“Uh huh. It’s gotta be a scam.”
“They know better than that,” Andy said. “Either it worked more efficiently than we thought, or it didn’t work much at all.”
“I didn’t notice anything,” Roxanne said.
“You’re not supposed to. You’re a witch hunter.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“They’re not going to be able to work together to tear the radiator away from the wall, are they?” Andy asked.
“You want me to break their arms, so we don’t need to worry about it?”
“No,” Andy said. “Just wondering aloud. I guess the worst case scenario is that they run. Don’t get the vibe that they’d come after us. Speaking of which, what kind of kid carries a knife?”
“Says the guy who wears armor under his clothes,” Eva replied.
“The civilians are supposed to be normal.”
“I don’t believe in normal,” Eva replied. Rather than attach another person to the radiator, she cuffed Christoff to Callan’s right leg and Kathryn’s left. “Should we check for phones? Wait, nevermind, the jammer.”
“I’ll check just to be safe. You go get the guy we left outside. As soon as he’s locked up, we’re going upstairs.”
I heard Eva humming as she headed for the back door. She paused, peered over one stack of books, them kicked it aside, using the toe of her boot to mess up a diagram in chalk. She turned on the spot to resume her previous path.
I slipped back upstairs before she could see me in the toaster.
One option was to send Evan after the captive Thorburns. If he could open the door to a jail cell, could he open cuffs?
But half of the captive Thorburns were unconcious or hurt enough they might as well be unconscious. Short of me pulling some stunt like trying to infuse them with my spirits, which was a bad idea, they wouldn’t be escaping, even if they were technically free.
I entered the mirror upstairs, and found myself face to face with Alexis, Tiff, and Ty. They had a group of bogeymen and goblins in their company.
“The others are captured,” I said. “They’ve been beaten up and restrained. Evan’s waiting downstairs.”
“We’re safe here, right?” Ty asked.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “I don’t know what they’re planning, but if a hiding spot like this was all it took to stay safe from a witch hunter, I don’t think witch hunters would be that big of a concern.”
“Damn it,” Ty said.
“Is there any reason we can’t try to overpower them?” Alexis asked. “We’ve got resources.”
I looked at the gathered ‘resources’. A gaggle of Others.
A teenaged girl in slightly old fashioned clothes who was hugging what looked to be a diary with a cover and lock made of stitched-together flesh to her chest. Her hair covered her eyes.
A knight in rusty armor.
A tall man who was swaddled in furs, with dead eyes.
An older woman with three malnourished, feral children standing at the end of thin chains. Each had the rag-clad children, two boys and one girl, had chains wound around their necks, like choke collars attack dogs. Their teeth were brown at the gums, snaggle teeth. I wouldn’t have wanted to get bitten by one of them.
Rounding out the group were two goblins. One was fat and squat, neckless, with a severe underbite and eyes like burning coals beneath a neanderthal brow. The second was genderless, with wings in place of arms, its head hunched forward, as if the weight of all its countless teeth made it impossible to sit straight. Its hair was lanky and greasy, with one charm worked into the end: a trio of mouse skulls.
“I feel like they probably have an answer for an en-masse attack,” I said. “But they could have an answer to anything.”
“Yeah,” Alexis said. “There’s no right answers here.”
“There are, I think, but they aren’t obvious or easy,” I told her. “We’ve got a few hours until night falls. We need to somehow get our defenses up and ready or we’ll be curbstomped when the sun sets and all bets are off. We should do something about the Thorburns downstairs. That’s all ignoring the very immediate problem of the witch hunters, who are bound to try something.”
“Getting our defenses in order was a problem even before any of this started,” Alexis said. It seemed like she was taking point among the three. “I don’t know if it’s even possible.”
“Especially since the witch hunters are removing defenses as they see them,” I said.
“Fuck,” Ty said.
“Do you guys have any tricks up your sleeve I don’t know about?” I asked. “Implements, familiars, demesnes?”
“No,” Tiff said. “We went through a phase where we were trying to scry a way out, use the practice to see if there was a path, test all the major decisions. Every time we raised the question of whether we should make a major binding deal like that, especially with familiars and especially in relation to Rose or Evan, we kept turning up the same results, with scary frequency. All signs pointed to soulmates being separated, a person being lost.”
“The natural conclusion was that the enchantresses had something planned to cut us off or mess with us, like Corvidae’s trick,” Alexis said.
I nodded, but as much as I agreed with the logic, I wasn’t happy with the result. “We need a wider variety of monsters to throw at the witch hunters. Put them on their heels, buy time.”
“I can do that,” Ty said. “Variety, I mean. I might need help.”
“I’ll help,” Tiff said.
“What’s going on with the Thorburns downstairs?” Alexis asked.
“They’re hurt, some are out of it, and most would be pretty useless in an outright brawl. Some are awake, and that means we have to be careful about collateral damage. If they see the wrong thing and cross that event horizon where they can’t ignore this world anymore-”
“They become our responsibility,” Ty said. “Right. Sorry for saying so, but I do not want a Thorburn to be my responsibility. It’s like taking charge of a ship with a hole in the hull. You know it’s bound to sink, and you know you’ll get blamed when it does.”
“Not to mention, extending your analogy,” I said, “The ship is liable to be a total asshole. You don’t want to take responsibility for an asshole you don’t know.”
“Yeah,” Ty said. “I didn’t want to say that either, but yeah.”
“Variety of threats, keep them busy,” I said. “It’ll buy us time to think.”
“Okay,” Ty said. He sprung to his feet, moving out of my field of vision. “Elemental? Ghosts?”
“Wind elemental,” Alexis said. “Anything else is going to be awfully hard to explain.”
“Got it.”
“I’ll get the supplies,” Tiff said. “Myrrh?”
“Myrrh works,” Ty replied.
“We’re low on myrrh,” Alexis said, adding her two cents. “Incense works too.”
“Got both,” Tiff said.
Alexis turned her attention from the other two to me. She didn’t say anything.
“I’m thinking,” I said.
“Me too,” she told me, “I’m not liking any of the options. There’s too many unknowns.”