Until only one was left. The girl hesitated, unable to bring herself to join the others. She looked at Rose.
“I’ll come with you,” Lola Duchamp said.
Even this late in the night, Lola Duchamp was heavily made up with bright colors around her eyes, enough that it could almost be called war paint. She had pink tips to her hair, and a nose ring. Not the typical subtle enchantress. Bold as she appeared, Lola Duchamp looked very frightened.
“Thank you,” Rose said.
Lola shrugged.
Rose turned toward her cousins. “Paige?”
Paige glanced backward, at Isadora, who sat by the door.
“Go,” Isadora said, her low voice carrying from the opposite corner of the church. “Better you than me.”
Many sets of eyes watched that interplay, their attention caught by the sphinx’s very attention-grabbing voice.
Paige nodded.
There’s something symbolic about who I pick. One from each major group, maybe, and Paige counts as the Toronto end of things. She has talents we can use, that aren’t quite standard practice. We have a Duchamp, and a Behaim, we have me, for the Thorburns…
“You know,” Peter said, “If I were Alister, I’d really have to wonder about how eager Rose was to gather a bunch of girls around her.”
“Ahem,” Evan said.
“You’re vile,” Paige told her brother. “You know I’m related to her.”
“Tell me about it, the implications-”
“Peter,” Rose cut in.
“Right, right, I’ll stop. My bad,” Peter said, while looking as far from sorry as possible. He grinned at her.
“You’re with me,” Rose said.
“Bullshit,” Peter said, smile dropping from his face in a flash. “Bullshit and fuck you and fuck the unicorn you rode in on. Or have Paige fuck the unicorn because she obviously likes the animal-”
“Shut up. There’s no time, and I know you’ll stir up shit until you see a way out of a bad situation. I want a non-practitioner. There are benefits to having you with us, as a relatively innocent human.”
“If he’s considered innocent then this world is fucked,” Paige said.
“Seriously,” Peter agreed.
“Ahem,” Evan said.
Rose shook her head a little. “I mean innocent as in-”
“I know what it means,” Paige said. She glanced at Peter. “It’s still fucked up.”
Rose frowned. “It was down to you and Ellie, Christoff is too young, Roxanne is too young and just a bit tainted by the Abyss, and you’re right. I do need a staff along with the distaff, to balance things out more.”
Peter slapped his hand to his face.
“Fucking serves you right,” Paige said, under her breath.
“Ahem!” Evan said, with a little more emphasis. “Guy here. I have a noodle, pretty sure.”
“I assume she means a guy whose testicles have dropped,” Peter told the bird. “Presumably someone who can actually locate their noodle.”
“Wait, what?” Evan asked. “They do that? Testicles drop? Where? How? Why?”
“That’s essentially it,” Rose told Peter. “Evan is too Other to count, I think.”
“You’re not just doing this to bullshit me?” Peter asked.
“Every body counts here,” Rose said, echoing her thought from earlier “Harder to surround with an effective diagram, harder to stay hidden, to stay together. I wouldn’t say it if it didn’t matter. Humans are protected, on a level. One step removed from all of this.”
“Ah, but see, I’m a cowardly, manipulative asshole,” Peter said. “There’s not much manipulation to be done, and the asshole part isn’t any value. If you want a coward, you should go with Ellie.”
“Fuck you,” Ellie said.
“Come on,” Ainsley said. We really can’t be arguing.”
Peter frowned. It had looked like he was going to say something, but he actually listened.
“How about you decide before we leave,” Lola said. She turned to Rose, “Who or what else do you need?”
“I think that’s-” Rose started.
Then Blake hit her.
A memory, except it wasn’t a memory. It wasn’t a replay of an event or an image or anything in that vein.
It was an impression, a concept. Not a full one, quite possibly because he didn’t want to let go of it. It was a tease, something to lead Rose’s thoughts to a destination.
The Abyss isn’t about destruction and ruin.
It wasn’t a confident thought, it was an idea or a hypothesis, a question without a question mark.
“You think that’s it?” Lola asked.
“I think…” Rose said, trailing off. She turned her gaze to the other end of the church. The Others were there. Isadora was off to the left with the Eye, there were some scattered Others who had come as guests, some ghosts, there was the door, and an empty space as nobody wanted to be the first one through it, and then there were the more disturbed Others. Goblins, ugly things, the revenant, and the bogeymen in residence.
Not about destruction and ruin?
Rose headed down the central aisle of the church, and her chosen group followed. She didn’t turn to check, or to see if Peter was among them.
Her smallest cue here could make a difference in terms of how others perceived the coming conflict. Expressing confidence was everything. If she showed weakness, then that might be the excuse someone twitchy needed to try to take her life.
The trail of people who followed after her was a sticky one, catching or stopping here and there, to say words to this person or that one.
Rose stopped at the end. “Green Eyes.”
The mermaid looked up at her from her seat on the pew.
“Blake wants you to come with, I think,” Rose said.
Blake apparently didn’t disagree or want to clarify his point. He was still, motionless.
“Okay,” Green Eyes said.
Just like that.
As simple as the acceptance was, Green Eyes still glared with a steady, ominous sort of intensity.
She knew, Rose knew. That Blake had made the agreement. That there was no room in this world for the both of them.
She didn’t know, Rose suspected, that even now, Rose was digesting Blake. Eroding him away into nothingness.
And that, very possibly, he was letting her.
But it was a toxic sort of digestion. He was a poison, and for anything she gained this way, she lost something too. There had to be a cleaner way to do it, and that meant that Rose and Blake were both operating on a time limit of sorts.
If and when she found a moment to extract Blake and place him in a vessel, she would have to watch her back against Green Eyes, out of concern that the mermaid would destroy Rose before she could dispose of Blake.
It was a complication. One that Blake apparently wanted.
Rose frowned.
“Thank you, Green Eyes,” Rose said.
She gazed over the assembled practitioners. Her eye fell on Ty, who had been draped out over one pew, a bandage around his middle. A card was pressed to the bandage. Someone had offered some help via. practice. He raised a hand in a bit of a wave.