Padriac, she was almost positive, didn’t have a car. It wasn’t like a Faerie to grub under the hood and keep the thing running, it was even less like a Faerie to take a car into a shop for general maintenance, forking over hundreds of dollars or wasting the time to get around the repairs. Besides, being an exile meant Padraic couldn’t go anywhere.
If he was heading to Toronto, and he wasn’t using her parents to get a ride, there were really only three options. Bus, train, or walk.
Walking would take too long.
Only one destination made sense. The station. The train schedule had been timed to allow for commuting to and from Toronto, arguably the minor tweak that had enabled Jacob’s Bell to start growing, prompting this war over the Lordship, but the returning train would be gone, this late in the evening. Only the latest bus to Toronto would get him out of here in any reasonable span of time.
“Padraic,” she said. “Or Maggie Holt, if you insist on using that name, you pricklet. Fucker. Where the dog-diddling fuck are you?”
As if by answer, she heard a scuffling noise behind her.
A shadow moved in the darkness, dodging out of sight, as if barely staying out of her field of vision. That would be design more than it was luck.
The wind wasn’t even blowing her way, but she still scented the faintest whiff of something rancid. Not even the good kind of rancid, where it started off savory and went bad. This was the kind of smell that started off as something offputting and went worse. Like… ball sweat or that black mucky crap she’d once horked up after a really bad sinus problem, a few years back. All wrapped up in a bouquet as though said foul-smelling object had spent far too long dwelling amid bathroom smells and warm garbage.
Or, to put it in simpler terms, it’s a bad smell that’s finding me despite the wind direction.
“Hey, goblin,” she said. “It would not be in your best interests to mess with me tonight. I’ve got places to be and Faerie to-”
A loud bang made her spin in place. The ice tried to catch her foot as she moved it, but she caught a crusty bit of snowbank with her hand, instead. Soaking her hand with bits of ice and snow to keep from falling over… hard to say it was good, but it was better.
Hissing cut through the quiet as a car across the street resettled at a slight angle. one back tire thoroughly deflated.
Her heart pounded. The noise had been large enough for her to feel it, like a surprise attack.
Goblins were always easier to deal with when she had the advantage of the first move. She really only had two experiences to date, in dealing with goblins without that advantage. One where she’d fucked up, a clever little bastard of a goblin had slipped out of her trap, only to come after her with a vengeance. It had been cunning than it was capable, being no bigger than a bar of soap, possessed of more animal instinct than actual wit, but that hadn’t been a fun week.
The other instance had been the first instance. Her hometown. Her home, she still thought of it sometimes. Even if she’d left it behind, unsalvageable, thoroughly ruined.
Fucked.
Being able to swear wasn’t nearly as fun or relieving as she might have hoped, considering the cost.
Even though she wasn’t entirely sure what the full cost would be, the cost was too high.
The station.
She had to get there before the bus left.
The one eye that appeared beneath the car with the popped tire was a yellow slit, just barely catching the light. It was wide, focusing on her, then narrowed, as if the face was contorting with emotion.
The wind blew with enough force to make flecks of snow break loose from snowbanks, and the glimmer of light from the eye joined the flecks of snow in drifting away. It was gone, slipping away by some angle she couldn’t track.
Move faster.
She picked up her pace, moving as fast as she could without risking falling.
Another shape to her right, lower to the ground, moving on all fours for more speed and stealth. This one had lanky hair and tiny sagging tits on a scrawny frame, a scrap of bright colored cloth clutched in hands too small for its body. The overlarge claws on its feet were long and strong enough to scratch through the snow and catch on pavement, as the goblin dove into the snow that covered the expanse of lawn in front of an old house. There was a cloying smell like blood and black licorice.
The girl in the checkered scarf felt an ugly feeling stirring in her gut.
She recognized that one. Appearance and smell both.
Without slowing, she spoke loud enough for each of the goblins to hear, “What’s up?”
She was glad her voice hadn’t betrayed her nervousness. She couldn’t even clear her throat without the possibility that one of the goblins would hear it.
“You told us the game,” a voice sounded, from higher up. There, a tree not far away, further up the road. The voice was high, with a ragged edge, like it belonged to some rejected chain-smoking muppet.
It wasn’t a voice that would belong to the goblin she’d seen beneath the car, nor the one in the snow.
That makes three.
A game?
“Let’s go over the rules one more time, or are you so stupid you’ve forgotten already?”
“Fuck yourself bloody,” the words were spat, virtually a growl by the time the final word was spoken.
She couldn’t see the source of the voice, but she saw branches bob as the goblin in question leaped off. Ice broke away and fell in jagged clumps, disappearing into softer snow below. Snow fell from the edge of one garage, knocked loose. Then, one half-story up, more from the roof of the house.
She wanted to run now, but she’d already picked her pace. Showing fear would be a mistake.
The only option was to keep moving forward.
The sound of her feet crunching in the snow was joined by the sound of something dragging behind her.
One was across the street to her left, if it hadn’t circled around, the tire-popper. The female one would be in the midst of the snowbanks to the right, another atop the houses and garages, staying ahead, ready to trip her up if she tried to make a break for it.
And one behind her made four.
Every afternoon since Molly Walker had died, without fail, she’d made one trip to talk to the girl’s ghost. The idea was to confess, to tell stories about stupid day to day stuff, to lay herself bare. Every day, she’d made a point of reminding herself of what she’d done. What she’d helped bring to pass.
In the process, she’d reminded herself of what goblins were capable of. That wasn’t wholly unintentional. It meant she wouldn’t let herself forget about home, about Molly. About these creatures she was dealing with every single day.
It meant, unfortunately, that the memories weren’t easy to shake. The knowledge of just what the goblins had done to Molly Walker.
The scraping, dragging noise made her think of tools. Corkscrews, spoons, doorknobs taken apart into their constituent pieces. Strips of wire that had been cut free from older chain-link fences, coarse enough with age to saw, flexible enough to wind around a body part and cut off circulation.