“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.