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]
13.05
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.