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.
13.03
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.”