around her, Midge glared at us.

She was bruised, bleeding from a dozen cuts and scrapes, and she was burned.  Here and there, wounds overlapped.  In places where she’d been burned and then punched, the skin was more messed up.

Had it been us in the thick of that, even as a group, I didn’t think we would have been standing.  But as far as Midge was concerned, the vessels hadn’t served any purpose except to help her demonstrate just how good she was at hurting and killing human-shaped things.

And now, with the vessels taken care of, the only human-shaped things around were us.

Midge smiled, reaching up to bite off a chunk of skin that hung off the side of her hand, like someone else might bite off a hangnail. She rubbed the resulting ruin of a hand on her dress, leaving a zig-zag of brown-red blood on the fabric.  She didn’t even flinch.

This is some horror movie shit right here.

“How do you get her bound again?” I asked.

Maggie said, “If they’re tightly bound and sworn to oaths, you don’t need to, they stick to the rules that were laid out.”

“Midge isn’t sworn to oaths, is she?”

“Nope,” Maggie said.  “She has to follow the instructions given.”

“I think we need a few more details here.”

“I talked Rose through a basic release.  Rose didn’t think she’d be able to leverage any power, so I drew out the diagrams, she used the Thorburn voice, I did the physical side of the binding, and then passed ownership of it to Rose.  Rose says the word, Midge gets released, Midge goes after the target, then she comes back and is either bound again or banished.”

Fell nodded, as if that made all the sense in the world to him.

“Target’s gone, why isn’t Midge coming back?” I asked.

“You’d have to ask Rose.  Something went wrong.”

“How do we get her to come back, then?”

“Rose has to order it.”

“Midge doesn’t seem interested in giving her the chance,” I said.

“Nope.”

Fell drew his gun.  I doubted it would put Midge down.

This was a mistake.

It was a dangerous mistake.  Something Maggie had pushed for, a little reckless and unprepared, and now we were reaping the consequences.  We’d traded one problem for another.

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Maggie – I suspected her inability to swear pointed to a mistake in her past.  She was new to this.

It was out of the ordinary for Rose.  Over the past couple of years, I’d spent a lot of time dissecting myself.  How I dealt with problems, what my limits were.  What I needed and why.

How did Rose deal, when backed into a corner?  I knew her to be more disciplined and liable to think to the future on the whole.  But here she was, feeling the effect of almost two weeks of confinement in the mirror world.  Her only contact with others had been a hug and brief handholding with me and some contact with Others, manhandling from Conquest and a quick kiss from Padraic.  She’d been interrogated, and that had only compounded how very vulnerable she felt.

Was this Rose as she was when pushed to her limit?  Reckless?  Just as indiscriminate as I’d been described?

“If Rose hides somewhere out of sight, maybe?” Tiff suggested.

“Theatrics are important,” I said.  “When and how you say something can impact the strength of the words.  Cowering, hiding and asking her to go back is less likely to work than a stern order.”

Midge looked around, turning glaring eyes on everything in the environment.

She bent down to pick up an inert vessel, then grabbed another.  Both mannequins, the heavier sort, damaged from the beating Midge had delivered.  She held them under one arm, then started striding towards us.

Somewhere between an approaching rhino and an infant girl absently carrying a toy around with her.

“Rose,” I said, with a tone and sharpness that carried through the empty street.

“A few kinks to iron out in this whole ‘mirror-girl summons stuff’ concept,” Maggie commented.

“Rose!”  I said, louder.

Midge’s momentum and direction suggested she didn’t plan on slowing down.  She slipped briefly on a slippery bit of road, but it didn’t make her seem less threatening.  Just the opposite.  She stumbled and slipped towards us much like a boulder might take a careening path down a hill.

There was no doubt in my mind that she was gunning right for Fell, planning on plowing through.

Fell seemed to have the same impression.  He raised his gun, aiming.

“I don’t think that’s going to do much,” I said.

“I’m open to ideas, Thorburn,” Fell said, a mite testily.

“Goblins?” I asked.

“That might be like throwing fuel on the fire,” Maggie said.

Fuel on the fire.  Goblin and gun wouldn’t work, too aggressive, too direct.

Counter with opposites.

In terms of our indirect assets…

Not quite how the idea was meant to be applied.  Not every Other fell into neat categories, and Midge was hardly some incarnation of aggression, but it was a starting point when I needed to brainstorm, and the train of thought led me straight to one option.

“Evan,” I said, touching my hand to my shoulder.  Evan made the two-inch hop to my finger.

I flung out my hand.  Evan flew in the direction I’d cast him.

I was secretly happy that had worked.  Theatrics.

Good kid.

Evan used the same maneuver he’d used against the Eye.  Through the legs.  A little more force than a sparrow should have had.

Midge fell, landing on all fours.

It bought us time to retreat, backing up a step, while she stood up, grabbing the vessel she was carrying.

“That’ll do,” Maggie said.

“Rose!” I shouted, again.

“Midge!” Rose called out.  Finally stepping in.  I couldn’t tell where she was.  “Your task is done!  Return!”

Midge shouted something incoherent, tearing the head off the mannequin she carried with her.  When she threw it, it moved like an arrow shot from a bow.  It passed through the thick, graffiti-covered glass that encircled a bus stop bench and hit a shop window.  I saw only a flicker of movement to suggest that Rose was fleeing.

She’d sought cover behind another transparent surface, and it hadn’t worked.

The glass around the bus stop shattered into tiny fragments in the wake of the mannequin part.  The shop window broke into large triangles, several feet long, then broke again as they hit the sidewalk.

Midge twisted another piece free of the mannequin.  A club-like hand and forearm.  She was breathing hard, her eyes scanning the area.

“I order you-” Rose started.

Midge turned on the spot, flinging the hand.

Another shattered window.

It was a really good thing that Rose wasn’t a real person.  If the inbred monster from the back-country was something I’d summoned, I wasn’t sure I’d be dodging these chucked objects so well.

“Maggie,” I said.  “Rose happen to give you any more details on Midge here?”

“They fall into categories.  Natural, they get twisted by their environment.  Built for cold, desert, for living in ravines or deep caves, inhospitable places.  Social, they form tribes.  Cannibal families or that sort of thing.  Then there’s the loners.  Break from the pack, their pack dies, or they’re exceptional members of a family unit, too crazy or brutal to be allowed to mingle.”

Rose started to speak again.  Midge turned to throw another hunk of mannequin, but Evan swooped close, screwing up her aim.

“I bind you, Midge!  I bind you as your pa was bound!”

Midge reacted to that.  She said something I couldn’t make out.

“You were his precious, his only gir-”

Midge threw another hunk of mannequin.  Evan’s interference wasn’t well timed enough.

“Midge was part of a family,” I said.

“She might have been on her way to becoming a special one, but vigilantes came after them all before things progressed.  Whoever claims the dead didn’t want her.  Rose said, what was it?  They think Midge dwells in the darker patches of limbo.  The hands that catch the fallen have gaps between the fingers, and nothing caught her.  Those who know the name can haul her up for a time, before the depths claim her again.”

“Can we cut whatever connection is holding her here?” I asked.

“Your pa called you his mosquito.  His skeeter!” Rose called out.  “I tie you to your father, and I bid you to return to him!”

Another broken window.  Further from Midge.

Rose was being strategic in the surfaces she moved between.

Except I felt my connection to Rose shift and break.  Something had happened.

Had she not moved out of the way?

She was still there, but she’d retreated to somewhere distant.  Maybe the house.  Catching her breath?

Midge turned in a tight circle, holding the lower half of a torso.  Watching and listening.  Patient.

Evan flew by.  She swatted him, a glancing hit, and I felt the impact.

My familiar found his senses and flew away before she could step on him.

When Rose didn’t appear, Midge turned her attention to us, hefting the mannequin part.

It wasn’t just that she was big, six feet tall and four feet wide.  It was how she was constructed.  If the bus stop was any indication, it’d tear past us like a cannonball.  Fell shot her.

When Midge didn’t fall down, he shot her three more times.  The brutish woman took a step back.

Midge had stopped, her damaged hand pressed to two of the bullet holes.  She looked up at us and smiled.  As if she relished this, or she felt something other than pain when wounded.

“You could spell up that gun,” Maggie said.

“I’ve been working under the Lord of the City since I was twelve,” Fell said.  “If he needs a practitioner taken care of, a bullet works.  If he needs something bigger taken care of, he doesn’t send the illusionist-enchanter.”

Midge wasn’t throwing.  She was waiting.

Evan swooped.  Muscles stood out in Midge’s legs.

“Back!” I barked out the word.  Too fast and sudden to be a proper shout.Evan veered off with a flutter of wings.  Midge’s swing seemed lazy and horribly timed when she hit only open air.  I suspected it would have pulverized him, had it connected.She was baiting him in.

“Why can’t she be dumber?” I asked.  “Why did Rose have to pick something that could be so fucking problematic when it slips the leash?”

“Subhumans aren’t stupid, they’re socially backward,” Maggie said.  She thought for a second.  “Really socially backward.  And they’re good with improvised tools and weapons.  Supernaturally good.”

“Ah.  Put a broken chair in their hands, they’re going to be better at murdering you with it than if you gave them a proper gun or knife?” Fell asked.

“Yep,” Maggie said.  “And the ones who do get some crazy weapon like a jackhammer or a machete become the subhuman exemplars Rose described.  Ones with actual personality, trademarks, and rituals.”

I sighed, not taking my eyes off Midge, watching for any possible sign.Fell’s phone rang.  Midge was moving, drawing her hand back.

“Heads up!” I called out.

But Fell was already reacting, and it wasn’t to waste air on warnings.  He threw a handful of powder into the air with one free hand.

The hurled piece of torso missed by a considerable distance.

“Couldn’t have done that sooner?” I asked.  “Spare us the tension?”

“Shhh, Thorburn.  You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Illuminate me,” I said.Midge threw again.  To the same distant spot.I saw confusion on her features.

The phone rang for a fourth time.  Fell finally answered.

He paused for a moment.

“Okay,” he said.  He hung up.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Your friends are nervous.  There’s activity near them.  Either our opposition tracked down the effigies I secreted around the city, and they just happen to be in the neighborhood, or the very temporary protections I put down are faltering.  The Astrologer is very good at navigating and finding things, and that could include your friends.”

“They aren’t tied to this, they aren’t my Champions,” I said, then quickly added, to be safe, “in the sense of this contest.”

“They’re involved.  There’s a massive gap between not wanting them to be tied to this and them not being a part of it.  You know it.”

I glanced at Tiff and bit my lip.

Midge paced.  She approached the bus stop, then tore the bench loose.  Stainless steel or something approximate, cut into a wavy shape so it wouldn’t be comfortable to sleep on.

She bent it, twisted it, and tore it in two pieces.

She threw them blind.Hoping to hit something.

The post that held up the roof of the bus stop was the next casualty.  She threw it so it flipped end over end.

Uncomfortably close to us.  Tiff made a noise.

Midge made a few more indiscriminate attacks, dismantling the bus stop.  None came as close as the post did.

She found and threw the largest blades of glass that had come down from the shop display window.  Each one thrown like a throwing knife or Frisbee.

Useful pieces of glass exhausted, she paced, searching, constantly on the lookout for us or for Rose.

Her eye settled on something else.

Fell’s car.  Battered, with one broken window.

“No,” Fell said.

She stalked toward it, slipping briefly on ice.

“No, no, no!” Fell said.

He moved, and I took that as my cue to move.

We had our differences.  If it came down to saving my friends and the lengths I would go, I suspected he would be caught off guard.  He was a loner, by all appearances.  He’d mentioned family, but he functioned alone.  I didn’t.

But the car?  I had my bike.  I could understand his attachment to the car.

We’d fucking rescue that car.

Evan flew around me.  Where he’d made Midge stumble, the push he gave me helped steady me where I felt unsteady.  Just as it was easier to slip when I was already slipping, it was easier to move forward with balance when I was upright and on firmer footing to start with.

“Evan,” I said.  I reached out.  “Hold up!”

He turned in the air, then landed on my hand.

“That part before, where you stuck your arm out and I took off?” he asked.  “That was great!”

It had been, but I didn’t have time to agree.  “Part two right now.  Fake out.  Watch for my signal.  Don’t stop watching.  Go.”

“Yeah!” he said, saying it as he took off, so his voice faded slightly as the distance increased.

Midge had noticed us, meaning that Fell’s protection wasn’t sticking with us any longer.

She maintained her course to the car.  Did she think someone was inside?

I actually managed to arrive before Fell, putting myself between Midge and the car.

Unarmed, no magic, and a sword I could barely hold, even if I was in a position to use it as a weapon.

“Evan!” I called out, looking over Midge’s shoulder  “Now!”

Midge turned, faster than I might have expected, arm drawn back.

I raised one hand, gesturing ‘stop’.

Evan flapped hard, steering himself away, reversing direction.

A momentary stall and fake-out.

Midge’s expression when she faced me again was something to behold.  Her face was burned, the whites stood out, her pupils narrowed to points, and brown nubs of teeth were bared.

She apparently didn’t like being deceived.

When she struck out, it was from fifteen or so feet away.  Far enough away that I hadn’t anticipated an attack.  Close enough that I couldn’t move out of the way.

Fell was already throwing the powder into the air.

Midge released the blade of glass, an underhand throw, quick and accurate.

I could see the powder taking form.  Another me standing two feet to the left, catching the glass in the stomach.  Impossibly, it went all the way through with a wet sound, made a louder thunk sound as it hit the car, and then belatedly shattered.  Leaving illusion-me with a morass of glass shards in his midsection.

Fell, just to my right, raised his gun.

She caught his hand and crushed it, gun and all.

Then she pulled.

One arm came free of the socket.

She caught the other hand before he could stagger away.  One hand on his chest, another on his wrist, another pull.

This time, due to angle and the force with which she gripped his hand, it came apart at the wrist.  She had to try a second time to tear the arm from the socket.

He spun to the ground from the force of the maneuver, and landed in just the right position for her to step on both of his kneecaps, pulverizing them.

Leaving him to bleed out, she reached for the car.

The real Fell threw out a handful of powder, directly at her maimed reaching hand.

She closed it into a fist, then turned toward Tiff and Maggie, car forgotten.

“Protecting the car,” Fell said.  “Your friends will need to manage, but if we lose the car-”

“I get it,” I said.

Superficially, if we lost the car, we were limited in how we could get around.  The guerrilla strategy wouldn’t work.

Sentimentally, he was attached to his car, and while I’d never put my bike before my friends, I could sort of understand him putting his car before relative strangers.

Besides, berating him for being selfish wouldn’t achieve anything.  Focus number one had to be on stopping this rogue summon.

We’d tried to fix one problem and we’d created a bigger one.

“I’m back,” Rose said.

Speaking of.

I looked.  She was in the car’s side-view mirror.

A dark red line crossed her white blouse, and blood had spread from it, seeping into the cloth around it.  It forked like a lightning bolt might.  Or a crack in glass.  From one shoulder to the other.

“You’re hurt.”  Putting it lightly.  A few inches higher and it could have been her throat.

“I’ll cope.  I found the solution, but I need a distraction.”

I glanced at the others.

Maggie had the flute in hand, and Dickswizzle was dancing circles around Midge.

We had a second.

“Okay,” I said.  “Fell, can you do this again?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“If illusion like I use is going to fail, it’s going to fail on the third try.  Deceptions work that way.  Besides, I need to have her attention before I can redirect it.”

As he’d caught her fist with the powder, or the thrown object.

I nodded.

I signaled Evan.

He swooped low, Midge fell, and Dickswizzle leaped, biting at her throat.

Too many double chins to get through before he could reach anything vital.

Midge caught the goblin and tore it in half.

In the distance, I saw Maggie tossing the flute aside.

Rose intoned, “Midge, daughter of Rackham Thin, daughter of Fat Mam, drinker of blood…”

Midge found her footing, grabbed at the road where there was a pothole, and tore a chunk out.

Fell shot her until she dropped it.

“…Bound by the sixth seal, the second point of the star, marked Gula, marked Forente…”

Crawling on all fours, Midge found a storm drain grate beneath the snow, lifting it up.

Evan flew close.

She swung as she stood.  He dodged.

“I bind you once more by this imperfect sealing.  Until it is repudiated by the blood that forged it, you may never be perfectly bound.  Let this suffice.  By the Thorburn blood, return to the morass from which I called you!”

Midge dropped the grate.

A trick of the light, like a shadow passing over the sun, and the darkness was molasses thick as it collected her.  When it passed, she was gone.

“Fuck me,” I said.

“No time to rest just yet.  Trouble incoming,” Fell said.  “I can sense it.  More dolls, I think they’re making more batches.  They’re going to be more clever about what they do next, especially if Conquest has a hand in it.  And the Eye…”

I looked.

I could almost sense the Eye.

“It’s moving slower than before,” I said, as we rejoined the others.

“The big thing?” Maggie asked.  “The monster that’s not even trying to hide itself?”

“That thing,” I said.

Tiff had gone silent.  She was hugging herself, as much as she could while keeping one hand on my bike, as if it might tip over if she let go of it.

I didn’t ask if she was okay.

At moments like this, when we were least okay, the compulsion to go with automatic responses was a dangerous one for a person who couldn’t lie.

“We should move,” Fell said.

My eyes hadn’t left Tiff.  She flinched a little as he said it.

“The dolls, the vessels, whatever you call them.  Can we block them?  A protective circle of some kind?”

“Yes,” Fell said.

“We saved your car, we can make a little distance with it.  Let’s use the time we do have to set up the garage.  Backtrack a bit, shore up our defenses, make sure he isn’t going to win a battle of attrition.  If this keeps up, we’ll need all the safe havens we can get.”

He followed my gaze to look at Tiff.  “Her?”

“Yeah.  It’s why they’re on board, and it would be a help.”

He nodded.

“Okay?” I asked Tiff.

She looked rather relieved to have the option.

“Yeah,” she said.

■

We were down one ally, for all intents and purposes.  Tiff was gone.

But we had Alexis, and we had Ty.

We also had Maggie.  I wasn’t sure why, but when I took a headcount, trying to weigh the options and assets we had on hand, I had trouble counting her among our assets.

It was a hell of a lot easier to blame Rose for the lapse in judgment and control.

But I found myself paying attention to Maggie instead.

I looked through the window at a city that was burning.  No less than six fires or glows of fire that I could make out from the balcony.

The apartment we occupied was one in a new construction.  It looked better than a lot of the structures we’d seen around.  The spirit world hadn’t had a chance to intervene.  It gleamed with hope.

It was a good choice, symbolically.

“They’re going to change up their tactics,” Fell said.  “The Sisters… I think those vessels were something of a one-size-fits-all solution.  Something they could calibrate to send at virtually any threat.  Whatever they send next, it’ll be more specialized.”

I nodded.  It fit.

“If I could say so,” Fell said, “I would say that summoning was a clusterfuck.“

“I realized what we did wrong,” Rose said.  “The terminology of the binding Maggie and I set up when we primed Midge to come when I gave the word, it was too narrow.  She was supposed to defeat all enemies we had in the immediate area, then return… but when we defeated some of the enemies-“

“She couldn’t follow through,” I said.  “Freeing her of the contract.”

“I thought, since I only had to ask to bind her and banish her, that it’d be a cinch.  But it was hard, and by interrupting me, she took the power out of my words, forcing me to find stronger wording.”

I wanted more than anything to ask her just how much involvement Maggie had had in the choice of wording, but I couldn’t with Maggie present.

Forcing me to make a mental note of the possible sabotage and move on.

“Let’s forget what happened, past tense, and focus on what will or could happen.  Future tense,” I said.

“Okay,” Rose said.  “Fine by me.”

“I’m short my best goblin,” Maggie said.  “The ones I do have are the most minor sort of gremlin.”

“Just add water?” I asked.

“No.  Dismantlers, trapmakers,” she said.  She showed me the folded paper slips.  Each one had what I might have assumed was a sun scrawled on it, along with goblin names and basic labels.  I belatedly realized the suns were supposed to be mechanical gears.

Screwloose and Douchegargler.  Labeled junkyard dog one and junkyard dog two, respectively.

“Traps are good,” I said.  “Can we put them to work?”

“They’re kind of what you might call ‘mad dog’ goblins.  See?  Written right there.  Junkyard dogs.  In practice, they’re sort of like the subhuman we just dealt with.  You sic them on something, they do their work, then they’re gone.  You don’t rein them back in without a lot of trouble.”

I nodded.  “That’s all you’ve got?”

“All I can use, yeah.”

“Okay,” I said.

“What about the goblin sword?” Fell asked.

“The what now?” Maggie asked.

I hadn’t had a chance to tell him to keep it on the down-low.

Fuck.

I got the sword and unwrapped it.

“Geeeeez.  I’ve heard about this sort of thing.  Faerie used to enslave and bind goblins, during an era when the courts were changing over.  Mixed up relationship between the two.  Many powerful goblins agreed to take up certain forms, as part of treaties.  This thing isn’t small potatoes.”

“It’s not the biggest potato either,” I said.  “Middle of the road, though it’s hard to believe that after seeing it in action.”

“I want this,” she said.

“And you can’t have it,” I said, suddenly very glad for the promise I’d made to Evan.  “Not without us jumping through some hoops first.  Let’s table that for now.”

She frowned, looking genuinely disappointed.

I changed the subject.  “If we’re going to hammer this out, we need to find a way to hold on to any victories and avoid future conflict.  The longer we stretch this out, the better.”

“If we can hold out two days,” Fell said, “The weekend will be over.  The Sisters will either have or want to return to work.  Conquest will lose that resource, on a morale front or in manpower.”

I nodded.  “I didn’t even consider that.”

“Defensively, we can set up walls and wards,” Fell said.  “We can misdirect, and we can cross our fingers.  Problem is, I’m not confident it’ll work long-term.  They’re going to change things up, and the Lord of the City has generations of experience dealing with my family and our magic.  He’ll know how to deal with me.”

“We need another way to duck out of sight,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Rose said.  “When I was looking at the notion of limbo, the stuff that was going on with Midge, I had something of an idea.”

“What sort of idea?”

“Guerrilla defense, right?  We need to be petty, strike from a location where they don’t expect us.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Is there anything saying we have to stay here?”

“In this building?”

“In the spirit world.”

I glanced at Fell and Maggie, then Alexis and Ty, who were sitting off to one side.

“Morals,” I said.  “We’ve already done a lot of incidental damage.  I’m not sure how this world is reflected by the real world, or vice-versa, but…”

“But Conquest picked this battlefield because it keeps his subjects out of the line of fire,” Fell said.

“And because it probably gives him an advantage,” Rose cut in.

“That too,” Fell admitted.  “It’s more his medium.  More yours, too.  You’re more flexible, Rose Thorburn, but you’re also more vulnerable.”

Rose touched the cut on her chest.  “It’s shallow.”

“It’s meaningful.  You’ll need to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses.  You’re stronger here, but you’re safer over there.  Decide.”

“I take it you’re saying we need to decide where we want to set up camp,” I said.

“I’m saying exactly that.”

My friend piped up for the first time since we’d entered the apartment and recapped him on what was going on.

“Why not both?” Ty asked.

Why not both?

■

Doorways.  Passage from one world to the next.  Not easy to set up, but we had time, and Rose had access to grandmother’s books.

My friends would stay on the other side, keeping the defenses up and tend to the gates.  At least for now.  If they needed sleep, we could take shifts.

We would roam the free world.

Back in the city.  Among the regular civilians, who were oblivious to what was going on.

Or so I thought.

There were sirens.

As a group, Fell, Rose, Maggie and I stopped by a store display.  Televisions played, showing surveillance camera footage and cell phone video.  A crazy obese woman in the middle of a city street, flinging glass at fleeing shoppers.  The news caption on the bottom read ‘Drug-fueled rampage?’

The pattern was the same, the path she took, amid cars that had stopped in the middle of the street.

Until she was gunned down.  In the same spot where Rose had banished Midge.

We watched as the screen changed over.  Changing topics.  Arson, fires throughout the city.  Car accidents.  Property damage.  Deaths.

Conquest was applying his own pressure to us, in his own particular way.  He didn’t actually care about the residents of Toronto.  He knew this would bother us more than it bothered him and his people, with the possible exception of the Astrologer and the Sisters.

I wondered what he thought, after seeing Midge’s rampage.  I hated to think it, but he could almost think we were shoving it back in his face, showing we could do just as much incidental damage.

This changed things, and it made our strategy that much harder to follow.

I turned away.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Subordination 6.9

The television that Joel had brought into my apartment showed an endless series of reports on what was going on around the city.  Blackouts, fires, raised tensions and overcrowded hospital rooms.  Looking at it from a distance, ignorant, I might assume it was just another night of typical sensationalist news reporting.  Worse than most nights, but there was a natural ebb and flow, right?  Some nights, you’d have more stories and more ugliness than there’d been in the past two weeks.  Unusual but not alarming.  Nothing that would shift the average Joe out of his comfort zone.

Except I had outside knowledge.  I could place many of the events and deduce more.  The Eye, and ghosts were active, which was influencing people in subtle ways.  Maybe, just like Alexis and I had experienced our own simulated heart attacks, a few people who were in line to have one experienced some.  How many ghosts were active, and how many negative emotions, diseases or other issues were being triggered prematurely?

Magic has a price, but it’s not always the practitioner that pays it.

I leaned back on my futon.

Joel was here, more or less filled in, and more than a little concerned that Alexis, Tiff, and Ty weren’t with us.  Goosh was at her place.

Fell patrolled the perimeter of my apartment, his attention on the taped-down diagram that protected the edge.

“This is a mess,” I said.

“I agree,” Fell said.  “As perimeter defenses go, this is pretty sad.”

“I was talking about the general situation.”

“Oh.  What did you expect, Thorburn?”

“I hoped that he’d stick to the deal he made with the High Drunk and leave the city alone.”

“He is,” Fell said.  “An omission to protect the city from his underlings isn’t the same thing as targeting the city.  If that tests the truth, the power he gleans from the ambient misery makes up for it.”

“Fuck,” I said.

“Keep in mind, too, that this is his city.  There are quite a few reasons why practitioners and Others often want to be Lord over a city.  There are mundane reasons, wanting to protect one’s interests, or keep the riffraff out, cultivating a certain flavor of Other and practitioner to occupy your domain.”

“If you were to become a Lord,” Rose said, “It’d mean keeping out the likes of Laird, and putting your friends in better positions.”

“I do not want to become a Lord,” I said.  “No way, no how.  I already have enough people gunning for me as it stands.”

“If they’re already gunning for you, what does it change?” Maggie asked.

“You’re not seriously suggesting it.”

“Not even remotely,” Maggie said.  “You’d die, first of all.”

“And there’s nothing remotely redeeming about it,” I said.  “I mean, I can see the broader appeal.  When you claim a demesne, you make a challenge.  If there’s less in the way of individuals to reject that challenge…”

Rose finished my sentence, “…You can be bolder about the claim.  More power for you, more power for the people under you.”

Fell nodded.  “That’s another reason.  Respect is one kind of power, and it’s a power you can use as fuel or currency.  Few things command respect like being Lord of a city.”

“But like all things, that comes at a price,” Rose said.  “Thus the figureheading of Conquest.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Too many knives aimed at your back.”

Fell went on, “Getting back to my original point, outside of mundane or common sense reasons, there’s something to be said for the fact that the city is yours.  When you own something, it’s a one-sided relationship, and that means an uneven exchange of power.  One way or another, you influence that which you possess.  If you are the Lord of a city, then your substance runs through that city.  This isn’t something you control, but is more incidental.  When Conquest is passive, biding his time and building his strength, then the city is too.  When he is at war, then so is the city.”

When the city is at war, then there’s fire, people in the hospital, and a general ambiance of fear.

“I wish I’d known more about that, going in,” I said.

“I wish you had too.  I thought you might have some idea, and the plan to bide our time was with the knowledge that the city might suffer in the meantime.  I’m of two minds, now.”

“Two minds?”

“I’m glad you’re not heartless, Thorburn.  It helps when I have to work alongside you.  But at the same time… it’s obvious you’re bothered by what you’re seeing in the news, and the effects your contest are having on the public.  You’re wringing your hands-”

I looked down.  I was unconsciously toying with the locket chain, hooking my fingers beneath it.

I put my hands down flat.

“-and I’d be able to tell if it weren’t just that.  It’s not bad that you care, but strategy-wise?  From a purely rational perspective?  You being heartless would help.”

“Not too heartless,” Maggie said.  “That would mean demons, and I don’t think anyone here wants demons.”

“Right,” Fell said.  “A little bit of heartlessness could help.  Accept that what you’re doing helps everyone in the long run, if you depose Conquest, accept that some people are going to get hurt incidentally, and make do.”

“That sort of runs against my personal philosophy,” I said.  “I want to leave the world in better shape than it was when I arrived.”

“Says the diabolist,” Fell said.

“Yeah,” I said, dead serious, “Says the diabolist.”

He nodded.  “Well, decide how you’re going to handle this.  I’m going to try to patch up your defenses here.”

“Out of curiosity, how?” Rose asked.

“His champions are the Sisters, Astrologer, Chronomancy, the Eye and the Shepherd.  He picked a variety of talents, but we should be able to establish this as a refuge if we can distinguish it from the spirit world version of the apartment.  I can target human frailties and distract attention from the location, and I can ward off ghosts.  We’ll have to cross our fingers that the Eye doesn’t show up here, because my talents aren’t the type you use to stop him.”

I nodded.  “Thank you.  I’ll cross my fingers, so to speak.”

“I feel the need to stress that this isn’t a long-term protection.  We’re better off constantly moving.”

“I know, I get it.”

I’d had brief words with the others before we’d settled on my apartment.  Rose was a factor in the decision; she’d wanted company in visiting the apartment, in case something or someone was waiting for us when we arrived.  Some books were here.

I wanted to be here because I wanted to sleep in my own bed, stupid as it sounded.

With experience and the various ups and downs we’d faced, I was becoming aware of just how much my personal strength, power, and vulnerability was linked to my existence as Blake Thorburn.  Having my bike had done wonders.  Having my friends was nourishing on a spiritual level.

Was there a flip side to that?  Was I weakening myself if I thrust myself into unfamiliar situations?

Was I weakened by the fact that Maggie was here, in my apartment, making me distinctly uncomfortable?

Maggie had taken her time examining the Hyena’s sword, then explored my place.  I already had my doubts about her, but being under her scrutiny didn’t help.

I’d picked up art here and there.  A piece of wood that had been sat in the water of some lake or river long enough to be smoothed over, dried, painted and varnished.  A little white dog, a little abstract in shape, but recognizable enough.  A black and white series of images of women with their shirts off, backs turned or chests covered with arms, showing off their tattoos.

Maggie’s attention turned to my bookshelf, which was only half-filled with books.  The rest was trinkets and odds and ends, and admittedly two shelves of junk like screws, bill notices and change that I had stuck up there because I couldn’t be bothered to put them away where they belonged.

I wasn’t the only one looking.  Joel was studying her too.  He saw me seeing him looking.

“Where’s she sleeping?” Joel asked.  “Or are you not sleeping tonight?”

“I spent last night in a jail cell.  I’m definitely going to try to sleep tonight,” I said.  “Maggie?  Any preference?  Do you need to get home at some point?”

She considered.  “It might get complicated if I’m gone long enough for someone to notice how long I’ve been gone.”

“How did you arrange things with your dads?”

She shrugged.  “My parents and I don’t always see eye to eye when it comes to what I’m doing here.  It’s been worse since the change of location, coming to Jacob’s Bell.”

“Please tell me you told them you were coming.  I don’t want to get arrested for kidnapping a minor.  I was just in jail for being accused of murdering one.”

“For murdering me,” Evan clarified, sagely.

“I took measures.  There shouldn’t be trouble,” Maggie said.  “If there is, it shouldn’t inconvenience you.  But if I explain now, it will inconvenience you.”

“How does that work?” I asked.

She shrugged.  “I can tell you, if you want.  But maybe it’s better to focus on other things?”

“Maybe,” I said.  I met her eyes.  “You understand where I might be a little concerned by the fact that you’re dodging my question?  Unknowns are bad.”

“If I hadn’t taken measures to get out of Jacob’s Bell, I wouldn’t be standing here.  You wouldn’t have my particular brand of help.  I didn’t have many options, and the option I did find was pretty dratting fragile.  You could be grateful I’m even here, helping-”

“I am bribing you with access to magical tomes.”

“Something you were offering before.  I’m not complaining, I’m only saying.”

“You’re here, you’re helping.  It’s… it’s great.  Really.  But I think it’s a dumb move to let our guard slip, so I gotta ask.  Are you doing anything nefarious here?”

“There’s no real malice or hostility in my heart, honest.  I’m here because it’s a way to improve my personal situation, because I don’t like guys like the Lord of the City, or even the idea of Lords in general.  Besides, it’s a heck of a lot more interesting than sitting in podunk nowhereville and going to high school.”

“People have been hurt.  You’re putting your life at risk, and it’s interesting?” Joel asked.

“Yes.  Believe me, I’ve seen stuff that makes this seem pretty tame,” Maggie said.  “This gives me a chance to explore.  It’s great.”

Joel latched on to the first part of her statement.  “Stuff that makes this seem tame?  I’m not sure I want to know.”

“You don’t.  You want to know why I can stand beside your buddy right now, when most won’t?  I’ve seen things that might rate an eight on the cosmic scale of bad.”

“You might be overestimating that,” Fell commented.

“I’m not,” Maggie said.

“I second what Fell said,” I added.  “Rose, Evan and I have squared off against a small demon.  Knowing what I know, putting it in context, I might rate it a six, and we almost didn’t make it out.”

“I’ve seen an eight,” Maggie said, a little firmer, “I’ve seen a lot of stuff.  Take my word for it.  A lot more suffered, and a lot more didn’t make it out.”

She sounded so calm about it.  From my perspective, when I thought about the demon in the factory, I felt vaguely sick to my stomach, or I felt like I could start seeing things in the darker corners of my apartment.  Could she really be talking about an eight without any sign of distress?

I sighed.  “I guess I’ll take your word for it, then.”

She nodded.

“This is going to take a while,” Fell said.  When I looked, he was pouring powder onto the floor, then using one of my tools to scrape it into shapes and patterns, building on and inside the diagram we’d taped out.  “In a minute, I’ll have to cover other rooms, and then I’ll go.  If we’re going to figure out what we’re doing tomorrow, we should do it now.”

I nodded.

Fell said, “I’m going to leave you guys when I’m done, so I can look after my family.”

“I wasn’t aware you had one,” Rose said.

“He told me he has siblings, and his parents and uncle were involved, if I remember right?” I suggested.

“I do have a family,” Fell told Rose.  “Conquest might try to use them against me as leverage.”

Family.  Did that mean allies?  “Can I ask who they are, or is it too personal?”

“You can ask.  My niece hasn’t been inducted into this world yet.  She benefits from the protections of innocence, and she’s in capable hands, but I’d still like to be sure.”

The niece couldn’t be another ally.  A shame.”Not going to stop you,” I said.  “You’ve helped me protect people close to me, it’d be hypocritical to deny you the chance to do the same for yourself.”

“Thank you,” Fell said.  “Frankly, you can’t stop me if I do want to leave, I don’t need your permission.”

“That too.”

“What’s the plan, as it stands?” Fell asked.  “We’ll need to set up somewhere else at some point tomorrow.”

“The plan,” I said, “Is to sleep, eat, and then I visit the police station.  If I don’t, they might start thinking I look a little guiltier.  Besides, I need to collect June.”

“Who?” Joel asked.”Ghost in a hatchet.  I left her behind.”

He nodded.

“The same police station where you ran into the Behaims?” Fell asked me.

“Yeah.”

“That sounds like a potential problem.  Do they know you’re coming?”

“They’re chronomancers who dabble in augury,” I said.  “Divining the future.  I wouldn’t be too surprised.”

“Can you avoid going?” he asked.

“I could,” I said.  “I’m wondering if I should.  I mean, for reasons beyond the charges against me and getting the hatchet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m thinking of going after Laird.  I’ve had three wins against him, I’m not sure what that means in the grand scheme of things, but I can’t help but feel I’ve got the advantage and I should use it.”

“He’ll have help,” Maggie said.

“Yes,” I said.  “Almost definitely.  But I don’t think that help will include the heaviest hitters.  Not the Eye, probably not the Shepherd.”

“The Astrologer,” Fell said.  “Heavy enough.”

“She’s possible.  So are the Sisters,” I said.

“Walking right into the lion’s den?” Maggie asked.

“If I’m going to walk into the den,” I said, “I might as well go in prepared to deal with the motherfucking lion, so to speak.”

She smiled.

“If I’m going to help, I’ll need to know more about the Behaims,” Fell said.

“Alright.  Well, they’re arrogant and well-learned,” I said.  “They tend to prefer big, devastating effects, and the entire circle is supporting whoever they’ve got in play.  Laird had the entire circle helping to power his ritual, back in Jacob’s Bell.  Duncan had trinkets infused with power.”

I retrieved the little stonehenge charm bracelet and held it up.  “Credit goes to Evan, for collecting this.”

“You stole it?” Fell asked.

“Evan did.  So yeah, I guess we did?”

“Bad karma, depending on how you do it,” Fell told me.  “Especially if the possession has power.”

“We were fighting,” I said.  “Going head to head.”

“Even if you’re fighting, certain objects belong in certain hands.  The universe doesn’t like that kind of disruption.”

“The Universe is awfully nitpicky when being nitpicky would inconvenience me,” I said.

Fell shrugged.  He resumed working on the powder diagram.  It looked like a strong wind would muss it up, but it was remaining in place.  “Look.  If that’s the case, then how come Duncan didn’t get bitten by karma when he took June, my hatchet?”

“Ah,” Fell said.  “If he did, then it’s only fair if you took something of his in return.”

Hm.

Alright, then.  Not complaining.  I leaned forward as I spoke, “Look, the Behaims are making a bid for power.  Taking me out of the picture is a part of that.  They’re collectively handing power to Laird and Duncan, probably under the belief that they’re going to get paid back tenfold when Laird becomes Lord of Jacob’s Bell.”

“A shame they’re a whole city away,” Fell said.  “With that kind of power structure, it can be good to hit them on the ground level.  Put the guys on the top of the pyramid off-balance.”

“Definitely a shame,” I said.  “That’s essentially it.  I can’t guess what they’re going to try to pull, but I think my having Evan on hand might help if I need to slip out of a trap.”

“You’ll have us for company,” Rose said.

“If Laird has allies and I have allies, they cancel each other out at best.  He’s liable to have more, and they’re bound to be stronger.”

“True,” she admitted.

I had challenged Conquest to a duel of sorts.  This was the duel.  We each had our respective groups, and we each had given up our abilities.If this was a challenge involving leadership, I’d have to exercise some.

I tapped my fingers on the coffee table in front of the futon.  “Consider all the factors at play, be ready, be prepared, and brainstorm.  We don’t need a solution right this minute, but I do think we need a strategy, and I’m confident we can come up with something if we put our heads together.”

There were a few nods, more unconscious than not, as they silently agreed with me.

Conquest drew power from grinding others under his heel.  Physically, mentally, and emotionally.  We needed to keep our spirits up.

“Fell,” I said.  “I need to know about the Astrologer.  I know she was an apprentice, her master passed the buck to her.  She was apparently sympathetic to us, but Conquest tapped her as his champion.  I know she apparently summons things, but I don’t know much else.”

“She does summon things.  Those things are more manufactured than produced.  Drawing spirits from the area, then cobbling them together under an impression.  If a ghost is a psychic imprint on the fabric of the world, then the Astrologer makes the imprints and then fills them in with the available resources.”

“Making ghosts?” I asked.”The candle that burns twice as hot burns half as long.  Her summonings burn bright, and they don’t last for very long.”

I nodded.

“Power has a price.  She and her predecessors have paid a literal price for their power.  To make her impressions, she uses machines at the outer rim of the city.  Lights, lasers, and properties she controls throughout Toronto.  Not as organized as you might imagine.  They’re points of light on a dark canvas, and she uses them to draw pictures.”

“Constellations?” Rose asked.

“Essentially.  Nobody in Toronto has a firm grounding on what the exact rules are.  Those of us who do have books on astrology are working with ideas that are often a hundred years old, if not older.  What she’s doing is larger in scale than what the books propose, but it’s also limited to certain things appearing in certain places, after certain preparations are made.”

I frowned.  “I want to say we don’t have to worry about her unless she lures us to a specific location, but that’s no guarantee, is it?  We could wander right into an ideal spot for her.”

“Or she could find our location, use a computer to turn certain lights on and off, and align her metaphorical ‘stars’ to drop something minor in our midst,” Fell said.  “As a practitioner, she’s no particular threat to Conquest.  Too conditional.  As a strategic asset, she’s a problem.”

“Fuck,” I said. “But didn’t her master make a sacrifice to earn her protection from being pressured by Conquest?”

“Yes,” Fell said.  “On the proviso that she wouldn’t oppose him.  She did, and that protection defaulted.  I don’t know what else Conquest has done to seize her.”

I nodded slowly.

“Anything else you need to know?”

“A few things,” I said.  “But they can wait until the morning.  Minor stuff.”

“Alright.  Let me wrap up the other rooms,” Fell said.  “Nobody’s going to be forcing their way through from the spirit world apartment to your real apartment.  I think it’s subtle enough it’ll hold up to a cursory examination.”

“Excellent,” I said.  “Thanks again.”

“If you want to make it up to me, let’s not make this contest of yours a complete disaster.  Suck it up, turn off the news, and focus on the steps we need to take to win the challenge and stop Conquest.”

“I think I can do that,” I said.

“Good,” he said.  “Because there’s a loophole in this contest of yours.  Nothing says I have to be loyal or obedient, and as far as I’m concerned, the best way to stop Conquest or his champions from killing you or forcing your surrender is to kill you myself.”

“The fuck?” Joel asked.

“No,” I told him, “It’s okay.”

“Is it really, hon?” Joel asked.  “Did someone change the meaning of ‘okay’ while they were stirring up all this crazy?”

“Yes, it’s really okay,” I told Joel.

“You agree, then?” Fell asked.

“Yeah.  Can you keep my soul or whatever it is out of his grasp?  Killing my mortal body won’t be enough.”

“I can try.  I might need to make a container.”

“Good,” I said.

“I’ll go wrap up.”

I nodded.  I turned my attention to Maggie.  “Futon okay?”

■

My hands were paralyzed, one wrapped around the handle of the Hyena’s sword, spikes sticking through the flesh and out the back of hand, thumb and fingers, too painful for me to let go of it.  The other hand was tangled by the locket and the cord that surrounded the imp’s book, fingers bent back out of position.  When I moved, it had been a jerky, frustrated movement, the length of the sword, the pain, and the weight of the sword and book all frustrating my attempts to interact with the world.

My arms were cracked open like a hard plastic doll, and all that was within were feathers of mixed, dull colors, sticking to one another.

I couldn’t move fast enough to catch up to anyone.  I was too tired, too gaunt, an old man in a young-looking body, and the objects bound to my hands were too awkward to allow me to open doors easily or even walk through a crowded area without banging them on something.

I couldn’t close my eyes, because something black and monstrous slithered beneath the surface every time I did.

When I breathed, it was like I was having the heart attack again.  The air I spent was air that I couldn’t replenish by any means.  I was deflating, losing substance.

There was nothing to do but stand there, too tired to move, arms spread like I was crucified, or a bird in mid-flight, staring at Rose and her gathered summonings, with Pauz perched on her shoulder.

I somehow knew that words would cost me more of that vital substance than I could afford to spare.  I knew, too, that nobody would listen.

I stared until my eyes watered, because the idea of blinking was too terrifying…

The water in my eyes became welling moisture, and the resulting tear that fell from my right eye was black and heavy.  I could feel the tendrils and tiny clawed feet reaching out from the tear, rasping against my cheekbone.

I stirred, and for a moment, the feeling of the blankets around my legs was reminiscent of the tendrils.  I kicked at them, frantic.

I gasped like I was coming up for air, or bouncing back from another ghost-induced heart attack.

Holy fuck, fuck me, fuck.  I’d had more nightmares than I could hope to count over the years.  I couldn’t recall any that were more horrifying in the light of day.

A small sound escaped my lips as I lay there, panting, trying to convince myself that the infinite space that lurked just outside my field of view wasn’t some vast residence for the sliver of abstract demon that had found its way into my eye.

“Blake.”

I startled at the sound.

“Are you okay?” Rose asked.

Her voice, quiet, was eerie, in this time and place.  I could see her as she’d been in the nightmare.

When I’d seen Midge, I’d known Midge was a bad fit for Rose.

There was more to it, though.  I’d also had a suspicion that Rose had picked Midge for a reason.  She’d taken my place in the world in the dream.  I was the monstrosity there, not her.

I was the doer of our pair, the warrior even, by necessity more than because I was suited to it.  Rose was the thinker, the scholar with access to the books.

Midge… Midge would maybe have been be Rose’s warrior in my place.  Making her less reliant on me.  Supplanting me.

Not quite so extreme as it had been in the dream, but supplanting me all the same.

It wasn’t a comfortable thought.

“You were watching me sleep?”  I asked.  I’d tried to sound like I wasn’t suspicious, but I was pretty sure I’d failed.

“Evan said you were having a bad dream.  I came to make sure you were okay.”

I followed Rose’s gaze.  Evan was perched on my headboard.

Silent, I sat up.  The idea of sleeping any further was a dim fantasy now.  I sat on the edge of the bed in only pyjama bottoms, breathing hard.

The light outside my window suggested we were on the cusp of dawn.  I could hear the street.  Life, activity, people going about their day.

“Do you want a hug?” Evan asked.

Evan was one of the only people who didn’t make me feel slightly panicky when he touched me.  But then again… “I don’t think you can hug me, can you?”

He hopped up onto my shoulder, and I did everything I could to keep from picturing his taloned feet as some eerie parallel to the claws I’d felt scraping against my cheekbone.

He reached his wings forward to touch the front and back of my neck.

“This doesn’t work,” he said, sounding a little frustrated.

“Sorry,” I murmured.

He hopped down with a brief flutter, then resumed ghost form.

He hugged me with arms that couldn’t touch, just putting his arms in the right place.

I looked at Rose and saw her looking away.

This scene, a little boy hugging a half-dressed adult, might have looked a little weird.

The oddness of the situation put a small smile on my face.  It was a distraction from the odd, dark pressure of the dream, and that did a lot to help.

“Thanks, Evan,” I said.

“I don’t know what else to say or do,” he said.  “It doesn’t seem right that you don’t get a hug or reassurance when you’ve had bad dreams.”

“Part of being an adult, I guess,” I said.

“It shouldn’t be.”

“Maybe you’re right.  Don’t worry about it.  I’m not a huggy person.”

“Okay,” he said.  He sounded doubtful.

I stood and approached the window.  Evan, returned to bird form, settled on my shoulder.

“I’m glad you got a chance to sleep,” Rose said.  “I think maybe I feel less tension now that you’re in a better place.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Like there’s less question of where power is needed, so it can just flow.”

I nodded.  “How’s your chest?”

She touched the place where she’d been cut.  She’d changed tops, and wore something with a collar more like a dress shirt, a cameo pinned over her heart.  “Healing.  Or… not even healing.  Healing implies a natural process.  This isn’t natural.”

I nodded.

I stared down at the city streets, watching the first people coming and going, heading off to work and school.  Most people in this neighborhood were students.

“Mom and dad never hugged me much,” Rose said.

“No,” I said.

“I’m kind of angry at them.  Or at fake-them, if you will.  That they didn’t prepare us better for the world.”

“There’s hardship that leaves you stronger, and there’s hardship that leaves you weaker.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, more to fill the silence than anything.

“There are good things too,” Evan said.  “Good things that make you weaker, and good things that make you stronger.”

“True,” I said.

“Um.  So maybe instead of standing here in the dark, we could do one of the good things that make you stronger?”

“Evan’s bored,” Rose said.  “He woke Maggie up to turn on the television so he could watch something.”

“Makes sense,” I said.  “Yeah, we could do something like that, maybe.  Just let me get my bearings here.  The quiet is nice, and it’s going to be a scary day, I think.”

“Yeah,” Evan said.  He hopped over to my other shoulder.  After a moment he moved up to the top of my head.

“Evan,” I said.  “That’s not quiet.  Is there a problem?”

“Nope.  Sorry.”

He took off, flying through my open bedroom door.

I heard Maggie, and briefly shut my eyes.

“She’s awake,” I said.

“She slept even less than you did, if she slept at all.  I’m not sure, but I think something might be bothering her.”

So much for peace and quiet, getting my bearings.

“Rose…” I started.

“What?”

“Have you noticed anything about Maggie?”

“Noticed?  No.  Why, have you?”

“Gut feeling.  Something’s off.”

“You paid more attention to her than I did.  Why?”

“Just,” I said, lowering my voice to be sure that Maggie wouldn’t overhear, even if she happened to appear in the doorway.  “How much of the wording in Midge’s ritual was Maggie’s?”

“You think she sabotaged us?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “There’s nothing I can put my finger on.  But maybe… be wary?  In case?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I couldn’t ask for anything more, because I wasn’t sure what to ask for or how to figure it out.

I pulled on a black t-shirt.  I crossed over to my bathroom, with the shattered mirror.  I glimpsed Maggie sitting on the futon.  She’d taken off her jeans, sleeping in shirt and underwear, and while she was too far away for me to make out, I saw her adjusting her blanket to cover her lap.

Rose was talking.  “I spent the night working on the rules for the summonings.  Wordings, covering more bases.  It’s more thought out.  I’m confident moving forward.”

I took a deep breath.  I found myself at a loss for what to say or do.

How could I say I didn’t want to take the risk again, without essentially telling Rose that I wanted to strip her of one of the only resources she had in the midst of all this.

How could I describe what I’d seen in the nightmare?

I took my time answering, washing my face more carefully and thoroughly than I otherwise might.  I ran my damp hands through my hair, to get it out of my eyes for at least a little while.

“Yeah,” I said, when I’d finished.  “We can go over that in a little bit.”

I made my way to the living room.

Maggie had pulled on her jeans while I’d washed my face.  She said, “Evan’s saying he wants to go for a motorcycle ride.”

Oh.  When he’d wanted to do something good and healthy, that’s what he meant.

“Plenty of time for that later,” I said.  “We’ll be spending a while on the bike, I think.

“Aw.”

“Aw,” Rose echoed him.  “Maybe you are heartless after all, Blake Thorburn.”

I ignored her.  “Evan, why are you so into the motorcycle when you can fly?”

“Because it’s a motorcycle?”

“Hard to argue with that kind of reasoning,” Rose commented.

“It’s easy to argue with that kind of reasoning,” I said, without any hostility.  This normalcy of this was like a breath of fresh air.  “Be careful about lying, we don’t need a hit to our power now, in the middle of all this.”

“I’m not lying.  I’m not talking about the reasoning.  I’m saying the kind of reasoning, that of a young boy, is hard to deal with.”

“Nuh uh,” Evan said.

I offered a noncommittal groan by way of response.  Too early in the morning.

“Did you have any luck brainstorming while you lay there all night, or did you actually sleep?” Maggie asked.

“I didn’t have as much trouble falling asleep as you’d think.  It was waking up that sucked.  Did you sleep?”

“No.  I spent the night thinking.  Big day ahead of us.”

I nodded.  “You want food?”

■

In the end, we hadn’t ended up eating at the apartment.  Fell had reached out to us, and we’d agreed to get started.

All forces assembled.  We’d collected Ty, Alexis, and Tiff from their camps in the spirit world, Tiff taking watch near the real-world side of the gateway in the garage, stopped for donuts, breakfast sandwiches, and coffee, and got ourselves sorted out before we split up again.

Maggie and Fell headed out for a brief visit to the junkyard, in the hopes of catching goblins.

Rose started her refining of the summons, and we took it as a learning experience for the new recruits.  They did the diagrams and physical work, Rose did the actual invocation.

I stood watch, standing on the balcony outside the apartment.

A figure landed on the next balcony over.  So massive she might have knocked it to the ground, if she hadn’t become human in the process of landing.

Theatrics.

I was tense, but the approach hadn’t been hostile.  Had she wanted to pounce on me, she might have been able to.

Even now, I was reasonably confident I could duck into the apartment behind me.

“Hello, Isadora,” I said.

“Thorburn.  You look better than you did last night.”

“Thank you,” I said.  “Is there a particular reason for the visit?”

“I’m thinking of the trick that circus performers do, spinning plates balanced on fingers and sticks.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Not quite so hard as it looks, to keep them spinning in place.  But when something sets things off balance, the fallout is dramatic, even catastrophic.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You seem very intent on upsetting a balance we have been working to maintain for some time.”

“Maybe the balance needs upsetting?” I asked.

“Who are you to say what should or shouldn’t be disturbed?”

I hesitated.

She seemed put off by that.  “I relieve you of the consequences of my riddle.  You’re free to answer.”

“I’m a mortal man,” I said.  “Isn’t it our prerogative to screw with the status quo?”

“Just as it’s your prerogative to establish it?” she asked.  “I’m not making that a riddle either.  It’s a rhetorical question.  I will say that in the myths of my time and birthplace, it was traditionally those with divine blood who had the power to affect change.  All were at least somewhat Other.”

“I was under the impression that all practitioners were at least a little bit Other,” I said.

“You’re not entirely wrong.”

“I don’t like the idea that the ignorant, non-practitioner mortals are powerless, though.”

“Mere mortals are among the most powerful, in a sense.  But we could debate that for days or weeks on end, and that’s not why I’m here.”

I shrugged.  “Why are you here?”

“Two reasons.  One hostile, that may inadvertently help, one helpful reason that may lead to disaster for you.”

“Oh,” I said.  “I’m going to say ‘Great‘, with all the sarcasm I can muster.”

“Hostile:  I’m making a formal declaration of war, in fairness.  I will attack you in the next day.”

I exhaled slowly.  “You couldn’t put it off?”

“No.  Not really.”

I nodded.

“The helpful.  You should know that when you perish, Rose will be the next Thorburn heir.”

“Wait, what?  Really?”

“Really, Mr. Thorburn.  It’s fated.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Subordination 6.10

I stopped, and Isadora was content to let the words sink in.

I glanced inside.  Inside the vacant apartment, Alexis and Ty were drawing on the floor in chalk.  Deadly serious.  Rose appeared here and there, her distorted reflection appearing in the door of the oven and the glass light fixture.  She was no doubt giving directions, and I was pretty sure she had a book held in her hands.

Evan was simply watching from his perch.  Maybe talking – it was hard to tell when he opened his beak.

Rose appeared in the window beside me, and the angle allowed her to get a clear view of Isadora.

I met her eyes and indicated she should go back with a little jerk of my head.

A frown creased Rose’s face, but she left.  I saw her rejoin the others.

She must have said something, because they all tensed a bit.  I held up a hand, telling them to stay back.

Isadora, in the midst of this, stood there, calm and regal.  Her chin was raised just a touch too high, as if she couldn’t quite shake the guise of the noblewoman, even when she’d long since abandoned it to become the stern college professor.  Her dress was fashionable if simple, white, and there weren’t many places where she would have stuck out while wearing it, her coat had a ruff that might have been fur and might have been feathers.

Her breath fogged in the air, which I found somewhat interesting, on a basic level.

But I was focusing on these things to distract myself from reality.

“Fated,” I finally said.

“You are not long for this world.  When you are gone, your partner will take your place.  Things will reorder themselves in the aftermath, and she will adopt the ties that you have abandoned.  Depending on her nature and the internal logic of things, it’s very possible that minor people in your life will become major people in hers, in the transition.  It will be disorienting, for her, for those you two know, and for your enemies.  There’s a kind of strategy to it.  Rose will be able to dispatch whoever killed you in the chaos that follows.  In the days, weeks and months that follow, things will reach an equilibrium.”

“Just like that?” I asked, feeling numb.

“As I’ve said, your death at my hands would make for the cleanest ending.  The transition would be naturally smooth.”

“I mean, my grandmother did this?  So easily?”

“I don’t imagine it was easy.  All things have a cost to them.”

“She’s murdering me.  And Rose is… what, Rose was made, unknowingly complicit?  Set up to take advantage of my passing?”

“It may be that you two already sense it on an instinctual level, that there is only place for one of you in the world.”

“I’m getting really tired of people telling me I’m going to die.  Laird at first, then more powerful individuals, and now you, saying it like it’s a certainty.”

“That, too, might be instinctual, the others taking notice.”

I was distracted by the rather dark thoughts of death.  I looked up at her.  “Hm?”

“Practitioners and Others can see the ways of things, the ties that bind, and just as a mortal might learn to intuit the weather, we learn to intuit other things.  Some of us have a background that lends itself to seeing these things, as the farmer’s attention falls on the weather.  Some only have a small sense of things, only when the prevailing winds are especially strong.”

“And the prevailing winds are suggesting I’m going to bite it?”

“Yes.”

“I have to ask, then, what’s the point of you coming after me if my death is inevitable?”

“All deaths are inevitable.  Even immortal things will perish eventually.  Why would you ever murder someone, knowing they’ll die eventually?  That’s a rhetorical question, no need for an answer.”

I rubbed my hands together for warmth, then folded them into my armpits.  I leaned against the railing of the balcony, facing the others, the city at my back.  “I think your point is clear enough.”

“Good.  If it helps, I don’t think you’ll need to concern yourself with me until you’ve cleared up your business at the police station.  I’m more comfortable leaving you be for this little exercise, given how disruptive the antics were yesterday morning.”

“Antics?”

“We talked about spinning plates.  Where a dragon is said to make a bed of gold coin, I find I’m more comfortable on a bed of these metaphorical spinning plates.”

“Everything in balance?” I asked.

“Yes.  I’m as sensitive to changes in the balance of things as a common man might be to changes in the light or to noise.  I’d struggle to explain this to you as much as I would struggle to explain color to the absolutely blind, but I would say that power touched across a great many individuals and places, like a vast stroke of lightning, followed by a thunderclap forceful enough to shift each of those things from their positions.”

“Shift?  Tossing stuff around?”

“In part, but it primarily moved people somewhen else.”

“Ahhh.  That wasn’t me.”

“I know.  It was the younger Behaim that was at fault, who earned my ire here.  Time distorted, and everyone that you and the younger Behaim had talked with moved backwards.  Reality wobbled quite a bit until you each caught up with the rest of the world.  The metaphorical plates fell, and my rest was disturbed.”

“In the late hours of the morning?”

“Not that it matters, but I sleep eighteen hours a day.  A useful thing for my mother, created as a sentry and sentinel over holy sites, a nuisance of a thing for me.”

“Ah,” I said.

She was grouchy because of the little time reversal that Duncan had pulled, and she was giving me a free shot at them first.

Was this what it was like being on the other side of the fence?  Duncan and Laird had lost the three times, and they’d broken their word, and now other people and things were conspiring to help me screw them over.

I wasn’t about to complain.

“If that’s all, I’ll leave now.”

“Wait, please,” I said.  “Two things, if that’s alright?”

“Perfectly alright, Mr. Thorburn.  I declared war, I’m obligated to hear you out.”

I paused.  “Can I filibuster you?  Hypothetically?”

“If you can hold me here by discussing relevant things.  I don’t believe you can, and even if you tried, the Lord of the City would find you and catch you before then.”

I nodded.

“What did you want to ask?”

“I’ve been led to believe that the Lord of this city is merely a figurehead.  That you’re keeping him in place.”

“Fell would be the one who told you.”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.  Essentially true.”

“You could have told me.”

“When?  By the time I had a sense of you, I knew you were a diabolist, and nobody is going to associate with diabolists that easily.  It’s easier and safer to remove you, given the precedent history has set.  Even now, after you’ve proven your mettle.”

“Is the figurehead thing why you’re coming after me?”

“Yes.  We can’t have you unseating the Lord of the City.  Your background makes things worse.  You’re upsetting things, and while it isn’t so dramatic as what the Behaims did, it’s a problem across the board.  You can see what’s happening in the city.”

Screwed twice over by things I couldn’t control.

“Alright,” I said.  I didn’t want to argue.  Not about that.  “What if I said that I don’t expect to win?”

She arched an eyebrow.

“Just asking,” I said.

“If you lose, you’re just as dangerous.”

“Things aren’t that binary,” I said.  “Existence isn’t black and white.”

“Existence is very much binary,” she said.  “You exist, or you do not.”

“I think you know what I meant.  I don’t think you can paint all of reality with strokes of ‘right and wrong’.”

“I would argue that everything can be broken down to right and wrong,” Isadora said.  “Case in point, I can ask, ‘Do you disagree?'”

I stayed silent.

She smiled a touch.  “You don’t give me an answer, because you’re afraid of giving the wrong answer.  I just condensed a great many possible answers into two.  Right, wrong.  You can do the same with all of existence, if you wish.”

“I see.  I’m not sure I like that view of reality.  If there’s one right answer and nearly infinite possible wrong answers, aren’t there an awful lot of wrong answers in existence?  Isn’t reality made up of a great deal of wrongness?”

“Break it down, Mr. Thorburn, examine the densest material at the most fundamental level, and you’ll find a lot of empty space between the components of each molecule.  A great deal of empty space between molecules.  Look at the universe itself, and take note of exactly how much of the void occupies the solar system, compared to the objects, and I think it’s a strong representation of reality.”

“You’re linking right and wrong to existence and nonexistence.”

“I’m the very manifestation of that link, aren’t I?  Rhetorical question, once more.”

“Point taken.”

“Look at the very fact that we are alive in the here and now.  How likely are we as individuals, how likely are we in this exact state at this exact time?  Right is being a point of light in an infinite darkness, and that holds power, because it brings vast complexities into being.  Even small decisions or changes in wording might lead you to different courses in life, to meet different people.

My friends inside were noticing I was talking to someone.  Were they seeing the connections?

It was good if they were getting practice.  I shifted position, trying to convey that I was at ease.

There was virtually no way the Sphinx would come after me right now.  It wasn’t in her nature.

“I have to admit, it’s eerie to hear a being such as yourself talking about the universe and molecules.”

“Then I’ll give you the sort of answer I might have given when I was young, instead.  Everything is reducible.”

“Even your argument, apparently.”

She smiled.

“There’s a problem with that, though,” I said.  “When you asked me if I disagreed, I stayed silent.  You reduced it to two possible answers, but I took a third option.”

“Silence.”

“Yes.  Before this discussion began, you reduced another question to two possible answers.  Will I defeat the Lord of the city and destabilize things enough to justify your murdering me, or will I lose and surrender myself to him, justifying you murdering me?”

“You’re proposing a third option?”

“Would I be offending your intrinsic nature if I said I’m proposing a third, fourth and maybe fifth option?”

She smiled, “Not at all.  My favorite answers to riddles are the ones I could never anticipate.”

I nodded.

“Anything else?”

“My friends,” I told Isadora, while staring at Alexis.  “When you come after me, please leave them alone.  Ty is pretty awestruck by you, Alexis is maybe the most right person-”

“Thorburn.  There’s no need to justify why I should leave your friends alone.  If they remain out of it, I will leave them be.”

I nodded.

“I wish you luck, diabolist.  I will try to find you later in the day.”

“Thanks for being fair,” I said.

She nodded, then hopped up to the railing, then stepping off.  The flapping fabric of her dress, coat and hair spilled out into something bigger, and she was full size before she was halfway to the ground.

I sighed.

I’m going to die.

The realization was a heavy one.

But I couldn’t dwell.  The others were getting more restless, and I needed to move.

I stepped back inside, rubbing my hands.  Evan lighted on my shoulder.

Three circles, each distinct.  Geometric shapes, symbols, and words scrawled out in remarkably good handwriting.  That would be Alexis.

As I progressed further into the room, the bathroom came into sight, a large mirror facing the door.  I could see Rose standing in the doorway of the bathroom.  The best reflective surface in the empty apartment.

She moved, and I could see the summonings.  Three, in circles on the other side of the mirror.  The others had drawn the circles, they’d appeared in the mirror world, and Rose had enlisted their help in summoning the things, using her voice to summon them to her mirror reality.

From there, I suspected, they could be bound into more convenient packages, as Maggie had bound Dickswizzle into the flute or the whistle or whatever it was.

The circle closest to me held a woman.  She was dressed in brown homespun clothes that were spattered with dark brown patches that I suspected were dried blood, holding a kitchen knife that seemed disproportionately large, all things considered.  Her facial features seemed slightly offset, as if they weren’t quite anchored in place, and the longer I stared, the more the eyes, cheekbones, eye brows, nose and mouth seemed to drift from their starting point.

A man with an apron and vest, wild orange hair, and slashes of dull ashy yellow wax crusting his skin here and there.  One of his eyes was missing, and the orb within was more wax, set with a tiny black dot in the middle, slipped into place.

The other circle was empty.

I wasn’t an expert, but there was only one Other we had discussed summoning.  I’d vetoed the choice.

Rose was tense.  Braced for an argument.

Was there more to the inherent hostility?  Was the sphinx right?  Were we instinctually aware that there was a game of musical chairs in progress, the two of us dancing in circles, and only one chair?

Fuck that.  Fuck the hostility, fuck the arguments wasting time, fuck the game of musical chairs.

I’d take the third route.

Starting by forestalling whatever argument she was prepared to make.

I tried to keep my voice level, but a kind of hoarseness found its way in despite my efforts.  “In the interest of full disclosure, the Sphinx has informed me I’m fated to die.  It won’t be too long.  It’s… sounding pretty damn certain, and it fits with what some others have been telling me.  Fated, was the word she used.”

Evan spoke up, “There’s gotta be a way to stop it.”

“This isn’t the movies, Evan.  Yeah, I’ll fight it if the chances comes up, but something like Isadora would be pretty screwed if she lied that blatantly.  If she tells me something straight up, I’m inclined to believe her.”

I saw Tiffany’s hands go to her mouth in shock, as she took it in.  She was the first to react, oddly enough.  Our relationship was the newest, the shallowest.  Was that why?  did it take longer for others to grasp the full import?

Alexis’ expression was one of shock, but it kept going, distorting, until it hit some breaking point.  Her face crumpled a little, and tears appeared in her eyes.

She reached up, as if to hug me, then thought again about it a moment later.

I felt like an utter asshole for not just hugging her anyway.  That was what happened in the movies, right?

But I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit how shaky I felt.  Standing still, being stoic, it was all I could do.

I looked at Rose, and I could see the alarm on her face.  She’d been waiting, probably, with words prepared to argue for the summoning of the Corvidae spirit, and I’d left her speechless.  But it was more than the shock that Alexis was demonstrating so well.

Was she worried about her own existence?

Good.

“I’m sorry Rose,” I told her, and my voice was a little hoarser than before.

I didn’t tell her why I was sorry.  I’d lie to let her keep worrying.  If we were caught up in some dance we weren’t aware of, then maybe mutual self preservation would push her to cooperate where she wouldn’t otherwise.

“I’m sorry Evan,” I said.  “We made a deal, though, and I’m going to try to make the most of the time we have left, to follow through.”

He didn’t respond, but he hopped over a bit and settled closer to my neck, leaning on me.

Ty hugged Alexis in my place.

■

Fell finished painting the posterboard, then stepped back to examine his work.

My eyes moved from the board to the circle that was drawn on the floor of the apartment, checking over every detail.

“This is your escape hatch,” he said.  “While in the spirit world, things take on a different dimension.  The workings of practitioners are more physical, the workings of man are more fragile.  You’ve already seen hints of this, how easily neglected things fall to ruin in that world.”

I nodded, and Rose nodded with me.

We’d talked briefly, running through the various stages of grief in our own way and our own individual orders.  I’d gone in with acceptance of a sort, and it helped that my recent brushes with death had acclimatized me to the idea.  Rose still seemed to be in denial.  But she’d dropped the pretense of a fight and she seemed to be in my court, now.

I wished it hadn’t affected Alexis as much as it had.  Ty, too, seemed to have switched to a very introspective mode.

We’d agreed not to tell Fell and Maggie, when we heard them at the door and realized our time for mourning was over.  Not telling them meant putting on our best game faces.  Some of us were doing better than others.

“With luck, the defenses they’ve set in place are going to be geared towards stopping us in the spirit world.  If they are expecting us, they have to expect that Blake will make a personal appearance in the real world.  If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be able to follow through on the agreement he made with the local police chief.  They’ll be prepared in other ways.”

I drummed my fingers on the kitchen counter that divided the kitchen from the living room.  “We hit them from multiple directions, and we hit them hard.  I’m inside the building with Evan and Rose.”

“Will you be okay?” Alexis asked.

She was maybe having the hardest time dealing with what I’d told her.  It surprised me, because she was often so strong.

But people worked to leave legacies, and while my ambitions were pretty damn low, merely on leaving the world a better place than I’d left it, Alexis was having to face the fact that the legacy she was leaving was in jeopardy.  One of the people she’d saved and helped rehabilitate was potentially going to die.

“No idea,” I said.  “But Rose has the firepower, Evan can hopefully help me work around the traps.  We have Alexis and Ty as eyes on the scene, and Fell guarding the perimeter to distract further trouble.  In an ideal world, this is our chance to take out one of Conquest’s champions.”

“Perception and misdirection are my stock in trade,” Fell said.  “I’ll set your friends up so they’re hard to spot and capable of tracking whatever is going on.  If trouble heads your way, I’ll try to turn it aside or stall it.  If I can’t, Maggie will step in.”

“The goblin catching expedition was a wash,” she said.  “I have my gremlins, and some Faerie tricks I’ve picked up, but that’s it.”

“Faerie and Goblins are usually opposing,” Fell said.  “Allying or borrowing the help of one usually scares off the other.  A feud dating back thousands of years, even.  It’s surprising you’re able to balance the two.”

“I know,” Maggie said.  “But I hate goblins, and that counts for something for at least one Faerie.”

I nodded.  “Whatever you can do helps.  We’ll try to be fast, hit them hard, do what I need to do, and get out.  I just don’t want to get cornered again.”

Rose spoke up.  “Saying ‘we’re going to do this fast’ feels like you’re tempting fate when we’re talking about chronomancers.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Definitely,” she said.  “But since we know who we’re up against, I did some reading.  Time is a fundamental force.  It’s hard to find a valid counterpoint to it.  But it’s a heavier thing to manipulate.  The restrictions are bigger, and the costs are stricter.  Physical space is one of the big restrictions.  You mess with time, you have to work within certain boundaries.  The house is a pretty clear example of that.”

“Very strict focus on the area affected,” I said.

“Turning back the clock, if the sphinx was right, is probably limited to degrees of separation and connections.  Only people that are three degrees of separation from the target, you, and from Duncan, or something like that.  If there were ripples that extended beyond that third degree of separation, then there would be incongruities.”

“Stuff not adding up?” I asked.

She nodded.  “And that costs, when dealing with a magic that’s very costly to start with.  It’s not a cost you can anticipate, either.  Chronomancers either have to build up a safe buffer to protect themselves in case they wind up having to pay a penalty fee, or they suffer consequences.”

“Like?” I asked.

“Years off their lives, premature aging, distorted perceptions, stolen memories.”

I nodded.

How was I supposed to process this?  On the shallow level, we were talking about employing monsters to stop Laird and Duncan, very dangerous creatures.

On the other hand, I was hearing about those penalties, and my knee-jerk reaction was to think that I wouldn’t make my worst enemy face something like that.

To be rushed to their demise?

Maybe it hit closer to home than it might have before my conversation with Isadora.

“That’s essentially it,” I said.  “If ghosts or vessels start to show up, Ty and Alexis do what they can to warn us so we can clear out, or Fell and Maggie go after the Shepherd.  If we end up facing the Astrologer, Fell tries to bend the paths the light is following and distort the picture.”

“She’s stronger at night,” Fell said.  “Less of a concern.”

“We have strategies for everyone.  Either stall and warn us or go on the offensive, depending,” I told them.  “Stay alive above all.”

“Let’s go,” Fell said.

I bent down to pick up the posterboard and wobbled a little, stopping halfway only to catch my balance.

Still not entirely recovered.  Not even halfway there, even.

It was hard to tell if I felt better because I was getting better, or if I was getting used to being a weakling.

I folded the posterboard along the pre-cut marks, until it was a quarter of the usual size.  I slid it into my backpack.

Fell, Maggie, Rose and Alexis used the gate to cross over, and they became vague silhouettes, pale.  Rose was even harder to make out than usual, but she was brighter than the rest.

Two overlapping realities.

I had to wonder if this kind of vague form was what Others made out when they looked at us.

I focused on them until I could make them out, as if I were adjusting the dial on a microscope.

Alexis stared back at me, her eyes lacking irises or pupils.  As it had after the awakening ritual, her hair shifted as if in a breeze.

Her clothes were transparent, and her tattoos stood out.  On her back, on either side of her body, on her leg, including a few small ones on the side of her foot, practice sketches, visible through the foot, as if it were more real than her flesh was.  Three molars were visible through her cheek, like some faintly glowing mark on her cheek.

I glanced away before I saw anything too rude.

Fell was also wearing an astral body, and his clothing had changed in a way that left me no doubt he’d inscribed it like I had my suit.  I could still peer through it, seeing the holster of his gun and the powder that now stirred as if it were alive.  I deliberately avoided looking below the belt.

Maggie – Maggie was just as problematic, but for different reasons.  A touch too young for my conscience.  What I could see of her without looking right at her was surprising.  She was second only to Rose, and Rose was pretty much an astral body made solid, Maggie was the most intense to look at.  She was something wild and restless, her hair tangled and bristled like a briar bush, eyes dark, slightly thinner than she was in reality, her fingertips and ear tips were pointed.

I couldn’t tell without looking, but I thought there might have been blood spatters.

Had she stepped a bit too far into that world?

Or, maybe, was she right?  Had she really dealt with an ‘eight’ on a scale of one to ten?

Fundamentals had warned about using the sight too much, going too deep.  I was starting to understand how that worked.  When we crossed over, our sight had adjusted.  If I peered hard enough or long enough, I suspected, I might not be able to readjust my vision to view the normal world at all.  Go too deep, exploring permutations and distant perspectives of things, and perhaps you couldn’t resurface.

I could see the problem with that.  Being in the real world, but only able to view the spirit world version of it?  It would be like going mad, except the monsters and things in the shadows could very well be real, and there could be no hope of maintaining normal relationships, when you saw normal people through the eyes of an Other.

There was probably more to this, what I was seeing, and what it meant to look at things out of focus and see the spiritual side of people, but we didn’t have time to explore it.

I adjusted my vision until they were blurry enough that I could look at them without being embarrassed, and signaled the go-ahead, carrying the posterboard.

We moved as a unit, though Rose moved from mirror to mirror, and Evan flew, taking to the air to view the area around us.

Interesting, to see how some pedestrians walked through Fell and Alexis, while others stepped around him, as if unconsciously acknowledging his presence.

One by one, we split off.  Taking our stations.  Ty, still real, found a table at the window of a big book store, while Alexis stopped on a street corner.  Fell and Maggie waited on the same block the police station was on.  An impressive red brick structure.  Some police officers and a fair number of cars were situated just outside, the cars parked along the length of the street.

Evan approached, flying low to the ground, flying recklessly enough to disturb some of the brave pigeons that had lingered for the winter.  He rose just in time to land on my shoulder, and I flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt.  He took refuge beneath as I set the hood down flat, Evan peeking out from beneath.

Wouldn’t do to have a bird flying around the police station.

Here we go.

Through the doors.

I used the sight to search for traps, a brief sweep.

“Move!” a heavyset woman ordered me, when I opened the door but didn’t rush through.  Nothing on the frame.

“Old man,” Rose whispered.  “Over the staircase.  Crucified by gold chains.  Sand leaking from the areas where the chains bite into the walls.”

I nodded.

They were here.  I turned, heading off to find another, less direct route to the chief’s office.

“Stop,” Rose said.

I stopped.

“Four.”

“Four?”

“Four Behaims.  Very close.  Younger.”

Bastard isn’t one for half-measures.

I reached over to push up my sleeve.  I touched the Stonehenge charm.

I could feel connections of varying intensity.  Bonds between the charm bracelet and the other people around me.  People paying fines, staff, police…

Two to my right.  A teenage girl and a younger boy who was maybe just on the cusp of teenhood.  The boy had what looked like a pad of yellow sticky notes held between index and middle finger, and was periodically flipping through it with his thumb, a practiced gesture.  There was something drawn on the top one, and it looked complicated.

Another to my left, older, maybe older than me, a man in sunglasses.  Another in front, the same age, standing to one side, fiddling with her phone.  It wasn’t a smartphone, some brick phone, the durable sort.

All of them had the standard Behaim look.  Dark hair, square faces, heavy builds that weren’t necessarily fat.  Well, the youngest boy and the older girl looked like they might be, but that wasn’t the concern.

None had noticed me quite yet, but I was stirring interest by way of the charm.

I stopped using it, trying to duck out of sight.

Off to one side.

They were searching for me, and I paid attention to the roving connections, trying to hide.

Maybe that was a mistake, because the guy with the sunglasses noticed.  The others saw his reaction and took that as their cue.

I wouldn’t be slipping by.  It was a shame Fell wasn’t willing to teach me his illusion, because I’d really like having it.

“How do we handle this?” Rose asked.

“Gently, I said, as the teenage girl and sticky-note boy made a beeline for me.

“I think Laird is counting on you being gentle.”

“Maybe,” I said.

I turned a hard right.  Heading for a long hallway that would let me put distance between us.

They followed, except for phone girl, who remained where she was.

“Another Other lying in wait toward the end of the hall, keeping you from rounding the corner.  The giant with the hidden face.  He’s powering a circle that was drawn on the wall there, hidden in the midst of some graffiti.”

Fuck me.

“Tell me when you want me to stop,” I said.

“Twenty paces.”

For now, the number of people in our immediate proximity was an advantage.  Cover, and they couldn’t do anything obvious without drawing attention.

“You wanted me to be your firepower, Blake,” Rose interrupted my thoughts.

“Not against kids,” I muttered.

“You think they’ll play nice?” she asked.  “They’ve been practicing longer than you have.”

“Not with those things, and what happened last time.”

I drew looks for talking to myself.  People seemed surprisingly okay with it, all things considered.

“I was more careful.  The restrictions are tight.  No killing.  No harming me or you.”

Mail and reception, bathrooms…

Bathroom could be a dead end.

Another stairwell.

I bit my lip, thinking.

“Three paces.”

I stopped.  Those were my options.

I could see runes laid out, making it a dangerous proposition.

They’d trapped the building.

Pretty fitting, given Duncan’s previous M.O.

Alright then.

If there was anyone inside the bathroom, they were in the stalls.  I walked to the far end of the bathroom, using the sinks to steady myself as I ducked low to see if any feet were visible.  I was alone.

Rose was already waiting when I turned to the bathroom mirror.

“I need you to stall them.  Going to duck into the spirit world.  With luck, their sight isn’t that good, I can slip by.”

“Relying on luck already?” she asked.

I dug through my backpack, pulling out the posterboard.  “They didn’t see the connections as well as I did.  Their sight isn’t that well trained.”

“At least one of them saw.”

“Maybe one of them is competent then, but it’s better than being followed by four.  Go.  We’ll figure this out.”

She went, traveling from one mirror to the next on her way to the door.

I could see her walking.  Raising a hand as she passed one mirror, then it was lowered when she passed the other, her mouth open as she said something I couldn’t make out.

When she’d reached the mirror closest to the door, she had company.

Mary, the woman with the kitchen knife.

Wouldn’t have been my first choice.

I’m losing control of all this, I thought.

Losing control of Rose, no longer having my friends compartmentalized…

The door swung open.

The boy with the sticky notes, the girl I assumed to be his sister.

“Laird uses children to fight on his behalf?” I asked.

“We volunteered,” the girl said.  “Those books you ruined?  Those were valuable.  That was fucked up.”

If theft of property that belonged in a certain place had repercussions, then destruction had to be the same.

“You shit on them?” the boy asked.  “In our aunt’s house?”

“To be fair, I only let a goblin loose,” I said.

“It wasn’t fair at all,” he said.  He held up the stickies so I could see the inscription.  It looked like a complex piece of clockwork more than a magic circle.  “You probably deserve this.”

“Your family killed my cousin, and tried to get me killed.  I’m not supposed to fight back?”

“I-” he started.  He stopped when something clinked against the mirror.

Rose was standing beside me, but something else was tapping the mirror, with steady, sharp sounds.

He and his sister looked at the mirror.

“Go get Gav,” she said, her eyes wide, her voice a hush.  “Get him in here, tell him to use protection.”

He fled the room.

“That was a mistake,” I said.

“No,” she said.  She looked at the mirror.  “That was.”

She reached into her pocket, and she withdrew a chain.  Not steel.  Some other material.

She tossed it to the ground, then kicked it twice, until it made a rough oval shape.  She stood within.

The glass shattered.  A knife point stuck through.

Mary came through a moment later, with a crash of glass.  She collapsed on entry.

The man with sunglasses, ‘Gav’, appeared in the door.  He also had a chain in hand.  He tossed it to the ground at the doorway, then used his toe to move it so it was secure.

Mary staggered to her feet.

I could see the fear on the girl’s face as she remained within her small circle, arms tight against her side, chin raised.

Mary stalked around them.

Raised her knife, ready to stab, but didn’t swing.

The girl reached into her pocket, careful not to let her elbow move beyond the boundary of the circle.  She unrolled a small scroll.  “I hereby bespell you, Blake Thorburn, by the-”

I snapped my fingers and pointed.

Evan flew.

The circles didn’t stop him.

Gav’s chain did move in his passage.

Gav stumbled back, his fear visible even with the sunglasses hiding his eyes.

The door swung shut.

He didn’t know that Mary only attacked women.

The girl’s fear was palpable.  She shrieked as Evan flew by again, and the scroll tumbled to the ground.

“My uncle-”

“-can come,” Rose said.  “We’re dealing with him anyway.”

Evan flew by a third time.  She kicked the chain to make it a rough circle again, and she managed to hit him with her knee.

Enough bullshit.

I strode forward.

I saw her expression as she realized what I was doing.

“No,” she said.

I pushed her to one side on my way to the door.  I kicked the chain under the nearest stall.

Mary swung her knife.

“Scare, no permanent damage,” Rose ordered, stressing permanent.

Which was probably scary enough when you were disarmed and had a knife-wielding Other on you.

Mary seemed to listen, all the same.  The cut across the backs of the girl’s forearms were as shallow as cuts could be.

The Other hung back as the girl retreated into a corner.  Staring, bristling with latent hostility.

I snapped my fingers and pointed at the window.

“Mary,” Rose’s whisper was barely audible over the shrieks and screams, “Come back.”

I was dimly aware of the Other making her way to safety.

I headed out the door, leaving them.

“Officer!” I shouted at the nearest cop, before the other Behaims could ambush me.

The officer turned my way.

“There’s a girl in there with slashed wrists,”  I told him.

His reaction was immediate, calling for help, shoving his way inside.  More officers came running, and the area was chaotic.

Blocking the young Behaims from their sister or cousin.

I used the chaos to my advantage to leave them behind.  I was dimly aware of one running up the staircase that was warded against passage.

As I passed the pictures mounted on the wall, Rose walked in step with me, and the Bloody Mary walked in step with her.

Subordination 6.12

I’d faced more than a few situations that left me bewildered, scrabbling for mental footing before I could be killed or caught in a trap.

This situation, as it turned out, was more bewildering than most, the imminent death or trap a little more questionable.

The Behaim kids had caught me, I realized.  They’d surrounded me.

That wasn’t so hard to understand.

But I was in the spirit world, where I’d been in the real world not so long ago.

A touch more concerning.

I was also in a foreign place.  The far end of the spirit world version of the police station’s parking lot.  Everything was fenced in, except for the dilapidated gate at the end, where an old Father Time figure was lurking, bearded, old, and robed, with golden chains draped over the ground around him like a squid’s limp tentacles.

Three on the side of me closest to the building, sunglasses and Father time on the other side.

Their expressions were stern, distorted by the influences of the spirit world and the fact that my vision was out of focus.

I just dealt with you.

The girl who Mary had sliced was there, cut arts covered by her sleeves.  Either the situation had had a particularly fast resolution or… or what?

I’d seen the Behaim ritual and the aftermath of accelerated time around the house, I’d seen Duncan turn back time, and now this.

Had they rewound themselves?  How did that explain my being here?  Had they stopped time and moved things in the interim?

I didn’t have my backpack or the hammer that was engraved with the rune, but my pockets were still full.

Evan fluttered, landing on my shoulder.

“Hey, kid,” I said, murmuring.

“Heya.”

The Behaims were staring at me but not moving.  That damn little kid with his pad of sticky notes was riffing through the pad with his thumb.

“Are you as confused as I am?” I muttered.

“We’re not where we’re supposed to be,” Evan commented.

“Yeah,” I said.

The Behaim guy with the sunglasses might have heard, because he smiled a little.

“Where’s Rose?” Evan asked.

I looked around.  My eye traveled over the back windows of the cars.

No sign of our resident girl in the mirror or her knife wielding Other.

“Good question,” I said.

This was too eerie, too out of place.

Something was wrong.

“Gut feeling on an escape route?” I murmured, a little quieter than before.

Evan turned his head.

I glanced without turning my head.  He was looking at a police van, fairly nondescript, but for a red and blue stripe at the side and a coat of arms on the side.  The nose pointed at me, rear bumper facing the chain-link fence.

Good enough.

I bolted, and Evan took off in the same moment.

I stepped up onto the bumper of the van, then the hood, slipped, and climbed onto the roof on all fours.

One of them was doing something, because my legs were moving more sluggishly than my upper body, as if I were wading through water.  My shoulder ached something fierce, and I couldn’t think back to any incident that might have caused it.

Evan’s passing flight helped me shift my legs into position, and helped dismiss whatever effect was accumulating there.

The top of the van was slick with wet snow, but I managed to find my balance.

The top of the chain-link fence was just about level with my collarbone.  A short jump, easy enough to make, even with me in a less than stellar physical state.

I didn’t make it.

Evan was the reason.  He flew past me, and he altered my trajectory.

I wound up stepping right off the side of the van.  I dropped and crashed onto the trunk of the police car parked next to it.

The kid with the sticky pads had bolted to the fence.  He touched one sticky note to one of the posts with three fingers extended.

I could smell the burning air.  No flickers of lightning or anything of the sort, but the smell was thick and pronounced enough to suggest that I might not have survived contact with the fence.

I groaned as I rolled off the back of the car, careful not to touch the fence.

“Sorry,” Evan said, as he landed on my shoulder.

I groaned again, quieter, while rotating my shoulder.

The other three kids were closing in on me.  The younger girl, the older girl I’d seen the Bloody Mary cut, and Sunglasses.

“Laird’s sending his nieces and nephews to do his dirty work, huh?” I asked.

“Not just nieces and nephews,” the kid with the sticky notes said.

The older girl Mary had attacked spoke up.  “We volunteered.  We take you out, the family fortunes improve, and because we had a hand in it, our fortunes improve too.”

I had to bite off the urge to make a sarcastic retort.

“I see,” I said.  “Where does this go?  Killing me?”

“Binding you,” Sunglasses told me.  He looked at the younger boy.  “Craig?”

Craig tore off a sticky note.  The one on top that I’d seen earlier.  Like a piece of clockwork.

Why was I here?  What was going on?

I’d beat them.  Slipped away.

The old man Other was still looming, cutting off my escape.

The other escape routes included the fence, which was awkward, especially now that they expected it, or making my way back into the building.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there, but with very few alternatives…

Slowly, I climbed up onto the trunk of the car next to me.  The kids maneuvered themselves to stay an even distance away from me.

“Again, Ainsley,” Sunglasses said, speaking to the girl that Mary had sliced.

Ainsley drew a striped candle from her purse with one hand, and it lit itself.  She already had needles in her other hand.

I couldn’t imagine many situations where one of my enemies using needles was a good thing.

I pointed.

Evan darted straight for Ainsley and the candle.

He stopped a foot in front of Ainsley, and I felt as though I’d been hit by a car.  I tumbled, landing with my back to the fence.

Or, more to the point, I felt like I were a bird that had just flown into a solid surface.

“That never gets old,” Craig said, still holding his sticky notes.

“Shh,” Sunglasses told him.

Ansley slid a needle into the candle, right at the base.

“Zero hour,” she murmured, “Let us begin.”

This pain is an illusion, only a matter of perception, I told myself.

I tried to struggle to my feet, and found the strength wasn’t there.

They’d turned things around on us, and they had me in the worst position possible.

I just wish I knew how.

“Hour one,” Ainsley said, sliding a needle in at the first stripe.  “I bind your legs, Blake Thorburn.  I bind the pigeontoed that first held you up.  I bind the legs you wear as a man, now, and the crooked weary hips that will be yours when you’re old.”

I could feel my legs getting heavier again.

“I reject your binding,” I spat the words, “Because I have sources telling me I won’t fucking make it to old age.  Your third point doesn’t stick.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sunglasses said.

Ainsley nodded, grave.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

She found another needle.  “Hour two.  I bind your legs with the folly of childhood, the trials of adulthood, and the frailty of age.”

My legs grew heavier, as if she’d laid something heavy across them.

I started to get my bearings, grabbing the side of the car for support, but my legs felt three times as heavy as the rest of me.

Evan fluttered, trying to put distance between himself and the kids.

Sunglasses kicked him.

Only the fact that I was leaning heavily on the cop car kept me from collapsing.

“Hour three,” Ainsley said,  “I bind you in place, the cradle with its bars.  The career with its trappings.  The cage of the body, the deathbed, the coffin.”

“I reject your binding,” I gasped, as I slumped down.  “I rejected it once, I reject it again.  I was never going to be able to hold a career, I can’t now, as a diabolist and a target for just about fucking everyone.  I’m probably not going to die an old man, either.  I reject it, I reject it, I reject it!”

“This isn’t about you,” Sunglasses said.  “It’s about saying things that other forces understand.  But by all means, please keep going.”

“Hour five…” she said.

“You skipped one,” I said, as she worked a needle into the soft wax.  She didn’t flinch as hot wax dripped past her fingertips, catching on the needles.

She shook her head.  She was almost a quarter up the way of the candle, skipping several stripes.  “…I bind you to remain in place until such a time as you’re released by my word or the breaking of this small totem.  I root you where you now kneel.”

I needed Evan to break the spell as he had before.

“Then I want to fly,” I said.  “Evan, I name you.  We’re kin in our desire for freedom, our desire to keep moving.  You and me are bound, what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.  Lend me your power, give me your wings.”

Evan started to move, but a tap of someone’s boot sent him sprawling, and left me on my hands and knees on the ground, grunting at the pain in between gasps for air.

“You’re just guessing, aren’t you?” Sunglasses asked.

“Doing my damndest,” I panted.

“Might have worked if you didn’t-”

Evan, having faked how hurt he was, took off, flying under the nearest car before he could be kicked again.

I caught him.

The effect didn’t break.

“Lay it on thicker, Ains.  Craig?  Go get your dad.  Watch the barrier at the doors, we don’t want the others coming through to rescue him.”

Sticky Note Kid glanced at us as a whole, then bolted for the doors to the police department.

“Hour eight,” Ainsley said.  Another needle in the candle.  She held it in such a way that the needles stuck out through the gaps between her fingers, wax running over the backs of her hands.  “I take the freedom you cherish, Blake Thorburn.  I take your wings, I take your claws, I take your ability to crawl, to slither, to leap and trawl.  I take this freedom from you as time takes all things.”

The pressure that had weighed me down before now pressed in from all directions.

“Rhymes,” I said, in an effort to fight past my frustration.  “Cute.”

“I try,” she said.

“Evan,” I said.

Sunglasses stepped closer.  I saw a golden disc in his hand.  Like a saucer, almost.

Ready to beat on my familiar?

“Get help,” I said.

I flung him, back and away from the others.

Sunglasses stepped forward, disc raised, but Evan was already gone, up and over the fence, then down, so he could take cover behind it, flying around the building.

Sunglasses relaxed.

“One,” I said, “Two, three, four, five…”

“Hour-” Ainsley started.

“…six, seven, eight…”

“Ainsley,” Sunglasses said.

“…nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen…”

It was childish, but I was going to disrupt her concentration any way I could.  The numbers were important, no doubt, I had no idea why or how, and I was going to throw as many numbers out there as I could.

When kids did it, they did it with random numbers.  Ty had shown me the truth, once upon a time, when I was measuring things for a display.  Count in order, and you could more effectively disrupt someone’s ability to recall numbers.  Their minds would get caught up in the flow of numbers, and they’d lose track.

“…eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…”

“Cover my ears,” she said.

Sunglasses covered her ears with his hands.

She ran her free hand up the candle, counting the needles.

“Hour thirteen…”

I stopped.  No point in continuing.

Sunglasses and the youngest girl turned their heads at the same moment.

“Trouble,” Sunglasses said.

“Someone stepped into the snare,” the youngest of the two girls said.  “They won’t make it much further.”

“Yeah.  Be careful, keep an eye out.”

She nodded.

“…I bind that which I have already bound…” Ainsley continued.

I grit my teeth.

What to do?

I didn’t know enough to free myself, and I didn’t know enough to bind them faster or better than they were binding me.

Attacks?  I had no weapons.

The practice?

No.

I could sense Laird drawing closer.  His kid was Craig, the sticky note kid?

“…bind you thrice over.”  Ainsley said, finishing.

My heart was pounding, my mouth dry.  I was cold, being crouched down against the freezing pavement and snow, moisture soaking through my jeans.

“Kind of overkill, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Not after what I saw in that bathroom,” she said.  She reached into her pocket, winced, then pulled out another needle.

“Kind of sheltered, aren’t you?  That wasn’t even remotely diabolic.”

“It was barbaric.  Using something like that on me?”

“People haven’t really held back in dealing with me,” I said.

“I’m holding back,” she said, glaring down at me.  “You know what Craig would have done?  He would have stuck you in an old man’s body.  Aged you by ninety years, until you were so old and demented you couldn’t speak.  My uncle?  He would have had Craig leave you like that.”

“Taken down by a sticky note?” I asked.

My supposed savior was stuck, trapped in one place, and Evan was stuck with them.

I could only stall.

“Craig’s good.  He started earlier than most of us, and…” she stops as Sunglasses elbows her.  “Hour twenty-one.”

Very near the top of the candle.

“Does it hurt?  The wax?”

“I bind-” she started.

The nearest car shuddered, then tilted.  The tires on one side had been punctured.

I heard rattling.  the fence was swaying.

“Get your silvered chains,” Sunglasses said.

“We used them to bind the exit.”

“Not all of them.  Tandie?”

The younger of the two girls pulled one of the gleaming chains from her bag.

“Some well-off families get their kids fancy cars,” I said.  “I guess your family gives you… what?  Protective chains?”

Sunglasses ignored me.

“Where do I put it?” Tandie asked.  “Around him?”

“No.  Ainsley, finish the binding, so he can’t be moved by others.  Tandie, protect us.”

“We won’t fit all in the circle.”

“Me and Ainsley, then.”

“And me?”

“Give me the chain and run.  Go inside!”

Tandie hesitated, then did just that, practically throwing the chain at him before bolting.

I heard a loud crash.  The car closest to the door moved.  It didn’t move fast, but it still moved, rolling between Tandie and the door.

“No, please, no,” Tandie said.  “No horror movie stuff please, no.”

Another crash followed.  The car next to the other one began rolling forward.

One by one, the cars began moving, brakes cut, somehow shifted into neutral.

“I bind you one final time,” Ainsley said.  “I bind-”

The one to my left shuddered, and the crash was painfully loud.  It began rolling.

Safe within the circle, Sunglasses and Ainsley stayed stock still as it approached.

She tried again.  “I bind-”

The car to my right shifted into motion with a bang.

The car door swung open.  Nobody inside.

As the car moved forward at perhaps five miles an hour, Sunglasses watched the door approach, threatening to bump into him and Ainsley.

When it was close enough, he kicked it, vicious.  It slammed shut.

Tandy shrieked.  She’d been climbing over the car hood to get to the door, but now she fell, landing on the snow-covered pavement, two hands wrapped around her ankle.

Her screams turned more frantic as she got a look under the car.  She began to crawl away on three limbs.

“Come, Tandy!” Sunglasses called out.

He wasn’t looking as a small figure crawled over the open car door.

It was the size of a chimp, roughly as hairy, but less consistently hairy, with a receding hairline and thick body hair.  Its feet and hands were clawed, and it had no tail.  The macabre overbite showed off an uneven row of fangs.

What was eerie was how it had decorated itself.  It wore a makeshift monocle that wasn’t round, but held in place by points of glass that punctured its eye socket.  Its genitalia was decorated, pushed through a series of washers and wound up by wires that bent it into some grotesque art piece.

It grinned as it saw me.  It then winked, catching hold of the handle above the door, weighed-down genitals swinging madly for a moment, then swung itself into the car.

Sunglasses was fixated on the other of the two little monsters, which was assaulting the youngest of the two girls.  That one was female, potbellied, just as hairy, but similarly decorated.  It carried a makeshift backpack and wore a collar and a self-inflicted two-way wedgie with a single length of rusty chain welded to a collar.

Eugh.

Sunglasses’ composure broke, and he bolted to the side of his cousin or sister.  “Bind him, Ainsley!” he shouted.

Ainsley looked down at me.

“I bind you, Blake Thorburn, as I mark the twenty-first hour.  I bind you for the eighth time, I fix you in place by the cardinal and intercardinal directions…”

The car behind her, the one with the male goblin within, started up, rear lights glowing.

“Move,” I said.

“I bind you-”

“Ainsley,” I said.  “I bind myself, until you’ve released me.  Get out of the fucking way!”

The car’s wheels spun before it got traction.  That bought Ainsley enough time to look at me, eyes wide, then to move.

The car came within an inch of her as a creature four feet tall somehow managed to work both gas and steering wheel.  It turned as it reversed at full speed.

It veered in a ‘u’, skidding on ice-slick pavement, tail end swinging four feet in front of me like some great sledgehammer before it violently collided with the other car that had been parked next to me.

Untouched by the crash, almost invigorated, if sheer excitement and activity were any suggestion, the male gremlin crawled up onto the roof of the police car.

The female was currently dancing circles around Sunglasses, who was kicking at it while hugging Tandy close with one arm.  He had the golden disc in one hand, and was periodically angling it at the gremlin, trying to catch it with a reflected beam of light.

Ainsley was backing away, putting her at the furthest point from Sunglasses.  All of the cars in the long, rectangular lot were now stopped at one side of the fence.  She wasn’t on that side, and it left her with very little cover.

“Screwloose,” I called out, remembering the thing’s name.  “Return to the one who summoned you.”

He hopped down, then approached me.  Swaggering.  Strutting, chest out, arms swinging to his side and behind him.

I saw tools appear in his hands at some point they swung out of view.  Makeshift tools, things that might serve triple-purpose as lockpicks, swiss-army tools and/or weapons.

There was only malice in his eyes.

Right.  What was it Maggie had said?  She dealt with mad dogs.  Best let off leash on very short spans of time.

Except she wasn’t here to stop it or call it back.

I glanced over, and I saw Ainsley’s abandoned silver chain.

I reached, and found it maybe three or four feet beyond where my hand could touch pavement.

My legs might as well have been welded in place.  I was paralyzed from the waist down, fixed in place by some sevenfold curse.

I glanced at Ainsley.  She still held the candle.

She looked down at the candle, then back at me.

She shook her head.

I deflated a little.

No use wasting my breath arguing.

I pulled off my jacket, then threw it out, so it might drape over the chain.

It might have worked, if the snow and slush didn’t hurt the traction

I flung it out again, hoping for a better snag on the chain.

A small explosion startled me out of my wits, cutting past my jacket.

The goblin carried a length of pipe with a strap that could go over one shoulder.  No, it was two lengths of pipe that were connected, Some kind of crude, makeshift shotgun?

He dismantled his makeshift weapon, shook a shell out, then reached behind him, digging for something.

I took note of the fact that he wasn’t digging in his satchel… and he wasn’t wearing pants.

He retrieved what must have been a gremlin-made shotgun shell, still striding forward.  Shell into the small pipe, large pipe slid over both.

I covered my face.

He slammed the large pipe against the small one.  It fired.

I screamed.

Shallow damage from a crude contraption, but it was still me getting shot.

“Fucker!” I shouted, lowering my hands.  I was openly bleeding from the gouges.  A twisted paperclip stuck out of my arm at one spot.  Glass in another.

I heard him cackling.

“Little fucker,” I said.  “I swear, if and when I get out of this-”

There was a clatter and a bang.

I looked in the direction of the others.

Douchegargler, the female goblin, was perched beneath the open hood of one car, hand holding the hood up.  Smoke was billowing from the engine block.

Sunglasses lunged for her.

The goblin ducked into the engine block, letting the hood slam on his hand.

Little fuckers.

I wasn’t about to complain, except they were being indiscriminate, I was included in the indiscriminate part of it, and Laird was almost-

The door opened.  It stopped short, banging against the side of the car that had stopped in front of the doorway.

Craig squeezed through the gap.  He took in the scene.  A parking lot thrown into disarray, his cousins in peril.  “What the hell?”

“Gremlins!” Ainsley shouted from the far end of the lot.

I used my jacket to try to catch the chain again.

I managed to get some traction.  Not pulling it toward me so much as bunching it up.

Holding both sleeves, I managed to fling the jacket out and get the collar around the chain.  I dragged it closer.

Screwloose was apparently out of shotgun shells.  He came at me with a blade.

Still kneeling and immobile, I whipped out the chain.

The chain struck him across the face.  Shocked more than hurt, he staggered.

I whipped it out again.  I caught him around the throat and forearm.

I hauled him close.  When he struggled, I bound him further with the chain.

“Drop the weapon!” I shouted.

He didn’t.

Pulling chain tight enough to cut off circulation, I bashed one tiny, gnarled hand against the pavement until he let go of the blade.

“I forbid you from biting or harming me,” I growled.

“Nuh, we’re lovey-dovey,” he growled the words with a distinct English accent. “Bugger me, diabolist, and bugger me well.  I’ve got sharp stuff stowed back there.  I’ll bite you all I want.”

I held him fast.  There was one gremlin, and it was perched on the hood of the car that had trapped Sunglasses’ hand.  Laird or Craig were doing something to the door, eroding it by aging it, but it was a metal door, and the process was slow.

Craig and Tandy had backed away from Sunglasses and the gremlin, a little too unnerved to get close.

“Ainsley,” I said.  “Release me, and I’ll help Sunglasses over there.”

“I can’t,” she said.  “I made promises.  To take this seriously.”

“This is serious.”

“-I can’t,” she said, so fast I doubted she’d even heard what I said.

“You can.  Sunglasses over there-”

“Owen.”

“Owen’s going to get hurt if that engine explodes.  I bound myself to save your life.  You-”

“You were bound,” she said, still responding too fast.  She was shaking her head, as if trying to deny the situation.  “You didn’t have to.”

“I saved your life!” I shouted.  “Are you willing to trade away his for some better fortune in the family!?”

“I-”

“Because if you are, then I’m fucking better than you!” I shouted.

“You’re never going to be better than me!” she said, a note of hysteria in her voice.  “I could let a hundred people die and I still wouldn’t be as bad as you are when you’re just existing!”

I growled with frustration.  Tried to ignore the goblin that was rhythmically thrusting its pelvis skyward in its struggles to escape.

I couldn’t convince her.

“Owen!” I shouted.  “Sunglasses guy!  You talk sense into her!”

“I’ll be okay!” he shouted.

“Gargler!” Screwloose cried out, as if mocking my tone, “Fucken Drive!”

The female gremlin looked at him, then grinned.

She kicked the windshield, cracking it, then threw herself through it.

“Fuck!”  Owen said.  He hauled on the hood, but it didn’t move even with the gremlin gone. “It’s snagged!”

“You morons!  You’re willing to die for this?”

“To stop you?” he asked.

The car started up.

“Yeah,” he finished.

Fucking kids drank Laird’s kool aid.

“I’ll let you go if you stop her,” I told Screwloose.

“Eat me!”

The door was still coming to pieces.

“I’ll let you go if you go after Laird Behaim.  I can sense the connection on the other side of the door.”

Screwloose looked up at me.

“Agree to hurt only him, tell me you’ll leave Toronto and leave people alone for a decade, and you’re as free as Maggie’s binding will leave you.”

“One-of,” he said.  “Totally free?”

“Free, but you leave humanity alone.”

I saw indecision on his face.

“Yeah!”

I might have been missing something, but my gut said this little bastard was just a short-term thinker.

Whatever.

I unraveled the chain.

One problem dealt with.

The car’s wheels shifted, the front swerving slightly as it fought for traction.  I saw Owen’s eyes go wide.

He tried to shift position, getting his legs up, crawling onto the hood, so he wouldn’t be in front of the car.

He didn’t succeed.  Not really.

One shin was caught between the bumper of the car and the side of another.

He screamed.

“Evan,” I said, bowing my head.  “Evan, I call you by name.  I call you by the ties that bind us…”

I felt the connection appear.

“Evan, we’re connected.  Nothing can keep us apart.  Let’s use that.”

I felt something click.

Thirty seconds later, Evan descended from the sky.

“Finally,” I said.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Got shot,” I said.  “Nothing too bad, don’t think.  What held you up?”

“Trap.  Got Maggie.  I tried to help her out, but I’m not as good at helping her as you.”

I nodded.

“Felt you call,” he continued, “I decided to come.  I tried to find help,” he said.  “She’s all I could find.”

“Well,” I replied.  “I think that’s our help, then.”

We looked at the scene.

‘Gargler had managed to reverse back into the fence, and was in the midst of switching gears and preparing for another forward rush.

Ainsley had another candle out, no doubt working on one of the goblins.

The other two had disappeared inside as Screwloose had appeared.  Under the protection of Uncle Laird.

Screwloose was lurking under a vehicle.  I had no idea what he was doing.

Utter chaos.

“I can’t help you,” Evan said.  “I could before but I can’t now.”

“I know,” I said.  “You couldn’t find the others?”

“There was Maggie, and Fell’s busy in front of the police station.”

Busy?  With what?

I didn’t want to know.  Saying he was ‘busy’ was enough.

“Rose is inside, and I think her monsters are too.  She can’t get out.”

What the fuck was going on?

Did I miss something?

“Evan,” I said, my eyes on the ground.  “We need backup.”

“Backup?”

“Either the imp or the sword.  Fell has both?”

“They’re in the car, and he’s close to the car.”

I nodded.

“You want the imp, then?” Evan asked, with a note of hope.

“The imp… it’s dangerous.  It’s a bad precedent.”

“You want the Hyena,” he said, with a note of disappointment.

Disappointment in me?

“Yeah, Evan.”

“Do we really have to?”

“People might die if we don’t.”

“People might die if we do.”

“No,” I said.  “No, I don’t think so.  Not if we’re careful.”

“You can’t be careful with something like that.”

“We can try,” I said.  “Listen.  Find the sword.  Tell it… fuck me, I’m guessing again.  But it bound itself as much as I bound it.  It surrendered to my will, and you’re an extension of my will.  Tell it that it’s free for ten minutes, provided it accepts the conditions and it agrees to be thoroughly and equally bound after those ten minutes are up, no matter what happens to me or to it.   Tell it that it can’t hurt anyone or anything without our express permission.  Tell it that it has to do everything I- no, everything you say.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, Evan.  Does that make you feel any better?”

“Not much.”

I nodded.

“What else?”

“Tell it that if it accepts, then it gets a chance at sanctioned bloodshed-”

“Sanctioned?”

“It gets a chance to draw blood that it wouldn’t get otherwise.  It gets a chance to be scary, to be something other than a sword.  Maybe that’s enough.  Come back to me if it isn’t.”

“Okay,” Evan said.  I detected a slight tremor in his voice.

“Will you remember all that?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Will you forgive me, Evan?”

“Yes,” he said, decisively.  “Because your heart’s in the right place, even if this is stupid.”

Then Evan took off.

The car’s wheels were spinning, but it wasn’t moving.  More of an effort than simple wheels on slick pavement.

Ainsley had four needles in her second candle, but the wax was melting in streams and rivulets that were running down to her elbow, inside and outside her sleeve.  It was apparently hot and intense enough that she was flinching, even as she fought to recite her words and stick more needles into it.

It had already melted enough that there was no twenty-first line to stick her needle into.

The door to the station fell into roughly five pieces, little more than rust filigree at this point.

Laird, followed by the two younger kids.  My sense of the connection had been accurate.

He glanced over the situation.

He drew and fired his gun into the door of the police car with spinning wheels.

The acceleration stopped.

Laird helped Owen -Sunglasses- open the hood, and he dragged the boy back, until his back was to the wall of the station.

I heard murmured words, thought I maybe saw a nod from Owen.

Laird stood straight.  His eyes fell briefly on me, then he approached the car, reaching in through the shattered windshield to turn the wheel.  He nodded at Ainslee.

She broke the binding, and the car rolled forward.  The wheels were still spinning, so it was a little faster than five miles an hour.

It bumped into the pile-up of cars on the one side of the parking lot.

“There’s a gremlin under the car!” Ainsley called out.

Laird looked.

I saw the gremlin scamper away.

Afraid of the stranger, maybe somehow recognizing that Laird wasn’t a novice practitioner.

Laird strode forward, approaching me.

Something tripped, and a device launched out from under the car.  Like a hockey puck, it skidded out beneath Laird’s outstretched foot.

Laird stopped, foot suspended in mid-step.

He moved it out of the way, bent down, and carefully picked up the object.

It looked like some sort of small bear trap.

“Maggie, I presume,” Laird said.

I nodded.

“Your other friends are occupied or caught in traps by Duncan and his sons, Rose is bound indoors, and I’ve broken most of the available and useful reflective surfaces in the spirit world.  Things are going to find an excuse to break in the real world in the coming days and weeks, but we can cross that bridge when it comes.”

“Sounds like bad karma,” I said.  “Giving the universe a lot of menial work to do to keep everything coordinated.”

“Well,” Laird said, “I’m hoping to make it up to the universe.”

“Borrowing against the future for the sake of the present?” I asked.

“I would say it’s just the opposite,” Laird said.  His eye roved, searching for the gremlin.

“I seem to have a gap in my memory,” I said.

Laird smiled.  “Your, uh, Rose?  She does too, it seems.”

“What did you do?”

“I’m particularly fond of the saying, what is it?  ‘Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it?  It’s very useful when we can use the same tricks a second time around without you being any the wiser.”

“I’m asking what you did.”

“You can ask.  I’m not saying anything more on the subject.”

“You’re far from being my favorite person in the world, you know that?”

“I do.  I’ll live, basking in the irony that I’m really doing you a service.”

“A service.”

“Most of the others want to see you dead.  I want to see you live, ideally as a non-threat, for at least a little while longer.”

“As a withered, helpless old man?”

“Better than being dead, considering where you’re going.”

He stopped in front of me.

He was imposing, especially when I was hunkered down on the ground, shivering and bent, while he was standing tall above me, with his heavy jacket, barrel chest, and square jaw, glaring.

Not exactly my mental image of a practitioner.

“Conquest is coming,” Laird said.  “He’s smart enough to stay out of the thick of things until the opposing king is in check.”

“How nice for him,” I said.

“I may be your biggest ally here,” Laird said.  “Conquest wants you dead, I want you bound.  The sooner you offer your surrender, the better off we all are.”

“You’re lying,” I said.

“Some consider that kind of accusation a grave insult,” he said.

“Good,” I said.  “Add ‘fuck you sideways‘ to the insults you’re due.  You’re not my biggest ally.  He is.”

Laird turned.

The Hyena prowled forward.  Evan was perched on one tattered ear, wings spread.

“Ah, we expected that one,” Laird said.  “Craig, take Owen and Tandy inside!”

“You expected it?” I asked.

“Yes, and you’ve made a bit of a mistake,” he said.

I looked.

The Hyena stopped short of the fence.

“Go, whelp!” Evan ordered.  “Obey me, mutt!”

The Hyena snarled in frustration, but stopped short of the fence.

An enclosure around the parking lot.

A ring of metal, to keep a proper goblin at bay.

“I don’t know whether to respect your integrity for leaving the imp be, or to pity your lack of foresight.”

“Take it from me and Evan,” I said.  “That thing’s no small potatoes, fence or not.  Evan!”

Laird seemed to read something in my posture and tone, because he didn’t give me a chance to finish.  He crossed the distance between us, and he kicked me, heel to face.

I landed on my back, stomach arched skyward, knees still fused to the ground by Ainsley’s binding.

“Hurghf and burgfh!” I managed, one finger extended.

“What?” Laird asked.

“Huff and puff!” Evan shouted.  “Do it, ugly!  Huff and puff, there!”

The Hyena blew.

“Ainsley!” Laird shouted.

Ainsley shielded the needle-punctured candle with her body.  Successfully blocking the Hyena’s breath from the lit wick.

She, however, wasn’t prepared for the other effect of the Hyena’s breath.

I could smell it from halfway down the parking lot.

She staggered, doubled over, and vomited.

In the doing, she wasn’t able to maintain her focus and keep the candle close enough to stay out of the way, but far enough that she didn’t stab or burn herself.

Somewhere along the line, the candle went out.

I toppled, landing on my back.

“Don’t move,” Laird said.

I heard the cock of a gun.

Ainsley approached, staggering.  Her eyes were watering, and she had a hand pressed to nose and mouth.

“I’m sorry, uncle,” she said.

“It’s okay.  Keep an eye out for the gremlin.”

“I see it,” she said.

Their eyes -and mine- traveled to the fence.

The goblin was there, arms spread, gripping the chain-link, legs bent as clawed toes found purchase on the fencing.

“Shoot it,” she said.

“I’m not taking my gun off the diabolist.  Bind it.”

“Okay,” Ainsley said.

She drew out a candle.

The goblin extinguished it with a stream of foul smelling urine.  Much as one might hold one thumb over the end of a tap or garden hose to concentrate the stream, the workings of wire and more made for a surprising long-distance spray.

Laird shifted position, turning sideways, raising his coat with his free hand to block the stream.  “I hate goblins.”

“If they keep this up, I may start to like them,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,’ Laird said.  “Conquest will be here in a moment…”

The gremlin let go of the fence.  It raised one hand.  I saw what it held.

“…and this will all be settled.”

A sticky note with a rune on it.

The goblin managed to activate it.

This time there was an arc of electricity.

Ainsley shrieked and Laird wobbled before dropping like a rock.  The gremlin dropped from the fence like a stone.

Ainsle went for the gun.  I beat her to it.  I pointed it at her.

“All things considered, I think I played pretty fair,” I said.

She set her jaw, lips tight.  She still had a fleck of vomit at the corner of her mouth.

“You’re going to let Rose out of the building now,” I said.  “Or I may do something to your Uncle Laird that you’ll regret.”

She didn’t move.

“You don’t care what happens to them?” I asked.  “That kind of makes sense to me.  I’m not very fond of your family either.”

“Ha ha,” she said, without humor.

Did that count as a lie?

If not, I’d have to remember that one.  Some situations mandated sarcasm.

I checked Laird’s pulse.  It was there.

“You won’t hurt him?” she asked.

“If I was going to hurt one of you, I would have let that car hit you.

He was even semiconscious, it seemed.

Good enough.

I did what I could to drag Laird back while keeping the gun available.

Things picked up a moment later when the door opened and the Tallowman came striding out with Bloody Mary a step behind.

Ainsley backed away from Bloody Mary, giving her as wide a berth as was possible without climbing over the cars that were piled up in the parking lot.

“The Tallowman has your bag,” Rose said, from one car windshield.

The wax-crusted man handed me my backpack.

“We save Maggie from the trap first, we rescue the others from Duncan, and then we scram,” I said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Rose said.  “Tallowman, go around to the front of the building.  You recognize our friend?”

“Yes mistress,” the Tallowman said, his voice meek.

“Go help him.”

“Yes, mistress,” the Tallowman said.

A little creepy.

“That went screwy fast,” Rose said.  “I blacked out for a good half hour.  Amnesia.”

“Some trick,” I said.  “Evan and I did too.  They used it to split us up, separated us, we still came out ahead.”

“Be careful about lying.  We’re not sure how this went while we were out.”

“I’m pretty certain,” I said.  Maggie was in sight, looking very impatient inside a rectangular magic circle that was bound to the pavement by golden chains.

“You’re certain we came out ahead?”

“We got Laird,” I said, pointing to Laird’s limp body, dangling from the Hyena’s mouth.  There was a white smear drooping from the side of the Hyena’s nose to Laird’s shoulder.  “And I think I’ve figured out the trick.”

“Trick?  To?”

“The Behaim’s power.”

Histories (Arc 6)

He roused, scrunching up his face.  That simple movement made him hurt in five different ways.  His lip had been bitten, he’d hit his head, his nose had taken a beating and was probably bleeding, his forehead was maybe cut, and he’d smacked his chin.

His wrist throbbed, but it needed no excuse to do that.  He’d made too much use of his hand, and the bone wasn’t fully healed.  He gingerly flexed his fingers, and felt his arm throb within the cast.

“You’re awake,” she said.  She laid her pen down across the spine of her book.

It dawned on him what he’d done.  Weeks, months of frustration, fear, pain, and worry, it had all boiled forth, and he’d done just about the worst thing he could possibly do.

The collar of her dress was ripped, her hands and knees scuffed.  Leaves and dry grass stuck to the fabric.  Straight blonde hair had been combed into a semblance of order with her fingernails.  A book sat on her lap.  Nothing dangerous – the clasp suggested it was a diary.

She sat next to him, staring out at the lake.  She looked oddly at peace.  That fact, if he let himself believe it, bordered on the terrifying.

“This was a mistake,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.  She smiled a little, looking down at the water that lapped against the dirt and the reaching roots that were no longer anchored in earth.  “I’m making a lot of mistakes these days.”

He rubbed his face, which brought back all of the pain he’d noted earlier and even found new sorts.  The implications dawned on him.  “Oh, gods help me, this was a mistake.”

“We might have to wait a few more months to see how grave a mistake we made here,” she said.

He froze.  His blood ran cold.

“I-”  he struggled to recall.  He’d been an animal, and she’d been an animal in return.  What exactly had he done?”

“You pulled free before you finished,” she said.  “I was toying with you, Aimon.”

He exhaled a shuddering breath.  “Oh, this was such a mistake.”

“You sound like a skipping record,” she said.  “Where’s the acerbic wit from before?  Insulting my family?  My blood?”

“Are you trying to pick a fight?”

“Finally, he breaks pattern!  A cause for celebration!” she said.  “Should I have Arsepint fetch a bottle to mark the occasion?”

He looked, twisting around, feeling sore in several places, before he saw the blasted goblin.

It watched?

In that same thought, he realized how close they were to the footpath that ran along the edge of the lake, overlooking the small rocky beaches and the water.  “Keep your voice down.”

“Arsepint?  Go distract any passerbys until I order you to do otherwise.  Scare or lead them away without showing yourself.  Have fun.”

The goblin glared, then disappeared.

“Stop talking so loud,” he said, “Whisper instead.  If we get caught-”

“Do not order me,” she said, and she managed to sound like she was twice her age, practically royalty.  Then, in the next breath, she averted her eyes, stumbling over her words a bit, “That’s, I don’t think it’s how our relationship works.”

“Relationship?”

“Not romantic, I don’t think, but there’s a connection here,” Rose noted, touching the snaking trail of golden dust that stretched between them.  “Two people with a connection between them, enemy, ally, it’s a relationship.”

“I’m not in the mood for this insanity.  My head hurts.”

“I can imagine.  You were clearly in the mood for something else,” she said.  “My something-else hurts.”

“Don’t be disgusting.”

She stared out over the water, silent.

“Sorry,” he said.  “I’m ordering you around, when you asked me not to.”

“A Behaim, apologizing to the diabolist in training?” she asked, archly.

“I’ve… I feel like I’ve had people telling me what to do for years now,” he said.  “The one time I break form, I…”

“Do this?” she asked.  “Or are you less concerned about this and more concerned that it involved me?”

“If I’m being honest, yes, it has more to do with you.  Though I’m not proud of this, either.  Other lads might be, but…”

“But you’re a gentleman, is that it?  A gentleman that just so happens to kiss the most hated girl in Jacob’s Bell, unprovoked, and then goes on to ravish her,” she said, putting a breathy kind of emphasis on ‘ravish’.

“You’re needling me again.”

“Yes,” she said.  “You don’t know how good you have it, to have people telling you what to do.  But you have direction, you have the backing of your family-”

“I have the pressures of my family, the disappointment when I fail to live up to those pressures.”

“You’re whining again,” she said.  “You want to know why I needle you?  Because I like the Aimon that’s angry more than I like the Aimon who acts like a weakling.”

He seized her wrist, quick enough to startle her, hard enough to be painful.

She didn’t even flinch.  She stared him in the eye, the faintest smile on her face.

“Witch,” he said, letting her wrist go.

She rubbed it, then clasped her diary with both hands, holding the closed, leather-bound book against her knees.  She still had the pen in hand, and poked at her knee, thinking.

“If my company is so unpleasant,” she said, “you could leave.”

“How do I explain this?” he asked, indicating his face.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I can work it out, but I need time to think,” he said.

“What’s the trouble?” she asked.  “Are you trying to find a way to explain that you assaulted a young lady?  Or to admit that you were assaulted by a young lady?”

He shot her an ugly look.

“You can gloss over the, how shall I put it, the aftermath?  You’re free to tell them it was me.  Nobody will fault you for coming after me.”

“I’m more concerned that they’ll fault you,” he said.  “Say what you will about me, I don’t want my family organizing a lynch mob or going to war against you and your family.”

“That’s almost gentlemanly, Aimon Behaim.  And I’m flattered that you’d think I’d put up any kind of fight.”

“I saw your goblin.”

“One goblin, yes.  Are the Behaims so weak that one or two goblins would give them any difficulty?”

“Except it’s not just you, is it?  There’s your father?”

“Who doesn’t practice,” she cut in.

“And weren’t you just taunting me over the fact that your mother was home?”

Rose Thorburn reacted as if she’d forgotten that detail.

“My family will think you contrived this.  Your mother…”

“Is a hard person to understand,” Rose finished the thought.  “A scary person, scarier because you can’t anticipate what she might do.”

He nodded.

“This wasn’t a scheme, was it?” he asked.  “A trick, to influence my emotions, to capitalize on my failings as a man?”

“You didn’t fail, Aimon Behaim” she said.  “Your malehood isn’t in question here.  Not that I particularly enjoyed it, I’m almost relieved that it wasn’t so grand as-”

“Don’t,” he said, pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.  “Please, don’t be lewd.”

“-But the release?  I needed that.  So did you, I think.”

“Don’t talk about it.  It’s not ladylike.”

She made a small amused noise in response.

“I’m trying to decide if it’s better or easier to loathe you or respect you, and you’re making that decision difficult every time you open your mouth.”

She sighed audibly.  “There was no trick.  No imp of the sixth choir to hound you and tempt you to me, nor any imp to give me the courage.”

“I’m oddly disappointed.  To think I did that of my own volition…  I’d hoped the Imp-”

“Don’t.  The imp would be worse.”

“I don’t want to know,” he said.  “This… this mess of a thing, it gets worse the longer I think on it and try to come up with an explanation that doesn’t complicate matters.”

“The alternative,” she said, “Is that you don’t give any answer at all.  Keep mum, refuse to open your mouth on the subject.  I can do the same.”

“A pact of secrecy?”

“It’ll have to be.”

“I think you underestimate the pressure that three sisters, two aunts and a mother can exert,” Aimon said.

She stood, dusting herself off.  He looked away as she fixed up her skirt and undergarments.

She spoke to the back of his head.  “You keep complaining about having people make demands of you, the people leaning on you, the family, and what that family might do to you.”

“So?” he asked.

“I experience all the judgement and expectations too,” she said.  “My father, he’s a harsh disciplinarian, but he’s fair.  He’ll hit me when I get back.”

He turned to look at her.  She stood there, in a short sleeved dress with kerchief collar, diary and pen each held tight in both hands.

“Kind of strange to think of that,” he said.  “The Thorburn diabolist and her husband lecturing their daughter, the stern gaze, the belt…”

“Oh, no need to feel strange,” Rose said.  “My mother doesn’t lecture me.  All she’ll ever do is give me a look.  She’ll leave me to wonder what she thinks.  To guess at something when she’s never let me know what she really thought, not once in my life. ”

She shifted the diary to one hand to put the pen inside the hollow of the spine.  Her hand trembled a bit.

“You’re shaking.”

“Am I?  I am.  That’s not like me.  I suppose I’m afraid of what her response will finally be.”

“Her response?  I thought you weren’t going to tell her about this.”

“I wasn’t and I don’t plan to.  I said it before, I’ve made a lot of mistakes lately.  I made an oath earlier tonight, said things in anger and haste, and it may well affect the family.”

“She’ll be upset?”

“I’m,” Rose stopped short.  When she exhaled it came out as a huff of a laugh.  She blinked a little, as if to hide the tears.  “I’m frankly terrified.  My carelessness ruined three or four lives, and she didn’t bat an eye.  But this?  I don’t think upset is the word.”

“I don’t envy you,” he said.

“Who would ever envy me?” Rose asked.

“Would you stop arguing every other question or statement I make?  You make being kind a challenge.”

Rose seemed caught off guard by that.  She fidgeted, avoiding eye contact.  “I didn’t ask you to be kind.”

“I’m giving what I can, all the same.  It feels feeble, giving only a listening ear when you might face the unrestrained anger of a diabolist, but I’m giving- what?”

She was laughing, scoffing, even.

“What?” he asked, again.

“That isn’t what worries me.  My mother’s unrestrained anger.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m worried she won’t care.”

■

It was four days before he crossed paths with Rose Thorburn again.

The main street of Jacob’s Bell took no more than five minutes to cross.  Many of the shops were closed; the ice cream parlor was among them.  A hand-drawn sign in the window urged would-be ice cream buyers to support the troops instead.

Aimon worked in a squat building that had been crammed between the now-empty ice cream parlor and a small bank.  Young women passed by with regularity, to and from the factories and small shops on the main street.

He quietly considered it a sort of hell.

His wrist was mangled, set firmly in place with a plaster cast.  Most people still in town were women and the elderly, and a few odds and ends like Rose Thorburn’s father, who were looking after local businesses and factories.  Every curious look he got felt like an admonition, a criticism.  It didn’t help that he still had marks on his face and hand from the altercation with Rose.

He’d been bad at numbers as a child, but grueling lessons from the family had remedied that.  A chronomancer couldn’t be bad at numbers, of all things.

Still, he’d never loved numbers, and now he lived them.  He was forced to write with his left hand, to scrawl down and total the amounts, to note times and dates when he handed letters and parcels over, or when he accepted them.

He wanted to spend power to make the days pass faster, but the family kept a close eye on that sort of thing.

He almost didn’t notice when Rose Thorburn appeared at the entrance to the small, narrow office.

She stepped outside, looked both ways, then returned.

“You aren’t using the Sight?”

“I don’t trust the Sight, not completely,” she said.  She handed over an envelope.

“Montreal… the Academy?”

“Yes.  I agreed to send a letter when I returned home.  I had to go back for court, the Lord of Montreal had words with me… a mess, all-in-all.”

“I admit, I was sweating a fair bit, worrying that you’d let your mother know what we’d done.  Jumping at bumps in the night.”

“I said I’d keep silent,” she said, sounding offended.  “Few things annoy me more than being called a liar.”

“Already, you’re on the defensive.”

She frowned.

“Was it as bad as you’d feared?”

“Nearly,” she said.  She turned around, leaning against the counter with her back to him.

“I’m sorry.”

She glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows raised.

“I am.”

Her expression softened a bit.  “Thank you.”

“My sisters still hound me, asking how I got these cuts and scrapes.  My aunt keeps suggesting that the light beating was punishment for coming home, when others are still waiting for brothers and sons.  I think she’s trying to bait an answer from me.  My mother has been suspiciously quiet on the subject.”

“It sounds lively.”

He made a face.

“I’ve been thinking, ever since that night,” Rose said.  “One sprawling idea, unfolding.”

“A diabolist, deep in thought.  That’s cause for concern.”

“What’s going on elsewhere in the world, it feels like a premonition.  Old systems are fixed in place, and they’re starting to wear out.  Too many layers, too many patch jobs, too much stress placed on the wrong things.”

“How unexpectedly philosophical of you.”

“Our families are the same way,” she said.  “Bound to old systems, degrading, winding down like an unwound clock.”

“I wouldn’t argue with you there.”

“They’re like great, old works of machinery that are coming to pieces.  You said your family’s expectations weigh on you?”

He frowned.

“Are we not so close as we were that night?” she asked.  She turned to lean over the counter.  “Divulging our weaknesses?”

“It gnaws at me,” he admitted, his voice low.  “Even my own expectations for myself.  Especially my own expectations for myself.”

“What if I suggested a small kind of revolution?  A way to respond to those expectations?”

“Revolution?”

“You’re trapped in a box.  I can imagine you the clockwork soldier with a ruined arm.  Your father would have you marching in step, doing what?  The Behaim family hasn’t made any grandiose moves in some time.  The entire family pays in, as far as I can tell, but nobody claims the prize.”

“You want it?”

“No.  That’s not what I’m saying.  I’m telling you that, in my eyes, you live a disappointed existence.  A responsible one, but responsibility doesn’t nourish the soul, does it?”

“For some, it might.”

Rose seemed to consider that for a moment.

“Maybe you’re right.  But for us?  I don’t think it does.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that we could gamble.  Strive to change the system, to put something in place and capitalize on it.”

“How?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but whatever we end up doing has to be better than this, doesn’t it?”

“You’re a diabolist.  I’m not so sure you’re right.  You could fill libraries with stories of how things could be worse.”

“Weigh the potential gains against the potential losses,” she said.

“What do we stand to gain?”

“You’re the broken clockwork soldier, going through the motions.  Deviate from the path, and every living soul around you will work to get you back on track, so you’re following that set path of yours.  Eventually, should you follow that path, you might be the leader of the Behaim family.  If you were lucky, you might get ten or twenty years to lead the family as you wish.  Am I wrong?  Or has someone suggested a different path?”

“I’ve thought about the fact that I’m next in line, but it won’t be until my father dies… too far away to think about.”

“Think about it now.  Think about the moment you’re sixty or so years old and you take that chair, a leadership position in the council… you’re finally free, in a sense, but you’ve forgotten how to act.  What do you do?”

“You tell me.  What do I do?”

“You default to what you know.  You do what your father did and his grandfather did before him.  You inject a small personal touch, a bit of your personality and preferences.  Things change, but they change by inches over the course of generations.  The cycle perpetuates itself.  Those pressures you feel now?  You take that path, clockwork soldier, and you may never escape them, not until you’re dead.”

“I’m starting to realize why we habitually avoid the Thorburns.”

“Tell me I’m wrong.  That this doesn’t strike a chord and sound very much like the little voice of doubt in the back of your head.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong.”

She smiled.

“I am saying that I’d be a lot more eager to continue this conversation if you weren’t sounding an awful lot like a certain snake in a certain garden.”

“I’m offering you freedom.  I’m offering you power.  A chance to break that pattern.  I won’t say it’s free of consequence, but the costs aren’t as high as you’d think.”

“How?  And what do you get out of this?”

“The how is something I can explain soon.  Me?  I’m your inverse.  I have no boundaries.  I have rules I must obey, same as any practitioner, but I’m like a sheep without a pen, without a dog to bark at me and send me back to safety.  I’m wandering without guidance, and periodically I run into trouble.  I can weather my father’s anger.  I can deal with my mother.  But I can’t be alone any longer.”

“You want friendship?  Or more like the other night?”

“I want both, or either.  I want to make you an offer, where I shoulder the majority of the cost and the risk.”

He stared at the girl.  She wore a jacket over her dress, with a satchel to hold her diary and quite possibly supplies.  Blonde, very nearly pretty but not quite there, an intense expression on her face.

He had to remind himself of what she was.

“You’re a diabolist.  Bargaining with you is one step removed from bargaining with them.”

“Yes,” she said.  “But I think it’s worth it.”

“What is?  Where does this go?”

“Changing the status quo.  Breaking up the system.”

“How?” he asked, before he could regret voicing the question and giving any merit to this mad idea of hers.

“Meet me tonight,” she said.

She didn’t say where.  He didn’t need to ask.

■

It was cooler than the other night, and Rose Thorburn wore a sweater over her dress, a row of buttons left undone.  Her hair blew in the wind.  The water crashed against dirt and roots.  A short distance away, there was beach, and the crashes were even more dramatic.

“I want to possess you,” Rose Thorburn said.

It was a sentence with two interpretations, but the emphasis on possess made the meaning clear.

“What?“

“A light possession.  It wouldn’t be anything too dangerous, not a demon.  But I can use the material from my books… some of the best bindings you could hope to find.”

“Why?”

“Because it gives you the freedom you crave.  It would be another spirit in your body, allowing you to shrug off the burdens your family would put on you.  You could be stronger, faster to react.  You could heal faster,” she said.  She eyed his hand.

He grabbed the cast with his good hand.  “You sound utterly insane.”

“I’m not.  I’m very sane.  Look, if you’re possessed, there’s nothing stopping you from working alongside me.  A light possession, something that won’t make decisions for you, but if you get caught, then you blame the possession.  You return to ordinary life.”

“And you?”

“I know the risk I’m taking.  I was just in Montreal.  I went to a school that had an Inquisitor on the staff.  The risk I’m taking is bigger than anything you’d have to face.”

“Rose,” he said.  He had to stop to take a breath, composing himself, picking his words and tone carefully.  “I’m not even sure I like you.  Respect?  Maybe.  Maybe I even understand you, on a basic level.  But we’re too different.”

He could see how still she’d gotten.  She held the tome against her chest, hugging it hard.

“You’re dangerous,” he said.  “You’re… I’m not sure why you’d even reach out to me.  Why me?  Do you like me?”

“No.  Yes, but not… not in the important way,” Rose said.  “I’m desperate.”

“Desperate?  Rose-”

“Not… not like that.”

“Why?  Can’t you do what I’m going to do, and just grit your teeth through the bad parts of life?”

“Where to begin?” she asked.  “God!  I feel like I owe my family something.  I feel like I need direction, a goal, but it’s impossible to go for it alone.  I’m so scared that if I do something, try to make a change, then people are going to get hurt.  I can’t lean on family, and a diabolist doesn’t get the luxury of friends, not unless they’re the kind of monster who can take it in stride when the bad stuff trickles down and starts to fall on those friends.”

“I’m not the solution you want or need,” he protested.

“I need a voice in my ear.  Every great man has a great woman at his back, but the inverse is true.  Isn’t it?”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Sometimes all you need is someone to tell you you’re doing the right thing, or the wrong thing.  To bounce ideas off of.  That’s the way it is in the books.  The Watson, the Sam, the Friday, the Horatio.””You can’t base real life off of books.”

“I don’t have anything else to work with,” she said.

“I’m sorry, but no.  I can’t.”

She nodded.

“There’s no rush,” he said.

She didn’t nod in response to that.

“Talk to me,” she said.  “Change the subject, please.  I’m embarrassed.”

She couldn’t know it, but the only other time she’d looked as human as she did right then was when they’d been trading insults, getting riled up, a prelude to the event of four nights ago.

“When I talked about expectations, there were things I didn’t say.  When I was on the ground, in the trenches, I had certain responsibilities.  Because the Germans have practitioners, you know what I mean?”

Rose nodded.

“I want to say that there was a great fantastical secret mission, that we knew the Germans were getting involved in the occult, but it wasn’t like that.  He’s an ordinary man, and he has no idea, outside of a few books he has no idea how to use.  There are people under him that know, but they’re keeping their mouths shut.  They’re protecting him, but they’re keeping their mouths shut.”

“They could be afraid of what we could do in response.”

“Maybe.  But that blade cuts both ways.  If one side realizes their losing and decides to tap into resources like your family has, what happens?  The only solution is for the war to keep going.”

“It could wind down.  Forces unrelated to practitioners started it, those same forces could end it.”

“It’s so much worse than you think, Rose.  The things that happen over there, the state of things in the trenches, and having to guard my unit at all hours?  I changed, I got fit, I changed the way I think, how I sleep and eat, so I can be on guard, always watching for tricks.  For rats that are a little too smart, or phantoms that would whisper panic into men’s ears while they sleep?  For ghouls that… well, they pretend to be soldiers that die like anyone might, but when you let your guard down and search the body, they bite you and get a hungry kind of death into the wound?”

He raised his hand, showing off the cast.

Rose nodded.

“If it weren’t for that, the idea that I have to go back, to keep fighting on that second, secret battlefield?  I might think about your offer.  But I can’t.  Not really.  I can’t commit to anything, and I can’t be your ally in whatever it is you’re trying to do.”

“Okay,” she said.

She wiped at her face, but he couldn’t see enough to tell if she’d been wiping at a tear or moving her hair out of the way.

“We can stay in touch,” he said, “At least until I go back to active duty.  If I go back to active duty.”

“Don’t pity me,” she said, with a note of anger.  “Don’t condescend.”

“I’d like to think I wouldn’t.”

“Like or don’t like all you want, you would condescend, Aimon,” she said.

A bit more anger than before.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Change things,” she said.  “It would be easier if I had help.  A voice to say yes, or to say no.  But I’ll move forward.  Maybe I’ll lend a hand to the war effort.”

“A hand?  You?”

“I only have so much time before my hands are tied.  You’re dreading this eternal war, but I’m worrying about the clock running out, and a chronomancer could be so useful in that department.”

“The clock?”

“Diabolists bear a heavy burden.  My family passes that burden down from parent to child.  When my mother dies, I’ll adopt the burden.  A shadow will fall over me and it will linger there thereafter.  My mistakes will cost me more, bad luck will find me, my enemies will prosper more easily.  I have to do more with my life before that can happen.”

“Could that be why your mother is keeping her distance?” Aimon asked.  “Giving you that freedom?  Or protecting you from the shadow that lingers over her?”

Rose looked at him, momentarily bewildered.

“Maybe you’re not so alone as you imagine,” he said.  “I won’t give myself over to possession to cheat the rules, but if you need a dissenting voice… I can ignore the pestering of my sisters and aunt for a little while longer.”

■

Thirty-five years later…

The rain poured down, torrential.  The bad weather made Aimon’s hand and wrist hurt.

The ghoul’s bite had never healed completely.  Flesh had necrotized, turning black, and even now, bone was visible in places.  He could cut at the rot with a knife, and it would be a red hot agony, or he could let it linger, and he would feel his strength slipping.  It didn’t get worse, it didn’t get better, but the dilemma remained.

Aimon was aware of his father’s eyes on him.  There had been suspicion, but he had covered his tracks.  To admit that they knew would mean his family would have to admit that they’d spent valuable power to spy on him using their craft.

His father watched as he stepped forward, and he felt the resistance of the small hand that gripped his own.  He relented.

Laird fought to catch up, black rain boots splashing in the flooded grass.

Rose was already there.  Regal, water ran off her wide-brimmed cap.  Avoided by virtually every other council member in attendance.  She couldn’t have looked less motherly, holding the swaddled child.

More for the child’s benefit than for Rose, Aimon offered the shelter of his umbrella.

Aimon could feel the weight of his father’s disapproval, but he could ignore it.

He looked down at the babe, and almost as clear as day, he could recall the scene.

Rose, standing before a pile of pig carcasses, her child held overhead.  It had been pouring then too.

Bonfires had burned, and Aimon had worried that one would go out in the face of the torrential rain.  That one of the seven jars filled with a mixture of wax and hair might tilt over and roll away.

He’d been there, a bystander.

A friend.

He’d been there when the demon appeared.  Fat, decaying in some mockery of what had happened to Aimon’s hand, with a horse’s skull fixed over his head, it had carried a sickle.

And Rose-

Rose had never seemed more alive, facing the worst kind of end, the potential loss of her firstborn.

That moment had left a wound as bad as the ghoul’s bite.  Her expression, the intensity.  They’d loved each other, but never at the same time.  They’d been allies, confidantes, they’d slipped away to have secret meetings, to talk about what the council was doing, and how they might do it differently.

“The day is finally here,” Rose murmured.

Aimon nodded.

“You’re free,” she said.

Aimon looked down at the tombstone.

Malcom Behaim.

His father stood near it, a mere echo, watching in disapproval.  Was the horror in his father’s eyes real, a ghost’s realization of things that had occurred that it was now powerless to change?  Or was it an imagining, a reflection?

“I should be free, yes,” Aimon said.

“Are you?”  Rose asked.

Aimon didn’t answer.

“Free?” Laird piped up, his voice high.

“He’s in charge of the family now,” Rose said.

“Oh,” Laird replied.

“I spent a long time wondering what your father would do when he was in charge.”

It was hard to look at Rose.

Aimon could imagine the scene.  See the binding circles coming to life.  He’d had to look away, because looking directly at the demon had been too dangerous.

The demon had cut into the pile of pigs, compulsive, furious.

The sickle cut away the names.

The name had fallen from Aimon’s recollection, piece by piece.

Rose, meanwhile, had done what she could to close the circles.

Whatever else she said, he could imagine all of the different ways that things could have played out.  If he’d accepted the possession, if he’d been closer, if they’d happened to love each other at the same time, one of them brave enough to make a move…

Would he have ended up right next to her, sharing in her sheer excitement?

Charles squawked in Rose’s arms.

Aimon looked.  He could see his wife looking on, clearly uncomfortable at his proximity to the diabolist.

“It’s been some time since we talked about it,” he said.  When we married, we couldn’t meet so easily.  “Your goals, your dream.”

“It’s been some time since I gave it serious consideration.”

“You’ve abandoned it then?” he asked.

“No.  Most definitely not.  Have you?”

He couldn’t answer.

“I’ll ask you outright,” she said.  “Will you do to Laird what your father did to you?  Impose the same rules and restrictions?”

“Time has a way of changing one’s mind.”

“You can alter time, can’t you?  Change your mind.”

He smiled sadly.

“Is that a yes, then?” she asked.  “Tradition continues its ceaseless march through the generations?”

He flexed the fingers of his bad hand.

Pain every day, to remind him of the war.

On the other hand…  the demon.  The monstrosity.  Rose, her eyes wide.

She’d done it for a good reason.  She’d done it well.

She had embraced diabolism as a way to protect others.

“No,” he said.  “No, I think we can take a different road.”

He saw the dawning realization, the smile on her face.

“But,” he said, “I need certain concessions.”

“Concessions?”

“This can’t come back on my family.  I swore oaths.  To preserve the stores of power my family has amassed over generations.  I won’t make Laird swear those same oaths.  If he needs to bring about change, he’ll have the power to do so.”

Rose turned appraising eyes on Laird, still bearing his baby fat.  She didn’t answer right away.

“Go to your mom,” Aimon said.

Laird let go, then ran, getting away from tombstone and boring adults, arms flailing at his sides in his childish run.

“Will he be up to it?” Rose asked.

“If you want to bring about change, it has to start with the next generation.  If we succumb to fear…”

“…We’ll be just as bad as the ones who came before us,” she finished.

“Yes.  Another thing.  You’ll have to teach Laird.”

“Teach him?”

“Diabolism.  Enough to protect himself and the rest of the Behaim family.  We can’t move forward if I have to watch my back.  Laird either.”

She considered, then seemed to come to a decision.  “Yes.  I think we can arrange that.”

“Good,” he said.

“It won’t be pretty,” she said.

“No.  But did you ever think it would be?”

“When I was young and naive.”

Aimon nodded.  “What do you need?”

“Time,” she said.  She smiled a bit.  “Charles, any children that come after him… I can’t teach them.  My grandchildren… I need time, to see them grow up.”

“Costly.  To stave off death?  That’s something else altogether.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I’ll see what I can do.  I hate to suggest it, but I’m not sure I can offer much more.  I can’t promise protection against Laird the same way you’re promising protection against the diabolism.”

She nodded.  “That’s fine.”

He felt a bit of a chill.  “I can’t imagine it is.  I can do what I can to raise Laird and my other children well, but-”

“Don’t lie.  You’ll spoil him rotten.  I know you well enough, and you’ll be too generous rather than risk walkng in your father’s footsteps.  If conflict is due, then conflict will happen.”

“You’d leave your heirs defenseless?”

“No.  No, not at all.  Do you remember the Barber’s summoning?”

“I have nightmares about it.  Scars.  I don’t think I could forget if I tried.”

“Do you remember the boons he can grant?”

“Medical skill, in exchange for leaving a big enough hole for something else to occupy.  Extend one’s life…”

He gave Rose a look.

She shook her head.  “Considered and decided against it.  I trust you more than I trust the texts.”

“Hmm, there were two more.  Sharp blades, I can’t imagine a good use for that.  To carve out a reflection?  I wasn’t so clear on that one.”

“I am.  As protection for my heir goes, it’ll serve.”

Void 7.1

Laird woke, free of any chain, handcuffs or rope.

I watched as he opened his eyes, groaned, and then stared in momentary confusion at the slice of pizza and the glass in front of him.

When he raised himself from the floor, he was treated to a view of me, Maggie and Fell.  Evan was perched on the handle of the sword I held, while Rose was inside a full-length mirror, provided by Joel.

He took in the scene with care, very deliberate.  His attention fell on the chalk circle around him.  Three concentric circles, the first about five feet across, the third about nine feet across.  Each had been elaborated on with an intricate, almost lace-like border that ran along the perimeter, pointed outward.

“What’s this?” he finally asked, while pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes screwed shut.

“That’s pizza.  Pepperoni and onion.  The coke might have gotten a little flat since we poured it.  You took a few hours to wake up.  I was almost worried.”

“That’s not what I was asking,” he said.  “The circle.”

“It’s a problem if any of your friends, family, or allies find you,” I said.  “That circle means they shouldn’t be able to.”

“And if I ask for help or simply walk out?” he asked.

“Fell here has his revolver loaded with shot shells.  It’s like a small shotgun, painful, debilitating, but it probably won’t kill-.”

Laird interrupted, “-I don’t need an explanation.  I know what shot shells are.  You’re offering hospitality with one hand and threatening to shoot me with the other?”

It was Maggie who spoke up, “The tried-and-true rules have a firm grounding in history, officer Behaim.  The roads were dangerous at night, food was hard to come by.  You couldn’t turn away someone at your door, and you couldn’t refuse a guest amenities, or you were sentencing them to death.  You couldn’t abuse hospitality given for the same reason, because you’d be sentencing the next guy to death.  But, all that said, nobody’s going to begrudge a man, a peasant, or a king their right to keep a weapon on hand if they know their guest is a potential threat.”

“And here I thought you were a novice,” Laird said.

“I have a lot of free time,” Maggie said, “Not a lot to do, I’ve become a bit of a student of history, as it happens.  You learn relevant things all the time if you pay attention.”

“Blake’s recent bout of forgetfulness excepted, I’d say we’re all students of history,” Laird said.  “I’d hope we’re all learning.”

Maggie smiled.  “True.”

Rose, not smiling at all, said, “Yet you keep coming after us, and you get bitten worse each time.  What’s that they say about insanity and doing the same thing over and over again?”

“I prefer to view it as one long, ongoing conflict, than a series of failures.”

“How convenient,” Rose said.  “I’m not sure the universe agrees with you.”

“I’m not sure either,” Laird said.  He rubbed at his temples.  “Ah, my head.”

“Please excuse me if I’m not too sympathetic,” I said.

“Fully excused,” he said.  He looked up, squinting a little at the light that came in from the window.  “Well, this should be interesting.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “But let’s handle the mundane stuff before we get to the interesting.  You have food, drink, can I get you anything else?”

“Water,” he said.  “Sugary drinks give me a headache, and I could do with an Aspirin, to start off.  Whatever that goblin did hurt quite a bit, and it’s left my head pounding.”

“It smells too,” Evan commented.  “My mom used to get me to eat my asparagus by telling me it would make my pee stink.  You smell worse.”

“I do,” Laird said.  He wrinkled his nose.  “Am I being greedy by asking for a bucket of water, a washcloth, and maybe a change of clothes?”

“Bucket and washcloth are doable,” I said.  “They can double as a chamberpot.  We just had someone go shopping for us, but we didn’t get clothes.”

I almost said sorry, but I wasn’t so sure I was.

“A chamberpot, how medieval.  My coat, then?  It seems to have gotten the worst of it.”

“A plastic bag,” I said.

“Please.  And… where is my implement?”

I pointed.

Laird looked.  The watch sat on a nearby table, outside of the circle.

“We make no claim to your property, except to secure it.  I don’t know if you can see from that angle, but there’s another circle to keep the zeitgeist spirit firmly in place.”

Laird nodded.

“Maggie,” I said.  “Could you round up the stuff?  I’d rather not take my eyes off him, Fell’s got the gun, and Rose can’t do anything.”

“No worries,” she said.

“First aid stuff should be in the bag by the door.”

“Yup.”

“The tables have certainly turned,” Laird observed.  “Me, alone, my companion secured out of reach, virtually useless…”

He gestured toward his golden pocketwatch, and his gaze passed over to Rose.

Rose scowled just a little.

“…And there you stand, Blake, looming ominously, with me at your mercy.  A great deal of help at your disposal.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What happens next?  Shall we repeat history, with the roles reversed?”

“I give you what you need, then finish the circle,” I said.

“Finish?”

I nodded.

“It’s an odd circle.  Humans don’t lend themselves to being bound inside diagrams, for the most part.  The details… who drew this?”

“Why would I want to open my mouth?  To give you hints?”

“You don’t need to, but you can give me answers for the same reason you’re giving me food.  I can’t reciprocate your generosity, really, unless I give you answers.  It’s a win-win situation for you.  You get karma by playing by the rules, or you get answers.”

“Win-win-lose, you mean,” I said.  “I could give you vital information that leads to you breaking free and getting the better of me.”

“Does that mean there is vital information to be had?” he asked.  “Information you’re  insecure about?”

“I’m insecure about a lot of things,” I said.  “Sharing information about the circle isn’t even in the top ten.  I’ll explain the circle soon.  For now-”

“-For now, I’ll stay put if it means I don’t get shot.”

I nodded.

Maggie returned.  Rather than a bucket, she had a small trash can with a lid.  Probably better.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’ll bring it to you like this, but I’m not going to empty it when it’s full.  So gross.”

I nodded.  “Fill it with water?”

She nodded.  I waited while she filled it with soap and water from the sink.

Laird was looking around, one hand raised to block the light from the window as he took in the apartment.

“Your apartment?” Laird asked.

It was a vacant room in another building Joel managed, a space he rented out to students, but I didn’t need to tell Laird that.

I shrugged.

“Do you remember our first conversation?” Laird asked.

“Comparing the residents of Jacob’s Bell to countries?  Yeah.”

“I compared my family to America, if you remember.”

I nodded.

“What happens when an American dignitary is kidnapped?  When any offense is made against the American people or American soil?”

“Overreaction,” Maggie said, from the kitchen.  She arrived with the little bucket of soapy water and a wad of paper towels.  “An excess of force.”

“Overreaction.  Well put,” Laird said.  “You know that this won’t end well for you, don’t you?”

“I’m holding out hope,” I said.  I was careful not to block Fell’s line of sight as I stepped over the lines, carefully planting each foot so I wouldn’t scuff the marks in chalk.

Standing in the midst of the circle, I set down the little bucket of soapy water, reached back, took the paper towel, and set it down too.  Aspirin, a garbage bag and a glass of water followed.

Laird carefully arranged each item so he still had room to sit.  His attention seemed to linger on the circle.

“Pizza,” I said.

“Hm?” Laird asked.

Maggie handed me the pizza box.  Only a few slices remained.

I handed it to Laird.

“And some more water,” I said.

“One sec,” Maggie said.

“Pizza will keep for a little while, and it’s edible cold.  We don’t plan to leave you here so long that you’ll run out of water or face an overflowing chamber pot.”

“I see,” Laird mused, leaning back to get a better view of Maggie filling a vase with water – there apparently weren’t any pitchers in the cupboards.  “I’m staying here for a while, then?”

I nodded.

“Could I ask for a book or two, then?”

“No,” I said.  “Don’t have any, and I’m not sure you couldn’t use it to pull something.”

“A chair?  Something I could use to sleep?”

“You have the plastic bag with the coat for a pillow.  The apartment isn’t cold,” I said.  “I want you fed and healthy.  Nothing more.”

I handed over the water pitcher.

He grabbed it, but he didn’t take it from me.  It left me suspended in place, waiting for him to grab it.

He used the opportunity to stare up at me from his kneeling position, speaking in a low voice.  “When America is attacked, retribution tends to be brutal.  Not necessarily swift, but they hold grudges.  Pearl Harbor, Nine-Eleven…”

“I would argue that America’s living a lie,” I said.  “They spend a great deal of time deluding themselves about just how powerful they are, a lot of time deluding others, and a lot of time abusing the power that does exist.  Not that Canada’s a whole lot better.”

Laird took the water jug.

“Deluded, hm?” he asked, as he set the jug down.  He took a second organizing everything.

“Yeah,” I said.  “About how many friends they have, or the reality of the ongoing war, so to speak…”

I trailed off.

When Laird didn’t answer right away, I started to make my way back out of the diagram.  Maggie offered a hand to help keep me steady.

“I’m getting more eager to hear the answer to this particular riddle,” Laird said, tapping the floor next to the circle.  He’d placed the bucket behind him, and was busy removing his coat.

“Soon,” I said.

He folded the coat and stowed it in the garbage bag, squeezed the air out, pointing the opening at us, then knotted it firmly.

I pulled up a chair, sitting facing him.

He took his time getting organized, shifted position, sitting on the floor, and looked at me.

“The circle will break up incoming connections, and should serve as a barrier to anything going out.  You’ll have trouble practicing,” I said.  I indicated Rose.  “Rose’s work.”

“I’ve seen similar,” Laird said.  “But there’s a little too much detail and not quite enough substance, if I may say so myself.  The outer circle may be stronger, but you passed it easily enough.”

“That’s intentional,” I said.

“Do tell.”

“I’d rather show,” I said.

I reached over to the table, grabbed a book, and then leaned forward, placing it in between the first and second circles.

Black Lamb’s Blood.

“Hm,” Laird said.

I laid a piece of paper down on the book.  It was bound with a sticker, the only thing we’d had readily available, and marked with a script.

“Pauz,” I said.  “Should you accept the compact written on that paper, I release you.”

The bindings of cord came undone.  The book opened, pages flipping around, and Pauz unfolded in the process.  There was a brief fuzz of black around him, like insects, feathers or coarse clumps of hair scattered into the wind, a spray of blood.

He flexed, turning to stare at me, then looked down at the diagram that surrounded him.

I watched carefully, the words to call him back on the tip of my tongue, as he made his way around the circle.  Caught between the first and second of the three circles, Pauz did a full circuit before deciding that there wasn’t a weakness he could capitalize on.

“A watchdog,” Laird said.

“I asked myself what you cherish,” I said.  “Then I asked myself how I could use that against you.  You’re arrogant, you want to be in charge, to be Lord, to have power.  Pauz can take all that away.

“You made the circle weak on purpose.”

“Yes,” I said.  A fragile magic circle inside a stronger magic circle inside an even stronger magic circle.

“What are the terms you gave the imp?”

“They’re written in the envelope.  Rose’s research, again.  Careful wording.”

Laird glanced at Rose.  I did too- she was standing there, her arms folded.

When I spoke, it was in a low voice.  “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t spiteful.  Dealing with those kids back there?  That was fucked up on a number of levels, Laird.”

“They knew what they were doing.”

I stabbed my finger in his direction.  “You used them, you’ve brainwashed them with the Behaim-centric, anti-Thorburn thinking.  I had to fight to keep them alive, and as far as I can tell, that’s more than you did.  Your child, your nieces and nephews.  As far as I’m concerned, you’re toxic.  You’re dangerous.  If you’re miserable for the next couple of days, I’m not going to complain.”

“Days?” Laird asked.  I thought I detected a note of surprise and emotion, a hint that I’d broken through the facade.

“You’re not short.  You might have trouble sleeping, if you can’t stretch out all the way.  Breach the line of that circle, and Pauz can come in and join you.  He shouldn’t cause any physical damage that can’t be reversed, but if the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t want to test Pauz’s ability to bend those rules.”

I saw Laird look down at the imp.

“The rules don’t say I can’t talk to him,” Pauz said.

Lines creased Laird’s face as he turned to look at Pauz.  Concern?

“The rules say you have to stick to English,” I said.  “No demonic tongues or anything of the sort.”

“Yeah,” Pauz said.  He crawled forward on all fours, looking almost feral as his back arched, the individual vertebrae sticking up, a spine with an ‘s’ curve, apparently.  A baby with a mouth like a piranha, dead eyes, and dark gray flesh.  He made a scratching noise, circling around until he was out of Laird’s view.

“Do you want to volunteer information?” I asked Laird.  “This could go easier.  I could give you amenities, or

“I didn’t think you were capable of this, Thorburn,” Laird said.

“I’m not doing anything but keeping you here.”

“It’s torture.  Psychological torture.  You’re setting me up to fall into the imp’s clutches, but by doing it like this, you defer responsibility for it.”

I glanced at Rose.  It had been her idea.

“To be entirely honest, I wasn’t aware that was actually a thing,” I said.  “Deferring responsibility.”

“It is,” Laird told me.  He’d gone very still, and looked very grim, the lines in his face making his age and stress obvious.  “You leave a man standing on a chair with a noose around their neck.  The powers and spirits that would decide where responsibility for the death rested don’t necessarily have the wits or the long memory needed to figure it out.”

Fell sat in a chair, the butt-end of the gun resting in his hand.  He’d relaxed a bit since the imp was summoned.  “It’s true.  There’s a reason practitioners prefer curses and convoluted ends over efficient things like bullets.”

“Ah,” I said.  “Interesting.”

I shifted position, getting out of the chair, then crouching until I was at eye level with Laird.

When I spoke, my voice was low.  “Tell me, is that deferring of responsibility the reason you used Maggie and her goblins to go after my cousin?  Molly Walker?”

“Ask your friend there.” he asked, pointing at Maggie.  “She’s the one that sent the goblins after your cousin.”

“No need.  Rhetorical questions don’t need answers,” I said.  “I just wanted you to know you didn’t win any points in this discussion by reminding me of how you had Molly brutally murdered, using and manipulating Maggie.”

He stared at me, unflinching.

“Sit tight,” I said.

I rose to a standing position, using the seat of the chair and Maggie’s help.

“You’re playing with fire,” Laird said.  “If that imp breaks through-”

“Pauz.  I am Pauz,” the imp growled, enunciating it pa-ooz.

“If the less-than-charming Pauz influences me, it’s a step forward for his kind.  There’s no recovering what we lose to them.  Objectively, taking this risk is more evil than the murder of a thousand Molly Walkers,” Laird said.

“Or, you know,” Evan piped up, “You could not kill a thousand girls?”

“You sound scared, Laird,” Rose said.

Laird spread his arms.  Pauz lunged, moving three feet into the air, snapping his teeth in an effort to seize Laird’s fingertip as it approached the line.

But Laird had stopped just short of passing over the circle.

Pauz landed with a heavier thud than I might have expected.

“I admit I am,” Laird said.  “If that’s what you wanted out of me, then you’ve won.”

“That’s not the victory we’re looking for,” Rose said.

“What do you want?” Laird asked.

“To remove you from play,” I said.  “For the purposes of this contest.”

“And in general,” Rose chimed in, finishing my thought.  “To ruin you, Making it so people have to ask, ‘Is Laird compromised?’  ‘Is he in any shape to lead?’  By doing this, we get as close to the line as humanly possible.  Raise the question.”

“You remind me of her,” Laird said.  “Of the elder Rose, your predecessor.”

Rose didn’t reply.

I pointed.  As a group, we retreated from Laird and the imp.

“You remind me of someone else, Blake,” Laird called out.

I didn’t take the bait.

We were halfway to the pre-furnished bedroom on the far end of the apartment when I heard the noise.  It sounded like something between nails on a chalkboard, a bird’s screech and a death scream, if an something the size of an elephant were to make the sound.

I was slower than the others in stepping back to see.

The imp was on all fours, facing Laird, mouth open.  Laird was halfway to his feet.

“Mercy,” Fell muttered.  “That thing made that noise?”

Pauz screamed again.  Most of us covered our ears.

“Pauz,” I said, “Stop.”

He stopped.

I didn’t even have a chance to draw in the breath to say another word before Pauz launched into a full on speech.

“You won’t have a moment’s rest,” Pauz spat the words at Laird, “You’ll slip, step too far.  When you let me in, the first thing I’ll do is make you drink the contents of that chamberpot.  I’ll bleed you and you’ll leak, pissing yourself in fear.  I’ll watch you scramble to sop it up, to lap at it with your tongue and blot it with your rags, fighting to keep the circle from being compromised.”

“Thorburn,” Laird said.

Pauz continued, “Give me one hour inside that circle, and I can break you.  I can make you wallow in your own piss and shit like a pig in mud, and you’ll be happy to do it, because it pleases me, and because it means I won’t make you feast on your own filth.”

“Ew,” Evan commented.

“Shut the thing up, Thorburn,” Laird said.

I stayed silent.

The eerie gravelly voice went on, “Give me the chance, and I might go after your family, and I’ll do the same to them five times over.”

“Thorburn,” Laird said.  “You’ve won.  You got me.  You don’t need to drive the point home.”

Pauz continued, “If you don’t give me the chance, I’ll make a sport of it, I’ll reduce you to the sort of animal that would go after them and do depraved things.  I want to watch you come back to me like a dog to its master.”

“I’m not listening, la la la,” Evan said, wings to the sides of his head.

Laird looked up at me.  “I can’t take another hour of this, let alone days.  Anyone would make a mistake.  Let the imp through, or fall asleep, or jump at a sudden scream and accidentally trespass over the line-”

“Did Molly beg?” Rose cut in.

“Again,” Laird said, leaning his head back, staring up at the stippled ceiling, “That’s a question you should be asking Maggie.  Ask her about blood and darkness.”

“You’re a bit of a bastard,” Maggie said.

“Deferring the blame,” Rose added.

“She was there, I wasn’t,” Laird said.

“But wait,” Pauz said, and he sounded earnest enough to catch our attention.  “You don’t have a tail, do you?”

“If you want to beg for mercy, maybe you shouldn’t start by arguing trivialities about Molly’s death,” Rose said.  “I didn’t really know her, but Blake did.  He cared about her.”

Laird didn’t answer, and Pauz took the opportunity to continue.  He almost crooned, if that was even possible with his hoarse, rough-edged voice.  “Shall I drag your intestines out through your arsehole so you have something to wag for me, Laird Behaim?  That’s not permanent damage.  It’s within the bounds of the written rules.”

“Ew,” Evan said.

“Pauz,” I said, “Shut up.”

He shut his mouth and glared at me.

I chewed on my lip for a second.

“Thank you,” Laird said.

“You shut the fuck up too,” I said.  “If I hear another word out of your mouth, I’m liable to let the imp have his say.”

Laird shut his mouth, his lips in a firm line.

“You don’t really get a good look at someone until all the chips are on the table,” I mused.  “You don’t get a good look at yourself, either.  Right now, though, listening to you, I feel like I’m getting a sense of you.  How you’ve responded to this whole situation.  To the circle and Pauz.”

Laird, mute, could only listen.

“You started by trying to be clever.  To figure it out, to be gracious and win me over in little ways.  You picked at Maggie and Rose to try and find weak points, and tried to figure out what you could about the circle for much the same reason.  I didn’t miss that.  That’s Laird Behaim on the surface level.  Push a little deeper, and you get the reaction, the rationalizing.  Morality, deferring the blame.”

I studied him.  His eye flicked between me and Pauz, who was mute, tensed as if to leap, mouth pressed into a frown that extended from one corner of his jaw to the other.

“Push deeper, add a note of desperation, and we see what may well be the real Laird Behaim.  You’re pushed to find a solution, you’re almost begging, and in that moment, you go for the first ideas that come to mind.  Ideas that would work if the tables were turned and we were trying to convince you.  You tell us we’ve won, as if the nebulous idea of victory is something I even want.  You continue to rationalize.”

Laird spoke, knowing full well that I’d threatened to sic Pauz on him for speaking just one word.  “I’m not the enemy you think I am.”

“You’re sure as fuck not my friend,” I said.

“You don’t have it in me to give this imp a genuine shot at me,” Laird said.  “I’m thinking the rules of that contract allow him to scare me, but not actually get to me.”

I didn’t flinch as he met my eyes.  “Do you want to try me?  Test that suspicion?”

Laird paused, gauging me.

Then he shook his head.

“Didn’t think so,” I said.  “Pauz, if he says another word without my express permission, I permit you to talk to him again.  Until then, I want you to remain silent.”

Laird glared at me.

“Rose,” I said.  “Do me a favor?”

“Maybe?” she replied.

“I’d feel a hell of a lot better with a second line of defense.  The Tallowman, maybe?”

“The whole idea of using Pauz was to avoid having to dedicate too many resources to keeping him contained.”

“Please,” I said.

Rose hesitated, then relented.  She nodded.

■

“Classic Bond villain mistake,” Ty said.

“I know,” I said.

“Leaving the enemy in the deathtrap, ignoring him?  A henchman of questionable loyalties watching over things?”

“I know,” I repeated myself.  “But there are things to do.  Time is passing, and we can’t make dealing with Laird a full-time thing while all my enemies are scheming.  We wrote up that contract carefully.  The imp can’t actually do much.  The Tallowman is a bigger threat to Laird than Pauz.”

“Don’t tell me you did the monologue, explaining things.”

“I did, kind of.”

“Damn it, Blake,” Ty said.

“It makes sense in context, the karma gain for fair play-”

“You’re telling me the universe encourages being the Bond villain?”

I hesitated.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Ty asked.

“Kind of?  Convoluted traps are generally better than just shooting the bastards, apparently.”

Ahead of us, Fell was talking with Maggie.  The man paused.  “Don’t underestimate the value of a bullet.”

I sighed.  “I won’t and I don’t.”

Ty changed tacks, “Evan, back me up here.  The rule for an evil genius is that you’ve got to have, like, an ordinary five year old kid to keep around and tell you your plan is idiotic.”

“I’m not five,” Evan said.

“He’s not ordinary,” I cut in.

“And Blake’s not evil,” Evan added.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ty declared.  “Look, how many Bond movies have you seen, Ev?”

“None?”

“None!?  You’re in dire need of an education.  We should make that a thing, tonight.  Shore up our defenses, sit back with some videos on the laptop, and get the kid caught up with the greatest hits.”

I let the discussion between Ty and Evan continue in the background while we walked.  The Hyena’s sword sat in a poster tube, a hat sitting on the upper end, covering up the hilt where it stuck out of the tube.  It was awkward, slung over one shoulder, and banged against my right thigh like the Hyena was striving to make its irritation known.  Evan, for his part, was perched on the pom-pom on the hat.

People looked, curious, but I was well beyond the point of caring.

Rose was back with Alexis and Tiff, giving them quick lessons.  Ty had been restless, which wasn’t so unusual for him, and I’d been glad to have him along.  He carried our supplies, general arts and craft stuff we’d sent Joel and Goosh out to buy while we waited for Laird to wake up, while I carried the Hyena.  My carrying both would have been awkward.

The streets were crowded, people doing their shopping in the evenings, and I could smell rich food as people grabbed late lunches or early dinners.  I was hungry.

It was easy to forget to attend to real life.

First things first, though, we had stuff that needed doing.  The sphinx was due to attack, and this was the optimal time.  I didn’t want to be near Laird when it happened, lest disaster strike, and if I was being entirely honest with myself, I wasn’t upset to know that Alexis was a fair distance away.

“Fell, how are your power reserves doing?” I asked.

“I’ve used more power in the past three days than I do most years,” he said.  “Covering us up, covering our tracks and keeping the hideouts out of sight.  It’s not easy.”

“Where do you stand?”

“If and when you ask me to do this stuff tomorrow morning, I might have to say no,” Fell told me.

I nodded.

Rose had only the two summonings.  The Hyena was a dangerous tool to use, as the sword seemed to suggest.

We’d dealt a blow to Conquest.  The trick was seizing this opportunity and running away with it.  I was no long sure I wanted to bide our time, knowing how Conquest might let his people prey on Toronto, but I’d do it if I had to.

Take an advantage, hold on to it, and let Conquest be just a little bit less of a conqueror.

The next step was a simple one.  I needed to keep from slipping in anyone’s standing.

I pushed up my sleeve and touched the Stonehenge bracelet.

The Behaims, as far as the connections suggested, weren’t close.  The last Behaim owner of the bracelet, Duncan, was a good distance away.

That was a very good thing to know, considering that we were on our way to the police station.

“You’re sure about this?” Fell asked, as we approached the block.

“No,” I said.  “But I don’t know how much they know.  This could be the last place they think to look for us, or it could be the first.”

“Be wary,” he said.

I nodded.  “Evan?  You know who to look out for, I hope.”

“Yep!”  Evan took flight.  But he circled, fluttering for a moment in a haphazard attempt at staying in one place, difficult with the strong wind.  “Ty?”

“Yeah?”

“Batman would totally kick her ass.”

That said, Evan was gone.

“Brat,” Ty said.

“Let’s hurry,” Fell said.  “I can’t tell how, but they’re actively looking for us.”

“The Astrologer?” Maggie asked.

“More like a thousand tiny eyes than one big one,” Fell said, “If it were her, it would be one big one.”

I picked up the pace, quickly falling into step beside Maggie.  I heard Ty grumble, the contents of his bag jostling as he  hurried after, metal clinking against glass.

“I could do something with the sword,” Maggie said.

“I see it as Evan’s more than anyone’s,” I said.

“I’ve only got two gremlins, and it’s a rip-and-tear summoning with no control, and I’ve got some Faerie tricks I bargained for, but I’d really rather not use those.”

“We’ll manage,” I said.  “This is an in-and-out job.”

She frowned.

“We’ll see what Rose can dig out of the books after,” I said.

“We should be doing that now, put this off.”

I shook my head.

I heaved the double doors open.  Letting us into the police station.  Before they could shut, I stuck  one hand out, stopping it from closing.  “Ty, stay out here?  Keep an eye out?  Run if there’s trouble?”

“What happens to you if there’s trouble?”

“We’ll see the connection changing as you run.  I’m getting to know this place like the back of my hand, we can find another exit.”

He rolled his eyes.  “If you’re sure.”

Fell moved my hand.  “Less talking, more walking.  They’re on their way.”

I nodded.

No Behaims lying in wait.

No destruction.  No sign of an all-out practitioner skirmish.

It was eerie, disconcerting.

I approached the desk on the third floor.

“I want to talk to the police chief,” I said.

She arched an eyebrow.

“What?” I asked.

“Third visit in as many days,” she commented.

Third visit?

I frowned.  “I was here earlier?”

“Yes.  You and two officers.  One wasn’t local?”

Hm?  Me and the Behaims?

“What happened?” I asked.  “Got a little bruised up earlier, my memory isn’t all there.”

She narrowed her eyes.

Suspecting me of being an addict?

“It’s true,” Maggie cut in.

“It’s part of why we’re here,” Fell said.  “Helping him out.”

That seemed to be the qualifier the woman at the desk needed.  The joys of having buddies with good karma.  I gave people the wrong impression, led people to expect the worst.  The goblin queen in training gave off a better vibe, and the hitman in service to the secret lord of the city was the pleasant, convincing one.

“You came in, the two other officers stepped forward to offer their help.  You -rather loudly– called out to the police chief, calling him to you.”

The fucking memory erasure.

“That was the last I saw of you,” she added.

I frowned.  “There are back stairs, aren’t there?  Over that way?”

“Yes.”

I’d tried to duck out, to evade Duncan and Laird, and something had gone wrong.

“Thanks,” I said.

I turned on my heel.

Down the stairs.

Fell stopped me before I could round the bend and head for the basement.  “They’re coming.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know.”

“I’ll deal,” I told him.  “Two minutes, then you can drag me out.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it.  “Go.  I’ll be outside.”

I nodded.

Down to the basement, end of the hall, near the morgue.

A cop stood behind a chain-link mesh, leaning over a free paper with a sudoku puzzle.  The crossword was already filled out.

“I’m here to reclaim something of mine,” I said.

“Name and ID.”

“Blake Thorburn,” I said.  I fished for my wallet and driver’s license.

I noticed the response.  A dozen connections responding to the name.

Were there ears out there too, searching for any hint of my name?

Something to watch out for.

“Yep, I remember the captain calling, but you were supposed to show up this morning.”

“Something came up,” Maggie said.  “Can we go?”

“Can’t let you walk around swinging this thing around,” the police officer said.

“I’ll put it in my bag,” she said.  “Promise.”

The power that a small oath had.  Just a little more oomph.

The officer handed over the hatchet, and Maggie stuffed it into her bag.  We made our exit as fast as we could without running.  Maggie stuck her hand into the bag and handed me the hatchet as soon as we were out of sight.

We made our way outside.  Ty had taken off the backpack filled with supplies, and it rested at his feet.  Fell stood beside him, holding a scrap of paper.

When he saw me, Fell raised the paper to show me.

A flier, nondescript, something about an impromptu concert.

But an eye was drawn on it, stylized.

I could feel the eye looking.

“They probably made a few thousand of these, then tossed them out to be carried into the wind,” Fell said.

“They’re stepping up their game,” I said.

“Worse,” he said, “I think they’re sharing tricks.  This is the Astrologer and the Sisters, I’d bet.”

I clenched my teeth.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when Evan landed on my shoulder, fluttering in my ear in an attempt to compensate for the wind.

“Trouble,” he said, sounding as if he were panting for breath.  It was eerie, jarring with his tiny bird form.

“Trouble?” Maggie asked.

“People.  They’re not really there but they’re there.  On the other side.  Women.  They’re almost flying.”

“More tricks shared,” Fell said.

“They’re just around the corner.”

I glanced at Evan.

“Really,” Evan said.  “Waiting.  They’re doing this thing with their eyes closed, and fingers pressed together…”

“They’re looking,” Fell said.  “And I’m not sure I can stop them, if they’re doing this.  Too many eyes.”

I frowned.

“Then there’s only one option,” Maggie said.  “We gotta hit them.  We knew it was going to get ugly.  Let’s be the ones to decide how.”

“How?” I asked.

“Blood and darkness,” she said.

Void 7.2

My backpack, sitting at Ty’s feet, produced the gate for travel to the spirit world.  Tyler did the ritual, for the practice.

I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d gotten to the spirit world earlier when I’d entered the police station.  I really hated having a gap in my memories.

Entering the spirit world, as it happened, wasn’t much of an improvement or a help.

I’d suggested the detour as a way to stay off the radar without straining Fell’s reserves, but the slips of paper with the eyes on them were visible here too.  They fluttered in the strong wind like ungainly bats, and went out of their way to catch on light poles, windows and walls.  The eyes, drawn on the papers in the real world, were visible here, fully detailed, complete with eyelids, the pink at the corner, and the tiny veins on the surface.

I could see the connections tying the eyes to the people who’d drawn them.  Most were inactive, lazily looking over the city and the shadowy silhouettes of people or watching where they were drifting.  When the connections flared to life, though, the eyes were alert, and they had a way of finding us.

It was like being caught in a net.  Struggling meant getting caught faster.  Moving around, we put ourselves in a position to be seen by more eyes.  They were communicating, I suspected, using something as mundane as phones, and reporting what they saw so others could do the meditating thing, get their eyes to focus, and track us.

Problem was, even if struggling did get us more tangled up, staying put and doing nothing left us in the same predicament, caught in the metaphorical net.

Snow came down hard and wet, and the wind was so chaotic that there was no protecting ourselves against it.

We headed straight for the nearest group of Sisters, and I was all too aware that others were making their way toward us, some from maybe halfway across the city.  The net was closing.

Our only option was to cut the net.

I had nothing against the sisters, but they’d joined this fight, and even Laird’s kids had to accept that picking a fight might mean you’d get hurt.

We rounded the corner as a group, me in the center, Maggie in front, her athame in hand, bag slung over one shoulder, hanging just beneath her free hand.  Her black hair and the ends of her scarf whipped in the wind.

I wasn’t sure if it was uncharitable to say, but she looked most at home in this chaos.  Here, as we walked into the wind, she was moving faster than any of us, determined, and the human veneer was giving way to the Other with the force of the wind and the traces of the spirit world.  I apparently looked like a heroin addict when I was infused with too much in the way of spirits.  Maggie was a little more elemental, a little more natural.

Fell held himself together better than any of us.  His flesh and hair were largely untouched, but his eyes and clothes periodically showed traces of the smoke and dust that he so frequently used.

“Evan,” I said.  “Scout, that way, see if you can’t stop them from running.”

“On it!”

He took off, and tumbled head over talons as the wind caught him off guard.

Some wing flapping and experimental twists and turns later, he figured out how to fly into the headwind, using twists and turns in the alleys where the walls broke up the wind.

“Good kid,” I muttered.  The air whistling past us made my nearly inaudible.

The weather was steadily getting worse.  My clothes were soaked, and the cold was seeping into me.

“Is this something important?” I asked, raising my voice.  “The weather?”

“It’s important,” Fell said, raising his voice to be heard.

“What is it?”

“No idea!”

We were drawing closer when Evan returned.  I nearly dropped the object he deposited in my hand.

A keychain.  A set of keys, a car key, and a USB stick connected to a fish-shaped carabiner.

Evan moved his wings over his head, and my first impression was that he was trying to shield himself against the wind.

It was only after he’d taken off again that I realized he’d been trying to salute.

“Stealing is bad karma, right?”

“Yes.  Implements more than regular things,” Fell said.  “But even stealing a regular thing is bad.”

“What if I throw it away?  Still bad if I don’t have it?”

“You moved it from where it’s supposed to be.  A little bit of a problem.”

I nodded.  “I can deal with little problems.”

We caught up with the two Sisters at their car.  They were out of focus, clearly in the real world, but they did see us.  Both had identical tools.  Rings on their fingers, burning bright in the spirit world.

They could have left the car behind.  They didn’t.  Rather than give us access to it, they’d decided to hold their ground here.

Evan was perched on the hood of the car.  They didn’t seem keen on ignoring him, so both stood close together, taking a position that let them keep Evan, me, Fell, Ty and Maggie in sight.

I twirled the keys around my finger for a moment, waiting.

There were more Sisters coming.  By unspoken agreement, we held our ground.

“Can you hear me?” I finally asked.

One woman nodded.

“Can we chat?” I asked, “Or have you sworn something or been bound in a way that makes it impossible?”

“We could talk,” she said.  Her voice was muffled, and it wasn’t the wind.  This particular spot was in the middle of the city block.  The wind that did make it into the open space where the alleys converged swirled more than anything.

“Your boss, the Elder Sister… how’d she get you roped into this?”

“We volunteered,” the woman said.

The third Sister entered the… whatever this space was.  The cul-de-sac of an alleyway.  She stopped partway down, looking at the scene.

I waved at her, beckoning her over.

She approached, taking hesitant footsteps.  Her hand was clenched, her thumb held between the middle and ring fingers of her right hand, so it touched the glowing ring that marked her as a Sister of the Torch.  As an Elementalist.

She was older than the other two, and wore a small leather jacket over business casual clothing.  With us in the spirit world and her in the real world, she was harder to make out, a little more vivid, as if she were standing under blacklights and we weren’t.  She was either stronger than the others, or she was a little more Other.

She took us in.  Fell and Maggie were standing off to one side.  Ty stood next to me, holding the backpack in both hands.

“You guys volunteered to join the war effort, help the Elder Sister,” I said, to bring the new arrival up to speed and give them a nudge to maybe offer more details.  “I wanted to make sure you weren’t lied to.  This is dangerous, and you might reconsider if you had all the facts.”

“We know it’s dangerous,” the older woman said.  “It’s an insurance.”

“An insurance?” I asked.

“We invest our time, two hours a week, while we’re in University.  Learn the ropes, learn the basic spells, do the rituals until we can do them from memory, offer an animal in sacrifice to the spirits, and eventually forge our rings as we enter the inner Sisterhood.”

“And you give up the ability to lie,” I said.  “You face greater risk from Others and predatory practitioners.”

“Yes, and we serve Conquest in exchange for his permission to do business in Toronto.  We each make several Terracotta Soldiers -dolls- every year, we attend meetings in a rotation, paying fealty.  All of this is a kind of insurance, and an investment.”

“For what?”

“Knowing you have the ability to set someone on fire is an edge, when you work in a high-stress environment, it gives you confidence.  We can walk down a dark street in a bad part of the city, and you can be confident.”

“Until a goblin comes after you,” I said.  “Seems like a pretty bad tradeoff.  A lot going in, but the results aren’t all there.”

“Goblins burn just like people do,” she said.

She paused.  I suspected she’d noticed what I’d noticed a moment ago.  A carload of Sisters was drawing closer.

“Goblins can slit throats just like people do,” Maggie commented.

The Sister ignored her.  “The other benefit is the Sisterhood.  Contacts, the undeniable ties.  We join, and we can’t step away, not completely.”

“That’s a good thing?” I asked.

“I think it is absolutely a good thing,” she said.  “We’re a second family, we rise and fall as a group.”

“And when your Elder Sister is conscripted by the Lord of Toronto… wouldn’t it make more sense to preserve the group and let her fall, than to take the risk.”

“Not if it means angering the Lord of Toronto.”

“Not really buying it, Sister,” I said.  “A tiny bit of magic and a close-knit sorority, in exchange for having to march off to war?”

“Once every few generations?  Yes.  A tiny bit of magic?  Many people seem to think we’re weak because we aren’t practitioners first and foremost.  We’re businesswomen, lawyers, mothers and wives.”

She looked at Fell as she said ‘people’.  She turned her attention back to me.  “Conquest picked us for a reason.”

“He did,” I said.

The car with the other Sisters arrived.

The silence lingered, cut only by the sound of doors opening.  The Sisters at that one car got out, watching from a distance.

The older Sister looked at her charges.  Herself, the two who Evan had stolen the car keys from, and now four more.  “We’re not as weak as people think,”

“Maybe not,” I said, “But I don’t think that’s why he picked you.”

I saw her expression change a little.  Concern?  She didn’t look that comfortable in the cold wind.  Her cheeks were red.

“Why, then?” she asked.

“Because he’s worried you’ll see through him.  Practitioners in Toronto fall into categories.  There are the ones who are oblivious, too small or minor to have really clued into the way things really work-”

“And how do things really-”

I talked over her.  “-Like the Knights and you.  There are the ones who know but couldn’t do anything about it, like Fell here… the ones who know and don’t care, perfectly happy to maintain the status quo, and there are the ones like me.  Who know and can announce it to the world.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“The Lord of Toronto is weaker than he lets on,” I told the Sisters.  “He’s a pretender.  He uses theatrics to seem like he’s more than he is, to get people like you to bend the knee.  He’s a false Lord, a figurehead.”

Her eyes narrowed.

I saw some other Sisters exchange glances.

I spread my arms.  “Would I really challenge him if he was as powerful as he pretended to be?  The Sphinx knows, but she doesn’t care, because apparently having something as messed up as that guy is better than sticking her neck out and being Lord herself.  Fell knew, but he’s obligated to serve and keep his mouth shut.”

“Why tell us this?”

“What I was originally getting at was, well, if I’d brought you on board, there was a chance you’d clue in.  Even if he wins, he sort of loses, because you come to resent him, or he loses respect and loses power as a consequence, on multiple fronts.  By telling you now, I get the same result.  Thank you for sitting still and listening.”

“This doesn’t change anything.”

“Think about it, take a minute, consider what it means to the Sisters and to your Elder sister.”

“She’s still in his clutches,” the Sister said.

“My companion Rose was too,” I said.  “She suffered, but she did get out.”

“Our Elder Sister could be tortured if we don’t toe the line,” a woman said.

The older Sister -not the Elder Sister, who wasn’t even present- frowned.  “The other option is that we deal with you right now.  The crisis ends, we have Conquest’s favor, whatever he might be, and things go back to normal.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “I can also kind of imagine Conquest killing all of you, rather than risk letting this information spread.  Think about that, weigh the same arguments we raised before.  The benefits versus the losses, when you’re dealing with all this.”

“I’ve already thought it through.”

“In twenty seconds?  While we exchanged words?”

She nodded.

“Damn,” I said.  “I don’t suppose you’re going to turn around, say I’m right, and agree to let us go?”

“No.  Putting you before the Elder Sister?  No.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“So am I,” she said.

“Should we call an end to the discussion?” I asked.  “Resume hostilities?”

“I expected you to try and worm out of this one.”

“Should we?” I asked, again.”

“Yes,” she said.

The word was barely out of her mouth when I pointed.  “Leonard!”

The Sisters tensed.

But Ty was already responding.  He dropped the backpack, holding Leonard so the bag dropped away and Leonard remained.

“Might be flammable!” I called out, before the Sisters could react.

Ty whipped the bottle in their direction.  It hit the wall behind the closest car.

Leonard appeared, smoky, stronger and clearer than the last time I’d seen him, but this was a one-time appearance.  He had an overgrown beard, a receding hairline, a worried expression, his eyes sticking out slightly, his expression sad.

I could smell the gas, sharp enough that I thought it might affect my sense of smell for the next while.

They coughed.  We backed up before the gas could reach us.

One had drawn a gun from under her coat.  Evan flew by her, but didn’t move the weapon aside.

I looked at her and shook my head, raising my voice to be heard. “I don’t think you’ll die unless you pull that trigger.  Anything that fires a bullet could ignite the gas.”

She was coughing so much she couldn’t really aim.

The older Sister was trying to draw something on the back window of the car, but she wasn’t getting very far.  She startled a bit.

Rose at work?

Bloody Mary, even?

Rose was supposed to be with Alexis, or at least spending much of her time there.

The older sister looked at me with red eyes.  Her nose was already running, partially from the fumes, partially from the coughing.

The strength went out of them, one after the other.

Leonard, too, faded in his own way.

His power had been spent in one burst.  I’d been waiting for this kind of situation.  Dealing with practitioners, humans.  This was the first time I’d been up against them and fully armed at the same time.

I stepped forward, paused as I smelled the gas, and then held my breath, pressing on.  The impression of the gas was fading with every second, faster than it might otherwise dissipate in air.

After a moment, I bent down to check the older Sister’s pulse and breathing.  The others joined me, dividing up the workload.

I very nearly jumped out of my skin when Fell slammed a car trunk.

I heard banging.

“Dolls,” he said.  “Almost slipped out.”

I nodded.

When I stood up from the second woman, I saw Rose in the mirror.

“What’s going on?” I asked.  “Where’s Alexis and Tiff?”

“They’re safe, but it’s getting ugly, and they’re a little spooked.  Might be time to regroup.”

I nodded.  “We’ll head your way soon, get them prepared.”

Rose disappeared, stepping out of sight.

It only took a moment to check everyone.  Evan was the last one to finish, his tiny head pressed against the woman’s throat, wing extended over her mouth.

“Recovery positions,” Fell said.  “If they vomit, we don’t want them to aspirate.”

We turned them over as Fell instructed.

More were on their way.

“Drive?” Ty asked.

I looked at the keys I had in hand.  I shook my head.

I bent down to put the keys in the hand of the woman Evan had taken them from, then closed her fingers around them.

“They may shoot first, next time,” Rose said.

“They might,” I said.  “But Grandmother told us we needed to get our karma up, as one of her rules, and this feels right.”

“Dunno how right it feels.  It’s getting colder, the wind’s getting worse,” Maggie commented.

“We should hurry,” Fell said.  “There are more coming, and that trick only works once.”

“Getting criticized from all sides,” I muttered.

“Not from me,” Evan said.

I drew a marker from my pocket.  I moved the older Sister’s head.

It only took a moment.  A dotted line.

Words:  I could have cut your throat, above the dotted line.  Below: Conquest would have.

“Let’s hurry then,” I said.

We left on foot.

■

By the time we reached Alexis, Rose and Tiff, we’d crossed paths with another group of Sisters, successfully distracting them by pointing them to the others, only a minute or two behind us, and Fell had used more of his power to help us disappear into the midst of the weather.

The snowstorm had locked down the city, alternating between wet, heavy snow and freezing rain.  When I looked, I could see that the real world looked almost as desolate as the spirit world.  In spots, the ice and snow had brought down branches from overhanging trees, blocking off streets.

Some blocks had power, others didn’t.  Power lines were down somewhere, I was betting.

The gap between the two worlds was swiftly closing.

Darkness, I thought.

It was eerie that Maggie had suggested it before other parties had brought it to pass.  I wondered if the violence or pseudo-violence against the Sisters counted as the ‘blood’, or if we could expect more bloodshed in the hours to come.

I was shivering.  My constitution wasn’t all there, and the cold and wet was getting to me.

The connections said they were close.  We were unable to see more than ten feet in front of us in the real world, where things weren’t as obscure as they were in the spirit world.  Their sudden appearance from the falling snow and fog was a bit startling.

“Geez.  Give us a bit of warning,” I said.

“Sorry,” Tiff said.

“You guys okay?”

“Bit spooked.  The power went out.  The candle man-”

“Tallowman,” Alexis said.

“The Tallowman, he made candles, but that mostly made it worse.  His candles cast pretty spooky shadows.”

“I can imagine,” I said.

“It took us a bit to convince ourselves the power going out wasn’t the start of some attack plan.  You get paranoid,” Alexis said.  “Rose left to let you guys know, but… not having her around, it’s tough.”

I nodded.

“What’s going on?” Alexis asked.  “This is crazy.”

“It’s the work of the Lord of the City,” Fell said.  “He’s increasing the pressure.”

“We’re stepping up our offensive,” I said.  “We just took down one group of Sisters, and it looks like we took the meat out of their surveillance system, though it’s still there.”

“Definitely still there,” Fell said.  “I can see them looking.  They’re making stilted, periodic progress towards us.  Looking for us, finding us, getting ready to move through this mess, and then traveling for five or ten minutes before they stop to start looking again.”

“The snow’s hurting them as much as it’s hurting us?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Fell said.

I nodded.

“We stopped a good few of them, maybe their leadership, Elder Sister excepted.  I’m hoping the headaches they get will keep them out of the fray for the next bit.  If the weekend ends and they have to go to work, and if my arguments had any effect, maybe that’s enough doubt to make them reconsider what they’re doing.”

“He still has the Shepherd, the Eye, the Astrologer, and he should have the support of the lesser Behaims, if he’s convinced them that helping him is the only way to rescue Laird,” Fell said.

“I know,” I said.  I shivered, a sudden, jarring movement more than a gentle tremor.  It seemed to startle Evan, who shuffled around some where he was tucked in between my neck and coat collar.”Fuck, can we get inside?”

“Joel sent a text before the phones died,” Alexis said.  “There’s a place a block and a half this way.  I’ll show you.”

We marched off as a group.  I could see how the others crowded around one another, shoulder to shoulder.  Only Maggie, Fell and I stood apart.

It bothered me that I wasn’t part of the huddle, but I was willing to trade the physical discomfort for the psychological security.

I rationalized it by thinking that I was wet and snow-covered enough that I’d just get them wet and more covered in snow.

It was feeble, but I’d put up with it.

Nobody was talking, and the- it wasn’t silence, with the wind howling and the nearby trees creaking as they blew, but it was a lack of conversation.  I spoiled it by speaking up.  “In terms of territories, how many do we have?”

“We left our mark at the garage, three apartments if we include that last one, and your place,” Alexis said.  “A bit of graffiti, kind of saying ‘we live here’.  I don’t know if that counts.”

“It’s pressure,” I said.  “He’s lost soldiers, he’s getting meaner.  The snowstorm may be a part of it.”

“We’re winning?” Alexis asked.

“We’re not losing, and that’s the important part,” I said.  I was mumbling, my lips were so cold.  “It’s a matter of time before he gets more involved.”

We passed a grocery store.  There were people crowded inside.  Taking shelter, and stocking up on supplies, it seemed.

“Joel didn’t say how stocked this place was,” Alexis said.  “Should we grab stuff?”

I stopped.  I could see Rose in the window.  Where our hair and coats were flapping from the cold wind, Rose was still, her hair in place but for a few strands that had slipped through.  Her face wasn’t as red as ours were.

Mary Francis was beside her, knife in hand.

She looked imperious, and it wasn’t just because the Bloody Mary made for an excellent contrast.

“We could,” I said.  “I don’t think any place is delivering.”

“We shouldn’t,” Fell said.  “Look.”

I looked, and I saw.

Ghosts.  They were more monstrous than most I’d seen.  Twisted, influenced by outside sources, maybe.

The Shepherd had our location.  The ghost-keeper.

The ghosts were entering the grocery store from the far wall, mingling with the crowd.  Searching among the vague silhouettes that represented people in the real world going about their business.

They weren’t looking for us.

One ghost stepped forward, crossing paths with an old man.

Another, a woman, walked forward, while a small boy ran from another direction, his head turned, oblivious to her, a plastic container of candy in one of his hands.

They stepped forward, overlapping.  As ghosts were prone to do in the movies and tv shows, they dissipated, breaking up and becoming fog on contact, then began to draw back together.

But they weren’t walking through the people.

When they congealed, they congealed around or in the people.

The child continued on his way, but something stayed behind, a woman who’d bled.

The result was a mingling, with traits of both, a bleeding hermaphrodite woman-child.

More physical.

“Wraiths,” Fell said.

Wraiths.  Ghosts twisted by negativity and spirits.  Some, like Leonard, faded with time.  Others found sources to tap to fuel themselves, but became twisted.  More like the Mary Francis summoning that was keeping Rose company right now.

These were the twisted ones.  I could imagine they were the Shepherd’s special reserve.

The old man and young man mingled to become a shadow bent by disease.  The old man didn’t continue on his way.  He fell like a rock, his features clarifying as his emotions grew stronger.  Others leaped to his side to help.

The ghost had taken something from him, and he hadn’t had much to give.

I saw as another ghost found another victim.  A ghost of a woman slender, finding a heavier man who looked all the heavier in full winter gear.

My view of the heavier man faded until he wasn’t visible at all, no matter how I focused my vision.

Not someone of much substance, it seemed.

The three ghosts headed straight for us.

“They know exactly where we are,” Fell said.  “They’ve known for a bit.  We just- this is a trap.”

“Drat and dagnabit,” Maggie muttered.  “I wish I could swear properly.”

Fell looked around.  “I don’t know how those scrying papers can even see us.  This snowstorm-”

“Maybe the scrying papers aren’t what found us,” I said.  I pointed.

It was a shape.  A man, half again as tall as any of us, naked, his hair long and curly, a thin beard on his face.  He carried a sword and a round shield that was broad enough to cover him from knee to shoulder.  The snow piled on his shoulders, dusting his hair and pubes white.

Where he was supposed to have eyes beneath his eyelids, he had only shafts of light projected from some inner luminance, extending out in our direction.

When I changed my focus, viewing him with the Sight, I saw sun flares and bright spots.

“The Astrologer,” Fell said.  He was backing up.  He’d already drawn his gun.  “She’s making a play.”

“Fuck,” I said.  I shivered.  “Can’t accuse him of not holding to the idea of the challenge.  He’s playing the general, timing things to corner us.”

The glass window of the grocery store broke.  I saw people shriek.

Mary Francis stood in the shattered window frame, but she wasn’t why they were screaming.

No, the screaming had started earlier, but it had been muffled by the distance between us and them and by the glass.

Someone was kneeling on the ground, bleeding openly.  The silhouette was no longer vague, but was showing glimmers of something that might become a ghost.  A psychic impression on the fabric of reality.  Vague as the person was to my senses, the blood was very real.

More ghosts were finding victims in the chaos.  I saw one ghost pass by several subjects before choosing another.

Picking hosts, complimentary souls to leech from, who shared some common element.

There was blood elsewhere.  Spatters, further from the wraiths.

It took me a second to make sense of the storm within.  Dark shapes that had been people were gathering and mingling like waves in a storm, crashing against one another.

The wraiths seemed to be getting stronger, feeding on the negativity and violence.

The people were rioting, and the Wraiths were both feeding on it and lapping it up.

I clenched my teeth.

An eye for an eye, Conquest?  I went after the very core of his being, attacked his ability to be Conquest and subjugate others by putting him on his back foot, and he was returning the favor.  Attacking my conscience and my drive to fight.  This violence and these deaths were on my hands.

With no cars on the street, we were free to back away.  I took a step back, and virtually everyone else in the group took my cue.

Fell didn’t.

“No,” Fell said.  “Stop.”

I’d seen a lot, but with the mounting pressure of the advancing wraiths and the imposing figure of the naked swordsman promising imminent attack, it was hard to convince myself to stand my ground.

“He wants us to run,” Fell said.  “We’d be running right into a waiting trap.”

“We’re supposed to stay and fight?” Ty asked.

“Do you want to die?” Fell asked.

“No, don’t want to die,” Ty said.

“We have to pick one and go through them,” I said.

“Yeah,” Fell said.

A wraith staggered toward us, going from a meandering approach to a sudden run.

Fell’s advice forgotten, we collectively backed away.

“Ty, salt,” I said.  “Throw it.”

“Won’t work so well,” Fell said.

“Throw it anyway,” I said.

Bloody Mary slashed at a wraith.  She drew blood, but the blood didn’t spatter anywhere.  Spectral, imaginary.

I grabbed the tube that hung across my back and pulled the toque off the handle.

“Evan,” I said.  “Ask the Hyena to come out to play.  Same rules as before.”

The Astrologer’s creation hadn’t moved an inch.  It could have been a statue.

“Hey, uglymutt,” Evan said.  “Come out to fight, listen to me, don’t hurt anyone living.”

Ty threw salt at the wraith closest to us.

It smoked, staggered back, blinded, but it didn’t perish.

Superficial damage at best.  A momentary setback.

“Said it wouldn’t work,” Fell commented.  “It’s not entirely a ghost anymore.”

“Mary!” Rose called out.  I didn’t hear the next thing she said.

Mary stalked toward us, breaking into a run.  She didn’t stop, simply stabbing the wraith in the back, crashing into and through it.

Blood spilled, a hole opened in its middle, but it didn’t stop.

The Bloody Mary climbed to her feet.  She stabbed herself a few times in the thigh in irritation, contemplating her next move, or waiting for the Wraith to make it’s next move.

“Hey, goblin,” Evan was saying.  “Listen.  You come out right now!  I order you and Blake orders you!”

The sword didn’t change.

“He’s not listening!”

That fucking goblin.  I’d bound it, after a fashion, but it had bound itself.

It was apparently content to stay bound and let us deal with the current situation, and I couldn’t do anything to change that fact.  If I could use my own talents, my own power and words, maybe I could have forced something, but that didn’t fit with the nature of the contest.

“We run,” I said, glancing over my shoulder.  “Fuck it, we can’t go through them.”

Fell didn’t respond.

“Fell?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “We run.”

“Evan,” I said.  “Go.  Scout.”

He took off.

This was it.  I’d aimed to unsettle and upset Conquest, to hit him where it hurt.  I’d done it.

He was pulling out all the stops.

He could keep up the pressure like this, and the snowstorm alone would do us in.

The sidewalks and streets were alternately covered in mounds of snow and freezing puddles that had a way of getting past the tongue and lace of my boots to transfer freezing cold to the tops of my feet.  The street was more puddle than anything else, but the puddles masked potholes and other hazards.

We turned our backs to the scene, hurrying as well as we could across the hazardous terrain.

Evan returned.  “The Eye.”

“That way?” I asked, pointing.

He was already gone before my finger could extend.

A glance behind me indicated the wraiths were making good headway over snow and ice, unhampered.  There were a good seven of them outside the grocery store.

I drew June.

If Mary could hurt the wraiths, then maybe June could too.

Maybe if they got that close, it didn’t really matter.

The wind howled.

Tiff shrieked.  It sounded far away, with the way the wind stole the sound.

I turned, and all the strength went out of me as I saw the damage.

Fuck, fuck no.

Alexis was down, and she had an arrow as long as my arm sticking through her stomach.

In the same moment I looked to see what direction the arrow had come from, another one appeared out of nowhere.  It didn’t fly through the air, I didn’t see it.  I only saw the aftermath.

An arrow simply appeared, sticking right through Fell’s collarbone.

I saw the Astrologer’s creation, sword and shield abandoned.  The naked warrior held a bow.  I saw light cross, making an effect very much like a lens flare, and he drew another arrow out of the air, nocking it.

I dropped to my knees, my arms going around Alexis.  I held her tight, trying to pull her back and out of the way.  Her body felt alien and limp in my grip, the contact uncomfortable, but not acting was unimaginable.

At least around the nearest corner.

The Astrologer’s creation wasn’t shooting.  The Wraiths were in the way, closing the distance.

“Blake,” a feminine voice said.

I looked.

The Sphinx blocked our path, large enough to take up the entire sidewalk.

“Please,” I said.  “Let me help my friend first.  She’s-”

“Shhh,” the Sphinx said.  Her large, human hand reached down, a fingertip touching my lips.

Her lion’s paw moved, a little lower, claws appearing and disappearing.

Shredding my jacket, my sweatshirt, t-shirt, and laying the ribs beneath bare.

Void 7.3

In the movies and on TV, being aware of imminent harm is a good thing.  You can brace yourself, dodge, do little things to minimize the impact of it.

In the movies and on TV, being in shock bought you time to function before the pain kicked in.

Wrong and wrong.

I was lucky that I wasn’t able to process what she was doing before it happened.  I didn’t stand firm or go stiff, I bent.  I went, even, as the claws hooked into fabric and skin, hurling me off to one side.  I felt the scrape of claw-tip against bone.  Going limp, it meant I’d been pushed, rather than stay there to let the claw carry through more flesh.

I’d been stabbed, once upon a time.  I’d been hurt.

This was still something foreign.  Too much to process.  In the moment, I took it in as something wrong, like Pauz and the abstract demon were wrong.

Alarm.

Mindblowing pain, well beyond the point I could understand or frame it.

A stray thought, nonsensical, wondering for a moment if she sharpened her claws herself, more than realizing that the claws were hitting me.

And devastation, as I was torn away from Alexis, thrown against the nearest building like a rag doll, my ankle striking the corner of the window frame, my heel cracking against a window.

Because I was supposed to be helping Alexis, and she was hurt.  She wasn’t supposed to be in the line of fire like this.

I hit ground, and the only thing that stopped me from rolling forward onto my stomach was the position of my arm beneath me, stretched out in front.  In an impulse movement, some confused attempt to make sure I wasn’t dead, I moved the arm, and managed to leverage myself back, so I rolled onto my back instead.

The shock of landing and the pain in my leg seemed to wake up the rest of my body.

I only got the benefit of maybe two seconds of being in shock, if that.

Looking down, I couldn’t tell the difference between my gore-covered clothing and jacket and the gore itself.  Tattered flaps and layers.  Blood flowed out and ran along the side of my body down to my back, not nearly as warm as I’d expected it to be.

I raised my hands, convinced I should do something, apply pressure, staunch the flow of blood, but it was too much, too broad an area.  I wasn’t sure if I’d be infecting myself by getting dirty coat sleeves in the wound.

My arms flopped limp to my sides, because I didn’t have the focus or the strength to keep them raised.  I suspected something was wrong with my pectoral muscle.

Ty appeared in my field of vision, standing at a funny angle, bent over, arms outstretched, but his attention turned skyward, his posture overly shy.

Evan descended, his flying a little shaky, as if he’d almost forgotten how.  He settled on my forehead, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to move.

His focus was on the same location as Ty’s.

They were focused on the sphinx.

“Can I help him?”  Ty asked.

“No,” the sphinx said.

“Please,” Tiff said.  “Let him help.”

“I would advise helping the young lady with the arrow through her midsection, or you could help Mr. Fell, if you wanted to put connections aside for the smarter option.  You’ll need two people to save one, and the one you ignore is likely to die.  I’d say Maggie there should help so you can have a chance at saving both, but I somehow doubt she will.”

“But Blake-”

“It’s easier to help them than Blake.  Don’t pull it out.  Put pressure around the entry and exit wounds, if you can.”

“I need to help Blake.  He needs it more than them,” Ty said.

“I made a declaration of war, challenging him to a fight.  My concern is with him and him alone.  If you step in, I’ll include you in the challenge and I’ll deal with you the same way.”

She moved, stepping forward in a strangely graceful, steady movement, and it took me a second to make sense of it, she was so large.  My perspective so warped by my position on the ground and my general disorientation.

Ty turned, keeping the Sphinx in front of him, keeping himself between the Sphinx and me.  I wasn’t quite sure what he planned to do if she did go after either of us.

“It hurts,” Evan whispered.

I tried to respond, but I only managed a small sound, inflicting a whole lot of pain on myself.

“It really hurts,” he said.  “But it’s all in my head, right?  It looks really really bad.”

Don’t need the details.

“Out of my way, please,” the sphinx said.

“What if I say no?” Maggie replied.

“I could say you’re suicidal and stupid.  Letting me by is better for the both of us.”

“That so?  I could say things about you being a hypocrite, a supposed paragon of order and balance, pulling a dirty move like this.”

“Are you such an expert on sphinxes, stranger?”

I’m bleeding to death, and you’re arguing.

“As far as I can tell, you aren’t much of a sphinx.”

“My only answer is this: look.”

I couldn’t see what she was referring to.

Fuck me.  Speaking wasn’t in the cards, but how was I even supposed to breathe like this?  I felt pain in places where the claws hadn’t even touched me, as if the force of the swipe had torn my skin in other places, not just where I’d been scratched.  Every little breath I managed prompted shuddering huffs of pain.  More going out than in.

I felt lightheaded, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was the breathing and how much was blood.

“What are you doing?” Ty asked.

It was more inquisitive than accusatory.

“Only following through on my promise, now move,” Isadora said.

I heard a small grunt.  I suspected that Maggie had been made to move.

Then, loud enough to make my vision go out of focus, louder than she should have been able to manage, even considering her size, she boomed, “Astrologer!  Reconsider.”

I closed my eyes rather than try to recover from the sound.  I twisted around, craning my head up to try to make out what was going on.

If my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me, the Astrologer’s creation was aiming skyward, almost straight up in the air.

Aiming over the sphinx?

Trying to hit me?  I could almost imagine the arrow disappearing into the atmosphere, only to plunge down and catch me in the heart.

Too much all at once.

“Ev-” I managed.

“What- what do I do?  What can I do?”

I shook my head.  That much I could do.  I tried to speak, and the pain was too bad, the air too short.  If I’d known what to say, maybe I could have forced it, but I didn’t have an answer for him.  I only screwed up my face in an expression of frustration.

I was so cold.  It had been bad enough before, but lying on the ground, being like this?  I was shivering uncontrollably, and with everything else that was wrong, I’d barely even noticed.

“I could try the Hyena again.  He could carry you, and we could get help.”

“Eh-” I started.  “Ev.  Sor- sorry.”

“No!  Don’t say that!”

“Pro-mised, try to, stop more- stop bad things,” I said.  “Did- didn’t last- not long enough.”

Maggie, the Sphinx and Ty were exchanging words, but I was too focused on putting sounds together and trying to make them into words.  Half of them stopped short before I got the whole word out, my breath catching in my throat as I huffed in pain.  I had to use shorter words.

“Doesn’t matter,” Evan said.

“Mat… ters,” I said.

“Doesn’t!  I… Can’t I say or do something?” Evan asked.  “I don’t know the right words.  You don’t have to do what you said.  You don’t have to stop the bad things to keep your promise to me.  You tried.”

I shook my head.

“I swear, I swear I free you,” Evan said.  “Okay?  So you don’t need to worry about that.  Worry about other stuff.”

Other stuff.

Evan had to hop to a new location, settling on my stomach as I tried to look, turning my head all the way to the right, then all the way to the left, straining my eyes to look as far to the sides as I could, reaching for some possible combination of angles that would let me see into the blind spot where Alexis lay.

Ty was crouched at her side, I was pretty sure.  Maggie was backed up to the wall, her dagger in hand, facing the sphinx.

“Blake,” Evan said.  “My promise… there are strings.  That’s how people do it, right?”

Still trying to catch my breath, feeling like I’d lost far too much ground for a mere handful of sentences, I was left only to shut my eyes and listen.

Please, Evan, you were one of the good ones.  Don’t learn from them.  Don’t learn from me.  Don’t learn from them.

Evan represented everything I wanted out of life.  Something uncomplicated with moments of fun, getting by, surviving.  Leaving the bad stuff behind to build something better.

If he started scheming, then I felt like I’d already lost.  I’d failed to leave a better impression, the world better off than it had been before I’d gotten involved.

I managed to sum up the breath.  “What?”

“Keep fighting.  Do something.  But you gotta try.”

I didn’t have words to sum up exactly what I felt, right there, looking at him, on the other side of the gory mess that was my chest.

Frustration at the fact that I couldn’t, anger at him for not understanding even when he could feel some measure of the pain I did, confusion over everything, and abject relief, because he was still Evan.  No scheming, no underhandedness.

Only the core shared trait that had drawn us together.  We’d press on.

“Help,” I said.  “Give… strength.”

“You need a push?”

“No.  Need-” I stopped, grunting, eyes screwed shut.  “-ten… acity.”

“I don’t know how to give you that.”

I didn’t have the words to respond.

I needed whatever had driven him to survive and escape for those days or weeks in the woods.

Scared, cold, hungry, alone.

My left shoulder wasn’t working a hundred percent.  I simply clenched the hand, so the chain of the locket bit deeper.  I used my right arm to try to stand, resting my weight on my forearm, then trying to shift it so I could use my hand instead.  Every movement redoubled the pain.  I was acutely aware that things weren’t in the right place, that the pain was out of sync with what was actually there.  Flesh had parted, and yet my brain could only map stuff to what it understood as the way I’d been put together.

I felt pain in my chest, but it traveled a funny route as it throbbed, and my eyes told me that my skin was hanging loose.

Four deep gouges, from the left of my chest to the right.  At least one claw had gone deep enough to have raked along the bone.  My skin was in strips, two of the three still attached at both sides.

When I propped myself up, the skin moved, the weight of my flesh pulling on the injury site in a different way.

I very nearly hurled as I felt it.  More wrongness.

Blood ran down my front, over my stomach toward my lap.  Lukewarm, but still warmer than my skin.

Evan settled on my shoulder.

The Hyena had slipped away, and lay against the snowbank.  Shifting forward to the point that I could crawl forward on three limbs made my tattered skin hang away from me.  I didn’t hurl, but I did feel like half the strength went out of me as blood started trailing down in thick streams.

I grabbed the Hyena with my good hand, already numbed fingers plunging into cold snow.  I gripped it by the handle.  The Hyena had studded it with spikes sharp enough to pierce through my gloves and stab into the flesh, and I let it.  I made my reaction to the pain -outside of the reflexive pulling away- to be to grab harder.

“H-” I started.  I had to stop, because I gagged.  The pain was intense, and the signals were scrambled.

“What?”  Evan asked,.

“Help,” I said.

I tried to use the snowbank to get to my feet, but snow crumbled under the hand, and my weight only pressed the snow down.  I was using the hand to hold the sword, and came within a foot of falling onto the blade.

Evan hopped back, grabbed my collar and pulled up, flapping.  It was about as effective as one could expect.

“No,” I said.  My vision swam.  I still couldn’t breathe well, and talking meant drawing on a precious resource.  “Help… swing.”

“Huh?”

“When it’s,” I winced, “Time.”

I moved further forward to reach a part of the snowbank where ice and general traffic had made it harder.  A more stable surface to lean on.

I very nearly blacked out.  I’d found my feet and had no memory of doing it.

My gaze fell on the others.  Ty was pressing down on the outside of Alexis’ wound, around the shaft of the giant arrow.

It was this spectral thing.  Would it fade away?  What happened then?  Removing an object from a wound just gave everything a chance to bleed.

If she bled like that… she’d wind up like me.  Due to bleed out in a matter of seconds.

“I don’t know how to give you strength,” Evan said, sounding as if he were confiding or confessing.

I think you already are.

If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be standing, I was ninety percent sure.

I couldn’t move my left shoulder, but I could move my elbow.  I grabbed at my coat where it was intact, clutched it tight, bunching it up.  I was trying to draw cloth tighter against the wound, for all the good it did, and I was pretty sure I was failing.  Blood was running from the slice in my shoulder to my elbow and down to my wrist.  It dripped from the opening in my glove.

We’d been doing okay, Isadora had stopped us.

She’d stopped everything.  The giant archer constellation thing was still, no arrow nocked.  The wraiths and everything else stood where they were.

The sphinx’s arrival had frozen the fight.  Nobody wanted to be the one to move and upset her.

Even Maggie had moved a little closer to me, edging away.

“-know what’s going to happen, Rose?” Isadora was asking.

“I’m positive,” Rose said.

“That makes things harder.”

“You’re making things harder,” Rose said.  “What’s the idea?  Doing Wrong for the sake of balancing out all the Right in the world?”

“No.  That’s not what I do, and it’s not how I operate.”

“How do you operate?”

“If the scales are tilted one way, sometimes drastic action is needed to restore things.  They may wobble in the aftermath, but equilibrium will be reached.”

“Then this looks like a whole fuckload of balance coming further down the road.”

“That’s an accurate assessment.”

Ty looked up at me as I passed, trudging forward.  The blade of the sword dragged through the snowbank, and I used it like a clumsy sort of cane, thrusting it back to stab it into deeper, more solid snow and ice, to have something to press against.  It slid free when I resumed moving forward.

It felt oddly squishy, but that was largely blood welling up to fill the fingertips of my gloves.  The spikes were just deep enough to make wielding the thing painful, but not so deep that it was impossible.  My arm throbbed up to the elbow, but I already had endorphins flooding my system, trying to counteract the pain elsewhere, my hand was cold.

Tiff’s head was bowed, and she was shaking, holding her hands to Alexis’ wound, but something Ty did or a sound he made seemed to clue her in.  She looked up and her eyes went wide as she saw me.

Ty started to stand, to stop me, but something about my expression gave him pause.

I couldn’t talk, so I willed them to stay instead.

It was a distance to the Sphinx.  Six paces.  She was facing the window, and her own wing blocked her view of me.

I wasn’t sure I’d make it that far.

“Spirits,” I muttered, my words barely coherent, I was speaking so quietly.  I made each breath a word, wheezed and whispered out past my lips.  “Gods.  Elementals.  Goblins.  Faerie.  Take morsels from me.  Take power.  But give strength.  Give me… what I need.  Give it first.”

If there was a difference, I wasn’t sure I could tell.

“Hyena,” I said.  “You… if you decide… break binding… attack sphinx… feel free…”

I focused on the sphinx.  Her back leg, closest to me.  The leg alone was almost as large as I was.

“Why wait?” Rose was saying.

“Because asking is akin to groveling.  It sets one on the wrong foot, to be the supplicant, the power is handed off to another.”

“Fell, Blake, and someone very close to Blake are bleeding to death,” Rose said.  “And you’re concerned about power?”

“You don’t deal with the lord of Toronto without being concerned about power.  If Blake dies, it isn’t a great loss.  Fell?  He serves the lord of the city, and as much as he’s a thorn in his master’s side now, he won’t remain there.”

“I thought you wanted Con-”

“Careful,” Isadora cut in, wasting no time.

Her claws had come out.

“I thought you wanted the lord of the city to stay in place.  Why let Fell die?”

“Because he won’t return to being a servant.  He’d continue fighting.  This way, his niece will be pressed to take over.  Unfortunate, given how very young she is, but it maintains the balance.”

“And Alexis?”

“Your friends should be able to save her if left alone.  I will strive to make sure that happens.”

“They’re not my friends.  They’re Blake’s.”

Fell’s niece?

Fell hadn’t said anything about that.

Fell and I were disposable?  We would be replaced, so the universe could do without us?

Fuck that.

Another blackout moment.  I was close enough.

The sword clinked as I pulled it out of the snowbank and it touched sidewalk.

I moved my head, nudging Evan from my shoulder.

He knew what he was doing.

I was swinging one-handed, but Evan flew past, to give it a bit more force, a bit of a push.

I wasn’t strong enough to lift it clear off the ground, so the point scraped against the sidewalk, carving an arc.

I aimed for her hamstrings, for lack of a better word.

She moved in that same moment, and I saw her legs move out of reach.

She turned around in a moment.  Her front paw, claws sheathed, lifted off the ground, blocking my swinging arm from moving any further.  The blade’s tip passed harmlessly under the raised claw.

“No, little warrior,” she said.  “Better monster slayers than you have tried.”

I gazed at her with eyes that might have been dull, unfocused.

The lion, the bird of prey, neither suggested slow reflexes.  Her mother had been made to be a warden, a guardian of a holy place.

Yeah, she was right.  If it was that easy, it would have been accomplished long ago.

Isadora’s paw pushed me back.  Already off balance from the swing, I was out of strength.  I landed hard, my head hitting snowbank.

Tiff shrieked.  Or at least, I was pretty sure it was Tiff.

I heard Ty say something.  I only caught the tail end.  “-he’d want you to stay and help Alexis.”

The only person who stood by me here was Evan, landing on my forehead.  Even the Hyena was gone, having fallen free of my grip.

I suspected black spots were passing across my field of vision, but it was hard to tell.  There was only dark sky above, and endless amounts of falling snow.  I wasn’t sure how to tell what was a black spot and what was simply black.

“I thought he’d passed out,” Isadora said.

“So did I,” Rose said.

I closed my eyes.  The white of the snow was too bright against the darkness.

“He’s not showing,” Rose said.

“I know,” Isadora commented.  “I’m not in a particular hurry.  Haste makes waste, after all.”

“He doesn’t think you have it in you.”

“Fuck you, Rose,” Ty said.  “Don’t encourage her to kill him.”

“I’m not,” Rose said.  “Isadora, the stakes aren’t high enough, and they won’t get high enough.  The lord of the city won’t show to ask you not to kill Blake because that shows that he’s weak.  Now you won’t back down because it makes you look weak, and I don’t think you want Conquest to move forward with this.  It’s a stalemate, and every second that passes, decent people are bleeding to death.”

“I’ll assume you aren’t counting Fell among these decent people,” Isadora said.  “You’re right, but neither Conquest nor I lose anything substantial if these people bleed to death.  If I hold you hostage, after the fact…”

Rose knows, I realized.  Isadora told her, or she’d already figured it out.  She knows that if I die, she gets to live.  She’s not worried because she knows, and the people who are dying aren’t her friends?

“Blake put up a fight,” Rose said.  “You’re going to let him die after that?”

“Are you implying it’s wrong?”

“No.  I’m saying it’s… ignoble,” Rose said.

My back was wet with sweat and blood, and the chill crept up through the moisture, seeping into the core of my body.

I felt like my strength was being drawn out by the ground, along with blood and warmth.  I couldn’t shake the lingering image of my body melding or melting into the surface of the sidewalk, becoming a part of it.

Into the streets of Toronto, no less.  I’d been fucking told that I was going to Hell, or some place equivalent to it.

“Ignoble,” Isadora said.

“I think so,” Rose replied.

I heard Isadora sigh, and it was another sound that was big.

Then I heard her speak.  “Conquest, I request your presence, and swear no harm to you or yours so long as no harm is meant for me in turn.”

I could feel him arrive.

It was like a weight on my chest, being deep enough underwater to feel the water pressing in on me, knowing full well how far away the surface was.

“I take it this isn’t a gift?” Conquest asked.

“No,” Isadora said.

Rose spoke up, “As gifts go, it would be a weak one.  Finishing him off, when the victory is undeserved, it would look bad, wouldn’t it?”

“Be careful, Rose Thorburn,” Conquest intoned.  “You aren’t as safe as you think you are.  Curb the undeserved arrogance.”

“She’s right,” Isadora said.  “This isn’t your victory.”

“It would be if you were acting out of fear or loyalty to me.  The power I exert by sheer presence is still power.”

“It’s neither.  My only motivation was the balance.  This isn’t your victory.”

“No need to say it a third time,” Conquest said.  “You’re helping them.”

“I am.”

“How unusually shortsighted, Isadora.”

“I’m helping you as well, Conquest.”

“Playing both sides,” Maggie said, from the periphery.

“But she’s not playing them against the other,” Rose said.  “As I see it, if I can speak for Blake, there’s no grudge to be had.”

I didn’t see or hear the response to that.  There was only silence and the darkness beneath my eyelids.

Rose was cornering Conquest.  If she absolved Isadora of guilt, Conquest could only look petty if he sought retribution.

“Your role here is done, Isadora,” Conquest said.  “You’ll answer for any further interference.”

“I understand.”

“That was not the answer I wanted to hear, daughter of Phix.  The appropriate response would have been a promise to refrain from anything further.”

“I can’t, and you know I can’t.”

“That you will answer for.”

“Yes, I probably will.”

He’d wanted retribution, and he’d forced answers out of her until he had one he could punish her for.

I supposed Rose’s manipulations weren’t that effective.

I felt Conquest approach.  My eyes remained closed.

“I could end him now,” Conquest mused, “And the situation would be handled.”

“Two-” Rose started to speak.

“Silence,” Conquest intoned.

I was aware that the other foes were drawing nearer.  The wraiths, the Eye… only the astrologer’s construct remained in place.

“I’m not under your sway,” Rose said.  “You can’t use the chain to stop me, I-”

“You can do as humans have done since they grubbed in dirt and wore furs,” Conquest said.  His words had a danger to them, an implicit threat.  “Recognize that I have the power to destroy something you value, and be silent.”

Nobody spoke in the silence that followed.

“Blake Thorburn,” Conquest said.  “I grow tired of this.  One of your champions has been claimed by Death, someone precious to you is on the way there, and the younger Rose Thorburn has informed me that you have nothing good waiting for you on the other side.”

I didn’t move.

He continued, “Do you wish to keep fighting, or shall I save them and save you?  Those close to you can resume their ordinary lives.  I can allow you to visit them when you’ve served me well.  Your familiar, even, can carry on.  Servitude under me might be unpleasant, but it stands far and above what waits for you and your family on the other side.”

If my body wasn’t already nearly frozen, I might have felt my blood run cold at that.

Alexis.  My family.  Rose.  Even Evan.

“If you can’t bend the knee and form the words, look up at me from that sidewalk, meet my eyes, and blink once.  I will take it as communication of surrender.”

If he killed me, he was only finishing the job.

If I surrendered, he could take more credit for that, it was power to him.

It was the easiest way out.

I raised my eyes to look at him.  He wore a monstrous guise, his skin stretched into a macabre expression, his white beard short beneath bared teeth, a false halo mounted to his shoulderblades, his skin folded and stretched to form an elaborate coat or robe with a high collar, inlaid with piercings that doubled as embroidery.

His eyes were white from corner to corner, but there was a sheen to them that made his gaze look more dangerous than blind.

His rictus grin stretched just a fraction wider.

I didn’t blink.

“Three…” I said.  “Three days.”

“Three days?”

“And I hope… to be well enough… to fight you,” I said.  “Three days recovery… you can say killing me was your doing.”

I didn’t get any further.  Darkness crawled in around the edges of my vision.

■

The bridge stood unfinished.  A massive construction, aimed at nowhere.  Rebar and girders stuck out of concrete, spearing out toward water and sky.

Evan flew by, rising, turning, then plunging.

Falling as far as he could before he had to pull up and turn away from the ground.

The sun shone through intermittent dark clouds, casting the world in patches of bright light and deep shadow.  The rain that came down was a light drizzle, warm on my skin.  The handlebar of my bike was warm to the touch, heated by the sun.

My arms were bare, my tattoos free of scarring, but the branches and birds had doubled in number.

The landscape behind the bridge was cliff and hill, thick with trees and roads, reminiscent of a puzzle with some of the wrong pieces in spots, where the clouds created swathes of shadow.  The cliffs were high enough and the clouds low enough that the tops of the cliffs disappeared into the haze.

Evan rose again.  “It’s like a rollercoaster!  Watch!”

I watched.  I could even reach out and experience what he experienced, the rush.

I didn’t flinch as he careened within an inch of the water’s surface, barely a speck, he was so far below me.  If he had hit, I might have suffered the same pain, and I might have fallen from the bridge.

But he didn’t, I hadn’t, and I smiled a bit at his excitement as he took an inefficient, winding route back up.

When I drew in a breath, the air was oxygenated in a way you never had in the city.  All these trees, the fresh air, the lack of pollution… the simple act of breathing invigorated.  I felt at ease in a way I’d sought for a long, long time.

Just a touch lonely, but I’d reconciled myself to the fact that I might never have human company and really feel comfortable at the same time.  Even before I’d been homeless, that possibility had been taken from me by the endless bickering and hostility that was home and family.  I cherished Alexis and my friends, but as much as they nourished and validated me, even they took as much as they gave.

It was one of the reasons I could never really imagine myself with someone.

This was… it was about the best I could hope for.  True peace.

That peace was shattered by the sound of footsteps.

Mrs. Lewis came to stand on the edge of the unfinished bridge, a few feet to my left, hands clasped behind her.

“I get the feeling,” she murmured, “That my arrival isn’t entirely unexpected.”

“Not entirely,” I said.

“I don’t know whether to admire your stubbornness or condemn it.”

“Why not both?” I asked.

“By invoking our names, you could have cleanly resolved the situation and handled Conquest.  Laird Behaim would be weaker for it, your friends could be saved… you’re shaking your head.”

I was.

“Are you that afraid of the slippery slope?”

“It sounds like a generous offer you guys made,” I said.  “I call you, and all I have to do is the one errand?  Well, that sounds like it might be worth holding on to.”

“Does it?  Or do you intend to die without invoking us again?”

“I thought I might save it for a really bad situation.”

“As opposed to being on the brink of death, surrounded by enemies, people you cherish dying?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “The way things are going, I’m going to be up against worse.  Might need to hold on to that.”

“If we do get the impression you don’t intend to call on us, you might lose our goodwill.”

“What happens then?”

“You and Rose are both aware that when you cease to exist, she takes your place.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“We could, how do I put it, hasten the process?”

I nodded.  I looked up as the shadows seemed to grow deeper.  The clouds were moving in.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Do.”

Evan flew by, circling around us, then took off.

“Where are we?”

“Right now, you are lying in the same bed you’ve occupied for the last two days and twenty-three hours.  They’re taking measures to get you in fighting shape.”

“Fuck,” I said.  “I can imagine what some of those measures are.”

“Yes.”

“You know what I meant, though.”

“As for me, I’m occupying a space in your psyche you’ve retreated to.  Even the most war-weary soldier needs something to retreat to.”

I looked around.

“Hope?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Or close enough.  I hope you realize that this three day detour of yours has lost you much of the advantage you gained.  He’s been reveling in his victory, after a fashion, recouping power.”

“Fuck,” I said.

“Your allies are weakened.  His aren’t.  This is largely on your shoulders.”

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“This is the last chance.  Strike fast, strike hard, and call on help if you need it, Blake Thorburn.”

I clenched by teeth, trying not to let her see.

“Now, I recommend that you wake up.”

I did.

The first thing I saw, as it turned out, was Rose, standing beside a man who had to be J. Corvidae.

Void 7.4

“Welcome back,” Rose said.  She closed her book, setting it down across her lap.

My attention was on Corvidae.  He was within the full-length mirror, standing in front of and to the right of Rose, a small notebook in one hand, an old-fashioned pen in the other.

He was an Other who had been scary enough he could be mistaken for a demon, much like the Hyena had been.  Seventh choir, the abstract, easy to underestimate.  They played subtle games, standing at the opposite end of the spectrum from the first choir, which simply took the most direct route, devouring.

Except he wasn’t a demon.  He was a less-than-garden-variety Bogeyman.

His eyebrows were thick, his teeth a fraction too wide.  He had a hook nose, and his long hair was slicked back, tied into a ponytail that didn’t stick out, but draped down over one shoulder.  His skin was a dark brown, like a supple leather, but his eyes were pale.  When I wasn’t making eye contact, it looked like his eyes were white from corner to corner.  When I was, his narrow pupils bored into me.

He wore a dress shirt with a tie, a vest, and slacks, and threads stuck out here and there, the cuffs of his shirt and backs of his pant legs abraded, the knees threadbare.  His fingers were long, the nails in need of a cut, a little chipped and frayed, as if he had been scraping at a hard surface.

Had I passed him in the street, I might not have given him a glance.  The more I looked, though, the more I noticed the oddities.  His features, cheekbones and the lines of his chin, the shape of his ears, the structure of his neck and shoulders, it all was slightly off, almost as if he’d been drawn by someone who’d never seen a grown man before.  It quickly became unsettling.

I looked away.

We were in the furnished apartment from the other day.

“Alexis?” I asked.

“She’s okay,” Rose said.  “Well, as okay as you can be after being stabbed.  Nothing vital.”

I relaxed some.

“Tiff, Ty?”

“They’re here,” Rose said.  “Look.”

I turned over, and found it easier than it should have been.

Tiff and Ty were lying on thin mattresses on the floor, with blankets drawn up over them.  Circles had been drawn on the ground, and the design had the same elaborate flair as the concentric circles Rose had suggested we draw for Laird and Pauz.  Was Rose developing a signature?

Odd to think about, when she wasn’t the one drawing the circles.

I didn’t miss the use of blood in the diagram, dried to a dark brown in the midst of the white chalk lines.

I touched my chest, and found a great deal of it numb.

When Mrs. Lewis had suggested they were reviving me, two ugly possibilities had sprung to mind as far as how they might do it.   Both had come true.

Ty and Tiff had given blood, for lack of better terminology, to revive me.  The same way I’d given blood to revive Rose.

But reviving wasn’t enough, was it?  You could fill a broken glass all you wanted, the liquid would still flow out.

My shirt had been removed, and I had a heavy pile of blankets on top of me.  I removed them to verify what I was touching.  I’d been plugged up with wax.  It was a pale beige-brown, out of contrast with my skin, the skin around the injury still red and angry, though not necessarily infected.

It matched the contour of my chest and ribs, soft enough to expand as I breathed.  A little cooler than the rest of me.  I could scrape off wax with my fingernail, so it peeled away in a curl.

On second thought, maybe it was better not to do that.

I moved my hand to get the wax out from under my fingernail, and I found another patch of wax there.  The damage from wielding the Hyena.  It had mostly healed.

“Healing?” I asked.

“Maggie’s been using a trick she learned to patch you together, do away with the wax and smooth over the skin.”

I experimentally raised myself up, and accidentally shifted Evan from where he was snuggled up against my neck.

“Unh,” he said.  His eyes were closed.

“He’s asleep?” I asked.

“My recommendation,” Rose said.  “He can’t go all that far from you without wanting to return, I’m not sure if it’s familiarhood or sentimentality.  He was frankly driving us up the wall, wanting to be entertained or involved.  I told him that you might rest better if he rested too.  He doesn’t have to sleep, but it seems he can do it if he wants.”

“Sorry about this, little man,” I said.  “Keep sleeping for a little bit.”

“Buh,” he mumbled, incoherent, tiny eyes still closed.

I checked I was wearing pants, then swung my legs over the side of the cot.

“It’s been slow work, giving you new flesh, undoing the damage.  Apparently Maggie could do it fast and give you gnarly scars, but she wanted to do it slow and leave you looking normal.  I thought you’d want normal – you’re already fighting to keep your identity from slipping away, with everything else that’s going on.”

“You thought right,” I said.  “Thanks.”

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Eerily good,” I replied.  I extended my arm.  My left arm’s movements felt a little more limited.  One of the scratches extended from my right nipple to my left shoulder.  There was wax there, not matching the skin.  Numb.  “But definitely not perfect.”

“Perfect would be expecting too much,” Rose said.  “We had to knock two people out to get you up to par.”

I glanced at her, trying to ignore Corvidae.  He disturbed me on a number of levels, one being his appearance, the other being the fact that he was here.

At the same time, I didn’t want to do what Rose had done to me earlier, now that our roles were reversed.  Maybe there was an explanation.

“Two people bled out to bring me back?” I asked.

“Yes.  We talked it over, they don’t want to fight, but things are getting uglier, time’s run out, and you weren’t waking up.  We need you active and able to fight, especially since we lost Fell.”

I shut my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Sorry,” she said.

Fell wasn’t someone I loved, and even my ability to like him had been strained, but I’d respected him, he’d been competent, he’d even gone out of his way to help.

But I’d gotten him caught up in this, and now he was dead.

“The Shepherd collected his soul,” Rose said.  “Not just the echo, but the soul.  He got in touch with us yesterday, offering a trade.  Laird for Fell.”

“He made this offer on the Lord’s behalf?”

“Not explicitly,” Rose said.  She paused.  “I said no.”

“What?”

“I thought about it for a while, and we talked it over.  Maybe in another situation, we’d be able to stick him somewhere, put the soul in a vessel, bring back Fell in some capacity.  But they wouldn’t give us Fell if we could still use him.  By getting Laird back, he kind of counteracts your victory earlier, and it’s maybe the last hold we have on them.”

“If we’re counting points, then any points I got for getting Laird are probably matched by points they got for collecting Fell,” I said.

“Exactly,” Rose said.  “And if we give up Laird, along with any points we earned there, the Shepherd releases Fell, and then Fell’s soul moves on…”

“They have more points in the end,” I said.  “Fuck, no, you’re right.  That might have been the right decision.”

“It wasn’t a hard one to make.  They’ve been making a number of plays, trying to subvert the advantage we had.”

“He’s been busy, then,” I said.

“He has been very, very quiet, actually,” Rose said.  “He’s staying out of the way, giving you your three days.”

“You said things were getting uglier?”

“He’s staying out of the way, but he’s doing that whole thing where he’s technically following the rules, but he’s not forcing others to do it,” Rose said.

I nodded.  “How bad is it?”

“Pretty bad.  He’s ‘protecting’ the city by maintaining the snowstorm, keeping people out of harm’s way by keeping them indoors.  His people have been telling local Others that there may be a change in the way the city operates, and this is the time to get in good with the lord of the city, be in his good graces when he moves up.  The ones that aren’t smart enough to understand are still happy there are no people around, so they’re roaming, looking for trouble.  If I’m being open about what’s happening, then I’d have to tell you that people are getting hurt.”

I hadn’t thought it would get this bad.

She continued, “The news is saying it’s a bunch of kids and thugs capitalizing on the snowstorm.  The last big fight at the police station?  The cars got totaled?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, the real cars caught up to their spirit world equivalents.  The damage is being blamed on vandals.  Arson, looting, beatings with very little information about the alleged attackers, speculation about a new drug on the streets…”

“Okay,” I said.  “Stop.  This isn’t helping my conscience.  This was a dumb idea.”

“It was a good idea,” Rose said.  “It got us out, it gave you the upper hand… it just went badly.”

“If a plan turns out badly, can it really be called a good one?”

“I think so.”

“Because when I think of things backfiring and schemes with horrific collateral damage, I think of family.”

“I do too.”

“The stuff that mom pulled?  The dormitory thing?”

“The dormitory thing,” Rose said.  “Yeah.  Most definitely remember that.  One of her… less human moments.”

“Yeah.  That.  I don’t know how many students were left without a place in the middle of the semester, but it was a thoroughly shitty thing to do, and it was a whole lot of wrong just to inconvenience a potential heir.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.

“I don’t want to follow in their footsteps.  In fact, that may have been one of the moments where that really dawned on me.  That I wanted to go a different route.”

I climbed to my feet.  I had to search around for clothes, and found my backpack.  I dug out a shirt.

“It wasn’t for me,” Rose said.  “It wasn’t a revelation or anything.  I feel like I reached that point a long time ago.  I got pulled into the schemes, that was an early one.”

“Early?”

“Against Kathy.”

I blinked.

“Callan, for me,” I said.

“Ah,” she said.

“But go on.”

“It’s just… I was immersed in it, I was implicated, I played roles, reported back on them if I saw them at school.”

“Ah,” I said.  Worlds different from me.  Mom and dad had essentially given up, with no real viable heir, only periodically attacking the people who looked like they might be contenders, and our family being the target more than a few times.

“I fought it, but I didn’t really have a way to break the pattern or get them to stop.  They plowed forward, I watched it like I might watch a car wreck, and it became easier to just ignore it, do my own thing.  Or so the fabricated memories go.”

“Were you in the running?” I asked.

Rose nodded.  “We all thought Paige was the top candidate, then Peter made his play and… well, the next thing I remember, I got confirmed as heir at the meeting.”

“Not Molly?”

Rose shook her head.

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“It doesn’t really matter.  It’s just the vestige thing.  When it’s bent out of shape, reality seeks the straightest path to righting itself.”

“That can’t be right,” I said.

“Hm?”

“Molly.  You’re forgetting Molly.  If reality is seeking the straightest path, why would you be the first pick for heir?  Why not follow after Molly?”

Rose frowned.  “I don’t know.”

“That’s the kind of important detail you really should be sharing,” I said.

“Our focus has kind of been elsewhere,” Rose said.  “With the most recent issue being you in a near-Coma?  Remember that?”

“I remember,” I said.

“The discrepancy is important, but let’s not lose sight of what’s really going on.”

I bit my tongue for a second.

If I pushed on this subject at the expense of other stuff, I’d be doing what Rose had done.

“Okay,” I said.  I found my sweatshirt on the back of a chair, grabbed it, and found both the claw marks on the front and my clawed-up t-shirt beneath.  Both had been thoroughly washed, but a thorough washing hadn’t gotten all the blood out.  Unsalvageable.

“Changing topics.  What’s really going on, then?”

“The lord of the city has, through indirect means, sent Others out into the streets, searching for our hideouts.  They’re finding our hideouts, and if we’re ‘counting points’ as you said before, then we’re losing here.  The Knights aren’t responding, Fell’s dead, for all intents and purposes, the Imp is occupied keeping Laird pinned down, and the Hyena isn’t cooperating.  Your friends, I get that you wanted them here, they aren’t really potent strategic assets.  I’ve been teaching them, giving them access to books, but they’re not exactly big guns.  We’re losing.”

I pulled on the tattered sweatshirt, because going out in the cold with just a t-shirt seemed like a bad idea, and I didn’t have any more clothes.

I looked at Ty and Tiff, and I wondered if they had any clothes I could borrow.

It would be a bad idea, I reasoned, to take the clothes outright.  It could be bad karma, even if we were close enough for the sharing of said clothes to be implicit.

Or did the connections factor in?  Were the clothes okay for me to take simply because of the indirect ties I had to them?

Fuck, I didn’t understand enough about how the world worked.

“You only have two champions,” Rose said.  “You’ve got me, and you’ve got Maggie.  Maggie’s out, doing her thing.”

“Her thing?”

“Hunting monsters.  Diverting them away from Laird, our last remaining hideout.  We don’t have Fell to hide us anymore.”

“And you?  What are you doing?”

“Ah.  This is the point where I have to explain J.P. being here.”

“J.P.?” I asked.

Corvidae smiled.

“Do you talk?” I asked.

“I do,” he said.  His voice was hoarse, uncomfortable to listen to.  More fitting for an old man than a young one, or for a heavy smoker.

“Primarily when asked questions,” Rose added.

“When invited to respond,” he corrected.

“Full name?”

“John Pica,” he said.

I broke from his unwavering eye contact to look at Rose, my eyebrows raised.

“We needed ammo.  They were rooting us out, they’re still using the dolls, the vessels, they’ve got ghosts, and when they get close, they bring in the Eye to start wreaking havoc.  Power goes out, fires in the neighborhood… trying to get us to pick up and move, distract us.  Astrologer has constructions at regular points around the city, it’s… it’s a mess overall.  So we called on a few more Others.  I called on a few more.”

“More?”

“It’s all I can do.  I can’t match the Lord of the City in numbers, not with summonings.  I can be smart about bringing them in and pointing them places.  I can call on specific Others for specific tasks, and J.P. was one.”

“What task?”

“Distracting your adversary’s champions.  J.P. set the Astrologer and the Sisters of the Torch against each other.”

“How?” I asked.

“Apparently the sisters have this elemental they all use in their rituals.  An intermediate flame spirit, the eponymous ‘torch’ of the group, their go-to power source.  J.P. went for a walk, came back, and the elemental decided it wanted to set up shop in one of the Astrologer’s pieces of equipment, rather than the housing they’d prepared for it.  Apparently there’s a lot of power flowing through her systems at the moment, enough to bait an Elemental closer.”

“She’s not giving the elemental back, I take it?” I asked.

“The equipment was handed down to her by her teacher and master.  It’s sentimental and it’s a huge aspect of her power base.  No, she’s not giving it back.”

I’d made some headway with the Sisters, and I had questions about the Astrologer and her changing allegiance… this wasn’t something I would have gone along with.

Stupid as it sounded, I didn’t want to hurt them.

I bit my tongue.  “Where’s my jacket?”

“You’re not going outside, are you?”

“I’m not sitting here and waiting for things to get worse,” I said.  “Evan, wake up.”

Saying his name flexed the connection between us.  He roused, then did a small bird stretch, wings extended fluffing out his feathers to look bigger.  “You’re up!  You’re okay!”

He flew to my shoulder.

“Thanks to my friends,” I said.

“Ahem,” Rose said.

“I’m counting you among them,” I told her.  “Don’t be silly.”

She seemed genuinely taken aback by that.

“What are we doing?  What’s next?” Evan asked.

Already full of energy, it seemed.

“We’re meeting up with Maggie,” I said, “Then we’re putting together a battle plan for one last skirmish against the big man.”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” Rose said.

“Why?” I asked.  “We’re weaker than we were, he’s stronger?”

She didn’t respond right away.

“A… voice in my dream told me that he’d consolidated his power and he was strong,” I said.  “Are you saying there’s more to it than that?”

“Kind of,” Rose said.  “It’s better if you see.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It is,” she said.  “I can station Mary to guard your friends, but maybe you want to leave a note, reassure them it’s all okay.  We should go meet up with Maggie.  I might not agree about going up against the lord of the city, but I do agree that we should hash together a plan.”

■

The snowstorm was bad.  I’d borrowed Ty’s coat, scarf and hat in the end, and the cold cut right through it.  My chest tightened as the wax filling my wounds hardened.

I’d be sensitive to temperature, it seemed.  Keeping away from direct heat sources would have to be a priority.

Hail had broken windows and damaged cars, broken branches lay around every tree, and the snow was bad enough that the plows weren’t keeping up, if they were showing up at all.

The city had shut down.  With no power, the snow, and thick clouds, it was darker in the middle of the day than some nights had been.

Minutes passed where all I could see were flurries of thick white snow, all I could hear was the sound of wind.

The Tallowman followed me.  Rose was clearer than ever as she moved within the windows, Mary, Corvidae and an oily black figure following her.

Rose was stronger.

I wasn’t so sure I could stop her if she decided to send her monsters after me.

She’d saved me, though, to her credit.  She’d also known something about me being vulnerable, what happened when I died.

She’d told Conquest.  I could put two and two together.  Conquest knew the particulars about how Rose and I functioned as a pair, including the fact that I’d be replaced by Rose if I got offed.  Rose knew more particulars than she was letting on.

I hadn’t lied when I said I considered Rose a friend.

I didn’t trust her one hundred percent, but I hadn’t lied.

At the same time, I wasn’t sure the sentiment went both ways.  What was I to Rose?

Was I a jailor?  A figure that kept her from leaving her prison of mirrors?

Had I been that jailor from some point very early on?  I could remember how she’d acted, on our early mornings in the house.  Sudden shifts in attitude, harboring knowledge, hostility without rationale…

…I could remember her reactions.  The way she’d acted almost offended when I’d been nice, reached out, tried to make amends.

Almost as if she wanted to hate me, and I was making it harder.

Had she known?

I felt Evan shiver beside my neck, tugged Ty’s scarf tighter, to bring the my familiar closer.

If Rose had known, how had she found out?  Had she been reading something I wasn’t aware of?  Had the lawyers reached out to her by some arcane means, like Mrs. Lewis had found me in some buried part of my psyche?  Or had she known from the beginning?

Or was I something else to her?  If not a jailor, could I be something else?  Molly had been a sacrificial pawn.  Was I the same?  Was I simply chosen because my mirror-world alter-ego was the most competent, or because I was most likely to help the family’s overall karmic balance before I died?  Was she only helping me because it bought her more time before she had to brave these dangers herself?

No.  She’d put herself at risk, being shackled by Conquest to spare me from being tortured.

I had to remember that.

She might have come to regret the decision, but I had to remember that sacrifice.

Her reactions to so many things like the taking of a familiar and the binding of my friends, it all made more sense if I thought that she didn’t want me connecting myself to this world, making myself harder to dislodge.

But I had to remember that she’d made the big sacrifice.  There was no explaining that away.  She cared on some level.

“Heads up,” Rose murmured.

I looked, and I saw a homeless man in a puffy jacket making achingly slow progress through the snow.

When I looked at him with the Sight, though, I saw something else.

In the sliver of his face I could see, I noted no nose.  His mouth had no lips, only obvious, yellowing teeth.  His skin was a bruised green-purple color, his eyes hidden by shadow.  Almost like dessicated corpse given life.

The window beside him shattered.  Rose’s oily black creature pounced from the midst of the flying glass to tackle the big brute.  Long fingers circled its neck.

“Keep moving,” Rose said.

I couldn’t shake the mental image of her sending the black thing after me.  It was eerie in appearance.  If Corvidae was the kind of Bogeyman that preyed on adults, powerful people –white men, if Rose’s accounting was right- then the black strangling thing was a baser kind of monster.  One that would be perfectly at home under a child’s bed or in a dark swamp, waiting for the right foot to be placed down in its reach.

We didn’t get half a block before she was sending Mary out to attack two more bystanders.

I hadn’t even realized they were there before blood was being spilled.

Rose’s expression was hard and unreadable.  What was going through her head?

I didn’t want to be second-guessing my allies when I should have been going after Conquest, but I was.  My head was whirling with questions long before I saw what Rose had wanted to show me.

Then I had more.

“The hell?” I asked.

Streets that should have been straight were curved.

They were shorter, the dimensions warped.

It was even true when I didn’t use the sight.  The snow made it less obvious, shifted to more aggressive patterns to blind me, flakes stinging my eyes, or moving in such a way that I couldn’t notice.

But, all that in mind, the reality was that in both the spirit and the real world, the city was being drawn together in a spiral.

Like spaghetti around a twirled fork.

The fork, I realized, was Conquest’s tower.

He was drawing up the city, altering geography and everything else.  The spirit world was the most obvious victim, and the real world was following suit in its own way.

It was his city.  Now he was restructuring it.

Or, more likely, he was having a minion do it somehow, just like I’d had Evan act as an extension of myself for the purposes of freeing the Hyena.

“What the hell is he doing?”  I asked.

“Giving us less places to hide, while pushing out the monsters from their roosts, driving them out to roam.”

Squeezing us out.

“You think he’s pretending to be stronger than he is?  When he’s doing this?”

“I want to think so.”

“If you’re right, and that’s you’re as in you were, not you are, things might be different now.  Look at this.  Think about the power being spent.”

I took it in.

I looked away, for much the same reason I’d looked away from Corvidae, earlier.  From ‘J. P.’

It was unpleasant to consider the implications.

That Rose was shrugging off the one stipulation I’d made.  That Conquest really was this much stronger.

“It doesn’t change anything,” I said.

“He’s a monster.”

“I’ve committed to the duel.”

“Stay committed.  But let’s do this smart.  Think less about battle plans, more about playing it smart.  Give me time, let me summon more Others.  We can raise the stakes, raise an army, up the strength of what I’m summoning…”

“Until you summon another Midge?” I asked.  “Make another mistake with collateral damage?”

“That was one mistake,” she said.  “My first summoning.  Absolve me of that like I tried to absolve you of guilt for starting the contest.”

I glanced up at the tower.

“Work with me, Blake.”

“I want to,” I said, “But I’m afraid he’s going to get stronger faster than we do.”

Rose didn’t have an answer for that.

I turned away, trudging in the direction the connections were pointing.

Past a husk of a car and a patch of blood that had frozen and been nearly covered by snow.

“Let’s go find Maggie.”

■

Maggie was embroiled in a fight when we arrived.

Rose had made another call I didn’t necessarily agree with.  Maggie wielded the Hyena, a gauntlet on her hand, sporting a very similar design.  The gauntlet served to protect her hand from the worst of the spikes, I assumed.

Three wraiths had her cornered in a looted store.  Floor to ceiling display windows had been shattered, the shelves largely cleaned out, and snow had drifted within.  Maggie was nearly invisible in the gloom, prenaturally pale in the midst of it.  A bit bedraggled.

Three wraiths.

Three monsters.

Rose’s creatures were stronger.  As rescues went, it wasn’t a dramatic one.  Two wraiths were torn apart.

Corvidae intercepted the third, a man that had burned to a crisp, apparently, gripping him by the wrists.  He’d spoken something in french, and then released the spirit.

The spirit flew away as if it had a goal in mind.

I shivered a little.

“You’re alive, Thorburn,” Maggie said, when we reached her.  She was bleeding, and her lips were too red.

“You’re holding my sword,” I replied.

“Our sword,” Evan corrected, hopping forward so he was clear of the folds of my scarf.

“Our sword,” I amended.

“Rose gave me permission,” Maggie said.  “You were unconscious.”

“You could have asked me,” Evan said.  “I could have woken up to say it wasn’t cool.”

Or, I thought, she had you go to sleep so she was free to lend out the weapon.

“How are you managing?” I asked, changing the subject.  As if to make it clear what I was doing, I adjusted my scarf.

“Hoping they aren’t missing me in Jacob’s Bell,” Maggie said.

“Could really do with an explanation of how you slipped away,” I commented.  “But for now, let’s talk about the contest.  Sooner it’s done, sooner you can go back.”

“I’m not complaining,” Maggie said.  She flashed a smile, and there was blood in the spaces between her teeth.  She’d been hit.

It was disconcerting.  For her to be, what, excited, while I was feeling so grim about this?  So guilty?

I felt like all I was doing was suppressing my feelings.

“The perimeter?” Rose asked.

“Having a bit of trouble,” Maggie said.  She wiped at her lip, and her fingers came away crimson with blood.  “Things suddenly picked up about half an hour ago.  I think the Lord is awake, alive and well.”

“Define a ‘bit of trouble’,” Rose said.

“I kind of failed.  It might be a good idea to check upstairs.  See how old Behaim is managing.  Can’t really guard against attacks from all directions when you’re all on your lonesome.”

“Something slipped past you?” I asked.  “They have access to Laird?”

“There’s a guard,” Maggie said, “But yeah, maybe.”

“I asked if you needed help,” Rose said.

“I didn’t when you asked, when I did need help, you weren’t available.  It’s not like I can call you on a cell phone, not really.”

Two people, or a person and a vestige, struggling to do the job that we’d had a hard time doing as a group.

Two people I didn’t necessarily trust at this point.

I wanted to trust them, so much it hurt, but I had too many questions and not enough answers.

“Let’s move,” I said.

We were forced to take the stairs.

“It’s wraiths,” Maggie panted.  “They don’t need to use stairs.”

I redoubled my efforts, taking stairs two at a time, leaving Maggie and the Tallowman behind.

I reached the apartment and kicked the door rather than wait for Maggie to show up with the key.

I rounded the corner at the end of the hall, and I found myself facing Laird, still in the circle.

Pauz was crouched there, grinning, his back to Laird.

Two Wraiths flanked the circle.  The new Other Rose had left behind, a woman with a Glasgow smile and surgical mask pulled away from her face, lay unmoving on the ground, clutching her chest.

“Took you long enough,” Laird said.

“Laird.”

“I’ve been trying to communicate with your imp, despite the fact that you forbade him from speaking.”

Rose and Maggie caught up with us.

Rose’s eye fell on the fallen Other.

Laird held up his implement.

How?

The Wraiths had tossed the thing to him?

“Basic rule,” Laird said.  “When a malevolent being is released from its binding, it goes after the one that bound it.  Isn’t that right, imp?”

Pauz shrugged, but he was grinning.

“I noticed you coming,” Laird said.  “I thought I’d wait for you so I could watch it happen.”

He broke the circle, flinging water across it.

Pauz was free.

Pauz took a step towards me.

Then, a moment later, Pauz was a book again, pages and cord fluttering into place, trapping him, then taking form.

Laird watched as the book hit ground.

“A bluff,” he said.

“We’re better than you think,” I said.

“So am I,” he replied.

He clicked his watch.

A moment later, he was gone.

My heart pounded.

“We lost,” Rose said.  “Down one champion, your friends are out of commission…”

“No,” I said.  “I don’t think this is a loss.”

She looked at me.

“Just the opposite, almost,” I said.  “If we can pull this off…”

“What are you thinking?” Maggie asked.

“It’s time to test my theory on the Behaims, and make the decisive play.”

Void 7.5

The snowstorm raged all around us.  Progress was slow, hampered by weather and the increasingly inconsistent rules of the city’s layout.  We could somehow still get turned around by walking in a straight line, and there were threats everywhere.  Many minor.

We waited while one threat lingered.  It wasn’t one of the minor ones.

A fat man, with two women and a man in his company, occupying a bus shelter when the buses had stopped traveling their routes days ago.  All four wore winter clothes, but they had a demeanor like some of the sketchier homeless I’d run into, once upon a time.  Little details that made me think of meth-zombies, cokeheads, or anorexic people.  There was a kind of look in their eyes, as far as I could make them out, a dark gleam that had a way of working its way into people’s eyes when one single idea dominated their existence.

Except these things were Others.  Their purpose was simple enough.

The fat one carried a dismembered arm, raising it to his mouth periodically to take a bite.

“Ghouls are supposed to be thin,” Rose said.

I heard pages turning.

“I played a video game with ghouls in it once,” Evan said.  “They were a level up from the regular zombies.”

“That’s not what this is,” Rose said.

“It’s just an idea,” Evan said.

“It’s not… damn it, ghouls are supposed to be thin.  The three hanging around him are thin.  Why is that one fat?”

The fat one turned, eyes scanning the curtains of snow that were falling.

“Maybe it isn’t a ghoul,” I said.

“All the other signs are there.  It fits.”

“It’s really not the focus right now.  Assuming it’s a ghoul or it’s ghoul-like, what do we do?  I’d really rather not take the long way around, get lost and run into something else.”

“Ghouls are individuals who’ve interrupted the circle of life and death, usually by eating the dead, coming back from near-death one too many times, or practicing necromancy.”

“Black magic?” I asked.

“Yeah.  Maybe I should amend that to say ‘practicing necromancy badly‘.  Using terms we’re mostly familiar with, they’re individuals who are out of balance.  They’re the spinning plates that are only just hanging on, and that means they need a fine touch to keep going.  They do that with periods of convalescence, like hibernation, and bursts of… hunger is the wrong word.  Life or death voraciousness.  Maddened with a need for sustenance.  More like a rabid dog than human.”

“So they are basically super-zombies,” Evan said.

I heard Rose sigh.

“Sustenance?  Feasting on human flesh,” Maggie added.

“The go-to way, yeah,” Rose replied.  “If they have their wits about them, then they can use the necromancy they knew in life, or they just move between areas with an awful lot of death or life energy.”

“But they mostly manage by eating human flesh,” Maggie said.  “Right?”

“Essentially.  No warning, three hour window to find food or perish, rest for months or years.  Depending on where their personal balance is sitting, they eat either corpses or they scarf down bits of still-living victims they’ve found in isolated spots.”

“Can we not be the still-living victims?” Evan asked.  “I don’t have much meat on me.  Look at me…”

He got out from under my scarf and puffed up.

“I weigh as much as the battery from the remote control, and a lot of that is feathers.”

“I don’t know if that’s a concern.  These guys don’t look maddened with hunger,” I commented.

“The contraction of the city is pushing locals out of their usual haunts,” Rose said.  “They’re probably trying to find their way back, maybe grabbing some food to keep nearby while they’re at it.”

“If that’s the case, shouldn’t they pass?” I asked.

“They’re dead.  They don’t feel the cold, they don’t get tired, the only thing that drives them is a need to gorge themselves with flesh.  They aren’t going to move until they have a reason to move.”

I stared across the road.  My leg was cramping from crouching behind the snowbank.

“We can’t afford to go around,” I said.  “We need to hurry this along, before the window of opportunity disappears.  How do you stop ghouls?”

“Conventional wisdom is that you stave them off by reintroducing them to the cycle of life.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“The go-to answer is menstrual fluids,” Rose said.  “Drawn on their forehead, fed to them, ‘poison’ a weapon with it.

“Huh?” Evan asked.

I glanced at Maggie before I realized what I was doing.

“No sir,” Maggie said, deadpan.

“Damn,” I said.

“There’s one benefit to being a vestige,” Rose said.  “My body doesn’t change.”

“I don’t get it,” Evan said.

“You don’t want to know,” I said.

“I helped against that black demon in the factory.  What could be worse than that?”

“Other options, Rose?”  I asked, ignoring him.

“Some plants are tied to the cycle of death and rebirth.  Holly.”

“We used holly against the Hyena,” Evan said.  “See?  I know stuff.  You can tell me stuff.  No need to leave me out because I’m a kid.”

“No holly near here, as far as I can tell,” I said.  “Not sure how that would work, either.”

“Funereal icons,” Rose said.  I heard her turning a page.  “Either done over the ghoul’s prone body or you can do it from a distance if you have the full name of the ghoul.  Not going to work.  Don’t have any of that.”

“Just tellll me,” Evan said.

Maggie glanced at me.

“I’m not going there,” I said.  “‘You don’t want to know‘ is generally something you should take at face value in this world, he needs to learn that, but he’s not going to learn from me.”

“Coward,” Rose said.  “Come here, Evan.”

“Yes!”

He strutted, wagging his tail-feathers in the general direction of my face before flying down to my hand, which I was holding next to the mirror pendant.

Rose murmured her explanation.

“No.”  Evan said.  “My mom told me about that!  No!  Don’t- What’s wrong with you?”

“Shh,” I said.  “Let’s not get their attention.”

“You make the super zombies drink it?”

“Shh,” I said, again, a little sharper than before.

“There aren’t any other options listed,” Rose said.  “They’re apparently hard to put down, I wouldn’t want to pick a fight.  I think these books assume you’re not a matter of minutes away from dealing with the monster in question.  They figure you’ll be able to ask around or call favors.”

“Damn it,” I said.

“Ugh,” Evan said, then before I could reprimand him, he said, “What about eggs?”

“What?” I asked.

“When my mom told me about that stuff, I remember not getting it, and she said something about it being like chickens laying eggs.  It confused me more.”

“Rose?” I asked.

“You want to egg the cannibalistic monsters?”

“I never liked eggs after that,” Evan added.

“We need to move before they do,” I said.  “We backtrack to the nearest convenience store, grab supplies, then we egg the cannibal super-zombies, including our mysterious obese cadaver, and if that fails, we use weapons instead.  We have your summonings.”

“We do,” Rose said.  “Go.”

It was a ten minute round-trip, extended to fifteen minutes when one tall, slow-moving Other rounded a corner, trudging along, taking its time in disappearing from view.

Cartons of eggs collected, we made our way back, ducking low to hide behind the snowbank as we got near.

Aside from devouring the dismembered limb, the ghouls hadn’t budged.  They sat in the bus stop, not talking, only their heads turning slowly as they searched the area.

I drew June, and used her blade to crack an egg, smearing her with it.  The whites froze in a heartbeat.  Maggie did the same with the Hyena.

I didn’t like her having it, but taking the thing back would mean leaving her unarmed, and I didn’t like that either.

We moved as a pair.

The ghouls noticed us, stirring.  The fat one had been gnawing on the arm, and when he turned his attention to us, I saw the gleam of white fangs stained with blood.  The bone of the arm had been gnawed, a little more pointed.  Maggie wouldn’t necessarily have a problem, but the makeshift knife coupled with his natural reach threatened to let him fight me with more reach.

Moment of truth.

I whipped an egg at the first one to step outside of the bus shelter.  I missed, hitting the edge of the glass enclosure.

The ghoul stopped in its tracks, and the one behind it collided with it.

It was hard to say whether it had worked.

Maggie landed a dead-on hit.

It seemed to startle them more than anything.  Part of it might have been our relative lack of fear.  I imagined ghouls had decades or centuries of experience dealing with prey who were isolated, scared, and more focused on escape than confrontation.  People ran, the ghouls didn’t get tired, and they eventually caught up.

This was unfamiliar territory.

The skinnier male ghoul grasped in my direction, trying to get a grip on my coat, baring his fangs.  I leaned out of the way.  He stumbled forward, and I caught his neck with June.

The wound froze as I cut through flesh.

Maggie took a moment longer with the other ghoul.  Her arm must have been getting tired, I realized.  She circled it, waiting for it to make a mistake, then deftly cut through its knees.

The four glass walls of the bus shelter shattered as Rose’s minions appeared.  The Tallowman, Mary, and ‘J.P.’ Corvidae.

The fat one struck the Tallowman and Mary aside.

Mary didn’t hit the ground.  Somewhere in transit, she became muddled, as if all of her features existed as one amorphous mass, and then she shifted to another form, slipping away from reality, unable to hold herself together.

The fat one stalked toward us.  J.P. Corvidae didn’t get in its way.  Our bogeyman companion stepped back, arms raised, clearly not intending to fight.

Bastard.

I would have done the same, arguably, but it didn’t help matters.

Maggie egged the thing, holding three eggs in one hand and whipping them at him one after the other.

“It’s not really working,” I said.

“I think it’s working a little,” Maggie told me.  She flashed a grin, not taking her eyes off the Other.  “He doesn’t like it.”

The Other stopped in its tracks.

It drew a charm from its pocket.  A necklace or macabre rosary, dangling with finger bones.

It pointed at the ghoul lying on the ground, the one I’d cut with June.

The body moved.

Maggie stepped forward, swinging the sword, taking the head of the ghoul before the undead necromancer could do anything with the corpse.

Without waiting, she swung again, the blade biting hard into the pavement, and she took the ghoul’s head.

The braver of the two remaining creatures stared at us.  The fat one, still bearing stubble on its face.

“If you attack,” I said, “We take you to pieces.  If you run, I’ll come after you and take you to pieces.  Can you communicate?”

It nodded.

“Do you know any critical names, here?”

It shook its head.

A rumble caught me off guard.  My head turned.

A car approached.  I felt a tertiary sort of connection to the occupant.

The thing hadn’t taken advantage of my distraction.  Maggie still had it at swordpoint, an egg held in her free hand.

“Your choice,” I said, one eye on the car that was struggling to make it through snow that was piled higher than the car’s underside.  “Can’t let you continue like this.  Going after people.  You choose.  You go after one of the enemies I designate and then return to me for further instructions and possible binding and execution, you agree never to harm another living soul, or you die.”

“Bound for future use,” Maggie murmured.

“Or you take on a convenient form for later deployment, I do you a favor in turn, and we negotiate terms of your release after the fact.”

It held up two fingers.

“Second choice?” I asked.  “Agree never to harm another living soul?”

“I swear,” it managed.  Even from ten feet away in the blistering cold, I could smell the breath.  It was the aroma I might expect from a coffin being opened.

I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.  It was the least advantageous to me.

All the same…

“Go,” I said.

“Don’t feel bad,” Evan told the ghoul.  “This is a lot better than the other idea they were talking about.”

It turned and left, half-running, half-jogging.

The fourth ghoul turned to go.  Maggie stepped forward, swinging the sword with both hands.  She took its head.

I met her eyes.

“It was a danger too, and weaker ghouls can’t communicate on that level.”

“What was that thing I just talked to?” I asked.

“Process of elimination says it was a greater ghoul.”

I sighed.

My eye was on the car that was struggling to make its way down the road.

“The eggs totally worked, didn’t they?” Evan asked.

I wasn’t so sure they had, but it was hard to say.  Maybe the other stuff worked because it was human, and the ghouls were closer to humans than not.  Were eggs too far removed?

“Maybe,” I said.  “Come on.”

Ty, Tiff, Alexis and Fell were out of commission, out of commission, injured and dead, respectively.  If there was any benefit to that, it was that it was easier to operate as a group.  Me and Maggie.  Evan was easily hidden, and Rose existed on a different plane, easily brought along with a mirror.

I approached the car, which was struggling more and more.  The snow here was higher than it had been on the major streets.  I didn’t recognize the woman within the vehicle, even if I could make a guess about the connections.

“Can you see it?” I asked.

“I can,” Maggie said.  “She knows him.”

Maggie was holding the sword at the ready.

“No,” I said.

A small smile crossed my face.

This was ideal.

We approached the car from the side, and somewhere along the line, Maggie managed to hide the sword altogether.

Sure beat a poster tube.

The woman startled a bit as I knocked on the window.

She stared at me.  Did I have blood on my face?  Had she picked up on what happened with the ghouls?

The window rolled down.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Stuck?”  I asked.

“I don’t need to go far,” she said.  “Just that house over there.  If I could get into the garage, I’d be in the clear.  I don’t want to be on the street if the plow comes.”

“We can give you a bit of a push,” I said.  “Do you have a shovel?”

A smile crossed the woman’s face.  “In my trunk!  Let me do it-”

“No,” I said.  “You stay behind the wheel, get ready to hit the gas.  We can handle it.”

We walked around to the back of the car while she rolled her window up.

“Volunteering me?” Maggie asked.

“Objections?”

“If I wanted to do work, I’d be doing something different with my life.”

“Five minutes of work,” I said.

She rolled her eyes.

I beckoned the Tallowman.

Between hat and scarf, his freakish nature was largely hidden.  Only his face – a waxy orb where he should have had an eyeball, and tallow filling the scar around the eye socket, where something broad and crude had been used to destroy the contents.

He moved slowly.  I could understand that, feeling how hard the wax in my chest was.  I used the shovel to get the worst of the snow away from under the front bumper.

Three of us pushing, one inhumanly strong, and we managed to get the car moving.

She’d already opened the garage, and used her momentum to glide straight in.

She was beaming when she stepped out.

“Oh my god, thank you,” she said.  “Whoo, I should not have gone out.  Nothing in the stores.”

“Pretty brave,” I said.

“Are you in a rush, or do you want to come inside and have a bite, or warm up, at least?”

“I can’t speak for my companion here, but I’d love to take you up on that,” I said.

“Yeah,” Maggie said.  “Please.”

“I’m Joanna, by the way.”

“Hi Joanna,” Maggie said.  “I’m Maggie.”

“Blake,” I said.

A moment’s concerns were banished when Joanna smiled and led the way inside.

We were led into the garage.  I lagged behind.

“Ev,” I murmured.

He squirmed his way out from my scarf, flying to my hand.  I positioned myself so I wasn’t in anyone’s line of sight, standing by the garage door.

“You know the drill,” I said.

“What if-”

The others were already at the door.  A moment’s delay and I’d look suspicious.

“Improvise,” I cut him off.  I moved my hand, and Evan took flight.

When I’d drawn close enough, Joanna closed the garage.

In the dwindling light that passed beneath the garage door, I could see the ward carved into the doorframe.  A stylish pattern, made clearer by the stain that had been applied to the wood.

Craning my head, I took it all in, examining the connections.

Nothing too strong in the house itself.  It wasn’t a demesne.

“Alarm rune,” Maggie murmured in my ear.

Perfect.

I stepped across it, and I felt the connection pop into being.

He knew, now.

There were a variety of clocks on the wall in the bent hallway that extended between the garage door and the front door.

I saw a picture of the woman with Duncan Behaim.

“Are you married?” I asked.

“He’s my fiancé.”

The fiancé was on his way.

“Police officer,” I observed.

“A damn good one,” Joanna said.

“With an obsession over clocks,” I said.

“Yes.  Everyone notices.  Everyone has their eccentricities,” she said.  “Can I offer you anything?”

“No thank you,” I said.

Maggie shook her head.

“Any idea why he has that particular eccentricity?” I asked.

“None at all.  I think it’s cute,” she said.  “Where were you two going?”

“We’re looking for someone,” I said.  “Not a hundred percent sure where to look.  He’s proving hard to track down.  He’s the police chief in the town I recently moved to.”

“No,” she said.

“You know who I’m talking about?  Is your fiancé Laird Behaim?”

“Laird is his uncle.  A whole contingent of my Duncan’s family just showed up a few days ago.  It got to be too much, so they changed over to a hotel room.”

I resisted asking where.

“Family can be hard,” I said.

“I’m glad to deal with family,” she said.  “Makes me feel connected to him, if that makes any sense.”

“I can sort of understand that,” I said.

Joanna smiled.  “Do you mind?  I’m going to make some malted hot chocolate.  Offer stands, if you want anything.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

She rounded the corner to the kitchen, leaving me feeling very out of place in Duncan Behaim’s living room.

Maggie seemed to be adapting better.

“What are you doing?” Rose asked.

“Testing the hypothesis,” I said.

“Dangerous way to go about it,” Rose said, just under her breath.

“Have to take risks,” Maggie said.  “Keeps things exciting, if nothing else.”

“That’s not exactly my perspective,” I said.

“Nor mine,” Rose said.

“I do think that everything has a price…” I said.

I saw a connection flash.  Our hostess was talking to Duncan.

“…And a bit of risk can be the price of opportunity,” I said.  “She-”

“She just contacted him,” Maggie finished for me.

I nodded.

“What now?” Rose asked.

“Think.  Laird slipped away a bit ago, using his pocketwatch.  Duncan isn’t using the same means to get here faster, when someone he cares about is at risk.”

The phone call finished.

“He’s forsworn, isn’t he?” Rose asked.

“That could be it,” I said.  “Could be I’m right.”

Joanna stepped into the room.  “This is embarrassing, but I just realized I forgot I promised to mail something to my work as soon as I got home.  Are you okay right there while I go handle that?  I’ll be right back.”

Running.  Duncan had told her to scram.

“I’d feel a little strange, being in your house when you’re not around,” I said.  “Should we go?”

“No, please, stay as long as you like.”

She’d been told to keep us here.  Now she was caught between two instructions.  Had he communicated the severity of the situation?

“It’s fine,” I said.  “If it’s an inconvenience having us, we could head out and get in touch with Laird another time.  We did our good deed for the day.”

“It’s no inconvenience, really.  Duncan’s going to be back any minute-”

“Oh, I definitely don’t want to be sitting in your living room without you there,” I said.  “He might be surprised and shoot me.”

True on both counts.

“It’s fine.  Really.”

Maggie chimed in, “How long have you been together?”

“I really should go-”

“It’s fine, Joanna,” Duncan commented, from the direction of the garage.

Duncan entered the living room.

I stood from the couch.  “Hi, Duncan.”

“Mr. Thorburn.  I can’t say how surprised I am to see you here.”

“I’m here all the same,” I said.  “Enjoying Joanna’s hospitality.”

I saw him frown a little.  “You offered them something to eat or drink?”

“I did.”

A light smile touched my face as I met Duncan’s eyes.  He was frowning just a little as he heard that.

Hospitality.

Few sins were as egregious as a breach of genuine hospitality.  To harm a guest in one’s own home, or for the guest to harm the host.

“Can I ask you to go upstairs, Joanna?”  Duncan asked.

“I want to know what’s going on, first.”

Duncan met my eyes.

“You have my permission to tell her,” I said.

He started to open his mouth.

“-But I’d reserve the right to tell her about you in return,” I said.

His mouth closed.

“Duncan?”

“Go upstairs, Joanna.”

She didn’t move.

“I want to see Laird,” I said.  “Call him.  This can be resolved neatly.  No mess, no collateral damage.”

His hand moved over to his gun.

His other hand toward his pocket.

“Duncan?” Joanna asked.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “We’re even.  You want to spoil that, draw that gun, I’m going to have to balance the scales again.”

He didn’t budge.

I continued, “I’m not even with Laird.  Not with my cousin’s blood on his hands.”

I could see Joanna react to that, visibly paling over the seconds the silence stretched on.

He lowered his hand to his gun.

“Stop,” Maggie said, before he could draw it.  She stepped out from behind me, holding a gun in her right hand, already raised and pointed at Duncan.  Fell’s gun.

I wondered if Joanna would say anything about the gauntlet, but I supposed the gun had her attention.

“Oh god,” she said.

“Two fingers, draw it, place it on the ground,” Maggie told Duncan.

Duncan placed his handgun on the floor.

“I don’t suppose you want this gun, Blake?”

“I don’t know how to use it,” I said.  “He does.  I’d rather not give him the chance to use the thing against me.”

“Whatever.  Kick it toward me, Dunc.”

Duncan did.

Maggie kicked the gun under an armchair.

I spoke, “Duncan, we have more firepower, right this moment, right here, than you do.  You can make the first move, break this tentative truce we’re both benefiting from, and I’m betting we’ll still beat you.  I’m offering to let you balance the scales.  Call in help.  Call Laird out of hiding.  Call your backup.”

“This was a damn shitty way to handle this,” Duncan said.  “Involving my fiancee?”

“She’s not involved yet,” I said.  “Not in that particular sense.”

“I’d say I’m pretty involved,” Joanna said, her eyes fixated on the barrel.

“Exactly my point.  You don’t have a damn clue what’s going on, do you?” I asked.

“Barely.”

“If that,” I said.  “Duncan… I’m trying to be civil.  I’m trying to be fair.  I did Joanna a favor, she invited me in.  Maggie didn’t threaten anyone until you touched your gun.  If you play ball, call Laird, and stay out of things, I won’t touch you or your fiancee.  You walk away from this, you can concoct some misdirection to reassure her…”

I could see her expression change.

“You know it’s not that simple,” Duncan told me.

“It isn’t,” I said.  “It’s your choice.”

He bowed his head a little, staring down at the ground.  Maggie’s gun didn’t even seem to concern him.

“Okay.”

“Good man,” I said.

“I’ll need to step into the kitchen.”

I nodded.

He rounded the corner to head to the kitchen, a cramped space with dark wood cabinets and clocks above each door, each clock a painted plate with clockwork built into it.  I followed to keep him in my line of sight.

I was watching.  I didn’t miss it.

The egg timer disappeared as he walked past it.  A little sleight of hand magic to go along with the practice.

A part of me wondered if he’d used that same sleight of hand to slip a potential criminal something more incriminating.

I wasn’t concerned.  We all had our roles to play here.

“Use the egg timer,” I said.  “Why don’t you pull the same trick Laird did to slip out of the circle we had him in?  Can’t you stop time?”

He glared at me.

But he didn’t stop time.

“Why, Duncan?” I asked, my voice low.  “That kind of magic only affects you.  It’s far from doing something negative to me and breaching hospitality, if you slip away.  Joanna isn’t watching.  You could grab her and get her to safety…”

“Shut up, Thorburn,” he said.

“Tell me it’s because you’re forsworn, even.”

“I think you and I both know it isn’t that,” he said.

“Ah,” I said.  “Then get rid of the timer and make the call.”

He did, tossing the egg timer into the sink.  He dialed.  “Uncle?”

I waited.  Duncan gave directions.

“Blake, Maggie,” Duncan added, in the midst of the stream of instructions, “Plus the mirror and-”

I hung up the phone, jabbing the button on the receiver to hang up the corresponding cordless phone.

“Back to the living room,” I said.

The gradual compression of the city was more intense than I’d imagined.  Laird made good time.

Good enough time that I was left with doubts, even after the near-confirmation from Duncan.

This was it.  Two big steps to walk away from all of this in essentially one piece.  Step one.

Laird.

The man arrived in the neighborhood, and he brought the cavalry.

No sooner had he arrived than a dozen dolls did too.  Each squad with a Behaim kid at the helm.  I watched out the window, staying close to the curtain so I wasn’t visible.  Seventeen or eighteen individuals in all, nearly impossible to make out in the heavy snow.

“If you promise to stay out of this and do me no harm, I’ll let you and Joanna go,” I said.

“If you have to hold on to us, it’s harder for you.”

“Your call,” I said.

He pursed his lips.

“Come on, Duncan.”

“Can you let Joanna and only Joanna go?  She can go upstairs, out of harm’s way.”

I glanced at Joanna.  She sat on the arm of the armchair, both hands around her mug.  She looked up and nodded.

I couldn’t trust ordinary humans.

Then again, she liked Duncan, of all people.  How normal could she be?

But it was a kindness, and I was starting to think I needed to be more kind, especially after my last visit with Mrs. Lewis.

“Go, Joanna.”

She fled, running up the stairs.

Laird was approaching.

First Laird, then Conquest.

The dolls were a complication.

Here we went.  Laird was drawing closer-

And in the moment my attention was on the world outside the window, Duncan moved.

Grabbing the cup of hot chocolate, flinging it at Maggie, all before she could shoot.

She barely flinched.

But Duncan’s hand reached forward, across the gap, his wrist catching the very edge of the barrel, pushing the gun to one side.

He turned it into a grip, grabbing Maggie by the wrist and waistband and heaving her into the air.  Before she had her bearings, he was flinging her, hurling her into the armchair.

The armchair titled, and he was reaching for his gun.

I closed my eyes.

Stepped on his hand, walking, the position of things fixed in my mind.

I kicked the gun further out of reach, sending it skittering along hardwood

My balance was gone in the next moment as I was tackled at the knees.  I fell hard.

Duncan hit me, two clean hits to the face before I could bring my arms up.  Then he was on top of me.

I had a moment to wonder if Conquest had passed on that tidbit.  The weakness, the fear.

Fight or flight kicked in at full force, and it was all the wrong instincts at the wrong moments.  Freezing up, recoiling when I should be attacking.  He was bigger, stronger.

“Duncan!” Maggie shouted.

Duncan whirled, and he hauled me around to serve as a human shield.

I fought, rather ineffectually.

“Blake!  Stop squirming!  I can hit him if you stop!”

I couldn’t, not really.

An awful lot of bad memories, inarticulate.

I did go limp, so Duncan had to fight to keep me upright and serving as a shield.

I could see Laird outside the window, looking in.  The golden pocketwatch raised…

Evan fluttered past me a heartbeat later, followed by a blast of cold air.

The scene had changed.  The main window at the front of the house had been shattered.  Two monsters advanced on Laird.  The tallowman and the black oil strangler.

Duncan wasn’t holding me.  He was a step away, pistol in hand.  Maggie was on the ground, disarmed, holding one both hands to her face.

I felt a surge of victory.

I’d been right.

Perception.

The Behaims didn’t alter time itself.  That would be insane.  It would require more power than they could feasibly manipulate, to alter reality on a fundamental, core level.

They manipulated other people’s perceptions of time.

The coffee shop, I hadn’t been frozen.  I’d considered it odd, had wondered why the staff hadn’t noticed me.  But they’d been included in the midst of it too.  Bending perceptions, tweaking details, so I could sit there in a kind of unwitting stasis, completely tuned out.

The circle around the house, it was a trick, a vast, complex trick.  I’d seen two very different images when viewing it in the real world and with my Sight.

The way Duncan had turned back time at the station… I’d sat there in my cell, thinking I was waiting for events to play out, for rescue from the Knights to come, but I was really just revising memories to experience the morning all over again, while catching up to the real present day.

Had he turned back time once more, I might have done the same thing, or something close to it, not taking any action until the mid- or late afternoon.

A third time?  Maybe not until the late evening.  I would have run out of time, passed my midnight deadline without any attempts at capturing the eraser demon.

I had little doubt they could really manipulate time, but it was undoubtedly expensive, a real investment.

Shutting my eyes and being oblivious helped against the little tricks.

Against the big ones?  Laird’s use of the golden pocketwatch?  Keeping Evan out of the way, ready to break the spell with his natural inclination to freedom and escape, Rose prepared to break the window and let my favorite bird in the world in.

Laird was fending off the Others, falling back and preparing something while the dolls stepped forward.

Duncan had his back to me.

I drew June.

I struck him in the hip, hard, with June reversed, so I was striking with the blunt end.

He screamed.

I struck his hand, knocking the gun free.

He stopped struggling when I moved the hatchet blade to his throat.

Maggie, still holding her face, blood seeping through the segments of the gauntlet, struggled to her feet.

“Grab the gun,” I said, my voice low.

Her head was bowed, and I saw a glimpse of something inhuman in her expression when she changed hands, shaking the blood free of her gauntlet.

She was possessed?  Was that what was going on with her?

She’d let something in?

A moment later, she had the Hyena in hand.  She held the point to Duncan’s throat.

“Or I’ll take the gun,” I said.  “That works too.”

I grabbed the gun from the floor.

Laird saw me.

Golden pocketwatch raised…

Theatrics, show.  Rose and I had drawn those conclusions at the start.

I lowered my eyes, closing them.  I heard Evan fly past me.  I’d lost no more than three seconds.  Laird had moved.

I heard Evan pass by twice in close succession.

I knew it was costing Laird more than it was costing Evan and me.

I moved, putting my back to the wall by the window.

“Rose,” I said, hoping there was a large enough pane of glass for her to speak through.

“Yeah?”

“We should wrap this  up.  Where’s Corvidae?”

“I told him to stop Duncan.”

“Did you tell him how?”

“No.”

I thought for a second.  “Go upstairs, now.  Stop him.”

I heard a faint footstep from Rose.

The wind whistled into the house through the open window.

“Are you okay, Maggie?” I asked.

“He hit me.  He pistolwhipped me.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, all things considered.”

“Good,” I said.  “Stay alert.  Time to end this.  Laird!”

My holler carried.

“Thorburn!” he answered.

“I’m under the impression that Rose is upstairs with Duncan Behaim’s wife-to-be and a particular Other.  I didn’t want this, but it’s happening!  Stop fighting!”

There was only silence.  Everything had gone still.

Had Rose’s Others listened to me?

Handy.

“What Other?” Laird asked.

“I don’t think you’d know him,” I said.  “Let me reduce this to a very simple question.  What are your priorities!?”

“Priorities?”

“If this goes any further, people will get hurt.  Duncan Behaim might lose someone precious to him!”

I heard a sound from Duncan.

“Shh,” Maggie said.

“Not death,” I said.  “Something worse.  She’ll be lost to him forever, in a particularly twisted way.  The Other that does this… it’s been mistaken for a demon from time to time.”

“Corvidae,” Laird said.

I felt a chill.

Well, he had access to the same books.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Your call.  Do you want to carry out this favor for Conquest and watch your nephew lose everything precious to him, or do you want to worm out of it, do me one favor, and let all this end?”

“One doesn’t disappoint Lords,” Laird said.  “I think you’re framing that in a pretty skewed way.”

“What does it come down to, Laird?  A grab at power, or family?  Your kid, nieces and nephew are here.  Are you going to tell them that when the chips are down, you’re going to choose-”

Evan fluttered by.

I’d barely lost a half-second there.  I couldn’t see the watch, and the trick was losing cachet.  I grinned.

“…status and the power grab?  You can stop trying, Laird.  It’s not working anymore.  Not really.”

“I think I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“It’s a simple choice.  Family or power?”

“Family is power,” Laird said.  “And corrupt powers make for a broken family, as the Thorburn line has demonstrated so well.”

“Sounds like you’re dodging the question.  I guess you can’t admit to your kid that you don’t give a damn about him.”

“No, Thorburn, that isn’t it at all.  I’m buying time.  Even-”

Evan fluttered by.

I heard gunshots and flinched.

“…Damn.  Even small amounts for exorbitant prices, like that.”

“Pretty stupid, firing a gun with Duncan at swordpoint here.”

“Don’t hurry to use up your bargaining chips, Thorburn,” Laird called out.  “Your situation isn’t as favorable as you think.”

I remained silent.

“If you want to peek your head out and see, you’ll get the picture.  I swear no harm will come to you from us.”

I did.

My heart sank.

The plan was fucked.  Laird was right.  Even knowing how to deal with it, I’d let him buy time.  Reinforcements had arrived.

Conquest stood in the swirling snow, tall among the various dolls and young Behaims, triumphant over the crumpled bodies of Rose’s summonings.

Void 7.6

“I do believe this will end here,” Conquest said.  His voice, inhuman as it was, carried.

“I’m hoping it won’t!” I had to raise my own voice to be heard over the wind and distance.  It was hard to tell with the snow covering everything and the confusing effect of the snowfall itself, but I was pretty sure they were standing in the middle of the street.  Half the street, a lawn, and a bit of house separated us.

“I offered you a peek,” Laird called out.  “You might want to duck back behind cover before you’re no longer peeking and you’re staring.”

I did.

“Conquest is here?”  Maggie asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

We could say his name now.  We wouldn’t be forming any connection and cluing him into anything he didn’t already know.

“Okay, well, we knew he might come,” Maggie said.

“I’d hoped for more time,” I said.  “We need to take down Laird first.  This mixes things up.”

“Just a bit.”

Rose appeared in the glass window of a cabinet.  “Corvidae didn’t get a chance to do anything.  He was ready to, but it didn’t go that far.”

I nodded.  “Conquest is here.”

“We don’t have Laird?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

“Well put,” I said.

I felt connections shift, heard the muffled crunch of footsteps on snow, and called out, “Stay put, Laird!”

Silence and stillness followed.

“Seems we have a bit of a standoff,” Laird said.

“Seems so,” I answered.  “A bit like bank robbers with hostages, isn’t it?”

“I was thinking something along those lines,” Laird said.

Cold air flowed into the room through the shattered window.  Duncan’s house thrummed with the furnace working in overdrive.

“Does that make you the hostage negotiator, Laird?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Laird said.

Meaning no.  I’d called him out on whether he’d choose power or family first.  He had his kid, nieces and nephew with him, and everything he said mattered.  Being careless and throwing away Duncan’s life could look careless.  But he couldn’t commit to anything either.  Not with the lord of Toronto looming just behind him.

He’d cornered himself in a way.  Us too, but the situation he’d put himself in was the leverage I was most interested in.

If he decided on the full-on offensive, then he risked Duncan dying, he risked losing the trust of his family.  They’d probably get me in the process and win the fight, but would he do something?

He’d come to Toronto to bail Duncan out.  He was willing to use his family as pawns, but he hadn’t done anything to make me believe he didn’t care about them on some level.

When the chips were down, did he value reputation and power more, or did he value family?

I had to be strategic here, use what I had.

How did this play out?

Laird could give up, too cold and unable to take action, Conquest could lose patience.

The former put Conquest at the helm, the latter put Conquest and Laird at odds.  They might even fight.

It was more likely that they had tricks up their sleeves.

I heard more snow crunching.

“Stay put, Laird!”  Maggie called out.  “I will put a sword through this man’s throat!”

“I’m not moving,” Laird said.  “Sending the kids around to watch the exits.  I’ve ordered them not to enter or try anything.”

“Call them back,” I said.

“Too late,” he told me.

Damn.

“I know how that goes,” I said.  “You can tell them that, but you signal another, or you write it down.”

“No,” Laird replied.  “I don’t want them trying and screwing it up.  I’d rather have control over how this plays out.”

I considered.

“Okay,” I said, I couldn’t peek out, so I looked at Duncan instead.  “Makes sense.  It’s also a convenient way to get rid of them so you can pull something they wouldn’t like, isn’t it?”

“You’re so invested in finding something evil in what I’m doing.  Have you considered, Thorburn, that I might be right?  That you and your family are a stain on this world and we’re all better off without you?”

“So you want to hand us over to Conquest and let him sic demons on the world?  How is that better?”

“You tell me, Thorburn.  You started this contest, and Conquest has bent the city to its knees as a result, innumerable people have been hurt or killed, you’ve set two peaceful groups of practitioners against one another, assaulted a police station, and led this city into at atmosphere of fear, violence and confusion.”

“It’s got to be better than what happens if he gets what he wants.”

“You had a plan, didn’t you?  You weighed the risks, you made a gamble, there are elements you haven’t broadcasted to the rest of us?” Laird asked.  “Is it so hard to believe that I could do the same thing?”

“A scheme?” I asked.  “You’re admitting you’re scheming against Conquest with him standing right there?”

“Not a scheme.  A deal.  I came here to arrange for Duncan’s safety.  That wasn’t my sole reason for coming.  I was and remain interested in the long-term safety of Jacob’s Bell and Toronto.  I had a discussion with the Lord of the City, and we made arrangements for just about everyone’s long-term benefit.”

“Except mine, I assume,” I said.

“That’s why I said ‘just about’.  I don’t know what would happen to you.  You’re a bit of an enigma, you and Rose.”

I frowned.

“Surrender, Blake,” Laird said.  “Just… give up.  Stop making things worse.”

I stared down at the ground.

“I’ve stopped some pretty fucked up monsters,” I said.  “Tried with some others.”

“Maybe, but you’ve dragged your friends into this.  You dragged Fell into it, and he died as a result.  You dragged that little ghost boy into this, and I don’t think he deserves to face down the kind of ugliness we both know your family deals in.”

“Like you’re better?  You sent those kids after me at the police station.”

“I won’t say I haven’t made mistakes here and there, but I’m looking after my family in the long term.”

“Putting yourself in charge of Jacob’s Bell in the process.”

“Trying to, yes.  You’re trying to make this a choice between one or the other.  Save Duncan or take power.  I think they’re one and the same.  Intertwined.  Can you confidently tell me you’re bettering the lives of your friends and acquaintances here?”

Laird was building on his dream, striving for some distant goal, becoming Lord, putting his family on the map.  My dream?  My goal?  When I floundered, trying to put my thumb on it, I kept coming back to a mental picture of the place I’d dreamed about.  The place Ms. Lewis had called my refuge, my hope.  It was the place I wanted to be, the place I wanted to reach when all this was said and done.  I fought, in part, because I wanted to get to the point where I could do that.

Get on my bike, get away from it all.  Find a place where I had peace and a nice view.

My friends hadn’t been there.

“You aren’t answering me,” Laird called out.  “Is it because you can’t answer?  Or are you pulling something?”

“Does it matter?” I called out.

“No,” he said.  I thought I heard a note of amusement in his tone.  “It doesn’t.  I’ll be right here, our metaphorical hostage negotiator.”

Conquest was quiet.  The dolls were still.  Maggie still held Duncan at sword-point, and Rose occupied the shard of window beside me.

My friends hadn’t been there, was that because I felt, deep down, that Laird was right?  That I wasn’t a positive force in their lives?

“Rose,” I said, lowering my voice so Laird wouldn’t   “How much did you tell Conquest?”

“You’re wondering if he told Laird this?”

“Or overheard or something.”

“Nothing this specific.  I told him about your hangups, and some observations about your character.  He came to this on his own, I think.”

“Okay,” I said.

“He’s not getting to you, is he?  This garbage isn’t hitting the mark?”

“It is,” I said.  “He’s partially right.”

“The diabolist sees the light,” Duncan commented, his voice low.  “Could it be a miracle?”

“Shh,” Maggie said.  “This thing isn’t easy to hold.”

I looked at Maggie and Duncan.  She still covered part of her face, and the sword did look hard to hold with one hand.

Rose spoke, her voice gentle, “Focus, Blake.  We went into this with a plan.”

“The plan is out,” Maggie said.  “It was simple.  We get Laird, we use Laird to screw over Conquest.  Now Conquest is here.”

“We have options,” Rose said.  “We came into this with a strategy.  So did they.  Let’s be smart about it, plan, counterplan.  You can’t get fucking down in the dumps because they’re attacking your character and Evan isn’t around to stand up for you.”

I grit my teeth.

“Isadora called you a warrior,” Rose said.  “Your friends bled to get you back in the game.  Don’t just sit there and take Laird’s word for it.  Fight.  You made promises to a lot of people.  All the people you respect in the midst of this, Fell, Evan, Maggie, hopefully me, you gotta keep going for our sakes.”

“That wasn’t a question,” I said.  “I can fight and do justice while feeling crappy for letting things get to this point.”

“I don’t think you can,” she said.  “Dealing with the family, I learned how distracting feeling horrible could be.”

“Take it from me, if you frame it right, feeling like shit can be a good motivator,” I said.  Before she could argue further, I asked, “Corvidae is upstairs?”

“J.P.?  Yes.”

“Got anything else to summon?”

“Not really.  A few of the ones I tried to summon were off on other errands.  A few more felt like Midges, or the text was iffy enough I wasn’t sure if they were real demons or not.”

I nodded.

We needed to win with the assets we had right here.

“How does Corvidae work?” I asked.

“Strictly physical objects or people.  Switches the connections around.  Things and people find their way to new owners, but old attachments linger.  Emotional ties…”

“We need Laird, we have Duncan.  Is it possible Corvidae could swap one for the other?”

“I don’t think it works that way, and there’s a conspicuous lack of information in the book about practitioners using Corvidae to their own benefit.”

“Radiation?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something like radiation,” Rose said.  “There has to be a reason people don’t use Corvidae to hook them up with their crushes and unattainable loves.  Besides, I don’t think anyone owns Laird, and it’s a transfer of ownership, even with loved ones.”

I nodded.  No using the magpie man to trade one hostage for another.

“I’m glad you’re thinking, Blake,” Rose said, “But I don’t think the answer is as easy as that.”

I nodded.

“We have the Hyena,” Maggie said.

“If I release it, I think Evan will have command of it,” I said.

“I know how goblins operate,” Maggie said.  “Asking me to be your champion and then giving the goblin beast to Evan isn’t good strategy.”

“Let me rephrase.  If I release it, Evan will have command of it, circumstances allowing,” I told her.

“Cold,” Maggie said.

“I made promises,” I said.

“Still cold.  You sortaowe me one, after I’ve come all this way.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “If I was certain I knew who you were.”

She snapped her head around, staring at me.  “Huh?”

I met her eye, the other one covered by her hand, blood leaking down her arm.  It looked like it hurt.

I could have asked her to lower her hand, to give me a better look at her eye, where Duncan had clocked her, but there was a very good chance that doing so might mean I had one less ally here and one more enemy.

“Nevermind.  I’m getting distracted from the subject at hand,” I said.  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No kidding,” Maggie said.  “Are you losing it?”

The question sounded so natural, but the fact that it was a question and not a statement only added to my doubt.

“You’re only now starting to doubt him?” Duncan asked.

“Hush,” Maggie said.  She rested the tip of the sword on Duncan’s collarbone, the sword’s point pushing against his skin to create a faint depression.  The smallest push could break the skin and a more serious push could slide the blade right into windpipe, artery or jugular.

“Laird’s an augur,” I said.  “He can see the future.  Now that we know the time magic is mostly bullshit and bullshitting, I’m suspicious that the ‘seeing the future’ thing is one of their more costly activities.  I’m not sure how it works, but he might be working out the best plans of attack.”

I watched Duncan as I said it, and I saw his expression change just a bit.  Not a smile, not a frown, but a very neutral tug of the corner of the lips, out to either side.

I wished I knew why, but it was good to know that I’d provoked some reaction from him.  I made a mental note.

“While I’m brainstorming, we have another option,” Rose said.  “Well, we have two, but one you’re more likely to consider.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“June.  We can use June.”

“How?”

“Let her go.  It’s her medium.”

“You mean we…”

“Same we did with Leonard.  One last expenditure of power.”

“Leaves Blake unarmed,” Maggie commented.

“Yeah,” I said.  “But I see where Rose is coming from.  If we don’t get out of this in one piece, then there’s no point to holding on to June.”

I felt the weight of June in my hand.

Neither Rose nor Maggie said anything.

Out there, in the midst of the snow, I heard Laird talking.  From the one-sided nature of the conversation, I suspected he was on the phone.

“What’s the second idea?” I asked.

“We let Pauz free.”

I didn’t move.

“No objection?”

“I’m waiting for you to elaborate,” I said.  “You wouldn’t just suggest this out of nowhere.  You probably considered the objections I’d raise and came up with answers.  What’s-”

Music.

Loud, throbbing music cutting through the whistle of the wind.  The bass was turned up too high, the entire thing undercut by the hiss of static, a radio station that was tuned slightly off.

“Car stereo,” I said.

We’d taken too long to deliberate, and they were making their first move.

The music stopped.  It was only eerie silence.

I glanced over my shoulder, and saw the same scene as before, but Laird wasn’t there, and the car on the street had its headlights on.

“Maggie, draw the gun,” I said.  “I need the Hyena.”

“It’s just over there.  Pass it to me,” she said, “Take the sword.”

I glanced over my shoulder again, making sure I wasn’t putting myself in the line of fire, then hurried over.

I grabbed the gun from the ground and reversed it for her, as was my habit, learned over many hours of handyman work.  Our attention split between Duncan and the possible threat outside, we fumbled a bit, but Duncan didn’t try anything.

Then Laird’s soundtrack started playing.

Words in Arabic, punctuated by a soundtrack of ticks, tocks, and audible gear shifts.

“Fucker,” I said.  I raised my voice to be heard.  “Laird!”

He didn’t respond.

“Laird, you fucker!  This isn’t in Duncan’s interests!”

“You said it yourself,” Rose commented.  “The Behaim family peeks at the future.  You’re dealing with a hostage negotiator who can see the outcomes of his actions.”

“Or make an educated guess, at the very least,” Duncan said.

“Quiet,” Maggie said.

“Or what?  You can cut me a little with the sword, but the gun is either fired or it isn’t.  There isn’t a lot of middle ground.”

Maggie kicked him in the head.  Duncan toppled from his kneeling position, hard.

“Or that,” she said.

Duncan didn’t move, hand to his mouth.

The music was ongoing, building in tempo.

I covered my ears with one hand and the wrist of the hand that held June.

As defenses went, it was weak.

“Rose,” I said.  “Let the Hyena loose.  Order it to obey Evan and us.  Hit the car.”

“Hyena!”  Rose raised her voice.  “The seventh-youngest Thorburn bound you, and the seventh-youngest Thorburn bids you to listen!  Accept our order, obey Evan Matthieu, the ghost and the bird, agree to do us no harm.  Do this and you may step forth, wreak havoc, strike down our enemies!”

The sword began to come undone, twisting in my grip.

I heaved it through the window, spinning hilt over blade.

I could only see bits in my peripheral vision as I ducked back behind cover.  I could see the lighting in the living room change, as though a heavy cloud had passed over the sun on a sunny day, but it was overcast, and the shadow was thicker, deeper, and harbored a fair bit of darkness inside it.

“Corvidae,” I said.  “Stall for now, try to find a good opportunity to use him if you can.”

Rose didn’t respond.  She shouted something I couldn’t make out.  A line in another language.

Glass broke somewhere upstairs.

A body landed in the front yard.  Corvidae, almost the same as I’d seen him earlier, but he wore a coat.

“Corvidae, guard us!” Rose ordered.

“Not where my talents lie,” Corvidae commented.

“Deal with it!” Rose called out.

The Sister’s dolls advanced across the front yard.  I saw a glimpse of the Hyena assaulting them, biting and tossing them free, before he changed direction, moving for another target.

I could see the wounds, the elemental energy bleeding forth.

Conquest passed into my field of view as he stepped back, both hands on his old fashioned bayonet rifle.

When Conquest’s eyes fell on me, I ducked behind cover.  I had only a fleeting glimpse of him raising his weapon to his shoulder, the barrel pointed at me.

“Down!” I shouted.

Maggie threw herself to one side, landing on her side so she wouldn’t take the gun off Duncan.

I dropped to the base of the wall.

Conquest was big, the rifle disproportionately large.  The shot blew a chunk out of the wall by where my arm had been.  Another hole appeared in the wall on the far end of the room.

Rose was saying something, but my ears were covered.

“What?” I asked, lowering my hand.

The music was almost drowned out by the sound of the Hyena tearing into the car.

“Corvidae is down,” Rose commented, sounding very calm.  “Wait, nevermind, he’s back up.”

“Duck, Rose!” I said.  “Those bullets could hit you!  Conquest has done it before.”

“I am,” Rose said.  “But he’s trying to stop you, you know?”

I did know.

He wanted to take me out so Rose was easy pickings.

But he’d aimed for a spot that would have hit my arm.  Assuming supernaturally good aim, was he shooting to wound?  Did he want to break me?

Another shot passed through a spot slightly higher than the last.

Maybe not.  That seemed aimed at hitting head or neck.

It all seemed to be playing out in slow motion.  The way the splinters and plaster flew through the air, the chunks of brick arcing toward the floor.

Everything mattered, missing something vital could ruin us.

But my perceptions were the key thing here, and I was perceiving things in an odd way.

The music?  The individual elements were piling on one another now, building up to something.

I could cover my ears to stop that bit of perception alteration from getting to me.

Maggie couldn’t, not with a gun in one hand.  Not if she wanted to aim at Duncan.

This wasn’t a glamour, not exactly.  It wasn’t countered by someone recognizing it for what it was.

I’d argued with Rose before, saying that magic was an art form, not a science.  That it was about symbols and interpretation, and just as we focused ideas through words and images, the rules of this world could be altered by way of incantations, rituals and symbols.

Time as we recorded and tracked it was a construct, attitudes toward it changed from culture to culture, person to person.

He was altering that attitude.

Things were slowing down, in action and thought, and it was getting worse.  I knew my actions were slowed, but my thoughts were gradually catching up.

Why?

What did he gain, slowing everyone down?  What did it do except give us more time to think as trouble arrived?

Duncan shifted his weight, back away from Maggie at first.  Innocuous.

“Touch your ears…” Maggie said, and the words were slightly drawn out, distorted by the music, “…I shoot!”

Maggie didn’t see how he was getting his feet under him.

The music shifted, the effect doubling down.  Duncan moved as if he’d expected it, choosing that moment to spring forward.

Maggie stepped back, adjusting the angle of the gun, gauntleted hand closing on the trigger.  Excruciatingly slow.

Duncan moved faster.

His hands moved faster.

The runes he’d drawn on his wrists in marker.

I could remember when I’d tested the slow time field around Hillsglade house.  Dropping something, watching it move slower in my perceptions as compared to reality.

I moved, not drawing my arm back -there was no time- but simply hurling it forward.

I threw June.

The music could affect my body, convince it to move slower, it would have a harder time doing the same to a hurled hatchet.

Duncan’s hands reached the gun.  Maggie managed to pull the trigger, but Duncan was already turning the gun around, one hand on the back of it, the other on the side of the barrel.

The gun shot passed over one of his shoulders.

He twisted the gun around until it was pointed at Maggie, her finger sliding out of the trigger-guard as the gun rotated.

The hatchet hurtled past him, handle striking his elbow.

He moved, holding the gun with one hand.  His body was as affected as mine was, but his hands and his arms weren’t.  He looked at me out of the corner of one eye, aiming-

-and there was nothing I could do about it.  Even covering my ears wasn’t making a whole lot of difference.

Rose was saying something, but her voice was distorted.

Then I heard fluttering right in my ear, and the entire world shifted into focus, in the chronological sense.

Evan.

Good kid.

I threw myself to one side, and Evan gave me a push to help.  In the doing, I put myself behind Duncan, where it was physically impossible to aim at me.  The shoulder couldn’t bend that far back.

“Good job,” I said, putting my feet under me.

“Hyena’s down!” Rose said.  I put two and two together and realized she was repeating her line from earlier.  “Corvidae is gone!”

The music still played.

Conquest moved, stepping to a point where he and his rifle were visible through the window.  Basic logic said that if I could see him, he could see me.

Evan’s wings sounded I lunged to one side, trying to use Duncan as cover, hoping Conquest had made some deal-

No such luck.  Shots rang out.  The damage was exaggerated as it hit various objects and surfaces within the house, causing plaster to rain down, loud and violent enough to make my vision distort.  He didn’t need to reload.

He was the assailant, I was the civilian, or the man on the battlefield who was out of ammo and praying not to get hit.  That was the aura he had, the atmosphere that he carried with him when he was on the offensive.  It stripped away rational thought, shifted the ‘fight or flight’ decision making into pure ‘flight’.

It was like being the kid in the classroom, homework unfinished, praying the teacher wouldn’t pick you to answer the question.  That was the closest comparison I could make, tying it to reality, except being ‘picked’ was being hit by the bullet.

And you knew the fucking teacher had it in for you.

I found the hatchet in my scramble.

Time seemed to slow as I ducked low, grabbing the handle, and put inadvertently distance between myself and Evan.

I thought of moments I regretted.  Moments where I looked back on them and wished I’d done something different.  Moments I’d been attacked.

I found something there.  Anger, a need to not feel like that again.

I’d fight back, lash out blindly if I had to.

Evan found me again, no doubt trying to help me avoid the next bullet.  In the moment I found the regular flow of time, I swung the hatchet, aiming for Duncan’s wrists.

It was about as grisly as one might expect.

Blood, a scraping that felt incongruous with everything else.

I’d only hit one wrist, but that was enough.

I pulled it free, expecting resistance, found none, and let the hatchet fly into the air.

Rose was watching, waiting.

“June!” she shouted.  “We release you from your binding!  All at once now!  The snow!  Nothing but snow!”

Conquest shielded his face as the hatchet detonated, the ghost appearing as she’d been the first time I’d seen her, clear as day.

Bye, June.

Snow filled the room, thicker than any snowfall.

I ran, and by the third step, my feet were padding on snow.

The house was filling with it.

Russian winter to stall the Conqueror, I could only hope.

I ran around to the side of the house, the exit in the garage.

I stopped, caught between Conquest, who might be following, and Laird, who would be near the car at the front.

Maggie had slipped out the front.  I could feel the connection moving.  I wasn’t sure why Laird wasn’t going after her, but she had slipped out, which was all I could ask for.

“You okay?” Evan asked.

“You’re a hero,” I told him.  “I’m unhurt.”

“Because in the movies, people get shot and they don’t realize, and it’s all-”

“Evan.  I’m okay.”

“For now.  We can’t stay here,” Rose said.  “Go for Laird.”

“Don’t have any weapons,” I said.

“We do,” Rose said.  “It’s the last big option you have, but…”

I heard a crash from the direction of the kitchen.

Conquest was making his way to us, too big for the room.

It seemed Duncan wouldn’t have a house when all of this was done.

“Do it,” I said.  “Clean and fast as you can.”

I heaved the garage door open, then slipped under.

I came face-to-face with a Behaim kid.  The older teenager.

He held a golden disc like he might hold a weapon.  He was looking around, searching for something.

Did the disc need a vehicle?  A power source?  A target?

It didn’t matter.

“Duncan is inside,” I said, my voice low.  “He’s bleeding badly, maybe to death.  Get inside, stop the blood flow.”

I could see the horror on his face.

“Please,” I said.  “I promise I won’t hurt your Uncle Laird too badly.  I won’t kill him, if I can help it.  But Duncan may well die without help.”

He wasn’t moving.

“Go!” I shouted.

He went, running.

I didn’t move as fast. Snow still billowed out from the living room, like smoke from a fire, thicker than the snowfall that still plagued the city.  Even on the driveway, which had been shoveled in the not-so-distant past, pushed down by the passage of Joanna’s car and tires, it was nearly knee-deep.

The Hyena lay on its side at the end of the driveway, collapsed, snow already thick in its fur.  It didn’t breathe.  Blood pooled around it.

The dolls the Hyena had gotten its teeth and claws on were acting erratic, conflicting with other dolls or staggering in Laird’s general direction.

One staggered in mine, making slow and uneven progress through the deeper snow of the yard itself.  Evan circled it, and it spun in place, trying to clutch him, before it lost its balance and collapsed.

A moment later, it erupted in a small explosion.  Evan was clear.

Laird was standing just outside his car, surrounded by four more injured dolls.

He fired his gun, and one staggered back before breaking into individual pieces.

If I could get my hands on him…

But I couldn’t get past those dolls without risking it.  Couldn’t risk getting shot.  For now, he was prioritizing

The garage door opened.

Conquest.

The snow didn’t even impede him, out here.

“This has gone on long enough,” Conquest said.

I didn’t open my mouth.

If he shot me-

He didn’t.

The butt of his gun struck the snow beside him, barrel pointed skyward.  He held it like he might a cane.

“We’re not fighting?” I asked.

“Fighting implies a kind of equality, doesn’t it?” he asked.  “One person fighting, the other fighting back?  I’m not so fond of level playing fields.”

I nodded slowly.

I had a very bad feeling.

“I saw your Rose preparing to call the imp.  She won’t be finishing the task anytime soon.  Laird is occupied.  This is between you and me.”

“And me!” Evan said.

I wasn’t sure if it was the contrast to Conquest’s voice or fear, but Evan’s voice was a squeak, it was so high-pitched.

“Ah, of course.  You have support.  Shall I call mine?”

I tensed.

The Shepherd?  The Eye?

Conquest spread his arms.  As if stepping out from behind the curtains on either side of the stage, two figures emerged.

Two men, a bit of scruff on their cheeks, they wore utilitarian clothes, dirty, one suited more for spring or fall, the other for winter.  Heavy layers.  They had wavy blond hair of different lengths.  One was slightly shorter than the other.  Fractionally.

“Blake?” Evan asked.  he looked up at me, then over at them, confused.

“Yeah,” I said, as I stared at them.  “He found them.”

My heart pounded.  I knew exactly what was coming.

They were me.

“Echoes,” Conquest said.  “Images, memories and emotions that left a mark on the surface of reality, on the spiritual plane.  Much like yourself, little bird.”

“Fuck you,” I told him, and my voice was strangled.

“Allow me to reintroduce you,” Conquest said.

The younger one rushed at me.

There was no avoiding it.  In a way, it was mine.

■

The rain fell hard.

It wasn’t one of the nights where sleep came easy.  Most nights, I could get five hours, in the right place, if I’d eaten, if everything was okay.

But I itched.  I suspected I knew why, and shame gnawed at me.

One night in the shelter, when the rain had been worse, I might have caught them from the cot.  Lice, bed bugs, fleas, something.

There was no getting rid of them.  I had a hundred tiny bites on me, and all I could do was suffer in silence.  I’d known sleep was going to be hard to come by, so I had picked a less desirable spot, where I had more of a view, where the rain only fell on me when the direction changed.

I was fully prepared to spend the night awake, enduring discomfort on a number of levels, lost in thought and introspection.

I was almost ready to go back.  To just duck my head down and see my parents.  To bite the bullet.

I didn’t expect sympathy.  If they had any to spare, they would have found me already.  I’d stayed with friends for a while, couch surfing, then the periodic night on the streets when I’d been unable to find a couch became the typical night on the streets.

I didn’t even expect blame, exactly.

When I contemplated the situation, I was trying to find arguments that I could make, that would keep my parents from shoving me right out the door again.  I wasn’t young enough to demand they take me back.  They weren’t required to by law.

I seethed as I recalled memories, trying to think of every major wrong they’d done me, so I could tell them they owed me a few nights of a bed to sleep on, a shower, some food.

By the time I heard the footsteps, it was too late.

This isn’t the worst one.  Or even the second-worst one.  Not the one where I was shot and beaten.

Kids with makeshift clubs.  Sticks, something that might have been a ski pole without the plastic bit on the bottom.

Of course, ‘kid’ was relative.

Teenagers, big enough to be almost-adults, little enough to lack the full-sized brain that let someone make the right judgement calls.

In a way, it’s why I don’t blame Maggie more than I do.  Because I’ve spent too long trying to frame this.

The first hits were aimed at knocking me out, or at least leaving me senseless.  Aimed at the temple, hitting my ear instead, cutting it.

Another blow, aimed at the same spot, maybe by the same person, hitting the edge of my eye socket.

A jab at my ass with something long and sharp, raucous laughter.

I fought, lashing out, hurled the first thing my hand could find.

They fought back, focusing mostly on my head, until they saw a chance to grab my arms, holding me down, my legs kicking.

It didn’t matter, the struggling.  They took turns.  Aiming at the head, aiming at the stomach, legs, groin, knees.

End it.  Please.  I can feel it all.  How much experience can an echo cover?

The emotions- hatred, confusion, mindless animal terror.

It was like each hit beat me down a little more.  Pushed me further back.  Put me in the mindset I’d had when I was just a little younger.  Being a teenager, so frustrated, hurting in ways I couldn’t put words to.

Being a small child, wanting his mom.

They were slowing down.

I was left with only the hurt.  Feeling like I had as a kid, in some after school activity, after some older kids had mocked me in the changing room, chanting at me “you suck, you suck!”  Just as unable to comprehend how people could do something so cruel.  Making the connection between things I’d read about and the fact that it could really happen in reality.

They stopped.

I wasn’t even a four or five year old, in terms of where I was mentally or emotionally.

Four or five year olds could move of their own volition.

I was left to lie there, in a spot that most people wouldn’t go to, beside the road, overlooking the water.

They must have seen me take the path down.

My eyes fell on a sparrow, sitting on a short sign.

“I can’t do anything here,” Evan said.

Yeah.

“Yeah,” he agreed.  “I’m really sorry.”

I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.  For being unable to help?

For having seen it?

The echo didn’t stop.

The scene became fractured, skipping across the highlight reel.  What I had anticipated as one night of mild discomfort would be a few days.  The highlight real treated me to all of the most emotional moments in those days that followed.

I’d been considering going home, before that.  Stupidly, stubbornly, I’d told myself I would wait until the cuts and bruises were gone.

■

I inhaled as if I were coming up from underwater.  I took a step back, forgetting that there was snow blocking my range of movement, and I stumbled.

“You and I both know what this next one entails,” Conquest said.

“Fuck you,” I gasped out the words.  “Fuck you, Conquest.  You shitstain!  You think this makes you look strong?  Your worst doesn’t even compare to what petty humans do to each other!”

“Are you sincerely asking me to do my worst to you?”  Conquest asked.  There was fucking amusement in his voice.

“I’d ask you to fuck yourself, but I doubt you’re that well endowed, if you’re pulling this petty fucking shit!”

“It seems to be having an effect on you,” he said.

I shook my head.  The scene was replaying in my head.

“It wasn’t real,” I said.  “It… that wasn’t exactly how it happened.”

“Close enough to matter,” he said.  “Holes had to be filled in, gaps covered.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Let’s see how accurate this next one turned out,” he said.

The echo didn’t rush.

It limped.

Eyes downcast.

Just looking at it was as bad as everything else Conquest had put me through.

I backed up.  Even in the snow, I was faster.

Until hands gripped my upper arms.

For a moment, I thought it had me.  Fear overtook me.

“This is for the best,” Laird said, in my ear.

I tried to retort, but the words didn’t find their way to my mouth.

I struggled, and he held me fast.

Evan flew between us, breaking Laird’s hold, and I heard him fluttering in my ear as Laird screamed all of a sudden.

I was free.

But the echo was too close now.

I turned, thinking I could move away faster if I wasn’t walking backward, and I felt it seize my wrist.

■

No.

One man, this time.

His features were distorted, but I’d been messed up enough after the fact that it might have muddled the memories, distorted the echo.

No, no, no.

“What’s-” Evan started.

“What can I do?” Evan cried out.

Nothing.  It’s a scene, it wants to play out.  Just talk to me, distract me, okay?

“It can’t be that simple!”

It is.  It’s as simple as it gets.

People suck.

“What about your friends?  Your friends don’t suck!  Ty is cool!”

And Alexis, and Tiff, and Joel, yeah.  But I really don’t want to associate them with this.  Something else.

“This thing is a ghost?  The echo?”

Yeah.

“Then, like me?  Are there ghost weaknesses?”

Not like you.  It’s a replay.

“Fast forward!  Stop!  Pretend it’s a video, like it’s art, and change it like you would the video, right?”

Like June?  Calling events to mind?

Yeah.

Skip to the end.

Alexis sat in front of me as I woke.

“Shh,” she said.  “I’m here.  I’m not doing anything, I’m not going anywhere.  Just rest.  Feel better.”

I let my head down to the ground.

“If you need anything, no matter how minor, stupid or hard to get?  Ask.  I’ll figure it out,” she said.

“Just stick around,” I muttered.

“I can do that.”

A burst of gratitude, big enough to leave a mark, alongside all the other crazy, mixed-up emotions.

■

I stirred, but this time I didn’t gasp.  Laird had backed off a little.

Silently, quickly, I grabbed the splinter of wood I’d been given to find the eraser demon.

I stabbed it into Laird’s neck.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Void 7.7

The splinter found its way to a spot just below Laird’s Adam’s apple.  When I pulled it away, it broke, the narrow end of the splinter disappearing beneath welling blood.

Laird dropped to his knees, holding his hands to the wound.  I met his eyes as he stared up at me – one was almost crimson, with a bead of red on it.  Not from the splinter – something else.

I felt like I wanted to throw up, scream, swing punches and curl up into a ball, all at once.  I felt betrayed, if you can even feel betrayed by your enemies.

All of the emotions were at odds with one another, and I was left there, shaking, trying to put the pieces together and remind myself of where I stood.

My thoughts ran backward.  From the stabbing to the visions, Evan, Laird grabbing me, Conquest speaking, then I began to wrap my head around the whole situation.

Rose was summoning Pauz.  Maggie was… I didn’t know where Maggie was.  Somewhere outside.

“Even something so small as a rat can bite, when sufficiently cornered,” Conquest said.  “You might want to step forward and help Mr. Behaim.  Certain deals were made, and those deals are void if he passes.”

I stared down at Laird.  He was covering the wound.  I wasn’t sure how you could put pressure on your own throat without strangling yourself, but he seemed to be doing okay.

Until he coughed, hacking out, and a cloud of blood sprayed out with the spit and air.

Not so long ago, Fell had told us to move the bodies of the fallen Sisters so they wouldn’t suffocate on their own vomit.

Once vomit or foreign matter got into the lungs, finding its way past the little valve that decided whether stuff made it to the lungs or the stomach, it became a problem.  People could manage fine, or they could die a rapid death.

If he was coughing up blood like that, there was a good bit of blood leaking from the wound, straight to the windpipe.

I bent down.

“Blake,” Evan said.

“Turn over, Laird,” I said.  “Face down, better it flows out and up, than inside and down.”

He didn’t move.  He stared at me with one bloodshot eye.

“I’ll help,” I said.

I hated touching him.  Touching people wasn’t my thing, and touching people who were bigger and stronger than me…

My hand shook as if I’d been electrocuted, as the thought ran through me, clenching even though I hadn’t instructed it to.

“Okay,” I muttered, and I wasn’t even sure Laird heard me.  “I can’t help that way… just promised.  I’ll…  Evan?  Help him.”

“Um,” Evan said.

“Please,” I said, quiet.

I half-turned, watching Conquest.

Laird grunted, then started coughing violently as he flopped over, the sparrow playing a role with a bit of a push.

He was face-down, now.

The blood flowed more freely, and leaked between fingers as he clamped his hands to his throat, forming tendrils as it dribbled onto snow.

I reached out, stopping just shy of touching his gloved hands with my own.

It would have made sense, to do it, but I couldn’t bring myself to.

“If I grant you another stay of execution,” Conquest said, “It would be the third.  I would be in my rights to demand a favor of you.”

I shook my head, not really in any headspace to form the words.  No stay of execution.

I wasn’t in any shape to fight.  Physically, I was fine.  But every non-physical part of me was in a bad place.

I was shaking, and it had nothing to do with the cold.

Not in any shape to fight, but I didn’t really have a choice.

He held his bayonet rifle like a spear.

My instincts were all wrong.  When I’d dealt with Pauz, I’d thought about how skewed my impulses were, especially when by boundaries were breached.  This was the same, but it was far more pointed.

My instincts were telling me to go after Conquest, to throw myself at him in an effort to hurt him like I had Laird.  To get rid of all of the negative feelings, venting the outward-pointed ones on Conquest, silencing the inward-pointed ones by taking that bayonet to the chest or throat.

It was the simplest, easiest way to make it all stop.

He was approaching, and I was frozen in place, trying to get my mental bearings, to convince myself to move.

Thinking of everything I had to fight for.

But all I really wanted was peace.

The two ideas conflicted.

Conquest took a step forward.  Steady, no hesitation, but not rushing either.

A war was going on in my head already as I tried to sort out my thoughts, reaching for some idea that wouldn’t fall apart as soon as it was fully formed.

Alexis, Tiff, Ty, Goosh, Joel.  No, I’d done more harm than good.

“Um,” Evan said.

Evan?  I couldn’t find a way to complete the thought.

Molly?  I’d just avenged her in a way, maybe.  There was more to be done, but I’d done something.  If I ran into her after I moved on, I could say that much.

No, wrong train of thought.

Conquest drew closer, snow forming clouds around the base of his feet as his weight came down.  He was three times my height.

I wouldn’t be able to fight like this, not with my head and heart all mixed up.  I couldn’t convince myself to do this smart, instead of doing it reckless.

Rose?  I didn’t trust Rose.

Family?  No.

The next thought outside family was the lawyers, the nebulous idea of dying and going straight to some miserable afterlife, simply because of the karma that dragged me down.

That was a bit more of a push.  The concrete idea that I wouldn’t find peace, going down that road.

I took a step back, slowing the rate at which Conquest closed in.

I didn’t want to go to hell, or whatever equivalent I was due.

Even simpler than that… I didn’t want to die.

That was the idea I needed to move, to act.

He was still closing faster than I could retreat.  Only natural.

He drew his weapon back to thrust.  I cast my arm out.

I was almost too slow.

Laird’s blood, caught in my cupped hand, spattered the snow.  I held my hand out, more blood dripping from the fingertips.

Conquest stopped, weapon poised.  The blood formed a line between us.

Blood of a free man.  I thought, still backing away.  Once captured, rescued and given liberty.  By you, no less.

“This is why you wanted to find Behaim?” Conquest asked.

I was silent as I continued backing away.

“Freedom may run contrary to my nature, but blood doesn’t,” Conquest said.  His deep, eerie voice felt like it could carry across the neighborhood, over a good portion of the city, even.  “Suffering doesn’t.  Death and dying don’t.”

He stepped over the line of blood.

I was too messed up in the heart and in my head to even swear or feel panic.

He stabbed with the blade at the end of his gun, and I threw myself out of the way.

One action, one response, and it basically illustrated how the fight would go.

He barely had to try, while it took everything I had to get out of the way in time.  I hit the snow, and had to fight to get the right position and find traction so I could move fast enough to avoid a second thrust.

The blade raked along my shoulder.  I felt pain as blade parted flesh, then felt the cold seep in, swift.  The two things put together were pretty indicative of there being something terribly wrong.

I stumbled.  Evan caught me, a bit of a push at the right moment.  I found my balance and stumbled a few more steps.

It was only a scratch, I realized, the cold air leaking in through a tear in the fabric.

“Um,” Evan said.  He took to the air, circling me, drawing higher.

I looked to see why he was agitated, and saw Conquest lowering his gun, barrel pointed at me.

“Wait,” I said.

Evan flew past me, giving me a bump, as Conquest pulled the trigger.  I didn’t move a muscle of my own volition, but Evan pushed me out of the way.  I felt the wind move as the bullet whistled past my arm.  Even through my coat, I felt it.  I caught my balance, a couple of paces to the left of where I’d been standing.

“Wait?  If you want another stay of execution,” Conquest said, “I’ve already said what that entails.  A favor.”

I didn’t respond.  Maintaining eye contact and speaking felt like a foreign concept, and I wasn’t about to take a submissive action like lowering my gaze.

“Beg me,” he said.  “Kneel.”

Beg?

I realized I was hugging my arms against my chest.  I hadn’t been aware.  It made me look weak, but I felt weak.  I’d been scraped raw, and all I wanted to do was break down.  Shut the world away.

There was a chasm between where I stood and where I wanted to be.  I’d just dealt with one person who was responsible.

Dealing with Conquest, though?

I’d known from early on that winning wasn’t really in the cards.  Even if I did win this battle, I’d lose in the long run.

I was so sick of all this.

When the words came out, they came out as a torrent.  I couldn’t stop once I started, so I put my focus on forming the words properly.

“Why the fuck would I beg?” I asked, and there was venom in my tone.  “You’re petty, Conquest, you’re small in every way that matters, you’re a fucking pretender, trying to cover up for the fact that you don’t have as much power as you’re pretending.  Practically everyone in this city that matters knows, they look down their noses at you.  You’re a fucking joke!  The metaphorical small-dicked, overcompensating, pathetic joke of Toronto.”

The wind blew hard, stirring more snow.

Conquest raised a hand.

The wind shifted, abrupt and strong enough to nearly lift me off my feet.  I was left momentarily blind as snow found its way to my eyes, my weight no longer solidly on hard ground.

I caught myself and shielded Evan.

As quickly as it came, the wind stopped.

A cracking sound marked a tree reaching the breaking point, and a large branch crashed to the snowbank beneath it, crunching ice.

The houses and cars along the street were painted with snow and frost that crusted the windows.  I had little doubt the same was true across the city.

It was quiet.

“Empty words,” Conquest said, “When you insist on retreating and running.”

Had I pushed him to his breaking point?

Had I challenged his authority enough?

It was impossible to keep it all in my head.  Conquest, the fight for survival, the absolutely black well of emotion that had boiled over when he’d shoved the echoes at me.  There was no way to wrangle it all, to keep it in mind, so some of it was bleeding out.

That odd feeling of betrayal had become indignance.  It felt like such a small word to be labeling my feelings with, but how was I supposed to parse it, otherwise?  I wanted justice.

This world had been unfair to me from the beginning.  I’d paid for my victories thus far.

He stabbed.  Evan helped me avoid it this time.

Two near-misses that only Evan had saved me from.

I hadn’t missed the pattern.  I’d sensed it when we’d fought the oblivion demon, and Fell had put words to the idea.  Evan’s ability to help me escape harm had its limits.  Illusions had a way of cracking on the third attempt.  Evan’s ability to save me from harm had a way of failing on the third try.

There was an underlying logic to this world.

“Go check on Rose,” I murmured.

“Are you sure?”

Not answering, I touched him, he hopped to my finger, and I flung him out.

Evan gave Conquest a wide berth on his way to the open garage door.

“Doing away with your familiar?”

I opened my mouth to speak, found the words out of reach.  He took that moment of bewilderment to advance, swinging the spear.

I stumbled back out of reach.

He aimed, to shoot, and I let myself lose my balance.  The shot passed over me.

I flipped over and half-crawled, half ran to the nearest parked car.

A car wouldn’t actually stop a bullet, as I understood it, but the engine block was dense enough.

“Still running,” he commented.

I found that spark of anger again.  “Are you that weak, Conquest?  That you’re bitching about someone keeping his distance?  You sound like the sort of kid I used to play with in elementary school.”

“You twist my words.”

I did.  I could interpret most things he said or did to attack him.

It was something I’d learned to do long ago, when I still lived at home.  When the fight over the inheritance and the general atmosphere was still ongoing, toxic and unpleasant.

I said, “They’re coming out of your mouth.  You’re an incarnation of Conquest in a country and city that barely has any!  I almost pity you.”

My words came out a little ragged.  There had been too many bursts of action, too many bits of running and fighting, moments of high adrenaline.  My head was pounding from the stress of emotion running too high for too long.  I needed to maintain my attack.

“Perhaps the mental strain is getting to you?” he asked.

“You sound scared,” I said, raising my voice.  “No flourish, no stylish finish.  You’re down to the point of stabbing and shooting, waiting until I get tired and can’t stay out of reach.  You just pulled out your trump card, and I’m still fucking here!”

“Not a trump card.  Merely a card among many,” Conquest said.

He raised his gun, but he didn’t aim at me.

It was Maggie, on the far side of the street, crouched by a snowbank.  She was more exposed, now that the snow had stopped.  Her face was intact, now.  The same healing she’d granted to me?  Faster, clearly, with no scarring.

He fired, and Maggie moved her hand.  The bullet hit snow.

He fired again, but she was already moving her hand in the other direction.  The bullet hit snow on the other side.

Goblin magic?  They work with and against metals.

Maggie ran for cover, hiding at a spot I couldn’t see.

Cowardly, I thought.  I said, “I thought this was between you and me.”

“Then you’re an imbecile.  The contest was for us to battle with the aid of champions.  She remains yours.  I’ve disabled your Rose, killed young master Fell, slain your Hyena.  Without your Rose, you can’t use the imp.”

“And yours?” I asked.  “Somehow I don’t think it’s confidence that has you here alone.”

“The Eye was working the storm, drawing on shifts in climate, and twists this city up to build my tower, as man disrupts his environment to fuel the growth of cities.  He’s active, but indisposed.  You’ve weakened my Shepherd, set the Sisters of the Torch and the Astrologer against one another.  Laird bleeds to death as we speak.  This is the natural conclusion.  Once I’ve dealt with the goblin queen that lacks any goblins, it’ll be only you or me, and you can only run for so long.”

As if to punctuate his statement, he stepped closer.  He thrust around the side of the car, I backed off, and he reversed the weapon, swinging it like a club, hitting the car so it rocked into me.  Both car and the snow that layered the top of the car hit me.

Wind knocked out of me, momentarily blind, my movements limited as more snow fell.  I was between the parked car and the snowbank, and was knee deep, with snow having fallen around my feet.

I saw Evan fly forth from the garage, and my spirits lifted.

But Evan wasn’t coming to my rescue.

He flew to Maggie.

Conquest struck the car again.  It slid, sandwiching me between fiberglass and snowbank, momentarily squeezing the air out of me.  I stood at a diagonal, half buried, pinned.

“A beheading, do you think?” Conquest asked.

I looked to Maggie and Evan.

No help there.  Maggie held her funny little dagger, but she was staring at me, and she wasn’t doing anything.

I had my locket, but no glamour, no spell I could rely on.

The hatchet was broken.

I was almost out of tricks.

But Duncan had been too, not so long ago, and he’d put up a fight.

Duncan.

The thoughts that reached me were fragmented ones.  Theatrics, object-

He drew his weapon back behind his right shoulder.

“Fuck you!”  I shouted.

His distorted expression showed only a permanent leer of contempt.

He swung.

I reached up and across, with my right arm, fist clenched.

“Stop!” I bellowed, pulling my sleeve down, exposing the skin between glove and coat.

The blade of the bayonet, practically a sword, given our scale, struck my arm.

The arm wasn’t enough to stop it, obviously enough.  Much less my wrist.

But the Stonehenge charm bracelet was the first thing in the line of fire.

The blade cut the bracelet.  It stopped.

Everything stopped.

Maggie and Evan remained in place.  The snow had stopped falling when Conquest had ordered it, but even the snow from inside the house and the snow that fell from rooftops like a frozen waterfall had stopped in place.

When I looked with the Sight, I saw that most spirits had stopped altogether.

The movement of my arm stirred the spirits, as if simply reminding them to start moving again.

Two simple elements.

Theatrics, for one.  A good, clear shout, acting at the right moment.

Duncan had been given the bracelet as a power reserve.  I’d spent that power, rightfully taken, much as I’d spent June.

Chronomancy might be a farce, at least in part, but this had worked.  Nothing Conquest had done had suggested he was immune to the flaws of perceptions.

There had been nothing certain about it, only gut feeling.  If there hadn’t been a spirit inside, or if there hadn’t been enough power, or if Conquest had been immune…

I sank back, gasping for air.

My head touched the snowbank, and found it hard.

In the next moment, I was moving.  My arms stretched out, finding leverage on the snowbank, and I managed to pull my legs up and free.

I climbed over the back of the car.

I found secure footing.

Lines circled my wrist, like the rings of Saturn led astray, dust swirling in a corkscrew orbit.

Breaking apart, showing just how much time I had.  One or two minutes, if that.

Couldn’t hurt Conquest.  He was an incarnation, vulnerable.

I made a beeline to Laird.

The cut on my shoulderblade made itself known as I pulled off my jacket.

I rolled Laird, surprised at how easy it was.

Using my jacket as a bundle, holding the bottom corners and the sleeves, I scooped up the blood-soaked snow.

I slung the bundle over one shoulder, hurrying toward Evan and Maggie.

The line was running out.

I bent down, and began shaking the bundle, controlling the gap in the bottom-

The effect ended.  Wind blew, fierce, from the point where sword had touched bracelet, stirring snow and creating clouds of loose snow that reached as high as the houses around us.

I squinted against the wind, glancing up at Conquest, as he followed through.  The blade bit into the car’s frame.

He looked up at me.

I kept letting the bloody snow out of the jacket, drawing a thicker, clearer line.

“Blake?” Evan asked.

“Plan?” I asked.

“Rose won’t wake up.  She got shot, inside the mirror-world.  I thought Maggie could give blood, but-”

“There isn’t a strong connection,” Maggie said.  “Among other reasons.”

Like whatever it is that’s lurking just under your skin?

Arm extended, I peeked around the snowbank.  A bullet clipped the space inches from my head.

“Use mine,” I said.  “Just… don’t grab me.  Stab only.”

Maggie wasted no time in listening.  I was glad for that.  I even respected it.  After so long fighting with Rose, arguing over every last thing, it was awfully nice to have a friend that’d stab me when stabbing was necessary.

The dagger punched into the back of my hand, almost exactly where I’d stabbed myself when I’d fought the faerie swordswoman.  I bled.  Maggie drew out a line in Rose’s direction, matching the direction to the connection that stretched between us.

Maggie said, “Rose, we give you Blake’s blood and bid you to rouse.”

I added,  “We need you as we needed Laird.  This may be our last chance.  Take as much as you need.  I don’t know if I trust you, but I trust you to do that much.”

I felt the strength go out of me, as I sank to my knees.

Here we were.

He’s only about as strong as the Hyena.  I took on the Hyena with only a little help from Evan and June.

Still bent over, I resumed drawing with the bloody snow, a thicker, stronger line.

“He’s coming,” Maggie commented.

I nodded.  My hand hurt,  and holding the coat was hard, but it got lighter as I deposited more snow.

Conquest appeared, drawing close, as I had the circle three-quarters of the way done.  Maggie and Evan remained at my side.

I felt stronger with allies close.

“Blood of a free man,” I said.  “I claim his defeat for myself.  It’s blood I drew, suffering I own, my victory, my conquest.”

“It’s incomplete,” Conquest said, circling around.

I turned, ready to pour more snow, but it took him only two steps to circle around.

The bayonet blade stabbed the earth just beside the opening in the circle.

Maggie’s backpack was bloating and twisting.

She threw it at Conquest.  He swatted it aside.

Rose is back.

The imp clawed his way forth from the backpack.  He hurled the bag and its remaining contents to one side, then hopped up, placing himself on the tire mounted on the back of an S.U.V.

“Cheat me once, diabolist, shame on you.  Cheat me twice?  Shame on me,” Pauz growled, in his too-deep, gravelly voice.

“Yet you accepted Rose’s offer,” I said.

“Yes.”

Conquest glanced at me.  “What have you done?”

“Then, Pauz,” I said.  “Follow through, and you’re free.”

That last word was a heavy one.

All that trouble.

All of the danger he posed.

But I was letting him go.

I knew what was coming.

Pauz screeched.

It was that same terrible noise as before.  A rotten, venomous sound that penetrated to the bone marrow and distorted vision.

Radiation.

But it worked, distracting Conquest.

I threw the last of the bloody snow down, on and beside the blade of the bayonet.

The bayonet was a part of him, as were the bullets, apparently.  He apparently counted the snow a barrier, when it was .  He couldn’t swing over or through the snow.

He could only pull it free.  Crimson snow fell into place, closing the circle, complete.

Conquest opened fire on the imp.  The imp scrambled away.

“Blake-” Rose said, speaking through the pendant.  “Corvidae is on his way.  He couldn’t find anything good, apparently.”

I nodded, then realized she might not be able to see me.  My throat was tight.

“Blake?

“Sorry,” she said.

“Me too.  This went poorly.”

“We’re alive,” Maggie said.  “Drat worrying about how.”

“Drat it indeed,” I said.

The imp slid over the front of the vehicle, disappearing beneath the underbelly.

Conquest stabbed the car with his bayonet.  I saw him tense, and felt alarm sing through me.

“Fuck,” I said, the word escaping as a gasp.

I ran clear of the circle, and Maggie was a step behind me.  Evan fluttered, giving us a nudge.

The S.U.V. hit the dead center of the circle, then rolled clear.  The snow was largely untouched, the line mostly unbroken.

We backed into the middle of the street, while Conquest dealt with having the imp in front of him and us behind.

It’s not safe inside the circle.  Our refuge.

Conquest turned his attention to us.

Pauz attacked, leaping to the small of Conquest’s back.

A rabbit leaped from the midst of the snow to claw and bite Conquest’s arm, failing to get far with the white, leathery skin-fabric covering in the way.

I couldn’t say for sure, but a part of me wondered if a being like Conquest remained as afraid of demons as the rest of us.  He was immortal, few things could touch him on a fundamental level, but when you lived by a concept, and you faced down a being that could subvert that concept…

Conquest was twisted to begin with.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still there in that alley, or in a room of the hostel-turned shelter for young homeless.  To let him become more twisted?  I didn’t like it.

I especially didn’t like giving the demons ground, but the alternative was losing the fight or turning to the lawyers.

The lawyers were an unknown quantity.  The deal they wanted to make with me sounded too good to be true, so I could only assume it was.

Pauz was more of a known quantity.

Conquest shook both imp and rabbit off.  He stabbed a raccoon that was making its way through the snow, then shot something in the distance I couldn’t see.

I could see the connections between imp and animal.  He was reeling them in, calling them in from elsewhere.  Rats by the hundreds.

I wondered if this neighborhood would be okay, after all was said and done, or if the vermin and mad animals would follow Pauz to his next destination.

Neither was necessarily good.

But we didn’t have much in the way of options.  The Hyena was out of commission, and I’d made promises as far as the Hyena went.

I could see Corvidae.

Empty handed, damn.

We had the numbers advantage, but things weren’t coming together.

Pauz wasn’t winning or bringing Conquest to his knees.  Corvidae hadn’t been able to find what we needed…

We moved as a group, putting distance between us and the fight, using the car that Conquest had smashed for cover.

“Check another house,” Rose told Corvidae, “tear something from the wall if you have to!”

Corvidae smiled.

It wasn’t a pretty smile.  His features were alien.

It wasn’t a nice smile either, or a respectful one.

I was reminded of Midge, the inbred redneck Other.

Contempt.

Corvidae disappeared, moving too quickly through the snow.  I looked away before he could distort in my field of vision again.

“He’s no help,” I said.

“We need him,” Rose said.

“Not much help to go around,” Maggie said.

All of the bodies on this battlefield had been nearly buried by fallen snow.  Laird was the only person who wasn’t covered.

I’d spent the past week building up allies, drawing people together, and now…

Just us.

“This grows tiresome,” Conquest said.  He held his weapon out, pointed at Pauz.  The imp moved through the snow like a crab, not taking its eyes off Conquest.

It leered, its entire body tense.

“Surrendering?” Rose asked.

“No,” he replied.

He aimed at me.

I ducked, and the bullet hit the hood of the car.

He kept firing.

We ran as a pair, Rose within my pendant.

But there wasn’t much cover to go around, outside of a handful of cars buried in snow and some frozen snowbanks.

We picked a snowbank, and Conquest fired anyway.

Evan tried to give us a nudge, putting us out of the bullet’s way.  Conquest shot him instead.

One crippling blow, removing Evan from the picture, knocking me down.

Maggie grabbed my arm before I could fall, and I fought her, struggling free.

Stupid, reflexive action.

I landed face down in a driveway, feeling like a bullet the size of a beachball had just passed through my chest.  My thoughts turned to slush.

I’d just given energy to Rose, and now Evan was claiming his rightful share.

“Luck stretches thin,” Conquest said.  He held out his rifle, pointing it at Pauz.  “The universe makes its demands.  You can only gamble so many times before the universe sees fit to give me my due.  Back away, goblin queen.”

Maggie backed away from me.  I wouldn’t accept her help anyway.

“Not having free use of my power, it’s something of a chore,” Conquest said.  “I’ll be glad when you’ve given up-”

He fired at the imp, driving the beast back.

“-and I can flex muscles that have atrophied in the past few days.”

“Sorry,” Maggie told me.

She bolted, running down the street.

Conquest raised his gun, but Maggie ducked low, and in a moment, the connection broke.  She’d cut it.

I bit my lip.

Conquest loomed over me.  I couldn’t move.

No tricks up my sleeve.

He stopped to shoot a larger animal.  One of the imp’s.

I was starting to feel the effects of the imp’s power.

That scared me more than anything.

“You’ve got the upper hand,” I said.

“You surrender?”

“I don’t know if I can,” I said.

“The alternative is death.  I strongly suggest surrender,” Conquest spoke.  “Laird is dead.  I promised him that I would wait two centuries before I used the Thorburn power.  The threat would cow those beneath me, I would gain in power, simply having you in my grasp, and he can build his kingdom in the meantime.  Keeping you alive was only a way to delay your counterpart’s manifestation as something real.  It simplifies things.”

“My counterpart-” I started.  My mouth was dry.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know if I can surrender, because Rose and I are a unit, two sides of the same thing.  We’re both the Thorburn heir, as I understand it.  You might need to get her to surrender.  You’ve bested me, I won’t move ten paces from here until this is decided.”

Rose spoke, “Fuck you, Blake.  Sticking this on me now?  It’s-”

“It’s base trickery,” Conquest said.

Shocked at the words, I swallowed hard.

“Rose told me you were hard to get along with.  That you and she had a flawed, distorted relationship.  I’m to believe the tie between you two is so strong that you can’t surrender without her consent?  That when you promise to refuse any use of magic, she isn’t bound by the same promise?”

“It’s complicated,” I said.  It sounded feeble.  “We’re ying and yang, two sides of the same coin.”

“It’s not that complicated at all,” Rose said.  “I haven’t used any magic.”

Conquest turned his head.

“I haven’t.  Just like Duncan did when he was spent of power, just like Blake, I’ve been using the power Maggie and Blake’s friends set up.  They drew the circle, they set the things up to be summoned when an object was broken… we picked objects on my side of the mirror.”

“Thin.”

“As for my other power, to break mirrors, it’s innate to me while I’m an Other, a distorted reflection.  Besides, the deal was not to use power in Toronto.  This mirror world… it’s not Toronto.  It’s a vestige of Toronto.  It’s like comparing Disneyland and Euro-Disney.  It’s my world.”

“Questionable,” Conquest said.  “All the same-”

He lunged.

He passed into the pendant.

I flinched as the glass shattered.

The window of the S.U.V. broke next, then the windows of the house.

A battle waged over the reflective surfaces.

I could only wait.  I’d done what I could.

Pauz approached me, grinning.

No.

“I beat you once,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.  “Shall I take my revenge now?”

If he did – if he stopped me before Conquest could…

The contest would end.  A draw at best.

But it would be a horrible way to go.

No, I had to trust that this would work out.  Trust in the others.

Even if my companions here were reduced to the ones I trusted the least.  Maggie with some wild thing lurking within her, Rose with her questionable motivations, Corvidae, the impof things feral and foul.

I closed my eyes.  “No.”

He had a mocking grin on his face.  “You said you wouldn’t move.  Shall I drag you aside and watch what happens?  I can reign over the chaos that follows.”

“Or you can go,” I said.  “Did you think I didn’t plan contingencies?  That I don’t have a way to capture you right away?”

His eyes narrowed.  “Tricks.”

I remained still.

Glass continued to break here and there.  I could feel the strength going out of me.  Rose was spending power, and she was using the conduit of blood Maggie had drawn out, to keep her reserves up.

“I am Blake Thorburn,” I said.  I shifted position, cupped a limp Evan in my hands, then found my feet.  I stood as straight as I could manage.  “Custodian of Hillsglade house, overseer of the Thorburn’s diabolic library.  I come from a long line, and you’ve caught me at a moment when I’m very tired and very pissed off.”

“Poor mortal,” Pauz said.  “I can smell your pain.”

Time to draw from the same well as Rose.  “If you cross me here, I will bind you again, Pauz, I swear it on my name and my blood, and I’ll stick you somewhere where you won’t be found until humanity is long gone.”

“Your words don’t have the power that hers do.  You’re not the real heir, not the heir intended.”

“No,” I said.  “Do you really want to risk it?”

He narrowed his eyes.

He disappeared in a flurry of flies and darkness.

I sagged, the strength going out of me.

I’d never acted so much in my life.  To pretend I had strength when I felt more powerless than ever.

I carefully measured my steps, taking only five, to get past the driveway.

Corvidae appeared, a small oval mirror in his arms.

There we go.

He held it up, walking slowly.

I could see when the presence moved into it.

Corvidae threw the mirror.

It landed in the snow, one end buried.

He can’t turn down a fight, I thought.  He has to crush the weak.

The mirror stuck in the middle of the circle I’d drawn.  The blood of a free man, Laird.

The circle would be lined with Rose’s hair.  Hacked off.  Caught by Conquest, freed by myself.

Maggie had torn out the pages of Black Lamb’s Blood, weighing them down so they wouldn’t fly away.  I couldn’t afford to lose them.  The pages that had bound an Other, now free.

Thrice bound.

“It’s done,” Rose said.

I slumped to the ground, exhausted.

“We did it, Evan” I murmured to Evan.

“Woo,” he mumbled.

Void 7.8

I sat there, cold, hurting in too many ways to count, enjoying the fact that I had just a few minutes before someone tried to kill me or do worse.

It was like waking up, and feeling a kind of tranquility where I was warm, comfortable, and all of the negativity of the past and responsibilities of the future had yet to spring to mind.

There was just the moment.

Evan’s body expanded and contracted by the smallest discernible fraction as he inhaled and exhaled in my cupped hands.  He was healing fast, and seemed to have largely shut down or fallen asleep while he put himself back together.

I stared down, half at him, half at the ground.

Success.

Not victory, but success.

As was always the case with this sort of thing, reality began to sink in.  I remembered Duncan and the kids.  The effect that had kept people indoors would be fading, and it was only a matter of time before Toronto woke up and resumed business as usual.

My eyes roved over the street.  Houses stood like tombstones, blasted with snow to the point that brick and siding were dusted white, and the space between the houses was an uneven plain of snow, rising and falling, with a vague trench in the middle where the snow had piled on the road, rising where snow had been shoveled onto lawns or pushed there by the plows.

“Are you okay, Rose?” I asked.

Not supposed to ask that, I remembered.  But I didn’t feel very verbose.  Talking was the last thing I wanted to do, because it only served to banish the lingering calm.

“He was focused on me, I was focused on making him lose his bearings.”

I searched around until I found where she was speaking from.  A larger piece of my pendant-mirror, lying in front of me.  I couldn’t imagine it gave her much room to stand.  Maybe all the pendant-shards together?

“You’re okay, though?”  I asked.

“Yeah.  You?  How are you managing after all that?”

I couldn’t sum up the words needed to explain it.  How did I convey how not okay I was, without inviting pity or giving her the wrong impression?

“I killed Laird, I think,” I said.  “Fuck, I said I wouldn’t hurt him too badly if I could help it, and- fuck.”

“You broke a vow?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

She didn’t respond, I didn’t volunteer anything, and a few moments passed.  The momentary tranquility of earlier was swiftly giving way to anxiety.  I’d known it would, I just didn’t like how firm a hold that anxiety had on me.

Evan began to pull himself together.  He was still bloody, but he seemed largely intact.  He experimentally fluffed himself up, relaxed, then fluffed up again.

“Problem?” I asked.

“Blood in my feathers.  Feels weird.”

“A bath might fix it,” I said, glad for the change of subject, the simple, implicit question I could actually answer.  I was doubly glad that Evan was talking more or less normally to me.  “That is, if being magical doesn’t fix it before then.”

“That’d be weird,” Evan said.  I raised my hand to my shoulder, and he hopped onto his perch there.  I moved my scarf so he could take shelter.  “Can I give myself a bath?”

“Probably,” I said.  “Not sure if it’ll come off, might have to wait until you molt.  Again, allowing for being magical.”

“Uh huh,” he said.  “Or it could be my thing.  Evan Matthieu, blood sparrow, biting out chunks of eyeball and fighting monsters!”

Thinking of blood made me think of Maggie, odd as it was.  I looked in her direction, and saw her sitting on the tire that was mounted on the back of the sports utility vehicle, a matter of feet from the circle.

“Chances are good that you’d influence your natural properties, if you made a habit of getting that bloody,” Rose said.

“Huh?”  Evan asked.

“Soak yourself in blood probably would give you power of a sort.”

“Cool.”

“I think some Others and practitioners do that sort of thing… but if I’m remembering right,” Rose said, “There are drawbacks.”

“Aww.”

“I’m going to vote against the blood-bath strategy,” I told Evan.

“Awww.  Why?”

“To be safe.  And because we need to wrap this chat up and get down to business.”

“Aw-” Evan started.  He cut himself off as I angled my head, bumping him with my jaw.

“I’m not objecting,” Rose said.  “But are you alright to move?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.  “I need a second opinion.  I swore… fuck, I can’t remember the exact wording.  I wouldn’t move until this was decided.”

“I think you’d be lying if he broke free and the fight continued,” Rose said.  “I’d say this is pretty decided, but if you want to sit there and wait-”

“No,” I said.  “I feel like if I don’t get moving as soon as humanly possible, I’m just going to stop.”

“Suit yourself,” she said.  “I’ll be over by Maggie.”

“Sure,” I said.

She was gone before I even started pulling myself back up to a standing position.

Too many close calls, situations where I was potentially breaking vows.

This whole dynamic, it was perfectly suited to the cool customer, to the men and women, boys, girls and Others who were coldly calculating, unflinching, with strong memories and keen attention to detail.

That wasn’t me.

“Hey,” Evan said.

We were alone.  A quick check verified that none of the Behaim kids had approached.

“Hey,” I said.

“About before?” Evan asked.

I felt the emotion like a weight on my chest.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Is that a serious rule against me doing the blood sparrow thing or is there wiggle room?”

I let out a small half-laugh.  “No rules.  I said it was a vote, because it is.  We’re partners.  You make the choice, ideally with my input in mind.”

“Uh huh,” he said, his tone suddenly cheery, “So… that means I can do it?  Or I go do it and then say sorry after?”

I sighed.  “Rose and I are rubbing off on you.”

“Seriously though,” he said, his tone changing.  I knew exactly what he was referring to.  He didn’t finish the thought.

“Seriously,” I said, “You’re… putting me in a tough spot.  I want you to enjoy the stuff you should be enjoying, as a kid-”

“Dead kid.”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s a magic bird.”

“Yeah.  My point stands.  I-”

“A magic bird who could be a terrifying blood sparrow,” Evan said.

“Evan,” I said, and my tone was harsher than I meant it to be.  Sharper than it should have been.

I kind of regretted doing that.  I might have sworn I wouldn’t do it again, just to give myself a serious reminder, but I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t slip in the heat of a moment, and the heat of the moment was the only time it was liable to come up.

“Sorry,” he said.  “I’m nervous and I don’t know how to act, so I’m trying to be me, but I guess I’m being a nervous me.”

“I’m sorry too,” I said.  “I’m- I guess I’m trying to be careful about what I say and how, and the interruptions aren’t helping.”

“Okay, I’ll shut up, then.  You, um, you know I wasn’t really asking about the blood thing, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I wasn’t talking about it either.  I want you to enjoy being a kid, whether you’re a bird or a kid or whatever else.  You’re doing an awesome job so far.  A ridiculously good job.  But there’s stuff we’re dealing with that isn’t pretty, and that-”

Memories flashed through my mind’s eye.

“-That-,” I stumbled, my train of thought interrupted.  “was some of them.  The stuff we’re not exactly talking about.”

Not what I’d been meaning to wrap up with, but I’d rather finish the thought somehow than keep stumbling.

I was purposefully taking my time trudging through the snow to Maggie and Rose, watching my back in case the kids emerged.  My jeans were soaked up to the knee already, and the cold just passed right through it.

“I’m kind of glad I didn’t have to grow up if that’s the sort of thing you have to deal with,” Evan said.

I let out another small laugh, more as a response than out of any genuine humor.  I didn’t feel up to saying anything in response, and the alternative to laughing was letting the floodgates open, and I needed to stay functional.

Unhealthy, maybe, to bottle it up and slap a thin veneer of cheer over it, but I wasn’t sure there was a healthy way to deal with stuff of this caliber.

“I don’t think you should assume my life was typical in any way,” I said.  “And you really shouldn’t say that.”

“I got stuck in the woods because a giant monster and his ghost chew toys trapped me there.  I’m not typical either.  Life can suck, and mine sucked toward the end, and I’m sorta glad it stopped sucking.  Not totally glad but sorta glad.”

“Evan-”

“No, nuh-uh.  You said I shouldn’t interrupt you while you’re all borked.  You also said we were partners, so that goes both ways.”

I sighed a little.  “Fine.  Say what you want to say.”

“You told me I shouldn’t say that I’m kind of glad.  But I have to because I’m supposed to tell the truth.  I miss my parents and I miss parts of my old life, the video games I never got to finish playing, and sometimes I do something awesome and I think I should tell my friends, and then I remember I can’t.  Because dead.”

True to my word, I didn’t interrupt his spiel.

“But I am glad that I get to do stuff now instead of being alive and waiting for the next crummy thing to happen, or being dead and not getting to do much at all…”

I’d arrived at the end of the driveway by Maggie and Rose.  Maggie sat on the back of the car.  She held a mirror, presumably from the side-view mirror.

Rather than approach them, I cast a glance backward, making sure there weren’t pursuers, then held up a finger for their benefit.  I walked a short distance away from them, keeping them out of earshot of Evan.

“…I’m a freaking kick-ass magic bird.  Most of the time the worst that can happen is you go kaput and I gotta go head off to the land of the dead.  I don’t have to worry about stuff the usual way.  Only thing I gotta worry about is helping you with the stuff that you worry about.”

“The way you phrased that makes me feel kind of conflicted,” I said.

“It’s true!  That’s the deal, isn’t it?  You make my life better, you stop monsters with my help, and I help you through stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “That’s essentially it, I guess.”

“So,” he said, and his tone shifted.  More careful.  “That stuff.”

“I’m not majorly comfortable talking about it,” I said.  I stuck my hands in my pockets for warmth.  “It was what it was, and I can’t shake the feeling that people think less of me when they know, and I’d much rather be the guy with the cool friends and the motorcycle than… what you saw.  And don’t tell me it didn’t change how you think of me, because it had to, and you can’t lie.”

“I can’t,” he said.  “And even if I really want to tell you I think you’re more amazing…”

He trailed off.

It hurt.  I had to admit it.  It hurt.

I respected him for being mature enough to say it, but it hurt.

“That one vision-”

“Evan,” I said.  Interrupting him, despite myself.  Reflexive.

“Being beat up?  Seeing you sleeping on the streets, all dirty?  Not so amazing.  I don’t blame you, but it’s not so amazing.  I do think those guys suck for being cowardly and attacking you by surprise, all as a group.  I thought I should say that.”

“Okay,” I said.  “As much as you want to comment-”

“I need to comment,” he said.  “Because we’re stuck together.  If I don’t say something, then it becomes this thing we don’t talk about, like the time my mom and my dad separated for a while when I was really young, and my mom had a boyfriend right away after my dad left, and my parents got back together and nobody ever talks about the guy that was around back then, like they think- thought I didn’t remember.”

“You want to keep channels of communication open,” I said.

“Yeah, that.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Channels of communication are open.  Thank you for being honest.  We should really hurry to the others and do what we can-”

“Not yet.  That other one, the second vision memory thing?”

“Evan,” I said.

“I didn’t understand it.  I mean, I got it, sort of.  I- I can pick up on how unhappy it made you.  I can put the pieces together.”

“This is one of those things where talking about it doesn’t always make it better,” I said.

“I’m- okay.  Right.  But if you ever do want to talk abut it, we can, and the channels are open.”

“I don’t think I ever will,” I said, “But thanks.”

“And-” he said.

I tensed.  Please stop talking.

“-I sorta get why Alexis is extra important to you.  If something happens, and if I can, I’ll look out for her.”

I let out a breath I’d inadvertently been holding in, and a small part of it was relief.

“That’s it,” Evan said.

I nodded.

I headed back to Rose and Maggie.  While I did it, I adjusted my scarf, making sure Evan had enough coverage that cold air wouldn’t leak around him.

“That was good wording, by the way,” I said.  “That promise?  I’m happier hearing you be careful like that than I am hearing a straight-up oath.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

We reached the circle.

The Behaims were moving around more, according to the connections, but not in our direction.

“What was that about?” Maggie asked.

“Needed to finish a discussion,” I said.  “Nothing that should negatively affect you guys.”

“If you say so.  He’s inside.  I can see him moving around.  Now what?”

“Now for the hard part,” Rose murmured.

I could make her out, and it was my first real clear view of her since this skirmish had started.  Her hair had been cut short enough that it hung only to the nape of her neck, and it wasn’t an even cut.  Styled, it might look good, but it wasn’t.  The bits at the back were shorter than the bits closer to the front of her face.

In a way, it made me think of a bird’s wings.

“Well,” I said, shaking my head until I was more focused, “Not the hard part quite yet.  We just need to bind him without his cooperation, and without letting him go.  Then we get to the hard part.”

“I meant ‘now’ as in the next leg of this.  I’m open to suggestions on how to do this binding.”

“Let me try,” Maggie said.

Maggie reached into her bag.  She pulled out Black Lamb’s Blood, and the remains of the cord that had bound the text.

Using her athame, she held the cord out, so only the blade extended past the edge of the circle.  She deposited the string within, then rearranged it with the blade, walking around it and poking the cord into place.

When the cord formed a circle, the ends overlapping, she stuck her athame in the ring of crimson snow, cutting it in half.

“The hair?” Rose asked.

“I should be able to use what’s here,” Maggie said.  “If I can’t, you do have more on your head.”

“I’d rather not,” Rose said.

“You could use hair from elsewhere,” Maggie said, arching an eyebrow, athame raised.

I shuddered a bit.

“Couldn’t resist,” Maggie said, as she got back to work.  “That really bothers you?”

“She’s me.  It’s like you’re talking about doing something rude to my sister.”

Maggie began pushing the crimson snow into a tighter ring, one small enough to just encircle the mirror.

She began moving the pages, each of which had snow on it, the snow pushed down into a trench-like depression, with the hair within.  The process was slower.  She did three, adjusting the trench as she went, then circled around to do the opposite three, keeping it relatively symmetrical, moving each page as far as it would go without breaking contact with the ones on either side.

On the other side of the street, two houses down, the Behaim kids emerged.  Duncan was leaning on the tallest one, his arms wrapped in bandages that were already crimson with blood where they had been cut to the bone, his hands dangling limp.

I was frozen as I watched them make their way over the snow, their attention on the snow immediately underfoot.

I could practically count down, their pace was so measured.

They reached the end of the path, stopping at the foot of the driveway.

They see.

Laird lay face down in the snow.

I swallowed hard.

“Blake,” Rose said.

“Hm?”

“About what you said before, theatrics are important.  I don’t know for sure, but if the spirits are on the fence, and if I’m not sabotaging you by telling you this, well, it seems like they would be more inclined to take your side if you acted like you were right.”

I nodded slowly.

Maggie was still going, the papers halfway to the inner circle of blood.

“Can we leave you to it?” I asked.

“You can.  Should you?  Don’t know.  Those kids are going to be upset.”

I nodded.

I crossed the street, approaching the kids.

They hadn’t budged from where Laird lay, Duncan now standing between the two teenagers, who worked together to support him.  The younger ones stood on either side of Laird.

One was one of his sons, if I remembered right.

The younger girl was crying, hands to her mouth.

They tensed as I drew near.  I raised my hands.

“It’s over,” I said.  “Please don’t make this any worse than it’s been.  I’m… pretty fucked up, but you guys have Duncan to look after, I…”

I was having trouble articulating why they shouldn’t hit me with their worst.

Seeing the expressions on their faces, I wasn’t fully convinced, myself.

They looked to the oldest teenager for guidance.

Eyes lowered, still propping Duncan up with one arm, he very deliberately let go of his implement, letting it drop into one pocket.

The others relaxed, or they didn’t look poised to jump me.

“You know what gets me?” he asked, tone dull.  “English.  The language doesn’t do us justice in situations like this, does it?”

He met my eyes.

Being so close to where I’d relived the memories, I felt like my mind was some sort of minefield.  If I thought the wrong thing, or thought in the wrong direction, I might crack, or snap, or get pulled back into recollections.

People suck, my own words to Evan, in my head.

“You’re right, sometimes there aren’t the words to say what you really want to say,” I said.

“There are a lot of things I could call you,” he said.  “But I couldn’t call you a motherfucker without lying, and it doesn’t feel like the word has enough force to it, does it?”

“I promised you I’d avoid hurting him too much,” I said.  “Not to kill him if- I think I said I wouldn’t kill him if I could help it.”

“My uncle is dead.  It doesn’t look like it was clean,” he said.  “I could call you forsworn.  The spirits will get around to it if it’s deserved, but I could call you on it right here, decide how it plays out.”

I nodded slowly.

The older girl said, “Nothing to say?  No words in your own defense?”

“If you’d name me forsworn,” I said, “I’d challenge you to walk through the last ten minutes in my shoes.  See what I saw, feel what I felt, and then decide I was out of line and that I didn’t try.”

“The wording was, with minor differences, that you’d avoid hurting him too much, full stop.  You’d avoid killing him if you could, circumstances allowing, full stop.”

I did what I could to avoid flinching or showing doubt.

I even did what I could to avoid thinking about my doubts.

I needed to sell this, not just to them, but to the spirits that were observing.

“In terms of quantity of blows, it was only the one,” I said.  “In terms of the pain inflicted… I think it was a very low number on a scale of one to ten.  I offered him some help after the fact.”

The teenage girl beside Duncan spat on me.  I was pretty sure she was aiming at my face, but she hit the coat I’d borrowed from Ty instead.

I didn’t move.  I held their gaze, steady.

The spitting, the seconds of silence that passed, it was a tacit acknowledgement that I wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Go,” I said.  “Get Duncan there some help.  Do what you need to do, family-wise.  I’m guessing I’ll see some of you soon.”

The teenagers led Duncan off, the little girl following.

The youngest boy stayed, staring at me.  His face was drawn, his features tight.

“What?”

“Trying to remember what your face looks like,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s worth the effort,” I said.  “A whole lot of Others and powers that be who can see the future are telling me I’m due to bite it sometime soon.”

“The Faerie told my father that one of his sons had only one year of life remaining,” the boy said. “And he was told he had thirty more years.  Things can always be fudged.  I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“How does that work?” I asked.  “How were things fudged?”

“Use of real time magic, just to be safe,” the kid said.  “The family held a meeting, they voted and signed off on it.  My father wrote terms into his will and sealed them with the appropriate magics.  He and mom are giving us their remaining years if they die, half to me, half to my brother.  Or my dad is going to try to.”

It looked like it was getting harder for him to speak.  He was very deliberately avoiding looking at his dad.

It struck a chord in me, how I didn’t want to think of the wrong thing.

“I’m glad you’ve got that,” I said.

“Fuck you.  You shouldn’t be,” he said.  “We were enemies before, because of what you are and the family you come from.  Now, after this?  Like my cousin said, English doesn’t give good enough words, sometimes.  What’s worse than enemy?”

I didn’t answer the question.  “He knew what he was getting into, he knew what he was getting you into.”

“You killed my dad.”

“He pushed me into the worst sort of corner,” I said.

My tone was eerily flat.  It sounded disconnected, unconvincing even to myself.

“You killed my dad,” he repeated himself.

“He was setting me up for a fate that could be worse than death.”

“You killed-”  he stopped himself.

It was an eerie parallel to Evan.  The singlemindedness.

“Maybe I can’t call you forsworn,” he said.  His voice was small, and it sounded like it might break.  “Don’t want that backlash.  But I can say I wish you suffer everything bad that’s coming to you.  I can appeal to the greater powers and the least powers, and tell them that if you have upset things, if you’ve got something bad coming your way, then they should make you lose whatever it is that made you feel happy and- and safe.”

With that last word, his voice finally cracked.

“Fuck you,” he said, as soon as he could speak straight, punctuating his statement.

Spat on, sworn at on two different levels…

“We can’t take him with us.  Don’t you dare touch the body,” he said.

“I won’t,” I said.

“If you’re wrong, and you don’t die soon, then I’m going to come after you.”

I nodded.

“No fancy comeback?  No threats?”

I swallowed hard.  “I don’t blame you.  I blame him, because I think he’s given you a pretty one sided version of things, but I don’t blame you.”

“Fuck you,” he said.  “Just… whatever you killed him to avoid?  I hope you get worse.”

I nodded.

There was nothing more to be gained here.

I turned to go.

“Fuck you!” he shouted at my back, and his voice cracked again, worse than before.

I rejoined Maggie, avoiding looking their way.  Evan perched on my shoulder, watching my back for me.

Maggie had the circle closed, now, and was rearranging the cord yet again.  “I need something else.  Can you bring the Hyena?”

I glanced at the monster’s corpse.  It was easy to miss, half-buried in snow.

I started to speak, but my throat was tight.

It was Rose who spoke.  “Hyena, you’re done.  I, um, bid you to collapse and be bound again, for it is a simpler form, and one you’ve committed to.”

Nothing happened.

Then, after seconds had passed, the Hyena moved.  The snow fell, covering the remains of the body.  When it settled, close to the street, the sword stuck out of the thickest part of it, broken.

“What the hell books have you been reading?” I asked.

“I pulled that one out of my ass,” Rose said, “so to speak.  Borrowing from you, really.”

I nodded.

I extended the handle of the sword in Maggie’s direction, but she shook her head.  “Much as I want it, best you do it.  You have a role here, since you freed the people.”

“Makes sense,” I said.  “What do I do?”

“I’m going to hold the paper down, and try to angle things so I can use the point of the athame.  Use the sharpest point of the broken blade.  We’re going to use two blades and work together to tie a very simple knot.  Don’t put your hand inside the circle, or you might not get it back.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

She shook her head.

I didn’t touch the handle, instead resting my right hand on the distorted wolf-skull emblem on the hilt, and my left on the cluster of bone at the pommel.

It was harder than it sounded, and it sounded very, very hard.

I almost didn’t mind.  Ten failures, then twenty.

I’d heard stories about how scientists gave games like Tetris to the recently traumatized, to force a change in brain patterns and keep the trauma from getting its claws in the psyche.

I suspected I wasn’t so fortunate as that, but it was almost meditative.  Not at all bad.  I didn’t have the energy for impatience.

By the time we got it done, the sky was growing darker, and paradoxically, the city was waking up.

We finished about ten seconds before my hands and knees started to go completely numb, one minute before someone happened to walk outside and see us kneeling in the driveway.

My ears were ringing, my eyes had been so focused the rest of the world looked distorted, and I was cold and hurting.

I didn’t even hear the questions the bystander asked.

We’d tied the knot, Maggie reached in to cinch it tight, and we pulled the mirror from the circle, bound in bloodstained paper and cords that had been soaked in blood.  Maggie tied the knots with locks of Rose’s hair.

We hadn’t conversed while our focus was on the knot, and I wasn’t even sure if Rose was even around, or if she had sought refuge somewhere where there were books and modern conveniences.  Evan was resting, his thoughts elsewhere.

Even with the mirror bound, we were silent as we headed off.  We didn’t have a specific reason to be silent, but we didn’t have anything more to say either.

I wanted food, I wanted sleep, and I doubted I’d have time for both.

The hard part came next.

■

The mirror clattered on the dining room table.

My apartment, as it happened.  No reason to hide anymore.  Not exactly.

Something had changed.  The connections around the city, the tone of things.  It was like the world had been cast in a stark contrast before, and it was only now letting up.

Even the connections that radiated from and to me were less intense.

Conquest’s champions knew he was bound, and they weren’t acting.

Goosh and Joel arrived, Joel carrying food.  Freezer pizza.

Freezer pizza sounded damn good, frankly.

Alexis, Ty and Tiff arrived not long after we did.  I had the kitchen sink filled with warm water and a drop of dish soap, and Evan was doing his best to give himself a bird bath.

“Hey,” Ty said.  “Hey little bird.  I’ve got my console and some games in my backpack.  Blake said that this next stretch might involve waiting?”

“It might,” I said, “It could just as easily arrive in the next minute.  A Sphinx crashing through my window, or an arrow, or the building burning down…”

“I’m… not sure I want to hear this,” Joel said.

I nodded.  “Sorry.”

“Do you have Salv?” Evan asked.

“I do, as a matter of fact, have Salv,” Ty responded.

“Do you have a save file at the crash?”

“I do.”

“Are- are you willing to watch a bird struggle to use gamestation thumbsticks and press buttons when he says?”

“Willing?  I don’t think you could convince me not to.”

“Sweet!”

Maggie had settled in at the end of the table, her arms folded.

I had questions, but… even now, was it time to ask?

Beyond her, practically everyone I trusted was here.

Which made it very concerning when I heard a knock at the door.

Only the people I didn’t trust were left.

I opened the door.

“Paige,” I said.

“Hi, Blake,” she said.

I looked at the woman behind her.

“And Isadora?”

The Sphinx nodded.  “Everyone else will be on their way soon.  May I?”

Too speechless to respond, confused, I nodded and stepped out of their way.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Void 7.9

Isadora looked much as she had when I’d seen her on the balcony, but she’d taken more measures to make it look more like she was human.  More of the winter clothing including scarf and hat, fashionable in a way that suggested she wasn’t paying that much, but still had an uncanny awareness of what would suit her and go well together.

Paige was different from the last time I’d seen her.  The clothes weren’t a new style, but I had the uncanny impression that she’d taken one step along the road to being more like Isadora.  Same thing with the clothes.  Her hair was styled differently.  She stood straighter, more poised.

They stopped at the entrance to the living room.  Paige’s eyes roved over everything.  Ty and Evan were sitting on the floor, Ty unwinding cables he’d neatly bound with twist ties, and Evan perched on the game controller that had been set on the ground, one foot on each thumbstick, wings extended for balance.

The others were on the couch or in the dining room.

“Your T.V. sucks,” Evan said.  “My mom and dad have a better T.V. in their kitchen, and it’s as old as I am and it’s smaller than the…”

He trailed off as he saw Isadora and Paige.

“…microwave.”

The appearance of strangers changed the tone of things right away.  Only some of my friends had seen and met Isadora.

“I remember you,” Joel said.

“Yeah,” Paige said.  “Thank you for being so patient with me and pointing me in the right direction.”

“Not a problem,” Joel said.

Others, including Alexis, Ty, Tiff and Evan, were looking at me for a cue.

“I suppose introductions are in order,” I said.  “But before I launch into those… I have to ask, Isadora, does she know?”

“She knows some,” Isadora said.  “Almost enough.”

“That’s pretty vague,” I said.  “Dangerous, even.”

“I know,” Isadora said.  Then, after a pause, she prompted me, “Introductions?”

“Most of you know Isadora.  Joel, Goosh, this is the woman who cut me open the other night, nearly killing me.”

I saw Paige’s eyebrows go up.  She glanced at Isadora.

Isadora didn’t offer an explanation.

“Beside Isadora, we have Paige.  My cousin.  Last in line to be heir to the Thorburn property and all its misfortunes.  No, I don’t know why she’s with Isadora.  Isadora, Paige, these are my friends and allies.  Alexis, Tiffany, Joel, Goosh, Maggie, Ty, and Evan.”

I pointed to each in turn.  Evan flew up to my extended finger as I finally reached him.  I moved him to my shoulder.

“Isadora told me ‘there are no coincidences’,” Paige said.  “Evan?  As in the kid you were accused of murdering?”

“Your cousin is sharp,” Ty said.

“That means I’m right?  It’s not a coincidence?” Paige said.

“Not helping, Ty,” I said.

I looked between Paige and Isadora, hoping to make the connection.  I settled on speaking to Isadora.  “What’s this about?  Is she a hostage?”

“No.”

“Why is she here?”

“I chose to come,” Paige said.

Alexis spoke up, “You couldn’t choose to come unless she gave you the choice in the first place.  I think he’s asking why Isadora gave you the choice.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Having someone speak up and help clarify this situation and help me feel a little less off-balance made a world of difference.

Isadora spoke up.  “We were talking, I said I had something to do, she asked if it had to do with this world.  I said yes.  She asked if she could observe, as per our prior agreement, made a few days ago.  I said she could do more than observe.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.  “She knows some, but not enough?  She’s a danger to herself, to the innocent, and to the rest of us, if the wrong thing gets said.  She’s a walking minefield.”

“You just asked a question and answered it in the next breath,” Isadora said.

That took me a second to wrap my head around.  “You want her to act as a walking hazard?”

“The sorority, the astrologer, your friends from the convenience store and the drunk, among others, will be arriving within the next twenty minutes, by my best estimate.  Tensions are liable to be high.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I’d said something only a few bit ago about possibly being shot through the window.  No surprises with that pronouncement.

“This will go more smoothly with her here.  Everyone will have to carefully choose their words, and nobody will pull out weapons with a relative innocent in the way.  Peace, after a fashion.”

Because cluing her into the world behind the curtain means taking on some responsibility for whatever happens to her.  I looked at Paige.  She’s here because it means possibly finding answers.

This was a disaster waiting to happen.

“Did you find her, or did-”

Paige cut me off.  “I found her.”

“She investigated on her own,” Isadora said.  “Word was getting around about the altercation at the University, you and the drunkard’s friends.  She heard, discovered it was you, and asked around.  I was one of the people that she asked.”

“That seems like an awfully contrived series of events for someone who was just saying there are no coincidences,” I said.

Isadora smiled.  “It illustrates my point, as a matter of fact.  Paige?  Remember what we talked about earlier?  Rephrase it in your own terms, show me you understood the idea.”

Paige blinked a few times.  Then she took the challenge.  “Imagine a stone, the stone is tied to other stones, all arranged around the edge of a pond, or on the side of a bridge.  Throw it in, and what happens?”

Maggie answered, “That’s a stupid hypothetical.  It depends on the strength of the rope.  The size of the stones, the number of stones…”

“And the strength of the throw,” Paige said.  “Exactly.  The stone could dangle, safely suspended above the depths, all other things being standard.  If the stone is particularly heavy, however-”

She paused a half-second to glance at me.

“-Then the ropes could break, if the ties are weak enough, or, conversely, it could drag the other stones down with it,” Paige finished.  “Our hypothetical stone had momentum, a stone was already gently rolling in that general direction, and-”

“-That stone, named Paige, followed the path of least resistance,” Isadora finished.  “Good.  Eerily accurate, as a matter of fact.”

Paige smiled, and that response bothered me more than I cared to admit.

I bit my lip.  “I told you not to press, Paige.  To let this be.”

“I did.  For two days.  I wrapped up all but one of my exams, but I hate leaving things unfinished.  Our cousin died, and you had something to do with it, you were related to at least two murders, and I’m supposed to drop it on your say-so?”

“Yeah,” I said, and I sounded angrier than I should have.  “Now you’re all wrapped up in this, and the S- Isadora is trying to convince you it’s ultimately my fault.”

“A great deal of this is,” Isadora said.

“Fuck that,” I said.

“A lot of what comes next will depend on your ability to accept that fact and pay attention to what’s happening and why.  Tell me, Mr. Thorburn, why are the connections between you and the people close to you so strong?”

I glanced at Alexis and Tiff.

“I don’t know if they are.”

“If the connections were weaker, then they would break, and you’d spiral headlong into the murk, almost entirely alone,” Isadora said.

I thought of Joseph, who’d left rather than stay.

A weaker connection?

“Wow,” Ty said.  “That’s fucked.”

“As I’ve been repeatedly trying to inform Mr. Thorburn, as ‘fucked’ as that might be, the alternative is uglier,” Isadora said.  “In terms of how it involves those he’s tied to, and how it involves everything and everyone else.”

“I don’t want to plunge into any ponds,” I said.

“Yes,” Isadora said.  Her gaze was level and intimidating.  “You wanted to avoid the plunge, to avoid being stripped of everyone you hold dear, Evan excepted.  Which, I presume, is why you murdered a man earlier?”

I didn’t flinch, but I could feel the attention of everyone else on me.

Murder.  Not fancy, not explainable by saying he was an Other.  It was just a splinter of wood to the throat, an awful lot of bleeding, and a slow death of blood in the lungs or blood loss.

I wasn’t proud, and I couldn’t explain without getting into stuff I was even less proud of.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I guess so.”

“Holy fuck,” Paige said.  “Really?”

The oven beeped.  Joel looked startled.

He still made his way over.  My oven’s door, the racks and the warped baking sheet made for a fair bit of noise as he got the frozen pizza out.

I approached him, then stopped halfway.

“Can I offer you anything to eat, Isadora, Paige?” I asked.

“It’ll be a minute before it’s cool enough,” Joel said.

“You’re talking about pizza not two breaths after we were talking about murder?” Paige asked.

“In this instance, Pizza could well be more important than one man’s life,” Maggie commented.

Paige spun on her, giving the girl an incredulous look.

“To answer your question, I’m rather particular about my diet,” Isadora answered.  “And I ate recently enough.  Just alcohol, if you have any?”

“Beer,” I said.  I still had some in my fridge from a week ago.

“Now you’re putting me in an awkward position,” Isadora said.  “If I act picky, I’m being rude, but if I accept blindly, I run the risk of being offered the swill that the students at my University call ‘beer’.”

“It’s decent enough,” I said.  “Not swill.”

“Then I’ll gladly accept, thank you.”

“Can we get back to the topic of murder?” Paige asked.  “Is this hypothetical murder, or-”

“Paige,” Isadora said.  “Everything in its proper order.  You were asked a question.  Do you want anything to eat or drink?  Be honest.”

Paige frowned, as if this were some kind of moral quandary.

“A little bit of pizza and some water?” she finally asked.

I nodded.

These unexpected, uninvited guests were going to eat the pizza Joel had brought.  I put the water on the stove for oatmeal, resigning myself to a less than exciting meal, to be sure I had enough to offer.

I could hear them in the living room.  Alexis was talking.

“…Hurts, I can’t really stand up or bend over without help, but it didn’t hit anything vital.”

“I’m not surprised.  A shame that Malcolm Fell wasn’t rescued as well.”

I looked over my shoulder at Maggie.

Was the Sphinx sowing doubt, or was that a subtle reminder?

Joel leaned close, “Should I go?  I’m not much different from Paige.  I know some, but not nearly enough.”

“You know to not ask questions,” I murmured, as I opened the silverware drawer and found a serrated knife to cut the pizza with.  “She’s more dangerous, because she’s unprepared and she’s still walking headlong into this.  Because that thing is leading her headlong into this.”

“Thing?”

“Nevermind.  Go if you need to, but I don’t know if anything’s going to get mentioned in front of Paige that would be a problem for you too.”

He nodded.  “I’ll stay then, for moral support.”

Doubling down on Isadora’s gambit.  Our meeting would take place with innocents in the room.  Say the wrong thing, or use powers in an obvious, aggressive way, and we risked becoming responsible for those same innocents.

I brought Paige’s pizza and water over.  Isadora was sitting in the armchair that Ty had been planning to sit on while gaming, and Paige leaned against the wall to Isadora’s right, arms folded, expression troubled.

“Isadora, glass for the beer?”  I asked.

“No need.”

I removed the cap from the beer and handed it over.  She took a drink and smiled.

“Laird Behaim is dead,” Isadora said.  “The Behaims will claim and cremate him, I expect.  I wouldn’t anticipate legal problems.”

I nodded.

“Casualties are to be expected.  It’s not part of my makeup to mourn the dead, even the deaths of children or the deaths of thousands.  So long as it happens at the right place and time, cleanly.”

She looked directly at me as she said that last word.

“I can guess what your concern is,” I said.

“Yes.  The weather cleared up, and virtually everyone knows you’re all here.  All of you, including him.  You can imagine our collective curiosity and concern.”

Including him.  She meant ‘including Conquest’.

Conquest, who was in an ignoble location, in the bottom half of my double-decker toolbox, not five feet from me.  Anyone who tried to get him out would have to undo the clasps, discovering the lock I’d worked into the clasp at the back, unlocking and removing it, and then lift off the upper section with all the attendant tools, bits, and pieces.

Virtually every step would be a noisy one, somewhat time consuming.

One clasp had a piece of paper with a rune on it hidden just beneath.  The inside of the box, too, had a rune set in place.  The runes, too, would delay anyone from trying to steal the mirror with the incarnation bound within.

“Explanations will have to wait until everyone’s arrived,” I said.

“Of course.  I already suspect I know what unfolded.”

“Can I trust our other guests to not blow up the building or kick the door down and attack on sight?”

“They can’t kick the door down if you leave it open,” Isadora said.

I started to head for the door, but Joel was already going.

Weird, that there was more security in an open, unlocked door.

Isadora leaned back, relaxing, beer held in both hands.  On a level, it made sense, the reclining cat, on another, it didn’t fit the noble sphinx’s image.  “The little bird is doing well, I see.”

“I’m doing pretty awesome,” Evan said.

“He’s been a huge help,” I said.  My hands were jammed in my pockets.

Paige was observing everything, watching, silent, trying to put two and two together.  She spoke, “How?”

“You could say I’ve been kicking ass and taking names,” Evan said.

Paige didn’t react.  Evan’s voice went in one ear and out the other.

“Moral support,” I said.  “Backup.”

“A bird?”

“We egged super-zombies,” Evan said.

“A bird,” I said.  “I thought you said you had been filled in.”

“In abstracts,” Paige said.  “Metaphors about masks and icebergs, and the progression of man from being heavily confined by their own limitations and driven by base needs to being driven primarily by ideas, and how everything casts a shadow.  Even man and what man is doing at the time he casts a shadow.”

“Ah,” I said.  “So you haven’t been filled in.  Just the opposite.”

Her gaze was intense.  “I have almost no details.  I want any you can give me.”

“I don’t think you would, if you had a better sense of things,” I said.  I looked to Isadora.  “Please forgive me for saying so, but I have a hard time believing this isn’t you trying to extort me, or hurt me in some backhanded way.”

“I don’t blame you for feeling that way,” Isadora said.  “It’s neither.  Think back to Paige’s metaphor of the rock, lashed to other rocks by the pond.”

“I’m thinking,” I said.

She raised a hand, and in the moment she turned it over, the light in the hallway formed a backlight against her hand, and I saw a flicker of what might have been claws in her long fingernails and the position of her hand.  “Imagine that I’m holding firmly to a rock named Paige.  When your stone tumbles into the water, dragging all the rest with it, Paige remains firmly in my hand.  Maybe the other rocks dangle.  Maybe the rope breaks, and they all fall.  In both cases, there’s less of a splash, less upheaval, one less stone in the water.”

“You’re laying claim to her,” I said.

Paige shifted position, clearly uncomfortable, even though she was getting what she wanted.  She wanted information, but the moment I dropped a hint, she couldn’t make eye contact?

“Close enough,” Isadora said.  “A strong connection that won’t be easily broken.”

“What, then?  This becomes some partnership?  Master and apprentice?  Something like I have with Rose?”

“Rose?” Paige asked.

“Or Evan?” I asked.

“That’s twice now you’ve-”

“Shush,” Isadora said.  “I can’t stand interruptions.”

“Right,” Paige said.  “I’m sorry.”

“I believe you,” Isadora said.  “Mr. Thorburn, the closest parallel would be to you and Evan, yes.”

I could see it.  Paige as a practitioner, with a freaking powerful familiar.

But wasn’t there a danger there?

“So she’s going to be-”

“Before you go further and inadvertently insult me,” Isadora told me, “Paige would be the ‘Evan’ in the partnership.”

I blinked.

“Huh?” Paige asked, forgetting her promise not to interrupt.

“A pet?” Tiff asked.

“Kinky,” Alexis said.

I could see Paige going stiff, clearly uncomfortable, entirely off guard for the first time I’d seen her in… since she’d fled Grandmother’s room after their private interview, now that I thought about it.

“I’m not a freaking pet!”  Evan piped up.  “I’m a kick-ass, eye-biting, giant-tripping, life-saving familiar.”

“Not entirely inaccurate,” Isadora said.  She seemed too happy, smiling, relaxed.

“I don’t get a vote here?” Paige asked.

“You do,” Isadora said.  “But I think you’ll accept the offer.”

Paige was flushed red.

As things went, it was affecting her too much.  She was too bewildered, too upset, given her usual composure.

Unless…

Right.

Right.

“This is why grandmother refused you the inheritance,” I said.  “Put you dead last?”

Paige’s head snapped around, and she stared at me in shock.

“I’m not following,” Evan said.

“You’re gay, Paige?” I asked.

“Ohhh,” Evan said.  “Wait, nope, still not following.”

“You can’t or won’t have kids, so you can’t or won’t continue the family line?” I asked.  “Peter found out and told her?  Or did he find out part of it, and grandmother figured out the rest with questions and an eerily accurate ability to tell if you were lying?”

I could see the pain on Paige’s face as she averted her eyes.  “You’re an asshole, just bringing it up like that.  Show some damn class, Blake.”

“You caught me on a bad day.  I’d be more gentle, otherwise,” I said.  “Isadora, I’m pretty sure, wants you as a kind of slave.  You’ve wandered into this mess, and you still have room to back out now.  Get the fuck away from the pond, so I can’t drag you in, no matter how deep I sink.  Leave all this behind.  Fucking run.  Be glad you can’t get the house and all the enemies it comes with.”

Paige stared at me.

“Paige,” Alexis said.

“What?” Paige asked.

“Do what he says.  Blake’s been sliced, cut open, beaten, frozen, and nearly killed.  All of us pulling together have had to fight and make huge sacrifices to keep him going-”

Don’t put it like that, I thought.

“-and I know he cares about you.  He’s told me about his childhood.  Time spent with his cousins.  When he tells you this, I’m convinced he’s getting the words from a good, well-meaning place, okay?”

Those words seemed to reach Paige where mine hadn’t.

She looked at Isadora, and I could see a hint of doubt in her expression.  “Slavery?”

“No,” Isadora said.  “No, not really.  But it’s a kind of relationship that’s just as old, dating back to the earliest days of mankind.”

“Prostitution?” Paige asked.

“Again, the same era.  You have the pieces necessary to figure it out, if you really want to.”

“You’ve… you’ve hinted you’re older than you look.  Blake’s reaction before, the way he thought you’d be like Evan… you’re more special than you look, too.  You’re not human.”

“You’re thinking along the right track,” Isadora said.  “Assuming you’re right, what sort of relationship would harken back to humanity’s earliest days?  Think about how you’re feeling.”

“Feeling?”

Isadora took a drink of her beer.

“I’m… the first place my mind is going is to a very confused neanderthal man making an appeal to the gods, in an effort to make sense of it all.”

“Very, very close to the conclusion I was hoping you’d reach,” Isadora said.  “You’ve got a keen mind for logic and details.  This calls for you to tap into something else entirely.”

“Faith,” Paige said.

“Close enough.  You can make that leap, or can you summon the courage to leave.  But you should decide one way or the other soon.  I’d remind you of the proverb of the ass, who died hungry and thirsty because it couldn’t choose between the water and the grain.  If you don’t decide in, oh, the next three minutes, the decision will be made for you.”

“I either stay with you and worship you?  Serve you as a pet?”

“Both right and not right.  People like you once bowed and scraped for favors from sorts like me.  Something between the master-slave relationship, the master-apprentice relationship, and the stricter rules of hospitality.  A form of sheltering, if you will.  I’ll point you to the right reading material when the opportunity arises, if you choose to accept.”

“Oh gee whiz,” Paige said.  “Because it sounds so tempting.”

Sarcasm was so refreshing, I had to admit.  Lowest form of wit or no.

“Chances are good that you’d be happy, in the long term, I’ve done this with a great many of my students, and every single one of them that you might track down and ask would tell you they’re happier as a result.  I could feed your natural curiosity with more knowledge than you could get by conventional means, raise you up to be someone stellar, and even break the ties to your family, so you can leave them and the problems they pose well behind you.  You might find yourself at odds with Blake, Rose, and their allies, but I don’t sense a great deal of connection between you and them.”

“You keep mentioning Rose.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.  “Stop focusing on the details.  Go back to normal life.  Isadora isn’t mentioning that she kills the people who don’t work out.  That’s why all her past subordinates are all happy.  The unhappy ones get swallowed, they’re dead, they don’t exist anymore.”

Paige was frozen.

I could sense the other connections converging on our position, and I realized what it meant.

I saw Rose in the window.

She stepped into the TV, appearing on the unlit, concave screen.

She looked at me, and I nodded.

The TV broke.  Not an explosive shattering, but a crack, loud, with the sound of glass falling.

Paige startled.

Rose and I had both hoped for the same thing.  That Paige would run.  That she needed only a push to go.

We’d misjudged where she stood.

She spun around, instead, reaching for Isadora’s hand, half protecting her, half seeking reassurance.

I could feel it, as we passed the point of no return.  The other connections were drawing nearer.

“I’m sorry, Paige,” I said.

“Sorry?”

“Looks like you made your choice.”

“I suppose I’ll be taking responsibility for you,” Isadora said.  She squeezed Paige’s hand, then let go.  “If we aren’t lucky enough for some dumb soul to do so before the night is over.”

The Shepherd entered the apartment, and my focus shifted away from Paige.

He looked older than the last time I’d seen him, but that might have been the dark clothing and the better lighting.  He didn’t have his crook-staff, and wore only a navy-blue sweater and black jeans beneath a black coat.  His face was a little red from the cold, his eyes narrowed.  He smelled like horses.

“There are innocents present,” Isadora said.  “Talk only.”

The Shepherd, who didn’t talk at all, as far as I knew, nodded and entered.

I held out pizza and a glass of water.  He shook his head, refusing both.

I moved one of my dining room chairs to the living room.  The Shepherd sat with his arms folded across his stomach, back straight, hair tousled by the weather.  He looked intense, and somehow a little mad, in the less-than-sane sense.

“With that TV cracking all of a sudden like that, I’m thinking I should go,” Joel said.

“Okay,” I said.  “Thank you for the pizza.”

Joel smiled, but the expression was tight.

Goosh followed him out, wordless.

Diana the Astrologer was the next to enter, pausing momentarily as she saw me standing at the end of the entryway.  Silent, she removed her shoes and entered.

“Hungry?” I asked, “Thirsty?”

“Something hot,” she said.

“Coffee?  Tea?”

“Tea, please.”

I prepped the coffee at the same time I put my oatmeal together.  By the time I’d scraped the bowl clean, the tea was steeped.

She lingered in the doorway of the kitchen even after I handed it to her.

“I’m sorry I shot at your side,” she said.

“I believe you,” I said.

“My arm was twisted, so to speak.  But… I told my Perseus to avoid killing if he could help it.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Thanks, I guess, for trying.  I’m trying not to hold onto grudges, so I consider you absolved, as far as I can do that.  There’s a girl in the other room, on the couch.  It would be more appropriate to apologize to her.”

“I’ll find her.”

“There’s also Fell…”

“He told me to kill someone, or else, and I did.  I made a call, and Fell was the one I knew best.  The most disposable.”

I nodded.

She didn’t seem to have anything else to say.  Silent, awkward, she backed out of the kitchen and made her way around to the living room.

I wondered if she’d just needed to justify what she’d done to someone.  If I remembered right, she didn’t have a coven or a circle.  She had only her master, and he’d died for her sake.

Lonely.

Three of the Sisters arrived at the same time the Astrologer disappeared from view, their Elder Sister first among them.  All dressed up, looking like they were ready for a day at the office.  They refused both food and drink.

They were followed by the Drunk, and I felt a measure of trepidation.

All enemies, so far.

He’d brought four people with him, with very much the same vibe as I’d seen in my run-in at the University.

Food, drink, a warning about the innocents.

The sidelong glance he offered me gave me chills.  The creatures he had with him doubly so, now that I had an idea of what they were.

The drunk’s underlings, I noticed, went straight for the shittier beer in the fridge.  Maybe they had good manners as party guests, maybe they didn’t care.

Almost immediately behind them were the Knights.  Nick reached out to clap one hand on my shoulder, but I ducked out of the way.

“Um, sorry.  Just a little gunshy, after the last twenty four hours.  Beer in the fridge,” I said.  “Beer from a party at the front, good beer for friends, and people I don’t want to offend at the back.  Don’t have much else to drink except questionable milk and tap water.  Pizza is on the counter.”

“First thing you say is about beer and pizza?” Nick asked, giving me a hard look.  “You don’t think we have other, more serious concerns?”

“My gut told me beer and pizza first,” I said.

“No kidding?”  He asked.  He gave me a funny look.  “Fuck, if only you were born a woman, I’d trade in my wife for you.  I’m still trying to get her to think like that.”

His wife elbowed him, but she didn’t look too annoyed.

I neglected to mention my real female alter ego, and focused on staying out of their way as they moved through the kitchen.

The Behaims were among the last to arrive.

Duncan led the pack, looking grim, fresh bandages visible underneath his sleeves as the older teenager helped him take his coat off.

“Hospitality has to be observed,” I said.  “Food and drink in the kitchen, help yourselves.  Make yourselves comfortable.  I have no grudge against the kids, and no reason to act against you, Duncan.  Everyone’s meeting in the living room, past the kitchen.”

There were no answers as they walked past me.

I was ready to shut the door and return to the others when I saw a woman walking down the hall.  Older, with a kid in tow, like a grandmother and child.  I assumed they were neighbors.

But she met my eyes, and something convinced me they weren’t.

“Can I ask who you are?”

“This is Emily, and she’ll be standing in for Malcolm Fell,” the old woman said.  “I’m her bodyguard, and that’s all you need to know right now.”

I looked at the little girl.  “I’m sorry about Fell.”

Her expression was stark, without warmth or softness, as she stared up at me.

“Maybe you should be,” the old woman said.  “We’ll see how this situation is handled before I hand down any verdict.”

I glanced in the kitchen to verify that I wouldn’t be lying.  “There’s pizza and tap water.  I’m afraid I don’t have much else.”

“We’ve eaten,” the old woman said.

She stalked off to the living room.

By the time I rejoined everyone, the tension in the air was palpable.  Sisters and Diana, and the Corvidae-inspired issues there.  The Shepherd and the old woman stared me down.

In fact, it was easier to point out those who weren’t on edge.

Alexis and Tiff still occupied the couch, most likely because Alexis couldn’t move so easily.  Had they been able, I could imagine we would have set up at my dining room table, which wasn’t big enough for everyone.  As it was, we were lined up against the wall, Maggie by the toolbox at the dining room table, with one eye on the kitchen, Alexis and Tiff at the couch, and me between them.  Ty had taken a seat at the end of the table, perched there like he was ready to spring off and leap to my defense, or the defense of Alexis.  That was sort of how he always was.  Restless, eager.

“For those who don’t know,” I said, “The Lord of the City is bound and securely in my possession, but not beaten or broken.”

There was virtually no reaction.  Most already knew, it seemed.  For others, it was only clarification.

The Knights, though, seemed a little surprised at the declaration.  Paige’s attention was on the rest of the room, trying to decipher what was going on with the locals, their attitudes.

My friends weren’t so different.

“What we have now is a stalemate,” I said.  “One I aimed for, almost from the beginning of this contest.  I didn’t want to win, not explicitly, I didn’t want to lose either, obviously.  Both involve ugly consequences.”

“This won’t?” the Elder Sister said.

“It might,” I said, “But it seemed safest.”

Isadora spoke, “Do you know why he holds the position he does?”

Is this a softball question?  Is this Isadora ‘helping’ me again?

“He’s a figurehead,” I said.  “He’s disposable, but tough enough he doesn’t get disposed of.  He’s easy to manipulate, and that means you can generally get what you want without having to stick your neck out and draw attention.”

“Let me take your question from earlier and turn it around on you.  Are you extorting something from us, Mr. Thorburn?”

“No,” I said.  “I don’t think I’d get out of that alive.”

“Do you want to depose him?”

I glanced at the old woman with Fell’s relative in tow.

“I wouldn’t mind,” I said.  “I think he’s pretty toxic, pretty damn ugly, in terms of how he operates.”

“As opposed to working with what are very nearly the worst sorts of ally?  Leveraging them as tools?”

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“I think I do, but perspectives will vary,” Isadora said.  “Do you want to rule, then?”

I almost laughed.  “No.  Definitely not.”

If looks could kill, I might die ten times over from the various glares that were directed my way.  It jarred with the ridiculousness of the question.  What kind of lunatic would I have to be to want to be in charge?

“What do you want?” Isadora asked.

“I want to be left alone,” I said.  “This needs to end, but I’m not the person to end it.  People have made that clear.  I’m too… too questionable.  So I’m leaving it up to you.  I would hope that you decide on a new leader, someone who wants to be in charge badly enough to stick their neck out and risk getting hurt, but whatever you decide, I’ll hear you out.”

“Will you do what we ask without hesitation or objection?” the Elder Sister asked.

“No,” I said.  “Because that takes me back to square one.  I’m sitting this one out.  I’ve earned a break.  I’m going to use that break to do some reading I’ve fallen behind on, I’m going to look after my circle, and when that’s done, when I feel ready, I’m going back to the factory.”

There were a few exchanged glances, murmurs.

Paige looked a little bewildered.

“That could be construed as a threat,” the old woman said.

“It could be,” I said. “But it’s not intended as such.  If I have to capture, I will.  I’d rather eliminate the problem altogether.  Scour the buillding.  I’d appreciate help, but I’m not going to expect it.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Nick spoke up.  “From a distance.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“That’s it?” Duncan asked.  “You throw everything into disarray, lure us all here, and then announce that you’re shirking the responsibilities that come with victory?”

“I take it you don’t have any conception of what’s in that factory,” Nick said.  “He’s not shirking responsibilities at all.  He’s picking his battles.”

“If it was so easy to put in someone disposable as Lord,” Isadora said, “We would have done it already.  People have tried, and I was among the people who helped shut them down.  Wasn’t I, Jeremy?”

Eyes moved to the Drunk.

He didn’t answer.

“Rhetorical question,” she said.

“Yes, then,” the drunk said.

“Nothing more to say?  I thought you would be making a bid for power here.”

“No.  Not like this.  I know how things function, I am interested.  In my own way, in my own time,” Jeremy said.

“One contender,” Isadora said.

“If you can call it that,” Jeremy said.  He had a beer bottle in hand, and stared down the neck at the liquid within, rather than at the room.  “And no, I’m not implying I’m weak.  Only that I’m not joining the fight just yet.”

He took a drink.

“We can’t have someone who’s just going to die five minutes after he takes power,” Isadora said.  “Or we would have let Jeremy take the position when he last tried for it.  We need people who will secure the city, maintain an equilibrium.  Even one that’s latently unpleasant.  Because chaos and upheaval are worse.  Anything new demands that it be tested by outsiders, and we can’t weather that sort of test.”

“Allow me to disagree,” the old woman said.  “You’re the most comfortable person in this room, lounging.  Drinking without a care in the world, because you know you’re just about untouchable.  You haven’t been on the unpleasant end of the lord’s attentions.”

Isadora smiled, “No, I suppose not.”

“Emily will be assisting anyone who looks like they can securely take the position,” the old woman said.

“We’ll be making a bid,” the Elder sister said.

There was no surprise on her subordinate’s faces.

“I’d say it’s been nice knowing you,” Nick commented, “But… well, no.”

“Behaims?” Isadora asked.

“No bid,” Duncan said.  “I’m not insane.  But we could provide assistance, for a favor in turn.”

His eye moved, then he shut them, stopping short, as if he’d only started to look at me, then cut himself off.

“The Shepherd, I presume, will be backing the Lord himself,” Isadora said.  “Opposing Thorburn and attempting to wrangle the Lord’s release or kill Thorburn?”

The Shepherd nodded.

He’s a champion of Conquest, and the contest isn’t technically over.

Fuck.

“I may do the same, we’ll see,” Isadora said.

Fuck!

I remained still.  It helped that I was tired.

The questions went around the room.

Nobody else was willing to say whether they were making a play for the Lordship or not.

“Outsiders will turn up,” Isadora said.  “It’s the way of things.  But I suppose that doesn’t concern you, does it, Thorburn?”

I shook my head a little.

“Then I suppose that’s enough for now.  We’ll cease intruding.”

Just like that, they did.

They were gone in a fraction of the time they’d taken to arrive.  Only the Knights didn’t leave right off the bat.

■

“Sorry to leave you out of it,” I told Rose.

“It’s fine,” she said.

“See anything interesting from the glass?”

“Not so much.  I was mostly watching for trouble.”

I nodded.

“The factory demon is next?”

“Maybe,” I said.  “There’s stuff to wrangle.”

“Like?”

“Like working around the no-magic limitation, for one thing, in case this stalemate lingers,” I said.

I turned my attention to the Hyena’s broken sword.

The Hyena was dead, the face on the hilt a skull now.

“And,” I added, “If I can manage it, I could really do with an implement.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Void 7.10

The sudden shifts in weather had made for some spectacular changes in the environment.  Ice had melted and refrozen into spiky groupings on branches, tree branches hung low, and a mist hung over much of the area.

The factory loomed before us.

“This is it?” Ty asked, as if we hadn’t been staring at it in silence for several minutes.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I don’t expect or want you guys to go inside.  It’s as bad or worse than anything we’ve run into so far.”

“Brr,” Tiff said, rubbing her arms through her coat.  “I get a bad feeling, standing here.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” I said.  “You should, and that’s the kind of instinct I feel like you should hone.”

“Uh huh,” she said.

“How do we do this?” Alexis asked.

“Carefully,” I said.

Ty smirked.  “I think I was five the first and last time I found a line like that funny.”

“It’s not supposed to be funny,” Rose said.

“That’s good then,” Ty said.  “Because it wasn’t.”

“It eats existence?” Alexis asked.

“It eats your hand,” I said, “Then as far as you and the rest of the world are concerned, you don’t have a hand, and you never did.  The past doesn’t get rewritten, but your brain will do its best to make sense of it, filling in the gaps.”

“What if it can’t?” Tiff asked.  “Make sense of it, I mean.”

“Might be that you just don’t make sense of it.  It eats away at you, this thing that’s wrong in your understanding of the world.  You might go crazy,” I said.

“No offense,” Tiff said, “But I’m not going to argue over you not wanting us to go inside.”

“I don’t want to go inside,” I said, “But this needs doing, and I said I would.”

“I like seeing you with more conviction in what you’re doing,” Alexis said.  “I just wish it wasn’t with something this dangerous.”

“You and me both,” I said.

She fidgeted, then tossed her cigarette aside and started on another.

Alexis was smoking far more than she had before my bathroom mirror had broken and I’d made my trip to Jacob’s Bell.

I didn’t begrudge her the vice.  Smoking was ugly to me, but sometimes I liked a bit of ugliness for contrast.  Ty had a set of knives that he’d made together with a friend some time before I’d met him, reforging them out of scrap metal – the blades themselves were nice enough, but the backs of the knives, the parts furthest from the blades, hadn’t been polished.  They still had a gritty and raw sort of texture from whatever chunk of car frame or furniture they’d been taken from.

I liked those knives.  They were crap for actual use, apparently, an early experiment on Ty’s part with too low a concentration of something or other, but they were beautiful.

Alexis was the same way, kind of.  Not in terms of being crappy.  The other part.

My hands clenched the spine of Black Lamb’s Blood.  The pages we’d torn out were now set in place, corners sticking out where the angle didn’t fit a hundred percent.  I’d finished it on the drive over, after an evening and morning spent reading it off and on, going between it and a few books Rose had picked out and propped up by a mirror.  I might have gotten even more reading done, but we’d started feeling restless, electing to move out and get something concrete done, and Black Lamb’s Blood was the only physical text I could read in the car.

Too much to do.

Pauz was out there.  I fully intended to find and recapture him.

Things were moving behind the scenes, factions moving against one another, and I was staying largely out of it, hands off, while the locals decided what they’d do.

There was still Jacob’s Bell to handle, the inheritance, the families there, and the resentment.  Laird was dead, and he’d died by my hand.

Then there was this.  One was the simplest and most pressing tasks of them all.  All the more important because of how easy it was to convince myself to ignore it.  The oblivion demon.  We were scouting the location, considering what needed to be done.

“I’m thinking,” Rose said, very carefully, “That the graffiti surrounding the building is important.”

I looked at the graffiti that extended around the base of the building.  There was a lot of it, covering every surface that was in reach, or in reach of something that could be climbed.  Some was simple, letters spelling out some acronym or slang word I didn’t know.  Some was elaborate, with stylized letters, gradients and sharp edges.

“A binding?” Alexis asked.

“Maybe,” Rose said.  “Maybe there is graffiti largely hidden in the midst of all that.  But that might be a reason the demon is staying inside the building, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the demon’s origin point or egg or whatever it is.”

“Hey,” Ty said, “That’s fantastic.  We can just ignore it, and it’s stuck there, right?”

“People are going inside,” I said.  “Someone drew the binding and they aren’t around anymore, so they might have gone inside, only to be eaten.  The building was built in 1910, and it’s only been vacant for forty years or so, but if you compare it to other buildings that have been abandoned just as long, it looks like it’s in worse shape.  It’s degrading.  You can’t see it from here, but a portion of the roof has already collapsed.”

“The binding isn’t perfect,” Rose said.  “It’s radiating out, eating at its environment.”

I nodded.

Tiff craned her head.  “It’s not as isolated as I thought it would be.  There’s a park nearby.”

“Ergo, the fence,” Alexis commented.  She was hunched over a little, her gloved hands folded inside her sleeves, except when she wanted to remove her cigarette from her mouth to talk.  Each hand got its turn in venturing out into the cold.

Her nose was red from the cold, I noticed.  She saw me looking and smiled.

“Fence for the mundane, and practitioners put up wards to shoo people away,” I said, forcing myself to avoid staring.  “Runes that would make people more inclined to take detours, or just avoid or ignore the area altogether.  They had it for the parkland where the Hyena was lurking.  Except here, I don’t think it’s working.”

“Might be because of the radiation,” Rose said.  “Eating away at the protections, so they don’t last as long as they should.  Windows of opportunity are created.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “Or maybe it’s the metaphysical equivalent of a vacuum.  Nature abhors a vacuum, or something like that?  He eats reality, stuff gets drawn in as a matter of course.  Or it’s just a failing of the modern age.  The era of the internet.  You can divert people who might happen across the place, but when it’s featured on ‘abandoned building’ websites and the practitioners aren’t invested or savvy enough to take down the website or stick a big fat rune on the site’s homepage…”

“We can’t and probably won’t ever know just how many people have been caught by that demon,” Rose said.

“Any number is too many,” I said.  “This isn’t today’s project, but it’s a project.  Rose has access to the books.  We can prop one mirror up by another to read them through the surface.”

“Provided I’m willing to keep going from person to person, turning pages on demand,” Rose said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “It’s good these guys have a chance to wrap their heads around this, and I like having a chance to look at it from a distance without rushing.”

We stood there, watching.  Our breath fogged in the air, joining the heavy mist and Alexis’ cigarette smoke.

Evan returned from the air.  I held my hand over my head to give him an easier landing spot.

“Good flight?” I asked, holding him out in front.

“Yep!  I still like the motorcycle more, though.”

“That’s weird,” I told him.

“Nuh uh.”

“Flying has to be better.”

“No it doesn’t.  I’m small.  Imagine riding on top of a motorcycle the size of a train.  Makes my bones shudder and the wind blows through my feathers, and-

I shook my head a little as he went on.

“Did you see anything interesting while you were up there?”  Tiffany asked.

“A big bird screamed at me.  I think it might have been a hawk.  I screamed back, and he left me alone.”

My hand found its way to my face.  “Yeah, don’t get caught by a hawk.”

I couldn’t shake the mental image of the hawk taking Evan to pieces, and the effect that might have on me.

“Actually, it wasn’t so much me screaming back.  More just me screaming.  You don’t expect something to come after you like that when you’re all the way up there.  I was surprised, and then I realized what it was before I’d finished the first scream, and I kept screaming, and I didn’t stop until he went away.”

“Be careful,” I said.  “Be aware, and don’t get caught by a hawk.  Or a cat for that matter.”

“I think a cat would stop if I screamed at the top of my lungs.”

“If a hawk or a cat hit you full-strength, you might not be in any shape to scream,” I said.

“Huh,” he said.  “You know, this is just one more argument in favor of giving me special powers.”

“That’s already on the metaphorical to-do list,” I said.  As I’ve said a dozen times now.  “Blood sparrow, box yet to be ticked off.”

“Maybe you should put it on a real to-do list,” Evan said.

“You know what could be even better than a blood sparrow?” Ty asked.  “Considering the demon your practitioner wants to fight?”

“No, Ty,” I said, before he could say anything.

Ty ignored me.  “A fire sparrow.”

“Yes.”

“Fuck you, Ty,” I said.

“Blake, Blake, Blake!”  Evan hopped around on my outstretched hand.  I let my hand drop, and he caught himself with a few flaps of his wings, full-intensity flying until he’d circled around to land on my shoulder.  He hopped in place there.  “Blake!”

“What?”

“Fire sparrow.  Ty thinks it’s a good idea!”

“I heard it, just as you did.”

“Maybe you didn’t, because you’re not even half as excited as I am about the idea!  Imagine me doing everything I’ve been doing already, except I’m on fire.”

“Great, Ty,” I said.  “Now he’s not going to let this go.”

“It’s like all this stuff I’ve been doing with moving around and epic dodges and biting that guy’s eye, except I’m like a daredevil.  Being on fire while flying through a flaming hoop or something.”

“He’s a kid, on top of everything else,” Ty said.  “He gets bored, and he needs to get excited about stuff.  You’ve got to give him that.”

“Devil-bird?  No, that might give people the wrong idea.”

“Yeah, probably would, Evan,” Rose commented.

I briefly considered making Evan ride on Ty’s shoulder for the ride back, then thought twice about it.  Ty was liable to stir him up further.

I sighed.

“What about those flaming birds?”  Evan asked.

“Phoenixes,” Rose said.

“Yes.  I could be like one of those!”

I ignored him.  I looked over at Tiff and Alexis, only to see that Tiff was smiling.

“Don’t,” I said, under my breath.  “If he thinks you approve, it’ll only egg him on further.  He’ll get on your case until you get on my case.”

Tiff did a terrible job of wiping the smile off her face, and settled for looking away, off in the direction of the ice-laden trees.

Alexis rubbed her hands together.

“Cold?” I asked.

“Yeah.  You?”

I touched my coat.  It was hideous, a thrift-store buy, a down-filled brown corduroy coat with a folded-down collar, but it had deep pockets, it was warm, and it had only been eighteen dollars.

“I’m warm enough,” I had to admit.  “All the same, if we’re not getting anything more out of this, we maybe should head back soon, get a move on with something more concrete.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said.  “I’ve been reading about protective spells.  I was just thinking that if I got a picture of the graffiti-”

She patted her coat.  “Forgot my notebook in the car.”

“No prob,” Ty said.  He drew his phone out of his pocket.

I saw it, made a mental connection, and moved my hand to stop him from raising it.  In the process, I very nearly slapped the phone out of his hand.

“What the hell?” he asked, as he caught it with the other hand, stopping the phone from dropping into the snow.

“You remember the rules that Rose and I outlined before we arrived?”

“If something comes up, it’s vulnerable to fire, very possibly vulnerable to other things of creation and light.  No looking in or at the windows.  If something goes down and we’re at any risk at all, we’re not supposed to try and save each other.  We save ourselves first.”

“Remember why we’re not supposed to look in the windows?”

“Try being more patronizing, why don’t you?”

“No jokes.  Not with this.”

Ty frowned.  “Because it doesn’t follow typical rules.  If it’s reflected in our eyes, it’s in our eyes?”

“And if its image is captured in your phone?”  I asked.

He looked down at his phone, his forehead creased as he frowned.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Chances are low,” Rose said.  “If it was that easy, and if I’m right about there being bindings hidden among the graffiti, it would probably have escaped already.”

“Probably,” I said.  “But low chances or not…”

“Yeah,” Ty said.  “It’s a bad idea.  Unless I can get a shot that doesn’t include the windows?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “That.”

He moved the phone by milimeters at a time, until he had a shot.  I heard the artificial camera sounds as he took the pictures.

“We should meet up with Maggie, then start working on the plan to free up your ability to use magic,” Rose said.  “If we can’t come up with a plan A, we’re going to have to go with her plan B.”

“You know a plan sucks when it’s the plan B before you even have a plan A,” Alexis said.

“Give me a better one,” I said.  “Please.”

She shrugged.

“Yeah,” I said.

Ty finished taking the photos and put his phone away.

“Speaking of the one member of our group who seemed most uncomfortable with the idea of stopping by the factory…” I said, as we collectively turned to head in the direction of the car.  I paused long enough to make sure everyone was listening, “…Anyone else have concerns?”

“Don’t know her,” Alexis said.  “I don’t get a good vibe.”

“You get ‘vibes’?” I asked.

“Not really.  Not usually.  But I got one with you, I think, and I got one with her.  Good vibe with you, but she gives me a bad one.”

I nodded.

“Why?” Rose asked.

“Something’s legitimately Other about her,” I said.  “Duncan hurt her, and I saw something beneath the surface.  When I looked at her with the Sight, she looked like she had more power than she’s been displaying.  Little things haven’t been adding up.  My first thought was possession.”

“That would explain a lot,” Rose said.  “She hasn’t been sleeping.”

“Insomnia?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Rose said.  “I see her sometimes and she’s lying there, just breathing… but then she gets restless and she starts moving around.  Like she’s trying to pretend to sleep, but she can’t bring herself to do it for eight hours straight.”

“Okay,” I said.  “This is the sort of thing where it’s really useful to compare notes.  We’ve read about cases where someone lets something in and it takes over.  Or a familiar overwhelms the master.”

“You still trusted her with the binding circle.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because nothing’s suggested she’s not on our side,” I said, “I like to give people the benefit of a doubt until they give me reason to do otherwise.”

“Noble,” Rose said.  “Stupid as fuck, but noble.”

“Not arguing that,” I said.  I’m the fool, after all.

“What are we supposed to do, then?” Tiff asked.

“Just keep an eye out.  Note anything unusual, report it when she’s not nearby.  For now, we’re going to meet with some dangerous people, enact our plan B, and maybe if there’s any spare time to let our minds idle, we need to think about a way to produce as much fire as is humanly or inhumanly possible.”

“Oh,” Evan said, hopping around on my shoulder.  “Blake, blake!  I know, I know!”

■

Our first stop put us outside a little building on the outskirts of Toronto.  Between picking up Maggie and then making the trip, we had a long enough drive that we had to stop for lunch on the way.

The drive was somewhat uncomfortable with Maggie in the passenger seat, the other three crammed in the back, but there wasn’t another configuration that would have worked.  The roads had yet to be cleared, so I couldn’t ride my bike.  I wasn’t one for being crammed anyplace, and I didn’t want to make the others sit with Maggie when we’d just been voicing our concerns over her.

Then, to top it off, she got in a long discussion with Evan about how one could theoretically pull off the ‘fire bird’ thing.  Certain kinds of goblin and elemental, and how shamans could manipulate spirits into war paint to wear them, and other inane ideas that would be floating through Evan’s head for days to come.

The building was only one floor, squat, with a sloped roof.  The snow heaped over it had greater dimensions than the building did.

I knocked.

The Astrologer answered.

“You don’t have any errant spirits on your person?  Nothing electrical or technical?”  she looked at Maggie, “No gremlins?”

“No,” I said.

“No,” Maggie said.

“Good.  Come in.  Tea?” she asked.  “I’m drinking a lot of tea right now.  I ran out of milk a good few hours ago, so you’d have to choose between green and black.”

“Sure,” I said.  “Wouldn’t complain.  Green.”

“Going to be a bit of a squeeze, but you guys should come in.”

The others gave their orders as I made my way inside.

It kind of baffled, boggled the mind even, that we were in the great white north, a place with a freakishly low population density of about four people per square kilometer, and yet I kept finding myself in places without enough room.

I took a fraction too long to decide where I could sit where I’d have enough room, prompting a, “Blake?” from Alexis behind me.

We sat, in chairs or on the edges of desks, where we could find the room.  The room wasn’t much larger than my parents’ one-car garage had been when I’d been growing up, and it was chock full of computer towers, shelves and boxes.  Where those things alone didn’t take up enough space, the place was further littered with errant books and stacks piles of paper, a lot of it from some old fashioned printer where the paper connected as a series of sheets, end to end in one long feed with holes at the side so the machine could manipulate it better.  The printouts themselves were faded, featuring reams of calculations, and many piles had words written on the sides in marker.

Diana looked so mellow and laid back, compared to the put-together way she’d looked when I’d first seen her.  Skirt over tights, slippers, and a loose woolen sweatshirt, her hair tied back in a ponytail.  She flicked on her kettle, which rested on a shelf.

“My humble abode,” Diana said.  “I do have a house, but I spend most of my time here.”

The computer monitors, even, were old CRTs, some black and green.  The place smelled like tea, ozone and mold.  The whole setup, including the vaguely rounded pile of snow above the building, struck me as being a kind of high tech hobbit hole.

Not what I might have assumed.

Maggie smirked, “This is where the magic happens, huh?”

Ty groaned.

“I like it,” I said.  I wasn’t lying.

“I do too.  Aesthetically.  In terms of usability, though, a lot of it’s grandfathered in.  My mentor was cutting edge, but cutting edge then is archaic today.  I’m not sure if it’s easier to let go of the sentimental attachment or wizard up some kind of power up to the equipment.”

“You were close,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.  “By the way, I really am sorry for shooting you.”

“It was nonlethal, you were trying to help,” Alexis said.

“Did you talk to Fell’s family?” I asked.  I wasn’t sure if the old woman counted, but ‘family’ could just as easily refer to the little girl alone.

“I did.  They aren’t as forgiving as miss Alexis is.”

I nodded.  “Trouble?”

Diana frowned, taking her seat.  “A lot of trouble these days.”

“Not so different from my life,” I told her.

“Maybe not.  I felt some empathy for you when I realized just how much you’d gone out of your way to stop the Hyena, imp and the demon in the machine.”

“Machine?” Rose asked.  “I don’t think there were any machines in there.  The factory was stripped bare.”

“That’s not the kind of machine I’m talking about.  I’m talking about reality.”

“Ah,” I said.

“I haven’t been sleeping, and I’m prone to go off on tangents when I’m on my own.  The sisters are attacking in shifts, and the problem with my setup is that things are spread out.  I won’t share details, I hope you understand why.”

She didn’t trust us one hundred percent.  I nodded.

“I can protect my things if I’m paying attention.  But I can’t pay attention while I’m sleeping, and they attack every two to four hours.  I’m making mistakes, and I can’t afford to.”

“You have sentimental attachments to those other places?” I guessed.

“Yeah.  He made all this fun, you know?  Geeking out, hanging on every word while this fantastic, funny, geeky man described what he was doing.  Tapping into greater things, experimenting on my own… I can remember the day I surprised him, came up with an answer he hadn’t.”  Diana had a fond smile on her face.  “Then push came to shove, reality settled in, and he cut his life short for my freedom.  Freedom I frittered away.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “I know how important precious people can be.”

Alexis glanced at me.  I kept my eyes fixed on a stack of paper between me and Diana, refusing to meet hers.

“You asked us to come here for more than a second apology and some company,” Rose said.  “You want help.”

“I’m not twisting your arm,” Diana said, quiet, “I’ll totally understand if you refuse, and I promise no vendetta or meaningful grudges, so long as it ends at just a polite refusal.  Or even a refusal punctuated with swear words, if you decide me shooting your friend there deserves it.  But I’m very tired, the Sisters think that if they keep messing with me, they’re either going to break the machinery that their spirit is dwelling in, or they’ll break me, and I’ll find a way to return it to them.”

“They aren’t fond of me either,” I said.

“Can you try?”

“I’ll trade a favor for a favor,” I said.

“I’m listening.”

“We’re meeting the Sisters,” I said.  “If the opportunity arises, and if we can do it without undue risk or harm either way, I’ll see what I can do to alleviate the strain they’re putting on you.”

“I’d complain about how vague you’re being, but I’m happy to hear this much.  What are you asking for?”

“Permission.  I want freedom from the rules of the contest, to practice as I need to practice, to deal with the demon in the factory, and maybe the imp if the opportunity arises.”

“I don’t think I can give you that permission.”

Maggie was the one who spoke, “You’re Conquest’s champions, you’re his hands.  In his absence, I’m thinking you could collectively be his voice.  Blake would be acting outside the bounds of the contest, but this would give it tacit weight.”

Diana nodded slowly.  “Swear you won’t use any power directly gained or granted during these excursions should the contest resume.”

“Hey,” Ty said.  “We’re offering help, no need to play hardball.”

“No,” I said.  “That’s fine.  It’s in my interests to do it.  More weight, as Maggie said.  I hereby swear that I’ll put all power and weapons aside, to the best of my ability, should Conquest be freed and this contest resume.”

Diana nodded. “Tea stopped boiling, and I didn’t even notice.”

She was halfway to her feet when she saw our expectant stares.  “You have my permission, by the way.”

I relaxed a little.  I wasn’t the only one.

She bustled with cups and teabags for a moment, re-confirming a few people’s choices of tea.

“Earlier, we were talking about websites and cameras,” Ty said, with the next available moment of quiet.  “Seems like you’d be the person to ask for clarification.”

“If you’re looking for a fast power grab, this isn’t the way to do it,” the Astrologer said, without turning around.  “What I do took generations to put together, and it has its weaknesses.”

“I’m not looking for a fast power grab.”

“This is niche, unperfected, pretty out there by practitioner standards.”

“It’s like you’re speaking my language,” Ty said.

“You really are speaking his language,” Alexis said.

“I can almost guarantee that I’d bore you if you let me get going,” the Astrologer said.

“Bet you wouldn’t,” Ty said.

“You probably wouldn’t be able to bore him,” I said.  “As for the rest of us, why don’t we say we’ll stay until the tea’s done, and then we have to go?  So we have an excuse to leave if we need it?”

Diana smiled.  “You don’t know what you’re doing, giving me a chance to talk about this stuff.”

“Give me your worst geek-out,” Ty said.  “And I wouldn’t mind your email, so I don’t forget.”

Diana reached backward and grabbed a scrap of paper, scribbling her email down. “Don’t feel offended if I take a few days to reply.  My modem only does twenty-eight kilobits a second, and I only have so much patience.”

I don’t think anyone present wasn’t horribly affronted by the idea.

“Like I said, grandfathered technology and sentimental attachments,” Diana said.  “On to explanations.  It’s about math, at the most basic level.  Space, not the out-there space, but space in general.  Proportions, lines, and really big diagrams.  With this computer, I program the lasers…”

It was, in the end, not quite as boring as she’d said it would be, though it was pretty bad.

All the same, Ty hung on every word.

While I was thinking about implements, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of implement a guy got when his defining trait was an inability to commit to a path.

■

The Sisters had a place that was as spacious as Diana’s place had been cramped.  Diana hadn’t made her place a demesne, and I suspected I knew why.  So long as she didn’t, the building was still partially his.  Her mentor’s.

The Sisters had no such delusions, and the architecture seemed like a pointed statement to that end.  Not a homage to the past, whatever their traditions.  Only present and future, here, in a church without religion, cherry wood with traces of gold, water running along gutters on either side of the hallway, almost gold as it reflected candlelight.

Every one of the Sisters wore a deep burgundy robe with one sleeve longer than the other, their faces largely hidden, but for their lips, which were painted red.

A group of what I presumed to be initiates were in less ornate robes, sleeveless and ringless, kneeling before the altar where the Elder sister and her immediate subordinates were gathered.  All initiates were twenty-something, attractive, and wore hoods that covered their eyes.

The Sisters had welcomed us in, but they mustered against us as an army now that we were in their territory.  Their dolls were markedly better than they’d been just a few days ago.  A step up in quality that suggested they were a hair more serious.  They were more uniform in size and shape, suggesting they were being hand made or printed from some mold, and stood about as tall as an ordinary man, all with runes on their foreheads.

I remembered what they’d said about being looked down on, before.  That they were more powerful than most assumed?  Seeing this, it was easier to buy.

I wanted to think that the simple and restrained elegance of it seemed more imposing than Conquest’s alien realm, but that wasn’t quite true.

I felt like, if the Elder Sister somehow became Lord, like she’d planned, then it would be.

It was hard to breathe in here, and that had nothing to do with the ridiculous number of candles that made it seem almost brighter than daylight.

“I can’t tell if you’re brave or stupid,” the Elder Sister said.

“The two are so related you could say they’re inbred,” I said.  “Desperation is a close cousin, but I wouldn’t say I’m desperate, either.”

“What would you say, then?” she asked.

“That you’ve declared you want to rule the city as Lord or Lady or however it works.  I harbor…” I tried to think of how Diana had put it, “…no meaningful grudge.  I can cooperate, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones and act toward the greater good.”

“Define ‘greater good.’  Because we’ve had anonymous threats to our families.  Others are settling in the city, and you’ve brought nothing but pain and chaos with your arrival in the city.  To me, that kind of endemic problem suggests demonic influence.”

Radiation.

I glanced at my friends.  “You think I’m tainted?”

“I think it’s inevitable, and I really don’t like considering what that means in the big picture.  Even having you here, I feel like we’re hurting ourselves.”

“But?” I asked.

“But your grandmother has visited from time to time, and I can’t refuse you and yours an invitation, now that her titles have passed on to you, along with the according rights.”

I nodded slowly.

“I don’t think it’s taint,” I said.  “Just karma.”

“Karma is more directed.”

“Some of the crazy stuff that’s happened feels pretty directed.”

“We’re predisposed to see patterns.  One of the first things our initiates learn is how to tell the difference between a glimpse of a spirit in fire, smoke or running water, and the pattern we want to see.  Even before they awaken, we want them to have that much.”

“So, what, the universe’s vendetta against me is just a pattern I’m imagining?”

“I wonder.”

“Look,” I said.  “You want to rule.  I’m offering an exchange of favors.”

“No.  Not with you, I’m sorry.”

“I back off for as long as you allow me, and give you one less person to worry about while you consolidate power and make your play.  You just give me permission to-”

“No means no,” the Elder Sister intoned.

Her voice rang through the chamber.

Excellent acoustics, if nothing else.

“With me, then,” Rose said.

“You’re tainted too,” the Elder Sister said.

“Everyone’s tainted, if you’re going to be that general,” Rose said.

“Not by the demons.  By Conquest.”

That gave us pause.

“You spent some time in his company, he’s bled out into you.  You think it’s coincidence that you up and decided to form a killing squad of horrors?”

“What do you want?” I asked the Elder Sister.  “If we’re all tainted by something or other-”

“The new ones.”

I looked over my shoulder at Alexis and Tiff.

“Yes, them.  They’ll vouch for you.”

“Not interested,” I said.  “Been down that road, and it’s looking an awful lot like a metaphorical rabbit hole, if we keep layering conditions like these on top of one another.”

“I’m not asking for servitude.  The girl answers three questions, on top of the usual penalties, should you break the terms.  No questions that would harm them or anyone they care about if they answer, and the questions are answerable at the time we ask.”

“Deal,” Alexis said, “if and only if you back off the Astrologer, on top of the conditions Blake wants to name.”

“The Astrologer has-”

“We know what the Astrologer has,” Rose said.  “I can’t make promises, but we could see what it would take to undo the process.  If you’re willing to hear out someone who’s tainted by Conquest.”

The Elder Sister considered.  “Let’s discuss, then.”

Tainted by Conquest.

Note to self:  Keep Rose away from the mirror.

My chest was still wax, and I wasn’t the only one who was less human than when all this started.  Even Rose, who had arguably been inhuman to begin with, was traveling that road.

The sensation had been lingering since the first time I’d been told I’d die, like some sword dangling over my head, but it was growing more concrete now.  A vague, nebulous idea of impending doom.

I closed my eyes for a few seconds, blanking my mind, then turned my attention to the discussion of terms.

“It’s clear how badly you want that spirit back,” I said.  “Let me start off by asking for something you should be giving for free anyway.  We should get rid of that demon in the factory, and to those ends, we need fire.”

“A lot of fire,” Maggie said.

■

The Shepherd took ten hours to find, even with the ability to follow connections.

In the end, we split up, each of us picking a different hospital.  Then we waited for people to die horribly.

Once the Shepherd showed up, Maggie and Ty tailed him, and we collectively headed his way.

I was just glad that Alexis had a phone.  The lack was an inconvenience sometimes.

He was waiting for us when we arrived.

How did one negotiate with something that didn’t speak?

“Whatever you’re doing,” I said, “I presume you’re loyal to Conquest.  But… there’s a story behind all that, isn’t there?”

He didn’t move.

“You deal with memories.  Echoes, permanent impressions.  The creature we’re talking about, it eats memories.  It eats everything about a person, including the connections.  So if you had someone die, driving you to-”

He was shaking his head.

“No?” I asked.

He shook his head again.

“All the same, if it keeps doing what it’s doing, it means less ghosts, less power to you.”

He shook his head again.

How the fuck was I supposed to argue with this bastard?

“Conquest wanted to stop it, I want to stop it.  Are you telling me you want it to keep doing what it’s doing?”

He didn’t move.

This weary man, restless in his pursuit of ghosts, willing to torture and mutilate those ghosts to make wraiths… I couldn’t appeal to empathy.  I apparently couldn’t appeal to power, when death was the most abundant, endless resource around.

What leverage did I have?

“You’re the guy that didn’t collect me,” Evan said.  “You just left me there.”

The Shepherd didn’t answer.

“You’re a pretty shitty person,” Evan said.  “And you know what?  You didn’t get me.  You won’t.  I’m an undead sparrow, I’m awesome, and you suck.  You’ll keep sucking unless you listen to Blake, because he’s kinda awesome in his own way.”

The Shepherd didn’t budge.

Too much to ask for?

“I won’t come after you,” I said.  “I won’t do anything direct, unless you give me reason or excuse to.  But so long as I’m around, so long as you’re stonewalling me?  I’m going to screw with you.  I’ll take your ghosts out from under you.  You’ll have competition, which is something I’m thinking Conquest was helping you with, giving you a monopoly.  And if there’s a ghost you’re looking for, if there’s something you want?  You’ll have to worry now.  Maybe there’ll be other Evans…”

He stared.

“Or you can give me permission to use magic outside of the bounds of the contest, and I won’t.  And there’s even the chance that I could die and be erased…”

I trailed off.

He was already writing.  Using his stick in the snow.

I barely recognized it as a signature.

He walked away.

“Can we use that?” I asked.

“We’ll have to,” Rose said.

The Hyena’s hilt was a weight at my side.

We have a majority opinion, no use asking the Eye.

“Let’s get me my implement,” I said.  “And then we’ll get in touch with the Knights and talk about the attack on the factory.  No holds barred.”

Void 7.11

Dinner simmered on the stove, the pot lid didn’t match the pot a hundred percent, and the rattling was a constant background noise.

Everyone was gathered in my living room, waiting for me to speak.

I had an impulse to drive them out.  It was dumb, running contrary to things I’d decided, said, and done before.

I was tired, and a part of me was used to being alone, even as I paradoxically craved companionship.  I still felt raw where the memories had brought memories back to the surface.  The discrepancies and false notes in the memories Conquest had subjected me to made it worse, if anything, as my mind itched to resolve and compare notes, even as my heart didn’t want to go anywhere near that stuff.

“So,” I said, “Alexis, Ty, maybe even Tiff, this might a moment that your entire life has been leading up to.”

“All moments are moments our entire life has been leading up to,” Ty said.

“I know,” I said.  I had to suppress a sigh.  “But I wanted to be dramatic and clever, and there aren’t many ways to do that without lying.”

“Keep going, Blake,” Alexis urged me.

“You’ve gone to a lot of galleries, you’ve done your own art.  You’ve offered the critiques for good ideas and bad ones, and you’ve trained yourself to interpret.”

“You need the power of bullshit interpretations?” Ty asked.

“Yeah, that’s basically it,” I said.  I picked up the Hyena by the pommel, then stabbed it into the coffee table, one finger resting on it to keep it from falling over and gouging the surface further.  “You’ve each read the basics regarding implements.  Symbolic meanings and interpretations go a long way.  Here, I have the Hyena’s corpse.  I’m considering it for an implement.  Anything you could say, positive or negative, would be a help.”

“It’s metal,” Alexis said.

Ty groaned.  “No puns.”

“No pun intended.  You could put this on an album cover for some rock band or other, and it wouldn’t look out of place at all.  If I had to say… I don’t think it suits you from an aesthetic perspective.”

I nodded.  “Thanks, that’s the kind of thing I need to hear.  That’s not as minor as it sounds.”

“Maggie knows about goblins, doesn’t she?” Tiff asked.

“I do.  Goblin sects have traditions,” Maggie said.  “Taking the form of a weapon started off, if I remember right, when goblin warlords dueled the toughest bastards on the battlefield, and offered a choice between servitude or death.  But even bound goblins wanted a chance at shedding some blood and furthering their reputation, especially when the binding was short-term.  Becoming a weapon became a way to achieve that, while the conquering goblin got a symbol of victory, something he could hold in the air to convince the defeated goblin’s followers to follow him.”

I’d already read something on the subject when I’d been considering the sword as an implement.  I waited while my friends quizzed her.

“Why the spikes on the handle?”

“That’s kind of a fudge-you,” Maggie said.  “Except with more colorful language.  A grudging sort of surrender, where using your power and reputation costs the victor something.  Failing to acknowledge the grudging surrender means bleeding yourself, the goblin drinks the blood, and can, given a few decades, drink up enough to buck the bondage and get free.”

I nodded.

“Is that a risk now?”  Tiff asked.

“No,” Maggie said.  “The goblin is dead.  The artifact remains, and it’s, I guess, pretty mundane now.  Want to file off the spikes?  Might lose authenticity, but you could.”

“Maybe,” I said.

She shrugged.

Alexis leaned forward, looking closer at the sword.  “What does it mean, then, if you’re carrying something that has a metaphorical ‘fuck you’ as part of the design?”

“Could mean something bad,” I said.  “Could mean I don’t give a damn what others think, I’m moving forward all the same.”

“Could mean both,” Alexis said.

I nodded.

“What do you want it to mean?” Alexis asked.

“That’s a loaded question,” I said, “One I was hoping to answer later, so I didn’t color your impressions.”

“Trust us and say it anyway.”

“I look at it, and I think of one time when I acted to better the world and I did.  Undeniably, even.  I think of victory, and I think I could maybe achieve more victories.  But it’s not just about me,” I said.

“Other people will have their own impressions,” Alexis said.

“Implements are supposed to be badges,” I said.  “When I talked to the lawyers, I was told that the various choices we make here represent broader questions.  The familiar question is about who we want to associate with, our sphere.  In the books, the case studies and examples tell us about practitioners who decided to live among Others, eschewing human contact and relationships.  There were people who fucked up, and cut themselves off from everything, outside of the master-familiar bond.  Laird picked something that could be largely hidden, that wouldn’t interfere with family or career – a familiar that was content to be a watch a good portion of the time.”

There were a few nods.

I looked down.  “The lawyer strongly suggested I take something powerful as a familiar, something ugly, and ignore the fact that I’d have to live with its company for the rest of my life.  I took Evan instead.”

“Damn straight,” Evan said.

“Felt right,” I said.

“What about this?” Alexis asked.  “Does this feel right?”

I grabbed the sword, positioning my fingers not so I could wield it, but so I could hold it, each finger resting between spikes.

“I’m not as sure,” I said.

“Maybe this isn’t the path you want to take?” she prodded.

“I think the lawyer was wrong about my choice of familiar.  I’ve walked a fine line, getting further away from being me, and having a good companion, having you guys, it’s a way to hold on to myself.  Connections.  But I’m not so sure she’s wrong about my need to grab power sooner than later.”

“Do you want to compromise?” Alexis asked.

“Yes,” Rose said, before I could answer.

She was reflected in the window, and it was dark enough out that the image was clear.  She sat in the mirror-world version of my living room, alone, surrounded by stacks of books.

“That’s not your call,” Alexis said.

“Yeah, actually, it is,” Rose replied.  “I’m attached to him, and his decisions affect me.”

“Let’s not get into this,” I said.  “Let’s just say that Rose’s opinion counts for an awful lot here, and she thinks I should compromise.”

“Thank you,” Rose said.  “That’s all I wanted to put out there.”

“I think you shouldn’t,” Alexis said.  “Something about this feels… wrong.”

“What I was saying before, about the familiar and the meaning of the decision?  It applies here.  Choosing an implement means deciding the one tool you’ll define yourself by for the rest of your life.  That adage, ‘if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail?’  I think that holds true with implements.  This is a kind of commitment to a path in life, so maybe that’s what feels wrong.  I’m committing to something… less than pleasant.”

“You’re committing to breaking swords?” Ty asked.

“I’m committing to stopping things like the Hyena.  You don’t take an implement like this if you don’t plan on fighting, and continuing to fight for a long time.”

“One of the example implements in the book was a sword, wasn’t it?” Tiff asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  I kept my mouth shut, rather than volunteer more that could color their impressions.

“This isn’t a sword though,” Ty said.  “It’s a broken sword.  The handle is almost longer than the remaining bit of blade.”

I nodded.  He’d basically said what I was going to say before I stopped myself.

“An icon or symbol,” Tiff said.

“Yeah,” Ty replied.  “I’m not sure if I like the implications.  A sword’s a phallic symbol, right?  The equivalent of great gleaming steel penis.  The bigger the sword, the more they think you’re overcompensating.  And a broken sword?  I’ll be blunt.  You shouldn’t define yourself like that.”

Ouch.

It wasn’t that he was being hurtful.  He was, but it was the kind of hurt I had to trust to those close to me to provide.  That any of us did.  The sort of truth that one didn’t want to hear.  The sort of truth, even, that one might not immediately appreciate, that could test the friendship.

“What are you thinking?” Alexis asked.

“It would be a lot easier if this was the answer,” I said.

“But?”

“But it’s feeling less like that’s the case,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Can I butt in?” Rose asked.

I glanced her way.

“Books on shamans talk about the value of trophies.  Powerful shamans wear the furs of defeated enemies, to retain a share of that enemy’s power.  You can go pretty dark-side with that, wearing finger bones or dismembered body parts, on top of everything else, but you could also find some use in a trophy like the Hyena’s blade.”

“That bit that the Elder Sister said about you being tainted by Conquest?” I asked.  “Talking about abusing your defeated enemies doesn’t help matters.”

“Using the Hyena was your idea before it was mine,” Rose retorted.

“Fair point,” I said.

“Some shamans specifically hunt monsters to get materials to make items with, infusing those items like you infused June’s hatchet.  Right here, you’ve got something that could be powerful.  Tricky, yes, but powerful.  Tap into what the Hyena could do.  Strength, durability, inspiring fear…”

“There’s the Conquest bit again,” Alexis commented.

Rose shot Alexis a glare, but Alexis was staring at the table, where the blade had gouged it.

“She’s not wrong.  This is about me committing to a path,” I said.  I touched a spike on the handle, “Putting myself in harm’s way… taking a violent path.”

“You said you wanted to stop monsters like that,” Evan said.

“I do,” I said.  “Maybe we could do it without resorting to direct violence.”

“Oh,” Evan said.  “Maybe.  How?”

“Traps,” I said.  “Thinking things through, being methodical…”

“How well has that gone in the past?” Rose asked.

“I trapped the Hyena,” I said, the words slipping out of my mouth before I realized the irony of the statement.

I was talking about not taking the Hyena.  Taking a different path.

The problem with Rose and I being so similar was that we thought in similar ways.  I could see her level stare, as if she were seeing straight through to what I was thinking.

“I guess I’ve got a choice,” I said, before she could make a point of it.  “Do I want to take this path, or do I want to leave it for a future date?”

Assuming I have a future.

The thought butted its way into my mind.  I very nearly said it out loud, but I didn’t want to drive that home for my friends.

“The Hyena wounded spirits,” Rose said.  “It left scars on them.  If you tap into that, you could do the same with your workings.”

I shook my head.

Not selling me there.

“Okay,” Rose said, “Fine.  Let’s assume you don’t want to go down this route.  When and where do you make your next grab for power?  Do you want to establish a demesne?”

“No,” I said.  “No, it’s… god, I hate that idea.”

“Why?” Rose asked.

“Because… the big life decisions.  A familiar represents the people you want to be around, choosing an implement is like choosing a career, and a demesne is where you want to be.  I can’t even articulate it, but I don’t want to be here.  I don’t want to be in Jacob’s bell.  Following through on what I promised Evan?  That’s something else.  I can do that in, I dunno, Nova Scotia, or British Columbia, or New Zealand, you know?  But even talking about this, I feel-”

I touched my heart.

“-I feel like I could panic.  Like I’m making some decision and I’ll never get away from this, if I confine myself to one place.”

“Like I’m confined?” Rose asked.

“You know what I mean,” I said.  “You can still explore.  I know it’s not ideal, it’s fucked, and it’s even unpleasant, being shackled to me and the house, but we have leeway… but maybe, yeah, maybe like you’re confined.”

“You can understand my problem?” she asked.  “This isn’t smart, throwing away ideas out of hand.  Getting me out of here happens in one of two ways.  Either you get power, which a demesnes or a strong implement would help with…”

“…Or I die,” I said.

There was a chill in the room.

“No dying,” Evan said.

“We’re going to do our best to avoid dying,” I echoed him.  “I raised the question of using the Hyena because I wasn’t sure if I liked the idea.  The negatives are adding up, and together they’re outweighing the potential positives.”

“Do you have other ideas for implements?”  Rose asked.

I shook my head.  “I’ve thought about tools, something like the hatchet, but a mallet or something.  I’m looking for something that… how did you put it, Maggie?”

“Hm?”

“When I asked about your implement?”

She drew and flourished her athame with a measure of skill that suggested an easy sort of familiarity with the tool.  “It’s not a weapon, exactly, it’s something that you use to deliver the coup de grace once you’ve got your opponent.”

“Not that,” I said.

“It fits me?  It resonates with me?”

“That.  Resonate.”

She tossed the stylized knife into the air, then caught the handle, sheathing it in the same motion.

“I might feel different if I had my hands on stuff, but I don’t.  All I can say is that the ideas don’t resonate with me.”

“This does, or did?” Ty asked.

“A bit,” I said.  “It fits, but handcuffs can fit too, and they aren’t necessarily something I’d want to wear every day.”

“I know a few people who would disagree,” Ty said.

“So we’re settled, then?” Alexis asked.

I ran my finger along the Hyena’s handle.

“I’ll do without,” I decided.  “I’m not making the call when I feel this ambivalent, and not wanting this as an implement doesn’t mean I can’t get some use out of it.  It’s still a possible trophy, and I could get something out of it.”

“Wait, Maggie, you don’t have any commentary?” Rose asked Maggie.  “I thought you’d push for the Hyena.”

“Nah,” Maggie said.  “I’ve dealt with goblins for a while.  I’ve seen how bad they get when they’re bad.  If he wanted to go for it, I’d back him up.  If he wanted to go for it.  But I’m not a dumb- I’m not stupid.  I’m not going to force the issue.  I recommend you do the same.”

Rose frowned.

“Okay,” I said, grabbing the broken blade.  “That’s off the table.”

Rose spoke, quiet, “It’d be nice if we weren’t waiting for all hell to break loose before making the tough calls on this sort of thing.”

“We discussed it,” I said.  “It’s good.  In the heat of the moment, I might have gone ahead with it.”

“I still want us to be stronger,” Rose said.  “You get that, right?

I nodded slowly.  “Can you find that book on shamanism?  We have other stuff to get to in the next few hours, but I’d like to see how to draw out some power from this thing.  Might even be useful if I get something like the Stonehenge bracelet, again.”

“Sure,” Rose said.

“Everyone has something to read?” I asked.  “You guys know what your jobs are in the next, uh, sixteen hours?”

There were nods.  I looked at Maggie, “And you’re okay for now?  You don’t need to get back?”

“I’m putting it off,” she said.

“Can you?” I asked.  “If I remember right, you promised your parents you’d attend school…”

“School’s out,” Ty said.

I slapped my forehead.  “Right.”

“I’ve got elbow room,” Maggie said.  “I want to make the most of it.”

“If you say so,” I said.  “You helped out, I owe you.”

She smiled.

“Let’s eat, then,” I said.  “Sleep, then break away, do what you need to do.  We’re all in top condition tomorrow, or we don’t do this.  Above all, we do this smart.”

“With a lot of light and fire,” Ty said.

■

I had to wonder if the first hunters felt this kind of trepidation.  How often did a person experience this quiet kind of terror?

The hunter knew where the wild beast rested, though he would be flying blind when he crossed the threshold and entered the lion’s den.  The hunter knew that he was outclassed in strength, in toughness, and in size.

All the hunter had were the piecemeal tools they’d been able to put together.

Floor plans loosely sketched out, displayed on Ty’s laptop.  We’d checked the compass points and the point and time of sunrise and sunset, to judge when we’d have the most light filtering through the windows.

Rose had Corvidae with her, which I wasn’t so happy with, but Corvidae was another body on her side, and the demon had already attacked her there.

The other Others were broken and slain.  If the energies that drove them were strong enough, they might recuperate and make themselves available to the next summoner, to fulfill the terms of the bindings that had been placed on them, or happy to have a chance to feast on whatever energies it was that drove them.  The Tallowman was one likely possibility for resurrection.  Coming back was his schtick.  The Bloody Mary?  Maybe less certain.

The laptop sat on the dashboard, and the car was off.  Three of us gathered nearby to get a sense of what was where, and to discuss placement.

The Knights had brought two trucks, and Ty was helping Nick unload gear.  Halogen lights on stands, a generator, and red plastic gas jugs.

I wanted to say it was being carried out with a military precision, but it wasn’t.  We were disciplined, entirely serious and focused, but we were less than efficient.  In too many cases, I saw people standing around looking for something to do, while there was stuff to be unloaded or set in place.

One halogen light for each ground floor window.  The sun would be pouring in through several windows and the hole in the roof.

Nick’s son approached me, handing me a plastic bag with a smiling worm wrapped around a hook.

I fished out three flare guns, cast in bright orange plastic, vacuum-wrapped in plastic.

I slipped one into the leather package I’d made for June.  Not exactly a good fit, but it would stay in place.

“Lights are clean,” Rose said.  “Not reflective enough for me to go inside the glass.”

I frowned, “That’ll have to do.  I wish there were more definite points in the midst of all this.”

“Nothing’s definite in life,” Nick said, behind me.  He was rummaging through bags.  Bottles of water, thick gloves, and a mask.

“That’s right,” Maggie said.  She was standing with her back to the car and the factory both, bundled up, not even willing to look in the general direction of the factory.  She kept talking, injecting false confidence into her voice.  “If it was easy to puzzle them out, humans would have worked it all out a long time ago.  But no, you wind up with stuff like this.”

Stuff like this.

“Not doing a lot to help my confidence,” I said.

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Maggie said.  “Maybe you should reconsider.”

“But what happens then?” I asked.  “How many years or decades is it before someone else makes a genuine attempt at stopping this thing?  Everything I’ve read on demons suggests they’re a rot that eats at reality.  Things become worse.  A bite here and there, a chunk elsewhere, a major loss somewhere else entirely.”

“I like you, Thorburn,” she said.  “Not like-like, though I wouldn’t mind, if you didn’t-“

She paused long enough to leave me thoroughly startled, but continued on, casual, like she was talking about the weather, “But I think you’re interesting, at the very least.  The world might even be a better place with you in it, and there isn’t enough of that these days.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“So why is it your job?  Why are you going in there alone?”

“Isn’t it my job because I’m the only person stupid enough to do it?” I asked.

Another car pulled up, stopping between Nick’s truck and Joel’s car.  The trees blocked the view of the factory from here.

“I can’t stay for this,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“I’m not going to wish you good luck.  I don’t see the point.  I don’t have anything to give you that would make a difference, that I’m willing to give up.  I don’t even know why I came.”

“I appreciate the company,” I said.

She nodded.  “This isn’t my thing.  Being on the sidelines, being the side character.”

“I envy you, that you can,” I said.

She smiled just a little.

The people at the third car were unloading.  Sisters.

Dolls.

I stared at the map, trying to reconcile the layout with what I was able to make out when I’d been there the other night.

I reached for the trackpad and made a note.  Fallen rubble.  Rounding that corner would mean taking a detour around the rubble, or maybe hurdling it.

No, hurdling was a bad idea.  Even if Evan was accompanying me, giving me a periodic boost.

Rubble cast shadows.  It could hold something.

Maggie, my friends, Rose, the possibility of interference, and a careful strategy with too many possibilities against a threat that I didn’t fully understand.

The ideas filled my head, and despite the fact that there were a dozen solutions waiting to be discovered, the resulting traffic jam meant I couldn’t think of a single one.

I shut my eyes, trying to focus.

One thing at a time, starting with the girl next to me.

“Maggie?” I asked.

“What’s up?  I didn’t weird you out before, did I?”

“No,” I said, “Just… are you okay?”

“Okay?”

“You haven’t explained what you have going on with your parents, you’re acting strange, different.  Little things have come up, maybe a big thing.  I know you’re not sleeping.  I get the impression something’s wrong.”

She was silent.

“You helped me before.  If something’s come up, if you need help, if you’ve done something or made a bad deal, we can put this on hold and back you up.”

She jammed her hands into her pockets, staring at the ground.

“I was telling the others before, maybe you let something in and you got possessed?”

She shrugged.  “Thanks for worrying about me.  But you should focus on this right now.”

“Should I?” I asked, making it a pointed question.

“You’ve got help here that you might not have if you wait a few days.  The Sisters, the Knights, you can’t back out now, or this won’t work.”

“So you do need help?” I asked.

“Don’t we all?”

“Don’t dodge my damn questions,” I said, more harsh in tone than I’d wanted.  Nervousness seeping through.

“Sorry.  I’ll try to be more direct.”

“You were among the first people that were decent to me when all this started.”

“I was.”

“And you came here to back me up, you made a difference.”

“I did,” she said.

“I’m allowed to show concern for you,” I said.  “Even if there’s something going on that I don’t fully understand.”

She gave me a look, and there was a bit of sadness in her eyes.

“What?” I asked.

“I really want to give you a kiss on the cheek,” she said.  “But I can’t, can I?”

I shook my head.

“Give him heck,” she said.

I smiled.

The conversation was over, and I wasn’t accomplishing anything meaningful looking at the map.  There were more important points to cover.

Slowly but surely, things were settling into place.  Objects and people.

A few ghosts had arrived, observers.

“Blake,” Ty said.

“Yeah?”

“Ghost dropped these off.”

He extended a hand, and he dropped two objects into my outstretched palm.  A box of matches and what looked like a piece of burned pillow?

No, a stuffed animal’s limb.

I could feel the ghosts within.

The Shepherd was volunteering aid?

My eyes roved over the area.  I didn’t see the Shepherd.  I did see the Sphinx.  Isadora was lying down on the far end of a wide gap in the trees, the same spot where I’d grabbed the branches for the wreath.  She stared, oblivious to the light dusting of snow that had settled on her black fur and wings.

Put more pressure on me, why don’t you?

People were gravitating toward me.  Isadora didn’t budge.  Maggie, on the other side of the

My nervousness only intensified.

“It’s about time,” I said.

It was good that we had a designated time for this to begin.  It was harder to jump off that diving board when you had all the time in the world.  Better to be thrust into a situation where you had no choice to jump, if jumping was absolutely necessary.

It was almost a relief, knowing.

I just couldn’t let myself entertain the slightest thought of being able or willing to retreat from this.  To run.

One of my legs jittered, the knee wiggling from left to right, as if I was as unsteady on that leg as a newborn fawn.

I shifted my weight to make it less pronounced.

“You don’t enter.  If something goes wrong, if things turn sour, we back off.  If something happens to me, well, you won’t know.  So don’t make it matter.”

“This sounds insane,” Ty said.

I ignored him.

“You guys have one job.  Approach from an angle where the sun hits the windows.  See if the windows have paint on them.  If they do, it might be part of the binding, and we can’t break that.  Find open windows.  Toss in the gas cans, toss in the rubbing alcohol, toss in the kerosene.  If you can reach, dump it in, but don’t put your hands inside the building”

There were nods.

“Knights, you’re manning the halogen lights.  If this works, those lights should give me a clear path.  If it works really well, then they’re going to cross in a way that makes a protective diagram.  Bad alignment and the sun mean that might be a bit of a pipe dream.  Just give me the extra light you can, shine it through, I’ll figure out what to do from there.”

Nods from the Knights.

“Rose?”

“I keep track of the time.  I’ve got notes in front of me.  Whatever happens, when the time runs out, we burn the building.”

I nodded.

“My job… I’ve just got to get to the door to the basement.  Going over the rubble might make sense, but there’s an awful lot of cracks and darkness in that rubble, and if my foot disappears into a gap, I’m gone.”

I sounded so much calmer than I felt.

“…That means going in the front door, same place I entered before, I head to the back, turn a hard left.  I toss what I carried down there, I use any cans I can that you guys passed through the window, then set it on fire.  I leave, and we scour the ground floor, using what you guys put through the window.  With luck, we’ll gain some ground against the thing, and we can hold that ground by keeping the fires lit and the lights on.  We figure out where to go from there.  If the boiler room or basement or whatever is down there is too big to burn by tossing stuff down the stairs, we use a similar strategy there.”

I took a bit of a breath.  “But what we’re really hoping, is that it’s one lifeform, and if anything’s lurking downstairs, we can cut off everything above from what’s below, with a strong blaze in the right place.”

I checked the time.  Ten seconds past the mark where we’d guessed the sun would be in the optimal location.

I couldn’t even think about not hesitating.

I turned toward the factory.  “Let’s go.  Question me while we move.”

There were no questions.  Even Evan had dropped the firebird topic.  I didn’t tell him I’d researched it and found it too dangerous.  Shamans keen on the dramatic had tried riding fire spirits, and by and large, they’d self-immolated.

The silence yawned, and for a moment, I felt utterly alone.

But Evan settled on my shoulder.

It only dawned on me when I couldn’t see them, that they were almost as afraid as I was.

I held two gas cans this time, I had the Hyena in my back pocket, and the flare gun at one hip.

“Hey,” Evan said.

“What’s up?” I replied.

“Thanks for letting me come.”

“Didn’t want to go in alone,” I admitted.

“We have company,” Evan said.

I looked.  Four dolls.

“I’m not sure they count.”

“They count if you let them count,” Evan said, in a tone that suggested he thought he was being wise.

“I’ll try,” I said.

Without breaking stride, I grabbed the matchbook and lit a match from within.

A wraith flared into being as the match touched snow.  A man, too burned to make out features.  A husk, made uglier by the wraithmaking process.

The arm of the stuffed animal…

I gave it a squeeze.  Smoke puffed out.

A little girl emerged from the smoke.  When she looked at me, her eye sockets were empty, with only glowing cinders around the rim.  Her nose and tongue nearly gone, glowing in the same way, like some cigarette butt.

“Inside,” I said.

She ran, frantic, panicked, straight into the doorframe, unable to see, half-spinning as she reeled, then tore through the open door, casting a dim light as she went.  Moving all the while like she had two speeds – paralysis and pell-mell.

The burned man glowed brighter as the area got darker.

It wasn’t dark within, ghosts or no, but it was dim.  Already, I could imagine seeing things in the spots of shadow.  Something snaking out there, or boiling forth like some swarm of bugs from a disturbed hive.

I exhaled slowly.

When I looked again, I didn’t see anything.

“Now!” I hollered the word.  I was afraid to stop, because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to start again.

The halogen lights flickered on.

One opposite me cast a light almost straight to the door.  A path of light to the very back of the factory.  Others crossed it, drawing circles on the walls, highlighting cracks in deeper shadow.

“Ghosts, draw circles in the floor with fire!”  I shouted.

Burning footprints drew circles in the darkness.  Places where I was safe.

They were obedient.

This was easier than spending the gas from my cans to do the same.  I still wouldn’t give them all my trust.

It was like being a chess piece, moving between the triangles of light and circles of dim flame.  Watching for attacks from odd angles, without really looking.

Can’t step off the path.  Can’t step outside the circles.

“You okay?” someone asked.  It might have been Nick’s son.

“Light’s good!” I called out.

The gas cans were ready, resting in my hands.

Looking where I was going was something of an art form.  The lights were brilliant, threatening to blind, and looking at darkness threatened to let the demon leap into my eyes.

The ghost of the little girl ran a zig-zag through the space, giving light where I’d had none.

My footsteps were hollow on the hard floor, as I moved as fast as I could.  Like a tightrope, it was easier if I crossed it faster than slower.

Not too fast, but fast enough.

The dolls trudged behind me.

They would be the heat-seeking dolls, tuned so they wouldn’t target me.

When the fires started to burn, they’d make the fires bigger.  I just had to keep my distance, control the blaze.

I reached the end of the hallway, passing the scorch marks where I’d drawn the circles.

“Ghosts, stop!” I shouted.

Both the cinder-girl and the burned man stopped where they were.

Circles marked the area.

“Guys, drop the gas!”  I shouted.

My voice was eerily loud in the near-silence.  There were no trees rustling here.  The people outside were too spread out to really be communicating.  There was only the footsteps, and there was me.

Windows here and there shattered.  Thumps marked the arrival of the bright orange gas jugs.  I saw fluid spilling out.  In two spots, people were pouring gas through the window.  I watched to make sure there was no danger.

Zero movement.

No noise, no threats.

The way the lights shone through the window, the light that extended toward the door to the sub-level passed over the rubble I’d remembered seeing.

I needed to cross it, but that meant stepping into shadow.

Careful, Blake.

I noted where everything was, as carefully and systematically as I could.

Gas jugs.

Flares were too risky.  Flares went out, and I actually didn’t know how long that took.

Fires went out too, but I had a sense of how long that took.

I sloshed gas over the rubble.

“Hey,” I said.  “Girl, I don’t know your name, but-”

The ghost stopped in her tracks.

“Right over there, light a fire.  Only over there.”

She ran, that full-blast panicked run, stumbled, and landed belly-first on the rubble.

It ignited, and I squinted against the force of the flame.

Squinting, I almost missed it.

The demon, fleeing from the safety of the shadows that the rubble created.  Slithering out in every direction, like a carpet seeking to cover every available expanse that the light didn’t already claim.  I saw bits of it creep into areas where the light touched, and I saw those same parts fray and decay, crumbling away.  Glimpses of limbs and other things, all a mucus-covered black, scrabbling for a grip on the hard surface.

“Holy jebus,” Evan whispered.

“Don’t look straight at it,” I warned.

“I’m not!”

Trying to be stern for Evan somehow allowed me to sum up some confidence.  I splashed out with the gas, trying to catch the wall and the flame both.

It recoiled, and whole chunks broke away as they burned violently.  None fell remotely close to the waiting gas cans.

I didn’t do it again, all the same.

Move forward, but keep moving, be careful…

The light from the burning rubble meant the hallway to the side was clearer.

I drew a loose circle with splashes of gasoline on the floor, then leaped from the long triangle of light to the burning circle.

I nearly lost my balance and stumbled straight through.  I heard flapping wings at the same moment I managed to right myself.

I couldn’t find the words to thank Evan.

I was calculating my next move when I heard it.

Something dragging.

When I saw, I felt something go tight in my chest.

The demon, slithering alongside the wall.

A tiny hand held a piece of rebar, dragging it against the concrete at a speed faster than I could run.

No, it doesn’t make sense.

Sparks flew.

Sparks made contact with gasoline.  A fire erupted, and before I could even find my footing, the fire found the nearest gas can.

The demon immolated itself, vast amounts of flesh tearing away from the wall as it burned.

The dolls found the flames, and they exploded in turn.  Small, accelerant-boosted flames turned into bonfires, reaching three-quarters of the way from floor to ceiling.

I turned to the window.  Escape only feet away.

But I could see the arms and tendrils reaching out from the dark spaces between the glowing rectangles where sun shone through glass.  They lurked in the cracks in the glass, where the light refracted away.  A spiderweb ready to catch me.

He’d slithered around.

Another gas can exploded, closer, and rubble fell alongside great swathes of flaming demon flesh.

“What?” Evan managed.

“Fly, Evan,” I said.

“What?” he asked, this time directing the question at me.

“Fly for the opening in the roof,” I said.

“But-”

“The rules, Evan!  If something happens, you’re supposed to go!”

I grabbed him and threw him.

He caught himself, flapping his wings.

I saw the tendrils snap out, arms reaching, burning as sunlight touched them.

I saw just how dangerous the escape route was.

The window was worse.  There was still a path to the front door, lines and circles.

I ran, opting for speed over self-preservation.  Moving through flames, letting my legs burn.

Smoke was already heavy in the air.

I didn’t make it halfway to the door before I stopped in my tracks.

Smoke, in its way, held darkness.

He was in the smoke, roiling, twisting, thriving.

No.

I had no escape routes.

I drew the flare gun.

I could hold out.  Wait for help.

Couldn’t I?

The demon, Ur, was asking the same question, it seemed.

The demon had an answer.

It bit.

It tore not through me, but through the ribbons and cords that extended between me and the individuals just outside the buildings.

I saw what was happening, and felt only stark horror at the realization of just what it meant.

The back window.  Through the spiderweb.  With the flare gun, I could break the web.

I ran for it, giving it my all.

I didn’t make it.

■

“Stop, Alexis!”  Ty shouted.  He grabbed at her arm, pulling hard.

Alexis stopped dead in her tracks.

“You remember what we agreed to, right?” he asked.

She was panting, she looked bewildered.

“Abandon the mission,” Rose said.

“But-” she started.

“Wait for the fires to die down, abandon the mission,” Rose said.

“But-” Alexis said.

She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

She wasn’t even sure what she was supposed to say.

The others joined them.  The Knights and Tiff.  Watching the smoke rise.  Watching a sparrow travel a confused path through the sky.

Rose settled a hand on Alexis’ shoulder.  “We can’t do anything more here.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Histories (Arc 7)

Demons of the First Choir are the counterpoint to the forces that brought the universe into being.  There is no telling the damage they have done, but Bartholemew Peck’s Abyssian suggests a dark possibility, that the universe as we know it might be the leftovers of something far vaster.  That the materials and elements that gathered to form stars and planetoids are merely the crumbs of a feast.

If this were true, it would be the demons of the First Choir that did the feasting.

Though it’s scarcely more than speculative fiction, it illustrates the nature of the First Choir for the seventh of our nine chapters here.  They devour.  They take.  The vectors by which they act take all forms that we know to destroy things – tooth, claw, bludgeon, coil, frost, and even forces such as lightning and flame, which might well seem ironic for the Choir of Darkness.

The thing to note, however, is that these beings annihilate.  In this, they are distinct from the other choirs.  In this chapter, you will read of Caacrinolaas’ venom, which slowly but surely eradicate a man’s entire being.  You will read about Shabriri’s lantern, which scours one’s sight away, and her bell, which peals with such force that it irrevocably destroys one’s hearing.

Above all, you will read about the consequences.  The aforementioned venom forces the victim to destroy all relationships to others by unforgivable means if he does not wish them to be inflicted with the secondary effect after he is entirely removed from the world, this effect being a pining so intense that they will never move of their own volition again, only staring into the distance.  Shabriri’s blindness and deafness ultimately leaves one so unable to see or hear that they will perceive absolutely everything that doesn’t exist in that space and time, as their eyes and ears are opened ever wider to true void.

The focus of this text remains the identification of that fine line that separates demons from those Others which are foul but not true fiends.  In this, I must stress key points.

Unless otherwise noted (as in the Lonely Man’s subsection), that which is destroyed can be replaced, but it cannot be retrieved.  While the demon itself might appear to grow, spawn, create, or manifest, I would posit that this is an illusion.  The things that might appear to come to pass are a casualty of other damage, some of which might be beyond our scope of understanding.

Effects, connections, ideas, hallucinations, ideas, and whatever else might seem to be created by the demons of this choir are, I would suggest, purely the effect of reality or other forces distorting to fill the void.

A ‘statue’ left in the place of a destroyed man (See Bazuili, below) is not created by the demon, nor by transmutation, but other forces filling the resulting vacuum.  In this case, it is the nearest available force of substance -the ground- seeking to repair the damage, at reality’s behest.

The cacophonous aria that follows the victims of the mote Tobu-Bōkyaku is not the demon’s cry, nor a signature, but the only sounds that remain to the victim after the being has made its passage through the victim’s ear canals.

A chaotic and tumultuous morass of connections remain after Coronzon destroys a group of people by addressing them thrice, but again, these connections should be said to be the fallout.  Remove a stone from a wall, and the stones around it will fall to a new configuration.  Those stones may face undue stresses, and the gaps will exist between them, but the gap nonetheless exists.

We’re predisposed to finding patterns in chaos.  That is all this is.

This idea forms the basis for the rule I propose on distinguishing these demons from those which are merely destructive fiends, and on understanding and managing the aftermath.

When the First Choir takes away from existence, nothing is created to replace it.  At best, we find a pattern in the chaos that is left behind.

– Excerpt from ‘Classifying Others: Fiends and Darker Beings’, by R.D.T.

■

Isadora – 2:41 PM

Smoke billowed.

Even being here was hard for her.  The wrongness of the being within the factory made her very being ache.

Still, it was best if she was sure to witness this.

He was trying so hard.

She’d gutted him to buy him time.  Inversely, she’d given him karma to support him, and it had led him here.  Would it take away his remaining time?

Riddles.

She had yet to fully grasp the way the world worked.

She could only support the world, to ensure that things kept working, that the clock was wound, and efficiently deal with those forces that would stop things from operating as they ought to.  Some was natural to her, an instinctual drive to attack the ignorant.  Other parts were her personal character at work.  She wanted to learn, to understand.

As a result, she existed wholly for the riddle.  Puzzling out reality as reality was understood, framing it, supporting it.  When she asked someone a question, she challenged them to either justify their relationship to this fathomed reality, or to die.

Everything in the context of the asked and the answered.

The demon within the factory, by contrast, was unanswerable.

And the Thorburn diabolist?

He begged the question, so to speak.

The Fool in the Tarot deck frequently depicted a boy with a dog at his heels, staring at the sky while he walked blithely off a cliff, burdened only by a bundle on a stick.  The diabolist had admitted a relationship to the card.

No single detail was quite right, but much as something might appear similar if one were to unfocus their vision…

The young diabolist walked with the sparrow at his shoulder, eyes on the windows without looking through the windows, walking forward as if he were afraid to stop.  His burden here was the gas containers.

No, he was burdened not just by the gas containers, but by some notion of responsibility.

A man, when facing death, aspires to finish what he started.

What had the custodian of the Thorburn estate started?  What drove him?

She knew he sought to do good and to vanquish evil, and she could surmise that both good acts and the existence of evil had touched him deeply.

The Fool card was akin to the ace.  Depending on the game being played, it was often the lowest card or the highest.  Valueless or highly valued.  Powerless or powerful.

It all depended on context.  He sought to kill the demon, and he would either catastrophically fail or succeed.

This Fool sought to slay the metaphorical dragon.  He felt his own mortality, which was quite possibly her fault, in part, and now he rushed to finish the task he’d set for himself.  To better the world.

The Fool was wrought with air – the clouds he gazed at, the void beyond the cliff, the feather in his cap, even the dog could often be found mid-step, bounding, just above the ground.

He was a Fool wrought with a different element.  The familiar didn’t quite fit for the departure from the air, but the traditional dog didn’t conjure ideas of air right off the bat either.

What was he wrought with?  That was another question that begged an answer.

He sent his servant dolls and ghosts inside, then passed through the threshold.

Others wished people luck, she gave it to him, transferring it from reserves she’d saved for special events.

The demon roused, and she could feel it, even through the boundary.  She stood, and retreated as the demon made its true dimensions known, flexing within the factory, seeping into cracks and through rubble.

Halogen lights cast bright shafts through open windows.

People passed jugs of gasoline through open windows and the tallest of Blake’s companions emptied one jug just below the window.

Isadora was tense.  Her muscles were akin to cables, stretched tight by some immense weight, legs spread for more balance, as if she instinctively expected some great collapse.

Fire flared within, a rolling explosion followed, a jug of gasoline being caught by fire.

Too early.

The demon was growing faster than it was being destroyed.

It was as though the cables had been cut.  She dropped to the ground hard, wings still partially extended at her sides, then folded one front leg over the other, trying to find some poise.

Poise was important in moments like this.

The ones outside were scrambling, running.

Isadora could hear the mirror-bound diabolist shouting.  Ordering one of the other girls, Alexis, to the front door, to provide Blake an escape route.

Too slow, moving around the periphery of the building.

The ache she felt yawned wide.  There were no English words for the idea.  Chásma.  The closest she could manage to an explanation would be to say she felt fractures in her bones.

Except the fractures were tested, the wrongness sharper, and when the cracks opened, a hollowness was revealed.

She moved her head, stretching her neck.

Getting closer would be dangerous.  At worst, she’d disturb the binding around the exterior of the building.  She’d hurt herself much as someone like Blake might hurt himself while standing too close to open flame.

At best?  There was no best.  There wasn’t much she could accomplish here.

Ironically, given how her mother had been created to be sentry to a holy site, Isadora wasn’t inclined to prayer.

The chasm of wrongness widened, and she suppressed a shiver.  Every sense was jarred, now.

How could it be so vast, while staying within the factory’s bounds?

Rather than try to avoid the grating impressions of this misshapen thing straining against its bonds, she let herself feel them.

It was only then that she realized how apt her earlier metaphor had been.

The factory stood there, not tall, but still largely intact, part of the roof collapsed.  To use her comparison to bones, it wasn’t so different from a fractured shinbone, the only thing keeping it from crumbling to pieces was the band that encircled it.

The marrow had been devoured, and there was only infection within.

This shinbone extended deep into the earth.

Deep, deep into the earth.

A great shaft of darkness, a pit.

All the gasoline in the world might not make a fire great enough to bring light to the bottom of that pit.

Did the young diabolist comprehend that the floor he stood on might as well have been paper thin, given the distance that the pit extended below?

Did it matter?

Questions.  These ones didn’t require answers.

She felt the moment he ceased to be.

The wrongness reached through each and every one of them.

It lanced through Isadora, and she did what she could to distribute it, to break it up so that it would damage every part of her a little, rather than deal a grievous wound.  It didn’t wound her awareness as it did the others.

She remembered, at least in part.  One of her duties was to remember, and here she could retain the fragments she’d held on to, the ideas she’d established.

It helped that she hadn’t maintained a close connection, that she hadn’t been on a first name basis with him, and that the impact she had made on him had already been partially erased, the scars filled, then smoothed away.  The ripples that extended outward had less foundation to travel across, and were easily shored up.  She no longer had his name, but she knew who he was, and she could identify him as Thorburn, as the diabolist, and put the rest of the pieces in place.

Isadora looked for Maggie, but Maggie was gone, and had been for some time.

Those that were running kept running, as the pieces fell into their new configuration, sitting askew.  One by one, they stopped running, no longer pulled along by the connection that was supposed to bind them to Rose’s counterpart.

Paige would need to know, which was a complicated thing.  Akin to telling an Alzheimer’s patient that they had a relative, and their relative had passed in one of the worst ways possible.

What a shame, really.

She’d tried to tell him that a clean death was the best path available to him, but it seemed he wasn’t built to go down quietly.  She’d called him the little warrior, and the idea fit.

Isadora remained where she was as the demon shifted position, searching for new prey.

More of reality resettled.  Unpleasant, grating, as if the demon was everywhere in the city, in Jacob’s Bell, in Toronto, and in places in between, for just a moment.  Exercising his power.

The binding held.  The demon remained where it was.

With the resettling of reality, Rose appeared.

A damned shame, quite literally.  This wasn’t clean at all, as exits went.

Rose, not even aware that she’d crossed over, reached out to stop Alexis, who was still running, caught up with emotion, even though that emotion no longer had a target.

The familiar was coming to pieces.  A deal forgotten, it stubbornly refused to move on.  There was no power to feed it but the spirits that had impregnated the ghost prior to the familiar deal.  Nothing powerful, only spirits of freedom, air, yearning.  These spirits would be spent in a matter of minutes, and the familiar would cease to be.

Others were dealing with a sadness they couldn’t explain.  One girl, Isadora forgot the name, was rubbing at her eye, looking at the moisture as if confused.

The young man, Ty, who’d called Isadora beautiful, was standing stock still, caught between confusion and a desire to give strength.  He was caught in a mental loop, akin to obsessive compulsive disorder, or a dream where one repeated an action over and over again, getting the same result, dozens, hundreds of times over.  She could see him reaching out for a connection, finding the wrong one.  Trying to think of a friend, thinking of someone who’d recently left the group instead.  Not that person.  Someone else.  Reaching out, trying to think of the right person… and so the repetition continued.

Humans were not machines, however.  He would find his way out, maybe a little worse for wear.  It depended on whether he was rescued by his friends, or if he was allowed to stew in this recursive loop of thoughts for a time.

Each of them would either invent memories, as some were inclined to do, to fill the void, or they would live with the void, and it would rub them raw from time to time, something unexplained.

If they needed it, Isadora would explain what she could and help them fill that void.  But if they decided to fill it themselves, she wouldn’t be able to.

For now… She stretched her wings out.  It remains to be seen what damage is done.

■

The Eye – 2:46 PM

The crackling of flame was a mask, just barely covering an ocean of screaming heads, arms and bodies thrashing in pain.  Raw-throat screaming, the kind of screaming that hurt, that happened because there was no other choice.

Burning to death hurt.

The Eye of the Storm remained where it was, hunched over a metal barrel, hands extended over the burning contents.

One eye stared down and saw visions.  Memories and echoes, brief stories of human struggles ending in failure.

In the brighter parts of the flame the Eye saw lightning.  In the snap and pop, the bang as the can’s contents shifted and touched the metal, the Eye heard thunder.  The Eye heard ruin, mankind’s endeavors ending in disaster.

A crunch, as something burned enough that it broke.  A car crash, bones breaking.

Symphony.

In time, humanity as a whole would succumb to this kind of fate.  It was inevitable.  With every creation came a destruction.  A new scientific achievement, a new weapon.

War would erupt, and war would see man destroy himself.  Bombs would fall.

These were the thoughts that ran through the Eye’s head as it held hands over the flames.  The elemental remembered the thousands who he had burned, thousands who had burned of their own accord.  Those who had been electrocuted, who had been ground to pulp by metal of their own making.

Right now, right here, he would wait as he’d been instructed.

Conquest would deal with Blake Thorburn.  When that was done, he would signal the Eye, and the Eye would attack once more, and people would burn.

A chill wind passed, something unnatural.

Conquest would deal with…

With what?

Conquest would… …Done, he would signal the Eye, and the Eye would attack, and people would burn.

The Eye shifted position, uncomfortable.  The thoughts didn’t connect.

Simplify.

Reduce.

Remove the damaged bits.

The words resonated with some century-old part of him, and he shifted from discomfort to ire.

Simplifying…

The Eye would attack once more, and people would burn.

He touched the edge of the barrel.  The contents shifted position and the fire erupted forth, touching the trash that a small grocery had left beside the building.  Cardboard boxes and vegetables.

The fire found its way to the necessary places in that pile of material.

The wire attaching the battery to the smoke detector inside shorted.

The Eye was already leaving the alleyway when the fire started to reach toward the dumpster.

Emanating heat enough to touch nearby patches of ice.  They would melt and re-harden in the course of a minute.

The next car to find the ice would find zero traction available.

It didn’t matter whether that car was a fire truck or a chance accident blocking access to the blaze.  The Eye knew it would serve.

People avoided him, avoiding eye contact, but he didn’t truly care if he was seen.  The orders were to attack.  The timing and consequences of this were for his master to worry about.

He’d given up worrying a hundred years ago.

The screams of the burning were the only thing familiar and natural to him, now.  The electrocuted, the crushed.

A gauge in the nearby traffic light shorted out.  People would later blame it on the blackouts that had afflicted the city earlier.

That’s how they operate.  Blame.

The Eye felt uncomfortable.  Old memories were stirring, and it didn’t know why.

All the same.

The traffic light fed information back to a main computer.

The main computer would give the wrong instructions to the system.

A subtle change.

Change enough that the Eye would hear the sounds it needed to hear.

■

The Astrologer – 2:47 PM

Diana shifted position, head smooshed against the pillow.

Why was it so hard to sleep now that she finally had an opportunity?  There was a limited truce in effect, she was safe…

Safe…

Her eyes began to drift shut.

It hit her like a niggling worry, but swiftly spread.

Sleep became uneasy sleep.

Uneasiness woke her up.

When her eyes opened, she felt a kind of horror over the fact that she’d almost let herself drift off.

Her labs were in danger.

His labs were in danger.

Doug’s.

She bit her lip hard enough that it hurt, in efforts to keep herself awake.

Her hand shook as she turned the kettle around to check how much water was inside, then flicked the switch to turn it on.

She was running on caffeine and willpower right now.

Monitors were off, which bothered her.  She’d gone through all of her pre-nap motions.

Napping was impossible.

Fuck, this sucked.

What happened next?

Either she finally did drift off, and she lost something precious to her, or she took action.

She checked the cupboard for a mug and found it empty.  Another little heart stopping moment.  There should be one mug in there.

She didn’t keep many.  If she did, she was liable to let it slide and let dishes pile up.

With less, she was forced to wash them regularly.

She checked the sink.

She’d had guests, right.  She was getting forgetful, she was so tired.

The bags and types of tea helped her piece it together.

Except there was one mug too many.

Right.  They’d been going to the factory.

Oh.

She filled the sink without looking, and pulled each mug out in turn, washing with exaggerated care.

A few grew in her heart.

One last mug.

Doug’s mug.

She didn’t know who it had belonged to.

She wouldn’t have given up the mug if she hadn’t liked the person.  It was how she operated.  She was sentimental like that, she knew.

That same uneasiness that had woken her up settled into a feeling of loss, and the only face that fit the feeling was Doug’s.  Her mentor’s.

She sat down on a box, the dirty mug in hand, and she thought of Doug.

With an edge of desperation to the thoughts, she started thinking about how she would protect Doug’s legacy.

■

Behaims – 2:45 PM

“Are we fighting?” Owen asked.

“Maybe,” Duncan said.  “It depends on who needs help and why, and if we can do what we need to do to deal with Blake.”

“Whatever you need,” Owen said.

“Call Moira, get her to email the scanned books.  I don’t want you kids in the thick of it,” Duncan said.  “We approach this indirectly, unless a reading says we need another direct confrontation.  A spell to help things along, at most.  You, Gav, and the girls.”

“Okay.  Shouldn’t be a problem.  Speaking of… how are your hands?”

Duncan’s arms rested on his knees, hands limp and relaxed.  He didn’t try to move them.  Every time he tried, it hurt.  “The painkillers help.”

“That isn’t answering the question.”

“An incomplete answer is still an answer.  Be careful.”

“Yes, sir.”

He shut his eyes briefly.  There was a dreamlike edge to his thoughts, with the codeine, and, in an amusing way, his perception of time was distorted.

The clocks around him ticked, many salvaged from his fiancee’s house.

It was soothing, the sound of his childhood home.  It had driven her crazy.

Now things were on hold.  They couldn’t stay at the house, and she didn’t want to stay with him.

He suspected he knew where things were going.

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

He smiled.

Tick.  Tick.        .   Tick.

His eyes opened.

Owen was walking down the hallway.

“Owen,” he said.

“Yes, uncle?”

“Get everyone packed up.  We’re going back.”

“Back?”

“To Jacob’s Bell.  It’s done, I’m fairly certain.”

Not without casualties.

“I, uh, okay,” Owen said.

“I’ll need help packing,” Duncan said, working his way to a standing position.  “You and your twin can get some driving practice in, I suppose.”

“You’re coming?”

“I’m coming.”

■

The Sisters – 2:40 PM

“Yes,” the Elder Sister said.  “I’ll do you one better.  If you can give me the bill for a retrofit, new paint and logos on your trucks, I’ll pass it on to the city, and I will sell you to them.”

Her office overlooked the hallway, just above the altar where she could address the lesser Sisters.  Candles burned around the window, making the aperture look like a gate lined by flame.

The other Sisters were making their way here and there downstairs.  Guiding the initiates.  Not a large number, but enough.  Girls with good grades, good positions, who either weren’t going home for Christmas, or who were willing to stay if it meant getting an edge elsewhere.

They would be eased into this.  The blindfolds would come off.  Later they would see a practitioner at work.  Later still, they would be awoken, then the rings would be granted.

Hopefully they would have the torch spirit back before then.  It would be embarrassing if they didn’t.

The guy on the other end of the phone was talking.  She listened to the tail end only, then cut in.  “I can make this really simple.  Cut twenty percent of your active staff.  Pay particular attention to the guys who make mistakes.  Who hit mailboxes, or consistently miss days.  Set money aside.  Call friends with garages, and be prepared to tell them you’ll pay extra for a fast job.”

Protests.

“Don’t commit wholesale or rush ahead, but do trust me.  You can start looking at files and talking to a trusted employee about who you can cut.  You should hear from me before you need to start with the actual layoffs.”

More protests.  He was on the fence, but this was the biggest protest yet.

Why should I trust you?

Success or failure hinged on her reply.

“I’m on your side, Mac,” she said.  “If I disappoint you, I hurt myself, and I hurt my own employees.  I’m speaking to you from the heart, and I’m going to help you, if you give me the chance.  T.O. Plow will become part of the city services, and they really need better plow services after this last storm.  Nobody else in Toronto is positioned to deploy in numbers like you can.  You stand to make a small fortune.”

The arguments were more feeble this time.  Less a resistance and more the unease of anyone facing a major change in their life.

“Mac,” she said.  “What’s my reputation?  I don’t lie.  You’ve doubled in size in the time I’ve been lobbying for you.  Subtract what you’re paying me from what I’ve saved you, and you’ve earned tens of thousands.  If you want to more than double in earnings now, you need to do two things for me.  Say yes, and then follow through.”

Agreement.

“Thank you, Mac.  Do me a favor and don’t fret.  Focus on taking advantage of the snowstorm and the heavy demand, take the employee files with you tonight and read them in bed.  No rush, no pressure.  I suspect a little voice in the back of your head has been telling you you really should be more ruthless with the employees.  It’s natural for a company that’s grown as fast as you have.”

A one-syllable response.

She reached out to the blazing urn on her desk and extended a finger for the fire sprite that lurked within.

A small woman emerged, keeping just far enough away from the Elder Sister’s hand to avoid burning her.

“It’s very simple,” she said.  “All those thoughts you’ve had but haven’t followed through on?  That you’ve grown too fast, and it’s crazy to lay people off when you’re growing as fast as you are?  The employees are thinking it too.  The worst employees are thinking it and taking advantage of it.  You’re going to look at the books and see the problems pop up almost straight away, I think.  It’ll be a relief.”

Another one-syllable response.

“I’ll reach out to you in a few days, Mac, if I can make the call, way things have been going.”

He would be thinking of dropped phone and power lines.

She was wondering about mortality.

All the same…

She hung up.

Mortality.  Success and failure.  It reminded her… it was about time.

Her phone had a text on it from one of her subordinates.

The dolls had been delivered.

Thorburn was dealing with the demon.

It was win-win, wasn’t it?

Either they didn’t have the diabolist to worry about, or the demon was dealt with.

It wasn’t that she disliked him.  But he was more trouble than he was worth.  The fact that he was going to try to mediate the issue with the Torch the Astrologer had stolen went a long way.  It meant things were quiet for now, and the Sisters could focus on other things.

Problem was, the concerns about taint and the general fact that she couldn’t predict him went further the other way.  Unpredictability was scary when someone could tap the kind of power he could.

It was easier when things were predictable.

So long as things stayed predictable, she saw a fairly clear, straight road to the Lordship of the city, temporarily or long term.

Build up ties with local business, expand her powerbase here, deal with Conquest’s remaining subordinates – which amounted to the Shepherd and the Eye right now – and ally with others.  Isadora should back her if she made enough headway to sell the idea, and as for Emily, Fell’s successor… well, Fell’s family would accept an option that kept Conquest from regaining power, and the Sisters could arrange a scholarship for Emily, resources…

This would work.

The candles across the entire great hall flickered, as if a draft with no substance had passed through.  The shockwave from a distant event.

She shook her head.

A disconnect, a momentary lapse.

It unsettled, left her nerves on edge.

It reminded her of the nightmares she’d had for years after leaving University, the idea of something critical that had been forgotten.  A major exam or assignment that her entire degree hinged on, except it was a little more profound.

In her work with the Sisters to date, she’d avoided putting them in life or death situations.  It wasn’t something she’d been prepared to do.  Their focus lay elsewhere.  They only went to war when they had to.

Right now, there was only one war that demanded her attention.

She stepped out of her room, turning to the first Sister she saw.  “Sharon.”

“Yes, Elder Sister?”

“How many dolls do we have?”

“I have no earthly idea.”

“Find out and get back to me.  We need to handle this business with the astrologer before we do anything else.”

“Yes, Elder Sister.”

■

The Shepherd – 2:47 PM

The Shepherd felt the recoil, reality reacting.

He was sensitive to such things.  A silenced scream.  If the universe worked as it was supposed to, such a scream would be heard across the city.

He felt it every now and again.  Sometimes in clusters, a few at a time.

This time it was just the one.  He had a vague sense of who.  Two of his ghosts were nearby, even.

It always made him think of Bennie, and Laurel, and Andrew.

If the feeling behind a scream was what determined how loud that scream could be, his scream would be heard across the world.

He called for his steed, footsteps shuffling as he made his way down the dilapidated stairwell.

It was good that he didn’t speak.  He told himself he’d look for the children until it was dark.  If he’d said it aloud, it would have been a lie.  Every time, he lied to himself.

■

Rose – 2:47 PM

Rose’s heart was pounding.  She felt like she was on the verge of a panic attack, and she couldn’t make sense of why.

Once upon a time, she’d gone on a camping trip with the school, her parents had hoped it would help her make friends.  They’d hoped, too, that making friends would help her build up her social skills.  Rhetoric and understanding people would only help with the inheritance.

She’d gotten dirty, her hair greasy.  Everyone had.  They’d been proud of how dirty they’d gotten.  Sharing in that was the closest she got to making friends there.

When she’d returned home, she’d hopped in the shower.

The hot water had felt alien, painful.

Everything felt that way now.

The fresh air was so rich she felt like she was getting high off it.  She was cold, and it almost hurt to breathe. The sun on her skin helped with the cold, and she felt like she’d just woken up on a Saturday morning with the sun shining on her.

It was too much.  Too intense.

It jarred with… with this.  The smoke, the fire, the fact that someone had just died and she had no idea who, why, or how.

The others were similarly lost, similarly distraught.

Reeling.

She felt no particular connection to them.  They were, what, one step removed from her?

Feeling a chill, Rose put her hands in her pockets for warmth, and found a note there.

She read it over five times before it sank in.

“Throw the rest of the jugs in,” she said.  “Hurry.  It was part of the plan, and we should follow through.”

“You want us to get close to that?” Ty asked.

“Not too close,” she said.  She looked at the note again, as if it might have changed in the meantime.

I wrote this to myself, and I was supposed to explain things, so I wouldn’t be too lost if it goes wrong.

Except it’s better if we don’t know.

Burn what you can.  We promised we would.

We have a connection to those people.  I’m not positive about what’s going to happen if it goes bad.  Either way, they should be yours.  You can manipulate them using that, using the chaos that’s going to unfold now.  That doesn’t mean you should.

If nothing happens, well, there’s no need for this note, and I’ll look stupid.  Ha ha.

There’s nothing here for us.  You know what the next step is.

I’m such a bitch.

“I’m going back to Jacob’s Bell,” she said.

The others turned.  Ty was hurling the jugs of gas at windows with a two-handed grip, a barely-repressed anger he didn’t understand.

“What?” Alexis asked.

“I’m going back to Jacob’s Bell.  You can come, that’s fine, or you can stay.”

She saw the expressions on their faces.

Feathers were falling.

The feathers almost reminded her of something.

Was that a clue?  A cue?

“Hey!” she screamed.  “Bird!”

The bird descended.

She held out both hands, cupped.

The landing was clumsy, her catching of the bird doubly so.

“Hey,” she said.

Just like the others, it felt like it was hers, but not hers.  One step removed.

“Hey,” the bird said.  “I’m not sure what’s going on.”

“None of us are,” she said.  “Why don’t you stick with me?”

“I think I’m dying,” the bird said.

“We can fix that,” she said.

■

Ur – 3:17 PM

The humans were leaving now.

As if they were some magnetic force that had hauled him up from darkness, now absent, Ur settled back into the shadows, contracting himself.  Here and there, pieces of rubble were dragged into place.  Things were propped up.

One section of wall was cracked, and in time, the wall would break free.

With more time, the binding that encircled the building would be broken.

With care, Ur moved a metal beam, winding around it, manifesting limbs to grasp at it, tongues to encircle it, until it had the leverage needed to lift it clear off the ground.

It placed the beam so it sat diagonally against the wall, reducing the stress that would be placed on it.

A few more years would pass before the section of wall broke free.

A decade more would pass before the binding broke.

Everything in place.

Everything, in time.

As if provoked by the idle thought of consuming, a mouth on the side of one wormlike section of body reached out and snatched at a largely dismembered hand.  The hand crunched.

Ur retreated into the shadows of the rubble, and into the chasm that dwelt beneath the factory.

A piece of rebar dragged against the ground, held by a tiny hand, retreating with the rest of Ur as he disappeared into the shadows.

A tiny hand attached to a tiny form, three-quarters of the way complete, eyes shut.  Two more were pressed against it, part of the same growth, the three compacted so tightly together that the shape of them distorted.  All in the form of human babes, with jet black skin.  One with horns, one with tufts of spiky fur, the other smooth and bald.

The binding would break in time.

Ur would bear its motes first.

The hand dropped the rebar, and the metal sang as it clattered.

Ur was already gone.  The factory still.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Signature 8.1

Buttsack had this down to a science.  Once they were inside the building, the humans were supposed to be safe.  The doorframes, the windows, the plumbing, all were made of refined metal, ‘stainless steel’ they called it.

‘They’ were fuckholes, as far as he was concerned.

Goblins as a whole came in all shapes and sizes.  Some were fat, some were skinny, some were furry, others scaly, others still had skin.  They could be no larger than a squirrel, or five times the size of a man, in all colors.

Certain rules held true, though.  All were ugly.  Buttsack was no exception.  His loose skin maintained an appearance and smell like the body parts that were his namesake, and he was grotesquely fat for his three-foot frame, giving him an uneven, ungainly appearance.  His legs were like overstuffed sausages sticking out from the stolen, piss-stained pair of shorts he wore.  Among the goblins of the area, he was just small enough to evade the attention of the Wise, the humans that knew.  However, that also meant he was also big enough to bully the other goblins hereabouts.  Some were quick enough or clever enough to stay out of his way, but the ones that weren’t paid up.  Some gave food, or gifts, some gave tips, and others gave him knowledge.

Metal door, metal frame, pipes… he was aware of all of them, as he might be aware of a flame by reaching out and feeling the warmth from it.

One piece of knowledge Buttsack had picked up had been from a scrawny little bitch of a goblin that called itself Scuzzwick.  Lick both hands, lick the back of the knees and elbows, the back of the neck.  The licking didn’t matter so much as the wet, and it was easier and more comfortable to use his own tongue than to use the snow.  He scratched his forearms deep enough to get his fingertips wet with blood.  Once the wet patches and blood were there, he could reach each arm out to either side, feel the wet patches grow cold from the force of the winter breeze.

Move with the wind, letting the arms move as the wind did.

A fatass of a man sauntered right past him.  Buttsack could feel the movement of air, clutch it with bloody fingertips, and follow it.

Catch the wind and ride it through the door the man was opening.

Drifting inside.

“Do you smell something?” a bystander asked.  The dumpy looking fuck shut one of the metal cabinets, then hooked a lock onto it.

Buttsack hurried off to take cover before he became fully material again.

This wasn’t a proper boundary, no power had sealed it, but it was still uncomfortable.  The things that gave the goblin power and energy were cut off here.  It was a bit like suffocating, a bit like being cold.  He always felt it a little, the sensation of dying, the spark within him going out by the smallest degrees, bit by bit, but here, like this, he felt it happening faster.

The goblins shared stories between one another about what goblins were and why metal was so problematic.  The usual story was that when a Wise man drank from a cup while dining, the bits of food that got into the cup and lingered after the drink was done accumulated.  Except it was workings, not drink, and bits of self, not food.  Greasy fingerprints left behind when touching something beyond the veil.  Bits of skin that should have grown and the hairs that should have fallen from one’s head, that didn’t, because they were wearing different skin or hair, and the stuff that wasn’t had to end up someplace.

There was another story that said that the unfair folk were people once, and they chopped off all the bits they didn’t like, and those bits became goblins, but Buttsack didn’t like that version.

Fuck the unfair folk.  Being magic hairballs for humans, fabricated of their dust, scum, grease, pubes, and stress, that was one thing.  Being of faerie?  Fuck that idea sideways and backward.

Whatever the case, many stories had one or two common elements.  The goblins were leavings, discards, scrap given form.  The earth called to them, to decompose them like it was meant to devour and decompose all leavings, and the metal was the earth in distilled form.  Or maybe the process that made goblins was

All the same, this wasn’t a place he was willing or able to stay.  He had to make the most of his time here.

Moving around was easier than in most places.  Here, the humans were insecure. He could see it in the shifting patterns around them, where their focus was falling.  He’d seen the roving spotlights in the movies and video games.  In most places, the attention of people was like those spotlights, roaming, cast out from their eyes, a dull glow emanating as they listened.  Here it was different.  The focus was largely on themselves, only periodically casting out at specific targets.

Not always, but enough.  Buttsack cloaked himself thoroughly against the insensitive, and for extra measure, he was careful to watch where they were paying attention and nudge it aside when it veered his way.

A satchel, sitting at a young man’s feet as he talked with a friend.  Buttsack smelled money, and reached inside, picking through contents, nostrils flaring as he sniffed away.

A wallet, fake leather, in the front pocket of the satchel.  The goblin stowed it in a pocket for later investigation.

“Oh man,” the boy that stood above him whined, “I just got a whiff of something rank.”

“You’re too close to the bathrooms,” his pal said.  “You’ve gotta change lockers.”

Buttsack moved on.  A phone, left at the bottom of one metal cabinet, pocketed.  A metal case sticking out of a purse… he opened it, and found cotton sticks with strings dangling from the bottom.  He stuffed them into the bag of a boy.  She’d have to do without, and the boy looked like the bigger pussy anyway.

Moving out into the main hallway, there was more foot traffic, and attention was harder to divert.  He waited, instead, lurking beneath a colorfully decorated display with false leaves and berries and a snow idol stuck to the surface.

A bell dinged, and the number of people in the hallway began to thin out.

The changing room that reeked of girl-sweat… no luck.  The door was shut, and he didn’t want to spend power walking with the air again.

Washroom was a yes, opposite the changing room.  The door was propped open.

He slipped inside.

Some bitch sat on the windowsill, while her cankled friend smeared powder all over her face.  The one at the windowsill wasn’t looking at anything, and her lack of focus was exactly the sort that could see something that was walking the fine line he was, wanting something to catch her attention.

He detoured right, instead, taking cover beneath the sinks and the oversized bag that cankles had left by the wall.

Rummaging, he discovered a wallet.

Nothing else to do, he picked his way through it.

Nothing.  Not a single coin or piece of paper.

Bitch.  Poor-ass cankled pasty-faced bitch.

He took the shiniest cards and stuck them through the ventilation grate by the sink, replaced the wallet, and then went through the bag.

A small pouch with writing tools – he broke the nicer looking ones, and scattered the remains inside so they’d leak their ink.

Another pouch?  He unzipped it slowly.

Syringes.  A little glass bottle.

Not the fun kind of syringe-stuff.  The kind that the human’s doctors gave out.

She wanted to short him?  He made the effort of coming here, and she didn’t have shit fuck all?

Fuck her.

He unscrewed the glass bottle, then reached into a pocket.  A sealable bag with white powder.

The fun stuff.

He busied himself emptying some powder into the glass bottle, carefully.  He knew where to get more, and this would be good.  Not right away, but in time.

Buttsack considered making it a regular thing, even.  If he could somehow get his hands on her stuff…

His thoughts were cut off when the door behind him opened.  He moved his hand, ready to turn the attention aside.

The bitch focused on him right away.  He moved his hand, ready to divert her attention and head in the other direction, but she didn’t budge.

Blond hair, long and silky, a nose ring and more rings in her ears, with bright green paint around her eyes.

He stared at her, she stared at him.  His gut was cold and hollow with fear, and fear wasn’t far removed from anger.  If she made a problem for him, what could he do to her in return?

“What?” the cunt at the window asked.

“Nothing,” the new bitch said.

One of the Duchamps.  She wouldn’t say a thing.  The goblins left the families alone, kept it all on the down-low, the families left the goblins alone.

That was the deal.

The girl headed to the furthest bathroom stall, giving him a warning look.

He had to admit disappointment, and briefly considered peeking all the same.

He finished lacing the medicine and then put everything away.

Fuck her, cheap cankly slut.

He picked through the bag, curious if there was anything else he could fuck with.  Condoms and the pill-cases were fun, but the bitch didn’t have any.

He settled on papers.

Almost smug, he thought, lesser goblins wouldn’t know how to do this.

Look at the papers, figure out the names.  Stuff with red markings and circles all over it was useless to mess with.

Find the papers with no markings, toward the end.

Find other papers to get clues.  Best if he did it clever-like.  Make it make sense.  Sometimes a nice colorful threat to the teacher, referencing an old mark if they were low, or drawing a picture at the edges of the ages,

Allusions to violence and guns worked well.  Something suitably strange, even, like a bit of blood used to draw a heart, and a line written within saying something like ‘I like to cut myself where nobody can see the marks.’  Get dumb humans sent to doctors to have their brains poked and prodded and their bodies looked at.

Except he’d done that one not so long ago.

But here she gave him nothing.  A simple, stupid, boring bitch.

One of the papers in the booklet had two people’s names at the top, two different kinds of writing.  Working together?

He went back to the unfinished work and erased the name at the top, copying down the other, mimicking the writing style.  Two copies might be turned in.  A stupid mistake.  Eyebrows would raise.

He put it back, and then stowed the little bag of powder at the very bottom corner of the bag, inside a fold.

Mix things up a bit.

Buttsack didn’t always understand their ways, the language or the changes from yesteryear.  He did understand the ugliness that came natural to them, and he could figure stuff out fast when it made him better at what he did.  He understood how easy it was to mess them up, to push them off course.  One incident, an oddity.  A string?  A bit of drugs, a cheating allegation?  People would worry, they would stay away from her, they would-

He grabbed the pipe beneath the sink and pulled his feet away from the floor, hiding in the shadows as Cankles collected her bag.

If she was still coming into the bathroom with a friend to keep her company a week from now, then he’d find something else to do to her.  He’d find her again, find where she lived, and he’d make a campaign of it.  He’d convince her she was doing it to herself.  Isolate, with a few other tricks, dismantle, destroy.

She’d suffer.  His grin was toothy as he watched her leave.

What now?  He had to wait until the hallways were empty before he could crack open the machine of food and cash.

Two stalls were occupied.  There was one he didn’t dare touch.  That still meant one possible view.

He smiled wide.

There were a number of fun things he could do here.  Scare them at the right time, snatch their bag and run, spit a loogie into their pants or panties…

This one wore hose, which he could scratch, or he could dig in his pockets for something to drop inside.  He kept a lot of things.  A live roach, two centipedes, a bundle of flea-infested hair, fresh shit in plastic wrap-

He’d decide depending on what she looked like.  Maybe do all of them.  Then he’d make a marking so the fear would stay, the bad feelings, but the impressions would linger, staying with her.

He ducked his head low to crawl under the stall door.

A chain settled around his neck.

“No!” he shrieked, clutching at the metal loops.  “No, no, fuck you!”

“Shh,” the practitioner said, tightening the chain.  Her dark brown hair was cut short, pushed out of her face by a metal hairband.  She still wore her winter coat, alongside a checkered scarf.

He could feel his essence draining out of him, bleeding into the metal.

This was what dying felt like. Except he wouldn’t die.  He’d become less, he’d take years to recuperate.

“Please, give mercy,” he said, lowering his voice, pretending to comply with her wish for quiet.

She smiled, showing her teeth, her eyes crinkling a little with mischief.  “What makes you think I’m the merciful type?”

Buttsack started shrieking, full-volume, lashing out with his claws.  She kicked the wind out of him, pulled the chain tight enough that he had to grasp at it to try and spare his throat, and then wound the chain around his head, into his mouth and around his hands, binding them in place.

Shit fell out of his pockets as she hauled his feet up, bending them brutally backward.  A second chain came out of her bag, winding around his feet and through his elbows until one was bound to the other.  Each loop of chain took a measure of his strength, until he was too feeble to work his hands out from under the metal.

He’d never live this down.

■

Maggie finished tying up the goblin, then dragged it out of the stall, slinging it over so it skidded off to one corner of the bathroom, chains scratching against the tile.

“You’re one of the gross ones, aren’t you?” she asked, as she bent over the sink, washing her arms up to the elbow.

The goblin grunted in a way that very strongly suggested he was cussing at her.

“Yeah, well, same to you, Wrinkles.”

The other stall door opened, and the Duchamp girl stepped out.  Lola Duchamp, was it?  It was hard to keep track of them all.  They looked so similar.

Lola went to the sink two spaces away from Maggie and began washing her own hands.

The goblin, unable to speak, resorted to pelvic thrusts in their general direction.  Lola glanced down, then looked away, disgusted.

“Quit it, goblin,” Maggie ordered, her tone sharp.  “Or I’ll step on it.”

The goblin went still.

“Sorry,” she said to Lola.  “Problem of dealing with goblins.  They have a way of bringing you down to their level.”

“There’s a deal in place,” Lola said.  “We don’t mess with the goblins, they leave us alone.”

“You guys have a deal in place,” Maggie said.  “I never agreed to anything, and I don’t benefit.  Am I missing something?”

“It’s the way things are done here.”

“Consider me an anarchist,” Maggie said.  She finished washing her hands and shook them dry.

“Anarchy doesn’t work,” Lola said.  She picked at a fleck of black near one eye with a fingernail.

“It doesn’t work for countries.  As personal philosophies go, it’s fantastic.”

“Until you realize you’re utterly alone,” Lola said.  “Are you happy being alone?”

Maggie shrugged.  She walked over to the window, tested her ability to touch the metal, then used the scarf to insulate against the cold as she hauled it open.

“Fuck, that’s cold,” Lola said.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“Putting Mr. Wrinkles away until later,” Maggie said.  “Unless he gives me a nod right now to tell me he’s cooperating.”

Both Maggie and Lola looked at the goblin.

He thrust his pelvis into the air once.  Quite amazing, even, given the chains that bound him.

“Right-o,” Maggie said.  She grabbed the chains and hauled him off the ground.  “Heavy little snot, aren’t you?”

The goblin’s retort was muffled but his glare said enough.

She held him above the open window.

Behind Maggie and Lola, the bathroom door opened.  Maggie still held the goblin out the window.

A teacher.

“You two should be in class,” the woman said.

“I’m new,” Maggie said.  “Still learning my way around town.”

“I know for a fact that isn’t true,” the woman replied.  “Your name is making its rounds around the staff room, Maggie.  We do talk about our students.”

I am new, relatively speaking, Maggie thought.  And I am still learning my way around town.

Still, she made a show of looking suitably embarrassed.

“I have to assume you’re using the windowsill as an ashtray.  Please tell me it’s a cigarette, and not something you could get suspended for.”

The goblin squirmed, fingers reaching out in an attempt to scratch at Maggie’s hands.  Maggie shifted her grip so the goblin couldn’t touch her.

The woman couldn’t see, of course.  The goblin had cloaked itself, and something told Maggie that the woman was one of those people that could look right at an Other and walk away none the wiser.

“It’s neither,” Maggie said.  “Want to do a breath test?”

“Yes, I’ll call that bluff,” the woman said.  “Whatever you’re doing, please close that window first.”

Maggie nodded, turning her attention to the window, “Just trying to see if there’s something on the outside… ah.”

She balanced the goblin on the very edge of the window, then hooked the metal clip at the end of the chain to the raised lip of the window frame.

A nudge, touching the chain alone, and he tipped over, screaming.  A moment later, he jerked to a stop, screaming in pain, this time.

That only lasted a second or two.  He started screaming in rage as he realized what she was doing.  The chain swayed as he struggled, swinging left and right.

Maggie shut the door, only to find the teacher a foot behind her.

“Breath test,” the teacher said.

Maggie huffed a breath in the teacher’s face.

“Hands too.”

“You might not want to-”

“Hands,” the teacher said, firmer.

Maggie held out her hands.  “I’m telling you-”

The woman took a sniff, then recoiled.  “Good god.  Wash your hands.”

“I did.”

“Wash your hands again,” the woman said, irritated, “Then go to the office, get a late slip, and get yourself to homeroom.  Lola Duchamp?”

“Same thing, I get it,” Lola said.

The woman turned to go, pausing at the door.  “Maggie?”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Consider seeing a doctor.”

The woman slammed the door.

“Goblin stink,” Maggie commented.  She took a tentative sniff of her own hands, then screwed up her face.  She started washing her hands again.  “I don’t think I even touched him directly when I was sticking him through the window.”

“It’s probably in your clothes,” Lola commented.  “Mine too.  Come with me to the office?  I’ve got something to bring up.”

Maggie nodded, giving her hands a quick rinse to get the soap off.

Lola held the door for her as they made their exit.

“Are we friends now?”  Maggie asked.  She let her shoulder bump Lola’s.  “Partners in crime?”

“No,” Lola said, without humor.

“That’s cold,” Maggie said.  “Shutting me down.  You could at least play along, or give more material so this conversation keeps moving.”

“Anarchists can be too dangerous to befriend.”

“Sticking to the Duchamp party line there, Lola?  What is it they tell you?  Stay away from outsiders, they’re dangerous and they’ll fudge you up?  Stick with our cult of black widow enchantresses, marry the disgusting old dude we tell you to, squirt out some Duchamp clone, drink the kool-aid…”

“If we’re talking about dangerous company, practitioners that make stupid mistakes like giving away their ability to swear have to rate somewhere up there.”

“That’s not exactly what I did,”  Maggie said.  “But hey, excellent banter.  I could convert you yet.”

“Oh?  Do tell.  How long do I have before I’m killing people in cold blood, Maggie?”

The words were like a physical blow.

Maggie managed a fake smile, “As banter goes, that’s a little too direct-to-jugular to fit in with the flow, FYI.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.  While we’re trading tips, if you want to pretend my words aren’t affecting you, you can’t have that telling pause before you respond.”

Despite herself, Maggie hesitated before speaking again, trying to find her mental footing.  “You think you’re better than me?”

Stupid.  If an argument was an exchange of blows, she’d just given up her opportunity and stuck her chin out for a hit.

Sure enough, Lola seized the chance, “We’re civilized, we’re building something.  You’re, what, doing the metaphorical equivalent of grubbing in the dirt for cockroaches?  I can’t even think of a good metaphor for what you did to the last Thorburn heiress, but it’s lower than that.  The fact that it needed to be done doesn’t diminish the ugliness of it at all.  We’re not ever going to be friendly, understand?”

“My metaphorical cockroaches could slit your throat and drop a dookie in the wound,” Maggie said.

The look Lola gave her was priceless.  Shutting up a Duchamp?

“Could, not will.  Just saying,” Maggie said, before Lola could decide on a retort, or escalate this into a problem.  “Not to worry.  You might not be friendly, but I’m a lot nicer than I look.”

Even now, Lola didn’t have the words for a reply.

Which worked.  Going back to her exchange of blows metaphor, she’d just picked up a chair and slapped Lola across the back of the head.  It wouldn’t make her friends, but she’d won the argument.

“You’re more energetic than usual.”

“It’s the end of the semester, and I’m pretty happy things have gone as well as they have, believe it or not.”

“You’re in Jacob’s Bell.  You murdered a girl.  You’re happy?”

Lola kept bringing that up.  Lola had to know the effects the words had, and it rankled.  She had no idea what was involved, the sleepless nights, the shame, and yet she threw it out there.

Which made Maggie’s mood worse and made it more likely Maggie would say something they’d both regret.  ‘I’ll have a goblin cut your throat and crap in the wound’ wasn’t her worst.

Maggie took a breath, then exhaled slowly before replying.  “Pretty happy, for lack of a better term.  I’m in a better place mentally and emotionally, even literally.  The damn nightmares have stopped.  I’m meeting people and making sorta-friends.”

“Sorta-friends like Mr. Wrinkles, the bathroom goblin?”

“No,” Maggie said.

“Because he’s a better choice for a friend than Blake Thorburn.”

“Blake gets a bad rap.”

“Maybe.  But I still don’t know how you can interact with him.  Aren’t you scared?”

“Nah.  Look at where we are right now.  What could be worse than high school?”

There was a pause.  Lola ventured, “On a related note, there’s something I wanted to bring up.”

“We’re almost at the office,” Maggie said, pointing.  “Dratting shame.”

“Where’s your homeroom?”

“Geo.  It’s in the-”

“I know where it is.  Whoever finishes first waits for the other, we walk back together.”

“Going back on the ‘never be friends’ bit?”

“No, but I need to run something past you, and-” Lola paused as someone walked by, “we can’t do it here.”

“I dunno, they check the times for the slips, and it’s a huge hassle if I have to go back to the office to explain why the walk took me-”

“At the back of the school after school then.  This is serious.  I need a few minutes of your time.”

“This is serious?  Traps can be serious too.”

Lola sighed.  “I promise no willful harm, direct or indirect, premeditated, present, or future, will come from me to you, as a result of this.  You have my protection, up to the point that you abuse it.”

Maggie considered, then said, “Okay.”

Lola nodded.

Maggie stepped in Lola’s way, cutting her off, before the girl could cross the distance to the front office’s door.  She opened it herself, holding it.

Equity.  You hold the door for me, I hold the door for you.

Lola didn’t break eye contact as she passed, intimidating as all get out.  Even her walk was graceful.  Take away the makeup and the piercings and she was such a Duchamp.  It was so disappointing.  The style could have been a small rebellion, but… no.

Can’t help but wonder how that works with the whole arranged marriage thing, Maggie thought.  Is it by choice, and she goes back to normal when the Duchamps want her to, does she define herself the way she wants, and they find a partner willing to take her, or is that look purely because the Duchamps wanted a girl with a particular style for a particular husband?

Whatever the choice was, it was gross.

Maggie followed Lola into the office.

When she’d moved here, Maggie hadn’t been able to shake the idea that she’d go to school and there would be only a handful of classrooms, with one classroom for each grade.

As it happened, St. Sebastian’s wasn’t that small.  Eight hundred students, give or take.  All of the trappings of a usual high school.  The only caveat was that it was the only real high school in Jacob’s Bell.

Maggie waited patiently in line, trying to zen away the frustration and the urge to say something.  That would be giving them what they wanted.

If a student was more than five minutes late for class, the school rules said they had to go to the office and get a slip.  The backlog of students meant that there were twenty or more every morning around this time.  Making the trip to what was bound to be the furthest point from the classroom, waiting in line, giving a reason, waiting for the secretary to write it all down, going back, it made everyone more late.

They wanted to frustrate.  To think they were being clever, driving the point home with this ‘subtle’ time wasting monotony when they really, really weren’t.

Maggie’s interest was diverted by the arrival of another practitioner.

Her head wasn’t the only one that turned.

Blonde, but with features too sharp to fit a Duchamp, not pretty and maybe a little underweight, she was dirty to the point that you could tell from the other end of the room.

“Fuck me,” Lola said, under her breath.  She stepped out of the line, hurrying.

But the principal was closer, and reached the Briar Girl first.

The tone of discussion in the room changed.  From conversation to restrained questions and answers.  It seemed like half the people in the room had no idea who the Briar Girl was, and the other half were eager to share the details, and all were trying to be quiet enough to overhear.

Maggie had another advantage.

She reached into her pocket, and gripped a pointed, leathery object.

“Listen,” she whispered under her breath.

The goblin’s ear in her hand got warm.

The principal eyed the crowd.  When he spoke, Maggie could hear through her hand.  “Step into my office?”

“No.”

“You haven’t attended school all semester.”

“I’m not attending school now.  I want to meet someone.  If you can tell me which class-”

“If you’d please step into my office-”

“No,” the Briar Girl said.  “I don’t like confined spaces.  Stop asking.”

“I’m going to call the CAS, given your situation-”

Lola approached the principal and the Briar Girl.  She met Maggie’s eyes, then moved one hand to her own ear.

The goblin ear in Maggie’s hand went cold.

Then Lola said something to the principal.  Enough power was spent in the process that Maggie felt jealous.  If she had that much power… she’d hoard it.  She’d have no choice.  But Lola could fritter it away.  Maybe under the expectation that someone would pay her back, maybe because she really did have power to spare.  The Duchamps really were a step above.

The principal turned to the Briar Girl and said, “I am going to talk to you as soon as this is over.  Please wait here.”

Then he was gone, out of the office.

The connection that extended from him went nowhere, like a ribbon with a frayed end.  A wild goose chase.  He’d reach the end of it, then find himself unable to recall why he’d left in the first place.

Maggie watched Lola’s furtive discussion with the Briar Girl, their furtive glances her way.

“Your name?” the secretary asked.

“Maggie Holt.”

“Reason for being late?”

Problem with being unable to lie, situations like this call for snark.

“Well, it’s that time of the month-”

Or time of the week, that Mr. Wrinkles shows up.

The secretary gave her a very unimpressed look.

“Bathroom concerns,” Maggie said, her voice low.

“If this trend continues, you might need to do some volunteer hours.”

“Volunteer hours?”

“Practical detention.”

Gah.

“Go to class,” the secretary said, handing Maggie a slip of paper.

Maggie did, glancing over her shoulder at the Briar Girl and Lola, who were still chatting.

When she was safely in the hallway, she used a kleenex to wipe the blood from the goblin ear off her hand.  Maybe one more good use out of it before it was spent.  It had been a bribe from a goblin, to get her to release it.  If she wanted another, she might have to harvest it herself.

Reaching homeroom, she held up the slip, which the teacher didn’t even look at, then found her desk.

The class was quiet, and everyone was working on some worksheet, writing periodically.

The teacher appeared by her desk, leaning down to be quieter, as she handed over the worksheet and a marked test.  “You’d be doing far better if you showed up to more classes.  I can only give you so much leeway, given your circumstances.”

Maggie nodded.

The test sported a big underlined D.

There were two Duchamps and one Behaim in her class.  She could feel their stares, each carrying the weight of Lola’s words, compounded by the grade and the fact that they probably knew what the teacher had said.

Accusatory, condescending.  All thinking the same thing.

Murderer.

That thought led to the next, Blood, darkness, and fire.

She fidgeted with her pen more than she followed through on the worksheet.  With the mention of the murder, the Thorburn thing, and her recent goblin capture, they all distracted.  The capture was a good distraction, Blake wasn’t a bad distraction, and the murder was.  Killing Molly was like all of the horribly embarrassing and hurtful things she said and did when she was a kid, bundled up together in one.

She’d been the middleman, passing on instructions from Laird to the goblins, but it still left her with a shame like a tender wound, aching constantly, all the worse when she was trying to find sleep, hurting ten times more when she or somebody else prodded at it.

Which was why she was missing class, in a roundabout way.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t going to school, it had more to do with what she was doing when she did arrive.  She was content to hole up in the stairwell, stay out of the way, and work on her stuff.  If she had a goblin stowed, she could miss a class to bring it out and do some bargaining, offering freedom for a little technique or trick, or a bit of explanation about how things worked.  The really stupid ones could be caught over and over again, bled for everything they were worth.  She could read in the library, she’d practiced techniques on the school roof when it was only fall, and she could make notes and plan.

In the process, she maybe missed each of her classes once a week, but she was still keeping her promise.  Still going to school, like she’d promised her dads.  Technically.

Anything more than that was impossible.  She was sleeping better these days, but ‘better’ didn’t mean well.

Taking time out of class meant she could prepare herself, make herself a little and preparing helped her relax.

In a way, it was a long journey to take to feel at ease, and it didn’t last long.

But it was getting better.  She had an ally now.  Allies.

Sorta-friends.

Blake was one.  He could still offer her books.  Even though he’d just left, dashing off to Toronto, he was bound to come back.  When he came back, fixing his problem with the barrier, he’d give her access to books, with access to the books, she’d step up her game and prepare for trouble, and she’d beat it and everything would be okay.

■

“Thorburn probably isn’t coming back,” Lola said.  “I can’t tell you the key details, but four separate divinations or powers are saying so.”

Lola was here, a senior, one year older than Maggie, joined by Penelope, Joanna, Chloe and Lea.  Not all of the school-age Duchamps, not even half, but enough.

Gavin, Owen and Craig Behaim were here too, as were the Briar Girl, Patrick, Evonne, and Keller.

Plus the wrinkly goblin, bound in chain, which she’d retrieved and brought with her now that the school day was over.

Maggie looked at all of them in turn, for a hint, a clue.

They were deadly serious, and whatever they’d discussed, they’d shared with each other, but they wouldn’t share with her.

“You guys are jerks,” Maggie said.  “Why would you tell me that?”

“You’re on the verge of becoming a problem,” Gavin said.  “That vote during the council meeting was supposed to be a warning.  A very firm suggestion that you’re supposed to shape up or ship out.”

“Gotta say,” Maggie said, sticking her hands in her pockets, “didn’t appreciate you voting yes on my execution.”

“I was trying to make a point, a tangent to the greater point.  You came after me-”

“I played a prank.”

“You came after me,” Gavin said.  “You sent goblins after me.”

“I played a prank to equalize things because you assholes felt like the new girl needed to know her place or some shit like that.”

“I was asked to test your measure, see how you operated, what kind of practitioner you were.  I did as I was asked.  Whatever your excuse, you came after me with excess force, and you needed to know that when you make enemies here, on top of crossing lines and drawing interest from non-practitioners, you put yourself in a dangerous position.  So I voted.  Others will do the same until you clue in.”

“Yawn,” Maggie said.  “Is this the only reason you reached out?  I knew most of this already, and if we’re rehashing old arguments-”

“Maggie, that’s not it,” Penelope said.  She was the oldest human present, and wanted to think she had more authority as a result.

Maggie remained silent, waiting for more of a response.

“With the Thorburn thing happening, we can’t have too many wild cards in play.  This thing, right here?  It’s the next generation of practitioners.  Except for your goblin there, and Patrick and his group who invited themselves-”

“You make us sound so unwelcome,” Evonne chimed in.

“We’re part of the next generation, and we’ll be part of the generation after that, and so on, barring strange circumstances,” Patrick said, “and believe it or not, we’re relatively young.  We’re perpetually current.  I’d like to think we count.”

Penelope hesitated.  Her canary gave her a look that a bird wasn’t supposed to be capable of, and Penelope continued as if Patrick hadn’t interjected.  “The current generation are doing their thing.  We’re doing our thing.  We’ve talked it over amongst ourselves, us practitioners.  On the assumption that you’re not planning on leaving Jacob’s Bell anytime soon…”

A pause, giving Maggie an opening.

“No plans to leave anytime soon.  Moving is a pain in the butt, and my parents really want to stop somewhere and get over what happened back home.”

“…Yeah.  Well, since you’re sticking around, and you’re almost an adult, we thought we’d count you in our number.  In a decade or so, we’ll be the council, or some of us will.  We’re extending an offer of peace.  Separate from the official council business, but honest, and it carries over as we move on.”

“Peace?”

Penelope continued, “We leave you alone.  We leave your family alone.  What Gavin was saying, in his roundabout way, is you could be our enemy, and stuff like the vote will edge closer and closer to putting you in a bad situation, or you can take this deal.  You do what you need to do, and you do it without any hassle from us, provided you keep to the terms.”

Maggie pulled her hands from her pockets to fold her arms.  “Lola said something like ‘we’ll never be friends’.”

“We won’t,” Lola said.  “But we can leave each other alone, and we can exist in the same sphere without being at each other’s throats.

Penelope spoke up, “It’s not going to change things overnight.  It might be a little clumsy, while we work out the details, but we can keep our parents from giving you a hard time, stop further execution votes from coming to pass.  As our parents retire and we take our spots on the town council, we can raise you up with us.”

“With enough time, you’d have as much of a say as the Crone, the Faerie, Briar Girl or any other local powers,” Lola said.

“I don’t like you either,” Gavin said, “But I can play ball if it means you don’t screw everything up.  We can send help your way.  Resources, knowledge, individual lessons, if people feel up to it or if you want to bargain for it.  If you want to focus on the goblins, we can change the way things are done.  Powerful goblins go to you instead of getting killed, we tell you if there’s something going on goblinwise.”

Maggie double checked there were no funny connections.  No obvious manipulations at work.  “But there are conditions?”

Gavin shrugged.  “Nothing too difficult.  First off, you can’t mess with the whole thing going on with the contested Lordship over Jacob’s Bell.  I’m hoping you’re not insane enough to think you can even make a play there.”

“Nah.”

“It benefits you,” Penelope said, “Letting things progress.  If we or our families become Lord, we can give you your due.  We’ll swear it.  We become Lord, you become…”

“Subordinate,” Maggie said.

“I’d rather say you become more powerful, with our backing,” Lola said.  “We’re not asking for slavery.  You’d have free will.  You could be a pain in our backsides and vote against every idea we raise, so long as the core rules are maintained.  So long as you’re hands off when it comes to the ‘throne’ and letting Jacob’s Bell become something better.”

“And?” Maggie asked.  “Those can’t be the only conditions.”

“It’s not a condition, since Briar Girl didn’t agree,” Lola said, “But we’d very much appreciate it if you didn’t mess with the wedding.  It’d be interfering in the Lordship game in a general sense, if not technically.”

“Fine,” Maggie said.  “Get to the meat of it.”

“You can’t go and help the enemy,” Gavin said.  “If someone intervenes at the right time, then things get more complicated.”

“Ahh,” Maggie said.  “That’s what you’re worried about.”

Penelope said, “We talked it over, it’s not hard to figure out what he’s offering you, and we decided we’d top the offer.  The resources of two families, Briar Girl will teach you some stuff in exchange for us doing her favors.  I can’t imagine you’ll get a better deal.”

“Not anytime soon,” Maggie said.

“The only lump knowledge Blake can offer that we can’t is knowledge on diabolism,” Gavin said.  “And if you’re going there, we’re going to have a problem, I’m sure you understand.”

Maggie nodded slowly, considering.  “Meaning that if I can’t come up with a good argument as to why I’m not accepting your deal, you’re going to assume I’m a wannabe diabolist, and I’m public enemy number two, after Blake himself?”

“No,” Penelope said.  “I can’t speak for the others, but I wasn’t after that sort of ultimatum.”

“I was.  Her answer should clear stuff up,” Gavin said.

“Okay,” Maggie said.  “Patrick?  Are you part of this deal or something?”

“It’s interesting,” he said.  “But I’m merely here as an observer.”

“Let me give this a shot, then,” Maggie said.  “Arguments why I shouldn’t take the deal?  If you guys came up with it on your own, I could fall for a bait and switch.  Your parents step in, they act without your knowledge or assent, and I lose all the benefits while still having to pay the price.”

Craig raised a hand, as if asking for permission to talk.  He was one of the youngest present, alongside Joanna, middle school or so, and blocky in terms of how he was put together.  Not muscular, not fat, just something in between, with a very typical Behaim square jaw.  Laird’s son.

“Go ahead,” Gavin said.

“I told my dad, Laird, and he said he’d see how viable it is.  I’m not sure, but he talked to Sandra,” Craig said, glancing at Lola and Penelope, “And everyone else that’s important, to make sure it’s okay.  He said it should be fine, and he’d step in if things got messy.”

Laird.

Maggie wasn’t sure if that helped or just made her more uneasy.

“They’re giving us slack,” Gavin said.  “Probably watching to make sure we don’t screw it up too badly, maybe meddling a bit behind the scenes.”

Penelope nodded, “This is genuine, coming from us.  It’s accepted by them.”

“It’s a load of hooey,” Maggie said.

“How is it hooey?” Joanna asked, the youngest Duchamp present.

“You want to know why I sided with Blake before?  Because he’s made wads more sense than a hundred Lairds or Lolas or Patricks have.  He’s fudged up, sure, but as I see it, that only makes him more legit.  I see people who are ‘normal’, and you know what?  I don’t respect them.  Either they’re oblivious and useless to me, or they’re just plain lying.  We’re all a little twisted.”

They were staring at her.

She hadn’t meant to say all that, but she had, and now she sounded paranoid.  There was nowhere to go but forward.

“The abnormal stuff isn’t deep inside Blake.  It’s exposed to the world.  Everyone with a clue knows why, mostly.  Demons and black tomes.  Anyone who’s spent more than an hour with him, me included, can figure out most of the rest.  He came from a bad family and a bad place in life, and at the end of the day, I think he’s more genuine than any of you.”

The others stared at her, intense, divided between those who seemed like they couldn’t comprehend what she’d just said, and those who thought they understood.  And were probably wrong..

“Sorry, but I have to ask.  Is this a romantic attachment?” Penelope asked.

Maggie shook her head, “If I had to put my finger on it… he’s like a dog you find by the side of the road.  Scruffy, quirky, you know it’s got a story.  It’s nice enough, plays fair, and I’m not about to let a bunch of idiots say it’s dangerous when they don’t know.”

“I sort of know,” Penelope said.  “He hurt my sister’s familiar.”

“You think the scruffy dog isn’t going to bite back when threatened?  No, you’re not being fair.  That dog had no dratting choice in what happened to it, and I respect it for not being worse than it is.  I’ve seen stuff too, and, well, that so-called dog has every right to hate me, and it was darn fair.  But even if I respect it and don’t mind its company, there’s no frigging way I’m taking the pretend dog home with me, you get what I’m saying?  I’m talking about a whole bundle of issues.  Fleas, dirt, bad habits, I dunno.”

“Yeah,” Joanna said.  “He could have been meaner, when he beat Letita.  He scared me though.  Him and the woman he was with.”

“He’s allowed to be scary,” Maggie said.

“Then I take it you’re going to side with your metaphorical dog over us?”  Gavin asked.

Maggie drew in a deep breath, then exhaled.  “Write up a contract.  If it’s everything you’re presenting it as, no tricks or anything that I can see, and you guys sign, I’ll sign too.”

“After saying all that?”  Penelope asked.

“He’s in trouble like you said?  I’m not interested in sticking my hand into the middle of a dogfight.  I’m not interested in acting against him, either, but I’m not under any rules or oaths that say I have to help him.  You guys studied me, you figured me out.  What I want above all else is power, knowledge.  I’ll take what you’re offering, if it’s legit.”

“It is,” Gavin said.

“Then yeah,” Maggie said.  “Is that everything?  We done?”

“For the purposes of this meeting?  Think so,” Lola said.

Maggie gave the group a bit of a salute.  “Run it by me when you’re done.”

“Will probably be a few days,” Gavin said.

Maggie shrugged.  “You know where to find me.”

She grabbed the chain that bound the goblin, then dragged the struggling creature in the snow behind her as she made her way off the school grounds.

Patrick fell into step beside her.  Evonne and Keller weren’t around.

His skin stripped away like autumn leaves in a strong wind, revealing a face beneath.

This was the face she thought of as Padraic.  Leader of the local trio of exiled faerie.

A teenager’s face, decidedly Faerie with a slant to his features and ears, wild dark hair, and a sly, almost condescending half-smile perpetually on his face.  There was an art to it all that was pure design, raw nurture, with no nature in play.

This was the face he wore for her.  Every part of him promised a subtle sort of danger, and even now, Maggie couldn’t tell if it was the sort of danger someone experienced while skydiving, controlled, measured, or if it was the sort of danger one experienced when they leapt out of an airplane without a parachute.

She wasn’t sure which idea appealed more.  The former was tantalizing, the latter offered a kind of freedom.

They walked together in near-silence for twenty minutes or so.

She was halfway through a thought about how long the silence would go on before it was awkward when he spoke.  That simple fact sent a thrill of fear through her.

“If Blake is a stray dog, what am I?”

Jealousy?  Feigned jealousy?

Where did the game end and the reality begin?  Or was he all game?

The worst part was, she enjoyed the lack of commitment, the fact that she only had one toe in this water.  Telling herself that she was safe, that there would never ever no way no how absolutely not be a relationship between them.

And that in itself could be part of the lure, the bait being set.

“Good question,” she hedged.

“Take a stab at it,” he said.

“You’re… the kitten in the shelter.  Giving me that big-eyed look.  And I know it’s calculated.  Everyone and everything is telling me it’s a bad idea, but here I am.  I haven’t walked away.”

He smiled.

And if I ever took that kitten home and let my guard down, it would kill me in my sleep, then curl up on the corpse.

She had no illusions about the monster Padraic was.

Even if he was damned attractive.

“Like the cat, I know you’re prone to doing what you want to do, regardless of the wishes of others, but-”

“You want me to wait here.”

Maggie nodded.

“I can,” he said.  “But I have to demand a favor, in compensation.”

She tensed a little.

“When you’re done, you let me teach you another trick with glamour, convincing spirits, and the objects they represent.  It has its uses in a melee, and I know you like the ones with uses in a fight.  I’ll even forfeit the glamour you need to practice.”

This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision, she knew.  What he was offering now was more bait.  This was something he’d anticipated handing over to her to keep her interested.  Keep her around.  He would have had this in mind for months, even.

“If it sounds uneven, remember, I need your continued silence about the lessons I’m offering.  If we get caught, we’ll have the Queen’s Riders after us.”

He managed to make it sound so alluring, the idea of them sharing a secret.

The kitten’s wide-eyed plea?  Please.  She was staring into the serpent’s eyes while the coils surrounded her.  She knew, and he knew she knew.

He knew, too, that she would accept.  She had to.

“Okay,” she said.  “I’ll take you up on that deal if you watch the goblin.  Watch and nothing else.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling.  She was careful to look away before the smile could get its hooks in her heart.

All glamour, she told herself.

She quenched the buzz of adrenaline and other excited, warm feelings with ugliness.

The path down the hill was a steep one, though it had been traveled some.  Footsteps had tromped snow down until it was almost smooth, and she had to move slowly to avoid falling over while Padraic watched.

There were flowers, odd as it was, in the middle of winter.  Pictures and arrangements, cards, all sitting on a wooden platform that rested in the snow.

Maggie drew her Athame.

She pricked herself under the fingernail of her pinky finger, and watched as the blood filled the little concave of her overturned pinky fingernail.

Tilting her hand, she let blood drop.  She repeated the process of letting the blood well up and then drop a total of three times.

The ghost absorbed the offered energy, growing strong enough to be seen.

The echo of the departed Molly Walker stood amid the token offerings that family members and various residents of Jacob’s Bell had left near the site of her death, hugging her arms to her body, face hidden by hair.

The boards that kept all the little offerings dry and safe from the elements were inscribed with a circle, to prevent interference.  It wouldn’t do if a goblin desecrated the little shrine.  But Molly’s echo had drawn a crude circle too, Maggie noted.

Maggie’s inverse.  Molly had never fought.  Maggie saw no option but to prepare for war, to face it head on.  Even as an echo, she continued to defend herself, retreating from this hostile, unfathomable world.

Maggie stared at the ghost, trying to interpret details, to come to grips with what it meant and represented.

She’d been in a bad place, scared, out of her element, desperate.  The arguments had been persuasive.

Could she really sign that contract?  Sign on with them?  Knowing that Laird was a part of it?

Could she, conversely, really side with Blake, letting guilt and shame make the decisions for her, and render herself weaker?

Maybe she’d decide by the time she was done.

She began what she considered her penance.  A way of reminding herself of what she’d let happen, so she wouldn’t do it again.  Every day, an offering to help keep the echo alive, and-

“It was a pretty slow day, I guess.  I captured a goblin, but I’ll get to that in more detail in a bit…”

Signature 8.2

It was still strange, seeing Patrick attending high school.  Like Ev and Keller, he showed up once in a blue moon, as interest suited him.  He wore different faces, stirred up drama, and then disappeared when he’d scratched that itch.  Maggie suspected that it might be a way of keeping tabs on the local players, as humans grew up and the local dynamics shifted.

Evonne, Essylt in her tongue, had only showed up to talk to Patrick the once, that Maggie was aware.  The woman was more predatory, and interrogation of bound goblins had revealed her father was some Faerie De Sade, someone known to be a very good and creative torturer, among a people who’d had centuries to pursue torture as a hobby.  He’d been executed for some failure, and the Ev had been banished.  Keller, a friend of hers and something like an apprentice to Ev’s father, had elected to come along and protect her.

Keller, doing the grunt work in Ev’s plan, showed up now and then among the student body, primarily during lunch hours or after school.  Faerie liked pretty things, and had a way of gravitating toward the prettiest person in a group, but Keller targeted the fringe groups.  The kid with the funny ears and his friends, who all liked the roleplaying games but hid what they were really talking about because the faculty considered.  The French-speakers in French immersion who seemed to do their very best to avoid learning or speaking more English, and the less than successful drama club members.  To them, Keller was the guy with connections, old enough he didn’t attend high school, young enough he could relate to them, even flirt, without crossing a line.  He wore a different face for each group, and he seemed to be equipping them.  More than one had trinkets with some kind of power that Maggie could recognize.

The kid with the funny ears with no cartilage to keep the top ends upright had a regular old book, nonmagical, that had been loaned to him by Keller, that he was apparently using to inspire the adventures he made up for his friends.

The cigarette smoking Quebecois girl that led the French immersion crowd had something in her pocket, and she’d made a recent trip to Toronto, returning with a completely overhauled and rather expensive wardrobe, albeit largely in black, with gifts for all her friends.  Maggie’s suspicion was that the girl was finding she was suddenly far, far better at shoplifting since she’d received the good luck charm from ‘Alain’, Keller’s Quebecois guise.

The rather round member of the drama club was finding his diets were working, he had Keller’s advice on fashion, and was exercising.  Some guys, even, were not-so-subtly gravitating his way, and the drama club was transforming with new membership.

Maggie didn’t have the fancy books.  No library, no resources to tap.  The only reliable source she had right now was, well, Patrick.

Except Patrick was the one at the head of the problem in question.

That left Maggie with the internet, storybooks, the brief and chaotic notes in her binder, and basic deduction.

She was pretty certain that presents and boons like the ones Keller was giving out were traps.  That they’d be wonderful and fantastic up until the point that things turned sour.  Maybe they became too much of a good thing, maybe there was a rule that had to be followed, with some horrific backlash if it wasn’t.  Maybe there was a catch.

Exiled Faerie weren’t allowed to go after innocents, not directly.  But, Maggie was fairly certain, they weren’t forbidden from doing something like giving a kid a flute that would summon a sprite to do their chores for them, with the caveat that the sprite would blind them if they ever tried to watch it while it worked.

End result?  The kid would be stupid, the sprite would eat the kid’s eyes.  People, the kid included, would rationalize it away as an accident, an infection, or just a freak occurrence.  Life would go on as normal, and the local Faeries-in-exile got their jollies without breaking the rules.

Maggie could look across the field where the students who weren’t eating indoors were spending their lunch hour.  She could see the stories playing out.  Connections, two Others among maybe three hundred scattered students; a student that seemed content to repeat the same grade without any teacher noticing he’d been on the class roster for ten years, and Patrick himself.

One of the Behaims took a seat on the ledge where Maggie sat.  A girl.  Strong jaw, full lips, and a hat with flaps over the ears.  Sort of what Maggie thought a female dwarf would look like, except without the dwarf part of it.  The girl was probably taller than she was.

The Behaims were healthy, as a general rule.

“Your rear end is going to get wet and cold,” Maggie said.  She was sitting on her own backpack.

“I’ll deal.  I’m supposed to ask you if you’re willing to look the contract over.”

“Finally?  You guys have been bugging me a couple of times a day, like you’re all worried I’ll change my mind.”

“Have you?”

“No.”

“Then will you look the contract over?” the girl asked.

Stubborn.

“Not right now,” Maggie said.  “Lunch ends soon, and if that contract is as solid as I’m hoping it is, then I won’t be able to read it all.  I’m thinking, anyway.  I’ll look after school, if I can.”

“Okay,” the girl said.  She didn’t move.

“I don’t know your name.”

“Tenth grade.  Elspeth.”

A year younger, then.

“The Behaims have a thing for really tragic names.”

“Old family names.  There’s a power in it.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.  You’re right, the names we get stuck with can bite, but there’s a reasoning behind it.  Am I interrupting your thinking?”

Maggie shrugged.  Yes, but she wasn’t in a mood to be a bitch about it.

When Elspeth didn’t take the excuse to leave, Maggie said, “Patrick, you see him?”

“Yeah, I see him.”

“What do you know about him?”

“I know of Patrick.  I don’t know him.  He shows up at the council meetings.”

“I mean, tell me something I wouldn’t know myself.”

“He was at the heart of this whole thing last year.  Slept with this guy, Duke, a straight guy.  While glamoured up as a teenage guy.  Ended a relationship that had been going on since middle school.”

“Four years, through high school?  That’s like lifetimes in real years.”

“Exactly,” Elspeth said.  “The aftermath was something to see.  Duke and his girlfriend Mary had been part of this really tight clique.  Just about fractured in half, one side backing Duke, the other backing Mary.  And maybe things would have calmed down, except the news got out that Mary was pregnant.  If Patrick hadn’t split up the friends, maybe they would have broken up over the pregnancy, but feelings wouldn’t have been as hurt, and a full fifth of the graduating class might not have gotten involved in the whole thing.”

“It’s like network television,” Maggie said.

“You’re not wrong.  Things are never simple with Faerie involved.  One thing led to another, which led to another, and so on.  All with Patrick stepping in only now and then to keep the flames fanned.  For him, it’s like a real-world soap opera, interactive.  A nudge here, and stories unfold.”

Maggie wasn’t too surprised, though she hadn’t heard this story in full before.

The hurt feelings, broken friendships and reams of pain and chaos aren’t really something he understands or pays attention to, except when he needs to leverage and use it.

That’s what he is.

“Creepy, something as old as him sleeping with a high schooler,” Elspeth said.

“I felt that way once.  Then I adjusted my perspective.  Years are to a Faerie what dollars amounts are to a priceless artifact.  You could do your research, find experts to help figure it out, cross-check facts, but it doesn’t really matter in the end.  The priceless artifact costs a lot.  The Faerie are old.”

Elspeth nodded.  She didn’t look convinced, and Maggie didn’t care enough to keep trying to sell the idea.

He’s old.  Old enough to grow jaded and then find new faith in existence a dozen times over, until neither case has any meaning.  Old enough to be bored with reality.

The goblins had told Maggie stories about Faerie that had decided they couldn’t be entertained any more.  Faerie older than Padraic, who had seen enough permutations of everything that they couldn’t be surprised or amused any more.

Padraic didn’t eat or drink in the conventional sense.  He supped only on entertainment, and he’d been hobbled when he’d been sent here.  He was fighting and endless battle to stave off that ennui that would turn him into a monster that ranked up there with the worst.  All Faerie were.

On a level, it meant he wasn’t evil.  He was just… working with a different set of sliding scales.

On another level, fudge that.  He was evil.

Whether it was evil or sliding scales, he was idly moving among the student body right now, talking to some people, charming other.  The equivalent of picking wings off flies.

Maggie ventured, “There’s something like seven plots I’m aware of.  Keller has three charms and one questionable book that he’s given to people around the school.  Patrick has been talking to three people or groups of people, besides me.  This is going to end badly.”

“Maybe.  But if you try to fix it, it’s liable to end worse.”

“I can imagine,” Maggie said.

“Don’t get involved.  They’ve probably anticipated what might happen if any of us stepped in.  If you try to intervene, they’ll get you wrapped up in the game or the drama or whatever they’ve got going on here.”

“Yeah,” Maggie said.

She didn’t mention that there was something else eating at her.

The goblin she’d interrogated, Buttsack, had confessed to systematic attacks on more or less random targets.  There was a lot of little hurt here and there.  Some big hurt.  Buttsack had used a curse on a girl to make her envision everything edible as rotten and disgusting.  Every plate of salad practically compost, meat appeared and tasted rancid, festooned with maggots.  She’d been hospitalized a month ago, on the belief that she had an eating disorder.

Buttsack was upset because he wanted the curse back, so he could use it again.  Maggie managed to twist his arm until he shared the way to break the curse.  She’d scribbled it down and emailed the hospital with a message for the patient.

She’d left a note in the locker of the diabetic with the cocaine-tainted insulin, and discreetly removed the gremlin bait from her math teacher’s keychain, keeping it for herself.

Something told her that Buttsack hadn’t shared every victim of his.

The Faerie were active, the goblins allowed to run rampant so long as they were minor goblins.  Bogeymen and boggarts lurked in the outskirts of town.

The atmosphere was dark, here.

The council was letting bad things happen to innocents because it was, in a roundabout way, a path to power.

A seeing man is king in the land of the blind.  Protect your own eyes and let everyone else get blinded, and you rise to the top of the heap.

The dynamic here was toxic.

Places like this were a haven for those who didn’t want to kowtow to a proper Lord.  For every person here that hadn’t been directly affected by an Other in one way or another, there was another who had.

Too few were benevolent.

As Jacob’s Bell became something bigger, some would leave, because the city was no longer a haven.  Others would try to mark their territory and ride the cresting wave to the top.  They would get bolder, fight one another, or prey on people in an effort to grasp at power.

She hadn’t been able to help everyone that Buttsack had hurt or plotted against, and even though he was the most malicious and capable goblin she’d run into since she’d arrived in Jacob’s Bell, he was still a minor goblin.  Resourceful, but minor.

She wanted to help, but how was she supposed to help with the rest of it if this was all she could do to help him?

How was she supposed to help Blake if she was this powerless?  How was she supposed to face the blood, darkness, and fire that was inching her way even now?

Padraic was taking his leave.  He stepped on ice and used the slippery surface to do a half-turn.  His eyes fell on her.  She could see his smile.  She could imagine his voice in her ear.

“Was he just looking at you?” Elspeth asked.

“You know, if Penelope or Gavin pushed you to come and try and be friendly, you can stop pretending.  It’s not going to change what I decide to do with the contract.”

“Thanks for letting me off the hook,” Elspeth replied.  She stood, dusting snow off her rear end.  “My ass was freezing.”

“See ya,” Maggie said.

Exiled faerie were kept out of towns with Lords as a matter of course.  The Court apparently didn’t want exiles making deals or gaining power, so they stuck them only in small villages and towns, or even in areas well out of reach of humans.

Maggie made a mental note to ask him what would happen to the Exiles when Jacob’s Bell made the transition.

She put her hands between her thighs and pressed them together for warmth, watching the crowd.  Now that Patrick was gone, she was free to watch the practitioners.

Owen was being an idiot over a senior girl, and she’d turned him down despite some shenanigans affecting the connection between them.

Lola seemed distracted by something, fidgeting, her attention on her phone.  Every time she looked down, a connection ignited.  Someone far away.

Penelope was particularly focused on Maggie.  She was one of the people who’d worked out the idea for the contract, and she seemed especially intent on it.

If things worked out well, Maggie knew who to thank.  If they didn’t, she knew who to blame.

She made a long list of mental notes.  Weaknesses, ideas, clues, identifying details.  Whether or not she accepted the contract, they could easily become enemies.

Any information was a possible vector of attack.  Even romantic entanglements, even doubt over some distant boyfriend or family member.

She’d learned that much from the goblins and Faerie of Jacob’s Bell.

■

Maggie nudged the meat around her plate.  It looked like someone had cut away the good parts of the chicken, leaving only the giblets and tattered bits, and slathered it all in some weak, slimy sauce of vinegar and gluten free flour and cooked up in a baking pan with far too much fluid.  It looked undercooked.

No, scratch that.  It looked like limp, shredded, groin giblets.  Undercooked, limp, shredded groin giblets.  With overcooked asparagus and undercooked potatoes on the side.

Had Buttsack found a way to curse her?  Or was she just being influenced by the goblins, seeing rude things when they weren’t there?

“I know it’s not your favorite,” her dad said.

“That suggests I’ve had this before.  I’m pretty sure I’d remember this.”

Much as I’d want to forget.

“It’s pretty bad,” her father said.

“…Just eat what you can,” her dad said.  “We’ll have something else soon.  To take your mind off it, why don’t you tell us about school?”

Maggie suppressed a groan.

Full disclosure.  It was part of the deal, for her being allowed to practice.

Not that she was telling them everything, but she had to make a good faith effort.

“Bunch of kids approached me a few days ago, offering a truce.  Today they delivered the contract.  I’m halfway through.  I’m thinking I’ll read the rest in bed tonight.”

“Why have a truce if you aren’t at war?” her dad asked.

“Because they want to make sure I don’t go and help Blake with whatever’s going on in Toronto.”

“Does that have anything to do with the box of unpacked stuff you have up in your room, that’s been grunting and moving around?”

Maggie tensed.  “You said you wouldn’t go in my room.”

“I didn’t,” her father said.  “But it’s hard to ignore, and since I’m working from home, it’s… distracting.”

“It’s… a goblin,” she said.

She hated this.  The wounded looks, the bewilderment.

Her dads had been introduced to this world, they were scared of it, and they were vulnerable, even if they hadn’t awakened.  She didn’t have the heart to share her thoughts on just how overwhelming the problems here were, the number of lesser Others who were preying on people.

Let alone Padraic with his games, or Keller with his trapped gifts.

“Okay,” her dad said, “this meal was a failure.  Let’s clear the dishes and we’ll figure out if there’s something fast and healthy we can do.”

Healthy eating.  Her dad’s attempt at asserting control over something, as a way of coping.  It was just stressing her out more in the end, but she couldn’t say that.

You guys and mom are my favorite people in the world, but I feel like we’re falling apart just like Jacob’s Bell is.  How can you build something better when the foundation is so unsteady?

“Are you okay?” her father asked.

“Meh,” she said.  “Not really.”

“You can put that entire world behind you, you know.  You don’t have to get involved.  Just… reach out.  Find help, don’t feel you have to tackle it yourself.”

Both her dads had been there to hear the prophecy.

Twice more.  Blood, darkness, and fire.

Hundreds would die.

No, it wasn’t that easy.

“I’ll be in my room,” she said.  “Love you.”

He put his hand on her shoulder, letting it fall as she walked away.

She reached her room, turned on her laptop, and plopped herself down in her computer chair.  She picked up a fat gold coin from the shelf above the computer.

One of the Rescuer’s coins.  Retrieved from the man who had tried to save her from the goblin attack back home.

Yeah, even now she still thought of it as home.

A kick sent her skidding over to the cardboard box.

Buttsack glared at her as she opened the flaps, a post-it note stuck to his face, a rune on the front.  The inside of the box had runes for metal on it.

The silence rune on the post-it was from her binder, the metal ones were from Padraic.

She flipped the coin, then caught it, flipped it, then caught it again.

Heavier than it looked.

She couldn’t carry it around with her all the time, but she appreciated the weight it had, in more than one sense.

No matter what her dad said, she couldn’t just ignore it all.

She left the post-it in place, debating what to ask for.  Did she press for more details on his past victims, in hopes of helping someone out?  It was good to build up goodwill, but as power grabs went, it was weak, and she wasn’t sure he would share details all that easily.

Was it better to ask for techniques?  Tricks?

Expand her repertoire?

The computer bleeped, interrupting her thoughts.  She spun around and kicked herself back to the desk, rolling.

An email, notifying her of a message on her wall.

Maggie,

A situation came up.  I’m going head to head with the biggest name in Toronto, and there aren’t many people I can call on for help.  You have your field of expertise, and I have my hands on something that’s not small potatoes.  If nothing else, could I get you to call me?  It’d make a big difference in figuring this out.  Our previous deal stands, whatever you decide.

This was the deciding moment.  She’d read most of the contract, and it was what they’d outlined outside the school.  Lessons, borrowed books, trinkets, safety and access to their properties.  Tutoring lessons.

It was, she suspected, exactly what her father wanted her to do.  It meant allies.  People who could back her up if everything went to hell.

Not that she wouldn’t hold on to her notes.

Blake, though, had something related to goblins, something that wasn’t small?  A moderate goblin?

The old deal stood.  She helped him out, he gave her access to books.

It wasn’t enough.

“Sorry, Blake,” she said.

“What’s that?”

Her dad stood in the doorway.

“Guy we met before needs help.  But it’s not worth the trouble.  Would mean angering a lot of locals.”

“That’s what was making you look so down at dinner?”

“Part of it,” she said.

“Listen, there’s nothing in the fridge.  I think the potato bar is still open, if-”

“Yes,” Maggie said.

“-You’re hungry.”

“I’m hungry.  Yes,” Maggie said.

She practically bounced as she stood from her chair, pausing only to lock the laptop so it would go straight to low-power mode.  She shut the box and hurried downstairs.

“You don’t have to act that enthusiastic,” her father said, as she reached the ground floor.

“Real food,” she said, just a touch breathless.  “Ridiculously thick milkshakes.  There’s two or three things that are tolerable about this town.  Those milkshakes and that greasy food are them.”

She had her coat on before her dad was even downstairs.

“Can we buy some junk food at the magazine store on the way back?” she asked.  “I want to torment the goblin by eating it in front of him.”

“I’m not paying for you to torture another creature, goblin or no.”

“Torment, not torture.”

“No tormenting either.  Yes, you can get junk food, but you pay for it yourself.”

Maggie grinned, grabbing her backpack and slinging it over one shoulder.  Her wallet was still within.

“And you do your homework after,” her father said.

She rolled her eyes.

She, her dad and her father ventured out into the dark side streets.  In the dead of winter, the only light was from the street lights, and they were intermittent, with whole streets cast in ominous pitch darkness.

Her thoughts about the state of the city gave her pause.  She turned on the flashlight she kept in her coat pocket.

The potato bar was part of the little stretch of stores in the ‘downtown’ area.  A third of the storefronts were empty and desolate, others were only open in the summer and looked empty and desolate, and the others had dingy signs.  Even though it was downtown, only three cars passed them as they made their way to the bar.  One completely ignored the stop sign.

She held the door for her dads.  In the time they blocked her view of the dark block of parkland opposite the bar, a pair decided to appear.

Maggie held the door open as they approached.  A woman and a child.  Both so beautiful they could be models.  Neither were human.

Ev and Padraic, both wearing glamour.  Pretending to be a twenty-something mother and her young child.

Maggie joined her dad, remaining keenly conscious of what the Faerie were doing.  She was focused enough she needed a nudge before she could give her order.

The food arrived fast.  Chipped chicken in poutine and a chocolate milkshake so dense the mug could probably be used to bludgeon a bear to death.

Padraic used a high child’s voice to order a milkshake, little legs kicking as he sat on his stool to Maggie’s right.

The five of them and the one cook were the only ones in the dim bar.

Maggie ate her poutine as fast as she could without burning herself on the hot grease.  Poutine wasn’t good if it got cold.

She’d kick herself if she got into something with Patrick and let this rare treat go to waste.

Fortune prevailed, and she was largely done when the cook disappeared into the back, clattering with dishes or something.

She wiped her mouth, then asked, “Did you want something, Patrick?”

“I want a lot of things,” child-Patrick said.

“What?” her dad asked.

“I said I want a lot of things,” Patrick repeated himself.  “I want freedom, I want to go home.  I want sweet, cold revenge.”

The words were chilling, coming from someone who looked and sounded like a small child.

“What does that have to do with me?” Maggie asked.  “I’m enjoying time with my dads.  I don’t want hassle.”

“What makes you think I came here for you?” he asked.

“Tell me you didn’t.”

Patrick didn’t reply.  Instead, a smile crept across his face.

“I think we’ll step away,” her dad said.  Her father nodded in agreement.

They gathered up their sweet potato fries and chicken-potato wrap and retreated.

Maggie felt a moment’s loathing for the Faerie, independent of all the rationalizing she’d done earlier.

Events of blood, darkness, and fire could strike her at any time.  Moments like this were precious.

“I’ll clarify,” Maggie told him.  “What do you want with me?”

“I’m bored.  Can we chat, Maggie-closest-to-my-heart?”

Again, hitting those creepy notes.

“Define ‘we’,” Maggie said.

“Essylt is along for the act, nothing more.  She can leave now, if she wishes.”

Just like that, the elegant young mother stood from her stool.  She flashed a smile at Maggie’s dads.

Gross.

“Can we just not dance around the subject?  You approached me for a reason.  I’m guessing it’s something that recently came up, because you didn’t approach when I was visiting the dip by the bridge this afternoon.”

When I was visiting the ghost.

“The Briar Girl is spying on Blake, and she offered me knowledge for a point in the right direction.  Mr. Thorburn apparently intent on vigorous leaping from frying pans to fires, idiomologically speaking.”

As he spoke, he was breaking up his own glamour.  It was subtle, the changes only obvious when Maggie focused elsewhere, then returned her attention to Padraic.

He continued, the pitch of his voice changing just as gradually as he spoke, “He’s started a little contest, and even handicapped himself.  It’s really quite interesting.  You were named as a possible champion for his undersized, underarmed side, and I’m very keen to hear any details.  I’m limited to this grim little town, you see, and it’s rare to experience any involvement in greater events.”

Maggie sucked on her milkshake while he talked.  She put one finger on the top of the straw to trap the air inside and keep the milkshake from dropping back into the glass.

“I’m sorry to disappoint,” she said.  “If I had more to share, I’d barter for something.  He sent me a message.  I’m thinking I’ll have to tell him no.  Refuse him even answers to his questions about goblins.”

“No, Maggie dear, you can’t do that.  He’s interesting, you’re interesting, and you want to just leave it be?”

“I’m planning on signing the contract, unless something comes up.”

The cook stepped out, glanced at Patrick, and gave Patrick a puzzled look.  Patrick was grown, ordinary.

But Patrick was taking a taste of his own milkshake, and the cook seemed willing to accept he’d already been served.  The man disappeared into the back.

“This is tragic,” Patrick said.  “So much could have unfolded from this.  Do I need to offer you more knowledge, to urge you to go to Toronto?”

“Maybe,” Maggie said.

Knowledge was good.

“The prophecies the others mentioned?  It’s because Mr. Thorburn is going to perish, if he doesn’t get help at the right time and place.  All of the contract business, unsigned or not, those pages are primarily a manipulation, to keep you away from that place until that time passes.”

Blake was going to die?

That was different from ‘Blake isn’t going to come back to Jacob’s Bell.’

So many things wrong and rotten with this city.

Could she accept responsibility for another Thorburn’s death?

She had to.

“I’m… no, Patrick.  That doesn’t change anything.  My first and last priority is getting stronger, to prepare.”

“They called you the wild card.  Be wild, Maggie Holt,” Patrick said.

His words had glamour in them.  They aroused an excitement and restlessness in her that she knew wasn’t supposed to be there.

She suppressed it, and found it surprisingly easy to do.

In learning from him, she was getting better at dealing with this sort of thing.

“Then you leave me no choice but to make one grand offer,” Patrick said.  “You want power?  Shall I put Maggie Holt in the same place as one of the more powerful and respected beings in the area?”

He let the idea hang in the air.  Maggie suppressed the compelling glamour that was trying to get her excited.

“That sounds like a terrible bargain,” Maggie said.  “Far too many traps.”

“You’ll face zero risk from him.  You stand to learn a great deal,” Patrick said.

“Who is he?”

“An entity with the experience of Lordship, though he’s been stripped of much of his power.  It’s really quite an unbalanced deal, so I must alter the terms.  I’ll arrange the meeting, alongside my guarantee that you’ll personally face no meaningful risk from this being, in exchange for, let me see, I want you to consider helping Mr. Thorburn, and…”

“And?” Maggie asked.  “There’s an and?”

“Trading in opportunities and maybes alone is feeble.  It can breed ill-will with the spirits, if you leave too much abstractness up in the air.  What if we agreed to the deal, you refused the opportunity, gave consideration to serving as the diabolist’s champion, and decided against that too?  The spirits might sort through all that, trying to decide if we’re disturbing the system or if the deal was struck in good faith.  Much like someone might draw ire if they tried to game the system.”

“Assuming I’m interested in this bargain, what’s the solution?”

“A token exchange of something concrete.”

“And that exchange is one way?” Maggie asked.  “I don’t believe it.”

“As you wish,” Patrick said.  “Good for you to be on your toes.  I’ll arrange a meeting in some form, with a personal guarantee that he won’t touch you.  I promise opened doors and troves of new lessons, and, let me see,” he paused.

Faerie didn’t need to pause, not really.  An act, theatrics.

He bowed a little, “In this shop that smells like rancid grease, I hereby offer Maggie Holt a ring from my finger, impregnated with my power, should you accept this deal.  It bears a connection to me, and through it, the owner can draw out glamour until I’m spent of it.  I’ll give it to you for one month’s time, thirty days.”

Maggie managed to suppress her shock.  She settled for being very still, her eyes fixated on the ring.  Gold and obsidian, with the gold formed into branch-like protrusions.  “You’ve lost it if you’re offering that.”

“Not at all.  Handing this over would mean I’m extending a measure of trust.  Imagine it as a prelude to taking me on as a familiar, Maggie my dear.”

Her heart nearly skipped a beat, but she remembered Lola’s advice from the other day, and barely hesitated.  “You’re assuming I want you.”

“Are you pretending you don’t?  As partnerships go, it would be mutually beneficial.  I’m powerful enough that when I speak in that council room, everyone present listens.  Familiarhood is an out, a way to slip the shackles of exile.  To be free to leave this city.  It wouldn’t earn me fast friends, but the court can keep track of me by keeping track of my partner.  The smallest of hurdles.”

“‘Small’ is relative,” Maggie said.  “And again, you’re still assuming I want you as a familiar.  I’m not even sure I like you.”

“Everything is relative, if it’s definable,” Patrick said.  “This ring is defined very simply.  An extension of myself, a golden circle.  Gold for bounty, a circle for an aperture, a gate.  If you were to take this ring and prove you won’t abuse the ability to wield all the control over glamour I have, and if make a good showing of it, I would sign myself to you as a subordinate familiar, swearing whatever oaths are necessary to keep my power from overwhelming you.  Maybe you don’t like me, but I think you like the font of power I offer, my knowledge and skills.”

Maggie took a pull on her milkshake, as much to give herself a moment to think as to drink.  It had partially melted, and it tasted delicious.

This deal sounded delicious too, which only made her wary.

“And in exchange for this, I’m giving you…”

“Consider going to Toronto to help Mr. Thorburn, and give me my pick of one thing from inside your backpack there.  The value isn’t so important to me as the sentiment.”

“That isn’t reassuring,” she said.

“Maggie dear,” Patrick said.  She expected the glamour to hit her before it even did.  Imbued words, charming, meant to tug at her heartstrings.  He continued, oblivious or uncaring to the fact that he’d had little effect, “My primary interest here is in what is happening in Toronto.  Interest being the operative word.  Allow me to sate that interest, and I’ll embrace this uneven deal.”

“One thing from my backpack?”

“Yes.”

“Is it something I’m aware is inside?”

“I dare say it should be, barring mental defect on your part, like amnesia.”

“I’m going to look inside my bag first,” she said.  “I reserve the right to take stuff out, if I don’t want you to have it.”

“You’re considering my offer then?”  Patrick asked.  He smiled, hitting her with glamour again.  “Fantastic.”

She dismissed the glamour, dashing it aside, and dusted herself off to be sure.  Before she did anything else, she paused, making sure she wasn’t thinking strangely.

Taking full mental stock of what was going on…

She glanced back at her dads.

“They’re content,” Patrick said.  “I’ve distracted them and the man behind the counter so we can talk in private.”

“If you’re looking to win me over, messing with my dads is not the way to do it,” Maggie said.

“I’ll take note of that.  I swear to leave your parents be.”

She relaxed, and set to sorting through her bag.  The wallet was inside, and she wasted no time in removing it.  The remains of her lunch, which she really should have removed earlier… nothing of value there.

Textbooks, she could afford to lose them.  Unfinished homework… even there, she couldn’t imagine his interest.  Pens?

One nice pen her father had given her.  Sentimental value.

Patrick had said something about sentiment.  Did he want to take the pen along with the attachment to her father?  Could he?  She wasn’t sure he was capable, and he’d just sworn to keep them safe.

She set it aside, just in case.

Leaving only textbooks and notebooks.  She took her time paging through the notebook to be safe.  Half a year of notes and handouts.

She could handle the inconvenience if he took the notebook out of some idle curiosity over how humans operated, or as material to help him in his schemes.  It’d make the next semester harder, but her education wasn’t the highest priority.

“Is this a trap?” she asked.

“I harbor no animosity toward you, Maggie dear,” Patrick said.  “I find you interesting, I would tarnish myself if I suggested becoming a familiar to someone boring.  I’m motivated by interest: Maggie Holt in one hand, Toronto in the other.  Combining the two seems like common sense.”

Patrick used his hands to gesture, clasping them together as he said ‘combining’.

“Are you anticipating that this Lord-level entity I’m supposed to meet is going to trap me or otherwise act against me in some form that escapes the protection you’re offering?”

“No.”

“Are you anticipating that I’ll cause trouble by going, breaking the truce and obviating the contract with this Junior Circle?”

“Yes,” Patrick said.  “I’m disappointed, but yes.  You will bring chaos down on your head by accepting the deal, refusing the contract, and assisting Mr. Thorburn.”

“Maggie,” her dad said.

Time was out?

Maggie drummed her fingers on the counter.

“Maggie,” he said, again.

“You could probably have distracted them a bit longer,” she said.

“Yes, but I’m impatient,” Patrick said.  “Yes or no?”

Maggie drummed her fingers more.

“Yes.”

Padraic smiled.  “Your bag?”

Her heartbeat was like something else, the way it pounded in her chest.

Padraic took his time removing the content.  Textbooks and a pencil case, some tampons, a bit of loose change, her notebooks.

“Maggie,” her father said, joining her dad in the orders.

“Just go,” she said.  “I’ll catch up.  This is important!”

Her father shot her a very unimpressed look, but the door shut, and it was just Padraic and Maggie.

She made doubly sure her Athame was on hand, in case there was trouble.  She’d cut goblin hair with it, and it was probably laced enough with impurities to do some real damage to Patrick if he made a fuss.

When the bag was empty, Patrick examined it thoroughly, turning it inside out.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Satisfying my curiosity, for one thing,” he said.

“And for the other?”

“Looking,” he said.

He picked up the notebook, then paged through it.

“For?”

“This will do,” Patrick said.

He picked one piece of paper from among the various slips and handouts she’d stuck between pages, so everything fell in chronological order.

The test paper, with the underlined ‘D’ on it.

Patrick pulled his ring off.

“That?” Maggie asked.  “That’s it?”

“Not exactly,” Patrick said.

He used a ‘branch’ on the knife to swipe across the paper, once horizontally, once vertically.

He tore off one corner, “I’ll give this to you, my dear.”

She took the test paper.  Every part of it, the underlined D included, was present.  “I don’t understand.”

Patrick turned the slip of paper around so she could read it.

Maggie Holt

She felt a chill run through her.  “I don’t understand.”

“You’re repeating yourself, my dear.”

“So are you,” she retorted.  “Keep calling me ‘my dear’, it’s weird and creepy.”

She knew she sounded defensive, but she didn’t like this unease in her gut.

“What should I call you, then?”

She opened her mouth, but the name wouldn’t come forth.

It dawned on her just what a horrible mistake she’d made.

She reached for the ring, but Patrick was quick, pulling it out of reach.

“The deal-” she started.

“The deal was that the ring would go to Maggie Holt,” Patrick said.  “Maggie Holt is my name.”

His name in the possessive.

He swiveled around on the stool, then hopped down.  “And, as promised, I’ll work to ensure that the person with the name of Maggie will cross paths with the de-powered Lord when I make my visit to Toronto.  As promised, you face no risk in the process.”

Me.

“Who am I?” she asked.

It was such a dumb question, but it held so much weight.

“That is a very good question,” Patrick said, with a smile.  “I’d hurry up and answer it.  Names are a lynchpin in the composition of our being.  You’re going to suffer if you don’t fill that void.”

“You bastard.”

Padraic began cloaking himself in glamour.  Short black hair with a hairband, canted eyebrows that looked perpetually caught between anger and a frown.  A shorter, female body.

“I look forward to this,” she said, “Getting to go to Toronto.  Finally getting out of this city.  While you’re suffering for lack of a name, I’ll be shoring up my disguise.  If it makes you feel any better, I’ll help out Mr. Thorburn.”

“You said you felt no animosity.”

“I don’t.  Like I said, this is pure interest.  I have a great deal of interest in ‘Maggie Holt’, the name, but I have no strong feelings either way for you,” the new Maggie said.

“You’re a bastard,” the girl in the real checkered scarf said.

“Be sure to consider going to Toronto, lest you be forsworn on top of everything else, not that I recommend it.  You might collapse like a house of cards if you venture too far from the connections you have here,” ‘Maggie’ said.  “I have a trip to Toronto to arrange.  It’s been so long since I had a good ruse and got to practice my acting.”

The girl in the checkered scarf stared, horrified.

A moment later, she found the Athame.  She stepped close, hiding the weapon with her body until the last possible moment.

Maggie blocked it with a fork, catching the blade between the tines.

A twist, and a strike with her free hand, and the girl in the checkered scarf was disarmed of the implement.  She found a hand around one wrist and her neck, a gentle tap of heel to the back of her knee took away her balance.

Dishes spilled from the bar counter as she was pinned, facing skyward.

“This implement, if I remember the rituals right, rightfully belongs to Maggie Holt, the name is invoked as part of the ritual.  I can’t really use it, but I’ll have to make do,” Maggie said, taking her implement in hand.  “You’re already weaker, I can tell.”

The girl in the checkered scarf grunted, struggling to win the contest of strength, but the fingers tightened around her throat, punishing her.

“Don’t interrupt,” Maggie said, whispering in the other girl’s ear.  “Save your breath, and save your strength.  You’ll need both.  Like I said, you have lessons to learn.  Doors have opened to you, as they are wont to do for lost souls.”

“Fuck you,” the girl in the checkered scarf spat the words, despite the fingers at her throat.

She seemed more surprised at the epithet than Maggie did.

Maggie let her go, dancing back with wallet in one hand and mostly-empty schoolbag in the other, Athame stuck in her belt.

“This is fun,” Maggie said, smiling wide.  “I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’m hoping it won’t be for a long, long time.  Bye!”

Then she was out the door, half skipping, half running.

The girl in the checkered scarf composed herself, catching her breath.

Dad.  Father.

She collected all of her things that she could carry, stupid scattered school things, useless, then ran to catch up to them.

To Maggie’s family.

She only stopped running when she reached their back steps.

She knocked, unable to breathe past the lump in her throat.

The lack of recognition in their eyes was like a sword through her heart.

She looked like their daughter, but she wasn’t Maggie Holt.  When push came to shove, the latter won out over the former.

She was adopted, her birth mother lived in Toronto, meaning she couldn’t even claim a blood relationship.

The girl in the checkered scarf turned away before any questions could be asked.

Signature 8.3

“Motherfucker!”

She could swear.

Maggie Holt had made the deal.  Maggie Holt was bound to it.

Maggie isn’t my name anymore.

The cold was a bit more bitter than it should have been.  Wind that had barely caught her notice earlier was now making her stumble.

The clumsiness had nothing at all to do with the tears that insisted on sitting at the corner of each eye, not large enough to come free with a blink, yet re-emerging if she scrubbed one away with her hand.  She set her jaw, clenched her fists, and marched.

Jacob’s Bell was easy to navigate.  There were three major roads, Harcourt running from North to South, dividing the city in half, while the other two ran from West to East.  Sydenham ran parallel to the highway, curving only to avoid the marshland near Hillsglade House, while King George ran through downtown.

While the smaller stores and restaurants sat on King George, deep within Jacob’s Bell’s downtown area, essential institutions like the hospital and the school sat up on or near Sydenham.  One such building served double duty as a train station and bus station, and could be referred to as one, the other, or simply ‘the station’, depending on need or preference.  While the train’s horn could be heard a half-dozen times a day, it only stopped twice in a given day.  The buses were more frequent.

Padriac, she was almost positive, didn’t have a car.  It wasn’t like a Faerie to grub under the hood and keep the thing running, it was even less like a Faerie to take a car into a shop for general maintenance, forking over hundreds of dollars or wasting the time to get around the repairs.  Besides, being an exile meant Padraic couldn’t go anywhere.

If he was heading to Toronto, and he wasn’t using her parents to get a ride, there were really only three options.  Bus, train, or walk.

Walking would take too long.

Only one destination made sense.  The station.  The train schedule had been timed to allow for commuting to and from Toronto, arguably the minor tweak that had enabled Jacob’s Bell to start growing, prompting this war over the Lordship, but the returning train would be gone, this late in the evening.  Only the latest bus to Toronto would get him out of here in any reasonable span of time.

“Padraic,” she said.  “Or Maggie Holt, if you insist on using that name, you pricklet.  Fucker.  Where the dog-diddling fuck are you?”

As if by answer, she heard a scuffling noise behind her.

A shadow moved in the darkness, dodging out of sight, as if barely staying out of her field of vision.  That would be design more than it was luck.

The wind wasn’t even blowing her way, but she still scented the faintest whiff of something rancid.  Not even the good kind of rancid, where it started off savory and went bad.  This was the kind of smell that started off as something offputting and went worse.  Like… ball sweat or that black mucky crap she’d once horked up after a really bad sinus problem, a few years back.  All wrapped up in a bouquet as though said foul-smelling object had spent far too long dwelling amid bathroom smells and warm garbage.

Or, to put it in simpler terms, it’s a bad smell that’s finding me despite the wind direction.

“Hey, goblin,” she said.  “It would not be in your best interests to mess with me tonight.  I’ve got places to be and Faerie to-”

A loud bang made her spin in place.  The ice tried to catch her foot as she moved it, but she caught a crusty bit of snowbank with her hand, instead.  Soaking her hand with bits of ice and snow to keep from falling over… hard to say it was good, but it was better.

Hissing cut through the quiet as a car across the street resettled at a slight angle. one back tire thoroughly deflated.

Her heart pounded.  The noise had been large enough for her to feel it, like a surprise attack.

Goblins were always easier to deal with when she had the advantage of the first move.  She really only had two experiences to date, in dealing with goblins without that advantage.  One where she’d fucked up, a clever little bastard of a goblin had slipped out of her trap, only to come after her with a vengeance.  It had been cunning than it was capable, being no bigger than a bar of soap, possessed of more animal instinct than actual wit, but that hadn’t been a fun week.

The other instance had been the first instance.  Her hometown.  Her home, she still thought of it sometimes.  Even if she’d left it behind, unsalvageable, thoroughly ruined.

Fucked.

Being able to swear wasn’t nearly as fun or relieving as she might have hoped, considering the cost.

Even though she wasn’t entirely sure what the full cost would be, the cost was too high.

The station.

She had to get there before the bus left.

The one eye that appeared beneath the car with the popped tire was a yellow slit, just barely catching the light.  It was wide, focusing on her, then narrowed, as if the face was contorting with emotion.

The wind blew with enough force to make flecks of snow break loose from snowbanks, and the glimmer of light from the eye joined the flecks of snow in drifting away.  It was gone, slipping away by some angle she couldn’t track.

Move faster.

She picked up her pace, moving as fast as she could without risking falling.

Another shape to her right, lower to the ground, moving on all fours for more speed and stealth.  This one had lanky hair and tiny sagging tits on a scrawny frame, a scrap of bright colored cloth clutched in hands too small for its body.  The overlarge claws on its feet were long and strong enough to scratch through the snow and catch on pavement, as the goblin dove into the snow that covered the expanse of lawn in front of an old house.  There was a cloying smell like blood and black licorice.

The girl in the checkered scarf felt an ugly feeling stirring in her gut.

She recognized that one.  Appearance and smell both.

Without slowing, she spoke loud enough for each of the goblins to hear, “What’s up?”

She was glad her voice hadn’t betrayed her nervousness.  She couldn’t even clear her throat without the possibility that one of the goblins would hear it.

“You told us the game,” a voice sounded, from higher up.  There, a tree not far away, further up the road.  The voice was high, with a ragged edge, like it belonged to some rejected chain-smoking muppet.

It wasn’t a voice that would belong to the goblin she’d seen beneath the car, nor the one in the snow.

That makes three.

A game?

“Let’s go over the rules one more time, or are you so stupid you’ve forgotten already?”

“Fuck yourself bloody,” the words were spat, virtually a growl by the time the final word was spoken.

She couldn’t see the source of the voice, but she saw branches bob as the goblin in question leaped off.  Ice broke away and fell in jagged clumps, disappearing into softer snow below.  Snow fell from the edge of one garage, knocked loose.  Then, one half-story up, more from the roof of the house.

She wanted to run now, but she’d already picked her pace.  Showing fear would be a mistake.

The only option was to keep moving forward.

The sound of her feet crunching in the snow was joined by the sound of something dragging behind her.

One was across the street to her left, if it hadn’t circled around, the tire-popper.  The female one would be in the midst of the snowbanks to the right, another atop the houses and garages, staying ahead, ready to trip her up if she tried to make a break for it.

And one behind her made four.

Every afternoon since Molly Walker had died, without fail, she’d made one trip to talk to the girl’s ghost.  The idea was to confess, to tell stories about stupid day to day stuff, to lay herself bare.  Every day, she’d made a point of reminding herself of what she’d done.  What she’d helped bring to pass.

In the process, she’d reminded herself of what goblins were capable of.  That wasn’t wholly unintentional.  It meant she wouldn’t let herself forget about home, about Molly.  About these creatures she was dealing with every single day.

It meant, unfortunately, that the memories weren’t easy to shake.  The knowledge of just what the goblins had done to Molly Walker.

The scraping, dragging noise made her think of tools.  Corkscrews, spoons, doorknobs taken apart into their constituent pieces.  Strips of wire that had been cut free from older chain-link fences, coarse enough with age to saw, flexible enough to wind around a body part and cut off circulation.

Was this divine retribution?  She wasn’t one to believe in god.  Less so since learning about the existence of gods, odd as that might be.

But the god-bothered were pretty good at the whole guilt schtick.  That whole eye-for-an-eye deal.

Her fingernails very nearly dug crimson crescents into the skin of her palms.  The only thing that stopped her from puncturing the skin was the knowledge that the goblins would smell the blood.

Being surrounded meant that no matter which way the wind blew, she could smell some trace of them.  Sometimes it was faint, sometimes it was almost a slap in the face.  The wind was blowing in her face, which slowed her down and made her scarf whip behind her.  The cold gust threatened to make her eyes tear up, so she squinted.

Squinting meant she didn’t have quite as good a view of the ground in front of her.  One hump of snow caught the underside of her foot mid-stride.  She stumbled a little.

There.  Fermented testicle sweat, fecal matter and hot garbage, right in her face, in the moment she looked down to catch her balance.

The wind direction and smell combined-

Yes.  Buttsack stood in the middle of the sidewalk.  He looked like a cross between the worst features of a small child and a very old man, simultaneously lumpy, misproportioned, hairy, wrinkly, gnarled beneath his too-loose skin.

He was bigger than most of the local goblins, tougher.  He didn’t shiver, despite the cold, even though he had only coarse body hair, a pair of shorts that reached his ankles, a pair of panties on his head, scrunching up loose flesh around the elastic.  A scrap of paper in his hand, fluttering in the wind.

His face was bulldoggish, his one visible eye a yellow slit, brimming with simmering emotion.

For all the drama he’d displayed on their first meeting, where she’d caught him with the chain, Buttsack’s face didn’t twitch.  He stared at her with a degree of emotion that she couldn’t even identify.

Hate?

She’d never really seen someone’s expression distill hate before.  Not real hate.  Not like this.

It unsettled, seeing him like this.  Even with a pair of underpants pulled tight over his head, the crotch covering one eye.

Her underpants, as it happened.

As if he’d noticed her noticing, he used his one free hand and reached up to grabbed one side of the undergarments.  He pulled them down further, as if giving himself a reverse wedgie, his asshole of a face contorted into something uglier in the process.

The front of the fabric bulged as his tongue traced a line down the front, slow, from top to bottom, then back again.

When he let go, the elastic snapped back into place with a force that made her flinch just a bit.

“Do you really want to go for a round two, Buttsack?” she asked.  “I seem to recall you begging and pleading.  Shall I tell the others here just how you sounded?”

“Paper,” Buttsack said.

He let go.  The wind carried the paper to her, too low to the ground.

He wanted her to reach for it.  She could either let it go or she could risk falling, or failing.

Simply failing here could be disastrous.  If they were dogs surrounding her, one moment of weakness could be like a snap of the fingers or an order, bidding them to close the distance and take her to pieces.

She reached with her foot instead, with no time to even make sure if her other foot had any traction.

The paper was caught between her foot and the ground.

She bent at the knees to collect it, and saw the shadow of the goblin with the sack behind her.  Squat, neckless, bug-eyed.

She recognized it as one of the ones she’d directed at Molly Walker.

Unnerved, her hands shook as she unfolded the paper.  Two papers, as it turned out, folded twice over so they formed a neat square, kept tidy with a simple paperclip.  Buttsack’s greasy fingerprints marred the outside.

The writing was florid, complete with a stylized capital letter starting each paragraph.  It was easy enough to read in the clear moonlight.

How odd, I don’t believe I’m certain who I should name in the salutations.  I trust that if it’s found its way to your hands, the letter is intended for you.

Don’t stop your reading once you’ve begun it.  I did make these foul little beings promise to deliver the letter and refrain from interfering until the reading was finished one way or another.  It’s part of the terms for a game I’ve set up, you see.  But I shouldn’t digress.  Everything in time, for niceties’ sake and for dramatic effect.

The boxes stacked in the bedroom said ‘Maggie Holt’ on them, so I went on to assume it’s my room.  A brief word with the two gay gentlemen who own the house helped clarify the matter, with both assuring me that the room was mine and it was mine for keeps.  I thought I would make sure that my room was properly aired out before I made any return.  That isn’t to say that I’m planning on coming back any time soon, or that the bindings didn’t look sufficient to keep the smell contained, but I like to be sure.  I’ve had words with the other occupant of the room and I’ll be shooing him off as soon as I’ve finished this letter, handed it to him with further instructions and gone on my own merry way.

I realize I’ve left you in dire circumstances.  As I said, no hard feelings are intended.  In the interest of fairness, I’m thinking I might flip a coin.  Heads, I’ll come back before you’re completely gone, to give you a sporting chance.  Tails, I’ll wait long enough.  Yes?  No?

I have heard the Fair Folk do like their lopsided deals, which is surely in the realm of your imagination, so you might naturally conclude that I have spent the last two centuries or so practicing the flipping of coins in such a way that I almost always get the result I want.  No, I suppose a coin flip doesn’t count for much in the spirit of things.  Let me think, let me think.

What if I were to say I will return to Jacob’s Bell, albeit with no warning, and promised that if I did, and you were still present in some capacity, I would present myself to you for a conversation?  Of course, it would be ever so tragic if I were to arrive when you were out of town.  I’d say it was inevitable, even, that the one time I returned, it would be while you were away.

I think, in the end, that I will ignore small graces and give you a gift instead.  Two, hints as a matter of fact, in this very letter, about how you might escape the predicament with the goblins.  Taking and using the hints would mean you couldn’t meet me before I departed, which might leave you feeling chagrined.  I do suppose you could follow me soon after.  But wait!  Leaving the town would mean you weren’t around in case the goblins came after your fathers.  How tragic a thing is that?  It seems you just can’t win!

I seem to be going on and on.  I’m just so very excited!  You might even say I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl!  Ha ha!

I did claim a set of gremlins bound in papers as I passed through the bedroom.  The others were unusable.  I’m not quite a practitioner, you see, and certain deals and powers afforded to mortals aren’t for my like to claim.  Certain tricks, yes, but there are rules to be observed.  Give me time to get more settled into this skin, and that may change.

Buttsack watched as she turned to the next page, her face blank.

In the meantime, Maggie Holt has formally relinquished all goblin bondage and bindings.  Any promises that goblins made to remain hands-off or leave certain individuals alone are now undone, the goblins freed.  Two goblins were bound in or near the Holt household, and I was sure to pass on instructions for our little game.  They’ll be gathering their fellows, I imagine, before they bid you hello and celebrating their liberation.

On to this game I mentioned.  I had to be clever with my wording, but goblins are stupid little things, by and large.  I had to offer something to ensure they would give you distance while you read, so I simply distributed the clothes in Maggie Holt’s dresser and laundry hamper to the goblins as a means of guiding them to their target.  They’re to find their fellows and spread the word and scraps of clothing.  They’ll be able to find the person who wore those clothes, by scent or the ties that bind.  They were a little muddled by the fact that different parts of the same threads pointed in two different directions, but they do tend to be stupid little creatures, don’t they?

They’ll be after both of us, it seems.  Not to worry!  I suspect I’m rather more elusive than you are, and the threads will largely lose their tie to me once I’ve left.  In short, you need not concern yourself with my welfare.  As for you, dear girl, rest assured, the prize we agreed on for winning this little game here is limited only to bragging rights.  I’m hardly a barbarian or blackguard in this.

As to the nature of the game itself, it is exceedingly simple.  If their quarry is able to walk, hold pen or parcel, speak or see by sunrise, the goblins lose.  If none of those things are possible, bragging rights abound for these little pests and buggers!

How interesting, don’t you think?  I know the goblins seemed eager, and I wouldn’t have you getting bored in my absence.  Rest assured, I didn’t want you to feel like it’s a priority to see me before I take my leave from this little town.

I do believe you are at the door downstairs, and I do believe there are a small few of Maggie Holt’s goblins that must be personally sprung from their more secure confinement before I catch my train.  I’ll cut myself off here.

I must be away!  I leave it to you to decide whether to curse me for the length of this thing or to forgive me for the brevity of it.  I do know the reading of it postpones the contest.

With care,

Maggie H.

“He signed the name with a heart over the ‘i’,” she commented, staring at the page.  “What the hell is wrong with him?”

“Doesn’t matter,” a voice whispered from her right.  Not one she’d heard before.  “You’re done reading, and-”

“It matters,” she said.

She wanted to continue speaking, but she went too fast, and her voice caught.  Three or four thoughts were snapping together all at once.  The hints.  Stated twice.

In the search for the hints, she found the answer.

Her hand trembled enough to make the page shake.

“Yeah?” Buttsack asked.

“Yeah,” she managed.  “That goblin is wrong, he’s lying, because this does matter, and I’m not done reading.  I’m commenting on the reading.”

“Commenting?” Buttsack asked.

She turned back to the first page, and she started reading again.  “There’s a lot to read in the midst of this.  Details to be picked out, clues that might inform…” she stumbled, trying to scan the page and speak at the same time, “…inform my strategies against him.  For example, I can read each sentence here and try to divine if he was lying, if I can call him forsworn.”

“Who’s him?” the high, ragged voice asked.

“Nevermind.”

Right here, this was the trick.

She took a step forward, eyes still on the page.  She could tell that Buttsack hadn’t moved out of her way.  “You promised not to interfere with the reading.”

“You’re walking, not reading,” Buttsack growled.

“I’m doing both.  Will you move out of my way or will you be forsworn?”

He didn’t respond.

She kept walking, even though the position of the page blocked her view of the goblin.  The smell of him was thick in the cold air.

If she happened to trip over him, there might even be a solution in that.  The question was, how fast could she name him forsworn, demand he obey her and sic him on the other, smaller goblins?

Was it faster than another goblin would reflexively respond to her weakness and attack her?

Her hands were cold, and the edges of the paper crumpled a bit as her grip grew tighter.  If she lost hold of the page, she was dead.

She walked past the spot where he stood.  He’d shifted position, perching atop a snowbank, where the snowplow had driven the snow high.

“Hey Scuzz,” Buttsack said.

“What?”

“This isn’t going to work.  She’s going to walk to sanctuary.”

“Maybe a cloud will pass over the moon?”

“Useless fuckspittle.  We can do better than maybes.”

She continued walking.  Her eyes scanning the words.  Continued dragging sounds told her that the goblin with the tools was following behind her.  Slow but steady, matching her pace.

“Arsedrip!” Buttsack shouted, loud enough to startle her.  “Up there, go!”

“Which, the sigh-”

“Don’t say it, you pustule!  You’ll clue her in!  Both!”

They were plotting.

“Go,” Buttsack ordered.  “Figure it out or I will fucking eat your genitals raw and regurgitate them into birdy mouths and-”

“You’ll feed the birds to cats and the cats to dogs and so on, until my genitals are shit nine times over,” Arsedrip said, “Am I on the right track?”

Keep reading, don’t get distracted.  He grabbed my gremlins.  The fucker…

“If you get it, you better go!”

Arsedrip ran past her, forward, further up the street.

“Cumnugget, you- yeah, just like that!  Nice and thick!  You aren’t completely retarded!”

She couldn’t read and run at the same time.  If she tried and failed, then one of the goblins could call her on it, and this would go from bad to worse.

Just as ‘Maggie’ had said, she couldn’t give chase now.

No, she wouldn’t call him that.  Padraic was still his name, and thinking or speaking the name would maybe help hammer at the trickery and put cracks in it.

Couldn’t hurt, and she wasn’t quite willing to forfeit her old name in that sense, either.

Padraic had arranged this.  He had putting her in a situation where she couldn’t chase him.  Where she was sufficiently distracted, pinned down in Jacob’s Bell, unable to leave out of concern that he would return, or that her fathers would fall prey to the goblins.

They weren’t quite innocent of Other things, but they did have protections.

She had to wonder if it was enough.

A distant crash and the sound of metal creaking marked goblin activity a block away.

She forced herself to return to the reading.  Her eyes fell on the line, ‘It seems you just can’t win.’

She reached an intersection.  Buttsack’s yellow eyes were on her, dancing in her peripheral vision as she strained to see the crosswalk sign without taking her eye off the page.

No crosswalk sign.

A shadow moved.  A goblin was perched on the crosswalk light, blocking her from seeing the ‘walk’ or ‘don’t walk’ signs opposite her.

The same was true on her left hand side.

She couldn’t see the light either.  She knew goblins could produce opaque bodily fluids in great quantities.  Shit, vomit…  They could break glass.

If she just looked up, she would see the light peeking through the smears or past the goblins.

She kept her eye on the page, and she took a leap of faith, stepping out onto the street, her attention on cars and their headlights instead.  Traffic was light in this town, with as much traffic on the main roads as there was traffic on side roads in other cities.  There was one car two blocks over.  Too far away to be a problem.

Except it didn’t stop at the one intersection.  The sigh?  The sign.  The goblins had taken down a stop sign, or enchanted it, or both.

She paused in the middle of the street as the car skidded to a stop.  The driver hadn’t seen her, and the hard packed snow wasn’t so different from ice.  Wheels skidded, and the rear end of the car wavered, fishtailing slightly.

The car stopped at the intersection with the blacked-out lights, nose jutting through the passenger crossing.  If she hadn’t stopped, it would have knocked her over, maybe broken her legs.

She walked around the nose of the car, reading.  The goblins were chattering, setting up the next bout of interference.

“Can’t stop her reading, but we can make someone else stop the little bitch from walking.  Good enough.  Um, um.  Hey, Cumnugget!  Get over here!  Even half a brain can help brainstorm!”

Celebrating their liberation…

Where the hell was she supposed to go?  She had no home to go to.

No friends, not really.

The closest things she had to friends were Blake, who wasn’t even here…

Padraic came to mind, which would be a laugh if it wasn’t so fucking tragically sad.

Who else did she have a connection to?

Molly’s ghost?  Did the mute, unresponsive creature even count as a friend?

That thought led to another.  There was a protective circle around Molly’s shrine.

But what happened after that?  She’d die all the same if she stayed out in the cold all night, standing there.

No.  What other options were available?

Laird?

She couldn’t say yes, not in good conscience, not so soon after thinking of the ghost as something resembling a friendly face.

Not with everything else the ghost represented.

“Wait, wait,” Cumnugget said.  “Why can’t I attack her?  I didn’t swear nothing.”

“You swore implicitly,” Buttsack said.  “You took the clothing we used to find her, after hearing the terms of this game.”

“What if we get some jerkbutt that didn’t swear nothing?” Cumnugget asked.  “Who isn’t playing the game?”

She felt a chill.

“That’s interfering,” Buttsack said.  “Isn’t it?”

“What if- what if I just happen to walk by some place near here where some horny suckerbutts hang out, on my way to scout the way, and they just happen to follow me back?  I’m not doing nothing ‘cept walking.”

“I think it sounds like you need to go for a walk, doesn’t it?” Buttsack said.

“Think it does.”

Her eye found the line, ‘they do tend to be stupid little creatures, don’t they?’

Where was she going?

There weren’t many options remaining.  She turned left.

Harcourt ran North to South, dividing the left half of the city from right.  Half the streets in the city transitioning from ‘Street Name West’ to ‘Street Name East’ as they passed the dividing road, or the other way around, depending on the direction in question.

The houses in Jacob’s Bell ranged from ‘shitty and dilapidated’ to ‘used to be really nice and are currently alright’, and Danvers Avenue West was one of the areas which tended to the latter.  Houses here were old houses, dating back as much as a hundred years, suffering from less than perfect maintenance and all the vagaries that old buildings were prone to.

She didn’t know the streets exactly, but she was fairly certain she was in the right area.  These houses had more presence, being larger.  They loomed shadowy and grim like tombstones dwelling at the edge of her vision.

Her eye tracked the page, barely taking in the words, even as her mind turned over her options.

Still reading.

She didn’t know exactly where she was going.  If she spoke in an attempt to find a connection to follow, this fat wrinkled goblin that followed her might accuse her of being finished.

Each footstep was careful.  Her feet and hands were cold and numbness was seeping in.  It might have been the cold, true.  Still, there was a connection of sorts between that chill and the quiet horror that had seeped into her the moment she’d lost her name, yet to leave her.

Buttsack moved suddenly, waving.

Beckoning.

Cumnugget was here with the other goblins in tow.

The girl in the checkered scarf ran, thereading abandoned.

Her focus was warped, after so much attention given to the page a matter of feet from her face.  The world appeared distorted, darker in contrast to the paleness of the page under the strong moonlight.

The houses all looked the same.

She could have kept running, maybe continued down the block for another minute or two, but the house to her right had a wrought metal railing.

She grabbed the railing, using it to arrest her forward momentum, turning to face her assailants.

Buttsack moved faster than he should have, given his bulk.  A trick, maybe.  Something.

Teeth found her shin, hard against bone, and teeth found her calf.  Nothing hard there.

She fell backward, and she twisted over, falling on her back.

The pages fluttered free of her hand as she reached out to try and grab at his eyes.  Too far down, the narrow eyes too recessed.

Buttsack grabbed at her leg, trying to find a grip.  He was heavy, large.  Bigger than he should have been.  But in that scrabble for a grip, he gave her one chance.

She didn’t kick so much as she levered him back, like one might balance a baby on their shins, holding the infant’s hands.

She didn’t hold Buttsack’s hands.  The wound in her leg screamed at her as she half-twisted, driving him into the railing.

Something hard in the goblin met the hardness of the railing.  Metal sang its sweet song.

She reached into her pocket and found her keys, saw the goblin’s bulldoggy face, and realized there wasn’t a weak point to strike at, then thought twice about it.

Precious seconds disappeared as she used the railing to find her feet.  Buttsack recovered just as quickly.

Other goblins closed the distance.

One, squirrel-sized, pounced onto her shoulder, a fork in each hand.

Small as he was, he was strong enough to drive the tines into the edge of her chin and through her jacket, into her shoulder.

She shrieked in pain and grabbed him, tearing him away, and jammed him through a twist in the railing, then wrenched him, so the inflexible metal twisted him the wrong way.  Back or neck broken, easily.

She pulled one fork free of her shoulder.  The one that had scraped her chin had fallen free and disappeared amid snow.

Half the tines had been broken off, giving it more penetrative power.

She held it out, threatening, her wounded leg nearly buckling as she put weight on it.

The goblins approached.

Half had scraps of her clothing.  They wore them as trophies or clothing, or had desecrated the items with filth, or largely destroyed them.

If Padraic had been done this to make her feel more violated, it worked.

They weren’t approaching any further.

A sneak attack?

She half-turned.

A hand settled on her shoulder.

The girl in the checkered scarf looked up at Sandra Duchamp.

Her relief was powerful enough to wipe out the brief surge of strength adrenaline had given her.  Her leg did buckle.

Sandra helped keep her from falling, two hands catching her around the middle to prevent both knees from cracking against frozen-over sidewalk.

“Sanctuary,” the girl in the checkered scarf said, her voice low, eyes on the ground.  She was close enough to kneeling for it to count.

“She’s our quarry,” Buttsack growled.

“I could ask for concessions,” Sandra said.  “Blake Thorburn-”

“I’ll make-”

“Shh,” Sandra cut her off, the sound surprisingly sharp.  “I could, but I won’t.”

“Because you’re leaving her for us?” one goblin asked.

“No,” Sandra said.  “I’ll grant sanctuary to this stupid little girl.  You goblins will either disappear promptly or you’ll become troll food.”

Her weasely familiar unwound itself from around her neck, darting along one arm, stepping on the kneeling girl’s back-

“Oof,” the girl in the checkered scarf grunted.

The familiar hopped down to the ground, and the resulting sound resembled a falling sack of potatoes more than a large rodent dropping to the ground.

“I’ll be looking for you,” Buttsack said.

That was answer enough.

The goblins disappeared.

For long moments, the scene was still.  Sandra bent down and collected her familiar from the ground before helping her supplicant stand.

“I don’t have to swear anything?” the girl asked, wavering on her feet.

“No,” Sandra said.

The girl nodded slowly.  “I… I didn’t know where to go.  I thought about asking Laird, but-”

“Laird is gone.”

“Then it’s an extra good thing I didn’t go to his place.  Ow, frick- fuck, hurts.  Would’ve died.”

Sandra put one hand on the girl’s chin and used the leverage to turn the girl’s head, peering at the wound at the corner of her chin.  “Oh my.  What did you do to yourself?”

“I got forked.”

“Not what I was talking about, but yes, we’ll need to clean that promptly.  Goblins like to taint their weapons.  We’ll hope it’s only feces.”

The statement only got a weary nod by way of response.

“Rest your weight on me.  My house isn’t far.  Just over there.  The smaller house.”

They limped on for several seconds, spending more time working out a rhythm and figuring out how to progress than they did covering any ground.

“You know who I am?”

“I can put the pieces together.”

“Oh.  Well yeah.  Doesn’t look pretty, does it?”

“When I was teaching my nieces to drive, I told them they won’t learn proper respect for the road until they had an accident of some sort.  Maybe that’s silly, but I think the notion applies to the practice, too.”

“‘Accident’ sounds like it’s too mild for this degree of fuck up.  Oh god, ow, shit, my leg hurts.”

Sandra offered a look of surprise.  “I didn’t think you could swear.”

“I can now.  Silver fucking linings.”

“I’d strongly suggest you keep to old deals and promises.  Negative or not, you’ll want to hold on to what you can.  You’re coming apart at the seams.”

“Okay.”

They made their way to the front door.

“Lean more heavily on me there,” Sandra said, “I need one hand free for the key… here.”

The door opened, and they made their way inside.

“Why help me?”

“You might call it an urge to express a frustrated maternal instinct,” Sandra said.  “Have a seat in the armchair there.  I don’t have a couch for you to sleep on.  This is my refuge, so to speak, from incessant company, and couches only invite company to stay.”

“I didn’t take you for a loner.”

“Not a loner, exactly.  I revel in politics, in family business.  Dwell too long on such things, however, and I risk losing perspective.  I have to step away from it all.  The only company I would comfortably invite here is temporary company, like yourself, and one man who is presently in Toronto.”

“Blake’s in-” the girl started, before she stopped herself.

“I know exactly where he is, not to worry.  Not the man I speak of.”

The house was smaller than most on the block, and there was a kind of elegance to the setup.  Everything was narrow, everything had a place.  An old fashioned cornucopia took up space between sets of books that were pressed to either side of the shelf by bookends.

Books on herbs, cookbooks, wine guides, Tantric sex guidebooks, books on weaving and threads.

Spellbooks.  Two matching tomes, one in some Nordic language, the other apparently a translation, reading ‘Trollkind’.

A small glass of wine and a plate of bread and cheese were placed on the stand by the armchair, eliciting a look of surprise.

“While you’re present, you have my promise of safety.  You may take of my food, water and wine with no expectation of repayment,” Sandra said.

“I don’t know the proper response.  But… I won’t betray this hospitality.”

“One night, for the time being.  Faerie are dangerous business.  A bad kind of accident to decide to have.  If I give you more shelter than this, I risk getting on the bad side of their plots.”

“He’s gone too.  With my name and a glamour that makes him look like me.”

“He’ll return.  When the court gets wind of this… escapade, they’ll step in.”

“Could I reach out to the courts?  Get their help?  If I turned him in, I could f- mess with him.  Throw a wrench in the works.”

“Oh,” Sandra said.  It sounded like pity distilled.  With one hand, she brushed at the girl’s hair.

The girl stared down at the ornate rug in the middle of the living room.  “Yeah, frying pans and fires.  That was a stupid idea.”

“You have a hard road to travel, and it’s one I can’t and won’t help with, except for what I’m offering tonight.  Most individuals strong enough to help know well enough not to.  The exceptions to the rule… well, you’ll find out.”

“I imagine I will.”

“Let me get the first aid kit, and you can explain what happened tonight.”

“Oh, I can explain right now.”

Sandra raised an eyebrow.

“I earned my bragging rights.”

Signature 8.4

Sunlight streamed through the windows where curtains hadn’t been drawn.  Probably intentional on Sandra’s part – an unobtrusive alarm of sorts to ensure the guest wasn’t up too late.

The girl in the checkered scarf -she did still wear the scarf, having fallen asleep in the armchair- was already wide awake.  A blanket had been draped over her, tucked in at the shoulders and by her hips, and she left it where it was, joining her scarf in half-covering her face.

Her eyes were fixed on her knees, her mind as active as her body was still.  Her thoughts walked the razor’s edge of inspiration and there wasn’t much footing to be had, if any.  A misstep meant succumbing to panic.

Through the kitchen doorway, she could see Sandra walking through the kitchen, and raised her head a bit to get a better look.  A portion of the blanket fell aside as she reached up to push a lock of hair out of her eyes.  She didn’t fix it.  Out of sight, plates clinked.

That ferret-thing passed across the narrow slice of the kitchen the girl could see, running along the edge of the counter.

A moment later, it passed the other way, roughly half of a package worth of bacon clasped in its jaws.

“All of the remaining bacon, Hildr?” Sandra asked.  Her voice was barely audible.  “Give me half of that and I’ll get the sausage out for you.”

A pause.

Sandra stepped into view, meeting the weasel and collecting the requisite bacon.

The woman’s head turned toward the armchair.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll cook it in a separate pan from yours.  Hildr and I are practically family – a little bit of troll spittle won’t kill me.”

“Uh, sure,” said the armchair’s occupant.  She stood and stretched, unwinding her scarf a bit where she was too warm.  After a moment’s consideration, she took off her winter jacket.

“The bathroom is that way,” Sandra said, pointing.  “Do you have a preference for what you drink with your breakfast?  Tea?  Coffee?”

“Do you have cranberry juice?”

“Yes.  I’ll get it out.”

“And, uh, I don’t know what to do about clothes.”

Sandra gave her a once-over, a careful, searching look, before deciding, “Wear what you have for now.  You won’t be too badly off if you wear those clothes for one more day.  When you’re done eating, you can use my shower and dry off before you set out.”

“Thank you,” she replied, laying her jacket over the arm of the chair.  The plate and glass from last night were already gone from the little table.

She took her time going through the bathroom, her mind still darting through possibilities.

Go to Toronto?  No.  Padraic was right.  A bad idea on a number of levels.  Padraic could return, and she needed to look after her dads.

She washed her hands and then her face, using her wet hands to push her hair back.  As usual, it immediately rebelled against her attempts to get it in order.

After sniffing her clothes to judge her body odor and resigning herself to a maybe, she headed to the kitchen.

Hildr was devouring a raw sausage roughly a third her size, while Sandra was setting the table.

Croissant, crepes with blueberries and strawberries, bacon and a glass of juice.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she told Sandra, sitting down.

“I didn’t.  But I like to eat well, and it’s hardly hospitable to give you gruel while I prepare this for myself,” Sandra said.  She tapped the spoon of icing sugar to lightly dust her crepe.  “While you washed up, I was thinking about the clothing situation.  I do have clothes from when I was about your age.  I grew up in this house and left it behind when I moved to Toronto.  I’ve never had cause to get rid of it.”

“That could be good,” the girl replied.  She took a bite.

“I’m not sure it would be.  You’re coming unraveled, so to speak, and you’ll want to hold tight to those things which tie you to your identity.  Physical objects or otherwise.”

Like going to see Molly?  She made a note of that.  She also noted that she still had her scarf on – she had been wearing it for a large portion of the winter.   She downed a mouthful of the cranberry juice.

She sputtered, covering her mouth before she could cough it out on the table.  That only served to get it in her nose.

Her hand pounded the table a few times while she fought to regain her composure.  The ferret thing was hissing at her, baring vicious looking teeth.

Sandra barely flinched.  “It shouldn’t be off.  It’s fairly fresh.”

“Bitter.”

“Oh.  When you asked for Cranberry juice, I thought you meant real cranberry juice.  The stuff you usually find in stores is primarily apple or pear juice, with a bit of cranberry added.”

The girl with the checkered scarf sputtered a bit.

“You can get used to it,” Sandra said.  “I prefer it mixed with a bit of orange juice.  Should I get you a glass and orange juice?”

“Please.”

While she did so, Sandra said, “I’m assuming you don’t know how to put together a model?”

“Depends what kind.”

“It’s a technique enchanters pick up when first learning.  Sometimes you try to manipulate a connection and it goes poorly.  When that happens, it can help to have a sense of what exactly has happened.  I’ll show you after.”

“Thank you.  Kind of going above and beyond the call of… well, it isn’t even your duty, is it?”

“No.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch.  Please eat.  Rules for the hosted are simple – that you graciously accept what is freely offered.  I didn’t poison anything here.”

The girl in the checkered scarf ate.

“Laird, as I told you last night, went to Toronto.  He’ll be one of the champions opposing Mr. Thorburn.  Opposing Mr. Thorburn and Maggie Holt, that is.”

The girl in the checkered scarf nodded slowly.

It felt weird, hearing the name spoken like that.  It should have felt weird because it was familiar to her, but it wasn’t.

“I’m not quite sure how to phrase this without missing the mark.  Need?  Wish?  Desire?  Not quite any of those.  I would very, very much like to be lord of Jacob’s Bell.”

“No offense, but this isn’t exactly news to me.  I’m a little out of the loop, but I’m not that out of the loop.”

“Let me continue.  I once wanted to be Lord of Toronto, but things didn’t go the way we’d hoped.  I made a bid for power, I lost, and I hoped this would be my consolation prize.  Then Laird made it clear he wanted it.”

The girl nodded, eating.  The cranberry juice in orange juice was just barely drinkable.  She didn’t complain.

Sandra continued, “We fought, then we struck compromises, to keep things in balance.  The marriage was one such compromise.  Laird hopes to go to Toronto, put himself in the good graces of the lord of the city, and leverage that when he returns here.  I’m suspicious that won’t happen.”

“How come?”

“Laird has a very particular personality.  He comes from a particular lineage.  I grew up a number of years behind him, and he was always someone I paid attention to, because of his position in his family, the favor that the head of the Behaim showed to him, and because my mother told me to.  I know him fairly well, all things considered.”

“My condolences.”

“The knowledge is a good thing.  That it’s Laird… I don’t think it’s a bad thing.  He was groomed from a young age.  Less able practitioners in his general age group were punished by having to give him power as penance.  He was tutored, even sent away to the United Kingdom for a time.”

“Lucky guy, getting all the breaks.  A little spoiled, a little messed up because of how one dimensional his social circles were?  I think I get it.”

“I don’t think he was lucky at all,” Sandra said.  “Others in his family have to pay a share of their power, and are restricted in what they can do, as far as the practice goes, but they are free.  Laird has had firm hands gripping him by the arm every step of the way.  Even now, he’s bound and shackled, playing his role in schemes that were set up before he was born.”

“So he convinces me that Molly Walker is an inhuman monster and gets me to sic my goblins on her?”

“Yes.  And he’s done several other things, some recent, some not.  He puts on a good face and smiles, he sees to his duties as a police officer and a keeper of the peace in town, but I wonder sometimes if he isn’t screaming inside his head.  That’s why I gave him a nudge, prompting him to go to Toronto.”

“I just woke up, I’m not exactly on the ball.  I might have missed something you said, or I didn’t catch the logic there.  Don’t get it.”

“The Lord of Toronto is an entity that doesn’t live or die, but ebbs and flows in power.  As of right now, he ebbs.  He’s fighting for a foothold.  Laird, by contrast, is fighting the course of his own destiny.  In the doing, he might be adhering to it, like an animal that struggles against the net that binds it might only trap itself further.”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you know he gave up a share of his lifespan to his children?”

“No.”

“I believe he’s been setting his affairs in order.  The tone of our last conversation suggested it.  It didn’t take much of a push to get him to go to Toronto.  He asked me to look after the Behaim family in his absence.  Are you seeing where I’m going with this?”

“You’re talking about the Lord and Laird in the same breath.”

“Which is amusing when you think about the link of his name to the title.  Maybe Destiny has her way after all.”

“One and the same?” the girl asked.  “Oh.  Oh.  You think he’s going to sacrifice himself to give the Lord of Toronto a foothold?”

Sandra put down her fork, meal finished.  “Yes.  His personality would fit, and maybe he’s been thinking about this for some time, altering his own perspective, preparing for this.  An Incarnation is a representation of that which it represents, in a circular fashion, but it builds its image from pieces given to it.  Men that sacrificed themselves, as Laird may hope to sacrifice himself.  Laird would give the Lord a more modern perspective, clearer knowledge, and freedom to act outside the confines of its being.  In the long term, he would be trapped, largely dead, but in the now, well, he might shake himself free of Destiny’s firm grip.”

“He’s going to become an Incarnation?”

“Who knows?  I do suspect that he won’t return, one way or another.  I doubt Blake Thorburn will either.  Where does that leave us?”

“Well, I’m still here, nameless and kind of screwed.”

“And I’m still here as well, very, very much wanting to be Lord, with one potential rival potentially out of the way, and one dangerous element pinned down in Toronto, with signs and portents saying he’s unlikely to return alive.  I have to deal with Johannes, as well as other locals.  I might need help.”

“Ahhhh.  You must be desperate if you’re coming to me.”

“There are very few pieces on the board here.  I can call in favors from branches of my family, but that draws attention, and we aren’t at a stage yet where drawing attention would be good.  Understand?  I could twist your arm, make demands, and extract oaths from you, but I don’t know what specifically I would ask for right now.”

The girl in the checkered scarf put down her utensils, chugged the last of her juice, and then leaned back.  Try as she might, she couldn’t think of anything to add.  All of the gears that were turning in the back of her mind were presently busy trying to find solutions to her own predicament.

“There isn’t a catch, not really,” Sandra said, “My niece called you a wild card, didn’t she?”

The girl in the checkered scarf nodded.

“You could side with anyone here.  You could very well side with Johannes, if he has a solution.  I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have any clever ideas on how to salvage your Self, and I wouldn’t blame you.  But if you do side with Johannes, I’m hoping you won’t side against me in the process.”

“I can sort of see that.”

Sandra collected the dishes, rinsing them off in the sink before putting them away.  She didn’t turn around as she said, “He could and may well force you, if he has a solution.”

“Maybe.  Is that your subtle way of reminding me that you could have forced me to turn on Blake in exchange for sanctuary?”

“Yes.  In fact, as I first spoke to you, I was already working out this conversation for this morning.  Bookending ideas.”

“Clever.”

Sandra half-turned, revealing a slight smile.

“Here’s my chance to be clever – I think you said that the people that were strong enough to help me should know that it’s a bad idea to?”

“Yes.”

“Johannes is one of the exceptions to that rule, I take it?”

“Yes he is.”

“Is this a nudge?  Is this one of those nudges, like you gave Laird?  To go see Johannes?”

Sandra smiled, picking up Hildr.  The girl in the checkered scarf could see how the fur at one side of the ferret’s head had been braided and clasped in place with a tiny metal clip.  Sandra said, “It could be.  Nothing mystical about it.  The question would be why.”

“Yeah,” the girl in the checkered scarf said.  “I guess so.  Would I upset you if I said I don’t want to go see him just yet?”

“No.  Can I offer you anything else?”

“I’m done,” the girl replied.  And the juice sits heavy in my gut.  “Thank you.  I haven’t eaten a breakfast that good in a while.  One of my dads is on this health kick.”

And I might never get to eat a crappy vegan tofu salad or granola-milk slop breakfast if I can’t get my name back.

“Are you okay?” Sandra asked.  “All things considered?”

The girl looked up.

“You were somewhere else for a moment.”

“I’m… yeah.  Like I said before, I’m not so functional when I’ve just woken up.  I’m ready to get down to business.”

“Use my shower.  I’ll get things ready so I can teach you what you need to know when you’re out.”

■

She decided to pull on clothes rather than use the offered bathrobe, feeling fabric stick to skin where she hadn’t quite dried off enough.  For much the same reason, she hadn’t used the offered shampoo and conditioner.  Shampoo tended to leave her hair more unruly, so she tended to do one day on and one day off.  Her hair going unwashed a day was more her than it was smelling like the wrong products.

She donned the hairband, pushing her hair away from her face, and stared at herself in the mirror.

Was it just the more intense lighting above the bathroom mirror that made her look paler, her eyes lighter, her hair darker?  Starker?

She wound the scarf around her shoulders, loose.

When she emerged and stepped into the living room, she saw a sheet of parchment had been laid out.  Not paper.  Old fashioned stuff, a little uneven at the edges.  Another scrap sat at the base of the coffee table, mostly rolled up.  Thin ink marked it.  Lines and scribbled words.  Testing pens?

Sandra didn’t look up as she drew a circle in the middle.  “Write all personal details you can inside.  Everything about yourself you can think of.  You can’t include your name, but you can and should include other things.  Try to think of things that Padraic wouldn’t necessarily know about.  Things he wouldn’t have taken or claimed for himself, as part of his identity, that make you unique.”

I have three parents, but I think Padraic thinks it’s just the two.  I don’t sign my name with a heart over the ‘i’, but I do a little squiggle at the middle part of the M to make my signature mine when I’m signing something like a cheque.  I like salty foods way too much.  I don’t actually love regular pizza, but I’ll eat anchovy pizza and I’ll tolerate other stuff.  Both of the boys I’ve really liked much at all turned out to be gay.  It’s very rare for me to cry or sob when I’m upset, though I might get tears in my eyes but sometimes after a really long day, I’ll just break down and cry into my pillow for no reason, like I save it all up for that.

“More?” she asked.

“All you can,” Sandra said, eyeing the list.

It bothered her that Sandra was reading these small, personal things, but she wasn’t in a position to complain.

I’m pretty sure I’ll die young.  Polar fleece fabric gives me the heebie jeebies so bad I can barely sit still after touching it.

She hesitated.

I love my parents more than anything, and they’ve done better jobs than most.  I mean it.  But sometimes I wonder if the reason my priorities and feelings are messed up are because my surrogate mom wasn’t around enough and my dads just aren’t that emotionally sensitive.  I know it’s stupid, I know it’s wrong, and I tell myself every time that I’m just looking for a broad-strokes answer to it all, but I still think it sometimes.

She stared down at the words, pen still in hand, for a long minute.

“A little bit of blood,” Sandra said.  “I have a needle-“

The girl was already biting the end of her thumb.

“Or you can do that.”

“Used to it,” The girl said.  “Center circle?”

“You have the right idea.  Good.  Now draw more circles,” Sandra prompted her.  “Around that one.  Things you’re connected to that are important to you.”

Dad.  Father.  Mom.  Home.  The house.  My room.  My title as a goblin queen.

She paused at that last one.

“That’s fine,” Sandra said.  “Being a student?”

“I’m not much of one.”

“Okay.  Anything else?”

She wrote Blake, then Molly.

“Good.  This is something you can do again when you feel the need, to figure out where you stand.  When we do it, we use a board, pins and threads, so we can practice illustrating webs of connections and manipulate things more.  That isn’t what you need, so we’ll take the simpler road.  Draw lines from you to each of these things.”

The girl in the checkered scarf did, drawing a line between the circle with the confession, little secrets and blot of blood, to the circle with ‘goblin queen’ within.

The pen was nearly out of ink.  The line came out spotty, half of it was just the pen nib digging a groove into paper.

“That’s supposed to happen?” she guessed.

“Yes.  Keep going.”

Between herself and her parents.  Worse.  Two thirds of it was only scratches.

Herself and the house?  Worse still.

Mom?  Better again.

Dads?  The worst yet.

Her room?

She suspected she knew the answer before she tried.  The pen scratched paper, but no ink came out.

Padraic had made his claim to it.

Blake?

The sole bit of line was so short she could cover it with her fingertip.

Molly?

One of the stronger connections.

“If these were threads, and we were applying stress, you would be seeing how frayed they were.  You could gauge the health of the connections.  Keep this in mind.  Check again later today.  Figure out how this condition of yours is progressing.”

“Okay.”

“You have options.  There’s one obvious one I can’t and won’t outline to you, out of concern that Padraic would be upset with me.”

“And you need all the friends you can get, with so few pieces on the board.”

‘Yes.”

“I’m assuming that one option is that I have to go head to head with Padraic.  Take it back.”

“You said it,” Sandra said, smiling a bit, “Not me.  Another option would be to draw things out.  Faerie get bored, and if you can survive in the meantime, it’s possible he would take pity on you and return the name.”

The girl stared at the woman, unimpressed.

“Possible, but not likely,” Sandra amended.

“How do I survive, though?”

“Forge new connections, hold tight to the connections that do exist, tenuous or otherwise.”

“Oh god.  You’re telling me that I have to work for my salvation by making friends?”

“That’s one way to forestall the inevitable,” Sandra said.

“I’m liking the first option more,” the girl said.  “It allows for shoving of a stick up one of Padraic’s nether orifices and attaching it to a lathe.  I don’t make friends easily.”

“Other connections, then.”

“Other connections.  Making a mental note.  Got it.”

“The third option… well, I suppose it isn’t easy either.”

“Third option?”

“Accept that he’s won.  Make peace with it.”

“Oh helllll no.”

“Yes,” Sandra said.  “There’s a running theme in dealings with Faerie.  Trust me, I’ve dealt with them enough to know.  As a general rule, it’s not worth it.”

“What’s not.”

“It.  Whatever you’re striving for in dealing with them?  Whatever they’re offering?  It isn’t worth the trouble.  Rescue someone from Faerie clutches, and they’ll play along, acting like everything’s good, only to go back to their old masters.  You can win, but you might well fall prey to a trap in the process.”

“Blake kicked a Faerie’s ass the day he invited me into my house.”

“Yes he did.”

“So… that rule has its exceptions.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.  I don’t know the particulars, so I can’t comment.”

The girl in the checkered scarf narrowed her eyes.  “So I’m supposed to give up?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Yeah.  Right.  I’m not about to lie down and get replaced, thank you.  Not my style.”

“Of course.”

“Anything else?”

“Not so much.  There are other tricks, but everything has its own gravity, and so long as he has your name, there will be a natural pull, drawing that which is Maggie’s to him.  If you were to reclaim your name, I’d think a confrontation would be inevitable.”

“What if he bites it in the meantime?”

“You would have to be careful with the timing and mechanism, lest you inherited a name with the notion of death attached to it and took that death for yourself, but I would be surprised if it even came to that.  I’d sooner expect him to simply get bored with this game and return your name to you.”

“You’d-” the girl in the checkered scarf started.  “Fuck, really?”

“Careful with the swearing, remember.”

“Swearing in very particular circumstances that call for it.  How is he not going to die?”

“He’s been around for centuries, leading an exceptionally interesting life.  Add up his experience, and he’s developed a degree of familiarity with most types of Other that are close to the sixteen or seventeen years you’ve spent getting to know your own family.  He’ll avoid situations where victory isn’t in the cards for him.  Faerie like to pick easy fights for themselves, but impose challenges on themselves to keep it interesting, always holding on to the idea that they can abandon the challenge and cut loose if the situation calls for it.”

“So that’s it?  No chance?  If it even comes down to a contest-”

“If it were Essylt?  She’s more one-dimensional.  Padraic?  I would consider your loss a foregone conclusion.”

The girl looked down at the map of connections, fists clenched at her sides.

“What happens?” she asked.  “Later on?”

“He’ll take and borrow to create his new identity.  Connections will find less traction with you.  Even simple connections.  The ability to open a door involves a connection, however basic.  In the end?  It depends on what the two of you do.  You might be reduced to a glimmer, held together by the little that Padraic didn’t take, unable to act or even function.”

“An echo.”

“Close enough.  More likely, you’d start coming to pieces.  You might find that spirits occupy the hollow spaces that are created, which would accelerate the decay.  You might go out in a blaze of spiritual activity.  Conversely, your body might simply be ground down into your constituent elements, the spirits would nibble on the exposed edges of the girl who was once Maggie Holt, and gravity and connections would pull the half-eaten, half-faded husk to pieces.”

The girl in the checkered scarf felt her heart pounding as if she’d just run around the block.

“I should go,” she said.

“I think you should.  That line connecting to Blake looks less solid than it did a minute ago.  While you’re here, I can help reinforce things, but I can’t stop Padraic from taking things from his end of this struggle, leaving you less to work with.”

The girl grabbed her coat, pulling it on.

“Where are you going?” Sandra asked.

“Don’t know.  Maybe the Briar Girl.”

“If she were strong enough to do something substantial, I would be very surprised,” Sandra commented.

“Maybe that’s true.  But she and Blake had a connection, and maybe I can establish one with her.  She doesn’t seem like she’d be impossible to get along with.  And I can ask.  Get more info on where to go next.”

“Maybe, instead of doing that, you should tackle the more dangerous possibilities while you’re still strong enough.”

The girl in the checkered scarf paused midway through doing up her buttons.  “You’re trying to nudge me to Johannes again.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“Maybe, maybe not.  And I do owe you one… but… what about her?”

“She is… not your best bet.”

“She could have an answer.  She’s been around for a freaking long time.”

“True on both counts.”

“So?”

“I suppose if you’re going to talk to her, you should be as strong as possible.”

“Great.  Unless there’s something I should know?”

“You know who she is?”

“Yeah.”

“You know what she is?”

“Pretty sure.”

“So long as you go in armed with knowledge.  She can’t hurt you unless you give her the chance.”

The girl with the checkered scarf nodded.  “Just in case, could I- do you have a weapon I could borrow?  I know it’s more valuable and permanent than food, but…”

“I have a number of weapons.  Metal?  I assume you’re still worried about them?”

“Not unworried.  They’re impatient, not exactly the type to wait all this time, lurking outside and attack me in broad daylight.  But one of them did promise to come after me, so…”

“Any preference in terms of what you’d want to wield?”

Bigger and sharper the better, the girl thought.

Then she reconsidered.

“My implement is a knife.  I’ll take something in that vein, if that’s okay.”

Sandra walked over to a bookshelf.  She withdrew a case and opened it.  Three knives sat within.  She placed the knife on the arm of the armchair.

The girl picked it up.  A stiletto, long and narrow, with a sheath.  “You sure?”

“As with my childhood clothes, it’s one of those things that’s been around for some time.  I have no particular attachment to it, and I’m happier it’s seeing use.  You’ll find Mara’s place due west, after the buildings give way to forest.  Stick to the hardest path.”

“Cool,” the girl said.  She paused.  “I won’t say thank you.  That’s sort of useless.  You helped me out.  I’ll… I’ll try to thank you with deed, not word.”

“I appreciate that.”

The girl nodded, then opened the front door, took a good three steps back from the force of the wind and snow, then plunged into the elements.

■

Take the hardest path.

Story of my freaking life.

The hardest path, as it turned out, meant not walking down the path people and their dogs had carved into the woods.  It meant going uphill, through snow that soaked her jeans in an instant.

Pushing through the thickest growths of branches, rather than walk around.

Maybe Sandra was nice to me just so she could get me to buy this crummy advice and laugh to her creepy children of the corn family about sending me off to stumble through deep woods.

Even as she mulled over the idea, entertaining the surprisingly infuriating mental image of Sandra and her ferret-troll both laughing with one hand over their mouths, she had a sense that this was a bit too troublesome.

There was always an easier option.  Always a seemingly valid route around that outcropping of stone with a tree growing out of it.

Was this a spell of sorts?  A way of turning ignorant people away, keeping one patch of wilderness in a reasonable walking distance from town away from prying eyes?

Or, given that Mara had been around for a while, was it by design?

Had Mara planted and cultivated trees or moved stones to generate this effect?  A simple, steady, relentless building of this discouraging barrier over the years?

The girl in the checkered scarf pressed on.  She told herself that the resistance the branches gave to her pushing hands was another design.  Branches left scratches on her hands and face.  One copse of trees tried three times to scrape her hairband away from her head, then snagged on the button-hole of her jacket.  Not actually moving, but simply happening to catch her clothing.

She couldn’t see any rune or trick, but maybe it was a harder thing to see.  Maybe the tree had been planted in the middle of a rune, so it manifested certain snatching, scratching qualities as it grew.

Maybe every tree this deep in the woods was like a full-sized bonsai tree, guided by Mara’s hand.

There were probably a lot of really cool things one could do when they were effectively immortal and largely removed from everyday human concerns and habits.

The cottage, as it turned out, looked fairly normal, if old fashioned.  Over one rock, and there it was.  Squat, probably no more than four rooms, all wooden logs, planks, and stones with a coarse looking mortar.  A fire somewhere within gave the thick, dusty glass a faint orange-yellow tint.  Thick smoke rose from the chimney at one side.

It wasn’t made of gingerbread, at least.

“This was probably a really bad idea,” she told herself.

Her voice didn’t help to reassure herself as much as she might have hoped.

A vague sense of danger made her double check where she placed her feet, every place where there was a gap in the branches.  No traps, no dolls or totems, no apparent runes or anything of the sort.

No options left, she knocked on the door.

She heard metal scraping on stone.  It reminded her of the goblin with the tools.  A shiver ran up her spine.

The door opened.

Not Mara.

A child, maybe twelve, aboriginal, with a chain shackled to her wrist.

The child didn’t meet her eyes.  Her shoulders were drawn in, eyes fixed on her feet.

“I’m looking for Mara?”

“Crone Mara doesn’t like the white people,” the child said, in an accented voice.  “I do not like the white people.”

“I’ve always cared less than most people do when it comes to being liked,” the girl in the checkered scarf said.  “I’m interested in dealing.  Negotiations.”

“Then come in and wait.  Crone Mara will speak to you very soon.”

Again, that vague sense of danger, a trap.  The metaphorical lion’s den.  “I have safe passage?  You can give me permission to enter?”

“Yes.”

She’d halfway expected the interior to be a demesne, but there was no guarantee that Crone Mara would hold to any recent traditions.  The notion of the demesne had come over from Europe with the settlers.  Crone Mara predated them.

No, the interior was cramped.  Warm, with thick walls and no leaks, but cramped, with a floor of stones that fit together like jigsaw pieces, grooves worn along the most traveled paths.  She suspected it predated the log and wood construction of the walls themselves.

The two bedrooms to the one side had no doors, only a bed and just enough space to stand between bed and wall.  Shelves above the bed held clothes.

It was all so utilitarian.  Only that which was absolutely necessary was within the building.  Of those necessities, the kitchen stood out as the largest room in the small building.  Containers held food, reeking of meat, and a fire burned under a large pot of stew filled with large chunks of vegetables.

There was only one nod to anything resembling entertainment.  All around the uppermost edge of the kitchen, high enough up that one would need to stand on a table or box to reach, were dolls.  Crude, made of raw materials, features made misshapen by the damage done to leather and woven grass by age.  There was no organization.  The very oldest stood beside more recent creations.  The newest dolls were crafted of reed and hide.  The oldest had started to come apart, hide degrading, reeds long since eaten away, revealing slivers of bone within.

The girl in the checkered scarf took a seat at the kitchen table.  A tree had been cut straight down the middle, flat end turned up.  The table was three such half-trees.

The chain at the younger girl’s wrist dragged on the floor as she made her way to the pot, stirring slowly.  Each motion of her arm made the chain tap against the stone housing of the broad fireplace.

Minutes ticked on, and the girl in the checkered scarf became acutely aware of the passage of time, the lack of time she had before she became some kind of glimmer or husk.

“What do you do here?”

“I am cooking blood stew.”

“When you aren’t cooking, I mean.”

“I will chop firewood.”

“Okay, sounds like indentured servitude.  Let me rephrase.  What do you do when there aren’t chores?”

“There are always enough chores to fill the day.”

“Always?” the girl in the checkered scarf asked.  “Every day, it’s just waking up, doing chores one after another, until you’re ready to go to bed?”

“Every day.”

The rhythmic clink of chain against stone continued, alongside the scrape of the large wooden spoon against the bottom of the pot.  The child’s flesh was raw around the shackle.

That looks like it hurts like crazy.

This sounds like it would drive anyone insane.

“It sounds lonely.  Never having fun.  Do you talk, at least?”

“There are lessons.  Basic things.  How to do this or how to do that.  How to maintain the hut”

“Uh huh.  And games?”

“No games.”

“Stories?”

“Few stories.  Only sometimes, to remind of why we are to fear and distrust the white people.  Better to be in here.”

“Um, okay.  What about singing?”  How bad can singing be?

“Crone Mara does not sing very often.  They sing when the quiet is too deep, or when I ask.”

The girl in the checkered scarf followed the pointing finger.

The dolls.

“Oh heck no,” she said.  “Point taken, no need to demonstrate.”

But the dolls were already singing.

Faint at first, like rustles through the trees, whispering, reedy voices, they found the high notes.

Children’s voices.

A foreign language, some voices better at the singing than the others, some halting, creating a vaguely discordant sound, like a children’s choir where there hadn’t been enough practice.

“Alrighty,” she said.  That does nothing to convince me you wouldn’t absolutely lose your mind in here.  “Can we stop?”

“They will stop when they are finished.  It depends on their mood.  They sing more when they are sad.  Lately they sang more than they have been silent.”

“Great, great.  Any idea on when Crone Mara will return?”

The little girl shrugged, giving the door a momentary glance.

Discordant voices, scraping spoon, clink and scrape of chain against stone.

The chain was fat, coarse, old fashioned, a little rusty.  It might well have predated Jacob’s Bell.

Her eye fell on the point where it had been banging the stone.

There were flecks on the ground.

The chain was being worn down, as was the thick stone that bordered the fireplace.

No way the chain had been that worn down in this generation alone.

The scraping of the spoon had stopped.

The little girl was looking her in the eyes for the first time.

The little girl looked old.  Weary.

“Can you break the chain?” the child asked.  “Crone Mara has the key.  For you to free me, you would need to break the chain.”

“I’m really not looking to make more enemies,” the girl in the checkered scarf replied.  “You’re putting me in an awkward position.”

“Can you break the chain?  It is damaged, you see, right here.  Can you show me that the white people are not so bad?”

“You’ve got to give me a chance to answer before-“

The child stepped closer, and chain scraped on floor.

The singing of the dolls grew louder.

The child’s hands clutched at the end of her jacket.

“Will you help me, white girl?  You can, if you act now.”

“I’m thinking.”

There were tears on the girl’s face.  “Please tell me you will help me.  Please.  Just say it.”

“I-“

“Please!”

The word was ragged, as if the child wasn’t used to anything but a dull monotone.

It was too much, the smoke in the hut, the singing, the pleas-

“I think-“

The girl’s hands clutched tighter.

“-That I’ve read too many fantasy novels to fall for this,” she finally managed to say.

A moment passed.

The singing quieted.

“Crone Mara,” the girl in the checkered scarf said, meeting the child’s eyes.

Crone Mara stood a little straighter.  Tears still marked her cheeks, but there was a flinty look in her eyes.

“What would have happened if I’d said yes?  How would I ‘help’?”

“You would be compost,” the girl said.

“Got it.  No.  Bad.“

The child reached into her shirt for a key on a string and undid her shackle.

“Will you negotiate with me?” she asked the child.  “I need a hand with something.”

“Never.  Not ever,” the child said.

“Got it,” the girl with the checkered scarf said.  She stood from the table.  “Had to ask.”

She stepped out into the cold.

One down.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Signature 8.5

From the witch’s hut to meeting Hansel and Gretel.

Before all this had started, she had grilled goblins for tidbits.  The tricks and techniques almost always had to be bartered for, but information was easier to come by.  Goblins got bored, and when they were done cursing and making threats, they could be prodded to talk.

The goblins traveled in very specific territories.  They liked areas where they could enjoy human comforts while not quite being in the presence of humans.

More frequently, they picked places that had been abandoned or for sale for some time, and Jacob’s Bell had a lot of those buildings.  By the time a realtor or bank employee stopped by to check on the building, walls were spray painted or had holes, feces were smeared in places, and garbage littered every surface.

It was with this knowledge that she limped along busier streets, keeping to areas where the heavier plumbing made crossing harder for goblins, under an archway.  Avoiding goblins in general, because a minute after she had one on her tail, she’d have a half-dozen.

It was light out, there were people around, and it was morning.  All things that discouraged goblins.  So long as she traveled these roads, she was okay.  She’d done it practically every day, just to be safe.

The risk came when she headed into one of the less stellar areas of Jacob’s Bell.  Only a twenty minute walk from Sandra’s, she approached a deceptively nice looking area.  The houses were more in the prefab style, all identical, built maybe five years ago, but had languished and started falling apart, largely ignored, before Johannes’ area and the station had started bringing attention to Jacob’s Bell.

The people who moved in were able to keep the houses in a below average state, but tended to find that when they put in the time and money to fix something, another thing broke.

Goblins.

If you were struggling, they ensured you kept struggling.  If you were well-off, they weren’t much of a concern to start with.

In better-policed areas, practitioners and the Lords that managed them were strict about keeping Others from interfering too much with humanity.  If one person every generation was grabbed by the likes of Mara, a few people had their lives ruined by Others like Buttsack and the Faceless Woman, well, the general sentiment seemed to be that it was a drop in the bucket.

Drop a frog in a bucket of boiling water, and the frog would hop out.  Put it in cold water and slowly bring it up to a boil, and you had a roasted frog.  Except not really, but the idea held true.

Humankind was slowly roasting in boiling buckets, and the Lords and practitioners were more focused on dealing with those who were being less than gradual, less than subtle.

Even if the buildings here looked more modern, with less peeling paint or weather-worn wood than, say, Sandra’s place, she knew that the slow boil was well underway here.  Different rates of boil for different people.

The trick here was to study her surroundings.  She didn’t know the exact address, but she could put two and two together.

She kept one eye on her back, another on the state of the buildings, making mental notes of the little details.  A garage door for a house with no furniture inside was stuck, partially open, snow creeping into the garage space.  Another house had broken windows.

Like dogs marking their territory with urine.  Come to think of it, goblins probably did that too.  The same method, different ends.

There was a point where stuff was less lousy.  The damage normal, not goblin-made.

She did two laps through the neighborhood before she had a sense of it.  The epicenter of ‘not quite so messed up’.

Of the four houses, one wasn’t occupied, but it wasn’t trashed either.

Another had kids digging a tunnel through one snowbank.  They were so still and quiet when she approached that she wondered for a moment if they were goblins in snowsuits.

Paranoia.

Rather than continue searching, she approached them.  Better to forge new connections, no matter how small.

“Hey,” she said.

They kept playing.

“Hey, little dorks.”

One boy poked his head out of the hole-in-progress.  Clumps of snow clung to the fabric of his hat.  “Dorks?  We aren’t in the two-thousands anymore.”

“You need to shore up your tunnel.  If that snow falls on you while you’re crawling through, you’ll suffocate.”

“It’s just snow,” he said.

“Avalanches can wipe out buildings, you don’t think this much snow could wipe you out?”

He shrugged, then ducked down to continue playing, scraping with some sort of tool.

“Hey,” she said.  “Midget.  Pay attention to me.”

He poked his head out again.

“Don’t ignore me,” she said.  “Get on my bad side and I might break your tunnel.”

He didn’t flinch.  He thought she was joking.

She raised one foot, placing it on the side of the snowbank, driving the point home.  His eyes widened, and a little girl standing on the driveway piped up with a mewling “No!”

“First off, shore up that tunnel of yours.  Then tell your parents they’re idiots for not watching you better. Third, you can tell me if you know where Andy and Eva live.”

The boy didn’t respond.  He only stared.

The girl in the checkered scarf looked at the others.  Make this easier on me.  Where are the local witch hunters?

One girl at the side, smaller, said, “Andy lives in that house right there.  He used to babysit me, before his parents disappeared, and then he was too busy most of the time.  Then his sister came back, and we couldn’t be near him at all anymore.”

“Mom says Eva’s a psychopath and a tramp,” the second boy said.  he stood by the little girl, and was so bundled up that only a slice of his face was visible.

“You know if she’s around?”

“Andy might be gone right now, he usually goes and gets groceries around lunch, buys some fast food or sandwiches while he’s out, and sometimes he gives us something.  Asks if we saw anything strange when he was gone.  I think I heard him, but I’m not sure if he was coming or going.  Don’t know about Eva.  She’s usually out at night more.”

“Uh huh.  Good to know.  Hey, did he warn you about anything?  Places to avoid, in case you came by?”

“Huh?” the girl asked.

But the other boy did have an answer.  “He said we had to stay off the property, like our moms and dads told us.  If we did have to come to his place, though, we should stick to the front walkway and stairs, no fooling around, no tampering with windows or trying to sneak in.  Knock firmly on the door.”

“Got it.”

“I don’t,” said the boy in the snowbank.  “What’s to get?  Why even ask that question?”

“Because I might know Andy and Eva better than you do.  I know the sort of thing Eva gets up to when she’s out for her nighttime walks, for example.”

That had their interest.

“What?  What does she do?”

“Answers don’t come for free, dork.”

“You want us to pay you?”

“I want info.  You’ve obviously paid attention to those two.  They would’ve been the cool teenagers when you were kids, and now they’re two twenty-somethings who’re living on their own, they’re mysterious… you’ve watched, and you haven’t figured it out yet.”

“What, is she like a prostitute?” the girl said.

You’re, like, seven.  How do you even know what a prostitute is?

“No.  Look, you tell me something, I’ll tell you something.  Maybe something Andy said, or that he did, or you saw Eva when she didn’t know you were watching.”

The three children exchanged glances.

The boy standing on the driveway spoke up, “I don’t know exactly, but there was this one time when my dad was having problems.  Really stressed out and kind of freaking.  Nothing going right, and he and my mom kept talking about this boy, and it was bugging me…”

The etching of concern on the little boy’s face suggested ‘bugging’ was the wrong word.  He’d probably been tormented by confusion and the sheer negativity surrounding whatever had been going on, his friends hadn’t been any help, and he’d gone to the only trusted ‘adult’ he could find for counsel.  Andy.

“Paul,” the boy in the snowbank said, “I really don’t think Andy would want anyone to tell.”

“Oh.  Yeah, I guess not,” ‘Paul’ said.  He looked embarrassed, conflicted.  Caught between loyalty and interest, unhappy with where he stood on both fronts.

The girl in the checkered scarf looked over the group.  “I think I already know the answer.  It was bugging you, so you talked to Andy about it.  Then something happened, and the problem fixed itself.  The ‘boy’ that was giving your parents trouble just… disappeared.”

Paul didn’t even try to hide his surprise that she’d hit the mark, or at least came close to it.

“Yeah,” she said.  “I know.  And since you gave me a half-finished story, I’ll give you half an answer.  Your mom told you Eva is dangerous?  I think Andy is more dangerous than she is.”

“But he’s klutzy, and slow, and he’s a nerd.”

“Get with the new millennium, dork,” she said.  “Nerds are the second scariest group that humanity’s ever produced.”

“Second scariest?  Who are the scariest?”

“Stupid people,” she said.  Seeing their expressions war between confusion and incredulity, she added, “You’ll get it when you’re older.”

She left the kids with that tidbit of wisdom, she headed to the house they’d pointed to.

In retrospect, she suspected she could have figured it out.  The house was in worse shape than the others on the block, but it wasn’t malign influence or devious business that had caused it.  Just the fact that two twenty-somethings with very little idea how to maintain a property had lived here.

She wasn’t about to play games with the rules the kids had outlined.  Even if they didn’t know anything, a warning to them was as good as a warning to her.

Stick to the path, knock on the door.

There wasn’t a reply.

She hesitated to knock again.

The kids weren’t wrong.  Reports from various sources seemed to conclude the same thing: Andy was a bit slow.  Not mentally, but physically.  His reflexes were bad, he wasn’t athletic, he had no stamina or raw strength.

But Andy knew that.

He knew he couldn’t win in a straight-up fight with any practitioner or other.  His response to that knowledge was to avoid the straight-up fights entirely.

If he thought she was a threat, he’d kill her while she stood right here, before she even knew he was around.

“Hansel, Gretel, you home?” she asked the door.

The door opened, and her line of thinking made her take a step back.

It wasn’t Andy that was the problem.  It was his sister.

The young woman had a black tank top, sweatpants, and a crossbow in hand, aimed at the girl in the checkered scarf.  Her blond hair was tied back into a ponytail that left waves of hair framing her face.

Her eyes, not the crossbow, were the most concerning thing.

“I-”

“Shh,” Eva said.  “One more word that isn’t an answer to a question, or one more action I don’t give you permission to make, and I’ll shoot.  Nod slowly if you understand.  Good.”

Eva glanced around, furtive looks, as if unwilling to look away for more than half a second, then stepped back, the crossbow unwavering. The interior of the house suggested a lot of stuff that just didn’t have places to be.  Stacks of what might have been tax forms, books with no shelves to go to, bags of garbage sitting by the door, waiting to be carried out… it might have looked organized, but whatever organization was trying to take hold, disorder was winning out.  One garbage bag had been opened and left open, and bits of garbage sat on a chair with no table, right in the front hallway.  As if someone had been going through the garbage.

It was chaotic.  Unbalanced, even.  A healthy, ordered mind didn’t live in a space like that.

“Step inside, very slowly, then close the door with your foot.”

The girl in the checkered scarf moved at a glacial pace, partially to see if it would agitate Eva.  Eva didn’t seem to mind.

The door clicked as it shut.

“Without turning around, reach behind you and lock the door.”

Whatever the state of the house, the bolt slid in smoothly as the latch rotated.

Another click.

Eva stared, studying her.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the practitioner who came into town halfway through the year.  I’ve been to some meetings, I even played a part in what happened to Molly Walker.”

“Oh.  You.  You’re…”  Eva said.  She paused, groping for the name.  “Can’t quite place the name.  You’re easy to forget, apparently.”

“I’m-”

Eva pulled the trigger.

The girl in the checkered scarf managed a strangled grunt.

Watch enough action movies, spend enough time sitting in class, bored out of your skull, and you spend a little time imagining how you’d do in a proper fight.  You like to imagine you’d dodge the arrow.

She hadn’t.  She’d barely registered what had happened.

She gasped, clutching at her throat.  The bolt had penetrated the door, and it had punched through her scarf in the process, pinning her to the surface, scarf tight against her throat, the bolt itself so close to her neck that her struggles made skin touch cool, smooth wood.

The crossbow landed on a broad, square landing that marked the turn in a staircase leading upstairs.  Eva was drawing a knife from a back pocket, closing the distance with long strides.

The girl in the checkered scarf didn’t even try to fight.  Hands went up, flush against with the door, above her head.

Eva kicked her squarely in the sternum, and didn’t move the foot after it made contact.

It hurt, and Eva hadn’t really held back, but the girl in the checkered scarf left her hands where they were.

Eva’s face was only a foot from her own, and the knife-

She didn’t dare look.  No doubt the knife was in a position to do some immediate, terminal damage if she did anything else that Eva didn’t like.

A long ten seconds passed.

“Next time, you die.  Understood?”

Slow nod.

“Good.  Don’t even think that agonized screaming or blood are a problem.  The walls are thick, and Andy lacquered the floors after doing the spring cleaning.  Nice and thick, so there won’t be anything seeping into or between floorboards.  Cleaning up is easy.”

The young woman stepped away, arm extended with knife pointed, not once shifting her posture, position or eye contact in a way that suggested she couldn’t close the distance in a half-second and stab something vital.

Eva didn’t touch the shaft of wood that had penetrated the door, either.  She managed to reload the crossbow with a knife in one hand, eyes fixed on her new prisoner.

The only movement the girl in the checkered scarf made was to press her neck against the shaft, giving slack to the scarf and freeing up her neck for easier breathing.

“Now,” Eva said, as she raised the crossbow again, “You have my permission to say whatever it was you felt you needed to say.”

“I’ve honestly mostly forgotten what I was going to say.”

“Can’t have been that important.”

The girl in the checkered scarf remembered halfway through that sentence, opening her mouth to speak, but not letting a sound escape.

Eva indicated for her to speak, using the knife to make her ‘go on’ gesture.

“My name was stolen, which is why you can’t place it.  One of the Faerie has it.”

“Oh?  Well, that sucks.  Probably really bad for you.  But that doesn’t explain why the lamb came to the slaughterhouse.  Where we specialize in slaughtering lambs, among other things.  Explain.”

“All the creatures I captured got released.  Some are after me with vengeance in mind.  I was also thinking of going to see Johannes, and I’d rather make that visit as armed as I can possibly be.”

“You want our weapons?”

“Yes.”

“The only thing people negotiate with me is slow or fast.  You’re out of luck, Jane Doe.”

“If-” the girl with the checkered scarf said, pausing only to make sure she wasn’t about to be shot, “-If you could, please don’t call me that.”

“How come?”

“An lack of a name is a void waiting to be filled.”

“Really?  I could give you a goblin name like Twatface, and it could stick?”

“Yes.  So please-”

“Clitwart?  Ragstain?  Shitdribble?”

“You could call me anything you wanted-”

“Even Madonna?  No, that’s not nearly creative enough.  The Olsen Triplet?  Fatalie Shortman?”

The girl in the checkered scarf felt a chill.  A little too intense to be just in her head.  Not just cold seeping through the door, either.  “Please stop.”

“This could be the most fun I’ve ever had putting the screws to someone.  What about something off the wall?  Like Hitler?  Dahmer?  Satan?”

“That would be a bad idea.  Names have a power unto themselves, and some of those names probably have a lot of curses aimed their way.  You might bring something to pass.”

“Seems too easy.  Losing a name, replacing it…”

“It’s not easy at all.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I wouldn’t know.  I’m a newbie to all this.  I’m in bad shape, I just… I need to find a solution, before I degrade and I can’t do anything.  I need tools and weapons to do it, and you guys are the best source available.”

“In theory only.  I’m curious how this works.  You degrade?”

“No name, nothing at the center of my self.  I think it’s like the metaphysical equivalent of taking ten pounds of flesh out from within someone’s ribcage.”

“So take a new name.  Replace thy flesh.”

“That doesn’t help the fact that I don’t have many connections.  If I have too few and they get severed, or if they grow weak-”

“Hey, stop,” Eva said.  The crossbow moved a fraction, giving weight to the words.  “I’m not big on the magic stuff.  When people explain the magic stuff to me, I work it out in my head, and I distill it down to a simple, clear explanation.  I can do it with any magic.  Really.”

The girl in the checkered scarf nodded.

“Right here?  All this talking you’re doing?  It says one thing to me.  Nobody will miss you if I shoot you right here and watch you-”

Eva shut up right as the lock clicked. The door moved, but stopped short.

“-bleed out.  Ugh.  Worst timing ever.”

A whisper, a male voice.  “Is that you at the door, Eva?”

“It’s not me!” Eva called out.  “I’m here.”

A pause.

“Wait, shit, don’t try anything!  I’m fine, I’m safe.  Password is Creevey.”

“…Okay.  Let me in.”

“Let him in.”

To avoid being strangled, the girl in the checkered scarf was forced to make twenty or so tiny steps to follow the motion of the door.

Andy stepped inside, throwing a foil-wrapped sandwich to Eva.  She caught it while still keeping the crossbow aimed more or less at her target.

He walked right across the crossbow’s line of fire to put bags down on the square stair where Eva had tossed the crossbow earlier.  Milk and the like.

“You let someone in?” he finally asked.

“Don’t lecture me.”

“The deal was I wouldn’t get in your way when you have a job you want to do, you don’t argue when I outline protocols.  There are some things out there that you don’t want to let inside.”

“She’s not a thing.  She’s just a practitioner who’s in a bad way.”

He reached into one bag to grab a chocolate bar.

“Gimme,” Eva said.

“I gave it to the lookout kids to share.”

“Fuck that!”

“They said someone came in and didn’t come out.  I needed to bribe them to get them to go inside.  Witnesses are bad.”

“Give them your chocolate.”

“I didn’t violate protocols.”

The girl in the checkered scarf cleared her throat.

“Who or what is she?” he asked.

“She’s someone we know, minus the knowing part.”

“A trick?  Is she an assassin?” he asked.  He took a bite.

“No.  Just a dumbfuck who got in over her head, looks like.”

“Uh huh,” he said.  “Then why are you holding her at crossbowpoint?”

“Because letting a potential threat inside and not pointing a crossbow at them seems like a bad idea?”

Andy didn’t seem impressed.  He put his half-finished chocolate bar back in the bag and retrieved a sandwich like Eva’s.

“Open mine first,” Eva said.

He did, peeling back foil wrap.  He held the front of the crossbow up while she took a bite, then served himself.

“I just wanted weapons, and maybe tips on dealing with a situation like mine, if you had any” the girl in the checkered scarf said.  She kept her voice level, stayed assertive.  “No harm or trouble intended.  I can swear I won’t hurt you if that helps.”

“We’re witch hunters, it’s our duty to hunt witches.  Now one falls into our lap,” Eva said, ignoring the offer.  “Nobody is going to miss her.  I’m gonna put one through her heart, add a notch to my belt, dispose of the body in the furnace downstairs, and then watch a movie online.”

Andy chewed on his sandwich.

“Or are you going to renege on the deal and start interfering with my hunts?”

He finished and swallowed.  “She’s scared enough, Eva.  You can stop fucking with her.”

Eva scowled a little.  “You’re so lame.”

But she lowered the crossbow.

The girl in the checkered scarf released a deep breath.  She’d been inhaling, but not daring to exhale.

“I’m going to put a new protocol in place, I think.  Doing this sort of thing is dumb, Eva.  Making enemies of practitioners you don’t intend to finish off?  You pointed a gun at Thorburn, and now this?  No matter how bad their situation is, that situation can improve.”

“I don’t want to live to thirty anyways,” Eva said.

“I’d be okay with that, except you’re going to get me killed along with you,” he said.  He looked at the pinned girl, “Sorry about this.”

“I can talk, right?”

He took a bite of his sandwich, nodding as he chewed, approaching her.

One hand seized the bolt in the wood.  He pulled and failed to get it out.

“You’re so lame,” Eva said.  She approached too, and the girl in the checkered scarf found herself with two people less than a foot away from her.  She craned her head away from the bolt to give them more room to work.

“Fuck,” Eva said, abandoning her attempt.  She bent and broke the bolt, which produced more splinters than a clean break.

The girl in the checkered scarf freed herself, gingerly working the scarf free of the bolt.

Andy nudged past, then opened the front door, reaching around it.  He fiddled for a second, then stepped back, holding a package.  Rectangular, broad, and wrapped in what looked like butcher’s paper.  A piece of electrical wire stuck out, apparently what he’d used to attach it to the door knocker or whatever.

When he put it down on the pillar at the bottom of the stair railing, it made a faint but detectable ‘clunk’ sound.  Hard.

The girl in the checkered scarf checked her scarf.  There was a hole where the bolt had passed through.

“Don’t fuss.  Nobody’ll notice,” Eva said, flippant.

“Spirits might.  Every connection matters at this point.  Even a piece of clothing.”

“Way I see it, if you’re that desperate for stuff to hold on to, you’re already fucked.”

You’re not wrong, the girl in the checkered scarf thought.  She couldn’t formulate a reply, witty or otherwise.

“I’d offer you food, but we aren’t bound by the usual rules,” Andy said.

“Right.  That’s okay,” she replied.  “Fuck me, I hate this town.”

“Sounds like we have something in common,” he said.  “I feel so damn tired at the end of the day.  Place takes a lot out of you.”

“I can’t wait to be gone,” she replied.

“Question is, where are the likes of us going to go?” he asked.

Right.  They were witch hunters.  They knew stuff, and it was hard to leave all that behind and live an ordinary life.  Practitioners could very well be unhappy or unsettled by the appearance of the twins in their town.  Lords or local powers could seek to control them, even abuse them.

Her own circumstances weren’t better.  Pretty much anywhere she went, she’d be second or third tier.  At best she’d be ignored.  At worst, she’d be a potential threat or target.

That was, if she even got out of this in one piece.  As it was, she was a target no matter where she went, working with borrowed time.

Eva ate while Andy grabbed a bottle of water out of a bag.

“Yeah,” the girl with the checkered scarf finally said.  More in answer to the silence than the question.

“Yeah,” Eva added her own voice.

“Look,” the girl in the checkered scarf said, “I don’t want to kick up a fuss, and I don’t have a lot to bargain with.  You guys want to clean up dangerous Others?  Arm me and send me on my merry way.  If you’re fair about it, I’ll promise I won’t hold a grudge for the whole crossbow thing.”

Eva rolled her eyes.

“Deal,” Andy said.  “You do know that deals with the likes of us aren’t binding?  Not on our end, anyway.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Just so we’re clear,” he said.  Without another word, he led the way to the back of the house.  She limped behind him, the wound Buttsack had left made worse by the walking.

Eva, for her part, headed upstairs.

Stuff cluttered everything, even here.  Andy methodically moved scattered papers to appropriate piles, moved a book or two around, and then knelt by a cabinet, where he fished out a keychain from his pocket.

Everything about his movements suggested he was the one who organized everything.

More subtly, she could conclude, objects had a kind of importance in this room.  Stuff that might have been family knick-knacks in another house took up odd positions here, sort of akin to how a museum might arrange things.  Giving objects a kind of prominence.

Odd objects.  A figurine of a bear, a frame that held a strip of cloth with an embroidered knot on it taut, a kettle, a small statue of a pig, a mannequin’s hand, a metronome…

Andy unlocked the cabinet.  A drawer slid out, heavy enough that the desk momentarily rocked when it reached its full length.  Part of the drawer had to be recessed in the wall.

Knives, swords, and something that looked like a mace or a scepter, but hollow, with holes punched through the surface.

He saw her looking.  “Censer.  When you want to hit something and you need a particular kind of smoke, both at the same time.”

Five seconds later, he had another drawer open.  Guns, many of which were old fashioned, ammo, and lead pipes.

“Take your pick,” he said.

“For real?”

“Some things I wouldn’t let you take, but that’s like, uh, that gun there, it’s the first gun I bought for myself, personal attachment.  And that sword right there is impregnated with the blood of a fox-woman.  And maybe that obsidian knife, unless you had a specific use for it, it’s sort of niche, and it’d be a pain to replace.  Just about everything else, well, if you lost it, it’s an excuse to get a replacement, or it’s less clutter.  Win win.”

She ran a finger along a length of pipe from the gun drawer.  “Sometimes all you need is a good whacking stick, huh?  I know one goblin who could stand to get hit by this thing.”

Wordless, Andy picked up the pipe from the rack.  He showed it to her.

“No freaking way.  That works?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll take it.  And I’ll take that, thank you, and, if you’re sure I’m not being greedy here-”

“No.  Just so long as you don’t come after Eva later on.”

“-Promised.  I’ll take that too.”

■

The highway divided the older part of the city from the new.  Only Harcourt led under it, and the north end of Harcourt was a ways from the twin’s place.

The town seemed to be fighting her more, now.  It reminded her of being in Mara’s woods.  Everything got in her way.  There were barely any people on the streets, but the woman with the two small dogs on a leash just so happened to be on the sidewalk in front of her, and even when traffic was so light kids might have played ball hockey in the middle of the street, two cars just happened to pass by just when she realized she couldn’t walk around the lady with the dogs, who were yipping and zig-zagging so violently that a disaster seemed inevitable.

The wind pushed against her.  The snowbank devoured her leg to the knee when she tried to walk over it, trapping her, doubly hard to extricate herself from when her other calf was injured.  Then the ground on the far side was frozen, covered in gravel, making it more slippery, as if she’d stepped on marbles scattered over ice.

Her sight was having a harder time seeing reality over the spirit world.  Not an intense difficulty, but enough that she noticed.

Then, topping it off, the goblins showed up.

Broad daylight meant they had to be furtive.  They moved when her head faced the other direction.  Lurked in the shadows that were available, eyes gleaming in that reflective way that animals had.

They were more secretive this time around.  Kept more of a distance, watching and waiting for an opportunity.

They gathered in greater numbers, perhaps in hopes that if another woman with a troll arrived to back her up, they could scare the troll off.

They even, she suspected, might have spread the word that the girl who’d hunted goblins was now vulnerable.  United in a common cause.

Hatred, of course.

They made a move as she reached the bridge.

Shadows, a lack of traffic…

A dozen pairs of eyes that she could see.  Some clinging to the roof of the bridge, others lurking at the sides, or in crevices.  Most were small, cowardly.

She recognized the goblin who barred her way.

“Buttsack,” she said.

“When you’re dead by my hands, I’m going to cut the skin off your face,” he growled, “and I’m going to make it a thong.  I’ll wear it so your lips are stretched tight against my butthole, and your eyes will have a close-up view of my cock, with balls bulging out one hole and schlong out the other.”

“That’s an amazing mental picture,” she said, managing to keep the tremor out of her voice.  She drew the section of pipe.

Hope this works.

Buttsack held out his shiv.  Not a knife, per se, but a piece of metal in a knife-like shape, ragged.  “We’ll make your death so bad it makes a dozen ghosts, and I’ll fuse the ghosts to my new thong so you can feel it.  So it’s just a little bit alive.  Moving, kissing my puckered brown ass all day long.”

She slapped the pipe against her palm.

Then she pointed it at him, walking toward him.

He cackled.

The one pipe was actually two pieces of pipe, one smaller pipe sliding into the other with a healthy amount of WD-40.

The smaller pipe, in turn, had a shotgun shell stuck in the end.

The big one had a blasting cap welded to the end.

She slammed the small pipe against the big one.

It fired.  Butsack went down, one side of his face and his shoulder a bloody mess.

Not quite dead.

The smallest goblins scattered.

The big ones-

They weren’t moving.

If they did move, she could probably make a run for it, but it wouldn’t be fun.

When she drew the stiletto, it was partially for their benefit.  Because seeing her draw a weapon in front of their wounded pseudo-leader would hold their interest, keeping them watching rather than participating.

She moved Buttsack’s hands, fighting him as he moved weakly.  One hand over the other.

She stabbed both at once with the stiletto.

The goblins lurking at the dark corners of the bridge watched in silence as she dragged Buttsack into Johannes’ realm.

Into twisted, narrow streets.

What little she could make out of the real world was quick to fade.

This was another realm entirely.

She thought, but wasn’t sure, that she could hear screaming.

A child ran by, with rat ears and a long rat’s tail.

An ogre, ten feet tall and built like a cartoon caricature of a high school bully turned real, lumbered into view.  Fat, broad in the shoulder.

She didn’t flinch, didn’t show fear.

“I’m a practitioner,” she said.  “You can’t touch me.  Johannes’ rules.”

When the ogre spoke, it was with a British-ish accent.  “Not for long, little girl.”

She set her jaw and continued forward, moving more easily, even with her limp and bleeding burden.

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Signature 8.6

The streets started out narrow, and then they got worse.

It was gradual, subtle.  From the outskirts, it was easy to overlook.  Trudging from one street to the next block, the sidewalk disappeared.  Lawns in the prefab housing developments got narrower, the houses were positioned closer to the roads.

Trees older than any of the buildings here loomed over the road itself, branches knitting together overhead for a third of a block, frozen into a kind of icy archway.  Two blocks down, the overhanging trees and branches loomed over half the block, bigger.  Here and there, people were perched on porches, leaning forward, or clustered in tight groups.

Still not so unusual that she would have raised an eyebrow, if she weren’t in the know.

The road sloped slightly downhill, bending around a strip mall, a one way street with no street leading out, no good spot to turn around and go in the other direction.

Time was different here.  She’d met the twins around noon, but the sun loomed on the horizon, the sky a peach hue.  The wind always blew steadily, unfaltering, the sky was always the same color, the sun in the same height above the horizon, only shifting to different compass points in the sky, confusing any sense of direction or ideas about whether it was early or late in the day.

The attitudes of the people who congregated in the streets seemed to reflect the atmosphere.  A lack of direction.  A hundred people, a dozen cars, and half of the people looked like they’d just come downstairs and walked into the kitchen, only to realize they’d forgotten why they’d just come downstairs.

A hundred people, just going through the motions, checking the fridge, visiting stores, perpetually in a daze.

An Other stood behind a fence, arms folded on the bar that held the chain-link upright.  Massively fat, horrendously bad complexion complete with peeling skin and pimples, his eyes were spaced too far apart, mouth far too wide, his nose too flat.  A toad of a man.  Still, he wasn’t quite so unusual that she couldn’t have dismissed him as a human being with a severe syndrome or something.  Most people didn’t even look at him, and the ones that did looked away, embarrassed.

For his part, the Other was looking at her.  His eyes were spaced far enough apart on his broad head that only one could watch her at a time as she made her slow progress, his head unmoving, eyes slowly shifting to track her.  He raised a cigarette to his mouth and puffed on it.

Her leg was hurting, made worse by her burden, a fat, four-foot-tall, eighty pound goblin.  The ice and the compacted snow of the street made him easier to drag, but his skin was so loose that it compounded the little traction that did exist, and the same smooth surface made it harder for her own feet to dig in.  People who looked at her glanced away, much as they had with the Other.  They kept to the usual pace, the dissonant wanderings.

Her expression was stern as she rounded the curve in Harcourt street.

Right here, at the end of the curve, the place got more twisted.  A few more signs, a three-way intersection.  Convoluted streets that made her have to pause to figure out how to get where she was going.  Everything was crammed in together.

It was like Mara’s setup, in a way, but the goal wasn’t to keep people out.  Just the oppsite.  This was a pitcher trap.  The unwary insect could perch on the edge, only to slip and fall in.  Entering was easy.  Leaving, every curve would bend back, leading toward the city center.  The one way streets would point the wrong way, and if Johannes willed it, the city would adjust.  Try to drive out along one of those one way streets, and a car would start coming the other way, or a cop would arrive.

Or, even simpler, the streets one took to get in wouldn’t be there when the traveler looked away and back again.

The older part of Jacob’s Bell was perpetually asleep.  Excepting bursts of activity here and there around the time everyone left for work or school, Jacob’s Bell tended to be the sort of place where you could walk from A to B and only see one person or one group of people.

Here, though, it was busier.  Newer housing developments, low property costs, an hour’s commute from Toronto, and the new setup at the station all brought people in.

It wasn’t asleep, but it was… how was she supposed to even parse it?  It was waking up, and it was poised, still half caught by the twilight of near-sleep, ready to leap up and strike.  To get out of bed and start running and never ever stop.

It was like something she might imagine seeing if she had taken a bad hit to the head and she feared another.  Except she was the seeing man in this land of the blind.  It was the rest of the world that didn’t make sense, here.  Stuff didn’t quite fit together, her eyes had trouble tracking from one point to the next without getting caught or snagged, and anyone who wasn’t wandering around in a daze looked like they were perched.  Tensed, even.

The people sitting on their front steps, hands or arms resting on their knees, as if they couldn’t quite relax, even when sitting.

People and Others gathered in tight groups, conspiring. The people would be talking amongst themselves, trying to voice their vague concerns while trying to keep their unsteady grip on reality.  Across this entire domain thousands were caught in the same precipitous state.

Scarf flapping in the incessant wind, hands a little bloody, face spotted with flecks of goblin blood, she dragged the goblin behind her.  Nobody commented, nobody looked.  All for the same reason.

They weren’t real people.

They were shadows with an illusion of depth.  Snapshots.  Reflections.

Dissonance was as dangerous to them as any knife.  Once their reality was challenged, they cracked a little.

They would go well out of their way to avoid that, acting on a thread of self preservation that existed on a level well below the instinctual.

Another bend in the road, leading her to a shopping center.  Individual buildings were set up on separate city blocks, connected by tunnels that extended over the street, from building to building.

It was the busiest part of all of Jacob’s Bell, and every road was a single lane road.  With no sidewalk, she was forced to walk on the edge of the road, side-view mirrors of passing cars passing within a foot of her.  Someone honked.

This, right here, was the point where an ordinary citizen might start wondering what the fuck was going on, but they were liable to blame themselves, to wonder if they’d missed a sign.

The road on the way out of the area had a spike strip and a parking attendant’s booth in the complete wrong order, with two cars parked nearby, tires shredded.

This was where the pitcher trap started catching its flies.  She struggled for a minute to get the bloodied goblin past the spike strip.  She got him halfway over it, the spikes digging into his gut, then pulled on his leg to bring his lower half over, increasing the amount of weight on the spikes.  She managed to get his limp body to do a somersault over the spikes, grabbing one foot to resume dragging him, his face scraping against ice and snow.

Entering into the uptown area, she saw taller buildings, breaking up the view, crowding together.  A small collection of Others, three or four, were gathered by a ledge in a parking garage crammed with cars that looked like they were in pretty rough shape.  Each of the Others was about seven feet tall and slim, brown skinned with glossy black hair.  They were similar enough in appearance to be related, all wearing long winter jackets and either ankle length skirts or loose-fitting pants.

One of them, the youngest looking by appearance, was sitting on the ledge, feet dangling over a two story drop.  She had her hair in black dreads, tied back.  With how black her long jacket and dress were, even her brown skin looked light.  She watched with an intense stare, her eyes showing too much white at the edges.  Given her height, the people who passed by didn’t break the Other’s line of sight.  Psychopath eyes.  Unnerving.

There were goblins here too.  Bigger ones.  They had the same habit of peering at her from dark places, their eyes flashing momentarily like slivers of light striking on random reflective surfaces.  Unlike stray bits of light, however, they had a weight to them.

They would be Johannes’.  All of them, in one way or another.

She pressed on.  It was easier if she kept moving.  When she was forced to pause, the goblin stuck to the frozen ground, her leg seized up, and the strain in her arms caught up with her.

She wondered momentarily if it had something to do with the nature of this place.  She couldn’t help but feel she was constantly going downhill, and it was drawing her to keep moving, deeper and deeper.

A car passed close enough that her snow-crusted scarf slapped against the passenger-side window.  If her hand hadn’t been on Buttsack’s foot, the mirror might have caught her elbow.

Worrying.

She paused, trying to find a way to maneuver up to safer ground, and Buttsack kicked weakly against her grip.

Was he waking up?

Going back was too hard, arguably dangerous.  She elected to move laterally.

Up a steep, snow-crusted stairway to an intersection.

A larger building stood nearby.  Giant metal letters had been mounted on the side.

A middle school?

She headed over, shifting her grip to have one hand to each of Buttsack’s feet, letting go only when she was near enough to test a door.

The interior wasn’t warm, but it was out of that constant wind.

Mostly.  A window was open or broken somewhere, and colorful papers drifted lightly across the school hallway.

Buttsack groaned.

She dragged him halfway down the hallway.  The stiletto still pierced both of his palms, above his head.  She shifted the position of it, putting the blade between two lockers, and then kicked the handle, driving it in.  The metal on metal sound echoed through the school hallway.  Buttsack made a pained expression.

“Wake up,” she told him.

He rolled his head from one side to the other.  Half his face and most of his shoulder were a bloody ruin.  She could see muscle and exposed bone, complete with bits of dirt, and moisture from the snow and ice she’d dragged him through.

She grabbed the pipe.  A single cord connected the front of the inner pipe to the back end of the outer pipe.  It worked well, slung over one shoulder.  She aimed it at him.

“Wake up or I’m liable to shoot you.  I’m done dragging you around, one way or the other.”

His eyes opened.

A moment later, they opened wider.  “You brought me here?”

“Caught you the first time in a school.  Fitting we do this in a spot like this.”

“The Sorcerer’s Demesne.”

“Oh, that.  Yeah.”

“Bitch!  You fucking bitch!”

She bent down, grimacing at the tension in her leg where he’d bitten her the night before.  She pressed one end of the pipe against his groin.

“Bi…” he trailed off.

“I’m curious what’s so bad about being here.  I can understand why goblins want to stay away from, say, the neighborhood where the witch hunters live.  I can picture Eva hunting goblins for sport.  I can even understand why you guys want to avoid regular humans.  Common sense.  But you’re upset to be here?”

“You should be too.”

“I’m kind of upset,” she said.  She shifted position so less weight rested on her calf, and the pipe slid forward a bit in the process.  Buttsack flinched.  “An awful lot of walking.  This place isn’t even that big, but it’s so convoluted…”

“This place is bad because there are powers here,” Buttsack hissed.  “Things any self-fucking-respecting sod would fucking stay way from you moronic fucking cunt!”

She slammed the larger pipe down.  When the end of the smaller one slid from its perch over Buttsack’s groin, she didn’t try to correct it.  The spray fired into and beneath his prodigious rear end.

In retrospect, her ears ringing, she wondered if he was meaty enough to shield her from the shrapnel.

She wouldn’t do that again.

All the same, Buttsack was screaming, feet scrabbling frantically for purpose on the dusty tiles of the school hallway.  She’d taken a piece out of his rear end.

“Bitch!  Whore!”

“You know, I haven’t asked, since I’m not Isn’t it lying to call me those words?”

“Cunt!”

“I guess the words have another meaning, in a way.  Listen-”

He spat out a stream of invectives in a language that wasn’t English.  It sounded vaguely Germanic.

She sighed, took the pipe gun apart, removed the spent cartridge.  She retrieved another shotgun shell from her coat pocket and fit it into place before putting everything together again.

The onslaught of foreign curse words slowed.

It stopped as she put the pipe back into position.

“Listen,” she said.

She had his full attention.  His emotions were overflowing to the point that he couldn’t keep his expression still.  One lip twitched in some reflexive need to snarl.

“There are powers here, you said?”

“Yes.  Genies, goblins, elves, minor incarnations, wraith kings.  Changes from day to day.”

“Didn’t know we had that much traffic in Jacob’s Bell.”

“We don’t, you stupid fuckkkk-” he came to an abrupt halt as she adjusted her grip on the pipe.

“Go on.”

He glared, sullen.  “The sorcerer alters the layout to let them in.  Uses his familiar.  The rules are the same, always.  You don’t go after practitioners, you leave grudges and greater weapons at the door.  No fighting, unless it’s to go after someone who starts a fight, no deals with anyone except the Northern Sorcerer.  You leave with what you brought with you.”

Giving him an awful lot of power, if powerful creatures are respecting his rules.

“Nobody else has tried to do this?”

“Lots do it, you imbecile!  But not many mortals.  How many have this much room to work with?”

“True.  We-”

Buttsack’s head turned a fraction, ears moving to reorient.

She stopped.

Her head turned.

A little girl.  Black, maybe ten years old, wearing a parka over a white dress, gray tights on her legs, with winter boots that had fur at the top.  Her hair was in two buns at the back of her head, held in place with bright elastics.  The child’s eyes were wide.

She could see Buttsack.

The girl in the checkered scarf moved, but the little girl moved faster, running.

By the time the girl in the checkered scarf reached the corner, the little girl was gone.  A door slammed somewhere distant.

Fast.

“You could be in trouble,” Buttsack taunted.  “You bitch.”

He went rigid as she pointed the pipe his way.

“You should kill the little slut to be safe,” Buttsack said.

“How long was she watching?” she asked.

“Dunno, but I still think you should pop little slut full of whatever you’ve got there.  Make her bleed.  If you hit her in the gut you get blood mingling with shit, and she dies slow.  I’d give you my shiv but you fucking lost it, mongoloid bitch.”

“You’d think I should kill her even if there wasn’t an excuse.  You have a choice here.  Agree to obey me and do me and mine no harm for the next year, and I’ll free your hands.  Refuse, and I leave you here for something to find.”

“Might take my chances.”

“You might.  Decide now.  Offer expires when I’m done counting down from five.”

“Five seconds?  You whore!”

“Four seconds.”

“Choke on a shit-covered dick!”

“Decide fast or the genie, elf, wraith king or whatever else that finds you decides your fate.”

He turned to the foreign swear words again.

“One second…”

“Fuck!  Yes.”

“Say it, just so we’re clear.”

“I obey you, one year.”

Well, that had been easy.

In fact, she was so caught off guard by how easy it had been that she mentally stumbled.  She’d been expecting him to be stubborn and stay behind, and now she felt obligated to bring him along.

Just how scared was he?

“Coolio.  You stay close to me.  Alert me quickly and clearly to any meaningful danger.  Avoid interacting with any other entity or object except when and how I tell you to.  You can talk to me, but I expect a measure of respect.”

“Can I fucking breathe?” he asked.

“Yes.  You can walk and carry out other simple tasks.”

“Because the air and floor are objects.”

She pulled the stiletto free from where she’d jammed it into the space between locker door and frame.

He grunted.

“Work with me and we’ll relax the rules later.  Make this difficult, and you’ll have a very boring year.”

“Bitch.”

“Respect, or do you want to be forsworn in your duties?”

“Said it quiet, indoor voice,” he said, looking around at the spot where the shotgun had blasted away a portion of his rear end.  He was durable.  Dense little bastard, underneath that loose skin.  Sullen, he said, “Modicum of respect.  Not forsworn.”

“Don’t swear at me.”

He made a noise like a dying cow might.  She realized it was a groan.

“And no annoying sounds, either.”

“Uh huh.”

She knew goblins, and she knew he’d be thinking about a way to get around her rules and do something suitably problematic.

For now, he was being quiet, half-walking, half-crawling to follow her.  She didn’t slow down for him.  Let him get tired out, he’d be less of a problem later.

She looked for the child, and she couldn’t find her.  Not even with the Sight.

“Quiet,” she murmured, as they ascended a half-flight of stairs, approaching classrooms.

Voices?

She moved along the wall, approaching the first classroom.

No.

She was nearly silent as she approached the next.  Her leg ached more from the more controlled, precise movements.

At the next classroom door, she could hear the voices more clearly.

“-Else besides the scary gun chick and the cute little whatsit creature?”  A young male voice.

“It definitely wasn’t cute.  Very definitely wasn’t.  But it was just them, I think.  I didn’t look for long.”  Girl’s voice.

“Damn it.  If we could just ask… are you sure she wasn’t friendly?”

“If she was thirty, muscley and wearing a bloodstained tank top and headband and carrying a gun, and she was doing what she was doing to some Nazi supersoldier or something in a movie, I wouldn’t think twice.  But she’s like, your age, Noah.  And she’s a she, and that thing was small and it’s worse.”

“And she’s human?”  Male voice, less young than the first.

“Like I said, I only looked for a second and then I ran, but she had this metal wand, and I think that’s it.”

The girl in the checkered scarf looked down at her pipe shotgun.

She reached out and knocked on the door.  It creaked a bit as the touch made it open a fraction wider.

No response, not a noise.

She pushed the door open, checked for possible traps, magical or otherwise, then rounded the corner, entering the classroom with arms extended, pipe in one hand.

They’d backed up, plastering themselves against walls.  Virtually silent in the process.

Two boys, two girls.

They looked terrified to the point that she wondered if they would have heart attacks.  Each was frozen like a deer in the headlights.

Three were young, about ten.  One of the ten year olds resembled the older boy, Noah, who was in his mid teens.  Definitely younger than her, despite what the kid had said.  The foibles of youth.

“I mean you no harm.”

They didn’t budge.

Jesus.  The fear on their faces.

Were there more people like this around the city?  People who’d seen the Other stuff and managed to stay alive?

For any Other that liked their mortals running scared, these guys would be like candy.

Poor frigging saps.

She looked for and found Buttsack standing in the doorway, a few steps behind her.

“Hey, this is the goblin I was talking to. Buttsack, say hello.”

“Hello, whelps,” Buttsack said, in a low growl.

“Say it nicely.”

He gave her the dirtiest look he could manage, then plastered a smile on his face, wide enough to make his eyes scrunch up.  It somehow made him look far, far more terrifying.  He clasped wounded hands together, twisting them in front of him.  In a higher pitched voice, he said, “Hello, adorable little sweethearts.”

There was a pause.

Frigging goblins.

“You named him Buttsack?” one of the younger boys asked.

Frigging goblin names.

“No.  He came with the name,” she said, sighing a bit.  “Look, kids, whatever you think you saw, Buttsack and I are sort of allies right now.  You could even call us friends, since we have common interests.  Getting out of this place alive being one of them.  Right?  You can tell them.”

“We’re allies, just like she said,” Buttsack said, nodding a little too energetically.  “She might want you to be friends too.”

He sounded like he was trying to coo as he said that last sentence.  It came out strained.

Motherfucking goblins.

The kids looked more scared.

“Look,” she said.  “I mean you no harm, unless you come after me or try to stab me in the back somehow.  You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers.  When I’m done supplying the answers I can give you, I want to ask you some minor stuff.  Deal?”

She saw them break their frozen positions to glance at one another.

“Who are you?”  This from Noah’s little brother.

“I’m the girl with no name, unfortunately.  Long story.  I’m, in some ways, a lot like you.  A bad, scary, frigging strange situation got dropped on my hometown, I barely made it out alive.”

“This is happening in other places?”

“Nn-Yes, but not like you mean.  What happened to my hometown was… different.”

Her memories of the scenes, of the blood, flooded back to her.

Painful, ugly, but maybe it was good to touch base with that particular connection.  As connections to things went, her name wasn’t a big part of her attachment to hometown, and her hometown wasn’t something Padraic could or would necessarily take away from her.

Noah spoke up, “Something came after Mia, and then when we walked back home, it came after all of us.  We decided to hide out, but…”

“But that was a little while back,” the girl in the checkered scarf finished for them.  “And now things aren’t adding up.  Your families are acting weird, clocks are all wrong.”

“Yeah,” Noah said.

“Time is wrong,” the little girl from before said.  Noah had looked her way when he said Mia.

In moving her eyes from one side of the room to the other to follow the conversation, the girl in the checkered scarf saw a flicker of something.

She adjusted her Sight to look.

No fricking wonder the kid had been so fast.  Even the way they’d gone still…

The four children stood before her, and each of them was shattered.  They were like mannequins or dolls, finely detailed, everything in the right place, but bits had broken away.  Whole chunks were missing, and cracks radiated across their whole bodies.  Where gaps existed, mice had crawled into the holes.  Teeming hordes, occasionally skittering along the outside surface to find a space with more room.  Here and there, a mouse ate a smaller mouse, and like some cartoon, it grew by the slightest fraction.

Noah was different.  There were mice, yes, but the horrific rent that extended from the crown of his head to his left shoulder was occupied by what appeared to be a mangy dog, nestled into the hollow space.

The girl in the checkered scarf exhaled slowly.

When she unfocused her eyes, the multitudes became single features.  Patches of fur.  One of Mia’s eyes was black from corner to corner, glossy.  Focus properly again… the eye socket was shattered, the empty space filled with large black rats.

“Ah… crumbs,” she muttered.

“What?“Noah’s little brother said.

“Well, there’s bad news and there’s worse news.”

“That’s not funny,” Noah said.

“Nope,” she said.  “Bad news is, this whole scenario here?  Pretty much none of it is real.”

“That’s good,” Noah’s brother said.

“That’s bad,” she said.  “When I say this isn’t real, I’m referring to you guys, too.”

She could see the confusion, the alarm, even a bit of anger.

“Screw you,” Noah’s brother said.  “Don’t play with us.”

He was pale, with longer blond hair that had almost led her to mistake him for a girl.  She could see the rather large rat inside him.  Next to the dog, it was the biggest spirit present.

It would be making him more aggressive, confrontational, probably territorial, if she had to guess.

It looked gravid.  Pregnant.

She pushed the thought out of her mind.  Too weird to consider.

“You keep going quiet,” Noah’s little brother said, accusatory.

“Yeah,” she said.  “I’m… ah geez.  I’m sorry.  But you’re just pretend, kind of.”

“You keep saying that,” Noah said.  “Stop scaring my brother and his friends or we’re going to have a problem.”

I’m bigger than you, she thought.  How big a problem could we have?

She didn’t say it aloud.  Instead, she turned to the nearest desk with paper on it.  She still had the pens Sandra had given her.  One proper pen, one mostly empty pen that made ink only some of the time.  “Come.”

They were careful, slow to approach, quick to start when she moved too quickly.

By the time they’d gathered closer, she had the sketch finished.  They smelled like musk, like dust and sweat too.

An animal smell.

She’d drawn four rough outlines, like the ones that might appear on a bathroom stall.

“Here we have four people.  I caught some of your names already.  Noah, Mia…”

“Benjamin and Olive.”

“Heya,” she said.

“Whatever,” Benjamin said.

The girl in the checkered scarf looked at the girl who’d been named as Olive.

Olive was blonde, freckled, and had an expression that looked perpetually angry.  Her fingers clutched the fabric of her pants..

“Olive doesn’t talk,” Noah said.  “Something’s happened to her teeth since all this started.  She keeps biting her tongue, and the words don’t come out right.”

Without being asked, Olive opened her mouth.  The girl in the checkered scarf didn’t have a chance to look away before she saw.

Yep.  Olive had mouse teeth.

Olive also had mouse spirits filling her mouth, their bodies making her cheeks bulge as they squirmed past..  Some had blood on their faces, where they’d bitten her tongue.

She shut her mouth.  The bulging stopped.  Only the occasional mouse eye peeked out from the cracks that stretched from each corner of her mouth to the nearest ear.

“You went quiet again,” Ben said.

“…We’ve got four people here, named Noah, Mia, Ben and Olive.  These four people have shadows.”

She extended each picture to show the shadows each one cast.  She filled them in, then folded the paper, so the shadows were on the ground, the original pictures standing up.

“Well, there was a man who made a magical reality for himself.  Let’s call him the sorcerer.  Now, when wizardly types make these places for themselves, they base it on things they know, on reality.  That’s pretty normal.  But this guy, well, he worked it out so…”

She folded the paper forward and backward, then tore it along the middle, separating the shadows from their sources.

“…He could bring something very much like the real Noah, Mia, Ben and Olive with him.  Along with the houses, and the streets and everything else.  With me so far?”

“Oh my god,” Mia’s voice was faint whisper.  A mousy whisper, but the girl in the checkered scarf didn’t want to do the kids the disservice of thinking like that.

“And now he’s making it the way he wants it, pretty much.  That includes making deals with monsters.  Monsters get to do what they did in the bad old days, when we had more superstition than outright protection against them, and he gets payment in some form or another, or so I understand.”

“That monster that came after me?” Mia asked.  “The squirmy people?  The beautiful woman and her wild child?”

“Betting they’re all people who paid the sorcerer for the chance to hunt you.  And they can, because it’s not quite real.  The real Noah, Mia, Ben and Olive should be out there somewhere, going about their ordinary lives.  Maybe a little bit weaker or prone to getting sick since a bit of them got taken away.”

“Holy fuck,” Ben said.

“Yeah,” Noah said.  “I… I really want to deny this, to say it’s impossible, that it’s… Fuck!”

The shout was so sudden it made both the girl in the checkered scarf and Buttsack jump.

“That’s a good way of putting it.  Like I said, I’m sorry,” she told him.

“Bad and worse,” he said.  “What-”

He stopped.  The girl in the checkered scarf had raised a hand to interject.

“What?” he asked.

“That’s the bad.  It’s not the worse.”

All four children stared at her, expressions stark.

“Listen, I was thinking I’d do this thing with scrunching up the paper, and then showing the damage it’d do, but you don’t deserve stupid little theatrics.  All the stuff he’s doing to alter his reality, the stuff that you’re doing that’s different from how the real versions of you would act?  Well, you’re fragile.  You’re falling to pieces.”

“Pieces?” Mia asked.

The girl in the checkered scarf nodded.  “Bits are breaking away, and, uh… spirits are filling the space.  It’s why you’ve been acting differently, why you’ve been stronger in some ways and weaker in others.  The sorcerer might even be doing it on purpose.”

“This is worse?” Ben asked.  He sounded angry.  “We’re fake, we’re just props in some wizard’s screwed up fantasy world, but oh, we’re sorta dying but not really, and that’s the worse part?”

“Yeah,” the girl in the checkered scarf said.  “It’s worse.”

“You’re lying.”

I can’t lie.

“I know because I’m going through the same thing,” she said.  “A… monster took my name.  Mostly my fault.  Now I’m falling apart in the same way.  It’s why I’m here, as a matter of fact.”

“Good to know.”

Her heart caught in her throat.

An adult voice.  Or mostly adult.  One she recognized.

She turned.

“Kids, meet the sorcerer.”

They were frozen in fear and confusion.

Bad instincts, really.  Prey instincts.

“Most make a beeline straight for me,” Johannes said.  “Ask permission.  But I do suppose you do live in Jacob’s Bell, and it would be unreasonable to expect you to stay out entirely.  Hi.”

“Heya,” she said.

“Padraic?” Johannes asked.

“Yep.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave my vestiges alone.”

Maggie glanced at the kids.

Fuck.  They weren’t real, and they weren’t long for this world, but… fuck.  They were still scared.  They were thinking beings with a broad spectrum of feelings.

“Vestiges, children,” Johannes said, drawing his pipes from one pocket.  “Find another place to hide for the time being.”

“Why-” Ben started.

But Johannes was tapping the set of brass pipes against his ring.

Metal chimed, a brief sound like that from a tuning fork.

“Begone,” Johannes said.

The kids were gone in a flash, faster than was humanly possible, darting for a hole in the floor, Mia grabbing a backpack on her way.

“There,” Johannes said.

“Not a coincidence that they have dogs and rats inside them, is it?”

“No.”

“Can I ask what the long term plan is?”

“You could.  Or you could ask what you came here to ask.  I have only so much time, now that we’re close.  It won’t be long now before the claim to the city comes into question, I have things to see to.  Metaphorical Ducks to get in a metaphorical row.”

She bit her lip.

He waited patiently.

“Can you help me?”

“Yes.  Do you want my help, nameless girl?”

“I’m not so sure, now.”

“Keep telling yourself what you told them.  They aren’t real.”

“I’m fairly attached to a few people who aren’t much more real than those kids are.”

“I imagine you are.  I guess what I really need to know is… do we have a problem here, nameless girl?”

You mean, am I a problem you have to get out of the way before Jacob’s Bell changes over?

“Not just right now.”

“Then just right now, you have my assistance.  I’m stronger than Sandra, who you saw earlier.  I can nourish you in the right amounts to slow your decay.  I can provide small amounts of assistance.  To fix your problem, I’d need more of a commitment.”

She nodded slowly.  “When you say fix…”

“I can retrieve your name from Padraic.  All would go back to being the way you need it to be.  Your name might be a little tainted, and Padraic would be unhappy, but he wouldn’t take it further from that.  I know Faerie superior to him in the court, and I would act as the middleman, putting you at minimal risk.”

“In exchange for… a commitment?  You want me to look past that thing with the kids, and…?”

“And I would want you working at my side.  My allies, for the most part, are transient ones.  Mercenaries, if you will.  Help me take Jacob’s Bell.  After that… it’s up to you.  You could take a seat on my council and be my problem solver, or you could leave the city.”

Take Jacob’s Bell.  Fight Sandra.

Fight Blake and Rose?

Help the man who did that to those children.

Fake children.

Whatever.

He spoke softly, “Take your time deciding.  For now, however, I can find you a place to stay.  Do you need anything else?  I give you these things with no strings attached.”

“What time is it?  I need to step outside.”

“What time do you want it to be when you leave?”

“Three thirty?”

“On a particular day?”

“Uh, I guess not.  I was hoping it would be today.”

“You’ve already spent a full day in my realm.  It’ll be three thirty by the time you find yourself outside.  The way should be relatively clear.”

“And… do you have a phone I can borrow?”

He touched the paper she’d drawn on, and sketched a rough drawing of a cell phone.  He reached into the paper and pulled it free.

It was a flip phone, ancient, worn around the edges, the sort that would survive practically anything.

“Something that will work outside of here?”

“Ah,” he said.  He reached into a pocket and handed her a smart phone.  “I’ll need that back.”

She nodded.  “Can it call outside numbers?”

“It can.”

She nodded again.  Her heart thudded in her chest.

“Just ask for me, when you’re ready.”

She nodded again.

She left.

Her fingers dialed the familiar number.

The phone rang.

She walked through the alien landscape, and it was weirder going out than it had been going in.  Less hiding behind the veil.  Houses with crooked roofs hid in the shadows of larger buildings.

“Hello?”

“Mom?  It’s me.”

“It’s-”

“Me.  Just… me.”

“What’s wrong, honey?  You sound tired.”

“I’m… I’ve had a really bad couple of days.  I need to talk to you, and I kind of need you to not ask about what’s going on.”

“I can do that, I’m just cooking dinner right now.”

“Yeah?  No other obligations?”

“No, hon.”

They talked about inane things until the phone’s battery ran out.

Signature 8.7

“I guess I missed you yesterday,” she said.

Prick of the finger.  Blood collected in fingernail, three drops deposited on the ground.

“I feel worse about it than you’d think.  Missing a day.  But it’s reality shenanigans, I guess.  Going to places where time passes differently.  I’m… jeez, coming from there to here, I’m seeing how screwed I am, and I’m hoping I’m not giving away something I can’t afford to give away, right here.”

Molly Walker’s ghost stood there, head bowed.

“Hopefully the tradeoff in keeping our little connection here strong is more or less equivalent.  If it isn’t, well, I guess it’s not all bad.  Penance doesn’t count for much if it isn’t hard, right?”

The ghost didn’t respond.  Couldn’t.

“Unless you’re religious, in which case you just gotta say a few prayers.  You aren’t religious, right?  That’d be weird.  Churchgoing diabolist family.”

Her light, fake laugh was empty in the still air.

A group of children walked along the sidewalk further up the hill that overlooked the spot where Molly had died.  Normal, everyday kids, on their way back from school.  Now that Jacob’s Bell was shifting gears and starting to grow, or even trying to grow, the elementary school and high school remained close to one another, but the elementary school was shifting to only serve grades from kindergarten through six.  The middle school in the north end was the go-to spot for the sevens and eights.

Which was problematic, because they were walking straight into the sorcerer’s realm, and they were walking out with a little bit less of their Selves.

“Nobody’s looking at me, and getting places is hard.  The goblin with a chunk missing from his backside was covering more ground than I was.  Having a name means you have a certain legitimacy in the world.  The smallest spirits don’t have a reason to get out of my way, now.  Feels like I’m walking against a headwind, no matter where I go.”

Molly didn’t move.

“My vision is getting a little weird around the edges, which is making me think I don’t have a lot of time.  Eyes are the window to the soul and all that.  Says a lot when your eyes are starting to feel the hit.”

The girl in the checkered scarf sighed.

“But I don’t want to dump my problems on you.  I just wanted to stick a nail in this connection, and above all, I wanted to let you know that I might not be paying more visits.  I don’t know what happens next, but it’d be weird to be on Johannes side and against the Thorburns, but still paying you visits…”

She trailed off.

Molly looked afraid.  Always, even when her echo reflected moments before she’d seen the goblins.

General fear.

Justified fear.

“Frig.  You can’t make it easy on me, huh?  Can’t give me the thumbs up and tell me I should go do what I need to do?  You gotta look like that and remind me that I’m coming perilously close to doing what I did, siding with Laird.”

She jammed her hands into her pockets, and found her pockets colder.

“I guess I gotta maybe say goodbye here.  Because I dunno what’s going to happen, and I’m running out of time.  I’m… I sort of made a promise to myself, way back when, that I wouldn’t be passive again.  I didn’t want to just stand by the next time trouble came calling, or cry when I could fight back.  And I guess I made the mistake of thinking I had to be aggressive, that fighting back meant fighting.  I’m still doing it, I guess.  I’ve always really been really crum- really shitty at finding the middle ground.  Yeah, fair warning, I might swear a bit, even though I’m not supposed to.  Count it as penance, I guess.”

Behind her, kids laughed as they ran along the sidewalk.  They walked right by the spot where Buttsack was hiding.

She summed up her courage, drew in a breath.  “I-”

Her voice cracked.

She tried again.

“I’m really fuckin’ sorry, Molly.”

She was as close to the ghost as she could get without intruding on the protective circle and shrine.  She watched for any hint of a response.

Kind of stupid to, but she still looked.

The lump in her throat was growing by the second.  All she could do was keep her breaths small.

She raised her arms a bit, because the emotions that were welling up were intense enough to demand she do something, and they were the sort that made her feel like she should hug someone or hit someone.

But she couldn’t do either.  Even if she deserved to hug Molly’s ghost, which she didn’t, there was the protective shrine and the fact that this Molly was only an echo of her fear and terror from that night.

The ghost’s hands weren’t shaking, she noticed.

Maybe a little less fear and terror now.  Just like Johannes’ children had been patched up with the spirits of rats and dogs, she’d patched up Molly some, giving up a bit of herself.

The emotion wasn’t going away, and she couldn’t do anything here.  She had nothing more to say that wouldn’t just take away from that last line.

She wondered about giving more blood to the ghost, while her blood still had any power at all.  Give it all up, a proper sort of penance, and-

And no.  No, even before she was through putting the thought together, she dismissed it.  That would be giving up.  It would mean she wasn’t fighting back.

She let her arms drop to her side and kicked the first clump of snow she passed by, hard.

The effect wasn’t quite so dramatic as she’d hoped it would be.

Fight to the end.

She met up with Buttsack.  He glowered.  “What?”

“You look like you’re going to cry.”

“Get moving.  We have stuff to do.”

He moved, his limp matching hers, in most part.

The trip the rest of the way up the slope to the road was difficult.  Headwind, the snow just deciding to be in the worst possible condition for walking through.

Did celebrities and powerful people glide through life, in large part, because their names carried weight?

Doing things this way wasn’t working.

The only person who was able and ready to help was Johannes, and she wasn’t sure if Johannes would ask her to make compromises.  Laird had asked her to make a compromise.

There weren’t many roads open to her.

Was there a road where she could be her, while avoiding retreading old ground and doing what she’d done to Molly after Laird had approached her?

If there was… what would that road look like?

Her best tools were the goblins.  Nobody else wanted them, and she understood them.  She’d dwelt on them for so long that her mind was keyed to think like goblins thought, to expect their reactions.  They were uncomfortable to deal with, but they were comfortable territory.

“Buttsack?”

“Yes, nameless mistress?  Wormy apple of my eye?”

He made his voice ooze with syrup.  Had he seen the reaction his ‘sweet’ act had had on her earlier?

He was still working out safe ways to get to her.  Scattershot approach for now, he’d narrow it down later.

“You get that line from some cartoon or something?”

“Yes,” he said.  His smile showed bad teeth.

“Needs some work,” she commented.

His strategy wasn’t the best bet.  Later wasn’t a sure thing, when it came to her.  She was liable to lose her grip on reality, or, more correctly, reality would lose its grip on her.  To top it off, the ogre she’d seen on entering the north end had warned her that she might not be a practitioner for long.

She’d said her name when she’d sworn her oath.  How long before the oath unraveled, leaving her without anything at all?  Padraic was pretty much guaranteed to be making a claim to her ability to practice if he was pretending to be her, but he hadn’t sounded confident about his ability to simply take that power.

If that was one hold she could maintain… maybe she needed to put a nail in that too.

Well, getting power would be a start.  If she had a little bit more oomph at her disposal, she’d be able to cement her position better.  There were ways to do it, even, without committing to a decision.

“Are local goblins still hanging out at the MacEwen Park shed?”

“Last I saw.”

“Do you know a better spot to find a lot of goblins in one place?”

“Don’t really care enough to know.  Little fucksops run when they see me coming.”

“Are you pulling my leg?  You’re telling me you’re not a charmer, Buttsack?”

“They do what I say when I need it.  Give one of them a kick in the ass and tell him to gather the others, or I’ll come after them.”

“Like the time before, where I shot you.”

“Yeh,” he said, barely audible.  He glared at her.  “Like that.”

She reached an intersection and turned north.

“We’re not going to the park?”

His bulldog-like face, growl of a voice and the question made her think it was what a dog might say in similar circumstances.  It was a welcome shift of tone from the accumulated emotion of talking to Molly.  She laughed out loud.

Stumbling a bit in the face of the wind and the slippery sidewalk, she had to stop, leaning on a railing, still laughing.  The wind picked up, catching on her scarf.

The girl in the checkered scarf grabbed at her scarf before the wind could claim it and make it so she was no longer the girl in the checkered scarf, but only the girl.

“That’s a no?”

“Yes, we’re going to the park…” she said.  She secured her scarf. “But we have one step first.”

He saw the tunnel loom and groaned.

They passed into the tunnel, and Johannes’ realm unfolded before them.  A different entry point than it had been on her last visit.

Straight to Johannes’ apartment building, the tallest building in Jacob’s Bell at maybe eight stories.  The penthouse was perched on top, sitting askance, a tilted crown atop the building, all done up in tempered glass that reflected the peach colored sky in dark purples, golds and reds.

The sorcerer had left the invitation open, the door sitting ajar.  Welcoming her in as he might one of his guests.

Buttsack muttered something foul under his breath, growing with intensity as they took the step that put the real Jacob’s Bell firmly behind them.

“Suck it up, Buttsack.  The alternative is that I ask you for this stuff, and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you want to be sent out to collect.”

“What stuff?” he asked.

■

Johannes nodded slowly.  “Chains, steel wool, lighter fluid and matches, shotgun shells…”

The windows were open, but it wasn’t cold.  Here on the top floor of the tower, the upper section was raised, and only an arrangement of pillars held it up, reflective panes extending between each pillar, floor to ceiling, marked with curls of gold, bronze and the like.  Inside each curl of metal were the seams for the opening of the windows.

“…marbles, chalk and a plastic bucket…”

“Two buckets,” she said, without taking her eyes off the view.

Here, standing in the middle of the room, the only view was of the clouds on the horizon, cast in colors that were surprisingly cold, considering they were reds, oranges and purples.  There was no city, and there was no winter, not from this vantage point.  The breeze was warm, the air fresh in a way that one typically only found while driving through a park or something.

He went on, “…Cranberry juice, not pure, some coke, bottled water, and some sandwiches.  That’s all?”

She nodded.  “So long as I can take it out of your territory, yeah, that should be it.  What are your terms?  What do you want?”

“What are your intentions?”

She wasted no time in replying.  “Getting power.”

“To be used against me?”

“Are you seriously worried about little nameless me?”

Johannes smiled.  “I suppose not.”

The girl in the checkered scarf had to readjust her hairband to keep the hair at the front of her ear from tickling her eye.  “I’m hardly a threat to anyone, but if you need it, I promise not to use the power I gain here against you.”

“Very well.  I have one guest I can tap for the task.  Faysal, do you think you could bear a message to the Duck Knight?”

His dog sat by the window, long white hair billowing in the wind.  “The market district has no oversight.  The Djinn-born are restless.”

“I’ll keep an eye on it,” Johannes said.  He let go of the paper.  The wind direction changed, carrying it to Faysal.

Faysal flared.  A flash of light, a gleam, a brief glimpse of a humanoid figure, too bright to look directly at, and the entire area seemed to bend, like it sometimes did in the science fiction shows, when a ship kicked off into hyperdrive and the area took a second to resettle.

Then the dog and paper were gone.

“Duck Knight?”

“Long story.  Tagged along on another’s invitation.  We had words, and he’s agreed to be at my disposal while I grant him my hospitality.  I’m disposing, and I’m frankly glad to have the chance.  I wouldn’t want him thinking he’s getting off scott-free.”

“Okay then.”

“We have a chance to talk.  Can I offer you food or drink?”

“Can I refuse politely?”

“You can.”

She nodded slowly.

“Power,” he said.

“Power,” she replied.

“Power comes with costs.  It’s hard for me to step away.”

“Your familiar is a gatekeeper.  It can go virtually anywhere, virtually instantly, including some places with locked doors, or did I hear wrong?”

“You heard right.”

“I’d ask how you pulled that off, but you wouldn’t give me a straight answer.  There are a lot of things I really want to ask.  Need to ask, even.”

She fidgeted with the end of her scarf in her hands.  She had nothing to bargain with.

“I might give you a straight answer,” he said.  “I did promise to help you out where I could.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“I’ll give you three answers if you give me three.  But we can each retain a veto, to be fair.”

“Is this a trap?  This sounds like a trap.”

“Not a trap,” Johannes said.  “Ask your questions first.  I’ll match mine to yours in a way that’s fair.”

“Yeah?  Okay, then I’ll bite.  How did you get all this?”

“Very broad.  Are you sure you want me to answer?”

“It would count against my question count if I said no, I’m pretty sure.”

“It wouldn’t.”

“Then I’ll be clearer.  How did you get this demesne?”

“Going right for my veto.  No comment.”

She arched an eyebrow.  Johannes smiled.

“Alright, then.  How did you get something like that as a familiar?”

“Like all of the best friendships, we started out as enemies.  The inverse is possible, too.  It’s all about the strength of the connection.”

She arched an eyebrow, but was careful not to ask a question to get further details.

“I suppose that doesn’t answer the question.  We began as enemies.  When you mess with the natural order of creation or go well outside your way to bend the rules, you can expect the universe to send something like him after you.  I should have gotten the attention of a entity of the third choir, who oversee structure, but I suppose they weren’t absolutely sure.  They sent one of the little ones after me.”

“Little.”

“Yes.  Equipped to deal with the problem if it decided it had to.  I made an argument, he threatened me.  We even skirmished, very briefly on at least nine occasions, and he drew closer and closer to me.  Even came close to annihilating me.  Forced me to play my hand sooner than I’d hoped, but I played my hand all the same.  Once I’d started the ritual-”

“I take it you’re talking about the Demesne ritual.”

Awkward, to be in the position of being forced to give up a question or make a statement and risk lying.  She opted for the latter.  Carefully.

“Yes, I’m talking about the Demense ritual.”

“You vetoed my attempt to ask about the Demesne thing about a minute ago.”

“I did.  If I’d answered, I’d have had to tell you how.  Here, I can tell you about it.  About, meaning movement in a particular area.  I have room to maneuver in this case.  Did you want me to continue?”

“Please.”

“Well, once I started the ritual, he couldn’t interfere.  It’s not in his makeup, and quite frankly, I should have been destroyed as it stood.  We talked between rounds-”

“When you do the ritual, you invite locals to challenge your claim.  You’re talking about talking between individual challenges.”

“Something like that.  Yes.”

He paused, very deliberately, giving her a look.

“Go ahead.  Sorry.”

“Well, at one point he asked why I hadn’t tried using my pipes.”

“He was a dog then, I take it.”

“He was a great many things.  You could argue there was a little bit of everything in him.  The pipes could have worked.”

“But…”

“But I have a sense of how things work.  I might have won the battle, but I would have lost the war.  As it stood, I talked him into it.  Made a very convincing argument about the way things should be.  The deciding point to sway him, apparently, was that I hadn’t tried to use the pipes.  I claimed my Demesne and my familiar within seconds of one another.”

“So… that suggests the universe didn’t need him for its errands.”

“The universe did need him.  This is something of a vacation.”

“Ah.”

“Your second question?”

“Where’d you get the pipes?”

“I bought them from a man who had no idea they were an instrument.  He thought they were art.  I’ve been led to believe they’ve been wandering.  Escaping, I’d venture to say.  I did my research, trying to find out what path they’ve traveled, and all I can tell is that they were once in the hands of men and women who most definitely should not have the ability to beguile children.  Perhaps a long succession of those men and women.  I don’t know if they’re the originals or if a very bad person decided to make them, but they serve.”

The girl in the checkered scarf shivered.  Very bad people.

“Then my third question,” she said, “Would be why?”

“Very broad.  I’d warn you-”

“I know.  Broad question, broad answer.  It’s cool.”

“Did you know, against all odds, we’re actually winning?”

“Who’re we?”

“Men, women, children.  Humanity.  We’re beating back the Others.  We’ve got twenty-and-thirty-somethings in a prolonged adolescence, compared to a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, when most teenagers could be expected to be working, growing up fast.  Even people of retirement age are enduring under delusions, blithely striding forward into ruin, with crippling debt and no savings.  We’re reveling in a culture of relative innocence, and longstanding agreements put in place centuries ago protect people.  Society is changing with a startling speed, and the Others can’t keep up.  They fix themselves to ideas and methods and then fall by the wayside when we abandon our radios or our lanterns in favor of televisions and electricity.”

“We’re winning?”

“We’re swelling in number, and where there used to be only points of light in the midst of the night-time, small candle flames and hearthfires, our nights are bright now.  They have less shadows to lurk in.  We’ve grown to a population of billions, and the rules put in place by one brilliant man with an eye to the future have made it so that they can’t really stop us.  They kill hundreds, but we grow in terms of thousands in that same span of time, and then we send our practitioners to deal with the most problematic ones.  They have less fertile ground to grow from, as we put superstition and fear behind us and move on with blind, stupid confidence.”

The look he gave her as he said that last part made her feel like she’d almost been insulted, but it wasn’t quite so direct that she could call him on it.

“Don’t get me wrong.  You could say I’m one of those people,” he said.  He covered one eye, and pried the other open.

She looked away before she could see the empty socket.

He passed the orb from one hand to the other, then put it back.  “Blind, partway there.  Confident?  Yes.  Stupid?  I don’t have the objectivity to say, but, well, I’ve put this together, so that might be answer enough.”

“Agreeing or disagreeing?”

“Yes,” he said.  He smiled a bit.  “I don’t think we’ll banish all the Others anytime soon.  Or even in a hundred years, or a thousand. But we’re making inroads.  The landscape is changing, and Others are on unsteady footing.  Some won’t be uprooted no matter how much the landscape changes.  Because they’re powerful, or because they’re rooted in something too fundamental.  Some have found their place in the new landscape, but I imagine they’re still uncertain.  Even humans are a little uncertain.  Then there’s another group.  Some Others are looking for a place.  Faysal was one, in a way, and I think I’d rather give them a place than see what happens when they try to take it.”

He paused to let that sink in, then spoke again, “I won’t say it isn’t selfish.  I think, as the situation shifts and Others are replaced by us, others will start doing what I’m doing.  Maybe Lords will start offering up their cities.  It’ll concentrate the damage the Others do to us, maybe even slowing it, giving us more time to expand and assert or dominion… And whatever happens, I wouldn’t mind being the example people look to, ideally as a success story.”

“Ideally,” she said.

“That’s why.  It’s why I reached out to you, seeing you displaced as well.”

“I’m not an Other, as far as I can tell.”

“In the midst of a revolution, I’d rather be the one the other guy is shaking hands with than the one they’re crossing swords with, whether the other guy is Other or practitioner or human,” he said.

He looked so at ease, and he was talking about such grand ideas.

“Faysal is back,” he commented.  “We should hurry this along, I’m thinking.  You’re more or less secure while you’re here-”

“But you can’t do anything to stop Padraic from taking what he takes.  Sandra said the same thing.”

She looked.  The dog stood at the edge of the room, looking out the window at the city below, hair blowing in the wind.

“My turn?”  He asked.

“Please don’t screw me over.  It wouldn’t be sporting,” she said.

“Not to worry.  My first question… you’ve heard my argument, you know my agenda, at least in the abstract.  are you going to take my offer?”

The question caught her off guard.

She slowly shook her head.  “I can’t.  It’s… it would put me at odds with people who’ve been fairest to me, and that wouldn’t be fair to them.”

“Sandra and the Thorburn family?”

“Yes.”

“I see.  Then my second question would be… is there anything I can do to convince you?”

“Honestly?  Probably, yes.  But…”

“But…” he echoed her.

“It’s like it was with Faysal, maybe.  Yeah.  You want to play that game, I could list off stuff you could probably give me.  Important stuff…”

Fire and blood and darkness stuff.

He answered her.  “But I’d lose the war.  I imagine it’s in a different sense than having two enemies to fight for every one I vanquish.”

“…I think we’d both lose in the long run.  I guess it’s part of who I am.  I can’t take the easy road.  I can’t be passive.”

“Even if these important things are weighing on you.”

“Even then.  I need to find my own strength here.  I have to fight my way past this.”

“I see.  I could press you on the subject, demanding my answer.”

“I could veto,” she said, her voice firmer.  “and we might not get along so well afterward.”

He nodded.  “I won’t put us in that position then.  Keep your veto.  I have just one more question, I suppose.”

“Sure.”  She tensed, ready for the knockout blow.

“What’s the story with your being unable to swear?”

She blinked.

“I can put two and two together, but I’ve wondered.”

“I traded the harshest part of my tongue to a goblin for information on how to bind superior goblins.  I, uh… that’s pretty much the whole story.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t suppose you know where there are any superior goblins?” she asked.

“I’d be betraying my guests if I directed a practitioner their way.”

“Goes against the whole point, huh?”

“Yes.  In theory, I could point you to a certain individual who betrayed my rules, Rackspatter of the Nine Thousand Scalps, but I wouldn’t be doing you a service.  For one thing, he can’t be bound.  If I remember right, ninety-nine of his nine thousand scalps are from practitioners that tried and failed.  It’s like the rule of three, reinforced thirty three times over.  At this point, it’s a foregone conclusion.  You’d be the hundredth.”

“And he’d be over nine thousand,” she said.

Johannes’ smile suggested he browsed the internet.  That was telling.

“Damn it.  So the goblin I dealt with got my curse words, letting him give people tongue lashings that hurt, but I’m gonna have to wait.”

Johannes raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Wait?  You’re not taking my deal, but you’re speaking with an eye to the future.”

“Yeah,” she said, quiet.

She trudged over to the spot where the dog had dropped the bag.  It was filled with next to everything, some of it in plastic bags.

Faysal was looking at Buttsack, who was perched on the railing, staring out at the city.  As different from the familiar as anything.

“A magicked bag,” Johannes commented.  “Everything weighs one tenth what it should.”

She tried to pick up the bag, and found she didn’t have the strength.

I’m as weak as a baby.

“Buttsack,” she said.

The goblin huffed out a bit of a groan before picking up the bag.

“I’ll need the bag back, if you’re up to the task,” Johannes said.  “As for the phone…”

“I’m suspicious there’s a reason you keep lending me things,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Keeps me coming back.”

He smiled, a faint dimple showing in one cheek.

A tell, even.

“Can I ask a favor?” she asked.  “Two?”

“Perhaps.”

“Let me hold on to the phone?  Battery’s dead-”

“Do you need the charger?”

“No.  Just… just the phone.  And a book on claiming a demesne,  if you have one?”

“Bag, phone, and book.  Three favors requested.  I could ask for something in return.”

“Yeah.”

“Let me ask one more question.”

“I can’t shake the feeling that all of this was a lead-up to this one question you wanted to ask.”

“No, not at all.  In fact, if you don’t feel like answering, that’s alright.”

“Can I not answer and still take the stuff?”

“No,” he said.

“Well, if there’s no harm in the question, shoot.”

He glanced at Faysal, then back to her.  “What’s the real reason you said no to me?  It can’t just be your personality at work.”

“Ah,” she said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“I… I guess, when it comes down to it, you’ve got to fall back on what you know, you know?”

“I know.”

“And you told me your story, and you told me your agenda, and even though you left stuff out, I can sort of piece it all together.  But at the end of the day, there’s only one guy that I know of who’s tempted any angels down a different path, and I bet he sounded awfully convincing too.”

Faysal tilted his head.

“Ouch,” Johannes said.

“Just saying.”

“My fault for asking,” he said.

She put one hand on Buttsack’s head and steered the goblin towards the door.

“Would that other guy wish you luck?” Johannes asked.

“Probably.”

The floor tiles rotated, opening a hole.  A table rose from the floor, and Johannes picked up the book.

He handed it to her.  “Well, good luck all the same.”

“Appreciated.”

“Can Faysal send you anywhere particular?”

“That might help.  Buttsack, you’ve been by the shack, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Where were the guards stationed?”

“No guards.  We come and go enough to see if there’s anyone nearby.”

Faysal spoke, his voice that was accented in a way that made it richer, not flawed.  “I can put you two somewhere safe, child.”

She nodded slowly.  “Thank you.  The shed in MacEwen Park.  Can you put me there somewhere around…”

“A safe time, a safe place?” Faysal asked.

“Uhh, sure.  Thank you.”

Light washed over her, and it was warm, and in the midst of it, she saw Faysal Anwar as it truly was.

■

Cold air hit her like a hammer blow.

That wasn’t what had shocked her so much.

“Holy bucking candy balls,” she said, eyes wide.  “I think I might have pissed Faysal Anwar off with that comparison I made between Johannes and-“

“He’s always like that,” Buttsack muttered, interrupting.

“Frigging hell,” she said.  “Then remind me not to get on his bad side.”

“As you command, my mistress, wart on my cockshead, puckered-“

“Shh,” she said.

There were trees all around.  The park was a sliver of land that, as she understood it, was too much hassle to put buildings on.  Too close to the marsh – Hillsglade House was visible in the distance.

The wind pushed at her like she was some stuffed toy caught in the grip of two warring children.

“Every time I leave, I’m weaker,” she said.

“Time’s passing fast,” Buttsack said.

“How much time?” she asked.

“Enough.”

“Is it intentional?”

“No.  Something that fucking big, it distorts everything around it.”

That white dog…

“Frig,” she said, again.  “And Sandra thinks she can fight Johannes?”

“Yes.”

“Frig,” she said.  “I feel so small.”

He was silent.

“And I’ll get smaller if I don’t move.  Which direction?”

He pointed.

“Kill any goblin that tries to stop me or warn the others.”

Buttsack grinned.

He had his uses.

She loaded her pipe, moving one knife to one pocket.

The shack loomed in view.  A section of playground sat on the other side of the trees, distant.

The ‘shack’ was a building with maintenance equipment for park and playground, built of concrete blocks and a high window barred by a grille, to keep people from breaking in.  Squat, big enough to park a riding lawnmower inside, and thoroughly decrepit, to the point that there were several large holes in the exterior.

The sun shone, casting it in silhouette, making it hard to tell just where the holes were.

A resting spot for goblins.

There were others in the town.  Had Buttsack been unsure about this one, she might have tried one of the houses.

This served.

“Are they asleep?  Check.  You should know what tricks to watch for.”

“I’m one of the fucking ones they’re watching for,” Buttsack said.

“Try.  Signal me when you’re ready.”

He creeped.  Goblin creeping was different from human creeping.  He could dance along darkness, become the ill winds.

Buttsack wound up in a position where he simply perched within a hole in the wall.

He turned and gave her the finger.

That would be the signal.

The snow pulled at her feet.  Even the short walk to this point had drained her.  She felt like she had just finished a marathon.

She’d felt a definite loss of personal power after her first visit to Johannes’ realm.  Now this?

How much time had passed?

She reached the shack.  Her hand touched the worn exterior.  Had a goblin taken a sledgehammer to it?  The damage was heavy.

“How many?” she murmured.

“Six.”

“Bag,” she said.  “Quietly.”

She only managed to add the qualifier a fraction of a second before he let go.  He caught the strap with one finger, stopping the bag mid-flight, breaking the fall.

Quiet was relative, it seemed.  She reached out, her hands on the bag, and she knew she wouldn’t be strong enough.

She threw herself against the bag, instead, pressing it against the wall with her body.  It made for more noise than she wanted.

Buttsack leaped.

She heard a strangled scream.

More noise as the bag scraped against the wall, her arms straining as she fought to keep it from crashing to the ground.

The moment it stopped, landing in softer snow, she was opening it.

Another strangled scream.

The goblins were waking up.

She pulled the chain from the bag, everything from fingertip to toe straining as she fought to pull it free.  Other things were dragged out of the bag as the chain came out.

Once the stuff was out of the way, the process was faster.  The chain unraveled, and she circled the building.  She stopped at the front door, winding the chain around the latch.

A goblin appeared just in front of her, through a hole that she had yet to bar.

She grabbed the pipe, saw its eyes widen in recognition-

The blast was deafening in the relative quiet.  She wondered if her lack of presence in the world would keep people from paying attention, or if they’d catch the shotgun blast all the same, but find themselves unable to place it.

They were ignorant and innocent, whatever the case.

He’d gone back inside.  She had to haul on the chain harder, as it dragged against three corners of the building now.

Too difficult.  She dropped it against the base of the building and headed for the bag.  Easier to grab the other end.

Another two goblins appeared.

She hadn’t had time to reload.  She pointed the pipe at them all the same.

“Try the other door,” she said.

Then she moved to slam the pipes together-

They were gone.

Goblins were cowardly, as a general rule.  One of the first rules she’d learned.

She touched the two ends of chain together, then moved the bag’s contents so the metal there would help bar the gap.

As barriers went, it was weak.  Metal charged by cold.  She only needed it to hold for a minute.

Her hand touched the hole Buttsack had used to get inside.  Big enough for a raccoon to crawl through.

It would have to do.

The bucket was in the bottom of the bag, fitting the bag’s shape.  Most of the stuff was packed inside.

Ideal.  It made it easier.

She struggled with the buckets, moving it, removing the chain by tilting the bucket, then fed it through the nearest available hole in the structure.

grabbing the sandwiches and drinks, putting them in the bag with the remaining bucket.  Now it was light enough to sling over one shoulder.

Bucket, marbles.

And one of the items that Andy had given her.  The same item he’d stuck to the door.

A rectangular package wrapped in butcher’s paper.

She unfolded the paper.

The contents were mostly soft, dull beige, with a bit of hardware on the one end.  A microchip, a bit of wiring, and a dull screen that might have fit on a calculator.  All in all, it was surprisingly small.

Then again, she had no idea how big these things were supposed to be.

She dropped it in the bucket, then packed it in with the steel wool.

She tossed the bucket inside.

She could hear the confused comments, the swears.  She could see them peering through the holes.  She was already limping away.

“Fuck?  What the fuck!?” one goblin.  “What’s this?”

“Hey!  Bitch!” Buttsack cried out.

“You’ll live,” she said, without turning around.

“Cant get at whatever she shoved inside!”

“Break it!” Buttsack was shouting.

She walked until a good sized tree was between her and the goblins.

She pulled the transmitter out of her pocket.

Safety off.

She pressed the button.

She’d thought the pipe shotgun was loud.

When her senses returned to her, she was lying in the snow.

The world was a little darker, and not because time had passed.

Cracks ran through everything, as if the world were a picture, and the bomb had broken the glass in the frame.

Here and there, the cracks opened wide enough for a foot to slip through.

She crawled to her feet, careful to avoid the gaps.

She suspected she didn’t have the strength to open a door at this point.

It would be ignoble, if somewhat fitting, if she couldn’t do this next part.

Walk around the shack…

Stepping further out of the woods, she had a view of the town.

Most of it.  It was faint, faded, and further away than it should have been.  Everything looked like it was uphill, as if she stood in the midst of a great depression.

Not the small explosive’s work.

The door had been partially damaged.

Right.

She moved slowly, taking a moment to reload the pipe shotgun.

She pushed the damaged door open, and the middle held fast, held by chain, while the part that should have connected to the hinges swung inward.

She squeezed through, stumbling and nearly falling on her way in.

The goblins were wounded, but not killed, filled with glass marbles or shards of the things, as well as bits of plastic bucket and maybe some steel wool.

Buttsack was already on his feet, glaring with the hate of a thousand sociopaths.  He started to hobble her way.

“Stop,” she said.

He didn’t.  She didn’t have that much sway over him anymore.  He spoke, and his voice was a growl.  “I could-”

She shot him in the leg.

He screamed.

“Now you can’t,” she murmured.

She pulled the chain to the middle of the room, then arranged it in a circle, looped three times over, avoiding the spot in the floor which opened up into some seemingly bottomless pit.

The darkness shifted, and in the corner of her vision, it was worse.  She couldn’t shake the feeling that it was getting worse behind her, in all of her blind spots, waiting to catch her by surprise.

Her sanctuary was against goblins alone.  A circle Seven feet in diameter.

She sat down, cross-legged, and pulled the remaining items out of the bag, collecting it in a pile.

She’d opted for the lighter fluid and matches over a large battery because she hadn’t been sure how strong she would be.  Her plan had been to use her own blood if she had the strength, and the lighter fluid along with improvised materials if she hadn’t.  As it happened, she hadn’t needed to worry.

Flecks of goblin had been scattered throughout the room.

She used the end of her scarf to clean the inside of the circle, then painted a circle around the inside of the chain.  Goblin blood.

Chalk for a third circle.

Chalk for circles inside the circle, and lines that led to where her legs and rear end met the floor.

She pulled off her scarf.  “My dads bought this for me.  They gave me shelter, in more ways than one.  They gave me strength.  They’re at the core of who I am.”

Scarf in one circle, with the word ‘Dads’.

“My mom…”

She put in the phone Johannes had lent her, the vehicle for her latest, freshest communication with her mom.

An ‘x’ in goblin blood.  “My hometown…”

There weren’t that many connections she could secure.

Pipe shotgun.  “My relationship to goblins.”

She picked up the book on Demesnes, then shifted position until a circle was in front of her.  “Blake.  He told me he’d teach me magic.  My first real friend here.”

She opened the book, paging through it.

“Biiiiiitch,” Buttsack groaned.  He didn’t move, still staring up at the ceiling.

Others were rousing, reaching into open wounds to dig out marbles.

“Take your time,” she said.  “I’m… well, I won’t say I’m not in a hurry, but I can wait.”

She found the page on Demesnes.

But there was one more circle to attend to.

She pricked her finger with the stiletto, then let the blood collect.

The cracks around her yawned wider.  The structure shook.

She could see one or two of the goblins smiling.

One drop.

She let the blood collect again.

The cracks widened further.  A deep, endless darkness, a void that beckoned.

“If you want me,” she told the void, “You’ll have to take me.”

Second drop.

“I’ll take you,” Buttsack said.

She ignored him.

The third drop collected.

Reality cracked and creaked, straining to hold together, as the blood filled the little square of her baby fingernail.

She let it drop, and her vision wavered.  She very nearly fell over into the nearest crack.

There was barely any light now.  A crack ran through the window, allowing only a sliver through.

“Molly,” she said.

The word passed her lips, and she sat.

Waiting.

In the dark space around her, barely visible, the goblins moved, picking bits out of their wounds.

One slipped outside.

He came back with friends.

An hour might have passed, she couldn’t be sure.  She read through Demesnes to pass the time, to learn.

The goblins recovered, healing from the wounds that hadn’t been dealt by metal.  She reloaded her gun.

She ate and drank.  The sandwiches had been made as she’d specified.  Close enough to her favorite ham and cheese.

When all of the goblins were standing, Buttsack included, she was ready.

She paged through Demesnes to find her way to the ritual.

A demesnes wasn’t in the game plan.

“I hereby make a claim,” she said.  “Let this be my statement.”

The goblins watched.

She improvised, using the demesnes ritual for a guide, a loose outline to follow.  “I claim a name, and I claim only that name.  I claim it by the connections here, and only these connections.  I-”

She hesitated.

“-I name myself Mags.  By this, this remnant of my old name, I claim my Self, I claim my strength, and I deny Maggie Holt from taking anything further.  I give up what I have lost, and I hold to what I still have.

“But I won’t be half a person.  I claim other things.  I claim myself to be the wild card.  I claim myself to be the neutral party.  Three times, I was met and welcomed, and three times did I bargain.  I know these people have no reason to gainsay me in this.  I will be the messenger, the ambassador, the deciding figure, in Jacob’s Bell, until I’m replaced or unable to serve.”

I will be a part of this shithole for the indefinite future.

“Let this be my challenge.”

The words had a resonance.

“If anyone would deny me this, I bid them to come, and to go fuck themselves.  I’ll answer them, and meet them in fair contest of mutual agreement.  I so swear, with all my being to hold onto what I have here, I swear with my everything, as my being is all I have left.”

She aimed her pipe gun and fired it.

The sound rippled, reaching far.

She waited.

Footsteps passed outside.

Sandra.

“No contest.”

She couldn’t track time.

But the cracks didn’t seem so deep.

Johannes.

“No contest,” he said.

She nodded slowly.

Then another figure.

She could see her, but not hear the footsteps.

The voice was her own.

“You had to surround yourself with goblins of all things.”

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Bits of goblin.  Filthy, nasty.  Mess.  Ruins.”

‘Yeah.”

“Eugh.  Not worth it.  You’re conceding?”

She clenched her teeth so hard it hurt.  “In part.”

“I very nearly had you.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m interested to see how this next bit plays out.”

“Fuck you, Padraic.  I bet you did a shitty job of being me.”

But Maggie was gone, as was Padraic.

All of this is so I can keep fighting.  I may be giving up on the name, but that doesn’t preclude killing you somehow.

Mara was next to appear.

“I won’t be so easy,” Mara said.

“I won’t have my dads,” the girl in the checkered scarf said.  “Not wholly.  I won’t have my old life, or even the school I hate.  If you want to be cruel, and force me to travel the harder path, let me keep going like this.”

Wind blew, whistling through the holes in the shack.

“No contest.”

The girl in the circle nodded slowly.

Time passed.

She waited, and she ate.  She conserved water, but time passed, and it finished.

The goblins watched, pacing, wanting an opportunity to attack.

Even as they watched, she relieved herself in the second bucket.  She endured the catcalls.  Then she resumed the sitting position.

Another figure.

A group.

They didn’t peer through the holes in the shack, but opened the door.

Rose Thorburn, out of the mirror, a black, gangly kid with a bird on his shoulder, a taller girl with a luggage case behind her, and a shorter girl with a cigarette.

“No contest,” Rose said.  “You’re done.”

Mags nodded slowly.

“You okay?” Rose asked.  “I heard what happened.”

“I’m not okay, but I’ll deal.”

Rose nodded.

There were no cracks anywhere they didn’t belong as Rose offered Mags a helping hand in getting to her feet.

“You’ve got to tell me your story,” Mags said, stepping outside, her eyes on the strangers.  “Starting with where Blake is.”

The quiet, confused looks were an answer unto themselves.

“What?” she asked.

Null 9.1

When I opened my eyes, rain had settled in my one eye socket.  The act of opening my eye meant that freezing water seized the surface of the eye itself, and a thin dribble ran along my cheekbone.

I blinked, and found I couldn’t see out of the one eye, even after the moisture was gone.

My hand grasped for purchase, and it found mud.

The rain was as cold as water could get without being ice.  My body was numb and damaged.  When I tried to rub a sticky smear of blood from my face, I succeeded only in getting blood on my hand and grit on my face.

Standing was hard.  The mud beneath me was the sucking sort of wet mud that could steal a shoe, or let someone sink in to mid-calf level, and refuse to let them go.  As I dug a foot in, struggling to find traction, I created an opening that let the freezing water in nearby pools flood in around my foot.

My clothes were heavy with moisture.  My winter jacket, ostensibly waterproofed, was sodden, and my clothes were worse.  Wearing some suit made of snow would be better, because snow insulated to a degree.  This just carried the cold right through to the core of my body.

The mud insulated, I noted.  I pulled myself to a sitting position and blinked the water out.  I ran my fingers through my hair, and found my hands stiff to the point of being wooden.  I’d hoped to clean them, and found the mud on my head made it impossible.  With dirty fingers, I plucked at flecks of ice that were sticking to the eyelashes of my good eye.  I blinked the resulting bit of dirt out of my eye.

Which reminded me…  I tried to look with my Sight.

Nothing.  Nothing at all.

I was partially blind in a way that went beyond one eye being fuzzy beyond the point of use.  My one good eye saw darkness, the bad one saw everything through a milky gray veil, like a badly scratched lens, but neither eye could See.

All the same, a cold darkness in the very core of me told me what I’d expected to confirm.

I felt alone.

The rain and this loneliness weren’t so unusual to me.  They were recurring themes for me.  The dirt, too, being filthy, on several levels.

I expected to be weaker than I was.  Which wasn’t to say I was strong.  I still struggled to stand, with nothing firm to set my feet on, my body weighing twice as much as it should with the caked on mud, bits of ice and collected moisture.  Various small injuries decided to wake up as I moved.  My fingertips were scraped here and there, and a throbbing pain at the meat of my left hand insisted on nagging at my attention.

I raised my face to the ‘sky’, and let the rain pummel it, running through my hair and over my face, washing away the worst of the grit and blood.  The wind hit me, changing the direction of the rain, and I swayed, one foot very nearly skidding in the mud.

My one good eye revealed a sky of sheer darkness.  It was less like a starless night, and more like I was in a cave, the roof well out of view.  The rain could be from some lake or ocean above the cave, leaking in, threatening to break through some thin layer of rock and snuff out everything beneath in one swooping motion.

That pretty much summed up the effect that the darkness had, here.  An omnipresent weight.  The roof of this place could have been twenty feet above my head or completely absent, only a limitless nothingness above.

Like the rain, it pressed everything down.  It made me want to crawl instead of walk.

The only light, when there was light, came from a single old, orange lightbulb in a cage housing, mounted on a wall of irregular stone and mortar.  It flickered, spending as much time off as on.  I couldn’t make out the rest of the structure from the distance.

All the same it cast the faintest of light through the darkness, lighting up my path, or the lack of a path.  The bits of mud that crested and rose above the puddles were shiny in the light, the briefly revealed humps and ledges suggested snakes, centipedes, squid tendrils, or crocodiles lurking with only traces of their bodies above the surface of the murk.

Here and there, grass or weeds stuck up.  They were sparse in a way that only reinforced the desolate nature of the place.  That grass could grow and couldn’t.  Wouldn’t.

I shivered, and continued my lurching progress through the sloppy mud.

The light marked the arch-like entrance to a tunnel, its sister bulb on the opposite side of the entrance fritzed out, permanently off.

My good eye studied the interior, searching for any possible trap.  I could make out another light further in.  Around a bend, just far enough that a portion of the tunnel was unlit.

I stepped into the tunnel, just one stride inside, and got my bearings.

The mud, it seemed, formed a gentle ditch, and the collected rainwater was being directed into the tunnel entrance.  The water frothed, oily black in the darkness, only the periodic foam catching the flickering light, and it churned against heaps of objects that had been dragged into this tunnel.  A shopping cart, rent and ripped, so the prongs stabbed skyward, a few planks that were nailed together in what might have been an old loading pallet.  A bit of fence.  On either side, the ledge was only about two feet across, a half-foot above the water level, where water flowed in a steady, incessant stream.  The water itself formed a gap maybe five feet across.

The walls were wet and slimy, and resembled an old tunnel wall that predated cars, rounded stones set in place with cracked mortar.  Where stones had crumbled, they had been replaced with brick.  That brick remained older than I was.

A drain.

My hands didn’t feel like my hands as I pulled off my jacket.  They felt like puppet hands I was operating by remote control.  Obeying my instructions, but not in any clever, effective way.  I still managed to hold on to my jacket and wring it out, careful to maintain my footing.  I couldn’t even hear the water I squeezed out hit anything, over the dull roar of the flowing drainage.

There was nowhere to put my jacket where it wouldn’t get dirty, so I put it down in the muck just outside the drain’s entrance.

I pulled off my sweatshirt and shirt as one single entity.  One of my hands hurt – I’d smashed it somehow, and my shoulder hurt where I’d taken some impact.

Stupid, maybe, but I couldn’t imagine getting any colder.

My inside-out shirt and sweatshirt dangling from my hands, I saw the light flicker on briefly.  Inviting me to see.

I saw the dirt that had leaked inside my clothes, and I saw the dirt move.

Bugs.  Not all of it, but some.  I’d imagined seeing great centipedes in the muck, and I saw small ones here.  Earwigs, centipedes, pillbugs, all things I’d expect to see under a rock.

Even on my arms-

The light went out.

I stopped, waiting, my arms shivering from cold and the tension of holding onto the wet fabric.

The light flickered on again.

No, not that many bugs on my arms.

Great black tracks marked the surface of each arm.  They were great thorny branches, grown mature.  No birds, but innumerable feathers, one bird’s skull with a branch growing through the eyehole.  Here and there, the branches stood alone, as if they’d broken off and fallen to earth.  Not a healthy tree, but tinder, the limbs of a great tree frozen and cast to earth by the weather.

The branches crawled up my arms, past my elbows.  One reached to my shoulder.  I couldn’t see how far up my neck it traveled.  The other was denser, painting my left arm black and brown with branches and feathers, respectively.

I touched a spot where the darkness was especially deep, on my left hand.

A crack, not a branch.  Running from the spot between my middle and ring finger to my wrist.

The light flickered off.

I tested the wound, prodding my ring finger, pushing the two halves of my hand apart.

The light flicked on.

I could see through the gap.  A yawning wound, effectively cutting my hand in half.  The ring and pinky finger were especially stiff.  The bits of flesh in the gap were nearly black, not crimson.  It barely hurt.

The wound on that same hand was an old one, a puncture wound I’d made to draw blood.  The scratches on the fingertips were self-inflicted, made for the same purpose.

Wounds I’d healed with glamour.  The glamour had been left behind, the wounds had yet to heal properly.  I’d only forestalled it, painted over it.  Why would my body heal a wound that wasn’t there?

I didn’t have the strength to hold up my shirt and sweatshirt anymore, and I didn’t have the focus to busy myself wringing them dry.  I hugged both to my stomach, my back touched the slimy wall, my head bowed, and I closed my eyes.

The scene was, ironically enough, bright in my mind’s eye.  Memory more real than this.

Being in the factory.  Realizing just how bad things were going.

Running for the windows.

I hadn’t made it.

The demon had closed around me, blocking every avenue of escape.  Getting help had been impossible – my connections to the rest of the world had been severed.  That I was as alone as anyone could ever be.

Or, as it happened, so alone that I couldn’t be.

The world had broken away around me, no longer seeing the value in holding me up.  Cracks had yawned open around me, and in my hurry to get away, I’d fallen through.

Putting me here.

My dirty shirt and sweatshirt got dirtier as I laid them against the narrow shelf of brick I was standing on and unlaced a boot.  I got one sock off, and carefully wound it around my cracked hand, tying the knot at the back of my hand.  It made for a crude sort of bandage, holding the two pieces of my hand together.  If I hadn’t thought I needed to use my fingers to grip, I might have stuck my whole hand inside the sock.

I needed those working fingers.  I pulled my boot on over a bare foot.

My hands were wringing out my shirt and sweatshirt when I saw the first other living thing in this place.

Female, emaciated, her eyes reflecting like a cat’s might, but as pale green circles instead.  She was perched on the heap of wood and the torn-up shopping cart.  Only her upper body was visible, collarbone and ribs standing out with skin stretched taut around them.  Her naked breasts were small, her arms tense with the exertion of holding herself up.  Her hair was plastered to her head, her face looked like she was wearing a section of someone else’s skull as a mask.

The lights went off, behind me and further down the tunnel.  Pitch darkness.

Only darkness.  In the stillness and the quiet, I wrung out my shirt and sweatshirt further, then pulled it on.  Clammy and wet and dirty on grimy, damp and cold skin.

The lights came back on, first one, then the other.

She was gone.

I shivered, pulling on my winter jacket.  The mud had risen up, trying to claim it, to hide it.

I should have been scared, in the midst of all of this.  I should have crumpled up into a ball and refused to move.  I should have railed against the world, this fucked up unfair world and all of the wrong that loomed behind the curtain.

Except all I felt was numb.

I checked the sock-bandage at my left hand.  Secure.

Where to go from here?

It was tempting to just follow the light.  Outside, it was only darkness and hard rain.  The mud could take hold of a foot and refuse to let go, or hide traps or waiting ambushers, human or otherwise.  It could be hours of walking through a black so absolute I might as well be blind.  My gut told me that the only things I was liable to find were more places like this.  Vaguely hostile in layout, dangerous, quite possibly riddled with Others.

I made my way down the stone path, toward the second light.

When I reached the spot where the Other had perched, I reached over, grabbing a section of wood from the shattered pallet.  A broad, flat plank, a nail stuck in the end, holding it firm…

One tug, only as hard as I could manage without risking losing my footing on slick stone, and it came free.

One end was sort of jagged.  It was wet, slick with algae or slime or just from being wood worn smooth by current.  It was cold, even, and bits of ice clung to the splintery bits at the frayed end.

No sign of the horrifically thin Other.

There was a dip further ahead, a downward slope.  More debris sat on the slope, and with the little light that extended forward from the first light, now behind me, I could see the flowing water foam where it crashed against the debris.

A large rock.  The handle of some gardening implement or broom or something, with a scrap of cloth caught on it, and the legs of a plastic or folding chair.  More sat below the ramp.  The Other could easily be one of those jagged shapes.

The Other didn’t attack.

I reached the darker patch, and the end of my plank skittered lightly across the stone in front of me, feeling for any tripping hazards.  Progress was agonizingly slow as I checked the ground, used my hand to feel for anything jutting out of the wall.

A half-foot of progress, me shuffling forward, then another check.

When the wood wasn’t checking my route, I held it out, feeling for any reaching hands, ready to smash an attacking Other in the gut.  If it gave me a chance.

If the darkness outside had weighed down on me, this was worse.  It pressed in on me from all directions, making me feel impossibly small.

The numbness at the core of me gave way to a profound uneasiness.

Spelunking, the art of exploring caves, was terrifying unto itself.  The idea of getting stuck, of getting turned around… even if one was traveling a route others had taken a hundred times, it was a fear that lingered.

When we -and we felt painfully hazy right here- had been discussing the factory, the topic of the urban explorers had come up.  Same idea.  Old buildings, the risk of getting stuck, of something happening, it was a very real concern.  For an unknown number of urban explorers in Toronto, something had happened.

This was worse, on a level.  All of those same claustrophobic, paranoid fears, they held true in this place.  Even aboveground, it was claustrophobic.

Problem was that here, they were justified fears.

I stopped short.

In pitch darkness, where I couldn’t see anything but phantom images persisting across my field of view, I found that the path ended.  There was no more ledge.  A quick test with the plank confirmed.  It had broken away.  Crumbled.

A quick feel around, and I could confirm that there was no bridge, no passage or door to my right.

I peered forward, leaning a bit, trying to make out a ledge a bit further, or even prod it with the plank to gauge my ability to make a step.

No visible ledge.

I did see two circles in the churning water.  So faint I might have thought they were phantom images.

But when all the other images danced in and out of my field of vision, my eyes remained locked on those faint green circles, and those circles remained exactly where they were.

Confidence.  Theatrics.

If I earned my own demise, doing this, well, my circumstances wouldn’t be that much worse.  But if I could look stronger than I felt, well…

Thin odds, but I’d take what I could.  I couldn’t move forward without addressing the creature in the water, so I decided to address it head-on.

I extended my free hand, and with my finger crooked, I made a ‘come hither’ gesture, beckoning it.

My other hand gripped the plank, ready to defend myself if I had to.

The eyes rose up, and I could hear the sound of water falling free, as though someone were rising from a bath.

The eyes stopped, level with my bellybutton, over the water.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she said.  Her voice was airy, halfway between hiss and whisper.

The emaciated Other from before?

“You could have grabbed me by the ankles,” I said.  “Hauled me under.”

“I could have.”

“But?”

A long pause.  I didn’t dare move my eyes away from hers.  Part of it was a dominance thing, the other part of it was that I wasn’t entirely sure I would be able to find her eyes again if I looked away.

When the lights went out, the eyes retained their faint green color for a moment.

Just when I thought that brief color would fade, the lights came back on.

She never blinked.

“You don’t have to answer,” I said.

“I know.  It’s not something I like to think about.  That’s where I fell in.  Right there.”

I didn’t have a response to that, and she didn’t bother to elaborate.

The dull roar of the drain and the faint rattle of debris against debris took on an imperceptibly different tone, in light of her words.

As if the sound of the water was now a great machine, grinding, scouring.

I could smell her, and she smelled faintly of ammonia, joining the smells of rich mud and the damp, mildewy smell of the drain itself.

“You were like me, then,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re like,” she said.  A pause.  “But I was human.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Not anymore.  Only other person to talk to me couldn’t speak anymore.  When I think of who I am, my old name gets mixed up with underwater sounds in my head, I guess.”

“Well, my name’s…”

“It’s okay.  It’s hard to remember names here.”

“No, I remember.  My name is Blake.”

Another pause.  “I knew a Blake once.  You don’t look anything like him.”

Having conversation was nice, even if I couldn’t shake the notion that she could lunge at my any moment, and drag me to a watery grave.

“You seem so calm,” she whispered.

“I don’t know enough yet to be properly afraid,” I said.  “Makes it a bit easier, and I guess, I dunno, it hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

“You’re supposed to fear the unknown.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I used to think that too.”

A loud crash spoiled my calm act, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin.  My left foot skidded a half-foot on smooth, water-slick stones.

The crash didn’t stop.  It sounded like a one thousand car pileup, vaguely muffled.

“That’s the sluice,” she said.  “Further down.  If you see lots of little snails and things stuck to the ground, it means the sluice is right above you, and it could open any time.”

“I can’t see much at all,” I said.

“Oh.  Yeah.  I forgot.  Then if you hear them crunching underfoot, like you’re walking on… on… what’s that cereal called?”

“Cheerios?  Rice Krispies?  Corn flakes?”

“Yeah.  Corn flakes.  You can’t figure out the big sluice unless you’ve been down here a bit.  Stay away for now, or it’ll wash you over the edge.”

“I appreciate the advice,” I said.

Somewhere along the line, I’d jammed one of my hands into my armpit for meager warmth.  It didn’t work, but I maintained the habit.  Now I shifted the plank to another hand.

“It’s okay.  You get used to it,” she said, and I imagined she was trying to sound soothing with that thin voice of hers.  “The dark, the cold, not being on the top of the food chain, always being worn down…”

“That doesn’t sound the least bit like I want to get used to it,” I said.  “No offense.”

“Haven’t you ever looked at wild animals and envied them a little?  Their simple existences?”

I thought of my bird watching, not long after I’d gotten my own place, with…

With a friend’s help.

Alexis’s help.  Right.

My heart started pounding a little harder at that near miss.  The noise here, the rushing water, the pressure and the need to focus my senses elsewhere, it made it harder to remember.

“I guess I have,” I said, before I could get too lost in thought.  Let’s not disturb the creepy Other.

“I don’t think you find your way down here without dealing with something bad.  That’s how I think about it.  There’s- there’s a relief in all this, Blake.  Putting it behind you.  Whatever was burdening you, it’s gone by the time you come this far.”

Whatever was burdening me.

Karma?  That was… I had to assume it was on my successor’s shoulders now, on…

…on Rose’s shoulders.  Right.  Why had the name been so hard to conjure up?

Well, I was assuming Rose wasn’t cast down here along with me, that her role in things wasn’t screwed up by the screwed up way I’d gone down.

All the rest of it?  The threats, the pressures, the worries and conflict?

I’d wanted to get away from it all, to put it behind me.  Now, well, I had my wish.

Be careful what you wish for.

“You might be right, but how do you get out?” I asked.

“Only way I know is to go further in.  In here, you are what you eat.  It’s easy to- to let yourself go.”

“Let your Self go,” I echoed her.  Her thoughts seemed to have a thread to them, but I was having trouble connecting the dots.

“That’s what I said, yeah.  I… it’s hard to remember the details, but I arrived, and I wandered for a long while in the rain.  I found this big store, you know the kind, one of the huge ones you could spend half a day inside, but the parking lot was fenced in, and I tried walking around to find the front door, but it was like every side of the store was the back of the store.  That’s when I first realized something was wrong, because I’d just left this… this place, and found a city and I somehow found myself-”

“There.  Here,” I said.

“Yeah.  I found a group of people, and they told me that there was nothing there.  That it’s just landscape, for show.  They laughed at me and took what little I’d brought with me.  I ran before they could hurt me, and I got here, after a couple days.  Except I didn’t get far.  I stepped onto that broken bit of ledge right there, and I fell.  Just like you almost did.  Water pushed me down, and I wasn’t strong enough to swim against it.  Someone saved me.  He wasn’t strong enough to lift me up, either, so he pressed his lips to mine, and breathed for me.”

“Breathed?”

“He could breathe like I can now.  For hours, he breathed for me.  And he’d stop, making me hold my breath, then start again.  Until I could hold it for a couple of minutes.  He left me, holding my breath, and came back with raw fish.  Tore it with his teeth and regurgitated it for me, kept breathing for me… for days.  Weeks.  Pressed his sandpapery skin against mine, and we… yeah.  I wanted to, and I dunno if that’s that syndrome or whatever from that movie with the bookish girl and the big horned ox guy-”

“Beauty and the Beast.  You’re thinking of Stockholm syndrome,” I said.  I didn’t elaborate, arguing for why it wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome.  That would have been assholish, arguing when she was sharing her story.

“Yeah.  I forget words sometimes.  Somewhere along the way, my skin came apart, because his skin was rough and the water just kept coming down so hard.  But I healed and everything back together in scars and tougher bits, and then I could breathe underwater, and I have teeth and claws to hunt fish with, and I can see better in the dark and…”

“…And the other guy?”

“I was in a state where I couldn’t swim.  He went to get food for- for me, and one day he didn’t come back.  Eventually I had to swim, and I did.  Now it’s just me.”

“Waiting at that same ledge?”

“I thought I’d save you if you fell in, like he saved me,” her voice was a thin whisper.  Almost reluctant, abashed.

The shiver that took hold of me right then was more profound than any the cold had gotten out of me so far.

I had to resist the urge to accuse her.  She’d been waiting.  Not warning me, only waiting.

But the rules and expectations were different here.  She knew I was friendly-ish now, but she couldn’t know before.

I couldn’t let myself blame her.  She’d been genuine in other respects, and quite frankly, I couldn’t afford to give up even a tentative friend.

Not the first time I’d been in that position.

“Hey,” I said.  I didn’t have a name for her.  “Green Eyes?  Can I call you that?”

“Yes.  I like that.”

“Green Eyes, if and when I do fall in, if you can’t or won’t help me get somewhere with a secure grip, can you kill me instead?”

“Kill you?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Just… no offense, but that sounds like a torment that would be custom-made for me in hell.”

A pause.

“After I kill you, can I eat you?”

Eat me?

She said it so very casually.  I might have felt a chill run down my spine if my spine wasn’t already all chills.

“Go to town,” I said.  Better to say yes than risk her not killing me.

I heard a short, reedy laugh.  “Cool.”

She said it in a way that made me think it would be spelled ‘Kewl’.  I suddenly had a very clear vision of her as a teenager, stumbling into here much the same way I had.

I wasn’t drying off, and the darkness was disorienting.  Without my eyes to go by, I was very concerned I’d lose my sense of up and down and simply teeter over into the water.

I broke eye contact with her, looking toward the light further down the tunnel, hoping to center myself.

Big mistake.  It left phantom lights against my eyelids, making it twice as hard to see the ledge.

I was more blind than ever, with only two feet of damp, slick ledge and a watery grave before me, a cannibalistic Other waiting to dine on me.

“If you’re looking for a way past, it’s one big stride to get by,” she said.  “You’ll want to lean on something.  There’s a big branch here.  A couple of really good places to put your wood there.”

I reached out blindly for the tree branch.

A hand seized the plank, and I felt my blood go cold.

She moved it, and I felt it scrape.

I tested, pushing, and found it firm.

Would she move it away as I made the step?

“Can I trust you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

I hesitated.  “Can you lie?”

“…You know about that?”

“About?”

“That some things down here can’t lie?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I guess I do.”

“I’m not one of those things.  They don’t tend to be very pleasant, just so you know.”

“I know,” I said.

On a level, I’m one of them.

I made the leap of faith, a blind step into utter darkness, my heart dropping out of my chest as the branch gave.  The plank slipped.

A moment’s give.  Something stopped the plank from sliding free.  It provided the resistance I needed.  I felt my foot set down on Terra Firma.

I pushed, carrying my momentum forward, and I felt a momentary resistance as I pulled the plank away from the branch.

She let go of it.  She’d been holding it secure.

I was upright, safe on the other side.

Would I be able to make it back the same way?

“Thank you,” I said.  “I don’t have much to offer you in gratitude.  I’m sorry.”

“Then, can we keep talking until we have to go separate ways?”

“Yeah?  I might be benefiting from that more than you are,” I said.  “You can ask what you want.”

“Don’t know,” she said.  “Just hearing another voice or having someone listen is nice.  Usually the only one I hear is the little man that sells snails, if I find something I can barter.”

I nodded slowly.  “Then… can you tell me more about how to get out?  We got distracted.”

“I got distracted, it’s so easy to do, when you focus on the now all the time,” she said.  She was falling behind me, her already quiet voice growing fainter.  “Moment.”

I heard the faintest of splashes.  A metal-on metal scrape.

Her voice came from a new location.  “Can’t stay afloat on my own.  Have to grab stuff, or I get pulled under.  Um.  So if you want out, the only way I know is to go through.  Change, adapt, eat, and get stronger.  Then there’s places where it’s closer to the real world than others.  You gotta get to those places, and it’s not easy.  One part, you have to swim against a current that’s three times as fast as this, and you have to do it for a while without a chance to surface.”

“That’s not an option for me, then,” I said.

“I don’t know about any others, really.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“But if you do get to one of the exits, there’s usually someone or something there, or so I hear.  They sit there and they get in the way and they make you work to get past.  Usually, you’re really tired, and they eat you.  Or you can put up a bit of a fight, and they make you promise to do something for them.  To carry something back.”

I nodded slowly, continuing my slow, careful, shuffling progress.  “There’s no way out that doesn’t force me to give up my Self?”

“Sort of, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“What is it?”

“Sometimes someone comes, and they pick a few of us and take us with them when they leave.”

“These people that come, are they monsters?”

“Very sometimes monsters, but mostly it’s people.  I thought at first you were maybe one of them.”

“But?”

“But I think if you were, you wouldn’t have gotten stuck where you did.”

“Ah.”

“And your arms, when I saw them…”

“Yeah,” I said.  “My tattoos have a mind of their own.  I don’t really get it.”

“If you’re thinking someone’s just going to show up and help, I wouldn’t count on it.  They only come for the worst monsters, and I don’t even think they ever come looking for anyone specific.  That would be almost impossible because this place is a maze and it gets more like a maze all the time, when stuff breaks down.  Just like people break down.  It’s just what this place is.”

“Where things that fall through the cracks go,” I said.

“Yeah?  I like that,” she said.

“What would you call this place?”

“Dunno.  I think of it as the sewers,” she said.

They weren’t really sewers, but I didn’t correct her.

“Or the compost heap,” she said.

“Compost?”

“That’s how I think of it.  It’s what this place is, what it’s meant to do.  It wears you down and grinds you up, like the water would have done to me if I hadn’t been rescued.  The mold gets you, or the rats gnaw you up, or something.  Then you’re gone.  Some like me eat and we get by, but we have to fight constantly and in the fighting we get worn out and hurt too, so we get worn down there.  The strongest… the strongest eat and get powerful.  And because they eat a lot of things and they get scarred, and they get ugly, and maybe they lose some big part of whatever they were before they came here.  They get composted,” she said.  “Then they leave, and I dunno what happens next.”

“I imagine they become bogeymen,” I said.

“Maybe,” she said.  “But in all that eating, they’re still giving up more than they get, and this place still takes pieces out of them.  It’s the whole purpose.”

I remained silent.  I wasn’t sure what to say to all that, and this bit was a little steeper, the corner of the ledge more rounded, allowing an errant foot to slip.

“I stick to the shallows here, mostly.  There practically no food, little fishes and frogs and bugs if I’m quick, but it’s safer.  Only a few guys I gotta watch out for in the water here.”

“Anything I need to worry about?”

“Not unless you go for a swim.  One of them, they’re only a threat to me, it feels like.”

“Duly noted,” I said.

“You’re so calm,” she said, again, almost in awe.

I was quiet, making my steady progress.  I passed into an area with light.

“There’s a bit coming up where I won’t be able to follow you.  Not so much stuff in the way.  Bigger things underwater.”

“Like the guys you mentioned?”

But she was gone.

A moment later, a faint sound of splashing water, she emerged, hands on the ledge opposite me.

She wasn’t wearing a skull mask.  Her face was skeletal, the skin virtually transparent, veins visible beneath the surface, red, blue, and yellow-black.

I was pretty sure people didn’t have yellow-black veins like that.

All this time, I’d been thinking she didn’t blink.  Now I saw that her eyelids were so transparent that I couldn’t tell.  Her eyes, luminous green in the dark, were a pale milky white right now.

Her teeth were tiny, narrow, and sharp, visible through transparent lips.

The lights flickered out, leaving me with an afterimage of her face superimposed on darkness.

She reminds me of a fish from the deep ocean.  The angler fish or something like that.

“There’s a branching path ahead,” she said, in her whisper of a voice.  “Go left.  I think that’s the last advice I can give you.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Good luck,” she said.  “Good luck.  If you wanted to stay here or come back sometime, that’s okay.  We can talk, and I could show you where the stuff is on land, for food, while I get the stuff from the water.  Some rats here can get pretty fat.  And if you die, I can eat you, and that can be your payment for me showing you the ropes.”

The sluice, somewhere distant, closed.  The abrasive noise stopped, and I realized I’d been tensed.  My shoulders relaxed.

The lights came back on.

“Bye,” she said, her voice far clearer in this sudden quiet.

“Wait,” I said.

She stopped.  There was only the sound of water, and with the slope well behind us, even that wasn’t as bad as it might otherwise be.

“I owe you one,” I said.  “You said that some of the guardians of the exits, they ask for people to carry favors or carry things back to the real world.  Is there anything I can take back for you?”

“You really think you’re going to make it back.”

“I’m going to try.”

“I don’t think you realize how bad this place can be.”

“You don’t know how bad some of the stuff I’ve dealt with so far has been.”

She remained silent.

“Sorry if that came out wrong,” I said.  “I do appreciate the help, and the offer stands.”

“It’s easier if you don’t fight.  Stay out of the way.”

“Before, you said you get to leave all your burdens behind,” I said.  “I don’t think that’s entirely true.  My burden is, well, I can’t just stop like you’re suggesting.”

She nodded slowly.

Lights out.

“I don’t have anything I want you to take back there.”

“Then, what if I said I really am, in a roundabout way, one of those wizards you talked about, one of the people who come to collect monsters and take them away?”

“Are you?”

“Not right now,” I said.  “But I’m hoping I can be again.  Kind of hoping.  I think it’ll happen when I get free.”

She stared at me.

“Would you want me to come back for you, if I could?”

“I’d like to get away from the black fish… but I can’t think about the future like that.  I have to think about food, and keeping certain areas blocked off, and figuring out where and when to rest where I can’t get surprised or cornered.”

“Nothing, then?” I asked.

“You should be doing the same,” she said.  “Focus on the now.  Realize just how much trouble you’re in here.  Giving you something to think about could get you killed.”

I leaned back.

“A kiss?” she asked.

I startled a bit.

In the darkness, I couldn’t make out her expression.  Even if I’d been able to see her face, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.

“I… it’s something I let myself think about, sometimes.”

I couldn’t shake the idea of her simply grabbing me and hauling me under, especially after I’d refused her offer to stay.

I remembered her lurking beneath the water, not warning me, only watching to see if I drowned.

But here I was, utterly alone.

In a way, the very worst thing that could have happened to me had happened.

In a way, that made it very hard to be afraid.

I still felt numb inside.

A kiss, bodily contact, that was scary unto itself.

But all of that, even that part of the past, it felt so far away.

I knelt on the ledge, aware of how precarious my position was.

She heaved herself partially out of the water.  Two transparent lips brushed against my cheekbone.  I flinched, despite my best intentions.

Then she pushed herself away.

I stood, slow, aware that my clothes had partially dried, though I was still freezing.

The light came on just in time for me to see her dive.  Her tail broke the water, and I saw a flash of albino white scaling, and skeletal ridges separating transparent fins.

“Bye, Green Eyes,” I said.

I moved on, with excessive caution, and I reached a branching path.  Wooden planks had been arranged in a triangle, allowing passage between ledges.  They were supported by trash and debris that had collected at the intersection.

I passed over the bridge, my heart pounding.

The tunnel opened up into a vast area, so wide I couldn’t take it in all at once.

Tunnels were lit by dim lightbulbs within, and others were only hinted at, highlighted by distant lights.  The smells were thick in the air, and I could see where it might be called compost, or sewers.

The drains and grates and pipes all led onto ledges and balconies, or emptied water intermittently onto broad bridges, or simply dropped vast amounts of liquid into vast, empty darkness.  Here and there, I saw figures, most furtive, moving quickly from one area to the next.  Here and there, I saw others.  A man was perched in one spot with what looked like a jury-rigged tent, made of trash.  A tarp was laid out, showing an arrangement of common trash and shells.  He was only a hundred feet away, or so, but he was across from me, and a great void separated us.  It would be a long, convoluted road to meet him.

Not that I had anything to barter with.

It was loud, here in this central hub.  Green Eyes had said the whole intent of this place was to break things down.  The cacophony of noise would be intended to erode at sanity.  It was loud enough to make my vision distort, to startle the wits out of me when a sudden crash rang through every drain and sewer here.  intermittent enough to distract.

Noise aside, I was glad to find a dry spot to sit down, on a spot just above a broad, stagnant gutter choked with debris.  It looked like a gargoyle had once sat here, oddly enough, but had broken away.  I sat, leaning against the wall, my shin securing my position by pressing against the base of the gargoyle’s statue.

Perhaps a little too visible here, but it was a place to sit down.

“We’re in!”

My head turned.  A voice.  A recognizable voice.

“My gut was right,” another voice said, her voice quiet.  “I was never that big on trusting my gut, but now…”

That second voice was Rose.

“As haunted houses go, this is pretty flipping cool,” a small boy’s voice, excited.

Evan.

I craned my head around, looking.

I saw a flash of Rose’s face in the gutter, before a drop fell from above.  The water rippled.

“We’ve got access,” Rose said.  “That’s the key thing.  I’ll show you to the library in a second, then we got to start with the rituals.”

Somewhere else nearby.

Sources of still water.

I couldn’t quite see it, but I could hear it.

Except I wasn’t hearing it with my ears.

It resounded through me.

“I just don’t get why you didn’t do this ritual earlier,” Alexis said.  Her tone was vaguely accusatory.  “Or how you didn’t do it earlier.”

“I don’t know,” Rose said.

“Something to do with this Blake Mags mentioned?” Tiff asked.

My heart pounded.

They didn’t know me?

‘Mags’ knew me?

My throat was dry.  I almost forgot to watch my back.

Except the stab in the back didn’t come from the Drains.

“There was a reason for it,” Rose said.  “Had to be.  And I’m sure we’ll find the clues here, given time to look.  All I know is, I fucked up my awakening ritual on purpose, last time around.  This time, right here, right now, I’m gonna do it right.”

Null 9.2

She fucked it up on purpose?

My thoughts were slow to get going as I tried to dredge up memories.  Promises she’d made, that had no real power behind them.

A promise to help me, to work with me, even.

The fact that she’d used Ty, Alexis and Tiff to prepare her summonings, but hadn’t been able to do it herself.  I’d glossed over it because she’d told me the ritual hadn’t worked.

Why?

How many times had I thrown myself into life or death situations, and all this while, she’d been holding back?  Keeping hands off?  I’d scratched, fought, and bled for power and she’d just turned it down?

Why?

When she would have made the decision… it would have been after we’d argued.  When she was frustrated, new to the mirror.

All because she’d wanted to be able to lie to me?

When I’d made promises to her, to get her out of the mirror somehow, she’d said she felt bad about it.  Because she’d known the promise she was making in exchange had no weight to it.

I was clenching my fists, and the strain was making the two halves of my one broken hand grate against one another.

It’s this place.  There’s a reason I saw it.  This place wants to grind me down, and it thinks giving me a glimpse like that is going to help do it.

Which isn’t entirely wrong.

I couldn’t let my agitation push me into doing something stupid.

This was the initial foray.  It was liable to get a lot worse, if what Green Eyes had said was true.  I had to get a grip on it now, if I wanted to be ready for whatever hit me later.

I grabbed the plank from where I’d laid it across my lap and stood, very carefully, making sure to have three points of contact with solid surfaces at all times.  One foot on the gutter, one on the gargoyle, my good hand on the wall.  I might still fall if something broke away, but it was less of a certainty.

The ledge here was steadier and gave me enough room to walk, so my shoulder didn’t scrape the wall, but I was more careful than I had been on first entering the drains.

There weren’t many light sources, and the ledge, at times, was only a thin line of light where the moist and rounded-off edge caught the light shed by some distant bulb.  A patch of stone, the edges lit up in a similar way.

Movement through this place was agonizing.  Slow, treacherous, and no matter how careful I was, there was no guarantee I wouldn’t fall prey to some trap, trick, or attack.

This was a place that made people feel small.  When I’d been in the tree with the Others beneath me in the Hyena’s woods, I’d compared myself to a prehistoric ape.

Here, I was degraded even further than that.  Calling myself an ape was maybe being too arrogant.

Apes had fangs.  They could climb properly.  They had fur to protect them.

Humans were built for endurance running, we evolved on the plains, chasing down our prey as pack hunters with improvised tools.  There was nowhere to run here, no tools, and no guarantee that I had more stamina than whatever I was up against.

The ‘ground’ here shuddered with some great mechanism, an endless roar of pouring water with a grinding of machinery, like the endless crush of some great millstone.

I felt like the trembling of the ground might make me simply bounce off, lifting my feet clear of the ledge, letting them slide to one side and off into the depths to one side.

Bugs crawled on my hand as I gripped one stone.  One, quite possibly a centipede, took a chunk out of the back of my hand.  I hugged the wall with my body and shook my hand, letting them fall into the darkness.

But more were crawling on my stomach and chest now.

I brushed them off and got stung by something.

There was no relief here.  No getting clean, no quiet, no comfort, no place where the smells weren’t vaguely offensive, no place where I was safe.

I approached a corner, and nearly jumped out of my skin as a massive figure loomed in front of me, at the corner’s edge. Not a gargoyle.  An irregularly-shaped block of brickwork that had broken away from the wall.  I got close enough to peer at it.  The mortar had cracked, but only around one section, so the entire thing held together, jutting out from the corner, as though it was poised to simply break free and tumble to the ground below if I tried to hold onto it for leverage.

I looked up.  The wall further above wasn’t much better, as far as I could make it out.  I could easily imagine something breaking free and braining me.

A steady stream of water flowed down the wall’s surface, joining the constant shuddering in responsibility for the state of the wall.  Thin trickles of water were pooling in the broken section of wall and draining off the edges of the block, onto my footpath and over area I’d have to squeeze through.

My plank scraped the areas I couldn’t see, a blind man’s groping in the dark.

Nothing offensive that I could tell.

I rounded the corner, edging along the ledge, while ducking below the giant hunk of brick.

The roaring, grinding sound got louder as I rounded the corner.  The wall no longer blocked the sound.

I stood straighter, and I could make out what looked like some massive, haphazard dam-turned-watermill.  A river of water flowed out of a tunnel and over the edge of an open-mouthed trough, dumping vast amounts of water and debris into the darkness.

The trough and the watermill were both put together with what looked like haphazard layers of metal, completely rusted, to the point of having cankerous boils on the surface.  The mill itself was a long cylinder, with four large paddles to keep it turning.  The turning wasn’t consistent, but when it did turn, nearby lightbulbs flickered on, or flickered brighter.  I could hear a distorted radio buzz.

More metal and wood formed a broad, flat, somewhat uneven bridge over the rushing water.  There were people gathered on and around it.  Kids.  Old people.  Others.  All together in clusters, or standing alone.  They had to be deaf, with the sound of this water and the metal-on-metal creak of the mill itself.

Shacks had been erected with more debris and sheet metal, fallen signs and collected branches.  When I’d been homeless, the accommodations I’d been able to manage had been better, on average, than what I saw here.

People were sitting on the ledge, and I wasn’t about to try going over them.  No choice but to climb down.

The climb down was precarious, especially when the surface below me looked so flimsy I felt like I might simply punch through and drown.  I could see the frothing water through the gaps in this makeshift bridge.

Metal sang with the impact of my landing.  One or two heads turned.  One man reached to his belt, where he had a makeshift skewer ready, deemed me no threat, and dropped his hand to his side.

I was careful with where I stepped, simultaneously watching the people around me.  All were dirty, most wore rags, and all were beaded in droplets of moisture that had been flung up from the crash of water below the bridge.

The man with the skewer had a wound on the back of his head that had festered as it healed.  It was mostly closed, helped by what might have been crude stitching with yarn of all things, but it was angry, puffy, with pus-like fluid in the recesses and cyst-like bulges straining against the skin around the site.  Another similar wound marked his arm.

My eye was drawn to the insect bites on my own arms.  My own arms were beaded with droplets, and the water-diluted blood was flowing freely.  It was freezing.  How could they even stand to be here, with the chill in the air making it worse?

One man was perched on the bridge, back to the railing, swaddled in rags.  He had no legs- no, wait.  Yeah, he had legs, but they belonged to an insect, not a person.  His eyes glowed through the shadows in the rags.

My heart almost stopped as a group of children tromped across a flimsy section of rusted sheet metal, each footfall slamming it against the wood frame beneath, producing a sound that I could hear even over the roar.

I exhaled as they made their way to the far end, well behind me, no longer certain that they were about to doom me to a watery abyss.  I watched them go.  They weren’t wearing much.  A little boy wore only a sash of cloth around his hips, more a skirt than anything else, and his back was riddled with ulcers.  A girl had patchy fur in two colors, black and part white, and snaggle-teeth that looked like they’d make it impossible to open or close her mouth, one arm ending in a scarred stump at the shoulder.  The biggest of the boys, who’d somehow managed to be overweight in a place like this, had bulges under the skin I could make out, like worms had nestled in deep.  A goblin rode on his shoulders, pulling his hair, but he didn’t seem to mind.

When I got closer to the far end of the bridge, I could see that the larger group of adults was staring at me, giving me hard looks.

Because I’d been looking at the kids?

I raised my hands to either side in the universal gesture of peace.  Maybe less effective when I had a plank in one hand, but if they were going to begrudge me a weapon in this place, they could get real.

They relaxed a bit.

It was eerie, getting the benefit of a doubt.  Was it the lack of bad karma, or was it this place?  Did they just not have the energy to spare to confront every threat?

The one or two of them that had weapons in hand didn’t drop what they had, I noticed.

I didn’t even try talking to them.  The noise was too loud, the looks too hostile.

I moved on, leaving them behind, heading for the next ledge, this one a broad pipe that ran alongside the wall, bolted in at intervals.

A woman’s hand seized me by the upper arm.  I whirled, plank readied-

And others had their makeshift weapons pointed at me.

For a moment, we were still.  The kids on the bridge were staring, frozen.

I decided to lower my weapon first.  No point – they could kill me here if they wanted to.  It was hard to bring myself to do it.  My heart still pounded from the momentary contact, and she’d done it hard enough to hurt.

The others didn’t do me the favor of lowering theirs.

The woman had a heavy net folded and thrown over one shoulder.  She pointed.

The destination I’d been headed?

When I looked at her, she gestured, making a scary face, turning her one free hand into a claw with fingers and thumb hooked.

Monster that way?

She pointed that way, then drew a finger across her throat, and pointed at me.

It’d kill me?

She drew a finger across her throat, then pointed to herself, and her companions.

And kill them?

Point, to ledge.  Then hand to one side of her face, head tilted, eyes closed.

It’s sleeping.

One pointed finger, extended my way, then she ‘walked’ across the air with two fingers, very slowly, with exaggerated care.

Tiptoe?

I nodded and mouthed the words for ‘thank you’.

The roar of the water continued.  The weapons came down as people stepped away.

The woman looked over her shoulder, waved a bit to get someone’s attention.

A man, bald.  I couldn’t see what was wrong with him.  It maybe said a lot that I had to define people in this place by how screwed up they were.

He stood, walking past me with a bit of a limp, he paused, then gestured for me to follow.

I nodded.

Up on top of the shacks, using them as stepping stones, to a higher area.  A narrower ledge here – I couldn’t have two feet on one section at the same time.  My stomach scraped against the wall with every step.

The bald man, his limp aside, moved with grace and ease across the ledge.  Familiar ground.

Months or years of experience, easily.

He could have stood by and let me forge ahead on my own, but he didn’t.  He continued to lead the way, periodically becoming little more than a silhouette in light or a vague human-shaped blur in the darkness.  Here and there, he paused, gesturing to a possible hazard.  A bit of stone that stuck out enough it might poke me, or a bit of ledge that wobbled when I touched it with my toe.

After what I might have guessed to be ten minutes of progress, he stopped, pointing down.

The act of looking was somewhat terrifying, given how little I could afford to lean away from the wall, but I looked all the same.  I couldn’t make out the shape, not really, but it was big, it smelled like garbage, and it had spiky black fur with periodic spines sticking out.  I could see it expand and contract with every breath, steam rising from one area I took to be the head.

I wasn’t sure if I would have even seen it.  It was big enough to block some of the light.

When I looked up, my guide was already moving on.

It was easily another ten of fifteen minutes before I felt brave enough to speak up.  “Hey.”

He raised a finger to his lips.

Right.  I wasn’t about to argue.

I lost track of time before we reached safer ground.  A corridor opened up, and we were able to step inside the mouth of it.

“You’re new,” he said.  His voice sounded disused, creaky.

“Yeah,” I said.  I ran my hands through my hair, where it was sticking to my forehead.  How was it possible to be so cold and yet so sweaty at the same time?

“You come this way, you leave it ‘lone.”

“Will do,” I said.  I held my hands up to the light above the corridor to examine them.  My fingertips were raw from damp, cold, and friction.  “I don’t… I really don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing.”

“You got choices,” he said.  “You wander until something gets you, you find a place you can hunker down and you wait until something gets you, or you decide it’s too much trouble and get yourself.”

“Or you get others,” I said.

He gave me a look, about as dirty as they came.  “Y’think you’ve got it in you?”

I sighed, then shook my head.

“Good.  Because I’d throw y’off the edge here if y’did.”

I frowned, gazing over the edge at the darkness.  The wall opposite couldn’t be seen.  It was just a wall that extended up and down as far as I could see, a pinprick of light or two in the dark, and nothing more.

As if the world were nothing more than the one spread of grimy, damp construction here, the neverending downpour from a pipe that jutted out of the wall further down.

“You make it sound so hopeless,” I said.  “Why even bother trying if you think it’s that bad?”

“The kids,” he said.  “Not mine, they washed up alongside us.”

“Washed up?”

“Bad weather hit, could be hurricane, but I dunno, don’t watch or listen to much.  Next thing, we’re all collected in some shallow drain with a whole lot of debris and dead.”

Washed away, I thought.  Had the storm erased their ties to the world as surely as Ur had eaten mine?

“You’re settled awfully close to that thing.”

“Sure.  Killed whoever lived where we’re at, we set up there, do what we can t’keep the thing going, fish the trough.  If it stops turning, it might hear us and decide t’pay a visit.  Lost two before we learned.”

I nodded slowly.  “What is it?  A goblin?”

He gave me a dark, suspicious look.

“What?” I asked.

“Yeh, it’s a goblin, or so we’ve heard.  Not what most people would guess.  Dragon?  Sure.  Bat?  Yeh.  But goblin?”

“I know stuff,” I said.

“Do you now?  ‘Cause the only one we know who knows this sort of thing calls herself a witch.”

“Is she dangerous?”

“Yeh,” he said.  “She’s dangerous.  Not always.  Not even some of the time, but she’s unpredictable, spiteful.  We mostly steer clear, but sometimes if we’re hurt or something new’s come up, we ask, and we pay.”

“Well,” I said.  “I’m not dangerous either, but I’m not all that unpredictable either.  I was a beginner, before I found my way down here, and I’ve lost just about everything I had.”

His stare was long and level, and there was a tension in the air.

Was he considering whether he should just shove me over the edge?  Handle the problem?

“If you want t’talk to her, she’s down through this way.  No light, y’gotta feel your way.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

A shrug.  “Wander until something gets you, wait until something gets you…”

“Or get myself.  I get it.”

He nodded slowly.

I rubbed my arms, comparing the two paths available to me.

“Y’realize the cold can’t kill you,” he said.  “Can’t starve, can’t go crazy without sleep.  But when y’give up on those things, y’give up something human in yerself.”

Wearing you down.

I was getting a sense of how this place worked.

Probably just as easy to let us decide to sacrifice common needs and let ourselves become less human than it was to maintain the usual rules for each individual inhabitant.

I couldn’t afford to do that if I wanted to get out and resume a normal-ish life.

I looked around.  Food was impossible and dangerous in its own way.  Water was… disgusting.

Sleep?  If I rested, maybe my mind would be a little clearer.

“Is this a bad place to sleep?” I asked.  “I… I just don’t really know much about anything here.”

He looked around before giving me a response.  “Probably.”

Probably.

The way he said it suggested that any place was probably a bad place to sleep.

I settled in, my back to the wall.  The floor was slightly sloped, and a thin trickle of water ran along the floor, dancing this way and that as dirt moved out of the way or the wind changed.  My rear end would get damp, and even my shoulders, where they pressed against the wall, given the state of my coat.  As places went, though, it was drier than some.

When I looked up, my guide was on the ledge, getting ready to make his way back.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Whatever’s keeping you going,” he said, “Hold onto it.”

“Yeah,” I said.

When the faint sounds of his shuffling progress were drowned out by more distant sprays of water, I glanced around, checking every way for possible trouble, then let my eyes close.

■

Days, weeks, years?  No, not years.  Months, at most.  It was hard to keep track of time.

Green Eyes had been so right.  It was all too easy to focus on the now.

I shuffled through the narrow space.  The walls pressed in around me, scraping at my shoulders.

There was no way to ensure I had food and water and sleep without staying active, focusing on the moment-to-moment. That came at a cost.  There was no way to track the passage of time but the intermittent flashing of lights, spouting of water and my own breathing… it was easy to just let the days slip by.  When I was so tired or sick that I didn’t think I could go on, I tapped into anger.

Rose and the others spoke up from time to time.  It helped to keep the anger stoked.  I couldn’t even remember what exactly had been said.  I only remembered the resentment, the self-hatred for feeling resentful, the fury at realizing what Rose had really been up to, the hurt.

A big ball of the most horrendous feelings possible, making it impossible to sit still.

The rules are the same, I thought.  The bald man’s advice had reminded me of that.  Whatever was down here, the basic rules I’d learned were the same.  Goblins didn’t like metal.  Faerie, even the sort of Faerie that lurked down here, they didn’t like crude things.

A little bit of ruthlessness, a goblin’s hide to keep myself warm, a bit of glamour to mend injuries…

Well, that made it easier to get the ball rolling.

I reached the corridor that opened up into the Cistern.

I unfurled wings.

They’d been decoration at first.  Then, with time, they’d become a part of me.  Even a part I could use.

More bat wings than bird wings, which was disappointing, but I had feathers, both real and tattooed, across the flaps.  A part of me liked that on a visceral level.

Another part of me felt like it was tainted, a gift for bending to the rules of this place.  Becoming a part of the system, cooperating with this small universe in helping to break others down.

Fetid, muggy air rushed over skin, through hair, feather, fur and spines.  Here and there, droplets of moisture fell on me, heavy with silt and grime.

I glided more than I flew, and I watched for potential prey.  Only the ones that were further gone.  Less human.  They were more nourishing.  If they asked for mercy or drew weapons, I left.  If they roared or screeched, I killed and I ate.

Steering myself up until I very nearly stalled, no air under my wings, I hooked clawed toes and fingertips on an outcropping of brick, twisted myself around and leaped off, because it was easier than reorienting myself in mid-flight.

In this area, where the smell of feces was stronger, I knew to avoid certain areas where water could come pouring down without any warning, knocking me out of the air.

No prey.

That was fine.  The nice thing about a primarily carnivorous diet was that one didn’t need to eat frequently.  One meal could do for several ‘days’, as far as days existed in this damnable place.

I hadn’t given up on getting out.

Not long now.

Before too long, I would try to make my way over the steam vents.  I’d lost heart the last time around, gliding for what felt like days and nights without seeing anything, while a great shadow followed, waiting for me to grow tired enough.

Next time.

Then I’d be out.

I steered myself upward.  The claws of my feet scratched small chunks out of the ledge as I settled at the mouth of one drain.

My night vision was good enough to reveal the figure emerging from the water.

“Blake,” Green Eyes said.

Most of the others that had known me as Blake were gone now.  The ones who were still around would be the targets of my revenge.

Simple, but it was still what drove me.

I had to get my feet wet to draw closer.  The bed of the drain here had collected so much silt and grime that it was like walking in the shallowest water on a beach.  That same silt and grime had, here and there, worked its way into my skin, coloring it, texturing it.  It had done the same with with Green Eyes, I assumed.  Her skin was rough, like a cat’s tongue.

She ran one hand along my long neck.  I didn’t flinch.

I’d given that part of myself up long ago.  I’d needed a more animal comfort before I’d needed to hold on to that.  My feelings for her weren’t romantic.  I’d just wanted to be warm.

I think I’d known, as I made that choice, what I’d be giving up.  Even why and how.  It wasn’t long after that that Blake Thorburn had crumbled as a person, leaving room for me to become this.

“Soon?” Green Eyes asked me.

No longer able to speak, I bobbed my head in a nod.

■

I woke up.

I spent far, far too much time staring at my hands, convincing me it had all been a dream.

Except it hadn’t, I realized.  It had felt real, as had the weight of memories, dim as they had been for my monstrous self.  They faded as quickly as I could reach for them, useful details dancing away.

A portent, then?

A suggestion of what could easily come to pass?

Even as the memories faded, the feelings remained, taunting me.

The act of flying, or gliding, and the feeling of security.  Of being one of the bigger threats in this particular area.

The knowledge that, if I were only to agree, to relinquish it, I could be rid of metaphorical demons that had haunted me for years.

If I didn’t want to go to the trouble of eating or sleeping, I just… didn’t have to.

If I didn’t want to feel cold, I could just stop.  Flick that switch in my head and stop worrying about it.

Everyone I’d seen to date had chosen some vestiges of human to cling to, but they hadn’t all chosen all vestiges.  There was only so much energy and time, so much risk any of us could face before we got ourselves killed for our trouble.

This place wanted us to choose.

But it was a lie.  Bait in the trap.  I wasn’t sure I could believe I had it in me to become that.  Not positive.

I was stiff as I hauled myself up off the ground, resting one hand on the slimy wall for balance, so I wouldn’t slip and simply fall backwards into the endless darkness.

I ventured into darkness, one hand on the wall, plank on the ground in front of me, making a faint sound as I dragged it left and right against the stone floor, feeling for hazards.

The bug bites were stinging.  I cursed myself for not thinking to ask about it.

The mark on my cheek where Green Eyes had kissed me stung too.

My wounds, from the stab wound on my left hand to the scrapes and blisters on my fingers and the place where my arm had been grabbed too hard throbbed.

I had little doubt I could simply shrug off all the pain.  Push it somewhere deep inside me, where it wouldn’t touch me.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay whatever price this place would exact from me.

How had the other Bogeymen gotten by?  Had they found their way to these same Drains, or had they discovered other places like them?  A ghost town shrouded in mist for the Tallowman to claim a building and resume his practice?  Had Midge found a place in the wilderness to set up a shack and live much as she’d lived in life, only becoming harder and meaner as she spent more time there?  Was she there now, so rooted in this Limbo that she would simply find her way here if her material body was killed a hundred more times?

The blank skittered right, but it didn’t touch wall.  The interruption cut off my thoughts.

A bend?

I prodded, and found a drop.  The plank’s end rose of its own accord.  A quicker movement made a splash.

Water.

Feeling around more, I was able to figure out the general layout.

Pitch darkness, a bridge of hard earth.  Water under and on either side.

I made my way across, the plank scratching across the ground, reminding me of where the bridge was.

Water splashed to my right.

I froze.

A rotten fish smell flooded the area.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

Another splash, then another.

The smell grew stronger.

I felt cold.  Not personally, but from some nearby source.

Cold radiated from this as heat did from a hot poker.

I felt it draw nearer, and in the darkness and near-silence of this chamber, my other senses were painfully acute.  I felt the cold increase by steep degrees, reaching from my left shoulder toward my chin and collarbone.

I raised my chin by mere fractions.

It was a matter of an inch or two away from me.  Some reaching hand.

I felt the cold envelop my neck, and held my breath and my voice both.

Reaching around my neck, but not touching.

I felt it reach down along my spine.

Too many turns.  It wasn’t an arm.

I leaned back as I felt it draw closer to my neck, a natural consequence of this tendril or tail or whatever it was snaking around over my shoulder and behind me.

When I couldn’t lean over any more without risking falling into the water, I turned my upper body, not moving my feet out of concern that they might scrape.  I bent over, resting my free hand on one knee for balance, and ducked under.

I stayed like that, bent over, one hand on my knee, the other holding the plank.

One remained behind my leg.

Another was well over my head, only close enough for me to feel the brush of cold.

A droplet fell on my extended arm.  I suppressed a hiss of pain.  It might as well have been acid.

Every muscle in my body was tense, some of that tension from a searing pain that bordered on agony.

“Alexis?”  Tiff’s voice.

A sniffling.  “I’m okay.  I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

“You really need to sleep.  Things are getting ugly out there.”

“I know.  I’ll try.”

It was like a slap in the face, the knowledge that I hadn’t left the world a better place than it had been when I’d come into it.  Not for Alexis.

Something nudged the plank I held in the moment I was distracted.

A tenth of a second later, before I could even get my bearings or comprehend what had just happened, it had the plank, gripping it with a strength I couldn’t have resisted if I was on my bike, a chain stretched between bike and plank, wheels spinning full-bore.

It crushed the plank, and only windmilling arms kept me from plunging into the water.

I was left with only a square of plank.

More splashing, more violent, coming closer.

I turned to run and fell instead.  I spread my arms wide, reaching out for and hugging the bridge to keep from rolling off.  My empty, sock-bandaged hand touched water and went instantly numb.

A splash of water hit me, and more numbness spread from where water touched skin.  It was right here, whatever it was.

I felt a hot breath and nearly gagged from the rotten fish smell.  The heat of it was a stark contrast to the coldness of the limbs.

The sheer amount of breath, enveloping me, forming steam where it touched water, was another indicator of what I was up against.

I managed to find my feet.  There was no testing my step, only memory.

Another breath, more diffuse, only half as strong, in combination with cold as intense as I’d felt yet…

It was just in front of me, mouth open.

I acted on instinct alone.  I held the remaining bit of plank in both hands, and I struck out.

I hit something solid, and, using my two-handed grip, I raked the ragged edge of the plank across flesh.

There was no cry of pain, no response.

Only the limbs lashing out.  They hit water before they hit me, just as I was turning to run.  The water caught me mid-stride.

My shoulder met solid wall, hard enough that I didn’t even realize I’d dropped the plank in the shock.  One leg went off the bridge and into water so cold it should have been frozen over.

With one good leg and one good arm, I managed to heave myself past the corner of wall, past the area with the bridge, to the corridor that followed.

I heard something wet slap against stone, a faint crack.

There was no relief on the other side.  No remedy from the sharp pain that jolted from my shoulder to the fingertips of my good hand, nor the blistering cold that made me feel like my leg had fallen off.

No light, even, to convince me that whatever I’d left behind me wasn’t waiting a short distance in front of me.

I crawled ahead enough that I could be reasonably sure it wasn’t about to find a way to reach into the corridor and grab me, then collapsed.

I had no way to judge the amount of time that was passing.  My thoughts were borderline feverish.

I had to get out of here.

Had to.

Had to help Evan and repay debts and keep this fucking pattern from continuing with the Thorburn line.  I wanted to see Alexis and Tiff and Ty but especially Alexis.

I wanted to ride my freaking bike and my complete and total inability to tell what had happened with my leg and the freezing water was making me think that maybe that wasn’t necessarily possible.

I wanted to kill that freaking motherfuck of a demon who had put me here.

My fingertips scraped against the hard, damp floor beneath me.

Hours might have passed before the cold in my leg receded enough for me to feel confident about moving it.  My arm still felt stabs of pain from my shoulder, but they were only about ten times as bad as the worst whack I’d ever given my funny bone.

The pain in my frozen leg was a much different sort of pain from what I was experiencing in my shoulder.  If I were carved of stone, my shoulder might have a general crack running through it.  My leg, if I had to put an idea to it, felt like it was all cracks.

I thought about how the injuries of the people on the bridge had healed, and felt a twinge of panic.

But above all, I hobbled forward, wincing with every step.

The pain didn’t subside before I reached light, and it took me a long, long time to reach light.

The lack of ability to judge time was getting to me, joining the pain and general disorientation.  It was very much what I expected it felt like to be in solitary confinement, only this was a big, big place, and there were others present.

But the idea fit.

Light.  I could see a place very much like the watermill’s bridge, but far more extensive.  A settlement.

I had no illusions.  This wasn’t a safe place.  The danger here would be danger of another kind.  People would be vicious to retain whatever they had here.

All the same, I started plotting a path.  A great many bridges, real stone ones and makeshift pipe ones, as well as improvised bridges cobbled together with debris.  The path to the settlement area was a winding one.  I memorized the route I needed to take, one that would involve interacting with the smallest number of people.

Progress was slow, but that wasn’t a bad thing.

Priorities.  Getting information was one.  Green Eyes had suggested a way out.  Maybe there was another way out.

If the Witch had a measure of respect and power, maybe I could get something, or barter my knowledge and meager expertise to obtain something.  A better weapon would do worlds for my mental well being.  Medical care too, if it meant not letting my body be corrupted or degraded or whatever this place wanted to do to it.

But a weapon, after that run-in, sounded like a fantastic idea.

Hobbling footsteps carried me to the first bridge.  Stone, natural to this place, with no railing.  The stones had been smoothed by droplets of water that had fallen down from above and run off either side for decades.

A man was there, oblivious to me, hands clasped behind his back.  Black hair, black beard, black scarf, black jacket, black slacks, black shoes.

It was hard to convince myself that he wasn’t going to simply turn around and push, just because he could.  Something about him made me feel uneasy.

I edged around him, and when I was close enough to be pushed, I took one quick step, putting me out of reach.  I stumbled on my bad leg, but I stumbled on safe ground.

I was clear.

Paranoia would wear on my sanity too, but paranoia was better than falling victim to some stupid, vicious act.

“Blake.”

I stopped short.

That voice-

I turned.

To say my heart dropped out of my chest really didn’t do the feeling justice.

It was more like a great brutish fist just reached up from under me, fingers gripping everything inside the ribcage, and tore everything out, leaving me hollow.

I wobbled a bit.

If I’d been smarter about it, I would have put the pieces together.  I’d been watching for the wrong thing.

He didn’t belong here.  His clothes were intact, free of grime.  His jacket was a blazer worn to contrast the nattiness of the sweater he wore, his scarf worn for style, not for winter wear.  He wasn’t dressed for the season.  His hands were jammed in his pockets, he was completely at ease.

I recognized him.

Fuck me, did I ever recognize him.

“Long time no see, Blake,” he said.

I swallowed hard.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked.

“I think you know exactly what I’m doing here, Blake,” he said.

“Stop saying my fucking name,” I said.

“Whatever you want,” he said.  He smiled.

An easy, genuine, disarming smile.  His eyes crinkled, betraying his age.  A little older than thirty, maybe.

The colors were all wrong.  His hair was supposed to be brown, I remembered the scarf as being red and white.

He was a shadow version of the man I remembered.  Black.

That thought made me think of a fleeting mention Green Eyes had made to something.  A black fish.

Of course.

I’d been treated to a vision of the present.

A glimpse of the future.

Now a shadow from my past.  Something produced by this place to harry me, to ensure that I wouldn’t have peace without paying for it.  Without becoming a monster, or… or what?  Letting go of my memories altogether?

This place doing what it could to find my weaknesses, to claw at them.  Attacking from different directions, to put me on my heels.

“Carl…” I said, and the name felt heavy on my tongue.  “Don’t follow me.”

“You know I’m supposed to, Blake”

I turned to go, putting him behind me.

His footsteps followed.

I broke into a run.  Heads turned.

He was faster.  When I glanced, I saw him pass by them, running just as fast.  They didn’t react, didn’t see him.

He was here for me and me alone.

My run became something reckless. My footfalls came down hard enough on one makeshift bridge that something bounced loose, to strike a hard surface a distance below.  I was already a ways ahead, running along a ledge that would have been too narrow for casual walking.

I looked, and I saw him just a step behind me, reaching.

Stupidly, instinctually, I spun away.  Less instinctually, more out of anger, I threw a punch.

Except there was nothing solid underfoot as I planted my foot behind me.  Only open air.

A glimpse, as I turned in the air, of Carl standing on the ledge.  A smug, vague expression that revealed nothing at all.

I was dimly aware of a bridge, and with the one foot that was still on solid ground, I kicked.

Another bridge of scrap metal and wood.

I didn’t trust myself to grab onto something and hold on.  Instead, I simply slammed my arm into the nearest gap.  Metal sliced the back of my hand and the ‘v’ shaped gap crushed my wrist.

I dangled, the entire bridge swaying with my weight.

With my damaged, bandaged hand, I gripped the sturdiest piece of wood.  I was breathing too hard, and my hand shook.  Rather than trust the integrity of my divided hand, I wrapped my forearm around it, and then pulled my wedged hand free.  I climbed up onto the bridge in increments.

I didn’t stand.

“Mann, Levinn, Lewis,” I said.

My voice was hollow in the darkness.

“Mann, Levinn, Lewis.”

Eyes stared at me.

“Mann, Levinn, Lewis.”

There was no clap of thunder, no fire and brimstone.

Only a long pause, and heels striking the bridge.

I didn’t look up.

“Let me help my friends,” I said.  “You win.  This place wins.  Just let me help them, and you have me after that.”

A deal with the devil.

“No,” was the reply.  “Too late.”

Null 9.3

I clenched my fists, but neither was in particularly good working order.  My left hand was split in two, the wrist of my right hand butchered by the way I’d slammed it through the side of the bridge.

Getting to my feet was a slow process, made slower by the fact I couldn’t use my hand.  Elbow on the railing, which wobbled unsteadily as I put my weight on it, a piece of signboard bowed under my weight as I planted one foot on the ground and used it to stand.

Ms. Lewis was already walking away.  Her suit and clean, shampooed blond hair were eerily out of place in here.

With a quick glance over my shoulder, I looked for Carl.  He was gone.  For the time being, I was sure.

Bystanders stepped out of Ms. Lewis’ way, giving her a wide berth.

“Don’t walk away from me,” my voice was low.

She didn’t respond.  She kept walking.

I hobbled after her.

She paused, and I took that as my cue to stop.  Which was great, because I was aching in a dozen places.  My leg, my hands…

“Talk to me,” I said.  Demanded.

“Talk to you?”  She turned.  “Who are you?  Keep in mind, that’s a very complicated question.”

“It doesn’t need that complicated or loaded an answer.  I’m Blake Thorburn.”

“‘Blake Thorburn’ has no power.  He has minimal presence in the material world.  He has a minimal presence here.  The spirits no longer pay him any mind.  He can lie.  Did you know this?  Your words have no substance anymore.  The only person who actually knows about you is your goblin queen friend, and she recently finished a ritual that obligates her to stay in Jacob’s Bell.  You can’t throw your name around if it has no weight.”

“You still know about me,” I said.  “How?”

“Yes.  The demon primarily cut connections to those who were gathered outside the building.  When you lost your grip on the world, other connections broke.  Your home, your parents, your little sister… I held onto mine, as your goblin queen friend did.”

“And I know about me,” I said.

“You do,” she said.

“Why?”

“That would be telling.”

“I want out of here,” I said.  “You can’t tell me you don’t have any use for me anymore.  Just take me out of here, let me see to my affairs, and then you have me at your disposal.”

“Whether you’re talking about the errand I promised or joining the firm, we’re simply not interested.  You’ve served your purpose, you’re spent, as currency goes.  Inviting you back would only undermine everything we put in place for our client.”

“Undermine?” I asked.  My mind raced.

“I understand you’re upset, Mr. Thorburn, but I offered you a means of extending your very short stay in the world, and you refused it.  You’ve effectively ceased to exist, and right now, you’re wasting my time.  If you wish to continue this conversation, I may have to bill you for your time,” she said.

A pause as I glared at her.

“You went considerably out of your way to refuse our last offer.  I don’t think there’s anything I could tell you here that would be worth the price I’d exact.”

Undermine.  It was an idea to latch onto.

If the idea had been to simply bring Rose into the world, they could have set up what they did and simply killed me.

Rose hadn’t become a practitioner, purposefully screwing up the awakening ritual, but she had learned.  She’d studied.

I’d been there for a reason.  Buying time.  Buying Rose time.  I’d been there to absorb the initial hostility, to put Rose in a good position.  Then Grandmother’s ideal heir, custom made, got placed in the real world, replacing me, consuming my energy to become real.  Any enemies vicious enough to put her down would be bewildered.  Rose, knowledgeable enough to know what to do, would capitalize on the confusion that came with her appearance.

Except I’d gone down in the messiest way possible and buggered up that part of things.

Isadora had known it, and she’d tried to offer me a clean death rather than this.  Or whatever fate I was running headlong towards.  Rose had maybe known it.  Laird had known it.

I could understand Isadora knowing because of what she was.  I could understand Rose knowing because she’d been tipped off.  Given a nudge or some lawyerly advice.  How had Laird known?

“I was the sacrificial pawn, then,” I said.  “That’s all it amounts to?  I die, so Rose can live?”

“Effectively,” Ms. Lewis said.  “You were polite in our conversations, and that’s more than some of our more manic or deranged clients manage.  I noticed your call, however small your voice is, and I thought I would stop by to urge you to make peace with your circumstances.”

“Peace?” I asked.  “Peace?  Here?”

“It would be for the best,” she said.

“This isn’t the kind of peace I want,” I said.  “I’m really fucking tired of people trying to get me to lay down and give up.  To accept their fucking idea of peace.  I want my peace, damnit!”

“Yet the alternative to our idea of peace was and is an unquiet end.  You’re standing in quicksand, Mr. Thorburn.  Thrashing means you only sink faster, exhausted and frightened.  Go still, wait, and you might remain in the quicksand, but it won’t be quite so unpleasant.”

“No,” I said.  “That’s not me.  I’d rather go down fighting and stupid.  Foolish.  I’m asking for your help because I have to keep going somehow, and I can’t keep going here.  Not with the price involved, not when it’s going to grind me down and make me something different.”

She tilted her head a little.  It was unsettling how the gritty droplets that occasionally rained down from the ceiling weren’t touching her.  This place wasn’t touching her.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said.  “You can’t give up, and this may be the worst place for you to be…”

Despite myself, I checked again.  Carl was still gone.

“…But you won’t get help from me.  Unfortunately, that puts me in an awkward position.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I put you in an awkward spot?” I asked, infusing my voice with weeks worth of repressed sarcasm.

“Dramatic irony at its finest,” she said.  “Your goblin queen friend can’t and won’t come, and your other friends are preoccupied.  You left no other meaningful allies behind you.  You’re alone.  I’m your last hope, and you can’t let me go… unless I prevail on your wisdom and self preservation.”

“You’re threatening me?”

“I can’t have you following me out,” she said, “And I’d rather not make waves by leaving more dramatically.  People aren’t the only things that come to this place to be worn away.  Many a Demesne or forgotten god have fallen through the cracks, nothing to tie them to the world above.  I would rather not disturb the more powerful locals.”

“You’re saying there’s an exit.”

“I’m saying this conversation is over,” she said.  “I’m not here to hand you a solution.  I’m saying farewell, that I’ve dealt with worse individuals, and I’m choosing to refuse your request in person, rather than leave you to keep wondering.  I’m sorry it has to end on this note, but if you follow me, I will speak a name and you will regret making the choice.”

“I’m not-”

“As I said, this conversation is over,” she told me.

My divided hand clutched my wounded wrist as I stood on the rickety, piecemeal bridge, watching her leave.

When she said she would make me regret it, I believed her.

Frustration, rage, horror and a measure of panic boiled up within me.

Impotent emotion.  I wasn’t dumb enough to follow.

But what the fuck was I supposed to do if I stayed?

I watched her disappear into the darkness, onto some ledge or path out of reach of any of the flickering lights.

My heart pounded.  My mouth and throat were dry, even though my entire body was damp and numb with cold.

The darkness pressed in.  I couldn’t shake the idea that the darkness was as solid as hard earth, and it extended for miles in every direction.  Any progress I made was at the expense of scratching in dirt.

There was only this little patch of reality, and then only constant resistance that cost me more than it was worth to make headway against.

Seeing Carl had fucked me up.

Bystanders were staring.  Others and people who weren’t a hundred percent people anymore.  Broken down individuals who’d been shored up by whatever they could scrounge up from this place.  Animal parts, grit, rags, flesh bloated with water.

I turned my back on the bridge that Ms. Lewis had taken, limping back in the direction of the small settlement.

I would have been lying if I tried to convince myself I managed to compose myself, but fuck it, I was allowed to lie now.

■

Hard shoe heels struck the tiled floor.  The church was dim, with some multicolored light streaming in through stained glass windows.

Sandra stood in front of the altar, not at the altar.  It loomed behind her, but the fact that she wasn’t using it as a stage to speak from suggested this wasn’t a proper assembly.  Her familiar was perched across her shoulders, body bent to accommodate her neck.  She wore her hair in a braid that draped over one shoulder, and a long coat with a fur ruff around the hood.  Her family was arranged on one side of the aisle.

Mags sat on the edge of the stage, to Sandra’s left.  Three goblins sitting or standing in her immediate vicinity.  Her dark hair turned away from her head in twisted little curls, and only the metal hairband kept her from looking shaggy.  Her t-shirt was black, with a bloody cartoon character on it, her jacket too small for the deep winter.  Her denim skirt had threads hanging from the hem, and her legs were in black tights, jammed into sneakers.  She looked painfully out of place with the modern clothes, and she looked worn out, with dark circles under dark eyes, little injuries everywhere, but the goblins around her were obedient, and formed a kind of unconscious tableau.

Andy and Eva stood leaning against the stage to Sandra’s right.  He looked just similar enough to Eva for them to be obvious relatives, but their style of dress and demeanor were completely different.

Duncan sat with the Behaim family, his jacket draped on the back of the pew behind him.  He wore gloves that extended inside the sleeves of his long-sleeved shirt, had one foot propped up on the seat of the pew.  One finger tapped a relentless metronome beat on his knee.

A younger Aboriginal girl sat on a pew, all alone.  Nobody sat next to her, but the Briar Girl and the Briar Girl’s familiar sat in the row behind her.

The Faerie had taken seats behind the Behaims.  Ev and Keller.  Padraic was absent.

Johannes was the last major player, sitting a little ways back, his familiar beside him.

Other Others were arranged at the edges of the room.

Eyes were on Rose.  Alexis, Ty and Tiff had joined her, and each one of them was backed by a summoned Other.  Alexis had a knight in rusted armor, Tiff was joined by a small child with white hair and pale pink eyes, lower face hidden by a scarf, and Ty was accompanied by both a mangy-looking Evan and a hulking brute of a man draped in what might have been necrotized flesh or seaweed.  It was hard to tell.

Rose was accompanied by James Corvidae, and her style of dress -still wearing clothes from Grandmother Rose’s wardrobe- matched his in a strange way.  Corvidae met the eyes of the small Aboriginal girl who’d partially turned around.  He smiled, a slow, wide smile.  The girl twisted around, sitting back down, eyes forward, but she smiled a little too.

Rose wasn’t in a position to see either smile.

“The diabolist has a cabal?” Sandra asked.

“No,” Rose said.  “A circle.  I haven’t taught them anything that would qualify them as a cabal, not yet.”

“You’re not doing yourself any favors, talking like that,” Sandra said.

“I know.  Can I sit?”

“It’s your prerogative,” Sandra said.

Rose stood by while Ty, Alexis and Tiff filed in to take a seat on the pew.  Their individual others moved into the row behind them, not sitting.

Rose took her seat at the end of the pew closest to the middle of the church.

“I must say,” Ev commented, her voice light and airy. “It is quite refreshing to have an active Thorburn around.  Say what you will about the last one, she just wasn’t that interesting.  We’re happier to be rid of her.”

“If you’re trying to bait me, it’s not going to work,” Rose said.  “I wasn’t fond of Molly either.”

Mags shifted position, uncomfortable.

“For the most part, we’ve made our initial forays,” Sandra said.  “Testing the water.  If I suggest that an outright war is looming on the horizon, I don’t think anyone’s about to correct me.”

Nobody did.

“I didn’t think so.  This may well get very unpleasant, and I’d like to manage how unpleasant it gets.  I’ve touched on the subject with Johannes, and I believe he’s on the same page as me.”

“Geneva conventions?” Mags asked.

“In a sense,” Sandra replied.  “I don’t want this to devolve into the same sort of mess that apparently occurred in Toronto.  I would propose a series of rules, to keep this contained and to keep it private.”

“I’m not against the idea,” Johannes said.  “So long as they’re new rules, not some convoluted tradition that we can’t hope to study before events come to pass.”

“New rules,” Sandra said.  “We limit the collateral damage by keeping all altercations between official combatants.  To protect individuals that can’t speak for themselves-”

“Small children,” Johannes said.

“Yes.  To protect individuals like babies and small children, we assume that only those individuals that sign a given, freely available tome are participants in the struggle for the Lordship of Jacob’s Bell.”

“I’ll have to say no to that one,” Johannes said.  “My allies come and go, and some can’t sign a book.  The rule is biased against humans and humanoids.”

“Individuals that can speak for themselves,” Sandra clarified.  “Make a declaration.”

Johannes spread his arms wide.  “I have friends that can’t speak conventionally.  And how and when would this declaration take place?  You’d need observers, which suggests it would have to take place in a setting like this, but that creates time restrictions.  Not to mention it’s a rule that explicitly puts me at a disadvantage.  I’d prefer my enemies to be surprised with the sheer variety of contacts and allies I have.”

“Then you won’t agree?” Sandra asked.

Johannes shook his head.

“If I may?” Duncan asked.

“Go ahead.”

“People can declare themselves out of bounds, with the caveat that they cannot participate,” Duncan said.  “Those who cannot speak for themselves can be named by another.”

“While they are present,” Johannes said, “With room for objection.”

Duncan nodded.

“I have no objection to that,” Sandra said.  “Innocents, and anyone who names themselves or is named by another and cannot or will not speak against that?”

“Works for me,” Johannes said.

“A show of hands, then?” Sandra asked, raising her own hand.  “Who is interested in making a bid for power?”

She kept her hand in the air.  It was joined by Duncan, Johannes…

And Rose.

“Rose, I know you’re new to this,” Sandra said, “But you might change your mind if I were to tell you that if an area has a diabolist for a Lord, that area becomes a target for other groups.”

“Groups with a sense of self preservation,” Duncan said.

“I know that already,” Rose said. “I’m still making a bid.”

“And your, ah, Circle?” Johannes asked.

“We’re standing by her,” Alexis said.

Sandra made a bit of a face.  “Right.  Then do we have any individuals or groups that are declaring for themselves?  Separate and apart from the conflict, or hoping to gain from it without declaring for a side?”

Hands went up around the periphery of the room.  Various Others.  The two Faerie.

The little Aboriginal girl’s hand went up, as did the Briar Girl’s.

“Very well,” Sandra said.  “You agree to abide by the rules?”

“If we don’t,” the Briar Girl said, “You’ll deal with us first, to keep this controlled, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Sandra said.

“Then I guess I have to.”

“I have to ask if there are any explicitly neutral declarations?  A role to play in the contest itself, or in relation to the city?”

Andy and Eva’s hands went up.

Mags raised her hand too.

“Good,” Sandra said.  “We’ll clarify the details in a moment, then.  The second point would be to protect the citizens.  Any altercations for the Lordship, should take place within Jacob’s Bell, which is only appropriate.  No property should be damaged or altered in such a way that it distresses an innocent resident.  I don’t want this to be about bloodshed and destruction.”

“Within Jacob’s Bell and its demesnes, and my residents aren’t considered innocent,” Johannes said.  “Honestly, Sandra.  Do you really imagine I’d let that one slip by?  Amend it and I’ll agree.”

“I’ll agree as well,” Duncan said.

“Very well,” Sandra said.  “Any altercation should involve a clear declaration of war.  Where allowed and fitting, I would like to do this with clear rules of engagement.  Contests, rather than outright fighting and murder.”

“This is getting tiresome,” Johannes said.  “Of course you want contests rather than murder.  You’re an enchantress.  Assassination and violence remain on the table, or this is a farce.”

Sandra smiled.  “Good.  Declarations of war, then.  Fair notice, confrontations should take place behind closed doors, the public none the wiser.  I’ll just suggest it’s more Lordlike if one can best a foe without such barbarism.”

Johannes smiled just a little too much at that.  “Of course.”

“We can add more rules at a later point,” Sandra said.  “For the time being, are these basic restrictions fair?  Any objection?”

“I object.”

Rose’s voice was quiet, but it carried.

It wasn’t the first time she’d displayed good oratory skills.  Eyes turned her way.

“You object?” Sandra asked.

“Yes.  I’m declaring my bid for the Lordship of Jacob’s Bell, and I’m unequivocally refusing all the proposed rules and conventions.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Duncan said.  “You know what’s going to happen.  Anyone who refuses, like the Briar Girl said, is inviting immediate retaliation.”

“You keep telling me things like I was born yesterday,” Rose said.  “I know.  I don’t particularly care.”

“You’re making enemies here,” Sandra said.

Rose shrugged.

“You’re putting innocents at risk by weakening this agreement,” Duncan spoke, his voice low.

“Oh, you’re thinking of your fiancee,” Rose said.  “Again, you keep telling me things I know and have considered.”

Johannes spoke up, “Your circle will be obvious and easy targets to weaken you.  Surely you’re not that heartless.”

Tiff fidgeted, hands out of view behind the back of the pew in front of her.

“It certainly looks like I am that heartless,” Rose said.

“They’re open game, then?” Johannes asked.

“Try,” Rose said.

She stood, fixing her coat, then strode from the church.

It was a good twenty seconds before her circle and Others had all departed.  The door shut behind the monstrous Other with the seaweed flesh.

“Well,” Mags said.  “That happened.”

“We could forge the same deal with her absent,” Duncan said.

“It would be far weaker as a group-sworn Oath than it would be if everyone was involved, and it would put us at a disadvantage in relation to our prickly miss Thorburn there, tying our hands while leaving hers free,” Sandra said.  “I’d rather not, not officially.”

Johannes smiled, leaning back on his pew.  “Honor system it is, then.”

The North End Sorcerer excepted, there were very few present who looked particularly happy with the turn of events.

The Faerie were two of those few.

“So refreshing,” Ev murmured to Keller, practically squirming with excitement.

■

Muscles were tense all throughout my body.  My teeth were grit so hard I was getting a headache.

I intentionally walked through the open pool of water, disrupting the image and sounds.  Nobody else had caught them.  The scenes were just for me.

What the fuck are you doing, Rose?

Me being a pawn was bad enough.  My friends being used as pawns?

Holy fuck, if this place wanted to screw with my head, it was succeeding by leaps and bounds.  Fuck me.  I’d already been trying to deal with the frustration and rage that had followed from talking to Ms. Lewis, but now this?  Watching my friends get led to their doom while I was utterly unable to do a thing about it?

I raised a fist, ready to punch a wall, and stopped.  My wrist was still a wreck, badly bandaged with my other spare sock.

My other hand- bandaged with the first sock, divided in half.

A kick then?  My right leg was a wreck, barely able to sustain my weight when I walked.

I would have screamed, but I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t wake up something I didn’t want to wake up.

There wasn’t anything to do but swallow my frustration.  To let it gnaw at me from the inside out.  The environment was doing its fair share of damage from the outside in.  At some point, I’d hit my limit.

This wasn’t that point.  Like I’d told Ms. Lewis, I wasn’t about to lie down and die.

I hiked up my pants leg to double-check my leg’s condition.  Veins and capillaries had burst, causing horrific bruising, complete with what looked like black tracks along the skin where the veins or arteries or whatever had been closer to the skin.  All from a brief touch from the cold tentacled thing in the water.

I let the pants leg drop.  At least it wasn’t an open wound, like the cuts and abrasions on the sides of my right wrist were.  Open wounds meant inviting diseases.  Or, worse, they meant inviting something special to this place.  Fungi, molds, parasites, infections of the sort that weren’t in any medical journal.

I needed a weapon.  There were people selling them here, further into the settlement.

I needed information.

Progress through the settlement revealed more shacks.  In places, shacks had been arranged around resources.  Eight or so shacks were arranged in a ring at one point opposite a chasm, and water periodically emptied from some pipe high above, along with collected debris and garbage.  Where the water passed under, I observed, there was very little garbage.  A grill or grate to catch the leavings, shared communally?

Light, it seemed, was another convenience, many shacks built to covet and borrow the light of a given lightbulb, their windows and shoddy construction allowing only slices of light through for others to use.  Safety was yet another, and the only apparent safety here was the safety of being in the middle of the herd.  As I drew closer to the heart of things, the houses were crammed in closer together.  It was like a very young child’s experiment with building blocks, sloppy, haphazard, and it didn’t make fundamental sense.  Everyone knew that when one laid down bricks, they staggered it, so each brick was supported by the two below.  Kindergarten level architecture.

Yet over and over, I saw sloppy construction where people had somehow, for some reason, decided to build their shack as an extension of the place below, increasing the pressure, making it all just a touch more wobbly and unsteady.

The people, too, didn’t feel like a society.  The crowd didn’t function as any crowd should.  Individuals stopped in the middle of the footpath, walked against the unsteady flow of people, and ranged from the openly hostile to the hyper-passive avoidant types.

I wasn’t seeing any indication of signs or general means of finding anything I needed.  I had to ask.

I stopped a man who was walking by, looking furtively around, like he might be jumped from any direction.  He startled at my reaching hand, as if he’d barely noticed I was there.  Skin had been ripped away from his face, neck and hands in long, perfectly straight, pencil-thin strips.

“The witch?” I asked.

He started moving again, but he extended a hand, pointing as he walked, eyes averted from mine.

Moving in the direction indicated, I found an alley.  It was the only way to describe it – a bridge with constructions on either side.  Shacks were piled haphazardly beside and on top of on one another, very few any larger than a single room.  They rose like individual walls with only a narrow path between them.

I picked out the Witch’s as one of the biggest, with walls of found stone – clusters of brick and mortar or stone and mortar that had broken away from various walls of the drains, fit together imperfectly.  Something had been stuffed in cracks, sufficient to keep light from shining through gaps where individual elements weren’t flush.

There was even a plant in the window, which was quite literally a hole in the wall, lacking glass or any covering.  The plant was a weedy, shitty looking plant of indeterminate nature, but there was a decoration.  That said something.

Anyone here who isn’t a victim is a predator, I thought.

I knocked on the door of driftwood.  There were cracks between the door and the wall, and candlelight shone through.

“Come in.”

I had to work for a second to figure out how to open the door.  The ceiling was low enough I had to duck a bit.

The witch was surprisingly normal looking.  Back in what Ms. Lewis had called the material world, the witch would have passed for a homeless woman.  Her hair was matted in places, and her skin had stretches of rash where it didn’t seem to have grit embedded in the flesh.  Forty or so, Greek if I had to attach an ethnicity to her.

But she would have passed for normal, and the extensive collection of knick-knacks and decorations, as well as genuine conveniences suggested she had been here for some time.  She’d spliced wiring leading up to a lightbulb and extended it to what seemed to be a hot plate.  A radio buzzed in the background, a man’s voice reading what might have been baseball stats, alternating between English and a guttural foreign language.  Swells of static periodically drowned out the voice.  Candles sat on three different surfaces, fat and crude looking.  Driftwood was stacked by what might have been a fireplace, though it was no larger than a toaster.

“You practiced,” the witch said.  “Before.”

I nodded.

“That was you with the visitor, on the poles?”

The poles?  Now that I thought about it, the bits of architecture between the bridges of scrap metal had resembled pillars, reaching up from the abyss to go nowhere.

“Yes, it was.”

“My visitors customarily bring gifts,” she said.  “I don’t ask them to, but they started doing it, and some even bring small gifts from time to time, so I remember their faces.  An insurance of sorts, so I might give them my time when they need it, and I am otherwise preoccupied.”

“Forgive me,” I said.  “I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine,” she said, “You don’t have to give me anything.  It’s a convention, not a rule.”

“I’d like to,” I said.  “I could give you word of the outside world.”

She snorted rather dramatically.  It wasn’t the usual snort.  It was the sort of snort that one could only manage if they were particularly ill or if the circumstances and environment were just right.  Heavy, impossible to ignore.

“No?” I asked.

“Everyone has the same question, and I’ll ask them if I’m curious in exchange.”

“I like fairness,” I said.

“Good,” she said.  “Ask your questions.”

I shook my head.  “One second.”

I pulled off my winter coat, then my sweatshirt, followed by my shirt.

“You’re more attractive than some,” she said, “But not so attractive a striptease is warranted or wanted, my dear.”

Shirtless, cold, I held out my t-shirt and sweatshirt.  “Sorry this is so impromptu.  You can have either one, your choice.”

“You’re new here,” she said.  “What makes you think I want a filthy, sweaty piece of clothing?”

“I was homeless once,” I said.

“Were you now?” she asked.  She quirked an eyebrow.  “What do I care about that?”

“There’s always a use for an extra bit of clothing,” I said.  “And I assume people are bringing you the wood you’re using for that fireplace, as gifts, and I can’t imagine you won’t find some use for a reasonably clean, intact shirt.”

“You’re not wrong,” she said.  She took my t-shirt, smiling.  “I like you.  Offering accepted.  Sit, please.”

I sat, struggling with my injured leg and hands.

She made no comment on either, taking an excessive amount of time to drape my t-shirt over the makeshift fireplace.

“Ask your questions,” she said.

“How do I get out?”

“There it is,” she said.

“I’ve heard there are exits guarded by powerful entities.  They exact a price for passage.”

“That’s one way,” she said.

“And I’ve heard that practitioners visit, picking up the most monstrous and powerful.”

“Partially right.  The most monstrous are left well alone, and for good reason.”

I nodded.  “My… visitor commented that there were powers best left undisturbed.”

“You know of demesnes?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Gods?”

“I know of them,” I said.

“People aren’t the only things that find their way down here.  A demesnes with no tie to the world may fall through the cracks just as any person might.  Some say this is how this place learns and adapts to the times.”

“Makes sense,” I said.  “Does anyone or anything run this place?”

“Maybe, maybe not.  I don’t know everything.  I would venture a guess, fellow practitioner, that it was a demesne once, and it was attached to some vital process of our reality.  Through this vital process, it came to devour other demesnes and objects, and it swelled in size.  It connected to other such areas, and formed the backbone for what might otherwise have been the original void.”

“Nothingness?”

“In the earliest creation myths, void was not nothing, but raw chaos.  Nothing was not a concept.  Void was an endless storm of everything under the sun, a great elemental grinder to churn up all which fell into its reach.  But over time, this place became more civilized.  Gods, you see, fall through the cracks as well, without worshiper or memories to hold them in place.  They sleep inside the walls, and bring a kind of logic to this place.  Demesnes bring memories of their masters.  Every visitor shapes this place in little ways.  The drains are but one manifestation of this essential need the universe has, for healthy entropy.”

I nodded.

“Cooperating with this entropy and working in concert with this place might make you sensitive enough to the underlying workings to divine a way out.  The sad fact, however, is that many who do this don’t want to leave, in the end.”

“I, um, had a dream, where I did that.  Cooperated.  But I did want to leave.”

“Many have these dreams,” she said.  “Not all leave in the dream.”

I nodded.

“There are other ways,” she said.  “You know of bogeymen?”

“Yeah.  They get out.”

“Hot malice drives them, anger.  They boil up much as heat rises, and crawl free.  Particularly gruesome, iconic ends give them this strength.”

“I feel pretty goddamn angry,” I said.

“Reports of your discussion with your visitor suggest you are… but the kind of malice and anger I’m talking about is anger where a civil conversation is utterly impossible.  If you were one of them, you would attack on sight.”

I frowned.

“There are other ways, but they are very specific ways,” she said.

“I’m open to specific.”

“I couldn’t name them all, and I couldn’t be certain about them all either.  At times, it’s ambiguous.  Did they escape, or did they die in the process?”

“I’m open to uncertain, too,” I said.

“Too much hassle.  Bring me another gift on a day I’m not so tired, and I’ll entertain you naming the possibilities.”

I frowned, hands clenched.

“Another question?” she asked.  “You’ve found me tired but in a good mood.  Take advantage.”

“There’s something following me,” I said.  “A person from a memory.  But his hair and clothes are black.  A conversation with another resident of these drains suggested she-“

“-Had a shadow as well,” the witch said.  “Not everyone does.”

“What is he?  No, scratch that, dumb question.  How do I fucking deal with him?”

“Most decide to run,” she said.

“I’m not most,” I said.  “How do I bind him?  Or seal him or banish him or whatever?”

“Ah, and I was starting to suspect you weren’t a real practitioner.  Unfortunately, our like don’t have our true power down here, only our knowledge, and some tricks here and there.”

“Knowledge is power,” I said.  “And it’s a huge freaking inconvenience sometimes, but you and I both know that Others can be countered if you have the right material, or the right circumstances…”

“You’re right in that, but you’re wrong in one element.  He’s not Other.  Not quite.”

It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.  If he wasn’t Other, and he obviously wasn’t human, or animal, or plant, or mineral…

I groaned a bit.  “No.  That’s so cheesy.”

“It’s true.”

“He’s me?”

“A part of you.  A reflection, twisted in a distorted mirror.”

“I’ve spent way, way, way too much time already dealing with a distorted reflection already,” I said.

Memories of the recent dreams hit me.  The feeling of betrayal.  There was that anger I’d just mentioned.

Fuck.  I needed out of here.  Rose was fucking it all up.  I was at the point where I might do something reckless if I didn’t see a way through.

“The obvious answer is very simple,” the witch told me.

“What’s that?”

“You simply give him up.  Abandon him, reject him, carve away that part of yourself.  Some do it simply by attacking and killing their shadow.”

I swallowed.  “Like I can give up my need to eat, or my need to sleep, or any of that.  Except there’s a price, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” she said.  “Tell me, did your shadow plague you in this vision you had, of yourself escaping?”

“No,” I said.

She spread her hands, as if that was my answer.

“…I was a monster,” I said.  I wasn’t so hampered in my relationship with Green Eyes.

I only had to ask, and I could be rid of Carl, of those memories.

“Oh fuck,” I said, burying my face in my hands.  “Don’t tell me that.”

“The spirits might not reach us or affect us with the same strength down here, but I believe in truth and honesty,” she said.  “I believe in the bastardized notion of karma that suggests that if one is just and good, then justice and goodness will find them.”

“Telling me that isn’t just and good,” I said.  “Fuck, that’s an easy out I’d totally take in the heat of the moment.  Do you have any freaking idea how scary that is?  I just said that knowledge can be a huge inconvenience.  This is a freaking death sentence you just handed me.”

“I gave you truth,” she said.  “If I started lying to people who come to me, I’d lose what little traction I enjoy, here.”

Fuck fuck fuck.

“Talk to me, stranger,” she said.

We hadn’t exchanged names.

“This isn’t even a slippery slope,” I said.  “My humanity is one knee-jerk reaction away from utter ruin.”

“Humanity?” she asked.  “Look at yourself.  Your hands.”

I did.

I looked down at the feathers and branches, the cuts and scrapes, the wounds on my wrist.

“I guess I’m not so human anymore,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s the question,” she said.  “The real question is, what are you?”

“That sounds an awful lot like the question I just got from my visitor.”

“It’s an important one,” she said.

“I’m… Other,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“And, what, that means I should keep going down that route?  That there’s some weakness or strength I can derive from my status?”

She sighed a little.

“I don’t…” I started, but I couldn’t put thoughts into words.  I was agitated, upset.  “All I ever wanted was to wrap this stuff up.  To go back to something resembling an ordinary life, to have my bike and my familiar back, and just, I dunno… wander?”

I felt like I was going to throw up.  She wasn’t responding.

But she was listening, and that meant something.  I spoke, just to fill the silence, to unload something more that I’d bottled up inside me.  “I… every step of the way, I feel like I’m getting further and further away from that.”

“Hm,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m thinking, nothing more.  When push comes to shove, do you think you’ll take the step that leads you down that path, or the step that leads you to where you need to be?”

“Away from here?  I’ll take the step I need to take.  That’s what’s driving me so insane about all this.  I keep taking that damn step.  Away from what I want.  Why?  Is that bad?”

“It’s what it is,” she said.  “I’ve mused before on the paths some take to escape.  That this place tells them.  Perhaps this vision of your future is suggesting you need to let go of this dream of yours if you want to find a way out of here… except…”

“What?”

“You have a shadow as well.  By my theory, you’d need to confront a reality about your past.”

“Confront the shadow?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Okay, that sick feeling I had was getting worse at hearing that.

A thought struck me.

“And what does it mean if I have visions of the present?  Of that screwed up reflection I mentioned in passing?”

“A doppleganger?”

Was Rose a doppleganger?  “For the sake of argument.”

“It means there’s a present reality you need to confront or resolve.  I’ll put it simply, stranger.  These things are anchors, tying you down to keep you in place.  This place is taking those anchors and using them, giving them form, to put you off balance.  I’ve never run into someone with three, not that I’ve noticed.”

“This is kind of abstract,” I said, staring down at my tattooed hands.  The branches seemed to move as the shadows the candles cast danced from left to right.  “I’m not sure I grasp how I’m supposed to deal with these things.”

“How does a boat deal with its own anchor?”

“Haul it in,” I said.  “Get it onboard.  Oh fuck no.”

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s the answer?”

“It’s maybe a part of the answer,” she said.  “This doesn’t make an exit magically appear.  If I’m right, it does free you to walk through an available exit.”

I stared down at my hands.

“You know,” she said, “I came up with this theory based on personal experience.  Glimpses of what was waiting for me if I made it back scared me off when I was drawing closer.  I decided it was easier to remain here, than to resolve the issue and face reality.”

“I can’t be complacent,” I said.  “It’s just not in me.”

“That realization sounds like the first step you need to take.”

“It’s the next step that terrifies me,” I said, my voice quiet.

“Rightly so,” she answered.

A silence lingered.

“I was going to ask about medical care, how to treat my injuries, but I’m already worried I owe you too much.  I jumped into the questions without asking what the proper price would be.  The shirt was just for the sit-down?”

“The shirt was a convention, not a rule,” she stressed.  “As for this… if and when you fail, stop by and tell me.  Or leave me some sign if you can’t speak.  Further my research.”

“If I succeed?”

“Then I won’t have any answer at all,” she said.  “Forcing me to wonder if you’ve died or escaped.  Another data point, if nothing else.”

“I owe you more than an obscure data point or vague sign,” I said.

“If you felt compelled, and if you were ever able to travel like you dream, I think my family has a gravestone with my name on it in Wisconsin.  Zoey Artana.  A flower would be nice.”

“That sounds like a proper wizard name,” I said.  “I’m jealous.  You’ve got a deal.”

I started to get to my feet.

“It’s going to get uglier before it gets better,” she said.

“Believe me, I know,” I said.  “Thank you.”

“We’re all on the same side here,” she said.  “Us against this place.  Doesn’t mean we’re all friendly, but it does make this sort of thing easier.”

“You’re not wrong,” I said.  “If there’s anything that might make me want to stay in this place, having people be decent to me is a hell of a trap.”

“Godspeed, stranger.”

I wasn’t sure what to say in response, good luck with this thing here, so I stayed silent.

I walked until I reached the poles.  Pillars of stonework spearing up from the darkness, until it felt like a strong wind would make them wobble.  Rickety bridges of debris stretched between each of them.

I stood there, in the darkness, cold and hungry, my woolen sweatshirt clammy against my skin, the seams rubbing at my shoulders, hurting from a dozen things at once.

I waited.

There was no standing water for me to glimpse Rose and the others.  I wasn’t about to sleep to confront the future, and I wasn’t sure that was the route I needed to take to pass that particular hurdle.

My focus lay elsewhere.  The first hurdle, the most concrete one.

I heard footsteps and turned.

Carl stopped as I made eye contact with him.

“You got me,” I said.  “I’m not running.”

“Think of everything you could have avoided if you’d done that from the start,” he said.

“Fuck you,” I said.  “Do what you gotta do.”

He approached, and I had to stop myself from taking a step backward.

He stopped a foot from me.

He wrapped his arms around me in a hug.

I found myself someplace else.

I’d expected something bad.  The shelter, cold, fear, panic, shame.

This place wasn’t that kind.

I felt warm, sunshine, safety.  I smelled literal bullshit and cut grass.

I felt at peace.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Null 9.4

I guess I’m starting from the beginning.

It wasn’t a memory.  More like a stage play, an act, the objects around me were props, not replicas.

The Drains were telling me I wasn’t out, maybe.  Or tainting my memories with some twisted version, to make bad memories worse.

A light rain fell, and it was dark.  The sky above me was pitch black, and I stood in the middle of a field of grass.  It was blighted.  The lighting was strange, without source, but sufficient to give me a glimpse of a landscape that extended from horizon to horizon.  Flat, checkerboard patterns where the dirt or grass were in different states.  Here and there, I saw animals in the distance.  A gaunt horse, a cow with some prolapsed uterus or intestine dangling from its rear end, a goat with blood on its snout.

I was shirtless, shockingly skinny even to myself, my arms smeared with mud, scratched and rubbed raw here and there.  My body wasn’t my own.  It wasn’t the body I’d worn before I was sent to the Drains, and it wasn’t the body I’d worn in the Drains.  I was lean, eighteen, skin, muscle and bone, with barely a half-pound of fat on my body.

I’d never been stronger, yet exhaustion had a firm hold on me.  Not just the tiredness of a hard day’s work.  The tiredness that came from working oneself to the point of collapse one day, sleeping five hours, then doing it the next, for days on end.  A simple push could have laid me flat.

I was okay with it.  I took in a deep breath, and even the taint of the Drains that marked this place didn’t take away from that essential experience.  The air of the outdoors.  Of cow and horse shit, wet grass, and oxygen.

I felt that peace.  Brief and fleeting, but peace all the same.

I recognized it, in a way.  This was where I’d stood, a little more than two years ago, when I’d first been okay.  Maybe okay for the first time I could remember.  No stresses of family, or school, or ambient hostility, no pressures, no watching people I cared about tear each other apart…

It was okay, but not perfect.  I did have worries looming on the horizon, but it was a damn sight better than it had ever been, and there was hope it could better.

It was a heady feeling, a scary one, because of how fragile and how very surreal it was.  The alien nature of this landscape only enhanced that surreal quality.

My grimy hands pulled a rubber band free from my hair, then pushed that same long, damp hair away from my face.  I tied it back with the simple elastic, so the hair was against the nape of my neck.

The fact that I could do that much of my own volition meant I wasn’t limited to being an observer here, like I had been in the visions Laird and Conquest had bestowed on me.

My heart pounded.

“What are the rules here?” I murmured.  I wasn’t sure if I expected a response or not.  What form would that response take?  An ominous voice?

I grabbed the poles to my right, jutting out of the ground, I recognized them as part of a post hole digger, and I slammed it into the earth.

Eerie, to have two functioning hands, a working leg.  I could see out of both eyes, and the vision out of my right was somehow too sharp, the outlines too defined, as if my brain was overcompensating after the recent lack.

Hole dug, I had to walk ten feet to the pile of wooden posts and boards.  I grabbed one post and a few boards, gathering them up in my arms, and waddled back.  Post into the vacant space… I checked it was secure.

The wood wasn’t supposed to be such poor quality.  It looked like the sections of a post I’d be replacing, not putting up.

All the same, I carried out the necessary steps.  Rotate the post until the slot was in the right place, then move the boards into place.  Nail them in.  I unrolled the length of wire fencing to run along the new section of fence, and I stapled it in place.

I looked at the post hole digger.

I knew what came next.  I’d reach for it, pick it up, but I wouldn’t get to the point of digging the hole.

I bit my lip, and I kept my hands where they were.  I watched the field instead.

Intentionally breaking from pattern.

“Everything alright?” the voice was deeper.

I turned to look.  I didn’t flinch as I saw the old man.

An actor, so to speak?  He looked Other.  His face was pale meat, eyes invisible in the midst of puckered, infected flesh, his mouth a slash across the lower half of his face, the vague hole that was his nose was off-center.

“Everything’s great,” I said.  The rain was falling harder, the light not so expansive, if I was noticing right.

Was that the result of deviating from the script?

He put one hand on the post, giving it a test for stability.  The fingers were all blurred together, like a burn victim’s.  “You’re doing good work, Blake.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ve paid people who weren’t as quick to get their heads around what they were supposed to be doing.  You’ve got a knack.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Now that I wasn’t so active, the cold drizzle was starting to get to me.  I headed to the treeline and grabbed my shirt from where I’d hung it.  The trees seemed too bright and green, given the darkness of the sky, the branches jagged and gnarled.  I pulled the flannel shirt on.

In the midst of the silence, my response was halfway second nature and acting the part, halfway to remembering the line I was supposed to give, “I like having something to do.”

He turned, looking toward the house in the distance.  “Stop what you’re doing, come and eat?”

“I don’t have much more to do.  Can I-”

“I insist,” he said.  His voice was serious.  “I want to chat.”

“Should I bring the tools or-”

“Under the trees,” he said.  “You can get back to it this afternoon.  If the rain’s too bad, you can just pick them up.  Don’t forget.”

It took only a second to move everything from the fence-in-progress to the shelter of the treeline, a matter of feet away.

We walked through the field to head to the house.  A minute passed.  An awfully quiet minute, considering the ‘I want to chat’, a moment before.

I felt trepidation.  Not for the same reason the me of then had.  The me of then was worried about getting fired.  The me of now was worried about what was coming.

“You’re planning on staying the winter?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“Um.  Given the chance, please,” I said.  Then, the me of then felt compelled to add, “I was hoping to have a guaranteed warm place.  It was sort of the point of doing this.”

I remembered how I’d felt guilty about guilt-tripping him.

“Thought so,” he said, festering meat hole of a mouth opening and closing.

I hated to see someone I’d looked up to made into something so disgusting.  It was a slap in the face.

Fuck me, I’d been so relieved then.  Now it was just one step further along the path.

“I was talking about it with Chrissy,” he said.  “We’re kind of in an awkward place.  Wanted to figure out where you stood before we got ahead of ourselves.”

“Awkward?”

“Deal stands, Blake.  You’ve got room and board so long as you’re willing to help out.  I’m as happy to have you as you are to be here, if I’m not making bad assumptions.”

He didn’t sound happy.  “I’m happy to be here.”

When the first really cold rain had hit for the early fall, I’d headed to the youth shelter.  The idea had been floated around by shelter staff, that if we wanted secure accommodations, there was always a chance to find work in the more rural areas between the big cities.  Situations just like this.  Farmers who needed help but couldn’t afford to pay a wage.

It was tentative, mostly for springtime when the workload was heavier.  Most who made the offer had been bitten more than a few times.  Stuff stolen, addicts who flaked, choosing the high over the work.  The job could end any time, without warning, and it was very possible to be worse off in the end than if we hadn’t tried at all.

I’d made the leap, and it had worked out for the most part.

“There’s already frost on the ground, first thing in the morning.  You’re not dressed for it, and neither Chrissy or me have clothes that would come close to fitting you.  If you keep going like you are, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

I very deliberately avoided looking at his more prodigious stomach.  It bulged in a weird way, like he had a hernia or parasite.

He continued, “Unless I’m wrong, you don’t have money to buy better clothes, and we- we’re not in a position to buy clothes for you, however helpful you are.  Not good, rugged, warm clothes that are going to do you for the winter.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I’m not wrong then,” he said.  “You didn’t think that far ahead?  You don’t have clothes I don’t know about?”

“No,” I said.  “Even if I had thought about it, I don’t think there was much I could do.”

“I suppose you’re right, Blake.  Six or seven hours a day of work outdoors, it’s… it would be cruel to expect you to do it, as it stands, and it’d hurt us more than it helped if we kept you on but kept you indoors, in terms of finances and all that.”

I didn’t have a response for him.  There was only waiting.

“Might have to let you go,” he said.  “Just to be safe.”

Oh, the anger that the me of then had experienced.  The frustration, even.  Not so different from my recent experience in the drains.

To fight and work myself feverishly for a place in the world, to do it with my own strength, then to get kicked while I was down, again.  To try my hardest and just have circumstance take it all away?

“Sorry,” he said.

“Yeah, I am too,” I said.  My feelings were so bare that I could only decide between sullenness and anger, and I’d gone for the former.  I’d hated how I’d sounded, then.  How much it reminded me of the family I’d run away from, the passive-aggressiveness.

“I was thinking, after you’re done with the fence, you want to help me with wiring the lighting in the new stable?  You’d learn something you could take with you.”

“Back to the streets?” I asked.  “Yeah, might keep me warm in the coming months, earn me a job.”

I’d been looking to wound, maybe, to slap him in the face, to get a reaction.

He didn’t flinch.

I’d probably felt worse at hearing those words come out of my mouth than he did.

“Shit,” I muttered.  Even now, my shame was as sharp as it had been then.  “Sorry.  Nevermind that, please.  Please just forget I said that.  I’d really like to learn whatever you can teach.”

The silence was like a weight around my neck, too heavy.  Each step forward was harder than the last.

“You know what?  I’m going into town tonight,” he said.  “Need to pick up some stuff.  Why don’t you come?  I can maybe ask some people I know, they’ve got kids who are or were about your age, might have some stuff to spare.  You can stop by the bin at the back of the church.  Bit of a long shot, lot of a long shot, and I dunno how you feel about…”

Oh.

That was how this worked, wasn’t it?

Just like the witch had told me.

All I had to do was say no.

This would end here, on this pleasant note.

All I had to do was deviate from the script.

“About relying on the kindness of others?” I asked, before he could say begging.  “If it means staying, it’s fine.  That’d be great.”

The ‘great’ came out a little strained to my own ears, where I’d meant it to be enthusiastic, meaningful.

“Good man,” he said.

One meaty lump of a hand fell on my shoulder.  For the me of now, it was a weight, body contact, uncomfortable to the point of being unbearable.  For the me of then, it was the first time anyone had ever called me a man in a way that felt real.

There was a reason I was starting this early on.  Digging into a period of time I didn’t even like to think about.

Lose-lose, in the end.  Either I said no, and I gave up, or I said yes, over and over, knowing what was coming.

■

It wasn’t as fragmented as I’d hoped it would be.  No jumps from scene to scene.

The environment and the hideousness of my surroundings began to grate, fluctuating here and there.  Eating was hard, the taste slightly off.  Everything uncomfortable.  There was no respite here.

I felt like there was a rule at work, and it wasn’t entirely about the script, the story, or the stage.

I was making my way through this with hindsight, and wherever that hindsight helped me against what had been unfamiliar or uncomfortable before, this landscape replaced it with ugliness.  The food was an unfamiliar taste, the dynamic at work still uncomfortable, and that was represented in the meal.

The me of then hadn’t quite been able to trust people.  People were made monstrous.

The end result was that I was more or less on the same equivalent footing as I had been back then.

My mind was working overtime to figure out how this place worked, to take my thoughts off the future, and the realization of when and why things were ugly was my sole epiphany, over the course of the day’s work, finishing the fence and learning about the wiring.

My anxiety ratcheted up as it came time for us to head to town.  In the end, the me of now was almost in a worse mental space than I had been then.

Fuck.  Fuck.

Fuck this reality.  Fuck the Drains.

The small town came into view.  Old buildings, peeling paint, all under a dark sky.  The streetlamps and lights from inside the buildings were the sole illumination.

Fuck, fuck fuck.

Fuck.

The car stopped.

“Got some stuff to do, errand, asking around,” he said.  “Meet you here in, hm, hour and a half?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Good luck,” he said.

I nodded.

This spot was darker, a little more jumbled, the buildings closer together in an odd way, but still spaced apart, as if there was one destination in each cardinal direction.  The church, the stores, the bit of hill overlooking the water.

My memories were indistinct here.  I couldn’t remember the exact order, so the order didn’t feel like it mattered.  I could go to the church and check the bin, only to discover there was barely anything I could wear.  I could go to the clothing stores, hoping for cheap overstock, for stuff that was being thrown out or discarded, only to be disappointed.  I could go to the hill and stare out at the distant lake, at houses separated by quarter-miles of dense foliage or broad fields.  The me of then might wonder about the future, morose, doing his best not to think about the days he’d been beaten, shot with pellet guns, had his things stolen.  Days he’d nearly died.

But one building loomed, larger than it should have been.  Restaurant, cafe, tavern, all of the above, none of the above.  The lights inside were brighter, and the illumination extended further, reaching across the street to where I stood.

Fuck this place.

I crossed the street, not sure I’d have the conviction if I put it off.  Skip the unimportant steps.  This was where this place wanted me to go.

Laughter, one goofy laugh.  Genuine laughter.

More actors.  Three girls, all alien or monstrous in their own ways.  One with a crest of what might have been a hard fungus, shaped like horns, but growing over her eyes, over to and behind the corners of her forehead, her flesh was pallid.  Another looked almost normal, but never blinked, the whites of her eyes visible.  The third had teeth about twice the normal length.  The guy opposite them had scalded, peeling flesh.  They were supposed to be in their early- to mid-twenties.

They were arranged in a booth with a table, three seats with cushioned backs surrounding the three sides of the table.  Each had beers, and overfat, burned french fries sat in a basket lined with paper.  They took turns grabbing the french fries, biting into them.

The actors weren’t my concern.  My attention was on the man at the far end of the booth, opposite the opening, girls on his right, the boy on his left.

Carl.  Just as he’d appeared in the drains, utterly normal, except the colors were off.  Black hair and beard, black turtleneck sweater, black jeans, black scarf around his neck, more for fashion than for wealth.  His arms were draped on the back of the booth, extended out to either side.

The look on his face was different than it should have been.  Or so I thought.  I couldn’t remember the exact expression, or I was remembering it wrong because my perspective had been tainted.

For me, then, it had been a long, long time since I’d dealt with people my age in anything but a hostile context.

“Hey there,” Carl said.

“Who’s this?” Fungus-face asked.

“I thought we’d seen all of the local boys,” Teeth commented.  “Hey you.”

“Uh,” I said.

“Don’t worry.  We don’t bite,” Carl said, smiling.  He looked at Teeth, “Right?”

“Right,” she said.

I couldn’t shake the notion that he was in on this.  That he saw what I saw and accepted it.  His expression and posture… he was on this stage that the Drains had created, but he wasn’t an actor any more than I was.  Not really.

“Listen, I feel dumb for asking, but-“

“The only dumb question is the question to which you don’t know the answer,” Carl said.

I hadn’t known how to reply to that.

“I do, though,” I said.  “I’m pretty certain I know what you’ll say.”

“Then why ask?” he said, cutting me off from elaborating without actively interrupting.

“I have to,” I said.

Was it hindsight that colored my view of his words and his attitudes?  The me of then had kicked himself for handling the conversation so badly.  He’d almost walked away.

“Then ask,” he said, serious but still smiling.  “We won’t laugh at you or judge you.  Promise.”

“I’m doing some work for a local farmer, and I’m-” their attention made it hard to press on.  The me of then had stuttered.  The me of now decided not to.  “-sort of underequipped for the winter.  I’m sort of asking around, seeing if anyone has a jacket or boots to spare.”

They hadn’t laughed at me, just as Carl had promised.  That somehow made it worse.  The awkward silence was made doubly worse by the fact that I had no idea what they were thinking.

Except the present me sort of knew.  I could see Carl studying me, very much in the way he’d studied me then.

“Not cool,” Carl said.

I was supposed to say something, to sputter.  I didn’t.

“Before you ask for a favor, you should tell us your name,” he finished.

I resisted, but something in the atmosphere told me I couldn’t bend the rules this much.  I couldn’t improvise here, refuse an answer and expect this test to continue.  Every second I waited, the contrast between light and dark seemed to sharpen, the noise of the light rain outside more intense, until it all felt like it might start to come apart at the seams.

“Blake,” I said.

This shadow reality seemed to sigh.  I blinked, and the contrasts eased up, the patter of rain against window growing quieter.

“Hi, Blake, I’m Carl.  These are my friends.”

I was caught for a second, tripped up because his words didn’t line up with my memories.  Hadn’t he introduced them?

I didn’t complain.  Easier if I didn’t think about it, and they weren’t the focus of all this.

“Hi, Carl’s friends,” I said.

They smiled or gave me little waves by way of greeting.

Carl smiled.  “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, Blake, I actually do think I can help you out.”

I remained silent.

“It’s not a problem, Blake,” he said, smiling.  “We’ve got some spare stuff.  One boot might need some glue where a flap is sticking off, and it’s not pretty, but it should do you.  What size are your feet?”

“Ten.”

“Perfect,” he said.  “You got a car?”

“No.  I can borrow a bike.”

“If you can get here, you can get there.  It’s west off the forty-one rural.  You’ll see a sign.  Loon Lake.  We’ll get you set up, Blake.”

My expression was stern, my gaze hard, as I met his eyes.

“Thank you,” I said, in probably the least grateful tone I’d ever managed.  Only because I was sticking to the script.

“We’ll see you in the next few days, then?” he asked.

That… it felt wrong.  I didn’t remember it.

He was breaking from script.

Making me say it.

“Sure,” I said.  My chest and throat were so closed up with emotion that I could taste bile in my mouth.

He gestured with his hands without moving his arms, “Got plans?  You should sit.  Partake of our fries.”

“I shouldn’t,” I said.

“Don’t worry, really.  We’re about as low key as people get.  Come on, we’ll order a round.  It’s on us.”

His eyes were exactly right in this world of imperfect and muddled details.  For someone who said he was low key, the eyes were hungry, drinking in every detail they could, looking for something he could use.

I’d sat down.  I’d had a bit to drink, despite being under the legal age.  Such was the script.

The past me had.  Here, I took a different option, “No thanks.  I’ve got someone waiting for me.”

His smile was almost smug.  Not Carl’s smile so much as it was my shadow’s.  I was deviating from the script.  I hadn’t ruined it, I wasn’t running, or refusing to continue, but I wasn’t helping myself either.  Not on the surface.

“See you in a few days, then?”  Never-blinks asked me.

“Yeah,” I said.  I raised my hand in a small wave, forcing a smile to my face.

“Bye, Blake,” Carl said.

I didn’t reply as I left the cafe.  I headed to the hill that overlooked the shop, leaned on the railing at the cliff’s edge, and stared out at the alien landscape.  I could take this option, but I couldn’t refuse to give him my name.  I had to give him that power.

After about twenty minutes, I punched the railing hard enough that I should have shattered my hand.  It hurt like I had.

■

Time slipped away from me somewhere along the line, as this shadow-reality crept in on me.  Never time that I could have given up.  Hours stretched on, but always the better hours.  I lost track of time while I worked, I experienced time at its normal pace when I lay in bed, awake.

If this was a matter of simply overcoming one or two events, it would have been something else.  Grit my teeth, fight.

But this was a question of endurance, fortitude.  Doing it all over, the bad bits, the stressful bits, the parts I regretted.

I’d been physically exhausted on my initial entry into this shadow reality.  Now my emotions and my sanity were starting to feel the toll.  The hideousness of everything, the darkness, the uncertainty, knowing what was coming…

Fuck this place so very much.  Fuck it, fuck it, fuck, fuck, fuck.

An unspoken curse punctuated every push of my feet against the bike’s pedals.

Wheels skidded on the dirt road as I came to a stop.

Carl’s place.

Cabins, all built on a hilly spot of land, overlooking a lake.

Carl waited on the front steps of one cabin.  It felt imperfect, not exactly right.  He had a bundle in his hands.

The second I was off my bike, he tossed the bundle at me.  Clothes, jacket, boots… Everything I needed.

“Great to see you, Blake,” he said.  “Come check it out.  Get hydrated.”

I couldn’t say no.

Except that wasn’t exactly right.  I could.  I just couldn’t do it without failing this test.

I followed.

More cabins, all log, stripped bare, set down on a concrete-block foundation.  Chunks were cut out of the logs so they could mesh at the corners, Lincoln Log style, with mortar or something filling the gaps.

He grabbed a beer from a cooler, tossing it at me.  I caught it in both hands.

My eyes roved over the lake.  I could make it out, despite the lack of light from above.  I was reminded of pictures of bioluminescent algae on the ocean, highlighting the cresting waves.

It was beautiful, eerie, and unsettling.

Doubly beautiful because it was in stark contrast to the ugliness I’d experienced for the length of my stay here.

“Nice place,” I said.  Script.

“It really is,” he said.  Just like that, simple.  He helped himself to a beer.

We drank our beers.  He finished his first, starting on the second.

Tired from the bike ride, I stayed where I was, content to nurse the empty can and pretend it had more in it than it did.

“Carl!” a girl’s voice.  Fungus-face’s.  “Coop!”

Carl was on his feet in a second, a brilliant smile on his face.  “Come on.  You want to pay me back for the jacket and boots?  Give us a hand.”

Waves crashed against the rocky beach below.  Each crash was more intense than the last.  The wind picked up, my hair and the grass whipping in the gale.

Second by second, it intensified.

“If you’re going to tap out,” Carl said, his voice friendly, as if he was my greatest ally, “This would be the time to do it.”

I felt my skin crawl.

“In a way, it’s the point of no return,” he said.  “Go any further, and you might feel like you have to do something stupid.  Like punching that railing…”

I touched my hand.  The pain was gone, any wound already healed.

“…Or one of us.  You know there’s no situation where you win here,” he said.  “Conquer this reality, attack me, dash any or all of this from your mind and your heart, you leave a hollow that gets filled by other things, and you become a monster.  Abandon it, and you’re still there, in the Drains, for the rest of your short existence.  Go through with it, and you’ll be less.”

“I know,” I said.

“Three,” he said.  “Two…”

“Let’s go build your fucking chicken coop,” I said.

He spread his arms wide, as if embracing this world.  He turned on the spot, and he jogged away.

I had to run to keep up, because hesitating might have spelled the end of this, as good as giving up.

It was a metaphor for what followed.

Actors with smiling faces played the roles of the waiting group.  Small, only six, eight with Carl and me.

It was a barn raising, so to speak, but it wasn’t a barn.  Eight of us worked in concert, starting from the raw materials.

Just as I’d run after Carl, I felt momentum carry me from this point on.  I wasn’t sure how I’d been able to tell, but I’d somehow known that the challenge here wasn’t in making the choices, so I didn’t have to make any.  I rode a cresting wave like the glimmers of light in the water did.  Enthusiasm, cheer.  They passed me another drink.

When I showed that I actually knew stuff, that I’d learned from my time with the old man, that I had talent.

I’d almost forgotten what that felt like.  To have people praise me. Even the old man’s praise had been tempered, mild.  But these guys, a few of them were drunk, and they held nothing back in telling me how amazing I was.

Even in the cool fall air, we got hot.  One of the guys elbowed me, pointing for me to look – Teeth was in the water her back to me, swimming with no top on.  One of the guys and Never-blinks ran to join her.

It was nice.  The me of the past had found it a reprieve from weeks of hard farm work.  The me of now found it a break from the hostility and grind of the Drains.

It took maybe four hours to get the chicken coop and surrounding fence up, between eight of us, though half were drunk or playing around by the time the job was done.  I’d been content to work, because this sort of thing came easily to me.  Putting stuff together.  I had ideas about the roof, and I’d wanted the praise that came with making those ideas happen.

It was dark by the time we were done, and we were sitting on the steps of the nearest cabin.  I had a beer in my hand, and it wasn’t my second, or even my third.  My eyes were on the cresting waves with green-purple light marking the peaks and the foam on the sand, pitch black marking the ebbs.

Carl offered me a joint.  I refused it, passing it to the girl next to me instead.

Even if I’d hopped on my bike now, it would have been two or three in the morning by the time I was back.

I’d told myself I had a job to do.  Part of a job.

I’d then convinced myself it was only a job that I might get fired from if the jacket and boots weren’t sufficient.  A job he’d been willing to fire me from.

Fungus-face took my hand, pulled me to my feet.

Mute, I followed as she led me to her cabin.

I couldn’t see her face in the dark.  I could only feel her lips on mine, her cheek against mine as she hugged me tight.  There was very little ugliness here, because there hadn’t been much holding me back then.  Nothing that needed translation.

“I like the scruff,” she said.

“I’ve always hated it,” I replied, speaking for myself more than I spoke to her, convincing myself I still had some volition in the middle of this scene.  “Makes me feel homeless, reminds me of this night, right here.”

She pulled off my shirt, then pulled me down on top of her.

Actors and actresses on a stage.  Even I played a role here, because I couldn’t be the me of the present day in the midst of this.

The me of the past felt better than okay, for the first time in ever.

■

“Basics only,” Teeth told me.  The teeth were less pronounced.  Unfamiliarity and discomfort translated to ugliness, but the group was getting more familiar, more comfortable for me.

“Right,” I said.

“Only stuff we can’t get on our own.  We’ve got the cow, the chickens, and the veggies.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She squeezed my arm.  “You okay, Blake?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Toilet paper?”

“Yep.”

I grabbed three packs.

Teeth grabbed another three.

“That’s a little overboard,” I asked.

“I’m going to be polite and sum it up by saying girls use more than boys.  Trust me on this.  Better to have too much than not enough.”

“Right-o,” I said.

Pushing a cart burdened by toilet paper, I stopped in my tracks.

The old man.  The farmer I’d been working for, a basket in one hand.

I’d never actually said goodbye or gone back.

The look he gave me was one of disappointment, as he reached past me for a box of sealable plastic containers.  Wordless, he moved on, leaving me behind.

Yeah, I regretted that.  Not making the trip by bike, not saying something to him there in the grocery store.

Even now.

God, I hated this place.  I had to remind myself of that.  I hated this place, because it was such a petty asshole of a place, to make me face even stupid little moments like this.

“Hey,” you said.  “I’m starving.   You want to grab a snack?”

She squeezed my arm again, offering me a mischievous smile.  “A little something.  Or we’ll get in trouble with the others.  I can’t wait until we have the farm plots up and running.”

“Yeah,” I said.  My eyes were on the old man’s back.

I averted my eyes.

■

Snow fell.

Of course this place expected me to go through it all.

A bit of anger fueled my strength as I brought the hatchet down.

With deft cuts, I removed branches from a tree.

In a matter of hours, this tree I’d just brought down would be firewood.

“Blake,” a male voice.

“Food?” I asked.

But when I turned, the Scalded Guy had a serious look on his face.

“What?” I asked.  I slammed the hatchet into the tree, then met him halfway.

He looked a little freaked out.

“Something happened,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Better you hear it from her.”

Her.

Even on hearing that, I’d known.

By the time I reached Carl’s cabin, a suspicion had worked its way into my heart.

Fungus Face, sitting on the bed that doubled as a couch.  The others stood at various points around the room.  Ten of us, altogether.

There was only thing that would make one girl look that miserable, the other people that concerned.

“Whose is it?” I asked.

Callow, stupid, insensitive me of two years ago.

On a level, though, I’d been terrified.

“Carl’s,” she said, “He’s the only one I didn’t… we didn’t use a condom.  I can’t be positive.”

“It’s not a problem,” Carl said.  “We’ll figure this out.  This sort of thing takes a village, and that’s what we’ve been building all along, isn’t it?”

There were nods here and there.

The me of then was watching it, seeing the reactions, the way that Fungus Face was the last one to start nodding, and how she didn’t look any less upset.

In agreement, but not agreeing.

I met Carl’s eyes.

His gaze was cool, confident.

The peace of this place had been disturbed.

■

The cabin doors didn’t have locks.  I was sleeping under heavy blankets, comfortably warm, when cold air swept into my room.

My first indication that I had a visitor was when my sheets moved of their own accord.  A cold hand touched my back as a weight settled in under me.

“Jesus, you’re cold,” I said, turning.  I stopped.

One of the newest to join.  The sister from a brother-sister pair.  Cute as a button, maybe two years younger than me.

“Hi,” she said.  “Is this… a problem?”

When I didn’t respond, her hand touched my stomach, slowly moving down.

My hand fell on hers, stopping it where it was.

“After what happened to…” I couldn’t say Fungus Face, and the only two names in this shadow-place were Carl’s and my own.  “After the pregnancy… this feels less cool.”

“We can be careful.”

“I’m saying no,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, her voice a hush.  “Can I stay?  It’s warm here, and I don’t want to walk back through the snow.”

“You can stay,” I said, reluctantly.  I’d kind of been wanting quiet.  Rest.  It was hard to come by, at times.

She snuggled close to my back, warm, but all I felt was uncomfortable.  Bothered in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

“Carl said you were into me, that you’d been watching me, so I thought…”

“Another time, it would have been… very welcome,” I murmured.  “But not now.”

“Okay,” she said.  I heard a soft giggle.  “Very welcome?”

“Very,” I said, but there was no warmth in the word.  Even when the past me had said it.

Time passed.  The wind made one bit of fencing rattle around the cow pen.  Every time I heard it at night, I told myself I’d fix it, and then when morning came, there was always more to do.

When I spoke, the words were quiet.  “Around the time… your friend invited you to come here, she was talking about going home for a bit.  It was getting colder, and she wasn’t enjoying the experiment so much.”

The bit of fencing banged in the distance.

“Now she’s pregnant,” I said.  “And everyone’s just assuming she’ll stick around.  I’m not sure I like that.”

“If she went home, it’d be the same, wouldn’t it?  Worse.  Her parents would make her make a decision and she wouldn’t necessarily have a say.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Here, at least, she’s got the freedom to decide on her own,” she said, and there was a finality to her words, like she’d decided.

The present-day me wondered if past-me had believed her.

■

I heard a car door slam.

I’d been unsure how I’d feel, but when the moment arrived, I felt my heart sink.

“Heyyyy!” a voice.

“Heya!” Carl said.  “I brought people!”

There were cheers, noises of greeting.

I sat on my bed, my knife cutting bits out of a stick.  I was trying to get a figure out of the wood, but I’d yet to get a result I wanted.  There was time.

Fifteen minutes passed.  Carl pushed on the door, and the rock I’d put behind it stopped it from opening.

“Blake?” he spoke through the crack.

“Hi,” I said.  “Sorry, I wanted privacy.”

I didn’t move to stand or move the rock.

“Blake, a lot of the others was saying you were feeling off.”

“Nope,” I said.  “Feeling good.  I’m just not feeling-“

I was cut off as he pushed the door, the stone I’d put down grinding against the wooden floor.

He entered my room, hand over his eyes.

“You’re not jacking off?” he asked.

“Nah,” I said.

“Because there are a lot of girls around who’d be happy to-“

“Not doing that either,” I said, cutting him off.

“Blake, is something wrong?” he asked.  He dropped his hand and managed to look concerned.  “I’m gone for a week and-“

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said.

“You are acting strange, Blake,” he said.  “You’re not helping out, and others are shouldering the workload-“

“No,” I said.  “I’ve gone above and beyond before, they can manage the slack for now.”

“We don’t treat work like a currency here.”

“I do,” I said.

He frowned.

I took a piece out of my stick.

“How can you even sleep in that bed?” he asked.  Change of subject.

I looked down at the spikes of wood I’d carved off of sticks.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’ve got cabin fever.  Come on, fresh air.  I’m not one to give orders, but I’m ordering you right now.”

I hesitated, but he pointed, and I moved before I thought to do different.

I climbed out of the bed, stick and knife going on the squat bookshelf that served as my bedside table.  I pulled on my worn boots with the glued sole that Carl had given me, then my jacket.  We ventured outside.

The others were collectively unloading the truck.  Beer, basic supplies, tools.

“This whole thing is supposed to be low stress,” Carl said.  “You seem stressed, Blake.”

“I’m not stressed,” I said.  “I’m me.“

“You’re holed up in your room, being antisocial.  People are worrying about you, enough that it’s something I hear from five different people within two minutes of getting back.  All of them are worried about you, Blake.”

“I’m fine,” I said.  I somehow managed to sound less fine each time I said it.

He raised his hands, a placating gesture.  “Great.  I’ll take your word for it.”

We stood on the edge of the grass, where it overlooked beach and the small, dark lake under the pitch black sky.

“You came from a bad place,” he said.  “I heard about your suspicions about the pregnancy.”

“Fancy that,” I said.

“It’s natural to have trust issues, coming from where you came from.  But this is supposed to be a healthy place, Blake.  A good place.”

“The problem’s all me, then.  I’m just screwed in the head,” I said.  The words came out bitter, not like I’d meant them to.

He sighed.  “Something’s going on with you, Blake.  You’re confrontational.  Did you just stew in that room for the last week, convincing yourself something was wrong?  That because this works, there must be something wrong at the center of it?  Because I  know what it’s like to think that way, Blake, I did when I was your age.  I only want you to let that go, so you can enjoy life like I do.”

A group of people walked by.  The new group, taking a tour with Fungus Face leading the way.  She had a baby bump.  The car trip to Toronto had been partially to get her to a doctor for necessary checkups.

“Bonfire for the new guys?” Fungus Face asked.

“Go for it,” Carl said.

Her face wasn’t so much fungus anymore.  The horns were barely noticeable.  A large portion of the strangeness to her features were a blush of green and purple to her pale skin, nothing more.  So easy to ignore it, now.

On a level, I felt like I’d been here months.  It was surreal, to have to remind myself of what was wrong.  That this was a stage, with actors, a test.

Someone had to jog to catch up with the group.  She was lagging because she’d stopped to try and light a cigarette in the cold.  Her hair blew across her face, very nearly coming in contact with the smoking cigarette.  Only her cupped hands stopped it.

I stepped forward, gingerly touching her hair to move it out of the way.

She successfully moved it back, and fixed it in place with her hat.  She flashed me a funny little grin, cigarette clamped between her lips, not even showing a hint of her teeth.

Younger than I remembered her.  On the tail end of a very unkind adolescence.  She had bad pimples, patches of acne.  Her longer hair was meant to cover most of it.

“Hey, Alexis.”

Her eyes widened in recognition as she saw me.  She ducked her head down as she spoke, “I don’t remember your name.”

“Blake.”

“You know each other?” Carl asked.

“Crossed paths,” I said, nothing more.

“See ya,” she said.  She ran to catch up with the others, snow flying behind her with each running footfall.

Carl and I walked a bit in the opposite direction, down to the beach.

“I only want to see you happy,” Carl said.  “That’s it.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“What’s your opinion on Alexis?”

I shrugged.  Wary, I only said, “She’s cool.”

“That’s not very helpful.  I want to know her as a person, and she’s hard to get a read on.  A bit of an odd bird.”

“I like odd birds,” I said.  “She had helpful advice a few times, we watched each other’s stuff in the one shelter.  That’s all.”

Just a bit of a lie.

“Hamm’s Shelter?”

I didn’t respond.

He jammed his hands in his pockets.  I watched the water, while he focused on the group unloading the truck.  The headlights were on, lighting up the exhaust, giving the group a clear view of the unloading process.

“If you like types like her, could I ask you to maybe go out of your way to make her feel comfortable?”

I felt a cold knot in my gut.

“Make her feel comfortable?” I asked.

“Keep her company, pair off, show her how things work, the usual chores and feeding the animals?”

My skin crawled.

I felt vaguely nauseous.

“Pair off… like how you pointed Fungus Face my way?” I asked.

“Fungus Face,” he arched his eyebrows.

Breaking script, both of us.

“When I seemed jealous about Fungus Face and the other guys, you pointed Teeth my way.  One by one, all of the girls.  You sent the little sister to my bed the night I seemed unsettled about the pregnancy.  Now you’re very subtly hinting for me to go keep Alexis company?”

“You’re making this out to be some screwy conspiracy,” he said.  “The only time I’ve seen Alexis smile is when she looked up at you just now.  And you said you liked her type.”

“That’s not-“

“What, Blake?  Am I wrong?”

“You can’t just do that,” I said.

“Do what?“

“Manipulate us.  Screw with us.”

“To make you happy?“

“So you’re admitting it,” I said, and there was anger in my tone.

“No, Blake,” he spoke the words as a sigh.  “I’m trying to figure out what agenda you think I have.  I’d rather solve the big question than the little one.”

“You’ve got this grand idea for this… I dunno, this commune, self-sustaining, whatever, free love, easygoing, away from the pressures of the world.”

“You’re making that out to be a bad thing?”

“I’m making your methods out to be questionable,” I said.  “Pushing people, messing with them, always the group and what we need as a whole, you never give orders and you never seem like you’re doing anything major, but you’re really fucking good at steering the group against anyone who acts different.  You did it to Fungus Face.”

“When?”

“She coincidentally gets pregnant not long after she’s thinking about leaving, and the group decides for her, that she should stay with us.”

“Can you quiet down?” he asked.  “We can have this discussion, but let’s not make it-“

“Fuck that,” I said.

He reached for my shoulder, to steer me in a different direction, or to give me a push.

I flinched, pulling back, fist clenched.

“Woah,” he said.

“Don’t touch me.  Don’t,” I hissed.

“This is coming out of nowhere, Blake.”

“No, it’s really not,” I said.  I didn’t unclench my fist.  “You’ve led us around by our groins, you give us all this work to do and just barely enough food, you make us dependent on you, because you’re the one with the plan, the car, the ideas, the money, five or ten years of age on any of us.”

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“I’m saying just that,” I said.  “That you’ve got this damn dream, and you’re twisting us all around in really subtle ways that make it really hard to point to any one thing.  But somehow, on the days I don’t play ball or join the herd, there’s less food, less conversation, less… I feel sick saying it, less girls.”

“That’s crazy,” he said.

“It really, really is,” I replied.

“How am I controlling the girls, then?”

“The same way you’re trying to control me, but you put twice as much effort into them as you do us guys.  Half of them are in love with you, and they play ball with the group polyamory shit because they think if they try to covet you they’ll be shunned, the other half are… they’re still being manipulated, mostly.  And if they resist that, then you fucking get them pregnant to keep them in the group.”

Carl had gone still.

I turned to see Fungus Face standing at the edge of the trees.

“You know it,” I told her.  “You’ve convinced yourself it isn’t true because it’s easier.  Just go.”

She turned, running to the nearest cabin.

“That wasn’t what you were supposed to say,” my Shadow observed.

“It was something I’ve wished I said a hundred times,” I said.  “Cathartic.”

“Not that it matters,” the Shadow said.  He rubbed Carl’s beard.

“It matters,” I told it.

“Almost done,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Whatever happens, I win,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“See you shortly,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Fuck you.“

He ran after Fungus Face.  I headed toward the main area of the commune, taking long strides.

Alexis was with the group, the new people all drinking with Teeth.

“Hey,” I told Teeth, “Carl really needs you.  It might have something to do with the baby.”

Her eyes went wide.  She ran for the cabin where Carl and Fungus Face were.

Alexis rose half out of her seat.  I seized her wrist, shaking my head.

“What happened?” one of the guys in the newcomer’s group said.

“This place is a cult, I said.  “Not a drink-the-Kool-aid cult, but it’s still fucked.  I’m leaving, you have five seconds to decide if you’re coming.”

I didn’t wait for a response.  I headed for the truck.

Footsteps followed.

Only Alexis.

She had just closed the passenger seat when the guy who’d just spoken came to the window.  “You can’t take the car.  There’s a pregnant girl-“

“There’s always going to be reasons you can’t,” I said.  “That’s how it works.  I dunno, I’ll- I’ll send people.”

“You can’t-“

I shifted gears, stalled, and then managed to get the truck moving in reverse.  The guy stepped away.  I turned and pulled onto the road.

“Fuck,” I said.  “Fuck.”

Alexis put her hand on mine.

I pulled it away, sharp, the gear-shift making a violent noise as it jerked in response.

“Sorry,’ I said.  “That’s not nearly as reassuring as you think it is.  I’d explain but…”

“Okay,” she said.  “It’s cool.”

I nodded, focusing only on the unfamiliar act of driving.

Away from the only place I’d ever really felt like I’d belonged.

■

What was worse than being in a bit-rate cult and then spending a week second guessing yourself?

Being in a bit-rate cult and then spending a week second guessing yourself twice, the second time in some fucked up, twisted shadow realm.

I sat on the cot in the youth shelter, a separate, two-bed room, arms around my knees.  This wasn’t a decision time.  It was an experience time.  I got to sit there and experience the cold, impersonal misery of the shelter, while reflecting on everything I’d just given up.  Just to drive the point home, this Shadow-place made my environment as unpleasant as it could get.  The sheets were stained, and I heard people screaming across the hall, constantly fighting.  Chaos and conflict and urban, in contrast to the commune by the lakeside.

I was giving up feeling okay.  Friends, intimacy, sex.  A sense of accomplishment, of having built something.

I heard the door open.  Even with the benefit of hindsight, I expected Alexis.

It was Carl.

I hadn’t confirmed what shelter I’d cross paths with Alexis at, the shelter we were most familiar with, but he’d intuited it.

And maybe we hadn’t ditched the car far enough away.  He’d gotten a call, and he’d figured out the answer.

I gripped the side of the cot.

“You called the cops on us, Blake,” he said.

“On you,” I said, eyes on my knees.

“It messed up a lot of things.  People got scared, we got fined, for lack of permits, even when I own the land…”

I stood from the bed.  I tried to walk past him.  He blocked me.

“Tell me,” he said, “Do you even believe it anymore?  Now that you’ve had time to think?  This cult nonsense?”

“No.  Not a hundred percent.”

“But you still called the cops.”

“Better to do it and be safe, than not do it and wish I had,” I said.  “I don’t think it was easy for anyone there to say they wanted to leave, and the cops, maybe they made it possible.  Please get out of my way.”

I moved my arm to push past.  He grabbed it.

He wrestled me down onto the bed.

He was stronger.  We’d done the same work, but he had ten years on me, and his build was just somehow stronger.

He pinned me down.

I very nearly succumbed to panic.

“A small part of me has wondered, since all this with the practitioner stuff started,” I spoke, trying to disassociate, to distance myself from this, “Were you an Other?”

“No,” he said.

“But you’re a reflection of me.  If I didn’t know-“

“You know,” he said.  “I’m just a person.  Well, I’m your Shadow, but Carl was only ever a person.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice very small.  I struggled, but I couldn’t break his grip, or even move.

My eye moved to the door, then back to Carl.

“No,” he said.

I couldn’t even speak.

“No,” he said, again.  “You don’t get to skip it this time.  This ends one of three ways, like I said.”

Banish him and become a monster, set him aside, or…

I waited.

Chronologically, if time didn’t work differently here, I’d have doomed myself, waiting.  The door would open, and I’d miss my window.

“I’m supposed to beg,” I said, my voice a hush.  “To beg you to take me back.  To promise to apologize, and make amends.”

“By the script,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because-“

“No,” I said.  “Time works differently here.  I’ve had time to think.  Why?  Isadora asked it.  Ms. Lewis asked it, or something like it.  Pretty much every powerful being I’ve talked to has asked it.  Including Conquest, who talked to Rose, who apparently knows more than she’s letting on.”

“You’re not afraid,” Carl spoke.

“Which is an answer unto itself, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“It keeps coming down to why.  Just like me and piecing things together with your cult.  The fact that we were hungry.  There weren’t any big huge warning bells.  Lots of little things.  I… it’s a strong hunch, but I have to trust it.  I gotta trust my gut.”

“You-“

“God, I don’t even want to look at you,” I said.  “Alexis, come in.”

The door opened.

Alexis, moving in silently.

She was armed.  Something hard in a sock.

The Shadow knew it was coming.  He only had a blank look on Carl’s face.

He disintegrated as Alexis clubbed him over the head.

“Come on,” she said.  “Go, go, go.”

Old Blake had, according to the script, gone with her.  He’d then gone borderline catatonic after the fact.

She’d talked him through it.  Answered every damn question.  Agreed as he slowly put the pieces together, about the little tricks, the behaviors.  Had come back from the library with lists, about how cults liked to keep the food supply short, so people were more tractable.  Keep people working…  Had answered questions like was Carl maybe stronger because he’d been eating?

Why?

Why?

Why were the people that weren’t Carl or Alexis just blurs?

Why was I the heir, and not Paige?  If Grandmother could set up a vestige, couldn’t she set up a heterosexual Paige?

Why was practically everyone convinced that I was going to die?  Except they didn’t say die.

What the fuck was up with my tattoos?  Why did I get ‘possessed’ so easily?

Why was I good with glamour?

Why were my injuries so transient, so easy to remove, my spiritual damage so hard to shore up?

Why did I remember everyone?

Why didn’t the details add up?

The room in the shelter was gone.  There was only darkness.  Not even a solid surface under me, or air to fall through.

I spoke to the darkness.  “I feel like, if I get this wrong, I’m done.”

Only darkness answered.

“I’m probably fucked if I get it right,” I said.  “But that’s my situation, isn’t it?  Perpetually fucked.”

I could have done with anyone, even a Carl, to be there, to speak to.

“I can’t believe that I needed a Rose,” I said.  “Easier to believe that Rose needed me, a little warrior.  Someone to stall the inevitable.  You cobbled this together, grandmother, my story included, to make it so I couldn’t get touched… because when I did, I got hurt.  Not always right away, but my shoulder hurt after Tiff slept with her head there, and my hand, after I held Rose’s hand and even in the beginning, when I saw the visions, they said something moved… the connections aren’t real connections…”

I trailed off.

“I’m the vestige, aren’t I?  Rose is the second Thorburn heir, I’m just the custodian.  The sacrificial pawn.”

The darkness broke away, crept in.  The tattoos reappeared, the feathers, the birds.  The branches crawled across my skin, my neck and chest, as the Shadow around me found its place.

“That’s the situation I need to accept,” I said, making it a statement, not a question.

I stood in the middle of the Drains.  An Other.

“Fuck,” I said.

Null 9.5

One trial done.

I still had others to face down.

It had felt like it had taken years, but no time had apparently passed here.  I could barely remember where people had stood before I’d let Carl reach out for me…

If there’d been something solid to hit, I might have hit it.

Old wounds scraped raw.  Shame, regret…

False wounds?

The thought was quiet, almost not in my own voice.  It’s not real.

A weight lifted off my shoulders.  It was much as it had been when I’d first arrived in the Drains.  I turned my face skyward, drawing in a deep breath.

Difference was, back then, it had almost been because things had been so bad they couldn’t get much worse.  Now…

This was a kind of relief.  Things made sense, and knots were coming untangled.  Some things still didn’t make sense, there was a kind of horror to this, but I wasn’t burdened by my past anymore.

Because I didn’t necessarily have one.

I exhaled that deep breath I’d taken, and I saw vapor.  Moisture leaving my body?  More moisture inside my body?  Dust?  Something else?

I tried again, exhaling on purpose, and I didn’t see anything.

Some branches were still growing, trying to find places on the exterior of my body to entrench themselves.  There was a sound like splintering wood as they lurched and spasmodically grew to reach their new vantage points.  I could feel them embracing me.

I unzipped my sweatshirt to peer at my bare chest.  My chest was untouched, my ribs and back had the branches.  My face- I couldn’t see any of my face except my left cheekbone, nose, and part of upper lip when I moved my face in certain ways.  I didn’t see any marks.

No telling about the other side of my face.  I had only one working eye, now that I was back.

A spatter of water ran over my face and head, and I wiped it away – smearing a bit of grit over my forehead.  I wiped it off as best as I could, rubbing the grit onto my pants, and then ran damp hands through damp hair, pushing it back out of my eyes.  Silty grime and moisture kept it in place.

There were more birds on me now.  All tattoos, still, some hiding among the thicker branches, only the dark circles of their eyes peering out.

“I’m guessing you’re the spirits that possessed me as I cracked?” I asked.  Filling in the gaps.  I tried to get a better view of the birds, rolling up my sleeves and moving my arms-

A creaking, splintering sound as I moved my arm.  No damage done, only the branches on the skin moving.  I tested my movement, but the sound was far quieter.  Just a bit of stiffness, working out the kinks.

I resumed moving my arms to get a better view of the birds, and I could see how they were looking up at me.  They weren’t moving, but when I looked away and looked back again, they’d taken entirely different positions.  Still on the same branches, but turned in different directions, wings in different positions.

It would have been almost cartoonish, if they didn’t look so eerie.  The color was almost entirely gone.  Even the birds looked like ghosts.  Echoes.

“You’ve got a nice window seat now, huh?” I asked.

No response, of course.

In the wake of coming out of the Shadow-place, I’d felt cold, and I’d felt like I was almost in shock.

Now, as the seconds passed, I didn’t feel my heartbeat.

I wasn’t breathing, and I hadn’t been since I’d intentionally exhaled, but I wasn’t purple in the face either.  I reminded myself to keep up the act.  Breathe in, breathe out, just like I’m supposed to.

I found the breathing became automatic.

There.

There would be rules to be followed, as an Other.  As a vestige.

Sucks that I don’t know exactly what those rules are.

I turned, looking around.  A small handful of people were staring at me.

I collected myself, getting my clothes in order, rolling down my sleeves.  Hood up.  I fixed the bandage around my ruined hand and the bandage around my gouged wrist.

I’d faced down the reality of my past.

My present?  The future?

My present situation was marked by my visions of what was going on elsewhere.  I was stuck here.

The future… I wasn’t even sure how to parse that.

Maybe I could connect the dots if I had another dream, but I didn’t feel like sleeping anytime soon.  Not so recently after that experience.  A part of me still felt like I could embrace it.  I could just… give up and let it happen.

Accept somebody else’s idea of peace.

I felt a thrum of alarm and unease in my chest at the idea, as if my heart was a box and something was inside, fluttering in momentary panic.  The vibration of it ran through me.

I turned.  I had questions, and I had only one place to go to get them.

I drew a small handful of curious glances.

The door to the Witch’s hut was closed.  I heard voices through the windows – there wasn’t any glass.

I walked a distance away, and I waited.

One of the birds tattooed on my hand was peering around my sleeve, looking in the direction of the witch’s hut.  I pulled my sleeve down.

I mulled over the questions I had, and tried to figure out what I could offer as a gift.

The door opened.  The hinges were makeshift, not actually hinges, and the door opened in an odd way.  The man struggled with the door until the witch held it.  He lurched out, a bundle swaddled in his arm.

In the swaddle was a very small, frail woman or maybe a child.  The individual was riddled with the long, hard kind of mushroom that grew on the sides of trees, nearly to the point of being buried by them.

The man looked despondent as he hobbled away.  I watched him go.

“You’re back,” the witch said, her eyes on me.  “You look quite different, considering how short a time you were gone.”

“How long?”

“Oh, it’s hard to measure time here.  Hours?”

I nodded.

“Come in?”

“The only gift I can offer is a bit of story, knowledge.”

“It’s only a convention,” she said.  “Not an obligation.”

“I remember coming to a decision, maybe a year ago,” I said, “I wouldn’t accept something for free.  I didn’t want to give someone else that power over me.  To make me dependent.  I just discovered that that decision was only an illusion.  I’m honestly not sure if it holds any weight, but I feel like it can’t be a bad decision.”

“If everyone felt the same way, the world would be a fairer place,” the witch said.  “If you’ll tell me what happened, I’ll give you my attention.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She stood out of the way, inviting me in.

■

“…a vestige,” I finished.  My recap had been loose, general, skipping whole chapters and ideas.  The story wasn’t as important as the underpinnings.

I met her eyes, “And you knew.”

“I had an idea,” she said.  “Vestige isn’t the idea that leaped to mind.”

I nodded.  “It’s funny, but names mean so much, symbols, all that, but all the same, at the end of the day, labels are a bit of a trap.”

“Yes.  Any of us have had labels applied to us over the course of our lives.  Some are accurate, some aren’t.  Man, woman, normal, freak, genius, ‘good’, idiot, ‘wrong’…”

“Fool,” I said.  “High Priestess.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“Labels that were applied to me,” I said.

“How, exactly?”

“They were scrying me or something, using a spell to read me.  They drew the Fool with the right hand, the High Priestess with the left.”

“Ah.  I don’t know that particular trick.”

I nodded, “me either.  Didn’t really get a chance to research after, either.”

“The Fool can be the lowest value or the highest value card.  The ‘zero’.”

“I know that bit.”

“Fitting, for someone who doesn’t really exist.”

I grimaced.  “Ugh.”

“The High Priestess addresses the veil of awareness, about intuition,” she gave me a pointed look, one eye peering at my hand, where the tattoos were more intense.

“Well then,” I said.

“For those of us who know about the practice, it has a second meaning.  The very first thing we perceive when we enter this realm.”

“Connections.”

“Yes.  Make of that what you will.”

“Left and right hands?”

“I don’t know the exact ritual or the exact meanings.  I do know the most basic aspects of the left and right hands, practically and symbolically.  The right hand is the active hand, the hand fixed in the now, the one with which you address the world.”

“Sure,” I said.

“The left is the hand we use when we’ve got our hands full, in times of stress, more clumsy, but we’re strongest when we use it in concert with the other, rather than relying on the other alone.”

“Solid advice.”

“Except-” she started.

I looked up.

“The left hand has another meaning.  When referring to the parts of the body, terminology for the right side is Dexter, as in dexterity.  When referring to the left, the word is Sinister.  In superstition, the left is viewed to be the side closest to evil.  When we spill salt, we’re to throw a pinch over our left shoulder to ward off evil.  When the angel and devil are depicted sitting on a man’s shoulders, the appropriate representation puts the devil on the-“

“Left side,” I said, in concert with her.

“With allowances for artists who don’t know what they’re doing.”

“So,” I said, “What does that mean?  This decision I just made is evil?”

“Not necessarily.  As I said, the left hand is the hand you use when the right hand alone isn’t up to the task.  We use it when we’re in a desperate situation,” she said.  She gestured at our surroundings.  “And our actions tend to be clumsier.  Not wrong, not evil, but it’s not a stretch to jump to that conclusion, when all’s said and done.  I’d worry more about when the High Priestess intrudes on your life and it’s not in moments of desperation.”

“Oh,” I said.  “Well that’s a relief, then.  Because I don’t think I’ve had a minute to breathe where my circumstances weren’t desperate.”

“In the quieter moments between fits of whatever it was you were doing.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“The possibility remains that I could be very wrong.  Give some thought to whoever did this reading for you, and why.  The only time I imagine someone should be concerned with your left hand is when they’re your enemy, and they want to know what you have up your sleeve, how you might function in a moment of peak stress, or if they wanted to put a ring on your finger.”

“Wedding ring?”

“I’m not being entirely serious,” she said.  “We put rings on that finger because of the myth that it was the sole finger with a direct line to the heart.  I’m not sure it has any meaning.”

“Uh huh,” I said.  I thought of the Behaims.  “I’m not entirely sure what they were planning.  What about the Hanged Man in the right, the Chariot in the left hand?”

“For who?”

“My, uh, mirror self.  The girl who took my place when I came here.”

“The Hanged Man suggests suspension.  Patience, waiting to act to achieve a better outcome.  Being stuck.  Despite the implications of the name, the man is often depicted hanging from his ankle, not his throat.”

“Enough said.  The Chariot?”

“Victory, control, overcoming obstacles.  It can mean travel, reaching a new point in life.  It suggests aggression finding a clear outlet, being honed, often in the frame of being articulate, winning arguments, and confidence.”

“My concern is what it means in the left hand,” I said.  “I’m… rather worried about what she’s doing.”

“For that, we can look to the image on the card.  I’m working from memory, but the card usually features a man with a laurel or crown on his head.  The victor, if you will.  The conqueror.”

I leaned back, my head striking the door, making it bang against the frame.

“Problem?”

“That’s ominous,” I said.  “Very ominous, considering the events prior to me making my way down here.”

“The black and white sphinxes that pull the chariot frequently refer to mysteries, and the stance of the man in the chariot suggests will being enforced, not strength.  Schemes, rhetoric, arguments, travel, it might point to some reckless path to ruin, or to glory.  Just like your High Priestess, it’s not necessarily an evil path, but on the crux of this, she may find glory or ruin.”

“Sphinxes, conquest,” I said.  “No, this is suggesting ruin more than anything else.”

“Oh?”

“Too many parallels,” I said.  I fidgeted, fingers drumming my knee, where my legs were crossed, me sitting on the floor.  “Oh man, this is going to get worse before it gets better.  I’m getting a sense of what she’s going to do.  I gotta get out of here.  Soon.”

“Don’t we all?”

“I passed one trial.  I faced the question of my past, my origin.  I need to know… how do I face the others?”

“I don’t know about the future.  I’m not even sure how your future would get its hooks in you.  The present, well, I can only tell you my experience.”

“Yeah?”

“Except there’s a problem of sorts.  I… hm,” she said.

“Just give it to me.”

“It’s not that you don’t want the answer,” she told me.  “I just don’t know how to frame it.  When I did it, I was looking for a way out.  These sewers showed it to me.  A glimpse-“

She paused, frowning, looking off to one side.

I waited, patient.  Something told me that if I pushed, she’d just shut down and kick me out.

“I suspected it was responding to the route I’d chosen.  If I’m right, then the closer I got, the clearer the picture.  When I realized exactly what it was showing me and why, I turned back.  The images haven’t plagued me much since.”

“Right,” I said.

“The problem is… if you were anyone else, if you just had the Shadow plaguing you, then I’d expect this to be it.  You gave this place what it wanted, it broke you down on a level.  It should cooperate with you.  I don’t know enough to guess what you’ll have to deal with here.”

I rubbed the stubble on my chin, silent.

“That’s the best I can do for you,” she said, her voice stirring me from my quiet musings.

“Right.  Thank you.  I mean it.”

“Not at all,” she said.  “I should ask for a token gift or payment, in exchange for the information.  The spirits might not oversee us, but… equity.  I shouldn’t dole out advice for nothing.”

I nodded.  I plucked at my wool sweatshirt.  “Will this do?  More fabric, quality is pretty good, it’s warm.  I’ll be cold, but I can deal.  Not so much use in holding onto my humanity, when I know I’m not human.”

“Your sweatshirt will do,” she said.

I unzipped it, then pulled it off.  I folded it, then handed it over with both hands.

She took it, letting it sit on her lap.

“Guess I won’t be seeing you,” I said, half-standing, head bent so I didn’t bang it on the corrugated steel ceiling.  “Thanks again.  If I get a chance, I’ll visit that grave.”

“Hey,” she said, as I turned around.

Something hurtled at me.  I caught it in my right hand.

“A gift, to wish you well on your expedition.”

I unfolded the bundled sweatshirt.  My sweatshirt.

“It’s warm,” she said.  “Fabric’s pretty good quality.  Do what you can to hold onto your humanity.  Keep the best parts.  Take the good that comes with being Other, too.  But don’t just throw any of it away.  Be smart about it.”

I gripped the sweatshirt a little tighter.

“Also,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“It crossed my mind while you were talking, but then I got distracted.  I was going to ask, but I’m not sure if it means anything.  It’s only a thought, but it might be a thought worth carrying with you.”

“A thought?”

“Are you right handed, or is it the injury to your hand that’s making you favor your right?”

“I’m right handed.”

“Okay,” she said.  “Your mirror self is a southpaw, then?”

“No,” I said.  I searched my memories, before coming up with a fairly confident, “No.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “That’s odd, isn’t it?  Given the mirror thing?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Worth thinking about,” I murmured.  I didn’t want to say goodbye again, so I shot her a salute, before pushing my way through the door.

I stood in the center of the settlement.

This… wasn’t going to be fun.

The rehashing of my ‘past’ had been one thing, but there hadn’t been any real chance of being irrevocably destroyed, devoured, facing a fate worse than death, or an ignoble end with one stupid misstep on a ledge.

At worst, maybe, I might have been mentally broken, left catatonic all over again, or I might have made the wrong decision, failed to see the falseness for what it was, and trapped myself down here, perpetually ignorant.

Now I had to go back.

Face the present.

While my future was waiting, probably with its hand behind its back, hiding a weapon it was preparing to blindside me with.

I started walking.

Back the way I came.

Along the posts.  Back to the dark tunnels.

I’d had one fleeting vision in there.

A starting point.

■

“What the are you doing here?”

Rose stared as her parents came down the driveway, Ivy in their arms.

Her parents, not mine.

I should have made the connection, seen the clue.  If they were going to name their firstborn daughter after Grandmother to curry favor, why would Ivy be ‘Ivy’ in a world where I was the elder sibling?

“We wanted to see how you were getting on.”

“I’m busy.”

“Rose,” her father said.

“Rose, what?”

“It’s done, it’s over.  The house is yours and-“

“You wanted to see if you can’t worm in and get a piece of the profits if and when I sold it?”

“No,” he said.  He managed to sound exasperated.

“I’m not selling the house.  I can’t.”

“That’s fine,” he said.  “Whatever you want to do.  We just wanted to see you.  Are you okay?  With this whole thing that happened to Molly, and what Irene was saying about how she was acting…”

“What was she saying?”

“She was distant, cut off, and she wished she’d done more to help Molly.  Look, we made the trip here because we were worried.  The phone is disconnected-“

“Yeah, that wasn’t me.”

“Rose,” her mother cut in, stepping close, Ivy in one arm.  She reached out with her free hand, seizing Rose’s.  “Please.”

Rose didn’t even flinch.  Her expression was placid, not betraying a single emotion.  “Please what?”

“Don’t shut us out.  We’re close, and we’re here out of genuine concern.”

“For the money?”

“No.  For you.  You’d tell us if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” Rose said.  “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Can we work on getting to the point where you could?”

“In the realm of theory?  Maybe.  In reality?  No, I’m not interested, and no.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” her father said.

“No,” Rose said, expression unchanging, “I’m not.  You want to start on the road to reconciliation?”

“You’re implying we did something wrong,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah I am.  So I was about to make a deal with you, but now I have to amend it.  If you want us to get along, I’m going to need you to sign a statement that swears you won’t take any money or profits from sale of the property-“

“What?” her father asked.

“And, I’m going to need an apology,” she said, her voice hard.  “Not for all of it, but I’m going to need it worded in such a way that you recognize and admit culpability for some of it.”

“Look,” her father said.  “Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying we raised you perfectly, or that I don’t have regrets.  A lot of it stemmed from the way I was raised.  Our family was so cutthroat, my mother pushed us to fight each other every step of the way, and that was… in a large way, it was the only relationship I knew for a long time.  We certainly weren’t allowed to make friends at school.  I’ve changed in some ways since meeting your mother, and since I became a father to you- taking you figure skating, or to gymnastics.”

“When I was eight.”

“Like I said, I’m not saying I was right.  We made mistakes, and when you started becoming more independent, resisting us when we were trying to put you on the right path-“

“By attacking my cousins.”

“Maybe.  Some of it.  But that’s the competition I was talking about.  It was ingrained into me.  I saw you back away from it, and I trusted you to figure out your own path.  Your own way to be effective and strong in a very hard, unforgiving world.”

“Well, congratulations,” Rose said.  She spread her arms.  “This is it.  This is me.  You want to blame Grandmother for making you into who you are?”

“Shh,” her mother said.  “Don’t wake Ivy.”

Rose glared.  “You want to blame her?  Well, you have only yourselves to blame for who I am, and I’m someone who doesn’t even want to waste five seconds in your company, let alone however many minutes we’ve been talking already.”

Her father clenched his fists.  I imagined the expression on his face was very similar to my own when I was angry.

“Rose,” her mother said.

“What?“

“That’s okay.  We can leave it at that.  But right now, I want  you to take Ivy.  Because whatever’s going on, between you and us, that doesn’t impact your relationship with your sister, okay?  You have to admit that’s the case.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to wake her up.”

“It’s okay.  Just take her.  Hold her.”

Rose didn’t budge as her mother shifted Ivy around in her grip.  Ivy made a small whimpering sound.

“Take her, before she fusses.”

Reluctantly, Rose took Ivy.

“We made mistakes,” her mother said, in a low voice.  “I won’t deny that.  Help us avoid making the same mistakes with Ivy.  That’s all I ask.”

Rose was stiff, holding the sleeping infant.

“Please?” her mother asked.

“Yeah, maybe.  How?”

“We just want to see you from time to time.  Time and place of your choosing.  Next week?”

“There’s a small cafe downtown.”

“I know it,” her father said.

“I’ll maybe call you,” Rose said, “Let you know.”

“Okay,” her mother said.  She reached out, and Rose began the process of handing Ivy back.

Her mother, however, hugged her and Ivy both.

Rose, still rigid, allowed her forehead to rest on her mother’s shoulder, eyes still open, moving by fractions, as if she were thinking and calculating about things far beyond the realm where she could see.

■

The scene went dark.  For a moment, I was disoriented, and I feared I was blind.

I wasn’t – I was only in utter darkness.  The pitch black of being in a cave where the last light source was a twenty minute walk down winding corridors behind me, and the next one was twenty minutes ahead of me.

“If you’re trying to get to me,” I said.  “You’re going to have to try to do better than that.  Rose has a better relationship with her parents than I did?  Good for her.”

I laughed a little.  Not loud – only a little.  “She’s real.  She’s busy plotting?  Spooky, when I’ve seen the recent vision, but good for her.  I’d hope I’d be taking every chance I get to plot as well.  You want to get to me, Drains?  Try harder.”

In retrospect, it might not have been the most brilliant idea to taunt the primeval engine of entropy and destruction.  The compost heap of reality.

Still, it gave me the courage to keep moving forward.

I’d unzipped my sweatshirt, taking it off, and tied it around my waist.    My boots were off too, laces tied together, so they were around my neck.  I walked with fingertips trailing the wall to either side of me.

The cold was bitter, it hurt like an icy fist closing around me, but it didn’t damage me.  I wasn’t wounded, I wasn’t frostbitten.

I wasn’t sure if that was due to my particular nature or if it was just this place, only wanting to use the cold to make me uncomfortable.

After walking another five or ten minutes, I felt the temperature of the air drop a degree or two in temperature.  Not a cold wind, but even so, the still air was cooler here.

I slowed down.

Steady steps, careful, heel, then toe.

Cooler still.  My skin would have prickled with goosebumps, if I were still human.

I wonder if I can get wings after all.

It was a giddy, delirious thought, a little unhinged, as I approached the spot where I no longer had walls on either side of me.  My arms were stretched out all the way to either side, and I touched only air.

Heel, toe.  It was quieter than tiptoeing, as my heel touched a frigid puddle where a gentle groove had worn into the bridge, and I controlled the way I lowered the rest of my foot so it wouldn’t splash.

I felt the cold radiating from my right, and I very nearly hissed in pain at the sharpness of it.  Nearly.

I tried to remember the degrees of cold.

My arms were still extended to either side.  I didn’t dare move them, out of a fear that they would creak.

I didn’t breathe.  My heart didn’t beat.  I was a false person, a doll, a man of branches and feathers.

Another step, another… the front of my foot came down in a way that had the toes touching only open air.  I adjusted the angle I was walking, to stay on the path, and I made my steps more careful, until I was more sure.

Five more steps, and I felt the acute cold, sharper than it had been, across my right foot.

I brought my left foot forward.

Same thing.

I shifted my weight, balancing on one foot, and raised my right foot, extending it outward, half-inch by half-inch.

I wobbled, arms windmilling.  The branches didn’t creak or splinter.

Controlling my movements, I stepped forward, over the limb that was draped over this narrow bridge.

Raising my back foot over was just as precarious, just as dangerous.  If I touched it, I might lose my foot, before it simply got me.

My hand touched something cold and slimy, and I felt another mad birdy fluttering of panic where my heart should have been.

Goodbye.

But my other hand touched something cold and slimy.

The two walls of the tunnel.

I made my way into the tunnel, hands still trailing the sides.

I paused.

“Missed me,” I said, loud enough for my voice to carry into the chamber I’d left behind.

A limb struck the wall, hard enough to make a cracking sound.  Cold air blew past me, frigid enough to tear the wind from my lungs.

When I’d caught my breath, I had to resist the urge to laugh.

It was frustrated.

Was I a little crazy?

No.  Well, yes, maybe.

But that wasn’t exactly it.

“I’m not so afraid anymore,” I murmured to myself.  “For better or worse.”

■

The Astrologer stared at the burning building, tears streaming down her face.

■

I edged above the slumbering greater goblin that served as the omnipresent terror to the small cluster of people on the watermill bridge.

For long moments, I contemplated attacking it.

If I had metal, something that worked as a weapon, and if I had enough courage to simply step from the ledge I was on and plunge down onto its back…

Something told me that in the vision of the future I’d seen, an action like that had been what had started me on my path.

Kill it, share the meat for favor and more tools, skin it, and take the pelt…

In some cultures, wearing parts of the beast meant taking on their strengths.  The book Valkyrie had touched on that.  Binding spirits into objects, then carrying those objects.

The vision taunted me.  The knowledge that I could do this, I just had to decide to.

The knowledge that yeah, maybe I could have wings.

What did it matter?  I wasn’t real.

Right?

I remained where I was, debating the possibilities, for far too long.  I felt almost paralyzed.

On the surface, it was a dumb question.  Of course I wanted to stay human.

But this went beyond the surface.

What was my dream?  What did I want?

I wanted peace.  To be left alone.  To explore, and not be bound to one place.

Ideally with Evan at my side, my friends a phone call away.

Except they weren’t mine anymore.  Not in the normal sense.

No.

This was, in part, what that vision had been about.  Taunting me with a future that highlighted just what I could and couldn’t have.

I might never get to ride my motorcycle again.

In a way, my heart broke a little with the thought.  Owning that little piece of work had been my first real accomplishment.  The first real thing I’d bought that hadn’t been for my own raw survival.  The first thing I’d wanted to buy.

It was a symbol for me, symbolic of a lot of things.

Now I looked down at the goblin below me, and I saw it as another symbol.  The other path.

I touched my sweatshirt, which I’d put back on, and I remembered the Witch’s words.

I’ll keep my humanity.

But, if this even counts as a third trial… I’ll accept this reality about my future.

I probably won’t ever ride again.

I started edging along the ledge, as quiet as I could manage, teeth clenched.

You want to take something away from me, Drains?  That hurts more than losing my humanity.

Why?  It was simple.

Motorcycles rocked.

Humanity?  It varied.

■

“Yo,” Mags said.

Alexis and Ty exchanged glances.

“I’m the postman today,” Mags said.

“Rose is sleeping.  She was up late,” Alexis said.

“Yeah?”

“Something about a Barber?” Alexis asked.  “Any idea?  Might have something to do with what she was saying about us needing the big guns.”

“Huh,” Mags said.  “No idea.  I’m just hoping those guns aren’t too big.”

“Me too,” Ty said.  He looked tired.

“Not me,” Evan said.  He looked like he’d lost a few feathers, a few more were sticking up, as though they were on the verge of falling out.  “I don’t need to sleep anymore.  It’s a luxury.“

“Lucky runt,” Mags said.

“You should sleep,” Ty warned.  “It conserves energy, and it delays the time until your next transfusion.”

“Bring it,” Evan said.  “I’m saying we should do the fire spirit thing.  Make me a phoenix, bro.  C’mon.”

“No, bro,” Ty said.

“C’mon, c’mon.”

Ty looked to Alexis for help.

“You got him started on that,” Alexis said, “You egged him on.”

“Damn it.”

“C’mon!  Pleeeeeaaase.“

“Ahem, listen,” Mags said.  “I have letters I’m delivering in my official capacity as ambassador, and it doesn’t matter if Rose is asleep, because they’re for you… three.”

“Tiff’s hurt,” Ty said.  “I’ll take hers to her.”

“Great.”

Mags handed over three letters.  The envelopes matched.

Ty tore his open.  Evan hopped down to his wrist to get a closer view.

“A declaration of war,” Ty said.  He looked up at Mags, concerned.

“Damn, didn’t know,” Mags said.  “They said they’d do it.”

“We didn’t-” Ty started.  “We thought Rose stopped them from agreeing to those accords.”

“They’re still sticking to them, just not so officially,” Mags said.

“Damn it,” Alexis said.

“For all three of us?”  Ty asked.

Mags shrugged, “I can only assume.”

“Picking off the pawns before going for the checkmate, I guess,” Alexis said.  Her voice was calm, but her hand jittered as she reached for her pocket.  “Damn, need a smoke.  I’ll be back.”

“Not in the house,” Ty said.  “Rose said not to, and if you burn this place down-.”

“I’m not doing it outside,” Alexis said.  “Declaration of war, remember?  We could get attacked.  I’ll do it in the bathroom with the fan on.”

She muttered some curse word, inaudible, as she stalked off toward the ground-floor bathroom.

“Thanks, real Mags,” Ty said.

“Sorry,” she said.  “Good luck.”

His own emotions were betrayed as he hurried to shut the door, barely even paying attention as he shut it in her face.

He slumped against the door, while Evan fluttered up to the top of his head.

“Damn it,” he said.

He looked utterly miserable.

■

The guilt that fixed me was like a spear to the chest.  Violent in its intensity, force, and the pain that hit me where my heart was supposed to be.

I had asked this place to try harder.  Now it was dawning on me.  The objective, the message.

Hitting me where it hurt.  I didn’t want to wrestle with the idea until I had more validation, more confirmation.

Keep moving.  Wrestle with it when you’re out of here.

In the end, there weren’t many paths to try.

I was at a ledge, not far from Green Eyes.  Not far from the gargoyle’s perch where I’d first sat down, gotten my first glimpse of the present.

She’d told me to go left.  Her last bit of advice.

Coming back the opposite way, that meant I was turning left, to take the path she’d warned me off.

Another dark tunnel, sloping downward.

Water pattered down on my head and shoulders from above.  It ran down the walls in trickles and streams.

I saw light at the end of the tunnel.  My path was lit up, brighter than I’d seen yet.

I heard a buzz, a dull drone, like a low note, held continually.

Further down the path, the ground was shattered, ruined.  It was limited to chunks that only barely held together, haphazard, with deep cracks between each that I could fit a limb into.

As I got further down, the amount of running water increased, the light grew more intense, and the state of my surroundings grew even more precarious, more crude.  I almost had to hop from one shelf of stone to the next.

Twice, I had to stop to calculate which path posed the smallest gamble, three times I had to pause to work out how best to navigate over piles of crumbled masonry, or open chasms that were too wide for me to leap across.

The drone increased in intensity.

The light was in sharp contrast to the darkness here, and the sharp shadows that were cast were misleading, suggesting gaps where there were none, or glare hid the cracks that did exist.

I rounded a corner, and I was blinded.

■

Fell’s grave, the snow falling heavily.

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” the old woman told the little girl.

■

Then light once more.  Almost worse than the darkness.  My skin prickled with it.

In the midst of whole sections of the Drains that had broken away was a cavern.  Quite possibly what the Drains had been before they’d mutated into the drains.

In the midst of that cavern, a face stood out from the wall.  It wasn’t stone, but it looked like something close.  Bone, perhaps, or calcified flesh.

I had to wrestle with the idea that it was simultaneously further away than it looked and very, very big.  Especially for a face.

It could very well have been as large as a mountain.  The area between it and me was empty of anything, vast, a chasm as wide as the gap between countries, maybe.

It rested at an angle, leaning against a distant solid surface I couldn’t make out, surrounded by cracks that cities could have been built in.  It was cracked as well, with gaps running along its pale features, almost to the point that it looked like it might shatter any moment.  The eyes were open, and a light radiated from the eyes, as intense as the sun.

The noise it was making, the size of it, I couldn’t comprehend it, not cognitively, but in my would-be heart?  I felt something swell.

Light shone from the open mouth, too, and the drone emanated from the mouth, deep enough to touch me in the core of my body.

The size of it, the sheer base… I wasn’t even sure how to phrase it.  The simpleness of it?  No, that was wrong.  The appearance, the light, the utter monotone of the sound it generated, it was more like it was at the heart of simplicity, at the heart of something from which more complicated things could emerge.

A lesser god?

Forgotten, fallen through the cracks, swallowed up by this place that had existed before the Drains were Drains?

But… if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, this place and the area around the face had become Drains, only to break away.  The face, presumably, had been buried.

It had been revealed now.

It came back to the same question I had just faced.

Why?

I looked at the wall where the light was shining.

Where there was light and water, there was life.  Plants grew, scraggly, weedy, dangerous looking plants that probably had thorns or poisonous oils.  Because I doubted anything else would grow here.

Where there was light, however, there was shadow.

In that deep shadow that remained where the light couldn’t quite reach, I saw something move.

I saw darkness move.

My ‘heart’ beat its mad panic beat inside my chest.

I knew the name of that particular darkness.

“Ur,” I murmured.

It was working its way into this place that lay through the cracks.  Into the Drains.  The only thing that had stopped it, cutting it off from the heart at the source of it, was the accidental uncovering of this ancient forgotten god.

The panicked movement within my chest only got worse as my thoughts turned over, grasping the import of this.

■

Alexis, sitting in the bathtub, using the drain to put out her cigarette, a book on her knee, her other hand on her head, fingers in her hair, pushing it back.

■

Ty giving Evan a push, sending Evan fluttering off to where they’d stowed the video game console.  Evan was slowly dying, even his flight faltering, and he didn’t remember our bargain, he wouldn’t know to keep it, to move on.  Ty was too weary to even move away from the door, too stressed to even want to.

■

Tiff, nose crusted with blood, blankets pulled up around her on the couch, where she was so still she looked dead.

■

Carl, sitting in his living room, smiling at two of his friends.  One had a cup of tea, the other a joint.

■

I swayed, the battery of scenes leaving me virtually unable to put two thoughts together.

I didn’t even have time to contemplate the fact that Carl existed.

“I get it,” I said.  “I get it.  The abused becomes the abuser.  It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

Only the scouring light and jet blackness answered.

“I made a cabal, just like Carl made his cult.  The world was worse off for having me in it?”

I took a step back.

I stared at the chasm in front of me, the light that lit up the motes of dust that were thick in the air, the waiting tendrils of Ur.

“And I have to go out the same way I came in?”

If my heart felt like an animal in bondage, thrashing to escape, I felt like it was crawling its way to my mouth, ready to flee.

“Through Ur?”

Another step back.

I ran.

I leaped.

Ground gave way underfoot as I planted my foot down.  I still leveraged it into a jump.  I crossed the chasm.

I’m so light.

I hit with my ribs taking the brunt of the impact.  Masonry broke away, deep gouges cut into it by Ur’s devouring tendrils, and I fought to keep my place.  I climbed a small avalanche of falling brick and stones that disappeared almost as quickly as I could grasp them.

No fucking way was I leaving it at that.

I saw tendrils move, escaping the cracks they’d been hiding in, reaching.

My climb slowed.  I lost headway.

Clawing with my hand, I tore away a section of brick that was blocking the light.  It flashed across the gap, and the tendrils disappeared.

I found footing, leaped once more, almost straight up, grasping a handhold.

Again, I tore at brick to kill the tendrils.

I leaped to one side to put myself in the light, to catch a breath.

Metal gleamed in the dark.  A rod, radiating with spikes.

I grabbed the rod with my damaged left hand, letting the spikes impale flesh.

It would, if nothing else, keep the two halves in place.

I pulled the Hyena free.

This is the place for lost things.

And I was close to the place that served as entrance and exit both.

But not quite there.

Tendrils were breaking free, clutching for me, using the same shadow my body cast.

I wasn’t going to make it like this.

Tendrils seized me around the middle, and they bit into my sweatshirt, consuming it, finding gaps in my flesh.

I couldn’t even look to see the damage it was doing.  I had to avert my eyes.

I had to…

Ask for help.

I screamed.

I screamed guttural, as close to the same tone as the god that shone its light into this dark chamber, fighting Ur for as long as he lasted.

I worshiped that lost god for just a moment.

The light grew more intense, and Ur burned away.  Even the pieces in my arm.

I found the gap, unable to see, and clawed my way through, fighting through the shadowy places Ur had just occupied.

The light faded.

I was in the factory, lying in a heap, the dim morning light streaming through the windows, basking me in everything that was ordinary and warm.

The same place from which I’d entered the Drains.

The guttural god of light didn’t reach here.  The light faded.

I found my feet.

Ur, too, recovered.  Shadows breaking out of the walls, cutting off my escape.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Null 9.6

I’m back.

The demon pulled itself free.  A long limb here, serrated on one side with teeth, like some horrifically long jawbone.  A length of connective tissue there, with flesh sloughing off.  A pillar of flesh, extending floor to ceiling, like a long neck or a torso without ribs… all pitch black.

Welcome home, Blake, I thought.

If there were more details to be seen, I didn’t make them out, my eyes fixed on the floor.  After the Drains, near-complete darkness and then the brightness of the lost god’s light, the contrast seemed stark here.  Even the dim seemed far brighter than the tracts of utter darkness that the sunlight didn’t touch.

Light and dark.

Being in the Drains had helped, in a way.  I’d spent far too long straining my eyes to make things out in the darkness.  Now, in the midst of the factory, I was especially aware of the illumination from the windows, the way the dust lit up the shafts of light.

Two windows on the north face, four on the east face.  The light that came in did so in dim, murky shafts, painting long stripes of light across the floor.  The only paths I could travel.  I couldn’t even think about moving through the deepest darkness.  I couldn’t see what was happening in there.  Ur’s domain in entirety.

Time seemed to move in slow motion.  It didn’t, but it seemed like it.  I had no heartbeat, no breath to mark the seconds.  Motes of dust moved lazily through the air, stirred into flurries here and there by Ur’s movement.  Ur moved with the force of the tide coming in, slow, impossible to hold back, covering too much ground to even fight against.  If I tried to stop him, he’d only sweep in on either side of me, snatch me up, and devour me.

He was vast in a way I couldn’t put words to, the sort of massive that meant he extended from this reality to the Drains, and maybe to other places.

Comparatively, I was less than I had been.  Which wasn’t a bad thing, not entirely.  The meat had been carved from my bone, metaphorically speaking.  My ears, after that constant noise, were almost ringing in the silence.  No blood pounded in my ears or made phantom noises.  Every noise I heard was real.

I had very little to lose here, as I’d already lost just about everything.  At the same time, I had everything to fight for.  I’d fought this far, and I wasn’t about to lose my momentum.  He was weak, and I had only this one moment to grasp my next move, to wrap my head around the situation and deal with the shock of being back.

The only noises were Ur’s.  Grinding his way against a solid surface, slithering, slopping.  Faint noises.

If I wanted to, I could simply focus my gaze, ignore the movements in my peripheral vision, dismiss the sounds as something else entirely.  Pretend the problem didn’t exist.

I heard a grating noise behind me, something moving against the wall.

I moved.  Long strides.  Not to the windows. The windows were a trap, I knew that now.  The light they shed wasn’t protection, and Ur could and would grab me before I made it.

No, I ran to the place where the shafts of light across the floor criss-crossed.  Diamonds and squares were formed where the light crossed paths.  I felt Ur clutch me, and I tore free, falling in the process.

I pulled myself to my feet.  I didn’t stand in the darkness.  I stood at the center of the grid of light.  Almost the center of the factory floor, eyes on the ground.

A makeshift diagram of light, diamonds and squares drawn out by the natural intersection of light coming in from the windows.

One maneuver on my part, one maneuver on Ur’s.  I’d covered four paces, while Ur continued to swell in size, claiming all of the darkness around me.  Grasping hands, moving faces of animals or insects, lunging movements, all in my peripheral vision.  Every little movement distracted, demanding that I betray common sense and look, because any of it might be an attack, a bite, a claw, a reaching tendril, a trick.

Any of it might be a feint, as it turned out.

One lunging hand plunged past a shaft of sunlight, briefly illuminated, crumbling in the light even as it reached.  Past the second shaft of sunlight- half the size.  Past the third- flesh sloughing off to reveal a reaching, grasping claw, smaller than my own hand, but with fingers like kitchen knives.

I slashed out with the Hyena, pre-emptive, before it could do anything to me.  It seized the blade, and it wasn’t cut.  It pulled me.

If I’d been more clever, I might simply have abandoned the weapon, a casualty of war.

As it stood, I resisted and tried to match Ur’s strength with my own.

He slowly dragged me toward the darkness, inch by inch.  I didn’t pull so much as I angled my body to make dragging me harder.  Low to the ground, legs straight out, feet skidding on the floor.

Those knife-fingers wove themselves around the blade, wrapping around it in fits and starts, extending, then reaching further.  The light ate away at it, but for every step back it took, it gained two steps of ground.  The light touching it just wasn’t that strong, and I had no way to drag it back to where the proper ‘diagram’ was marked on the floor.

The guard of the sword was largely gone at this point, the wolf’s skull emblem damaged and partially scraped away by the efforts of the Drains or the fall.  The claws inched closer, doing their best to seize the blade and reach for my hand.

The light didn’t eat the hand, but it did chew through the thicker arm, further back.  Severed from Ur, the hand lost its strength, I stumbled back, landing on my back, and I scooted back until I was safe in the center.

Notches had been taken out of the sword.

The Hyena twitched.

Was it still alive?

Couldn’t be.

No, it wasn’t the sword.  It was something reflected in the sword.

I had to use my free hand to tear the metal out of my left hand.  I cast it aside.  The metal smoked where the light touched it.

Fucking stupid of me.  Ur could leap across reflective surfaces.

Ur didn’t seem particularly inclined to push past the light again.  My so-called-diagram wasn’t a wall, not absolute protection, only a preventative measure.  The light was mottled here and there, where it failed to get through the windows, or where windows were cracked or covered in dust.  Ur could push through if and when it wanted to.

I swallowed, utterly still, still on my back.  The Hyena had stopped smoking, so I flipped it over, letting the light hit the other side.  It took seconds before it was burned clean.

Somewhere outside, a cloud moved over the sun.

My diagram began to come apart, and Ur gained ground.

One reaching extremity, a deformed, tumorous lump- so large I had to turn my head to avoid looking straight at it as it loomed.

I couldn’t hope to fend it off, so, still lying on the ground, I brought my feet up, bracing against it, arms stretched out to my side for more traction.  It pushed me, striving to push me out of the diagram, into waiting oblivion.

Spindly arachnid legs unfurled from the thing.  The ones that didn’t crumble away in the light poised, their needle points aimed at me.

Another mass of darkness moved directly above me, perched on the ceiling.

I rolled, releasing my resistance to the thrusting limb, pulling my legs back from the stabbing legs that followed after me, piercing the ground.

The darkness on the ceiling shifted, then dropped.

A column of darkness, right in the middle of the diagram.  Meat and gnashing teeth, spilling out like water.

Kneeling, I grabbed the Hyena, because it was the only weapon available, and I struck out.

This time, Ur recoiled.  The column thinned out at one section, the lumps of flesh that were reaching for my feet and knees losing their connection to the source.  There was less of Ur’s being feeding into them to give them more mass to extend my way.

I didn’t know how or why the cut had worked this time when it hadn’t before.  Warming in the sun?  No.  It didn’t make sense, it was still cold to the touch.  The factory was cold.

But I cut again, repeating the same action, over and over, until I’d gutted the column. The ‘foot’ of the column that had touched down in the middle of the diagram broke apart, large hunks of black meat and ichor that became piles of black squirming maggots that shriveled up into nothingness in the sunlight.

I heard something behind me and turned, slashing out again-

This time to no avail.

Tendrils caught at my neck and chest, tearing.  They thinned out by the second as the dimmed light touched them, but they still took strips of skin with them, not consuming, but still wounding me, inch by inch, morsel by morsel, working to drag me out of the meager light.  One tendril caught me around the knee.

I cut, backhanded this time, and managed to sever the worst of the tendrils.  The light did the rest.  I stumbled closer to the middle of the mesh of light near the center of the factory floor.

The pillar of Ur still hung overhead, and I turned, cutting at it, blind.

Again, it recoiled.

Two more cuts.  Ur retreated, pulling the broken pillar of flesh up and away, up to the ceiling and out of sight.

A moment later, the sword began to move of its own accord, twitching.  In the corner of my eye, the weapon was dark, and the cracks got darker, widening-

I tossed it down into the nearest, brightest spot on the ground.  It spun in place, smoking.  I saw a piece of Ur slip free and try to find its way to darkness, only to disintegrate before it did.

Ur retreated as the cloud moved out of position, the light growing stronger.

Something was off.  The timing of Ur’s responses, the inconsistency of it-  Ur hadn’t flinched when I’d made contact.  Sometimes before, sometimes after, and sometimes not at all.

I knelt in the light, and I reached for the Hyena, picking it up for the third time in the last five or ten minutes.  I turned it over in the light, letting the sun clean it.  I saw how, when I turned it at certain angles, the darkness leaped into it, spreading into it.

Reflections were a means for Ur to travel.  Reflections were also a means for light to travel.

This weapon cut both ways.

My heart thrummed in my chest, but my body was still.  I recognized the pain of holding the Hyena, the spikes piercing flesh, but it felt distant.

Ur would win this in the long run.  I had a weapon, but it did far too little.  I might as well have been using a bucket to empty a lake.

I used the sleeve of my sweatshirt to scrub the remaining length of blade.  I pressed it against my thigh, so only a bit of the metal was exposed.  I angled it so the light would catch it, reflecting off to one side.

Ur recoiled, responding to the faint shaft of light.

Not a wound, but still, a tool.

I could feel my tattoos creeping in to replace the flesh that had been torn away.

I’d have loved to hurt it.  I moved the light, and in the corner of my eye, I could see Ur shift in response.  Moving the light back and forth, I saw Ur react, sliding back out of the way.  Rather than deal with the moving light, Ur simply avoided the areas the light roved.

I aimed for the thickest patch of darkness.

The light didn’t penetrate.  It was as though there was no surface there to catch the light.

That darkness was supposed to give way to light was a truism, a law of reality.

That Ur was apparently breaking that law…

Damn it.

I focused the light on the parts of Ur I could make out, driving him back, scanning my surroundings.  The demon crowded at the light, smoking where it accidentally got too close, trying to find a way closer to me – a crack it might use to sneak into the diagram, a shadow that ran along a bump in the floor.

There wasn’t anything, but this was a struggle that Ur would eventually win.  As time passed, more clouds could pass over the sun.  The shafts of light would move.

My eye traced the path, memory informed me about general directions involved.

As the sun rose, I’d lose ground.  It wouldn’t be soon, but given time, the lights would no longer intersect.

The diagram would come apart.

My heart was going crazy as I moved the blade, turning it to pass the light steadily over the surroundings.

Ur was smart enough to anticipate the movement of the light, to predict where I would move it and move out of the way before the light touched it.

Here and there, Ur had covered up windows, or covered up parts of windows.  Where Ur scraped against the edges of windows and sections of wall, falling debris clouded the light.

My eye fell on one window – there wasn’t much glass, largely covered, but it was close.  The only things of substance on the floor between Ur and me were chunks of rock and scattered pieces of glass from the window, ranging from a foot across to mere dust.  The little shards caught the light, scintillating in rainbow hues.  It was very possible my foot could slip.

Another section, further away, suggested a path to the window.  The same window I’d been running for when I’d fallen into the Drains.

Broken window or run for the intact window, further away?

Broken window.

I bent down, and I placed the Hyena on its side, blade facing the window, catching the light from the window so a shaft of light extended along the floor.

Widening the path.

Could Ur anticipate me?

How smart was the demon?

I bolted.  A reckless, headlong rush.

I was two paces away from the window when Ur finally stirred.  Tendrils snaked across the window, a mesh, smoking from contact with the light.

But I was already moving, one leg going far in front of me, as I changed direction.  The foot skidded long, I tipped over, and my hands came down amid glass and rocks.

I grabbed the largest pieces of glass and rock, feeling pain jolt up my arms from the cuts in my hands, and I sprinted back.

Already, tendrils and spidery limbs were moving to block my retreat.  Criss-crossing, smoking, disintegrating, but forming a net, a barrier, a wall.

Ur to the left of me.  Ur to the right of me.  A covered window behind me, a net in front of me.

I leaped, a headlong dive for the biggest gap.

Ur got his claws and teeth in me.  Ur took chunks out of me.  If I’d taken a second longer, I might not have made it through.  Sun-weakened limbs failed to hold me.

I collapsed, losing my clutched glass and rocks.

Rock and broken glass.

My eyes narrowed to lower the chance for error, I took in my surroundings, watched for a clutching hand, trickery.

I saw only faces, vague figures, humanoid  in shape.  A segment of Ur shaped like six bodies, shrink-wrapped in oily black skin.  Mouths agape, the skin stretched tight against lips and teeth-

I moved the Hyena, and the light pierced one body.  Ur moved away, collapsing the figure.  Not a real person, or even a good effigy.  A trick, a psychological ploy.

I’d trapped myself in this diagram here.  Stepping outside for more than a moment at a time could only spell my doom.

Waiting was just as bad.

Ur was too big to fight.

I spat on the largest piece of glass, then used my sweatshirt to rub it clean of dust.

With one of the smaller rocks, I propped it up so it caught the light.  Some shone through, a pale light extending beyond the glass, some was reflected back toward the window.

I did more with other pieces of glass I’d collected.  I only had a handful, scarcely half a window, but I did have some.

There was just a bit more inside the area the ‘diagram’ covered, and I used that as well.

It wasn’t much, but it served to expand the area I had to work with.  That was something.

The rocks…

I grabbed one piece of concrete and scratched it against the floor.

Nothing.  It only crumbled.  Too weather-worn.

I tried others, and for the most part, I got the same effect.  They didn’t leave a mark.

Hm.

If I chewed off the flesh at the end of one finger, could I use the bone to scratch the floor?

Probably not worth it, not with the time involved, even if it worked.

Instead, I used the rock to scratch the blade.  One side, roughing it up, grating metal with stone, until it was too scratched and too embedded with dirt to reflect anymore.

Holding it so the one reflective side caught the light, rather than Ur, I used the blade to scratch at the floor.

Spikes and rough spots on the blade gouged my hands.

I pulled off my sweatshirt, wrapping a sleeve around the handle, and I ensured the spikes wouldn’t cut me too deep.

One hand on the handle, the other on the pommel, to drive it forward, to push, or tap.

The floor had absorbed a lot of moisture, had dealt with extreme cold and a fair amount of heat.  Canada took pride in its long, cold winters, but the summers hereabouts could get brutal enough.  It meant my job wasn’t as hard as it could be.

I cut lines into the floor.

The Barber was, if I wasn’t mistaken, a demon of the third choir or thereabouts.  He was abstract, like Ur, though more inclined to take solid forms.  As a demon of ruin, he was opposed by structure.  Geometric shapes and symbols.

Ur was a demon of darkness.  The natural conclusion was to oppose him with light.  Light was the sole reason I wasn’t dead already.

But Ur was, above all else, a demon of oblivion, of erasure.

To oppose him, I had to create.

Where the blade scraped ground, it left white tracks.

I scraped out a thick diamond, a minute’s work.  Then I began to draw.

I’d never been much of an artist. It didn’t help that I’d never existed, but the point stood.  The memories in my head were of me helping other artists frame their work, using skills I’d learned on the farm and honed over two seasons in Carl’s commune.

I didn’t try to be fancy.  One image, simple, to represent something.  A circle with two dashes inside it for eyes to be the head, an oval with lines drawn across it to be a swaddle of cloth.  A baby.  Then one image for every year.

The baby crying- lines radiating from its open mouth while two crude figures stood above, impassive.  The baby walking, arms reaching out, the parent facing away.  So it went.  A small child pushed to the ground by a fat teenage girl.  By his cousin Kathryn.

I stopped when I’d drawn images to line two faces of the diamond.

On the opposite side, I drew another diagram.

A baby, crying.  But the lines – I was sure to double check the first baby I’d drawn and draw the lines in the reverse angle for the swaddle.  In the second picture, the figures held the child.  In the third, the parent stood with arms reaching.

In the fourth, the small child pushed to the ground had a rectangle for a skirt, no notch for shorts.

The images were drawn to sit opposite one another, and even if my ability to draw wasn’t all that, I had a keen sense of space honed by years of work.  False, imagined, but they were skills I possessed all the same.

The memories in my head weren’t real.  They were artificial, or stolen, or given.  It was very possible they were simply pieces of reality that had fallen into a particular configuration.

All the same, they were inspiration.  I needed to draw something, a lot of something, and my memories were the one well I had available.  Four images to a face, eight for me, eight for Rose.

When I’d drawn the eight year old Rose, counterpoint to eight year old Blake, I sketched out another diamond, thick and fat.

Ur lunged for me as I drew the fourth line.  On a level, I’d expected it. On another level, I’d made the mistake of letting the shadow I cast give him an avenue for attack.

I managed to pull my arm back inside the diamond, and Ur didn’t pursue.

Darkness writhed in the shadows at the periphery of light, stirring.

Rather than try again, I adjusted the position and angle of glass, catching the light, and painted a bit of a shelter, illuminating my work space.  Faint, barely there, but it helped me brave the gap and finish the line.

I backed up until I was in the center.  Each little picture came very close to being a hieroglyph.  It made sense when I considered that hieroglyphs had been cut into stone tablets and walls.

This is the tale of Blake and Rose, I thought.  Was it coincidence that the images I’d drawn of Rose seemed thicker, the lines stronger?  Had I been leaning harder on the Hyena, or had the work earlier blunted the very tip of the shattered blade, allowing for a broader, clearer groove into the floor?

Or was it representative of something else?

My light was disappearing.

Ur lashed out, reaching, but Ur didn’t pass over the line.

This tale of Blake and Rose is my creation, I thought.  I turned my attention to the brightest patch of floor.  If I worked here next, then by the time I was finished, the light might have shifted to give me room to work elsewhere.  I was already plotting the greater work.  When I ran out of years, I could move onto pivotal scenes.  If I reached a wall…  My eye fell on a patch of graffiti, barely visible in the dim light that seeped through the windows.

The binding on the outside… it only dawned on me now.  It was a creation of a sort too.  Not just words hidden in graffiti, but the graffiti itself.

Nine year old Blake.  Playing with Paige and Molly.  Rose’s version of that image wouldn’t have that.

Ten year old Blake.  Torn away from his cousins.

I had a clear path available to me.  I was containing myself within this diagram that Ur couldn’t pass, but I could extend it.  So long as I was careful, I could stay largely within the diagram, continuing to expand it.

I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t need to go to the bathroom.  My heart didn’t beat.

I’m a false man, I thought.  A vestige, maybe, a boogeyman.

I could do this for days, I thought.

I hated the idea of waiting, of taking hours or even days to do this, but I could cover this floor in images.

Where would Ur go then?  Into the walls?  Retreat beneath the factory?

Ur stirred, moving around the periphery of the room, while my eyes were focused on the images I was etching into the floor.  My attention was divided several ways.

I almost missed it.

In one moment, Ur was there, writhing, making phantom images, distracting, and I was drawing the head of a twelve year old Blake over a test paper scrawled with doodles, marked with a big fat ‘F’ in the middle.

In the next moment, Ur was gone.

The factory empty, the way utterly clear.

Deceptively clear.

It was if Ur was communicating with me.  Negotiating, maybe, or tempting.  Aren’t your hands tired?  Aren’t your hands hurting from this tedious, awkward work?  Don’t you want to go back to Jacob’s Bell and help your friends?

Leave this crude binding unfinished, and you can go.

Go, I imagined Ur saying, so I can catch you by surprise, snatch you up and devour you once and for all.

I kept scratching.  Thirteen year old Blake and his first crush.

If I couldn’t remember her face, was that because the event wasn’t real, or was it just faulty memory at work?

The quiet was eerie.

The light moved as I worked.  I took a minute to adjust the mirrors, and gave my hands a rest.

No wind, no slithering, scraping, grinding or any of that, not even my own breathing or heartbeat.

Utter, complete quiet.

Then a sound.  A sudden crack.

Rocks fell from above.  Pebbles, landing and skittering across the images I’d just drawn.

Larger pebbles.

I had to be careful, looking up.  Up was dark, and very little light from the windows reached the ceiling.  The ceiling was that same utter darkness that had swallowed up the light from the blade.

But as the light from the windows had shifted, a section of ceiling above me had illuminated.

Binding diagrams, as I understood it, extended all the way up and all the way down.

Ur couldn’t loom above me anymore, not with the diagram here.

Ur could, however, work in the abstract.

The demon was devouring the roof.  It was like something from a cartoon, but Ur was cutting a broad circle, further around than my own, and when the demon finished, the roof would fall.

Right on top of me.

On top of my diagram of created art.

Stay put, get crushed.

Run, get caught.

Hyena in one hand, handle and arm wrapped in my sweatshirt, a large piece of glass in my other hand, I ran.  Broken glass scraped underfoot as I scrambled for the nearest window, hoping I could somehow run faster than Ur could raise an obstacle or seize me.

I needed to make this bluff into something I could take advantage of.  To seize on the fact that he was pretending not to stand in my way, and catch him by surprise.

I couldn’t.  Demon’s flesh extended from pockets of darkness.  An ‘x’ of limbs, barring my way.  They smoked and crumbled in the light, but a barrier was a barrier all the same.

Ur reached for me, and he succeeded in catching me: teeth clutched my injured hand.  This time, I knew how to use the Hyena.  A stab, extending the blade so it faced the nearest available window as I finished cutting, the light bouncing back to catch the knobby, ulcer-ridden head that had extended from darkness.  Cut and light together, so the light could make the cutting easier and the cutting wouldn’t be undone by easy replacement of flesh.

It let go.  I kicked it, using that same action to push myself further in the direction I wanted to go.

More tendrils and limbs.  Not big ones this time – a multitude of smaller ones.

I wasn’t going to make it.  The light wasn’t enough.

I thought of the lost god that had suppressed Ur.  I wasn’t naive enough to think he could somehow reach me here.  Just a random god of light that a tribe had once worshiped, preserved only by word of mouth, perhaps, until the tribe or the myth had passed from human memory.

I roared, not in fear, or in worship.

The demon ate existence.  It was opposed by creation and light.

I roared only to generate noise.  To create that noise.

The effect wasn’t tangible, but if Ur put more demon’s flesh in my way before I reached the window, I couldn’t tell with my eyes screwed shut.

I felt him tear at me, scrape and clutch, and I only screamed louder, struggling to hold the Hyena at the right angle, so the light would help forge the way.

If I’d stopped making forward progress as limbs clutched me and tried to drag me back, I couldn’t tell.

“I am the Thorburn bogeyman!” I screamed, the words raw.  “I am made of stick and bone and birds and spirit and false memories!”

Something tore at my eyelid.  I twisted my head back, screaming my anger to Ur and his factory and to the world.

“I beat you!  In this I’ve beat you!  You can swallow me up, but those scratches will stay!  People can learn how to stop you!  It’ll be easier!”

Something caught me around the throat.

“Tear down the roof to hide it and you’ll let the sun in!  Tear out the floor and people won’t come inside!  I’ve won!  I’ve won!”

My words felt like they had power.

“I’ve won, Ur!”

My fingertip brushed glass.

With a final surge of strength, I heaved myself forward and through.

When I opened my eyes, snow had settled in my one eye socket.  With the act of opening the eye, I felt snow touch the eyeball itself, drifting free to trace a line over my cheekbone.

I blinked a few times, clearing my vision in my one good eye.

The snow was wet and cold, and I used it to wipe my face clean, wary of the broken glass.  I was bleeding from wounds the demon had inflicted, and the snow served to dilute it.  The blood was too dark, too thick.  Almost congealed.

Nothing to do with Ur.  Only me.

When I spoke again, my voice was quiet, the words for me, not for it.  “I know how you work now.  I’m weak and broken and flawed and fake, and I still beat you, you motherfucking fucker.  You’re living on borrowed time.  I’m going to finish that diagram, and I’ll squeeze you to pulp between diagrams.  And I’m going to tell people exactly how to stop you, just in case something happens to me.  There’s nothing you can do about it.”

I picked myself up, still careful of the glass.  My body felt too light.  New birds were perched on the thicker growths of branches that had grown where flesh had been ripped away.

My eyes fell on the graffiti.

“I won,” I said, my words very small in a dark, still, silent Toronto.

■

My life in Toronto, reduced to the contents of cardboard boxes that sat out in the hallway.

Half my furniture remained.  The futon, the table my television had sat on, my coffee table.  My toolbox was gone.

Joel had forgotten me, his memories piecing together the best available explanation about this mystery client who had taped out a diagram at the edges of the apartment, and he’d packed away my things.

He’d replaced the bathroom mirror.  I stepped in there, and I gazed at my reflection.

I’d nearly forgotten what my face had looked like.  I hadn’t seen it for weeks.

Except for some markings around my blind eye where Ur had torn the eyelid, it was still my face.  Pale, with a dark circle under the one eye, some branches and darkness around the blind one.  Amid those branches, three birds were clustered together in the corner where the tear had happened.  Beady black eyes standing out from my flesh in three dimensions – one bird in profile, the other looking out straight on.  Three eyes visible in total, matching the general curvature of my eye socket.  I blinked, and they blinked slightly out of sync with me and each other.

I was a vessel, and the spirits would fill in the gaps in the way that made the most sense.  If I was damaged, they’d shore me up, but I’d become less me.  Already, some of the branches were raised, the skin rougher.

The conclusion was simple enough.  I was operating on borrowed time.

I’d mentally described a handful of others as being capable of straddling that boundary between human and Other.  Comfortable in both worlds, just ugly and freaky enough to be Other, but not so much that people couldn’t explain it away.

Seeing those three beady eyes standing out from my face, I wasn’t sure I’d pass.

I was less able to pass in public than Midge, the four-hundred and fifty pound hillbilly cannibal murderer.

I grabbed a washcloth, and I got it damp.  I gave my face a thorough scrub.  The water was almost black as I wrung the cloth out.  I scrubbed my face again for good measure, and on the second wringing, the water was almost as bad, leaning a fraction closer to black-brown or black-crimson.

Five more washes and rinses, and it still turned out more grime than not.  Like trying to wash dirt or vacuum up a beach.  No amount of scrubbing or vacuuming would change the fact that there was more dirt and sand than one person and one tool could clean up.

My arms, too, were more black than white tone, a dense forest of branches, littered with feathers and small prey birds hiding in their midst.  Chickadees and sparrows.  I was pale, and no amount of rinsing at the sink was going to suffice to get my hair clean.

When I was more or less as clean as I could get without actually stopping to take an actual shower, I found a box and began going through the contents until I found clothes.

I pulled on a fresh t-shirt and boxers.  My sweatshirt was closer to me than my jeans, so I grabbed it, contemplating throwing it away.

It was tattered, torn in spots, thanks to Ur.  Frayed wool stuck out to trace my collarbone, at the collar of my shirt.

It was dark, and it wasn’t dark with grime.  Seen in the right light, it was just… darker.  In the exact right light and position, I could see that same essence rolling off it like a kind of smoke, as if it were a recently extinguished candle.  Brown-gray smoke, the faintest aura, clinging millimeters away from fabric.

“You went through the Drains too, huh?” I asked my sweatshirt.  “A little less real, a little more spirit.  And you were a gift, too… shit.”

I pulled it on, then my jeans.  Clean socks and my winter boots.  My first aid stuff was in my toolbox, and my toolbox was gone.

I tore up a t-shirt using the blade of the Hyena, and I wrapped my left hand.  The wrist of my other hand had already healed.  Or, in more exact terminology, the spirits had already filled in those cracks and gaps.  The skin was particularly rough there.

What happened if they got my whole hand?  Would I lose control of it?

I left the rest of my stuff where it was.  I traced walls of the apartment with my hand as I walked out.

“I guess I’m giving you up too,” I said.  “Bye, apartment.”

I didn’t linger.

I reached the garage, and I felt a moment’s trepidation, seeing how dark the place was.  It made me think of Ur, and the Drains.

But fear didn’t have the same hold on me.  I’d faced down my greatest fear and called it false.

Would that I could do the same with… fuck.  What did I even call this?  ‘Despair’ was so melodramatic.

But… despair all the same.

The bike was gone.

Maybe it was in storage.  More likely, if Joel had no memory of me existing, he might have deemed me a squatter.

If my bike wasn’t sold, he’d probably sell it sometime soon, or give it to one of our friends, same as the toolbox.

My life, taken apart, the bits and pieces scattered.

I could build something that resembled it, but I would never quite have it back.

A part of me wanted to stay, to try and scrounge up those bits and pieces.

But it would be an illusion.  It would run contrary to the reasons I’d left the Drains.  Those reasons had given me the strength to fight my way free, and I couldn’t deny them.

That desire to stay and find my bike, to reach out to Joel and see if he had any word on the subject, it was a desire to be the old me.

I’d never really had a proper trial to face my future.

Was this endless well of grime and the state of my clothing supposed to suggest that the Drains hadn’t quite let me go?  That that place could pull me back in if I wasn’t careful?

If so, this might well be my trial.

I turned my back to the empty space, because I didn’t like the feeling that stirred inside me when I stared at it.  My thoughts were on Rose, the danger to my friends, the state of Jacob’s Bell, the lawyers, grandmother.

I could see my expression in the side view mirror of Joel’s car.

Try as I might, I couldn’t twist my expression into anything other than barely repressed anger.

■

“Wait, it’s a demon?” Ty asked.

“Yes,” Rose said.

There they are.  I hung back.

“As in, something like what was in that warehouse?” Tiff asked.

“Factory, not warehouse,” Rose said.  “And no.  Not like that thing.  The thing in the factory was a minor demon of the first choir, maybe on its way to becoming moderate, I don’t know.  The Barber is in the middle tiers of the third choir, according to the books.”

“Does that make it stronger or weaker?”

“It’s stronger,” Rose said, confident but not sounding too pleased to be confident.  “But, and this is important, it’s a strength we could control, if it came down to it.”

“I dunno,” Ty said.

“You’re flippin’ crazy,” Evan said.

“I’m being realistic,” Rose said.  “What I need to know is… do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Alexis said.  “I’d be a lot more inclined to exercise that trust if I knew what it stemmed from.”

“That goes two ways,” Rose said.  “I’d feel less guilty about drawing on it.  But we’re in dire straits, and…”

“What?” Ty asked.

“The house spirit is reacting.  Something’s inside,” Rose said.

“Shit, shit,” Ty said.

“Something or someone?” Tiff asked, her voice small.

“Something,” Rose said.

I was already stepping into view.

I saw their eyes widen.  I saw fear, I saw hands moving closer to weapons, and it killed me a little.  Delivering a little wound as sure as a slice of a knife could, a little crack for another bit of spirit to get in.

I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

Evan was the one who drew closer, before anyone else.  Who let his guard down.  He settled on the back of the armchair closest to me.

I reached out for him, and my fingertips only touched my side of the mirror.

Silent, I let the hand drop to my side.

Histories 9

The untidy man walked through the park.  He looked like he’d been ‘preppy’ once, but was disheveled now.  He wore a button-up sweater and a collared shirt with a tie that had been pulled loose, the knot a good half-foot from his collarbone.  He wore slacks and shiny black shoes.  His hair had been parted earlier in the day, but was now messy.

The youths were a stark contrast to him.  Fourteen or so, some with hair bleached to a near-white, some with hair gelled into wicked spikes or flame-like wreaths around their heads, some with both.  Most wore heavy eyeliner.  Some had jackets with ripped sleeves.

The twenty-something man set down his gift.  A case of beer.

“You’re offering?  How much?” asked the boy with the craziest hair.

“Free,” the man said.

The group’s ‘cool’ facade broke as a few of them exclaimed in surprise.  “No kidding?”

“No kidding,” the man said.

“You’re not going to turn around and demand money later, are you?”

“No,” the man said.  He raised his nose, miming sniffing, “I wouldn’t mind some of that grass, though.”

Wariness, now.

“This isn’t some sting, is it?”

“No,” the man said.  “If it was, I’d be getting myself in a lot more trouble than I’d be getting you into.”

“Man, this stuff is expensive.  You’re doing us a favor and all, but-”

“But nothing.  You want me to sweeten the deal?  If you do me this favor and manage to finish off the case between you, I’ll get you another before the night’s over.”

The eyes of the group’s leader widened at that, he wasn’t good enough to hide his greed, even as he demurred, “I dunno.”

“Hey,” the smallest in the group spoke up.  He was the least done up in the rocker aesthetic that ran through the gang.  “Don’t be a pussy, D.  Think things through.  He’s cool-”

“He’s not-”

“He’s cool, D.  With it.  Gotta give a little to show we’re honest.  Make friends and he could hook us up in the future.”

“I’d consider it my duty,” the man said.  “But if you’re not interested, I’m gone.  Don’t worry, you wouldn’t see me again.”

‘D’ leaned closer, and the group huddled.

“He’s creepy,” ‘D’ said.

“He’s giving us free beer, and he’s offering more,” one of the other guys said.  “One joint.”

D hesitated.  “He’s creepy.  What if he’s getting us drunk to do stuff to us?”

The littlest of the group leaned away from the huddle.  “You queer, mister?”

“What if I am?” the stranger asked.  There was a glimmer in his eye, more mischief than threat.

The boy wasn’t quite sure how to parse it.  The question finally came out, clumsy, “You want us?”

The man smiled, “No.  No I don’t.”

“Then why?”

“Because once upon a time, I was where you are now, and a man did this for me.  I’m hoping that one day, you kids will be in a position to do it too.”

“That’s all?”

But another boy was pushing the leader of the group, and a little push was apparently all that was needed.

“Whatever,” the leader of the kids said.  He opened a pocket of his vest and fished out a joint.

The man took it, and wasted no time in lighting it, taking in a breath, holding it, then puffing out a ring.  “See?  Not a cop.”

He nudged the beer closer to the group with one foot.

Hesitant at first, like animals edging closer to a watering hole that predators might frequent, the boys reached for the beer.

They pulled it closer and tore it open to get at the cans within.

The man smiled, leaning against a tree, facing away from the boys.  He smoked.

The smallest boy of the group watched the stranger, wary, but still took a beer.

The drinking progressed, and the boys started to relax.  They relaxed even more when a woman came down the path, her hand finding the man’s, fingers winding together with his.

She was gorgeous.  Not in the way you saw in the skin magazines, but beautiful all the same.

She apparently heard the whispers from the boys, because she turned her head, paying attention to them for the first time, and she smiled.

“We might have a proper party going now,” the man said.  “Maybe you want to invite some of your younger sisters?  Maybe the Ibix trio, too?”

The woman smiled, practically skipping off into the woods.

Each of the boys, with the exception of one, were too inebriated to notice how contrived the situation seemed.

When the other girls arrived, with three more boys and one more case of beer, the other boys were definitely too distracted to notice.  The new arrivals had a look to them, as though both boy and girl were just naturally ill-suited to clothes.  The clothes hung wrong, as if enticing, demanding that the situation be remedied, inviting the clothes to come off.

The smallest boy in the group watched the scene unfold.  He was tipsy, but not drunk.  Swaying lightly as he sat, he turned down three girls before the group collectively decided to leave him alone.

Neils, D’s best friend and right hand man, was getting more attention from the three boys that had come with the girls than from any girls.

The small boy shook his head, trying to get his senses in order.

He was a little alarmed to see the man staring at him.

The man beckoned.

The small boy didn’t move.

Another beckoning.

People were stopping what they were doing.

In the midst of that scene, the spell ending, he saw glimmers.  One of the girls had sharp teeth.  The boy with his hand on Neils’ chest had an animal gleam in his eyes, his hair too long, the muscle structure of his shoulders odd, too pronounced.

Unneverved, the smaller boy stood, hurrying out of the crowd by the clearest route available.  Putting him right in front of the strange man.

The man took another puff.

At that moment, the smallest boy realized the joint wasn’t burning up.  It burned, and it generated smoke, but it wasn’t any shorter than it had been when it had first been lit.

“What’s going on?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” the man asked.  “Not much of a drinker?”

The smaller boy shrugged, feeling uncomfortable, still unnerved.

“Too young?” the man asked.

“I’m older than most of them.  Just a…”

“Late bloomer.”

“Sure,” the boy said.

The man nodded.  “Not interested in this?”

“I’m interested,” the boy said, with a defensive note.  “I’m… it’s just, Troy moved a couple months back, you know?  He was the oldest and knew how stuff went, so he was in charge, but when he moved, there was a lot of stupid fighting over who’d take his spot and call the shots.”

“You weren’t one of them?”

“Nah.”

“Okay.  Go on.”

“Well, D jumped off a bridge on a dare, to prove his worth.  Stripped down to his skivvies, hopped off the side, and landed ass first.  Water went right up his ass-”

The man laughed, abrupt and loud enough to spook.

The kid couldn’t help but smile a little.  “He nearly died.”

The man laughed harder.

“Shit blood for a month after, he says.  But we didn’t have it in us to tell him he couldn’t take over, after all he’d been through.”

The boy looked at ‘D’, who had his hand up one girl’s shirt.  Another girl snuggled close to him, worming her head under his arm, using one hand to tip the beer he held so it emptied onto her waiting tongue.

“Ah.  I think I understand,” the stranger said.

“I dunno if you do.”

“You didn’t want to be in charge, but you’re the one that watches out for them, after D’s misadventure.”

“I guess.  Are they okay?”

“Probably.  You know, it’s good that you care like that.  Shows the right kind of leadership.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely,” the man said.  He took another puff.  “I’ve been looking for an apprentice.”

“Apprentice?”

“If you’re interested.  I don’t get the feeling you dislike any of this, outside of not knowing what’s going on.”

“I dunno.”

“I’d have to teach you to be more firm.  That’s a joke, haha.  As for not knowing what’s going on, that’s easily fixed.  I’m a priest.”

“A priest?”

“Yes.  Not like you’re imagining.  I worship Dionysus.  You know that one?”

The boy shook his head.

“Tragic.  Downright tragic.  I worship him, and he gives me his favor.  Right here…”

Sweater raised, the man showed off his belt buckle, a section of horn.

“That’s one such gift.  So long as I wear it, it keeps my drink flowing and herbs burning, so it doesn’t run out… you can probably count the cans, and you’ll see more than that case is supposed to hold.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s all about investment.  That’s how gods operate.  They gamble, molding life and giving that life a breath of the divine, to get it moving, and they hope that that little bit of life will earn them more than it cost them.  You can see my god’s creations doing their earning right there.”

The small boy looked at the scene, then looked away, uncomfortable.

“Same for me.  I made pledges, promising myself to my god’s favor, promising to keep to certain rules, and he gives me these favors.”

“Like cases of beer that don’t run out?”

“Yes, and other things.  I watch over his girls and boys there,” the priest said, smiling, “And he’s gifted me with a new one, matching my exact taste and interests.  A reward for proving my worth and reliability, and a way of keeping them current.  I can call on his favor, but there are no guarantees.  I have to gauge how happy he is with me, and if I want him to give me something specific, I have to ensure he’s very happy.”

“How do you make him happy?”

“Slaughter a goat or ten, follow his rules, or the lack of rules, as the case may be, and throw the occasional party.”

The priest’s hand gestured to the scene behind them.

“Ah.”

“It’s up to you.  Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem like a young man with a clear vision of where he’s going in life.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Here’s your once in a lifetime offer.  Say yes, and I’ll introduce you to a genuine god.  Say no, and I’ll have to insist you get drunk enough that you forget all about this conversation.”

The boy looked at the god’s creations, engaged in their celebration and worship.

“They’re a little scary.”

“Of course they are,” the priest said.  “They’re divine, and every god worth the worship they get is at least a little scary.  The weak ones get beaten, taken over.  With him, for Dionysus, what you get is blood lust, desire, and naked fear.  My question is, do you want him to be your scary god?  Do you want that to be your desire, bloodthirst and fear to control?”

The boy looked at the scene again.  He could see the animal in it, the nature, smell the alcohol and the blood and the moist grass.  For a moment, perhaps, he could see what it would mean to be in command of that raw energy.  It was a heady feeling, dizzying.

“Yeah.”

“There we go, finally a decisive answer.  I’m Nathan, priest of Dionysus.  You are…”

“Jeremy Meath.”

“Initiate of Dionysus.”

“Jeremy Meath, initiate of Dionysus.”

■

“This is a mistake,” Nathan said.

Jeremy shook his head.

“Everything comes at a price,” Nathan said.  “The gods exact the greatest prices of all.  You can’t treat this as some sort of system to be gamed.”

“I’m not,” Jeremy said.  He walked the perimeter of the apartment, before throwing open the window.  The furniture had been stowed in the bedroom, leaving the living room open.

“You haven’t practiced.  You haven’t established a working relationship,” Nathan said.

“I’ve prayed, I’ve performed sacrifices.”

“But you haven’t learned to use the power he grants you.  You’re going into this blind, and this is something you get one shot at.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re-“

The older man stopped mid-sentence.

“I’m what?  Crazy?” Jeremy asked.  “Our god bears the epithets of Bromios, of Agrios.  He protects those who do not belong to society.  Who is he, if not a god of madmen?”

“You’re too young.  You’re still a teenager, inexperienced,” Nathan said, very clearly changing tacks, his argument weaker for it.

“I suppose we’ll see,” Jeremy said.

He laid out the item.  The address plate with the house number for the condo.

“You’re reaching too far,” Nathan said.  “You’re dooming me in the process.  I have responsibility over you.”

“I hereby make a claim.  Let this be my statement,” Jeremy spoke, his hand on the number plate, his voice low.

“Idiot,” Nathan said, his voice sounding farther away.  “You’re going to war when you’ve never held the sword before.”

“I claim this space, and only this space.  I claim it by right and deed, and I name it mine, I name it my god’s, and I name it for my god’s creations.  I name it as my staging ground, a place from which I can expand my god’s realm.  I do this not as a warrior-“

He paused, looking at Nathan.

“-But as a devout man.  I go to war with faith in my heart, not a sword at my side.  Let this be my challenge to all that would oppose me.”

The words reverberated through the area, through Jeremy and Nathan both, and all of Toronto.

“Dionysus,” Jeremy said, “I have not asked you for anything yet.  Now I ask you to give me the strength to see this through.  Let this gaping emptiness be filled by the powers of savage and inborn truth.”

Seconds passed.  He could feel others approaching, their weight tilting the world by the smallest fractions.  He closed his eyes, steeling himself.  There had been no chant in the background, no tide of wine or terrible transformation.  His god’s will was not making itself known.

But he could feel another tilt take place.  He opened his eyes.

The color was draining out of Nathan’s face.

Sure enough, they arrived.  Satyr, nymph, maenad, bacchae.

They gathered behind him, leaving Nathan bereft.

Most of them had been Nathan’s.

“You mad fool,” Nathan said.  “Damn you.”

“The gods are gamblers,” Jeremy said.

“So are we,” Nathan said.  “The game is rigged against all of us, unless we play very carefully.”

“If you believe that, you’re worshiping the wrong god.”

“I guess so.  I didn’t expect him to lose faith in me before I lost faith in him.”

“Well, those are the old ways,” Jeremy said.  “My first challenger is showing up now, unless you’re going to take the first stab at it?  You can prove your worth, reclaim what I’ve been given.”

“Can I?  I don’t think so.  You’ve got his attention and favor right now.”

He couldn’t quite manage to keep the bitterness out of his tone.

“Goodbye,” Nathan said.

“Goodbye,” Jeremy said.

His mentor left.

The room grew darker, as the spirits claimed the space.  It waited, in a state of flux, ready not not quite his.

He waited, quiet, and resisted the urge to drink.  In years of service, he’d been lightheaded, but almost never drunk.  Tonight might mark one of the few occasions he’d let himself get drunk.

He was relying on his god for insight.

He was relying on another simple idea, too.  That his god had as much to prove here as he did.  He’d noticed the trend, reading about the gods.  Priests had to work to get the kind of displays their god first gave them as initiates.  If his god was going to do his utmost to impress him, he might as well make use of that, and tackle a suitably large problem.  The demesne.

The first arrival, five minutes later, was Doug.

The man was young, but his hairline had started receding at the first chance it got.  His glasses weren’t thick, but they were tall and wide.  His beard was shaved short, his narrow body suggested he wasn’t eating too regularly.

The man was accompanied by Diana.  She cowered a little.  Reserved, years younger than Jeremy.  The house’s interior was darker, almost amorphous.  His servants lingered in the background, standing by to serve if it came down to a fight.  What little light existed cast their features as they truly were.

A frightening place for a child.

“Nathan seemed upset,” Doug commented, his voice gentle.  “He didn’t have much to say.”

“His god rejected him in favor of me.  The upstart.”

“Ah,” Doug said.  “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Jeremy said, meaning it.

Doug made a face, an apologetic half-smile.  “I’ve come to answer your challenge.  Been a few years for me.  I believe the standard approach is to negotiate the form the challenge takes?”

“Yes.  You can name a facet of the game, or take something off the table.  We narrow down the choices to a compromise.  If we can’t compromise, the spirits will decide the game, and they’ll be upset with the two of us for forcing them to make the effort.”

Doug nodded.

You know this, Jeremy thought.  Are you asking just so I can get my bearings?

His own hands were shaking just a little.  He stilled them.

“If I may,” Doug said, “I’d like to propose a board game.”

Jeremy nodded.  “Okay.  For every piece that’s taken, a shot.”

Doug smiled, “That takes Go off the board, for safety’s sake, or a ko situation.  Too bad.  Morabaraba?”

“That’s, ah, Twelve Men’s Morris?”

Doug smiled wider.  “You know it.  Fantastic.  Let’s make it Eleven Men’s Morris, to avoid the messy draw.  No accidents that lead to the capture of a dozen stones like we might see in Go, but there’s room for the decisive play, with plenty of space for forfeit.”

Jeremy frowned.  The game was a complicated variant of tic tac toe.  Placing stones.  Achieving three in a row meant one could permanently remove one of their opponent’s.  Once all of a player’s pieces were set down, they could be moved, to the same ends, aiming to create three in a row.  The game scaled up from threes to twelve, with complicated board arrangements.

“Is that a problem?” Doug asked.

“No, just… my mentor taught it to me.  He taught me most of the usual games… Deal.”

The board appeared between them.

Jeremy didn’t look particularly happy.

“How about you play Diana in my stead?” Doug asked.  “I’ll take the shots for every piece she loses.  If I pass out, or she gets too worried about me, we’ll forfeit.  She won’t be impaired, but she’ll be concerned for me, it should balance out.”

Jeremy gave the man a curious look.

“It’s good practice for her, and I’d rather walk away with goodwill for the two of us than a proper victory.”

“I suppose you have that goodwill then,” Jeremy said.

“I wouldn’t be so fast to agree,” Doug said.  “She and I have played this quite a bit.  She’s good.”

He put his hands on Diana’s shoulders, urging her forward to face the board.  He leaned in close to confide, to whisper an encouragement.

She nodded.

“Can I ask?” Jeremy asked.

“It’s only a chance to play someone new,” Diana said.  “The stakes aren’t high.”

“And if you win?” he asked.

“You don’t take revenge, and on three occasions, we can ask you to stand down from attacking, buying us a day’s protection.  Fair?”

“Fair.”

He was the challenger, Diana and Doug the challenged.

The challenged put their first stone on the board.

The game was swift.  Diana took the better position at the start, but that was an astrologer’s prerogative.

As he took more shots, he felt his mind grow receptive to his god.

A glimpse of what he needed to achieve… a particular board position, and however good Diana’s position was, she didn’t yet look enough moves ahead.

Had he done this two years later, or played against Doug, his opponent might not have been so young that they’d fail to look far enough in the future.  Once the board was arranged so he could move one stone between two rows of two stones, completing one after the other with each turn, he had Doug reeling.

“I forfeit,” Diana said, in lieu of making her next move.

It wasn’t his usual nature, but Jeremy offered a hand for her to shake.

She shook it, then offered Doug a shoulder to lean on.

An easy one, a gimme.  He had only three shots in him.

Diana and Doug weren’t gone for five seconds before the Sphinx entered the building.

He felt a moment’s trepidation.

“You understand that I’m not particularly fond of your god?” the Sphinx asked.

“I do.”

“I hear your challenge and answer it,” she said.

“Then I challenge you to combat,” he said.  No tricky word games, no tests of knowledge, and no riddles.

“By rights, as challenged, it’s my choice first,” she said.

I know, but you like things ordered, and I have to put you off balance somehow.

“Fine,” he said.

She smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile.  “You’ll have your challenge of combat.  I can’t demand your god stay out of it, that would just invite you to demand I forego my power and strengths, but I can make this between you and me alone.  Your new soldiers stay out of this, and you don’t bring any outside weapons into this.”

“Deal,” he said.  He could feel the buzz from the shots, giving him courage where it might have failed.

He watched as the Sphinx became a proper Sphinx.  Wings unfurled, black cloth became black fur.

Claws extended.

Jeremy bowed his head.  “I call upon loud-roaring and carousing Dionysus, primeval, two-natured, three-times-born, Bacchic lord…“

The sphinx prowled forward, tensing, but this arena had rules, and he was to be allowed his chance to prepare.  Seeing her move at a speed that should have closed the distance in seconds, while remaining at bay, it nearly left him unable to speak.  She was big, she was powerful.

“Hearken to my voice, O blessed one.  Gird me.”

His god gave him two gifts.

A staff, bronze, topped with a pine cone, and a horn of drink.

For a moment, he feared that his mentor had been very, very right.  But the arena had given him the time he was due, just like it had granted the sphinx time to change into her true form.  Now she closed the twenty feet in a matter of five steps.

He drank, and he nearly choked.

Blood, laced with alcohol strong and pure enough to burn the sinuses, not wine.

He took as much of the drink as he could into his mouth, then forced it all down in one gulp that felt like a softball going down his throat.

A moment later, he saw red.

It felt like seconds passed.  It felt, at the same time, like hours had passed.  Mad visions of flashing claws and violence, real and hallucinated, they struck him one after another, not necessarily in succession.

When he came to, he was panting.  Blood dribbled from his nose and ear, claw marks etched his chest, his arms, and his legs.

The Sphinx was injured too.  She sat back, licked a wound at her shoulder.  Her blood dripped, thick and heavy, from his pinecone scepter.

There was still blood in the horn, not yet spilled.  Four-fifths of the contents remained.

“Don’t,” the sphinx said.  “If you drink that, you’ll probably die.”

“If I don’t drink it, I’ll probably die.”

“Short of finding immortality, you’ll die someday.  I might kill you here, but that’s not in my best interest.  I swore to myself, long ago, that I’d put my survival first.  To those ends, I’d like to offer a deal.”

“A deal?”

“I won’t contest your demesne any further.”

“In exchange for?”

“A meeting.  There are some young ladies you should meet.”

■

He was quiet as he entered Sandra’s wing of the demesne.  Some nymphs were scattered here and there.  Five were working in concert to comb through Hildr’s fur with bone combs that took two hands to hold, the teeth spaced far apart.  He couldn’t tell if the troll was enjoying the attention or just barely tolerating it.  Trolls were hard to read.

Sandra sat in a windowsill.  Demesne to her left, window to her right, the view of Toronto, outside his personal realm and temple.  A nymph sat on the floor beneath the window, more catlike than human in how she seemed to mold herself against the wall and floor, eminently comfortable in any position.  Her hands reached up to caress and massage Sandra’s left foot.  Sandra barely reacted, except to shift the position of her foot from time to time, to give the nymph a better angle.  She turned the page of her book.

She was hard to read too.  Did she enjoy things more than she let on, or was she caught in a state of perpetual tolerance?

He’d told himself he’d attend the meeting, and went in with plans to reject this arranged marriage.  She’d surprised him.  He couldn’t bring himself to say no, but his god wouldn’t encourage his saying yes, either.  He’d tried to pose things so Sandra would be inclined to say no in his place.

Now she was here.

Torches burned throughout his demesne, their light suggesting how pleased Dionysus was with him.  They’d burned lower since her arrival, but they still burned.

On a level, he wasn’t really sure how to interact with her.

He’d interacted with initiates.  Any practitioner that helped someone awaken and see past the veil took on a risk, but for a priest, well, a great deal could be gained, too.  Thus far, there hadn’t been any disasters.  Dionysus was fairly pleased.

The thing about initiates, however, was that they could be dismissed, the job could be finished, and the disciple could be asked to leave Toronto.  Sent to one city or another, to try and establish a presence for their god there.

There were others he dealt with, as victims, as pawns, but he mostly kept to himself.

Sandra… he wasn’t sure how to categorize her.  He wanted her to leave, he wanted her to stay.  He couldn’t commit to either without feeling like he was betraying something.

The Sphinx wanted her here to stay, apparently.  The meeting had been arranged for a reason.

That was ominous, and as he dwelt on the idea, he felt it settle into a kind of concern.

Was she supposed to neuter him, in terms of the power he could bring to bear?

A trap?  His god had already suggested the true nature of the Duchamp line in a dream.  All girls.  Was there something his god hadn’t revealed?  It would have to be something that appealed to Dionysus’ nature on some level.

He didn’t like the way that knowledge sat with him.

“Other foot, other foot,” the nymph murmured.

Sandra shifted position, offering her right foot to the nymph for a footrub.  In the doing, she saw her husband.

She rolled her eyes, pausing for a second to see if he had anything to say before she resumed reading.  There was a light smile on her face as she returned her attention to her text.

Tolerance, but good natured, not because she was simply enduring.

The doubts didn’t disappear, but they didn’t sit as heavily as before.  This wasn’t love at first sight, infatuation, or even falling in love, careening head over heels into love’s grip.

He did think, however, that there could come a day -not tomorrow, not in a week, a month, or maybe even a year- when he did love her.

One look, and she’d managed to find a place in the mind his god had warped, a mind that had a very hard time dealing with people.  She’d made him thirteen again, before he’d ever stepped foot into this world of gods and monsters, and she’d become one of the first girls he’d ever looked at.  She was one of the teenage girls he’d admired from afar when he’d been undersized, underweight, and awkward.  She, like they had, made him feel equal parts uneasy and heroic with just a moment’s eye contact and a smile.  But the idea of something happening as a result still felt very far away.

Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine something strong could be forged from that beginning of a connection, but at least something could come of it, perhaps.

“Wine and cheese?” he finally asked, aware that he was only emphasizing how long he’d been looking by announcing his continued presence.  “Some grapes on the side?”

“That would be lovely,” Sandra said.  She finished reading her sentence before looking up.  “Thank you.”

“What kind of wine do you drink?”

“Anything white.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Hildr huffed.  Sandra laughed.

“And a shoulder of pork,” he said, loud enough for the troll to hear, already turning away, her laugh ringing in his ears.

■

A time of upheaval, Jeremy mused.

Unrest in Toronto, unrest in Jacob’s Bell.

Fifteen years since he’d seen Sandra.  Their communication had been fleeting.  Brief messages, to the point.  Business.

He had permission from the old Lord of the City to travel throughout Toronto.  Now, with things in a state of flux, that permission had been revoked.  It made for some difficulty.  He hadn’t ever needed a car.

Now, with the current situation, he was braving Toronto’s rush hour traffic for the first time.  A great many complaints and comments he’d heard over the years were suddenly making sense.  He’d lived in the now for years, and the act of waiting in traffic was maddening.  He couldn’t read without feeling ill, he wanted to stay reasonably sharp, and somehow the congestion of Toronto extended a good hour and a half after they had left the city, with no sign of abating.

Still, it was almost better than the alternative.  Since he couldn’t drive, he’d handed over the task to the eldest Ibix brother.  The satyr playboy had gone on and on about the fact that he could drive, testifying that he’d been taught by his ‘dates’, he’d rightly earned the piece of plastic that gave him the right to drive, and he was quite proud of the learned skill.

Well, right on one count.  The eldest Ibix was proud to be behind the wheel.

At least the traffic jam meant they couldn’t go over ten kilometers an hour, and the satyr was just as happy to be going that speed as it was to have the gas pedal flat to the floor of the car.  The other occupants that had crammed into the back of the car had showered him with praise over every little action.

Jeremy was relieved to the point of dizziness when the exit sign for Jacob’s Bell appeared.

“Take the exit,” he told his driver.

The satyr did.

The exit led them to the foot of the highway.  The road led under the highway to their left, where the newer part of Jacob’s Bell remained under construction, and into the older half of Jacob’s Bell to the right.

“And… turn left,” he said.

It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, entering another’s demesne.

The road grew more twisted.

“Park.”

Tires skidded as the car pulled to a stop.  One wheel rode up on the sidewalk.

“You’re getting better,” Jeremy commented.

The satyr grinned wide.

Jeremy stepped out of the vehicle, stretching.  The seven nymphs and satyrs that had crammed into the backseat of the sedan climbed out as well.  Most were underdressed for the cold, the satyrs especially.

He took it in.  The scope of it.

He’d fought tooth and nail and had very nearly died to take only the condo.

This place… it boggled the mind.

“Johannes,” Jeremy said, “I announce my arrival.  I’d like to request a clear path to the heart of your domain, or a face to face meeting.”

“He can hear you?” one of the satyrs asked.

“Shh,” Jeremy said.  “See?”

He pointed at the flash of light.

The dog was first to appear, Johannes second.  The man walked with a cane.

“Mr. Meath.  High Drunkard of Dionysus, I’m pleased, albeit surprised, to meet you,” Johannes commented.

“Johannes, North End Sorcerer,” the priest said, brusque.

“Should I interpret this as an attack?”

“No.  I’ll be staying in Jacob’s Bell for a little while.  No more than a week.”

Or I may lose my chance to make a bid for Toronto.

“You’re assisting Sandra Duchamp with her bid for Jacob’s Bell.  How quaint,” Johannes commented.  “Why are you here?”

“We’d like a place to stay.”

“You’re aware that by assisting Sandra, you’re opposing me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m at a loss.  These two things don’t add up.”

“They do, just not in an obvious way.  If you pressed me, I’d be annoyed, and we’d have to drop the pretense of feigned civility.  I’d rather not.”

“All of this trouble, to avoid a little bit of awkwardness?”

“No.  Some of this trouble is to avoid a touch of awkwardness.  I’m also trying to eke out a small advantage.”

“Right to the point.  ‘Keep your enemies close’?  That cuts both ways.”

“Yes,” spoke the priest.

“What if I said no?”

“I’d make other accommodations.”

Johannes glanced at his dog.

The dog spoke something in some language that sounded almost Arabic.

Johannes said something in the same tongue.

Not so unusual.  Sandra knew several Scandinavian languages through Hildr, despite the fact that the troll rarely spoke one word, and her pronunciation was largely guttural mush when she did speak.

It made all the more sense when one considered that the dog was a Gatekeeper.  A creator of paths and languages, a traveler’s guide.

“Dear Sandra does like to make things complicated, doesn’t she?” Johannes finally asked, his conversation with his familiar done.

“No comment,” the priest answered.

“I’ll give you a space.  You can come and go, but you can’t hunt, and you can’t interact with the Other residents.  Your passage is barred the first time you act against me or my rules in my territory.”

“Agreed.”

Johannes frowned.  “Enjoy your stay, drunkard.”

“Thank you,” the priest answered.

The Sorcerer and familiar disappeared the same way they’d come.

The landscape rearranged itself.  Buildings parted like moving waves, and a path pointed to their new abode.  A squat apartment building.

Each member of his coterie took something.  The satyrs took the heavier bags.

Jeremy took only one small, heavy bag.  Contents sloshed.

“Talk to me,” he said.  “What do you smell?”

“Genies,” spoke the elder Ibix brother, without hesitation.

“Genies are a problem,” Jeremy said.  “Plural?  More than one?”

“At least four.”

Genies.  All of the problems a sphinx posed, with a great many of the same capabilities, but sphinxes were created, and genies were natural, born of elements and divine remnants.  A keen eye for the balance and the cosmic makeup of reality, an ability to alter that balance and makeup, and, generally speaking, genies operated on the macro scale.  Moving mountains, so to speak, or building castles in the span of a day.  Hard to use without causing a great deal of alarm among non-practitioners.  Guardians for the Sorcerer’s demesne?

“What else?”

“Glimmers.  Almost-people, like shadows come to life.”

“Vestiges.  Good.  Keep going.”

“A very big ghost.”

Lots of possibilities there.

“Sweat and metal,” said one of the youngest Satyrs.  One of Nathan’s.  “Something almost human, but not quite.  Violent.”

Vague, but any information was good information.

“Fox.  I like the smell of her.”

Suspicions, but it wouldn’t be good to jump to conclusions.

“Burning wires,” said the youngest Satyr.  “Elemental.  It’s not very old.”

“Good.”

“One… wraith-vestige?” the middle Ibix brother suggested.  “It smells like rotted branches, and birds, and the abyss.  It doesn’t smell very big, but it passed by here not long ago.”

“Excellent,” he said.

“And something that smells like fat and bile and blood.”

“I believe Sandra mentioned that one.  A butcher.  Stay away, it likes innocents, and you’re innocent enough for it.  The Sorcerer might let it slip the leash to come after you, just to hurt Sandra.  Not an official breaking of the rules of hospitality.”

His coterie nodded, taking in his orders.

They arrived at the apartment.

“Nobody home,” a nymph spoke up.

“All for us?” the priest commented.  “Good.”

He set down his bag on a bench in the middle of the lobby, unbuckling it and laying out the contents.

A scepter, topped with a pinecone, a branch with grapes at the end, a horn of ale that could drive a man into a killing madness, half finished, a carving of a bull in amber, a carving of a lion in gold.  A small sickle meant for the cutting of grapes from the vine, and a great horn belonging to a beast long dead, sizable enough to be used as a club.

Gifts from his god.

He’d come prepared for war.

■

He stood at the end of the path to the Duchamp household.  He didn’t approach, only watching.  A few individuals cast him curious glances.

He hadn’t really groomed, but that wasn’t his style.

Sandra was rallying her own troops.  Calling in favors.  The Duchamps from out of town were returning home, and many brought husbands.

Always in pairs.  Husband and wife.

A dozen different kinds of practitioners, coming and going in a matter of two or three minutes.

Someone would have tipped Sandra off.  She appeared in the doorway.

Her expression was still so hard to read.  Different emotions now, though.  Her eyes shone a little.

She approached, oblivious of the people who turned to watch.  Her hand brushed his hair, and his scruffy cheek.

“You’ve gone a little gray,” she said.

“You’ve barely changed at all,” he said.

She embraced him.

Still his wife.  They’d never divorced.

“I can hardly believe you need me,” he commented, “All these people.  Even if he has genies and angels.”

“These ones will deal with Johannes, or they’ll try,” she said.  “You… ah, we both made a mistake here, and it’s a twist of fate that it hasn’t bitten us already.”

“Mistake?”

“I asked you to stop someone from leaving Toronto, and you promised you would.  They came back, shucking off much of their identity, which is why you don’t remember.  That was your broken promise.”

“Ah.  You don’t sound so worried.”

“I’m not.  I made a mistake too, telling you you’d know him when you saw him.  That wasn’t true, apparently, not as he escaped.  You can remedy it, and keep it from being a lie.  While these people deal with the Behaims and Johannes, I need you to go after the Thorburns.  I think you’re uniquely equipped to do it.  They’re off balance, it’s the optimal time to do it.”

He squeezed her tight, feeling a tightness in his own chest.  He let her go, backing away.

“Of course,” he said.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Mala Fide 10.1

“Evan,” Rose said.  “Step away from the mirror.”

“Why?” Evan asked.

“Because stranger danger,” Ty said.

“But he’s got sparrows on him.  Sparrows like me,” Evan said.

“Johannes likes dogs, you don’t want to be a dog around him,” Rose said.

“No, but…” Alexis said.  Her gaze was fixed on me.  It was clear that she didn’t recognize me, and that wounded me as sure as anything.

Even if I knew she was a stranger, a false friend that had been propped up somehow to make me a part of this world… it hurt.  I knew myself for what I was, but I was still Blake.  My memories were still in my head, they impacted who I was.

I still felt a bit of an ache when I looked at Alexis, a whole mess of complicated feelings.

I stood in the midst of the light that leaked through the window and into this mirror realm.  Where the mirror’s field of view didn’t reach, there was only darkness.

I’d known from the moment I’d seen the graffiti, reversed.  From the moment I’d exited the drains, I’d been in the mirror world.

“But, Alexis?” Rose asked.  “You’re going to need to elaborate.”

“The bird tattoos… that looks like my work.”

“It is,” my voice came out a little hollow, a little rough at the edges.

“But I don’t do projects that, uh, extensive.  Never work on the face.”

“You didn’t,” I said, staring down at the tattoos.  “It sort of got away from me.  Took on a life of its own.  Technically, you didn’t even do these, I don’t think, but it is your work, all the same.”

“Who are you?” Rose asked.

“That’s a very good question,” I said.

“It’s a question that I’m wanting an answer for,” she said, “I don’t want evasion.”

“Oh?” I asked.  “But you’re so very good at it.”

Stupid, I thought.

But somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to take back the words, or to go on talking.  With a kind of hunger, I studied her expression, to see if her betrayal ran so deep that I could somehow see a tell or clue in her eyes or the tilt of her frown.

She’d lied to me from the start, risked my life.  She’d stonewalled me and frustrated me at every other turn, and why?  Because I wasn’t real, and she’d known.  Now she was risking the lives of my friends.

Yeah, not quite my friends, but people that I wanted to protect all the same.

She was talking about dealing with Demons.  Using them.

I watched the others exchange glances.  Rose didn’t turn away from me, always keeping me in the corner of her vision, but she did give the others sidelong looks.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” she said, turning her gaze away from my friends, back to me.  “You seem to think you know me, but I don’t know you.”

That I.  I smiled a little, then walked off the edge of the patch of light and over to the nearest reflective surface.  The television screen.  I watched them collectively turn, a little too fast, even alarmed.

“Once upon a time,” I said, “You got quite upset with me for that use of ‘I’.  You’re part of a team, Rose, remember?  Try rephrasing it to ‘You seem to know us, but we don’t know you.”

“Let’s skip the quibbling and cut right to the part where you tell us who you are?”

I touched the television’s surface.  The surface vibrated at the touch, like a plucked guitar string.  The other’s reactions suggested they didn’t see it.

I sighed.  “I’m Blake Thorburn.  I was second in line to get custody of the Thorburn household.”

Rose arched her eyebrows.  “There’s a few big holes in that idea.”

“I know,” I said.  “I’m missing a bit of chromosome.  People that stand up to pee aren’t supposed to inherit the house.”

“Yeah,” Rose said, “that’s one.”

“I was your metaphorical stunt double, Rose,” I said. “Metaphysical?  Both?”

I paced back to the other patch of light.  Transition from one patch of light to the other was near-instantaneous.  There was no space between but what my mind needed to piece together to make sense of the relation of this space to the real world.

I continued, “I was the second custodian, but that doesn’t mean I was the second heir.  You were.  Grandmother apparently wanted someone with an unhealthy amount of paranoia and tenacity to weather the initial attention.  You got stuck in the mirror, and you got the time you needed to read up and figure stuff out while I fought the faerie and the chronomancers, and the Hyena and all the others.  Then I get taken out of the picture, and you get to hit the ground running.”

“That sort of fills in the gaps,” Ty said.

“Yeah,” Alexis and Tiff agreed.

Rose was silent, frowning a little.

“You stopped the Hyena?” Evan asked, a small note of awe in his voice.

“Yeah,” I said.  I held up the remains of the sword, then realized that the particular details weren’t even visible anymore.  The image of the Hyena’s head on the guard, the pommel… it had been worn down too much by the drains.  “This was him, after he was bound.  Maggie said something about that, and there might be something about goblins becoming weapons in the books…”

I trailed off.  Evan was still looking up at me.  He was falling apart, feathers coming out in clumps, sticking up where they were starting to come out.

I gripped the top of the mirror, hanging from it as I leaned forward.

“…We were allies, Evan,” I said.  “You were my familiar.  A soul with a bit of freedom spirits and wind spirits and spirits of escape and whatever else.  Then Ur ate that connection, that bond, and maybe a little bit of you is falling to pieces and a little bit of me is falling to pieces, because that connection is now some gaping wound.”

“Were we friends?”

“Yeah.  We got along quite well,” I said.  “I think… I dunno, a familiar and his practitioner are supposed to have a connection, and we had that.  Mutual admiration, maybe, if that’s not making too much of an assumption.”

“You admired me?”

“Damn straight I admired you,” I said.  “You survived, you endured, you escaped.”

I let my arm fall from the mirror’s frame on my side of things.  My finger brushed the border.  A bar on my extensive cell.

“I died, though.  I’m dead, you know,” Evan said.

“I know.  It’s not like I did that fantastically myself.  Look at me.”

“So we know who you profess to be…” Rose said.

Profess?  I was glad I didn’t have a proper beating heart.  With blood pounding in my veins, I might have flipped out on her.  Instead, anger stewed inside of me without hormones or adrenaline or whatever other chemicals my body should have been using to manifest it.  Raw, cold fury.

“…What do you profess to be?”

“An Other,” I said, my words terse.

“Sounds like you’re dodging the question.”

“I’m being honest,” I said.  “I made something of a pronouncement earlier, and the words had power.  I don’t think I can lie, even if I’m not technically a practitioner anymore.  I’m an Other, and trying to stick another label on myself just gives me more room to be wrong.”

“Try,” she said.

She was being so hostile, and I was already having trouble staying civil.

“I’m your reflection,” I said.  “I remember growing up as the child that your mom and dad might have had if they’d had a boy, instead.  I have memories of making friends with these guys, of leaving home because I couldn’t deal with the family thing, and ending up homeless.  Meeting Alexis on the streets.  Running into her again at Carl’s place…”

Alexis’ eyes widened.  “I… I remember leaving.  The vibe was wrong.  The pregnant girl, the attitude around the place…”

“I warned you, as I remember it.”

“I got back to Toronto, and stuck out the winter at the shelter-”

“-That was where you saved me from Carl, in my version,” I said, my voice quiet.

“-And Carl was there, in the shelter, looking for more recruits, and I got freaked out.  I hit him with a chair.  Which isn’t like me.  I always hated that I did that, that I couldn’t find the courage or the words to warn people verbally and spread the word.  Just a stupid sneak attack that could have gotten me in trouble.  One of my big regrets, now that I think about it.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I didn’t tell her that I’d seen some image of Carl, active today.  Maybe still doing what he’d been doing then, better.

Was that the way things went, when Ur removed memories?  Took away the good, left the bad?  Or were those regrets a reality that she’d never shared with me?

Both kind of sucked.

“I… remember all that,” I said, “But I’m just a fake.  An image, cobbled together from somebody’s memories, or multiple people’s, I don’t even know.  Something convincing to draw fire while Rose figured things out.  I’m, if I had to stick a label on myself, a Vestige.  Except that demon in the factory ate my connections to people, and I wound up…”

I trailed off, not even sure how to articulate it.

“What?” Ty asked.

“I fell through the cracks,” I said.  “And I clawed my way back up.  Not entirely in one piece.  So I’m a-”

“Bogeyman?” Rose asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Bogeymen tend to be angry,” she said, her gaze fixed on my own.  “Or they tend to be self-destructive, going out in a blaze of ruin and violence.  Are you angry, Blake, or are you the other type?”

“Yeah,” I said, without breaking eye contact.  “I’m angry.”

“I guess I don’t need to ask who you’re angry at?”

I slowly shook my head.

“Yeah,” she said.

“But,” I said, “I’m not your enemy.”

“And we’re back to me not believing you again,” Rose said.

“Huh?” Evan asked.

I clenched my teeth, staring at her.

“I believe you when you say you’re angry.  That you’re angry at me.  Or the world, even.  You look like a bogeyman, and I’ve dealt with a few lately.  That fits too, so I could maybe even believe you when you say what you are.”

With one hand, she gestured at Corvidae, who stood in the corner, watching all this with dark eyes.

“But as far as who you are, or that you’re a friend?  There isn’t much to go on except your say-so.  If you were going to lie, you’d do something like that.  Mix in truths with the fiction.”

“What about the individual pieces that fit?” I asked.

“Our enemies include connection manipulators and augurs and Faerie.  Johannes has contact with Others from all around the world.  Can you give us proof of your identity that couldn’t be falsified using one of those things?”

“Anything can theoretically be falsified,” I said.  “I can’t lie.  You can’t take my word for it?”

“No, because there’s no guarantee you’re telling the truth about your inability to lie.”

I suppressed a groan.

“That’s a no, then?  You can’t prove your identity?”  She asked.

“That’s a no, but you’re suggesting there’s no way for me to gain your trust?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.  We’re not in a position to be extending blind trust to anyone or anything,” Rose said, emphasizing the ‘thing’ part of that last word.  “There are any number of Others who could pretend to be a Thorburn, gather the information, make up a story.”

“I’m of the opinion that if your choices are making a leap of faith and making allies and failing to make that leap of faith and being utterly alone, you should make the one exceptionally short leap.”

“Says the would-be ally,” Ty said.

The look I gave him must have been something, because he flinched, almost in sympathy.

“Sorry man,” he said.  “But, well, she’s not entirely wrong.  We’ve only been in this for a few weeks-”

Weeks?

“-And the prevailing idea seems to be that you can’t rule anything out.”

“Weeks,” I said, a little stunned.  “How long ago was the incident at the factory?”

“Almost a month ago,” Alexis said.

I didn’t have a response to that.

I’d spent so long down in the Drains.  It had only felt like a day or two at most.  Maybe three, four, or five at the very post, if I counted the blurry time spent visiting my memories.

Rose, however, seemed to take my lack of response as a weakness to pounce on.  She went on the offensive, “Enchantresses have connection manipulation, strong ties to Faerie, glamour.  They could dig up details, figure out what fit, and prepare an assassin with a prepared story.  The chronomancers could rig up a trap and keep trying until their tailor-made assassin figured out a way past our defenses.  Johannes could leverage… whatever he’s got.  I don’t know.  The only guarantee against any of it is absolutes.  If the chronomancers want to try the brute-force approach and hammer us in simulated timelines until we say yes, then the only answer is to make it so the answer is always no.  If the enchantresses are going to try to trick us, then we need to counter subtlety with bluntness, because that’s the textbook way to counteract an enchantress or a Faerie glamour.”

“Absolutes are pretty fucking damning,” I said.

“Then I’ll be damned,” Rose told me.  “Because the alternative is worse.  There’s a war going on, and there’s no room for mistakes.”

“What if turning me down is the mistake?”

“What if accepting you is the mistake?” she countered.  “Given the choice, I’d rather do without.  At least then the situation is clearer cut.  I’m dealing with known quantities on one front, at headquarters.  With these guys, with Mags when we need a liason or a message passed on.  No others.”

I bristled, but there was nothing I could do.

I couldn’t reach out and act on that anger.  Maybe a good thing.

“Alexis…”  I started.  I wasn’t sure how to finish.

“I’m sorry,” Alexis said.  “I don’t know you.”

I flinched.

“I- I’m resisting every nurturing instinct I have, to care for the wounded and help those in need, because you’re definitely making me want to,” she said.  “I dunno if knowing that helps.”

I shook my head.  Definitely doesn’t.

You were the most important person in the world to me, before this started.  But that wasn’t even real.

“What was I, here?” Tiff asked.

“A very recent leap of faith,” I said, glad for the chance to turn away from Alexis, to abandon that conversation before Alexis could unwittingly cut me too deep with her words.

“I’m not sure I get it,” Tiff said.

“If I’m not real, then you’re the first real friend I made, not some connection that got thrown together.  You’re… not that different from me, in some ways.  You’re the me I remember being a year and a bit ago, when Alexis helped me, and a part of me felt like helping her help you was a step on my personal road to fixing myself up.  I trusted you like I’m asking Rose to trust me right now.  I made that leap of faith.”

Rose didn’t say a thing, only watching.

I hated her in that moment.

Nobody was moving, or speaking in my defense.

I didn’t know what else to say to Tiff.  I didn’t want to peter out or lose steam or lose heart now.  I pushed forward, changing targets.

“Ty.  I’m… I didn’t love you like I did Alexis, but I loved you as a friend.”

“I believe you,” he said.  “Everything you say makes sense, and maybe it doesn’t count for a lot, but I feel like you’re genuine, even if I’m not exactly an astute reader of people.  I’ve been burned in the past…

“I remember,” I said.  He’d had very good art stolen or plagiarized in the past.  He’d been cheated out of money he was rightly due, his art sold for pennies rather than dollars.

“I don’t have a reason to doubt you,” Ty told me.

I nodded.  A flare of hope in my heart.  “Then-”

“But Rose is right.  There’s too many unknowns.  Too many ways they can get to us.  And a bogeyman showing up with a good story is possible, too.”

The hope was dashed.  “Anything’s-”

“-possible.  I heard you before.  Instead of us trusting you, can you trust us, instead?  Rose has a plan, and if you’re a copy of her or she’s a copy of you or whatever it is, can’t you trust that the plan is a good one?”

It’s not that simple.  She’s a threat.  Conquest tainted her.  The Behaims or Duchamps drew the connection between Conquest’s card and her left hand.  She’s ten times the danger to you that I am.

But I couldn’t say it, or I’d be actively fighting her.  It would sound like I was making stuff up.  I would only be putting my friends at risk, because they wouldn’t leave, no matter what I said, they couldn’t, but the doubt and hesitation would only distract them.

“No,” I said, “No, I don’t know that I can trust that her plan’s a good one.  Not with what I glimpsed, while I was away.”

“You might have to,” he said.

I shrugged, noncommittal.

“Sorry I can’t give you any more,” Ty told me.

“Me too,” I said.  Changing tacks again.  “Evan?”

“No,” Rose cut in.  “Evan’s impressionable, and he’s weak right now.”

“Evan’s stronger than that,” I said.

“Duncan Behaim could theoretically walk in here and talk to Evan, and win Evan over with talk of flaming sparrows and video games,” Rose said.  “Evan’s too trusting, and hasn’t been burned enough times to know to stay away from the fire.”

“I’m not that stupid,” Evan said.

“He’s not stupid at all,” I said.

“All the same, if you’re going to try to turn him,” Rose said, her voice quiet but sure, “We’re going to have a problem.”

“I’m not your enemy,” I told her.

She spread her arms a little.  “There’s no guarantees.”

“Alright,” I said.  “What I said holds true, no matter what.  I’m not your enemy.  Even if you won’t be my ally in all this.  I clawed my way out of the Drains to help you guys, and I’m going to do exactly that.  Even without your help.”

“Just so long as you don’t actively interfere with us,” Rose said, “You can do whatever you want, more or less.”

“Then I only have one, no, two more things to say, because I have to get it out there,” I told her.  “Then I’m going to get to work.”

Rose folded her arms.

“First off, Ur.  The demon.  I know how to beat him, and it isn’t fire.  It’s creation.  Art.  The graffiti might hide words, but it’s an art of its own, and that has value.  If something happens to me, do me a favor and wipe out that motherfucker.  Let this tip and the circle I started be my contributions.  I sort of promised Evan I’d do what I could to stop the real monsters.”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “Thank you, but that could be a trap.  You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t jump at the idea.”

“I guess I do have to, don’t I?” I asked.  “Consider it.  Try it, if you think it’s safe.  If you look in the windows, you might be able to see my work, through the reflection.  A diagram on the floor, in the mirror version of the factory.”

She nodded.  “Okay.  I’ll consider it.”

“Thank you,” I said, even though I felt far from thankful.  “Second thing?  I want you to look at me.  I’m fragile.  With every injury, I lose a bit of my human appearance.  A lot of this was from the Drains, but not all of it, understand?”

“They’ve been spreading a little bit while we’ve been talking,” Ty said, his voice quiet.

“Really?” Tiff asked.

“I have a good eye for detail,” Ty said.

“They’ve been spreading because this damn conversation has been killing me,” I said.  A note of emotion made my voice hitch the tiniest bit at the end.  I wasn’t even sure if they were able to catch it.

I saw concern, maybe doubt, but nothing resembling advocacy, no help from any corner.

“Literally killing me,” I said.  “There’s only so much me, and I guess emotional damage wears that away just as sure as any wound.  And some of this damage to my body is because you took something from me, Rose.  Inadvertently, maybe, but you took it all the same.  Tore it from me.  These people are not your friends, Rose.  They’re the fake friends of a fake man.  If you hurt them?  Or if you gamble them and get them hurt?  You will answer for it.”

“You’re a lot easier to believe when you’re talking about how angry and pissed off you are,” Rose said.

She sounded so damnably calm.

“That’s all I needed to say,” I told her.  “I’ve got to walk away from this, because I can’t take it any more.  I’ve got reading to do.”

I turned to go.  I need to read those damn diaries that Grandmother wrote, and about shoring up a spirit, and power sources and-

“Maybe,” Rose said, and something in her tone made me hesitate.  “But you’re not going to do your reading here.  This discussion was never going to end with you staying.  It seems we’re going to need to shore up our defenses to prevent intrusions from more oblique angles.”

I turned back, staring at her through that tiny window that was the mirror.

“As heir and custodian of the Thorburn estate, granddaughter of Rose D. Thorburn-”

“Rose, stop,” I said.

“-I hereby expel you from Hillsglade House, until further notice.”

The mirror in front of me winked out of existence, as did the television screen, the window, and the oblong patch of light somewhere above me that was the mirror in the library went black as well.

I couldn’t occupy a space that didn’t exist.  It wasn’t darkness.  It wasn’t vacuum.  Only utter nothingness.

I was thrust into the nearest available space.  Into snow that wasn’t really that cold and outdoors that had no fresh air.  Powdery snow flew around me, but the impact still hurt.  Being shunted from one location to another hurt more.

Tossed aside, cast out of the house.

I stood in the reflection of the house’s front windows, beyond the house, and I could see through to perceive Rose and the others, gathered in the living room.

The interior was dark.  No path stood available for me.

She can do that?  I thought, I could have done that?

Fuck.

Numb, aching, feeling the wood creep across my skin by millimeters, gaining more ground in the wake of the betrayal and abandonment, I made my way to my feet.

It touched the window.

When I’d exited the factory, I’d gone from one side of the window to the other.  The glass I’d carried with me had broken with the landing.

There was no passage through this window.

Fuck.

I stared around me.

Darkness, and patches of scenery.  Most of the city was reflected in some fashion or another, from front windows and car mirrors.  Some patches were clearer and stronger than others.

The interiors of houses weren’t lit anymore than Hillsglade House was, and not every roof was reflected in a surface.

The end result was a piecemeal city, artificial and empty.  Buildings stood, but not every face of the building existed.  Stretches between these cardboard cut out sections of street were cast in opaque darkness.  I was reminded of the towns in old westerns, where buildings were only building fronts, held up by stilts.

Rose had been limited to my presence and places I’d been.  Was this all ground that Rose had covered, or were the rules different?  I was the true vestige, after all.

I set off, taking long strides.

Rose was tainted.  I had no doubt about it now.  The Rose I’d talked to in there had been off.  Not quite right.  Closed off, controlling, a course in mind and no willingness to be swayed.

They were holing up.  Protecting the house with barriers.

The mad despot in her tower, challenged on all fronts.

Was she going to get worse?  The others weren’t, as far as I could tell, arguing against her.  Maybe that was some influence of hers, maybe it was genuine trust.  Maybe it was that they were newbies to this world, and Rose took point as a matter of course, having a week or two more experience than they did.

Either way, they weren’t going to call her on her shit.  She was going to keep going until someone confronted her on an equal level.  As a peer.

When I’d been real and Rose the person in the mirror, she’d taken that role, questioning me, keeping me level.

Now that the roles were reversed, she’d cast me out.

I needed help.  Help, ideally, that could smack some sense into my alter ego.

Maggie, I thought.

If it had been a month since the factory thing, which would have been in the last week of December…

Could she be in school?

Maggie could be the peer I needed.

It helped that the driveway was long.  I’d been able to start walking first and decide on a destination second, without having to change course.

My path degraded as I walked, the reflections less clear.

When it had effectively disintegrated, I simply stepped across, skipping ahead a third of a city block.

I covered ground fast.  My body was light, my bones felt more like sticks than stone.

There was a definite time lag between the real world and this one.  Snow, smoke from chimneys, they existed as still images, catching up to reality only every two or three seconds.

Goal number one.  Find Maggie.  Once I had at least one ally, I had some ability to affect the real world, to get something done.

Number two, I needed a real body.  I’d promised it to Rose, but, well, this wasn’t how I’d wanted to give it to her.  Getting a body was a high priority, but only because it would make other things doable.  Not necessarily the second step, but something I’d have to keep my eye open for.

Priority number three, I needed information.  Books would be great.  Knowing what my enemies were doing was greater still.  It would help me, it would help my friends.  It would even help Rose.  Then, as part of that same line of thinking, I had to figure out what Rose was up to.

The further I got from Rose, the clearer my own reflection became.

“Hello hello,” I heard a female voice, melodic and sing-song.  “Did I spy…?”

Fuck no.

“You did spy,” a man said, his voice with the same melody to it.

“A shadow without a person to cast it, in the window.  My eyes are sharp, you know.”

“I’ve complemented your eyes before, my dear lady.  I’d make a work of art out of them, if you weren’t so attached to them.”

“Or if they weren’t so attached to me?”

“Mmm hmm.”

The voices weren’t getting quieter as I walked away.  They were following.

Faerie.

“It looks like a rose, it walks like a rose…”

“Not interested guys, you might not remember, but we’ve done this before,” I called out.

“Sounds like a rose.”

“Roses don’t have sounds,” I said.

Challenge subtlety with bluntness.

They’d barely been a block away.  Random luck I’d run into them, or something else?

Rose was shoring up her defenses, holing up.

Was this entire town a minefield of hostile Others and practitioner traps?

“A rose can rustle,” Ev’s voice followed me, reaching into and through the nearby panes of glass.  Cars were parked along the length of this street, and the rearview mirrors and side windows reflected the surroundings for me to tread in.  “A brush of wind through leaf, stem and thorn.  A sound that only the most gifted beings might claim to know.”

“Shall we be your breath of wind?” the man asked.  “We can treat you to the faintest of breaths on your skin, until your skin has prickled from head to toe, and phantom sensations caress you.”

“Not interested,” I said.  “Go away.”

“So rude,” Ev said.

My eyes were on a patch of darkness.  If memory served, the area was a stretch of parkland.  Too marshy to do much with, maybe, being so close to Hillsglade, they’d put a shack on it, and there was a sports field.  Behind both were trees, and highway.

If I reached that point, I’d skip ahead, create some distance.

I quickened my pace.

“Don’t be in such a rush, handsome rose,” Ev said.  “We’ll accompany you.  Watch.”

I glanced back.

A scraping sound, a flash of orange-yellow light.

A lighter?

The light was strongest around one side-view mirror.

Ev moved the lighter until it was behind her, impossibly bright, the only light available, casting her in silhouette.

“Lighters don’t work that way,” I said, challenging any glamour she was using.

But the shadow was now something that extended the opposite way, until it came to rest on the side view mirror.  If I followed the head of the shadow to the shoulders, now cast on the side of the car, the torso, stretching long across the ground, and finally the legs, attached to a Faerie…

She’d gone from silhouette to shadow, and the shadow extended to her, on my side of the mirror.

I heard footsteps, and realized they belonged to Keller.

Also on my side of the mirror.

Ev wore a long jacket with a shawl that hid her arms when they weren’t straight down at her sides, her straight black hair looked liquid, like the post-effects in a shampoo commercial.  Her eye was as dead as a doll’s.

“Neat trick with the lighter,” I told Ev.  “I don’t suppose you could teach it to me?”

“I could,” she said.  “Will you give me your company for twenty year’s time?”

I pretended to consider, then shook my head.

“You’re falling to pieces, artificial flower,” Keller said, behind me.  He was so fine boned he looked like he’d had a bird skeleton before his flesh had been put on.  His jacket was short, the collar fluffy, and he had a choker on his neck.  I could see his belt, glittering with tools that were discreetly concealed, but not entirely hidden.

My heart pounded.

I wasn’t a practitioner anymore.  I knew stuff, but there would be no drawing runes on the ground and commanding spirits.  It didn’t help that the spirits didn’t follow the same rules here.

I drew the Hyena from the holster I’d once made for June.

What I wouldn’t do for your company, June, I thought.

“Well,” Ev said, “That’s as hideous as weapons get.”

“Yeah,” I said.

The shawl fluttered, moved by a wind that wasn’t here, and I saw her holding a short knife.  It was curved like a bird’s talon.

Then the shawl moved back into place, and I couldn’t see it.

“I thought a Faerie would have something fancier,” I said.  “A twelve foot sword or something.”

“Letita?  Pah,” Ev said.  “Her sword broke, she’ll settle on something else.  Last I heard, she was making a trident that could come apart in a cat o’ nine.”

“Crude, as torture devices go,” Keller said.

He was two steps closer than he had been a moment ago.  I hadn’t noticed him draw closer.

I shifted position to try and keep them both in my sight, and saw that Ev was closer still, an iron thread stretched between hands, knife clamped in her teeth.

Keller held the other end of the thread.  The thread then extended from him to… the mirror Ev had used to enter.  I had little doubt it was sharp enough to cut to bone, if I happened to walk into it.

Magicians used sleight of hand.  Move one hand, while the other took your watch.  Then while you looked at the watch, they’d palm a card.  One thing after another, and while you were watching their hands, somewhere along the line, they changed their clothes.

Faerie, as I understood it, could do something very similar, but in this case, they were moving people, not individual hands.

These two were a working pair, they’d spent centuries together, learning tricks that had nothing at all to do with glamour, and they’d tested those tricks against Faerie who’d been watching out for those same tricks for just as long.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

“Rather than a whip,” Ev said -she held the knife-, “We’ve caged you in with finer string.  No slipping away, artificial flower.”

Not wanting to move, I tilted my head instead.  I could see light from the mirrors touch the string, making it glow.

“You can run,” she said.  “But you’d get caught by a thread you can’t even see. It’d cut deep, at just the right place to avoid killing.  Most keep running at that point, thread scraping bone, and they keep going even after they realize it’s a maze, and they’re carving themselves to pieces on the walls.”

“If it goes that far,” Keller said, three paces behind me, “I’ll use the thread to sew you back together.  There won’t even be a scar.  Promise.”

“What’s the alternative?” I asked, “To the wire?”

Ev revealed her knife again.  “I can cut your skin and lift your nerves free.  Play them with the knife’s edge as a musician might plays his fiddle.”

“She’s really very good,” Keller murmured, “The very first time I met her, she was conducting a melody with a Faerie’s gasping cries.  Music made by pain and pleasure alone.  Ethereal.”

I hate Faerie so fucking much.

“The real challenge,” Ev said, “The art, is to make the music something special for the instrument.  Something so beautiful that it trumps the pain and wins the instrument’s heart over to me.”

“I believe she’s only managed it twice,” Keller said.

“Practice makes perfect,” Ev admitted.

I looked between them.  The way they alternated off one another was almost hypnotic.  On a level, I suspected I knew how this went.  They drew my focus, taking turns.  Ev, Keller, Ev, Keller, Ev, Keller, captivating my attention with the horrible stuff they’d do to me, and when I was used to the pattern, they’d change it up.  I’d turn my attention to the next, expecting the next explanation, but no, I’d have a Faerie enacting the horrible things, while my attention wasn’t all there.

“What do you think?” Keller asked, “Where to start?”

“There’s something beautiful about a man on his knees, face turned skyward, suspended like a puppet by the strings that are meant to be inside that face.”

“A pious sort of beautiful.”

I needed to do something to take control of this, but if I attacked, I’d be leaving myself open.

I thought of Hillsglade House.  The wounds that had been delivered to me hadn’t been physical, not entirely.

Words hurt.

“That’s the fucking stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of,” I said.

I saw Ev’s expression go cold.

“Nerves don’t work that way.  They work by ion channels or something like that.  And music of moans and groans?  The only way you’d make that work in the slightest is if you caked it full of glamour.  That’s not beautiful, that sounds like a five year old getting into her mom’s makeup kit for the first time.”

Okay, from cold to pissed off.  Her anger distorted her expression.

Good.  Nice to finally get a rise out of someone, after Rose being all smug and condescending.

“Don’t fuck with me,” I said.  “Not today.  You don’t want to cross me.  I’ve got very few reasons to hold back, and an awful lot of negativity to vent.  What I wind up doing probably won’t be anything near some nervous violin-playing or whatever that garbage you were spitting out was.”

I saw them exchange a glance.  How many signals and tricks had they exchanged over the past few centuries, to communicate complicated strategies with but a look?

“As you wish,” Ev said.  She sheathed her weapon.  Her metal threads uncoiled, returning to their spool, sparks flying where some flicked cars or light posts.

Keller smiled, bowing slightly.

The two Faerie walked away.

Ev shot me one teasing look before drawing her lighter, disappearing through the side view mirror of her car.  There was a gleam of mischief in her eye.

Then they were gone, back in the real world.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.  They were pissed at me.

This was worse.

Things were bad and getting worse fast, and I had nowhere to go for sanctuary.

I headed for Maggie, walking faster than before.

Mala Fide 10.2

The school, as it happened, was protected ground.

Disguised as childish scribbles, chalk drawings or graffiti, there were symbols arranged in a circle on the streets around the school.  To my eye, a loose ring cutting through the utterly black nothingness that stretched between mirror places, masking everything within.

I waited, and in the waiting, I realized that there were stationed guards as well.  A regal old lady with her grandson in her lap.  Seen in a different light, seen with a note of doubt, wondering just how she could stay there for twenty minutes to an hour, not actually doing anything, I was able to peer past the veil.

A faerie, older than Ev or Keller, if her silver hair was any indication, with a carving knife.  She carved up her ‘grandchild’, an idol of wood, adding fine details.

A wrecked car, a police officer and the car’s driver, a tableau.

Time, however, helped to identify them for what they were.  A singular entity, I was pretty sure.  The scene repeated over and over again, a six minute loop.  If I had to guess, they might have been ghosts, or less than ghosts, shored up with a spirit of time.  A zeitgeist.

The Behaims protecting their kids in the school.

I wasn’t sure how that worked in execution, but time shenanigans spooked me as much as a Faerie did.

I had no idea of how long I had to wait, and I didn’t exactly want to stay put for Ev and Keller to find.  I paced the perimeter of the school, exploring the streets and kept moving.

I found more Others, but they weren’t guardians.  They were predators.  Two goblins in plain sight, hiding near the dumpsters outside a grocery store.  They disappeared when an employee stepped outside to throw out a box of produce.  They piled the most rotten, moldy stuff into bags, then scampered off, sticking to shadows.

A trashy looking woman with a jacket of short black fur was perusing store fronts.  She passed right in front of me, looking through the reflections, and her eyes settled on me.  Cat eyes.  She traced the window with her nails as she passed.  Talons disguised as overlong painted nails.  They made a noise like nails on a blackboard as she scraped the glass.

It seemed like every other time I looked through the windows and mirrors to the real world, I saw something.  A bit of diagram, a man that was overly tall, with a neanderthal brow and a thick beard.  A ghost.  A pair of Duchamps who appeared to be out shopping with their infant daughter.  I stayed out of their sight and out of their way.

Likening it to a game of checkers or chess would be unfair.  Yes, they were putting pieces on the board.  Calling in favors, apparently, and deciding what needed to be where.  The Behaims were very obviously tapping into their supply of magic that they’d been holding in reserve.  These were the opening moves of the game.  Threatening, building something, maybe testing the water here and there, if Rose calling it a ‘war’ meant something, but as far as I knew, pieces had yet to be taken off the board.  There hadn’t been any attacks.

Unlike a game of chess, though, the pieces here were very much alive, or as alive as Others got.  They moved constantly, forcing everyone that was native to Jacob’s Bell to constantly adapt.

If I went with my gut, and the general atmosphere, I didn’t think anyone had made an explicit, overt move yet.  There was tension.  Seeing just how many Others, diagrams and practitioners there were around here, I had the distinct impression that all it would take was one mistake.  One member of one side failing to watch their backs, or underestimating one of the other side’s players.

One mistake, and this would all turn ugly.

Why the emphasis on the school?  A means of pressuring the opposition?

I watched the faceless woman walk down the street, phone in one hand, a cigarette in the other, never actually making its way to her nonexistent mouth.  Her eyes and mouth were smudges, like they’d been drawn with thick black pencil and wiped away with a cheap pencil eraser.  The angle of her head and the hair that fell down around either side hid the true nature of her face from random passerbys.

How often did one actually look at strangers on the street?

Wait.  The faceless woman was making a beeline for another Other.  The woman with the garish makeup, cat eyes and claws.  The cat woman was staring into a shop window, the faceless woman staring down at her phone.

I wasn’t the only one who saw it happening.  Three sets of goblin eyes peered out from darkness, watching.  Two Others, pretending not to see one another, a game of chicken, of all things.  Seeing who would move first.

I had to almost press myself against the display window of the store to see the Duchamps further down the street.  One was holding something, but the other held her wrist, stopping her from acting.

I contemplated breaking a window, but I wasn’t sure if it would make things worse.

The scene was still, except for the faceless woman, continuing her walk, boots hard on the sidewalk.  Snow blew around her, but the wind wasn’t strong enough to reveal her face.

On the far side of the street, a woman and her male friend walked with coffees in hand, oblivious.  Jacob’s Bell residents, going by the style of dress.  Not ugly or cheap, but… small town more than Toronto.

The faceless woman drew closer, not veering.

The cat woman flexed her claws.

The door of one store opened, and I saw light stretch and cover different ground as the glass of the door caught and reflected it, expanding my mirror domain.

A man stepped out onto the street.  Vaguely familiar looking, he practically tackled the faceless woman.  Arm thrown around her shoulder, he intercepted her and used forward momentum to steer her way.

The cat woman turned, smirking, before she left, turning in the opposite direction.

The guy and the faceless woman drew closer to me.

They stopped right in front of the window I was residing within.

They didn’t talk.

I didn’t move, out of concern that they would somehow identify me.

“Such a hassle,” the man said, removing his arm from the faceless woman’s shoulders.  She shrugged her way free, jabbing her cigarette in his general direction as he backed off.  She looked nice, if a little plain, with a hat, scarf, and long jacket.  He looked painfully average, though very thin and rather rumpled.  His voice was almost a drawl, not accented so much as very fatigued.  It was the perfectly wrong voice for him to say, “Don’t get pissy now.  You’re the one that keeps trying to make a point.”

The faceless woman backed off.  Her left hand dropped to her side.  The phone wasn’t on, or even functional.  The screen had a spiderweb of cracks radiating across it, and it looked a few generations old.  She still held one arm up perpetually, cigarette between two fingers.

“If you’d done anything, she’d have gutted you,” he said.

The faceless woman turned his way, incredulity clear in her body language.

“She would have.  I hate to break it to you, darling, but circumstances have changed.  You might have held third or fourth place as one of the scarier free locals before, but I would be very surprised if you were one of the top twenty-five right now.”

The faceless woman turned and started pacing.

The man sighed.  His mumble of a voice was so quiet I was surprised she could even hear him.  “We have the disadvantage and the advantage of being new.  That thing?  That’s an old thing.  Don’t let appearances deceive.  If I had to guess, going by what little I’ve been able to pick up, I’d think that woman was a harbinger of Bast or a Lamia or something in that vein.  Maybe demonspawn.  What do you think?”

The woman didn’t react, still pacing.  Prowling, even.

There was a pause before the man spoke again.  “Powerful, smart, willing to play by the rules.  Pick two, or be prepared to have a very short existence, understand?”

She turned his way for a moment, before she resumed pacing.  She tried to go still for a moment, but after a short period of tapping her foot, tapping one finger on her cigarette, she started moving again.

The interplay between the two was fascinating, on a level.  He did the talking, while she emoted.  It wasn’t the same sort of coordination that happened with Faerie, honed over centuries of keeping one another’s company.  It was very natural, very easy, and almost enviable.

He spoke like he was very tired.  “Wait a little bit longer, and there’ll be enough chaos and bloodshed for all of us,” he commented.  “It’s not the most noble thing, but we’ll be able to make our way around the battlefields and take our pick of the leavings.  How does that suit you, being a scavenger bird?”

The faceless woman turned at the far end of the street, paused, and tapped on her cigarette a few times.  Ash fell, but the cigarette didn’t grow shorter.

“What a shame,” the mumbling man said, “I’d hoped to have a conversation partner, but it looks like I’m the lone speaker in this group of mutes.”

I startled at that.

“You were talking to me,” I said, as it dawned on me.

“Oh, you do talk,” he said, managing to avoid any trace of sardony or condescension in his tone.

“I, uh, to belatedly answer your question, I don’t really see myself as a scavenger bird at all.”

“Was I overstepping?” he asked.  “You never know, with you types.  There’s so often a theme with your kind, but sometimes that theme is something you embrace, and sometimes it’s a sore point.  Sometimes both.”

I was a little too off balance to properly wrap my head around the conversation.  Rather than keep mumbling and struggling through, I tried to pull back and get my head in order.

“No,” I said.  “Birds aren’t a sore point.  A theme?  Maybe, but it was more accidental than anything.”

“Then I won’t make a point of it.  I recognize you.  From the Thorburn house?”

“Yeah?” I answered.

“I delivered the pizza,” he said.

Ah.  My mind flashed back to that scene.  Goblins had impaled him on the fence, and the faceless woman had taken his face, all in an attempt to bait me outside.  I hadn’t fallen for it, and he’d mocked me after the fact.

I ventured, “Can I ask what you are?”

“I don’t know so much, not really.  I died, and I kicked and screamed so much that they wouldn’t take me,” he said.

The wan smile and relaxed attitude he offered me did not look like the expression of someone who’d clawed their way back from the afterlife.

“A revenant,” I said.

“Oh?  A label.  Good word, too.  Better than being a wibbabog or boggart or banderscratch or momo or whatever name some of us wind up with.  It’s like the practitioners who think up the names are giving the job to their children, instead of doing it themselves.”

“That’s more international influences than silliness,” I said.

“Eh,” he said.  A pause.  “Are you safe to look at?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He turned around, giving me a more thorough look.  “You came from the same place as her?”

I glanced at the faceless woman.  She’d stopped pacing, though she still fidgeted.  She held her hand straight up, fingers splayed, but for the two that held the cigarette, and grabbed her arm at the base.

“Forest?” the quiet man asked.

“No,” I said.

“Same general place, then,” he said, and the words were barely comprehensible.

“I suppose,” I said.

“Fought your way back from someplace ugly,” he said.  “Brought the ugly with you, if you don’t mind my putting it that way?”

“Something like that,” I said.  “What’s her name?”

“Funny thing,” the mumbling guy said.  “She hasn’t said.”

“Ha ha,” I said, humorless.

But he smiled a little.  “She’s only my friend, you don’t need many names when you have only one person to talk to.  You need other things, though.  I had to ask around some to get details on her type.”

“Bogeymen,” I said.

“Yes.  Bogeymen.  Wherever you came from, the place probably has a hold on you.  It’ll take either of you back if it gets the chance, you know.”

“I had that impression,” I said.

“She didn’t do so well at first.  Too reckless, hard to rein in for Ottawa’s Lord, Toronto kicked her out.”

“How do you know that, if she can’t talk?”

“I wound up looking for answers after we crossed paths, because she really wasn’t doing well, found out some things about her.  Did some traveling.  We got to talking, so to speak, and here we are, a few years in, a few years wiser.”

“Scaring people,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.  “Killing the occasional one if we can get away with it, just to drive a point home.”

Killing.  He said it so matter-of-factly.

“You don’t approve?” he asked.

“I’m not big on the killing thing,” I said.

“You’ve never killed?”

I thought of Laird, bleeding out.

“I’ve killed,” I said, I left it at that.

The faceless woman moved her hand, the orange light at the end of the cigarette tracing a line across my field of view.  Almost a wave.

“She wants details.”

My gut reaction was to say no.

But they’d find out all the same, if they kept an ear out.

“Laird.  Self defense, in large part.”

“Ah.  That was you.”

“That was me,” I said.

Apparently satisfied, the faceless woman resumed her old position, leaning against a wall, cigarette held up, between two fingers, one boot tapping on the ground.

“I’m not a big fan of murder myself, but when Death comes calling, as he might do for me, or when the world wants to swallow you up and digest you, as it might be in your case, sometimes you’ll do what you have to.  Get the power you need to stay here, clock the hours you need to clock, do your part to keep the universe running.”

Clock my hours.  I’d left the Drains, but I’d brought the drains with me.

I frowned.  Rather than argue the point, I tried a different tack.  “Slim pickings here, even if I did want to kill someone.”

“Like I said, it won’t be for long.  It makes for a pretty tableau, doesn’t it?  The practitioners fight, and a man is left ruined, bloody, broken or powerless, utterly alone.  Then figures step out of the shadows, and the practitioner realizes that they’re facing down the likes of you, or me, or my friend there.”

I could imagine it.

Problem was, I could very well imagine it being Alexis, Tiff, or Ty.

My mind ticked over possibilities.

Rather than let the silence hang for a half-second longer, I opened my mouth, a half-formed argument in my head.

“You’ve done me a favor here, sharing this info on bogeymen, being friendly,” I said, speaking slower so I might have more time to think.  “Can I share a tidbit of info, as thanks?”

“Wouldn’t object,” he said.

The faceless woman had stopped moving.  Those smears where her eyes and mouth should be, they moved like ink in water, as if promising to reveal some detail if I stared long enough.

I turned my head away.  The benefit of knowing that not all knowledge was good knowledge to have.

“Hillsglade House, you know it?”

“Sure,” he said.

“They’ve got a demon there.  Summoned on the top floor.”

“The Thorburns have a reputation,” he said.

“Well, this is the reason for that reputation.  It’s bound, but it might not stay that way.”  I paused, and paused longer, as I realized there wasn’t a graceful way to say the next part.  “I would advise keeping your distance from that place and the people there.”

“A tidbit of knowledge,” he said.  “Well, I’ll gratefully accept it.”

I nodded.

He smiled, “You’re so transparent.  How ironic, for a man that dwells in mirrors.”

I didn’t feel fear in any natural way, no more than I did joy or anger.  Less so than anger, even.  I’d conquered one of the metaphorical demons that had haunted me, and by recognizing my past for the false thing it was, I’d given fear far less of a hold on me.

But that simple sentence did unnerve me some.  I felt a swell of deep concern in my chest.

When I didn’t answer, he relented, saying, “Don’t worry.  If you want to murder them yourself, I won’t stand in your way.”

“That’s not what I-” I said, stopping myself.

“Not what you meant?  You don’t want to kill them?  None of them?”

“I don’t.  But-”  I thought of Rose.  “If I had to, I would like to think I wouldn’t hesitate.”

“Ah, well, it’s your business all the same.  The man I came back to murder was dead by the time I clawed my way out of my grave.  I wouldn’t do you the same disservice by interfering.”

If my brain was a book, I would have spent the next several seconds flipping pages, trying to find that section where the bit on revenants pointed to subtypes.  Varieties.

Most had a mission.  When the mission was done, the revenant ceased to be.  He hadn’t.  A mother might return from the dead to rescue her daughter and trap the kidnapper in her stead.  A murder victim would murder the murderers, a man might return to maintain his business for one or two more nights, so his legacy would be sure to keep running.

He didn’t have a mission.  There was a bug in the system that had brought him back.

I’d forgotten to respond, and now that I had a sense of who and what he might be, I was sort of stuck.

“How did you manage to stay?” I asked.

“Like I said, you’ve got to find power where you can get it.”

“You also said you weren’t that keen on killing.”

“I did.  The trick is to realize your strengths.  We’re newcomers.  The Solomon whatsit doesn’t apply.  We have access to anyone we want to go after, innocent or otherwise, see?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Far more,” he said.  “Far, far more.  Usual protections might not apply, but the universe will protect innocents in a roundabout way.

“Something like that,” I said.

“You can make power by leaving an impact.  By giving us attention, giving us time and effort, giving us a moment’s thought, they’re still giving us something.  There’s power to be had in that.  Take that power.  Thrive.  Get even the ones who know about us, when they think they’re safe.  Innocents have some protections, the universe will contrive to shield them, but if you can leave a lasting mark, that’s worth a fair bit.”

I thought of the bogeymen I’d read about.  The monsters.  Was there a method to the madness?

By creating fear, they left a lasting impression.  Pain, of course, but also fostering doubts.  A glimpse of a faceless woman, not enough to make them certain, but to leave them thinking about that one night for years or decades to come.  Maybe committing the occasional murder, to remind the universe that they were present, and they had no intention to go elsewhere.  Fewer things made an impact so much as removing one individual from the ranks of the living.

There was more, too.  I’d left the Drains, but I’d brought some of the Drains with me when I’d left.  I was a manifestation of the Drains, and these same actions -scaring people, making an impression, hurting and killing- they were all actions the Drains wanted me to undertake.

So I hadn’t really escaped at all.  I was only serving the ends of the Drains in this space.

I really wished I had access to books on bogeymen and things that went bump in the night.  Especially now that I was one.

“You should work on it,” he said, filling my contemplative silence.  “Whatever ugly got in you while you were stuck in that world, it’s getting more of a hold.”

I touched my face, and I saw how some parts of my tattoos were standing out from the skin, raised in places, like something thin had been slipped beneath them.

That was more than a little spooky.

I glanced around, and I saw a kid walking down the street, backpack slung over one shoulder.  He kicked a snowbank.

The mumbling man seemed to notice too, because he glanced at me.

“I should go,” I said.  I didn’t give details on why.

“I should get my friend out of the way,” he said.  Then, as if he were reading my mind, he added, “Be careful, the children are being escorted by family.”

The word family had an emphasis that left little doubt in my mind as to which families he was referring to.

“By the by, if you ever feel like hunting…”

He wasn’t talking about hunting animals.

“Maybe,” I said.

“This will be something to behold,” he said.  “It’s just a question of when, and we’ll have more victims than we can imagine.”

“Human victims?” I asked.

“Practitioner victims, but they’re more or less the same thing” he said.  “There’s a gentleman’s agreement of sorts about touching or killing the humans, or giving them reason to worry.  Anything’s fair game, so long as it’s covert.”

“You talk about it so casually, killing people,” I said.

“There’s enough of them,” he said, a little coldly, though none of that cold seeped into his placid expression or tone of voice.

I was starting to wonder if he was always middle of the road in appearance and action.  It forced me to start second guessing his earlier responses, and whether he’d been masking a complete other attitude.

“You were one of them,” I said.

But the faceless woman shook her head at me.

“Was I?” he asked.  “Most of us weren’t very good at being human when we were alive.  She wasn’t.  I wasn’t.  Were you?”

“I… wasn’t,” I said.  Wasn’t alive.

“I wasn’t one of them, not really.  Are you walking this way?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He gestured.  We walked alongside each other.  Where the sidewalks didn’t have room for more than two people to walk side by side, I was on the other side of the display windows and car mirrors.

My progress staggered somewhat, with me periodically leaping from the light shed from one surface to the light from the next.  There was a pause as we crossed one set of traffic lights.  I waited on the other side for him.

He spoke, “Sandra wants to preserve tradition.  Johannes wants a new world, where Others exist in ghettos, eating phantom sustenance.  The Behaims seem to think that they can make everything better if they’re in charge.  I don’t know what the Thorburns want.”

“I wish I knew, myself.”

“If you do find out, let me know.”

I saw the tall Other from earlier cross the street to avoid this particular pair.

“Where can I find you?”  I asked.

“Under someone’s bed,” he said.  “Wandering dark alleys, sitting in the backseats of cars.  I’m not easy to find.  You might go looking for her, but she only picks out a target once in a blue moon.  Hm, hm, hm, how to arrange it?”

The faceless woman touched her scarf.

“Ah, of course.  The Ambassador.”

“Ambassador?”

“Short black hair, unruly, goblins, short checked scarf?”

“Maggie?”

“Not quite.  I’d say her name, but that calls her.  She’s taken on certain responsibilities.”

I remembered my vision.  She’d raised her hand as a neutral party.

Ambassador, though?

“She’s the person I’m looking for,” I said.

“Oh?  Oh!  Well, she isn’t at the school.”

I gave him a concerned look.

“Complicated.  Best to let her explain.  Mags Holt, Ambassador.  An Other in a mirror requests your company.”

“Mags?” I asked.

“She’s busy, so I don’t know how long she might be, but-”

He was looking just over his shoulder.  A problem?

He stepped back out of the way, putting his shoulders to the display window of the pharmacy.

I ducked out of sight, sticking to the light.

A group of Behaim women, ushering their teenage and elementary-school aged kids along.

The faceless woman made a move, like she was going to follow or act somehow, and the revenant seized her arm.  “Don’t.  Stop being so damned territorial.  Patience.”

She pulled it free, and she seemed pissed.

However close their relationship, he backed up even further, pressed against the window, clearly trying to keep his distance.

I spoke up, “The person who makes the first move loses.”

She didn’t let up, still crowding the revenant’s personal space, but she tilted her head, one smear of an eye peering at me.

“You reach out to hurt one of them, and they’ll protect themselves.  Then someone else will hurt you while you’re occupied with your focus elsewhere.  It’s why this balance exists.  There are creatures that are stronger, prouder, and more dangerous than any of us, and they’re holding back for now because they recognize this.”

She relaxed a little.

“Well said,” ‘Mags’ said.

She stepped into view.

“My cue to go,” my new friend said.  “The offer to go hunting stands.”

“Thank you for the discussion,” I said, as diplomatically as I could.  I suddenly felt very on the spot, caught between my association with these… things and Mags here.

Between being the monster and being the man.

She was in the company of two goblins who were all wrapped up in snowsuits, only eyes peering out.  One had mismatched eyes.  Not just color, but size and species.  She looked rougher than I’d seen her before, hair tousled, clothes a little tattered.  Her hand was at one side, near what I assumed to be a weapon.

She looked like she’d grown up a year overnight.  It had only been a month.  Not even.

“I’ve heard that you held onto your connection to me somehow,” I said.  “You remember me?”

“You’re not entirely wrong,” she said.  “It doesn’t look like you held onto yourself all that well, though.”

“Came to pieces,” I said.  “Had to fill the gaps with something, I guess.”

“Yeah, guess so.  I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help more,” she said.

I shrugged.  “You helped all the same.”

“I didn’t, not like you’re thinking.  But let’s drop that topic.  I feel like I’d have to go into it and explain, and that’s not what either of us need right now.”

That only made me want to ask more, but I didn’t.

The problem with dropping a topic was that it didn’t mean there was more to say.

I looked past her at the street beyond.  There were reams of kids on the streets now.  Stores and coffee shops littered the area around here, sometimes with a few houses separating them, or a dentists office or vet’s office that had been set up in what had once been an old fashioned home.  A little strange to see a dinky little house with a big metal sign bolted to the front, or a lit up sign on the lawn outside.

I turned my attention to her.  “Sorry.  I’m… a little unfocused right now.”

“I know the feeling.  Being untethered.”

“What’s this about you being an ambassador?”

“I realized what they wanted, and what they didn’t want.  They saw this coming.  Experienced, powerful practitioners, they want to play this out very carefully, very slowly.  Means they can fold their hand if they need to, and maybe make a play in Toronto, or back up the side they think is going to win.  But the wild cards… you, me, Rose?  We could upset that peace.  Turn it all into a big blaze of fuckery.”

I blinked.  “You can swear?”

“Yeah.  Long story, don’t ask.”

I didn’t.  “Well, I guess I can see that, the wildcards thing,” I said.  “That Other we just passed?  Seems to fall into the same grouping.”

“Maybe.  There’s probably more to it if they’ve left her alone.”

Bore thinking about.

“I tried to downplay my status as a wild card.  Made myself a part of things.  I just don’t want to be the cause of all this going sour… I have reason to believe that if I was, it would somehow be worse.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Rose is a threat to the balance too, but she’s holed up in the house, and there are very few entities present who can siege that house.”

“And even those entities are reluctant to make a move,” I said.  “Because that’s possibly leaving a gap in some defense or a lack of eyes in one place, and that could imbalance things.”

“Exactly,” Mags said.

“It’s a cold war,” I said.

“It won’t stay cold,” she said.  “They have to test the waters to gauge the strength of the enemy, posture, and with so many different powers gathered in one place, it’s a matter of time before someone does something.  Those parents aren’t watching those kids just to keep the kids safe.  They’re-”

“To keep us safe from things the kids might start.”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Makes me wonder what the junior council is up to.”

“Junior council?”

“At the school, it’s… ah, nevermind.”

“What’s this about you not being at school?  I thought you promised your dad.”

“I did.  But I don’t have my dads either.  Not quite.”

There it was.  That thing that made her seem so much older.  Not the effects of age so much as the weight of experience.

“I know them,” she went on, “I meet them from time to time, we can talk, and it’s mostly like the good old days, but I lost them- a large part of them, and, well, yeah.  I don’t get it all back unless I take it back.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“There’s a space at the town center, kind of a guest house, for visiting dignitaries or celebrities for major events or something, I dunno.  I’m there.  I read, I patrol and work on keeping the local goblins under control, I visit people when called, deliver messages, negotiate meetings, and I wait.”

“Wait?”

“When all of this is over, I’ll get back what I lost,” she said.  “I’m going to blood and fire and darkness that Faerie bastard.”

She smiled, and in that smile, for a moment, she was Maggie again.

I needed Maggie.

“I need your help,” I said.

“Ah man,” she said.

The smile was gone.

“Please,” I said.  “I don’t think I’d be asking for much, it doesn’t have to be major.  But if you recognize me, can you talk to the others?”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Please,” I said, with more emphasis.

“I’m a neutral party,” she said.  “I can’t negotiate deals, not like that.  I definitely can’t give a helping hand to the most volatile of the four local players.”

“Mags,” I said, “Rose is- she’s going off the deep end.”

“The bound Incarnation,” Mags said.

“Yeah.  You were there-”

“I wasn’t.  But I know.  I haven’t been sitting on my hands these past few weeks.  She used her own hair to bind it, and the binding isn’t perfect.  Where the essence of the bound Incarnation leaks out, it seeps into the hair, and through the hair, it touches on the connection to taint the-”

“Girl,” I said.  “Rose.”

She nodded.

“I get the book, she goes back to normal?”

“No guarantees.”

“And you can tell me this?”

“It’s an ongoing topic of discussion.  If anyone challenges me on it, well, I don’t think you’re about to turn around and help Rose or tip her off that we know.”

I frowned.

“I’ve got something to do.  Walk with me?”

She gestured.  There was an awful lot of darkness in that direction.  Stretches of grass, sidewalk and bike path, if I remembered right.

“I can’t exactly…”

“Cumnugget,” she said.  “Mirror.”

One of the snowsuit goblins grumbled, but it pulled off its backpack and rummaged within.

A hand mirror.

“This isn’t a trap?” I asked.  “Your responsibilities as ambassador don’t obligate you to bind me if you get the chance?”

“No,” she said.  “But I’d like to get moving, and I don’t want to prematurely end this conversation.  I’m actually glad to have you back, even if…”

“I’m a monster?  I’m a wild card that threatens to upset the balance?”

“No,” she said.  “Not that.  Well, yes that.  But you being a friend balances that out.”

Friend.

A genuine friend, not one that had been made for me, or however it worked.

“Thank you,” I said.  “I’m glad to have you as a friend too.”

I hopped across the nothingness, snapping to the patch of light that passed through the hand mirror she held.

She gave it to the goblin, “Hold it steady, don’t waggle it around.”

The goblin groaned, but it did as she ordered.

“The thing that gets me here,” Mags said, “Is that I feel like I have to do this, but I’m not liking it either.”

I tensed.  “It is a trap, then?”

“No.  Not at all.  Just come.  Showing is easier.”

I joined her.

It was nice, not having to skip across nothingness to pass between patches of light.  It was hard to shake the impression that I might one day make that jump and fall.

“I have another favor I kind of want to ask,” I said.

“Favors are tricky,” she said.

“When I was, uh, gone, I met someone.  I was hoping I could maybe get her from there to here.  She doesn’t exactly have a name, but-”

“Blake, that’s more than just tricky.”

“She’s a non-threat, as far as I can tell.  And she’s a mermaid, kind of, so it’s not like she’s going to turn Jacob’s Bell upside down.  But she helped me, and a part of me wants to repay that somehow.”

“I don’t know.  That’s… a pretty big deal.  Adding another person to this picture.”

“I had to ask,” I said.  “I won’t be upset if you say no.”

“Okay,” she said.  “I’ll think about it.  You’re a jerk, asking now.”

“Now?”

She took the mirror from the goblin.  “Over here.  Down the hill, watch your step.”

The sidewalk had been veering uphill, and now we stepped off it, onto the sloping hill.  We both made halting progress down the hill, more a controlled fall than a walk or a climb.

Standing in knee deep snow that I could barely feel, I saw the person in the mirror come into view.

Ah.

My heart did its herky-jerky flutter in my chest.

She’d been feeling guilty, and here I was, asking a favor she probably shouldn’t give me.

Molly’s ghost, standing amid snow-dusted decorations and mementos.

Molly had never been so popular when she’d been alive.

I watched as Maggie pricked her finger with a blade that wasn’t her athame, and very carefully let three drops fall.

“Three?” I asked, quiet, unsure if I was breaching something by speaking.

“Felt right.  Making a bit of a ritual of it.  I try for the same time every day, same thing.  I talk to her.  Tell her how sorry I am.  Keep the ghost alive.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She shrugged.

“I don’t know if I count, so maybe I’ll just say, one and a half of us down, five more to go,” I said.  “Hi Molly.”

“Hi,” Molly said.

Maggie’s expression suggested she was as surprised as I was.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Mala Fide 10.3

“Crap,” Mags said.  “Crap, crap, crap.”

“She’s not just a ghost, she’s an aware ghost?”

“She’s not supposed to be.  Look, Blake, I meant for this to be the equivalent of visiting a grave, but I can’t do this like this,” she said.  She sounded a little frazzled.

Having the girl you’d helped murder speak could do that to you, really.

“Can’t do what?”

“I can’t connect you with this ghost, if she’s maybe going to give you some advantage.  Shit.  Look, we gotta go.”

“I-” I started, but she was already moving the mirror, turning me away, so I couldn’t see Molly’s ghost.  “What’s going on?”

“The Maggie you met in Toronto wasn’t me.  It was Padraic.  He took my name and screwed me over.  This ambassador thing isn’t just a job.  It’s a necessity.  If I lose it, I’m a goner,” she said.

“It wasn’t you?”

“It was Maggie but it wasn’t me.  I’m shoring myself up with the label of ‘neutral party‘ just as much as you’re shoring yourself up with whatever the fuck that is,” she said.  Her voice sounded strained as she made the awkward climb up the snowy slope.  I could see the goblins up above.

“I get it,” I said.  My mind ticked over every scene, every doubt I’d had.

Not a possessed human, but a human mask stretched over an Other.

“Nothing against you, Blake,” she told me, “You’re cool, whatever you are right now.  But I’m on pretty unsteady footing right now.  If one person gets ticked at me and calls me on it, they can move to take away my title and then I don’t know what happens.”

“You’ve been interacting with Molly all this time?”

“There’s been no interaction, damn it.  She’s just… there.  She doesn’t respond, she doesn’t move.  I do the ritual thing, just as penance and to keep the ghost around, and that’s it.”

She crested the top of the hill, stepping up onto the sidewalk.  She wasn’t watching the hand mirror, and my available footing swiftly shrunk as she bent down to shake her pants legs and get the clumped snow off.

When she stood, I had a better view of the two snowsuit goblins through the window of the hand mirror.

“…I don’t know what this means, but like I said, I really don’t want to start anything, and…

One was pointing.

“Mags,” I said, interrupting.

“…Connecting the wild card to a friendly ghost seems like a bad idea, so could you maybe just not-”

“Mags,” I said, louder.

“What?”

“Goblin is trying to tell you something.”

“Right, I told them to shut up.  They… Fuck!”

She turned, and I had to move fast to stay inside the patch of light from the mirror.

It was Molly.  She’d followed us, but her back was now to us, facing the site of the little memorial.

“Fuck me, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Mags said.

I looked at my cousin’s ghost.  “Why are you following us, Molly?”

“I’m so alone,” she said, a whisper. “Everyone’s against me.”

There was a flicker, suggesting that she wasn’t quite so autonomous as Evan had been.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’ve been there.”

“I can’t sleep.  I think they’ve been getting inside the house.  I hear stuff in the living room, or upstairs, and they were getting to me in my dreams, before I figured out the circles to stop that, except now I don’t dream at all.”

“No refuge in sleep, huh?” I asked.

“I can’t even go to my family, because if I do, then someone might target them, I had to drive them away.”

“You should have called me,” I said.  “…Except you couldn’t.  I didn’t exist, before you died.  Shit.”

“Now they’re coming for me,” she said.  “Goblins and spells to trip me up.”

“Molly,” I said, “Did you have a reflection?  Or were you a reflection?  A person in the mirror, one way or another?”

“All alone,” she said, in an exact repeat of her earlier statement.

“Guess not,” I said.  “Well, that clarifies something, and leaves more questions.”

“Can you not be so crazy calm about this?” Mags said.  “One Thorburn has them all talking in concerned voices.  Two will have them taking decisive action.  Three fucking functioning or semifunctional Thorburns, each with serious fucking issues?  The rest of those guys are going to be doing one of two things.  Some are going to be flying around in a mad panic, propelled here and there by the sheer violence with which they’re shitting their pants, and the rest are going to be getting organized to murder you and pointing the finger at me!”

“I’ve noticed you’re swearing again.”

“Fuck, yeah I am!”  She said.  She was pacing, but she at least held the mirror in the same general direction, so I didn’t have to pace with her.  “Alright, number one goal here is to keep this from steamrolling into a serious problem.”

“I’ve dealt with ghosts before,” I said.  “It’s not as big a thing as you’re making it out to be.  She’s an echo, not a proper Thorburn, and there’s a limit to what she can really do.”

“She’s making me a little panicky just by being here and being outside that circle, and I was already feeling pretty crummy about the whole shebang here, and now it’s like, all of it’s coming together, past, present, and prophecy.”

“Prophecy?”

“Damn it,” Mags said.  She pulled off her hairband, ran her fingers through her hair, and then put it back on, “Okay, look, I showed you Molly because I wanted to make it clear that I’m not against you, right?  And I feel like human garbage for having to say no when you were pretty cool before, but those are the circumstances.  I thought I’d make it up to you by pointing you to Molly, so you don’t get the wrong idea.”

“Appreciated,” I said.

“Well, this wasn’t something I was all that keen on explaining, because it’s not something I enjoy thinking about.  But if I’m responsible for stuff going down a bad road, then chances are pretty damn good that it’s going to turn out a hell of a lot worse than it otherwise might.  I’m supposed to help bring about three incidents of blood, fire and darkness.”

“You or ‘Maggie‘?” I asked.

“Me.  And with everything going on, this looks like a ripe opportunity, okay?  I’m a little freaked.”

A lot freaked, I thought, but I didn’t say so.

“Alright,” I told her.  “Alright, fine.”

“Fine?”

“I believe you.  I’m game, whatever the game is.  What do you need?”

“She’s… I’m pretty sure she’s following you, because she didn’t follow me before.  Can you stay put?  I’ve gotta go get something to bind Molly with, so she stays where she’s at.”

I looked at Molly.  She still stared at the depression of land below the slope.  Now and then she flickered, turning to stare at where the hill led to the North End.  An echo of her Self in the time before she’d died, debating which way to go.

“Salt,” I said.

“There’s salt on the road.”

“Salt holds power because it’s pure,” I said.  “It was used to preserve.  It held off rot and it stopped the emergence of life, if you salted the earth with it.  It flavors food.  Life, consumption, death, it fits into a niche in the cycle of life and death.  Dirty, gritty salt, I don’t know how effective that’d be.  Probably enough for something as weak as Molly is, but…”

“Probably isn’t a hundred percent.” Mags said.  “Got it.  Good tip.  A box of salt, then.  There’s a convenience store just a minute away.  Goblins, stay, keep him company, keep the mirror available for Blake, uhhh… Blake, can you promise not to use it against me if I tell them to listen to you?”

“I promise to do my best,” I said.

“Good.  Listen to him,” she ordered them.  “You can occupy yourselves but don’t cause problems for anyone or anything.  No lasting damage to any human, plant, animal, or human-made object, nothing that would cause suspicion.”

The one she’d called Cumnugget groaned for the Nth time.  The other one only bobbed its head in a nod.

Mags sprinted off.  I could hear her retreating footsteps.

Cumnugget stuck the handle of the hand mirror into the snowbank, then plopped down in the snow.  The other goblin did the same a short distance away.

A snowball went flying, hitting Cumnugget hard in the head.

Cumnugget packed up a snowball, squeezing it hard to compact it, and sent it back

Neither goblin tried to move out of the way, they were so focused on the attack.  Making more snowballs, harder snowballs, rubbing snowballs in the salt and gravel at the edge of the road, and generally holding nothing back in weaponizing the snowball fight.

Cumnugget was enduring a hail of snowballs to the back and the back of the head, hunched over, while busily sticking one snowball full of twigs so they radiated out in every direction.  Sharp teeth chewed off the end of one twig, sharpening it where it had been blunt before.

I could have ordered them to stop, but it was kind of amusing, in a slapstick Saturday morning cartoon sort of way.

“Stop that,” I heard a woman say.

She stepped into my field of view, and plucked the snowball from Cumnugget’s hands.  Cumnugget watched, eyes gleaming like forlorn puppy dog eyes, nose bleeding freely from a hurled chunk of ice earlier in the snowball fight, the blood leaking past the buttoned up collar of the jacket, which covered the goblin’s mouth.

The woman bent low, and I had a view of her face as she pulled a kleenex out of a coat pocket and handed it to the snowsuit-clad goblin.  “Use this to stop the bleeding.”

Aunt Irene, joined by Callan, my second-oldest cousin.

Molly’s older brother.

“I had to drive them away,” Molly said, without moving her lips.  An internal thought brought to life.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m sorry.”

A snowball smacked into the back of Cumnugget’s head.  The goblin whirled, snarling.  A second snowball smacked into the goblin’s face.

“Goblins,” I said, my voice low.  I didn’t think Aunt Irene and Callan could hear me, but I stayed quiet to be sure, “Give them a little space.  Stay in my sight until Mags is back.”

Cumnugget seem to interpret that as permission to go after her fellow snowsuit goblin, who ran.

When they got far enough away that they couldn’t move much further without technically staying in sight, the fleeing goblin wasn’t able to flee anymore.  Cumnugget tackled him.

“Almost covered by the snow,” Callan said.

Aunt Irene made a face.

“You okay?  It’s not the first time we’ve had to dust off the snow.”

“Comes in waves, doesn’t it?” Aunt Irene asked.  “Were you there when I was talking to Christoff?”

“I caught the tail end of that talk, I think.”

“Grief hits you in waves, and sometimes it’s a bigger wave than you’d expect, it catches you off guard.”

“Yeah.  You feeling a big wave right now?”

“Oh, it’s in the top five.”

My eyes fell on Molly’s ghost.  She was right there, and they weren’t aware.

Not consciously.  The pointed grief my aunt was describing could easily have something to do with the ghost’s presence.

“Phew,” Aunt Irene said, fanning herself with her hand, blinking rapidly.  “Don’t want to get upset right here.”

“I don’t think anyone would blame you, mom.”

“I’d blame myself.  We have things to do.  Mrs. Duchamp said-”

“I’m pretty sure Mrs. Duchamp didn’t have to deal with anything like this.  Look, why don’t you stay here?  I’ll go down and clean up, and that way, only one of us gets snow in our boots.”

“No, on our way back.  That way you’re not standing around with wet socks for however long it takes us to follow up on what Mrs. Duchamp said.”

I raised my eyebrows at that.

“Sounds like a plan.”

He put a hand on his mother’s shoulder as they headed down the road in the direction of Hillsglade House.  They walked past the snowsuit-clad goblins.  Cumnugget was mashing the other goblin’s face into a snowbank.

Molly followed them.

“Molly,” I said.

She didn’t change course.

“Molly!”

As Mags had so eloquently put it, fuck.

The timing had been too specific.  Was this the Duchamps at work, manipulating connections to put Aunt Irene and Callan in my way again?  Probably not.  I wasn’t sure that many people even knew I was around, or were in a position to recognize me if they did.

Mags had talked about a prophecy.  Was this her personal version of bad karma, reality going off-rails in the most inconvenient way?

The Rube Goldberg machine of the universe, ticking forward toward Mags’ blood, fire and darkness, or whatever it was.

As the group had passed, Cumnugget had let the other goblin up, only so it would be possible to stuff its mouth full of snow.  Cumnugget was currently in the process of packing the snow into the goblin’s open mouth, both hands driving handfuls of it down and in.

“Goblins!” I shouted.  “Go stop that ghost!  Grab salt off the street and throw it across her path.  Do not throw it on her!”

Cumnugget let go of the other goblin, backing off.  The goblin wobbled a little as it stood, using its mittened hands to work whole fistfuls of snow out, along with thick tendrils of drool and some blood.  It followed about ten paces behind Cumnugget.

“Frick,” I said.

I could have told them to pick me up, but Mags was coming, and I much preferred to have Mags filled in and on board than to be shouting at goblins.

It took two full minutes for Mags to arrive.  She was halfway up the hill when she realized something was wrong.

“Go,” I said.  “Hillsglade House, I’m pretty sure.  Something about Sandra.”

She started to go for the hand mirror.  I didn’t wait for her.  “I’m going ahead.”

“You want?” she asked, still reaching for the mirror.

“Might be useful,” I said.

Then I skipped over the darkness.

I didn’t have the motorcycle anymore.  That sucked.  But I was light and I didn’t get tired.  I covered ground quickly.

A trio of fat men were reflected in the lights generated by car windows and windshields, half a street up.  A little too similar, a little too childish in their dress.  Golfer’s clothes, almost, with matching hats with flaps over red hair, red noses, matching sweaters under plaid coats, and pants belted a touch too high at the waist.

They noticed me as I ran, heads turning.

The two in the back glanced in different directions, almost as if they’d communicated with a thought.  I slowed, checking for a way around.

The one in front, without a word from the others, deemed it okay to reach out, smashing a car’s windshield, a side mirror, and then kicking a display window.

The light available to me disappeared.  Had I kept going at the same speed, I might have been shunted off in one direction or another.

Waiting for me?  Prepared for me, even?

I prepared to jump across the darkness, but something made me hesitate.

In the midst of the darkness, a kind of light blossomed, like a glowing smoke.  Three figures emerged into the nothingness between patches of mirror-space.  They were utterly bald, naked, looked more like metal statues than people, and had the same proportions as the three men I’d seen.  The same faces, minus the hair peeking around the edges of the cap.  Each had a pecker that looked like it belonged on a baby, not a grown man.  They half-floated, half-waddled, and only glimmers of the landscape they walked on were visible in this space.  Red stone that fit together without the use of mortar, highlighted by gold, and I thought I saw a glimpse of a carving of a dragon or a dog.

This trio of Others could apparently understand and navigate this mirror space more easily than I did.

“Let me past,” I said.

They shook their heads in perfect unison.

“I’ll rephrase then,” I said, anger leaking into my voice,  “Let me past, or I might decide to carve one of you up so badly he’ll never be mistaken for a member of your trio again.”

They didn’t budge.

I ducked right, skipping over the largest tract of darkness available.  I crossed a block or two of residential buildings, touched on a patch of light shed from a car’s side-view mirror, and then turned a hard left to continue in the direction I’d been going.

I was just touching on solid ground again when I felt hands seize me by the shoulders.

I stared up at a face.  The head was broad and fat, the face almost cherubic, but the two together, they made for a face that was too small in proportion with the head.

I felt a momentary panic at the body contact.  In the instant I remembered that those memories were false, that I didn’t need to be paralyzed by them, he reminded me that body contact could still be a very bad thing, hurling me.

I passed through one patch of light, and by through, I meant through.  Glass shattered as I entered the area with too much force, another window breaking somewhere in the real world, and I was shunted straight into the nearest mirror realm, still moving fast enough that I broke the glass there with the force of my entry.

I hit ground, tumbling, and managed to put my hand and arm out to stop myself from rolling over into the next patch of darkness and accidentally skipping over to the next patch of mirrorverse.  I could feel the spirits patching up the damage to my body as I stood.  The drawbacks of having hollow bird bones or a skeleton of dry twigs.  I broke easily.

Slippery slope.

The three had already caught up to me, standing on or just outside this space.

I might as well have been a swimmer in shark infested waters.  This was their element.  Except the sharks were bald fat men with the smallest dicks I’d ever seen.

First Aunt Irene, now this.

Maybe Mags’ reaction to hearing Molly speak had been on target after all.

This sucked.

They paced in a circle around me.  I held the Hyena ready to retaliate if they tried to grab me again.

“I clawed my way back up from the Drains,” I said.  “I’ve faced off against demons.  I’ve killed a goblin, I’ve killed a man.  Do you really want to do this?”

They did.

One of them came at me from the left, hands reaching out.

With the broken Hyena, edge very possibly dulled from scratching a damn picture series into the floor of the factory, I slashed out at the closest reaching hand.

Though it looked like these guys had been cast from some dull metal, the blade still managed to cut.  Sparks flew where metal met metal, joined by a spray of blood.

In recoiling, he lost forward momentum.  In an action that was simultaneously flailing his arms for balance and reaching for me, he threw his other arm my way.

I ducked under it, and I was quick.  Much as I’d ridden past the Shepherd, I dragged the ragged edge of the broken sword against the side of the Other’s belly, moving behind it.

I could see the others advancing.  Their faces were contorted into matching expressions of utter rage.  I’d have called their faces demonic, if I hadn’t met actual demons before.

I wasn’t experiencing the same kind of rage.  I didn’t feel much at all.  Even the fluttering in my chest had a certain slow rhythm to it.

Just as I’d opened him up along the side of the belly, exposing guts that looked as real as any human’s, I brought the sword across the back of his knees.

The Drains had ground away everything I didn’t need, and had left me equipped with only what I needed to bring about entropy.

“Blake!” Mags’ shout brought me back to reality.

The Other dropped to his knees.  His buddies were making their moves, one moving away, no doubt aiming to get to the black void they could swim though as quickly as they did.

I brought the broken sword to the Other’s throat.

His brothers stopped.

“Blake!” Mags said, closer.

“I’m here,” I said.

It took her another twelve seconds to find the reflective surface, even though she hadn’t sounded like she’d been far away.

“What the fuck?” I heard her say.

“They got in my way.”

“What are they?”

“Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Bleeding Profusely?” I suggested.

“Shit.  Okay, don’t do anything if you don’t have to,” she said.  “This is getting out of control fast.  Johannes!  I need you or a representative, asap!”

“You realize this could out me?” I asked.  “He might know my face.”

“Killing one of his guests does too,” she said.  “Unless you plan on killing all the damn witnesses?”

I looked at the other two.  I wasn’t sure I had it in me.

Light flashed, brilliant, and for a moment, the patch of light I stood in extended two or three times as far in every direction.

“Ambassador,” a male voice spoke, rich with an accent.

“Faysal.  We’ve got a situation.  I need a decision on this that doesn’t lead to outright war.”

“We’ll see.  This would be…”

The dog with the long white fur hopped up, front paws resting on the ledge beneath the window of the house.  “…Ah.”

“They’re yours, right?” she asked.

He leaped up and over, jumping into this mirrorverse.  Much as the fat men had, the dog walked on the nothingness.  Each footstep created ripples that moved too fast, rings of light that seemed to stretch on to infinity in every direction.  His fur seemed too white, here, considering the fact that light didn’t reach him while he stood in the darkness.

He spoke, “They are Johannes’ guests, yes.  Should I recognize the swordbearer?  I’d think I’d recognize these markings, but man’s kind all look so similar.”

“I’m not sure you’d recognize these markings,” I said.

“Ah, very well,” Faysal said.  He looked back at where Mags peered in.  “You seem agitated, ambassador.”

“Go, Mags,” I said.  “Handle it.”

“I have somewhere I should be,” she said, looking between me and the dog.

“Then please go,” Faysal Anwar told her.  “Be where you should be.”

Mags ran.

The dog looked at me, sitting.  “Good afternoon.  Will you tell me who you are?”

“No, sir,” I said.

The outright refusal felt heavy in the air, as if it had a very tangible quality to it.  I wasn’t sure why I’d added the sir, but it felt right.

I was left wondering how often something like a Gatekeeper heard the word no, and just what the response would be.

“Good afternoon to you too, by the way.  I don’t mean to be rude,” I said.

“I forgive you, abyss-borne.  I’m sorry to say so, but you smell of goblins and worse things.  Demons, even.  The threads that are supposed to tie you to the world are either cut, never to heal, or they were torn during a recent fall, and are only now mending.  If I had to guess, I would say you’re walking a very short, violent road.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I answered.  “I’d like it if the short, violent road involved helping people along the way, turning that violence against ugly things.”

“Even when that description might include you?”

“Uglier things, then,” I said.

“If you grow ever uglier, then what will you do when there is nothing uglier than you that you’re able to fight?”

“I’ll have reached the end of my short, violent road, I suppose,” I said.

The Other I was holding hostage moved.  I moved the sword in warning, and I inadvertently nicked it.

Faysal seemed to take it all in stride.  “That will do, then, in place of an introduction.  I now know you, and I can present myself as Faysal Anwar, familiar to Johannes the North End Sorcerer of Jacob’s Bell.”

“Well met, sir,” I said, without irony.

“Once upon a time, after I had finished working, I would perch on the tallest mountaintops with two or more of my cousins,” the dog told me.  “I would watch.  Centuries would pass before I had cause to move again.  When I worked, I forged paths.  Natural concourses for rivers to flow, for beasts to find water and for feet to tread freely.  I helped open up the world like a flower might unfold.  I opened doors, and earned the title of gatekeeper.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“Do you have an allegiance?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“To whom?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“I understand, but I’ll also warn you: Refuse me one more time, and I’ll declare that this is no longer a discussion, for it isn’t conducted on even footing.”

“What would it be?” I asked.

“Hostile negotiations,” he said.

I didn’t budge.  My heart fluttered in my chest like a blind bird in a cage, but I managed to stay utterly still.

“I’ll make my offer,” he told me.  “I am a gatekeeper.  You, as it appears, are enclosed.  Join Johannes in his cause, and I’ll conduct you from your current enclosure.”

The fluttery beat in my chest took on a different note.  Freedom.

“I remember making a promise, once, that I wouldn’t accept someone else’s idea of freedom.  Only my own.”

“I would open the door, I would not dictate the freedom that lies beyond it, but to ask that you work alongside Johannes,” Faysal Anwar told me.  “Should you wish it, I can release the hold that the abyss maintains on you, and nurture the regrowth of your Self, or I can help you open a clear way between here and the abyss.  The former would make you as close to mortal as you could be.”

Not only free, or close to free, but alive?

“And the latter?”

“When the abyss-borne are slain, they return to the abyss.  If they are strong enough, they can return again and again.”

“At the cost of needing to making an impact,” I said.  “To scratch out footing so they can’t be dragged back to the Abyss without being slain.”

“Yes.  You aren’t strong enough to return, if you fall, looking at you.  The Abyss would break and consume you on your next visit.  If I were to open a way, however, a path just for you, it would take but a fraction of the strength to return.”

“You’re doing this for Johannes’ Others?”

“For one or two.  For others, I’m doing other things, or negotiating a favor offered by one to buy the loyalty of another.”

Holy shit.

A choice between being alive again or staying like I was and being effectively immortal.

Free of the mirrorverse, either way.

I could have my damn motorcycle back.  I could ride it.

But… I’d be on Johannes’ side.  I couldn’t help my friends, probably.

False friends, really, I told myself.

But there wasn’t any heart in the thought.  I could tell it to myself, but I couldn’t feel it.

My hope crumbled, and crumbled hope became frustration and anger.  I hung my head a little, gritting my teeth.

Damn it.  Trust a damned angel to use hope to hit me where it hurt.

“No,” I said, and the word was strangled.

“Ah,” he said.  “I’ll trust you have your reasons.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice still strangled.

“As one who has watched over the world for centuries, I know things.  I know, for example, that right this moment, your relative is confronting Rose at Hillsglade House.  The ghost grows agitated, for it harbors many unpleasant memories of the building.  Meanwhile, I know that you’re here, having just eviscerated one of these Iaiah.”

“I like how the sound of its name sounds like some brief, agonized cry,” I said.  “Is it supposed to be the cry of the victim, or is it the sound this guy makes after I cut his throat?”

“Neither.  Curious.  It should have healed by now, but it hasn’t, which suggests a quality unique to you or that blade.”

“Fancy that,” I said.

“Joining Johannes is off the table.  Would you be open to compromise?”

“Sure,” I said.  “Considering that they were the ones that attacked first, I might be in my rights to demand a little more here, no?”

“You are in your rights.  To explain, these Iaiah were invited, and we have a certain responsibility to look after them as a result.  They are territorial as creatures created to be guardians so often are, but when placed as guardians, they are more commonly tasked with warding off more abstract things.  It seems they react on instinct even when visiting strange places.”

“I understand,” I said.  “If you want forgiveness, I’ll drop my grudges, as best as I’m able, in exchange for moving this along, and getting a guarantee this won’t happen again.”

I gotta go, before something happens.

“Deal tendered and accepted,” Faysal Anwar said.  “The Iaiah won’t interrupt you again.”

“I need all of Johannes’ guys to stay out of my way.”

“I would be reluctant to offer that even if I knew your full identity and harbored absolutely no doubts,” Faysal Anwar told me.

“Right,” I said.  “Damn.”

“I told you I would move this along.  I offer free, unmolested passage through Johannes’ realm, in and out, within the next day.  We will have a discussion, I will nourish you, and we’ll agree on one favor.  I promise no tricks or manipulations, no attacks or subterfuge.  You and I will agree on a favor for me or my practitioner to perform for you, in exchange for your release of the wounded Iaiah.  You will leave Johannes’ realm in a frame of time reasonable to you, and you will do so happier, healthier and better than you were when you entered, in a way that the you of the present would deem agreeable.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“This I pledge, in exchange for the release of this guardian entity.”

I removed the sword from Tweedle-Bleeding’s neck.  “Deal.”

“Fare well,” Faysal Anwar told me.  “I must remove the wounded to where he may be helped.  Excuse me.”

“You fare well too,” I said.

I leaped across darkness.

A flash of light ripped across the darkness behind me.  Surprised, I very nearly missed my step, stepping into the nothingness, rather than leaping across it.  Not such a problem -I still moved across instantaneously-, but when the footing differed in angle or I stepped onto snow, it could make me stumble.

I reached the foot of Hillsglade House, reflected in the windows of the houses across the street from the spike-topped wall.

My next step took me to the spot where the house’s windows faced the surrounding property.  The window jutted out over the porch, two windows sitting at diagonals and another facing straight out.  I had a view of the front door.

Molly, Rose, Aunt Irene and Callan were all present.

Mags…

Ah, there.  A patch of light further down the driveway.  She held the hand mirror, but it didn’t face her.

“-Going to come with me right this instant.”

“You do not get to order me around, Aunt Irene,” Rose said.  “If you keep trying, I am going to slam this door in your face.”

“You have no right to sell this property.”

“I agree!  I don’t know where you got it in your head-”

“Reliable sources,” Aunt Irene cut in.

“Wrong sources,” Rose said.  “I swear I have no intention of getting rid of this place.  Believe me, I wish I was in a position to, but-”

“But you’ve got people with you right now, looking at the property.”

“Looking only in the vaguest sense of the word, they aren’t looking to buy.  They’re… acquaintances from Toronto.  That’s it.”

“Could you word that in a less convincing way?”

“Probably!  But I’m being honest.  Whoever told you that is just trying to mess with me, just like they messed with Moll-”

Callan’s hand hit the door so hard and so fast that I swear even the ghost jumped.  Flat of the hand on hard wood, making windows rattle.

Molly had gravitated closer to me, back to the wall, eyes downcast.  Rose a few feet to her left, me a few feet to her right.  “They won’t stop making noise.  I haven’t been able to sleep right for days.”

“Stressful, huh?” I murmured.

“Try that again?” Callan asked, speaking low and slow, with menace in every syllable.  “You’re a chronic liar, Rose.  That’s as good as fact.  You won’t convince us of anything, got it?  Don’t ever try using my sister’s name again, because I’m going to hear it as a lie and I won’t be able to hold back.”

“You’re going to hit me?” Rose asked.  “Do it.  I’d be worth it, just to have you out of my hair.”

“We’ve got the backing of the local police,” Irene said.  “We, not you.  Callan would get away with it.”

“Well then,” Rose said, without hesitation in her voice, “Hit me just to vindicate my very, very low opinion of you, please.”

Callan didn’t move.

“The police are on our side, the local bigwigs are putting their weight behind us-”

“If by weight, you mean some old-school cannon with the barrel planted between your shoulderblades, the metaphor works.”

“-and most of the family is in town.  You’re alone in this.”

“Alone,” Molly’s ghost echoed her mother.

“It’s okay,” I said.  “I’m here.”

The ghost raised her head, looking straight through me.

“Yeah,” I said.

“…an idea that is?” Rose was asking.  “There’s a reason they brought the family here, and it’s not to help you or hurt me.  It’s to ruin all of us.  How can you even live in this city this long without picking up on how much they detest the Thorburns?”

They’ve set it up so they can take us all out in one go.

These were the plays the other sides were making.  Irene being here, bringing the family in.  Optimal ways to root Rose out.

“They might dislike us but they hate you,” Aunt Irene said.  “The enemy of my enemy-”

“Is still a damned enemy!” Rose said.  “The sooner you realize there is no such thing as a true ally, the better off we’ll be.”

“I suppose we’ll have to prove you wrong by working together.  We’ve got Molly’s version of the contract, and we’ve got multiple eyes going over it.”

“I’m stuck,” Molly’s ghost murmured, not moving her lips.

“You won’t find a thing,” Rose said, just a little smug.  “Believe me, Grandmother’s lawyers are very capable.”

“I advise you call them.”

“They’re the sort of capable that makes them a little too costly to call on a whim,” Rose said, her voice level.  “I’m tempted, though, and not because I’m worried about what you’re trying to pull.  I just want to see the looks on your faces when you see just how badly you’ve been misunderstanding this whole situation.”

“There’s a monster in the attic,” Molly thought aloud.

“Well put,” I said.

“…Advising you call them,” Aunt Irene was saying, “Because we’re making our first argument.  The contract stipulates you’re supposed to maintain the property, but for the last two weeks of December and the first week of January, the driveway wasn’t plowed.”

“Oh my god,” Rose said.  “They really know how to fuck with me.  They gave you an excuse to be pedantic.”

“We’re challenging you for custodianship,” Aunt Irene said.  “You’ll be hearing from us shortly.”

“Fine,” Rose replied.  “Please go fuck yourselves on the way out.”

Aunt Irene turned to leave, Callan following.

I could see Mags glance down at the ground.  She muttered something at Aunt Irene as the woman passed.  From Aunt Irene’s body language, I didn’t think she’d responded or even acted like she’d heard.

Molly’s ghost started, as if to follow, then stopped.  She looked at Rose, then at me, then her mother.  “I don’t know what to do.”

“Just relax,” I said.

Rose stepped out onto the porch, arms folded.  Her face was a little flushed, short hair damp.  “What are you doing here?”

“Keeping the ghost calm,” I said.

“Trying to stay calm,” Molly said, echoing me.

Mags came up the steps.  She didn’t approach, but leaned against the railing of the porch instead.

“Ambassador,” Rose said.

“Hey Mags,” I said.

“Hey,” Mags said, a little glum.  “You work things out with Johannes’ familiar?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Man, he makes tempting offers.”

Rose shot me a look.

“Why do people ever deal with demons when they could deal with angels?” I asked.

“I’d think there’s probably a very good answer to that question,” Rose said.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I didn’t join Johannes.”

“I’m not worried,” she said.  “I’m just saying.”

“Well so am I,” I said, a little testily.  “I’m backing you up here, seriously.  Stop fighting me and let me, and we could actually make it through.”

“Ahem,” Mags cut in.  When I looked at her, she gestured a little at the ghost.

Molly’s ghost was twitching, flickering a little more.

“Right,” I said, sighing.  “This enigma.  Our runaway ghost.  We can hardly bind her here.”

“No,” Mags said.  “You look worse.”

I looked down, touching my side where I’d careened into the ground.

What I felt alarmed me.

I unzipped my sweatshirt.

My lowest right ribs were exposed, and they were a little more narrow and crooked than ribs should be.  Branches climbed out from the skin to entwine them.  Feathers stuck out here and there, half tattoo and half feather.

“Bleh,” I said.  “I don’t suppose you could look up Iaiah, Rose?”

“I’ve got enough to do,” she said.  “What Auntie was talking about?  She could probably pull it off… it’s almost precisely what I’d try to do if the tables were turned.  I could deal with it, but I can’t deal with it and this war at the same time.  Things are going to explode any day now.”

“Let me try, then,” I said.  “I’ll see what I can do about those guys, and Molly here.”

“You’re implying I trust you.”

“I’m implying you have no other choice,” I told her.

“Fine,” Rose said.  “You’re probably right.  Go to town.  Just don’t expect it to change anything if you succeed, and you will lose what little tolerance you’re getting from me if you screw this up.”

That said, she returned to the house.  The door wasn’t slammed, but it shut with enough force to make the window shudder.

I frowned.  “I’m annoyed with myself for ever entertaining the idea that she could be a female version of me.”

“We should go,” Mags said.

“Right,” I said.  “Let’s get this situation under control.  No blood, fire and darkness for us.”

“God, don’t even say that,” Mags told me.

“I’ll come with you to the spot where you can bind her,” I said, “Then skip over to Johannes domain.  If they’re going to owe me a favor and if it’s going to make a difference, I’d rather make that difference sooner than later.”

“Fair,” Mags said.

“You bind Molly here, then maybe we touch base and confirm everything’s cool before I see what a vestige like me can do about the legal issue with the family?”

“I think that sounds like the safest activity you could undertake,” Mags said.

“Don’t say that,” I told her.  “That’s a bad omen.”

“There are bad omens everywhere,” Molly said.  “I want to see the family.  I have to warn them.”

There was a clarity to her voice that made me very concerned.  A degree of focus.

She was developing a little too quickly for my liking.

“Change of plans,” I said.  “I’ll help you with the binding, first priority.”

Mala Fide 10.4

“They’re trying to get me out of the house.  They succeeded.”

“They’re trying with Rose now,” I told Molly.

“Don’t talk to the ghost,” Mags said.  Her eyes were forward.  She held the mirror so it included me, held on the far side of her body.  I could make her out, the ghost beside her.  “Shit, people want my help.  They’re calling my name.  I don’t think it’s urgent, but I really can’t futz around too long here.”

“I don’t think I could ever do that,” I said.

“Huh?”

“It’s not in me.  If I were in your shoes, I’d lose my mind.  It’d probably kill me.”

“Yeah well, it’s not all cupcakes and rainbows for me.”

“But you can do it,” I said.  “I couldn’t, even without the question of what it’d mean to be unable to help my friends.”

“Is that supposed to be a dig at me?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.

“No.  I- I didn’t even realize it could be taken as one.  Sorry.”

She sighed audibly.

“Any idea how we’re going to bind her?” I asked.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said, “But in terms of timing, I dunno, if I get called away and it’s urgent?”

“What’s the idea?”

“I got some rope, I got a bucket, some bottled water, and a box of salt.  Soak the rope in salt water?”

“Worth a shot,” I said.

“I don’t want to be trapped,” Molly said.  “I left the house to get away…”

“I’m sorry,” Mags said, contradicting herself by replying to the ghost, encouraging it.  “Salt in the wound, isn’t it?  I wish I was in a position to treat you better, honest.”

“I have to warn the others, but I can’t, because that puts them in more danger.  Rose is next in line, and…”

I winced at that statement.

Confirmation, of a sort.  Molly-ghost’s memories were of Rose being her cousin, not me.

But she’d stopped talking.

“And what?” I asked.

“Rose is next in line, and we didn’t get along.  And she lied about me to get me in trouble.  And Kathryn ruined my first car… I wasn’t able to get the insurance.  That really pissed me off.  I’m not proud of the things I did, either.”

“You’re remembering the past, you’re worrying about the future, you’re a little too three-dimensional there, Molly,” I said.  “You’re worrying me.”

“You…” she looked at me, peering into the mirror, before trailing off.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m not sure I’m okay with this,” Mags said.  “Let’s keep it all nice and quiet and calm for our ghost friend here, without bending her fragile brain or feeding her whatever it is about you that’s making her more alert.”

“I don’t recognize you,” Molly said, “But you’re family.  Family’s the most important thing right now.  Has to be.”

“With that kind of attitude, I can see why grandmother would pick you for first heir and custodian,” I said.

“She didn’t,” Molly said.

I looked at her.  “She didn’t?”

“Fuck her, most of all!” Molly said.

“Molly,” I said, “Focus.  Grandmother picked you first.  Why?”

“Fuck her, most of all!” Molly repeated, with the same inflection as before.  “God!  I didn’t want any of this!  They’re… they’re going to kill me in some horrible way, and there’s nothing I can do about it.  Nobody- nobody’s going to help me.”

“Blake, let’s maybe not continue this line of questioning.”

“It’s important,” I said.  “It’s-”

Molly flickered, skipping to a different point in time, some different line of thought.  Moving, it seemed, not by the three dimensions of up, down, left, right, forward and back, but some other plane.  Still in the same physical spot, but at some other point in time.

“Agendas,” she said, her voice low.  Her voice had a gravelly tone that suggested extreme fatigue.  “Everyone has an agenda.”

“What was grandmother’s agenda?” I asked.

“Can’t make an omelete without breaking a few eggs, right?” she asked, but there was no mirth in her expression.  I could see dark circles under her eyes.  She glared at me.  “Enjoy your fucking omelete.”

Then, in the next moment, she flickered and disappeared.

Mags stopped walking.  Between that and my staring at the spot that Molly had occupied, I nearly walked out of the patch of light.

In my world, everything was utterly still.  In Mags’s, the real world, the wind made snow-laden tree branches sway.

“Ummmmmm,” Mags said.

I tried to remember what I’d read about ghosts.  I’d read something after taking Evan as a familiar, or Rose had said something.  The sheer mass of information I’d taken in was a bit of a jumble.

“She’s returned to her haunt,” I said.  “Some place where her echo is strongest.”

“Where?  The place she died?  The memorial?”

“Has to be,” I said.

“Running,” she said.

“Running with,” I told her.

The patch of light the hand mirror cast wasn’t a big one, only four paces long and two or three paces across when we were running.  With every movement of her arm, it swayed, moving forward and back, a little side-to-side.  With the snow on the sidewalk, and the inability to see far enough to anticipate potential obstacles, I was on unsteady ground.

I managed to keep up without fucking up.  I wasn’t even breathing hard when we reached the hill that overlooked the memorial.

Aunt Irene and Callan were cleaning off the snow, shaking a bouquet of fake flowers free of moisture.

Molly stood near them.

Her hair blew in the wind, and she hugged her arms to her body.

The look on her face, though.  Hollow, angry, despairing.  It was like the expression I might have imagined on the face of a parent who had lost their child.

What did it mean for a parent to lose their child?  They’d lost someone who lit up their life, who they’d invested countless hours into, who was supposed to carry on their legacy.  By passing a piece of ourselves and our teachings on to our children, we achieve a kind of immortality.

But Molly hadn’t lost a child.  She’d lost someone she’d invested eighteen years into.  The person who had a hand in every bit of joy she’d experienced in life.  The one who was supposed to create her legacy.  Herself.

She was face to face with her own death, her own mortality, too late to do anything about it.

“It’s not fair,” she said.

I could see Aunt Irene flinch, looking away, as if she’d heard the words.  Her hand clenched.

“I’ve had nightmares like this,” Mags said, her voice barely audible.

“We can’t just stand by and let this happen.”

“Whatever’s happening,” Mags said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’d do something if I could but…”

“This is on me,” she said.  “I’m the one who gave her too much of my personal power.  How was I supposed to know she’d hoard it or whatever it was?”

She looked down at the ghost and the two family members of the girl she’d helped kill.

“Balls,” Mags said.

She started down the slope.  I went with her, because it was the only route available.

“Why me?” Molly asked.  Her voice carried.

Callan moved one little wreath with a band of paper extending across it, shaking it with a touch too much force.  He looked angry.

The ghost was affecting the pair.

“Sorry if I’m interrupting, but-”

“You are interrupting,” Aunt Irene said.

It was a sharp change of tone from her earlier discussion with Callan.  If I hadn’t known anything about Molly’s presence, I might have dismissed it as lingering emotion from her ‘discussion’ with Rose.  With the context…

Fuck, I could only assume Molly was pissed.

“I come down here regularly,” Mags said.

“Yeah, I know,” Aunt Irene told her.  “I’ve seen you.  I wondered, you know, why you’d have any interest.  I feel pretty damn sure you’re not one of Molly’s friends.”

“I wish I had been.”

“I bet you do,” Aunt Irene said.  “But I’d drive by, and I’d look at you standing there, most of the days after school, and I’d be curious.  Then I saw you at Hillsglade House, standing in the driveway, and it clicked.”

“Whatever your assumption is, I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.”

“You’re an opportunist.  Get close to the heir of the house, win them over, and then when the house is sold, you’re the person who’s helped them out all along, so naturally they offer you something.”

“No- that’s not what I was doing.”

“Are you trying to manipulate me too?  Or did Rose think she could use you to mess with me?”

“No!”

“Then what?  You categorically deny it all?”

“I deny some of it?”

“Only some?” Callan asked.

“Please,” Mags said.  “I just wanted to…”

“To what?” Callan asked, almost snapping, his answer was so quick.  “Why did you feel like you had to interrupt us?  My mother is clearly upset, and you’re upsetting her more.  Clearly you must have had a good reason.”

His gaze was hard, almost glittering with anger.

When Mags didn’t answer, he said, “You had a reason for visiting too.  Morbid fascination?”

“No!  That’s-”

“Were you in love with her or something?”

“No!”

“You had some motivation for showing up every day.  It’s not like my mother and I aren’t going to pay attention to it.  Even Christoff asked about the strange girl that was visiting, and he really didn’t need more stuff to worry about in the aftermath of all this.  I think we deserve an answer.  What’s going on?  Was my mom right?  Was it greed?”

“N-”

She didn’t get a full word out, because he kept talking, “Are you here because of opportunism?”

“That’s…” Mags floundered for a word.  “It’s not like you’re thinking.”

“That’s not a no,” he said.  His voice had a note of triumph in it, but there was absolutely zero joy in it.  “I think it’s exactly like my mom theorized.”

“It isn’t, honest,” Mags said.

She’d said she’d had nightmares about something like this.  She’d had a role in murdering Molly, and on a level, she’d gotten away without a hitch.  Only now it was coming back to bite her, almost in the worst way possible.

“Then convince me.  Explain,” Callan said, and his voice was loud and sharp enough that it was only a half-step away from him yelling at Mags.

“I can’t,” Mags said.  “Listen, I’ll go, and I’ll come back when you’re done.”

“Maybe, if you can’t look us in the eye and explain why you’re so invested in this, you shouldn’t come back,” Aunt Irene said.

“Maybe,” Mags said, quiet, “But I will.”

“Pisses me off,” Callan said, looking away, very aggressively shaking snow from a card that was inside a sealable freezer bag.  He wiped the moisture from the outside of the card on his pant leg.

Mags had turned her back, starting to leave.

I heard Molly speak, as Mags put her foot on the slope.

“You ordered the goblins to kill me.”

Callan moved, as if a thought had just happened to come to him.  With the angle of the mirror, I could only see a slice of him, but everything in his tone of voice made it very easy to imagine his expression.  Incredulity.

“Is it guilt, that brings you back here?”

His voice carried.

The angle of the hand mirror changed slightly.  I could imagine Mags clenching her hand around the handle.

Molly was doing her own thing, now.

“That,” Callan said, and he put a special kind of emphasis on the word, “Is even less of a no than your response to the greed thing.”

“It was clutching at opportunity, not greed,” Mags said, her voice so quiet that Callan didn’t have a chance at making out the words.

“If you’re going to say something, say it loud enough for us to hear!” Callan called out.  “Start with why the fuck you’re so guilty about my sister dying!”

Mags wasn’t functioning at her best.  She wasn’t even functioning by halves.

This wasn’t her.  Not the her I knew from here, and not the Maggie that Padriac had been pretending to be.

“Mags,” I said, keeping my voice low.

“They killed me and they took me to pieces!”  Molly raised her voice.  “They used corkscrews.  They used needles!”

Mags didn’t budge.

“Mags,” I said, a little more forceful.

“Fuck you!” Callan shouted.  “You come here?  You make us more miserable, bringing shit up like this?  Why?  Why the fuck can’t you just give us some damn peace?  So you can relieve the guilt a little?  Fuck you!”

“Mags, get a grip.  Callan feels guilty too, it’s part of why he’s seizing on this so forcefully,” I said.  “Repeat after me.  ‘Don’t you wish you could have done something more?'”

Mags spoke, as if she was very far away.  “Don’t you wish you had done something different, too?”

“Fuck you,” Callan said.

But there wasn’t even half the heat in the words that there had been earlier.

“Fuck you too,” Mags said.  She turned around, and she faced the pair.  Molly’s ghost hovered a little higher off the ground.  Mags’s voice was just a little choked.  “Fuck all of us.  This… this situation sucked.  It was fucked up, and a lot of people weren’t able to see just why.  I hate that.”

“You want to philosophize?” Callan asked.  “Do it somewhere else.”

“Yeah,” Mags said.  “Right.”

She made her way up the hill, taking a few steps at a time before pausing to look back and check on the scene.

“That didn’t work so well,” I said.  “The family’s emotionally charged, and-”

“-And that right there is my frigging kryptonite,” Mags said.  She injected false cheer into her voice, “But hey, bright side!  When things go that shitty, the nightmares have gotta pale in comparison, right?”

“I think this is your prophecy at work,” I said.  “It feels just a bit too contrived, pieces falling down in a very specific way.  A leading to B leading to C…”

“We need to head it off,” she said.

“We do,” I said.  “Listen, you might need to engage with Molly.  If we can get a rapport going between you two, we can buy you time to do the thing.  Do you think you can push through?  I can talk to you, if you think you can focus on my voice.”

“Yeah,” she said.  The mirror jerked, and the angle shifted vertically.  She was bending down.  I heard something crunch.

“Setting up?”

“I can have the rope soaking.  I don’t know how well it’s going to hold moisture, but I figure we can pour the rest of the salt so it’s bordered by the rope, and the rope should freeze in place, at least a little… ah, they’re leaving.”

“Ready?” I asked.

“No,” she said.  “Molly’s coming to us, she’s not following her family.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“That’s-”

The perspective shifted.  I had to shift over to avoid being caught outside of the light.

I had a view of the slope and of the little memorial, the latter of which was now clean and free of snow.

Molly held a position at the base of the slope.

“Frick,” Mags said.

“That’s where you stood when you watched,” Molly said.

Mags was frozen.  Her eyes were fixed on Molly’s, and Molly’s stare was hard, still hollow with loss.

“Respond,” I urged Mags.  Whatever my feelings were toward Molly, as one of my few good family members, the priority was keeping this situation from graduating from ‘shitstorm’ to ‘prophecy of fire and whatever else coming true’.

“Yeah,” Mags said.  “This is where I stood.”

“I don’t know why I remember this,” Molly said, “But when they found me, they thought I was a mauled animal at first.”

“I told you that,” Mags said.  “One of the first times I came to that memorial there.”

“You told me you were sorry,” Molly said.

“A lot of times.”

“Tell her you weren’t the only one responsible,” I said.  “Laird played a part, and you were manipulated when you were weak and scared.”

Mags shook her head.

“No?” I asked.

“I’m not going to make excuses,” she said, not taking her eyes off Molly.

“I wouldn’t accept them anyway,” Molly said, with venom in her voice.  She’d apparently heard.

That venom…

“Yeah,” Mags said.  “I didn’t think so.  What would it take?”

“You took my life, didn’t you?”

“Kind of.”

“Mags,” I said.

“Give me yours,” Molly said.  “Give me that body.  It doesn’t make up for it, but it’s close.”

Mags shook her head.  “I can’t do that.”

“She’s a wraith,” I said, my voice low.  “She’s… fuck.  She absorbed the negativity from me, and the Thorburns, because they’re connected to her.  And-”

“-She probably absorbed it from me too,” Mags said, without flinching.  “Stupid of me.  Selfish.”

“I don’t think it was selfish at all,” I said.  “It was a sacrifice, the blood you gave her, to keep that memory alive.”

“Sacrifices can be selfish,” Mags said.

“Callan wasn’t wrong, was he?” Molly asked.  She drew closer.

“He wasn’t a hundred percent right either,” Mags answered.

Molly changed course, toes barely touching the ground as she moved to keep about two arm lengths away from Mags and me.

Her hand took hold of the same branch that one of the goblins had been plucking twigs off of.

She lifted it.

“Fuck me,” I said.  “How much power did you give her?”

“It’s not just me!”

“Molly,” I said, cutting in. “Listen, I know you don’t remember, but I have memories of us being close.  You, me, and Paige, okay?  If we could back down for five seconds-”

She talked over me.  “This is between me and her.”

I fell silent.

Then I saw her moving the stick.  The broken end dragged on the ground-

Drawing.

“Mags!” I said.

Mags moved, reaching for the stick.

Too late.  Whatever Molly had been drawing, it was already finished.  A rune.

The wraith swung the branch at Mags, who caught it relatively easily.  Molly had strength, but that didn’t mean she was necessarily strong.

Molly let go, and raised her hand.

A gaping hole in the middle, one finger broken.

A dribble of ghost-blood fell on the rune.

“No way,” I heard Mags, as if she were barely in earshot.

Wind stirred, and blew at my hair.  I felt feathers at my side shift.

“I think I need some space,” Molly said.

The wind picked up.  But instead of shifting gears, so to speak, and cranking up to the next level of force, the wind kept getting stronger.  A steady, constant speed.

There wasn’t supposed to be wind in my mirror domain.

“Get the rune,” I said.

I didn’t have a good view of what happened next.  My attention was on fighting the wind.  I dropped to all fours, to have more points of contact with the ground, my sweatshirt fluttering.  Snow and ice swept over me.

I heard Molly speak.

“You’re sorry?  Kneel.”

I half expected the wind to get stronger until I was forced out of the patch of light.  That wasn’t what happened.

The rune managed to gather all the power it needed, and then it simply turned out the lights.

My mirror window into the real world started to go dark, taking my footing with it.

“You gave me your blood as penance?  You gave me your power.  This is me using it the way I think it should be used.  Go against that, and you’re invalidating every act of contrition you made there.”

“Mags!” I said, raising my voice to be heard, in case this fading window wouldn’t carry sounds as well into the real world.  “That isn’t her!  You can go against it!”

Before the light could go out and maybe take me with it, I skipped to the next real bit of solid footing, about a five minute walk from the slope, Mags and Molly.

Once there, I collapsed, back to the wall.

Damn it.

We did not need this right now.

I turned over my options in my head, while double checking I was still in one piece.  No substantial damage, beyond what I’d suffered fighting the three guardians of the mirror space.  Ribs damaged in the tumble, now exposed.  Feathers stuck out from the side of my stomach, where I’d scraped the skin, and poked out where and when my sweatshirt rode up.

I still had the Hyena, but that didn’t feel like an answer in dealing with Molly.

Just when I was preparing to go, Mags turned up.  She held the backpack with the salt and rope in it in one hand, the adjustment straps dragging on the ground.

“What happened?”

“Ugh,” she said.  “She tapped my power for the rune there.  She’s right.  I can’t fight her, not really.  I’m getting more calls.  Same people, and it’s getting more insistent.  If they accuse me of not doing my job…”

It would bode ill.

“Bad day,” I said.

“Putting it lightly,” she said.  “She disappeared again.  She didn’t go to the memorial either.  I’m assuming it’s the house.”

Not to the memorial?

“I don’t know if a ghost can have multiple haunts,” I said.  “I sort of skimmed, when I read up on ghosts.”

“Right.  Fuck.  Okay.  Next destination, Hillsglade House?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “She’s a wraith, she’s shoring herself up and storing strength by feeding on negativity.  It’s going to twist her into something else.”

“How do you stop a wraith?”

“Mostly, I think, wraiths stop themselves.  They burn through whatever power made them.  Maybe if a practitioner is skilled, they can infuse it with more spirits, and shape it, like the Shepherd in Toronto did.”

“I wasn’t in Toronto, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.  Uh, the other way they stop is the way any ghost can theoretically be put to rest.”

“Yeah?”

“Help them resolve the issue that made the echo in the first place.”

“Great.  How do we resolve hers?”

I paused.

“What?”

“For a wraith, that’s usually venting all that negativity at a person or a group of people.  Getting revenge.”

“Balls,” Mags said.  She leaned against the window, bringing her head back hard enough to make the glass rattle.  “She’s a practitioner, but any power she draws on is going to be mine, because I established a connection.”

“She’s still growing.  She’s finding her strength, but by all accounts, she was never a very offensive practitioner.”

“She banished you pretty well.”

“Her focus was on defense.  Knowing that, we’ve got a sense of how she’ll operate.  She wants to make you miserable.”

“She wants me to experience the same pain she did.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I believe that.  But there’s a reason she disappeared and didn’t go right after you.  You think she went to Hillsglade, but I’m not certain.  What’s her agenda?  How does that fit in?”

“Getting access to books?”

“If she tries, she won’t succeed.  Rose put up barriers.  I can’t get inside.  I doubt an obvious threat like a ghost or a wraith could.”

“Another haunt, then?”

“Maybe,” I said.

Mags pulled a notebook out of the bag.  She opened it to the first blank page.

Wraith of Molly Walker in the middle, circled.

Thorburn, defensive caster, middle child, first heir and custodian.  Mags wrote the words inside the bubble.

Around the edge, she wrote more words inside bubbles.  Hillsglade House.  Molly’s Home.  School.

“Places she could be?” I asked.

“Things she has a connection to, but mostly places.”

“Her little brother,” I said.  “Her mom and Callan, who should be in the same place.  Um.  The goblins that killed her.  Extended family.  Laird.  Sandra.  Grandmother.”

Mags scribbled each idea down.

She switched to a different pen.

A line from Molly’s bubble in the middle to each of the bubbles ringing it.

Each line came out with a different strength.

The strongest, oddly enough, was ‘extended family’.

“More negativity to feed on,” I said.  “More connections to her soul and her Self.”

“Right.  I know where they are.  Your aunt said when she was talking to Rose.”

She swiftly packed everything back into the bag.

I could see her nervousness, the agitation that made paper flutter as she seized it.  Even the pens, when she put each one into a pocket for that pen alone- they wobbled.

I hated to have to tell her, but…

“I’m not coming,” I told her.

She froze, shifted position to look at me in the window.

“I’m not as useful here,” I said.  “We can’t chase her.  We’ve got to head her off, like we said before.  We should split up.  I’m… I’ll figure something out, and you give chase and distract her as well as you can, alright?”

“Damn it,” she said.

“You going to be okay without the bogeyman around for moral support?”  I asked.

“I’m going to have to be,” she said.  “Ugh.”

As if she wouldn’t have the courage if she didn’t set off right there, she sprinted out of my field of view, the backpack not even over her shoulders.

I headed in the opposite direction.

I felt trepidation of my own.

I walked over until I was at the very edge of the light shed by this row of houses.

I couldn’t make out the light, but I did have an open invitation.

I leaped, and I prayed I wouldn’t be intercepted, or wind up somewhere where I could get in trouble.

My feet came down on solid road.

Here, the wind blew.  The sun shone, a sky overhead.

Faysal Anwar was sitting in the middle of the road, gleaming white.

“As per our arrangement?” he asked.

“Please,” I said.

“Will you walk with me?” he asked.  “I rather like walks, and I would like to stretch my legs.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Because of my role as a Gatekeeper and a being that supervises travelers and forges paths, not because of my canine body.”

“Oh.  Sure,” I said.  Given the choice, I might have preferred to stay, so I might make a faster exit when the dealing was done, but I wasn’t about to fight for trivialities with a guy like him.

“You were in the midst of a crisis, the last I saw.”

“The crisis is ongoing,” I said.

“Ah.  Then let me please see to my end of the bargain here first.  I promised nourishment.”

“I don’t know that I really eat anymore,” I said.

“You do,” he told me.  “You devour.  There is a yawning emptiness inside of you that craves sustenance, but you do not yet know how to feed it.”

Buildings parted before us, sliding out of the way, creating a narrow road for us to walk.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said.

“You’ll do more than that,” Faysal told me.

We rounded a corner, and walls pulled away, revealing me.

Not only me, but a me that, on a level, I hadn’t ever really seen.  Discount my false memories, and account for the fact that Rose had taken my place in the mirrors every time I’d looked, up until I’d become a bogeyman, and I’d never really looked at myself.

Average height, longer hair that had a way of getting in his eyes, hands in his sweatshirt pockets, with winter boots… he looked just a little tired.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“An image.  Nothing more.”

“An image.”

“As you are now, you’re a starving giant, Blake Thorburn.”

I raised my head a little at that, eyes widening.

“Yes, I know your name now.  I know who and what you are.  It did take some doing.  You have the appetite of a giant, and you aren’t aware of it, but you are devouring everything you can get your hands on.  Spirits flood to fill the emptiness inside you.  When Blake Thorburn became something Other, a great many connections were broken.  You came undone, in a great many ways.  You were broken, and now you are a shattered vessel.  The drains filled you and transformed you, the spirits are finding surer footing in you, stronger ones supplanting weaker ones, while your psyche and your body render them into something familiar and comfortable to you.”

“Birds and sticks?” I asked.

“Something in that vein.  Once I knew what to look for, and once I had the details I needed, I was able to ask my practitioner for permission to follow the loose threads in his consciousness.  Connections were broken, and some are already mending.  His weren’t, not really.  It was a tenuous relationship to begin with, and it’s easy for the mind to lose its grip on those who they have only met once or twice.”

I nodded slowly.

“The memories are still there.  They weren’t erased, only lost.  This is your image, as Johannes had it.  I found two Others who caught glimpses of you, and strengthened that image.  Without ready access to those memories, they won’t suffer unduly.  Take it.  The difference is meager, but it will make a difference.”

“No trick?” I asked.

“No.  This is my hospitality.”

I reached out, not quite sure how I was supposed to eat myself.

The image blurred, and it folded itself around me.

I breathed in, almost as if I were testing the skin that wrapped around me.

It felt different.  More human, almost.

The tattoos, as I looked at my arm, weren’t quite so stark.  I couldn’t pick anything out that was different, but it seemed somehow better.

I checked my ribs, and the feathers didn’t stick out so much, the ribs weren’t so exposed.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re very welcome.  The hungry chasm in your being shouldn’t be quite as open as it was.  You’ll recover faster”

He’d started walking, and I walked alongside him.

“Thank you,” I said, again.

“We have had our discussion, in a way, though I am open to more.  That leaves only the favor.”

I started to speak, then hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I have two favors to ask,” I said.  “I’m hoping that since Mag- the ambassador is working for all of our interests, you’ll help with this without making too big a fuss of it.”

“I agreed to grant one favor.”

“You didn’t agree to grant only one,” I said.  “Trust me, this is helpful to all of us.”

“What is the favor?”

“The ambassador is chasing a wraith.  The wraith, I’m pretty sure, is going to keep running, moving from haunt to haunt.  Can you capture it?”

“Capture it?  I would be reluctant but willing.  If I displayed power to bind, kill, or alter the wraith, I might draw unwanted attention, disturbing a tenuous peace.”

And the prophecy of blood, fire and darkness would come to fruition.

“I would be willing, but I would prefer to choose a specific time and place, so my practitioner isn’t too disadvantaged.”

“No, scratch that,” I said.  “What about… if you have a control over paths, can you bar the wraith’s path, keep it from running?”

“I cannot close paths, I can only open them.  But I could open paths that would lead the wraith to a dead end, and arrange it so the only exit would be through you and the ambassador.  I could do this discreetly, and if the wraith didn’t harm you, there would be no cost to you or the ambassador.”

“Sounds like an option,” I said.  “That’s fair.”

“Would you deem it satisfactory, per the terms I offered?  I would want the past you and the present you to be happy with this favor.”

“There’s the second favor,” I said.

“Ah.”

“I have an acquaintance, from the Drains.  She helped me, I thought I should get her out if I can, and I know she’s not a warrior.”

“She’s an ally, nonetheless,” the dog told me.

“Yeah,” I said.  “And that’s why I can’t ask the ambassador to do it for me, and right now I don’t really have anyone else to turn to.  I can’t imagine she’d be the turning point in this war for the Lordship… I just owe her, on a level.”

“A greedy thing, asking for two favors, when one is generous enough.”

“I had to ask, to keep my word,” I said.

“I understand.  I can’t grant it to you as it stands, unless you have something to offer me.”

I frowned.

The wind was cold, which was strange to me, and the landscape alien, twisted, a little too inclined to move as Faysal needed.

The Sorcerer’s domain, but it was also the dog’s.

I was pretty damn sure I didn’t want to fight either of them here, if they had this much say over just how things were laid out and put together.

It was just a dog, but here, seeing the whole landscape change around it, I felt like I was getting more of a glimpse of the metaphorical iceberg beneath the water’s surface.

“I don’t have anything significant to barter,” I said.  “But… the reason I ended up in the drains was that I was fighting a demon.  Given a chance, I’ll fight it a fourth time and I think I have the tools to win, this time around.  The knowledge.  It’s a demon of the first choir, and I can bind it with art.  I know how to trap it, I know how to kill it, and I fully intend to do both.”

“Given the opportunity.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Maybe that counts for something, if it’s a demon and you’re an angel?”

“In the colloquial sense.  Yes.  That does count for something, and it does answer questions.  In an even match, my kind will inevitably lose to one of their kind.  Entropy will have its way in the end, but I can hope that end is in the far-flung future.  A demon of the first choir… entropy distilled.  Brave or ignorant, to challenge it.”

I didn’t speak.

“You’ll have your two favors,” he said.  “The second in payment for what you have lost in the fighting of demons.  Is that agreeable?  You should be leaving my domain happier, healthier, and better.”

“It’s agreeable,” I said.

“Then for the release of the Iaiah that you gave me, I grant your terms.  I have some traveling to do before I can find your abyss-dwelling companion, and it seems… a very unexpected group has just passed into this realm.”

“Unexpected?”

“Don’t concern yourself for now.  Your companion I’m to recover, what is their name?”

“Green Eyes.”

“So be it.  I will be in touch before long.  Turn around.”

I did.

A door stood in front of me.

“It will take you where you need to be.”

I stepped through.

The cafe in the ‘downtown’ of Jacob’s Bell.

My family.

Mom, dad, Ivy, Uncle, Uncle’s current and ex-wives, Jessica and Steph, respectively, and my cousins Kathryn, Ellie, Paige’s twin Peter, Irene’s youngest Christoff, James, and Roxanne, in descending order.

No Paige, no Aunt Irene or Callan, though they could easily be heading this way, if they’d left Christoff with family.

Molly was there, at the back of the cafe.

Mags was outside, looking in the window.

I moved to Mags’ side.

“Well?” she asked.

“It’s done.  If we can get her to move, we should be able to corner her.  Then we can bind her or whatever else.”

I stared inside.  They were agitated.  Half the parents were busy watching the kids, Ivy was dumping food on the floor and nobody was cleaning it up, and the one other occupied booth had two very annoyed looking patrons inside.

Short of grandmother dying a second time, getting the inheritance out of the hands of the current custodian and heir was apparently the only thing that would bring this group together.

It didn’t look like they could exchange two words without looking aggravated, annoyed, or smug.  But all the same, Uncle, Aunt Jessica, and dad each had stacks of paper in front of them, highlighters, pens and sticky notes in hand, ignoring the chaos of the younger teenagers and children, Ivy’s squalling, and the aggrieved looks of the cafe’s staff.

There was something to be said for Thorburn bullheadedness.

“We need Molly out of there,” I said.

“We also need a plan,” Mags said.  “I’ve got the salt-soaked rope, but she’s not weak, and she’s aware enough to know we’re trying something, and even to grasp exactly what we’re trying to do.

“She knows about bindings,” I said, “Yeah.”

“She shouldn’t be this clever,” Mags said.

“Molly is absorbing paranoia, anger, and all the trace thoughts that come with the feelings,” I said.  “Ghosts are made of that kind of emotional picture.”

“I feel like we’re being tampered with.  More than just a prophecy coming to pass.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “Second guessing yourself?”

“Just a little,” she said.  “Frig.”

“Molly’s going to be prepared,” I said.  “You’ll need to be careful.”

“Fuck being careful,” Mags said.  “We’re doing this my way.”

“Your-”

“Who’s the biggest shit disturber in there, among all your cousins that’ve lived here?”

“Um.  Probably Ellie.  Poor impulse control, property damage, petty theft, slept around.  Woman with tattoos.  Looks like a human weasel.”

Mags was winding a strap around her hand.

“Why?”  I asked.

“Need a story.”

I thought of what I’d told Rose.  “Can that story involve interrupting what they’re doing?”

“Naturally,” she said.

“Naturally?” I asked.  “How’re-

But Mags was already moving, opening the door.

I had to remind myself that the Maggie I’d gotten to know in Toronto wasn’t this person.  It was a fake.

And the real person was apparently the type that had to move and act.  When push came to shove, and she wasn’t facing down a regret bigger than maybe losing her name, she didn’t give herself a chance to hesitate.

She didn’t hold anything back, either.

“Hey, bitch!”  Mags practically bellowed.

Ellie turned.  She’d been taking up a booth all by herself, not helping with paperwork or managing kids, lounging.

“What the fuck are you doing back here?”  Mags asked.

“I don’t know you,” Ellie said.

“You know me.  My bike?”

“I’ve seen a lot of bikes.”

“Wasn’t it you that stole my bike, years back?  You bitch.”

“Kid, if you want to get on my bad side…” Ellie warned.

“What?  What are you going to do?”  Mags asked.

“I’ve fought girls twice your size,” Ellie said.

Mags didn’t hesitate.  She stalked forward, Ellie raised her hands defensively-

And Mags shoved her.

It wasn’t the kind of strong that screamed magic.  It was the kind of strong where Ellie teetered backward and crashed hard into the wall, just beneath Molly’s ghost.

“And lost?” Mags taunted Ellie.

Molly seemed almost delighted.  She hadn’t been fond of Ellie, and the negativity latent in the whole scene… yeah, that wasn’t helping the wraith problem.

Before anyone could stop her, Mags grabbed one of the fat glass salt shakers from the table.  She tossed it into the air, caught it with the hand she’d wound the strap around, and hurled it at the wall like she might’ve thrown a fastball.

Molly’s ghost disappeared an instant before the shaker shattered explosively.

The staff had reached Mags, who backed away, pulling her hand away from one grip.

“Let go of me,” Mags said, “Seriously, let go!”

When she was released, she straightened her jacket.  She reached into her coat, and pulled out her wallet.  “For the damage, and the inconvenience.”

She removed bills, slapping them down onto the raised border between two booths.  “Say when.”

She’d slapped out five bills before the manager or cook or whatever had his bearings, stopping her.

“I understand if you want to ban me from the premises,” Mags said.  “Sorry for the trouble.”

The cook looked between Mags and Ellie, then at the family, which had undoubtedly caused him no small amount of grief.  He pitched his voice low.  “No trouble.  You can come back, but not while they’re here.  For now, out, out.”

Mags nodded.

“And the rest of you, out.  Too many headaches, this is my final straw.  You stay, but you are not eating?  Enough.  Come back tomorrow, you can stay so long as you eat.”

Mags strode out with an air of victory.  I moved to the exterior, where the window looked out on the street.  “There.”

“‘Your way’ involves more violence and destruction than I would’ve thought,” I commented.

“You don’t know the half of it.  I’ve used frigging plastic explosive.  It’s a casualty of spending too much time around goblins, you get to think like they do.”

“That’s a little scary.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

“I like doing things directly, and I did get the ghost to scram.”

“That you did,” I said.  “Now we’ve got to find her.”

She pulled a paper from her pocket.  The bubble map.

She shoved it in the nearest bit of snow.

When it came out, the lines were washed out, the ink running.

“That’s the strongest line,” she said, with confidence.  “The house.”

Maybe this was what it was like to be Rose-in-the-Mirror, dealing with Blake.

Trusting someone’s gut instincts.

“Cool,” was all I said.

It wasn’t a long walk, and where I could have skipped ahead, I stuck by Mags.

Rose was standing on the porch with Alexis.  She pointed at the side of the house.

We went in the direction she’d pointed.

The back of Hillsglade House, where the hills and the glades mingled.  I’d met and bound June here, and traveling a little further, I’d negotiated somewhat unsuccessfully with the Briar Girl.

Molly was here.

She lunged.  Mags threw down a  line of salt.

The wraith retreated.

“You can’t even look me in the eye,” Molly said.

“It’s tough,” Mags said.  She raised her head, though, and did meet Molly’s eyes.

“You killed me.”

“I had a hand in it,” Mags said.

“I didn’t want any of this.”

“I know that now,” Mags replied.

“I’m filled with so much awfulness, and there’s more every minute.  I know it’s not me.  Every instinct I have is telling me that the awfulness is for you.  That I should make you feel it.  Make you hurt and angry and frustrated and hopeless.”

“That’s an option,” Mags said.  “I might even deserve it.”

“You do!” Molly raised her voice.

“But it’s not the only option,” Mags said.  “I’d like to make a deal.”

“Why would I ever want to deal with you?”

Mags shifted her weight, removing her backpack and tossing it to one side.

She dropped to her knees, eyes on the ground.

“Molly Walker, I can’t ever give you what I took from you, I can’t make proper restitution.  But even if I can’t give you your life back, and I can’t give you my life in exchange, because of other debts I owe… I can give you a life.”

She cast a sidelong glance at me, “Sorry, Blake.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“What’s this?” Molly asked.

“I’m asking you to be my familiar,” Mags said.  “And I’ll make things up to you where and when I can.  Damn the consequences.”

Mala Fide 10.5

My tattered shoes found little traction on the ice, but the ice was reflective all the same, and it thrummed as I walked on it.  I ventured out further, and each footstep seemed to echo.

People had cleaned the ice and hosed it down, washing away the rougher frost and the accumulated snow.  Only the smallest portion of shore was visible, but I could make out floodlights on tripods.  They stood on the snow-covered area that would be a thin strip of beach after the thaw, waiting to be set up.

For now, it was a hockey rink, rigged out on the lake with the help of planks and simple tools, reflective enough to be a big mirror.  Partially dismantled for repair, cleaning, or something in that vein.

I stood in the center, hands in my pockets, and enjoyed the quiet.

It was peaceful here, if nothing else.  No others were lurking nearby, that I could tell.  This wasn’t the sort of area that a typical Other would lurk, and I was in the mirror world besides.

Mags needed to hash things out with Molly, and my presence wasn’t helping.  I was tainting the ghost, even if it was by small amounts, and the discussion was a private one, with very real, raw feelings on both sides.  Mags had her own metaphorical demons to confront, and Molly was dealing with a whole mess of negative emotions, some legitimate, others from being a wraith and absorbing the emotions and impressions around her.

It was better for me to step away.  I’d checked on my family, verified they’d stopped reading through the paperwork as a group, checked if any of my friends were hanging outside the house, and then retreated to the least confined area I could find.

Well, the second least confined.  Johannes’ domain was open, and the dog had been pretty decent to me, all things considered… but couldn’t that be a trap?  It would be a good trick, luring me in, making promises, and then when I trusted him and waltzed blindly into the Sorcerer’s demesne, they’d pounce on me and destroy me.  I didn’t want to worry, even in my downtime.

Here, I was away from it all.  Things were quiet, tranquil and eerily still.

With no other sounds, no wind, no noise, no stirring of leaves or animals creeping forth, even the sounds from the other side of the reflective ice gone quiet, I was keenly aware of my own body.

I didn’t breathe.  My heart didn’t beat until I willed it to.  The smallest of movements made me rustle and creak, even snap like so many broken twigs, if I went too long without moving.

“Ahem.”

I turned.  Faysal Anwar sat by the lake, on my side.  His tail swished behind him.

“I’m sorry I took so long to get back to you,” he said.  “We had an unexpected guest.  A certain amount of posturing and positioning was needed.”

“I imagine it’s tough, keeping control of a domain that large,” I said.

“Yes, but the end goal is hopefully worthwhile.”

“You’re an angel, colloquially speaking.  Are the motives here angelic?  Supporting Johannes?”

“Considering my earlier offer?”

“No.  Just curious.”

“My motives aren’t angelic.  I do believe our actions are necessary.”

“I’ve heard it described as a ghetto for Others.”

“I don’t agree with the choice of word, ‘ghetto’, but yes, a place for Others.  Humans are winning, Others are being forced to the fringes, and something is liable to happen, given time.”

I nodded, “Humans are winning.  That’s nice to know, and a little difficult to grasp.”

“A long story.  Why is it so hard to believe?”

“You said it yourself.  Demons beat angels-”

“All other things being equal,” Faysal Anwar said.  “A greater angel can defeat lesser demons, but while a greater angel occupies themselves with that, what is the greater demon doing?”

“They’re equivalents?” I asked.

“To be honest,” Faysal said, “I don’t know.  But I’m inclined to say no.”

I nodded.  “I’m surprised you don’t know.”

“My kind don’t have a network of communication.  The greatest so-called ‘angels’ do, yes, but I only know what I’ve picked up through thousands of years of observation, patience, and periodically crossing paths with others of my kind who deign to speak to me.”

“Ah,” I said.

“You were saying, before I interrupted?  Demons beat angels, and this makes it hard to believe man would succeed?”

“Yeah,” I said.  I pulled my hands from my pockets and spread my arms.  Look at me.  Entropy wins.  I’ve been to the Drains, but I haven’t come across anything suggesting that there’s a force of creation that’s working just as hard.”

“There are two possible answers,” Faysal Anwar told me.  “The first is that such a place exists, but creation spews forth, it does not take in.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “Gods come from somewhere, don’t they?”

“Maybe,” he echoed me.

“The second possibility?”

He swished his tail.  The long fur and the movement of snow behind him made it look more dramatic.  “That the drains are not annihilating anything, only changing.  Change provokes change, much as you continue to spread the effect of the ‘Drains’, as you call the abyss.  That change might be uncomfortable, even unpleasant or ugly when that change affects the things you find comfortable, but not intrinsically bad.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “But that brings me back to my initial question.  If humans are succeeding here, and the forces of annihilation and Wrong are supposed to win over the forces of creation and Right, are humans simply beating the Others back because we’re somehow prevailing over Wrong?  The demonic choirs include a choir of human depravities… can that mean that we’re a divine creation, that we’re naturally opposed to demons, and somehow we’re one of the only choirs that’s winning, against all odds?”

He tilted his head a little.

I swallowed hard.  My mouth was dry.

“It sounds less like you’re trying to ask me a question and more like you’re trying to convince yourself,” he said.

I shrugged, sticking my hands back in my pockets, more for a place to put them than a need for warmth or anything like that.

“It also sounds,” he said, very delicately, “like you aren’t doing a very good job of convincing yourself.”

Not the answer I’d wanted.

I looked down at the surface of the ice.  I moved my foot, and it thrummed.

“I really don’t like the other answers,” I finally said.  If we aren’t Right…

“I can imagine you don’t.  I can’t tell you that humankind is innately Good, Blake Thorburn, but take solace in the fact that I can’t tell you that humans are innately Wrong either.  I don’t know.”

“Damn it,” I said.

“If it helps,” he replied, “You’re making good strides forward.  Most wouldn’t go to the efforts you have.”

“I’m not human,” I said.

“No,” he said.  He stood and stretched.  “But for something only one or two steps removed from humanity, you’re doing well enough to count, as I see it.”

He turned to leave, walking past the point where the shore was visible, treading across the nothingness between my present patch of light and the light of downtown, what would be a ten minute walk away.

I averted my eyes as he blossomed with light.

When the light faded, I saw what he’d left behind.

Three rusty pipes, each connected to the others.  A triangle, though one of the pipes was bent, making it closer to a skewed square.  The bend made it possible to stand up, almost like a door.

My limbs snapped and creaked as I started walking.  How long had I been standing there before Faysal Anwar approached me?

My back snapped more as I bent to pick up the connected loop of pipes and picked it up.  One of the bits of pipe swung, screeching a metal-on-metal screech as it came partially unscrewed at the end.  Still connected, but one section pointed to the ice below me.

Unwieldy.  As a loop, it was maybe four feet across at the widest point.  I had to hold it at an awkward angle to keep it from dragging on the ground and maybe even coming to pieces in the process.

More importantly, I didn’t want to hold it too high and risk enclosing myself in a ‘circle’.  I couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating and problematic.

My arms didn’t get tired, but they did get stiff.  I couldn’t raise it higher, and I couldn’t let go, so I simply brought it down, so one side could touch the surface at my feet.

Though the pipe wasn’t hot to the touch, ice turned to water and then boiled into plumes of steam as the rust-coated metal made contact.  Rust flecks and grime made the frothing bubbles a red-black.

Hm.

I laid it down, and it continued to boil and steam, sinking into and beyond the reflective surface.  The ice that had been sectioned off melted.  Not so different from a hole for ice fishing.  The reflections it cast were those of a still pool of water.  The ring of pipes floated, but it didn’t float in water.

A light flickered in those depths.  A dim, old lightbulb crackling to life for a moment.

In the darkness, I saw a figure appear, large round eyes glowing the faintest of greens, hands reaching for the pipe, holding the loop much as I had.

“Hi, Green Eyes,” I said.  “Blake here.”

She was silent, but talking wasn’t easy when one was underwater.  I wondered if she could hear me.

“You gave me guidance when I needed it.  I offered you a way out, if I got the chance.  If you want company, and a bit of a break-”

She lunged.

The ring of pipes came apart.  Bubbles hit the surface, distorting the view.

The bubbles faded.  I had a glimpse of her narrow, pale body, before she swam up and through the lopsided pool of of melted ice, breaking the surface.

She didn’t emerge on my side.

The water was disturbed twice more before she let it be still.

She stayed on the far side, hands pressed against the ice on either side of the portal, frowning.

Her mouth was stretched in a permanent macabre grin, triangular teeth as long and narrow as any of my fingers meshed together seamlessly.  In the relative light, I could make out the individual transparent scales, the veins that webbed beneath her skin’s surface, even the shadows of organs.

“Not too cold?” I asked.

She shook her head.  Pale hair floated around her head.

“I wasn’t sure if it would be okay, but once that whole thing started, I couldn’t interrupt it.  The portal might have come apart if I tried.  I can’t go inside most houses anyway, and I didn’t want you to have a small body of water…”

I trailed off.

She took a second to enjoy her full range of movement, contorting herself as she turned two quick figure-eights in the water, chasing her tail for a moment, then doing another couple of looser figure-eights at the lake’s bottom, where the ice overhead didn’t hamper her movements.  She gave me a thumbs up.

“Try talking?” I asked.

She did, raising her voice.  Her voice came out muffled, obscured by the water.  I couldn’t make out the words.

“You can hear me, but I can’t hear you?”

She touched one hand to her ear, then swam another figure-eight.  I could see the vague shadows of her lips.  She was smiling.

Better hearing, maybe, by virtue of a longer stay.  Necessary for both predator and prey.

Change.

“We’ll need to work out some means of communication before too long,” I said.

She nodded.

While I was thinking about that…

There was an eerie double vision when I looked at her in contrast to the overcast sky that was reflected in the surface, as if both were transparent.

“Are you able to swim freely?” I asked.  “Or is there a lot of strange darkness around?

She looked around.

She swam well out of my field of view.  Her movements stirred the sand at the bottom of the lake, raising murky clouds.  The time she took to return seemed reasonable.

Good.  We’d verified she was in the real world.

“I’m stuck where I’m at, Green Eyes,” I told her.  “I travel across reflective surfaces.  You’re limited to water.  Or can you climb up onto land if you have to?”

She shook her head.

“Right,” I said.  “I, uh, hope this is better than your prior circumstances were.”

She nodded.  She blew me a kiss.

“No killing, please” I said.  “No maiming, though I don’t think you’re the type.  You should have plenty of food at the lakebottom, and if you need to nourish your nature, you can always scare the wits out of people.  Anything else, and you might bring unwanted attention down on your head, you’d get sent back there, to the Drains, and I’d feel guilty.”

She nodded.

She drew a little ‘x’ over her heart.

“I’ve got stuff to do,” I said.  “Enjoy… this.  Call my name a few times if you need something.  I’ll be by to visit sometime soon.”

Fins at her elbows, spine, and the end of her tail fanned open wide, the membrane stretching thin enough to show the veins between the narrow bones.  She swam low enough to have some freedom, and did more underwater acrobatics, enjoying the freedom, basking in the light that filtered past an overcast sky and the water around her.

I thought I might have heard the muffled sound of her yelling, through the water and ice.

I hoped I’d just done a good thing.

Hands in my pockets, I walked away.

I went the way Faysal had gone, but I didn’t disappear into any great, brilliant light.  I hit the downtown area, passing by the cafe and various storefronts.

I spotted Peter and Aunt Steph in one store, buying clothes.

As far as I was aware, the vast majority of the hotels were in the North End.  Prior to Johannes’ expansion, there hadn’t been much reason to stay.  I thought I’d maybe seen a motel, but I knew my uncle and parents, and they wouldn’t be the types to take a motel over a hotel.

Out of my reach.

I could check in with Mags, but I didn’t want to intrude.

Let them hash out what they needed to hash out.

I’d made other promises.  Stalling the family in their attempt to oust Rose was only one part of it, the Molly situation was on hold, and Rose was still cornered, with a lot of major players out for her head.

On a level, I was one of those players.  She was toying with my friends, and she was tainted by Conquest.

I didn’t want her head so much as I wanted to clear it.  To remove Conquest’s crown, so to speak, and give her the ability to think straight.

In an ideal world, I wanted her thinking straight before this situation in Jacob’s Bell devolved into utter chaos.

By process of elimination, there were only a few people I could go after.

I knew where Laird’s house was.  I’d infiltrated it.

Working off memory and instinct, I skipped across patches of darkness and moved in the general direction of the house, hoping to spot landmarks I could use to close the distance.

In the end, it was easy to spot the house, even from a distance away.

Multiple cars.

Rather than skip across the patch of darkness in the middle of the street, a ten foot gap at most, I moved diagonally.  Zig-zagging, I made my way down the length of the street, until the mass of parked cars and the countless reflections from side and rear-view mirrors gave me more than enough light to work with.

Windows were two-way, as reflections went.  When I’d jumped through the factory window, I’d passed through the factory window.  The only glass that had broken had been the glass I’d carried.

The interior of the house, however, was pitch black.  The only thing I could see was the faint reflection of my surroundings and my own face.

Damn.

I paced the perimeter, not watching where I was going so much as I looked at the windows, trying to see if there was anything I could make out about the surroundings.

One rune on the gate to the backyard.  I steered clear, even though it wasn’t replicated on my end.

By the time I’d circled back to the front, someone was stepping outside.

Two Behaims, older than Laird had been, but still possessed of the Behaim’s characteristic stockiness and ruddy complexions, heavy eyebrows, dark hair and dark eyes.

They got in their car.  I double-checked which car it was, then got in the back seat of the same car, behind the driver.  I had to lean to one side to see the driver’s door move, and quickly pulled my door shut at the same time.

Slightly off.  It was three doors that closed, nearly in sync but not quite there.

I waited, tense, my eye on the one-quarter I could see of their faces in the rear-view mirror.  My hand was on the Hyena’s hilt, though I couldn’t really do much with it.

“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.  She seemed like the type that might be called a dowager, the sort of woman who’d have been called handsome more than pretty, back before age had taken its toll with wrinkles and sagging skin.

The man didn’t reply straight away.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Duncan urged us to be paranoid.”

“Don’t badger me,” he said, gruff.  “It’s nothing.”

I let out a silent sigh of relief, more out of a desire to do it than any particular need to breathe.  I shut my eyes, listening to the car.

I wasn’t entirely sure what dictated how things operated in my mirror world as opposed to the real world – I didn’t see cars traveling up and down the streets, for example.  Sometimes things remained the same and sometimes they changed.  A part of it seemed to have something to do with my own actions, and the force and effort I put into them.  Stuff I put down tended to persist in the mirrorverse, but only if I did it while being mindful of the task, doing it purposefully.

Even so, I did what I could to allow the car to sweep me up, to not resist in any way as it started moving.

I opened my eyes again.  Looking in the mirror, I could see only a portion of each of their faces.

The man’s hair was just starting to go gray at the sides, and he had a thick mustache.  He was also the type, I noted as he started the engine, who wore a hat while driving.  He wore a plaid flat cap with a brim, that made his hair stick out a bit on the side I could see.

In my memories of riding my bike, being aware of my surroundings had been key.  Looking inside cars to see who the drivers were and what they were doing, so I could adjust accordingly.

Cell phone?  Cause to be wary.

Wearing a hat while driving?  Almost as bad.

Why?  I couldn’t say, but the rule held true.

“Liam’s looking healthy.”

“Yeah.  Good kid,” the man said.

Come on, I thought.  Give me something more than talk about family.

But silence was what reigned here.

I looked out the window, hunching down a bit so I’d be harder to see in the rear-view mirror, and looked out the window.

An older couple, comfortable in their own company, long since out of things to talk about.

“Crawford was looking well,” he said.

“Lets her kids play too much with those games.  Five years ago, you could expect them to be playing, running around, popping up every half hour to show us what they were doing.  Now they’re little zombies, eyes on tiny screens you could cover with your hand.”

“Hm,” he said.  “I kind of like it.”

She elbowed him.

“Let them have their distractions, Glo,” he said.  “We don’t know how this is going to go.  There’s a chance some of them will be orphans, by the time this is all over.”

“Ben!”

“You know there’s a chance.”

“You don’t have to say it like that!”

“If things were different, I’d volunteer to step up in someone’s place, make someone younger stand down and sit this one out.  But things aren’t that convenient, Gloria.  All hands on deck.  Duncan all but said it.”

“Yours and mine included.”

“The parents too.  Every child old enough to be awakened.”

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“Neither do I, but we agreed to put up a united front.”

“He wants to go after the Diabolist.  There’s some things that shouldn’t be included in that united front.  It’s playing with fire, and he’s so intense about it,” she’d lowered her voice an octave, as if afraid she’d be overheard.

“He went head to head with the younger Rose in Toronto, he knows the personality we’re up against.”

“He says he did, but he can’t give details.”

“That’s scary in itself,” ‘Ben’ said.

“Yeah,” Gloria responded.

“Yeah,” the old man said, again.

A minute of silence.

“You were pretty quiet, when people were taking sides,” Gloria said.

“Not sure about sides.”

“I had that impression,” she said.

“Duncan seems to favor the younger one.”

“Alister.”

“Yeah, Alister.  Can’t keep the grandchildren straight anymore.”

“He’s only eighteen.”

“So’s the Thorburn girl.”

“Twenty.  Molly Walker was eighteen.”

“Close enough.  He’s…”

He trailed off.

I checked the rear-view mirror, and I saw the older man looking straight at me.

I didn’t move, staying where I was, meeting his stare with a level one of my own.

“We got a problem here,” he muttered.  I wasn’t sure if it was a question for me or a statement for Gloria.

“Do we?” I asked.

Gloria whipped her head around, but didn’t see me.  Ben reached up and re-angled the rear-view mirror.

“Don’t recognize you,” Ben said.

“Might be for the best,” I said.

“Don’t recognize your type, either.  Male Bloody Mary of some kind?”

“No,” I said.

“Can’t imagine you’re an elemental.”

“No,” I said.  “I’m complicated.”

“You can use words longer than two syllables,” he observed.  “Try using words to explain what it is you’re doing in my car.”

“I was curious about how the Behaims were doing, so I decided to ride along.”

“One of Johannes’?”

“No.  I mostly belong to me.  Some people or places might have tenuous claims to me, but I’d venture to say I’m as free as you are.”

“Who’re you siding with?”

“Nobody,” I said.  “Everybody.”

“That might sound good to you, but the free agents around here are like wild animals, hunting, scavenging.”

I thought of the revenant and the faceless woman.

“That’s not my style,” I said.

“You’re just sating your curiosity,” he said.

“Mostly,” I said.

“To what ends?”

I thought for a second.  “Bringing change.”

“I’ll say it again, as good as that idea sounds to you, you’re not convincing me here.”

“I’m not concerned with convincing you,” I said.

“I’m a practitioner, Gloria too.  You don’t think we don’t have tricks up our sleeves?  Be concerned.”

“I know how the practice works,” I said.  “You need a good idea about what I am to really come after me.  Without a nice label to put on this eerie stranger in your backseat, you’re forced to try a scattershot approach.  To guess, or cover as many bases as possible.”

“While you only have the one thing you need to do,” he said.

I could see the faintest shift in his brow.  The gleam of sweat beneath that cap of his.

If I kept this up, I’d give the man a heart attack.

“I’m assuming Duncan doesn’t want to be leader?” I asked.

“Fishing for information?”

“A little bit,” I said.  “But I’m more interested in giving it.  There’s a reason Duncan isn’t confident in his own abilities, and it has nothing to do with the wounds on his wrists.”

“Those wounds healed a long time ago,” Gloria said.

Ben’s eye was studying me, taking in every little detail.

“Ben,” I said.  “You don’t strike me as someone who’s only dabbled.  You’ve been involved with the game, probably with Aimon, before Laird was put in charge.  You’re confident, sitting there.”

“You know an awful lot about us for a face I don’t recognize,” he said.

“You know an awful lot too,” I said.  “You know how this plays out.  You probably have even more tricks up your sleeve than you’re letting on.  Above all else, you know how important and how dangerous information is.”

“And?”

“I want to give you information about the people you’ve put in charge.  Laird was reckless.  Duncan doubly so.  Duncan lost a great deal of his personal power because he lied.  Think twice about putting stock in his opinion.”

“I’m already thinking twice.  You learn to, or you do very poorly as a practitioner.”

I nodded.

“Were you the one to kill Laird?”

I turned my attention his way, just a little too fast.  Gloria reacted much as I had, but looked sideways instead, then back to me.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Like you said, I’ve got tricks up my sleeve.”

“I won’t confirm or deny,” I said.

“But it’s as good as a confirmation.  Was the killing just?”

Just, he asked me.

I could say yes and feel reasonably confident I was telling the truth.  I might even sway the man.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted.  “It was desperate.”

“I can’t tell if you don’t seem like the desperate sort at all, sitting in a stranger’s car with no sign of hesitation, or if you’re made of little but.”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“I believe you all the same.  I’ll think on it,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

This fact-finding mission had turned into something else entirely.  I still wasn’t too worried.  Whatever tools he had at his disposal, I only had to scramble to one side and I should be able to make it to safety.

“Laird has- had children,” Gloria said.

“I know,” I told her.

“Are you affiliated with the Thorburns?” Ben asked.

I looked at him, but I was fairly confident in my poker face.

“I’m only asking,” he elaborated, “Because the time and place of the death suggest one conclusion.”

“I’m my own man,” I said.  “But there are three people and one bird in the Thorburn faction I’d very much like to save.  I haven’t decided what needs to be done in the heir’s case.”

“I see.”

“If it helps,” I ventured, “I would very much like for your grandchildren to walk away safe as well.  Same for the Duchamp’s grandchildren.”

“And the rest of us?”

“Let the cards fall where they may,” I told him.  “For you and me both.  War is war, and if you guys are participating, I won’t rule anything out.  You wanted to know what I am?  I’m tenacious.  I don’t give a damn about the old guard or tradition or anything like that.  So long as the innocents are still standing at the end, I don’t care what happens to the rest of us.”

Gloria spoke up, “You’re not counting yourself among the innocents?”

“No.  But those three people, that one bird, the youngest Behaims and Duchamps?”

“Is that what you want then?” Ben asked.  “Those four for the grandchildren?  An implicit threat that if one of those four is harmed, the children might be too?”

“No,” I said.  “I want you guys to get the point.  I want all of us to stop smashing our heads against the wall, failing to learn as we repeat cycles over and over.  I want change, I want us to do this one thing Right.  That includes leaving those four and the grandchildren out of it.  It means paying more attention to who you’re putting in charge, because Laird was arrogant, Duncan was stupid, and you can’t afford to make a bad call on the third go-around.”

“Uh huh,” he said.

I waited for more of an answer.

I didn’t get it.

“You getting out of my car anytime soon?  I’m not driving you to our house.”

“Sure,” I said.

I opened the car door.  There was mostly darkness beyond.

“I’ll turn around, tell the others back at the house, as diplomatically as I can,” Ben said.  “You try this spiel on Sandra yet?”

“No,” I said.

“You’ll find it a harder sell.  The Duchamps are a little more wrapped up in keeping things the same.”

“We’ll see how it goes,” I said.

I stepped out and over.

The next swatch of available reflections was lower, and I got to enjoy a moment’s ‘flight’ before I landed.  I felt things snap in my legs, and I felt things alter just a little in the process, crawling in tighter.

Sandra, I thought.

Rose had spoken out against terms of war.  There was probably a reason for it, but there was a reason for the terms of war too.

I wasn’t sure how this was going to play out, but I liked having a hand in things, guiding them.

I liked knowing that the Behaims weren’t arrogant scumbags across the board, even if the one legit Behaim I’d talked to thus far was a dopey older guy who wore a hat while driving.

If I was a little obsessive on that particular accessory, it was because I had too many memories of nearly being blindsided while on my motorcycle.

Talking on a cell phone while driving?  I fantasized about reaching in through an open window, snatching it, and dashing it to pieces on the road before accelerating off.

I was fairly certain my ability to practice was cut off, now that I was more Other than practitioner.  Some ideas held true across the board.  Connections, certain means of offense and defense…

But I didn’t have the Sight.  I couldn’t call Sandra’s name and find her, nor could I catch her name when Ben said it, and follow that thread to its source.

Still, the idea went both ways.  If I tried to find her that way, she could find me, and I preferred to stay under the radar.  That Ben had connected dots was a hassle, but I didn’t feel too exposed.

I moved.  I was more comfortable in my skin now, riding the high of three minor victories.  Molly caught, Green Eyes released, and now a successful contact with a Behaim.

I crossed tracts of darkness, scouting.  There was no shortage of possible threats to note and keep track of.

A collection of ghosts at one point.  No June or Leonard in that small crowd.  They’d been spent, their echoes erased.

A man and a woman who seemed to notice me the moment I looked their way.  The man was black, and had thick dreadlocks under a toque, the woman very prim and proper, blonde.  A Duchamp.

I ducked out of their way before anything came of it.

Still, it inspired a line of thinking.  Johannes had a hand in many of the visiting Others.  Sandra, by way of her connections to the Duchamps, had a mess of contacts to draw from, apparently.

As far as searches went, it was haphazard, unreliable.  I simply navigated, and tried to find the highest concentrations of practitioner.

In the end, it came down to sheer luck.  Good or bad, I wasn’t sure.

I found Sandra.

I found the High Drunk, too, and his coterie of Others that looked like overactive teenagers and college students.

Fuck.  Was Toronto leaking?  A part of me had hoped the issues I’d left behind would at least keep the locals there busy.

Sandra and the Drunk were walking side by side, talking, the group following a few paces behind, crowding together, jostling and messing around as they walked three or four abreast on a sidewalk that comfortably let two people walk side by side.  They were playful, like enthusiastic kids.

I skipped ahead to a car.

No eye contact.  I faced away.  I wanted to create as few points of contact as possible.

I only listened.

“…don’t know the particulars,” Sandra said.

“I’m good at improvisation,” Jeremy Meath replied.

“The benefit of working with a god.”

“Exactly,” he said.  He smiled.  “Don’t fret.”

“I’m not fretting.”

“I know your tells.  Your thumbs.  Your hands are in your pockets, but you have restless thumbs.”

“There.  Tell hidden.”

“And your shoulders, Sandra.  No, not like that.  You square them and raise your chin just an angle when you’re challenged by something.  I think it’s the troll influencing you.  Hildr has the same body language.”

“Ah, if something challenges a troll, they traditionally respond by fighting, breaking bones.”

“Exactly.”

“Hildr doesn’t do that.  She’s a little more clever.”

“Is that because that’s how she survived this long, or is it because you’re influencing her in turn?”

“Good question.  When I think back to the hunting of the troll, being hunted in turn… hmm.”

“I’m only telling you so you can fix it,” he said.

She reached up to squeeze his arm as they passed me.  I only saw it in my peripheral vision, but I still tensed.  Every connection mattered.

I skipped ahead, to stay away from the crowd, who looked a little too inquisitive, and had too many pairs of eyes for my liking.  I’d already been spotted by an old man.  These guys seemed like an even bigger threat.

I waited in a car, eyes still forward.  I could make out the Satyrs, well behind, peering at the car I’d just left.  I’d made a small noise or something.

“…Fret,” Jeremy said, again.  “You and I, we make a good team.  You do well so long as things are under control, while I-”

“Thrive in the midst of madness.  Don’t upset things.  No chaos for now.”

“I agree, no chaos for now,” he said.  “Only enough pressure to get the results we need.”

“Good,” Sandra replied.  “Keep an eye out for the mirror dweller.  We still don’t know enough, and he is a priority.”

I felt my heart pound in my chest, more a head against a wall pounding than a throb.  Alarming on several levels.  It was a connection between me and her, threatening my cover, she knew, and it made Jeremy’s objective here pretty damn clear.

“Wouldn’t mind more details,” Jeremy said.

“Then barter with the Sorcerer and Faysal, see what else they’re willing to divulge. You have more access to them than I do.”

Ah.  What else they’re willing to divulge.

Damn it.

My greatest asset in all this was quickly being stripped away because my enemies were talking.

“I’ll make do.  Whatever happens, I’ve got protection,” Jeremy said, offering Sandra a wry smile.  “I’d rather act in concert.  This may be our only window to deal with the Thorburns.”

“It won’t, but it’s the first one, and it’s the best window, before anything is underway between us and our other enemies.  This is win-win,” Sandra said, “Provided we act decisively, we can safely clear one problem from the board.  Pity.  I really didn’t want to do this, but, well, we each choose our paths.  Hopefully the girl hasn’t committed.”

“Speaking of,” Jeremy said.  “This would be where we part ways.”

Something in his tone… I dared to look.

That tall, rumpled, faintly wrinkled, plain looking man with too much beard and circles under his eyes, perpetually weary, looked down at the woman who looked like a PTA bitch, too fastidious, too cold and hard-nosed.

But Sandra didn’t look cold.  She looked sad.

She reached out, putting one hand over Jeremy’s heart.  “We both do what we do best.  No apologies.”

“No apologies,” he said.

She gave him a light push, and he turned away in the same motion, raising one hand, snapping.  “Hey, you hooligans.  Get a move on!”

His enthusiasm and call for action seemed somehow false.

“What are we doing?” a man asked as he caught up.  I caught a glimpse of his features as he moved across patches of light.  Curled horns, a curl of beard, and hooves, not steel-toed boots.

A satyr.

“What are we doing?” another voice chimed in, excited.

“We’re crashing a party,” Jeremy said.  “Barriers or no, when you ask a god to open a door, that door gets opened.”

The direction they were traveling.  Hillsglade House.  My friends.

And Sandra?

I snapped my head around, no longer concerned with the idea of being caught.  She had a sense of who I was.  Faysal Anwar had told her.

What was Sandra doing?

Only one idea stood out.

Molly.  Mags.

Acting against the Thorburn wraith while the Drunk kept Rose occupied.

Mags might have lost her neutral standing after all.

And I was left having to choose.

Mala Fide 10.6

Mags and Molly on the one hand, my friends on the other.

My first instinct was to break a window, get their attention while they were together.

The old me would have, as far as I was ‘old’ at all.  The ‘me’ that I’d been around the time that I’d approached Evan, up until Ur had inadvertently cast me into the Drains.  I’d been getting more confident, and my ‘trust my gut’ approach to this whole thing had given me momentum, while leading me headlong into disaster.

The Blake that had fought Conquest would have broken the window.

But that wasn’t a long-term solution.  I’d have their attention.  But what would I do after that?  I couldn’t fight.  I could maybe break glass, maybe reach through like Rose had.  I had limited means of attack, and I was more vulnerable than they were, to boot.

Worse, I knew that doing what she’d done had taken a lot out of Rose.  She’d recovered.  I didn’t recover so much as I changed.  Those changes led down a road.  If I lost something, there was no guarantee I could replenish it.

I was tense as I watched Sandra and Jeremy go their separate ways.  It wasn’t worth it.

The problem wasn’t limited to my general inability to fight or defend myself if I go their attention here.  If I went to one place or another, what could I do to help?

Communicate.  Warn.

I moved past Sandra, skipping across patches of light, barely paying her any mind.  Had people been able to see, they might have been able to make me out in the mirrors.  Stepping into view, glancing around the surroundings, then disappearing, moving on.

I saw people, a few gathered Others, ghosts, and then Johannes, in the company of Faysal Anwar.

Sandra and Johannes, converging on the same spot.

An impromptu meeting at the church.

I knew where Mags had been, and if she was invited to the meeting, then I knew the route she’d take.  If she wasn’t invited, then she needed to know so she could mount a defense.

Mags was near Hillsglade, and Hillsglade was one stop.

I reached the front of the house.

Nobody in the living room, nobody visible outside.

Damn it.

I drew the Hyena.

I struck the window with the pommel of the weapon, all of my strength behind it.

It didn’t bounce off so much as it slid.  If the spikes weren’t already embedded in the near-permanent holes in my fingers and palm, I might have lost my grip entirely.

The barrier against my interference apparently included stopping me from breaking in, literally speaking.

Screw Rose.  Damn her.  If my friends got hurt because of this, I’d…

I wasn’t sure what I’d do.  I couldn’t think straight.

I heard a laugh, from some place beyond my ability to see.  They weren’t here, but they were getting close.

No time.

Would I be made to watch, unable to act or change the outcome?

I estimated the distance.  I had time for a quick conversation, and that had to be better than standing here being useless.

Mags.

I pushed myself away, breaking into a run.  I headed in the direction I’d last seen Mags walking: directly south of Hillsglade House, toward the lake.  The idea had been that they’d have some space to chat, and heading that way meant they were downplaying the risk of running into locals.   I’d headed west from that point, to the other end of the narrow beach, where the skating rink had been put together.

There were a lot of crummy little shops and businesses here, punctuated by clusters of nicer looking businesses, where people had moved in and just gotten things off the ground.  Amid convenience stores and dry cleaners that looked like they’d been around since the thirties, there was a fancy upscale place selling women’s yoga clothes or something, and a place selling mountaineering, kayaking and canoeing equipment that looked like it didn’t have anything that cost less than a hundred bucks.

Odd places, for the economically depressed town.  Were the business owners banking on the city’s expansion, or were these businesses some kind of abstract indication of Johannes’ influence creeping into the city proper?

Past the shops.  Dinky, dingy houses.

Past the houses, the park.  One little patch of light in what should have been a vast tract of green, punctuated by little gardens and statues, riddled with concrete paths.

I found Mags in Molly’s company, at the lakeside.  Mags still had the mirror, tucked into the back of her jeans.  They hadn’t killed each other, and didn’t look prepared to.

Molly had settled in form.  The flickers persisted at the edges, but her body remained stable, with only tearing at the edges.  Her features had distorted, not leaving her unrecognizable, but still a little hollowed out, twisted.

Mags looked like she’d been affected too, but in a different way.  I couldn’t see her face from this angle, but her posture was bent, as if she had a weight on her shoulders.

A pity.  I might have hoped she’d recover a bit, facing down her demons.

Had I?  Facing down Carl?

Still, Mags’ hands were in her pockets.  Not something someone did if they thought they’d have to defend themselves.

Molly noticed me before I could clear my throat to announce my presence.  Mags noticed Molly noticing, half-turned, then pulled the mirror out so I didn’t have to scramble to stay within the reflection.

“What’s up?” Mags asked me.

“Sandra,” I said.  “She knows about Molly.”

“Balls.”

“She’s convening a truncated council meeting or something, at the church,” I said.

Mags didn’t respond.  Her head was bent.

“What?” I asked.

“She was a… She wasn’t an enemy,” Mags said.

“She is now,” I said.  “I’m pretty sure she’s going after Molly, and you’re included in that, if you finished the ritual.”

Mags nodded.  “I sort of saw that coming.”

“I’d help if I could, but I don’t know what I can do,” I said. “You should get over there, so you can speak in your own defense.  Or run, or whichever.”

She ran her hand over her hair, then patted a bit down at the back where it was sticking up.

“Or… something,” I said.  “Fuck.  This is a joint attack, they don’t want Rose helping you, so they’re attacking Hillsglade.”

“Go,” Mags said.  “Help your friends.”

“I can’t,” I said.  “I’m locked out.”

“You can’t do anything here either,” she said.  “You’re doing less than nothing.  You’re feeding Molly.  She calmed down after you left.”

I looked at Molly.  Though she hung her head, as though she were facing the ground, her eyes were on me.  Her shoulders were too slouched.  Her hands a bit too long, her clothes tattered and dark at the edges.

My influence was a part of that?

I twitched, ready to run.  “You’re positive?”

She nodded, a tight gesture.

“You’re going to handle this?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” she said.  “Go.  Handle that first.  If I’m due some payback for what I did, I’ll face it and I’ll fight every frigging step of the way.”

I started to go, then stopped.  I looked at Molly.  “I remember telling you that if you needed help, you should call me.  I know that didn’t happen for real, but…”

I stopped speaking a full second before we felt it, as though some sort of premonition had hit, or I was like the animals that freaked out before a natural disaster.

It rippled through the city, and it set the windows and mirrors to shuddering.  It rolled through me, a shockwave without any physical force at all.  It didn’t push me or knock me off my feet, and it didn’t stir my hair, but I still felt as though I might have been collapsing or bleeding from every orifice if I’d happened to be flesh and blood.

My body, head to toe, changed, recuperating from countless infinitesimally small injuries.  A one-percent change in every single damn cell, or spirit, or whatever.

Molly, too, was reeling, trying to find her balance, flickering madly.  Mags only looked concerned.

“What the moose dick was that?” she asked.

I could smell it on the air, stronger with every passing second.  Like smoke and dust after a bomb had hit.  The smell was sharp, like overripe fruit and a room where there had been a little too much sex and sweat, without sufficient washing of sheets.  It smelled warm.

It made me think of Carl.  Of a time when I’d been very human, with human comforts close at hand.

The predominant odor was wine, late in its arrival, so sharp I might have wanted to sneeze if I’d been able to.  I could taste it, as the smell reached and touched the back of my tongue on its way down to my lungs.

I felt just a little lightheaded.

What had Faysal said?  I consumed whatever was at hand.

Even this ambient power, apparently.

I was going to get drunk on it.

“Something like this, he couldn’t get away with it if he hadn’t cleared it with every other local power,” I said.

“They didn’t clear it with me,” Mags said.

“That would have been warning you,” I said.  “And if you’re colluding with Thorburns, as your relationship with Molly suggests, that means they might see telling you as a risk that they’d tip Rose off.  I’ve got to go.”

“I don’t get it,” Mags called out.  I was already leaving.

“Someone’s throwing a party at Hillsglade House,” I called out.  “Molly, what I said before – if you need help, call for me and stall.”

“What if you need help?” Mags asked.

But I was already gone, too far away to answer the question.

It wasn’t a long trip.  Three paces, leaping across darkness.  Another five paces, this time taking a route that took me away from the house, but positioned me for another step across the reflective surfaces, jumping a considerable distance in the process.

I arrived at the front window of the house.

The interior of the house was no longer dark, but had a peculiar hue, like the light was shining off wine red and gold surfaces.  The smell was thick, The barriers had been breached.  The tail end of Jeremy Meath’s group was still making its way into the house.  They moved as a group, fanning out through the rooms.

I stepped inside, in a manner of speaking.

Whatever Jeremy had done here, calling his god in to ram down the metaphorical gate, it had changed the atmosphere fairly dramatically.  The air was heavy, even on my side of the mirrors, thick as though the place had filled with smoke, the smell of incense and faint perfumes joining the smells that had wafted out as far as the lakeside.  The lighting was skewed, and the impact of the divine act had knocked books from their shelves, unsettling and moving furniture.  I saw two women climbing over and under a tipped-over bookshelf in the hallway.

In this light of red and gold tints, I could see their real features.  Their facial and bone structure was different, though not unpleasant.  Their movements were languid, as they easily crawled across the spaces, as if they were simultaneously very flexible and very strong.

They might have reminded me of lions, with that grace, predatory slant to their features, and general strength, but they were panting hard, bronzed skin flushed red, and when the one in the rear looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was following, her pupils were pinpoints.

I moved up to the window overlooking the turn in the staircase.

The lead Maenad wore a snake, coiled up and along the one arm, around the back of her neck, and down the other arm.  It was the color of red wine, with a diamond pattern of white along its back.

I felt like, given general fairness, that snakes should only be big or poisonous, not both.  That snake looked like it was both.

“Search,” I heard Jeremy speak.  He was on the second floor.  “Turn it upside down.  We know they’re in here.”

“I can smell them,” a satyr spoke.  He had full-size ram’s horns on his head, hair spilling down thick and coarse over his shoulders and back, but the horns were heavy, and his legs those of a goat, his body perpetually leaning forward.  One hand rested on his knee, while his horned head swung ponderously from left to right.  “They smell scared.”

“Scared is good,” Jeremy said.

I had a better look of him as he turned my way.  The satyr’s nose was flat and wide, his eyes narrow.  He was muscular, but he had a barrel chest.  If satyrs were supposed to be expressions of male fertility, this guy must have been created when unibrows were considered sexy.

A little different from the other Satyrs, who blended the qualities of beast and man in a kinder, more artistic way.  They stood straight, they didn’t slouch.  They looked more boyish.  Not quite modern-day male models, but all were guys I imagined could hit on women at bars with some success.

“They’re here somewhere,” he said.  “A treat to whoever finds them first.  I don’t want to ask for help if he thinks we can manage it ourselves with the resources we have at hand.”

I knew where they were.  The question was, did he have the resources to, or did I have time?

I crossed the length of the hallway, passing within two feet of the priest.

“I can,” the Maenad leader said, as she reached the top of the stairs.  She had the fluid strength of the lion, the snake around her shoulders, the features of both on her face, her eyes bloodshot.  She panted, nostrils flaring.  “I want that reward.”

She extended her hand, and the snake began to slither forth, unwinding from her right arm to raise itself up from her left.  It extended its tongue, and turned its head, pausing for a fraction of a second to hiss, tongue out.

I followed its line of sight.

The bookshelf, where the lower entrance to Grandmother’s hidden library was.

That was all I needed.

I could be patient, sure, but there were times for action.

Quickly, quietly, I crossed picture frames and mirrors, until I was right next to her.

I wasn’t sure how this worked, or how far I could go.  This wasn’t the sort of thing I could practice.

Still holding the Hyena, I hit the glass of the picture frame as hard as I could, stabbing through.

Glass flew.  I didn’t see if it did any damage – that same glass was my window into seeing that world.

I felt my footing break apart as the glass scattered, darkness opening up.  What little footing managed to exist rose and fall and shrunk in area as the glass turned over in the air, taking in less light, less connected to the glass that had neighbored it with every split second that passed.

But I wasn’t gone.  I hadn’t been relocated.

The window was still there, broken as it was.

Remembering Rose’s actions in the police station, I reached through with my open hand, blind, remembering only the position of things.  I aimed for her wrist.

I got a handful of snake instead.

Strong as the maenad was, and as quick as the snake might be, she was using the one  arm to support half of the weight of a snake that could have weighed a hundred or more pounds.  Her strength didn’t break the laws of physics.  When I moved her arm, it swung, as the snake adjusted for the movement.

She wasn’t able to just tear her hand free.

I, on the other hand, was able to move the Hyena.

My hope had been to grab and slash her wrist.  In reality, I grabbed and slashed the snake.

My footing disappeared, and it was all I could do to pull my arms away from the jagged edges of the aperture before I got slashed.

I fell and was shunted, relocated to the window at the end of the hall.  I was dropped unceremoniously on the ground, and felt my body react to the impact.

‘Ground’, in my case, was limited to the floor that others could see reflected when they looked at the glass.

See being an operative word here.  They were looking at me now.

When I raised my head, gathering my bearings, I saw the Maenad passing off her snake to her nearest neighbor – the animal had been sliced to the spine, muscles and guts severed.  It bent in an angular, forced sort of way where it had been cut.

Cords stood out on her neck, veins visible here and there across her body, but her face was eerily blank, all of the emotion in her eyes, lower lids raised.

When she moved, she moved fast.  A lunge, crossing half of the hallway.

I ran.  She shattered the window behind me.

My travel from one pane of glass to another was nearly instantaneous.  She matched me in speed.  By the time I arrived in the next picture, her clawed hand was already slashing toward me, skin marred by a dozen light scratches.

I moved, then moved again, without looking.  I heard the two pictures break in short succession.

She didn’t give me a chance to think, much less act to stop her.  She came after me, moving to hit the surfaces I occupied.  Every wall was littered with pictures of nature and sublime landscapes, and she seemed to increase in speed as she found me in each one, hitting a picture before the glass had finished falling to the floor from the last.

I could have slipped away, moving halfway across Jacob’s Bell, but my gut said I shouldn’t.

Didn’t want to rely on my gut or my heart alone.  I’d made that mistake before.

Couldn’t duck into the mirror in the library.  There was no patch of light, either because the door was closed, or Rose had covered it.

Without the time to form a complete thought, I had to form a half-thought instead.

I moved, I ran, and I crossed the hallway, zig-zagging.

Her companions were fast enough to move out of the way as she came through the group, chasing.

The hollers were faint, but I could hear them cheering her on.

With the vapors of wine and smoke heavy in the air of my mirror-realm, I felt my awareness slip.  I moved too slowly.

She shattered a picture I occupied.

I was shunted to the next.

She shattered that one too.

I wasn’t able to ground myself.  Something felt wrong with my body.  I was in an unfamiliar hostile environment, and it took me a second too long to reach the next place.

That one second was enough time for her to get impatient, using one hand to sweep three pictures from the walls.  One hooked on the peg, and flew through the air across the hall, punching through the window at the far end.

I found my feet.  She was coming right for me, hands outstretched as claws.

I didn’t have time to run.  I thrust out with the Hyena instead, stabbing at one of the reaching hands.  The blade penetrated the glass, and I felt it make contact.

I dodged out of the way before the footing was completely gone, crossing the hall.

She grabbed the now-empty frame off the wall, hurling it at me, then turned on her toes, following after.

I crossed the hall again.

She followed, reaching-

And stopped.

Her claws were an inch from Jeremy’s face.  She panted hard, painted nails twitching.

Damn.  That half-plan had been to try and bait her to hit the one person who wasn’t fast enough to duck out of her way.

It seemed her loyalty to him overrode her anger.

“Stop, Kakia,” he said.

“Serpent… was… gift…” she said, panting out one word between each quick inhalation.  She still dropped her hand, her face close to Jeremy’s, eyes not leaving him.

“I know.  I was there when he gave it to you,” Jeremy said.  “I’m not pleased either.”

I didn’t need to catch my breath, but I did need my bearings.  I took stock of my surroundings.

Three reflective surfaces here.  Once they were gone, I could only go upstairs or down.

“You’re the mirror dweller Sandra mentioned,” Jeremy spoke.

“Yeah,” I said.

“That snake was a gift from my god to a favored servant,” he said.

“That’s unfortunate,” I answered.

He turned until we were facing one another.  His maenad lowered her head until her forehead rested on Jeremy’s shoulder, still panting, fingers held in a claw-like position to the point that the straining of her fingers made them each move independently, as if she couldn’t hold them completely still.  The wounded hand bled, blood dripping down her fingers.

“Unfortunate,” he said, as if he were trying on the word, “You have little idea how right you are.”

“That sounds ominous,” I said.

“You’re crossing a god,” he said.  “It should.”

“I’ve seen a god,” I said, “I think, anyway.  I haven’t seen your god, though.”

“No?  I thought we’d crossed paths.”

“You came after me in Toronto,” I said.  I thought back to the conversation and intimacy I’d seen just a short while ago.  “I believe it was on Sandra’s behalf?”

“If I did, it was for her, yes,” he said.  “I don’t remember you or what I did to you.”

“You sicced Conquest on me,” I said.

“Was that what I did?  Hm.  Set it all in motion.”

I could see the restlessness on the part of his people.  They formed a protective circle around their priest, but they couldn’t sit still.

“Hey, Jeremy,” I said, conversationally,  “Would you happen to know what protocols are for dealing with very abstract demons?”

With the word ‘demon’, many of the Satyrs and Maenads tensed.

“You’d have to be more specific,” Jeremy said.

“Any protocols at all,” I said.

“I know of the most important one,” he said.  “You don’t deal with demons of any type.  Common sense.”

“Which is why you left the Etobicoke imp alone?  Pauz?” I asked.  “And the demon in the oil factory?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll give you a little lesson then, no reciprocation asked for,” I said.  “When a demon is abstract, it’s not necessarily bound to all the normal rules we are, in terms of shape, state, time or place.  With me so far?”

“I wasn’t the most exceptional student, when I attended school,” Jeremy said.  “I struggle with lectures.”

“Try,” I said.  “Commit this to memory.  Of the two abstract demons I’ve met, both followed the same minor rule.  If you see it in a reflective surface, that’s because it occupies that surface.  Your eye is reflective, Jeremy.  The eyes of your minions serve too.  Look directly at it, and it has you, and it isn’t ever letting go.”

“How inconvenient,” he said.

Very,” I said.  “As far as I’m aware, there’s one in this house.”

Give Jeremy a cookie.  He didn’t look half as scared as even his murderous maenad did.  She didn’t move her head, but her eyes widened.  The others reacted, looking at one another.

“You could be lying.  There are no guarantees you’re bound to tell the truth.”

I shook my head.  My vision wavered.  I was feeling the influence of this heavy perfume, smoke, blood, and wine that all sat so thick in the air.  “Not lying.  If I am telling a deliberate falsehood, I give your god permission to strike me down.”

I saw one or two Satyrs step back.

“It doesn’t work quite that way, but close,” Jeremy said.  “Where is this supposed demon?”

“Last I saw, it was in the house,” I said.  I decided to bend the truth.  “It can’t leave.  I would like to keep you from leaving with it, accidentally or otherwise.  That’s in my top five concerns right now.”

He didn’t take my bait and ask what the other four were.  “If the demon was a concern, the occupants of the house would be a lot more afraid than they are.”

“It’s scarier than the demon in the factory,” I said.  “As rankings for demons go, it’s  few steps up.  I don’t like Rose, but I trust her not to fuck that up.  You… I’m much less inclined to trust your lot to keep from accidentally fucking up.  When I killed the snake, I was protecting all of us.”

“The responsibilities of being a diabolist’s favored pet,” Jeremy said.

“Eh,” I said.  “You got one of those three labels right.”

“I have my own responsibilities,” he said.  “When I wield power, it isn’t with lines on the floor and carefully worded contracts.  I only ask.  I can change the wording, pick the phrasing, decide the poetry of it, and read old texts, from my god’s days of glory.  But when I want to practice, I only speak.  A single word will suffice.”

He wasn’t murdering me or getting us all killed while he talked, so there was that.

He continued, “My challenge is to show I’m worthy.  In the heat of the moment, I don’t need to do anything special.  Outside of those moments, I have to curry favor.  There aren’t any gauges, no measurements I can take.  I have to watch for signs and trust him to show me his pleasure or displeasure.  If I overstep, asking too much for how little favor I have, he may punish me.  If I hold his favor but do not spend it, he might revoke it.”

“Easy to get wrong,” I said.

“I don’t shape how it manifests.  He does.  But when he works…”

“He can knock down all the barriers in a house that’s supposed to hold up against a pair of angry chronomancers and enchantresses.”

The atmosphere here… I didn’t even have pumping blood, but my head pounded.

“Yes,” Jeremy Meath told me.  “That snake was his.  You killed it.  You maimed his servant’s hand.  For all intents and purposes, there is a gun pressed to your head as we speak.  There has been since you hurt that snake.”

I shook my head a little.  “Can’t be that simple.  You would have said it already.”

“I need answers before I have my god smite you.  Where is the Thorburn Cabal?”

You should be asking where the demon is,” I said.

“Eryalus?” he asked.  “You smelled something foul when you entered the house.”

The ugly satyr spoke, “Above us.”

“Has it moved?”

“No,” the satyr said.

Jeremy looked at me, spreading his hands.

“If you upset Rose,” I warned, “there’s no guarantee she won’t give the demon a command.”

“I’m not concerned with upsetting Rose,” he said.  “I want to find her and her cabal.  Now, second try.  Where is the Thorburn Cabal?”

“Ask your god to point you in the right direction,” I said.

“Asking him for trivial things I could earn and achieve on my own is a fast way to lose favor.  For the third time, where is the cabal?”

Three times.  The answer I gave here mattered.

I’d spooked his minions by mentioning the demon.  Maybe I could take advantage of that.

“She’s in an area that, as I understand it, involves warped space,” I said.  “One step to the side, and, how did you put it?  Above us?”

Which was technically true.  It was a two-floor affair.

I could see his jaw set, eyes narrowing.  There was no softness in his face, however worn and rumpled he might otherwise look.  How could a priest of drunken merriment and debauchery look so joyless and cold?

“If that’s the case,” he said, “We could all be dead.  You’ll definitely have to tell me where she is, so I can stop her.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“What do you think I did, mirror man?” he asked.  “I needed to disarm the diabolist and her cabalists of their greatest weapon, which we just talked about, and I needed access.  My god granted me both with one fell stroke.”

“Jägerbomb,” a younger satyr said, snickering as if it were far funnier than it was.

Which wasn’t hard.  I didn’t think it was funny in the least.

“You’re telling me you went after the one person in Jacob’s Bell who has the most dangerous knowledge around, the one person who can tap into world ending forces, who’s maybe a little hard to anticipate to begin with, and you got her drunk?”

“I’ve been led to believe my god impaired her faculties,” Jeremy Meath said.  “As I said, doing what I do is far from an exact science.”

“If she calls on the wrong name,” I said, warning.

“She won’t, not anytime soon,” the priest answered me.  “My god is a god of madness and drink.  She’ll be insensate, for now.”

“For now?”

“I imagine there’ll be a window of time when she’s lucid enough to act, and still far enough out of her gourd to do something stupid,” the priest told me.  “If circumstances were better, and she didn’t already have something summoned, this would have been perfect.”

His expression didn’t change from that stony stare, as he made that admission.

His minions looked more than a little freaked out, though.

“You leave, I find her, we mutually prevent anything stupid from happening, and Sandra gets to do whatever she’s planning to do to Mags and Molly,” I said.  “You and your god win.”

“It’s not that simple.  When my god created this situation, he posed a challenge to me.  If he simply gave me what I needed, what would that be worth?  I have to work for it a little.  His era of gods are especially fond of making the little mortals dance,” Jeremy said.  “If I walk away from that challenge and fail to dance, I disappoint him.”

“Seems to me,” I said, picking my words with care, not breaking eye contact with him, “Following a god like you do is very nearly as tragic an existence as being a diabolist.”

His expression changed for the first time in a good while.  A light smile.

“I think you might be right, mirror man.  There’s a reason I’m here.  When someone like Sandra, the departed Laird Behaim, or even Conquest do battle with a diabolist, they’re busy trying to win, while the diabolist knows they can win.  It’s merely a question of how little that diabolist can get away with losing in the process.”

“Rose and I have surmounted plenty of obstacles without summoning or dealing with demons,” I said.

Jeremy stroked the hair of the Maenad who hadn’t moved her head from his shoulder.  She’d stopped clenching her claws, and now held her injured hand against her chest.

He continued, “But the mindset is still there.  If you two truly needed to, you could call in a favor, call a name, find a book, or remember an author’s name from one of your books and chase it down.  With your diabolist, you can theoretically pick up the raw firepower you need to remove every single one of your enemies from the table.  But you don’t.  We have to hold back, because the price is often too high to pay.”

“I think I want to be more optimistic than that.”

“Okay,” he said.  He shifted his weight, and his injured maenad backed off a bit, giving him space.  “Right now, we’re playing a game of chicken.  Rather than an onrushing car or train, there’s a diabolist of impaired faculties in the building.  It would not be surprising if she woke up and then acted with her faculties thus impaired.”

“That’s the gist of it,” I said.

“As an optimist, you would have the advantage.  Maybe she’ll simply sleep it off.  Maybe she’ll act benevolently.  As her ally, too, the odds are with you.  She’s more likely to come after me than she is to hurt you, am I right?”

I was silent, and utterly still.

“On the other hand, she’s in close proximity to your other allies, who are very likely to be collateral damage.  I don’t know if you know this, but she’s been tainted by Conquest.”

“I know,” I said.

“Then you know we have every reason to expect that taint would have more sway over her when she’s not fully herself.”

If he didn’t look quite so grim, I would have thought he was enjoying this.

“If you crack first, you might well show me the way to her.  I would try to be fair.  Killing her would only transfer ownership to the next heir.  We don’t want that.  I don’t want to hurt or kill her cabalists either.  We can keep her and you contained and organize your release from captivity when the Lordship is settled and full attention can be devoted to the dangerous diabolist and her mirror-dwelling pet.”

“Or you crack,” I said.

“Or I crack.  I call on my god to show the way, and in the doing, I disarm myself of my primary source of power.  You hurt the snake, and that counts a great deal against you.  I could probably assume that’s enough that he’d grant me the favor, despite the disappointment in me.  But probably isn’t certainty, and   I’d normally be unwilling to call on my god for three great acts in a single week, let alone a day.”

“Our game of chicken,” I said.

“A good game for an optimist to play.  It’s not about who wins,” he said, “It’s about who loses the least.”

“Or,” one of the Maenads said, “you could send us after him.”

He turned his head to answer her.

I ran, not even listening to the words that escaped

However much I wanted to be an optimist, I couldn’t, not when this much was at stake.

“Demon upstairs,” I breathed the words, “Don’t follow.”

Technically true, but misleading.  I just needed them to hesitate.

I stepped from the edge of the mirror space, and I leaped.

Moving up, more than anything else.

Up to the next floor.  To the meager, short-reaching light that the picture frames shed into the hallway.

They were already moving.  They were fast.

I found the bookshelf, which was supposed to open into the real world.

I just had to reach the handle before they got close enough to see me and what I was doing.  The benefits of being inside a reflected surface.  If I couldn’t, I could run.  I could get help.

I wasn’t sure what form that help would take, but I needed to check.

It was unlocked.  The way into the library was clear.

The reason it was unlocked, however, was something else.  It was open.

The house had been Jägerbombed, as the satyr had put it.  Pictures had been knocked from walls, books from shelves, and the entire building had been rocked, with barriers suffering for it.

And, perhaps, a divine hand had nudged things to this particular result.

The lock had jostled open.  The bookcase was partially ajar.

I looked from my reflected bookshelf to the one opposite.

I ran.  No regard for safety.

I lunged through the mirror.  Reaching for the bookshelf, blind.

If I could push it closed-

The darkness claimed me.  My hand didn’t touch it.

I was shunted.

By the time I found my feet, I could hear the noise of the bookshelf sliding open.

It opened wide.  Rose, Evan, Alexis, Tiff and Ty lay collapsed on the ground.

Jeremy strode in, as I pressed my hands against the glass, unable to stop him.

Mala Fide 10.7

My mind was a haze, my emotions caught in some horrible, undefinable place.

I liked humanity, I hated people, but certain individuals were immensely important to me.

Four or five of those individuals were now at the mercy of our enemy.  Jeremy Meath walked into the library, accompanied by his satyrs and maenads.

I tensed as a satyr reached for Rose, fingers brushing the side of her face, her lips, and her throat.

“Don’t,” I said, from my vantage point in the hallway.

The satyr ignored me.  “She’s breathing.”

“Be careful,” Jeremy said.  “They were in Fell’s company for a time.”

“I am being careful.  I see her, hear her breathing, smell her, feel her,” the satyr said.  He smiled wickedly, “I could taste her.”

“No.  That’ll do.  Bring her here,” Jeremy said.  He walked around the writing desk, pulling the chair back.

The Satyr scooped up Rose, showing an easy sort of strength.  Rose’s head lolled, arms dangling at her sides.  Her fingers moved unconsciously, as if she were dreaming.

When I saw her eyes, only for a moment as the Satyr rounded the desk, I could see only whites.  They’d rolled into the back of her head.

She was placed in the chair.

“We’ll need restraints,” Jeremy said.

A satyr produced a pair of handcuffs from a back pocket.  One of the maenads was wearing a chain for a belt, held in place with a combination lock, and began unwinding it.

“Thank you,” the priest said.  “We’ve got several captives here.  Anyone else?”

“Not here,” another satyr said.

“I’ve got restraints on me,” a third chimed in, grinning, “but they’re for men only.”

Jeremy looked down at Ty.  “Let’s not subject the young man to that.  Search the cabinets.  Be wary of traps, sniff first, check the surroundings, communicate with those near you so they know what you’re doing.”

He paused, glancing at me.  “Keep your distance from reflective surfaces while you’re at it.”

The satyrs and maenads fanned out.  Jeremy worked with the satyr to chain Rose to the swivel chair, leaning her forward to wind the chain in and out of the bars in the back, under and over the arms, and around her body.

“Jeremy,” I said.

“Are you surrendering?” he asked, without looking my way.

“No.”

“Are you picking a fight?”

“No,” I said.  “I want to negotiate.  Talk this out.”

And I want to distract you in the hopes that you make a mistake here.

“We can talk when I’m done.  If you want to leave, I won’t try and stop you.  Arcas, do me a favor and lay that mirror flat on the ground, very carefully.  Don’t let it face anyone, and leave the cloth in place.  Maybe use a cord or your own shirt to tie the sheet in place, to be sure.”

He was talking about the full-length mirror that had a sheet thrown over it.  Back when Rose and I had occupied the house together, it had been her window into the library, giving her access to the books.

“We could break it,” a maenads said.

“I would if I was sure there wasn’t anything inside it,” Jeremy said.  “We’re doing this carefully.”

“You’re just ignoring me?” I asked.

“I don’t think I can catch you just yet, and I’d rather do this right.”

He opened the drawers of the desk he’d just chained Rose to.  He pulled them out of the desk altogether, checking the bottoms, and then stacked them on the desk’s edge, one by one.  “Aurope, take these through to the nearest empty room, stack them out of sight.”

One of the maenads hurried to obey, carrying drawers that were stacked one on top of the other, three high.  I had a glimpse of the contents as she approached me.  Old pens, including fountain pens with stylized tips, letter openers, a syringe, and bottles of ink, with tidy little scrolls of paper.

“Cuff her ankle to the desk,” Jeremy said.  “No, not the leg of the desk – she could free herself easily by lifting the desk up.”

“It’s solid wood.  I couldn’t lift it, and I’m strong.”

“Strong like bull,” a voice said, from the sidelines.

The satyr grinned.  “If she’s strong enough to lift that, she’s strong enough to break the cuffs,” a satyr said.

“I won’t rule anything out, and I know people are capable of amazing acts when they’re scared enough.  Here, this bit, where the drawers were.

I heard the click of the cuffs.

“The bird?” a maenad asked.

Evan.

Evan was key here.

“Evan!” I shouted.

“Buh?” I heard his voice, faint.

“Fly!  Fly away!”

“No go, mirror dweller,” the maenad said.  “Bird in the hand.”

“Literally,” said the satyr that was busy unspooling a roll of twine.

“Thank you for adding to the dialogue,” the maenad said, sarcastically.

“Oh,” I heard Evan, though I couldn’t see him through the bodies that were in the way.

“Now would be a great time to escape,” I told the bird, ignoring the various Others.

“Can’t,” he said.  He was talking like he had his mouth full.  Drunker than I was.  I wasn’t sure how that really worked, since he had a beak, not lips, and his ‘speech’ was something else entirely, but whatever.  He added, “Not good.”

“No,” I said, clenching my hands.  As fuzzy as some of my senses were around the edges, my voice was still clear, at least.  “It really isn’t.”

“Bring the bird here, Metrodora” Jeremy said.  “I’ll be with you in a moment, mirror man. If you’re willing to stay there and cooperate, we can negotiate.  If you want to leave, that’s fine as well.  Right this moment, though, I need to secure things here.”

I stared, my expression grave.

He turned to his maenad companion.  “Right.  I’ll need him right here.  Down on the floor.”

The maenad knelt beside Jeremy as he set down books on the ground at the base of the desk , stacking them atop one another to form a box of sorts, utilizing the space between the stacked texts.

I was tense, watching.

If they were going to contain him, they had to let go.  He had a window of opportunity.

If I had any sort of bond with Evan…

Suddenly in action, I turned to search my surroundings.  I didn’t have anything to cut myself with that wasn’t the Hyena, and I didn’t want to use that.

“A little bit of wine,” Jeremy was saying, in the other room.  “Like so.”

“Aww, you’re wasting it,” a male voice.  A satyr.

“Don’t know what he is, exactly, I’m relying on my tried and true approach.  Stand ready, you two.  Metrodora-”

“Bird goes in between the books?” she asked.

“Yes.  Arcas, when I anoint the circle, I want you to drop the book on top, carefully.  It’s like a lid.  A container within a container.  I’ll say a prayer over it to seal it for a third layer of protection.”

I couldn’t find anything sharp in my little patch of world.  The drawers were in darkness, leaving me unable to retrieve the mirror equivalents of tools Aurope had carried away.  Why did the furniture in this house have to be so solid?

Rhetorical question.  I suspected I knew why: the occupants had long been anticipating something like a siege or something within the house wanting to get out.  Every little bit mattered.

My eye fell on the swivel chair.  The mirror to Rose’s own.  Not entirely in the darkness.

We were reflections of one another?  Maybe her paralysis was my path to action.

I grabbed the back of the chair with both hands, lifting the chair over the desk.

On my way to the window, I twisted my entire body to swing it at the door frame.  Wood splintered, the chair back largely detaching from the base, four prongs of sharp wood sticking out.

“Here we go, blood to seal the deal,” the priest said, “and a prayer, hm.”

I slashed my palm with the wood.  The tattooed flesh didn’t cut.

I grabbed my sweatshirt, lifting it, and slashed at my hip instead.

Dropping my sweatshirt and wiping my hand in the same motion, I slammed my blood-wet hand against the glass.

“Come, Evan!”  I shouted.

The timing was as ideal as it could get.  The maenad Metrodora was in the process of putting him in the ‘box’ of books.

“My power for you!” I said.  But Evan was already free, flying through the gap in between the box and the approaching lid.  He plunged past the border of the circle, stray feathers scattering as if he were scraping against something that wasn’t even there.  The ensuing flight was ungainly, devoid of coordination and straight lines, like a sloppy paper airplane that just happened to be flapping its wings.

He made it through the doorway from the library to the hallway, though.

Connection, I thought.  Our connection had been cut, but that didn’t mean new and different ones couldn’t be formed.

I was a hollow Blake-shaped thing, all the gaps filled with Drains-stuff and spirits.

Evan was a dead little boy’s soul, molded into a bird body by the familiar ritual, the gap from our missing connection stuffed with more spirits.

If I was, as Faysal said, instinctively devouring spirits to shore up the gaps, then Evan was probably doing the same.

I knew he’d be receptive to taking anything I had to offer.  I just had to give.

And now he was free, flying under the influence.

The connection I’d just forged, giving him a bit of myself, apparently drew him toward me.  A moth to a candle.

“Stop,” I said.  “Don’t-”

He turned, flapping wildly in some attempt to stop or stall his forward movement.  He succeeded in only making a sharp right, sharp left, and then hit the mirror.  He dropped out of my field of view.

“Fuck,” I said.

Jeremy was striding our way, flanked by maenad and satyrs.

With one hand, he swept the frame off the wall.

I moved before it could shatter.  Other pieces of glass were falling, leaving me no place to go but down.

The second floor had only a few pictures and windows.  Less than there had been the last time I’d been there.  I headed straight for the first floor, instead.

When I looked, craning my head to see, I could make out the patches of light, distorted because I was viewing them from the wrong side, winking out, one by one.

I’d apparently made myself enough of a nuisance that he wasn’t interested in talking.

My hand was still bloody, though the gash at my waist was closing, knitting together like knotty wood, an instant scar of sorts.

Evan was an escape artist, so to speak, he’d evaded the Hyena, and spirits of freedom and survival and whatever else had been attracted to him, shoring up his soul in a kind of anti-wraith way.

If someone was going to help here, it would be him.  But he couldn’t even fly straight.

I heard Evan’s voice, growing louder on the approach

“Crap, crap, crapcrap, crahp, craahhhhppppp…”

Evan turned, bumping the wall as he rounded the bend in the staircase.  He managed to fold his wing in before he collided, keeping it from snapping or breaking.  He didn’t start flapping until he was far enough away from the wall, and his reactions were slow.  He nearly hit the ground before he managed to fly again.

A satyr and maenad jumped down to the landing behind him, not wasting a second in continuing down the staircase, chasing him.

“Oh crap!”

“Over here!” I shouted.

He clipped the couch as he turned, spiraling violently before he managed to get his bearings.  Having learned from his mistake upstairs, he didn’t try to perch or stop abruptly.  He set himself down, legs pulled up against his body, and coasted on the hardwood, spinning in a half-circle as he slid.  He came to a stop with his back to me.

He was darker around some of the edges, as though feathers were stained.  He really had taken in a bit of me.  A bit of the Drains.

“Stay put,” I said.

He pulled his wings and feet tight against his body, shortening his neck.

I held the Hyena in plain sight.

The satyr cleared the couch with an easy jump, one hand on the back of the piece of furniture.  The maenad slowed, pacing with a kind of menace in her eyes.

“Crap,” Evan said.

Both the satyr and the maenad had stopped where they were.

“Here, birdy, birdy, birdy,” the satyr said, singsong.

“Nuh uh.”

Whatever else was going on, they were spooked by me.  That counted for something.

Evan was flying poorly and wasn’t successfully putting together any words longer than a syllable.  Even those lone syllables weren’t that well put together.

We had to make do.

A book flew through the air.  I dodged to the front window, where a single pane was intact enough for me to stand in.

It had been thrown by the maenad.  The satyr was free to lunge for Evan.

“Crap!”  Evan dodged out of the way.

I pressed my hand against the window.  I closed my eyes.  “Spirits, I know I’m not a practitioner, but I could use help.  As you managed the giving, please take.  Give me the poisons that course through Evan Matthieu’s-”

Another thrown book.  It hooked on the curtain, losing much of its momentum, and glanced harmlessly against the window.

“-body.  Let me be the one who is drunk on the priest’s illusions.  I offer power, and I offer it knowing I might permanently change as a consequence.”

Nothing.

Fuck you, spirits, I thought.

Too complex.  I couldn’t manage the complex stuff.  Simpler stuff only.

Options.  There would be no convincing these Others.  I couldn’t reach them to hurt them.  Something in the environment?

“Evan,” I said.

“Gah!” he shouted, turning less than sharply in an attempt to avoid the satyr’s reaching hand.

“Did Rose set up anything?  Countermeasures?  Ready summons?”

“Ahhhhh!”

“Evan!”

“Yes!  Crap!  Help!”

Great.  There was possibly an option, but Evan wasn’t in a state or a position to spell it out.

We needed breathing room, but these creatures wouldn’t stop anytime soon, if my brief skirmish with the maenad earlier was any clue.

He veered toward the maenad.  She didn’t glance his way as she picked up another book.

But I saw muscles tense in her legs.

“Back!” I shouted.

Evan steered himself back and away.  His reactions were slow.

The maenad twisted on the spot, reaching for him.

He managed to stay out of the reach of her arms, dodging the satyr.  The maenad had to move around the satyr to chase, which gave Evan a chance.

He managed to wedge himself into the one-and-a-half inch gap between the tops of the bookshelves and the ceiling.

The satyr leaped onto the bookshelf, hands and feet on the individual shelves.  The maenad wasn’t far behind.  One hand groped in the gap for Evan.  I saw only the paleness of his feathered belly as he squirmed his way to the side, moving to the far end of the long row of bookshelves.

He couldn’t make a daring escape like this, I couldn’t necessarily help him, and if we waited, things wouldn’t get much better for us.

Damn it.

I didn’t have the abilities of a proper practitioner.  I didn’t have options.

I’d do what the maenad had done to me, attacking from a distance, but I was pretty sure that anything I threw through the window would be fake, breaking with the window.  I didn’t have anything suitably solid I could grab and throw.

Well, no, that wasn’t true.  I had the Hyena.  I didn’t trust my ability to throw it effectively.

Something else…

If I was going to turn the tables by doing what the maenad had done to me, why not take it a step further?

If I had no power or options… the natural conclusion was to bluff, and hope this pair wasn’t too brilliant.

“I now invoke all the powers and knowledge personally taught to me by my grandmother,” I said, speaking low and grave.  “I call on the instructions she gave me in this very room, the words she gently imparted to me in the antechamber upstairs.  I call on the tutorings of demons she summoned on my behalf, everything that was given to me so I might know the words to speak to kill a god.”

Not technically a lie, as I saw it.  When I invoked all of those things, I was invoking nothing.

But both the satyr and maenad looked at me, eyes wide.

Evan flew free, slipping out of the cranny behind their turned heads.

“Deus nihilis,” I started.  “Nex-”

That was enough to get them to act.  If not because they bought it, I imagined the idea was still pretty insulting.

They weren’t keen on closing the distance and getting stabbed like the greater maenad had.  Killia or whatever her name had been.  The maenad grabbed a book instead.  An old leather-bound dictionary with gold at the edges of the pages.  The sort that predated the internet, a one-stop place to find any given word.

She hurled it at me.

I shoved my hands through the window.  Glass shattered.  The local section of the mirrorverse went dark.

I caught the book.

I leaped over to the dark reflective screen of the television set before I could get shunted, because moving faster was key here.

Still holding the book, I threw it, two handed.

Glass shattered as the dictionary punched through.

I was already moving to the side.  I stood in the hallway, with only a sliver of a view of the living room.

The satyr was sitting down, hand to his nose, blood flowing from the cracks between pages.

As far as they’d seen, they’d thrown the dictionary at the window, only for it to disappear as the window broke, reappearing a second later from the nearest reflective surface, apparently slamming into the satyr’s head.

I was glad it had worked.  If I’d merely dropped the book instead of bringing it with me, I would’ve had to catch the next one, throwing it back blind in the same motion, before the window finished breaking.  Less effective.

Damn, all the same.  I’d been aiming at the maenad.  More dangerous, as far as I could tell.

I saw Evan flying in short bursts.  Still not a straight line, taking evasive maneuvers with nobody chasing him, or just trying to get away with no idea how.

“Evan,” I said.  The satyr and maenad snapped their heads around to look at me.

Evan stopped again, doing his skid-landing in the hallway, coming to a stop a short distance to the left of me.

The satyr started to stand, wobbled, and fell.

The maenad grabbed him by one horn, hauling him to his feet.  He leaned heavily on her.

What now?  Reach for me and I’ll cut you.  Throw something at me and I might throw it back.

They didn’t want to walk by me, either, and that meant they couldn’t go back upstairs.

“What now?” Evan asked.

“Trying to think,” I said.  I didn’t feel as unfocused as before.

Were the effects wearing off?

“Are you feeling better?” I asked.

“Some,” he said.

I nodded slowly.

Not necessarily a good thing.

That meant Rose might be waking up.

“The stuff you mentioned.  Countermeasures and traps?” I asked.

“There’s some stuff with the deeb- diabluh- the evil books.  Pack of dust stuff, uh, powder.  Some more in the shelves.  cards.  She didn’t even tell the others, but I sleep in there and I preted’d to sleep and watched.  She doesn’t want ’em to tamper with any of it.”

“Good to know,” I said.

“My head hurts.”

“It’ll get better,” I said.

“There was this big bang, and then bluh,” Evan said.  “Couldn’t see, couldn’t stand.  Rose said to go in the library and then tried to close the door with Tiff.  The crow man said somethin’…”

“Corvidae?” I asked.

“Yeah.  Corb- Crow man said somethin’ and Rose was scared.  She banshid’ him instead of fin’shin’ the door.  Tiv and Ty didn’t get the door closed, and then it all went fuzzy.”

I watched as the maenad paced, dragging the satyr with her, as if she thought she could find an angle to attack from.

“What did Corvidae say?” I asked.

“That he’d look after her while she was sleep’n.”

“I get it,” I said.

“Really?  I can’t even talk right.””

“You’re drunk,” I commented.

“This is been’ drunk?  Bluh,” he said.  “What’s wrong with people?  Why would you want this?  Can’t even fly proper.”

“People don’t fly,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” he said, sounding amazingly affronted.  It went beyond the indignance of the young and the surliest inebriated and combined the two.

“You fly, though,” I said.

“I’m not people,” he somehow manged to pronounce the word like he was saying ‘peephole’.  He sounded even more belligerent as he raised his voice, “I’m a god-dammed bird of fire and awesome who just isn’t on fire yet.”

“Damn straight,” I said.

The maenad was watching us.  Her eyes moved from me to Evan as we talked.  She was following the conversation.  The satyr looked like it had a little more control of its faculties than it had.  A fast healer?

I couldn’t move to hold the conversation elsewhere without giving up the spot that kept her from reporting to her priest.  Evan wasn’t coordinated enough to fly up to me, and I couldn’t bend down, either.

That made detailing a strategy difficult.

“I need a mirror,” I said.  “Something that can be carried.  I need you to think.  Have you seen any kind of compact or hand mirror with Rose, Tiff or Alexis’ stuff, in the bathroom?  Grandmother’s stuff, even?”

“Dunno,” he said.

Damn.

“I can look,” he said.

“Wait,” I said.

But he was already taking flight.

In a way, my short skirmish with the elder maenad had been helpful.  While it had broken a dozen pieces of glass, it had scattered that glass over the floor upstairs.  It had also given me a very practical way of assessing just how my particular relationship to the mirror world worked.  The speed I could move, the way the worlds came apart.

The maenad here gave chase, pushing the satyr so he’d land on the armchair before bolting forward, after Evan.  She was almost on all fours as she crossed the couch, dropping close to the ground.

I lunged, stabbing through, but she was out of my reach.

I moved, switching to the nearest window.

Evan would be on the second floor, checking the bathroom.  The problem with the second floor was that my short skirmish had destroyed just about every reflective surface.  Only a couple of small picture frames remained, as well as the mirror in the bathroom.

I didn’t want it to come that close to the wire.  If she confronted Evan and I there, I wasn’t positive I could protect Evan and the mirror at the same time.

“Jeremy!” she shrieked, as she reached the second floor.

She was staying low, moving on all fours with about the same ease and speed that I might move on two.  Muscles stood tense in her arms and legs, her eyes bloodshot.  At this height, I couldn’t quite reach her.  I’d miss like I had before.  I wasn’t sure I could get ahead of her to hit her the next time either.

The closest thing, apparently, that Jeremy had to soldiers.

But even if she was flexible, there were limitations.  Her body bent more easily, but it still moved like a human did.

Crawling, she couldn’t look up.

I got ahead of her, gripped the hyena, and plunged it through the glass.

My arm bent.  I shoved, pushing the frame away from the wall.

Letting it fall.

I held the blade out, and felt it make contact with something.

I wasn’t able to retract my arm before I was shunted off to the nearest location.

The maenad lay on her side, both hands on her ankle.  I’d raked the back of her calf and her ankle, slicing them.

Meaning I’d very nearly missed.

Evan left the bathroom.  A small hand-compact shed light.

“They’re coming!” the wounded maenad screamed.

“Higher,” I said.

Evan flew higher.  The area in the compact’s reflection grew wider.

I skipped over, running to keep up, fighting to stay within the compact’s area as Evan swerved.

“Free Rose, free the others, or uncover the mirror in there,” I said.  “Hold off on the traps until I say, unless you don’t see any other option.  If you can, get close to Jeremy, give me the word, I’ll stab.”

“‘Kay,” Evan told me.  “Stabby mirror.”

I would have felt more confident if he didn’t nearly clip a wall as he said it.

They’d cleared all the reflective surfaces on the third floor.  Even the windows on either side of the hallway were broken or covered, as far as I could tell.

All I had was the mirror Evan held.

My way was clear, but Evan wasn’t so lucky.  When he flew to one side, I had to adjust.

When he flew lower, passing through the doorway, the amount of floor space I had shrank to maybe four feet across.

Then, just as quick, he soared higher.  The image reflected in the compact mirror was a bird’s eye view of the library.  I saw tracts of detail, and areas of nothingness where surfaces weren’t captured in the mirror.

“You can’t expect to win,” Jeremy called out.

“I can’t stand by while you go after my friends!”

“The same friends who locked you out?” he asked.  “Who left you to rot?”

“Extenuating circumstances!” I called out.  I positioned myself more or less where I thought he was.

“One word, and I can end this,” he said.  “What can you do?”

“One word, and I can end this,” I retorted.

“Gone,” I heard Evan’s voice from far away.

“What?” I asked.

“Gone,” he said.  “Crap, crap, crap!”

“What’s gone?”

“The stuff!”

My view was only of the empty library.  My window into the real world was a good twenty feet overhead, a circle about as wide as my palm.

Sounds and estimation were my only insights.

“Plan C!” Evan shouted.

Plan C?

Then he swooped, swaying a little as he fought to maintain his balance, and I knew.

Regardless of what happened, when I broke the mirror, I’d get shunted elsewhere.  My ability to act here would cease.

I held the Hyena in both hands, eyes trained on the little circle that was shedding light.

It swept toward me.

“Now!” Evan called out.  The voice sounded weird.

Not Evan.  It was Jeremy’s voice.

The little compact broke, and my footing disappeared with it.

At the same time, light flared, another reflection opening up.

I was shunted, dumped onto another patch of light.

I picked myself up.

I could see a pizza slice of the library, one quarter of it, bookshelves.

When I turned around, I could see the source of the reflection.  The full-length mirror.

Reflected, I could make out Rose, still in the chair by the desk, Jeremy, and my friends, with a satyr and maenad standing nearby.  The satyr was holding a leather thong.  A sling.

I had an idea of what had happened.

A rather bleary-looking Ty picked Evan up gingerly.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Ty said.

“Good,” I said.  “Guess you got me, priest.”

“Yes,” Jeremy said.  “You got my attention.”

I had a bad feeling I couldn’t place.

Stepping closer to the mirror, I could make out the mark on the floor.

They’d moved the full-length mirror, placing it in the circle he’d started to make for Evan.

He’d then broken the one mirror that held me while they removed the cloth, moving me to the nearest available surface, the one inside the circle.  Maybe he’d closed it after.  Maybe he hadn’t needed to.

I’d been bound the same way Conquest had.

“How did you know how the mirror thing worked?” I asked.  “You shouldn’t-”

“I told him,” Rose said.

I stared.

“I had a plan, Blake,” she said.  “Those three know it.  Evan knows it, even if he doesn’t always get it.”

“He doesn’t like the idea of using monsters,” Ty said.

“Monsters?” I asked.

“I set up a dead man’s switch,” Rose said.  “Me and Barbatorem.  If I die, he’s going to get out.  While you were breaking windows downstairs, I was talking with Jeremy.  It’s not a victory on either side, but it’s-”

“Grounds for negotiation,” Jeremy said.  He looked displeased.  “I’ll leave you be while I look after the two I sent downstairs.”

He left the room.

Rose waited for him to go.

“If he had to walk away, it would be a loss,” Rose said.  “As it stands, I’m giving up some things, and he’s leaving me and the others alone.  The house doesn’t have barriers, so it’ll be tough at first, but… we’re okay.  We were going to be okay from the start.”

“What was the deal?” I asked.

“You,” she said.  “I gave him what he needed to bind you, told them how to disarm the traps Evan knew about.  At the end of the day, they only want things to be manageable.  I made them pay me for it, in a roundabout way.  Deflected their first move.  They also wanted me to agree to certain terms of war.  I’ve accepted this time.”

“But you’re using a demon?  You’re tainted by Conquest, Rose,” I said.

“I know,” she said.  “They know.  Do you think we’ve been sitting on our hands, while I slowly went crazy?  We discussed it, we talked it over.  We have all these books, you don’t think we have a way to break Conquest’s hold?  We decided to keep it.  It’s a power source.  So long as I’m sure to spend it regularly, he doesn’t get too much of a grip on me.”

“But the demon.”

“It’s managed, Blake,” she said.  “Frankly, it’s none of your business.”

I tensed at that.

“Because I’m just the monster,” I said.

“You’re a monster, but that’s not all you are,” she said.  “If it helps you feel better, I did some research, we discussed some, and I’ve got a pretty good working theory on what you are, now.”

I remained silent, waiting for her to elaborate.

She didn’t.

“Dammit, Rose,” I said.

“If it helps,” she said, “We believe you now.”

“But you’re leaving me trapped?”

“Yes.  Had to happen, now that we know.”

I looked at my friends.

Of all of them, Alexis looked the most unhappy.  An unlit cigarette dangled from her lips.

“Alexis,” I said.

“I’m really sorry,” she said.

“About what?  What’s going on?”

“We can’t move you easily,” Rose said.  She turned the mirror until it faced the wall, not the bookshelves.  “This will have to do.”

“Hey,” I said.  “Wait, woah, fuck no.  That’s not giving me an answer.”

“It’s best if we don’t tell you,” Rose said.  “As I was saying, we can’t move you easily.  If you’re willing to be quiet and not kick up too much of a fuss, we can leave this like it is.  If you make a problem of it, then I’ll have to put down a rune of silence, or maybe even erect a temporary wall.  I don’t want to do that.”

I was silent, but it wasn’t out of any kind of obedience or cooperation.

My hands clenched at my side, I stared at her.

“Did Conquest get to you, or are you ten times the bitch that Grandmother was?” I asked.

“More likely the latter,” she said.  She turned her head.  “What?”

Jeremy spoke, offscreen.  “We’ll be taking our leave.  Something’s come up.  As agreed, we’ll vacate the premises.”

“What came up?”

“Things went… poorly, with our local ambassador.  The wraith is free, not bound as a familiar, and may have started off a chain of events.”

“I’ll come,” Rose said.  “Assuming you won’t try to harm me?”

“No.  This might need all available hands.  I’ll explain on the way.”

I watched as they filed out, one by one.

“Sorry,” Alexis said.

Outrage seized my throat.

Ty was among the last to leave.  I saw Evan in his hands, moving to stand rather than lie on his side.

He saw me, and offered me a wing-salute and a wink.

Maybe my only ally in this, and it was against his will, but he was still leaving.

The doors slammed shut.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Gathered Pages (Arc 10)

Notebook 27:

Note:  Archiving paper letter, sent.

Mr. Samaniego,

Thank you for your latest shipment.  It was just what I needed.  My sister was thrilled with the katana, and intends to use it regularly.  I did pass on your warning about katanas being far less effective than they appear to be in movies and video games, but she didn’t seem to care.  I’m caught between worrying she’ll get killed when it breaks at a critical moment or fall into a funk and be impossible to deal with for a week.

All the same, the gift bought me a week of her listening to me.  That matters a lot.  Thanks again.

To answer your question, things are heating up here, but are still under control.  A storm is brewing, and things that would stay away have been gravitating closer.  It isn’t the other practitioners at work.  I can’t help but imagine savvy crows lurking near a place that will soon be a battlefield.  Your offer for help is appreciated, but wouldn’t go over well.  I don’t know about the other locals, but Sandra has made it clear she knows who you are and would rather you stay away.

When you next collect from the black stipend, can you put some of it toward a bid for plastic explosive, low priority.  While you’re in that neighborhood, can you double check the rocket fund?  I could use the extra firepower if things go south.

I’ve finished the wiring on the radio.  It’s a week earlier than you asked for.  Recording and live feed options.  The live feed will kill batteries, so I included some with a good lifespan to them just in case, in a second routing.  To activate the hidden camera, use a pen or something else to depress the space between the AM and FM buttons.  I’m interested in hearing if you can see the camera lens without turning it on.  Reminder: your average practitioner will be able to look and see if something’s watching them, even if it’s a camera.  It’s a little heavy too, thanks to the extra batteries, you might want to watch out for that.

My best to the kids.

– Andy

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  Archiving paper letter, received.

Andy boy,

Good go with the camera.  Not so bad.

I opened it to dig out the extra battery and live feed.  Too much of a giveaway.  The detail work and hidden lens were good as they were, much better than anything my hands can do.  I can put just about any gun or an engine back together, but I can’t put tiny holes in the front of a plastic radio without making a hash of it.

Don’t worry about the camera being seen.  It’s not for any wizards or whatchits.  One of my crew has been acting funny.  Whole reason you’re supposed to operate in larger groups.  More eyes.  He’s still got his senses, but he’s dodging the cameras he knows about.  Might be drugs, might be witchery.  Might be he’s a clever something else who took his memories along with his face.

I’d leave it like it is and keep an eye on him, but my ex dropped the kids off (here of all places!) and I saw the man talking with them.  It’s enough to concern, if he’s unsafe.  We’ve got a new recruit, about your age, and you know I like to be careful with the trainees.  Too easy for bad influence to take hold as they mature.  I’m not specifically naming your sister here.  Not specifically.

The kids are fine.  Thanks for asking.  Long winter’s getting to them.  They only get a few hours of daylight that isn’t seeing them stuck inside a classroom.  I do what I have to, and they do their thing.  Keep me motivated, pop into my mind when it’s down to the wire and I need to dig up a bit more something to push through.

The quartet in ‘Magog picked up all the C4 we had to dole out before I could get your bid in.  Supplies are running low, with the last source we had getting arrested.  I know you said Eva was messing around with your grenades, and I know Mac taught you how to rig a daisy chain pin pull.  I stuck a belt of pineapples in your shipment.  I can’t imagine it’s unwanted.

Rocket?  I have serious reservations about giving you that RPG launcher, boy.  Either you’re using it, and I don’t think you’re equipped for it, or your sister is using it, and we’re talking a slew of other problems.

Consider asking for help instead.  Offer still stands.  I trust your sensibility, Andy boy.  If you think you need seven (now eight) good witch hunters to cut down the riff raff, you know we’re good for it.  We’re all in this together, Andy boy.  You two, me and my guys, the Magog nuts, the Montreal organization.

If you say no, then I’ll accept that.  I’ll trust your sensibility a little less, but I’ll accept that.

You know those files that Mac always had us fill out?  Wouldn’t mind seeing your best attempt at one.  I’m particularly interested in just how much danger you think you’re in.  A big part of the reason we interact is to share knowledge.  If you or Eva get yourselves into trouble, the rest of us need the details to walk into that situation with our eyes open.

-Samaniego.

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  Andy’s personal notes

The diary section.  Having sat here trying to figure out what I should do, I can’t help but see the open book and know I really should.  If anyone picks up the top book off the stack of volumes, I’ll say here what I said before.  I was never good at this.  Eva’s better at it than I am, which is weird, since I’m the book guy.  She tape records it, but she still does the personal diary bits pretty consistently.

I’m writing stream of consciousness because if I stop, I won’t get going again.  That’s the big problem with me.

When we got our training and they gave us all the tools we need to do this, they kept going on about how important the diaries are.  They made us read some too.

I think my problem is that I think too much.  Most of us who start this when we’re kids, we don’t live long enough to leave anyone behind.  Humans have an instinctive desire to leave a legacy.  I don’t like myself enough to want to leave anything of myself behind.

The tone of things is changing.  Everyone’s excited, Eva included, and all I can think about is what comes next.

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  After Action Report (Andy & Eva)

Job commissioned by council.

Incident was raised by Joanna Duchamp, the younger, corroborated by other members of the younger council – informal group of practitioners consisting of Behaims, Duchamps, Maggie Holt and possibly padraic.

Grade schoolers in Joanna’s classroom reported a shallow puddle in the woods east of school.  Stones and branches that were dropped into the puddle disappeared, leaving no trace, only muddy clouds.  Children were joking about pushing each other in, or threatening to throw the boots or hats of others into the muddle.

Joanna was unable to show us the way.  My suspicion is that the puddle noted her approach.  Contacted young neighbor and got directions.  Eva and I went to look.

The puddle was a manifestation of a frog spirit.  We rigged a treated wire snare for a countermeasure, and Eva stood by with a weapon.  We disrupted the manifestation to raise the frog spirit, and killed it with a treated wire snare.

Frogs should be hibernating for the winter.  It concerns me that a frog spirit would be active at this time of year.

Our resources aren’t fleshed out enough to identify it in more detail or look up why.  I received mail from Samaniego two days ago, and I’ve been meaning to respond.  Tomorrow.  Am tired after two long hikes past the school in one day.

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  Archiving paper letter, sent.

Mr. Samaniego,

I’ve attached backups of all my files.  See .crypt 1 through 26 and ’27incomplete’.  You’ll need a program to open them.  I included a notepad document with some directions on how to get that program.  I wanted to protect all exchanges – to access pages where you and I exchanged correspondence, you or I would have to supply the password.  The same goes for my conversations with Creevey.

Your offer for help is appreciated and accepted.  I would still ask you to please steer clear of Jacob’s Bell.  My need for help takes another form.  If your trainee is still there, I would very much appreciate if you could have her set up something online for sharing information.  A slow but steady stream of guests have been arriving over the past week, and I can’t keep up, going at the rate I have been.  Eva’s fine, Eva runs on instinct, but I need to research what we’re up against, so I at least know what to steer her away from.

Please see pages 120, 122 and 150 in volume twenty six and pages 45 and 60 in volume twenty-seven.  Also, I described a series of creatures on page 71 of volume twenty-seven.

Help with identification would go a long way.

Eva and I would very much like to have our rocket launcher.  I talked about it with her, in the sense of the general situation, and she agreed.  No jokes, no apparent manipulation.  I think she realizes that things are getting more dangerous, and recognizes the need for more firepower.

If Eva and I are on the same page about something, that’s indication enough.

-Andy

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  Archiving paper letter, received.

Andy boy,

You had to ask about the computers, huh?  I’ve put the new recruit on it.

If the two of you are on the same page, yeah, I’ll go with it.  I’ve asked around about your weapon, and passed on the files.  The others will get back to you.

Good luck.

-Samaniego

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  Andy’s personal notes, after action reports.

Met with the unnamed practitioner, placed tape with conversation transcript in the Holt file.  We left on amiable terms, despite Eva’s initially hostile response (threatening to shoot the practitioner).  I’m concerned about Eva, and it’s not something I can address with Mac, Creevey or the Magog group.

We walked different paths from the beginning.  Different forms of training, different amounts of time spent with Mac’s group, Creevey, in Halifax, and with the talons in Rhode Island.  They trained us in all the basics, but they emphasized our strengths too.  While I was learning to use a hunting rifle, Eva was hunting goblins with a sword in hand.  While I was learning about the basic principles of the practice in Halifax, Eva was in London, Ontario, doing god knows what.

I’m increasingly worried that something went wrong.  That she ran into something and it got to her.

I’m not sure it was one of the monsters.  Not in the fang and claw sense.

We had two jobs on behalf of the council, keeping things tidy while they get their ducks in a row.  Non-allied threats are still lingering.  Goblins are supposed to sleep for sixteen to twenty-two hours a day, but I’ve noticed goblins have been more awake and active than that.  Ghosts are cropping up, and they should be quieter than they are.  Old echoes are stirring.

Things move so slowly that we don’t see the gradual changes, but the monsters who live for centuries do.  I’ve wondered for a long time why the monsters gather in the same places the practitioners do.  The obvious answer is that the practitioners follow where the monsters are, drawing on the power the monsters can give them.  But I don’t think that’s it.  The monsters should want to avoid the practitioners, who are the best equipped to bind them.

The second answer is that monsters are practitioners.  We know about some cases.  See Mara in the files for Jacob’s Bell.  It’s a common theory with Faerie, and obviously the likes of vampires and werewolves, which are much rarer and more monstrous than conventional media would have us believe.  Again, it’s an answer, but it doesn’t feel like ~the~ answer.

This is a thought I’m putting together as I put pen to paper, something I’ve thought about in the shower, but what if the monsters are following practitioners because there’s some fallout we’re not fully aware of?  What if we’re gouging reality?  I sit in on the council meetings, because I don’t trust Eva to go alone, and I won’t stop her from seeing what she views as ‘the drama’.  I watch Sandra and Johannes interact, and I see them practicing.  A part of me wonders, are each of those displays generating some attention?  Are some or all of the monsters detecting magic in the air like sharks in the water detecting magical signals or sniff out blood?

They become a little less human over time.  They make compromises, and they might unwittingly be inviting the monsters into Jacob’s Bell.  Sandra does it because it’s the way it has always been done in her family.  Johannes does it with the future in mind.  Both do it to be on top.

I think about that.  The selfish actions, and the unwitting damage they may be causing.  I don’t like it, but I have to keep doing what I do.

Promises.  Responsibilities.

Eva is all about action.  She doesn’t like to sit still, and when she does, she turns on the television and tunes into something that lets her turn her brain off.  Or blares music so loud that thinking is impossible.

For a long time, she was better than me.  Maybe she still is, standalone.  If Sandra needed to die, I think Eva could do it.  I could do it too, but not without drawing on expensive tools, planning for days or a week.

It felt subversive, giving the girl with the scarf weapons.  It wasn’t something I should have done, standing where I do.

There are promises to keep.

In the interest of keeping those promises, we went after two of the monsters.  Trying to keep things under control.

In the middle of the day, we had to deal with a gnome or brownie or fairy-cousin of some sort.  A little person disguised as one of us, going door to door with a clipboard.  There was something questionable in the fine print.

The rules are strict when it comes to going after the regular people.  Our hunt wasn’t successful.  It was fast, it was tricky, and we weren’t coordinated enough.  It was one of the monsters that’s been around so long it knows most of the conventional tricks.

Eva blamed me for letting it slip away.  She was probably right.

I was inspired to write this entry by the meeting with the girl with the scarf, because I definitely want better records if memories are being altered, and by the night that followed, because a thought crossed my mind, and it felt like more of an epiphany.

Eva and I both had guns.  Shotguns with rock salt for a ghost.  Not perfect, but it slowed it down.  The echo went as quickly as it’d resurfaced.

The police came, hearing the gunshots.  We couldn’t afford to get caught without the practitioner police chief in town to get us off the hook.

The close call made me think.  I was tired, I don’t have a lot of stamina on a good day, and for a moment, I nearly considered giving up.

I nearly gave up on my promise to Mac.

Hearing Eva yell at me, I felt like it was a role reversal.

What if I’m as bad as she is?  I’ve yelled at her so many times for getting into hairy situations, for taking risks, or making blind leaps, picking a fight without knowing exactly what she’s fighting.

But she’s a genius, in terms of talent.  She can go toe to toe with a faerie that’s glamoured itself up as a vampire, harboring some of the best traits of both, and still cut the thing’s head from its shoulders.

The thought hit me that I’m just as bad as she is.  To want to get arrested.  To have it end.  Knowing that she’s behind bars, and so am I, and the responsibility is over.  No caring for the sister who trained in how to fight monsters and became one.  Just me, a prison cell, and a book.

To end my existence.

Realizing that was a wake up call, hearing it from Eva’s lips doubly so.

I don’t want to go down that road.

That means being more regular with my diary entries.  Polish my skills.

The promise to Mac still holds.  He was my teacher.  More of a dad than anyone was to me.  I owe him too much.  As infuriating as Eva can be, Mac saved her for me.  Mac saved me from me.  He saved my parents, even if it was with an ice pick through the temple.

It’s my duty to see the promise through.

■

Andrew,

I know we haven’t been in contact, but three people have been in touch with me in the past week, asking my advice in identifying the creatures you’ve described this past week.  Rather than let the irritations continue, I’m going to the source.  You’ll have ten deliveries in the next two weeks.  Boxes of books.  My secondhand tomes.  I’ve already marked some pages where you raised questions or named details, my best guesses, off the top of my head.  Please tell your teenaged witch hunter peers to stop pestering me about the computer nonsense.

-Creevey

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  Andy’s personal notes.

The girl with the scarf is now ‘Mags’, a local ambassador.

Rose, too, has returned.

They always pushed paper in training.  The idea that paper is more permanent than the digital.

My papers are getting awfully messy, with big gaps in the files.  For any poor soul that has to dig through my teenage ramblings, any gaps in the files are because Eva opened a window and some of the pages blew out the window.

I think there’s more to it than coincidence.  Too specific, as events go.

The files that went missing seem to have something to do with the younger Rose.  They cover the point in time when Rose Thorburn the younger replaced Molly Walker.  Trickery, or did the universe want to erase traces?  Even my memories of Rose are fuzzy and nonspecific.  It feels somehow like it’s the first time I’m seeing her face.

She did offer me support, at a time when I was feeling pretty grim.

She brought a cabal with her, and they look fairly new to all this.  It reminds me of me, back when I started the training with Mac.  Every monster was a whole different kind of frightening.  Molly Walker was like that up until the end.

Rose feels different than when she left, somehow.  Now, as I think about how her predecessor handled everything… I think about how Rose coped, and I wonder ‘how did she handle it?’ and I can’t come up with much.

When I asked Eva, Eva reminded me of the techniques we learned.  Right off the bat, she found the discrepancy.

When we ask, “How did Rose manage?”, we struggle to answer.

When we ask, “How did the second Thorburn heir manage?” we can mutually agree that the heir was almost eerily in step with this world.

As witch hunters, free of any vows or ties to the world the monsters and practitioners inhabit, we’re protected against the trickery.  A measure of innocence can challenge that reality, and clearly see the emperor without his clothes.

It’s the youths that are going to make a difference.  Good or bad.

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  After action reports.

Eva’s commented on the change in my outlook.  We’re working more effectively as a team now.

Eight threats targeted and chased down in the past week.  Eight victories.  I even allowed myself to get excited about it, as we found our stride.  Eva in close, drawing attention, me at a distance.

She’s listening to me more, even.  It’s always been her propensity to ignore people she doesn’t agree with.  I think she agrees with how we’re doing things now.  Block escape routes with traps, wait until they’re in the right position, then attack.  Things aren’t fixed.  She’s still more reckless than she once was.

It helps that we have less administrative work, with Mags taking on the messenger duties, standing by at meetings.  She doesn’t have a lot of firepower, but there’s a symbolic element to it.We remain ninety percent positive that one bogeyman we dealt with was attached to Rose.  Testing the water, seeing how responsive we were.  We crossed paths a few days later, and it felt like she was showing me just a bit more respect.It’s now impossible to keep track of the local guests.  No less than twelve practitioners under Sandra, twenty monsters working for or doing favors for Johannes.  I’m getting four hours of sleep a night, staying up reading, and sleeping in thirty minute bursts during the day to keep going, but I have more drive than I had when I was sleeping twice the amount.

The remainder of the action reports are as follows:

- Eva baited a skinchanger into an old boathouse past the marina.  I crushed it with a deadfall trap.

- Went with Mags to help with goblin hunting, helping to herd them to a place where she could bind them.  I believe they’re still bound, and she’s waiting them out.

- One Nightmare-type monster was invading dreams.  Targeting normals.  Not affiliated with Johannes or Sandra.  Found wandering the streets in a human guise, spotted through the trickery with innocence, cut down with katana.

- Junior council pointed us at a new child at school.  We followed.  No parents or furniture in house, never slept – only stood in the house.  Executed quietly, no blood was drawn by cuts.  Plant matter at core.

- Investigation by Sandra led us to second wooden person.  Adult, fought back.  Immolated by molotov.

- Arrogant practitioner among first outsiders to make open bid for leadership.  Small bomb under seat of car.  Sandra and Duncan, the new police liason, diverted attention of authorities.

- Backwards Man required special means of tracking, as the human-like monster functioned by operating backwards in time.  Wounds occurred in his future, our past, making it impossible to make anything stick.  Came after us with knives.  I distracted while Eva slipped by to invade his apartment.  Destroyed the object at the crux of his nature.  Investigation into ties to local Chronomancers was initiated and dismissed.

- Practitioner was posing as a tertiary member of the Duchamp family.  Sandra’s records showed no such evidence of marriage.  Simply trying to hide in the background.  I took him down with the second shot from 150m range with a hunting rifle.

I don’t enjoy the killing, but I was proud of that last one.

Things are accelerating.

■

Notebook 27:

Note:  Council Notes

Samaniego told me to keep logs, in case something happened to me.

If something happens to me in the near future, this is going to be at the root of it.

I’m writing it as I remember it:

■

Mags entered the church.  Molly ‘walked’ a half-step behind her.  Not quite floating, not quite walking, not walking like someone would walk on the moon either.  She didn’t really have feet, either.

Andy studied the ghost, pen ticking on his notebook as he leaned against the stage.

He’d visited it before, to study the thing, even considered getting rid of it.

Now it was active, alive, and it looked meaner.

“We’ve got a problem,” Eva said.

“Yep,” he said.

“We were just talking about you,” Johannes commented.

“I don’t suppose you want to start over from the beginning?”

“We were talking in generalities,” Sandra said.  “Unlike the demesnes claim, it isn’t always obvious if someone has carried out one ritual or another, like the familiar ritual.”

“That’s an invitation to share,” Johannes said.

“Oh,” Mags said, looking between them, “I thought you’d say more.  You had to have discussed more than that.“

“We’re not your enemies,” Sandra said.

“Yet somehow I don’t think you’re baking me a cake in here,” Mags said.

“When you wanted to claim the title of ambassador, I’d like to think we were gracious.”

“It wasn’t entirely selfless,” Mags said.  “You stood to gain too, removing a problem from the board by making it a non-entity.”

“If we’d stood by and let you continue down that road,” Sandra said, “You would have become a non-entity all the same.”

“But not without making a mess,” Mags said.

Sandra sighed.

“Is a three week span enough time for you to lose your sense of appreciation?” Duncan asked, from the sidelines.

Andy looked at Duncan.  As factions went, Duncan was a non-player.  Or he wanted everyone else to think so.  The real risks were the two people who were in Duncan’s company right now.  A young and talented chronomancer, and an older member of the family.

He would be very surprised if the young chronomancer wasn’t the one to ascend to the head of the house.

Mags spoke with a terse tone, “I don’t think I’m showing a lack of appreciation.  I’m just a little miffed that you’re questioning me, instead of giving me the benefit of a doubt.”

“You’ve upset your neutral position.”

“I’ve done exactly what you guys did for me.  I took a wild, unpredictable element and I made an effort to normalize her, to keep things quiet.”

“With no ulterior motives?” Sandra asked.

“With no mind to consequences?” Johannes added.

“I paid lots of mind to consequences.  I just pushed them aside,” Mags said.

“I really did want to support you,” Sandra said.  “But you’re making it hard.  You’ve upset your neutral position.  If we don’t challenge you for a flagrant violation, picking one side in the conflict, then our word is worth less.”

A self-imposed bondage of rules and law, Andy mused.

“A flagrant violation on the surface only.”

“Tell me how it isn’t a violation,” Sandra said.  In a serious, quiet voice, she added, “Please.”

“Molly,” Mags said, not looking at the ghost.  “Do you harbor any love for the Thorburn family?”

“My immediate family yes.”

“For Rose?”

“Definitely not Rose.”

Mags spread her arms.

“Thin as arguments go,” Duncan said.  “It’s fine because she’s not particularly fond of her family?”

“That’s all you’re going to get, and that should be all you need,” Mags said.

“Is it now?”

“I asked, she said no,” Mags added.

There were a few exchanged glances.

Andy made a note in his book.  Not an entry, but something to inform his entry when he wrote it.  Besides, it gave him something to do with his hands.

He hated these meetings.

“You still asked,” Duncan said.

“Thin, as arguments go,” Mags retorted.

“Enough,” Sandra said.  “No bickering, please.”

Mags shrugged, sticking her hands into her pockets.

Duncan took a second to compose himself, before speaking in very deliberate, authoritarian tones, “You were the one to resurrect her.”

“Accidentally,” Mags said.  “I think.”

“Regardless of what happens, you’ve upset the situation in Jacob’s Bell.”

“I got the situation under control.  No real harm done.”

“That’s for us to decide,” Duncan said.

“Can we not let Dudley Donut here keep talking?” Mags asked.

“Wherever blame lies,” Sandra said, “We need to deal with Molly Walker’s spirit.”

“No,” Molly said.  “I don’t need ‘dealing with’.”

“You’re quite sentient, as ghosts go,” Johannes commented.

Andy saw Mags look at Faysal, then Johannes.

Something up there.

“That was a whole other issue,” Mags said.

“What I require,” Molly said, “Is an apology.  Amends.”

“Very sentient,” Johannes commented.

“Not helping,” Sandra told him.  “What sort of amends?”

“A child from each group,” Molly said, staring.  “A meaningful sacrifice from Johannes, who doesn’t have a child to spare, but who stood by and let me be killed.”

Andy saw Eva’s hand go toward her weapon.

He put his hand on her wrist, shaking his head a little.

“That’s, uh, not going to work,” Mags said.

“I think everyone present agrees with the ambassador,” Johannes said.

“I don’t,” Sandra said.  “Can I take the ‘sleeping beauty’ loophole?”

Molly gave Sandra a curious look.

“Not death.  But removed from the family all the same.  A loss, a sacrifice all the same, a child sent away, never to return?”

“Do you swear this?” Molly asked.

“No,” Sandra said.  “I don’t swear.  I don’t have a child of my own to give up, and I suspect I’d struggle to find a mother who’s willing.  It’s only a thought.”

“I’m not willing to do even that,” Duncan said.

“And I would still be in a position of making a meaningful sacrifice,” Johannes added.

“This is the way it always happens,” Molly said.  “My grandmother, my parents, my aunts and uncles.  They’re greedy, selfish, they refuse to face the consequences.  Those consequences get passed on to the young.”

And the young are tasked with changing the status quo, before they become the problem, Andy thought.

“Don’t,” Mags said.  “Whatever you’re thinking of doing-”

“They killed me.  You killed me.  I believe you, that you’re willing to make amends.  What comes next-”

Andy didn’t stop Eva from raising her weapon.  A pistol loaded with salt shot.

She fired.

The wraith was fast to move out of the way.  Unexpectedly so.  Mags yelped, throwing herself to the side.

The wraith’s voice echoed through the church, “I can’t promise you’ll walk away unscathed, but I won’t come for you, murderer.  The others, the old ones… they have to face what they did.  The city does.”

There was a long pause.

“Angry ghost,” Johannes commented.

“Wraith,” Andy corrected, thinking of the books.  “Eva and I have dealt with a number of ghosts lately.  She wasn’t one.”

“The difference being?” one of the younger Behaims asked.

“A little more unpredictable,” Andy said.

The bell at the top of the church tolled.

Eva glanced at Andy.

“Go,” he said.

“Which way?” she asked.

But Sandra was already pointing, pulling out her chalice.  Eva was faster, crossing the floor in two steps.

The bell tolled a second time.

“Faysal?” Johannes asked.

Both sorcerer and dog disappeared in a flare of light.

Third toll.

Andy crossed the floor, offering Mags a hand.

“Balls.” Mags said, accepting.  “I tried.  I could’ve contained her, kept her calm.  But she’s too angry.  I would have left her behind, but she’s tied to me by blood.  I didn’t think she’d be this angry, after I’d calmed her down a little…”

“What’s she doing?”

Fourth.

“Starting something,” Mags said.  “Don’t you feel it?”

“No.”

“Each toll, it’s filled with negativity.  Each one is worse than the last.”

Fifth toll.

“Everything in the city is going to feel it,” Mags said.  “They’re going to think it’s a signal, and that’s enough.”

Andy felt a peculiar calm settle over him as the bell continued to toll.

He thought of the promise he’d made.

To serve loyally, in Jacob’s Bell.  To keep the people safe.  He could do that.

But the promise to Mac had had contingencies.  If things got bad enough, and things were bad, he had another responsibility.

Mags looked up.  “Thirteen tolls.”

He offered her a light smile.  A witch hunter could lie.  Oaths weren’t binding.

One of these days, after years of loyal service, when it didn’t put too many people in danger, he’d skip the council meeting, and act while they were all in one place.

He had a rocket launcher at home for just that purpose.

Malfeasance 11.1

My existence was reduced to a pizza slice of reality.  A triangular section of a room with light shed from a window high above that I couldn’t see.

Nothing to read, nothing to do, and nobody to talk to.  I couldn’t even punch the wall to vent my anger, because I didn’t want to risk hurting myself.

Screaming, though.  I could get away with screaming.  Even if I knew it wasn’t necessarily making me any friends.  Without the need for breathing, my scream could be a howl, continuing well past my usual lung capacity.

My throat started hurting, though, and I had to make myself stop.  The last thing I needed was for the Drains to get a grip on that.  I’d wind up sounding like some movie monster.

I couldn’t do anything.  My thoughts were chaos and every single damn bad emotion it could summon up, all mixed into a pot of something with no outlet.

I didn’t need to pant for breath as I stopped.  I saw the birds on my arms with their beaks parted, midway through their own screaming.

Pausing to look around at my surroundings for any possible clue, I found little except for the edge of the desk, no books perched on or under it, the side with the drawers beyond the scope of the reflection, floor and wall.  No chair to sit in.  Nothing I could pound or throw to vent my frustration.

I looked at the circle on the other side of the mirror.

Could I reach through the mirror and break it?

Maybe.  It would be hard, with no guarantees.

I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of what might happen if I was trapped in a circle with no mirror to go to.

I’d leave the option open for a last-ditch effort.

I’d brought the chair around, and did what I could with the section of desk.  I tried to move the desk, but my fingers slipped on the wood.  If I got low enough to grab the one stout, half-foot of leg at the base, I couldn’t get leverage or traction on the ground or surrounding area.

Easily an hour passed as I used the Hyena to chip at the desk in an effort to create a handhold.  Two oblong, splinter-ridden holes that I could fit three fingers inside.

When I tried, I couldn’t get it to move.

I tried to use my sweatshirt, slinging it through the two holes and then around the leg, and didn’t get it to budge.  Only the beginnings of a tearing sound.

I drew a finger in the dust on top of the corner of desk, marking the progress as shadow moved and the light moved to one end of my little slice of reality, only to disappear.

Afternoon became night, as the line in the dust was joined by brother lines, punctuating hours.

Once the light was largely gone, I didn’t have any way to track the passage of time except my own thoughts.  Where my own heartbeat or breathing might have helped me punctuate the minutes, it was different now.  It was based on my thinking, my remembering to do it.  When I forgot, it could feel like a minute had taken an hour, or I’d let time slip away, realizing only moments later how far my thoughts had traveled and how long that might have taken.

I thought about Alexis, and picked apart my time at the commune, searching it for discrepancies.  If it still hurt or stung, recalling that, I told myself that at least that made me a little more me.

I mulled over memories of time spent with my friends, and their current relationship to Rose.

I didn’t like the gaps, the incongruities.

Why had they been my friends to begin with?

I’d had an apartment.

As far as I could tell, the universe took the path of least resistance.

I now had time to think, and I didn’t like where my thoughts were going.  Had my life been based on someone else’s?  An outside source that could fill in the gaps, a life that I could step into?

That wasn’t me.  Not how I wanted to operate, to be.

Revenants were, I knew, something between a zombie and a bogeyman.  They came back from the dead, usually with a mission in mind, and a specific timeframe or pattern they needed to follow.  Most didn’t know enough to keep themselves going after they achieved their success or failure.

The revenant, I knew, could sometimes get away with being a hero, insofar as a vigilante was a hero.  They weren’t the types to turn a criminal in for the cops to prosecute, after all, but when a gang killed enough people in horrible ways, the revenant could rise and eliminate them.  Another example I’d read had been a soldier that had surrendered, along with his comrades, only to watch each be tortured to near-death and then brutally executed, with him last.  He’d returned a year to the day to hunt down the enemy soldiers and deliver punishments that were worse.  In certain circles, he’d been seen as a hero.  A benevolent spirit.

Not so common for bogeymen.  If I even was a bogeyman.

Rose had alluded to the idea that she knew what I was.  That there was something I hadn’t caught onto, dangerous knowledge that made me too dangerous to be allowed to walk free.

I spent some time dwelling on that too.  It gnawed at me.

Where it gnawed at me, I changed.  The branches finding just a little bit more ground.

I looked at the pale sparrows that hid in the branches that had climbed over my entire body.  Minor damage became tattoo, and became more physical branch where there was already tattoo.  Serious damage allowed for larger spirits to find their way inside, and they took the form of the birds.

I traced lines of branches and felt the raised portions.

“Don’t suppose you guys could poke your heads out and help me?” I asked.

I blinked.  The birds had moved closer to my hands, peering at the mirror.  Some looked more like sketches than real birds, their eyes just circles with shaky lines circling them a few times.

I extended my hands closer, touching the surface, looking away, waiting.

When I looked again, they’d moved closer, clustering at my arms.  Where I’d had branches around my hands, a feather or two stuck out.

When I looked again, they’d retreated to their hiding spots.

“Thanks for trying,” I said.

I dropped my hands to my sides.

“I’m going to go crazy if I only have my thoughts to occupy myself with,” I said.  “I hope you don’t mind if I voice my thoughts aloud.  Bit of a one-sided conversation.”

None of them moved, except for one on my forearm.  It might have been one of the originals, taking the spot of one of the birds that had been tattooed on.  He was one of the most realistic, and he was the only one who was looking at my face.

“Well, you listened,” I said.  “I like you.  I’ll call you Lefty.”

Was talking to yourself a sign of impending madness if you were a frankenstein hodgepodge of reflection, drainstuff and spirits?

I shut my eyes, resting my head on the wall, facing the nonexistent ceiling above me.  “Well, Lefty, I’ve got to talk to someone, to distract myself from the fact that I’ve been stuck in solitary by the people I tried to save.  It isn’t helping any.  It’s sort of killing me, even.”

Lefty had his head cocked when I next looked down.

“Maybe that’s a bit of a fib,” I said.  “It’s not destroying… all this.  But it is killing the Blake in me.  I’m not sure what happens, if this takes over.  If you take over.  I haven’t changed quite enough to see if my emotions or mindset change.”

I looked at my hands, turning them over, left hand first, then right.  When I looked back at my left hand, Lefty had moved around the circumference of my arm.

I clenched my fists.  “Which isn’t to say I’m not really upset.  If Rose is telling the truth, and she doesn’t have Conquest as an excuse to be doing what she’s doing, then that makes me ten times as pissed off… and it also means that doing anything to her is off the table.”

I placed my arms over my knees, thumbs tracing the lines of tattoos, the raised lines of branches that reached under the tattoos, as though I’d stuck something just beneath the surface of the tattoos, and I felt the actual branches, which were standalone.

I was glad I hadn’t picked anything else.

“What’s the worst thing I could have picked for tattoos?” I asked Lefty.  “I liked some pretty dumb cartoons as a kid.  If I was the sort of person who held onto nostalgia, instead of loathing my past, maybe you’d be a pastel-colored bug with a symbol on its back.  What do you think?”

Lefty remained silent.

I took my time, doing an inventory of my physical condition.

My right ribs and the bone of my pelvis at my waistline were the worst spots, branch mingling with bone,  I’d fallen hard when fighting the temple guardians, Tweedle Dee, Dum and whatever the third one was called.

There was a gap in the branches and bones.  I put my finger in there.

I felt one of the bird spirits brush past it, and the hand came out as fast as if I’d touched a hot stove.

I stood, because sitting wasn’t any more or less comfortable than standing, and sitting prompted a little too much thinking.  I paced, and parts of me snapped and popped with the movement, suggesting I’d been sitting for at least an hour in total.

It hadn’t felt like an hour.

Still, it was better than the alternative, the time yawning on for what felt like hours, when only minutes had passed.

If sitting made me think, then moving made my emotions stir up.

Something had happened to Mags.  My friends weren’t in a better position than before.  Rose was…

I didn’t want to think about Rose.

“What’s the solution, Lefty?” I asked.  “How do we fix all this?  If it’s a monster that needs killing, that’s a whole lot easier.  But this is a flawed dynamic.  I can’t set it on fire or trap it in a binding circle.”

Lefty only looked up at me with beady black eyes, no expression on its face.

“Do I take a cue from the vigilante revenant, and carry out the sort of task that a bogeyman is supposed to, only with an acceptable target?  Or do I take the Blake route?”

I continued pacing.

“I could have handled that last bit better.  I was a little inebriated.”

I heard the door open, and turned, though I couldn’t hope to see it.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Hey,” I heard Ty’s voice.

He stepped into view in the long mirror, visible from head to shin.  He wore a sleeveless t-shirt and pyjama pants, and had Evan perched on his shoulder.

“You look a bit like a swashbuckling pirate,” I commented.

“Yarr,” Evan said.

“I meant Ty.”

“Yarr,” Ty said, smiling a little.  He plucked at his pyjama pants.  “Reaching a bit, but I think we’re all tired enough to buy into it.

“I’d say ‘Evan want a cracker’, but I don’t, so I won’t,” Evan said.

“Good call,” I said.

More seriously, Ty said, “Sorry we didn’t stop in earlier.”

“Would’ve been nice,” I said.

“If I thought you needed water or food or something else, I would’ve found the excuse to come to you, but as it was…”

“I was musing on the subject earlier, but I think I’m still degrading, like this,” I said.

“Wearing away?”

“Starving, falling apart, something like that.  I don’t know the proper term for it.  But a part of me is dying, and I think the ugly parts might gain ground.”

I could see a note of concern on his face.  Not quite to the point where I thought he was feeling concern for me.  I was still a stranger.

“You do need something then?” he asked.

“Peace,” I said.  “I need peace.  The turmoil is, as far as I can tell, literally eating me up, inside and out.”

I saw his expression change, just a little bit more concern.

“I don’t think I can give you that,” he said.

I wanted to fidget, to bounce my leg in nervousness, in some representation of how I was feeling, or for the outlet.  But it wasn’t something that came naturally.  I was still, and in being very still I was very inhuman.

“I feel pretty horrible about it,” he said.  “Dunno if that matters.”

“Matters some, but it doesn’t help,” I said.  “I don’t want you to feel horrible.”

“We were suffering from the worst hangovers to date-”

“First hangover!  And probably my last!”

“-and doing our best to shore up the defenses.  Four walls protecting us, and not a lot else.  More than a handful of things slipped in and needed to be dealt with.”

“I could have helped,” I said.

“Probably,” he said.  “It’s like, four thirty in the morning, and I’m pretty out of it.  I heard you talking, and Evan was flying around, which isn’t quite silent.”

“Not bumping into walls anymore,” Evan said.

“…I thought I’d just stop in, before one of you disturbed the others.  It was pretty clear you weren’t asleep.”

“I don’t think I sleep anymore.”

“I can,” Evan said.  “But it’s not like it was before, when I was alive and all.  Back then, I could wait til I was tired, lie down, and sleep would come.  Now I have to look for it.  It’s more like a nap.  Maybe that helps?  You can try doing it like I do?”

“Maybe,” I said, though I wasn’t sure it did.  “Thanks.”

Ty stepped out of sight.

I wasn’t sure if I was in the clear to ask Evan about the wink and salute earlier.

“You know, when you said thanks, I totally thought you’d give Ty a dad look.  Or a mom look, like Rose sometimes gives, or even Ty sometimes.”

“A dad look?” I asked.

“I can’t do it.  I don’t have the right face muscles.  You know what I mean?  That look like you’re just pretending to take me seriously, and you’re pretending so badly you just gotta look at someone like, ‘ha ha, we’re not really taking the kid seriously, am I right?'”

“It’s different if the dad does it or the mom does it?”

“It’s two totally different looks, though I can totally see the man having the mom look while the mom has the dad look, depending on what kind of parents they have.  And Mags obviously had a dad to give her the mom look.”

In the midst of trying to keep up and wrap my head around the dads and moms, I caught that last bit.  My attention snagged on the had.

I felt like I was missing so much, spending time in the Drains, and now spending time here.

“I’m not about to be condescending with you, Evan,” I said.  “As far as my memories go, I didn’t really have parents to model my behavior off of.”

“But Rose did?”

I made a so-so gesture with my hand.  “Enough.  Maybe the opposite.  Rose got too much attention.”

“Tiff too, in a bad way,” Ty said, returning.  He held up a pack of cards, still in the box.  “Same general type, in that respect.”

“Sure,” I said.  “Is everyone okay?”

“They’re managing.  Mags isn’t in anyone’s good books after the wraith thing.  They’re using her to try and hunt Molly down.”

“And the state of things?”

“Ugly.  The fights so far are small, contained.  Nothing that’d scare the innocents, but aggressive.  Can’t speak for the others, but I was glad to get back here, even with the lousy defenses.  Once it got late enough in the day that there weren’t people on the streets, other stuff came out.”

“Yeah,” Evan said.

Ty took a seat, cross-legged, on the floor.  He paused, then leaned to one side.  “What the hell did you do to that desk?”

“Made holes,” I said.  I didn’t lose anything by admitting, “I wanted handholds, to see if I could move it, drag the reflection-version into view.”

“That’d be difficult.”

“It was,” I said.  “Didn’t work.”

“Probably for the best,” he said.

He paused, shuffling.

“Hold ’em,” Evan said.  “C’mon.”

Ty gave Evan a look.

“Deal me in,” Evan said.

Ty reached around, grabbing a book, and placed it so it sat open, standing up, blocking his view of Evan’s cards.  He did the same for me, dealing the two cards face up, behind the books.  It looked like he’d done it before.

Nothing interesting in the book.  A glossary of alchemical symbols, it looked like.

He doled out what looked like copper coins from another nationality.

“Real money?” I asked.

“Found them in the cupboard about a week after we all moved in,” Ty said.  He issued the stacks of coins.

We played ten quick hands in relative silence, only speaking in single words as our turns went around, and, in Evan’s case, when he tried to move coins with his head and knocked over the stack.  In such cases, it was usually a muttered cuss word and summary pleading on Evan’s part for Ty to pile up the coins again.

The bids were small, one coin per, but all the same, Evan had a few more coins than Ty or me.

“Maybe Go Fish,” Ty said.

“But I like winning,” Evan said.

“This is a regular thing?” I asked.

Ty raised his eyebrows, “Poker?  No.  Because Alexis-”

“Usually wins,” I said, simultaneously with him.  When he gave me a funny look, I said, “When it comes to poker, anyway.  I know that much.”

“And Evan wins whenever Alexis isn’t playing, despite the fact that we had to teach him to play a couple weeks ago, and here I am, with something like three hundred hours clocked on online poker.”

“I thought you quit,” I said.

“I did.  But that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve clocked those hours,” Ty said.  “I’d think the little guy is cheating, except there’s no way for him to keep any cards tucked up his sleeves.”

Evan spread his wings, looking.  “Nope.”

“It’s like being a fencer, and you think the other guy’s going to play by the rules, and he just comes at you with a foil in one hand and his other hand swinging.  Except he’s following the rules.  Evan doesn’t fold when he should, which throws me off, but when I try to play it smart and efficient, by the odds, he still pulls ahead wins because he has the devil’s own luck, as the idiom goes.”

“That seems to be how it’s going,” I observed.

“And he doesn’t have tells,” Ty said.  “Tiny bird face.  You’d think he’d have the decency to puff up his feathers when he had a nice hand.”

“Why would I do something like that?  That’s dumb.”

“Kind of loses its shine when playing smart doesn’t win.  I blame magic,” Ty said.

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

“Or,” Evan said, “Or, or, or, I’m a genius.”

Ty gave me a look.

“That’s the dad look,” Evan said, hopping up, pointing a wing at Ty.  “Did you see?  That, right there.”

I leaned back, well past the point where I could see the cards or coins, and rested against the corner of the desk.

“I’ve missed you guys,” I said.

Ty’s expression was hard to read.

Sympathy, maybe.

I hadn’t been on the butt end of his sympathy, not in my memories.

“You fell through the cracks,” Ty said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What was it like?”

“Dark,” I said.  “Like all of the ugliness of this world we’ve been introduced to, compounding all the worst parts of being homeless.”

“Worst parts?”  Evan asked.  “There are good parts?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Just like there are things that aren’t so bad about prison.  There’s a reason some people keep sliding back to that life, being on the streets or in a cell.  There’s aspects where you have peace of mind, or the ability to just stop worrying about whole aspects of your life because it either can’t get worse or there’s something in place for you.  So you face real life, and maybe a part of you knows that if you give up, stop trying, then you would at least have that.”

“Are you about to backslide?” Ty asked me.  “Slip back through the cracks?”

I thought about how I’d considered breaking the mirror, and the consequences when I didn’t have any place to go.

Any place but down?

“No,” I said.  “I have too much to do.”

Again, a sympathetic look.  The guy stuck in a binding circle, with too much to do.

I thought of my memories.  I thought about how I’d known Ty before I was supposedly created, and I could call on memories to a time after I’d met Ty, but before I’d really gotten back into the swing of everyday life.

Living on a fucked up commune, that was another kind of place I might’ve backslid to… one I’d wanted to, even if it was for one moment of weakness.

But after I’d met Ty, had he had that same look of sympathy for the antisocial guy Alexis had brought in, a guy who spent more time looking out the window or at the ground than at people’s faces?

The memories segued too smoothly into reality.

That made me uncomfortable, somehow.

As if deep down in the Drains, I’d lost sight of something, and now I might never get it back.

I had a thought on the tip of my tongue.  The sort of thing where I wasn’t sure if I should say it, because it might be awkward or stupid once it left my mouth, or I wasn’t entirely sure how to form the thought.

I said it anyway.

“You know what?” I added.  “I did sort of make friends, down in the Drains.”

“Friends?” Ty asked.  “In Bogeymantown?”

“Who?” Evan asked.

“That’s… hard to explain,” I said.  “It was easier to make friends.  I think… well, without the burden of bad karma, it’s easier.  I imagine Rose is having a hard time of it.”

“I imagine you’re right,” Ty said.

“But this, I can’t agree with it, obvious bias aside,” I said.  “This dead man’s switch feels like an even worse idea.”

“We were talking about it when you first showed up, and Rose kicked you out,” Ty said.

“What are the details?” I asked.

“I shouldn’t tell you the details,” Ty said.

“She redrew the circle around the barber,” Evan chimed in.

“Evan, cut that out,” Ty said.

“Pshh.  I’m a part of the team, and I have as much say as you.  If the circle isn’t taken care of, in a way that only she knows how to do, both for how the circle’s supposed to be and how it needs to be taken care of,” Evan said, “The Barber can get out.  If it does, then she’s the only one who knows how to bind it again.”

“I have an idea of how to,” I said.  “And here I am, stuck.  I feel compelled to comment on how convenient that is.”

“It’s not like that,” Ty said.

“Just saying,” I said.

“Can we play more?” Evan asked.  “While we talk?”

I scooted forward.  Ty reached around the books to collect our cards, and shuffled.

Our cards were dealt.

I won with a three of a kind.

I gave that a moment’s consideration.

If I was going to win over Ty… could I win him over?

Under the pretense of needing to move and stretch a bit, I shifted position.  I bent limbs in odd ways to intentionally make parts of me pop and snap.  In the midst of it all, I changed my perspective relative to the mirror, and got into a position where I could gesture to Evan with one hand.

I raised two fingers, pointed at myself, and pumped my hands in the air, a mock victory celebration.  I pointed at him, and drew a finger across my throat, pointing at the cards, and made a mock sad face.

Ty was right.  Evan’s body language was impossible to read.

I fixed my position, resuming a normal sitting posture.

Another hand.

I folded.  Evan won.

“I helped one of my Drains friends get up here,” I said.

“You brought a bogeyman into the world?” Ty asked, just a bit incredulous.

“Two, if you include myself,” I said.  “And it’s a she, so bogeywoman?”

“I’ve wondered how you did it, but explain this part first.  Who is she?”

“Doesn’t have a name,” I said.  “I might not have made it if she hadn’t given me advice and pointed me in the right general direction.  Faysal owed me favors, I called them in.”

“You keep answering questions with stuff that makes me want to ask more questions,” Ty said.  “Okay, putting aside how you got out of the drains, or the form this advice took, or how you were in a position to call in favors from Faysal, do we need to worry about her?  Raise.”

“Not any more than you need to worry about your next Other,” I said.  “Call.”

“I’m out,” Evan said.  “Fold.”

Ty moved my book.  “Damn it.”

My win.

“In fact,” I said, “Evan, if it’s no trouble, could you run an errand for me?”

“Maybe,” he said.  “Going outside is dangerous.  Too many things want to eat me.”

“I named her Green Eyes.  If you could get an escort at a time of day when it was fairly safe, could you stop by the lake?  Just check on her, tell her I said hi, and I’d visit if I could?”

“Is she good looking?” Evan asked.  He wiggled his body one way and his head the other, “Do you liiike her?”

“I don’t know her well enough to know.  But she seems like a good sort, all things considered.  I’m not in a position to be picky, so I won’t rule anything out in the grand scheme of it all,” I said.  I extended my arms, showing off the tattoos.

“I think you do like her,” Evan said.  “I think you might be in loooooove.”

I peered at my cards.  “Raise.”

“Fold,” Evan said.

Don’t be so obvious about it, I thought.

“She’s a mermaid, though, so it’d be awkward,” I said, to distract Ty.

I got two very surprised looks.

And Ty said Evan wasn’t capable of facial expressions.

“Awesome,” Evan said.

“Gotta admit, I’m curious now,” Ty said.

“You liked Isadora,” I said.

“I like new, whatever it is, if it’s entertainment or food or girls.” Ty said.  “Mermaid is new, as girls go.”

“She’s a bogeyman mermaid,” I said.  “It’s not what you’re imagining, I’m almost positive.”

He shrugged.

“Evan folded, I raised, by the way,” I said.

“Call.  Annnd… damn it.”

“I’m worried about how she’s managing, as part of all this.”

“In the lake, in winter, you mean?” Ty asked.

“The Drains are harsher than that,” I said.  “And types like she and I are tougher than you’d think.  Not that I want to push that toughness.  Seems like it’s Blake that takes all the grief, and the stuff from the Drains that gets stronger.”

“I can ask Rose if there’s any problem with you getting a book on bogeymen,” Ty said.  “I’d like to stop you being in here from being bad for you, if nothing else.”

He dealt out the next set of cards.

Come on, I thought.

Evan folded.

Ty and I put our money in.

The cards were flipped over, one by one.

“Raise,” Ty said.

Fuck.

“Fold,” I said.

I remained absolutely still to hide my agitation.

Three wins.

That was all I needed.  Three wins.  A toehold, some leverage with the spirits that managed everything, so I could maybe convince Ty to give me something I needed.

Freedom was one option, but felt a little forced.

A better option would be to get information.  To glean a little something about who I was and why they had me in here.

Except, Ty was better than I was.

I lost the next hand.

We broke even in the next.

I lost the one after.

He was paying attention now.

“Fold,” Evan said, sounding a little bored.

“Again,” Ty commented.

He won the hand.

Leaving me out of money.

“Can I give him my money?” Evan asked.  “I’m gonna fly around the house and see if there’s any trouble.”

“Wards we put up should alert us if there is.”

“Unless it’s a witch hunter,” Evan said.

“I’m thinking you two are in collusion,” Ty said.  “And something tells me it’s a bad idea to let that happen.  Go fly, Ev.  But I think we’re done with poker for now.”

Evan gave me a look, then flew away.

“He was really yours,” Ty said.

“Hm?”

“He’s loyal, and I can see the connection between you two, even now.”

“Maybe, yeah,” I said.

He paused, then said.  “There’s… I don’t remember you.  I’m not even like Alexis, feeling like there’s some Blake-shaped hole in her memories.  I’m sorry if it sounds harsh when I say it, but things make sense, with you gone.”

“I wasn’t real, as far as I can tell,” I said.  “But I’m suspicious someone was.  Maybe someone the lawyers acquired, or another family member, or… I don’t know.  I feel like it was based on something.  That, or it was a really clever piece of work, putting together a lot of reality wholesale, and I don’t even want to go within ten miles of whatever’s capable of doing something like that.”

“It isn’t how demons or diabolists operate,” Ty commented.  “Creating anything.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Which goes back to sacrifice.  Welcome to the thoughts that have plagued me for the last eight or so hours.”

“But whatever the case was,” Ty said, “We had mutual memories before.  And those memories were altered.  Like I said, Alexis feels the absence.”

“We were friends,” I said.  “But we weren’t as close as Alexis and I were.  If you’re looking for a Blake-shaped hole in your memories, you might want to look at your work.  I remember helping you set up.  I gave you feedback.  I was one of the first people you went to when you’d started a new kind of thing and wanted to just share everything you were doing.”

“I’ve been feeling an itch, like I really want to talk to someone about the magic stuff,” he said.  “Maybe that’s the Blake-shaped hole.”

I heard a knock at the door.

Ty turned his head.  “Rose.”

“I can think of five ways what you’re doing right now is a bad idea,” she said.

“Are you going to order me not to?” he asked.

“I don’t do the orders thing.  Slippery slope with big C in my head.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Did we wake you?  Sorry.”

“The bird did.  Everyone’s up now.  Just checking, so I know, are you still a bit hung over?”

“Yeah,” Ty said.

“Everyone else is too, Evan excepted.  How are you, Blake?” she asked.

“No hang over, and I’m better, after having some company.  You’ve got to at least leave me with a book, the next time you leave me in solitary.  I’ll lose my mind.”

“We’ll see,” she said.  “A novel or two, maybe, nothing magic.”

“How does that even work?” Ty asked.  “I don’t see the cards or the book reflected, and they’re right in front of the mirror.”

I had a glimmer of an idea as to how, and I’d practiced a bit, but I was evasive all the same.

“I could say you’ve just answered your own question,” I said.

“You could, but will you?” he asked, smiling a bit.

“No,” I said.  “I’ll just ask why, if you profess to know what I am, and you know how to contrive to bind me, you don’t know anything about this part of how the mirror realm works.”

“I think I know,” Rose said.  “Don’t worry about it, Blake.  Solitude aside, how are you?”

“He’s falling apart, he says,” Ty commented.

“Stress,” I commented, “Being isolated from those things that make me me.”

“You’ll have to deal,” she said.  “Crepes for breakfast, Ty?”

“We have fruit?”

“I bought stuff on the way back from the late meeting yesterday.”

“Cool,” he said.  He stood and stretched.

“Can I get a recap on the conversation thus far with Blake?”

“You’re doing that paranoid overlord thing again,” he said.

“For my peace of mind,” she said.  “Please.”

“Yeah,” he said.

I closed my eyes.

I’d trained for it, in the course of interacting with Lefty.  Shifting the focus of my awareness.  Letting other things wash over and around me.

The trick, however, was to avoid interfering with the circle.  That would be a nightmare.

I did what I could to make it so I didn’t have any influence or impact on this mirror world, except to devote my focus to the circle, pushing against it.

My presence pushed other influences out of the mirror world.  I imagined, as the effect went, it avoided realities like Ty carrying a book across the room, and dragging it through my midsection.  For a vestige, if I was a vestige, simple interference like that was dangerous.

There was something of a melancholy feeling in my chest as I opened my eyes.  The knowledge that Rose hadn’t been able to pick this up, it pointed to the simple fact that she was real and I wasn’t.

This was my realm, not hers.

The cards, the two books, and the stacks of coins sat around me on the floor.

As quickly and quietly as I was able, I moved them all behind me.

“Breakfast,” Rose said.  “Blake, I’d offer you something in the way of spiritual sustenance, but I think it’s too dangerous.  Try keeping your activity level low.”

I clenched my fists.  “Gee, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Give this a week or two to blow over, and we’ll see what we can do with you.”

“You sound like them, you know,” I said.

“Them?”

“Sandra, and Laird,” I said.

“Which reminds me of Laird,” she commented.  “I’m putting a bogeyman in the room to watch over you.  It worked with him.”

“Don’t be stupid about all this,” I said.  “Come back, talk to me.  Get info from me.  If you’re going to risk them, risk the city with this damn dead man’s switch, do it smart, do it informed.”

“Yeah,” she said.

I heard a violent rustling, followed by heavy footsteps.  Not in my field of view.

“Break the mirror if he does anything untoward,” she said.  “Don’t communicate with him.”

She shut the door behind her.

I found a seat, and carefully moved all my coins to the side, at the edge of the mirror’s field of view, so only someone standing at a strange angle could see them.  The books and cards joined them.

I felt confident now.  I’d find my way out.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Malfeasance 11.2

I couldn’t influence the outside world, but I could influence this one.

I looked over the cards.  They were nice, a little old fashioned, the white of the card paper stained with age, but beyond that, they were ordinary playing cards.

My presence had made it so they weren’t reflected, establishing my presence in this mirror world.  But a lack of activity, a shift of focus, a bit of release, like the smallest kind of surrender, and I’d let them through.  The reflection of the cards.

I didn’t have all of them.  Ty had taken some with him, or kicked them out of the scope of the mirror, or something.

Not playing with a full deck, I thought.

Twenty large, fat coins.  I couldn’t make head or tails of the language on the coin’s faces.  I was careful as I moved them aside, wary of the guard I couldn’t see or hear.

Two books.  One on alchemy, more like a dictionary than any kind of spellbook, filled with tables and measurements and Latin words.  Aqua Regia, Aurum Regia, Aqua Justatium, Lapis Philosophorum, and so on.  Each chapter was prefaced with the sort of stuff that started with ‘Evidenced herein’ and spent more time referring to other parts of the text than it did actually saying anything.

The second book was a catalogue of bogeymen.  Rose’s research for summoning the ‘help’.  A quick perusal suggested there was very little in the way of vital information.  A practitioner who focused on things that had fallen between the cracks was known to the practitioner community as a ‘scourge’, and it seemed like Rose was leaning that way.  Just by the language of the text, the assumption seemed to be that the people who were reading the book were very angry types with revenge or hostility in mind.

I could only assume that those did like Green Eyes had suggested and went down to the places between the cracks to collect fallen things for use were to scourges what grandmother Rose was to the diabolist community.  The scary ones you didn’t want to tick off, who knew their stuff and were very good at doing what they did without getting killed.

The book had no explanations about what types of bogeymen there were or how they could sustain themselves.  It was a text for people looking for quick answers, types who wanted to hurt a rival or answer an insult, often in the bloodiest, most horrible ways.

The last chapter, however, did have some information I could use.

Binding a bogeyman typically involved using some form of the natural elements, and things with permanence.  In the former case, it depended based on the type of bogeyman and the place beyond the cracks in reality that they had come from.  Some were particularly vulnerable to running water, others struggled to move solid objects and could easily be trapped or stopped by a simple closed door.  Yet others didn’t like fire.

Moat, box, or burning circle could serve, depending on the type.

The other option was old items that had a history and durability to them, antiques.

I touched the mirror.  I felt the surface vibrate.  I couldn’t actually examine it, though.  The mirror couldn’t reflect itself, so I only saw the portal into the other world and a trace of the frame where it stood out enough to be caught in the reflection.

Pretty old, if I remembered right.  It had probably predated my grandmother.

Thing was, though, I wasn’t quite trapped inside the mirror.  Not any more than usual.  It was the circle on the other side of the mirror that was giving me problems.

I turned back to the text.

The final chapter was, as far as I could tell, the ‘I fucked up, how do I run damage control?’ for novice scourges.  Troubleshooting and understanding where things could go wrong.  It said a lot that it was the last chapter, as if the assumption on the part of the guy who put the catalogue together was that the scourges would prioritize summoning first and fixing problems later.

Diabolists, priests, and now scourges, as sorts who were their own worst enemies, setting themselves up for failure.

The book followed a trend I’d noticed, where authors really liked referencing their other texts.  I imagined it was a way of selling more books to what was no doubt a niche market.  Couldn’t fully understand the contents of ‘Lost and Bound: Bogeymen’ without ‘Plumbing Darkest Depths’ first.

Those who’d buy just the catalogue without getting the work that presumably introduced concepts was probably reckless to begin with.  The ideas raised in the last chapter seemed to be intent on answering that sort of recklessness.

Bogeyman came with a container, practitioner broke the container?  Approaches to binding rituals.

Sent bogeyman to go murder someone in the most horrible ways possible, but they were blocked, and came back to me, what does the practitioner do?  Do the same thing, and hope they aren’t equipped to bounce it back for the third total time, because it would be far stronger on the third trip.

I looked at the mirror.  I was going to figure out a way through and out.  There were countless possible solutions.  I just needed to find one.

I heard the door open, interrupting me as I read.

“Oh!  Oh wow, you scared me,” a female voice.  Tiff.

Not directed at me.

My guard, it seemed.

I closed the book, setting it down off to one side.  My eyes scanned my surroundings. No contraband in sight.

Tiff knocked on the desk as she approached.

“I’m here,” I said.

“I didn’t want to intrude,” she said.  “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said.

Tiff wore a beige sweater that seemed designed to be oversized, the sleeves folded back two or three times over so they didn’t slip over her hands, as well as a knee-length skirt over tights.  Where Ty had been in pyjamas, she was up and ready to face the day.

“Rose was saying at breakfast that you were falling apart?”

“In a sense,” I said.  “I’m degrading.  Being in here is wearing on my sanity and my Self, as far as I can tell.  Less human, more… whatever this is.”

“That’s common,” she said.  “For Others to not like being bound.”

“It wasn’t so long ago that I wasn’t an Other, or not so obviously,” I said.  If I sounded bitter, it wasn’t intentional.

“I wanted to ask if there was anything I could do,” she said.

“Talk to me,” I said.  “Keep me company.  Or let me go.”

“I would, but there’s other stuff going on.  Rose asked me not to fill you in, just in case.”

“I see,” I said.  I traced my finger along my arm, following a ridge.  “Who is Rose, to you?”

“A friend.  Someone in need.”

“You were my friend,” I said.  “Look at me.  I’m dying.  I’m in need.”

She frowned.

“You were my friend,” I said, a second time, with emphasis.  “You alone, Tiff.  Alexis is… I think you’re among a very small group of people who can imagine what Alexis means to me.  She helped us both in very similar ways.”

“Yeah,” Tiff said.

“But she and Ty, I have memories of them being my friends.  I loved them.  I still love them, like they were my own family.  But as far as I can tell, those relationships aren’t any more genuine than they were with Rose.  They were stolen from something and then Rose got them.”

Tiff shook her head a little.

“You were my friend,” I said.  “For real.  Just like Evan.  Just like some of the individuals I met in the Drains.”

“You said that, a bit ago.  It kind of stuck with me.”

“Yeah.”

“This… isn’t an easy conversation to have,” she said.

“If it feels like I’m turning away from Alexis and Ty by saying that, that’s not it.  I will help them.  However contrived our friendships were, I will die if I have to do it to save them.”

“I’d say that’s a relief, but I don’t want you to die.”

I couldn’t meet her eyes.  I looked down at Lefty.  “Thanks for saying so.”

“When I said this wasn’t easy, I meant that there’s so many things to trip over, and gaps, and conversation landmines.”

Gaps.  I felt compelled to ask, “So you do remember Rose?”

She looked uncomfortable.  “No, or yes.  I… the other two, they didn’t handle it well, when whatever happened at the factory happened.”

“When Rose entered this world and I headed off to the Drains.”

“Yeah.  Ty just couldn’t process, on a mental level, and Alexis took it really hard emotionally.  It came and went, and affected them especially at night.  Alexis said it was worst when you’re in that twilight of near-sleep and your mind’s wandering, she kept tripping over-”

“-A Blake shaped hole,” I said.

“Yeah, a Blake shaped hole.  Ty took a while to find equilibrium.  Different.  He’s really a guy in how he just doesn’t recognize how bad he was, looking back.  Rose was… on a level, we knew Rose.  Or we didn’t know her but we were familiar with her.  She offered help, and where I couldn’t do anything to help Alexis or Ty, Rose could heal that damage and fill the gap, help them through the bad nights.”

I wasn’t sure how to handle that.  Being as angry as I was, yet hearing that she’d helped people I cared about.  It jarred.  I frowned, and I hoped it didn’t look as scary as it could, given what I was.

Tiff seemed to get more intense as she talked, her tone resembling a person pleading for a loan they needed to stay afloat.  “We couldn’t just turn our backs on her after she helped them with that.  Stuff was happening in Toronto, and we thought people might come after us, just because, so we stuck by her.  She stuck by us.”

“She thrust you into this situation,” I said.  “She treated you like sacrificial pawns, rejecting the rules that others were trying to set, knowing they might go after you to get at her.”

“We talked about that,” TIff said, sounding more than a little defensive.  Because she didn’t believe it?  “We planned it, and we talked about all the bases we needed to cover.  Knowing we might be vulnerable or targeted was one base we covered.”

“You talk about a lot of stuff as a group,” I said.  “Me, and Conquest setting up shop in Rose’s head.”

She fidgeted.  “What else are we going to do, cooped up here for days on end?”

“It’s her fault you’re cooped up.  This wasn’t supposed to be how things went with you guys.  You’re not supposed to be pawns at all, you’re not supposed to be sitting there talking at you guys and swaying you.”

“Blake-”

“She’s taking something that was supposed to be good, something that wasn’t hers to take, and she’s fucking twisting it-”

“Stop!” she said.

I did.

Angry as I was, I didn’t pant, I didn’t move.

It was, perhaps, the moment I’d felt the least human yet.

Tiff, however, wasn’t quite as in control.  I could see her clenching her fists, eyes on the ground.

I hadn’t realized how upset she was getting.  That defensiveness I’d noted wasn’t because I was winning.

It had been because I was losing her.

“If you’re going to try to turn me against Rose, then I can’t be here,” she said.  “I can’t support that or give you an opening you can exploit.  I can’t do it emotionally, either.  This is hard enough to deal with.”

I nodded slowly, because I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“I’m genuinely sorry,” I finally said.

“I understand,” she said.  “You’ve obviously been through a lot.”

Her eye moved to my rib.  With my sweatshirt and shirt still off, dropped on the floor to help hide the pile of coin and cards, she could see the hole at my side, as well as the gnarled growth around the opening and pelvic bone.

I ran my hands through hair that was now perpetually dirty.  “You too.  I’m sorry for getting you into this.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m… damn it.  Joel told me to be selfish.  He wanted me to be genuinely selfish for maybe for the first time in my life, and I may actually be accurate there, with how short my life has been.  And I asked for help from people I cared about, because I couldn’t do it alone.  If this goes bad, and something happens to you guys, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“That’s not up to you,” she said

“You’re right, though  I don’t want to just make this conversation about attacking Rose.  I’m also sorry for saying all that and making you have to defend her.”

She pulled the chair around, and sat opposite me.  She fidgeted before she was able to get her hands to sit still long enough to hold them in her lap.

I wasn’t much better, however well I could hide it.  I wasn’t any less angry than I’d been, but right this minute, shame took the top place, and shame kept me quiet.

“I don’t know how much you know about me,” Tiff said.

“That you came from a bad family situation, and Alexis helped you out.  That I really like your art, and I’m jealous that you’re capable of doing it.  That you were horrified at the notion that because we had our first date of sorts at a coffee place, that I might nickname you ‘donut girl’.”

When I met her eyes, she was looking at the branches that sprawled across my chest.  She’d relaxed a bit.

“Date?” she asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” I said.  “Alexis introduced us.  She wanted you, me, and her to have an… event.”

“Oh god,” Tiff said, hands flying up to her face.  “I think I know what you’re talking about.  She hinted.  Stop right there, or I won’t be able to look you in the eyes.”

“You haven’t been looking me in the eyes for a little bit now,” I said.

Her eyes flashed up, peering at me from between her fingers, they met mine, then dropped down to my torso, a fleeting glance.

Even with her hands covering her face, I could see her ears going red.

Oh.  She hadn’t been paying attention to the monstrous bits.

I’d meant my comment to be more melancholy, recognizing what I’d become, not teasing.

A part of me wanted to imagine a world where none of this had happened.  Where Alexis and Tiff and Ty and me and Joel and Goosh could all be friends.  Where I always had the opportunity to just pick up and go ride my bike halfway across Canada if Toronto felt too confining.  Work odd jobs to pay for gas.

But then I remembered that if none of this had happened, I wouldn’t exist.

My goal was different, now.  To protect these guys, and make that world possible.

Only without the ‘Blake’ part.  Without the motorcycle.

I wasn’t sure how to feel as I walked over to grab my sweatshirt.  I very carefully transferred the coins to the pocket, then pulled my shirts on.  I’d taken them off to investigate the changes of my body.  I stuck my hands in my pockets and pressed the coins down to keep them from jingling.

Tiff sighed through her hands, which still covered her face, then drew in a deep breath, straightening her spine, dropping the hands.

Still a little pink.

“What I was saying before,” she said.  “My home situation.  I’ve been backed into a corner before.  My mom made bad decisions and my dad made bad decisions, and I could usually weather the worst of it.  But sometimes it was too much.  A chain of things or stuff coming together, and I hated the person I was becoming at times like that.  I tried to get away from it all, and I wound up in freefall.”

“No connections to keep you from tumbling down,” I commented.

She gave me a curious look. “Yeah.  I was windmilling my arms, looking for something to hold on to.  I did stupid stuff.  Stuff that, if I had different luck or a little more time, might’ve made me into my parents, despite my best efforts.  Drinking, drugs, just leaping into relationships with guys that weren’t… good.  It was all easy, and if I’d spent another week or month doing it, maybe I would’ve gotten trapped.  Then Alexis was the next thing that turned up that I could hold onto.  Only she wasn’t so bad for me.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “She does that.”

“She’s a genuinely good person,” Tiff said.  “Who isn’t always good to herself, and who can still mess up, even if she means the best.  She needs help to watch out for that sometimes, and that’s hard.”

“It is hard,” I agreed.

“I think, sometimes, she could look at the worst person ever and see something right here,” Tiff said, tapping her chest, just over her heart. “But maybe I’m biased.  She saw some talent and good in me around a time I couldn’t see anything redeeming about myself.”

“I think she made a good call,” I said.  “But that’s one of the things to watch out for.  Sometimes it’s not worth what it costs you, right?”

I managed to resist the urge to say something about Rose, and the cost there.  Tiff didn’t pick up on the hint, which was probably a good thing, because she was still listening, and maybe it would reach past the walls she’d erected.

Her hand was still on her heart.

“I never paid attention to my heart before.  But lately, I feel like all it’s ever doing is pounding.  Just racing and racing so hard I can’t keep my hands still.  Can’t sleep.”

I looked at where her hand touched.

I touched my own heart.  I had to will it to beat to feel the eerie fluttery sensation within.

She wasn’t aware.  “If there’s one thing in all this that terrifies me, it’s the idea of going into freefall again.  Being forced into freefall.  Backed into a corner until I have no choice but to do something stupid, and then keep doing stupid things, and I don’t want that.”

Feeling the fluttering in my chest, I had a bit of an idea.  It related to Evan on a level, and it related to this.

I shifted position, dropping my hand and moving my shoulder, and a bit of wood popped.  Tiff startled a bit at it, as if I’d stirred her from a daze.

“Sorry,” she said.  “I barely slept last night, and then Evan woke me first thing, doing his bird thing”

“It’s okay,” I said.  “Thank you for sharing.  I want you to know that I don’t want that negative stuff for you either.  I don’t want you to be miserable, or backed into a corner.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“In the interest of achieving that,” I told her, “I’m not going to press you right now.  That’s just more pressure, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll try not to,” I said.  I won’t tell you that if you just released me, I could protect all of you, and I’d do everything I could to keep your fear from coming to pass.  “We should chat again soon.”

“We could,” she said.  “Is that you saying goodbye?”

I hated to turn down more conversation, when it was the only thing keeping my head on straight and my body intact, but all the same, I said, “Yes.  I don’t want to say anything I might regret, breaking my word, and I’m still… backed into a corner, on a level.  Being kept in jail by whatever it was that Rose summoned.”

With a sweep of my arm, I indicated my little domain.

“I’ll see if the others need help with anything,” she said.  “I didn’t mean to talk this long.”

“Be safe,” I said.

“You too.  I’ll talk to you later,” she said.

She dragged the chair out of my field of view.  I heard a murmur that might have been an apology, as she disappeared.

A minute later, the door closed.

I paced, thinking.  My eye moved down to the two books more than once.

I thought of the playing cards I’d stashed in my back pocket.

I thought of Evan.

I’d been able to transfer power to him, in a very crude way.  I could imagine that this kind of practice was second nature for more experienced Others.  Recognizing what they were made of and how they could use that.

Tiff had talked about finding the buried strength within.

Here we were.

My fingers touched the rib that bridged the space to the hollow within me.  No organs in my chest cavity.  Only emptiness, and birds.

As blunt objects went, I had a book.

It took some doing, getting the right angle, but I managed to get my left arm around to my right rib and hold it firm.

With my right hand, I held the book.

I slammed it into my ribcage, as hard as I could.

I didn’t feel pain in the usual sense.

I also didn’t feel it break.

I swung a second time.

A third.

I swapped hands, holding it with my right hand and swinging with my left, tightly controlling the swing to hit it in the right place.

As far as altered, vaguely disconnected perceptions of pain went, that was still pretty damned painful.

All the more reason to do it again.

Rib smashed.  Despite my best efforts, I lost my grip with my right hand.  Had it broken in two places, I might have dropped it somewhere inside the cavity of my body.

As it stood, it only broke away from my sternum, the bridge of bone running down the center of my chest.  I wrenched it to push it away, widening the gap between ribs, and after a bit of readjustment of positioning, I slid my hand into the central space.

Within, I found a morass of branches, angular and rough, largely devoid of leaves.

The sound of snapping and popping made me pause.

I pulled my hand out quickly.  The rib was healing, little branches winding around it as if to reinforce it.

Bogeymen were notoriously tough.  I supposed I benefited from that at the worst possible moment.

After a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed the Hyena from its makeshift sheath at my side, and I began to stab and chip away at the branches and the broken section of bone.

The Hyena stalled healing. That applied even to its wielder.

The plants and bone stopped knitting back together.

I returned my hand to the dark cavity within me.  I held it open, cupped slightly, palm up.

“Come on, Lefty,” I murmured.  “Show me you trust me, at least.”

I felt a bird hop down into my palm.

I gripped it like I might grab a softball, and removed it from my chest.

It felt very much like having the wind taken out of me.  Which might have been exactly what had happened.

It wasn’t Lefty.  One of the sketchier ones.  Vaguely luminescent outside of my body, it had eyes that looked like they’d been drawn on in black pen with a shaky hand and too many rings.  Free of the interior of my body, it was shedding feathers at a rapid rate.

What I’d taken in, I could take out.

“Fly,” I said, letting go.

It flew around me twice.  By the end of the second loop, it was struggling to stay airborne.

The spirit returned to my waiting hand.  I returned it to the hole in my side.

There.

Another tool at my disposal.

I wanted to be careful about my next move.  I sat and I thought.

Spirits were the arbiters of this world.  They drove things, negotiated things.  They were everything simple and simultaneously very complex in what they could do.

I had a store of spirit-stuff inside me.  It was a question of how I could make effective use of it.

I’d given some energy to Evan, transferring power to him to give him an edge to escape the little box of books.

Did that mean the mirror wasn’t a barrier to spirits?

I reached in for another bird.

Some tried to escape my waiting hand.

But again, a form settled into my palm.

Lefty this time.

“Please don’t break the mirror,” I told him, my voice straining slightly due to the lack of something within myself.  “If this works, don’t make a big display of yourself.  Wait for instructions.”

I touched him to the mirror, passing him through.

He made the faintest of sounds as he landed on the ground.

My jailer didn’t react.

I had to get down on my hands and knees to get close to the little bird spirit that was losing feathers with every passing second.  “Can you move out of the circle?”

He bounced a little, hopping short distances until he reached the circle’s perimeter.

He stopped, bumping against it.

No luck.

“Come back,” I whispered.

He came back the same way he’d gone, hopping little hops.

“Push the mirror,” I said.  “Stay out of sight, but nudge it, see if you can turn it around.”

Something of a mistake.

What I wanted and what the spirit did were two completely different things.

I’d meant for the spirit to nudge the foot of the mirror’s stand, to change the angle of the mirror’s facing by increments, until I could maybe see books.  With books, I could have had an escape route  If it had failed, I would have brought it back, then called out a group, trying the same thing.

Failing that, I could have torn up paper from the books and tried to create a proper physical body for the birds to inhabit.  I wasn’t sure how or where I’d take it, but it was a thought, and I didn’t have many options.

Instead, it nudged the bottom of the mirror itself.

Joined to the stand at the left and right side, the mirror’s angle easily changed to tilt up or down.

Nudged, it swung, the top coming toward me and the bottom going out.

I was shunted, but there was only one reflection to occupy.  I was dumped onto my side, and scrambled to get to my feet.

As got my bearings, I looked to the mirror, I found myself looking through the mirror at the bogeyman.  A tall, shirtless, long-haired, long-bearded man with thick eyebrows that gave him a perpetual glare, and a giant hook in the place of one hand.  Scars criss-crossed his chest, some from blades, some from burns, and one or two strips that looked like they might have been from octopus suckers.  Salt crusted his skin and hair.

He was tense, muscles straining even when he was standing still, as if it were all he could do to keep from lunging at me.

He lost that fight.  He seemed to make a decision, striding toward me.

“Wasn’t me!” I called out.  “The bird nudged the mirror!”

He slowed.

Sorry Lefty, selling you out.

“I’m not doing anything,” I said, raising my hands.  “Look.”

He didn’t look like he could relax at all, but he stopped, holding his hook back like he’d use it to strike the mirror any second.

How had he found his way back to this world?  How had he been cast out?

“I’m pretty sure I’d lose if we fought,” I said.  “You look like the type that fought his way back.”

He didn’t move a muscle, but I could almost imagine he’d relaxed a fraction.

“I’ve been there,” I said.  “Down there.”

And the tension increased, returning me to square one.

Familiarity wasn’t a good thing.  Stupid of me.  If he’d fought his way up, he’d probably carved through more than his share of weaker people who’d been in his way, to get stronger.

At my feet, Lefty hopped back through the mirror.  I slowly bent down to pick him up.

“Alright,” I said.  “I’m-”

He screamed.  Rage, anger, the sort of roar that summoned up all the fear and prey instinct of one’s target and made them freeze, certain they were going to die.  The sort of horror that made a guy standing a quarter-mile away pause in momentary terror.

But I wasn’t so caught up in those feelings.  I’d discarded the worst parts of my fear instinct.

He wasn’t attacking, and that was indicative of something.

All the same, I scrambled back to get away from him, stepping deeper into the reflection, ironically moving myself closer to the spot he occupied in the real room.

When we’d moved into the house, Rose and I had catalogued the bookshelves, figuring out what was on each.

I knew where I was going.

Problem was, it was up on the second floor.

“Lefty,” I whispered, turning my body to hide what I was doing before reaching into my chest to grab the bird, “Nudge the mirror, tilt it up, just a bit toward the ceiling.”

I could already hear running footsteps and shouts.

I didn’t wait or watch to see if Lefty would obey.

I continued to back up, continuing to pretend to be afraid.

My back touched the ladder that led up to the second floor.  I scrambled to climb it.

There.  The book I needed.  Rose hadn’t moved it, or she’d kept the same filing system as Grandmother.

I head the door open as I grabbed the book.  I hurried to tuck it into the space between my rear end and the waist of my pants, then pulled my sweatshirt down over it.

“Shut up!” Rose ordered her minion.

“Can’t cross the circle,” the bogeyman said.  “Wanted to warn you.”

“Fine, good.  But next time?  Anything he does with the mirror?  Anything suspicious?  Fling something at it.”

“Hmm.”

“Sounding a little more Conquesty there, Rose,” I commented.

“Not the time, Blake!” Rose shouted.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“He just started screaming!” I said.

“You moved the mirror?” she asked.

“Trust me,” I said, improvising, “I did not want to move the mirror like that!  I definitely didn’t want to offend Fish-hook there.”

“If I move it, will I destroy you?” she asked.

“No, but-”

She spun the mirror around, flipping the facing so it was back in the original direction.

I was jerked back into the light, mirror still in the circle.

Coins very nearly spilled from my sweatshirt pockets as I collapsed on the ground.  I used my hands to stop them.

I didn’t move, afraid any further action would reveal the book or cause noise with the spare change.

Rose was doing something at the mirror.  “You want to protect your friends?”

“Of course,” I said.

“This isn’t the way to do it.  Do you have any clue what’s going on out there?”

“A small clue.”

“Very small, Blake.  We’ve had two creatures try to get into the house in the last twelve hours.  We can’t raise enough protections to block everything out, so we’ve resorted to novice-level alarm runes, sleeping in shifts, and being very worried.  My dead man’s switch is one measure, but they can still take it away from me if I’m not careful.”

“Release me, I’ll help,” I said, my voice strained.

Which made me wonder – where was Lefty?

“Help by not distracting me from keeping those four alive, all right?  You’re a big problem, more than you understand, but you’re not even in the top three issues we’ve got right now.”

I remained silent.

She was looking at me and the mirror.

“Fuck,” she said.  “I really want to know how you did that.  But the house is under siege, and given the pattern- why am I even talking about this with you?  Stay put for one minute.  I’ll put you in a different damn mirror and bring you with me.”

I glared at her as she strode from the room.

My focus shifted as my gaze fell on the twine that encircled the mirror, binding it upright, so it couldn’t flip around any further.

The book was one I’d glanced over before leaving the house, in my efforts to get a sense of the way this world worked.  One of the first books I’d noticed on setting foot in the library.

Sympathetic Magics.

I found the chapter I needed.

Sympathy is a branch of the practice that deals with commonalities, heavily tied to enchantment.  Expert sympaths can form a connection between a doll and a person, and inflict harm on the individual by harming the doll.

I sorted through the cards, laying them out in as complete an order as I could manage.  Spades, diamonds, clubs, hearts.  Ace, two through ten, jack, queen, king.

This would cost me, as escape routes went.

Lefty flew up to my hand.  I deposited him on my left shoulder.

“Right shoulder is and will always be Evan’s spot,” I commented.  “You’re sitting this one out.”

I reached into my chest, through thickets of branches and twigs, and gripped one bird that wasn’t fast enough in escaping my hand.  Twigs broke as I pulled it free.

I pressed it into the deck.

It wasn’t a rune drawn on each card, but I didn’t have anything to write with.

It took me a minute to find the next bird.  I was acutely aware of Rose’s promise to return shortly.

As an Other, I didn’t have the ability to practice.  I held no sway over the spirit realm.  There was no pact or compact between me and them, not anymore.

I had my own spirits though.  It was worse than giving up my own blood, because I was pretty sure that power lost by giving up blood would be replenished in time.

I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t pay for this somehow.

But I was damned if I’d sit still, and let yet another person dictate how I should live my life.

I’d be damned thrice over if cool people like Ty, Tiff, Alexis and Evan would pay for the mistakes of others.

I fished out another bird, and pressed it into the deck.

I felt tight inside, a little less like I could fake being alive.

This wouldn’t be a trick I could repeat without regaining power somehow.  I’d need to eat, or feed my bogeyman nature.

I draw connections through like, three times over,” I said, reading from the book.  Then the part I had to improvise.

“Like in appearance,” I whispered, fanning out the cards.

“Like in surroundings,” I said, touching the cards to the floor.

“Like in number,” I said.  I tapped the cards on the floor again, until they were flush, and then shuffled them.

I slammed the pack down on the ground.

The cards that were still laying on the floor from my game with Ty assumed a similar position.

I heard the bogeyman scream again.

Fucker.

With both hands, I spread out the cards, fanning them out over the ground in an arc.

I turned around, facing the mirror.

Something collided with the back of the mirror.

My world splintered, a ravine opening across one end of it.

I was pretty sure I knew where I’d wind up if I fell through.

But the cards on the floor in the real world were in a similar position.  A half circle, covering the circle that the priest had drawn out.

I acted with confidence, even as my legs felt weak.  I strode toward the edge of my little mirror realm in the library.

I skipped over and through, moving to the bathroom one floor downstairs.

I took another step, putting me in the living room, to one side of the shattered window.

The others were there, along with two bogeymen.

“Who’s attacking you?” I asked.

They practically jumped out of their skin.

“No,” Rose said.  Her voice was tight.  “You… motherfucker.”

“Who’s attacking?”

“Blake,” Alexis said, “I’m sorry I didn’t come talk, but-”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I said I’d help if you let me, and I guess I’ll help if you don’t.  Who’s attacking?”

“The Behaims,” Evan said, sounding just a little too happy to see me, for a guy who was supposed to be on the down-low.

“Want to come stop them with me?” I asked.

He looked at the others.

I shouldn’t have even asked.

He took off, flying through the hole in the window.  I was right behind him.

Malfeasance 11.3

“I don’t like that sound,” Evan said.  He was perched on the roof of a car, while I was reflected in the window.

I could hear it too, though it was faint.  Not so much a sound as an echo without a source.  It was as if the town had a heartbeat, a noise that resounded with a slightly uneven rhythm, the tolling of the town’s namesake bell.

I had one of the fat coins placed between my pinky and ring finger, and was trying to ‘walk’ it over the back of my hand.  Problem was, it was a big coin, meaning I could pass it over to the space between my index and middle finger, and then what?  I pressed my hands together, and ‘walked’ the coin from one hand to the other.

“Didn’t hear it in the house,” I noted.  I tucked the Sympathetic Magic text into my waistband, beneath my sweatshirt.  My hands felt less strong than they should.

“Protections,” Evan said.  “We put up stuff so they couldn’t get to us inside.”

I fucked up and dropped the coin, and caught it out of the air before it could fall.

“Lots of stuff around here wants to eat me,” Evan said.  “We should find a safe place before night falls, because that’s when the bad stuff really comes out.  There’s a big spell that everyone joined in on, even Rose, that keeps other people indoors and keeps them from looking outside too much.”

“Big magic,” I said.  “She agreed to that as part of a deal?”

“Yeah.  With Jeremy the priest.”

“All right, something to keep in mind, while I’m filling in the blanks and figuring this out,” I said.  “I don’t want to fuck this up for the other guys, which means doing this carefully.”

“Got it.  Careful.  I guess that means no-”

“No sparrow of blood and death and doom,” I finished for him.

“Aw.  How’d you know I was going to say something like that?”

“Heads up,” I said, “Look.”

There were a group of Others on the approach.  Female figures with a range of body types, with babies strapped to their chests, backs, swaddled in slings, or in strollers.  Six in all.

What caught my interest was the lack of communication between them.  They moved with an urgency, like they had a mission, silent.  None of the babies cried.

“Pack of mombies?” Evan said.  “I think I’d rather deal with real monsters.”

“I think they are monsters.  Shh.”

We weren’t too far from the school, and it was early in the day  It made sense that mothers would be coming back from dropping off some older children.

But the feel of them…

Another mom was coming down the street from a block over.  I saw her pick up her pace, approaching the ‘mombie’ group.

She said two words, cooing and adjusting her own baby, as if ready to present it to them, when the lead mombie bumped her with one shoulder.

Completely ignored.

She said something in response, offended, and left in a bit of a huff.

I stepped across the street, crossing the gap between reflections to get closer to the shop window ahead of the group.

I stood two feet away from them, separated by a pane of glass and a degree of reality, and I watched them.

Dolls.  Their skin was too perfect and even in complexion, their makeup painted on.  Their babies, by contrast, were far from perfect.  A little too hairy, with ears pointed at the tips, a little too intelligent in how their eyes moved.  Eyes like a cat’s or a dog’s, with barely any whites.

Changelings was the first idea to pop into my head.  A myth that I remembered learning about before, from some movie or another.  The child was removed from the crib, often by the faerie, for something resembling a baby, so the faerie could put one of their spawn among humanity and have a human baby to raise themselves.

I watched as the remainder of the group passed.  Each changeling was scanning its surroundings from its mommy-doll perch, each positioned to look in a different direction.

Roaming, on the watch.  Spies, or scouts?  If they were faerie or faerie-associated, did that mean these children were in league to Sandra?

I returned to Evan before one of them could scout me out.

“They’re creepy,” he said.  “I think you’re right about them being monsters.”

“They are,” I said.  “Mom dolls with feral faerie babies or something.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been at it for a while, roaming and looking for trouble.”

“There’s a lot of stuff like that,” Evan said.  “It’s worse than it was before, and before I didn’t feel safe going out to fly.”

“But you’re with me?”

“I was going flippin’ crazy in that house.  So much worrying, and I beat all the games that Ty brought for the handheld, and I beat all of the good games on Tiff’s phone, and I even beat two games for the console, which is really flippin’ hard when you’re the size of the controller.  The rest of the stuff is boring or I can’t do it without someone to use one side of the controller while I use the other.  They’re so busy they can’t sit down to play a game or play with me.”

He’s still a kid, after all.  Three weeks of doing nothing can get old.

“You’re wanting to do something right?  Stop the Behaims?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m even less willing to be cooped up than you are.”

“The others want to sit back and wait.  Rose is safe because of the dead man’s witch-”

“Switch,” I corrected.

“-But the others aren’t.  I can’t sit there and wait and worry.  Because Ty is really cool, you know?”

“I know,” I said.  “And I don’t want to wait and see what they throw at us before acting.  The priest attacking is clue enough that they aren’t in any shape to just sit back and wait for the other guys to pick themselves off.  The metaphorical guns are too big to let the other guys shoot first.”

“I smell blood in the air,” Evan said.  “I think someone’s already been doing some of that shooting.”

“Can you find the source?”

“Of the smell?  Yeah.  Do I want to?  No.  Too many things want to eat me, and dying once is enough for me, thank you sir.”

I considered for a moment.

“Good point,” I said.  “You know where the Behaims are hanging out?”

“Which ones?” he asked.

“Great answer,” I told him, breaking into a smile.  “Nearest one first.  Point the way, and I’ll follow.”

■

The house was big, but that was all that could be said about it.  The stone exterior around the lower floor had deep cracks in the mortar, and the siding around the upper floors had been discolored slightly by weather and sun, in dire need of an all-out replacement.

I knew my memories were fake, that I wasn’t real, and that it was fantasy to even think about it, but I’d always thought about having a place, about getting it looking nice.  Not too big, or it would be too much upkeep.  Maybe something with a little statue in a small but dense garden, a bird bath and feeders in the back, a bike in the driveway.  In the weeks I remembered adjusting to life off the street, I’d contemplated backsliding because it was easier, yes, but I’d also had a vision of what I really wanted, deep down, and as much as I didn’t love the idea of tying myself down to one place, I imagined that if I did have a place of my own, I’d want it to be comfortably mine, everything in good working order.

It bothered me on a fundamental level, seeing people take poor care of what they had.  There were a lot of things like that that I saw from time to time.  Why build a family if they were going to be lazy about it?  Why get a car if they were going to let it fill up with bags from fast food places and let stuff clutter the floor of the vehicle?

My apartment had been, eclectic, a bit randomly put together, but I’d taken care of what I had.  I’d known where everything was.

Sure, one or two things could slide.  Maybe the car was just needed to get to work.  Maybe the house just wasn’t a priority.

This… where was the focus?

What, if anything, was the occupant’s pride and joy, here?

“Can you get inside?” Evan asked.

“It’s dark.  I can’t even look inside,” I said.

“Wards,” he said, in his sagest tone.

“Wards,” I agreed.

“I can’t lipread, and Rose says lipreading isn’t that useful anyway.  So what do we do?”

“We could sneak you inside, but I’m not sure I want to do that.”

“Good way to get me re-dead.”

“Yeah.”

“Break a window?” he suggested.

“I need to occupy the window,” I said, “And broken windows get attention.”

“Umm.”

I roamed while we thought.  I could occupy the reflection of the windows that faced outside, but the opposite side of the window wasn’t in my reach.

“Who lives here?”

“Dunno exactly.  Behaims.  They’re older.  Rose said they’re heads of the family.”

I thought about what Laird and Duncan had told us, and what I’d observed.

“They’d probably be the ones who arbitrate when it’s okay to tap the family reserve of power,” I said.

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

Which meant if we could spy, then we could find out how they were using power.

As much as I wanted to see what was going on, that wasn’t the important thing, was it?

“Can you open a window?” I asked.  “Just a crack?”

“I can try.”

He hopped up, fluttering, to the window I was occupying, and with his wings still flapping, extended his tiny feet.  The taloned toes of one foot hooked on the window, the toes of the other hooked on the frame, and then pulled, or pushed, as the case may be.

He probably weighed less than an apple, and he was straining to open a window that was maybe four or five feet by three feet across, no doubt latched shut.

Well, he had weeks of experience in this body.  I’d trust him.

He gave up.  “If it wasn’t so big, I could do it.  Or if it wasn’t latched on the inside.”

“Alright,” I said.  “Good try.  Smaller window?”

“Smaller window,” he said.

“That way first,” I told him, pointing.

I arrived before he did.

The window was small, high, and square.  Occupying the space was difficult, as I stood on the ledge, my shoulder braced against the frame, my foot against the rest.  If I’d needed to move, I might have risked falling.  As it stood, the only risk I faced was slipping to the point I was moved over to the next patch of light.

Had I been properly alive, the book I’d tucked into my pants would have been ten times more uncomfortable.

“Don’t sprain anything,” I told Evan.

“I’m good,” he said.

The method was the same, but this time, legs flexing, wings flapping to help keep him in place, he tried to screw his beak into the gap.

Sure enough, it popped open.

“Yes,” Evan hissed.

“Don’t make too much noise,” I murmured.  “They’ll hear.”

I still couldn’t enter or see within, but I could hear the noise that came from inside, through the open window.

I had to ignore the faint echoing knell.

It reminded me a bit of the Drains, and I didn’t like being reminded of the Drains.

There were voices coming from within.  Not in the room the window looked into, given the distance and the vague muffled tone of it.  An adjacent room.

“…ster’s getting results,” a male voice.  Man one.

“As I’ve said a few times, he’s been saying he’s getting results.  With very careful wording.  How big are the results?  At what cost?  In what timeframe?”

“You’re being paranoid, Ben,” man one said.

Ben didn’t rise to the insult, “I’m being pragmatic.  Tell me that, in his shoes, you wouldn’t equivocate some, and mislead the adults as to exactly what you were doing?  Lead them to think that you spent all they gave you, that the threat is dire, while you’re busy pocketing excess.”

“We’re in a unique situation here,” a woman said.  “Most of us are sworn to very particular oaths, swearing we won’t use what we’ve gathered over the generations.  The idea was always that we’d be very careful about what fights we picked, use our future sight and the bloodline’s power to prepare well in advance, and prepare the next generation without using those same oaths if the situation called for it.”

“I’m not arguing that-“

“Stop, Ben.  Let me finish.  Aimon was lax about following the rules, and let several individuals slip through the cracks.  Maybe on purpose, maybe not.  But Laird was one individual who had as much free reign as the family could get him.  Alister is another.  Whether Aimon saw all of this coming or not, he made those two critical pieces in this war.”

“Laird got himself killed attempting to repay a favor he shouldn’t have asked,” Ben said.

A woman spoke.  “One mistake, but Laird did a number of things right.  The tools he gave Duncan are tools that are keeping us relevant now.  Tools we can use without breaking the oaths.”

“You don’t like Alister,” man one said.  “But he’s one of the only assets we have that have come of age.  He’s exceptionally talented, he’s smart.”

“He’s already lying to you in small ways.  If he’s lying to you in this?  We can’t afford to make a bad decision for the head of our family, not for the third time in a row.”

“If he tells the truth, then by the oaths the family keyholders have sworn, we’re obliged to keep him from squandering our resources.  If he misleads us, he can keep using those resources to our collective benefit.”

“You know me,” Ben said.  “I don’t drink, I don’t even like medication that might muddle my thoughts, and believe me, Gloria thought I was the stupidest man in the world, when I refused pills after my hip broke.”

“I did,” a woman said.  Gloria.

Ben continued, “I live my life simply.  Up until I retired, I worked hard.  I was responsible to my family.  I’ve always been faithful.  If that means anything, if it has any currency at all, then let me say this.  I believe in balance.  I believe in living in accordance to God, the spirits, the elements, and the natural order of the universe.  Living that way makes us strong.  You know this.”

“Ben-“

“Let me finish.  I think we’re getting away from that.  Not just us here, not us as a family, but everyone.  We deceive our enemies with misdirection and omission, while paying only lip service to truth.  We lie to ourselves, damn it, because if we believe the wrong thing, then the spirits cut us an awful lot of slack.  We’re all just being… fundamentally dishonest.  I think the universe makes us pay for it more than we think, and I don’t want that to be the foundation for our Lordship of Jacob’s Bell.  Not for us, and the tone it sets, and not for the way I think it’s going to be seen by other eyes, from above or around us.”

A long pause.

“Ben, I realize you’re passionate about this, but you’re not a family elder.  It’s ultimately up to us.”

“You’re representatives, you speak for us.  For me.  And I’m saying we should back Timothy.”

“I’m seconding the motion,” Gloria said.

There was a low murmur of multiple voices, some agreeing, more sounding negative.

“We’ve heard you, Ben.  Your arguments will be taken into account.”  Man one.

“Pass the wine.”

“Red?”

“Yeah.”

“Does anyone else have anything to add before we move forward?”

“We’re outclassed, and we’re hurting badly with Laird gone.  We’re not going to win this without pulling out all the stops and being damn clever.”

“The Duchamps and Johannes are pulling out the stops and being clever too,” someone said.  “They’ve got more they can do, and I’d even say they’re cleverer.  Why play their game?  Maybe Ben is right.  We play this right, not devious.”

The distant voices mingled together.

I heard tap water turn on and then off.

“Cold,” I heard a voice below.  A little younger, if I had to trust my ear.

Ah, given the placement of the window, it would make sense if it was a bathroom.  Or maybe a kitchen with an awkward setup.

“Window’s open,” a voice said.  Not old, not young.  It had a rasp to it.  Other.  “Raise me up.”

A pause.

“Um,” Evan whispered.

“Up, up,” the voice said, “High as you can go.”

“Hello little bird,” the voice said.  “Enjoying the warmth of a toasty house?”

Evan was silent.

Inside, I heard someone calling for order.

“Problem, Cranaus?” the woman called out from below.

“No.  Not at all.  I’m having a conversation.  I’ll return to you when I’m done.”

“Can you get down?”

“My dear, I’m disappointed you have to ask.”

“Alright, alright!” the woman said.

As she left the room, I heard her mutter, “Had to be a damn cat.”

Cranaus sniffed a bit in irritation.

“An ordinary bird would have flown away by now,” he said.  “Facing down a predator like myself.  An ordinary bird would have the sense to know I could catch and kill you just like that.  An ordinary bird shouldn’t as haggard you do.”

“I’m no ordinary bird,” Evan said.

A laugh, with a bit of an edge to it.  “No you aren’t.  Are you a more-than-ordinary bird who’s attempting to break into a house owned by one of my master’s blood?”

“No.  I definitely didn’t want to go inside.”

“Were you plotting harm against my master or her blood?”

“Um,” Evan said.

“We were leaning toward disruption, buying time,” I cut in, before he could get us into trouble.  “I’ve more or less decided against any sort of disruption or mischief.”

“Do tell.”

“I liked Ben’s argument in there.”

“It makes you think, doesn’t it?  How things have changed?  But you’re not so old that you’d know.”

“Not so old, no,” I told him.

“Definitely not that old,” Evan said.

“The slant of things changed around the time the new world was discovered.  Things progressed so quickly after that.  I suppose you’re one of the devious ones?”

“If I’m being honest, I’ve been devious before, even as recently as twenty minutes ago,” I said.  “But I try.  My bird friend here, I think, is pretty straightforward.”

“Yeah!”

“There’s a difference between being genuine and being guileless,” Cranaus said.  “The genuine fight with one hand tied behind their backs, but the guileless are already doomed.  They don’t know it yet, but they’re doomed all the same.”

“Guileless?” Evan asked.

“If the universe decides to turn around and hurt that bird,” I said, “I’m not sure this is a world I want to fight for.”

There was a pause.

Evan hopped back on the windowsill, occupying the same relative space I was.  A black paw snapped out, stopping on top of Evan’s head, pressing it down just slightly, holding him in place.

I was ready to break the window and strangle the cat if I had to.  I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to do it, with the strength I’d given up.

“He passes, then,” the cat said.  “But I’m forced to hold him hostage until I decide what to do with you.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Who are you with?” Cranaus asked.

“I’m with myself,” I said.

“What’s your stake in this?”

“The welfare of those I care about.”

“Who?”

I almost didn’t answer, but there was an intensity in his rough-edged, very un-catlike voice.

“Three people within the Thorburn household, and this little guy.  To a lesser extent, innocent bystanders.  To an even lesser extent, myself.”

“Why rank yourself so low?”

“Because when my nature was read with tarot cards, they drew the Fool.  I’m worried I’m one of those doomed guileless.  Every time I act on my own behalf, I have to watch how others suffer as a result.”

“That suggests you’re not supposed to be here, in the grand scheme of it all,” Cranaus told me.

“That suggestion sounds painfully accurate,” I said.

“Then-“

“Then why do I continue to exist?” I interrupted.

“I like your question better than the one I planned to ask.  Do tell.”

“Because I want to change that.  I fell through the cracks, where things that don’t belong go.  I don’t know if what I became down there is all about entropy, destruction, or if it’s about change, but I’ve got to use that, and hopefully I can use that to make my existence a net positive.”

Another cat appeared, colored the sort of gray that looked blue in the right light.

“Brave bird,” the cat said, with a voice that sounded more like it belonged to a snake, if snakes could talk.  All whispers and sounds that slid.

“Damn straight,” Evan said.

“Good morning, Hylas,” the black cat spoke.

Three familiars and me, now, gathered by the window.  The cats found a position where they sat side by side, shoulders touching, about a half-foot in front of Evan.

Why did I feel like something more was going on?

“You’re familiars, right?” I said.

“We are.”

“Why does it feel like you’re testing me?” I asked.

“Because I am,” Cranaus said.  “We keep the company of men and women.  But as much as I liked the company of my master when she was a child, she changed.  I love her and I will do what I can for her sake, but I do not always agree with her.”

“What do you do when you disagree with her?”

“I imagine I see spies lurking nearby and I accost them.  I do what I can to keep them from overhearing anything more, and I inadvertently let slip that the Behaims have a weapon, and they’re deciding who they should give it to.  I’d accidentally share that they stand on the brink of deciding.”

“Timothy or Alister.”

“Just so.”

The gray cat, Hylas, commented, “They’re leaning towards Alister.”

“You asked me what my stake was in this,” I said.  “What’s yours, telling me this?”

“We win, whatever happens.  We can’t act directly against our masters, but we like to have a say in events.”

“We draw strength from it,” Hylas the gray said.

“If you perish, on the other hand, we’ve indirectly disposed of an intruder.”

“We draw some strength from that as well,” Hylas said.

“Geez,” Evan said.  “I want to grow strong too.  I’ve been trying to push this fire bird thing, but nooo.”

“Fire?  Pah,” Hylas said.  “Imagine a bird of the storms, of cascading torrents.”

“Or of the earth,” Cranaus said, “Not conventional, to be sure, but impressive, impossible to ignore.  Aspire for greater things than mere flame, my little acquaintance.”

I hesitated.

“Are you gods?  Were you gods?” I asked.

“We were men,” Cranaus said.  “The sorts who were brief-lived legends, to the point that godhood was a possibility.  Nothing more.  We subsist now by a long existence of being familiars for one master after another.  Chronomancers like to draw the greater legends from history for such a thing.”

“Well, great men,” I said.  “Thanks for…”

“Playing fair?” Evan asked.

“It’s not fair though,” I said.  “They win either way, either they get to make a move without facing consequences, or they dispose of us.  We face a risk either way.”

“Yes,” Hylas said.

“…Which is fair, considering you caught us spying,” I admitted.

“Anyone can spy, where there is an opportunity.  But the prerogative of the one who catches the spy to decide the outcome.  You liked Benjamin’s words?  You act like you would follow them.”

“I’d like to,” I said, “But I’m not sure I can do this with one hand tied behind my back, so to speak.  I want to try, if it’s possible.”

“Then try.”

“How bad can this get, me picking a fight with Alister?”

“Not quite so bad as it might get if Alister is given the weapon his family elders want to give him, if he has any reason to fear you.”

“Right,” I said.

“He’s meeting the junior council outside the school,” the cat told me.  “Making use of the time between classes to touch base.  They’re often late for their first class of the day, after homeroom.”

I hesitated.

“I would go,” he said.

“First,” I said, “Can I ask who’s mounting the attacks on Hillsglade House?”

“That would be Alister,” he said.

Ah.

“Can I ask what the weapon is?”

“You can, but I won’t give you a satisfactory answer.  Go now.  It’s difficult for something like you to look anything but dangerous, but you’re doing an admirable job, crouched within a windowsill.”

He removed his paw from Evan’s head.

I let go of the window, and with no ground to land on, I instead arrived at the closest patch of light.

This was the Behaim’s play.

I wished I knew more about the weapon.

But Alister was the focus here.  How had the revenant phrased it?  Sandra wanted to hold to tradition, Johannes wanted to restructure how Others and humans functioned as a society, and the Behaims sought to be on top and then make everything work out.

If they picked Timothy as their champion… I wasn’t sure how it would play out.  He hadn’t been talked about much at all.  A safe bet.  If he was picked, I imagined they wouldn’t strive to be on top in the same way.  They’d… I wasn’t sure, maybe they’d be an adjunct to whoever was on top.  Being a relative bit player compared to Sandra and Johannes, it was hard to imagine them playing a big role, much less being on top.  They’d just be biding their time until someone looked like they were positioned to win, and offer the help needed to finalize it, in exchange for a small share of local power.

Alister, though, had been described in terms of talent, strength, having the ability to make things happen.

Could they catch others off guard?  Could the Behaims win, with Alister backing them?  I wasn’t sure I liked the idea, given all I’d heard.

“Blake?” Evan called out.

“Here!”  I raised my voice.

He perched on a snow-dusted shrub in front of the window I occupied.

“We going to stop him?”

Here was a challenge.

If I sent Evan ahead, or back to Hillsglade House, I was putting him at risk.  He could get intercepted along the way.

If we went back together, we risked missing our window of opportunity.  The span of time between classes wouldn’t be that big.

If we went ahead together, without notifying Rose… I was risking doing exactly what she was worried about, throwing everything into disarray.

Fuck.

“Yeah,” I said.  “We’re going to stop him.”

We moved, Evan flying, me running.  We operated on two entirely different planes, two modes of functioning, but there was a measure of synchronicity.  Neither one of us fell too far behind.  When I looked through the windows or mirrors and up, I could see him half the time.

The decision gnawed at me.  There were no cell phones in this universe.

I hated the idea of leaving Rose in the dark.

We reached the school in a relatively short span of time.  It remained protected.

The junior members, however, were gathered outside the school grounds, away from their peers.

Mags was among them.  Molly was not.

I stopped where I was.

Evan set down on the side-view mirror nearest the car window I occupied.

The sky was a startling blue as I viewed it through the window and mirror.  The city dark and worn, beneath the sparkling dust of snow.

The kids, I noted, were all armed.  Ready for war.

“I smell blood, here,” Evan commented.

“Something tells me that anyone who tries to hurt those guys is going to be the one bleeding,” I said.

I pulled the book out of my waistband.

While infusing the text with one more spirit I couldn’t afford to give, I recited a few words.  Three points of similarity.  Repeating the same ones tended to be a problem.

Age.  The practitioner’s coat of arms.  The scuff mark on the back cover.

I tore off the back cover, and laid it across the hood of the car.

No pen, I’d have to make do.

Drawing the Hyena, I began to carve letters out, as slowly and carefully as I could.  Rounded edges were harder. The paper cut, then turned black and brown where the blade had touched it.

Rose,

Behaims plan to back Alister.  They have weapon for him.  Must discredit or stop or attacks can become more serious, worse.

Give permission?

I didn’t sign my name.  No time.

I threw the cover as far as I could get it, and I hoped the cover of the real book did something similar, within that library.

Mags was looking over her shoulder at Evan.

Evan extended one wing in a wave.

Mags waved.

“Go first?” I asked.

Evan flew.

A moment later, Mags beckoned me.

I crossed the distance.

“Hello, Mags,” I said.

More than a few people startled at my voice.  A couple startled twice, reacting to my appearance when they saw me in the car window.

“I’d like you to meet the junior council,” Mags said.

“Blake shouldn’t be here,” Joanna said.  Letita’s master, I recognized.  I’d met her while with Ms. Lewis.

“I’m ambassador, I say he can be here,” Mags said.

“I don’t think it works that way,” a female Behaim said.

“Tough luck,” Mags said.  “What’s up?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said.  My eye roved over the group.

My eye fell on one young man.  Eighteen, apparently.  He had the Behaim look, dark haired, with very strong features, a little taller than average.  His features, though, weren’t so blocky as the other Behaims.  Strong cheekbones and a prominent chin and an odd face shape.  He wore a leather jacket with a heavy wool scarf tucked inside it.  The way his hair was styled, the narrow jeans, the shiny black boots… something told me he was a Toronto resident, not a kid who’d lived in a small town all his life.  His eyes were a bottle-glass green as he peered at me.

“Molly’s awol,” Mags said.  “So are the independent Others.  We think there’s a reason for that.  In the past hour alone, a good four practitioners and ten innocents have been hurt.”

“When you say independent others, you mean Others like the faceless woman?” I asked, more to keep my thoughts in order and slow down the conversation than out of genuine need to know.  My head was swimming a bit.  “The revenant?”

“They’re among them, yeah.  Essylt and the torturer Faerie might be too.”

“Hm,” I said.

“More a force of nature than an organization.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“We should go in soon,” the Behaim girl said.

My eye found Alister again, on the far side of the group.

“You’re here for me,” he said.

“Alister?”

“Yes.  You’re here to make a formal declaration of war.”

It made sense, doing it that way.  If I was going to do this seriously, with a minimum of casualties to Rose’s game plan, doing it tidy was one way.

“I-”

He cut me off.  “That wasn’t a question.  It was a statement.”

I was starting to see where Ben had been leery of him.  He did take risks.

“Statements like that are dangerous,” I said.

“They are if you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.

He drew a deck of cards from his hand, holding it up.

The Fool was the card that faced me.

“Your friend Rose is going to give you her signal.  You’ll make your declaration of war, because you have to.  But this won’t go the way you want it to,” he said.

“It might!” Evan chimed in.

Alister looked at the other members of the junior council.  “You should go to class.  I’ll be a bit late.”

“Go,” Mags said.

“You’ll have to stay out of this, Ambassador.”

“Yeah,” Mags said.  “Hang with me, Evan?”

“I’m totally helping Blake.”

I nodded.

The echo of the bell continued in the background, an angry noise.

“I like doing things this way,” Alister said.  “A proper contest of skill.  Game on.”

Malfeasance 11.4

“Game?  Evan asked.  “This is a game to you?”

Alister held up the deck again.  The card facing us was Temperance.  “Balance, union, opposites, agreements, and compromise.  An earlier reading suggests you’ve killed before, but you don’t want to murder me.  If I suggest a deal, a gentleman’s agreement…”

“You think I’ll accept?”

He smiled.  As smug as he was, a thin-lipped snake’s grin would have fit him, but he had very full lips, as characteristic of many Behaims.  When he spoke, it was with confidence.  “Yes.  I well and truly believe you won’t deny the agreement, if it’s fair.  No killing, no permanent harm, nothing that would alarm the locals, beyond our small battleground here.  I’ve got a ready-made spell in play.  No interference.”

The bell continued to echo in the background, as if punctuating everything that happened.  A sound that altered the tone of things as sure as a red tint or darkness would on a visual level.

If I’d felt top-notch, at full strength, I might have gone after Alister before he could get his footing, and the sound of the phantom bell might have played a role in that decision.

As it stood, I felt just a little shaky.  A little less like Blake and more like a broken reflection, sticks and spirits all glued together with Drainstuff.

What did it cost me if I said no?  If I refused to play fair and acted the hypocrite?  Caused the chaos Rose was worried I’d cause?  I’d lose a bit more Blakeness, I was sure.  I needed to feed the inner bogeyman and replenish the spirits before I risked it.  I didn’t want to crumble or fall back to the Drains.  Not like this.

“Fine,” I said.  “Consider this my declaration of war.  We’ll make this an even contest.”

“What about me, huh?” Evan asked.  “I bit out a chunk of your uncle’s eyeball.”

“I’ll try to remember to be careful with my eyes, then,” Alister said.  “When I speak of you, I speak of you as a pair, a situation unified.  Which, I imagine, isn’t too far off the mark?”

He showed us the card at the bottom of the deck.  The two of cups.

“That’s getting irritating fast,” I said.  “Just agree, Evan.  It makes the most sense.”

“Ugh,” he said.  “Fine.  Deal.”

Even as I’d mentioned the irritation the deck was causing me, I was thinking about it.  The deck was important.  Was it his implement?

I paced, moving from surface to surface.  Hearing the bell toll, I felt like I had in the Drains.  Sitting still was almost like giving up.  I had to keep moving, stay active.

Alister turned, keeping me in his sights, using one hand to cut the deck in half, then rotated the top half around one finger until it was on the bottom.

I could see how he kept the deck in his peripheral vision.  Cut, combine halves, bottom of the deck visible, showing different cards.  Answering questions he wasn’t asking aloud.

“That deck,” I commented.

“It could be a scam,” Evan said, loud enough for Alister to hear.  “Feels like it’s all fakery.”

Good bird.  Challenge what you thought could be challenged.  Break the glamours and other illusions.

Alister smirked, but didn’t look at the bird.

“You’re smiling, but you’re not saying he’s wrong,” I said.

“He’s wrong,” Alister said.

He said it so confidently.  I almost lost my stride.

“Evan could be onto something,” I said.  “Bravado, showmanship, appearances.  You show off well, but is there anything beneath the surface?  It’s not a scam, but only because people buy into it.  Like glamour?  Or even certain magics that desperate practitioners try to pass off as chronomancy?”

He didn’t flinch in the slightest.

“Prophecies are something that have cropped up in any number of cultures and times,” Alister said.  “Any number of stories, myths, epics and legends.”

“They have a common theme, though,” I replied.  “Very frequently, the actions of the people involved in the prophecy help bring the prophecy to come to pass.”

“True.  Does it matter?”

“Maybe Evan’s right.  Maybe we should just ignore the cards, ignore the prophecy.  Put it all aside and take you out of the picture, so to speak.”

Alister cut the deck and raised it, bottom card facing me.

A naked man lay on the ground with a red cloth draped over his buttocks and legs, a number of long blades stuck into his back.  I saw the ‘x’ in the corner.

The tolling felt like it was fractionally louder.

Going by Roman numerals… Ten of swords?

“I don’t know what that means,” I said.

“Bad end,” he told me.  “The plan leads to catastrophic failure.”

“For you or me?”

“For you.”

“Why not Death?” I asked.

“Death as a card isn’t quite what it sounds like.  The ten of swords, by contrast, is a loss so complete you don’t need to worry about further losses.  There’s a kind of peace you have to make in the face of absolute failure.”

“I’ve been there more than once,” I said.  “Your card has it wrong.  Things can always get worse.”

The knell was louder still.  I tried not to let it inform my actions.

“Can they?” he asked.  He had to keep turning around to keep me in his field of view.  Good.  He shrugged a little, cut the deck, then showed me the two of wands, not even looking at the cards.  “Rose is currently debating what to do.  She’s on the brink of a decision.  Does she send you help?  She’ll decide to, very soon.  Act recklessly, and you’ll lose what little faith she’s placed in you.  The fallout… well, things can get worse, but it’s the sort of loss you never recover from.”

If I’d had a proper heartbeat, my heart would’ve been pounding at that.

Well played, Alister.

That was scary.  Scarier in a way than the Drains.

I could handle the Drains, on a level.  I’d done it once.  I’d been miserable, but I’d done it.

Handling Rose, though?  The best I’d done to date was form short lived partnerships, only to see them fall apart.  I could totally believe that I’d lose my shot if I fucked up.

Not that I was willing to fuck up.  By breaking myself out, I’d promised myself that I’d make things better as a result.  Besides, I was willing to admit I had an ulterior motive.  I didn’t want to fuck up and screw Rose over because that would prove Rose right, and I was way too pissed off at her to do that.

“It’s easy to blame those poor souls that got involved with prophecies in the epics and the myths, say they walked right into it, but when you’re actually facing the prospect,” Alister said, “it isn’t such an easy thing to handle, is it?”

“You’re making a lot of very definite statements,” I said.  I tried to fake him out, changing the direction I was walking when he didn’t have a clear view of me.  He didn’t miss a trick.  “Dangerous for a practitioner.”

“Useful too,” he said.  “The spirits like it.  Keeps things simple, with everything being less effort for them to arbitrate.  It puts me on better terms with them, because I make it all easier.”

That deck.  It was his implement, I was almost positive.  It was at least part of how he professed to know everything that was about to happen, or at least narrow things down enough to make a good guess.  So long as he could, he could make confident statements, the spirits would be happier with him, and they’d help the statements come true out of goodwill, just like bad karma had been dragging me down and introducing problem after problem for the entire time I’d been human.

That deck was at the center of his ability to perpetuate an upward spiral.

It dawned on me that I’d been walking into trouble this whole time.

Not walking into his prophecy, but something else entirely.

By giving him chances to show off the cards and make predictions, I was letting him score points.  Every spirit that was nearby, maybe excepting the spirits inhabiting me, was getting to be very pleased with this young man who made it all simple for them.

His hand didn’t stop moving, cutting the deck, reordering it.

“She’s decided, with the counsel of her acquaintances.  The cavalry is on the way,” Alister said.

The card he showed me was the Chariot.  The white-crowned man, ostensibly Conquest or Conquest’s man, standing before a starry backdrop, a ruined city in the background, sphinxes pulling the namesake vehicle.

A little ominous, all things considered.

“You were the one attacking Hillsglade House,” Evan piped up.

“Yes.  One of them, but very recently, I did send a few zeitgeists to test the metaphorical waters, ravage the windows and shutters with the vagaries of time.”

“I don’t know what a lot of that means,” Evan declared, “But I know that when someone attacks you, the rules say you can hit them back.”

“You’re not wrong.  That’s-”

Evan flew past Alister.  He only barely moved out of the way as the sparrow practically bounced off his face.  Ricocheted like a flung stone.

Evan passed me, doing a wide loop to get his bearings and look for a spot to land.  He was apparently not that keen on the post box where the snow was a foot deep and powder soft.

“The deck,” I said, my voice low.  “If you can.”

“Got it,” he said.

Alister touched his face.  There was a scratch at his eye socket, and a dot of blood on his nose.

“I thought you said you’d watch your eyes,” Evan said.

“I said I’d try to remember to,” Alister said.  He used the side of his thumb to remove one drop of blood from the side of his face, but it was replaced a second later, fresh blood welling out.

He used his free hand to reach into his jacket.

Golden light appeared around him, realigning until it formed ribbons punctuated by Roman numerals, the edges serrated with zipper-like teeth.  They interlocked, ran crosswise with one another, and parted, rotating around him, forming a faint, rapid tickticktick that blended in with the knell of Molly’s bell.

I heard a faint sound, like a great piece of machinery grinding to a sudden halt, the noise of the sudden stop playing back in reverse, followed by the tickticktick reversing.

A dot of crimson flew from Evan’s foot, darting to Alister’s face.  No sooner had it made contact than the injury was gone.

The golden ribbons disappeared, becoming diffuse golden light, then regular light, then nothing at all, indistinguishable from reality.

“Don’t worry,” Evan told me.  “When we took down the circle around the house, Rose was able to do it because chronomancy is mostly fake.”

“I know,” I said.

“I don’t think he can really reverse time to fix a tiny scratch,” Evan said.

But my eyes were fixed on Alister’s green eyes.  I could read his expression, and I could see the slight smile.

“I can,” Alister said.  “I did.”

“Generations upon generations of conservation of power, and you spend it to heal a scratch that could heal naturally?” I asked.

“It could leave a scar,” Alister answered.  “Easier to turn back the clock six seconds than do it by a whole hour, when all of this is said and done.”

The bell continued to ring in the background.  It was an odd sound, with a cadence that made it sound like it was constantly getting louder, but it wasn’t.

“Well,” I said.  “I’m… almost lost for words.”

“That’s sort of the point,” he said.  You’re-” Cutting the deck.  Pause.  Cutting the deck. Pause. “-Something of a container for spirits.  You’re impressed on a level, the other spirits in the area here are impressed.”

“I’m more appalled than impressed,” I said.  “I’m kind of glad I told the people I did that they should be wary of nominating you.  If I hadn’t, they might have let the others nominate you without issue.”

“You put a roadblock in my way?” Alister asked.  “And here you are, being appalled that I mismanaged my time.”

He was following me a little too easily, but he could be surprised.

How could I use that?  The cavalry coming to aid me wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  I needed to do something decisive fast, or his prediction could come true.  But I couldn’t ignore the prophecies, either, or I’d walk right into that ‘ten of swords’.  Bad ending.

This was a game, so to speak.  It was all about framing things, positioning.  Being in the right place.  Evan had caught him off guard.

That he was willing to expend power to show off to the spirits said something.  We might never burn through the entire Behaim stockpile, but if he did keep doing that sort of thing, I would very much like to be a little fly on the wall when he had to explain it all to the Behaim elders.

Assuming they had a form of accounting.

Positioning.

He’d outlined the rules of this little ‘game’.  He’d spelled out what was going to happen.

If it did happen, he won.  Somehow.

I needed to postpone.

I still had the book.  It was still tied to its brother by sympathy.

I scrawled out a quick message to Rose.

‘Hold ‘help’ back’.

I cut off the cover and threw it.

“Didn’t change anything,” Alister called out.  “It’s all slated to unfold.”

He was using his words to garner an advantage.  Could I use mine?

“Alister,” I said.  “What do the cards tell you about my sword?”

He didn’t look away, per se, his eyes still fixed on me, but he did lose focus.  I’d seen him cut that deck a few too many times.  I could tell when he hesitated a fraction.

The Five of Coins.  A woman in a tattered shawl and a child, walking under a window of stained glass that displayed the namesake coins in the working of the window.

I used the hesitation the card provoked.

I didn’t move left or right.  I moved  through him.

If he was going to turn around to keep me in focus at all times, I’d make him turn all the way around.

He did a partial turn, and I moved again.

Just one tiny hesitation, and I had the slightest of edges.  If we were making individual moves, I now had the benefit of the first move.

“What does it say, Alister?” I asked.

“Adversity.  Loss.”

“What does it mean, Alister?” I asked, staying out of his sight.

He didn’t answer.

“You don’t know?  That has to cost you points with the spirits,” I said.  “Maybe Evan’s right, maybe what you do is a sham, and you’re just conning the spirits.”

“I know what it means,” he said.

“Prove it.”

“That’s alright,” he said.

He managed to find me, locking his eyes with mine.  I raised my arm, and Evan took note of the signal, flying.

Evan went straight for the deck.  Problem was, Alister was expecting it, and held the cards firm.  He punched the bird out of the air with the same hand.

Evan hit snow.

I winced.  Evan didn’t necessarily heal through any connection to me.  Any damage he sustained…

Alister didn’t waste a breath.  He backed away from me, and reached into his coat.  He threw down a piece of paper, then stepped on it.

“Tick,” Alister said.

The paper broke away into a swirl of sand.  I heard that same tickticktick whir I’d heard earlier, only it had a cadence to it like a chitter.

A clockwork arachnid, with a bulbous behind.  An hourglass was built into the behind, suspended in a globe.

“Guard me,” Alister ordered.  “Focus on the bird.”

Noting that he’d gleaned an advantage, I somehow felt fractionally better than I had.  Stronger.

Had I scared Alister, just a bit?   Or had the Hyena scared him just a bit?  Enough that he’d wanted to summon something?

Busying himself with Evan and the summoning had let me slip away again.  I walked on the edges of reflections, so I could step to the next window or mirror with a single stride.

I got to the car closest to him, and I smashed the window.

The crash was violent, and in the moment the side window broke, I could hear the bell pealing loud, unfiltered by the glass but more muted at the same time.  It was something that was absorbed and blunted by the blowing wind and the atmosphere of Jacob’s Bell.

I realigned myself just in time to see that Alister had barely flinched.

“A feint,” he said, holding his deck up.  The tick had interposed itself between himself and Evan.

“You apparently didn’t like what the card said about the sword,” I told him. “You don’t feel like sharing.  Why?”

“The deck is mine to use, not yours.”

“Weapons can cut both ways,” I said.  “Don’t want me making declarations to the spirits, Alister?”

Evan flew at him, then veered off as the tick raised its forelimbs, lunging at him.

It still got Alister’s attention.  Whatever foresight he had, he’d wanted to see what unfolded.  A casualty of wanting to use his deck to keep track of what I was plotting.

Pressure.

I decided to use the moment.  Crossing the street to the nearby car, reaching the side window.

The tick was still focused on Evan.  It was a dumb thing.  Probably a minor spirit.

I stuck my arm through the window, and speared it in the head.

I was shunted, cast off to one side.

The tick, by contrast, was dead.

The faint ring of the bell seemed to mark its slow, mechanical death.

I smiled a little.

“You want to know what the sword does?” I asked.  “It leaves wounds that don’t heal.”

“Ah,” Alister said.  “Too bad.  That was a favorite little summoning of mine.  I can’t ever repair it?”

“Evan here managed to dodge that fate, being left with an injury that wounded his very soul, leaving his ghost insane with agony.  I could theoretically do the same thing to you.”

“I can undo it,” Alister said, moving himself to a position in the middle of the street.  Evan was perched on a car, and I was in the largest window nearby, at the front of a house.

“That’s what the cards are telling you?” I called out the question.

“Common sense is telling me.  The cards are telling me something else.”

“Beggar woman and the church window?” I asked.  I couldn’t remember the cards.  “Loss?”

He wasn’t about to give me an answer.  I only needed his attention.

If something was getting to him, then I’d use that.

I shattered another window.

“Another-” he started.

I carried through with the same motion, drawing the broken blade against the back of a car.

He didn’t finish the sentence, caught off guard by the vicious metal on metal screech.

He might be able to see my next move, but if I was quick, he couldn’t see the one after.

“Enough of that,” he said.  He still managed to sound confident.

But a part of me fed off of whatever he was feeling.  It was less like a rush or a high, and more like waking up after being half asleep.  Stepping from the bleary fog of having just woken up into a cold shower.

I felt clarified.

The bell continued to toll in the background.

“Want to see if you can undo the damage I can do with this sword?” I asked, and my voice carried.  “The agreement you proposed was that I wouldn’t cause any permanent damage.  If you can undo it, then it’s not permanent.”

“It doesn’t matter.  Your ‘help’ is arriving.  Delayed, but arriving all the same.  She might give you the benefit of a doubt, but she can’t relinquish control.”

“Evan,” I said.

“On it,” he replied.

He took flight, heading in the general direction of Hillsglade.

Stopping help from coming.

“Offer still stands,” I said.  “One slice.  I can reach through glass, mirrors, even some ice.  If you’d rather I stay away from the face…”

“A bluff,” he said.

“Which part?” I asked.  “Me avoiding the face?”

He set his jaw.

“You’re good,” I said.  I continued to pace, zig-zagging, so I was always in his peripheral vision, or behind him.  “Clever, talented, born to the right family at the right time, in the right circumstances.  All the things a person needs to be great, in this modern day.  I’m not just talking about practitioners either.”

“Envious?” he asked.  “How sad.”

“No,” I said.  “Somehow, I always took it in stride.”

A thought crossed my mind.

A gamble, but all the same.  “Do you know how I remember spending my eighteenth birthday?  Can your cards tell you that?  Or are you going to show the spirits how incapable you are a second time?”

He didn’t hesitate.  Deck cut, card displayed.

A woman in a tattered shawl and a child, making their way through the snow beneath a stained glass window.  The five of coins.

I chuckled a little, pleased that I’d managed to rope him into showing the same card.  “Adversity and loss.”

You just drew the trap card.

If he’d refused, I’d still have gleaned an advantage.  It had been a win-win, with a very good chance that I’d been wrong, and my background would have turned up a different card.

Such was the nature of the game he had posed.  Positioning.  Getting the other guy into a position where he was cornered.

“You have all those advantages, Alister, but you’ve got one thing that’s always going to hold you back,” I called out.

“What’s that?”

“You’re a fucking Behaim,” I shouted.

I slammed the Hyena into a window.  The glass broke.

It took a second for the glass to stop tinkling, clattering onto ice and the floor inside the house.

“Your Evan can only stall them for so long,” he said.  He wasn’t smiling with his mouth, but those bottle-glass eyes were sparkling.  He was enjoying this, fear aside.  “The Others arrive in a moment.”

That was the problem, in the end.  I was blind.  I didn’t know why he was pleased about that.  I didn’t get his aversion to the Five of Coins.

He, on the other hand, could see everything coming.

That was, as I’d just revealed, a double-edged sword.

Rule of three in effect.  One minute to get him to draw that card a third time.

Hell, if I did that, I’d have beaten three Behaims, and achieved my third victory by rule of three against the family.

I even had an idea on how.

I’d just been talking to the two cats about taking the direct approach.

“Surrender,” I told him.

He barked out a laugh, “What?”

“I’m not just an Other, Alister.  I have all the memories of being a practitioner.  I’ve got victory in my grasp.  Surrender, and agree to turn down the position to lead the Behaim family.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I beat Laird.  I beat Duncan.  I won using the rule of three twice.  With this, right here, I can have victories against three of you, three of which use the rule of three.  That has to count for something.”

“It does, assuming you’re not bluffing.”

Straightforward approach?  I could do it.

“I’ll tell you how I can win,” I said.  “I’m going to attack you.  If you use your deck to predict and avoid the attack, you’ll probably draw that card, because it’s associated with this blade.  Somehow, I don’t think you want me to force you to draw it three times.  That’s what my instincts as an ex-practitioner are telling me.”

“Why do I need to draw anything if you just told me?” he asked.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

I was.

“Why indeed?” I asked.

I broke the window, changed locations.

Broke another window.  I arrived at the next spot and saw him covering his face and head with his arms.

I shifted position, battered him further.

I knew I was scaring him.  I could feel it.

He didn’t have his ability to view the deck.  To know what was coming.

Anything I did could be the attack I’d mentioned.

He backed away a step, so I moved directly behind him.

“Surrender!” I shouted in his ear.

He spun, deck in hand, but didn’t look.

He didn’t open his mouth.

Fine.

I reeled back, and I flung the Hyena through the window.

If I could reach through, so could the Hyena, in a way.

It passed through, flying blade over pommel.

He dodged it.  No looking at the cards.  Only human ability.

The Hyena clattered to the ground.

I could hear the echo of the bell, louder than ever.

“Well,” he said, “The bird failed.  That’s it.”

I watched the Hyena spin in place on the ground.  No ice nearby, but the bulge in the crossguard and the shortness of the broken blade let it spin briefly.

I could make out the Others.  Rose’s bogeymen, a small contingent, coming for help.  Alister turned, backing away as rapidly as he could.

I closed my eyes.

I willfully relinquished my presence on this mirror realm.

I let the real world be reflected as it was.

The Hyena spun lazily on the ground a few feet to my left.

“Sympathetic magic,” I murmured.  I said a few words in latin, and I fed one spirit to the reflected sword.  “Shape, borne of the same goblin, delivers the same blows.”

He heard me.  He snapped his head around.

The real Hyena was still on the ground.

I put my foot on the top of the reflected one, then kicked it.  It and the real Hyena skidded across the road, catching on a ruff of snow and skipping a foot and a half into the air, spiraling.

Alister threw himself to one side.

I was already using the gap between reflected spaces to cross the distance, getting ahead of the reflected Hyena.

I stopped it with the bottom of my sneaker.

Alister wouldn’t move fast enough to dodge it.

I didn’t have to offer surrender.  He knew he could end this with a word.

He didn’t.

I kicked the broken sword in his direction again, sending it skidding his way, every part of it bladed, spiked or otherwise hazardous.

I watched as it veered off to one side, as if a magnet were pushing it off course.

“Enough,” a woman’s voice called out.

Sandra.

“About time,” Alister said.

Sandra was joined by an Other.  A tall Middle-Eastern man with a long black coat trimmed with gold.  He wore sunglasses, but I wasn’t sure the glimmers of light I saw on the lenses weren’t his eyes shining through from beneath, rather than reflections.

“What a mess,” she commented.

“Timely arrival,” I said.

“What we’re doing here isn’t just fighting each other for Lordship.  We have to prove we deserve the position.  Knowing what’s going on is critical, if we’re going to earn the trust of the neutral parties,” she said.  She walked amid the broken glass.  “I have something of a web spun across Jacob’s Bell.  I can feel the weights of certain events and entities.”

Oh.  So this was it.  When Rose’s Others arrived, so would Sandra.  The fight would be over.  She seemed perfectly at ease, picking her way through the glass.

“I’ve arranged it so I can arrive promptly on any scene I feel requires intervention, if unchallenged.  I can tell you this, Blake.  Everyone is prepared to challenge the Thorburns.  Any action on your part will provoke a response from others.”

She was heading for the Hyena.

I beat her to the reflection, grabbing it, and sliding it.

Two more steps took me to the nearest window.  I punched my hand through, retrieving the blade before I was cast aside.

“More mess,” she said.

“The rules don’t disallow mess, Sandra,” Alister said.

“Expectations of the council discourage it,” she said.  “Let’s clean this up so we don’t have to explain yet another gas explosion.  Everything in its rightful place, please.”

She drew her chalice from her bag and tapped it against the nearest mailbox.  It sang, a ring of metal on metal, every bit as pleasant as the gouging of the mailbox hadn’t been.  She touched it to one shard of glass.

The bits of glass vibrated.

“Back you go,” she said, authoritarian.  “Where you’re meant to be.”

The glass danced, slid, hopped and jumped until it reached the window panes, fitting together like a dozen individual jigsaw puzzles.

“Eblis?” she asked.  “It’s easier for your kind than it is for anyone else.”

The tall man snapped his fingers.

Like lightning, the seams disappeared.  I saw reflected areas appear around every window I’d broken, like a flash of lightning.

“Hm,” she said, sounding a little satisfied with herself.  “Thank you.”

I wondered how the spirits took that.  If Alister got credit for a show like the removal of the small scratches, what kind of cachet did Sandra have?

“This concludes my duty to Johannes for this day,” Eblis said, his voice as deep as the rumble of thunder.

“That’s between you and him,” she said.  She turned her attention to Alister and me.  “You two are done.  I would like you two to agree this is a draw.  We leave it at this.”

Was it a draw?

If the Behaims disapproved of this display here, they might refuse to give Alister the lordship.

I’d had him on his heels.  Without intervention, I’d have beat him.

“I agree if he does,” Alister said.  He was still on the ground where he’d fallen.  Where he’d be bleeding if I’d hit him with the Hyena.  He might be able to undo it, but he hadn’t wanted to.

All the same, he looked just a little smug, lying there.

But this won’t go the way you want it to, I remembered his words.

I had to weigh what this meant.  The consequences.

The bell tolled in the background, and I tried to shut it out, to think clearly.

If I refused, claiming the victory, I’d have denied him what he wanted.  I’d remove the Behaims from the playing field.

But would I be risking what he’d suggested?  The ten of swords, the loss I couldn’t recover from?

It went both ways, didn’t it?  If I’d refused to play fair, I’d have lost Rose’s trust.

If I played fair here, would I gain it?

What was that worth?

This wasn’t what I’d wanted at all.  I wasn’t reducing the risk to my friends.  If anything, I was condoning it, allowing him to get whatever weapon I’d heard about.  He’d still be free to send zeitgeists and test or wear down the house’s defenses.

“This was a fair competition, with rules established in advance.  We played by the rules, we kept the civilians out of it,” I said.  “Interrupted as it was, there was no clear winner.”

“Wuh?” I heard Evan, a short distance away.

“I agree,” Alister said.

“What?” I heard Evan, again.

“I’d offer you help in standing, but there’s only so much I can do from this position,” I said.

“I’m fine,” he said.  He found his feet.

“Take your bogeymen back before we have an incident,” Sandra said.  “If you want to wreak havoc, do it after dark.  Alister, I believe you’re late.”

“I am,” Alister said.

Wasn’t he eighteen?

I didn’t ask.

“Fine,” I said.

“Turn around!” Evan called out.  “Back to the house!  Hup two three four!”

One of the Others near him swatted in his general direction, annoyed.  Evan avoided it, taking wing.

“I’ll see you later, Al,” I said.  “We can pick up where we left off, maybe.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” He answered.  “I learned so much about you.”

I took the faster route back to the house, beating Evan there by leaps and bounds.

They’d put a board up to cover the broken front window.  It made my navigation a little harder.

I saw Tiff, reading.

“Tiff-”

She dropped her book, uttering something inarticulate that was made up entirely of vowels.

“Can you get Rose?”  I asked.

“I’m here,” Rose said.

“It’s done.  It was resolved… amicably,” I said.  “I wasn’t able to slow him down.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you for keeping me in the loop.  Though I’m not happy you delayed my minions from arriving.”

“We’re okay?” I asked.

“No,” she said.  “But we’re better than we were.”

“Just don’t fucking try to bind me again,” I said.

“We’ll see,” she said.  “I won’t unless you give me a reason to.  Which you probably will.”

“You gotta answer some questions, Rose,” I said.

She folded her arms.  “I don’t have to do anything.”

I was pretty ready to break some more windows at that point.

“But I can invite you in,” she said.  “No mischief, no harm intended.  Just… get inside.”

Malfeasance 11.5

I stepped back into the house, though there weren’t many surfaces to work with.  Too many windows, glass panes and mirrors had broken in the course of the priest’s raid.

My eyes scanned the surroundings.  Here and there, things had been written down in chalk.  Runes, symbols, and diagrams.  It looked like the metaphysical equivalent of boarding up the windows.

“Thank you, by the way,” I said.  I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but it was hard enough to get the words out that it might have affected my tone.  I shouldn’t have had to ask to come back inside.

“We’re not friends,” Rose said.  She didn’t turn around as she knelt to pick up a piece of glass she’d spotted at the foot of a bookshelf.  “This isn’t us cooperating.  This is me admitting that I’d rather have your cooperation and Evan than not have either.”

“Okay,” I said, biting my tongue to keep it at that.

“Where is Evan?”

“On his way with your creations.”

“Right.”

Tiff, Ty, and Alexis appeared in the doorway, standing by the kitchen.

“You’re back,” Ty commented.

“Mission was a failure,” I answered.  “But things aren’t any worse off, and I do have information.”

“Share,” Rose said.

I bristled at the order.  “Alister, like Laird, isn’t held back by the Behaim rules.”

“We know this,” Rose said.

“All signs point to Alister being made head of the Behaim family.  Very soon.  With the appointment, presumably, comes a gift.  Some kind of weapon.  Evan and I met him, he forced our hands with his cards.”

“The implement,” Rose said.  “There are weak points, but they’re hard to target.  He tends to take the initiative and hold it.  You don’t surprise a guy who’s as good at reading events as he is.”

“I surprised him a little.  Would probably have had him, if Sandra hadn’t intervened,” I said.  “What’s the deal with the five of coins?”

“That’s not really what I’ve been reading up on,” Rose said.

“I have.  Five of coins is poverty,” Alexis said.  “Loss.  In practitioner circles, one’s ‘wealth’ is usually measured in terms of power, so a loss of powers.  Might be being forsworn, might be a loss of something else that’s vital.”

Rose frowned.  “Who was going bankrupt?”

“Alister, and the Behaims as a consequence, while I’m thinking it through,” I said.  “He predicted he could heal the damage I could do with the Hyena here, but I guess it would have been costly?”

“Something like that, Rose said.

“I was close,” I said.  “I was going to cut him.  Because it seemed to be the thing that scared him most, after that card showed up.  I wanted to do something that would take Alister out of the running, whether it was leaving a scar so maybe people wouldn’t have confidence in him, or forcing him to spend far more than he should.”

“That would have been convenient,” Rose said.

“Right?” I asked.  “Sandra stepped in.  She’s got this, I dunno, web, or net, connecting everything in Jacob’s Bell.  If any big guns are deployed, she knows about it, and can respond accordingly.”

“Something like that would need anchor points,” Rose said.  “You can’t suspend a web without attaching it to something.  Odds are good that she had her people draw symbols at key points or landmarks around the city.  Okay.”

“She was there with one of Johannes’ people.  The other three players all in one place, and they weren’t killing each other,” I said.  “After dark, apparently, is when it all gets nasty.”

“I know that last part too.  Which of Johannes’ people?”

“Tall, brown-skinned man with glowing eyes, called Eblis?”

“Djinn.  That’s telling,” Rose mused.

“I thought he was keeping the Djinn close to home?” Ty asked.

“He was, at least,” Rose said.  “If he’s willing to send them out on errands, it says something about how confident he feels.  His area is probably fortified, and he’s making displays of strength.”

“Or his area isn’t as fortified as that implies, and he’s trying to mislead us,” I said.

“Yes,” Rose said, “Or something else altogether.”

I paced, moving across the various surfaces.  I couldn’t hear the bell inside the house, but the effects still lingered, making me feel restless.

“T-minus thirteen hours to midnight,” Ty said.  “The full set of barriers aren’t up, we’re probably not going to get a lot of visitors.  Since only a few of us can work in the same room at the same time before we’re bumping into each other, we should nap in shifts, so we’re well rested when the time comes.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I’m available to help if you want.”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” Rose admitted, sounding more than a little reluctant.  “Maybe we can station you elsewhere in the house, or we could set up mirrors in places the rest of us can’t easily cover.”

“I prefer the second idea to the first,” I told her.  “Feels less like something you’re doing to me to keep me out of the way and more like I’m genuinely helping.  ”

“Good,” she said.  “Second idea it is.  Since you still seem to maintain a degree of connection, I’ll put Evan on the same duty.  If there’s a problem you can’t handle, send him, we’ll figure it out.”

“If I was better equipped to act, I’d be able to handle more problems, which would help,” I said.

“I won’t let you read the books,” Rose said, with finality.

“That’s-” I started.  I grit my teeth and stopped at that.

In the pause that followed, none of my friends spoke up in my defense, urging her to let me have access or give our side more firepower.

I had to twist my own arm on a mental level to force my thoughts in the right directions: they were my friends, however they were acting now.  It was outside interference that was making them so much more loyal to Rose.

I had to protect them.

“Alright,” I said, though I had to force the word out of my mouth.

She gave me a curt nod. “Now, it does matter if they were all together like that and not actively hostile.”

“They were,” I said.  “If there was hostility, it wasn’t while I was around.”

“That means we’re in a precarious position.  They know our defenses are down.  They’re united in their desire to remove us.”

“How?” I asked.  “How would they do it?  You set up the dead man’s switch.  If you don’t actively keep the Barber contained, and I’m really trying to keep from going into detail about why this is a bad idea, then they’ll have a demon to deal with.  A demon that’s apparently one significant tier up from what we fought in the factory.”

“I can’t tell you the details about the switch,” Rose said.

I hit the nearest shelf before I realized what I was doing.  A book toppled on the far side, falling to the floor.

I was aware of the eyes on me.

“Blake,” Alexis said.  “Don’t get upset.”

“We’re on the same side,” I told her.

“Yeah.  We are,” Alexis said.

“Then why are you hiding things from me?” I asked.  “Do you think I’ll go out of control?  Am I supposed to turn evil?”

“No,” Rose said.  “Nothing’s confirmed in that department.  It’s possible, if the human in you loses out to the Other, but nothing’s confirmed.  That’s not the concern.”

“Then what is the concern?” I asked, barely controlling the tone of my voice.

“We can’t-”

“You can!”  I felt the television screen vibrate from the volume.

I regretted it immediately.

I could feel notes of fear from the others.  Even Rose.

I liked the clarity it gave me, even as I hated the idea of it on a cognitive level.

“You can,” I said.  “Because I really want to work with you, but I’ll go crazy if this keeps up, and I’m not sure I trust myself to hold it all together.  I can’t think of anything you’d say that would be more harmful or troublesome than leaving me to guess and assume the worst.”

Rose had her arms folded.  She wasn’t looking at me, though her brow was knit.

“I was talking with Alistar in the midst of the fight earlier.  I had one pointed comment for him, I’m trying to remember how it went.  Something about bringing prophecies to pass, in the course of trying to avert them.  Now, maybe what you’re dealing with here isn’t a prophecy, but more like a-”

Rose was shaking her head.

“No?” I asked.

“No.  Stop right there.  I’m not discussing this.  I’m not giving you hints.”

I turned, and I stalked away before I could say anything I regretted.  I paced around the room.

Being here like this was going to make me lose my mind.

“Okay,” I said.  “Keep me in the dark.  Fine.  Your choice.  But remember, grandmother had me put together for a reason.  I’d like to think she picked traits that would complement me as a vestige, and traits that would keep me fighting.  Tenacity, strength.  What did Isadora call me?  ‘Little warrior’?”

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “You do have a streak of tenacity in you.  That‘s obvious.”

“Let me be your warrior,” I said.  I pointed at my friends.  “I won’t be able to help them without helping you, because you’re all connected, and I’d only hurt myself if I tried to convince them to leave.”

“I’d hurt you if you tried to convince them to leave,” Rose said.  “It wouldn’t help anything, them least of all.”

I didn’t move or say anything.  She’d dodged the first part of what I said.  I waited for her to pick it back up.

“And yeah,” she said.  “You’re more right than you know.  I’m almost positive you’re right, as a matter of fact.  You were set up to be a scrapper.  If I’ve put the missing pieces of memory back right, you made a good show of it.  But you’re not complete, Blake.  You’re a hammer in search of a nail.  What happens when everything is nailed down?  When things were quiet after Toronto settled down, what happened?  You went after the demon in the factory.”

“There were reasons I did it,” I said.

“I believe that,” she said.  “There will always be reasons.  But you’re made to follow a certain trajectory.  Everything was arranged so you would naturally self destruct.  The ‘little warrior’ in you would move from one conflict to the next, removing my enemies so my way was clear, until there were no enemies left or you perished while fighting a critical enemy.  If you died in a fight, I’d have the chance to take advantage of the confusion.  Except the enemy who did get you didn’t get confused.  I didn’t get to take advantage of any confusion.  I was the confused one.  But we managed.”

I didn’t move a hair.  She was telling me stuff.  I wasn’t going to break the spell.

“Now you’re back, and you’re not supposed to be.  Just like you weren’t supposed to kill Laird.  You’re following a different course, but you’re still a hammer looking for nails.  You’re still itching for a fight.  You’re not something I can manage.”

“Except I just proved I can be managed, that I can be sort of respectful.  Even in this damn conversation, the fact that I haven’t completely flipped out should be telling.”

“It is,” she said.  “Part of that was intentional.  I had to push, to see how much you pushed back.”

Joints in my hand snapped and cracked as I clenched my fists.

I spoke with a deliberate kind of slowness, picking my words and tone carefully.  “I thought you weren’t going to give me hints.”

“I didn’t, not the kind I meant,” she said.

“Okay,” Tiff said, stepping forward, between me and her.  “Okay.  Let’s… let’s stop talking about this, before we’re back to square one.  Please?”

“Alright Tiffany,” Rose said.  She put a hand on Tiff’s shoulder, walking past Tiff to the kitchen.  “We need to talk about how we’re going to move, before dark.  Blake isn’t wrong.  The major players are organizing, they’re more secure in the free for all at night than we are.  If we’re going to move, we should-”

The front door opened.

It took me a second to get my bearings.

“Hey,” Evan told me, as I appeared in the front window.  He was perched on the wood that had been placed over the hole.  “You were inside?”

“Yeah.”

“Awesome,” he said.  “I hitched a ride with these slowpokes, going back, ’cause I didn’t want to be all on my lonesome, and I was just starting to feel bummed out that I might not get to hang with Ty.”

I looked out over the city, using the section of window to the left of the broken part, and I could detect the faint toll of the bell.  Something felt off, ominous, and it wasn’t the bell alone.

“I’d really like everyone to be together,” I said, “without hostility.”

“Me too!  Yes.  Er, aren’t we?  If you’re inside-”

“Rose and I aren’t getting along,” I said.  “But she’s not imprisoning me or locking me out, so that’s something.”

“Rose,” Evan said.  “Right, wait, or go inside.  Gotta talk to Rose.”

He was gone, flying in through the open door over one of the Bogeymen’s heads.

I shifted position on the window, facing the house’s interior.

“Company,” Evan said.

“Company?” Rose asked.

“It’s your family.”

“Oh,” she said.  “It’s about that time, isn’t it?”

Tiff spoke up, “When I tried to figure out what they were doing last night, all signs pointed to them splitting up.”

“I did that,” I said.  “Or helped it along.  Mags got them kicked out of the cafe they were gathering at.  That would’ve been yesterday.  I stalled as best as I could.  If you hadn’t bound me, I would’ve tried to keep up the disruptions.”

“They would have had to get up first thing and meet to get this far this early,” Rose said, ignoring the last part of what I’d said.  She ran her hands over her clothes.  “I’m wrinkled and dusty.  Damn it.  I wanted to portray a better image.  The house is in a pretty sad state, too.”

“We could do a quick clean,” Tiff said.

Alexis added, “If you need us to back you up when they arrive, we could hang here, or-”

“Please clean,” Rose said.  “And then stay out of the way.  You being here would be ammunition.”

“Can do,” Alexis said.

“Watch the diagrams,” I commented.  “They’ll raise eyebrows.”

“Eugh,” Ty said, looking around.  “Right.  That’s a thing.  They’ve been here so long I look right past them.”

“Move the piles of books and boxes,” Rose said.  “Hide them without covering them up.  It looks like things will be messy after all.”

They worked as a group.  Even Evan chipped in, gathering the odd piece of paper and flying it elsewhere.

I could have used sympathy to help, but it was a gross and disgusting overuse of my power.  Besides, I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure I trusted Rose.  She’d promised no mischief or attacks on me while I was in the house, but I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t try something the second we were both outside of the house.

“Rose,” Alexis said, “Stop.  Go wash up and change.  We can handle this.”

I could see indecision cross Rose’s face.  “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.  You’re going to need to tap Conquest for this, aren’t you?  Better to be a proper Lady of status than Lady Macbeth.”

“I’d really rather not tap him.”

“We knew you’d probably have to,” Ty said, moving a box.  “It was a conscious decision we made when we decided we didn’t have the time to focus on the issue of your family.  It wasn’t said aloud, but I think we all agreed.  I’m suspicious you knew it too.”

Rose hesitated.  “Right.  Back in a minute.  If they come before I’m down, make them wait.”

“Right-o,” Ty said.

Rose got as far as the stairs before pausing.  “Blake?  Don’t make me regret letting you inside.  Please.”

I wasn’t able to formulate a response, so I only bobbed my head in a curt nod.

She was gone so soon after that I wasn’t sure she’d even seen my response.

I watched the others work.  They were pretty efficient, saving breath for work, only speaking to call across the room and ask if a box or stack of books was in a good spot.

I stood watch by the front window.

“That’s going to have to do,” Ty said.  There was a sheen of sweat on his face.  “Dishes, papers…”

He hurried from the room with what he could carry.

Tiff and Alexis left with the spellbooks that had been strewn on the table in front of the couch.

Alexis was faster in returning, an unlit cigarette in her mouth.  I’d known her to do that when stressed.

“This arrival feels too convenient,” I said.

“A push from Sandra?” Alexis asked.

“It would fit.”

“Yep,” she said.

I wasn’t sure what else to say.  I continued watching the streets outside via. the window.  Alexis hadn’t visited me while I’d been bound.  She’d been the person closest to me before all this, and now she was the furthest.

When I glanced back her way to see if she was cleaning, I found her less than a foot from me.  I didn’t startle, but my heart did something funny in my chest.

“I don’t know how to feel, seeing you like that,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“My work, becoming something warped.  It’s all how I’d ink the branches, the spatter pattern, the watercolor in the space beyond is maybe a little pale, but if I was dealing with someone who didn’t give a damn about the fading…”

“The colors were more vivid when you first did them,” I said.  “In my head, anyway.”

“That’s… were the lines that good?”

“Yeah.  I think so.  My eye isn’t bad, but I was so happy with what I got I didn’t exactly study it to find flaws.”

“That would be some of my best work, either way.  Except now the darkness is using it on a symbolic level or something.  It’s being used to turn you into something else.  That…” a pause.  “Sucks.”

Sucks.  Such a simple word for an utterance she had so many subtle emotions into.

“I think I was something else to begin with,” I said.  “Rose’s attitudes seem to point that direction.”

“Blake, I can’t- if you start talking like that, fishing for tells…”

“You’re good at hiding your tells,” I said.  “But okay.  We won’t go there.”

“I’m thinking a year and a half ago, if I had to put it somewhere chronologically?”

“Yeah.  About.”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Huh.  I can even picture the week it was.  I thought it was a slow week.”

I rotated my arms, studying the tattoos that now clustered on them.  More tattoo than bare skin.

“Well,” I said.  “If I’ve got to have something changing, as I lose my humanity, this is…”

I searched for how to phrase it.  I had to be careful not to lie, and I felt like the choice of words was exceedingly important.  Alexis, standing behind me, didn’t say anything.

“It’s good,” I decided.

A light thud.

Alexis’ head forehead rested on the glass of the window.  I couldn’t make out her face, with the angle of her head, but I could see the cigarette sticking out.

I checked the street.  No sign of the family.

Reaching up, I touched the glass from my side.  The side of my thumb traced the line of Alexis’ hair.

“I know you don’t remember it.  I know it might not have even happened, but to me, you saved me, Alexis.”

She didn’t move.

“I was cursed with an inability to create,” I said.  “Maybe that’s part of being built as a warrior, with only the necessary parts.  But I could never draw.  Tried a bunch of things, but I never found that talent.  I don’t… I’m trying to sum up this one thought, but I feel like I’ll keep getting off track if I try to explain it.  I don’t really know, but if there’s any ability for an artist to be able to tell this sort of thing through their work, I really want you to be able to look at this and see it as it was supposed to be, and know that you saved me.  That-”

Again, I couldn’t find the words.

“That-  Um-  Shit.”

I wasn’t choked up, but I wasn’t sure I could be choked up in the normal way anymore.

Words simply failed me.  I tried taking in a deep breath, even though I didn’t need it. The back of my hand stroked the glass that separated me from touching her hair, then dropped to my side.

“If- If I’m stubborn, if I have any well of strength to draw from at all, I owe that to you.  That means I have a responsibility.  I can’t use that strength and stubbornness the wrong way.  I- you never let me in enough for me to really know why you were so set on helping people like Tiff and me.  I’ve guessed.  I’ve speculated…

“…But I want you to know that you did help me.  You helped me to my feet, helped me be a real live boy again.  And maybe the demon took that away when he took away the connection, and maybe that’s why you took it harder when I left.  Maybe it’s not real, maybe it didn’t really happen, I don’t really know.  But if you were trying to prove to yourself that you were capable of something… I think you proved it.”

The silence that followed scared me.

I’d conquered my demons, so to speak, in the midst of the realization that I wasn’t entirely real.  But I was a little scared, standing there.

Looking past Alexis, I could see Tiff and Ty standing in the hallway, only a sliver of their bodies visible beyond the living room door.  No doubt they’d seen or heard some of it and then stepped back  out to leave the two of us alone.

The pressure of the silence grew with every second.  I glanced back.  Nobody approached, though one car had stopped by the side of the street.

“Sorry,” I said, “If that was presumptuous or if I was adding to your burdens, saying you’re somehow responsible for me.”

“No,” she said.  She stepped away.  “That was…”

More silence.

“It was?”

She smiled a small smile, lips pressed together a little in that unconscious way she had of hiding her teeth, the cigarette in her mouth bent, maybe from when she’d rested her head against the window.  “Good.”

Was there less tension in her face and neck than there had been?

“I really need a damn smoke,” she said, with no rancor in her tone.  “Excuse me.  I’ll be outside.”

“Is that a good idea?” Ty called out.

“We’ve got some wards.  I’ll be okay,” she replied.

I was left alone, with only the faint murmur of Ty and Tiff’s conversation in the hallway.

Two minutes passed, me agonizing over ever last word I’d said, wishing I’d picked some better ones, while paradoxically not at all displeased with what I’d said in general.

I’d needed to say it.

“We need a theme song,” Evan chimed in, behind me.

“Hm?”

“Bird boy and scary tree,” he said.

“I’m not a tree yet,” I told him.

“You’re covered in branches.”

“And birds.  Can’t I be, I dunno… there’s got to be something better than tree.”

“Bird boy and tree, you and me…” Evan said.  It took me a second to realize he was even trying to sing.  “Um.  Were you good at music?”

“I was good at building,” I said.  “None of the creative stuff.  Those other guys were the artists.”

“Any of them good at singing?”

“Ty’s pretty good at everything,” I said.

“Okay,” Evan said.  “I’ll ask him later.”

“Ask him to come up with something better than tree, while you’re at it?”

“Eh,” Evan said, noncommitally.

I shot him a look.  He broke apart, becoming a ghost, just to stick out his tongue at me.  A moment later, he condensed back into bird form, flapping his way around in a circle before he could find his perch again on the lampshade by the window.

Smiling, I watched what was going on outside.

“Rose is really scared,” Evan said.

“I believe it,” I told him.  “Scared is good.  The problem is when scared leads to her acting like Molly.  We need to do something.  Act.”

“We will,” he said.  “But we gotta survive first.  And, uh, with me being dead and all and you being, um, uh, sorta you?  The surviving part is something we should work on.”

“Point,” I said.

It took another minute before the first confirmed Thorburn sighting.  Not long after that, they arrived en-masse.

Dad, Mom, Uncle, Aunt Jessica, Aunt Steph, and Aunt Irene, with just about all the kids in tow, minus Paige and Molly.

I wished I’d asked more about Molly’s status.

“Rose!”  Evan called out.

The group made their way up the long driveway.  Rose answered Evan’s call, coming downstairs.  Still wearing grandmother’s clothes, but a different outfit.  A blouse with lace around the folded collar, a brooch, and a knee- length skirt, black.

“You smell like mothballs,” Evan chimed in.

“I’ve worn and washed these clothes before,” Rose said.  “How can I still smell like mothballs?”

“Here,” Tiff said, walking up behind Rose.  “Post it, and a rune, and… a bit of blood.”

“Better already,” Evan said.

Tiff removed the post-it.

This was what I’d missed, being in the drains.

The anger nestled deep inside of me had gone quieter though.  Where I might have been inarticulate in anger before, unable to express just how and why that bothered me, even to the point of not fully realizing I was angry, I was able to get a hold on it now.

“Alexis is out back,” Ty said.

“Okay, that’s just not a good idea,” Rose said.  “You don’t split up when there’s a horror movie monster after you, and we’ve got at least thirty equivalents in town right now.”

“We’ve had a surplus of horror monsters after us for a while,” Ty said.

“She’s supposed to be smoking in the bathroom with the fan.”

“I think she needed space?” Tiff asked.

“Rule still holds, space is irrelevant.  Go get her,” Rose said.

“On it,” Ty answered.

I met Rose’s eyes.  Pale, with faint dark circles under her eyes, blond hair tied back until there wasn’t a hair out of place, a white blouse and ivory brooch, her shirt crisp.

I was rumpled, tattered, my skin riddled with dark lines and faint splashes of color.  My hair, once blond, was dark with the grime that now impregnated it.

She didn’t say anything.  She headed to the door, and as per her earlier request, the others vacated the area.  Alexis hurried past, taking the stairs two at a time to get upstairs.  Evan roosted on the back of the chair beside Rose.

Rose opened the door.

“Rose.  I’d apologize for not calling ahead,” Uncle Paul said, “But-”

“I knew,” Rose interrupted.  “We even had time to tidy up.”

That seemed to put him slightly off balance.

Rose was different.  Poised.

He seemed a little caught off guard.

“If this is the place after cleaning up, I’m very concerned about what it was like before,” Aunt Steph snarked.

“We had, how should I put it, unwelcome visitors?  Something of a break in,” Rose said.

That shut Aunt Steph up.

“A break in?” Uncle Paul asked, skeptical. “I’m more inclined to think you had a party.”

“No,” Rose said.  Confident, clearly in control of herself.  “It was a break in.  I’m guessing you found something in the contract.”

“Several somethings,” our father said.

“Of course.  Come in,” she said.

She didn’t wait to see if they’d listen, or wait for a response.

They followed her into the living room.

“You’re wearing grandmother’s clothes?” Callan asked.

“Funny thing,” Rose said.  “All the clothes that I had over at mom and dad’s place were, what was it exactly?  They just happened to go up in flames?”

“They were packed into the back of the garage for storage, and, unfortunately, the garage flooded earlier this fall.”

Rose spread her hands.

One by one, everyone found seats.  Adults took the sofa and chairs first, the younger individuals – Callan, Kathryn, Ellie, Peter, James, Christoff, and Roxanne, all stood, framing their parents.

A show of force.

Evan had apparently gone completely unnoticed as Aunt Jessica sat down.  He flapped his wings, fluttering, and she startled, flying out of her chair.

Rose whistled, and Evan flew to her.

I was supposed to feel bothered by that, but I was glad she had that.

“What’s with the bird?  And the getup?  Why not buy clothes.  And act sane?  You look weird,” Roxane said.

Roxanne was twelve, her blonde hair normally straight but presently curled, spoiled rotten by Uncle Paul and Aunt Jessica, aware that she was pretty and cute, and fully capable of leveraging that to get what she wanted.  She managed to put a lot of bite into very simple criticisms.  I imagined she was an unholy terror in whatever grade she was in.

“I’m a little weird these days,” Rose answered.

“I said that badly,” Roxanne said.  “You look fucked up.  It’s like you’re a crazy bird lady only it’s more fucked because you’re too young to pull it off.  Can’t we get the house if she’s crazy?”

“The term is mentally unsound,” Uncle said.  “And yes, we could.  But we don’t need to.”

“I know false bravado when I see it,” Rose said.  “You’re confident, you’re not that confident.”

“And you’re a twenty year old girl with a high school education,” Uncle Paul said.  “The house is visibly falling apart.  You know the contract terms name you custodian and heir only if you keep things to a certain standard.”

“That’s your plan of attack?” Rose asked.  “I thought you’d surprise me.”

“This is preliminary,” Uncle said.  “We’re not going to discuss everything we found with you.  We would like to give you an idea of what we’d be saying and doing if lawyers were to get involved.”

He dropped the pad of papers on the coffee table.  It was thick enough to thud as it landed.

“You’re trying to intimidate me?  Uncle P, you have no idea what I’ve been dealing with these past few weeks.”

“Believe me,” he said, “I actually think I have an idea.”

I walked through my version of the room, and changed my focus.  Letting go.

It was harder than it had been.

My first attempt failed.

“Why don’t you illuminate us?”

“No.”

My second attempt managed to produce a reflection of the pile of papers on the coffee table.

I picked them up, and began to leaf through them, looking at the highlighted points.

“You claimed the place was broken into just yesterday?  Did you file a police report?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“That’s none of your business.  I’m not volunteering any more information, if you’re just here to fish and make one of the obvious and most easily dismissed legal stabs at me.”

She was right.  There was more to it than that.

I flipped straight to the end, and found notes.

I snapped my fingers.

Peter turned his head.  Then scrambled to get out of the way as Evan flew over.

I bent down low.

“Tell her,” I murmured, “They are going to declare her mentally unsound.  Duncan is helping.  Sandra is helping.  People are on their way now.  They are going to get her put in a mental hospital.  It will not last for any longer than they need it to, but it will free someone else to come after the rest of them, without risking hurting her.  She needs to stop it from happening.  Go.”

Evan flew back to Rose.

Looking visibly distressed, Aunt Steph asked, “Can you cage that thing?”

“Thing?” Evan asked.

Nobody reacted.  His voice was only for us to hear.

“I’ll get him a bit of food,” Rose said.

She stepped into the kitchen.  I followed her.

“Mental aslyum,” Evan said.  “Just to keep you out of the way.”

Rose nodded, but couldn’t reply without being heard talking to herself.  Which wouldn’t help matters.

“Right now, they’re coming.  We need to deal with it somehow,” I said.

Rose shook her head.  “Against Sandra?  And Duncan?  They’re too strong.”

“What, then?”  I asked.

“We’re going to give them me,” she said.  She sounded a little too much like Conquest, and not quite enough like Rose.  “And we’ll let them face the consequences.”

Malfeasance 11.6

Rose gave Evan a piece of cheese puff from a bag, then took her time rolling up the bag and binding it closed with an elastic.

“No objection?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I told her.  “You haven’t elaborated on anything.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, her voice pitched low.  “They’re testing the water, seeing if our resolve holds up when the pressure is on.  It’s… it sucks, but we have to call them on it.”

“I need more details than that,” I said.

“They’re going to take me away,” Rose said.  She leaned forward, arms folded on the kitchen counter, “It’s even possible they’ll lock me up or drug me.  The dead man’s switch… they’re counting on the idea that I’ll crack before they do.”

“They’ve got-”

“Rose?” I heard the voice from the living room.  Dad’s.

“-A guy who can read the future,” I said.  “And Laird knew how to counter demons.  He can share that knowledge.  You can’t play chick-”

“Rose?” Roxanne piped up, her voice perfectly pitched to pierce anyone’s thoughts and seize their attention.

“-en with someone who has no reason to be afraid,” I finished.

Aunt Steph appeared in the doorway, and Evan took off, flying around Rose.  She took the warning for what it was and turned around.

“Problem?” Aunt Steph asked.  She smiled, but it looked forced.  All of her smiles did.  Uncle Paul’s first wife, they’d had Kathryn, Ellie, Paige and Peter.  She’d gone the stay at home mom route, let herself go in the worst way while Uncle Paul kept himself more or less presentable, and when they split up, never really pieced herself together again.  At present, she was wearing clothes that were surprisingly nice, almost certainly dry cleaned or brand new, and her hair was professionally cut.  Whatever her attention to the broad strokes, she missed the mark in the details.  She was groomed in a perfunctory sort of way, basic makeup and a comb through her hair, and she’d missed areas.  A mole sat on the side of her neck with coarse hairs sticking out of it.

I didn’t like to judge people by appearance.  If I did, I wouldn’t have liked Alexis like I did.  Alexis’ hair was sometimes like Aunt Steph’s, an afterthought more than something she focused on, and even Aunt Steph would have paid more attention to fixing her teeth.  The big difference was that Aunt S’s grooming issues were a symptom of something else that was going on with her personality and worldview.  Rather than work, she’d lived off the teat of child support and disability allowance that was almost certainly trumped up.  Ellie and Peter, the two children that had gone to her in the divorce, had followed a similar road to very different destinations.  She’d given them only the bare minimum they needed to get by, and as far as I could tell, had taught them that if they wanted more, they needed to manipulate others to do it.

I could imagine a world where the stars had aligned differently and grandmother hadn’t tainted or taunted the family with the inheritance, and where I actually sort of liked my family, as a whole.  A world where the general nastiness hadn’t bubbled up and out and twisted them.  In this theoretical world where I could see my Uncle Paul or Callan or any of the others at Christmas and exchange presents, I suspected I’d still have a deep seated dislike for Aunt Steph.

“I was taking a moment,” Rose said.

“Maybe you should ‘take a moment’ later, when you don’t have the rest of the family in the other room, waiting for you,” Aunt Steph said.  I could imagine she thought she sounded sweet, saying it.

Maybe you should go fuck yourself, I thought.  Rose met my eyes, and I could tell we were on the same wavelength there.

“Of course,” Rose said, turning.  She stood straighter, and then she smiled.  I would never have been able to do that.  She tapped the counter in front of me, and her inflection was slightly different as she said, “Have to think of the others.  I’ll have to give you the benefit of a doubt.”

“Good,” Aunt Steph said.  She smiled, and it was a smug, too-pleased-with-herself sort of smile.  If I hadn’t already known what they were doing, that smile would have given the show away.

But Rose’s words there hadn’t been for Aunt Steph’s benefit.  They’d been for mine.

She was going ahead with this.  Damn it.

She held out a hand, and Evan flew to her outstretched finger.

“Dirty,” Aunt Steph commented, frowning.

“I should be able to flip the bird to people,” Evan said.  My head snapped around to look at him.  He continued, “It’s called flipping the bird, so why can’t a flippin’ bird give someone the finger?”

My eye moved over everyone in the living room.  Evan had been heard only by Rose and I, as far as I could tell.  The family had made deals with Sandra, Johannes or Duncan, but there was nothing to suggest they’d been clued into the real goings-on.

Rose was silent, ignoring Aunt Steph’s comment as she headed back into the living room to rejoin everyone.

I remembered her words.  ‘Have to think of the others.  I’ll have to give you the benefit of a doubt.’

Rose’s plan, apparently, was to hope that Sandra, Johannes, Duncan, Alister, and all the rest backed off and let her back before the dead man’s switch kicked in.  Which meant that the rest of us were left with Hillsglade House to look after.

That meant Evan, Alexis, Ty, Tiff and I all needed to survive, and we had to do it while the defenses of the property were a fraction of what they had been.  If Johannes and Sandra were cooperating enough to arrive at Alister’s side, and Sandra wasn’t leaping at the chance to take Alister out of the running, there was some kind of deal in place.  That meant all of our enemies were probably gathered in a loose coalition against us.

Putting aside grievances to deal with Rose and her dead man’s switch, and quite possibly Molly as well.

Rose knew it, but she still wanted us to stick it out.

Fuck.

I couldn’t let it come to that, if I had any chance to avoid it.

When I returned to the living room, I could see the others gathered.  Uncle Paul had one armchair, Aunt Jessica stood behind him, with one hand on Roxanne’s shoulder, another on James’.  Very protective.  Mom and dad –Rose’s mom and dad- were sitting on the couch, taking up more space than they needed, with Ivy as their ready excuse.

Aunt Steph nudged Ellie, and Ellie reluctantly vacated the chair for her mother, before standing next to Peter.  Kathryn shifted a bit away – the oldest of the cousins, mother to the first of grandmother’s great-grandkids, she didn’t have her kid with her.  I wondered how that worked.

“We’re worried about you, Rose,” Rose’s dad said.  “We talked earlier, I tried to make that clear.  Your mother and I have talked it over.  I want you to know that whatever comes next, we didn’t want this.  We agree it’s probably in your best interests, but we didn’t want it to play out this way, not when we were just starting to reconnect.”

“Da,” Ivy piped up.  He reached down to brush her hair with his fingers, tidying the part in her wisp-thin blonde hair.

“You can’t have it both ways, dad,” Rose said, raising Evan up to her shoulder.  “You don’t get to trash my clothes and leave me without anything-”

“That was an accident,” her mother said.

“-And you don’t get to meet with all the others and discuss strategies for getting me out of the house or selling the house out from under me and then turn around and pretend to be my ally in all this.”

I saw Ellie smirking, almost as if she agreed.  Then again, Ellie, the third oldest of the cousins, was probably the least proficient when it came to the finesse side of things.  She probably thought all the cloak and dagger stuff was bullshit.

“I’m your family,” Rose’s dad said.

“You’re my relative.  You’re far from being my family,” Rose said.  “Unless you want to tell me what the rest of these guys have planned?”

“We discussed that,” he said.  “While we don’t agree with the timing, we think everyone will be happier in the long run, the way things are.  Please cooperate.  If you just… go…”

He trailed off.  Rose had one hand to her face, and was laughing softly, laughing only to herself.

When she moved her hand, the look in her eyes was alien.  Cold.

Her dad lost his train of thought.

“I grew up with you, dad.  I have a rule when it comes to you, you know?  It makes dealing with you easy.”

“A rule?” he asked.

“It’s really simple.  Whenever you say something, I flip it around.  You say you’re doing this to make everyone happy?  No.  What you really mean is you’re doing this to make you happy.  You want us to be a family again?  I hear that, and I interpret it as ‘you aren’t my daughter’.”

“That’s unfair,” Rose’s mother cut in.

“Paranoid, even,” Peter chimed in.  He just couldn’t resist dropping that barb.

“This is exactly why we’re worried about you,” Rose’s dad said.  “You’re not of sound mind, you’re not making good decisions for the family or the inheritance.”

“Wait,” Rose said, raising a finger, “I got this.  Give me a second.  ‘This is exactly why we’re trumping up charges against you.  You’re just a little too clever right now, and we don’t want you outplaying us in terms of the inheritance.’  How’s that?”

“That isn’t cute, funny, or productive,” Aunt Steph said.

“It’s a little funny,” Peter said.  His mother shot him a look.

“What’s that even about?  Trumping up-” Uncle Paul started.  “What in the hell are you talking about?”

Rose smiled slowly.  “You act well, Uncle P, but someone already gave it away.  I have an idea of what’s in that contract.  Some people are supposed to turn up pretty soon, aren’t they?  They’ll take me away, and I’ll wind up talking to a shrink or locked in a padded cell, all doped up?  That’s how you think it’ll go?”

Jesus.  I could feel the atmosphere in the room change.  I’d dealt with demons, I’d dealt with other monsters, and I’d done my time in the Drains.  This was a different kind of creepy.  The expressions didn’t change, nobody moved, but in the act of putting on poker faces, there was a collective sort of pause.  A moment where nobody else in the room exchanged glances or moved, because a glance or a movement could potentially give it all away, confirming Rose was right.

Six adults and seven children who were so versed in the lies and deception that they could all manage to avoid reacting in surprise.

“It wouldn’t normally work, but you’ve got a friend, someone local, who can pull strings?” Rose asked.  “I know.  I’m pretty sure I can handle it.  I’m betting I’ll be out soon, even.”

Aunt Steph piped up, “This is that paranoia-”

“Stop,” Rose cut her off.  “Just stop.  I know the details.  A member of this family pointed me in the right direction, a little earlier.”

She briefly met my eyes.

Clever, Rose.

The facade cracked, the poker faces slipping as some members of the family looked at one another.  A lot of eyes turned Ellie’s way.

“You want to game me?” Rose asked.  “You have little conception of what’s really going on.  You raised me to play this game, to scheme and backstab and to see through lies.  One member of this family thought they could achieve their goals by passing the information along to me.”

“So you say,” Uncle Paul said.

“Do you know why the policeman and the community leader held a meeting and decided to reach out to you?” Rose asked.  “They’re just a little bit worried about me.  Think about that.  Consider the idea that maybe the house and the money it’s worth is one of the least important things here.”

“There’s more money in play?” Aunt Steph asked.  “You got the assets on the property.  Something valuable?”

Rose smiled, spreading her arms.

She was divulging information she maybe shouldn’t.  In fact, she was very much the egomaniacal villain from the movies and kids cartoons, who explained far too much of their master plan.

I wondered momentarily about that.

Rose was falling back on the little bit of Conquest that was inside her.  Why?

Because she was scared, or hurt.  If I put myself in her shoes, it would have sucked, knowing that dad hadn’t been on the up and up when he’d said he genuinely wanted to be a family.

Some people hid behind an act.  Rose had a whole other side of herself to hide behind.  Tapping into the Conquest inside her was one thing, drawing strength from it, but if she was using it as a crutch, consciously or otherwise, then that was a problem.

Power had a price.

“You’re distracting from the subject at hand.  Your knowing doesn’t change anything,” Uncle Paul said.

“We’ll see,” Rose said.

The family was sufficiently distracted.

I didn’t trust myself to give away a piece of myself.  I needed to strengthen myself before I acted.

Nothing suggested the family knew about the practice.  Even if they did, I should be free and clear with a little mischief.

I stepped around to the front window, and I smashed it.

Every head in the room turned my way.  I could feel the note of fear, and smiled a little as I stepped off to one side.

“The hell was that?” Uncle Paul asked.  He’d sprung out of his seat.  “Gunshot?”

“No, gunshot wouldn’t make a window explode like that,” Ellie said.

“How do you even know that?” Peter cut in.

From the television set, I could see the family at the one side of the room, peering outside.

“I saw someone,” James spoke up, he was a kid between Paige/Peter and Roxanne in age at fourteen, wearing glasses.  As far as I was aware, he wasn’t as bad as Ellie or Peter or Callan or Roxanne, but that was more a case of them being horrible excuses for human beings than him being particularly good.  He was a nasty little shit who’d been prone to sprees of vandalism and hanging around with equally nasty grade schoolers around the time I’d left home.

“There’s nobody out there,” Uncle Paul answered.

“I believe I mentioned something earlier about there being outright attacks on the house,” Rose commented.

Technically true.  Misleading, but true.

I could feel the unease growing.  Ivy was whimpering, apparently picking up on the atmosphere, and Rose’s parents were shushing her, bouncing her in place.

Then Ivy’s eyes fell on me, and she broke into actual tears, squirming.

“Company’s here,” Uncle Paul commented.  He didn’t try to hide his smugness behind a poker face.

“Man!  A man with bad face!” Ivy cried out, almost fighting to get further away from me and squeeze herself further into her mother’s embrace.

Peter grinned.  “Your uncle does take some getting used to.  I know I’m still working on it, after nineteen years.”

His father shot him a look.  “Don’t be childish.”

“Black line face man!” Ivy cried out.  “In the T.V.!”

I stepped out of the television before anyone turned their heads.

One picture was up on the wall in the hallway.  I vaguely recalled it being knocked to the ground, but I supposed someone had picked it up and hung it again between the time the priest had invaded the house and the present.

From the hallway, I watched the family.  I still held the reflection of the paperwork that Uncle P had brought.

I reached into my chest.

No birds available.

“C’mon,” I muttered to myself.  “I scared Tiff, I scared those guys…”

Nothing.

Damn spirits, I thought.  You want more?

Replenishing my power wasn’t that easy, it seemed.

A moment later, I returned to the window.

“Bad man!” Ivy shouted.

Heads turned.

Roxanne raised her eyes.  I might have thought she was young enough to be innocent, but she looked right past me.  At most, I might’ve been an odd shadow she wouldn’t notice unless she was looking for it.

James, at fourteen, was two years Roxanne’s senior.  He saw me.

Why the difference?  Was it that James was quieter, more studious, less exposed to the ugliness of the world?  Or was it that James had never truly grown up or defined himself outside of the shadow of his parents and their desires?

All the same, he caught a glimpse of me.  His eyes went wider.

I wish I was more apologetic about this, I thought.  Just scaring them.

I smashed the window, but what I didn’t expect was for James to raise his hands, flinching as I moved my arm.  In the doing, he put his hands right against the glass.  Glass flew, and with the jumble of people, there was more chaos this time.  James fought to get away, and hit others in the process.  Kathryn fell, and knocked over Roxanne.

Fuck.

No time to do anything about it.  Back in the hallway, I reached into my chest for the second time, and I collected one bird that had been stirred into activity by the excitement.

I pushed it into the paperwork I held, then watched the scene.

Dad was on his feet, mom was focused on Ivy, who was shrieking, while the rest of the people in the room, Rose excepted, were trying to untangle themselves in the space between the armchairs and the now-broken front window.  Rose stood behind the couch, her back to the kitchen door, watching it all impassively.

“By the bonds of sympathy,” I said.  “Crafted by the same coalition, drafted by the same beings, equal in weight.  I bind this to that and forge a connection of like to like.”

I moved the contract, sliding it off the table and beneath the bookcases.

Ivy continued to scream.  When she did speak, it was in gasps, between wails.  “Wanna go!”  Screech. “Wanna go!”

James was crying.  He held his hands in front of him, and there was blood on them.  As his mom and dad tried to help him, he flinched away from the more sudden movements of nearby family members.  I had to strain my eyes to see in the midst of the chaos, but the cuts were shallow.  A lot of the blood came from one short cut at the hairline.

I hadn’t planned on hurting him, not like that.  But all the same, damn.  I did feel stronger after all that.

Uncle Paul stepped away from Roxanne, leaving her to Aunt Jessica.  He grabbed the man purse or soft suitcase or whatever the accessory was supposed to be called, and then looked to the coffee table.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Your son is hurt and you’re focused on something else?” Aunt Jessica asked.

“He’s fine.  Just spooked.  Rose took the damned contract.”

“I haven’t moved from this spot,” Rose said.  “Right mom?”

Caught between loyalty to the group and her charade of wanting to be the dutiful parent, I could see Rose’s mom hesitate.

“Rose honestly hasn’t moved an inch,” she finally said, holding Ivy against her shoulder.

Uncle Paul scowled.  “Find it.  I’m going to talk to the men in the driveway and ask if they saw something.”

“I’ll come with you,” Rose’s dad said.

Then they were gone, moving right past me as they entered the hallway and turned a hard right.

I saw Aunt Steph duck down, no doubt to search under the coffee table.

I reached between the legs of the bookshelf, grabbed the reflected contract and lifted it up, pressing it against the underside of the bookshelf.  Through the bond of sympathy, I held up the contract in the real world.

A good fifteen seconds passed.

“I can’t find it,” Aunt Steph finally admitted.

I relaxed, putting the contract down.

“You need to,” Rose’s mom said.  “There’s pertinent details in there for…”

“For you to get me sent away?” Rose asked.  “I’m not sure it matters.  They’re bending rules like crazy to make this possible in the first place.  Which is why it’s not going to stick.”

“We’ll see,” Aunt Steph said.  “I need to talk to Paul.”

“Aunt Steph,” Rose said.  “One thing.”

I reached the little patch of glass that I could peer through, a porthole into the real world.  Aunt Steph was a matter of feet away.  Rose’s mother and Ivy were right next to her, apparently joining her on the way out the door.

Rose continued, “Did you consider the fact that they want me out of the house so they can destroy it?  Or that if the house just happened to burn to the ground, it might render the area worthless?  That everything that our family did in terms of the inheritance might be for nothing?”

“The value’s in the parcel of land.  It has nothing to do with the house,” Aunt Steph said.

“You read that contract backwards and forwards.  If there’s a problem and it’s judged to be malfeasance on our part, the property goes to the lawyers, not any of us.  What’s to say the lawyers won’t just turn around and sell to the city?  We’d get virtually nothing if it played out that way.”

“That’s not how it’s going to play out,” Aunt Steph said.

“They’ve pulled strings to get me stuck in a hospital.  A local hospital, right?  If it’s deemed to be a psychological problem, then I could get stuck in there indefinitely.  You’ve been so focused on getting me out of the way like that that you’ve failed to consider the thing at the core of this.  There are powerful people in Jacob’s Bell who want us gone.  All of us.  They want us gone to the point that there’s a ridiculous price tag on the property, that they’d break laws and manipulate the system to get me out of the way, and you don’t think they’d take the simple, expedient route to getting rid of us by simply burning it all down, the first chance they get?  You don’t think they’d call in similar favors and pull similar strings, so the police department is a little slower to arrive, or the fire station misses the call?”

If it was as easy as burning the house down, they would have done it already, I thought.

But she’d basically told Aunt Steph what the problem was.  If the house was left undefended…

“Ellie and Peter can stay,” Aunt Steph said.

“Don’t volunteer me,” Ellie said.

“Those two don’t know what to watch out for,” Rose said, as if it were very matter of fact.

“I know how to watch my back,” Ellie said.

“If you did it, my children can do it,” Aunt Steph said.

“There’s a chance their lives will be in danger,” Rose said.

“This is that paranoia thing again, isn’t it?” Peter asked.

“Idiot,” Ellie said.  “She’s not really paranoid.  If she says my life’s in danger, I’m listening to her.”

“Molly died.  Do you think that’s a coincidence?” Rose asked.

“That was murder?” Ellie asked.  Rose had her full attention.

“It was,” Rose said.  “Then it wasn’t.  I don’t think it’s anything particular now.  Just… glossed over.”

“Don’t fucking use my sister in your games,” Callan said, a distance away.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Rose said.  “They alluded to it being suicide.  If you think they’re right, that she was the type, and she was in that state, look me in the eyes, tell it to me.  I’ll drop the subject of Molly’s death right here and right now.”

Callan looked away.  “That doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth.”

“Fine,” Rose said.  “Let’s leave it at that, then.  Consider it on your own.  They’ll put me in a hospital, maybe for the rest of my life if they can get away with it, which they can’t, and they’ll pull some sketchy stuff.  You think you’re safe?  That this house is?  That the money is?  You’re really willing to put your kids in the line of fire?”

“Eh,” Peter said, shrugging.  “If it comes down to the money or us, mom’ll take the money.”

He sounded so nonchalant about it.

Though they weren’t identical twins, obviously, he bore a striking similarity to Paige.  Where Paige was prim, proper, crisply dressed as a matter of habit – no doubt Aunt Jessica’s influence, Peter was all about favorite pieces of clothing that he had sentimental attachments to, wearing them until they were frayed.  He had tousled hair that had been lightened to a near-white, and eyes that were exceedingly sharp.

I heard Uncle Paul’s voice, even if I didn’t have an angle to see him.  I’d destroyed the front windows beyond the point that I could occupy them.  “They’d like to see Rose.  It’s time to go.”

“Think twice before you force my friends out,” Rose said.  “They’re able to tell you who and what to watch out for.  If you’re smart, you’ll bow and scrape and at least pretend to be nice to them.”

She passed by me, and gave me a sidelong glance.

Evan took flight before Rose was out the door, returning inside.

“I’m going to take James to the hospital, make sure he doesn’t need more attention,” Aunt Jessica said.  “Watch the house.  Roxanne, stay for now.”

“Sure,” Peter said, smiling.  “I’ll look after her.”

Aunt Jessica gave him a look.  “Kathryn?  Can you look after things as the adult here?  Keep an eye on Rox?”

“I’ll watch her,” Kathryn said, sounding unimpressed.  Roxanne shot her oldest sister a look.  There was nearly a twenty-year difference between them.

The door closed.  Aunt Jessica and James gone.

“…Coward,” Peter threw a final retort.  Sharp tongued as ever.

Kathryn, at thirty-two, was the most senior cousin among those who’d remained.  I was honestly surprised she’d stayed, given she had the excuse of a baby to look after.

Callan flinched as Evan flew by.  Not a fan of birds, apparently.

Callan was two years younger than Kathryn, taller, stronger, and narrower.  Molly’s older brother. He looked vaguely uncomfortable.  was it because this was the house his sister had spent so much time in before she died?  Or because he didn’t like what Rose had insinuated about it being murder?  Things had been glossed over magically, but the dissonance was real.  If it weren’t for Christoff, his younger brother, I suspected he wouldn’t be holding it together as well as he was.  Both of Callan’s hands rested on Christoff’s shoulders.

I didn’t know much about Christoff.  When I’d ran away, he’d still been wearing footie pyjamas.  He hadn’t evinced much personality in the short run-ins I’d had with him.

Ellie, with tattoos far less cool than my own, more a hodgepodge blend of different tattoos that didn’t flow together.  The sort of look one picked up if they allowed themselves to be practice for a tattooer friend.  A novice tattooer’s doodles more than tattoos with theme or thought put into them.  She still hung back in the living room, lying on the couch where Rose’s parents had sat with the baby, far from the window.  Four years older than me and Rose, she looked younger and smaller than Rose, just by virtue of a slight slouch.  I’d likened her to a weasel in appearance.  She had an extensive criminal record, but had managed to avoid doing too much time.  Aunt Steph’s natural talent and lessons in gaming the system turned to simply getting away with shit.

Peter, Ellie’s younger brother, was at the far end of the room, almost completely opposite me.  He’d never been as outgoing as Ellie, nor quite so lazy as his mother.  From what I’d been able to pick up in conversations with Paige, he coasted through life on natural talent and intelligence.  If anyone got in his way, be they teacher, fellow student or whoever, he made them regret it.  Ellie was more the type to hit someone.  Peter would have had made teachers cry.

I remember how he’d made his own twin sister cry.  They’d gone in to see grandmother together, and he’d left Paige devastated.

And Roxanne… Roxanne looked oddly at ease, all things considered.  I wasn’t about to toss around words like sociopath, but… well, when the time had come for her to tell very specific, very loaded lies about people in the interest of maneuvering for the inheritance, she’d done it without flinching.  She seemed remarkably calm, considering how spooked and bloody her older brother had been, and all the talk of danger that had been bandied about.

Alexis, Tiff, and Ty, I noticed were standing on the stairs at the end of the hall.

“You’re staying?” Alexis asked.

“Rose was trying to convince us to be nice to you and not force you out,” Peter said.

“She’d be right,” Alexis said.  “There’s two kids in town who’re the children of a professional killer.  One has bombs.”

“Bulllllshit,” Callan said, drawing out the word.  “I lived in this town for most of my life, if you think I’m going to buy that-”

“Then don’t,” Ty said.

“I believe you,” Peter said.

Ty’s eyebrows went up.

“I have other questions,” Peter said.  “Like how the fuck do you guys know Rose?”

“We met in Toron-”

“Or,” Peter said, “Why is Rose different?  That’s kind of the same question.  Because the Rose I knew was a no-life sad sack loser with no friends.”

“Right now, here, she’s been fighting for her life because of a thing her grandmother set into motion,” Alexis said.  “We’ve been helping her.”

“Oh, I see,” Peter said.  “You have certain talents that make you indispensable when there’s a threat of something like arson or murder?”

“Um, basically,” Tiff said, looking like the exact opposite of a person who had ‘indispensable talents’.

“This is ridiculous,” Callan said.  “This isn’t an action movie.”

I looked at the others.  Kathryn was silent.  The kids looked a little spooked, except for Roxanne.  Ellie was leaning forward, her attention trained on the conversation.

“I’m going to go use the facilities,” Callan said, “Then I’ll put something over that broken window, if you just tell me where stuff is.”

“I’ll help with that,” Ty said.

“Stuff’s upstairs,” Alexis said.

“Tea, anyone?” Tiff asked, almost hopeful.  She only got glares and blank looks in return.

“I’ll have some,” Alexis said.  “Just give me five.  Kathryn, if you’d like to-”

“Don’t even,” Kathryn said, “I’m not taking orders from a freeloader.”

“Then we’ll postpone sweeping up,” Alexis said.  “I’ll handle it in a minute.”

Alexis disappeared.

“What do you think?” Kathryn asked Ellie.

“I’m taking Peter’s lead,” Ellie said.  “He’s still a kid, but he’s smarter than me.  If he sees an opening, we should go for it together.”

Kathryn nodded.  “You’re going to be good?”

Ellie snorted.  “I might grab some of grandmother’s stuff.  Get some of the inheritance we’re due.  Be easier if you watched my back.”

“Share,” Kathryn said.

“‘Kay.”

Slowly, people sorted themselves out, the youngest kids moving to the living room with Kathryn.  I heard the television come on.  I couldn’t wrap my head around just sitting around while cold wind blew in through the shattered window, but… that was them.

Alexis held her phone to one ear, roaming the house.  Evan was perched on her shoulder.

Not talking to anyone.  Just wanting an excuse to talk to thin air.  To me.

I offered a tiny whistle.  She found me.

“You get any of that?”

“Eavesdropped.  Missed the little stuff.”

“Well,” I said.  “As last-minute defenses go, filling the house with innocents, if that even works for these guys, it’ll slow down a lot of the stuff they could throw at us.”

“It’ll slow us down too,” Alexis said.  “We have more defenses to put up.  But I guess this is better in a way.  No practitioner is going to want to risk cluing these guys into what’s going on in reality, not with the amount of badditude headed our way.”

“We’ve got until dark, then things get messy,” I said.

“Yeah.  What can you tell me, going in?”

“Only that you should watch out for Ellie, Peter, and Roxanne.  Ellie’s a bit crook.  Peter’s a con artist in training, just the type to take that route, smart as he is, and Roxanne’s… toxic.  I can explain more when we have more time.”

“Okay.  I-”

I made a sudden gesture as I saw a shadow behind her.

Peter.

“Hey,” he said.  He smiled.

“Hey,” Alexis said, voice low.

He stepped close, and she backed away a step.

“So,” he said.  “Couldn’t help but notice the symbols on the floor.  There’s a story there.  Are you going to share details, or should I bring it up with my sister and cousins?”

Malfeasance 11.7

“Symbols,” Alexis said.  Buying time to think.

“Symbols you went out of your way to hide,” he said.  “You really should sweep more, if you’re strategically redecorating.  There’s very blocky spaces on the floor where dust hasn’t settled, which means books or boxes were moved very recently.  It’s really obvious if you look at it from the right angle, where the sun comes in through the window and reflects off the floor.”

“So you looked and you saw the markings on the floor.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “It’s recent, probably, since they weren’t around when I was here for my grandmother’s death.”

He let that hang in the air, as if he was trying to make a point.  It’s your turn to talk, not mine.

It was obvious enough what he wanted her to talk about.

Alexis leaned over to look into the living room, where Kathryn, Callan and Roxanne were watching TV.

“Hmm,” Peter said.  “It’s a secret?  Something you don’t want them to hear about?”

Alexis didn’t answer the question.  Couldn’t.  “I’m wondering why you didn’t tell them before you came to me.”

He shrugged.

Putting the ball right back in her court.

I could have broken a window, but I didn’t like just how small a number of reflective surfaces we had nearby.  What happened when I effectively removed all the workable area inside Hillsglade House?  I’d effectively lock myself out.

I wasn’t sure Rose would go to the effort of buying mirrors just to give me some room, not when she wasn’t all that keen on me.

“It’s complicated,” Alexis said.

“I’m not surprised,” he replied.  “Hard to imagine there’s a simple explanation.”

“At least one of the people who could break in and come after us believes in things like ghosts and goblins,” Alexis said.  “We thought we could use this stuff to protect ourselves.”

“Oh,” Peter said, nodding, “That makes a lot of sense.”

“I think I’m going to go check on the others,” Alexis said.

“Wait, wait, hold up,” Peter replied.  “I’m still a little confused.  You’re willing to draw stuff around the house, and sure, I get where that’s sort of an idea, maybe, if you’re dealing with someone crazy.”

“We’re dealing with a few people who could be called crazy,” Alexis said.

“Great, great,” Peter said.  He smiled.  “So why not, I dunno, barricade the doors and windows?  Or call the police?”

“Police are in on it,” Alexis said.

“RCMP, then,” Peter said, without missing a beat.  I couldn’t tell if he had the answer ready before she’d asked, or if he was just quick.  I wasn’t sure which was more impressive.

He’s as smart as Paige, I thought.  He just walked a very different path.

“RCMP wouldn’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Alexis said, pausing for a second to decide on an answer.

“Because what?” Peter cut in.

“Because-”

“If you have to think of the answer, you’re not being honest,” he said.

I leaned closer to Alexis’ ear, a foot away from the little picture frame I was standing within.  “Grandmother had her thumb in-”

“You’re hesitating,” Peter said.

“And you’re being an asshole,” she retorted.

“-something illegal,” I finished.

“Whatever,” he said.  “I’ll go tell Ellie, and we’ll figure out which would fuck you up more: calling our parents in or calling the RCMP ourselves.”

“Do that, and you’re just going to be fucking with everyone here,” she said.

“I’m not really seeing the problem with that.”

“Yourself included,” she added.

“Ah.  Is that if I mention the strangeness here to family or if I call the RCMP?”

“Both.”

“Okay,” he said.  “So the logical conclusion is that grandmother was involved in some sketchy stuff.  Which… kind of makes sense, given the type of people that’ve owned the house or married into the family.”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“Well now I’m more curious.  It couldn’t be drugs.  Prostitution doesn’t make sense.  Counterfeiting?  No, counterfeiting wouldn’t get the attention of the sort of crazy people you’re talking about.  Wouldn’t make this many enemies.  Stop me if I’m getting too close.”

“Tantamount to giving you the answer,” Alexis said.

“Well, yeah.  So this level of crazy has to be rooted in something.  Something with history, even.  Ideology.  Nothing militant, probably not racist or cultural, it’s a white bread small town here.  Not political, I don’t think, maybe religion.  Religion gets people pissed off and acting funny, but religion wouldn’t piss off the RCMP unless it was scary religion.  Something extremist or bordering on a cult.  But what’s a cult without cultists?”

“If you want to talk to yourself, can I leave you here while I go have a smoke?” she asked.

“You’ve got me curious now,” he said.  “I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about this.”

“Be curious, then.”

“Super curious, as a matter of fact,” he said.  “All put together, though?  Not sure I’m buying it.  It’s a little over the top.”

“Wait until dark,” I murmured.

I saw Peter’s head turn.  “I could swear I heard something there, and it wasn’t the T.V.”

“Maybe the craziness you’re talking about is infectious,” Alexis said.  “You want proof we’re for real about all this?”

“Yeah,” Peter said.

“Then sit tight.  Spend the night here.  Then decide.”

“Giving you a chance to pull something.”

Ty walked by, carrying a piece of plywood and a hammer.

Alexis sighed.  “I’m starting to see where Rose got to be how she is.  I need a damn smoke.”

“Trying to run from me again?” he asked.

“No,” she said.  “I’m not going anywhere, only taking a break.  You hold onto that thought, or maybe even take a fucking second to think that you don’t lose anything if you wait and see.  You might even get something out of it, find some way to leverage it, I dunno.”

“Waiting was always part of the plan,” Peter said, shrugging.  “You sound annoyed.”

“I am annoyed, and tired.  I’ve barely slept and now I’ve got this garbage to deal with.”

“Aw.  Poor girl,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.  “That’s it for this conversation.  Gonna go have my smoke.  You go do whatever it is you do.”

“I’ll come with,” he said.  “I could do with a smoke too.  Can I mooch one cigarette off you?”

“Um, no, and no,” she said.  “You guys are going to get me chain smoking again, just when I was stopping.  Fuck.  This is a mess.”

“Yeah, keep pretending you have it bad,” Peter said, his voice thick with sarcasm.  “It’s kind of hard to muster up any sympathy for you.”

“Don’t presume to know who I am,” she said.

“I don’t.  I know about us though, about the family.  You think it’s bad dealing with me?  I’ve had to spend my whole life dealing with a dozen people who’re just about as bad as me.  And most of them?  They got a better end of the bargain than Ellie and me.  I was never going to get the property.  But I still had to wade through all the shit and crap that came with the fight for the inheritance.  My sister wasn’t much better off.  She never had much of a chance either.  Most of us thought Ivy had a better shot than Ellie.”

“You saying my name?” Ellie called from the next room.

“Yes, I’m calling you a miserable loser!  Now fuck off!” he shouted back.

“Fuck you!” she called back.

Peter smirked.

Standard sibling interaction for the two, apparently.

“The gist of your argument, then, is you’re using crazy to deal with crazy because shit is crazy and my grandmother was into crazy illegal stuff,” Peter said.  “And I’m supposed to just hang around and wait to see how crazy it really is, for proof?  Are you seeing the pattern here?”

“I see it, I don’t care.  You can do what you want,” Alexis said.  “I’m going to have a smoke, alone.”

She stalked off, thoroughly agitated.  Evan took off from her shoulder and joined Ty, who summarily headed upstairs.

Peter remained where he was.

I, too, stayed.

“So?” Ellie asked.

Peter craned his head to one side, checking down the length of the hall, to see if anyone was at at the bend of the stairs.  “One second.”

He took a second, walking part of the way upstairs, returned, then headed around to the back of the house.

“Well?” Ellie asked, as he came back.

“Cigarette girl is legit scared,” Peter commented.  “For her life.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, think so.  She was just about ready to swing a punch at me, on nerves alone.  She’s got a good poker face, too.  I don’t think Rose was fucking with us.  Or she was including a whole lot of truth with the occasional lie.”

“You mean Rose isn’t crazy?” Roxanne asked.  A part of me felt like Roxanne was playing up her role as the ‘child’.  The baby of Uncle Paul’s family, clinging to her position.  She was starting to approach the point where she couldn’t trade on ‘cute’ alone.  I wasn’t sure where she’d go later, from a strategy perspective.

“Not ruling anything out when it comes to Rose,” Peter said, taking it in stride.  “But a lot of stuff doesn’t add up here.”

“I had that feeling, talking to Molly,” Callan said.

“Hey, that reminds me,” Peter said, “when you talked to her, did your sister ever act guilty?  Ashamed?”

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“No, fuck that, Cal,” Peter said.  “This is important, and I’m not implying jack shit.  Did she seem guilty?  Like she was up to something or grandmother roped her into something sketchy?”

“Nah, she didn’t seem guilty,” Callan said, reluctantly.  “Mostly scared.  Like these guys are.”

“That’s a clue,” Peter said.  He stretched, yawning, and checked again to see if there were any eavesdroppers, “They’re probably telling the truth about something coming up tonight.  We should have a plan.”

“Whatever you’re thinking, don’t rope us into it,” Kathryn said.

“You know you have to get on board.  We need the numbers advantage, or we won’t manage anything,” Peter said.

“I started my own business, I run a restaurant, and I’m a mom.  I think you’d be shocked at just how much I can manage on my own,” she said.

Peter raised his hands in surrender.

“This entire thing reeks of bullshit,” Callan said.  “You reek of bullshit, too, Pete.  I’m going to do the reasonable thing, sit back, and assume the simplest reasonable explanation is true.  Peter’s wrong, the locals are fucking with the Thorburns, just like they’ve been doing to my family since I was born.  Same pressure and all the other stuff that affected Molly like it did also got to Rose, who’s always been a loner, and that’s why she’s freaking out.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s wrong,” Peter said.  “But whatever.  You’re out, then.  Christoff’s out by association?”

“Yeah, I guess,” was Christoff’s response.

“The Walkers have walked.  Kat?”

“Kathryn, Kathy if you’re somehow unable to pronounce my full name,” Kathryn said.”

“Kitty, then.  are you on board?”

“You haven’t said what we’d be on board with.”

“Let’s say they’re telling the truth.  Something happens tonight.  We could take advantage, snoop while they’re distracted…”

“We can snoop now,” Ellie said.  “Maybe we get caught, but so what?  What’s the worst they could do to us?”

“The other option is that we can use Rose’s friends as body shields,” Peter said, ignoring his sister.  “Which is an idea we should be considering anyway, if it gets that bad.  You don’t have to outrun the bear.  You have to kneecap the guy who’s outrunning you.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Callan said, “Why are you implying we’d back each other?  Not counting my little bro, I despise you fucks.  Why can’t I throw you to the wolves?  I’d enjoy that.”

“Bear, not wolves,” Peter said.

“Whatever.”

“And the reason we’re not fucking with each other is because if they win,” Peter said, his voice low, pausing to look over his shoulder, “Rose wins.  And fuck Rose, am I right?  If we win, on the other hand, the house changes hands.  First to Kitty-”

“Fuck you,” Kathryn said.  “That document said it goes to Ellie after me, and I know you’re backing your sister.  You’ll have a knife in my back the second I get the property.  You’re on your own, you greasy little shitstain.”

Peter sighed.  “Ellie?”

“Sure.  I’ll slum it and work with you, how’s that?” Ellie asked.

“You, slumming it by working with me?  You’ve been to fucking jail.”

“That actually sounds pretty accurate,” Callan said.  “Her slumming it.  Don’t think too highly of yourself, Pete.”

“You’re just stirring up shit,” Peter said.  “Whatever.  Ellie and me, then.  I guess it’s every family for themselves?”

“Nah, I’m with you guys,” Roxanne said.  “Got to be better than TV with only a hundred channels.”

“Not on my watch,” Kathryn said.

“You’re not my mom,” Roxanne said.

“I’m your de-facto mom, until the others get back.”

Roxanne smirked, a fake smile as cutting as any scowl or glare could be.  “Can I strangle myself with my de-facto umbilical cord, then?  I’m doing what I want to do, and I want to do this.  Remember the Christmas before last, when I didn’t get the phone?”

“Who could forget?”

“Remember what I did?  How I eventually got the phone?” Roxanne asked.  “And after?”

“Specifically?  No.  I remember it all as one prolonged, high pitched sound,” Kathryn said.

“Exactly,” Roxanne said.  She sounded positively gleeful.  “You really think you can beat me when daddy and mom couldn’t?”

“I think if you make a peep and sound the slightest bit like you sounded then, I’ll smack you,” Kathryn warned.

“I’ll call that bluff,” Roxane said.  “Hit me, hard as you can.  I’ll hurt you worse.  You have no idea how good I am at getting people in trouble.”

Kathryn scowled.  I saw her clench her fist.

“Kitty,” Peter said.  “I’m offering to take her off your hands, when the time is right.  Stop arguing by reflex, and take three seconds to consider the blessing I’m bestowing on you.”

There was a brief pause.

Kathryn frowned.  “You forfeit all remote privileges, Roxie.  You sit there, you shut up, you sit still, and you don’t fuss while Callan, Christoff, and I watch what we want to watch.  I won’t get in your way when Peter needs you.”

Roxanne squirmed.  “Ugghh.”

“Take the deal or leave it.”

“Alright,” Roxanne said.  She looked at Peter, “If this isn’t any good, I’m taking it out on you.”

“We’ll manage something good,” he promised.

Peter, Ellie, and Roxanne.

The three most problematic cousins, banding together.  I let my head tilt forward, forehead hitting the glass.

“What was that?” Peter asked.  “That didn’t come from upstairs.”

“I heard it too,” Ellie said.  “Is it that bird?”

“Didn’t see a bird,” Peter said.  “And I’m pretty sure the bird is upstairs.”

I could see Peter looking around, triple checking this time for eavesdroppers.  “Let’s call this discussion quits for now.  We’ve got about, huh, when does the sun set, this time of year?”

“Around five,” Callan said, sounding exasperated, his attention now on the television.  Christoff had the remote.

“Then we’ve got just over five hours until it’s dark.  Let’s sit back, observe, and see what opportunities arise.”

“Whatever,” Ellie said.

“I’m gonna walk around the grounds,” Peter said.  “See what’s up.”

“And pester cigarette girl?” Ellie asked.

She’d overheard more than she’d let on.

“And pester cigarette girl,” Peter said.  “Keep the pressure on, see what cracks.”

Ellie shrugged.

I sat and watched a bit longer, as Peter got his boots and jacket on and stepped out the front door.  The others settled in to watch the television.  Only Ellie seemed restless.

Right.  Safe enough to move on.

I popped upstairs.

There was, going by the windows and picture frames that were still intact, no way into the library except to leap to the point where the full-length mirror was.

What were the odds the circle had been fixed and that I’d be trapping myself by leaping in?

No, I’d tested my luck and found it wanting.

I headed downstairs, checking on the other family members, and then collected the document with all the terms and conditions of the custodianship and inheritance.

I sat down opposite the library doors, and I set to reading.  I wasn’t just going over the legal terms, but the notes in the margins.  Three different handwriting styles.  I could assume one was my dad, or Rose’s dad, one was Uncle Paul, and one was one of my aunts.  Very possibly Aunt Irene trying to keep her eye on things.

About five pages in, I realized this wasn’t the first draft.  One or two notes in the margins were a part of something bigger that wasn’t present.  Copied over or reworded from a previous draft.

This was the product of several examinations of the document, the family poring over every page as a group, picking apart the word choice, turning their minds to how they might take advantage.  They’d debated it, brainstormed, and collaborated.  Then they’d gone to the beginning and done it all over again, with a fresh set of eyes, maybe different people reading it.

Reading it thoroughly, front to pack, notes included, I could imagine what a chore that had been.

It would have been heartwarming that they’d made the effort as a collective, if it weren’t for the fact that they were doing it to screw a fellow family member over.

I saw a shadow move across the hallway.  It came from the staircase, and I didn’t have a vantage point to see.

I headed upstairs, bringing the paperwork with me, thumb as a placeholder.

I caught a glimpse of Ellie on the staircase.  Heading further up.

The ‘fourth floor’ was only one room.  The ‘tower’ with the Barber dwelling in a circle.

Tense, I headed down to the ground floor, looking for some window I could use to communicate with Alexis.

Nothing.  No window I could peer through gave me a view of Alexis.  There was only Peter, walking as far away from the house as he could get without walking on a slope, treading a circle around the property.

I headed back up, straight to the third floor.  There was the mirror in the hidden library, but there were so many ways that could go wrong.  What was to say Rose hadn’t set a trap around it?

I’d break a window.

I was in the process of drawing the Hyena when Ellie reappeared.

Too fast a reappearance.  Either the door was locked, or there was some other deterrent in play.

Fuck me.  It was too dangerous to have someone wandering around.

She moved down the length of the hallway, passing me, checking every room.  Satisfied that she was unobserved, she moved quickly through each room.

As she got closer to me again, operating in a room opposite a picture frame, I was able to watch her work.  She opened the topmost drawers of a dresser, lifting up socks, bras and underwear in a variety of muted colors – blacks, beiges, whites and grays.  Tiff’s or Alexis’, I imagined, since Rose was making do with whatever she could use of Grandmother’s stuff.  Ellie retrieved a sealable freezer bag filled with jewelry from one back corner.  It disappeared into her backpack.

She turned her attention to the top of the dresser – pill bottles were checked.  Two bottles disappeared.  She opened little boxes and kits on top of the dresser, finding more jewelry, bracelets she held up to the light, before stuffing them into a sock and slipping the sock in her bag.  The now-empty box went back onto the top of the dresser.

Another box was opened, flatter, once a shiny black, now worn in places.

I recognized the old fashioned tattoo machine that Ellie held up.  One of the ones, if I remembered right, that Alexis had considered making into her implement.  As far as I knew, she hadn’t gone ahead with it, but it was something she put a lot of sentimental value into.  One had been a birthday present from me to Alexis, a thank-you for the work she’d done on my arms.  Others had been birthday presents she’d given to herself, bought at a time when she’d had to scrimp and save for weeks to get a few hundreds of dollars together to make the purchase possible.

Ellie slipped it into her bag.  The box went back where it had been.

Two more boxes checked, nothing taken.  She put everything that remained into the position they had been before she’d raided it.  More or less.

She stepped out into the hallway, then paused.

Listening.

I reached up, and I knocked on the picture frame.

I could see her startle.  I could feel the fear that simple action provoked.

Good.

I knocked again.

She spun around, looking to the end of the hallway.

Somehow, she managed to convince herself it was nothing.  She disappeared into the next room.

A phone, plugged into the outlet by the bed, was slipped into one pocket, quickly enough it could have been an unconscious maneuver.

A box was pulled out of a luggage suitcase and opened- revealing a set of home-made knives.

Ty’s stuff.

Box shut.  The box with the knives included were slipped into the bag.  It rattled.  She paused, grabbing a set of socks, and stuffed them in, jostling the bag.

Not a cat burglar by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d done this before.

I held my tongue and kept to watching as she went through everything, a kind of rage simmering within me.

Ty’s room took only a minute.

She headed down to the second floor.  Same pattern.  She checked every room first.  This time, however, she was interrupted.  Stepping out of what would’ve been Rose’s room, she found herself face to face with Alexis, who was heading up the stairs.

“Can I help you?” Alexis asked.

“Which room am I sleeping in?  Want to drop off my shit,” Ellie said.

“Beds are all taken,” Alexis said.  “If you want to stay here tonight, you’re staying in the living room.”

“Whatever,” Ellie said.  She brushed past Alexis as she headed downstairs.

Alexis went up to the third floor.  I considered following her, but something held me back.

Some people put a lot of stock in the better part of human nature.

I believed in the worse parts of Thorburn nature.

Ellie reappeared, not fifteen seconds after Alexis had gone upstairs.  She started doing another quick check of each room.  She didn’t enter the rooms, but she definitely looked.

Right.

I headed upstairs, just in time to find Alexis entering the library.

“Alexis,” I said.

She jumped.

“Christ,” she said.

“Do me a favor?  Hold the door for me, and move that mirror out of the circle?  I’ll update you when I’m back.”

She frowned a bit.  “If they find this place-”

“I’ve got your back.  Please?”

She offered me a little nod.

I returned to Ellie.  From the mirror atop Rose’s dresser, once grandmother’s dresser, I had a view of Ellie as she collected antique brooches, pins, earrings, necklaces, and other old fashioned jewelry.  I lurked to one side, so I wouldn’t be right in front of her.  When I’d spoken and moved before, I’d drawn attention.  They probably didn’t have a clear view of me, but they could see glimmers.

I moved to the bedroom window.  I knocked, sharp.

She spun around.

I was already back in the mirror atop the dresser.

She didn’t look in the mirror as she resumed her looting.

I refocused my attention.  I let the bag she was piling the stuff into be reflected into my space.

Reaching into my chest, I found a spirit.  It almost quivered with anticipation, sensing the emotion.  Feeding on it, even.

The bird fluttered a little as I shoved it into my version of the bag.

“Bonds of sympathy,” I whispered.  “I bind like to like.”

Ellie stepped back, walking around to the door, peering through to make sure she didn’t have company.

She was working faster when she returned to work.

“Both contain the stolen belongings of Alexis.  Both contain the stolen belongings of Ty.  Both contain the stolen belongings of Rose,” I whispered.

I saw her pause again, looking up.

I felt the connection.  I wiggled the bag.

“I do this,” I spoke to the spirits, “In retribution for actions against me and mine by Ellie Thorburn.”

Ellie fidgeted a bit, gripping the strap of her bag a little tighter.

Did she feel the sentiment.

She reacted, as her bag moved, looking down.

“Ellie!” I screamed the word, slamming my hands against the mirror, face thrust forward, eyes wide and teeth bared.

She threw herself back, ass hitting ground, and tossed the bag in the process.

I winced, realizing the damage that might have done.  The bag on my end moved as hers did, flying through the air, tearing out of my grasp.

There was a weakness to this technique, I realized.  The people and the objects in the real world had more weight.

All the same, she’d let go of the bag.  Her first thought and priority was her own well being.

My priority here was the bag.

I slid it across the floor, into the open closet, and lifted it up onto the top shelf.

It was almost in plain sight, if she took one step to the right.  But Ellie had picked a darker fabric, and it bit her in the ass now.

With a measure of satisfaction, I watched as she scoured the room, her attention on the ground, under the bed, behind furniture.

Her actions grew more frantic.

With every worried glance at the mirror, I felt myself regain a bit more power.

Dangerous, I knew, to risk indoctrinating one of the innocent, but I was pretty sure this little stunt had more than paid for itself.

I’d protected my friend’s things, too.

She did a double-check, examining every obvious surface, ignoring the less obvious location that was the closet.

The sound of a distant door opening and voices ended her search prematurely.  Deciding on discretion, she quickly stepped out of the room.

Her fear continued to feed me in little ways.

I hoped it fed both parts of me, bolstering the aspect of me that was Blake Thorburn, thoroughly pissed about what she’d done to my friends.

Before heading upstairs to reunite with the others, I checked on the Thorburn group downstairs.

There weren’t many surfaces I could dwell in, and the surfaces I did have available weren’t good ones.  The reflective side of the toaster in the kitchen, the window in the hallway, the staircase window, the window by the back door, and the window in the back door.

My view of the scene was consequently very limited.  A tall woman striding into the front hallway, passing by the picture frame so quickly that I couldn’t make her out.

From the toaster, my view was slightly distorted.

Eva.  She’d walked right by the doorway between the living room and the front hallway.  Nobody had glanced at her long enough to realize they had a stranger among them.

The front door opened again, closing quickly.

“Hey Peter,” Ellie called out from the living room.  “A word?”

“Mm hmm,” A male voice responded nonverbally.

Andy, not Peter.

My view of the front door was narrow, when I watched from the picture frame in the hallway.  I had to press my head against the side of the mirror to view from the right angle, watching as the door leading into the hall closet was opened.  Andy no doubt stood so the door would block any view of him.

I saw Ellie step into the hallway, and knocked on the glass.

She paused.

I knocked again.

Too little, too late.  She turned back around just in time to get a mitt pressed over her mouth, simultaneously pressing her against the wall.  Andy shoved a taser into her neck.

He held it there, easing up the pressure enough that she could slide down the wall to the ground.

The pair shifted positions, Eva at the corner by the kitchen, where she could watch the staircase, kitchen, back door, and hallway at the same time, a machete in one hand.  Andy stood to the right of the door leading into the living room, taser in hand.

Directly opposite me.  Eerily calm, brown hair slightly in his half-lidded eyes, beneath a dumb hat with ear flaps, brown on the outside, lambskin or something on the inside.

He pulled off one mitt with his teeth, then shoved it into one pocket.  He let the taser dangle from a wrist-strap while he pulled off the other mitt.

He moved his hands in a series of gestures.

Eva responded.

I watched as she stuck out her tongue, then bit it.  Her eyes closed, her head rested against the corner of wall.  Almost as if she were meditating or in a daze.

Andy slid down to the front door, opened the door, then closed it.

“Ellie?  Peter?”  Kathryn called.

Eva took the distraction to move past the kitchen door, disappearing around the bend to the space where the back door was.

I beat her there.  For one instant, we made eye contact.

“Hi,” she said.

I swung the Hyena, aiming to break the glass.

She beat me to it.

Glass shattered, a few stray shards tinkling as they hit the floor by the back door.  I relocated myself to the little window that was part of the door.

She broke that too.

Toaster.

I had a view of the Thorburns standing, ready to investigate.  Callan grabbed a poker from beside the fireplace.

This was going so wrong so fast.  If we failed here-

How would we even survive the night, when all the creepy crawlies and Others had a chance to come out of the woodwork?

I headed upstairs.

Alexis was waiting by the door.  She looked anxious.

“Witch hunters,” I said, before she could say a thing.

I could see the color drain out of their faces.

“Should we-”

“Anything you can send is good,” I said.  “But don’t come down yourselves.  Lock yourselves in.”

“I can help,” Evan said.

“Come out, stay in Rose’s bedroom,” I said.  “There’s a mirror in there.  I’ll signal you if I can, to come free the others.”

“If they don’t kill the others,” Ty said.  “Because Witch Hunters can kill people.  Even innocents.”

I swore under my breath.

I ducked back downstairs.

The little picture frame I’d been using to peer into the hallway and living room was gone.

Only the toaster remained.  I could have used the television set, but it was on.

They knew about me, they were planning for me.

Andy was nowhere to be seen, from my limited vantage point.

Eva wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room.

The pair had outright disappeared.

“I don’t care what she said,” Callan said.  He had a phone in hand.  He held it to one ear.

“That sounds suspiciously like a dial tone,” Kathryn said.

“Fuck me,” Callan said.  “Not 9-1-1, then.  I know some guys.”

It took him a second to dial.

“Dial tone again,” Roxanne commented.

“Shut up!” Callan hissed the words.

“This is fucked up,” Christoff said, his voice small.

“Yeah,” Roxanne said.

“Ellie isn’t responding, so she either ran or something happened,” Kathryn said.  “Peter, far as we know, never came back.”

“Those assholes,” Callan said.  “They planned this.”

I would have laughed, if the situation wasn’t as bad as it was.

The explosion, I suspected, caught everyone by surprise.  There was no clink of metal on hardwood.  Nothing thrown.

Andy’s work.

Light, noise, disorientation.  I recovered fast, but I could feel my eyes crawling, as if they were healing from some minor damage.

I saw Eva striding into the room.  If Callan was able to see, he would have only caught a glimpse of the girl with the machete before she disarmed him, blade striking the poker.  He was doubled over, and she brought her knee up into his chin.

I had never, not once in my varied years, seen someone deliver a roundhouse kick in real life.  Eva did it like it was easy.  One step forward, another, pivot, kick.

Kathryn threw her arms up in a vain attempt to protect her head.  It wouldn’t have made a difference, had the kick connected with her head.  Instead, the blow hit her right in the stomach.

There was nothing I could do.

Christoff ran, staggering, disoriented.  He reached the hallway, and walked right into Andy’s waiting attack.  A jab with the taser.

The kid was barely a teenager.

Eva’s kick hadn’t taken out Kathryn, or Callan for that matter.  That wasn’t how it really worked.  One well-executed blow didn’t usually knock someone out, and when it did, it often came with brain damage and long-term impairment.  It did, if done right, essentially take them out of the fight.

Eva thrashed Kathryn, blow after blow, until Kathryn fell and made no motion to get up.  She stepped back to assess the situation, saw Callan trying to struggle to get up on all fours, a crawling position, and stomped on his shoulderblades.  His already-bleeding chin collided with the floor.

Leaving only Roxanne.

I couldn’t act without cluing Roxanne in, and I wasn’t sure there was much I’d be able to do, even then.

“Please,” Roxanne said, eyeing the boarded up window.  “I’ll tell you where the others are.”

“Do,” Eva said.

Roxanne scrambled to get away from the older girl.  Like Christoff, she moved straight for Andy.

“They’re upstairs somewhere.”

“That’s not clear enough,” Andy said.

“Please.  I don’t know anything more.  Tie me up, but don’t hit me,” Roxanne said.

“I’ll zap you,” he said.  “You-”

With a knife or a letter opener, Roxanne stabbed him in the groin.

There was a metal on metal sound.  Andy backed away, stunned, but unbleeding.

“Stab my fucking brother!?” Eva screeched.

Her foot collided with Roxanne’s face, full force.

Again and again, she kicked the fallen girl.

I watched, silent, as Andy eventually managed to wrestle Eva away.

“Upstairs,” he said.  “We have a job to finish.”

Malfeasance 11.8

Eva panted, head hanging, while her brother stood between her and Roxanne’s bloody form.  He was breathing hard too, though he’d put in only a fraction of the effort in stopping Eva than Eva had put into thrashing Roxanne.

Andy continued to hold one hand up, as if warning Eva off, while he dropped to a kneeling position.  His hand went straight to Roxanne’s.  She didn’t move or offer any fight as he plucked the blade out of her hand.  He slid it into a pocket, then checked her pulse, holding her hand.

“No more than three, and the mirror creature?” Eva asked.

“Shh,” he said.

Eva put her hands on her hips, bristling a little.

“Okay.  She’s alive,” he said.

“I know she’s alive,” Eva said.  “If I’d wanted to kill her, she’d be dead. I didn’t want her dead, so obviously…”

“Okay, Eva,” he said.  “Okay.  We did that alright,” Eva said.

“Yeah,” Andy said.

“We should move.  You just said something about upstairs?”

“The hard part can wait, we need to secure things.  Help?”  More metal jingled.  I saw a glimpse of handcuffs before the ratchet sound of handcuffs marked Roxanne being handcuffed to the radiator.

Eva bent down and with one hand on Callan’s collar, one hand on his belt, she slid Callan toward the radiator that Roxanne had been handcuffed to.  I heard the ratchet of the cuffs closing on Callan’s wrists.

Ellie proved more problematic.

“Please,” my cousin managed.

“Do what I say, you’ll probably live,” Andy said, his voice calm, “I promise you, there’s pretty much nothing you can say that’s going to convince me to do anything different from what I’m doing, and if you try, you might tick off Eva.  You’re better off being quiet.”

Ellie turned her head slightly in Eva’s direction.  It was like she wasn’t willing to look directly at Eva, but probably had more to do with soreness and burns.

He grabbed her hand, and she struggled up until the taser appeared.  The fight went out of her.  He ordered, “Crawl.  Cuff yourself next to your cousin.”

It didn’t take long for Ellie to obey, using the offered handcuffs.  Andy checked the cuffs.

Eva was busy sliding Kathryn’s limp form over to the radiator as well.  One of Kathryn’s eyes was already swelling, and I suspected I could make out blood in the corner.

It made for pretty cruel and unusual punishment.  A collection of Thorburns stuck in close proximity to one another?  Damn.

“How’s the…” Eva paused, eyeing the still-conscious and semi-conscious Thorburns.  “..Thingy?”

“The thingy is…” he started, fishing in one pocket.  He retrieved an emerald-colored ball, somewhere between a baseball and a softball in size, holding at an angle so none of the defeated Thorburns could see.  “Basically unchanged?”

She frowned.  “I thought she said it wouldn’t last very long.”

“It’s not supposed to,” he said.  “It’s gone a little darker.”

“Uh huh.  It’s gotta be a scam.”

“They know better than that,” Andy said.  “Either it worked more efficiently than we thought, or it didn’t work much at all.”

“I didn’t notice anything,” Roxanne said.

“You’re not supposed to.  You’re a witch hunter.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“They’re not going to be able to work together to tear the radiator away from the wall, are they?” Andy asked.

“You want me to break their arms, so we don’t need to worry about it?”

“No,” Andy said.  “Just wondering aloud.  I guess the worst case scenario is that they run.  Don’t get the vibe that they’d come after us.  Speaking of which, what kind of kid carries a knife?”

“Says the guy who wears armor under his clothes,” Eva replied.

“The civilians are supposed to be normal.”

“I don’t believe in normal,” Eva replied.  Rather than attach another person to the radiator, she cuffed Christoff to Callan’s right leg and Kathryn’s left.  “Should we check for phones?  Wait, nevermind, the jammer.”

“I’ll check just to be safe.  You go get the guy we left outside.  As soon as he’s locked up, we’re going upstairs.”

I heard Eva humming as she headed for the back door.  She paused, peered over one stack of books, them kicked it aside, using the toe of her boot to mess up a diagram in chalk.  She turned on the spot to resume her previous path.

I slipped back upstairs before she could see me in the toaster.

One option was to send Evan after the captive Thorburns.  If he could open the door to a jail cell, could he open cuffs?

But half of the captive Thorburns were unconcious or hurt enough they might as well be unconscious.  Short of me pulling some stunt like trying to infuse them with my spirits, which was a bad idea, they wouldn’t be escaping, even if they were technically free.

I entered the mirror upstairs, and found myself face to face with Alexis, Tiff, and Ty.  They had a group of bogeymen and goblins in their company.

“The others are captured,” I said.  “They’ve been beaten up and restrained.  Evan’s waiting downstairs.”

“We’re safe here, right?” Ty asked.

“Probably not,” I admitted.  “I don’t know what they’re planning, but if a hiding spot like this was all it took to stay safe from a witch hunter, I don’t think witch hunters would be that big of a concern.”

“Damn it,” Ty said.

“Is there any reason we can’t try to overpower them?” Alexis asked.  “We’ve got resources.”

I looked at the gathered ‘resources’.  A gaggle of Others.

A teenaged girl in slightly old fashioned clothes who was hugging what looked to be a diary with a cover and lock made of stitched-together flesh to her chest.  Her hair covered her eyes.

A knight in rusty armor.

A tall man who was swaddled in furs, with dead eyes.

An older woman with three malnourished, feral children standing at the end of thin chains.  Each had the rag-clad children, two boys and one girl, had chains wound around their necks, like choke collars attack dogs.  Their teeth were brown at the gums, snaggle teeth.  I wouldn’t have wanted to get bitten by one of them.

Rounding out the group were two goblins.  One was fat and squat, neckless, with a severe underbite and eyes like burning coals beneath a neanderthal brow.  The second was genderless, with wings in place of arms, its head hunched forward, as if the weight of all its countless teeth made it impossible to sit straight.  Its hair was lanky and greasy, with one charm worked into the end: a trio of mouse skulls.

“I feel like they probably have an answer for an en-masse attack,” I said. “But they could have an answer to anything.”

“Yeah,” Alexis said.  “There’s no right answers here.”

“There are, I think, but they aren’t obvious or easy,” I told her.  “We’ve got a few hours until night falls.  We need to somehow get our defenses up and ready or we’ll be curbstomped when the sun sets and all bets are off.  We should do something about the Thorburns downstairs.  That’s all ignoring the very immediate problem of the witch hunters, who are bound to try something.”

“Getting our defenses in order was a problem even before any of this started,” Alexis said.  It seemed like she was taking point among the three.  “I don’t know if it’s even possible.”

“Especially since the witch hunters are removing defenses as they see them,” I said.

“Fuck,” Ty said.

“Do you guys have any tricks up your sleeve I don’t know about?” I asked.  “Implements, familiars, demesnes?”

“No,” Tiff said.  “We went through a phase where we were trying to scry a way out, use the practice to see if there was a path, test all the major decisions.  Every time we raised the question of whether we should make a major binding deal like that, especially with familiars and especially in relation to Rose or Evan, we kept turning up the same results, with scary frequency.  All signs pointed to soulmates being separated, a person being lost.”

“The natural conclusion was that the enchantresses had something planned to cut us off or mess with us, like Corvidae’s trick,” Alexis said.

I nodded, but as much as I agreed with the logic, I wasn’t happy with the result.  “We need a wider variety of monsters to throw at the witch hunters.  Put them on their heels, buy time.”

“I can do that,” Ty said.  “Variety, I mean.  I might need help.”

“I’ll help,” Tiff said.

“What’s going on with the Thorburns downstairs?” Alexis asked.

“They’re hurt, some are out of it, and most would be pretty useless in an outright brawl.  Some are awake, and that means we have to be careful about collateral damage.  If they see the wrong thing and cross that event horizon where they can’t ignore this world anymore-”

“They become our responsibility,” Ty said.  “Right.  Sorry for saying so, but I do not want a Thorburn to be my responsibility.  It’s like taking charge of a ship with a hole in the hull.  You know it’s bound to sink, and you know you’ll get blamed when it does.”

“Not to mention, extending your analogy,” I said, “The ship is liable to be a total asshole.  You don’t want to take responsibility for an asshole you don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Ty said.  “I didn’t want to say that either, but yeah.”

“Variety of threats, keep them busy,” I said.  “It’ll buy us time to think.”

“Okay,” Ty said.  He sprung to his feet, moving out of my field of vision.  “Elemental?  Ghosts?”

“Wind elemental,” Alexis said.  “Anything else is going to be awfully hard to explain.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll get the supplies,” Tiff said.  “Myrrh?”

“Myrrh works,” Ty replied.

“We’re low on myrrh,” Alexis said, adding her two cents.  “Incense works too.”

“Got both,” Tiff said.

Alexis turned her attention from the other two to me.  She didn’t say anything.

“I’m thinking,” I said.

“Me too,” she told me, “I’m not liking any of the options.  There’s too many unknowns.”

“The plus side,” I said, “Is the enemy has a lot of unknowns too.”

“The witch hunters?”

“The council,” I replied.

“Ahh.  The enemy behind the enemy.”

“The root of our problems,” I said.

“Okay,” Alexis said.  “I’m being a bit of a tattoo geek, here, but I’ve had a few sessions with clients who couldn’t articulate what they wanted.  Let’s block this out, start from scratch.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You just said the key things.  We need the witch hunters stopped and defenses in place for tonight.  We need to buy time until Rose comes back.”

“Bonus points if we can free the other Thorburns and get them out of harms way,” I said.  “I don’t like them, but…”

“But?” Ty chimed in from the other side of the room.

“I just really don’t like them,” I finished.  “All the same, they’re a resource.”

“Okay,” Alexis said.  “Those are the broad strokes, the notes we have to hit.  We can’t do much about the witch hunters, agreed?  Their whole schtick is that they’re really hard for a practitioner to work around.  We can send a mob at them and hope it keeps them distracted until we can make another move.”

“Witch hunters on the backburner,” I said.  “Leaving… the council?”

“The council,” Alexis said.

I nodded slowly.  The source of both the nighttime attacks, or the bulk of them anyway, and the witch hunters.

“A starting point,” I said.

A distant explosion made me sit up.

I stepped out of the patch of light and crossed to the hallway outside.

Smoke rose from a black scorch mark on the floor, at the end of the hall opposite the stairs.  Andy and Eva were at the opposite end.  The explosion, whatever it had been, had knocked a picture frame off the wall.

There was so very little space left to me.  From one end of the second floor hallway, I could see how one window had been spray painted.  Some of the paint marked the curtains.

The girl grinned as her eyes met mine.  She reached the top of the stairs, striding forward.  She raised a gun-

I didn’t bother to watch.  There were too many possibilities.  Silver bullets, in the metaphorical sense, that could have hurt me.  I threw myself to one side.

The sound of the gun was muted, the hiss of an air compressor more than any gun I’d ever heard.  The window broke into a thousand fragments.

They were cutting me off from the house.

I disappeared back inside the hidden library.

“They’re in the hallway,” I said.

“Fuck,” Ty said.

“Tiff,” Alexis said, “Open the third floor door, leave the ground floor door closed.  Send the ‘help’ to deal with the witch hunters.”

“Right,” Tiff said.  Her hands were hidden inside long sleeves, and hidden further as she kept her arms folded.  It almost looked as if she was wearing a straightjacket.  Wool, but a straightjacket all the same.  She looked grim.  She climbed the little ladder to the second tier of the library.

“I assume I’m the one going after the council?” I asked, resuming our former conversation.

“You’ll have to be,” Alexis said.  “You and Evan.”

“Okay,” I told her.  “But there’s a limit to what we can do before dark.”

“Yeah.  Breaking the rule wouldn’t help.  Law of retribution,” Alexis said.

“Which?”

“The practice and Others get stronger if you do it for a just reason,” she said.  “I punch you or treat you more horribly than you deserve, your workings are going to affect me more.”

“Oh, that.”

“Break the local rules, and you’re not just fighting against all those other practitioners.  You’re fighting against society.  Against the tide of civilization.”

“Aren’t they breaking their own rule, sending the witch hunters?”

“They’re keeping the letter of the law,” Tiff called out from upstairs, “If not the spirit.  Ready Ty?”

“Five seconds… four, three, two…”

He finished drawing with chalk, and spoke, “Sylph Elatus.”

The air distorted, a slight fog, a movement of dust, tracing the vague outline of a young boy.

The boy darted forward as Tiff opened the library door by hand.  She left it open only for a few seconds, allowing the gathered Others to pass through.

“Next summoning,” Ty said.  “I think we’re out of usable ghosts.”

“Minor incarnation or spirit,” Tiff suggested.  “Um, can’t remember which types were in the books.”

“Any insights?” Alexis asked.  “Things we can use against the attackers?”

“They’re kind of fucked up.  Andy’s ok, but his sister’s a bit of a lunatic.  Trigger happy, kicked a kid to the point of near-unconsciousness.”

“Choleric!” Alexis called up to Tiff.

“Right!”

“If you can, order it to turn them on each other!” I called up.

“Dunno if I can!”

I frowned.

It wasn’t fast, the hunting down of the book.  I watched, waiting, trying to figure out a good strategy for going after the council.

“Deck’s pretty stacked against us,” Alexis said.

I startled a bit at the tone of her words more than the suddenness of them or the words themselves.

“We’ll manage,” I said.

“Be careful you don’t lie,” she warned me.

“We’ll manage,” I said.  “Do I need to say it a third time?”

“No,” she said.  She smiled a little.  “But if we don’t manage…  If it comes down to you…”

She trailed off.

“If it comes down to me, then that’s it,” I said.  “I’m responsible for you.  I’m pretty sure that if you die, then I take on a bit of that misfortune.  I go too.”

“No,” she said.  “Your connections moved to Rose, right?  Rose is responsible for us.”

I frowned.

What did it say that that bothered me?  I wanted to be responsible for them.  I wanted to have that tie to people I cared about.

“I’ve been thinking about it.  If we die, or if something bad happens to us, Rose is probably going to suffer, because she adopted that responsibility.  The council members might have even figured it out,” Alexis said.  “It could be the advantage they need to get control over her, to defuse the dead man’s switch.  Or they call it a win and rely on the karma swing to screw up Rose’s plan.  The dead man’s switch might not wind up working at all.”

Hearing Alexis talking about dying was making my skin crawl.  Branches and feathers inched forward, taking millimeters of ground on the surface of my body.

“No,” I said.

“Blake, we need to plan.  If something happens to us, it’s going to set off a chain reaction.  Something could happen to Rose.  You need to do what you can to help her, even-”

A pause.

“Even what?”  I asked, my voice low.

Ty was watching us intently.

“Do what you can to help her,” Alexis repeated herself, instead of answering my question.  “The enchantresses wanted the Thorburns here.  If she dies, if the dead man’s switch doesn’t stall things, then the Thorburns are going to run out of people really quickly.  The next three heirs are here.  One bullet for each, in turn.  Then it’s Ivy?  How does that work?  How does Paige work, being in Isadora’s grip?”

“Let’s go back to the part where you mentioned dying, and assume it’s not going to happen.  Because it can’t.  You’re making it clear it can’t.”

“Blake.  Witch hunters.  They’re the one thing Rose was most worried about, the reason she finally caved and did the dead man’s switch.  Even if we manage to beat them, the house is going to get raided at nightfall.  We-”

“Trouble!” Tiff called out.

Paper was pouring in through the gap in the door on the second floor.  Reams of it, yellowed and old, moving through the space as if it had a life of it’s own, and coming through in piles.  Hundreds of pages, with writing scrawled on them.

The influx of paper stopped.

“Shit!  Don’t let her form!” Ty called out.

Tiff went from deer-in-the-headlights to action.  She didn’t cross the distance in time.

The pile of scattered papers rose off the ground.  A human figure was standing from beneath it all, and as the papers slid left, right, forward and backward off the pile, the air caught them and shuffled them together.

The end result was a girl in old fashioned clothes, carrying a diary bound in skin, complete with ugly black stitches.  Her head hung, her hair in her eyes.  Her lips were painted crimson.

One of the bogeymen they’d sent out the door only a minute ago.

“It’s a bounce!” Alexis called out, springing to her feet.  “They blocked her somehow!  She’s after the nearest available target!”

Return to sender.

A very good reason many practitioners were very careful before they sent a curse or a demon stomping over to their enemies.  If they fucked up, or if the enemy was clever or strong enough, that same curse or demon or whatever could come back, stronger.

Clutching her diary to her chest, the girl advanced on Tiff, hard shoes click-clacking on the ground.

Tiff had only just managed to get both hands and both feet onto the ladder when she saw how close the diary girl was.  A step away.

“Jump!” Ty called out.

Tiff did, shoving herself away from both the diary girl and ladder.

Ty caught her awkwardly.  Both fell to the ground.

Alexis was already at the cabinet behind the big wooden desk when the diary girl stepped off the ledge above the ladder.  Alexis turned her back on the girl, throwing open the cabinet doors to look at the contents.

Rather than fall as a body, the diary girl turned into pages again.  They filled the lower half of the room.

I heard cries of pain as the pages blocked my view of the others.

“Blake,” Alexis said.  “Look after -ow, god!-  After Rose.  Don’t trust your instincts when it comes to her.  Go do what you can, but go!”

“Alexis-”

She knocked something over or pulled it out of the cabinet.  I heard a clatter.  “Go!”

The pages coalesced into the diary girl’s body again.  Seeing her up close, I could make out how her flesh was just carefully cut pieces of paper, stacked atop one another, some pieces with blood on the edges.  Her old fashioned 40’s dress was made of more paper, yellowed and scribbled on in places.  Her eyes, now that I could see them, were the only thing that was real.

A book of flesh, a body of paper.

Alexis, Tiff, and Ty were each bleeding from a thousand papercuts.  Not enough to make blood gush or pour, but enough to make beads of blood appear at different points along the lines.

“Bounce her back,” I said.

“Antique box,” Alexis said, standing just to my left.  She held a box a human might have been able to fit inside, but only if they really contorted themselves.  “Not sure how to get her in it, but once we do, we can push her outside the library and remove the lid.”

The paper girl tilted her head.  Her hair shuffled to a more appropriate position, considering the angle and gravity.

A moment later, the paper girl attacked, becoming a flurry of papers, blowing past Alexis as if she were a simple stack of paper in the midst of a very small tornado.

“Alexis!” Tiff shrieked.

Alexis did what she could, pushing against the headwind, box held up.  Not a single paper found its way inside.

The box fell, cracking on the floor.

Each return-to-sender makes the summoning stronger, I thought.

Alexis was bleeding more openly now, little rivers of blood leaking out of wounds.  As she moved her hands to her face, some slits opened a little wider, allowing a bit more blood out.

“Got another box?” Ty asked.

“In the bedroom upstairs,” Alexis said.  “Ow.  Oh god, this hurts.”

I felt my heart pounding in my chest.  What to do?  There wasn’t anything inside the room that I could use, even if I could afford the spiritual energy I needed.

I couldn’t break the mirror without losing all access to the library.

Words, then.

“Diary girl,” I called out.

“Mirror boy,” diary girl whispered back.  When she turned her head, her neck didn’t bend so much as the individual papers turned.  She could have turned her head three-hundred and sixty degrees around.

She smiled, the paper of her face reshuffling, her expression changing in the wake of the rearrangement.  “Paper and wood.  Affinity.  A-F-F-I-N-I-T-Y.  I’ll let you free when I’m done.  If they bring you up and out and you manage to kill them, you’re free.”

“I don’t want you to kill them,” I said.

“E-X-S-A-N-G-U-I-N-A-T-E,” she spelled out the word.  “The blood loss will kill them, not me.  Then I’ll have their skin, and I’ll make a new book with a new cover and fill it with new words.”

“Leave them alive,” I said.

“Ohh,” she said, her voice almost sing-song, amid the whispers.  “We can sup on the fear.  Cut them in the sensitive parts of the flesh.  In the meat between each tooth, the corners of the mouth, the eyelids and the eyes themselves.  The webbing of the fingers and toes.  The achilles tendon.  Then, when we have them just how we want them, the soft flesh of the stomach… The armpit… the thigh.”

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have almost thought she was trying to be seductive.  She breathed those last few words.

My thoughts weren’t really focused on that at all, outside of how I might use it.

No, my concern was on how I could argue for my companion’s lives.  Or, more precisely, how I couldn’t.

She’s too far gone.  There’s no human left inside.

“Blake,” Ty said.  “I need you to do something for me.”

“I’m going to deal with this.  Then I’m going to help you figure out how to keep the witch hunters out, and you guys are going to be safe.”

The paper girl hugged her diary to her chest, hard.

“After all this is said and done, I need you to look after that obnoxious, glorious little bird of ours, okay?”

“Tyler, no, that’s-” I started.

“Blake, shut up,” Alexis said, with more ferocity than I’d heard from her in a long, long time.  “They bounced one back at us.  They can bounce more.  We don’t have food in here, we don’t have water.  We don’t have time.  There are enemies at the metaphorical gates, we’re outnumbered, we’re being overrun, and we’re in no shape to weather a siege.”

“You’re giving up?  They only sent one back.  The others are doing something.  They have to be.”

“No,” she said, not raising her head.  There was a bit of blood slowly making its way down a lock of hair at the side of her head, flowing from a scalp wound.  “I’m accepting facts.  We’re novices.  There’s at least three, four major players aligned against us.  If we have a chance, it’s in you leaving, right now.  Cut off the serpent’s head, and maybe the body will follow.  And in case it doesn’t work out that way… let us say our damn goodbyes.”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t find words.

“Oh, I can feel their fear,” the diary girl said, hugging herself as much as she hugged the diary.

“It was nice to meet you,” Tiff said.  “And if that sounds really lame, it’s because I’m a bit lame.  But when you showed up stuff started making sense.  I… wish I’d gotten to know you better, since our second meeting, and that I could have returned the favor, helping you make sense of stuff.”

I very nearly opened my mouth to tell her she could.  To ask for the hint, the tidbit of information that would help me fill in the blanks.

But doing that would be like admitting that their situation was this dire.

“…But I can’t,” she said.  “I really like your tattoos, you know?  Not the scary bit but… I wish I could’ve known the you that you would’ve been, and that I could’ve been that you, too.”

Ty had said his piece, in his roundabout way.  Asking me to look after Evan.  Tiff had spoken from the heart.  And Alexis…

Alexis’ head hung.  She didn’t move.  Blood pooled on the floor where her chin hung forward, dripping off the tip of her nose and chin, and off the one lock of hair beneath the open cut.

“Alexis?” Ty said.

“The lady isn’t dead,” the diary girl said.  “I can feel her fear.  It’s sharper now.”

The diary girl crossed the library, heading straight for Alexis.  Tyler tensed, taking a half-step forward, and the diary girl flared, paper shuffling rapidly, the edges all facing him.

She did the same thing as she drew closer to Alexis than she was to Ty.  I had a close-up of the trick, the individual pages moving with a will of their own.

I didn’t have time to think about it.

I lunged through the mirror, glass breaking and cutting my flesh.  Fragments danced off my skin on their way to the ground.  A short-lived body in the real world, blind, with only seconds to act.

With the Hyena, I gutted the diary girl.  Unable to see, I still felt her collapse against me, her form holding for only a second before the papers began to slide apart.

Would she reform?

I couldn’t let her.

The blade of the Hyena pointed down, I thrust down, aiming for her back.

She muttered something incomprehensible as I destroyed her spine.

I was losing my footing, and there was little that remained in the house.  No mirrors, no reflections.

I reached out, grasping, and I found the book.

The Hyena, gripped by my other hand, speared the cover of still-supple flesh.  Stabbed right through the middle.

“That’ll do,” I heard Alexis, sounding stronger than before.

A feint?  I felt a surge of relief.

Then she said the heaviest words I’d heard yet.  “Goodbye, Blake.”

I found myself a distance away from the house.  Every window that wasn’t broken was painted over.  There weren’t any surfaces that remained.

I stood in a cold place without experiencing cold.  My alien, bogeyman, vestige, something-Other body couldn’t process the emotions I felt, except as pain.  I felt the branches and tattoos gain more ground, and it didn’t stop.

I was abandoning them.

Finally, the loss of my human body slowed.

My arms were more wood than anything resembling flesh, now.  I could see through gaps between the branches at my wrists.

I felt lighter, stronger, and far more fragile.

“Evan!” I called out the name, at the top of my lungs.

I didn’t like how my voice sounded.  I wanted to believe it was cracking with emotion, and not just cracking, like dead wood might do under stress.

The bird flew out a destroyed window at the side of the house.

I whistled.

He found me, descending.

“You didn’t come,” he said.

“I didn’t have the opportunity,” I said.

“Are the others okay?” he asked.

I wanted so much to lie to him, to lie to myself.

When my mouth opened, the words didn’t come.

I finally told him the truth.  “No.”

I wasn’t sure how a bird without facial expressions could look devastated, but Evan managed it.

“They’re scared, they’re cornered, they’re hurt, and they don’t see many options.”

“Okay,” Evan said, his voice firm.  “Let’s fix that.”

Let’s fix that.

I drew in a deep breath, to try and get centered again.

The air I drew in through my mouth just wheezed through the holes in my sides, a perpetual intake of breath, wind rustling through the branches, ruffling feathers.  No maximum lung capacity, no minimum either.

“Let’s go,” I told him.

■

The various Behaim properties were locked up tight.

Johannes territory was verboten.  Too dangerous to enter.

The Hospital, not that far from Johannes’ territory, was firmly warded.

Evan and I circled Sandra’s place.

“Dark,” I said.

“Damn,” Evan said.  “I don’t see much.  I don’t think she’s here.  That troll’s a jerk, too.  She’s tried to eat me five times, just while I’ve been flying around.  She’d probably try to eat me now if she was around.”

“They anticipated retaliation,” I said.

“Maybe,” Evan replied.  “That seems kind of cowardly.”

“It is,” I said, turning the idea over in my head.  “The spirits like fairness.”

“Don’t we all?” Evan asked.

“No,” I said.  “I think deep down inside, we all like things to be a little bit unfair in our favor.”

“Hm,” Evan said.  “Like when I totally cheat at poker and cheese Ty off?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling.  “Like that.”

“Alexis cheats worse, you know.”

“Well,” I said.  “I hope she finds a way to cheat her way through whatever’s happening in the house right now.  If the witch hunters found a way into the room, that’s bad.  If they didn’t, that’s less bad, but the clock is still ticking toward nightfall.”

“Uh huh,” Evan said.  With far too much assurance, he said, “They’ll be okay.”

If they aren’t, it’s on Rose, I thought.  She left.  She gambled on this.  She wanted the enemy to realize the dead man’s switch was still a problem, and to concede defeat to her.

She’d put Alexis, Tiff, and Ty on the line, just like the Drains had suggested in the vision.

I felt anger boil up, with too many targets to name.  Where other emotions were muddled, anger was a crystal clear feeling inside me.

It’s on me, too, I thought.  I brought them into this world.

If the anger had been a fire within me, the note of guilt made it a smoky, black, toxic sort of fire, not the type of fire one used to keep themselves warm.

I remembered Alexis’ words.

Don’t trust your instincts.

I drew in another wind-whistling-through-the-woods breath, then exhaled.

Be calm.

Alexis had a reason for saying what she’d said.

“Okay, so I’m busy thinking, even if my brain is only the size of the eraser on the end of a pencil,” Evan said.

“Your brain is not that small,” I told him.

“My bird brain is about that small.  But whatever size my brain is, I gotta know, what do we do if we find one of the council members?” Evan asked.

“We catch them by surprise,” I said.  If I could find Sandra while she was driving somewhere, break the windshield at an opportune moment…

Everyone had moments where they were weak or vulnerable.  A moment where someone was hurtling down the road at sixty kilometers an hour qualified.

“You can’t catch Sandra by surprise, or Alister.  She can sense connections and he can see the future.  And with Johannes it doesn’t matter if you catch him by surprise because he’s so strong he can wipe his butt with your face,” Evan said.

“Wipe his butt with my face?”

“I dunno,” Evan said.  “I wanted something better than ‘mop the floor with you’.  I tried.  Geez.”

“There’s always a way,” I said.  It’s why I haven’t completely given up hope about my friends and crumbled.  I just feel like utter shit that there’s nothing I can do to help them now.

The anger flared.

“So we just gotta find a way,” Evan said.  “I’m ninety-five percent sure there’s nobody home, wait, wait, shit, don’t wanna lie, it’s not really exactly ninety-five, but whatever the word is for when you’re talking in specifics… Um.”

“I think you’re safe,” I said.  “Damn it, though.”

Every second that passed was a second that the house remained under attack.

“What now?” Evan asked.

“Extension of the same plan,” I said.  “They’re united against us, right?”

“Right.”

“It would be great if we could handicap Sandra or make her look weak, and get the other two to capitalize on that weakness, distracting them all from Hillsglade, but we might have to go after another viable target,” I said.

“Maybe breaking the rules and attacking during daytime?” Evan asked.

“Maybe,” I said, “With all the dangers involved, we might have to.  I really wanted to go after the head of the serpent.”

“The serpent’s a hydra, isn’t it?” Evan asked.  “Cut off one head, another pops up.  Laird, Duncan, now Alister?”

I frowned.

“It is,” Evan said.  “I came up with that all by myself, I’ve been doing my reading.  So ha.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“Damn straight.  Wait, why am I happy about it?  That sucks.  We’ll never get past all of them if they keep getting new leaders.”

“We can if we destabilize things, or somehow deal with Johannes, who isn’t the succession sort… but it is a problem,” I said.

“Pooh,” Evan said.

“Unless we turn things around,” I said.  “Do the opposite of going after the head of the serpent.”

“Go for the feet!” Evan said.

I was currently within a car window, parked by the side of the road, and gave him a look, where he was perched on the side view mirror of the vehicle.

“Some snakes have feet,” he said, “probably, somewhere.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, checking the time by looking inside the car.  “We’ve got a plan.”

“Sweet!  Operation’s Snake’s Foot is a go!”

“Sure,” I said.  “In thirty minutes.”

“In thirty minutes!”

■

If I couldn’t go after the head of the serpent…

The bell tolled in the background, joined by a shrill ring.

I lurked, waiting, one hand on the Hyena.

The school day was over.

I watched as the children filtered out of the school.  The elementary and high schools were close to one another.

My eye watched every student in turn, looking for details.  Behaim?  Duchamp?

I saw the Briar Girl.

From my vantage point in the window of an empty storefront, I whistled.

The Briar Girl approached a short distance, saw me, and stopped.

“Your like has come for me before,” she said.

“I doubt that,” I said.  “I’d like to think I’m one of a kind.”

“Ah, you’re not enforcing the laws?”

I shook my head.

“Good.  Because I hold to the laws, as I’ve said again and again. Hi bird.”

“Hi,” Evan said.

“Prey bird,” her rabbit spoke.

Evan shuffled a bit further away.

“We’ve actually talked before,” I told her.  “Back when I was human…ish.”

She frowned.  “Should I be more bothered by the idea that you’re lying, or that you’re telling the truth and I’ve somehow forgotten?”

“It’s not that important.  I’m not here for you.”

“Of course not.  I’m a bystander, this time around.”

“I want you to do me a favor” I asked.

“I’m not committing to anything.”

“You might like the idea,” I said.  “I need you to convene the young Behaims and Duchamps.  Get the junior council together.  Things need to change, the status quo needs to be challenged, and I think I’m not the only person who might feel that way.”

Malfeasance 11.9

I’d expected a crowd, I didn’t get a crowd.

I’d expected kids of various ages, and found myself surprised.

The reality, it seemed, was that the youngest kids were running for cover.  School wrapped up at half past three, and it apparently got dark at five.  An hour and a half of freedom, or time to handle the minor things, then nightfall.  Enchantments and spells would kick in, the civilians would find themselves suffering through an abruptly early curfew, and there would be chaos in the streets.

The bell tolled in the background, low and ominous, as if the bell itself were present for this very scene.  The gathered practitioners looked over their shoulders, to the bell’s source.

“That’s one angry ghost,” a Duchamp said

“I can barely hear it,” Craig Behaim commented.

“More experienced practitioners hear it more,” the Duchamp said.  “She’s after my aunt, Johannes, and the other leaders.  Alister, I guess?”

“I’m not going to fall for something like that, Lola.  You find out what we’re doing when everyone else does,” Craig said.  He looked for the bell’s source again.  “She isn’t running out of power?  Where’d she get that kind of energy?”

“Some of it,” Lola Duchamp said, “Is from him.”

The Behaim boy startled a little as he saw me.

Five people in total had joined the Briar Girl and me.  Alister was not one of them.  I recognized Penelope Duchamp, who had been quiet thus far, and I recognized the bird on her shoulder, even if I didn’t know its name. She was joined by the girl who was apparently called ‘Lola’, a bit older than her, with bright red makeup around her eyes, pink tips on one strand of her blond hair, and a silver nose-ring.  War paint, almost.

Craig, Ainsley, and Gavin Behaim were here as well.  Laird’s son, niece, and nephew, respectively.  I’d killed Craig’s dad, the Bloody Mary had cut Ainsley’s wrists, and I’d left Gavin behind with his wounded uncle, who I’d just hacked with an axe, then gone on to kill Laird.

They didn’t necessarily remember the details, though.

Two Duchamps, three Behaims.

I stood within a window looking out on a narrow street.  The store behind me was an ice cream place that was closed for the winter season.  Less of a successful business, more of a hole-in-the-wall place that people could find if they ventured off the beaten track.  From what I’d glimpsed, it wasn’t the nicest looking place.  All the same, we were afforded a certain degree of privacy to chat.

“You,” Craig said.

So he’d heard about who I was.

“Hi Craig,” I said.  “Ainsley, Gavin.  Penelope, hi again.  I’ve met each of you, even if you don’t remember.  This is Evan.”

“Hiya,” Evan piped up.

“I don’t remember,” Penelope said.  “Craig said it was you who killed his dad and maimed his uncle?”

“And I tried to unseat Alister,” I said.  “I don’t deny it.”

“Doesn’t make me feel very trusting, when I imagine what you might have done to me,” Penelope said.

“Your sister’s in a dance class, right?”

The question only made Penelope look more paranoid.

“You were dropping her off at dance class one morning, when you decided to come after me and Rose.  Your sister’s Faerie familiar was injured.”

“I remember that, vaguely,” Lola chimed in.  “Letita being injured, and the call to arms at way-too-early-o’clock when it was way too cold in the morning.”

“I remember too,” Penelope said.

“I showed mercy, and returned the familiar to your sister instead of trying to kill it.  You called off the attack on me.”

“Ahhh,” Penelope said.  “That explains why I was grounded until halfway through January.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “We… I don’t feel we left on bad terms.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “But things are different now than they were.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Definitely different.  Which is part of why I asked you to come.”

“I’m thinking we should wait for Mags before we get down to business,” Gavin said.

I nodded, though I felt antsy.  I wasn’t sure what my friends were dealing with at this given moment.  Were they at the witch hunters’ mercy?

“So,” Lola said, sitting on a metal post that doubled as a bike rack, “Bogeyman.”

“Blake.”

“Blake.  What are you, in all of this?  You’ve defended Rose, apparently.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Where do you stand?”

“Right here.”

Lola folded her arms.  “No jokes.  Where do you stand in terms of allegiance?  You’re in Rose’s camp?”

“No,” I said.  “If I have to admit it, I’m really not.  I don’t agree with her decisions, I don’t like how she’s playing this, and right now, I’m pretty damn anxious because of a plan she’s putting into motion.”

“Which is?” Craig asked.

“Something that, if I do share it, will be shared with the ambassador here, and your tacit cooperation.”

Craig nodded, though he didn’t look happy.

“Once, I wasn’t trapped in this mirror.  The Thorburns have fought over Hillsglade House for years, and I remember being right there among them,” I confessed.  “I had my opportunity to fight alongside the others for my share of the property.  I could have walked away with millions.  I never fought for it.  I remember walking away from it all, and I remember paying dearly for that decision.”

“Cryptic,” Gavin said.

“It’s not intended to be cryptic,” I said.  “It’s just who I am and where I come from.  I didn’t want to be a part of this world.  I was dragged into it.  So far, the deck seems pretty damn stacked against me.  I’ve had to give up an awful lot of the stuff I care a whole lot about.”

I searched their faces for changes in expression, for clues, signs.  Did they think less of me for admitting that?  Were they figuring me out?  Deciphering weaknesses?

“I didn’t want to kill Laird,” I told Craig.  “Your dad.  I don’t know why he was doing what he was doing, but… I didn’t want that.”

“We have only your word for that,” he answered.

“Yeah,” I admitted.  “Just like you have only my word when I say that I can’t lie.  I’ve been down this road.”

“Ah,” Gavin said.  “That’s a bit of a problem.”

“It’s a fixable problem,” Lola chimed in.

I suppressed a sigh.  “You’re talking about the seal of Solomon.”

Lola nodded.  “You know your stuff.

Agreeing to the deal that Suleiman Bin Daoud had set up between humanity and Others.  Binding myself, with certain terms contingent in the binding.  One of the first things I’d read up on, way back when.

“That opens me up to a lot of forms of attack,” I said.  “Being properly bound, being targeted by certain vectors…”

“It protects you too,” Lola said.  “Gives you a power source.  You become a part of the greater scheme of things.”

“Damn it,” I said.  “No.  That’s exactly what I’m talking about.  That’s why I’m trying to talk to you guys here.  It’s… damn it.  Would you accept the deal, as-”

“If it’s the reason for the meeting,” Gavin said, “We should wait for Mags.  She’s close.”

I sighed.

“I did the seal thing, I think,” Evan said.

“I can explain later,” I said.

“Right!”

A moment of silence passed.  The Behaims, understandably, weren’t very happy with me.  The two Duchamp girls were murmuring to one another, while shooting periodic looks my way.

“Hey, chickadee!  Fellow bird!” Evan called out to Penelope’s familiar.  “Come perch with me while we wait.  We can trade stories about all of the places to avoid when you’re out for a flight.  Like Sandra’s weasel thing, except you’re a Duchamp so you’re safe, but stuff like that!  Bird tips!  Wait, wing tips!”

The chickadee looked at him.  It spoke with a voice that was so high it might have sounded artificial, if the articulation wasn’t so perfect.  “Do not presume that we’re equal, child.”

Evan was suddenly as mute as he’d been vocal.  He pulled his head back closer to his body, until it looked like he had no neck at all, his feathers fluffing out in general.

Penelope looked at me and cupped her hand so Evan couldn’t see.  It hurt my ability to see too, but I was pretty sure she mouthed the word ‘sorry’.

Mags arrived, a goblin in a snowsuit waddling behind her.  It looked fat, and its eyes didn’t match, where they peered beneath the hood.

“Hi Blake.”

“Hi Mags,” I said.

“I hear you almost killed Alister.”

“I only wanted to cut him a little.  He told me he could undo the damage.”

“Then why cut him?”

“Because he said he didn’t want me to, and I needed to do something.”

“You’re aware that Sandra, Alister, and Johannes know where you are, right?  They know this meeting is happening?”

“Sure,” I said.  “But right now, they’re also trying to stay out of my way.  While we’ve been making small talk here- and not-so-small talk, I guess, my friends have been under attack.  They know I’m looking for them.  So the question is, do they come here to stop me from talking to you, exposing themselves, or do they stand back, and let me say what I have to say?”

“I suppose it depends on what you have to say,” Gavin told me.

“You want to know why I’m not so keen on the seal of Solomon business?”

“Because you don’t want to lose the ability to lie,” Craig said.  He looked the most unfriendly out of all of the Behaims, and none of the Behaims seemed friendly at all.  “Or you’re afraid of being bound.”

“Not quite,” I said.  “My big concern is that we all share a common enemy, and somehow, a lot of us are missing it.  It’s getting us one by one, and I can’t just give it more power.”

Lola Duchamp tilted her head a little.  “Now you’re being intentionally cryptic.”

“History,” I said.  “Your families, the Duchamps especially, are bound to it.  Everyone’s doing things the way they’ve been done for ages, because they’ve been done that way for ages.  It’s… it’s this corrupt, stupid force in all of our lives.”

“You’re gathering up a bunch of us Behaims and telling us that the big bad enemy is time?”  Craig asked.

“History, not time.  The past.  I don’t think I can really convince Sandra or Alister or Johannes or any of the others to turn from their paths.  They’re too secure in their power, comfortable in what tradition and history and expectations have given each of them.  I’m really, honestly hoping I can convince you guys.  Convince all of you guys, who are less in History’s grip.  I’m banking on that, while the knowledge that my friends might be hurt or dying is slowly tearing me apart.”

“What makes you think we can be convinced?” Gavin asked.

“The knowledge that the Behaim family power is all being funneled into one point, one person.  The first person was your dad, and… whatever my issues with him, he at least used it properly.  Duncan used it too, less properly.  Everything I’ve seen of Alister suggests he intends to squander it.”

“Assuming Alister is going to wind up in charge.”

“I spied on your family’s discussion while you were in school,” I said.  “All signs suggest it’s in the works.  A lot of voices in Alister’s support.  Talk of a weapon being put in his hands.”

I saw the Behaims exchange glances.

“I shouldn’t comment either way,” Gavin told me.  “Shouldn’t validate what you’re saying or fill in the blanks around your best guesses.”

“As far as I’ve been able to tell, you were misled,” I told him.  “Just like your fathers and your fathers’ fathers were.  You’re the equivalent of cows producing the milk, and it’s the Lairds and Alisters that get to decide what they do with that milk.  The best you can do is hope they make good use of the power they milk from you.”

“You’re calling me a cow?” Ainsley asked, glaring at me.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I guess I am.  If you insist on sticking with the herd, instead of thinking for yourself.”

“Cute,” Gavin said.  “Do you really think it’s smart to antagonize us, when you’re asking for our help?”

“I’m not trying to be your friend.  I don’t think that’s about to happen  given our history,” I answered.

“What, then?”

“I’m hoping that we can at least stand here, and agree that the status quo sucks, and it’s going to suck more for all of us if things continue down this course.”

“Speak for yourself,” Lola said.  Her breath fogged in the air.  She jammed gloved hands in her pockets.  “You were going to say that the Duchamp tradition has hurt us too, right?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Arranged marriages, being used as a currency of sorts, to buy more power for the family?”

“That was the impression I had,” I said.  “Is it wrong?”

“It’s right.  Right now,” Lola said.  “I did everything I could to make myself unpresentable.  Fought it every step of the way.  Put metal in my face and ears, not just because I thought it was cool, but because I wanted to scare off the stodgy old mages and whatnots that paid visits and leered at us.  It didn’t work.  They found me someone who wanted someone distinctive.  Guy ten years older than me I’ve met once, for an interview.  Like I was applying for a job.  Wedding’s set for a year from now.  If it weren’t for the chaos here, the wedding day would’ve been the second day I saw him.”

“No kidding?” Mags piped up.  “Ten years older?”

“I think that’s illegal,” Evan whispered.

“Not illegal.  Lola’d be eighteen,” Penelope said.

“Oh.”

“Whoop dee doo dah,” Lola said.

“He seemed nice, though,” Penelope added, with an excess of cheer.  “Interesting, too.  Passionate about what he does.  Could be thirty eight or forty eight.”

“Sure,” Lola said.  “Nice, interesting, into his work.  Not that old.  But he could want different things than I want, and because he’s buying me, he gets the final say.  I don’t want kids?  Too bad.  I want to go to school or have a career?  Too bad.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Lola shot me a smile, but there was an anger in her eyes, surrounded by the startling crimson eyeshadow.  It was as if I’d angered her just by inviting her to talk about the subject.  “Things change, Blake.  If the Duchamps come out on top, and we’re most definitely a contender, then the marriage thing can stop.  Or they can at least slow down, make it volunteer-only.  My fiancé is coming into town with his brothers.  He’s helping.  And so long as I play along, we’ve got that tiny bit of extra psychopomp firepower.  We can help Sandra take over, and help the status quo change.”

“For the next generation?” I asked.

“Or the rest of this generation,” Lola said, glancing at Penelope.  When she looked back my way, Lola’s body language was stubborn, her jaw set.

“You don’t have to do that,” Penelope said.

“No I don’t,” Lola said.  “But I can look at our options, weigh things in one hand versus the other.  Doing this, playing along, it’s a safer, stronger bet than the other options I’ve debated so far.”

“I wonder,” I said, “If your mom thought the same thing.  Or if Sandra convinced herself she could change it all.”

“They could’ve.  They’re could be working on it as we speak, attacking your friends at the house and working to put Sandra in her seat as Lord of Jacob’s Bell,” Lola said.

“Or maybe,” I replied, “Things will keep going the way they’ve gone for generations.  You might end up making peace with the fact that Penelope gets married off, because there wasn’t enough time.  Then Penelope’s younger sister could end up getting married off.  You can still convince yourself that it’s fine, that it takes time.  What happens after?  You end up having a kid with the psycho, and one day you could wind up using the same tricks on your daughter that your mother and aunts used to manipulate you?”

I could see Lola’s expression harden, the muscles at the corners of her jaw standing out, any softness disappearing.

I waited, inviting her to speak, but there was only hardness.  “…Maybe you wind up convincing her that if she just plays along, she won’t have to do the same for her daughter?”

“You really aren’t interested in making friends,” Mags commented.

“I want people to look!” I said, and I raised my voice a little too much.  I was anxious, in my odd, inhuman new way of being anxious, and having them fight me on this very preliminary front was only making it worse.  “I want you to god-damn think!  Why the hell would the Duchamps stop doing what they’re doing, just because they were a little more powerful?  Power has to be secured.  They’re not going to abandon the methods that got them status and power in the first place.  They’re going to keep doing it, only they’ll escalate.  Reach out to practitioners who are further away.  Use their new position to build something.”

“No,” Lola said.  “I know Sandra.  I know… some general stuff about her.  I’m sure she wouldn’t escalate.”

“The priest?” I asked.

Lola raised one eyebrow, but she didn’t reply.

“You heard something when Hillsglade House was smote?” Penelope asked.

“I don’t have much of a fricking clue what happened with Sandra and him,” I said.  “All I know is that right now, it’s looking like a pretty raw deal for Lola here, for the Behaims, and even for Penelope.  It’s a raw deal for me.”

“Me too,” Evan chimed in.  “Not me, exactly, but an awful lot of people I like are part of this.  I want this to go okay for them.”

“Things change,” Lola said, with a note of certainty in her voice.

Stubborn.  I was a little surprised that a Duchamp would be like that, that someone from the subtle and creative enchantresses would be so blunt in attitude.  I supposed it had to do with where she’d come from.  She’d carved out a bit of individuality among a sea of cousins and sisters who all looked and acted very similar to one another.

That stubbornness, though, was something of a wall for me.  I couldn’t push forward so long as she kept giving me the same answer.

“We’re the only ones who can change the course of all this,” I said.  “You guys, as representatives or whatever you are to your families, you’re in a position to spread the word, make arguments.  If you don’t like the current status quo, fight it.”

“At the worst possible moment?” Craig asked.  “We’d weaken our families just in time for Johannes to swoop in and seize the lordship.”

Lola commented, “The Behaims aren’t in a position to get the lordship anyway.”

“No comment,” Craig said.  “Whether we were or weren’t, we’d be betraying our family.”

“Oh, I’m not saying Blake is right,” Lola said.  “I’m saying you’re weak.”

This wasn’t what I’d hoped for.  Maybe if I’d had a larger group to work with, I could have convinced the younger ones.  Joanna, Penelope’s younger sister, might have been more inclined to listen.

I’d wanted them to realize just how much they were slaves to their bloodline’s traditions.  But they were on the cusp of adulthood, already settling into their individual responsibilities.  Craig, Ainsley and Gavin had been trusted to go to Toronto to help Laird and Duncan fight.  Lola was getting married.  Penelope had at least had enough leverage to call off the Duchamps when I’d returned Letita to her and her sister.  She’d gotten in trouble, but she’d had a voice.

Maybe, if I’d been able to reach the ones without a voice, I could have done something.

Fuck.

The Briar Girl spoke.  “You told me I might be interested in this.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What do I have to gain?”

It dawned on me that she’d forgotten our prior conversation.

“When the Thorburns fall,” I said, “The glades that give Hillsglade House its name will probably be cut down, the marshes will be drained.  You’re… very similar to me, in a way.”

“Similar?”

“Swept up in the tide.  More at the mercy of the individual families than any of the others, who have cabals or covens or circles to protect them.  If and when the Thorburns lose, you lose, very probably.”

“If the Thorburns win, I lose.  After the priest left the house, we all heard about what Rose did.  There’s a working with a demon, protecting her.  We can’t touch her.  Nobody wins when there are demons involved.”

“Not how I would have phrased what she did,” I said.

“A demon is involved?” she asked.

“Can I ‘no comment’ that?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.  There was no humor on her face.  “I think that’s enough of an answer.”

Not just to the question I’d just asked, but everything I’d been suggesting.  Her way of refusing me.

I stared down at the ground between all of us.

“I think,” I said, “That if things continue down this road, it’s not going to be one side winning, the rest of us losing.  It might not even be one person winning, and everyone else losing.  I think it’s going to turn out worse than that.  Everyone in Jacob’s Bell loses.”

There was a short pause that followed that said a great deal more than any statement.

Mags summed it up.  “Coming from a diabolist, that’s a fucking scary thing to hear.”

I shrugged.  “Not what I meant.”

“Still scary,” she said.  As if an afterthought, she said, “Man, that bell.  It’s getting worse.”

“We’ve been talking for a bit,” Gavin said, the eldest Behaim present.  “I’m thinking we need to head home.  I’m expecting there to be a lot said.  Especially if Alister wound up being promoted to head of the house while we’ve been talking.”

That’s it?

“Unless you want to be bound by the seal,” Gavin told me, “I don’t really see any other reason to keep talking.”

I shook my head.  It was against everything I was and everything I was striving for, right here.

“Yeah, didn’t think so.”

This had been a hail Mary, a plea for sanity amid madness, from people who’d generally been a lot more sane than their elders.

But they were caught up in the tide.  Now I faced the idea of having to figure out what to do next, knowing that with every passing moment, things might be getting worse at Hillsglade.

Damn me, damn them, damn it all.

Such a familiar feeling.  Being angry, being unable to think straight.  Wanting to do something that I knew was a bad idea.

“We’re adjourned, then?” Mags asked.

“Guess so,” Craig answered.

“Right,” Mags said.  “I’ll chat with you in a minute, Blake, if you want to wait?  Maybe you could stick around, Briar Girl, so you can vouch that I’m not siding with him?  I’ll buy you something from the store after.”

“Sure,” the Briar Girl said.

So, Mags had gotten in trouble, at least on a level, even if she’d held onto her position.  The threats had been grave enough that she was now forcing herself to be impartial.  Giving herself a witness and alibi.

I remained mute, frustrated and angry.  My body wanted to act, to do something reckless.  I stayed where I was.

Lola met my gaze with her own.  She looked monstrous in her own way, with the red around her eyes, her skin pale.  “I hear what you’re trying to say.  Maybe if the timing were different, it would be different.  Maybe if you weren’t who and what you are…”

Penelope nodded.

“Penelope,” I said, speaking the moment the thought crossed my mind.  “Lola said her piece.  Are you going to say anything, or are you going to stick to the pattern of letting your elders decide things for you?”

Lola glared at me, hearing that.

“I make my own decisions,” Penelope said.

“The excuse Lola gave, that she has to do this to maintain the marriage and keep her husband-to-be in the fight, you don’t have that excuse.”

“No,” Penelope said, “But the bigger argument, it’s… I can’t go against my family, not if I’m risking making them weaker.”

“You drove Joanna to her dance lessons at the crack of dawn for a long time,” I said, recalling.  “You… I feel confident in saying you obviously care about your family.”

“Yeah,” Penelope said.

“Lola’s willing to marry a stranger because she thinks she can change things for your sake, and for all your sisters and cousins.  Why doesn’t it go the other way?  Why won’t you take a risk to save her from that marriage?”

“That’s not fair,” Penelope said, suddenly angry.

I wasn’t making many friends, doing this.

Was that a mistake?  I couldn’t imagine any way I might have phrased things that would have gotten them all on my side.

“If you feel the least bit conflicted about this,” I said, “Think about all of your cousins, about Joanna.  By coming in such small numbers, you decided to speak for them.  Are you that confident that you’re saying what they’d want you to say?”

“Yes,” she replied.

It caught me off guard.  The sudden, certain answer.

It made me despair, just a little.  Because it cost me ground and leverage I might have used to ask Ainsley a similar question, to keep that conversation going.  To find an opening.

“It sucks, but yes,” she said.  “I’m not saying that our moms and aunts and grandmothers are always right, but whatever Aunt Sandra’s done, I feel like she cares, whatever she winds up doing.  You’re a stranger, and all you’re offering are words.”

“Blake,” Mags cut in.  “I’ve got to step in.  It’s not that late, but it’s getting later.  I wouldn’t be doing my job if I made these guys stay longer than was safe.  I’m sorry to say it, but… I don’t think this is going anywhere.”

I nodded.

The Behaims and Duchamps started to leave.

“Just tell me…” I spoke to their backs.  I didn’t restrain my voice and even I was a little surprised at how different it sounded.  There was a hollow quality to it.

They stopped.  Three of them turned around or partially turned to look at me.

“…Do you care?” I asked.  “About being used as cows, giving up your time to fuel the Behaim battery?  Being married off?  Seeing people you respect and care about being married off?”

“Of course we care,” Lola said.

“So,” I said, before anyone could add anything.  “If my words aren’t enough, you’re saying you want to see me act?”

I saw Craig’s hand move toward one pocket.  Penelope’s bird moved to one side, further from Penelope’s neck, more to the outside of the shoulder.

“I’m not threatening you,” I said.  “I’m genuinely asking.  You want proof I’m willing to take the risk, abandon the status quo?”

“What are you doing?” Gavin asked.

“Proving that I mean what I say.  The Thorburn status quo has most of you guys beat, I’m thinking.  It’s a death sentence, a karmic burden like you wouldn’t believe. In the more immediate present, the Thorburns are on the verge of being utterly destroyed, if they haven’t been already.  I’m obviously not fighting against much, by fighting that reality.  I have to test myself, right?  Bite the bullet, face an ugly reality?”

“What, exactly, are you doing?” Gavin asked.

“I couldn’t tell you, or someone might try to stop me,” I answered.  “I’m taking action.  Remember what I said.  I don’t give a damn about money.  I don’t care about the power, really.  I’d give it all up and go with my friends back to normalcy if I could.  When the subject comes up, and people start talking, I want you to remember that.  Spread it around.”

Apparently unnerved enough that he’d decided to act, Craig pulled a bit of thin chain out of his pocket.  I recognized it.  Blessed silver chain or something.  A one-stop measure for most kinds of Other or something of the sort.  They’d had it in the parking lot outside the police station.

“Evan!” I ordered.  “Go!  Back the way we came!”

I stepped out of the window’s reflection.  Escaping before they could get in our way.

■

One quick conversation and a bit of scavenging later, and we were set.

Actually taking action proved a little more difficult.  The house was barred to me, which I’d expected, but it was barred to Evan as well.  Plywood had been set up against the windows, the same boards that Ty had used to cover the front window, but on the back window and back door this time.

Many surfaces had been spray painted.

Evan flew in a wide circle around the house, carrying the small bike side-view mirror he’d ‘liberated’ from a downtown shop.  When he paused, here and there, I was able to peer through the mirror.  I couldn’t fly, meaning there was no surface to stand on when he was at a certain height and angle.

No subtle way to get in.  no way, even, to peer inside.  Either the curtains had been shut, or the window had been spray painted black.

On the plus side, there was still a car a little ways down the street, shabby and nondescriptive, and according to Evan, it smelled like gunpowder.  I’d peeked inside, and there were heavy cases throughout.  I was pretty sure it belonged to the witch hunters.

They were still here, which meant that maybe, just maybe, the others were alive.

Evan did another loop, perching on a tree that looked out on the back of the house.

“Well,” I said, “We might have to get in the house another way.”

“Another way?”

“It’s a little unusual, and not my first choice, but we might have to use the door.”

“Hah,” Evan said.  “Crazy.”

But he took off, flying to the back door.

He hopped up and down on the thumb-press handle of the back door.  It didn’t move.

“Locked,” he said.  “Lemme see…”

He relocated himself to the bulky lock above, a secure, albeit somewhat old-fashioned fixture that could have withstood a hit from a sledgehammer.  It had a slot for a key.

He used the fiddly plastic bit at the end of the mirror, sticking it at the lock, mashing it in over and over until it stuck in the lock.  Wings flapping, over about four tries, dropping the mirror twice, he rotated the mirror around, and the lock with it.

The door swung open.

“Yes,” he said.

“Careful, careful,” I warned.  “Don’t move.”

Peering through the mirror, crouched on the ground in a narrow and small patch of light, I said, “Turn the mirror back around?”

He did, but in the doing, he moved it too fast.  I was shunted to the street outside.  I skipped back to my former  location.

My eyes scanned the surroundings.

The witch hunters wouldn’t want to leave anything up to chance.

I’d expected a shotgun to fire the second the door opened, in some contrived setup, or something.

What I saw was a metal box with two wires sticking out of it, resting flat against the ground.  A symbol was painted on top of it, a rune.  Probably written by a third party.

Fuck me, that was scary.  I wasn’t sure entirely what it was, but it was scary.

“Stay high,” I said.  “I think there are more wires.  Short bursts of flight.  There’s a lot of places for traps, and if they catch you-“

“I got it, I got it.”

Together, we reached the kitchen.  The toaster, I noted, had been spray painted black.

Evan ducked into the sink.

I heard footsteps, followed by hushed voices.

Evan flew out of the sink, and into the living room.

“Fuck, that scared me,” Ellie said.  Her voice was a little hoarse.  “It’s just the dumb bird.”

None of the others replied.

“It’s not just the bird,” I said, as Evan set the mirror down.

I saw their heads turn, but they dismissed the idea.

“Listen to me,” I said, pushing a little harder.  “I’m here to help.”

Evan hopped down, beginning to open the handcuff locks with his talons.

“Who are you?”  Ellie asked, looking around.

“Look at the mirror,” I said.  “And listen.  We only get one shot at this.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Malfeasance 11.10

This goes against every instinct I have, I thought.

But what good was my argument, if I told the members of other families to take a different path, to step away from the status quo, if I didn’t do the same?

Roxanne, Callan, and Kathryn were pretty beaten up.  One of Kathryn’s eyes was so swollen she couldn’t open it.  Callan wasn’t moving at all, even in response to the voice.

Roxanne looked like she’d taken it hardest, which she had.  I could hear her hoarse breathing from a few feet away, and her right hand and wrist were black and purple with bruises, her upper lip was crusted with blood, and her ear was swollen enough to look like it belonged in a cartoon, puffy and overlarge.  She was more lively than Callan, though.

Ellie, Peter, and Christoff, by contrast, looked mostly okay.  Peter was slow to move, and had dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there an hour ago.  Christoff looked spooked.

Evan continued to pick the locks, one after the other.  I wished I could see more.  The footsteps I’d heard earlier suggested the witch hunters were upstairs, but there were no guarantees.

I strained my ears, to hear if there was trouble incoming.

“…I have a concussion,” Kathryn said, setting her head down on the hard ground.  “I’m hearing things.”

“You’re not imagining this,” I said.  “Which of you can move?”

“Who are you?” Ellie asked.

“If I had to come up with something serviceable,” I said, “I’d say I’m your cousin that was never born.”

“My head,” Kathryn groaned.

“Fuck this shit,” Ellie muttered.  I saw her move toward the hallway.

“Careful!” I spoke.  In trying to convey intensity without actually screaming at her, I found my voice in a weird middle ground that I probably wouldn’t have reached if I were human.  Hollow, broken.

It served to stop Ellie in her tracks, though.

“What?” she asked.

“They rigged traps at the doors,” I said.  “Probably in other places.”

“I know,” she replied, her voice a whisper.  “I heard them, I saw the stuff.  I was looking to see if they’re around.  Which they aren’t.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Do not go running off.  Things are volatile, and not just in the bomb sense.  They have other tricks.”

“Like the flashbang,” Kathryn said, not lifting her head off the ground.  “Why am I talking to the voice in the bike mirror?”

“Bike mirror?” Ellie asked.  “I figured it was a small camera and microphone with a bit of video.  Shitty resolution.”

The sound of voices from upstairs made everyone stiffen.  Eva and Andy.

“Focus,” I said.  “Who’s capable of moving?”

“I am,” Ellie said.

Christoff nodded, “Me.”

“I can,” Roxanne mumbled.  She sounded like her mouth was full.  Her jaw was probably swelling.

Peter nodded, too, but he didn’t speak.  He was staring intently at me.

That made me nervous.

“Kathryn?”

“I feel dizzy.”

“Short distance?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Evan, hiding places?”

“Um.”

Ellie raised a hand.  “Sh.”

Footsteps.

“Cuffs back on,” I said, “Resume position.”

Peter was quick to obey.  Kathryn, however, resisted, starting to rise, then tilted and stopped.  The two kids were frozen.

“Shit,” Ellie whispered, but she hurried to the radiator, following her brother’s lead.

The kids obeyed, leaving only Kathryn.

She glanced down at me, then collapsed heavily onto her side.  She reached for the handcuff that was still partially attached to the radiator and missed it by a foot.

Ellie helped cuff her.

“The mirror,” I said.

Evan flew down, grabbed the mirror, then flew to the kitchen.  As the space between kitchen and the living room was fairly open, we had a good view.  Evan squeezed back into the space between the spray painted toaster and the row of tattered cookbooks, holding the mirror in one foot.

Ten seconds passed, and Eva passed by the cuffed Thorburns, heading to the front door.

“Hey,” Ellie called out.

Don’t be stupid, I thought.

“Please let me go?” Ellie asked, her voice a little rough, “Please?  My throat hurts.”

Eva stepped into the room.

“Please,” my cousin pleaded.  “I don’t care about these assholes.  Just please let me go?”

The witch hunter kicked her, hard, in the side.

“Please!” Ellie said, louder.

Eva kicked her again.

“I’m not a part of this!”

Another kick, sharp.  Roxanne shied back from Ellie and the kicking foot, wincing even though she wasn’t the one hit.

Eva spoke, “There’s a pattern here.  I’ll explain: you speak, you get kicked.”

Ellie shut her mouth.  She didn’t speak again.

The witch hunter used her toe to nudge each individual set of hand cuffs, shoving hands and feet around until the chains went taut.  Roxanne made a small noise when her badly bruised hand was moved.

“Be quiet,” Eva said.  “You don’t know when I’m coming back.  You’re not my concern here, you’re just in the way.  Stay put, be quiet, and you’ll never have to see or hear from us again.  Make yourself a concern, and we’ll remove you as a concern.”

She waited a moment, then strode out of the room.

“Fuck you,” Ellie said, and her voice was a complete change of tone from before.

She’d baited the kicks.  For some reason.

I didn’t presume to know how her warped mind operated.

Evan relocated us to our old position, against the wall, right of the radiator.  He nudged the mirror until he was sure it wouldn’t fall over.

“Good job, Evan,” I whispered.

“Of course,” he said, feigning arrogance.

“Who’s Evan?” Ellie asked.  She couldn’t hear him.  “Who names a fucking bird Evan?  So lame.”

“You’re lame!”

I ignored her, speaking calmly, my voice almost but not quite a whisper, “We need a good hiding spot for the others, or the witch hunters might take someone as a hostage.”

“Let them,” she said.  “I don’t give a shit about Kathy or Callan.”

“Fuck you,” Kathryn said

I refused to get caught up in the debate.  I hated this.  The stupidity.  I remembered it being a large part of my frustration, part of the reason I’d fled.

Rather than make ourselves collectively better, the family had a way of dragging the successful down.

I could remember thinking how I’d never be the person I wanted to be, so long as I stuck around.

“Check the bench underneath the front window,” I said.  “There’s a sort of hidden lid.”

Kathryn gave Roxanne a light push, and Roxanne moved to obey.

“Oh yeah!”  Evan said, taking flight.  He startled Roxanne, who froze in place.

“Carefully!” I told Evan, now that Roxanne had stopped.

Evan landed on the lid.  Where the front window jutted out a little, two windows set at diagonals, the middle window facing straight out, the window was built in a way that someone could sit inside it.  The resulting bench, also a lid, had cushions sitting on it.  Broken glass, too.

“Um, there’s something on the two windows,” Evan said, extending one wing, then the other.  Pointing.

“Get back,” I told him.  “Those would be explosives.  Unlock the cuffs again.”

Evan flew back to the others and began freeing them.

“That’s one smart bird,” Roxanne mumbled, peering over with one eye open, the other shut.  “It won’t peck us?”

“Not if you’re good,” Evan said.

“No,” I said, “he won’t bite.  If you’re good.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Ellie said.  “Birds aren’t like that, and if you’re not using a camera-”

“Ellie,” Kathryn whispered, checking Callan’s pulse.  “Shut up.  You’re smarter than that.  Look at what Peter’s doing.  Copy him.”

“Peter?  He’s not doing anything.  He’s just sitting there.”

“Emulate him,” Kathryn hissed, with an intensity that made me suspect she’d practiced it on a daily or weekly basis for a long time.  “Shut the fuck up and sit still.  Figure it out without asking stupid questions.  Our concern is those two kids who just thrashed us and started talking about bombs.”

Ellie glanced at Peter, who shrugged.

She scowled, but she didn’t say anything further.

“Getting you guys out of the house would be a start,” I said, “But it won’t fix anything.  They know who you are, you’re their mission.  If you leave the house and somehow avoid the traps they rigged at each door, they’ll probably come after you to remove the witnesses.  If you leave town, they’ll come after you, or they’ll reach out to someone else who’ll come after you.”

I watched their expressions, saw Ellie’s furtive glances to the hallway, and then to the kitchen, the direction of the back door.

“You don’t know me, but I know you,” I said.  “More than you might suspect.  I know, Ellie, that you’re wanting to slip away.  That you test limits, try to claim what you think you deserve, until it all goes wrong, and then you run.  I know, Peter, that your automatic assumption is that you’ll get away with it, whatever it is, and so far you’ve been damn lucky, and part of that is that you’re way smarter than most people think.”

Ellie glanced at Peter, who remained impassive.

How was he processing this?  I’d once likened Ty’s art to the sort of musician that picked up every instrument for a while, gaining a general knowledge, rather than specializing in any one thing.  Peter could be said to be the same, but with an emphasis on people.  He got how people worked, he found weaknesses, he preyed on them, and he coasted through life.  I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if I learned one day that he’d conned an old woman out of her retirement savings, or started a shady company, collected the money and disappeared.

But how did someone who understood people process a situation where he was missing a huge chunk of the puzzle?

He spooked me most of all, because I wasn’t sure how he’d act or react in the midst of whatever happened next.

“Kathryn,” I said.  “You’re a tyrant.  I wasn’t there, but I suspect you got to where you are by relentlessly applying pressure to everyone who got in your way or threatened to get in your way, crushing them under your heel.  Roxanne, I don’t think a lot of people outside the family truly get what you’re capable of.”

“Do you?” Roxanne asked.  Her one open eye was bloodshot.

“More than most,” I said.  “Listen, I’m not going to appeal to teamwork, or to your inner goodness, and I’m not going to try to be your friend.  I’m just going to say this.  If they win, if they get what they want?  You’ll never get your chance to sell the house and get the money you’ve been expecting for most of your lives.  You’ll probably die.”

None of them responded.

“I’ll get trouble for introducing myself to you,” I said.  “I know you aren’t the types to thank me for any of this.  But you were raised to be horrible people, and I was too, in a small way.  Right here, right now, you need to be your own particular sort of horrible to them.  If you’re willing to work together to do it, all the better.”

Still no responses.

Kathryn was woozy, and Ellie had been told to shut up, and was complying.  Roxanne, it seemed, wasn’t going to speak before anyone else did.  The brat, much as I’d suggested, was the sort to stay quiet and hang back until she saw an opportunity.  Taking the lead ran contrary to that.

Damn it.  They couldn’t even shut up and listen without being problematic.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” Peter murmured.  “Who’s the fairest of them all?”

“He has mild hypothermia,” Kathryn said.  She reached for his hand.

He pulled it back.

“…A fever, probably, I’d know if he let me check his temperature,” she added.  “He’s not making any sense.”

“You’re a wizard, Pete,” he said.  “How does the line go?”

“Great,” Ellie said.  “It’s up to me and the kids.”

“Blue pill, red pill?  Tumbling, tumbling, down the rabbit hole, except instead of a grinning cat, it’s kids from film Tarantino,” Peter spoke, drawing out the ‘o’ of ‘hole’ and ‘Tarantino’.

His vision didn’t waver in the slightest, his eyes fixed on me.  His voice wasn’t slurred.

He knew.  He knew about the diagrams on the floor, he’d connected dots and pieced things together enough to know in generalities.

I spoke, ignoring him, “If you’re wanting-”

More voices from upstairs.  A sharp crack.

We fell silent, ears peeled.

I resumed speaking, a little faster, “-to do your own thing, go with Evan.  Let the bird point you to possible traps.  Downstairs should be safe, though I wouldn’t trust the window.  There’s a cellar, and tools.  Breaker box should be down there too.  Upstairs, it’s a gamble.  You might run into them.”

“And they’re armed,” Ellie said.  “Yeah, no.  Hiding in the cellar sounds good.”

“If you hide, they’ll probably find you,” I said.

“If I hide, I have a chance to find them first, while they’re looking for me,” Ellie said.  “Safest, smartest plan, far as I’m concerned.”

“Safest, smartest plan,” Peter said, looking up at his sister, sounding eerily lucid compared to his momentary wackiness a bit ago, “Would be to repurpose a bomb.  It’s not the movies, you can probably pull out wires until it stops working.”

“You want to fuck with a bomb?” Kathryn asked.  “Fuck me, and fuck you.”

“Ellie,” he said, extending a hand up to his sister, who was standing.

She didn’t take his hand.

“Help?” he asked, hand still extended.

“Not if you’re tampering with bombs,” she said.

“I’m looking,” he said, struggling to his feet without any help, using the arm of the couch.  He looked a little weak.

“Careful,” I said.

He wobbled, then looked down at me, before offering me a wan smile.  His eyes were sharp, pupils dilated to points.  He was focused.

Reminded me of me, a little, back when I’d been human and bled out.

He was suitably cautious as he found and peered at the bombs Evan had pointed out, his hands in his pockets as he very carefully maneuvered his head around.

“Damn,” he said.  “Nevermind.  Shit.”

“What?” Ellie asked.

“Not touching this shit.  There’s a fucking level on the top, with wires in both sides.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how this works.  Too big a bump or tilt it, and boom.  Shit.  Would’ve been nice to move something to the staircase, bait them down…”

“Whatever,” Ellie said.  I’m sticking with my plan.”

She sprung to her feet, peeling off her shoes, and kicked then under the sofa.  She glanced up and down the hallway, at the staircase leading upstairs.  “Where’s the basement?”

“Cellar,” I said.  “Door beside the hall closet.”

She disappeared around the corner, nearly silent.

She reappeared.  “Tripwire, top of the stairs.  Just so you know.  Almost got me.”

Then she disappeared again.

There was a moment’s pause.

“Who are those kids?” Kathryn asked.  “Bombs?  Tripwires?  They’re good.”

“Hit men,” Roxanne mumbled, her head hanging as she shuffled around to a sitting position, one eye on the hallway.  “I think I want to be them.  Then I want to find them, and pay them back.”

“Focus,” I said.  “We don’t have time.”

“I’m not hiding beneath those bombs,” Kathryn said.  “Can’t leave through the door, right?”

“Claymore or something at the back door.  I suspect there’s something at the front,” I explained.

“Can we detonate it on purpose, from a distance?” Peter asked.  “It’d bring the locals running.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said.

He smiled a little, a knowing smile.

“You’re the boss,” he said.

I looked around.

Callan, Kathryn, Peter, Roxanne, and mute Christoff.

“Move Callan, help Kathryn to a hiding spot.  If you or the kids can figure out places to lay traps while you’re at it, great.”

“And you?” Peter asked, arching an eybrow.

There wasn’t anything I could say without cluing him in further.

A part of me felt like Kathryn, Ellie and the kids were at the point where they could maybe explain away what had happened to date.  Kathryn was sharper, but maybe less willing to let go of her grip on the real world.  Ellie wasn’t as sharp, not in this respect.  The kids were kids.

But Peter…

Fuck.

“There’s a reason they spray painted and broke the mirrors and pictures in the house,” I said.  “If you can find anything that’s been put on the ground or covered, prop it up, that helps.”

“Uh huh.  Just like the movies?  The eyes in the pictures move to follow you.  The house is rigged,” he said, smiling.

“You’re on the right track, ish,” I said.

“I don’t follow,” Kathryn said, quiet, “But moving sounds like a great idea.”

They decided on the simplest plan, in the end.  Callan and Kathryn were the biggest liabilities.  Peter and the two kids helped support Kathryn to the front hallway, helping her to the stairs.  Peter backed off, presumably letting Kathryn use the railing while the two younger children helped.

Just an unconscious Callan and Peter, now.

“So?” Peter asked me.

“So what?” I asked, in response.

He moved the couch cushions, then moved the coffee table back.  “So… how does this work?  What are the rules?”

“The less you know, the better,” I said.

“For who?” he asked.  “Way I see it, the more I know, the more I can help.  It’s not just the windows and mirrors here.  At the cafe, when that girl with the scarf picked a fight with Ellie?  That was odd, and I didn’t get the feeling it had anything to do with the people who goaded us to come here.  You wanted a look at the contract, somehow.  It’s how Rose knew we’d be coming for her.”

“Not quite right,” I said.

“But I’m close?” he whispered.

He leaned over Callan, and slapped Callan, hard.  He flicked one finger at Callan’s closed eyelid.

Callan moaned, but didn’t wake up.

“You’re close,” I said.  “What are you doing?”

“Hiding Callan,” he said.  He reached into the couch and unfolded a cot that was built into the bottom portion.  “I’m a little too weak to pull it off myself.”

He picked up the poker Callan had dropped and sat down on the edge of the bed.  “That bird isn’t an ordinary bird.  It’s not a trained bird.  And I have a really hard time believing a guy who would somehow get his hands on a lockpicking, bomb-detecting bird would call it something as dumb as Evan.”

“Evan is the best name.”

“That’s not important,” I said.

“Which brings me…” he trailed off, half-rising to his feet, tense.  Footsteps.

Roxanne and Christoff.

“Lift him,” Peter said, grabbing one of Callan’s arms.

Roxanne had only one hand available, leaving Christoff to deal with the bulk of the weight.  They raised Callan up until he was half-sitting, half-lying on the bad.  Springs as old as I was creaked and popped with the sudden weight.

We all went still.

Whatever the witch hunters were doing upstairs, they didn’t hear.  Chances were good they were on the third floor.

Peter dragged Callan’s feet around until Callan was lying down, head by one of the arms of the couch, feet by the other.  Arranging Callan’s arms and legs so he fit on the mattress without anything dangling, he folded the couch back up, with Callan inside.  Metal and springs protested loudly.

“Cal won’t be able to breathe,” Christoff spoke.

“As fun as rolling him down the stairs to the cellar would be,” Peter said, “It would be loud.  And leaving him in the open gets him cut or shot.”

Christoff didn’t look happy.

Peter looked my way.  “The bird isn’t important.  What is?  I asked you what the rules were, here.  What can you share?”

Peter was a people person.  I thought about that.

“Andy is the trap and bomb guy.”

“Noticed.”

“Eva the fighter.  They’re working for the people who run things behind the scenes.  Eva’s a little bit crazy, a loose cannon.  Andy reels her in.”

“The bitch,” Roxanne muttered.  “I need a better knife.”

She held up the letter opener.  It looked old fashioned.  Pretty clearly one of grandmother’s things.  Probably snatched from a nearby surface.

I thought of Ellie’s bag.

No, too awkward to get, especially when I didn’t have access to upstairs.

“If-” I started.  I paused, frowning, thinking in more depth.

“Think fast,” Peter said.

“I need access to the rest of the house.  The others are in, kind of a makeshift panic room.  If Andy and Eva are still up there, that means they probably don’t have access.  They’re upping the pressure, or guarding things.  In maybe about an hour, things get really ugly.”

Peter nodded slowly.  Roxanne, still keeping one eye closed, frowned, but she looked at Peter and decided to take his lead.

“Ugly in the sense of…” Peter started.

“If I don’t have access to my friends upstairs, it’s probably over,” I said.  “That’s all those two are doing up there.  Just before the clock hits five or so, they’ll probably pack up and leave.  Because those two pale in comparison to what’s coming.”

“The machete wielder who stomps on a twelve year old and the kid with the bombs are pale?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ll take your word for it.  We have a time limit then?”

“Yes.”

Peter approached me.  Evan ruffled his feathers and opened his beak, but Peter ignored him, picking up the mirror.

“Careful,” I said.

“You’re not heavy.  I’m not going to drop it.”

“I’m not that worried about you breaking it.  Point it at the ground more than the ceiling, and hold it steady.”

He did.

“Roxanne, Christoff, go look for picture frames and mirrors.  Stay on the ground floor, be ready to run or hide.  Move slowly and carefully.”

“Evan,” I said, “go with.”

The other three left, nearly silent.  I could see how Roxanne held her one arm off to one side, trying not to swing it around.

“You’re really not going to share the real dirt?” Peter asked.  “Because you, right here, not technology.  If you could somehow bestow some of that on me?  It’d help.”

He smiled wide.  It was more genuine emotion than I’d seen from him… ever.

“It’s not technology,” I said.  “I can’t give you it.  Those guys up there?  They’re witch hunters.  You’re almost stronger against them like you are, than with anything I could bestow.”

He nodded slowly.  “Right now, I’m thinking I could run.  I could probably defuse the bomb on the plywood, even if I couldn’t re-arm it.  I’ve got this poker.  If there was a commotion, I could probably get the nails out, slip outside.”

“They’d be able to find you,” I said.

“Maybe.”

“They have ways,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter.  All I need from you is a promise.  Because I feel like this is what I’ve been waiting for for half my life.”

I bit my lip, looking away.

Further away, I saw a patch of light open up.

“Lie to me,” he said.  “Tell me you’ll do it, break the promise later.”

“Why would it matter if I was lying?” I asked.

He remained silent.

Time was too short.

“I’ll tell you more later, but it takes time, on a lot of levels.”

“Uh huh,” he said.  “That works.”

“What works?” I asked.

“The way you phrased it, and I’m pretty good at reading people.  That sounded genuine.  Which tells me a lot.  I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not, but I believe you when you say it takes time.  And that tells me a lot more.  Time… is really important, in a lot of ways.”

“Sure,” I said, impatient.  The way he was acting, he’d ask questions until Eva decided to make another trip to check on the prisoners.

“The fastest route to victory,” he said.  “Taking out those two?”

“They’ll beat you in a fight, and whatever you’re thinking about, they’ve probably run into it before, and they handled it before.  They’ve been doing this for a while, against people far more hardcore than you.”

“What, then?  Time is of the essence, how do we win?”

“Get the bird and the mirror into the hallway, with the witch hunters elsewhere.”

“Hm.  Hard to do without-”

Heavy footsteps upstairs, getting louder as they approached the staircase.  They stopped, then resumed again, getting quieter.

Another patch of light appeared.  The bathroom in the hallway.  Fuzzy, oddly distant, like any patch that wasn’t continguous to a patch I was in could be.

With a number of fits and starts, the light reoriented, and extended.  The angle had changed to have more coverage, the little picture frame pointing out into the hallway.

Maybe it was Evan doing his part.

“Hard to do without a distraction, and if they find any of us, they have a hostage.”

“Just need more windows or mirrors,” I said.  “Reflective surfaces.”

“Uh huh.  Which does what?”

Roxanne appeared, Christoff following, Evan perched on Christoff’s head.

“Need knives,” she said.

“Not objecting,” Peter replied.

When Roxanne was gone, he commented, “Man, dad wasted Roxy, using her like he did.  Jessica’s fault, probably.  All that time spent doing stupid shit?  Horseback riding and dance classes and music?”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

Roxanne passed beneath me, carrying a cleaver and a dusty bottle of olive oil.

“Oil?” Peter murmured.

“Basement stairs,” she said.  She disappeared from view.

“Such a waste,” Peter commented, more to himself than me.

Christoff, delayed, headed in Roxanne’s direction, holding one knife in both hands, pointed at the ground as if it were ten times as heavy as it really was.

“Her!” he said, too loud.

Eva.

Peter moved immediately, back pressed against the wall by the door, poker in one hand.

“Andy!” Eva called up.  “They escaped!”

I didn’t catch his response.

I could hear her footsteps.  I relocated myself to the bathroom.

I had the Hyena.  I just didn’t have the opportunity to use it.  If I could get her close to a reflection…

She stalked forward.

She easily sidestepped the thrown bottle of olive oil.  Glass crashed against the floor at the base of the steps that led upstairs.

A patch of light opened up.  The glossy olive oil reflected.

A door slammed.

There was a pause, and then she headed back the direction she’d come.  Where her footsteps had been audible earlier, they were virtually silent now, heel-toe.

She’d accepted that the kids had disappeared downstairs, or that they were cowering at the end of the hall.  Her focus was on the living room and kitchen.

I heard flapping wings.

“Ahhh,” she said.  “The bird?  Oh, that’s messy.  That raises questions, Thorburn!”

Talking to me.

I moved to Peter’s mirror.  Evan was working his way into the spot between the bookshelves and the ceiling.  From Eva’s lack of reaction or response, she hadn’t seen it.

“Andy!” she called out.

“I’m standing watch!” he responded.  “How bad?”

“They’re hiding!”

“Let them hide!  Forty minutes!  Keep the plan simple!”

“Fuck that,” she said, no longer shouting.

I relocated, switching between mirrors.  I saw her head for the living room.  Peter was in the corner, hallway to his left, kitchen to his right.

“She’s coming from the left,” I whispered.

Peter moved, hugging the wall as he moved to the kitchen.

“Andy!” Eva called out, not three feet from us, going by volume.  “Throw me one of the fanny packs!”

“Which one?”

“Obviously not the one that’s going to set the house on fire!”

Peter started to edge left.

“Watch your step,” Eva said.

“Catch,” Andy offered.

I heard a slight clink as she caught what he’d thrown.

“Cover your ears,” he said.  “Even with the closed door and all, it can do permanent damage.”

“I’m not using the flashbang.  They’re in the basement.  All of them, I think, holed up like rats.  The bird guided them.”

“If not the flashbang… the tear gas?” he asked.  “Come on, Eva.”

“It’ll be hilarious.  We need them out of our hair, anyway.”

“Keep it simple, Eva,” he said, sounding more tolerant than anything.

“If you’d let me break their arms, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“I’ll be upstairs.  Come up soon, I don’t like being unable to watch both doors at once.”

“Sitting and waiting is boring.”

“It’s smart.  Don’t take too long.”

“Whatever.  Watch for the bird.  It’s around.  The mirror dweller too, probably.”

“Right.”

I moved to the bathroom, and had a glimpe of Eva holding a bulky fanny pack in one hand, a canister of some sort in the other.  She was heading to the basement door.

“Get ready,” I whispered.  “When she’s focused on the basement, you can head upstairs.”

“Hold on, I don’t move that fast,” Peter told me.  “I need a better distraction.  If I leave you here, you can-”

He was already reaching to put the mirror down.

“Don’t,” I whispered, annoyed.  “There’s a mirror in the other room.  I can use that.  Keep this mirror with you.”

The door slammed, and Peter moved straight back to his prior spot, back to the wall, partially sheltered by the open kitchen door.  Eva moved something that scraped against the floor, somewhere in the living room.

The coffee table.  Trapping the door shut, no doubt.

Our window of opportunity was gone.

What was Peter doing?

Clever as he was, he wasn’t moving that fast, and he wasn’t, it seemed, used to a conflict, where timing might matter a great deal.

He didn’t trust me.

Which put us back at square one.  Eva on the ground floor, Andy upstairs, Evan too far away to reach out to.

I moved between the three available reflections, trying to find the right vector or angle to mount an attack.  Back door, useless.  Bathroom, only showed me the bathroom and a bit of the hallway.  The mirror Peter held showed me the kitchen.

I could hear Eva walking, humming merrily.

The pool of olive oil…

I relocated myself to that part of the hallway.  My surroundings were vague, dark, my footing uneven in a way that wasn’t just a floor slick with oil.  My side of things was dry, in fact.

When I looked down, I could see the real hallway.

Much like the ice had been.

“When she goes back upstairs,” I whispered.  “I’ll stop her.  I’ll shout to you, you attack.”

“Sure,” he said.

A full minute passed, and Eva didn’t head upstairs.  Twice, I had to whisper to Peter to tell him to relocate back to the living room, then back to the kitchen.  Eva was pacing, hanging around the door she’d blockaded.

I could distantly hear the Thorburns’ reactions.

Then Eva approached.

I moved to the pool of olive oil and broken glass, kneeling.

She passed above me, my hand reached out of the pool, Hyena extended, slashing at the bottom of her foot.

A weird angle to attack from, and she was fast, adroit.  She hopped from one side of the pool to the second stair.  Too high for me to even reach.

Peter, not waiting for my signal, had stepped into the doorway.  He saw the extended arm and sword.

Eva, in turn, saw him, alongside both the arm and the sword.

“Bastard!” she shouted.  She threw the fanny pack at my hand.

My footing was already disappearing.  The solid mass of the fanny pack disrupted the pool, breaking up the olive oil and making it less of a cohesive reflection.

I found myself in the bathroom.  Eva hopped over the pool, landing right in front of me.  Living room to our left, kitchen with Peter inside to our right.

She started moving right.

“Go left!” I shouted.

She stopped.

“Stop!”

“You motherfucker,” she said, turning my way.

“Run!  Back hall!”

She kicked the picture, almost an absent gesture, as she spun on her heels.

Peter hadn’t run.  I found myself in the mirror he held.

I’d known he was tired.  More than that, I’d known that he wouldn’t listen.

He stepped from the living room to the kitchen.

“Run,” I whispered.  He had only seconds.

He turned on the taps at the sink, full blast.  Then leaned back, and kicked the tap.

“Fucker,” I heard Eva.

Ducking under the sink, he grabbed the fire extinguisher.  He pulled the pin, and then sprayed it in the direction of the hallway.

When he was done there, he directed it at the sink.

The mirror was covered, I was shunted somewhere behind Eva.

A minute passed.  I heard her cursing, holding her shirt to her mouth.

Slowly, patches of light began to appear on the stairs.

Pools of some liquid or another.

The sink, too, started to overflow.  Clogged.  Another reflection appeared and slowly expanded, creeping along the floor.

I smiled, feeling a kind of relief.  That brilliant asshole.

He was flooding the house.

Malfeasance 11.11

When mom and dad come home, they’re going to be soooo mad.

Flooding house, oil and broken glass at the base of the stairs, shattered back windows, at least three people in need of a hospital visit, one of whom was folded into the couch.

Oh, and the bombs.

If they showed up at the wrong time and tried to force their way in…

I shook my head.  Too many ifs.  If we took too long, if Andy got to my friends, if Alexis wasn’t okay, if one of my friends were hurt, dying, or dead…

I didn’t like the feeling that took hold of me as I thought on that subject.

I relocated myself to the kitchen floor.  There were places where the residue from the extinguisher made the water too muddy to reflect anything.

The mirror Peter had been holding was gone.  Covered, broken, or cast aside to a place where it couldn’t reflect anything I could use.  Peter, too, was missing.  From the water or whatever else that was on the stairs, I suspected he was already up there.

“Evan,” I called out.

Evan came flying to me from the bookshelves.  He started to land on the edge of the counter, but shied away and landed on the toaster instead.

“Water,” he noted.  “And, oh poop, witch hunter.”

I didn’t have a good angle to see Eva.

“Clever, Bloody Marv,” I heard Eva speak.

“Wasn’t quite my idea,” I said.  “Also, Bloody Marv?  Really?”

“Gotta call you something.”

I considered reminding her about my name, then reconsidered.

I’d given it freely in the past, just talking to the junior council, but there was a sense of danger about Eva.  Her willingness to harm, her sheer resourcefulness.

“Thorburn Bogeyman,” I said.

“T.B.?”

“Whatever,” I said.

I moved to the one intact picture frame by Eva, watched her pace a little.  A restless tiger in its cage.  She kicked the doormat until it blocked off the water that creeped closer to her.  Her body was dusted white from the fire extinguisher’s spray.

She had the machete in one hand, the dark green orb cupped in the other, and the fanny pack with the grenades slung over one shoulder, apparently collected when she’d run past the pool of oil.

It was, in an odd twist, a reversal of the situation they’d had with us.

One more pressing threat upstairs, a lesser, hobbled threat downstairs.  Couldn’t ignore them both.

If I went upstairs to help Peter deal with Andy, I risked letting Eva run rampant.  Much as they’d done with us.

If I stayed here with Eva, well, Andy wasn’t quite the threat Eva was in a fight, but I suspected he could deal with Peter rather easily.  Neither was a fighter by nature, but Andy, I imagined, at least had practice.  Armor, too.

The water on the stairs was coming from the second floor bathroom.  Andy would have heard.

“Only one more to go,” Eva said, unaware that I was close to her, ready to strike if her pacing brought her too close to the frame.  “Pretty sure.”

One more?

“One more what?” Evan called out.

“T.B.?” the witch hunter called, almost taunting.  “I’m talking to you.”

I could see her body tense.  She approached the doormat, putting one foot on it.

Ready to make a break for it?

I switched locations.  “I’m listening, I’m just not sure why I’m supposed to take the bait.”

She chuckled to herself.

“Evan,” I whispered, “Go check, help if you can, don’t get shot.”

Evan took flight, wings flapping as he headed upstairs.

“I’m asking,” the witch hunter said, “Because I want to know if you’re there.”

“I’m here,” I said.

By asking periodically, opening a dialogue, she kept me here, watching her, keeping her from making a break for it

She thought time was on her side.

Yet the house was flooding.  Water crept on a variety of surfaces.

“You’re a new bogeyman, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Damn,” she said.  “I always wanted to know if it sucked, being bound.  Stuck inside some old antique until someone releases you.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t know,” I said, glancing back.  Nobody in the stairwell.  Light covered much of the second floor hallway.  Where footsteps landed, the reflection was disrupted.  I couldn’t tell where the footsteps were, only the cadence.

“Andy said it’s hard, being a bogeyman.  You spend a while in the Abyss, or Limbo, or whatever name you want to slap onto the ground level of reality, and it chews you up and spits a monster out, right?”

“Something like that.  Haven’t heard it called the ground level before.  Doesn’t seem much like reality.”

“Yeah, I bet,” she said.  “You want Andy for that explanation.  Mayans or someone thinking that all reality was basically chaos and void before the first gods set it straight.  Humans following after, smoothing off the rough edges.  I’m getting bits wrong already.”

“Sure,” I said.  The entire world was essentially like the Drains, in another time?

“Let’s say I whip out a thing and use it to bind you.  Nice old fashioned thing with a lot of weight and power to it.  Do you just stay inside?  Or is it more that you go back to the place you came from, Limbo or wherever, steadily getting worse, and you pop out when the container gets opened?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Which of the two is worse?” she asked.  “Stuck inside some container or another, all dark, just waiting for a few decades or centuries, or going back to the place that made you a monster?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“When we capture an Other, there’s a guy we call.  Specializes in disposal.  All the little whatsits and doodads get relocated somewhere proper.”

“That’s a spooky idea,” I said.  “A warehouse full of boxes with monsters inside.”

She snorted.  “Fuck that.  Hole in the ground and poured cement, way out in the middle of the scads of protected land we’ve got here in the great white north.  Nobody’s going to dig much in permafrost, except our guy that’s sticking cursed items and bound monsters in the ground.”

“If you’re trying to scare me,” I commented, “I don’t feel fear in the same way, anymore.”

“Ahh.  That’s no fun,” she said.  “So if I just happened to tell you that one of the people upstairs has a bomb glued to them, that wouldn’t affect you at all?”

I glanced upstairs.

“Hard to picture something like that,” I said.

She made a sound, not quite vocal enough to be a chuckle.  “I had my bushwhacker to her throat, Andy rigged the bomb.  Level on the top.  Tube with water in it, big fat bubble?  Fluid is conductive, right?  If the bubble moves to intersect one of the wires, the current can’t conduct, the bomb blows, and you get diabolist all over the walls and floor.”

“Telling the enemy how to defuse your bomb?”

“Not quite.  I saw Andy build it, or I was in the same room watching TV while he built it, same thing, but I couldn’t defuse it if you gave me twenty tries.  I’m just saying.  Last I saw, other two were cornered, afraid to even get close.  Rune of exile on the thing to keep it from being tampered with by other spirits, keep the boom muted.  She’s shaking, trying not to shake too much, or she’ll go out with a bang.  You can’t feel fear, or you don’t feel it the same way.  How do you feel, hearing that?”

“Not good,” I admitted.  “Angry.”

She sounded like she was enjoying herself as she spoke, “How would you feel if I told you that while we were putting the bomb on her, I watched your other friends, safe inside their circle?  Every time they moved, I gave her a little tap.  Right at the collarbone.  She bled.  She screamed lots.  If it was wood and not bone, I’d have left notches.  Maybe I still did.”

“If you’re trying to get me angry,” I said, my voice low, “That works.”

I heard her chuckle.  Or cackle.  One or both of the two.

I moved back to the window behind her.

She had the cabinet by the back door open.  There were brooms and mops inside.

She spoke while she worked.  “They’re all bleeding, one’s probably dead, by the way, and the other one can’t move with the bomb strapped to her.  Forty minutes to half an hour, and none of that’s going to be different.  The boggarts and shit come crawling in through the woodwork and they’re going to do horrible things to those people, to the Thorburns you identify with, to all the others.”

She can lie, I told myself.  The self-assurance wasn’t very effective.

I watched, unbeknownst to her, while she propped two mops up against the window.  She hooked an old towel from the closet over them, so it covered the shattered mini-window.

“You there?” she asked.

I had to relocate to answer from the kitchen at the end of the hall, so my nearby voice wouldn’t tip her off that I had a little window.  “I’m here.”

“Are you really that much of a monster already?  You don’t give a damn?”

“Believe me,” I said, “I look forward to showing you just how much of a damn I give.”

She offered me that cackle-chuckle again.

When I returned to the spot nearest her, I saw that she’d moved on from the window.  Stopping the draft?

No.

She was working to set up the same thing with the window to the right, propping up brooms, not using a towel this time, but coats that had been hung up by the door.  Alexis’ was one.  She drew the billowing, shifting curtains over the coats.

She hit the light switches a few times.  The hall light and kitchen lights alternated on and off until both were off.

I was shunted.  Back to the puddle, still growing as the sink overflowed.

The end of the hallway was dark.  In the gloom, the reflections might as well have been covered by fabric.  I didn’t have a view of a surface I could stand on.

Damn it.

“Don’t mind me,” she said.  “I always liked the dark more than the light.”

“Somehow,” I replied, my eyes on the ground I stood on and the kitchen that was reflected beyond it.  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“S.O.P. against any Others who are reliant on a certain environment.  You deny them their environment of choice.  In your case…”

She trailed off.

Looking down, I could see the kitchen ceiling below me.  Water flowed, and the surface rippled as the water made waves.

A small, dark object sailed high, flying from the patch of darkness, diagonally across the kitchen, and into the living room.

I saw smoke.

My first thought was what Andy had mentioned about an incendiary grenade.  Setting the house on fire.

My second thought that even Eva wasn’t that heartless.  She cared about her brother, and he was on the second floor.

It was only smoke.

With the kitchen light off, the light that currently reached the reflective surface of the water was the little light that came in from the living room, the overhead light in the center of the ceiling, and the slices of light that escaped around the edges of the plywood that had been boarded up over windows.

The smoke obscured that light.  A lot of it was low to the ground, maybe only waist height, if I was judging it right, but that was still high enough to block a lot of the light from the water.

I backed away before I could get shunted again.

I heard footsteps splash, and couldn’t do anything about it.

“You think you have a clever answer?  The water?” she taunted me.  “It doesn’t make a difference, Thorburn Bogeyman.  The sun is setting, and all I need to do is cut the power, and you’re outta here!”

God damn, she was enjoying herself.

Why was it that only the really crazy types enjoyed themselves in situations like this?

I didn’t take the bait.  I remained silent.

“Hello?” she asked.

I didn’t respond.

“Huh,” she said.

A second later, she was running.

It caught me off guard, and my reaction was slow.

She passed me, easily.

She leaped over the puddle of olive oil, now in the process of being diluted by water, ironically impassible to me, water mixing with oil to create a mess of small reflections instead of one big one.

She was faster than me.  Or maybe she was the same speed, with the benefit of having the head start and experience.

I, however, had the opportunity to take shortcuts.

I went up.

Second floor.

Eva was cresting the top of the stairs, cradling the fire extinguisher against her body.

Hyena in hand, I cut.  She, in the same moment, saw me and leaped.

The blade grazed her boot.  Nothing more.

She landed on her side, squeezing the trigger on the fire extinguisher, carpeting the water at the top of the stairs, and many of the stairs besides.

I was forced downstairs.

I wasn’t sure why it was downstairs, when the closest position would have been just behind where she’d landed.  I didn’t have time to think about it.

I headed upstairs, putting myself in the bathroom.

Peter was inside, sitting on the counter by the sink, feet on the lid of the toilet.  One of his hands was pressed into his armpit.  The shower was on, the shower head removed, and the hose leading to the shower head dangling over the edge of the tub, gushing water onto the floor outside the tub.

“Peter.”

He jumped.  “Geez!”

“You’re hurt.”

“Ah, yep.  Guy out there got my hand.  Pretty sure I have a broken finger.”

“Guy and the girl are both out there,” I said.

“Hm.”

“She’s mucking up the water.”

“They blocked the underside of the door, too, not much water getting out,” he said.  “This was as far as I could get without getting beaten up or zapped.”

“It was good,” I said.  “Only a step in the right direction, but nice work.”

“Uh huh,” he said.  “Keep talking like that, and I’ll start thinking you’re not really some long-lost Thorburn cousin.”

“Hold that thought,” I said, absently.

I ducked back outside. The hallway was obscured, but the water had leaked across the hallway and into the room opposite the bathroom.  Rose’s.

I waited in there, listening without the noise of the shower or the distraction of Peter.

“Should have grabbed something from the kitchen cupboards,” Eva said.  “Sprinkle it here and there.”

“Wouldn’t go that far,” Andy replied.  “There’s a simpler option.  Linen cupboard.”

“Yeah!”

“I already checked these cupboards.  You could hunt around upstairs.”

“Fuck.  Don’t want to do chores when I might miss the fun stuff.  We could strip the bed.”

“Bedrooms are a little flooded.  Upstairs is dry and safe.  I like keeping things simple.”

“Right.”

“I’ll stay here, keep an eye on the bathroom, staircases, and watch for the practitioners.”

“You can’t just blow the bathroom door away?”

“I used all the bombs on the exterior windows and doors.”

“Shit… and on the kid upstairs?  Before they locked themselves up again?”

“…Yeah.  Look, Eva, stop stalling.  Go get the sheets.  It’ll take a minute, two minutes tops.  Almost less time than you’ve spent complaining just now.”

“Ugh.”

“I’ve never known you to prefer waiting to doing something.”

“Uh huh.”

“Am I wrong?”

“I’m supposed to be calling the shots,” she said.  “You do it off-the-job, I do it on-the-job.”

“Then call the shots, Eva,” Andy said, sounding exasperated.

“You stay put, I’m getting some stuff to throw on the ground and block the reflection.”

“Sure, Eva,” he said.  “If you say so.”

“And,” she said, sounding a little more excited, “do you think you can kill the power?”

“The breaker box is probably in the basement.  With the rest of the Thorburns and the tear gas.”

“Fuck!  And they rigged the stairs, covering it with oil.  I’ll break a leg going down there.”

There was a note of interest in his voice, “Did they?  It’s fine.  Look, Eva, you want to hurt them for whatever reason?  Just make them stay put.  They’ll hurt more than anything you can do.  Right now?  They’re staying put.  We keep the Bloody Marv out of the way for thirty more minutes, and we’re free and clear.”

“Kill the power, and the Thorburn Bogeyman won’t be able to protect them when it gets dark.  Helps us now, and helps us later.  It’s part of the plan.”

“Hm.”

“No?  Yes?”

“I’ll figure something out.  Go.  Sheets.  Please.”

“Going!  Turn out the lights you don’t need!”

I heard her footsteps and the light splashes of her footfalls.  The water was probably less than an inch deep, it wasn’t much.

The light in the hallway flicked off, and the light that reached under the door disappeared.  I still had light from the bedroom window.

Before I could raise my eyes, I saw a movement.

Tiny.

“Evan,” I said.

“Blake!  I couldn’t get to Peter and I couldn’t go outside, so I came here.  You said to wait here, before.”

By the vanity mirror atop the dresser.  Right.  I hadn’t even thought about that.

Andy was possibly shutting off the power.  Eva was getting sheets to cover the hallway.

“Are you ready to kick some ass?” I asked.

“Always.”

I thought for a second.

“You can open doors.  Can you… open a way for me?”

“Huh?”

“There’s crud from the fire extinguisher in the water.  Can you get rid of it?”

He leaned over the dresser, tilting his head as he looked at the water.

“In the hallway?” I asked.

“Oh.  I can try!”

“Good man.  Hold tight.”

Had to stall Andy and Eva.

Andy first.

He worried me more than Eva did, frankly.

How to stop him from futzing with the power?

I closed my eyes for a second, visualizing the house.

Was there a chance?

I headed downstairs, dropping straight down.

The first floor was pretty flooded.  Water reached into the hallway and living room, while Eva’s doormat barricade had, somewhat ironically, helped me.  By blocking the water, she’d freed it to take the path of least resistance.

And the best path of least resistance was down.

I headed down.

The basement was flooding.  Trickles of water streamed down the walls and pooled on the floor, much of it too dusty to see.

The basement windows were small enough that even Roxanne would find them a squeeze.  The lightbulbs were old and orange.  The water made for a reflective surface, and there was light.

The gathered Thorburns were still coughing, making sounds of pain.

Tear gas, apparently, wasn’t something you bounced back from in a matter of five or ten minutes.

“Hit the breaker switches,” I said.  “Then turn everything back on in… five minutes.”

“Who?  The guy from the mirror?  Where are you?”

“Now,” I said.

I didn’t wait for a response.  My gut told me that if I tried to convince them, they’d argue.

With nobody to argue against, they’d only be able to obey.  Hopefully.

I headed back upstairs.  I moved to the bathroom.

“You locked in?”

“Fuck me!” Peter exclaimed.

“Not if I can help it,” I said.

“I’m- no.  Yes?  I locked myself in.”

“Thirty seconds, open the door, head into the hallway.”

He was silent.

I had to trust my knowledge of who he was.  Problem was, Peter was both an opportunist and a coward.  Either way, he’d convince himself it would all work out in the end, whether he was avoiding a reality or taking a risk.  I wasn’t sure which of the two ideas would win out.

“You should get a chance to beat that guy’s face in,” I told the Opportunist.

The lights went off. I was shunted out the door, back downstairs.

Again.  The closest location should have been Evan, across the hall.  Annoying.

I headed back to Evan.  “Door.”

He hopped onto the doorknob.  It was faux crystal, probably made of plastic, like an oversized diamond with rounded edges.  He gripped it with his talons and let his body weight turn it.  He fell, catching himself with a flutter of his wings.

I reached through the puddle, and gave the bottom of the door a push.  Light streamed into the bedroom from the hallway.

Evan wheeled around, then flew down the length of the hallway, feathered body just tracing the water.  The grit on top of the water parted like grease in a dramatized soap commercial.

I followed after him, footsteps splashing, as a glowing road, lit by the purples and oranges that streamed through the window, opened before me.

Andy was kneeling in the water, holding a twisted length of metal in pliers, a coarse glove on the hand with the tool.  He was looking up at the light, confused.

No reason to cut the power when it was already cut.

It also served as a distraction, putting him off balance.

He turned his head as Evan passed by.

I bent down, reaching through the path that was now open to me.

I wrapped my arms around Andy’s shoulders and throat, pulling him down.

The Hyena, still in my hand, always in my hand at this point, in these circumstances, touched his neck.

“E-!” he started.

“Shut!” I spat the word in his ear.  Not even a full ‘shut up’.

I didn’t have long.  My footing was destroyed.  I could only cling to him, and hope to bide time until-

Peter approached, holding the ceramic top of the toilet under one arm.  His right hand was messy with blood, especially around the fingertip.

At the last second, he swapped it to a two-handed grip, holding it at the middle.  A chunk of old, age-stained ceramic that had to weigh twenty pounds.

“Jesus, Peter,” I started.  “Don’t-”

I was relocated to the end of the hallway.  The disruption to the water’s surface too much for me to stay.

From the end of the hallway, by where Evan had perched on the windowsill, I saw Peter bring the end of the lid down on Andy’s head, Andy’s hands going up to stop it, but lacking the strength of leverage to accomplish anything.

I could hear it.  The sound of the impact.

“You’re really making me doubt your family credentials, cousin,” he murmured, slumping against a wall for leverage as he got to his feet, not out of any weakness or disability, but because he didn’t have a hand free, and it was easier than letting go of the toilet top.

I couldn’t appeal to his goodness, to mercy.

“Part of the strategy,” I told him.  “We need them alive.”

“He’s alive.  I might have broken his jaw and cheekbone, but he’s alive,” Peter said, straightening.  “Lesson numero uno for Thorburns.  Go for the jugular.  They’re trying to kill us.”

Eva appeared at the end of the hall.

I’d seen her angry, after Roxanne had tried to hurt her brother and failed.

She only stared, chin at an odd angle, a little too high, her head tilted slightly, hands behind her back.  No sheets, that I could tell.  The light from the window behind Evan didn’t quite reach her, so she was lit by the light above the stairwell, behind her.  Silhouetted.  Cold air blew in through the broken window, making her hair stir.

“Great,” Peter said.

Her voice was quiet.  “Is he dead?”

“He could be,” Peter answered.  “You take one step, I aim for his throat with the next swing.”

“Doesn’t work that way,” she said, shaking her head a little.  “He’s the one who keeps the mad dog, me, on a leash.  Taking him out of the picture is a pretty fucking stupid thing to do.  He’s the one who listens to reason, not me.”

“You refer to yourself as a mad dog?” Peter asked.  “Man, I thought my family had the lion’s share of ‘fucked up’.”

“You want to see ‘fucked up’?” she asked.  She raised her hand.

Grenade.

“Tear gas?” Peter asked.

“No.  Incendiary grenade, with the pin out.  My hand on the lever is the only thing keeping it from going off.  This house is largely made of wood.  Do the math.”

I could see Peter tense.

“If I don’t think I can carry him out,” she said, “I’ll cremate him.”

“Along with the house and its occupants?”

She didn’t respond, her eyes on Andy.

Without warning, she approached, taking long strides.

I could see Peter start to raise the lid, ready to take Andy out of action.

This time, the coward won out.  He backed away.

I moved to meet her.

She kicked the water, the resulting spray disrupted the reflection.

It bought her two paces.

Evan, though, flew past her.  The momentum of his passing, eerily out of sync with his tiny amount of actual mass, forced her to stop moving forward and put one foot out to the side to maintain her balance.

It was all the time I needed.  I twisted around, then bent, reaching through the reflection.

I seized one foot, arresting her forward movement.

She fell onto her side, then lifted her leg away from the ground.  My arm was extended, until the whole arm was sticking out of the pool of water.

I didn’t see it coming until it was too late.  She levered herself around, leg still high, and used her other leg to sweep my arm, water spraying as it skidded in the water.  A full-force kick right at my elbow.

Wood splintered and snapped.  Bone, if I had any, broke.

I barely felt the pain.  It was secondary.

I was relocated downstairs.  It cost me precious seconds, as I got my bearings again.  My arm sat at a skewed angle, and the wound crawled.  It was as if the branches were fingers, and they were scrabbling for purchase, blindly groping.

I had to put the Hyena down for a moment while I twisted my arm around into the right position.  The fingers wrapped around the wound, meshing together and mingling into a great ugly, horned knot of wood.  Feathers and bits of bone stood out from one portion as if a bird had been crushed and killed as the wood had come together.  I flexed my hand.

Back up to the hallway.

The witch hunter had drawn her machete from some sheath inside her jacket or pants or some other hidden place, and was advancing on Peter, weapon held high.

Evan flew past, trying to put her off balance.  She moved the blade but missed him.

“Evan, back off!” I ordered.  “Peter-”

Peter raised the piece of ceramic as a sort of shield, moving it right as he watched the weapon.

She punched him, hitting him from the opposite direction.

She punched him with the grenade.  Hand still gripping the grenade and the lever, she hit him full-force in the face with the chunk of metal.

The second hit came from the opposite direction, a backhand.  Peter lost his grip on the lid, balance clearly gone.  It broke as it hit the ground.

She drove a knee into his middle, knocking him over.

I bent down, catching her foot with one of my own, and pulled them out from under her.  Stupid, to knock her over when she held the grenade, but what other option was there?

We didn’t all go up in flame, which was nice.

I even managed to grab the machete, pushing it away.  It practically hydroplaned on the thin layer of water that covered the hallway.

All three of us brought down, fighting at its ugliest, in a heap, scrabbling, fighting dirty.

I had to step away, waiting for the water to settle.

Peter wasn’t putting up much of a fight, but I might have said he’d lost the fight from the second he took that first punch unprepared.

Getting on top of him, she hit him over and over again.  Right, left, right, right, right, left.  Whichever fist and direction would hit better in the moment.

Evan hovered around her, out of reach.

He can do his thing twice.  But every time he goes for a third try, they get him.  It had happened with Ur, during the fights with Conquest, with Duncan…

Seeing the opportunity to act again, I reached through the water.  My arms encircled Eva’s head and shoulders in a full Nelson, pulling her backward and off Peter.

“I’m letting go of the grenade in five, four, three-”

I switched my grip, seizing the hand that had the grenade.  I was losing my grip on reality, sinking back into the mirror realm.  As she twisted her wrist around, preventing me from getting her, I found my hand on only metal.

“Heh,” she said.

She let go, then rolled away, twisting out of my grip.

If I’d been one to experience true fear, that might have been the moment I’d lost it.

Instead, I found myself shunted, no place to go but the nearest reflection, a live incendiary grenade in one hand and a body made largely of wood and feathers.

I didn’t let myself experience paralyzing fear or panic.  I hurled the grenade into the great expanse of darkness between patches of light.  It found a patch of light far away from Hillsglade House, instead, skipping across darkness much as I might have.

I headed back upstairs.

I’d expected to see her taking Peter to pieces.  Instead, she was kneeling by her brother.  Peter was limp on the ground.

“I hear you,” she said, without looking my way.

“Hi Eva.”

“Survived?  Damn.”

“Survived.”

The fury had gone quiet again.

What was going through her head?

“There goes my trump card,” she said.  “Other trump card didn’t do much.”

“Other?”

She held up the green orb as her answer.

“Can I ask?” I asked.

Her voice was low, almost menacing.  “You can ask, I’m not saying.  I’m going to give it back to the owner on my way to the hospital.  I’m proposing an exchange of prisoners.  I walk out with my brother, you look after your… numerous wounded.”

I didn’t answer.

“Right,” she said.  “Taking that as a yes.”

“Eva,” I told her.  “The claymore or whatever by the back door, the bombs on the windows, the bomb on the front door… double edged sword right now.”

“Seems like one edge,” she replied.

“If you try to leave,” I told her, “I’ll throw something at those bombs.  At the door, the claymore, whichever.  I’ll take out you and your brother.”

“Not smart,” she said.

“Doing what I have to,” I replied.

“Your beaten up buddy there-”

“Isn’t a buddy.  But if you go after him, I’ll fight you.  We can continue to lock horns until the sun goes down.”

“Ahhh.  That’s your plan.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t expect me to help.”

“I expect you to try to survive the night,” I said.  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what’s coming is pretty damn indiscriminate, isn’t it?”

“Nah,” she said.  She smiled at me.  “You’re pretty boned.”

I stared at her, long and hard.

I am a Thorburn, in one way or another.  I know deceit when I see it.

This wasn’t the first lie she’d told me.

“Evan,” I said.  “Go upstairs.  Unlock and open the door.  Talk to the others.  So long as Andy’s hurt, Eva’s mostly a non-threat.  She won’t leave him so long as I could go after him.”

She scowled at me.

“There’s no bomb on any of them.  See how they’re doing.  We have only a few minutes to prepare for sundown.”

Histories (Arc 11)

She watched as her Pa paced.

Then Mam came out of the side room.  Pa fidgeted, following Mam to the countertop.  Pa was as thin as Mam was fat.  He was a skeleton covered in cracked brown leather, beard shorn short, hair tied back into a long ponytail.  His head only came up to Mam’s shoulder.

Mam, by contrast, was the size of a bear, fat as she was tall, with clusters of nobby bits and warty bits nearly hidden in the folds of her neck and shoulders.  She was pale, her eyes heavily lidded, making her look half asleep, and her hair was greasy.  Her mouth sat open and askew almost all the time, lip hanging low enough to reveal the wide-spaced teeth.  The only time mam’s mouth closed was when she was thinking, and she sucked on her bottom lip.  Her more thinky expression.

She thought even now, busying herself by pushing things around the counter without actually cleaning or using any of it.

“No need to preserve.  Cupboards are full.  We eat tonight,” Mam finally said.  She pushed her hands through piles of dirty dishes, grabbing a knife with bits still caked on it, a fork.  These she set to one side.

Pa smiled.  His face creased everywhere with the expression, every single one of his bad teeth showing.  “Pie?”

“Sausage pie,” Mam conceded.

“Good,” Pa said, smiling.  “Good.”

“If you want ‘good’ you go chop some wood,” Mam said.

“There’s wood already,” he said.

“Chop it!  I’m not stopping cooking halfway to get your lazy ass out of that chair of yours and into the woods to chop.  Chop now!”  Mam’s voice got more shrill as she talked.

Pa grimaced, but he headed outdoors.  Probably to get out of the house more than out of any desire to help.

“Midge!” Mam said.

Midge cowered a little under her mother’s eye, retreating under the table.

Mam strode forward, pushing the table against the wall with one sweep of her fist, exposing Midge.  She grabbed the girl’s ear and hair in one meaty fist, and practically lifted her.

Midge kicked her legs, squealing.  A few kicks hit her mother.  She even raked at her mother with longer, ragged toenails.  The dress her mother wore suffered for it, but her mother’s skin was too thick.

“I said to watch yer little brothers!”  Her mother hollered, voice low.

Midge continued to squeal, high, loud, prolonged sounds.  Her mother gave her a firm shake, hard enough that some bit of Midge might have broken if she was any closer to the wall or the table, then let go.

Midge found her feet right away, backing up.  She looked toward the door and pointed.

“Mal and Posie are moving the car.  Don’t act helpless, stupid child.  You.  Do.  Your.  Job!”

That last word was a screech as bad as any of them.

Midge scampered away as fast as she could.

The side room.

The babies were sitting up, side by side in the crib.  Born the fall before last, they were big boned, as Ma said.  Skinny, but big boned.  Their skulls were thick enough that their brows hung heavy over their eyes, making them look perpetually angry.  Jory had his mouth open, drooling, while Biff had his mouth closed, fluid streaming out of one nostril.

“It’s a little girl,” a voice whispered.

“Shh.”

“Oh god.  What’s wrong with them?”

“Shh!”

Midge knelt by the crib, staring at her brothers.  Biff had been suckling on a bone earlier, but it now sat on the mat at the bottom of the crib.

“They dirty?” Mam screeched from the other room.

The fluids from the bone mingled with stains of piss and shit that dated back to when Midge had been that size.  The smell was bad enough she couldn’t tell, and she wasn’t about to stick her hand in there.

She looked off to one side, and saw her old doll collecting cobwebs.

She looked away.  Every time she was caught with her doll, Mam made her look after the real babies instead.

“I asked if they’re dirty!”

Midge looked at her Mam, standing in the doorway, and shook her head.

Her mam disappeared back into the kitchen.

Midge snatched up the bone.  Her brothers had apparently been fed recently, and their movements were so sluggish she had her hand out before they even looked at her hand.

She prodded Biff with the bone until Biff tipped over.  His head cracked against the wooden slats of the crib, his neck finding a funny angle.

He continued chewing on his bottom lip, staring absently in her general direction.

So boring.

“Hey, little girl,” a voice sounded.

Midge turned to look.

Three strangers.  Two women, one plump and one thin, and a man.  They were dressed colorfully, their clothing weirdly sharp in how fine all the edges were.  Collars around their necks were chained to the metal frame of Pa’s bed.

“Hey,” the man said.  He smiled.

Midge didn’t trust smiles.  Smiling was what you did when you hurt people, or sometimes when Pa got his food or Mam got her Pa.  A rare thing.  For Midge, it mostly meant being hurt.

“My name’s Shawn,” in the kind of accent that Jory called ‘posh’.

She stared at him.  He kept smiling, but all she saw in his eyes was the fear.

“What’s going on?” the thinner girl mewled.  Her accent just as posh.

“Shhh,” the heavier girl said, hugging the girl, chain at her neck clinking.  “Let Shawn talk.”

“What’s your name?” Shawn asked.

Midge shook her head.

“She doesn’t talk?”

“The woman called her Midge?”

“Midge.  That’s… a nice name,” Shawn said, smiling.

Midge shrugged.

“How old are you, Midge?”

Midge scowled.  Mal had tried to show her.  Mal was clever.  Her big brother was the one who fixed the cars and sold the scrap.  The one of them clever enough to pass in town without drawing too many stares.

She held up a hand.  All fingers out.

“You’re older than that,” Shawn said, smiling.  His eyes looked uneasy.

She shook her head, thrusting out her hand.

“Seriously?  Five?”

“Shawn, focus.”

“Midge, I…”

Shawn trailed off as Midge raised the bone, yellow with scraps of gray meat hanging off it.  She extended it toward Shawn.

“Um,” he said, “No thanks.”

She didn’t stop or slow down.  When she was right next to him, she jabbed, striking him in the corner of the eye.

“Ow!  Fuck!  What the fuck!?  What’s wrong with you?”

Midge stared at him.  The anger was more familiar, comfortable.

“Shh, Shawn!” the heavier girl said.

He didn’t shout, keeping his voice low enough that Mam wouldn’t hear, but there was anger in his voice.  “That hurt.  What the fuck?  This fucked up place and this fucked up family!”

“Shawn, suck it up,” she said.  “Midge?  Listen, Midge, do you know where the thin man keeps the keys to these collars?”

Midge shook her head.

“You don’t know?  Do you think you can find out?”

Midge shook her head.  She headed to the cabinet, and fished through until she found a collar that looked good enough.  Mal had showed her this too.  He was good at putting stuff together.  Which was good, because he was as scrawny as Pa, but not nearly as strong.

Midge grabbed a knife, too.

She pushed the ends of the collar together as she approached the others.

Then she showed them what Mal had put together.  Slide the knife into the slit…

The collar popped open.

“Brilliant,” Shawn said, his voice low, expression grim.  As Mam made a noise in the kitchen, Shawn shot one fearful look her way.  “Except that doesn’t work while we’re wearing them.”

“Oh god,” the thinner girl said.

“What?” Shawn asked.

“Are you terminally stupid?” the girl asked.

“What?”

But the girl only shook her head.

Midge walked across the room, collecting her doll.  When she returned to the trio, she held the collar at neck level around the doll’s throat.  The cloth doll’s head smiled at the three, the collar as wide around as the doll was tall, the collar much too large.  Midge had to shuffle things around to hold the doll under one arm, hold the collar in place, and get a grip on the doll’s head with a knife still loosely gripped in the same hand.

She tore head from body.

“Nooo,” the thin girl said, making it a long, drawn out sound.

“Oh god, oh god,” Shawn muttered.

The collar only came off if the head came off first.

Only the plump one managed to stay quiet, though Midge could see tears in the girl’s eyes.

Fear and despair were familiar too.  This was more comfortable than when they’d been smiling at her.

“Midge, why-” the girl’s voice choked, as if she couldn’t get the words out.  “Why did you do that to your doll, honey?”

Midge looked down at the destroyed doll.

“It’s a nice toy,” the girl said.  “Do you want me to fix it?”

Midge hesitated, reluctant.  She glanced back at the kitchen, but Mam was busy.

She nodded.

“Here,” the girl said.  “Come here.  I’ll put it back together.”

Midge approached.

The girl reached out for the head, and Midge extended her hands, the doll in two distinct pieces.

The girl didn’t take the doll.  She snatched the knife from Midge’s hand, and with her other hand, she grabbed Midge by the back of the neck, pulling her closer.

Midge stumbled forward a few steps, and felt the knife press against her chest, over her heart.

“Andrea!” the thin girl gasped.

“Sorry,” the heavier girl murmured.  Her voice cracked.  “We really need a hostage.  There has to be some way to get out of here.  If they break the chains-”

Midge could smell the girl.  Traces of sweat, of blood, but sweeter smells too, like fruit, in the girl’s hair.

Mam got the first pick of every meal.  She had the babies to feed.  By the time everyone else had eaten, there wasn’t much for Midge.

Her stomach rumbled.

She ignored the knife, leaning in close, and bit into Andrea’s collarbone.

The knife penetrated her chest.  She barely felt the pain, in the midst of the exultation.  The joy of food.  Of warm food.  Meat.

Her hands gripped the girl’s upper arms, and squeezed.  She felt the individual parts snap and break.  With each struggle, every jerk or shove, she didn’t lose her grip, be it tooth or finger, but reaffirmed it.  Her jaws locked, like the junkyard dogs in Mal’s scrap heap, or the weasels that scurried in the woods.

The boy on the one side and the girl on the other grabbed her, hit her, screamed in mutual stark terror, but they didn’t dislodge her.

It took Mam to dislodge her, hauling her away from the food with enough force that the bit of bone she was gripping with her teeth broke.  The screams of the three renewed.

“I told him,” Mam spat the words, red in the face, every few words punctuated by a shake that made Midge’s brain go all woozy.  “I told your Pa, you’re wrong somehow.  Now you’ve gone and ruined our dinner.  How do you make sausage when the blood’s all over the danged bedroom floor?”

Midge was frozen in fear.

“He’ll listen now,” Mam said.  “Treat you like Mal’s bitches, we will.  Lock you away.”

Midge didn’t, couldn’t resist as her mother hauled her outside.

Her Pa couldn’t resist either.

“Ah, my ‘skeeter,” her father said, almost mournfully, as he saw the pair approach.  “What have you done this time?”

Midge didn’t know what to say or do.

It was two minutes before she was shoved into the storehouse.  The shack.  The door was shut and barred.

Put away with all the other broken and discarded things.  Many were things taken from people who took a few too many wrong turns, like Shawn and Andrea and the other girl.

There were no windows.  It was okay.  She was good at seeing in the dark.

She pulled the knife out of her chest, and tossed it aside, sitting down in the corner with a hand over the wound, waiting.

The dullness of it was the second worst part.

She counted things, like Mal had told her, sticking to the things that could be counted with fingers and toes.  She moved piles aside.  She told herself stories in her head, spinning variations of stories her Mam had told her when she was smaller and they hadn’t yet known she was odd.  Mostly mute and big for her age.

But the hunger was the worst part of all.

She caught the bugs and scarfed them down before they could crawl through her fingers.  She chewed on an old leather boot until it was soft and tore the soft bits and ate them.

There were rats, too.  Best of all.

She learned where to hunt them, crawling further back into the shack, moving things so they’d move in certain directions or get cornered, or have things fall on them.

She crawled further back and further back still.

Until she found her way out.

The grass was grayer and the trees didn’t have leaves.  The sky was black, and a heavy mist hung over everything.

It was cold, but the cold didn’t bother her.

Bugs bit her, but she was used to that.

The ground broke away underfoot, like ice over ice water, except it was only sludge beneath, but she was strong, and she could keep moving forward until it was solid again.

She found the quiet little town, the place where it was almost easier to live outdoors than to risk going inside.  Bad things lurked here.  Some big, some smart.

She settled in, living on the fringes at first.

Not much different than life had been before.  It wasn’t much of a journey from there to here.  Here, she ate rats too.

And when people came along, more than one, she hid.

When a person, just one, came along, she followed.  She waited until they were asleep, she snuck up on them, and she broke them.  She ate her fill each and every time.

The first time she saw a Pa and a Mam was the first time she went after people when there were more than one.  She ate her fill then, too.

Her days were punctuated by hunting, scavenging, waiting, sleeping, and eating.

She stopped caring if they were asleep.  She stopped caring if they were alone, if there were three, or if there were eight.  They ran when they saw her anyway.

The door to the shack opened.

Her instincts were honed.  Even in the bewilderment of being home again, she didn’t waste a heartbeat.

Stranger?  Attack.

She lunged, catching the man by the head in both hands.  Easy, when his head was only as high as her shoulders were.

She took off his head like she’d taken her doll’s.

She hurled it at the next man, and knocked him off his feet.

Grabbing the headless body with both hands, she hurled it at the third man.

She didn’t get much farther than that.  There were others, and they were guarded by dogs.  The dogs spoke like men spoke, and the men spoke like the priest Mal had taken her to meet when she had first learned to walk, their voices a drone and a song and even posher than posh.  Proper, careful, old words.

She saw her Pa.  He was standing in a circle that had been drawn on the ground, head bowed.  He had more scars, and more gray hair, and his lips were thinner.  He was old.  He wore only overalls, no shirt, and held a tree saw in each hand.  There was blood on the blades.

Mam’s body was on the ground not far from him, headless, thrown into a pile with all the others.  Even Biff and Jory, who were almost halfway to being adults.

Stopped with words and dogs and circles.

But their words couldn’t stop her, and it was funny that the men seemed to think they should.  She killed two more before they thought to actually attack her.

She was strong.  She didn’t even slow down as they stuck one spear through her stomach or a sword through her arm.  She shoved one into the side of the house with enough strength to put a hole in the wall and a lot of holes in the man, from bits of house.

But, in the end, they got her.  She kneeled as the burdens their words put on her shoulder grew to be too much.  She watched through glaring eyes as they painted a circle around her.

“You’ll say the words,” one of the strangers told her.

She didn’t disagree.  What did it matter?  She said the words.  She agreed to the deal, whatever it was.

“You’ll come when you’re called,” the stranger said, his voice tight.  Upset about the people he’d lost.  “Midge, I hereby banish you.  Hear my words…”

“Midge?”  her father rasped the words.  “My ‘skeeter.”

She didn’t respond.  She only took a moment to shut her eyes and feel the cool air on her skin, to smell a place that was alive, not forever dying.  Before she opened her eyes again, she was banished.  Back to the place at the rear of the shack, with people to hunt and food to eat.

■

She was stirred from a nap by someone speaking her name.

“Geez,” a voice.  “You go a while without thinking about just how big she was, but then you see her, and… she’s big.”

Midge looked around.  Her breath fogged in the air.

A house on a hill, woods at the edges.  A town sprawled beneath.

She wriggled her toes, squeezing snow between each toe.

“I’m nervous about this,” someone said.  “Last time…”

“The binding was imperfect,” another someone said.  “We need strong, if we’re going to make it.  Midge is strong.”

Midge turned to look.  The last voice… a boy in a mirror.

His face crawled with branches, his hair was so grimy it didn’t move when his head did.  When he blinked, six different beady eyes that peered between branches also blinked, slightly out of time.

She’d hunted his type too, more than once.  Not a hunt that ended in food, but satisfying all the same.  Made her think.

“She can’t come in the house,” a girl said.

“No.”

“She’ll freeze out here.”

“I don’t think she will.”

“Can we give her a blanket, or anything like that?”

“We need to focus on summoning more help, and I really don’t want to leave Andy alone.  Even with his injuries.”

“I’m getting her something anyway,” the girl said.

“We agree on that,” A taller woman said, arms folded.  She glared at the mirror.  “If he dies, it’s on you.”

“I know.  But Alexis is helping him.”

Midge watched the discussion continue.

The girl emerged from the house, two fur pelts in her arms.

No, not pelts.  Coats.

“I know these probably don’t fit,” the girl said, laying the coats down on the snow, before backing up.  “But I thought maybe they’d help?”

Midge stepped close, and smiled at seeing the girl stumble back three steps in quick succession, running.

She liked it when they ran.

But she’d been called like this before, and this calling was proper.  She would obey until they made a mistake.

She bent down, collecting the coats.  Too small.  They wouldn’t fit her if she was half the size.

Still, she wasn’t stupid.

She did up the buttons, putting the buttons of one coat in the holes of the other.  She lifted the resulting garment up to her shoulders, and worked her arms into the sleeves, tearing them at the seams until her arms were through.

“That works.  Midge?  Stand guard,” the girl said, “You have free reign to kill and maim anything that isn’t human, unless they’re someone you see standing here before you, or they say the password, ‘birds and trees’.”

Midge nodded her agreement.

“Good.  Great,” the girl said, turning back to the group.  “There’s something reassuring in thinking that we can’t summon anything much worse.”

“I’m not so sure,” the boy in the mirror said.  “We’ve had a lot of non-answers, a lot of Bogeymen were very recently summoned and put down by witch hunters, going back to the Abyss.  I almost suspect that a few locals have summoned some things to deny us the chance to.  None of the ghosts in Grandmother’s records are responding, and the goblins are Maggie’s schtick.  Doesn’t leave a lot of options.  We’re running low on convenient allies and especially low on time.  That leaves us with the inconvenient ones.”

“What’s more inconvenient than Midge?”

Midge didn’t hear the remainder of the conversation.  She stared off into the distance, at this dark, beautiful place, and she saw the sunset, dark red, as the sun was a sliver at the horizon.

She smiled.

■

A spark of flame, sweet grass burned.

A voice sang, undulating, in time with a drum.

Herbs were thrown onto the fire.

Other substances were thrown into the fire.

A dozen minds within the house exploded with new sensory information, visions, hallucinations, thinking further, even as those thoughts meandered.  The typical limits and defenses crumbled.  The minds became truly innocent.

The singing rose in intensity.

The fire blazed.

The spirits exulted, dancing among one another, into one another.

They stuck, they bound to one another.

More grass joined the fire.  The smoke changed from a clean white to black.

The spirits tore apart then rejoined, one spirit leaving a part of itself behind as it separated itself from the mass, then tried to find a better position, suiting its own need for worship and attention, for power, for placement in the grand harmony of how it all was put together.

The singing grew more intense, until each sound sounded like it caused pain to utter.  There was heartbreak in there, loss and pain.  Anger, all the wilder and more dramatic for the herbs in the smoke.

The tears in eyes wasn’t from the smoke alone.

The spirits collected and gathered, drawing in the emotion, feeding on it, altering themselves.

They congealed.

A greater spirit, the least of gods, the line was thin between the two.

They wore the form of a bird.

They opened their mouth to make their terrible piercing noise, a croak.  Or a guttural cry.  It depended on the listener.

It opened its mouth, to croak, to cry.

It ruffled its feathers.

There was only the crackle of burning grass, now.  No singing.

The singer’s voice was hoarse as he spoke in Algonquin, “Cause them heartbreak.  Do it until they have suffered what we have three times over.”

The spirit-bird cried out its response.

It flew from the building of interwoven wood.

It viewed the world through the eyes of a spirit.  A web of connections.  A tree was only a tree in the shade it gave to the ground below, to the relationship of wind to branch and air to leaf.  A man was only a man in relation to those he knew, to the wife and children he supported, the house he owned and the job he worked.

The crow soared, and it saw things as greater or smaller by the good they did the people and things around them.

The crow found the brightest places, and it found a place to land.

One of the bright things was a governess, kind, looking after children that weren’t hers, because their parents had passed.

The crow watched until they had gone to sleep.  It undid the latch and let itself inside.

A medallion, a precious heirloom, was moved to a box owned by the governess’ favorite orphan boy.  A collection of trinkets and funny stones, buttons and one mouse skull.

The movement was careful.  The thread that tied the governess to the heirloom was still strong.  She would find it, and she would be hurt.  Damage would be done that was irreparable.  A small amount of damage, but damage all the same.

The bird waited for a day, watching through a window.  The box was found.  The bird observed the shouting, the brief, three-stroke whipping the boy suffered, saw the tears and felt the boy’s sense of injustice, aimless.

That night, the bird moved the medallion to the boy’s keepsake box a second time.

It didn’t stay to watch this time.  It was a little bigger, a little stronger than before.

With that strength, the bird took up a pen, and visited a letter.  One woman’s name was erased, ink drawn from paper to pen, another woman’s name written in its place, with the same ink and the same penmanship.

This, the bird stood by to watch.

It wasn’t a dramatic incident.  The hurt and confusion were profound and quiet.  The man’s wife was too proper to speak of the subject, or to even confront her husband, but it hurt her as if she’d been stabbed.  Her husband loved another woman?

He did.  His own doubt ate away at him.  The bird watched him twist and turn.

It took four more pushes, four small incidents and well placed items.  A flower favored by the woman he wasn’t married to, on his doorstep.  A trace of her scent, tracked onto his pillow while he slept.

The man made his advance the day he heard her name whispered in the wind, conjured by the crow’s beak.  He was turned down, and broken with shame in the process.  His object of affection hurt, his wife wounded deeper still.

With every act, the crow spent little and gained much.  Every reaction was a form of worship.  It grew.

In two year’s time, it was able to take the form of a child, in addition to the shape of the bird.  It worked connections with more violence.

A small boy, Algonquin in appearance, went largely unnoticed amid the playing children of a new town.  When attention started to move in his direction, he sidestepped the forming connection.

A girl sat on a bench, watching the others kick a ball around.  She glittered and glowed with connections.  Everyone knew who she was, as she was the daughter of a community leader.  She fit in well with the flow of things, the natural course of events.  When she spoke, the spirits knew, she spoke true.  She remained innocent.

But the crow cared little for innocence.

A boy, forced to stop playing by the nearby teacher, sat on the far end of the same bench.  He was known to many, but not in a good way.  He carried a weight, the imprints and echoes of other spirits and events.  His father, in particular, radiated such negativity that the boy could only carry it.  The boy was a liar.

The crow found the connection between them, a thread, and touched the middle of it.  It pulled.  The two wouldn’t topple over the back of the bench, but they would follow the path of least resistance.  Drag a string with a weight on each end, and the weights would touch.

The actual events were more happenstance.  More girls sat on the bench, and the girl that had sat there shifted position to give them room.

In that same moment, the boy lay down on the remaining section of bench.  In the doing, the top of his head made contact with the girl’s dress and hip.

Simpler, dumber spirits contrived to tidy up the mess of the unruly connection.

The boy experienced a moment of electric shock, running straight down the core of his body.  Ever restless, he froze, not daring to move.

She noticed too, but she was striving to get along with the other girls who occupied the bench, and didn’t want to move away.  She pretended not to notice.

It was, as things went, innocent.  Happenstance physical contact.  But it was a beginning to something.

The boy did everything he could to transcribe the event to memory.  He closed his eyes, sun warm on his face, and the whole of his attention was concentrated on the coin-sized area of his head that was in and was keeping contact with a beautiful girl.

The girl looked down, and she saw his face, imagining him asleep.

It struck her that she’d never seen him so at ease.  When he stopped acting the troublemaker, he looked nice.

The crow cawed and swooped past.  The boy’s teacher saw him occupying the bench, and shouted at him, ordering him to stand by her side.

He loathed his teacher in that moment.

He looked back over his shoulder as he got up from the bench, and met the girl’s eye.

The touch of pink on her cheeks… that was more than a beginning, to him.

It, she, gave his life meaning.

Had the crow wished, it could have let her heal the boy of that which ailed him.  The abusive father, the propensity to drink, the anger and restlessness.  The boy might even have found that peace, as well as the strength needed to prove himself in the small town and become someone respectable.

The crow did not wish for this.

In a way, the boy and the girl were happier in the short term.  They grew up a little, and enjoyed their romance.  But romance, as these invaders called it, was a mysterious, fleeting thing.  It was not true love.  It inveigled.

A stolen kiss behind the schoolyard, the pair being caught.  The girl spanked by her father when he heard.  The pair were driven together by hardship.

The girl became a liar.

The girl found the boy’s restlessness and anger and made it her own.

They stole away from their respective homes and found each other in the woods, late at night, hearts pounding as they embraced.

The crow planned a tragedy that would darken the hearts of everyone in the little town.

It did not do so unimpeded.

Though his guess was off target, the girl’s father openly voiced his suspicion that something darker was at work.  He spoke of devils working their way into his daughter’s heart.

He called for help, and help arrived.

A man of the cloth, who took an immediate dislike to the local minister.  A stern, strict man, who knew things.

He was wrong about what the crow was, but he still managed to capture and bind it.

He sent it back at the ones who had created it, with a touch of added power, hostility, outrage, given freely, and the compact of the Invader’s ways of dealing with spirits.  A seal, which made the crow both less of what it had been and more a part of things.  A different manner of things.

The crow flew.  Then it walked.

It arrived at the outskirts of the area, and it found its creator waiting, an old man.

“I knew you would come back,” the old man said, in a language the crow hadn’t heard for some time.

“They’d have me harm you,” the crow responded.

“Yes.”

“Let me.  You’re old.  It won’t hurt many.”

“No,” the old man said.

The crow advanced a step.  “If you don’t let me, then I’d have to hurt you indirectly.  Your children and grandchildren, your home…”

“If I let you kill me,” the old man said, “They have you.  They’ll use you against us.  Better to destroy you or turn you back against him.”

“A canoe crosses the same river, day in, day out.  Back and forth,” the crow said.

“Yes.  But sooner or later, it has to stop.  Each journey gets harder, more meaningful.”

The crow nodded.

It attacked, drawing a knife.  It drew back, ready to throw the blade, then flung the weapon.

Stepping forward to complete the throw, it stepped onto something.

Gunpowder lit, going up in a moment.  A symbol appearing in a puff of smoke, burned into the ground.

But the blade had left the crow’s hand a moment before.

The old man stared as the blade went well over his head, and through the wall of a building.

There was a distant roar, a scream, both from the same young man.

The crow bowed his head, folding his hands in front of him.

“I won’t ask what you just did,” the old man said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.  Don’t speak,” the old man said, his voice pained.  “Take what I give you, and use it against them.”

“I don’t think you have anything strong enough to send me back,” the crow said.  “Even if you did, they have my name, they have sealed me.  I could stop them, make them pay, but when I was done, the next one could call me, and I’d be bound to act.”

The old man nodded.

The screams were joined by others.

Anxiety was writ large over the old man’s face and body.

“Then take what I give you, use it against them.  Let the ones who bound you live, but never let them call you without paying a price.”

The crow smiled.  “Some will be strong.  I don’t think there’s much you could give me that would let me bend the rules like that, father.”

The old man frowned, eyes closing.  “Don’t call me father, wretched thing.”

The old man produced a knife, and cut his own throat.  Not a clean cut, in the end, but a savage one, where strands and matter caught on the knife, and the blade turned a sharp angle at one large vein.

The crow watched impassively as the old man dropped to both knees, then carefully eased himself down to lie beside the circle.

Blood flowed out, and covered the lines that had been burned into the ground.

The crow drank of the power.  All that the old man was capable of.  Nine more years of a practitioner’s life, distilled into a kind of strength.

The crow was no longer a child, but a man.

It walked, instead of flying, to the town it had flown from.  Calmly, quietly, it put things in motion for those who had summoned it to find ignoble ends.  Two men of the cloth found with their manhood deep inside cattle.

This took more power than the crow should have used.  It took years to recover.  Years where the crow studied the people and watched from the periphery.  It was the sort of power that it couldn’t afford to use, and diminished it forever from that moment on.

But it had almost come to resemble a person, in the bargain.

It started almost from the beginning, building its power.  A piece of paper signed to the wrong person, with the property and value going to the failure of the family, not the harder worker.  A meaningful gift, with all the value attached, handed over to someone else, to forge a friendship between a scoundrel and a doctor.  The doctor took to using laudanum, and his patients experienced agony for it.

The crow traveled, more patient, more slow.  Working in three different places at a time, traveling from one to the other, so time might pass and events might unfold in their own time.

Twice, he was called.  Twice, he went.

The first to call him lost a book that he had borrowed.  It would be missed by both parties.

The second found her son and heir to her power stolen away by another woman, her one-time husband’s new wife.

Neither suspected.

Searching out the lovelost boy and girl, with their ill-advised relationship, the girl now harboring anger and resentment in her heart, he found both missing.

Looking for them, following the threads that tied everything to everything else, forming the fabric of the world, he found them in an old wooden house.

An old woman, one of the crow’s people, stirred a pot.  Her daughter, yet to even approach adulthood, swept.

The lovelost couple were bound, sitting at the table.

“Have a seat,” the old woman offered.

The crow did.

She served a stew.  None of the foods the invaders had brought with them.  A pleasant change.  She, her daughter, and the crow all ate.

The bound couple remained too terrified and perhaps too stubborn to even speak.

The crow was first to finish, and took the offer of a second bowl.  He stared at the dolls that sat on the shelf as he ate.  Each as bright as a lantern.

They each finished at the same time, the daughter dutifully picking up the bowls and carrying them outside to wash.  A chain trailed from her ankle to the hearth, long enough that she could reach the trough where water had collected, to wash each of the wooden bowls.

The old woman spoke in Algonquin, “Why did you come, spirit?”

“Them.”

“Do you have a claim to them?”

“Not a strong one.  I merely want them.”

“So do I,” she said.  “I need strength.”

“We all do,” he replied.

He watched her, and he could see the connections between her and the area, between her and the stones, and the trees.  She was brighter than any living soul the crow had met, and so set in her ways that she was almost a part of the grand scheme of it all.  Here, at least.

“You have time,” he told her.

“When you have the time available to you,” she answered, “The moment becomes more important than the year.”

“I’ll remember that piece of wisdom,” he replied.

“How badly do you want them?” she asked.  “What can you offer me?”

“I suspect we’re both immortal.  I can promise friendship, and a promise to visit now and again.”

“I could promise the same.”

“You don’t travel.  I have been told that any time one of them summons me, I am to take something they value.  I’ll bring you one of these things as a gift, each time I visit, and show you the rest I have collected in the meantime.  Each, shown or given, comes with a story.”

She didn’t smile.

But she looked at the fire and sighed.  “Tell me it will hurt them.”

“It will hurt them,” he said.  “You’ll see in time.”

“Very well.”

He drew a knife and cut the ropes.

They fought their way free of the ropes, rising from the bench and backing away in a moment.  The light from the hearth didn’t quite reach them in the corner, and the shadows there were dark.

“Leave,” he spoke in their tongue.

They fled.

He could feel them go, could see the connections shifting as they returned to their place in his plan.

“I was going to have them tomorrow night,” the old woman said.  She rose from the bench, then sat down again, her back to him.  “No need to wait, now.  The blade?”

He handed her the blade.

She bent over, and she sliced deep into her own ankles.  The blade wasn’t sharp, and she had to saw until she was satisfied.

“There are herbs,” the crow commented.  “Medicines.”

“Their medicines?”

“Among others.”

“The pain is useful,” she said. She bent over, grabbing the chain from the floor, draping it over one knee.

She placed one hand flat on the table, then slammed the knife into it, piercing flesh and the table both.  She bent over with the pain.

“A good thing there is so much of it.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice tight.  “Child!”

She held the chain in her one free hand, winding her hand up in chain to get rid of the slack.

The child saw the knife piercing the old woman’s hand and fear hit her.  Dull-eyed before, she pulled away.

The old woman, however, pulled her close.

“Nanaming,” the old woman said, her head pressing against the child’s, even as the child shrunk down.  Her arm held the chain tight.  “Ga chibwàmashe,  kwagwedjitò.“

A short phrase, but the words echoed words spoken again and again.

The pair were still for a moment.

The little girl broke the old woman’s grip, backing away.

The old woman, in turn, looked at the girl, then at the crow, eyes wide with fear.

“Mother?” the old woman asked the child.

“Once,” the child responded.  She stepped into the bedroom, then returned.  A key in hand.  She undid the shackle and rubbed her wrist.  “You’re the mother now, for a little while longer.”

The old woman tried to stand, and fell to the floor.  She howled in pain as her hand wrenched where it was skewered to the table.

“Easy,” the child said.  “Go gently.  You should already feel your body going numb.  There will be a moment of panic, a fluttering of the heart, and you’ll feel no more.”

The old woman stared up at her, mute.  “The dolls?”

“You’ll join all the ones who came before,” the child assured her.  “You’ll keep the children company until the bones that hold the body upright crumble and the hairs wither.”

True fear struck the old woman, but she didn’t have the strength to move.

“Dangerous,” the crow commented, as the old woman slumped.  “Every generation?”

“Not too dangerous, with practice,” the child said.

“I could help.”

“I trust myself more than I trust you.”

The crow touched the table, brushing at the bloodstained wood with one hand.  He felt the notches.

“Twenty-three times?” he asked.  “You only have so many dolls.”

“The years take them.  I bury the remains around the house.  The first four are at the cornerstones.  Far more than twenty-three.  I used rope before.”

“Where do the children come from?”

“The question is where the men come from.”

“I see.”

She didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t ask what would become of the pair settling in the nearest town.

They’d see, given time.

■

Corvidae appeared in a flurry of feathers.

He glanced around, at the circle on the floor, then at the group of practitioners.

The witch hunters too.

“Again?” he asked.  “Where is Rose?”

“Occupied,” the monster in the mirror said.  “You don’t need to know.”

“I see,” Corvidae said, smiling.  “What am I doing, then?”

“I don’t trust you in the house, but we still need help.  I’m betting that someone will want to see how things play out.  They’ll probably assume we’re busy and they’re too tough to take out, and venture out of safer territory.  Find them, distract them.  Don’t hurt innocents or civilians.  Only the local powers, and only those hostile to us.”

Corvidae managed a bow.

“Go.  The sooner the better.”

Corvidae stepped free of the circle.

In the hallway, miss Alexis was letting the other members of the family out of the basement.

“Don’t-” she started.

But Corvidae was adept in altering the connection between the bomb mounted on the door and the surrounding environment.  He opened the door and slammed it behind him.

“Don’t!” he heard miss Alexis ordering the others.

Corvidae walked merrily down the long driveway.  He could see eyes glimmering in the darkness, ready to siege the house.

Much too enjoyable.  Ups and downs, including a few trips to the Abyss, to learn the right details needed to send others to the Abyss, and to pick up a proper name.  Now it was time.

He laughed, and it was a high croak of a laugh, a guttural cry.

His thumb brushed the lock of black hair that was tied around his right ring finger, easily mistaken by the unwary for a ring.  A certain mirror had gone missing, a tome in mirror form, with a denizen within.  That one could wait a century or two.  Better to leave it alone, let it work its effect on miss Rose, and in the end, if an opportunity arose and certain individuals got angry enough, perhaps one of his people could benefit.

What would he get this time?

■

The water was warmest close to the lakebottom.

Even in winter, the frigid water here was better than the warmer water there.  It was clean, and it sang through her gills, clear and fresh.  She was more durable than she looked.

Here and there, she managed to scrounge up something in hibernation, buried within the coarse, near-frozen sand of the lake.

She could relax.  The black fish didn’t chase her here.

Happy, happy.  She twisted around herself. letting her fins flare out to arrest her movement, then flicking her tail twice in rapid succession to launch herself forward.

Company would make her happier still.

Company-

Green Eyes.

Someone called her name.

Green Eyes.

She recognized the voice.

Green Eyes, if you’d hurry it up-

A light flashed.  She didn’t wait for it to take form as a door or whatever.

Blake!

■

“-it would be very much appreciated,” Blake finished.

She made a big splash as she broke the surface.

The bathroom was bright, the gathered crowd a little out of sorts.

“Jesus,” a boy she didn’t recognize said.  He looked almost like Blake, but with finer features.  And no branches or birds or any of that.  Clean.

She liked Blake more.

“Green Eyes,” Blake said.  He was standing in the middle of the bathroom mirror, above the sink.  Black paint had been scraped off with a chisel or some similar tool.

“Blake,” she said, smiling.

“Man, those teeth,” the Blake-family-member said.

“I’m not sure if I should be wowed or disappointed,” a black-skinned boy in the hallway said.  “Leaning toward wowed.”

Blake spoke, “We need help, do you want-“

“Yes.”

“Can you-“

“Yes,” she said.  She put her arms on the edge of the tub and lifted her tail over.  “I can help.”

“Hi!” the bird-morsel said.

“Hi,” Green Eyes replied.

“Thanks for that,” Blake said.  “We’ll catch up later.”

“Great!”

“Stay out of the way of the innocents on the ground floor, and the one we’ve got in the bedroom across from you.  They’re… complications for the enemy.  Don’t eat humans, don’t eat Evan.”

“Please,” the bird-morsel said.

“I’ll be good,” Green Eyes told Blake, still propping herself up on the side of the bathtub.

“Here we go,” Blake said.  “Clock’s ticking down, there aren’t any great options left.  Everything else that’s worth summoning was summoned in the last few weeks, killed, has specific rules, or some other complication we can’t work with.”

“You’ve got odd friends,” Blake’s relative said.

“Yes,” Blake replied.

“I remember when the family got together, I was jealous of-”

The town bell tolled.  Green Eyes liked the town bell.

“Being?”

A second toll.

“Sorry, was going to say jealous, but…”

“Of?”

Third toll.

“I don’t know,” Peter said.  “Paige, Molly, and-”

Fourth toll.

“Me?” Blake asked.

With the fifth toll marking sundown, the house shuddered.

Duress 12.1

Alexis, Tiff, and Ty weren’t doing so hot, to put it lightly.

Alexis wasn’t letting me look right at her face.  Ty looked pale, in addition to the thin lines of red that criss-crossed his face and hands and the beads of blood here and there.  Only Tiff seemed sort of together.  Cut up, but she hadn’t broken down.  Nervous, mostly.  When she hesitated to step out of the sanctuary of the library, I suggested she stay behind and read up on possible spells to protect us.  She’d agreed, and we closed the door, sealing her within.

Not ideal, but we had a lot of very resourceful individuals in very bad shape, and when it might only take one dramatic move like the priest’s smiting to bowl us all over like so many pins, spreading out felt like the better plan.

Against all horror-movie logic, but still the better plan.

Evan was guarding Andy and making sure Andy kept breathing.  Tiff was gone.

Alexis had decided to wear the hand mirror that Evan had brought into the house, which made it harder for me to see just how she was doing.  I could tell how slowly she was moving.  Doubly so when I saw just how spry Eva was.  Periodically, I moved to nearby puddles of water to try to get a glimpse of Alexis’ face, but couldn’t make much out.  She seemed to notice me and look away before I got a really good look.

Bad cuts.  Worse than Ty or Tiff had suffered.

Together, we made our way down to the ground floor.  The sink had stopped overflowing.  Someone had turned off the water under the sink, or something like that.

Entering the living room, the most obvious fact was that the Thorburns weren’t in great shape either.  Roxanne, face swollen, hand black and blue, Kathryn with a bruise crawling across the side of her head, and Callan, who looked like he’d been to hell and back, but had been rolled out of the couch, alive and breathing, sitting up with his arms around Christoff, hair plastered to his head with sweat.  Ellie looked okay, but was pacing.

I could see them tense as Eva came down the stairs with us.

“Holy shit,” Ellie said, her pacing stopping immediately.  “What the fuck?  The psycho bitch?”

“Ratface Thorburn,” the witch hunter commented, “We meet again.”

“Fuck you,” Ellie said.

“We’ve got her brother hostage,” Peter volunteered.

“So we call the police now?” Kathryn asked.  “Turn her in?”

Ellie snorted.

“No,” Peter said.  “This isn’t half over.  She’s an asset.”

“It can be over if we leave,” Ellie said.

“You’ll die,” Alexis said, with a rough edge to her voice.

That roughness, the suggestion that she wasn’t doing well at all, was maybe a bit more credibility in the Thorburn’s eyes.

“The bombs-”

“You’ll die,” Alexis repeated herself.

A long, drawn out scream echoed outside.

I could see everyone react with fear, Eva excepted.  She turned so the side of her body and face faced the front door.  Presenting a smaller profile.

Nothing came of it.  Seconds passed without further incident.

“Bombs aren’t the problem,” Alexis said, even though there was no need.

“I think we’re due some answers,” Kathryn said, stern.

I glanced at Peter.  He’d dropped one line, which made me want to ask a hundred questions I didn’t have the time to ask.  I wasn’t sure I didn’t share the same sentiment.

“We’re-”

Another scream occurred nearby.  It was joined by an outcry, almost a cheer.  A group.  Soldiers on a battlefield, pumping themselves up before the charge.  Whatever had started out there hadn’t finished.

A window at the back of the house rattled.  Something fell over.

There was an impact that made me think a car had run into the side of the house.

“Gonna go check,” Ty said.

“Sure,” I said.

From direction and the impact, I could only assume it was Midge.

I wasn’t sure what it would be that would occupy Midge for more than a few seconds.

I spoke, “I need each of you in different parts of the house.  Thorburns, you’re spreading out.  Don’t pick a fight-”

“Ha,” Ellie said, agitated, “No chance of that.”

“Just call for us.  Don’t run, don’t mess around, don’t make noise unless you’re spotted and you’re shouting for assistance..  Stay put, arm yourselves, wait.”

“Or we could stick together,” Ellie said.

“Ellie,” Peter said.  “Listen to him.”

“Peter,” Ellie said, meeting her little brother’s eyes.  “I trust you more than I trust any of the rest of these assholes except for maybe Christoff, who couldn’t lie to save his life.  I still don’t trust you nearly enough to listen and obey some random fucking-”

Another crash sounded outside.  A dull bellowing.

“They’re at a window, I think I can stall them!” Ty called out.

“-instructions,” Ellie finished, her voice a little smaller than before.

Peter pressed on, “Use your head, Ellie.  I know you’ve got a brain, even if you don’t use it.  Grandmother was into something big.  Bigger than any of us want to realize.  What we’re up against, they’re the sort of people who don’t want to be noticed.  People who are very good at hurting other people without getting caught.”

“Spies?”  Ellie asked, her voice arch.  “I’m supposed to believe that James fucking Bond or the S.K. are outside our house right now, trying to break in for some-”

“Ellie,” he cut her off.  “These are covert operatives who are nowhere near as polite as the spies you get from movies and books.  When it’s all over, we’ll probably be in pieces in garbage bags, if we’re lucky.  More likely, they’ll be really inventive in how they torture you, torture me, torture the kids…”

“Peter,” Callan said, speaking in a low voice, both hands on Christoff’s shoulders.  “Don’t spook the kids.”

“I’m not spooked,” Roxanne said, with a note of awe.

Ignoring the fact that one eye was so swollen it was a puffy line in her face, she looked fascinated.  Not unafraid, but more terrified and interested both.  She was as tense as a guitar string, attention rapt.

“I’m spooked,” Christoff said, his voice small.

“Then man up.  If your balls are going to drop, let’s have them drop now,” Peter said.  “Ellie, these guys are going to fuck us up if we don’t listen very carefully.   I’m pretty sure these assholes could and would feed us to hungry livestock or burn us alive.”

“In a small town in Canada,” Ellie said, skeptically.

“Think about it,” he said.  “Why the fuck would a major covert organization set up in a big city, with thousands or millions of eyes around?”

“I can think of a lot of reasons,” Ellie said.  “Don’t try to mom me, trying to derail me with bullshit.  Let me think, spies have jobs?  International jobs?  This shithole doesn’t have anything resembling an airport.”

“Fuck me,” Peter said, under his breath, “Why are you only smart when it helps you be wrong?  Help me out, Blake?”

“I never said it was spies,” I said, being intentionally vague, “Though some of those people out there make pretty effective spies.  It is shady and it is a mess of secrets some people are willing to kill to keep.”

“Fine, whatever.  When did you get this epiphany, Peter?” she asked.  “You figured it all out, you heard or saw something, and now you’re just as much an expert as the asshole with an internet connection and camera-mirror shit that’s talking us all through this?”

“Obviously,” Peter said, “It was while you were sitting in the basement, pissing around.”

“Obviously,” she said, glaring at him.

She was getting scared, but she was exercising that fear as hostility.  Probably a survival instinct she’d picked up somewhere along the way.

“Listen to him,” Peter said.  “Trust me.  I’m still on your side.  Our deal stands.”

She scowled.

The plywood at the front window of the living room rattled as someone or something banged on it.  I reacted instantly.  “Back!”

Kathryn was the only one who hadn’t connected to exactly why I’d given the instruction.

The sound, the light, and the reverberation that knocked Alexis back were all out of sync by fractions of a second.  Even my world was disturbed, as the surface of the water from the flooded and flooding house was distorted for a moment, reducing my territory to the few good sources of reflections I had available.

My view of the scene was limited to my ability to peer through the shaky, zig-zagging little circle that moved every time Alexis did.

I was only able to stop and peer through when she found her footing and stood straight.  There were more shadowy figures standing outside.  A half-dozen ‘people’ and what looked to be four or five children, standing far enough away that the light from the living room ceiling didn’t reach them.

Eva crossed the living room, while everyone else backed away.  She stood at the window, looking down.  “Got one of them.  Hi, guys.”I couldn’t make out the response.

“Scared?” Eva asked, spreading her arms, gun in one hand, knife in the other.  “Don’t be.  Come on up to the window.  I won’t bite.”

“Kathryn,” I said, in the quiet.  “Take Roxanne upstairs.  Bedroom across from the bathroom.  Do not go in the bathroom.  There’s a bag with knives in the closet.  Stuff Ellie stole.”

“What?” Ellie said.  “No.”

“Up high,” I said.  “Get the knives out of the bag.”

Kathryn and Roxanne fled upstairs.

Callan and Christoff would have to stay here.

“Ellie,” I said.

“Peter’s pep talk didn’t convince me,” she said.  “What makes you think I’m listening?”

“Because I’m telling you go to go up to the third floor.  Shutters are closed, all you have to do is holler or scream if someone gets the bright idea to come in through the window.”

“You can’t possibly believe someone’s going to-”

“Ellie,” I cut in.  “It’s probably the safest places in the house for you.”

She considered that for a second, “Where were those other three hiding?”

“Hidden room on the second floor,” I said.  “You can’t get in there, you’d attract attention by trying, and you’d probably get hurt one way or another, nosing around there.  Third floor, bedroom, safe place.  Stay put, don’t move around.”

“I like being able to move around,” she said.

Midge made more noise in the backyard.  I was pretty sure something very solid had broken.

“Then, fuck it, just stay on the third floor,” I said, exasperated.  I wasn’t terribly in tune with my emotions and she was still pissing me off.

“What about the tower room?  That one room that sticks up?”

What did one say to a woman who’d always gone against the grain, always rebelled, and fought every damn step of the way, even when not fighting probably would have been easier and more beneficial for her?

How was I supposed to convey to her that it would be the worst idea in the world to break into that room, when telling her would only make it more enticing to her warped brain?

“Well?” she asked.

“I’m kind of interested too,” Peter said.

“Why do you think my brother and I showed up?” Eva asked, turning her head away from the people outside.

“Hm?” Peter asked.

No, I thought, but I didn’t have anything to interject with.  This was entirely the wrong thing to be saying to Ellie and Peter Thorburn.

“We brought bombs, we brought guns and tasers and grenades.  Those assholes out there, I know some of them.  Little lady out there wants to stitch your mouth and eyes shut, stitch your hands to your sides and your legs together, and leave you like that.  I’m not even joking.  All the sick freaks and monsters are coming this way, and they’re coming because of what’s all the way upstairs.”

“Oh god,” Callan said.  “Stitch-”

“What’s upstairs?” Peter interrupted.

“Come on, Pete,” I said, miming his tone from earlier.  “What do you think?  What’s the worst possible thing it could be?”

“Worst possible-” he started.

“I’ll give you a damn hint,” I said, before he spoke thoughtlessly aloud.  “When Rose and I talked about it, we talked about it in terms of contamination.”

“Enough said,” he said.  “Upstairs, Ellie.”

“What are you- no,” she said.  “That isn’t enough said.  That-”

“Bioweapons or radiation or some shit that has all the other organized crime psychos scared shitless,” he said.  “I don’t want to know, neither do you.  Go.  Those guys outside look restless.”

I heard Ellie’s retreating footsteps splashing on the wet floor, even though I couldn’t see her.

There was a sound of breaking windows.  The only windows I could think of that weren’t broken already would be the ones in the basement.

“Basement,” I said.

“Right.”  Peter rose to his feet, heading back to the hallway.  He shut the door and I heard him dragging something.

Blocking the door.  It probably wouldn’t help much.

A second and a half later, there was a banging, a rattle of the door repeatedly being slammed against the blockade.  Peter began to move other things in the hallway, supporting the position of the table more than he was trying to block the door.

I could remember when I’d assumed the outside walls would hold off the Others for hours.  It hadn’t been twenty minutes.

The absence of one person in the living room apparently gave the Others outside a bit more courage.

They advanced a little.

“Hey,” Eva called out.  “I recognize you, that means you should damn well recognize me.”

“Yeah,” was the response from outside.  A male voice.

“You know you don’t want to get on my bad side.”

“We’re not here for you, Eva.”

“You damn well better not be.  As I was saying, you don’t want to get on my bad side.  How would you like to do me a favor?”

“No, Eva,” I intoned the words, like an adult might to a wayward child.

“You want in?  Go right ahead,” she said.

“I will kill Andy if you fuck with us here!” I said.

She hesitated.  But in the moment she turned to reply to me, she saw Peter coming out of the hallway, weapon in hand.

He could see right through her, just like I could.  She was betraying us, right here.  He’d acted on it.

Said a lot about him that he could be so damn clever, but when the situation called for it, he went straight to ‘blunt object to face’.

He swung the fireplace poker over his head and down.  Eva didn’t have time to bring her whole arm up, so she only raised her elbow, moving towards the descending poker.  Her elbow caught Peter’s wrist and deflected it.  The poker came down  a fair distance to the side of her.

Peter had an instant of eye contact with Eva, a deer in the headlights with his face a matter of a foot from hers, before she hit him.  Two punches to the head, a kick that seemed primarily aimed at disarming him, stepping on the poker that still touched the ground, then wrapped her arms around his upper arms, pinning his arms to his side while she brought her knee into his side.  Staying right up close, not giving him any room at all to act.

I saw a knife flash in her hand.

She hadn’t had a knife a second ago.  Concealed?

Eva didn’t stab Peter.  The Others were making a move, and she shifted her grip and flung Peter to the side.

“Alexis,” I said, as they approached the window, moving through snow with long, powerful strides.

No response.

She hadn’t responded in a while.  Fuck.  I’d been so focused on external events-

“Alexis!”

Callan reached over to Alexis, who was half-sitting on the arm of the sofa, and took her wrist.  I didn’t get to hear his verdict any more than Eva got to finish dealing with Peter.

The Others were adroit, hopping up the two or three feet to the window itself.

The faceless woman was the first I noticed.  She stayed on the bench beneath the window, the curtain blocking the full view of her face.  Her cigarette glowed.

Did she have a supernaturally good sense of light and dark, like I had with reflections?

The other Other was a bald man in a suit, thin enough to be skeletal, with a pinched mouth and eyes too large for his head.  He clasped a pocketwatch to his chest with one hand, the other straight down at his side.

Fuck me.  If the Behaims had bogeymen on call, this would be the type, wouldn’t it?

“Blake,” I heard a voice.  The third Other to enter through the window.  The unassuming, boring Pizza Man.  The Revenant.  His eyes glittered dark, his smile was like he was in on some grand joke, wry, as if he was about to burst into excited laughter at any moment.  “Didn’t know you were here.”

Not a hint of his fatigue and tiredness from before.

“I told you that it was dangerous to mess around here,” I said.

“I know,” he said.  “But that thing your other cousin did.  Man.  I’m excited.  I could barely keep her still.  There aren’t many acceptable targets or acceptable times to express my excitement.  Then an opportunity like this comes up?  Know what I mean?  This is going to be something to behold.”

“I don’t know the feeling, but yeah, I think I understand.”

The clock man was paying attention to Peter, who was on his rear end, hands and feet on the ground, staring up.  The clock man’s expression was frozen as he advanced on Peter.  A light smile that revealed some teeth.

“Shit,” Peter said, crab-walking away.  He found his feet, but the clock man bent forward, placing the clockless hand on his collarbone, and shoved him back.

Peter and the clock man disappeared into the hallway, Peter retreating, stumbling for footing, and the clock man swiftly advancing, maintaining his hand in the one position.

I’d have intervened if I’d seen it coming.  It was so sudden.

And, on a level, a part of me wanted to be near Alexis.  I shook my head, moving to the water that pooled on the living room floor.

I saw the clock man back away a step.  Peter was slumped against the closet door in the front hallway.

With shaking hands, Peter pushed his upper body away from the door, as if it took some effort.

The doorknob had shattered on impact with his body.  The resulting piece of the doorknob was a prong of metal, now crimson.  The blood that dripped off it in strings was thick, as if it wasn’t just blood, but other bits clumped in there too.

I could see the blood at Peter’s shoulder where it had speared him.

“Fuck,” Peter said, slumping to the ground beneath the door with a light splash.  “And now my pants are drenched.  That’s going to bug me all night.”

The clock man left Peter like that, backing into the living room, dusting himself off, the exact same expression on his face.

He traced one finger along the television set, thoroughly destroyed in the localized explosion at the window, and then picked up a piece of glass.

“Eager, aren’t you?” the revenant commented, smiling a little wider, “Not that I’m objecting.”

Shit.  I’d almost liked him, and now he was living true to his nature.

I’d never liked the parable of the scorpion and the frog.

I liked it even less now.  It made me think of Green Eyes.

I liked her too.

“Sorry, window-dweller,” he said.  “But big things are happening.  There’s value in being a part of them.  I don’t know what you had planned for this bunch, but you had your chance to do it.  Now the rest of us get a shot.”

He headed for Callan, the clock man headed back for Peter, shard of glass in hand.

I could deal with one, but not both.

Eva was just standing there, next to the window.  The remaining Others just outside weren’t venturing inside.

“Eva!” I shouted.

The warning tone was enough to stir her into action.  A part of me suspected it didn’t take much.  She wanted to participate.

She went right for the revenant.  He was unarmed, she wasn’t.

I’d seen her fight people.  I got a chance to see how she fought monsters.

Eva put herself in the revenant’s way, and the revenant threw a punch.  She was ready to block, deflecting a blow from something much stronger than she was, knife flashing out to cut his throat.

Against anyone else, and a hell of a lot of anythings, she might have ended the fight right there.

But the revenant didn’t stop.  He threw another punch, and clipped her.  She went with it, turning her body to absorb the force of the blow, then struck out with her knife, using the turn to hit that much harder.  Going for the side of the neck, this time.

“Yeah,” the revenant said.  “Knew I shouldn’t pick a fight with you.”

I was already in the water, trying to find a way to work around the distorted surface.  Too many feet splashing.

The clock man walked with care, Peter in his sights.

Peter rose to his feet, then ran upstairs.  He fell twice on his way to the stairs, first at the spot of oil that sat surrounded by water, then on the stairs themselves, with a piece of glass caught in the underside of his shoe.

The clock man followed, walking.

Eva kicked the revenant bodily in the chest, shoving him into the hallway and out of Callan and Christoff’s sight.

Then she really went to town.

He moved his arm, and I didn’t even get a chance to see why, because she was ready to stop him with one arm blocking his elbow.  One leg was positioned behind his knee.  The whole of her body mass served as leverage, her shoulder pushing his upper body, her lower legs planted firmly on the ground.

His free, unblocked hand got a grip on her collar.  Her knife severed the fingertips.

I glanced at the clock man.  He was just at the bottom of the stairs.  Peter was at the top.  Once the gap was slightly wider, I could appear between them.

For now- I reached out of the water and gripped the revenant’s hair as he started to rise, hauling him down, his head cracking against the wood.

Eva threw the knife, planting it in the revenant’s throat.  As if she was setting her shovel into the ground, she stomped on the handle, forcing it through.

Two hands came up for her legs.  She backed away a step.

To stand, he had to pull the point of the blade out of the wood beneath him.  I had a glimpse of him, the handle of the knife, not the blade, jutting through his neck.  The blade stuck out the back.

“You’re-” he said, but his voice was almost too distorted by the intervening object to make any sense.  He grabbed the blade with one hand and pulled it from his neck.

A toss in the air, and he caught the handle.

His wounds closed in a matter of a second or two, except for the throat wound, which was too wide.

Eva made a quick motion, he reacted, ready to catch her or defend himself, but it was only a feint.

She did it again, once or twice.  In those seconds, the throat wound finished closing.

“You’re trying to behead me,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“That doesn’t work against everything,” he said.

“It’ll work here.”

The basement door rattled, the things in the basement still periodically trying to get out.  I could see narrow, long-fingered hands clutching around the open door, trying to get a grip on the table, so they could shift its position.

Eva paused, took a half-step back, then kicked the basement door.

Severed fingers dropped into the pool of water.

I looked upstairs.  I could sense the distortions in reflections.

Peter had gone straight for the third floor.

The clock man was just reaching the second.

I saw my window of opportunity and moved.

I appeared, drawing the Hyena, and swept the broken blade through his ankles.

He stumbled, catching the railing, but I reached up to grab his waistband, and found the leverage to pull him down toward the stairs.  The gaunt clock man tumbled.

In the process, I could see Ty at the end of the hall.

Three dead things that might have been gargoyles or winged goblins lay beside him.  He was unaware of me as he swung his hammer to finish crucifying one, affixing it to a picture frame by slamming a nail through its wrist and wing.  He rose, pressing the picture frame against the window, gargoyle sticking out-

I didn’t ask.  My focus was on the clock man, who was still falling down the stairs, hamstrings cut.

By the time he finished his ten-foot tumble, I was waiting on the landing where the stairs made a ‘u’ turn and were just a little wider.

The clock man came to rest on the waiting Hyena.

I was shunted to the base of the stairs, and looking down at the reflection, I could see up, where he’d been.  A cloud of black ash.

I moved back up, and saw the timepiece sitting on the broader stair.  The only thing that remained.

Reaching through, I collected it, drawing it into my realm and opening it.

No hands.

But it didn’t belong here.  The Hyena did, it was mine, claimed and reclaimed.  The timepiece disintegrated like my footing did when the reflections shattered.

I found it back in the real world and stabbed it with the Hyena.

One down.

Countless Others to go.

“-Bomb!” Eva was shouting.

“You really think I care about a bomb?” the revenant asked.

“Your friend-”

“Her either?”

They were struggling.  Eva was winning the fight but losing the war.  She was cornered, the bomb behind her and the revenant in front, and no exit on either side.  Every time the revenant charged, she was forced to back up.  When she pushed back, she hurt him, delivering grievous wounds, but failed to regain the ground she’d lost.  None of the wounds lasted.  Couldn’t kill a dead man.

“Eva,” I said, “What do you need?”

“I kill unnatural motherfuckers like you with nature.  Fire usually works.”

“Wooden house.”

“Blade, then.  I’ll do it the old fashioned way.”

“I’ve got a blade,” I said.

“And,” the revenant responded, “that’s my cue to abandon this particular fight.”

He backed away from Eva, and ducked back into the living room.

Eva and I both found our way into the living room as well.

Callan was standing, Christoff behind him, Alexis to his right, slumped back against the couch.  I could see how deep some of the wounds on her face were.

Was this the old ‘outrun the bear’ strategy?  Leave the nigh-comatose girl as bait while making a break for it?

“How are you doing?” the revenant asked his companion.

Sitting on the window ledge, the faceless woman was kept from intervening by the presence of innocents.  She tapped her cigarette a few times, impatient, and let the ash fall into the shallow pool of water that covered the living room floor.

Others were standing behind her, impatient, but not wanting to cross within a certain distance of her.

It said a lot.  She was actively helping to keep Others at bay by being as scary as fuck, and I wasn’t any less worried.

Her foot joined the cigarette with the tapping, making a series of light splashes in the water.

“I know, baby,” the revnenant said.  “I’m suspicious we’re in the clear, but I don’t want to bet on it.”

Her tapping intensified for a second, then stopped.

She drew herself to her feet, in a grand sweeping motion, head bowed a little, her hair masking much of her face.

Damn it.

“Apparently you want to bet on it, though,” the revenant said.

“Her face,” Christoff whispered.

“You know,” Callan said, coldly, “When you’ve got an ugly scar on your face, spy convention is to drape your hair over that side, and leave the normal side alone.”

She stood up straighter, and used her free hand to fix her hair, combing it back with her fingers revealing her face as it was.

“Or it’s… that doesn’t make sense,” Callan said, suddenly confused.  “That mask-”

She slowly shook her head.

“Not a mask,” the revenant shared.  “Well, looks like we’re all-in.”

“All in?  What’s the bet?” Callan asked, still leaning to one side, one hand on Alexis’ wrist.

“That we can go to town, and we can get away with it,” the revenant said.

Shit.

I went straight for the faceless woman.

Same plan as the clock man with the broken clock.  I sliced her ankles.

I was shunted, moved back to the kitchen.

I had to wait for things to settle down to even see what was going on, but people were moving so damn much.  Eva was no doubt at the center of it.

Something told me, though, that of all people, the faceless woman was apparently capable of recovering from cut hamstrings.  A fast recovery, no less.

“Callan, take Christoff and Alexis upstairs!” I shouted.

“I can only take Christoff!” he said, his head turning to try and find where I was speaking from.

“You’ll take Alexis, damn it!”

“Blake?” I heard Alexis mumble.

Chaos.

“Alexis,” I said.  “Cat’s out of the bag.  If there’s anything you can do-”

“Gave too much blood already,” she said, feeble.  “Strengthening the library.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Alright, you did good, getting us this far.”

“This doesn’t look good,” she said.

Eva was sparring with the two Others in the living room.  I could see the agitation on the Others outside.

“No.”

“If… I’m thinking maybe since I’m not at my best, I’m all hollowed out inside, you can take me for a ride?”

“I don’t think I can wear the Alexis suit,” I said.  “I’m too solid.  Doesn’t feel like I can.”

“Oh.”

“But that’s not a bad idea,” I said.

Books fell to the ground as Eva struck the faceless woman and knocked her into the bookshelf.

A retaliatory swipe of fingernails left gouges in Eva’s upper arm, as if she were made of soft clay.

“Fuck!” Eva shouted.

The revenant tackled her.  Not trying to hurt, or to hold.  Just something between a hundred and sixty and a hundred and eighty pounds of weight right there, limiting Eva’s movements, while Eva stood a matter of two or three feet from the bogeyman who could knit flesh with a touch.

Eva fought back, but her hand was moving in a palsied way, fingers bending wrong, almost as if they were trying to bend backwards.

Her nerves had probably been fucked up by that one swipe of claws.

She managed to throw the revenant off her, tossing him to the point where the coffee table had once been, and she backed away, panting hard.

That she was putting up a fight at all was amazing unto itself.

Callan crossed my field of vision and nearly stepped on me as Christoff helped him in the direction of the stairs.

“Christoff,” I said.  “Help Alexis to the ground.”

“She’ll have to crawl,” Callan said.

“That’s fine.  Just… help her down,” I said.

“You’re- not really there, are you?” he asked.  Looking toward the stairs.

He was unnerved, confused, not thinking straight.  Seeing the faceless woman had broken him into this world.  He wasn’t processing much of anything, by the looks of it.  Topping it off, he’d been beaten up as badly as anyone.

Except maybe Andy.  Andy was, as far as I knew, still out cold.

“Callan,” I said.  “This is what Molly was dealing with.  This world, this craziness.”

He looked around, as if he was trying to find me.

His expression creased.

He was an asshole, stubborn, absolutely brutal in how he dealt with others.  It was like the younger siblings had learned from what the older ones had gone through, and had gotten more clever.  The older ones, they were simpler.  Kathryn was a bulldog, tenacious.  She attacked and she didn’t let up.  Callan… he wasn’t equipped with status.  He didn’t fight so much as he blindsided.  He was half again my age, and he hit people where it hurt, picking and choosing when and where he did it.

He’d cost Paige the recommendations she needed to get the hell away from here and get to a good school in the U.S., going straight to her teachers.  He and his friends had probably been responsible for the vandalism of Kathryn’s restaurant, after we’d all heard Aunt Jessica talking about how they were expecting someone prominent to pay a visit and review it.

Callan had, I was pretty damn sure, been the one to knock over my bike in a fit of pique on the day Grandmother had passed verdict on the heirs.

But, at the end of the day, he’d cared about his immediate family.  Even though I’d been too young at the time to remember, I suspected he’d had high hopes about being the heir, but he’d given up when grandmother had laid down the law about it being a female heir.  Gave up on a lot of levels, maybe.  He’d never gone on to great things.  Alternated between working jobs in Toronto and working jobs here.

He’d backed Molly all the way.

“You couldn’t help her, but you can help us,” I said.

Eva was doing her best to fight with a revenant behind her and the flesh-stitching Bogeyman in front of her.

I couldn’t wait for Callan to act.  I couldn’t give more convincing.

I moved forward, and I lunged for the revenant this time.

He moved his leg as I cut, and I only got the calf.

It was all Eva needed.  She saw him falter, and backed away, using him as an obstacle to fight the Bogeywoman with.

That was all the help I could give.

Alexis was being lowered into the pool of water.

“Cold,” she said.

I hadn’t even realized.  The window was gone, exploded, and cold air was flowing into the room.  With all the water…

I hope this helps.  I reached into my chest and retrieved a spirit.

Reaching through the water, I pushed out, and I pushed the spirit into her.

She gasped like I’d thrown cold water on her.

In an instant, she was paler, her eyes black from corner to corner.  The edges of the shadows on her face and body darker and rougher.

I was weaker, and it was energy I probably couldn’t afford to give.

My hand brushed her shoulder before I was cast aside by the lack of footing.

“You feel like this all the time, Blake?” she asked.  Her voice was almost haunting, as if everything I’d heard for a long time had been muffled by the mirror, but her voice was as clear as a bell, resounding here.

“Feel like what?”

“Empty.  Cold.  Broken.  Distant.  Like… the worst night of waking up on the streets, when nothing’s right and you’re shivering and hurt and dirty and hungry, and you know it’s going to be a long time before you can do anything about any of it, and you get this feeling in the pit of your stomach.”

I lowered my head.  My feet were almost in line with hers.  I looked down at her, and she looked down at me, keeping only a partial eye on the ongoing brawl.

“I do.  But it’s my natural state,” I said.  I thought of what Peter had mentioned.  “Something-”

“Incomplete,” she said.

I could hear the resonation of her voice, so clear.  So closely linked to me, thanks to the spirits I’d given.  Alexis was using a marker to draw on the arm of the couch.

Incomplete.

That word felt important.

“Sorry to spend some of what you just gave me, but-  Television!”

Eva’s reaction times were freakish.  Alexis hadn’t finished speaking the word before Eva kicked the revenant.  He crashed into the shattered television set.  Something sparked, and fire erupted.

He staggered, head and shoulder aflame, burning more with every passing moment, then went to the window, throwing himself through.

“Go,” Eva said.  “No grudges.”

She wasn’t talking to him.

The faceless woman went after her companion.

“Upstairs!” Alexis said.

Retreating.

With the faceless woman gone, all the Others who’d been clustered outside came in.

The front door detonated.  A small blast, not even reaching down the length of the hallway.  No fire, which was probably a part of the runes on the thing.

It did damage the blockade at the basement door.

A dozen bogeymen, goblins, and other assorted monsters were in the house.

We had to give ground.  Ground floor lost.

Not even forty minutes had passed.

Fourteen hours until the crack of dawn, give or take.

Duress 12.2

“How bad?” Tyler greeted us as we reached the second floor.

“Bad bad,” Callan said.

“The sort of bad where we barricade the stairs now,” I told Ty.

“On it.”

“More the bad where we break out the machine guns,” Eva commented.

“You have machine guns?” I asked.

“Not here.  But if we did, this would be the time to use them,” Eva said.

Ty emerged from the room where Roxanne and Kathryn were holed up, dragging a dresser.  Alexis helped him.

“Alexis is an other now?” Ty asked.

“No,” Alexis said.  “Running on borrowed power.”

“It’s bad, then,” Ty said.

The first arrivals had already showed up at the landing on the staircase where I’d dispatched the clock man.  Too uniform in appearance to be goblins, they were half the size of an ordinary person, pale, hairless and spindly, with fingers like a spider’s legs and no noses or ears to speak of.  Their mouths were wide and crowded with teeth.  Their teeth and fingernails looked like they’d been collected from people who’d lost theirs.  Diseased, cavity-ridden to the point I could see through some, torn, splintered, crusted with plaque or fungus…

The rest of them were so featureless that it almost suggested there was nothing to them but tooth and nail.  They seemed fairly craven, shying away as Eva’s eye fell on them.  Mustering up the courage as more crawled up from downstairs.

“Jesus,” Callan said, eyes going wide.  “Christoff, go in with Roxanne and Kath.  Tell them-”

“Don’t tell them anything,” I said.

I didn’t wait to argue or clarify the point.  I descended to the landing on the stairs.  Then I attacked.

I wasn’t sure what the story was with the little guys, but they weren’t fighters.  I plunged into and through the water, to appear in their midst.  Four seconds of action, not with any style, but raw brute strength, both hands on the Hyena, slashing at center mass.

Six to eight of them, reduced to twitching bits of gore and blood in the water.

They hadn’t put up much of a fight, but there were a good number of them, and the sheer amount of foot traffic in the hallway downstairs suggested there were more on the way.  If one of the little guys got to someone like Tiff, Ty, Alexis or one of the Thorburns, I was betting they would lose the fight with the human, but from the look of those teeth and nails, the human would get sick pretty fucking fast.  That wasn’t getting into the damage those mouths could do, biting out a pound of flesh.

Playing the odds.  There was too much chance for someone to get distracted or for one of those little guys to slip through and do a lot of damage.

I took on the next group, my head, shoulders, and both arms emerging from the spray.  Fighting them wasn’t hard, and I was pretty damn sure there was an assortment of Others lurking in the downstairs hallway.  If my actions here could be savage enough to make them second guess what they were doing, all the better.

When there were too many body parts for me to have anywhere to stand, I was shunted, putting me in the hallway.  Down again.

Various Others were left to back away as I continued attacking.  I didn’t get tired.  The incidental scratches caught wood, and very little flesh.

I didn’t feel much fear, and the fear I did experience was a disconnected kind.  Distant and buried.

I didn’t feel much pain.

It was easy.  Except easy was the wrong word.  I was riding a wave, nourished by the reaction I was getting from the Others, using that to push forward.

In the midst of entering and exiting the water, I was getting glimpses of my surroundings.  I couldn’t even be sure, in the midst of spray and moving bodies and the tactile part of it, blade dragging a ragged arc through something that wasn’t flesh, if I was actually getting glimpses of what was happening around me, while I was in the real world.  I felt like I was lasting longer before my footing eventually crumbled.

I caught myself wondering if this was the way out.  If somehow I could just push myself far enough and hard enough, and somehow emerge.

Then something else caught me.  Two hands seized my wrists.

I had a full ‘say-Mississippi’ second to recall what I’d glimpsed in the hallway as I hung there, blind, my wrists in an iron grip.  This guy was big, muscled, bare chested, with scars on his chest, tiny eyes buried beneath bristling eyebrows, wild hair and mountain-man beard framing his face.

He pulled one hand away from the Hyena, then pulled my arms in opposite directions.

I felt one of his feet settle on my upper chest.  Pushing my chest down while my arms were pulled up.

Pulling my arms from their socket.  Wood splintered and cracked.  One arm jerked as something gave, only for another thing to catch it, the broken end snared in a tangle of other bits of wood and flesh.

My footing was gone, though, and I disintegrated, disappearing from his grasp.  Cast down to the basement, into darkness.

My shoulders worked on healing, the skin on my chest crawling as the tattoo moved to cover where he’d planted his foot, healing the scratches.

When my right arm healed, I used my hand to pull my other arm back into position.  I waited while branches reached around, hooking into open spaces at my neck and back, like great wooden fingers finding purchase.  My eyes were turned toward the first floor.

There was a lot of foot traffic.  The floor of the hallway was broken up by a countless number of splashes.  Twenty, thirty Others in total, now making their way up the stairs.

But, even with the hallway floor being as disrupted as it was, I could still see.  There was light there.  Not everywhere, but patchy.

I moved back up to the hall.

Ah.

Not the floor.

There was enough blood on the one wall of the hallway to reflect me.

Useful.

I lunged from the wall, going straight for the big guy.

The Hyena raked him between the shoulderblades.

He half-turned, his hand catching mine, forceful enough that specks of blood flew into the air.

I was quick to switch the Hyena to a free hand, and stabbed him through the wrist.

He, in turn, caught the Hyena, tearing the weapon from my hand.

His spare hand came down on my forearm.  The spikes of the Hyena’s handle tore sideways across my palm as my hand came free, my wrist wrenching.

I was shunted.

Not to the basement this time.

Surrounded by darkness, I found myself almost drowning.  Nothing to grab, nothing to breathe or touch.  Swallowed by darkness.

I wasn’t inclined to feel spooked, to be afraid.  I’d killed a big part of that fear in me.

But I felt a note of genuine fear as I waited, adrift in darkness.

I couldn’t tell if I was rising or falling.  There was no up, down, or any of that.

I broke the surface.  I found myself in the basement.  I might have gasped for breath if I still needed to breathe.  Instead, I felt drained.  No power, no strength, I was unable to move, able to experience only dull sensations, a world of light and darkness, while I lay prone in the water.

A few more of the little toothy bastards were still crawling in through the window.

There was probably a source.  They were so nearly identical that I suspected they were being poured forth by a cauldron or pushed out by some kind of injection mold.  A monster-bake oven.

The spirits that had occupied my body stirred around me, hopping here and there, wings fluttering periodically.

My fingers moved under my own power, agonizingly slow, bones grating against one another, as my fist clenched.  Dead branches fell away.

A piecemeal hand, like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing.  My left hand was worse off, with a gaping wound in the meat between index finger and thumb.  The fingertips were shredded.

Old wounds.

It was me, minus the help of the spirits.

A spirit-bird hopped around, not quite real, a sketch brought to life.  It cocked its head, looking down at me.

“Didn’t like that either?” I asked.  It was my voice, reedy and weak.

It cocked its head the other way.

“You know I’m your best bet,” I said.  “You want to be big?  You want to grow up to be a badass spirit?  Hitch a ride.”

One by one, they found the openings. The parts of me where the branches stuck out and there was no more flesh beneath.  They wormed their way inside.

My body returned to normal piece by piece.  Three fingers, then the forearm, then the shoulder, and finally the rest of my arm.  All of me, coming back bit by bit.  The wood grew back, the tattoos finding purchase on my skin.

I pulled myself to my feet.

The Drains are reminding me that they can take me back.

Or something else?  Outside interference?

The bastard mountain-man had my sword.

I returned upstairs, bypassing the second floor.

The little toothy bastards were climbing over the barricade – a dresser and two chairs piled against the stairs.  Eva was dealing with them much as I had.  Almost effortlessly.

“There’s a big-” I started.

Eva reacted instantly, slamming her foot in my direction before she’d even turned to see what I was doing.

Sending me back into the great nothingness beneath the basement.

This time, it took nearly a minute for me to surface.

Leaving me lying in the reflection in the basement, the spirits having largely abandoned ship yet again.

“Note to self,” I muttered.  “Don’t spook the witch hunter.”

The birds stared at me.  One fluttered up to the highest point of my head, perching in my hair.

“We’re all in this together, guys,” I said.

They returned to the interior of my body.

Once again, I pulled myself together.

Swearing under my breath, I headed back upstairs.

Alexis, Ty, Peter, and Callan were all at the base of the barricade, trying to hold it there, while Eva was perched on top, a curtain rod with a broken end held in one hand, spearing down with short, rapid strikes, machete in the other hand, held high.  She raised one foot as a large hand swiped at her, the Hyena’s blade narrowly missing her leg.

I looked to the landing of the stairs, but there was too much foot traffic for the ground to serve.

The wall… the press of bodies had smeared much of the blood away.

But not all.

I emerged, grabbing one of the weedy little tooth-and-claw creatures by the throat, and struggled forward, shaking off others as they scratched and bit me.  My focus was on the mountain man.

Still holding the toothy motherfucker, I slammed it mouth-first into the space where the mountain man’s thigh met his buttock.  Teeth sank into muscle that stood out like steel cable, and the force of the hit dislocated the little guy’s jaw.

The rest were clustering on me, each no more than twenty pounds, but there were enough of them that I was weighed down.

I let myself fall, moving out to the nearest reflection.  The creatures fell away as I disappeared.

I was back in the hallway.

The big guy had eased up, and the group was slowly gaining ground, Eva standing on the railing with one foot, her hand braced against the wall.  Suspended above the staircase, she stabbed down at the big guy, and the curtain rod came back with one end slick with blood.  I could hear the mountain man roar.

She dropped back onto the toppled dresser to add her weight to it.  The mountain man’s hand settled on the edge as he tried to find leverage, and she chopped at it with the machete.  Nothing severed, but his hand disappeared.

The entire dresser jerked as the Other bodily threw himself into it.

A drawer slid open, long spidery fingers tipped with horrendous looking fingernails grasping the edges as one of the bald toothy things began to worm its way through, entering by some hole in the back face of the dresser and passing through the half-open drawer, between Ty and Tiff.

Ty tried to shut the drawer, but all of his focus was on maintaining traction on the wet floor, one foot on the doorframe of the bathroom, the other on the ground, shoulders and one hand against the dresser.  He didn’t have the leverage.

The little thing came out, teeth gnashing, and Ty opted to roll away rather than get bitten.

Without Ty’s efforts helping to keep the dresser in place, the mountain man managed to push it back.  Eva hopped back to the floor to try to cover for Ty’s portion, but momentum was momentum, and the wet floor let it coast.

Around the time everyone collectively abandoned their efforts to hold the barricade together, the mountain man grabbed the dresser with one hand and hurled it.  It flipped end over end, clipping Tiff and Eva both, before crashing onto the floor in two pieces.

A dozen of the spindly little tooth freaks, and a trio of other Others were in the stairwell now, the mountain man in the lead, blood pouring from one destroyed eyeball, and a gash on his cheekbone.  The trio were composed of a nigh-identical brother-sister pair, dark haired, expressions grim, glaring, as they ascended the stairs.  Teenagers, he wore shorts, she wore a skirt, her polo shirt had lace at the collar and sleeves, her hair long at the back, but they were otherwise the same.  Same severe bangs, same expression, same exact rocking of their bodies from side to side as they picked their way around the spindly things and made their way up the stairs.

The one behind them was a robot, it seemed.  I didn’t get a very good look.

Callan ducked into the room with Roxanne, Kathy, and Christoff.  I could see Christoff peering through the ajar door before the mountain man stepped forward.  Callan appeared, a flash of his face, and the door slammed.

“Eva,” Ty said.

She glanced back.  Ty held out a set of nails with what looked like gift tags attached to the ends with string.  I couldn’t make out the letters on the tags, but they didn’t look like English.

“They work?” she asked.

“Probably not.”

All the same, she flipped the machete over, gripped the handle in her teeth, and took the nails.  The tags fluttered.

“Confined quarters,” Alexis commented.  She was supporting Tiff, who’d toppled when the dresser went flying.  “Hard to fight.”

The big guy moved, swinging the Hyena, which looked ludicrously small in his grip.  Eva blocked it with the curtain rod, and the rod lost in the exchange.

He lunged, swinging his fist with the Hyena clasped within it, and Eva tossed the remains of the curtain rod down.

The mountain man’s foot came down right on the rod and flattened the end.  Solid metal, by the look of it.

“Harder for him than for me,” Eva commented, as she moved the machete to her free hand.  “Don’t presume to know anything about fighting.”

“Whatever,” Alexis said.  “It doesn’t look like you’re winning, and our escape route is behind him.”

“Or through the window,” Eva said.  “Sloped roof, snow…”

“I put a diagram on the window,” Ty said.  “There’s stuff out there.”

“Of course there is,” Eva said.  “But maybe that stuff is easier to deal with than this stuff.”

“The diagram, that the crucified bat thing?” I asked.

“Yeah.  I figured like repels like, so… what better to scare off the gargoyle-bats than a dead gargoyle bat?  I was improvising.”

“I don’t see any gargoyle-bats,” Tiff said.  “Maybe it worked.”

The mountain man bent down and picked up the curtain rod.  He bit down on the flattened end, tearing away excess metal.

The solid metal rod ended in a crude point.

“Brilliant,” Peter said.  “You armed him.”

“He was supposed to slip,” Eva said.  “S.O.P. against giants and brutes, take away their footing.  But nooo, fuck physics, he gets to break the rules.”

The mountain man stabbed with the spear, and Eva parried.  She resumed her previous position, body turned sideways, machete extended, nails held between her fingers in the hand behind her.  The mountain man barely moved at all.  He didn’t need a fighting posture.  He was tall enough to hit his head on the ceiling if he jumped a little, and wide enough that he could touch both walls of the hallway without difficulty.  It wasn’t a narrow hallway.  When the family had met for the inheritance, everyone had been gathered in here, sometimes three across, without feeling like any personal space was being violated.

He stabbed again, a movement of the arm, without his body or footing changing.  Eva threw herself to the side, forearm pressing against the blunt edge of the blade for a little extra leverage.

He brought the Hyena down.  Almost face to face with him, she deflected the swing with her forearm and elbow, forcing the arm down to the side.

Even as a deflection rather than a block, the impact sent her down, off balance.  She stopped herself from falling flat on the ground by stabbing the machete through his foot to the floor.

Still in a crouching position, machete-wielding arm extended in front of her, she punched the nails into the softer part of his stomach.

Unarmed, she threw herself back, accepting Ty’s offered hand in getting to her feet.

The mountain man stared down at his impaled foot.  He raised it a half foot, sliding it up and down the machete’s blade.  He raised it as high as it would go before reaching the handle, then angled his foot and brought it down.  The metal snapped and broke underfoot.  He scraped his foot back and forth, doing more damage in the process, until the metal fragments fell loose from his foot.

He faced down an unarmed Eva.

“Those tags-” she started.

“-Were supposed to do something by now,” Ty said.  “Sorry.”

Eva turned her head and spat, shaking her arm, as if trying to relieve herself of pins and needles.

The big guy swung the Hyena.  Eva leaned back out of the way, then shook her arm again.

She, and we collectively retreated.  Odd as it was, even in the mirrorverse, I was limited to the more undisturbed reflections, and when everyone was packed into the hallway like this, I was just as pressed for space as they were.

I didn’t feel eager to jump into the fray and get cast down again.  I’d pressed it too far earlier.  I didn’t like the look of those twins.

The robot stood behind them.  A man, prim and proper, with ken-doll hair all in one solid piece.  Gears turned visibly at his joints.

I could see Eva open and close her fist.

“That scar earlier…” I said.  “From the faceless woman.”

“Hurts like a motherfuck.”

“The nerves, though.  You were moving your hand funny,” I commented.

“Still am.  Like playing a fucking video game with all the buttons mapped wrong.  You can do it, but it sucks.  Instead of A, B, C, D, it’s A, Z, Q, F.  You adapt.”

“Not that fast,” Alexis said.

“I adapt then,” Eva said, moving a little forward, then back, as if gauging the mountain man’s willingness to react.  “Shut up and let me focus on the fighting?”

I scanned the area.

Green Eyes.

The door was ajar.  Was she observing?

“Green, on three,” I said.

“Go fuck yourself.  I’m doing this my way,” Eva said.

“Two,” I said.

The mountain man lunged, sticking the curtain rod out.  Eva stepped aside.  He simply moved his hand to the right, and swept her into the wall with enough force to make a thud.

I advanced.  Through the reflection, out of the water to break the surface.  “Three!”

I’d made sure to step out before I urged Green Eyes to come out.  Her body disturbed the shallow pool of water even more.  Before, I’d had seconds to act before I was shunted.  Cast aside.  Forcibly relocated.  Now I was far less willing to be moved, because I knew I’d get moved down.  Each time, a little deeper, a little slower to recover.

If I’d had four or five seconds before, I now had three and a half.  That last half-second had to be dedicated to moving myself to the nearest reflection.  I couldn’t take chances.

Going for the weapon type I was most familiar with, I grabbed the broken machete’s handle.  I sliced the mountain man’s calf.

He turned to look for the attacker, and Eva struck out, kicking in the general area where the nails had embedded his stomach, retaking his attention.

I moved, putting myself between the automaton and the twins.  The gangly little biters retreated from me, apparently content to let the big guys do the fighting.

The female twin looked my way.  The male was focused on Green Eyes, who was on her belly, emerging from the bathroom, elbows bent, hands planted on the ground.  The mountain man was tall enough to obscure the light, and the hallway was gloomy.  Her eyes glowed faintly in the dimmer light.

Green Eyes lunged.  Pouncing by virtue of her forearm strength alone, mouth yawning wider than it had a right to.  I followed suit going after the female of the twins.

The male twin caught Green Eyes, staggering backward with her weight and momentum, and her teeth slammed shut an inch from his nose.

The female of the twins backed away a step.  Almost casually, she drew a knife from each sleeve and stabbed Green Eyes twice, a one-two motion, once in the body, once at the face.

Green Eyes moved fast enough that the knife aimed at her face only grazed her temple, the cut disappearing into her pale hairline.

Already, the male twin was twisting.  Moving to deal with me.  I’d gone after his counterpart, and she’d retreated.  Now he turned on me.  I caught a glimpse of the broken bit of metal in his hand.  A bit of the machete that had probably flown off.

I blocked the thrust as best as I could with my arm, but rather than try to stay and wrestle, risking losing my footing and falling, I turned to move to the nearest reflection, heading into the bathroom.  He used the opportunity to land a grazing hit on actual flesh at my back.

I had so little to spare.

I returned to the hallway to see Green Eyes fighting the female twin, while the male defended his sister, striking at her.  Not deep wounds, but a knife wound was a knife wound.  I saw flesh part, already pulled tight against Green Eyes’ skeletal frame, and it was eager to separate.  Blood flowed, dark, and bone gleamed, exposed so easily.

“Stop, Green!” I said.

She twisted around, tail swinging like a bludgeon.  When it got caught between herself and the male twin, she thrust out.  Pushing herself and him away.  The female twin struck at the fan of her tail fin with the knife, cutting at the webbing.

The twins settled back in a fighting posture.  For them, it was hands at their sides.  The female twin faced me, her back to Green Eyes.  The male twin faced Green Eyes, his back to me.

Their postures mirrored one another exactly.

Go for one, they only defend, or dodge, and their counterpart attacks.

Even working with Green Eyes, there was a fraction of a second’s difference in timing, and the twins could use that.

Behind the automaton, another group of Others gathered.  The small toothy motherfuckers were heading upstairs, climbing up the railing to head for Ellie, Andy, and Evan.

Fuck.

“Those tiny fuckers!” I shouted.

Eva spoke without taking her eyes off the mountain man.  “Homonculi from Sandra’s extended circle.  Anyone who loses a fight to one deserves to die.”

Homonculi.  Right.

“They’re going upstairs.”

“Stop them!”

“I can’t.”

“The moment my brother dies, I’m coming after you,” she said.  “Every one of you, and I break-”

She grunted as the mountain man swung at her.

“-your arms and legs and I’ll take bids on which other can do the most horrible thing to each-”

I tuned her out.  I had other things to focus on.

The male twin drew a knife and handed it to his sister.  She didn’t even look as she accepted it.

One organism.  Operating in perfect sync.

“I wanted to do better,” Green Eyes said, panting.

“You’re doing fine,” I said.  I eyed the spot of exposed rib at her side, the knife wound in her stomach, and the bit of her skull that I could see beside her eye.  The skin had split like stretched saran wrap, and the edges of the wounds were oozing.  “Except those cuts, they look ugly.”

She made a face, like she was genuinely hurt on an emotional level.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

She managed to smile a bit, her white teeth flashing whiter without the veiny translucent skin covering them.  “I know.”

The automaton behind me was advancing.  I had very little space to work with between it and the twins.

I saw some Others make use of the room to head upstairs.

Third floor lost.  I could only pray that Evan and Ellie were doing okay.

Going down the hall, we had my friends and Peter at one end of the hall, then Eva, the mountain man, Green Eyes, the twins, me, and then the crowd of Others ascending the stairs, in that order.  Off to the left of the twins was the bedroom with the rest of the Thorburns.

If the twins stopped focusing on Green Eyes and me, they could easily head right into the bedroom with the gathered Thorburns.

We were alternating enemy and ally, here.  One-on-one, we were losing.

Meaning someone had to take the fall.

“Take the big guy!” I shouted.

She didn’t hesitate, going after the mountain man’s exposed back.  She leaped, the fingertips on one hand finding purchase on his back, the other hand on the wall for leverage.  Her scaled tail wrapped around one side of his body, and the individual scales were barbed.  When she moved her tail around to the other side of his body for more leverage, she took strips of skin with it.

Her fins flared, the spines standing out, two or three scraping through the flesh like so many knives, and she sank her needle-teeth into the base of his neck, where his spine met his shoulders.

But while she was busy with him, I was left to deal with the twins.

One organism.  Not joined by any physical connection, but something else altogether.  Four arms, four legs, two heads and two bodies.  Four knives, now that they’d fully armed themselves.  They were quick, and they were brutal.  Every time I saw an opening, I’d attempt to exploit it and achieve nothing, except opening myself up for an attack to one flank.

Recovering, changing to the nearest reflection, closer to Green Eyes, I decided to change tacks.  Not going for the opening, but attacking straight on.  Attack the attacker, not the vulnerable one.  The old plan was turning out so badly, this had to be better.

One knife pierced right through my right hand, arresting the forward movement and causing me to drop the broken machete.  Her other knife found the left side of my throat.

My free hand reached out, trying to grab her, to stop her.

Her brother impaled my left hand.  His knife found the right side of my throat.

New plan, worse than the old plan.

Their arms limbs crossed one another like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The two of them smiled in unison.  Their heads both tilted as they met each other’s eyes, two siblings that shared a secret.

I couldn’t stay.

I tore free, not giving a damn about the damage to my hand or my throat.

I thought about Eva’s fight with the revenant.  Just so long as I didn’t behead myself.

Recoiling, front of my throat torn out, mending slower than my hands, I stumbled back, and found myself in the mirror that Alexis wore.

Oh man, I felt weaker than I had before.  Only so much energy to spare on mending myself.  I was drawing from a reserve with a limit.

“Blake?” she asked.

I couldn’t respond.

Ty leaned forward, peering into the mirror.  “Yeah, that’s Blake.”

“Doing okay, Blake?”

I didn’t, couldn’t respond.

“No, I think,” Ty said.

Ahead of us, Green Eyes was crawling out of the way of the mountain man’s reaching hands, slithering this way and that, dragging barbed scales through his skin as she went.  Tracks of sliced and flayed skin marked his back, shoulders and arms.  She bit into his shoulder.

He turned, reaching for her, and in the doing, he put weight on the one leg I’d wounded earlier.  His leg buckled a little.  Green Eyes swept her tail across his arm, cutting him.

Eva kicked him, full-strength, three times in the side.  He lost a little more ground.

But the twins were advancing, going for Green Eyes.

The whole plan with ganging up went both ways.

Back to the fray, because my friends wouldn’t recover like I could.  My throat and hands had partially healed, and that would have to do.

I’d reveled in frenzy earlier, now the shoe was on the other foot.  From the moment I appeared, I was back on the defensive.  The twins were acting in concert, cutting at me, brother slashing, then sister, then brother, each cut or thrust coming within a tenth of a second of the last.  It was all I could do to deflect the lightest blows with my arms and keep stepping back out of the way of the rest.

I retreated, moving to a new reflection.

Which meant I hadn’t accomplished a thing.  They were still advancing on Green Eyes.

Think like a practitioner, I thought.

What were they?  Damned if I knew.  I wasn’t a hundred percent willing to slap the bogeyman label on them, but I wasn’t ruling it out either.

Simpler line of thinking, then.

One word, to sum it up.

Coordination.

Connection, finesse.  They were bound to one another.

Opposite technique.

I moved to the fallen, shattered dresser, and reached through the water’s surface for the one drawer that stuck out the most.  There was hardly anything in it.

With a two-handed grip, spinning, I hurled the thing at the twin’s backs with all the strength my body could manage.

They’d heard something, because they both turned, then flung themselves to either side of the hallway.

But the drawer hadn’t sailed down the middle of the hallway.  The brother moved to the left, the sister to the right, but the hurled drawer struck the brother in the shoulder.

I didn’t get to see all of the aftermath.  I was forced to move back.

I saw the clockwork automaton move, and dodged to one side.

Its fist punched through the floor.

I heard an audible click, a k-chunk, as if the thing was changing gears, and it straightened.  Water flowed into the hole in the floorboards as it took a step forward.

Papers flew through the air, around the mountain man, past the twins.

The automaton retreated, arms raised, as if it was something more than paper.

Looking back, I saw Ty, one hand raised with a stack of paper on it.  He did the ‘make it rain’ effect, slapping it to send the papers flying forward, and each one soared like a paper airplane.

Several others retreated downstairs.

It bought me time to deal with the twins.

The pair had turned around to face me, shielded from the flying paper by the mountain man’s bulk, their facial expressions and body language were identical.  Solemn, frowning, and yet somehow conveying a great deal of displeasure with me.  I’d actually hurt them.

Then, acting out of sync, the brother turned his head to look at his sister.  She continued facing me.

She sheathed a knife, then used the one existing knife to cut her shirt.  She rasped her arm with the side of the blade with three quick motions, until it started bleeding.  She caught one drop of blood with the blade, then flicked the knife out, casting it aside.

Only when she was done did she draw her knife.

When I looked at him, I saw where the corner of the drawer had clipped him.

Torn shirt, light scrape.

The trickles of blood on each arm matched.

They broke into runs, heading my way.

Well, I wasn’t above using the same strategy twice.

I gripped and hurled another drawer.

It was heavier, with some contents, and in trying to compensate for it, I threw it too high.  The twins stepped away, to either side of the hall.

It hit the mountain man, further down the hall.  He had to shift his footing, and the clothing fell out to disturb his footing, but that was all the damage it did.   Eva was on the assault, and gory wounds marked his back.  Green Eyes dragged clawed fingertips through the gore with far too much ease.  The mountain man’s muscle broke away with a weird stringy quality, like the contents of a spaghetti squash.

Before the twins reached me, I moved across reflections.  Toward the mountain man.

The twins had reversed direction to face me by the time I’d emerged.  I grabbed the drawer I’d just thrown.  They came after me.

A blunt, blind, wild swing to the side, much like the reckless way I’d thrown it.

Crudity to match finesse.

The sister caught the drawer before it could hit her head.  Her sibling lunged to capitalize on my shifted focus.

I ignored the lunge, the stabs to my side, and I pressed the attack.  I charged, pushing forward, using raw strength to just ram her back.  Her brother shifted his stance, skipping back with rapid steps to match.

Pushing the girl at a diagonal, I knocked her into the wall.  When she stopped, fairly abruptly, the corner of the drawer hit the corner of her eyebrow, near the bridge of her nose.

Wait for it…

The brother drew his knife.

He struck himself with the hilt.

My eye flickered over to his sister.  She was watching him.

But she had a fleck of blood.

I was almost too late.  He brought the knife up, point moving to the injury-

I brought the drawer up, helping him along with a quick bludgeon.  Hitting the butt end of the knife.

When I lowered the drawer, the knife was stuck through his eye socket, just above his eyeball.

The one time they’re out of sync.

The sister watched her brother wobble, then collapse.

Long seconds passed.

Like lightning, she slammed her own knife into her eye socket.

When she collapsed, dead her body was a parallel to her brother’s.  Their arms crossed in the middle of the hallway.

When I turned to look, the mountain man had fallen.  His head was charred, like it had been burned, while his wounds bubbled like someone had poured hydrogen peroxide on them.  My friends had done the former, I was guessing, while the latter had to do with Green Eyes.  In the midst of it, her body slick with foamy gore, Green Eyes had her teeth around his spine, pulling it free from the bloody ruin of his back, arms straining to help her pull it up and away.

Eva stabbed the broken curtain rod between body and spine, then leveraged it to one side until the spine broke.

“Here,” Tiff said.  She grabbed the Hyena, holding the pommel with two fingers so she wouldn’t impale her hand on spikes, and tossed it in my general direction.

I reached through the water, only to grab it.  My hand barely made a ripple.

Green Eyes smiled as she saw me.  There was gore between her teeth.  “We did it!”

I wasn’t able to muster the same enthusiasm.

There were an awful lot of Others at the end of the hall.  The automaton, one skeleton with what looked like praying mantis arms made of bone, swaddled in cloth, and one very large, very fat goblin.  Some were still migrating upstairs.  Others were hanging back, focused on us.

“Upstairs,” I said.  “They got upstairs.”

I could see my friends behind Eva, shifting position, as if ready to retaliate against her.

But Eva didn’t do anything.

Thing was, when she did decide to do something, she’d do it in a flash, and one of my friends would be dead.

A chunk of the mountain man broke away, the surrounding flesh dissolving.

“We’re fighting our way through, then.” Eva asked, her eye on the end of the hall.  “We’ll need something that hits a hell of a lot harder.”

“We don’t have-”

“We’ll need something,” she said, raising her voice.

It wasn’t an option.  If we said no, if we gave up on the chance that somehow Ellie and Evan were holding out against the same caliber and quantity of Others that we’d just barely managed to fight, then she had no reason to keep cooperating with us.

She was going to save her brother.  No question.

Her and her brother.  The twins I’d just dealt with…

Why couldn’t I have that kind of relationship with Rose?  I mused.

Then I thought about how the twins had gone down together.  How the witch hunter so willing to go down fighting if it meant helping Andy.

Maybe not.

“Something,” I said.  “I don’t suppose anyone has the key to the library?”

“Yeah,” Alexis said.

“We’ll need elbow room,” I said.

“I can help,” Ty said.  He held up the stack of papers.  “Did these a bit ago.”

“Those are?”

“Command words.  Ofuda.  A Japanese style of practitioning.  I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I went down the list and copied out words.  Figured it’d be better to get a virtually guaranteed one or two out of the deck right than risk getting none or all.”

“Don’t suppose you have any paper?”  Alexis asked.  “I wouldn’t mind something to write on.”

Ty reached into a pocket and handed some over.  “Go for it.  Runes work, but you really need to frame it, so the paper is the diagram and contact with anything but the ends or the edges releases the word.  Runes will just go off right away, indiscriminate.”

“I’m… just going to do regular runes.  How do you throw it?”

“The spirits carry it forward.  They’ll find the right target.  Path of least resistance.”

“Right,” Alexis said.

The press of bodies made one or two Others advance a bit, flanking the automaton.  The bone mantis and a fat man who looked like some schlub off the street, but with eerie dead eyes.  I took one look at him and thought Gacy.

They were dangerously close to the bedroom with the Thorburns inside.

Green Eyes, Eva and I moved forward, ready to confront the mass.  At our approach, they retreated.

Still had to get the Thorburns out of the bedroom.

I was so not looking forward to another skirmish so soon after the last.

“Uh, no,” Ty said, behind me.  “If you write fire, and fire takes the path of least resistance in a wooden house with wooden walls, what’s going to happen?”

“Right.”

“You sure like fire,” Tiff said.

“Fire works,” Alexis said.

“Gotta love fire,” Eva said.  “Hey, that reminds me.  Horrible fates awaiting you guys if my brother’s dead?  Fire’s a good one.  Fire hurts.  One of the worst ways to die, frankly.”

“Actually, you don’t die by burning when you die in a fire,” Tiff said.  “You suffocate from the smoke.”

“I won’t let you suffocate,” Eva replied, very matter-of-factly.

I believed her.

“Better,” Ty told Alexis.

“Good enough better?” I asked.

“Good enough.”

The next few seconds were basically what I’d done against the twins, only en-masse.  We charged the front group, Ty and Alexis flinging papers.  It was chaos, and in the midst of it, I alternately felt like I was doing it all and I was barely contributing.

But Ty got the door open.

“Roxanne, Kathy, Christoff, close your eyes!  Follow Ty!  Hold his hand!”

I didn’t get a chance to see what they were doing.

I only fought.  Brutal, savage, stupid fighting, where I seemingly took as many hits as I delivered.  No strategy, no tactics.

One praying mantis limb punched through the center mass of my body.

I pulled free, feeling the numb coldness sweep through me.  Some kind of poison.

But very little of me was flesh, still.

“Come!” I heard the voice, distant.

Green Eyes and Eva pushed out, then retreated.  I kept fighting, pushing forward, retreating, waiting for reflections to clear up, using the blood on the walls.

Not hard, the hallway was practically coated in blood.

Then I returned to the mirror in the library.

All the Thorburns gathered, my friends, and Eva.  Evan was perched on the upper floor, by Andy’s body.  Ellie was slumped over.  Evan had let them in.  Cracked the lock.

They’d tried to shut the doors behind them.

The clockwork automaton was there.  The Behaim’s work, no doubt, and its hands were keeping the door from shutting all the way.

Holding the door open a crack.

“Andy,” I heard Eva.

She was already climbing the ladder.

“Stop her!” I called out, but it was futile.

She’d reached her brother’s side.

I couldn’t attack him.

We had no leverage on the witch hunters, now.  Maybe we could have managed it if we could threaten her with all of our concerted efforts, but we couldn’t.

The witch hunters were the least of our problems, with the Thorburns gathered in the diabolist library, and monsters at the gates.

Duress 12.3

“Keep your eyes closed,” Alexis told the Thorburns, uselessly.

Silly.  The Thorburns that hadn’t yet collectively opened their eyes and looked around.

To be fair, it was kind of a miracle they’d obeyed this much.  Fear, it seemed, went a long way.  Not all the way, necessarily, but when the entire house probably reeked of blood and other noxious smells, I imagined it helped win over those fight or flight instincts that were so warped in this particular family, and get them back to their more primitive roots.

At the second floor entrance to the library, the clockwork man was straining to push the doors apart.  Ty held one of the sliding bookcases that formed the door, Alexis and Tiff were at the other, and despite their efforts, the clockwork man was holding his own.

Callan left Christoff behind, nearly slipping on a bloody footprint on the floor of the library as he headed to the door.  He added his strength to Ty’s.

The automaton lost a little bit of ground, fingers almost touching.  Tiny gears were at each knuckle, and as its hands drew closer together, the gears came close to touching.

Green Eyes twisted around to face the door.  I could see Kathryn and Roxanne step back as the mermaid moved across the floor using her arms, the natural moisture of her body reducing the friction as she moved forward.

I wasn’t sure if her sudden approach was a factor, if someone reacted with a bit of fear and lost their grip, but the automaton managed to push the doors apart.

Two little toothy guys came crawling through – one above the automaton’s head,  scaling the surface to cling to the underside of the second stage of the library, while another crawled between the clockwork man’s legs.

Green Eyes got the second, pouncing on it.  The first crawled up and around to the railing, then onto the second floor, lurking, before it made eye contact with Eva, kneeling at her brother’s side.  Ellie was a short distance away, having crawled back from Andy.

“Get them,” Eva said, “I’m not going to stop you.”

It scampered away on all fours, circling above us, fingernails and toenails making faint clicking and shuffling sounds as it disappeared from my field of view, lurking somewhere above.

I was stuck in the larger of the two mirrors, slowly recovering from a dozen scratches, and a gaping hole in the center of my body.  I could step outside, but the shutting of the door meant even I didn’t have passage.  I could step to the mirror Alexis wore, but the window was small, and she was active.  The risk of being locked out, unable to stop the problems inside the library from coming to pass, kept me from leaping behind the clockwork man and trying to interfere with it.

A brave little sparrow flew down, sweeping past the clockwork man.  Making some attempt to push, to drive him back or put him on his heels.

Nothing.  He only narrowly missed being torn to shreds by the group waiting behind the man.

Something clipped him, and he struggled to fly as he came back.  He landed at the edge of the desk, a short distance from me, his head jerking this way and that as he tried to take it all in.

The group was making more headway on the door.

There was a loud click, another k-chunk, and the automaton lost most of the ground it had gained, the bookcase doors sliding within an inch of being closed.  Sparks flew as spinning gears on different knuckles touched.

But in that click and shifting of gears, it had gained new strength.  The assembled group couldn’t stop it from pushing the doors apart, until its arms were outstretched to either side, the bookcases held apart as far as the automaton could manage.

The skeletal thing with great bone praying-mantis limbs ducked its head under the automaton’s outstretched arm, stepping into the library.  Three more homonculi passed under the mechanical man’s other arm.

Ty and Alexis’ paper tags touched the skeletal thing, and the papers stuck, a mixture of two very different handwriting styles.

“Nope,” I heard Eva say from upstairs.

The thing brushed at itself with one of its scythe limbs, and the papers came free.

She knew.  Is it an anti-practitioner measure?  Something special made for coming after people and creatures like us?

Green Eyes pounced on the scythe-armed thing, teeth gnashing as she bit into the bones of its shoulder and neck.

But it was only bone and tattered cloth.

There was refuge in simplicity, it seemed.

“Shit,” Callan said, watching the various measures fail, “Shit, shit, shit.”

Largely ignoring her, it turned toward Callan.

“Shit!” Callan said, his voice higher pitched at the end.

Like a fencer with a foil in hand, the thing stepped forward.  From the elbow on, its limb was like a great rib, sharpened at one side and drawn to a point.  It moved faster than I would have expected.

Callan’s throat opened up, blood welling.  He clasped one hand to his throat, eyes going wide.

Shit.

Black veins opened up around the wound site.  Where they traced the faint blue and red lines at his skin, the skin cracked.  The wound yawned open.

I could see his expression. The fear. The thought crossing his mind, the expression of agony, as he opened his mouth and tried to scream, but only burbled blood.

“Callan!” Christoff shrieked.

Christoff was just at the cusp of being a teenager and being a child.  In that cry, he was a little boy again.  Callan was his role model, old enough to be his father figure.

Maybe ignoble of me to think so, not so different from thinking ill of the dead, but he really could have done with better.

The black veins of poison, venom, or magic-induced necrosis were reaching Callan’s face now.  As the skin cracked, blood fell out in spurts or trickles, before the necrosis turned it black.  The skin between the dark tracks in his flesh was turning gray.

He half-coughed, half-spat blood, as if he could somehow clear his throat enough to say something, and failed.  Bowed over, face pointed at the ground, he charged.

He barreled right past Green Eyes and the reaper-thing.

“Callan!”  Christoff shouted, louder than before, a little more desperate.

Without even looking, Callan barreled into the left arm of the clockwork man.

The arm didn’t budge.  Metal, held firm by resistance, like a piece of the building. Had we been more coordinated, maybe Ty, Tiff, and Alexis might have been able to ease up the pressure and stop trying to push the doors closed, giving the clockwork man less bookcase to leverage himself against, but we weren’t, and they couldn’t.  If they eased up, there was nothing to stop him from simply striding inside, the remaining Others following.

Callan sprawled at the automaton’s feet, and one of the homonculi seized the opportunity to bite deep into his thigh.

More of the homonculi swarmed him, burying him beneath their collective mass.

The rest of the people in the room backed up until their backs were to walls or furniture, as the reaper-thing ventured to the room’s center.

I couldn’t do anything.  Even if I were there, I couldn’t save him, and I wasn’t in a position to use the distraction.

I was here.  With all the others.

“Kathryn,” I said, addressing my oldest cousin.  “Peter.”

Kathryn looked shell shocked.  She’d cursed Ellie out for being too slow on the draw, but now that they were confronted with the entirety of this reality, Kathy was the one having trouble getting a grip.

She’d dressed business casual, and it seemed to accentuate how very out of place she was.  She might have wanted to look more like a lawyer, more imposing than her two hundred pound build would suggest.  She was tall, her dirty blonde hair dyed brown and tied back into a severe ponytail, and her suit jacket made her broad shoulders look broader, while masking her stomach.  In a courtroom or business meeting, she would have been a tyrant.  Now she was the second tallest person in the room next to Callan, who was in the process of losing a few feet of height to tooth and claw, and probably the heaviest.

“Help him,” I told her.

Ten or twenty minutes ago, I might have added, ‘Or you all die.‘

But Kathryn looked at me.  She could see all of me, not just a face with lines across it.  A body that was more branch than flesh, with only skin and bone and muscle down the center of my face, the sides of the neck, and down the center of my torso.  My sweatshirt hung open, so I could reach into the side of my chest, and the shirt beneath was tattered enough to show the damage.  There was more flesh at the legs and buttocks, out of sight, and I hadn’t yet seen my groin turn to wood and bird, but I assumed it was a matter of time.

I still had a gaping hole in the middle of my chest.  It had narrowly missed my ‘heart’.

It was, perhaps, the final piece she needed to grasp all of this.  I was pretty sure I didn’t need to belabor the obvious.  The Thorburns were fucked up, but they weren’t stupid.  Mostly.

I think she got it.  She took the lead, grabbing the chair by the desk.  Holding it by the backrest, she swung it at a homonculus, killing the thing.

The reaper-thing moved its arm-scythe, raising it a fraction, and Kathryn threw herself to the side, almost falling in her haste to back off.

Only a slight movement of the bone scythe, but Kathryn had reacted severely.

Callan was still struggling as he was eaten alive by both the toxin and the homonculi.  Alexis, Tiff and Ty were a dangerously short distance from the reaper, still doing what they could with the bookshelf, keeping the clockwork man in place.

Peter was circling around, and the reaper seemed particularly interested in him.

Kathryn had a clear path to the bookshelf, automaton and just behind the automaton, Callan.

She didn’t take it.

“I’m a mom,” Kathryn said.

“So?” Peter asked.

The reaper was still tracking him, turning as Peter walked around.

“I’ve got people to look after.”

“So?  Do something, then,” he said.

I couldn’t understand how she even had to think about it.  That such a line of thinking was even possible.  Self preservation, yes, but she was trying to rationalize her way through this.  Invent some way through it.

Did she expect us all to tell her she should hang back?  We’d handle it on our own?

She had, I suspected, spent the entirety of her life with someone else available and ready to take the fall for her or cover for her.  Where others might have gotten spoiled or indolent, Kathryn had flourished under the combination of Uncle Paul and Aunt Steph and found some ambition.  She had a desire to be something more from Uncle Paul, knowledge on how to game the system from Aunt Steph, and unlike Callan, Kathryn hadn’t suffered the crushing disappointment of realizing she might never inherit the house.  She’d found her own path.  A path with a lot of victims and scapegoats left in her wake, but a path nonetheless.

This, right here, was Kathryn in a situation that was utterly alien to her.  The murder-reaper-thing, the clockwork man, the homonculi, a hallway drenched in blood and a long-lost cousin in a mirror weren’t the things she was having a hard time dealing with.

I suspected it had more to do with the fact that she was, for maybe the first time in her life, the only one truly accountable for her actions and their consequences.

More homonculi slipped into the room. Kathryn swung the chair, striking two, and the remainder backed away, unwilling to venture further.

There was a larger crowd outside.

“Do something!” she cried out.  I wasn’t sure who she was saying it to.  Everyone was already doing something, or were too injured or incapacitated to.  Unless she wanted Roxanne and Christoff to leap into the fight.

What she was saying didn’t matter so much as why.  Why was she demanding help?  Because she just couldn’t compute that this was on her.

Damn it, I hated my family.

“Go, Kathryn!” I said.  “Just go!”

She moved.  Failure to compute or not, she’d been on the verge of action, and my words propelled her forward.

With the sound of her footsteps, the reaper-thing turned, arm raising.  Green Eyes used her tail to try and bind the arm down, as if she was tying the skeleton thing down.  One more contortion among many that kept her on the offensive, her full body weight piled on it without making it so much as bend, doing her best to stay out of the way of those twin scythes.  Even as she worked to entwine it, the reaper still twisted its arm around, upper arm pressed against its body, the bit past the elbow jutting out.  It walked toward Kathryn, spike of bone sticking forth.

Peter threw a tome at it, striking it in the back of the head.  Same mistake that Green Eyes had made, trying to fight it or bite.  It didn’t function along those lines.  It didn’t have flesh to wound.  The only hurt that probably mattered was a bone-breaking level of hurt.

Even if he’d hoped to only distract it, it was a futile gesture.  It wasn’t human, and it wasn’t bogeyman.  It operated under different rules.  Seek out one target, dispatch.  I wasn’t sure how it defined what qualified as a target, but it seemed to like going after people, especially moving people.

I could see how close the fully-pinned-down arm was from the end of Green Eyes’ tail.

“Green Eyes!” I said.  “Back!”

She flung herself back, more snake than fish, and the force of the movement did serve to put the reaper off balance.

It was the distraction Kathryn needed to run past Tiff and Alexis, still holding the bookcase, and reach the automaton.

The old wooden chair crashed into the automaton’s legs.

The legs didn’t budge.

A man made of metal, it seemed, was pretty damn dense.

Where Kathryn’s strategy differed from Callan’s however, was that she wasn’t aiming to just hit the thing.

The chair remained where it was.  Gears and moving parts at the joints caught on the cross-shaped piece of wood that the individual wheels were attached to.  Something hitched, and the metal man’s leg jerked.  It took a step back with the one leg, repositioning.

The reaper drew its arm back, its attention on Kathryn.

“Kathryn!”  I shouted.

She turned to look, and belatedly brought the chair up.  It was a miracle more than anything that kept her from getting stabbed – the back of the chair she was holding caught the bone spike that was being stabbed at her, and by bringing up the rest of the chair, she knocked away the thing’s arm with the seat.

I could see the fear in her eyes.

Trust your instincts, I thought.

If nothing else, we Thorburns had a streak of stubbornness running through us.

She swung the chair at the reaper, and the legs caught in the spaces between the reaper’s bones.

But the arms weren’t bound anymore, and the thing could easily reach around the chair to attack Kathryn.

She pulled away, backing up, and the reaper decided to hit the old wooden chair instead, cleaving the seat from the section with the wheels.

It said a lot about just how shitty the homonculi were in a fight that Ty, Alexis and Tiff were fending them off pretty damn well with periodic kicks, while still holding the bookcase-doors in place.  So long as they kept their weight against the shelves, the automaton was frozen, unable to reposition itself.

Green Eyes approached the reaper, but it wheeled on her, no pun intended, and she stopped where she was.  Using her tail, she knocked the seat of the chair in Kathryn’s general direction.

She did the same thing she’d done before.  The seat of the chair was shoved into the clockwork man’s knee, and moving parts caught the wood.  The already damaged wood splintered, breaking, and was swept up in the mechanisms.

Unlike the prior leg, this one simply moved back as far as it would go, unresponsive.

Losing its grip, it moved its other leg forward.

The leg jerked.

Callan’s hand gripped the heel, keeping it from moving forward.

He couldn’t possibly be alive.  Not for much longer, anyway.

He’d grabbed it earlier, and held it even now.

Kathryn brought the chair down on the clockwork man’s arm, and the entire clockwork man went down, collapsing.  The library doors moved along their rollers, shutting as yet other Others tried to push forward, making their way over fallen bodies and swarming homonculi.

I could make out the click as the doors shut.

I could hear the pounding and scratching as the Others tore at the bookcases.

The defenses weren’t just physical, though.  I couldn’t enter, and the doors had held up to even the smiting of a god, when the defenses across the rest of the house had failed to.

But that was a sword that cut two ways.  The things battering on the door took any number of forms, and some, invariably, could be forms that could break into the library.  If the library was a section of folded space, there were attackers that didn’t care about space to begin with.  It was only a matter of time before they made their way into the library.

Or, as I noted the reaper’s presence, they could break out, and let others inside in the process.

Looking up at the second tier of the library, I could see Eva at the railing.  She was standing by her brother, who was still limp, leaning over, apparently content to watch.

With the section of floor ringing us above, it was like we were in a gladiatorial arena, all of us against the monster, me trapped in the mirror, the rest in various states of injury, awe, or confusion.

“My brother,” Christoff said, focus on the closed door, and not on the reaper.  He didn’t cry, his face didn’t crumple.  I would have thought he looked stunned, but his eyes were too alert, albeit moist.

“Was dead already,” Peter commented.  “He tried to sacrifice himself heroically and he fucked it up.”

“No,” I said.  “He held the machine’s ankle.”

“If you want to make shit up for the kid, that’s cool, but trust me, Callan’s not worth it,” Peter said.

“I can’t lie,” I told him.  “Pretty damn sure I can’t lie.  One of the rules.  So if I say I saw Callan hold that thing back enough for us to close the door-”

“Okay,” Christoff said, cutting me off.  “Okay.”

I kept talking anyway.  “He did good, Christoff.  I’m not his biggest fan either, but he did good.”

Christoff set his jaw.

With the door closed, the group that had been keeping the door in place was now free to spread out, giving a wide berth to the reaper.

Or whatever it was.

Touch of death, skeleton body, scythe arms, and tattered rags.

I was also aware that there were a few homonculi lurking about.  One or two that had apparently collapsed as Kathy had hit them with chairs or one of my friends had kicked them were gone now.  Slipping away while our collective attention was elsewhere.

Ominous.

The mortals ringed it, while I watched from the mirror.  Now and again, I moved to the mirror Alexis wore, trying to get a better view of the reaper.

No, I wasn’t helpless.  I was loathe to spend power if my connection to this world was as tenuous as it had seemed to be earlier, and I didn’t feel like I should imbue an object and attack the reaper or Eva.  It would be too easy for me to take too much, or for them to retaliate and cast me out.

If I couldn’t get in while the doors were shut, what did that say about my ability to get out?  What happened if the mirror broke?

There was only one place that would take me.

Okay, maybe two, but I really hoped I wasn’t due a visit to hell.

No, I wasn’t limited to just standing here.

I broke into a run, heading for the shelves, climbing the ladder to the second floor.

I found the bookshelf on types of Other.

Risen: a treatise on the animate deceased.

Morte Vilify: Perversions of Death.

I began flipping through.  I cheated, looking only for the pictures.

Nothing in the first book.  I set it aside.

Perversions of Death, then.

All of the pictures were in the middle.

Wood cut images.  I found something damn close to the reaper in one picture, joined by two others.  The reaper-alike had a long jaw and fingers stretched out to the same length as its forearm, the tips sharpened.  It had one brother with flesh attached, bloated fat, spiked orbs hooked to a swollen, distended tongue, from dangling genitals and from the intestine that protruded from its middle.  The third was gaunt, but had skin draped over it, heavy iron rings causing the skin to stretch down.  Her lower teeth were exposed, while the skin formed a dress around her lower half, the skin of her breasts wrapped around her chest and hooked in front with a large metal ring on the upper.  The skin of her hands was joined together and folded around, so her arms formed a permanent loop.

The Bane is form’d of one with a blight of body, already within the grasp of Death, they yet hold a breath of life.  The Dark Necromagus must be at the bedside of the deceased as they cross over, to catch the breath in a prepared vessel.  Thrice must the blighted man be bestowed that foul breath that escapes the mouth of the long dead, as airs and humors bloat the corpse, the soul released at death introduced between each to accept and accommodate those airs most foul.  During these times the body will be well restrained, as the soul will be in the worst of agonies and the body will not be limited to their normal strength.

“Tell me how to kill it,” I said.  “Come on…”

Those Magi who practise with the dead in ways most profane take some time to prepare the Bane, according to the nature of the blights that claimed them.  For a blight of bone, the skeleton will be stripped, softened and re-hardened by alchemic admixtures.  For a blight of the lower stomach, the intestines will be dragged out and repurposed–

Skipping ahead.

Peter had protected himself from one of the scythe-claws with a book that he was now holding in front of him with both hands, but the scythe was eating away at the paper, and the point was drawing closer to him.

The others had a chain wrapped around the other scythe and were trying to hold it back.  Tug of war, against one individual.

I kept reading.

The Bane is oft used as a devise against those who practise, for death has already taken them thrice over, while their spirit and soul are inured to the worst torments and agonies.  Barriers will serve their purpose, but hexes and deleterious magics will often glance off the Bane, rendering them a potent devise against the unwary.  Without expecting their workings to go awry and come back to them, such a Magus might find themselves dealing with their own practises and the Bane both.

The creator must deliver their instructions to the Bane with gravest care, as the Bane is obedient to a fault, the soul broken many times over.  Once destroyed, the Bane will never return.

Still nothing about how to destroy it.

When defending oneself against a Bane…

Here we were.

…care must be taken, as the Bane is a thing of blight, and will blight all it touches.  Many will alter their Banes to make this contact easier.  Fire will serve if the Bane was carelessly wrought, but many will be coated or painted to protect their flesh.  One might surmise that the Nosferatu are a natural variation of the Bane, insofar as they are natural.  The Nosferatu, if this theory were correct, would incubate spirits of death within them, and depositing them within a victim, inviting them to and from the veil of death.  The blight, both pre-existing and given, would be one of the blood.

As such, consider the same methods that function on the Nosferatu.  A length of green wood will serve as a conduit for the living energies to vacate the dead prison that confine them.  Natural energies, too, will suffice, with daylight, running water from a natural source, lightning strikes, clean fire if the Bane is not pre-treated, a spike of crystal, or a stalagmite with a history of attachment to the ground serving to provide this conduit of natural forces.  Like the Nosferatu, the Bane is a wretched thing, and death should be seen as a mercy.

The Bane was partially wrapped in chain.  It hacked at the chain with one of its bone scythes, and Ty intentionally dropped the chain, making it too slack to cut.

The chain around the undead creation was starting to look a little worse for wear.

“It’s called a Bane.  Green wood is supposed to kill it,” I said.

“Nope,” Ty said, snatching up the chain off the ground.  The two different ends of chain were being held at opposite ends of the Bane, “All out, unless that wood you’re made of is green.”

“No,” I said.

The chain snapped, a link breaking.  Ty nearly lost his balance as the sudden slack in the chain loosed.

The chain had caught on bone.  It was still caught, only one arm somewhat free.

“Running water,” I said.

“Opening the door is a bad idea.”

“Wouldn’t work.  Needs to be from a natural source.  Lightning.  Not sure of that needs to be natural either.”

“Lights in here are spiritual, not connected to the house,” Alexis said.

“Column of stone?” I said.

“No go.”

“Crystal spike.”

“I’ve been in every nook and cranny of these cabinets,” Tiff said.  “I’d have noticed that.”

I nodded.

I saw Peter’s head raise.  “Bitch.”

We collectively looked.  I had to step to Alexis’ mirror and then back to the larger mirror to move down to the lower level and see.

Eva had a stake in her hand.  She was leaning on the railing, and tossed the stake in the air, catching it.  One mistake away from dropping it and letting it fall to the floor below.

“Green wood?” I asked.

“Cut earlier tonight.”

“Give it here!”  Ty called out.

“You can go fuck yourselves,” Eva said.  “This is my insurance against that thing, but I don’t have any reason to save you.”

More links broke.

I saw Evan take to the air, sparrow wings flapping.  Whatever hit he’d taken earlier, he was still in one piece.

The witch hunter caught the stake, and didn’t toss it again.

“If you try, little bird,” she said, “I will stake you.  Your tricks won’t work.”

Evan was a soul in a different form, just like the Bane was.

I wasn’t entirely sure the method of soul extraction wouldn’t work on him too.

“Evan,” I said.  “No.”

“Dang,” he said, before settling on the railing opposite Eva, the furthest point in the room from her.

My eye fell on Ellie.

It would have been perfect if Ellie had been willing to play ball, to steal the stake and make her way downstairs.

But this wasn’t that kind of scene.  Ellie wasn’t that type.

If she had the stake, I could trust her to run away and maybe get it to us.

“What else did the book say?” Eva asked.  “There’s one obvious option, but it doesn’t get mentioned that often.”

One obvious option?

“Daylight?” I asked.  The only thing I hadn’t mentioned.

“I bet you wish the sun was rising anytime soon,” she said.  “Think twice.”

I felt like it was on the tip of my tongue.  I’d read something not so dissimilar, once upon a time.

“She wants us to do it,” Peter commented.

She wanted us to do it.

Right.  I had to look at her through the lens I used to view the Thorburns.  Through the twisted, fucked up viewpoint.

She wanted us to hurt.  To suffer.

Ah.

“Bone,” I said.  “Like a green stake is living wood, a fresh bone…”

“Exactly,” Eva said.

“Christoff,” Peter said.  “You’ve been useless so far.  You’ve-”

“You’re not serious,” Alexis said.  “He’s a child.”

The last essential links broke.  Kathryn and Alexis fell as their end of the chain lost its tension.

“Someone better volunteer an arm,” Eva said, “Or everyone here volunteers their life.”

The noble Roman above the gladiator pit where lives were being fought for.  She was reveling in this.  Sadistic enjoyment.

Except, if I remembered right, things had never been like they were in the movies.  It was all for sport, and few lives were lost.

Which made Eva worse than some of the more decadent and corrupt emperors in Rome.

Fuck.

The Bane turned on Peter.

“Why me?” Peter asked.  “Third fucking time.  The fuck?”

“Karma,” I said.  “Apparently you’ve racked up more bad karma than any of us, except maybe me, and I’m inside a mirror.”

“Karma?” Kathryn asked.

“Lies,” I said.  “Lies are one.  Even if you’re not a part of all this, it adds up.  Wronging people, breaking your word…”

“I’m fuuuuucked,” Peter said, backing away from the Bane.  “Fuck me.  Kicking myself for ever thinking this stuff was cool.  Even with the scary stuff… if there’s karma, I’m so completely and utterly fucked.”

“More than you know,” I said.  “You inherit the house, you inherit all the bad karma dating back generations.  We weren’t good wizards, in case you weren’t aware.”

“Shit,” he said.  He tried to feint to the left, then dodge right, but the thing wasn’t fooled.  “Ah fuck.  Fuck me.”

Was I willing to do something with sympathetic magic?

What could I do that they couldn’t?  My bones weren’t necessarily alive.

Breaking through the mirror?  I hadn’t been able to hurt the faceless woman.  What if I tried to use the Hyena and failed here? I’d have one mirror left and the problem would still be here.

The Hyena was almost the opposite of what we needed here.

“Ah no.  Shit,” Peter said, as his options for escape started to run out.  The room was circular, but there was furniture at the edges, and as fast as he could duck to one side, the Bane could follow him.

“Chop off your arm,” Eva taunted.  “Stab it through the heart or face.  You seem resourceful.  I give you one in four chances you’ll manage it.  One in ten you’ll survive the attempt.  It’s delicious.”

“Ellie,” Peter said.  “I… wish I had something clever or meaningful to say.”

Ellie moved to the railing, gripping it and peering over.  “You’re an asshole, Peter.  Don’t you dare die.”

“Seeing what happened to Callan-”

“I didn’t see.”

“It’s gonna be a bad one.  Um.  If you make it out of this, you can have my stuff.”

“Fuck you, I don’t want your stuff,” Ellie said.

“Alright,” he said.  There was a note of finality in his voice.  “Right.  Cool.”

Ellie scrambled to the side.

Charging Eva.

She took the kick hard, crashing into the railing.

“Please,” she begged.  “Please.  He’s my brother.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Eva said.

Ellie crawled forward a bit.

“I’ll do anything,” Ellie said.

“I don’t want anything you have.”

It was, perhaps, a meeting of polar opposites.

Eva was the alpha dog, the one who won fights.  The snarling bitch that commanded respect by virtue of how badly she could kick your ass.

Ellie wasn’t.  Ellie was a coward, the type to hang her head and slink off out of sight.  She broke the rules and stole the scraps.  Alone, she begged and wheedled and cheated to forge her way.  As part of a group, she thrived, she mooched.  She was the omega.

It was common to think of the Alpha as the superior, to imagine that if we were wolves, we would want to be Alpha.

Ellie, I imagined, had never wanted that.  She’d learned to take her licks.  Even when she’d taunted the witch hunter earlier, baiting kicks, she’d been cultivating an impression.

Now, crawling forward, taking more hits, distracting, taking advantage of the fact that the witch hunter was watching out for the sparrow that might try to steal the wooden stake, she managed to throw herself forward four or five feet, taking another hard kick in the process.

She held a hypodermic syringe to Andy’s throat.  I could see the expression on her face.  Taut, like every muscle was drawn tight.

One momentary look, a meeting of eyes, eyes glittering with righteous anger, and she slammed the plunger down.

Eva kicked my cousin hard in the face.

“What was it!?”

“Save him!”

“What was it!?” Eva kicked Ellie again.

But Ellie had been to juvie and she’d been to prison, and she’d been the omega there too.  A thief, living on the bottom rung.  She was… easy to hate.  She’d taken beatings there too.

She wouldn’t break with this much.

“Save him,” she said, her voice in a different tone.

Rather than take the ladder, Eva leaped down, landing two paces behind the Bane.

Peter had opened a cabinet door and was using it as a meager shield.

Eva staked the thing through the back.

It crumbled into its constituent parts.  I saw a wisp of something person-shaped flow out of the base of the stake.

“There,” Eva said, standing back.  She turned to glare at us.  “Done.  Now you’re going to tell me what you gave him, or I’m going to kill you.  If you gave him drugs-”

“Poison,” Ellie said.  “There’s stuff in the cupboards.  I grabbed some while we were in here.  I filled the syringes.”

I glanced at our resident sparrow.

“She was rummaging.  She did something in the cupboards, until I told her she might let a monster out,” Evan said.

I nodded.

“Fuck,” Eva said.  “Poison isn’t some magical shit where you give the antidote and he gets all better.  If he’s dying and something is getting to him…”

“You’re going to help for the next few hours,” Ellie said, gripping the bars of the railing, her face pressed between them, glaring down.  “You’re going to have to trust us.”

“Trust you?” Eva asked, looking around.  “You’re some of the saddest, most disgusting excuses for humans I’ve ever met.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed.

Fuck, we were sad.  We were disgusting.  But Callan’s dying action, and Ellie stepping in to save her brother…

“Thanks,” Peter said, looking up at his sister.

“Don’t,” she spat the word.  “Don’t you dare.  When this is done, I’m going to hit you five times for every time she’s hit me.”

“Sure, Ellie,” Peter said, smiling.

The pounding and the scratching continued on the doors, upstairs and downstairs both.  I could see dust fall from the edges of the shelves, and I wasn’t sure that there weren’t cracks on the backs of the bookshelf doors that hadn’t been there before.

They would find their way inside.

Worse, I wasn’t sure what the Thorburns would do if they stayed cooped up here.  Kathryn, Christoff and Roxanne were all glancing around the room.  Ellie was focused on us – she’d already looked around.

Peter, the idiot, was using the edge of his sweatshirt to hold the fallen scythe-bone from the Bane.

Evan landed on the corner of the desk beside me.

“Sorry,” he said.  “Letting them in-”

“Was smart,” I finished for him.  “It’s good.  We’re mostly safe.  Except for Callan.”

Christoff’s eyes went to the floor.

“These doors won’t hold,” I said, mainly to distract the remaining Thorburns from looking too intently at the books and trinkets around us.

“No,” Alexis said.  “Tiff, you’re the best one at the protective stuff.  Can you do something?”

Tiff nodded.

“We need a plan,” I said.

“I’m open to hearing any plans,” Ty said.

“If this continues, we’ll have only one place to go,” I said.  “The fourth floor, maybe.”

“That’s the worst idea I’ve heard out of your mouth,” Alexis said.

“I know,” I said.  “But I’m about to trump it.”

“Oh boy,” Peter said.  “This should be good.”

I was thinking of the number of times that fire had been referenced since we’d come inside.  Eva and her incendiary grenade, Alexis and her Ofuda.

The trick was figuring out how to phrase the plan so I didn’t sound like a complete lunatic.

A good minute passed, while I turned the words over in my head.

No good way to phrase it.

Leaving me no choice but to tell them, knowing I sounded utterly insane.

Duress 12.4

“I’m thinking we should start a fire in or near the house,” I explained.

I studied the expressions on their faces.  Concern was a pretty big one.

“That sounds like a bad idea,” Green Eyes said.  She had crawled part of the way up the desk, using one hand to prop up her upper body, and the fingernails of her other hand to comb gore out of her hair.

“Start a fire in the house… while we’re in it?” Ty said.

“Just enough of a fire that they notice,” I answered.

“Not even a small fire, then,” he said.  “Not a table or a piece of furniture.”

“No,” I said.  “The flames would need to cover at least a section of the house.  But we won’t be… the location isn’t important.  We can work out the details.”

“I’m almost on board with that,” Peter said.  “Burn down the house, put an end to this lunacy, house has to be sold if it’s flooded and burned, with the sale, money gets out there, and because we’ve all been helpful, we each get a cut.”

“No,” Kathryn said.  “That’s idiotic, and nothing in the contract supports it.  The law firm would take over the property.”

“Which would be messy,” Peter said, “Considering everything that’s involved, and the sheer amount of blood in the hallway.”

Tiff, Alexis, Ty and I were already shaking our heads.  Evan saw us and started shaking his head too.

“No?  Because… they’re in on it.  They’re a part of it,” Peter voiced his thoughts aloud.

“There you go,” Ty said.

“How much a part of it?” Kathryn asked.

“On a level,” I said, “They’re a bigger part of this than Rose or I.  They made this possible, and they’re perpetuating it.”

“Why?” Peter asked.

“That’s an answer too long and complicated for me to give,” I said.  “Our focus right now needs to be on getting through the rest of tonight.  It’s what, seven o’clock?  Not even?”

“Not even,” Ty said.

“Thirteen plus hours until all of this is over,” I said.  “We need a new angle.”

“And somehow this new angle leads us to burning the house down?”

“Part of it.  Maybe,” I said.

“Part of it maybe,” Ty said.

I could see Ty, Tiff, and Alexis exchange a look.

The look was about me.

The pounding on the doors changed in timbre.  Different hands and tools were smashing at the barrier, now.

“What are you guys not saying?” I asked.

“They’re worried that, your jokes aside, you’re legitimately insane,” Peter said.

“You’ve known them for all of one and a half hours, give or take, and you feel qualified to judge what my friends are thinking?” I asked.

“He’s… not wrong,” Ty said.

I didn’t have a response for that.

I could see their eyes, the lack of eye contact as they refused to look right at me.

“Blake isn’t crazy,” Evan said.  “He’s as sane as I am.”

“Thank you,” I said.  “I appreciate that.”

“Um,” Peter said.

“The bird is talking,” Ty clarified.  “We can hear it, you can’t.”

“Sucks to be them,” Evan said, “What I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted, is since I’m very level headed and very sane, and I’ve done so much, saved the day a few times, I’m pretty sure…”

“You can’t set yourself on fire, Evan,” I said.

“No,” he said, exasperated.  “I want you guys to set me on fire.  Or turn me into fire.  Duh.  I’m too young to play with matches.”

“Us setting you on fire is a bad idea too,” I said.

“Listen,” Peter said, pausing to wince at one particularly loud slam on the door, “I get that the bird supposedly talks, but this isn’t doing a lot to make things sound less crazy.”

“The… bird,” Green Eyes said, “wants to go out in a blaze of glory, I think.”

“As a blaze of glory,” Evan corrected.  “I want to go out there as a blaze of glory.  Flaming bird, wings spread, trail of smoke behind me, all my enemies fleeing at the sight of me.”

“Sorry,” she said.  “As a blaze of glory.  That does sound pretty cool.”

“I know, right?”  If Evan could have smiled, he’d have been beaming at Green Eyes at that point.  She was propped up, leaning over him, half-sitting on the desk, now, with Evan on the corner beneath her.

Green Eyes raised her head to look at me, “If we’re going to stay here, we’ll need food at some point.”

“Holy shit, you didn’t eat enough?”  Peter asked.

“We’re not staying here,” I said.  “They wouldn’t have attacked if they didn’t think they could finish off everyone in the house.  The whole point is to leave Rose without any supports.”

Which started almost everyone talking.  Too many things to be said, no organization, and even the people I was closest to had only a couple days of memories of association with me.

Alexis, Tiff, and Ty wanted to talk about tactics, or how much they didn’t like mine.  Peter was focused on me and Green Eyes and all the rest of the strangeness, almost being cheery or humorous in a weird way that might or might not have had to do with his near-death experience.  Kathryn was trying to clarify just how all of this worked, with a focus on the sensibility of it, which wasn’t constructive in the here and now.

Only Roxanne, Christoff, and Eva were silent, observing.

There was too much in the way of nervous energy, too many differing motives and points of focus.  The levels of experience, comfort and familiarity with this world varied by years, months, weeks, and hours.

“Quiet!” I shouted.

People fell silent.

I could see how agitated they were.  Peter’s hands almost fidgeted before he stuck them into his pockets, leaning against a bookcase.  Kathy somehow looked furious, as if trying to be heard and failing had somehow offended her on a fundamental level.  Ellie was incapable of staying in one place, and Eva’s constant glare only made her more prone to nervous pacing.

“Please,” I said, as I glanced at Christoff.  “We’ve already lost Callan.  Some of you nearly died out there.  Things are bad.  Focus.  Let’s take thirty seconds to think.  Silence.  Then, when those thirty seconds are up, we’re going to go around the group.  Each person can say one thing, or ask one question for, let’s say, one answer.  Think about what you need to say and what doesn’t matter.”

There were a few nods.  Some reluctant.

“If you’re all going to be silent,” Eva said, “I might as well say-”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ellie said, glaring.  She was still bleeding here and there from the kicks she’d taken.  “I’ll forget what poison it was, and your brother can die, if you don’t shut the fuck up and play the good doggie.”

“Doggie?” Eva asked, eyebrows going up.

“Sit, stay, sic ’em if we give the order,” Ellie said.

“If you think-”

“I think,” Ellie interrupted.

“Shut up!”  I said.

They shut up.  Eva didn’t pipe up, though she glared at Ellie, and the rest were content to keep their mouths closed.

The pounding and scratching continued, and I could almost see the nervousness of the others ratchet up in the quiet.  They felt the need to do something.

Trouble was, we needed to be on the same page.

I took more than the required thirty seconds.  It was only when most of the others had started looking around and acting like they were about to talk that I spoke up.

“We’re going by seniority here,” I said. “We-”

“Define seniority,” Peter cut in.

I had to resist the urge to reach through the mirror and throttle him.

“In order of seniority,” I said, my voice firm, “From the first people to be introduced to the Hillsglade House situation to the most recent, we each take our turn.  Hopefully the new people, like Kathy and the kids, will be able to pick up some details here or there, or amend their questions.  Everyone else stays quiet, unless you have something to add.”

There were a few nods.

“My name is Blake, I’m, as far as I can tell, a fakery that grandmother Thorburn put in place to take the hits while Rose figured out how all of this works.  Because our family has enemies.  As you’ve all seen.  Things have hit a climax, all of those enemies have mustered forces, and now that Jacob’s Bell is starting to grow, they want to fight to decide who gets to be in charge.  Just about the only thing they can all agree on is that they hate the Thorburns.”

“Because of bad karma?” Peter asked

I gave him a look, but judged it was a good thing to help clear up with the others.

“It’s complicated, but that’s it in a nutshell,” I said.  “Telling people about this stuff is a fast track to getting more bad karma.  Getting involved with the sort of things Grandmother got involved with is a faster track.  The lawyers are a part of that.  Those are the bullet points for what you need to know about why this is happening.  Rose is gone, and you guys are… like I said, nobody wants to be the one to tell you ‘hey, magic is real‘, so you’re-”

“Human shields,” Kathryn said.

“Basically,” I answered.

She nodded.

“Cat’s out of the bag,” I said, “We’re trapped, and honestly, we don’t have a lot of options.  We could wait until sunrise, but I don’t think we’ll get that far, playing the defensive game.  If we fought, well, I don’t think all of us are going to beat all of them, because there’s an awful lot of them.”

I saw a few nods, fatalistic glares, and tension running through people’s bodies.

“That’s why I’m proposing the fire,” I said.  “Fire gets people’s attention.  Rose wanted to play a game of chicken.  She’s betting on the fact that the people out there are too scared of the monster on the fourth floor to keep her in a straightjacket and padded room somewhere, or whatever they’re doing with her.  By setting a fire, we’re escalating the game of chicken and take away the sense that they’re in control.  That’s one advantage of the strategy.”

“There are disadvantages,” Alexis said, her voice still a little odd from the spiritual infusion.

I held up a hand.  “Hold on.  Hear me out.  There’s more to it.  Look at the big picture.  We’re holed up in here, and the monsters and friends of the major groups in the area are hounding us, pounding on the door.  Meanwhile, the others should be holed up in their individual homes and demesnes, watching, waiting, and keeping their metaphorical doors locked.”

“Ahh,” Peter said.  “I like this kind of thinking.”

“I thought you would,” I answered.

“Clarify?” Kathryn asked.

“The ones who aren’t monsters are, for the most part, people.  They have their own worries and concerns,” I said.

“What’s going to happen if we lose this game of chicken?” Peter asked. “What’s my enemy planning right this second?  Are we ready to make the next move?  Am I safe?  We’re fighting for our lives, but they’re tense.  They’re… are they singular or plural?  The powers?”

“Mostly families,” I said.  “One mostly-singular guy with a talking angel-dog and a lot of favors he’s just called in.”

“Yeah.  So they’ve got their own drama to handle, then.  Tension in the ranks?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“With the fire, we add to the tension.  See what snaps.  Number one way?  You see it every day.  ‘This deal expires!  Stock is running out!  Hurry!  Don’t think, just act!‘  Take away their time.”

“That’s more subtle than what I was considering, and some of these people manipulate time, so…” I shook my head a little.  “We’ve got help out there.  Not a lot, but Rose is there, so is Corvidae.  I’m… flexible in terms of how I can move around.  If we can draw them out, we can target them.”

“While the house is on fire,” Alexis said.

“While the house is on fire,” I agreed.  “It might scare some of the Others-”

“It scares me!”  Ty raised his voice.

I held up my hands.  “Hold on.  In order.  Alexis.”

Alexis glanced over the room.

“I have concerns,” she said, her voice still a little odd, “and by their nature, they’re concerns I can’t share.”

“That’s bullshit,” Ellie said, still upstairs, watching us through the railing.

“No, it’s not,” Tiff said, “Seconding that statement.”

“I’ll back it too,” Ty said.

I resisted the urge to snarl with frustration.  “That’s really not helping.”

“It’s the truth,” Alexis said.  “My turn to talk, right?”

I could still sense the spirits within her.  Her voice was eerily clear, almost clearer than anything I’d ever heard.

“Go ahead,” I said, though I couldn’t meet her eyes.

She might have thought it was out of anger or frustration.  It wasn’t.

“There are other factors at play.  You can’t go with your gut because you’re not entirely you.  You… put a spirit inside of me to give me the energy to keep going.  That you can even do that should be a clue that there are forces at play inside you that aren’t purely Blake.”

I’d unconsciously shut my eyes, following her words.

The word that stood out to me, oddly enough, was entirely.  A few hundredths of a second’s hesitation partway through speaking the word.

Not entirely myself.

“Stop,” I told her.

“She’s supposed to say her piece,” Peter said.  “You laid down the rules, don’t break them right away.”

“I’m not,” I said.  “Just… I can’t stand here and let her keep saying what she wants to say without full disclosure.  The spirit I gave you, it’s giving me an in.  A way to see what you’re saying or feeling.  I don’t know.”

I managed to meet Alexis’ eyes.

“If you keep talking, I might be able to figure out something I shouldn’t.  I may already have an inkling from what you just said.  I don’t… I can’t convey how badly I want to figure out what’s going on.  I feel like it’s a matter of life or death, a question of my existence.  But I want to play fair with you more.”

In the seconds of near-silence that followed, with only the pounding on the door, Alexis folded her arms.  I saw her turn her hand over, as if she was studying it for changes.  She clenched her fist.

“‘Kay,” she replied.

Just like before, I was able to read her tone, getting a sense of her attitude.

Pretty fucking powerful implications for a damn one-letter response.

They weren’t implications I could wrap my head around, but the general sentiment was clear.

I’d done more harm to our relationship than good, confessing that much.  A breach of trust that I might never recover entirely from.

“I guess I’m next?” Tiff broke the silence.  Ty shrugged.

“Sure,” I said.

“I studied some divination, mainly because I studied a lot of the defensive stuff,” she said.  “I’ve always been pretty lame.”

“Passive,” Alexis said.  “We were working on that before all this started.”

Tiff shrugged.  “Passive.  Focusing on the protection stuff seemed like the thing to do.  Figure out what they’re going to do by telling the future or remote-viewing them and prevent it.  Keep things intact and let Rose be the heavy hitter.”

I nodded.

Her voice was quiet.  “If we’re going to set fire to the house and try to draw them out, I can do a reading.  It might give us better odds if I do it right.  But I agree with Alexis.  I don’t know if you’re saying we should do this because it’s you or if it’s the… less pleasant things inside you that are saying it.”

“Less pleasant?”

“You were sent to the Abyss, and that’s why Rose was able to take your place.  You were supposed to die, but you didn’t.  You came back…”

“You don’t have to be nice, Tiff,” I said.

“Dirty.  Darker.  I- I-”  She stuttered, obviously uncomfortable with the number of eyes on her.  She made a conscious effort to get her thoughts in order.  “-don’t know how you were before, but you’re a little twisted now.  Your arms bend funny inside the sleeves of your sweatshirt, and there are places I can see through the branches that are covering you, and I just see…”

“Darkness,” Ty said.

Tiff nodded.  “You brought a bit of that place with you.  And maybe that place wants you to burn the house because it’s a place that chews things up and it wants to chew up this world too.”

“You’ve done your reading,” I said.

“Yeah.  Rose has summoned a lot of bogeymen.  I wanted to know how to deal if another one of them went wrong.”

I nodded.

“So… I guess if I have to finish saying my thing… maybe we should let the others chime in.  If the fire seems like a good idea, without your saying anything to make it happen, then maybe we do it.”

She shrugged, obviously unhappy with the compromise.

I wasn’t too happy with it either, but I could shut my mouth and let the others have their say.

“Alexis and Tiff think you’re the problem,” Ty said.  He was holding one of the nails with tags attached – the ones jammed into the mountain man hadn’t done anything.  “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea.  How do we fight past that group outside the doors?  How do we start the fires?”

“Ahem,” Evan said.

“More importantly,” Ty said, “how do we put it out?”

“We could decide on the plan and then work out the details,” I said.

“We could,” he said, “But should we?  I’ve had moments where I had to wonder whether I should move forward with a project or abandon it.”

“Shitty tags that didn’t do anything are a clue you should abandon more shit,” Eva commented.

“Probably,” he said.  “Wasn’t talking about the magic.  There’s stuff in the books we haven’t read yet.  If we get everyone reading, we could come up with something, a summoning, or a ward…”

“That you haven’t found and bookmarked in the last few weeks?” I asked.

“Found, bookmarked, summoned and lost,” Tiff said.  “We burned a few bridges, just trying to get by.  Others that can only be summoned once every so often, because the Abyss holds on too hard.”

I nodded.  I felt a little uneasy talking about just how short the collective resources here were getting, with Eva listening.

“There’s not a lot,” Ty said.  “But it beats the alternative.”

“What’s the alternative?”  Peter asked.

Ty shook his head, “Ask if you’ve gotta ask, but ask on your turn.  Let me finish.  Blake, I’m willing to be convinced, but if everyone’s getting their say, it’s going to take a while.  I don’t think we have that long.”

“Like Peter said before, about pressure and lack of time messing with your ability to think critically,” I said.

“Goes both ways,” Ty said.  “It might be affecting you as much as it’s affecting me.”

“Yeah,” I answered.

Ty shrugged.

“My turn?”  Evan asked.

“I suppose it is,” I said.

“I should have had my turn before, you know.  Because I was your familiar before Alexis and Tiff and Ty did the ritual.”

“Yeah,” I said, “You were one of the first to get clued in, but Alexis knew about the general family circumstances before, and… yeah.”

“Technically,” the witch hunter said, “I’m the most senior one here.  I’ve known about how fucked up the Thorburns were since I was four.”

Alexis spoke in a low voice.  “Technically, I don’t expect you to have anything to add.  You’re just a problem, until there’s something to be killed.”

“Story of my life,” the witch hunter said, sounding far too casual.  With a little more bite in her tone, she added,  “Hurry up so I can unpoison my brother.”

“Okay,” Evan said.  “Right.  Ahem.  So.”

“So,” I said, echoing him for the benefit of those who couldn’t hear him.

“Fire.  Awesome.”

“Fire, awesome.  I think I see where you’re going with this,” I said.

“Ty was saying we need strategy.  So… we gotta get out of here, right?”

Not where I’d anticipated him going.

“We do need out of here.  That would be step one.”

“We open the door and there’s a buttload of monsters out there.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “The monsters pose a problem.”

“And we want to come back.  Because we gotta go somewhere after the fire is started, and if we leave the house, we’re not going to do very well.  This-”

“This library is our starting point and our ending point,” I said.  “Nowhere else to go, as sanctuaries work out.”

“With monsters filling the space between here and the far side of the house.  In the hallways.”

“Yeah.”

“Rooftop,” he said.

“Rooftop?”

“I’ve flown over this house a bunch of times.  I know how the outside is.  Instead of going through the hallway, down the stairs, all the way to the ground floor, then alllll the way to the back hallway, we go out, then duck right.  Out the window, or through the bedroom and out the bedroom window, then we’re on the roof.”

“There are gargoyle-things outside,” Ty said.

“But probably less than there are things inside!” Evan said.

“True.”

“Sum up?” Peter asked.

“If we decided to start a fire, we could head out a window and make a break for it along the roof.”

“Slick,” Peter said.

“Snow could help or it could hurt,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Would we even make it to the window?”

“No guarantee,” Ty said.  “And those gargoyle shits were vicious.  Just saying.”

It’s not the answer.

“Food for thought,” I said.  “Thank you, Evan.”

“Is it worth a brownie point?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Because I’m saving up my brownie points, to call in a favor,” he said.  “I want-”

“I know,” I said.  “I know.”

My eyes fell on the Other who was sitting with Evan.

“Me?” Green Eyes asked.

“Thoughts?”

“Um.”

“No pressure,” I said.

“No,” she said.  “I’ll help.  But if things go bad, and I get killed, I’ll probably wind up back at the Drains.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Bring me back?” she asked.  “Please?”

“First real chance I get,” I said.

She nodded.  “Thanks.”

That cleared up the practitioners and Others in the group.

Leaving me to deal with the Thorburns.

“Peter,” I said.  “Anything to say?”

“Alternative,” he said.

“Hm?”

“Before, you mentioned an alternative.  You implied it was bad.”

“Demons,” I said.

His eyebrows went up.

“Not nearly as good an idea as you’re imagining,” I said.

“Actually, I’m thinking that’s probably bad,” he said.

“I can virtually guarantee you that it’s worse than you’re thinking,” I said, thinking about Rose’s theory that demons of the first choir were the reason the universe was as empty as it was.

“Okay,” he said.  “It’s bad enough that being killed like Callan was is a pleasant alternative.  How much worse?”

“In December, you and I would have resembled each other.  Different builds, I’m taller, but I was human, to all appearances.  One demon, and it sent me to the same place that she came from.”

“Yeah,” Green Eyes said.  “It’s where we met.”

“I lost everything,” I said.  “My humanity, fake as it might’ve been, my home, my motorcycle, my friends, my familiar, my ability to feel properly, my identity.  It… I think it hurt my friends here, took something from each of them, because affecting me was enough to affect them too, as collateral damage, by association.”

I was careful to meet each of the Thorburn’s eyes.

I had to communicate just what the danger was, here.

“You being inside a mirror, that a part of the demon or something else?”

“Little bit of column A, demon, little bit of column B, Grandmother.”

“Right,” he said.

“And the kicker?” I asked.

“There’s a kicker?”

“It didn’t get me.  It almost got me, and it did all that.  I was lucky.  It missed, and it ruined the very fragile image of Blake Thorburn and left only Blake the Bogeyman.  That demon is still alive, still active, within a kind of binding circle.  It’s not even a major demon, as far as I know.”

“A not-major demon turned you into a monster.  What does a major one do?”

“You’re asking too many questions,” Kathryn said.

“If this goes south,” I said, “and they enter the room on the fourth floor and look at the occupant wrong, we may well find out,” I said.

“Ah,” Peter said, with a nuance that suggested the pieces were falling into place.

I hope he doesn’t make me regret this.

Then, with with all the sarcasm he could muster, he added, “Great.”

“Kathryn,” I said.

She shook her head.

“No?”

“This is your fault.  You… set this up.”

“Rose did,” I said.

“Ok, then what is Rose doing?  Aside from using us as human shields and playing chicken?”

“I imagine,” I said, “That Rose is talking to people.”

Alexis added, “She’s playing chicken, she’s got to look brave.  She’s got to scare the other guy.”

“Rose?  Scary?” Peter asked.

“She’s read up on pretty terrifying things,” Tiff said.  “Demons, bogeymen, real monsters.  Stuff we couldn’t summon if we had a few months to prepare.  Right now, she’s got an incarnation in her head.  Conquest personified, leaking into her brain and behaviors.”

“She might not be able to back down,” I said.

I could see Alexis’ expression change as I said that.  I was too aware of it.

Why?  Why had she reacted?

In the interest of not using this knowledge to my gain, I looked away.

Stupid, maybe, but I wasn’t about to tell Alexis I wouldn’t use illegitimate knowledge and then turn around and read her body language.

“Head games, then,” Peter said.

I nodded.  “Same way she could stay levelheaded when she was dealing with our family.”

“Wow,” I heard Roxanne mutter.

“She didn’t have a lot of time to prepare,” I said.  “What I’m wondering is how much power the locals have over her.  Did they have her drugged, or explicitly avoid drugging her?  Could they deny her a mirror?”

“You’re thinking of paying her a visit?” Ty asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  “There’s a lot of things I’m thinking of.  But too many start with us opening these doors, and we don’t have a lot of options once that happens.  Any thoughts, Ellie?”

She shook her head.

“No comment or questions?”

She shook her head again.  “This is fucked.  Comment made.”

“Roxanne?” Tiff asked, talking to Roxanne like she was a normal kid.  “Do you have any questions?”

“The lying thing,” Roxanne said.  “That’s for real?  He can’t lie?”

“I can’t either.  Ty can’t either.”

“Uh huh.  If I became like you, I wouldn’t be able to?”

“No.”

“Uh huh.  Alright.  That’s all I needed to know.”

Why did that bother me more?

“Callan,” Christoff said, the moment he’d realized it was his turn.  “Can I bring him back?”

“Probably not,” Tiff said.

“Not like he was,” Alexis corrected.  “There are other ways.”

“I came back, kind of!”  Evan said.

“The bird mo- he came back,” Green Eyes translated from ‘can’t be heard by innocents’.

“I never left, really, but I got to live again.”

“There are ways to call spirits and put them in vessels,” Alexis said.  “There’s… probably very good reasons that practitioners don’t generally bring back their loved ones.”

“But I could,” Christoff said.  “If I became a wizard?”

“If you became a practitioner, maybe,” she said.

“Can I, now?”

“Not now,” she answered.  “We don’t have the things needed to do the ritual.”

Christoff nodded.

Peter was rubbing his chin.

“What?” I asked.

“Seems wrong, that the dead could be brought back from being dead, but our whole problem is we’re in a bad place and we can’t get out of it.  The dead can go from one circumstance to another, violating the natural laws of the universe, but we can’t get from A to B?”

“Bringing back the dead requires certain circumstances,” Alexis said.  “Like with Evan, he never quite left.”

“But it’s possible.”

“A lot of things are possible,” Alexis said, sounding annoyed.

“Okay,” Peter said.  “Cool.  So, knowing absolutely nothing about this world, I’ll just put it out there.  We’ve got a fish on dry land, a bird without room to fly, a bogeyman in a mirror, and a ton of people crammed into a library, waiting for the doors to get kicked down.  In the interest of thinking outside of the box… how do we get out of this… box?”

It wasn’t a question with an immediate answer.

Ty walked along the perimeter of the library, looking at book spines as if he could find something to spark an idea.

Alexis and Tiff talked in low voices.

A chunk of wood fell, dancing along the floor.

A hole in the bookcase.

One red eye peered through the hole.

That was it for our sole sanctuary.

They’d die and I’d…

I looked at Green Eyes.

The thought sparked an idea.

“Ty,” I said.

“‘Sup?” he answered.  He was up on the floor above, still looking at spines.

“You’d probably be the one to know.  We can bring Others here.  Summoning them.  Like we did with Green Eyes.”

“Yeah.  Varying amounts of resistance, demands, obligations…”

“Can we go the other way?” I asked.  “Visit… there?”

“Another exit,” Peter said.  “While they think we’re here…”

“Where do you want to visit?” Ty asked.

“Anywhere but here,” I said.  “But I’m thinking the most obvious, familiar territory for two of us…”

“No,” Green Eyes said.  “Aw, no.”

“Just for a short time,” I said.

“It’s doable,” Ty said.  “Question is, do we want to do it?”

“If we can get around to the back of the house,” I said, “There’s a stone porch and some furniture.  It’s where Rose and I summoned June.”

“Okay?”

“If we can approach from an angle they don’t expect, we could probably get a bit of fire and smoke there without risking the house.  From the town below, it’d look like the house was burning.  If the situation called for it, we could be more ambitious with the firestarting.”

“We never agreed-”

“Ty,” I said, “This wouldn’t just be hoping that Corvidae could do something with the opportunity.  We would be able to flank them.  All of us.  At least make a couple of moves.  Set a fire, get their attention, and attack, while everything and everyone’s looking at the house.”

He, Alexis, and Tiff exchanged looks.

“You’d know better than us how bad these ‘Drains’ are,” he said.

“They’re bad,” I stated.

“Better or worse than what’s out in that hallway, making their way in?”

Something wispy was starting to creep into the library.  Tiff stepped forward to banish it with a dash of salt.

“Can I get back to you on that?” I asked.

Tiff pursed her lips.

“But at least that way, there’s hope,” I said.  “A short trip.”

“You don’t come out in one piece,” Green Eyes contradicted me, her voice quiet.  “It’s almost a rule.”

I could see Alexis’ reaction, much as I’d caught certain words and bits of body language.  I wished I hadn’t.

Not in one piece.

That meant something.

Duress 12.5

The holes in the bookshelf were widening as claws and weapons pierced the wood.  With each thrust, each chunk that was torn away, there were books that fell from the shelves, the railing and ladder-stairs popped and creaked as metal strained.

“Should that be happening?” Peter asked, looking around.

“The doors have only held up this long because they’re part of a distortion in reality,” Tiff said.  She was drawing in chalk on and around the bookshelf, while Ty was drawing on the floor.  Alexis had a book open.

“I’m asking again, should that be happening?”

“In an ideal world?  No,” Tiff said, her attention on the diagram she was drawing out.

I could recognize bits and pieces here and there.  I recognized one of the symbols in the dead center, writ large, as an elemental ward, one of the more elementary ones we’d learned from Fundamentals.  Not containing, but pointed outward, with fractal-like lines extending out from the four points of the diamond.

Ty, on the other hand, was drawing a diagram on the floor.  The diagram was more of a wheel or Ouroboros.  The snake eating its own tail, the diagram fed into itself.  Not facing outward, not facing in.

“A gate,” I observed.

“I’m hoping so,” he said.  “Alexis?”

“We need to sacrifice something of value, destroy it irrevocably, and say a few words.”

“Define ‘value’,” Peter said.

“If you have to ask, it’s probably not valuable enough,” Alexis said.

“I’m starting to hate this whole thing,” Peter said.  “Karma, which apparently means you can’t lie, but when you want details, you can’t get a damn straight answer either.”

“You’ve basically summed up the last few weeks of my life,” I said.

“That’s reality,” Ellie said.  “Everyone tells you to do this, do that, there are rules and they fuck you in the ass if you obey them, and if you don’t obey them, then they fuck you in the ass.”

“There’s a lot of ass-fucking going on in your worldview, huh?” Peter asked.

“Fuck you,” she said.

“I think,” Tiff said, “that just like real life, you can be kind, honest, and decent, and it’s something that helps you, even if it’s in subtle ways.”

“Says Tiffany,” Ellie said, “Happy go lucky, smile and it’ll all be alright!”

“Shut up,” Alexis said, looking up from her book.  “You don’t know anything.”

“I know that I got dealt a bad hand.  Shitty family, get diagnosed with a learning disorder finally, and it all makes sense.  But it’s when I’ve already decided to drop out.  But oh, hey, mom and dad didn’t notice I had problems because they were too busy divorcing.  I drop out, dad mostly disowns me, mom helps me get by only if I do favors for her.  I figured it all out pretty damn quickly, how everything works.  If I want something, I have to deal with others to get it, and everyone I deal with wants to take advantage.  The only way I’ve figured I can make it is if I lose well, or if I don’t play their fucking game.  Be a good little loser.  But oh, hey, if I’d actually just smiled and been a good girl, it’d all have worked out fine.”

The sarcasm was thick with that last line.

“I’m not getting into this,” Tiff said, hunched over her diagram.  Alexis came to her side, book in one hand, a wooden box in the other.  Tiff took the wooden box and set it on a shelf, as part of the diagram.

That Tiff was hearing Ellie at all was kind of amazing, considering the variety of claws and other limbs that were starting to reach through the holes that had been opened in the door.

“You’re not getting into it because you admit what you said is stupid?”

“Ellie,” Alexis snapped, “Shut up.”

“I can speak for myself, Alexis.  Ellie, I’m not interested in discussing it,” Tiff said, her voice tense, “because I think you’re wrong.  You guys don’t have a monopoly on shitty families, and you don’t have a monopoly on shitty circumstances.  My family’s personalities were worse, I’m pretty sure my upbringing sucked more than yours, and I still believe what I believe.  Keep your chin up and persevere and there is a way through all this.”

“Your family was worse?  How?”

“Their personalities were.  If you go outside just personalities, you get the whole ‘dark magic’ thing going on in the background, and yeah, your family wins.  But for personality, a lack of basic human decency, my family trumps yours.  They weren’t fancy or complex or even varied in their horribleness, but they were bad, and bad enough that I’m not interested in discussing it or elaborating.”

Ellie opened her mouth to answer that, but the death glares from a few others and an increase in the intensity of the pounding on the doors kept her from actually speaking.

“Valuable thing,” Alexis said.

Ellie reached into her vest pocket and pulled out a trinket.  There was a woman’s face cut in ivory, against a tarnished silver background.  It swung on a silver chain.

“I thought I stopped you from looting the house,” I said.  “I didn’t see you pocket that one.”

“That was you?”

Alexis took the brooch.  “Works.”

The brooch was placed in the center of the gate.

The scratching and pounding had stopped.

There was only silence outside.  No growling, no footsteps or splashes, no laborious destruction of the wall.

It was not a good silence.

“Hurry,” Christoff said.

“Having the thing isn’t enough, we need to destroy the valuable object,” Alexis said.  She still held the book.

“I don’t have a sledgehammer, sorry,” Evan commented.

As if the word sledgehammer had invoked something, a heavy mass slammed into the bookshelf doors.  Several of us stumbled.  Books all across the library fell from their shelves, and even the floorboards shifted position so they didn’t all lay flat, before they resettled into their old positions.  Approximately.

The damage to the doors had spread, every hole almost twice as big, every crack three times as long or twice as wide.

The doors wouldn’t take many more hits on that level.

“Holy shit,” Peter said.

“What was that?”

“Fuck,” Alexis said, eyes back on the diagram, “We need to annihilate this pendant now, and get out of here.  Think.”

More silence from outside.

“Biggest, heaviest thing in the room?” Peter asked.  “Desk?”

Our eyes collectively fell on the old writing desk.  Old fashioned, it probably had as much overall mass as a grand piano.  I’d tried to move it alone, when Rose had trapped me in the mirror, and I’d failed.

“All together,” Alexis said.

Everyone, Eva and me excepted, gathered around the writing desk.  A collective effort to lift it-

Another slam on the door.

The cracks and holes opened further.  The mirror I was dwelling in rocked side by side violently enough that I thought it might fall over.  Peter caught it.

Metal yawned, and dust fell from the ceiling in plumes, every joint and joist, nail and screw in the room straining and popping as reality found itself at odds with the configuration of things.

I could see a figure on the far side of the doors.  Deep brown skin, eyes like  liquid gold, hips wrapped in wispy white cloth that was gossamer-fine.  Genderless.

“Djinn,” Alexis said, breathless.  “Lift.”

The Djinn turned his back, walking away.  It was going to come back, most likely, and it was going to act.

Fuck.

Big and bad enough that the brainless little homunculi were afraid to approach while it was taking point.  The scariest Others that rational individuals steered clear of were steering clear of this thing.

The group waddled over toward the diagram, table held between them.

“Careful,” Alexis said, voice strained with the burden. “If we mess up the lines, we won’t get another chance.”

I knelt, my face almost pressed against the mirror.  “Left.  Alexis, Ty, swing your half left a half step…”

They moved.

If all four legs came down…

I saw Roxanne step away, more in the way than helping.  “Roxanne, move the tome to your right, put it under the back leg, furthest from the pendant.”

“Why-”

“Do it!” Kathy hissed.

Roxanne did.

“A little bit right,” I directed.  I saw Roxanne back away.  Now!”

They dropped the desk, hard.  A leg that was a three-quarter foot by a three-quarter foot in solid, laminated wood came down.  With the books on the far end, the one leg came down independent of the rest.

It broke the pendant.  It also punched through abused floorboards.  As the other leg on the same end came down, it did much the same, if rather less seriously.

“Shit,” Ty said.

“It didn’t work?” Tiff asked.

“It didn’t work,” Alexis said.  “It was supposed to open up the gateway in the moment of-”

The Djinn hit the doors again.

Third time’s a charm.

The door broke.  Tiff’s ward went off.

Snow.

Even without the ability to see connections, I could make out how the sudden formation of snow followed certain patterns.  Cold air flowed into the room from outside, and where it did, snow appeared, growing in size and intensity as it did.  It followed the same general outline as the fractal pattern, causing snow to build up and spread across the shattered door, reinforcing it.

The floor continued to crack and break, something giving way.

The writing desk had punched a hole in the floor, and the hole widened as the pressure of the desk’s weight overwhelmed the integrity of the floor.  The desk went onto its side, and then down.

It seemed the pendant wasn’t an acceptable valuable object, but the writing desk served.

I hoped there wasn’t anything too valuable in the drawers, because we weren’t getting it back.

Not from there.  The space below was hostile.

“Oh god,” Green Eyes said.

She recognized it too.

Not the Drains.  But not the house either.

Some other part of the Abyss.

The Djinn had disappeared as the snow had appeared.  Maybe it didn’t like cold.  Maybe it had done its task and decided to go.  But other Others were now making their way forward, some having more difficulty than others against the miniature snowstorm.

Eva was making her way down the ladder, her brother’s wrists bound together, his arms wrapped around her shoulders.  Strong as she was, she was struggling with the burden.

I hated to say it, but if she was going there with that sort of burden, it would probably kill her.  I’d hoped to have time to hammer out the rules, to give them some idea of what to anticipate, and how to prepare themselves.

“Grab what you need and go!” I shouted.

I moved to the mirror Alexis was wearing.

We descended together, as Alexis leaped to the nearest available platform.

If I’d had time to warn them, I would have told them not to trust any footing.

It gave way.

The fall was, as falls went, pretty damn rough.

I managed to catch Alexis partway, wrapping my arms around her, and absorbed the worst of the impact.  Bent nails, broken glass, and spikes of wood tore at my back and sides.

One of my hands found a handhold.  I latched on, feeling my shoulder nearly jerk free of the socket as the sum total of her weight and mine hung from the one arm.

There was no footing beneath us.  As the fixture collapsed, it fell.  Fragments of wood and chunks of rubble hit the wall and bounced off, or hit other pieces of falling debris and bounced off that.  It disappeared into oblivion, far, far below us.

Joining the writing desk, I imagined.

A steep vertical surface, air thick with choking dust, fog, and darkness.  As far left as I could see, vertical surface.  As far right as I could see… more vertical surface.  Up and down… the same.  Disappearing into darkness and fog, a good kilometer or five.  There was far more light than there had been in the drains, but it was almost more hostile.  Red and orange, flickering violently.

The nooks and crannies that dotted the surface, irregular, were windows.  Spaced too far apart, or clustered, they took different forms.  As if sections of building had fallen and somehow jammed together, like a game of Tetris.

Several hundred feet away, running parallel, there was another building of the same composition.

As the lights in one building died, the lights in the other made up for it, or happened to go out at similar times.  A fluorescent light hung half-off the ceiling in the room opposite me, and it made the shadows of handholds dance deceptively.  In other places, dirty and burned lightbulbs cast a mottled, dappled light onto the wall, suggesting handholds where there were none.

Apartments.  The surface Alexis had aimed for had been something like a flimsy fire escape or a window washer’s platform.  Or, more accurately, it was a trap, rigged by some local resident or another.

“Fuck!” I heard Ty hiss.

When I looked up, I saw that he’d found a handhold, only to discover that it was serrated with broken glass.  He fought for a foothold and failed to find it, as his fingers bent into a clawed position, trying to avoid the worst of the glass.  Blood ran down his hand and arm.

Peter had wrapped his arm around a piece of wood that stuck out from an area of the building where things had simply blown out.  His bad hand was now fighting for traction, as the wood creaked.

I couldn’t quite make out the others, due to angle or the like.

My arm strained, creaked and popped as I raised Alexis up, lifting her.  She huffed out a small breath, halfway between a gasp and a whimper, as her hands found purchase in a gap where brick became wooden slats.  Her arm jerked as silverfish came boiling out.

“Got it?” I asked.

“Not really that good,” she said, her voice strained.

“You won’t find good here,” I said.

“Got it,” she said, her eyes scanning me.  I wasn’t sure whether she was answering my question or statement.  “You’re out.”

I looked around.

“I’m home, I guess,” I said.

She didn’t have a response to that.

I abandoned her.

Climbing, I ignored the rats that lurked just out of sight, ready to bite as I found a handhold.  I held firm when I tested a foothold and it proved to be only rubble, crumbling and falling.

Christoff was struggling to climb up to a ledge.  There was a note of panic in the movement.

“Christoff,” I said, my voice as low and soothing as I could get it.

I could see him tense.

He tensed more as he looked down and saw me.  Rather than freeze, he started to climb faster.  Not out of fear, but because it was the only thing he could do.  Up there was a horizontal surface.

My branch-covered fingers dug into stone, oblivious to the scratches and scrapes they endured.  I clawed out a position and climbed up.

“Help,” he said.

“Focus on finding a place to hold on,” I said.

“Up there-”

“It’s a trap,” I said.  “I guarantee you, it’s a trap.”

He was breathing harder with every passing second.  Fear was winning.

“Find a place to hold on,” I said.

He nodded, a tight gesture.

Roxanne, a short distance away, had wrapped herself around a section of wall.  The part of her that was more indoors was serving as a platform for innumerable earwigs to flow over her and through her hair.  She shook her head, and made small sounds, digging her longer fingernails into her ear, speared and dead bugs scooped out in the curve of her nail, along with blood.  I wasn’t sure if it was the bugs making her bleed, or if the panic of having bugs crawling beneath her clothes and into her hair, eyes, and ears was driving her to dig into her own flesh.

Evan flew up to me, wings flapping.

“Help her,” I said.

“What?  Man, bugs are not a part of my diet.  Except for that one time I was trying to fix my power running out and that was bad and ick and-”

“Help her,” I said.  “And save your energy.  There aren’t a lot of safe places to roost and rest those wings.”

“On it.”

He flew to Roxanne’s shoulder.  I saw a glimpse of him pecking at the bugs that were making steady progress towards her ear canal.

By the time I reached Peter, Green Eyes was there.  Her tail wrapped around the wood, and her arms strained as she held it up.

Tiff, Eva, and Ellie were all in the same place.  Ellie was managing the burden of her brother and still managing to keep Ellie from slipping, her shoulder offered as a foothold.

Kathryn… I was pretty sure I could make out Kathryn further below, standing on a window ledge, about two floors below me.

“Kathy,” I said.

She looked up at me.

“There are good odds that monsters will lunge out of those windows to grab you,” I said.

She started making her way to the side.

I headed to Ty, who was still struggling.

His breath fogged from the cold as he panted, accepting my help to drop down to a position about five feet lower than he’d been.  There were wooden slats with spaces between, and a light shone from within.

The lights were on inside, some old fashioned, almost torches in sconces, the  others were fluorescent, flickering constantly.

Ty found a position, holding onto slats that wobbled when he moved his arm, only one side nailed in.

“Is everyone stable?” I spoke, trusting my voice to carry in the near-silence.

I didn’t get much in the way of responses, but nobody said no.  Their focus was on not falling, and the seemingly endless drop below us.

“There’s no relief here,” I said.  “No respite.  We need to move fast, get out of here before it gets to be too much.”

“Inside?” Peter asked.

I moved over, peering into a window.

It looked like a bad motel.  A television was on, but showed mostly static, the image flipping over and over, flickering.  There was a threadbare armchair, a wall with paint missing, and paint chips littering the floor.

Too easy.

I didn’t know what this place was, but the rules had to hold true.

“Let’s limit how much time we spend inside,” I said.  “This place is meant to ruin us.  Break us down and spit us out.  If you see something that looks safe, assume its a trap.”

“We need to head northwest,” Alexis said, “Only two hundred feet.  Cardinal directions should hold true.”

Only.

“Which direction was northwest?” I asked.

She held one arm out away from the wall, so she could point off to one angle, off to one side.

We’d have to go over and inside.

“Green Eyes?” I asked.

“What?”

Oh, she sounded pissed.  She didn’t like having to come back.

“How are you managing?”

“Considering that I don’t have feet, and there’s only so many handholds?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Considering that.”

“I’m fine.”

“I think… we’re mostly okay, by virtue of being bogeymen,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll help you guys out where we can.  Slow and steady is better than rushing.  We just need to head a bit to the right, then we need to find a way in.  Ask if you need help or if you can’t find a way.  Okay?”

I heard one okay from elsewhere.  I really hoped it was someone I knew, and not a stranger’s voice.

“This place is going to get to you,” I said.  “Tiff, Ellie, all that stuff you were mentioning?  Alexis?  Your time on the streets?  The longer you stay, the more you let down your guard, the more it’s going to dredge up that stuff.  It’s going to put ideas in your head…”

“Let’s just climb,” Alexis said.  “And hope we get out before we run into that.”

I wanted to say more, to prepare them, to explain the different things, but my arms didn’t get tired like theirs did.

“Okay, go,” I said.

I felt an almost genuine fear for the welfare of my friends, watching as they climbed.  The building was so pitted and worn that there were spaces to hold on or stand on, but they were treacherous.

“My hands are tired already,” Christoff said.

“Callan died to buy us time,” I said, turning to check on him. “If there’s strength to be found, find it there.”

He nodded tightly.

Behind him, something slithered out of a window.  A man with a centipede body from the waist down, long hair and beard, homeless guy chic, pale and skeletally thin, he had pale, rainbow-hued eyes like a bug’s to be found between eyelids that were stretched taut, unable to fully close over the orbs.

Ignoring us, he climbed the side of the building, and his upper body disappeared into a crack in the wall.

The lower body continued to climb and crawl after him, almost unending.

Six or so seconds later, the tail end of the lower body, bearing an earwig-like set of pincers, disappeared the way the upper body had gone.

When I looked from my oblivious younger cousin to Ty, I could see the alarm on his face.  The fear at what Christoff had completely missed seeing.

How easy it would have been for the centipede man to just grab Christoff.  A tug, a pull, and Christoff would be falling.  Holding Christoff, he could have carried him off, and there was little Christoff could have done.

“Oh god,” Peter said, under his breath.  “Oh god, this sucks.  This sucks, this sucks…”

Roxanne shrieked, loud.

“Roxanne!” Kathy called.

“They’re crawling under my clothes.  I…”

She screamed louder, a different sort of scream.

“Roxy!” Kathy said.  “Pay attention!”

“They’re under my skin,” Roxanne said, almost like it was the least reassuring mantra in the world.  “They’re under my skin, they’re under my skin, they’re under my skin.”

Her voice grew higher pitched and edged with pain, her body tenser, with every utterance.

“They’re in my skin.  They’re inside me.  They’re under my skin.”

When I looked, I could see the red lines tracing maze-like paths across her body.  Here and there, something popped out, a tiny black wriggling form, traveled an inch or two over the outside of her skin, then burrowed again, blood welling at the entry and exit sites.

“There’s nothing there,” Peter said, flat out lying to her face.  “Whatever you think you’re feeling, there’s nothing there.”

“This place is psychological,” Alexis said.  “The book said as much.”

Roxanne shook her head, tightly.  She wasn’t moving.

“I don’t know what to do,” Evan said, before pecking at one bug that had emerged, spitting it out.  “She can’t hear me.”

“I can hear you,” Roxanne said, in a small voice.

The others were making forward progress.  Roxanne was dead last, only just behind Kathy, who was struggling with the climb, and Peter, who wasn’t functioning well with one hurt hand.

“You can hear me?” Evan asked.

“Different rules,” I told Evan.  “Less layers separating you and them.  Besides, I don’t know how much innocence you hold onto, here.”

“Oh.  Hi, Roxanne!”

She made a sound, whimpering.  She shook her head, and bugs flew free, but her hand very nearly slipped.

“I said hi!  I’ve been grabbing bugs off you, least you can do is-”

“Hi,” she said, her voice tiny.  “Please stop talking.”

“It’s like Tiff said,” Evan told her.  “Chin up, persevere, and you can make it through.”

She shook her head, a small gesture, as if even a normal shaking of the head threatened to unseat her from her precarious position on the wall.

I edged closer to her.  The bugs, and one hurt hand, and all the rest of the abuse from Eva’s beating earlier, and she was the youngest one here, Evan excepted.  She needed the most help.  Green Eyes was with the main pack, further ahead, and I’d have to trust them to the wall-scaling mermaid.

“I can’t move,” she said.

“You can do it,” Evan said.

“I can’t move!  My… I keep getting shooting pains down my arms.  The bugs are eating me, they’re eating me!”

Going shrill again.

“Channel that fear,” Evan said.  “Keep moving.”

“Fucking bird!  I will grab you and I will take you down with me if you don’t shut up!”  Roxanne shrieked.

Evan looked up at me, helpless.

I was only about fifteen feet away.

“I’m going inside,” she said.  “I can’t-  I can’t-”

Evan flew away as she reached a window, climbing in past broken glass with enough panic fueling her actions that she wasn’t careful.

Evan landed on my shoulder.

“It’s okay,’ I said.  “You tried.  Help Kathryn.”

It took me ten long seconds to reach that same window.

“Roxanne,” I said, peering inside.

The interior was haphazard, the floor tilted so the left side was lower on the left, the right too high.  At the other end of the hallway, maybe twenty feet away, it was the opposite.  A window marked the exit onto the other side of the building.

Impossibly tall and broad, it was only twenty or so feet thick, here.  One room thick.

My cousin was sitting on the floor at the base of the window, head buried in her arms.

“Roxanne,” I said.  “If we don’t go, we’re going to get separated.  There’s no going back home if that happens.  We need Ty to draw the circle.”

“It hurts.  I’ll… I’ll walk inside.  It’s not as cold in here.”

“The place will mess with your head, and it’ll lead you away from them.  There’ll be places, I’m sure, that won’t have routes, understand?  This place is under no obligation to be convenient.  Just the opposite.  It’ll let you think you can follow them, and then you’ll hit a dead end, and you’ll have to go outside, on the wrong side of the building.  This is what it wants.”

“Roxanne… what would your dad say?”

“Dad?”

“Uncle Paul.”

“He’d say… I don’t know.”

“Then I’ll take a stab at it,” I said.  “He might tell you that all the others are coping.  They’re dealing.”

“Bugs aren’t eating them!”

She looked up at me as she said it.  The rents in her flesh, the scars, were reminiscent of how Callan had died, the poison eating along the paths his veins marked in his skin.

“They’ve got their own stuff to deal with.  But the place is going to try to scatter us.  It’s going to fuck with everyone, in turn.  Do you want to be the one who failed and got lost, when everyone else succeeded?”

“That’s stupid,” she said.  “I’m not some stupid idiot that can be convinced like that.”

“Roxanne,” I said, my voice quiet.  “Man the fuck up.  You don’t get to give up here.  For once in your life, you don’t get a second chance.”

Oh god.  I had so many memories of my dad and Uncle Paul talking in just that tone.

I didn’t stop.  “This place, it has a kind of intelligence.  Think of it as a person, doing its utmost to fuck with you.  Okay?  Fuck with it back.  Win.  Get out of here.“

It was a language she spoke.  It struck home.

Mute, nodding, she found her feet.  I offered her a hand and she took it.

She startled.

Three feet away from us was a man in a rumpled business suit, tie too tight at his neck.  His hair was mussed up, like he’d just woken up.  His sleeves barely reached past the halfway point on his forearms, and he wore no socks or shoes.  Hands and feet both were covered in deep gouges that disappeared beneath the fabric of his suit.  His face pulled into a wide grimace, not quite a frown, not quite a smile, just pain and ugliness, every one of his teeth visible, even the molars and wisdom teeth.

There had been zero sign of his approach.  Not a sound.

“No,” I told him, firm.

His lips moved too fluidly as he closed his mouth, licking his lips for a moment.  The mouth closed, lips moist, but it was almost out of place on his face, like it wasn’t centered.

“Okay,” he said, barely opening his mouth.

I kept a wary eye on him as Roxanne eased her way out of the window.

He didn’t move.

“My hand,” she said.  “It’s hard.”

I watched the man in the ill-fitting suit as I followed her out, straddling the window and finding a foothold.

“Climb onto my back,” I told her.  “Focus on holding on.”

The man didn’t budge an inch.  He didn’t shift his weight, barely breathed…

Roxanne found handholds in the branches at my left shoulder and the open hole at my right side.  Her legs wrapped around my midsection.

I inched away, getting as far as I could from the window before I turned to look for the next handhold.

“You stink,” she said.  “Like gutterstuff.”

“Cope,” I told her.

The main group was so far away.  Three-quarters of the way to where we needed to be.  Kathy was still below, but she was halfway or so.

We’d almost backtracked.

I wanted to be there before they went inside, because all signs pointed to these apartments being occupied.

I looked back toward the window just in time to see the man’s head emerge.  Slower and more fluidly than a person should be able to move, his head at an angle that would have only worked if he were lying down or standing on a wall, it was more like a puppeteer was extending a cardboard cut-out through the open window.  His bloody, cut-up hands emerged, a bit too late, gripping the windowsill firmly.

His expression was neutral as he stared.

I edged away, and against my better judgment, I took risks, reaching further, testing things less carefully.  My body was strong and it didn’t get tired, allowing me to rely more on one grip.

I saw one Other emerge, then another, poking their heads out of windows three floors above Kathryn.

Clowns, female, their paint smeared on so thick that it made their flesh look like paper mache.  The colored-in parts looked half-done, like it was smeared on in crayon, pastels, or charcoal.

The noose fell, missing Kathryn.

I redoubled my efforts, striving to cover more ground.

They reeled it in double-time, until the noose was halfway between them and Kathryn, and let it drop again.

Evan flew up, wings flapping, and the noose moved aside before it could settle around her neck.

The lights around Kathryn went out, and the next attempt was conducted in near-pitch darkness.

When the lights came on, Kathryn was struggling to keep upright while removing the noose from around her wrist.

I felt Roxanne’s arms tighten around my neck.

Evan hopped down to help her, working on undoing the knot.

One of the silent clowns jumped from the window.  The other end of the rope was wound around her arm.

I hurried to close the distance, but there were no handholds in the brick.  I was forced to backtrack, paying for rushing with a loss of time.

The rope went taut.  It was connected to something in the clown’s room, which made the falling clown a counterweight.  It went down, and Kathy’s arm was hauled up.  She lost her footing, and was forced to catch at the top of a windowsill with the elbow of her free arm.  When the initial momentum was gone, she dropped again, and caught herself again, legs dangling for a few seconds before she found the previous footholds once more.

She weighed more than the clown did.  That meant she wasn’t pulled up endlessly.  She was, however, suspended in place.

Evan continued working on the knot, and I continued heading over to her location.

A peek backward showed that the man with the ill-fitting suit was still in the window, staring.

A peek downward indicated that the clown was fumbling around its person.

Drawing a knife, it clamped the knife in its teeth.  It began walking up the side of the building, reeling itself in as it went.  Towards Kathryn.

Twenty feet away, fifteen, ten…

The knot came undone.

The clown fell about ten feet before its counterpart caught the rope, stalling its fall.

Faster, I thought.

We were equidistant from Kathy now, but I was burdened, and the clown acrobat had clearly done this before.  Her face was determined, though her eyes were literally empty – there were only black spaces rimmed with red where the eyelids had been cut out.  She had a light smile on her over-painted face.

“Roxanne, if I leave you behind,” I said, “I’ll be able-”

“No,” Kathryn said.  Her voice was strained.

“You’ll-”

“My arm is dislocated,” she said.  “There’s no point.  There’s nothing you can do for me.”

Ah.

“Focus on Roxanne,” she said, “And when you’re done getting her to safety, go to fucking hell.  Bringing us here?”

I didn’t have a response.

Hooking one arm inside a windowsill for leverage, Kathryn stuck out one foot in the direction of the taut rope.  She wound the rope around her leg, and then swung it.

The clown was forced to dance to the right as her rope moved.

Kathryn did the same thing in the other direction.

The clown moved like a pendulum, back and forth.  Its forward progress had slowed.

Kathryn met my eyes.

I edged downward, aiming for the rope.

If I could get between them…  I did have the Hyena.

The clown danced left, then danced a bit right, and clawed her way a few feet higher up the rope, until she was fifteen feet below Kathryn.

Another dance to the left, playing along with the momentum, within two feet of me.  A dance to the right-

A window shattered.  A large hand seized the clown by the throat.

The rope fell loose, still swinging as the clown girl let go.

The clown’s arms went limp at her sides as the hand continued to squeeze.

The hand let go, and the clown dropped.  Tumbling down much as the debris had.

I passed under Kathryn, then climbed up, to give a wide berth to the window the hand had reached from.

The lights went out, then came back on again.

Something dropped.  It might have been a sink, or part of a toilet.  But Evan was in flight, and gave Kathy a push.  She swayed, and was forced to catch at antoher handhold with her sole good hand, in order to stop from falling.  The chunk of porcelain disappeared into the void below us.

“Don’t,” Kathryn said.

“I just saved your life!”

“Save it better!” she snapped.

She was panting, and I could see the shine of sweat on her brow, despite the fact that it was cold enough for our breath to fog up.

She looked up, wary for more ‘slapstick’ falling objects, and then edged along to another spot, finding another handhold.

“Kathy,” Roxanne said.

“Get going,” Kathryn said.

“But-”

“Get going, you little idiot!”

Roxanne was the one being told to go, but I was the one doing the work.

I continued following the others.

Kathryn, in turn, followed me.  With only one arm that functioned at all, she had to be doubly sure of footholds, and sometimes there was only one, one place to put her foot down while she lunged for the next surface to grab, with swaying, flickering, and misleading maps of light and shadow.

She followed the route I forged, and remained silent as I mentioned the various handholds and footholds, what was good, what to watch out for.  No breath for a thank-you.

■

Rose let the book drop onto the coffee table.  She stood there, staring down at it, another two books stuck under one arm.

Her expression was grim.

“What happened?” Ty asked.

“One second,” Rose said.  She scrawled a symbol on the coffee table in chalk, looked around, then circled it.  “Need to make sure we have privacy.”

“What’s going on?” Evan asked, flying closer.

“The benefits of doing research,” Rose commented.  “I found him.”

“Him?”

“Our recent visitor,” Rose said.  “Blake.”

“Oh,” Ty said.  “Shit.”

“Shit indeed,” Rose said.

“He’s in the books?” Tiff asked.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Is he for real?” Alexis asked.

“He thinks he’s telling the truth.  For the most part, he is,” Rose said.

“Then that’s… not a bad thing, right?”  Tiff said, a bit of cheer in her voice.

Alexis picked up the dropped book.  She turned it over, then opened it.

Evan hopped up, cocking his head as he read over Alexis’ shoulder.

“No title?” Ty asked.

“It’s not a text,” Rose said.  “It’s a diary.”

“Oh.  Your grandmothers.”

“There’s a lot to be said for what gets left out,” Rose said.

“Left out?”  Evan asked.

“In the diary, she talks about binding the Barber.  I was doing some fact checking, so I could be sure there were no surprises with the dead man’s switch, and I noticed the discrepancy.“

“What is it?” Alexis asked.

“A power the Barber has.  Blake is a vestige.  It’s a question of how it was made.  And why.  The Barber is a demon of ruin.  It ruins by way of reflections.”

“Reflections?” Evan asked.

“Cut right down the middle.  Or, more likely, cut out a quarter.  Let them get filled in and shored up as vestiges are prone to do.  One gets the friends.  One gets memories of school.  Another gets the ability to study.  Another gets the ability to fight.  Trauma to one, repressed memories to another, and all down the line.  Where there’s overlap, there’s enough memories to spare, or the spirits are filling it in.  Things get exaggerated in vacuum, expanding to fill the empty spaces.”

“You’re both vestiges?”

“I’m pretty sure we aren’t,” Rose said.  “We’re both more vulnerable to possession, but that’s not the point.  The bigger part gets to be real, the smaller part is the vestige.  But the way it’s done, there’s always conflict.  Which is the point.  The Barber makes his victim destroy themselves.  Fight tooth and nail for everything.  If one side survives, well, there’s nothing saying the Barber can’t cut away more of them.  Do it again, until all you’ve got is a ruined, mad, pathetic husk.”

“But Blake wasn’t-“

“The hostility was raw,” Rose said.  “It’s supposed to be subtle, but… coming from  where he did, I’m betting the subtleties have been ground away.  The way this works, one of us is destined to destroy the other.  Believe me, I definitely want to get rid of him, especially now that I know.  If he finds out about this…”

“He’ll want to destroy you.”

“He was telling the truth, when he said you were his friends.  If he finds out,” Rose said, speaking very carefully, “that he could get you back, get all of his old life back, simply by defeating me, that he could make headway by diminishing me, even, that we’re in a tug of war for every aspect of the existence, that we’re being driven to the point where one kills the other…”

She was rambling, and had lost the thread of her own statement.

“Rose-” Alexis said.  “What he said, it matches up with this.”

“He’s not real,” Rose said, “The diary says as much.  When a man is cut in twain by the shears, the part that retains the heart and soul is female.  He’s… I’m going to need your help.  I’m going to need promises, because we can’t fly blind here.”

“But I like him,” Evan said.  “He’s got birds on him, and birds are awesome.”

“Then- fuck it,” Rose said, “Like him all you want.  But I’m going to have to ask that you stay quiet.  I’m genuinely frightened.  The stories that go with the Barber…  it’s usually a build-up, regular interactions with someone who overlaps too much with you.  Then conflict comes up, and the damage is… as bad as it gets.  Life-destroying.  And neither of us are complete people.  It’s pretty easy to do damage to each other.”

“It’s different here, though,” Ty said.

“But the pattern is still holding.  Grandmother used it, but it’s still the same thing.”

“Why?” Alexis interjected.

“Because she wanted a tailor-made heir.  Cut away all the bits she doesn’t like… like my having friends and ties to another city, or interests.  Retain the parts she does.  Then, when all’s said and done, if I can’t beat my reflection, maybe I don’t deserve to be her heir.”

“You want to lie?“

“We have to,” Rose said

She injected a bit of Conquest into her voice.

Continuing, she said, “We can’t afford to be weak right now, or to have to watch my back for an attack from a fragment of my reflection.  I’m not denying it’s going to be messy, but we need to stand together.”

The others accepted.  Influenced, but not forced.  They made the call of their own accord.

It was only after the others had fallen that Evan finally relented to the pressure and promised to stay silent.

■

I felt the birdlike flutter in my chest jerk, twitch, then splinter, as if it were multiplying.

My entire body shuddered with the ensuing vibrations, as if I had a flock of birds within me.

“Blake,” Roxanne said.  She was slipping.

It took me long seconds to go still again.  I caught her wrist and pulled her up.

My chest heaved.

I’d stopped climbing.

But only just.  I’d been moving while the Tenements showed me a glimpse of the past.  We were nearly at the place the others had gone inside.  Ellie was looking out the window.

I looked back, and saw Kathryn making slow progress behind me, hugging the wall, oblivious to the damage she was doing to her one good hand, fingertips, cheek, and knees bloody where they’d been scraped raw.

I climbed up enough to hand Roxanne over, then headed down, giving Kathryn some support.  She wound up needing it, climbing up to the window.

I was last to ascend.

Ty was already opening the way.  A gate to the foot of the hill, outside Hillsglade House, near the trees.

Alexis glanced back and smiled.

I couldn’t smile back in return.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Duress 12.6

“I feel like I aged ten years, going through that,” Peter commented.

“Kathryn did most of it with one working hand,” Roxanne said.  “Not even a hurt hand.  One of her arms is broken or something.”

Eyes turned to Kathryn.

“Dislocated,” Kathryn said.

Alexis approached her, which meant she came closer to me in the process.

I found myself stepping back and away.  Not entirely because I wanted to give Kathryn and Alexis some space.

Alexis gave Kathryn’s arm some attention, moving it and prodding the joint.  Evan was perched on Kathy’s other shoulder, and leaned forward to watch.

“Eva’s gone,” Ty commented.  “Moment I opened the portal, she just charged through, her brother over her shoulders.”

“Probably thinking she can get a practitioner to figure out what poison it was,” Alexis said.

“Bezoar treatment,” Tiff said.

“Something like that.  We’ve lost our witch hunter.  We’re going it alone.”

I was hearing the words, but only just putting them together into proper thoughts, before the next sentences came.

My head was full of the fluttering and noise and chaos and general heatless fury that had followed the vision.

“I really want out of here soon,” Tiff said.  “One of those windows we passed, the room inside looked like my house, growing up.  The people inside looked familiar, too.”

“I don’t remember seeing any room with people,” Ty said, looking away from the gate.

I wanted to open my mouth, but I was having trouble dealing.  They’d looked me in the eye, talked to me, pretended to be my allies, and all the while, they’d been secretly nursing the idea that, hey, if I got too hostile with Rose, they’d have to kill or bind me.

I looked down at Alexis and Kathrn.  Alexis had told me not to trust my instincts… because my instincts were going to tell me to go after Rose?

“Maybe they’re your Black Fish,” Green Eyes said.  She had passed through the gate and was lying in the snow, almost submerged, her chin at the bottom of the circle.

“Black fish?”

“Yeah,” Green Eyes said.  “It’s more like an eel than a fish, but it follows me, and it has for a long time.  Even here, I can hear it whispering through the cracks in the walls.”

“Um,” Peter said.  “That sucks, I guess?”

She might have sounded a little crazy, to someone without context.

“You okay, Blake?” Alexis asked.

I’d been lost in thought, and she’d caught me staring.

Her look of concern seemed genuine.  Was that the case, or was she better at lying to me than I’d thought?

I couldn’t really feel the thread of spiritual connection to her anymore.

Evan looked back at me, then flew from Kathy’s shoulder to mine.

The movement caught our resident sewer-mermaid’s eye.

“Look at you,” Green Eyes told me.  Her tail was limp on the ground, and her arms were now propping her upper body up, wrists together, upper arms incidentally covering her breasts.  As multiple lights flickered within the hallway, there were periods where her skin appeared almost normal, then translucent as she was lit only by the moonlight above.  Now and again, when a cloud was over the moon and the lights flickered out, only the orbs of her namesake eyes were visible.

“Look at me?” I managed.

I could still feel the birds stirring inside me, agitated and angry.

“I haven’t seen you since we first met.  It’s too bad you need to stay in the mirrors,” she said.

“Um, about that,” Alexis said.

My ‘friend’ turned her body my way.  She reached to her throat and raised the twine that was attached to the mirror.

The mirror was broken.

The fluttering inside me became more agitated.

“That’s inconvenient,” I said, very simply.  My voice and tone were badly out of sync with how I felt.  I wasn’t going to betray what I knew.  Not here, not now.

“It makes sense that this place would try to keep us from leaving,” Tiff said.

Except it’s only affecting me.

Alexis nodded slowly, staring down at the mirror.  She spoke after a delay.  “I don’t know what to say.  I’m sorry.”

Each of the three statements were statements that could be entirely true while not ruling out that she or they had damaged the mirror on purpose.

And, god, I hated thinking that way about people who were so damn important to me.

It was all I could do to stay still when it felt like every bird that had once been content to roost on the branches was now actively moving within me.  If I’d been holding a jar with this much activity inside it, I probably would have dropped it as it shook itself free of my grip.

Yet somehow I managed to keep my body in place.

“It’s not a problem,” I said.  “The last time I left, I was able to just walk out.  It sent me to the mirror as a matter of course.”

“Oh,” Tiff said.  “Oh, that’s great!”

“Yeah,” Ty added.

Was it all in my head, that they sounded less than genuine?  Alexis was only staring up at me.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Roxanne asked.  She couldn’t make eye contact with anyone, and her arms still hugged her body.  “Let’s go.”

“Waiting until the coast is reasonably clear,” Ty said.  He stepped closer to the gate, then stepped back, sticking his hands into his sweatshirt pockets.  “And I just realized that there’s a critical flaw in our plan.”

“Which is?” Peter asked.

“Clothing,” Ty said.  “We weren’t exactly in a position to grab our coats, hats, and gloves.”

I looked at the others.  Sweaters, sweatshirts, long-sleeved shirts and blouses, jeans… everyone had boots on, but a sweater and boots weren’t so useful when the temperature was at minus ten.

“No way,” Ellie said.  “We don’t have… I thought we were going back to the library?”

“Are we going to head back to the library?”  Peter asked.

“It was broken into,” Ty said.  “The ward should do something, and hopefully they won’t keep trying if we aren’t in there.”

“Hopefully,” Tiff said.

“It’d be nice if the books were there when all of this was done with.  The books are supposed to be protected, so…” Ty finished his sentence with a shrug.

“So where are we going?” Peter asked.  “Church?  Ask for sanctuary?”

“The local church is a major meeting place for them,” Tiff said.  “The enemy.”

“Where are we going?”  Peter asked.  “Where do we go when we’ve set whatever fire and they come after us?  This is a really simple question, and if we can’t answer it…”

“We can’t answer it,” I said, “not easily, not well.  There’s no real safe haven, unless we get clever, lucky, or fight like hell to make one.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Peter replied.  “But hey, since we don’t have a place to go, and we don’t have any winter clothes, we can start a fire and maybe stand around warming our hands until the monsters get us and tear us to pieces.  I’ve heard being torn to pieces by ghosts and goblins is one of the better ways to go.  Or,  maybe if they decide to make the ‘killing us’ part take a while, the cold will get us.  Maybe not a quick death, but a medium-length death, at least.  That’s something.”

Christoff put his hands up to his ears, “Stop.”

Peter snapped his fingers.  “Unless they drag us inside.  Then it could take hours, if they even let us die at all.”

“Stop!” Christoff said.  “Shut up!  My brother died and you’re making jokes like this is something to joke about!”

He shoved Peter, two-handed.

Peter, stone-faced, took a step back, catching his balance.  “Be more pathetic, Christoff, it’s a great look for you.  Talk to me when you aren’t so fucking useless!”

He shoved Christoff back, far harder.  Christoff, only barely a teenager, was still small, closer to his mom and sister in build than Callan had been.  Christoff fell hard.

Floorboards broke.

I caught the cloth around Christoff’s stomach before the floor gave way completely, lifting him up by his shirt.

“Woah,” Evan said.  “Not cool.”

Mice teemed in the space between the floor and the ceiling below, moving through the area like water in a river, no empty space between them.

“Even less cool!”

Some, as the tide of rodents flowed, managed to scrabble up the wall or up a broken floorboard, running toward feet, or toward Alexis and Kathy, who were kneeling and sitting, respectively.  They both kicked and swatted at the things, sending the mangy vermin running off to nearby holes in the wall and floor.

The floor continued falling through, emptying down into the floor below.  The sheer amount of them didn’t abate.

Had he fallen through, would that tide just have poured down on his head?  Were bugs and rodents literally filling the walls and floors around us?

I set Christoff down, walking around the hole in the floor, toward Peter.

He looked far more afraid than I might have anticipated, backing away several steps before stopping with his back to the wall.

“Calm down,” I said.

“Calm,” he said, both hands raised.

I was closer to the portal, and turned my head to look out.

The lights in the house had died.  Every window and door was shattered, and dark figures ringed the property, some human, some human-shaped, and some most definitely monstrous.

There were too many between us and the place we needed to be.  Setting fire to the glades at the very edge of the property wouldn’t work.  Nobody would be fooled, and it wouldn’t drive away the Others.

“Can you back off?” Peter asked.

I met his eyes.

“I’m not going to mess with the kid anymore.  I was pissed, I was frustrated, that’s it.  I’m cool.”

I didn’t move.

“My brother said back off,” Ellie said.

Ganging up on me.

“Blake,” Alexis said.  “Come help?”

I turned away from Peter.

She was still looking after Kathryn’s shoulder.

I couldn’t look at Alexis without feeling that ugly stirring inside me.  I kept my attention on the shoulder.

“Is this okay?” Alexis asked.  Talking to Kathryn.

“Fix my arm and I don’t care,” my cousin said.

“Good.  Blake, we need the arm at this angle.  I don’t know if I’m strong enough to push it into the socket, so if you could do it?”

I nodded, mute.

“Don’t like being here, huh?” she asked.

“Does anyone?” I replied, despite myself.

“I guess not,” she said.  “Position it like this.  You’re going to want to shove the arm in this direction, firmly.  Like-”

She touched my arm, part of the demonstration.  Fingers touching wood and skin both.

I shied back, flinching.

“Sorry,” she said, quickly.  “I’m sorry.”

Why had I flinched?

I felt anger more than fear.

Anger more than like.  An agitated, alien sort of anger had ripped out so many of the good things and found its way into the resulting voids.

I wanted to blame the Tenements, the Drains, the Abyss, but I couldn’t.

Damn me, damn them, damn it all.

I shut my eyes.

I didn’t want to be that person.  That angry, wounded person.

A second passed.

“What’s wrong?” Evan asked.

I shook my head.  I couldn’t really sigh anymore, which was weird.  I couldn’t stretch, or groan, or do any of the normal things I had used to do, to let the little stresses go.  I couldn’t ride my motorcycle or seek comfort in my friends.

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” I said.

“That’s this place speaking,” Alexis said.  “It’s getting to you.”

“It’s this place, yeah,” I said.  “More than you know.”

“You can’t get bogged down.  Staying in one place is probably a mistake.  You were saying you don’t know what you’re doing?  Let’s do what we can to keep moving forward.  We’ll help Kathy, then we’ll work out a plan, then we should leave.”

“That wasn’t what I was saying,” I said.  “I wasn’t talking strategy.”

I slammed the arm into the socket.  Kathy screamed, a short sound.

Followed by a groan of pain.

It hadn’t worked.

“You did that right,” Alexis said.  “I had the training, while volunteering.  It could be broken, but that’d be a strange break.”

“This place inflicted the wound, in a roundabout way,” I said.  “We might need more extraordinary measures to fix it.  If it’s fixable.”

I saw the look on Kathryn’s face.  A bit of horror.

“Sucks to be you,” Ellie said.

“Blake,” Alexis started.

I didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

“Alexis,” I cut her off.  Talking was easier than listening.  If I listened, I might start thinking about the validity of her words.  “What I was saying before.  I don’t know what I’m doing… it isn’t just the short term.  It’s the long term, above all else, really.”

“You don’t need to dwell on the long term,” she said.

Oh man, that word choice.  From someone who could well be conspiring to put me down the moment I stopped being useful.

I shut my eyes, focusing on being still, not punching the wall or saying the wrong thing.

“I do need to dwell on the long term,” I said.  “I need to have something to aim for, after today is done.  Something more to fight for.”

Something selfish, I thought.

I could remember what Rose had said.  The sooner you realize that there’s no such thing as a true ally…

My friends were still my friends, but they were the furthest thing from true allies right now.

“You’ve got us,” Evan said.

I opened my eyes.

“I’ve got you,” I said.  Not agreeing with him.  You in the singular.  Evan had been pressured into keeping silent.  He’d tried to help me escape the binding circle, and he’d backed me up on nothing but instinct and hearsay.

I stood straight.  “We’ll have to do something about your arm later, Kathryn.”

“Great.”

“Green Eyes, you’re obviously okay with the cold.”  She was in snow right now, and she’d managed well in the frozen-over lake.

“Yes.”

“Evan?”

“Um, sorta?”

“You two are with me,” I said.  “We’re going to start that fire.”

“With you?”  Evan asked.  “We’re not staying here, are we?”

“No,” I replied.

“Then how?  We don’t have a mirror.”

“I’m hoping,” I said, “That I don’t need a mirror.”

“But-”

“Ty,” I said, “Or anyone that’s feeling particularly spry… can you borrow some sweaters and sweatshirts?  Layer?”

“Going out into the cold?” Ty asked.  “Alone?”

“With Green Eyes.  Evan too.”

“I guess I could, if Alexis thinks she could open another portal if this one breaks down?”

“I can.”

“Good,” I said.

“What am I going out into the cold for?” Ty asked.  “Winter clothes?”

I shook my head, “But clothes might be a good start.  The real trick, I think, will be the body.”

“The body?” Ty asked.

“Dead branches,” I said, “Ideally.  I wouldn’t mind bones, too.”

“I think I’m starting to get a mental picture of what you’re wanting to do.”

“Hurry and do it, then,” Kathryn said.  “I hear scratching in the walls and it’s getting louder.”

And, from the tension in her neck and face, her shoulder probably hurt like murder.

“What if he doesn’t come back?” Peter asked.  “Then we’ve got even less clothes, and we’re in the same situation.”

“I can bring the clothes back,” Green Eyes said.

“That’s, uh,” Ty said.  “Let’s try assuming I won’t die?”

“Okay,” Green Eyes said.  “I’ll protect you.”

“Thank you.”

“But if I protect you and you do die, can I eat you, before I bring the clothes back here?”

Ty stared down at her.

“Please may I eat you?” Green Eyes corrected herself.

“Sure?  I guess I won’t care that much?”

“I’m game,” Green Eyes said.

It took a minute for Ty to collect the offered sweatshirt and sweater.  He declared himself warm enough, and stepped through the gate, joining Green Eyes.  He trudged on through, while Green Eyes moved like a mole through the earth, surprisingly fast, with a hump of broken snow left in her trail.

“Now we play the waiting game,” Peter commented, fiercely kicking one rat that had managed to climb out of the hole in the floor.

I walked to the end of the hallway, opposite the portal.

Standing guard.

I could see the life in the Tenements.  The Others patrolling along their individual territories, the occasional lost soul, like the old man who apparently lived between two floors, crawling with wood and concrete scraping at his back and belly simultaneously.

I smelled smoke, and I turned my head.  Alexis was taking a puff.

“How do I get to be what you are?” Christoff asked Tiff.

Tiff, probably the most approachable one in the group.

“You do a ritual.  You make an offering to major kinds of Other, to central elements, and there’s a lot more involved.  You’re agreeing to a deal, to be a little less human and a bit more Other.  Making a compact to obey certain laws in exchange for being recognized and for being allowed to see.”

“That’s where you agree not to lie?” Peter asked.

Roxanne had stressed that question.  When I looked, Roxanne was sitting against the wall, drifting asleep, her head nodding, then jerking as it moved too fast.

Tiff nodded.  “That’s right.”

“And it’s tied to this karma bullshit.”

“Yeah.  It’s tied to the karma bullshit,” Tiff said, her voice soft.

“Ugh,” Peter said.

“I want to,” Christoff said.

“For Callan?” Tiff asked.

“No.  I just… want to.  Being a little less human sounds good.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” Alexis commented.

He shrugged.

“Christoff is a coward,” Peter said.  “Callan’s old enough he got his chance at thinking he had a shot at the inheritance.  Molly actually got the inheritance-”

“Don’t talk about Molly,” Christoff said.

“Fine.  I won’t.  You’re a chickenshit, Chris.”

“Shut up.”

“Fine, fine.  But I wouldn’t jump on the first out you’re given, just because real life hasn’t been kind.  I thought being an adult, or almost an adult, would be my way out.  Away from the pettiness, away from the idiocy, constantly feeling like I was clawing my way out of some quicksand made of stupidity.  But no.  That’s reality.  Think seriously before you make a call one way or the other, because I don’t think you’re going to get what you want.”

Was that almost a pep talk?  Advice?

“Chris,” I said.

Christoff looked at me.

“Molly told me, once, that you were picked on at school?”

“Yeah.”

“Here, in Jacob’s Bell.”

“Yeah.”

“Were any of them Behaims or Duchamps?”

“Um.  A Behaim.”

“The clockwork man who tried to pry the doors open back at the library?  Pretty sure that was a gift from the Behaims.”

I saw his eyes widen.

“It’s more of the same, Chris,” I said, turning my eyes back out the window.  “More of the same family against family shit, on the schoolyard and here.  Think about it.”

“Let’s not talk about the magic,” Tiff said.  “Something nicer.  What do you do, when you’re not in school, Chris?”

I tuned out the ensuing discussion.

A handful of minutes passed.

Then the lights started going out.

I thought it was an isolated incident at first, looking up as the lightbulb almost popped in its hurry to go black.  Not a flickering death, like it was struggling to stay lit, but sudden blackness.

But the pop was actually thousands of other lightbulbs doing much the same thing, throughout the building, and the building opposite this one.

Everything went dark.  The hallway was only lit by the moonlight that streamed in through the open gate.  Here and there, there were open fires in other apartments, a section of building that perpetually burned, and a scattered handful of apartments where residents had put together makeshift campfires.

Like an almost starless night out there.

The empty void of space.

“What’s going on?” Evan asked.  He was whispering so quiet that I could barely hear him.

All the same, I only responded with a, “Shh.”

The rush of wind grew more intense.  I felt the building sway.

It was, in the midst of all that dark, something moved.

Not between the two buildings, but on the far side of the building opposite us.  Where there were hallways like this one, with windows on either end, rooms with a great many windows, or giant holes in the face of the building, like a room had been clean torn out, I could see through to the other side.

The building opposite was so tall that I couldn’t see the terminus, so wide and so deep that the edges disappeared into utter darkness.

I could only see the head and shoulders of the thing that walked by, a pale silhouette, almost but not quite obscured by the oppressive darkness, slivers visible at a time, lit by the fires here and there.

When things were this dark, a little light apparently went a long way.

A fierce wind followed it, stirred by the movement of something so vast that its head took up almost my entire field of vision.

The building shook like a boat on stormy water.  Rats scurried and screamed.  Windows rattled.

I thought I maybe even saw bodies fall from the sides of the building opposite.

It took a solid five minutes for things to stop moving.

The lights came back on, in a matter of speaking.  The same weak, maddening flickering and buzzing of old lightbulbs and wiring.  The lights maybe a little more intermittent and dimmer than before.

Half of the others had actually stepped outside.  Kathryn hadn’t moved, and Roxanne hadn’t woken.

Roxanne was on her side, whimpering.  She got more agitated by the second, almost thrashing.

“The skin-crawling bugs?” Ellie asked.  She was outside, despite the cold.

“Nightmare or a terror dream, more likely,” Alexis said.  “Roxanne, wake up.”

I thought of the nightmares I’d experienced while I was in the Drains.

“Wait, Alexis,” I said.

But she was already touching Roxanne.

Roxanne startled awake, but she didn’t shake off the nightmare.

“Bugs,” she said.

She dug her fingernails into the skin of her forearms.

“Give her space, this place is getting to her!” I raised my voice, but the noise and the shouts and the voices of others almost drowned me out.  Some heard me, looking at me, but Alexis wasn’t one of them.

Or, more likely, Alexis was the type to look after the wounded birds.  Like she’d looked after me, or looked after Tiff.

“Roxy!”  Kathy shouted, starting to rise to her feet, then failing.  Uneven floorboards and one arm that hung limp at her side.

Roxanne managed to drag her fingernails through two or three inches of her own skin before Alexis got to her.

Alexis seized Roxanne’s wrists.

Roxanne reacted about as badly as I might have feared.  She tore free of Alexis’ grip, and reached behind her.

“Knife!” I shouted, already running forward, hopping over Kathryn.

Roxanne struck out, kitchen knife held the wrong way, blade pointing down, the weapon too large for her frame and a one-handed grip.

But, all the same, Alexis shielded her face with her hands.  The action meant the knife only cut the tip of her nose, but it also meant that her palms were sliced open.

I reached Roxanne, and seized the knife.

Alexis, for her part, lunged, throwing her arms around Roxanne.  Pinning her arms to her side with a hug, hands held away so the cuts didn’t touch Roxanne.

“Stop,” Alexis said.  “Stop.”

Roxanne was panting, head jerking, fighting to escape, for long seconds.

“Stop,” Alexis said, calmer.  Calming.

Roxanne stopped.

“I’m never going to be okay again,” Roxanne said.  Almost mournful.

“Shhh,” Alexis said.  “Relax.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Peter commented, “You’re a Thorburn.  You were never going to be okay in the first place.”

The look that Tiff shot him was one of utter appalment.  Not an oft-used word, but it wasn’t an expression that was often seen, either.

“Oh,” Roxanne said.  “Yeah.”

She might have sounded a little bit calmer, saying that.

When I looked back at the window, I saw a familiar face.  Or half of one.  The man with the ill-fitting suit was just outside the window, peering in, his eyes over the windowsill like a crocodile’s over the water’s surface.

“No,” I told him.  “If you want one of us, you can think again.”

One arm reached over the windowsill, and it pointed.

At the open window.

I looked back, then looked to him.

“Want out?” I asked.  “We can talk.”

■

Green Eyes was the first to appear.  Her eyes glowed in the darkness of the night sky, the lower half of her face covered by snow.

“Mission successful?” I asked.

Ty emerged as well, trudging through snow.

“That, right there, is the biggest faggot I’ve ever seen,” Peter commented.

Ellie sniggered.

“Faggot as in bundle of sticks, I get it,” Ty said, not even cracking a smile as he deposited the sticks outside the gate.  “I bet you think you’re brilliant.  You know, there was a time when I wondered what the Thorburns actually did that made people hate them so much.”

“Good work,” I said.

Ty nodded, then stopped as he stood in the doorframe.  “And that is?”

The man in the ill-fitting suit sat in a binding circle.  Alexis’ hands were bound in makeshift bandage, but the dust here was making me worry.  Tiff knelt by the binding circle, with Christoff at full attention, watching the process.

“Company,” I volunteered.

“Company?”

Rather than answer, Tiff turned to the man.

“Should you be willing to accept and bound to the strictures of the proposed agreement, you’re free to leave and make use of our gate,” Tiff said.  “Behaims, Duchamps, or the North End Sorcerer only, and only if they practice, only if they’re twenty or older.”

The man in the ill-fitting suit nodded, stood, took a tentative step toward the edge of the circle, then broke into full stride.

Green Eyes made a noise at him as he passed.  Almost a snarl, but not quite.  Asserting dominance.

“Down, girl,” Peter said.

She made the noise at him.

“We got the sticks,” Ty said, “Lots of branches falling off trees, with the cold.  And, do you want to show him, Green?”

Green Eyes propped herself up.

She had a bone clamped in her teeth.  She opened her mouth and let it fall into the snow with the sticks, then wiped away the copious amounts of drool with her forearm.

She raised a hand, holding herself up with only the other, and I saw three more bones held within.  She switched hands, raising the other.  Her fingers were wrapped around a spine and a ribcage that lacked a few ribs.

“Wow, that’s…” I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Did you kill a freaking deer?” Peter asked.

“Too clean to be a fresh kill,” Kathryn said.

“That’s human bone,” Green Eyes said.

I don’t think she could have said that with less confidence, I thought.  I didn’t volunteer that observation.

“Where did you get human bone?” Alexis asked.

“The Briar Girl,” Ty said.  “We ran into her, I asked permission and gave a gift to get permission to keep exploring, collecting branches.  We chatted, and, well, the way she phrased it, she was getting annoyed with the Others that were attacking the house traipsing through her territory.  On a completely unrelated note-”

“She was making dolls with bird skulls, and there was one that she couldn’t be bothered to finish making,” Green Eyes finished for him.  “She was so frustrated, what was it she said?”

“She gave up and declared it trash, a project never to be picked up again,” Ty said.  “I’m hoping that means what I think it means.”

“That she doesn’t own it,” Alexis concluded.  Ty nodded.

“Huh?” Christoff asked.

“Police can look through your trash, because by throwing it out, you’ve given up all ownership of it,” Ellie said.

Ty nodded.  “So we got sticks, we got bone…”

Here was the test.

“Feel like an art project?” I asked.  It was the hardest thing in the world to do, to act normal.  To make this leap of faith.  “Do you need me to strike a pose, to get you inspired?”

I saw them exchange looks, and it killed me.

Checking with one another.

I knew, now.  The Tenements might have been showing me the worst possible thing, but the vision hadn’t been lying.

I managed to stay still, even as my degree of agitation stepped up a notch.

If I moved, it would be to hit a wall, or to scream.

I managed a light smile, so my body language wouldn’t fail to match the levity of the question.

“How are we doing this?” Ty asked.

Bundle it together,” I said.  “Bones in the center of each faggot.  If the wood bends, try to wrap it around.  Match the shape of the body.”

“We might need a few more trips for sticks,” Ty said.

“Maybe,” I agreed.  “Let’s see.”

Unsure whether to build it on the outside or in the Tenements, we used loose electrical wire from the tenements to hang an ‘x’ across the portal.  Building it at the threshold.

It was, as it happened, like being crucified in reverse.  The body came together on the ‘x’, bone, then sticks, bound in place with string.  Ty’s stock, for the nails with Ofuda attached.

Somewhere distant, a resident of the Tenements screamed, a feral sound.

Out in the real world, there was a distant crash, and a cheer taken up by dozens.

Whatever their feelings, my friends gave their full attention to the project, rubbing cold hands, then resuming work.  Alexis’ hands were hurt, but she gave direction to Ellie, Roxanne, and Christoff, who seemed happier with something to do.  Ellie and Roxanne traded off, which amounted to them doing nothing about half the time, but Christoff remained hard at work.

“Take a break,” Ty told him.  “I’m actually capable of doing the magic thing, and I’m all-in with this stuff, and I’m taking some breaks.”

“Nah.”

“You’re really into this magic stuff, huh?”

“Not sure anymore,” Christoff said.

“Then take a break.  I don’t want anyone losing fingers to frostbite.  We’ve got enough damaged hands and arms right now.”

“Nah,” Christoff said.

“But-”

“Revenge,” Christoff said.  “Shut up and let me do this.”

Ty sighed, and resumed his own work.

It was… vaguely human shaped.  More empty space than branch and bone.  As the others turned to putting the twigs that had broken off and shoving them into the empty spaces, I stepped forward.

“I’m fucking done with mirrors,” I said.

I tore off a section of branch-entwined rib, and stuck it through the thing, to where the ribcage was missing some.

“I’m done standing back and letting them come after us.”

I used Roxanne’s kitchen knife to shave the larger, gnarliest branches from my arm, and put them in place.  I wasn’t sure if they clutched or if the wood merely settled in a different way with the weight of the wood on top.

I didn’t look at my friends.  I didn’t want to see the look they would be sharing, as if they weren’t sure they’d made the right call.

“I made promises.  I’m keeping them.”

Tearing, loose bones, branches and feathers from my gut.  My stomach was empty inside, the wood plentiful.  I hadn’t nourished that human side of me in a long, long time.

“I’m moving forward for my friends,” I said.

When I tore more away from my chest, slashing at myself with the knife when the branches and bones snagged, it was maybe more violent than it had been before.

“I’m doing this for Evan, because I believe in the promise I made him,” I said.  “I’m going to kill the monsters.”

I continued to tear at my chest.  I was losing steam, feeling weaker.  There was flesh there, and I didn’t hesitate to add it.

“I’m sufficiently convinced,” I said.  “That those bastards out there are monstrous enough to qualify.”

I grabbed at spirits, and shoved them into the effigy.  I couldn’t speak, too weak, lacking energy.

There was only the innumerable, violent, chaotic noises of the Tenements and Hillsglade house, in the silence, as I grabbed spirits that no longer had body cavities to hide within.

Last of all, I found my heart, struggling to evade my grip.  Larger than any spirit yet.

Tearing it free, I lost my strength.  I felt Evan at my collarbone, gripping me with tiny talons, flapping, as if his tiny bird body could somehow hold me up.

But I was like a puppet with most of my strings cut.

My friends didn’t step forward to help.  Maybe they were afraid, maybe they didn’t want to interfere, maybe they had other reasons.  But they didn’t step forward to help.

Green Eyes, still on the other side, reached around, embracing the body, and put a hand to my chest, stopping me from crashing into the thing.

Her other hand touched my wrist, and raised my hand and my heart up to the other body’s chest.

With my knife, I used the last of my strength, fueled by the one or two spirits that lingered within my body, and I cut one of the wires.  The body tumbled backward, almost see-sawing on the remaining wire, and I tumbled with it.

My body crumbled to dust.

The effigy-body landed in snow.

I curled new fingers, and I felt the wood crawl.  Flesh, too, sought purchase on the new body.  Not much, but it was some.  I felt my face grow in.  I wound the loose wire around the looser parts of my body as it consolidated.

“Thank you,” I spoke, as my tongue emerged.

I stood, wobbling on limbs that were a little weaker.

Without looking back at the humans, I headed in the direction of the house, Evan flying alongisde me, Green Eyes crawling through the snow.

Duress 12.7

Visions of violence danced through my head as I donned my armor, so to speak.  Being slapped by my dad.  Carl.  Smashing Letita with the rusty pipe.  Fighting the Shepherd.  Fighting Conquest.  Hacking at Duncan’s arms.  Killing Laird.  The fight in the hallway.  Tearing my heart out of my chest.  In the darkness between visions, I saw Ur.

It was a mess, disconnected, disparate thoughts, and noise.

Do this, the thoughts seemed to promise, and it would all start to make sense.  The jumble would start to be something that pointed to a conclusion.  A reality that made sense, if only to a me that thought about those sorts of things.

Another part of me almost wanted Alexis to come up behind me, grabbing me, stopping me.

They’d been a big part of why I’d even bothered to fight my way out of the Drains.  Why I’d let go of my humanity, and admitted my existence as a Vestige.  Faced down Carl.

For what?  To have them turn around and plot behind my back.

It made sense.  I didn’t agree with it, I didn’t like it, but it made sense.  Deciding what they decided.  Doing what they did.

Yet there was a small, tiny, diminished part of me that craved for them to do something that didn’t make sense.  To come after me.

That part of me was soon drowned out by the noise.  I could see the house, and I could visualize the Barber, as I’d seen him in the corner of my vision.

The shears, which he had used to carve a man up, producing Rose the heir and Blake the custodian.

I wondered what our name had been, before.

I started to zip my sweatshirt up partway, found what remained of the zipper so ruined as to be useless, and tore away the zipper instead, leaving only the cloth, my chest and stomach exposed to the cold.  The fabric of the sweatshirt had been wool, but stuff of the Drains and the Abyss and the blood of a number of homunculi and other creatures caked it, long since dried and frozen.  A part of me suspected it could have withstood a knife thrust without giving way.

My pants weren’t in much better condition.  Where the damp snow touched the fabric of the pants leg, the snow came away darker, like the gray slush on a city street, after snow and ice had mingled with crud from the road and tires.  The pants didn’t get cleaner in the process.

We were halfway up the hill to the back of the house when Green Eyes handed me the Hyena.

Half-buried in the snow, she didn’t look much like a mermaid.  Snow clung to her hair, and her skin was a pale white-blue, masking how transparent it looked.  As I took the Hyena, she ducked beneath the snow, traveling four feet before emerging again, slightly ahead of me.  Her eyes flashed as she looked around.  Pale hair, pale skin, pale snow.  She was hard to make out.

“Hurts to hold, especially when I’m crawling on my hands,” she said, even though I hadn’t asked a question.

“Thanks for bringing it this far,” I said.

It was easier, putting the others behind me.  I felt a tension in my new body ease, and I’d barely recognized it had been there.

The anger, too, was there.  Tearing myself to pieces and plucking my still-moving heart out of my chest hadn’t done anything to abate it, either.  An effect of being what I was, quite probably.

My thoughts were a scattered black noise when they even touched on the subject of my friends.  Staying focused on the now helped.  What I was wearing, and what I was capable of.

We didn’t slow.  Green Eyes kept up her forward progress, I walked, taking long strides, and Evan flew from branch to branch, stopping to let us catch up.

Three Others on the hill had noticed us.  Not the worst thing in the world.  There were easily twelve to fifteen Others in the backyard, and in approaching from a direction they weren’t expecting, we had time to cover ground.  The three that had noticed weren’t shouting warnings or reacting.  It was very possible that they didn’t recognize us as the people from inside the house.

Three women, in various winter clothes, much like a college girl would wear.  Jackets, tight-fitting yoga pants, and those boots with fur at the top.  Two were Asian, the third white, and the only unusual thing was the heavy ornamentation around the neck.  Chokers, loops of jewelry…

“Okay, since nobody else is asking, what’s the plan?” Evan asked.

“Grab the box with the log stacked up inside it, drag it away from the house, and set it on fire,” I said.  “Then we run before everything in the house comes after us.”

“I meant for dealing with them.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

“I can see right now,” he said.  “Birds have great eyes, for reals.  We’re outnumbered.  A lot outnumbered.”

“Very outnumbered,” Green Eyes said.  I wasn’t sure if she was agreeing or correcting him.

“A lot outnumbered,” he said, apparently deciding that she was correcting him.  “Outnumbered enough that you gotta be grammatically wrong to say how bad it is.  Like holy angel poop we so dead outnumbered.”

“You don’t have to fight,” I told him.  “You’ve done good tonight.”

“I want to do more good.  I gotta act my most awesome, and the spirits can recognize it and make me more awesome.  I’ve already worked it out.  I gotta be honest and true to myself and I have a game plan that I’ve declared a lot of times.  I gotta stick to the plan and the spirits will reward me with sweet, sweet karma.”

“You’ve ‘gotta’ be alive to do it,” I said.  “Green Eyes and I can theoretically come back.  I’m not sure you can.  You can help without putting yourself in danger.”

The three female Others were heading down the slope of the hill, picking their steps carefully in snow that ranged from mid-calf to knee height.

Not strong, by the look of them.  Strong Others would have plowed through it.

Yet something about them told me they weren’t practitioners.  It was as if their breath didn’t fog in the cold winter air, except their breath did.  As if there was a clue I was missing.

As they descended from the top of the hill and we climbed from the bottom, it looked like we’d meet halfway.

“Okay,” Evan said.  “Instead of that, why don’t we all survive and avoid the crazy stuff?  Because I think you’re great, and I like Green Eyes too, and I like the other guys and what’s the point of running away if I’m not going to be around all the people I like?”

“You’re a survivor,” I said.  “You survived the Hyena.  I want you to survive this, too.”

“Uh huh, and what happens if I’m all alone, huh?  I’m falling apart and I’ve been dying since just after Christmas.  I need Ty and Alexis and Tiff and Rose if I’m going to get the spirits stuck in me to keep me going, and I need you to help me figure out a way to stop needing the spirits, since you know the full story.”

“And me?”  Green Eyes asked.

“I need you to, uh, tell me how great I am.”

“I can do that,” Green Eyes said.  “I’d be very eager to find out just how good you are.”

“Great!  See, Blake?  So cheer up.  I need you and you need us and we need each other and we’re good.  But we gotta get through this okay.  And I’m saying okay only because I’m not sure how alive some of us are anymore.  But we gotta get through this.”

I didn’t have a good refutation for his argument.  We were only a fifth of the way up the hill.  The women toward the top had stopped, apparently deciding it was too much hassle to come after us, when we were ascending.

“What’s the long-term plan, Evan?” I asked, changing the subject and hoping he’d let up on the pressure.  I was accepting that he was with me through thick or through thin, here.

“Long-term plan?”

“When we’re done?”

“Oh.  Like you were saying back there.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got some video games to finish with Ty, and I obviously want to work with the others and get myself fixed so I’m not falling apart anymore, and I want to have a moment of ultimate power so I can shove it in people’s faces when they groaned and moaned at me for bringing it up.  Besides, you and me are supposed to go monster hunting, right?”

“Yeah, that was the plan,” I said.  “Stop the worst of the monsters, if we can.”

“Right.”

“Everything you just mentioned, you need others around.  What if some of us don’t make it?” I asked.

“Then that sucks monkey beans.  Ruins my plans.  We’ve all got to make it.  Which was my whole point, before.  We’ve got to make it, and that means you, too.”

“But what if some of us don’t make it?  Hypothetically?  What do you do?”

“Fly until I can’t fly anymore,” he said.  “I’d want to ride a motorcycle again, but I dunno if that’s possible.  But, but but but, I can fly and maybe ride motorcycles if everyone does make it, right?  So that’s best.  Let’s aim for that.”

Fly, ride motorcycles, everyone lives.

“Hey Green Eyes.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really lucky I met this bird, here.”

“Damn right,” the bird said.

“Sounds right,” Green Eyes said.

“He’s starting to convince me not to do the headlong rush.”

“I’ll do what you want to do,” she said, looking up.  “But I’d rather make it through this.  I really don’t want to go back.”

“The headlong rush is easy,” I said, and raw violence would go a long way towards settling the unease I feel deep inside.  Or distract from it, anyway.  “…If we’re all going to prioritize survival, that’s hard.”

There was no reply.  Evan was flying, and Green Eyes didn’t have anything to volunteer.

“I’m not good at planning,” I said, but the words felt like they were more for myself.

Rose and I were two parts of a greater puzzle.  Two flawed, incomplete people.  We’d both, in our ways, filled in the gaps.  Made ourselves more complete in different ways.  Rose had Conquest, and I had… this.  Ideas, symbols, spirits.

Take away the magical stuff, like the Drains had shown me when Eva had attacked me and cast me down into the dark space below the basement, and I was only a part of a man.  Whole sections missing.  Other sections damaged by things that had happened since all of this began.

If I didn’t cling to the monster…

We were drawing nearer to the three women.

“What about you, Green?” Evan asked, perching on my shoulder.  “What’s your big goal?”

“The warmth of food in my belly.  Being safe.”

“But that’s a now goal.  What about tomorrow?  Blake was just saying we shouldn’t be constrained in our thinking, right?”

Not up to talking, still trying to think of how to approach this situation, I only nodded.

“Warm food inside me, not having to worry, maybe talking with friends or watching television.”

“You gotta think bigger.”

“You mean your ‘blaze of glory’ sort of big?”

“Yeah!”

Green Eyes changed how she was moving through the snow.  She was a bit ahead, and rather than crawl, elbows bent, she walked forward with her arms extended straight down, dragging her lower body behind her.  She was a little slower, but not so much that she’d fall well behind in a minute.  “I’m not like that.  Can’t remember what I was before, but I don’t think I ever had dreams.  I would’ve held on to them.  It was always about getting through the day.  Then, in the dark waters, it was about getting through the hour.  Every hour.”

“But you can change.”

“I have.  I will.  But I’ll probably always be okay with having clean water, company, and food that’s warm and panicked.  That’s good enough.”

“Is it?” the woman at the center of the three asked.  “Think carefully about where you’re getting your food.”

Still holding the Hyena, I spread my arms.  The universal gesture of nonaggression.  Green Eyes, for her part, relaxed her arms, dropping into the snow, only barely peering above it.

“Whose are you?” the lead woman asked me.  She looked like a Japanese student.

Not who, but whose.

“My own,” I said.

“You’re not wanted here,” she said.  “Not by us.”

I knew for a fact that neutral parties had been a part of the attack on the house.

“You’re probably right.  We’re here all the same.”

“Some of those present,” she said, “Appear to be territorial.  Go around to the front door, it’s better.”

Trying to get rid of us?

I had to wonder why.

“I became what I am, right here, because I didn’t want to do what others told me,” I said.  “I have to walk my own path.  Right now, you’re standing on that path.”

She moved her hands at her sides, not raising her arms, only bending her wrists.

I tensed.

The girls on either side of her acted, following orders made with the smallest of gestures.

Their necks unspooled from within their body cavity, guts, bands of muscle and viscera trailing from a spine that coiled as a serpent’s might.  Twenty feet of neck, poised in the air.  The bodies remained as they were, hands in pockets.

Serpentine as the necks were, the girl’s faces were scowls, nothing more.  No apparent fangs, no weapons.

Intimidating, but I couldn’t see obvious danger in it.  What was the worst they could do?  Strangle me?

I touched my hip with my thumb to remind myself that the Hyena was there, just in case.

“I smell meat,” Green Eyes murmured.

Meat?

“The necks,” Evan said.  “Meaty giblet necks.”

The two girls with elongated necks looked at him, but they didn’t act.  Their focus was on me.

“No, behind them.  Lots of blood,” Green Eyes said.

“Our meat, our blood,” the woman with the yet-unextended neck said.  “We already divided it fairly.  Divided into sevens twice.  The extra piece goes to the one who finally kills her.  If any of us try and die, our shares go to the one who succeeds.  Pot’s growing.  It’s not a deal we’re sharing.  It took too long to find rules we all agreed on, and if we have to adjust for every new arrival…”

Kills it?

“Midge,” Evan said.  “I got a glimpse.”

Ah.

Also: Damn it, Evan.

“You know it?”

“You don’t?” Evan asked.

Taking advantage of his question, I added, “Midge popped up in Toronto for a very short time.”

“We wouldn’t know.  We’re visiting,” the woman said.

Think, Blake, I told myself.  My thoughts were all noise.  They weren’t all cooperating.  It would be so easy to just kill this one, stab her with the Hyena, catching her off guard.  Green Eyes could take one of the snake-necked women, I could take the other.  Three down, eleven to go, and when those eleven weren’t cooperating, it would be possible to take advantage of the chaos.

But if I suppressed my ‘slasher movie’ instincts…

They weren’t part of the assault on the house.  Not fighting, not eager to be on the front lines.  They didn’t look strong.

‘Visiting’ meant they were very possibly Johannes’.  Especially if they didn’t know Toronto.

“We’re not looking for a share of the meat,” I said.

“I wouldn’t mind a share-” Green Eyes started.  She shrank down into the snow a little as I turned my head her way.  “-But I can do without.”

“Then why are you here?” she asked.  “A late arrival.”

“I’ll tell you why I’m here if you tell me your role, lurking at the back, arguing about meat.  I’m assuming whoever called you had reasons for asking you to come here.”

“They didn’t ask,” she said.

Rather than speak, I kept my mouth shut.  I’d already made the offer.

She relented.  “He put out an open offer.  He’ll host us again if we can bring back any information he can use, that nobody else brought.  We’re not participating so much as-”

“Scouting,” I finished.

She offered a nod.  The angle of it seemed off.  The other two women weren’t the only ones with horrendously long necks.

Host.  A free admissions pass to Johannes’ wonderland for Others, in exchange for intel.  Probably smart, giving up so very little in exchange for potentially huge gains.  I was gratified to find that she was summoned by Johannes.  One of his assorted Others.

She was, I realized, not a fighter.  A scout, an observer, maybe a bit of a scavenger, to pick the bones clean after all was said and done.

Now to fulfill my end of the bargain.  She’d elaborated on her motives.  As to mine…

“I’m looking for that,” I said, pointing at the wood pile.

“Why?”

“Because I want to start a fire,” I said.

“There are rules.  Set out when we were sent here,” she said.

“Not for me,” I said.

“But the rules are there for a reason,” she said.

“They are,” I agreed.  “The demon, in one of the rooms of the house.  Step carelessly, and we might let it free.”

She nodded that odd nod of hers again.  The angle of her chin didn’t change in the slightest.  Her head merely rose and fell.  Then, just when I thought I had her agreement, she asked.  “Why fire?  Why were you headed here, long before you were close enough to see the wood?”

It would be so easy to stab her.  To attack the others, create the chaos I could take advantage of.  Maybe even use Midge, to get another body on my side.

I’d largely abandoned my humanity, leaving the others behind.  What was I clinging to?

I’d asked myself a similar question, back in the Drains, before I’d decided on my way out.

I was mired, right now.

If I pushed forward, if I was a true monster, I might lose some of Evan’s faith.

If I didn’t… there was the dim chance that we might fly, in the metaphorical sense.  Escape and be free.  We could strive to get everyone through this alive.

But this wasn’t in my nature, as a broken human being, and it wasn’t in my nature as a monster.

I touched one of the few sections of true skin I had left.  My face.

“Tattoos,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to be an artist, once.  But I guess I wasn’t made to have it.  I was made to be resourceful, to be strong.”  And maybe a bit desperate.  “Rather than be the artist, I was content to be a canvas, to make art happen.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Fire… it’s dramatic,” I said.  “It’s me, and it’s everything here, and it’s an ideal capstone to the evening.  It’s going to make people look.”

“You burn,” she says.

“Not if I can help it,” I said.

“But you’re the type to burn.  I can see it.  Playing with fire is insanity.”

“Well,” I said, “It looks like I’m that kind of Other.”

“If we let you past, You don’t interfere.”

“Not making any promises,” I said.

She scowled.

“To be entirely honest,” I said, staring at her, “I don’t think you’re strong enough to stop us.  Even if you’re the kind of Other that can see weak points and vulnerabilities.”

Her gaze, as she met mine, was fierce.  A staredown between alpha dogs, to decide who had supremacy.

“Ane,” one of the long-necked girls said.  “I think they got her.”

The woman snarled, but she turned her back to me.

Going to claim her share.

I headed up the hill, all too aware that if the wrong person arrived, if we made the slightest mistake, or if Evan was seen…

“Evan,” I said. “Hide in my hood.”

He hopped across my shoulder and into the recess of my sweatshirt’s hood.

The backyard, such as it was, was flat, a nice change after the steep incline, where footing had been so unsteady.

I moved with purpose, ignoring the rest, placing myself so that the three long-necked women partially concealed me.  They were all clustering around Midge, who lay on her back, surrounded by bloodstained snow.

I headed straight to the wood pile.

I grabbed wood and threw it toward the center of the porch.  It didn’t make noise, except to punch through the light crust of ice atop the snow.  There was no thud, no clack or crack as wood landed amid snow.

The Others, such as they were, weren’t fighters.  Scavengers, living off of the scraps, luxuriating in the raw destruction and the sheer negativity that surrounded Hillsglade House, gathering information in hopes of earning the goodwill of their masters.

When the rack of stacked wood was partially empty, I tested my strength.

I wasn’t as strong as I had been in the mirror, but I was still strong.

I dragged it.

“Need fire,” I said.

“I could-” Evan started.

“No,” I said.  The Others that were attacking the house were on the lookout for a bogeyman in a mirror, a Thorburn, one of Rose’s cabal, or a sparrow.

“I’ll get it,” Green Eyes said.

“Kitchen drawer,” I said, in a voice that was pitched to a low whisper, “Far left of the kitchen.”

“Got it,” she said.

She disappeared inside, through the door that had already taken a blast from a claymore.

I heard a thud.  An Other in the collection of scavengers was shoved back.

Those that hadn’t been pushed back pressed in.

Midge, apparently, was fighting back, even in defeat.

That she’d lasted this long, well, that was something.

Green Eyes emerged.  The Others reacted, defensive, overly alert.

As if they were afraid something bigger and stronger was going to come and take their meal away.

Green Eyes’ tail was wrapped around a chair leg.  She dragged it outside with her.  I saw the industrial size box of waterproof matches in one hand, a barbecue lighter in the other.

I grabbed the chair as soon as it was in reach, placing it atop the pile.

More furniture…

I spotted wooden crates that had once held dirt and flowers, now nearly invisible beneath a heavy layer of snow.

I dumped out the dirt and placed the crates with the split logs, wood rack, and chair.

It was looking more like it would be a small bonfire.

By the time I’d emptied a fourth crate, Green Eyes was returning with another chair.

Some of the Others had chunks of meat in their mouths, their portions of food, and were stepping away from the huddled mass, watching.

None had recognized me yet.  Those who might have made the connection were falling prey to group psychology.  The others accepted me, so they suppressed their suspicions.  With food available, they had other things to focus on.  Food was power, to many, many Others.

Starting the fire, as it turned out, was more difficult.

A lack of kindling.  Only wood, and the crates were still damp wood.

I debated setting the box of matches on fire, but I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t explode and set me on fire, and I didn’t want to exhaust my firestarting materials.

Green Eyes ducked inside, and by the time she’d returned, I’d failed to get the fire going.

She provided a package of napkins.

From there, the fire was easy enough to start.  Napkins crammed into holes, where the wind couldn’t reach them, set alight.  They caught the drier, flakier wood and bark, which caught the denser wood.

All without picking a fight, first.

Thank you, Evan.

“May I?” a muffled voice asked.

I turned.

A man in a stainless steel mask, with heavy-duty handcuffs at his wrists.  He wore nice clothes, all things considered.  His hands were bloody, holding a tattered mass of flesh and fat.

“May you…?”

“Use your fire, please?  We must be civilized, and a civilized person cooks their meat.”

“You can use it, but only if you add wood to it,” I said.  “Make it bigger.”

“I promise.  May I cook the meat first?”

“You may.”  I stepped away as I gestured at the bonfire, inviting him to take my spot.  It was still in the process of igniting, fire jumping from one piece of wood to another.

More were claiming their meat.  Five or six of the thirteen or so Others had ‘food’ in hand.

As they scattered, my eyes met Midge’s.  Her lower body wasn’t intact, already largely stripped of flesh.  A safer area to start when her arms threatened to grab or bludgeon.

Following my gaze, Green Eyes commented, “I’m hungry.”

Then Midge blinked.

An ugly smile spread across her face.

Then she started to laugh, to snigger, an ugly, snorting, mean sort of laughter, drawn out over long seconds.

She didn’t take her eyes off me.

Heads turned.

“What’s she laughing about?”

“Ane,” one of the long-necked women said.  “I can almost see-”

“I see,” Ane said.

Seeing vulnerability.  Made obvious by Midge.  Damn it.

“He’s-”

I ran.

Part of the plan in the first place.

The man in the steel mask didn’t follow.  Several did.

I wasn’t as strong as I’d been in the mirror world, but with room to stretch my legs, I was reminded of what I’d experienced in the drains, and during my brief skirmish with Ur.

A body of dry twigs and old bone was surprisingly light.  Once I got moving, I was able to move fast.

Green Eyes, for her part, started to fall behind.

“Here!” I shouted.

She pounced on me, arms wrapping around my shoulders.  Barbed scales caught on my clothes, and scratched at my flesh where her wrists grazed my collarbone.

Once she wrapped her tail around my stomach, I felt more flesh catch, but the tail wasn’t battering my legs as I continued to run.  It was easier.  Running with a heavy backpack.

Even with the burden, I wasn’t slow by any measure.  Only a handful could match me in speed.

One woman, bronze-skinned, statuesque, pulled into the lead, winter coat unbuttoned, long coattails flapping behind her.  She had eyes like a hawk, with bright yellow irises.  Another, a gaunt man with long hair, eyes bugging out, leaped onto the side of the house, crawling at a speed that matched my running speed.

Something whizzed by my head.  I heard Green Eyes cry out in pain.  It had grazed her.

I couldn’t turn to look with the burden on my back.  I had to trust Green Eyes to.

“Sling,” she said.  “Like from David against Goliath.”

The bronze-skinned woman.

We were leaving some of the Others behind, but the woman and the wall-crawling man weren’t ones I was about to simply outpace, even considering that I didn’t get tired.

“Evan,” I said.  “If she misses you twice, come back.”

He crawled out from where the hood was pressed down by Green Eyes’ arms, then took flight.

It wouldn’t be enough.  He could slow them down, but I needed to make them stop.

I still had the Hyena in one hand, the long-nozzled lighter in the other.

“Take,” I said, raising the Hyena’s handle up to my collarbone.  “Don’t stab me.”

Green Eyes grabbed it.

I reached into my pocket for the box of matches.

Time to do something stupid.

My eye fell on the trees.  Old, overgrown trees that now shrouded the house.

This one was too close, I decided, as I ran past it.

Green Eyes yelped something, and I half-turned to see the wall-crawling man flying in my direction.

I twisted my foot around, pushing myself in another direction.

Plumes of snow exploded from the impact of old man and deep snow.

He leaped onto a nearby tree, then leaped for me again.  I was forced to give up momentum to dodge again.

Chances were that if he got me, he’d get Green Eyes.  He’d lose the ensuing fight, but we’d lose our chance to slip away.

There.

A tree that sat on the edge of the hill.  It grew at an angle, curved like a bow, the branches reaching toward Hillsglade House.

Far enough away.

I ran, changing direction.  My footsteps fell on the wood where the base of the tree had grown away from the slope.

“Green,” I said.  “Off.”

She grabbed a branch, unwinding herself from my midsection.

Where her tail stripped flesh, left to right, I was almost spun, a footstep veering off in almost the complete wrong direction.

But my arm hooked a branch.  Box of matches in one hand, lighter in the other, I still managed to scale the tree, resting occupied hands on branches that stuck out.

Twigs, here and there, broke off.  They snagged in my hair, and they snagged in the vacant spaces of my arms and chest.  Rather than make the climbing hard, it almost facilitated it.

I reached the point where the tree started bending on the general direction of the house.  My eyes met Green Eyes’, where she was holding onto a branch, climbing up by virtue of arm strength alone.

The leaping man prowled below.  Waiting for us to come down, or waiting for us to reach a point where the branches didn’t obscure us and he could leap onto us.  Getting us on the way down.

With the tip of the lighter, I prodded the box open.

Placing it in a crook in the tree, I set the cardboard alight.

One match was combustible.  A tiny sort of ignition and explosion, but combustible all the same.  Fifty match-heads in an enclosed space?  A hundred?  A hundred and fifty?

I reached out for her hand.

She grabbed it, and swung, the branch I rested on bowing and protesting with the sudden addition of weight, as she returned to a piggyback position behind me.

It was a long way down, landing on a snow-covered slope.

But, as the long-necked woman had suggested, fire was a bigger danger.

I leaped.

For four or five long seconds, I got to enjoy the sensation of flight.

Then a small bird named Evan flew through me, between the branches that made up my midsection, and buoyed me up for a moment.  I experienced the briefest moment of weightlessness, an arrest in downward momentum.

When that sensation passed, I fell the rest of the way.  It was a heavy landing, intervention aside.

Wood cracked and splintered.  Green Eyes and I came apart, rolling down the slope.  We came to a stop at the base of the hill, not far from the wall around the property, topped by its spiked railing.

Above us, in the tree, we could see the flare of light, the starting fire, and the orange droplets that were burning matches, falling free, dancing off branches on their way down.  As fireworks went, it was pretty measly.

“You have a mark on your cheek,” Green Eyes said.

“Hm?”

“Where I kissed you.  The birds are all close together, three tiny eyes, at the corner of your real eye.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I like it,” she said.

“Why?”  Evan asked.  He’d perched on the railing.  “Also, we’re not home free yet.”

I raised myself up.

There were Others coming down the slope.  One or two had stopped to look up at the tree and the dots of orange that were dropping from the matchbox.

The woman with the sling, however, was too far in the lead.

I raised a hand, pointing.

She turned her head to look, then stopped.

At the fire in the tree, then at the house.  The fire behind the house was already sending up smoke, the flames lighting the smoke here and there, framing the house just a little.

As the long-necked woman had said, they’d promised to leave the house intact.  They knew the stakes.

The woman’s eyes narrowed.

But she turned.  She headed for the tree.

Reckless?  Maybe.  But I knew there was a djinn on the premises.  There were powers at play.

There was no chance, I was sure, that the locals would plan an attack on the house and not have measures in place to stop a fire or avert disaster.

The tree was far enough away the fire could be stopped, but close enough it couldn’t be ignored.

Or not ignored by most.

The snake-necked women were approaching.  So was the leaping man, and a woman in old-fashioned clothing.

I’d tried.  Not to avoid bloodshed, but to use my head, when my emotions were riding high.

Maybe there was a time for bloodshed, all the same.

“My name is Blake Thorburn,” I said.  “If you fight me, I will retaliate, and I will most likely destroy you.”

The leaping man leaped.

Evan flew between me and him.  I rolled, the man veered off course.  He landed a foot to my left.

I staked him with the Hyena in the process of getting to my feet.

“Stand down, and I have no grievance with you,” I said.  “I’m only interested in killing monsters.”

“How do you define a monster?” the woman in old-fashioned clothing asked, in a cutesy, ‘Miss America’ voice.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “But if you have the sense to stand down, to back away from a fight that hurts both of us, and probably ends one of us, I can leave you alone for the time being.”

“Oh,” she said.  She flashed me a winning smile.  “I don’t have that much sense.”

She reached behind her back, drawing a beater of a Tommy-gun.

But I was faster.  Lighter than lightweight.

The Hyena speared her heart.

I pulled it free, then slashed at the hand that held the gun for good measure.

She faded out.  From color to black and white.  The ‘film’ turned spotty, burning up, with holes appearing in her, inky black tar bubbling where her insides were revealed.

I turned my attention to the long-necked women.

“I’ll offer a deal,” I said.

“A deal?” she asked.

“Go talk to Johannes.  Tell him not to worry about the fire.  I’m using it to draw the others out.  It’s information you can use to barter for another stay in Johannes’ domain.”

I saw her eyebrow quirk.

“No risk involved,” I said.

“Unless he thinks I disappointed him.”

“You’re not a fighter, right?” I asked.  “You did what you were supposed to.  I accomplished what I wanted.”

She glanced up at the tree.  An Other was cutting away burning branches, but more of the tree was catching fire.

A moment passed.  They changed tacks, not trying to cut away what burned, but cut away the branches that could give the fire access to the house.

“We should go,” Green Eyes said.

“Yes,” Ane said.  “We should.”

“Then-”

“Give me plausible deniability,” she said.  “Kill the body.”

That said, she vacated her host.  Her head pulled free, flying, with only organs trailing beneath it.

Her underlings, whatever they were, followed behind her, as they left the property.

There were Others who’d noticed the fire, or noticed the activity.

Green Eyes was right.

We needed to go.

Green Eyes and I went over the fence, towards the city proper.

I saw activity.  People standing outside houses.

Virtually every Other that counted was at the House.

These were Practitioners.  Worried, watching, eminently distracted.

I held the Hyena in a firm grip.

Easy pickings.  Killing more monsters.

Duress 12.8

Time to be the monster from the monster movies, I thought.

Dozens of practitioners, each and every one capable of binding me, or calling in help.

The advantage, conversely, was that they thought I was trapped in the mirror.  At least, they did until Johanes elected to share that pertinent detail, or at least until one of the Others or Witch Hunters we’d just dealt with reported in.

The advantage of surprise.  With luck, the fire would suggest that they had won.  With better luck, they’d be misled into thinking they’d won by too much.  That someone had made a mistake and now the house burned, threatening to let a demon loose.

As I looked back over my shoulder, Hillsglade House was backed by a pitch black sky, the overcast sky blocking out even the moon and the stars.  The smoke, the snow on the ground and the clouds nearest the house on the hill were lit up by the orange glow of the two fires.  It was hard to ignore.

Evan’s underbelly was pale as he relocated to the roof of a nearby house.  Green Eyes crawled through the snow, blending into the pale snow.

Then there was me.  When I resumed walking, the house to my back, the branches of my arms, legs, neck and body all snapped and cracked, more like I was a man moving through a thick tangle of branches than a man made of branches.

Once I found my momentum, though, my body remained pliable.  Only movements that broke from the flow elicited the noises of breaking and creaking wood, or scrapes of wood against bone.

My feet were bare, and the snow muffled my footsteps further.  I was virtually silent as I moved between houses, avoiding the open streets where practitioners were gathering in clusters.

I headed between two houses, along a shoveled path that led to two gates, each opening into backyards.

I was approaching the group that had been nearest the house.  A fence enclosed the backyard, separating me from them.

“-did it?” a woman was saying.

“I’m suspicious it was the Behaims.  Every time the topic of demons has come up, the Behaim leadership are so blasé.  You don’t act that way around demons unless you’re very confident you’re safe or you’re stupid,” another woman suggested.

A man spoke, “Couldn’t it be stupidity?  The stories I’ve heard of their misadventures here and in Toronto… I’m not sure how to put it politely.”

“It’s easier to let yourself make mistakes when a fix is often a turn of the clock away,” another man said.

“They’ve been doing more,” the woman said.  A Duchamp, had to be.  “They went to Toronto and made a play there.  They dealt with the Thorburns on several occasions here.”

“Saying they failed only because they tried more doesn’t elevate them in my eyes.”

“I’m not trying to elevate them, dear,” the woman replied, making it the least affectionate ‘dear’ I’d ever heard.  “But they’re stubborn, and in our little spars in past decades, they’ve managed to hold their own.”

“How?”

“Big guns,” another man said.  “Chronomancy, you’re tampering with one of the fundamental aspects of reality.  Put up a fight, scrap, trade blows, and wait until you have an opportunity to deliver the knockout blow.”

“Essentially,” the woman said.

“What if it’s the Sorcerer?”

“Johannes?”

I hurdled the fence, using my empty hand on the top of the fence to make it possible, enjoying just how light my body was.  The action required ‘muscles’ I hadn’t exercised, and the resulting crack of wood made their fear spike.  I could feel it.  Alarm, attention.

A small bird flew across the street.

They relaxed.  I could feel the fear fading.

“If the Thorburns have dropped out of the running-”

“Rose is at the hospital, she might not have heirs, but we have to kill her to end the line.”

“We should get our bearings first.  The moment she dies, we have no reason to play nice with the Behaims or Johannes.”

“More importantly, they have no reason to play nice with us.”

I drew closer to the corner behind them.  Five people were gathered together, two women and three men.  I avoided looking at them.

Safety in numbers?

The other member of the group was a distance away, talking on the phone.

I could hear her, too.

“-inside.  I already talked to her about the snowballs she put in the freezer last night.  She went to get them after dark, and if the lecture- yes.  Snowballs.  I don’t know why.  Either she wants them to become ice balls or she’s saving them until spring.  Yes.  No, I don’t care what the reasons are.  I don’t want your cousin going out tonight, for any reason.  It’s dangerous.”

The group of five were facing the house, allowing me to approach the Duchamp woman that was on the phone.  Standing just far enough away that she wouldn’t be heard.

My eyes and thoughts remained elsewhere, as I approached.  No use giving her a cue.  If she was looking for connections and saw one appear with great haste, it would be a giveaway.

My footsteps were silent.  I didn’t breathe or have a heartbeat.

I pressed the Hyena to her throat.

I heard her breath catch.

One finger touched her lips, shushing her.  She nodded slowly.

I was close enough that my ribs touched her shoulderblades.  I could make out the artificial voice on the phone.

“It’s two in the morning and she’s still up.  She doesn’t listen to me, mom.  I can tell her and it makes things worse.  It’s like every time I tell her to do something and she doesn’t listen, there isn’t anything I can do to punish her, so she gets more bold…”

I moved my finger away, but I held it up as a warning.  She started to turn her head toward the group, but the Hyena’s blade pressed tighter against her throat, my hand moving over her mouth, arresting the movement.  I could feel the blood that was drawn as the rougher and sharper bits of my wooden fingers dug into skin.

I wouldn’t let her force a connection, even one as simple as eye contact.

“I want to be out there with you.  Helping,” the voice on the phone said.

“You’re helping right now,” the Duchamp woman said.

“I want to help more.”

“Please believe me, Lola, it’s better you’re not out here right now.”

“Mom, I’m not some kid anymore, and if things are serious enough, I should be there.  I’m engaged, which you okayed.”

“Lola, I really don’t want to fight-”

“Mom.  I’m not picking a fight.  I’m saying if you think I’m mature enough to get married, I’m mature enough to participate.  You might need my eyes…”

The voice on the phone trailed off.

“Lola?”

I used gentle pressure to urge her to retreat, until she’d retreated to the corner I’d peered past.  Almost leaning against the fence, with me obscured by the surrounding shadows and the fence.

“Your thread looks wonky.”

“You shouldn’t be able to see my thread from the house, sweetie.”

“Your voice sounds funny too.  Tight.”

“Lola, please.”

“What’s- what’s going on?”

“There… there are some treats in the cupboard with the pots, toward the back.  I was planning on sharing them with you two later, if you were up.  If you want to bribe your cousin into obedience, so tonight is easier, you can.  Whatever makes tonight easier.”

“Mom?”

“It’s…” her voice cracked a little.  “…Not looking like it’s going to be a good night.  That’s all.  Don’t worry.  I don’t think you’re in any danger?”

I shook my head slowly.  The woman watched me out of the corner of her eye.  After a moment, she nodded.

“You sound different, mom.”

“I love you, Lola.  Whatever our differences have been, I love you.”

I pressed the Hyena against her throat, with just a little more force.

“I love you too, mom?” Lola made it sound like a question.  I wasn’t sure if it was that she wasn’t sure about the love, or if she was just unsure in general, given circumstances she didn’t totally grasp.

“I need to look after the situation here.  I’m going to say goodbye now.”

“Bye, mom.”

Reaching across her chest, I pressed one fingertip to the phone she still held up with one hand, touching the red button on the smartphone’s screen.

Call ended.

I heard her sigh, long, but silent.  Something wet touched my hand, and for a second, I thought I’d cut her.

Looking across the street, I could see Evan, perched on a car.  Green Eyes was lurking in the snowbank, much as a crocodile might lurk beneath water, only the upper half of her head and face visible.  Her eyes reflected a green light, as if they glowed from within.

I saw Evan move, cocking his head.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Joyce,” she said, barely audible.

“Joyce,” I said.

The name hung in the air.

“I-” she started.  “What are you planning?”

“Shh,” I interrupted.  “I’m disposing of the rot.  Culling.”

I could feel the effect that last word had on her.

More silence.

“Your family attacked me and mine.  This is wholly within my rights,” I said.

She only nodded.

“Swear me an oath,” I said.  “If I have any doubts, any suspicion at all…”

I left the latter half of the sentence unfinished.

Phone still held to one ear, she let out a shuddering breath, inhaled, and then spoke, her voice a near-whisper.

“I, Joyce Anne Duchamp, swear… I will return straight home, I will sit on my hands and refrain from practicing until sunrise.  I will not intentionally communicate with anyone until sunrise, unless I would be unquestionably assisting you, or if the words, sentence and intent are neutral.  I- I swear I will not act or interfere against you or yours in any way from here on out.  I hereby pronounce myself removed as a threat to you and your allies.”

“That’s a damn good oath,” I whispered, “But you need to give it weight.”

“I swear all this- on my name, on my blood, on my daughter… for my daughter,” she said.

I wasn’t sure I liked that she’d sworn on her daughter.  That didn’t sit comfortably, considering just how affected I’d been by Grandmother Rose throwing around her metaphysical weight to use and abuse her grandchildren for her own gain.

But maybe Joyce was only listing the things that sprung to mind, things she valued.  She was doing it for her daughter.

She was spooked.

I moved the Hyena, and I gave her a push forward.

“Joyce?”

One of the guys in the group had focused on her, as she stumbled a bit, back into the light.  Under the streetlamp, the tracks of tears on her cheeks glistened.

“What’s wrong?” one of the women asked.

“Gail…” Joyce said, opening her mouth.

By the terms of the oath, she wasn’t supposed to speak except to help me.

“What’s wrong?  Is it Jessie?  Lola?”

Joyce was frozen.

What the hell was she doing?

“Come, Gail,” Joyce said.

I’d thought the Duchamps were good actresses, natural manipulators, trained to lie from a young age.  Joyce was proving the exception, unless I was missing something.

“Joyce, I’m not-”

“Come,” Joyce said.

Gail went.  I retreated further into the shadows as the woman crossed the distance from the group to Joyce.  Joyce seized her hand like someone grasping at a life preserver.

“Do you need help?” the other woman in the group asked.  “Did something happen to one of your girls?  What’s going on?”

I could see Joyce hesitate.  “Just Gail.  You… stay where you are, Jan.  We’ll come back this way later.”

“You’re not making any sense,” one of the men said, sounding particularly annoyed.

“I know,” Joyce said.

That said, tugging on Gail’s hand, she strode away.

“It’s that damn bell,” one of the other men said.  “Makes everyone batty.  I’m surprised they haven’t shut it down, yet.”

The bell?

I could barely hear it.

Why?

I watched as Joyce and Gail disappeared out of sight.

What was the logic there?  Why did I have a vague feeling that Joyce had just played me?

No, not played, I realized, as I saw the situation.  The oath was real, the terms were real, but before she’d even finished speaking, she had decided that things would play out like this.

She’d told me she wouldn’t interfere.  I’d told her that I was cutting out the rot.

Did this mean that, in her estimation, Gail didn’t constitute rot?  That the ones who remained did?

I looked at the four who remained, my eyes averted from the blonde woman who was almost definitely a Duchamp and almost certainly an enchantress.  All the same, she might have sensed something, because she turned back to look over her shoulder twice as I examined the other members of the group.  I was forced to step silently back.

No, that was it.  One member of the group.  He wore a wedding ring.  He was connected to her.

Once I knew the rules, I could take a closer look, avoiding looking at the husband and wife pair.  Off to the side was one man, not fat but solidly built, with a leather jacket that made him look even bulkier, and a dark, wiry beard that didn’t go with the close-cropped hair on his scalp.  He resembled the husband in the pair.  A brother, perhaps.

The other man looked out of place compared to the two guys, who looked very much like bikers who had cleaned themselves up but couldn’t give up the general trappings.  He had neatly parted brown hair, sharp eyes, and a cleft chin that might have been attractive if it wasn’t so pointed.  He wore a scarf and a stylish, form-fitting jacket with four brass buttons arranged in a square, his pants cut to a slim fit, and he carried…

I saw his implement.  A crystal ball with a skull in the center, tucked in the crook of his arm.

Looking at it, I was immediately reminded of the Bane.  The undead thing with scythe-arms.  A tormented soul.

Gail’s husband.  Joyce had separated wife from husband.  She’d done it very deliberately.

It was a leap in logic, but it somehow felt right.

“The tree looks like it’s going out.  Something’s cutting down branches,” one of the large, bearded men said.

“The fire in the back, though,” Jan commented.

I hoped the fire hadn’t raged out of control.  It shouldn’t have, but stranger things had happened.

My eye passed over Jan as she spoke.  Once more, she looked back over her shoulder.

“Janice?”

“Something’s there.”

“Sandra said the Apple of Discord would concentrate attention on the house.”

“She did,” Janice said.  “But the hairs on the back of my neck keep standing up.  Something is there.”

Collectively, they turned.

“Was it something that affected Joyce?”

“Maybe,” Jan said, peering, as if she could make me out.  “Maybe you were right.  If the Thorburn situation is resolved…”

“The Sorcerer?” her husband asked.

I stepped further back into shadow.

Still, as the men fanned out in front, they kept moving in my general direction.  I’d hopped the fence into a little bike path or a narrow road that was only a car’s length wide, and short of hopping over the fence, which would certainly get me spotted, I had nowhere to go but back, further down the unlit path.

I saw Jan draw an athame.  Hers wasn’t wavy like Mags’ was, but curved like a crescent, the blade on the wrong side.

Images of faces flickered between the orb-encased skull and the necromancer’s fingertips, as he caressed his implement.

The two bearded men simply looked as though they might be able to kick my ass without the benefit of being practitioners.

As they shifted position to enter the alley, I saw Green Eyes behind them, crawling across the street.

Jan’s keen awareness alerted her.  She turned.

I switched immediately from retreat to attack, striding forward.

They stopped in their tracks as they saw me.

The two bearded brothers broke into grins, the one in the lead first, then the one just behind his left shoulder.

Before I’d even finished thinking out the word ‘ominous’, Green Eyes had lunged.  Jan caught her before the mermaid could bite, hands on Green Eyes’ upper arms, pulling her head back before the mermaid opened her mouth impossibly wide and then slammed her teeth together, a matter of an inch or two from her face.

Jan’s husband, beaded guy number one, was distracted by the noise, looking back.

Just in time to see Green Eyes bring her tail up and around Jan’s waist, encircling most of it, pushing shirt and jacket up, tail touching skin.

There was a term for what happened next.  Working as a handyman, learning my trade, I’d heard the stories.  Wear a ring while operating a lathe, or wear a watch when you miss a step on a ladder and get it hooked on a surface, well, sometimes you wound up degloving yourself.  The angle and hardness of the ring or the watch trumped the tensile strength of skin, and the skin just… slid right off.

I’d never, however, heard of someone having most of their midsection degloved.  The tail was strong, the hooked scales barbed, and Jan simply fell over, like she couldn’t process what had happened.

The necromancer reached out, and the images of faces danced out, much like a flash of electricity.  Green Eyes took one to the collarbone, reeled, and then disentangled herself, ducking under a fence, a canvas of bloody skin still hooked to her tail.

The two black-bearded men were still caught off guard by what had happened.  The one in the lead headed back to rescue his wife, while the one behind him focused on me.  They almost collided with each other, in their attempt to deal with the issue.

My new opponent shouted something guttural, almost musical in single syllables, bringing his hand back as if he was going to swing a punch.  “Moc, zlo, bru!”

I stepped back, expecting him to fling something my way.  I didn’t expect an actual punch.  His fist accelerated, and he covered far more ground than I would have expected, slamming his hand into the middle of my chest.

“Zlo, bru, ohenn!”

I hadn’t yet caught my balance when flame appeared, a roiling explosion a screaming face at the front of the forefront of it.

Rather than get burned, I let myself fall.  The flame passed overhead.

“Ohenn, dolhu!”

The fire seemed to slow in the air, as if the explosion was suddenly happening in slow motion.  The dark parts and the bright parts seemed to become more distinct.

The flame dropped, almost liquid, congealed.  Napalm-like.  Burning oil.

I rolled to one side.  It splashed into the ice and snow where I’d been lying a moment before.

But in rolling, I found myself lying between fire and fence, my heels almost touching the wing-tipped toes of the Necromancer’s boots.

He hit me with distilled echoes, every single one of them a dying memory.

What I experienced was very similar to having my vision go dark, darkness creeping in around the edges, the vision that remained getting spotty.  Thing was, it happened all at once.  I might as well have been hurled into a deep, dark well, with only meager light at the top.

I could hear the Drains, the wind whistling out of sync with the creaking of unstable architecture in the Tenements, distant howling and screaming, the gnashing of machinery, faint songs or tunes that might have been a carnival.  Disconnected from it all, I was aware of the existence of some monstrous bird-bat-thing, only partially formed of a dozen fluttering spirit-hearts.  A shadow of a very dark thing, making itself known.

I didn’t deal with demons when it would have been a hundred times fucking easier.  I didn’t deal with the lawyers.  Why do you think I’d deal with you?

I had to claw my way back to reality.  Out of the well, past the darkness that creeped in around the edges of my vision.

I was out and up for about one second before the Necromancer hit me again.

Back into the well, now with visions and sensations to go with all the fleeting images.  A small village, desolate, in the midst of a dense forest, with a screen door attached by only one hinge, caught by the wind so it slammed incessantly against the doorframe.  Every sensation was raw, as if the place laid every last nerve bare.  Something, I was pretty sure, lurked in the woods.

A festival.  A crowd of Others and lost souls, bumping and jostling, leering, cheering, screaming.  Here and there, the screams were real, as someone failed to keep up, lost strength and showed vulnerability near the wrong partygoer.  The buildings that framed the narrow street had no windows, entrances or exits, more like tombstones than any place people lived.

I fought my way free.

My fingers caught the wire fence, and I heaved myself forward and to one side, almost bouncing off the fence in my haste to move to one side before he could hit me again.  Not the sort of movement I might have been able to do if my strength wasn’t disproportionate to how light my body was.  Not that I was that strong, but moving around was easier than when I had first arrived.

The benefit of causing fear?  Feeding, for lack of a better word?

I stepped close, faster than he might have expected.

He stuck his implement out, trying to touch me with the crystal-encased skull, and I thrust the Hyena at him.

I was just a little more adroit than he was.  The Hyena went into his chin, stabbing upward, through the bottom of his mouth.

I grabbed his wrist before he could stick the ball in my direction again.  Using the leverage of the broken sword through his chin, I twisted him around, forcing him to stumble to my right, acting as a living shield between me and Bearded Guy Two.

Leaning closer, I murmured, “I wonder why Joyce thought you deserved to die?”

I saw his eyes widen a bit.

“Did you say or do something, that she needed to save Gail from you?  She was willing to betray her family to get rid of you.”

The eyes widened further.

I twisted the weapon, then dragged it out of his neck, not pulling it free, but cutting out to one side, off to the corner of his chin.

As he staggered, I kicked him.

“Dolhu, vbreg!”

As the Necromancer went down, something caught him, and he was thrust in my direction, through the flames that still burned atop ice, clothes igniting on contact, carrying the fire forward.

I hopped up and back, my thighs resting on top of the fence.  In the doing, I just barely avoided having a burning body fly through my kneecaps.  The bleeding Necromancer crashed into the fence, instead.

I went backward, put my feet under me, and ran, putting a shed between me and him before I went over a fence and into another backyard.

That damned beard guy.  He was chaining effects, there was a rhythm there.  Something like something-fist, fist-fire, fire-something, something-fling.  I didn’t know the language, and I didn’t know the rules.  There were particulars, but I didn’t know how to exploit them or combat it.

Almost like a dance, one step leading to the next.  I could imagine that practice and care were making each word act like a rune, invoking spirits.  Speaking a private language they shared with spirits, utilizing momentum.

With the cover of a wood-slat fence, I was able to circle around.  They were standing shoulder to shoulder, one facing in my general direction, the other facing the other side of the narrow alley-street, where Green Eyes lurked.

If we pounced, I had little doubt they would catch us in the air.  Strike us down.

They’d known I was weak to fire.  Or they’d guessed.

I suppose it was a pretty easy conclusion to draw.

Couldn’t close the distance before they could blurt out two syllables or so.

Next best thing…

I stood, appearing on one side of the fence, and I threw the Hyena at the one with his back turned to me.  It turned over, pommel over blade, spinning through the air.

The guard hit him, not the blade, but the spin brought the blade into the back of his head.  Not hard enough to pierce skull to brain, but enough to stay in place.

“Vbreg, b-”

Seeing his brother with what seemed to be a sword embedded in his head gave him a half-second’s pause.

Evan descended, taking advantage of the delay.  A lone sparrow, going for the eyes, giving the man more than a half-second’s pause.

Green Eyes, for her part, came over the fence, taking advantage of the chaos, right for the face of the other brother, biting, her teeth scraping more than they severed.  Her tail swung around, bludgeoning the one Evan was attacking.

Almost casually, I hopped the fence.

“Tell me,” I said.  “Would an impartial observer call you monsters?”

“Fuck you!” the one said, clawing Evan away from his face.  He flung the sparrow to one side.

Not quite a confirmation.  Mr. Rogers might have been a little flustered, in such circumstances.

He looked like he was about to do something, until I pressed the blade too his brother’s side, careful to avoid Green Eyes.

“Have you hurt innocents?  Have you struck your wife or child?  Taken pleasure in the pain of others?”

“Tell her to leave my brother be.  You already took his wife from him.  She’s taken his face.”

“Tell me, first.  Would I see you as monsters, if I got to know the two of you?  By standard Canadian values?”

“We follow traditions and practices handed down through our family.  Given to us by the ogre shamans of the cold mountains.”

“That’s not a no,” I said.  “All you have to do is say no, and I’ll leave you be, with apologies.”

He didn’t answer.  Instead, he started another short chant, “Vbreg, Jisk, R-“

From the moment he’d opened his mouth, I was already turning.  The Hyena pierced his solar plexus, and it was like the air had gone out of his lungs.  The ‘r’ sound became a growl, then a moan.

Belatedly, the one Green Eyes was fighting fell clumsily to the ground.  She scrunched up her bloody face, then worked to pull her tail out from beneath the man’s mass, before she resumed eating, biting into the softer meat at the front of the neck.

“Let’s not be so hasty next time,” I said.  “I wasn’t sure Jan over there deserved that.  We need to be careful, moving forward.”

Green Eyes had to gulp three or four times to get the full mouthful down, her gills flaring with each gulp.

“Smelling her brought back memories,” Green Eyes said.  “Bad ones.”

I approached Jan’s degloved body.  She’d already bled out, and her eyes stared skyward.

Bending down, I sniffed.

I didn’t have superhuman senses, but even beyond the reek of blood and other bodily fluids that came with a grisly end, I could smell the distinct reek of alcohol.

“Being a drinker isn’t grounds for executing someone,” I said.

“No,” Green Eyes agreed.  She looked a little sullen.  “But she wasn’t a someone anymore.”

“I’m not sure that-”

“She wasn’t,” Green Eyes said.  “I promised I’d be good and I was good here.  I followed the rules you gave me.  I smelled it on her.”

“Okay,” I said.

I looked at Evan, who gave me his best bird shrug.

I dragged the bodies together, and as I reached the Necromancer, he fought me, weak.

He had what appeared to be a doll in one hand, fashioned of some soft material.  It wore another man’s face, hyper-realistic, distorted in agony.  In moving the necromancer, I’d broken a black ribbon that stretched from his neck to the doll’s.

I watched as he struggled to wind the ribbon around his own neck with hands that grew steadily weaker and clumsier.  Once the connection was formed, he touched his thumb to his bloody wound, running it along the ribbon, from himself to the doll.

A hyper-realistic wound started to open on the doll’s throat.  His own wound started to close.

He stopped, his hands trembling, and the transfer reversed.

The Hyena’s effect taking hold?

I watched him try and fail again.  Using ghosts as some sort of repository or sympathetic replica, to take his pain.

No, a ghost wouldn’t be enough.  Just like with the Bane, something like this might well require a soul.

Very gently, I pulled the doll from his grip.  The ribbon came undone again.  Weak hands reached for and failed to grab the doll.

“Be free, soul,” I said, before cracking the doll down the middle.

The agonized face separated, and a moment later, the doll’s face was only two depressions for eyes, a bump for the nose, and a line for the mouth.

I put the halves of the doll on the ground.

There was enough blood on hand.  I couldn’t see the spirits, but I could imagine the same rules held true.  Blood had power.

Right now, we had to be discreet.

Using the available blood, I drew a circle around the four bodies.  Hopefully breaking connections.

I left the Necromancer behind, bleeding out in the circle, and hoped there was karma in that.

“Come on, Green,” I said, “It might be better to be a little hungry, as we keep this up.  There’s more troublemakers around.”

She nodded, grinning.

“There are Behaims,” Evan said.  “Just a block over.  I think they heard stuff, but they decided not to come.”

I nodded.

We moved as a group, much as we had before.  Green Eyes was bloody enough that she didn’t quite blend in, but that was negligible at best.

Behaims.

I didn’t expect what I saw.

They’d called back their Others.  Clockwork men, children and old men shrouded in rags that hid their faces.  A giant surrounded by sand.  A bogeyman that aged with every step, before giving birth to herself in about two seconds flat, her placenta becoming a red dress by then time she’d aged to five.  I saw another technicolor Other, too.

“We’ll need to do readings,” a man was saying.  He had an abrasive tone to his voice, vaguely irritating.  “Figure out where Johannes and the Duchamps stand.  This is going to get very messy, very quickly.”

“Especially when they see what we just did,” one of the youngest Behaims present spoke up.  I wasn’t sure, given the winter clothes he was swaddled in, but he might have been Owen, one of the Behaims to show up in Toronto.

The abrasive-voiced guy spoke again, “It’s not the right way to do this.”

“No,” Alister said, “Probably not.”

I’d heard the abrasive voiced guy before.  He was one of the ones who had argued on behalf of Alister.  Against peace.

Good enough.

The Behaims were dispersing, moving in groups.  I saw the guy with the voice rounding up his Others.  Clockwork men.

There was a power to be had in attacking the unassailable.

Strike, then run.

“Green Eyes, head back the way we came, ambush anyone who comes after, that’s older than twenty,” I whispered.  “Evan, give me my escape route.”

“Will do, chief,” Evan said, wing-saluting me.

Easy enough, as the Behaims split up.  They were individually vulnerable, but they felt like they were safe.  I could strike and I could run.  I knew how the time magic worked.  Barring some major intervention, they wouldn’t catch me.

And if they were doing readings on the other major players… they wouldn’t be doing readings on me, necessarily.

I slipped close to the clockwork-man wrangler.  Again, I put the blade to his throat.

I cut.  Blood showered onto the snow.  I turned to slip away, ready to attack another group from another angle.

Reality wrenched.

I was back where I’d started.

The clockwork wrangler was unhurt.

I noticed that Ben, the decent-ish guy, was now staring me down, a few paces away.

Had he done it?  No, that wasn’t a perception trick.  Something bigger.

I frowned, ready to back away.

Something barred my path, the broad side of a lance.

A suit of armor, clockwork.  A knight, about eight feet tall.

But unlike any of the other things, it was inlaid with gold.

It vibrated with power, as if an immense heat came off it.

I felt a little bit like I had around the djinn.

“Blake,” Alister said, behind me.

I turned.

I saw Alister.

“Meet my new weapon,” he said.

The weapon barely concerned me.  If he was even talking about the suit of armor.  The thing the Behaims had said would put them back on the map.  A secondary issue at best.

Alister had company, standing next to him.

Rose.  Holding his hand.  They almost matched in height and sheer pretentiousness, standing side by side.  Rose wearing grandmother’s old clothes, Alister being just a little too stylish and fashionably dressed for a guy in his late teens or early twenties, hanging around Jacob’s Bell.

She’d had a plan, apparently.  Obvious enough.  She’d wanted an opportunity to chat with certain people.

The plan, as it turned out, involved an engagement ring on her finger.

Histories (Arc 12)

“I don’t think you’ll be surprised by anything here.  If you’ve been paying attention in class and doing your homework, you won’t have a problem here.”

Alister took the sheet, placing it face down on his desk.

“This is knowledge you’re going to need for just about everything you learn from here on out.  If you don’t know this by the time you’re in high school, you’re going to fall behind.”

When the teacher had progressed far enough down the aisle, Alister reached into a pocket.

The pocketwatch was old, chipped, and the clasp sometimes took a few tries to work.  Some of the damage was his fault.

In the corner of his eye, he could see his cousin.  Ainsley was moving her hand, trying to get his attention.  This, in turn, got the interest of a few more of their classmates.

“No,” she hissed.

Now people were staring at him.  Lola Duchamp was among them, craning her neck from her spot at the very front of the classroom.  Attention made the next part harder, which was probably intentional on Ainsley’s part.

She was such a pain.

He turned his head, glaring at her.  Her hair was in braids, which didn’t suit her, and she wore glasses that he knew she hated.  She wore a shirt with a frilly collar underneath overalls, and he knew she hated the clothes too.

Sad thing was, he thought, Behaim girls didn’t tend to age well.  They were healthy, but healthy was not a label most girls liked to have stuck on them.  Ainsley would be one of those most.

Going by their older cousins, she’d be pretty as a teen, and then she’d get… blocky.  But the sad fact was, she was stuck with her parents while she was a teen, and her parents were dead set on making her a dork.

Tragic.

The two of them were as different as night and day.  If it weren’t for their last names, nobody would even guess they were cousins.  Much less that they were even friends.

Ah, Ainsley.  You always play by the rules.  We’d all be happier if you didn’t.

He span the pocketwatch like it was a top.  It wasn’t, however, and it rattled as it turned onto one side, metal clicking against the cheap plastic cover of the school desk.

He stopped it with his hand.  It clacked, hard, against the surface of the desk.

“Alister,” the teacher said, stopping midway through his process of handing out the quiz papers.  “Do I need to confiscate whatever toy you’re playing with?”

“I don’t think so,” Alister said.

“I hope you’re right.  No more noise, please.”

Alister grinned.

The moment the teacher’s back was turned, he pressed the button at the top of the pocketwatch.  The door came away, revealing the face and hands below.  The only peculiarity was the existence of two hour hands and two minute hands.  One set in black, one set in red.

It wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t well made.  But it kept time.

In more way than one.

Alister turned the dial that encircled the button at the top of the watch.  The red hands moved.

One hour and fifteen minutes.

Ainsley made a firm gesture, glaring at him, but was forced to relent as her classmates got distracted, and the teacher reached the last desk, handing the last test paper to Lola Duchamp.

“Eyes forward, please,” the teacher spoke.

Lola reluctantly looked away from Alister to turn her attention to the paper.  Ainsley, too, focused on her test paper, though Alister could see her watching him out of the corner of one eye.  When their eyes met, she sighed visibly, and raised her hand to block her vision of him.

Deliberately looking away.

“And… start.”

Alister hit the button on the top.  Simple mechanics made the clasp that held the lid of the pocket watch open move, but the lid was already open.  The bent section of wire shifted position, and completed a diagram.

The diagram, in turn, housed a lesser zeitgeist, the smallest form of time spirit that could be tracked and bound.

The hour and minute hands moved, an almost instantaneous shift to where the red hands were.

“…translate between fractions, percents, and decimals,” the teacher was saying.

The test papers were gone.  His books were open, and his own handwriting was in the notebook.  The last section had a list of homework questions.

“And finally, let’s do five questions from section B.  We’ve got some equations to solve, with percents in there.  This is not hard.  Let’s see… questions one, three, seven, and twelve.”

Alister marked down the questions.

Class ran for a few more minutes before the bell rang.

He dragged out the process of packing up his bag, hoping that it would give Ainsley an excuse to leave.  Putting books away, pens, papers.  He glanced back at the pages to see what he’d missed.  He hadn’t actually disappeared, only giving up his perception of time.

But time was relative, and understanding that meant one understood a lot of the Chronomancy stuff.

He watched Molly Walker exit the classroom.  She glanced at him, then glanced away.  Lola Duchamp stepped back to get out of Molly’s way, though Molly wasn’t walking that fast.

Lola had a bit of a hard look in her eye, as she watched the Walker girl disappear down the hall.

Lola understood.  Most of the family did.  Molly was a Thorburn, whatever her last name, and the Thorburns were dangerous.  Instinctively, Lola had cleared out of Molly’s way.

What did Molly make of it?  Did she catch the look Lola had given her?  Or was it something that she only caught once or twice a day?  A cumulative pressure?

He realized he was still staring at the door… and Ainsley was waiting at the door.  He couldn’t be too obvious that he was stalling for time.

“Dick,” he said.

“Hm?” A classmate asked.

“What’d you think?  The test?”

Dick made a so-so gesture with his hand.  “You?”

“I feel pretty good about it,” Alister said.

“Nerd.  You’ve been wrong before.  You’ve been hilariously wrong.”

Alister smiled and shrugged.

He caught a glimpse of Ainsley, who was standing by the classroom door, arms folded.

Ugh.

“Want to come over this afternoon?” Dick asked.

“Can’t.  Got a thing.”

“You have lots of ‘things’ these days.  I was talking to Tom about it.  He thinks there’s something you’re doing and you’re too chicken to say.”

“Oh?  Really?” Alister asked.  “What sort of thing would I be chicken about?”

“He was joking around and saying it was something gay like ballet or cheerleading.”

Alister’s smile was cold and humorless.  It clearly made Dick uncomfortable.  “What do you think?”

“I dunno,” Dick said.  “We were just joking around.”

“So you did have a guess?”

“Nah,” Dick lied, shrugging.

Doesn’t sound like Tom.

“I wonder where he got that idea in his head,” Alister said, his eyes tracking Lola as she headed across the front of the room, glancing briefly at him as she passed through the door.

Wouldn’t be the first time.  Lola had awakened a full year younger than he had.  It didn’t sound like much, but she had twice the experience with all this that he did.

“Dunno,” Dick said.  “I gotta go get my lunch from my locker, and I’m gonna get something from the vending machine, want to come with?”

Alister measured the intensity of Ainsley’s glare, trying to judge her mood.

No, she was too annoyed to mess with.  He couldn’t stick with Dick and dodge her.

“I might meet up with you later.  Ainsley’s pissed at me, I think.”

“Why?”

Alister drew the pocket watch out of his pocket, showing it to Dick.

“You steal that from your dad or something?”

“Something,” Alister said.  He clasped a hand on Dick’s shoulder, then broke away, the two of them going in different directions.

Ainsley fell in step beside him.

She’s going to nag me, Alister thought, suppressing an out-loud groan in favor of a mental one.

“What are you doing?” Ainsley nagged him, the moment they were out of earshot of anyone.

“I’m going to go get lunch.”

“With the timekeep,” she said.

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re gaming the system.”

“Of course I’m gaming the system,” he said.

“Skipping class?”

“I’m not- I’m… I guess I’m skipping class.  Literally.  But-”

“But your parents and my parents and our aunts and our uncles and our grandparents have all gone over the rules, talking about the risks and the dangers.  Time isn’t something you mess with.”

“It’s made to be messed with,” Alister said.

“We’ve only been practicing for the last year.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.  You’re going to get hurt, or you’re going to get in trouble.”

“I’m not going to get in trouble if you don’t tell.”

“You’re going to get hurt, you jackass.”

“Keep saying it,” he replied, annoyed, “and you’ll probably make it true.”

“How many times do I have to say it before I get it through your thick skull?  You can’t be reckless about this.”

“Can too,” he said.

“Can’t.”

“Can,” he said, “and will.”

She punched him hard in the arm.

“Geez!”

“Watch what you’re saying,” she said.

“I am.  Look at this.  Where are we?”

“School?”

“A training ground,” he said.  “Lola’s messing with me, I think.”

“You think.”

“Feels that way.  Thread-wise.  Planting seeds.”

“Magic seeds?  There are rules.”

“Rules, rules, rules.  You think Lola’s playing by the rules?  Do you think our parents are?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Say it clearer then,” he retorted.

Ainsley spoke through grit teeth, “You can break rules, but only after you’ve learned them.”

“I’m a fast learner.”

“Yeah?  That’s why you’re skipping classes?  How much are you putting in the bank there, Alister?  Because I’m pretty sure we’re only required to fill one timekeeper a month.  I’m almost positive they keep track of this stuff.”

She had her own pocketwatch in her hand.  Hers had a proper chain, and wasn’t quite as beat up.

“They do,” he said.  “But Old Will keeps the books over at his place, and Timothy has the log in the library.  They don’t really communicate that much.”

“They don’t- what are you doing, Alister?  We avoid giving up too much time.  Every single Behaim in the family gives up only what they have to, and you’re… what?  Giving up twice as much time?”

He didn’t respond.

“…More than twice as much time?”

“Old Will is, well, old, for all intents and purposes.  So if I give up as much as the other adults, he doesn’t notice.”

“A device every week?  Plus the one you’re giving Tim?  Five times what you’re supposed to be giving up?”

More than five times, he thought, but he didn’t volunteer that.  Tim accepted more if he gave more.

“Why?” Ainsley asked.

“If I said, it might be a problem,” he said.

“Oh, it might?  It’s already a problem.  You’re wasting your time.  It can’t be as simple as you wanting to skip school.”

“I’m doing what I want to do with my time,” he said.  “It’s none of your business.”

“Alister,” Ainsley said, grabbing his wrist before he could walk away.  “That’s can’t be it.  Tell me why.”

■

“Tell me why,” Laird said.

Alister seethed.  Ainsley stood a bit behind Laird, and their moms and dads.  She looked a little spooked.

“I don’t think Ainsley was lying,” Laird said, “I don’t think you were lying when you told her what you did.  There’s a chance you were manipulated into doing this.  Motivation matters.”

“I wasn’t manipulated.”

“You can’t make that judgement call yourself.  Poisoning the well would be a key play for the Duchamps.  Poisoning you and compelling you to feed that poison into the supply could destroy the family.”

“That’s not it,” Alister said.

“No,” Laird replied, “Probably not.”

Laird had this calm, assured manner of speaking, as if nothing could faze him.  When he said something, it was hard to argue against it.  Some of it was leadership, maybe, but some was just Laird’s natural way.  Alister wondered if his uncle could talk a bad guy into a confession, just laying out the facts, and getting the guy to agree, until the guy was spilling his guts.

Uncle Laird continued, “We haven’t detected anything.  But until you give us answers, we may have to take countermeasures.  No more lessons, no more practicing, no access to the well, to give or take.”

“That’s not-“

“-Fair?”  Laird finished.  “Nothing is fair.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in.  Alister was dimly aware of the adults exchanging looks of surprise.

Dangerous words, for a man that couldn’t lie.

“Nothing is fair,” Laird repeated himself, his words filling the silence.

Alister swallowed hard.

Uncle Laird was a hard man to face down.  Especially when he was all serious like this.

“What were you doing?”  Laird asked, his voice serious.  “Missing school-”

“My grades are good!”  Alister blurted.  He could see how irritated his parents were.  His dad was pursing his lips, like he could barely restrain himself from shouting.

But right here, right now, they were deferring to Uncle Laird.

“School is about more than grades.”

“It is, which is why I’m doing this.  I want to be a good practitioner.”

“You need to know how to study if you’re ever going to get a grasp on chronomancy.”

“I am,” Alister said, feeling more in control.  “I’m studying harder than anyone.  But I don’t want to ever have a desk job.  I want to be a full time chronomancer.  Hours upon hours of time in class is… it’s not what I want.”

“The quality of time you put into the timekeeper is important,” Laird said.

“Weren’t you just saying school was important?”

Alister’s father cut in, “Don’t be a smart alec.”

“I’m not trying to.  I’m…”

There was a pause.

“What?” Laird asked.

“I’m… trying to be smart.  That’s all.”

Laird leaned back in his seat.  “So you think time spent in school is the best time for you to give up?”

Alister sensed a trap, but nodded all the same.

“Speak,” Laird said.  “I want to know you’re not lying.”

“I do think so.  Sir.”

“It would be one thing if you did it to put in the minimum, but Ainsley said you put in several times that.  I checked with Old Will and Tim.  There are logs.”

Ugh.

Laird spoke softly, “You had to know you’d get caught.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We check the books-”

“-Every year,” Alister finished.

“Yes.  You’re aware, then.”

“I thought I’d be able to do it for another four months or so.”

“You picked the time you started this… operation, and you did it very deliberately, it seems.  You knew when you’d finish.  Putting nearly thirty hours a week into the well.  Almost fifteen hundred hours, by the year’s end.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to need you to tell me why.”

Alister glanced –glared– at his cousin.

“Please leave us alone,” Laird said.

“But-” Ainsley said.

“Please,” Laird spoke.

All of the others began to leave.

Alister met his cousin’s eyes.

“Narc,” he said, under his breath.

“Stop, Ainsley,” Laird said.

Ainsley stopped in her tracks.

“Your family member, your cousin, just did what she did out of genuine worry for your well being.  For the family’s sake, because she feared something very similar to the poisoning of the well I described earlier.”

Alister shrugged.  “Sure.”

“I refuse to let you hold a grudge against her.  Forgive her.”

“I… what?”

Laird looked imposing.  Where Alister and Ainsley were still growing, taller than their peers, but not yet as big as their grown family members, Laird was tall and wide and sturdily built.  Heavy eyebrows made his glare all the more ominous.

“Forgive your cousin.”

“But I can’t lie, and I don’t forgive her.”

“You’re going to try.  Promise,” Laird ordered, “to try.”

“Alister,” Laird said, “What you’ve been doing, I don’t think you’d keep it secret from family unless it potentially hurt members of this family.  If you can’t forgive your cousin for acting in your best interests, I can’t trust you to be a part of the Behaim circle.”

Meaning being forbidden from practicing.  Or worse.

Alister swallowed.

Ainsley was taller than him, her shoulders broader.  She looked so silly, dressed up like a kid from ten or fifteen years ago.  Overalls.

But… she’d always had his back, before.

Most of the cousins had.  Ainsley was just closest to him in age.

“I’ll try to look past this,” he said.  “I don’t want this to end our friendship.”

Ainsley nodded, stiff. “Me either.”

“Go,” Laird said.  “I’d like to have a word in private with Alister.  I don’t think he’ll share if others are listening.”

Ainsley and the assorted adults left.

Laird stood, crossed his living room to the kitchen, and grabbed a beer.  He checked the time, prompting Alister to look and see for himself.

“Five,” Laird said.  “Good enough.  Now talk, because if you don’t, I’m going to assume the worst.”

“Control,” Alister said.

“Control?”

“Of… the well.  Kind of.  I’m thinking, for all the generations before, you couldn’t get to be head of the family or member of the council without being here.  Without paying your fair share.  The guys in Ottawa and Montreal and Toronto, they don’t really have a shot at being head of the family, right?  I don’t think it’s ever happened.”

Laird arched an eyebrow.  “You want to supplant me?”

“No,” Alister said, dead serious.  “I want to be next in line.”

Laird sat down, bottle of beer in hand.  He took a drink, then leaned back once more.  “What makes you think this works?”

“It makes sense.  Some people don’t pay in as much.  But… you pay in more, and you’re in charge of the family.  I’m pretty sure Aimon paid a fair bit of time into the well, before you.”

“He did, but we didn’t do it for the reasons you did.  We did it for the family.”

“I know.  But I can do it for the family and I can do it for my own goals too.  Even if it doesn’t work, if I give up a piece of myself, something has to fill the gap, right?  Time is fundamental.  Take some away, and it deals collateral damage.  I’m not sure, but I think people around me lose time too.  If I’m doing it in school, where I’m surrounded by other practitioners, and borrow a bit of power, a bit of spirit from everything around me.”

“Including Ainsley, and your other cousins.”

“What I take from them, I can give back,” Alister said.  More serious, he said, “If I become great, I will give back.  I believe that.  But I’m also taking from the Duchamps.  I can see it.  Chipping away at them.  I become a little more Other, giving something as precious as time away, and they… have to adjust.  They’re adjusting because of me, and that gives me a certain kind of power, doesn’t it?”

“You imagine that you’re influencing things in a subtle way, doing what you’re doing.  Incremental advantages for you, disadvantages for your enemies.”

“Yes.”

“You’re probably right,” Laird said.  “You’re sacrificing your childhood for something else.  Investing more.”

Alister didn’t dare respond.  Everything hinged on this.

“You think the invested time will favor you because you’ve given more of yourself to it.”

“Yes.”

“Pretty cocky, for a boy who isn’t even in high school yet.”

“I’m smart,” Alister said.  “I’m good.  Better than Ainsley or Owen or Gavin.  And Owen and Gavin-”

“Are older,” Laird said.

“Yeah.”

“Yes.  They aren’t half as good as you.  It seems the cards don’t lie.”

“Cards?”

Laird turned around in his chair, and reached to the shelf.  Boxes were lined up.

He seemed to decide, then picked one.  He picked a book from the far end of the same shelf.  Both box and book were placed on the coffee table between them.

Alister opened the box, lifting off the lid.  Cards were stacked within.

“Keep those.  You’re going to want to study the subject material, and study it fast.  Given what you’ve talked about, I think it’ll be a natural fit.”

“Divination?”

“Your future was read a long time ago.  Decisions were made.”

“Decisions?”

“To arrange a different binding for you, alongside your awakening.  So you wouldn’t be constrained in the same ways.”

“I don’t remember anything like that.”

“We were subtle,” Laird said.  “Just as Aimon was more subtle with me, just in case things didn’t work out.  We decided you had potential, and paved the way.  We didn’t, however, expect you to be quite as quick as you were to start being inventive.”

“I’m not sure I get it.”

“Things are moving towards a crisis point,” Laird said.  “The question of who leads the Behaim family is secondary to the question of who leads Jacob’s Bell.  We’re anticipating conflict, Aimon anticipated conflict, and we can’t have every member of the family fettered by rules.  A select few have been vetted, cleared to tap into the well and use that power as they see fit.  I was one, you’re another.”

Alister’s eyes went wider.

“I expected to wait another few years for you to get your bearings, but seeing as you’re already walking the path, we might as well get underway.”

Laird stood, setting the bottle on the short table by the chair.  “Come.”

All this time, he’d thought he was walking his own path, and now… Alister shook his head.  “What’s going on?  Where are we going?”

“I know you have a lot of questions, but try to save them.  You’ll have most of the answers soon enough, and you might find yourself wishing you hadn’t wasted all your questions on the simpler things.”

“I have limited questions?”

“You’re proud, Alister, and a proud person can only ask so many questions before they exhaust that pride.  We’re very different people, but I think we’re similar in that.”

Alister nodded.

They passed Ainsley and the assorted adults, heading outside.

“What’s going on?” Ainsley asked, a concerned look on her face.

Well, if he got in trouble, she’d be at fault.

“Private lessons,” Laird said.  “We’re stepping up his training.”

“He’s getting rewarded?” Alister’s father asked.

Laird didn’t answer, except to say, “He’ll be back home by dinner, Jonathan.”

Alister hurried into the car, before his parents could tear into him.

Ainsley was staring at him.

He shut the car door, and pulled on the seatbelt, but Laird was already pulling out.

A proud person could ask only so many questions.  It made sense.

He had to pick the questions carefully, so the asking elevated.

Alister picked his question carefully.  “You keep saying we.  But I don’t think you’re talking about the family.”

“Not the Behaim circle, no.”

“Who’s we, then?”

■

Rose was intimidating, considering she was thin and old.  Her clothes looked fragile too, starched, or lacey, or just old, though certainly not worn or threadbare.  They were a statement.  She was just a bit aristocratic.

There were words she could say that would overturn Alister’s entire world.  If she had something summoned, a simple snap of her fingers…

Laird stood on the far side of the living room.  It put Alister right in the old woman’s sights.

For the better part of his life, Alister had been told that you didn’t speak to the Thorburn diabolist, you didn’t look at her, you didn’t even think about messing with her or anything of hers.

Even Molly, Christoff, or Callan Walker were supposed to be off limits.  Some did mess with them, especially the younger kids.  They sensed the vibe, maybe, and they acted on it, but even then, it was uncommon.

“Sit,” she said.

He had to tear his eyes way to find an appropriate chair.

He took a seat, closer to Laird.

The room went dark.  It wasn’t the lights – the lights and lamps weren’t on.

“Um,” he said, turning.

Laird was shutting the curtains.

“Eyes forward,” the old woman said.

When Alister looked, she had chalk in hand.

“I never believed in mollycoddling,” she said.

Oh.  Oh shit.  Oh shit.

She dropped to one knee, surprisingly easily for someone her age.

The chalk touched floorboard.

Alister started to rise from his seat.  Laird’s hands pushed him down.

“You need to know what you’re dealing with,” Laird said.

“Dealing with?  I’m not and never planning on-“

“Pay attention,” Laird said.  “If you miss something, you’ll need to sit through this again.  Take it from me, you don’t want to.”

Those words sent a chill through Alister.

“You-“

“-Sat where you sit, in a manner of speaking.  I had that seat over there, I think.”

“You did,” the old woman said.

“Why?  What’s going on?”

“An introductory lesson, one of several.  You’ll need to know how to defend yourself, and this is the first step.  Knowledge is power, and practice,” the old woman said, “makes perfect.”

“Why do I need to know how to defend myself?”

“First choir.  Darkness,” she said, not answering his question.

Or maybe she was.

“I call on Ouhim,” she said.

Alister’s heart leaped into his throat when he saw the diagram.  A simple circle, without ornamentation.

He saw the space within the circle turn black.

A head, or a face, pale, rose from the pool of darkness.  The silhouette was sleek, like a person with long black hair, plastered to their head with water, and a long black dress that covered the hands, clinging to their form.  Genderless.  Human shaped, but not humanoid.

Two eyes, no nose, mouth or ears.  The eye sockets were only dark pits, utterly black within.

Laird wasn’t holding him down anymore.  He found himself rising out of his seat, despite himself, staring at the twin pools of darkness.

Shaking his head, he looked away.

Ouhim smiled.

With a sound like a mountain splitting in half, a black crack spread across its face, as if the mask had splintered.

The crack swiftly spread beyond its face, onto the walls, across bookshelves, a foot above old woman Thorburn’s head, where she sat in the armchair opposite Alister.  Destroyed novels and pieces of wood fell to the floor.

There wasn’t a muscle in Alister’s body that wasn’t seized tight.

“It’s not…” Alister couldn’t form words.  “Bound properly.”

“It’s sufficiently bound for our needs,” the old woman said.  “I have an established relationship with it.  It won’t do permanent damage, provided we don’t let it.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but the words weren’t there.  He looked back at Laird.

Laird’s expression was grim.

“Go, Ouhim,” the old woman said.

The smile faded, the crack closing, until there wasn’t the slightest seam or scar.

Ouhim disappeared the way it had come, faster, dropping into the circle as though it were dropping into a hole.

In the aftermath of Ouhim’s visit, the bit of fallen wood from the bookshelf and two books that had been split in half remained ruined.

“I thought you said it wouldn’t do permanent damage,” Alister said, pointing.

“That’s not the kind of permanent damage she’s talking about,” Laird spoke.

That Laird knew… it sent a fresh lance of fear into Alister’s heart.

“The second choir,” the old woman said.

“Wait, stop, please.  Why are you showing me?”

“It’s a mnemonic tool,” she said.  “You’ll see one member of each choir.  You’ll remember until the day you die.  It’s a good foundation to build from.  After this, after I’ve instructed you in what they’re capable of, you’ll want to learn the necessary protections.”

“I want to learn already, I don’t need demonstrations.  I don’t want this foundation.  Tell me why you’re doing this.  Why am I getting these lessons?”

Laird sighed, just behind him.

The old woman was looking at Laird, too, as if they were sharing some unspoken communication.

“You, Laird, or the both of you are likely to find yourself opposite my descendants.  We face a unique situation.”

Unique how? he wondered, but he didn’t voice the thoughts aloud.  As Laird had said, questions had to be reserved.

She walked around the circle.  “Morax.”

It felt like being plunged into ice water.  The air was thick.  The light, too, seemed as if it was weighed down, pressed down into just blacks and reds, without shade or hue.

But when he looked, the circle was empty.

“Second choir, madness.  Don’t panic.”

Alister felt a hand settle on his shoulder.

In this sharply contrasted world of black and red, the old woman’s wrinkles were like scars on her face, jagged lines of black, too sharp.  “The situation is that we’re looking to enact revolution.  Aimon was on the same page as me.  Laird is… less so.”

“Yet I remain open minded,” Laird said.  “Provided my family benefits.”

Laird’s voice and the existence of the hand on Alister’s shoulder didn’t jibe.

Alister glanced a little to the left, and saw just how large the hand was.

Deep red.

“The problem with revolution is that it involves conflict, and the various sides in this conflict wield too much firepower.  My side most of all.”

Alister could barely hear her.  The hand… it was attached to a muscular arm.

The arm was attached to a hairy man’s body.

The man, in turn, had a high forehead, and at the corners of the forehead, the skin twisted into a gnarled sort of halo, like a crown of thorns that was embedded in the demon’s head.

But the demon’s expression was placid, a light smile on his face.  It might have been the forehead, but something about his appearance, somehow, evoked the idea of a scholar.  A scholar, perhaps, that existed in an era long past, when scholars could have long hair, beards, bare genitals hanging free, and coarse hair on their chests.

His eyes, in this world of black and red, were a pale sky blue.

“My heir, whichever I select, may call things like this to use against you and your family, Alister.  Wheels have been turning for a long, long time, and try as I might, I’m not in a position to stop them.  They have too much momentum.  Go, Morax.”

“Momentum,” Alister said, as the surroundings returned to normal colors, each color arriving in its own time.

The sensation of the hand’s weight on his shoulder didn’t leave.

“I shoulder a heavy weight of karma.  I’ve managed it by being careful.  Every action I take is deliberate.  Whatever you might see, here, I’m being exceptionally careful, calling names I know I can trust.  But careful doesn’t encourage change.  Not when the entire universe is struggling to heal from grave wounds.”

“Wounds?”  He asked, before realizing what he’d just left himself open to.

“Avert your eyes.  Third choir, ruin.  Zapan.“

Alister looked away just in time.

The demon manifested within the circle like a rolling thunderclap, a storm of images, each one demanding his attention, like a charging bull, a thrown object, all outlined and augmented by fire and lightning and other light shows.  The assaults weren’t reserved for him, but at everything.  Every mote of dust and book and person in the room.

“My understanding of things is simple, Alister.  Every Other is, if you trace things back far enough, the fault of demons.  Every practitioner is the fault of Others, or, for a rare few, the fault of demons.  All of these things, in their way, guide all of existence slowly toward its end.  The unlucky few who get in too deep fall into their clutches.”

Zapan screeched, an eerie, broken sound just at the bounds of his ability to hear, making Alister feel like things inside him were breaking and would never feel okay again.

“Even chronomancy-“

“Virtually all practices, Alister.  Call it a diabolist’s bias, but I would posit that the only difference between Laird and I is the level of self-delusion.”

“For the record,” Laird said, “I don’t agree.”

“Go, Zapan.”

The roaring, thundering, broken noise came to an end, and the moments of silence that followed were almost worse, they were so raw.

“You’re doing this so easily.”

“Given excuse or predilection my heir may, too.  These were three very different types of demon, from the three primary choirs.  Can you see yourself, five years from now, defending yourself from this?  If the circle hadn’t been here, and I was your enemy?”

“No.  Not at all.”

“With time and training, we’ll hopefully develop that into a maybe.  Maybe, in the right circumstances, you could defend yourself.”

“You’re neutering your own side?”

The old woman pressed thin lips together.  “You’re on my side more than those things are.  Sandra is, too, even if she loathes me.  You’ll understand that too, in time.”

“I don’t understand my role.  What do you want from me?”

“I’ll explain,” she said.  “I believe that the ability to practice comes from demons.  I believe the world’s attempts to balance itself are a response to this.  A response to us.  We practice, the spirits judge as a proxy for all of existence, and the spirits right the wrong.  But much like a spinning top, the world is teetering out of balance, Alister.  The jerks this way and that will get only more severe.  Push, and the world pushes back.”

“Or you topple it,” Alister said.  “The top tips over, and goes flying across the table, and it stops spinning altogether.”

The old woman nodded.  “I can’t hope to fix things. The universe seeks to maintain its balance, but this makes it hard to change things.  As I said, it pushes back.  Sandra’s family has done what it has done for nearly five hundred years.  The Behaims have done what they’ve done for three hundred.  Crone Mara existed before the Algonquins.  History has weight, and that much weight is difficult to move.”

“The leadership of Jacob’s Bell may be a movement,” Laird said.  “Or an opportunity to bring it about.  A brief window of time, where we can change the status quo.”

“But this remains difficult,” the old woman said.  “Even fixing my own family is… I’m not equipped for it.  Getting involved, it only exposes them to this.  And I decided long ago that we need better foundations, if we’re to build something solid enough.”

“I’m not sure I get it.”

“A nudge, Alister,” the old woman said.  “Timed right, in the right direction, in the right amount, as things teeter to one side, and the top may well spin faster, in the right direction.”

“You’ll learn to use the cards, and you’ll learn your chronomancy,” Laird said.  “I’ll be doing the same.  With luck, one of the two of us will be able to time things appropriately.”

“Doubling our chances?” Alister asked.

“I don’t think so,” Laird said.  “The penchant of the Behaims, I’m sure you’ve heard, is to stubbornly pummel the opposition into submission, then while they’re off balance, hit them with the finishing blow.  I do the pummeling…”

He left the sentence unfinished.

“Okay,” Alister said, clenching his fists.  It helped – his hands were still shaking a bit from the visitors earlier.  “Okay.”

“Things are going to get much messier before they get better,” the old woman said.  “But it’s much easier to affect things with a nudge when they’re already moving.”

“We have a lot to do,” Laird said.  “You’ll need to learn to protect yourself and protect others.  You’ll also have to get things in position, and–”

“And the nudge?” Alister asked.  “What sort of nudge am I giving?”

■

“Stay here,” he said.

Ainsley gave him a concerned look.  The timeless armor only obeyed.

“Please, Ainsley,” Alister said.

She relented, nodding.  She looked around, as if she didn’t quite trust that the timing was right.  Her candle was in one hand, pins in the other.  Weapons at the ready.

Her nervousness was contagious.  He used his implement, sorting through the cards.

Two of cups.  Connection.

Good enough.

Rose was sitting on the cot as Alister opened the door.  He’d expected her to be wearing a hospital gown, but she still wore her normal clothes.  She hadn’t been drugged.  In the worst case scenario, they would have needed her alert and capable.

Her clothes, he noted, were very, very similar to the ones the old woman had worn, the first time he’d seen her.

But Rose wasn’t the old woman.  The atmosphere was the same, the sense of power, even here, where she should have been powerless.  But Rose was something and someone entirely different.

All the same, he had no doubt that she was ready, able, and capable of speaking a word, using a gesture, and summoning something.  The difference, a difference, was that she wouldn’t.

He smirked a little.  You could only be told so many times that you were brilliant, that everything rested on your shoulders, without getting a little bit full of oneself.  It was a shield, a buffer.  The alternative was to crumble.  In this critical moment, he had to choose one or the other.

“They just let you walk in here?” she asked.

“Nudged the shift schedules a bit,” he said.  “There is a bit of a gap, right now.”

“I was hoping one of you would come to talk to me,” she said.

“You didn’t care which?”

“I have things I’d like to say to Sandra, and things I could say to Johannes…”

He checked the cards.

“They’re not coming for a while yet.  It looks like it’s down to me,” he said.

She nodded.

“I assume something you’d say to me?”

She nodded, a tight motion.

“This sounds crazy, but…”

He drew the little box out of his pocket, opening it.

There was no joy on her face, but he did manage to get a small expression of surprise out of her.

“I had arguments, I was willing to threaten, it was even a long shot, but…”

“But why?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Getting things in position,” he said.  “The junior council is on our side.  The Behaims are backing me, even if they aren’t happy.  Your people are… mostly okay.”

He saw the relief in her.

“They’ll be as close to safe as they can get, soon enough.  I’m having the family call their creatures back in a minute.  I expect Johannes and Sandra will follow suit.  It’ll upset their tempo.  Your friends will have time.  We can use that time.”

“Well,” she said, “You’re looking like a knight in shining armor, here.”

“A good portion of this was Laird,” he said, “Not me.”

He could see the surprise on her face.

“This is going to get far worse before it gets better,” he said.

“It’s… pretty damn bad.”

He held up the deck, fanning out cards.  “Greek to you, I imagine, but believe me.  It’s going to get a lot worse, very fast.  We’ve got company.”

Execution 13.1

Rose and Alister, side by side.  Behaims all around me, a clockwork knight of some sort barring my escape route.

Now I could hear the bell.  It tolled in sync with the pounding movement inside my chest, my arms, my legs.

I had to move, shifting my feet, hand clenched at my side, other hand gripping the Hyena.  I saw them react, tensing, securing their own footing on the snowy street.

Alister let out a long breath, a plume of cold breath in front of his face.

The bell was Working in concert with the bogeyman part of me to urge me to attack, to go all out.  Solve a dozen problems at once.  I could surprise Alister and Rose by lunging, moving faster than they expected, or by throwing the Hyena.

Alister was young, though.  Eighteen, I was pretty sure?  When I’d told the man in the ill-fitting suit he had free reign around here, I’d told him to steer clear of anyone under twenty.

It had been a spur of the moment call, but my gut feeling had been that anyone under twenty wasn’t necessarily free of their parents’ influence.

Alister, though… I had little doubt he was independent.  Did my own rules apply?

Or, I thought, maybe I can stop thinking about Alister in terms of how easily I could kill him.

“Hi, Rose,” I said.

“Blake.”

“Does the armor talk, Alister?”

“No.  It’s a construct.”

“Okay, that makes it simpler,” I said.  “I can just greet you.  Hi, Alister.”

“You could greet Will, too.  He’s the guy who you just tried to murder.”

I nodded slowly, looking at the guy who I’d just cut.  Time had rewound.  Probably chronomancy trickery, messing with my perceptions, rather than an actual reversal of time.

“Heya, Will,” I said.

“Fuck you.”

“Right,” I said.  Couldn’t blame him.

“Do me a favor, and give us some space?”

“If the council wants, we can replace you,” Will said.

“I know.  I know I don’t have your full trust, but… we need privacy here.”

Will didn’t look too happy, stalking off with his mechanical soldiers.  He didn’t leave so much as walk away until he was more or less out of earshot.

Many of the other Behaims were lurking nearby too.  Keeping watch.

Alister let go of Rose’s hand, sticking his hands into his pockets, instead.  “I should ask, Blake, is the murderous spree because things went wrong, or because they went right?  Either the others are safe, or they’re gone.  I can’t imagine you’d be here otherwise.”

“There’s a third possibility,” Rose said, her voice quiet.  “He might not have trusted himself to be around them.”

“That wasn’t it,” I said.  “Not quite.”

“I see,” she said.  “Is my guess closer or further from the truth than Alister’s?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Depends how you interpret the sentence.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” she said.

Some of the Behaims were still backing off.  Every set of eyes was on us.  It was, if I wound up in a fight, a lot of firepower leveled my way.

“Ah, there’s a bit of pressure,” Alister said, his voice just a bit quieter than before.  “They nominated me to be the guy in charge, after a hell of a lot of debating.  This is my first publicly visible act as leader of the family.  How do I deal with the Thorburn bogeyman, when I have the Thorburn heir at my side?”

Rose was studying me.  Emotionally cold, detached, disconnected.  Beneath the old fashioned coat, I could see her knee-length dress and the lace-patterned hose on her legs.  Her boots had brassy buckles on the straps, with snow in some old scuff marks at the toe.  She’d fixed her hair recently.

My antithesis, in a way.

“Any opinions, Rose?” Alister asked.  “Have to admit, this gets a lot easier if you give me the okay.”

“If I tell you you can deal with him with extreme prejudice?”

“Yeah.  That.”

She nodded.

But she didn’t give the okay.

“How is the house, Blake?” she asked.

“Flooded, there are some areas that are virtually painted in gore and bodies, holes in the floors, broken taps, the inner library was broken into, last I saw, before access was barred, which might cause further problems.  Then there’s the fire, and… glancing over that way, I can tell that it’s still burning, despite the efforts of the attacking Others.”

“And my friends and family?” she asked.

My, she’d said, not our.

Not wrong, but misleading.

“Callan died,” I said.

“Shit.  I almost liked Callan.”

“Roxanne’s in bad shape, Kathy’s arm might not ever recover, and Peter’s… he’s okay, but he’s figured far too much out.”

“Whose head is that on?”

“It was chaotic enough I can’t quite remember.  Local bogeymen, I think.  Partially on my head.”

Rose nodded.

Is she asking me this because she wants to know what’s up after she kills me?  I wondered.

“I’m glad most of our people came out of it okay,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Did you happen to kill anyone noteworthy before you came after Will, there?”

“No, nobody noteworthy, as far as I know,” I answered.  “But I wasn’t idle, either.”

“Well,” she said.  She sounded so calm.  How much was she using Conquest, here?  “Alister and I just had a long conversation about you.”

“I… see,” I said.

“Would you believe I was actually arguing to keep you alive?” she asked.

No, I thought, automatically, quietly furious.  My survival was my call, not hers, and I didn’t believe her in the first place.  It was unfair, maybe, and maybe it was fueled by the natural opposition to Rose, but when I heard something phrased as a question, my natural reaction was to assume it was a falsehood or misdirection.

Rose went on, “Alister kind of has a grudge, after you tried to kill him-”

“Maim,” I said.

“Well then,” Alister said.  “That’s something.”

“-Maim him, then,” Rose said.  “I, on the other hand-”

“Don’t have a grudge?” I cut in.

Immature, maybe, but I wasn’t sure I trusted the Abyss any more than I trusted Rose.  I could give her a chance to clear the air.

“-I, on the other hand,” she repeated herself, “feel like we’re too short on allies.  Johannes has a lot of Others on his side, and the Duchamps have a lot of practitioners.”

She hadn’t confirmed or denied my point.

“Yeah, the Duchamps have a lot of practitioners.  Equates to an awful lot of homonculi, apparently,” I said.

“I believe you on that count,” Rose said.  “Ty thought about making some a week or so ago.  But my point is, I hope you can understand if I say I’m not about to turn down help.”

“Even if that help is me?” I asked.  “With all the mystery and stuff you won’t tell me about who and what I am?”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

It’s complicated.

Sure.  She wasn’t entirely wrong.

“How about I make it very simple?” I asked.

The bell tolled louder.

I saw Alister glance skyward for a moment.  “Maybe you should steer clear of phrases like that?  In the movies and on TV, they tend to precede the big action hero moments where the big guy pulls a dumb stunt.  There’s no guarantee you’ll be as lucky as the hero.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Rose, I know.”

Alister glanced at her.  “Know?”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“We just discussed it,” Rose said.

“Right,” Alister said.  “Now it clicks.  Been a long night.”

I glanced at him.  “You have no idea how sarcastic I want to be right now.  I’m surprised you told him.”

Rose cleared her throat.  “Before one of us gives away a vital detail in the dumbest way possible, can you clarify what you know?”

“I know where I came from, or I know about as much as you do, I think.  Two parts of a whole.”

She nodded slowly.  “You read the diaries?”

“Diaries?” I asked.

“Grandmother’s.  Leaving the house all of a sudden, like I had to, knowing you had free reign, I figured that would be the way you’d find out, if you found out.”

I shook my head.  “Didn’t have time to sit down and read.  We’ve kind of been fighting for our lives.  Or existences, in any event.”

Evan set down on the edge of a nearby roof, at my three o’clock.  He cocked his head to one side.

I’d told him I’d be heading back his way, and that he should cover my retreat.  No doubt he’d been wondering what was up.

I shook my head, fairly emphatically.  For Evan, primarily.  “It was bad.  Witch hunters, Others…”

“But the point is that you know,” Rose said.  “Somehow.”

“Yeah, the Abyss told me,” I said.  To drive in a point, I added, “I’m being honest here.  Up front.”

“I had reasons for keeping it a secret,” she said.

You turned my friends against me, I thought.  The thought was angry, a growl.

“I know,” I said, in a very normal voice.  “I don’t agree with the reasons, but hey… I’m pretty biased.”

“Yeah.  Me too,” Rose agreed.  “There’s a more obscure principle at work, here, called validity.  By saying it, you make it so.”

“I’ve run into that one,” I said.

“A prophecy gets more traction with those who are supposed to carry it out if it’s known.  If it has more people who carry a piece of it with them.”

“Much like the threads between us three,” Alister said.

Rose nodded.  “This is… almost a prophecy.  Fated, might be the right word.”

“I was fated to die,” I said.  “I’m still here.”

“Fated to move on from this world,” Rose said.  “You did.  You came back.  Bending the rules here.”

“We can’t bend this rule?” I asked.  “Take the idea that one half is supposed to destroy the other and turn it on its head?”

“How?” Rose asked, with a little more force than was necessary, as if it was an accusation or a demand.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I’m still processing.  You’ve had most of a day and a night to think on it.  I’ve had less than an hour, probably.  But if I had to suggest something… can’t we unite the two halves by forging something like the master-familiar bond?”

“You already have a familiar,” Rose said.  “Limits options.”

“Had,” I said.  “Which doesn’t necessarily limit anything.”

I noted that Evan was still on the rooftop, waiting.  Watching.

Wanting me to ask for help, maybe?

“There’s something between you two, even if the connection is broken.  Nevermind.  If I had to put it bluntly, I don’t like you, Blake.  I’ve seen you change in the remarkably short time I’ve known you, and I don’t think I like what I’d be attaching myself to.  To top it all off, being master and familiar doesn’t mean we’d be getting along.”

“Just an idea,” I said.

“Not to mention,” she said, “That the big issue here, between you and me, is we aren’t static.  With you in this… state, Blake, you’re nebulous.  Evan went to me after you left us, but you reclaimed him, just like that.  Dealing with the others, I can see my grip on them weakening.  It’s going to get worse.  More abstract concepts might start coming loose.  Actually forming a master-familiar bond, that’s opening a conduit, letting things flow freely.  There’s no damming that river when it starts flowing, one way or the other.  It leads to a point where one of us destroys the other, to recoup maybe ninety percent of what we are, minus whatever was lost forever between the blades of the Barber’s shears.”

“Okay,” I said.  “And you’re afraid it’s going to flow to me?”

“No,” Rose said.  “I’m concerned about how you’ll react if the human parts of you flow to me, and all that’s left on your end is an apparently murderous bogeyman with a hate-on for me.”

“The alternative is that you could cooperate with me.  Listen to me.”

“Or you listen to me,” she said.  “I’m the original.  The heart, the soul, the core.  The books were pretty unambiguous.  I checked multiple texts.  Go back to the basics, the raw stuff of humans and humankind, birth and death, and you’ll find it starts with the woman, ends with the woman.  Cut away and you’ll wind up with a female at the heart of it.”

“Maybe,” I said, remembering her saying something very similar in my vision in the Tenements.  Her arrogance was grating, and it was making me feel agitated again.  I had to be very deliberate as I spoke, to keep my tone under control, “But I’m not sure that means what you think it means.”

“We were someone, and that person is gone now, never to be whole again, because that’s the issue with demons.”

“Yep.  They destroy.  Even the worst Others out there, what they do is just a change of states,” I said.  “Pretty much everything non-demon is in agreement that it’s a very bad thing in the long run: what a demon destroys is forever broken.”

“I get chills when you phrase it like that,” Alister said.

“I don’t know who we were,” Rose said, “But she would have-”

“He,” I cut in.

Rose frowned at me.

“Common sense,” I told her.  I plucked at the fabric of my sweatshirt. It had an importance, and I’d just realized what it was.  It was even possible that the Drains had made sure to give it to me, because of that.  “The guy had an apartment, a bike, clothes.  You’re wearing grandmother’s hand-me-downs.  What makes more sense?  Girl gets cut in two, universe rearranges itself, and her clothes became a guy’s clothes, somehow-”

“A demon or a spell could have done it.”

“Add or remove demons as needed,” I said.  “Or, second option, we were a guy in the first place.  The simplest answer is often the correct one.”

“Names,” Rose said.  “Names hold more weight.  Names are fucking important, when you look at what happened to Mags.  Why would Ivy be called Ivy?  If we were a guy, then she’d be Rose.  For the same reason I-”

“Ross,” I said, the moment the thought came to me.

I saw Rose’s mouth open and close.

I saw a crack in her facade.  A moment of true concern.  Almost a kind of fear.

A part of me wanted to capitalize on it.  A screaming, angry part that remembered how she’d turned my friends against me, made this so much more complicated, out of fear and arrogance.

Kill her while she’s off guard.

Alister seemed to recognize her distress, and the knight’s lance was suddenly pressed more firmly against my throat, threatening, warning.  The angry thoughts went quiet all of a sudden, as that simple touch brought me back to reality.

I noticed that Alister hadn’t even moved or spoken, yet the clockwork knight had obeyed.

I spoke, calm,  “We were probably Ross, or Russ, or Russel, or something that was the male equivalent of Rose.  Mom and dad wouldn’t name their second kid Rose, if they’d already named their firstborn something equivalent.  They aren’t that tacky.”

A part of me didn’t want to enjoy seeing Rose put on her heels.  Realizing just how egocentric she’d been.  She’d been arrogant, because she’d been made that way.  She’d jumped to conclusions and she’d acted on them, and I couldn’t fault her for that any more than she should fault me for being an incomplete human.

“We were a guy, and we were cut in half.  And the feminine side, the heart, the soul, they went to you, whatever a heart and soul are without friends.  You got the name.  I got… blackness, or white, or whatever you use to represent nothingness, maybe.  I got the trauma, the defining experiences, the desire to fight, and you got… ambition and attachment to family.  Your memories of high school are probably fuzzy, and pretty damn empty, because reality had to stretch what you had to fill in the blanks.”

“Blake…” she started.

I waited for her to finish, but she didn’t.

“I’m not denying that you might have the heart, the soul, the core, or whatever.  I’m definitely not denying that you got the name, or something damn close to it.  I don’t, however, think you’re a shoe-in to win any tug-of-wars.  I’m not trying to be hostile as I say it, but I’ve got an awful lot of important memories.  Unpleasant ones, but we were just talking about traction.  Connections forming.  Years of homelessness, intense emotional turmoil, being in a cult, Carl… Alexis.  Our friends.  That adds up to a lot of traction.  I’m not sure what the barber left you, that weighs on your side of the scale.”

I left the last bit unsaid.  The conclusion to my argument.

Rose had been left as a blank slate.  Only the parts grandmother needed and wanted in an heir were kept.

From the look in her eyes, she knew.

I glanced at Alister, who was standing just a bit to Rose’s right.

Maybe it was bad to air all this in front of a potential enemy.

But there were no good times.  It was the reality of our existence, if I waited until things were calm and everything was right, I’d never have a chance to speak frankly with Rose.

Putting it all out there, even though I knew it put me in a worse spot.  Rose knew I knew, now, and that made her more frightened of me.

“Don’t mind me,” Alister commented.

“I don’t,” I said.  “Not too much, anyway.  Your thing might be holding a lance to my throat, but you’re giving me and Rose a chance to talk.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” Alister said, glancing at Rose.  “My fiancée doesn’t look happy.”

“I’m not,” Rose said.  “But I don’t think I’m going to be happy until all of this is over, if we even make it through this.”

“That sounds like an excellent change of topic,” Alister said.  “This.  The discussion has been an eye opener, but you did try to kill poor old Will over there, and you were going to maim me not so long ago, and all signs point to things between you and my fiancée ending in tears.  The house is burning, and we’ve got you at, er, lancepoint.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“We’re going to need to resolve this one way or another.  Again, Rose, as per the terms of our arrangement…”

“My call.”

“Yes,” Alister said.

“I was thinking that sounded like a good thing, before.  Getting to decide.  Now it’s having to decide.  Do I leave Blake alone, and risk having him come after me, or do I have you kill him, and risk that I might infect myself with whatever spirits or abyssal stuff flows through him?”

“No intention of coming after you, unless you give me reason,” I said.

“I’ll give you reason, in a manner of speaking,” she said, raising her chin a notch.  “Whatever’s happening to you, the spirits in you, the degradation of your Self, the growth of the Abyss within you, your head will get twisted around, and you’ll convince yourself you have a reason.”

That struck a chord.

Green Eyes, and her insistence that the woman she’d killed wasn’t human any more.

Twisting her thoughts around?  Contriving a way around a basic, simple deal?

Fuzzy logic, but did the loss of karma matter, if it was counterbalanced by the Abyss feeding her or feeding me with more strength?

“I can’t say I won’t ever come after you,” I said.  “That puts me at the disadvantage.”

“According to the bogeyman with the lance pressed to his neck, two seconds way from possible decapitation?” Alister asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Says me.”

“There aren’t many good answers, Blake,” Rose said.  “We need to compromise, but by dint of circumstance, any compromise from one of us two means giving the other half leverage.”

“Dint?” I asked.

“Been reading lots of old books,” Rose said.  “My point stands.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, that just about sums it up,” I said.

“Like you said,” Rose told me.  “The simplest answer is often the correct one.  Alister was right, too, saying this is easiest.  Right now, the simplest and easiest answer looks to be ‘get rid of the bogeyman’.”

My heart sank.

“I’ve tried to be genuine,” I said.

“You have been,” Rose told me.  “I respect that.  I bet it even went somewhat against your nature.”

“Some,” I said.

She spoke softly, “But I’m not seeing any good answers.  With my relationship with the Behaims being what it is… I can’t afford to make enemies.  Alexis, Tiff, and Ty will probably understand if I tell them you were being reckless.”

“Evan?” I asked.

“Wasn’t mine, really.  I tried to look after him, I really did, but… I get the impression he was a much better fit alongside you than he was alongside me.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Evan was still watching.  He perked up as I met his eyes.

I shook my head a little.

“No?” Alister asked.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said.

“A deal.”

“Simplicity and ease, right?  I’ll agree to be bound.  It’s not simple or easy for me, but… it’s an answer.”

I saw them exchange glances.

“Really,” Alister said.  “By me or by Rose or-”

“Not by either of you,” I said.  “I don’t trust you.  I’m not sure I trust my friends, but… if you forsake all holds on Alexis, and free her of all former pacts and deals you’ve made with her, and if you agree not to influence her and let her make decisions of her own accord, I’ll agree to be bound by her.  You’d be able to trust me as much as you trust her.”

Rose shook her head.  “Able?  Maybe, but not willing.  I have to think of Midge and what happened in Toronto.  A reckless, stubborn bogeyman?”

“She’s more than a simple bogeyman.”

“As are you,” Alister said.

“I’m guessing you were being misleading before, when you were talking about how you need help, but you need help.  We were willing to use Midge to defend the house, and I’m thinking you might need to use me.  Even if you’re relying on Alexis, to keep a handle on me.”

“But I’d be giving up Alexis,” Rose said.  “And I’d potentially be giving up my grip on her, to hand her over.”

“I’d be giving up my grip on me,” I said.  “Being bound… it goes against everything about me.”

Rose and Alister exchanged glances.

Alister spoke, “We’d have your friends, the Thorburns, most of the junior council, the Behaims…”

“Evan,” I added.

“The sparrow,” Alister said. “It puts us on a good footing.”

“A better footing,” Rose said.

“A good footing, relatively speaking.”

“Yeah,” Rose said.

“On the other hand, speaking as the chronomancer of this group… I have to wonder if he’s buying time.”

“Not my intention, except in the abstract,” I said.  “I don’t want to be destroyed.”

Rose and Alister exchanged looks.

“What,” Rose said, “If I come after you?”

“I reserve the right to defend myself,” I said.  “Including defensive measures set up in advance.  We can let Alexis decide what’s reasonable.”

Rose’s eyebrows went up.

I could see her eyes move as she thought intensely, turning over possibilities in her head.

It’s… odd.  I’m more nervous about the idea of talking about this with Alexis than I am about talking to Rose, or to Alister.

Even though I trusted Alexis, on a level.

Alister drew his deck out of his pocket.  He glanced at the card, then showed it to Rose.

“Yeah?” Alister said.  “It’s… most definitely a compromise.  Balance of some sort.”

“Definitely a compromise,” Rose said.  “Leaves both parties more or less equally unhappy.  Unless we’re missing something.”

The silence was almost palpable.  The snow muffled everything, and there was no wind.  The only motion was the smoke and the dancing light from behind Hillsglade House.

I shifted my weight, and branches and twigs popped and cracked.  I could hear the fluttering of spirits within me.

I extended my hand for Alister to shake.

He extended his own hand.

The silence was broken.  Where the bell had pealed and tolled before, this was a knell, a crashing of thunder, the noise a church bell might make as it came free, striking hard ground.

Spiritually, it was like a gust of wind.  Every spirit within me was thrown aside the walls of the cage, against the walls of my body.

Something else took residence.

Maggie Holt stood on the top of the slope, where the sidewalk reached over to the bridge.  Her hair blew in a strong wind, and her hands were shoved into her pockets, for warmth and to shove her jacket down so her skirt wouldn’t blow up.

Her eyes, though, were wide, welling with too many ideas and feelings for me to even process.  She moved her lips, but no words came out.  The wind took some of them, horror took the rest.

The goblins clambered over me.

I didn’t feel pain.  Only the knowledge that I was being taken apart.  They were chaotic, different in behavior, in appearance, in size and shape and smell.  But they were terrifying.  I felt like I hadn’t experienced real, genuine fear in months.

And in figuring out the order to use in breaking someone down without killing them, they were awfully, horribly organized.

One hand raised, reaching out.

A silent, wordless plea.

A fat goblin caught it.  Nail files at the ready.

My vision was streaked, blurry.

But I could see the words on Maggie’s lips.

A distant, primal, subconscious part of my mind processed the words.

Laird told me to.

Not an excuse.  But a fact all the same.

Laird Behaim.

Behaim.

Never forgive the Behaims.

I closed my eyes.  When I opened them, I was standing before Rose and Alister again.

The bell tolled, an echo of an echo of an echo, one rolling over the other, a cacophony.

Sandra had tried to control it, Molly’s Bell, using that Apple of Discord I’d heard about.  Centering the conflict on the house.

In slow motion, almost, trying to get centered, and place myself in reality, I withdrew the Hyena from Alister’s outstretched right hand. Blood oozed from the hole in his palm.

I saw him stare down at it.

To his credit, when he raised his eyes to me, there wasn’t a trace of surprise in his expression.

“The bell,” I said.

“Your cousin,” he said.  “I know.  Grudges die hard, and history is a hard thing to ignore.”

“I didn’t,” I said.  Not even a complete sentence.  But the meaning was clear.

“Fuck me,” he said, backing away a step, left hand gripping the wrist of his right.  “This really hurts.”

The card was right, I thought.  Balance.  Both sides equally unhappy.

Wait.  If it was balance, or whatever the drawn card was-

“Sorry, Blake,” Alister said.  “But my family is watching.”

“Your family-” I turned to look.  To see staring eyes.

In that same moment.  The suit of armor with the lance moved.

It didn’t move from A to B with a handful of steps.  Its arm didn’t move fluidly.

It went from A to B as if it were two completely different photographs, switching from one to the next faster than the blink of an eye.  In the darkness, with the armor gleaming here and there, spots on my vision made it seem to linger in the spot where it had stood before.

Where it stood now, the lance was sticking through my abdomen.

Bits of broken wood fell to the ground.  Other bits got tangled in my legs and on my pants, and gripped to hold their spot.

I worked to back way, heaving myself backward, along the length of the lance.

In the process, I glimpsed Rose and Alister, grim expressions on their faces.

My eye fell on the knight as I pulled myself free.  I staggered, adjusting to the fact that I had a hole someone could have fit a leg through in my stomach, and consequently very little abdominal strength.

I saw the clock on the knight’s chest.  Ticking counterclockwise.

Ticking down.

A timer.  Five, four-

Too late, I started to run.  I was fast, I was light.  Even injured, I could cover a fair amount of ground.

It hit me harder than a sledgehammer.  The lance piercing my shoulder.  My arm hanging on only by the scraps and fragments of the armpit.  I caught my arm and held it-

Eleven, ten, nine-

I raised my injured arm to my mouth, and I bit onto the cloth.  My hand still operated, and I was able to pass the Hyena to my free hand.

I twisted and stabbed the knight.

Not even a scratch.

Five, four, three–

The bell continued to tolled, out of sync, messing up my ability to count and predict.  It seemed to be getting worse, moment by moment.

Betrayal.

By siding with the Behaims, we’d betrayed Molly.

I backed away.  There was no winning.  No making everyone happy.

The lance pierced my chest.  Dead center.  Grazing my heart, breaking a part of my spine.

But I was still moving backward.  I slid free, landing on all fours.

A small bird flew past me, helping me get my balance and my bearings.

Circles were appearing in the snow.  The snowflakes within bright and slow and glittering.

The watching Behaims.

With Evan’s help, I could navigate the traps that were unfolding around me.  Break free of the snares.  I practically staggered.

The Knight moved, but it could only move so far in the space between seconds.  It only grazed me.

I saw Will, struggling with his mechanical people.  They weren’t obeying.  Weren’t coming after me.  He had to duck as one nearly hit him, twisting around.

Evan and I ducked around a corner.  Putting a building between us and the Behaims.

We were on a main street.

All of the Others who’d been at the house, and many of the Others that had been held in reserve, they were active.  Reacting to the bell.

I found the nearest dark spot, and let myself collapse.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Execution 13.2

“I have no idea what happened there, but I can confidently say that probably could have gone better.”

“Yeah, Evan,” I replied.  I’d collapsed onto my stomach, and I didn’t turn my face away from the ground as I spoke.  “Yeah, it could have.”

“Are you dying?  Hole in the stomach usually means dying.”

“Not dying, Evan.”

“Do you need help moving?  I work my mojo and help lift, like this,” he said.  Tiny talons grasped a branch at my shoulder.  He tugged, flapping his wings.

“I just need to think for five seconds,” I said.  “Where’s Green Eyes?”

“Close.  She found a hiding spot.”

“Good.  So long as she’s safe.  Something’s going on with the bell.”

“Something’s going on with you.  Guy extends his hand, and you shake it with a broken sword?  Except you stabbed it, so that’s, I dunno, it’s like someone goes in for a fist bump and you shake it instead, but way, way worse.  Even if he’s a bit of a jerk, that’s-”

“It wasn’t me,” I said.

“Looked like you.”

“Evan,” I said.  “Molly stepped in.  She doesn’t want anyone making deals with the Behaims.  What I did there, I didn’t do by choice.  She interrupted the deal, stopped it from happening.”

“Oh.”

I began to climb to my feet.  Wood creaked and snapped, my midsection precariously close to breaking in half.  There wasn’t any structural integrity there.  I had to lean against the wall.  I wasn’t quite in an alley, but it was a narrow bit of one-lane road that almost didn’t qualify as a road.  The building next to me might have been a small cinema, once, but there were only patches of differently-painted brickwork now where the big signs had been.  My fingertips dug into the parts of the brickwork where the weather had eroded the mortar, much as I’d climbed on the walls in the Tenements.

“Same problem we’ve been running into for the last while,” I said.  “Can’t break the pattern.”

“Rose said something similar, a few days ago.  About your gran and the diaries, or something.”

I could hear Evan, but I couldn’t place him.  I looked at my shoulder, where I’d last felt him perch, and he wasn’t there.

A moment later, I found him, perched within the gaping hole in my abdomen.

“What did she say, specifically?”

“That, um, your gran struggled to change stuff, according to the diary.”

“Elaborate?”

“Can’t.  That’s all Rose said.”

“Right,” I said.  “Damn.”

Rose had deterred me from reading the diaries, way back near the beginning.  Back when she’d lied about knowing who we were and where we’d come from, when she’d lied about doing the ritual.

Now, just recently, it had come up again.  Rose thought the diaries might have clued me into what I was, and the true origins.  That we were cut from the same metaphorical cloth.

I needed to read those diaries.

But it wasn’t like I was going to get a few days to just sit down and read anytime soon.

As I made my way back to the main street, I could see the Others that the Behaims had been keeping as protection.  Will, the guy I’d very nearly slashed, had managed to wrangle most or all of the clockwork people.  There were other Others, however, who were very clearly free.  Zeitgeists and bogeymen from film.

The clockwork people were assuming a defensive position, facing off against Others who had been the Behaim’s allies until only moments ago.

They backed off as Alister’s clockwork knight stepped forward.

That knight apparently spooked them.  Because they could see something I couldn’t, maybe, or because they had knowledge I didn’t.

I could step in to help.  Flank the attackers, save the Behaims.

I wasn’t sure that I should.

Would it make a difference?  I suspected the Behaims had things well in hand.

But helping the guy I’d just been planning to kill, someone who was arguing for all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons, someone who’d participated in the attack and quite possibly sent that ken-doll clockwork man to pry the library doors open?  It was kind of hypocritical to turn around and save his life.  I hadn’t changed my mind on anything between the time I’d tried to kill him and now.

On the other hand, it was maybe poor form to go from almost accepting a deal with the Behaims to joining the other guys in attacking them.

“Any wisdom, Evan?  I feel like I should step in, but rationally…”

“No,” he said.  “Not much wisdom here.  My brain is roughly the size of a corn kernel, I haven’t had a heartbeat for half a year, about.  I’m pretty sure I’m brain dead, technically.”

“Don’t make excuses.  You learned to play poker.”

“This is more complicated than poker,” Evan said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Definitely more complicated than poker.”

“I cheated, anyway.”

“Yeah.”

I turned my back on the scene.

There was far more movement than before.  Other attacking Other.  Further down the street, a pack of people ran.  Moving in something pretty damn close to a formation.  Unpracticed, driven by necessity and a bit of intelligence.

Back in December, I might have been one of the people running.  Now I was one of the monsters.  I didn’t rush, and I didn’t run.  I couldn’t, with the holes in my body, for one thing, but I was trying to get a sense of the situation and make sure I didn’t rush headlong into trouble.

I was, I realized, approaching the spot where the Others and the practitioners were meeting.  Where the chaos was thickest.

My mind was whirling.  Trying to figure out a direction.  Even the Behaims were too strong to touch.

I’d planned to pick people off, to find a chink in the armor and exploit it.  But the metaphorical armor didn’t have many cracks.  Molly was doing the same thing I’d planned, and Molly had been exploited.

I didn’t want to be a pawn, but ever since the beginning, I’d been a bit of driftwood in a roiling tide.  A part of a much greater machine.  I’d struggled to bring about change… and I wasn’t sure I liked how I’d succeeded, if I’d succeeded.

“In the interest of making it less complicated,” I said.  “Our biggest enemy isn’t the Behaims, or Conquest, or the demons.  It’s the status quo.  I guess I didn’t realize how much reality wanted to hold onto it.”

“What do we do, then?  Go back to Ty and the others?”

I shook my head.  I didn’t want to see them.  If there was something to do, that was one thing, but if I was going back and all I was doing was telling them I knew they’d effectively betrayed me?

“No,” I said.  “I don’t want to, and I don’t think it would help.  We wanted to create an opening, and… I guess Molly created a bigger one.  We just need to figure out how to use this, before things start settling down.”

“Before dawn,” Evan said.

“That’s the most obvious deadline,” I replied.  “I think this may be the most critical point.  What happens before dawn determines what happens during the day, and everything after that.

A tall Other strode into the middle of the street.  He wore what appeared to be a black skirt that trailed from a heavy belt that was about a foot tall. His chest was bare, and what looked to be disconnected bike or chainsaw chains trailed from his waist, arms, and neck, each chain ending in something wickedly sharp.  Sawblades or caltrops of welded-together nails.  He had long hair and an almost feminine cast to his features, owing to a lack of body fat, but he still looked eminently masculine.  The muscles and the scarred skin helped on that front.

He stopped, his skirt and chains forming a barrier in my path, too broad to leap over, even if I were feeling spry.  Some chains were almost black with blood and other bodily fluids.  One ended in what looked to be a chunk of goblin.  Another, it seemed, was hooked into a living body.

The body belonged to a Duchamp woman, maybe fifty or sixty, who had the bit of metal caught in her calf.  A big, hook that might have gone around a steel cable, the point sharpened, was sticking through and around one of the two shin bones.  The woman was very much alive, and her hands and feet had been scraped raw where she’d fought to crawl through snow and salt and over cold pavement, simply to avoid being dragged by tugs against an open wound.

Now that the Other had stopped, she was fighting with frozen, bloody hands to work the big, awkward hook out of her leg.

The Other paid her no mind, his attention on me, his expression grim.

I raised the Hyena as a just-in-case measure.

“I have no interest in you,” he spoke.  His voice carried well, like the echo from a deep well.  “I could take the bird, if you offered.”

“The bird belongs only to the bird!”

“What do you want them for?” I asked.

“I have a quota.  Souls to be cast down into the workings of the Machine.  You are clearly black with the Machine’s oils.  You would be redundant.”

“You’re talking about the Abyss,” I said.

He inclined his head slightly.  “Yes.”

The Duchamp woman gasped in pain as she managed to get the hook out of her leg, pushing with the bend of her wrist and base of her palm, rather than frozen fingers.

“The bird has some of the Abyss in him,” I said, as I watched the woman crawl away on elbows and knees, making a point to keep hands and feet off the ground.  “A transfusion of power from me to him, not so long ago.”

“He is also small in body.  I’m no longer interested in him.  I’m going now.  Nine more to collect.”

Without even looking, the Other tossed a chain in her direction.  The end was covered in roughly twenty fish hooks.  The chain draped across her shoulder, the mess of hooks dangling between her arm and body.

One sharp tug, and a good two-thirds of the barbed hooks set into flesh at her armpit.

He moved on.  Tall and strong as he might have been, he was forced to lurch due to the chains that trailed behind him.  Left foot forward.  Right foot brought up next to the left.  Right foot forward, left foot brought in line with the right.  Hooks and blades and chains dragged furrows into the snow.  Where they skipped up and touched ice, a car bumper or the edge of the sidewalk, he was strong enough for the blades or hooks to cut through fiberglass or a bit of concrete.

The woman shot me a pleading look as she scrambled to keep up on frozen hands and feet.  She managed to find her feet, and for a second I thought she might walk after him, but she took a fraction of a second too long.  He took one lurching step forward, and she was tugged, sent sprawling.  From there, it was all she could do to keep up.

“Are we going to help her?” Evan asked.

I tightened my grip on the Hyena.

The bell was so loud.  I wasn’t sure I could trust myself.

“We can,” he said.

“What makes her different from Will, back there?”  I asked.  “I’m not saying we won’t or that we can’t… but a lot of people will need help.  Enemies who sent monsters to kill Callan, or condoned it.  She’s out here, a representative for the Duchamps.  She didn’t decide to sit this whole thing out.”

“If that’s your only rule to decide who dies, an awful lot of people oughtta die tonight,” Evan said.”It’s up to you.  I promised I’d help stop the monsters… I’m just not sure who the monsters are, here.”

“Guy with chains talking about throwing people into a big machine is a good bet,” Evan said.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“I know what you mean, sure, but I’m not sure.”

“It’s up to you,” I said, again.  “I want to.  I itch to step in and stop him.  But I’m not sure I trust my instincts, and I know it doesn’t make sense.  The monsters are picking off our enemies for us.  Or occupying them.”

“I’m really not the person to ask,” Evan said.  “Which is why I suggested going to talk to Alexis or Ty or someone.”

I shook my head.

Not that Evan was wrong, per se.

The bell continued to toll, cacophonic, jarring, setting every spirit in me stirring.

I was a monster.  I didn’t deny it.

But I was aware of how I’d nearly killed Will Behaim, and now I couldn’t help but think about how he had a family.

I was mixed up, and the bell was disturbing my thoughts, twisting them around.  I wasn’t sure I could trust myself in a fight against a genuine enemy, if I’d start thinking about how they had a family, or a history, how they might be okay.  I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to spare someone who needed sparing.

With every step the chain man took to carry him further away from me and Evan, it became harder to justify closing that distance, chasing, to rescue her.

“She’s old.  She’s supported the Duchamps through at least two generations,” I said.  “Marrying off daughters and sisters and cousins.  Forced marriages, denying them freedom.  Perpetuating an ugly cycle.  She’s here.  She’s…”

I was having trouble convincing myself.

“Yeah,” Evan said.  “But the other guy has hooks and chains and stuff, and he flings people into the Abyss.”

There were distant screeches.

I was reminded of the Drains.  The cold, the noise, the fact that there were no right decisions.

Except I wasn’t in the Abyss.

I was here.  In Jacob’s Bell.  One hour’s drive away from my hometown, the home that was no longer mine to return to.  I was here, and in the midst of this decision, I was being forced to confront myself, much as the Abyss had forced me to consider my origin, and the Tenements forced me to consider my present reality.

“I made you a promise, Evan.  To stop the monsters.”

“I think the spirits forgot that promise?  I did.”

“Anyone that needs the spirits as an excuse to hold to their word is a pretty shitty person,” I said.  “I don’t trust my instincts.  What are yours?  Is he a bigger monster than she is?”

“I don’t know, Evan.  But I think you’re right.  We need another voice to help us figure out a strategy, and we need help, but the Behaims are out for blood, because of what Molly did.  The Duchamps aren’t likely to be in my good books.  I’m not sure how to reach out to the junior council, even if I hadn’t tried them, not so long ago.  Johannes… I don’t trust him, and I don’t even want to show my face near him, knowing the kind of power his familiar can sling around.  That doesn’t leave many options for people to talk to.”

“No, I guess not.”

“There’re the Thorburns,” I said.  “Fresh eyes on the situation.  But if I go do that, if I contrive to make them practitioners, am I adhering to the pattern I did before?  Backing up the status quo?”

“There aren’t many things you can do that haven’t been tried already,” Evan said.

“No,” I agreed.  “You’re right on that.”

“Briar Girl?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s sitting this one out.  Probably protecting her forest.”

“The woman in the woods on the other end of town?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know many others,” Evan said.  “Green Eyes.”

“If we’re looking for a voice of reason,” I said, “I’m not sure-”

“Hi,” Green Eyes said.

She’d crawled out of the shadows at some point in the last few seconds.  Evan had been greeting her.

“Heya!” Evan said, a little too cheerfully.  “We’re trying to figure out where to go for help.  Kind of hard, when most people want to kill us.”

“Molly,” I said.

“Oh.  The psycho ghost that’s causing all these problems by ringing the bell?  Who just possessed you?  Well, at least she probably doesn’t want to kill you.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Call this an act of desperation.”

“This?”

“Molly.  Molly.”

I turned my eyes skyward.

“Okay,” Evan said.  “I’m with you.  I have no idea what you’re thinking, but I’m with you.”

“The ringing changed,” Green Eyes said, her fins flaring out, “Just a little, but it changed when you spoke.”

“It’s changing every second,” Evan said.

“If she’s the one with the bell, then she hears,” Green Eyes said, with certainty.

I couldn’t draw in a proper breath.  Or I could, but the air only went out.  Seeped between branches, stirring the snow that had collected on me into light clouds.

The branches of my body were marked with the lightest of frosts.

When I roared the words, the snow unsettled.  Air drawn in through those same cracks and up through my throat, out my mouth, carried those snowflakes.  Not quite the fog of breath, but something else.

“Molly Walker!”

Would she answer?

Could she?  Was she trapped in this new form, a knell of chaos, or was she unable due to the danger it posed?  No doubt she had a great many enemies.

I got the answer to my question as Molly appeared before me, the bell growing louder, until it distorted vision.  The distortion in vision worsened, clarified, and became her.  My cousin.

She’d changed, becoming one with half of a broken bell that was nearly four feet tall.  The top of the half- bell rested on one of her shoulders, the rim at the bottom near her knee.  She didn’t bow under the weight.  She was taller, narrower, as if she’d been physically warped.

“Thanks for coming,” I said.

“Don’t thank me.”

She didn’t sound happy.

“I know you didn’t like what you saw there.  Me talking to Alister.”

She shook her head.

“I get it,” I said.  “But desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“I think that’s the sort of thing Laird might have said, before he signed off on me getting tortured to death,” Molly spoke.

Something in her tone had enough force that I felt the spirits in me react.  Evan hopped back, out of the hole in my midsection, and flew back, around, and up to my shoulder.

“We can’t hold onto the past, or we’re just going to perpetuate things.”

“I heard you say something very similar to the junior council,” she said, in that same tone.  “Try again.”

She was really not happy with me.  Fuck.

“Laird paid for what he did.  He died in an unpleasant way, and he did it at my hand.  Alister wasn’t a part of what happened to you.”

“You’re arguing with me,” Molly said.  Her features shifted slightly, a reaction to her change in mood, yet not a simple change of expressions.

“I’m stating the facts.  I’m on your side.  All of this, the chaos, the hurt, the… endemic problems that are running through bloodlines like some disease, it all needs to stop.  And I’m starting to see the merit in using this to stop it.”

I showed her the Hyena.

“You let one live, and you failed against the other.”

“If you saw that, you saw the fight against the others.  I’m not talking blind, directionless violence.  I’m talking…”

“Culling,” Molly said.

“You heard that too,” I said.  “Yeah.”

“Keep talking.”

“I called you because we’re running out of allies.  You and me are in pretty similar situations.”

“Do tell.”

“We’re at the point where our usefulness is running out.  The moment things quiet down here, or the local practitioners get a firmer hold on their creations, they’ll probably put an end to you.  Make you the next target.  They want things stable, predictable, and the both of us, we’re a possible threat to that stability.”

“I’ve heard this too,” she said.

It was eerie, how she kept saying that.  How was she able to follow along so easily?

“You’re powerful,” I said, as an extension of that same thought.  “I don’t know how or why, but you’re powerful.  Let me remind you, the Thorburn diabolists have been powerful, but they’re also targets.  I was, Rose is.  The next heir probably will be.  With the Thorburns more or less down and out, what do you think happens next?”

She was listening.  When she didn’t cut me off or dismiss me, I felt like I had license to continue.

“I’m on your side, Molly.  Believe me.  But there’s only so much we can do in the next handful of hours before dawn.  What’s happening here, I’m not sure it’s the answer.”

“You want me to stop,” she said.  Unimpressed.

If I were human, I might have withered beneath her glare.

Holy fuck, she’d soaked up a lot of raw negativity in the past day.

“No,” I said.  “No, I don’t want you to stop.”

Saying that, I had her attention.

“But the aimlessness of it, it’s not helping.  We need a goal.”

“Goal?”

“Yeah.  What does it help, if you whittle down each group just a little?  Kill twenty Behaims, twenty Duchamps, kill or turn a few of Johannes’ allies… at the end of the day, we’re right back where we started.”

She was silent.

“The deal you were going to make with the Behaims,” Molly said.  “It wasn’t confirmed.”

“No,” I said.  “We never shook on it.  Verbally, we never clarified it.  It was all ifs.”

“You want to attack one.  Weaken one side.  Upset the balance.”

I nodded.

“The Behaims-”

“All of them were responsible in a way,” I said.  “Laird is dead.  Don’t hold on to your grudge against the Behaims.  Think Molly, don’t just ride on instinct.”

“Yes.  The Behaims will be expecting you.  And they have Rose.  Rose knows what you are and how to stop you.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Johannes is safe.  In his demesnes.  You warned him.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“You want to go after Sandra,” Molly said.

“I think it makes sense.”

“And after?  Johannes takes power, safe within his demesnes.”

“After,” I said, “I’m hoping the Behaim and Duchamp organizations are still partially intact, and someone can kick down the doors like they knocked down the barriers in Hillsglade House.”

“After that?”

What a change, from the simple ghost who couldn’t see past the, well, past, to this.  An entity with an agenda.

“After that, I don’t know.  It’s impossible and borderline insane to plan with this many factors in play.  But if we can take the advantage, we can upset the balance again.”

“One mistake, one failure, and someone can take power.  Even if we succeed…”

“If we succeed, we’ll have made them regret what they did,” I said.  “We’ll have left the door open for change, if we haven’t changed things in the course of it.”

“That’s not good enough.  I need more.”

“I can’t give you more,” I said.  “It is what it is, and it’s better than what you were doing.  It’s… almost constructive.”

“Or we just destroy it all,” Molly said.

“Your family included?” I asked.

She bowed her head a little.

“Callan-” I started.

“I know,” she cut me off.

“The Other that attacked him, the Homoculi, they were egged on by the ringing of the bell.”

“That’s on Sandra, it’s not me,” she said.  Her voice was more distorted than ever.

“It’s a bigger problem,” I said.  “A systemic problem, one that involves all of us.  I can’t give you anything more concrete in the way of plans.  I can’t give you power or answers or strength or any of that.  All I can do is say I promise.  I swore to Evan that I’d deal with the monsters.  I will strive, in the midst of all this, to root out the true monsters and deal with them.  It’s the third time I’ve promised this.”

“Third?”

“The third,” I said.  “To Evan, to myself as I realized what I was in the Abyss, and now to you.”

I could hear the bell go quiet.

Eerily similar to the moments before she’d taken control of me.

“The last I saw, Sandra and the priest weren’t that far away.  Closer to downtown,” Molly spoke.  She sounded surprisingly like Molly, albeit with a tone as though she were nursing an awful lot of hurt near her heart.

I looked south.  Toward the lake.

“You’ll want to wait,” Molly said, in her very normal voice.  “Another few minutes.  The priest is praying, and you’re hurt.”

“Blake’s tough,” Evan chimed in.

“Yeah, no, I’m pretty hurt,” I said.  I tested my arm.  The wood was patching itself up, but a whole joint was harder to put together, and I suspected I was low on fuel.

“But when you’re standing in front of the TV, nobody’s going to tell you you’ll make a better door than a window.  Because you are a window.”

I could see the impatience on Molly’s face.  She wasn’t one for idle humor, even while we were waiting.

She wasn’t really Molly.  She’d become something else.

“Where’d this power come from?” I asked.

Molly shot me a look.

“You’re awfully aware of what’s going on here.  You’re generating so much rage.  I’d expect a ghost to affect one person like you’ve affected me, but… you’re affecting all this.  A huge amount.”

“Sometimes, in the right time or place, an idea can become a spirit, and a spirit can become a god,” Molly said, in that ordinary voice that made me think of a Molly who’d never thought of gods outside of visiting church once a week.

“A god.  You pick this up from one of your books?”

“No.”

“From Mags?”

“No,” Molly said.

“Because Mags is the only-”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” Molly said.  “She’s not part of this.  And I’m glad for that.”

“How is she not a part of this?” Evan asked.  “She’s an ambassador.  You’d think an ambassador would be busier in a time of war.”

“She’s with the small council.  She’s keeping- I don’t want to talk about her,” Molly said.  “I hate her and I don’t and… it’s easier not to talk about her.”

Read the tone, Evan, I thought.

“It’s gotta be important if you’re becoming a god, and Rose said Blake gave you power and Mags gave you power, and-”

“Evan,” I said.  “Let’s listen to Molly when she says she doesn’t want to talk about something.”

“Thank you.  I’m not saying I’m becoming a god.  It’s… only an idea.”

“That’s a hell of an idea,” I said.  I looked out over the town.

“Scary idea,” Green Eyes said.  “I’ve never met a happy god.”

Just about everyone present glanced at her.  Green Eyes didn’t elaborate.

“Sandra is mustering her strength,” Molly said, a change of subject that felt just a little forced. “I’ll create a distraction.”

I nodded.

“What will you do?” Molly asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “But I’ll hurt her somehow.”

“We,” Green Eyes said.  “I’m not leaving you again.  Not when you got a hole in you the last time.”

I nodded.

“You have ten minutes,” Molly said.  “Then I hit them.”

I moved.

My goal wasn’t Sandra.  At a run, I could get to the lake in two to three minutes.  Get within sight of her in half that time.  Even injured.

One arm held the other in place, tight against my abdomen.

Green Eyes followed, surprisingly quick.  Evan was in the air.

“I need bodies,” I called out.  I glanced at Green Eyes.  “Already dead!”

“Bodies?” Evan called out.

“Unattended!”

Getting further down the street, heading southeast, I saw the park at the end of ‘downtown’, insofar as Jacob’s Bell had one.  Hillsglade House was almost directly north, the lake and Sandra directly south.

Evan was already circling over a pair of buildings.

Playing the role of the buzzard.

As I drew nearer, I realized there wasn’t an alley between the buildings.  Here, the shops were just starting up.  Many were closed.

The furthest point from the newly revitalized area at the north end.  Closest to the marsh and the forest that the city wanted to expand into.  Close to the park.

It was like returning to the tenements.  I climbed a section of display window that was covered in iron bars, then reached for a windowsill.

After the Tenements, even being injured, with one arm only partially working, serving only to hold my position and give me a chance to raise my right arm, this was cake.

Green Eyes was even faster at climbing than I was.

We reached the rooftop.

A dozen birds congregated on a pair of corpses.  A couple, pecked to death.  A telescope had toppled beside them, and snow collected on a book that was still open, pages facing the sky.

Green Eyes lunged for the nearest bird.  She caught it, and stuffed it in her mouth.

Two of the other crows exchanged glances in a very human way, then took off with the rest.

Approaching the bodies, I brushed the woman’s hair aside.  It was only after I moved it that I saw her face and recognized her as a Behaim.

Using the Hyena, I carved flesh from bone.

Using raw strength, I tore carved bone from body.

I pressed carved bone into the cavity.  One folded segment of spine went into my middle, which still gaped open.  Almost like intestine.

The bone found its place, and the wood closed in around it.  At the shoulder, I doubled down on bones, replacing what I’d lost, then adding some.  The wood closed over, almost eager to get a grip on the still-bloody bone.

“Better?” Evan asked.

I nodded.

We were almost out of time.

But I felt strong enough to hop down from the two-story building’s roof.

We approached the lake.  It took less time than I’d thought.  Evan landed on my shoulder.

An awful lot of Duchamps and their husbands were there.  They were pulling together in what looked to be a last-minute defense.  Protecting themselves against their own Others, scurrying this way and that to patch up defenses that had gone awry.

A strategic position, away from the city proper, far from Johannes’ demesnes, and close enough to act on the house if need be.  Fortified.

Molly’s initial jolt had, at a glance, made all of the weak bindings break.  The secure bindings held, as did the better relationships.  In the midst of the chaos, Sandra and the high priest of Dionysus were standing on the dock, giving orders, talking.  The priest’s followers were gathered around him.

I braced myself for it.

It was still bad.

Molly attacked.  Full force, focused on the Duchamps.  Two, three, five times as intense as she’d hit me, to disturb the spirits and briefly take possession of me.

I saw the attempts at rebuilding a defense fail.  I saw Others that were being reined in suddenly turn, breaking free.  A dozen traps went off, and there was fire, and distortions in space.  A flickering of what might have been a doorway to someplace else.

But in the midst of it all, Sandra and Jeremy barely even flinched.

Seeing it, I knew.

There was no chink in this armor.

“Back,” I said.

“Back?” Green Eyes asked.

“We promised, you promised-” Evan started.

“There’s no way to win this,” I said.  “Getting through all that?”

“So we run?” Evan asked.

“No.  We attack from another angle,” I said.

We headed in the opposite direction.

Execution 13.3

We stopped moving once we were clear of the small war that was going on at the lakeside.

Evan settled on my new shoulder.

Green Eyes collapsed, rolling onto her back in the snow, and picked a small bit of glass out of one hand.  The blood looked surprisingly red against her pale skin.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling.  “This is nothing compared to where we were before, you know.”

War, blood, destruction and various Others roaming everywhere, cold, icy, generally hostile.  I wasn’t sure I agreed.

But I could at least say that this world wasn’t actively conspiring against me, right?

No.

Well, at least it wasn’t actively conspiring against me with some malign intelligence.  It was just general karma and bad luck.

“I’m glad you’re happy, all things considered,” I said.  It would have been douchey to disagree, and less than entirely honest to agree.

She smiled wider.

“Evan, how good are your eyes?”

“Good?  Try great.  It’s like having a superpower.  I’ve got bird eyes when I want bird eyes and human eyes when I want human eyes.”

“Great.  Jacob’s Bell isn’t that big.  Less than twenty thousand people, if I remember the sign on the highway right.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Green Eyes said.

“Figure two to six people to a house,” I said, “Eliminate a chunk by saying there are people in those squat apartment complexes, but we can probably rule them out.  The local families are established enough to have houses.  Stay away from the areas with apartments, and the downtown area where it’s all businesses…”

“Okay…?”

“I’m just thinking… Molly mentioned that Mags is with the junior council.”

“You want to find Mags?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “She’s… I’m somehow doubting that if all the junior Behaims and Duchamps and whoever elses are meeting, tonight of all times, they’ll be meeting at Sandra’s house or any of the major Behaim meeting spots.”

“Maybe,” Evan said.

“Process of elimination, to figure out what sort of places we need to look.”

“Not near the house, right?” Green Eyes suggested.

“Good,” I said.  “Right.  Unless they wanted a view… but they’d want to be safe, first and foremost.”

“And out of their parent’s way,” Green Eyes added.

I nodded.  “They’ll have guards.  Both against each other and against outside threats.  If what happened here happened there…  chaos.  A bunch of kids trying to get their bindings in order while their Others are now free.”

“Okay,” Evan said.  “That’s something I can look for.”

“Loop back regularly,” I said.  “Don’t get too far away.”

“Got it,” he said.

Evan took flight.

I looked down at Green Eyes, who was looking up at me.  Her hand still had a small wound in it.

“You shouldn’t crawl with your hand like that,” I said.  “Especially with the salt on the road.”

“It’s mostly healed, and I’m tougher than I look…” she said, trailing off as I offered her a hand. “But, um, sure!”

She smiled a little too wide as I lifted her up, pulling her back to a piggyback position.  Her tail encircled my middle, to anchor her in place.

I followed Evan, carrying Green Eyes.  I could barely see him in the dark, a white and brown shape against a background of pitch black.

I felt a stab of envy.

“What are you thinking?” Green Eyes asked.

“Right now?  I’m wondering if I could make wings out of branches, or if the cost would be too great.  Getting the ability to fly would be an awfully nice compromise for losing my motorcycle.”

“Can’t you ride now?  Like this?”

I looked down at my hands of wood.  “With gloves, clothing covering me head to toe, and a full helmet, maybe.  But it wouldn’t be my bike.  I know that sounds stupid, but… man, I remember working my ass off for that bike.  Skipping meals to put an extra five bucks in the jar.”

“Skipping meals?” she asked, aghast.  It took me a second to realize she was joking.  Poking fun at herself.

I hadn’t really thought about her having a sense of humor.

“I was homeless for a while, I got used to being hungry.  For a while, it felt like my body forgot how to tell if it was hungry or not.  Sometimes I’d be ravenous just after I’d finished a meal, and sometimes I’d realize I hadn’t eaten all day.”

“I know what that first bit is like,” she said.  She shifted position, and settled her chin on my shoulder.  The point of her chin might have dug in a little, but I wasn’t that easy to hurt.

This would be the time to talk, I thought, but nothing came to mind.

“We don’t really know each other that well,” I spoke my thoughts aloud.  “Beyond the obvious.”

“Yeah,” she said.  Then, impulsively, she shifted her grip and raised her chin off my shoulder.  You wish you could fly?  I wish I wanted my motorcycle,” she said.

“Huh?”

“I mean, I wish I had something I wanted like you want your motorcycle.  But I didn’t.  There was nothing left for me to want so I went and I went to the Drains.  I had no reason to stay and nobody and nothing wanted me back.  I think if I’d even had a dog, that would have been enough to keep me out?  Or get me back out when I started to go in there?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I feel like the biggest loser, when I think about it all like that,” Green Eyes whispered.  “Better to think about food and comforts and being useful and company.”

Her arms and tail squeezed me just a little tighter.

Right.

“Well, I’m here,” I said.  “So you’ve got me.”

“And there’s food,” she added, as if she’d forgot.  “Can’t forget the food.  Thinking about food is good.”

“Don’t eat me,” I reminded her.

“Okay.  Until you’re dead.”

“Until I’m dead, no eating me.”

“Got it.”

Evan returned.  “That whole block is a no.  Nothing except some goblins which might be coming this way.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Going thataway,” Evan said.  He didn’t even point before he headed off.

I glanced around for the goblins that were apparently headed this way, and didn’t see them.  I picked up the pace all the same.  My feet were wood, as were my toes, and though the general shape matched the feet I was supposed to have, they had a gnarled texture, branches criss-crossing one another, mingling like roots grown over one another.  They bit into snow like the best pair of rugged boots.

Green Eyes grabbed me a little tighter, getting a better grip as I picked up the pace.  Her fingers hooked on branches and bones, some even inside my body.

It struck me that I was okay with it.

That I’d been okay with it, even since the revelation that, yes, I was a vestige, or something close to one, but my memories were real.  Carl was real.

That was hard to process, and I didn’t like where my thoughts were going, as I dwelt on it.

I spoke my doubts aloud, instead.

“I didn’t miss the implications, when you talked about company,” I said.

She squeezed me just a bit tighter, like it was an involuntary thing.

“I’m not very good with girls,” I said.

“I’m not a girl.  I’m a mermaid,” she said.

“Someone once tried to use sex to control me,” I said.  “It was one of a few ways he had of getting into my head.  Touching other people, even being friends with people, it was hard.  It’s hard to untangle the good stuff from the bad memories.  I get a hug, and the first place my mind goes is to… him, and the person he wanted me to be, leading the life he wanted me to live.  Because back then, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get girls or hugs or friends again, if I didn’t get the ones he and his people offered me.”

“Was he more family?”

“No,” I said.  “But I think he wanted to be.”

“Do you want me to let you go?  I can crawl.  My hand is better.”

“It’s fine,” I said.  “I’m… I thought it wasn’t real, but recent events have opened my eyes.  It’s hard to reconcile it all.”

Snow crunched under my feet as I tried to keep up with Evan.

Green Eyes’ head turned about a second before I heard more crunching.

And there were the goblins.

Bigger than the others I’d seen around Jacob’s Bell.  Almost human in size, but with monstrous features.

A fat one had rings in his nose, with chains reaching over and to either side of his head, making an already large nose into almost a pig snout, his hair looked like it had been shaved off with a rusty knife, and his upper row of teeth were exposed by the way the nose was pulled up and stretched.  Both upper and lower rows of teeth had double-edged razor blades or box cutter blades stuck between each tooth.

The female goblin in the group was swaddled, a scarf or two wrapped around her head.  Her eyes glowed like red dots in the shadows where her eyes were, while a long, narrow tongue lolled out of a gap between wrappings.  Her hair was long and tangled.

Two more, of matching height and build, were muscular, and far too hairy to be real people.  Thick sideburns and bristly hair on their heads was normal enough, but their necks were hairy as well.  Their teeth were pointed.  They were built like bodybuilders.

Unlike so many of the small ones I’d seen, these ones were fully clothed, and they were armed.  Winter coats, scuffed leather jackets, pants, and general accessories.  Fatty had two large butcher’s cleavers that looked like they could take a head clean off.  The woman goblin had a pole or a pipe, and the men had smaller weapons in each hand – knife, bottle, knife and hatchet.

“When I said I wanted company, I meant it,” Green Eyes said, her voice low.  “I’ve been awfully alone for a very long time.  Even before I fell into the water.”

“Yeah.”  We’re talking about this while we’re about to be attacked?  I would have said something, but… Green Eyes had been helpful.  Unquestionably helpful.  If she was untrustworthy at all, it seemed like a fairly predictable sort of untrustworthiness.

If she did like me, I wasn’t about to make this harder.  It was a bad idea to screw around when sensitive feelings were on the line.  It risked making friends into enemies.

“It’s like the bit of glass in my hand,” she said.  “Things have sucked for so long, even this… inconvenience, it’s cool.  It’s great, like the nugget said.  Because I’m not there.  I’m not dealing with that.”

“Yeah,” I said.

The goblins were spreading out, drawing closer.

“If we’re here and we only ever talk, that’s great,” she said, as she climbed off me.  She dropped to the ground, elbows bent, ready to pounce, “If you’re carrying me that’s great, too.  If you decide you want to date or whatever it is monsters do together, or if you want to do something with none of the strings attached or people trying to make you into something you’re not, then that’s great.  Better than great.”

“I’m not sure how this is going to turn out.”  If we’ll survive the night?

“So?  You’re being weird and overthinking it.”

I think you’re being weird by talking about it right now, when we’re about to get in a damn fight.

“I don’t want to mislead you, or hurt your feelings.”

“You got me out of there.  You freed me and you didn’t have to.  I’m not… you’re not that guy you were talking about.  You’re you and you helped me and you’re my hero.  Hell, you offered to let me eat you.  You’re nice.”

“That’s an odd metric for nice,” I said.

“I don’t think big about the future, I don’t think complicated.  The only way you’re going to hurt me is if you lie to me or if you decide you never want to see me again.”

“I don’t think I can lie,” I said, “And in terms of the future, if we make it out of this, if I’m being honest, I’ve always thought of the future as this place I’d go where I could get away from it all, get away from everyone…”

She wasn’t facing me, but I could see the muscles in her arms and back tense.

“…But,” I said, “You’re on the short list of company I’d like to keep, anyway.  Only way that’s going to change is if you eat someone I care about.”

“Great!”

“‘Ey, fish,” one of the hairy goblins said.  He moved his knife over to the hand with the bottle and then groped his man-parts.  “You want company?  I got some right ‘ere.  Two ‘andfuls.”

To his credit, it did look like two.

“Already stanks like pussy,” the other hairy goblin said. “Fishy smell.  Gets the heart pumping, ‘ey?  You can ‘ave us both at the same time, fishy.  If you’re good, we won’t cut you up for sushi after.”

I saw her tense.

Thinking she was stressed or bothered delayed me by about a second.  Then I realized who I was thinking about, and only just managed a “Wait!”

But she pounced.  Strength of arms and tail together, she covered a solid ten feet, from ground to eye level.

Right for the one with the knife and hatchet.

He staggered back a few steps, trying to keep from being bowled over.

It was pretty impressive he managed to keep his feet at all.  They were strong.

But Green Eyes’ jaw strength wasn’t that bad, either.

She sank her teeth into his throat.

Dropping the hatchet, grabbing her hair, he tried to pull her away.  It wasn’t that effective – basic engineering at work.  To get her to let go, he’d have to pry her jaw open, or pull her teeth out of his throat sideways.

She swung her tail around and up, and slapped the second hairy one in the face.  Pulling the tail away, she removed a full quarter of the face, and sent him staggering toward me.

Having them both at the same time, in a way.

I was already moving forward, acting on instinct.

The goblin’s arms were already up around his face, so I went for the body, rather than risk hitting the arms.  I stabbed him in the ribcage, stomach, then a few more times in the ribcage.

I wasn’t sure what I was stabbing for, and he was big enough that I wasn’t sure the Hyena’s relatively short blade was penetrating anything vital.  If goblins had the same vitals.

I stabbed, then cut, forcing it out sideways.  The blade penetrated between two ribs, and exited about a half-foot below the armpit.

I couldn’t focus too much on the one.  Green Eyes was still attacking the other, and the other two goblins were on the attack.  Fatty and the woman goblin with the tongue.

The woman squared off against me, which left Fatty to go after Green Eyes, cleavers in hand.

The woman goblin’s pipe was held like a spear.  I could smell the substances on the end.  Caked in shit and blood, from the smell of it.

I tried to move around, but she was almost as fast as I was, and her weapon had reach.  She jabbed for my face.  I slashed back in retaliation, trying to strike the spear.  I hit only air.

“Watch out!” I called out.

The fat one was attacking, cleavers swinging.

Green Eyes leaped away, pushing herself off with as much force as she’d leaped onto the hairy goblin.

In that half-second where I was looking, the woman goblin caught my throat with her tongue.  She turned in a quick circle, her tongue winding around her head, then leaned her head back in the same moment her spear came forward.

I managed to turn my head just in time to avoid losing an eye.  The spear’s point raked the side of my head, digging over my scalp.

She leaned to one side, using the fact that my head was turned, pulling me just a bit off balance.

Enough that I couldn’t do anything as she stabbed the spear through the bottom of my chin.  The point hit the back of my throat.

I could taste it.  The metal, the shit, the blood.

I cut with the Hyena, but the tongue was already retracting.

The spear was yanked out, and I was pulled forward.  I caught myself, and backed away before she could stab me somewhere else.

Tongue came out, lighting fast, like a frog’s, and caught my knee.  She retracted it, pulling her head back, and tried to pull my leg out from under me.

I wasn’t that lightweight, though she did succeed in making my feet slide on the road’s surface, where tires had packed the snow down into an almost ice-like slickness.  She retracted her tongue in the instant I started to swing the Hyena.  I saw the spear coming, and elbowed it off course with a change in direction of my still-moving sword arm.

Fatty appeared at her side, cleavers in hand.

“Nuh,” she said.  “Mah fog!”

“Share,” Fatty sneered.

“Mah fog!” she said, her voice shrill.  She swung the spear, striking him across the face with the flat of it.

He swung the cleaver at her head.  She ducked out of the way.

My throat was healing, but slowly.  I wasn’t sure I could speak, with the damage to my tongue.

I couldn’t call a message to Green Eyes.  We were allies on the battlefield, but until we could communicate, we weren’t much of a team.

These two were mine to deal with.

I took a step forward.  Tongue slashed the spear’s point in the general direction of my head, and I was forced to stop and back away a step.  She then kicked fatty in the side, screeching, “Mahn!”

He swatted the cleaver in her direction again.

Green Eyes was retreating, trying to get into a position where she could pounce, but the hairy one I’d stabbed and the hairy one she’d bitten in the throat were giving chase.  She couldn’t stop for a second without letting them get close enough to hurt her.

Fatty saw me edging in Green Eyes’ general direction, and hurled a cleaver.

I barely registered it, but instinct won over.  My left arm came up to shield my face, and the cleaver bit deep enough to hit bone.  I was surprised to see blood.  My grip on the Hyena slackened.

At my throat too.

Great.  They were fighting among one another, and I was still losing.

Bigger goblins weren’t slouches in a fight, it seemed.

He was reaching into a pocket.  I started to back away, ready to dodge, and the tongue caught me.

He hurled a snowball, with surprising strength, right for my face.

My hand caught it.

Bits of broken glass and gravel fell to the ground as the ice and snow crumbled.  He’d thrown it hard enough that two of the nails in the midst of the snowball had stuck into the wood of my hand.  Not even a little.  I’d have to pull them out, and my other hand already had the Hyena stuck in it, and a cleaver in the arm.

Man, fuck goblins.

I couldn’t even reach up to grab the cleaver with the nails in the way.  I brought my hand up to my mouth, gripped the nails with my teeth, and-

He hurled the snowball from the other pocket.

I twisted my body and face away, but it still struck me in the temple.  I kept moving, walking away, but I was staggering a bit, and the snow and glass in my eye was making it hard to stay focused on the pair.

I didn’t even see Tongue before she’d cleared the distance between us.  She was airborne, spear in both hands, and thrust it, right for my chest.

I thought of Evan.  He wasn’t here, as far as I knew, but he would have been really helpful to have around.  It was a moment’s inspiration, but I moved as I might if he were present, pushing me.

I twisted around, turning almost three hundred and sixty degrees.  The spear slid past me.

Barely looking, she took a step back, and used the butt end of the spear to catch one of the chains that extended around Fatty’s head, and ripped it away from his nose.  “Mahn!  Mah gob!  Mah kill ya!?”

I finished turning, stumbling as I faced her again.  I tugged the cleaver from my forearm.

Fatty, bleeding profusely from a ruined nose, pointed at me, as if reminding her she was still fighting.

Tongue stabbed.  My eyes weren’t on the spear.  I watched her face-

Saw the wrappings part.  I started moving before I even saw the tongue.

The Hyena cut it.

“Ahhhhn!  Gahhrk!”

She stabbed, but this time I had the advantage.  I caught the pole with both of my weapons crossed into an ‘x’ of sorts, and pushed it down and away.  I managed to step close enough that I wasn’t in danger of being stabbed with the spear’s point, and uncrossed the weapons, cutting her forearms.

She backed away before I could hit anything more vital.

I backed away as well.

I saw Fatty moving in the corner of my eye.  I ducked the thrown cleaver.  It hit a more distant window, across the street.

“Blake!”

After so much guttural non-speech from a goblin who had far too much tongue in her mouth, the very clear voice was almost disorienting.

I turned to see that the one I’d stabbed several times had the bottle in hand.

He’d turned it into a molotov.  Cloth sticking out the top, already lit.  The cloth wasn’t well soaked, it seemed, and it wasn’t burning all that well.

Still, a molotov.

His hairy buddy was keeping Green Eyes at bay, keeping her from interfering.

I threw the cleaver at the bottle.

No years of practice at butchery here.  I missed.

The goblin, though, backed away a step.  A bit too much.

He raised his hand to his wounded side, in reaction to some pain the movement had elicited.

I turned on the spot, bull-rushing him.

Because…

I didn’t have a great idea of why I was charging the guy with fire, when I was mostly made up of dry wood.

But it put Tongue Spear and Fatty McCleaver behind me.

I kicked the hand with the bottle.  It was on the far side of me, and the end result saw the bottle falling free, a couple of feet away.

The resulting fire was far, far less impressive than I’d anticipated.  The pool was barely two feet across.

He’d probably already drank the rest.

The other side effect of my attack was that I’d practically collided with the goblin, my chest touching his chest.

I reached over and dug my hand into the wound I’d carved out with the Hyena.  He flinched, and I used the opening to stab his throat.

He still didn’t go down.

I saw his eyes widen.

Looking over my shoulder.

I moved, and Tongue’s spear impaled him, right through the middle.  Now he went down.

She backed away, tugging the spear free before I could attack her.

The ones who remained were scared, now.  I could feel it, clarifying me.  Mending me.

Was this how the monsters in the movies got the energy to keep going, just when you thought they were down?

Green Eyes moved to my side.  Her hairy goblin’s throat now fully torn out.

“I’m in a good mood,” she said.  “You do not want to get in the way of that.”

I saw Tongue Spear and Fatty McCleaver exchange looks.

Fatty wiped the blood away from the side of his face.

Then, very deliberately, gave us a very bloody middle finger.  Because just flipping the bird normally wasn’t emphatic enough.

The remainder of the fight took less than a minute.  Tongue Spear didn’t have a full-length tongue anymore, and Fatty didn’t have any more cleavers or snowballs.  They were scared, even if they’d decided to fight to the end, and that only helped us.

In the end, we had them broken and bleeding, lying on the ground.  Green Eyes had Fatty pinned, and I had Tongue at bladepoint.

“I’ll let you live, but I need concessions,” I said.

“Gkkk, hrrgle,” Tongue gurgled.  She snorted, looked for an instant like she was going to spit in my face, then twisted her head around and spat a mouthful of mucus and blood on the side of Fatty’s face instead.  “Mak krggle,”

Even less intelligible with a length of her tongue lopped off.

I wished I could sigh.

“You,” I said, to Fatty.

“What want?”

“See any gatherings of young practitioners around?” I asked.

“Wut?”

“Kids?”

“No.”

I frowned.

“Who sent you?  Who brought you here?”

“Goblin King Hal Spikedick.”

“Is his wife blonde?”

“Fuckably,” Fatty sneered.

Green Eyes gave me a sidelong look.

“I need a promise you’re going to never attack or hurt another-”

I could see his expression change before I was even done speaking.

“Nevermind,” I said.  “Does the binding Mr. Spikedick arranged keep you from doing that whole ‘turn into a weapon’ thing?  Binding yourself?”

He shook his head.

“Because the third option, after pacifism and you doing the weapon thing, is me putting you down right now.”

It took him only a second.  His skin peeled like old paint, and the rest of him crumbled.

What didn’t crumble congealed.

I reached into the congealed mass and pulled out a fairly shoddy looking piece of meat cleaver.  Where the blade would normally be flat, a bit had been carved out of the middle, in the shape of an animal with legs splayed out like roadkill.  The genitals, I noted, were both generous in size and displayed erect, sticking out into the carved-out portion.

When I gave it a shake, the blade rattled in the wooden handle.  It didn’t give the impression of something well made.  I doubted it would last for more than a few whacks.

I looked at Tongue.

She turned her head and spat.

She dissolved much in the same way.

I picked a length of chain out of the muck.  Rusty, with barbed wire woven through it to the point that it was impossible to hold easily.  I had to give it a few shakes to get most of the bodily fluids off of it.

“Want?” I offered Green Eyes.

She gave me a look like I was crazy.  It was extra effective, considering it came from the mermaid with goblin blood all over her face and chest.  The blood was fitting into the cracks between the finer scales, making them more pronounced.

“Right,” I said.  I wrapped the chain around my arm, over the sleeve of my sweatshirt.  I looked around.  “Where the fuck is Evan?”

We spent a moment looking, then started moving, Green Eyes crawling at my side.

In about twenty seconds, Green Eyes perked up.

Her hearing was slightly better than mine.  I could hear Evan.

“Help help help help help-”

Growing louder with each ‘help’.

He flew past.

Green Eyes lunged, and caught the gargoyle-thing that was chasing Evan out of the air.  She landed in a snowbank with a bit of a puff of snow, before shaking her head like a dog might, killing it.

Evan settled on my shoulder, very obviously breathing hard.

“Couldn’t-” he started.

“Breathe.”

“Could- couldn’t turn.  Or he’d get me.  Used my Evan-mojo, dodge.  Kept having to fly away.  Saw a chance, space in trees, big enough for me.  Not him.  Turned, flew here.  Thank you, thank you.  Good mermaid.”

“Bleugh,” Green Eyes said, dropping the gargoyle.  “It’s not meat.”

“Then I really owe you one,” Evan said.  “For saving me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Because fairness is power and power is my road to awesome, and because I’m really really super duper grateful I didn’t become gargoyle food.”

“Food, then.”

“Yeah?  What food could I provide?  I’m a sparrow, I’m dead, I’m…”

I pointed, and we started moving again, still talking.

“A snack,” Green Eyes said.  “Um.  I’m really hankering for chicken nuggets.”

I shot her a look.

“Real chicken nuggets,” she said.

“I’m not sure real chicken nuggets exist.”

“Real, like from a fast food place.”

“Now I’m not sure what not-real chicken nuggets are.  You mean homemade ones?  Are those even a thing?  Do people make homemade chicken nuggets?  I’m suddenly really interested.”

“Sort of?” Green Eyes said.

She looked up at me.

“I’m not digging you out of this one,” I said.

“Digging?  Did I miss something?” Evan asked.  “I missed something.  What did I miss?”

I could hear the tolling of the bell.

Distant.  Whatever was happening at the lakeside, it hadn’t ended yet.

“Put a pin in that thought,” I said.  “I promised Molly I’d help her against Sandra.  That promise holds.  Did you see what we were looking for?”

“No, not exactly.”

“What, exactly?”

“It’s a barrier.  A big one.  It’s protecting an area.  And I’m pretty sure I saw guards.”

“A barrier.”

“Around a neighborhood.”

“Show me.”

“It’s not super obvious.  But… this way.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So, about the chicken nugget thing,” Evan said.  “Green Eyes?  Can you explain?”

I let them talk as we moved, watching Green Eyes be uncomfortable

The barrier was three blocks away.

Except it wasn’t quite a barrier.

“Do you get it?” Evan asked, “Because I’ve flown over this town a lot, and I still almost didn’t get it, especially being distracted by the gargoyle things.”

“Things, plural?” I asked.  Perched at my shoulder, he used a wing to point.

They  were flocking.  Them and something larger.

The skies weren’t much safer than the ground.

But they were avoiding one area, and by doing so, they were being forced into tighter clumps.

Ah.

“They’re being redirected,” I said.  “It’s… almost impressive.”

“What’s impressive?” Green Eyes asked.

I looked around, and confirmed my suspicion.  “Opposite side of the street… George, Chapel, Hubert street…”

“Yeah?”

“This side of the street… George, Hubert.”

“One’s missing?”

“It’s… hidden,” I said.

“Tucked away or something,” Evan said.  “I tried to fly into it, but I got turned around, and then the gargoyle came after me.”

“Protecting a territory,” I said.  “Seems like something Duchamps might do.  Direction and redirection.  Powerful enchantment.”

“Maybe,” Evan said.

He took off, flying toward the section of road between George and Hubert.

The second he was out of view, flying close to the rooftop, he came right back.

“Huh,” he said.  “What?”

He hopped around on my shoulder, trying to get different perspectives, to the point that it got annoying.  I raised a hand and placed it gently on top of him, to hold him still.

“Let me try,” I said, out of sheer curiosity for what it was like to get turned around so readily.

I passed between houses, into a backyard.

Passing a point, halfway across the backyard, I felt a stir of wind.  My hair, grimy as it was, didn’t move the slightest, but my sweatshirt fluttered momentarily.

I had to check three times to make sure I was still on course.

I… was immune?

It took nearly a minute of thought before I connected the dots.

“Guys,” I shouted.

“Yeah!?” Evan called back.

“Back in a bit!  Don’t worry unless it’s a long bit!”

“Define a long bit!”

“Do you have a watch?”

“No!”

“Then does it matter, if you have an exact time?”

“No!”

“Bye!” I called out.  “Back soon!”

I passed through the backyard.

In doing so, I must have tripped a secondary barrier, because I got attention.

There were Others on the street.  Shadowy, fat, tall, figures, with eyes that glowed like coals.  All wore loincloths, and looked like they were made of condensed smoke.  Their expressions were bestial.

If I’d never seen a demon before, I might have taken them for demons.

Three of them.

I watched a woman stride out of one house, approaching.

I’d tripped an alarm, so to speak.

I spread my arms, glad I’d already sheathed the cleaver.  I wasn’t as menacing as I might have been if I were fully armed.

It was the sister.  The one that Joyce had dragged away from the gathering of Duchamps.

This wasn’t what I’d wanted.  I’d wanted the junior council.

“I talked with your sister earlier,” I said.

“You’re the reason she’s acting strange?”

She had that general tone to her voice, one of the ones that made me instantly dislike certain people.  As if she were trying to sound casual, but came across as hostile by default, because that was just how she was.

I ignored it and nodded.

“Sitting on the couch, eyes on the floor, nonresponsive, except to take the food and water I gave her.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What did you do?”

“I spared her,” I said.

“Spared?”

“The alternative was that I’d cut her throat,” I said.  “But I overheard her talking to Lola on the phone, and…”

I shrugged.

“I could end you right now,” she said.  But I felt how spooked she was.  I’d waded past their defenses.

“Maybe,” I said.  “But, before you decide to, I should tell you that your sister swore to take no action to stop or interfere with me.”

“That’s why you were able to get past the barrier.”

“Is it?  That’s not my point.”

“Get to the point, then.  It sounds like all hell is breaking loose down there, and I don’t like being outside,” she said.

“Your sister took you away, which did help.  One less person for me to deal with.”

“Deal?” she asked.

I saw her expression change fractionally.

“I played a role in killing your husband and his brother,” I said.  I left out the Duchamp woman.

She staggered like I’d struck her.

“Damn her,” she said.  “That wasn’t her call.”

But she sounded different.  The hostile tone was gone.

She sounded a little choked up.

“It wasn’t,” I agreed.  “Me and my friends did it.  Now, I’m not looking for a fight, here.”

She didn’t respond.

“I want to speak to Lola,” I said.  “Where can I find her?”

“Inside,” she said, still sounding dazed.  She seemed to rally her senses.  “If you think I’ll let you in-”

“Just ask,” I said.  “I’ll meet her out here if need be.”

“I…”

“Please.”

I watched her turn to go.

It was an awkward few moments, waiting with the smoky things, quite possibly ogres, standing there, staring at me.

She emerged.

“Come in.  Protections inside are a better safeguard than anything inside.  If you try something-”

“I don’t intend to do anything overt,” I said.

“Overt?”

I shrugged, “I only want to talk, ideal world.”

“Your funeral if you don’t.”

I passed inside.

Much as before, I could sense the change.

Not an ordinary home.

Sure enough, Joyce was on the couch, sitting on her hands.  She looked at me.

Lola was standing by the kitchen table in the adjoining room.  It was an open concept, and we had a clear view of one another.

“You again,” she said.

“Not meeting the junior council?” I asked.

“I am,” she told me.

I raised an eyebrow.

She took a step to the side.  I could see the laptop on the table.

“Ah.”

“What do you want?”

I gestured to the laptop.

“Um, I don’t-”

“Please.  And a phone.  This is important.”

I saw her look at her mother, who only stared at the floor.

“I think maybe you’d better leave,” Lola said.

“I helped kill your aunt’s husband,” I said.

Her eyes widened.

“I’m interested in continuing the process.  But, here’s the thing, I get it if you can’t tell me to go after your fiance.”

“Um, yeah.”

“But I’m suspicious that if I put out an open call, asked the Duchamp kids in the chat… he wouldn’t be the only one that deserves to die, harm to the family aside.”

“That’s-”

“I only want to ask,” I said.  “And open a proper discussion.  Unfiltered.  Nothing more.”

I saw her look at her aunt.

“Who are you calling?”  she asked.  I had her.

“Thorburns,” I said.  “Or a friend, who can get my cousins online.”

Execution 13.4

Craig[B]:  i’m not disagreeing. i’m saying we can’t say until the night is over.  we can’t make any deals if we don’t know everything

Penny[D]: We really have to don’t we?

Penny[D]: What happens if we wait?

Penny[D]: The fighting between families goes on and everything out there moves faster than anything in here.

Penny[D]: We get swept up in it and then what’s the point of having a junior council at all?

Penny[D]: We’re pawns in our parent’s games.

Penny[D]: We’re pawns against each other, and the council dissolves.

Craig[B]: no offense but thats your battlefield.  your all enchantresses and you do this sort of thing well.  what if we accept and you turn it around on us?

Lea[D]: Else[B], I PMed you.

Penny[D]: Mags is here to help negotiate deals.

Mags: I’m only here as a mediator. I can’t make the Behaims deal with you and I can’t stop them from dealing with you.

Craig[B]: well i don’t think we should make any deals until alister is back online.

Tandy[B]ear: yea

Lea[D]: *Is* he going to be back on?  Emphasis on is.  If we’re not sure then we might run out of time.

Mags:  One possibility is to sign something provisional.  Make it official later.  Or don’t.

Penny[D]:  The whole point is to have a deal in place before we’re angry or upset or not thinking straight.

Penny[D]:  Before things maybe possibly end tonight and the lordship is decided.

Penny[D]:  We make things official, before one side knows whether they won or lost.

Penny[D]:  Preserve the point.

Mags: Which defeats the point of something provisional, ya.

Mags: Also slow it down a bit.  Let others get a word in before you drown them out.

Craig[B]: i don’t know

Craig[B]: ains?  elspeth?  owen?

Else[B]:  Thinking.  Ainsley is still out, backing up Alister.  We could call but I don’t want to distract.

Owen[B]: I’ll do a quick read and see if it’s okay to call.  Brb.

Penny[D] has renamed Ainsley[B] to Ainsley[B]Afk

Penny[D]: I know its late and everyone is tired.

Penny[D]: I know tensions are high and we’re all worried about our families.

Craig[B]: combo break

Penny[D]: …What?

Craig[B]: no threes plz penelope.  saying ‘you know’ three times to try to do smthing with rule of 3?

Penny[D]: I’m not sure it works like that.

Craig[B]: tell us you weren’t trying to see

Mags: Don’t taunt.  Penny, don’t make threes.

Penny[D]: Whatev.

Penny[D]: As I was saying, I know it’s late and we’re tired and we’re scared.

Penny[D]: Its easy to feel helpless.

Penny[D]: But let’s do what we can to get in contact with people.

Penny[D]: Wake them up, talk to them by phone.  There are too many who are idle.

Owen[B]: Ains and ali are busy running.  Have to wait to call them.

Owen[B]: Maybe we could wait until we have something to say first before we rally everyone?  Like you said, a lot of us are spooked at the idea of what might happen.  I’m watching the chat with one eye and looking after protecting my house with the other.  I’ve been in fights.  Some of us in here don’t have any responsibility or the security of knowing they can protect themselves at all.

Else[B]: the younger ones.

Owen[B]: Yeah

Tandy[B]ear: yea and I know I want to be here but I don’t know what to say

Penny[D]: I’m feeling outnumbered by Behaims right now.

Lea[D]: A lot of our girls are old enough to be out there with their husbands or too young to be in here.  Chloe had to leave just a minute ago.

Penny[D]: Sigh

Penny[D] has renamed ChloMo[D] to ChloMo[D]Afk

Penny[D]: We’re running out of time.

Penny[D]: How many hours until the night is over?  My aunt told me before that we had a situation.

Craig[B]: two hours and fifty two minutes.

Penny[D] has set chat name to: JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12]

Else[B]: Trust a chronomancer to know the time off the top of his head.

Dolores[D] renamed themselves to ThorburnBogeyman

Craig[B]: …what?

Lea[D]: Oh god.

Penny[D]: No no no.  Lola?

Craig[B]: is this a joke

Mags: Blake?

Else[B]: Doing a quick read.  Phone in hand, trying to call.

ThorburnBogeyman: No joke.  Hi Mags.

Mags: What did you do, Blake?

Lea[D]: busy signal from her phone.  did anyone else get ahold of her?

Else[B]:  No.

Penny[D]: He got her?

ThorburnBogeyman: I didn’t ‘get’; amyone.

ThorburnBogeyman: Anyone.

Penny[D]: What did you do to Lola?

Penny[D]: How did you get into her house?

Lea[D]: I can’t get her mom or my mom on the phone either.

ThorburnBogeyman: Lola is here.  She’s safe and unharmed.  I had her implied permission to use her computer.

Penny[D]: Did you torture her for that implicit permission?

ThorburnBogeyman: No.  I told her about evemts earlier in the night and she accepted what I was suggesting.  Enough to let me on.

Penny[D]: Which doesn’t explain how you’re on her computer right now.

Penny[D]: Her house was protected.

Penny[D]: Did she go outside?

Penny[D]: Mags?

Mags: I’m here.  I’m not sure what you want me to do.

Penny[D]: Arbitrate!

Craig[B]: where was lola?  where is the thorburn?

ThorburnBogeyman: You can ask questions all night, but I was reading what you were saying before I announced myself.  Penelope is right, we don’t have a lot of time.

Penny[D]: What happened to Lola?  Jessie was at her house, too, I think.

Owen[B]: I look away for five seconds… Penelope, we have your back.  If you need me out there, I can help.  PM me.

Tandy[B]ear: I liked Lola.

ChloMo[D]afk: Wait, what happened?

ChloMo[D]afk renamed themselves to ChloMo[D]

Mags:  Blake Thorburn, the Thorburn Bogeyman, took over Lolas computer.  We’re still confirming Lola is okay.

ThorburnBogeyman: I’m not the fastest typer.  Hands are odd, too.  I can’t answer questions as fast as you ask them.  I’m going to cut to the chase.  There is a fire at Hillsglade House.  I lkeft there and ran into Duchamps.  Joyce Duchamp as well as Gail Duchamp.  Gail Duchamp’s husband is now dead.

ThorburnBogeyman: I don’t get the impression it was much of a loss.  It seemed almost a relief.

Lea[D]: I don’t know that end of the family that well.

ThorburnBogeyman: I don’t know if I should be touched at Owen’s offer of help despite family lines or offended that he thinks its mneeded.  Lola is fine.

Penny[D]: Kin of the Ogre Magi.

ThorburnBogeyman: Yeah, them.

Penny[D]: They weren’t the only ones you killed.

ThorburnBogeyman: A necromancer and a woman named Jan also died.

Owen[B]: Holy shit.

Tandy[B]ear: Why?  What did they do to you?

Penny[D]: Maybe we should have put you down.

ThorburnBogeyman: Maybe?

Craig[B]: Just got Ainsley on the phone.  Filling her in.

ThorburnBogeyman:  Does that ‘maybe’ mean you’re not sure, Penelope?  This is important.

Penny[D]: Janet was a relative.

Lea[D]: Which?  Who’s Janet?

Penny[D]:  Cousin of ours, once removed.

ChloMo[D]: I knew Janet.  She made the best fucking cookies, when I first met her.  I friended her online, but she started spamming my email with these weekly newsletter things about her and her cats and her kid.

ThorburnBogeyman:  Jan wasn’t my call.

Mags: What’s going on, Blake?

ThorburnBogeyman: things are changing.  We knew people would get hurt.  the duchamp family lost power, and I’m wondering if they would be willing to lose more.

Owen[B]: IMing you, Penny.

ThorburnBogeyman: But this isnm’t my medium.  I’m getting l;ost in the jumble of words.

ChloMo[D]: I had to unfriend her.  Hated doing it.  She seemed lonely.  Not her fault her husband was a douchenozzle.

Else[B]: We have to hold onto our family ties.

ThorburnBogeyman: No you don’t.  Penelope is exactly right.  There’s a time limit if we’re going to change anything.  By dawn, something will be decided about the fight for Jacob’s Bell.  You have a window of opportunity.

Penny[D]: Don’t put words into my mouth.

Penny[D]: I stand by my family.

Penny[D]: Thick or thin.

ThorburnBogeyman: you stand by the ones who intend to marry you and your cousins off?  To necromancers and ogre magi and guys named Spikedick?  Or to the girls who may have their lives ruined?

Penny[D]: the deals I was asking for were for truce, to keep this council intact and preserving it.

Penny[D]: Both the older ones and the young ones.

Penny[D]: That’s family.  You don’t pick and choose family.

Owen[B]: What do you want, Thorburn?

Penny[D] has renamed ThorburnBogeyman to [Th]Bogeyman

Penny[D] has renamed ThorburnBogeyman to [Th]Blake

Penny[D]: There. Better.  Name was stretching my tablet window.

Penny[D]: I second Owen’s question.

[Th]Blake: I want to make a proposal.

Penny[D]: You want to manipulate us, the weakest link, while things are at their most critical.

[Th]Blake: I’m not here to manipulate you or play games.  I want things to change, and I don’t think letting this fight for the lordship continue as is is something that will make anything change.  I think you’re deluding yourselves in this

Owen[B]: You don’t know anything.

[Th]Blake: I know more than you’d think.  The Lord will get picked, and the city will run much as it did.  Only bigger.  Worse.  If I was in your shoes, I would be terrified of the idea of the lordship being decided in your familys favor.

Craig[B]: maybe if i was a duchamp

Owen[B]: Terrified?  No.  You haven’t been part of this for nearly long enough to know what’s going on.

[Th]Blake: I won’t say I’m objective, but a fresh set of eyes can’t help?

Penny[D]:  No.  You’re inventing a problem for us to solve.

Penny[D]:  We didn’t ask for a fresh set of eyes.

Lea[D]: Or help.

Penny[D]: Or help.

Craig[B]: especially help from someone whose an avowed murderer

Owen[B]: A fresh set of eyes isn’t a share of what we deal with is older than the printing press.

[Th]Blake: Isnm’t that the logic your parents use to justify manipulating you, Owen?

Owen[B]: You’re twisting my words around.  I thought you weren’t here to manipulate.

Tandy[B]ear: yea sorta

Tandy[B]ear: the parental logic I mean

Dolores2[D] has joined JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12]

Lea[D]: There we go.

Penny[D]: Lola is on her phone. Situation confirmed, she is safe. Her mother is bound by her own word. Gail is standing by with Jessie safe in bed and unaware.

Dolores2[D]: I’ve been reading over the bogeyman’s shoulder. Thanks for worrying about me. My phone was co-opted

Owen[B]: For?

[Th]Blake: I’ll make my point before things get complicated and others join the chat. Penel;ope told me before that she wouldn’t act against her family, even if they do questionable things

[Th]Blake: I’m wanting to make sure that she isn;t drowning out other voices.

[Th]Blake: In the imterest of being fair and not manipulative, I told the ghost of Molly Walker I would weaken the Duchamp[ famil;y.  Rather than kill indiscrimnnatel;y, I decided on this.

Lea[D]: The hell?

Owen[B]: ?

Penny[D]: Why the Duchamps?

Dolores2[D]: first I’m hearing of this

[Th]Blake: ?ns after.  complicated.  I’mn not making promises.  But if any Duchamp in this chat feels the need to speak their voice, like Gail mnight’ve needed someone to speak for her, name husbands or members of family who have crossed lines or needed to die, tell me.

Chat JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12] has been silenced by Penny[D].  Only chat moderators may speak.  They thank you for your patience.

Penny[D]: Okay.

Penny[D]: No.

Penny[D]: I’m sorry, but this isn’t okay.

Penny[D]: I can’t let my cousins and sister and everyone else do something at 4am in the morning that they might regret.

Penny[D]: Sandra and everyone are out there fighting for our sakes and our futures.

Penny[D]:  If you give him a name, you might as well be pulling the trigger on a gun.

Mags: Is it your place to decide?  Like Blake said, aren’t you just doing what your parents did?

Mags: If I don’t get a satisfactory response, I’m unmuting the chat.

Elliepete has joined JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12]

Christoff has joined JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12]

Penny[D]: If you unmute the chat, and anyone is shortsighted enough to give him names, you might as well be killing them.

Penny[D]: who the hell are these guys?

Mags: The only one doing the killing is Blake.  I don’t agree with it, and it scares me, a little, but that’s on him.  Right from the beginning, when you invited me to this group, you told me you wanted this to be a place where the young practitioners had a voice.

Mags: If you take that voice away, I have to agree with Blake, then you’re not being true to the spirit of things here.

Chat JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12] has been unsilenced by Mags.

Owen[B]: Fuck you, Penelope.

Else[B]: Who are those people who joined?  Are they more Others?  Did someone guess the chat password?

Elliepete: Nope and nope.

Penny[D]: This is getting too difficult to manage.

Owen[B]: You had no right.  No right to cut off all communications.

ChloMo[D]: Manage, Penny, or control?

Lea[D]: I expected better.

Else[B]: Again, strangers in chat.  Are they the Faerie?

Elliepete: Wrong again.

Mags: Calm down, please.  Only speak if you have something to say.

Chat JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12] has been restricted by Mags.  [One] message per person per minute.

Mags: If you’re not contributing, I’ll silence you for two minutes.

ChloMo[D]: Fuck it.  I’ve got to go.  Something’s been happening at the lakeside.

ChloMo[D] has left JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12]

[Th]Blake:  Peter, Ellie and Christoff are Thorburns.  Now without a house and maybe without a library.  But I know Christoff is interested in being a practitioner.

Elliepete:  waded into the middle of a shitstorm? seems to be a theme tonight.  I’m doing the typing with my sister beside me.

Lea[D]: I’m going to say it, since I don’t say much.  Being a practitioner?  You mean being a diabolist.

Christoff:  No.  Your monsters killed my brother.  I’d like to figure out how to bring him back.

Owen: Why invite these people, Blake?

Chat restriction lifted for [Th]Blake

Mags: While you’re answering questions, Blake.  No more shenanigans like asking for names for your hitlist.

[Th]Blake: Thank you

Penny[D] has renamed Elliepete to Elliepete[Th]

Penny[D] has renamed Christoff to Chris[Th]

Chris[Th] has renamed Chris[Th] to Christoff[Th]

[Th]Blake: I brought them in because they’re faces.m  They’re actual people.  Because I wanted to generate some sympathy for them,. and I’m praying they won’t be assholes.

Elliepete[Th]: us?  be assholes?  Imagine that.

[Th]Blake: I don’t think much of humnanity as a whole but I believe in people.  I think the same is true for everyone else.  which is why you make us different.  you objectify.  make us diabolists instead of actual people.

Penny[D]: it wasn’t about that.  It’s about the fact that you’re tampering with forces beyond your ken.

[Th]Blake:  I walked into this with no intention of even touching diabolism.  Not ever.  Rose did too.  I held onto my convictions, even as I lost m y life, my humanity, my familiar, friends who I loved.  My bike, dammnit.  Everything I hold dear.  I could have spoken some names and summoned things and solved problems but I never did.

[Th]Blake:  I was away for a time.  Rose has been in the middle of this since the end of December.  She got desp[erate.  She’s using demons for leverage.  I don”t like the slipp[ery sl;ope shes’ on.

[Th]Blake: Damn these wooden hands

Owen[B]: You talk about slippery slopes but you killed people.  Tonight, even.

Craig[B]: You killed my father, didn’t you?

[Th]Blake: I did.  I killed people and I killed Laird.

Else[B]: I don’t think you have any moral high ground to stand on.

[Th]Blake: I don’t think anyone in Jacob’s Bell does, Elspeth.  You’re dealing with monsters you created.  You’ve all pushed us harder into diabolism than anything else, and if everything continues along this path, you’ll deal with monsters you paved the way for.

Penny[D]: Including you?  Are you a monster we paved the way for?

[Th]Blake: I don’t have a future waiting for me, and I don’t have a past, not quite, not an intact one.  The only two individuals who seem to give a damn about me are a bird and a mnermaid.  I more or less only exist in the moment.  I can’t imagine a reality where things settled down here and I was still around.

Lea[D]: Because you think you’ll be dead, or you can’t settle down?

[Th]Blake: Can it be both?

Mags: There are options, Blake.  The seal of Solomon, if you were willing, would mean giving up some control, but it helps others control your impulses.

[Th]Blake: Being destroyed sounds more appealing.

ElliePete[Th]: Mags?  Can I talk?  Unrestricted?  I feel like I have to chime in, but I can’t do it with one line.

Chat restriction lifted for ElliePete[Th]

Owen[B]: Favoring the Thorburns a little, Mags?  I know you’re friendly with them.

Mags:  I’m trying to be impartial.  If you have something new to say, ask, I’ll do the same.

ElliePete[Th]: Fuck you all!

Mags: …

[Th]Blake: I hear you, Mags.

ElliePete[Th]: This is a chatroom filled with teenagers?  Children?  Fuck you!

Mags: Keep that up and I’ll kick you.

ElliePete[Th]: I’m going somewhere with this.

ElliePete[Th]:  I was there when Blake was talking to an other, making a deal with it.  Telling it not to go after kids.  Nobody under twenty.  Being here, reading this chat and putting the pieces together, I’m more convinced than ever that this world is fucked up and upside down.  And that includes you, Blake, because you think any of these people are worth a damn.

Else[B]: Thorburns, making friends and influencing people.

Mags: I’m about to revoke your privilege to chat freely, Elliepete.

ElliePete[Th]: Fuck it!  Fuck your collective righteousness.  You’re worse than your parents.  You’re everything that’s wrong with the world, and that’s not counting the monsters and bumpkins and shit!  I hope you’re ashamed.  If I could make deals with Others, I’d do the opposite of what Blake did.  I’d send the monsters after you, not after your parents.  Your parents at least mostly admit what they are and what they’re doing.  But here you are, sitting here, and you’re convincing yourselves you’re upright.  Oh, you’re doing good, you’re speaking up.  You’re getting a voice for yourselves.  And if there’s something wrong with all this, you’re not to blame at all.  It’s your *parents* fault.  You’re insulated from it, because your parents are keeping you at arms length.

Mags: Jesus.  I thought they were done.

Chat restriction set for ElliePete[Th]  [One] message per minute.

[Th]Blake: Believe it or not, I think a lot of Penelope and several of the others here.  Even with the brief censorship earlier.  I wouldn’t have come here to reach out to them if I didn’t.  They’re scared, they’re in a tough position, powerless but still part of the families and the bigger machinations.

Owen[B]: Why does it bother me more that he’s trying to defend us?

Dolores2[D]: It shouldn’t.  I think he’s mostly right.

ElliePete[Th]: Fuck you, Blake.  Scared, in a tough position?  Who here isn’t?  You know what I think?  They’re all complicit.  They know they’re complicit.  They know they can change things, half of the people in this chat probably know know they should have said or done something different when people were openly discussing what to do about Molly Walker.  Or acted after they heard about it.  Or hate their parents because their parents kept them in the dark.

Christoff: My big brother got his throat cut.  He went out like a hero, getting eaten alive.  I still don’t know how he deserved it.

Penny[D]: It’s more complicated than that.

Mags:  I don’t know if it is.  I don’t sleep easy anymore.  I haven’t since Molly died.  I was there.  I’m as complicit as anyone except maybe Sandra, Johannes or Laird.  Laird, at least, paid for it in a roundabout way.

Owen[B]: What do you want?  You want us to feel bad?  I feel bad.  Congratulations.  I had a lot of discussions with my dad about it, and feeling bad doesn’t fix anything.  We move on, we do better in the future.

[Th]Blake:  I don’t think anyone here feels good about what happened to her.  I do think that unless things change, it’s going to happen again.  A lot of us, even me, for a time, have ignored what happened.  You can’t ignore history, or it repeats itself.  I told this to Penelope and a few others here, not long ago, but there’s no reason for things to change.

Penny[D]: And for that to happen, you need a list of people to murder?  I can almost respect where you’re coming from.  I think you said we cooperated, once?  I respect that.  But this isn’t a fix.  I can’t say how proud I am that nobody spoke up to give you any names, after the chat was unsilenced.

[Th]Blake:  I have seven names..  I got private m essages while chat was silenced

Mags: PMs.

[Th]Blake:  Yeah.  PMs.

Lea[D]:  …

Owen[B]:  What happens now?

[Th]Blake:  I leave.  You’re free to continue chatting with the Thorburns.  Or don’t.  Censor them, kick them out.  But consider what that means, if you’re doing to them what you did to Molly and Callan.  Keeping them at a distance, avoiding looking them in the metaphorical eye, just so it’s easier to kill them when the time comes.

Christoff[Th]: For crimes we didn’t commit.

[Th]Blake: Yeah.

Penny[D]:  This was supposed to be a safe place.  A place where we could come without feeling like we were surrounded by giants, always on the bottom rung.

ElliePete[Th]:  Or a place where you could work on insulating yourselves, reassuring yourselves you were doing right?  Says a lot that you call yourselves the Junior Council.  Training to be your moms and dads.

Else[B]: That’s not fair.

[Th]Blake: Maybe not.  Bye.

Chat JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12] has been lifted by PennyD.

Penny[D]: I hope you fail.

[Th]Blake: I wouldn’t plan on it.  I’m not saying I’ll succeed, or even that it’s likely.  But if people start thinking it’s dangerous to be an ally to the Duchamps, you’d better be prepared to adapt fast.

[Th]Blake has left JBJC [Sunrise at 7:12]

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Execution 13.5

I watched the chat continue to scroll by, new messages pushing old ones past the top of the screen.

Peter, Ellie, and Christoff were still there.  It gave me a measure of hope, seeing that.  Whatever the feelings of Penelope or the others, they at least had enough self-awareness to realize that kicking Thorburns out of the chatroom would be an act of great hypocrisy.

On a level, Penelope might have cornered herself, trying to censor the chatroom.  Now she was in a position where exercising her powers over the chat could cost her.  Until another mod came on, maybe a Behaim representative, the Thorburns would have access.

Or, perhaps, they’d have access until their phone batteries ran out, and then they’d get locked out.

Manipulating the system was something of a Thorburn specialty.  If I didn’t benefit, it was because of my unique nature.  I was only part Thorburn.  Literally.

In giving them access to the chat, more specifically giving them access to the younger members of the community who might be more willing to listen, I was hoping they could achieve something, even mild.

I was doing a lot of that.  Opening doors to possibilities.  Sending Corvidae out there to hunt for practitioners, sending the man in the ill fitting suit out there from the tenements, in much the same manner, then filling in the Thorburns.  Now I was putting the Thorburns in the same room as the junior practitioners, in a manner of speaking.

I tapped the table, hard wooden fingers rapping on wood, then double checked the piece of paper where I’d written the names.  My wooden hands had made my already abysmal handwriting into a scrawl, for the last four entries.  The first three had been done in Joyce’s.

Carter Duchamp, PyromancerLandon Michaelsson, Spellbinder

Gudbrand, Valkalla

Crooked Hat, Scourge

Eric Ritchie, Dabbler

Stan Ritchie, Dabbler

Mason Hall-McCullough the Benevolent

I switched my status from ‘appear offline’ to legitimately offline.  Computers and phones weren’t my thing, but I wasn’t ignorant either.  I’d had enough exposure in my teens.  There was a lot one could do when they’d figured out how to use a computer to get information, or the sorts of places one needed to look to find the features they wanted.  These days, if there was a feature one wanted, it was just a question of finding it.

Knowing that much was the only thing that kept me from being in the same group of computer illiterates as the struggling sixty-somethings and elderly.

“What do I need to know?” I asked.  “In brief.  You know who these guys are?”

Joyce raised her head as I handed her the sheet.  “Yes.  I remarried.  I’ve gotten to know people from the extended family, then I came back here.”

“Please,” I said.

“Um.  Carter is young.  He’s a criminal, and we knew he was a criminal.  He was in bad shape, the deal was supposed to help him get his feet and help us get access to his resources and information network.”

“And?”

“It worked.  His being a pyromancer is… almost negligible, in terms of what we wanted from him.  Not so much in terms of what he can do.  We wanted someone willing and able to do some less legitimate business, we married off one of our own to him, and he got her into that life.”

“And for that, he deserves to die?”

“When child protective services came to take the daughter away, the child’s mother was insensate.  He dealt, and she’d gotten into it.  She’s never recovered.”

I thought of the alcohol Green Eyes had smelled on the one woman.

“A form of escape?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Joyce said.  “But he ruined her, and a lot of members of the family were pretty unhappy with him.  There was a lot of talk about whether to welcome him here, but…”

“I don’t need the full story,” I said.  “Only what’s relevant.”

“…We thought we needed the manpower.  Okay.”

“Landon,” I said.

Lola, a few feet away, looked pretty unhappy with this conversation.  She still had her phone, which she’d taken back from me as soon as I’d reached out to Alexis with information on how to get the Thorburns online.  She was still using it to follow what was going on in the chatroom, while keeping an eye on me.

“Spellbinder,” Joyce said.  When I looked a bit confused, she added, “An enchanter, but specialized in control.  He keeps three or four Others with him at all times.  I named him because he broke the rules.  He’s paranoid, and doesn’t really associate with people.  Only Others.  We’d hoped to use her as a way to bring him back to society, to get him involved.  But we underestimated his paranoia.”

“What happened?”

“He bound his wife.  To keep her from passing information on to us.  Bound her mind and bound her bodies, so she only does what he says.”

“Hypnosis?” I asked.

“The binding is as solid as hypnosis is soft and vague.  He’s… scary.  In a lot of ways.  I don’t think the family would miss him if he was gone, but we invested in him, we lost a family member to connect to him, and I guess Sandra decided that if we’d paid the price, we might as well…”

“Use what you paid for?” I finished for her, as it didn’t seem like she’d continue speaking.

“I didn’t know that whole story,” Lola said, quiet.

“It was a long time ago,” Gail said.

Joyce nodded.  “It’s not the kind of story we share, especially to someone engaged, or yet to be engaged.”

“You could have told me.  Holy shit.  We condone that?”

“He’s strong,” Joyce said.  “And we play a long game.  Sandra promised we’d act against him, and that the revenge would be dramatic enough that others would know we weren’t to be trifled with.”

“But only if we got the Lordship?” Lola guessed.  “Only if we had that clout?”

“Excuse me,” I said.  “There isn’t a lot of time.”

Joyce frowned.  “If anyone needs to die, it’s him.  Nobody will associate with him, given circumstances and the danger that he might use them.  He protects himself with puppet Others.  Any other practitioner you go after, you’ll find webs of safeguards.  You can’t hurt them or target them without our enchantresses knowing.  But Landon stands more or less alone.”

I nodded.  “Okay.  The Spellbinder is strong.  I’ll put him off until later, then.”

“Put him off?”  Lola asked.

“It makes sense,” Gail said, eyes on the ground.  I could practically read shame radiating off of her, as she betrayed her family.  “If he’s going to alert others no matter what he does, he might as well pick off the strongest first.”

I nodded.

“Gudbrand,” Joyce said, looking down at the list.

“Valk-something?” I asked.

“Valkalla,” Joyce spoke.

“He didn’t do anything,” Gail spoke.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Joyce asked, looking up at her sister.  She looked at me.  “I said I wouldn’t speak unless it helps you.  I’m helping you by explaining, giving context.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“He’s not married to one of ours.  His father remarried, and married one of ours.”

“And?”

“He was unhappy with the fact that she only bore girls.  Valkyries and the various offshoots, they work with spirits and souls.  Rather than have girls, he used his newborn daughters.”

“As fuel,” I said, just a little spooked at the thought.

I only got a tight nod from Joyce in response.

“That was him,” Gail said.  “That was at a different time, for the Duchamp family.  Thirty-five years ago.  Before Sandra was in charge.”

“But the metaphorical apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Joyce said.  “I’ve met Gudbrand.  I feel confident in saying he’s no different from his father.”

“Holy fuck,” I said.  “How have you not turned against the family heads for this?  You marry these guys?”

“No,” Joyce said, shaking her head.  “No, it’s not like that.  It’s… once or twice a generation.  A lot of pairings.  Divorces are hard, and sometimes not even allowed.  Things go wrong.”

“Who are the others?”

“I can barely read your handwriting.  Crooked Hat… he deals with your kind.”

“Yeah.”

“His Demesne overlaps with a section of the Abyss.  He’s trying to learn to manipulate the Abyss to his own ends.  The elder Duchamps thought it was enough of a prospect that we could, how to phrase it, metaphorically buy stock in the venture?”

“He went there willingly?” I asked.  “Long term?”

“Yes.  I don’t know what he did that made someone think he deserves to die, I haven’t even heard that he’s a bad person.”

“He’s married, though?”

“Seems fine enough… as arranged marriages go.  They have four daughters, three young, if I’m remembering right.  He gave his daughters odd names, but that’s not anything worthy of execution.”

I frowned.  “Eric and Stan.”

“Eric is Stan’s brother.  They’re not major practitioners.  But they had an extensive library with texts we needed access to.  If it was a little bit larger, we might call them something more impressive than dabblers.  But it isn’t.  They’re collectors.”

“Someone thinks they deserve to die.”

“I don’t know,” Joyce said.

“Looking at the people in chat,” Lola said, “Manon?”

“No comment,” I said.

“She’s the only one I can think of that would know them, besides me.  And Manon knows Laurine, Stan’s daughter.  They gave the names in this order?  Eric, then Stan?”

“Yeah.”

“If I’m guessing right, connecting dots… they deserve it.”

“That’s all you’re giving me?” I asked.

“If you don’t give them a chance to call home and network, they’re not a threat,” she said.  “You don’t need to know more.”

I didn’t like that, but time was short.  “What about the guy with the title?”

“The Benevolent,” Joyce said.  “I can guess.  He’s old.  Got married to Clara before Rose Thorburn the senior was a practitioner, if I remember right.”

“Old.  He’s been around a while, obviously.”

“Longevity goes hand-in-hand with good karma,” Joyce said.  “Which he has.  In abundance.”

“He practices using Karma?”

“Yes.  I can see why people would be unhappy with him.  He made his wife miserable.  Tricked our family, even.  Neglected to mention that he already had three wives, making his Duchamp wife the fourth.  Likeable in person, but less so from a distance, and those of us who realized that kept our distance, myself included.  We never had an angle or clear excuse to retaliate for his deception, but that’s how he operates.”

“If I didn’t feel like that was a pretty vague justification for attacking someone,” I muttered, “I almost suspect I’d enjoy hurting him.”

“Enjoy?”

“Almost.  Almost.  It sounds like he’s a personification of everything I hate about all of this.”

“If it helps,” Lola said, “He’s probably done far worse than what we just described.  But events play out in a way that supports him.  There’s rarely enough people in the same place, talking about him in a way that would let them put the pieces together, at a time that we’d be free to do something about it.  If someone named him, maybe they have a stronger suspicion, but aren’t in a position to voice it?”

I drummed my fingers against my leg.

I couldn’t help but think of Carl.

Carl, who I’d last seen in a nice apartment, enjoying himself as he talked to people.

Sometimes bad people slipped the noose.

Sometimes good people suffered.

“I’ll take that under consideration,” I said.  Then, with more emphasis than the comment warranted, speaking to all of them, I said, “Thank you.”

“You’re really doing this?” Lola asked.  “Cold blooded murder?”

“I’m not sure that you’d find blood, exactly, if you tapped one of my veins and put the fluid under a microscope,” I said.

“You should know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I took the paper from Joyce.  I looked down at it.  “Yeah.”

That said, I turned to go.  I pushed the door open, stepping outside.

Did I trust them?  No.

Did I trust that there weren’t any traps in here?  No.  The Benevolent Polygamist was the most obvious potential trap.  Old enough that it wasn’t a true loss to the family if he died, and if he was as fortunate as I hadn’t been, back when I’d been custodian of the house, I could be running headlong into disaster, if I challenged him.

I mentally crossed him off the list.

“You were gone a while,” Green Eyes said, from within a snowbank.  Snow partially piled on top of her, and she was largely camouflaged.  Only the glow of her eyes gave her away, as I walked to a point where the light from the nearby streetlamps met the right angle, lighting the orbs up.

“If we coulda gone in after you, we woulda,” Evan said.

“I got what I needed,” I said.  “A list of names.”

“What names?”

I showed him the sheet.  “These names.  Targets.  This next part is going to be tricky.  Do you two know the basics of evading Enchantment?”

■

Sandra’s camp was effectively dealing with what we’d faced at Hillsglade House, except they were outdoors, with the benefits and drawbacks of that, and they had an awful lot more people.  I wasn’t sure, but I suspected the enchantresses were doing something to interfere with the attacking forces.  Turning one against the other.  There were points in the conflict where I wasn’t really sure about sides.

But if I had to guess, the Duchamps were winning.

Given a chance, everything defaults back to ‘normal’.

Without something to tip the balance, the Duchamps would recover.  They’d fight their war with the other major powers until someone did something dramatic.

I estimated twenty to thirty Duchamps, spread across four generations, from the elderly to the young, and maybe twenty male practitioners.  Exact numbers were hard for the men, as many of the Others around them were humanoid or humanish, and a good number of them were odd enough in style that they became harder to distinguish from the monsters.

The little spot by the water had a one-story building with an ice cream shop and a convenience store at the front, the signs and windows dark, as well as bathrooms and change rooms for those visiting the beach or using the park, apparently open, with practitioners using the raised walls that blocked off the view to the interior as a defensive position, defensive runes painted on the walls.  Far off to the right was a stage, separated from the building by a gap and archways, and Sandra was using the elevated position to command.  Most of Sandra’s contingent were standing on the raised platform that surrounded the shops, building and stage, behind the wrought railing.  Sandra was on the edge of the stage, flanked by her troll and some tougher looking Others, a higher vantage point, to overlook things.

I was careful not to look too hard or too intently, especially at the women.

There.  Fire.  Carter.  Drug dealing pyromancer.  I wasn’t sure how that worked in execution, if he took out competition by burning them alive, or if he only used the pyromancy for the ‘light a joint with a burning fingertip’ gimmick, but I had trouble wrapping my head around who he was and how he functioned.

Too minor a player, yet simultaneously too dangerous for me to risk dealing with, considering the dry wood I was made of.

I didn’t fuss with looking for the brothers Stan and Eric.  Yes, I had Lola’s assurance that they deserved what was coming to them, but they were minor.  Not a threat.

The Spellbinder was supposed to stand alone, but I couldn’t make him out.  Was it possible that he was isolated enough that he wasn’t even here?  He was vulnerable enough to pick off as opportunity permitted, but going after him too early would be giving away the show, when I could pick off someone who was networked, before the Enchantress network started working against me.

That left two options.

The valkyrie man who had turned his own children into fodder for his practice, and the scourge, who dealt specifically with Bogeymen and the Abyss.

Looking for them, I found Crooked Hat.  The scourge.  Identified, surely enough, by the worn, bent top hat he wore.  He wore a tattered trench coat that looked like my sweatshirt did, albeit dustier than mucky, buttoned over a vest and a dress shirt with a tie, and he carried a bent cane.

The items didn’t match, not quite, despite his generally neutral color scheme.

The various articles of clothing had been collected.  Trophies.

“There,” I said.  “If you look at the sign above the ice cream shop, under the far right corner, in the-”

“Top hat,” Evan said.

“And the man’s head engraved on the top of the cane,” Green Eyes said.

I squinted.  I could barely make out that the top of the cane was engraved at all.  “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there we go.  There’s one.”

I was little different from the Others that were attacking.  I wasn’t particularly strong.  I wasn’t smart, and I didn’t have any powers that broke the rules in any meaningful way.  I was tough, I was fast, and I was stronger than one might assume, given my frame.

“What do we do?” Evan asked.

“Watch,” I said, “Wait.  Make opportunities.”

“Opportunities?”

My eyes scanned the park and beach.

A movement caught my attention.

Pointing, a gleam of something gold.

Not quite at me.  At something close to me.

An Other just behind me lunged forward, breaking into a run.  Seven feet tall, oddly proportioned with a narrow body, a large head, and larger extremities, it had too many teeth crammed into its mouth, forcing a perpetual grin, and eyes that were too recessed in the sockets to make out in the dark.  It looked almost fake, like it had a carved pumpkin for a head, topped by a long-haired wig, made surreal by the addition of very real teeth.

I realized what had happened as the Other pushed his way past me.  I raised my hand, but his palm slid down my arm.  He raked himself on the chain and barbed wire I’d wound around the forearm.

I saw him react, obviously feeling the pain.  He spun on me.  I saw the gleam of his eyes in the sockets, where slivers of light had found the eyeballs.

“They’re manipulating you,” I said.  “Manipulating us.  Trying to contrive a fight.”

It responded with a guttural, wordless noise, drawn out.

“Buuuuuuuuggghghhhh.”

It didn’t speak.  Or understand, quite probably.

It looked down at its hand.  When it clenched one oversized fist, blood oozed between meaty fingers.

While I was looking, it hit me with the other hand.  Not justifiably worth calling a jab, it was so heavy a blow, but he didn’t bring his fast back before swinging.  I felt bones and wood break, and sprawled in the snow.

Direction and redirection.  The Enchantress’ stock in trade.

Two can play that game.

Green Eyes was tensed, forearms perpendicular to the ground, ready to pounce.

“No, Green!” I said.  “Evan, help!”

It was maybe a mistake to decide on a game plan before seeing how intact I was.  Part of my chest had been crushed, folded in like a car door might be dented.

But I was intact enough to move.

I flipped over onto my stomach, and I scrambled forward until I could switch from a crawl to a run.

Like many predators, when prey ran, this thing chased.

I went from moving barely as fast as I might have walked when I was human as I shifted from crawl to run, and then found my feet as I figured out how best to run in snow.  As Evan joined me, I found it even easier.  A push here and there, as I almost lost my footing or when the snow underfoot didn’t just compact, but collapsed.

The big thing was barely slowed down in the knee-deep snow.  It was tall, and its clawed feet were broad.  There was less avenue for his feet to sink in, or for him to happen on areas where the snow underfoot wasn’t solid.  Weight distribution.

“You’re getting away,” Evan said.

And, I thought, I’m getting closer to the Duchamps.

I was closing the distance to their defensive lines, to the squat building with its ice cream shop and convenience store.

“Don’t help me,” I said, before redoubling my efforts.  “Keep it on course until-”

I very nearly fell.  I didn’t bother speaking again.  Evan was already gone.

My approach was noticed.  Two Duchamp women and Crooked Hat laid eyes on me and my pursuer.  One of the women, by the looks of it, was his wife.

Here it was.

They were talking to one another, deciding who would handle what.

I could see as one woman focused on me.

How did one fight an Enchantress?

Same way one fought a Faerie, presumably.  Directness, to counteract subtlety.

In that, the charging Other behind me was a point on our side.

Focus on the plan, I thought.  Focus, focus–

She held a golden chain, something dangling from it.  I saw her swipe it hard, left to right.

She seemed to move in slow motion as she finished, the medallion moving slowly in the air.

I averted my eyes, but I averted them in the wrong direction.

I caught sight of the Valkyrie-man.

Unlike Crooked Hat, the Valkalla was undeniably bad.

An easy target.

But, I thought, there’s no reason I can’t go after both.

I didn’t change course.  The snow was easier going as I drew near the building.  The stage with its overhang and the building had blocked some of the snowfall.

Beside her, the other Enchantress was doing something else.  Not aimed at me.

I heard a snarl, the footsteps slowing behind me.

A roar.

“Suck it!” I heard Evan say.

The thudding footsteps resumed, a matter of five or ten feet behind me.

Her movements were sharp.  With one hand, she wrapped the gold chain around her hand.  Arm out straight in front of her, she clasped it, fingers hooking around the edges of the medallion..

I had a momentary glimpse of my reflection.

A catch-twenty-two.  The maneuver was clearly defensive.  The question was, was it the sort of defense where what I did was reflected back at me, a u-turn in my attempt to connect my fist to her?  Something similar, a simple ward against harm, where I might as well be punching a stone wall, destroying my fist or damaging the Hyena?  Or was it the sort of defense where I second guessed the attack by thinking it was a trap, and she consequently stopped me?

It didn’t matter.

I leaped.  My feet settled on the railing.  For a moment, I perched.

My knees bent, and I leaped.  Up, not into them.

I stabbed the roof of the squat building with the Hyena.

An enchantress did something.  I jerked, my grip suddenly giving.  The blade skittered against ice.  I slid further down the roof’s edge, feet dangling at the head-level of the practitioners I’d just leaped over.

Right.  Of course there was a connection between me and the ground.

And if that could be strengthened-

Again, with no justification, no reason, I felt the connection between me and the roof break.  I landed on my feet, back to the wall, Duchamps and other practitioners lined up facing me.

Around that same moment, the Other that had been chasing me collided with the railing and the practitioners manning it.

Evan had steered the thing where the Enchantresses manning the railing here had tried to deter it.

It tried to lean forward, swiping its hand in Crooked Hat’s direction, but the railing gave.  It landed with its forearm braced against the ground, head roughly at the level of my collarbone.

More manipulation, I suspected.

“Evan!”

I bolted for the nearest gap, off to the right, toward the stage.

“Fast,” I heard a voice, somewhere off to one side, behind me.

When I wasn’t running through snow, sure.

I caught a glimpse of Crooked Hat, moving in the same direction I was, just to my right, barely out of the large Other’s reach.

His stick extended, touching the railing.  Tapping.

The railing broke down the middle, as if someone had driven a motorcycle into the midpoint.  The wooden slats formed a triangle, broken halves.  The broken pieces were longer than they should have been, and they braced one another, touching the wall of the building.

I hurdled it, jumping.

He touched one of the broken sections of fence.

It too, broke.  The pieces extended beneath me as they flew away from the point of the bent cane.

Shattered, fragile boards and bits of metal broke further as I landed atop them.  Points dug into my body of wood, jamming themselves into the holes in my arms and torso.

Motherfuck.

“Sorry,” Evan said.  “Should’ve-”

“It’s okay,” I said.  I didn’t like the unusual number of sharp wooden points and splinters surrounding him.  I gripped him in one hand for protection.

Behind Crooked Hat, the monstrous Other was being brought low.  The railing, though wooden, had wound around its wrists, and the Duchamps were starting to bind it.  It tried to twist its head away as one Duchamp woman reached out to place a paper charm on its forehead.

I lifted my feet up, and brought them sharply down to earth, leveraging my body up and away from the broken fence.

Crooked Hat was gripping the cane near the bottom.  He held it upright, and let it slide down, until his hand gripped the top.

The bottom end of the cane, in that same moment, tapped the ice-crusted boards that formed the path beneath us, between railing and building.

The boards that were still supporting me broke and shattered.  More points jabbed me, pierced me, and stuck through me.

“Here isn’t so different from there,” Crooked Hat told me.  “Sometimes, all we need is a push.”

I pulled my right arm away, breaking the spears and points of wood that were sticking through it, freeing to move.  I froze when I saw him move his cane.

This world wasn’t so different from the Abyss?

Yeah, sure, I’d mused something similar before.  But no way was I falling into that trap.

On a lot of levels, I wasn’t falling into that trap.

The amount of shit people could pull because others bought into the idea that it was just so.  Mystically and in real life.

No.

It wasn’t just so.

I wasn’t going to fall into that trap.  I hadn’t, when Carl had tried to make me buy his worldview, trapping me in his way of thinking.

“Bullshit,” I said, “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

“Things wouldn’t get lost in the dark corners so easily if it wasn’t close,” he said.

“There’s proper love here, and beauty without it being a trick.  There’s harmony, and I’m not talking about Balance.”

“There are traps everywhere, and harmony is an illusion,” he said, with quiet confidence.

He believed it.

Shit on me, he truly believed that this world and the Abyss were close.

Fuck me, that took pessimism to a whole new level.  To only see ugliness everywhere, to see danger?

“How do you know so little, for someone who studies the Abyss?” I asked.

“I can hardly claim to be of the Abyss, like you can, but I think you’d be surprised at just how much I know,” he said.

He raised one hand to tip his hat.

The surroundings skewed, just a little.  As if everything was slightly ajar.

I could see things between the cracks.  A dry, dusty, place, not so different from here.  The buildings on the other side were all askew, more abstract than real.  The place was bright, but it was the kind of bright that killed.  That made paint peel and skin burn and plant life die.  The kind of bright that bowed and broke, that left people swaddled in rags and hunched over, crawling.  A radiation sun.

Was his hat his implement?  Joyce had mentioned his demesne.  Maybe the hat was his ticket to the abyss.

This guy was no small potatoes.

“You know stuff, huh?” I asked.  “About the Abyss?”

“And this world.”

“Yeah?  Do you know why your family asked me to kill you?” I asked.  “Because they did.”

I saw his eyes widen a fraction.

His head turned, toward the Duchamps that were throwing out paper charms to bind the larger Other.

At his wife.

I wasn’t free to rise and go after him.  In large part, I was still impaled.

But I had freed one hand.

I cast my hand out.  Flinging the small body I held in one hand.

Flinging Evan.

Evan flew past him.

A push.

Crooked Hat took a step or two back, and bumped into one of the Duchamp’s husbands behind him.

“Free it!” I shouted.

Heads turned.

Focused on me, rather than Evan.

Evan flew past the Other.  Its arms rattled against the wooden manacles, while papers flew free.

Escape.

There were exceptional people in this world, people who found their niche, something they were good at, who put their all into it.  Some became great scientists, others became artists, or architects.

Crooked Hat had become a great cynic, it seemed, and if he was the type to carry the Abyss around with him, very literally, then did he take it home with him?  Did he subject his daughters to it?  Did they live in the Abyss?

Maybe someone in the chatroom had thought so, and thought they needed a way out.

Evan, I suspected, was another great sort of person.  In the moment I saw him fly free of the reach of others, papers trailing in his wake, I wished I could have seen what he might have grown up to be.  He’d survived the Hyena, only to get claimed by the elements.  He’d found talents in that, in sheer tenacity, and resourcefulness.  He’d been good enough at escaping that spirits had found a connection to him.

What could he have been, if he’d been allowed to grow up?

“Again!” I said, seeing more papers going out.  The thing had broken one hand free of the railing, and swiped at the practitioners, only to get tagged by one swift Duchamp woman.

He flew by again, stripping the papers away.

The Other gripped the railing and tore it loose from its moorings.  It pressed in, shoving the practitioners toward the building.

The railing flew out of its grip, slapping the ice and snow, and the Other lost its footing.

Twice freed.  Each time would likely be harder than the last.

I realized it, and my ability to realize it was one of my few advantages in all this.  I straddled both worlds.

The Duchamp-side Practitioners, however, realized it too.  The practitioners who weren’t dealing with the now-free Other were focusing on Evan.  Avoiding the third attempt.

He could slip away.  It was what he did.  But as a general rule, he couldn’t slip away three times in short order.

With a crowd focused on him, he was vulnerable.

If I hadn’t been thinking about his better points just a moment ago, I might not have considered our next step from the same angle.  Maybe I would have fought, and trusted him to handle himself, or called him to me, so I could protect him and take the brunt of it all.

But this…

“Go, bird, save the Duchamps!” I called out, pointing at the Duchamps.  I tore my upper body free of the trap of wooden spikes.

My words made for hesitation.  Practitioners heard my words and didn’t attack Evan.

But Evan listened, no question.

As the Other found its bearings and pressed forward, Evan swept by.  Getting the Duchamps on course.  Helping them slip away.

But it was another nudge against Crooked Hat.  He had to catch the railing to steady himself.

But Evan had driven him back, and he hadn’t been that far from the Other before.

I tore my lower body free as I pulled myself to my feet, and kicked Crooked Hat squarely in the side.

The Other caught his head in one hand, enclosing it.

It squeezed.

Both the head and the namesake hat were utterly crushed.

The Other smiled its too-toothy smile, raising Crooked Hat until his feet didn’t touch the ground, then shaking him, so his limp legs wobbled.

While it was distracted, I ran past.

We’d made a break of sorts in the Duchamp defensive line.

I drew the cleaver as I saw the Valkalla that the enchantress had shown me earlier.  The bait.  Gudbrand.

But still another target.

I flung it.

Almost automatically, without the man even looking, his shortsword came up, and knocked the cleaver aside.

The thrown weapon broke in two with the impact.

Fuck.

He’d infused his weapons and gear.  Beneath a heavy leather winter coat with a fur ruff at the collar, he wore a breastplate.  He had a gun strapped to one thigh, another gun in hand, and a shortsword in the other hand.  His beard and hair were thick, his eyes dark beneath a furrowed brow.

The babykiller.

His eyes were on me, now, as people behind him backed up.

I saw green eyes flash just behind him.

“No!” I called out.

“Yes!” he said.

Why didn’t she listen?

Green Eyes lunged.

His sword came around.  Automatic.  Always parrying any incoming strike.

Green Eyes saw, and her tail moved, heading down, touching the railing.  She managed to knock herself off course, hooking the railing, wounding her tail, and throwing herself down.

But distractions were distractions.  Enough for me to close three or four feet, and build up speed.

He fired.

Shots clipped bone and branch.  They made holes the size of softballs on their way out.

“Your father’s weapons?” I asked.

Confidence.  I knew this much.

“Some,” he said.

“You know where they came from?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

I set my jaw.

Theatrics.  I had to appeal to the spirits, and the spirits liked a show.

When it all came down to it, I was an preternaturally tough Other with a broken sword.   I had to close the distance.  Be a little reckless.

I swatted with the Hyena, as I drew close enough.  Sure enough, his sword parried automatically.  It left him open.

Maybe he expected me to try and cut him, or hit him.  But I didn’t.  I embraced him, hugging his sword arm to his side, gripping his gun arm, forcing it down.

Gripping the tail end of the barbed-wire encrusted chain, I caught the back of his throat, pulling him even closer.

“For your brothers and sisters,” I said, loud enough for nearby Duchamps to hear.  I saw them stop, turning to see, if not fast enough to act.

A bit more, in the way of theatrics.

Maybe, I hoped, if the universe had any justice at all, a bit of karma.  A bit more strength.

He pulled the trigger, and a bit of the wood at my back blew away.  Sections of ribs.

But people were scared.

That, at least, was enough to keep me going.  To balance it out.

Even with a bad angle, I was close enough to be able to use the sword to cut him near the spine.  Nothing vital.  I shifted angle, then gripped the handle with both hands, and pulled it close.

He collapsed.

That had been vital.

I pulled myself free.

I saw the tension.  Felt the fear.

I saw Green Eyes slip under the railing.  Intact enough.

“No quarrel with you,” I said, turning my back on them.  “I killed the ones I was asked to kill.”

The inevitable question came.  “Rose?”

“Duchamps,” I said.

I passed the Other who had chased me.  I saw it watch me.

I only heard a chuckle.

A part of me felt like it was mocking me.

Taking advantage of the very same thing that had plagued me from the beginning of all this.  In a sense, killing a son for the crimes of the father.

Onward.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Execution 13.6

I’d perched on the edge of a rooftop, and I watched through curtains of falling snow as the Duchamps shifted positions.  The tolling of the bell in the background had returned to normal, or as normal as a ghostly knell could get.

Green Eyes slithered away from me, her tail scraping against my wounded lower back and the back pockets of my jeans, as she approached the roof’s edge.  She gripped the edge, and leaned over, elbows bent at right angles, watching.

Evan, sitting on my shoulder, was a little less dramatic.  But he watched all the same.

Some of the Duchamps saw me, I knew.  They could see the fact that I was looking, and trace it back to me.

But even with the bell going quiet, they were focused on their immediate safety.  They maintained a fighting retreat, abandoning their position by the beach as they headed Northwest.  Given how the beach here sat at the east end of downtown, their direction was toward the city proper.  They were moving quickly, getting protections back in order, and communicating with the others around them.

I saw how the group moved as they came around the edge of the park.  There were groups that had broken into threes – the pyromancer was part of one group, and there were two more groups that were composed entirely of Duchamp women and girls.  As an Other approached, it was set on fire, left to scream and roll around in the snow.  Another approached from a different direction, only to get rooted in place by a trio of Duchamps.  Binding it to the ground.  They gave it a wide berth, casting glances over their shoulders to make sure that the rear group was holding off pursuers.

A portion of the crowd passed them, giving a similar berth to the immobilized Other.  But it only took moments.  They moved on at a quick walk, and the Other fell in step just behind them.

“We’ll have to watch out for that,” I said.  “They’re operating in threes. That group seems to be more offensive, given how the pyromancer is there.  That’s one of the guys we’re after.”

“I see him,” Evan said.

“The other group is binding and capturing.  That’s almost scarier.  Once we’re bound, we’re relying on Evan to break it.  Being hurt is… almost temporary.”

I saw it happen again, and I pointed.  “There.  Can you see what they’re doing to pull that off?”

Green Eyes tilted her head, her temple resting on my forearm, to better follow the line of my arm and finger.

“No.  They’re holding up their tools and saying something,” she said.  She raised her head.

The Duchamp woman nearest the group turned her head.  More than one other Duchamp did the same, until most of the women who weren’t actively retreating were looking in our direction.

“I think they see us,” Evan said.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“They could do something to us, couldn’t they?”

“Be ready,” I said, but I didn’t move.

The Duchamps, in turn, didn’t come after me.

“What are they doing?” Green Eyes asked.

“Maybe they don’t see us after all,” I said.  “They can’t see that well in the dark?”

“Maybe,” Evan said.  “Most of them aren’t looking directly at us.  Sandra is, though.”

“Sandra,” I said.

I could almost make her out in the crowd.  There were an awful lot of women in winter coats and hats with long blonde hair draped behind them.

There were no cars on the street, and the Duchamp contingent made for a crowd.  Like oil and water separating, the men formed one group, the women another.  Not entirely, but noticeable all the same.

I saw some of the men talking.  Muttering, maybe.  It seemed the High Priest was a focal point in the group’s conversation.  The one that they were turning to.

“Wouldn’t mind knowing what they’re talking about,” I said.

“Us.  You.  This,” Evan said.

“Specifically.”

“You killing people,” Evan said.

“More specifically,” I said.

“Okay.”

Green Eyes jerked her head around, startling.

“Hi Molly,” I said, without turning.

“Expanding your senses?” Molly asked.

“No,” I said.  “Evan didn’t freak out, and Green Eyes didn’t lunge.  Not many people it could be.”

She approached the edge of the roof, standing just by my right shoulder.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m not sure what I expected,” she said.  “But you promised to go after the Duchamps.”

“I did,” I said.  “I am.”

“I heard you tell the bird-”

“Evan,” Evan said.

“-To save the Duchamps.  The enemy.”

I nodded slowly.

She changed.  I wasn’t looking at her, so I couldn’t see the full extent of it, but I was aware of her altering, to become something a little darker, a little sharper around the edges.  She spoke in her less human voice.  “I’m not wrong?  I thought the enchantresses could be working against me.”

“No,” I said.  “You heard right.”

She was silent.

Green Eyes tensed beside me.  She was more focused on Molly than the Duchamp group that was passing through a downtown without cars, people, or proper light.

“If you want evil, Molly, pure unadulterated slaughter, you’re looking in the wrong place.  That wasn’t the plan.”

“You convinced me to expend power.”

“For good reason,” I said.  “Look.  They’re already talking amongst themselves.  Worrying.  This isn’t about wiping them out.  It’s not about familicide.”

“The hell it isn’t,” Molly said.  “They want familicide.”

“If we’re lucky, they’ll fail,” I said.  “If we’re lucky, we can keep hitting the weak points.  Take out their power base.  The Duchamps depend on their marriages to other families.  If we break those, if we introduce cracks, we can break the family.”

“Cracks.  By going out of your way to save them?”

“Our weapons aren’t numbers,” I said.  “Not blades or guns or bindings or fire.  It’s doubt.”

“And fear,” Green Eyes said.  “In the middle of all that, even while you were being shot, you looked like you were standing an inch taller.”

“Fear and doubt, yeah,” I said.  “They aren’t much different.”

I stood straight, testing my back.  It had healed, but not completely.  I couldn’t carry Green Eyes properly until it was better.

“Our enemy in all of this is complacency.  The faith that everything will all work out okay.  We need to shake them,” I said.  “Do the unexpected, hit them where they’re weak.  And these people, the Benevolent, the dabbler brothers, the Pyromancer, and the Spellbinder?  They’re weak points.”

I looked at Evan.

“They’re, as far as I can tell, monsters.”

“I know,” Evan said.  “Because you wouldn’t, if they weren’t.”

“Thanks,” I said.

The two groups, of husbands and wives, I noted, hadn’t quite reunited.  Men on one side of the street, women on the other, walking right down the center of the car-less road, where they were free to move as a crowd rather than a line that could be attacked at different points.

I was surprised Sandra wasn’t mending the divide.  I had every expectation she could…

I smiled a little.

Of course.

The men who’d married into the family did too.

Sandra was paralyzed, just a little, by the fact that she was almost perfectly equipped to handle the situation.  They knew what she was capable of.  They were watching for it.  If she tried to manipulate them, she’d lose them.

“You do this, only attacking the husbands, the Duchamps get away scott-free,” Molly said.

“No,” I said.  “I don’t think so.”

I signaled, then made my way down the face of the building.  My hand caught window ledge, then drainpipe, then a roof that hung over the steps.  Being lightweight helped.  The landing was soft in the snow, marked by the crunch through a layer or two of ice.

By the time I crossed the front yard, Green Eyes a few feet behind me, Molly was waiting.  She hadn’t traveled the distance between points A and B.

She was glaring.  It looked pretty intense.

“We’re declawing the cat, Molly,” I said.  “Removing the horns from the bull.”

Evan perched on my shoulder.

“Cats still have teeth.  Bulls still have muscle,” Molly said.

Molly disappeared, joining the shadows and the snowflakes.

“Damn articulate for a ghost,” I muttered.  “What the hell is going on with her?”

“I know, right?” Evan asked.  “Artakulate.  She talks goodish.”

“Goodish,” Green Eyes echoed him.

“No way she’s becoming a god,” I said.  “So fast?  So easily?”

“I know, right?  Crazy.  It’d be like a ghost becoming the best bird ever.”

“Your tail okay, Green?” I asked.

“It’s good.”

“Evan?”

“I’m excellent.”

I nodded.

“You’ve still got holes in you, though.”

“There’ll be some trees along the way,” I said.  “I can grab some fallen branches.”

Evan hopped down, perching on one of the gaping hole in my side.  “You’ve got some broken bones, too.”

“Don’t do that,” I said, sticking my finger under his bird feet to pry him free of his perch.  He hopped from my finger to my shoulder.  “And with luck, we’ll have our hands on some bones soon enough.”

■

They’d rigged things.  They knew who I was, and they knew I was after them.  With luck, I’d already planted seeds of doubt, and some of them were wondering about the fact that I’d declared that Duchamps had sent me.

Hiding from them was nearly impossible, now that they were watching.  With that in mind, I stayed in plain sight.

They were moving down the street.  Now that I’d caught up, I remained one block over, moving parallel with the group.

As I passed through an intersection, I turned my head, watching them.

Here and there, there were traces of fear.  I could sense it, clarifying me.  All the same, all put together, they weren’t that scared.  Safety in numbers.  They were armed with a half-dozen to a dozen different forms of practice, and they were aware of me.

I needed to create doubt.  To shatter their confidence.  For now, I was content to match their speed.

Green Eyes trailed a bit behind, watching my back.  Evan worked to watch both of us, circling me a few times, when the Duchamps had a better sense of where I was, then looping back to check on Green Eyes when there was enough raw architecture between me and the practitioners to offer an illusion of security.

With each time we came into each other’s view, I noted my opposition.  The pyromancer was in the group.  I’d noted him earlier, and it was a question of keeping tabs on where he was.

Mason Hall-McCullough the Benevolent was there as well.  Spry for an old man, he had white hair that was neatly cut, combed straight back from his face, and he had a trimmed white beard with a pencil mustache.  Prayer beads were hung from his neck, folded over so that they formed two loops.  Each bead was the size of a fist, solid wood, alternating from red to brown, and was engraved with a symbol.  A smiley face, a sun, a four-leaf clover.  He walked with his hands in his pockets, but his jacket was open, and he didn’t seem to be bowing to the cold of the wind, even without a hat on his head.

I reminded myself that he could be a trap.  A name given because he was one of the hardest to touch.

The two brothers were somewhere in the crowd too, but being dabblers, they lacked any discerning marks, and were hard to pick out.  I looked for men who could be brothers, but didn’t see anything.  I didn’t want to ask Evan, because I needed him focused, and I wasn’t sure how easily his gaze could be identified with attention to connections.

The spellbinder, as far as I could tell, wasn’t here.

As next targets went, I kind of liked the Pyromancer.  Career criminal, he’d gotten his wife hooked on drugs.  ‘Ruined her’.

I was already pretty goddamn jealous of anyone who had someone.  Knowing that he’d had it and he’d ruined it?  That he’d perverted it and made it something ugly?  I wasn’t a fan.

I tried not to pay too much attention to him, lest I give something away.

Sandra, I noted, was watching me.  The Troll loped beside her.  Big, with braided white hair clasped in place with heavy workings of iron, and an animal gleam in its eyes.  Sandra moved through the group, meeting the High Priest of Dionysus near the divide between man and woman.  They spoke, but were much too far away to be heard.

The wind picked up a bit.  It barely bothered me now.  The only flesh I had was at my face.  I finished crossing the street.  The back of a laundromat blocked my view of the group.

Only a half block until the next intersection, if it deserved being called that.  Almost an alleyway.

Evan was lingering.  Communicating something to Green Eyes.

I quickened my step as I reached the gap, to minimize how much time they had to draw a bead on me, in a mystical sense, and saw straight down the alley.

Only a moment, only a sliver of the group visible.

Something had changed.

Eyes forward, now, I searched my recollection.  What I’d seen of the group before, what I’d seen after.  Not quite a ‘spot the differences’ puzzle, given how the group had shuffled and some people had walked further ahead or back, but… there was something.

Troll, the thought crossed my mind, an instant before Evan whistled.

I was already moving.  Picking up speed.

It came down from above, and the general sensation of its arrival was akin to a car being thrown from the rooftop.  A crash, the very ground shuddering, and sudden, violent movement, as it rebounded from the landing.

Unlike the allegorical car, Sandra’s troll didn’t come to a stop after hitting ground.  Without a heartbeat’s pause, it came for me.

Faster than it looked.  Enough that I wasn’t absolutely positive that I was going to be able to put distance between us.

There was an eerie kind of grace to her, in the same general sense that I imagined a train going off rails was probably pretty amazing to look at.  Everything about the the movements made sense in the general ‘A leads to B’ sense, and everything about her advance made me pretty damn certain I didn’t want to be near her.

She pulled a water meter off the back of the building in passing without slowing down even a fraction, tearing it free of thick metal pipes and fasteners.  It was one of the bigger meters, nearly as large as a microwave, but with the general aesthetic of a parking meter.

I glanced back again, just in time to see her throw it.  Again, without slowing.  She simply used the forward movement to drop into a four-limbed forward lope, moving like a gorilla might.

I moved a bit to the right, still heading full-bore away from her.  The water meter struck the ground to my left, hard enough that it bit through ice and snow and hit pavement with force enough to spark.

“Dodge!” I heard Evan’s voice, distant behind me.

I did.  Heading left, to where there was more snow and less ice on the ground.

A trash can hit the ground, and skidded on the ice, contents spraying out in front and around me.

Hardware stuff.  Boxes of paper and plastic containing individual parts, gears, and splinters of wood from crates or pallets.

As nice as it would have been to arm myself or collect something, I couldn’t afford to slow down.  I couldn’t afford to lose my focus, as I risked slipping on one bit of trash or another.

Commercial stuff.  Commercial buildings.

Benefit of being downtown.

I was approaching the next intersection.  I didn’t get tired, but I doubted the troll did either.  My focus was on watching where I stepped, trying to make my movements more efficient as I ran.

I eyed the building at the corner.  A new age store of some kind.  Women’s clothing, visible in the display.  Cheap looking, from the security fence on the exterior windows and door to the sign posted in the window.

Evan passed me, then circled.

I extended a hand, then a finger, and beckoned.

He set down on my finger.

In the moment I wasn’t looking, just as I reached the sidewalk before the intersection in question, a satyr came at me.  A headbutt.

Evan jerked.  I sidestepped.  I narrowly missed being hit.  He grabbed at me, but fingernails failed to catch on my sweatshirt.

I switched course, heading for the Duchamps.

I saw them stop.  I saw implements come out.

Enchantment was all about changing the relationship between A and B.  Influencing it with spirit or general effect.

If I misled as to what ‘B’ was, the basic plan fell apart.

I switched course a second time, heading for the display window.

“Unlock!” I shouted, flinging Evan.  “Then back!”

He found his bearings, and flew past the loose chickenwire fence that had been lowered around the shop window.  I saw the lock pop, the security fence automatically raise.

I’d meant the door, but that worked too.

Enchantment started to settle around me.  One of the teams of three.  Same practice they’d employed earlier.  If the relationship was between me and the ground, well, there wasn’t a lot I could do to get away from ground.

Evan returned just in time.  I caught him out of the air, then gripped him, sweeping him between me and the Duchamps, much as I’d once painted lines of blood to break a connection that was being used to track me.

I heard a sound of annoyance from him.  But the effect fell away.  I wasn’t attached to the ground.

My first thought was that maybe someone was living in the building after all, or the rules weren’t what I thought they were, and it was every building that was barred to passage.

But the glass did break, alongside my momentum.  Either the building used damn thick glass, or someone had influenced things, because hitting the glass was like hitting a brick wall.

In the moment I realized what had happened, my mind flashed to Sandra.

She’d be quick enough with that kind of enchantment, I imagined.

I caught my balance, then started off again, expecting troll hands to close around me any moment.

The troll had stopped, too, and was only just breaking into her loping gallop.  Duchamps were shouting.

Had Sandra ordered a halt, out of suspicion that I’d do what I’d done earlier, leading the Other in a blind charge into the Duchamp front lines?  Communicating something else?

The clothing on the racks caught on the exposed wood of my body.  I used Evan to club my way free.  The moment I rounded a corner, blocking line of sight, the clothing stopped trying to snag me.

The only meager light in the store came from outside, and that light dimmed as the troll’s large frame entered the building through the same window I had.

I headed for the door behind the cash.  Employee entrance.

There was a crash.  The Troll was destroying a clothing rack.

She hefted the remaining section, leaning back as though she were getting ready to throw a javelin.

I dodged right, but the ‘javelin’ wasn’t aimed at me.

It speared the floor, just in front of the employee’s door to the back.

On reaching it, I settled one hand on the thing, and pulled.

It didn’t budge.

I pulled on the door handle, touching it with the hand that still held Evan, and found it only opened about a half-foot.

Could I break it?

Looking back, to check the troll’s proximity to me, I could see past the Troll’s left elbow to make out Sandra, standing out in the street, golden chalice in her hands.

I doubted I could break it.  If I tried anything, it would likely be hampered.

Damn it.

The troll was smarter than she looked, and she had Sandra to back her up.

I turned left, but the Troll moved, ready to block my exit.

I turned right, and the Troll did the same.

If I made a break for it, the troll could cut me off.

Staying put wasn’t an option, either.

I was pretty damn sure I’d lose in a fight.

She was closing the distance.  her braids swayed, like flails, kept in place by locks of metal that could brain someone.

I let go of Evan.

“Did you just tinkerbell me?”

“What?”

“You tinkerbelled me.  Like in the movie-”

“Evan.”

“When they shake and spank the fairy for her fairy dust.  You spanked me!”

“Evan!  Focus on the troll.”

“Okay.  Damn troll.  She’s hunted me before.  Jerk.”

“Well she’s hunting me, and she’s not a weasel anymore.”

“Stoat, I think.  Stoat.  I asked, and she’s a stoat as a-”

“Evan!”

“Familiar.  We should run.”

“No shit.”

“Well, let’s go,” Evan said, clearly nervous with the Troll’s approach.

“Where?”

“Away?”

“Door’s blocked.”

“Then over-”

“She’ll get-”

The troll was getting closer.

“Up!” Evan said.

I looked up.

Cheap store.  Cheap ceiling.  It was a drop ceiling.  Foam or drywall panels.

I lunged in the Troll’s direction.  She planted her feet, hands ready.

I put one foot on the corner of the counter by the cash register, then twisted, leaping for one of the panels.

I got about halfway on the initial lunge-and-claw-forward movement.  I pulled myself the rest of the way before any troll hands could grab my foot.

The moment I was entirely up and inside the ceiling, the panel beneath me broke.  I tumbled to the ground, on the far side of the wall.

The troll emerged, devastating both door and doorframe, simply striding past.

I scrambled, with Evan’s help, for the emergency exit, past an office and a storage room.  Evan reached the door a moment before I did.  No lock stopped me.

The heavier metal door and exterior gave the troll pause.

I rounded the corner, and headed up the fire escape.

I was halfway up before Sandra’s familiar found me.  The troll leaped, gripping the exterior of the fire escape, but bolts came free of the wall.  She dropped down as the lower section of the fire escape broke away.  I saw her head back in Sandra’s direction.

Glancing at Evan, I gestured.  He flew in a lazy circle around me.

Hopefully breaking connections the Duchamps were trying to form to track me.

I leaped between buildings, enjoying the moment I was in the air, cold wind singing through me.

“You tinkerbell-spanked me,” Evan said, petulantly, ruining the moment.

“I did not spank you,” I said, looking around.  “And I needed to make sure you were clear.”

“Clear?”

“Of harm, for one thing,” I said.

“Right.  Sure.  Except I’m slippery and quick, so nyeh.”

“I know,” I said, stepping closer to the rooftop, glancing down to get a glimpse of the group before backing off.  “But… I think it’s good if you don’t waste that slipperyness.”

The Duchamps were moving again.

Heading in the direction of houses.  Sandra’s place, among others.

Once they got there, this would be doubly hard.  I’d be sieging them.

“If I don’t waste- How come?”

“Because you’re going to deliver death from above, if all this goes right.”

“Death from above?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I don’t get it.  I don’t hate it, but I don’t get it.”

“It would be easier if the rooftops weren’t so covered in ice,” I said.  “I mean, ice works, but…”

“But?”

“But it’s not very elegant, or it’s too elegant.  I’m not sure,” I said.

I checked around one heating vent, where the exhaust had melted snow, but turned more snow around it into ice.  I traced it with my hand, finding more chunks that had broken away and then joined the frozen crust.

There was a path, leading from it to a nearby door into the building.  There had been foot traffic here, more than a little, maybe even shoveled away, but it had since been buried under a layer of snow.

Someone had broken up the ice.

They’d broken it up with something.

“Evan,” I said.  “Here.”

He unlocked the door.

Pulling it open, I could barely see inside.

But I could make out the shovel and pick, as well as a bag of salt.  A notice board was posted on the wall, with dates and names.  Breaking ice, the shit job for some employee downstairs who’d done something to offend the boss.

A small trash can sat in the corner, filled with food scraps and wrappers from fast food places.  Breakfasts and lunches, enjoyed during breaks from the ice breaking.

Here we were, then.

I pulled the lid and plastic bag of trash clear of the can, then filled the now-empty bucket with packed salt and snow.  I held it upside down to verify it wouldn’t simply fall out, even if the lid came off, then packed it more.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Making something,” I said.  I put the lid back on.

Using the pencil from the notice board, I scrawled a message on the side of the plastic can.

“Whatcha making?”

“A parcel,” I said, doubling down on how thick the lines were, to make them obvious.

“A parcel.  Huh.”

I showed him the message on the side.

“Per request, for treatment of wife,” Evan said.  “Huh?”

“Maybe it’s better to call it a missile,” I said.

“Missile?”

“Come on outside,” I said.  I looked at the pick, but decided against it.  Theft was bad, karma-wise.

Standing on the roof, trying to get a peek of Duchamps, or even better, the men that were moving with the pack, men who couldn’t use enchantment to find me, I heard a scrape.

I wheeled around, expecting to see the troll.

I only saw Green Eyes.

“Leaving me behind?  I can’t move that fast!”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Almost every time.  If I don’t jump into the fray, I get left behind,” she said.  She accepted my offer of a hand to climb over the lip of the roof.

“How’d you find us?”

“I never left the one street.  I saw you go over to one side, then come out the back of the building, then go up the side.  I was worried you’d kept going.

“No,” I said.

I heard another scrape.

“Shit,” I said.  “Wait, did any of them see you?”

“Maybe?”

Evan looked up at me, cocking his head.

“They let you go,” I said.  “So you’d lead them to me.  Evan, circle-”

I heard another scrape.  Something heavier.

“Around,” I said, belatedly.

Something, quite probably the troll, was climbing the side of the building.

Evan did a loop.

“Listen,” I said.  “Same idea as with the big thing you guided to the Duchamps before.  Just keep it on course.  If you can make it slippery, and guide it to the target… do you know the targets?”

“Sorta?”

“The pyromancer,” I said.  I touched the salt, checking it was still packed.

“I know him.”

“Then guide it, delay as long as you can,” I said, “Stay out of sight, catch up with us after.”

“Right!”

I heaved the bucket, over the building, in the direction of the Duchamps.

Tempting as it was to watch, I couldn’t afford to.  I ran, Green Eyes following.

Okay, that was a lie.

On landing, feet sinking into snow, settling on my hands and knees on the snow that had accumulated on the roof, I allowed myself a glance.

The bucket was pale, but not bright.  Not obvious.

Evan had spread his wings, breaking his speed.  He was at the apex point of the bucket’s trajectory, but the bucket had already passed that point.

He lost it.  Or was he distracted?

Neither.  He dove, and veered sharply, passing the bucket, swerving.  Accelerating its descent, adjusting its course.

I heard the impact, the scream.

I felt the fear.

Those two things were very different, in how they affected me.  The scream was a reminder that I was dealing with humans.  That I was dealing with real people with real feelings, who could somehow be grossed out and alarmed.

The fear, that was something else.

I didn’t enjoy the fear, but I did feed off it.

A part of me itched to simply leap from the building, to go after them.

A reckless, bogeyman part, hungry to take advantage of the chaos and confusion.

The troll reached the top of the adjoining building before I’d found my feet.

Green Eyes and I were already moving, leaping down to a building that was only one story tall.  Then to the snow-covered roof of a truck parked in the alleyway.

The fear of the group stayed with me.  I’d alarmed more than a few people, this time.  The alarm persisted, and they were worried.  A whole group, moving away from the rooftop in case I sent any more packages.

Evan joined us.  Without my asking, he circled us, confounding connections.

I pointed, and silently, we reversed directions, hugging the base of the building.

I could sense the fear, and I could sense their general locations.

We circled around back, until we were following them.

I saw a satyr turn back, looking my way.

Evan flapped his wings.

The satyr shook its head, frowning.

His sense of smell had turned his head, most likely, but he wasn’t confident enough about it to raise a voice.

They’d come after me, and I’d still picked off one of their number.

They had started a fight, I was responding in kind.

It wasn’t right, it wasn’t good, and it didn’t qualify as justice, but in a way, it was almost just.  Fitting with the way this world worked.

I didn’t like it, but I disliked it less than fighting the way this world worked and getting my ass kicked for it, losing everything I loved.

But this wasn’t a road that was set in stone.

I’d been looking for a goal, and I had it, meager as it was.  Not a grandiose dream, like being normal again, or riding my bike, or fixing things.

I was going to do what I could to steer things towards a better path, and I was going to try to stay true to myself.  I’d veer one way or another, along the karmic path or against it.

But I was going to be Blake, when all this was said and done.

Even if Blake was less than half a person.

I set my eyes on my next target, and gave the signal to move on.

Execution 13.7

I was the monster from the movies.  Difficult to put down, creative in how I killed.  I operated by a pattern, and I accomplished what I set out to do.

In assuming my role, here, in lining things up and knocking them down, in sticking to my word, and in doing justice, I was being rewarded by the universe.  Things were being allowed to go my way.  I didn’t have the burden of Thorburn karma.  I was fledgling, relatively newborn, and the parts of me that were older were being subsumed, eroded away in favor of me becoming more of a monster.  I was becoming less of a fragment of Russel or Ross Thorburn, and more of a complete Other thing.

I had no illusions.  I was walking a fine line, a tightrope.  One serious mistake, and I stood to fall, and fall hard.

The Duchamps were walking through the dark and the drifting snow.  I barely looked at them, my eyes on the ground where I walked, my attention elsewhere.

“They’re going to see us,” Evan said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Is bad,” Evan said, stressing the words, like I was a small child.

“It’s good,” I murmured.  “I can tell when they’re scared.  The trick is to only give them glances of us.  Get them nervous.  Let them worry.”

I glanced at Green Eyes.

“What do you think I was doing when we first met?” she asked.  “I thought if you startled and fell, I could catch you.”

I nodded.

By all rights, I should have been annoyed.  I had concerns about Green Eyes, that went beyond the fact that she openly talked about murdering people.  She was impulsive, and that wasn’t just a problem in terms of the risk it posed to her, but it was a problem in the risk it posed to her victims.

That woman, Jan, I wasn’t sure she’d really deserved to be killed.

“Green Eyes,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“You made me a promise, that you would be careful about who you targeted.”

“Yeah.”

“One of the four remaining targets is the old man in that group.”

“With the necklace?”  Evan asked.

“Yeah.  With the necklace.  His schtick is messing with fortune, basically.  He knows how to play the game, how to get the universe on his side, and presumably that means things go against his opponents.”

“Against us,” Green Eyes said.

“Against us,” I said.

I felt a spike of attention as someone noticed me, peering backward over their shoulder and into the gloom.

I changed direction, picking up speed, and let them put some distance between myself and them.

The fear only heightened, in the moment they lost sight of me.

“You’ll need to be especially careful when we go up against him,” I said.  “You can’t jump in like you have twice now, especially now that we’ve got a guy like him in play.  Even if you think I’m in danger.  Even if we aren’t fighting him, specifically.  Even after, it’s just…”

“Okay,” Green Eyes said.

“Okay?”  Just like that.

“I’ll try.”

“I may need more than a try,” I said.  “If you go after the wrong person, or if his magic kicks in and throws a wrench in the works…”

“I’ll try,” she said.  “I’ll try.”

“You don’t trust yourself enough to be sure?”

She turned her face up to look at me.  I hadn’t realized how dark it really was, with how my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and my natural ability to see in darkness.  But her eyes glowed much as they had in the oppressive darkness of the Drains.

“Do you trust yourself?” she asked.

I didn’t have an honest answer for her.

“That’s not supposed to be snarky or clever.  It’s a real question,” she said.  “Physically, you’re about as messed up as I am.  But your head?  Your heart?  That’s different.  You get hurt and you fill in the gaps with bits of ‘monster’, but you’re doing it faster than I was.  But the stuff that hurts your body is different than stuff that hurts your head and your heart.”

“You’re asking how hurt my heart and head are?”

“Yeah.”

“If that kind of hurt affects your head, then I feel like I should be more monstrous than I am, there.”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Do you trust yourself, when you think about that?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Fairly sure I do.”

“A small part of me feels like I was the sort of person who didn’t trust herself, even before I was a monster,” Green Eyes told me.  “How can I be sure I can trust myself now?”

“That’s a good question,” I said.  “I wish I had an answer.”

“You’re such a guy,” she said.  “God.  Not every question needs an answer.  Not every problem needs advice.  Sometimes the question is an answer.  My question was an answer.”

“Oh, oh, I know this one!” Evan chimed in.  “Rhetorical question.”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” Green Eyes said.

“But it’s still rhetorical!”

“Shh,” I said, “We don’t want them to hear.  There are some Others in that group.”

“It’s still rhetorical,” Evan whispered.  Green Eyes raised her head to stick her tongue out at him.

We were drawing closer to the retreating group.  The conversation was distracting from my thoughts about strategy, how to deal with them before they found a sanctuary of sorts.  Getting them scared was good.  Scared meant they were more likely to make mistakes, or to show their hands.

They were, I noted, putting more creatures in the back ranks.

“I think being with you helps,” Green Eyes said, her voice small.

I glanced down at her.

“With my feeling sure of myself.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

Evan looked up at me.  He switched to looking down at her, for just a second, as if he were checking something, then looked up at me.

He hopped in place once, silent.

“Good,” I said.

Green Eyes smiled.

Evan sighed.

Why did Green Eyes seem to associate creepy, predator-ish situations with these sorts of discussions?  In grave danger?  I like you!   Stalking potential victims?  You’re swell!

I had to focus.  We didn’t have a lot of time, and we needed to figure out an angle for attack.  We’d caught them off guard once.  Then we’d hit them from the air… I’d been hoping that the darkness, the cold, and the general ambiance of a town at war would generate cracks I could manipulate.

The way things were going, however, it looked like fear wouldn’t provide any choice opportunities to pick off members of the crowd.  Mason Hall-McCullough, as it happened, had a lot of luck to spare, and it was helping him there.

I could only make out the rear of the group, and I couldn’t help but notice the way the group moved.  Slowing a bit, people changing direction.  The Others were moving more to the sides of the group.  Was something else attacking?

I slowed, and, unable to stick an arm out to stop Green eyes from crawling, stuck one foot out to touch her shoulder.

If we’d been moving, or focused on something else, I might have missed it.  Someone rose to their feet as the last members of the group caught up to them, and fell in stride with the group.  A man with a blond beard.

I caught the look he cast back over his shoulder as he noticed me noticing him.  I felt his fear.  Not as pronounced as some.  He wasn’t as scared, and there was a reason.

“They’re getting away,” Green Eyes said.

“Move slow,” I told the others.

We did.  Smaller steps.

I saw the spot where the guy had stopped.

Almost invisible, drawn in the snow and ice with thick lines of something blue, it had melted snow and ice down to pavement, and was consequently surrounded by a darker outline.  A diagram.  Not a circle, but something complicated.  From my perspective, it looked like a distorted triangle , with complex geometric lines within, the flat side pointed toward us.  The far end of the triangle crossed over, and formed what could have been described as supports for a smaller diagram.

“Huh,” Evan said.  “What is it?”

“A trap,” I said.

“Does the trap have something to do with the box over there?”

“Box?” Green Eyes and I both asked, almost in sync.

“Yeah.  Box.  Far side.  Squiggly bit, circle, zig-zag, then the forky bit, and there’s the circle on the far bit of the forky bit…”

The smaller diagram, supported by the larger triangle.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And in that circle…?” he asked.

“They’re getting away, don’t drag this out.”

“Hmph,” he grunted, which was a very small grunt coming from such a small body, “Wooden box, between the black chunks of frozen slush.”

Green Eyes reached over and grabbed my side for support, fingers encircling branches, to raise herself further off the ground.  “Ah, yeah.”

“Okay, then, doing this carefully…”

I advanced for a closer look.

On the third step, the diagram reacted.

Smoke, as snow and ice evaporated.  The diagram had changed, the supporting lines around the smaller diagram extending further, and to either side.

“Geez,” I said.  I took another half-step closer, and watched as the smoke and lines extended further.  “Reacts to proximity.  Evan?  Be careful.”

Evan flew out, turning immediately, then came back to land on my shoulder.

I saw more smoke rise, almost the sort of thing that could be mistaken as air from a storm drain or a sharp draft of wind that stirred the snow.  The diagram had extended further.

It was duplicating.  Four triangles forming a square, with the box presumably at the center.

It was, it seemed, sensitive enough to react to Evan.

“We should go around,” Green Eyes said.

“We’d lose too much time,” I said.  “We’d lose them.”

I bent down, and grabbed a hunk of frozen slush.  Ice black with accumulated grime, the sort that fell off the underside of a car.  I tossed it, then caught it.

“Can you hit it?” Evan asked.

“I’m not sure I should,” I replied.  “I’m looking at the diagram, and… look.  Some diagrams keep things out.  Some keep them in.  You can look at the way that things point, and infer a lot from that.  Triangles pointing in, triangles pointing out…”

“Point of the big triangle closest to us touches the box,” Evan said.  “The ones that are further away do too.”

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be faster to go around?” Green Eyes asked.  “I’m pretty sure I can keep up, if you don’t go quite as fast as you did before.”

“Smaller symbols seem to point inward, if I had to guess,” I said.  “I don’t recognize the language.  What’s the box like?”

“It’s… sort of like the box of books the priest tried to put me in.  But wooden blocks.  Like a child’s blocks.  What’s that game where you build the tower and pull out pieces?”

“It collapses, then,” I said.  “It’s built to break.”

“Yeah.”

I dropped the hunk of ice.

“We could be going around,” Green Eyes said, practically squirming in impatience.  “Just saying.”

“As traps go, I don’t think we want whatever’s in that box to get out,” I said.  “It could be a curse, an Other…”

“Or a distraction from chasing them,” Green Eyes said.  “A mystical bit of mumbo jumbo to catch your attention and not let it go.  Because that’s how those enchantresses work, right?”

“It’s not impossible,” I said.  I walked around the diagram, keeping an even distance from it.

“Just like that,” Green Eyes cajoled.  “Keep walking.  Or run.  Don’t focus on the box.”

But I stopped.  The four triangles didn’t meet at the corner.  There was a gap between the four sections of the symbol.

Nothing in or pointing to the gap.  Nothing, as far as I could tell, that worked with or included the gap.

I positioned myself carefully, then walked down one of the four paths, between two of the triangles.  It was only a foot and a half wide.

I reached the center of the diagram.  I was careful not to breach the lines of the triangles, keeping my body angled to one side, my hands and arms within the lines.  The only lines of the diagram I actually crossed were the lines of the circle encapsulating the box.

With the side of my thumb, I scratched out the blue stuff, distorting the smallest triangles within the innermost circle, the ones that pointed everything toward the box.

I angled my head one way, then the other, examining the box.  It had been placed with two pieces of ice blocking the view of it from our direction.

Then I reached out and took hold of it.

“What are you doing?” Evan asked.

“Being very careful,” I said.  “Which is a lot easier when people don’t speak very suddenly, right in my ear.”

“I bet.  Screw those jerks.”

I was careful to keep pressure on the right spots of the box, holding its shape by keeping pressure on the edges.

As I drew it out of the circle, backing down the path, it started to shudder.

The box growled.

“I greet you, stranger,” I spoke.

It growled again.

“I bid you to name yourself,” I said.

“Inomenos,” the box answered.  “Who are you, to bid anything of me?”

“Blake.  The Thorburn bogeyman,” I said.  “What are you?”

“You’re not worthy to ask the question, bottom-dweller.”

“Am I?”  Evan asked.

“I am Inomenos.  I am a wrong, made by man, released against men.  I have earned a name for myself.”

A curse, given life, I thought.

“You’re bound by the Seal of Solomon?”

“Yes.  You’re bound to truth, but you’re not bound to any seal.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said.  “I’m more interested in the rules that bind you.”

“I am not obliged to answer, monster of the Thorburns.”

“Monster of the Thorburns is far less descriptive than you’re imagining,” I said.  “The family is mostly monsters, honestly.”

“Blake,” Green Eyes said.  “They’re gone.”

“Listen, can we cut through the rigamarole?” I asked.

“Rigamole.  Cut?  I do not know this word, nor the phrasing.”

“Just answer my questions, and I might let you out.”

“What?”  Evan asked.

The box hadn’t answered, so I only offered my first question.  “When you’re free of the box, what are your instructions?”

“To devastate my master’s enemies until fifteen minutes pass without my finding them, then to return, and await being bound once more.”

“Can we redefine ‘master’ here?” I asked.  “Can you call me master?”

The thing chuckled, from within its box.  “No.  Not a thing such as you.  A mortal, only.  A man.”

“The bird?” I asked.

“Yeah!”

I continued, “The body is-”

“Insufficient.  Not yet a man.”

“‘Man’ is vague,” I said.  “He’s still mortal.”

“Vaguely mortal, vaguely a man, vague in form.”

Evan bristled.

“Okay, scratch that line of thinking,” I said.

Green Eyes gave me a look, and I jerked my head in the appropriate direction.  Might as well get moving.

The diagram continued to unfold like a flower as we approached and walked past it.  When it became complete on all sides, an energy of some sort gathered in the middle.  The snow and ice in the center of the diagram spurted a bit, forming a plume of snow and ice that exploded in a general way, before striking the road again.

We walked at a good clip.  I didn’t want to run, but walking was too slow.  Moving at a light jog let me move just fast enough to watch where I was going.  I definitely didn’t want to fall and let the box fall apart under me.

“Let me explain my line of thinking,” I told Inomenos-in-a-box.  “I want to screw with the guy that summoned you.”

Silence.  Only the sound of my footsteps, the scratching sounds as Green Eyes’ scales scraped over ice, and the distant, faint tolling of the bell.

“He put you in a box instead of just summoning you and pointing you at me.  To me, that says something about his relationship with you.  Am I wrong?  Or would you like a chance to go after him?”

“I’m forbidden from harming him until the close of the deal.”

“The deal is closed when you’re bound again?”

“Yes.”

Pretty standard.

“Then… okay.  What if we made a separate deal?  So it didn’t get in the way of the one you made with him?”

“Another deal?”

“Are you prohibited from indirect harm?”

“If I intend to harm, even indirect harm is prevented.”

I resisted the urge to curse.  Annoying.

“Then… I swear to release you, provided you swear to grant us the same protection from harm you gave the one who summoned you…”

“I would rather remain,” Inomenos told me.  “In hopes you drop the container, or lose it.”

“I’m not done,” I said.  “Go after the ones near him.  The blonde women.  Return to him as you’re instructed, but seek out the ones within ten paces of him.  Plague them, torment them, but don’t inflict any permanent harm on them.  Nothing they’ll suffer from, in body, mind, or heart, more than a day from now.”

“I have reason to believe they are his allies,” Inomenos said.

“I’ll give you one reason to see them as his enemies.  If you look, I suspect you’ll see that the men do not keep the company of the women.  They’re reluctant to mingle, except where they’re otherwise bound together as family, as married couples.  There is doubt in their hearts, fear, and confusion.”

“If this is so, I will do them mischief.”

“Good,” I said.  “Agree to do me and my companions no harm, and to return to your master to be bound if you do not find your suspicions validated.”

“Agreed.”

“Try to catch them by surprise,” I said.  “Before they know you’re coming, the more you’ll achieve.  Time is short.  The more time you can cost them, the more it will hurt.  It’s a good way to do mischief for them.”

“I will try.”

“Go for it,” I said.

I tossed the box to the ground.

It broke into its constituent elements.

Inomenos appeared in a dark cloud, flexing four skeletal arms, yawning until his lower jaw nearly reached his pelvis, where his legless body stopped.  There was only dark smoke beneath.  His face was like melted wax, the teeth few and far between.

He howled, but it was an eerie, wrong sort of sound.  Where most noises seemed like they started from the mouth and expanded outward, his howl was almost like he was devouring sound, drawing it in, and drawing himself forward in the same motion.  He disappeared into the darkness and snow ahead of us.

“Huh,” Evan said.

It didn’t take too long to catch up with them.  It helped that we could hear the screaming.  Inomenos’ screams, more than the rest.

The area was residential, the houses older and not so well kept.  The group was in one house’s front yard.  Snow had cascaded from the roof to block off the door and front windows.

The sounds were horrible, and I wasn’t particularly vulnerable to it all.  Many of the younger Duchamps were bent over, hands over their ears.  One noticed me as I looked at her.  She looked my way, and I could see images dancing across her eyes, as if they were television screens.  Herself, a crowd, in a place that wasn’t here.  It was some place with pillars and marble walls.

The older ones were holding up, though, they each had their own images dancing across their eyes.

They were forming rank and file, implements out.  Lenses, rings, bowls filled with oil.

Trying to bind the spirit.

Slowly succeeding, as its mobility seemed to be getting cut off.

The guy with the blond beard that I’d seen by the diagram was moving through the crowd, toward it.  Duchamp women stepped or staggered out of the way.

“Take a long route, go, do what you can, then get clear,” I told Evan.

He took off.

“And me?” Green Eyes asked.  “You want me to stay back?”

She was pulling the closest thing she could manage to puppy dog eyes, given her translucent eyelids, and a bit of agitation at the end of her tail, twitching restlessly.  I could remember how eager she’d been to keep moving.

“No,” I said.  “You can come.  I think I’ve healed enough.  Here.”

I offered a hand.

She climbed up onto my back, tail encircling my torso.  Her hair draped over one of my shoulders as she leaned forward, elbows bent at angles.

Keep your friends close, I thought.  We focus so much on the ‘keep our enemies closer’ part.

I glanced around, and then took a route opposite to the one Evan had taken, through a backyard.  Circling the group of men that was so distinct from the women.

“Do you know the witch in the Drains?”  I asked.

“I know of her.”

“She explained this bit of fortune telling once.  Apparently I drew the High Priestess with the left hand.  I have to be careful about who I gather around me, or it’ll be disastrous.”

“You’re talking about me?”

I stopped in my tracks.

Maenads.  The High Priest’s bloodstained, drunk murderesses.  Their hair was disheveled, as were their winter clothes, and they had the eyes of animals.  One was perched on the corner of one roof, the other stood between the two houses.

“Shit,” I said.  “Now I’m doing it.”

“Doing it?”

“Talking about stuff in the middle of a crisis.”

“What were you saying?”

The Maenad on the corner of the roof leaped.  A lump of snow the size of her dropped off the roof.

I lurched to one side, thinking she was going to leap onto me, but she didn’t.  She dodged off to one side, and circled around.

Putting me and Green Eyes in the middle of the two.

“We each take one,” Green Eyes said.

I expected her to leap, saying that, but she didn’t.

“Y-” I started

Green Eyes leaped.

“-es.” I finished.

The Maenad took her head on, fingernails extended like claws, teeth bared.

I didn’t have a chance to see the catfight, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.  My focus was on the other one.

She moved quickly, and not in a straight line.  Her feet touched the wall of the one house, where siding stopped and concrete began, and she propelled herself over to the railing surrounding one house’s porch.  The entire railing wobbled with the sudden weight, snow flying, as she ran along the top, the toes of her boots scraping ice beneath the lighter snow.

As graceful as a jungle cat.  About as violent, I imagined.  She reached the end of the railing and leaped.

I swung the Hyena for center mass.

One boot settled on my knee, the other hit the knuckles of my hand.  I could see her muscles flex beneath the tight-fitting, unbuttoned  jeans she wore.

She was like that for a fraction of a second.  I saw her nostrils flare.  Even as her face screwed up in disgust, smelling something on the Hyena, she kicked herself away, landing on all fours, elbow and knee deep in snow.

These are his god’s warriors.

One hand reached into her coat pocket.  I tensed, ready to throw the Hyena if I had to.

A handful of cigarettes and joints.

She raised them to her mouth, bit, and let them fall, scattered, onto the snow.

She was still biting an old fashioned lighter that had been in the jumble.

Fire?

Her hand disappeared into her jacket again.

I charged, forcing my way through the snow.

She leaped back to maintain distance between us, and stumbled on something in the snow, and caught her balance, hands going wide to her side.

A flask.

Aw hell no.

Teeth pulled the stopper from the flask.  She tossed back a swig.

Bad.

She hit the lighter with a practiced flick, producing flame.

Still moving forward, I bent low, grabbing at the snow.  Scooping it in one hand, and hurling the handful of snow at her face.

Just a little too powdery.

She spat alcohol through the open flame, letting it ignite.

I had to let myself fall in deep snow that hadn’t been shoveled all winter, to avoid getting ignited.

She took another swig.

I was only halfway to my feet.  I dove into the snow.

I felt heat roll over my back.

Okay.  Snow was a good enough shield.  How much alcohol could she have?

Stupid question.

It was just me and Green Eyes, here.

Right.  Switch things up.

Trust.  Keep my friends close.

I twisted around, rising, my back to my opponent, my eyes on Green Eyes’ continued struggle with the other Maenad.

The Maenad was on top, pinning the tail down with one foot.  Green Eyes had a grip on one wrist, but one of her own wrists was being gripped, fingernails digging in past scale and skin to the meat below.  There was a trail of blood on one lip and a bite mark on her collarbone that was bleeding a lot.

I didn’t think.  I only threw.

Hurling the Hyena.

The Maenad I was fighting sputtered, losing whatever alcohol she’d just taken into her mouth, and screeched out a belated warning in Greek.

The Hyena embedded itself in her sister’s back.

The screech of rage, oh man.

Green Eyes pulled the Hyena free, tossing it to me.  I caught it in both hands, to avoid catching the blade.  She had descended into the snow before I had it in my grip.  Swimming in it.

I saw the remaining Maenad’s eyes widen.  Yes, she could get me, with another swig and a breath of fire, but doing so came at the cost of Green Eyes maybe getting her.

She leaped back to the point between the houses, then backed away more.

She howled, wordlessly.  A mad scream that joined the noises in the background.

Calling for help.

Fuck.

“Green Eyes!” I shouted.

She didn’t pop her head up.

It didn’t take five seconds for the help to arrive.  More Maenads, Bacchae, and Satyrs.

Clambering over the houses, with roofs so easy to reach now that the snow was as high as it was.  Over the porches.

I backed away, but it was slow going, mired in snow.

The High Priest of Dionysus approached down the length of the alley, where the snow wasn’t as high, due to the two adjacent buildings and the overhang of the roofs.  He stopped at the end of the so-called path, so he wasn’t wading in mermaid-infested snow.  His Maenads flanked him.

“Blake,” he said.  “You’ve managed to be an ungodly nuisance.”

“Going by the fear I can feel from that group of people, I’ve been more than a nuisance.”

“Yes.  You’ve been other things, but that doesn’t change that you’ve been a nuisance.”

“Point conceded.”

“Any last words?” he asked.

“Why would I need last words?” I asked.  “I’m not planning on dying anytime in the immediate future.”

“It’s a courtesy.  I only need to say a word to my deity to lay you out flat.”

The Maenad said something in Greek.

“Your mermaid, as well.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You’re not going to escape.  You weren’t going to escape the moment they caught your scent, without that damnable bird around to shake it.”

I didn’t have a response for that.

“Just so you know,” he said.  “I have no intention of attacking your friends.  You’re removed, we have plans for Rose.  I fully intend to talk to Sandra and urge her to banish your friends from Jacob’s Bell.  This isn’t their town, and it’s not good for them.  I’m sure you’ll agree it’s better for them if they’re not here.”

“I don’t disagree,” I said.  “Thank you.”

“Despite everything I’ve done,” he said, “I did want to be a good Lord.”

“Despite what I’ve done here, tonight, I only intended to remove the most problematic men from the Duchamp’s roster.  I hoped it would shatter the family’s power base, done right.  Make people think twice about maintaining their alliance with the family.”

“What does that achieve?  They’re still obligated to stay, to help, by compacts made months, years, or decades ago.  Fight in service to the family in a qualifying situation.”

“I needed the Enchantresses alive, if we were going to collectively rally against Johannes,” I said.  “But at the same time, I needed the family broken.  Maybe the husbands will stay and help take the Lordship, but if they know that this is a bum deal, if they’re going to get killed off while the Duchamps walk off frazzled but okay?  If they’re wondering if they’ll get murdered at the request of other Duchamps… can the Duchamps keep what they’ve taken?”

“I see,” he said.  “And if they can’t keep what they’ve taken, will they still bare their necks?  I’m almost disappointed you failed.”

I shot him a quizzical look.

He shrugged.  “I can love the woman, even if I loathe much of what her last name brings.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever had your heart broken?” he asked.  “It’s an important question.”

I had to stop to think.

“I can’t say for certain,” I told him, “But I think, in a way, I am a broken heart.”

He tilted his head a little to one side.

“Jeremy!” Sandra cried out.

Jeremy half-turned.

She stopped, freezing.  “Back away, very slowly.”

Jeremy did.  One step back, then another.

Green Eyes emerged from the snow in front of him.  Her jaws were open wider than a human could pull off, teeth open, a bear trap, waiting to be sprung.  A half-foot from Jeremy’s groin.

He backed away another step.  Green Eyes matched his pace, maintaining the distance.

Jeremy glanced to one side.  “You didn’t smell her?”

From the length of Green Eyes’ snow-crusted hair, Evan shook himself free of snowflakes.

“Ah,” he said, with a note of finality.

His eyes met mine.  Level.  Serious.  Unflinching.

Green Eyes was waiting for my cue.

The maenads and satyrs were waiting for his.

I was utterly still, in a way only a bogeyman could be.

Jeremy was still in a way that only a guy with his private parts in a bear trap could be.

“Green Eyes,” I said.  “Back off.”

She didn’t budge.

“Seriously,” I said.  “Don’t touch him.  It’s okay.”

She remained still for a moment, then backed away an arm’s length.  Jeremy stepped back, and Satyrs drew closer, to protect him.

“Okay,” Jeremy said.

“How much bad karma do you rack up for setting your monsters on us now?” I asked.

“I imagine it’s less,” he replied, “than it might be for turning on one’s wife.”

He turned around, facing down Sandra, not me.

I could see the confusion on the maenad’s and satyr’s faces.

“I love you so much, Sandra,” he said.

“I know,” she replied.  “Bastard.”

Execution 13.8

“Jerry?” one of the Satyrs asked.

“Don’t worry, Itys,” the High Priest said.  He sighed, and I could see the cloud of cold breath in front of his face.

Sandra put her hands in her pockets.  I saw her gaze move past the High Priest to me.  Her eyes were half-lidded, as if even this eventuality hadn’t truly startled her.  She remained poised.

“Can you explain?” one of the Maenads asked.

“Yeah,” the High Priest said.  “I can explain, but it’ll be after.  For now, form ranks.  No permanent damage or killing of any of the Duchamps… but we are dealing with them.  Get ready.”

I saw Sandra shaking her head a little.

“That right, Blake?” the High Priest asked.  “No hurting or killing the Duchamps.  I’m laying out my terms, here.”

“I’m not making any promises,” I said.

He turned his head, so his face was in profile, only one eye turned my way.  He gave me a disapproving look.

“I’m not stupid,” I said.  “You haven’t promised anything.  You’ve alluded, but that means nothing, in this world.”

“Uh huh,” he said.  “I promise, then, to aid you in your efforts against the Duchamp family, provided you promise to refrain from doing permanent harm or killing the individual members.”

“If they don’t give me cause.  I’ll exercise self defense.”

“Agreed,” the Drunk said, turning his head back to face Sandra.

“But I like Sandra,” one of the Bacchae said.

“I’m with Thais,” another said.

There were less committal murmurs of agreement, with that.

Sandra smiled a little, but it wasn’t a happy one.  It looked more apologetic, sad.

“I guess karma comes back to bite me in the ass sooner than later,” the Drunk said.  “Dissension in the ranks.”

I saw the one Maenad glaring at me.

She elbowed one of the women next to her, a Bacchae or Maenad, I couldn’t see the details, and muttered something.

Enemies.  Blaming me for acting in self defense.

Green Eyes emerged from the snow next to me.  I’d been so focused on the Drunk and Sandra that I hadn’t noticed her retreat.  Evan shook off more snow.  He wasn’t in any shape to fly, being as damp as he was, so I had to bend down a little to pick him up and lift him onto my shoulder.

“I won’t lie,” Sandra was saying.  “I anticipated something along these lines.  For years, I thought you’d suddenly show up, after finding the right kind of power, or the right contact, and you’d react.  Take action.  Fix what was broken.  I didn’t anticipate it in the here or now.  Your timing sucks.”

“If the timing was more convenient, I wouldn’t be doing this,” he said.  “I’m capable, I have resources, but I’m not about to tackle your family when you’re having a good day.”

“Yeah,” she said.

I saw the plume of breath as she sighed.  “Damn it.  How are we doing this?  Are you going to sic all of your followers on me?”

“That would be rude,” he said.  “Not very fair.

She didn’t respond.

“Can’t help but notice that Hildr isn’t here.”

“Standing watch over the men that he was attacking.”

“You’re going to tell Hildr to attack, aren’t you?” he asked.  “First chance you get?”

“Yes.”

The Drunk winced.  I was looking at his back, but I could tell.  He spoke, “We’ll let you walk away without taking you hostage if you promise to call her off.  Keep her out of this.”

Sandra looked at the five or so Satyrs, the four Bacchae and the three remaining Maenads, at me, Green Eyes, Evan, and then back at the Drunk.

“You get a one-minute head start,” Sandra said.

“Ten minutes.”

“Three.”

“Starting from the time you meet with the other Duchamps,” he said.

“From the time you let me go.  I’m not joking around, Jeremy.  The stakes are high, here.”

“No,” he agreed.  “Not joking around.  I let you barter me down to three minutes of head start, let me decide when the timer starts.”

“Fine.”

She didn’t move.

The frantic screaming continued in the background.  The Other I’d loosed was still active, recently freed by Evan.

“Remember how we put it back then?” she asked.  “No asking for forgiveness.”

“I think,” he said, “We meant there was no need.  ‘We do what we must’, remember?”

“Because that worked so well for us, you think?” Sandra asked.  Another small sigh.  “I’m being a bitch.  It got us halfway, at least.”

“Yes,” he said.  “Goodbye, Sandra.”

The word held a kind of weight to it.  Finality.

“Then you realize this is goodbye,” she said.

He only offered a curt nod.

She turned to leave.

I could see the tension in the Drunk’s minions.  The stares that were directed his way.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Oh, God, that’s good,” Evan said.  “Means it’s not just me.”

“The context doesn’t matter too much,” the Drunk said.  “What matters is that we have limited time before Hildr comes barreling our way.  All of my followers together could stop her, I’m almost certain, but Sandra knows that.”

“It won’t be alone,” I said.

“No, she won’t,” he said.  “Your bird can’t possibly keep her from tracking all of us.  We’ll need to move.  Now.  She’s faster than she looks, I’m sure you know.”

“We’ll split up, then,” I said.  “I’m not done here.”

“What do you have left to do?  You wanted to weaken the Duchamps.”

“I have three more targets here.  A fourth elsewhere.”

“Names given to you by Duchamps, if I heard right?  Your announcement, after killing Crooked Hat and Gudbrand?”

I nodded.

“Who are you after?”

“Mason Hall-McCullough, the Ritchie brothers.”

“Ah,” he said.  “If I’d known you were after the old man, I might have decided differently.”

“Why?”

“There are some individuals you don’t want to cross,” he said.  “You can deal with him on your own.  The Ritchie Brothers… if it’s them you’ve got me on board.”

“Just like that?”

“Are you complaining?”

“No.  But I don’t trust events when they work in my favor.”

“My god is, in some respects, a god of fertility, madness, and beasts, among many other things.  In some respects, in a narrow, particular fashion, Those two could be said to fall within my god’s domain.  I still despise everything they stand for, and that’s all I’ll say on the subject.”

I don’t mind a vote of confidence on the ‘they deserve killing’ front, I thought.  On the other hand, I didn’t like ‘that’s all I’ll say‘, either.

“Can you give any tips on their appearance?  I’ll need to find them in the crowd.”

“Red-blond hair, red-blond beards.  Green jacket, for the one, black jacket for the other.  One of them has a book.”

I nodded.  “And Mason?  You’re okay with going after the brothers, but are you saying Mason doesn’t deserve to die?”

“He might.  He might not.  I don’t know him well.  If he did do something worth being killed for, I doubt anyone would be in a position to find out.”

“That was my understanding,” I said.  “I was thinking he could be a trap.  A name given to throw me off, a situation where I’d almost definitely lose.”

“As opposed to a genuine target?” the Drunk asked.

“A genuine target, yeah.  Maybe one of the Duchamps named him because they know something none of the rest of us do.”

“And maybe,” the Drunk said, “He’s both a genuine target and a fight you’re bound to lose.”

I frowned.

The Drunk gave a signal.  His Satyrs and Maenads began to move out, away from the main group.  His own feet crunched in snow as he headed to the side of the backyard, toward the neighbor’s yard.

When I didn’t join the general retreat, he paused.

“What are you thinking?” the Drunk asked.  “You’ve faced down the troll once.  If you stay here, you’ll endure a round two.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But you’re not running.  I know you’re quick, elusive, but…”

“I’m thinking,” I said, “That this may be my last chance to get to the Ritchie brothers and Mason the Benevolent.”

The Drunk stared at me.  His stubble was almost at the point of being a beard, and his eyes looked damn tired.

“You don’t have to follow,” I said.  I offered a hand to Green Eyes.  She climbed up onto my back.  “But I can’t let them go.”

“Word is you were human, not long ago.  Did you forget that mortals like me get tired, after hours of tension and stumbling around in the cold and darkness?”

“No,” I said.  “I’m counting on the fact that mortals like them get tired.”

I headed up to the porch the Maenad had jumped off, then hopped up to the roof, landing knee-deep in snow.  A small avalanche of snow occurred beneath my feet, but I maintained my position.  I scaled the roof.

I saw Sandra rejoining the group.

Snow crunched around me.

Two Satyrs.  They were surprisingly adroit, on the steep, ice-and-snow laden roof.  But then again, they were goat men.  They wore only sweaters and gloves, despite the cold, no jackets, one with a scarf, the other with a hat.  All despite the fact that the weather really demanded a hat, scarf, gloves, and coat.

One prowled forward, crouching at the apex of the roof.

“You need more allies like this,” Green Eyes murmured, looking down at him.

“Hm?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“She said-” Evan started.  Green Eyes swatted at him, and he managed a brief flight before landing on my shoulder again.

“I see the Ritchie brothers,” she said, pointing.

The Duchamps were gathering at the house where snow had fallen, blocking the front of the house.  Some were moving around to the back.  Others were facing Sandra, where she was talking to a group of ten individuals that was about eighty-percent male.

The husbands.  Maybe one or two of the people in the group might have been female family members or allies of husbands.

The Ritchie Brothers were there.  At this distance, given the circumstances, I couldn’t quite judge color, as the gloom turned everything into shades of gray.  But they were standing side by side, and I thought I saw the book.

“Red-blond beards?” I asked.

“Yes,” Green Eyes and the Satyr to our right said, at the same time.

She leaned forward, hugging me more, chin over one of my shoulders, my head effectively blocking her view of the Satyr, but I did catch a glimpse of her face, a suppressed smile.

“Your eyes suck, Blake,” Evan said  “You need animal eyes.  Or monster eyes.”

“Diagrams on the ground,” Green Eyes said, pointing.  “There, there, and there.  Like the one before, kind of.”

“Thank you,” I said.  I could almost make them out.  Spaced out at even intervals.

That made the approach harder.

“Maybe if you plucked out your eyes and let them regrow?” Evan asked.  As if the question wasn’t horrifying enough, he managed to ask it in a way that sounded innocent.  As if this was the most normal thing in the world.

“I think tampering with my perceptions is a bad idea,” I said.  “And I kind of want to keep whatever I’ve got left, fleshwise.”

“You don’t got much,” he said.

“Hey, yeah,” Green Eyes said.  “How much do you have, even?”

I declined to comment.

Just by being here, not even talking, the Satyrs were bad influences.

Still, it was manpower.

And, I thought, it was symbolism.

A more experienced practitioner like Jeremy wouldn’t have missed that.

I crossed the roof, and hopped down.  The landing was harder than I might have liked, with the added weight of Green Eyes on my back, but I still landed on two feet, and managed to avoid falling.

The Satyrs landed almost gracefully.

We hadn’t been noticed.

What did it mean for practitioners like the Enchantresses, so used to being aware, to tracking connections and more, to have to deal with an enemy they couldn’t track?

If I was targeting them, I imagined, it might have been entirely different.

I was aware of the Ritchie brothers.  Standing off to one side, talking with another bearded guy.  The diagram-drawer.

Mason the Benevolent was talking to Sandra.

I saw her check her watch.  Her stoat perched on her shoulder, leaning forward to look as well.

Tense, ready to act.

We’d spent a couple minutes talking.  In less than a minute, the troll would be loosed again.

“Attack?” Green Eyes whispered.

I could hear the toll of the bell.  Faint, but there.

“No,” I said.  “Attacking is suicide.”

Especially with Mason the Benevolent there.

I glanced at the Satyrs.

Both were staring at me.  Glaring.

Because I’d killed the Maenad?  Or because we’d been enemies only minutes ago?

I pointed.

They nodded, small gestures.

I led them around.

Avoiding the diagrams.  Avoiding the route the troll was most likely to take.

Off to one side.

“Diagrams?” I asked.

Green Eyes craned her neck, twisting her body, scanning.

“There.”

Damn it.

“For trapping the living curse,” one Satyr said.  His hooves were making a steady chipping sound against the ice and snow, as he ran alongside me.  He was close enough to a mortal in how he operated that he did get tired, it seemed, as he was breathing harder, but I was guessing he had more stamina.

“Would they work against me?” I asked.

Shrug.

Right.

“Diagrams?” I asked again, after passing a house.

“No,” Green Eyes replied.

I pointed, then led the way.

Between two houses.  The Satyrs, like me, were fairly quick, and adroit enough to land atop one section of fence, where the back yard was walled off.

I pointed again.

Taking the long way around.  Half a block to the right, forward, and now half a block to the left.

“Thing,” Green Eyes hissed.

I saw it a half-second later, as I came to a halt.

A gargoyle.

More animal than person, it had a jutting jaw and hair that was carved out of stone.  Its eyes glowed.  It had horns, claws, and wings, with spikes down its spine.

It was perched on the edge of the roof, above the back door where Duchamps were filing into the house.  Its head swept from one side to another, moving like a security camera might.  Except this security camera was attached to something the size of a small car.

The men had been airing grievances with Sandra, or asking for more information.

With luck, they were reacting to the loss of the High Priest.  The Drunk had been, going by what I’d seen earlier, a representative of their side, in the Duchamp contingent.  Powerful, somehow a leadership figure, and someone with Sandra’s ear.

I drew closer, using mounds of snow that had accumulated over a tarp-covered air conditioner and barbecue as cover.

“It smells like bad meat,” Green Eyes said.

The thing’s ear twitched.  Its head turned, quicker  eliciting a grinding noise, like the roll of a tire over gravel, yet audible from two hundred feet or so away.

I let myself drop to my knees, closer to the ground, harder to see behind the lump of snow.

When I looked again, the thing’s head was roving, scanning the surroundings.  A share of its attention was pointed our way.  Diagrams to cover from one angle, gargoyle from another.  If I’d circled the other way around, would I be running into a another form of defense?

“It-” Green Eyes tried, testing, her voice even quieter.  When it didn’t react, she whispered, “Smells like the little things back at the house.”

Homunculus?

I looked again.  This time, I saw the first of the men heading around to the back door.

Any second now, the brothers or Mason the Benevolent would disappear through the doorway.

“Evan,” I said.  “With me.”

“Yeah.”

“Satyrs, distract?”

I’d looked at them as I asked the question, and I saw the glances they exchanged, the dark looks on their faces.

“Nevermind,” I said.  “Just stay quiet.”

There was no time to waste, no room for planning or biding time.

I peeked, checked it was looking, then moved the second its head turned away, a full run.  In the doing, I underestimated how deep the snow was in the one yard, and my progress slowed.

I wasn’t going to make it to the shed that was supposed to be my next bit of cover before the thing looked my way again.

I saw its head turning, and simply let myself fall.  Arms spread, face down, landing in the snow, three-quarters of the way across someone’s backyard.

“Wait,” Green Eyes whispered, her voice breaking due to the smallness of her words, the individual components so faint they used parts that weren’t practiced much.

“Go,” she said, and she was off me.  Slithering away.  Or swimming.

I went, no longer burdened by my passenger.

To the shed, then the fence beyond.

I tensed as I saw her in the snow, freezing almost right under the thing’s nose.

It didn’t notice.

She was camouflaged.

She’d maybe even camouflaged me, being on my back, helping to offer just a bit more white to join the reams of snow.

I waited, now close enough I had to be careful of the humans seeing, making sure I wasn’t letting the Ritchie brothers or the Benevolent slip my noose.

I hopped the fence, landing in a crouch in snow, then moved to the side of the porch.  Snow had piled up and between rails in the railing, making it a simple wall.

Green Eyes approached me.  She extended a hand.

I started to reach for her hand, but she shook her head.

She pointed.  At Evan.

I didn’t dare speak, with the guardian homunculus so close.  I could only pass Evan to her, and in absence of words, will a message to her.

Don’t eat Evan.

She moved with glacial slowness, scaling the side of the house.

If I looked, I could see some of the homunculus.  Its flesh looked like it was ninety percent callus, the worst sort of callus that appeared on the feet, as dirt and sweat colored it yellow and gray.  Being homeless, working for a farmer, living at Carl’s commune, I’d had chances to build up some pretty gruesome calluses.

But it went a step beyond.  Large patches of its flesh had almost ossified, or calcified, or something.  It, in simple terms, looked as tough as dammit.

Makes me think of those biopunk movies, I thought.

Green Eyes reached the roof.  Helped in being silent and unnoticed by Evan’s presence.

As she moved through the snow, though, a lump of snow fell from the roof.  A miniature avalanche, much like the one I’d created earlier.

Green Eyes pounced on the gargoyle, setting her teeth into its neck.  Her tail scraped and stripped flesh from one wing, rendering it to tatters, and one layer of flesh from the thing’s side.  She made a screeching noise, and the thing howled at her, in return.

It was my cue.

I was nearly silent as I went around the railing.  The stairs had been shoveled clear, as had the porch, but there was enough snow to dampen my foosteps, and the noise of the fight was a distraction from the sound of broken branches.

My eyes were on the practitioners.  Their focus was distracted.  I could flank the group, hit them hard, and there were a half-dozen places I could escape to if I needed to.  Over the edge of the porch and into the neighbor’s yard, onto the roof, onto the neighbor’s roof, back to the backyard I’d just approached from…

The porch had two sets of stairs.  One leading into the backyard proper, the other had a gate at the bottom that opened to the driveway.  The gate was open, and the practitioners were there.

The Ritchie brothers, there.  Mason Hall-McCullough the Benevolent was there, too, but he was halfway down the driveway, at the side of the house.

All unaware.

Until the Satyrs behind me screamed.  Battlecry screams.

Eyes fell on them.  Standing behind me, still in the backyard.

My own eyes found them.  I saw the glares.  The anger.

It was Jeremy’s bad karma, quite possibly, that was bleeding over to me.  The Satyrs were upset.  They had loyalties to Sandra, and I’d killed one of their kin.

They were following the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

They’d revealed me.  Ruined the element of surprise.

I broke into a run, leaped into their midst.

Practitioners needed opportunity to practice.  To say words, to draw symbols, or use the right item in the right way on the right thing.

I faced a cluster, a pack.

“Deus-” one started.

I smacked him in the mouth with my forearm, goblin-chain-and-barbed-wire included.

I saw another drawing sheets of paper from his pocket.

I simply struck them out of his hand with the butt-end of the Hyena.

Throwing my weight against the group, I shoved the closest practitioners back into the ones behind.  They were a group, on or at the base of the stairs, without much room with the house, fence, and railing all in close proximity.

“I was asked to kill specific individuals,” I said.  It was easy to speak while I fought, as I didn’t really need to breathe.  My words came out strange, wind whistling past trees, albeit with force behind them.  “By Duchamps.  For Duchamps.”

Green Eyes and the gargoyle fell from the roof, in a heap.  She was covered in blood, and I had no idea how much of it was hers.

“Eric Ritchie, Stan Ritchie,” I said.  “You’re next on the list.”

I saw heads turn.

Stan and Eric.  A green jacket and a black jacket.  One had a thick mustache, but his beard was scarcely more than stubble, a step behind in growing in.  The other had thick glasses, a book in one hand.

“I’m on the list too!” Mason Hall-McCullough called out, almost cheerful.

“Wait your turn!” Evan shouted.

Some had fallen, being pushed back, or finding that snow, ice, and other’s people feet made for lousy footing.  I walked on them, pushing my way forward, keeping the rest on the defensive, retreating in a space that was almost painfully confined.

I was almost surrounding myself, leaving barely injured practitioners behind me, and there was nothing saying the Duchamps in the house couldn’t come out.

Except the Satyrs.

Even though they’d given me away, they were staying true to their role.  One had headbutted a practitioner, knocking him down, and the other was standing by the door.

In the time I’d looked, one practitioner had found opportunity to grab a fine chain  from their coat.

I stabbed to one side with the Hyena.  The chain was struck against the wall, falling loose from the practitioner’s grasp, the blade piercing brick, millimeters from cutting the webbing between the practitioner’s fingers.

In this, like this, Karma was on my side.

Declare my opponents, stick to the plan.  Be what I was supposed to be.

Using one hand to help, I grabbed the side of the gate, and I hauled myself up, perching on one corner post, Hyena held out as a warning, my eyes quickly moving between the various practitioners, searching for any more telltale signs, for lips that might be moving in an incantation.

Higher ground, albeit precarious.  I held the Hyena out, broken blade visible.  Light from a nearby streetlamp shone through the tangle of wood and bone that was my arm.

A bit of theatrics.

“I’m only interested in them.  Stay, and I’ll deal with them and leave,” I spoke.

For a long moment, I thought they were going to listen.

Then one practitioner in motley garb flung an arm out.

A toad.  A large toad.

Perceptions seemed to warp, the thing moving too fast toward me.

Thing was, it wasn’t foreshortening at play.  Not a thing growing bigger because it was closer.

It was getting bigger because it was getting bigger.

Evan took flight, and gave me a push as he did it.

I hopped back off the side of the gate and onto the end of the driveway, in front of the garage.

The goblin landed where I’d just been.  Its fingers had had iron worked into them, twisted into and under flesh, a pair of permanent gauntlets with pointed tips, permanent claws.

Those claws bit into the wood of the gate door.

The thing’s face had nails in it.  All inserted vertically, just under the skin.  Red, raw spaces between the individual nails, and around the spots where the nail had pierced or scraped skin on the way through.  Four nails surrounded each eye socket, a diamond shape, points nailing the eyelids into permanently open positions.

Its mouth was closed, its lipless grin literally ear to ear.

It wore armor, damn it, and it was hard to tell where armor ended and flesh began.  Much of it had been inserted through and beneath flesh.  I saw bits where muscle was hooked around or over spikes of dark iron.

It looked at my weapon, and the grin somehow got more intense.  Not wider, but it looked like it could barely keep its mouth closed.

It drew it’s weapons.

Two bound-goblin weapons.  A sword with so many spikes jutting out the side that I doubted it could cut.  An axe with a face etched into it, so much decoration I suspected it would get stuck if it was actually swung at something.

The goblin was showing off its stuff.  The weapons it was holding weren’t the only weapons it had.  More dangled from its waist.  A trophy collection.

The weapons, if I had to guess, were what the Hyena might have been if it hadn’t been insistent on taking an inconvenient form.  And if it were unbroken.  Goblins, quite possibly, of the Hyena’s general caliber.

I looked in the direction of the goblin king.

Was it pencildick or whatever the guy had been called?

The goblin came at me.

Fast, considering the armor it wore.

I backed away.  I only barely deflected the serrated sword with the chain and barbed wire around one forearm.

A practitioner beside me kicked me.  I bounced against the wall of the neighbor’s house, then twisted aside before the axe could hit me.

The face on the axe screamed on contact with the wall.

Brick shattered violently, with copious amounts of gore, torn intestines spilling from the open wound.  The air filled with the iron-rich scent of bloody feces.

Cosmetic effect?  Or something else?

On the off chance that it was ‘something else’, I made very sure to stay out of the axe’s way.

“They’re monsters,” I said.  “Monster enough their own family wants them dead.”

The goblin stabbed.  Wind rushed past me.

I felt blood well from the flesh around my face.  It filled my mouth.

I spat.

The goblin looked at it sword, expression eerily neutral with the nails in the skin and around the eyes, then slipped it into a loop of chain at its back.  It drew another weapon in the same motion.  Another goblin weapon.  A knife.

“They want them dead, even knowing the stakes, knowing the fight for the Lordship is happening right now,” I said.  “Knowing I have no interest in you, why defend them?  More than a few members of the family want blood and justice more than they want the Lordship.”

I backed up further as the goblin advanced.

It stabbed the hood of the car with the dagger, and dragged the blade down the side.

The metal on either side turned rusty, and sagged, more like old leather than car.

Smaller goblins began crawling out of the tear.  Being birthed by it, almost.  Naked, wet, and covered in blood.

I could see the dagger.  A female goblin was engraved on it.

Lovely.

The goblin slashed at the wall of the house, as we reached the midway point of the driveway.

“Diagram,” Evan said.

I’d almost forgotten he was with me.

Yeah.  If I kept walking back, I risked walking into the three or four diagrams I’d taken the long route around to circumvent.

I’d really, really wanted to do this subtly.  To do it clever, targeting the people I needed to target and then run.

“Or are you defending them because you’re monsters too?” I asked, edging to the right, circling around, hoping to avoid the diagrams.

The tolling of the bell seemed to get louder.

The smaller goblins had finished accumulating.  Each slash of the dagger was only good for two or three, it seemed.

They gave the larger goblin familiar a wider berth.

“Monster?” Mason the Benevolent asked, behind me.  “Tch.”

I ignored him.

The goblin pointed its dagger.

The smaller goblins moved as a group.  Charging me.

In that same moment, I felt the tug of enchantment.

I didn’t even need to look at the living room window to know there were enchantresses there.

The enchantment burdened me.  Evan fluttered, a short flight to one side, breaking the snare before it took hold, but it was a pivotal move at a critical time.  The smaller goblins pounced on me.  Ten to thirty pounds each, clawing at me and my clothes.  One reached my face, digging fingers into my mouth, hooking sharp nails over my teeth.

It tasted like butt smelled.

With eerie, easy confidence, the goblin strode forward, sheathing the dagger.

With a two-handed grip, it swung the axe.

I couldn’t react the way I wanted to, burdened by smaller goblins, but I managed to catch the handle with the blade of the Hyena.  When that didn’t stop it, I was forced to raise one hand, and press my palm against the flat of the Hyena’s blade.

The goblin was stronger than I was.  The axe inched closer.

I felt the snare taking hold again.

The axe blade touched the goblin on my face.

“Urp,” it said.

It screamed as it blew up, into gore amounting about three times its own body mass.

Evan flew by, and the axe slipped free, and the goblin familiar staggered.

It grabbed onto me for balance.  It switched around, changing positioning, and lifted me clean off my feet.

Strong.  Strong enough, as it happened, to heave me.

I didn’t move far, but I still moved.  I landed roughly, staggering backward, fighting to keep my feet.

I knew what I was in for.  Why the goblin had thrown me.

The diagram was expanding around me.

I reached out for Evan, and he flew into my hand.

I looked, and I saw the diagram, the shape of it.

I’d spent weeks of my life staring at the books, poring over them.  Seeing them out of the corner of my eye, or glancing over covers on my way to finding what I needed.  I’d seen them in Rose’s mirrors.  I’d seen my fair share of circles, of diagrams.

Only twenty or so minutes ago, I’d seen the diagram that had housed the box.  I’d carefully studied and examined the diagram there.  I’d used my analysis to hack it, for lack of a better term.  Understanding and circumventing it.

The bell tolled twice in the time it took me to catch my feet.  In those two tolls, I was forced to draw on instinct borne of that manner of study.  To guess, and guess well, and figure out where to put my feet and my body, with Evan’s help to guide my positioning.

Something flew past me in the moment before I came to a stop, and I heard glass crash on the far side of the street.  I went utterly still, and watched as the diagram snapped into a completed shape.

Nothing flared to life.  Nothing went off.

“Sorry,” I said to Evan, releasing my deathgrip on him.

“S’okay.  Watch your step.”

I did.  I made my way out of the diagram, staring the Goblin down.  The practitioners were all behind it, watching from a distance.

For a third time, I felt the snare start to settle around me.

Evan stirred, and it broke, more easily than before.

I didn’t feel the binding resume.

“I think I’m good,” I said.  “Go help Green Eyes if she needs it.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

He flew off.

I saw the goblin familiar watch Evan fly off toward the house, over the roof to where Green Eyes and the Satyrs had been dealing with the homunculus sentinel.

I saw its eyes narrow.

Bad feeling.

I ran for it.

The goblin didn’t turn away from watching Evan as it glanced at me sidelong.

It opened its mouth.

It wore braces, in a manner of speaking.  Machinery wired into teeth, into mouth, and down its throat.

That machinery consisted of three barrels.  One was empty.  One had an arrowhead sticking out of it, and the other had a dozen needles bristling from the end.

He held the axe out to ward me off as it fired the crossbow bolt, moving head and mouth as if it were speaking.  Except it was firing a weapon, with the snap of machinery kicking into motion and a crack of gunpowder.

But the Hyena and the full bearing of my body struck his axe arm.  He proved too strong, too heavy with armor and too big for me to really move.  All my effort and I only nudged.

I didn’t even make out the crossbow bolt striking Evan.  I saw only the bird fall, with a scattering of feathers that fell much, much slower.

I dragged the Hyena down the shaft of the axe, twisting my body out of the way of the axe, cutting the back of metal-clad fingers.  In the doing, I found some flesh.  He loosened his grip, and I tore the axe from his hand.

He backed off fairly quickly after that.

Rage told me to press the attack.  I wasn’t sure if it was rage borne of the monster part of me or the human part.

Evan.

I turned my head to check on Evan.  Which was perhaps the only thing that saved my eyes.  I’d almost thought the goblin had retreated out of fear.  He’d retreated to have room to fire, at optimal range.  The goblin familiar opened his mouth.

The needles, as it happened, were a kind of shotgun spray.

They tore into my shoulder, into my head, and the side of my neck, but they didn’t strike the flesh of my face.  Branches as thick as a finger were shattered by needles as thick as, well, needles.  The sort one put threads through.

I staggered back, until I was at Evan’s side, where he’d landed in deep snow.  Feathers lay not so far away.

I cupped him in one hand.

“Ow,” he said.  “Ow.”

The mad fluttering inside my body stirred, as I touched him.

He had a gash running down the length of his body, head to tail.

“Can’t fly,” he said.

Wordless, not trusting myself to speak, I grabbed him.  I lifted him into a cage of safety within my own body.

I touched bloody and feather-strewn snow, then crushed it in my fist.

The monster demanded revenge for daring to hurt Evan, and it was hungry, angry, violent.

The human wanted revenge for different reasons, in different ways, but it wanted it all the same, just as much.

All together, though?  The human and the monster together?  What that wanted, what I wanted, was different.

Absently, I drew a streak of blood and snow and the occasional scattered feather across my chest.  To clean my hands, because my clothes were grimy enough with Drainstuff it hardly mattered.

The mission.

The brothers were there, in my peripheral vision.

Watching.

The goblin had drawn a flail of some sort.  A weight on a chain.  It came for me, the weight tracing a lazy circle around it.  I retreated rapidly, closer to the brothers, to the other practitioners.

Twisting, I charged them.

No revenge.

My focus here, the problem I was trying to fix, it was them.  The real monsters.  The monsters who made worse things possible.

“Only them!” I called out, as I saw the practitioners reacting.  “At the request of a child!”

I could only wonder if those words had an impact.  If it slowed the response.

I saw a diagram expanding.

Their buddy.  He’d been busy while I fought.

I touched the trace of sparrow blood at my chest with knuckles that gripped one weapon, and held out the one hand in the direction of the diagram.  Moving around as the diagram grew, like an explosion in slow motion.

I swung the axe underhand, catching the one in the groin.

Reaching over, I pulled the looser chain and barbed wire away from my arm.  I only managed a half-foot of length.

But the goblin was giving chase, slowing as light erupted from the growing diagram.  Blinded, it turned its head to one side.

I hooked my arm over the brother’s head, and pulled the chain against his neck.  A human shield, between me and goblin.

The weight came around, and struck the top of his head clean off, meat and only meat striking the side of my face.  Several practitioners dropped to the ground as they avoided the flying sphere.

“Back,” Needledick said.  “Back.  No collateral damage this time, please.”

The goblin stopped, letting the weight strike ground, then car, before it stopped.

There was a moment of silence, me still holding the body upright against my own.

“Only them,” I said.  “And him.”

I looked at Mason Hall-McCullough, and I let the body drop.

“I can handle this,” the practitioner spoke.

The old man smirked, looking down at me.

“Can you?” I asked.

He smiled.

I advanced, and approached him.  He stood by the trunk of the car.

I saw no trap.  No diagrams.

He spread his arms wide.

“If you think it’s right,” he said.  “Strike me true.”

I stabbed him in the chest with the Hyena.

Turning back toward the house, I saw the Satyrs and Green Eyes, covered in blood, Green Eyes cradling one arm.

I pointed.  I got a nod in response.

I wiped the blood off the Hyena and onto my pant leg as I moved on.

Execution 13.9

The two satyrs looked just a little too smug, as I reunited with the splinter group.  It wasn’t a nice smug or funny smug.  It was the kind of smug that people enjoyed when they’d pulled something on you and they knew there was nothing you could do about it.

Green Eyes was breathing hard.  Her hair was mussed up to a point that even ‘swimming’ through the snow wasn’t pushing it all straight back away from her face, she had nasty looking bite marks on her collarbone and shoulder, and a claw scratch on her arm that looked oddly frayed, as the scales there had broken away and pointed in odd directions.

“Where’s chicken nugget?” Green Eyes asked.

I pointed at my torso.

Her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped.

“You bastard,” she said.

“What?”

“You ate him!?” she cried out.

I realized I’d been pointing more at the middle of my body than my upper chest.  I was about to respond, when my thoughts ran aground wondering if she was upset because I’d beaten her to eating Evan or if she was upset because she liked him now.

“He didn’t eat me!” Evan’s voice was muffled, emitting from within my ribcage, sparing me from having to find a way to gracefully word my next statement.

Green Eyes gave me a suspicious look.

Evan wormed his way forward until he managed to stick his head through a gap in some more knotted branches and ribs.  “See?”

She gave him a look that was just as suspicious.

“We need to move, at some point,” I said.  “Get where we need to be.”

“With Jerry?” one of the satyrs asked.

“No,” I replied.  “He’s doing… whatever he needs to do.   Each person we take out is one more clue the enchantresses need to pull it all together.  I’ve brought down six out of seven of them.  There’s one left.  If they’re going to figure it out, they’ll figure it out now.”

“They’re good at this,” one of the satyrs murmured.

I nodded.  “The last one is alone, independent from the main group.  He’s not well liked.  The spellbinder.”

I looked pointedly at the satyrs.

“Who?” the first satyr asked, brow furrowed.

“The one who went off alone,” the second said.  “Quiet.  Smelled like shea butter, sandalwood, and tobacco?”

“Shay what?” Evan asked, head still sticking out.

“Shea butter,” the satyr said.

“Why would someone butter themselves up?” Green Eyes asked.

“I think he used it for shaving, going by the nuances of the smell.  But it’s good for the skin, helps with healing, and it carries other scents well,” the satyr said, the words adopting a faint roughness as he spoke, almost as if he were purring.  He extended an arm.  He was definitely purring as he said, “Smell.  Tobacco, sandalwood, and shea butter.”

Green Eyes sniffed his wrist, then broke into a smile.

“Enough of that,” I said.

The satyr shot me a sly smile.

“You’re wearing the same stuff as that guy?” Evan asked.

I poked the bird’s head with one finger, pushing him back inside.

“No.  It’s useful to be able to decide how you want to smell,” the satyr said, arm still extended.  “Cinnamon and myrrh, for when you want to cozy up.”

“I like that,” Green Eyes said.  “It’s been so long since I smelled nice smells.”

“I thought you’d like it.”

More annoyed, I said, “You’re wasting time.”

The satyr didn’t quite manage to look apologetic.

“It’s useful.  Now I know what the guy smells like,” Green Eyes said.  I was about to concede that it was useful, when she added, “We should keep one of these guys around.”

I ignored the statement.  “Do you know where the spellbinder is?”

“No,” the satyr said.  “He left to hit some key areas where local monsters gather.  Goblin shack, goblins under the bridge that serves as a gate to the Sorcerer’s domain, the woods where the hag lives, and some others I’m not remembering.”

“The faerie hangout,” the other satyr said, stepping away from Green Eyes to stand beside his fellow.

“He could be anywhere in the city,” the first satyr told me.

“I figured as much,” I said.  “You can’t find him by sniffing him out?”

“Not unless we want to backtrack alllll the way back to the lakeside and then follow the same path he took,” the satyr said.  He adopted that same smug grin from before.  “Moving slower than he’s moving, if we want to be accurate and not get sidetracked.  We might never catch up to him.”

He was putting emphasis on words, rubbing it in in a way that made it hard to call him out on.  Practically telling me that if I tried to rely on him, he’d sabotage me.  Sabotage Jerry, in a roundabout way.  It was doubly irritating because I wouldn’t have called him out on it if he’d said it outright, I’d have shrugged and accepted that his loyalties fell at least partially with Sandra, and that the satyrs had reason to resent me for killing some of their own.

But by implication and by denying me the chance, he made it doubly infuriating.

The maenads were the High Priest’s warriors.  The satyrs were… more versatile, I imagined.  Quick, with sharp senses, capable of defending themselves, and readily weaponized in a social conflict.

Making them hard to deal with here.

I didn’t rise to the bait, even as the tolling of the bell in the background was like a push on the shoulder.  Familiar enough at this point that it was almost like a friend goading me to take a dare.  Just do it, and it’ll be satisfying.

“I’m not surprised,” I said.  “That leaves plan A and plan B.”

“You mean plans B and C.”

“Relying on the satyrs was never plan A,” I said, as I made eye contact with the satyr who’d just been trying to provoke me.  “Plan A is… no, let’s call it Plan B.”

“Plan B is supposed to be the plan that works,” Evan said.

“Well, if there’s any symbolic power in that, we could use it.  It’s a long shot.  We call someone back at the house.  See if they can’t use magical means to find the guy.  Except we don’t have phones, unless the satyrs have one and are willing to share.”

“Dead battery, was listening to music,” the first satyr said.

The second shrugged, patting his pockets.

“Thought not,” I said.  “Meaning we need to find a pay phone, or borrow a phone, one way or another.  Then we’d need to get ahold of someone, hope they weren’t too busy and that they had the knowledge needed.”

I ran my hand through my hair.  Very little of it draped into my eyes, these days.  It had snarled into longer lengths, held together by grit, as if I’d let particularly grimy clay into it, solidified by cold rather than heat..  A few twigs were snarled in there, and I wasn’t sure they’d ever leave.  More likely they’d grow and set down roots.

“What’s plan B?” Green Eyes asked.  “Run?  Six is enough?”

“No,” I said.  “I’d rather do seven than six.”

“Six is pretty good,” she said.

“Seven is an important number, Jerry says,” one of the satyrs commented, arms folded.

“Three, seven, twelve,” I said.

The satyr nodded.

Green Eyes only looked puzzled.

“It’s practitioner stuff,” I said.  “More than monster stuff.  Magic numbers.  Beat someone three times, counts for more, holds more sway with whoever’s there, watching.  Do it seven times, that’s something too.  We should finish this.”

“You’re missing bones,” Green Eyes said.  “You were supposed to grab some.”

“If the opportunity comes up,” I said.

“That goblin kicked your ass good,” Evan said.  Then, after a pause, he added, “Mine too.”

“I walked away.  That’s what’s important,” I said.

“The night’s almost over.  I think.  I’m not a very good judge of time.  It was a few years since I saw the sun, or the moon,” Green Eyes said.  “I like the idea of stopping, get some food, keep each other company.  But if you think we should…”

“I think we have to,” I said.

“Okay.”

“What’s plan A, then?” Evan asked.

“This, right here,” I said.  “Waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“Waiting,” I said.  “Though we could stand to get to a better vantage point.”

“I’m wondering if he’s cracked,” Evan piped up, sticking his head out at a different point.  He dodged my finger.  He poked his head out elsewhere.  “Not making much sense.”

“Assuming the enchantresses haven’t figured out a trick to find out where we are, despite the Evan influence,” I said.  “What are they going to assume we’re doing.”

“Going after the spellbinder,” the first satyr said.

“What are they going to do in response?”

“Warn him?” the second satyr asked.  “A phone call?”

“They’ll send some help.  A warning wouldn’t be enough,” Green Eyes said.  “We follow the reinforcements?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice soft.

“Assuming we can,” the first satyr said.  “What if ‘help’ is a spell.”

“Evan breaks spells.”

“Or if they drive?”

“How many people do you see out there driving?” I asked.  “Why didn’t your High Priest drive?  Why didn’t any of them?  Rhetorical question.”

“Ha,” Evan said, barely audible from within my chest.

“I don’t know,” the satyr said.  “Why didn’t they?”

I pointed.  Reluctantly, the satyrs followed.  Green Eyes was already moving to my side, following.

I spoke as we traveled.  “Because in a war like this, where an awful lot of things you don’t want to pick a fight with look human if you’re standing far enough away-”

“Like you,” Green Eyes interrupted.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.  Thank you,” I said.

She smiled.

“Anyway, I imagine that a lot of the sort of things you don’t want to mess with, like genies, that goblin I just dealt with, they’re human shaped.  So if you stand far enough away, or if you’re dealing with a crowd, you have to wonder.  You hold back.  But something in a car?  It’s going to be a practitioner, and I don’t think many practitioners can practice while driving.”

“They’ll travel on foot, maybe assisted by practice,” I said.  “Evan’s unable to fly, so we’ll have to be quick, we’ll have to be smart, and we’ll have to be lucky.”

“Because luck has really been with us?” Evan asked.

“It has,” I said.  I thought of the karma hoarder I’d stabbed.  “Eerily so.”

We climbed onto a garage roof.

“Don’t look directly at the enchantresses,” I murmured.  “Take in the scene as a whole, focus on details, or the people accompanying them.  Green Eyes, same idea as before.  Use their fear to gauge if they’re watching.  We can’t let them see us if this is going to work.”

“Yeah,” she said.

We’d hunkered down on our bellies, only our heads visible above the garage.  I was at the one edge, Green Eyes beside me, and, naturally, one of the Satyrs had settled beside her.

“Cinnamony,” she murmured.

The satyr on the far side of her smiled.

I really didn’t like that they were using such simple means to try and manipulate her.

She saw me looking, looked at the Satyr, then turned her eyes forward, ignoring me.

I saw a small smile creep across her face.  It got wider, until her teeth showed.  Narrow, long, and sharp, interlocking like a piranha’s.

Was she playing me?

I didn’t like the idea.  It stirred up all kinds of ugliness, like a footstep in a clear puddle kicking up clouds of black, vile mud.

“The smell of cinnamon makes me think of food,” she murmured, still watching the house down the street.

The satyr edged away from her.

Green Eyes, apparently unaware, leaned forward a bit, eyes narrowing, as if she were looking at something, her shoulder pressing into my armpit.

“What?” I asked.

“I saw movement,” she said.  “Wasn’t important.”

She settled down, the soft part of her chin resting on my arm, while her shoulder remained tucked into my armpit.

“I didn’t see nothing,” Evan said.  “You’re crazy.”

I turned my head.  He’d crawled out from inside me, and made his way under the back of my sweatshirt to my neck, just his head peeking out.

“Careful about lies,” I said.

“Oh yeah.”

“It’s okay,” Green Eyes said, not lifting her head as she talked, so her chin made my arm move with each word, “I am, just a little.”

“Okay,” Evan said.  “But if you’re seeing stuff that isn’t there-”

“Evan,” I said.  “Let it be.”

“But-”

“Let it be,” I said.  “And don’t expose yourself.  We might need you in fighting shape.  Focus on rest.”

“Hmph, shutting me up, stowing me away,” he said, retreating just a bit under my sweatshirt.  He stuck his head out again, “don’t think I didn’t hear that chicken nugget comment earlier.  I figured that out too, you hear?”

I reached up to poke at his head again, but he was already gone, disappearing inside my shoulder.

The snow fell.  There was activity in the house, people moving across windows.  A general sense of agitation.  A few too many people, perhaps, crammed into one house, unless it was a demesne – and I wasn’t seeing anything special through the windows to suggest it was.  Those numbers in that kind of space wasn’t a big problem when things were quiet, but things weren’t quiet.  Several recent deaths, high stakes surrounding everything, and people were probably limited to the common areas.  Restlessness.

It was more peaceful where we were.  I didn’t breathe, but Green Eyes could.  I couldn’t feel much, not heat or cold, exactly, but I could feel the pressure of her chin, and the movement of her body with each breath she took.  I could feel her heartbeat, distant.  It was almost reassuring, like having a heartbeat and lungs of my own again.

Quiet, calm, laced with a kind of tension.  As if we were snipers, waiting for hours for a possible shot.

Time was running out.  Was my guess right?  Would this work?  Or should we send the satyrs out to find a pay phone?

Were they capable of figuring out who the last target was?  All they had to do was connect the last dot.  Through magic, enchantment, any number of divination tricks, summoning spirits.

Or they could ask.  They just had to figure out, to hear where I’d gotten the names from, and then they could grill the various kids in the chatroom.  I had little doubt they could get the information they needed out of people.

Would they walk into the metaphorical crosshairs?

It didn’t do to dwell.  I glanced at Green Eyes, and noted the bite mark on her collarbone.

“How’re you holding up?”

“Wish I got to eat more of the people we stopped,” she murmured.  “Wish you got more raw bones and dead wood in you.  But all in all, this is good.”

She snuggled a little closer.

Having been where I’d been, experiencing what I’d experienced, knowing it was only partial, I had no grounding in what to do.  I’d had girlfriends.  I’d had more than enough tender moments, back at Carl’s compound, but now, like this, being what I was?  The only reason I wasn’t panicking at the idea of physical contact was because I’d left so much of myself behind.  I’d disconnected from Blake the human.

But maybe this was a possibility because we were monsters.  Green Eyes was probably never going to be a tool to manipulate me.  I wasn’t about to be something she could look at as food.  Or at least, not quite, in both cases.

I settled one hand on her back, and pulled her closer, more to reaffirm that it was good.

She made the smallest noise in the low part of her throat.

Evan piped up, “While we’re talking about food, you wanna know what I never did when I was alive?  I never had sushi.”

“I was getting to be fond of you, nugget,” she said, “Don’t go and change my mind.”

“Well, I liked you pretty much right away, so there.  Maybe I’m just a better person,” Evan said, his head poking up beneath my sweatshirt, a little lump at my back.

“If you are, then learn to be quiet when a girl’s trying to enjoy a moment with the boy she likes,” she said, very gently pushing the lump under the fabric down.

“Oh.  Oh, dang.  Shoot,” he said.  “Didn’t realize.  Now I feel bad.”

He sounded genuinely upset.

“Don’t,” Green Eyes said.  She stroked one section of the sweatshirt.  I could only assume Evan’s head was under it.  “It’s good.”

“Speaking of good,” one satyr spoke up, “You were right, bogeyman.”

I could see people moving out.

I watched, noting the number as they continued moving around the side of the house.

The number was the most important thing, here.  It set the tone of the coming confrontation.  How hard a fight would it be, and who would be fighting?

There were two big possibilities here.  Either Sandra would send a select group, or she’d send everyone that was willing to go, with only stragglers remaining behind, I assumed.

“Five,” I murmured.  “Ten.  Twelve…“

“Fifteen,” Green Eyes updated the count, as three more left the house.

“No lucky number.”  This from the satyr that had been cozying up to Green Eyes.

“No,” I agreed.

The group added up to twenty.

Probably closer to being everyone that was willing to go.

Good.

That was ideal.

We moved quickly, down from the roof, then along the sides of the street.  As planned, it was Green Eyes and I in the lead, the satyrs trailing behind.

Sandra was there.  More confirmation that it wasn’t the elite contingent.  Sandra wouldn’t have left the people with doubts alone to commiserate.  It wasn’t that she was manipulative, which she was, at least a little, but more that, well, she had a group to look after, and I would have stayed behind, if the positions were reversed.

I caught a glimpse of Needledick the Goblin King.  His familiar was with him, still humanoid.  He’d collected the axe I’d driven into the one Ritchie Brother’s groin, and held the serrated sword again.

I’d left the axe behind on purpose.  A spur of the moment thing.  It struck me as the kind of thing the goblin would come after me for.

I really didn’t want to pick another fight with a goblin of its caliber.

The diagram drawer was there too.

If we accidentally gave ourselves away, we’d have him to deal with again.  I didn’t want that either.

If seven was our lucky number, and if all went according to plan, then succeeding here would be key.

If I’d had a heart to stop, it would have stopped as I saw the diagram drawer look back, his fear spiking and staying at the new height.

Recognition?

He said something to the practitioner beside him.

The fear rose a bit more.

We reached the main street.

More open area, less cover to help us.  More white behind us, making us silhouettes against a pale background.  Without speaking a word, we collectively fell back a bit more.  Even the Satyrs, I imagined, had hunted enough to have instincts on this front.

I was only beginning to consider possibilities for slowing them down and getting ahead of them, now that they seemed to be moving with more direction, when Sandra acted.

A gesture, a movement, her chalice raised high.

The group blurred, as if I were wearing strange bottle glasses, and then the colors shifted, growing more stark.  When they moved, they moved fast, out of sync with reality and the space around them.  One footstep covering the length of two parking spaces, the legs not stretching, the individual not moving in any odd way, just… moving farther.  The heightened colors left a trail behind them, odd, veering too far in odd directions.

In moments, they were gone.  Down two blocks, then around a corner.  The trail of colors dissipated in their wake.

Leaving their pursuers, us, in the dust.

“Did they see us?” Evan asked.

“No,” Green Eyes said.  “There would have been more fear, or less fear.  They were the same.  They were just-”

“Covering more ground,” I finished.  “Did they leave smells?”

“Yes,” the first satyr said.

“You can track them?” I asked.

“Yes,” the satyr said.

We switched roles.  The satyrs led.

This was complicated.  I wished I knew Sandra better, to guess how she thought, how she strategized, and what she might do in this sort of situation, everything on the line.

It, in the end, took five or ten minutes to catch up.  Others watched us, and with each one, I had to wonder if they’d left watchdogs, guardians, reporting back to them.

The calm was gone.  There was only tension.

Yet Green Eyes looked positively rosy with good cheer.

“Which place is this?” I asked.  “It’s not the bridge.  Not the woods, unless I got really turned around.  Goblin shack?”

“No,” one of the satyrs said.

The scene came into view.  I stared.  “God dammit, why can’t it be simple?”

It was, in large part, an ordinary section of street.  A dead end, with a house at the far side.  The eclectic decoration around the house, which included a tarp-covered fountain and several rather elegant little statues standing in a snow-covered garden, pretty much told the entire story.

The Duchamps had gathered.  They had spread out, occupying the end of the street.  Several sat on car hoods and bumpers.

The Spellbinder, as it happened, was easy to pick out.  He looked so ordinary, if a little stone-faced in expression, with drooping cheeks and larger ears betraying his age just a bit.  His hair was parted to one side.  I could have figured his identity by process of elimination, after stalking the Duchamps enough times tonight.  I didn’t have to.

A diagram sat at the far end of the street.  The simple, stark, straight-line-and-geometry diagrams were to this what printed writing was to cursive.  Flowing lines, curving, like elaborate musical notes or calligraphy, all with a pattern in mind.

Which was fitting, given the Faerie in the center of the circle.

At least, I hoped it was a Faerie.

There were two girls in red-and-black checkered scarves.  They were identical in appearance, but different in dress.  Both had unruly curly hair that was only slightly more manageable because it was damp with snow, both had earmuffs, albeit with different styles.  One knelt in the center of the circle, slumped over.  The other stood between Sandra and Needledick the goblin king.

Each possibility worse than the other.

The entire group was arranged to protect the spellbinder.

Except he was no longer my focus.

“Mags,” I said.

The girl standing between Sandra and the goblin king shook her head slowly.

My eye flickered to the girl sitting slumped in the circle.

I thought of the story I’d heard of the spellbinder.

He’d bound his wife.  Enslaved her mind, spirit, and body.

Mags?

The girl standing between Sandra and the goblin king shook her head.  “No, Blake.”

“No?”

“That’s not Mags either.  Well, unless he decides to call himself that.  It’s not like the name belongs to one person in particular.”

I looked between the two girls.

The girl beside Sandra raised a hand, and pointed at the spellbinder.  “He got the faerie for me.”

“You might consider it a gift,” Sandra said, “for goodwill.  My family has long dealt with faeries, and Padraic is a bastard.  I’m content I can smooth over any hurt feelings.”

“I’m Maggie again,” Maggie said.  She smiled, but it wasn’t the smile that should have gone with the statement.  She hugged her arms close to her body.

“The ambassador is supposed to be impartial,” I said.  “You can’t side with them.”

“Mags is the ambassador,” Sandra said.  “She doesn’t have the name, she doesn’t have the title, or the obligations.  If she takes on any bad karma due to any lingering ties to the title, that will be dissolved when I become lord and do away with the job.  Maggie, of course, will be free to go.  No consequences.”

“It’s almost everything I wanted,” Maggie said.

“And your family?” I asked.

Maggie hugged herself a little more.  “Like I said.  Almost everything I wanted.”

I nodded slowly.  “I was assuming you were talking about this, us.  Will I be the second Thorburn you kill?”

“Harsh,” Maggie said, her voice cracking a bit, as she dropped to a whisper.  “You don’t hold back.”

There was a pause.  The tolling of the bell continued in the background.  I could only assume Molly was resting, or she’d be here.

“Screw this!” Evan piped up.  “You were cool!”

“I’m still cool,” Maggie said.  “Believe me.”

“Nuh uh!”

Needledick took a step forward.  He drew a weapon, and laid the handle in Maggie’s hand.  A trench club, not unlike a short baseball bat, with spikes at the tip, to lend it a bit more oomph.

Maggie gripped the weapon in both hands, the leather of her gloves squeaking against the handle. In this short dead end of a street lit only by two streetlamps, I could make out the tension at her jaw.

“Is this how this plays out?” I asked.

“You’ve had a good night,” Sandra said.  “Picked off several of ours, striking out of the cold and the darkness, from several angles, disappearing from even our ability to see you.  Winning over Jeremy was an especially good bit of luck on your part.  There’s a lot to be said for momentum, and this was the best way I could decide on to break yours.”

“Well, it’s a good way to do something,” I said.

Maggie nodded.

“Once, I mused on how similar we were,” I said.  “We might have even talked about it.  Do you remember?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” she said, staring down at the weapon.

“We both want the hell out of this town.  I think it stems from the same desire.  We want to be free, and this place sucks.”

She reached up and grabbed the fabric of her shirt, right over her heart.  “Believe me, I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t want to be free of this place for good.”

“The key difference, though,” I said, “Is that you wrap yourself up in more bondage to get free, while I… lose myself, I guess.”

“Bondage?”

“You’re their puppet, doing what they say.  Doing things the way they want you do to them.”

“Yeah.  I am,” she said.  She couldn’t make eye contact.

“Part of my success tonight is due to the fact that I’ve started to play my role a little better.  I’ve defined who I want to be and why, and I’m following that path.  Can you say the same?  Is this who you want to be?  Or are you their pawn, again?”

She stared down at the weapon.

“Moving speech,” Sandra commented.  “But a deal’s a deal.  She already agreed to our terms.”

“A benefit of changing identities,” Maggie said, “Is that you get to leave consequences behind.”

She straightened, and looked me in the eye.  She turned on Sandra, backing away, moving in our direction.

“Yes!” Evan said.

“Breaking a deal makes for bad karma,” Sandra said.  “Doing it when you’re in a precarious position-”

“Drat you,” Maggie said.

She swung the club.

The ground and air shimmered, tremoring, and many of the Duchamps stumbled backward.

“Yes!” Evan cheered.

She’d avoided attacking in the direction of the circle.

“Get back,” Sandra said.  “Use the circle for cover.  She won’t-”

“I might,” Maggie said.  “Take it from me, Sandra, you do not want to get on his bad side.  I know.”

As if to punctuate the statement, the Faerie in the circle screamed, features distorting.  A guttural, male scream, cutting right to the core.

Maggie backed up further, and shot me a winning smile.

“Yes!”  Evan said.

Green Eyes hissed, and Maggie practically jumped out of her skin.  She jumped even more as Green Eyes snapped.

“No!” Evan said.

“Maybe don’t bite the allies,” the first Satyr said.

“Agreed,” Maggie agreed.

The other practitioners were moving.  Reorganizing.  Getting implements out.

I watched each.

Sandra’s troll emerged, from stoat to full size.

A fight.  War.

Too many things to keep track of.

Hyena in hand, I put the point to Maggie’s throat.

It all settled.  Things going quiet.

“No!” Evan said, louder than before.  “What?  No!”

I met Maggie’s eyes.

“Drop it,” I said.

She dropped the weapon.

There was a long pause.  Very nearly silent.

“What gave me away?” Maggie asked.

“Green Eyes.  I don’t think the reaction fit to Maggie’s.  And I’m not so optimistic to think that things would go this well for me.”

“Yeah,” Maggie said.

“Fool me once,” I said.

“I fooled you quite a few times, in Toronto,” she said.  “More than once.”

“Well you didn’t get me here.  That’s your Faerie pal, in the circle there.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I could stab you,” I said.  “Free Maggie.”

She shook her head.  “Wouldn’t get the name back.  But if you let me go, I’ll leave until all of this is over.”

“Suppose I have to,” I said.

She backed away, then ran, moving faster than any human should.

The other Maggie stood from the circle.  She moved her arms and swept up the diagram, wrapping it around herself like a drape, as she backed away.  I saw the Spellbinder fall in step beside her.

“That doesn’t end this,” Sandra said.  “You’re outnumbered, and we’re positioned.”

“And, I’m guessing, the Spellbinder is nowhere near here.”

“Nowhere near here,” Sandra said.  “I sent him home.  He already left the city.  You won’t get your seventh kill for the list.”

I nodded slowly.

She flicked a hand.  The trench club flew to one side.  When I looked down, I saw that Green Eyes had been inching closer to it.

“I’ll surrender,” I said, very deliberately, “I’ll end the fight, let you have Jacob’s Bell if you can earn it, even support you, if you so desire, with one condition.”

“One condition?”

“Yes,” I said.  “Yeah.  All I need you to do, is swear to me, on your family, on your title, on your power, that you’ll stop with the fucked up arranged marriages.  You’ve told others in the family, you swore to them, you’ve implied, I want to hear it from you, that the Duchamp family will no longer continue catering to husbands like the ones I’ve killed.”

“You’ve killed a variety of husbands,” she said.

“Stop prevaricating,” I told her.  “You know what I want.  I want you to tell me, straight out, that I’m wrong.  That the Duchamps aren’t going to take the lordship and then keep doing what they’ve been doing.  Do that, you win here.”

The wind whistled.

There was no answer she could give.

I’d created the cracks.  Created sides, fostered arguments and doubt.  Put people on two sides with the six previous kills.  All I needed was one more.  A seventh.

“I can’t give you an answer, one way or another,” she admitted.

Which was, in its way, an admission of defeat.

I backed away slowly, my arms spread.  The others joined me.

Nobody moved to stop me.

I hadn’t gotten my seventh kill, using the list.

I’d achieved my seventh win.

Gathered Pages (Arc 13)

A cold evening of red bells

I never liked dates.  This makes a fitting entry for tonight’s diary.  I’ll remember it better than a number.

I skirt the truth.  I portion it out and hand out thirds to make a whole, and the world lets us be.  I like to think I amuse it.

I promise to leave, and I do, but I take a roundabout way to do it.  A twisting path that, if I am careful to drag my feet, will not take me out of this place until things are very nearly over.  I must only keep moving.

The one with the name Maggie Holt promises to leave, and she does.  The guise is discarded.

I was asked to go because we are a threat, another form of interference for the blighted Rose to worry about.  I agree to this as well.  I do not participate any further.

In word, in name, in intent, I follow the terms of the agreement.  I put pen to paper with cold fingers on the frigid streets of this accursed town, and I give these ideas weight.

But I am bound to this place by the orders of my Queen, and I am bound to it by my own perverse interest.  It is interesting, is it not?  I could hardly stay away.  I observe, and I chronicle.

There are so very few here who understand what is really happening.  There are many, I think, who would put a value on any record of these happenings, to piece it together after the fact.  The Duchamp family works with the Court and the Court may well wonder what happened to its fine allies, to the highborn and noble faerie who were given as pets to the Duchamp families.

Information I can sell, if I am careful in how I position myself.  If I let the Court corner me, they may use coercion as their currency.

Sandra tried to convince me to help, to turn my talents toward resolving this situation.  She talked of the Dubh Sgaradh at the house on the hill, and when I shrugged it off, she alluded to the Court’s visit.  Not telling me that she would perhaps hint at some of the lies I’ve told, for that would make an enemy of me, but letting me find the idea on my own.

An accomplished liar remembers his lies.  I cannot, of course, lie, but I do tell half truths, and a half truth could be said to be half a lie.  Just as I piece thirds of truths together into a whole, others might piece half-lies together if I am not careful.

Better to have those half-lies bound in a physical form, where they cannot be put together, each marked clearly on a separate page.

Should I need it, it is useful to have my thoughts on a page, in case I need to discard the ones I have.  One cannot be too careful, when the Court does their investigations.

It would be unfortunate if the Court found out I had left the bounds of my prison, under a different name.  For that, they would most likely kill me.

More unfortunate, if they found out I had interfered in local politics.  My punishment is to remain here, my hands tied, tortured with idleness.  If they discovered I had amused myself, hah.  For that, they would not be so merciful.

Worse still, I suspect, if they discovered that I had befriended miss Essylt and mister Keller.

Easy facts for the Court to discover, and Sandra had an idea of the punishments that awaited me if the Court found out.  Our lady Duchamp did not truly know the punishments, but who can, without experiencing them?

She thought to blackmail me, and made three mistakes.

The first was simple.  I want the Court to come looking.  What fun!

By the time I’ve circled the block, winding ever outward, the blighted Rose is gone, the situation settled.  I need only look at Sandra to know that she’s lost.  She stands quiet and alone in a crowd, as others talk past her.

A tie of hair in my pocket, wound around my finger.  My finger, in turn, winds around a lock of hair at my ear.  Winds it in, as a corkscrew penetrates a cork.  Let it reach the scalp and take root.

A shake of the head, a toss of golden hair.  All done in plain sight.  It’s clear the focus of the Duchamp contingent is elsewhere.

My jacket turns inside out while I still wear it.  My hands come out the sleeves smaller, with gloves on.

The rest is simply changing how I think.

Adopting a role.

I have to put the pen and booklet away, and transcribe from memory at another time.

■

A paraphrasing of the events on the Night of Red Bells, I

Essylt and Keller knew how I think.  They were waiting by the time I approached the collected group of Duchamps.

I let my eyes widen, taking in a breath at their beauty, but the rest was subtle nuance.  As though I had emotions I was bottling up.

Essylt allowed me a small smile of amusement.

“Why,” she told me.  “Miss Joanna.  You wouldn’t be awed by someone like me, would you?”

A clench of the jaw, as if steeling myself, fleeting eye contact, a look away.  I had to keep moving, and beckoned for her to follow, while averting my gaze.

“You flatter,” she said.  She made no attempt to hide that she liked it.  She and Keller fell in step behind me.

“Who?” Keller asked, his voice a whisper, the word curt.

I glanced at the crowd as we circled them..  I had my suspicions that someone had spoken about the possibility of attack.  The actions are guarded, the glances turning outward.

I moved in shadow, ninety-seven strides away, but keen eyes could find me.

I looked at the eyes.  I looked to see who studied the distance, as evidenced by the size of their pupils, the movements of their eyes, and their posture.

There.  One man, with a gaze like an arrow.

He turned his attention in my general direction, studying the shadows.

He looked left, I quickly slipped right to evade his focus.  He looked right, and I slipped left.  I was obscured by the patterns that dance in the darkness when one stares at it with the naked eye.

Another spoke up, and the man turned around to listen.

Almost disappointing.

“I’ll need company,” I decided, answering Keller’s question.  “One Behaim, one Duchamp.  So the numbers are in our favor.”

“What’s our plan?” Essylt asked.  “I’d like to see the expression of someone who fell into my clutches because they were looking for an evil from without.  Wary of a stranger to this dreary little hole, more than a familiar face.”

“If someone’s familiar with you, Ev, they’re not going to ignore you as a threat,” I said.

She sniffed.  “I’ll deign to take that as a compliment.  I’ll make it happen, miss Joanna.”

“I’m sure you will!” I said, a little more lively in demeanor now that I was fitting into the role.  “It’s almost a challenge!”

Essylt looked down at me, smiling.

I smiled wide.  Easier to be someone young.  Scarcely a teenager, only a little jaded by the world.  Guileless.

Essylt’s gaze lingered a half-second too long.  Critical.

But she wouldn’t tell me that I was missing a key part of my disguise.  That would be insulting.  Much as Sandra had communicated without communicating, Essylt could say a great deal with a fraction of a second’s worth of eye contact.

Joanna was the younger sister of Penelope Duchamp, daughter of Erica Duchamp, and not yet engaged.  But she did have other ties.

I reached into a pocket and withdrew a thin metal flute that might have had more engraving to it than actual physical material.

No longer than the span of four fingers on my hand, it had four holes along the top.  Had it found its way to the hands of mundane humans, it might have cost tens of thousands.  The humans, in turn, might have decided it was cursed.  The sounds it made were beyond the realm of human ears, but not beyond human ken.

Keller’s work.

It wouldn’t find its way to the hands of mundane humans.  No antique collector would put it to their lips and use it to attempt a piece, only to hear expert variations on that piece each night they drifted off to sleep.  Every night, every rest interrupted as their memory searched for the completed, perfected work.

For two minutes, I played.

“Aristoxenus,” Ev noted.  She now wore the shape of a Behaim lad.

“She likes the Greeks,” I said.

“She does,” Ev agreed.

I was halfway through the second song before Letita arrived.

In the form of a chickadee, she settled on my wrist, eyes closed, as she listened.

Disgraced, not quite banished, her placement here in the service to a young girl had been intended to remind her of the fate that awaited if she did worse.  The three of us were meant to be a threat, kicked dogs, broken Fae.

The Court had underestimated my winning personality.

I put the flute away.  Letita stayed, not speaking.

A few heads turned as we stepped out of the shadows and into the light.

“Joanna?  Chloe?”

“Hi Auntie Marge,” I replied.  I didn’t quite stop, but I shuffled my feet, restless, excited, rubbing my hands together.  Walking forward a fraction at a time, on the outward spiral I was traveling away.

“What in the world are you doing out?”

“I was asked to come here,” I said.

“Asked- I’ll need a word with your mother.  It’s dangerous.”

“I have Letita.”

“I can protect my charge,” Letita said.

“It’s dangerous in ways that-”

Auntie Marge closed her mouth as an argument between two women rose in pitch.

“-Have nothing to do with the monsters prowling the city,” Marjorie told me.  “Why were you asked to come here?”

“I was supposed to help against the Thorburn Bogeyman.”

“Really?  Nevermind.  That’s done.  It’s… resolved.  Look, I should get you home.  I’ll have a word with your mother another time.  A twelve year old should not be here, with everything that’s going on.”

I invited a touch.  Subtle cues.  I’d already draped my hair over one shoulder.  the shoulder closest to her was bare, but for the jacket I wore.  The rest was height, distance, and the suggestion of anxiety.

Marjorie reached out to place a hand on my shoulder, partly reassurance, partly to guide.

“Abernathy?” she asked.

Essylt didn’t respond.  A frown, a glance toward the larger group.

“This isn’t Behaim business,” Marjorie said.

“It’s junior council rules,” Essylt said, gruff, defensive.  “I’m neutral, along with all of the kids and some of the monsters.”

Amusing, Essylt pretending she wasn’t one of the monsters.

“The junior council back each other up.  She couldn’t come alone, or with just Chloe.”

“Small mercy, that,” Marjorie said.  “We might need to hold onto any ties we have with other families.  Even if it’s the loyalty of the youth.  Thank you for watching over Joanna and Chloe, Abernathy.”

“Sure,” Essylt said.

Oh, she did like to be less proper, when she had the chance.

There was a sound of steel being drawn from a sheath.

Like the movements of a dance.  Turning around, backing away.  One hand clutching Auntie Marge’s wrist, to control how she moved, to keep leaving.

As bends in the rule went, it was silly, but it had been established, and a faerie must do as a faerie must do, even if it’s a silly, self-imposed rule.

The Goblin King’s familiar had drawn a blade.

An argument grown too heated.

“I was promised certain connections,” the Goblin King said.  “Connections I see dissolving before my eyes.”

“Calm down,” the Architect replied.  “You’re making this worse, not better, by bringing violence into it.”

“Violence?”  The Goblin King asked.  “This is mere emphasis to a goblin.”

“Slitting a throat is emphasis to a goblin,” Teresa Duchamp commented.

“Good point, good point!” The Goblin King declared, obviously agitated.  “Yes.  Should I start doing that?  Or could Sandra Duchamp please break her silence to tell me that I didn’t just waste the last six years of my life supporting a family that’s clearly unable to follow through on promises.”

Sandra looked up to make eye contact with the man.

Delicious.  Fantastic.

There was an art to the interplay between Faerie.  Cleverness, layers.  But sometimes one wanted the equivalent of trash television when they were looking for amusement.

The Goblin King’s emotions ran high, while Sandra stood on a precipice.  Someone would walk away wounded, here.  Maybe not a physical wound, but something vital would be lost.

“I should get you out of here,” Marge said.

“Is Sandra going to be okay?” I asked.  “I want to watch.”

She pursed her lips.

Then, coming to a decision, she used the hand on my shoulder to guide me away.  I resisted just a fraction, but I let her make some headway.  Continuing my slow travel away.  Still moving slow enough to see the show.

Sandra’s troll moved at her side as she squared off against the Goblin King.

“We’ve been reasonable with you,” she said.  “Tonight’s events were-”

“Reasonable my ass,” the Goblin King said.  “We’ve all been very politely ignoring the so-called elephant in the room.  Our children?”

“Ah,” Sandra said.

“Blond haired, blue eyed girls.  I’ve seen the photos.  Each looks just like their mothers.  Nothing of their fathers in them.”

Sandra was mute.

“Nothing to say?  No clever words?  No more trickery?  Why couldn’t you tell the Thorburn monster anything?  Show some conviction, bitch!”

A bit of a snap to his words, bite.  Given a push, he might have literally started biting.  Alas, I’d sworn to avoid interfering.

“Believe me,” Sandra said, her voice level.  “I don’t lack conviction.”

“You failed,” the Goblin King said.  “Your trap didn’t work.  You let several of us die.”

“The ones who died were the worst of you,” Teresa Duchamp said.

“Don’t defend the Thorburn’s actions,” Camille said.

Ah, an exquisite sort of torture, this.  A feast for the senses.  Thousands of details, body language, eye contact, word choice, the size of the cloud that their mouths produced when they huffed, sighed, or spoke.  Everything that was happening had countless implications.  My imagination was afire.

I write this and I admit, I didn’t let the Thorburn win.  That had more to do with other agencies at play.  But if I didn’t try my utmost, knowing that this would happen might have had something to do with it.

There was something special that came to the fore when mortals were involved.  Dealing with another faerie, immortal until killed, there were layers on layers involved.  Schemes and double crosses over double crosses until one could lose track.

With mortals, it was temporary.  Like sculpted ice or a sand castle in the tide’s reach, it wouldn’t last.

Here, in this time and place, it was all the more temporary.  Sandra had tried to blackmail me, and had graciously conceded when I didn’t bow to it, offering a chance to deceive Mr. Thorburn instead.  Her blackmail had failed for three reasons.

The second reason was that I had no reason to expect any of these individuals to still be here, when the Court came calling.  Humans knew my secrets and didn’t even know that the important ones were secrets.  Yet I had no reason to expect they would live long enough for it to matter.

I saw the Goblin King’s posturing, the threats.  Sandra’s deflections, where she spoke at all.

“You failed, Sandra,” the Goblin King spoke.

“Yes.”

“Your own husband turned on you.”

“I don’t deny that, but there’s context that colors it.”

“You need to step down,” the Goblin King said.  “I need to never have to see your face again.”

“I can’t step down,” Sandra said.  “There’s too much in play.  Other deals I’ve made.”

“How very unfortunate,” the Goblin King said.  The words were a threat.

Old Hildr stepped forward.  Gallowscream the goblin familiar stepped forward as well.

Noble of Sandra to do what she was doing.  I doubted the Goblin King was aware, but I suspect many of those present were savvy enough to see.

Falling on her sword.

If she stepped down, the individual to take over would inherit an impossible situation.  They would fall as well.

Sandra wasn’t Faerie, but she had picked up some things in her time as the Duchamp ambassador to the Court.  She was making the Goblin King do exactly what she wanted him to.

No enchantment at all.

Marjorie nearly slipped on ice as she pulled me away.

The old fool nearly pulled me down, stopping my slow but steady exit.

But Ev, sly as she was, elbowed me back, moving forward to try and ostensibly fail to help.

She would leverage that to gain some advantage over me.

The fight started, very nearly in the same moment.  Troll against Goblin.  The Goblin a master combatant, the Troll a physical powerhouse.

But there were two others participating in the fight.  As the goblin circled around, old Hildr showed her back to the Goblin King.

A silly mistake, for the Goblin King to try and capitalize on that.  He moved forward, and Sandra acted.  Drawing a line between the King’s head and Hildr’s hand.  Hildr’s blind grope found its mark.

Gallowscream froze.  His eyes narrowed, the pupils drawing together into snake-like slits.

The Goblin King remained where he was.  The Troll’s hand was cupped around the upper half of his head.

“Shit,” he said.  It seemed to dawn on him just how bad his situation was.  “Shit!”

“I made promises,” Sandra said.  She sounded tired.  “A great many promises.  I could have Hildr kill you, right here and right now, but there are consequences for breaking my word.  I’ll say only this.  Leave.”

Hildr let go, and the Goblin King stumbled back.

She didn’t even make him swear.

“You didn’t even make me promise?” he asked, echoing my own realization.

Sandra’s demeanor shifted.

In her gaze, I could make out some of the best portrayals of the Lady Macbeth I’d seen.  Stark.  Cold.  Weary.  Aged many times over by one short span of time.  Regal and a touch broken.

She appeared a touch unhinged.  In that, she found a security that an oath from the Goblin King couldn’t have provided.

One without much to lose.

So much invested in this fight for the Lordship, into the family, and now it was all in shambles.  The family no longer trusted her.

But it had been the right play, to let the Goblin King go.  To put the power in his hand.  Had she made him swear, she might have removed him as a problem, but she would have had to deal with the rest.

These next moments would prove the true mettle of her character.

Oh, how I wondered, in those delicious heartbeats.  How would you handle this, Sandra Duchamp?

When she spoke, her voice was clear.  “The deal is done.  Those who came at our request are now free to leave,” Sandra said.  “Contact me in one month’s time if you have grievances, but give me that month to resolve this situation.  It is salvageable.”

As clear and simple as the message might have been, her eyes didn’t lose the dangerous gleam.

It hinged on the Goblin King.

Was his spite greater than his gratitude at being spared?  Was he willing to pay the cost to personal fortune by returning mercy with viciousness?

How goblin was he?

“Gallows,” the Goblin King spat the word.  He turned.

Gallowscream sheathed his blade with enough emphasis to be saying something, before following his King.  Hildr noticed and grunted a matching non-word.

A point to Sandra.

There wouldn’t be open slaughter here.  Not because of this.

A point, I imagined, to the Thorburn Bogeyman as well.  Our blighted Rose.  The Duchamps would be intact enough to help him accomplish other things, but not so intact to be a threat.

“Disappointing,” Essylt muttered, in her guise as the young, rotund Abernathy Behaim.

The look old Marjorie shot him was one of shock and indignation.  Essylt managed to feign chagrin.

“I would slap you,” Marjorie said, “If I didn’t think it could cause trouble for the family.”

“What family?” Essylt asked.

I had no problem keeping the smile off my face.  I made eye contact with Keller, who was dressed up as Chloe Behaim, and I could see the mirth in his eyes.

The older woman’s face had colored with a pink that had nothing to do with the cold.

“Let’s go,” she ordered.

We’d lost our chance to keep watching, but this had reached a conclusion.

Keller elbowed me.

I followed his glance.

A crow?

The Thorburn’s crow man.

Perhaps it is better to write that it was Crone Mara’s crow man?

Ordered to interfere with the enemy.  Doing just that.

He met my gaze, then Keller’s.

Bags had been dropped to the roadside so diagrams could be drawn.  The crow broke eye contact and climbed up to one open bag.

Displaying an uncanny strength, it emerged with a gun held in its beak.

Moving up onto a spot where a coat had been left folded atop a snowbank.  Depositing the gun atop the coat.  Moving a cell phone from the coat pocket to the bag the gun had occupied.

As we’d evaded attention, taking advantage of the Duchamp attention being elsewhere, the bird was operating almost in plain sight.

Marjorie continued to drag me away.  Both Essylt and Keller started to lag behind, watching.

There was a rare note of admiration in their gazes as they watched.

Things had settled.  More in the sense that the individual pieces of a landslide settled in a pile, one piece leaning against the next, ready to continue falling if a key element was disturbed.

This was what I’d come to watch.  It exceeded my hopes, even.

Not just the destruction of the Duchamps, but derailing the plan of the Thorburn Bogeyman.  They’d loosed something they didn’t entirely understand in the midst of their desperation, and now that something was acting.

Putting a gun in the wrong hand at the wrong time.

The man the cell phone had belonged to picked up his coat.  Muscular, tattooed, he seemed comfortable in the cold.  The gun slid off the coat as he moved it.

Sandra’s head turned.

She could see connections being manipulated.  The man moving to catch the gun, much as she’d moved the Goblin King’s head into Hildr’s meaty paw.

“Look at me!” she called out.  “Attention!”

She grabbed her chalice, raising it.

My eyes didn’t leave the man with the blond beard, the diagram drawer, the one who’d owned the gun.

Sandra’s words and presence lacked weight, in this moment.  The diagram drawer’s eyes remained on his work, etched on the road.  He took too long to focus on the chalice.  On Sandra.

Hands went to implements.  Recognizing that Sandra was manipulating.  Not, perhaps, recognizing that it was for their own good.

A lesser being might have hesitated.  Sandra didn’t.  She reached for the diagram drawer.  Took his attention.  Turned his head her way.  She had to know that it would make others hostile.

“The hell?” the tattooed man with the gun muttered.  The words were loud in the quiet.

The diagram drawer looked away from Sandra for a fraction of a second.  She tried to wrest his attention back to her, but he’d seen the weapon.

The crow must have been watching from the beginning, to figure out how to do it.  Must have known the man was paranoid, or put some other clues together.  A grudge, some other details.

It must have been watching the Thorburns, too, to know how devastating this would be to their plans.

On seeing that he was facing down a practitioner with a gun, the diagram drawer reacted without hesitation, in the time that practitioner was looking down at the weapon.

He drew a knife from inside his coat and used it in the same motion.  Slitting the gunman’s throat.  He reached for the gun and reclaimed it as the gunman’s free hand went to his throat, in surprise.

Auntie Marge covered my eyes, and I might have killed her for it, if I’d been permitted by the terms I’d agreed to.

But I was only an observer, given the chance.

A work of art.  A tableau, of action and consequences, frozen in a moment.

The Goblin King, now a distance away, reacted.

Ordering Gallowscream forward.  Throwing fragments of etched bone to the ground, loosing more goblins.

His focus was on Sandra and the elder Duchamps.

The diagram drawer placed a wooden box on the ground.  Lines slid off the individual wooden pieces and into the snow, forming a barrier between him and the others.

Then he raised his gun, aimed, and fired twice into the crowd.

The sound was deafening, even with the snow to dampen it.  The ringing of the shot joined the sounds of the bell.

The returning shot, a paper card, burned as it passed through the growing diagram.

From an intricate web of relations to a tangle, a snarl.  No doubt helped by the bell.  A night of exhaustion.

“Penelope!” Sandra cried out, in the midst of the chaos.  “Go, get the younger Duchamps-”

Penelope’s eyes widened, on realizing that Sandra was talking to her.  Before Sandra could finish speaking, Penelope spat in the woman’s face.

Sandra stared, taken aback.  No longer in control.

“Lea!  Maisie!  Jade, Lina, Juliette!”  Penelope cried out, turning.  Her eyes found me and Keller.  “Joanna!?”

“Mother sent me here!” I answered.

Which was true.  My own mother had sent me here to Jacob’s Bell.

“Chloe?  You’re with.  Come on,” Penelope said.

As a group, apparently eight girls and one supposed Behaim boy, we ran.

I cast a glance backward at Sandra Duchamp.

The faction had broken up.  Grudges that had been suppressed now boiled to the surface.  In the midst of it all, the former leader of the Duchamps stood alone.

■

A paraphrasing of the events on the Night of Red Bells, II

Penelope finished drawing the circle.

She checked her laptop, then looked down at the diagram.

Nervously, she looked over at the door.

Not one minute after we’d arrived, Erica Duchamp had left.  She was the mother of Joanna and Penelope, and I told myself to look concerned, to fidget, to stare off into the distance.

“There,” Penelope said.

Her voice sounded hollow in the stillness of the house.  When she looked at the other girls for confirmation, her face betrayed the same concerns they had.

The anger displayed by the Goblin King had been shared by others, if less obvious.  Yet others were afraid, or upset for other reasons.  The Duchamp camp was split in half, between those that agreed with the removal of the true monsters and those that didn’t.

Lola Duchamp had chosen not to join Penelope here at the house, claiming it was too dangerous to go out.  That sunrise was in less than an hour.

One spark, a flick of a knife, and things had imploded.  The allies had become enemies.  Each girl had a mother, an aunt, a cousin, that might not survive this.  Many had to wonder if their dads or uncles would turn on the family, now that the family was no longer convenient and useful to them.

Couch and chairs had been pushed to the side, a rug rolled up.  The diagram drawn on the floor had circles that displayed the masks of Thalia and Melpomene.  The dramatic masks of comedy and tragedy.  Large, shallow bowls of water were set at different points around the diagram.

“Chin up, girls,” Penelope said.

Almost as one, the collected Duchamp girls fixed their expressions, squared shoulders, and wiped tears from their faces.  Across the room, Chloe Duchamp crossed one leg over the other and folded her hands in her lap.

To all appearances, each of the girls was calm and composed.  Only details here and there suggested otherwise.

Penelope tapped a spoon to the bowl.

It sang.  Water rippled.

An image shimmered into existence.  Then another.

Alister Behaim.

Ainsley Behaim.

Rose Thorburn.

Lola Duchamp.

Mags.  Wearing a concerned expression as she looked around the room.

The ambassador’s eyes fell on me.  The one who had taken her name.

She smiled sympathetically.

I smiled back, but to all appearances, I failed to put on a brave face, and broke eye contact.

“The Duchamps are out,” Alister said.

“Don’t sound so happy about it,” Penelope told him.  “People are dying.”

“I was talking to Craig,” Alister said, ignoring Penelope’s point.  “He explained the terms of the deal you were discussing.  Terms for the junior council to follow, whatever happens.”

“I listened in,” Mags said.  “The wording was right.”

“A bit late for that deal,” Penelope said.

“Is it?” Alister asked.

“You won.  I have a hard time believing you’re going to agree to a deal that ties your hands.”

“Believe it or not,” Alister said, “I’m actually interested in the council succeeding.  I believe in what we’re trying to do.”

“But?”  Penelope asked.

He sighed.

Penelope went on.  “I refuse to believe you’re being utterly altruistic in this.  I grew up alongside you.  We went to the same schools, traveled in the same general circles, despite the age difference.  I know you well enough.”

“I am being altruistic.  But I don’t think you’re going to like how far that altruism extends.”

“Extends?” Penelope asked.

“Rose Thorburn,” Lola Duchamp spoke.

“No,” Penelope said.

“She’d get a spot on the junior council,” Alister said.  “With all associated benefits.  If her friends remained in Jacob’s Bell, they fall under her wing.”

“That’s insane.  She’s everything we’re fighting against,” Penelope said.

“Rose Thorburn the elder was a part of our local council,” Mags spoke.

“Rose Thorburn the elder was a hell of a lot stronger.”

“This Rose is just as scary.  Trust me,” he said.

“If you think you can blackmail us,” Penelope started.

“That’s not what I’m doing,” he replied.  “Believe me, if things hadn’t happened this way tonight, I would be making the same offer.  I’ll agree with what you were offering to Craig, provided Rose Thorburn is included.”

“Stop fighting everything,” Lola said, her voice low.

“Don’t think I don’t know that you helped the Bogeyman do this,” Penelope said.  “I knew that something like this would happen.  I’m pretty sure he planned for it to happen.”

How amusing, I think.  If I hadn’t been forbidden from interfering, I might help, just to see what happens.  Tell them it was outside interference.

No matter.

“I don’t know what he’s planning,” Rose spoke.  “What I do know is that something bigger is going on.”

Ah, so they’ve figured it out.

“Bigger?”

“Alister detected a larger threat.  He told me about it before the engagement,” Rose said, holding up the hand with the ring.  “Something else is pulling strings.  Not a practitioner.  Something powerful.  There are other things at work here.”

“Dawn is in less than an hour,” Penelope said.  “Things will settle down then.”

“No,” Alister said.  “We can’t afford for things to settle down.  If things are left to stand as they are, Johannes wins, and Johannes isn’t cooperating or communicating.  We can’t afford to give him ten hours of daylight and peace to consolidate and strategize.  We can’t afford for the other player to get a chance to step back and plot his next move.”

“You want to revoke the rule that creates peace at dawn?” Mags asked.

“No,” Alister said.  “I’m going to work around it.  The Behaims have a store of power.  I’m going to spend it.”

“On what?”

“Postponing dawn,” Alister said.  “Call it the sleeping beauty effect.  An awful lot of citizens are going to have bedsores and wake up hungry, but they’ll be safe in their beds for at least another twenty four hours.  I’m leveling the field between Behaim and Duchamp.  Rose’s suggestion”

Rose nodded.

“If you weaken yourselves when we still have Johannes to deal with, cozy in his domain…”

“This is contingent on several points,” he said.  “Working together against Johannes is key among them.”

“He’s the new enemy number one,” Lola said.

“And our parents?” Penelope asked.  “The Duchamps?”

Alister spread his hands.

Penelope nodded, “Not much you can do about that.”

“I’m moving forward with postponing dawn,” Alister said.  “Get sleep, if you can.  You know how to reach me.”

He disappeared.

“I’ll negotiate the deals, when the time comes,” Mags said.  “I’ll see what I can do about your parents in the meantime.”

“Thank you,” Penelope said.

Mags disappeared.

Rose remained.

“What?” Penelope asked, hostile.

Unaware of just how much she was influenced by the well of karmic gravity that surrounded even the image of Rose Thorburn.

“I’ll see if I can convince Alister to help,” Rose said.

Her image disappeared.  The water in the bowl gone.

“Manipulative bitch,” Penelope said under her breath.

She sighed.  “Sorry.  I’m tired.  Find places to sleep, guys.  Try to get some focus back.  Two or three to a bed, if we have to.  Joanna?”

I raised my head.

“Share your bed.”

“Okay,” I replied.

I was the first one to the stairs.  I reached the bedroom door with a sign marked Jo on the front, in bright colors.

Opening it, I could see the shape under the covers.

I approached it.

“Jo?” Lea asked.

“Yeah?”

“Could I share your bed?”

I nodded.

I moved the sheets.  Bundled up sheets and blankets, in a human form.

“What’s up with that?” Lea asked.

“I kind of snuck out,” I answered.

Which was true.  I had left Jacob’s Bell, as Maggie.

Half truths.

■

The birthday celebration

“There you are,” Essylt greeted me.

“Here I am,” I replied.  Padraic again.

She kissed me on both cheeks.

The inside of the Faerie House was luxurious.  Glamour painted every surface.  The front hall had been expanded to a grand hall, with twin staircases leading to a balcony above.

Music played.  Puppets made up with glamour danced.  A clock loomed over the staircase.

Joanna laughed.  “Padraic!”

“Joanna,” I smiled.

“I thought I’d missed you,” she said.  “I’ve got to go home in a few minutes.”

“Of course,” I said.

“I’m so excited,” she said.  “Thank you for this… everything!”

“You’re very welcome,” I told her.  “And you deserve it.”

“Why does she deserve it?” Essylt asked, not for the first time.  Or the tenth.

“Because I’m going to be the youngest practitioner in the family to do the Awakening ritual!” Joanna gushed.  There were lights reflecting in her eyes that would never stop flashing and dancing.  “I’m going to get a familiar, her name’s Letita, and I’ll get to practice.  But I’ve only got five or ten minutes, and there’s so much happening.“

“When the clock hits ten, you’ll go, as we agreed,” I said, gesturing to the clock that hadn’t moved in quite some time.  “You don’t want to miss your tenth birthday party.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Sine Die 14.1

“Here!” Green Eyes called out.  “Found one!”

Wood popped, snapped, and creaked as I approached.  I started to duck low, beneath the lowest branches of the trees that clustered in the corner of one back yard, but changed my mind.  Closing my eyes, I walked through the tangle.  Where ice-laden branches bent to the point of breaking, they hooked themselves on the holes in my body.  I could feel the wood shift, much as it had when it had been gaining footholds in my flesh, crawling, shifting position, the little pieces I took in finding places at the edges of the gouges, holes, and other wounds.

“Goblins, probably,” Green Eyes observed.

“Safe bet,” I said.

“Huh?” Evan asked.  He started to make his way through my body, and started to poke his head out, when I covered his eyes.

It quickly turned into a game of whack-a-mole, as he shifted position, poked his head out, and was blocked before he could take in the image.  “You’re not letting me see this?  You know the kind of horrible gunk I’ve seen?  Old gobby Mcnailface back there?  People dying?  I bit a man’s eye.  You going to tell me this is-”

He managed to worm his head out and around the edge of my hand.

“-blegh,” he said, before retreating back inside.

The body was arranged in the tree, more akin to an octopus than a human being, if it had even been human to begin with.  Every limb was broken in multiple places, joints popped out of sockets, skin a bruised purple-black where it had been stretched, wrapped around the thorny tree branches.  Fingers and feet had been broken and bent backward, wrapped around and nailed in place, not with any precision, but more ‘nail until it stays where it is’.  Branches behind the body had been broken off, the points of wood penetrating back and buttocks to hold up the corpse.

The least broken arm had come free, and dangled at the side, long since frozen.  Bits of bark and splinters under the nails marked where the dying individual had tried to claw free.  Fresher than the blood under the nails, marking it as one of the last things the individual had attempted.

Maybe it was better that Evan hadn’t looked long enough to see the smaller details.

“They didn’t even eat him,” Green Eyes said.

“Wasn’t the point,” I replied.

“What was the point?”

“I guess they wanted people to stumble onto it,” I said.  “Sunrise is soon, and goblins can be stupid.  Maybe their desire to horrify and alarm overrode their desire to avoid karmic backlash.”

“Hm.  It’s more than that, isn’t it?” Green Eyes asked.

I glanced at her.

“If they were that stupid, they wouldn’t have lasted this long.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Well, it’s a crazy night.  Or do you think there’s more going on?”

“There was this one place near the cistern, back in the dark waters, this one place that I could swim to where the bodies sometimes collected, a bunch of goblins made displays like this.  I could get food there if I was quick enough to grab the bodies before they fished them out.  But the reason they did the displays, I think, is they were marking territory.”

“You think that’s what these goblins are doing?” I asked.  “Staking a claim?”

I cut one branch with the Hyena, and bent another until it snapped.  The body was stiff with cold, but it still flopped forward, mangled head on my shoulder, skin cracking and breaking as much as it bent, where the joints weren’t connected.  Like a child’s oversized stuffed animal, or a macabre dance partner.

“Going by what I know?” Green Eyes asked.  “Sure.”

“Meaning they’re planning to stay a while,” I said.

She didn’t reply to that.

I moved through the thicket, carrying the body, and laid it out on the road.

The road, at least, was black.  If any blood flowed, it wouldn’t raise suspicion.

I glanced at the satyrs, who were hanging a distance away.  Keeping watch, supposedly.  Mostly talking.

Kneeling, I unzipped the remains of the corpse’s jacket, then tore off a strip.

I laid the strip across the eyes.

“How come?” Green Eyes asked.

When I looked up, she was lying atop a snowbank, looking down at me and the body.

“It’s not intact enough for me to do the polite thing and close the eyes,” I said.

“Doesn’t work anyway,” Green Eyes said.  “The body keeps them open.  It gets weird if you try, and they keep opening their eyes.  I learned pretty fast, you have to look at them as meat.  Once they’re dead they’re gone.”

I cut, using the Hyena.

Green Eyes kept talking, settling her chin on the back of one hand.  “Gotta look for the light in people’s eyes, instead.  That’s where the person is.  Not always good, but still people.”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “Might be a little biased, given my situation, but I like the idea that the person is inside.  Not the body.”

“Why do you think I like you, you knob-head?”

Evan made a sound, like he was suppressing a laugh.

I found that several ribs were cracked.  I cut away flesh, fat and connective tissue, a cut along one spot, moving on after the initial incision.  By the time I returned to the first spot, the Hyena’s tendency to twist and exaggerate the wounds had pulled flesh away for another slice.

Once the broken ribs were exposed enough, I pried them free.  I inserted the new ones in alongside the old, broken ribs.

“You don’t want to eat?” I asked.

Green Eyes made a face.  “Remember that cistern I just mentioned?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I learned my lesson.  The goblins threw some back in the water, after fishing them out and doing things to them.”

“Doing things?”

“Glass shoved into the skin, twists of metal, rusty razor wire jammed down the throat.  Worse.  Not stuff you want to bite into.”

“Ah,” I said.  The arm was too broken to salvage.  I turned my attention to the lower spine.

“When you get hungry enough, you’ll eat anything.  I kept going back.  They had a net, with fishhooks and other things at the places where it was knotted.  I think they made it out of hair.  Now I smell goblin stink and I lose my appetite.”

“Gosh,” Evan said.  “Making you lose your appetite?  Goblins are amazing.”

“Shush, you,” she said.

“Gosh,” he said, for emphasis.

“Save your energy for healing, so you can come out and I can swat you.”

“Gosh.”

I pulled the section of spine free.  “Evan, I might not be around forever.  I’d work on making friends with Green Eyes, just in case.  And heads up, coming in.”

“Coming in?”

I maneuvered the spine in through the gap in my side that I’d originally opened to access the spirits within me.

“Oh,” he said.  “And pshh.  Green Eyes and I are buddies, right?”

“Yeah,” Green Eyes said.  “We’re buddies.  You promised me chicken nuggets and that’s almost as good as saying I can eat you after you die.  I kind of want to see how you do it.  Get the nuggets.”

“Exactly.  See?” Evan asked.  He mocked a laugh, speaking in a monotone.  “Ha ha.  Nuggets.  So funny, now that I get the joke.”

I waited, holding the spine in position while the wood worked its way around it, much like roots might grow around stones.

I let go.

“You’ve been grouchier,” Green Eyes said.  “Ever since you ducked in there.”

“I wanna fly!” Evan said.  “Flying is great, then that goblin butt had to go and shoot me.  I’m useless.”

“You’re not useless,” I said.  “You think I would’ve walked away from the end of that fight with the goblin without your company?”

“Eh.”

“Okay.  In the interest of giving you something to do… I want you to visualize.”

“Visualizing.”

“We’re near the faerie house.  It’s at eleven o’clock.  Hillsglade is at two o’clock, maybe five blocks to the northeast.  I know you mostly looked from overhead, but can you remember the layout of the city?  I know Rose had you scouting Behaim houses, and we need to find some Behaims.”

Evan squirmed his way free of my body, poking his head out at the collarbone.  He still had a red gouge running along the back of his head, feathers sticking up around the wound.  “Um.  This is the street with the bad Christmas decorations?  There’s a Rudolph with a hole in it?”

“Over there,” I pointed.  “A bit worse for wear after the goblins passed by.”

“Ew.  Is that a real-”

“Which way, Evan?  This detour cost us time, but I don’t think Green Eyes would have left me alone if I missed the chance to shore myself up.”

“Nope,” Green Eyes commented.  She hadn’t moved from her resting position atop the snowbank.

“That way,” he said, pointing due West.

Seeing me stand and brush snow off me, the satyrs seemed to recognize that I was ready to move, and headed over to join us.

“We’re going to Hillsglade House, then we’re heading that way.  Next part of the plan is to work against the Behaims.  Go communicate with Jeremy.  Tell him what we’re doing.  Sandra’s done, but if we’re going to balance the scales and get things so we can all deal with Johannes, we’re going to need to hit the Behaims where it hurts.  We don’t have long, so… let’s do what we can.  We’ll meet you over there, if all goes well.”

The two satyrs nodded.

They made good time, running off.

“Trust me,” I said.  I picked up the body, and draped it across my shoulders.

Couldn’t leave it for people to find.  Not outside a random house.

Who was cleaning up?  At a certain point, things had crossed a line.  This wasn’t a mess that could be cleaned up before dawn, even with a concerted effort.  Even if every genie, practitioner and even goblin chipped in to help.

Corpses.  Monsters.  The most prominent house in the entire town, Hillsglade House, had broken windows, bodies, and debris littering the area around it.

“Um,” Evan said.  “So, you said Hillsglade House?  Isn’t that the wrong way?”

The bell continued tolling.

I noticed movement.  A dark figure at the periphery, shrouded by the general blur of darkness, stalking me much as I’d stalked the Duchamps.

Evan and Green Eyes’ heads turned at roughly the same moment mine did.

Problem was, they were focusing on other imminent threats.  I, standing to Green Eyes’ left, looked right.  Green Eyes and Evan looked left.

Evan noticed, looking between me, Green Eyes, and the two directions.

“Aw, crap,” he said.

“Surrounded,” Green Eyes observed.

I kept moving, as the Others approached from our left and right.  Crossing the street at a brisk pace.

By the time I had entered the street opposite, they had reached the corners of the intersection.  They started walking along the sidewalk, thirty meters back.

“We know those guys,” Evan said.

Why did that fill me with more concern than if they were utter strangers?

An Other dropped out of the sky, landing in front of me.

Not a bogeyman, to all appearances.  Where a bogeyman generally looked like something had been exaggerated, twisted, cut away and patched up until something had come together, in an extreme or in a single way, this thing looked like an artist’s work, and it was colorful, clean.  The feathers were more ornamental than functional, like a headdress from one of the First Nations, but they extended to wings, as well as a general mane.  His face was covered by a stylized wooden mask with a beak, painted gold and white.

If it weren’t for the taloned bird-feet that extended from knee down, I might have pegged him as an archetypical angel that just so happened to have red-and-gold feathers.

His hands, as he drew his wings back to reveal his torso, complete with a painted wooden breastplate, were taloned as well.

He drew a short sword from his belt.

“This one isn’t familiar,” I remarked.

“Along for the ride,” one of the Others spoke, behind me.

I turned, moving to one side to keep the feathered Other in my field of view as I did so.

The faceless woman and her companion, who had a head like a burn victim, lips and nose burned away, teeth and eyeballs exposed, almost too white.  His face was almost exaggerated with the burn, his flesh red and raw where it wasn’t black.  The Revenant.  The dead man that had returned.

“And now I’m hungry again,” Green Eyes said.

There were more Others approaching.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said.

“I know,” the Revenant responded.  He was surprisingly articulate for someone without lips.  “Why do you think we’re here?”

“Revenge?” I asked.  Our last encounter had ended with Alexis and Eva setting his head on fire.  He’d been trying to kill my extended family members and friends.

He shook his head, taking his time.

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” I said.

He turned, comfortable enough in the here and now to let his guard down, exposing his back to me.

“We’ve been manipulated.  Sent this way and that by the bell, and by practitioners.  My friend here was driven halfway up the wall by the tension here.  The bell let up, and I thought we had a moment to think for ourselves.  Some of the others have been noticing that they’re an awful lot stronger tonight.  There’s something going on.”

“Sure,” I said.  “There’s a lot going on.”

“Something specific,” he said.  “We went to go find answers, and we were headed off by the young Alister Behaim.  He sent us here, suggesting that we could get the answers we wanted if we ran into you.”

I closed my eyes.  “Right.  Of course.”

“We’ve been here for a little while, understand, my friend and I.  We know how this works.  We know Alister.  And, I’d like to think, we know when we’re being manipulated.  He knew what you were doing, and he decided we’d make a good obstacle.”

“I can see that,” I said.  “I expected him to intervene later.  When we were actually squaring off against the Behaims.”

He couldn’t quite smile in the conventional sense, given how his burned face exposed most of his teeth in that ‘smile’ that all skeletons seemed to have, but the change in his expression did reach his cheekbones, which rose up toward his exposed eyeballs.

“I went after your kin, your kin took my face off.  No permanent damage done either way,” the Revenant said.  “Let’s spite little Alister, yeah?  He thinks he can manipulate us, I say fuck him.  Let bygones be bygones?”

When bygones consisted of attempted familicide and mutilation?

“Sure,” I said.  “I’ll swear on it if you do.  To be a decent ally.”

“Broad.”

I shrugged.

“I swear we’ll be allies to you, or to leave you be.  Can’t promise to be with you through thick and thin, but you won’t have me champing at your heels during the thin.”

“Good enough,” I said.  “I swear the same.”

He did that smiling-despite-lacking-a-face thing again, and gestured.

All in all, eight Others joined us, before we’d crossed one block.  I moved briskly.

“We going to assassinate Behaims?” Evan asked.  “That’ll be a little weirder than anything else tonight, I think.  Strangers, okay.  But I’ve been watching Behaims and I know their faces.  It’s like in a video game, you know how you play, like, Fray, and-”

“What’s Fray?”  Green Eyes asked.

“Fighting game?”  Evan asked.

“I know Fray,” the Revenant said.

“I don’t know what Fray or fighting games are,” Green Eyes said.

“Okay, well, you’re brawling with these other characters, and you fight them and when you win two rounds you win, right?”

“Sure?”

“Well, what I’m saying is it’s like, when you play for way too long, you get to this point where you’ve fought Bat a hundred times and you see him and he’s kinda easy if you know how to deal with him so you feel almost fond of him?  You know anything like that?”

“Yeah,” the Revenant said.

“No,” I said.

“Not really,” Green Eyes said.  “But it reminds me of something?”

“Pshh,” Evan said.

“Oh, wait, now I remember!”

“Yeah?”

“I kind of liked the pregnant sewer rats, before.  The ones that are the size of a dog?  They were slower.  Easier.”

“Well,” Evan said.  There was a lengthy pause.  “There you go.  Take what I can get.  That’s how I sort of feel about the Behaims.  They’re the bad guys, but do I really want to go after them like that?”

“Don’t worry,” I told him.  “We’re not after the Behaims, exactly.”

“Okay.  Good.”

“If one presents themselves, and they’re one of the sketchier ones, backing the wrong system, being more of a problem than they could ever be a solution… then maybe.  But that’s not what we’re after.”

“What are we after?” Evan asked.

“I’m quite interested in the answer to this question, myself,” the Revenant said.

“We need to knock their legs out from under them,” I said.  “For the Duchamps, it was the husbands.  For the Behaims, it’s their well of power.  To access that, we’re going to need information, and we’re going to need something else.  With luck, we’ll find it at Hillsglade House.”

We were two blocks away, if that.  Very few of the Others that were with us were the types to get tired.  Being dead, Bogeyman, or winged had a way of helping when it came to prompt travel.

“You may find that we have a problem on that front,” the Revenant said.  “For one thing, when we ran into Alister…”

He trailed off.  I picked up the statement.  “…It was at Hillsglade House.”

“Got it in one.”

I nodded.

“You know he’s engaged to miss Rose?”

“I know,” I said.

“They’re getting their ducks in a row.  You’re a concern for them.”

“I know,” I said, again.

The wind stirred.  Picking up.  The cold was sharper.

I looked east, and I couldn’t make out the sun itself, but I saw light at the horizon.

“I like your mermaid,” he said.

I gave him a curious look.

“Interesting,” he said.  “That’s all.”

“Well, I like her too,” I said.

Green Eyes looked up at me.

“Fashion choice, a little more curious,” he added.

When I glanced at him, he pointed to the body I still carried.

“Not sure where to put it,” I said.  “Moment I harvested bits from it, it became my responsibility, I think.  Couldn’t leave it where it was.  Body on a rooftop, it’s different.  This is harder.  ”

“Yeah,” he said.  “There’s a reason your traditional bogeyman picks on campers, or people on vacation.  Cleanup is easier.  Urban city center?  Gets harder.  Have to get creative, or have certain talents.”

I glanced at the faceless woman.

As if to answer the question I hadn’t asked, he said, “If it’s not recognizable as human, after the fact, and you can leave it by the side of the road for a cleanup crew, there’s something to be said for that.”

Four satyrs in total joined up with us.  “Jeremy’s coming.”

Hillsglade House loomed before us, as we rounded a corner, approaching the street just beyond the property’s railing-topped walls.  Hollow, dark, with scarcely any light within.  Plywood boards had been put up against windows, and only slivers of light escaped through the cracks.

As we drew closer, I could make out people around the house.  I couldn’t look at one section of roof or set of windows without seeing something broken.  Siding was gouged and torn, there was a suspicious dark brown or crimson stain on one outside wall, and more suspicious stains in the snow, where bodies had been dragged away.

The collected individuals were all Behaims.

Alister, other Behaims, including close relative of about Alister’s age standing close by.  The timeless armor, Alister’s weapon.  Rose.

Did Rose count as a Behaim, now?

What would I have thought, weeks ago, when all this started, if I’d known I’d ask myself that question?

Couldn’t pick a fight, not with Alister potentially being involved.  He’d know, and all the trouble I went to in order to attack from another angle would be wasted.  Turned on me, even.

I bit my tongue and continued my approach by the most direct means.

Up the driveway.  Much as I’d approached, back when it all started, for grandmother’s inheritance.

All of this was a dark inversion of what had been.

My friends were there, on the porch, behind Rose.

The family was together, for lack of a better word.  Our parents weren’t here, but I couldn’t imagine they would be.  Peter, Christoff, Roxanne, Ellie, and Kathryn were there, all the same.

“Your timing is inconvenient,” Alister declared.

I spread my arms.  “That’s just who I am.”

“Yes,” he said.  “And look at you.  You’ve made friends.”

I glanced back at the other Others.

When I looked back at the group, without meaning to, I met Rose’s eyes.

Her expression was stone cold, but I saw the lights that Green Eyes had talked about.  I could sense the fear.

“We just happened to cross paths.  Thanks to you,” I said.

“I only had a small role in it,” Alister replied.  “Satyrs and neutral monsters.  Odd, how they’re gravitating toward you, isn’t it?  How you’re doing so well, and how some Others have noticed they’re stronger?”

“You’re not taking credit, are you?” I asked.

He scoffed a little.

“Trust me,” he replied, his voice quiet, but carrying.  “I wouldn’t be laughing if I were responsible.”

Was he killing time?  Trying to bide time until sunrise?

I glanced at my cousins.

How was I supposed to get them away from the rest of the group?

Hey, get away from that safe, secure shelter, and come with us monsters.

Alister toyed with his deck of cards.

Off to the side, the faceless woman reached down to Green Eyes’ head.

I tensed, turning.

But it was only a stroke of the hair.  Green Eyes looked shocked at first, then looked up and smiled.

The faceless woman dropped down to a crouch, and withdrew a comb.  She used it to get the one bad tangle from earlier out of Green Eyes’ hair.

I wasn’t happy, given the proximity between Green Eyes and the faceless woman, but what was I supposed to do about it?  It wasn’t like I could make the faceless woman swear to something, given how she didn’t have a mouth.  I couldn’t shake her hand, either.  That was a trap unto itself.

Be careful, I willed Green Eyes.

I turned my attention back to Alister.

“You’re battle hardened, driven by the bell.  I can see the wariness in your eyes, the tension in your body.” Alister said.  “Rose told me just about everything.  You were made to be a warrior.  You settled into the role with remarkable ease.”

“I’m not sure what you’re insinuating.  Because you’re doing an awful lot of insinuating right now,” I said.

“You’re inclined toward action.  Right now, you’re itching to move, to carry out the next goal.  It’s like a workaholic that keeps moving because if he stops, he realizes how empty he truly is.  You can’t afford self reflection.  But try to relax, all the same.  I’m not going to fight you, unless you start a fight.”

I didn’t move a muscle.

“It’s like when you get caught in an undertow,” he remarked.  “You can’t swim for shore.  The current has too much pull.  The tides favor you, right this minute.  Sandra tried to go against you, I won’t make that same mistake.  I’d rather go laterally.”

“Laterally.”

“You came here with a goal in mind,” Alister said.

I nodded.  He could have guessed that much without being able to see the future.

“To move this along, I’d like to ask what the goal was.  I can find out, but we’ve only got a few minutes before sunrise starts, and I’d rather act before then.”

“Destroying the reserve of power the Behaims set aside.  What you accumulated over generations,” I said.

He smiled.  “Well, that’s good.”

I frowned a little.

“No,” Evan piped up.  “That’s not good at all.  You’ve gone screwy in the head.  Rose, he’s gone screwy in the head.  You’ve married a lunatic.”

“Alister and I talked about this,” Rose said, her expression grim.  “Hear him out.”

Every part of me was wanting to respond.  To confront them, to ask why Rose was being so reserved, so scared.  Ask why Alister was so smug.  To talk to my friends.  To make a plea to my cousins.

Even if I wasn’t sure how I’d word any of it.

“Sure,” I said, instead.

Alister held up one hand.  A ring gleamed there, and it was the wrong hand to be his engagement ring.

“Behaim family crest.  Knight’s helm above a kite shield bearing the Fleur-de-Lis.  The ring isn’t the well of power we’ve accumulated, but it’s the key to accessing that well.  If it’s destroyed, the Behaims won’t be able to access the well for a few generations, until we figure out a way to undo the damage or get at the reserve from a different angle.  It’s also the symbol of my office as the leader.”

“Fancy that,” I said.

“It’s funny, but I’m the first person that’s been able to wear the damn thing on anything but a pinky finger, for a long time.  My predecessors tended to wear it on a chain around their neck.  Thick fingers.  But I digress.  The benefit of being a very old, important object is that it has very strong ties to the family.  If the owner dies and is lost, the ring has its way of finding us again.  Only a very powerful being or a specific scenario would be able to keep the ring from making a migration to the display case in Laird’s old house.  The power of connections, connections strong enough that the Duchamps would have a hard time gaming this little system here.”

He pulled it from his finger, then held it up, peering at me through the hole.

“What are you doing, Alister?” I asked.

“Not fighting against the current,” he responded.  “Sorry for all the water analogies, but you would not believe how many times I heard the ‘time is a river’ thing, growing up.”

He handed the ring to Rose.

“Connections,” Alister said.

Rose gripped the ring hard, her knuckles going white.

“Rose,” he said, nudging her.  “We talked about this.  If you don’t… I’ll look silly.”

“You trust him more than I do,” she said, her voice low.  I wasn’t sure, but I suspected she didn’t realize I could hear her from where I stood.

He shot her a look.

She scowled a bit.

Then she threw the ring.

I had to take a step back, which was hard considering that I was standing on a slight incline, and reach out to catch the thing.

“There,” Alister said.  He smiled.

“I’m imagining about twenty different ways Laird would kill you right now,” the female relative standing beside him commented.

I looked down at the ring.

“A trick?” I asked.

Alister shook his head.

“You already depleted the reserve of power?”

“It’s brimming, the well is.  What’s more, we need the damn power.”

“You’re going to tell me that if I don’t play ball, my friends are going to get hurt?”

“Closer,” he said.  “But I’m betting they’d come out of it okay.  Their karma isn’t so bad.  Your family members, a little less so.  But that’s not my angle.”

I turned the ring over in my hand.

“What’s the angle?” I asked.

“In giving you the ring?  To get you listening.  Get you to stop, and maybe get you to relax.  The power’s in your hand.”

“Okay.  I won’t deny that.”

“Now that I have you listening.  The plan.  In six minutes, the sun rises.  I have a circle and a preparation rigged, which will only take me a moment to put into effect.  I can’t stop the sunrise itself, but I can alter perceptions, and I can bend the rules.  Doing it will cost my family quite a bit.  It’s almost as good as what you’re going for.  But it’ll delay Johannes’ plan.  Or you can destroy the ring, and break our power base, and deal with Johannes as you wish.  There’s a chance you’d even succeed.  The cards favor you.  The tide favors you.  Water analogy again.”

“But?”

He held up a card.  I couldn’t make out the face at a distance.

“Do you know the import of the tower card, in the major arcana of the tarot deck?”

“No.”

“Disaster, revolution.  Revelation, even.  We’re due an omen in about…” he checked his watch, “…forty seconds, and that should make it all clear.”

I glanced at Green Eyes, then at my extended family members.

He paused, waiting.

Forty seconds.

The bell tolled, out of sync, making counting hard.  I didn’t try to count.

I looked at my friends instead.

At Alexis, and Tiff, and Ty.

Alexis mouthed words.  I suspected I knew what they were.

Alister checked his watch, then drew in a breath.

The ground shuddered violently.  Everyone standing was forced to shift position.  Only those by the railing, my friends, and Alister, who could lean against his knight, were able to avoid it.

The rest of Jacob’s Bell seemed to rise, as the shuddering increased.

Snow all around Hillsglade House seemed to fold, then rolled and cascaded down the hill.

It all went still.

“There we go,” Alister said.

“What the hell was it?” I asked.

“Our omen.  Hillsglade House just dropped a few feet toward sea level.  It borders marshland, so that might be the official explanation.”

“And the unofficial, practitioner explanation?” I asked.

“You’re due a third visit to the Abyss,” he said.  “Except this time, Hillsglade House seems inclined to go with you.”

“Hillsglade-”

“And,” he said, “Sorry, but time is getting short.  You need to realize just why the rest of the town isn’t dropping too.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Jacob’s Bell is on the way down.  The only thing keeping it here are the innocents, snug in their beds.  No innocents in this house, so nothing to keep it up.  Now, if I don’t keep the locals from suddenly deciding to evacuate this town, which they will, shortly after waking up, Jacob’s Bell is going to become a new attraction in the Abyss, complete with a spiteful lesser god and a perpetually tolling bell.  Johannes takes over, by virtue of being in charge of all that’s left of the city, and we… go down to stay, quite possibly on a permanent basis.”

He paused to let the words sink in.

“Damn it,” I said.  “You win.  Take your damn ring back and stop this, then.”

Sine Die 14.2

The furniture in the living room of Hillsglade House had been moved out into the adjoining kitchen and back hallway, and fairly tidily stacked on the ledge where the window jutted out at the front of the house.  The floor had been cleared, and a diagram drawn out.  Clear alcohol burned in little braziers that had been set on the floor, producing blue flame.  With no power in the house, the little flames were the only source of light; low to the ground.

Green Eyes’ eyes were among the only things in the room that weren’t painted in vivid shades of black and electric blue.  She lurked beside me, her head at my waist level, upper body propped up by her arms, peering through her hair, much of which draped in front of her face.  The green of her eyes looked out of place here.

Different Behaims stood at different points at the periphery of the octagon.  Adults.  Elders.  I recognized Ben, and the one that had sent the clockwork soldiers after us, killing Callan.  He was the one I’d failed to kill.

Alister’s demeanor was an interesting thing to see.  He looked poised, supremely confident, and utterly at ease in this setting.  When he walked across the diagram to the center, he didn’t miss a beat, walking over and between the lines.

He placed the ring in the center, standing on end, then flicked it, spinning it like a top.

“That’s not part of the ritual,” Rose observed.

“Theatrics,” Alister and I spoke in the same moment.

Alister smiled.  I didn’t.

“By their presence, the family elders agree to draw from the well,” Alister said.  “Let this ritual be completed.”

The fires went out, but the manner in which they went out was unique.  It was as if they were opened at the bottom, the burning liquid emptying along the lines of the diagram.

It animated, the individual components moving.  Everything rotated, circles spinning, individual components aligning.

I heard a ticking sound.  A cosmic clock, slowing down.

The components of the diagram all gathered together.  Like a great piece of machinery settling into place, everything came to an abrupt, town-wide halt.  My heart might have skipped a beat, if I’d had one.

The blue light that ran along the lines of the diagram traced its way to the center of the circle, leaving only darkness in its wake, and then used itself up, the fuse of an old fashioned bomb sparkling its way down to the base… then nothing.

“There,” Alister said.  “That buys us a day.”

“Good,” Rose replied.  “Ty?”

“Be right back,” Ty said.

He shot me a glance as he exited the living room and headed down into the basement.

Flashlights were flickering on, as we collectively stood in the front of the bottom floor.

It was a fairly pointless endeavor.  The breaker was thrown, and the lights came on, all at once.

Tiff shrieked.  At some point between the ritual and the lights going on, Green Eyes had climbed off me and crawled over to Tiff’s side, at the far end of the room.  Tiff had seated herself on the arm of the couch that had been dragged into the kitchen, Alexis sitting on the couch cushion itself.  Green Eyes was on the other side, her face six inches from Tiff’s, at about the same level.  Unmoving.

“Shit on me,” Peter said.  “I did not need to flashback to the mermaid melting the giant man to death.  Burned into my retinas.”

“Please don’t give her ideas,” Tiff said, not breaking eye contact with Green Eyes.

Green Eyes smiled, showing her teeth, then dropped to the ground, moving easily through, under, and around the pieces of furniture that had effectively blocked off the entire kitchen and back hallway.

“Try to behave,” Alister said.  “Things are touchy enough as it is.”

“As the frog said to the scorpion?” a Behaim asked.

“Said me, to you,” Alister said, his voice stern.  “What I’m saying isn’t for just the bogeymen and Others.  It goes for you too.  Don’t pick fights.”

I could tell, at a glance, that the older Behaims were not keen on being told off by an eighteen year old.

Had they expected to have a pawn they could control, who would be a more obvious target to any enemies?  He’d been a more obvious target to me.  Had things played out a little differently, I might have wounded him, bankrupted him of power by forcing him to undo the damage the Hyena had inflicted.

Green Eyes returned to my side.  I offered her a hand, and she used it to climb up my back.  She settled, her upper arms and chin resting on my shoulders, hands sticking out in front.

Better to keep her close, just in case.

“How’s your pet demon?” Alister asked Rose.

“Bound.  I should check on it in two hours.”

Alister didn’t respond.  Instead, he raised one hand, showing Rose his watch.

“Stopped?  All clocks?”

“All clocks in Jacob’s Bell.  The real power comes in when we need to smooth things over.  We’re borrowing against tomorrow, adding to today.  Except, as you’re well aware, given how you broke through my uncle’s barrier around this house, there’s more to some Chronomancy than simply altering time.”

“Or less to Chronomancy than altering time,” I observed.

“Ah…” Alister said.  He glanced at some of the other Others in the house.  The faceless woman and burned Revenant weren’t standing that far from me, and could see into the living room.  “Yes.  Both are true, depending on your perspective.  Right now, however, our focus is on the consequences.  We effectively skip a Tuesday.  Certain important mail isn’t delivered.  Errands are skipped.  We put everything out of order.  The real cost is in smoothing out the wrinkles, paying our debt to the universe for leaving things a bit out of order, and giving this enough backbone that it won’t fall apart the second it’s tampered with.”

Rose frowned.  “Does that mean the time-delayed effect around the demon’s circle is paused, or is that exempt?”

“Don’t know,” Alister said.  “What’s the timer?”

“Three hours.  I should check it in two.”

“I’ll remind you,” Alister said.  “If I can’t, someone should?”

A few older Behaims nodded in agreement.

“We expect you to hold to your end of the deal,” Alister said.  “It’s not just for our sake.  It’s common sense.”

Rose glanced over at Tiff, Alexis and Ty.

“Yeah,” she said.  “We’ll arrange it before we move on to the next steps.”

He cut the deck, glanced at the card, then pocketed it.  “Blake.  A word?”

I raised my eyebrows a little.

He gestured toward the front door.

I led the way out, walking past the faceless man and burned revenant.

I didn’t like him.  I didn’t trust him.  It wasn’t that he could lie to me.  It was a question of loyalties.

Stepping outside, I could see the sky.

The clouds had frozen overhead.  It wasn’t that they were that bright or easy to see to begin with, given the oppressive darkness and the lack of light from the city itself, but they formed a tableau now.  Like a cave roof overhead.

The longer I stared, the more artificial it looked.  Like an oil painting.

And it was so quiet.

Green Eyes reached out and touched a snowflake that had frozen in position in mid-air.  The snowflake drifted away from her touch, melting away.

“Perception,” Rose said.  “Neat to see, but it’s only a trick of the mind, a great many spirits playing along.  Pay too much attention to it, and you’ll start to see holes in it.”

“If it was a weaker effect, I’d urge you not to poke too many holes in it, but I didn’t make it weak,” Alister explained.  “I’m half expecting Johannes to send a genie or two to start trying to undo it and speed things along.”

Rose and Alister stepped down from the front steps to the driveway, joining Evan, Green Eyes and I.  Alister was in the process of pulling on a coat, Rose hadn’t taken hers off while in the house.

I expected Alister to tell my companions to leave.  He didn’t.

Rose studied me, her eye taking in every bit.  Including Green Eyes.

Finally, as if she’d come to a decision, she said, “Before we discussed the marriage in detail, Alister told me that he thinks someone’s pulling strings behind the scenes.”

“This abyss thing?”

“That’s part of it.  We can’t be sure without the full cooperation of Sandra and Johannes, but we think there might be more going on with the number of Others in town,” Rose said.  “Goblins without masters.  Many of your new acquaintances.”

“Gravity,” Alister said.  “As if we’re at the center of a whirlpool, and things are being drawn in.  Summoning is easier, control is harder, and thanks to the involvement of the Abyss, bogeymen like you and the faceless woman are thriving, recuperating faster, hitting harder.”

“Me too,” Green Eyes said.  “And the bird.”

“The bird?” Rose asked.

“Here,” Evan said.  He climbed up and settled at my shoulder.

“He got a small blood transfusion earlier,” I said.  “Back when the High Priest had us under siege.”

“Trying to rest.  Want to fly again as soon as possible,” Evan commented.

“Mm,” she said.  She pursed her lips.

Alister tilted his head to one side, then held up a hand, as if warning me or warding me off, even as he stepped closer.  I didn’t move as he approached.

“May I?” Alister asked.  He held up the ring.

Before I could voice my thoughts, Rose spoke up.  “Go ahead.”

Evan shied away from Alister’s hand.  Green Eyes moved one arm, half-cupping Evan, to shield him.

“You’re not going going to ask me my permission?”  Evan asked.

“Do you want to fly again?” Alister asked.

“Yes.”

“This is me being nice.  Offering valuable power to give you flight.  Pure goodwill,” Alister said.  “Believe it or not, manipulating spirits is a talent of mine.  I can patch you up and stall the problem of you running out of energy.  I promise.”

Evan looked up at me, obviously unsure.

“Up to you,” I said.  “But it’d be good to have you flying again.”

“And it would be good to keep the Abyss from getting too much of a grip on him,” Rose said.  “The element of time should fit with his spiritual makeup, and that’s a void that the Abyss isn’t filling.”

“Okay,” Evan said.  He shifted position and hopped up.

The wound had healed in the interim, while Evan lurked within me, but not by much.

His ring just around the end of the finger, at the base of the fingernail, Alister ran the loop of metal along the length of the wound.

Putting feathers back in order, wound closed.  Evan stretched, testing, and his feathers stood on end in the process.  When he settled down, he looked more like a proper sparrow than he had since before I’d left for the Drains.

“Heck yeah!” Evan said, checking out his wings.  “Could do with more blood and fire for decoration, but-”

As if he couldn’t wait long enough to finish his sentence, he took to the air.  A faint trail moved in his wake as he disturbed snowflakes that were no longer falling.

“See?  I’m not hostile,” Alister said, backing away from me, showing me his hands, ring included.  “We’re not your enemies.”

“I know,” I said.  Even as I said it, I was thinking strategically.  Warily.

Twice now, he’d used the ring and a favor to pacify me.

With the third, what advantage could he glean?

I spoke up, “Believe me, that thing Rose is worried about, the hostility between severed halves?  It’s a double-edged sword.  Her paranoia over it is one edge.  Seeing me as more of a monster than I am.  She’s already tainted your thinking.”

Rose narrowed her eyes.

“You’re an Other that is racking up a notable body count overnight,” Alister commented, eminently calm.  “Can you name everything you’ve killed tonight?  Others included?  I’m betting you can’t.”

“If I could,” I retorted, “I think that would be a point against me.  Counting kills would be a little obsessive, a perfect recall almost more monstrous.”

“Okay, okay,” Alister said, raising his hands.  “Right.  That came out as being more combative than I meant it to.  I’m just saying-”

“I protected those people in there when Rose was taken away.  Are you going to fault me for the Others I killed while I did that?  It’s a war, Alister, and I’ve been fighting the only way the smaller force can fight.  I’ve been trying to do it in a way that leaves the right people alive.  So I’m pruning for future growth, rather than simply destroying.”

“Is that why you destroyed the-” Rose started.

Alister stepped between me and her, a hand raised in front of each one of us.

Green Eyes bared her teeth.  Because it was easier, I shifted position, turning back so one shoulder and the mermaid head that was resting on it were both further from Alister’s hand and ungloved fingers.

“Back to what we were saying before,” Alister said.  “The abyss, and our mysterious player.  We all thought the wraith of Molly Walker was a little too strong for what she was.  She’s only a vehicle for larger events.  A gateway between here and the Abyss.”

“And me?” I asked.  “Are you implying that I’m a vehicle?  Did I enable this?”

I extended an arm, as if to encompass Jacob’s Bell.

“No,” Rose said.  “Believe me, I wish I could pin it on you.  It would make things far, far easier, if I could simply point to you as the source of the problem.  Put the karmic weight for recent events on your shoulders, then get others to remove you.”

“You’re merely a player,” Alister said.  “You simply happened to be a well-positioned player.  The Abyss wants one thing.  You gave it what it wanted, at a time and in a place where the abyss maintains a great deal of sway.  In exchange, you got more of what you wanted.  Fuel to keep going.  Momentum.  You should recognize and take advantage of that, if you’re going to keep up the same string of successes, tonight.  What’s happening with the Abyss isn’t a good thing, but you gain little by rejecting it wholesale.”

“I gain more than you’re implying,” I said.  “Earlier, I told myself that I’d be me, in the midst of all this.  Not trying to be human, not trying to be bogeyman.  I’ve got to make that call when the situation calls for it.”

“Damn shame,” Rose said.

I shot her a look.

“You’d be easier to predict if you stuck to one course,” Rose said.

I tensed a little.  Green Eyes did too.

“I think what Rose means,” Alister said, interjecting himself again, “Is that you’re an ally.  Our goals are the same.  We want to stop people we care about from getting hurt, yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes,” Rose said.

“That means we want to find whoever is behind this chaos and stop them.”

“Yeah,” I said.  Rose was nodding.

“It’s easier for us to work in concert with you if we can predict you.  But you’re inherently unpredictable,” Alister said.

“Basically,” Rose said.

“You’re unwilling to take on the seal of Solomon,” Alister said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Which would make you easier to keep track of and form deals with.  It would nail you down in shape, form and demeanor, stop the Abyss from getting as much traction with you, and quite possibly slow down the rate at which the rift between yourself and Rose widens,” Alister said.  “If you want to maintain the balance of your Other and your human selves, this is a damn good way to do it.”

“Didn’t know all that.  The answer is still no,” I said.

“Why?” he asked, with uncharacteristic emotion in his voice.

“Because of who and what I am.  I’d be giving up an integral part of myself.  Maybe I’d seal myself into one shape or one mindset, but I’m pretty sure I’d be insane, or I’d lose it fast.  I’d be closing a door.”

“Some doors need to be closed,” Rose said.

I grit my teeth, frustrated.

“Christ,” Alister said.  “Let’s… not have you two talk to each other, okay?  Make it a rule.  Blake doesn’t want to make the oath.  Fine.  We’ll go with that.”

“We can’t cater-”

“We’ll go with it,” Alister said.

“Okay,” Rose answered.  “Well go with it.”

“We’re standing at the center of an intricate spider web.  One wrong step, and we hit a snarl,” Alister said.  “Right at the center, right here, we’ve got people at each other’s throats.  You two.  My family against me.  The demon, poised to get loose.  More people, ready to go after Rose and me the moment the demon isn’t a concern.”

“The lawyers,” I said.  I hesitated.

“I explained,” Rose said, answering the question I hadn’t yet asked.

I nodded.  “The state of the house… we’re supposed to take care of it.”

“Okay.  If that even counts as a problem at ‘home’,” Alister said.

I could remember my last interaction with Ms. Lewis.  “I’m laying odds that the next time we see them, they’re going to be a problem.”

“Should we call them?” Alister asked.  “Head off the problem at the gates?”

“No,” Rose and I said, in the same moment.

Alister frowned.

“They agree, for once,” Green Eyes commented.

“Which is either a very good sign or a bad one,” Alister said.  “I’m not sure how to interpret it.  Damn it.  Okay.  There’s still Sandra to deal with. The family is in shambles.”

He gave me a pointed look, as he said that.

I nodded.  Leadership broken.  Power base broken.  We’d still have their help.

Shaking his head, he said, “And Johannes is… quite likely gearing up to respond to this problem.  If he wants to throw muscle at it, we can hold out.  If he wants to get creative, I might have to be ready to respond.  More likely, he’s going to do both.”

“He’s not going to be able to tear down the time effect, you don’t think, but he might work around it, or pervert it to his ends?”  I asked.

“I forgot for a moment that you were a practitioner, once,” Alister said.  “You’ve grasped the problem.”

“It takes you out of the picture, Alister,” Rose said.  “Me too, if I’m going to stick by you.”

“You’re not,” Alister said.  “It just doesn’t make sense.  We need to do what we can.”

“What, then?” Rose asked.

I could see the pained expression on his face.  The fleeting eye contact with Green Eyes.

“Something to do with me,” I spoke my suspicions aloud.  “Wait.  You want us to team up?”

“No, not exactly that,” Alister said.  He extended a hand, palm up, and Rose placed hers in his.  He extended a hand to me.

I wasn’t comfortable with giving him my hand.  not when he had that ring on his finger.

He plowed ahead, ignoring my reluctance, indicating me with his empty hand.  “You’re close, though.  Imagine, if you will, the scales.  Blake on one side, Rose on the other.  Stick Blake on the Rose side of the scale, things go full-tilt, stick Rose on the Blake side of the scale, same problem.  Let one get too big, the other small, the scales tilt, and we get problems.  More of a rift.  Actions of the one hurting the other.  We need to keep you on a level playing field.”

When he looked at us, he didn’t seem to have the response he’d wanted.  He finished, “You two need to coordinate.”

“Shit,” Rose said, and Alister nodded in agreement.

I nodded my agreement, suddenly getting what Alister had been saying, about not being sure if agreement between us was a good thing or a bad thing.

■

The city was a frozen tableau, utterly silent.  Clouds of snow had been stirred by the wind and frozen in the shape of claws and twists in the air.

In the midst of it all, Others lurked.  A fleeting shadow here and there.  The snow stirred in their wake, belatedly.  Out of sync with reality.

The scrape and squeak of footsteps was incredibly loud.  The periodic huff of breath surprising in its intensity.

Coordination.  Balancing the scales.

Halves of wholes.

I had Tiff.  Rose had Alexis.

I had Peter and Roxanne.  Rose had Ellie and Kathryn.

Christoff was staying behind.  At least, Alister wouldn’t be a worse role model than the rest of the Thorburns had been for Christoff already.

I had the Faceless Woman.  Rose had the Revenant.  I had the feathered Other, a brute of a man that might have been ogre or part ogre, and an Other in fine clothing, complete with a hood and a mask, no skin showing.  Rose had three of the ones that remained.  The leftovers stayed at Hillsglade.

I had Evan and Green Eyes.  Because they were mine.  Rose had the backing of the young Behaims, with Alister staying behind, staying in contact.  Hers.

“Johannes makes his move soon,” I said.  “Alister says it’s a big one.  Be ready.”

“That’s not encouraging,” Tiff said, her voice small.

“We got you,” Green Eyes said, with a smile.  “Got your back.”

Tiff turned, and offered Green Eyes a smile that was about as far from reassured as one could manage, while still being a smile.

The negotiation had been fast, swift, and fairly brutal.  Ty had too big a tie to Evan, so him coming with me was a problem.  Alexis and I were a problem on a number of levels.  Too strong a tie, in my mind.  Too much of a breach of trust, in my heart.  I couldn’t look her in the eye, or coordinate with her.

Rose’s tie to Alexis was milder.

All down the line.  We’d hammered it out.  Taking the Faceless Woman had been a call I’d made with Green Eyes’ brief interaction with the woman.  Rose could at least communicate with the Revenant.

The High Priest was waiting at the far side of the street, after we crossed the road at the base of the property.

“Well?” he asked.  He reached out to touch a snowflake that was trapped in mid-air.

“Change of plans,” I said.

“That seems to be a trend when young Alister is involved,” he said.

“I need you to divvy up your minions.  Give us some, but make it an even number.  Half to me, half to Rose.  The rest, yourself included, should go talk to Alister.  He’s waiting at Hillsglade House, he knew you were waiting here, and he told me to tell you he promises no harm will be done to you.”

Jeremy the High Drunk gave me a level stare.  Thoroughly unimpressed.

“You had a plan,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Break one family, then break the other.  Pick up the pieces of each, go after Johannes.  I give you the backing of my god, so our motley army can break through and reach the man himself.”

“Yes.  The Behaims spent their power, doing this.  The plan stands.”

“But?”

“But there’s someone pulling strings.  The rumble earlier?”

“Multiple rumbles.”

“Yeah.  The abyss is claiming the city, and it’s going to claim everything here with it.  The real problem is that something or someone is helping it along.”

“Something?”

I thought back to the tail end of the conversation with Rose and Alister.  After the discussion of coordination.

“Rose and I are splitting up.  Checking the obvious suspects.  It’s not Johannes, according to Alister.  He’s taking advantage, and if it happens it happens.  Jacob’s Bell disappears, along with all his enemies and Hillsglade House, he drains the marsh and expands east, ignoring whatever’s left to the south.  But the cards suggest it’s not him.  That means we need to look to the other practitioners and Others.  Ones with territories that wouldn’t necessarily be part enough of Jacob’s Bell to get drawn into the abyss with the rest of the town.”

The man frowned.

“We gather who we can on the way, the junior council if nobody else, and investigate the possible threats behind the scene.”

“The Briar Girl lives nearby,” he observed.

“Rose is tracking her down, with her group.  We’re after the Hag.  Or the remaining Duchamps, then the Hag.  We’re better equipped to travel a longer distance.”

“Speak for yourself,” Roxanne muttered.  “Short legs, I hurt all over, and-”

“You’re hunting an experienced  Other and practitioner in her own domain?” the High Priest asked, interrupting her.  “And you want my devotees to help?”

“Ideally.”

He frowned.

“You have one Satyr and one Maenad.  I’ll send the same to miss Rose.  You don’t involve them in a fight if you can help it.  If you get the Duchamps on board, they’ll act as bodyguards to those Duchamps.”

I nodded.

“Fine,” he said.  He turned and looked.  “About a twenty-minute walk from this end of the town to the other.”

“Half an hour, with Tiff, Peter and Roxanne along.”

He nodded.  “You’ve seen Johannes’ play?”

“Play?  No.”

“You will,” he said.  He touched a Maenad and a Satyr on the shoulders, then pointed at me.  They nodded.

Not the most trustworthy allies, but I’d take what I could get.

He turned to go, heading toward Hillsglade House.

“You, what?” Peter asked.  “Hey!  You can’t do that!  You’ve gotta tell us!”

Jeremy turned, and I saw a gleam in his eyes.  A mean one, just a little wicked.  More than a little mad.

I flashed back to when he’d betrayed me to Conquest.  Starting the whole event, complete with a war in the city.

Peel away the surface, and you see what lies beneath.  Remove him from Sandra…

…Or remove Sandra from him.

This was what he was, before.

“Take it from someone who works for a god,” he said, spreading his arms, still walking, albeit backwards.  “Some things just can’t be described with mere words.  Don’t get my followers killed, or you’ll lose what little grace I’ve given you.”

“Shit,” Peter said.  “Aw shit, what?”

“Calm down,” Roxanne said.

“Dirty pool,” Peter said, sounding annoyed.

We didn’t make it a block before we saw what the High Priest had been talking about.

If the area had been unchanged, the snow still falling, I might never have noticed.

But I saw the snow move at one rooftop of a very old building downtown.

A lot of snow moved, as a matter of fact.

Wings unfurled, briefly highlighted.

Red eyes opened, gazing at us from a distance.

A toothed mouth opened, and roared.  A screech.

I saw a flicker of flame, and brief illumination of a scaled body.  The noise of the screech was enough to disturb the snow, pushing it away from the rooftop.  To highlight other shapes.

A man.  Larger than the Astrologer’s creation, craggy in features, with a heavy beard.  Tall enough I could see him head and shoulders on the far side of a two-story building.

“Johannes is going full mythic on us,” Tiff said.

“Helping us on our way to the Abyss,” I said.

“Huh?  I don’t get,” Roxanne said, backing away a step.  I could see the marks in her skin, standing out with how pale she was.

“If you want to sink people, you gotta drop something big on them.”

Sine Die 14.3

“Oh man,” Evan said.  “Is that a dragon!?  That was fire in its mouth.”

“That was a dragon,” our satyr said.  “It disappeared.”

It had.  The area where the thing had dwelled was now only shadow, and stirring snow.

The satyr very pointedly looked up, as if expecting the dragon to drop on us from above.

Everyone present took his cue, moving closer to the nearest building, as if it might provide just a bit of cover.  It had the benefit of moving us out of the craggy giant’s field of view.

“How do you deal with a damn dragon?” I asked.

“I’ve played lots of video games,” Evan said.  “Dragons, uh…”

“They aren’t like they are in the video games,” Tiff said.  “Generally speaking, you don’t deal with dragons.  For one thing, they barely exist anymore, for another…”

The satyr, Green Eyes, and the maenad turned to look in the same direction at once.  I didn’t bother to check.  I just moved, which meant I reacted only a fraction of a second after they did.

Peter, Tiff, and Roxanne were just turning to look as the rest of us were moving the opposite direction.  I put my arms out, touching their shoulders, pushing Tiff and Peter.  Roxanne, in front of Peter, was forced to move with.

“Shit!” someone shouted.  “Shit!”

The dragon touched ground behind us.  The neighborhood rattled like it was a dish-laden table and someone had dropped a weight on it.  Windows, wood, cars, all shifting violently in response.  Icicles and piles of snow dropped from the overhangs around shops and stores.

I only caught a glimpse of it, as I passed into the alley.  I was just behind Tiff and Peter, Green Eyes on my back.

I’d expected something sleek.  The silhouette I could make out suggested something like a bear in stature, more like a small building in raw mass.  Broad, thick in build, and draped in looser scaly hide, with enough obvious muscle that my initial thoughts about its ability to fly were banished.  Its eyes glowed, not like Green Eyes’ eyes did, but as if lit with an intensity of their own.  The heat rising off of it pushed away the snowflakes that were frozen in the air.

It was maybe eighty feet away as I passed into the space between two buildings.  The space was narrow enough I could have just barely touched both walls with my fingertips, and was riddled with ventilation and general stuff.  A broom, a bucket of salt and sand, and garbage cans.  The others were ducking under a section of ventilation that had been spewing steam into the alley before it had been frozen in time.

Still running, I only managed to take two steps into the alley before the reptile slammed its bulk against the two buildings, shoving its head into the space.  The flesh was squeezed, drawn back by the pressure, teeth exposed and scraping against the brick and concrete on either side.

It reached one claw inside, head tilting to make room for the limb as it lashed out, clawing in my general direction, five or so feet short of actually making contact.  I felt Green Eyes clutch me tighter, arms around my chest.

I wondered if the damage to the alleyway could be explained away by saying a large truck had backed into the alley before realizing there wasn’t room.

It screeched once more, a loud sound, before clawing at the pavement and ice of the alley floor, digging deep gouges out of it, as if it could somehow make itself fit with enough raw willpower.

I ducked underneath one jutting piece of ventilation, backing away more than I ran, my movements limited by the speed of the people ahead of me.

The little alleyway was lit by an orange-red light from behind me, and I felt a sinking sensation in my gut.

Like thin tendrils of drool, an ignited fluid, molten metal or magma was escaping the corners of the dragon’s mouth.

It drew its head back, almost until it didn’t have a neck.

“Shit!” Peter shouted.

There was no escape route.  No place I could push forward.

Tiff was hopping up a set of stairs at the side of one building, touching a key the length of her forearm to a door.  Roxanne hopped up beside her.  An escape route, or a makeshift shield.  Maybe both.  The maenad, faceless woman and satyr were rounding the corner at the far end of the building.

I was too far back to take either option.

I reversed direction.

Not going for the dragon, but for the section of ventilation I’d just ducked under.

I grabbed a tall recycling bin, and swung it around, a makeshift shield, albeit a plastic one.  I braced it against the vent, my back to the wall.

Being a bogeyman meant I was immune to some human frailties.  My heart didn’t beat, my muscles didn’t ache, my lungs didn’t struggle to pull in air.  When we were hit, all the same, I lost my senses.  Up, down, left, right, backward, forward, my grip on Green Eyes, her grip on me, my ability to understand where I was, it all disappeared.

Disorientation, damage, my hand going to pieces as it collided with a surface.  Fire, as it painted every surface, igniting brick and pools of water.  Removing all traces of winter in this dismal, dark alleyway.

There was only the inferno.

I was on fire.  One arm, part of my chest.  Burning surprisingly well.

Turning over onto my back, aware that I was on fire, I was aware of the dragon’s maw.  In my disorientation, it looked like it was looming directly above me, while I was at the bottom of a deep pit, with walls of flame or smoke on all four sides.  Liquid flame spilled from its mouth, as if it had ignited itself, and it didn’t even care.

One of the four walls surrounding me was sky, I realized, as smoke cleared, and I struggled to get to my feet, to stagger toward that sky despite the lack of appropriate ground underfoot, the way my leg somehow wasn’t moving fast enough, and the way the overly bright flames seemed to claw everything back in the opposite direction, sections of brick wall, glass…

Like the pull of a star.

Green Eyes was screaming.  Others were shouting.

I shook my head, but it did nothing to help.

It was easier to work with my dashed senses than to try to put everything in order.

To get away, I needed to move away from the scaled beast.  That meant moving down.

I staggered more than I ran, not familiar with my surroundings.  I’d been halfway down the alleyway, and now I was at the end of it, surrounded by long licks of fire that looked more like fluorescent lights than anything I’d ever called flame, they were so bright.

The others were on either side of me.  A couple were shouting instructions.

Green Eyes was there.  Struggling with the fact that part of her face, hair, and the end of her tail were on fire.  I suspected that if she hadn’t been riding on my back, my head would be in that condition too.

Her focus was on me, mine on her.  Both of us momentarily more concerned with the fact that the other had been ignited than we were with ourselves.

It felt like such a long distance, to look over my shoulder.  Things had broken in the impact, when I’d been thrown by the initial  hit, and some of those things were part of my neck.  The amount of fire in the dragon’s mouth had increased.  A section of wall had broken away, where it had clawed at the surface.

I reached for Green Eyes, only to realize that my right hand had shattered.  Still there, but not intact enough to grip anything.

My left hand was okay, but the arm and elbow were blazing.  I was careful to hold the fire away from my body.

She reached out to me.  I gripped her hand, and tried to pull her along even as I braced my legs under me to jump, to lunge across the most passable stretch of dragon’s fire.

Aflame, my left leg gave up.  With melted, burning plastic from the bin I’d tried to use as a shield still caking it, the bone and wood simply gave up, bone breaking like chalk, the wood that braced it now essentially gone.

Green Eyes still holding my arm, unaware that I’d just lost my ability to stand, I was pulled down on top of her.

Green Eyes screamed something, but I couldn’t make it out over the roar of fire.

How eerie, to not be afraid, in the midst of all this.  To not be terrified, my face screwed up in panic like Tiff and Roxanne’s were.  Like the maenad’s face was, even.  I was still disoriented, still trying to deal with the world having been one thing in one moment, and holocaust and ruin in the next.

Metal.  Sections of ventilation duct, or dumpster.  I couldn’t tell.  It burned too, and edges had turned molten.

I grabbed it, and I slid it over toward the others.

Peter shouted, “It’s breathing again!”

One working arm, one leg, one screaming, flailing mermaid clutching me.  Maybe being burned by me, or burning me.

I made it two feet, pushed at the metal, kicked at the ground, trying to haul myself and Green Eyes closer.

The maenad reached me, leaning forward, to grip me at the shoulders, fingers hooking at sections of wood.

Peter was there too, a little more ginger in how he reached forward.

The metal served as a brief barrier to the flames on the ground, and when I was pulled, it was akin to a sled, something I could be dragged on.  Not part of the plan, but I wasn’t complaining.  It took all the focus I had to simply hold on to Green Eyes, in hopes that she might be dragged with me.

The fire rushed past.  A spray, a glob, like mucus or paint, covering every surface that wasn’t covered already.  Where there was already fire, it flared, spreading, growing taller.

Much as I’d seen the Dragon looming directly above me, my perceptions skewed, I saw Tiff, the faceless woman, and Peter all standing above me, talking.

“There,” I managed to make out what the maenad was saying.  “Grab it!”

A moment passed.

“Extinguish rune isn’t working…” Tiff said.

“Shit.  What the fuck did you drag us into?”  Peter.  “What the fuck?  Where is it?”

“…I didn’t think it would, but I don’t know what else I could do.”

A male voice further away.  “It moved.  Keep an eye on rooftops!”

“Blake,” Evan said.  “Blakeblakeblake, look.  No going into the light!  Or the dark, or wherever you’re supposed to go!  Blake!”

The satyr appeared, and passed a shovel to the maenad.  Not a snow shovel, but a dirt shovel.  The rusty head was shaped like a spade, connecting to a four or five foot long wood shaft, that was connected to a padded grip, in turn.

The maenad, standing, touched the shovel’s tip to my shoulder.

She stomped on it, hard.

“Damn it.  Tough wood,” she said.  “Move the sweatshirt.”

“Don’t get burned!”  Tiff said.  “Dragonstuff is potent.  I don’t think that fire ever goes out!”

Someone moved my sweatshirt at one shoulder.  The point of the shovel was repositioned.

She stomped again.  Driving metal into and past wood, into the joint of the shoulder.

Leverage applied, the point scraping against bone, deep inside, finding the notch where the socket met the shoulder joint.

Another stomp, to sever.  She tore the cloth of my sweatshirt with her hands, and then kicked the still-burning arm and section of shoulder off to the side of the alley.

“Leg next,” she said.

“Green Eyes,” I said.

She glanced over her shoulder.

She was gritting her teeth as she moved around to my leg.

I saw the faceless woman turn around.  Her back was to me, cigarette held high in one hand, the other in a pocket.  Watching Green Eyes burn?

Tiff was talking, “Um, melted plastic isn’t burning quite as well, so it’s not spreading as much here, but-”

“It’s airborne, somewhere not too far away,” the satyr was saying, eyes skyward. “The dragon is.”

The maenad placed the shovel at my thigh.

I moved my leg, and the shovel slid off, biting pavement between my legs.

She stared down at me, an angry expression on her face.

“Help Green Eyes,” I said.  “Help her now, or I’ll fight you every step of-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” she cut me off.  “Or I’ll leave you to burn with her.”

I set my teeth.

She replaced the shovel’s blade, then struck it with her heel.  One kick served to break the wood and bone.  It also broke the shovel’s end from the shaft.  The metal had torn, no doubt already fatigued and rusted.

“Mm,” she said.  “Don’t move.”

She bent down over me.

“My-” I started.  I wasn’t even sure how to finish.  How was I even supposed to describe Green Eyes?  My friend?  My mermaid?  I gripped the maenad’s wrist, but my hand had splintered, and had no strength to it.  “Damn it, help her!”

“You might be able to summon her again,” she said, ignoring my grip as she tore a section of burning wood off the side of my chest.  “Bogeymen go back to the abyss when they die.  They can resurface.”

Tiff spoke my thoughts, “That’s not a guarantee, especially for a weaker bogeymen.  When we summoned her in the bathtub-”

“Uh huh,” the maenad said.

“There’s no guarantee the fire will go out if she passes on.  With dragon’s breath, it could burn her spirit, even.”

The maenad ignored Tiff.  “Let go of me, wooden man, or I’ll break this hand off too.”

I released her wrist.

“Don’t let him see,” she said, as she picked up the shovel’s head.  I could see a gleam in her eyes that wasn’t so different from the one I’d seen on the High Priest’s face.

I suddenly wished I hadn’t released her.

I saw flame licking Green Eyes, the tail moving this way and that as she continued to thrash, weaker than before, one hand raised, as if she wanted to clutch her face and couldn’t.

The Satyr stepped between me and Green Eyes.

He didn’t manage to stop me from seeing the maenad put the tip of the shovel against the center of Green Eyes’ forehead.  There was no handle to go with it.  It was only a rigid bit of metal, now.

“Little girl.  Take this.  Hold it steady.  You fuck this up, you only make more hurt, understand?.  And don’t let her touch you.”

“What?”  Roxanne asked.

“Hold.  It.  Steady.”

“Green Eyes,” I said, staring at the Satyr’s hoofed feet, as he impeded my view.

“Blake,” was the reply, from Green Eyes.

With Roxanne holding the shovel’s handle-less end in place, the maenad drove it down with one sharp kick.  I saw the tail move suddenly, flip this way and that, until the maenad moved and stepped on it, to stop the thrashing.  One bit of fin and some hair was still ignited.

The maenad stooped down, and cut the hair and fin away, as if to be safe.  It didn’t matter.  The tail wasn’t moving.

“Aw,” Evan said.  “Awww, and eww, but mostly aww.  Crumbs.”

“We need to go,” the satyr said.  “It’s stalking us.”

“Someone should pick up the wooden man,” the maenad said, “and it won’t be me.  Not after what he did to my sister.  Even if I’ve had my pound of flesh, I don’t trust myself around him, and I don’t trust him.”

Mute, I did what I could to try and rise.

I had only one fully intact limb.  My chest was fairly ruined, too.

I had strength, but no structural integrity, and limited movement.

Still, I crawled over to Green Eyes.

Evan had perched on her tail.  The faceless woman still stood over her.

“Ow,” Green Eyes murmured, as she saw me.  “Oh wow, ow.”

My eyes widened a bit.

She had to twist her head around to see me.  The shovel’s blade had scraped off half her face, the eyeball with it.  Bone was exposed, where there wasn’t ragged meat.

She raised a hand to cover that half of her face.

I reached out and grabbed her hand with my ruined one.  I only had three intact fingers, and in trying to clasp her hand and failing, I only seized her fingers.

I was forced to let go, as Peter moved me, trying to prop me up with one arm at his shoulders, standing with me.

“Lighter than you look,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Tiff?” he asked.

Tiff reached my other shoulder.

“My face, and my eye,” I heard Green Eyes murmuring.  Not to me.  To the faceless woman, ironically enough. “It wasn’t a very good face, but-”

I saw the faceless woman reach down.  I didn’t want to say anything, out of concern that a moment’s spite could make the faceless woman do worse.

But she didn’t use her ability to knit flesh.

She helped Green Eyes reposition, and I saw how Green Eyes’ hair had been combed down in front of one side of her face.  A curtain of hair so pale it was almost transparent.

She smiled up at me, but it was a little lopsided.

You’re not supposed to be this positive after we’ve both been maimed, I thought.

It took us a moment to find our stride, me supported by two others.

“Dragons are so like they are in video games,” Evan said.

“No,” Tiff said.  “Um, in video games, a guy with a sword can kill a dragon.  Only way that happens here is if a god intervenes, or you’re drawing on some similar degree of power.”

“We’ve got an in with gods, right?

“Not unless someone wants to hike back to the house,” Peter said.

“Not it,” Roxanne said.

“Not it,” Peter responded, without missing a beat.

“None of us are hiking back right now,” I said.

“You definitely aren’t,” Evan said.  “You’ve only got one leg.”

“Yes, Evan.  Thank you Evan, for that,” I said.  “Tiff, you know something about dragons?”

“A little bit.  They were a side note in something else I was researching for Rose.  About vestiges, and spirits.  For Evan, and for you two.”

“Explain.”

“Dragons are… they’re sometimes called snags, or recursive loops, or um, shoot, can’t remember the word.”

“Problems,” Peter said.  “Problematic.”

“Um.  Sure.  Most are.  Some think dragons are what happens when something feeds into itself.  Every dragon is different, and some are more elemental, or mostly elemental, or spirit, or deific.  Something like a lesser god that worships itself, or an elemental that takes in more than it puts out.  They happen only when the stars align right, and attempts to produce them tends to turn out…”

“Problems,” Peter said, again.  “That’s what this stuff mostly boils down to, right?”

“Um.  Not exactly, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but-”

“I’m right.”

“Yeah,” Tiff said.

“Yeah,” Peter said.

“It went wrong.  So they’re rare and they’re unique and they tend to be feral, not always reptilian, but there’s something to be said for memory and the world remembering the dinosaurs or whatever, so it’s more common, as a given snarl needs to find a reference point, but-”

“How do we stop them?” I interrupted.

“Uh.  You don’t.  Or you don’t easily stop them.”

There was a screech, close by enough that we nearly broke stride and fell, as a group.

Just on the other side of a nearby building.

Tiff’s voice dropped a notch in volume.  “Most Others, they have weak points.  As Blake just evidenced.  He wasn’t even directly hit, and we nearly lost him.  Faerie, you hit them with something  crude, and they can’t deal, on a lot of levels.  Goblins, you hit them with refinement, with cunning ideas and passive means.  But Dragons are different.  Like I said they’re a snarl.”

“Clarify,” I said.  I realized how tense I was, after what had nearly happened to Green Eyes, and added, “Please.”

“There’s no polar opposite.  Most are amalgams of elemental and spirit and animal and nightmares, on top of whatever else.  You have to beat them at their own game.  You get the dragons that are all poison, to the point that one drop of venom can clear out a lake.  Then you have to just out-poison them.  You get the dragons in some areas of the East that are more spirit and elemental, like dragons of the mountains and… it’s like you have to destroy a mountain by hitting it with a bigger mountain.”

“How do you-” I started.  “Nevermind.  You’re saying the only way to kill ol’ firebreath there is hotter fire?”

“No,” she said.  Her voice dropped to be even quieter, as we approached the end of the street.  “There’s another way.  Most are violent, killing machines.  So… if you’re brave enough, you can try the conventional means.  Facing them in battle.  Eventually someone succeeds.  Usually with the backing of some major power.  Usually a god.  Which makes them rare.”

“We totally have a god,” Evan said, “don’t we?”

“Fuck,” I said.  “What about giants?”

“A hell of a lot simpler,” Tiff said.  “Um.  Secluded.  Big.”

“Basically,” the satyr said.

“They still bleed, though?” I asked.

“They’re endangered,” the maenad told me.  “Can’t breed, no gods old or rough-edged enough still around to make more.  Except maybe where you’re from, but any that crop up there still aren’t going to be adventurous enough to move.  Everyone knows it isn’t right to touch a giant.  Or they should know.”

“And if that giant over there comes after us?” I asked.

“Metaphor,” the maenad said.  “One of the last elephants in the world charges you, your life is obviously on the line.  You going to shoot it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I get your point.  I do it, it’s technically okay, but an awful lot of people aren’t going to see things technically.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Got it,” I said.  “Question: how the hell did Johannes get these things, and-”

There was a distant yowl.

Suggesting that we weren’t just dealing with a giant and a dragon.

“-and why are they so damn complicated?”

“Everything’s complicated,” Peter said.  “And-”

“Problematic,” Evan joined in, as Peter finished the sentence.

“Johannes has them because he offers a sanctuary,” the maenad said.  “Just like our High Priest does for us, his followers, except Johannes does it for anything that’s willing to play by the rules.  The giants have enemies, just like they have advocates, and even if the advocates vastly outnumber the enemies, there’s people who come after them, and Johannes gives them one more hiding spot, just like this.  The dragon, that’s different.”

“It’s not smart,” Tiff said.  “It’s an animal, almost.”

“Does this animal have a tamer?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Tiff said.

“That’s something, then,” I said.  “But I suspect Johannes will learn from Sandra’s mistake.  He’s not going to expose his throat to any attacks.  Unless we make him…”

I could hear a low rumble.  Close by.

“…Somehow,” I finished, my voice dropping low.

I was in pieces.  I couldn’t fight.

The dragon was close.

It couldn’t be simple.

We collectively drew back as the dragon advanced into an intersection.  Brushing up against an older pickup, the great scaled beast shifted the vehicle out of its parking spot, sending it out into the middle of the road, bumper largely scraped off.

The damn thing looked like it could take on four modern tanks and win.

A hand gripped the back of Peter’s shirt, pulling him back, and me with him.

The satyr.

He raised a finger to his mouth.

The giant, as it turned out, was quiet.  It moved at a plodding pace, but I suspected that in a long-distance race, it would beat a running human being by virtue of sheer stride and endless stamina.

Seven or eight seconds passed as it approached our general position, and then it exhaled, long and heavy.  Hot breath steamed and froze on the giant’s thick facial hair.  Its face looked to be carved out of rock.

There was a sound like a building settling as it turned its head one way, then the other.

Every movement was slow, calculated, as if he considered it all with great care, deciding each in advance, then carrying it out.

He stepped over the pickup, as if it were an afterthought, his head turning as he looked in the direction the dragon had gone, past the intersection one block over, and further down the street.

Bending down, he used one hand to seize the pickup truck the dragon had grazed, and moved it back into position.

He remained where he was, bent over, one hand still on the truck.

I couldn’t make out his face.  Only the back of him, one leg, and a kilt of what looked to be cow hides, threaded into a continuous garment with thongs as thick around as my remaining arm.

I saw his leg tense.

“Balls,” Peter said.

“I don’t see-” Evan started.

“Go!”  I said.

One slow, continuous motion.  Turning counterclockwise, pickup truck still in hand, the other hand settling on the roof of a building for stability.

The giant hurled the pickup truck at us underhand, casting it down the length of the one-way street we were on.

Roxanne shrieked.

The truck was still airborne when she’d finished.  The vehicle hit ground, not far behind us, flipping end over end, unpredictable-

The satyr went over it, as it rolled, leaping.  Green Eyes, low to the ground, simply flopped over, dodging it as it scraped past.  The maenad tackled Tiff and hauled her out of the way.  Peter, overburdened, trying to move too fast, fell, taking me with him.

The truck rolled past.

The faceless woman, further ahead, turned just in time to meet it, as it skidded on its roof, already losing momentum.  She stumbled back, trying to put her hands out to stop it, and then fell.  A moment later, she stood and dusted herself off.

The giant loomed at the far end of the street.

“Thu!” the giant called out, his voice echoing much as the bell had.

“Fee fi fo fum,” Peter muttered.

Given free reign, causing devastation that was harder to explain as people woke up.  How would the locals process it all?  The fire, the destroyed vehicles and city property?

War?  Call it an airstrike in the night?  Something else?

They’d leave, the town would plummet into the abyss, and the giant and dragon…

Well, I supposed they were tough enough to work their way free.  Probably.

The dragon reappeared.  Perching on a rooftop, a matter of meters from the giant.

The giant reached up, and dug thick fingers into the dragon’s loose-fitting hide.

“That explains that,” I said.  “The dragon’s master.”

“Almost obvious in retrospect,” Peter said.

“Ro!” the giant howled the word.

Attack.

The dragon, still perched on the rooftop, began drooling flame.

I glanced back at the alleyway that still burned.  The fire and smoke had frozen in time.  The effect reasserting itself.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” Peter said.  “Well put.”

I started trying to move, but it was slow.

Peter, in turn, tried to help me stand, but once it was achieved, slower still.  He could help me, but working on his own he couldn’t help me and move quick.

The dragon breathed.

A gobbet of flamestuff.  It moved in an arc, a stream and a spatter trailing behind.  A few dots of fire landed on the giant’s shoulder, and were brushed off.  The fire slammed into the ground in the center of all of us, liquid sloshing out diagonally across the breadth of the street, sidewalk to sidewalk, before colliding with a parked car.  Effectively cutting us off from one another.

“I need wood,” I said, as the flames embraced the parked car.  “I need a body.”

“I would love for you to have a body,” Peter said.  “Would love for me to have a body when all of this is over, too.  My priority, as it happens.  No offense.”

“None taken,” I said.

The dragon leaped.

It didn’t fly so much as it glided.  It used the hot air from the fire for just a little extra lift, but it was too heavy to truly rise with the hot air, as vast as its wingspan was.  Too dense.

It landed on the parked car, and the burning mucus splattered everywhere.

Drooling onto the blazing vehicle, it clawed at the metal, sending flaming scraps in the general direction of Tiff, Roxanne, and the maenad.  The group scattered.

I swear the dragon smiled as it lunged forward.

The maenad broke a store display window just in time for the girls to disappear inside.

The dragon began to gather fire in its mouth to spit again.  I could only hear the distant shouts.

“Leave me,” I said.  “Run.  Take cover.”

Peter dropped me, right in the middle of the street.  He ran.

This is the power Johannes can bring to bear? I wondered.

I twisted around.  One intact leg, one mostly intact arm.

I headed for the nearest store.  Outdoor clothing.  Boots.  I traveled maybe two miles an hour, doing it.

A glacially slow pace, as I was out in the open.  In full view of the giant.  The dragon only just happened to be after moving prey.

Reach forward, pull myself forward another foot or two, toe digging in snow and ice for traction to push myself forward, using my broken hand, or the hard edge of my elbow.  Where the ice was beneath me, it was possible to slide forward, harder to find traction.  Where it was road and snow, the opposite was true.  Never easy.

Reach forward…

The giant lurched forward.  Dark eyes larger than I was now focused on me.

I continued moving, because there was little else I could do.  Peter was already long gone.

Evan distracted the giant.  Flying past, right at eye level.

Again, he did it.

Then he backed off.  He was learning.  Moving over to help the others with the dragon again.

The satyr had a weapon out, and whipped a stone at the giant.  Barely a tap, but it got a moment’s attention, and a moment was apparently a meaningful amount of time to a giant, as ponderous and decisive as the creature was.

I reached the base of the store display, on the far side of the street, and I stabbed the window with the Hyena.

Glass broke, raining down around me.

The giant approached, covering more distance than I had with half a stride.  It bent down.

I crawled through, over broken glass, and into the store.  I tumbled down to the base of the display.

The hand reached through, breaking the display wider.  Fingers scraped.

They touched me, grazed me, and destroyed my already armless shoulder further.  But I was just another piece of wood.

Surrounded with broken wood, dead wood, if not branches, I began putting myself in order.  One splinter in my hand, just to have something approximating a thumb, then a larger piece of wood, a peg leg.

From there, I could move.  I could hobble.

Through the store, out the emergency exit at the side.

Half a block down, to the downtown street.  Old fashioned buildings for stores.  Trees at set distances, leaves gone for the winter.

At the base, broken branches.

Knowing every second counted, I began putting myself together.

Leg first, in case the giant spotted me.

Then…

I thought of the vision the abyss had given me.  A view of my possible future.

I thought of how the dragon had flown.

Not arms.  Wings.

I set to building.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Sine Die 14.4

I’d committed to walking the line between human and Other.  If I felt like wings were somehow more of an appeal to my human side, despite all conflicting evidence, was that a bad sign?

I wasn’t an artist.  I wanted to be, but my memories of trying were ones of frustration.  Of false starts and disappointment and of putting two elements together and getting something other than what I’d wanted.  Alexis had turned flaws into features, and was adept at working with the mistakes of others, doing her thing with the tattoos.  Tiff, going by what I’d seen, worked in a sketchier style.  Ty, well, he made a lot of mistakes to start with, but in all the time that I’d worked on…

On painting?

I couldn’t remember what I’d actually done.

Which said a lot.  As I thought on it, I wasn’t sure I’d ever been able to remember exactly what projects I’d attempted and failed.  There was only my crude exercise in drawing the circles around the demon Ur.  Fragments here and there.

That, in turn, led me to the understanding that the art wasn’t mine.  I paused for a moment, hands freezing midway through my work.  A quiet horror, almost a sense of betrayal, but far from specific, hard to place, in terms of blame.

Had Rose experienced moments like this?  She’d known what we were for some time now.  Had she dwelt on it?  Those elements that were missing?

That dawning realization that some of the most intense, heartbreaking moments of frustration were because the other person had something we needed?

Friends.  The idea hit me.

For Rose, quite possibly, it was friends.  When she had failed to form bonds to the others, the same natural camaraderie, did she think of me?

I’d been given the desire to create, but left without the ability.  Rose had that ability.  I had little doubt.  Too useful to a potential practitioner.

The other things were things I could understand.  But this?  This felt like a slap in the face.  The cold stir of anger inside me prompted me to resume the work.  That felt more Other than human.

Or maybe it just felt more like the me I didn’t want to become.

The branches reached out and seized that which was offered, as if I were patching up a part of me that simply needed to be healed.  Wings that I’d been missing for a long time.  They made the wings twisted, gnarled.

Very quickly, I realized that it was lopsided.  I had only one arm, and the branches didn’t all match.  The wing on my left seized the stump, replacing the arm.  I panicked momentarily, trying to undo the process, but time I spent on trying to pry branches back and put the basic constructions in place for an arm gave the rest of the wings more time to develop on their own.  The branches rearranged, drew the broken extra rib from my chest to give structure and shore up areas I’d yet to find a branch for.

If I’d been an artist like Tiff or Ty or Alexis or Joel or Joseph, maybe I could have worked with it.  Tending to a garden that grew nearly as fast as I could cut, or position.  I could have worked with mistakes, developed them.

I could have made it elegant, made it fit right.

I’d studied birds at one point.  Birds had evolved from land creatures, and the first thing one had to do when understanding wings was to recognize them as fundamentally similar to arms.

The upper arm, the humerus of my wing, extending out from the gnarled spot on my back, it was thin.  Lacking support.  The elbow joint too small, weak.  The biggest problem, considering it was what the entire fucking wing depended on.  I tried to add more to it, a larger branch along the humerus, the broken end at the elbow, where I needed the joint more fleshed out.  Where, hopefully, the splinters might form the necessary elements of the joint.

Twists of wood reached out, fingers like roots or roots like fingers, and gripped the larger branch, found weak points, and splintered it.  Took it to pieces.  Carried the pieces down, like so many wriggling worms, one catching the splinters of wood as another let them fall.  Building the longer fingers I hadn’t wanted to build.  A bat’s wings, not a bird’s.

The horror I experienced was a kind I was getting a hell of a lot more familiar with, since realizing I was only a vestige, a fraction of a person.  I wasn’t, it seemed, in control of my own body.

Fuck that, I thought.

I grabbed at one bit of wood and I wrested it free from the little fingers of wood that were grasping at it, fitting it into another position.  Too little.

I used the Hyena, and I cut away at one of the fingers of wood, transplanting it up at the upper arm and elbow, where things were too thin to support anything.

Fingers began clawing at it.  The same thing as before.  Digging into the joints that had formed, breaking it down, trying to break up the larger pieces to create splinters.

I raked at the little roots and hooks of wood with the Hyena, shaving them off the arm.

My entire body, all at once, writhed.  Every branch bending, contracting, shifting position, scraping against bone.

I dropped to my one good knee.  The makeshift peg-leg scraped against sidewalk, but failed to find traction.  The strength went out of my hand, and the Hyena, staying for a moment due to the spikes that stuck through my hand, dropped to the sidewalk.

I grunted, experiencing something that quite probably would have been pain, if I still had proper nerves.

I was breathing heavily, though I didn’t need to breathe in the first place.  My eyes were open, staring at the ground, littered with smaller bits of branches I’d broken off and planned to use after.  I didn’t dare look to see what was happening.

Fuck it.  Fuck you, I thought.  Don’t you dare take this away from me.

Let me fly, damn it.  Don’t taunt me with broken wings.

To show me a vision where I had wings, to lead me to the point of tearing myself apart, replacing an arm, gouging at my humanity, then take it all away?

Even here, the Abyss had a hold on me.  Even here, it could effectively destroy me.  If it wanted to hit me where it hurt, to churn on as an endless machine of entropy, this was the way to do it.

“Show me you’re about change, not annihilation,” I muttered.  “Let me change.  Help me change.”

I felt the back of my neck crawl.

The crawling reached around to the corners of my jaw, then up to my temple, and across my cheeks.

I reached up to touch it.

Splinters, small fingers, hooks.  Scraping at my fingertips, gouging.

Slowly reaching for my eyes, reaching for my remaining flesh.

Tiny, like the legs of spiders, pincers, fish hooks, they stabbed and set themselves into the flesh that remained, around my mouth, near my eyes, at my forehead.

Then they stopped.  Waited.

Asking.  Offering.  A deal with the devil, metaphorically speaking.

Give up your face if you truly want wings.

Give up your eyes.

I could hear the dragon screech, not all that far away.

This crisis I faced was removed from a very large, very real crisis that threatened people and Others I cared a great deal about.

Do it, and you can fly.  Fly, and you might be able to do something to save them.

A question and an offer that did nothing to resolve the debate about whether the Abyss wanted ruin or change.  Or if there was even a difference between the two things.

Lose-lose.

Except I wasn’t there.  The Abyss might have had a hold on me, but I was still free.  I was a messenger, and I brought that ruin and change by nature.

“No,” I said.  “No.  You’re going to give me the damn wings, and you’re going to leave my damn face alone.  You’re going to do it, because I’m going to give you my word.  I’ll help the Abyss in a way that counts.  I’ll give you your damn meal, and it’ll be better than what you’d get by taking a piece out of me.”

I could hear the giant intone another monosyllabic word, from two or so city blocks away.  He didn’t shout, but he might as well have, given how far the sound carried.  The dragon screeched in response.  I heard the eruption of flame.

The wooden bits that had their hooks in my flesh released their hold.

Again, the wood shifted and reorganized.  Wood at the underdeveloped humerus was moved elsewhere, thinning out the long upper ‘arm’ of the wing.  The weak elbow joint got weaker.

I had the wings, but no feathers, no flesh to stretch between the fingers.

Still on my knees, eyes still on the scattered twigs and bits of wood, I reached for the Hyena.

I unbound the chain and barbed wire, and wound it around my waist and hips instead, a too-wide belt.  When that was done, I cut at the remains of my sweatshirt’s sleeve, where it was hampering the growth of the larger of the two wings.

No… the wings weren’t different in size.  There was a massive wingspan, the individual bones long, with the individual branches almost braided together, winding together like old roots.

The problem was the humerus, the elbow.  Too thin, too weak.  It threatened to snap from the weight of the wing alone, and I still lacked anything to tie the wing together.

“Come on,” I said.  “Come on, come on.”

The wood at the elbow peeled.  Knots grew, then fell out.

I sheathed the Hyena and reached out, trying to examine it, but the humerus was too long.  I had to stretch my arm out to the full length.

My thumb found one knothole, my index finger found another.

The knot that formed the wing joint at my back shifted, moving closer to the shoulder.  The humerus fit snug against my own arm, with only the sweatshirt in the way.

Reluctantly, I removed my hand and cut at that sleeve as well.

The branches at my back clawed the remainder of the sweatshirt to pieces.  Scraps.

The scraps, in turn, were carried off, dragged to their individual stations.  Stretched.  The membrane of the wings.  As the individual branches settled into position, they reinforced the wings.  Almost forming musculature.

I sheathed the Hyena yet again, and grabbed at the elbow joint to help hold up the wing before the added weight could break it.  Fingers into the knotholes.

Wood creaked, snapped, and strained as I raised the full wing.  Longer than I was tall.  The fabric had holes in it, and thin branches crawled through it like worms, veins, or vines, to spread out and shore it up.

I flapped, experimentally.

It wasn’t enough to lift me up.

Bat wings, not bird wings.

I couldn’t take off.  Couldn’t fly.  The twigs I’d been staring at on the ground were gathering at my feet.  Giving more substance to my peg leg, so it was more of an actual leg.

I could almost imagine the Abyss mocking me, making the twigs give me the foot I needed as I ran, my wings extended behind me, fingers close together, to reduce drag.

I was still light.  Almost lighter, given how the individual components of my body had rearranged.  I hadn’t added that much material to myself.  It was very possible the wings were fragile.

My body continued changing, rearranging, even as I ran.  Finding a better configuration, strengthening my new foot.

Settling.

If I’d accepted the seal of Solomon, where would I stand now?  Would this be possible?  Would I have needed to go this far, or would I have proven more durable?

I could see the scene.  The giant was in the middle of it all, standing in flames, while the dragon perched on a building just behind it, looking down.

Flames all over the street had frozen in place.  Snow had been stirred by the dragon’s flight and giant’s movement, given permission to fall, until it froze again, and there was a slight haze at the street, from the smoke and snow that had settled further down.

Every movement stirred time back into action.  It made smaller actions more obvious, in a roundabout way.  Everyone left a trail for others to follow.

I could see where others hid.  Ground level, inside buildings and shops.

It wasn’t anything that would help.  Not like this.  We’d run out of time.

The moment of truth.  Borrowing a technique from the dragon.  I ran, leaping onto the trunk of a car that had been knocked further into the street, then set foot on the roof of the car.

I leaped, wings extended, and flapped, bringing the wings down hard.

The fire was stirred into life.  Hot air reached me, rising beneath the wings.

I didn’t erupt into flame, which was fantastic.

I didn’t plummet into the fire, either.

The problem was with building momentum.  My wings carried me forward, but they didn’t carry me higher.  I had to flap again to bring the fire to life, to stir the air into action once again beneath my wings.

If anything, I was losing height, inch by inch.  Failing to rise, even with the momentary benefits of each wave of hot air.

I tested my ability to turn, fractional movements of my arms.  Being able to stay very still was a benefit.

Testing my ability to fly, or to glide, while literally above a trail of fire was perhaps not my smartest move, but I didn’t have any fast routes to high places.  Elevators wouldn’t work with time stopped.

I heard the sound of crumbling masonry.  Looking to the source of the sound, I saw that the dragon had noticed me, and now clutched the wall, looking down, tensing muscles.

The act of looking very nearly made me tilt off course, off onto pavement that was spread with snow, ice, and little dots of flame where flaming spittle had touched it.  I righted myself, flapped, struggled.

I was still losing altitude, perilously close to actually touching the flames, I looked ahead.  Traced the paths the flame painted.

More fire was better.  It meant more heat, more air rising.

If I could fly over it, rather than straight into it.

The most fire, as it happened, was beneath and around the giant’s feet.

It posed a problem of sorts.  Go for it, and risk being crushed even if I had to throw myself to one side to avoid the flames, or give up on this attempted flight?

I went for it.  My wings moved, wood creaked and threatened to snap altogether, and it got worse as the warmth of the fires I was stoking into life made my body dry out.

The dragon leaped down, wings spread.

The giant lowered his chin to look down at me, ice cracking and falling from where it had frozen in clumps at his beard.

In the time it took to fall the two and a half stories to the fire, I almost managed to reach his foot.

The fire blazed.  Already active, without need for a beat of wings to animate it, the hot air waiting.

The dragon hit ground, close, and the impact stirred air.  Air, in turn, caught my wing, and knocked me off course.  Away from the heat and upward draft.

Acting on instinct, I changed course, aiming for the fire at the giant’s heel, so the leg would be between me and the giant.  In the doing, I very nearly sailed headlong into fire.

A change in the angle of wings, flapping-

Altitude.  Ten feet, twelve, fifteen.

I stalled.  I wasn’t an expert in flying.  There was only instinct, luck, and a scarce bit of know-how.  The angle was wrong, the hot air sliced past my wings instead of catching them, and I paused, riding the residual current.  All at once, I dropped, straight for the flames.

I stuck out one leg, dragging my foot against the giant’s leg, spread my wings once again, and tried to catch the fire.

Still sailing down toward it, albeit at an angle, now.

Another shift of angle.  Wings spread until the joints almost hurt.

I caught the hot air once more, just as I threatened to run out of fire, sailing past the giant and toward a dim, cold section of street.

I turned, instead, one wing dipping low, a perilous one foot away from dancing tongues of flame.

Small grace that the wingtip there was bone, not wood.

I turned, I stopped descending, angled each wing, and rose in a lazy spiral, around the giant’s leg.

I was graced with a glimpse of the bristling dragon, mouth wide, teeth on display, fire leaking at the corners of its mouth.

I was forced to close my wings as I passed between the giant’s thighs, back brushing the bottommost section of his sewn-hide kilt, and flapped more to try and hold on to my altitude after.

The dragon watched.  Aware, tensing to lunge.

The giant turned, and I was at the same height as his hand, where it rested just beside his thigh.

Unable to rise.  Dragon waiting to leap at me and snap me out of the air if I dropped.

Something told me I wouldn’t be able to simply dodge it by changing course.

I could only hold position, waiting and watching.

The giant’s hand came around.  A little bigger up close than I might have anticipated, cupped and ready to simply catch me.

I flapped again, pushing myself back, away.

And a little bird rose up, spiraling up around and past me as I’d spiraled up and past the giant’s legs.  Giving me a push.

The hand passed beneath me.

I flapped, Evan flew around me.

I rose, scaling higher, past the giant’s elbow, shoulder, and then past his head.

One large, dark eye peered at me, following me as I ascended.

“Hahahahaha,” Evan cheered. “Yes!”

The giant, below us, dropped to one knee.  The movement down into the fire sent more air up.  I rose further.

“Awesome awesome awesome!”  Evan cried out.

My eyes were on the pair below.

The giant picked up the dragon.  Large as the giant was, he still needed to get both arms beneath the dragon to raise it up, cradling it.

It snapped at him, and he batted at its head with the fingers of one hand in rebuke, two fingers sealing the dragon’s mouth shut.

Evan’s movements, flying around me, passing beneath me, gave me a push here and there to stay aloft.

Can’t fly without help, I thought.

The thought of help made me think of the others.  I could see their hiding spaces.  The areas the dragon had attacked.  The broken shop windows, the shattered doorways.

A lot of damage done, individual elements adding up to make it that much more likely that people would ‘what the fuck’ out of Jacob’s Bell, the moment they woke up.

Giving reality less traction.  A bit of a story, and the place would disappear into a sinkhole, or something.  The news might not cover it, and Jacob’s Bell would be lost.  The records of it existing simply finding their way into dusty corners and wastebins.

But that wasn’t my focus, exactly.  My focus was on the dragon, and the sheer power it wielded.

I needed to stop it.

A sparrow and a wooden man with wings fighting a duo that had no doubt been together for a very long time.

“Yes, yes, yes!  Hahahaha!  Love the wings!  Best call you’ve ever made!”

“Ho!”  The giant proclaimed.

Firmly gripping the dragon, he hefted the Other.  Legs straightening, arms going overhead, the giant hurled the reptilian beast skyward.

I closed the fingers of my wings, but didn’t draw them close to my body.  I pulled my fingers free of the elbow, and did what I could to hold the wings in position.  I drew the Hyena as I dropped, straight for the dragon, the giant, and the flames.

“Worst call!”  Evan shouted, from his position far above me.  “This is worst call!”

It was a fall, or a dive, or both, or neither.

Straight for our opposition.

For a dragon the size of a one-car garage.

It bared its teeth.  Ignited spittle filled the air behind it.

Head arched back, not to spit, but as part of a greater movement.

Wings spreading, to guide it, to slow it’s ascent and its fall both.  Foreclaws raised.

Between the claws at my five and seven o’clock, and the fanged mouth at my twelve, I didn’t have much room to escape.

I ignored the instincts that told me to go for the spread wings that spread out to fill the rest of the ‘clock’ between twelve and five, and twelve and six.  Too easy.

I unfurled my wings, grabbing at the weaker humerus with the hand that still held the Hyena, letting the spikes on the handle snag at the wood and give me traction, helping to anchor the hand in place.

With the help of the wings, I changed direction.  Heading for the five o’clock position, on this vast span of death and scale and destruction that had unfolded beneath me.  For the claw.

When I’d nearly reached the claw, I shifted direction.  Re-angled my wings, hauling the right one to one side, a sharp turn.

My leg got caught.  The tip of one claw touching me at the knee.  Tearing right through, forcing another swift change in direction, one I hadn’t planned so much.

Tumbling head over heels, trying to get my wing in position, I passed the dragon.

I’d hoped to veer for the wing membrane, to slice it and leave the dragon immobile.

Now there was only the giant and fire below me.

I saw all of the typical weak points writ large.  Eye, throat, the bulging vein along one arm, that might have been an artery.  Most parts protected by skin that might have been as thick as my forearm was long.  Thicker than the Hyena was, at any rate.

Touch a giant and people will come after you, I thought.

I focused on orienting myself, on stopping myself from falling, getting to the point where I was gliding again.

I didn’t have time to sheath the Hyena.

I dropped it, and seized the wing again.  Fingers became part of the elbow joint once more, and my arm reinforced the wing.

The Hyena dropped, sailing down.

It landed point-first at the point where the giant’s hairline, at the very top of his forehead, sinking as deep as the now nonexistent hilt.

Now able to use both wings to the fullest, I controlled my descent, slowed it.

Removing my hand and folding my wings in one singular motion, I seized the handle of the Hyena.  Even my weight wasn’t enough to drag the blade through the great Other’s forehead.

It remained where it was, and I remained where I was, one hand on the blade, intact foot braced on the forehead, wings folded and head hanging.

To either side of me, the giant’s arms slowly rose.

Not in response to me.  Cupping his hands.

“What in the what are you doing!?” Evan shouted.

I looked up at him, just now arresting the dive he’d made to follow me.

“Help,” I said.

It took me two tugs, but I pulled the Hyena free.

“With!?” Evan said.

I worried that my instincts were wrong, or that they were right, but the need for a second tug had cost me time.  That I wouldn’t be able to manage even if I did everything right.

Then I saw the others.  Running westwards.

With that, I knew that it couldn’t be too bad.

Even if I failed, they’d manage.

The Hyena came free of the giant’s forehead, slick with blood.

All in one motion.  Sheathing the Hyena, seizing the wing.  My legs pushed off and away from the giant.  My body twisting so my wings could go out to either side, flapping while level with the ground.

Evan caught me, gave me more height, to make up for the lack of momentum.

With the height, I could swoop.

“Oh,” Evan said.  “Oh bananas!”

The dragon descended, just in front of us.

Landing in the giant’s cupped hands.  Foreclaws extended to grip the giant’s forearms.

It was heavy.  Even with the difference in size, and the giant’s monumental strength, it wasn’t easy for the giant to hold the beast’s weight.

Arms dropped with the weight, as the giant adjusted.  The impact stirred the air, and I veered to one side.

A sharper swoop.  Timed so the dragon was only just landing, still adjusting.

Flame boiled in its mouth.  The mouth, in turn, yawned open.

I dove straight for the thing, aiming for the point just over its shoulder.

Teeth snapped shut, a few feet from me, missing thanks to the awkward position, the bob of the giant’s hands.

Flecks of dragon’s fire showered the air.

I flew through the flames, over the dragon’s shoulder, and folded my wings.

It wasn’t the Hyena, though I didn’t deny that the blade might have played a part, sheathed in the coil of goblin chain around my waist.  But the chain had barbed wire, there were sharper elements to it, and I had momentum.  I scraped along the length of the softest, most vulnerable area on the dragon that I’d been able to make out, the membrane of the wing.

I spread my wings, catching myself, and I flew, away and toward the others, as the dragon reared back, one wing shaking violently, balance lost.

The giant caught it.  Held it, drawing it closer.

I thought he might have rebuked it for snapping once more, as Evan and I flew away.

Neither giant nor dragon followed.

Winning wasn’t in the cards, in this particular fight.  But a one-for-one, injury-for-injury, wasn’t so bad.

“Oh man,” I could hear Evan, as he kept me aloft.  “Oh man, it’s going to be so hard to keep you alive, now!”

I shut my eyes, feeling the cold air rush past me, even through me, through the holes in my body.  The grit in my hair broke off and flicked against my wings, and extra bits of wood that had taken too much abuse were now breaking away.

I could feel the strain in my shoulder and elbow.

I couldn’t fly forever.  I could barely fly at all without Evan’s help.

I eyed the group below, and I knew I’d have to land.  Patch myself together.

But, even if it was assisted, even if it wasn’t perfect, I allowed myself to fly just a little longer.  If nothing else, it would help with navigating the mess of trees that lay before us.

Off to the witch’s hut, I thought.

Trying not to think about what she might have set up to protect herself, when things were as bad as they were in Jacob’s Bell.

Sine Die 14.5

“There,” Evan said.

He flew over and beneath me, until he was just beneath my chin.  He angled himself differently, and I followed.  I could look straight between his wings and follow the line of his back and beak to the hag’s place.

I peered forward, but I only saw trees and shadow.  My eyelashes were frozen, and I didn’t have the hands with which to rub at them.

“I’ve been over here, but I haven’t visited her,” Evan said.  “Get too close and you run into hawks and other things in the trees.  Apparently there are some huge spiderwebs in the summer.  Big enough to catch a sparrow or a cat.  Aaaand now that I say it out loud, I’m pretty sure they were making fun of me.”

“Who?”  I asked.  I had to speak louder to be heard, even with proximity.  I wasn’t sure if Evan had the same issue with the wind rushing past his ears.

“The locals!” he said, matching my volume.  “Lesser spirits and junk!  Like those two cats at the Behaimses place.  I’ve been busy, trying to figure out what’s what and what’s up.  Only so much you can find out while flying around, you know?”

“Yeah.”

We were close enough that I thought I could make out the building.  There were no lights on, so to speak.  There was smoke coming from the chimney, but the branches of the trees seemed to catch the smoke, and keep it from reaching the sky.

It wasn’t frozen in time.  Were we approaching the point where we were outside of the town?

Or was she there, stoking the fire, keeping it active by being active?

“It’s like the movies.  You got the awesome badass cop, that’s me, here, and he has to fork over the dough to get the deets, right?  Except I’m giving real dough, or french fries, or whatever.  Token worship or sustenance.  And they fib to me?  Jerks!”

“I wouldn’t rule out anything,” I said.

“We’re getting close,” he said.  “Might want to go lower.”

“Lower?”

But he was already descending.  The air ran past him and off him like he was much larger, buoying me up, but with him disappearing, I naturally lost altitude.  I didn’t flap to stay up, but dove down just a bit, following.

“Closer, closer…” Evan said.

“To?” I asked.

A shrill cry cut through the air.

Dark forms lifted from the woods.

“That,” Evan said.  “Hawks, I think.”

“That wasn’t a hawk cry.”

“You’re such a bird nerd!”

“It wasn’t,” I said.

“Okay, well, whatever they are, they pop up whenever you fly too close.”

I could count twelve, and my vision wasn’t that good in the dark.  I could only guess at how many there were total.

Croaking bird calls.  Crows, too?

I could make out distinct silhouettes beneath us.  Dark winged shapes rising from the woods.  They didn’t flap, but kept their wings spread, gradually rising, much as I was gradually dropping.

“Turkey vultures,” I said.  “Turkey vultures and crows.”

“Vultures?  Okay, whatever.  They’ve come after me a few times.  Sucks.  Sucks more if I’m so high up I can’t dodge through trees.  But I have you, now.”

“Right,” I said.  I carefully looked back and down, in the direction of the others.

“Going to be freaking awesome to have someone to fly with,” he said.  “Someone to keep the monsters off my back.  I mean, what’s the worst they can throw at us?  You beat a dragon!”

“I didn’t beat it,” I said.  “I grazed it.  A light scrape on the wing, to discourage, if nothing else.  It might have come after us, if the giant had let it.”

“Uh uh uh!”  Evan said, “Theatrics!  Words are important!  You beat a dragon!  And now-”

More buzzard cries joined the others.  Shrill, piercing.  I couldn’t blame Evan for likening them to hawk cries.

With every few seconds, the number of cries increased in number.

“Okay,” Evan said.  “Lots of them.”

There was practice involved here.  Demesne, perhaps, or whatever the old woman did that fell in that ballpark.

I dropped lower, while Evan stayed just beneath me, shielded from above by my size, wingspan, and mass.

The cries of birds were picking up, one starting before the last had finished its croak or shrill scream.

The first ones to take to the air were now starting to get closer to us.

“Turning back,” I warned him, as I dipped my left wing lower.  “Left turn.”

“Roger roger.”

Wouldn’t do to turn and leave Evan to continue soaring forward, without help or protection.

By the time I’d pulled a u-turn, the birds were at eye level with me.  Crows flapped, while the vultures simply kept their wings spread.  Not coming straight at me, but still rising.  Each turkey vulture had a featherless head.  It looked like their heads had been skinned alive.  Red, grisly, without much flesh stretched over the bone.

“Eugh,” Evan said.

An entirely different problem from the dragon, this.

Evan seemed far more confident in my ability to handle this problem than I was.

He hadn’t been there when I’d been swarmed by Pauz’s collected animals.

Being swarmed was bad.  Being swarmed while still in the air was worse.

“Back to the others,” was all I said.

It took about a minute before the birds reached the right altitude.

They descended on me.  Five pounds each at most, they hit me in twos and threes.  Landing on me, or flying just over me and pecking, scratching, gouging.

“Fuck!” I spat out the word.

They picked at the fabric.

Attacking me like I’d attacked the dragon.

“Um,” Evan said.

One pecked at my leg.  I steered myself upward, ascending and slowing down at the same time, and kicked the bird before it could react.

There wasn’t much I could do about the others.

“Into the trees!” Evan said.

“Can you help me dodge?”

“I can try!”

I dove.  Evan shifted, swerved, and landed somewhere inside my chest cavity.

Who hadn’t dreamed of flying, once?  Peril aside, being able to just drop from seventy-five feet up in the air to the point where I was very nearly touching the ground?

Yes.

But that was peril aside.  Peril included?  Bittersweet.

“Flying here sucks!”  Evan cried out.

I quickly discovered why.  A clear path opened up, I took it, and found a copse of trees just in front of me.  A virtual wall.

A bird’s beak stabbed at my hairline, and came away with a chunk of flesh.

I angled myself to the left, aiming for a thicket of branches, and flew straight into it.

I paid for it in buckets, with the loss of balance and momentum, but wood stuck to my back and my wings, and the birds were scraped off.

A large snow-covered boulder seemed to rush at me, twice as fast as everything else.  An optical illusion, helped by the deeper shadows and layers of snow that suggested it was a part of the background.

Still off-balance, I was too slow to move entirely out of the way.  I felt my wing clip it, but only the tip broke away.

Birds descended from the thicker collections of branches, scattering snow and ice as they lunged, snapping beaks at me as we crossed paths.

Doing their best to go for the wings, and the eyes.

They almost bordered on the suicidal, as they collided with me in attempts to hit my wings or spear me through the face.  I had to twist my face away to save my right eye.  Each action I took and each collision served to put me even more off balance, costing me precious fractions of a second I needed to raise one wing, to flap, to descend.

I was supernaturally tough.  What might have happened if I were flesh?  If these beaks and talons were digging more than mere millimeters into my flesh?

Picked to pieces until I couldn’t fly anymore?

An area opened up.  I could make out shapes in the distance.

The others.

I headed toward them.

“No!” Evan cried out.

As fast as I’d turned their way, I steered clear.

Into branches, some as thick around as my wing was.  Some grew together, as if they’d meshed together, to better break my speed.

Around the time that the last of my forward momentum was gone, I folded my wings, and let the weight of my body carry me to the ground.  I dropped five feet, snagged on more branches, and stopped partway.

I moved my arm free of my wing, and the lack of support meant that the wing stopped holding me up.  I dropped the remainder of the way, landing knee-deep in snow.

Two seconds after I’d stopped, a buzzard came right for my face.  I caught it, holding it, with its wings pounding in my direction, talons scratching.

When I let go, it flew away.

“Yeah,” Evan said.  He climbed out of my chest cavity, “So… that happens.”

“Can’t fly and defend myself at the same time,” I said.

“You can, you just need practice.  Barrel roll roundhouse kicks, maybe.”

“I can’t do a roundhouse kick to start with.  Why would I be able to do one while flying?”

“You just need practice,” Evan said.  “You’re good at fighting.”

“I’m good at scrapping, if I’m good at anything,” I said.  “That’s not the same thing as fighting.”

I started picking my way through the snow on foot.

“Scrapping,” Evan said.

“Fighting when the chips are down.  Keep going when I’m missing an arm and a leg, when I’ve lost my self, or my enemies force me to relive my worst memories.  You were there for that last one, I know.”

“I was?”

I blinked.  “Yeah.  Sorry.  Forgot that just about everything prior to Rose taking over got erased.  Yeah, you helped me through it.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Evan said, with a kind of sage gravity, as if he knew what I was talking about.

“Why did you steer me clear of the others?”

“Trap,” Evan said.  “Definite trap.”

“Right.  What sort of trap?”

“Not sure.  But something felt wrong.”

“Well, keep an eye out,” I said.

“Will do.”

We headed to the others, moving around a collection of trees.  At a glance, they were ordinary evergreens.  When I examined them, or tried to figure out how to climb them, or move through them, I saw how dense they were.  The way branches crossed one another in twos and threes, the way that the openings between branches were never in the same place that the footing was solid.  Sloped rocks and dips in the snow that suggested small pits.

Then, again, the clearing.  The one I’d very nearly flown over.  Twenty feet across, maybe a hundred feet to reach the others.  Snow, flat but for the periodic animal track, blemished only by a small few fallen branches.

Hard to tell in the dark, if there was anything more going on.

The others were trudging through the snow.  I could hear them from here, their boots, hands, and legs tearing past the icy crust just on top of the fluffy white snow.  Peter, Roxanne, Tiff, the satyr, the maenad, and Green Eyes.

My eyes roved over the snowy expanse.

No clues.

If I were to go around, loop to the right of the impassable cluster of trees…

No.  It might well have been a dead end.

I looked the other way.  Moving across the clearing, perpendicular to the direction I’d need to go to meet up with the others, disappearing off to the left…

I was pretty sure that path fed back into the clearing.

Why here?

Evan had picked up on it in an instant.  Now that I wasn’t trying to fly, I was getting the same vibe.

Trap.

I raised a hand for others to stop.

They did.

Gloomy figures in darkness, they peered at me, cold and waiting.

My eyes roved over the snow.

Tracks.  Something small that might have been a rabbit, something slightly larger, like a fox or wolf…

And something larger.

I approached the other tracks.

Masked, well hidden under a fresh snowfall, but not quite right for deer.  Definitely not big enough for moose.  It wasn’t that I was any expert in this sort of thing, but the tracks were close together.

“What are you thinking?” Evan asked.

“Someone passed through here earlier tonight,” I said.

The tracks had been covered by a layer of snowfall.  They were now a slight trench, where the snow was fractionally lower.

I followed it.  Moving diagonally across the clearing.

The tracks stopped at a group of trees.  A rock jutted up.

I examined the surroundings.

No runes, no markings, no wires.

Evan peered down.

“The rock,” he said.

“Hm?”

“The rock.  Less snow on top.”

“Trees,” I said.  “Cover overhead.”

In the distance, Peter muttered something to the satyr that I couldn’t make out, and got a response.

“Hey!” Peter called out.  “I know you’re made of wood, but it’s cold!  Colder when we’re not moving!  Can we get a move on?”

“Compared to the lower branches?” Evan asked.  “Look.  There’s enough snow on that branch to bury me, but on top of the rock…”

Not much snow at all.

“Good eye,” I said.

“I know.”

I dusted snow off the rock, very carefully.

Again, no runes or ropes or wires.  A triangular rock.

Tall and triangular, shaped like a doorstop.

Was there passage here?

Or was the wedge serving another purpose?

I used one foot to push snow aside.

A lot of loose dirt had mixed in with the snow.

“Ah,” I said.

“Digging?” Evan asked.

“Moving the stone,” I said.

“Hello!?” Peter called out.

“Trap!” I replied.  “Back up!”

They did.  It took a good thirty seconds for them to trudge back through snow.

“More!” I said.

They backed up a little more.

I put my one hand on the tree, and gave it a light push.

With only that gentle pressure, something higher up cracked, something below cracked.

Snow broke free of the spell of frozen time.  An entire section of forest seemed to come to life in small ways, with drifting snow and movement from a faint wind.  The tree I’d touched broke free, tilting.  Ice and snow rained down on top of Evan and I as branches were torn from where ice had frozen them in place.

With the one tree came two others, like one domino hauling the rest behind it.  Dirt and snow were kicked up as roots pulled free of the earth, and with the housing lost, a fourth tree toppled.

Trees that had grown for more than a hundred years now fell.  Their branches were meager, and did nothing to slow the fall.

The landing broke two of the four trees right in the middle, the upper ends striking hills, the midsections bowing until they broke.  Where they touched the middle of the clearing, dirt, roots, and thin branches stuck out, kicked to life where they had been arranged in rows.

Part of the trap mechanism, buried just beneath the earth.

Three trees, falling, parallel with one another, across the middle of the clearing.

The fourth fell diagonally.  Poised to strike down anyone or anything fast enough to move clear of the initial deadfall.  A dead tree, the branches long since fallen or broken, reduced to spiky protrusions jutting out from the trunk.

The sound of splintering, shattering wood echoed through the crone’s glade.

Had we been approaching from the other direction, we wouldn’t have seen the track, I wasn’t sure we would have escaped.

Not all of us.  Maybe I would have, with Evan’s help.  I suspected the satyr and maenad were spry enough.  Green Eyes… maybe.

But not all of us.  Which wasn’t good enough.

Snow that had shaken free of branches across the entire forest now came to a stop, halfway through to falling to the ground.

I could hear crows and vultures cawing in the background.

The others headed in my direction, walking across the fallen trees.

“Magic?” Green Eyes asked.

I frowned, looking at the fallen trees, and the poles that had been part of the mechanism.

“Not sure,” I said.

“No,” Tiff said.  “That’s not how she operates.”

“Oh, great,” Peter said.  “Innocents are protected, they say.  It’s good to have some innocents along.  Innocents are harder to affect with magic.  You aren’t entirely magical, but you should go along.  You’ll help the group just by being there, an extra set of skills.  What happens in the first half hour?  Dragon, giant, now falling trees.  Are we protected?  Noooo.”

“This is natural,” Tiff said.  “But it’s hers, in a way that very few things are anyone’s nowadays.”

“When you say hers, you mean the woman who hates whitey?” Peter asked.

“That’s not how I’d phrase it,” Tiff said.

“Just trying to keep it all straight.”

“It’s not straight,” Roxanne said, staring down at the fallen tree she was standing on.  It was a non-sequitur, an out of place line, and it made me worry a bit about her mental state.

“You okay?” Tiff asked.  She placed a gloved hand on Roxanne’s shoulder, on the crimson coat.

Roxanne twisted away, scowling, as if she’d been burned.

“I see,” Tiff said.

“No you don’t,” Roxanne said.  “You don’t.”

I winced.  Meeting Tiff’s eyes, I could see she was thinking along the same lines.

Being called on a lie was bad, for a practitioner.  Even if it was superficial.  Not the best word choice by Tiff, but it was rare to get that kind of attack from inside one’s own camp.

“Roxanne,” I said.  “Don’t do that.  That kind of arguing is disastrous, here.”

She tensed.  “You stop doing that first.  Taking charge.  Telling us what to do.  Being condescending.”

“They’re not being condescending,” Peter said.  “They really are superior.  They’re better than us, and they’re acting like it.”

“That’s not-”

Peter raised a hand, then glanced at me.  “You want to lead the way, or do you want to use us as cannon fodder?”

I glanced in the direction of the hut.

The others followed behind me as I led the way.

“The problem, Roxie,” Peter said, “is that you’re used to being superior.  Everyone has a way of dealing.  Kathy?  Attack, attack, attack.  That’s her pattern.  When the attacks fail?  Undermine, sabotage the competition in less direct ways.  Paige?  Act better than she is, raise herself up, place herself on a pedestal.  When that fails?  She breaks down, and she breaks down hard.  Recognize the pattern, and you know how to play someone.  All that emotion gets turned inward.”

“I don’t care,” Roxanne said.  “Stop talking?”

“Gotta talk, part of how I deal.  You and me?  We’re manipulators.  Different environments, but we play the same game.  Where we differ is in how we deal when the manipulations fail.  I’m not so different from Ellie.  I retreat.  But where she changes things up, I retreat to study.  I come back better, smarter.”

“I think you might be a little biased in your interpretation of yourself,” I commented.

Peter shrugged.  He stepped closer to Roxanne, who only glared at him, one of her eyes still bloodshot.  “You, little Roxie, go right for the jugular.  Or with a letter opener aimed at the crotch, it seems.”

“Don’t call me Roxie,” Roxanne said.  But she didn’t move as Peter extended one hand, taking hold of her jacket, and lifted it up until the bottom edge was up around Roxanne’s armpits.  She didn’t resist, and she didn’t flinch like she had with Tiff.

I looked back over my shoulder.

Knives in sheaths.  Nice looking sheaths.  Oiled leather.  A leather harness was strapped around her body, with twist ties holding some excess straps in place, and ultimately was set up to hold a glass bottle over her bellybutton, and two pouches at either side.  There was more just under the jacket that I couldn’t make out, and maybe more behind her back.

Tiff stared.  “Did she always have those knives?  That harness-”

“The witch hunter’s,” Peter said.  “From the big bag they left behind, before Rose’s friends went through it.  When she went to the bathroom, after we got back to the house.  Our attention was on the Behaims.  Hers was on preparing in case she needed to get cutthroat.  That’s another little difference between us.  She plans for failure.  I like thinking I won’t fail, and still manage to deal if I do.”

Roxanne didn’t react.  She kept walking, jacket lifted up to expose her sweater and myriad weapons.

“Armor, I’m presuming,” Peter said.  He flicked at her stomach, fingernail tapping something hard.

“I used a book,” Roxanne said. “There were pieces in there but it was more to protect bottles.”

Peter commented, “That bottle there, that’s alcohol, Blake.  She has matches too.  Strips of cloth, if you didn’t see.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?  You do realize that she was planning for the eventuality that she might need to go after you?”

Green Eyes growled.

Roxanne only shot the mermaid a dirty look.

“I do realize it,” I said.  “I’m okay with it.  Not happy, but okay.  I’d rather she was preparing to deal with the monsters.  Even if that includes me.  It didn’t look like she was about to use the thing.”

“She was on that road,” Peter said.  Peter let go of the jacket.  Roxanne pulled it down straight, unflinching.  “Kathryn was told to make herself successful, and she did it the way she saw fit.  Dad never forgave her for setting her sights as low as she did.”

He continued, “Paige was told how to be successful.  She set herself on that path.  The family very nearly tore her down.  She handled it badly.  James was more coddled.  They’re breaking him down, making him into a puppet, to try and get the best of both worlds, doing what they say when they say, studying what they want him to study, because that’s what he’s good at.  They’ll shape the personality later, they’ll do a terrible job at it, and they’ll ultimately break him like they break everyone else they interacted with.”

“They didn’t break me,” Roxanne said.

“They haven’t started with you, you twit,” Peter said.  “The wizards and whatsits get started at thirteen or so, or so we’ve been told.  That’s when Dad lays down the law.  Starts exerting pressure.  Shaping you like he thinks you should be shaped.  Which is so stupid it makes me want to spit.”

“I wouldn’t have let him ‘shape’ me,” Roxanne said.  She sounded a touch defensive.

“Maybe not,” Peter said.  “But he should’ve recognized what you’re capable of as is.  You’ve got that same aspiration that Paige and Kathy have.  A desire to be better, but without Dad’s interference, and with natural intelligence and viciousness, you could be as scary a monster as anything here.”

“That’s not true!” Evan piped up.  “Blake’s a great monster!”

“No,” Peter said.  “That’s-”

“He took on a dragon without flinching!  You didn’t even see him killing people earlier tonight!  He was brutal!”

“Evan,” I said.  “Stop defending me.”

“Hmph,” Evan grunted.  “Green Eyes is a good monster too.”

“Thank you,” Green Eyes replied.

“What I’m saying,” Peter said, “Is that Roxanne has all that aspiration, and when she gets forced into a corner, taken down a peg, forced to get mean, she immediately slips into the best role that she can emulate, from all those around her.  She did it easily.”

“Slipping into the role of the witch hunter,” Roxanne said.

“Most capable person we’ve seen that didn’t have the benefit of weeks of studying the right books or having the right tools,” Peter said.

“It almost sounds like you respect me.”

Peter barked out a laugh.

“Fuck that.  You’re a spoiled little shit, and Dad pretty much ruined you.  But this?”  He gestured at her midsection, where all the weapons were.  “I can respect this.  Pretty much the best the Thorburns have to offer.”

“Mm,” Roxanne murmured.

“What I don’t respect, what I think is downright pathetic, and what you need to stop fucking doing, is going after us.  Because you’re doing it.  You’re scared and I’m scared and I bet even the bloody mermaid is a little scared.  But that fear is making you fall back on your emergency measure.  Going for the wrong jugulars.  Pay attention.  Do this smart.  Come on.”

I suspected the message could have done without the biting tone he’d given those last two words.  Like the worst of a disappointed parent’s rebuke.

Which might have been the language Roxanne recognized most easily, now that I was thinking thought on it.

Roxanne had fallen silent.

The wind stirred.

I could see the reaction of the others, as I turned my head.  That momentary discomfort, followed by the realization that the wind shouldn’t be moving at all.

I might have picked up on it sooner, simply because of the fact that I’d been flying, when there had been air but no proper wind, the rising thermals there when I brought my wings to them, immediately responsive, but the skies remaining still.

There was something there.

“Guardian,” the maenad said.

“Is that a thing?” I asked.  “A label we need explained?”

“Sure,” the satyr commented.  “We don’t know what it is, but it’s guarding these woods.  Making it a guardian.”

Not helpful, I thought.

The shape moved through the trees.

Narrow, tall, naked and simultaneously sexless, with only dark pubes at the nether regions.  Its flesh was mottled like that of a corpse, or maybe a baby fresh from childbirth, it had spidery fingers that each had two or three joints too many.  It moved like it floated, leaving no tracks behind it, legs only periodically moving to propel it forward.  The front of its head looked exactly like the back of its head did.  A tangle of hair, blowing in wind that wasn’t there.

Each hand touched the trees it passed, bony fingers almost clicking as they wrapped around branches and trunks.

“Shit,” Tiff said.  “Wraith, maybe?”

“Assuming she’s covering her bases,” Peter said.  “Maybe something that could handle what falling trees couldn’t?”

“That makes sense,” Tiff said.

“Green Eyes,” I said.  “Ideas?”

“Not really,” she said.  “It doesn’t feel like most things I saw in the dark waters.”

The thing continued to move across our field of vision, at a jogging pace that nobody mortal could maintain in the deeper snow.  The snow didn’t stir on contact with it.

It felt ominous.  Like a pressure on my chest.  As if it were digging fingers into my gut and twisting up the contents, just by being there.

“Like most?  What does it feel like?” I asked her.

“The black fish,” she said.

“Mm,” I said.  “Like Carl.  Yeah.”

Like it was something that, instinctually, I should run away from.

“English?” Peter asked.

“Like it’s the worst possible thing, made manifest,” I said.  “Except… maybe less personal.”

“Yeah,” Green Eyes said.  “I couldn’t have said it that well, but yeah.”

I watched it with a wary eye as it passed through a thicket of trees.

And, in the span of an eyeblink, where the terrain blocked it from view, it stopped.  The eye carried forward, expecting it to continue, and saw only the usual darkness.

The maenad spun in place.

The thing was there.  A matter of five or so feet from us.  It floated the rest of the way, covering the distance before I could step back.

I hacked with the Hyena, only for the blade to pass through it.

Spidery fingers wrapped around my neck.  Very solid.  The fingers wrapped around my neck twice over, more like rope or ribbons than actual digits, and some wood immediately gave way under the thing’s grip.

The fingers naturally constricted, each finger encircling what remained of my neck two and a half or three times.

I stabbed in the general region of its head, and I touched nothing.

Tiff threw something at us.  I thought it was snow, at first.

“Ah, ow,” I said.  Almost hurts.  “Salt in eye.”

“Not a wraith,” Tiff muttered to herself, already digging through pockets

I could make out Green Eyes swiping her claws at the thing.  Touching only air.

“Astral,” I said.  Actually breathing wasn’t hard, my voice didn’t wheeze, but my words were affected as my throat was damaged.  But-

More wood cracked.

-But I remained very invested in keeping my neck intact.

Evan was fluttering into activity, but his focus was on evading the thing.  The thing swiped for the bird twice, and Evan dodged both times.  The fact it was now only using one hand for me was definitely slowing the damage it did to me.

“Go-” I started.

The thing caught Evan, lurching to one side, so its arms were fully extended to either side.  Bird in one hand, me in the other.

“Damn it!” Evan said.

He slipped free of the grip, veered closer to me, only to get caught again.

“Don’t,” I said.  “Just go!”

Evan slipped free again, as if he were wet soap in hand, and flew back out of reach.

This is so stupid, I thought.

Was there a trick to it?”

Astral, astral, astral.  Um.  Shit!” Tiff said, more agitated.  “Astral workings are harder to protect against.  Um.  You need stuff prepared in advance, ideally.”

“Hurry,” I said.  I couldn’t move from where I stood, with the thing holding me.  I couldn’t touch it.

“Nightmare?  No.  Um.  Doom.  Curse made manifest?  Roxanne, when you looted the bag, did you collect anything that looked like a dreamcatcher?  A necklace, pendant, rosaries?”

“Why the fuck would I?”

More wood cracked.

I was pretty sure the thing had fingers wrapped around my spine and the remaining threads and splinters of wood.

.”Damn it,” I muttered.  “They keep coming for me.”

“I would,” Peter said, helpfully.  “If I were against us, I’d go after you first, easy.”

I heard the croaking of crows, the shrill cry of a turkey vulture.

Movement through the woods.

“Okay, wait,” Tiff said.  “Don’t move.”

“Not moving,” I said.  “Might want to hurry.”

She was already pulling off a glove, fishing in a pocket.  Her hand shook.

“Um, was hoping for a bigger coin,” she said.

In the time that it took her to extend her hand toward my shoulder, Peter reached into his pocket and retrieved another, larger, coin.  A toonie.

“Great,” Tiff said.  She dropped the quarter she was holding and placed the toonie on my shoulder.I felt my neck strain.  Bone cracking.

I liked my spine.  It was mine.  Or the upper part was.  Borrowing one from a corpse just wasn’t the same.  I suspected that if I lost my spine, I might be a goner.

“Heads, I compel-” Tiff started.

The sound of cawing crows increased in volume.

A small object collided with me.  A crow.

The coin fell into the snow.

“Shit!” Tiff said, again.

The small crow unfolded into a larger man.

Corvidae.  Our crow spirit, wearing a worn suit with a long jacket and tattered scarf.

He unfurled into his full human form between me and the strangler.  He pushed out, and drove the spirit back.

A proper spirit to battle the astral thing.

The fight was brief, as Corvidae slipped past Roxanne, reached into her jacket with an almost casual ease to grab the knife, and stabbed at the projection, succeeding where none of the rest of us had been able to.

He sliced at it, and it dissipated into a thick cold fog, fading into the air.I stared at Corvidae.

He handed the blade back to Roxanne.  In an instant, it was all quiet.

“There you are,” Tiff said.

“Here I am,” Corvidae said.  “Tasks completed.  I was to return to you at dawn, or when I failed, but you weren’t where I expected.  I’ve found you.”

“You’ve found us,” I said, terse.

He smiled at me, gaze level.

“One more body on our side,” Peter said, rubbing his hands together for warmth.  “Great.  And it’s someone that can fight off things like that?  Better yet.  Don’t want to get strangled.”

I reached out to the nearest tree branch to collect some wood, touching it to my throat.  Before I could reach a second time, Green Eyes was proffering a broken branch from the ground.  I smiled at her.  She smiled back, slightly lopsided.  Half of her face was still covered.

“Cold,” Peter said.

I nodded.

Without speaking, I led the way, giving Corvidae only a moment’s glance.  “Thanks.”

“I live to serve,” Corvidae said.

“Yeah?” I said, having already turned my back on him.  “That sounds like it sucks.”

Navigation proved hard, as we moved deeper into the woods.  Where it wasn’t slow going, it felt like the path was too winding.  Too easy to get turned aside.  The cold was wearing on our mortals, and we were losing precious time on the nuisance of simply having to get from A to B.

But the same was true for travel by air.

A part of the reason I wasn’t too vocal was that I was trying to keep my thoughts focused on the location of the hut.  We’d scouted, we’d been unable to press forward, and the air seemed to be protected.

But there was more concerning me, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.  The Abyss had given me the information I’d needed, thus far.  The visions I’d glimpsed had been awfully helpful.

And in the vision I’d had of the meeting, back when Rose rejected the truce the others were discussing, I could remember Corvidae’s conspiratorial smile with Mara.

Mara, it just so happened, who we were about to face down.

“Mara, was it?” Roxanne asked.  “You called her a crone?”

“Mara, yeah,” Tiff said.

I glanced back, and I took it as a chance to look at what Corvidae was doing.  He was at the very rear of the group, trailing behind.  Ostensibly watching our backs.

“I like that you’re asking,” Peter encouraged Roxanne.

Roxanne shrugged.  “Don’t know what to ask, though.  Um.  Important things first.  She can be stabbed?”

“Think so,” Tiff said.  “Like any of us.  Except maybe that thing.”

“She’s sort of human, right?” Peter asked.

“More or less,” Tiff said.  “Crone Mara was human a long time ago, according to Dramatis Personae.”

“I can deal with more or less human.  Can’t say that about damn dragons,” Peter said.  “What could someone like Roxanne or me do against a dragon?”

“I’d think twice before deciding there’s something you can do about the crone,” I said.

“If you’re going to think twice, you’d better do it fast,” the maenad said.

We collectively turned to the side.

Mara.

She wasn’t old.  She was young.  Thirteen or so, not far off from Roxanne’s age.

The young crone’s breath fogged in the air.  She didn’t watch us, but fiddled with a branch, snapping off a twig, casting it aside.

“A comb?” the satyr asked.

“No,” the maenad responded.  “Don’t think so.”

“Huh?” Roxanne asked.

“Terminology,” the satyr murmured.

Tiff explained, her eyes focused on Mara, voice just as low. “Means an item charged with power.  Drop a stone, it becomes a hill.  Drop a comb, it becomes a river.  Innocuous items, spent for a single use.”

“But sometimes a twig is just a twig?” Peter said.  “I can get behind that.”

“Tending to her woods,” Tiff said, under her breath.  “Her woods.  This is her battlefield.  We should avoid making it a battle.”

I glanced back at Corvidae.

I was all too aware that Corvidae had taken up the spot at the very rear of the group.  Putting us between a crone in the guise of a child and a wolf in crow’s clothing.

Couldn’t tip off the others without tipping him off.  If I called his bluff as I had with Mags, would that be in my favor?  Or, conversely, had he been watching us?  Had there been a reason, other than his natural talents, that he knew that Roxanne had the blades under her jacket?  Had he been watching earlier?

Was I being paranoid?  Was this the ultimate conclusion the Abyss had been leading me toward, from the time it plotted that vision?  Would I ruin a good thing, sabotaging myself?

I thought back to Peter’s words.

My pattern, my last-ditch measure.  Fight, scrap, push forward.  My last ditch measure, every step of the way, had been to sacrifice a little bit of myself, on the course to winning the fight.

I wouldn’t make it to the end of this if I kept it up.

I saw the satyr and maenad drop a little, tensing, as if poised for a fight, they’d seen some cue I hadn’t.

I brought the one wing in front of me, a shield, and because holding it to one side made me a bigger target.

Mara turned on the spot, facing us head on.

Sine Die 14.6

“You’re intruding.”

The words carried.  They had an impact that went beyond sound and language.

It was as though the very forest reacted.  Drawing closer.  A pressure weighing on us.  The satyr shifted his footing, uncomfortable, and the weight on the snow made it compact.  He only dropped by an inch, but it was a surprise, and it caught all of us off guard.

I had little doubt that everyone that had a heart could feel it pounding, while they wondered just how dangerous this particular patch of woods was.

Would the ground swallow us up?

Could we do anything if it did?

We’d come here for a reason, and we might as well focus on it.  Dragons and giants aside, our big concern here was what happened to the town.

Might as well get straight to the point.  “Jacob’s Bell is being drawn into the Abyss.”

“I know.  Good,” the crone told us.

“How do you know?” Tiff asked.

“The small warband on my doorstep, blood fresh on their hands, claws, and breath, darkness in their eyes.  They demand answers of me?  Presumptuous.”

I spread my wings and arm, bowing a bit.  “Mara Agnakak.”

“Don’t bow to me, Atawateecim.  I’ll see it as mockery.”

“Um,” Tiff started.

The crone didn’t let her finish.  “You betray custom.  One should give notice before trespass.  The laws are with me in this.  The laws are with me in any and all retribution I take.”

Her words took on a heavier accent and a fair degree of force as she said retribution.

“How were we supposed to give notice?” Tiff asked.  “There’s nothing in the books, and in the past few weeks I’ve been here-”

“I am not at your beck and call,” the crone said.  “I would not give out my name or share a means of finding me.”

She was articulate, even if her voice was accented, and awfully good at putting emphasis to words.  Not unlike certain members of my family in that.  I glanced at Roxanne and Peter.  But in her case, she’d had a lot of practice.  She’d been around for a while, even if she hadn’t done much talking in that time.

I really wished I had a better idea of how she operated.  I was in the dark about her particular talents and abilities, or how to counter those talents and abilities.  I might as well have been back on day one.  In the cold, freezing woods, dealing with the Briar Girl’s specialized zombies.

There were differences, though.  Rose wasn’t here, and it was a good thing, rather than the inverse, I had allies, and I was… different.

Very very different.

“Should we have contacted the ambassador?” I asked.

“That stupid little child?  I would not have answered.”

“Meaning we should have called before answering, but you… had no intention of answering the call?”  Tiff asked.

“Yes,” the young crone said.

“That seems like a pretty big flaw in these rules,” Evan muttered under his breath.

“Shh,” I said.

“You can’t complain if we had no other avenue,” Tiff said.

She was trying to sound firm, which wasn’t her usual pattern, and she was almost succeeding.  I was a little surprised to see that she had it in her.  She’d come a long way from the person I’d first met, who’d stuck to Alexis like glue, mouth shut.

“You had avenues,” the crone replied.  “Not coming was one.”

“Mara,” I said.  “I don’t want to start something here.  We’re not approaching with hostile intent.  I don’t want to be enemies.”

“No you don’t,” Mara replied.  “But enemyship is as much my choice as it is yours.  I choose to be enemies.”

I drew the Hyena.

I saw the crone’s expression change.  Not a smile.  She wouldn’t give me that much.  But amusement.  Almost relaxed, more comfortable with this than she’d been with my blade in a sheath.

“Blake,” Tiff murmured.  “Rose told me about Mara.  She might be more dangerous than the dragon.”

“I know,” I said.

“Then… let’s not pick a fight?”

“We’re not,” I said.  “I’m speaking her language.”

“Indian?” Evan asked.

“Algonquin,” Tiff corrected, gently.  “And I don’t think that’s what Blake means.”

My eyes were fixed on the crone’s.  The snow was frozen around her, but her breath billowed out in front of her face, expanding, and here and there, it touched a snowflake, stirring it into motion.

“If I strike at you,” Mara told me, “I’m backed by laws.”

“If I fight back, I am too,” I said.

“I’ve been here for a very long time,” she said.  “This place is mine, and it’s been mine for more years than I can count.  It will serve me.”

“I’ve only technically existed for a few months,” I replied.  “I don’t think I’m long for this world.  It sounds like you have a lot more at stake than I do.  I can’t imagine you really want to pick a fight against someone with so little to lose.”

She didn’t respond.

I took that as a cue to elaborate, “It doesn’t fit what we know of you.  You don’t get to be as old as you are by picking fights or being reckless.  Assuming we each killed the other, I’d be ending something like, what, a few hundred years of history?  What do you gain by destroying me?”

“You understand so little,” she said.

It was a little weird, being condescended to by someone who looked just over half my age.

She went on, “Gain, loss, love, fairness, right, rights.”

Mara put an emphasis on the s at the end of the second statement.

I spread my arms a little.

“Meaningless,” she said.  “The town will fall, just as it rose, two hundred and fifteen years ago.  Before that, I was here.  I watched people come and go.  Settlements rose and fell.  Not many, not large, but a number.  Before that, I was here.”

“Been here a while,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed.  “The man and woman who brought me into this world came to this place on a raft of reeds, and I was so small I had to be carried. We traveled from the west to here over my lifetime, following the deer and the hunt.  When my parents passed, I stayed.  I was one of the first to lay claim here, and I have never given it up.”

“Over the water to the west?” Peter murmured.  “The lake?”

“Ocean,” Tiff said, her voice almost a whisper.

“I nurtured those who followed after me or passed through, offered them my hand and my amassed knowledge, so they could be communities, a people.  Many are mine.  Hundreds of years of work.  I saw things follow in our wake, things stirred into existence by our being.  Your Others, echoing our intelligence, echoing our pride and fear and pain, to join those Others that were here before the first people.  I am familiar with them all.  I know what man is, and I know that your love and law and fairness are invention.  Invention younger than I am.”

These words had a power that went beyond a simple explanation.  It was a declaration, and she was gaining a kind of power through it.  I could feel it.

I could see how tense the satyr and maenad were.  Green Eyes was hunkered down.

“What do you have, if you take all that away?” I asked.  “That’s not humanity.”

“It is everything humans are, distilled.  Your culture, your ideas, they pollute it.  Weaken you.”

“We might have to agree to disagree,” I said.

“No,” she said, and she said it with conviction.  “You know the power of your repetition.  Three times, you do something.  Three times you bind it to make it so.  Agreed?”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“Invention.  But at the core, there is truth.  I have not counted, but I can still be utterly confident in saying that I have woken up in the same place for more than nine million of your days.  I have gathered, hunted, cooked and eaten the same foods on those same days.  I have been born, bled for the first time, and been reborn on more than one thousand occasions.  The wheel of life and death turns forward and I am an indelible part of it, especially here.  This is a pattern, this is my ritual.  Now tell me, what is the truth of this.  What does it make me?”

“A hag,” Tiff murmured.  “A blood hag.”

“The dullest person alive?” Peter muttered.

“Powerful,” I said, before she could respond to him.  “A hell of a lot scarier than a dragon.”

“Man, you must be really glad to have visitors,” Evan said.

Mara’s eyes narrowed, face hardening.  “You don’t understand.”

“Guess not,” he said.

“Boredom is a newer invention,” she said.  “Loneliness a luxury.  For most of humanity’s time on this earth, the only desire was to exist.  Food, shelter, water, health.  When our lives ran short, we carried our existence forward through our offspring.”

“Mara,” I said.  “We’re not here to debate the definition of humanity.”

“You’re here to ask if I had anything to do with your town’s descent into darkness, chaos, and ruin.”

“Yes.”

“Did you really expect me to give you an answer?” she asked.

“You’ve already pointed out that we came with something of a warband.  Is that not answer enough?” I asked.

Again, that almost relaxed, easy sort of acceptance of the open threat.

“Okay, Blake,” Tiff said.  “This is part of the reason why Rose wanted me along for the ride, here.  You’re a little prone to pick fights, the way you are now.  Stop.”

“Mara,” I called out.  “Tell me, is there any way we could have done this fairly?  Gotten a straight answer out of you?”

“No,” the crone said.

“There’s no way we’re going to get out of here without a confrontation of some kind?” I said.

“No,” Mara said.  “There isn’t.”

I nodded slowly.

“Shit,” Tiff swore, under her breath.

“Had that vibe right from the start,” I said.  “Which brings us here.  Talking.”

Buying time, I thought, though I didn’t dare say it.

Mara was, if nothing else, endlessly patient.

If I said that I was taking advantage of that patience, she might revoke it.

I just had to pray my allies got the message without the message being too obvious.  If one of them lost nerve or pushed things the wrong way, this could all be for naught.

“Mara,” I said.  “You’ve been talking about what lies at the root of humanity.”

“Yes.”  She rubbed her hands together for warmth.

“Trade, barter, that’s at the root of humanity.  You’ve done it.”

“I think,” she said, “I’ve seen it go sour enough times to have little interest in it.”

“Sure,” I said.  “One sided bargains.  That’s at the root of mankind too, isn’t it?  Well, if it’s in your favor…”

“You’re assuming I want anything you have,” she said.

“You said it yourself.  I have blood on my hands.  I suspect you want that, if it’s the right blood.  The lives I’ve taken already tonight have to count for something, given your agenda.”

“Killing is a service, more than deaths are a product,” Mara said.

“Okay,” Tiff said, quiet enough to not be heard by Mara.  “Conversation taking a turn for the creepy.”

“You want deaths, then?” I asked.  “In exchange for the lives of those here, I could promise-”

Mara was already shaking her head.

“No?” I asked her.

“No,” she said.  She pointed a finger at the group, finger extended to point just over my shoulder.  “I want those lives.  One can leave my woods for every one you kill.  For doing the deed and getting blood on that broken blade of yours, I’ll give you your life at no cost, and I’ll give you the answer you want.”

I glanced back over my shoulder.

I could see Evan, Green Eyes, Tiff, Peter, Roxanne, the satyr, the maenad.

The maenad tensed as I made eye contact.

Did she think I thought she was expendable?

Eight of us.  Four would have to die to satisfy the crone.

“Decide,” Mara said.

She didn’t sound happy.  She didn’t sound satisfied.

She didn’t sound sincere.

Weapon in hand, I turned to the group.

“Sorry about this,” I said.

“Um,” Evan said.  “Um, no, Blake.  No.”

Roxanne swiftly backed out of my way, bumping up against Peter.

I saw her put one hand on the front of his coat, clutching it, as if in unconscious fear.

I couldn’t, I realized, see her other hand.  I stopped in my tracks.

“Put it away,” I said.

“Put what way?” she asked.

“Step away from Peter.”

“So I’m first?” she asked.

“Roxanne,” I said, firm.

“What are you doing?”

Answering every statement with a question.  Evading, dodging.

Buying time.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I told her.

“Then why are you paying this much attention to me?” she asked.

“Because I know you’re armed and I don’t want you to attack me from behind.”

“Show me your hands.”

“Why should I?”

I touched the Hyena to her throat.

Slowly, gradually, she lifted up her hands.

I reached past her and into her pocket, and retrieved a small bottle with a scrap of gauze sticking through the neck, loosely corked.

“Peter too.”

He didn’t move.

“Peter.”

I jogged my arm while holding the blade steady at Roxanne’s throat, making it clear that I would attack her.

He raised his hands.  Empty.

Why did they have to make this so hard?

I gently pushed Roxanne aside and pulled down his sleeves.  I gave a light pat to each jacket pocket, then checked the ground.

He’d dropped it out of sight.  A box of waterproof matches.

Held by Roxanne to be lit by him.

Once I had both match and bottle, I planted them in the snow.  “Leave them.  Trust me.  I’m not going to hurt family.”

The two were mute as I turned toward the three less familiar Others in our retinue.  I wasn’t counting Green Eyes among them.  She was familiar.

The satyr and maenad were ready for a fight, spoiling.

I warded the satyr off with one wing, folded around half of my body, and held out the Hyena, pointing it at the maenad, ready if she lashed out.  I knew how fast they could be.

I gave her a slight shake of my head.

She backed away, keeping a certain distance from me, and I walked between the two of the Drunk’s followers.

I reached Corvidae, at the rear of the group.  Corvidae, who had hidden himself out of sight, sheltered by the crowd.

“You didn’t consider that I would take it as an insult if your first target was an Other so similar to my people?” Mara called out.

I considered a few things, I thought.  Wanting to see Mara’s reaction was one.

Subtlety wasn’t one of her stronger points.

Which inspired a similar thought.  I extended the sword toward Corvidae.  He backed up, holding up his hand, two fingers touching the flat of the blade, as if he could hold it back with just that.

“Aren’t insults an invented thing?”  I asked.  “For you to be insulted…”

A distance behind me, she didn’t react.

“Hi Crow,” Evan said.

“Hello, Sparrow,” Corvidae said.  “Will you just watch this?”

“Yep!”

“We’ve flown together,” Corvidae said.

“We flew together, and then you flew off, and then you lured an owl to come after me.”

“Mischief is in my nature.  I didn’t let it harm you.”

“Scared the poo out of me,” Evan said.  “I think meanness is in your nature.  Rose said so, sorta kinda in a way.”

“She’s not wrong,” Corvidae said, quiet.  Louder, he said, “Why me?  Why walk past the others and come for me?”

Calling me on the fact that I was calling his bluff?

The tone and the cadence of the reply reminded me of when I’d turned on Padraic, just an hour or two ago.  I didn’t feel it was a coincidence.

Had he been there?  Was he teasing me in the same breath he was asking me to justify myself?

“You’re a bogeyman, you come back after you’re eliminated.”

“Not,” he said, “If you kill me with that.  Probably.”

“Blake,” Tiff said.  “What are you doing?  Do you expect us to just stand here while you pick and choose four members of our group to just kill?”

“Yes, Blake,” Corvidae said.  “Do you?”

“I’d like you to just stay back,” I said.

“If you’re justifying attacking him, because he can come back after being slain,” Mara spoke, her voice carrying across the clearing.  “Kill the one on the ground.”

I looked down at Green Eyes.

“Or both?” I asked.

“Her first, to avoid insulting me,” Mara said.

And then when she’s eliminated, you renege on the deal?

Or keep to the terms on a technical level alone?

I returned the Hyena to the point that I was holding Corvidae at bay.

“No?” Mara asked.

“No,” I said.

Mara didn’t move.  Didn’t do anything, not even exhaling, but the effect broke.  Time resumed.

Snow started falling again.  First by Mara, then as far as we could see.

The wind stirred, and the noise of it was disconcerting, branches touching branches, ice-heavy pine needles rattling like so many wind chimes, wood creaking.

It was the quietest things had been all night without being silent.  Deafening us with a normal level of noise.

An entire forest came to life around us, and the puppeteer Mara Agnakak was pulling the strings.

Subtlety wasn’t her strong suit, she couldn’t keep a secret as simple as Corvidae, but she didn’t have to.

She existed as a static entity.  A closed circle, not unlike the dragon.

“She didn’t just break the effect that the Behaim asshole Rose is marrying said was supposed to remain unbreakable, did she?” Peter asked.

“No,” Tiff said.  “Not exactly.  I’m pretty sure it’s only broken here.”

“In her domain,” I said.  I tried to keep Corvidae within range of a lunge, in case I needed to stab him, while keeping one eye on Mara.

We’d nearly run out of time.  I could stall, buy time, but her ultimatum had forced me to make a call.

“Mara!” Peter called out.

“Whelp,” she responded, voice almost drowned out by the noise of the forest and the wind in our ears.

“You’re doing it all wrong,” he said.

“I am not interested in your perspective.”

“Blake had the right idea.  You want to get revenge?  Bloodshed?  Letting Blake live is the best way to do it!  He’s a maniac!”

“One that is fighting to salvage this town,” Mara said.  “I’ll stop that here.”

“Wake up!” Peter said, raising his voice.  “One town?  Have you not paid the slightest bit of attention to the Thorburn family?  We’re fucked up.  How does someone as immortal as you are not see the long term implications of letting us live?  We’re the worst, most artificial, broken human beings you’ll find around here!”

“You’re asking for clemency, based on the fact that you’re everything I despise?”

“Yes!  Exactly yes!”

Refuge in audacity?

Refuge in repugnancy?

“I wish I’d gone with Rose’s group,” Tiff said, under her breath.

“If you really hate modern humanity, if you hate everything we represent, you should be encouraging us to spread, to do our screwed-up thing to this cancerous non-humanity that’s filling the world.  Do you know how many lives Roxanne here is going to ruin as she grows up?”

Roxanne shot him a dirty look.

“Roxanne and I legitimately thought Blake was going to murder us in cold blood.  That’s how fucked up we are, as a family.  Let us live, we continue to fuck up the other families, screw with or kill Johannes, and Jacob’s Bell becomes worse for all the people you hate.  You win, and it’s easy, and it poses no risk at all to you.”

“If I let this argument sway me, I would become what I despise.”

“Artificial?  The wrong kind of humanity?” Peter asked.  “Fuck that.  You’d be exemplifying what you are.  Continuing to exist, working against humanity.  Even if it’s by letting certain humans live to poison the rest.”

“Mm,” Mara said.  “You’ve challenged your own argument.”

“Hm?” Peter asked, his stride broken.

“You call humanity a cancer.  But poison, applied carefully, can kill cancer.”

Peter recovered instantly.  “Hate to break it to you, but we’re not careful in the slightest.  We’re a reckless, fractious, senseless, sad family, and as far as I can tell, it’s a miracle we haven’t destroyed ourselves yet.”

“It’s due to your grandmother that you haven’t destroyed yourselves,” Mara spoke.  “She is the careful element I do not trust, in all this.  By killing and slaying each of you, I will work against whatever plan she has set.”

“Fuck,” Peter said, on his heels.  He glanced at me, then Roxanne, and bounced right back.  “Fuck you.  You’re wrong.  You lose power when someone calls you on bullshit, don’t you?  Well you’re wrong, you old bitch.  Humans exist to evolve, to adapt, to improve, and sitting here like some wart on a dick, doing the same thing every day?  You’re less human than the sparrow, or the flesh-eating mermaid!”

Crone Mara remained where she was.  She reached out and touched a branch.

A crack and the branch she’d been tending before our conversation now broke.

The crack seemed to echo through the woods, in the same moment the wind died.

Like a gunshot, almost, reaching across her territory, the sound bouncing off trees that happened to be in the right place, against stones, skipping over the surface of water like flat, balanced stones.

The sound reached its intended audience.  The birds returned.

Rising from the trees in the distance, they were a vague fog of black against an overcast black, speckled with stars and black-gray clouds.

Their cries filled the air.  More noise, joining the wind and the movement of the trees.

The effect was subtle, but it quickly became apparent what she was doing.

The snow reflected what light there was back toward the sky, giving us something to go by in this dim light, but as the sky was swallowed by a mass of birds, even that light disappeared.

“Roxanne,” Peter’s voice sounded so terribly far away, as acoustics failed.  His voice sounded even further away as he finished his statement, his request.  “Help.”

A bird tore past me, striking me.  I folded my wings back, to reduce the chance that they might get torn.

“Practice,” Tiff said.  “Simple actions, made into powerful ones with tens of thousands of years of repetition.  Train a bird, tune a sound…”

“This is how she operates?” Evan asked.

“No,” Tiff said.  Her voice came from another space, as if she were moving.  I hadn’t heard the footsteps.  “She’s a blood hag.  She’ll have Other powers, and practitioner powers.  This is just what someone can pull off if they just happen to be immortal and very patient.”

A match flared to life.  I could see Peter and Roxanne, together, Peter holding his jacket up as a shield.

A bird flying by snuffed the light.

“Shit!” I heard a voice.

The match fire appeared once more.  I wasn’t looking at the pair so much as I was looking out for trouble.

I could see Green Eyes, raised up off the ground, one arm against a tree, cheek bulging, eye wide, mouth filled with crow, straight hair draped over the other half of her face.

Behind her, I saw Corvidae, holding a knife.

I moved faster than I’d ever moved, wings stirring to life, thrusting me forward even as my legs shoved off the ground.  Not flying, not running, but a lunge, covering ten or so feet.

The light went out, snuffed out by another moving bird.  I heard a cry of pain, and suspected someone had tried to shield against the birds with their body, and been hurt for their trouble.

I was forced to move against Corvidae with no light at all.

“Down, Green!” I shouted.

She went down.  In the doing, she placed herself where I very nearly tripped over her.

My wing struck at the knife.  The Hyena stabbed at where Corvidae stood.  Where he had to stand, given the direction of the thrust.

A hand on my wrist arrested my swing.  An iron grip, from a very small figure.

Forward momentum kept me moving, and I’d been moving fast.  The perils of being a lightweight, a man of twigs, branches, hollow bones and feathers.  I landed on my back in snow, and the hand released me.

The cawing of crows filled the air now.  The buzzards were larger, but not nearly so noisy.  There were other birds, too.

The flame came on and went in a fraction of a second.

I heard someone curse at the failure.

But the image I’d seen was burned into my mind’s eye.  Corvidae and Crone Mara, standing practically shoulder to shoulder.

She’d saved him.  He hadn’t even moved from the point I was stabbing at.  Another inch or two, and I’d have cut him.

A boot settled on my wrist.

“Corvidae’s working for Mara!” I hollered the words.

“Working for Mara?” Corvidae murmured.  His voice went perfectly with the noises of the scavenger birds.  “No, no.  I couldn’t do that, see?  Our deal stipulated that I was to assist you.  Work against lone enemies.  So.  In the interest of doing that…”

A blade stabbed at my fingers.

Not to injure, but to pry.

Had I been able to see, or intuit direction, I might have been able to stop him.  It would have helped, too, to have another hand.  I could thank the Abyss for that.

But he found the right grip, and he slipped the Hyena from my grip, the spikes dragging against my fingers.

I reached for it, and found only cloth, with brittle bone within.  The smell of thick dust filled the air.

“There you go,” he said.  “To weaken your enemy, and promote chaos…”

“Corvidae!”

The fourth match or so flickered to life.

It hardly mattered.  The opaque cloud of birds was dissipating.  We had light, if it could even be called that.

Crone Mara was on the far side of the clearing, sitting on one of the fallen trees, gingerly holding the Hyena.

“Three times, you have disgraced yourself.  You have intruded on my territory without due notice.  You have stolen that which is mine, without declaration of war.  You have refused my offer of safe passage.”

“I call bullshit on all three counts!” I shouted.

“Bullshit!” Roxanne joined the cry.  Evan was only a step behind her.

We managed to make Mara look annoyed.

“I have been here for a long time,” Mara said.  “My day is a ritual.  My existence is ritual.  The spirits that dwell here are mine.  They will side with me.”

Her face was cloaked in shadow, framed by her hair, shrouded by the canopy, and something told me it was intentional, as if she instinctively knew where the light fell, here.  The only light there, in her silhouetted form, was a gleam at one eye, like the edge of a knife.

Shit.

She held out the Hyena, balancing it on one hand, so it teetered slightly.  “Enact your judgement.  I am life, birth, death.   By this token, give the monster a heart, and return his weapon to him, impaling-”

A gunshot rang out.  Mara leaned back, swift.  The vague light of the moon and the city reached her face, illuminating it.

I could see the darker spot of blood moving, dripping, at her eyebrow, touching her cheekbone.  The Hyena had fallen to the snow.

The cavalry.

I wasn’t sure it was a good thing, given what the cavalry entailed.

Rose strode from the woods, butt of a hunting rifle touching one shoulder.

Mara didn’t move an inch.

A shot rang off.

A miss.

Others followed Rose.  The remainder of the contingent.

It wasn’t just that it was Rose that had come.  That was a problem, considering our dynamic, but it wasn’t a surprise.

No.

Her group outnumbered mine by a significant margin.

That was… annoying.  A relief, considering present circumstance, but to have me balance the scales, then go out of her way to unbalance them?

Help had arrived.

The Knights of the Basement, armed with guns, joined Rose, Kathryn, Ellie, the Others, and the Behaims.

She’d called in help.  Probably before we’d banded together.

But that wasn’t the focus here.

The crone was.  The immortal.

I sensed the glimmer of fear from Rose as she acted.  I knew Mara had seen some cue too, because Mara was shifting her weight.  Moving.

Before she could, without even glancing to see what I held, I took the object that Corvidae had given me, and I dashed it against a tree.

Rose fired.

Mara moved in the same moment, away from the bullet, simultaneously turning to glance at me.  To see a small cloth doll with a weird leathery face being dashed to pieces.

The bullet didn’t strike home, but I was pretty sure that she’d been grazed.  Clipped in an ear.  One hand went to the side of her head.

“I thought you said this gun made me accurate.”

“Benefits you,” the man I’d nicknamed ‘Shotgun’ spoke, holding his trademark weapon.  “Can’t help you if the target can dodge bullets.”

Mara stood straighter, taking us all in, hand still to her ear.

“I have done nothing to warrant tonight’s intrusion.”

“Living as long as you have, I’m sure you’ve done something,” I said.

“Acting directly against you?” Mara asked.  “Not so.”

“Well,” Rose said, gun still aimed.  “We’re assholes like that.  Did she say, Blake?  Whether she was involved?”

“No,” I said.

“I won’t,” Mara said.

“And… she made it a promise, in a roundabout way,” Rose said.  “Damn it.  That makes things complicated.”

“Corvidae can comment,” I said, glancing toward where Corvidae stood.  Green Eyes was in a tree, braced against branches, and he was standing clear of her lunging range.

“I can,” Corvidae spoke.  “Allow me to consult my notes.”

I’d faced way too many smug motherfuckers to let that slide.

“Shoot him!”  I shouted.

But Corvidae was already drawing something from his jacket.

A hand mirror.  Bound in paper.

“Don’t shoot him!” I shouted.

Sine Die 14.7

“He’s not ours?” Rose asked.  “Corvidae?”

“No,” I said.  “If ‘shoot him’ didn’t make it clear.”

“In the interest of good faith, I’ll assist you, as you requested earlier,” Corvidae said.  “You’ll need to be stronger, miss Rose, if you’re going to face Mara Angnakak.  This is the best way I know how.”

“No!” Rose said, her voice joined by Alexis’, too late.

He’d thrown the thing.  Hurled it at the nearest collection of trees.

A fair part of my introduction to this new reality, to the community, to the dynamic, the expectations, had come from Laird.  He’d described what diabolists did as tampering with nukes.  Radiation.

Conquest wasn’t a nuke.  He was a volatile element in a very fragile container.

The mirror wrapped in paper, bound in place with hair, lazily arcing through the air, might as well have been a bomb.

The white of the paper around the mirror momentarily caught some of the light from the gray-black clouds overhead.  As if Conquest was reaching through.  Exulting.

The mirror changed course, curving in the air.  It landed in soft snow, handle sticking up.

I wasn’t the only one to turn to look at Rose, a distance away from Corvidae, fist held out to one side, expression grim.

Her expression broke, head bowing a bit, eyes closing, hand going to the side of her head.

“Wow,” one Behaim commented.  The girl that had been with Alister.  “Wow.  I don’t think I could have done that, and I have more hair to get a grip on.”

“Yeah.  Ow,” Rose said.  “That hurt more than I thought it would.”

It was too dark to make out, but she’d pulled out her own hair, and used sympathetic magic to connect to the hair that bound the paper to the mirror, also hers.

She’d probably pulled out a fair amount, in her haste.

“Why interfere?”  Corvidae spoke.  “I was helping,”

“You are the worst helper!” Evan said.

“As you were summoned,” Tiff intoned, “We bind you.  Bow down, take no action, speak no words, until you are asked.”

Corvidae stopped, smiled, and bowed.

He dropped to a sitting position in the snow, back to a tree, one leg propped up.

Leaving just us and Mara.

She stared at us, and at the guns.

How would this have looked, to an outside observer?  A mob, including several monsters, several guns, all mustered against a single young woman, almost a child.

“Man,” Alister’s relative said.  “Mara’s place.  Growing up, we were warned about it.  Scary stories, cautionary tales.  Don’t go into the woods, or you might never come out.  If you get caught in those woods, stay put, wait until you hear the bell in the woods and then follow it home.”

“Take the wrong path,” the other Behaim said.  “Or you’ll get turned aside.”

“I know these Behaim children,” Mara said.  “But the ones pointing guns at me?  Who are you?”

“No names,” Nick, otherwise known as ‘shotgun’ in my internal narrative, told his Knights.  To Mara, he said, “We’re help.”

The Knights paid little attention to appearances.  Most had long hair, one or two had mullets, their facial hair was either too short to matter or mountain man style.  Their clothes that looked like the sort one wore to work in a gas station or do outside labor.  Farmer clothes, handyman clothes.  Coats and jackets made to be durable, jeans, and work boots stained with oil and who knew what else.  Several had toolbelts on, but the tools they had in the belts weren’t for construction or repair.  Practitioner tools.

I didn’t like that they were here as Rose’s, but if I could put that aside, damn, were they ever beautiful people.  I respected them, I even trusted them.

“The cavalry,” I said.

He smiled.  “I like that.”

“We’ve met before,” I said.  “You probably don’t remember.”

“Nope.”

“I wasn’t a monster, then, but… Ur just about got me.  I got away.”

His eyebrows went up.

“Not to give you false hope,” I said.  “There were extenuating circumstances.”

He frowned, then nodded.  “Right.  Too bad.”

Mara stared.

“How are we doing this, Mara?” Rose called out.  “If Corvidae agrees to share the information we need, you can expect us to disappear post-haste.  We have no reason to stay, and no reason to fight.  You shouldn’t expect any visits from us in the near future.  I don’t know about you, but it sounds awfully nice to me.”

“No, you got it all wrong,” Peter said.  He adopted a tone, “Nice is a construct, a human invention.  Humans are not, when you strip it all away, ‘nice’.”

Mara narrowed her eyes.

“Can we not upset her?” Tiff asked.  “Pretty please?”

“She’s the type that’s pissed off by nature,” Peter said.  “Remember what I said about patterns?  Right here, we have quiet rage, stewing rage, insanely patient rage.  Then when she hits her limit, bam.  Black out the sun with carrion birds.  Doesn’t matter what I say.  She hates me anyway, I promise.”

“Benefit of being a Thorburn, I guess,” Alister’s peer remarked, “Used to being hated.”

Peter smirked at her.

“I do hate you,” Mara said.  “I would rather your summoning didn’t divulge any information, Kàgàgi.”

Corvidae didn’t make a movement or sound in response, but I knew he’d heard.

“We have to reach a resolution of some sort,” Rose said.  Her gun leveled at Mara, Rose moved slowly through snow, waiting until one foot was firmly in place atop the heaping snow before she moved the other.  “Compromise, even.”

“No compromise.  I intend to kill each of you in turn,” Mara spoke.  “One by one.  I can ward off the spirits and powers that would carry your companion’s souls to their eternal rest.  Bind soul to dying body, so that their self can endure the moment of death for centuries.  The act of rotting and being ripped apart by carrion birds, a dim, broken awareness.”

I joined Rose in pacing around Mara.  Part of the reason was to keep Mara roughly between us, though I was closer to the two o’clock position, while Rose was nearer to six.  The other reason was to keep at a distance from Rose.  The reason I wasn’t slowing or picking up my pace to be exactly opposite was that I didn’t want to have that accurate gun of Rose’s pointed at me.

I didn’t think Rose would shoot me, but I could trust her common sense while respecting the gun.

In a way, we were balancing the scale, each of us maintaining an equivalent distance from Mara.  If the scale was slightly askew, well, that was the way things were.

Our movement meant that we alternated between being in light and shadow, where ‘light’ was purely subjective.  In the gloom, ‘light’ wasn’t even moonlight.  Only the lights of the city bouncing down off the clouds, helped just a bit by the moonlight that could seep through.

Rose seemed to notice me.  Without moving her gun from Mara, she took in the wings.  Her forehead creased with the frown that followed.

She turned her attention back to Mara as Mara continued her speech.

“…When the flesh is gone, the feeling of being trapped and immobile will persist.  The panic, the despair… but I won’t give you that, Rose Thorburn,” Mara said.  “You alone, I’ll give over to Death.  Worse things wait for you than confinement in a slowly rotting corpse.”

“You’re talking, but all I’m hearing are threats,” Rose said.  “Threats are meaningless unto themselves.”

Hoo boy.  I was pretty sure she was channeling some Conquest as she said that.  Dipping into the old reserve of power to find poise and natural arrogance.  Banishing the fear.

Not that it was necessarily a bad move.  Challenging Mara had to count for something.  Take away from her sway over the local spirits.

“Threats are largely meaningless until they’re carried out or someone responds to them,” Mara said.  “The question is how you respond to them.  If you were smart, you would ask for mercy.”

“You wouldn’t give it,” Rose said.

“But you’d ask, all the same,” Mara said.  “What else is there, for you?”

“Uh,” Ellie spoke up, from the midst of the Knights.  “I’m not smart at all, and I’m asking.  Can she even do that?”

Peter had talked about people’s patterns.  I’d seen Ellie’s.  Grovel, be the omega to the enemy’s alpha, be the coward.  Break the pattern, and she lashed out.  Taking a beating from Eva, only to turn around and poison Andy.

I wasn’t sure I liked the idea that Ellie had a gun, all things considered.

“What I’ve learned,” a heavyset Knight beside Ellie said. “Is if you have to ask, they probably can do it.”

Ellie gripped her gun tighter.  “Great.”

“Assume they’re more dangerous than you’ve heard,” I could hear him saying.  “That assumption has kept an awful lot of us alive for a few years now.  If it means we don’t pick certain fights, all the better.”

“Oh?” Mara asked.  “What a shame you picked this one.”

Several of the veteran practitioners and Others in the group tensed, myself included.  A few people with guns focused on their aim.

But they weren’t ready for a word.

“Die,” Mara said.

The heavyset man reacted to the word like he’d been slapped.  A step backward, gun pulled back and pointed away, as if he were afraid he’d reflexively pull the trigger.

He dropped to his knees.  I could, now that his face was no longer in such utter shadow, make him out as one of the individuals that had been in the room when I’d first met the Knights.  Was he the one with the artificial leg?

Teddy?

The import of the word had become clear.  Shots rang off.  Mara dropped, and she did it fast enough that I suspected the first bullet and most of the others had flown over her.

Birds were scared into the air by the ringing shots.  The noise of the gunfire was so raucous, so powerful, that snow and ice fell from branches.  Had we been on a mountainside, it might have stirred the snow and brought on an avalanche.

I chased Mara, careful not to put myself between the people with guns and her.

More darkness, more shadow.  Mara was running, one eye on the gunmen, and she was moving faster than I did.  As light as I was, my feet still stabbed through the snow, five steps in six sinking me to mid-calf or knee level.  Mara’s footsteps didn’t.  She moved easily over the crust of snow, and when her feet did punch through it, she found something solid beneath.

Peter backed away, hands on Roxanne’s shoulders, drawing out of Mara’s way.

Mara was creating too much distance, and the light was swiftly dwindling.

“Evan!”  I called out.

Evan took flight.

I, too, spread my wings, walking forward to try and find a point where I wouldn’t be fighting the grasp of the snow as I tried to ascend.

Green Eyes was about as fast as Mara, crawling forward, weight distributed evenly on snow, fingers hooking at the crust of ice on top.

She moved to intercept, as I took to the air, kicking free of the snow.  The light was going quickly now, and I did what I could to memorize the most open areas.  The space of the clearing, the branches I couldn’t afford to run into.

“Don’t let her touch you!” Rose called out.

Green Eyes hesitated, stopping at a ridge.

“She only needs to touch you to kill you!”  Rose elaborated.

“Take the harder path!  The obvious path is a trap, here!” another voice said.  It might have been the male Behaim.  He was grunting as the birds assaulted him.  “Paths will turn you around and send you back into her clutches!”

“She didn’t touch Teddy!” another voice shouted.  “And he’s having a heart attack!”

“Slowing him down, but we’re not equipped for this,” the female Behaim called out.

“I don’t know!” Rose said, raising her voice as the bird cries intensified.  She grunted as one bird attacked her.  “But she’s not doing it again, she might need something more concrete to off the rest of us, some possession of ours, some point of reference!  Touch is the most obvious.  Each kill should be easier than the last!  Don’t-”

I didn’t hear the words that followed, as the birds started hissing, croaking, and calling, drowning us out.

As I found the footing to kick myself free of the snow around me, flapping my wings, the last of the light and voices were drowned out.

Even my ability to sense fear was gone, as the birds and their frenzy made for a thick soup of negative emotions.  It was bad enough that I couldn’t tell where the others were, scared as they were.

Her territory, her battlefield, her darkness.

The birds were hers, but there was no bloodthirst to them.  I’d been attacked earlier, but I’d crossed some barrier.  Roxanne and Peter had been attacked, but they’d been lighting the matches, and maybe it had something to do with them working against the Crone.

When I’d flown over, testing the limits, part of the reason had been to gauge her.  To see how she protected herself.  I’d hoped for clear sailing, but hadn’t been surprised to find a defensive measure.  It was the nature of that measure that had been so useful to know.  Not a barrier, or a natural wall, not even a hiding place, exactly.  More passive than that.  Reactive.

Mara was a survivor, more than a fighter.  She had sway over life and death, as evidenced by her attempt to give me a heart that she could stab, and her ability to kill with a touch or a word, but her actions, her approach, had largely been to deter.

Increasing the response of the birds, so they got more intense the closer we got?  The traps?  All of it had been to keep us at arm’s length, allowing her to dispatch us as she saw fit.

Now we were at arm’s length.  She was moving, I was blind and giving chase, and the others were trying to organize.  Was this where she worked to dispatch us?

If Rose was right, Mara would try to achieve a sequence.  Kill someone who was close to death already with a word.  Use a touch to kill a second person.  By the rule of three, would she be able to kill someone who wasn’t close to death with a mere word?  Rose?

In her darkness, the shadows of the birds adding to the darkness of night, she could be going after anyone, and they wouldn’t know until she had her hands on them.

“Raise your hoods- protect your faces!” one of the Knights was hollering the words, top-of-his-lungs shouting to be heard over the birds.  “Flash- fucking birds– Flashlights!”

They’d come prepared.  Beautiful, beautiful people.

I’d have liked to think that if we hadn’t been coming from a ruined house, if circumstances were reversed, we’d be just the same.

Flashlights flared on.  Too little light for me to spot Mara.

Even that little amount of light was soon quenched.  Just as they’d gone after the matches, the birds attacked the people holding the flashlights.

One flashlight dropped to the snow, and was attacked there.  The birds that dogpiled the little device drove it down deeper into snow.  Snow lit from beneath, a glowing blob of light, with the dark silhouettes of birds moving over top of it, diving at it, walking over it, pecking.

“They’re attacking the light sources!  And anyone who tries to communicate!”

Stimuli, response.

Light?  Attack.  Noise?  Attack.

I had to holler the words.  The good thing was, I technically had no lung capacity.

“Don’t move!  Silence!  Lights out!  Freeze!”  I called out.  “Help Teddy, but stay quiet!”

It took time for them to accept it, to play along.  Long seconds.  I didn’t flap, but chose instead to glide.  I let the wings catch the air currents, let Evan buoy me up, and traced a lazy circle around the clearing.  I let myself rise, to break my momentum, then dove, to maintain it.  A slow, steady spiral.  I only hoped that I’d hit ground before I hit a tree.

The voices and shouts stopped, after the lights were off and we were no longer crunching through snow.  Not silence, but I could hear one set of footsteps now that the only bird cries were distant ones.  A shuffling sound.

I turned, dropping one wing while raising the other.

A fair bit of noise.  A good pace?

The only people in that direction were my cousins.  Maybe the satyr or maenad.

Picking off the weakest first?  Going after Peter because he’d taunted her?  Or going after the combatants?

Her cabin was in that direction.  Retreating to a place where she was stronger?  Picking up a weapon?

Too many questions.

The biggest was the question as to where she was, precisely.

My senses were strained to their limits, hoping for a glimmer, a shadow moving against a background of shadow, a clearer noise.

Well, when in doubt-

“Mara!” I screamed the word.

“Not Mara!” Peter shouted back.

“Not Mara!” Roxanne echoed him.

“No Mara!” I heard another voice nearby.  Green Eyes.  “She’s not here!  I don’t smell her!”

I turned, as the crows descended to punish us for shouting.

I heard the others trudging away.

“Guard them,” I told Green Eyes.  “Keep them safe?”

“Yeah,” she said.

I heard Peter mutter something under his breath.  Foxes and henhouses.

Fuck.  They’d been the only ones moving, after I’d shouted the warning.

That meant Mara had to have frozen, along with everyone else.  Waiting until she had clearance to move, taking full advantage of the darkness and her intimate knowledge of the terrain.

But where?  Why?  I was losing track of it all.

Mara had, last I’d seen, been in the middle of the clearing, near the fallen trees.  That was her starting point, moving initially under the cover of darkness and the noise the birds were making, responding to our lights and voices.

I tried to draw a mental picture.  Rose had come in at the Easternmost edge of the clearing, near where I’d had the others stop.  To Mara’s right.  Her contingent would be thereabouts.  Rose had circled the crone, and was a distance from the rest.  Isolated.

Nothing I could do about that.

My group had moved across the clearing, and was opposite the other group, to Mara’s left.  My cousins and Green Eyes had broken away and moved further away, further from Rose and the others. They’d covered a lot of ground, but Peter wasn’t shy about running from situations where he couldn’t fight.

The satyr and maenad, going by what I’d glimpsed earlier, had started to approach Mara up until the warning had been given about her ability to kill with a touch.  They were further behind.  I wasn’t sure if they’d continued to approach or started to retreat, but I had to place them somewhere between my cousins and the center of the clearing.

Corvidae was further still.  He’d been told to stay still and he had.  He’d already been at the rear of the group.

Corvidae as her first target?

I felt a chill.

Trust your instincts, I thought.

I’d been warned about it, but it had been tainted advice.

My chest ached when I thought about that.  The lie, the danger in that lie.  Not to trust my instincts.

In terms of being both Blake and the monster, my instincts were my best bet, here.  They were all I had to go on, my senses stripped away from me.

I felt angry, and used that anger to bolster my strength as I flapped my wings, rising, then dropped.  Corvidae wasn’t the obvious choice, but he had a way of complicating things.  In terms of tools an exceptionally experienced individual like Mara might use, Corvidae… he felt like the worst possibility.

I landed in deeper snow.  My legs protested, and wood creaked and snapped.  Still, all in all, the rough landing in snow made less noise than I might have thought.

Blind, I moved forward.  I had only the light that had fallen into the snow to go by, but I had always been fairly good at judging distances, whether I was noticing a hallway with wonky dimensions, or building displays for my friends.

I’d intentionally dropped to the ground early.  Birds attacked me as I crunched through the snow, more with every few steps, as I was one of the only sources of sound.

“No!” I heard someone cry out, off in the direction of the others.

Teddy, I thought.

I hesitated, waiting for confirmation, for warning that it might be Mara.

The birds that had been harassing me flew off in the direction of the scream, the summary sobbing.

Insult to injury.

I resumed moving, my wings held out, the tips tracing the snow.

We were collectively blind.  I had to feel my way.

I reached a point close to where Corvidae had been, and I found tracks with one wingtip, disturbed snow.

Mara could have appeared before me in an instant.  Touched me.

What could a hag as old as humanity’s presence in North America be doing, with all of her opponents blind and unwitting?

I thought of the guardian we’d run into, and quickened my pace, my footsteps falling in the tracks she’d left in snow, taking me away from the center of the clearing, toward the woods at the edge.

“Blood,” Evan whispered.  He’d perched on my shoulder.  “I smell blood.”

I sniffed.

I could smell something.  I hesitated to call it blood.

I felt out with one wingtip, until I touched something small.  My first thought was that it was fluffy, some small animal.

Bending down, pulling my arm free so it was no longer a component of my wing, I touched it, stroking feathers.

Wings splayed, legs in the air.  My hand traveled the length of its body, getting slick with blood, traced the line of the beak.

Corvidae?  She had killed him?

Or was it a decoy?

If it wasn’t, he’d moved by some other mechanism.  Becoming a crow, getting carried?

Then why this?  To mislead?

Bait?

I grabbed my wing, and swept it in front of me.

Nobody there.

She might be Other, but she’s a practitioner too.

The cawing continued in the distance, mocking, ugly sounds.

Her flock of carrion birds didn’t have much of a presence here, not while we were making so little noise.

“Corvidae might be dead!” I called out.  “That would mean she needs one more to make three!  Don’t broadcast your location!”

The rule of three was an invention, maybe, but she’d said enough things to suggest she didn’t eschew all human inventions.

I wasn’t as afraid of being touched as the others had reason to be.  No heart with which to suffer a heart attack.

I was just about the only one who could move freely.

If she wanted to target me, how would she do it?  Fire wasn’t her style.  She had to do something if she wanted to do a lot of damage to me in a short span of time.

The mirror.

Was she after the mirror?

I picked up my pace.

Assuming Corvidae hadn’t moved, the direction he’d thrown…

I made more noise as I ran, wings extended, tips tracing the snow.

I found Mara’s tracks.

I ran, charging along the tracks, trusting her to have chosen the path with the best footing.  My feet didn’t sink into deep snow, and they didn’t break the icy crust.  I covered ground fast, almost without noise.

If I happened to run headlong into her, then all the better.

She could kill with a word or a touch, but I had to hope she couldn’t kill me without giving me life first.

Same for Evan.

As he was so fond of saying, he was already dead.

When the path turned and I didn’t notice by the change in footing, the wingtips that traced the snow were able to feel the bumps and broken snow to one side.

I ran headlong into a flying bird.  It cawed at me, beating its wings against me, until its struggles let it break free, flying away.

“Stop,” Mara spoke.

I stopped.

The opaque cloud of birds above us parted.  A circle, ever-widening.

I saw the light.  Passing down through the opening, not bright, but compared to the darkness before, bright enough.  A warm light.  A sliver of dawn.

That light came down as a diffuse shaft.  The others were vague figures in the distance, at various points at the periphery of the clearing, barely visible, still shrouded by the flock of birds and the trees overhead.

It served as a spotlight, illuminating only Crone Mara, me, and her hostage.  The rest weren’t included in this.

Time moved normally, since she’d banished the effect.  We were outside of Jacob’s Bell.  The sun had started to rise, while we fumbled about in darkness.

I took in Mara’s hostage.  Alexis knelt in the snow.  A circle of blood and black feathers surrounded them.  Only five or so feet across.

Had Rose sent them around to flank?  For another purpose?

The crone stroked Alexis’ throat, but her expression was cold.  A glare.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Blake!” Rose screamed my name, from the opposite end of the clearing.  Closer to her group.

“Alexis?” Evan asked.

“If you speak,” Mara said, leaning close to Alexis’ ear, “It will be for the last time.”

Alexis nodded slightly.

A tear welled in her eye.

“What do you want, Mara?” I asked.

Mara glanced to one side.

I followed her gaze.

The Hyena, retrieved and brought here, left with the blade impaling the earth beyond the circle that surrounded her.

“One slain by that won’t return,” she said.  “You can end her existence, and damn her to misery and darkness.  You know what would await her, there, where you came from, but it’s better than what awaits her here.  ”

Alexis was shaking her head.  Mara gripped her jaw, hard, and Alexis froze.

“You could also end your own,” Mara said.  “I could be convinced to offer the previous deal once again.  One life, for one being freed to leave.”

I no longer had blood that churned in my veins, no stomach to turn food into calories, into energy.

All of this was clear to me, as I realized just how cold I was.  No different from my surroundings.

I found myself looking back at the others.

“They can’t help you,” Mara said.  “The circle will protect me from workings.  If a gun is pointed at me, I’ll know.  I’ll hear the gunshot and move before the bullet hits me.”

“Why… this?  The display?” I asked.  “You could have just…”

I paused.

Then I answered my own question.  “You wanted to see me react.”

“Yes.”

I met Alexis’ eyes.  Wanting her to signal.  To blink, to look in a direction.

She only stared into my eyes.

“Alexis,” I said.

“No goodbyes,” the crone cut me off.  “It would be my pleasure to deny you that much.”

I clenched my teeth.

I turned, and bent down to pick up the Hyena.

“Blake,” Evan said.  “You can’t.”

“I can,” I said.  “It’s kind of a rule for me.  Paying people back.”

“You mean-”

I heard a muffled thud.

Spinning on the spot, I saw the Crone standing over Alexis’ body.

“The last thing she saw was you turning your back on her,” the crone said, looking down at the body.  “Were you close?”

I lunged for her.  My hand hit the barrier, a wall of air.  I stabbed it, and achieved nothing.

“I feel like tonight wasn’t a complete waste,” the crone spoke, her voice matter of fact, words unrushed, “That expression of yours is a good one.”

Quiet, patient rage, I thought.  Peter’s words.

I stabbed at the barrier again.

Extending a hand, the crone made a swirling gesture, skyward.

The cloud of birds overhead began to close.

Darkness began to overtake us again.

She would slip out of the circle.  Pick another to attack.

Taunt us, prey on us.

“Behaims!” I shouted.  “Turn back the clock!”

Empty words.

If the lesser Behaims had that much power, I wouldn’t be standing here.

I extended my wings, reaching out, encircling her small circle.  But I couldn’t reach all of the way around.  There was an opening, a doorway.

In the growing darkness, I saw her turn her head, as if noting that very same fact.

I moved, but every movement came with cues.  The crunch of snow.  With years of experience, she would know, she’d intuit exactly where I was in respect to her.

Above all else, she was patient.  I had little doubt she could wait in there for an hour, before I gave some cue and she saw a chance to exit.

I had to do something.  To let her kill Alexis and then get away unscathed?  It would be the worst kind of loss for me.  Exactly what she wanted.

Evan was shouting something, rude words, but I didn’t hear it.  My focus was elsewhere.

On Mara.

She was as blind as we were, but she knew the environment, and had years of experience.

But she was as blind as we were.  She couldn’t figure it all out.

Reaching up, I took hold of my weaker wing.  The one with the section that needed my arm to support it.

With all of my strength, pulling, tearing, I ripped it from its socket.

My head hung, forehead touching the barrier as I leaned forward, one wing outstretched to the left, my arm outstretched to the right, gripping the base of the wing, so it could extend around to the far side of Mara’s circle.

Just a bit more reach.

I was nearly blind, staring down at the ground, panting for air with lungs that had a hundred holes in them.  Staring down at the circle of blood and black feathers.

“Evan,” I said.

“Wicked old bitch!  Alexis was cool!”

“Evan!” I said.

“What!?”

“The corpse of the crow,” I said.  “Bring it here.”

“The corpse-”

Mara moved.

I’d guessed right.  The dead crow was critical.  Somehow.

Mara moved, and kicked the wing I’d torn free of my back.  I raised it, and she tripped on it.  Staggered just a bit.

I moved around.  Two long strides.  Evan was still on my shoulder.

I caught hold of Mara’s hair.  The Hyena touched her throat.

I’d won.  I didn’t feel like I’d won, but I’d won.

It was over.

Hollow victory.

“Do you still want me to get the dead crow?” Evan asked.

The dead crow.

Part of the reason it felt so hollow.  There were things I didn’t get.  Why had she killed the bird?  Corvidae?

“I can, if you want,” Evan said.

That little body, so far from this one.

To deny us the chance to ask him?

Why, if she’d expected to win?

A decoy?

Corvidae couldn’t move.  Not until he was freed.

Or no longer bound.

“I-” Evan started, speaking to the silence for a third time.

I moved.

Stabbing.

Striking at open air.

I found flesh.

“Kàgàgi,” Mara said.

Above us, the birds started to clear.

Light filled the area.  More than a sliver of dawn this time.

Corvidae stood before me.  Hand extended, an inch or two from Evan.  His arm went limp, and he dropped to his knees.  He broke up into feathers.  I saw only a glimpse of a lock of hair in one hand before the hand disappeared.  Letita’s hair.  Glamour.

I checked.  Alexis was no longer in the circle.

The second time I’d nearly been fooled, tonight.

A second breach of trust.

To make use of him like that, she’d killed him.  That much was true.

But she was a practitioner.

She’d called him right back.

Disguised him.

“You’ve won,” she told me.  “You killed him.  You’ve caught me.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Kill me, then,” she said.

I could see the others gathering.  Some were turning their heads, shielding eyes as they looked skyward.

One was pointing.

I looked.

Off to the west.  Smoke.

And where there was smoke, there was fire.

Peter and his cousin.

When she realized…

“No,” I said.  “I’m not that kind.  Now come on.  You have some questions to answer.”

My eyes were on Rose, as she hurried over, her priority finding the mirror, not Mara.

Twice tonight, an ally in the guise of a friend had turned on me.

Would it happen a third time?  An important time?

Sine Die 14.8

I managed to keep Crone Mara from seeing the smoke while we worked on binding her hands behind her back.  The wire was a little more brutal than I might have liked, but it was what the Knights had on hand.

When that was done, I stepped away.

I’d spent so very long in darkness.  Ever since the fight with Ur, really.  The Drains, the mirror world, where small patches of light were surrounded by vast tracts of shadow.

While I’d watched ‘Alexis’ die, I’d become aware of how very cold I was.  Not necessarily emotionally cold, but in terms of my humanity.  There was a lot to be said for having that warmth emanating from within one’s own body.  It meant that no matter what happened, no matter what emotions or events we experienced, we at least had that simple aspect of humanity.

I couldn’t quite phrase it right, put words to the idea.

But something swelled deep within me, as the sunlight touched my body, reached past gaps to touch things within, and touched the exterior, that little sliver of flesh I still retained, down the center of my face.  The light was warm, and it approximated the sort of warmth I’d been missing, existing in such cold, dark places.

A quiet, simple sort of joy.  The same kind that came with a hot meal, or sitting by a fire.

Holy hell, had it ever been a long night.

I turned my head, looking past the trees.  I could see the town, and I could see the darkness that still lingered within.  The sun was rising over it, but the light didn’t touch the town.

We had to go back.  Plunge past the surface and into the darkness.

I wasn’t in a rush.  I stood there, the sun shining on my face, letting the others deal with Mara, looking after the injured and the dead.  Teddy.

I felt the lightest of weights settle on one shoulder, tiny feet shuffling on one thicker branch that extended from what would have been my collarbone to my shoulder.  Opening one eye, peeking, I could see Evan there, wings slightly spread, face turned to the sun, same as mine was, both his inner and outer eyelids closed.

“It’s nice,” I said.  “Sunlight.”

“Yeah,” he said.  He opened his eyes, saw me looking, and hopped around, looking up at me.  “You broke your wing.”

“Yeah.  I can fix it.  If I’d used the Hyena to cut it off, it would be another story.”

“Yeah.”

“How are Peter, Roxanne, and Green Eyes?”

“Warming their hands by the fire,” Evan said.  “I could go get them.  It’s okay so long as we stay beneath the tops of the trees.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Is that an okay I should go or an okay I understand?”

“I get it.  I’m… not rushing, right now.  There’s so much to do, but right this moment, I don’t think we’re going to get attacked and killed if we let our guard down.  Just for the moment, maybe, let’s let our guard down.”

“Sounds good.”

I didn’t resume my previous position, face turned to the light, enjoying that it had no qualifiers, here.  That it wasn’t flickering bulbs that only reminded me of how dark everything else was, a confusing strobe or angle to hide handholds, or something that filtered through from a world I didn’t belong to.

I did watch the others, semi-consciously sticking to the light in the center of the clearing.

The Behaims and Knights were seeing that Mara was confined, and were drawing a circle around her.  If Mara had been talking, I would have wandered over to that end of the clearing, but her mouth was closed.  The treeline blocked her view of the plume of smoke.

Only a matter of time.  I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be to the burning of her house.

Rose watched over it, but didn’t participate, gloved hands clasped behind her back, holding the mirror.  The satyr and maenad sat on the fallen trees, talking, the satyr drinking from a flask, handing it over for the maenad to sample.

A younger Knight wandered over, and the maenad offered up the flask.  The guy drank, sputtered, and coughed.

Mara was forced to sit in the little circle they’d drawn, almost a parallel to the one she’d drawn around herself, to ward me off.  They backed off, standing guard around her.

I saw Rose say something, holding up a hand, then she turned to spot me and head my way.

Old fashioned Rose, in old fashioned clothes, hair tied back into a short braid, with two lengths framing her face.  Her expression was serious, unsmiling.  She held her arms out to either side for balance as she made her way through the deeper patches of snow, mirror in one hand, her rifle slung over one shoulder with a strap.

I waited a few seconds, then moved forward.  I still managed to meet her halfway, even though I’d given her the headstart.

We met each other’s eyes.

She shifted her hands so they were both in front of her, holding the mirror in both.  I saw her glance at Evan, then meet my eyes again.

“Being around you is terrifying,” Rose broke the silence.

“I can imagine, knowing what you know now.”

“It’s not the ‘doomed to kill each other’ thing.  I imagine you have that same sort of fear.”

“No,” I said.  “Not exactly.”

She frowned at me.

“I don’t really feel afraid in the conventional sense, anymore,” I told her.  “One of the first things that came with this transformation.  I conquered my fears and they just… went away.”

“Went away.”

“Don’t have to worry about them anymore.  I still worry, I have concerns for the welfare of Evan, and Green Eyes, and for… our friends.  But I don’t succumb to the grip of terror and panic like I should.”

“How nice for you,” Rose said.  She looked at the wing I was holding.  “Is it fixable?”

“Yeah.  Just need someone to stick it in place.”

“You could have asked me,” Evan said.

“You’re not strong enough,” I said.

Evan coughed.  “You still could have asked.  Some might feel insulted, being ignored like that.”

Rose stepped forward, putting her hands on the wing.

I flinched, but, after a moment’s delay, I let go.

She held the wing, maneuvering it as she brought the stump to the hole at my back.

Rose flinched as the wood at my back shifted, working to take in the wing.  Where I’d been hesitant, even protective of the wing, her reaction was more one of fear.

“You were calling me terrifying,” I said.  “I guess this is part of it?”

“Not like you’re thinking,” she said.  “You’re hard to predict.  Every time I look away, you’ve changed.  A monster in the mirror, then by the next time I see you, I’ve done my research, I know you’re a threat to me, and you’re invading the house I’d warded you out of.  Then, before I know it, you’re functioning, working despite the confines of the mirror world, striking down your enemies.”

“After which point I’m outside of the mirror, attacking the Behaims.”

She frowned.  “Killing, not just attacking.  It got rewound, but… very easy to imagine myself at the end of your blade, having seen that.  Now it seems you’re transcending normal human limits.”

“He flies!” Evan said.  “He transcends with style.”

I tested my wing, putting my hand into the available spot, stretching it to its full length, and then with drew my hand out, folding my wings.  Lopsided as they were without my arm as part of it, I was most comfortable folding one in front of my body, touching the ‘hand’ of the larger wing to my right shoulder.

“Do you keep going?” Rose asked.  “Is this one step in a journey to becoming something else altogether?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She nodded.

“Is Mara ready to talk?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, echoing me.

“Okay,” I said.

She’d come here for a reason.  I didn’t ask her what it was.

I had the sense that the both of us were being exceptionally careful about what we said.

I didn’t want to disturb this small peace I’d found here in the clearing and the sunlight, and Rose-

“Alister was bothered, I think, seeing how the two of us interacted,” Rose said.

“Bothered?”

“I’m marrying him.  It’s not a game or a gimmick or anything of the sort.  There’s strategy and power plays involved with it, but it’s not like I can or will back down or stab him in the back or anything.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“He made this quip, and it cut me pretty deep.  Commented that he wondered if what he saw in our interaction was what he had to look forward to in the marriage.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Ouch,” Evan said.

Rose shrugged, looking away.  “If I can show that I can function like a decent human being in the company of the vestige-cum-bogeyman that’s destined to destroy or be destroyed by me, well, maybe that counts for something.”

I bristled a little at the emphasis on my being a monster, but grit my teeth.  I managed to sound civil as I said, “Yeah.  I can respect that.”

“I’ve got to lay groundwork.  It makes no sense if we survive the remainder of the night, save the city from the abyss, and the consequences of everything we’ve done catch up with us and destroy us all the same.”

“Laying the groundwork for the future.”

“I’m trying to.”

“I’m glad,” I said.  “For too much of tonight, especially since I found out about where we really come from, from Russel, I haven’t felt like I’ve had much of a future.”

“Don’t say that!” Evan said.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t answer, don’t clarify.  You’re talking crazy!”

“Like I won’t survive the night,” I said.  “Or I won’t be me anymore.  If I lose my eyes or my mind, they’re the only part of me that are still Blake.  If they go, then it isn’t much different from being killed by a dragon or a crone or whatever else.  I’m having a really hard time picturing life as it’ll be in two weeks.  A few errands I should run, favors I owe.  Ur, the witch in the Drains, the Abyss.  But when those errands are done…”

I reached for the word, the phrasing.

I couldn’t figure out Rose’s expression as she stared at me, which made it even harder to finish.

“Flying together!” Evan finished for me.  He pecked me in the side of the head.  “I knew you were being too reckless, going after that dragon!  You sound like you’ve already lost your mind, you lunatic!  We’re supposed to go flying!”

I reached up and cupped him in my one hand.  I closed my fingers gently around him, until only his head poked out.

“Flying!  Adventures!  You, me, and maybe Green Eyes if she has to come along and if she promises to stop calling me a chicken nugget!  Winging through the air without a care, dang it!  Over water so Green Eyes can do the dolphin thing and jump out of the waves!  And then we’re supposed to fight monsters, and I go full throttle firebird Evan and raaaaaaaagagargh!”

The incoherent sound he made as he finished was a little more emotional and raw than he might have intended.  More like he was screaming at me than finishing his sentence.

He sat there, panting hard, tiny body swelling against the confines of my hand with each huff.

“Raaaaaaaaagh!” he tried again, just as raw.

“Evan,” I could just barely hear Rose speak.

“I want that,” I said, meeting his eyes.  “Believe me, I want it.  Maybe not the fighting monsters part.  Maybe a bit more quiet instead, sitting around, enjoying each other’s company, but I want it.  Really really truly.  The problem is that I’ve come this far by trusting my gut, and my gut isn’t telling me very good things.”

I looked from Evan to Rose.

“I didn’t know,” Rose said.

“Until I said it out loud, I’m not sure I did, either,” I said.  “I don’t know if I can stop anymore.  I don’t know if I like what might happen if I keep going.”

“All this time, I’ve been so frightened about the possibilities, that you could turn on me at any moment, that everything I am could be consumed and subsumed, a monster taking my place, and you don’t even care?”

“I care!” I said, wings spreading, advancing a step.

I became aware that Knights who’d been standing on the other side of the clearing were now pointing guns at me.

Rose’s expression, the fact that she now had one hand on her gun, which was still around behind her back.

“I care,” I said, relaxing my posture.  “I want to ride a damn motorcycle again, I want to hang with Evan and my other friends and fail at art and try my best at being a broken human being, helping people.  I want it so bad it aches.”

“I want it too,” Rose said.  “But when I looked at the two of us, I can’t help but feel you burn brighter, or darker, or colder, I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense.  I don’t like what happens when you burn, Blake, when you go after things you wanted, and I couldn’t help but feel you wanted it more, somehow.  Enough that you’d tear yourself to pieces, even as you fought me over this life.  Destroy us both.  And there was this feeling, this belief, that I was the only one who could win and not destroy us both in the process.”

“That’s how we are, isn’t it?” I asked.  “I have the desire, the want.  You have capability, without…”

I tried to find the word.

“Instability?  The ability to do without changing in the process?”  Rose suggested.

“Fragility, more than instability,” I said.  “I see it more as loss, taking damage to something fundamental.  Ties back to the mirror thing, the vestige.”

“I think I remember that from the book, actually.”

I shrugged.  “Probably.  You got the artsy-fartsy creativity, damn it.  Harder for me to be original when waxing poetic.”

Rose sighed.  “Shit.”

“Shit,” I said.

‘Where do we go from here?”

“When I look at where we stand, if I face the fact that one of us is bound to kill the other if we keep up this senseless tug of war over Russel Thorburn’s fractured life…”

I trailed off, gestured inarticulately.

Evan struggled, and I realized I was still holding him.  I let go of him and he flew around, settling on Rose’s head, at the hairline.

“…I don’t want to be the sort of person who wins that fight, I guess,” I said.  “Because I can’t help but feel like I can’t do that without becoming the monster I’m afraid I’d have to become.”

There was a long pause, as if the both of us were afraid to say anything.

Rose glanced around, as if remembering where she was.  She turned, saw the guns, and gestured to the others.  Telling them to stand down.  The guns that had been pointed at me were lowered.

Evan seemed to consider, then flew over to my shoulder.

“Nincompoop,” he said.

“I’m a bit of a nincompoop,” I said.

“A huge nincompoop.  A massive butt.”

“Massive.”

“Yeah,” he said.

There was another silence.

I realized Rose couldn’t talk.  Not without risking saying something that would challenge my resolution.

“Rose,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I forfeit.”

I saw her swallow hard.

“If I try to win this tiny war of ours, over Russel Thorburn’s life, or Ross’s life or whatever his name was, and you or your husband haven’t crossed some line?  Assume I’m too far gone.  Evan, that goes for you too.  You can both tell the others without lying.”

“I’ll exercise my own judgment, thank you very much,” Evan said.

“That’s a good idea,” Rose told him.  “I’m biased, kind of comes with having your life on the line”

I glanced up at the sun, filtered by heavy clouds and the branches at the edge of the clearing.  “The errands I needed to run.”

“I already made promises to deal with Ur.  I could do it in your name.  The final stroke.”

“It’s art,” I said.  “I wouldn’t mind leaving some kind of mark behind.”

“I can do that,” she said.  “The Abyss… that’s a little trickier.”

“I’ll do what I can to look after the Abyss tonight,” I said.  “There’s also the witch in the drains… I made a promise to her.  I don’t know if it counts if it’s on my behalf or if you’ve destroyed me and taken on some of my essence, but it’s more complicated, a flower to the grave of a Zoey Artana, I’m not sure exactly where, but-”

“Write it down?” Rose asked.

She fished in her pocket for paper.

Working the pen proved difficult with wooden hands.

“Your writing is worse than mine, and I don’t even have hands,” Evan commented.

“You can write?” I asked.  “With what?  A pencil nub?

“Stylus.  Gotta have it for some of the handheld games,” he said.

Rose took the piece of paper.  Her eyebrows went up.  “That’s a bit of a trip.”

“Maybe on the honeymoon,” I said.  “Considering that I’m giving you-”

She raised a hand.  “If this works out, then I promise.  Even if it means going to Wisconsin for my honeymoon with Alister.”

I nodded, smiling just a little.

“Okay?” she asked.

“Okay,” I said.  “Yeah.  There’s tonight still to do, and this is contingent on you looking after the others, Evan in particular, and-”

“With regular purchases of video games,” Evan cut in, more than a little sullen.

“Even if it means regular purchases of-”

“Blake,” Rose said, cutting me off.

I stopped.

“It’s okay,” she said.

She lied to your face so many times.  She didn’t take the oath just so she could.

I dismissed the thoughts that whispered through my mind, sowing doubt.

She made your friends keep your identity and your origins a secret from you.  Subverting people you genuinely loved.

“You’ll probably need to use the Hyena to destroy me,” I said.  “Otherwise, I’ll just come back, and you can’t taint our existence with Conquest, so you need to be doubly careful, if you’re going to-”

“Blake.  I’ll do what you need me to do.  Whatever our differences, we both want the same sort of things.”

I nodded.

She made you weaker, when you needed to be strong.

The voice of doubt in the back of my mind had taken on a different quality.  Gravely, deeper, a more fundamental sort of doubt.  Where the initial suspicion might be to worry they weren’t my own thoughts, I had no doubt they were.  They were thoughts welling from a deeper part of me, one that didn’t do a lot of talking.

“You’ll do it, then?” I asked.

“Yes,” Rose said.  “I’ll do it.”

There were rules, expectations.  Everything we’d done up to this point had emphasized the need for carefully worded deals.  Our deal here was… pretty godawful, in terms of terminology.  There were too many holes to exploit.

Rose, perhaps, wasn’t willing to test what we’d made, here.  I wasn’t willing to reflect too deeply on it.

“We should get moving,” I said, to forestall the voice of doubt.  Worrying that it might say something I couldn’t simply ignore.  “None of this is much good unless the town survives, and if the universe really is conspiring against us-”

“Me,” Rose said.  “Conspiring against me.”

“Then it goes double.  We’re racing against a lot of tilting dominoes if we’re going to keep the universe from dismantling our little truce.”

Rose nodded, then hesitated.

“What?”

“I have one thing I need to ask for.”

I went still.

“I know I’m already asking for and taking so much, but… can we please not call him Russel?  I really can’t picture us as a Russel.”

“Ross?”  I asked.  “Russ?”

“Ugh.  Awful,” she said, but she smiled a little.

I managed the smallest smile back.

“Rusty?” I offered.

“Forgive me!  I give up!” Rose said.  “I yield!”

She raised her hands, and held them up as she turned to go make her way toward Mara.

Her hands dropped after the first few steps, as she worked her way across the one patch of deeper snow.  Slower going.  She was heavier than I was, but not as strong, nor quite as tall.  She sank in deeper into the snow, worked harder to move despite that fact.  She had more substance.

She turned her head to one side, glancing at the smoke, and I caught a glimpse of her expression.

A smirk?

I was frozen in place as I watched her continue onward.

The tension, anger, and stillness eased out of me as I saw her raise a hand to wipe at one eye, then the other.

Not a smirk.  Just overwhelmingly relieved.

“Are you okay?” Evan asked.

“I think we’ve long since established that that is one of the worst questions to ask a person who can’t lie.”

“You’re not okay, are you?”

I looked at Evan, “Are you?”

He ruffled his feathers.

“Nincompoop.”

I couldn’t put words to what I was feeling, to describe how I felt.

“I’m going for Peter and Roxanne and Green Eyes,” Evan said.

“Shit,” I said.  “Green Eyes.  We can’t tell her, or at least, we really, really shouldn’t.  We need to figure out what to do about her, because I can’t see her being okay with it.”

“Yeah,” Evan said.  “Oh wow, yeah.”

“Mum’s the word,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

He took off.  I watched him go, turn, as if to check on me, then go again.

I turned my face skyward, and for just a moment, enjoyed the sun.

The others were talking in the background.  I heard Tiff say something about Mara, then my name, a question.

I heard Rose say something.  I was pretty sure it was, “Leave him.”

Ironic as it might have been, I let my head turn away, and I started my way toward the others.  Faster than Rose.

Rose, arms folded, stood off to one side.  She was giving me the opportunity to confront the monster I’d defeated.

“Mara,” I said.

“Monster,” she replied.

“You’re going to break your word,” I told her.  “I’m not picky, but I want you to start by telling us what, if any, involvement you have in Jacob’s Bell being swallowed up by the abyss.”

“Start?” the young crone asked me.

“Start.  Because when you’ve told us that, you’re going to swear oaths and you’re going to break them.  Over and over, until we have no doubt that you’ve relinquished all relationships with spirits and the practice.”

She squared her shoulders, raising her chin.  “You think so, do you?”

“I know it,” I said.

I could somehow breathe easier now, even though I didn’t breathe.

A burden had lifted from me.  I felt taller.

“You know so very little,” she said.

“Oh, for sure,” I answered.  “But I know this.  All that you’ve built, all that you are, the cycle that you’ve built your power on, it’s one has been turning for a very, very long time, and that counts for something.  You asked me if I was going to kill you.  I told you I wasn’t so merciful.  I intend to make you kill yourself, in a roundabout fashion, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“If you don’t swear never to practice or take action against another intelligent being again, on your blood, on your power, on all that you are and were, I’m sure one or two of these guys would be willing to finish you off with the Hyena,” I said.

Mara didn’t respond.

“You started the wheel turning, Mara,” I said.  “If you refuse to swear, then you’re killing yourself, in a way.  You’re stopping the wheel from turning.  I don’t think you’re capable.  You have no choice but to swear it, because if you swear that oath, you get to live to the end of this lifespan.  You have to live, given the choice.  You don’t avoid death for as long as you have, if there’s any question.”

She hung her head.  I saw her hands move.  They’d changed color, the wire cutting in.  The binding hadn’t been cruel, but she was twisting it up, doing it to herself.

I wondered momentarily if she was doing something.  A plan, a working of some sort.

“I could trade you information,” she said, looking up at me.

“You could,” I said.

“If I can keep my power,” she said.

“Then I guess we’ll have to do without,” I said.

“You have little idea what you’re about to walk into.  One small piece of knowledge stands between everything here and ruin.  If you wish to talk about a lack of choice, then you should know you have little choice but to take my offer.  You must spare me.”

“Blood Hags survive for as long as they do by taking the lives of others,” Tiff said.  “Not to be confused with sanguine hags, like Bathory.  From what Mara said, she took an immense number of young lives to live as long as she has.  Stepping into their shoes.  I don’t know about you guys, um, I’m really not feeling the mercy.”

Pretty strong words and sentiment, coming from Tiff.  There were a number of murmurs and mutters of agreement.  More to the point, nobody disagreed.

Mara bowed her head once more.

“Power,” she said.  “I can offer you power, then.”

“It’s not going to work, Mara,” I said.  “I know you’re pretty much compelled to strive for survival, and I’m guessing you’re numb to the sheer number of lives you’ve taken, but it’s kind of a big deal.  We’re not interested in bargaining.  We’re giving you one path if you want to live out the rest of that stolen lifespan of yours.”

“As I see fit?” She asked.  “At my home, unmolested?”

I didn’t glance at the smoke.  Let her realize on her own.  Face a life with fear of onrushing death.  Let her do it without her creature comforts, or the routine she’d maintained for countless generations.

I didn’t give her an answer to her question.  “Take the first step on that path by telling us whether you’re involved.”

“I was the architect of it all,” she said.  “I’ve been striving to these ends since the township was established.”

There was a dull rumble.  Cracks sounded elsewhere in the forest.  Birds took to the air.

“Peter?” Ellie asked, alarmed.

“No,” Rose said.  “Peter’s fine, as far as I can tell.  He’s over that way.  The trees fell… elsewhere.”

“She lied,” Alister’s female relative said.  “She’s losing her hold on this place.”

“That means she has no involvement,” Rose said.  “Do you know who is involved, Mara?”

“Laird Behaim lives with a dark thing, one of the demons your kind deals with, living in his corpse, peering from the wound,” Mara said.

More trees fell.  More birds took to the air.

I saw Alister’s relative breathe a sigh of relief.

“Try again,” I said.  She knows more than she lets on, about goings-on in Jacob’s Bell, to know that that was even a possibility.

“Yes, I know who is responsible,” Mara said.

Not a single tree fell.

“Who?”

“Rose Thorburn,” Mara said.

I could hear something rumble.  As if the very earth was cracking.

Here, however, we were safe.

“Ah well,” Mara said.

“Straight answers,” Rose said, stern.  “Who’s sinking Jacob’s Bell?”

“He’s been safe in his demesne all this time,” Mara answered.  “Sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one.”

“Johannes?” Rose asked.

“Yes,” Mara said.  “In the time you’ve wasted here with me, he has left his demesne.  Until I forswore myself, I was watching.  Paying attention to my surroundings.  If you leave now, and your path isn’t barred, you should get there in time.  But your path will be barred.  You’ve lost, for your arrogance.”

The trees were silent, spelling out the truth to her words.

“Hillsglade House,” Rose said.

Sine Die 14.9

The hag and the house.  Whichever one we left behind, we were screwed.

“Peter and Roxanne,” Rose said.

“It doesn’t matter,” the crone said.

“Evan’s getting them,” I told Rose.  “They’re headed this way.”

“We can’t leave Mara here,” I said.  “If you stay, I can go-”

“I would like a word with you, monster,” Mara said.  “Perhaps-”

“Well fuck you,” I said.  I turned back to Rose, “I can fly, I can get there faster.”

“You also carry a share of the darkest places with you,” Mara said.  “For a location teetering on a precipice, what would it mean, for you to be there, as something significant occurs, while your counterpart remains behind?”

Rose and I exchanged glances.

“You would work against your own agenda, tilting the city at a delicate point,” Mara said.

“I go,” Rose said.  “You wrap up?  Or we go together.”

“I’ll wrap this up, then I’ll follow,” I told her.  “I’m pretty sure I can catch up.”

“We can stick around here if we need to,” Alister’s female relative said.  “If we’re balancing the groups, like Alister recommended-”

“No,” I said.  “That’s a trap.  We don’t need manpower here, and if there’s something going on, you’ll need all the help you can get.”

“Okay then, just you Ainsley,” Rose said, even as she was backing away from the scene.  “Look after Blake.”

“Will do.”

Look after, or keep an eye on?

“Where do you want me?” Tiff asked.

“Come,” was Rose’s response.  As if she were talking to a dog.  “Knights, all but one of you with me.”

Tiff nodded.  Shotgun Nick communicated briefly with the others, then joined Rose.  Only one knight remained behind, a woman.

“Come on, Ellie, Kathy,” Rose said.  She paused.  “Satyr, Maenad, Ainsley, Sarah, stay behind, and he’ll have Green Eyes, Peter, Roxanne, and Evan.  I think that’s everyone we can afford to give up.”

I glanced at the Knight who was staying behind.  Sarah, by process of elimination.  She looked like someone I might have seen at one of the shelters.  Not homeless, but living at a point where she was perpetually down on her luck.  Thirty five or so, a puffy jacket with a plaid felt exterior, a hat that didn’t match, and stringy hair.  I respected her gun though.  It was a fairly large rifle.  A club hung at her hip, inscribed with something.

“I’m still exhausted from getting here,” Ellie said.  “We’re leaving again?”

“You wanted to come,” Rose said.

I raised an eyebrow at that.

“Except I’m turning out to be useless.  Peter went off and-”

Ellie’s voice stopped as Rose’s expression changed.

And set the fire.  Which Mara doesn’t know about.

Ellie had an impulsive streak.  I was glad she’d reined it in.

“I’m not even doing anything,” Ellie said, and her tone was resigned.

“You’re staying alive,” Rose answered.  “And you’re helping, through your presence alone.”

“You’re telling me I can’t slip into a house where some family is playing sleeping beauty, grab a set of keys and take their car out of town?”

“You could,” Rose said, “But I don’t think it would go well, and neither Christoff or Peter seem willing to go.  They’re interested in this, in different ways.”

Ellie glanced over her shoulder, in the direction of the smoke.

“Ugh,” she said, but it was a ‘yes, I’ll go’ sort of ugh.  “The shit I put up with for my little brother.”

The bonds of family.  We’d all been through so much, and through all of the pressure, I was seeing glimmers of the real ties, beneath all of the hostility and ugliness that had been ingrained into us.

It wasn’t just them.  We were working with the extended family and the Behaims.  A few weeks ago, could I have imagined it?

Probably.

It still felt strange.

Rose and her contingent headed across the clearing, striding across and through the deeper snow.

Our forces were divided once more.  Rose didn’t pay attention to the balancing of the scales.  We’d moved past that.

Without stating it out loud, without locking it in with oaths and promises, we’d agreed that I would cede the fight to Rose.  In our tug of war over existence, I would let go of the rope.

They made agonizingly slow progress.  I knew I could fly faster, glide faster, especially now that the sun was up.

How ironic, to be a bogeyman, a creature of darkness and night, and yet to be limited in this way.

A taunt of sorts, after all.  I could only glide, and I was reminded constantly that I had to stay out of the light, away from civilization.

I’d told Evan that I didn’t see much of a future for myself.  That was a part of it.  Yes, I could fly with him, and we could travel over water so Green Eyes might join us.  But it would be at night, furtive.  I would always be flying with Evan as a crutch.

It wasn’t true freedom.

When I looked, Rose and her group were only just disappearing into the trees.  I would catch up.

Wouldn’t I?  I’d leave later, but I’d arrive around the time that they did?

I paced a little.

“If I went after them, would I be letting you go?” I asked.

Mara shook her head.  “I’m caught.  You’d be straining the limits of your own oaths, but I’m caught.  I’m ruined.  You would be giving up something greater.”

There was no sign of a lie.

Head games?

“Something greater?” I asked.

“Look at the pair of you.  Rose and Blake Thorburn.  Your heart sits at the center of your being, Rose’s head rests at the center of hers.  But the darkest places have taken your heart, and a working of the universe has taken your other‘s head.”

“Riddles,” I said.

“If you pay attention, there’s more to it,” Mara said, “I hope you’ll be desperate enough to offer my release in exchange for a prompt answer.  If you wait, I’ll still give you the information and the lies you want, but you may well be late to arrive.”

I felt so restless.  A lose-lose.

“In this moment, bereft of a sound heart, your mind is the critical tool.”

“And the inverse is true for Rose?”

The young girl smiled at me.  Sly, humorless, almost mocking.

“You reached a truce,” the crone observed.

“Don’t want to hear it,” I said.

“Two spirits, two bodies,” she said.  “A ragged cut, so the twain shall never meet again.  Any connection that forms between you will be twisted and warped.”

If I’d made Rose into my familiar, or vice versa…

Just lie, Mara, I thought.  End this.  A few more lies, and we’ll be done.

But she knew it as well as I did.  She knew how anxious I was.  She insisted on stretching out as much as she could.

“You are what you are, creature,” Mara said.  “She is what she is.  By nature of your dissonant existence, you would not like what she does, once she has won.”

“You don’t know her,” I said, “and you don’t know me.”

“I have watched the Thorburn family since it set roots in Jacob’s Bell.  Since your ancestor first experimented with the darkest practices, and did great wrongs to her enemies, securing a place to live, a husband, wealth, and all things she wanted in life.  The cost of these things she bought was passed on to her daughter, who did much the same.  You have been bred to clutch, to grasp.  For existence, for material gain, for power.  It runs through your bloodline as hair or eye color might.  From daughter to daughter, the sons tainted by association.  Even as a distant bystander, there are only so many times you can watch things play out before you start to see the patterns.”

Patterns.  Reminded me of what Peter had said.

“And?”

“Think.  Why?  What does your grandmother gain?  What motivates her?  She should know what comes of dealing with dark powers as well as anyone in this town does.  The permanent damage done.  To let a demon free and give it the freedom to act?  All but the smallest and most elusive have been bound, now.  Some escape their confines, but they are soon bound again.  Were it not for your kind, we would be in little danger.”

I glanced at Alister’s relative.  Ainsley.

She looked tense.

“Your kind, diabolist.  Your bloodline and family.  The first diabolists did away with demons, bound and chronicled them, and they thought long and hard before exercising the power they had bound.  Yet the promise of power corrupted all.  Your grandmother knew all of this, and yet she made use of that power to make you.  Why?”

I saw the young crone smile just a little.

“Just tell me,” I told her.

“You know the answer.  Any who understand the practice do.  What is the practice, at it’s core?  The previous generations hold to their ways of managing it, but when you strip away the bark, the veneer, the skin-”

“This again?” I asked.

“When you strip away the surface elements, child, what is it?  The most fundamental rule.”

“Everything has a price,” Ainsley said.

“Yes.  It is a currency.  Your family saves it, Ainsley Behaim.  The Duchamps whore themselves out for it.  The Thorburns commit crimes for it.  The goblins make others bleed for it.  The Faerie recognize the way we give it a value it shouldn’t have, altering our own perceptions of it, and they take that a step further, extending it into all things.  I work for it.  Till the land for it.  I have endured for it, and have let it accrue over time, until there is no place to store it but all around me.  I spend less than I accrue, and I extend my existence.”

“At the cost of others,” I said.

“Cost?” the young crone asked.  “By seeking to end my existence, you have deprived this world of more than you have given it.  What cost, for all the knowledge I harbor?  For the stability I bring?  If all lived as I did, the world would never stop turning.”

I almost laughed.

“What cost?  Everything,” I said.  “You want to talk about the practice as currency?  What value is it, if it’s never spent?  You lock it away here, when a child brings possibility.  Potential.”

Mara smiled, a cruel, mocking expression.

I almost showed her the fire right then.

“You have no life, Crone Mara,” I said.  “You’re nothing, and you’re throwing away lives for nothing.”

“And who are you to throw stones?”

I shook my head, turning away.

“Currency, monster.  What was your grandmother doing?  What did she trade in?  What does she gain by taking an asset and throwing it away?  Going against everything she stands for to create you?”

“I don’t know.  You’re wasting my time.”

“No.”

The ground rumbled.  All around us, snow resettled.  A branch on a nearby tree dropped to the ground.

“I thought I was only skirting a lie,” she said.  “Not something I have experience with.  Hm.  Yes, I am wasting your time, Blake Thorburn, but there are answers to be found in what I am saying.”

I glanced at Ainsley Behaim.  Ainsley shook her head.  “I didn’t know your grandmother.  I couldn’t guess.”

“Neither did I,” I said.  “There were her diaries, but Rose discouraged me from reading them.”

Sarah turned, gun raised, and I followed her line of sight.

Green Eyes, Evan, Peter and Roxanne.

“Hey!” Green Eyes smiled.  “We did it!”

I smiled back.

Can’t tell her.

Can’t let her know that I’ve agreed to let Rose destroy me, forfeiting the deal.

Green Eyes practically tackled me.  She crawled on me until she’d found a perch, her chin resting on top of my head.

“My previous argument isn’t hitting home, let me try another path,” the crone said.  “Tell me, what do you want?”

“Peace,” I said.  “Freedom.  Change for a broken system.”

“What does she want?  Your counterpart?”

“Security, answers, solutions.”

“And, going back full circle to our earlier discussion, your grandmother?  What did she want?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “A legacy?  Continuing the family line?”

“She didn’t train her own children, did she?”

I shook my head.

“Hardly the actions of one who wants a legacy, to be so neglectful.  She threw you to the wolves.  She placed you in a specific order, why?  What was to be gained or lost?”

“I don’t know,” I said, again.

Peter and Roxanne finally caught up with the rest of us.  Sarah started recapping what had happened, off to one side, while Evan joined me, landing on my shoulder.

“Do you think your other knows your grandmother’s plan?” Crone Mara asked.  “These diaries you mentioned?”

I bristled.  “You’re trying to set us against each other.”

Evan roughed up his own feathers, sticking them up, as if to join me.  It would have been a nice touch, had he not been so adorable.

Mara shook her head.  “You’re not listening.  You’re against each other by nature.  Do you think it’s just a simple curse?  A compulsion to dislike one another?  I’m only informing you of what is already fact.”

“I can put feelings aside,” I said.  “I can’t believe that Rose is going to become the worst sort of diabolist.  She’s not going to summon demons.  She’s not a bad person at heart.”

“Does she have to be a bad person for her to do the antithesis of what you desire, deep down inside?” the crone asked.

She began working her way to her feet.  I tensed.  Sarah aimed a gun at Mara.  Green Eyes hopped down to the ground, tense, ready to pounce.

But Mara was only standing, wobbling a little with her ankles bound.

“Careful,” I said.

“I’ll take no physical action against you.  I can no longer practice.  All I have is knowledge and words.”

“Knowledge and words can be dangerous,” I said.

“Yes.  The point I was working to lead you to,” Mara said.  “The power of words.  They have a currency.  When we use the practice, practitioner or other, we use words and language to communicate to other parties, to barter and exchange that power.  You reached an accord with your other using words.  I watched it, and I sensed it, I saw the power that decision held.  Now, where do you imagine the danger lies, now?  Do you imagine a great melee?  Johannes and his gatekeeper against your companions?  Bringing their allies to bear?”

“That would be awesome,” Evan said.  “Bad with people getting hurt, but awesome.”

“No,” Ainsley said.  “Going by what you were saying, Mara… the danger lies in Johannes’ words?  Not a fight?”

“Picture it,” Mara said.  “The monster’s other half gets the security and answers she desires.  Johannes gets power.  The High Priest gets his lover, without her family or duty as part of the bargain.  The lesser members of the Thorburn cabal get to leave, to put this all behind them.  The junior council can start anew with Alister at the helm, without the burdens of the generations that came before, and even your grandmother may get what she sought.  A victory for all involved.”

At that last statement, there was a tremor, a reaction from the environment at the lie.

Far milder than before.

A milder lie, or…

No.

“Mara, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“A victory for all involved,” Mara said, again.

Our environment reacted, but it was almost imperceptible.  The same statement.  It wasn’t that it was no longer a lie… she’d burned herself out.

Our ability to use the environment as a lie detector had failed us, just as she’d dropped the critical detail.

Where did the lie rest?

“Tell me,” I said.

“Bargain with me,” she hissed the words.

She was too calm, too collected.

I reached across the circle, and I grabbed Mara by the collar.

I saw the smallest glimmer of fear in her eyes at the contact.

She felt just a little bit more mortal than she had.

One arm extended in straight in front of me, still gripping the collar of her coat, I marched her away.  Further from the trees.

I let her turn around.

Behind me, the smoke still rose from her ruined home.

I could see the facade crack.  The genuine fear.

“No,” she said.  “No, no!”

Her hands clutched at my wrist, trying to pull away, to move toward the fire.  “What did you do!?”

“Arson!”  Evan said.  “The house, and all the little dolls, burning!”

He sounded so cheery.  I suspected he was trying to feign a good mood after the earlier discussion.  Faking it, so Green Eyes wouldn’t suspect anything.

“I need to-” Mara said.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Peter declared.  “Something in your kitchen burned like lighter fluid once the fire got that far.”

“It’s been burning for a while,” I said.  “If you want to go there, to try to salvage something, you’ll tell me.  I imagine every second counts.”

The fear that seemed to cross over her features was almost inhuman, her eyes too wide, cords standing out at her throat, where it was visible just above the collar of her jacket.

I almost thought she’d die right there, from the shock.

“Mara,” I said.  “If you want to salvage anything there, you’re going to need to give me fast answers.”

“No,” she said, and her voice was hollow.  “There’s no salvaging this.  My tie to it is broken, the land’s tie to me is broken.  Without my claim, my power, there’s nothing to stop this place from joining your city in being claimed.”

“Except me,” I said.

She shot me a look.  For a moment, I thought there was a gleam of hope.  She saw a distant way out.

Then it faded.  Dashed away.

She laughed.  It sounded just a touch unhinged.

“Mara.  Who loses?  Who is this targeting?  What’s the plan?”

If Rose can stall, or get control of things, if I can arrive with the right knowledge…

“Wrong questions,” Mara said, watching the smoke, breathing hard, halfway between a pant and a laugh.  She met my eyes.

Her expression had changed.  Seething hatred.  No longer the cold, patient rage we’d been treated to before.

She spoke, “But I’ll answer the question, all the same.  Everyone I mentioned gets their wish, except you.  Everyone, I believe, will come to quickly regret it.  Even the Sorcerer.  They’ll only get a mockery of what they sought.”

Mockery.

Everyone.  Rose included.  My friends.  No solutions or security for Rose.  No escape for my friends, nor a chance for them to return to their lives.  Johannes would lose power, and Alister’s junior council, what, would fail?  Be subverted in purpose?

She continued, getting more agitated with each passing second.  “You, monster, you won’t even get a mockery of a wish.  Nothing in the outcome will resemble anything you desire!  You want freedom?  Change?  I can’t see any way this unfolds where you have either.  You’ll endure a monotonous, broken, endless existence, without a moment’s peace.  You come on my land, you intrude on my life, and demand answers of me?  Let this be your penalty, the suffering you are due!  Pray for death!  Pray for an untidy end, because nothing more awaits you than a bottomless well of misery!”

She was moving, and with her ankles bound, she fell into the snow.

I let her, and watched her laying there.

“How can she know all this?” Peter asked.

“She’s been around for a very, very long time,” Ainsley told him.  “I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

“But,” I said, and it was very possible my words were informed by my hopes, that this was a manipulation, a trick.  “Mara can lie.  She might pay a consequence, but there’s no guarantee that we’d be able to tell.  Any of this could be misleading, or an outright fib, to send us running down the wrong path.”

I looked down at Mara.

She’s different from the Faerie.  They revel in social games, they revel in the ability to manipulate, the schemes, the distractions.  Lying and social games are as natural to them as breathing.

But Mara… her immortality had been spent on routine, on doing the same thing over and over again, rarely interacting with people.  Even the vision I’d had of her interaction with the little girl she’d replaced, it had been cold, distant.

Mara could technically lie, she could work around the practice.  There would be bad karma involved, but she had the ability to spout lies.

But as a liar, well, it wasn’t one of her strengths.

“Shit,” I said.  “Scratch that statement.”

She was telling the truth.

“Satyr, maenad, watch the crone,” I said, raising my voice.  I was already turning to run.  “Peter, Roxanne, Sarah, Ainsley, Green Eyes, move!”

“What?” Peter asked.  “We just came all this way, and that’s after-”

“No time!” I said.

Just like his sister.

My wings extended straight behind me as I ran, taking the harder path.  Over rocks, between trees, ignoring the clearings.

It was easier to go out than to come in.

I saw a rock, leaped up to it, then jumped.  Evan carried me up.

The others were following, lagging behind.  They didn’t move as quickly as I did.

The crone had said that Rose needed to follow her heart.  This was the pivotal moment.

Johannes wasn’t going to Hillsglade House to fight.  He was going to offer a deal.

Logically, rationally, everyone present could well find it an enticing deal.  Everyone gained something.  Those that didn’t stand to gain anything had been dealt with in various ways during the day.

Logically, rationally.

Rising above the trees with Evan’s help, I flew in a lazy circle, eyes on the ground, searching for Rose and her group.

They weren’t in any place the sunlight touched.

They were already inside.

What did it mean to be too late, when this was a battle fought with words?

The crone had told me that I needed to use my head to get through this.  Rose needed to follow her heart.  To put calculation aside and trust her instincts.

Rose’s end of things seemed to make sense.  She had to put the compelling arguments aside.

Me?

I needed to figure this out.  To think forward, to think backward.  To exist beyond the now.

Almost experimentally, high enough off the ground that a fall might have dashed me to pieces, I turned over.  A sharp bend of each wing, catching the air, a barrel roll of sorts.

Turning my face and chest skyward, facing the sun.  Wings spread, Taking in the warmth.

One last time.

Evan caught me, nudged me, and I righted myself, stomach again facing the ground.

A twist of my body, a fold of the wings, and I plunged into the darkness and the night, wooden feet scraping on ice, salt, and pavement.

I heard a yowl, not so far away.

Distractions.  The barrier Mara had talked about?

No, I was still too combative in mindset.  What danger was a monster, compared to the right words in the wrong ear?

My allies hurried to follow, entering the darkness behind and below me.  Roxanne, a bit shorter than the rest, was slowing us down.

I dropped out of the sky and landed.

My hand pulled free of my wing just in time to block the barrel of Sarah’s rifle, before it could point at me.

“Shit,” Peter said.  “Scary, you dropping in like that, just after it all suddenly turns back to night.”

He leaned over, panting a bit.  Sarah seemed even more out of shape, despite being the gun-toting ‘Knight’.

“Gotta catch my breath,” Peter said.

“I’ve got to go,” I told him.  “Timing matters.  I’ve got to get ahead of this deal, convince them not to take it.  If I head out leaving you guys behind, our chances should get better.”

“Not far from where we ran from a dragon and a giant,” Roxanne said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.  “But-”

“Go,” Peter said.  “You told me to ditch you before, you were dead weight.  Now we’re the dead weight.  Fly.”

“I can spend power,” Ainsley said.  She wasn’t breathing as hard as Peter was.  “We’ll be right behind you.”

I turned and flew.

A dark form against a dark, unlit sky, joined by a small bird.  The wind sang through the gaps in my body.

A deal.  One that encapsulated all of the ones in attendance.  A trap.

It was as I glanced back at the trio that it started to click.

A path they might take, in striking the deal.

Green Eyes had been a threat to me, once upon a time.  Polite, conversing openly, she’d nonetheless lurked and hoped to catch me and eat me.

Peter and Roxanne were relatives, but they weren’t family.  Not until tonight, when they were making sacrifices, taking risks.  Prior to all of this, they had been the primary antagonists in my life.

Fell, the Hyena, June, the Duchamps, the Behaims, the High Drunk, they’d all had their tries at killing or maiming me.

The line between enemy and ally grew so blurred.

When I thought of classic enemies and allies…

Gears started turning in my head.

Enemies became allies…

Hillsglade House seemed to appear from the darkness.  I shifted the angle of my flight, reoriented.

My feet skidded on the ice of the short path that lead from the long driveway to the front door.  Coarse salt scraped between my feet and the wood of the steps.

The texture of the doormat felt strange underfoot.  I didn’t wear shoes or boots.  My feet were wood, a rough approximation of the individual components of the foot, all worked into one another.  The coarse mat was almost pleasant, scraping salt and accumulated snow from the gaps and the cracks.

R.D.T.  Stenciled images of thorny vines.

The door was unlocked.  I pushed it open.

The ground floor was empty, but tracks of moisture, sand, and salt marked the hallway, distorting the bloodstains that painted the floor and surrounding walls.  They led up the stairs.

“Where are the bodies?” Evan asked.

“Fed to something, maybe,” I said.  “Or thrown into the basement to be cleaned up later.”

“Not it!” Evan said.

“Shh,” I said.

The landing of the stairs was even worse.  I saw bits that hadn’t quite been cleaned up.  Ends of fingers or ears or little blobs of gristle, worked into the space between the floorboards and the wall.

When I reached the second floor, I saw that the doors to the inner library were open.  Floorboards had been torn out and splintered, set ajar so they fanned up and out like so many spikes.  The space around the gap twisted, and a hole in the ceiling and the floor above us suggested that it had all been torn open.  A glimmer of funhouse mirror architecture.

People had gathered.  Eyes turned my way.

A maenad glared.  The High Drunk, just to her right, gave me a dispassive look.

I could hear voices in the next room.

Rose had been too late.  Not in terms of a great fight, some trap, or other issue.

Johannes had talked to the Drunk.  Won the man over to his side, or at least set the tone.  Dictated all that came after.  Rose could hardly arrive and attack when the High Drunk was standing by, having a civilized discussion.

I moved through the crowd, and saw the library, devastated, every book knocked from its respective shelf.  They had been salvaged, moved into stacked piles, but it was so little, so late.

Rose, Johannes and Alister were all present.  Ellie, Christoff and Kathryn stood off to one side with Ty, Alexis, Tiff, and the Knights.

Alexis met my eyes.  I could see her as she’d been when she’d died.  Corvidae’s glamour.

I could see the betrayal, the agreement to keep my nature a secret from me.

I loved her and I couldn’t bear to look at her.  I wasn’t sure that would ever change.

“Blake,” Rose said.

If I told Rose, would that ruin the intent?  Did she have to reject this deal by her heart, not by logic and argument?

“Johannes explained what he’s doing,” Rose said.

“Mara kind of told me,” I said.  “She thinks this is a mistake.  I don’t even know what it is, but she thinks this is a monkey’s paw”

“Mara isn’t the most trustworthy source,” Johannes said.

“Her home is burned, her power base destroyed, and she’ll live out the rest of her natural life without being able to draw  on her hag powers,” I said.  “She wanted to taunt me, told me that I couldn’t stop this from happening.  Please.  Rose.  Anyone.  Help me prove her wrong.”

“It works,” Alister said.  “It’s a solution.”

“Blake,” Johannes said.  His voice was low, smooth, calm.  “It’s been a long road, getting this far.  In a way, you helped bring it to bear.  You fought long and hard, and now it’s time to stop fighting.  Put the sword away for good.”

I touched the Hyena at my hip, just to remind myself it was there.

“My familiar can give you a body again,” Johannes said.  “There’s nothing tying you here.  All you need to do is stand down.  Leave your weapon in its sheath.”

“And then?” I asked.

“A controlled sink.  We transplant a portion of the town to the Abyss.  We send the demon upstairs with that section of the town.”

“Or,” I said, “Rose can banish the demon.  There’s no need to give up the town.”

“If banished, it can be summoned by another diabolist,” Alister said.

“If we send it elsewhere,” Johannes spoke, “My familiar can strike at the demon.  There are old, forgotten gods in the Abyss.  He can put this demon right in front of those gods, and they can kill it.”

His familiar.  I noticed Faysal Anwar wasn’t in the room.

“I know about the gods in the Abyss,” I said.  “I met one.”

Johannes smiled.

“It was losing,” I said.  “Slowly, but surely.”

The smile faltered.

“Gods range in power,” he said.  Picking up right where he’d left off.

“I can’t say for sure,” I said, “But the one I saw was maybe the same size as the moon.  Or his head was.  I don’t think you can pull that off, resting in the Abyss, unless you have plenty of power.”

I closed my eyes.

This was the pivotal moment.  The argument.  I needed to figure it out, challenge the idea.  Break it down.

The idea from earlier had sat with me.  A niggling suspicion, an ugly idea.

How many times had I seen enemies turn into fast friends or allies?

Expectations were the enemy.  My instincts were the problem.  Assumptions and simple labels were ruinous here.

I spoke the words, knowing that being wrong could ruin me, at this most critical point in time, but I had to show confidence and state it clearly, or it just wouldn’t do.

“Faysal the angel and the Barber aren’t adversaries in this,” I said.  “We’re playing right into Faysal’s hands.  He’s the threat.”

Sine Die 14.10

I met everyone’s eyes in turn.  Rose, the High Priest, Alister, my friends.

Then Johannes’.

I wasn’t getting resounding support.  No voices echoing my suspicions.

“Proof?” Johannes asked.

I only shook my head.

“What I can’t decide,” Johannes finally said, “Is if you think you’re right, or if you’re just stirring up trouble, by your nature.”

“I’ve been through the metaphorical grinder since this all began,” I said, my voice low.  “Virtually everyone here has been my enemy at one time or another.  I’ve seen alliances form and be broken, marriages and families shattered and united.  It keeps hitting the same notes.  The line between enemy and ally is never as clearly defined as we think it is.  I’m a pretty good example of how labels don’t always apply in nice, clean-cut ways.  I can’t believe that, given all the time they’ve been around, that angels and demons haven’t found a way to cross wires or cross paths at some points.”

“You really believe what you’re saying,” Johannes said.  “You think my familiar is allied with demons?”

“I’m saying that he’s probably working with demons or a demon.  Different interests, but right now, right here, with so much at stake on a greater scale, I don’t think you can have entities like that in close proximity without having things get sucked into their orbit.  There’s just no way to deal with powers that vast in a safe manner.”

Johannes put two fingers to the bridge of his nose.  “Are you really going to dismantle what we’re trying to build here, out of sheer paranoia?”

“I might try,” I said.  “Is it paranoia if it’s justified?  I’ve faced down demons.  I’ve seen a demon working its way into the Abyss.  I’ve seen a man destroyed, the hierarchy of beasts and man overturned.  I’ve had my life taken from me by the fallout of two different demons doing their work.  Angels are apparently, according to an angel, only a step down from that.  I don’t know how much involvement your pet had in your decision to do this, but I do know that, according to the book that serves as Familiars 101, powerful familiars can eclipse the practitioner.”

“You may be underestimating how strong I am,” Johannes said.

“You don’t even factor in, Johannes,” I said, my voice hard.  “They operate beyond the bounds we do.  They destroy, and they create.  Those of us here, the humans, the faerie, the goblins, and whatever else, we’re only changing what they’ve left us to work with.  There’s very little we can do to even compete on their level.  A major, if forgotten god was only just keeping an even ground with what I was told was a moderate demon.  You want to tamper with the Barber, and you think anything is going to stop it?”

“Grandmother said that binding Barbatorem was one of her greatest accomplishments,” Rose said.  “Seeing other demons in action, if only briefly, just being around the Barber, I think I understand why.”

“I was hoping that you would get the Thorburn monster on a metaphorical leash, rather than agree with him,” Johannes said.

“I don’t,” Rose said.  “I’m not about to bind him in any manner, but I’m not going to agree with him automatically, either.  The deal sounds good.  There’s a lot more that’s at play, and, honestly, the deal fits in well with that stuff.”

“Too well?” I asked.

I saw Rose’s expression change for just a moment.

“I don’t know,” she said, a little less confidently.

I turned away.  Couldn’t push her too hard.  I had to think my way through this.  Argue with my head more than my gut.  In the meantime, I had to hope that Rose could do the opposite.

If we could both find our way to the right answer, at the same time, maybe the shattered whole that was the sixth Thorburn grandchild, Rusty, Russel, Ross, whatever his name was, maybe he could figure out this situation.  He, we.

It wasn’t quite Mara’s words, but her sentiments lingered, the warnings, the mockery, the observations.

Rose and I were at odds with one another.  Not enemies, but still at odds.

If we could cooperate, so could the angel and demon.

I’d found my way to one part of the answer.

But there had to be more to it.

My eyes fell on one stack of books.  Grandmother’s diaries.

Had Rose read them?  How much knowledge had she gleamed?

Was her knowledge of grandmother’s plan or greater agenda influencing her decision here?

Alister spoke, “Jacob’s Bell is so damaged that I’m not even sure I’d want it anymore.  There’s too much mess to clean up.  I can’t speak for the others, but I helped build the junior council based on the idea that we didn’t want to wait until our parents vacated their seats before being able to take a hand in things.”

“Ironic,” the Drunk said.  “Coming from the new leader of the Behaim family.”

Alister flashed what he probably thought was a winning smile.  To people who didn’t like him in the first place, though, it was only annoying.

“Honestly,” Alister said, “If you want to make a deal of nonaggression, help us on our way?  I’m not sure I care what you do.”

“You’re marrying Rose,” I said.  “And Rose-”

“Will be protected,” Alister said.  “As best as we can.”

I clenched my fist.  “You’re not grasping what you’re up against.”

“I’m not stupid,” Rose said.  “I’ve met grandmother’s lawyers more times than you have.  I’ve put a lot of thought into them and how to deal with them.  I just faced them down, on my way here.  The barrier that Mara talked about?  That would delay my arrival?  It was them.  More than a little upset about the state of the house.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“If it weren’t for my engagement with Alister, I don’t think they would have left me alone.  They’re a big part of what I’m trying to figure out, moving forward.  Striking a balance, keeping them dealt with.  I honestly feel a lot more confident giving up the house, keeping the books, or as many as I can take, and moving forward with Johannes’ contacts and Alister’s family backing me.  I think I can get the lawyers to agree to it.  They just want the Thorburn family to keep going.”

She paused.

“What’s the alternative, Blake?” she asked.  “You say this deal is a trap, some great conspiracy by an angel, but what’s the alternative?  What do you propose?”

I clenched my teeth.

“Right,” she said.  “Maybe an unfair question to ask you.”

“By your own admission, you’ve been through a lot,” Johannes said.  “But don’t underestimate us.  If worst comes to worst, we’re not incapable.”

“Trust me,” Rose told me.

There was an insistence in her tone.

I was almost instantly reminded of my own line of thinking.  The thoughts I’d had about how to communicate to Rose without influencing her instincts.

Was Rose doing the same thing?

Did she have knowledge that she was forced to hold back?  Putting her in the awkward position of having to communicate with me, getting me to play ball?

I looked back to grandmother’s diaries.

I stared at them.

Mara had talked about grandmother.  Grandmother’s plan and motivations were still a great big unknown for me.

“The good thing is that there’s no rush,” Johannes said.  “The bad thing is that I don’t think there’s an easy way to resolve this, and a deadlock is as bad as an inability to get everyone involved to cooperate.”

“We’re not about to get deadlocked,” the High Priest said.  His tone was serious, grave.

I didn’t participate in the discussion.  My thoughts were on grandmother.

Her plan.

What Rose wanted, or didn’t want, did it fit into Grandmother’s scheme?  Or did it subvert that scheme?

I glanced around.

Sandra wasn’t here.  Neither was Mags.  Faysal Anwar, too, was absent.

“Where’s Mags?” I asked.

“With the Duchamps,” the High Priest said.  “Who, thanks to your summoned crow, are in dire straits.  Sandra was very nearly killed by the backlash from her own contingent.”

“We simply set it loose,” Alexis said.  “We didn’t have time to give it more concrete instructions.  Things were rather serious here.”

“All the same,” the High Priest said.

“They have dibs on the Ambassador,” Alister elaborated.

“And your familiar?” I asked Johannes.

“Faysal is managing my domain,” Johannes said.  “Too many powerful agents that can’t be given too much free reign.”

I nodded slowly.

“Victory is in my grasp,” Johannes told me.  “The Behaims are strong, but not unbreakable. The Duchamps have fallen.  I’ve shown you all my strength.  If this were a court case, you could consider this my offer of a plea bargain.  If it were war, which it is, I’m offering peace.  There is no longer anyone in play that cares to have Jacob’s Bell.  Let me have it, let the others be, free to relocate if they see fit, and even if we are not creating or destroying as angels or demons might, we’re still creating a great work of change.  That has to count for something.”

“A new order,” I said, only speaking so I wouldn’t be left behind or ignored as the conversation moved forward.  My mind was still elsewhere.  “One of the other locals told me you wanted to create a realm where Others could reside.”

“Power,” Johannes said.  “But I would want that power to be untainted, and to attract the right types of Other.  I need this house gone.  Give me that, and I’ll share the power with each of you.  Even at one hundredth of the total share, you stand to gain much.  I can offer you that deal, Blake, but I think you’d appreciate having life again.”

“It makes sense,” Rose said.  “All that Faysal has asked for has been to be allowed to guide the demon to the Abyss, still within its circle, where it can most easily be dealt with.  Presumably by a greater power like a god.”

“Or an angel?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Rose said.

“An angel named Faysal Anwar?”

Johannes sighed.  “Paranoia.”

My attention fell on the diaries again.

I’d only read the opening.  I had only glimmers of an insight into who Grandmother was, otherwise.  A snippet here, mentioning Barbatorem, a detail here, from memory of dealing with family or visiting the house as a very young child, the brief conversation over the inheritance.

A child born into the Thorburn family, who swore never to teach her own children the practice.  A young woman who made a mistake, and saw innocents hurt for it.  A bitter, sly, arrogant old woman who derided her family as failures, and arranged her grandchildren in the wrong order.  Catching one by surprise, barbering the second, slighting Paige because she wouldn’t necessarily bear a daughter for the family.

“If you don’t have any more arguments,” Johannes said, “Perhaps you should stand back.  We can finish this discussion and deal without your input.  But you can’t filibuster our decision without actually saying something.  Not in a civilized process.”

“I’m not sure,” Alister said.  “The suspicions about your familiar’s motives might be a bit much, but… I’m wondering if we should bring him here to say his piece.  If only to reassure us.”

“He might complicate things,” the High Drunk said.

“He might,” Alister conceded.  I’d expected a rebuttal, a counterpoint.  He didn’t give one.  He’d been telling the truth when he’d said he wasn’t sure.

I made eye contact with Rose.  Willing her to somehow express or transmit her thoughts to me.  To share what she might know of grandmother or the larger plan.

Assumptions.  Thinking that enemies were going to stay enemies was dangerous.

But if I turned it around, looking at Rose, knowing that I’d once considered her a lonely ally when I had so many enemies, was the opposite true?

Grandmother.  The Lawyers.

Ostensibly allies, or at least willing to cooperate.  In practice?  Was Grandmother subverting them?

If I banished all assumptions, dismissed the obvious as a ploy, a trick to keep the lawyers pacified…

All power had a price.  Practice was akin to a currency, and we were in so, so much debt.

We could work for lifetimes, and possibly never be rid of it all.

In the beginning I’d wondered, very briefly, why we couldn’t game the system to get rid of the debt.  Spread it out among countless children, stagger it out, or figure out other means of breaking it down.

The lawyers were keeping us in this position.

Just desperate enough that we might take their deal, take an out, join their firm.

Putting ourselves in a position where we were contributing to a greater cosmic decline.

Was Grandmother working against that?  Was Rose?

How?

By looking like they were cooperating on the surface level, but…

But.  That was the key thought.

“I suppose silence is as good an answer as any,” Johannes said.  “Only speculation.  If everyone else-”

“Rose,” I interrupted him.  “I think I’m starting to get it.”

“Yeah?” she asked.

But I was only on the brink of putting it together.  The others were on the brink of making the deal.

It was a good thing fear wasn’t an emotion I really experienced anymore.  Panic could easily have taken hold of me, dashed the thoughts from my head.

How did one deal with an impossible amount of debt, when the debtors were striving to claim the funds?

Declare bankruptcy.

We, the children, were the assets.

Except bankruptcy didn’t work.  Didn’t make sense.

My eyes didn’t leave Rose’s.

“Rose?  We can do this without your permission, but I’d really rather not,” Johannes spoke, his voice calm.

Rose didn’t glance away from me.

“Rose?” he tried, again.

Not bankruptcy, but something simpler.  Something older.

Controlled failure?

“What gender is Kathryn’s child?” I asked.

“Male,” Rose said, without a moment’s hesitation.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Johannes asked.

I saw Rose’s expression change, just a fraction.

Everything, I thought, and I knew Rose was thinking something very similar.

Her chin rose.  Confidence?  Something else, maybe.

“Alister,” Rose said, still not breaking eye contact.  “A word?  In private?”

“You’re delaying,” Johannes said, exasperated.

“As you said, there’s no rush,” Rose said.

Alister glanced at Johannes, shrugged, then headed to Rose’s side.  The pair of them stepped past the people collected at the doorway and headed down into the hallway.

Buying me time?

I did what I could to use it.

Grandmother wasn’t a hero.  She wasn’t a good person.  She had sacrificed us, she’d set us up for failure.

But she’d done it with purpose.  A game of something like chess, giving up set pieces in a set order, to play a long game and hide the fact that she was intentionally losing.

Molly, the sacrificial pawn.  Rightly angry about it.  Too easily broken or swayed, perhaps.  Thrown to the wolves without time to prepare, absorbing the initial assault, forcing enemies to show their hands.

Rusty was second.  The division into Blake and Rose serving multiple purposes.  Intended to do just what it had, warning us, forcing us to confront the new reality immediately.  Catch the enemies by surprise.  Positioning us with the warrior buying time, while the true heir found her footing.

But… there was something more to it.

If Rose won, earned her survival, secured her position in this world, how was that a win for Grandmother?

Very simple.  Something the lawyers couldn’t act on until it was far too late.  If Rose carried on her position, kept going as the Thorburn heir, marrying Alister, settling into Jacob’s Bell, or leaving the house to fall and moving elsewhere with her new husband as leader of the junior council… time could pass.

Until no heir was produced.

One individual, cut in twain.  One given the desire, but not the ability.  The other left with the ability, but all of the trauma that would discourage the desire.

To the point of turning down the offer from the girl he loved, for a three-way.

I couldn’t guess what had been arranged for if we failed, if we died.  Kathryn was next.  And Kathryn had a little boy.  Again, not an heir.

Would Kathryn be cut in two, by the same sort of deal?  Or was the expectation, from the evaluation we’d been subjected to, that Kathryn would die or fail by some other measure?

Maybe the line of thinking was that Kathryn and Ellie would fail in a similar way to how Molly had.  Maybe, as she’d prepared other individuals with knowledge of how to deal with demons, she’d anticipated that they would destroy themselves, attacking Laird or Alister or someone and having the demon rebuffed, sent back to the summoner.  A demon, ready at hand, that was capable of bypassing the typical defenses.

Leaving the impulsive, stubborn, aggressive Kathryn and Ellie ill prepared for the rebound.

Rose probably knew the particulars.  She’d studied up, read between lines.

Rose would have, much as I was doing in this moment, come to the conclusion that she agreed with grandmother.  That we could let the debt rest with one individual, who couldn’t produce an heir.

There was more to it, I was sure.

Grandmother had had a plan, and she’d deemed that plan worth working with a demon, worth sacrificing one child.

Weighing the odds, she might well have thought that clearing the slate, in whole or in large part, even committing those wrongs to do it, was worth the many, many Thorburns who might die further down the road, or deal with demons as many of her predecessors had.

Damning herself in the process.

A full minute passed, after my thoughts came to rest.

Rose and Alister re-entered the room.

She and Alister both glanced at me, side-long, as she returned.  A fractional glance.

I gave her a quick nod.

I gestured toward Evan, who had come to rest on Ty’s shoulder.  Talking to Tiff, Ty and Alexis in whispers and murmurs.

Evan flew to me.

“Some might say that calling your familiar in the middle of a meeting is like drawing your sword,” Johannes commented.

“I’m pretty harmless,” Evan said.  “Look at me.  I’m a bird, I’m a kid.  I’m dead.”

“All the same,” Johannes said.

“Now who’s being paranoid?” Evan retorted.

“Shh,” I said.  I cupped my hand around him and lifted him to my left shoulder.

“Well?” Johannes asked.  “Your discussion with Alister…”

“Was about wedding arrangements,” Rose said.  “Wasting time.”

“Why?” Johannes asked.

“Blake?” Rose asked.  “We’re on the same page?”

“No,” I said.  “That may never happen.  But I think we’re thinking along the same lines.”

“Convince me,” she said, her voice quiet.

I glanced at Johannes.  He was rigid, jaw set.

He, I remembered, had a dragon and a giant at his beck and call.  He had genies.

If we upset him, if and when we disrupted his plan for a deal, we might be dealing with those soldiers of his.

“Do you remember what happened, why I went to the Abyss in the first place?”

“Ur.”

“But why, specifically?”

“The ties were cut.”

“Nothing to hold me up,” I said.  “Jacob’s Bell is the same.  This house is the same.  Connections matter.  Everything we’ve dealt with to this point, they’ve proven how much those connections matter.”

I glanced at my friends.  My hand still at my shoulder from where I’d lifted Evan up, I gave him a poke.

He pecked at my finger just before I let my hand drop to my side.

“Yes,” she said.  “And the lack thereof.”

“The whole reason the house was worth money, is it’s connected to other things.  Briar Girl’s forest, the marsh, the town.  It’s tied to our family.  You want to sink it?  I’m thinking it’s going to get pulled into the Abyss, and as if it’s tied to everything around it, it’s going to drag other things with it.  One of those things might well be me.  If I took the deal, it would be me, minus the Otherness.  Just a human in the Abyss.”

“Me too?” Rose asked.

I spread my arm and my partially-folded wing.  “And Alister, because he’s tied to you?  Drawn into a dark place, where there is only unrest, never a moment’s peace?  It could pull in every prominent figure that’s tied to this city.  That’s why Mara was so terrified that her house was gone.”

Alister turned to stare at Johannes.

The High Priest did as well.  Sandra had strong ties to the city.

“With your collective consent?” I asked.  “Johannes could empty the city of everyone and everything prominent, and leave the remainder of Jacob’s Bell intact.  All he would need to do to expand his reach into what remained.”

Johannes shook his head slowly.

“All I’ve ever wanted was to better the relationship between man and Other, as Solomon did.  Even with all the ugliness, I believe this world is better with magic in it.  I swear to you, none of what he says was ever my intent, or more than an inkling in my mind.”

“But,” a voice spoke from the hallway, “It was mine.”

The dog strode into the room.

People gave it a wider berth than a simple white-haired dog might have merited.

“The demon would have had its way with all of you, freed of its confines, able to prey on you, until the Abyss caught it once more.  A firmer, longer-lasting binding than any that man could achieve,” Faysal said.  “The Seventh Choir of angels exists in abstract.  We cannot and do not typically win direct confrontations.  The demon gets what it desires, to undo the working that binds it to man’s word by taking the Thorburn family and associated individuals to pieces, and I achieve what I desire, stopping it in the longer term.  Worth cooperation in the short term.”

The room was still.

“Well,” Faysal said, “That plan is spoiled.  How unfortunate.  It would be much tidier than this.  Still, with most relevant parties here, we can get started.”

“Faysal,” Johannes said.  “By these pipes-”

There was a distortion.  A folding of space, complete with brilliant light.  Faysal disappeared.

“Damn,” Johannes said.

The entire structure distorted, the walls sucking in, as if by an immense pressure, then ballooning outward.  Glass and wood cracked.  As floorboards and sections of ceiling twisted, light shone through.

The light was soon marred and masked by the smell of putrid meat.

I could smell burning hair.

“Run!  Out of the house!”  Alister cried out.

A small grace that the wall around the door had been blown open.  The crush of bodies might have jammed all traffic, trapping us within.  We were able to make our way to the hallway.

“Metal objects,” Rose cried out.  “Anything reflective.  Hide it!  Don’t look directly at it!”

“How are we supposed to fight it!?”

“You don’t!  It will destroy you!” she said, her voice high, imperious, altered by Conquest.

The smell was growing thicker.

I saw Ty hold his hand to his mouth.  He’d thrown up, caught it, and now blocked his mouth.  Rounding the stairs, he spit the mouthful to one side.

A fraction of a second later, the stairway and the rest of the house collapsed.

The noise was akin to an entire city folding in on itself.  There wasn’t a sensation that wasn’t amplified a million times over, every inch of me that vibrated was shaking like it would simply tear into splinters and sawdust.  Bone threatened to crack.

All light went out.

When everything stopped moving, we were in a heap.

The stairs that had led up now led down, haphazard, some only attached on the one side, others broken, some three feet below the stair that had sat next to it.

The house had distorted, and now sat warped.  Bookshelves lay along every wall, largely empty, and even as I watched, script appeared on the spines, as the words were being penned in on the blank spines of books.

Water and dirt flowed in along the sides, streaming along the surfaces, turning what had been conventional novels into sodden messes.

A library? I thought.

We had light.

I stared up.

I hadn’t expected this.

We were at the bottom of a great depression.  But there was sky above us.  Clouds swirled, dark, but not quite pitch darkness.  Somewhere off to the side, a light was shining, lighting up the falling snow.

Lying on her side, Rose reached a hand up, and caught one of the first snowflakes to reach all the way down to us, a hundred or more feet deep.

There was a rumble, as if responding to the thought.

We dropped by another twenty feet.

“Snow,” Rose spoke in a whisper, as the snowflake melted against her palm.  “That means-”

“The time effect,” Alister said.  “The floorboards broke.”

The bell started to ring again.  Violent, discordant, never with a pattern.  It, Molly was angry.

At the edges of the darkness, shapes began to move.

Called in from nearby sections of the Abyss by the peal of the bell.

As the snow had reached us from above, the smell reached us from below.

Even with my inhuman nature, it was almost enough to steal all sense from my head, to leave me reeling helplessly.

I heard a scrape.  Metal against wood.

Footsteps, heavy.

“It’s coming.  On your feet!” Rose said.

“We’ve been in the abyss before,” Ty said.  “Blake too!  Listen to what he has to say!  He knows how this place works!”

One snowflake, however, didn’t move.

Distant, at the edge of the Abyss, I could see it.  But it was humanoid.  Impossible to look straight at, as space distorted around it.

The dog.  The angel.

“Faysal,” Johannes said.  He’d collapsed onto his back, and he looked hurt.

Between a rock and a hard place, I thought.  With monsters all between.

“He says ‘stay’,” Johannes said.

Histories (Arc 14)

The wind blew, pulling dry bits of vegetation from the low, rust-colored shrubs and sending them dancing over the rocky floor of the tundra.  Snowless, but frozen.  When the wind didn’t blow, it was nearly silent.  The only noise would be the shifting of the earth, reacting to the pull of gravity, the noise of dirt stirring beneath nearly still water.

The vantage point the angel had chosen wasn’t a high one, but there weren’t many options for high vantage points.

Shape wasn’t a mandatory thing for him.  He could be all things, if he needed to be, but no one form completely fit.  He wore three at the same time.  A great white bear on his hind feet, a shaggy-haired wolf, and a man, neither young nor old, with hair and beard that had never been cut.  The white of the hair and fur were so pure as to be shining.

He thrummed, though utterly still, a part of all he interacted with.  The motes of sun that touched the tundra made it reverberate like a skin stretched tight, and that reverberation reached all the way to him.

Once, he had built.  He had been a theme, spelling out a thousand narratives simply by being, like so many pens touched to an endless scroll of paper.  He inked out paths and behaviors on the broadest scale.

When man had come about, he had been reflected in man’s thoughts and behavior.  As man became intelligent, so had the angel.  He had guided man and been guided in turn, a symbiotic relationship.

Man, however, created its own demons.  Some were obvious, while others stirred in the midst of the noise and chaos and took form.  Sentiments became figures, fears took form, and in some cases, man abandoned his kind to join the storm of thoughts and ideas.  To become the monster.

The creating ended, and man took the center stage, bringing change to that steady, stable creation.  Born from chaos and noise like anything else, a chance configuration of molecules, man carried that change and chance with him.  Each movement brought change, like a stirring of dust swelling and spreading out from underfoot.

As man’s power waxed, the creators’ power waned.

Soon, man’s power would wane, and it seemed ruin would follow.

Once the angel had created.  Now, he only maintained.  He mended that which had been destroyed, and he watched as the world spiraled to an end.  A distant end, yes, but an inevitable one.

A great distance away, glaciers cracked and erupted, and they fell into the oceans.

Here, in a small inlet, the local fauna was suffering, as the salinity of the water rose.

He left the area behind, but he traveled a specific path as he did.  The creeks feeding into the inlet changed.

The fix would be slow, but it would mend itself.  A small change, compared to the damage that was being done.  At this stage, it was only man.  Only change, carrying the world from one state to another.  In time, there would be more to be done, and the changes would not be so easy.  He would go to war and he would die.

His day had passed.  Things would change, they would find ruin, and the ruins would settle.

There was no emotion at this, no concern, no anxiety.  It simply was.

■

People milled through the streets.  Every one different, every one a harbinger of change, given the opportunity.

Collectively, more powerful than he was.

He counted the individual faces he saw.  Four hundred and twenty thousand, two hundred and eleven unique individuals had passed along the busy street since his arrival.  Brightly dressed, drab, young, old, male, female, happy, sad.  There were the locals, their skin a rich brown, and there were the foreigners and tourists, with skin and hair covering every natural human variation, and some colors that weren’t natural.

Most moved with purpose.  All but a small few moved in straight lines, once he corrected for the small changes, moving around people or letting people move around them.

In other places, the very light of the sun striking earth and the response of the earth to the pull of sun and moon could be deafening.

Here, amid so many footsteps, a storm of being, he wondered if mankind could take him to pieces simply by going about their day.

The wind stirred his fur.  He sat on a balcony, the railing around him rusting, the paint that had once covered it now peeling.  A woman sat in the shade of an umbrella, hands in her lap, mouth wide open.  Sleeping on a warm day, oblivious to the roar of the milling humanity below her.

If she woke up, she would only see a disheveled white cat perched on the little table at one corner of the balcony.  Dirty, but with enough white fur visible to suggest it could be beautiful, if left pristine.

A small child, riding on her father’s shoulders, happened to spy him looking over the railing, and waved.

Four hundred and twenty thousand, two hundred and ninety-six unique individuals, now.

He began adjusting paths.  Alterations to space, to placement.  One change, willed into being.  A car moved one inch this way.  More room for a car to park forward, making it harder for the men coming down the street in their great garbage collection truck to enter the alley and pick up the cans there.

Some trash should remain behind, but it wouldn’t be much.  The longer-term effect would be greater.  He could return in a week and do a similar thing.  The same men were liable to keep coming for the same patrol.

The rodent population would increase, and the monsters that lurked beneath the city would be encouraged to come up for the food and the comforting presence of the rats and filth.

There was an ecosystem here that needed balancing, too.  The monsters would run aground with the local goblin population.  Both would be weak when the practitioners at the nearby church stepped in, they would be ruined, but not entirely destroyed.

In a year, the angel could return.  If the practitioners were too strong, their direction dangerous, the angel could tease them into action by stirring the pot.  Distract and weaken.

A subtle change to the pathway slowed the movement along one street, to benefit one store, and subtly alter the course of business throughout this section of the city.

A growing date tree was guided so it might grow into the surroundings, fixing it in place, a curiosity that might inspire, and perhaps lead to the tree being allowed to flourish in its unique fashion.

More small changes were made.  To enhance growth, to rein in destructive elements, and sow seeds for future possibilities.

A figure appeared, standing opposite the angel, at the mouth of an alleyway.  His skin was a deep brown, his eyes dark but gentle, but his face worn.  He wore a dress shirt with the collar unbuttoned, and had a suit jacket folded over one arm.

The angel atop the balcony hopped down, just as the old woman beside him awoke.  She startled, trying to follow him despite the disorientation of recent sleep, but he was already gone.

Already at the side of the man at the mouth of the alley.  His brother’s side.

“Harith,” the angel greeted the man.

“Faysal.”  Harith took his hand.  They walked together, hand in hand.  “What news?”

Faysal shook his head.  He used the fingers of his free hand to brush hair away from his face, then smoothed his shirt as he dropped his hand to his side.  “No news.  The world turns.”

“We’ll encourage it to continue doing so,” Harith said.

They were in the midst of the crowd now.  People milled around them.  Each one a contained storm of events, of history, and untapped potential.

It was heady, distracting, to be in the midst of this.  Harith was a source of calm in the midst of a storm.

“Humanity surges in strength,” Harith observed.  “It surprises me at times.”

“Me as well.  I’ve wondered for some time if I should encourage it or discourage it.”

“Makes little difference.”

“It makes all the difference in the world,” Faysal said.  “Assuming we want to stave off the end of things, supporting humanity could make all the difference.”

“Or we could only be adding fuel to the fire, giving them the strength they need to speed along their way to the end of their road.”

“Yes.  I’ve wondered which it might be.  This would all be so much easier if we knew.”

“It makes little difference, because we can’t and don’t know.  We must ignore humans and look to balance.  Stability.  If the demon’s destruction is analogue to our creation, then stability is the balm to mankind’s change.  The humans are strong, and have seized the reins, taken to taming wild things.  Including us.  With a little help, they’ve willingly taken to engineering their own balance.  They are best left to their own devices.”

Faysal nodded.

“The demons are strong too.  They lurk in the background of things, and perhaps they always have.  When the age of humans ends, they will be best positioned to bring about an age of their own.  I feel we shouldn’t leave them to their own devices, as we mean to do with man.”

“Yes,” Faysal said.  He laid a hand on a child’s head as she ran by.

“Two problems have arisen in one place.  I’m otherwise occupied, and you’re not.  I thought to ask your help.”

“What problems?”

“One is a demon.  It is freshly bound and may not be bound forever, as the bloodline that did the binding may now be disintegrating.  It has been called a few times, and in answering the call, it is traveling a path.  Wearing down the road, if you will.  I know paths are your specialty, gatekeeper.”

“The other problem?”

“A man.  A practitioner.  He is building something.”

“Building?  Buildings are your specialty, Harith.  The third choir’s.”

“But the building is a subtle one, and subtlety is your specialty.  He is laying the groundwork for something big, that much is clear, but here we stand, off to one side, watching and wondering how he can build so very quietly.  Or why.”

“No sound of hammers, nor sawing wood?”

“In a sense.”

■

Johannes glanced over his shoulder.

Two bogeymen, a foo dog guardian, a ghost, and a faerie with a great rat pelt drawn over her shoulders stood ready.

Help, borrowed, bought, and coerced.

“Now or never,” he murmured to himself.  He glanced at his followers.  “Be ready.”

There were a few nods.

He turned forward once again.  His finger tapped.  His eye reread the page on Demesnes for the thousandth time.

Drawing in a deep breath, he spoke with confidence.  “I, Johannes the piper, the sorcerer, the vagabond, hereby-”

“-Stop,” a voice spoke out, soft, almost as if it were completing the sentence for him.

Johannes turned.

The man that stood in the doorway was beautiful, slight in build, white hair and beard cut short.  He wore a gently rumpled shirt and khaki pants, and his feet were bare.

Looking at the man with the sight, Johannes could see how the man fed into everything around him.  Where other connections were straight lines, the man shimmered, as if connections tied him to every speck of dust, every splinter of wood.  When he looked, he could see connections to more distant things.  To himself.  There was no tension, no rigidity to the lines.  The rules, very plainly, were different, where this man was involved.

The gleam of the countless individual connections made the man appear to shine, in the lobby of this partially built apartment complex.  He made everything around him radiate with something just as fundamental as light.

Johannes found his pipes in hand when he reached down.

His minions stirred, tense.

“I was expecting challenges and interruptions, but not before I started the ritual.”

“The ritual starting is what concerns me.  It’s very possible you’ve made a mistake,” the shining man spoke.

“No,” Johannes said, “I don’t think I did.”

“I can see it from here.  I’m not quite aware how, and I can’t say whether it’s to your benefit or detriment, but you’re about to act, and your actions will upset the balance.  That’s enough for me to take notice.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Johannes said.

“In this case, it may well be,” the shining man told him.

Johannes spread his arms.  “I’ve invested a lot into this.  Even the timing is pretty important.  A good few of the neighbors are off on summer vacation, or off in Toronto.  First weekend of summer, after all.  Unsporting, but what are you going to do?”

The shining man made the step from the doorway into the room.  He glanced around, then paced the perimeter, studying the circle and the boy.

Johannes was only fifteen, but his demeanor was one of someone older.  His long hair was tied back into a ponytail, flush with the nape of his neck, and his face had yet to grow scruff.  A gun, a laptop, and a set of papers sat on the top of the bar.  A cheap construction of wood that put everything at chest level, without Johannes having to sit down.  The laptop screen glowed, showing the same text that appeared in the book.

“The practice is about dealing,” Johannes said.  “Everything has a price.  The trick is to skew the deal in your favor.  I don’t see how this is different.”

“It defies convention.”

“To hell with convention!” Johannes said, raising his voice.  “Who or what the hell are you to come here and dictate what I can and can’t do?”

“One of the architects of convention,” the shining man spoke.

Johannes frowned.  “Ah.”

“And, it likely goes without saying, one of the protectors of convention.”

“That’s problematic.”

“Not if you put this matter to rest,” the stranger said.  “I could destroy you, I’m being gracious enough to offer you safety instead.”

“Thank you,” Johannes said.

He grabbed the book, then threw it to the nearest Other.  The childlike bogeyman caught it.

Johannes collected his laptop and gun.

“You’re taking this opportunity to leave,” the shining man said.

“Yeah, seems like the best option,” Johannes commented.

“I’m not oblivious to the fact that you intend to resume the ritual as soon as you get a chance.”

Johannes paused mid-stride.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Now please-”

“Attack,” Johannes said.  “Arthild.”

His pet Faerie went on the attack.  Her features distorted, and she swelled in size.  A rat, big enough to fill a smaller room, hair sparse, flesh purple with the veins just beneath the surface, stomach bloated and writhing.

One of the darker faerie, a lucky find, his ace in the hole.  He’d spent four months screwing with the rat population until something took notice.  He’d expected a spirit, he’d picked up the faerie instead.  One from the winter court, the sunless court.

The shining man dodged her charge.  She was mad, frenzied, and there was a deeper instinct driving her actions.  On colliding with the wall, her bloated stomach was compressed.  Fluids and rodents spewed from her nether regions, flooding much of the room.

Johannes was already heading to the door.  He turned, laptop held to his chest, and managed to grasp at the pipes while still holding his gun.  He paused for only a fraction of a second to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally shoot himself in the head before he raised the pipes to his mouth and blew.  A tune.

He’d had to learn the pipes to use the artifact’s power.  With the tune, he was able to sway the otherwise senseless swarm of rats.  What might have been a distraction or psychological weapon became a tool.  The rats swarmed the shining man.

He pushed on the door with his shoulder blades, spun, and ran.

His Sight told him that the combined collection of faerie and rats didn’t last any longer than it took him to run the length of a city block.  The connection between the pipes and the controlled was cut by the simplest, most inevitable means.  Death.

■

Johannes startled as the shining man entered the lobby of the hotel that was still in construction.  He had his laptop open, and a cable stretched behind the front desk he was sitting on.

He tapped the top of his screen.  “Architect of convention?  You wouldn’t be an angel, would you?”

“I am.  You’re trying my patience.”

“You have other things to look after?”

“Yes.”

“Things of structure?  The construction of elements, convention, I imagine?”

The angel shook his head.

“Damn.”

“Okay, well, with that in mind-“

Johannes swung his legs over the front desk and shouldered his way through the door behind it.

A short hallway, a turn, passing through some double doors-

There was a flash from the room behind as the door swung closed.

A flash in front, as he passed through the double doors.

The angel waited for him in the convention room of the hotel.

“Ah,” Johannes said.

Before he or the angel could say another word, he raised the gun and fired.

The angel stepped back.  Blood welled from a hole in the abdomen.

“Your weapons of war don’t work against me,” the angel said.

“Okay,” Johannes said, backing up.  “Angels… opposite elements are strongest.  You create, bullets destroy.”

“Bullets change, they affect structure, even if that is tearing down blood, muscle, and bone,” the angel said.

“Right.  Interesting!  Learn something every day,” Johannes said.  He continued to retreat, not to the door, but to the wall.

“You’re edging toward the light switch.  I assure you, whatever you intend, it’s not going to stop me.”

“I only need to delay,” Johannes said.

He hit the light switch, one light on, one light off.

The blacklight lit up the room.

It was now lit up lines and diagrams, words in script and spots of bodily fluids that had been given to power the working.

The angel stopped, taking it all in.

Johannes ran, sprinting from the blacklit room into the hallway.

He’d set up traps and tools all around.  He’d worked it so he had this entire section of town to play around and prepare in.  At least until tomorrow.

Trouble was, he hadn’t known who or what he was up against.  If he planned too broadly, he risked something powerful simply striding through and ignoring the effect.  If he was too narrow in having certain traps for certain foes, he risked having the wrong weapon at the wrong time, or simply not having an answer to a given threat.

He’d plotted that room and that trap with that in mind.

The binding wasn’t for the enemy.  It was for the bullet, which he had gone to great trouble to give a name.

■

The angel was free.  Nine brief meetings to date, nine skirmishes.  He hesitated to assign labels to beings as powerful and abstract as this angel was, but he was pretty sure that it was pretty close to getting pissed.

Around the fourth encounter, he’d stopped trying to start up the ritual and resigned himself to being chased.  His pursuer could travel anywhere instantaneously and couldn’t be delayed for long.  It was very possible the pursuer simply knew where he was.

But with that knowledge and the dogged pursuit, Johannes had formed a hunter-hunted connection with the angel.  He had a sense of where the angel was, and what tricks were working better than others.

Most were inducted into the practice as they entered puberty.  Johannes had been a part of it since birth.  He’d inherited it, and he’d inherited very little else.

He’d seen the good, he’d seen the bad, and he’d seen the ugly.

He’d done practitioners and others an awful lot of favors, and collected scraps of knowledge in pay.

He had, in a roundabout fashion, grown to loathe the status quo.  He’d found his mission, and very recently, he’d reached the point where he couldn’t postpone it any longer.

Now the status quo was coming for him in the form of an angel.

He was nearly out of tricks to use.  His pockets were light.

Time for the old standbys, he thought.  Back to basics.

Blood was power.

He drew slips of paper from his back pocket, and scattered them into the air.

Each was inscribed with a name.  Vestiges of people.  Each one appeared in turn.  Imperfect.  His work in this field was better than most, but it was still crude.

Vestiges were fragile.  There was a chance this wouldn’t work.

He cut the back of his hand, and he touched the blood to each vestige’s forehead.

Of the seven, only two shattered on contact with the blood.  The rest at least looked more or less human, albeit with an eye or other feature slightly askew.

Blood was power, and if the angel was following the most obvious source…

Let them be distractions.  He only needed a minute to get set up again.

“Scatter,” he said.

■

“I, Johannes the bard, the sorcerer, the miscreant, hereby make a statement.  Let this be my claim.”

There was a flash of light.  The angel appeared opposite Johannes.

“I claim only those places and spirits as far as the reach of my voice,” he said.  “I claim this space and only this space.  I claim the connections here and only those connections.”

He watched the angel, tense, waiting for the attack.

The angel remained where it was.

“I name this space my demesnes, a place where convention doesn’t hold, beyond those conventions which I openly decide to be fair and right.  I claim this alone, with no bloodline of note behind me, and no intend to mark a bloodline after me.  This demesne is forfeit when I have passed from this mortal coil.”

He exhaled slowly.

“I claim this space as mine, as I dislike that which lies elsewhere.  I would return to old times, stable times, and let this place be a sanctuary, both for Others that would come here, and for myself.  For I do not like where things are going elsewhere, and I would hope to change the destination.”

“Or delay it?” the angel asked.

“…Or delay it,” he said, eyeing the angel warily.  “Let this be my challenge.  All who would deny me this demesne, declare your right to challenge me, and find me here.”

The words were ominous, and they held power.

But so very few heard, and many of the ones who did were slow to grasp their import.

Johannes had retreated to a broom closet, lit only by the glow of his laptop.  The angel was only a few feet away, looming over him.

“The device?” Faysal asked.

Johannes nodded slowly.

He worked his way to a standing position, facing the angel.

The angel reached out to touch the microphone.

Johannes spoke, “Why didn’t you stop me?”

“You’d already begun.  It was done.”

“Ah.  If you wanted to protect convention, mauling the person who tried to pull a stupid stunt is a good way to discourage others.”

“Martyring you?  I could be discreet, but I couldn’t be sure.  I’ll see this to its conclusion, first.  Some powerful beings did hear you.”

“What?  Who, where?”

“The bridge.  It’s a place where local goblins dwell.  They’re on their way now.”

Johannes grit his teeth.  He’d used up too many tools evading the angel.  He’d been forced to start earlier, rush it.  He’d wanted to be more careful with wording.

“There are others,” the angel said.  “Many will challenge you for even a small, closet-sized space.  Some Others do not want neighbors.”

“I made the speakers quiet,” Johannes said.  “Had to make it my voice, all the same.  Needed the quality to be top notch.  Should’ve been whispers, but it’s hard to test, spur of the moment.”

“Your voice was quiet, but they heard all the same.”

Johannes nodded, already weary.  The battle hadn’t started yet, and he was exhausted.

“I liked the declaration,” the angel said.  “The sanctuary.  Returning to old ways.  So much of humanity is focused on rushing forward.  Shall we discuss in the moments between your challenges?”

“Sure,” Johannes said.  “Sure.  But can we do it while moving?  Let’s get out of this closet, first.  If it’s goblins, I have things I can do.”

■

Johannes’ breaths were ragged.  He coughed, and he felt how one tooth didn’t quite sit right.  Probably loose, knocked ajar.

Damn goblins.

He struggled to stand, but one leg was in ruins.

Lost.

His eye had been given away to one powerful goblin, a goblin queen turned partially into a goblin.

His arm was a ragged mess, and might have to be amputated.

He sat there, the entirety of his being focused on maintaining consciousness.

“Will you stop me?” Johannes managed to ask.

“I’ll leave you be, provided you don’t disclose how you did this.”

“Yeah,” Johannes said.

“Make your claim, and then take me for your familiar.  We’ll see this happen,” Faysal said.

Johannes didn’t act surprised.  He simply sat there, a heap, bleeding.  His voice was a croak.  “Deal.”

“Finish,” Faysal pushed him.

Johannes couldn’t even nod in response.

“My last challenge met,” the sorcerer spoke, and his voice was just as raw as before, even as he found a surge of strength.  “I claim territory as far as my voice reached to the west, to the large stone tree…

“I claim territory as far as my voice reached to the southwest, to the base of the condo sign…

“I claim territory as far as my voice reached to the south, the bridge, goblin’s bridge…

■

The bell tolled.  Faysal watched from above.

The beings that dwelled in the abyss were emerging.  Areas were shifting.  Quite interesting to watch, given his vocation.  One who created paths.

He studied the practitioners.  Studied Johannes.

He felt no fondness for the man.  No fear, anxiety or worry.

But Johannes was crafty, and had been irritating enough with scraps of knowledge and meager amounts of power.  Now he had a great deal of power, and he hadn’t let his guard down, nor abandoned his canniness.

Faysal wasn’t a warrior.  He was a planner.  So long ago, he’d anticipated Johannes’ failure, and steered events so he might take advantage of it.  To deal with the demon, among other things.

As familiar, one part of a whole, he could exert his power, stretch his wings and lay claim simply by being more.

For the time being, he seized all that Johannes was, in body, mind, and spirit.

None of Johannes’ temporary companions noticed his brief falter, the stagger, the hand that went to his head, as he fought and failed to resist.

There.

The fallen house on the hill continued to sink, nearly as fast as they climbed.  If they slowed or faltered in the slightest, they might lose their chance to escape.  He was a gatekeeper, and he sat so he blocked the place that bridged the sinking house and the rest of the city.

“Stay,” he said, and the idea communicated along the loose, waving threads that bound Johannes to him.

Johannes accepted the order, and at Faysal’s bidding, passed it on to the others.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Possession 15.1

The individual floorboards underfoot felt like the boards of a rope bridge, each one suspended but unsteady.  Not all of the boards were capable of supporting the weight of a human being.

One of the Behaims stumbled, one leg going straight through the floor.  I caught the man by the upper arm.

Callan’s age.  Related to the man that had killed Callan.

Though I was capable of holding him up, I wasn’t capable of lifting him back to a more secure position with one arm alone.  Another Behaim reached forward and grabbed him, and we lifted him together.

The sound of wood creaking under a great strain joined the tolling of the bell, as we followed the main group.

Someone was saying something, but the noise around us drowned out the words.

The abyss was building again, pulling down sections of the house that had lingered, clinging to the sides, one section of wall providing enough material to build six or seven walls, down here.

We climbed, and the environment all around us settled into place, crashing, cracking, splintering.  Bookcases tipped over and spilled out their contents, and small avalanches of loose wood, bricks, tomes, and stone found solid ground, dancing off unseen surfaces, careening this way and that, and settling into shapes that resembled bookshelves, sometimes only a stick caught between rocks or larger texts, with a book or two resting on it.  Each impact seemed to knock us down.  Sometimes an inch, sometimes a foot.

Above us, the opening to the town and the woods was only just visible.  The hole that the house had dropped into was roughly circular, and if I didn’t look directly at it, it cast the illusion of a great moon looming over us, albeit one so dark gray that it was far closer to being black than to white.

The meager light that reached us from above highlighted the others that were making their way down and around, on surfaces we couldn’t make out.  Light touching a bald head here, an outstretched arm there.  A little further away, a haggard woman stood with her arms spread, face turned skyward.  Soaking up even this pitiful indirect moonlight the way I’d soaked up the sun before.

“Oh man,” Evan said, and I could only just barely hear him over the cacophony of noise around us.  “Oh man, oh man, oh man.”

Hillsglade House had disintegrated and what had been high was now low, hallways sloped with only one wall and one floor, or a twist of plaster ceiling that cracked underfoot like so much ice when we let our feet linger too long.  The tumultuous movements of our surroundings weren’t smooth, but jerking, lurching.

A section of porch came down, apparently pulled from its perch when an Other tried to climb on it.  It struck a surface, bouncing, and the Other went flying in the opposite direction, head over heels.

No way, given trajectory, that it would come close to us.  It traveled left to right, a hundred feet ahead of us.

All the same, everything had purpose down here.  Everything played a part in wearing us down.

We moved along a section of broken hallway that swayed as though it were suspended by ropes, the midsection tilting left and right as our weight reached it. It was as if things were only barely held together, here, while the Abyss struggled to piece it together.  To either side, there was only darkness, and it was a darkness as dangerous as the void of space.  There would be little to nothing to catch us if we fell.

My eye tracked the section of porch as it disappeared into shadow.

Behind the bell’s tolling, the countless noises of things settling into place, I could hear the crunch.

Too perfectly timed.

“Heads down!”  I bellowed.

My hand found Evan, and I cast him forward, toward the others.

One Behaim woman was so startled at the noise of my voice that she nearly fell right there.  She twisted and lost her balance, arms wheeling.

I grabbed her, and I hauled her back.

A mass came careening down at a sharp angle, spinning end over end.  It struck the middle of the hallway like a great hatchet.

A gap formed and yawned wide in the same moment, as though the connections holding the hallway up were only attached at certain points.  We teetered away from the other half, until fifteen feet separated me and the Behaim woman from the others.

I could see Alister with his arm around Rose’s shoulders.  My friends, Evan.  The High Priest, Ellie, Christoff, and Kathryn.

The intention had been for Evan to help the others dodge whatever was coming.

Plumes of dust obscured the shadows to either side.

“Fuck you!” the Behaim woman cried out, nearly drowned out by the bell.  “Fuck!”

I blinked.

“I could have made it!”

No you couldn’t have.

“You might as well have thrown me over the side!”

“Don’t tempt me,” I said.

“What?  Say again!”

I didn’t clarify.

The ground swayed just a bit as Evan settled on my shoulder, returning to my side.

“Fly?” he asked.

“Can’t fly with a passenger,” I said, raising my voice to be heard.

Looking past the gap, I could see Rose pointing at the staircase at the far end of the ‘hall’.  Which was more of a bridge, and a dangerously tilted one.  Everyone on there was gripping something, and I wasn’t positive that the bookcases that lined the side like a strange railing wouldn’t simply break away at the most inconvenient time.

I motioned for her to go.  I’d have to catch up, but we couldn’t delay.

They lurched forward, moving diagonally to get from handhold to handhold and scale the incline.

Very carefully, I advanced down the decline that pointed down toward the chasm between the two sections of hall.  The darkness below matched the darkness that lay beyond the short and ragged bookcases on either side of the hall.

Except as I continued to stare, I could make out the same section of porch that had divided the hallway.  There was a platform, deceptively solid looking, and a criss-crossing mess of wood planks and rails from the porch, collapsed against some surface or another.

My eye traced the new route.  Down perhaps twenty feet, almost two stories, then forward, and a matching climb up to the platform the others had been on.

“No,” the Behaim woman said.  She was looking in the same direction, clinging to a bookshelf.  “No way.”

“It’s probably a trap anyway,” I said.  “Things here don’t cooperate.”

“They’re leaving us behind!”

She’s scared, I reminded myself.  She’s not rational.

“We need to goooo!” Evan said.

The abyss had an intelligence to it.  There was an organic flow to the way things happened, the why of it.  Obvious enough with the way it had showed me select visions.  There was a strategy.

The strategy here was simple.  Attacking me by forcing me to make a choice.  Leave her, or fall behind.

I smelled burning hair.

A scream echoed from below us, loud, close and forceful enough to momentarily drown out the Bell.

“The Barber,” Evan said.

“He’s coming,” I said.  “He’s letting us know.”

“The demon,” the Behaim woman said.  “Wards?  I can erect defenses.  Buy us time.”

“He can bypass most defenses,” I said.

“He-  No, I refuse to believe that!  Every problem has a solution!  If I manipulate time…”

She looked at me, head snapping around.

“Bridge!” the woman cried out, abrupt.  “Can you tear apart that bookcase?  I can freeze it in time.”

“That isn’t a perception trick?” I asked.

“You know?” She asked, staring.  She shook her head a bit, and our section of hallway reacted, swaying slightly, like a boat on water.  “It’s my personal reserve!”

I looked at the bookcase, touched it.

“Hurry!” she said.

“Things here don’t cooperate,” I said.  “It’s a trap.  Tear it apart and we might lose our footing.”

“Hurry!”

“Can you unfreeze?” I asked.  “Promptly?”

“Yes.”

“Freeze me,” I told her.  “Use me-”

I had to stop as a rumble made everything shake.

“-As a stepping stone!” I raised my voice to be heard.

She looked at me like I was crazy.

“Can you?  Do you need to prepare?”

She shook her head.

I wasn’t sure which question she was answering with that negatory gesture, but one hand now covered her mouth, and it looked like she was gagging.

Before things got too bad, then…

“Evan, help me, circle back and help her!”

“Got it!”

I spread my wings, and I leaped.  I worried the ground would break underfoot or tilt to the point of dumping her down into the darkness.

But I couldn’t turn to look.  I could only focus on covering the distance.

There was a flash, and as the darkness settled once again, I saw that the hallway was gone.  Floorboards had tilted and fallen into the gap, and the gap itself had widened to about thirty feet.

I saw the woman on the other side.  She’d landed, then scrambled for safe ground before unfreezing me.

I was glad she hadn’t simply fallen through and left me frozen there for some indeterminate amount of time.

Evan soared back to me, giving me some more height, so I could safely land.  I practically threw my wings back out of the way, reaching out with one hand for a handhold.

“Good-” the Behaim woman started.

An object came flying through the darkness, striking her in the temple.  It might have been a bat, might have been a brick.

Her handhold gone, legs spinning out from under her as her body twisted with the force of the hit, she simply slumped to one side, slipped beneath the lowest shelf in a bookshelf, and disappeared over the brink.

“Wha!?” Evan spoke.

I was frozen, staring at the place where she’d been, the open space her body had passed through.

“No!” Evan said.

I started moving.  Climbing.  Hurrying to catch up with the others.

Aggressive.  The Drains had been slow, patient, deliberate.  The Tenements had been more like an adolescent, intelligent, but not above pulling the wings off of flies.

This was something else.  There was fury.  Chaos.

Was it the influence of those of us who were here?  An echo of Molly’s anger, of the war in Jacob’s Bell?  The demon?

I reached the staircase Rose and the others had gone up.  Shelves lined either side, leading up to a set of dilapidated rooms I could only see the underside of.  Planks loomed overhead, just low enough to be inconvenient, with books perched on them.  More makeshift shelves.

I turned to look back, and I could see the gap, one half of the library on each side.

Though it was barely illuminated, I could make out the Barber, my eyes fixed a few feet to his left, while I scanned him with my peripheral vision.

He was muscular, with scar tissue covering much of his body, suggesting lash marks, the rest of his skin bruised and ulcerated.

His head, though, was covered.  An animal’s head with a long nose, tufts of hair.  I guessed it was a horse’s or a mule’s head, pitch black, with teeth bared, the eyes pale.  Blood leaked from the base, trailing down his muscular shoulder and arm, all the way down to a pair of shears as long as my forearm.

The shears tapped against his knee.  Tk.  Tk.  Tch.  Two clicks followed by a sharper sound.

“Run,” Evan whispered.  “Run, please.”

Tch.  Tch.  Tk.  Tch.

The Barber hurled the shears.

I dodged, with Evan’s help.  Going up the stairs wasn’t an option.  Too slow, and if the shears were aimed at me, the walls on either side wouldn’t let me continue to move out of the way.  I’d simply be throwing myself further along the shears’ path.

I headed left of the door, one wing out, spread, to produce the wind that would stop my movement, fanning air away and pushing me back the way I’d come, before I simply reached the one corner of the hallway and crashed into and through the bookcase.  Knowing the abyss, I might have destroyed one wing in the process.

The weapon struck the frame of the doorway that led up the stairs, just a foot to my right.  Had he adjusted, predicted the way I’d move?

For a heartbeat, I considered grabbing the shears.

Then I saw the Barber reflected in the gleaming metal.  I swiftly backed away as much as I was able.

He tore his way free of the blade’s surface, and the entire hallway lurched with his weight as he set foot on the floor.

Bookcases toppled like so many dominoes, and the floor gave way, starting near the gap, the collapse gradually taking more of the hallway, steadily stealing away the rest of the floor.

He easily tugged the shears free of the wood, giving no mind to the floor or the bookshelves.

Passing through the door meant getting close enough to him that he could hug me.

I kept my eye fixed on the door, just to his left.  When he took a step forward, moving toward my line of sight, I was forced to drop my eye, staring at the floor between our feet.

I’d inadvertently moved back, and my shoulders pressed against the bookcase behind me.

I couldn’t smell like I should’ve been able to, but the air was thick with the Barber’s presence.  I could feel it winding its way through me, and the spirits that lurked within my body cringed and backed away, as if it were poisonous gas.

Tktk.  Tch.  Tch.  Tch.  His free hand opened wide, palm facing me.

The sharp sound repeated, over and over.  He wasn’t striding toward me.  He moved slowly.  Almost relishing this.

I planted my feet on the ground and pushed.  Bracing myself, pressing against the bookshelf.

It didn’t work.  Everything here broke so easily, except the stuff that I wanted broken.

I lunged, running for the chasm, the open space, the gap.

“Blake!”  Evan shouted.

He threw himself between me and the Barber.

If I’d had blood, it would have run cold.  I swatted at him, trying to knock him out of the way, force him to not do what he was trying to do.  I wasn’t successful.

Three steps in, my hand just finding my wing, gripping the part that I needed to grip to make the arm and hand a part of the wing’s mechanism, I was stopped.

The Barber had matched me in speed.

The shears had penetrated my midsection.

Evan flew around in front of me, perching on a shelf.

He’d helped me dodge.  There was only so much he could do against something like the Barber.  Getting me entirely out of the way had been too difficult.

So he’d nudged me.  Put me in a position where the shears, wielded like a knife, had punched straight through the gaps in my body and out the other side, piercing the wood of a bookcase.  Touching nothing.

“Um,” Evan said.

The Barber moved around, and I had to twist my head to the side to avoid looking at him.

A hand settled on the right side of my face.  The heel of the hand touched my jawline, the fingers reached just over the top of my head.  Calloused and otherwise scarred enough that the hard edges grated against the wood on the side of my face.

His thumb pressed against my chin, just below my bottom lip, and he squeezed.

Bone and wood cracked, both splintering.

The thumb moved to my cheekbone.  His grip still iron, though in a less advantageous position for raw power, he squeezed once more.

I felt pain, and I suspected my eye socket was almost on the verge of shattering, the eye popping out.

Evan cried out, but I couldn’t hear over the bell.

Abyss, help me, I thought.

There was no aid.  But my eye didn’t pop free.  Bone beneath my scalp fractured instead, and I very nearly slipped free of his grip, the blood or other head-fluids making his grip less secure.  A gorier version of soap in the shower.

He caught my neck before I could.

He pulled the shears free, and there was nothing I could do in the way of struggling.

Evan came for me.  All I could think about were the shears, and a bird that was flying right for the demon that was wielding them.

My thoughts were noise and that noise sang in response to the bells.  It was a reckless song, a mad song.

I reached up and I grabbed the shears.  I held them partially shut with my one hand.

Evan veered around, and he dove.

Under the floor.

The butcher tugged, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t keep my grip on the shears.  I could only hope that I’d cost him precious time.  Still gripping my neck, he twisted, and he stabbed.

The shears punctured the floor, all the way to the handle.

An aimed strike.

There were no signs as to whether he’d hit Evan or not, but Evan’s initial dive and movements hadn’t been ineffectual.  He’d flown past and under the disintegrating floor, and accelerated the destruction, jarring it.

A whole section of floor gave way, and the barber backed away, heading back toward the doorframe and stairs that led up to the others, dragging me with.

Oh, to have a second hand.

The nearest bookcases were to my left, and I had only a right hand.

I could draw the Hyena, but what good would that do?

I twisted, striving to grab at something, anything, but my feet were too high up off the ground, and there was nothing in reach to my right.  My head snapped sharply from far left to far right, until I thought I might damage branches or spine doing it, just trying to avoid looking at him.  Simply closing my eyes would be admitting defeat, giving up any and all chance of spotting some clue or tool I could use.

The noise in my head was getting worse.  Chaos, noise, blood, pain.  I felt like every chip of bone that was dancing against my brain or whatever things surrounded my brain was producing a dozen televisions worth of maximum-volume static.

My dangling wing scraped something.  The chain at my middle.

I reached down, and pulled it free.  The barbed wire caught, as if the goblin was spiting me.

Bringing one leg  up, I managed to hook my toes on the end, and kick it down and away.  I let it spool more.

It caught.  We simultaneously jerked, the Barber’s retreat from the gaping maw of the abyss temporarily halted.

He tugged me, and the tiny hooks that had latched on wood broke or bent.

Change of tack, then.

Still holding the end of the chain, I quickly reached down, and grabbed more before it could fall.  A loop.  I threw the loop over the Barber’s arm, then reached under and caught the end.

Rusty bits of metal and hooks of barbed wire caught on his flesh.  It parted like burned plastic wrap, immediately oozing pus and wriggling things I couldn’t make out in the dark.

I tugged harder, but the damage remained superficial.  I’d wanted to set the metal into his flesh, or verify if he could be hurt at all.

The chain ran along my right leg, and I struggled, while the Barber dragged me, to get my foot in the right position, the chain against the long side of it.

Timing-

We reached the stairway.  He paused to reach forward and shove one section of bookshelf away.  His frame was slightly too large for the narrow corridor, lined by books, on either side and above.

I kicked out, kicking the chain, so it struck the doorframe and neighboring bookshelf.

It wasn’t a firm wrap, certainly not a knot or anything binding.

But when he ascended, pushing again to destroy surroundings and make room for, himself, the chain around his arm bound him to the doorframe, and he was momentarily halted.

He hauled his arm to one side, hauling me with it, my body striking the bookshelf, and links broke, though the barbed wire only stretched a fraction.

It put him in an awkward position, facing down to the bottom of the staircase.

Until he reached out and clasped the chain.

Passing some kind of energy into it.  Or taking something out.

The chain disintegrated, and I could hear an echo of a goblin’s scream, in the noise it made as the pieces scattered.

Tk.

Evan flew past.  A reckless dive, a perpendicular direction to the angle of the stairs.  Veering wildly just as he reached me, passing me, to fly off into the empty void.

A shove.  Pushing me down.

Branches on either side of my neck broke away as they scraped against the Barber’s fingertips and thumb, and I was driven face first into the stairs.  Barber to my right, bookcase wall to my left.

I pushed myself back and away.  Off to one side, into empty darkness.

Void, shadow.  Nothingness.

I turned over in the air, still reeling, thoughts distorted, before I remembered to unfold my wings.

Evan joined me.

“Little hero,” I said.

He might not have heard me, because he didn’t respond.

The Library was still coming together all around us, but for the time being, it was a twist of architecture suspended in shadow.  I couldn’t know for sure if anything lingered in those shadows, or if there were any buildings or features, but the flying seemed unimpeded.

Far below, now, I could see the Barber, ascending the long staircase, periodically destroying what was in its way.

Further up, much further up, I could make out the others.

Rose had recruited a bogeyman.  A pale man with newsprint on his skin and a great paper-cutting knife.

They were making headway.  Covering ground.

The barber, shears in hand, covered half the distance between himself and the others, traveling into a broken picture frame, then stepping out of it.

Catching up.

I got to a point where I was just above the others just as the Abyss decided to step in their way.

Light flared, showing around the edges and bottom of a set of double doors, leaking through a window.  It was as if the tunnel and door had always been there, without the light.  Which it hadn’t, but the darkness played tricks.

The main group was tense, ready for trouble, when the doors opened.

Children.  Boys and girls in private school uniforms.  Gaunt, pale, their eyes more dark shadow than eyes.  Some held flashlights.

One threw a flashlight forward, toward the others.  It hit wooden floor and span violently.

On each pass, the beam briefly illuminating the group of students, there were a different number.  Seven, six, seven, three, six…

On the final turn, there was a woman, following the group.

Horn-rimmed glasses, a corset taken to some terminal extreme, leaving room for only spine, and floor-length dress that didn’t reveal her feet.  She didn’t walk like she had legs.  She flowed forward as if she were carried aloft by beetles or impossibly tiny, quick feet.

She was talking, making grand, sweeping gestures.  With each gesture, the children around her flinched.

Teacher, students.

Was there a section of the Abyss that was a school?

Newsprint-face, now the students and teacher.  The Abyss was pulling together Bogeymen and Abyss-residents with a theme.

I did what I could to land as gently as possible.  I didn’t want my landing to make the floor start breaking down.

The teacher collected a book, lifting it free of the shelf.  She opened her mouth to speak, gracing us with a view of something that looked more like the inside of a worm’s gullet, studded with hooks and teeth, then raised a finger.  Wait.

Everyone but the teacher was knocked clean to the ground, many sprawling precariously close to the edge, as things moved.

Great pillars and blocks of stone rose from the abyss.  They were dark gray and black, but they were textured enough that I could see the dappled tone, the cracks, the doorways and tunnels that marked the surfaces.

One pillar struck the underside of the platform, and only quick moving on Ty’s part saved Tiff from falling.

Evan flew over to help the rescue operation.

The teacher remained rooted where she was, looking down on us all.  I eyed her, wary, but speech was impossible, and even standing was risky, as the Abyss insisted on shoring everything up.

Ty and the others managed to rescue Tiff before the renovations continued.

With the last set of rising columns and slabs came bookcases.  Returning that which had fallen, adding more.

A bookcase with a glass front rose to our right, breaking the bridge that led to the Academy.  It continued rising, a regular bookcase beneath it, then folded on some great hinge, right over top of us.  A candleabra that had been on a shelf fell, flames flickering as wax pooled against the glass.

A ceiling.

What had been a rope-bridge setup of rooms and stairs and countless bookcases was now becoming confined.  Narrow.

The bell took on a different tone, now.  Not so loud, but each toll seemed to pass us like so much wind, just piercing enough to make people wince, angling their heads to reduce the blow of it.

“Where’s Milly!?” a Behaim said, eyes wide.

“Couldn’t-” I started.

“You left her behind!?”

I shook my head.

“He tried,” Evan said.

“Says his friend?”

“Tut tut,” the teacher cut in, flowing forward to put herself between the two of us and the Behaims.  “Arguing.  Arguing has to be punished.”

The children that accompanied her cringed.

“No,” Rose said, her voice sharp.  “We’ll take Evan’s word for it.  And you…”

She pointed at the teacher-Other.

“Shut up.  I don’t know what you are, I don’t care, you don’t scare me, and I refuse to let you waste our time.”

The teacher blinked, a little put off by that.

The kids were cowering even more, now.

“March,” Rose said.

“Barber’s coming,” I said.  “Twenty seconds to a minute away, I’d guess.”

“Then march faster,” Rose said.

The others started to head up the stairwell.  The walls were so close on either side that they had to go single-file.

By some signal I didn’t catch, the teacher sicced her children on us.  They ran forward.  The ones that had flashlights were winging the lights left and right, and it made for something of a strobe effect.  Tricks on the eyes.

Again, the uneven number of kids, from one moment to the next.  All gaunt, all hollowed out, the color sucked away.

The Knights fired their guns.  The muzzle flashes only made for more bursts of light.  The Knight aimed at one, fired, and in the moment of the flash, was hitting open air between two children.

“Stop shooting!” Nick called out.  Too late.

When their number crashed into us, there were two dead Other-kids on the ground, and ten kids clutching and clawing at us.

I put the Hyena to one’s throat.  I’d hoped to stop it, but it only continued to press forward, until it ran itself through on the blade.

Ellie, for her part, displayed a remarkable enthusiasm in kicking one child down the stairs.  Not surprising, but remarkable.

Kathryn, for her part, despite being stronger, was struggling.

Rose gestured, her palm already bloody, and sent two kids sprawling.  She stepped on one’s throat, then stepped on one hand when it tried to claw at her calf.

The newsprint man fought, tearing apart and getting torn apart in turn.  The teacher reached out to him and dug claws into the underside of his chin, penetrating the softer tissue there.  He dropped, flesh sizzling around the wound.

The teacher moved while we dealt with the kids.  It felt like every time I turned around, they’d found some excuse or occasion to multiply.  Not a lot, but there were roughly thirteen here, and that was four more than before, if we ignored the one that had been kicked down the stairs.

“Books,” the teacher said.  “Oh, how I have missed a good book.  I do think I’ll enjoy this relocation.”

“Do you?” Rose asked.

The teacher hugged a book to her dangerously pointed breasts.  “Heaven.”

“Hell,” Rose said.  “At least for certain types.  Look inside.”

I could see concern on the teacher’s face.

“Rose,” I said.  “Barber.”

“I know,” she said. “But-”

The teacher shrieked.  She dropped the book.

I saw Rose lean forward, peering down, squinting against the poor, mottled candlelight.

“Oh,” she said.  “Yeah.  Very few books in here are readable.  The ink runs, or it’s in a lost language, or something.  The rest, near as I can figure, are filled with things you want to avoid.”

The teacher’s mouth gaped.  She turned, clutching for more books, pulling them from shelves, dropping them on the floor so they landed open.

I approached the teacher from behind.

The children didn’t stop me.  Whatever control the teacher exerted, be it fear or some kind of puppeteering, she wasn’t exerting it now.

I cut her throat with the Hyena.

“Did you think it would be any different?” I asked.

“Go!”  Rose said.  “Go, go!  Careful, don’t get jammed in!”

The children were gone when I turned around.

Rose and I lingered, Alister standing off to one side.

“I need time,” Alister told me.  “Rose knows, but… I’ve been taught things we might be able to use to block Barbatorem.  We just need, I don’t know, five minutes?  Ten?”

“You have-” I started to say.

I stopped short as the air that passed through my lips came with a taste, one that was filling the room.

The rank smell of the Barber, soup-thick in the air.

I heard his footsteps.

“-Seconds,” I finished.

“Avert your eyes!”  Rose called up the stairs.  “Try not to look back!”

She gave Alister a push.  He headed up the stairs.

“Go,” she told me.

I didn’t waste time.

For her part, she was right behind me.  Holding her rifle, she aimed it at the ceiling.

Glass shattered.  The candle fell, and the light nearly went out.

Reaching into her coat, she pulled out a string of pouches.  She tossed one into the middle of the room.

The flame erupted.  Oil, or some kind of accelerant.  Filling a room that was all wood and books.

“Won’t work,” I said.

“I know!” she said.

I turned, pushing Alister lightly, but there was a jam, and the single-file line had halted.

I could see the Barber appear in the doorway, lit from below by fire.

The flesh burned, and it smelled like rancid meat and burning hair, but he didn’t react with pain.  He didn’t slow or stagger.

He was dragging someone or something with him.  A body, held not with his hand, but skewered with the shears.

Using both hands, he held the body as he waded through the flames, so it wouldn’t burn.

The boy Ellie had kicked down the stairs.

The barber cut him in half.

One half almost disappeared before it touched fire.  It screamed and thrashed for a moment before it disappeared like the other children had.

The other thrashed too, but it was a gibbering, screaming, violent thrashing.  Bloody, flayed, rasping, almost breaking itself in a struggle to reach down and get at the Barber.  Its expression was wide, and the expression so twisted and manic that I thought its skin might split, pulled back and away as far as it was.

A girl, dressed in a scorched, ripped private school uniform, drenched in blood.  No longer a half, but a broken whole.

The jam further up cleared.  I grabbed Rose, and gave her a push, squeezing past her, and I grabbed a book.

“What are you doing?”

“We already decided I would die tonight,” I said.  “Run!”

The barber threw the child, over the flames and at the stairs.

There was nothing to her but fury and violence.  Pain and viciousness.

The child grappled me, clutching, tearing.  Her own fingernails tore free of the beds as she scrabbled, scratched, and clawed.  She found a grip on one of the bones of my forearm, and I felt something crack as she pulled.

Only one of her own fingers.  But she’d clawed away wood and twigs, too.

I did what I could to keep her at bay, keep the damage minimal, but I had only one hand, and I was focused on holding on to the book.

I caught the motion of the Barber in the corner of one eye.

I moved the book to intercept.  It slammed against one shelf, and I braced it there, as the shears slammed right through it, handle-deep.  Even with the bracing, I was spun around, and nearly fell on the blades of the shears.

The Barber was reflected in the blade.

I felt him starting to emerge.

Underhand, practically trampling the child, very nearly falling into the flames, I hurled the book underhand, down the long staircase the Barber had emerged from.

Wing extended, one hand catching a bookcase, I kicked the mirror-child loose, into the fire.

She screamed with pain and rage and madness, and I turned, running, taking stairs three at a time.

From a narrow staircase to a sprawl.  Bookcases six stories high, pillars with nothing but books and balconies and bridges extending from them.

The bell was louder here.  Others practically crawled on every surface.

We had a number of skilled practitioners, a priest, we had several Others.  We could do this, if we could just keep moving.

But we’d stalled.  Somehow.

I saw Rose with a gun to Kathryn’s head.

Kathryn wept, lying on the ground, propped up with her one good arm.

“Move!” Rose said.

But Kathryn didn’t budge an inch.

“Rose,” Alexis said, “It’s not going to work.  You can’t force her.”

“We can’t leave her behind,” Rose said.

“Leave me behind,” Kathryn said.  Her voice was a croak.  “Please.  Just leave me.”

I looked back over my shoulder.

Stepping closer, trying to see what had happened.

Kathryn lay across a sprawl of books.

Children’s books.  More square than rectangular.  The scrawled figure on the covers and the open pages bore a striking resemblance to her.  My eldest cousin.

I picked one up.  Saw Kathryn flinch.

It was open to the last two pages.

But, Big Bad Kathy told herself, even if my son doesn’t love me, and even if my husband hates me so, I love myself.  I do, I do!

I glanced at Kathy.  I looked down at the last page.

I do, Big Bad Kathy lied to herself.  I do, I do, I do.

Kathy had met my eyes.  They weren’t eyes anymore, but scrawls.  Crayon scribbles.  A tear leaked from the corner of one.

I looked down, at the stairway where the Barber was no doubt making headway.  I looked up, and I saw how far we still had to go.

“She’s gone,” I said, wincing at the noise in my head.  “Do like she wants.  Leave her.”

There was reluctance, the token hesitation, but there was no protest.

Kathy only hung her head.

“I’m sorry.  I wish I could help, but can you just…” I hesitated, reaching.  “Not be here, when the demon comes?”

Kathy didn’t respond, but moving slowly, she did pick up her books, and she hurried off in another direction.

“Don’t read the damn books!” Rose warned the others, as we moved onward and upward.

Possession 15.2

The tolling of the bell picked up, and with it came the monsters.  Floorboards creaked and shifted, as if they weren’t all nailed down or supported, but we weren’t standing on rope bridges anymore.  Things were solid, and sounds in the walls suggested that they were still being built, moment by moment.  Deeper constructions, beyond the surface level.

Gunshots punctuated the chaos.  With each shot, it felt like the bell was rocking, as if the recoil of the guns was jarring the bell, moving it harder and faster.

I saw Nick toward the lead, patting pockets, reaching into his jeans.  “Need ammo!”

One of his companions pushed ammunition into his hand.

I could see dark shapes moving toward him, and sprinted forward, a little too rushed.  My hard wooden feet slipped on hard wooden floor, and I nearly fell.  I used my wing to brace myself, touched my hand to the floor, and covered the distance.

If I’d been a half-step later, I might have been too late.  He was only just finishing reloading now, as the attackers reached him.

I tackled the nearest one, driving him into his companion.  Evan flew away, to the far side of Nick, to push at a lost soul that was approaching with a makeshift spear in hand.

Ink black, because he was ink.  He hit ground, and the ink splattered in lines and loops, spelling out words, drawing images.

The images covered his companion, who wound up beneath him.  Not an Other, not quite, simply a lost soul.  The script spiraled out as if drawn by invisible pens, and there was a delay.

The lost soul moved, trying to crawl away, and where the lines had been drawn, skin split, blood gushing out as if by as many knife slashes.

The group was running, and in getting to my feet, hurrying to put myself between these two strangers and the tail end of the group, I was left behind.

The ink man grinned, and I could see ink-stained teeth and a black tongue in the lower half of his face.  His eyes were black pools of ink unto themselves.

His companion struggled to stand, fighting to hold his skin in place where it had parted.  He slipped on wet ink and his own blood, and fell hard.

The ink man reached out with one foot, and placed it on the lost soul’s chest.

The spiraling script didn’t only cover the surface, but ran through the man’s veins, spreading out from the largest to the surface of the skin.

Blood, bone, muscle, and skin all separated, cut to pieces by the script.

The gore itself ran red-black, colored with ink, and the blood spread out in turn, forcefully enough that a chunk of skull was sent spinning off to one side.  The blood penned out a story in red around the corpse.

The ink man smiled.

I touched the spot where my shoulder had connected with him.  The wood had been gouged, and splinters stood away from the wound.  The gouges had been inked black.

“It’s a shame you’re the asshole kind of monster,” I said, “Because I really miss my old tattoos.”

He spread his arms.  Ink dripped from the fingertips, knuckles and elbows.

When he spoke, it was through a mouthful of ink.  Spatters flew from his lips, and the words were muddled.  “Got to earn a place.”

“I don’t think the Abyss is going to kick you out.  You fit here.”

“Fit, yes,” he said.  “But my aspirations are higher.”

“Higher?  You want out?”

He only smiled.

I was aware that the others were continuing to leave me behind.  The butcher behind me was a problem I had to keep in mind.  I needed to resolve this, fast.

The tolling of the bell was growing quieter.  Slowly but surely.

I frowned, backing toward the others.

The ink man apparently took that for weakness, opting to charge me.

My wing stayed up, raised like a shield, blocking much of my body, defensive.

If he cut the membrane of the wing, I might lose the ability to glide, my flying-without-really-flying.

He might have realized that.  Being the sadist he was, he might have wanted it.  To take something from me.  The bogeyman, reducing things to their composite elements.  Recycling the world.

It was greed of a sort.  Greed I took advantage of.

I pulled the wing back and away, twisting my body as I drew and thrust with the Hyena in one movement.  A weapon he’d been prevented from seeing with the wing where it was.

He ran straight into it.  Changing course for him was as difficult as it had been for me to rush to Nick’s aid.  His ‘blood’ splattered, a large amount of ink, and it landed on my arm and hand.  It didn’t spread or soak in as ink should, but took form, carving out nonsense words.

Still impaled, he reached for my face.

I hauled the blade of the Hyena up and toward his heart and shoulder, dragging it through his flesh.

His hands dropped, and he collapsed.

I was quick to back away, as the script spiraled out like something alive, a hundred thin, razor-sharp limbs, ranging from curved to looped and to angular.

The script did its damage, tearing apart surroundings, taking bookshelf to pieces, and cutting floorboards in half.  The blood script that marked where the lost soul had died was swallowed up and dropped down to a lower floor.

I turned and hurried to catch up with the others.  I couldn’t see them, as they’d started to run up a staircase that spiraled up a great pillar of bookcases, as thick around as a house, and they’d already rounded a corner, but I could see the brief flashes that came with the gunfire.  There were Others swarming them, now.  Many could be just as bad as the one I’d just dispatched.

The tolling of the bell grew louder as I ran.

Not because I was drawing closer.  The sound of the bell wasn’t quite following the group.  I was heading toward the base of the staircase, and the others were ascending.

I slowed to a stop, waiting, looking up.

I waited.

I listened, as the sounds of the bell grew quieter still.

There was a scream, a man’s, and I tensed.  Now that they were high enough to have few options, the pillar was getting in their way.  Rearranging, or employing some trap.

I was getting a sense of how this place worked.

“Evan!” I roared the word.

The peal of the bell joined the echo of my cry.

They came out of the woodwork, some very literally.  They stepped out of shadows and crawled through gaps between and inside bookshelves.

Lost souls, one or two bogeymen.

The lost souls were haggard, very much not in tune with the theme of the library.  They reminded me of the homeless, but their skin and hair had suffered for going too long without light, their eyes were eerily large, as if they were trying to take in whatever light was available.  Many were looking furtively about, as if studying their new surroundings.

I recognized the one bogeyman.  The papercut girl from the library.  She’d been the one that had been turned back on us by the witch hunters.  Old fashioned clothes, old fashioned hair.  Where she’d been prim and crisp before, each page of her body was bloodstained, she worked to breathe, and she bent over as if in pain.

Her book was gouged, and blood leaked from it, a slow, steady drip.

Her expression was one of hate.

The other was a brute of a man with a cracked old leather tome for a head, a great paper-cutting guillotine blade in one hand, wielded like a sword.  He had hardcover books slipped into the breast pocket of his dress shirt and the pockets of his slacks, one smaller book tucked into a rolled up sleeve like someone might with a pack of cigarettes, and they fit easily.  He had a belly, but not to the point of being morbidly obese.  I could estimate him at six hundred pounds, easily, and it was more muscle and height than fat.  A literary ogre.

I remained still, only periodically turning to check my back.

Evan appeared.

“Blake!  Fly!”  he cried out.

His voice was the trigger that set the Others to moving.  Lost souls mobbed, and Bookbrain lurched into action.  The papercut girl hung back.

I turned away from Bookbrain, ran toward the nearest bookcase, sheathing the Hyena and preparing my wings.

The shelves became footholds, I ran up the surface, and drew the wings down.

Evan reached me, and he buoyed me up, just out of reach of Bookbrain’s swinging paper cutter.

A flurry of papers rose past me.  I felt the papers cut, and I recognized the papers for what they were.  Superficial damage, but she preferred the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ approach.

They collected into the papercut girl’s form, about fifty feet above me.  The girl perched on one railing at the spiral staircase that ran along the pillar, just a silhouette in darkness, but I could see the pale eyes staring down at me.

She leaped, and she didn’t fall so much as she floated.  Papers in the wind.  Unpredictable movements, her dress and blouse moving with a life of their own, all sharp angles, as if the were starched to a ridiculous degree.  Now and again, she shifted the orientation of the pages, and every page that formed her body fluttered, as if she were a living flipbook.

I evaded her, turning a sharp right.  She passed me.

A moment later, the pages all went horizontal to the ground, and an updraft caught her.  The pages folded, turning a sharp angle, and she snapped over in my general direction, a paper airplane flight.

The papers formed a real, denser body as she flew straight for me.  Injured book still in hand, she reached for Evan, missed, and wrapped her arms around my wing, crushing it against her body.  Her consolation prize.

Whatever I was, I still needed physics to fly, and a folded wing with a fifty-pound weight attached to it was the bad sort of physics.

I spiraled, and it wasn’t a good sort of spiral.  Not a slow one.  It was the sort of spinning descent that made it impossible to get my bearings in time.

Evan gave me a slight push, to counteract the drop, but it was a small thing compared to terminal descent.

I -we– crashed into the railing at the side of the pillar.  The papercut girl was scattered into thousands of individual bloodstained pages, and I was sent through the stairs, still descending, left to crash at a diagonal angle into the bookcases above the next set of stairs.

I exhaled slowly.  The damaged shelves had pierced my body, trashing my midsection and my haphazardly repaired leg.  My head still hadn’t fully recovered from the brief skirmish with the Barber.

Yet, as I remained there, temporarily a part of the bookshelf, I could feel my body stirring to life, taking splinters of wood into itself, repairing that damage.

My enemy, too, was pulling herself together.  The impact had been nothing to her.

But the wound delivered to her book might never heal.

I could see the rest of this area, with similar pillars, differing in how they were climbed, the ground floor with its rows and columns of bookshelves, and the lost souls and Others that were milling about, yet to find an equilibrium.

Pockets of chaos.

I closed my eyes, and I heard the bells.

Was it even Molly anymore?

Was I even Blake?  Or Rusty?

“Are you dead?  Please don’t be dead,” Evan said.

“Alive,” I said, my voice a murmur.

“You shouldn’t keep doing this,” he said.

“I have to,” I said.  “Have to get the others out.”

I pulled myself free of the book case, and hopped down.  My landing was a crash landing, not helped by the state of my left leg.  It was only partially intact.

The papercut girl stood on a bookshelf that was as tall as a two-story house.  It swayed with her negligible weight, threatening to topple and take the other bookshelves around it like so many dominoes.

I turned to head up the stairs, and she took flight, dissolving into a flurry of windborne papers.

Intent on interrupting my forward progress.

Right.  Change of plans.

I turned, dropping one wing, steering myself toward the pillar. I landed, bracing myself with one hand and both feet, and was utterly unsurprised as the shelf under my feet gave way.

I found fresher footing.  My eye was fixed on the spine of a book.  The Killing of Angels.

I turned my eyes away.

“She’s coming!”

I braced myself with my wing and used my free hand to seize a candle.

“That’s fire, Blake!  Fire bad!  You’re made of wood, remember?”

I passed the candle into my mouth, biting into it.

“That’s fire very close to your hair and your head, Blake!”

I took flight, pushing off and away from the shelves.

The papercut girl was drifting, riding the currents of hot air that rose from innumerable bookcases with a lonely candle on every other shelf.  She saw me move and gave chase.  Arms became great collections of paper, broad.  Wings to match my own.  Only she could fly.  Her dress and hair moved in the wind, not rising, but only shuffling their flipbook shuffle.

I fought to ascend.  Both to catch up with the others and to stay above her.  But I needed Evan’s help, and she could fly with ease.

She matched me in height, and for a moment, we made eye contact.

I would have spoken to her, but I still held the candle, clamped in my teeth.

I charged her.  A bit of a dive, then rising.  She countered by moving skyward, then dropping.  Evading, doing the reverse of what I did.

As she was lower than me, I spat the candle out at her.

As attacks went, it was meager, pathetic.  It didn’t even reach her, and it was stupid to imagine the candle might have remained lit while one flew through the air.

She watched it spiral down, and looked up at me with a mean smirk on her face.

Her eyes widened as she saw me flying straight at her again.

She scattered, turning into pages, each one slicing past me.  Many slicing at the flesh of my face and eyelids.

“Evan, the book!” I called out.  “Thick clumps!”

He abandoned me.  Taking my ability to fly.

My instructions had been vague, short, nonsensical, but Evan and I were on the same page, so to speak.

He flew into the midst of the papercut girl, and I saw him flip over, hit hard by one flying piece of paper.

But he recovered, and he evaded the next attack.  Ironic, but he evaded the aimed blows better than the one that was very possibly incidental or accidental.

I twisted my face away from the attacks that still struck it, to little avail.

Evan, for his part, found what we were looking for.

The papercut girl couldn’t abandon her book.  Even like this, she had to carry it with her.  The book was supported by papers around it, a parachute or hang glider, hidden, masked.

Evan hit the book free of its protective sheath, sending it spiraling end over end.

I dove for it.  So did the papercut girl.

She reached it first, and rematerialized part of a body around it, torso, face, arms, but not head, not legs or stomach.  She hugged it to her chest.

She wasn’t in a position to move out of the way.  I folded my wing, Hyena extended, and touched the sides of her book with the toes of both feet.  I plummeted with it, touching the Hyena to the cover.

Her expression changed as the wind rifled through the pages of her head.  Fear.

“Swear.  Never harm another soul!” I shouted.

I could hear the bell’s protest.

She touched her hand to her heart.  To the book.  Her lips moved, but no sound came out, only the rustle of pages.

I kicked off, pushed away, sending the book through her paper body, scattering it.

Evan and I took flight.  I flew in lazy, gliding circles around the pillar, higher with each circle, counterclockwise to the stairway’s clockwise rotation.

I wanted nothing more than to catch up with the others.

But, for just one rotation, flying around the pillar, I worked only to glide.  To observe, to listen.

I saw the Barber on the ground.  Six stories down, but he was unmistakeable.  Cutting through hordes, reveling in the chaos.  A limb cut free here, a hand around an individual’s face while the scissors passed through to snip off a tongue.

He threw the gurgling Other to one side, and met another head on.

The black-feathered Other clawed at him, dug talons in and then twisted away, taking pounds of flesh in the process.  Yet somehow, with all the damage that was done, the Barber wasn’t any less.

I could see the body language of the Other and the observers change, as they realized that something was off.  Wrong.

The Barber took that opening, stabbing.  And the Barber cut.

With one hand, the Barber tore.

I could see an entire crowd back away from the Barber, with that action, as if the tearing were so great an action it had a shockwave, capable of parting a sea of monsters.

The Barber’s arms remained extended out to either side, his body bloody, as the two halves rose.  A raven man that had been skinned and feathered.  A twisted non-human that was twisted, broken, a wretch even among the sad and desolate souls of the Abyss.

He didn’t move, nor did he drop his arms as each half lunged, attacking Others on either side of him.  It was only when the skinned birdman tossed a body his way that he let his hands drop, a two-handed grip on the shears, spearing the victim in the side.

He used both hands, angling the shears, as he starting to cut yet another victim.

My flight carried me forward, putting the pillar between me and the barber, blocking my view.

The bell was loud, down there.  It was loud above.

I was almost certain now.

“Up, fast!” I said, as I found a warmer air current.  I flapped my wings.  Evan joined me, and we worked to climb our way.

It didn’t take long to catch up to the others, even with the delay.  The staircase was steep, and flying beat already-exhausted legs climbing what had to be twenty stories.

Especially when the Others kept coming at them.  Lost souls worming their way out between shelves like so many maggots in a carcass.  Now and again, an Other would appear.

Several of the Knights had abandoned their guns, ammunition spent.  The ones that had guns were saving the bullets for the Others.

There were so many Others around them that the collected pile of bodies on the stairs was impeding progress.

I circled around, and landed on the outside of the railing, further up.

“Rose!” I called out, roaring over the noise of the bell.

A bullet penetrated my chest.  I very nearly lost my grip.

“Shit!  Sorry!”  One of the Knights called out.

Nick snatched the man’s gun from him and passed it to another Knight.

I touched the bullet wound.

Rose and Alister had rivers of sweat running down their faces, and it wasn’t hot.  They were dirty, spattered in blood, and Alister seemed lightly wounded, though he still managed to help Rose, one hand on her shoulder.

“Can’t stop,” Rose said.

“Stop!” I called out.  “Stop making noise!”

Ironic, that I had to shout out over the bell to say it.

She and Alister glanced at one another.

Behind them, Ellie screamed as a haggard old man reached between books on the shelf and tried to drag her closer.  Her back to the railing, she kicked the man in the face.

Ellie seemed to like doing that, as it happened.

The railing, in that same moment, gave way.  Karma?  Whatever it was, Johannes and a Knight reached for her.  Two baseball players going for the same ball.  Counterintuitive.  Both failed, where one might have succeeded.

I took flight, Evan helping.

As rescues went, it wasn’t graceful.  It might not have even counted as a rescue, given how crude it was.  I veered into her, slamming her back toward bookshelves and stairs.  It kept her from falling the entire way down to the ground floor and the Barber, but it was only about as graceful as my last collision with the shelves.  Except Ellie wasn’t the type to heal within minutes, she was meat.

We collapsed in a heap, and stairs creaked, threatening to break and drop us even further, as we reeled from the impact.  She was hurt, and I was very aware that I didn’t want to hurt her further.

I saw a set of red eyes peering between books.  No back to the bookcase here.

I shook my head.

The lower lids of the eyes raised, as if the cheekbones were rising.  Glee?  Opening its mouth?

A hand snapped out, tipped with black claws.

I grabbed it.

“The fuck!?” Ellie gasped.

I shoved my wing into her lower face.  The closest I could approximate to a finger pressed against her lip.

“Shhhh,” I whispered.

I dug wooden fingers into the flesh of the Other’s wrist, sharp, intended to hurt, and as it gave me leeway, I twisted the arm, bending it backward, forcing it into the shelf.

I heard the moan and growl of pain.

My fingers sank in to the first knuckle, blood welling around them.

The Other screamed, long, loud.

The scream was interrupted as something else behind the bookshelf seized it, tearing it away so quickly and so suddenly that only part of his hand was left in my grip.  The ring and pinky finger, and a bit of the upper palm.

The noise in my head got louder.

Ellie was staring at me.

I joined her in looking at the piece of hand, then quickly tossed it back, over the railing.

I climbed off Ellie and gave her some assistance as she found her feet.

Looking where the Other had attacked from, I saw the spines of books.  Gibberish, running ink, scratched spine, and a book titled The Lies Rose Has Told You.

I took hold of the book, then pushed it past the bookshelf, into the dark void beyond, where monsters seemed to dwell and stew, ready to emerge.

“You okay to move?” I whispered.

“Have to be,” Ellie said.  “No way I’m staying behind like Kathy did.”

I nodded.  I flexed one wing, and I wasn’t sure I liked the structural integrity of it.  It had been lightly damaged, and being this high up, I wasn’t sure I wanted to try to fly and fail.

I opted to ascend on foot, instead.  Staying closer to Ellie.

We were a full story down from the others, now.  We were quiet on the ascent, but we still moved as fast as we were able.  Ellie was clearly hurting, wincing, moving with a limping sort of gait, favoring her back, but she didn’t complain, and there was something dogged about her persistence.

“You keep doing this,” Evan said.  “Jumping on the grenades.”

“I think the Abyss knows it,” I said.  “It keeps encouraging me to.”

“Well stop!  Because the guy that’s made of wood is the guy that’s gotta stay behind with the fire and the demon?  That makes no sense at all!”

“Quiet!” I hissed, “We’re in a damn library!”

For a moment, he seemed stunned.  He blinked.

“It’s like you’re trying to die,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

“I’m not-”

“You’re making it awfully hard to keep you alive.  I don’t know if I’ll get another chance to say it before you do something else that’s stupid, but you keep playing with fire?  Dragon, demon, The third time counts.”

“Faysal, maybe,” I said.  “Dunno if he has fire, but it could be angelic, light, energy…”

“Fay-  No.  You’re not getting it, you nincompoop.  We do this as a team.  We kick his butt and you live, and then we figure out where we go from there!”

“Shh,” I said.  “I’m not disagreeing.  But shhh.”

I saw him bob his head in a nod.

Ellie spoke up.  “What are you talking about?  Kathy just got magicked or something and we’re so supremely fucked, and you’re seriously thinking this could turn out okay?”

“You’re not?” Evan shot back.  “How can you get through something like this if you don’t believe you can?”

We’d just reached the tail end of the other group.  They’d stopped where they were, and were taking a breather.

Sure enough, now that the were being quiet, the influx of Others had stopped.  The Library was relaxing.

But I could see every head turn skyward as a rumble shook the entire area.  Books fell off shelves here and there, and one tall bookcase toppled, forming an arch with another tilted bookcase.

“We make noise if we move,” Rose said, her voice low, still carrying well with that Conquest voice she had a way of tapping into.  “But if we stay still, we sink.”

“Lose-lose,” Alexis said.

“It’s the way the Abyss works,” I agreed.

There were screams from far below, a rumble as something shifted into place elsewhere.  Candleflames throughout the Library swayed, very nearly going out.

“Flying’s the way to go,” Evan said.  “Minimal flapping, find the hot air…”

“We don’t fly, you little moron,” Ellie spoke.  “Why am I just now realizing I’m arguing with a bird like it’s normal?”

Johannes spoke for the first time, after his long period of silence.  “Don’t let appearances deceive.  The angel Faysal is powerful enough that only a god or a demon might pose a challenge.  This bird…”

“Is awesome,” Evan said, with confidence.

“Evan is one of the individuals here most qualified to speak on the subject of perseverance,” I murmured.

The High Priest nodded.  He sounded so weary, but he was one of the oldest people here, not counting the two remaining Behaims who weren’t named Alister.  He sounded so calm as he asked, “He’s earned the right to be optimistic, hm?”

Evan piped up, “Damn straight.  I survived for a long time, being hunted by a monster, and I kept up hope until the day I died, and you know what happened after I died?  Still hopeful.  So if you think you can change my mind about us being able to get through this, you’re going to have to do better than the wolf-goblin-hyena thing did, you’re going to have to do better than a personification of Conquest did, and you’re going to have to do better than all the other practitioner schmoes did, along the way.”

“Schmoes?” Alister asked.  One of the schmoes.

Something moved in the bookshelves behind Evan, just at my shoulder.  He hadn’t raised his voice that much.

I wasn’t sure I liked that.

“Kathy died, like Callan died,” Ellie said.  “Like Molly died.  One of the… other people didn’t come back, after that bridge got cut in half.  I don’t see how you can be this confident.  This place is…”

“Liable to grind us up and digest us,” Johannes said, his voice low.

I caught a glimpse of his, as we ran between bookshelves as tall as buildings.  He looked haggard, strained.  His long hair was sticking to his head with sweat, and the candlelight glittered in his eyes.

“I wanted to help you,” he said.  “Faysal said we met when Molly Walker died.  I think my approach to you was the same that it was to Rose.  A refuge for a vestige, a kind of peace with a diabolist.  As much as that’s possible.”

I thought I detected a faint ringing with his words.

“Shhh,” I reminded people.

“That plan changed,” Rose said.

“Not by my choice,” Johannes said.  “In the midst of all this, I still had to maintain my own goals.”

“Past tense,” Alister observed.

“Yes.  I’m not sure what the future holds,” Johannes said.  “I’m inclined to hope it’s merely a short, brutal, violent end.  Not the-”

“Barber,” Alister finished.  Then, as an afterthought, “Don’t look!”

It was hard not to, when we were making the connection, when we wanted to see with our own eyes.  I hurried to throw my hand over Ellie’s eyes.  She had diagnosed impulse control problems.

Alister pulled Christoff close with a bloodstained hand, the boy’s nose shoved into Alister’s armpit, facing away from the demon.

On a distant pillar, the Barber stood on a balcony.  The ruined bodies of lost souls lay at his feet, arms twitching, grasping for something that wasn’t there.  Hundreds of feet away.  Walking to him might have taken two to four minutes, if we’d had a bridge.

He’d just been on the ground below.

We were utterly silent.  Even the sounds below seemed muted, now.

The Barber snapped the scissors closed, producing a sharp sound that carried all the way to us.

Tch.

He didn’t move, even as a body at his feet clawed at one of his legs, groping, trying to climb up, plead.

The scissors opened and snapped closed again.  Then again.

Tch.  Tch.  Tch.  Tch.  Tch.

“Those measures you were talking about,” I spoke to Alister.  “For stopping him?”

“Not like this,” he said.  “I need time.  Open space.”

I didn’t respond.  You’re not liable to get either, down here.  Not unless the Abyss wants to tease you.

Tch.  Tch.  Tch.

“Shoes off,” Rose said.

“Shoes?” one of the Knights asked.

“Keep them, but don’t wear them,” she murmured.  “Anything that might make noise, leave it behind, or put it away.  We-”

Hands snapped out from the bookshelf at her eye level.  Grabbing her by the head and throat.  One covered her mouth, the other clutched her windpipe.

She was hauled off to the right, away from stairs, still gripped by the mouth and neck.  The arms knocked books from the shelves, and those books rained down on the rest of us.  One struck Johannes rather soundly.

Rose’s legs struck Alister, nearly knocking him down the stairs.  Only a chance catch of the railing saved him.

She dangled at the corner of the pillar, strangling, her toes ten feet up from the nearest stair.

Alister and I both climbed, though I was slower, my wing serving poorly for the task.  Alister on Rose’s left, me on her right.

I stabbed the wrist of the hand nearest me, the one that had her throat.  The other hand caught at her nose and lip, threatening to tear away skin if she happened to drop while the fingers were in place.

Rose clutched at me, and I folded one wing around her.

Alister touched a silver chain to the other hand, then, seeing it react, he encircled the wrist, pulling it away.

Rose managed to catch herself.  She was facing outward, the nearest horizontal surface the stairs that were ten feet below.  If she dropped, it would be so very easy for her to simply hit the stairs and keep going forward.  Over the railing.  Dropping to the ground as if she were falling from a rooftop.

Given the choice of accepting my support or Alister’s, she chose Alister.  A grim expression on her face, she managed to get turned around, and she made the climb down.

I kept my wing extended, sheltering her.  I wasn’t sure it would make a difference, given it’s general lack of fingers but there was only so much I could do.

There wasn’t a lot of room on the stairs themselves.  I paused, not wanting to rock the metaphorical boat, while Rose got to her feet.  Others were pulling off boots and shoes, laces tied together, hanging them around their necks.

“Can’t talk too much,” Rose whispered.

I saw her eye flicker in the direction of the bookcase.

Can’t openly discuss how to work against the Abyss in front of the Abyss, I thought.  The abyss liked its lose-lose situations.

I found a space to climb down to, and found myself in the midst of Ty, Alexis, and Tiff.  My former friends.

They looked so worn out.

Mara told me they wanted a way out.  Escape.  I don’t blame them.

I had to hope that there was a way to get them what they needed.

They’d gotten into this for my sake, and then I’d been removed from the equation.

Ty cupped one hand over one side of his face, shielding his eyes, and then pointed.

I very carefully followed the angle of his finger.

The balcony.  The broken lost souls were crawling away and over the railing.  They moved like damaged spiders, shifting around at a glacial pace, leaving bloody handprints and footprints here and there, making whimpering noises that carried through the relative silence.  The Barber was gone.

“Shit,” I said, under my breath.

I looked around, and I couldn’t see the demon.

Shit.

He shouldn’t have been able to climb that pillar so fast.  But he could.  The question was, where was he?

“Did anyone look at the barber?” I asked.

Something behind the bookcase moved.  Books rocked in place, and a candle flame went out.

That movement got people’s attention more than my question had.  I wondered for a long second if anyone had heard me speak.

What was there to be said?  Even if they had, would they tell the truth?

Well, yes.  It was one of the rules.  Even the Barber was bound to keep to his word.

Except the Library strongly discouraged communication, apparently.

I could see the restlessness of the others.  The fear.  They were on their last legs, and the Abyss was getting to them.

Not knowing where the goddamned demon was was a pretty good reason to be afraid.

“Go,” Rose whispered.

She led the way.

The others climbed stairs with socks on.  They weren’t running anymore, and that meant our progress was slower.

A stair creaked.  Large black birds flew up between the individual stairs, pecking, scratching.

Then they were gone.

Even elsewhere in the Library, it felt like things were settling down.

The ones who hadn’t gotten the point were starting to get picked off.

I was at the tail end of the group, letting my wing mend from the fall with Ellie.  I looked out over the railing, watching for any sign of the Barber.  Blood, smells, movement, violence…

I looked at the group, searching for signs.  Possession?  Was the Barber occupying one of them?

I looked at Evan, even, sitting on my shoulder.  Not the most obvious target, but if I was doomed to have an ally turn on me…

The faint shuffle of feet on steps changed in tone.  My head snapped around, looking up.

Rose and Alister had rounded a corner, and now they were out of sight.

It was a good twenty seconds before I reached that same place.

The pillar stopped.  We’d reached the top.  The roof of it.  As though it were simply a narrow, horribly tall building, with books on every face.  A library turned inside out.

The roof was flat.  Just the open space Alister wanted.

At the far end, I could make out a stairway.  It led over and outward, to a tangle of tree roots.  At a certain point, the stairs stopped, and the tree roots became the path.

There was snow, there were trees, dense and twisted, joining ruined walls and spiked railing.  There was ice, and here, where they wasn’t taken apart by the heat of the candles and the entropic nature of the abyss, there were falling snowflakes.

What had been the base of the hill, now the edge of a crater.  The path out of the Library.

The ‘roof’ was like the cover of an oversized book, bound in something tougher than paper, harder than leather.

Sitting dead in the center, spearing that cover, was a scuffed pair of shears

“No,” Tiff said.  “No.  No.  No.”

Ellie had her hands clenched into fists.  She was trembling.

I could see the look of complete and utter defeat on Johannes’ face.

The Barber had beat us here.  Now he waited between us and the way out.  Waiting for us to come to him.

Possession 15.3

The top of the pillar was bright compared to the rest of the library.  Smoke rose from innumerable candles, lighting up the surroundings below us like a distant, quiet, grim little city.

Up here, on a largely featureless square of land atop a great book-covered pillar, faces were comparatively easy to make out.  The bells that were audible were distant, closer to the ground.  The snow that came down was light, a layer of snow just thin enough that one could leave a footprint in it, but a breath of air might have scattered it.

The pillar was akin to a building, and the dimensions were similar, albeit a little narrow for the building’s height, but we were limited to the outside.  Only Abyssal things lay within, just past the relatively thin veneer of shelves and books and stairways.

As though we were fighting on the surface of an egg.

There were no signs of the demon’s footsteps.

For a moment, I wondered if it were a trick.  A deception.  I’d nearly been fooled twice tonight, after all.

But the shears that impaled the center of the rooftop had a weight to them.  Everyone present seemed to sense it.  We were deer in headlights.  Frozen, afraid to move.  Afraid to make a sound.  I didn’t even feel fear in the conventional sense, and I was virtually paralyzed.

Escape was only a short distance away.  A hundred feet, if that, to reach the bridge to the real world.

Rose’s eyes, I noted, were on the stairs.  She was frozen, just like me, but unlike me, she wasn’t immune to the fear and panic.  She dealt with it all the same.

Alister stood right at her side, his arm touching her shoulder.  She shared a glance with him.

It wasn’t a pairing of love.  It was a pairing, all the same.  He’d helped her make the first step in reaching out to me.  That counted for something.  Helping her on her way to being better.

She was improving by building something, while I only made headway by tearing things down.  Ultimately the reason I was deferring to her.  Because even if the tables were turned, I wasn’t sure I could trust her to make the sacrifice.

She met my eyes.

Now, in this moment, were we supposed to coordinate without communicating?  Even the addition of one Other to this tableau could be catastrophic.  A distraction for our side, an opening for the Barber.

We’d been created to destroy one another, and our interactions had frequently been poisoned ones, more so as time went on.  Now we were face to face with every Practitioner’s worst nightmare, and we had to swim against the current.

Rose reached out, touching Nick’s gun.  She steered him around, pointing the gun at the stairs.  She pointed to other Knights, and directed them to do the same.

She gestured to the Behaims, then pointed.

Spreading them out to either side.

Leaving her, Alister, the High Priest, Johannes, and my friends all at the top of the stairs.

I was reminded of a chessboard.  The rooftop was square, and the way things were spread out, we had Behaims in the rook positions, my friends, Johannes, and the High Priest as the knights and bishops, admittedly odd-numbered, and Alister and Rose as the king and queen.  The Knights and my cousins weren’t on the board, but instead lurked at the edges along the rear and one side of it, guarding or otherwise watching the stairs.  Many of the Knights had knives or machetes on hand.  Ellie and Christoff were only an extra set of eyes.

The Barber sat in the middle, yet to take form.

I saw Rose take in a deep breath, exhaling without noise.

There were no pawns.  No Others, satyrs or maenads had survived this trip to the Abyss.  Too fragile, perhaps.

No pawns.  Only me.

Ty had dropped to one knee, and had a pad of papers out, which he was scribbling on.

Still, the Barber didn’t move.

The Library maneuvered itself.  Not on our side, nor the Barber’s, it still made its small play.  A rumble, a shift, a distortion in surroundings.  A set of low groans, as if the Library were alive, and it wasn’t content.

The path beyond the bridge grew longer.  More of a descent.

The pillar shifted.  A five degree tilt to one side.

Books fell everywhere, spilling to the ground.

With the noise came Others.

One of the Knights cocked their gun.  I could read the tension on them as they looked down.

Company, coming from below.

Looking over to the side, I missed seeing what Alister was doing.

But whatever it was, it ended with him raising one hand.

His ring gleamed in light.

The timeless knight emerged.

Alister immediately dropped to the ground.  He brushed away snow and scratched into the surface of the roof with chalk.

This was his maneuver, his trick.  He had a means of binding the Barber.  The rest of us were supposed to buy him time.

With the first touch of chalk to roof, the Barber reacted.

An arm lurched out of the one face of the blade.  Shoulder, head, torso and all the rest followed.  That it was a massive beast of a ‘man’ that was appearing out of a window no wider across than the breadth of my hand wasn’t even a factor.

I saw the others react, eyes averting.

The fear was so thick on the air I could taste it, but I couldn’t partake of it.  It wasn’t for me to have.  Only the Barber.

Tk.  The shears clicked together.

Someone was gagging, struggling not to make noise, and only choking themselves.  They coughed.  It might have been Ty, or the Behaim rose had positioned off to the far right.

The sputtering cough, a sharp sound, rang in the general quiet.

A scream, not distant enough for my comfort, answered the ringing.  There was noise.

Something big, on the side of the pillar.

Whatever it was, it was making noise enough to draw others.  By the rules here, the other denizens of the Library would be attacking it, but the noise suggested it was drawing closer.  It wasn’t slowing down, even while under attack.

I couldn’t take my attention off the Barber.  We had to trust the Knights and the Behaim on the far end to deal with it.

I hoped they could deal with it.

The Barber advanced.  Alister’s suit of armor rushed forward to meet it.

Lance met shears.  There was no noise at the impact, but I was forced to take a step back.

The Barber pushed, the armor didn’t budge.

The armor pushed, and the lance inched closer to the Barber.  Sparks flew as it grazed the shears.

The lance’s tip penetrated flesh, just at the Barber’s collarbone.  Blood welled out.

The Barber lunged in my direction, letting the lance tear through flesh and bone.  It didn’t heal, but the wound closed, so broken, jagged, bloody bits met other broken-up bits and they held together.

The suit moved, putting its empty left hand out to block the Barber’s path.  The barber continued past, letting the armored hand clutch it, pulling a pound of flesh free.

The suit spun, turning its back to the Barber, extending its other arm, lance in hand, to attempt once more to bar the path.  To delay.

The Barber was so close to me.

We had to distract, to delay.  Buy Alister as much time as he needed.

I put myself in the Barber’s way, before it could duck under or around the timeless armor’s weapon.  There wasn’t much space between me and the edge of the roof, but we couldn’t let the demon reach the others.

The Barber reacted to my presence, and I shifted my weight, my toes and the balls of my feet digging hard into the surface of the book.

He stabbed the shears in my direction, but I was already pushing myself back and away.

Tch.  Metal snapped closed a foot from my face.  The metal-on-metal sound rang in the air.

I let myself fall from the pillar, and I could see the effects of just that noise.  Things were climbing free of the bookcase, and among them was a massive worm made of a series of overly obese humans, most with their respective heads shoved into the nether regions of the humans ahead of them.  Here and there, there were ones that had it backward, mouths stretched wide to a macabre degree, teeth sunken into the shoulders and back of the one behind them, a limb or two jammed into the one ahead.

I saw the head, albeit from behind, and it was spread like a cobra’s hood.  People had been slashed and clawed open, and limbs and heads were shoved into wounds, with bits pulled free and wrapped around for structural support.  Some of the ones there weren’t so obese.  Others had been drawn and quartered, butterflied, but still lived.

It was moist, covered in filth, with mucus and spittle and blood leaking here and there and streaming down the length of it.  That moistness was largely what let it flow so freely from the bookcases.

Legs and arms worked to grip the ones behind and the ones ahead, futilely clawing at flesh to try and reduce the strain on neck and shoulders, or the pull on their own nether regions.  Of the ones that didn’t, many twitched and flailed, some held weapons, others held books.

I folded one wing, and made the sharpest turn I was able before recovering.

It didn’t make much noise, aside from the sound of its extended lower body sliding between shelves, the periodic knock as a leg or arm struck something.

It collapsed onto the Barber.  Almost a lunge, almost a dive, but mostly just blindly, violently falling into position.

The entire pillar wobbled.

Even if the Barber made noise, the Library would act.  That was good.

I flew, circling the pillar, tracking the movement of the great worm, watching the head, looking for a sign of the Barber.

Nothing.

Any time he disappeared from view, I had to wonder.  Had someone looked?  Had one member of our group made that split-second decision and looked directly at the Barber, trying to see if we’d won?  If the way was open?

Circling the pillar, I could see that the Knights had dealt with the massive thing that had been crawling up the side.  Fingers were still attached to a section of the staircase, but they’d been severed from the hand.  I could make out a crater far below where it had fallen, floorboards cracking around it.

Though they’d dealt with the big one, it had stirred innumerable little things into action, and without their previous target to pursue, they’d turned on the Knights.

The fight to hold them at bay was grim, quiet, and tense, both combatants left with little choice but to fight with everything on the line, but still unwilling to risk making noise.  Movements were furtive, with more feints and false lunges than actual attacks.

I didn’t see Ellie or Christoff.

But they weren’t the problem.

Barber.

I circled the pillar, rising.

Barbatorem.

Alister was still working on his diagram.  He was using the leeway to draw more of the diagram, even though the worm’s body continued to slide across the middle of the rooftop like a macabre train on tracks.  Rose remained exactly where she was.  Imperious.

Ty reached out to me, holding a slip of paper in hand.

I flew down, passing him.  Unhooking a thumb from my wing, I snagged it, pinching it in place.

Runes.  I thought I might have recognized them.  One of the first I’d learned.

Silence.

I opened my mouth to speak, and no sound came out.

I’d nearly reached my starting point, where I’d begun my circle around the top of the pillar, when Evan saw it.

“Blake!”

I followed his line of sight, as his head turned.

The Barber was gone.  The shears weren’t.

As the ‘train’ ran along its tracks, the shears were periodically bumped and kicked, sent sliding across the roof, dancing along a trail of blood, piss, shit, and mucus.  The length of the worm blocked the others from seeing the Barber.  He was on the far side.

With the Knights at one side of the building, the shears were gradually moving toward them.  All the Barber had to do was emerge and drop down onto them.

I dove, and Evan flew with me.  Evan gave me a push, extra speed.

I landed early, landing in a kneeling position, because I knew my one foot wasn’t wholly intact.  I had to grab the silence rune in my teeth to free my hand.

My shins skidded on that same track of blood and mucus that had helped the Barber on his way.  I drew the Hyena, winced as a stray arm from the worm struck me, nearly knocking my aim off, and swiped my blade at the shears.

Not aiming to damage them, but to strike them, send them flying over the edge.  To give us room.  Time.

Between the moment my arm started to move and the moment the blade touched shears, the Barber manifested.  Flowing into existence with a cloud of noxious air, the nose of his horse’s head pointed at the ground, shaggy mane hanging down to either side, blood dripping from the base where the horse’s neck draped over the human portion.

The Hyena’s blade hit shears, and the presence of the Barber’s hand on the shears meant they didn’t budge a hair.  He didn’t raise his head.

I dragged the blade across the shears, hard, aiming to score the metal, to damage it.

Nothing.

He caught me by the sternum, fingers digging into and through the ribcage.

I stabbed him in the side of the throat with the Hyena.

No more effective than the lance or the fire had been.

The demon rose to a standing position, and he brought me with him, still holding me by the ribcage.

There was no help like this.  Not with the worm’s passage keeping the others from even clearing seeing me, let alone acting.  A blur.

He brought the shears my way, and I brought the Hyena up, driving the blade into the ‘v’ of the two long blades.

To my right, the worm slowed.  It wasn’t a clear slowing, not slow motion, nor was it a simple loss of forward momentum.  It stuttered, and flickered, a bad video image, skipping ahead from moment to moment.

The individual bodies that made up the one hundred or so segments were obese, maybe three to five hundred pounds each, but where they’d been moving past too quickly and too unpredictably to see past before, they were now moving at a crawl.

Time magic.  Not true time magic, but a trick of perception.

Which still worked wonders, even if it was being used to assist.  As the forward section bucked and twisted, a heavier section dropped to press along the roof.  I could see over the ‘worm’ to the main group.

Alexis was saying something, but the words had no sound.  She held a silence charm.

I could see the shape of her lips, but I couldn’t make out the actual words.

She pointed a rod at me and the Barber.  It was wrapped in paper and charms.

I wasn’t sure what to expect.  The Barber wasn’t going to be affected by much.

Which left me as the only viable target.

I realized what the words had probably been just as the lightning struck.

The visible flash was brief, easy to miss.  There was no explosion, no crackle of thunder.  Both the sender and the target were carrying runes of silence.  All I felt was an awe-inspiring impact, and the curious sensation of my chest being torn to pieces.

I dropped from the Barber’s grip.  The Hyena slipped from its position between the blades of the shears, and the blades snapped closed.  Given where I was and where the shears were, I knew that they’d closed awfully close to my own forehead, or just over the top of my head.

In trying to scramble back, I felt the lack of structural integrity.  I knew right away that I couldn’t fly.  If I could glide, it would be with Evan’s help, and it would be a steep glide.  The front half of my torso had been largely blown away.

My eye fell on those shears.

I brought my wing in front and hooked it around my front, for protection and in hopes that if I started to fall apart, my wing could help hold me together.

With my free arm, I reached out, and I stabbed the worm.

Blood and mucus sprayed out, spurts, as the blade caught the passing flesh.  The spray was in slow motion, stuttering, discordant.

The Barber didn’t flinch.  Didn’t treat it as anything unusual.  Blood sprayed and spurted to cover him.

Covering the shears.

Evan moved, flying close, and gave me a nudge.

Putting me just out of the way as a passing arm carrying a stick swung by.  Had it hit me, it might have clobbered me and sent me flying into the Barber’s grasp for a third time.

The timeless armor, on the left side of the roof, hopped up onto the moving worm, riding it toward us.  Holding the lance in one hand, it leaped, bringing the lance down in conjunction with forward momentum.

The Barber moved away, bending low, the shears slashing at the surface of the roof.

Once, twice.  A triangle-shaped cut

The lance came down, stabbing it, but it hardly seemed to care.

The timeless armor landed on the sliced section of roof and froze in place.  Unmoving.  Tilting forward as though it were going to fall, then stopping, mid-tilt.

The action had cleaned a part of the shears.  Again, I stabbed the surface of the passing worm.  More spray, more spatter.

The shears were dirtied once more.

As forms of attack went, it was mild at best.  The shears got bloody in the course of the Barber’s day to day.

But so long as they weren’t reflective, I could hope that the Barber couldn’t enter the shears.  So long as the Barber couldn’t do that much, it was more limited in mobility.

The Barber paced toward me.  I backed away.  I was still damaged.  Still hurt, I reminded myself.

There.  Behind the Barber.  Movement.  I thought it was Others, or more lost souls.  It wasn’t.

Ellie had climbed the face of the pillar, opposite the main group, climbing up so she was right next to the bridge.  Her head and shoulders were visible.  I saw her eyes widen as she saw me. Saw the violence, the gore, the worm, and the group on the far side.

She started to look toward the Barber, and I made a quick, violent motion.

The Barber stopped, watching me.  Not understanding.

Ellie resumed climbing.

She bent down, and she gave Christoff a hand, blocking his view with her body.

I watched as the two of them ran the length of the stairs, along the roots, and into the middling ground.  The outside of the Library.

Out.  Free and clear.  Or as close as one could hope to get.

Would the angel stop them?  Would they wait?

I shook my head a little.

I was squaring off against the Barber.  The worm separated the others from me.  The timeless knight was incapacitated by its own design.

But we were buying time, weren’t we?

Alister was drawing his diagram.

I just had to keep him occupied.

The Barber swung the shears around in a circle, one finger in the loop of the handle.  The blood and gore was sent flying.  Cleaning the blades with the force of the spin.

I flinched every time the point came around in my direction.  If he let go, let them fly forward… I probably wouldn’t be able to dodge.  But if I could, it would be over.

It was worse because I couldn’t watch it directly.

The noise in my head momentarily got worse.  I was struck with a vision of me clawing my own eyes out.  Letting the Abyss provide replacements.

Eyes the Barber couldn’t occupy.

No, I thought.

The Barber’s head turned toward the others.  To Alister in particular.

He let the shears slip from his finger.

The shears went straight up, like an arrow loosed from a bow.

His head turned toward me.

Then he disappeared.  Into the shears.  An indeterminate distance in the air.  Maybe even not in the Abyss anymore.

I couldn’t speak while I held the rune.

The rune was a tool.  Something I could use.  If he came back-

No.  No guarantees.  Even if I knew exactly where he was going to run, no guarantees.

I let the paper drop.  Evan caught it.

“Take cover!” I roared the words.

The shears dropped.  The Barber had already emerged.

The members of the group had backed to the corners, were gripping shelves and stairs and railings.  All at the edges.  I stabbed the floor with the Hyena, and I gripped that.

The Barber arrived, smack-dab in the center.  Cutting through one section of the great worm of human flesh.  The forward section and the rear section flew apart with such force that nearby structures and pillars were destroyed.

The impact brought with it a ringing that might have deafened.  A gong, a crash of a bell being broken.

Our pillar flew apart, cracked down the middle, all down the sides.  In places, the stairs held it together.  In others, it was shattered at the bottom but intact at the top, or vice versa.  A split log.

Gaps separated individual chunks and sections of roof.

The ringing continued, and it didn’t abate.

Looking over the edge, I could see the movement.

Every Other in the library now came toward us.

Creaking, cracking, a section of shelves broke away, and crashed into a nearby structure.  Others used it as a bridge, crossing to us.

Speaking was impossible, with the noise of the bell.

My own head was filling with noise, worse than before.  The split in my skull from the Barber’s grasp ached, making itself acutely known.

Even fighting back was impossible, like this.  I could make out Tiff touching the silence charm to her ear.  She grabbed Alexis’ wrist and forced Alexis’ hand up to make Alexis do the same.

Johannes, I noted, was helping one of the Behaims.  Where they’d been on the stairs before, they now dangled, the stairs themselves at a forty-five degree angle.  Too many surfaces without handholds.  He offered a hand, supporting them so they didn’t have to rely on the individual rails.

The Barber tossed the shears forward, entered them, exited them, as if he were passing through a door, a trick of the dark.

Did it again.  Crossing the roof toward all of the others.

Alister was talking, trying to shout instructions.  He and Rose were perched on an edge, with the High Priest nearby.

I saw Rose point skyward, talking to the High Priest.  To Jeremy.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw the timeless suit of armor.  The section of roof, ironically, had moved at a tilt, putting more secure ground under the armor.  I turned to Alister, but he was too preoccupied to notice, and the noise of the bell was deafening, making it impossible for me to communicate the fact to him.

I moved, skipping over the fractured roof, over gaps that allowed glimpses of those things that stirred within.

Nearly invisible in the shadow, an eye larger than I was peered through one gap, watching me as I crossed.  Iris swelling, then abruptly narrowing.  By the dimensions of it, whatever it belonged to had to be so large that it nearly filled the entire pillar.  A body in a narrow coffin.

The first of the Others were reaching us.  Among them, perhaps the most vicious of them, were the ones the Barber had made.  A bird without flesh, human beings broken until they resembled spiders, crawling and skittering forward on shattered limbs, no doubt howling, but impossible to hear in the chaos.

The Barber still moved toward the others.  A halting progress, zig-zagging, from one bit of secure ground to the next.

I saw Alister’s eyes go wide as the Barber approached them.

A Behaim threw up a ward, a protective shroud of some sort.  The Barber simply swept the shears sideways through it, dashing it to pieces.  Too little, the wrong element.

The shears closed on Alister, and there as nothing he could do about it.

I followed, four steps behind the Barber.  I lunged, and the ground crumbled under my feet, very nearly costing me the leverage and distance I needed.

I wasn’t close enough to put the Hyena between the blades, nor was I strong enough to do anything to the Barber.

I was close enough to put the Hyena between the handles of the shears.  The only thing that matched the jarring of the handles stopping, blades on either side of Alister’s throat, was the pounding, impossibly loud noise of the bell.

It was a momentary interruption.

I opened my mouth, shouted a message.  The words were dashed to every realm of the Abyss by the noise around me.

I reached out with my wing instead.  I touched Alister’s hand.

He lowered it.

With the very tip of my wing, I touched the ring on his hand.  The Behaim family ring.

I moved my wing to the side, pointing at the armor with the tip.

The suit of armor moved in that same instant.

Rose clutched Alister, and she pulled him down and away.  They slipped backward, and they dropped five feet before landing on their backs on a section of stairs, almost out of sight.  The High Priest was right behind them.

The Barber kicked me, and the shears snapped closed.  The sound of the shears cut through all the rest of the noise, clear and sharp.

He stepped down, landing on the stairs, and wood creaked, threatening to give way.

If only we were so lucky.

I started to follow, but a hand reached through the crack below.  An iron grip held me in place.

I bent down to slash at it, and something tackled me from behind.  Other hands reached up to seize me.

The timeless armor marched past.  Giving chase where I couldn’t.

My progress was halting, struggling.  There wasn’t one person we’d brought with us, Ellie and Christoff excepted, who weren’t now dealing with three or four serious Others and maybe two lost souls.  The Barber’s creations were tearing through the rest, and very quickly closing the distance.  We were on the stairs that spiraled up the exterior of the building, with most of the group at one corner, the southern face of the building to their right, with the Barber’s monsters ascending the stairs, clawing through all the rest, and the Barber at the western face to the left, cutting off their ascent.  The timeless knight followed the demon, but I doubted its ability to achieve anything.  It was more an immovable, indestructible object than a demon slayer.

And here I was, standing over it all, helpless, damaged and broken.

For most of the group, there was no way up, no way down except falling.

Chaos.

What followed was an impact that nearly matched Barbatorem’s fall.  One I’d experienced myself.

Not so long ago, at Hillsglade House.

A smiting, perhaps.  Something on that scale.

An act of god.

The High Priest had made a move, clutching a horn in one hand.

The impact hit every Other excepting me and Evan.  Many were sent flying from the exterior of the building, joining a practical torrent of books.

Their screams and howls cut through silence.  The ringing had ceased.

The Barber was left attempting to catch its balance.

The timeless knight appeared behind it.  I could see the strain on Alister’s face, the focus.

He controlled the knight.  The knight stabbed with the lance, driving the Barber back and over the railing.

The demon fell.  Disappearing into the shadows below.

“Come on!” I shouted.  My voice was so quiet in the stillness, the ringing it provoked so mild.

If I brought Others to me, then so be it.  Better me than the group.

I saw a lost soul clamber over the edge of the roof, coming for me, and I kicked it loose, letting it fall.

The others were ascending the stairs.  The high priest was barely moving, head bowed, horn in hand.

Vines, I observed, were tying things together.  Sections of building were being brought together as the vines tightened their hold.

The Library groaned, as if resettling, and some vines split.

Resisting our influence.

But vines made it possible to cross certain areas.  People were hurt, they’d been clawed apart, scratched, battered.  They’d fallen.

We had most of our number.  I couldn’t see one of the four Behaims that had come down here with us.  One was named Alister, one had been lost on the bridge, back when this started, and one, apparently, had been lost in this chaos just now.

I couldn’t see Alexis.  I had to look over the group twice to see.

I had so very little blood, only in my face, and my face was damaged, with thin branches crawling across the skin there.  All the same, I felt the blood run cold, practically draining out of me.

The realization that Alexis was gone was paralyzing.  It froze my head in place, leaving me unable to look at Tiff and Ty, because I might see their expressions.

In my stunned state, I didn’t even see it.  Not in time, at any rate.

The group was busy crossing the cracked, desolate top floor of the pillar, making their way toward the bridge back home, which was being restored with vines, and they were watching their flanks.

An object flew through darkness, spinning end over end.  Shears.

The demon emerged from them, soundlessly, without flash, impact or fanfare.  It came with its stink, and a sense of foreboding.  I joined many of the others in wondering just where it was coming from, in going tense, being ready for a fight.

Until I saw the hand, reaching skyward, from the midst of the group, toward the rear.

“Scatter!” I bellowed.

The demon didn’t flourish.  He merely brought the shears down, toward the high-priest’s back.

Alister saw, and Alister threw his left arm back, over the priest’s bent head, and put it out, sticking it into the path of the shears.  His right arm pulled the priest forward.

The shears crunched through bone and muscle with virtually no difficulty.

There was no blood, for blood loss could kill, and the Barber wasn’t about killing.  He was about ruin.

He stabbed a Knight in the back, the shears closed, and then hauled them open, opening the wound wide.

I ran forward, pushing past the other members of the group that were fleeing, running.

I managed to put myself between the others and the Barber.

He moved the shears, and I moved the Hyena, trying, failing, to position it where I might be able to keep those blades from scissoring closed.

I saw his arm move.  Stabbing.

“Stop!” Rose ordered.

The Barber hesitated.  I couldn’t block the shears, but I could strike at them with the Hyena.  The impact and the way it sent me moving to the right was more what saved me than any deflection.  Barbatorem was far stronger than I.

“My name is Rose Thorburn!  I am of the Thorburn Bloodline, I am of the line that named you Barbatorem!  You have been bound by my blood!”

Barbatorem hesitated once more.

Rose’s voice brought a ringing with it.

“Go,” Ty said.

The survivors were spreading out, forming a circle.  Guarding Rose.

“I bind you, Barbatorem!  As the Thorburn heir and diabolist, I order you to yield!”

Barbatorem backed away a step.

Rose was clearly tapping into Conquest.  The confidence with which she spoke.  The fact that she wasn’t cringing at the foulness that the Barber exuded, but instead advancing?

“By the seals to which you are bound, I order you away!  Back!”

The Barber backed away once more.

There was shouting at the fringes as the Knights met with the first wave of Others that Rose’s words had called.

“Back!”  Rose said.

Tiff had bent down to Alister’s side, and was helping to support him.  His face contorted in pain, but he managed to crawl forward.

The Barber lunged, and I met the shears with the Hyena, twisted them over to one side.  It felt like I was meeting a truck head-on, but it stalled him, kept him from gaining momentum.  I dropped to one knee, precariously close to a gap, and fought to regain my footing.

“Away with you!” Rose cried out, her words ringing in the air.  She gestured violently at the air.

The Barber backed away a step, in the same direction as the gesture.

I looked past him.

Alister’s diagram, shattered, spread out over several sections of pillar.

But the vines the high priest had called out were wrapping around.

Drawing the individual pieces closer.

The Knights, Ty, and the remaining Behaim were doing what they could to fight the Others.  Too tired, too hurt, it was looking ugly.

As if to punish me for looking away, the Barber made a move.  I only barely managed to keep the shears from taking a piece of my head.

“I compel you to be bound!” Rose cried out.  “Remain here in the Abyss!”

I matched her words with a strike, a lunge.  Battering the shears.

The Barber backed away, stepping into the still-broken circle.

The vines hauled the individual pieces of building together.  One last pull.

“…the temple,” I heard the High Priest murmur, the end of a prayer.  “From my demesnes to here.  Let your actions here be a memory that speaks of your deeds…”

The cracks began to mend.  Undoing the damage to the pillar.

“I compel you!” Rose cried out, but the words faltered.

There was a gap.  Gaps.  The circle didn’t mesh perfectly.  The priest’s prayer was fixing the building, but it didn’t fix the circle.

I dared to glance toward the center of the roof.  Sure enough, the damage toward the center wasn’t mending.

“I bind you to where you stand!” Rose said, doubt pushed aside.

But Barbatorem took a step forward.

“Back!’

Barbatorem advanced.

“Thought so,” Rose said.  “Only have so much clout.  Had to use it well.”

“Good try,” I said, my heart heavy.  “Damn it all.  We set our sights too high.”

She smiled sadly.

“Why?” came a voice to the side.  Ty’s.  “The circle-”

I spoke, “The actions of a demon are permanent.  What they destroy is irrevocably destroyed.”

Barbatorem walked over the lines of the now-useless diagram.  I was the one backing away now, fighting to find secure places to step without letting my guard down.

Tch.  Tch.  Tk.

“I’d hoped for more,” Johannes spoke, with a strange cadence to his voice.  “What a shame.  I thought I might have to force it, but I think I can leave this up to you.”

Heads turned.

“Damnation,” Johannes said.  “Damnation.”

“Have you lost it?” I asked.

“Probably.  I suppose this is where I say farewell.”

“Farewell?” Rose asked.

“This is all partially my fault, really.  I suppose I should bear the brunt of it.”

“What are you doing?” I asked, looking over my shoulder.

Backing away, Johannes raised his head.  But he didn’t look at me.

I could see something move in his eyes.

My head whipped around.

The Barber was gone.

“Do me a favor, if you please,” Johannes said, staring skyward.  His eyes weren’t his anymore.  He staggered blindly.  “Tell that angel to go fuck himself.”

Black veins tracked down his face and neck.

“Gladly,” I said.

I slashed across his eyes with the Hyena.  A red line, marring the reflection there.  The veins continued to spread, and skin started to boil and flake away.

Then I gave him a push.  Enough that when he fell from the edge of the building, he didn’t hit the stairwell on the way down.

I watched him fall, because I had to be sure.

His body hit the ground, almost impossible to see.

From a large crack in the side of the pillar, a great black hand as large as a house reached forth.  It seized the body, and it dragged it into the darkness.

With no time to waste, I hurried to help the Knights in dispatching the lost souls that had clustered around them.

With my approach, however, they scattered.

The library rumbled, and in keeping with its rules, we were silent on the way out.  Limping, wounded, missing pieces, and perhaps a little heartbroken.

I was acutely aware of Alexis’ absence.

■

The gunshot was loud, but it prompted no ringing.

I saw Nick’s expression, as he looked down at his Knight.  The one the Barber had torn open.  The pain had been too much.  We’d had to stop walking, and the victim had begged for peace.

Nick had given it.

“Alister,” Rose said.

Alister shook his head.

“You got hurt badly too.”

“I did.  It sucks.  I- I lost my ring.  I’m not sure what that means.”

Rose nodded.  “And the pain?”

“I don’t think the cut was meant for me.  The pain is… there.  But not like it was for him.”

Rose gave him a hug.  It was stiff, unexpected, and weird, without any real affection.  Alister looked more surprised than anything.

Then he returned it, and he was able to offer something resembling affection.

“We’ve been walking a while, and we’re not making any headway,” Ty said.  “We’ve got a lot of injuries.  Should we stop and look after the wounds?”

“We’re close,” Rose said.  “We feel close.”

“We’ve felt close for a while,” Tiff said.

I looked up.  We were working our way uphill, but the trees were dense, and the uphill climb didn’t stop.  We might as well have been on a treadmill.  But as we walked, the Abyss was drawing more into itself.  More trees, more marsh.

“Evan?” I asked.

He was with Tiff and Ty.

“Are you up to it?” I asked.  “Scout?”

He nodded, wordless, and took flight.

We continued our trudge through snows and between trees.  The sky remained dark overhead, the clouds roiling.

Evan returned.  He led us off to one side.  An angle.

The trees were denser here.  A cage, a barrier.

“Blake!” I heard Green Eyes, from somewhere distant.

“Green Eyes!” I called out.

“Be careful!  Remember what I said in the beginning!  Our first meeting!”

“Which!?”

But my cry wasn’t answered.

“Can’t,” Evan said.  “Tried flying to them, but it just keeps going.  Peter’s up there with Ainsley, the witch hunter, and Green Eyes.”

“A trick, a trap?” Alister asked.

I shook my head.

We were in the Abyss, but we weren’t.  We were at the gap, a middling place.

What had Green Eyes told me on the first meeting?

Oh.

Ways to escape the Abyss.

I felt something ugly well up inside.  A kind of certainty.

Once I knew what I was looking for, it wasn’t hard to find.

Into thicker trees.  I moved with an energy, now, a desire to find out that I was wrong.

“Blake!  Don’t get too far ahead, we’ll lose you!”

I forged on.  Evan at my shoulder.

I found the path.  One that led from the library to outside.  Sections of snow-covered driveway.  Burned tree.  Thick woodland.

A locket dangled from a branch.

I took it, and I opened it.

Dark hair within.

I tugged it free of the branch, firmly enough to break wood.

Three more paces found the fragments of metal, laid out in the snow.

One of the ways out of the Abyss, I thought.  Gotta get past the Gatekeeper.

I put the Hyena down in the snow, and the broken edges of the sword lined up with the fragments of metal, like two puzzle pieces.  I had little doubt they’d fit together readily.

Birds chirped in the trees.

When the others caught up with me, I was staring at a tree that had grown into a peculiar shape.  It bent, providing a space.

Mara told me, I thought.  That I’d lose the freedom I wanted.

I touched the wood.  A chair.  A throne.

The Abyss wants me to be one of the gatekeepers, and it’s holding the others hostage.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Possession 15.4

Be careful, Green Eyes had told me.

Had she suspected?  Known?  She’d been around the Abyss long enough to see how it operated, the gears turning, certain individuals raised up, certain individuals dashed against the metaphorical rocks below.

The Ink Man had told me that he wanted to get in position, or something along those lines.  He too had known.  He’d wanted this role.  Or one of them.  I could imagine other exits, each one guarded.

I was aware of the presence of others, of the murmured conversations, laced with anxiety and emotion.  They wanted out, much like someone who was drowning wanted air.  They’d faced a share of what the Abyss could dish out, they were in pain, wounded, or suffering from the loss of friends and family.

I wasn’t sure how much sympathy they’d have for my dilemma.

My thumb traced the side of the throne.  Anyone else might find it uncomfortable, but I was largely made of wood.  Minor discomforts didn’t tend to come up anymore.

“That’s all for you, Blake?” Evan asked.

I nodded.  I couldn’t bring myself to look back at them.

“The shards of the sword.  We left them on the street.  They got washed away.  Now they’re here,” Rose said.

I nodded again.

“The locket… I barely remember the locket,” she said.  “I figured that the locket being this weird force, just coming and going as it pleased, it was a Faerie thing.”

“No,” I said, and my voice was a little raw, as if I’d been screaming for a long time and hurt something.  “Not a Faerie thing.  A me thing.  It wants me to guard the door.”

“If you guard the door, you can open the door, right?”  Nick asked.

“Or would you have to fight us before you could let us through?” the High Priest asked.

The noise in my head was getting worse.  It felt like all the noise and chaos of the Library, at its very worst, had seeped in through the cracks the Barber had made in my skull, and now it played at the periphery, crackling at the edges.

“The Abyss has a way of thinking,” I said.  “It gives, then it takes, and it generally takes more than it gives.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” the High Priest said.  “Does it?”

It does, I thought.

“Do you think it’s going to make you fight us, as part of the price for letting us out?” the High Priest guessed.

“I think,” I replied, bristling just a little, “that letting you guys go is part of the give.  But this, this whole setup, it’s the take.”

“It’s…” Rose started, but she left the sentence hanging.  I had my back to her, so I couldn’t see her facial expressions.  “…Not as bad as other parts of the Abyss.”

“Cushy gig, as these things go,” Alister said.

I shook my head.

I knew I was making enemies here.  The words were soft, gentle, but only barely.  I could sense the tension that drove them.  Not much different than if they were all spoken between grit teeth.  It might have been a skewed opinion, maybe nudged by the influences of the Abyss, but I could sense their fear, a weight pressing on me from behind.

“I don’t think you get it,” Evan said.  “All you guys who were telling Blake he should sign up for the Seal of Solomon deal, you never got it.”

“Got what?” Tiff asked.

“Blake’s meant to fly,” Evan said, as if that explanation made any sense to them.  “I was his familiar, even if I don’t remember, and I got the wings, and Blake got to be the magician, and then Blake was the monster, and I remember that.  Or this, I mean.  But if there was any justice in the world, then I’d be the wizard or the monster and Blake would have the wings.  Because I’d be a great monster, and Blake… he’s meant to fly.”

“I can almost understand what you’re getting at,” Ty said.

“I can’t,” the High Priest said.  “I’m afraid you’re speaking bird, little one.  Your perspective isn’t one we’re in a position to grasp.”

Jeremy sounded tired.  The oldest person here, and he wasn’t that old.

Evan, by contrast, was the youngest.

It explained the vaguely condescending tone, but it, at least in Evan’s eyes, didn’t justify it.

He snapped.  “You jerks!  Just listen to me.  It’s a trap!  A very obvious trap!”

“For the Bogeyman,” the High Priest said.  “Who is at the center of this, with all of the rest of us as collateral damage.”

“For Blake, yeah,” Evan said.  “So let’s treat this like we would any other trap and take a hike!  Literally!  We can go, we find another exit.  We fight the guy waiting for us there, and then we leave.”

I was already shaking my head.

“No?” Evan asked.

“We can,” I said.  “But it wouldn’t work.  The Abyss is smart.  It’s doing what it does for a reason.  I’m not sure, but I think we’d be starting over from scratch.  Have to fight through the gauntlet, the head games, find our way through, and at the end, there’s no guarantee the Abyss wouldn’t have something like this waiting at the next exit.”

“We knocked down one barrier,” Rose said.  “Jeremy, can you use your god, knock down this one?”

“I’ve asked a lot of my god in the last little while,” the High Priest said.  “I’m concerned that he’s too fond of lose-lose dilemmas to simply hand us a solution to this one.”

There was a bit of noise.  Someone had dropped to a sitting position with a crunch and a few snapping branches.

“Blake, you made a deal with Rose,” Alister said.  “That you’d step down, let her win the struggle between you two.  What were the terms?  Does this qualify?”

“The idea was that I’d destroy him,” Rose said.

“This would count,” I said.

“No!” Evan said.  “Damn you!  This is- no!  You don’t get to jump straight to that!  Do you know how hard I’ve had to work to keep Blake alive while he’s throwing himself into danger and fighting dragons and demons for your sakes?”

“I’m aware, Evan,” Rose said.  “But we need to discuss the options here.”

“No we don’t!  We can pretend this isn’t an option because it really isn’t, or it shouldn’t be!  If we start talking about this like it’s an option then Blake’s going to decide it is and if it’s talking it’s not something I’m good at!  I can push him out of the way of dragons or demons or whatever but I can’t push him out of the way of being an idiot!  The last time I let you guys talk he talked himself into letting you kill him!”

The noise in my head wasn’t abating.  It didn’t get worse, but it certainly wasn’t getting better.

“He’s agreed to let you destroy him so you don’t both get destroyed, the least you can do is not talk about this like it’s a possibility!  Find another way, or I’m done!  I’m gone!”

My head turned.

Two eyes peered out of the darkness.

“What is ‘this’?” Alister asked.  “Is it so much worse than death?”

“Yes,” the voice belonging to the eyes said.

Green Eyes crawled through a gap in the trees.

There was a coldness in her eyes as she looked at the main group.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” I said.  “Leaving might be hard.”

“You shouldn’t have left me behind,” she retorted.  “Again.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m actually sorry.”

“I could hear you from a little distance away.  The nugget is loud.”

I nodded.

“Nugget,” Evan muttered, “says sushi girl.”

She approached me, but she didn’t climb onto me like she had in the past.  She climbed up the throne, flipped her tail over so it was on what amounted to an armrest, and reclined, sitting sideways.  If a fish could ‘sit’.  The sinuous nature of her lower body was especially clear with the way she’d draped herself back over the throne.

“You can’t,” I said.

“I know.  It’s not for me, and I’d be really bad at it,” she said.  “Won’t work.  Getting past this isn’t as easy as having someone else take the seat.”

She moved her head, rolling it back over the other armrest, facing skyward.  In the doing, she pushed her head under my hand, where I was still touching the throne.  I moved my thumb to flick a bit of hair away from where it trailed across her damaged face, but I left my hand where it was, the palm touching the bridge of her nose, the fingers and heel obscuring her eyes.

She’d healed, just a little bit, I noted, looking past the gaps of my fingers.

A benefit of being so close to the Abyss, perhaps.

She spoke, “He’ll live a long time.  It won’t be good living.  This is maybe one of the worst places for him to be, or it will be, once he settles in.  A perfect, personalized misery, just for him.”

“It’s not being destroyed,” Ty said.  “It’s being condemned.”

“Essentially,” I said.

“What would you rather do?” Alister asked.  “As far as I can tell, it’s the exact same choice you made with Rose earlier.  Either we all suffer through being here, or one person does.”

I turned to look at him.

They looked as worn out and scared as I’d suspected.

He was right.  It wasn’t pretty, but he was right.

The Abyss wanted me to be its plaything.  I’d been given the power to affect change, to take action and try to defend my friends, and it had all led to this.

I started to move my hand, ready to move Green Eyes from the throne.  She seized my wrist.

She held my hand there, staring at me from an upside-down perspective.

“Why should he do it?” Evan asked.  “He made the hard choice once, so he can do it again?  No!  When’s the last time any one of you made the big sacrifice?”

“Missing a hand here,” Alister said.

“Thank you for that,” the High Priest added.  “I do owe you something for it.”

Alister nodded.

“Big sacrifice,” Evan said, stressing the ‘big’.  “You know… um-  I’m not good with words.  Help me out here, Blake.  Green?”

I could hear the cries of the various denizens of the Abyss.  I could hear the tolling of the bell, even though it wasn’t here, and I could make out a deep rumbling, promising a reconfiguration, a change in broad strokes.

I opted to keep my mouth shut rather than risk the possibility that the noises in my head might become sentiments expressed through my lips.

Green Eyes answered Evan’s call.  “I don’t know what the nugget is saying-”

“And stop calling me a nugget!”

“-but the thing I keep hearing, over and over again, is that everything comes with a price.  What I’d like to know is, what are you paying Blake?  What does he get in the deal?”

The group exchanged glances.

“I’m not sure this isn’t another trick of the Abyss.  One more mouthpiece, so it gets what it wants,” the High Priest said.

“No,” I said.  I squared my jaw, and stood up a little straighter.  “No, Green Eyes is right.  This isn’t something you ask for without giving something in return.”

“What do you want?” Alister asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “As far as I can tell, there isn’t that much that’s worth enduring a personalized little hell for gods know how long.  You may have to sell it to me.”

“Blake,” Ty said.

“What?” I asked, and my tone was a little harsher than it maybe should have been.

He spread his arms, then dropped them to his side.  “I don’t want to say it, but apparently I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you.  I won’t say I regret it, but… I don’t remember it, and that’s making it feel really hard to justify.  There’s Tiff, and there’s Alexis.”

He put emphasis on her name.  It had the desired effect.

“I’m going to side with Blake on this one,” Rose said.

I looked at her in surprise.

“Green Eyes is right.  Everything has a price.  If we accept this option, let Blake make this choice, we’re going to pay somehow, further down the line.  We should give up something, to make it more equitable.”

She drew in a deep breath, then exhaled.

“Ty,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Blake was cut from the same cloth I was.  The cuts were meant to achieve things.  Blake was rigged to surround himself with allies.  Just like he was created to ultimately destroy himself.  I don’t know how much choice he had in the matter.”

“It’s a fair accusation,” I said.  “I did get them involved.”

Rose nodded slowly.  Her breath fogged.  The trees and branches were so thick around us that it felt like they were closing in.  Like a piece of music that was rigged to sound like it constantly escalated in pitch, ad infinitum.

Ty had shown me the piece of music in question, now that I thought about it.

“You did,” she said.  “But I’m more inclined to blame the demon, but that’s… I’m so very tired right now, Blake.  This isn’t even certified over, and I’m exhausted on every measurable level, and several levels that can’t be measured.  I’m tired of blaming you.  So maybe I’m biased, and that’s coloring my perception.  Don’t let me come across like I’m stopping you two from resenting Blake.”

She was talking to Tiff and Ty.

“I don’t resent him,” Ty said.  “But-”

He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence.

“You can’t resent someone for something that you don’t recall,” Tiff said.  “Knowing Blake, admittedly not that well, I don’t think it was mean spirited.”

“It was selfish,” I said.

“And it happened,” Ty said.  “Alexis is dead.”

All at once, I was back atop the ruined pillar.  The Others were clawing their way up, the Barber’s minions, the fleshless bird, the lost souls, the broken crab-walking wretches…

I could see it all as though I were there again.

My focus was on the fight in front of me, trying to find an avenue I could use to attack.  I was injured, my chest in ruins, and the group was at the corner of the pillar, Barber to one side, the mob to the other.  The Timeless Knight was on the approach.

Then, as if someone else were taking control of a camera, moving it away from the scene, I could see Alexis, off to one side.  Surrounded.

She screamed, and the noise was drowned out by a toll of the bell.

Others, including the feathers and talons that had been cut away from the skinned raven-man, were closing in, doing as much damage to each other as they were doing to her.

I saw the scene from Alexis’ perspective.  Looking over at the others.  Looking up at me.

She screamed something, the view distorting with each word.

Then, just before the Others could get her, she slipped beneath the railing, holding onto the edge, climbing down.  Clearly intent on climbing across the underside, to get under the stairway that was so burdened with Others.

Except there were more Others beneath, climbing up.

My head turned, taking in the scene, but even though Alexis could see me between the slats of stairs, I couldn’t make her out through the jumble of bodies.  All I might have seen, had I been given the time and perhaps a bit more light, were her fingers, clutching the slab of wood of the stairs.

She was scratched, and she made a call.

She dropped.  One floor down, to the next set of stairs.

A bad landing, a tumble, taking several Others down with her, landing in a heap.  Her limbs were bent in odd ways.

The image lingered on her, making sure I knew.  Her eye was open, a glimmer visible from a distant candle.  It didn’t blink, even as seconds passed.

The vision faded, clearing away.

But even though the vision faded, Alexis remained.  Shrouded in the darkness at the edge of the little glade here, her eyes glittering as if from candles that weren’t here.

“I can’t make a call,” Rose said.  “I’m biased on too many fronts.”

“I suppose the question,” Alister said, “Is whether one death and two lives cast into chaos is worth demanding this fate from him.  That’s really for you two to decide.”

Alexis hunched over, and I saw another little flame join the lights that danced in her eyes.  A lighter.

Cigarette lit, she straightened.  She saw me looking, and raised one hand in a wave.  Her arm was broken.

A ghost?

An Other?

“I invited them to this world, I’m responsible for them,” I said.  I watched as Alexis moved through the shadows, a little further back from the rest.

“I’ll amend my statement,” Alister said.  “It’s for you three to decide, between you.”

“If it spares them-” I started.

Green Eyes clutched my wrist tighter.

“No,” Ty said.  “I can’t ask him to do that.  I shouldn’t have even brought it up.  I’m just-”

“Tired,” Rose said.

“Yeah,” Tiff said.  “I don’t want to do this like this.”

They were too nice.  Too good.

“Two out of three say nay,” Alister said.  “Bringing us right back to square one.”

Alexis, continuing her circuit around the clearing, stopped by the throne.

She stayed behind it.

Taunting me?  I wondered.  Or is it offering something else in the bargain?  A fresh Hyena, a locket, and now an Alexis?

“If you have any last wishes, things you want us to resolve on your behalf,” the High Priest said.

“I already promised that,” Rose said.

“Why does it feel like you’re more on his side than ours?” the other Behaim asked.

“Because I’m tired of taking sides,” Rose said.  “So long as everyone takes sides, the scales will inevitably wind up tipping, and we suffer for it.”

“Rose,” the High Priest said, and his tone was grave.  “What choice do you think we have?  We need out, and I’m not hearing answers.  You’re only working to convince yourselves that it’s too inhumane to make a fragment of a human being sacrifice himself.”

“We could choose to stay,” Rose said.  “It’s not a very good choice, but it’s a choice.”

“You’re testing me,” he said.

“A little,” Rose said.  “This is actually my first visit to the Abyss.  I’m not sure my head is on straight, right now, and a part of me feels a little insecure about how everyone else is doing.  I might be testing you a bit to see if you’re responding rationally.”

“Do you know who thinks they’re being rational?” Evan asked.  “The Angel.  You know, the dog that’s waiting for us out there.”

“Dog?” Green Eyes looked at us.  She flipped over, so her chin was on the armrest.  “I didn’t see it.”

It’s gone?

“That gives us hope that getting past this means we won’t get blocked by the angel,” Alister said.  He managed a smile.  “We only have to figure this out.  Does Blake take a seat, or do we stay here forever?”

The noise in my head was unbearable, but looking at Alexis gave me some relief on that front.

On the other hand, it made me feel so guilty I felt like I might go to pieces over it.  Whether I turned to the monster or the human, I was being assaulted, pushed into a corner.

“We trick the Abyss,” Rose suggested.  “Abandon the question, take a third path.”

“I’ll remind you,” I said.  “It’s here, it’s watching, it’s listening, and it isn’t stupid.”

“Mmm,” she said.  “Then… can we make a deal?”

“Saying that so soon after saying you want to mislead it,” Green Eyes commented.  She was looking at Rose, and her eyes were narrow.  Slits in the gloom.

“Not helping,” I said.

“I swear I’ll approach this deal with honest intentions,” Rose declared.  “Blake received the passion to strive for a future, I received the ability, but no passion, no drive, and no goal.  I have only an arranged marriage while you have my fiancé‘s engagement ring, and a future rife with conflict and chaos, due to me by my bloodline’s karma.  Now… I’m staking the open nature of my future on this deal.  If I’m dishonest in this bargain, I give the Abyss the right to claim my future, in addition to any and all other costs I pay.”

“I’m not sure I agree with this,” Alister said.

“Would you rather we get married and live out our lives here?” Rose asked.  “Or are you going to say that Blake should give up his existence because he’s only a fragment of a person?”

“Wouldn’t dare,” Alister said.  “I know you’re a fragment too, if a more substantial, prettier one.  But while I’m commenting one way or another, I have to wonder if the pair of you being in agreement isn’t just as disastrous as the two of you at odds.”

“I wonder,” Rose said.

“What’s the deal you’re making?” the High Priest asked.

“Look at Blake’s feet,” Rose said.

They did.

I did.

The branches that made up my feet had broken away.  They’d split up, and they’d set root in the forest floor.

Sealing me here.

When had that happened?

The sensation in my head was getting worse.

To be filled with noise and violence and ruin, yet frozen in place.  Eternal restlessness.  Only freed when it came time to guard the gate, to dash the hopes of others.  A far cry from my hopes to leave the world a better place than it had been before I was a part of it.

Once I realized it, I might have screamed, snapped, broken.

I looked at Alexis, and rather than relief, I thought I might break in an entirely different manner.

“I hereby request Blake,” she said.  “I request passage to the outside for me and my allies.  In exchange, I’ll give you what you desire, and I’ll give you us.  You’ll have my services as a scourge.  Bit of a step down from being the town’s diabolist, but I’ve done a bit of it before, and I can do more.  A lifetime of service.”

The silence lingered.

Birds moved through the trees, just out of sight.  Rustling, nervous, their cries hesitant.

To be a birdwatcher, but to have the birds forever out of sight…

I wondered if I’d find the rusted hulk of my bike somewhere in this mess of trees and snow.  It’d top it off, as far as the taunting went.

For a moment, in the midst of the disturbance in my own head, the idea fresh on my mind, Alexis lingering in my field of vision, I thought I heard the rev of the bike.

But the sound was a tearing, a breaking.

The trees, burdened by ice and snow, dropped the debris on either side of the throne.  They stood straighter, and more trees did the same.

A path had formed.

I could see Peter and Ainsley there, at the end of the path.  Peter had one arm around Ainsley, the two of them hunched over, trying to stay warm.

The other members of the group practically broke out into a run, on seeing the path.

I remained where I was.

“Stop!” Alister bellowed the word.

“Stop!” Evan shouted, a shriller sound.

Most did.  When one of the younger Knights continued to run, Rose touched a knife to her palm, then gestured, tripping the Knight and sending them careening sideways into a tree.  A rough fall, but no damage.

“Not yet,” Rose said.

She turned to look at me.  The roots hadn’t released my feet.

Just in front of me, Green Eyes was tense.  Her mouth was slightly parted, narrow fish’s teeth more clear without the lips in the way.

It was harder to convince the others to stay put when the way out was there.  The deal was the same, me being imprisoned here, them going, but the choice wasn’t in my hands anymore.

“Not yet,” Rose said.

They were restless, freedom so close.

As if to taunt them, the branches began to slowly descend, the way disappearing.

She approached me, even as the exit was fading.  She put hands on my shoulders.

“You could have thrown me off the side of the pillar,” she said.  “Or at least let me fall.”

“Could have,” I said.

“Alister,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Do you know the familiar ritual off the top of your head?”

“You’re not considering-”

“I’m not,” she said.  “Honest.  I’m not.”

“Then yes, yes I do.”

The front of my torso was destroyed, and though it healed, the healing was only partial.

Rose seized my heart, and hauled it out of my chest.

Narrow cords of wood, the roots of smaller plants, entangled branches, all followed, like so many veins and arteries.

“Woah, what!?” Evan cried out.

Green Eyes hissed, violent.

“Shhh,” Rose shushed them.  Her eyes and much of her focus on my heart.

“If you do anything to him-” Green Eyes said.

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Rose ordered, with a bit of Conquest in her voice.

Green Eyes shut her mouth, though she was tense.

I stared down at it.  A dark thing, a knot of wood encasing a bird, or a bird made of wood, both and neither, thumping and thrumming and beating without rhythm.

“Not a real heart,” Rose said.  “Spiritstuff, filling the gap.”

“They’re running,” Alister commented.

I looked to see.  Tiff and Ty were staying, and Nick was lingering, but backing slowly toward the exit.

Rose frowned.  “That makes this harder.”

“What are you thinking?” Alister asked.

“The Abyss has a claim to Blake.”

“Yes.  It’s going to claim us if we don’t get out of here.”

“What if there’s no clear Blake to claim?” Rose asked.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it,” Alister said.

“Give me a prompt, any prompt.  Need a bit of ritual in this.”

“Um.  I, practitioner’s name, invite you to the world of man and mortal.  Let this be the port-”

“Skip ahead.”

“He accepts your hospitality.  Then you offer shelter, hospitality, demesne, sustenance…”

“That’s enough,” Rose said.  She glanced over her shoulder.  “I, Rose Thorburn, invite you within.  Let my body be the gate and the dwelling.  We were once one, then two, and now we will be an incomplete whole, for just a short time.  I offer you mercy, and I bare my throat to you, knowing what you are to me.  May my body be your shelter, my strength your strength, my being your sustenance.”

“Damnation,” Alister said.  “Should have known what I was getting into, marrying a Thorburn.”

I replied, “As the willing spirit, I accept your offer.  I agree to share in my own power and strength.”

Rose continued, “I give you me, my body for your spirit, for enough time that we might put old affairs to rest.  I give you time, up until we reach the moment where one might destroy the other.  I give you this with the hope that we both will strive for balance, and the knowledge that we will likely not find it.”

“I accept,” I said, not because I didn’t have better words, but because we were out of time.

Rose pulled, and the dark tendrils of the Abyss’ wood held on to my heart.

Alister handed her the Hyena.  Green Eyes tensed, now out of the chair.

Rose cut, severing me from the body, and I lost my eyes, my wings, and everything else.

■

The scene was broken, two sets of sound, two different views.  I might have been viewing it all through a shattered television screen with two sets of audio out of sync.  Out of the left eye, I could see my mother fussing over me.  Out of the right, she was standing still, distracted, fixing her hair.

In the left, I was Rose.  In the right, Blake.

Rose’s view was fractured, in a thousand pieces, painting a very different picture.  She was taller, simply by virtue of the images reflected through each piece of glass.

Blake, getting ready for church.  Rose… the time and placement of it wrong.

“Your grandmother b- -e there,” our mother fussed.  “Inheritance.”

It was a broken soundtrack, a bad edit, with imagination left to fill the gaps.  Rose’s memory of the event was rearranged, putting her at home, with our parents, just before the big meeting at Hillsglade House.

For me, it was much the same.  A whole section cut free.  I had no memories of my mother fussing over me.

I reached out, as if I could touch it, affect how things were arranged, then thought twice about it.

I couldn’t dwell in such a small, dismal, broken space.

I tried to find my way, to approach the surface.  Perhaps I could take one eye, to see the outside world.

Slowly, things were taking form around me.  Making this a place I could navigate, or operate in.

I was only spirit now.  Relatively small, compared to what I’d once been.  From a human to a fragment of a human possessed by the Abyss, now only a fragment of spirit.

I could hear Rose’s declaration, from far away.  Not a memory, but the real world.

“You can have both of us, you could break us, and it might even be easy!” she said.  There was definite Conquest in her voice.  “Or you can let us go, and the deal I proposed will hold!”

I didn’t hear or see the response.

I tried to, listening and looking for cues.

Instead, I only heard Conquest’s amused chuckle, echoing through the shattered space.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Possession 15.5

I looked around, but I couldn’t find the source of the utterance.

The landscape around me wasn’t quite dreamlike.  There was a logic here, a pattern that had a kind of familiarity to it.  There was Rose, and there was me, striving to fill the gaps.  In large part, I was able to.  But where this kaleidoscopic world was shifting, different elements moving around me like a close up of an eye, dilating and widening, there were solid elements too.  Elements that didn’t move.

It was like viewing the world with the Sight, which I hadn’t done properly since Ur had cut me off from the real world.  If I focused, depending on how I focused, things took on different forms.

I turned to the nearest pillar, focusing so that it was a pillar.  It was structurally sound, but only barely.  A large section of the exterior had broken away.

Another refocusing, and I could see the jagged cut, a place where nothing could dwell or connect.  A crack in the television screen.  No matter what we did, we’d be working on a different plane, unable to affect that screen.

I changed my perspective once more.  The pillar, the parts I could see, there were elements at play.  Figures, with longer hair, a length of thigh, arms folded over the chest.  Eyelashes.

They were me, or they were Rusty, but only fragments had survived the damage, from the cracks that ran along the pillar’s surface.

Femininity, perhaps, or self image that fit with Rose being female.

I blinked, looking around.

More structures.  Some mine, distinct, positioned where they once would have been part of things, now separate, degraded, damaged, and more raw.

I’d once prided myself on having an eye for interpreting art.  Now I was interpreting an alien landscape that should have been more familiar than anything else, because it was us.  I quickly made conclusions that I knew I couldn’t rely on, broad-strokes thoughts that let me put everything in a frame of reference.

An arch, more intact than the feminine one had been.  The books that stood out like they’d been half-way carved out of rough rock, the surface around them coarse, it somehow evoked thoughts of the Library we’d been in the process of escaping.

The Barber’s work had cut the arch in two, from one side to the other, and left a black fracture through the landscape that ran through virtually everything here.  The damage was such that the two halves didn’t fit together anymore.  A puzzle with a thick strip taken out of the middle.  The two halves no longer meshed.

I looked to the scenes surrounding the arch.  More orderly.  There was a rigid pattern to how the days and events had been laid out.

I focused a little harder one one section, a little more prominent than the rest, the colors bolder, the image sharper.  More importantly, it was a scene that was mostly intact, and entirely on her side of the black fracture.  Something of Rose’s that had been denied to me.  Entirely unfamiliar.

“Ros-” the sound stuttered.  “Go to the principal’s office.”

A seven year old ‘Rose’, pieced together from the remains of Rusty, looked up at her teacher, bewildered.

“Why?”

The teacher handed the foolscap paper to Rose.  “I’ll call ahead so they know you’re coming.  Don’t worry, it’s not anything bad.”

Rose couldn’t quite believe that.  You didn’t get sent to the principal’s office unless you’d done something wrong.

But she went.  The front office wasn’t far away.

“Hi Ros-,” the principal said.  The tall, thin man smiled.

He looked so big, from Rose’s perspective, even sitting down.

“Can I see?”

She had to step up to the desk to hold out the foolscap.  He took it and smoothed it out where she’d crumpled it a bit out of anxiety.

“Mrs. Wells phoned while you were walking down here.  She says you’ve been working very hard on your printing.”

Rose hesitated, then nodded.

“It really shows.  You should be proud of yourself.”

She allowed herself a smile.

“Do you think it deserves a sticker?”

She nodded.

He opened the drawer of his desk, and he pulled out a thick roll of stickers, as large as a roll of duct tape.  He peeled one off, and he pressed it down onto the foolscap paper.

“How’s that?” he asked.

She took the paper back.  Her eyes went wide.  The sticker was holographic!  Shiny!  The super-realistic image of the frog on the page opened its mouth, tongue starting to stick out as she looked at it from different angles.

She smiled wide, happy enough she could barely contain herself.

I pulled my attention away, but in the doing, caught other thoughts and reflections, associated to it.  A warmer memory, of mom seeing the paper, and giving her an awkward sort of hug, if it could even be called that.  She didn’t bend down, but just put a hand on Rose’s back as Rose hugged her, a pat and a short rub, then the work with the shiny sticker going on the fridge.

“Good job,” mom said.  “Look at that.  Do you think we should show this to grandma, the next time we see her?”

Rose shook her head.

“Okay.  But we’ll show daddy when he gets back from work, how’s that?”

“Yes.”

After mom left, Rose approached the image on the fridge, moving left and right to watch the image move.  Still excited, still proud.

Her face still a fractured mess, a reconfiguration that only resembled a girl.  The Barber hadn’t needed to be too careful, there.  It was a memory.  Flaws were to be expected.

I caught a thought from an older Rose, thinking back on the memory while she lay in bed.  Abstract, wondering why the school had done it.  Trying to build more positive relationships with students?  Or was it because she was a Thorburn, and the school had seen several other Thorburns pass through?  Were they striving to do this one right, where others had been disasters in their own way?  A more cynical line of thought.

One event could do so much.  So many individual things had been removed, destroyed, or moved elsewhere, to create two incomplete wholes.  How much had we been steered in our own individual directions?

I looked at an associated memory, a defining moment, on the far side of the fracture.  It was, on a level, an extension of me, as if I simply flowed into the landscape, as much liquid as solid, filling the available void.  The only difference from real life was that I was viewing things with different senses.

A shiny holographic image, our second, less important, but still, it should have been pleasing.  Except all that remained of that second memory was the sticker itself.  A bird on a branch, wings opening as I looked at it from different angles.  There was none of the academic pride, none of the surrounding memories.  Only the sticker, alone, at the edge of the fracture, something I had liked.

I heard Conquest’s voice, a whisper.

This time I was grounded enough to look for the source.

It came from above and around.  As if the sky was talking to me.

But the sky, as I looked at it, was only more distant images and scenes, structures.

I was, it dawned on me, making a fundamental error.  I’d tried to rise, I’d tried to navigate, but my surroundings were a shifting kaleidoscope collection of scenes, moving as Rose and I each focused on different things, even grating against one another as we did so, with some damage resulting, fragments of our selves being lost to the fracture.  Swallowed up and gone.

Given time, we might grind each other into dust, as we instinctively shifted pieces of the larger puzzle around, trying to fit things where they didn’t fit.

I’d tried to move around, to look up and down, even altered my focus, looking at things in different forms, to view the pillars as what they were.

But I was small, and I was looking at things in a small way.  A large part of the reason it didn’t make sense, was that I was studying a complex organism on what amounted to a cellular level.

I pulled back.

The kaleidoscope remained what it was, though not rainbow hued, but more muted colors.  The colors of Rose and Blake’s life.  Being a raw spirit, intertwined with my surroundings, my vision didn’t suffer for being further away or for me being bigger.

I was a share of the landscape here, at least in part.  I only had to own that reality.

Rose’s body was hers.  It was solid, a largely unchanging state.  I couldn’t occupy that domain.  Not easily.  Not without suffering for trying.

Her thoughts were more malleable, her memories all the more so.

Once I figured out the landscape on the macro sense, I was able to find her consciousness.  It moved like a roiling storm, too many factors and variables to take in.

Rose’s boots crunched through the snow as she approached the waiting group, Alister, Evan and Green Eyes in her company.  Peter, Ainsley, Ellie and Christoff all stood at the ridge above the hole the house had collapsed into.  Ellie and Christoff sat a fair bit further back than the others did.

“Peter,” Rose greeted her cousin.  Ainsley pulled away from under Peter’s arm to approach and hug Alister.

“Your hand,” Ainsley said, shocked.  “Oh my god.”

Alister shook his head.

Ainsley hugged him again, fiercely this time.  “I’m glad you made it out.  Everyone’s been so worried.”

“Not everyone made it,” he said.

Ainsley nodded.  “I heard.”

Rose glanced over at Ellie.  She offered a tight smile.

“I’ll try to relay what happened after,” Alister said.

“After a night’s sleep,” Ainsley said.  “Seriously.”

It was family looking after family.  Rose watched Alister’s eyes, and she tried not for the first time, to reconcile her feelings on that front.  His face was almost punchable, sometimes, especially the periodic smirks.  Attractive, but punchable.  She wondered if it would become something endearing or if she’d grow to want to strangle him.  He was so casually confident, almost smarmy, at his worst.

But attractive.  She’d never been one to join the other girls in fussing over the boys, but now and then, she’d been able to think that one boy or another was certainly attractive.  Alister was one such boy.

Seeing him dealing with his cousin, his almost restrained patience at dealing with Ainsley’s mothering and concern, Rose felt like there was a possibility there.  A place in this marriage-to-be where she might be comfortable with him.  If not comfortable, at least not wanting to actively murder him.

She looked away before she could get caught staring.

Rose met Peter’s eyes.

“You look like shit,” Peter told Rose, in a marked contrast to Ainsley’s gentleness and care.

“Probably,” Rose said.  “You have no idea what we’ve been through.”

“The stickman didn’t make it out?” Peter asked.

“He did, in a manner of speaking,” Rose said, her voice soft.  She tapped her collarbone.

Eerie, to step back from the scene and look at it more abstractly, to see how the entire storm that was Rose’s awareness briefly focusing on me, searching for and finding me within her.

Clouds hued in the grays and blacks of what Rose was seeing, tinted with flashes of light blue, like Ainsley’s jacket, as if someone had dyed the storm.

“You’re going to remember him forever?  He holds a place in your heart?” Peter asked.

“No,” Rose said, annoyed.

Alister, beside her, was fiddling with his jacket, where it had been cut off along with his hand.  He pulled his glove off with his teeth and started to work with the fabric.

Rose helped, pulling his sweater down and tying it in a rough knot.  After a moment, she pulled off one mitten and pulled it tight over the stump.  It was mangled, but not openly bleeding.  It took some doing.

“Because here I was, thinking you and stickman didn’t get along,” Peter said, sounding impatient with the conversation.

“The bogeyman’s spirit is possessing her,” Alister said.  He reached out, and he clasped Rose’s right  “He’s dormant for now, but he may take a more active role soon.”

Ainsley’s head snapped around, giving Rose a second look, suddenly very concerned.

“Oh,” Peter said.  He paused for a beat, then said, “That sounds like a terrible idea, but you know, I’m just the uninitiated guy who got introduced to all this a matter of hours ago.  If you guys think it’s okay, I can roll with it.”

“No,” Alister said.  “It is a terrible idea.”

Peter flashed a smile.  “Oh.  At least I’m hitting the mark, figuring this stuff out.”

“Yes.  You seem oddly comfortable, all things considered,” Alister said.  He glanced at Ainsley.

“What?” Ainsley asked.

Alister shook his head.

“Seriously, what?  I have no idea what you’re saying,” Ainsley said.

“Can’t help but notice he had his arm around you, as we walked up,” Alister said.

“Did he?  I barely paid attention,” Ainsley said.  Then, a little defensively, as my cousin glanced at her, she added, “We were cold, sitting here waiting for all of you, and I’m tired, so I don’t see how it’s a big deal.”

It sounded like she was addressing Peter as much as anything.  Rose paid particular attention to that.  She analyzed it, and I didn’t follow the analysis.  I could figure it out myself, without studying it.

Peter took it all in stride, shrugging.

“Okay,” Alister said.  “Fine.  I’m overreacting, and I’m sorry.  We all have reason to be tired.”

Rose turned, surveying the surroundings.  “We should leave.  I’m not sure I like being so close to all of this.”

“No objection,” Ellie said.  “Would have done that an hour ago, but where the hell are we supposed to go?”

“Our place,” Alister said.  “We’ve got beds, right Ains?”

“Yeah.  Might have to pull out an air mattress, but we’re provisioned.”

Peter glanced at Ainsley.  “I thought there was a family rivalry.  Are you really okay with dirty Thorburns sleeping with you?”

“Okay,” Alister cut in, his voice firmer.  “You did not have to word that like that.  You could have asked me instead of her.”

Peter looked offended, “I spent way too long sitting in the cold with her, we hiked all the way from the woods on the fucking other end of town.  We’ve talked, so I’m sorry if I feel more comfortable asking her than asking you.”

“I don’t even know what you two are saying,” Ainsley said, exasperated.

Rose shook her head.  After all the stress of nearly dying, wrestling with countless others, and dealing with the demon, she was almost relieved at the mild argument here.

A movement behind her made her turn her head.

Her eye fell briefly on Green Eyes, who was laying in snow, one hand on a branch.  The thing.  She was supposed to be a mermaid, but she was a nightmare.  A mockery of a mermaid.  Every inch of her was covered in scales with flesh-ripping barbs, and even the angle and posture of her body threatened immediate and horrible degrees of pain.

A bogeyman, Rose estimated, could be bad enough.  But one that was pissed off?

Rose’s heart rate picked up a touch as the creature narrowed her eyes.  She reached for Conquest-

-And I could see the landscape on my end of things change.

If Rose’s self was a realm unto itself, with me holding some territory and Rose holding the rest, then Rose willingly ceded territory to Conquest.

Changing my perspective, I could see Conquest taking hold, vines with tiny white flowers creeping, shoring up the solid structures, creeping between shattered images, bolstering them.

The storm roiled, but now white petals stirred, multiplying in the darker shadows which might have represented Rose’s fear.

I saw a tendril of Conquest’s reaching, and I moved to head it off, to look and see if my own strength could hold up to the incarnation’s.

Further from ongoing events.  Into memories.

It was much as things had been before.  Fractured images.  On the one side, Rose attended church with her parents.  On the other, well, I didn’t have those same memories.  My view of church was what I’d seen walking past and looking in, after a given church had closed.  The church where the Jacob’s Bell council met.  Ominous, dark, and empty.

“You’re in my way,” Conquest said.  She didn’t speak in a loud voice, but it carried in the church.  “I don’t think you want to be in my way.”

The scene was largely frozen, and it remained fractured.  On the one side, the church bright.  Mom and dad sitting on either side of a young Rose.  Rigid, proper, keeping her in line.  The fracture ran down across the benches of the rightmost aisle, and my side of the church was empty, dark, with things moving in the shadows.

Conquest stood at the Altar.  The minister, middle aged, all in white, with a pinched mouth and hard stare.  Two bouquets of flowers sat on either side of the altar, and both blossomed, white petals falling to make room for the new.

“I’ve been looking for you,” I said.

“Why?”

“Why do you need to occupy this sort of memory?”  I countered.

She pointed.  I followed her gaze beyond the church windows.

“Peter,” Rose said, with a stern tone.  Her connection to Conquest connected, exaggerated, and drew from several events in her personal experience.  From the scene that Conquest and I occupied, I saw Rose reach into and draw from the strict and slightly scary minister, our parent’s aura as they sat on either side of her, the pressure and expectation that she sit still and be good.

Peter shook his head, and looked away.  Breaking eye contact.

It felt satisfying to Rose, to achieve the effect she’d aimed for, getting Peter to back down with a word.

“That would be why,” Conquest said, her words tearing me away from the scene.  I was back in a church formed from composite images and memories.

Rose was relaxing her use of Conquest, and I could see as this Conquest retracted the tendrils and branches.

“I can’t help but note that you hold more ground than you did before she drew on you for power,” I said.  “You’re still here, for one thing.”

Conquest smiled with her pinched mouth.  She stepped down from the altar, fingers touching the petals that had fallen around the base of the bouquets.  Another sign of lingering influence.  “Rose knows what I’m doing.  She knows the price.”

I looked out the window, and I watched as the group turned to go.  Ellie and Christoff led the way.  Ainsley and Peter followed behind.

Heavy snow gave way under Ainsley’s feet, causing her foot to drop a few inches.  Peter caught her arm.

“Thank you,” Ainsley said.

“No worries,” Peter said, still holding her arm as he glanced over his shoulder.

His expression was placid, but he made eye contact with Alister.

It was probably more infuriating anything else.  It implied the shit eating grin that everyone present knew he was wearing inside.

Alister tensed, and Rose put a hand on his chest, stopping him.

“He’s…” Alister flailed ineffectually with his stump of a hand, trying to articulate something and failing.

“I know,” Rose said, gently.  They’d stopped, and the others were moving slightly ahead, out of earshot.

Rose was very aware of the mermaid bogeyman, who had also stopped, still glaring at her.

“I don’t know,” Evan said, from his perch just above Green Eyes.  “I’m clueless.  Someone explain?”

“She- Ainsley doesn’t know.  She’s not versed in this stuff.  She’s a good student, a good practitioner.  She doesn’t have any defenses against-” Alister said, with genuine worry creeping into his voice.  He stopped very deliberately.

“Against assholes,” Rose said.  “Against the scummy, slimy, far-too-intelligent-for-anyone’s-good guys who every dad and caring cousin worries will come calling.”

“Yeah,” Alister said, and there was an odd inflection to his voice.

“Come on,” Rose said, tugging on his good arm.

Alister obeyed, swaying a little with fatigue.

Rose ended up with both arms around Alister’s arm, her shoulder against his side, her head resting against his shoulder.

It wasn’t familiar to her, not quite natural, never something she’d had experience with, but she was trying, and she was secretly hoping to find her way there.  If it was even possible, with what the Barber had done.

“He’s trying to get a rise out of you,” she said.  “He’s scared, and he wants control, even if that control is earned by getting to the guy who seems to know what he’s doing.”

“The guy,” Alister said.

“The handsome, talented guy who happens to be engaged to his cousin,” Rose said.

She tried to make the compliment sound natural, but to her ears, and to mine, as I listened with those ears, it didn’t sound that way.  I was also privy to the fact that it killed her, just a little, that she hadn’t been able to pull it off.

“Fair enough,” Alister said, and he did manage to make it sound natural, enough to ease that small knot of anxiety.

Rose looked to get to more secure ground, and simply advised, “The worst thing you can do is make a big deal out of it, because he can and will take it as far as he needs to, to win.”

“Oh god,” Alister said, “Don’t even go there.  I don’t want to know what qualifies as winning here.”

“Mmm,” Rose said.  She pushed down the complex emotions that were stirring at that thought.

“What’s up?”

“Thinking about winning,” Rose said.

“With the big bad bogeyman lurking within you?” he asked.  “I can see how you’d be a little worried.”

“Shhh,” she said.  “He’s there, aware, and he’s watching, listening.  As far as I can tell, he’s being good.”

Rose turned, and she glanced at the mermaid and Evan.  The bogeyman was stalking them, staying just a few paces behind, watching through narrowed eyes.  Evan rode on the mermaid’s head.  Disheveled, feathers sticking up here and there.  Nothing to do with the fact that they’d had to inject spirits into him.  But to do with associating with Blake.

With me, I corrected.

“I need to cobble together a good barometer,” Rose said, to the mermaid.  “But nothing feels wrong, there.  He’s okay.”

“Mm,” the mermaid said.  Her tone was low and threatening as she commented, “I sure hope he stays that way.”

“Me too!” Evan added, brightly.

I looked away from the window.

I felt vaguely uncomfortable.  There was a dissonance that came with looking through Rose’s eyes.  Seeing Evan and Green Eyes without the same sort of familiarity or attachment.

Most definitely not rose-tinted glasses.

The minister was gone.  The church had half-emptied, and Conquest was now in the shape of my mother.  She stood by a memory of a young ten year old Rose, fixing her hair, smoothing out her blouse, a fractured image of a dress shirt.

“Winning,” Conquest said, looking up at me.

“There’s a joke to be made here,” I said.  “A juvenile one about conquering and mothers.”

Conquest gave me mom’s best disapproving look.  Rose and I had experienced enough that there was no shortage, even portioning them out between us.

The old standbys held, when it came to dealing with Conquest.  I needed to keep her from gaining ground.  I couldn’t let her influence me, or get me under her thumb.

“That’s not nearly as effective as you think it is,” I said.  “You don’t scare me, Conquest.”

She smiled, and it was a dangerous smile.  “I don’t?”

“For one thing, I’ve largely lost my ability to be afraid.  For another, I’ve seen exactly how much real estate you have in here.  I just faced down a demon, and I wasn’t even in that thing’s neighborhood when it came to raw strength or power.”

“I was there too,” she said.

“I can gauge how much you have to bring to bear.  You’ve only got access to a trickle of power in here.”

“That’s true,” she said.  She approached, still wearing mom’s and I held my ground.  “You’ve got more power and far more presence than I do.  I have the benefit of being very familiar with functioning on this level, knowing how to use the power I have.  We might even be an even match, if we were at odds.”

I had to wonder if I should be worried she was agreeing with me, or if that was a consequence of her being Conquest.  Was it even possible for her to back down, being what she was?

“We can be enemies in here,” I said.  “We can deplete power fighting each other, competing, or we can cooperate.  You can be for me what you are to Rose, with the same cost and payment.”

“I can,” she said.  She smiled a little, “But I decline.”

“To?”

“On both counts,” she said.

I wanted to react, to prepare for battle, but she was right.  I wasn’t familiar with this battlefield, with the weapons that might be employed.

She closed the distance, reaching out, and she seized me by the neck.

I tried to reach out, but I didn’t exactly have arms to grab her with.

“You slowly lost your arms when you became a bogeyman,” she said.  “You gained new ones, fabricating them, but they weren’t yours.  It was the Drains claiming you for itself, and you grasped that, deep inside.  Now, reduced to your essence, you’re left without.”

“Yet, somehow,” I said, my words a touch strangled, “I have a neck.”

“You’re a little more attached to your neck,” she said.  She turned her head, and dug her fingers into the skin between my neck and my jaw, to force me to look in the same direction.  Forcing me to look out the window, at the landscape beyond this church in composite.  “Much of this is yours.  You have defenses that Rose has lacked for some time.  Spirits that would protect a host, that I’ve worked to eliminate and replace.  But, even with your defenses, you’re raw, like this, and you can still be examined, analyzed, and broken down.”

“Does Rose know?”

“She knows that I have been making myself necessary.  She’d be stupid not to, and your counterpart isn’t stupid.”

I struggled, but in this medium, I wasn’t quite sure how.

Stupid, to get cornered like this, but what choice had I had?  I’d tried negotiating, and backing down or cowering would only have made Conquest worse.  I’d had to bluff my way into it.

Had to hope I could find power and leverage it.

But I might as well have been a one year old, this setting and form were so new to me.

“Ah,” Conquest said, still forcing me to look away.  Her voice had changed.  Harder, a little more crisp, a different person’s voice.  “I was expecting this.”

Outside, in the real world, Rose stopped walking.  She allowed herself to clutch Alister’s arm just a little tighter, before releasing it.

“Shit,” Alister said.

Rose was silent.  Most of the others, including the others who had escaped the Abyss, the High Priest, the Knights, Tiff, and Ty, had stopped, collected as a loose group.

Ms. Lewis stood a distance away.  Facing all of them.

“I was expecting this,” Rose said, echoing Conquest.

As she spoke, she drew on Conquest for presence, power, and courage.

Conquest, gripping me by the throat, squeezed tighter.  Hurt me.

Rose turned her head sharply to one side, as if listening for something.

“What?” Alister asked.

“Blake,” she said.

“He has atrocious timing,” Alister observed.

Not wrong.

“It’s not that.  He’s hurting.”

She eased up, letting go of Conquest, and the grip on my throat relaxed a fraction.  Still painfully tight.

“Not good,” Rose said.  “I’m disarmed, and we need every edge we can get, here.”

“You have us,” Alister said.

“I’m not sure that’s good enough.”

I looked down at Conquest, who wore Grandmother’s body, her expression cold.

Because, I had to assume, when I’d dealt with a dragon, fought multiple demons ranging from mote to nightmare, when I’d been in and out of the Abyss three times, befriended monsters who flayed people alive, and fought off the hordes of Toronto, my ignoble end had to be rubbed in by it being at the hands of an old lady.

“Rose,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Your husband-to-be, hello, Alister.”

“Hello.”

“And Mr. Thorburn, who isn’t in a position to respond.”

“No, he isn’t,” Rose said.

Rose’s heart was pounding, and I was keenly aware of it.  A sensation I’d missed.  Her mouth was dry, and she wanted to tap Conquest, very, very badly.

“We’re displeased,” Ms. Lewis said.  “I don’t imagine that’s a great shock.”

“No,” Rose said.

“We were to obtain the house, but the property isn’t in a state we can benefit from.  Which leaves us at a crossroads.”

“Crossroads,” Peter said, from the midst of the collected group, as if trying on the word, barely aware he’d spoken.

“This can be resolved without conflict, if you would agree to sign on with the firm.”

Several people in the group between Ms. Lewis and Rose moved uncomfortably.  Hands were on weapons.

“That’s good to know,” Rose said, very carefully.  “Can I have some time to get my affairs in order?”

“We would need an explicit affirmative on the offer of a position,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Are you giving it?”

Rose was silent.  Seconds passed.

Conquest tightened her grip on my throat.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Ms. Lewis said.

“It would be making me everything I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t be,” Rose said, “And I made other promises.  To Alister, and to the Abyss.”

Lewis didn’t look surprised in the slightest.

“Conflict it is, then,” she said.  “I’m sorry to have to do this, but I have orders.”

Rose nodded, but she didn’t speak.  She didn’t trust herself to.

“Sorry, Blake,” she thought, communicating to me.  “But if you could endure, I’d really appreciate it.  And if you could help, that’d be even better, because I have a dozen ideas, and zero faith they’re going to work.”

That thought expressed, she started to feed into Conquest.

Possession 15.6

“Murr-” Ms. Lewis started.

Rose’s rifle swung around.  She slapped it against her left hand.  At the butt end, her right thumb ran along the inscribed rune.  The tip of the gun jerked, the aim correcting.  Centered on Ms. Lewis’s heart.  Rose’s eye looked down the sights.

With Conquest’s confidence surging through her, her hand didn’t waver.  Her breathing came easily, as she exhaled slowly, simultaneously pulling the trigger.

“Answer-” Ms. Lewis continued.

Rose fired.

Ms. Lewis dropped.

“You still had bullets?” Alister exclaimed.

“Always save one bullet,” Rose said, and her voice sounded disconnected, even to her.  “Rule of thumbs for diabolists.  Goblin queens and scourges too.”

“Chronomancers would do well to hold to that rule as well,” Ainsley murmured, not taking her eye off Ms. Lewis.  “There are horror stories, people caught in endless loops, or cornering themselves.  Immortality is scary when you might outlive the sun.”

“Let’s say it’s a good rule for most,” Alister said.  “Speaking of, was it- is she dead?”

Rose slowly shook her head.

Ms. Lewis arched her back a little, made a pained sound.

“What do we do?” Tiff asked.

Rose’s heartbeat was steady, not even agitated.  A part of her might have stirred at seeing someone in abject pain, but that part of her was pushed down, far and away.

Her thoughts moved easily, without panic or fear.  She pulled off the rifle and tossed it to Nick.  “Nothing.  There isn’t a lot we can do.  When and if she gets up, shoot her again.  In the meantime, just let me think.”

Ty spoke, “We can-”

“We can’t,” Rose cut him off.  “I can guess what you’re going to say.  Don’t say it.  Trust me here.”

Her mind was turning over the situation, coldly, calmly, methodically.

They could gag Ms. Lewis, but another one of the lawyers would appear to resolve the situation, the moment it looked like Ms. Lewis no longer had it in hand.  There was no guarantee they’d regain control of the situation if and when that happened.

If someone suggested the gag, and the lawyers realized she was stalling, putting off that option, they might simply cut to the chase.

The ‘chase’ being a measure of overwhelming force, brought to bear.  Making an example of the diabolist bloodline that reneged on the deal, so all the others might know not to make the same mistake.

This wasn’t a new problem.  She’d known for a long time that it might come to this.  Blake had been focused on the problems now, the fighting, the wars.  Rose had been looking to the future.  Researching, hoping to find the answers needed, the key to making it through this.

What if she sacrificed Ty?  Or Alexis?  What if she gave up the house?  What if she accepted the deal?  Her thoughts moving all of the various permutations, like so many different sequences of chess moves.

Every new piece of information, every new person or person removed was a new factor to be considered.

Even just in the past hour, within the Library, her thoughts had been turning over the possibilities.  What if a given opponent could be made an ally?  Could she use their strengths?

So much of what she had done had been to buy time.  Keep Blake at bay, because he was so very dangerous, and the time he cost her was just one of the dangers.  She’d used the Barber to stall future attacks.

All to put off this moment, or one like it.

They had only a few moments.  Minutes if they were lucky, seconds if they weren’t.  Until the end of Ms. Lewis’ next sentence.

Rose had to find an answer before it was all over.

Conquest gave her a measure of control over the others.  It kept things in their places.

Conquest gave her the ability to face this moment head on, to remain steady and unflinching, akin to how a mild tranquilizer might allow a sniper to keep themselves still.

“Where’s the witch hunter we left with you?” Rose asked.

“Didn’t want to get closer,” Peter said.

“Ellie, go get her,” Rose gave the order.  “Leave Christoff.  If you run into anyone, anything… if it’s hostile, whatever it is, tell them the diabolists are here.  It’s open season.”

Best way to get them here.  If things get that far, and if things get ugly, I can maybe point them at Lewis.

Ellie was staring.  She finally managed to get the words out, a protest.  “Why me?”

“You’re still here?  Go!” Rose shouted, and she pushed some Conquest into her voice.

Ellie ran, heading over toward the city.

Ellie was a scrapper, she was fast, and above anyone else here, she could probably squirm her way out of a bad situation.  Peter might have been better if that situation involved words, but Rose put better odds on Ellie surviving something like the manticore Rose’s contingent had run into earlier, or a gang of goblins.  Ellie could beg.  Ellie was most likely to listen.

Ellie was expendable.

Rose’s eye fell on the lawyer.  Rose was certain she’d landed a bullet where the heart should have been, but the lawyer wasn’t dying.  Hurt, but not dying.

The trick here was to balance things.  If she tried for a solution, it had to be a good one, because it was very possible that the lawyers or a collection of underlings might simply appear.  Better to set out the contingencies.  To open the door for a little bit of hope.

If anyone or anything was waiting in the wings, watching, that someone or something would be happy to allow her that hope, then extinguish it.

This was only about buying time.

“Alister,” Rose said.  “You got actual training in dealing with demons.”

“Which choirs do you want me to ward against?”

“All of them,” Rose said.  “Tiff, Ty, Behaims, Jeremy, help him.  Knights, watch Lewis.”

“What do I do?” Evan asked.

“You and Green Eyes be ready.  When or if things get ugly, they’re going to get very ugly,” Rose said.

Alister started speaking, outlining what they needed to do, in terms of drawing diagrams.

“Given how fragile this area is, we protect against Ruin first,” Alister said.  “Chaos second, madness third… Fractal grid, outward pointing.  That covers the first and last.  We need a crest for the center, for fending off chaos.”

“What sort of crest?” the High Priest asked.

“Against madness?  I’d say the seal of solomon would work, but… that rules out too many other things,” Alister said.  “We need to cover more bases, if there’s a possibility of other Choirs.”

He drew his deck out of his pocket, one-handed.  He divided it into two halves, then merged the two halves, still with one hand, tapping it against his chest to get everything flush once again.

“Well?” Rose asked.

“We need a Lord,” Alister said.  “Natural order.  Animals serve man, man serves his king, and the king serve the gods.  A good king, or a good lord, well, they serve order, they provide structure, and they serve man.”

“And a bad king?”  Rose asked.

“Is worse than no king at all,” Alister said.  “Thing is, it’s not even worth discussing.  There is no Lord, and there’s no way we can officially declare one before the shit hits the fan.”

Ms. Lewis spoke, and every single pair of eyes and ears present turned her way.  “Someone taught you.”

“Yeah,” Alister said.

“Mm.  Rose senior,” Ms. Lewis said.  She touched her chest.  “It’s been a few long months since I felt proper agony.”

“It would be very convenient if you died,” Jeremy commented.

“My continued employment supercedes death.  It’s a… consequence of dealing with beings that operate in the very deepest workings of reality.” Ms. Lewis said.  “Now, if I may call in a favor, Mur-”

Nick raised his arm.

The Knight to his right aimed and fired, cutting off Ms. Lewis before she could finish.

“Guns are underrated,” Evan said, brightly.  “Bang!”

“Learning to rate the bullets we have left pretty damn highly,” Nick said.  “Unless Sarah or some other help arrives, we’re down to only a few bullets.”

He raised his hand behind his back, out of Ms. Lewis’ sight.  He held up two fingers.

“Good to know,” Rose said.  Her mind was ticking over the options.

All the ways this could play out.

She sighed.

“Faysal,” she said.  “I humbly request your presence.”

The wind stirred.  Over in Jacob’s Bell proper, snow formed spirals and clouds as it was blown free of rooftops.

No answer.

“You complete and utter asshole,” Rose said.  “Faysal, I request your presence once more.”

She wasn’t surprised in the least when her request wasn’t answered.

“Faysal,” she said, and she allowed Conquest to take a greater hold, putting all of her authority as a practitioner of some heritage and the power derived from Conquest into her voice.  “For the third time, I ask for an audience!”

Her voice rang out over the city.

Before the echo even faded, she was thinking about the other options that were available to her.

“Murr, I ask your-” Ms. Lewis tried once more, still lying on the ground.

A gunshot rang out.

One shot left.

One side free to ask, with nobody of import willing to listen.  Another side trying to ask, held at bay with agony.

“We could run,” Evan said.  “Escape?  Or we could-”

“Evan,” Rose said.  “Please.  You have to let me think this through, without interruption.”

They have only so many resources, but one lawyer we can’t kill is enough for this problem, Rose thought.  We push it too far, or start proposing the wrong suggestions, and they might head us off the pass, and devote another lawyer or two.

Even the discussion of retreat was dangerous.

“How’s Blake doing in there?” Evan asked.

Green Eyes turned to look, glaring.

“Not good,” Rose admitted.

Not good.

Understatement, that.

The pessimism was a counterpoint to the fact that Evan cared.

The church was gone.  Conquest liked to frame things, to draw out the battlefields, so every scene we entered took its own unique form, tangential to what Rose was thinking about, and to what she was doing.

Not long ago, Conquest had been weaker, but better versed in this battlefield, and with far more experience in how these fights were fought.

Now that Rose was drawing on Conquest for power, that ‘weaker’ part was no longer a consideration.

More skilled, more experienced, more knowledgeable, and stronger.

Two dimensional, more inclined to wound and lord over the suffering than to go for the jugular, Conquest had weaknesses, but they weren’t weaknesses I could leverage right now.

If this landscape was a mosaic, each individual element meshing roughly with the others, cracks running through it, Rose’s side of the mosaic somehow felt brighter than mine did.

She’d never been homeless.  I’d spent long nights under the stars, or in shelters that turned the lights off at eight.  I’d spent time with Carl, in cabins I and others at the commune had built with our own hands.  Cabins that hadn’t had power.  Even then, toward the end, it had only been a few.

Conquest held me, forcing me to be the bludgeon that she used to knock down barriers, and they were darker barriers than Rose’s.  She tore down my superstructures, and my confidence with them.  She hurled me, and did it with enough force that she could collect me again before I’d recovered.  Forced me to fail at getting to my metaphorical feet, as scenes unfolded around me.

No speech, no taunting.

I had no throat that could be ripped out, no heart that could be punctured.  I was my heart.  There was no way to finish me off, except to grind me down.

Conquest, as it happened, was very, very good at grinding people down.

I struggled and was battered through scenes of pain, of seeing the others suffering at my behalf.  Evan’s rage at the idea of losing me, the pained looks of my friends, at realizing that they couldn’t share themselves with me.  That they had to keep me at arm’s length, and hide the most important things from me.

Rose’s suspicion, her anger, her hatred.  Her fear, above all else.

Me attacking people, me being bloody, me cutting down those I called monsters.

A me I hardly recognized, now that the Abyss had so little in the way of a grip on me.

I was stripped down, pure, defenseless, weak.

All of me was out here, exposed and raw.  An open book.

Conquest insisted on wearing my grandmother’s face.  A face I had seen in the course of two short meetings and a handful of encounters when I was a very small child.

The root of all evil I had dealt with.

The woman who had made me, set me up as a distraction, a pin to be bowled over.  Now Conquest drove that point home, setting me up, dragging me to my feet, though I didn’t quite have any, and then knocked me down again.

Conquest paused.  Letting me lie there.

I realized which memories and elements of my personality surrounded me here.

My friends, my old life.

Joel.  Joseph.  Goosh.  Tiff.  Ty.  Alexis.

It wasn’t the sights that surrounded me that made the scene bad, though they didn’t help.  People I cared about giving me looks.  Looking afraid.  Looking concerned.  Helpless.

No.  What spooked me was the fracture.

A thick black line, running through a whole tract of my life.  Scenes removed, or broken into pieces too small to make out.

Half of my memories and experiences with my friends had been cut away.

Not given to Rose.  Just… removed.

Lost to some dark place that only demons knew.

Useless to the creation of Rose, grandmother’s perfect heir, made for the destruction of the Thorburn line.  Too dangerous to give to me, because it might tie me too tightly to Toronto, or alter my priorities.

A simple savage cut, and yet so much finesse, so much care and precision into the systematic ruin of one human being’s life.

“I’m a spirit too,” Evan was saying.  “Why don’t you eat me, too, and then I can go help Blake?”

“There’s only so much room in me for spirits,” Rose said.  “I’ve already got Conquest and Blake bumping shoulders in there.  Too many more and I might split at the seams.”

“Hmph.”

If I split at the seams… Rose thought, but it wasn’t a thought that led to other ideas.

Rose could hear Ms. Lewis sigh.

The woman found her feet, slowly, halting, and then brushed snow and dirt off her pants leg and jacket.

Rose glanced at Nick.

Nick shook his head.

“Thanks for coming, Nick,” Rose said.  “If you wanted to run, now, I wouldn’t blame you.”

“A demon took people from me,” Nick said.  “In every sense of the word, they’re gone.  You were right, when you said an entire town might suffer the same fate.  You want us to run when there’s a chance we might be able to do something against some other demons?  Or some immortal bitch that thinks it’s a good idea to traffic with them?  I’m almost insulted.”

“I wouldn’t be insulted at all,” Peter said.  “Can I run?”

“You can,” Rose said.  “I don’t know how much good it would do.  If she gets me, she gets all the rest of you.”

Peter nodded.

He didn’t budge.

“Charge her?” Ainsley asked.

Rose shook her head.

“Murr,” Ms. Lewis said.  “As we agreed, please obey my summons.  I summon you to punish others for reneging on a longstanding deal.”

The air seemed to vibrate.  Things seemed to cross over, double images, and Murr crawled forth from the gap between images.

It was a mote.  The head was reminiscent of a skull, and the lower body looked as though entrails were spilling out, with an excess of bone splinters, and the hands were riddled with bone splinters until they’d become talons, but the general proportions were those of a baby.

Murr unfolded feathered wings and took to flying, a jerking, halting flight.

The images they wear are borne of our fears and thoughts.  They rise from the stew of mankind’s psyche, Rose thought, thinking back to the books.

A part of her had hoped the next demon they faced would be a major one.  That the lawyers might summon something that owed grandmother a favor.  An enemy turned back on the summoner was all the more dangerous.

Faint hope, that.  But she’d memorized pages.

“Surbas, as we’ve agreed, you will come to do as I bid,” Ms. Lewis spoke.

Surbas emerged.  Another mote, wingless.  Moving too fast to be seen, it disappeared into the shadows.

“Hauri,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Come.”

Hauri was larger than other motes, with a second head forming at one shoulder.  Wet, gruesome, bloody.

My friends present gathered together, stepping carefully over the lines of the diagram that had been outlined in salt, snow shoved back to clear the ground, leaving only driveway.  It formed a grid of squares, the lines marked down so some went over, some appearing to go under.  Symbols marked smaller spaces at set intervals.  The way it unfolded, a greater pattern outlined, the thing formed a kind of flower shape.  Maybe fifteen feet across.

Rose –and I– noted that the lines at one side were a little less consistent.  Too late to do anything about it.

“Naph,” Lewis said.  “Come, join the others.”

Naph was skeletal in a different way.  More a slimy skin drawn over a baby’s skeleton, there were no openings.  The eye sockets were simply skin sucked into a void, dull and empty, the mouth yawned open, skin straining tight enough to reveal individual teeth, just a hair away from splitting in a hundred ways.

Naph landed on a branch with batlike wings, then crawled along the length of the branch, slowly, each movement eliciting sounds.

The sounds were wet, sucking noises to the ear, but they elicited sympathetic feelings from Rose’s skin, as if each sound was a brush of sandpaper against her flesh, coarse, rough enough to leave her raw.

Rose had drawn on Conquest for strength, for courage, and for focus.

Each mote that appeared was testing even that resolve.

“This diagram,” Rose murmured.  “Which choirs does it protect against?”

“Ruin, Chaos, Madness,” Alister said.  “Should protect against the choir of Unrest, but-”

“That’s never guaranteed,” Rose finished.

“Obach,” the lawyer announced another name.  “Come!”

“Oh god,” Tiff said.  “Oh god no.”

The snow swelled, and it bubbled, each bubble lasting just long enough to freeze before the swelling of another bubble pushed past and broke it.  It made the snow look like it was ulcerating, some infected, cancerous thing.  The oily black sheen to some of the bubbles only helped the illusion, as if it were a cancer in the landscape.

Obach leaped out of the snow, jumping to the nearest tree.  Bug eyed, small mouthed, with flesh like that of a toad.  Fly wings flapped at its back, almost too fast to be visible, before stopping.

The wood, too, bubbled in an ugly way, only these bubbles were more like cancer.  Boils, cysts, manifesting with every second of contact, spreading.

The snow continued to boil, a spreading infection.

Surbas lunged in the shadows.  It ate and mid-leap, devoured a small animal that dashed out of cover, disturbed from slumber.  A small rabbit, perhaps, or a squirrel.

Bigger, moving faster, bounding just as the rodent had.

It squealed, and Rose was among the people in the circle who raised their hands to their ears.

Surbas disappeared into low foliage.  What might have been part of the house’s garden, before the hill inverted, dropping into the Abyss.

Something screamed, a strangely human scream, and Surbas leaped forth, snapping at air.

The imp, twice as large as it had originally been, bounded into a tree, and lunged at a place where the largest branch met the trunk.

It scarfed down a third meal.

Winged, it fluttered over to a larger branch, near Murr.  Mottled, sleek, with an infant’s face stretched into an inhuman shape with far too many teeth, a permanent smile.  With each blink, it wore a different set of eyes, the left eye not matching the right.

“Shall I devour you?” it whispered, and the sound carried, the sharper sounds too sharp, like nails on blackboards.  “You can watch from the inside, while I use the best parts to devour all the rest.  Volunteer, throw yourself to me.  I’ll eat the first ones quick.  The ones later, I’ll eat from the fingers to shoulders, the toes to the crotch, I’ll eat the skin and then the juicier bits, I’ll make it slowwwwww.”

Each word was like a razor blade sliding along a sensitive place.

“The one you eat first has to watch.  Maybe it’s better to go later,” Murr spoke, and the voice was more feminine, smoother, out of sorts with the jagged bone appearance.

“Who knows how the mere mortals think?” Hauri asked, bobbing in the air, flapping periodically to stay aloft.  The smaller head sniggered.

“These mere mortals are trained in dealing with your kind,” Ms. Lewis said.  “You would do well to not give them a chance to think.  If I’m reading the diagram right from where I stand, it protects against the choirs of Unrest, Chaos, Madness and Ruin, though I think the mote of Ruin could push through the section to the left, right there.”

Hauri sniggered, both heads, not synchronized.  It made for a hard to place, uncomfortable feeling.  Hauri dropped out of the air, wings folded, and began to pace around, to just the point in question.  It hobbled a little, working to keep it so that both the normal head and the conjoined sub-head could keep the group within the diagram in sight.

“Nothing to stop the choir Feral?” Surbas asked.

“No,” Lewis said.  She turned her attention to Rose.  “I’ll replace them as they die or get bound.  I’m sorry.  You would have been better served by sticking to your one-bullet policy.”

“Probably,” Rose said.

There was relatively little cover, beyond the ridge.  Some shrubs, some stones, and pieces of the house that had fallen down the hill rather than into the Abyss, before the hill ceased being a hill at all.  Chunks of driveway stood out now and again, and there were a few scattered trees.

Now the imps were pacing, moving without rhyme or rhythm, only looking for openings.  Some paced clockwise, some counterclockwise, while others hovered.

Surbas disappeared behind one piece of cover.  He didn’t re-emerge.  The fanged imp from the feral choir, taking essential qualities from everything it devoured, casting away the rest into nothingness.

Quantity over quality, Rose thought.  But still enough.  Every imp a different miserable end, waiting for us.

For others.

“Evan,” Rose said.  “I need you to make a break for it.”

“Oh,” Evan said.  “A break for it.  Past fangs and skull-bits, and two-heads, and mister tumor and stretchy-skins?”

“If we don’t catch up with you, then you need to assume we’re gone.  Let others know what happened.  The lawyers will like that, and I’m hoping they’ll like it enough to let you do it unmolested.”

“You want me to leave you to die,” Evan said.  “To these guys.”

“No,” Ty said, under his breath, his voice cracking a little.

“Yes,” Rose said.

“Well I’m not going to,” Evan said.

“If Ellie met up with Sarah,” Rose said, “Then we need to warn her off.  They were too slow.”

“Really?” Evan asked.  “Tell me you’re not making stuff up to convince me.  Because if they’re not here yet and Sarah wasn’t that far away, I’m thinking they aren’t coming at all.”

“Evan,” Rose said.  “Go.”

She pushed a little Conquest into her voice.

Conquest, in the meanwhile, smiled.

“You lose too,” I told Conquest, as Conquest strode toward me.  Seizing me, and picking me up from a landscape built piecemeal from sections of my apartment, from the art installations I’d worked on, and the places of my friends.

Memories of people who might well die in the worst way.

“If Rose dies, you die,” I said.

“I’m only a sliver,” Conquest said, simply.  Wearing grandmother’s face, speaking in that infuriating way grandmother once had.

“No!” Evan’s cry reached out.  “No!  I’m not just going to do it because you say so!  That’s now how this works!”

Conquest frowned.

Evan.

Ur had severed my connection to Evan, so he was no longer my familiar.  A bond still remained.

I’d taken Evan into myself, and I’d smeared Evan’s blood on my chest, while fighting the goblin king and his weapon-collecting goblin pet.

Evan had stuck by me.

If any Abyss-stuff had seeped into me, I had to hope some Evan had too.

I took advantage of the moment of weakness on Conquest’s part, and I fought back.  I tore free of Conquest’s grip, and staggered.

Then, opting to attack before Conquest could regain her footing, I lunged.  In the doing, I very nearly forgot that I lacked arms.  I imagined for a second that I had my wings again.

Odd, that wings I’d had for part of one very long night were more connected to me than my arms.

But I was a mess of spiritstuff, a fragment of a person.

Just like Conquest was a sliver of something greater.

I lunged, I shoved Conquest back, and then I tried to fly.

In practice, as things ceased to have any geography to them, I merely kept my distance.  I backed away from Conquest, and I worked on regaining my footage.

Conquest pursued, but now that I wasn’t so battered, reduced to something small, I could put everything into scale.  I removed myself from Conquest, flowed away from her grip.

The incarnation was stronger than me, occupied more space than me.  We warred for our share of a space inside Rose’s being.

I’d drawn strength from Evan just being there.

Now I touched on other things.  Memories of my bike.  Of warm moments with friends.  All the things that made me Blake.  I consciously willed those things to become part of my identity again.

And, swelling just a bit, I began to push Conquest back and out.

“You said you needed a chance to think,” Peter snapped.  “Well?  Where are the fruits of that labor!?”

“Not now, Peter,” Rose said.  Her eyes scanned the surroundings.

“When, then?  After we get torn to chunks or worse by hell babies!?  Or-”

Ainsley put a hand on Peter’s arm.

Peter clammed up.

“If you’re doing something, you’d better do it fast, Blake,” Rose said.  “Because I don’t know how long we can hold up.”

How long I can hold up, Rose thought.

As if to give voice to that thought, Surbas leaped from the shadows.  Nick twisted around, swinging his machete at the imp.

A flap of wings, and Surbas changed direction midway through the air.  He landed on the diagram, and intentionally smeared the lines.

Two-headed Hauri approached, waddling, squirming, hauling itself forward with its front limbs, rather than walking.  Ty, hand bloody, used his finger to draw signs in the air.  Matching lines appeared in the earth.  Hauri collided with the edge of the diagram, the lines pulled together just in time.

Rose wanted to send Evan away.  Evan resisted, and Rose couldn’t fathom why.

I had to tell her why, and I couldn’t quite speak.

I had to pay a price, in the end.

I stared down at the sprawl of memories, individual facets that made up me, facets that made up Rose.

Reaching out, I seized cherished experiences.  Cherished parts of me.

Tiff, Ty.  Goosh, Joseph, Joel.

Alexis.

Far too few in number, as experiences went, half of them simply gone.

Rose had surmised that I’d been built to gather others around me.  Rose had been built to sit lonely in the tower, whiling away the years.  But everything had gone to shit, and now Rose was incapable of dealing with this current problem without a crutch.  Without Conquest.

Handling the memories made me even more in tune with myself.  Reaching out to Rose’s memories of them, to the small, few, scattered experiences she had with friendship, they helped too, showed me glimmers of smiles or gut feelings of being in a group and feeling included.  She had so few.  Only enough to tell her what it was, in abstract.  Not to give her any true experience.

I couldn’t hold on to any, if I wanted this to work.

Not of human camaraderie, anyway.  I held on to Evan, and to Green Eyes.

I gave her the rest.  Pushed them onto her side.  Dumped them.  Hit Rose with it all at once.

All while squeezing Conquest out of her head.

A hundred memories might have flooded into her head, in that instant.  Gentle ones, angry ones, helpless ones.  Warm ones.

I very much felt the lack, giving them up.

I saw a full third of the memories fall by the wayside.  Consumed by the fracture, the damage.

I felt the loss there, too.  I could remember having the experiences and emotions, even if they no longer had a place in my heart.

Rose’s hands shook as they went to her shirt.  She clutched her coat there.  “Can’t.”

“What?” Alister asked her.

“I can’t do it,” she said, under her breath.

He put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her close.

There were tears in her eyes.  “Fuck, Blake!  He’s…giving me a taste of what I never had.  I can’t do it alone.”

“What do you need?” he asked.

“What I tried to do before.  I need the group.”

“What did you try before?”

“Faysal,” she said.  “Faysal…”

“Faysal,” Alister said, joining in.

Nick swung his machete at the feral imp as it crept closer to the lines, clearly intent on messing them up.  It took to the air, going over the machete.

The high priest clubbed it out of the air.

Again, the imp steered itself to land on the diagram.

“Faysal!” Alister said, joined by his cousin this time.

Others picked up the cry.

Summoning an enemy.

The imps moved toward the gap in the diagram, a failure in the protective symbol.

There was a flash of light, and the imps scattered, retreating a solid twenty feet.

Faysal, wearing his dog form, sat at one side of the circle.  Opposite Ms. Lewis, who stood on a shattered section of driveway.

“You can stop,” Faysal said.  “I’m here.  Hello, Lewis.”

“Faysal Anwar,” Ms. Lewis said.  “You don’t mean to interfere, I hope?”

The dog shook his head.  “If anything, I’m willing to help, if you’ll agree to dispose of these pests.”

Ms. Lewis smiled.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Possession 15.7

“When you say pests, or ‘help’, you wouldn’t mean, say, those imp things being pests and you helping us?” Peter asked.

“No,” Faysal said.

“Then you’re a complete and utter bastard,” Peter said.  “What the hell right do you have, calling yourself an angel?”

“That would be a label others applied to me,” Faysal said.  “Human invention.”

“I was under the impression that all Others of any given classification were of human invention, to some degree, conscious or unconscious,” Rose said.  “Influenced, at the very least.”

The lead imp, Murr, growled at her.

“What?” Rose asked the imp.  It was all she could do to keep her voice steady, without the benefit of Conquest.  “Don’t like that idea, imp?”

“Did you want something, Rose?” Faysal asked. “At this point, I’m quite prepared to help Lewis wrap this up so these creatures can be put away properly.  It’s less damage in the end.  You went to considerable trouble summoning me; if you had a reason to do it, this would be the time to share.”

“Right this moment, I’m curious as to why you’re changing the subject from the topic of others being human-made.  Or why you’re even asking when you could just help her and be done with it,” Rose said.

Faysal cocked his head to the side.  “This isn’t making me more inclined to help you.”

Not thinking straight, Rose admitted to herself.  To me.

I maneuvered through memories.  It wasn’t hard to find the memories in question, as Rose was calling up the very same ones.

Two minds in one body, two minds free to pore over Rose’s memories and experiences.

I’d given her a portion of myself, an attachment to Tiff, Ty, Alexis, and to Toronto, with the idea that maybe, just maybe, she might be able to engage in actual teamwork.  Not simply giving orders, but working with others.

If I had to, if I could figure out what she was striving to do, here, I could give her something else.

I saw grandmother.  I saw Rose at the house, reading.  Rose talking to the lawyers.

I entered one scene, and I could make out Rose, sitting in the armchair of the living room.  It was empty, quiet, tracts of darkness surrounded her, but the scene that unfolded from the window was that of a complete city.

Rose in the mirror.  Before I’d been eaten by Ur.

I looked over her shoulder, in a manner of speaking.  I peered through her eyes, to read what she was reading.

Grandmother’s diary.  One of many.  A stack of no less than twenty stood beside her.  Where anyone else might be concerned about a stray breeze or bystander knocking over the books, Rose paid it no mind.  In her mirror world, reading while I was active in the real world, there were no external influences.

Here, in this memory, she was utterly and completely alone.

It made me wonder.  Her new sense of friendship, how did it combine with her ability to hold it together here, without anything resembling human contact?

Or was that why there was so much damage, when two pieces tried to fit together?

She read with a dogged sort of determination.  Now and again, she reached over and made a note with her pen.  I looked over her notes as she did.

A textual silence, Rose had noted.  The text spells it all out, regular updates.  Undeniable, safe.

But, she wrote, and she stabbed the paper with the tip of the pen a few times, letting the ink blot out in vaguely circular shapes, it’s too convenient.  R.D.T. the good little diabolist.  She brings up thoughts of rebellion in abstract, then abandons them.  Except they aren’t truly abandoned.

Textual silence.  What isn’t written?  What subjects, ideas and plans came up, but went unwritten, in case her enemies read her work?

She wages a subversive war against the lawyers.  I may have to, if they keep up their pressure.

Who are my enemies?  What rules do they operate by?

I turned away.  I abandoned the scene.  I suspected I could skim the memories, rush through them, pick across several in a fraction of the time that seconds and minutes passed in the real world.  All the same, there was little to be gained by reviewing memories where Rose was only just beginning to pull ideas and strategies together.

I latched on to the idea of the list, Rose’s notes.

I followed it through several successive scenes.  Some were fleeting, Rose picking up the sheet, reading it, putting it away.  Others were longer.  Rose doing more reading while I slept, or while I was busy with other things.

Only a few seconds had passed in reality.

“I did call you for a reason,” Rose said.

“Of course,” Faysal replied.

Rose’s mind flashed over a scene.  Distinct and separate from what I was looking through.

The list.  Rose writing a note.

There must be a reason the lawyers haven’t seized control of everything.  They aren’t all powerful.  What is their vulnerability?

Same vulnerability as any diabolist.  Everyone loathes them.

Rose reached for Conquest.  There was something sure about the action, a kind of confidence to it that wasn’t artificial.  The same sort of confidence needed to leap off a one hundred foot cliff.

The confidence required for an action of scale.

I got the hell out of the way, as Rose fed her power and self into Conquest, allowing the incarnation to have a greater hold on her.

Focused on self preservation as I was, I saw Rose seize some of the ties I’d given her.  To friends.  It was unlike her usual Conquest-afflicted self.  A strange side of Rose.  Reaching to that for reassurance?  For a different kind of power?

When she spoke, it was with power, without hesitation.  “In joint partnership with Alister Behaim, I would hereby like to declare, to your ears, and all who would hear it, that we hereby claim ourselves as sovereign Lord and Lady in Jacob’s Bell, with all associated rights and powers.”

The words vibrated, carrying.

Rose could see the connections forming, the connections breaking.  Some were major in scale, while others were to very distant places and things.

Faysal’s head turned as he watched the aftermath of the statement, disappearing into the distance.

Rose noted Tiff glancing at Ty, wide eyed.  The two were huddled together.  Tiff mouthed words.  They might have been ‘what the fuck?’

“Let it be known,” Alister said, giving his support to Rose’s statement.

Rose could see that where some connections had been flailing, grasping, like so many tendrils or reaching arms, they held tight after that.

“Though,” Alister said, just under his breath, “I wouldn’t have minded knowing about this beforehand.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said.

“You’re aware this is suicide?  The basic, fundamental idea behind this whole scene was that one side wins, consolidates its power, gets everyone else under their thumb, and then makes the declaration.  Not, you know, declaring lordship when we’re down, out, and just a few steps from dying in five different, horrible ways.”

“I’m aware,” Rose said, barely moving her lips.  Her eye fell on the nearest imp.

Even with Faysal suggesting an alliance, the imps were afraid to approach.

“You should be aware,” Lewis said, “That the only power you have as Lord is the power others give you.”

“Yes,” Rose said.  “But Johannes is dead, and Sandra knows she’s lost.  How many people out there are utterly unsurprised to be hearing this declaration right now, resigning themselves to the fact that the war is over?  Is Briar Girl?  Maggie?  The hag?  Are the goblins nodding themselves and remarking that they expected the side with demons and diabolism to come out on top?  There should be enough people in Jacob’s Bell who can believe Alister and I have become Lord and Lady that the belief holds some weight.”

“Enough weight to matter?” Faysal asked.  “You have no realm, your soldiers are few in number.  The spirits, as an extension of the world as a whole, can see you and evaluate you.  They know that you aren’t much of a Lord at all, and that counts for a great deal more.”

Rose didn’t flinch.

Theatrics, I observed.

Faysal sat a little straighter.  “As bids go, this counts for very little.  You strike me as one who will have a reign spanning minutes.”

“There’s more to it,” Lewis concluded, as an extension to Faysal’s thought.

“Yes,” Rose said.

“Not merely buying time,” Lewis said.  “I can look at you and I can tell, your demeanor would be different if you were still racing to piece together a plan.”

Rose smiled.

“So tell me,” Lewis said.  “Why shouldn’t I order the imps to attack you now?”

“Ask Faysal,” Rose said.  “If he thinks about it, he should realize why it isn’t in his interests to let it happen.”

Lewis glanced at the angel, leaning slightly to one side to look through gaps in our amassed group.

“I’m so goddamn confused,” Peter said, under his breath.

Rose reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, giving it a slight rub.  Reassuring.

“And creeped out now, too,” he said.

“You put power into your declaration,” Faysal said.  “You made it known.”

Rose nodded.

“You manipulated connections.  Ones tying you to Toronto.”

“Yes,” Rose said.

“You let them know,” Faysal concluded.  “The residents of Toronto.”

Rose smiled.

Faysal met Ms. Lewis’ eyes.

“Oh,” Alister said, under his breath.  He turned and let his forehead rest on Rose’s shoulder, the only available surface he was comfortable using, without a wall available.  “Peter?  Given that we don’t have a proper blackguard with us, could you do me a favor and-”

“I don’t know what that is,” Peter said, interrupting.

Rose reached up to put a hand on the back of Alister’s head, patting it.

“Just- just do me a favor,” Alister said.  “I can’t be sarcastic.  In my place, give me a good one?  Let me live vicariously through you?”

“I still don’t get what it is she just did,” Peter said.

“Faysal wants things neat and tidy,” Rose said, staring down the angel.  “He wants us swept under the rug, so the demons can go back in their box and he can go back to angel business as per usual.  In the interest of making that very hard to do, I’ve-”

“Declared yourself to be someone very important, to Toronto, for some reason,” Peter concluded.  “Making things very messy, for Faysal.”

“And us,” Ainsley added.

Rose didn’t flinch, and didn’t take her eyes off Faysal.

“Brilliant,” Peter said, with every drip of sarcasm he could muster.

“Thank you,” Alister said, without raising his head.  “I really appreciate it.”

“What are in-laws for?” Peter asked.

Alister raised his head to shoot Peter a look, just in time for Peter to clarify, “Cousin-in-law, anyway.”

Alister sighed.

Digging through memories, I’d found Rose musing on the last chapters of grandmother’s work.

Tonight I summon the demon Barbatorem.  I have been the diabolist I was expected to be.  In a week’s time, I summon my grandchildren.  My children are useless, and it is largely my own fault.  The grandchildren, left alone, will meet miserable ends, many claimed by dark powers.  I have never liked using the demons, but I suspect few do.  All the same, I hope that one set of Wrongs on my part will better this bloodline.  I summon the first demon I bound myself, the first true step I took on this journey, and I use it to close this chapter.

Should it be used as a weapon, it may well be in pursuit of the likes of Laird Behaim, who I have never liked, even if I respect the man.  We have talked so little, outside of council business.

If it should act as a deterrent, all the better.

But chances are slim to none that I have a grandchild that serves my exact purposes.  Should it come down to it, I’ll be forced to create one.

Except the shears of the Barber, as is the case with any demon, cannot truly create.  They only strategically destroy.

“Rose,” my own voice spoke up, but not from my lips.  From memory.

Rose looked up suddenly, a little startled.

Looking through the gateway of the mirror, she saw Blake.  Me.

Except it was Conquest, wearing my face.  A face that hadn’t been mine since I’d become a bogeyman.  Blake-as-human.  A force that, from Rose’s perspective, was akin to Conquest, seizing her life, taking it over, perverting it.

Conquest hadn’t ever left.  He was still here.  Powerful, with Rose leaning so heavily on it.  Now it was watching me.

“Conquest,” I said.

The scene around me had gone still.

“Not going to come after me?” I asked.  I dared to turn away, poring over memories.  Conquest followed.

“She’s the Lord of Jacob’s Bell, and I have my presence here,” Conquest said, in a voice that wasn’t mine.  “I have what I want.”

I nodded.  “You’re easy to please.”

“I’ll be more pleased by what follows,” Conquest said.  “Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other.”

“Rose is more a reader than I am,” I said.  “But that strikes me as laughably hypocritical, if it means what I think it means.”

“I don’t deny that I am pride and suffering,” Conquest said.  “I’m well positioned to know that a crown hastily donned makes for a reign of misery.”

“She’s not planning to reign for long,” I said.  Minutes?

What can she do with minutes?

“More suffering, then, in a shorter span of time,” Conquest said.

“For her or for everyone else?”

“What do you think?” Conquest asked.

I looked up from the collection of memories to assess Conquest, but he was gone.  Retreated elsewhere, to help Rose in his own way.

I turned my attention back to the task at hand.

Changing tacks.  Rose apparently had the current situation in hand.  We had to tackle the others.

Rose had read everything she could, helped by the fact that she hadn’t needed to sleep.  If I looked at it that way, I had access to the Thorburn library, as it had once existed.

I, in turn, was free to search out what she needed, while her mind focused on other things.

Trouble was, how did I identify just what she needed?

“Do you suppose we can wrap this up before the ones she called arrive?” Faysal asked.

“We can try,” Ms. Lewis said.

“Wait-” Rose started.

“Attack,” Ms. Lewis ordered, ignoring her.

As one, the imps screeched and howled.  Voices of hell, madness, ruin, and worse things, guttural and high, they put everyone within the diagram off their guard.  They launched themselves toward the opening in the diagram, where Surbas had fallen and scuffed the lines of salt and the scratches in the frozen dirt.

Alister reached out and caught Christoff by the neck, hauling him back toward the center of the diagram, before Christoff could walk on more lines.

Two-headed Hauri, speaking with two voices that overlapped to the point of making no sense, distorted.  The imp broke into two parts, and the distortion touched all things near it.  The trees, the shrubs, everything shattered, splitting right down the middle.  All present could see that when these things were broken in the right way, the insides could be seen.

Inside of every thing, there was darkness, yawning, so black and complete that it threatened to consume everything.

People in the group were screaming.

Rose realized she was among them.  Her arms hugged her body, as she felt the distortion touch her, threatening to break her in two.

Even with Conquest shoring her up, it was a terrifying prospect.

I’m broken already, she thought.  It’s easier for me to break apart than it is for the others.

“Hauri, I order you to cease!” she screamed out the word, and with Conquest touching her voice, she managed to make it sound authoritarian.

But the imp didn’t listen.

Ms. Lewis held more sway.

The Knights were working together to fend of fanged Surbas and the two halves of Hauri, the former of which was taking an aggressive stance, lunging, snapping, while they struggled with Hauri’s distortion.  Murr lurked, waiting, while stretched-skin Naph and Obach, cancer of the land, paced behind, ready to fill the gap as soon as Hauri or Surbas moved.

Hauri was the concern here.

If the lawyers had access to these imps, they were bound in some fashion.

Were they in books?

I darted through Rose’s memories, searching, hunting.

I found the memories of Rose perusing the tomes.  Her expression was grim.

Paging through, trying to memorize, to study the enemy.

A part of me was gratified that she saw them that way.

Another part of me less gratified that one thought that had kept returning to her mind, then, was what to do about me, if there was anything she could use here.

Her eye passed over Hauri’s entry.  The memory was there, ready to be summoned with the right prompt.

She gave him a moment’s more attention than she had given the others, because Hauri, get of Flavros, was a mote of duality, associated with Flavros’ triality.  Where its master confused the establishments of one individual’s past, present, and future, crafting prophecies that tangled up lives, Hauri was not yet fully developed.  It could only create dissonance.  A conflict between what was perceived and what was, the notes speculated, or between what was and what wasn’t.

I needed to give this to Rose, except it was already hers.  Buried, lost beneath panic and pain and dissonance.

Power has a price.  Through payment, power.

I only needed a little, enough to let this one set of memories rise to the surface.  But I also needed Rose to know to grasp it, to use it.

Instinct.  Gut.  That which had allowed me to survive while homeless.  To get away from Carl.  To fight.

Just a little.

“Hauri!” Rose called out, through the pain.  “Get of Flavros!  Imp of the second choir!  Bound by Marissa De Roust!  I name you and I order you be bound again!  Stand down!”

Hauri hesitated, frozen.

The Knight’s machete cut one of his heads from his shoulders.  The body fell, and Peter hurried to kick it well past the circle.  The head landed out of Peter’s reach – he couldn’t kick it without pushing past other people, and he wasn’t about to put himself out there with the other imps still there.

Fanged Surbas lunged.

Tiff struck it out of the air with her bag, bludgeoning it and sending it flying well past the diagram.

The two imps in the background ran forward, ready to take over.  Tumorous Obach and stretched-skin Naph.  One with too much flesh, the other with too little, stretched tight over a tiny body.

The Behaims, Ainsley leading the pack, worked to bog them down, slowing their approach.

“The head!” Ty shouted.  “Give!”

Nick stepped forward, piercing the head with the machete’s tip, then stepped back, head skewered at the point.

“Tiff,” Ty said, grabbing the head atop the sword.  “Hand!”

Tiff shoved her hand at Ty with enough force she might have knocked the wind out of him.

Huddled together, while the distractions had been ongoing, Ty and Tiff hadn’t been idle.

Scratched out in pen on the back of Tiff’s hand was a diagram.

Holding the head in one hand, Tiff’s hand in the other, Ty murmured something.

Where Hauri’s blood had spilled, the blood flowed out into lines.  A sympathetic effect.

The two imps that had been lurking at the back reached the diagram, and they slammed into it.  Slow motion, but not hurting themselves any less as a consequence.

Surbas snarled, and seized Naph, swallowing the imp.

We collectively watched in quiet horror as Surbas swelled.  Though Naph had only weighed eight or ten pounds, Surbas grew by forty or fifty.  His oily black skin failed to grow at the same rate, and started to split at the scenes.  Blood leaked out from these fresh wounds.

Tatters came to hang from his mouth, as his fangs tore the skin that was trying to stretch over his mouth.

He cackled, a sound with sharp edges that threatened to slit eardrums.

Rose looked down.

Holding Alister’s hand, she led him over to the center of the diagram, and she used her feet to scuff the lines of the diagram there, where the seal of Solomon was marked down.

Surbas attacked once more.

It took three people, this time, just to stop his charge, each person stepping forward carefully, so as not to interfere with the lines that had been redrawn.

Claws flashed, swinging, and the High Priest blocked him with a gesture.  Nick stabbed Surbas’ other claw, while the other Knight went for the throat, only for Surbas to bite the blade and hold it in place instead.

Rose drew a small knife from her pocket, and pricked her hand.  She handed it to Alister as she let the blood drip.

Alister added his blood to the mix.

Replacing the sigil of solomon with the power of a Lord.  Even a small, temporary Lord.

The choir of the feral reverse the natural order.  Here, we reclaim it.

The diagram flared, and the imp was cast out.

“You did offer your help,” Lewis stated.

Rose turned her head.

“I did,” Faysal Anwar replied.  “We didn’t finalize it.”

“In all our past encounters,” Lewis stated, “We never finalized it.  I’ve almost forgotten why.”

“Call it bad luck,” Faysal said.

He rose to a standing position.

There was a flicker, like an image between two frames of a film, too fast for the eye to grasp.

Rose saw only the afterimage, a great wheel, with lesser wheels within it, a figure with seven arms, a motif of wings.  Far larger than this dog that stood before her.

“Faysal,” she said.  “Others are coming.  If you let this follow it’s natural course, they’ll arrive one by one.  You’ve seen what happens, when things are staggered like that.  Just before you brought down Hillsglade House, Johannes did it to me.  People arrive one by one, precedent is established, someone tries to take power, or there’s conflict.  If you want stability, all of the individuals who are coming here need to arrive at once.”

“My kind,” Faysal said, “Is rather misunderstood.  I am not good.  I’m not even right.  Order is-”

Rose’s thoughts flickered through notes.

Grandmother’s theories.  Notes on other powers, on the structure of things.

“Order is the antithesis of mankind,” Rose said, interrupting.  “Johannes and you tried to establish it, to weaken man’s dominion.  A different rule of law.”

“Not because I am of Order,” Faysal said.  “But because the alternative is to let man careen down his course, right into the growing dominion of demons.”

Ms. Lewis cleared her throat.  Rose looked the woman’s way, but Ms. Lewis wasn’t trying to voice her own piece.

“If you attack, right now, if you wipe us out, they’re going to arrive.  They’re going to see this carnage.  They’re going to try and address this carnage.  They’re going to investigate it.  Maybe even go down there.  What’s to say they won’t find the library, choice tomes, or the Barber?”

“What’s to say they will?” Faysal asked.  “The world is full of possibilities.”

“It is,” Rose said.  “But I have only one question for you.”

Faysal quirked his ears up.

“Why the hell are you still a dog?” she asked.

“I could be a gatekeeper, if it pleased you.”

“You could,” Rose said, “But that doesn’t answer my question.  Give me a straight response.”

“They’re buying time,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Shall I step in?”

“No,” Faysal said.  “Please don’t.”

“As you wish.”

“Tell me, Faysal,” Rose said.

“You ask, but you already know the answer.”

“Yes.”

“Because I am still a familiar.”

“You had to know this was possible.”

“That Johannes wouldn’t die?  Or that he would die, but the connection would be maintained?” Faysal asked.

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “I’m pretty sure he died, but he had an immortal thing inhabiting his body.”

“Yes,” Faysal said.  “The demon has his flesh and being, and the Abyss has the demon, in turn.”

“Both abyss and demon have the pipes, which allow the piper to command children, rats, and dogs, among other things,” Rose said.  “I imagine you want this situation resolved.”

“And you believe you can give me this resolution?”

“Fuck no,” Rose said.  “But I think they can.  Bring them here.  Let me bargain with them.  I swear, I truly believe this will create a better opportunity than letting this become a site of conflict.”

Faysal nodded.

One by one, they appeared in flashes.

The Shepherd.  The Astrologer.  The Eye.  A man I didn’t recognize.  A little girl in white.  Isadora the Sphinx, with Paige in tow.  Paige was dressed nice, though her dress looked a little bit too much like a toga, what with the flowing white drapery, beneath her heavy coat.  Her shoes didn’t look like outdoor wear.

“Paige?  Bullshit!” Peter said.

Paige raised a hand in a short wave.

“Bullshit,” Peter said, quieter.

“If she’s alive, she’s okay,” Rose said.

“What the fuck do I care, about her being okay?” Peter asked.

A mite too defensively.

The Sisters were last to arrive.

Something about the tone of their arrival…

The Elder Sister smiled in acknowledgement at Rose, as if reading Rose’s mind. The new Lord of Toronto.

It wasn’t a pleasant smile.

The smile faltered as she eyed the imps, counting their number.

The four remaining imps were tense, and lurked, eyes on the new arrivals, moving through shadow, drawing closer as they searched for opportunity to attack.

Rose noted that Murr had yet to do anything.  It made her uneasy.

It made me go search for Murr in Rose’s memories.

“It’s not a trap,” Rose said.  “Only a bad situation.”

“I see.  One you were in a great hurry to summon us to.”

“Yes,” Rose said.

“After the state you left Toronto in over the course of several days, I’m somehow not surprised this is what Jacob’s Bell looks like after a week,” the Elder Sister said.

“Thank you for saying so,” Rose said.

“You’re thanking me.”

“It leads straight into my next big statement,” Rose said.  “We would like to abdicate my Lordship.  Given the state of things, I no longer feel that Jacob’s Bell should stand as is.  It’s not salvageable, and I would like to turn it over for Toronto to condemn.  Remove the roads leading into here.  Ward it from the eyes of the unawakened.  Let it be lost and forgotten.”

“Yet, by turning it over to us, you make your problems our problems,” Isadora commented.  “I can’t help but notice that you have… immediate, infernal problems at hand.”

“It talks?” Peter asked, under his breath.

“Our problems would include me, ideally,” Rose said. “I’ve agreed to be a scourge for the Abyss.  Help me deal with things here, including securing the fate of this angel, Faysal Anwar, and you’ll have all the assistance I can render.”

“And if we refuse?” the Elder Sister asked.

“These problems might become big enough problems to be Toronto’s problems,” Rose said, gesturing at Ms. Lewis.

“You’re aware of what this means,” Ms. Lewis said.  “My partners won’t simply accept a diabolist slipping our grasp.”

“I know,” Rose said.

“You’re bringing all of these others into it.”

Rose shrugged, unflinching.  “They were always a part of it.  They just turned a blind eye.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” the Astrologer said.

“It wasn’t.  Now I’ve made it that simple,” Rose said.

I’m such a bitch, she thought.

I privately agreed, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever liked her more.

Histories (Arc 15)

His hands closed into fists.  They were covered in so many unhealed cuts and scratches that the simple action was a shuddering one, his fingers and thumb twitching with the pain.

The lights in his apartment flickered.  The kitchen was clean, but far from tidy.  Bags were filled with trash he hadn’t been able or willing to take out.  Days spent active, nights spent reading, accumulating the garbage.  He couldn’t even begin to guess how many days there were until the garbage was next picked up.

“You told me to tell you if I saw it,” Fisher murmured.

The practitioner nodded.

“I belabor the obvious, but it’s sitting in your kitchen,” Fisher said, only his eyes peering out and above the top of the practitioner’s coat pocket.

The practitioner nodded once more.

He had a simple table in the corner of his kitchen, with room for two stools.  The table was piled with books, candles, and an ashtray piled high with ash.  Many cigarettes had been smoked down to the filters.  Many of the others had been loose tobacco and rolling papers, with no filters at all.  Smoked until they’d threatened to burn his lips.  He tended to smoke those when pacing, so he could spit them into the sink, to be swept up later.

A figure occupied one of the stools.  Manlike, but far from being a man.  He was clothed, and the clothes were nice, with a black sweater that had yet to fade from washing or wear, a lambskin jacket, and straight-leg jeans tucked into calf-length boots.  His eyes, eyebrows, nose, cheekbones and chin were each so very carefully constructed and shaped.  The figure’s white hair, curly, too long, only accented the appearance.

But his teeth, as he smiled, were oddly brutish.  Not inhuman, but not straight, angled so that they suggested sharpness, or the idea of fangs.  They were too large for how delicate his features were, and they were white.

The figure could have passed for one of the practitioner’s friends.  Probably had, already.  He looked like the sort that traveled in the same circle, where being in a failed band and recreational drug use were not uncommon.

But the smile, here, with the lights flickering, was just a little too white, too feral, suggesting teeth meant for tearing.  The smile caught the eye and held it.

Cause enough for fear.  Maybe even terror and panic.

But two things served to push matters well past fear and into the realms of despair.  For one thing, there was context.  Weeks of the hunt, the chase.

For another, there was the shadow.  Though it wore the shape of a man, the shadow it cast was a shadow of something far, far bigger.  Something that shouldn’t have fit into the apartment.

Fisher ducked lower into the practitioner’s pocket.

As the figure breathed, the shadow mimed the movement, swelling, deflating.  Spices in the spice rack, many cannibalized for hasty and haphazard rituals, moved in time with the breathing.  The shadow swelled, and it pushed out, past the confines that shadows should be limited to.  The spices were tilted, touching the metal bar of the rack, then left to return to a normal position.  Tilted again…

The figure reached out to sweep up the rolling papers and box of loose tobacco with one hand, and the shadow moved simultaneously, on the far side of the room.  Bags of trash were gutted, torn open.

The smell of the trash filled the room.  More musty than rotten.  Wet paper and cigarette ash, old coffee grounds.

But there was rot in there, too.  There were maggots, freed to spill out like grains of rice from a bag, crawling for the nearest spot of darkness.

The practitioner didn’t care.  Even if he somehow survived, he rationalized, he’d never be able to return here.

The idea was borne of the same sort of sentiment that made people uncomfortable with living where murders had happened.  He couldn’t imagine willingly coming back to a place where he knew this thing had been.

It busied itself, hands moving in a practiced way as it rolled up the cigarette.

It picked up a matchbook from beside one candle, folded the match around back behind the book, and scratched it against the strip, all with one hand.

It drew in a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.

Without even thinking about it, the practitioner held his breath, as the smoke reached his way.

Not that it truly mattered.

The entire apartment, even parts behind him, in the hallway adjacent to the kitchen, was moving in response to the spirit.  The thing that wore the appearance of a man breathed, the shadow that revealed what was behind the mask also served to hint at the truth, and blinds, spice bottles, trash bags and more all moved in response.

As though the kitchen were alive, the flesh of a living thing, an extension of the figure.

Making the practitioner the man that had unwittingly entered the belly of the beast.

“Sit?” the man at the table asked.

The practitioner shook his head.

“Sit,” the man at the table said, firmer.

Outside, something crashed.  A dog started barking violently.

“I prefer to die standing,” the practitioner said.

The man at the table took a long drag on his rolled cigarette.  “Did I suggest I care what you prefer?”

“No, but I’m going to fight for it if I have to.”

“To die on your feet?  All of the things you could fight for, things you could beg for or actions you could take, and you choose this.”

“Have to take a stand somewhere.”

“If you say so,” the figure said.

Where one ankle rested on his knee, the figure let his foot fall to the floor, toe pointed at the practitioner.

It was pain in the same way that a tsunami was water.  Pain had flavors, and in one moment, the practitioner tasted all kinds.  Sharp sorts of pain.  Broken, crushing, burning, and loud sorts of pain.  An agony that defied description.  He hit the ground, hard, and the feeling of his chin hitting the tile from a five foot, five inch height, without arms moving to break the fall?  Only a drop in the bucket.

And underlying it all was the idea that it was a wrong sort of pain.  That something wasn’t operating like the practitioner’s past thirty years of experience had told him it should.

While he became aware of the welling tide of blood, his hands fumbled for traction.

One hand touched his leg, which was closer to his shoulder than his knee.  The flesh beneath the pants leg was oddly cool, and the stump leaked an awful lot of blood.  More than he would have thought fit inside.

He tried to get his bearings, struggling to operate before the shock set in.  When he opened his mouth, however, all that came out were huffs of pain.

A tiny part of him wanted to believe that this was retribution.  That it was karma in the vernacular form, eye for an eye justice.  A whipping for the criminal.  But that part of him wasn’t satisfied.  He couldn’t feel it.  As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry.

The figure wasn’t even looking at him.  The end of the cigarette glowed orange as the body perched on the stool inhaled.  Smoke leaked out between large white teeth.

The practitioner moved his hand, and the numerous scratches and cuts made themselves known, though the sensation of pain was so far removed from what he experienced now that it felt almost alien.

The practitioner reached out, and he touched one finger to the blood.

He started to draw lines.

“No,” the figure at the table said, still not looking.

The practitioner stopped.  It wasn’t that the words had power, per se.  Only that he knew the actions were fruitless.  He was only undertaking them because the past several days had made it habit.  Already, he was so weak that a word was enough to stop him mid-action.

The man who was now sprawled on the floor, bleeding out, didn’t reply or move.  By some reflex, he gripped one of his dismembered legs, clawed from his body by the movement of a shadow too substantial to simply drape itself against the wall.  A white-knuckle grip, as if he physically clung to life.

The figure glanced down at the man on the floor.

The smile widened.

“Mann, Levin, Lewis,” the man on the floor said.

The smile faded.

“Mann, Lev- Levin, Lewis,” the man managed, once more.

The figure that was perched on the stool took another drag of the rolled cigarette.

“Mann, Levin, Lewis.”

The front door opened.  The man who let himself in, unlike the figure in the chair, did not look like he belonged, nor did he look like he had any association with the dying man that lay on a floor covered in blood and crawling maggots.  He was thin, handsome but for a scar at the corner of his lip, his hair carefully cut, and he wore a suit.

The shined black shoes stopped before crossing the threshold to the kitchen, normally meant to bridge the gap between hardwood and tile, a cross-piece of wood now served to block the ever-spreading filth.

“Good evening, Mr. Mahoun,” the lawyer said.

“Good evening, Mr. Mann,” the demon on the stool said.

“What is a noble of your stature doing here?”

“I was called,” the demon noble replied.

“By him?”

“By our acquaintance here, yes.”

“He overstepped.”

“If the greatest free diabolist in the field were to summon the least of my kind, it would be overstepping,” Mahoun said.

“In a relative sense, then, he overstepped.”

“Yes.  In a relative sense,” the demon agreed.

Mann hiked up the pants of his suit, freeing the fabric enough that he could bend down, sitting on his heels, to get a better view of the limp form.  “I know of him, the face is familiar, but I don’t truly know him.  What possessed him to try to summon you?”

“The greatest of sins.”

“Hm. What for?”

“He summoned lesser demons to amass a small fortune.  A friend of his tried to take the money.”

“Angry, and arrogant.  A story I’ve heard often enough.  Though to go to such an extreme, that’s unusual.”

“Extreme anger, extreme arrogance.  He was quick to realize what he’d done.”

“At which point it was too late to undo it.”

The demon smiled.  It lit the second rolled cigarette.

“I have some of my own, if you have a taste for those.  It helps to get clients to calm down.”

“This is fine,” Mahoun said, through teeth that bit hard on the cigarette.  He leaned over, looking at the fallen practitioner.  “You’re aware that he’s dying?”

“Yet not permitted to die.  We can leave him as he is for now.  I’m not in a particular rush.”

Mahoun shrugged, an easy, casual gesture.

Mann spoke, “I have to wonder… how?”

“That answer is more complicated,” the demon said.  “Greater agendas.”

“When I hear responses like that, I can’t help but think of the choir of unrest.”

Mahoun smiled.

“We make a practice of keeping tabs on active diabolists.  A number of new clients have been in possession of texts written by individuals who we don’t have tabs on.”

“I’m not of the choir of unrest, Mr. Mann,” the demon said.

“But you turn men, women and children into monsters, savage spree killers.  You work over days, weeks, months, and years to prey on diabolists and turn them into crazed killers with a bloodthirst.  Ones that are liberal in using their knowledge to do their deeds.  Or, failing that, you find practitioners, and make them into the sort of depraved individual that wouldn’t hesitate to practice diabolism.”

Mahoun’s expression didn’t change.

Mann continued, “It’s a similar pattern to members of the Choir of Unrest, writing tomes themselves, under the guise of being diabolists.  A hard thing to ignore, when new diabolists crop up every other month.  Or when we’re being asked to distribute books.”

“You’d almost think you had me in the wrong choir,” Mahoun said.

“Almost,” Mr. Mann replied.

The demon took another long pull on the cigarette.  The entire kitchen reacted, as if an invisible beast was within, pushing against every surface.  The shadows were darker than before.

“Don’t concern yourself with what I do,” Mahoun said, staring at Mann with pale eyes.  “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

The words had weight.  Even if the demon noble wasn’t bound, there was a certainty to the words that gave them power.

“None of my business,” Mann said.  If he was scared or intimidated, he didn’t betray it.  “He is.  Will this be a problem?”

Mahoun gave him a dismissive wave.  “The end result is the same.”

“I have your permission?”

“Yes.”

Mann turned, saw a long rug in the hallway, and stepped aside, gesturing.  It moved, sliding into the kitchen.  A bridge over blood and maggots.

A simple trick, but not an easy one.  To simply order spirits about required a longstanding relationship with those spirits, or something similar.  One could do it readily in a demesne they owned, building a familiarity with the spirits there, but to do it anywhere meant that one had to be recognizable anywhere.  The equivalent of being a household name or brand among humans.

He crossed until he stood over the limp body.  He grabbed the man’s jacket and forced him over onto his back.  He slapped the man in the face.

The practitioner stirred.

“You’re not dead.  Barring extraordinary luck on your part, you won’t get to die for a long, long time.  Either I get you, or Mahoun does.  The best thing you can do here is force yourself to pay attention.”

The name seemed to force a surge of adrenaline.  The man’s eyes opened wider, alarm touching every aspect of his features.

“There we go,” Mann said.  “Now.  You called me.  You only have my attention for thirty minutes total, and you spent several minutes wallowing in your suffering.  Do you have a request, or did you summon me for another purpose?”

The man looked at the demon, then the lawyer.  “Save me.”

“You are well beyond saving,” Mann told the practitioner.

“Get me away from him.  I’ve seen what he does.  My brother, my mother, my kid cousin… he used them.”

“That’s the least of what he does,” Mann said.  He glanced up at the demon.  “He was going easy on you.  Likely aiming to gradually step up what he did, keep it up long enough that you’d eventually realize, it was always going to get worse.  Break you with terror of everything your future held in store for you.”

“No,” the practitioner said.  He shook his head.  “He went after them, he made them wrong, let them find my books.  They let other demons inside.  Accepted them.  Other people stopped being able to even see them.”

Mann sighed.  The demon noble only watched.

“You want away?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll join my firm.  You’ll assist other diabolists, in large part.”

“Okay.  Please.”

“You’ll do this for, if I had to guess, somewhere between five and six hundred years.  We’d hash out the specific numbers at a later point.”

“Five-”

“As I said, you won’t get to die for a long, long time.”

The practitioner screwed his eyes closed, bracing himself against a fresh wave of the pain, but adrenaline still kept him conscious enough.  It wouldn’t last forever.

“Before you answer,” Mann warned, “There’s another cost.  That which is yours is forfeit.”

“Have… nothing.”

“You have a familiar.”

The practitioner’s eyes went wide.

“It would become ours, to use or give away as we saw fit.”

Fisher creeped out of the practitioner’s pocket, no longer caring about blood or maggots.  In the body of a toad, he hopped forward.  He spoke, however, with a more cultured accent.  “No.  We have a partnership, I have a say.  No.”

“You have a say, but you do not have the final word.”

Fisher turned to the practitioner.  “No.  Just say no.”

“Yes,” the practitioner said.  “I agree.  Whatever the time involved.”

Fisher froze.  “No, please-”

“I agree,” the practitioner said, again.

“I’ll draft up the papers,” Mann said.  “For now, let’s get out of here.”

He seized the practitioner, one arm around the man’s armpits, and lifted him easily.

The familiar stared.

“Another time, then, Mahoun.”

“As you say, Mr. Mann,” the demon said.

The familiar gave chase, if only to escape the presence of the demon.

Mahoun was still sitting at the table when the front door closed behind the lawyer and his new employee.

■

“There is a difference,” Mann said, “Between the various tiers of demon.  Imps, least, lesser, moderate, all the way up the hierarchy.  The simplest way to mark the distinction is capability.”

The new employee nodded.  He was dressed in a fine suit, now, and he had legs again.

“Speech is one such thing.  It’s an inverse of men.  We’re speechless at birth, we gain the ability, with increasing faculties, then if we live long enough, the ability to speak gradually leaves us.  Imps can speak because they borrow from men, they sup from the collective unconscious, and they sup from victims.  Demons of the noble tier can speak because they are… broad.  If they’re neither and they can still communicate, they may well have something of man.  A token.”

The new employee nodded.  He was trying to listen.  He had a new lease on life, now.  They walked down the street, and despite the fact that they wore nicer clothes than the people they passed, nobody paid them a second mind.

“Keep these things in mind.  We can’t have you making a mistake while you work for us.  Certainly not a mistake like the summoning of Mahoun.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll learn quickly or you’ll die,” Mann said.  “Come.  On the good days, you’ll be an errand boy.  This is a good day.”

The new employee hurried to keep up.

“The primary work we do is to help write contracts, and to handle certain summonings or arrangements.  You’re not going to do either for the first few hundred years.  The goal is to achieve these things safely, with minimal risk.  You can’t do safe, not yet.”

“I learned my lesson.”

“In a few centuries, you should look back on today, and you’ll realize how very little you’ve learned.”

“Yes sir.”

Mann frowned.  “Don’t think I didn’t see that in your eyes.  You think I’m an asshole?”

“No, sir.”

“I have been around for a very long time.  I’m aware of much more than you might think.”

“Yes sir.”

Mann shook his head a little.  “As you do good work, you’ll have less in the way of good days, but more opportunity.  You don’t need to eat or sleep anymore, we removed that need.  You would be well advised to study.  If you were to get an opportunity, you wouldn’t want to squander it, because it may be decades before you got another chance.”

“When you say opportunity, sir?”

“Early exit,” a woman spoke up.

The woman wore a suit, though with a short dress rather than pants, and her blonde hair was in a ponytail, a lock draped over one eyebrow with a strategic sort of care.

“Early exit is one opportunity that you’re competing for,” Mann said.  “You may not need to indulge in normal eating and sleeping, but if you ever think you might want to slack off in your duties, keep in mind that we have a number of other employees who don’t need to indulge either, and many are hungrier to get out than you are.”

“You’ll find that hunger,” the blonde woman said.  “After enough bad days, you’ll find it.”

The new employee glanced over his shoulder.  “You heard-”

“I’ve heard others get the same speech more times than you’d like to think,” the woman said.  “I’ve even heard a number ask the question you just asked.”

“She leads the pack, in terms of the next employee to take a name and a position at the head of the firm,” Mann explained.  “Like myself.  You would do well to listen to her.”

“Yes sir,” he replied.

“Look after him,” Mann ordered.  “I have things to do.”

With that, he was gone.

The blonde woman gestured, and they fell in step, side by side, walking down the street.

“Scared?” the woman asked.

“Slightly?”

“If you’re not terrified, you haven’t realized what you’re in for,” the woman said.

“I have a sense of it.”

“You did this to get out of a bad situation?” she asked.

“Yeah.  Yes.”

“How bad?”

“Noble demon.”

“Which?”

“Mahoun.  Mr. Mann said it went easy on me, but it really didn’t.”

She nodded.  “It didn’t.”

“I-”

“It didn’t,” she said, placing a hand on his arm.

“Okay,” he said, frowning.

“You escaped a noble demon.  The worst sort of end.  Now that it’s too late for you to realize, I’m free to tell you, you’ve jumped from the frying pan to the fire.”

“The fire.”

“How long do you have?”

“Five hundred and seventy-some years.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I know.”

“Not much time at all.  You could have paid off that karmic debt in a lifetime.”

“Not if I died.”

She shook her head.  “I have a lot to teach you.  How many demonic nobles do you think you’ll run into in the next five hundred and seventy-ish years?”

His eyes went wide.  “What?”

“I’m asking you to guess.  Because you will be crossing paths with them.”

He couldn’t speak.  Horror had stolen his words.

“Well, stay quiet like that while we’re here, and you’ll be in good shape.”

They reached the gate.  The blonde woman opened it.  She led the way up the winding driveway.

An old woman was already standing on the porch.  Rose bushes grew across the property, and trees hung over the older house.  She looked so normal.

It sent his perceptions and expectations in the complete other direction from the horror he’d experienced prior.  He found his words slipping from his mouth.  “I- You told me to be quiet, but is she…”

“A diabolist?  Yes.  She’s a respected diabolist, in many circles,” the blonde woman said.  “We would very much like to recruit her.  If you were to cost us the chance, you could give up hope of ever having a good day with us again.  I’m sorry, I have to warn you, so you aren’t surprised.”

The woman on the porch suddenly seemed a hundred times more ominous.

“She has five lifetimes worth of karmic debt,” the blonde woman said, “To put things into perspective.”

“So, at five hundred and seventy-five years per…”

“More than that,” the woman said.  “Much, much more.  But she wouldn’t ever join us.  Too canny, to ever think it was a good deal, or to put herself in a situation where she would need to ask for the help.  With luck, however, we could reach out to her grandchildren.  Now hush.”

They’d reached the porch.

“New one,” the old woman said.

“I’m consistently surprised by how much attention you pay to us, for someone who is so set against joining,” the blonde woman said.

“No secret knowledge here,” the old woman said.  “He has that look about him.”

“He does.”

“Scared, but not scared enough.”

“I’m trying to go easy on him,” the blonde woman said.

“Oh?  That isn’t necessarily doing him a favor.”

It felt so strange to be talked about.

“Mann is going to send him into the deep end soon, I imagine.”

“I imagine,” the old woman agreed.  “Can I offer you two anything?”

“No thank you,” the blonde woman said.

“Come in.  You brought the book?”

The blonde woman produced a tome with a black leather cover, but no markings on the front or side.

“Good workmanship.  Would you place it in the library?  The door is open.”

“I’d have to bring him.”

“You would not,” the old woman sounded indignant.  “I intend to grill him for information while you’re gone.”

The newcomer opened his mouth, then closed it, a little surprised.

“I think that would be frowned upon.”

“It would,” the old woman said.  “But you’re going to let me do it all the same.  If I’m ever going to join-”

“Which you won’t.”

“Which I most likely won’t, I would do it with my eyes wide open, and all available information at my fingertips.  You’re going to do it because it means there is a chance.”

The blonde woman frowned.  “You have a few minutes.  I’ll take a moment to peruse your library, if I may?”

“Please do.”

The younger woman disappeared inside.

The old woman’s face took on a stern cast.  “You will not waste my time, understand?”

The newcomer blinked.  “Yes?”

“You’re going to tell me everything about the people you’re working for.  If you don’t, or if you don’t produce anything satisfactory, then I’m going to say you displeased me.  They’ll hear you out as to why, little will happen to me as a consequence, and you’ll be punished all the same.  These people you work for?  Their punishments are dire.  Understand?”

“I… think so.”

“In exchange, I’ll give you some advice.  It will go a long, long way toward making the next few centuries or thousands of years more tolerable.”

He nodded.

“Talk.”

“Um.  I don’t even know where to start.  That woman, she’s-”

“Soon to become one of the named members of the firm.  ‘Partner’, if you want to buy into the lawyer theme.  Describe her.”

“Describe- she’s nice?  Strict, but she’s helping me out.  It’s hard to see why she’s a diabolist.”

The old woman frowned.  “Ah.  I see.”

“She was saying I picked the wrong path.  I probably did, but I don’t see why.”

“You’ve condemned yourself to… how long?”

“Five hundred and seventy-ish years.”

“You should try to forget the number.  You won’t be able to, it’s one of the few things you have, now, but you should try.  Listen to me, I want you to pay attention, you stupid little man.  Whatever you were escaping?  You’ve condemned yourself to five hundred and seventy-ish more years of it.”

“I was escaping a demon noble,” he said.

“And you’ll see a number more before your time is up,” she said.  She sighed.  “You’re useless to me.  Everyone around me is useless.”

“Useless, ma’am?”

“You don’t know nearly enough.  That you even think that woman is anything resembling nice or good?  She’s about to become your absolute superior, second only to the powers they serve.  She didn’t get there by being kind or nice.  She didn’t do good things when she was a diabolist, before.”

“Neither did I.”

“It’s an entirely different scale,” the old woman said.  “I’ve never heard of you.  Contrast that to her… for history to reconcile the kinds of things she did, it might well have had to invent something akin to the Black Death, to sweep it all beneath the rug.”

“I don’t understand.  The Black Death?”

“Something like the Black Death.  I suspect she’s older.  She’s not insane, which means one thing.  She very likely enjoyed it.  Her politeness, the veneer on the surface, it’s a mask she’s trained herself to wear, for this role.  Don’t give her cause to remove it.”

He nodded, mute.

“I’ll tell them to send you my way again.  They’ll know why I’m doing it, in large part, that I want to dig for information, but they won’t care.  They’re too big, and I’m only one cog in the machine.  When we see one another again, you’re going to give me better information.”

He nodded.

“Now,” she said, “One of your next few tasks will be grim.  I know that they sent the last two to the apartments in Hamburg.  The place was taken by demons, a transfer of property, demesne, to demons.  The diabolist is still inside, and will be for a long time.  When you go, it will be bad.  It will continue to be bad, each time.  They want to use this place as a whip, the threat of it will make you work harder…”

■

Levin straightened his tie.  Several other junior partners and employees of the firm joined them.

Lewis was there, past the fence, at the border of the hole to the Abyss.

Looking past her, the practitioner could see the Thorburn girl from the mirror.  Looking inside her, at the mess of connections, he could see something rattling around inside.  Years with the firm had given him cause to learn to quickly identify possession with his Sight.

Barely even connected them to the old woman, he thought.  But here, standing where I did six years ago, so close to where I talked to the old lady, hard to shake it.

“Motes,” Levin said, just to his left.  The old man’s voice was gravelly.

“Looks like, sir,” the practitioner responded.

“Her sadism will be the end of her,” Levin said.  “She’s even holding them back.”

The words were reminiscent of the description of Mahoun.  Ramping up.

The collected group backed up a touch as they approached the scene.

“What a grotesque lot,” the sphinx spoke.

“Petty insults?” Levin asked.

“You seem poised for a war,” a woman spoke.  Her ring burned when viewed with the Sight.

“You seem to be under the impression that this will be anything but one sided,” Levin said.  “Lewis?  Please.  There are things to look after.”

Lewis nodded.

“Murr,” she said.  “Please.”

The skull-headed imp acted.

Figures stepped out of the shadows, one after another.

Each one provoked a reaction.

A man in white, carrying pistols.

“Malcolm,” the little girl of the group said.

A tall man, thirty-something.  It got a reaction from the Thorburns.

A man with a policeman’s jacket, square-jawed.

Others joined the ranks, one-by-one.  Four figures were utterly black, head to toe, without features.

“Tricks,” Rose Thorburn the younger said.

“No,” the one the child had called Malcolm said.  “I’m sorry.”

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Judgment 16.1

The lawyers arrived from beyond the gate that bordered the property.  Rose was pretty sure they hadn’t truly approached.  They were there, but they hadn’t come from further away.  They hadn’t crossed the space from some distant point to there, before they’d started to make their way up the shattered driveway.

Folding space, or manipulating connections, Rose couldn’t be wasn’t sure.  It wasn’t like demons didn’t open doors into messing with the fundamental structures of things.

An ugly thought, that.  If they were drawing on demons every time they paid a visit…

Rose eyed the lawyers as they approached.  Levinn was the most recognizable, an older man, veteran member of the firm.  She also recognized the driver that had taken her to Toronto before the Conquest fiasco, though she didn’t remember specifics-

Memories flooded her mind.  Out of place, out of sync with her own.  As if viewed from the wrong perspective, the words and responses jarring with her own.

A conversation with the driver.  Word choice, priorities, meaning.  Getting the book Black Lamb’s Blood.

It didn’t feel good, and her head pounded uncomfortably, the edges of her thoughts burning or dissolving into static at the edges, recovering slowly.

“Tone it down,” she murmured.

Alister shot her a look.

She shook her head a little.  “Nothing.”

Walking behind the group was the creepy man who had delivered supplies to the house after her return from Toronto.  Long haired, prone to leering, he’d always struck her as the type that had probably been one of the worst kinds of diabolists, before.

Of the two new practitioners she didn’t recognize, one seemed to be occupied by something.  He came across as more Other than human, with dark circles under the eyes, and an unhealthy color and texture to his flesh.  When he was viewed with her Sight, it became clear that something crawled beneath the skin.

Bringing the total number of demons present up by one.

“What have you gotten us into?” the Elder Sister asked, under her breath.

As the lawyers crossed the distance to Ms. Lewis’ side, the group from Toronto backed away, forming loose battle lines as they did so.  A few weapons were discreetly drawn.

Rose used Conquest’s eyes to assess the situation, and she didn’t like what she saw.  If she stood on the other end of the battlefield, assessing the assembled group, she could have pinpointed a number of ways to break them, just by body language alone.

A lack of teamwork, obvious at a glance.  This was a motley crew, press-ganged into fighting by necessity.  Certain things stood out as being particularly vulnerable.

The Astrologer was a member of the group, but stood alone, apart from the others.

The sphinx was reacting to the demons with more fear and alarm than anyone else.  Isadora had backed away more than anyone else, when the group had retreated some. The fear of demons was apparently stronger when one was immortal.  Or was it that the sphinx noticed things that others didn’t?

Paige, the sphinx’s follower, hadn’t realized just how much Isadora had backed away, and stood off to one side, just a little more vulnerable.

Rose’s own group, huddled within the damaged diagram, hadn’t moved at all.  On a level, consciously or unconsciously, the members of Toronto had put the group between themselves and the assembled enemy, imps and lawyers both.

If that continued, it could spell disaster.

“What a grotesque lot,” the sphinx spoke.  Wary as she was, she didn’t let it show in her tone.

“Petty insults?” the old man asked.

“You seem poised for a war,” the Elder Sister observed.

“You seem to be under the impression that this will be anything but one sided,” Levin spoke.  “Lewis?  Please.  There are things to look after.”

Ms. Lewis nodded.  She squared her shoulders.

Rose felt her heartbeat pick up.

Blake was inside her, feeding her parcels of information.  Collecting memories, pushing them to the surface.

Grandmother’s notes on the lawyers.  Observations, collected across the diaries.

All drawn together like this, one after another, Rose found her head making a few connections that she hadn’t made when reading the diaries back-to-front, several times over.

Grandmother had written about every aspect of her life, and for the most part, she had been frank.  The diaries were diaries, and they held all the weaker and more embarrassing moments of adolescence, of romance and a brief affair with Aimon Behaim.  Even a visit to New York, to meet with a cabal of diabolists, for discussion, the trading of books, and an orgy.

She’d detailed her family life, which had been a challenge in every respect.  Finding a husband had been hard, when she’d been limited to Jacob’s Bell, and a husband that met her requirements was harder still.  She’d settled on a young man who was in Jacob’s Bell to dodge trouble, and had written about being relieved when he’d dodged Jacob’s Bell and his fledgling family too.  Compared to so many other mothers out there, she’d written so little of family.  They were an obligation, something she had little care for.  Her grandchildren had piqued more interest, but she’d watched them from a distance, interfering only periodically and anonymously.

All this was committed to paper.  She’d held nothing back, and she’d still been willing to leave her diaries for Rose to find.  Regular updates over the course of a long life.

It was, Rose realized, akin to the way a legal office might send a file, along with dozens or hundreds of other boxes of files.

The information in demand was there, it was only buried.

Family, husband, romance, sex, each had their turn at being glossed over.  But Lewis, Levin, and Mann were there, regularly, details provided.

Blake brought up the various little details and notes, one after another.

Ms. Lewis made eye contact with Rose, and the expression was unreadable.  Not cold, not angry, simply disconnected.

“Murr,” Ms. Lewis said, and the name was an intonation.  “Please.”

Murr unfurled its wings.  Black feathered, the wings spread, and the shadows grew deeper, spreading in every direction, as though the light sources were growing smaller.  In this perpetual night, the darkness was already thick.  Murr made it impenetrable.

One by one, the figures rose and stepped from the midst of the shadows, as if passing through thresholds.

Fell was first.  He staggered a little as he stepped forward, caught himself, then straightened.  He’d emerged armed, guns in hand.

“Malcolm,” Fell’s niece said.

Callan appeared second.  Worn out, worn down.

Laird was third.  He straightened his jacket, and the gesture seemed eerily Laird-like.  The way he held himself with his chin up, so very casually, as if he looked down on everyone, just a tiny bit, even when he looked, well, like he’d died and come back.

There were others, but they were others that Rose didn’t recognize.  Deceased belonging to other members of the group.  Someone for the Knights, dressed in the same rough, not-trying-very-hard way that the Knights had, carrying a gun.

Two women for the Sisters, one older, one middle-aged.  Maybe ones killed in the fight that had risen up around Conquest.

Someone for the Astrologer.  Rose couldn’t place the name, but she knew who he was.  The mentor figure.

Three children, for the Shepherd.

Alexis followed.  She’d been dead for a shorter time than the others, and she didn’t look quite so damaged.  Her expression was terribly sad.

Seeing Alexis was like a punch in the gut.  Rose tried to swallow and found it difficult, and that in itself was alarming.

To the best of her recall, searching back through all of her memories, she couldn’t remember ever missing someone.  Regret and heartache weren’t part of her emotional makeup.  In part, that was because she’d never had anyone to lose.

This sort of emotional distraction wasn’t what she needed right now.

Focus.  Bringing back the dead?  It didn’t make sense.  That wasn’t how demons operated.

She glanced over her shoulder, in the direction of Faysal.

Was it possible?  As a gatekeeper, he theoretically had access to any place, anywhere.  It was possible that he could provide access to some realm of the dead.

No.  Too many issues came up with that.  Alexis, if she’d died in the abyss, had to belong to the Abyss.

She eyed four new arrivals.  Black and featureless from head to toe.

Broken, somehow.  There but not there.  They didn’t move, didn’t react.

Three for her group, all three short, diminutive, one even looking at Evan.  One for the Knights.

There were more emerging.

“Tricks,” she said, aloud.  Not wholly because she believed it, but she said it because there would be far too many people here who would be put off guard, their heartstrings tugged at seeing someone they’d lost.

She had to establish it as a ruse, or the demon’s side would make their moves, and Rose’s allies wouldn’t have the wherewithal to fight back.

“No,” Fell replied, shutting her down, just like that.  “I’m sorry.”

Rose clenched her teeth.

They could talk.  That wasn’t good.

Zombies or effigies wearing the faces of loved ones were one thing.  But this?

“Help,” Ainsley said.  “Uncle Laird, the people standing behind you are not your allies here.”

“They don’t matter,” Laird said.  “This is between me and my family.  Just as Fell’s business is between him and his niece.”

“Rose too,” Fell said.  “At least, as long as she acts as a host for Conquest.  And Diana?  I’m sorry, but you did kill me.”

“Oh,” Laird said.  “Are we doing revenge, too?”

“We’re doing revenge,” Fell said, with conviction.

They knew each other?  Fell knew about Conquest?

No, of course they knew each other.  A major practitioner in Jacob’s Bell wouldn’t be able to function without some relationships to the major cities in the area, and Fell had been Conquest’s right hand man.

But Fell knew about Conquest.

She turned to the Sight, and she tuned her vision.

She took an involuntary step back, bumping into Christoff and nearly knocking him over.

The connections that tied the revived to others were eroding.

No, not quite eroding.  They were consuming, drawing fuel, and destroying in the process.  Dozens or hundreds of candle flames slowly eating at so many wicks.

Many of those wicks led to people who were present.

It was reminiscent of the broken connections that had been visible here and there, after Blake had been eaten.  The damage that had left Alexis sobbing without explanation, or Ty’s head going in circles.  Evan had been the most affected on that front.

“They’re tainted,” Rose said.  “Don’t get close to them.  And I’m not just talking physical closeness.  They’re consuming everything around them.”

“That’s what that is,” Alister said.

“I’ve seen it before,” Rose said.

“If you hadn’t seen us before, I would be very worried,” Callan said.  “Grew up together.  I gave you goddamn baths, when you were still shitting in diapers.”

Tiff clutched Christoff a little tighter.

Rose spoke louder, “You aren’t revived.  You’re mockeries.  Very accurate mockeries.  You’re actively consuming everything around you.  Ignis Fatuus.  Fool’s fire.  Candles to draw the moths.”

Except they’re liable to do a hell of a lot worse than burn us.

The shadow figures were spreading out, and they either couldn’t see or apparently didn’t care about the imps that lurked between, pacing, joining them in spacing themselves out.

It did, Rose noted, have the upside that her side was closing ranks, drawing together, preparing to fight shoulder to shoulder if they had to.

“I’m real,” the Astrologer’s mentor said.  “I can feel my heartbeat, I have all of my memories.”

Gods.  Rose could tell how the Astrologer was holding onto every word.  A bomb could have gone off and it probably wouldn’t have torn the woman’s eyes from him, her ears from his words.

“I can remember reading you bedtime stories,” Fell said, to his niece.  “You can ask questions.”

He reached out, stepping forward.

The girl didn’t move.  Her hand, however, rose from her side.

The Elder Sister reached out, ring flaring.  Flame erupted, and it drew a line of fire between Fell and the child.

When the smoke cleared, Fell had a gun pointed at the Sister.  “If you don’t believe I’m real, I could pull the trigger right now.”

The Sister didn’t speak or react.

Everyone had gone still.

Except, Rose noted, the lawyers.  Levin was gone, absent.  The other Lawyers had retreated.  Eerie, to realize how much they’d been able to maneuver, with this distraction.

It was a wake up call, of sorts, to the fact that this was a distraction.  A damn good, dangerous distraction, but a distraction all the same.

The imps were lurking amid and behind Murr’s creations.  The only ones who weren’t primed, tensed, and ready to attack or defend at a moment’s notice were the ones the mockeries were successfully getting to, and even they were straining to hold themselves back.  Fell’s niece, the Astrologer, Christoff…

A horrible form of fighting, this.  To prey on those who bared their hearts the most.

“This is a great deal messier than I would have hoped,” the angel spoke, in a deep, melodic voice, far removed from the dark scene.

“I really did try to keep it simple,” Ms. Lewis said.

“I believe you.  But that doesn’t change that things are far from simple now.”

“Blame the Thorburn diabolist,” Ms. Lewis said.  “She was the one who conspired to raise the stakes.”

“I did warn you,” Isadora said, behind Rose.  When Rose turned, the sphinx was already looking, making eye contact.  “The best thing you could have done would be to simply end your own existence.  Now look at where things stand.”

“I don’t remember that warning,” Rose said.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Isadora said.

Rose felt more than a little heated at that, much as if she’d been talking to Blake, enduring his casual disregard for her, or how monumentally difficult he was making her life.  She wished she had some means of retaliating, telling the sphinx to shove it, somehow, without hurting the group’s cohesion.

Blake probably would have.

But the stirring of anger was different than she was used to.  Harder to pinpoint, when Rose was often very good at figuring out what was going on with her head and her heart.

A bit of indignation she hadn’t had before?  Stubbornness?

“I don’t want to die,” Rose said, aloud.  “I don’t plan to.”

“Who does?”

This line from Peter.

The act of rebellion, standing up for herself, it went a long ways toward centering herself.

Have to assert control, break this illusion.

“You don’t want to die?”  Callan asked.  “What about me?  What about us?  Huh!?  We’ve died.  We’ve seen what there is, after.”

Fell, the imp’s Knight, and Alexis were nodding in agreement.

“Bullshit!” Peter said.  “You lying fuck!”

The ‘bullshit’ was becoming a refrain, almost a catchphrase.

“It’s true,” the Astrologer’s mentor spoke.  “I was a good person.  Paid my dues.  I was a good person, wasn’t I, Die?  I know I didn’t do the family thing, but, I took care of you, right?  As a scholar, I contributed to the betterment of people in general?”

Diana nodded, and there was a fierceness to the gesture.

The look on the man’s face was terribly sad.  “Then take it from me.  Even for the good guys, every second of being dead is a kind of torture.”

Diana reacted as if she’d been struck.  She backed away a few steps, making an unintelligible sound.

Her mentor didn’t follow, and it was a break from the pattern where they’d been inching closer.

It lent his words a fraction more authenticity.

Freshly armed with a bit more caring and sensitivity than she’d had, Rose was trying to find some way to reach out, to convince these people about what was happening.

It was a flailing attempt at trying to figure out a strategy.  Blind, unsuccessful, unfamiliar.

And, she thought, if there was an answer to be found here, Blake could offer me something.  A memory, perhaps.

If there was an answer to be found, did it lie within her?

She took all the emotions and feelings and memories that Blake had given her, and she pushed them down and away.

She looked at this from an objective sense.

“Fuck you,” she said.

Laird raised his eyebrows.  The mentor looked at her.

“I’m not talking to you,” she said.  She pointed at the Astrologer, then to the Elder Sister, then Nick.  “Every single one of you who are looking at them and getting all teary-eyed, fuck off.  You were happy enough to throw me and Blake under the bus when you thought we had something to do with demons, and then you see a demon actually create these sad-ass puppets, and you’re crying, you’re buying this?”

The focus was on her.  Even the Astrologer was dimly aware, and the Astrologer was a moth flying very, very close to the flame.

She simply had to use the advantage.  Somehow.

“It’s not like that,” the Astrologer said.

“What’s it like, then?” Rose asked.

“That’s-”  The Astrologer floundered.

“Someone?”  Rose asked, “Anyone?”

Apparently, anyone included Blake.  He was ready.  Offering up a memory.

This one so recent it was disorienting.

A glimpse of Alexis, fresh from the Abyss.  Changed.  Lurking in shadows, broken in form, with an unearthly light in her eyes.  The Abyss, taunting him.

This Alexis wasn’t that Alexis.

The action, the push of the memory into her head, it didn’t feel helpful.  It felt more like she was being stabbed with that twisted blade that Blake always had with him.  This new memory of Alexis was dropped in the midst of her other memories of Alexis, and the aftermath of it left her feeling hollow.

The feelings were a little too raw, too heavy, and a little too bogeyman.  It was worse than before.  It damaged things.

She’d been given the ability to care, then had a share of it smashed from her only moments later.

These were negative sum maneuvers.  Whatever he gave, she lost more.

The Barber’s curse.

It scared her, more than she liked to admit.

Fear, unlike her ability to care, to miss someone, was something that had sat close to her heart since all of this began.

That fear threatened to become anger, and the anger was directed at Blake, even as she knew he had a reason for doing what he was doing.

Even as she’d known, when she accepted him into her, that she might well become part of Blake’s negative-sum game.  It wasn’t exactly a surprise, now that he had access to her being, that the very being might end up a casualty.  That he might not see the full picture, like the fact that she’d agreed to be a scourge, and he’d just given her an experience the Abyss had used to get one more hook in him.

Now, potentially, it was a hook in her.

But, even as Blake’s crude interference it made her head hurt, left her mind feeling like it was scraped raw, it helped clarify her thoughts.  Make sense of it all.

This Alexis wasn’t the same as the Alexis Blake had seen.

Rose’s eye fell on the three shadowy figures who stood by, unmoving.

Broken.  Nonfunctional.  Something missing.

These were all constructs.  And they had been constructed in a way that didn’t reach to Blake, though it reached out to all of the others.

Because Blake was buried?  Hidden within her?  Was that part of what had broken these three, and the one near the Knights?

Oh.

What connected the Knights to her and Blake?  A certain demon.

She drew in a breath, then spoke.

“I’ve studied vestiges more than you would believe,” Rose said.  “Chances are good that these things are reflections of our memories, of details that we can’t quite recall, so it goes beyond just the surface level, beyond the point where we can think of things to trip them up.  They’re drawn from our impressions of them, most likely.  But that’s all they are.”

The Astrologer blinked.

“They’re mocked together from missing connections, from psychic impressions, or from memories, or something in that vein,” Rose said.  “And they’re wrapped around demonstuff.  It’s a headgame, and it’s a distraction.”

One perfectly tuned to get to us.  Manipulating connections even as they work to erode us through them.

“Distraction from what?” Alister asked.

“Good question,” she said.

Except for the feral imp, who was now at the Ms. Lewis’ side, the lesser demons were still out there.  Lurking in the shadows.  No longer visible, they were lumpy silhouettes on trees, or a winged shape flying in a tight circle, a dark background with a darker shape moving across it.

The lawyers themselves… were apparently content to stand back.  They were talking.

Blake had refreshed her memories of the lawyers.

She was equipped to analyze them.  To figure out how they worked.

Her eye fell on Laird, and she couldn’t help but think of his metaphor, way back at the beginning.

Nuclear weapons.  The lawyers made for a powerful group with weapons so terrible that they, corrupt as they were, were reluctant to use them.

How far did things have to go before they lost that reluctance?

Blake shifted within her, and Rose winced, both at the pain of Blake being there, ill-fitting, breaking things just a little with every action he took, and out of fear that he’d hit her with yet another painfully jarring set of memories.

But he didn’t.

He was only reminding her that she was there?

Trying to draw her attention to something?

Yes.

She was thinking too far ahead, again.

All well and good when she was in her library…

“Diana,” the mentor said.

Diana stared at him.  Rose could see the connections that stretched between the two.  The demonic taint was creeping along, reaching, making progress with every second.

“What if-” the Astrologer asked, “What if having only that much, what if that’s enough?”

The taint reached further, closing the distance, a metaphysical handspan from Diana’s heart, her throat, her mind.

“It can’t be,” Rose said.  “Take it from me.  I know vestiges, I know demons, and I know what it’s like to live with half of a person.  To be half of a person.”

She spoke the words, but she didn’t see the change she wanted to see.  The Astrologer wasn’t refusing the connection.  She wasn’t fighting.

Have to act in the now.

Evan… she looked for Evan, and she had trouble finding him.  So different from Blake, who always seemed to intuitively know where the bird was.

She found Evan with Ty, which made a degree of sense.  Letting go of Alister’s arm, she reached forward.

Evan hopped into her hand.

“Rose,” Alister whispered.

“Be ready,” Rose hissed the words.  They reached her entire group, huddled inside the diagram.

Rose broke away, stepping over the lines of Alister’s already broken diagram, more toward the others.

If the Astrologer lost this, well, she couldn’t be certain what would happen.

Please, she thought.  Don’t follow your heart.

The Astrologer bowed her head.

The taint continued creeping her way, taking advantage of welling emotion, of some vulnerability.

“I just finished saying goodbye,” she said.  “And you have to go and pull this.”

“My timing was always bad,” he said.  “Remember?  I’m a dork like that.”

She twisted her head to one side, eyes closed, a pained expression on her face.

The taint flared, spreading, encapsulating her.

Reaching into her pocket, she touched something.  A remote, or a crudely hacked-together-phone.

Light flared from beneath her clothes, worn LEDs.  One below her right shoulder blade, two on the left arm, three on the right.

Wings spread, and for a moment, she was an angel.

With the action, the connection frayed and broke.  The demonic taint fell away.

A long-necked bird, quite possibly a crane, rose up and away from the Astrologer.  It flowed forward and struck the Astrologer’s mentor.

As blows went, it was minor, but it opened the fight.

On the opposite end of the battlefield, three children rushed for the Shepherd, who hadn’t spoken a word, nor reacted.

He didn’t resist, didn’t react.

They made physical contact.

Rose turned her head away, as every connection that made up the Shepherd abruptly unraveled.  The Shepherd screamed.

In a heartbeat, he was a wet patch in the snow, though his scream continued well past that point.  Ghosts streamed from the location, one after another, and the associated emotions and effects were too intense to take in.  Rose twisted her head away.

Don’t fight me, Blake, she thought.

She drew more on Conquest, pushing Blake down and away.

Recognizing that she was, being so rough, doing the same damage to him that he’d been doing to her.

Then, as best as she was able, she reached out to him.

Never an easy thing to do, but it had paid off before.

He met her halfway, and she took hold of a part of his diminished, pressured being, and she drew on it for a little bit more power.

“Attack!” she gave the order.  “If you can’t attack yours, attack someone else’s!”

She hadn’t finished speaking when Fell wheeled on her.  Gun drawn, pointing.

“Go!” Evan shouted.

She threw herself to one side.  It wasn’t clever, or quick, or particularly graceful.

Fell, practiced, waited for her to stumble, then corrected his aim, lowering the gun as she bent low.

Evan leaped from her hand.  He went up, and he managed to push her down as he launched.

Rose landed on her stomach in snow, and the bullet fired, going over her head.

When she’d managed to catch her breath, she saw eyes in the darkness.

Her first thought was Green Eyes, and that was bad unto itself.

But Green Eyes, to the best of her knowledge, still had only the one eye.  Healing, but still.  One eye.

What emerged from the shadow was Surbas.  The fanged, feral imp.  The big one.

Surbas chuckled to itself.

“I ord-” she started.

Surbas howled at her, sudden, loud and forceful enough to take the words from her mouth.

“No,” it said.

“Rose!” Alister shouted, from too far away.

Surbas leaped.

Something flew up, a mess of connections.  The telltale ticking of Chronomancy.

The imp collided with a barrier, and it shed its skin.

A smaller imp continued forward, while its skin remained; a torn, stretched, furry hide drifted in a soup of slowed time.

The imp landed right in front of Rose, only a fraction smaller than before.

Immune to the practice?

Evan flew past, and the imp’s first snapping bite missed.

I’m not a fighter.

Blake was, but she didn’t know how to tap into that.  Not in a matter of one or two seconds.

The imp lunged, and Rose’s world became noise and pain and brightness.  Her ear set to ringing.

Dark shadows danced across her eyes in the aftermath of something impossibly loud.

A bolt of lightning had struck the imp.

She looked over her shoulder, and she saw the Elder Sister, standing by the Eye of the Storm.  The woman pointed, and the Eye moved.

Rose scrambled to her feet.  Evan tried to help, and she fell, overcompensating.  She found her feet again, backing away.

The imp, struck, was crawling from its mouth.  Shedding another body.

Even proper death didn’t stop it.

Between her backing away and Alister’s approach, she reunited with him.

All around them, there was disaster, chaos.

Some of the lawyers, a distance away, were holding items, but they weren’t acting, weren’t summoning.

“Faysal!” she roared the words, and she gave them power.  “Damn you!  Help!  It doesn’t get messier than this!”

The sensation was akin to a mountain deciding to move.

Faysal flared with light.  He stood, he approached, and the imps were driven back.

The lawyers, even, reacted, retreating.

“Do you want a war, Faysal!?” Lewis asked.  “You’re outgunned!”

Faysal spoke, and his voice carried well.  “Let’s put an end to this.  Maintaining a good working relationship has to be better than this.”

Everything had gone still.

“You’re right,” Ms. Lewis said, relaxing.  “You’re very right.”

“Good.  Let’s settle this with words,” Faysal said.  On four legs, he advanced, putting himself between Rose’s side and the lawyers.

In the stillness, a faint tune filled the air.

Faysal froze.

With every passing second, it grew louder, more nuanced.

“No,” Faysal said.

Light flashed around him, then died.

Diagrams around the lawyers and tools they held each glowed with an intensity that suggested they’d taken the light.  Prepared in advance.

It was the last word he spoke.

Mr. Levin approached from the edge of the crater.

By his side was Johannes, holding pipes to his mouth with one hand.

Dogs, rats, and children.

Johannes moved with an eerie, lurching sort of ungracefulness.  The large pair of shears he dragged with him were part of it.  The damage and corruption to his body were another.

Rose felt utter despair take her.

“Well,” Ms. Lewis said.  She didn’t look happy.  She opened her mouth to speak, but she was the one who didn’t get a chance, this time.

The explosion struck in the middle of the collected group of lawyers.

“Ellie!” Evan said, cheerful.  “And rocket launcher witch hunter man!”

“Run!” Rose shouted, though the words were useless, redundant.  Everyone was already moving.  For the love of everything, run!

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Judgment 16.2

They didn’t run to Andy and Ellie’s location.  Those two were to the northwest of the lawyer’s contingent, and Rose’s group was to the south.

Everyone, the lawyers and demons excluded, headed west, deeper into a sleeping, frozen Jacob’s Bell.  Evan and Isadora flew, the rest walked.

“Where can we go?” the Elder Sister asked.

“Uncle Laird’s house,” Alister said.  “He has protections against demons.”

“Given the local color, I’d think everyone would,” the Astrologer said.

“Everyone does,” the High Priest said.  “To some degree, anyway.”

“He has protections against demons that were taught to him by the local diabolist,” Alister clarified, between pants for breath.  “Including a protection against the thing that took over Johannes.”

“Johannes is the piper, sorcerer of the north end of this city” the High Priest clarified.  “Previously the leading contender for Lord of Jacob’s Bell.”

Rose felt a chill, and it was mirrored in a way by a near-simultaneous sensation from the spirit that dwelt within her.  The two sensations were just different enough for it to feel uncomfortable.

“He could be a contender again,” she voiced the thought aloud.

There were only the sounds of running footsteps, as everyone present digested the idea.  A demon-possessed individual taking over Lordship.

It wouldn’t be a long reign, Rose thought, but that might only mean more suffering in a shorter span of time.

It wouldn’t have to be a long reign, whatever happened.

To Rose’s right, the Elder Sister directed the Eye at a car.

The rag-wrapped elemental touched one car.  Smoke billowed from under the hood, then froze in time as the Eye backed away.  The elemental lagged behind the group, not fast enough to catch up after the momentary pause.

If they were going to get attacked from behind, Rose judged, better that it be the elemental than them.

“Oh!” Evan piped up.  He was flying closer  “Oh!  Elder Sister!  You’re the person to ask!  I’ve got this idea-”

“No!” Tiff, Ty, and Rose all said, together.

Blake stirred within her, and she could feel his restlessness.  There was so little he could do in this situation, and as her recent encounter with Surbas had indicated, she wasn’t well suited for an outright fight.

If there were battle lines, time to plan, she might have found her niche.  But running and fighting on the fly like this wasn’t that niche.

Could Blake provide that?  Maybe, but it seemed too monumental.  If he did give her something of that scale, what would the damage be?  Would she be recognizable?  Would he?

She vaguely recognized Laird’s home, but the memories were fuzzy.  Her first inclination was to think it was because of damage Blake had done…

Which it was, quite possibly.  Just not so much his fault.  It was a consequence of him being who he was and her being who she was, at the time.  She’d been in the mirror world then.

“Stop!” a high voice called out.

They stopped.

Heads turned.

It was the little girl, Fell’s niece, who had called out.

“They’re on our heels,” the Elder Sister said.  “Why are we stopping, Emily?”

“Illusion,” Emily said.  “Malcolm.  It has to be.”

“Illusion?” Alister asked.  “Here?”

“My bird eye superpowers don’t see anything,” Evan said.  He’d landed on the girl’s shoulder.

“I- I’m not sure,” Emily said.  “I mean, you can keep animals from seeing too, even with the keener senses, and I guess he could.  But it is illusion.”

Every set of eyes present, and there were quite a few, roved over the area.

“Paige,” Isadora said.  “As we practiced.  When we studied the way things were, we used tools, remember?”

Paige had gone still.  Stage fright, or something else.

“Remember?” Isadora said, and the word was less coaxing and more pressure.  Insistence.

“I do,” Paige said.

“Then hurry,” Isadora said, stern.

Paige nodded.  Her eyes briefly met her twin’s.

“I need light,” she said, not looking away from Peter, though he was hardly equipped to fulfill the request.

The Elder Sister produced a flame.

“Brighter,” Paige said, looking away from Peter.

As the light increased in intensity, Paige raised a hand, a short knife held high.

The blade caught the light, and it reflected it, casting a thin triangular beam on the houses around them.

She turned the blade to adjust the direction that the beam was cast, walking backward.

Passing over Laird’s house, the blade cast shadows.

Above the door, perched, was a small figure, feathered wings spread.  Below, moving across the front lawn, were two large, adult-sized shadows.

“Show yourself!” the sphinx ordered.

They weren’t given a choice.  She’d pushed, and whatever was shrouding them broke, stirring around them as sand, rather than snow.

The figures were still mid-stride as the shroud peeled away, closing the distance.

The Elder Sister used the light she was producing and cast it out, drawing a line of fire to block the two figures from approaching.  The light from the flame made their faces clearly visible.  Laird and Fell.

The Elder Sister cast out more fire, and Laird gestured, deflecting it, as the pair backed away.

Fell raised a gun, and Ty and Tiff moved simultaneously, Ty with papers in hand, and Tiff with a hand outstretched.

Fell didn’t shoot.

Nobody moved, as they settled into a light standoff, the two constructs on the front steps of the house that was supposed to be a sanctuary, the group on the road outside.

The imp had flown here, brought or resummoned the constructs.

That they had their ability to practice was scary enough.

“Someone please tell me we didn’t kill them, toward the end there,” Nick said.

“That we didn’t?” the Elder Sister asked.

“Because if we did, then that imp can bring them back again and again.”

“We didn’t,” Isadora said, with confidence  “I saw.  Malcolm Fell disappeared in the confusion, very literally, and I was watching the chronomancer, he retreated.  Neither were far enough back to be caught by the explosion.  Nobody defeated them.”

“I’m hopeful nobody will,” Laird added his own voice to the conversation, raising it to make himself clearly heard.  “I can’t help but note you lost your ring, Alister.”

Alister looked down at his stump.

Laird raised his own hand.  The ring was on his finger.  No, a ring.

“That’s not real,” Alister said.

Laird took a backward step.  He put his hand on the doorknob, “And this house is supposed to be protected against entry from unfamiliar persons, unless you decided to revoke that security measure?”

Alister didn’t answer.

Laird turned the knob, and found it locked.

He raised a hand, and gestured.

The click of the locks shifting was audible.

“It seems my demesne recognizes me,” Laird said.

“It is not your demesne,” Alister said.  “You and your ring are forgeries.”

“I’m real,” Laird said.  He spread his arms, “Enough to matter.”

The Elder Sister lashed out with more fire.  Laird deflected it.

“Enough to stop you if you do that,” Laird said, and it sounded vaguely patronizing.

The Eye lashed out, something far more intense, like the shower of sparks that might fly from an exploding transformer or downed power wires, and Laird threw himself back at the door, passing into the house.

The torrent of sparks and arcs of electricity died at the threshold of the door.

Fell had moved, too.  Rose turned to look to the left, where Fell now stood, distant from the house, then reached out to touch the shoulders of Paige and the Elder Sister.

Paige, again, produced the revealing light.

The image of Fell disintegrated into sand.  The real Fell was revealed as a shadow, a solid twenty paces away, more to the group’s left than to the front.

Before anyone could break the shroud, he swept one arm at the ground.  Snow stirred, a cloud of powder six feet high, blocking the light.  When the stirring came to a stop and the light shone through, Fell wasn’t there.

Rose eyed the demon above the door, then the man who stood behind it.

A mockery of a person, turned into a slow burning flame that would slowly destroy all that had tied that person to the world.

“We have trouble approaching from behind us,” Isadora said.  “We’re being followed, the group from the house.”

“Should I scout?”  Evan asked.  “I can keep an eye out.”

“No,” Rose said.  “If imps are flying around, I don’t know that we want you getting caught.”

“I won’t get caught!”

“Stay, it’s safer.”

“Blake trusts me!”

Rose hesitated.

“Keep us alive,” Alister jumped in.  “Stay close, help.  The sphinx will keep us updated, I think?”

“She will,” Isadora said.  “They are getting closer.  If it reassures anyone, they’re moving more slowly, but let’s not waste time.”

Rose clenched her hands, and was surprised to find that she was already clutching Alister’s one hand, squeezing it painfully hard rather than forming a fist.

They’re taking the city like it’s effortless.  They’ve got vestiges like Laird to take these key points, or remove key players, and they’ve got Johannes for the North End.

“We should go,” the High Priest said.  “Another sanctuary.  It has to be better than getting flanked here.  If we reached out to Sandra-”

“That thing has the house,” Alister said, his voice stern.  “I have family members in there.  A bulk of the family’s texts and tools are in there.  Do we really want to let them have that?”

On the other side of Alister, Ainsley stepped a fraction closer to him, and slipped a phone out of her pocket.  She began dialing, without looking.

“Do we have a choice?” the Astrologer asked

“He also has a copy of the ring,” Rose said, her voice quiet.  “If he uses that to reach out to the entire Behaim family…”

“We lose a number of allies, I take it,” the Elder Sister said.

“If you want to be pragmatic about it,” Alister said.  “I prefer to phrase it as ‘a bunch of existences end rather horribly, and the demons win a meaningful victory.'”

“I don’t,” the Elder Sister said.  “Believe me, I don’t want to be pragmatic when I could be more human, but all of this is hard enough to take in.  You know, I could blame to you two for inviting us into this mess.”

“That’s a debate for another time,” Rose said.  “Let’s focus on the now.”

“For now,” the High Priest said, putting a hand on Emily’s shoulder, pulling the little girl back from the edge of the group and toward the middle, “Let’s keep you from getting touched by your uncle Malcolm.”

“I can’t locate him anymore, but he’s out there.  Circling us.  I’ve never seen him like this,” the girl said.

“I have,” the High Priest said.  “I saw his predecessor do it too, but I was young then.  If things had gone differently, you’d have been raised to do it as well.”

“Do what?  I was told, but…”

“You’d stalk.  Hunt.  Solve problems,” the Elder Sister said.

We’re the problem he’s solving right now, Rose thought.

But the inverse was true, too.  Except her side was the one with the time limit, with pursuers on the way.  These vestiges were a problem to solve.

“These vestiges,” she said.  “They do damage through connections.  I don’t think any of us want to touch them, but their footprints form a connection to the ground, and they aren’t doing any damage I can see there.  If anyone is going to deal with them, it should be someone with as few connections to them as possible.”

“Easier said than done,” Alister said, watching Laird.  “It’s the people with connections to them that have the ability to deal with them.”

Like the novice illusionist dealing with Fell.

“Then I would suggest,” Isadora said, “That you give very good advice and leave it at that.”

Alister shook his head.  “Not that simple.”

“Of course not,” the sphinx said.  “I’m sensing hostile intent from our invisible gunman.  Oh, he’s backing off now that I’ve announced it.”

Most of the group was facing outward now, wary for an attack from any direction.  The atmosphere grew a touch more tense after the sphinx’s statement.

“Aren’t invisible assholes supposed to leave footprints or disturb the snow?” Peter asked.  “That’s how it works in the movies.”

“I learned how to stop doing that on my second day of studying illusions,” Emily said.

“Well aren’t you precocious,” Peter said, affecting a tone.  Ainsley jabbed him.  Paige simultaneously shot him a disgusted look.

“Can’t win,” Peter muttered.

“In more ways than one,” Ty said, sounding a little defeated.  Maybe a little broken.

He looked so tired.  Rose was a little startled to see it.  It was like looking at her mom and seeing how she suddenly looked fifty, instead of just looking like mom.

It stung, and it made her feel uncomfortable, realizing that his weariness was partially her fault.  She’d leaned so much on him…

She had to do something, and the best thing she could do was help work through this problem.

“They don’t want to die,” Rose said.  “Self preservation is a part of them.  Something instinctual is probably telling them that they can sustain themselves by consuming us.  Fell won’t attack until he’s reasonably certain he can do it and get away alive after the fact.”

“Ainsley!” Laird called out.

Ainsley startled.

“I can use the Sight.  I’m well aware that you just contacted my wife.  Or rather, that she just answered your repeated attempts.”

He very deliberately looked up at the ceiling above him.

“Maybe I should go say hi to her,” Laird said.  “Or my sons?”

Ainsley brought the phone to her ear, hand over the mouthpiece.  Instructions for those within the house.

Laird smiled a little.  Smug.  The Behaims had a way of looking so smug.

“What do you want, Laird?” Rose called out, hoping to distract him.

“What do you think?” Laird asked.

“More to the point,” Alister muttered, “Why hasn’t he gone into the house?”

Rose looked at the doorway.  The front step was scorched, the snow there melted, where the Eye had struck.

“Threshold,” she said.  “The barrier there.”

Alister’s eyes widened.

Rose’s eye fell on the imp above the door.  “If you could get to the door, could you get inside?”

“I have permission.  The barrier allows only people with Behaim blood and those with names written in the guestbook inside.  Major members of the family can give permission, but guests will feel uncomfortable.”

“Because books,” Ainsley said.  “Magical paraphernalia.  Better to keep visits short.

“Is there a back door?” Rose asked.

Alister snapped his head in Ainsley’s direction.  Ainsley nodded.

“That’s a yes, then,” Rose said.  Her eyes turned to the imp, perched above the door.  Murr wasn’t a very vocal or active imp, but god damn, was he troublesome.  “Need to deal with that, and there’s still Fell, who’s liable to capitalize on any distraction.”

“Distraction is a good idea,” the High Priest said.  “Not my forté.”

“It’s mine,” the little girl said.  “But Uncle Malcolm is a lot better at it than me.”

Too many conditions.  These vestiges made life so difficult.

“They’re arriving in a minute,” Isadora said.  “Whatever damage that explosion did, they’ve recuperated.”

No time to plan, if proper plans were even possible.

Her eye fell on the shadow of someone on the upper floor, peering through a window.

“Go,” Rose said, “Go!  Evan-”

“On it!”

We’ll figure it out in the process.

Alister and Ainsley broke away.  Without communicating anything overtly, they’d already chosen their respective directions.

Alister headed for the front door.  Ainsley sprinted for the back.

The group had the knights, they had the sphinx, they had the Eye.

Rose had to hope they could deal with Fell.

Her eyes were on the demon.

What was it?  Not ruin, not darkness.

What plane did it operate on?  Not madness, not feral.  Abstract?

It brought back the dead.  Defied natural order.  But they weren’t truly dead.  They were memories, tainted ones.

Grief?

Choir of sin.

The choir of sin was one of the hardest to deal with.  It required certain human conventions to combat.  Of those conventions, one stood out.

But Blake was there, stirring to life, almost eager to have something to supply.

She closed her eyes, wincing in pain as the memories were pushed to the surface, the scenes distorting, fragments missing.

As if she’d lose the memories in the end, as a price for having them supplied.

But it was a near-perfect recall.  Being in church.  Reading the words, the tips for pronouncing Latin.

The Latin words, ones she didn’t even understand, flowed from her mouth, as the memories were supplied, one after another.

Words became a chant, and, the chant became song.  A hymn.

The hymn made for a pattern, structure, the religion it evoked made for years of tradition and symbolism, reinforced by the collective of man.

To ward off what she hoped was an imp, designed or born to work against mankind on an intrinsic level.

The imp stirred in reaction.

Discomfort?

Gunshots rang out, and people at the edges of Rose’s group dropped.

Her words faltered.

The sphinx and the imp both lunged at the same time.  The sphinx reaching for Fell, way off to the right, the imp going for Rose.

Ty did what he could to erect a barrier, throwing papers into the air, drawing an image, but the imp bypassed it.  Wrong kind of defense for this threat.

The Astrologer glowed, a different collection of points of light, and a great ram appeared in the air.

The imp moved away.

“Brute force works!” the Astrologer shouted.

Rose nodded, raising her voice as she resumed the hymn.

But even though the imp was held at by, shadows all around them grew deeper by the second.

More?

And, worse, Alister and Ainsley were at the house, with no backup.

Another gunshot.  Ty fell backwards, and the movement seemed oddly fake, it was so slow, out of sync with the noise.

The blood was real, however.

“Fuck!” Ty shouted.  “Ah, god!”

Rose only managed to glimpse Fell for an instant before he was gone.

She managed to keep track of the words.  It was hard, because a number of letters were pronounced differently from how they were written, and the words weren’t quite words that came naturally, though they were vaguely familiar.  It mandated focus.

The imp was up there, almost posing in the air, legs crossed, arms and wings spread, fragments of bone and feathers radiating around it, staring through its mask of bone.

Fell stepped out of shadows, gun pointed at Rose’s head.

She already knew moving would, barring magical aid, do nothing.  One couldn’t dodge bullets.  Unless, maybe, they were Blake, or a certain small sparrow.

Instead, she met his eyes with her own.

She pushed Conquest into her gaze.  The glare of a tyrant, a condescending, arrogant, unflinching stare.

It was, as it happened, a connection of sorts.  Conquest had dominated Fell’s life, controlled the man’s destiny.  For this effigy of Fell, well, it was one more connection to use.

With her own gaze, she could see the connection snap into being, the taint dancing along it, reaching out to attack Rose by another angle.

She’d maybe made him hesitate in pulling the trigger for a second, maybe two.  But she’d opened herself up to ruin.  Look away, and he’d shoot.  Stare, and he’d use the connection between eyes, windows to the soul, to consume her.

She kept up the hymn, because to do otherwise would doom all the others, and she stared Fell down, as he brought about her end.

The connection was broken.  Rose blinked.

A mermaid’s tail slapped left, then right, as she tore into Fell.

Rose blinked.

Bloody strings and tatters hanging from between narrow, fishlike teeth, Green Eyes looked at Rose with one intact eye glowing in the gloom.

Green Eyes spat out a gobbet of flesh, then dove into deeper snow, disappearing beneath.

She hadn’t been with the group.  Rose had barely even thought about her.

Blake hadn’t given Rose a connection to the mermaid.  No fondness.

That momentary look that she’d been given, it left her feeling uneasy.

She’d seen horrible things, but the mermaid was somehow one that Rose felt would linger more in her mind while she tossed and turned at night.  Perhaps it was due to Green Eyes’ connection to Rose, or the very human loathing that emanated from a very inhuman form.

Growing up, Rose had been well educated in just how close to home and heart that particular kind of loathing could get.

Alister was at the door, and Laird was standing on the opposite side.  Alister couldn’t approach, but Laird couldn’t back away.

Laird’s head turned.

Rose felt something change.  A shift in pressure, like a door to the outside opening.  Ainsley had broken down the barrier.

“Run!” Isadora called out.  “They’re here!”

One small advantage gained, another major move by enemy forces.

The lawyers were here.  At the far end of the street.  Ms. Lewis and Mr. Levin.  Johannes and Faysal were absent.

The house wouldn’t work as a hiding place.  They couldn’t get to Laird and defeat him in time, especially within his own demesne.

They couldn’t leave him there unmolested, either.

“Burn it!” Rose shouted, abandoning her hymn.  Tiff was quick to throw out another temporary barrier to block the imp as the barrier of words ceased to have an effect.  “Tear down the house!  Get the family out!  Everyone else run!”

Isadora pounced on the edge of the roof, where a window jutted out.  She clawed at it with a great leonine paw, but did no damage.

Laird’s wife and children were just past the glass.

The glass shattered from within.  The sphinx worked to help them out, pulling the two boys against her chest.

The Eye had reached the ground floor.  He passed within the doors, and the walls on either side of him lit up, as if they’d been doused in gasoline and touched with a match.

The rest, Rose included, ran as a mob, and it wasn’t pretty, nor was it organized.  They didn’t have a destination.

Still, they put distance between themselves and the lawyers.

“Hurry!” Isadora cried out.

Isadora’s focus was on the house’s interior.  The bottom floor was already blazing, and the upper floor was joining it.

If Laird was capable of putting the fire out, he would have already.

“Don’t hesitate!” Isadora shouted, louder, an order.

One of the boys reached, shouted something Rose couldn’t hear over the fracas, over her own voice singing the hymn loud enough to maybe keep the imp away.

There was a scream.  The same sort of scream that had come from the Shepherd.  One that went beyond simple sound, reverberated to the soul, and not in a good way.

Isadora twisted her head and body away, not looking, she spread her wings, and she leaped from the roof.

With the boys, but not Laird’s wife.

She couldn’t fly with a burden, so she landed close to the group instead.  She dropped the boys near Paige, then ran alongside the group, wings folded.

Alister and Ainsley were following, catching up, and the Eye followed behind, neither catching up nor falling behind.

Rose looked at the house, and she saw the fires taking it.  Less than a minute had elapsed in total.

She looked for and spotted the connection between the boys and Laird.  She saw it break, dissolving.

The construct was gone.

Her eye turned to look at the pursuers.

They were falling behind, but that was no guarantee that they’d stay behind.  They did what they did for a reason, and if a diabolist like them was reckless, the diabolist would lead a short, unfortunate existence.

If they’d wanted to attack, back at the edge of the Library, they could have been a lot more aggressive than they had.

A desire to avoid recklessness was part of it.  Another part of it was that they did have the tools to utterly destroy their enemy.  They could act in a measured, deliberate fashion, and each action would be meaningful.  Claiming Johannes had been one such action.  Claiming Faysal through Johannes had been another.  Even sending Laird here, to deny the group one kind of sanctuary, it had probably been decided with care and strategy.

If Rose’s allies kept running, they would eventually tire.  They would make mistakes, or get whittled down.

In the now, however, Rose knew they needed respite.  They needed a chance to get everything in order, and plan, or discuss.

The hymn passing through her lips, she realized they did have one answer.

She gestured at Ty, and it maybe said something that she’d reached out to him, that she’d thought of him as quickly as she did.

She touched her index fingers together at the second knuckle, one horizontal, one vertical.

“Cross?  Religion?” Alister asked.

“Church,” Ty said.

Quicker than most gave him credit for.  Creative.

“Sanctuary,” Alister said.  “Except-”

Rose shook her head.  She repeated the gesture.  The hymn continued, almost an afterthought.

“The church is far away,” Alister said.  “And they’re-”

He looked back.  Rose joined him, glancing back.  She caught a glimpse of the imp, following at a greater distance, slowly backing off, but she didn’t see the lawyers at all.

They’d relocated.  Taken another path, or headed to another destination.

Rose feared they’d beat her group to their next destination as well.

If they didn’t, well, that was almost as bad.  It meant they were up to something else altogether.

“Enchantment,” the little girl said.  She was part of a smaller group, including Laird’s boys and Evan.

Rose’s ability to follow the girl’s line of thought was almost interrupted by her recollection that Johannes’ music could captivate children.  In the children’s story, the Pied Piper had rounded up all the children of Hamelin.

“Enchantment,” Alister said.  “Another vestige?”

“Helping,” the girl said, between pants.

It was, Rose realized.  Now that she looked for it, she could see how the route was getting clearer, shorter.  They were skipping the occasional city block.

Reeled in, she thought.

She stopped singing the hymn, in part because she was getting out of breath.  The imp was gone, faded into the shadows of the sunless sky above them.

They reached the church in half the time it should have taken, and there were no enemies waiting for the there.

Sandra stood at one side of the door, alone, no Duchamps with her.

Mags stood on the other side.

Rose’s group was sweating despite the cold, panting, many of them with lungs and throats raw from sucking in gasps of cold air.

“Thank you,” Rose told Sandra.

“I dread the explanations,” Sandra said.  “But we’ll need to hear them.”

Rose nodded.

Her teeth were chattering, and it wasn’t entirely due to the cold.  The adrenaline was still thrumming through her, and Conquest wasn’t keeping it all at bay anymore.

She wasn’t sure if that had something to do with the damage that had been done to Conquest through Fell, or if it was just that she was reaching the end of her rope.

“May we come in?” Rose asked.

“You may,” Sandra said.  “Single file, please.  If you’re a regular councilgoer, please reaffirm that this is sanctuary.”

Rose nodded again.

Alister was the first to go through the door, pausing to say, “I ask for and support the sanctuary here, established when the town was new.”

He moved on.  Rose followed.  She didn’t consider herself regular enough to matter, and she was too tired to find the words.

“Hey Blake,” Mags greeted her.

Blake stirred within Rose.

Rose frowned.

She turned, saw that Nick was behind her, and reached to Nick’s side, drawing the man’s machete from his side, metal gliding against sheath.

She swung the weapon around, stopping just shy of swinging it into the side of Mags’ throat.

Mags blinked.  “Um.”

“As I recall, there’s only one faerie in Jacob’s Bell that’s that bad with names,” Rose said.

“I-” Mags started.  She shook her head, blinking hard.  “I’m not a faerie.  I’m Mags.  Born human, still human, as far as I can tell.  Ambassador.  I was using my Sight to scan you guys.  You look a lot different when the perspective changes more toward the mystical.”

“She’s not lying.  I asked her to screen everyone,” Sandra said.  “For the record, I’m glancing over each of you as well.”

Rose’s hand shook as she lowered the machete.

She handed it back to Nick.

On a level, she felt almost delirious, making her way to the front of the Church.

Others were gathered within.  The faceless woman, the revenant.  Summoned things.  Goblins.  Practitioners from Sandra’s camp.  Scattered Behaims.  The junior council.  The Briar Girl.

Ellie was here, as were Andy and Eva.  Ellie sat alone, looking very bewildered.

Mara was absent, but that wasn’t a great surprise.

Still in there, Blake? she wondered.

Blake stirred.

A little less active, recently.  Had he hurt himself, moving things around?  Or had Conquest hurt him, during one of the instances where she’d drawn on Conquest for power?

Or was he just being good, trying to minimize damage?

She noted the entry of the mermaid into the church.  The mermaid gravitated toward the faceless woman and revenant.  At the back, while Rose was right at the front.  The mermaid was seated before Rose even reached the front row.

Rose found a spot by Alister.  A part of her wondered if she should sit there, or if it would be weird.  She’d never dated, never had friends, even.  The memories in her head were of dating girls, but Blake hadn’t been so kind, or so unkind, as to give her the attraction or anything like that.  They were incidental elements, hastily carved out and included in the collection of memories meant to imply familiarity, teamwork, friendship, bonds.

Now, removed from everything, it felt weird to sit beside Alister.

Need to get Blake out, she thought.  It wasn’t a healthy thing, to keep him so close.  Either he would spread his influence and start to take her over, she would digest him, or they’d remain like they were, and steadily erode one another.

The Thorburns were settling in just behind her.  Ellie had gravitated this way.

It made for an odd combination, with the Behaims having already positioned themselves in anticipation of Alister taking the customary spot of the Behaim leader.

A bit of a family reunion, this.  Rose twisted around in her seat, arm on the back of the pew, to look at them.

“Callan’s dead,” Peter said.  “Kathy’s gone the way of the monster.  Not sure what’s going to happen there.”

“Okay,” Paige said, quiet.  “I don’t know how to feel about that.”

Peter shrugged, “It is what it is.  You can hate them and still be sad that family met a bad end.”

“Why hate him?” Christoff asked.  “He sacrificed himself in the end.”

“And he made my life hell,” Peter said.  “I’m supposed to forgive?”

Rose had tensed.  It was, very possibly, a very bad sentiment to express so loudly in this church, around so many individuals and groups who had reason to hate diabolists, while Rose’s efforts in the other direction were comparatively very small and very recent.

Christoff was scowling, but he hadn’t argued.

“So.  Sister.  What’s with… that?” Peter asked.

“That?”

“I mean, I’m not sure if I should congratulate you.  You’re into tits?  Those are the biggest damn tits I’ve seen.  I mean, she’s a giant, practically-”

“Stop,” Paige said, putting a hand to her face.

Ellie was cackling.

“And if you’re into pussy, well-“

“Meow,” Roxanne added.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Peter said.

“I can’t lie anymore,” Paige said.  “So believe me when I say I loathe you, Peter.”

“Eh,” Peter said.  He shrugged.  “I love you too.”

Haggard, worn, having been to the Abyss and back in several cases, many of the Thorburns were now acting so casual.

The benefit of being survivors, maybe.  Screwed up, but survivors.

Rose heard a clearing of a throat, and turned to see Mags at the front, just before the altar.

“As ambassador, I’ll be leading us through this meeting,” Mags said.

Now we just have to survive what comes next, Rose thought.

Judgment 16.3

“I’ll be honest,” Mags said, “I’m not the sort of ambassador or whatever that’s going to be super formal or do everything right.  Let me get out in front of everything and make it clear that I mean no offense, and, really honestly, what’s going on outside looks like the sort of thing that makes us want to get past the talking and get to doing.”

Rose couldn’t help but notice that there were a few nodding heads from among the Junior Council.  Mags might not have been the type to manage a diplomatic arrangement with a Faerie noble, but she could speak to the younger, more human demographic.

“Do we need to do any introductions?” Mags asked.  “Gut feeling, personal preference, there’s a few new faces.  Do we need to know who is present and what they’re capable of?”

“I think that would be a good idea,” Sandra said.  “I know and have met virtually everyone in this room, barring a few sitting at the edges or back of the room, but teamwork will be important, moving forward.”

“Uh, right.  Good.  That’s Sandra Duchamp, for those who don’t know.  She was leader of the Duchamp family, before she recused herself.  Most of you know her, as she said.  The rest of you Duchamps, please stand?”

The gathered Duchamps, in two or three separate groups split up over four rows, rose from their seats.

“Enchantresses.  In their number, they have a scattered assortment of practitioners of a bunch of different types…”

“Not nearly as many as we had, before incidents earlier in the night,” Sandra said.

She glanced at Rose, and Rose felt Blake stir.

Rose maintained her composure.  Chin up, eyes turned forward.

“Behaims,” Mags said, pausing while they rose and turned to face other members of the church.  Rose looked up at Alister as he stood.  Mags added, “Chronomancers, led by Alister.”

Alister raised a hand, remaining standing for a moment as others returned to their seats.

“Two of three major powers,” Mags said.  “Johannes isn’t here, and according to Sandra, that’s because he’s dead?”

“Worse than dead,” Alister said.  “He’s possessed.  The most powerful practitioner in Jacob’s Bell, along with his gatekeeper familiar, is now under the control of a demon.”

“Okay,” Mags said.  “That’s bad.”

She seemed momentarily at a loss for words.

“Uh,” she said, floundering a bit.  “We’ll get back to that in a second.  Other players.  Briar Girl, off to the side there.  Local hermit and nature mage.  We have the local assortment of monsters, both native and visiting, toward the back right corner there…”

“Eat spunk!” one goblin shouted, as heads turned its way.  A larger goblin reached between its legs and hauled it off the back of a pew.

“The two witch hunters who keep them in line and serve the council are Andy and Eva,” Mags said, gesturing to the pair, who were sitting in their customary positions, at the far left of the stage.

“Absent are Crone Mara, recently removed from power, and our local Faerie-in-exile, plural, who seem to want to keep their heads down.  Unfortunately.  Moving on to Toronto…” Mags said.

Skipping me? Rose wondered.

Was it because she wasn’t considered an ally, but an extension of the problem?

“I’m afraid I don’t know you.  If you could introduce yourselves, that would help,” Mags said.

“I believe we’ve met,” the Elder Sister said.

Mags shook her head.

Having been skipped in the order of things, Rose was reluctant to jump into the conversation.  It might have been easier to do if she could draw more on Conquest, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to lean on that connection so soon after Fell had eroded part of that connection.  Where drawing on Conquest before might have been as easy as drawing in a breath, it didn’t feel quite so natural now.

She didn’t want to test that and be wrong.  Not when it might affect her, or it might affect Conquest.  Too many people in attendance had relationships of some sort to Conquest, and might react badly to a sudden broadcast of Conquest’s presence.

He could stay where he was, largely dormant, even if it meant she didn’t have nearly as much power to draw on.

It was the sphinx who jumped to the rescue.  “The girl many of us were acquainted with was one of the local Faerie, as I understand it.  Wearing this one’s face.”

“Ah.  Yeah,” Mags said.

“My name is Isadora, and Paige, sitting over there, is with me.  She is a tool for me to express some of my power with.”

Rose could see that Paige had been put on the spot.  Her cousin hurried to stand and present herself.

Even as Peter whispered, “Even she knows you’re a tool.”

Still smiling, looking proper, Paige managed a short, sharp kick at Peter’s shin.

He bit his tongue to avoid crying out in pain.

Rose privately wished one of the two had been able and willing to ignore the other.

“While everyone is looking this way, I am Jeremy Meath, High Priest of Dionysus.  My god’s favor is limited, tonight, largely spent.  I still hope to find a resolution.”

The introductions continued.

“I am the Elder Sister, Lord of Toronto.  You should know who I am.  These three women are elementalists in my employ.  This is the Eye of the Storm, a moderate elemental.”

“Emily Attwell, illusionist.  I’m part of the Toronto council for my own protection, as my father didn’t make many friends.”

“Diana.  Astrologer.  I don’t have a lot to bring to the table, but more because it’s fixated in Toronto.  I brought three arrangements, and a fourth to recharge another.  I’ve already used two.”

“I’m Nick, of the Knights of the Basement.  With the Elder Sister’s permission, we joined this conflict over the Lordship, as Rose Thorburn was very convincing in her explanation of how the city might be swallowed up by darker powers.  We’re novices, better with guns than with practice, though we prefer weapons and armor augmented with practice.”

“I’m the Queen’s Man,” another said.  “I’m well out of my depth.  I serve a spirit of patriotism for a place that isn’t here, my responsibilities lie more with gathering knowledge so others might deal with Others, but this isn’t a realm I can contribute anything to.  Not demons, never demons.”

Rose hadn’t paid much attention to the man, and it seemed it was for a reason.  He didn’t have much presence or power.

“If nothing else,” Mags said, “You’ve helped me launch into the next part of our discussion.  Rose?  Thorburns, allies of Rose?  Could you present yourselves?”

Oh, she skipped me so she could leave me until last.

She put more thought into this than I gave her credit for.

Rose stood from the pew.  Alister held her hand, giving it a squeeze before letting go.

The stares were so hostile, Rose realized.  They were scared and that fear sought someone to blame.

But, in the midst of that, there was something gratifying in having so many people stand with her.

At the very beginning of this, she’d been so alone.  Even if the memories were spotty, heavily and badly edited, she could connect the dots, and she knew the feelings of loneliness back in the beginning were real.

Even when she’d had Blake there, when she’d worked alongside him, she’d been entirely isolated.  Only a surprise kiss from Padraic had broken that seclusion.  If there was anything else, it had disappeared along with her memories of Blake.

Now, she could see, that Paige was standing with her.  Tiff had her back, while Ty wasn’t here.  She’d seen him come in, which meant he had to be lying down somewhere, hopefully bandaged or healed by some practice.

She felt bad that she hadn’t focused on him more.  Too distracted, too tired.

But Peter was standing with her, and Roxanne was too.  Christoff, Evan…

They shuffled a bit as they returned to their seats.  Rose was left standing.

“Am I wrong, or do you know the most about what’s going on?” Mags asked.

“I think I do,” Rose said.

Mags took a step to stage-right, away from the Altar, and away from Rose.

Rose took that as her invitation to approach.

She’d invited these people here to force them into a conflict.  All well and good when they had to decide between fighting the enemy and fighting her, but the enemy wasn’t here.

Blake moved around inside her, touching on different things.  It felt weaker than before, though no less uncomfortable.

This is the culmination of everything I’ve studied.  All of grandmother’s work.  A failure here would be devastating.

“Mags just introduced us.  Let me introduce them.  They are members of one of several groups that exist around the world, dedicated to diabolism.  They call themselves lawyers, and they sort of are in the activities they focus on, but that’s only theme.  There are others.  In each case, they’ve traded away their selves and souls to escape the consequences of their actions.  They wanted me to do the same.  In an abstract way, it speeds things along.  Gives more power to their side.”

The room was impossible to read, in expression and body language.  She had to dig for some context to figure out how to address them, and she dug for the academic.  Just as she’d needed to fine-tune every assignment to the tastes and moods of her teachers, she did it here.  They wanted answers, to know what they were up against.

Blake had given her the information, she only needed to convey it.

“As a group, they’re strong, but not so strong they truly want to go head to head against Toronto or other major groups.  Or they weren’t, until they got Johannes and the gatekeeper, Faysal.  They have monstrous power at their disposal, but they’re not inclined to use it.  They help others use it, and I think they work with demons to do it, but the dynamic there is too complex to get into, and I’d be making less educated guesses and statements than I’m making now.”

Rose thought of Ornias.  The offer Ms. Lewis had made only made sense if the firm had been in direct communication with demons.  Ornias might well have promised great power at a minimal price, if only the firm helped establish first contact with a new diabolist and gave him access to the world.

Every set of eyes and ears was on her.

“As individuals,” Rose continued, “They’re people who sold out humanity, in ways many accused me of doing.  They want to finish with their deal and their loss of self and there’s a fucked up pyramid scheme where they can shave years off their sentences by sentencing others.

“In life, most were depraved, dangerous types.  The sort we all fear when we think of diabolists.  They could end this almost easily, but they’d destroy themselves to do it, and they won’t do that.  I believe they’re motivated by a desire to keep their group operating, and I think that if they fail to meet expectations, the power that makes their group possible is going to revoke its favor, and them with it.  Self preservation is going to come to a head with the need to keep their positions secure.  Our problem is that they already have the means of doing that.”

“Johannes,” Mags said.

“Johannes,” Rose agreed.  “And through him, they have Faysal.  The Barber that possesses Johannes has a physical form while he’s inside the body.  We don’t need to worry about his abstract nature.  We do need to worry that he can penetrate most barriers and protections.  Even here.  Alister Behaim knew some measures, but they won’t work while the Barber has a body.  It can rewrite reality with its shears, an object possessed in an entirely different sense, and it can carve a person or Other in two, giving each half the traits it wants.  It has all of this, it has Faysal, who can carry it anywhere, it has Johannes’ Demesne, and it has, I’m very concerned, the ability to crown itself Lord and seize Jacob’s Bell.”

Oh, so many of them had known individual elements, but so very few had heard the whole story.  Only Alister and Tiff were really equipped to know, and Tiff might well have been ignorant of the implications of possession.  Even Blake had been in the dark about parts.

She could feel his agitation.  He wanted to act.  She suppressed it.

“They are our enemies.  In the broader sense, we are fighting against the end of all things.  Not everything, now, but everything here, soon enough.  If they get what they want, they will take everything we are, everything we hold dear, and they will defile or destroy it all in the worst ways.”

There were murmurs.  Paranoid looks at the shadows.

Leaders in individual groups were trying to reassure, or organize.  Some people were standing from their seats, unwilling to sit and listen much longer.

Rose glanced at Mags, hoping for a call to order.

“I can’t,” Mags said, then said, “My dads.”

Not refusing to call things to order, but hesitating at the call to arms?

Was that part of it?  Why they were falling into disorder?  Behaims and Duchamps, maybe, who wanted to go find their family or friends who had stayed back rather than come to the meeting?

All in all, a disaster.

Rose had meant it as a rallying cry, a call to battle in the sense that, if they didn’t fight, all was lost.  Because it was.

But, she realized, Conquest still had an influence on her, as did her lack of social flexibility.  If she needed to intimidate, to be arrogant, or be formal, she could.  She’d been made to.  Yet in trying to raise them up, she’d ground them down instead.  In trying to give them vital information they could use, she’d outlined too much too fast.  She’d destroyed their morale.

She’d forgotten how much one person could fear for their loved ones.  She’d felt so little of that fear herself.

I’m too cold.

She wished she could call on Conquest here.  Even knowing it would sit badly with the Toronto practitioners and Others, it would give her the ability to seize control here.

Blake shifted, the movement too acute to be anything but a response to the thought.

She didn’t trust it.  Even as spooked and out of her depth as she was, ill-equipped to organize an outright war, she still trusted herself more than she trusted the incarnation’s power.

Rose swallowed hard.  Speaking as if they weren’t actively breaking ranks, she spoke out, “Listen!  My grandmother studied this enemy!”

That got attention.  People did listen.  Some.

Isadora opened her wings wide.  More heads turned that way.

But the sphinx was merely stretching.  She sat her leonine hind end on the church floor, beside the pews, and squared her shoulders, attention on Rose.

Thank you, Isadora.

“My grandmother studied this enemy.  She noted a great deal of what I described to you.  She studied demons and the way this world is put together.  Trying to find an out, a loophole.”

“Did she find it?” Isadora asked, calm.

Rose felt Blake provide something.  She gripped the sides of the altar, head bowed, as the ideas settled into place.

“You can answer the question without fear,” Isadora said.  “I can suppress instinct, tonight.”

“She found a way out for my family, kind of,” Rose said.  “She studied karma, and she decided to use a demon to break the family line.  If all had gone according to plan, the line of diabolists and the karmic responsibility would have ended with me.”

The words were hollow, coming out of her own mouth.  Not easy words to say.

“Our enemy here put safeguards in place, trying to set things up so the title of Thorburn diabolist passed from one of us to the next, but I was intended to outlast the others.  I was made from the cut of the demon’s shears.  My counterpart was made to die, and I was made to last.  Until all the other Thorburns were dead, the lawyer’s safeguards having no living cousins to default to, with childbirth being largely impossible on my part.”

She stared out at the others.

“If I hadn’t, the family was positioned to self destruct.  Each heir worse than the last, armed with a demon while residents of this town were equipped with a means of turning that demon back on them.”

Ellie and Roxanne stared back at her.

“Everything was planned, and I don’t know the entirety of her plans.  I do suspect that she had Laird help manipulate Jacob’s Bell into helping those plans along.  Putting pressure on us.  Being actively hostile.  Positioning everyone else as enemies.  Setting individuals in her own camp so they’re engineered to fail.  All to mask what she was doing right under the lawyers’ noses.”

Molly.  Even Blake.

“What I’m saying is this: they can be outplayed.  They can be beat. If we play our cards right.  The kink in the workings, one that the plan couldn’t account for, was Johannes, and it was Faysal.  Faysal was too Other to grasp the plan or the implications, just like the group was too big and focused on the whole of their work to see what one old woman was scheming.”

Even as she talked, she was getting something of an idea.

“I think,” Rose said, “And I welcome any other ideas, but this is one… I think Faysal and Johannes are still kinks.  Still the key to bringing down their power structure here.  I won’t deny that they’re terrifying, or that stakes are high.  But they’re unsteady.  They’re likely just as scared as we are, if not more.  Even if they don’t show it.”

She raised a hand to adjust her collar, and her hand trembled, visibly enough that people in the back row could have seen it.

Idiot, she admonished herself.  Damn it.  Can’t show weakness here.

And don’t you try and tell me to relax by shoving a memory into my head, it’ll do more harm than good, she thought, pushing the idea at Blake.

There was no response.

“They’re unstable, and we know exactly where we need to hit them.  We know their weakness – their scope is too broad.  They’re too big to see the small picture.  The bulk of their weapons are so devastating they’ll only use them as a last resort.  They want us scared and stupid.  They show off the power and knowledge they have readily and easily, theatrically, to mask their weaknesses and make themselves out to be more than they are.  But if my grandmother had won, they might well have suffered a telling blow, or collapsed entirely.  If we win, we can destroy them, utterly and completely.  We just have to win smart.”

She let the silence hang.

“Together,” she said.

This time, the silence was less strategic.  She waited, uncomfortable.

A bead of sweat ran down to the small of her back, as if to mark the passage of every long second that passed.  Cold against warm skin, dancing along her skin, touching minute droplets of moisture and tiny pale hairs, almost imperceptible to the eye, each touch provoking it to halt for a moment or changing direction.

She could see how tired so many of these people were, especially the locals.  The night had been endless, the wars in Jacob’s Bell and Toronto both had cut far too close to home for everyone present.

Nobody was speaking up to voice their support.  Even from her own camp, though she suspected there was a strategic reason for it.  If one of them backed her up, it would change the tone of things.  The others would have room to argue.

But, Rose realized, nobody wanted to argue to say that this was a bad idea, because they could get shouted down.

The atmosphere suggested that the next to speak would lose the argument.

One voice broke the silence.

“Penis!” a small goblin cried out.  “Peeeenissssssss!  Penispenispenis-”

One of the other Others at the back gave him a solid smack.

It did something, however, to ease the pressure.

“Well,” the Elder Sister said.  “I knew your grandmother.  I’m of the impression the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Rose was silent.  There was nothing she could say here that would position her better.

Turning it on me.  I can’t say I’m surprised, Rose thought.

“What you’ve done here, bringing us here to suit your greater strategy, it seems very similar to what your grandmother did with her own grandchildren.”

“In a sense,” Rose said.  “Is that really the concern here?”

“Isn’t it?” the Elder Sister asked.  “Your grandmother deceived you, and you admit she provided only a portion of the information.  She used some of you as sacrificial pawns.  If she made you to fulfill a role, and if it isn’t a coincidence that you’re as similar to her as you are, why shouldn’t we assume you’re not just as deceptive?  The type to provide only a share of the information needed, on a need-to-know basis?”

Rose felt Blake move, and it was an uncomfortable movement.  Close to the skin, touching the ribs.  Agitated, upset.

There was no good answer to that.  The Elder Sister wasn’t wrong.

“You’ve given us good information.  I understand you’ve worked hard to move away from the path that was laid out for you, and I believe you think you’re working to good ends.  But, all that said, you very recently called us out for not recognizing those demon-made vestiges for what they were.  You.  A demon-made thing.”

Rose was still.  Too scared to even tremble.

“You, a creation of a demon, brought us into this.  You’ve turned a bad situation into a worse one.  We’re dealing with powers so vast that they simply consume all they touch, and all you’ve done is add more wood for the fire.”

An all-out offensive, then.

“What would you have done?”

“What we have done,” the Elder Sister said.  “Left it be.  Minimize the damage.”

“As you did with Ur, the demon in the oil factory?”

“Yes.  As we did with the demon there.  As we will continue to do.”

“Even if people get consumed?  Stumble into the factory and get eaten?”

“We have more wards up than before.  Very few will slip past.  Are you going to tell me that your method was better?  How did that turn out?  I can’t quite remember.”

Rose grit her teeth.  She drew in a breath, and the Elder Sister spoke before she got a chance to give a response.

“We did the same with the Hyena.  We sealed it away to languish in obscurity until an opportunity to deal with the problem presented itself.”

Evan took flight.

“No!”  Evan said, loud.  “That is a bad, bad answer!”

“Evan!” Mags said.  “Let’s not-”

“You jerks,” Evan said.  “I thought it was Conquest who ordered it, but you’re okay with that idea!?  What’s wrong with you!?  You let me die!”

“-Agitate things,” Mags said, trailing off.  “Enough!”

The order didn’t help.

Mags suddenly stepped closer to Rose, who backed away a step at the movement.

The ambassador reached beneath the altar, picked up a length of pipe with a strap attached, then aimed it at the ceiling.

She jerked the pipe, and it fired off, a sudden, explosive sound.

Plaster and bits of wood rained from one spot at the side of the church.

“Order,” Mags said, calmly.  “Evan, little man, come here.”

“But-”

“Here.”

Evan winged his way over to Mags, who put him on one shoulder.

“Elder Sister?” Mags said.  “Do I have that title right?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?  What course of action do we take, right here and right now?”

“We minimize the damage,” the Elder Sister said.  “The sorcerer has a powerful demesne.  It’s a grievous loss for humanity as a whole, but I would approach the opposing forces and try to negotiate a resolution.  They don’t want this conflict, nobody but the Thorburn Diabolist has committed to it, and we can try to secure a total or partial release of everyone else here, along with a promise that the demon stay within the demesne.  We seal it within, we evacuate and condemn Jacob’s Bell so there is no town for the demon to claim Lordship over, and settle it at that.”

“And everything goes back to the way it was, with them winning just a little,” Rose spoke.  Her voice was soft, but the church was quiet enough to let the words carry.  Acoustics helped.

“Any option you propose, including an attack, the Elder Sister said, “Is going to see them winning a great deal more.  Even if you win, we collectively lose, because we’re simply feeding more of reality to the metaphorical flames, as soldiers in an ongoing war.”

Fear was going to win, in the end.  Fear drove individuals like the Astrologer to nod her head at the Elder Sister’s words.

Fear made the sphinx want to avoid this conflict altogether.  A rare creature who put great value on her own ageless life.

“Okay,” Mags said.  “Okay.  That’s one side.  Rose, what do you want?”

What did she want to do?

A heavy, heady question.  One Rose had already answered, in abstract.  Take out Johannes, hit the lawyers where it hurt.

But in terms of battle plans?

“I want to invite Ms. Lewis or one of the other lawyers inside,” Rose said.  “She’s not stupid.  She knows what we want, and she’ll hit us right there.  She’ll offer you exactly what you asked for.  Escape.  Freedom.  Concession.  But if you want to know what I want?  I want her to ask, and I want her to hear a no.”

“You want us to fight in a war no sane individual would take part in,” the Elder Sister said.  “One with permanent consequences, reaching well beyond simple life and afterlife.  A dozen or two dozen lives lost, a few more pieces of reality carved away, permanent damage to creation.  All to gamble that you can keep them from taking the sorcerer and demesne.”

Rose nodded.  “Damn straight.”

“Then why don’t we see?” the Elder Sister asked.  “Both of our plans start at the same place.  We talk to the enemy.”

“You want to talk to her, let her make her proposal, and see what people decide?”

“I know what I’ve decided,” the Elder Sister said, offering a small smile.  “If the others want to decide one way or the other when the time comes, then that’s up to them.”

Talk to the lawyer, let her offer a way out, then see who went with.

“I don’t think that’s the way to go,” Mags said.  “Um.  Does anyone have another plan?  Suggestions?”

There were a few exchanged glances and murmurs.

Nobody voiced any reply at all.

“Actually,” Rose said, meeting the Elder Sister’s eyes.  “It might be.”

The Elder Sister raised her eyebrows, genuinely surprised.

“Two concessions,” Rose said.

“Concessions?  You brought us here, why should we concede anything?”

Mags stepped forward, “Wait.  Let’s hear them first.  If we disagree after the fact, we can talk that out.”

“Fine.”

“First off, this is all or nothing.  Either everyone that can retreats, and I work with those who stay to try and kill Johannes and keep them from gaining power, or we all fight, and you help to create an opening for a strike.  Going halfway doesn’t achieve a thing.”

Rose frowned, then continued, “I know you’ve made a decision, but I’m worried you’re making that decision for others.  Conquest showed that’s very easy to do.  You have influence, given where you stand.”

“Ironic, coming from you.  At the head of the room, Conquest’s power visible to anyone who looks.”

Rose shrugged.  She didn’t trust her hands enough to make any other gesture.  “We let everyone present decide on their own, if and when the question gets asked.  You don’t get that ball rolling, you can’t be the first one to accept.”

“The goblins too,” Mags said.  “They don’t count, they can’t count.  If you little bastards fuck around here, I will hunt you down, I will bind you, and I will make you wish a demon had gotten you.”

“Fuck you!”

“You know I’ll follow through!” Mags said.

There wasn’t another shouted epithet, which Rose took as assent.

Rose nodded slowly.  That’s one problem out of the way.

“That’s a heavy concession,” the Elder Sister said.

“Yeah,” Rose said.  “Because if you don’t make it, if you just take the offer right away, you automatically win.  We all know it.  One person leaves and we’re weaker.  More people leave, and the ball gets rolling.  But that’s not a meaningful result.”

“What’s meaningful about your result?”

“That’s the second concession I want,” Rose said.

“The second?”

“Just… let me explain.  People are scared.  Let me… try to make sense of it all.”

“To convince them?”

“Not directly.  I’ve already made my argument, you’ve made yours.  I just… like I said, my grandmother studied how things work.”

The Elder Sister spread her arms.  “I reserve the right to stop you.”

Rose nodded.

She drew in a deep breath, and sighed.

“According to my grandmother, the demons already won, a long, long time ago.  They devoured the vast majority of the universe, and that’s why the planets are so relatively small, compared to the sheer amount of nothingness.  It’s why we’re so very tiny, in the grand scheme of it all.  But these things we erroneously call angels surged in strength, they spun out a complete universe from the scraps, and on select scraps, or on a select scrap, they prepared life to emerge.”

Rose glanced out over the room.

“It would be easy to say that the universe is an unending repetition of creation and death.  That this has happened before and it’ll happen again, and this is the heartbeat of the universe.  But in looking at the history of this world, both the clear history and the one behind the curtain, something stands out.  Us.

“We’re another force.  And we’re only still emerging.  We’re change.  We’re an equal to them.  We just don’t realize it yet.  All the Others took our faces and our personalities, or fragments of them, and Faysal’s kind and the demons did the same.  We’ve evolved so quickly in so short a time.  Faysal saw it in Johannes, as he tried to change the system with his new way of dealing with Others.  He tried to harness that.  Now the lawyers are doing the same.”

She let the words hang.

She could have explained, could have elaborated, but that would have violated the deal.  Would have verged too close to an outright attempt to sway the others to her side.

We’re capable of change.  Will you embrace that, or hand that power over to them?

“Does anyone have anything to add?” Mags asked.

There were murmurs.  A question was asked, but Rose could barely hear it.  About protecting others, one way or the other.  Some Behaims and Duchamps had family, tucked in their beds.

“Do what you think is right,” Mags said.

“Okay, that’s settled,” the Elder Sister said.  “How do we invite her in?”

Rose’s throat was dry.

“We just say her name.  Ms. Lewis.  To Ms. Lewis alone, we give permission to enter, for peaceful negotiation.”

The door opened.

Blood pounded in Rose’s ears.  Blake was writhing, anxious, restless, eager to act if he needed to act.  Maybe if he didn’t.

She couldn’t even hear Ms. Lewis’ footsteps, or the initial words the lawyer spoke.  A greeting.

She could process the words that Mags asked, see lips moving, just as she’d anticipated.  She knew what they were saying, but she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“…would like to offer an out, to those uninvolved parties,” Ms. Lewis said.

The silence that followed was louder than any tolling bell.

Last Chapter                                                                        Next Chapter

Judgment 16.4

Rose hadn’t expected to feel the burden of this decision.  Her hands gripped the sides of the altar, and she leaned forward, head bowing just a little, feeling as if an immense weight had settled on her from above.

The candles that were set in sconces in the pillars of the church didn’t move or dance.  There was no smoke.  Plastic, the ‘flames’ simply flame shaped bulbs, screwed into candle-like bases.  A dozen large ‘candles’ on either side, drawing out a road between Rose and Ms. Lewis.  The practitioners, Others and humans of Toronto and Jacob’s Bell sitting at various points on that continuum.

Ms. Lewis, such as it was, didn’t bow or bend.  There was no sign that she was affected at all.  More like the false candle than a real person.

“If this is a question of my word,” Ms. Lewis said, “I can swear an oath.”

Not a soul responded.

Rose was tense enough that the slight turn of her head to check on Alister and the others made her head jitter partway through the motion.

“You called me for a reason,” Ms. Lewis spoke.  “If you aren’t asking for mercy or leniency, what did you want me for?”

“For this,” Rose said.  “Go fuck yourself, Ms. Lewis.  You have no friends in this church.”

“Are you going to remain in your church, then?” Ms. Lewis asked.  “If it’s a question of you not wanting to step foot outside, I understand.  Almost every practitioner has some sense of what we represent and what we can bring to bear.  Remaining where you are is easier than venturing beyond.  We wouldn’t penetrate the barrier around this church, though we have the ability.”

She’s changing the dialogue, Rose thought.  Making it so that staying, taking no action, is taking her side, or the Elder Sister’s side.  Surrendering.

Rose had to rally others to fight.  But now the lawyer was giving people the option of inaction.  An option that some were liable to take.

What would Blake do here?  He was better with people, but worse with words, form, delicacy.  When he’d stood here, back at the beginning, he’d chosen a hard, direct action.  Offering to spare others if they agreed to nonviolence.  Trying to divide enemy ranks.

Ironic, given what Ms. Lewis was offering now.

“We aren’t going to cave, and we aren’t going to stand by while you do what you’re doing.  We talked about it, and we’ve already decided,” Rose said.  “You can consider this our declaration of war.  This is our town, one we’ve fought for, one many of us fought each other for, and one we’ve bled over.  If you think we’re simply going to give it up so you can turn it into some victory for your side or a waypoint for demonkind and diablerie, you’re an imbecile.”

Ms. Lewis blinked very slowly, taking in the words.

Rose was privately proud of her word choice.  The imbecile at the end there, it wasn’t a word people heard often, so it had more weight.  It attacked Ms. Lewis’ standing more than any ‘fuck you’ or ‘asshole’ could have.

“Those are words you can only say because you stood to lose either way,” Ms. Lewis said.  “They lose value when you’ve effectively conscripted these individuals into a war for your own behalf.  A war that was heavily influenced by the fact that you allowed a demon you bound to go free.  Whatever happens from this point on, I hope they remember that if they’d simply given you to us, it all could have been avoided.”

Going on the offensive.  Putting Rose in a position where she had to justify herself.

She didn’t.  She let the accusation hang, though she could have explained herself.  Blake probably wouldn’t have.  He was too much of a scrapper, too intent on surviving, ironically.

He might have lost the war, even as he defended every point.

“Don’t even pretend you guys weren’t maneuvering for Johannes and the Angel all along,” Rose said, her voice hard.

Ms. Lewis smiled a little.  “Well.  Humanity is on its way out, all the same.  If you insist on hurrying it along, I’m sure my group’s, ah, associates don’t mind expediting things.  The moment any of you act against us, you can all consider my offer to respect your sanctuary to be null and void.  This doesn’t end until we have Rose Thorburn.  I would prefer her alive over dead, but dead works.”

She turned to leave.

Rose watched the woman pull the doors wide open, then step out into the darkness and the cold.

She was glad when nobody pulled a trigger or threw a bolt of lightning at her.

“It’s not like that,” Mags said, after the doors had swung shut.  “Johannes said humanity was on the up.  That we were winning.  I think that’s where a lot of his power came from.  That he recognized that we were capable or responsible for something greater, and he rode that to success.  Enough to be on par with a full family of trained practitioners.”

“I like that,” Rose said.  “That’s an idea to hold on to.”

“…Even if I don’t quite like what he was doing to the vestiges in his territory,” Mags said, as an afterthought.

“You know it, then?” Rose asked.  “You know your way around his territory?”

Mags nodded.  “Been there quite a bit.  Part of my duties.”

“I want you to help me, then,” Rose said.

Mags nodded.  “Darn straight.”

There was agitation now, restlessness, most were out of their seats.  Many weren’t quite listening to the conversation between Rose and Mags.  Their focus was on other things.

Self preservation, fear, general concern.  The lawyer had strategically dropped hints, enough to scare.  She could bypass the barrier, and Rose had very strategically invited her to.  If the lawyer hadn’t rescinded her offer to allow them their sanctuary, then Rose might have had to destroy the sanctuary herself.

Complacency was her biggest enemy here.  People being still, refusing to act.

“Listen!” Rose said.

She had their attention.  Conquest had nothing to do with it.  She’d earned it.

“This won’t be pretty, but the faster we do it, the less organized they’ll be!  We push out, we push forward, and my hope is to lead a select group straight for Johannes.  Hit them hard, pull out all the stops, create a gap we can use, and then default to staying alive.  Preserve yourselves, preserve the town, and keep pressure on them.  Recognize theatrics for what they are, respect the power of believing you can accomplish something.  That matters so much, I can’t articulate it.”

There were some nods.

“I wish I didn’t need to say it, but you should already know that if you attack me, you’ll violate the sanctuary.  I have no expectation that they’ll be merciful.  If you’re doing it out of hope that they’ll thank you by letting you leave Jacob’s Bell alive, you’re gravely wrong.”

Even veteran practitioners here looked pretty damn scared.

Rose hopped down from the stage to the floor below.  “Evan.”

“You know it!” the bird said, as if utterly oblivious to the tension and the danger.

He flew to her shoulder.

Have to strike a balance, Rose thought.  Each person I pick is more capability on my side, but one more body.  We have to be small if we’re going to be able to slip through.

“Alister?” she asked.

“I know how to ward off demons,” Alister said.  “It won’t work against Johannes, but I can protect these people.”

“Me, then,” Ainsley said.

Rose nodded.  “Enchantment would go a long way, for detecting trouble, and avoiding it.”

“I can offer my assistance until you’re out of reach,” Sandra said.

But you won’t come with, Rose read between the lines.

There was a look in Sandra’s eyes.  Not hate, not anything hostile, but very negative.  Almost but not quite pity.

She doesn’t think we’ll make it.

“If my family is willing to work with me,” Sandra said, turning away from Rose, “We can use the coven to strengthen workings, and we can give everyone on our side the benefit of that trouble-detection and the avoidance.”

Her family members began to gather around her.  Some more reluctantly than others.

Not working against Rose.  That would betray everything they were trying to do, but leaving Rose to deal with and face the brunt of the challenge she’d led them into.

Rose saw one group of younger Duchamps hanging back.  It was almost exactly the image Rose had had in her mind when she’d pictured people taking the Elder Sister’s option to surrender.  As more joined the larger group, others were drawn in, as if by a growing gravity.

Until only one was left.  The girl hesitated, unable to bring herself to join the others.  She looked at Rose.

“I’ll come with you,” Lola Duchamp said.

Even this late in the night, Lola Duchamp was heavily made up with bright colors around her eyes, enough that it could almost be called war paint.  She had pink tips to her hair, and a nose ring.  Not the typical subtle enchantress.  Bold as she appeared, Lola Duchamp looked very frightened.

“Thank you,” Rose said.

Lola shrugged.

Rose turned toward her cousins.  “Paige?”

Paige glanced backward, at Isadora, who sat by the door.

“Go,” Isadora said, her low voice carrying from the opposite corner of the church.  “Better you than me.”

Many sets of eyes watched that interplay, their attention caught by the sphinx’s very attention-grabbing voice.

Paige nodded.

There’s something symbolic about who I pick.  One from each major group, maybe, and Paige counts as the Toronto end of things.  She has talents we can use, that aren’t quite standard practice.  We have a Duchamp, and a Behaim, we have me, for the Thorburns…

“You know,” Peter said, “If I were Alister, I’d really have to wonder about how eager Rose was to gather a bunch of girls around her.”

“Ahem,” Evan said.

“You’re vile,” Paige told her brother.  “You know I’m related to her.”

“Tell me about it, the implications-”

“Peter,” Rose cut in.

“Right, right, I’ll stop.  My bad,” Peter said, while looking as far from sorry as possible.  He grinned at her.

“You’re with me,” Rose said.

“Bullshit,” Peter said, smile dropping from his face in a flash.  “Bullshit and fuck you and fuck the unicorn you rode in on.  Or have Paige fuck the unicorn because she obviously likes the animal-”

“Shut up.  There’s no time, and I know you’ll stir up shit until you see a way out of a bad situation.  I want a non-practitioner.  There are benefits to having you with us, as a relatively innocent human.”

“If he’s considered innocent then this world is fucked,” Paige said.

“Seriously,” Peter agreed.

“Ahem,” Evan said.

Rose shook her head a little.  “I mean innocent as in-”

“I know what it means,” Paige said.  She glanced at Peter.  “It’s still fucked up.”

Rose frowned.  “It was down to you and Ellie, Christoff is too young, Roxanne is too young and just a bit tainted by the Abyss, and you’re right.  I do need a staff along with the distaff, to balance things out more.”

Peter slapped his hand to his face.

“Fucking serves you right,” Paige said, under her breath.

“Ahem!” Evan said, with a little more emphasis.  “Guy here.  I have a noodle, pretty sure.”

“I assume she means a guy whose testicles have dropped,” Peter told the bird.  “Presumably someone who can actually locate their noodle.”

“Wait, what?” Evan asked.  “They do that?  Testicles drop?  Where?  How?  Why?”

“That’s essentially it,” Rose told Peter.  “Evan is too Other to count, I think.”

“You’re not just doing this to bullshit me?” Peter asked.

“Every body counts here,” Rose said, echoing her thought from earlier  “Harder to surround with an effective diagram, harder to stay hidden, to stay together.  I wouldn’t say it if it didn’t matter.  Humans are protected, on a level.  One step removed from all of this.”

“Ah, but see, I’m a cowardly, manipulative asshole,” Peter said.  “There’s not much manipulation to be done, and the asshole part isn’t any value.  If you want a coward, you should go with Ellie.”

“Fuck you,” Ellie said.

“Come on,” Ainsley said.  We really can’t be arguing.”

Peter frowned.  It had looked like he was going to say something, but he actually listened.

“How about you decide before we leave,” Lola said.  She turned to Rose, “Who or what else do you need?”

“I think that’s-” Rose started.

Then Blake hit her.

A memory, except it wasn’t a memory.  It wasn’t a replay of an event or an image or anything in that vein.

It was an impression, a concept.  Not a full one, quite possibly because he didn’t want to let go of it.  It was a tease, something to lead Rose’s thoughts to a destination.

The Abyss isn’t about destruction and ruin.

It wasn’t a confident thought, it was an idea or a hypothesis, a question without a question mark.

“You think that’s it?” Lola asked.

“I think…” Rose said, trailing off.  She turned her gaze to the other end of the church.  The Others were there.  Isadora was off to the left with the Eye, there were some scattered Others who had come as guests, some ghosts, there was the door, and an empty space as nobody wanted to be the first one through it, and then there were the more disturbed Others.  Goblins, ugly things, the revenant, and the bogeymen in residence.

Not about destruction and ruin?

Rose headed down the central aisle of the church, and her chosen group followed.  She didn’t turn to check, or to see if Peter was among them.

Her smallest cue here could make a difference in terms of how others perceived the coming conflict.  Expressing confidence was everything.  If she showed weakness, then that might be the excuse someone twitchy needed to try to take her life.

The trail of people who followed after her was a sticky one, catching or stopping here and there, to say words to this person or that one.

Rose stopped at the end.  “Green Eyes.”

The mermaid looked up at her from her seat on the pew.

“Blake wants you to come with, I think,” Rose said.

Blake apparently didn’t disagree or want to clarify his point.  He was still, motionless.

“Okay,” Green Eyes said.

Just like that.

As simple as the acceptance was, Green Eyes still glared with a steady, ominous sort of intensity.

She knew, Rose knew.  That Blake had made the agreement.  That there was no room in this world for the both of them.

She didn’t know, Rose suspected, that even now, Rose was digesting Blake.  Eroding him away into nothingness.

And that, very possibly, he was letting her.

But it was a toxic sort of digestion.  He was a poison, and for anything she gained this way, she lost something too.  There had to be a cleaner way to do it, and that meant that Rose and Blake were both operating on a time limit of sorts.

If and when she found a moment to extract Blake and place him in a vessel, she would have to watch her back against Green Eyes, out of concern that the mermaid would destroy Rose before she could dispose of Blake.

It was a complication.  One that Blake apparently wanted.

Rose frowned.

“Thank you, Green Eyes,” Rose said.

She gazed over the assembled practitioners.  Her eye fell on Ty, who had been draped out over one pew, a bandage around his middle.  A card was pressed to the bandage.  Someone had offered some help via. practice.  He raised a hand in a bit of a wave.

She smiled at him, raising her own hand in a small wave of response.

Fuck.  She actually cared what happened to these people.  Not just to Tiff and Ty and her family, but to the people as a whole.

It made it so much harder.

“Do you have a strategy?” the Elder Sister asked.

Rose turned around.  Many of the Toronto powers were gathered behind and around her, along with Sandra, Alister, and the Briar Girl.

“Beyond the broad strokes?” the Elder Sister added.

“They’ll be waiting,” Rose said.  “We’re all gathered here.  They’re going to hit us hard.  Our fear is their strength.  They’ll want to break our momentum.  Have us run out the door, then turn and run back inside, before they crush us.”

“You apparently know them well,” the Elder Sister said.  The words were accusatory.

I just have to think of Blake’s strengths combined with my own, and strip away the genuine desire to be good.  Use that sort of individual and form an establishment.

But speaking and likening the enemy to herself wasn’t going to make her any friends or win her any loyalty here.

“In terms of my group,” Rose said, “If Emily could cover our escape, block the lawyers’ view of us… it would make a big difference, especially if they have their demons on leashes.  We break through enemy ranks.  Then, if Johannes is here we catch him from behind.  If he isn’t, we make a break for his demesne.”

“I can try,” Emily said.

Rose would have asked Emily to come, but the girl was so young.

It was a daunting idea, to ask so much of someone so… unreliable.

“But you think that our group will be tested,” the Elder Sister said.

“Yes,” Rose said.

The rest of the people in attendance at the church had gathered.  They were listening, faces solemn and serious.

“We need a strategy, then,” the Elder Sister said.  “You have yours, thin as it is.  Enchantresses can help sway things, but they can’t form the focus of our attack.  I don’t have nearly enough power to bring to bear.  Chronomancers alter time, but we need to do something with that time.  I don’t have enough power to matter, and the rest seem to have limited resources.”

“We don’t need power,” Rose said.  “We need… to pave the way.  Leave moving forward as an option.”

The Elder Sister spread her hands.  “I lost our little contest, so I won’t say it, but…”

“You’ll imply,” Rose said.  That maybe we should hunker down and stay.

“Hey,” Evan said.  “Hey.  Hey.  I have the best plan.”

“No,” Rose and Tiff both said, automatically.

“You haven’t even heard me out!” Evan said.

“He’s right.  You haven’t even heard him out,” Lola said.  “He’s fighting alongside us, and he has as much of a voice as anyone.  If nobody has any suggestions, I don’t see why we can’t hear his.”

“I might love you a little,” Evan whispered.

“The plan?” the Elder Sister asked, her words terse.

“I’m a container for spirits.  I’m supposed to be a vessel for an Evan-spirit, but stuff got broke.  Spiritstuff is leaking out like a slow drip, so we’ve been giving me more spirits to keep me going.  So what I’m saying is, we stuff something inside me.  Something like a megahuge fire spirit, and we let me blaze a trail.  Literally.  And maybe we make them poop their fancy lawyer suits a bit.”

“Someone to lead the way,” the High Priest said.  “There’s worse choices than him, if he’s properly equipped.”

“Uh huh,” Evan said.

“I could do that,” the Elder Sister said.  “It wouldn’t last, if you’re leaking like you say you are, but I could do it.”

“Let’s make it happen!” Evan said.

“I might have something to contribute,” the Astrologer said.  “If I use my dipper sign to refresh the swan sign, given that you’re a bird…”

“Why are we even still talking!?”

■

Rose and Alister each pulled on one door, just peering around the edges.

The lawyers were gathered.  With them were motes, all the ones that had survived the first conflict, along with a few more.  But they were joined by no less than three demons.  Each was spaced out, and diagrams marked the snow, melted in, forming dark lines where pavement and burned grass were revealed.

Where there weren’t diagrams, the tumorous imp had blighted the ground in broad patches.  The road was cracked and pitted, trees had fallen and now hosted clusters of diseased flesh, and snowy lawns had been poisoned, turned into noxious marsh.  The poison there could quite likely kill a man with a touch, and it still festered, still spread centimeter by centimeter.

One demon in a female guise, her body twisted, enclosed in what looked like three cubes that had bitten into flesh.  Her head-cube rattled, shuddering, jittering, the orientation moving.

Another, broad in the shoulder, mouth yawning perpetually wide, as if its jaw were broken.  It wore human flesh like a shroud, a twisted mass of skin and muscle piled over and around the shoulder, over the head, a twisted mask where the eye and mouth holes of another individual’s face aligned with the dark, burned face beneath.  The eyes glowed, and Rose instinctually averted her own eyes away from them.  The ‘clothes’ of human flesh it wore moved and twitched, an eyeball that looked to be a heartbeat from falling from the socket moved, looking in another direction.

The third was narrow, a thin androgynous figure, wearing clothes that looked like they had been sewn together around it.  Corset thin, with voluminous sleeves, it had a thin mouth, no hair, and an oddly small nose.  The eyes, conversely, were overlarge.

Rose had almost expected a horde, but three demons was more than scary enough.  If they were anything like Ur or the Barber…

Everyone in the church was taking cover, staying out of the line of sight of the door.

Evan hopped up a bit, the sole exception.  In plain view, just a little bit behind the mat for drying and scraping boots, just inside the door.

Lights flared around him.  The Astrologer had removed some of the rigging she wore, laying it out on the floor.

Fire ignited, lighting up a trail of accelerant, drawing lines around Evan.

He swelled in size.  From something that weighed less than a full glass of water to something the size of a small dog, then a large dog.

His feathers glowed at the edges, like the edges of burning paper on a cigarette.

Evan laughed, and as he grew, the laugh swiftly took on a tone, deeper, almost guttural.

He spread his wings, continuing to grow.

“Yes!” he said, and it was more a man’s voice than a child, gravely, a hair from being a roar.

A bit of the influence from the Eye, which was being tapped as a power source.

The feathers ignited in full.  The flames poured off him, and they fell on the mat and the diagram.

“Go!”  the Elder Sister shouted.  “Before you incinerate all of us, for the love of-“

He took off, and in the doing, he stirred sparks and flame.

Fire poured off him in a steady stream, splashing out onto snow and street.

A hundred feet away, they could still hear the deep, powerful laughter.

Ms. Lewis gestured, and Rose’s Sight could see the connections forming, snapping out, lashing around Evan.

He slipped free as if he were oiled, turned, and let the fire spill down over top of the lawyers and the one female demon toward the front.  It fell on and around Ms. Lewis.

The Elder Sister was right behind, gesturing, extinguishing the fire just past the door.

The Sphinx and Briar Girl were the next ones out.  Briar Girl gestured, and hands reached out of the snow, figures raising themselves up and out.  Her familiar perched on her shoulder, then leaped down, swelling in size, taking on feral qualities.

Evan’s laugh rang through the town.  Where the effect that kept the city dark still lingered, his movements created light, parting clouds as he rose higher, wings spread.

He flew past them again.  Flames dropped,  pouring over another rank of practitioners and devils.  A second attempt at binding him failed.

Rose felt Blake stir, warning.

Can’t let him go out in flames, she thought.

She joined the next group out through the doors.

Have to find a gap.  Or make one.

Enemy practitioners burned and continued to burn, staggering or crawling away from the fire.  Here and there, an enemy practitioner simply burned, and the fires kept them burning, locking them in place.

But the demons – the thin one with the clothes struggled, backing away, but the others remained unaffected.

The one with the cloak of flesh opened its mouth wider, and it screamed.

All rational thought and sanity fled Rose’s mind at the sound, and she wasn’t alone in that.  Nowhere close to alone.  Even Evan the firebird plummeted from the sky.

The last coherent thought she had was a realization.  She’d anticipated that the lawyers would make them turn back, breaking the charge before crushing the residents of Toronto and Jacob’s Bell underfoot.

Her mistake had been assuming that the lawyers would make it a choice in any way, shape or form.

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Judgment 16.5

Cannot truly think, can only observe.  Detached, while my body staggers, hands on a person’s back, as they kneel with bare fingers of their one hand clutching snow.  A table for me to lean on.

The streets run with blood.  Horizon to horizon, land to sky.  I watch, we watch, a broken portion of my Self and I, and we see it flow and spurt from cracks in between things.  From the places where tree meets snow and sidewalk meets snowbank.  Between clouds and sky.  Not clean blood, not fresh.  Something rank and clotted, oozing from the cracks.  Where it flows, the gaps are getting wider.

It assaults the eyes like the demon’s howl assaults the ears and mind.  The howl pulls, tugs me from sense and reality, makes me ever more detached, my grip on things slipping, one metaphorical finger after another losing its hold.  The scene of a town’s streets literally running with clotted blood makes the world a place I don’t want to be.

That shattered part of me that scrapes me raw inside has withdrawn from my eyes and ears and awareness, leaving me alone to fight this.  Pulled away from the world by the ears and pushed away by the eyes.

One demon burns, still.  Another two advance, while their enemy is insensate.  One to split the head in two, its sound like axe blades striking each ear, cutting deep enough to touch grey matter.  Another to break the world around us.

The imps have taken to the air.  Circling overhead, unwilling to get between their betters and us.

The demons come, and with every movement they promise that whatever torment we experience now, we’ll experience worse when they have us.

Everyone who stepped outside the church has fallen.  Even the powerful ones.  They kneel and lie face down in viscera and old blood.

When I move my head, my hair gets in the way, and my mind can’t keep up with the way things move as my eyes travel, stuck one step behind.

Cold wind touches tracks of tears I hadn’t realized existed.

I hear voices.  Some inside the church, where people are still protected.  Even with that protection, they are struggling, protesting, joining their screams to the howls.

The smell is so foul it fills my nose and lungs.  I’m certain that if I swallow, I will vomit.  If I breathe too deep, or look too closely at anything, I will lose it.

Can’t think, only observe, can’t gather my faculties to move.  No help is being offered, though I can feel my other inside, rummaging, getting more frantic with every passing moment.  Emotionless, dead, it is still more lively than I am.

The demons approach, wading through patches of flame, and with each step, the screaming gets louder.

A gunshot rings through the air.  The noise, violent and painful from only ten feet away, is still clean, ice water when I’m boiling, or scalding flame when I am freezing.

I’m aware of a figure in the door.  When I look, my eyes won’t focus.  My world spins around me, and I’m afraid at the core of my being that it will never right itself again.  That, with a word, this demon has taken my reason and nothing can ever get it back.

The person in the door is female, athletic, not wearing a coat.  She aims, and she fires again, and I want her to keep firing, to keep making my ears hurt and my vision swim, because it is better than what the demon is doing.

She says my name, and the sound is unfamiliar.  She says something else, saying it to me, and for an instant, she is meat, venting sounds in odd pattern and cadence, and I know that she is a person, and I know that she is saying words, and even what those words are, but I am too far removed from everything to put it all together.

I try to move, but I very nearly slip on ground slick with blood.

I’ve just been given the ability to care, and now I’m left to watch and process it all as the demons have their way with us.

I can’t.

I can look at the lawyers, the ones that are still capable of standing after the fire are now a distance away, observing, utterly still.

The demons, on the other side of the street and steadily approaching.

I can’t face it.  Nobody here can.

I think about using the Sight, looking inward, and following my counterpart as far as I can.

But this would be running.  Admitting defeat.

Strange, how hard it is to ask.

Help, she asks.

The rummaging through my memories and experiences stops.

Where he once withdrew from what I saw and felt and heard, he now takes those stations again.  He takes her eyes and ears and senses and equilibrium.

Rose blinked her eyes, once, twice, thrice.  By the third time, they were no longer hers.

The world around her wasn’t bloody.  It was icy, her foot had skidded on a spot where snow had been made too smooth and flat.  The world was twisting, the gaps opening, things periodically stirring in those gaps, but that was something else altogether.

The scenery had been a trick of the senses, hallucination.  An extension of the scream.  It meant she still didn’t know what the she-demon with the great cubes of metal intersecting her body was capable of, but things at least made a degree of sense.

She could feel Blake’s pain and disorientation.  Where she’d once clung for dear life to her reason and awareness, he was now weathering the storm.  He was a filter, a barrier against the outside assault, in her eyes, her ears, and across her skin.  Her face crawled, her skin felt like something moved beneath the surface, so many fingers sliding between epidermis and muscle.  Like bruises or ink bleeding from a pen, patterns emerged on her wrists, between the sleeve of her coat and the bottom of her glove.

Branches and birds.

Just minutes ago, she’d outlined the benefits that the Barber had from possessing Johannes, that possession afforded one protections and the ability to blur the lines.  If a demon possessed a human, it could dwell within and be largely human when dealing with that which would harm the demon, and emerge to be demon when it faced threats that would harm the human.

Blake exercised the same idea here.

“Rose!” Eva shouted, not for the first time.  The witch hunter held a rifle.

Rose’s head snapped around.  She wavered, a little disoriented.

Eva, Briar Girl, Roxanne, and the High Priest seemed to be the only ones who were weathering this onslaught.  The demonic howling had brought everyone else to their knees.  Even the sphinx lay on her side by the door.

The demons were so close.  Right here.

“How do we stop them!?”  Eva shouted.  Somehow, Blake found the wherewithal to let the voice reach Rose, enduring the noise alone.  Not even taking the respite of another sound to break up the terrible howling.

Rose hadn’t yet shaken the nausea that came with the original visions, or the sheer feeling of hopelessness.  At the same time, she felt relieved, freed of the howl’s effect, almost giddy.

Blake’s efforts had helped, but she still lacked equilibrium.  She wanted to laugh at Eva’s question.

How were they supposed to stop the demons?

She could remember an excerpt from the texts.  It was framed like a joke, but not the sort anyone laughed at.

“The choir of darkness is the worst choir to deal with, because you can’t cast the light to banish them without also casting deeper shadows.  You can’t use creation against them when you can’t even see.

“The choir of madness is the worst choir to deal with, because they’re opposed by symbols, symbols are subjective, and they steal all subjectivity from the subject.

“The choir of ruin is the worst choir to deal with, because they’re opposed by structure, and how was one supposed to construct when the foundation was ruined?”

And so on, all of the way through the various choirs.  The Barber had proved that last point when it had destroyed Alister’s circle-in-progress.

The demons crashed into a crowd of Briar Girl’s feorgbold.

The female demon with the great iron cubes replacing much of her head, part of her torso, and the entirety of one hand and forearm swung the hand-cube into the crowd.  Where flesh met iron, there was a mingling of bloodstains, scabbing, and rust.  Sometimes the rust touched flesh, and sometimes it was the cube that was stained with scabs.

Briar Girl dropped, hard and fast enough that her hands didn’t even move to catch her or soften the blow as she met the floor.

Rose could see the Briar Girl’s familiar, a distance away, hunched over, rippling between forms, unable to settle, becoming more nightmarish by the second.  It had been doing that since the howling started.

Now it calmed, and Briar Girl, lying prostrate, drew herself into a fetal position, nails biting into her arms as the howling assaulted her.

As Blake was doing, the spirit had absorbed the howling, initially.  Now it was making the Briar Girl do the same, freeing it to act.

It flew at the demons like an eagle, with all the mass and ferocity of a bear, and the savagery of a mad wolf.

It evaded the swinging iron cube, and it tackled the howling demon, clawing deep.

Physical wounds wouldn’t do, but it tried.

“We need symbols!”  Rose shouted.  “Symbols for the howling one!”

“Can’t hear you!” Eva shouted, barely audible over the howling, even with Blake trying to dampen the noise, absorbing it himself.

The howling demon seized its attacker, and the nature spirit vibrated, screaming transmitted along the demon’s arms to its captive.  The spirit moved at a speed and manner that made it distort.

There might be an answer in the midst of all of it, but Rose was still reeling.  At her best, she could plan ahead a step, each step along the way.  The problem was when she missed a step, as she had when the howling had been underway.  Stride broken, she was scrambling to even begin finding an answer, and Blake was too preoccupied to supply one.

Only a few on the Jacob’s Bell side were still standing.  Why?

Briar Girl had been sheltered, her spirit taking the brunt of the effect.  Then shortly after Rose had recovered, it had switched around.

The High Priest worshiped a deity that included madness in his realm of control.

But Eva?  Roxanne?

What made them special?

The demon of ruin swung its cube-fist overhead, down for the nature spirit.  The attack was only barely dodged, and the strike hit the road.

The town shook, and the entire road cracked and shifted.  One lawyer had to stumble back and away.  Sections of road with flame on them alternately went partially out or blazed higher.

The spirit struggled to keep its footing.  While it recovered, the demon of ruin barely seemed to care about the instability.  It advanced, swinging again, and struck the spirit.

Hitting the thing hard enough that Rose could feel it like a hit in the chest from a baseball bat.

A bolt of electricity hit it.  Rose could see the lights of the church and surrounding block die.

The Eye struck again.  The demon staggered away, and the nature spirit familiar of Briar Girl’s limped back, shaking itself.  It took on different forms with every step, but even with the limbs of a coyote, then a lizard, a bear, then a bird of prey, those limbs were shattered.  It moved with the same grim tenacity that let a fox chew off a limb that was caught in a trap.

The defenders were reduced to Rose, the spirit, Eva, the Eye, the High Priest and a girl without the ability to practice against the pair of demons, imps circling overhead, on the lookout for opportunity.

Only them?

No, as Rose looked around, she could see that there were others having varying degrees of success at withstanding the demon’s howl.

Why were various Thorburns doing better?  Roxanne more than Ellie, Ellie more than Peter, the two of them more than Christoff.  Most of the Thorburns were able to crawl, while many Behaims were utterly motionless, almost catatonic.

Alister wasn’t among those Behaims.  He was on his hand and knees, head periodically moving, lips moving.

What made them special?  What made the Eye similar to Roxanne?  What advantage did Roxanne have over Christoff?  The taint of the Abyss?  No.

Roxanne and her cousin were close in age.  But where Christoff was a bookworm, quiet, disciplined, less touched by the misery of the family than others, Roxanne had been embroiled in schemes and nastiness.  Steeped in-

No, simpler than that.

Roxanne was fucked up, Rose knew.  She had Blake’s memories of family, along with his memories of friends.  Rose knew what he’d experienced when she’d been taken to the hospital, how he’d seen Roxanne operate.  That Roxanne had very carefully armed herself.

Roxanne, the Eye, Eva, the Thorburns as a whole, all more unhinged.

More inured and experienced with the various shapes and forms that… what was the word?  Not mental illness… mental unwellness.  They were more familiar with mental unwellness, on both sides of the fence.  In cases like Eva’s and the Eye’s, they were batshit nuts.

It fit with the way demons tended to operate.  Damned if one did, damned if one didn’t.  The only way to avoid being driven out of one’s mind was, well, to already be out of it.

Rose wanted to retreat, to return to the church, but that was exactly what the lawyers wanted.  Any and all momentum was already lost, but to force a retreat, then crush the enemy under their heels?  The lawyers were ready and prepared.

That demon of ruin wasn’t a particularly unfamiliar type.  Chosen, quite possibly, for how it could destroy the practitioner even as it warred with the practitioner’s workings, it caused damage that rippled through connections to damage things and people close to the target.  Damage the city a fraction by damaging the road.  Damage Briar Girl by hurting her feorgbold zombies.

By damaging the people familiar with the church or the sanctuary the church provided, the demon could batter it down, or tear those still within to pieces.

She needed a solution to the howl.  Injecting spirits into people could work, but that would take time, for each person.

Time they didn’t have.  The Eye of the Storm wasn’t putting the demons down, even if it was suppressing them for the moment.  It could hit one, but by the time the bolt of lightning or spray of flame struck the enemy, the other had more or less recuperated and started advancing again.

Only a good ten paces from Rose, now.  Beyond reason and rationale, she knew she couldn’t retreat without leaving Alister behind, and she wasn’t about to let the howling demon have him.

I’ve been infected by Blake’s muleheadedness, she told herself.

She flinched, closing her eyes, as a flash of light struck the howling demon, making it stagger.  Twelve paces away, now.

But pain was only an illusion.  It wasn’t truly something that could be harmed, it only wore the vulnerability to pain like it wore images conjured from the human subconscious.  Its internal directive to bring everything to madness would win out long before damage did anything.

Bending down, Rose tried and failed to drag Alister.  Not strong enough, and he was more like a cold, wet sack of potatoes than anything she could carry, awkward in all the worst ways when it came to being moved.

Think, Rose, she thought.

Think.  Can’t inject everyone with spirits, to put a barrier between their senses and their minds.  Can’t retroactively make everyone more fucked up than they are.

No, wait.  She could.

On both counts, she could.

“Jeremy!” she called out, and she tried to put power into the words, give them strength, pushing them along the few stable connections that remained, to ears that were still capable of hearing.  “Get our people drunk!”

She managed to drag Alister another foot.  The demon was closer to her than she was to the door, and it was advancing faster than she was retreating.

“I don’t have the favor to spare!” the High Priest bellowed the words.

“Get it!” she said.

The demon drew closer.  All of the eyes on its cowl of warped flesh were fixated on her.

“Get it now!” she clarified.

Gunshots sounded, one after another.  The demon barely flinched, even as bullets took chunks of flesh off its shroud, or put holes in its face and upper chest.

Eva.

The witch hunter unloaded the first gun, shoved it into a holster, drew another, and proceeded to unload that one.

Eva’s head twisted to one side, her eyes averted, in the same moment she got within arm’s reach of the demon.  Nothing to do with the flashes of lightning that seemed almost solely focused on the she-demon of ruin.  She was enduring the howling, even if her natural mental imbalances made her more resilient to it.

But flinching and averting her eyes in the same moment she drew close?

“Look out!” Rose said, as the demon moved its hands.

The Witch Hunter stumbled back, eyes open but not seeing.

“Demon of madness and pandemonium!” Rose shouted the words, “Devils in this town obey the Thorburns!  By my name, I order you to cease!”

The demon came to a halt, the howl still pouring from its mouth, weaker than before.  Eva shook her head, trying to think clearly again.

Rose could hear the words of the lawyer that had summoned the howling demon, distant, almost inaudible.

Not quite so strong, but with a hell of a lot more cachet.  The demon resumed moving, not two seconds after it had stopped.

But Rose had provided a window, and the witch hunter used it.  Eva slashed her machete horizontally, dragging the blade across the demon’s chest.  Following through on the same movement, she brought the machete down, dropping to her knees as the demon’s arms reached for her, catching only air.  The witch hunter leaped back, casting the machete in Rose’s direction.

Not a gift, or anything like that.  Eva just didn’t have the time to sheath the thing, and tossing it to Rose was just as easy as letting it fall to the ground.

Reaching into her back pocket, Eva drew something she’d scavenged from the church.

A simple wooden cross.

A symbol, Rose thought.  She heard.

The demon had only just recovered from its failed grab.  Now Eva moved, fluid and smooth, holding the cross out.

The demon backed away, now, redoubling the effort on its howl.

Blake was losing his grip entirely.  In a heartbeat, he’d fail to weather the storm, and both he and Rose would be lost to the howl’s effects again.

The witch hunter had the means of warding off the demon, driving it back.  She took things one step further.  She touched the cross to the demon’s wounded chest, then brought a foot up, pinning it there, keeping it there as the demon dropped to its knees.  Smoke billowed.

The witch hunter drew a third gun from within her open coat, and began firing it into the demon’s open mouth, trying to shut it up.

She’s utterly fearless, Rose thought.  But that lack of fear echoed Blake’s.  It wasn’t a healthy thing, it was a sign of something missing.

“Won’t hold!” Rose shouted.  “Get back!”

Eva kicked, pushing herself away from the demon, leaving the cross there, fused with melted flesh.  The demon reached for the cross, but the hands were forced away, as if repelled by magnets.

The witch hunter grabbed Alister under one arm, while Rose took the other, handless arm.  Together, they dragged him back toward the door, near the point where the sphinx had collapsed.  The Elder Sister was only a short distance away.

“…and as I delivered harm to my Sandra’s house, I accept harm to my own,” Jeremy was saying.  “In exchange for the power to act now, I forfeit power over my demesne.  Let it be something wild and uncontrolled, a garden untamed, and I will tend it.  For this, give me favor.”

He met Rose’s eyes.

She drew a line in the snow, a plain circle around herself and Eva.  She looked at Jeremy, then nodded.

“This favor I ask for now, is a bit of liquid courage for those who fight against the titanic evils,” Jeremy said.  “Excepting my allies in the circle here, please.”

The effect spread, not touching Rose and Eva.  One by one, the various fallen individuals roused.

Insensate, maybe, or a little insensate, but only enough to disturb the hold the howling demon had on them.

Alister looked over at Rose, started to rise, then winced.

He’d been on his hand and knees in snow, gloveless, so his hand was free to practice.  Now his hand was numb.

Rose seized it in both of hers and held it fast as she pulled him to his feet.  Held it after.

Lola.  Peter.  Paige.  Ainsley.  Green Eyes.  Mags.

She checked on each, helping them rouse, focusing on those who were closest first.  By the time she reached Ainsley, the fight outside had resumed in earnest.  The Elder Sister was working with the eye, meeting destruction with raw destructive energy, striking imps out of the sky, where they were still wary of approaching or interfering with the other two demons.

The flames around the third demon had been banished by lawyers, and lawyers themselves were rousing.

We have to go now, or we might never get a chance, Rose thought.

Ainsley was taking the longest to rouse.  The girl looked hollowed out, almost haunted.

The Sphinx still hadn’t risen.  Paige was stroking fur, but got no response.  The sphinx’s chest rose and fell, but the angle of her head and the sheer quantity of hair that had fallen in front of her face made her expression impossible to see.  Armfuls of hair, really.  Thick, luxurious, and on a head that was larger than most.  Paige didn’t even try wrestling with it.  She only touched onyx fur.

A descent into madness is a bigger fall for some than others, Rose thought.

Hopefully the sphinx would survive that fall, in the end.

Evan had taken to the air again, a streak of flame against an overcast sky.

He strafed the group of lawyers again, but this time he was warded off.  A freshly drawn diagram in the snow glowed orange, and Evan was pushed away, the spill of fire dying before they touched ground.

He tried twice more before landing beside the Elder Sister and the Eye.

“That sucked!”  Evan declared, putting a little too much emphasis into each word.

“Are you okay?” Rose asked.

“I feel powerful!” Evan boomed each word.  “So good!”

“You’re drunk,” Jeremy said.

“Being drunk is awesome!”

The Eye and Sister’s efforts against the demon of ruin were failing.  The demon had ceased approaching the church, and was now staggering off to one side.  Not trying to make headway against the torrent of elemental energy that the two were capable of putting out, but moving toward the howling demon.

Ms. Lewis shouted something.  Communicating to the diabolist by the ward that had stopped Evan.

Too late.  The demon of ruin charged its fellow, and she slammed the cube-fist into the cross.

The howling demon was sent sprawling, and the one who had summoned it, off to one side, folded nearly in half.

Ms Lewis scowled, gesturing, her voice inaudible amid the howling, and she dismissed the demon of ruin on its summoner’s behalf.  The cube-encrusted she-demon was banished, consumed by darkness.

Then she began uttering names.

Three.  Three more demons, to join the two that remained.

“We have to go,” Rose said.  Or we won’t get another chance.

“Go,” Alister said.  He pulled his hand away from Rose’s grasp, flexed it, only revealing how stiff it was.  “I… I’ll do what I can.  My head’s swimming, but I’ve studied this.  Protections.”

She checked over her shoulder, and she saw Emily.  Fell’s niece, the little illusionist.

“We need to avoid being detected with the Sight,” Rose said.

Emily traced a sign in the snow.  A rune.

“It won’t hold for long, but if you need to slip away, this is the thing.  One for each of us.  Or you can put it on an object to hide it.”

“We need it to hold,” Rose said.

“It’s going to burn up whatever fuel you give it,” Emily said.  “I don’t know of much else.  I’m still newish.”

“Then we’ll have to use old standbys,” Rose said.  Lines of blood to break connections.  It won’t keep us out of their sight forever.  Maybe not at all.  “Get those runes down, people.  On your right hands.”

Rose frowned, glancing at the lawyers and the emerging demons.

“Go.  Blaze a trail, Evan,” Rose said.  “Watch the imps!”

The great firebird took off, leaving a stirring of sparks and cinders behind it with every flap of its wings.

He circled the church, fire spilling out from his tail feathers, then flew through a crowd of imps that were getting too close.

Fire splashed onto the street, near and around the lawyers, but the ward protected them.

Rose worked to draw out the symbols.  Mags had already pricked a thumb and was drawing out symbols on the backs of Peter and Ainsley’s hands.

They were finished.  Each held up their ungloved hands, marked with blood.

“Ready,” Rose said.

“No you aren’t.  Wait,” the Elder Sister said.

More fire.  More sparks.  Evan was putting his all into it.

The three demons were emerging, rising from diagrams as if lifted by a platform from below.

“Wait,” the Elder Sister repeated herself.

“I’m ready,” Emily said.

“Wait,” the Elder Sister said, again, tense.

Evan completed another loop.  Flames splashed onto the road.

The Elder Sister gestured, her ring flaring.

As if they’d been pushed by a great force, the flames parted, the bulk of them slamming up against the barrier the lawyer had erected.

“Go!” Rose and the Elder Sister said, at the same time.

Paige stumbled as she started running, wobbly with the Drunk’s inebriating blessing flowing through her veins.  Peter and Ainsley caught her, held her firm until she had her balance.

As a group, the seven of them ran along the path that had been cleared, framed by fire on both sides.

Rose could see Mags’ face.  Troubled, as she looked around her.

Was it because the flames were starting to close in again?  The fires grew, feeding on nothing, and the path in front and behind became narrower.

Rose wracked her brain for runes she could put down to buy them time, to stop the flame or move them faster.

“The fires-” she started.

“Leave them,” Paige said.

“The power of tradition!” Peter said.  “Burn the witch!  And the handsome non-witch bystander!”

“Leave the fires alone,” Paige said, her voice low.  “And shut up, do you want them to hear us?”

Rose could feel the heat of the flames as they closed in.  There was scarcely a foot of ground between the two great swathes of burning ground, now.  Her skin prickled and the air was getting too hot to breathe.

A few running steps later, she was running on patches of flame, and wondering if perhaps her hair or the soles of her shoes could ignite.

They were painfully close to the lawyers now.

Leaving everyone else behind, to try and form battle lines and defensive measures before they had to deal with five proper demons.  The howler, the demon of the choir of darkness that had been in the fire, and the three new arrivals.

She picked up the pace, pressed on despite the intense heat.

All she could do was run harder and run faster, trying to resolve the situation as soon as possible.

The fire closed in, and it made contact.

It wasn’t any hotter than before.

They were immersed in fire, consumed by it, but they were left untouched, unburnt.

Surrounded by darkness, hidden by the illusion of bright flame, they forged onward.  Past the lawyers, rounding a corner, leaving the flames behind.

North.

To the Barber’s demesne.

Judgment 16.6

Evan landed off to one side with a muffled thud, snow rising and steaming around his talons.

“You didn’t set the town on fire, did you?” Peter asked.

“Nope,” Evan said, in his deeper voice.  He fluttered a bit to get to a point where he could walk by the side of the road, without being up to his stomach in deeper snow.  He was the size of a small horse, and continued to leave a trail of fire behind him.  “Flew around to lose them, but I flew over backyards and roads.”

“Good,” Rose said.  Her eyes were on the North end, several blocks away.  The morning light was more visible there, but it was more ominous than reassuring.  The light itself was dark, and the clouds thick enough to be almost pitch black.  It reminded her of magma.

The highway cut through the older area of Jacob’s Bell and Johannes’ demesne.  The periodic car zipped by, while trucks were more frequent, passing with a touch more noise, a glow of headlights and red taillights cutting through the haze.

Each person that passed was utterly oblivious to what was really happening in the town itself.

Rose looked back, toward the others.  Smoke mingled with the faint haze of morning mist, but the flames were visible, all the same.

She could only hope that the charms and enchantments that kept all this on the down-low would hold and keep bystanders out of this.

The same made it hard to impossible for those passing by to see the fine gaps and cracks that ran through everything.  An eighth of an inch at most, where the west and south facing walls of a building were supposed to meet, or where the sidewalk met the snow that layered the street.

“Sorry about your pussy,” Peter said, to his twin.

“Don’t,” Paige said, her voice sharp.

“God,” Ainsley said, moving to Paige’s side, shooting Peter a look.  “Learn when to stop.  I know we’re feeling woozy, and we were already tired, before that, but… what she said.  Don’t.”

“Welcome to what I grew up with,” Paige said.  “He sees weakness and he’s on it like a starved dog on a haunch of meat.”

“No, that’s-” Peter started, bristling.  He stopped and composed himself.  “No.  I do mean it.  I’m sorry.  I just don’t know what to call her.  Really.”

“Isadora,” Paige said.

“Isadora,” Peter said.  “Okay.  I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

“Okay,” Paige said.  “Man, I do not like feeling drunk.”

Rose glanced to one side, and she could see how Paige was rubbing one side of her face.

“She might be okay,” Lola said.  “I… don’t know if I feel any lasting effects.  If we can bounce back, maybe she could recover?”

“I don’t know,” Paige said.  “I’ve only got a few weeks of all of this under my belt.  I don’t know anything about way too many things, and I’m usually a fast study.  That thing back there was the worst experience of my life, and it hasn’t exactly been all unicorns and flowery meadows.  I don’t have anything to compare to here.”

“Rose is the resident expert on horrible badness,” Mags said.  “Not that I want to distract, if you’re focusing more on the badness that we’re about to deal with than the badness we just dealt with, but…”

“It’s fine,” Rose said.

“Great,” Mags said.  “Because I’ve read that demons tend to do permanent damage, and if you could shed any light on what we were just dealing with, it would do a lot for my peace of mind.”

Rose looked around as she walked.  At the gaps.

They’d been part of the vision, except they were more permanent, persistent.

“The world is managed by spirits,” Rose said.  “Spirits are influenced by us and our will.  For most, it’s a pretty passive relationship.  Spirits don’t interfere or change things too much, and they follow set patterns.  People don’t influence them either, by that same token.”

“Okay,” Mags said.  “Practitioner 101 there.”

“Well,” Rose said, “I’m not liking the look of those gaps.  The demon did its thing, and the town started to come apart at the seams.  I thought at first it was the Barber, but I’m not so sure, now.  We can alter the makeup of the world, with sufficient will or expectation, and it’s subtle, and we’re pushing against the pattern or the will of others if we try to will the world to be different.  But if you have a demon alter that will or expectation, twist everyone’s minds to a specific purpose…”

“Breaking up the world?”  Lola asked.

“Or a part of it,” Rose said.  “They chose the demons they did for a reason.  One that could hurt practitioners by hurting their workings, another that debilitated and stalled us, while…”

Lacking the words, she gestured at the surroundings.  At the ripped seams and world left ajar.

“…Making it easier to do what they want to do,” she finished.  “So… I’m not ruling out that she could recover.  If doing permanent damage to our psyche was the point, then we’d know, I think.  But I do think it was trying to hurt the fabric of things, affecting us like it did.”

A part of her worried that the others would react badly.  That she might crush morale as she’d done back at the church.  But this group, perhaps, was more resilient.

Scared, but resilient.

They’d reached the last leg of the trip before the passage under the highway.

Mags looked down at the dip to one side.  The ground sloped down from the road, normally it would have been grass, but now it was only snow.  A short tobogganing hill at best.

“What happened to Molly?” Mags asked, all at once.

“Absorbed into the Abyss, I think,” Rose said.

“I owed her better,” Mags said.

“I sort of know that feeling,” Rose replied.

“Darn it,” Mags said.  “Hate knowing that there’s nothing left for me to do for her.  She’s gone, or mostly gone?”

“Gone, I think,” Rose said.  “But if you want to do something for her… we need to focus on this.  I don’t think the real Molly would want Johannes to win.  She wouldn’t want people to suffer any more than she did.  All that anger was just the Abyss speaking through her.  Let’s respect the real her.”

Mags huffed out a breath, then rubbed her hands together.  “Evan, do me a solid?”

“For sure,” Evan said.

“See that space under the highway?  Under the bridge?

“Yep!”

“Go there, and flame on, you know?  Not destroying the highway, just to light it up.  Kiss the walls and top with fire.  Yeah?”

“You say that like there’s a chance I’d say no!” Evan said.  He hopped forward, wings flapping.

Looking in his direction, watching him take off for the space under the bridge, Mags already walking briskly, broke out into a jog.  Rose could see Green Eyes, off to one side, previously blocked from Rose’s view by Evan’s bulk.

Was that intentional?  Was the mermaid stalking her, deliberately lurking?

I’m supposed to be a leader here, but… I’m not sure I’m there yet.  I need to figure it out before it matters.

“He was on your skin,” Green Eyes observed.

“Yeah,” Rose said.

“He still is, a bit.”

Rose nodded, checking to see for herself.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to put words to why that might be the case.  Was it because Blake didn’t want to move, when every movement eroded the two of them?

Or because he didn’t have the strength?

Beneath the bridge, Evan flared with fire and light, flames reaching out to fill the space, fire filling the space, tongues of flame spilling out.

A half-dozen goblins dropped from hiding spots in the shadows, partially or wholly on fire.  Mags very carefully extinguished a patch of fire on the underside of the bridge itself before starting to put the creatures out.

It took a few seconds before Rose and the rest of the group were close enough to hear.

“-y darn time,” Mags said.  “Every time, you try to mess with me!  You little twits don’t learn!  I’ve shot you, I’ve frozen you, I’ve blown some of you up.  Do you learn?  Do you announce yourselves and stop trying to ambush me?  No.  But doing it on a day like this?  With demons running around?  That’s a special brand of twit.”

“Aaaaaah!” a goblin that was still on fire screamed.

Mags reached out with both hands, athame extended, other hand flat, then clenched her free hand into a fist.  The fire went out in the same moment.

“Aaah!” the goblin screamed, still smouldering, burned.

“Deal with it!” Mags said.  “Peckerbottom, I bind you.  You know the drill, standard rules.”

“Aaah!” it screamed.

“Nod,” Mags said.

It nodded, still writhing.

“That’s the most half-assed binding I’ve ever seen,” Lola commented.

“I’ve bound these little twits at least three times already.  Same rules every time.  If they can break the binding, I’ll be surprised.  Snotwit, I bind you.  You know how this works.”

“Uh huh,” Snotwit mewled.

“Spunkyfeets, Pissgag, Cuntwhistle, Stump, I bind you.  Stop whining and get to your feet.”

The goblins did.

Lesser goblins, Rose observed.  None any taller than waist height.

Mags saw Rose studying the things, “What do you think?”

“Having a few more numbers wouldn’t hurt,” Rose said.  “We only needed the smaller group to slip away.”

“That was my line of thinking,” Mags said.

“Can’t help but feel like goblins are more liability than advantage,” Lola commented.  “Never liked them.”

“Wait ’til I show you what I can do with my tongue,” Stump leered.

“If you even suggest anything similar to that, I’ll cut it off,” Lola said.

“He already had it cut off,” another goblin jeered.  “Why do you think he’s called Stump?”

The laughs and lewd comments from the goblins were a mishmash of sound.

“Any tips, going into the demesne?” Rose asked.

“It’s his place,” Mags said.  “I’m not sure what that means, now that he’s not… him.  He basically made it a xerox of reality, complete with occupants.  As they’ve worn down, he’s shored them up with magic from the pipes.  Navigation is going to be hell.”

“I can help with navigation,” Lola said.

“Good,” Rose said.  “Traps?  Tricks?”

“On my first visit, the demesne impeded me.  After I was invited, he made it easy for me to come and go.  Ambassador duties, passing on messages.  I don’t think it’s going to be friendly, this time around.  It might be actively hostile.  And, with everything that led into this, he’s got allies.  Underlings.”

“Genies,” Rose said, “among other things.”

“I’ve seen a genie,” Peter said, sounding a little smug.

“Why do you sound proud?” Paige asked.

“Well,” Rose said, “if you think of anything else, say the word.”

Mags nodded.

To Evan, she said, “Stay low to the ground, until we decide we need you.”

“Right-o,” he said.

She gave him a once-over.  “You’re smaller than you were a minute ago.”

“I’m leaking,” he said.  “Balloon with a hole in it.”

“Balloons with holes in them pop,” Peter said.

Evan’s eyes went as wide as saucers.

“I don’t think you’re going to pop,” Rose said.  “Come on.  Let’s move, before you deflate.  Lead the way.”

“Because I’m powerful!  And strong!”

“Both,” she said.  “But maybe keep it down.”

“I’m down!”

“You’re drunk,” she said.  “And you are being loud.  Dial it down a notch.”

“Dialed down,” he said.

She nodded, and he took that as his cue to lead the way.  Green Eyes hurried to move up to his side.

“Now who’s going to eat who?” Evan asked.  “I could do with some roasted sushi.  Hm?  Hm?  What do you say to that?”

“Sushi is raw fish,” Green Eyes said, already far enough ahead that she was barely audible.

“And?” Evan asked.

Rose ignored the conversation that followed.

She had allies here that would listen to her.  Paige, Ainsley, maybe Peter.  Then she had… Blake’s group.  Green Eyes and Evan.

Fitting that Mags, ambassador, was somewhere in the middle.

She didn’t trust Green Eyes to listen to her.  Even Evan was a question, in a way.

She held her right wrist with her left hand, tracing her thumb along a line of the faded, nearly-invisible etching of Blake’s influence, between her sleeve and her glove.

With the others, she passed into the demesne.  A place she’d seen before, even if she’d never entered it proper.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected.  An extension of the Abyss?  A version of the library that fit Johannes?

The buildings were pale, but the light from above wasn’t from sun or moon.  It wasn’t from a Conquest-like halo of light.  There was no sky.  No atmosphere, no clouds, no barrier or dome separating earth from something that was far from being heavens.

It was a darkness so deep it felt like she might be picked up from the ground and sucked away into the wider parts of it, torn away and flung into the deepest regions of that absence in a heartbeat.

Great spheres broke it up, but they were small comfort.  They had a gravity of their own.  Not planets, not moons, but something else.  So close it felt like they might scrape past, and wipe everything here away.

One took up a third of the space above, touching on two sides of the horizon, shifting perceptibly with every moment.  It shifted with what looked to be static, like that from a television screen, but the edges were too crisp, the details too sharp, until she thought it might touch her, or reach into her eyes.

When she tore her eyes away, the afterimages of those tiny depictions made her think of bodies.  Humanoid.  People, creatures, maybe demons, moving across the surface, shuffling over and through and under one another, occupying the entirety of the surface, layered as deep as oceans or as tall as mountains.

Two more great spheres had collided with one another, and fragments stretched between them, with trails of dust or smaller fragments extending between.  One was marked with faint glows that suggested the same expanse of magma she’d observed in the clouds over Jacob’s Bell.

It was a setting, she instinctively knew, that was familiar to demons and gatekeepers, and very few others.  A setting that predated things.  Or a setting that would be.

Far removed from humanity.  From this ghost town lit by that crackling static of a planet covered in moving bodies or the faint red glow of the burning wasteland sphere.  It made for a mottled, red-tinted moonlight at best, but more frequently the light provided that shifted away from the eyes, as if it were shy.

The town was disordered.  It was the best way to put it.  Things weren’t in their proper places.  It conjured up images of a ruin, but the buildings themselves weren’t ruined.  The buildings were crammed together, and with everything else pushed away or left untouched by the faint light.  At worst, there was only more of the absolute darkness.

“Any pursuers?” Rose asked.

Her voice sounded so empty here.  As if any and all suggestion of an echo or sound bouncing off the surroundings and back to them had been removed.

“Yeah,” Lola said.  “At least one of the lawyers.”

Rose nodded, unsurprised.  “The runes didn’t help, huh?”

“They got us out of there,” Lola said.  “But whoever or whatever he is, I get the impression he or she is on us like a bloodhound.  Some sort of trinket or demon or familiar.  If I had to put it to words… it’s that moment where a rabbit realizes it isn’t going to get away from the wolf or the hawk, captured, frozen in time.”

“Makes sense they’d have someone to track others down,” Rose commented.  “The lawyers have their debtors and fugitives.  I’m not the first to try to escape the consequences.”

“Man,” Peter said.  “If this is escaping consequences, I don’t even want to know what facing them is like.”

“I’d try to divert or do something subtle,” Lola said, “But I don’t feel like it would be useful.

“Let me, then,” Ainsley said.  She lifted a lighter to her candle, and tried and failed to produce a flame on four concurrent tries.  Each failure prompted a faint shift in her expression, leaving her with a deep frown by the end.  The look didn’t change when the fifth try produced flame, lighting the candle.  She let wax drip across their path, reached into a pocket, and pressed a piece of wood down.  Rose leaned forward and saw that she’d impressed a seal into the wax.

“Seal?” Rose asked.

“That should shake our bloodhound for exactly two minutes.  I just wish my lighter hadn’t been so finnicky.”

“Candles need oxygen to operate,” Lola said.  “Maybe this place operates by different rules?”

“We need oxygen too,” Paige added.  “What happens if it takes that away?”

“We have oxygen, let’s not set any self-fulfilling prophecies in motion,” Rose said.

There were some nods.

“Green Eyes?”

The mermaid was at the front of the group with Evan, peering forward, head periodically moving to scan the surroundings.  When she looked back, Green Eyes’ namesake eyes glowed a pale green with the light from the pseudo-moons above.

“It’s quiet here,” Green Eyes said.  “Sound doesn’t carry like it should.”

Rose couldn’t help but notice that voices sounded strange, too.  Too sharp around the edges.  As if sounds weren’t diffusing or breaking apart enough.

“No danger?”

“Can’t tell, not really.  Smells aren’t traveling like they should either.  But there’s death, and blood.”

“Blood and darkness,” Mags said.

“Faster we do this, the better,” Rose said.  She hadn’t forgotten that the others were dealing with demons.  A minute was fine if it meant getting their hands on some goblin cannon fodder or if they were making sure they understood the basic rules of a new landscape, maybe delaying or shaking a pursuer.  But waiting for waiting’s sake made her feel like she or someone else might lose their courage and outright lose the ability to press on, or that those precious seconds might cost someone on the outside their life.

She’d anticipated the abyss, or a shifting landscape where buildings themselves barred the path or formed walls.  Nothing moved.  There was no sound, and this place didn’t steadily wear against them or fight them.

Up a segment of fire escape, onto a rooftop of an adjoining building, then onto a jumble of cars that had been shoved over to one side, each member of Rose’s group walking carefully on the rooftops.

“Is that a genie?” Paige asked.

“Yeah,” Peter answered for her, his voice hushed.

Paige shot him an annoyed look.

They continued along the slanted and sloping rooftops, stepping down onto the ground itself.  Peter offered a hand to Ainsley, then Paige, then Lola, in turn, offering them something to steady themselves against in case their feet slipped.

Rose and Mags were already on the ground.  They approached the genie.

Eviscerated, the genie was stuck in a standing position.  Hollowed out, chest and stomach torn open, its jaw had split at the chin, as if it had opened its mouth too wide, venting from within.  Its remains were scattered around the open parking lot.  The source of whatever impulse or push had moved the assorted cars.  Scorch marks etched the pavement, leaving sections of it glassy.  There was no blood, no gore, only the shell of a form and signs of an outpouring of energy.

Not a one minute walk away was a giant.  Sitting cross-legged, hands folded in its lap, its shoulders slumped forward, head tilted so it faced the ground.  Even sitting, its head reached as high as the roofs of the two stores on either side of it, each one three floors tall.  The face had burned away, the skull shattered, revealing just how thick the bone was.  Far thicker than a human skull.  The interior of his head was only dark.  The fragments of the skull and wisps of scorched flesh littered the hands, lap, and surrounding pavement.

“Man,” Evan’s voice cut through the silence.  “Why does that bother me so much?”

“Giants are nearly extinct,” Lola said.

“Man,” Evan said, again.

“He’s his own tombstone,” Ainsley said.  “In a place like this, he won’t ever change from that.  Wind won’t erode him, microbes won’t eat him.  He’ll just sit there, until this place is gone.”

“Fucking assholes,” Mags said.  “Fuck them.  Even clueless idiots like me know you don’t mess with the giants.”

“Cause they step on you,” one of the goblins chimed in.

“Because they’re fucking giants,” Mags said.

Rose shot Mags a curious look.

“What?”

“Wasn’t aware you could swear.”

“I can, but I’ve decided not to.  Stay as close to my old identity as possible, even if it means embracing the bad.”

“Ah.”

“Looks like he was a cool dude,” Evan said.  “Just sitting and chilling and facing his death like a boss.”

“More likely he just wasn’t fast enough to defend himself,” Lola said.

“Cool dude!” Evan said, and his voice shifted enough from one syllable to the next that he looked to be well under the influence of the drink, still.

“Sure,” Lola said, in the tone of someone who had dealt with belligerent young sisters or cousins before.  “Let’s go with that, then.”

They left the giant behind, moving further into the city.

Rose had anticipated a maze, but as hard as the going was, there was little chance to get lost.  There were more ups and downs than lefts and rights.

They made their way down from the roof of the gas station, to neatly sorted piles of rubble.  Each pile was roughly the same size, and each pile was equidistant to the next.

It was telling, and it got the gears turning in Rose’s head.  She stopped, and she turned, looking.  How had things been laid out, when she’d been atop the gas station, or on the rooftops, earlier?  She tried to draw a mental picture.

“Rose?” Mags asked.

Rose realized the group was threatening to leave her behind, as she looked.

“It’s a diagram,” she said.  “He’s laid it out as a diagram.”

The other practitioners turned and looked for themselves.  The non-practitioners looked restless, drawing closer to the group.  Peter, Green Eyes, and Evan.

The observations and ensuing discussion were interrupted.

“Crush you,” the voice whispered, but it was a deep voice, not unlike Evan’s present one.  It was a voice that could have boomed if it wanted to, if this place allowed.

Weapons found hands.

Rose wasn’t surprised.  She’d anticipated trouble, and a part of her was glad to find it.

She held the machete that the witch hunter had thrown to one side.  Ainsley had her candle, Lola and Mags had knives.

“Break you,” the voice said, closer.

It moved between two piles of rubble.  Quick, given how large it was.

It was big, but not giant big.  Comfortably in the order of hundreds of pounds.  Fat, neckless, not unlike Midge in general proportion, the resemblance stopped there.  The mouth was a slash across its face, ragged, filled with misshapen teeth, the eyes dark recesses, filled only with shadow.  Rose was suspicious that if she had a light and the opportunity, she might have peered into those recesses to find beady black eyes.  Better suited for darkness than light.  Textured like callused flesh or a mole rat.

Ogre, Rose thought to herself.

One of the old creatures Johannes was so fond of surrounding himself with.

“We saw what happened to the others,” she called out.  “He hollowed them out, tore them to pieces.  All the Others that followed him, before.”

“Sacrifices,” the ogre said, a little louder than before.

“To?  For?”

“Crack it all to pieces!” the ogre bellowed, spreading his arms wide.

“Unmake it!” a second ogre bellowed, at a matching volume, from the opposite side.

Rose turned, and she saw the resemblance.

The Barber had cut, and these two ogres had once been one.  Now they were his.  Cut in a way that served him.

There would be no help from them.

In a low voice, Ainsley murmured.  “I can use the candle to bind one.  I can’t use it to bind both.”

“Open the gates!” the first ogre cried.

“Ruin to all things!” the second howled, louder than before.

Rose was already running, hurrying to catch the others.

The second ogre hurled something.  It might have been a concrete block.  He threw it underhand, like a human might throw a softball.  It sailed.

Lola managed to deflect it with a gesture, a stone in her free hand.

“Crack the walls!”

“Let darkness bleed through!”

The loud cries were stirring attention.

Now they had company.

Broken, cut, distorted things.  The Barber’s creations, sheared into shapes that pleased him.  They emerged from buildings, and they flowed from windows, or appeared on rooftops.

They moved, shuffled, and crawled with little noise.  Only periodically did one whimper.  Rank and file, in the service of other things.  A hunchbacked figure, cut with the shears.  A gaunt figure.

Things, if she was judging the ogres right, which had been predisposed toward destruction before, made into something worse with a careful cut.

They ran, and the hordes closed in.  Evan used his flames to drive them back and leave trails of flame that guarded the flanks.  Green Eyes went after one leader that strayed too far from his group, biting into his shoulder and neck, then scrambled to escape the hail of thrown objects and weapons.

But Rose felt her progress diminish.  She wasn’t moving slower, but her strides covered less ground, all the same.

She turned, walking backward, and she saw the pursuer, the possessed lawyer, with a demon hound at his side.

Chanting, gesturing.

Binding her into place, so the hordes could get her.

Rose drew and aimed her unloaded gun, pointing it at the lawyer.

He stopped trying to bind her, saying something to protect himself instead.

The binding that was leashing her to one place still lingered.  Each step was less effective than the last, as if she were walking up an icy slope, sliding back a distance with each step she took.

“Ainsley!”  Lola cried out.  “Get Rose!”

Ainsley threw pins in Rose’s direction.  Each pin traveled a measured distance, stopping at the cardinal points around Rose’s feet.  Faint lines marked a binding, etched into the street.

Ainsley blew out the candle, and blew away the binding.

They’d still lost their head start.

The Barber’s creations were closing in.

Too many for it to have touched each with the shears.  The cut was some effect the demon had worked across his domain, to alter vestiges.

Standing against them was akin to trying to withstand a tidal wave that looked to crush her against the beach.  Except they were far more brutal and savage.  Far less kind.

“Give me names!” Lola was saying.

Mags provided them.

“Now!” Lola said.

Mags cut Lola with the athame.

In a flash, they were moved.

Shifted to a building interior.

As a group, they collapsed.

“I’m No good to you now,” Lola said, looking down at her palms.  “Did all I could.  Pulling us along a connection.  That lawyer found us, he’ll find us again.”

“You did good,” Rose said.  Whatever you did, it has to be better than that.

“I know you’re there,” Mags said, quiet.  “Come on out, guys.  If you’re still okay.”

Rose found her way through the building interior.  Blades, like great shears or kniveblades, punctuated the inside of the building.  Each was stained with blood.

Not like the abyss had been.  Not a trap, or a way of attacking the residents.  They’d been a singular, decisive cut.

Rose saw vestiges emerge, untouched by the barber.  Ones that had dodged that strike.

“There we are,” Mags said.

They were children, partially hollow, broken and occupied by other things.

Rose couldn’t look straight at them.  It struck a little closer to home.

She looked outside the window, instead.

To the Barber’s tower.  To the gateways that surrounded it, fabricated by Faysal Anwar, and to the teeming horde that stood between them and it.

Had the way been clear, it would have been a ten minute walk.

But as things stood, she was far less confident than ever.

Judgment 16.7

“Guys, these are some of the vestiges from Johannes’ domain,” Mags said.

Rose tore her eyes away from the scene outside.  Calling it a revel would be wrong.  There was no celebration at work.  There was only chaos.  Countless broken wretches were spending as much time harming one another as they were milling aimlessly.  Reacting to touch with violence.  The aggressor and the victim, fight and flight.  In some cases, where there was enough mean going around, as was the case with the ogres, each side got two very different kinds of viciousness.  Raw barbarism in one, sadism in the other.

It made her deeply uncomfortable to see.  It reminded of the circumstances surrounding herself and around Blake, without the politer aspects her grandmother had no doubt enforced or demanded.

“I’ve made a habit of checking on them when I stop through,” Mags said.

Not that Mags’ acquaintances here were any better, as reminders went.

They’d been moved to what looked like an office building minus the office part of things.  A floor of a building with no walls erected, beyond the exterior ones.  Paint, drywall or other coverings were absent, leaving the insulation and wires exposed.  The ceiling was the same, a drop-ceiling without the tiles dropped into place.  Where the four blades of the Barber’s extending up into the ceiling and the ceilings of the floors above, thicker bits of construction had come down, leaving piled rubble throughout much of the otherwise empty, lightless space.  Everyone was scattered around the room, the vestiges in one corner, and Evan at the window, standing on a concrete balcony, doing his level best to avoid igniting the premises.  It helped that he was smaller, now, but she still worried he was a beacon of light to any who looked.

Now that Rose forced herself to look at the vestiges, she saw two boys and two girls.  One was older than the remainder of the group, thirteen or fourteen, the rest prepubescent.  They were, viewed with the sight and without, like cracked porcelain dolls come to life.  Hollow on the inside, they teemed with rat spirits, to the point that the press of furry bodies formed discolored, matted walls that covered the gaps.  They stayed to shadow more than they ventured into light, and only the flames that licked Evan’s body made their faces visible.

Paige created a light in the palm of one hand, and the light made them too visible.  The little band of vestiges even looked a little shocked when they saw one another.

The elder member of the group was missing most of his face.  The dog spirit that occupied him looked like roadkill, twisted, emaciated, its broken, short-muzzled face and one ear peering from the wreckage of one corner of his head.  If Rose squinted, it almost looked like a patch of hair that was the wrong color, covering part of his face.  That aside, he looked to be the strongest and healthiest, if especially wary.

The boy closest to him was thin to the point of being wasted, but his stomach was bloated to the point that his shirt couldn’t cover it, more weight on one side than the other.  Small, dark shapes moved beneath the skin, reminiscent of Green Eyes’ skeletal structure and organs.

A little girl with black skin was the third member of the group.  That she had her hair in twin buns was almost unfortunate, because it was reminiscent of mickey mouse ears, and she had more than a little bit of mouse in her.  Cracks ran along her skin, and as the spirits moved there, fur and the occasional paw or tail stuck up and through cracks, pushing the cracks apart.  One eye was black from corner to corner, the lids covered in fine dark fur, the other eye socket had a number of mice poking their heads out and through, moving furtively, noses and heads turning as they sought to peer at their environment before others pushed them out of the way.  As one grubby little paw reached too far and scraped her cheekbone, the girl flinched, rubbing at it with one hand, turning a small pawprint into a thin streak of dirt.

It made Rose think of Blake, with the small bird heads peeking out around the edges of one eye.

The shyest member of the group was a skinny little blond girl.  She had freckles across her face that might have faded with age, had she been able to grow older.  She wore a glare on her face, partly concern, partly because that was how her face was constructed.  Her tongue, lips and cheeks had been devoured by the bloody-faced mice that now lurked on the floor of her mouth, and mouse teeth and skulls pushed between her teeth and cut through her gumline here and there, as if the meat of her face was a fleshy grave for the rodents.  The teeth that hadn’t been displaced outright were jagged, twisted around, or set at odd angles.

The girl coughed, and a rodent flew free like a great glob of phlegm might, just barely managing to to catch at the ragged edge of flesh near the jaw before flying out onto the floor.  It darted around the side of her face and into her hair, legs scrabbling for leverage before it managed to squeeze through a gap that the hair hid.

Rose noted how Green Eyes, lurking off to one side, only barely managed to restrain herself from going after the morsel.

“Noah, Benny, Mia, and Olive,” Mags said, indicating the four children in order.

And we’re all present, Rose noted.

“What’s happening?” Noah asked.  “Is this the war you were talking about?”

“Uh, no,” Mags said.  “No, this is… war being led to a very unfortunate conclusion.”

“A demon took over Johannes.  It’s using his power to further its own ends,” Rose told the children.  She turned to Mags, “Why are they okay?”

“I’ve made a point of protecting connections,” Mags said.  “I asked Johannes to go easy on them, and I sort of… guarded them.  Maybe that counted for something?”

“Oh my gosh,” Paige said.  “He was going easy on them?”

Noah narrowed his eyes.

“That’s not important,” Rose said, changing the subject.  She couldn’t be sure if the kids knew how screwed up they were, but reminding them wouldn’t help anything, and informing them could derail the conversation altogether.  “I’m more interested in the fact that he might have kept a promise he made prior?”

“Maybe,” Mags said.  “Maybe it was subconscious?  Or he’s still in there, just a little, and he could steer it, or resist?  I have no idea.”

Rose frowned.

“A demon,” Noah said.  “It did all this?  We were napping when it happened.  It was like lightning hit everything all at once, from every direction.  We just barely managed to get out of the way before those things tried to spear us.”

Ainsley and Lola were nearest the things, the great blades that had speared up through the floor.  Ainsley was investigating one.

In the midst of her investigation, Ainsley nearly tripped over Mia, which put her on a collision path with the blade.  Lola grabbed her and stopped her from making contact.

Virtually every set of eyes present was on the trio of girls.

“You’re the magic types from the town?” Mia asked.  She hadn’t moved when Ainsley had approached her, and now her tone of voice suggested another kind of stubbornness, an insistence.  “Wizards and wizardesses?”

“Yeah,” Ainsley said.

“You knew what Johannes was doing?”

“Oh,” Ainsley said, seeing the logical conclusion to the line of questions.  “Listen-”

“You knew?” the smaller girl pressed, a little more intense.  “Mags says she didn’t have a choice, her very Self was at stake, but why didn’t you do anything?”

“It’s complicated,” Ainsley said.

“How?  Why?”

Had the little girl been an adult, the questions might have been answerable, but these were questions that came from the heart, and demanded an answer in kind.

Rose spoke, “Because he was considered too powerful to mess with.”

“That doesn’t sound very complicated at all,” Noah said.

“There were a lot of reasons,” Ainsley said.  “I’m young, there were other things going on, there are rules about who you can attack, when, and why.  But if you strip it all away, or if you distill it into some basic concept… yeah.  The reason we couldn’t just deal with him was that he’s strong.”

Mia only stared at her.  The answer didn’t seem to satisfy.

“As strong as he was,” Rose said, “he’s stronger now.  The circumstances surrounding all of this are forcing our hands.  If you can offer help-”

“I’m pretty sure they can,” Mags cut in.  “They should know their way around.  Things are twisted, crammed in together, reworked, but I think most of the elements that were here are still around, somehow.  If we could bypass that crowd between us and Johannes on any level…”

She trailed off.

“-we could really use it,” Rose finished her thought and finished Mags’ at the same time.

Noah glanced at each of his companions.

“You want us to help?” he finally asked.

“Yes,” Rose said, firm.

“If you want to take out Johannes,” Mags said, “This is the way to do it.”

“I bet,” Noah said.  “All this magic stuff, all the monsters-”

He shot a glance at Green Eyes and Evan.

“-Sucked us in, made our lives a living hell, just trying to survive.  You’re a part of it.  You condoned it.  And if you think you could stop him now, that means it was possible before.”

“I didn’t condone it,” Peter said.  “No wands in these pockets.  I’m an asshole, but I’m not an asshole in this respect.  It’s really very humbling.”

Paige elbowed him, shooting him a look.

“Paige either,” Peter added.

“That’s not what I meant,” Paige hissed.  “Don’t interrupt.”

Peter threw up his hands, turning away.

“It wasn’t all that possible, before,” Ainsley said.  “It’s a long shot now.”

“You mean it’s almost impossible,” Noah said.  “You want to get us involved in a fight we can’t win.”

“I mean it’s a long shot,” Ainsley said.  “One where every second counts.  They’ve got a diabolist with a demon hound sniffing us out, and the demon that took over Johannes is doing things.  Our friends and family may be dying as I say all this.  Please.  I can swear that we’ll make amends five times over.  Me and my family.”

“I can add my family to that,” Lola said.

“The two biggest families in Jacob’s Bell,” Mags said.

“But you want us to join the fight, as part of the price of that,” Noah said.  “You’re all the same.  You, your families, the sorcerer.  Well, I have the right to say no.  You had your chance to get on our good side, and that was before you needed to get on our good side.”

“We’re not the bad guys,” Ainsley said.

“Bad enough,” Noah responded.

“Wait,” Evan said.  He hopped forward a little, “Listen-”

“No,” Noah said.

“But I’m a kid too!  I got shafted too, metaphorically!”  Evan said.

“You’re one of them.”

“I can be energetic and peppy and win you over by speaking from the heart!” Evan said.  “I’m good at it!”

Noah ignored him.  “Mags, I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m really not.  Coming to check on us and maybe protecting us from whatever this is, like you were saying, bringing us snacks or comic books, it’s not enough.  We were fodder, monster chow.  When that happened, you all should have decided that was the time to react and respond.  But you didn’t.  Now that your own hides are at risk?  You can deal with it, and we’ll keep doing what we were doing.”

“He speaks for all of you?” Peter cut in.

“Ahht,” Olive said, speaking without a tongue or lips.

“Yes,” Benny said.  Mia nodded.

“Shit,” Peter said.  “He sounds a little too emotionally involved to be a good leader.”

“We’re all emotionally involved,” Benny said.  “It’s what happens when you’re in a ‘monsters hunt kids’ theme park.”

“And you’re used to focusing on survival,” Mags said.  “I can’t say I agree with what you’re saying, Noah.  If this goes bad, which it probably will, you won’t last long, and it’ll be bad.”

“Scare tactics.  Right.  Yeah, I’m not convinced.  You collectively dug yourselves into this, you deal with it.”

Noah turned to go, pointing at a hole in the wall.  The other three children headed for it, Mia moving in all fours and somehow not looking awkward doing it.

There was a crackle, a crack, outside, a flash of bright light, a lightning strike.

All eyes turned.

Another gateway.  A tear in reality, a hole opened by the Gatekeeper.

Rose could see it all.  The wretches that moved throughout the condensed patch of civilization, the sky, the tower and the almost certain death that awaited them there.

She could see her allies, her hand-picked team that would no doubt get shredded, taken out one by one on the way out.

The appearance of the gate was just another nudge, another straw on the camel’s back.

She moved without really thinking about it.

Machete in hand, she swung it around.

Her hand caught Noah by the back of the boy’s jacket.  He jerked.  Only thirteen, he didn’t have much mass compared to her fully grown self.

He made a strangled noise, then twisted.  Faster reflexes than any human.  More flexible, even being broken.  A flawed vestige.  He managed quite well, considering that she still had a grip on his shirt, facing her, hands outstretched, fingertips curled in.

The boy’s face contorted in rage, far more than a human’s normal range of movement should have allowed.  Cracks formed.

She felt eerily calm as she brought the machete to his throat.

He froze.

His eyes met hers.

“Um,” Evan said.  “Rose?”

“I wasn’t introduced, I don’t think,” she said.  “My name is Rose Thorburn.  I’m a member of a third powerful family in Jacob’s Bell.  Unlike the others, I won’t deny that I’m a bit of a bitch when it comes down to it.  I’ve only very, very recently learned how to appropriately care for people, like you care about this rat pack of yours.”

His face contorted even further at that last touch.

“I feel the need to protect mine just like you need to protect yours, keeping yours out of trouble.  That’s why I have a blade to your throat.”

Noah didn’t respond.

“Look over my shoulder at the mermaid,” Rose instructed.

Noah didn’t break eye contact.  But Rose adjusted her grip on the blade, and he got her point.  He looked.

“See how monstrous she is?  Her skin, the claws?  Look at those scales.  You can’t see it from here, but each one curls out at the end, and they have hooks with barbs to set into skin, and the slime that runs down her body melts skin to make it easier to rip up.  She eats people, she’s even giddy at the idea.”

“Rose,” Evan said, his tone warning.

Green Eyes probably didn’t like the phrasing.

Except Rose was beyond careful wording.

“I’m making a point,” Rose said, not looking away from her hostage.  “Look at me, Noah.  Look me in the eye, now.”

He did.

Her voice was quiet.  “That demon that got the Sorcerer?  He got me.  I’m more of a monster than she is.  More than the person-melting, flesh-ripping, cannibal mermaid.  By several accounts, she’s actually nice when you’re on her good side.  I have a very hard time saying the same thing.  I’m trying, but it’s an uphill battle.”

“Do your worst,” Noah said, setting his jaw.

Despite this, she could see the fear in his eyes.  Not necessarily fear of her, but knowledge he’d been caught.  He’d pushed it too far, and he’d lost.  Now he was ready to die.  The words that would send his brother and the two girls scattering were no doubt on the tip of his tongue.

“I was made to serve a purpose, just like you,” Rose said.  “I was thrown to the wolves, just like you.  You can see the markings on my skin?  I have a spirit inside me, tearing me to shreds.  Just like you.  The big difference between us is that you were made to run, and I was made to be scary.  Enough that people wouldn’t want to fuck with me.  Enough that people who are even more messed up than I am would think I was playing the game and being a good little monster.”

She let the words sink in.

“I’m all out of fear,” Noah said.  “That bucket’s ran pretty dry a while ago.”

He can lie, Rose observed, but he put up a good bluff.

“Mags has conveniently glossed over the question of what might happen to your group when the sorcerer is gone and this place is left to languish.”

“I didn’t gloss, damn it,” Mags said.  “I didn’t think about it.”

“I dwell a lot on the future and long term plans,” Rose said.  “I’ve studied this sort of thing.  Vestiges.  Abandoned places.  When he dies, this place will disappear.  The monsters who’ve been hunting you will throw all rules or whatever to the wind, Johannes’ protections obviously won’t hold, and there’ll be a short period of utter carnage and destruction before they move on to greener pastures.  If you survive, and that’s a big if, this place sinks.  You get swallowed up by the Abyss, a place that made a relatively ordinary girl into that mermaid you see over there.”

Noah glanced again at Green Eyes.

“Being what you are, you won’t last long.  It’ll change you too much, too fast.  Just like it did to my other half.  It will split you up from your friends because that’s the best way it has to change you into something it can use.  That’s if we win.  Understand?  If we succeed in our goal, we kill the sorcerer and stop or bind the demon, you’re doomed.  If we fail, you’re worse off.  I think you get that, but I don’t want you to tell yourself that there’s any chance you can go back to life as usual, miserable as it is.”

“You want us to join you because of that?” Noah asked.

“No,” Rose said.  “I’m negotiating.  You don’t get what we’re really doing, or the reality of what else is happening, or any of that.  That’s fine.  I understand that you’re limited in terms of what you’ve been told.  You’ve been fixated on everything that’s going on here.  On surviving, on the fact that you’re a plaything.  You’ve resigned yourself to the fact that you got screwed.  I’m going to say this in terms you can relate to.  You’re a vestige.  You’ll always be a vestige.”

I’ll always be a vestige, the thought crossed Rose’s mind.

“And?”

“And you’ve told yourself you’ll always be Johannes’ pet.  Or you’ll be stuck running from something or other.  You can’t leave because you have no place to go to.  Well, I’m offering.  If you help and we succeed in all of this, I should be free to stake out a demesne, and I’ll give your group permission to use a share of it.  You’ll have control of that space just like Johannes has over his, like the demon has now.  No more running.  Minimal obligations.”

“No obligations,” Noah cut in, too fast, too eager.

He was just a kid, after all.

“Minimal,” Rose said.  “The way this world works, you can’t have no obligations.”

He hesitated, but he’d already expressed some interest.

He looked to his brother and the two girls, but they weren’t any help.  They weren’t giving him an avenue to refuse, or to argue against it.

The hook was set.

“I’m the type of person who holds a machete to a kid’s throat,” Rose said, “But I can be that type in a way that’s useful to you.  One that’s invested in protecting you.”

“I dunno,” Noah said, noncommittal, “Like you said, you’re a bitch.”

Using fodder she’d handed him.

But, at the same time, her own thoughts were coming together.

She wasn’t willing to spend any more time on him.  Time was too tight, and something told her that so long as she pushed, he’d push back.  If she tried to pull, to draw him in, he’d resist.

“Figure it out,” she said.

She released him, pushing him away with her free hand so he couldn’t or wouldn’t throw himself at her, clawing and biting.

“I’m not sure I like how you handled that,” Ainsley commented, quiet.

“Did we have another choice?” Paige cut in.

“Aren’t you supposed to be some exemplar of truth, fairness and justice?” Ainsley asked.  “Because maybe that was true, but I don’t think it was fair or just.”

“I think it sounded like both,” Peter said.  “I agree with the kid.  This whole situation here wasn’t fair or just, either, and I think we’ve already established that your whole dynamic was a bit hypocritical, as far as Rose and general nonsense went.  You’re oh for three.”

Ainsley shut her mouth.  Rose wondered if she’d connected to the notion that Peter had been pursuing her, and was left thoroughly off balance now that he was on the attack, in a manner of speaking.

But that wasn’t the focus.  Rose turned and looked out the window, her thoughts elsewhere.

One of the many plans she’d considered in the context of the war had been a big declaration for her demesne.  If she would be attacked by everyone anyway, why not claim as much as she could?  If she could claim the streets of Jacob’s Bell, for instance, she might be able to encapsulate or overwhelm Johannes’ influence.

The idea of a proper demesne had stayed with her, and had inspired the offer she’d made to the boy.  But halfway through that thought, as she looked to the future once again, she could imagine how her personal realm might be affected by her association with the Abyss.  How Noah and his friends wouldn’t be out of place in the midst of it.

Johannes’ demesne wasn’t so dissimilar from the Abyss.

The parallels kept getting drawn.  Blake had wanted her to bring Green Eyes.  A bogeyman.  Was there more to it?  Was he with her in thinking about how things all fit together?  Gatekeeper, human, demon?  Humans and the abyss?  The stable ‘real’ world and the churning void of the Abyss?

“We should go,” Lola said, an abrupt statement that disturbed Rose’s line of thinking.  “I might not be capable of doing much, but I can feel my neck prickling like someone’s sneaking up behind me.  I’m pretty sure the lawyer is close.  Not about-to-kill-us close, but in or near the building.”

“There’s no point in going if we wind up stuck in the same situation we just had to scramble to run from,” Paige said.

“Yeah there is,” Lola said.  “Staying?  We definitely die.  Go, there’s a chance.  Slim, but still a chance.”

Rose clenched her teeth.  If they couldn’t help, couldn’t they just shut up and let her think?

“Boy,” Green Eyes said.

Noah startled a bit as Green Eyes drew closer.

Prey and predator.

“Rose, who’s making that offer?  I want her to die more than anyone, and she’s smart enough to know it,” Green Eyes said.

“Uh huh?”  Noah looked between Green Eyes and Rose.

“Yeah,” Green Eyes said.  “She’s right.  She’s everything I’m not.  If I could erase anyone, no consequences, I’d erase her.”

Noah was looking at Rose as Green Eyes said it.  He didn’t see Rose flinch or change her expression in the slightest.

Rose offered him a nod for good measure.  He looked away, as if bothered.

“Dunno what you’d call it, but I’m vouching for her.  I know what you’re in for if you say no and we win.  She’s telling the truth there.  It’s a good deal.  One I’d take.”

“Character reference,” Peter chipped in.

In the sense that we sometimes want to look at a one star review for a popular product to see what the worst critics have to say.

“Yeah, that,” Green Eyes said.  “Don’t always know the right words.”

“Why do you want her dead?” Noah asked.

“‘Cause that spirit she talked about, that’s tearing her up inside, like your spirits’re eating you up?  He’s my hero.  Not my boyfriend, exactly.  But someone important.  I’m worried about him, and stopping her is the best and fastest way to stop worrying.”

There were a few surprised glances from members of Rose’s group that hadn’t gotten the memo yet on that particular conflict.

“Okay,” Noah said, and the word had a tone.

Rose didn’t move.  She needed more.  Something told her that if she pushed, leaped to shake his hand right now, he’d run.

“Okay,” the boy said.  “It’s… better than nothing.  I believe you.  If my friends are okay with it-”

“If you’re okay with it, then go,” Rose said, stern.  “We don’t have time to talk.”

He looked at his brother and friends for confirmation.  They nodded.

He pointed, and this time, he was inviting everyone else to follow.

They’d had time to rest and recover, but not to mend.  Rose’s legs were stiff from far too much activity in one night.  Scratches and bruises from her stint in the Abyss were making themselves felt, and having stopped, the sweat that clung to her body had chilled.

They didn’t head for a stairwell or elevator, but for one side of the floor, where flooring had given way, a hole.

Dropping down to the floor beneath.

Green Eyes and the vestiges were the first ones down.  Rose’s group followed.

Evan was the last to come, leaving a line of fire behind him.

Further down, the floor was more damaged.  They improvised a route, dropping down another floor.

“No stairs?” Peter gasped.

“Blocked, trapped!” Mia said.

Which might be a factor in why there was so little furniture.

Another floor down, and Rose could see from the view out the window that they were close to the ground floor.

“Trouble,” Lola said.  “Just below us.”

“Keep going!” Noah said.  “There’s always trouble here!”

Rose redoubled her efforts, even as her legs felt like lead.

They dropped down once more, this tie through a shattered section of bathroom.  In making downward progress, they’d moved at a diagonal through the building.  From the northwest corner to the southeast, roughly, if cardinal directions had any sense or logic in this place.

Where other floors had been emptied, furniture and even walls torn away to barricade or block conventional entry, the ground floor was littered with debris, including but not being limited to a car that had been dragged into the interior, set beside the front desk.

Among that debris and detritus was a lurking wretch of the Barber, waiting for them, a broken thing, a half that had been given little except the ability to feel pain.  It had been beaten, left a shell of it’s former self.  A fat lump of a man.

She looked, almost automatically, for the other half.  She found it.  A female half, muscle and ugliness, face contorted with rage, a makeshift spear in one hand.

Not the threat that Lola had warned about.

The double doors at the front of the building shattered.

The demon hound.  The lawyer wasn’t far behind, holding the leash that connected to the hound’s great metal collar

The demon beast shrugged its way free of the double doors.  Paige was ready, holding her orb of light up high, hands cupped around it.

The light flashed, and it very nearly blinded Rose, even though her line of sight was blocked by the backs of Paige’s hands.  Ainsley grabbed her, helping to pull her forward, and she followed the rest of the group to the very corner of the building.

A passage, lined with wires on one side.  Not even an access hatch, it was more of a space cut for the wires, which just so happened to be large enough for the spirit-infused kids to crawl through.

Very possibly too small for them.  For her group.

Peter was the next one in, and it wasn’t an easy fit.  He went in head first, and he stopped at the chest.

Rose turned to look, and she saw the demon hound shaking its head.

Paige was saying something.  A quick prayer.

Not directing her focus at the hellhound, but at the lawyer.

The light flared again.  What looked to be invisible figures wreathed in glowing drapery emerged from the reflections and refractions.  They reached out and gripped the lawyer.  Not firm holds, but gentle ones, enough to mire him.

Karmic burdens?  Rose wondered.  It would fit the Sphinx’s specialty, as would the protective end of things.

A hand covered his mouth, while another covered his eyes.  He fought and twisted to get away.  The hound strained, but though it was massive and strong, and even though the chain went taut, it didn’t pull free of the lawyer’s hand.

The hell-beast lunged, harder, and a stray, blind swipe of its claw destroyed part of the front desk.  It still didn’t pull free.

Behind it, Rose saw, the lawyer’s expression changed.  His body rippled with dark smoke, and that smoke served to shrug off the specters.

“Rose!” Ainsley called.  She was already in the vent.  Rose and Paige were the last ones.

Rose climbed through, and she was thankful of all the days where she’d simply forgotten to eat.  Had she been one half-inch thicker around the chest or hips, she might not have fit.

Her cousin was so close behind her that the girl’s face collided at one point with the bottom of Rose’s boot.

The hellhound could be heard behind them, gnashing.

It’ll pursue us aboveground, Rose thought.

The path led to a basement area, and the group collected there, in almost pitch darkness, before Paige produced another light.  Maggie’s goblins were the first thing that Rose saw.  The vestiges were the next.

An omen, perhaps, that there was nothing pretty waiting for them ahead.

Noah led the way across the basement, to a hole in the wall.

“There was a worm here, it whispered things,” Noah confided.  “The Sorcerer sometimes came to ask it questions.  I think that was why he had it stay here.  But it left after a bit, before this war started.  We use the paths.  Old tunnels.”

Rose followed the group through the hole in the wall and into what looked like a very crude mineshaft.

“Like Mags told us, back when we first met, there’s bad news,” Noah said.

“Where does this end?” Rose asked.

“Close,” Noah said.  “It gets you close to that big tower, or it did.  But it’s hard to know, with how things got twisted around.  There’s a good chance you’ll come up at the edge of some group or another.  That’s the bad news.”

“The worse news is that lawyer and his pet are going to be right on top of us,” Lola said.  “So… plan accordingly.”

Rose nodded.  “I figured as much.  And wherever we end up, it’ll have to do.”

“You do have a plan?” Lola asked.  “Something beyond attack?”

Yes, Rose thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

The answer terrified her, a little.

She’d sensed how much Blake had worn away, being deep inside.

He’d helped her get this far.  He’d given her pieces of his heart, and helped her feel her way past obstacles.  He’d fed into her instincts, where they were lacking.

But, she knew, she wasn’t much of a fighter.

Now to return to the same circumstance that they’d been in when this whole mess had started.  Her thoughts, his actions.

Her hand trembled a little as she extended it in front of her.  She could barely see it in the gloom, even with Paige’s light.

As she ceded control, following the same path Blake had taken when he’d retreated from the madness demon, she felt the tattoos take over, some thicker than others, overlapping, reaching out over skin.

She just prayed that if they somehow made it through this, that he’d give it all back.

Your turn, she thought.

Judgment 16.8

My turn.

The steering controls were handed over.  Considering that the vehicle in question was still moving, it made for something of a stumble.

Green Eyes was far enough ahead in the tunnel that she’d had to stop to let others catch up, just out of reach of Paige’s light.  Her eyes glowed in the gloom.  Though her eyelids were functionally useless, her facial structure suggested a widening of the eyes.

Her teeth flashed whiter in the gloom, in part because the lips were pulling back in a smile, in part because Paige and the rest of us were drawing closer.

I could feel a stab of pain.  I stumbled.  My hand touched a wall, and made contact with rough earth.  Not soft enough to crumble, but dirty, gritty.

Not really my hand.

Not my body.  Rose was smaller than I had been, back when I’d been flesh.  She was heavier than I’d been when I’d been sticks and bones.  It was an awkward middle ground, and in the midst of it, buried inside, was Rose’s metaphorical heart.  She was scared, and in occupying her body, I experienced that fear.

There were Others who did the possession schtick that liked the fact that they could experience raw human emotion and use it to educate themselves on what worked and what didn’t.  I didn’t like it at all.  It wasn’t the fear that had gripped me, once, being afraid of being bound down, or having someone get close enough to manipulate me, forcing me to back away and keep moving to avoid either of the two things from happening.

Rose’s fears were something else altogether.  A fear of the outside world, of people.  A fear that permeated everything to some degree.  Suspicion and paranoia.

I could see how our progenitor might have functioned before.  With this, and with everything I’d experienced, he would have been left with no place that felt comfortable, nobody to turn to.  Only a few patches of safety where he could operate on a more normal level.  Toronto.  Friends from Toronto.

It was too easy to think that the Barber had made us more functional, portioning out the crippling fears.  But recognizing that that just wasn’t possible meant facing facts.  If I’d done what I wanted to do, just escaping, traveling, I probably wouldn’t have looked after myself in the long run.  I’d have resented having to stay somewhere to work to get gas for my bike, food to eat, and I would have been afraid of roots setting in too deep, or getting sick.  There was no way for that future to be as free as I’d wanted it to be.

Rose was due another kind of misery.  She was meant to survive.  To outlast the rest of us.  Was it a kind of mercy to others that made grandmother isolate her?  Dooming Rose to a relatively quiet, lonely life?

Oh, right there.  I felt it, and I knew Rose felt it too, looking outward from within, as I’d done with her.  Anger.

The anger was mine.

With the anger came more changes, and more pain.  Tattoos crawled over skin, and where they surfaced, they pierced the skin, reaching out and over.  A covering, like a second skin.

I lost control of my movements again, as branches came out of skin at the legs.  This time, I bumped into Mags.

To give her credit, she didn’t really freak out.  Beyond the initial surprise at being blindsided by a staggering branch-woman, she was fast enough to reach out and offer a steadying hand, her fingers finding leverage in the mesh of overlapping branches.

Paige saw, though.  She made an incoherent noise and backed off, eyes wide.  The light in the tunnel flailed wildly for a moment as she dropped her hand.

“Oh, look at that,” Peter said, smiling.  He seemed to be taking far too much joy in being able to keep his cool while his sister was shocked.

With the movement of Paige’s light, the entire group had come to a stop.  Green Eyes and the vestige children had stopped, further ahead.

“Is she okay?” one of the children asked.

“She’s bleeding,” Paige said.

I looked down at my hand.  The branches were rippling beneath gloves, and I worked to pull the gloves off before they could tear, tucking Rose’s machete under one arm.

In places where the branches and extra bones were punching through the flesh, the flesh was red and raw.  In other places, the flesh had been scraped or cut, and trails of blood were leaking out, coloring flesh crimson where the branches had yet to emerge.

I flexed my hand, very aware of how the branches were heavier in some spots than others.  It was more like my hand than Rose’s, if I squinted, looking past the fact that portions were dark, dry wood and portions were blood-slick skin.

“I am,” I said, and my voice sounded like a jarring hybrid of Rose’s voice and my own.

“You being… Rose?” Ainsley asked.  “Or Blake?”

“Blake,” I said it at the same time Mags did.

“Blake!” Evan said, bouncing in place at a point behind the group.  “Oh man!  I’d give you a hug if I had arms and if I wasn’t on fire and if you weren’t so gross and bloody and is Rose okay?”

Finding Rose was difficult, given how every building block of this body had ‘Rose’ stamped onto it.  Or, more specifically, the building blocks had ‘Rus-‘ stamped on them, and the smudges and damage made it look enough like Rose that it sort of worked.

I felt her, and I felt how she was hurt.  My surfacing had put holes in her body and it had done a degree of damage to her being.

I felt raw, I felt strange, having given up whole pieces of myself, and I knew that I’d been damaged by my close interactions with Rose.  Now she was within me, and the dynamic had been inverted.

“Rose is… she wanted to do this,” I said.  “I get the body and the fear and she gets to operate free and clear and pull together the things we need to.”

“But is she okay?” Ainsley asked.  “She was supposed to be my future sister in law.  I’m kind of obligated to ask.”

“No,” I said, “she’s not okay.”

Ainsley was very still.

I left the second part of my sentence unsaid.  And what will you do about it?

Maybe someone was about to say something.  It was hard to tell, but I hunched over and convulsed.  More branches pierced the flesh to embrace my torso.

Before they could fully emerge, I grabbed and tore away the jacket and part of the sweater-blouse combo.  The reaching branches destroyed what I couldn’t remove in time.

I tried to catch my balance, but even with support from Mags, I still dropped to one knee.

More blood and blood loss.

“This might not have been wise,” Ainsley said, belaboring the obvious.

“Rule of thumb,” I said.  I managed to get to my feet.  “If I’m involved, wise isn’t the word you’re looking for.”

“Blake,” Paige said.  She was pale.

“We’ve met,” I said.  “You don’t remember, but we’ve met.”

“I’ve pieced things together from what Isadora told me and what’s been said, but meeting you is another thing altogether,” Paige said.  She seemed to center herself, and she focused on positioning and providing the light, though she didn’t take her eyes off me.

I looked at her too, and it was chilling to realize I felt nothing.  Paige and Molly and I had once been close.  I knew it, objectively, and I now knew that the memories were unbalanced.  But they were memories were more Rose’s than mine.

Playing dress-up or going to the playground down the street from Uncle Charles’ house or any of the other stuff, it was all largely meaningless.

Looking at the human faces around me, very few meant anything at all.  People.

Only Mags stood out, and even that was tenuous.

Still, I felt the need to say something.

“Aren’t you glad our grandmother put you dead last for succession?” I asked Paige.  My voice was still broken.  Partly mine, partly Rose’s.

“Probably the nicest thing she ever did for you,” Peter commented.

“Don’t think I don’t remember what you said, back then,” Paige said.

“You’re right!  Nicest thing I’ve done for you, too.”

The changes were still ongoing.  Getting me to the point where I’d been after my epiphany down in the Drains.  I twisted my neck as the branches climbed it, trying to stay more limber.

But where I’d been empty, before, now I was a cage that housed a largely paralyzed, terrified body.  Branches crawled in and throughout the body and formed the exterior covering, which I had more control over.  Rose didn’t house the body, but her emotions did.

“Are you good to keep moving?” Lola asked, without an iota of sympathy in her voice.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Because our best advantage right now is that the lawyer that’s chasing us is on foot above ground, and there is stuff in the way, and our way here is mostly clear.  If we can get ahead of him, that has to count for something.  I don’t think we will, but I’d like to at least try.”

I nodded.

I started forward, and my footsteps were lurching ones.  I stopped and pulled off the first of Rose’s boots, and felt the wood grow from the softer, more sensitive parts of the foot, reaching for the ground.

When I set my foot down, the branches splintered, broke, and bent, and were fixed in place by yet more pieces of wood and shards of bone.

I did the same with the other foot.

This time, as I ran, I was faster.  The strength was mine, an unnatural sort.

I could have done with being lighter, but I was more mobile, all the same.

As we progressed, the humans naturally fell behind.  I found myself in the company of Green Eyes, the vestige kids, and the goblins.

Somewhere in the midst of it, Evan caught up with us.  He was about four feet tall, and he still burned, but the trail of fire behind him was intermittent, only really appearing when he pushed himself to catch up.

“Our goal is to clear the way,” I said.  “Vestige kids, show us the path, help the others, but whatever happens, stay away from the sorcerer.  His pipes pull you under his control.  Evan?  It’s very possible that includes you too.”

“But-”

“Be awesome.  Stay on the perimeter.  Hold back the threats.  There will be work to be done here.”

“Okay.”

“I tackle the biggest threat.  Green Eyes?  Cover my back and flanks.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Goblins,” I said… I paused. “Be goblins.”

“Can-” one goblin started.  He hesitated, “Can I have… that?”

He was pointing.

Oh.  Ugh.

I pulled the article of clothing away from my shoulder, where it had caught on a length of wood.  A bra.

“No,” I said.  “No you cannot.”

I felt something stir within me.  It felt like the birds had, moving within, but considerably larger.  Rose was trying to push me to say or do something.

Did she want me to give the goblin her bra?

“It’s for morale,” the goblin said.  “If-”

“No,” I said, ignoring Rose’s stir protest.  It hurt, in much the same way the branches poking through the skin had hurt both skin and branch.

“But-”

“You’re going to kill the monsters the Barber made because that’s what you do best.  You are made for this.  Be violent, be vicious, be wanton, you’ll probably never get an occasion quite like this where you’ll be encouraged to cut loose like this.  Those creatures up there have been carved up by a demon, and they’re weaker, in many respects.  Other stuff was highlighted as stuff was carved away, but Rose thinks of them as wretches.  They’re weak, you pick on the weak.  Be thorough, cut them down and put them down.”

One or two goblins grinned at me.  Hard to tell in the dark.

“You know you’re dealing with goblins when a good pre-battle speech for the goblins demoralizes everyone else,” Mags said.

“What are we doing?” Ainsley asked.

“Get into the practitioner’s tower,” I said.  “Run interference if you can do it without dying, but focus on getting to a place where you can be practitioners and work your mojo.  If it looks like you’re going to die, try to take a few of them down with you, or slow them down.”

“You’re a hell of a lot more vocal than Rose,” Peter observed.  “It’s almost reassuring, except for the ‘going to die’ part.”

I frowned, my eyes facing forward, at the endless darkness of the tunnel.  Rose’s bundled clothes were tucked under one arm, the machete was in the other.  I didn’t plan on keeping the clothes, but I wasn’t ignoring the possibility that I could throw them at someone or something.

I answered Peter’s comment, “She’s been busy thinking.  Like this, she’s mostly free to piece things together, without outside distractions.  I’ve just spent far too long being forced to sit and wait, wanting to help and being unable to.  I’m ready.”

“I asked Rose, but she didn’t give me an answer before you showed up,” Lola said.  “Is there a plan?”

“Remember that we can do this,” I said.

“That’s not an answer,” she said.

“She’s putting it together,” I said.  “I was there in the background, watching her work at it.  It’s predicated on a few simple ideas.”

“Do tell,” Lola said, sounding less than pleased.  I suspected the pressure was getting to her.

“I did,” I said.  “Remember that we can do this.  That’s the basis behind the plan.  The demons are essentially Faerie.  Everything is Faerie.”

Our running footsteps marked the silence that followed.

There was a screeching roar from above us, the sound of metal tearing.

“I am super duper sorry, I really am,” Evan said.  “But you’ve got crazy, Blake.  Really crazy.”

“Evan-”

“I’m sorry that I said it,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over my protest, the words tremulous where the alcohol affected them, “But it’s got to be said!  You’ve lost it!”

“I’m not crazy,” I said.  “We challenge them the same way we challenge glamour.  This is about belief.  It’s about breaking from the conventions that shackle us.  Humans and practitioners have a massive amount of power, and this is why the lawyers are doing what they’re doing.  Rose and I caught on, but we didn’t buy into their deal and jump on board with them.  Johannes caught on, and Faysal and the lawyers both went after him to take advantage of it.  Humans are architects of change, and this threatens them to the point that they have to respond.  They’re worried, and what we need to do is make those worries justified.”

“Oh,” Evan said.  “What?”

“Easier said than done,” Mags said.

“Hell of a lot easier said than done,” I said.

“Push forward, do what you can.  Keep an eye out and your mind open for possible chinks in the armor.”

“And some of us will even do it while wearing bras on our heads!” the small goblin cried out.

Rose nudged me.

Fuck it.

I hooked the bra strap from the bundle of torn clothes I had under one arm and tossed it to the goblin, who cackled merrily.

“We’re close,” Noah said.

I could see what he saw.  A shaft of light leaked through a gap in the tunnel roof.

I could hear noises too, feel the tunnel vibrating slightly with the footsteps overhead.

Rose reshuffled memories.  The memory she gave me was a heavy one, the sort of memory that burdened.

Her, inside Conquest’s tower, trapped.

The tower? I thought.

She was better at manipulating the memories than I was.  The image shifted, an emphasis.  A scrap of cloth on the edge of the tower, billowing in the wind.  White.

Surrender?

No reaction.

No, white was Conquest’s color.  Not surrender.

A flag?

The vision stayed.  Rose, alone at the top of the tower, no exit, no good surface to scale.  Even if she’d tried, there was no point in it.  It was Conquest’s territory.

I see it.  What am I supposed to do with it?

The image she showed me was one of the first I’d seen out of her eyes.

Johannes, emerging from the hole in the world that had swallowed up Hillsglade House and formed the Library.  Not him.  He held the pipes and the shears.

The memory came with the realization.  He was the Barber.

“Here,” Noah said, interrupting my thoughts.

Rose had hated those interruptions.  I was more willing to go with the flow.

“Here,” Noah said, again.  “It was supposed to be here.”

We’d reached the end of the tunnel.  It simply stopped.  There was a barrier, with eroded concrete blocks worked into the soil.

“It’s his demesne,” Lola said.  “He gets to decide the layout.  That we got this close and got stopped… it’s…”

“A massive cockblock,” Peter threw in.

“I was going to say deliberate,” Lola clarified.

“It’s both,” I said.

“We need up and out,” Noah said.  “It’s supposed to go up and into a church.  This isn’t it.”

“The nearest church is a bit away,” Paige said.

“Oh, the demon doesn’t want a church so close to home?  Who’d’ve thunk it?” Peter asked.  Ainsley elbowed him, and he shot her an annoyed look.  “Stop doing that.  Seriously.  I’m not good for much more than joking around and offering very basic observations to you jerks, in case you lose sight of the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest or however it goes.  Until you come up with something better for me to do, let me have this.”

“If Blake is right,” Paige said, “Then you’re an important tool here.  You’re more human than any of the rest of us.  That counts for something.”

He opened his mouth, and she cut him off.  “And yes, I did call you a tool.  Grow the fuck up.  I’m not in the mood for it.”

I looked around, and I stabbed the machete into dirt to try and see if anything could be uncovered.  It was fairly thorough.

“Well?” Evan asked me.

I looked back at the group.

Ainsley was already stepping forward.  “Our job, right?”

I nodded.

Her candle was already lit, joining Evan and Paige in lighting up the area, and she advanced to the tunnel’s end, stepping carefully past Green Eyes and the goblins.  She stabbed the wall with the candle, and drew a circle with the softer wax.

She shook the candle, hard, and it returned to its full length.  With her other hand, she pressed a pocketwatch to the center of the circle.

I could hear the rapid ticking sound that went hand in hand with chronomancy.

“Let’s see if we can get it the way it was,” she said.  “Preferably leading up into where we need to be, not into the church.”

The wall distorted, the circle twisting, opening ever wider, like a gate.

“Shit!” Ainsley said.  “He’s aware!”

That word, coupled with the fact that we were in a tunnel, proved to be warning enough.  We scrambled back, but the dirt above us was already coming down, billowing into choking thick clouds as it touched the floor of the tunnel.

It seemed to take five minutes before the dirt was done falling.  It wasn’t actually five minutes, but time yawned on forever when one was being rapidly buried alive.

The dirt and dust still came down in clumps and trickles as I raised my head.  I’d stooped over, and I’d done it with Green Eyes beneath me.  She was curled up, contorted into as small a shape as she could manage beneath my shoulders, head and chest.  In the oppressive darkness, her eyes seemed especially bright.

Looking past green Eyes, I could see Ainsley lying limp in the midst of the fallen dirt.  A hole had opened above her, and the hole was ringed with figures.  Many of their eyes glowed too.  Countless figures there were broken as the four vestige children had been, but the damage was far more severe.  The Barber had carved them into pieces, and spirits had flowed in to fill the gaps, making them more like rodents, more like mangy dogs, more like children, in places.  Features were distorted and warped.

I forced myself to straighten, a hundred pounds of dirt sliding off my back and shoulders, and Green Eyes lunged, crawling readily and easily over and through dirt.

Evan was right after her.

He knows.  Johannes did, the Barber did.

I shot a look behind me, as goblins worked their way free of dirt that ranged from knee to hip depth, using my own body to gauge.  For them, it had completely and utterly buried them.  Some goblins were bleeding from fallen stones.

The group behind hadn’t been hit as hard.  The further back they were, the less dirt there was.

I knew that Green Eyes and Evan were engaging in the fight, but I still let the bundle of clothes fall and reached for Ainsley.  I hated to move her, but I knew that if I didn’t, there would be no way to save her.  I pulled her free by the most direct means I could, then turned to place her behind me, so she wasn’t right beneath the opening and eager attackers.

Machete in hand, I threw myself forward.

The little warrior.

Reckless, savage, built to destroy myself in battle, and take Rose’s enemies down with her.  A viking berserker, without the viking, the anger a much different sort.  Buried.

The wretches, whatever I’d said, weren’t weak.  The Barber, by vice of being a demon, was capable of breaking rules, and one rule was apparently that he could carve away weakness.

One half left feeble, the other half left strong.

One half left cunning, the other half left dimwitted.

I wasn’t used to this body.  How it moved, where the strength lay.  How to fight when I wasn’t lightweight, or when I couldn’t practice in between the exchanges of blows.

I would have liked to say I put up a good fight.  I didn’t.  From the outset, it was an uphill battle.  I went after the biggest threat, which was a vestige of a large, heavyset man.  His face had broken, and the spirit that lay within him was that of a screaming infant, streaked with mucus, scaled to size.  Twisted, oddly proportioned, entirely out of place on his frame, peering past a face that had shattered like porcelain yet still proved capable of bleeding when I nicked it with the machete.

He swung, and I tried to get out of the way.  A fraction too slow.  With an overlarge fist, he clubbed me.  I felt branches break, and fell to one side, landing amid dirt and shattered pavement, just beside where the tunnel had caved in.

Within moments, I was set upon by two smaller wretches.  They grabbed for my weapon and the clothes that I had that still remained, and they inadvertently held me down while the overlarge baby-faced man approached.

He brought a meaty fist down, striking me clean in the chest, breaking more branches and bones, then another.

Evan flew past, and the flames and sparks streaked the wretch’s face.  The thing screamed, howling in pain.

I hauled the machete closer to me, bringing a scrawny wretch closer with the gesture, then smashed my forehead into the wretch’s face.  I stabbed the other wretch before it could scramble back.

I tried to climb to my feet and I failed to do it before the other wretches tackled me.  I had a disorienting moment where the fear that ran through Rose’s body slowed me down even more, before I found the simultaneous adrenaline surge to pull free.  I twisted around and swung the machete.  Not as clean or pretty as it was in the movies.  It cut deep for the first two I struck, and left only a graze on the third.  Another wretch was already behind me, grabbing at the elbow of my swinging arm.  The larger baby-faced wretch was holding one meaty hand to its face, glaring at me with a disproportionately large, rheumy eye.

Green Eyes was in much the same situation I had been in, but she was more effective like that.  Her scales and skin were slick, she did damage just through contact, and she had fangs and claws.  She didn’t need the reach or space to swing her arm like I did.

Evan strafed the crowd, still just large enough to fight off any wretch that grabbed him, burning on contact, even though he wasn’t leaving a trail of flame behind him.

The goblins were here and there, doing just what I’d ordered them to.  Where some of us struggled in the chaos, the goblins reveled in it.  They were completely and utterly at home in the midst of all this.  They cut and butchered, found weak points and went after them with no hesitation.  Just the opposite.  With eagerness.

But our enemies were seemingly endless.  We were in the middle of a street, not forty paces from the tower, and the bodies had emptied out of every building, as if there were a festival going on.  I couldn’t find a gap any wider than an armspan in the midst of the crowd.

Worse than I’d anticipated.

Worse, going by the stirring inside, than Rose had anticipated.  It had looked more manageable from a distance.

Or maybe the Barber was drawing them all closer to him.

It wasn’t like the Abyss, I noted.  Where the Abyss had been almost eager to destroy and wear away, this was utterly nihilistic.  Bleak, more than savage.  The wretches destroyed themselves as much as we destroyed them, and it didn’t matter in the slightest, because they covered the streets around us, as far as I could make them out.

I stabbed the great baby-faced wretch in the general vicinity of the heart, swung low to cut at the side of the knee, more a vertical cut than a horizontal one, then spun to shake off others and carve blindly into the crowd.  I was separated enough from the others that I didn’t have to worry about accidentally cutting one of them.

One slash of the machete proved too slow.  A wretch closed in, and I hit him with my forearm rather than the blade.  More closed in, swamping me.  Among them was a goblin, biting at a wretch’s spine, pulling free with a bit of bone and strings of flesh clamped in its bulldog jaws.

Not a goblin that I’d seen in the group below.  Mags had called it up or called it out or done something, I had little doubt.

Even with the help, we were drowning.  This wasn’t water, but we were still drowning.

Light shone, and I knew it was Paige.  A beacon, directed to blind the wretches more than it blinded the rest of us.

I wasn’t sure it helped, because even if it only affected me one tenth of the amount it affected everything else, I was left blind, dealing with five or six blind wretches who were trying to pull me to pieces.

Still, if I squinted, it was an avenue for the practitioners to come to the fore, emerging from below.  Peter had Ainsley.

I fought free of the weaker wretches, and rather than try to establish space around myself to swing the machete, stabbed the back of a larger one that looked like it was readying to pounce on Green Eyes.  It had once been part cat, part woman, it looked like.

The others were saying something, forming battle ranks.  Lines drawn out, a perimeter that forced the wretches back.  But for every one I cut down, there was another to replace it.  I was locked in place.

The lawyer with the hound was there.  Fighting Evan.

No, I thought.

I’m too slow, I thought.

Sorry, Rose, I thought.

There was no reply.

I’d changed, my self coming in enough to fill in the spaces around Rose which weren’t enough like me.  But I’d stopped there.

I could push for more.

I had Rose in the center.  I knew that there was no way to take strength for myself without drawing from her.  Just as she’d drawn power from me.  Different types of well.

I pushed.  As a bogeyman, I’d been hollow.  There had been spaces in me one could see through.

Now, as I focused on the matter, I established similar spaces.  Much like how birds had hollow bones.  I was a shell with Rose inside, and now there were points that one could see through both the shell and Rose.

Almost from the point I made the decision, the dynamic changed.  Where one enemy had stepped up to replace every one I cut down, I was now making fractional headway.  For every sixth or seventh wretch I struck at, I could make a gap.

With a gap, and a few more spaces made within, I could make headway.

The lawyer reached out and grabbed Evan.  The man’s eyes were deep yellow, his hair wild, scruff on his chin, and he seemed immune to the pain as his hands boiled and burned with Evan’s flames.

I was too far away.

Come on, come on.

With headway, I could build momentum.

I pushed past a lesser wretch, hit a wall of the big ones.  I barreled into them, cutting to drive them to either side.

I reached the lawyer, and I didn’t get a chance to swing at him, nor the hellhound he was trying to offer Evan up to.

I swung for the chain.

He knew in an instant, what I’d done.

A gesture, and the hound was gone, midway through opening its jaws to take a piece out of its one-time master.

Held in only one hand, Evan was freed.

I stabbed the lawyer.

I stared him in the eye, oblivious to the wretches around me who were clawing at me, trying to drag me down.

He wouldn’t go down with just that.  Not with a cut.

I twisted and broke the machete’s blade.

I stabbed him with the broken remainder.

Spikes impaled my hand.

The machete changed.

I’d left the Hyena back in the Abyss, a symbolic gesture, almost.

Now it was back.  As much a denizen of the Abyss as I was.

I pulled away, leaving the lawyer a wound he couldn’t recuperate from.

I cut him again, and turned to fight once more against the tide.

Others were shouting, pointing.

In the distance, blades were piercing the earth.

The same scissor blades as before.  Striking the people furthest away, then the next line, then the next.  The Barber altering his demesne.

Blood roaring in ears that weren’t mine, surrounding by screams and utter death, I fought my way for the tower.

We have to remember we can do this, I thought.

The others were there, ready to enter the building, but in the instant they got that far, blades appeared to block the door, like crossed spears to wall the others off.

The Barber was going to do everything it could to dissuade us of that notion.

Judgment 16.9

Each of the blades erupted from the ground as if it was stabbed up and through the surface by something that dwelt just below us.  Twice as tall as any of the denizens here, rusty, scuffed, but horribly sharp, roughly two out of the three blades were left coated in blood as they tore through members of the crowd, the occasional set scissoring closed with sprays of blood and dust.

The blades served two purposes.  They made more wretches, casting some into the air, causing the masses to stumble and pile up.  All by dividing them further.  Broken vestiges even before they were divided.

The second purpose was to form a barricade.  A ring of blades at the edges, ever-closing, and a barrier to block our entrance to the building.

Except there was more at play.  Our circle was filled.  Crammed full of wretches, many ex-human, a small few being ex-Other.  Mad, senseless, savage, driven toward violence and destruction without aim, but it was a pressure from every direction, and as the number increased at the edges, they surged forward, pushed by those behind.  The gaps narrowed and the ones still possessed of a glimmer of sense and sanity struggled to get away from the steadily-approaching eruption of blades.

Irony.  Scary, scary irony.

We were being bound.  Like bound by like.  Humans and others caught up in a sea of humans and others.  They pressed in on us from every direction and matched us in strength, by quantity if not quite by quality.

Even the mechanism wasn’t so different from how I’d dealt with Ur, how I’d theorized the mechanism for his ultimate defeat.  Create a perimeter, then gradually draw it closed.  Choke out those caught within.

There were screams and roars of pain all around us, but not so much it drowned everything out.  All the same, hearing was hard when every second meant I was trying to figure out where to place my feet, how to dislodge myself from wretches that had grabbed me, making sure I was still moving in the right direction, when I was being jerked this way and that.

Paige was shouting something.  I was pretty sure it was Paige, anyway.  Screaming orders, warnings.

A wretch that had originated from some savage, backwoods sort of Other snapped in my face.  Lipless, its face was predominated by thick triangular fangs each as long and wide as my hand.  With one arm grabbed, the other arm busy sticking the Hyena into the lower portion of the wretch’s stomach, I pulled my head back as far as possible, leaning on the crowd behind em.

I twisted the blade.  Something in the crowd behind me managed to dig into a space between branches to claw at Rose’s side, parting flesh with sharp nails.

Another snap of jaws, just shy of my face.  I twisted the blade further, shoved it in deeper, at a sharper angle, and the wretch’s head bowed.

I slammed my wooden forehead into the wretch’s flesh and skull, and it reeled back.  I hurled myself forward, away from the claws that were trying to scratch Rose and drove my head into the wretch’s chin, my hands still caught up in other struggles.

She -I was just now able to see the clues to its gender- toppled over backward, falling against the crowd in front of me, much as I had.  The difference was that she was much larger than I had been.  Her weight pushed smaller wretches down, just enough that her reaching hand couldn’t find solid ground to use to right herself.

I tore myself free of the crowd around me, swinging the hyena to cut at arms and hands that were reaching and seizing me, and set my foot on the fallen wretch’s ruined stomach.  I pushed myself up and forward, stepping on her chest, then the shoulder of another Other just behind her, facing the wrong direction.

I had the raw strength, I had a lower body weight to go with that raw strength.  I’d hoped to cover ground, moving over and on top of the crowd that was now pressing in so hard.

I made it three more carefully placed steps before something grabbed me by the ankle.  I toppled forward.  I didn’t try to stop myself from falling, or even to fall gracefully.  Neither was possible.  I brought the Hyena down into the neck of the biggest, most threatening looking wretch below me.

It was in the midst of this that Paige seemed very intent on communicating something very important.  I didn’t have the focus to spare to listen.

Rose, however, did.  I felt her move.  I was busy trying to deal with the fact that the wretch I’d stabbed was not the most dangerous one present, and one had clawed gauntlets instead of hands, and I knew that Rose was about to complicate the situation.

I badly underestimated just how much she was going to complicate it.

She couldn’t communicate directly, whispering into my head or whatever else.  She didn’t have the mechanisms for that, much as I hadn’t.  I’d suspected she’d shove a memory or experience from her share of things into me.  She didn’t.  She gave me something of my own.

Me and Carl, in the shelter.

Carl grabbing me.  Doing nothing else but talking.  Bringing matters to a head, after I’d spent weeks doubting myself, already on shaky ground before his arrival.  Forcing me to choose.

Would I turn my back on him, or would I plead to go back?

I’d made my decision, and I hated it.  Despised that I’d once been the person who would choose the latter.  Ever since, I’d fought to get further away from that person.  Fought it to the point that I’d turned my back on my humanity.

I knew the full story now, how we’d been put together.

After becoming a bogeyman, I’d convinced myself the scenario wasn’t real.  That I wasn’t real, and it was just a fabrication.

But Rusty, our progenitor, had gone through it.  It was real.

Now, knowing that, I faced it again.  I faced it and I knew that Rose saw.

That she’d looked through everything, in order to find that scene.

Me, giving up.

I remembered where I was, only just barely managed to move the Hyena to block one of the gauntlet-claws from disemboweling Rose, where she was nestled within me.

Paige was still shouting, only this time she was saying something about ‘toward the light’.  I’d missed the first portion, or the last portion.

Poor choice of words, that.

Rose was stirring, and something told me that she was about to hit me with the exact same vision.

Not helpful!

But I got the message, even if I didn’t understand it.

Give up.

With that thought, Rose relaxed.  She didn’t push, and she didn’t hit me with the memory again.

A second gauntlet came around, and the Hyena was already caught between the fingers of the gauntlet.  I brought my knee up to block the second grasping claw, and the wretch closed pointed fingers on my shin.

I could have pulled the Hyena free, stabbed.

Something clubbed me in the side of the head, and I lost my position, falling amid knees and feet in the crowd.

I was stomped.

I tensed, found leverage, fingers gripping the Hyena.

Rose hit me with another memory, before I could lash out.  Me, in a sleeping bag, beneath the bridge.  Attacked by a small mob of youths, younger than I was, almost savage in expression, memories twisted by imperfect recollection.

A foot kicked past a gap in the branches, striking Rose’s stomach.  I felt the pain, even if I was one step removed from it.

I snarled, and I turned over, Hyena tucked under my body, head tucked down, back hunched over.

In my peripheral vision, through gaps in the crowd of Others, I could make out blood and debris fly as blades stabbed skyward from the street.  Not all that far away.

Light flared.  Paige’s work, as bright to look at as the sun, and a whole lot closer.  Where the light touched, here and there, flesh smoked, and an aurora shimmer of light started to dance over the broader, flatter surfaces, be it the side of a building or someone’s arm.

A half-second later, the effect really started to take hold.

One wretch swung a punch at another that was in its way.  The aurora flared, much as water might splash if one punched a tranquil pool.  The fist came away battered, a finger bent in the wrong way.

More explosions of light rippled around us, clusters and sporadic bursts both.

Peeking out in the other direction, an arm still over my head, I could see the snapping wretch I’d knocked over bite into smaller prey.  Light exploded out the front and sides of her mouth.  She staggered back, blood and trails of light streaming from her open maw.

Metal gauntlets dug into my back.  Wood and bone broke, and I felt the light ripple out, retaliating.

It didn’t prevent the harm, it only punished it.

More blades sprung up.  I was getting very close to the point where, if I had a clear path, I’d be hard pressed to outrun the steadily advancing eruption.

But the way forward was still obscured.  Paige’s effect was steadily wearing down at the massed enemies.  I could see the tie to the sphinx.  Set a rule, with very clear, fair consequences.

Hurt others, get hurt in kind.

A very good rule to set up, when we were dealing with insensate monsters driven by pain and rage.  Thinning the ranks.

Toward the light.

I forced myself to rise, to move.  A wretch behind me struck at my back, and I took the blow, felt it scrape past wood to catch at flesh.  I staggered, and my forward movement worked with the flare of retaliatory light to push my attacker away from me.

It was almost impossible to see where the light was originating.  In front of me, a wretch tackled another, and was thrown off by a matching blast of light.  I squinted, turning my head away.

I was moving in slow motion, trying not to be aggressive as I moved through them.  I saw a gap appear and took two half-steps to place myself in it.  Something struck me with a makeshift club, as if punishing me for trying to fill the gap, and the strike was hard enough to splinter wood.  The weapon the wretch had used was shattered, the fragments tearing into her face and fingers.

A goblin with a bra for a hat pounced onto her face while she was distracted, and was summarily punished, thrown off by a bright flash.

I focused on moving forward.

The light was dying, but it was stronger toward the source, and I was moving in that direction.  I pushed forward, and found far more wretches had fallen or backed away closer to the others.  The group had formed a ring, using wards and makeshift shields to ward off attacks.  Those that hit the shields were punished just as severely as if they’d hit the people protected by them.

Paige was at the center, standing on a fallen Other, light held high.  Peter was behind her, using a length of wood to batter at the blades that blocked the door.

They parted to let me through.  I glanced over to one side, and I saw the blades springing up, only a short distance away now.  Fifteen paces.  As they rose, they doubled the enemy ranks.  The crowd surged toward us, and the light drove them back as they struck at the shields.

I knew, without a doubt, that the sheer numbers would win out over the light.

I did an inventory of everyone that was present.  Ainsley was down, Lola hurt but helping, Peter and Paige were at the perimeter, Mags and a handful of her goblins were here, holding the line with the vestige kids, Evan was overhead, and Green Eyes-

Wasn’t here.

“Green Eyes!” I shouted.

Mags looked at me over her shoulder, found an opportunity to point.

I wished I could use Rose’s eyes to use the Sight, but that apparently wasn’t an option.  Mags had to provide it.

As fast as I’d passed into the group, I passed out the other side, pushing my way forward.  Head down, shoulders hunched, focusing on moving ahead.

For every three wretches, maybe one had fallen, in the wake of the retaliatory effect.  There were gaps.  I focused on them, and weathered the strikes that came my way.

I found her, on the ground and writhing to try and stay away from others.  Where her tail touched flesh or scales hooked on clothing, the light spat at her, sparks that burned and made her smoke.

We’d had a plan, but with the sheer numbers arrayed against us, the plan had broken down.  Now she was suffering further.  She hurt others by touching them, and now she was being punished for causing that harm.

Stooping down, I reached past the crowd, extending a hand.  She grabbed my wrist, and I pulled, prompting a small storm of light to wreath her as she slid past others.  When she was close enough, I wrapped my arms around her, while she folded her own arms around my shoulders.

A scythe-like blade thrust out of the ground, two feet in front of us.  It cut a wretch in two, and I could see the space between the two halves, the emptiness, void that went beyond simple vacuum.  Tatters and shards of the wretch were swallowed up by that vast darkness.

Shadowstuff and environment gathered to fill in the missing parts, and the two resulting wretches staggered before catching their balance.

They clutched at me, and my efforts to pull away didn’t succeed in breaking their grip.  They hung on, their weight joining Green Eyes in slowing me.

More blades came, not far away now, with masses of wretches fighting to get past what was a veritable forest of the things.  Here and there, they were shoved into the blades another time, cut deep.

I was at the very edge of the crowd before the wall of shields when the light finally died.

They piled on me, striking, swatting, grabbing.

This time, it was Green Eyes who saved me.  She crawled on me like I was a jungle gym, and she was an exceedingly violent kid who’d spent her whole life there, tail swinging, claws flashing, teeth biting.  In the span of one step, I had what probably amounted to a full bucketful of blood pour down on me and Green Eyes.

We reached the defensive line, but it was different from before.  Those who struck at the shields and goblins weren’t being bounced off, but were pushed in by the ones behind.

Green Eyes slid off me, slick with blood.  I let her lie there, heading to Peter’s side.  He’d done more damage than I might have expected to the blades that  blocked the door, even though they were nearly an inch thick.

“Look out!” Lola screamed.

The blades emerged from the ground.

It was meant to be the drop of the guillotine, perhaps.  Corner us, get us to the point where we had absolutely no elbow room to spare, then bring the blades out of the ground.

It was Ainsley, barely sensate, propped up just to Peter’s left at the door, who saved us.

Taking her candle in both hands, she snapped it in two.  Her words were drowned out.

Time slowed, and we slowed with it.  The blades were already rising as the effect took hold.  Our momentum stayed constant, but our brains operated at a normal speed.

It was almost like a dance.  Seeing the blades appear, moving as if we were swimming underwater, to get ourselves out of the way.

The goblins, vestiges, and Mags were the first in the line of fire.  One goblin virtually leapfrogged over the goblin beside it, simultaneously shoving its partner into the way of the blade that he himself was dodging.  The vestiges were already quick, already fast enough to dodge even before time was slowed.

Mags, for her part, twisted around, scarf coming unraveled, her eyes wide, as the blade that was poised to stab right between her legs passed within an inch of her jawline.

The blades were already spearing up to catch the group toward the center.  Paige, Lola, Green Eyes.  Paige was adroit enough, but Lola was hurt, too slow to move fully out of the way.  She crossed her arms in front of her, still backing away, and the blade ran along the backs of her wrists.  Mags, still moving, very nearly stumbled into that same blade.

Like the vestige kids, Green Eyes was fast enough she probably could have dodged without help.  Her focus was more on me.

Only Peter, Ainsley, and I remained, with Evan being high enough up.

Like Lola, Ainsley was hurt.  Peter dodged the blade meant for him easily enough, blocking the bulk of it with the block of wood he’d been using to hammer at the barricade.

He and I both headed for Ainsley in the same moment.  I spotted the blade meant for me, and held out the Hyena, metal touching metal, sparks flying, the thrust of the blade now pushing me further away from it’s cutting edge.

Green Eyes’ shriek, drawn out in an odd way by the time-slowing effect, was the only thing that warned me of the other blade.  From the wall beside me, rather than the ground, a sneak attack.

One for me, one for Rose.

It speared out, right for my throat, changing trajectory slightly as I continued to dodge the first blade.

I ducked low to avoid it, but the process of getting out of the way meant I was no longer en route to help Ainsley.

Peter shoved her, hard, landing on his stomach.  The blade sprouted from the base of the building, where it met sidewalk, slicing Ainsley’s hip and elbow, but not cutting deep enough to separate.  The two were parted by the blade that sat between them.

It wasn’t over.  I knew it wasn’t over.

But we had a moment to reel, to react.  Where we’d once had an established clearing, our group was now caught in the midst of a thicket of demon blades, criss-crossing, looming high above us.

Not unscathed, but alive.  We’d avoided being Barbered.

Then the first of the blades moved.

What I’d assumed to be blades were only parts of shears or great pairs of scissors.

Now the shears closed, and they closed as the time altering effect was wearing off.  It seemed to accelerate the speed at which they moved.

Fast enough that I didn’t have time to turn around, assess the situation, or decide on priorities.

Ainsley was clear.  Peter wasn’t.  In the position he was in, he couldn’t move fast enough.

I grabbed him with both hands, threw myself forward, and hurled him back, as the blades meant for him and Ainsley both drew together.  My forward momentum put me directly in the blades’ path.  I put out a hand to stop it, touching the wall.

The blades closed, taking two fingers and a section of both Rose’s left hand and my own.  I had to pull and tear at my own hand to free the remnants.

I could feel Rose’s distress.

All around us, the forest of the Barber’s blades had all snapped shut.

Many of the wretches that had been cut several times over were in shapes that barely resembled people.  Too flimsy, too bent, broken, pre-existing wounds turned into other features.  A break in an arm now a joint, entrails now some mechanism for a glacially slow advance.  Too numerous now to simply be a crowd, many climbed and hung off the blades, like monkeys in trees.  They were slick with blood, and in the curious light, the blood looked nearly black.

The light in their eyes had been portioned out too many times, and had flickered out.  Their expressions were dead, dark.

Peter was staring at me.  I had to double check that I hadn’t been cut so deep that there was a double of me.

“Thanks,” he said.

I didn’t have a response for him.  I nodded, turning to face the situation.

Wretches were forging their way past the blades and one another.  They still fought with each other, but they were so numerous it didn’t matter.

The goblin that had been cut was fighting Mags and its copy.  The rest of us were picking ourselves up.  Green Eyes was okay, and was perching on a set of shears much as the wretches were.  Evan was high enough to be clear of it all, but he was smaller, and the fires were going out.

Don’t go too high, I thought.

Peter was helping Ainsley and wrestling with the block of wood.  I seized the block myself, sticking the Hyena through a gap in my midsection to sheath it before bringing the block against the blades that blocked the door.

They weren’t thin, but they bent when struck.

I could remember the vision Rose had shot me.  Of her atop Conquest’s tower.

It was a little more energy, to push myself forward, hit harder.

Peter reached my side, and he had a concrete block.

I hit, pulled back, and Peter struck.  I timed my swing so I’d hit as he got the block around to the side, readying for his next swing.  Not effective swings, not pretty, especially with my damaged hand making gripping hard, but we were hammering at the barricade all the same.  An ‘x’ of blades, the blades themselves resting against doorknobs, preventing the doors from being pulled open.

The first blade dropped, and I hurried to catch it before it could casually topple onto the group.  I worked to reorient it, blunt end forward, and readied to hit the second blade.

“Hit the door!” Peter shouted.  “On the left!”

I did.  The wood took far more damage from my narrow battering ram than the blade might have.

Two hits, a kick, and the bottom half of the left door was broken away.

Peter ducked, readying to move under, and the blade moved.

I reached out, too late to be effective, but Peter was already backing away.  The blade dropped, sliding down, cutting into the ground at the base of the door, where Peter would have been if he were crawling through.  A feint, on his part.

He shot me a grin.  “Predictable!”

“Stop being smug and get inside!” Paige screamed.

He looked at Ainsley, but Paige was already there, helping the girl.

I tossed the large blade to one side, drew the Hyena, and joined the front line.  By the time I worked my way past the blades that had sprung up, trying to hit us, the rest of the group was already gone, sans goblins and Green Eyes.

And Evan.

“Evan!” I called out.

He descended.

As one, with Evan facilitating, we retreated into the building.  The moment Green Eyes, Evan and I were through, the others shifted a desk so it blocked the door.

Claws and other limbs scrabbled at the door.

All of the others around me were panting.  Everyone capable of standing was bleeding from existing wounds.

Green Eyes wasn’t one to ‘stand’, but I honestly couldn’t tell how much she was bleeding, with all the gore that she’d covered herself in.  Lola, conversely, wasn’t up to standing due to what appeared to be a hit to the head, but there was remarkably little blood.

Ainsley was both bleeding and incapable of supporting her own weight.

I wasn’t in the best shape, either.  The holes which I’d opened up in Rose’s torso, arms and legs were raw at the edges, she was bleeding, and I was in pretty poor shape as well.  The damage done to my body wasn’t healing.  There was no reserve of power to draw on, here.  Whole sections of my exterior body had been torn away, and Rose’s body was exposed.  More than ever, we were like two very different jigsaw puzzles, pieces hammered and jammed into place in a way that wasn’t meant to be.

Except now, it was very visible on a physical level.

“Okay,” I said.  “First question.  Is there anyone we need to be worried about?”

“Worried?” Lola asked.  She had one hand to her head.

“That might have been cut in two by the Barber,” I said.  Someone that might look familiar, but who was out of sight and close enough to the blades that we might have to worry about them being…”

“Not entirely there?” Peter asked.  “Not limited to being in one place?”

“Basically,” I said.

“Sorry to jump straight to the obvious, but what about you?” Paige said me.  “Before you joined us?”

“Nope, was watching him,” Evan said.  “Was going to help, but then he fell into the crowd, but there weren’t any blades near him.”

“Good,” Paige said.

Thank you, Evan, I thought.

“After he went for Green Eyes, then?” Paige suggested.  “I know you weren’t watching him then, because the light was going out and you were helping the vestiges hold the line.”

“Uh,” Evan said.  “Not then.”

“I saw him,” Green Eyes said.

“You’re suspect too,” Paige said.

Mags was already shaking her head.  “I was watching.  They’re clear.”

For all the suspicion she’d just displayed, Paige looked genuinely relieved.

“He did get cut,” Peter said.  “But nothing came of it.”

More eyes turned my way.  This time, it was less about looking at my expression, more about taking me in as a whole.

“Is Rose going to want that body back when you’re done with it?” Mags commented.

I shook my head a little.  “I don’t know.”

“Just saying.  I’d be more than little bit offended if someone borrowed my body and left it like that,” Mags said.

“She’s not protesting,” I said.  “She was there, she saw the judgment calls, she didn’t say no.”

“One of those calls was getting hurt to save my life,” Peter said.  “Thanks again, by the by.”

That statement was followed by a silence.  Us breathing, momentarily relieved.

Paige, apparently, had a different interpretation.  “Why the hell did you go and do something stupid like that?”

A joke.  Not enough to elicit laughter, but a few people smiled.

“Screw you,” Peter said, and there was no anger in it.  “I’d do it a hundred times over.”

I turned my eyes away from the group, assessing the situation.

The tower’s lobby was ornate, but things had broken and fallen, throughout.  Architecture had crumbled, but it wasn’t the sort of crumbling that came with age.  There was a pattern to it.  More as though the Barber had altered the surroundings, and in the process, hadn’t gone out of its way to keep things intact.  Twist the building, stretch it a little taller, and the hooks that held pictures to the walls simply dropped free.   Minor supports and screws had fallen loose, but Johannes’ power over his territory seemed to be keeping things intact, and that was all the Barber needed.  Stone stairs led up and around, past walls, leading to higher floors, but even those stairs were a little worse for wear.

Ruin was part and parcel of the demon, it seemed, even as it tried to hold things together.

But, above all else, what I noted was that the building was empty.  There were no wretches, no others, and no blades.

Almost eerie.

“We learned something,” Lola said.

“Demons suck,” Evan chimed in.  “Demons with a dem-whatsit suck more.  I’m too tired to pronounce stuff.”

“We learned several things,” Lola clarified.  “You were right to bring Peter, Rose.”

“I’m Blake,” I said.

“And I’m assuming Rose is still there and she’s listening,” Lola said, very patiently. “There’s a lot we can learn from what someone doesn’t say.  What they don’t do.  This is Duchamp manipulation one-oh-one here.  He attacked us last.”

“What does it mean?” Paige asked.

“The way the blades appeared, targeting us last, it’s very basic rules for exercising force.  It’s how you do enchantments on stuff that’s resisting you.  Establish a perimeter, establish a precedent for influence, then exercise it.  He couldn’t use the blades to attack us until he’d used them elsewhere.  Peter was one of the last ones he attacked.”

“He’s weaker than he appears?” I asked.

“No,” Lola said.  Then she amended her answer, “Not quite.  Johannes is probably in there, resisting.  Enforcing one’s will on others is another thing common to enchantment.  Even the strongest individuals don’t tend to hold out long.  It won’t be long before the Barber has absolute control.”

“Oh, this is my chance to be sarcastic, right, since you guys can’t?” Peter asked.  “That’s encouraging.”

Lola winced, touching her head.  “Thanks.”

“Never a problem.”

“I’m pretty fricking surprised there aren’t more threats inside,” Mags said, looking around.  “No blades, no Others.  I was expecting a bigger confrontation right here.  Why?  What does this mean?”

Lola shook her head.  “Don’t know.”

“I have suspicions,” I said.  “I can share them on the way up.  We can’t waste time.  Mags, Green Eyes, Peter and Paige, with me.”

There were some nods.

“Evan and the vestiges need to stay,” I said.  I met Evan’s eyes, and forestalled his protest.  “Really.  Stay.”

“Getting left out,” he pouted.

“You’re getting an important job,” I told him.

“Yeah, that’s what they always say in the movies and junk.  They give the kid a kitsch role to shove him into the background.  Sorry, nope, I don’t buy it.  You’re telling the truth, because you have to, but you’re also fibbing.”

“Evan-”

“Nope!  At least have the decency to tell me straight to my face.  I’m done.  Played my role.”

I turned to the others.

“Ainsley, Lola,” I said.  “Since you’re not very mobile, I’m asking you to stay with them and help.”

“What are we doing?” Ainsley asked.

“If we don’t make it.  If the connections break and you’re certain we’re not here anymore, hit the building.  Tear it down, burn it down, I don’t know.  But topple the damn tower.”

“The building?” one of the vestiges asked.

“Tall order,” Lola said.  She paused.  “That’s not supposed to be a joke.  It’s an object in his demesne, and we’re not exactly equipped for knocking over buildings.”

“It’s his seat of power.  Just like Conquest’s was, in Toronto.  He’s using it to do something involving those portals that Faysal is opening.  Maybe we can meet ruin with ruin.  It might delay him, at the very least.  We’re leaving you behind.  Cover our backs and figure out a way to do it.  The vestiges know the way things are put together, and they’re fast.  Evan is…”

“Awesome,” Evan said, a little sullenly.

“And he’s a container for whatever spirit you can give him,” I said.

“Okay,” Lola said.  “Not sure how much we can do.  I’m having trouble seeing straight.”

“Evan and the kids here are your eyes and hands,” I said.

She set her lips into a firm line, then nodded.

“We got this,” Ainsley said, and the lack of strength in her voice didn’t do anything to inspire confidence.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

“Probably not, but nothing to do with how I feel now,” she said.  She winced.  “Ribs, nothing more.  Kind of screws up my ability to do anything and everything that matters.”

“And your candle?”

“I can put it back together.  I spent everything I’d stored for my own use, there, but I’m not useless.”

“Okay,” I said.

Okay.

It took me a bit of courage to convince myself to say it.  “Thanks for helping us get this far.  We’ll be counting on you guys.”

Evan gave me a one-wing salute, wing to forehead.

I did the same with the Hyena.

We turned to go.  Heading up the stairs as a group.  Mags, me, Green eyes, Peter and Paige.

“You have a strategy,” Mags said.  “You were saying, before.  You’d tell us on the way?”

“Rose has a plan,” I said.

“Pretty much the same thing.  Explain.”

“I think Johannes might be resisting.  In another part, I’m wondering if the Barber is struggling in the same way Rose and I are.”

“Struggling?” Mags asked.

“Possession can be parasitism and it can be symbiosis.  The Barber is incredibly powerful, while Johannes isn’t strong enough to hold his own.  What if Johannes isn’t maintaining a degree of control through strength of will alone?  What if the Barber is letting him win?”

“Why?” Mags asked.  Where I had more stamina, she struggled to run up stairs and communicate in more than a few words at a time.

“Because if the Barber wins, absolutely and completely, then Johannes is broken and gone.  Useless, for what the Barber wants to accomplish.  The demesne belongs to Johannes.  If we can break that connection, or if the Barber breaks the connection by being too rough with his meat puppet or metaphysical control over this place, we can stop it from accomplishing its goal.”

“And we can do that by killing Johannes?”

“We can, but it won’t be that easy.  Knocking down the tower won’t be that easy, either.  But think about it.  The tower is empty.  Why?  There’s a reason, clearly.  If Lola and Ainsley were in fighting shape, and if I felt more confident about letting the kids try and survive on their own, I’d almost suggest opening the door and trying to bait the wretches inside.”

“It would weaken the hold,” Paige said.  “The Barber’s power inside, the places becomes less Johannes.”

“We’re playing king of the hill,” Mags said.

“King of the hill,” I agreed.  “We need to weaken his hold on this place.  Knock him off the hill.  How ready are you?  How much firepower do you have left?”

“Some,” Paige said.  “I burned a lot.  I’m worried I’m draining more from Isadora than she can give, but… I think she’d want me to.”

I nodded.

“I have some goblins,” Mags said.  “Need more open area.  They’re not fancy.  Not top tier or even mid-list.  But…”

“You have goblins.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’ve got two fists and chutzpah,” Peter said.  “For all that’s worth.”

For all it was worth.

And I’ve got Rose, I thought.  More of a double-edged sword than the Hyena.

Rose recognized the thought, and she seemed to acknowledge it.

I felt her rummaging, searching for something we could use.

I was running out of strength, drawing from a finite well.  I was prepared to cede control, to simply let go and let Rose be Rose, and I knew that it might well be my last action.

But I’d do my damndest to put up a fight, all the same.

We reached the top of the stairs.  Rose’s heart pounded as we crested the top, though the exertion was mine.

As battlefields went, it was terrifying.  The tears the Gatekeeper had opened surrounded us.  Against a backdrop of the great spheres, they were akin to magnifying glasses.  Opening ways that reached to distant places.

To the great sphere which was covered in teeming masses, giving me a close-up of the shapes there.  Lesser demons, crawling and clambering over one another.

To the sphere of fire and ruin, where the tracks and trails of the magma’s glow wrote out something that could have been an alien circuit board, a pattern that seemed to speak to my gut, promising nothing good.

A third and fourth pointed to darkness, and it went a step beyond even the darkness that Rose had feared would lift her off her feet.  It drew away and ate at afterimages of light that danced across the eyes, making even fleeting glances feel like they were giving something to those places and that those places would never give it back.

Atop the large tower top was the opposition.  Faysal was at the back, wearing a gatekeeper’s form, a fractal and abstract image of wings and white fur and an artificial ivory flesh, glowing with light that trailed off and away, oddly small and weak in comparison to the darkness that surrounded it.

The dragon framed it, wings furled.  Bifurcated, nearly cut in half, but not quite, much of what I saw was the cross section of a dragon’s internals, elemental energies and white-hot scaled flesh bleeding heat and energy into the air, framing the sorcerer.

The sorcerer sat on the throne that Johannes had been sitting in when I’d first seen him, in my visions of Jacob’s Bell.  One half of the dragon’s head was to his left, one half to the right.  One of his leg was propped up on the seat, his arm resting on a knee.  The shears dangled carelessly from his fingers.

There was no light in his eyes, as he stared at me.  He didn’t blink, though the dragon did, before snorting a bit of smoke from its nostrils.

Right, I thought.  Just have to unseat the king from his hill.

Which doesn’t actually win us the fight.  It only helps.

“Fuck,” Mags said.

Judgment 16.10

We watched as the Barber held the shears to one side.  The fire that leaked out of the exposed cross-section of the dragon’s head came out in tendrils and lines, and those tendrils and lines touched the metal, slower and more fluid than arcs of electricity, but conducting all the same.

The metal grew white hot, cooled far too rapidly as the tendrils grew hair-thin and disappeared, another reaching out to touch another part of the blades.

Drinking in power.

One foot still rested on a knee.  He dropped it to the ground, used the scissors to push himself out of the throne and to a standing position.

As he did, the ambient light took on a different cast as it touched his face.  Black veins crawled over and along a horizontal line that marked his face, like cancerous worms, and knots of the veins had replaced his eyes.  More marks covered his flesh where the Library had nicked, burned, scraped and scratched him.  Like maggots crawling through his flesh, but an oily black in texture and color.

The darkness of his expression was countered by the spread of Faysal’s ‘wings’, though the wings were more a fractal pattern than true bird wings.  They reached further, and the light they emanated spread across the tower’s top.

I realized I was backing up, responding to an unconscious impulse, and made myself stop.  A fractional movement of his head suggested he’d noticed.

He could see.

Damn it all.

Alright.  Alright.  Fuck.  How were we even supposed to approach this?

He wasn’t going for the jugular.  As the Barber, just the Barber, he’d chased, pursued without pausing, closing the distance.  He had tricks available, using those shears.

Everything he’d done here had been different.  Passive, standing back, laying traps, striking from oblique angles.

Like a practitioner.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Mags whispered under her breath.

“Mags,” I said.

“What?”

“Keep one of those goblins in reserve.”

“Okay?”

If the dragon cooks us, we might need more bodies, or a distraction.  It’s a pawn we can place on the board, if we need to.

Johannes wasn’t moving.  His shears were dangling from one fingertip.  A twitch of the finger could have made them drop to the ground.

If that happened, if we could simply kick them over the edge, that would be something.

It wouldn’t happen.

He was letting us make the first move?

“You are not Johannes,” I said.

The sheer emptiness of this place meant my words didn’t resonate.  My own voice sounded too quiet to me, even as I spoke in louder, confident tones.

“I reject your power and your claim to power.  You’re a twisted creature belonging to some other long forgotten realm and time, you’re not something to be recognized or respected.“

I managed to inject a fair bit of vitriol into my voice.

The Barber didn’t move.  Faysal’s wings continued to rotate in the background, shining past the stone pillars and railings that ringed the tower’s top, the shadows sliding endlessly to the left.  The dragon’s smoke rose up in fine curls, from nostrils set too far apart, on a head split right down the center.

“You wear a human’s skin now, but even before that, you wore a form you drew from our heads.  You’re wearing a mask under a mask.  Your only power is the power we damn well give you.”

The opening salvo.  My attack, for lack of a better term.

“Blake.”

It took me a full two seconds to identify the speaker.  I almost thought it was one of my companions, my ability to intuit direction warped by the nature of sound, here.  But, even as I dismissed that thought, I thought it might be Faysal, behind Johannes and the dragon.

No, I hadn’t really grasped that he might actually communicate with me.  I was caught entirely off guard, even though I was staring directly at him.

Johannes.  The Barber.

“You talk,” I said, stating the obvious.

“I could always communicate,” he said.

The shears snapped closed, opened, closed again.

Tk.  Tk.  Tch.

He tilted his head to one side, as if trying to read and interpret me.  It wasn’t a comfortable position for a human.  He righted his head, and hair fell across his face.  He didn’t move it.

“You’re not Johannes,” I said, for the second time.

“I am,” he said, and he said the words with a confidence that matched and maybe even outstripped my own defiance.  “I’m Johannes, and I’m something older.”

Fuck.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.  I’d hoped to discredit, to attack him with words so I wouldn’t need to cross blades with him.  If I could have upset his position here just a bit before everything unfolded, it could have made a difference.  Maybe led to another thing, which could have led to another.

This started with unseating him from his position, destroying it.  Except he now stood at the dead center of the roof, I’d pushed, in a manner of speaking, and he’d resisted my efforts altogether.

Theatrics mattered, and he had stage presence to spare.

“Blake,” he said.  “Mags?  Paige, Peter, Green Eyes.  Listen to me.  It’s Johannes.”

“I don’t believe you,” Mags said.

Good, I thought.  I glanced at her, and her eyes met mine.  I offered her a small nod.

“I’ve seen out their eyes,” the Barber said.  “Their memories.  Their experiences.  I’ve seen how the world is put together, and what it is.  The world is meant to be consumed.  By resisting, we’re only making it worse.  We’re a horse with a broken leg, and the best thing to do is put it out of its misery, because it only gets worse from here on out.”

“You don’t sound like Johannes at all,” Mags said.  “He had faith.  He was optimistic, even if I didn’t like how he did things, he believed in humanity.  Establishing a system.”

Good.  Keep up the attack.

“I did,” the Barber said.  “It was only yesterday.  Hours ago, even.  I had hopes and dreams and even a bit of hunger for power, to give me a personal stake in it.  And now?”

He spread his arms a little.

“I know better,” he said.  His words, like ours, simply ended with each utterance.  No bouncing echolocation, no warmth.  They were sounds made with our lips, teeth, tongues and throats.

Every response we gave him, I was genuinely terrified that that would be the provocation he needed to come after us.  To give the word to the dragon or Faysal.

“You said we’re a horse with a broken leg?”  I asked.  “Breaks heal.  I think I’m speaking for most members of humanity when I say that I’d much rather be alive than gone.”

“Yet,” he said, “The end approaches in fits and starts.  You might think that you want more existence, but if you truly felt it, if you believed it deep down inside, then that would tip the scales.  If humanity was truly on the side of creation and progress, he-”

The shears pointed at the angel behind him.

“-he would be winning.  He would be stronger than I am.”

Tch.  The shears snapped closed as he lowered his arm.  There was a languid nature to his movements that suggested that some of his internal makeup was a little bit demon as well.

“That’s disingenuous,” Paige said, speaking up.  She’d found her voice.  “There’s history to take into account.  It wasn’t so long ago we were all getting sick and blaming it on humors or miasma.  Human existence has sucked.  My existence sucked-”

“And,” the Barber cut in, “I’m sorry to say that before the end of the night, it’ll turn out worse than you’ve ever conceived of.”

Paige’s mouth opened and closed, the words she’d been about to form drying out and withering on her tongue.

Come on, Paige, I thought.

“It got better,” she said, but her forward momentum had dissipated.  “For so long, it was awful, flat-out toxic.  But it got better.  Humanity will keep advancing.  The broken bone will heal.”

“No,” the Barber said.  He fixed his dark non-eyes on her.  “Your life only got better because you left it behind you.  You threw yourself into the realm of Others, adoration of a centuries-old creature doomed to be among the last of her line.  You threw yourself into studying her and how to be useful to her, and you abandoned your human life to do it.  You’re a coward, Paige Thorburn.  You live for balance, truth, justice and order, and you are none of these things.”

Paige tried to hold fast, but the doubt still crept into her expression.

“If I was a coward, would I be here?”

“Yes.  Your particular brand of cowardice led you directly onto this path.  To go anywhere else or do anything else would mean you had to return to your old life.  I could spare you, I won’t, but I could.  You still wouldn’t last the night.  Where are you going to go, Paige Thorburn?  You threw it all away for a creature that’s now dead.”

Dead.  The word had a finality to it, a certainty.

She set her jaw, but the doubt had crept in enough that I couldn’t deny it.  The pain.

The Barber looked at me.  “You had the right idea.  Attack with words.  Establish the facts, then use them.  If the tables were turned and you were the enemy, me as the one who didn’t know any better, it’s what I’d do.  I can show you how fragile you are before I destroy you.”

“I know how fragile I am,” I said.

“You as a collective.  Humans.  Mortals and Others.  I’m trying and apparently failing to convey that this has all been decided.  I can see it, and I’m speaking out of the goodness of my heart, as Johannes Lillegard, because I want to spare you the disappointment.  You can’t deny that this is reality.”

“I damn well can,” I said.  “You pretend to know us all, but you’re badly underestimating Thorburn stubbornness.”

“Underestimating you?  I made you,” he said.

Something in his voice made Rose’s heart skip a beat.  An edge, a bit of a growl that did echo, responding to elements of this environment.

He went on, “You can’t tell me that all is well and that you have hope, when you’re planning to die.  You intend to give up your existence to someone you well and truly know is a sad, lonely, shadow of yourself, devoid of passion.  No.  You have no place to say anything to me.  If you try to win over any subtle powers that are listening, you’re going to fail badly.  You have no ground to stand on.”

Why the fuck did he have to be able to talk, damn it?

“You shouldn’t-” Green started.

“Green,” I said, cutting her off.

She shot me a look.

“There’s no rush,” I said.  “Don’t speak just because you feel you have to.  Consider your words carefully.”

“What you mean,” the Barber said, “Is you don’t want to give up an easy third point of debate.  If you challenge my perspective and I firmly establish that a third person has no grounds to make the challenge, I benefit.”

“There is that,” I said.

“He has no faith in you here,” the Barber told Green Eyes.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Challenging me?  Prove it, then,” he said.  “The Barber is sworn to the Seal of Solomon.  Johannes is a practitioner.  If you would mark us as liars with a meaningful show of faith, we’ll be disadvantaged.”

He was right.  The more meaningful the show, the greater the disadvantage.

But there was no meaningful action I could make that wouldn’t disadvantage us more.  I could walk away, head down the stairs, and let her fight the Barber, I could give her the Hyena.

He’d already anticipated this much.

I spoke, instead, “When all of this is over, Green, I’m counting on you to look after Evan.”

“Paltry, as displays of faith go,” the Barber said.  He didn’t even flinch.  ”

“It’s good enough for me,” Green Eyes said.  “I’m counting on him making it through this, and not dying at the end of the night.  Even if he hates me for what I have to do to make it happen.  He’ll be able to look after Evan himself.”

“I think that sentiment is enough answer to why you have no grounds to challenge me, you and Blake are birds of a feather, after all,” the Barber said.  “Mags, I don’t think I even need to say anything to you, after the long conversations we’ve had.  That only leaves Peter.  Unless you think a goblin would be a better voice for humanity.”

He said Peter with such contempt.

I didn’t agree with the Barber, but I wasn’t the one he needed to sway.  He was answering my attempt to challenge his legitimacy and now he challenged ours, and I was betting he was winning over anything that was listening.  I hesitated to call them ‘spirits’, but they were.  The building blocks of reality were tuned into this conversation.  The words chosen, the way they were presented, and the effects they had were all factors.

He’d declared that victory for his side was inevitable, even if we won here.  Humanity was instinctively helping his side, and each of us here had no ground to stand on if we wanted to say otherwise.

Except for Peter.

“It’s not like I really got to know you, but I don’t remember you being this big of a dildo when you weren’t playing host to some scissors-demon,” Peter said.

“Petty insults.  A small mystery, how I didn’t lose my faith in humanity before the demon opened my eyes.”

“Fuck that,” Peter said.  “Petty insults are an art.  So is talking out your ass, and you’ve acknowledged that.”

“I can see straight through you, Peter Thorburn,” the Barber said.  “Backward and forward.  The benefit of an eye for ruin and having a practitioner’s Sight at the same time.  Don’t even pretend that you have any faith in humanity.  You dwell in the darker recesses of it, and you know deep down inside that when your charm fails you, you’ll plunge deeper still, to your own detriment.”

“Ouch,” Peter said, unflinching.  “But who the fuck are you to decide that this is about the now?  Because I think that’s the demon talking, not Johannes.  There isn’t a single person here on this towertop who doesn’t look back at yesterday and think about how much it sucked.  Sure.  I might dwell in dark recesses of humanity today, but maybe I get to enjoy a certain girl’s more pleasant-”

“Ahem,” Paige cut in.

“-tomorrow,” Peter said.  “Even if it’s not for ourselves, necessarily, we’re all looking forward.  Bumps in the road or no, we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think there was something better in general, later on.  Right?”

“Right,” Mags said.

Paige was nodding, as was Green Eyes.

“Damn straight,” I said.

The Barber looked us all over with a level gaze.

His eyes met mine.

I reaffirmed my grip on the Hyena.

Was this where he uttered a command to Faysal?  Or threw the shears to close the distance?  We’d answered his challenge, so to speak.

“You know, don’t you?” he asked, the question abrupt.

Know?

“When all’s said and done, the Abyss will spread, and it will swallow all things.  It’s the next step in humanity’s progress.  Left untouched, things will advance, progress and change until they tumble over a cliff.  That is what waits for humanity as a whole, in the interim.  The things you call demons wait beyond even that point.”

“That was about the sense I had of things,” I said, reminded of why I’d suggested that Rose take a bogeyman as part of the group.  Take Green Eyes.

“Then-”

“It’s fine,” I cut him off.  My own gaze was just as level as his.  “I’m not worried.  We’ll find a way to make it work.  I’ve gone out of my way to reject tradition, the ties of the past that bind us.  Why the hell would I let anyone dictate the particulars of the future?”

“Why indeed?” the Barber asked.  “The practitioner you’re currently possessing would do well to keep that in mind, when she considers how faithful you are to the promise you made her.”

I felt Rose react.  A sharp movement, too fast and violent, as she did the equivalent of snapping her head around, paying full attention.  It tore something.  Created a schism.

I tried to open my mouth to protest, but there was a disconnect between the parts of this face that were mine, and the parts that were Rose’s.

I’d left him an opening.  He took it.

He was backing up.  He snapped his fingers, and he pointed with the shears, a sweeping gesture.

The dragon roused.  Suddenly alert, hostile.

I could see the energy building up deep within its body, flowing and flaring at points along the length of its torso, around lungs, up the neck, toward the mouth.

Mags was throwing a piece of paper.  Paige, Peter and Green Eyes were ducking toward the stairwell.

I tried to follow suit, and I felt the disconnect between my wishes and the body’s actions.  The damage done with that pique of doubt on Rose’s part slowed me down, and I knew it was enough of a break that I wouldn’t be able to get to the stairwell.  Couldn’t run back to try and use the pillars or railings that ringed the tower top, and didn’t trust them besides.

The Barber’s dark gaze didn’t break, as he faced me down, the energy crackling and spitting out to fill the ‘v’ shaped gap between the two halves of the dragon’s head.

A pillar rose out of the middle of the rooftop, just behind him.

Control over his demesne.

The only option that remained.

It’s because I believe in changing destiny that I’m walking this road, damn you!

Rose got the message, processed it, and seemed to realize she was holding me back.  I had control again.  I rushed in his direction, Hyena in hand, as the fire reached the dragon’s bisected mouth.

Two focused streams, one to my left, one to my right, the space between them filling with swirling, erratic gouts and curls of superheated flame.

The only piece of cover available was the one the Barber had given himself.  With no other choice, I was heading straight for the Barber, even as the flame closed in to my left and right.

I swung the Hyena, because there was no other choice, here.  Too close in proximity, and this scant amount of cover from the flames wasn’t enough to be shared.

The shears caught the Hyena.  Almost immediately, I realized that I wasn’t strong enough.  He twisted the weapon, and twisted me over to one side, at the same time.

Forcing me in the direction of the flames.

My grip was only a one-handed one, my weapon a broken one, while his grip was two-handed, the individual blades each as long as my forearm.

I was losing this contest of strength, perilously close to the fire that now formed a skewed ring around the tower’s roof, curving with the pillars and railing to flow behind me, simultaneously blazing to my left and right.

Still, a one-handed grip meant I had one hand free.  My own grip on my weapon was enhanced by the spikes.  Still holding the Hyena, I twisted around, my back to the Barber, and moved to his left, driving my elbow back and toward his elbow.

I hit his upper arm instead.  The shears were jarred, the blades closed, and the Hyena was forced out the upper end.

Our weapons no longer pressing against one another, I was given an opening, while simultaneously threatened by the fact that the shears were right there, and I had no idea what he was about to do with them.

Someone was screaming, male but still a high pitched, ragged sort of sound.  It wasn’t me.  It wasn’t the Barber.

I dropped to one knee, anticipating that he’d thrust the shears at me, instinctively knowing I was off balance enough that if he simply threw his body at mine, he could send me stumbling into the fire.  Being low to the ground meant I was harder to move.

But he was more deliberate, careful.  He didn’t thrust blindly.  He had all the time in the world to decide where he’d put the shears.  As my knee hit rooftop, he was already poised, shears drawn back, slightly parted, thrusting them at my neck.

I swung the Hyena around, but I didn’t manage to put them in the way of the Barber’s weapon.  The shears were knocked up and to one side, instead.  They grazed cheekbone, temple, scalp, and ear, carving away wood and bone that marked my claim to that part of Rose’s face.

I cut at him, in turn, a halfhearted backhand slice at his midsection, given how I needed to move my weapon-wielding hand anyhow.  I saw the line appear, red, raw.

It closed instantly, knitting together with those black, leech-like masses.  Just as the Barber had been damaged but never actually hurt.  Never debilitated.

But, as efforts went, it perhaps made him a fraction of a percentage point less Johannes, a bit more Barber.

My damaged hand, cut by the shears earlier, went up to catch at one of his wrists.  I seized him, and he didn’t seem to care.  His eyes were elsewhere, looking over and past me.

I saw his lips move.

White light consumed him.  My hand closed over nothing.

Faysal.

The screaming I’d heard earlier was getting louder.

It was Mags, her goblin in tow.  A goblin, short, fat and wrinkled, was clad entirely in armor that looked like it had been made with some sheet metal clippers and liberal time spent in a junkyard.  It had a shield that was taller than the goblin was, and both a hunched-over Mags and the goblin were taking shelter behind it.

“Hot!” the goblin screamed.  “It’s hot!”

They reached the pillar.  The goblin positioned the shield so it added to the cover the pillar provided.

“Where is he!?” Mags shouted, over the goblin’s whining and the roar of the flames.

“Faysal moved him!”

I didn’t catch Mags’ expletive.

“Hot hot fuck me it’s hot!”

“Shut up!”

“Why didn’t you use him earlier!?” I called out.

“He’s a coward!”

“Fuck you!” the goblin retorted.

The dragon’s fire was more like napalm than a simple continuous blast of fire.  Where it moved through the air, it made for thick licks of fire.  Where it touched the rooftop, it spattered, making stone burn with all the eagerness and enthusiasm that wood or paper might.

It wasn’t stopping.

It wasn’t stopping, and I was almost certain that the Barber wouldn’t leave it at that.

He’s playing a role.  He’s trying to hold on to Johannes, avoiding doing anything that could jeopardize this claim to a demesne that he might be able to use.

What would Johannes do?

If the pillar fell, we would lose all of the cover we had.  The flames could keep coming, and we’d bake.  I’d combust, by virtue of the heat around me.  We might well suffocate before anything else.

Both were possible even if he left the pillar where it was.

But he had no reason to leave the pillar where it was.

No reason, except to keep us here, waiting for the dragon to run out of fire.

The others?

“We have to go back!” I shouted.

“Back!?”

“The others!”

Mags seemed to get it.

The goblin didn’t.

“Go!” Mags ordered.  She gave him a kick in the rear end.

He did go, and very nearly left before I could join them, with me throwing myself past the licks of accelerant-fueled fire that danced in the gap between shield and pillar.

It wasn’t a long trip to the stairs, but with my focus on the fire, the dragon, the shield, and positioning myself exceedingly carefully in the midst of it all, joining Mags and the goblin in taking a zig-zagging path, I did my utmost not to let myself burn or walk on any patches of ignited ground, I very nearly missed it.

I’d guessed wrong when it came to the Barber’s goal here.

The railing rose, the space between the top of the railing and the floor of the roof grew thicker, with curls of metal and stone filling in to become a wall.

Ringing the tower, sealing everything in.

Turning this into an oven.

Four enemies to fight.  Demon, gatekeeper, dragon, and the tower itself.

“Keep going, protect the others!” I shouted.

“What!?” Mags asked.

But I was already changing course.  Separating from her.  The intensity of the fire got worse as I stepped further from the shield-bearing goblin.

Pieces of wood at my back ignited.  One foot did as well.

I could feel Rose’s flesh sear and burn, and it was a pain unlike just about anything I’d ever felt.

But I reached the railing, staggered into it, and cut at it with the Hyena to chop at a piece of it, pushing myself through the biggest gap.

It now shielded me from the fire, giving me avenue to pause.  Hanging on with one hand, I used the Hyena to hack at myself.  Cutting away wood where it burned, too generous in how I cut, just to be sure I didn’t miss anything.  I left Rose’s foot as it was, seared by licks of the flame.

I climbed.  Up the exterior wall, onto a pillar.

The fire had stopped, and had perhaps stopped some time ago, but the flames remained intense, burning as if they consumed fire for fuel, endless, roiling, dying out in one place even as it surged in another for no apparent reason.

Looking down, I couldn’t make out the others.  They’d retreated into the stairwell, and the fire danced above them.

In the midst of the fire, I could see the Barber.  He was joined by the dragon, which moved awkwardly, its entire form and function altered by the way it had been parted.

I was twelve feet up, twenty feet away from the Barber.  Armed with only a broken sword.

We weren’t equipped to win this fight as it stood.  There were too many heavy hitters.

I stabbed the Hyena into the pillar’s top for leverage, in case he tried something.

The Barber saw me, using the Sight.  Or he sensed the offense to the demesne he sought to control.

I was ready for him to move up here.  A fight with a burning rooftop below and a fatal drop to the street on the other side.

He ignored me.  He used his shears to cut at the flame, severing it like he might paper.  A swat of the tool, another cut, and he created a path for himself, the dragon right behind.  Moving perpendicular to me, as if inviting me to come.

No, he was forcing my hand.

He was leading the dragon to the stairwell.  From there, all he had to do was fill it with fire.  The others wouldn’t be able to hold it off.  They just weren’t equipped for it.

Have to remove a threat.  Can’t do anything about the angel, the Barber is too careful…

My eye fell on the dragon.

Fuck me, I thought.  It was really my only chance.

I found myself running along the top of the wall, following the route they were traveling.  With the circular nature of the roof, we naturally converged.

I leaped, with all of my strength.  I flew, for lack of a better word.

No longer breathing fire, readying for its next blast, the dragon was focused on the stairwell, the Barber was focused on me.  I couldn’t touch him.  He’d meet my blade again, and he’d move away if he felt threatened.

I landed on the Dragon’s wing, tumbled, and only just managed to grab the dragon’s shoulder to stop myself from falling off to one side, at the base of the wall.  The fire there was only part of it.

My goal lay elsewhere.  With the leverage the grab had afforded me, I hurled myself over.  Into the v-shaped gap where the dragon’s body parted.

Into the divide the Barber had made.  With white-hot burning scales on either side of me.

I stabbed the part that looked most like a heart.

I saw the dragon wither, staggering away.

It made for a feeling of victory, however fleeting and tinged with the other danger that was moments away, but even that feeling faded fast.

As I turned, I saw that the Barber had answered my stab with a cut of his own.  He’d finished cutting the Dragon.

Now whole, its sickened and dying half killed by my sword, the Dragon rested against the wall.  Patches of flame surrounded me, and the Barber faced me, weapon at the ready.

Judgment 16.11

Dragon and demon-possessed practitioner were poised to strike at me.  The dragon’s teeth were slightly parted, and liquid fire ran out the corners like drool from a dog’s mouth.  It had been poised to breathe fire before I’d acted, and that hadn’t changed, even though the dragon had been cut in half.

Even if I’d wanted to move, I’d have had to dodge the spatters of fire that littered the battlefield.  Where the area could be navigated, the fire stretched up to calf or knee height from pools no wider across than my feet, patterned with no rhyme or reason.  Picking my way through would be hard enough, but getting any distance before getting cut off by a bad spread of fire- no.

No way I could move fast or far enough to get away before the dragon could spit its fire at my back.

The dragon’s fire was less concerning than the Barber, who was ready to use its demonic implement on me and Rose both.

I had one second to process the situation before the dragon shook its head, getting its senses.  The spittle flew to either side, thankfully leaving me untouched, though it made the Barber raise an arm to shield his face.  Dots of burning dragon’s spit speckled his jacket sleeve and arm.

An opening.

I lunged for him, my eyes dropping to track the spots where I could safely place my feet and legs, then rising up to look at him.

Eye contact.

Eye contact, insofar as he had eyes, anyway.  I felt a kind of despair as it happened, because I knew that I couldn’t change course.  I couldn’t do anything except face the situation head on, watching as the shears were moved, raised as a weapon.

All the same, I followed through.  I rushed him, felt the shears draw together at the blade of the Hyena, and carried forward, charging into him.  My shoulder bumped his hands, the crossed weapons pressed between us, neither successfully cutting flesh.

I’d hoped to drive him back, force him to stagger back into open fires, but he barely budged.  Too strong.  Bigger than me.  Somehow more rooted in this reality.

With my free, damaged hand, I reached up, and, unable to reach his face, I scraped at his throat with the ragged, splintered portion.  Superficial damage, but I could see the more demonic tissues reaching out as blood welled, covering the wound, leaving a scabrous patch of black.  The remaining fingers and thumb of that hand bit into flesh, grabbing his windpipe.

My eyes stared at his, fully aware that the dragon was moving in my peripheral vision.

Turning on the two practitioners that were fighting a short distance away.

On the Barber and I.

Did you cut off the portion that was more bloodthirsty, in favor of the side that was more obedient?  Because I don’t think he’s following orders.  And you’re not in a position to give them.

As if answering my thought, the dragon growled, a deep, powerful sound that traveled along the ground to be felt in my feet and legs, low in the throat.

Sorry Rose, but if I can’t win this for us, I can at least take him with us as we lose.

I didn’t sense any protest.

My grip tightened, as if the body that was beneath the now-ruined veneer of criss-crossing branches was offering a touch more strength.  Holding on as if our existence depended on it, when it was very likely to be the opposite.

“Fay-” the Barber started.

I tightened my grip a fraction more, strangling out the rest of the order.

His hands were occupied.  Both held the shears.  I spotted the pipes dangling from one of his wrists, attached by a fine chain, but couldn’t reach for them without sparing vital leverage.

Tantalizing.  Almost bait.

The dragon’s turned its full focus to us.  Snout aimed our way.

The Barber pulled back, very clearly trying to dislodge my hand, but didn’t pull free.

The whole of my being was concentrated on the one partial hand that gripped his throat.  Two fingers on one side, one thumb on the other.

You can’t speak.  If you let go of the shears to do the snapping thing, I’ll stab you.  I’ll get you in the solar plexus, if not the heart.  I’ll take your air, or the center of your being, and that’s a victory for our side.  Let me keep going, and I’ll crush your windpipe.  Even if you heal it, your words won’t belong to Johannes anymore.

Let the dragon get us, and you’ll lose every part of you.

There was no fear in his eyes, but he did struggle again, shifting his grip, gripping the handles of the shears to push, as if attempting to use raw strength to drive me down to my knees, where I wouldn’t be able to get his throat.

Too little, too slow.  The dragon drew its neck pack, mouth parting slightly.

The Barber cut.  Severing an inch of the Hyena’s broken blade.  In that instant, several things happened.  He found the chance to snap his fingers, and the Dragon paused, watching us.

I shifted my weapon, aimed for the softer parts of the Barber’s stomach, and was deflected.  I managed to press myself in close, chest to chest, my left shoulder jammed against his right shoulder, leaving neither of us the leverage to swing or thrust.

With the close proximity, I could feel as something rippled over the Barber, beneath his clothes, very possibly beneath his skin.  A hundred snakes, or great leeches, coursing out of a source deep within him.

Tapping into a strength that wasn’t his.  It might have been something I could have used, that he was less Johannes now, but I wasn’t in a position to do anything except hold on to his throat and strive to keep his arms pinned closer to his body.

But as his strength grew, my ability to do that faltered.  He pushed out and back, shears against my shoulder.  He pushed down, in a grim parody of the king knighting someone, blade on the shoulder, and my knees buckled with the pressure.

I stabbed at his left arm with the Hyena, and the blade came away slick with blood and black ichor.

I stabbed again, over and over, and he healed as fast as I could hurt.  My arm popped and cracked, stretching beyond all tolerances as he forced me down.

As I was bent down, I could see the stairwell, the others.  Mags and Green Eyes.

Green Eyes looked scared, and I remembered that the dragon had burned her, and she hadn’t yet fully healed.

Mags was holding her piece of pipe, holding it out like a wand, but the Barber was holding me as a human shield.

All the same I maintained a grip on his throat.  More tenuous than before.

“Thu,” he managed, rasping out the syllable.  He said another.  “Ban.”

Giant speak, I remembered.  A language of single syllables.  Just what he needed to communicate with the great beast.

A shape lunged from behind, and threw itself at the dragon’s head, knocking its aim off.

In the gloom, lit by fire from below, green orbs peered down at me, before the tail wrapped around, arms reaching down, constricting.

The dragon’s head moved in response to the impact.  Her fins flared, joining her body in obscuring the reptile’s vision.

The flaming fluids shot from the dragon’s nose, rather than its mouth, firing off to one side.  It lurched, and it threw itself against the exterior wall that ringed the place.

I didn’t have time to worry about her welfare.  There was only the Barber.  Forcing me down with a strength that didn’t belong to Johannes.

My grip started to slip.

He parted the shears, shifting the angle.  One blade at my shoulder, the other moving to one side.  The ‘v’ of the blades slid closer to my neck.

I let go, collapsing, falling backward.  I had an upside-down view of Mags, standing behind me.

Mags slammed the pipe together, firing a shot at the Barber’s head.  He whipped around, one hand leaving the shears to touch the wound.  Tendrils of ichor wrapped around his fingers in their effort to find and cover the damage.

“Go, Buttsack!” Mags ordered.

“Fuck you!” Buttsack replied.

“You’re bound!” Mags said.

“Fuck you, you lunatic!  You’re fucking crazy!  Call me forsworn!  Nothing’s gonna happen that’s worse than me going out there!”

The Barber straightened.  He coughed, a small sound, then said something under his breath.

White light flared, and he moved himself clear across the rooftop.

Face injured, arm injured.  And I was largely unhurt.

I started to rise, only to collapse partway through the process.

I blinked.

The arm I’d used to grab him was hurt.  My legs weren’t functioning right.  Even my back, Rose’s back, was locked up.

The power of adrenaline had kept me going, strength of fear, but it wasn’t capable of undoing damage.

Mags did something to move the fire around, stepping out of the stairwell.  She offered me a hand.  I was in the process of accepting it when other hands seized me, lifting me up from behind.  Peter.

Paige was still at the rear, crouched down, her attention on the dragon and Green Eyes. The thing was bucking, clawing blindly at a foe it hadn’t seen, putting holes in the wall and gouges in the ground.

I could have gone after the Barber, pursued the fight.  It even made sense, on a level, given the role he played.

But Green Eyes was a priority.  Taking on the one enemy here we could theoretically kill came a close second.

The dragon wretch, as I turned my back on our antagonist to focus on the reptile, was different than it had been.  Mangier, in the same way that a person left to fend for themselves in the wilderness might look tougher and more dangerous, even if it was only hardship that painted that picture.  The scales were ragged, but bristled like saw blades, there was a feral look in its eyes that hadn’t been there before, and it was leaner, narrower, with more muscle.

I moved, and I was surprised at how bad I was at that simple action.  Moving.  Putting one foot in front of the other.

The dragon wasn’t a complete being.  It had weaknesses.

As it happened, I’d seen a cross section of the monster, viewing its insides.

I knew exactly where its heart was.  Low in the chest.  The rib cage was triangular, and the heart rested at the lowest point.  I could see how the scales didn’t line up right.  The Hyena in my one good hand, I aimed it to match the gradient of the scales, to slide under and in.

My lunge missed entirely, as the thing wheeled its bulk around.  In the process, blind, it scraped its head against the wall, and Green Eyes with it.

Bloodied, twisted around, she lost her grip, dropping her constriction of the dragon’s head.  She pulled her tail up and away as it opened its mouth.  Its mouth was full of fluids, and they poured down to the base of the wall.

I backed away before it could splash up on or around me.  I wasn’t very intact.  Maybe only a quarter of my body was protected by the bogeyman exterior.  Rose’s body was almost as battered, inside.

“Blake, guys!” Paige called out.

The Barber.

Moving his pipes in the air, a circular motion.

I felt it like a stiff breeze.  I could see others touched by that same breeze.  Hitting each of us from different directions.

The fire, too, was touched.

Fluids had ignited, and fluids now spread.  Pushed by the effect, they were covering more ground.  The larger flames stayed just as large, but got wider.

I was put in mind of Rose’s sprint through the illusory flames.  Fire on either side of us, spreading, lifting, the gaps all closing.

Working to make the rooftop an expanse of dragonfire.

The spread was too fast.  I climbed onto the only thing that was available.  The Hyena stabbed the side of the dragon for traction, and my toes scratched at scales.  Rough, sharp, they were traction, allowing me to climb.

Before I’d found my first handhold, my wooden fingertips were smoking from contact with the beast.

It lurched, very nearly throwing me off, and lowered its head to claw at the offending mermaid that was clinging to its upper face.  She evaded the scratch and climbed over its head and onto its neck, to a point that head and claws couldn’t reach, between the dragon’s wings.

The dragon’s head turned to one side, peering over its own shoulder.  The eyelid was torn, ragged.

I climbed up higher, but already, the wood of my fingers and feet was turning black, smouldering.  I made a moment’s eye contact with Green Eyes.

“Thu!” the Barber spoke, and his voice had a ragged quality to it.  “Fi!”

The dragon responded.  Its head drew back, neck shortening.  I could see spaces at the sides of its neck glow, as loose skin stretched and filled with fluids.  Gorge.

Aiming for the others?  The stairwell?

No.  Mags was manipulating fire, and Paige was drawing out a diagram with glowing lines.  The fire that Johannes was trying to move licked against the edge of the diagram, but didn’t pass it.  Fire wouldn’t hurt them.  Shouldn’t.

No, the dragon pointed its snout straight up.

Well, I suppose this was how dragons dealt with dragonslayers who thought they were clever, occupying the same blind spot as Green Eyes.

Green Eyes was shifting position, getting ready to pounce.  I could visualize the scene, see how she would be too late.  She might stop it partway, but she’d get the worst of it.

“No!” I barked out the word.  “Here!”

I extended my bad hand, as I ran along the dragon’s back.  I felt her take it.

We leaped together, though her leap was far more powerful.  Almost enough to screw us up.

I managed to catch the edge of the broken wall with the Hyena.  We swung out, and we swung around.  I lost my grip almost immediately, blade skittering over stone, but Green Eyes saved the day, finding a ledge.

I dangled from her grip.  I could see the firework spray of the fire spouting skyward, higher than the walls, though most seemed to strike sections of the remaining wall and pillars on the way up and the way down.  That which fell beyond the confines of the rooftop spread out around us.

I saw two droplets strike Green Eyes, felt it in her grip as she reacted, whole-body, head bowed.

Still, she lifted me up, so I could use the same ledge for a grip.  She fixed her position, and then clawed at the site of her wound.

We started scaling the wall, much as I had before.  I paused to sheath the Hyena in a gap in my midsection, then resumed climbing.

“I know you’re there, Blake,” I heard the Barber call out.  “I can see you with the Sight.”

The walls rattled.  I paused mid-climb to maintain my grip.

He kept talking.  “I negotiated with the Barber.  They aren’t about suffering, per se.  They aren’t evil.  That’s an affectation we gave them, just like the human shapes and symbols were.  Once my eyes were opened, I understood it all.  I saw the issues, I saw where we stood, in the midst of it all, and all I had to do was ask.  It’ll only be able to do its work in a small area.  Jacob’s Bell, Mags’ hometown, Port Hope, a sliver of Toronto.  I’ve asked it to be quick.  Merciful.”

I reached the top of the wall.  I paused, hesitating to show myself.

“You’ll all be snuffed out like a candle flame.  Absorbed into the… what you see above.  Time and space and id and ego won’t mean anything, there.  They’ll become momentary and endless, existent and abstract.  Compared to what we face every day, even on good days, it’s the kindest thing.  To not be.”

There was a note of humanity in his tone at the end of it all.  I looked up at the great spheres above us.

One was opening, closer than all of the rest.  Was that what he was doing, right now?

“That isn’t you speaking, Johannes!” I heard Mags.

The dragon roared.  I heard an impact.  I shut my eyes, forehead pressed against the stone wall in front of me.

We can’t win this like this, I thought.  Rose.  Please, you needed me to take over so you could think.  Do something.

I felt her move.

Words.  Names.  Titles.

The Welder.  The Nurse of Darnby.  Bristles.

Stop, I communicated.

Stop.  I can’t practice.

There was a pause.

Another thud, an action on the Dragon’s part.

She tugged.

Not at a memory, or a feeling, or an idea.  Not at an experience of an internal structure within me.

At me.

I drew in a deep breath.

“Don’t…” I started.  I started to have second thoughts.  To abandon the others to the fight, instead of taking point?  It felt irresponsible.

But wasn’t that the same arrogance I’d accused Rose of?

“Don’t?” Green Eyes whispered.

“Don’t let me fall,” I said.

Then I receded.  I left the strength and the armor and the bogeyman bits where they were, and I retreated inside Rose, back to the deeper recesses.  The safe territory she’d gone to, to think.

I lost the ability to see, to hear, to think.  I wasn’t tapped into those senses, or those parts of the body.

My expectation was for Rose to summon her strength, to take over again, ready with the names at the tip of her tongue.

She didn’t.

Deep within, she met me.

I knew I was piecemeal.  I was surprised to find that Rose was much the same.  We were two broken stained glass windows, all ragged edges and hard lines, crudely constructed, both glowing from fires that burned within us.  The fires were pretty dim.  Too much of a push, and either of us could collapse inward.

“Do you have a plan?” I asked.

“We need to unseat the king from the hill.  Everything follows from that.  It should be fast, if we can manage it.”

“For this.  Right here.  We can’t budge him.  He’s strong, he can go wherever he wants, and he has a damn dragon.  Do you have a plan for this?”

“In part,” she said.  “I’ve gathered names.  I could use them, given a chance.  Bogeymen.  Dug through the recesses of my memory.  Stuff I looked at online, stuff I looked at in books that I might have left in the mirror world, when we changed places.  They’re not ones we’ve summoned and used up.”

“Bogeymen won’t win this for us,” I said.

“No,” she agreed.  “No, they won’t.  And even getting that done is hard.  I’m… not assigning blame.  But you’ve kind of left my body in bad shape.  If I take it over, I think I’ll be in too much pain to do anything.  It’s not… not me, but basic humanity.  Agony is a thing.”

I nodded.  “So.  We need my toughness and your practice.  You’re not going to suggest we merge back together or something?”

“No,” she said.  “That’s not possible.  The damage done is permanent.  If it was even remotely doable, I’d have already done it.”

I nodded.  I’d had to ask, but I wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

She said, “I need to patch myself up enough that I can deal with the pain.  I don’t think I can fix the damage that’s already been done.  I can use Conquest, for a bit of an Edge, but that’s a problem while you’re occupying me, and it’s not enough on its own.”

“Spit it out, Rose.”

“Your humanity.  I need some of it.  Maybe most of it.”

“Take it,” I said.

She stared at me.

“Take it,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.  “There’s a tangential benefit here.  Because there’s not really much of you left, it’s not very useful.  You won’t default to a human shape.”

“Something else.”

“Yes.  Keep that in mind.  It might be easier if you don’t try.”

Not a human shape.  Alright.

“I understand.  You’re kicking me out, then?”

“Yes.  I hope Green Eyes is ready to catch us, because this is going to suck.”

I could see the white flowers creeping in around her.  Out of some affectation, Rose had them white.  Conquest.

She extended a broken hand, and let the flowers grow there, unfolding, vines stretching.

The vines reached for me, and began to pull me apart.

My awareness faded as I felt true pain, right at the heart of me.  Where we’d scraped each other before, this was something else altogether.

Taking my form.

I reached for something, a place to occupy, and I felt the branches and bones move, but they weren’t rooted in anything.

Just the opposite, they were being forced out.  My connection to Rose’s inner self and to Rose herself was cut.

The branches came away, a jumble.  Green Eyes’ iron grip on my wrist disintegrated as it ceased to be a wrist altogether.

I could feel the rush of wind, and I knew that we were falling.

I kept my eyes, I thought.

Kept my face.

The composition, however, was gone.  Rose had taken that, to fix scrapes and gouges in her own face, burns at the side of her neck.

I found them, digging inside, and pushed them out and forward.

I opened my eyes, and I saw the demonic realm of the Barber all around us, and I saw the tower top, disappearing.  Green Eyes, at the very edge of it, looking down with her namesake eyes.

As we turned over in the air, I could see the sea of spikes below.

Any form I want, I thought.

I reached out, and found anchorage along Rose’s arms and shoulders.  I found the skin of my face, not yet taken, scraps of meat that had lingered here and there, and stretched it all out as far as it would go.

Rose hadn’t patched up the holes in her own body.  She was light.

I gave her wings.  I was the wings.

I had an idea of how to glide, to fly.  I used it.

My vision was distorted, skewed.  I could see from the crooks of Rose’s elbows, where the wood was thicker, recesses in the knotting, overlapping mess of wood serving as eye sockets, in the absence of flesh.  Both eyes too far apart.

We reached a point near Green Eyes, and I shifted things around.  Focusing on gripping.  I found the Hyena directly between Rose’s shoulder blades and passed it along the wing to her right hand.  Wood served to form a gauntlet so the spikes wouldn’t impale her.

“The Welder,” she whispered.  She scratched a circle into the wall, then a name.  “Once known as Gunter Veit.  I name you and I call you.  You’ll find few fires hotter than these.  Follow the orders my allies give you.  Fight the dragon, distract the man with the black-scarred face.”

The circle shimmered, then became a gate.  Rose held out a hand, ready to catch him.

He didn’t need it.  Scarred from head to toe, the scar tissue had integrated with a welding mask he wore.  He had a heavy tank on his back.

Won’t he explode?  I wondered.

But he found a handhold, and he swung himself around a break in the wall, onto the rooftop, into flames taller than he was.

I watched as Rose started on the next diagram, my eye swiveling around.

Her flesh was too pale.  Almost artificial.  Her hair was lighter than before, but it made her look severe.  The scratches and cuts that remained looked as though they’d been placed there on purpose, a bad makeup artist’s work.

“The Nurse of Darnby,” Rose said.  “You wanted to put others out of their misery so badly you made your way out of the Abyss to keep doing it.  You can stop a lot of misery from happening here.  Let this be your crematorium.”

The nurse did need help.  She looked more like a snuffed matchstick than a person, but scraps of a charcoaled nurse’s uniform and white teeth in the burned shell marked her general form.  Green Eyes gave the woman a hand in swinging over to the same gap the Welder had used.

“Bristles,” Rose said.  She scratched out the name.  “Here boy.”

The fifty-pound animal that came out snarled and snapped, biting at me on the way out.  Once a dog, it was more scar tissue than anything else, from burns to tire treads.  Weapons and tools that had apparently been used to try to kill it stuck out of its back, sides, head and shoulders, like spines from a porcupine.

The dog that wouldn’t die, apparently.

“Go.  Get ’em!”  Rose ordered.

Bristles snorted, then began its climb.  It snarled at Green Eyes on the way up.

It didn’t venture into the flames, but ran along the top of the wall.

“Faceless woman,” Rose said.  “Resident of Jacob’s Bell.  If you’re out there, we need the help.”

“Ah, that’s what you’re doing,” the Barber spoke, his voice still worse for wear.

Rose’s eyes snapped upward.

“Too close to home, that one,” he said.  “She’s sworn to stay out of my realm.  Cause for me to say no.”

The wall began to undo the word ‘faceless’, the lines melting.

Rose moved, slashing at the word as it disappeared, “Everyone, anyone!  Denizens of the Abyss, I carve your names with one of your own!  Hyena, Thorburn Bogeyman, Rose Thorburn, novice scourge!  Thrice over, we are of the Abyss, and we plead your help!  If you are near, if you can hear-”

“Enough,” the Barber said.

One of the lines she’d etched deepened and widened.  I wasn’t sure Rose saw it.

I changed my shape, forcing Rose to release her grip on the wall.

I felt her reach for Green Eyes, I tensed the hand, a squeeze, a heartbeat’s pulse.

“Get back!” Rose called out.

The blades erupted from the exterior wall of the building.  One for the position Rose had just vacated.  One for Green Eyes.

Not technically within the confines of the rooftop.  Less of an interference for his ruse of being Johannes.

I saw the spray of blood, I saw Green Eyes’ grip falter.  She fell.

Wings.

I formed the wings, stretched out the membrane, the flesh.

Guided Rose to Green Eyes’ falling form.

More blades popped out between us and her.  I dodged two.  Rose brought her knees to her chest to avoid having her ankles cut by the third.

We didn’t catch Green Eyes so much as we collided with her.   I steered us into the wall, shoving Green Eyes against a window.

Please be okay, I thought.

More blades would spring out right there.  I knew it.

The question was whether she was capable of moving.

She managed to move at the last second.

“Up,” Rose said.  “Leave her.  If she can move now, she can move later.  Every second counts.  This is a chance.”

I took us up.  I hated to do it, but I took us up.

It was slow, glacial progress, requiring steady flapping, earning us inches at a time, and it was a progress made worse by the fact that the Barber was still there, and every time we drew close to the building, blades appeared, ten or twenty feet long.

“Dog,” Rose said.  “Faysal has to be a dog to be controlled by the pipes.  Even if we didn’t see him, he’s a dog somewhere.  It’s a weak point, just like Johannes is.  I think I know where he is.”

We rose above the tower.  A bird’s eye view.  Rose’s body, my wings.  The heat of the flames made flight easy, though smoke made visibility hard.

I was only wings now.  Not enough of me left.

The flames were dying in areas.  Oddly enough, it seemed to be Johannes that was quenching them.

I could make out the Welder and the Nurse.  They lurked within tall fires much like a lion might lurk in tall grass.  They circled the dragon, who already had a torn wing.  Little more than a distraction.

The Welder even looked larger than before.  He held a spike of metal in one hand, a torch in the other.

“That’s not what I was planning,” Rose murmured.  “But it could be worse, Blake.  Look.  Where isn’t the fire?”

She’d heard the comment earlier.  Lola’s stratagem.

The Barber was below us.  Watching Rose fly.  As we drew nearer, blades sprung from the uppermost portion of the railing-turned-wall.

“Demons function by absence, by destruction.  And he’s destroying flames closer to the throne.  There’s a reason.  Dive.  Right there.”

I dove.  We completely ignored the Barber, going for the throne.

More blades.  But we were too high above, giving the wall a wide berth.  Diving toward the middle of the roof, changing course-

“Forward,” Rose said, “Forward…”

The Barber’s voice carried over the crackle of fire.

A flash of light.

And he was right in front of us.

I had to veer off course.  I didn’t trust Rose’s movements or my own facility in moving her body.

Our landing was awkward.  I heard Rose gasp in pain.  She shifted position, intent on landing on all fours, and it was all I could do to keep the wings from being crumpled beneath her.

We were kneeling right where the dragon’s right head had been.

From this vantage point, we could see behind the throne.  Faysal’s form, hunched over, strained from head to toe, enclosed within a diagram.  One that fed into… all of this.

“I hereby declare that you are not Johannes Lillegard,” Rose called out.  “You do not have his face.  You do not have his voice.  You do not have his rapport with his familiar!  You corrupt his demesne and-”

The ground split.  Rose threw herself to one side.

A blade had sprouted.  From the rooftop.

Oh, fuck.

He was being serious.  The ruse of pretending to be Johannes was paper thin, now.

“Be careful!” Rose screamed the words.  “The Barber is-”

She was cut off as she had to move again.

More blades appeared.  They were indiscriminate.  The Dragon was speared four times, lifted clear off the ground, but not divided.

He wasn’t going that far, at least.

The others were left to scramble, running.

Faysal was contained within a cluster of blades, shielded from our interference.

“This is not your ideology, this is not how you fight!” Rose screamed the words.

Another blade, one Rose wasn’t prepared to avoid.

Even if she’d taken my humanity to patch up her human shape here and there, she was still hurt, still slower.

I extended more of myself, one wing’s worth of material to block the blade.  It was dashed to pieces.  The Hyena was part of it, and clattered to the ground.

Rose pushed herself forward, staggering at first, then running.  For the throne.

We had his weak points.  Rose was calling him on them.  Driving them home.

We just needed a final blow.

“You don’t have his face, you don’t have his voice!”  She repeated herself.  “You are not Johannes!  Johannes would not bind his familiar like this!  He would not corrupt his demesne!  Johannes would use the flute, not the shears!  On all three counts-”

Another near miss.  I moved to shield Rose, but she avoided it herself.

“You are not Johannes!”

Abruptly, I was caught.  Rose jerked in place, arm trapped.

We were bound.

Rose turned.

At three points around the rooftop were lawyers.  Ms. Lewis stood on top of the impaled dragon.

“And you are not going to save the world,” Ms. Lewis said.  She held a loop of platinum.

“This is a farce,” Rose called out.  Continuing to challenge all of this.  “You’ve lost.”

“Maybe the Barber won’t get his claim,” Ms. Lewis said.  “But we haven’t lost.  We have the Thorburn diabolist, and we can subject her to a fitting punishment for breaking the compact.”

Rose bowed her head.

I felt her clench her hand.

Not a fist.  A pulse.  A heartbeat.

A warning, much as I’d asked her to give Green Eyes.

Ah.  The loop of platinum.

Not to bind her, but to bind me.

I let her go.

Rose stumbled forward the last ten feet.

A blade erupted between her and the throne.

She twisted, kicking the flat of it.

Discredited.  Even the demesne doesn’t believe in Johannes anymore.

The blade broke as if it were made of glass.  Rose stumbled, staggered, and half-spun in the air as she practically fell in the seat.

The impact seemed to reverberate.  Her intact left hand, partially that of Conquest, two fingers a near ivory white, gripped the armrest.

There was a heartbeat’s pause.

Not a victory unto itself.

One step.

Her eyes turned to the remaining others.  “Help!”

She’d taken the hill, in a manner of speaking.  But taking the hill didn’t mean anything if we couldn’t keep it long enough to matter.

Judgment 16.12

“Buy me time!” Rose called out.

Easier said than done.

The others were okay, though battered, bruised, and at least one bad injury.  They were standing closer to where the dragon had been impaled, and many of the blades were in their way, forcing them to very slowly extricate themselves, out of fear of dying to a simple slip or fall.

In short, it was Mags, Paige, and Peter on one side.  Buttsack, the Welder and the Nurse were there as well, though the goblin had been gouged by the blade, the Nurse injured in the prior encounter with the dragon.

Ms. Lewis, the possessed lawyer with two deep wounds in his chest, and the chauffeur that had taken us to Toronto, and the Barber, on the other side.  The Barber was only a short distance from the throne.  Closer than anyone else.

The Barber surveyed the situation, taking it all in, while the others fought to get closer to Rose, one eye on Ms. Lewis, who loomed above them, perched on the fallen Dragon.

He started toward Rose.

Rose brought a hand to her mouth, and whistled.

“Sic ’em!” she hollered.

Bristles leaped from the wall above, a solid twenty-foot drop, slamming into the demon.  The Barber stepped back for balance, it was able to stay standing by leg strength alone.  The hound’s exterior was heavy with the arrows, makeshift spears, knife handles, darts, a spade, and any number of other tools, making it something of a mess, and each of these weapons proved an obstacle or additional hazard as it clawed at the Barber’s chest and arm, fighting for leverage.

The Barber struck it, only to cut his arm on a knife that stuck from the bogeyman’s shoulder.  He pulled back, grabbing Bristles with an apparent intent to fling the beast off the side of the building, only for Bristles to twist around, mouth opening.  In the doing, it revealed that two of the weapons had once pierced its skull, replacing teeth with a blade and what might have been a screwdriver.  It seized the Barber’s wrist in its jaws, teeth and tools cutting deep.  The attempt to fling it away failed.

The other practitioners were acting. The chauffeur was speaking, his low tones carrying.  The possessed practitioner was approaching, one hand to his chest.

Mags was already reloading her pipe, pushing a shotgun shell into the end.  She raised it, aimed, and slammed the pipes together to fire.

She was too far away to do much, but the shots did serve to interrupt the man.  It proved brief as interruptions went.  Even if he hadn’t been immune to death and dying, he was a good distance away, Mags’ aim wasn’t perfect, and the one or two stray particles that happened to find him weren’t enough to do much.

The possessed lawyer continues his march toward them, speaking under his breath as a chain unfurled from his sleeve.  The chain smoked, and the smoke began to trace out a form of a hound.  The Welder hurled himself forward, stabbing with a spear of iron, but the possessed lawyer didn’t break his verbal stride, uttering a string of guttural words in another language.  With lupine yellow eyes and scruff on his cheeks, his hair now in disarray, he looked savage, as much animal as human.

The demon within him was one of the feral choir, it was clear.

There were shouts, orders, a jumble of noises.  The Welder and Nurse stepped forward to meet him, while Buttsack cowered, unable to retreat entirely because of the blades that now blocked the stairway.

My focus, however, was shifting to Ms. Lewis, who stood above and away from it all, doing nothing but keeping me bound.  I shifted my gaze again, to Rose and the Barber.

Rose was on the edge of her seat, fingers gripping the arms of the throne.

The Barber’s attempts to beat, batter, and wrestle with the Bogeyman were proving largely ineffective.  Bristles was a sponge for abuse.

This, naturally, led the Barber to his next option.  With one hand occupied, maneuverability proved hard.  He let go of the shears with one hand, gripped one of the handles, and let them fall open, the other handle resting against his upper arm, blades pointed down at the bogey-beast.

He stopped, his eye flickering to Rose.

She’d moved, her mouth open, and he’d noticed.

When he’d stopped, so had she.

His eye dropped, to the various tools that were stuck inside Bristles’ body.

“I see,” he said, and his voice still had that rasp to it, not entirely his.  “Going to banish it, and have it take my shears with it?”

Rose didn’t react.  She was frozen in place.

Shifting the shears to the hand that Bristles was attacking, the Barber reached to the same wrist that Bristles was gnawing on, he pulled the pipes away, then maneuvered them in his fingers, as they were apparently upside down.

With one hand, he raised the pan pipes to his lips, and he played.

Rose, in the meantime, shifted position, sitting straight in the throne.  Her eyes closed.

It made for a strange effect.  Rose pursuing one plan of attack while the Barber pursued another.  The Barber’s melody was haunting, finding an echo in this strange environment that seemed to make them impossible.  It reverberated, found an echo, compounded itself.  The more drawn out notes were like a wolf’s howl, punctuated by notes that evoked thoughts of yipping, whines, and even sharper notes that suggested something else altogether.  Pain, perhaps.

Rose, however, was speaking, and she was putting Conquest into her voice.

“This demesne goes unclaimed, belonging to none by right or establishment…”

Bristles grew more aggressive, savaging the Barber.  Stronger though the Barber was, the bogeyman was the equivalent of a squirming child with a pitbull bite.  Small as it might have been, in terms of relative strength, it was tenacious enough to be a problem.

Bristles opened its mouth.  The Barber shook his arm, and the bogeyman fell free.  It found its feet and shook its head.

The music continued.

Again, Bristles shook its head.  This time, it lunged, interrupting the music with the force of the impact.  The Barber turned his full attention to the bogeyman that still attacked him.

Not a dog?  I thought.  The Barber seemed just as confused by the fact as I was.

His thought process must have been very similar to mine, as he connected the dots.  Bogeymen were a human establishment.  He’d argued they were humanity’s eventual destination.

Animals did exist in the Abyss, that was true.  So did Others.  The dragon-bat-goblin thing I’d seen was such a case.  But Others were derived from man.  To continue along that journey wasn’t so strange.

For something to become an effective Bogeyman, had it taken on enough elements of humanity to resist the Barber?  Or had it never been human in the first place?  A human, treated like a dog, abused, finding his way to the Abyss, where it continued a journey to become doglike, but not a true dog?

Rose wasn’t smiling, but I thought I saw a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes.

A gambit, and it was one that had bought her time.  Bristles was the sort of thing that was very much worth summoning, here.

“The Abyss has a claim to all places left unowned.  As agent of the Abyss, I move to expedite this claim,” Rose said.

The Barber’s head snapped up, looking at her.

“Johannes is finished, and with him go all ties that anchor this demesne to this world.”

The Barber began to haul itself toward Rose, a limping gait.  Bristles gripped his leg, paws scrabbling for a grip on the rooftop, pulling in the opposite direction, only stopping to get a better grip and pull in another direction.

“This place can go when Jacob’s Bell goes!” Ms. Lewis called out.  “By three points of similarity, this place is anchored!  By the vestiges, echoing the people, by location, echoing the place it grew from, and by the bloodlines that are both here and there, knitting this place to that!  Inexorable, intertwined, the two cannot be separated.  When one falls, so shall the other!”

Ah.  She was ready to make a counterattack if Rose tried something.

“By three points of similarity-” Rose paused as the Barber drew nearer.  The pan pipes were in one hand, while the shears were in the other.

He slammed the handles together, and the shears became a sickle.

Only a few feet away, now.

The possessed lawyer’s hellhound lunged straight into the midst of the combined group of bogeymen, Mags, Paige, and Peter.  Peter had a cut on his back from earlier, when the blades all came flying up from below.  I could see ribs, and a whole lot of blood.  With the hellhound attacking, the rest of the group was bowled back.  The Welder was flung back into Mags, and  Mags was sent sprawling.

Buttsack was the only member of the group who wasn’t engaged in a life-or-death struggle.  He cowered within the forest of blades beneath the dragon.

“Go, Buttsack, or we all die!” Mags shouted.

“Fuck yourself with a fork!”

“If you get us out of this, I will damn well pay you in porn for as long as I am humanly able!”

Buttsack froze.

“I will give you thumb drives, you sorry excuse for a goblin!”  Mags roared the words.  The Welder was forced back again, his arms hugging the Hellhound’s muzzle, and he inadvertently kicked Mags in the side.  Still, she managed to get out another two words.  “Of weird stuff!”

He seemed to make his call, picking up his junkyard shield.

He sprinted for the Barber, and drove the base of the shield into the backs of the Barber’s knees.

Though it had been abstract as a demon, strong, it now had Johannes’ body.  It could take on aspects of its old self, but basic mechanics meant the Barber fell onto his back.  Bristles let go of his leg to go for the face.

“By three points of similarity,” Rose resumed, no longer holding her breath, caught in the chair, “Justify the connection of the vestiges here to the people there!  They’ve been butchered, and any echoes have died!”

Ms. Lewis didn’t have a ready answer.

Rose went on, her voice rising as she spoke.  “Jacob’s Bell will be removed as a place, and all that is happening here is evidence as to why.  The Practitioners here will die or leave, one and all.  Let this be the first of dominoes to fall, on both counts!  I am of the Abyss, and I am of Conquest, and from this seat, I deem this done!”

A vibration rattled through everything present.  It was much the same as if something very heavy had been dropped just out of sight, rippling through the strange firmament above, the very air, and the ground below.  The building seemed to waver.

The Welder, cast off of the Hellhound, fell at the hands of the possessed lawyer, fingers tearing his neck open.  Paige’s light was forming a shield to hold the Hellhound at bay, but it wasn’t holding up.

Below the dragon, Mags was still on her back.

I’d told her to keep a goblin in reserve, fully expecting that we’d be beaten and battered, and that we might need a distraction to cover our retreat.  Mags summoned it.

Not a particularly big goblin.  Smaller than Buttsack, who was the size of a morbidly obese seven year old.  Still it came when Mags tore the paper it had been bound into.

I didn’t hear the words, but I saw it run to the dragon’s dangling tail, which touched the ground.  Climbing, and moving toward Ms. Lewis, who appeared to be unaware, her focus elsewhere.

Paige created a brilliant flash of light, and everything went white.

The light served to blind everyone present, myself included.  Buying us time.  I used the time to pull myself together.  No longer a wing, but an arm, a hand.

In the time it took for the brilliant light to fade, people had repositioned, pulling back and away from the fighting.  Only the Barber was still caught up with the tenacious Bristles, but even he was on his feet again, back to a wall, hacking the goblin’s shield to pieces.

The chauffeur had summoned two demons, and they didn’t look like small fry.  They looked much like the Barber had.  One was grotesquely fat, covered in boils, his ‘face’ a lanky mess of hair, the sides, top and back of his head replaced with faces that looked as though they belonged to drowning victims.  The genitals that hung between the thing’s legs weren’t distinguishable as anything belonging to either gender.

The other was narrower, thin, with the head of an emaciated cat.

“I was diabolist,” Rose said, and she rose from her chair.  She’d left traces of a partial handprint in the metal of the chair’s arm, and the print glowed faintly, as her gleaming white fingers did.  “I’m now a servant of the Abyss.”

She faced down both of the demons and the chauffeur both, stepping forward.

“I think,” she said, “I’m qualified to tell you to get lost.”

She swept her hand to one side.

A glow similar to the one on the chair traced along the edge of the rooftop.  As it faded, it left cracks in its wake.

The demons moved, lunging, the chauffeur moving after a bit more of a delay.

That corner of the rooftop caved in.  The demons and chauffeur were all swallowed up in the falling rubble.

“Yes!” Mags crowed.

Don’t celebrate just yet, I thought.

This wasn’t done.

The Barber was winning its brawl.  We still had two lawyers to deal with.

The goblin poked its head up behind Ms. Lewis.  It sank its teeth into her calf.  In the moments of struggle that followed, it managed to drag her off the dragon’s back.  She and he dropped.

Freed, I immediately began crawling in her general direction.  My fingers weren’t strong enough to drag my entire arm and the entrails that flowed behind, lacking a better word.

Instead, I used my fingers to hook into the cracks and individual stones of the rooftop, curled my arm, set the base down, and unfolded my arm, lunging out to reach the next handhold.

A foot or so of progress per attempt.

Chaos.  Everything they had established was now breaking down.  The power, their invincibility, the supposed inevitability of their victory.

We were, all of us here on the rooftop, people who had a tendency to stick it out, to bulldog our way through it all.  Somewhere along the line, our belief in that had trumped our belief that they would win.

There wasn’t a single person in our group now who was intact.  Our enemies, even the demons and lawyer who had been cast down with the section of roof, remained immortal.

There was a yelp.  Buttsack followed it with a cry of his own, fleeing the Barber.

The Barber stood.

I wanted to act, to respond to situations as they arose, but that wasn’t a power I had anymore.  Rose had taken on titles and roles, she’d adopted parts of me, and she was versatile.  Able to call the maimed Nurse to her side, a temporary bodyguard.  Mags had Buttsack.  Paige… I suppose Paige was supposed to have Peter, but he’d collapsed, lying on his back, eyes open.

All I could do was continue my steady progress.  I could see all the blades that lay between me and Ms. Lewis’ silhouette, as she worked on extricating the small, stupid goblin that was trying to attack her.

The possessed lawyer moved in the same instant his hellhound did.  A two-pronged strike.

The burned Nurse flung herself at the Hellhound, only for the beast to explode into flame, leaving her to stumble through.  She recovered and threw her arms around the feral lawyer.  Her embrace singed clothing and made hair smoke.

Buttsack threw itself at the Hellhound, or tried to duck beneath it as it lunged, shield raised to protect himself, I wasn’t sure.  Either way, his bulk was a stone for the Hellhound to trip over.  Paige’s rebuke took advantage of that gap, a contained flash of light that acted like a slap to the face, making the Hellhound turn its head.

Things had reduced to a brawl.  Chaotic.

Rose grabbed the chain, hauled on the slack, and forced a loop around the Hellhound’s muzzle as it came around to bite her.

Mags, for her part, threw herself forward to Rose’s side, snapping a combination lock through one loop of the chain.

The hellhound raised a paw and clawed at two of them, hard.  Mags was unscathed.  Rose wasn’t, and dropped, hard.

The Hellhound pulled, trying to get closer to the others, but there was no more slack in the chain, and try as it might, it couldn’t break the binding.  Its tenacious attempts to pull free or get closer only served to tighten the loop.

Paige and Mags backed away, Paige dropping to Rose’s side to help put pressure on the claw wound.  Buttsack, now behind the Hellhound, backed away in the other direction, toward the fracture on the far end of the roof.

I started to make my way through the blades that dripped with dragon’s blood.  The ground itself was slippery, but the blades themselves were precarious handholds where the blood didn’t touch them.

The Barber was approaching, Rose was down, and the others weren’t capable or willing to get closer to either Barber or Hound.  Mags bent down and grabbed Rose, pulling her further back.

In their efforts to get away, they backed straight up into Ms. Lewis, who had dispatched the goblin.

“This would be the beginning of the end, I suppose, for now at least,” Ms. Lewis said.  She turned her head.  “Christopher, don’t summon anything more.  We should extricate, rather than entrench ourselves.”

Christopher, the possessed lawyer, scowled.  He’d dealt with the Nurse, tearing her throat out, but was struggling to get the chain away from the Hellhound’s muzzle.  The lock prevented easy removal, the hound wasn’t cooperating, which didn’t help matters, and it apparently couldn’t turn into fire when it was shackled.

I edged closer, the same halting progress I’d been managing for the last several minutes.

Rose was crumpled up on the ground, a claw mark on her already savaged upper body.  She looked up and glared.  “You’re staying, for as long as I can get the Abyss to keep you.”

“That won’t be long at all,” Ms. Lewis said.  “You know, this all could have been so much tidier.”

“We’re not the sorts to do tidy.”

“Things are the way they are for a reason.  What have you really gained, Rose?  At the end of all this?”

“You’re assuming it’s over,” Rose said.  She grunted with pain, and the look on her face suggested she hated that it had happened.

Close.  I was so close.

Not that there was much I could do, even if I got there.  I was a hand.

“Barbatorem,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Could you convince Ms. Thorburn that things are resolved?  I’d like to accomplish that much, at the very least.”

“I can,” Barbatorem said, his voice low.  He’d already healed the damage that Bristles had done.  He spoke, and he sounded a hell of a lot more like Johannes as he did, “I’m terribly sorry, Rose.  I agree with Ms. Lewis.  I wanted to do this better.  I never harbored an abundance of ill will for you.”

“Stop,” Rose said.  Bleeding, wounded, worn out, perhaps a bit touched by the Abyss, she looked like she had more of me in her than ever.  Sheer savage stubbornness.  Warrior grit.  “Don’t use his voice.  There’s no point in faking it anymore.”

There was a long pause.

“Ah.  Yes,” the Barber said, and the words were guttural, hollow.  There was nothing of Johannes in the sounds that passed through he mouth of his black-worm face.

“Lewis,” the possessed practitioner said.

Heads turned.

Peter.  Earlier he’d fallen.  Now he was up, active.  One arm was useless, the other held a chunk of stone from the broken edge of the rooftop.

He was at the wall of blades that had been erected around Faysal, prying.

“Peter!” Paige called out.

He noticed that we, our enemies included, had realized what he’d done.  He redoubled his efforts, no longer trying to be subtle or quiet.

He smashed.  “Bullshit!  Bullshit shitty assed bullshit fakery!”

Two blades broke in one swing.

“Christopher,” Ms. Lewis ordered, only to see that the hellhound wasn’t yet free.  “Barbatorem!”

Barbatorem threw the sickle.

“Get down!” Paige screamed.

Peter didn’t.  Call it Thorburn stubbornness, or just his natural inclinations, he wasn’t one to follow orders.  He turned to look at the source of the cry, saw the projectile, and threw himself to one side.

The weapon sank into the wall above where Bristles had fallen.  A foot to the right, and it might have continued on through the hole in the wall, disappearing into whatever lay beyond, or falling to the street.

Barbatorem gestured, and what he did had to be a kind of enchantment, drawing on his connection to the blade.  He moved, and he covered the distance with remarkable speed, closing on Peter.

He stopped and went still as his hand settled on the handle of the weapon.

He pulled it free, then kicked Bristles’ body over the edge.

Peter was still sitting on his ass, hands behind him to prop up his upper body, not yet on his feet.

A demon against a normal human.

“Fuck you!” Peter shouted.

Resistance was admirable, but even with everything we’d established and accomplished, it wasn’t enough to decide that particular conflict.

I’d already gone still, lurking at the base of the wall, ready in case Ms. Lewis tried anything.  I watched, and would have been holding my breath if I’d had lungs.  Or a mouth.

A shadow moved behind Barbatorem.

Green Eyes?

She’d been too hurt.  Barely able to keep out of the way.

Not Evan, nor one of the vestige kids.

Rose had called out to anyone willing or able to help.  She’d called one Bogeyman we knew.

The creepy man in the ill-fitting suit from the Tenements stepped out from the other side of the wall.  I’d bound him and sent him out to pursue our enemies, and here he was.

The Barber saw him.  Too late to react.  The man in the ill-fitting suit stepped to one side, then pushed.

A simple, stupid one-trick bogeyman pulling out his trick.  Defenestration.

The Barber toppled over the same brink it had just kicked Bristles over.

A long pause lingered.

Peter summoned his strength and threw himself at the cage again, stone in hand.

The cage shattered, and in the midst of that breakage, the diagram that sealed Faysal’s form broke.

Light flared, spreading, and where the wings that Faysal had drawn had been obscured by the wall that rose around us, they now rose up and around us, spreading over the sky.

The light was bright enough that it helped to obscure the darkness behind.

The wings folded, and in the sweep, the orbs and expanse that had decorated the firmament of this place were wiped clean.  There was only darkness.  Not a nether sort of darkness, or anything of the sort, but comfortable, absence-of-ordinary-light darkness.

The figure disappeared, spearing out and through that darkness.

The movement seemed to prompt another rumble.  This time, it didn’t stop.

One more anchor point gone.  Johannes’ lack of claim was undeniable.

“Man, Angels are assholes,” Paige said.  “He couldn’t stick around long enough to contribute?”

Ms. Lewis turned to leave, gesturing to Christopher.  Heading for the broken section of roof.  Maybe where they could have hopped down and away.

I seized her by the ankle.

It created a delay, prompting a stumble.  Time for others to notice.

Mags and Paige were on their feet in a moment.  They threw themselves at her, pinning her against the wall with their weight.  Christopher disappeared, down and away.

The struggle was brief, but it was human strength against human strength, and by virtue of numbers more than anything else, it soon came to a halt. The grip of the two girls secured on the woman’s wrists, Ms. Lewis pulled down to her her knees.  She momentarily struggled again, almost to test that she really was caught.  A long pause followed, quiet but for the steady rumble, still in the midst of an entire domain that was steadily going to pieces, fragments breaking away from every wall, every ceiling and object.

The sky above was gone, the ground was disintegrating, and everything between was breaking down.

Rose stared up at Ms. Lewis from her position on the ground.  Rose smiled.

“I didn’t want to do this, you know, given the consequences.  I was so close to being free of my debt, being free,” Ms. Lewis said.  “Orn-”

Mags struck her in the teeth with the pipe-shotgun.

“So don’t,” Mags answered.

Judgment 16.13

The Abyss was ruthless, and our surroundings were coming to pieces in fast motion.  Cascades of dust flowed off of every surface, accompanied by flakes, chips, and fragments, a hundred years of wear and tear occurring over seconds.  Where the surfaces were flat, such as the rooftop, the same dust and fragments danced as the surroundings rumbled and vibrated.  Were it any lighter it might have risen as thick clouds.  Any heavier, and it would have formed an almost liquid pool.

It fell between the two points.  Ankle height, a roiling cloud of finer particles.

I was small enough that ‘ankle height’ was enough to obscure me.  My view of the others was reduced to vague silhouettes.

“We need something to tie her hands with,” Rose was saying.  She was, out of everyone, closest to the ground.

“On it,” Mags said, “Gimme a second… grab her?”

“Grabbed,” Peter said.

There was a sound of chain rattling.

“Here.”

“You’re like a superhero, a tool for every job,” Peter commented.  The chains rattled some more as they were wound around the pinned Ms. Lewis.

“Damn straight,” Mags said.  “Except I use guns, not some stick.”

“Respect,” Peter said.

“Got her,” Mags said, tugging the chain to tighten the loops around the lawyer’s wrists.  “Wish I had my combination lock, but we’re good so long as we watch her.  I’d think it was too tight, but it’s not like she can die.”

“I-” Ms. Lewis started.

Mags raised her pipe with one hand.

Ms. Lewis didn’t try to say anything more.

“Use your scarf as a gag?” Peter suggested.

“F that.  My scarf is staying with me, thank you very much.”

They seemed to settle on something.  Within a few seconds, Ms. Lewis was gagged.

“Alright, well done.  Now help me up,” Rose said.

“Try sounding a little less bossy while you ask?” Peter suggested.

“I’ve been clawed open by a hellhound, possessed and hollowed by my inhuman alter ego, my head’s been rearranged and the only reason I’m still conscious is that I’m drawing some power from Conquest.  I’m going to be ‘bossy’, so shut the fuck up, Peter.”

“Wow,” was all he said.  “Maybe try saying please shut the fuck up?”

“Help me up so we can go.  Sooner than later.”

“One of you two better do it,” Peter spoke.  “Bending down is not a good thing for me right now.  My back doesn’t hurt nearly enough for how fucked up it feels.  Besides, I’m not sure I trust Rose not to bite.”

“Got her?” Paige asked.

“Yeah,” Mags said.

There was a pause as Paige bent down by Rose.

“Yeah, that gouge is pretty f’ed up,” Mags observed.

Peter managed to sound pretty casual about it.  “Am I going to have a badass scar?”

“Maybe if you don’t bleed out before we can get you help,” Mags said.  “You look pretty wobbly.”

He turned his head, but didn’t say anything.  I couldn’t see his face.

Whatever he’d done, glaring at Mags or something in that vein, it prompted her to add, “I can’t lie.”

“I like you a little less now.”

Paige finished pulling Rose very carefully to her feet.

“Buttsack!” Mags called.  “Get your ass over here!  You too, Stumpy, I know you’re playing dead.  Come, or you might not get another chance to leave.”

“Uh… you,” Rose said.  Her voice wasn’t that strong as she raised it to be heard.  “Same thing.”

The man in the ill-fitting suit, I realized.

“And he’s gone over the edge,” Rose said.  “Probably easier, if a little hard to get why.”

“We ran into him earlier.  I don’t think he’ll have any trouble making his way down.”

“Alright.  That just leaves Blake.”

“Blake?”

Heads turned.  The Sight, being used to find me.

It was Mags who bent down to collect me.

“He’s alive?” she asked.  My eye moved.  “Oh!  He’s actually alive… in a manner of speaking.”

“I need him,” Rose said.  “Let’s go, before the building does.”

My view was a warped one, wobbly.  I had little volition, almost no ability to move of my own accord.  The group took stairs as fast as they were able, and Mags was toward the front of the group, one arm on Ms. Lewis’ upper arm, periodically jerking her to keep her off balance.  Buttsack walked in front of the woman, one hand raised to hold on to her belt loop.  Trying to run would have meant hurdling the goblin to reach a lower stair.

Mags’ other arm was cradling what remained of me like she might hold a football.  I was a lumpy, crude hand with a thread of flesh running over it, an eyeball, tucked into the crook of her arm.

The walls were bleeding dust, fine cracks spreading and reaching deeper.  Every surface was caught in the same state between fluid and vapor, the stairs below almost a waterfall, though it had no force to it.  Different colors of different materials pooled together to form layers and patterns as they collected.  The sand of a million hourglasses.

We passed the floor the two demons and the chauffeur would have been on with no incident.  They would have left with the possessed lawyer, Christopher, I supposed.

With my body being what it was, I could rotate my eyeball to look through the cracks and glimpse the others making their way down the stairs behind Mags.

They were so worn out, but we’d found the light at the end of the tunnel.

There was hope.  Only a little bit further, and we won.

Power had a price.  Seeing the dust, the sweat, the blood, the sheer exhaustion, the looks in people’s eyes, and the damage that had been done, nobody would dare say we hadn’t paid a price.

Grandmother had created Rose and I to work against the system.  A snarl or a tangle in the pattern.  She hadn’t predicted the future, I was pretty sure; this degree of collateral damage was likely beyond her expectations, especially if we counted Toronto, but she’d achieved her goal.

Mags stopped, turning, and looked back to the others, who were slower to make their way down.  Rose was between Peter and Paige, and the trio were still having trouble keeping up with Mags and the hostage.

Ms. Lewis’ gaze was level, her expression oddly serene as she briefly glanced across to me, though she had drool and blood running from the corner of her open mouth, with what seemed to be tissues stuffed inside it.

While we waited, a shadow moved below.  I shifted position, poking Mags, and she turned her head.

A false alarm.  Green Eyes.  She’d been caught against the side of the building, and she’d made her way inside.

She was tense, her attention on Rose.

“Blake is with us,” Rose said.

Green Eyes frowned, but didn’t speak.

“Come on,” Rose said.  “Keep moving.”

Green Eyes made her way forward, favoring one arm over the other.

She noticed me and paused.  I stared into her eye with my own, measured the nuances of her expression.  Relief, fear, concern, all together.  Enough for me to feel confident that she was the same Green Eyes.  Those blades that had nearly killed her hadn’t cut her in two.

The mermaid looked back at Rose, and I wasn’t sure even she was aware of how her hands had flexed, fingernails scratching the floor.  A tell, as such things went.

Green Eyes took the lead, going down the stairs headfirst.

It would have been a lie to say that we were quick to reach the ground floor.  Too many people were hurt, and by the time we got that far, the stairs were impossible to see, layered with enough particulate matter that footing seemed to be an unsteady thing.

The others were waiting for us.  Ainsley and Lola were on their feet.  The kids were all there, too.  Evan was perched on a kid’s head.

“Green!” Evan greeted the mermaid as she came down the stairs.  “What happened?  Where’s Blake?  Is everyone okay?  Is the world going to end?  What’s- Lawyer!  And Rose!  Rose, you’re hurt!  Where’s Blake?”

“Mags has him,” Rose said.  “The-”

“That’s not Blake, that’s wood!”

“-Barber-” Rose said.

I moved.

“That’s moving wood!  It’s Blake!”

He flew over to me.

My eye hadn’t changed size, but the ease with which he flew so close to me, it drove home how small I was.

“The Barber,” Rose tried again, without the sparrow going a mile a minute.  “He fell?”

“He’s out there,” Lola said.  “I wasn’t sure what to do.  We reinforced the wards to the outside and hunkered down.  He hasn’t made much fuss.”

“What happened?” Ainsley asked.  “Everything’s falling apart.  Not just in here.  You have the lawyer, but… that doesn’t tell me much.”

“We won,” Rose said.  “I think.  We should go.”

“With the Barber out there?” Lola asked.

Rose’s face was grim.  She pointed at the door.

“You’re sure?” Lola asked.

“If we stay, we’ll get pulled into the deepest reaches of the Abyss.  If we go, the worst thing that’s likely to happen is that the Barber is waiting for us and subjects us all to a fate worse than death.”

“Can we hold a vote?” Peter asked.

“No,” Rose said.  “Open the door.”

“You’re being bossy again.”

But the vestige kids were obeying Rose, and they pulled the door open.

“Hang back, follow at a distance,” Rose said.  “It won’t do to let him play the pipes for you and lose this now, after everything.”

We made our way outside as a mass.  The Barber wasn’t visible, at a glance.

The entire city was… I might have said it was smoking from every surface, but the smoke flowed down.  Already, the upper floors of other buildings had started to break down, rooftops sinking or sloping.

The street itself was fractured, and it continued to break down. Large planes of pavement had broken in half, folding into zig-zagging ‘waves’ where one piece leaned against another.  Here and there, larger pieces broke down further, and plumes of debris were sent skyward as they landed heavily amid dust.

Had it been a perpetual thing, breaking down without ever ceasing to be, I might have thought the Abyss had decided what form Johannes’ domain should take.

This wasn’t that.  The decay was too fast, too measurable.

Blades that the Barber had summoned had fallen and broken like glass.  Bodies of wretches had wedged into cracks not yet big enough to swallow them.  In the gaps between sections of road, the dust was thicker, burying smaller ones and ones that had been dead for longer.

“He’s there,” Lola said.

The practitioners seemed to notice, turning their heads before Peter, Green Eyes, Evan or the vestige kids reacted.

The Barber.

I was one of the last to see.  Too many people in front.  He moved in a sideways direction, dragging the sickle behind him, and he’d elected to keep the damaged, broken body of Johannes.  The demonic taint of the Barber crawled all over the man.  Only the basic shape remained.  Scraps of hair and clothing.

He held the pipes, and we had children who were maybe in earshot.  He made no motion to play the instrument.

Instead, he drew the sickle back, as if he was about to swing it at someone just in front of him.

He threw it, aiming for us, except the ground beneath his feet cracked as he finished the motion.  Too far forward, too far down.  The sickle sank into the road, point first.

The ground beneath him caved in further.  A crater, with him at the bottom.

Heads turned.  All eyes were on Rose.  Her hand extended, fist clenched.

Slowly, she relaxed it.

“You’re doing that?” Lola asked.  “You took over?”

Rose shook her head.  “I’m asking nicely, as the conqueror who has just unseated the king.  Riding momentum.  But this place isn’t truly mine.”

She gestured at the shears.  The road splintered.  Where it splintered, it folded down.  The shears were drawn in, partially buried.

“Makes me really want a demesne of my own,” Rose said.

“It’s done, then?” Lola asked.  “You’re talking about the future like this is over.”

Rose didn’t reply immediately.

“Almost done,” Rose conceded the point.

“Almost,” Lola said.

“We’re not in any shape to fight, and he doesn’t die.  I’m suspicious he can, if we wanted to defy that convention and go to war with him, but we’re not in a position to make him.  He’s still there, and he’s not out of tricks yet.  He’ll want to sneak out.  He’ll try things.  He might even attack, and I’m not sure we can put up a proper fight, even with all of us together.”

Nobody spoke.

Rose continued, “Move forward, carefully.  If you have anything reflective on you, now’s the time to get rid of it.  Toss it aside, push it into the dust between bits of road to hide it, or hide it inside your clothes.  If he gets another body, he can essentially start fresh, only with a new bag of tricks.  More resources.”

“Good day to be a bird.  Nothing on me!  I’m naked!  Right Sushi?”

Green Eyes didn’t respond.

“Sush- Green Eyes.  I’m sorry I called you sushi, and said I’d cook you.  We’re buddies, right?  You’re not mad?”

“I’m not mad, nugget,” she said.  “Don’t worry about it.  We’re good.”

But she didn’t say anything else.  Her demeanor didn’t change.  Quiet, grim.

“You might be naked, kid, but those beady black eyes are a problem,” Rose said.  “Evolution gave you almost three-hundred and sixty degree vision.  That’s three hundred and sixty degrees of access the Barber has.”

“I’ve dealt with him before.”

“Just… be safe.  Head down, eyes closed.  Ride on someone’s shoulder.”

“With Blake!  He’s kind of shoulderish!  With fingers, and an eye.  But I don’t discriminate.”

“Sure,” Rose said, and she sounded very tired, her words clipped not on purpose, but with the tension, the simple fact that she didn’t have a wealth of focus to spare.  “Same idea for Green Eyes and the…”

Rose gestured, her right arm still around Peter’s shoulder for support.

“Rat pack,” Mags suggested, for the vestige kids.

“Sure,” Noah said.  “Eyes down, extra careful.”

The tension was palpable.  Though they moved furtively, patting themselves down, glancing each other over to point out little things, like buckles or buttons, things were still.  The group a small tableau in the midst of a city that was roiling more than an ocean in high storm.  With the way everything was coming to pieces, the walls thinning out, the little details being washed away, it looked like a city made of candlesmoke, ready to simply puff out of existence.

Peter untucked his shirt beneath his coat to cover up his belt.  Mags pulled off the metallic hairband that had been failing in its duty to keep her disorderly hair more orderly.

After all of the bases were covered, the group began edging forward.

“Don’t look directly at it.  Resist any bait,” Rose warned.  “Don’t look at it in surprise, don’t look back, don’t wonder.  Keep moving forward.”

The group moved around the crater, splitting into two groups, one going right, one going left.

The Barber made a sound, guttural and inhuman.  I imagined it was akin to the sound a giant might make if it managed to howl loud enough to be heard from beneath a river of tar.  It came from a deep, dark, place, past a great deal of resistance.

In the moment the scream reached its peak, Johannes died.  Every member of the group flinched as he popped, the container of the human body no longer enough for what dwelt within.  The contents banked against the sides of the crater, dusting the group.

“Good,” Noah said.  His eyes were fixed forward.

“I wouldn’t call it good,” Rose said, her voice tense.  “But I get the sentiment.  Keep moving.  Don’t look.”

The Barber unfolded, reaching out, flexing, a fresh body in the making.  The sea of dust only absorbed his feet, the pavement cracked underfoot.  He made progress, his form alien, reaching, forming new body parts just to find more traction or hold onto what he’d managed to get, but it was glacial, slow.

The group wasn’t much faster.  Too many people limping or barely able to walk.  The ones who were strong were carrying heavy burdens.  Even Peter, with his injury, was supporting Ainsley and Rose both.

Tkkkkk.

The sound of metal on pavement.

“Don’t look,” Rose said, again.  “He will take anything he can get.  Trust.”

“He went back for the sickle,” Lola said.  “You can hear it.  I can sense it.  He can throw it, like he did before.”

“He’ll fail, like he did before,” Rose said.  “Three times, we’ve gone to war with him.  Three times, we’ve beaten him.”

“Here,” Ainsley said.  “When did you fight him before?”

“The Abyss,” Rose said.  “That was the second time.”

“Was there a time before that?”

“The day he was bound,” Rose said.  “If bloodlines count enough to drag me into this whole mess, they have to be strong enough to let my grandmother’s victory carry forward.”

Tk.  Tk.  Tk-tk.

Ainsley shot Rose a look, and it was one of alarm.

As justifications went, Rose’s was pretty thin.

But saying so would be more dangerous than anything.  It could break the spell, or sunder the confidence of the lesser members of the group.

There was a scraping sound, not the sickle, but the sound of the pavement moving, being pushed aside.

The scrape that followed was sharp, a sudden movement.  It went hand in hand with a crash, and an impact that reached out a hundred feet ahead, serving as the push that some of the sections of pavement had needed to finish breaking.  Dust was knocked upward, and dust was sent cascading forward from behind.

“Trust,” Rose said, and her voice didn’t have the slightest sign of weakness.  “Believe.”

But, and it was a hard thing to see in the cloud of dust that had surrounded us, Rose’s head trembled.  The muscle at the left side of her jaw was standing out, distinct.

The Barber moved.  Not one sharp sound, but several.  Moving fast enough and violently enough that whole sections of pavement were being pushed aside.

Another crash, more dust filled the air, and parts of nearby building faces fell away.  A fast food building shed pieces of sign and fragments of glass.  Heavier things fell with thuds.

The heavier impacts sounded like footsteps.

The shadows that stirred in the clouds of the group took on shapes.

A roar echoed around us, that same tar-thick howl, only with an edge to it.

They kept moving forward.  They didn’t look back.

There were more crashes, more explosions of dust, another roar.

Further back.

He was mired.  Caught, to be swallowed up.

“Mags,” Rose said.

“Yeah?”

Rose pointed.  As the clouds of dust thinned out, I was able to make out a dip.  A fold of pavement that was lower than the rest.

“You’re sure?”

“She’ll come after us again, otherwise.”

Mags shifted her grip.  Ms. Lewis struggled, and I could sense the hesitation on Mags’ part.

She had no problem shooting monsters or tormenting goblins, but doing this was something else entirely.

Ms. Lewis doubled over, trying to push forward.  The vestige kids got in her way, Noah and Benny each catching one of the lawyer’s shoulders.

“Buttsack, do you-”

Buttsack didn’t wait for the question to end.  He hauled on Ms. Lewis’ belt, driving his shoulder into her stomach, and tipped her.  She fell sideways, into the dip, a ditch toward the center of the road.

In contrast to the Barber, all eyes were on her as she tumbled.  Pavement broke as though it were nothing more than compacted sand.  Still-intact slabs fell around her, disintegrated on landing, leaving her half buried.

Her struggles to get out from under only served to drive her deeper.  She sat up, but her legs sank.  The sand seemed to scrape and abrade.  The Abyss at its basest form.

Ms. Lewis was trying to spit out the tissues that had been stuffed into her mouth.

“A little forward?” Rose asked.

Paige and Peter helped her get closer.

Bending down a little, Rose put out a foot, setting it on a slab.

She winced as she did it, but she pushed.  The slab slid down the slope of the little ditch and collided with the lawyer.  A section of road that, dropped from above, would have turned a person into a pancake.  Definitely enough to cave in a ribcage.  For anyone else, it might have been lethal.  But the lawyer was beyond death.

“You need a punchline,” Evan said.  “Rules.”

“I was thinking,” Rose said.  She watched Ms. Lewis’ continued struggles.  Debris half-covered the woman’s face, and the slab of pavement had driven halfway through her torso.  She worked, all the same, to try and worm her way up and free, futile.

“You want this Demesne, Lewis?”  Rose asked.  “It’s all yours.”

The little light that remained was dying.  It was the light of the night sky over a city, night lights reflecting onto the clouds above, but those same clouds were disintegrating too.  There was only a clean slate.

Ms. Lewis had stopped fighting, but the decay of this world continued.  Even staying still, she was swallowed up, only one eye, a temple, and a bit of hair remaining above the surface.  Watching us.

We collectively turned our backs on her.

Off to one side, a building folded into itself.  The cloud of dust was impenetrable, but it didn’t reach far.  There was too much gravity here.

The rumbling had slowed, until it was barely perceptible.  The predominant sound was a whisper sound, granules on granules, like sand flowing over sand, or sugar over sugar.  The demesne was an expanse of fragments and sections of building floating in a still sea of gray-brown particles.  With no wind to touch it, the clouds of dust were quick to settle.  Only traces remained.

Traces, and the fragments of road that laid out a path between us and the exit.  There were gaps between, but they didn’t break underfoot, and they didn’t sink.

Another sign that this place wasn’t an active site for the Abyss.

We were close enough to the exit that I could see the bridge that marked the division between the older Jacob’s Bell and what had once been Johannes’ demesne.

The sky over the city was so bright I couldn’t look directly at it.

“They’re gone,” Lola said.  “The lawyers on the other side.  The demons.  I don’t sense the connections.”

“Damage is still done,” Paige observed.  “There are gaps between things.  It’s saturated with wrongness.”

“But they’re gone,” Lola said, almost whispering, as if, until this very moment, she hadn’t quite believed it was possible.  “People are alive.”

“Not everyone,” Ainsley said.  “We have to brace ourselves.  It won’t be pretty.”

“But-”

“But they’re gone,” Ainsley said.  She smiled.  “And people are alive.  Yeah.  I get what you mean.”

“We won,” Paige was the one who said it.

Rose didn’t seem so surprised.  “The cost of continuing the fight was too high, compared to the gains.  It might take them a while to digest what happened, put the pieces together, report back to whoever or whatever they report to.”

“The other lawyers will come after you,” Mags commented.  “By your own logic-”

“Their logic,” Rose corrected.

“By their logic, which you outlined just now, it’s too costly to leave you be.  You represent something.”

“Yes,” Rose said.  “I might have to stay in the Abyss until the worst of it blows over.  I’m getting a sense of how it works, it’s my battlefield, and I have work to do.”

“Scourge work,” Lola said.

“That’s part of it,” Rose admitted.  “Got to look after Jacob’s Bell.  That’s our most pressing problem.  Evacuate the citizens, clear it out, clean up the mess.  Too much damage done for it to be salvageable.  I think Alister will be willing to work with me to coordinate.  Each of us on different sides of the divide, if we have to.”

“I’m glad you’re still thinking of my cousin,” Ainsley said.

Rose nodded, smiling lightly.

I gave her the ability to care for others.  Will that be enough?

“But it’s not just the Scourge stuff,” Rose said.  “I was thinking of writing a diabolic text.  Taking after grandmother Thorburn, maybe.”

A few heads turned.

“Need to challenge ideas, change attitudes.  If I can put the right words to paper, disseminate the books, I can hurt them worse than we could repeating this fight a hundred times over,” Rose said.

We’d drawn close to the bridge.  The exit.

“I’m going,” Lola said.  “There’s people I need to look for.  My mom.  I can see the connection, but I have to make sure.”

“Bye,” Rose said.

“I feel obligated to say something or do something,” Lola said.  “But nothing’s coming to mind.”

“We just spent far too long fighting because we were supposed to,” Rose said.  “Because your families are supposed to hate diabolists, and I was a diabolist because I was supposed to be.  Fuck obligations.  Go to your mom.”

Lola nodded.  She turned to go.

“Thanks, by the way,” Rose said.

“Likewise,” Lola replied, raising a hand.  She didn’t turn around, half-running on her way past the bridge.

Hurt as she was, she picked up her pace as she ran, a limping gait.  Going home.

Mags fidgeted.

“The same goes for you.”

“I know you better than she did,” Mags said.

“And I know you,” Rose said.  “Go find your dads.  I know we’ll see you again.  This isn’t a farewell in any sense.”

“Two rounds done,” Mags said.  “As far as my count can be accurate.  Fire, darkness, and blood.”

“You’re looking to do this again?” Evan asked.  “Why?  Huh?”

“Long story,” Mags said.  “One I’d tell if I didn’t have my dads to look for.  And a Faerie to look for.  What happens to the Faerie who were exiled here when Jacob’s Bell ceases to be?”

“Depends on how things were worded,” Rose said.  “I’d guess they get to slip the noose until the individuals who exiled them hunt them down.”

Mags bit her lip.

“Go,” Rose said.

Mags gingerly handed me over into Rose’s care.  Rose held me in both hands, swaying a little precariously before catching herself.

Nobody else moved.

“Faster you all go, faster we can each get ourselves patched up,” Rose said.  “Ainsley, why don’t you go find Alister?  Bring him here?  I’m going to stay, until I know it’s safe.”

“In an empty Abyss?”  Ainsley asked.

“I’ll relocate soon, I think.  But this looks like as good a place to rest as any.  Peter?  Go with Ainsley.  Help her get to Alister, get her patched up.”

Peter glanced at Ainsley, then back to Rose.  “Sure.  You’re really okay?”

“Better than,” Rose said.  She managed a smile.

“You’re not all that bad for a Thorburn,” he said.

“Surprisingly high compliment, coming from you,” Rose said.

“I know, right?  But I can lie, so I figure I should get the most out of-”  He winced as Ainsley elbowed him.  “Geez!  I’m wounded, don’t go doing that!”

“You had a good moment back there,” Rose said.  “Freeing Faysal.  That was… heroic.  It made the difference.”

Peter smirked.

“Don’t let it go to your head.  I’ll be in touch, once I figure out how to manage it.”

His eyebrows went up.  “And the scary thing is, I think I almost look forward to a call from family.”

He offered a salute, then joined Ainsley in hobbling out and under the bridge.

“That pairing is not going to work out,” Paige said.  “I know I should watch out for statements that could turn out to be lies, but I’m… ninety nine percent positive.”

“I agree,” Rose said.  “Just don’t tell him those numbers.  He’ll make it work out of sheer stubbornness.  Maybe the failure will be good for both of them.”

“Maybe,” Paige said.

“You only stayed because you’re keeping an eye on him, right?  You’re probably itching to check on Isadora.”

“I am.  But that’s not the only reason I stayed.  I just wanted to say good work.”

“Good work?”

“Not for all of this, but for making it through.  All my life, I wanted to rise above the Thorburn stuff.  Family drama.  I kept getting dragged back down.  I didn’t realize that anyone else was fighting as hard as I was.”

“We were friends once, before Blake and I were separated into two individuals,” Rose said.  “Close, you, me, and Molly.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I remembered.”

“Like I said to Peter, I’ll try to keep in touch.”

“Yeah,” Paige said.  She glanced at those who remained.  The vestige kids, Evan, Green Eyes, and me.  “You okay like this?”

“I think so,” Rose said.

“You said you were better than okay when Peter asked,” Paige said.

“Entirely different questions,” Rose said.

“I suppose that’s true.  You did a good job, Rose.  You too, Blake, if you can hear me like that.”

Paige didn’t say goodbye.  Neither girl had anything more to add.  Paige’s exit was more of an awkward retreat.  Stepping away, constantly glancing back at our group, a concerned expression on her face.

She passed under the bridge.

The moment Paige was out of sight, Rose collapsed.  Noah tried to catch her, but he wasn’t big enough or strong enough to support her weight.  It made for an ugly, awkward fall.

The scene was still.  Even the sand-on-sand whispers had stopped.  There were no noises from Jacob’s Bell.

A car passed along the length of the highway, headlights only catching thick mist.

Darkness on this side, daylight on the other.

Green Eyes hadn’t budged an inch as Rose fell.  She watched, her expression cold.

“Green Eyes,” Rose said.

“I’m not going.”

“I wasn’t asking you to go,” Rose said.  “I’m asking you not to kill me.”

“Wait, what?” Evan asked.  “No!  We won!  This isn’t a bad end!  We fix Blake, we fix me, Rose triumphs, happy, happy, happy!”

“Rose is bleeding,” Green Eyes said.  “Too much.”

“Oh man!  You’re going to be okay Rose!  I can go for help!”

“She’s going to eat Blake, consume whatever humanity or flesh he’s got to try and patch herself up.”

Evan went still.  Shocked into silence.

“Essentially true,” Rose said.

“Then why shouldn’t I kill you?” Green Eyes asked.

“Because he wouldn’t want this.” Rose said.  “You know he wouldn’t want this.  And the promise I made with him… that was what he wanted.”

“This is better than-”

“No,” Rose said.  “I want to tell you I’ll give you the ending you want, but if I do, and it winds up being a lie, it’ll probably kill me.  I’ll be too weak.  I have to draw on him to patch myself up, I’ll probably have to pass out and rest for a bit before getting underway, and he could die at any point during that.  There might be too little left.  But with what remains…”

“There’s almost nothing as is,” Green Eyes said.  “You’re telling me what I want to hear!  Dodging the truth!”

“Green!  Green!”  Evan cut in.  “Come on!”

Green Eyes was bristling.  Fingertips digging into the pavement.  Her fins flared.

“Do it for me?  For the nugget?”  Evan asked.

Slowly, the fins relaxed.  The tension went out of the fingernails.

Rose nodded.

She turned her attention to me.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” she said, reaching down to break, digging for the flesh that remained.

Then all went dark.

Epilogue

Wind, the purr of the engine, they blended together to make a white noise.  His brain worked to make sense of it, and it created something very close to music, feeding into an almost zen-like sense of ease.  Not quite relaxation – he felt a tiny bit of fear with every car he passed, knowing how fragile a motorcyclist could be in an incidental collision, felt pure exhilaration running through him over the simple fact that he was on the road.

Even with his helmet on, he could smell and taste the trees and grass.  The faint aroma of gasoline and exhaust was one he very much enjoyed.  When he passed wild growths of flowers on the side of the road, he could smell those, too.

It was fresh air.  When he breathed, it felt like more oxygen got to his lungs.  There was a vague high that came with it.

The cars around him had none of that.  Some had their windows rolled down for the summer, but it was an attempt to escape the heat.  When they looked out their windows, it was through just that – a window.  He had unrestricted vision in every direction.  His body temperature was perfect, the wind sapping away the heat that soaked into the dark fabric of his jacket.

He slowed down as traffic on the highway did.  He didn’t have to, he could have navigated between the gaps without much fuss, but he figured it was sensible, especially given that he wasn’t alone.  He was a little annoyed to have to do it, especially given the reason.  The cars around him were slowing in attempt to take advantage of a slight rise and get a better look at a point further down the highway.  It wasn’t easy, given the trees that had been planted around here, obscuring the view.

He could feel the fractional drop in temperature as he passed into the shade the first of the trees offered, and he smiled.

These trees were his landmark.  He raised a hand, signalling, even as he put his lights on.  A glance over his shoulder, a double check, then a change of lanes.

He could hear the faint shift in the sound of traffic.  Another bike adjusting speed and direction, changing lanes to follow.

The exit took them off the highway, onto a poorly maintained side road, one that was very easy to miss.  He passed a spot where poles had once been holding a sign in place, but the signboard was gone.  The trees obscured the view, leaving the site a passing curiosity.

He signaled again, just to be sure his traveling companion wouldn’t go down the wrong road.

It took another ten minutes to get to their stop, going at a fairly easygoing pace on the poorly maintained road.  Traffic had slowed because people were rubbernecking further ahead.  The little booth had been erected at a spot with a better view.  Well placed, in his estimation.

It was a ways until they reached the town, but it offered a distant view of the buildings and the water that lay just a bit beyond.  A trail marked the way down to the side of the lake.  A family was already down there, kids splashing.

He signaled again, well before he braked, just to be absolutely clear what he had in mind.  He could smell the grease and the oil of the little stand well before he lifted up his visor.  With his sinuses clear and his blood pumping, oxygen flowing through his veins, he might have said that he’d never smelled anything half as good, but he’d experienced this before.

“Oh my god, I could eat a whole cow,” his companion said, behind him, echoing the thought.  She pulled off her helmet, and shook her head to let her cornrows loose where they’d bunched up closer to her neck.

“You should see the burgers here,” he said.  “It’s pretty close to eating a whole cow.”

She put down the kickstand to her bike, then approached, throwing her arms around him.  He hugged her back, and they rocked in place.

“Thank you,” she said, squeezing him tight.  “For convincing me to do this.”

“You’re very welcome,” he said, smiling.  He shifted his grip on her until one arm encircled her lower back.  He faced the surroundings with her.  The water, the trees, and a distant ghost town with far too many trees blocking the view.  Sating curiosity without quite satisfying it.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I asked, last time I was around.  Rumor is that it was something about contaminated water.  Dumping way back when, leeching into the town’s infrastructure.  I guess it was too expensive to salvage.  I don’t know the full story.”

“Why the trees, though?”

He shrugged.  “Maybe they thought it would be an eyesore.”

“We could go back and see if there’s a road we could take to go take a look?” she suggested.

“Shall we grab some food, first, miss Deidre?”

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation.  She smiled.  “Definitely.”

There were three other people in line before their turn came up.  He let Deidre order first, then gave his own order to the man with a mullet.  Burger with bacon and cheese, sweet potato fries, and fried zucchini.

He enjoyed the ambient chatter and people watching before the food was done.  Food in hand, they left their bikes behind and walked down the path to the water, locking up their helmets and bringing their backpacks, just to keep the essentials on hand.

It took them a minute to get settled, sitting on a fallen tree, halfway between the water and the little roadside booth.

They took a minute to get straight to eating.  A kid down by the water screamed.  The beach itself was as much rock as sand, but the child didn’t seem to mind, running away from the waves as they approached, then chasing them as they retreated.

“Is this the place?” Deidre asked.

“The place?”

“You said there was one place you wanted to stop by, after Toronto but before Ottawa.  Process of elimination…”

“Ah, yeah.  This is the place.”

“You never said why.  If there was a better view of the town, that’d be neat, ghost towns can be cool, but there isn’t.”

“It sounds dumb if I say it out loud.”

“Dumb?”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” he said.

She arched her fine eyebrows at him.

“Came through this area for the first time last year… it really sounds dumb if I say it out loud.”

“But you still plotted our entire road trip around this,” she said, before she took another bite of her pogo.  “There was a detour.”

“Yeah.”

“You can convince me to come with you on a spur-of-the-moment road trip, but you can’t explain this?”

He smiled, taking a bite so his mouth would be full and unable to respond.  She smirked at him.

“You’re going to have to tell me sooner or later,” she said.

He smiled, mouth still full, and nodded.

“Out with it, Dominic.”

He finished chewing, took a deep breath, then confessed, “I came through here last summer, and again in the early fall, because I was curious.  Nothing came of it in the fall, but-”

“I’m not following.”

“It’s easier if I show you.  Can I get you to take my burger?”

Deidre did, balancing the paper container on her knee.

Dominic licked his lips, rolled his shoulders, clearing his throat.

“Stop making such a show out of it.”

“Ahem,” he said.  He cupped his hands together, thumbs side-by-side, then raised his hands to his mouth.

He managed a chirping sound.  It took some adjustment until it was clearer and sharper.

“That was pretty bad,” Deidre said.

“Yeah.”

“If any bird heard that, it’ll probably take it as an insult.”

He smirked, taking his burger back.

No sooner did he have the burger in his hand when a bird appeared, surprising him enough that Dominic almost dropped his lunch.

“Hey!” he said, a short laugh escaping his lips.  The bird was circling him, going a mile a minute.  “Hey!  Little guy!”

The bird chirped in response, matching the amount of flight to the sheer amount of noise it was making.

“Hey, stop, stop.  Settle down.  Stop!  Want a bit of sweet potato?”

The bird stopped in the next heartbeat, settling on his forearm.  A sparrow, a fraction smaller than most sparrows he’d seen.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.  He pinched off a bit of sweet potato fry and gave it over.

The bird stopped its constant chirping just long enough to down the bit of fry, then it started chirping for more.

“Okay,” Deidre said.  “That’s almost adorable enough to justify the lengthy detour.”

“Almost?” Dom asked, in the same moment the sparrow turned its full attention toward her, chirping in time with his question.

“Almost,” she held firm.

“Little guy came with me part of the way through the states last summer,” he said.

“What?  No way.”

“Rode with me.  Lost him a couple times, but he always caught up to me.  I think he just really likes motorcycles.  I think he’s someone’s pet, or he was.”

The bird chirped.

“Could it be a she?” Deidre asked.

The bird chirped again.  It almost sounded indignant.

“No, pretty sure it’s not a she,” Dominic said.

“How do you know?  Are you a bird expert?”

“Definitely not a bird expert, but-”

“I say she’s a girl, then,” Deidre said.

The sparrow took flight.  Flapping violently, as it moved from Dom’s left wrist to his right shoulder.  It perched there, paused, then fluttered violently, remaining in place, before stopping, feathers fluffed up.

It chirped at her.

“Or not,” she said.

“That’s why,” he said.  “I asked the same question, back then, and I got a very similar response.”

The bird settled, feathers going smooth, or smoother.  It moved back to Dom’s left wrist, before chirping for more food.  It watched with rapt attention as he dipped his fried zucchini in cucumber sauce and took a bite.

“It’s like it knew what I was saying,” Deidre said.  “Do you understand me, little guy?”

The bird didn’t take its attention off Dom’s fingers as he reached for another sweet potato fry.  It chirped, once, as if to remind him that it was there.

“If you chirp twice, I’ll give you all the fries you want,” she said.

The bird didn’t react.

“It was a pet,” Dom said, with more confidence.  He offered another bit of sweet potato fry.  “Had to be.  It responded to your tone of voice, that’s all.  Probably reacts to a few key words, like the gender thing.”

“Right,” Deidre said.  She frowned.

“Almost done?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Sure, but you’re not.”

“Almost.  Come on.  He’s so funny with the motorcycle, I want to show you.”

He stuck the last mouthful of burger into his mouth, picked up his stuff, and led the way back up the path.  The sparrow remained on his arm, staring at the paper container that still held some stray fries.

They reached the little shack of a restaurant, and a few heads turned at the sight of the sparrow.  As they approached the bikes that were parked on the far end of the road, the sparrow took off, perching between the handlebars, then to the second bike.

It practically bounced in place with energy, seeming far too excited that there were two motorcycles.

“Okay, I have to admit, that is pretty funny.”

“I didn’t think he’d go this nuts,” Dom confessed.  “I don’t think his peanut brain can wrap his head around the idea of there being two motorcycles in one place.”

The bird flew straight for him.  He had to duck to avoid it, only to realize after the fact that it would have only grazed him.

They both turned to see the bird disappearing off into the woods.

“Huh,” Dom said.

“What was that you said about tone of voice?  I think you hurt his feelings.”

“Ha ha,” he said, deadpan.

“Seriously though, the bird was funny.  Thanks for showing me.”

“Not a problem,” Dominic said, but his attention was on the trees, his thoughts elsewhere.

“Would have been fun to have it follow along, but I guess it was a fluke thing, last year?”

“Maybe,” he said, his attention still elsewhere.

Where did the bird go?

“Hey, Deids,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Watch my stuff?”

“Bathroom break?”

“Nah, no,” he said.  Almost without taking his eyes off the trees, he pulled off his jacket and put it with his backpack on the seat of his bike, then headed down the path.  Being still, without the benefit of the wind and the motion of the bike, he’d accumulated a bit of sweat.

He’d tracked the direction the bird had gone.  That meant veering off to the right, into thicker trees.  He used his hands and arms to brush at the branches.

The way wasn’t easy.  He made it far enough into the woods that he began to have doubts, to suspect that he’d been wrong.

But the bird had flown with purpose, hadn’t it?

The thick canopy made the way surprisingly dark.  The light that filtered through did so in beams and as an ambient glow, lighting up the dust and pollen in the air.

He heard a laugh.  A girl’s.

He stopped, and he approached with a little more care.

A murmur, the girl’s voice, words inaudible.

A chirp.  The sparrow.

He stopped.

She was sitting by the water, back to a tree.  He couldn’t be sure if it was an old woman or a girl with platinum blond hair bleached whiter by the sun, but the voice, the laugh, and the fit of the seafoam colored sweatshirt she wore suggested the latter.

The sparrow was perched on her finger, busy chirping.

If he’d waited any longer, Dominic might have felt like he was doing something wrong.

“Miss!” he called out.

The girl froze.

“Are you the sparrow trainer?  I was wanting to ask.  Last summer, I-”

There was a flutter, a flap.  Not the sparrow that had perched on her finger.  If it weren’t for the branches right behind him, Dom might have fallen over backward.

As it was, he caught himself, freezing with a sparrow just inches from his face, perched on his shoulder.

The smaller sparrow arrived a moment later, flying his way.  He put out a hand, and it settled on his knuckles.

The girl was gone.  Small waves lapped up around where she’d been.

“Uh,” he said.

His heart was pounding, and he couldn’t put words to why.  It wasn’t just the fact that the larger of the two birds had nearly flown into his face.

The little sparrow bounced with excitement.  The larger one remained where it was, ruffling its feathers momentarily, almost seeming to ignore Dom altogether.  Its attention was on the trees.

“Well, I’m going back to my bike.  You can come if you want,” he said.

The sparrows didn’t leave.  Dom turned to go back to the path and Deidre, then paused, glancing back.

No sign.

The birds were patient as he forged his way past the branches and everything in his way, the small one flying off and away when he accidentally almost knocked it off with a stray branch.

Back into the daylight.  The smaller sparrow perched on him again as he headed up to the food shack and Deidre.

“There you are,” she said.  He raised her eyebrows.  “And you brought friends.”

“I did,” he said.

Both sparrows took off.  Each one settled on a different bike.  The larger on his bike, the smaller on Deidre’s.

“There’s two trained sparrows?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you call them?”

He shrugged.  “I don’t.”

“You could call the big one Ugly,” she said.  She turned her head at a sound, then shooed the smaller of the two sparrows.  “No!  Do not peck my motorcycle!  No!”

It evaded her sweeping hands and settled back in the same place.

Dom looked at the larger sparrow that had perched on his bike.  Unlike the small one, it seemed to be more focused on the surroundings than on him, or even the bike.  It had feathers sticking up here and there, and it was a little dirtier.  A small bit of branch was stuck in the plumage at its front.  It looked like a sparrow that a cat had hacked up and left on the forest floor.  Still, it had looked very similar last summer, too.

“I don’t want to call it Ugly,” Dom said, not taking his eyes off the little creature.  “It saved my life.  Maybe.”

“What?”

“I know it sounds dumb.  But I was riding through the states, and there was this moment where I was overtaking, and I had that feeling.  You probably know the feeling I’m thinking about.  Something being wrong.  Small voice in my head said ‘no’.  But I went ahead, ignored it, and the car I was overtaking started merging into my lane.  Totally blind to the fact that I was there.”

“The bird saved you?”

“Getting to that.  The speed I was going, where the car was, the incoming traffic, I had that moment where I realized it was all going to go in a bad way, no matter what happened.  Then, bam.  Bird that was riding with just flies off, slams into the side window of the car.  Scares the shit out of the driver, they correct, and I don’t die.”

Deidre looked at the bird.

“They rode with me all the way to Wisconsin.  Disappeared.  When I was on my return trip, they found me.  Rode with me back here.  They weren’t around in the fall, when I checked in.  In retrospect, I’m not sure they weren’t acting as someone else’s…”

He trailed off, looking at the bird, and saw it staring at him.  Very still.  As quiet as the smaller one was animated.  Deidre hadn’t said anything, so he elaborated, “…I was going to say guardian angels, but…”

“But?”

He thought of the white haired girl he’d glimpsed, the way she’d disappeared.

The ‘guardian angel’ thing had been an amusing thought before.  Now it felt a little less like an idle thought.

He couldn’t put words to that feeling.  Instead, he said, “I really like the idea of them being along for our road trip.  Especially while you’re with.”

She smiled, approaching to grab him by the shirt front, and gave him a peck on the lips.  “Sure.”

The little one peeped.

“If they’re coming,” she said.  “I’m happy if they are, but we can’t get your hopes up.”

“I think they are,” he said.  “Are you two coming with?  Deidre and I are heading to Labrador.”

The little one peeped again, bouncing on the spot.  The big one only turned, facing forward.

Dominic smiled.

“How about we loop back, see if we can’t take the other road and head down to explore the little ghost town, satisfy your curiosity?” he asked her.  “Then we can head on our way.”

“Sure!”

They began to steer the bikes around.  It was only a short trip back to a branch in the road. The birds remained at the front of the bikes.

A chain stretched across the side road, but it wasn’t impossible to duck under.

The moment they had the bikes pointed at the road in question, however, the birds took off, first the large one, then the small one.

Both perched on branches, just a short distance away.

Dominic blinked.

“Come on,” he said.

The birds didn’t move.

“Just visiting the town.  We can pass right through and pop out the other side, head to Ottawa, then Montreal, maybe.”

The little one peeped.

Still sitting astride his motorcycle, he raised his hands, and tried the bird call.

He got two blank stares instead.

“Won’t?” he asked.

“I’ll remind you that you’re talking to birds,” Deidre pointed out.

He leaned forward, elbows and arms draped over the handlebars of his motorcycle.  “Come onnn.”

The birds didn’t budge.

“Maybe they can’t?” Deidre asked.

“Can’t?”

“It’s like… you hear about animals reacting before an earthquake hits.  You said it was groundwater contamination.  Maybe they sense something wrong down that way, so they’ll instinctively refuse.”

“Maybe,” Dom conceded.  “Poisons in the air?”

Deidre offered a shrug.  She had very nice shrugs.

“How committed are you to going this way?”

“Not very,” she said.  “If I’m being totally honest, I had a bad feeling, like the one you described.  Nothing I can reason or explain, but-”

“But a bad feeling,” he said.  He sat up straighter.  “Good enough.  On to the highway, head to and through Ottawa, find some spot between there and Montreal to settle down for the night?”

Deidre smiled.  “Sounds good.”

“What about you two?” he asked.

There was no response.

“Right,” he said.

But as he turned the bike around to go back toward the little shack and the highway beyond, there was a flutter.

The birds settled in, the large one perched on his headlight.

He paused.  The girl with white hair stuck in his mind.

“Two ways we can go,” Dominic said, “Take the main highway, or we can go by the water.”

No sooner was the word water out of his mouth than the little one started to bounce in place.

Even the large one looked at him, which was about as much attention as it had given him in the entire road trip last summer.

Deidre laughed, and it was a good sound.  “I don’t think I get a say.”

“By the water it is,” Dom said.

Dominic led the way, easing in, gently ramping up the speed, one eye on the sparrow.

It managed a good enough grip, though the vibrations of the engine had to be rattling its brain in its skull.

Tough little critter didn’t seem to mind.

He picked up speed, until he’d matched pace with traffic on the highway.  He merged into traffic, glancing back to make sure Deids and the little guy were with him.

They passed the trees that seemed to surround the little ghost town.  It didn’t take long to pass it outright.

Small as it was, the sparrow couldn’t hold on forever.  Shortly after the town was left behind, there was a bump in the road, and it came loose, disappearing off to the side.

Dominic tried not to worry, but it was hard.

But, sure enough, just as it had been last year, the bird reappeared.  It wasn’t faster than the bike, but the highway curved gently, and the bird could fly in a straight line, meeting him further ahead, then continuing on, to meet him at the next bend.

It would fall behind eventually, he knew, but it would always catch up somehow.  If it got tired, it would take advantage of his stopping for gas or food to catch a ride, somewhere where the wind wouldn’t throw it loose.

In Dominic’s peripheral vision, the sparrow was joined by its smaller companion, and the two drifted out in the general direction of the lake.

The way got clearer as they got further from Toronto and the annoyance of the slower traffic around the ghost town.  He smiled, accelerating, content to be leaving it all behind.

Last Chapter                                                                        The End (Afterword)

Table of Contents

Epilogue

Bonds 1.1

Bonds 1.2

Bonds 1.3

Bonds 1.4

Bonds 1.5

Bonds 1.6

Bonds 1.7

Gathered Pages: 1

Damages 2.1

Damages 2.2

Damages 2.3

Damages 2.4

Damages 2.5

Damages 2.6

Gathered Pages: 2

Damages 2.7

Histories (Arc 2)

Breach 3.1

Breach 3.2

Breach 3.3

Breach 3.4

Breach 3.5

Histories (Arc 3)

Collateral 4.1

Collateral 4.2

Collateral 4.3

Collateral 4.4

Collateral 4.5

Collateral 4.6

Collateral 4.7

Collateral 4.8

Collateral 4.9

Collateral 4.10

Collateral 4.11

Collateral 4.12

Gathered Pages: 4

Conviction 5.1

Conviction 5.2

Conviction 5.3

Conviction 5.4

Conviction 5.5

Conviction 5.6

Histories (Arc 5)

Subordination 6.1

Subordination 6.2

Subordination 6.3

Subordination 6.4

Subordination 6.5

Subordination 6.6

Subordination 6.7

Subordination 6.8

Subordination 6.9

Subordination 6.10

Subordination 6.12

Histories (Arc 6)

Void 7.1

Void 7.2

Void 7.3

Void 7.4

Void 7.5

Void 7.6

Void 7.7

Void 7.8

Void 7.9

Void 7.10

Void 7.11

Histories (Arc 7)

Signature 8.1

Signature 8.2

Signature 8.3

Signature 8.4

Signature 8.5

Signature 8.6

Signature 8.7

Null 9.1

Null 9.2

Null 9.3

Null 9.4

Null 9.5

Null 9.6

Histories 9

Mala Fide 10.1

Mala Fide 10.2

Mala Fide 10.3

Mala Fide 10.4

Mala Fide 10.5

Mala Fide 10.6

Mala Fide 10.7

Gathered Pages (Arc 10)

Malfeasance 11.1

Malfeasance 11.2

Malfeasance 11.3

Malfeasance 11.4

Malfeasance 11.5

Malfeasance 11.6

Malfeasance 11.7

Malfeasance 11.8

Malfeasance 11.9

Malfeasance 11.10

Malfeasance 11.11

Histories (Arc 11)

Duress 12.1

Duress 12.2

Duress 12.3

Duress 12.4

Duress 12.5

Duress 12.6

Duress 12.7

Duress 12.8

Histories (Arc 12)

Execution 13.1

Execution 13.2

Execution 13.3

Execution 13.4

Execution 13.5

Execution 13.6

Execution 13.7

Execution 13.8

Execution 13.9

Gathered Pages (Arc 13)

Sine Die 14.1

Sine Die 14.2

Sine Die 14.3

Sine Die 14.4

Sine Die 14.5

Sine Die 14.6

Sine Die 14.7

Sine Die 14.8

Sine Die 14.9

Sine Die 14.10

Histories (Arc 14)

Possession 15.1

Possession 15.2

Possession 15.3

Possession 15.4

Possession 15.5

Possession 15.6

Possession 15.7

Histories (Arc 15)

Judgment 16.1

Judgment 16.2

Judgment 16.3

Judgment 16.4

Judgment 16.5

Judgment 16.6

Judgment 16.7

Judgment 16.8

Judgment 16.9

Judgment 16.10

Judgment 16.11

Judgment 16.12

Judgment 16.13

Last Chapter