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.”