“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?”