I saw them exchange a glance. How many signals and tricks had they exchanged over the past few centuries, to communicate complicated strategies with but a look?
“As you wish,” Ev said. She sheathed her weapon. Her metal threads uncoiled, returning to their spool, sparks flying where some flicked cars or light posts.
Keller smiled, bowing slightly.
The two Faerie walked away.
Ev shot me one teasing look before drawing her lighter, disappearing through the side view mirror of her car. There was a gleam of mischief in her eye.
Then they were gone, back in the real world.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. They were pissed at me.
This was worse.
Things were bad and getting worse fast, and I had nowhere to go for sanctuary.
I headed for Maggie, walking faster than before.
10.02
The school, as it happened, was protected ground.
Disguised as childish scribbles, chalk drawings or graffiti, there were symbols arranged in a circle on the streets around the school. To my eye, a loose ring cutting through the utterly black nothingness that stretched between mirror places, masking everything within.
I waited, and in the waiting, I realized that there were stationed guards as well. A regal old lady with her grandson in her lap. Seen in a different light, seen with a note of doubt, wondering just how she could stay there for twenty minutes to an hour, not actually doing anything, I was able to peer past the veil.
A faerie, older than Ev or Keller, if her silver hair was any indication, with a carving knife. She carved up her ‘grandchild’, an idol of wood, adding fine details.
A wrecked car, a police officer and the car’s driver, a tableau.
Time, however, helped to identify them for what they were. A singular entity, I was pretty sure. The scene repeated over and over again, a six minute loop. If I had to guess, they might have been ghosts, or less than ghosts, shored up with a spirit of time. A zeitgeist.
The Behaims protecting their kids in the school.
I wasn’t sure how that worked in execution, but time shenanigans spooked me as much as a Faerie did.
I had no idea of how long I had to wait, and I didn’t exactly want to stay put for Ev and Keller to find. I paced the perimeter of the school, exploring the streets and kept moving.
I found more Others, but they weren’t guardians. They were predators. Two goblins in plain sight, hiding near the dumpsters outside a grocery store. They disappeared when an employee stepped outside to throw out a box of produce. They piled the most rotten, moldy stuff into bags, then scampered off, sticking to shadows.
A trashy looking woman with a jacket of short black fur was perusing store fronts. She passed right in front of me, looking through the reflections, and her eyes settled on me. Cat eyes. She traced the window with her nails as she passed. Talons disguised as overlong painted nails. They made a noise like nails on a blackboard as she scraped the glass.
It seemed like every other time I looked through the windows and mirrors to the real world, I saw something. A bit of diagram, a man that was overly tall, with a neanderthal brow and a thick beard. A ghost. A pair of Duchamps who appeared to be out shopping with their infant daughter. I stayed out of their sight and out of their way.
Likening it to a game of checkers or chess would be unfair. Yes, they were putting pieces on the board. Calling in favors, apparently, and deciding what needed to be where. The Behaims were very obviously tapping into their supply of magic that they’d been holding in reserve. These were the opening moves of the game. Threatening, building something, maybe testing the water here and there, if Rose calling it a ‘war’ meant something, but as far as I knew, pieces had yet to be taken off the board. There hadn’t been any attacks.
Unlike a game of chess, though, the pieces here were very much alive, or as alive as Others got. They moved constantly, forcing everyone that was native to Jacob’s Bell to constantly adapt.
If I went with my gut, and the general atmosphere, I didn’t think anyone had made an explicit, overt move yet. There was tension. Seeing just how many Others, diagrams and practitioners there were around here, I had the distinct impression that all it would take was one mistake. One member of one side failing to watch their backs, or underestimating one of the other side’s players.
One mistake, and this would all turn ugly.
Why the emphasis on the school? A means of pressuring the opposition?
I watched the faceless woman walk down the street, phone in one hand, a cigarette in the other, never actually making its way to her nonexistent mouth. Her eyes and mouth were smudges, like they’d been drawn with thick black pencil and wiped away with a cheap pencil eraser. The angle of her head and the hair that fell down around either side hid the true nature of her face from random passerbys.