8.07
“I guess I missed you yesterday,” she said.
Prick of the finger. Blood collected in fingernail, three drops deposited on the ground.
“I feel worse about it than you’d think. Missing a day. But it’s reality shenanigans, I guess. Going to places where time passes differently. I’m… jeez, coming from there to here, I’m seeing how screwed I am, and I’m hoping I’m not giving away something I can’t afford to give away, right here.”
Molly Walker’s ghost stood there, head bowed.
“Hopefully the tradeoff in keeping our little connection here strong is more or less equivalent. If it isn’t, well, I guess it’s not all bad. Penance doesn’t count for much if it isn’t hard, right?”
The ghost didn’t respond. Couldn’t.
“Unless you’re religious, in which case you just gotta say a few prayers. You aren’t religious, right? That’d be weird. Churchgoing diabolist family.”
Her light, fake laugh was empty in the still air.
A group of children walked along the sidewalk further up the hill that overlooked the spot where Molly had died. Normal, everyday kids, on their way back from school. Now that Jacob’s Bell was shifting gears and starting to grow, or even trying to grow, the elementary school and high school remained close to one another, but the elementary school was shifting to only serve grades from kindergarten through six. The middle school in the north end was the go-to spot for the sevens and eights.
Which was problematic, because they were walking straight into the sorcerer’s realm, and they were walking out with a little bit less of their Selves.
“Nobody’s looking at me, and getting places is hard. The goblin with a chunk missing from his backside was covering more ground than I was. Having a name means you have a certain legitimacy in the world. The smallest spirits don’t have a reason to get out of my way, now. Feels like I’m walking against a headwind, no matter where I go.”
Molly didn’t move.
“My vision is getting a little weird around the edges, which is making me think I don’t have a lot of time. Eyes are the window to the soul and all that. Says a lot when your eyes are starting to feel the hit.”
The girl in the checkered scarf sighed.
“But I don’t want to dump my problems on you. I just wanted to stick a nail in this connection, and above all, I wanted to let you know that I might not be paying more visits. I don’t know what happens next, but it’d be weird to be on Johannes side and against the Thorburns, but still paying you visits…”
She trailed off.
Molly looked afraid. Always, even when her echo reflected moments before she’d seen the goblins.
General fear.
Justified fear.
“Frig. You can’t make it easy on me, huh? Can’t give me the thumbs up and tell me I should go do what I need to do? You gotta look like that and remind me that I’m coming perilously close to doing what I did, siding with Laird.”
She jammed her hands into her pockets, and found her pockets colder.
“I guess I gotta maybe say goodbye here. Because I dunno what’s going to happen, and I’m running out of time. I’m… I sort of made a promise to myself, way back when, that I wouldn’t be passive again. I didn’t want to just stand by the next time trouble came calling, or cry when I could fight back. And I guess I made the mistake of thinking I had to be aggressive, that fighting back meant fighting. I’m still doing it, I guess. I’ve always really been really crum- really shitty at finding the middle ground. Yeah, fair warning, I might swear a bit, even though I’m not supposed to. Count it as penance, I guess.”
Behind her, kids laughed as they ran along the sidewalk. They walked right by the spot where Buttsack was hiding.
She summed up her courage, drew in a breath. “I-”
Her voice cracked.
She tried again.
“I’m really fuckin’ sorry, Molly.”
She was as close to the ghost as she could get without intruding on the protective circle and shrine. She watched for any hint of a response.
Kind of stupid to, but she still looked.
The lump in her throat was growing by the second. All she could do was keep her breaths small.
She raised her arms a bit, because the emotions that were welling up were intense enough to demand she do something, and they were the sort that made her feel like she should hug someone or hit someone.
But she couldn’t do either. Even if she deserved to hug Molly’s ghost, which she didn’t, there was the protective shrine and the fact that this Molly was only an echo of her fear and terror from that night.
The ghost’s hands weren’t shaking, she noticed.
Maybe a little less fear and terror now. Just like Johannes’ children had been patched up with the spirits of rats and dogs, she’d patched up Molly some, giving up a bit of herself.
The emotion wasn’t going away, and she couldn’t do anything here. She had nothing more to say that wouldn’t just take away from that last line.
She wondered about giving more blood to the ghost, while her blood still had any power at all. Give it all up, a proper sort of penance, and-
And no. No, even before she was through putting the thought together, she dismissed it. That would be giving up. It would mean she wasn’t fighting back.
She let her arms drop to her side and kicked the first clump of snow she passed by, hard.
The effect wasn’t quite so dramatic as she’d hoped it would be.
Fight to the end.
She met up with Buttsack. He glowered. “What?”