“Yeah, guess so. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help more,” she said.
I shrugged. “You helped all the same.”
“I didn’t, not like you’re thinking. But let’s drop that topic. I feel like I’d have to go into it and explain, and that’s not what either of us need right now.”
That only made me want to ask more, but I didn’t.
The problem with dropping a topic was that it didn’t mean there was more to say.
I looked past her at the street beyond. There were reams of kids on the streets now. Stores and coffee shops littered the area around here, sometimes with a few houses separating them, or a dentists office or vet’s office that had been set up in what had once been an old fashioned home. A little strange to see a dinky little house with a big metal sign bolted to the front, or a lit up sign on the lawn outside.
I turned my attention to her. “Sorry. I’m… a little unfocused right now.”
“I know the feeling. Being untethered.”
“What’s this about you being an ambassador?”
“I realized what they wanted, and what they didn’t want. They saw this coming. Experienced, powerful practitioners, they want to play this out very carefully, very slowly. Means they can fold their hand if they need to, and maybe make a play in Toronto, or back up the side they think is going to win. But the wild cards… you, me, Rose? We could upset that peace. Turn it all into a big blaze of fuckery.”
I blinked. “You can swear?”
“Yeah. Long story, don’t ask.”
I didn’t. “Well, I guess I can see that, the wildcards thing,” I said. “That Other we just passed? Seems to fall into the same grouping.”
“Maybe. There’s probably more to it if they’ve left her alone.”
Bore thinking about.
“I tried to downplay my status as a wild card. Made myself a part of things. I just don’t want to be the cause of all this going sour… I have reason to believe that if I was, it would somehow be worse.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Rose is a threat to the balance too, but she’s holed up in the house, and there are very few entities present who can siege that house.”
“And even those entities are reluctant to make a move,” I said. “Because that’s possibly leaving a gap in some defense or a lack of eyes in one place, and that could imbalance things.”
“Exactly,” Mags said.
“It’s a cold war,” I said.
“It won’t stay cold,” she said. “They have to test the waters to gauge the strength of the enemy, posture, and with so many different powers gathered in one place, it’s a matter of time before someone does something. Those parents aren’t watching those kids just to keep the kids safe. They’re-”
“To keep us safe from things the kids might start.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Makes me wonder what the junior council is up to.”
“Junior council?”
“At the school, it’s… ah, nevermind.”
“What’s this about you not being at school? I thought you promised your dad.”
“I did. But I don’t have my dads either. Not quite.”
There it was. That thing that made her seem so much older. Not the effects of age so much as the weight of experience.
“I know them,” she went on, “I meet them from time to time, we can talk, and it’s mostly like the good old days, but I lost them- a large part of them, and, well, yeah. I don’t get it all back unless I take it back.”
“What are you doing, then?”
“There’s a space at the town center, kind of a guest house, for visiting dignitaries or celebrities for major events or something, I dunno. I’m there. I read, I patrol and work on keeping the local goblins under control, I visit people when called, deliver messages, negotiate meetings, and I wait.”
“Wait?”
“When all of this is over, I’ll get back what I lost,” she said. “I’m going to blood and fire and darkness that Faerie bastard.”
She smiled, and in that smile, for a moment, she was Maggie again.
I needed Maggie.
“I need your help,” I said.
“Ah man,” she said.
The smile was gone.
“Please,” I said. “I don’t think I’d be asking for much, it doesn’t have to be major. But if you recognize me, can you talk to the others?”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Please,” I said, with more emphasis.
“I’m a neutral party,” she said. “I can’t negotiate deals, not like that. I definitely can’t give a helping hand to the most volatile of the four local players.”
“Mags,” I said, “Rose is- she’s going off the deep end.”
“The bound Incarnation,” Mags said.
“Yeah. You were there-”
“I wasn’t. But I know. I haven’t been sitting on my hands these past few weeks. She used her own hair to bind it, and the binding isn’t perfect. Where the essence of the bound Incarnation leaks out, it seeps into the hair, and through the hair, it touches on the connection to taint the-”
“Girl,” I said. “Rose.”
She nodded.
“I get the book, she goes back to normal?”
“No guarantees.”
“And you can tell me this?”
“It’s an ongoing topic of discussion. If anyone challenges me on it, well, I don’t think you’re about to turn around and help Rose or tip her off that we know.”
I frowned.
“I’ve got something to do. Walk with me?”
She gestured. There was an awful lot of darkness in that direction. Stretches of grass, sidewalk and bike path, if I remembered right.
“I can’t exactly…”
“Cumnugget,” she said. “Mirror.”
One of the snowsuit goblins grumbled, but it pulled off its backpack and rummaged within.
A hand mirror.
“This isn’t a trap?” I asked. “Your responsibilities as ambassador don’t obligate you to bind me if you get the chance?”
“No,” she said. “But I’d like to get moving, and I don’t want to prematurely end this conversation. I’m actually glad to have you back, even if…”
“I’m a monster? I’m a wild card that threatens to upset the balance?”
“No,” she said. “Not that. Well, yes that. But you being a friend balances that out.”
Friend.
A genuine friend, not one that had been made for me, or however it worked.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad to have you as a friend too.”
I hopped across the nothingness, snapping to the patch of light that passed through the hand mirror she held.
She gave it to the goblin, “Hold it steady, don’t waggle it around.”
The goblin groaned, but it did as she ordered.
“The thing that gets me here,” Mags said, “Is that I feel like I have to do this, but I’m not liking it either.”
I tensed. “It is a trap, then?”
“No. Not at all. Just come. Showing is easier.”
I joined her.
It was nice, not having to skip across nothingness to pass between patches of light. It was hard to shake the impression that I might one day make that jump and fall.