Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 In the beginning, people had nothing.
 Their bodies ached, and their hearts held nothing but hatred.
 They fought endlessly, but death never came.
 They despaired, stuck in the eternal quagmire.

 A man offered a serpent to the sun and prayed for salvation;
 a woman offered a reed to the sun and prayed for joy.
 Feeling pity for the sadness which had overrun the Earth,

 Anne Savisa Boonchuy felt cold metal press through her sock; the sensation jarred her out of her doze and back into her body.

 She looked down. Her right shoe was missing and her sock was crusted and damp with dried blood. She lifted her foot and saw through the tears and cuts to her foot. It was swaddled with bandages, black and brown with grime, soaking wet and numb. She flexed her toes and barely registered that anything was happening.  A flood of incomprehensible horrors rushed through her brain and she realized that she must be on a whole lot of painkillers.

 Nothing hurt.  The world was one step removed.  Her shod foot felt nearly as numb as the other, her heartbeat filled her ears as if it were playing a drumbeat for the background music playing over... speakers...

 There was a knife in her hand.  It was a quality chef's knife, maybe ten inches long, full-tang construction, the sort that her mother had received for Christmas one year and cherished and kept in tip-top condition ever since.  It was splattered with blood.  She was soaked with blood down to her elbow.

 She touched her face with her other hand.

 She looked down at her shirt.

 Blood.  So much blood.

 Where was she?  What time was it?  What happened?  Why wasn't she...

 Grating.  She was standing on metal grating.  Below the grating, far below, was something like a distant fire.  But no smoke, or it was far enough that the smoke dissipated before reaching the grate.  Why was it cold?  Why did it feel cold?  It didn't smell like smoke.  It smelled like shop class with a nosebleed.

 In fact...

 She peeled her eyes away from the floor, from herself, to take in the room.  It looked like a waiting room; there were rows of crappy plastic chairs, a few padded seats between end tables, and everything was ancient and decrepit.  The green padding on the seats was worn, moth-eaten, and stained.  Cobwebs and worms of dried blood dangled from the plastic chairs' handles.  The anodyne white walls were peeling, revealing sheets of rusted metal.  There was a clock on the wall with a cutout from a magazine pasted over the face, torn where the hands had stopped.  The photograph was a closeup of an open, smiling mouth, red lipstick over bright white teeth.  The photograph was dark and damp, all save the teeth, which seemed to protrude from the image.

 There was a counter.

 She walked over tand peered through the foggy glass.  Now she realized there was a flashlight hanging from her shirt collar, a flat, sturdy model with a steady yellow glow.  She peered through the foggy glass above the glare of her flashlight and saw nothing but an abandoned office. There were posters, but they were waterlogged and covered in what she hoped was just mold.

 The phrasing of her own thought made her lungs twitch.  Everything was dirty down to the bones, vividly disgusting.  She wanted to wash her hands.  She wanted to inhale hot steam until she was sure her guts were clean.

 There was a key in the teller window.

 She took it.  Why not?  Why the hell not?

 Door.

 The door she had to have entered from.  She knew at a glance she didn't want to walk back through the door.  Nothing that had spit her out looking like this was worth going back to.  So she went for the other door.  This one was clean enough, and its poster was more or less intact.  It was a tuxedo kitten dangling from a low tree branch.  The top of the poster read HANG IN THERE, BABY!

 There was a long, triangular cut which bisected the poster around the kitten's belly.  Below the kitten was a poster-sized guide to the internal anatomy of a pregnant woman.  Nested in the peeled flesh, swaddled by crayon-bright guts, was a swollen, translucent womb.  Curled slumbering in that womb was a child-sized maggot.

 The door was locked.  It had a keyhole, which the key fit in, and turned, first the wrong direction, then the correct, and the door gently popped open as if she had turned the handle.

 The door opened, the key slipping from her hand.

 There was a man on the other side of the door.  She assumed a man; he was hunched down, his was dressed in worn leather, and he was thrusting something sharp at her midsection.  She yelped and fell back and a hideous scrape of metal on metal pierced her ears and something sharp jabbed into her stomach, just above her navel.  It barely hurt, so she was free to feel only hugely alarmed, free to feel mindless babble fall from her lips.

 The man shouldered through the door.  He said nothing, but his head...

 Vibrated.  Twitched.  Spasmed?  It moved too fast, twitched in fast-motion, but his bones made soft and fast clicking noises, flesh squealed with strain.  It was not a video trick, and he had two of the... baton-knives?  He swung the flat, rusty batons outward and knives as long as her own flicked from the ends.  He dragged them along the rail as he approached her, his head still twitching, and...

 She thought, suddenly, of chickens, the way they moved their heads around to get a better look at small animals they could hunt.

 He was sizing her up.

 She hit the wall, nearly tripped into a chair, and he thrust again she yelped and tried to charge him, to dodge at the same time, to do anything but lie there and die, and the blade caught her between the ribs.  He forced her back into the wall, the blade going all the way through her chest and impaling her to the wall.  She screamed, she stabbed, she thrust into the dark shape which was closing in on her, tried to do anything but get torn open. But heedless of the knife sinking into his arm, swinging at his head,

 he shoved that other knife into her belly, just above the handle of her hip bone, and sliced to the side, and

 she woke up.

 She didn't scream; Marcy and Sasha were here.  Anne had enjoyed a lifetime of nightmares, vivid and grotesque.  The first time she remembered sleeping all the way through the night was when she had bunkered down in a sleeping bag between her two best friends.  She had gotten better at not waking up screaming when on her own, but weeknights were still a gamble.

 When she slept alone, she slept with a nightlight and, on occasion, a pacifier.  She was turning eighteen on Wednesday and still she--

 Don't think about that, she thought.  Think about Sasha's lap.

 Which is where her head lay; and she opened her eyes at last and saw Sasha's darling blues looking into her.  And her heart knew peace.

 They were at Anne's house, resting after an eventful afternoon.  Sasha gave her the sweetest, most demanding little pout.  "Aww," she said.  "Annie-kitty have a cat-nap?"

 "mrrow" Anne said, nuzzling Sasha's belly.

 "mrrp!" Marcy said, and wriggled around, tickling Anne's stomach with her glossy hair; she had been laying her head down on Anne's belly in turn.  Marcy's last growth spurt had been a gift from her father's genetics, and she was now the tallest of the girls, if only by a quarter inch.  Sasha was more buff, but being cheer squad meant she only had so many muscles before the school would consider it inappropriate.  This was not the best combination with her love of lying all over Anne and Sasha, but she had gotten good at spreading her weight around, the better to serve as a living weighted blanket.

 She served this role until she remembered she had a game paused; she flipped around with the characteristic grace she had maybe 50% of the time when she wasn't thinking, and resumed her game of Sonic R.  (Authentic hardware, playing on Anne's dad's Saturn.)

 Sasha was feeling for Anne's journal.  "You have a dream?" she said.

 "Yeah," Anne said, taking her offered journal.  She took the mechanical pencil in hand, flipped to the nearest blank entry, and started drawing (first).  Drawing would have to be first, trying to catch the shape of the bag-head man before it slipped from memory.  Then she wrote a thumbnail of her dream around the image, augmenting with sketches: of the floor, of her mom's knife.  A very light doodle of the cat poster.

 Some days she wondered if mom or dad ever read this journal, but given she hadn't been involuntarily committed yet, she figured they either didn't take it seriously or thought she was just having a goth phase since age... mm, six.

 Well, maybe it wasn't a phase.  Maybe she was just kind of goth.

 That could be cool.

 "Hey," Anne said.  "Do you guys think I'd look good goth?"

 "Yes!" Marcy said, at the same time Sasha said "Hell yes you would."

 "Whacha gonna do, Anne?" Sasha said, twirling a lock of Anne's hair around her finger.  "Dye your hair?  Buy a lot of makeup?  Get tattoos someplace your mama can't see?  Or are you just gonna climb into some fishnets and play Bauhaus so loud the property value goes down?"

 "I hear ha-a-air!" Marcy said. "Maybe I can--"

 Anne put her finger on Marcy's mouth.  "No," she said gently.

 "Aww," Marcy said, lips pinched where Anne's finger graced them, "but I'll never get better if I don't experiment!"

 "There's a cosmetology school in town," Sasha said.  "Or, like, fifty, it's L.A.  One of them will let you practice on a cadaver.  You got that aura!  You can do it."

 "Heheh... aaah, nah, I'd need more... feedback..."

 She was absorbed in getting Tails Doll over the head of Sonic and trying to force her way into first place.  Challenge run.  She had to make Tails Doll work.  When it became apparent she was in a K-hole, Sasha spoke up again.

 "So," she said, "after your birthday, we're gonna take you to the coolest place I can find and we're gonna goth you up."

 "Like, Hot Topic?"

 Sasha groaned.  "I'm not just gonna take you to Hot Topic."

 "Why not?" Anne said.

 "Because it's poser shit, darling," Sasha said.  "We gotta find someplace real.  Something that does tattoos in the front and has a peep show in the back."

 "I mean," Anne said.

 "Girl, you're the last of us to turn 18.  We've been wu-haaaaa-ting for this."  She pinched Anne's cheeks.  "You wanna look at naked girls, don't you?"

 "...I do..."

 "Peep show, Jell-O shots, no carding, take pictures of you getting tits plopped on your head while Marcy's got her face in some sweaty stripper's armpit--"

 Marcy perked up at the sentence.

 Anne raised a hand.

 "Yes?" Sasha said.

 "If you take pictures," Anne said, "and they leak, we'll all be expelled, and we'll never see each other at school again."

 Marcy's happy-kitty expression turned into one of bloodless terror.

 "...point," Sasha said.  "Alright.  We dress you up... discretely.  We don't need to cut your last year short."

 "No, m'am," Marcy said.

 The thought of St. James knowing anything about them, anything more than what they let slip, made Anne want to crawl into a hole and die.  She could hate God on her own time, she could be bored with Catholicism and bored with private school as long as she wanted.  But she put up with it because Marcy and Sasha were trapped there, too.  They didn't deserve Catholic school; nobody did.  But if it made their lives a little easier, Anne would survive it for them.

 This is what love is, Anne thought.  You hurt a little so others don't have to hurt as much.

 And in silence she watched Marcy play her weird old racing game, and let Sasha play with her hair and shoulders, and whatever else she wanted to touch, in the safety of her room, in the warmth of day, far from school, far from dreams, far from anything and everyone.  Safe.

 Alone and safe.

 On Friday, Bee had bought a swing chair, brought it to the backyard, and attempted to build it on his own.  It went poorly.  On Saturday morning, he went to Anne for help.  His thumb was splinted, his wounds bandaged, his shirt off.  (Unnecessarily.)  Sweat traced the red-root scars down his chest.  Where Anne went, her girlfriends went, and the second attempt made much more headway (even with Marcy dropping an entire box of nails which exploded into a hundred potential caltrops).

 (Anne never used the word "girlfriend," by the way.  Nor did her girlfriends.  But Oum knew girlfriends when she saw it and she was proud that her daughter had found love young and held onto them good and tight.  If only Sasha were... ah, she was a teenager.)

 Day 2 went better; Anne and her ladies lay down for an afternoon doze, whereupon Anne was gutted in a noxious waiting room.  On Sunday morning, with gentle excuses as to why nobody wanted to go to church (it sucked, etc.), Bee called Andreas Wu and, in an act of profound faith, Alexander Waybright.

 Andreas was free (love thy neighbor, etc.)  He brought his wife along; many hugs and cheers were traded, and Olivia made smoothies for brunch.  Miraculously, as work got underway, Alexander arrived, and he brought beer and some steaks from this bitchin' butcher he knew.  (For dinner, obviously.)

 Though nobody invited her, Rachel Waybright eventually showed up as afternoon turned to evening.  This little intrusion was borne of seeing that her husband had posted a few photos on social media and it would look good to be seen with him.  When she arrived (she had her own house key, for the Boonchuy house was functionally all their houses), she stepped through the back doors and saw a happy little tableau.

 Oum and Bee were dozing together on the swing chair; even in his sleep Bee was nudging the chair back and forth, back and forth, the chair gliding softly. And Bee's hand had been less broken than believed, so he had wormed out of his bandages and splints, and that injured hand was on his wife's belly, protective.

 Alexander and Andreas were manning the grill, Andreas moreso, as the two men debated the finer points of steak-making.

 "There's this guy," Alexander said, watching Andreas drizzle salt across the assembled steaks.  Just enough; Andreas had dry-brined the bastards within seconds of seeing that Alexander had brought them.  "He's out in the woods, he's got these crazy knives, onions are falling everywhere, and he just--damn!  Just pouring olive oil or something over these steaks and cooking them right on this rock or something, it's the manliest thing I've seen in a minute and a goddamn half.  There's this... herb, I guess, he uses to--"

 "Alex," Andreas said.  "My man.  My brother from another mother."

 Andreas was biracial, Black and Taiwanese, and a goddamn giant.  He had a good foot on Alex, and close to a hundred pounds of muscle and suet beside.  As he dusted the steaks with garlic powder, he turned to give Alexander a look.  He was good at looks.  This look meant "look at how far down I have to crane my neck, little man."

 "Do you have a hot rock and oil leaf?" Andreas said.

 "I do not."

 Andreas slapped the steaks, one for each adult, onto the removable griddle surface for the grill.  "Get the foil, these babies are gonna need tenting in a few seconds."

 "Yessir," Alexander said, and only then saw his wife standing in the doorway.

 In the grass behind him, the girls were enjoying an impromptu round of chessboxing; which, admittedly, was more checkersfencing-with-foam-Minecraft-swords.  Olivia was winning, but she didn't hold back, and the girls delighted in losing at checkers so long as they could then lose more impressively in fencing-with-foam-Minecraft-swords.  (Well, Marcy was winning at checkers; she would've won at chess, too.)

 The multi-woman melee petered to a stop once Sasha noticed the sudden quiet.  She stood there with toy swords in hand, taking in her mother's presence with a detached respect.  In silence, Rachel brought a vape to her lips, took a deep breath, and exhaled a plume of Solar Harvest (mixed berry, cherries, red-flavored rock candy, courtesy of The Knoll, formerly Vaper's Knoll).

 Rachel said, "Okay.  Let's see where this is going."

 "Alexander," Andreas said, pointing at a meat thermometer verging on the rare zone, "the foil."

 "Shit," Alexander said, and managed to do the one thing he was asked to do.

 And it was a good night.  Rachel and Alexander coexisted well enough, though they barely exchanged two sentences over the evening.  As ever, Andreas's cooking was immaculate.  All in all, a fine time, and a fine evening.

 In no time at all, it was 3 AM, Monday morning, and Oum was awake.

 There were precious few stars in the Los Angeles sky.  The light pollution is too terrible; not to mention someone, somewhere, was shining spotlights into the sky.  Something was premiering, probably, or someone was throwing an obnoxiously huge party, or somebody had rented a spotlight and was shining it for no reason at all.

 Oum did not vape, and she hadn't touched tobacco since she was 15, but weed was not a vape or nicotine.  She decided, yes, now was the time to do so.  She clicked open the jewelry case that held her weed, rolling papers, and matches; she ground up some fresh herb, rolled it with the skill due a chef, and sparked it.  She breathed out fragrant smoke (weed, nothing else), and felt the weight on her shoulders ease, just a little.

 She saluted the darkness and tried not to pray.

 Marcy awoke on her beanbag chair, her blanket loose, one foot cold as she let it jut into the thoroughly air-conditioned room.  She sat up, looking for where she'd kicked her socks at some point during the movie.  The DVD menu played its heroic strings as clips of halfs'ems and elves and trudes (tree dudes) got up to a greatest-hits compilation of fantasy shenanigans.  Anne and Sasha, she checked, were fast asleep, curled up together.

 It happened like this some nights.  It's just how the cards were dealt.  Sometimes she fell asleep on top of Anne; sometimes she fell asleep between Sasha and Anne, which was how she liked it best, her dreams were the most wonderful when she was between them.  But some nights, Anne and Sasha fell asleep without her, entwined, and content.

 She stood, watching them sleep a little longer than propriety would allow; and then she kept watching, her heart thumping.  She knew it was weird to do this.  But Anne's favorite movies had a lot of longing stares at sleeping beauties by scary monster boyfriends; wouldn't a cute Marcy... best friend... be nicer than that?

 Didn't she want to be looked at?

 Didn't Sasha want her to be there?

 Of course.  Of course.

 She was dizzy.  Blood sugar, she thought, and maybe was even correct.  She padded into some slippers and from there crept downstairs, humming the love theme to herself and...

 Imagining.

 Why not imagine?

 She found some Chips Ahoy in the pantry; sneaking some of these felt better than actually rifling through the for-real cookie jar that the Boonchuys kept.  She poured a little snifter of milk, swished it around the glass, watching it swirl under the imagined moonlight (really, the loglo) of L.A. at night, and enjoyed her little snack in relative silence and relative swiftness.  She imagined Anne with long, pointed elven ears, and Sasha half again as tall with rippling She-Giantessa muscles.  She imagined, as she turned on the faucet to a bare trickle and painstakingly dribbled tap water to clean the glass without waking anyone up, what it would be like to be married to both of them.

 She imagined Anne with a scalpel in her hand and a smile on her face, Sasha with velvet gloves capped with glinting silver claws.

 She swooned.  Too beautiful.  Too much to dream about, even awake.  She needed air.  She left the watered-but-not-soaped cup in the sink and snuck out to the backyard.  She pried open the sliding door with immaculate slowness, not so slow as to make the sliders moan and hiss, not so fast as to slam them shut; and as she closed the door with equal gentleness, Mrs. Boonchuy said, "Good evening, Marcy."

 Marcy yelped, scaring a pair of poorwills that were resting in the bushes.  "Uh!  Hi!  Hello, Mrs. Boonchuy."  Marcy straightened out her nightshirt and the boxer shorts she wore to sleep.  "Good morning.  Technically.  I, uh!"  She stepped closer to the swing.  It was positioned at a diagonal, not looking straight at the house, but enough that Oum only had to crane her neck a little to see her.

 She was smoking weed, it smelled like.  The garden tended to smell like weed when Mr. or Mrs. Boonchuy needed it.  Marcy thought that was neat.  Oum was a beautiful woman, too, she thought, hopefully not too weirdly.  She could see so much of Anne in her mother, which was probably where all that emotional static was coming from, and she had a young, clean-lined face.  She was a classy sort of movie mom, the one where the teenage daughter was played by a twenty-something and the 40-year-old mother was played by a twenty-nine-something.

 As she watched, Oum took a long drag from her cigarette.  She held the smoke in for a good long while; she counted out the seconds on her free hand, which Marcy mirrored, and on lucky thirteen she let out a thick plume of smoke into the night sky.  Smoking wasn't cool, Marcy reminded herself, but just for the time being, pretend that it is.  She was entranced.

 "Are you alright?" Mrs. Boonchuy said.  "Any nightmares?  Or is Anne having a nightmare?"

 "Naw," Marcy said, with a little dismissive gesture.  "She had one earlier, when she was napping, but she's sleeping nice and tight right now.  Nice... and."  She kept her distance, just in case.  She imagined getting yanked out of homeroom for a random drug test, then getting expelled, then her father going to the school to give them a good talking-to, and then she'd be crowned High Priest of St. James and then she'd actually have to pay attention or worse yet actually lead during school prayer instead of tuning out all the awful Godstuff.

 "Mm..." Mrs. Boonchuy looked at her joint without taking another puff.  "You know, it runs in the family.  I've had bad dreams all my life."

 "Oh... oh.  I'm sorry."

 "It's just how it happens."  She took a shorter pull, held it in a little less long.  "They get worse around Anne's birthday."  She put a hand on her chest.  "I worry.  You know I worry."

 Marcy nodded.  "Mom worries about me, too."

 "You're a sweet little jewel, Marcy," Mrs. Boonchuy said, and only now did she smile.  "Take care of Anne when I'm not around, okay?"

 The wind picked up.

 "Like... when you..." Marcy said.

 "When you're at school, Marcy," Mrs. Boonchuy said.  "Or at the mall!  Or, I don't know, filming skating videos at the park."

 "You know, I don't know how to skate," Marcy said.  "I've gotten some pretty high scores on those Tony Hawk games Anne's dad has, I bet I could..."

 "I bet you could," Mrs. Boonchuy said, and giggled.

 "Thank you, ma'am!  For the vote of confidence."  She bowed, a genuine expression.  She liked Anne's parents, a lot.

 Loved them, really.  Almost as much as Sasha loved them.  Though if she thought about it, Anne really did have the right to love them the most, on account of...

 Oum stood up, gently extinguishing the joint in an ashtray.  "I should be getting back to bed," Oum said.  "And you should too, sweetie.  Do they still call you Marshmallow?"

 "Every day," Marcy said, with a blush.

 "Cute," Oum said.  "Cute, cute."  She pinched Marcy's cheek.  Marcy felt a blush spread across her dear face.  "Let's get you back inside before something decides to bite us."

 No mosquitoes out tonight, thankfully.  The garden returned to its slumber as they made their way indoors.

 Marcy looked down at the bed.  At Anne and Sasha, still holding each other, cheek to cheek; Anne's twitching arm under Sasha's shoulder, their lips within spare millimeters of each other.

 Marcy had corrected her blood sugar and enjoyed a little bitty pep talk courtesy of Anne's mom, and she had the strength of will and mind to decide that something had to be done about this.

 So she pulled her blanket up with her, and lay across them both, resting her head where their arms crossed.  It was, by objective metrics, a clumsy, difficult bed, uncomfortable, full of pieces that would have to detangle movement by movement in the morning, and Marcy slept like a doll, and Sasha had no complaint, and Anne's trembling first slowed and then stopped.  And though there was not much left of the night, and though her nightmares until now had been truly brutal, the rest was calm and beautiful.

 These were the last of the good days.

 God created time and divided it into day and night.
 God outlined the road to salvation, and gave people joy.
 And God took endless time away from the people.

Chapter Text

 The bathroom was unnameably foul.  The sink was yellowed and streaked with brackish muck; the hand dryer had been ripped out of the wall, leaving unpatched plaster behind, and the paper towel dispenser, besides being empty, had a dent kicked into it so badly it would take a hammer and chisel to open it again.  For being this abandoned, there was only one piece of graffiti.

 WHILE I AM DECAYING LIKE A ROTTEN THING
 LIKE A GARMENT THAT IS MOTH-EATEN

 The old man wasn't here to use the bathroom; he had just stepped in to escape the sun, the awareness he had that light had some kind of weight or force.  Most days, he felt just fine; his mind was sharp and his joints didn't complain too much when he had to run.  He had a .45 pistol and a shiny BSIS permit for concealed carry.  (He had fired the 1911 in fear or anger exactly zero times, and he had last carried it on duty around seven years ago.  But it was there, resting in the safe.)

 Today, he felt old.  He felt like he had a dangerous liability locked in the family wagon.  He felt like he was walking into hostile territory with no cover and an artillery beacon in his raised hand.

 Today, he was tired.

 He crouched closer to the streaked, cracked mirror.  He ran his hand before his face; saw the world vanish behind his fingers and return.  He did not meet his own gaze, for he was aware of the open door and the waiting threshold.

 Alright, that was enough time to gather his thoughts. He had one strong lead, and one trigger to pull.

 So, let's pull it.

 He slouched out of the bathroom, adjusting his trench coat collar.  The family wagon, or f'wagon, sat in the parking lot of the decrepit gas station.  There were (some) lights on in the store and an OPEN sign burning in the window, but that only lent the gas station an air of self-denial.  Like a soldier smiling while tucking his guts back into his belly.  The f'wagon was offensively clean and neat by comparison.  It was his pride, his joy, and also his house.  The Plantar farm had been sold since Sprig had been a pollywog, and was probably churning out almonds or pistachios against the wishes of the Lord and the land; he had to make the f'wagon beautiful to preserve the honor of the Plantars.

 The panel side of the f'wagon bore a spectacular mural of Det. Hopediah Plantar astride a mighty riding snail, a magnifying glass making one of his cartoon-frog eyes even bigger.  The slogan had his contact information and the name of his business:

 PLANTAR PRIVATE EYE
 "GOT A MYSTERY?  I'LL 'HOP' TO IT!"

 He liked frogs.

 He popped open the door and climbed into the driver's seat.  Sprig looked up from his phone.  "Welcome back, Hop Pop!" he said, propping his chin on the headrest of the passenger-side seat.  "Did you get attacked by a thousand rats?"

 "No, siree," Hop Pop said.  It didn't sound like he was forcing energy into his voice, at least to his own ears.  "Not even a hundred rats!  They took one look at me and said, 'that's not a man to be trifled with,' and gave me my space."

 "That's the spirit, Hoppity," Polly said.  She was chewing on a complimentary Tootsie roll from Planet Fitness, where they got most of their exercise and showers and Wi-Fi from (and occasional nights of sleep, when the right managers were on duty and it was a weeknight).

 "Where's the lead taking us?" Sprig said.

 "That's the fun part," Hop Pop said.  "Y'all kids ever want to see... Catholic school?"

 "No," Sprig and Polly said at the same time.

 "Me neither," Hop Pop said.  "But that's where the adventure part comes in!  Think of it as one of those 'deliciouses in dungeon' that are so popular nowadays."

 "Are we gonna be making food from things we fight in the school?"

 "I mean, if there's wild turkeys or bulls in the halls," Hop Pop said, and his stomach growled.  "Sprig, can you be a dear and play that affirmations app for your Hop Pop?"

 "Can do!" Sprig said, and quickly queued up the Dracula Flow Daily Thoughts Calendar app.

 The voice of the wise man played: "Motherfuckers will live in their car and call it 'van life.'  Stop lyin' to yourself and just say you're homeless, you stupid bum!"

 "He ain't lyin'," Hop Pop sighed, and turned the key at last.

 Anne regarded the frog on her tray.  It was an ugly little thing; it didn't even have the decency to be green like a proper frog, or even dark green.  Frogs came in orange and she didn't know what to think about that.  She prodded its bulging, open, unfocused eye with the butt of her scalpel, and winced at actually feeling it squish.  "Eeeugggh," she muttered.  "What did you think was gonna happen, Boonchuy?"

 "...What did you think was gonna happen?" Marcy said, nudging up close to her.

 "I... dunno?" Anne said.

 "And that is the heart of science, Anna Banana," Marcy said, pressing her hands together.  "Now you know!  What did you find out?"

 "Frog eyes are gooshy."

 "Taking a note of that!"  Marcy pulled out her journal and flipped to the latest page.  She scribbled down "Frog eyes are gooshy" alongside a sketch of Anne.  The sketch was rather happier about finding out about frog eyes than the real Anne.

 Sasha thumbed the plastic safety clip on the end of her scalpel.  She was on the other side of the table, but she had scooted her tray and frog between Anne and Marcy's offerings.  The better to keep track of them all, perhaps.  "Fuck me," she said, "what's taking her so long?"

 "She can take all the time she wants," Anne said.

 "Aw, but this is the exciting part!" Marcy said.  "I mean, you help your mom cook, right?"

 Anne nodded.

 "This isn't any different than, like..."  She looked at Sasha.  "Chickens, right?  Thai food has chicken?"

 "Don't ask me," Sasha said, "They just give me the same stuff every time I come over and I'm like cool thanks it's good."

 "It is good," Anne said, leaning at Sasha emphatically.  "And, if you hadn't noticed, chicken and beef and shrimp and all that good stuff is not a whole-ass..."  She looked around, seeing the teacher wasn't close and the other students were busy texting or chatting among themselves.  "Whole-ass frog," she said, a little quieter than before.

 "Just think of it as getting to open a birthday present early," Sasha said, with a little lilt.

 "I'll try," Anne grumbled.  When Sasha put on that tone, it meant you had to do what she was going to ask of you.  And Sasha knew what she was doing.  She felt a little weight off her heart.

 Marcy rested her head on Anne's shoulder.  "It'll be fun," she said.  "I promise."

 Marcy had been a little late to school, but she had just about erupted through the door to homeroom, and had been bouncing all day.  She was a high-energy particle in the shape of a teenager most days, but today, she seemed to be tuned just a little bit higher... and a little bit calmer.  A body high that let her head process things more gracefully than usual.  She was a miracle to watch in action, whether she was being graceful or... not... but this was something else.

 Something wonderful.

 Hopediah took a seat.  He doffed his hat.  "Good morning, Mrs. Murphy."

 "Please," the principal of St. James High School said, "Leland will do."  She tapped her nameplate.  "What brings you to our school?"  Her smile was wide and forced.  (Like a sofa through an apartment door, Hop Pop, because every day of his life was spent writing the great detective novel that would buy the farm back.  Or at least a nicer house.  Or at least an apartment.)  "Nothing too serious, I would hope," she added through grit teeth.

 "It concerns one of your students, m'am," Hop Pop said, setting his hat in his lap.  "Do you know Ms. Anne Savisa Boonchuy?"

 The principal's expression held steady.  "I do," she said.  "She's... an interesting one.  A senior.  I was principal of St. James Middle School when her and her entourage first made waves.  There was a very daring, puppy-involving prank that had them playing an Atomic Pink song over the PA system.  Very naughty... very impressive, I won't lie.  Those girls are frighteningly smart. I don't know where they sourced the dogs from, by the way, but it all apparently was a very... excuse me, do you mind if I..."  She glanced at a desk drawer.

 "Whatever would make you comfortable, Leland," Hop Pop said.

 She retrieved a bottle of Barefoot wine, twisted the cap, flicked it away, and began chugging straight from the bottle.  Ten second pull.  Was that a whole glass, or...  She pulled it from her lips, gasped for air, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and continued.  "I asked her to write an essay about her future.  Do you know what she wrote?"

 "I do not," Hop Pop said.  It wasn't in the stack of evidence, nor had he heard anything about the quality of her academic career.

 "I actually saved it, laminated it, if you can believe it..."  She went flipping through that same drawer and pulled out a student file.  She opened it up on the desk, revealing a single, laminated sheet written in slightly unsteady handwriting.

 Hopediah retrieved the sheet and read it.  In whole:

 "My name is Anne Boonchuy.

 "If I had to choose what I wanted to do with my life, I think I would rather just throw it away.  It's too much to ask anybody: 'what do you want to do with the one life you have?'  You can do anything, be anything, and the awful thing is that you actually can't.  So much is impossible or out of reach.  If I dream, it'll turn into a nightmare.  It always does.

 "But when my mom says to pick up a knife and come help in the kitchen, I hop to it.  When Sasha wants to study at a coffee shop and try out a weird drink while we're there, I just have to.  When Marcy is about to trip or get hit or explode or fall, I'm there to catch her.

 "If I had to choose what to do with my life, if it all came down to one second, I would choose to serve.  I want to be a person who brings a smile to other people.  I want to make miracles happen.  I just don't need them to be mine."

 Hop Pop set the page back down.

 "Isn't that weirdly fucked up?" the prinicpal said, and in a vast cosmic tragedy neither she nor Hop Pop knew that she was quoting Castlevania.  "No teenage girl should have 'use me until I am empty, then throw me away' printed on her forehead, and here she is doing exactly that."

 "That's a bit of a pessimistic read, isn't it?" Hop Pop said.  "Lots of kids these days feel lost and alone and like they're going to die in a war or from neglect or disease or direct hostile action by the pres--well, you know how it goes."

 "You're telling me," Leland said.  The bottle of wine was now 2/3rds depleted.  She had gotten in quite a bit while Hopediah was reading.  "I'm Catholic, goddammit!  It's the last minority it's safe to discriminate against!  They all see a Black woman and go, 'aha, she has a rosary on, we have an 'in!'  But this was--years ago.  Okay, around the time of the apocalypse, but, like, before we had that apocalypse break that was less apocalyptic but before the apocalypse resumed in force.  You know, if those Protestant fucks were right about the rapture, maybe we all failed God and the first four years of that shitbag's reign were the first of the seven years of tribulation.  Biblically speaking--"

 "Leland," Hop Pop said, "this is all leading to an important question I have to ask."

 "...yeah?" she said.

 The PA system crackled.

 "Anne Boonchuy," said the principal, "Please report to the principal's office."

 Anne's heart leaped into her chest.  "Oh, what did I do?" she said, glancing between her girlfriends.

 "Nothing, man!" Sasha said.  "If she gives you an earful, just--"

 "Tell her to talk it over with dad," Marcy said.

 They all knew which dad.  Whenever the school was involved, Papa Wu was the wire papa.  (Bee was the Cloth Papa regardless of location.)

 Anne scooped up her backpack.  "Wish me luck," she said, and headed for the door.  The biology teacher stepped through just in time to bump into her.  "hrph!" she said.  "Oh, uh, sorry, m'am!"

 "It's alright, Anne!" the teacher said, with a little laugh.  "Have fun!  In the principal's office!"

 "I'll try," Anne said, heading down the ever-familiar halls of St. James.

 She was running out of time to walk down the halls of St. James.  Graduation was impending.  There w--

 Nope.

 Don't.

 Don't think.

 Her stride turned long and heavy.

 Whatever this was, and maybe she was going to be expelled or maybe they were going to give her a crown and a staff and let her be School Queen in some kind of weirdo Cat'lic ritual she had never been told about like all those old--wait a minute, didn't those usually end with--or was that just a cartoon thing?  Call you queen so we can get you doing suspiciously-horny damsel-in-distress-y tests to prove you're queen material?  Or, uh, that thing where you get called king or queen for a day or a month and then they--

 A man stepped out of the principal's office.

 She was taller than him by a head; he wasn't a little person, but he was decidedly shrimpy.  He was old, his eyes lined, wisps of white hair growing from his ears.  He wore a long coat in spite of the early-fall weather still being warm in Los Angeles, and a hat perched atop a head which must surely be bald.  Nobody had a hat like that that didn't have male-pattern baldness to hide.

 Was that her femme bias showing?  If Sasha were here, would she have a--

 "Anne Savisa Boonchuy?" the man said.

 "...yeah?" Anne said.

 "I need to speak with you.  My name is Hopediah Plantar; I'm a detective."

 Anne blinked heavily.  "Uh.  I... am gonna need a lawyer before I talk to a cop."

 "Private detective," Hopediah said.  He pulled out a badge and flipped it open.  Maybe it wasn't a badge; it was an ID, though.  "I only need an hour... no, a half-an-hour of your time.  Someone wants to meet you."

 "Who?  Who's the someone?"

 "My client needs anonymity.  This is a very sensitive topic."

 "Then send me a letter," Anne said.  Her heel was inching backwards, toward the safety of the lab room where they only wanted to ask her to rip open a frog.

 "It's about your birth," Hopediah said.

 Ice poured through her veins.  Sweat beaded on her forehead.

 "Uh.  I left my phone back at the... class... it's off and, uh, on vibrate, in the--I'm--you know how it is," she said, with a nervous laugh.

 "It's alright," Hop Pop said, "I'll wait here."

 Anne closed the door behind her.  The classroom fell silent and all eyes were on her, including the people she hated looking at her.  Especially the people she hated looking at her.  Marcy and Sasha were so far away from the door, so readily blocked from sight by fucking Maggie--

 "Anne?" the teacher said.  "Are you alright?"

 Anne scooched in close, and as far as she knew, she was telling the truth: "There's an old creep calling himself a detective and I think he's trying to, like... kidnap me.  Can I run away please?"

 The teacher blinked heavily behind her glasses.  "Huh.  You... hmmm.  Someone who's not afraid for their life doesn't sound like that."

 Anne peered around Maggie, who stuck her tongue out at her; the loves of her entire life waved at her.

 "Can Marcy and Sasha come with me?" she said.  "Strength in numbers.  If he tries to--"

 "You three do good work together," the teacher said, thankfully seeming to forget the puppy incident in the moment in favor of the band and whose father was a critical donor to the school.  "Hate to break up the playset--ahem!"  She cleared her throat.  "Misses Wu and Waybright, would you be so kind as to accompany Anne out for the day?"

 Marcy went from waving to raising her hand.  "Can I take my frog?  Like, as... homework?"

 "I'll talk with your electives teachers, see if they can't spare a class!  See you soon, you three," and before she even said the sacred number Sasha was stepping past her, clapping her arm over Anne's shoulder.  They waited for Marcy to catch up, and Anne took her by the wrist (not the hand; not while in sight of authority and people who would make fun of them for being queer).  "Stay safe!"

 "Always," Sasha said, leading the trinary out of the door.

 They didn't talk until they were out of the side entrance to the school, out by what wasn't officially a playground because playgrounds tended to have equipment and visual interest.  This was just a grassy lot where the disaffected teens of St. James went to piss off at lunch or between classes.  The gym, the pool, and the tennis court were all over there, on the other side of campus; this was part of the landfill between Middle and High.

 The girls walked steadfastly towards the nearest sign of civilization.  Here Marcy broke the silence.

 "Wait," she said.  "Are we cutting class?"

 "There's..."  Anne shook her head.  "No, there's some fucking creep.  He was talking about..."  She stumbled over her words.  "I..."

 "Shhhh," Sasha said, stroking Anne's face.  "Birthday girl.  You're the birthday girl.  You almost had to dissect a frog, now you get to skip school.  Isn't that wonderful?"

 "Sash," Anne said, "thank you so much but my nerves feel like somebody's stabbing me.  Like, right now, very hard, stabbing me."  She looked between her girlfriends.  "Can we... lie low somewhere?  For a sec?  Please?"

 Sasha nodded.  "Poor thing.  Let's."  She looked around Anne.  "Mar-Mar, what's the bus schedule?  We have to goth this girl up before the day is out and now is the time."

 The bell rang.  The halls flooded with students rushing to their next class.  Around seven minutes later, the bells rang again and the halls finished emptying out.

 Leland Murphy peeked out from her office.  "Didsh... is she here?"

 "No," Hop Pop said.

 "I don't think she's comin'."  She resumed drinking from her wine bottle.  A second wine bottle, actually, this one was a red.  Though he could only assume second; there may have been a third at some point.

 "Ding dang rowdy teenagers," Hop Pop said, and stomped back off to the f'wagon.

Chapter Text

 It was decided that going back for Anne's bike would be a fool's errand; Sasha hadn't taken hers and Marcy in fact did not have a bike, for safety purposes.  Sasha splurged on an Uber, and the three piled in the back of an SUV with a mounted DVD player, currently in the middle of season 3 of The Venture Bros.  A daring swing, but Los Angeles was a daring town.

 On screen, the Monarch was advancing menacingly towards a cringing Captain Sunshine.  "Wouldn't it just fix eeeeverything twisted up inside if you if you can only fuck Wonderboy and your worst enemy at the same time, huh?!  Well, come and get us!!"

 Sasha giggled.  Anne smiled; her heart was still pounding.  She glanced out of the window and didn't see... what, a cop car with the old guy hanging out of the driver's side window with a gun in his hand?  She wouldn't be able to tell what car he was driving.  That's how stalking works.

 Oh, God, is this what people who get gangstalked feel like all the time?  Not for the first time she wished schizophrenia medication could be delivered via blowdart.

 The car came to a stop at an antique store the girls had walked by a few times.  Dad had come here now and again to go hunting for old, rare video games people had sold unknowing of how expensive they were.  That's how he claimed his finest score, Suikoden II on the PS1.  Something they knew but nobody would ever guess they would go to on purpose; a perfect hiding place.

 Sasha made a show of rating their driver and leading her girls out of the vehicle, Anne in the center, Marcy snapping out of a horse-girl-game trance... okay, that's a lie, she was still nose to her phone watching the white-haired horsegirl drop-kick her in the face even as Anne guided her into the building.

 For what it was worth, the antique place smelled amazing: the cleaning chemicals weren't too heady and there were stacks of old books with aromatic and magnificent scents.  A Dreamcast waiting for a new owner sat under the counter, the lady at the front counter was busy reading a gigantic romance novel, and nobody else was paying any attention.

 There was a security camera, but it was obscured by a thick smudge of bubblegum that had been there since the first time Anne had ever entered this place.  She felt bad for whoever owned this place.  Some of the cheaper stuff was readily grabbable, and surely someone had walked off with pockets stuffed full of little plastic geejaws or cheap jewelry or old lighters--

 Marcy touched her shoulder.

 "Hmm?" Anne said.

 Marcy was looking away from her phone (good!) and up at something on a shelf (probably good!).  Anne followed her gaze and saw something that, in fairness, also caught her attention.

 There was a little carved treasure chest on a shelf just above head-height for Marcy.  It looked like real wood, actually carved and inlaid with brass.  Three thumbnail-sized gemstones glittered in the lid.  Now that she gave it a look, she realized it was some kind of a music box; mom had one back home, a really beautiful little one that played the most wonderful tune when opened.

 "Wow," Anne said.

 Then she saw the price tag.

 "...damn," she said.

 Sasha tilted her head; a little this way, a little that.  She was smiling.  "So..." she said, in a low whisper.  "I have a plan."

 "Hm?" Marcy said, looking at Sasha at last.

 "Sasha..." Anne said.  "Is now the time?  Like, when we're... lying low?"

 "Annie-baby, it's your birthday," Sasha said, running a strong hand down Anne's arm.  "You deserve a little something beautiful.  Or a lot of something beautiful."

 "Don't we..." Anne said, and Sasha kissed her.  Anne froze up.  Kissing in their high school uniforms felt like a special kind of crime, almost a dare for someone to snap a picture, like, say, the--

 One more.  More insistent.  Stronger.

 "No time like the present," Sasha said.  "If not now... when?"

 "What's the plan, again?" Marcy said.

 The plan was "nobody was paying attention and Anne just crammed the box into her backpack and that was it."  Took less than a minute, and then they were walking down the street, intently.  Sasha knew where she was going; they'd be at the goth shop in about half an hour.  Give or take, traffic permitting.  Anne felt like they had stuffed a live bomb into her backpack.  She glanced at the people who passed by, for even on a weekday in late summer slash early autumn Los Angeles was always busy.

 Sasha sneaked her hand around Anne's and gave it a comforting squeeze.  "Nervous, babe?"

 "Lil' bit," Anne said.  "Still.  I mean.  Uh."  She nodded at her backpack.  "You sure that--"

 "I am," Sasha said, and that was that.

 She stopped trembling when Sasha took her hand.  She squeezed her back, and in the next moment Marcy seized her other hand.

 "There's a coffe place on the other side of the street," Sasha said.  "First, coffee."

 "That sounds great," Anne sighed.  "Help, you know..."

 "Sober you up?" Sasha said, with a smirk.  She said a lot of things with a smirk.  It was comforting.  Sasha knew what she was doing and she seized what she wanted when she wanted it.  Anne envied that about her; Anne's impulses were nowhere near as grand, and generally ended with her only taking a little of what she wanted (snacks, usually), or subjecting herself to the worries of mom and dad.  (Who were great, let's be real, but... well, was parasailing really that dangerous, mom?)

 Anne was an impulse acquisition by Sasha, after all.  She had a sixth sense for good things.

 Oum got a text at 11:30, twenty minutes into the lunch rush, and so Oum would not see it until 2 pm rolled around.  It read:

 "Hey mom 
 "I had to ditch school early, there was some creep trying to go after me.  I think someone might be trying to blackmail you?  Won't tell over text but just be careful.  Look out for a guy who looks like this."
 (sketch from memory, with the aid of one of Marcy's art styluses--styli?)
 "Kind of like this.
 "I'm safe, Sash and Marmar have me.  We're going to get good and lost and come home when it's safe to.
 "See you mom XOXO" (crying-happy cat emoji)

 Hopediah narrowed his eyes and looked over the photograph.

 It was a fresh printout of an old photo, taken a few phone generations ago but reasonably clear and clean.  It was a desk covered in pen marks and steep, fist-clenched carvings.  There were multiple hands at work; there were three shades of ink, four distinct styles of handwriting, and whoever had done the carving had done so with clarity and intensity, cutting into the less-forceful graffiti.

 The two ballpoint pens were more gentle: FREAK, KISSASS, accusations of smelling like fish, cartoonish drawings of giant bouncing breasts along with taunts about said breasts.  A doodle of a stereotypical Satanic goat.  Some, ah, ethnically insensitive declarations that were also what the kids nowadays were calling "slut shaming."  Hopediah observed these, but did not dwell on them.  He packed them away in the evidence locker of his mind palace and kept his eye on the prize.  Today was already a long one and by gum if he was going to see the rest of it mad.  Tragically, he had more of it to read.

 A permanent marker had written some much more intense accusations: WITCH was a big one, block letters, by the doodle of the devil-goat.  SLUT-BITCH was another one, which seemed an unnecessary doubling to Hopediah.  And then there were the carved letters.

 BURN IN HELL WITH LILLY [a slur]

 Ms. Murphy wrote the date of the photograph at the bottom of the printout: Anne's birthday, circa when she was 13.

 Hopediah shuffled the photo under his notepad.  He looked up at last, fetching his pen from behind his ear.  "How long have you known Ms. Boonchuy?" he said.

 There were a few girls culled from the list of people the principal could remember interacting with Anne.  At Hopediah's insistence they met outside, in the back of the school, far from surveillance.  Mighta been like catnip to the kids, even more reason to say "yes" and miss some class, or so he presumed.  Maggie was in the lead, a redhead with a pair of long braids.  Gabby was the other, also a redhead, but with a short trim and a stocky build.  Jamie Kreuger (the principal insisted on the full name) was present but uninterested.

 "She's a fucking witch," Maggie said.

 "He-e-ey, don't be mean!" Gabby said.  "We hang out all the time!"

 "When?" Maggie said.  "At black mass on Friday?"

 "I'm sensing a certain poor impression of the lady's character," Hopediah said.

 "Hmm?" Jamie Kreuger said, looking up from her phone.  "Oh, the... with the afro?  Yeah, she's kind of pathetic.  She kept trying to be my friend for like two years straight before Sasha told her to stop messing with me."

 "Aw, Sasha's such a good pal," Gabby said.  "They're always getting up to wacky misadventures in L.A.  You know, they're such good pals, I--have you heard that they play music in Compton after dark?  I hear stories about the--"

 "Witch, I knew it," Maggie said, snapping her fingers.

 "Again with this accusation of... wicc...itude," Hopediah said.  "Elaborate, please."

 "Everybody knows it, we just can't act on it because of, I dunno, the government.  But maybe that'll change and we can finally tie her to a stake and burn her."  Maggie spat.  "Mind if I smoke, actually?"

 "I won't tell!" Gabby said.

 "She's gonna tell," Jamie Kreuger said.

 Maggie pulled out an American Spirit Gold pack, tapped one out, and took it to her lips.  Before she could light it, Hopediah produced his own Zippo (butane insert, less muss and fuss as far as he was concerned) and sparked a tall blue flame.  Maggie accepted the light and took a deep drag, sighing out smoke.

 "Gabby, tell him about the tooth play," Maggie said.

 "Oh, yeah!" Gabby said.  "So when Anne was like seven she was in the S-J-E-S elementary school production of Your Teeth And You!  But there was this accident and the lighting fell and the stage lit on fire and we had to evacuate and Lilly Madden caught on fire."

 "Good Lord," Hop Pop said.  "Such tragedy."

 "We were fine," grumbled Maggie.  "I mean, Lilly Madden was in the hospital a few months, and then they took her out of school 'cause every time she saw a fire, like even a picture of one, it made her piss herself, and then she stopped going outside because she was afraid of the sun... when did she kill herself?"

 "When she was ten," Gabby said.

 "So that was the first person Boobchuy killed."  Maggie laughed around her cancer stick.  "Black magic.  That's why she's so goddamn dorky.  She's waiting on Sasha and what's-her-face hand and foot, because she's a servant of the devil, Anne, that is, and she's trying to drag Sasha down with her.  And she's built like that because the Devil wants all boys' eyes on her.  You saw her, right?  Anne, I mean?  Fucking look at her, tits out to here--" she waved her hands over a foot in front of her chest.  "Has to wear special bras because she leaks witch milk.  Has a cat, got another cat when the first one died, she had to spend a week out of school when her stupid first cat died, did you know that?  Nobody likes cats that much, nobody's that stupid except for witches, 'cause that was her fucking familiar and how she communed with the Devil.  Who gave her big fat milky titties to nurse her pact devils and seduce Sasha Waybright off the straight and narrow."

 "You're just jealous because Sasha has two friends and they're an autist and the weirdo who brokered peace among the band students," Jamie Kreuger said.

 "Sasha used to be cool," Maggie said.

 "Before you called Anne the N-word," Gabby said.

 "I did n--" Maggie said.

 "She did," Jamie said. " I was there."

 "Hmm," Hopediah said.

 "Well, she fucking earned it!" Maggie said, jabbing her cigarette into Jamie's collar, which got Jamie yelping in shock and stumbling back.

 "You fucking psychotic!" Jamie Kreuger said, patting out the burn mark.

 "You're in league with her too, aren't you?" Maggie said, jabbing her extinguished, smoldering cig at Jamie.

 "Hey, she hasn't--" Gabby said.

 "You wanna know what I heard?" Maggie said.  She spun on her heel and glared at Hopediah.  "She missed like a month of school when she was thirteen.  Her mom and dad said it was a 'fever' and she 'hallucinated for three days straight.'  But you know what I know happened?"

 Gabby watched, but her hands were both clamped over her mouth.  Jamie had split.

 "What happened, in your estimation?" Hopediah said.

 "She didn't need those bras before that birthday.  She got real into cats and real into servitude after that.  I think, if you ask me, that was her big turning point as a daughter of Satan.  I think she was pregnant."  Her blunt expression softened into one of glee.  "I think someone or something got her pregnant and they had to get rid of it."

 Hop Pop regarded his notes, which thus far read:

 JAMIE KREUGER - Nothing

 GABBY - Tragedy - fire - memory - guilt?

 MAGGIE - (several scribbled out words) Useless - Anne was sick?

 "Thank you for your input," Hopediah said.

 While Anne ordered a drink (a Golden Milk latte from The Palm) and Oum was hard at work making six orders of pad thai to four levels of spiciness, the antique shop had emptied out of customers.  Sensing an opportunity, the lady behind the desk (whose name was a little too appropriate, like Doris or Blanche) decided to get a quick bit of zoning done.

 "Zoning" was a word she had learned working at Wal-Mart for several miserable years.  It paid more and more regularly than the antique shop, but it felt better to work here, and the clientele was more agreeable.  When she had been robbed it was by polite people who merely waved guns in her face instead of telling her that because someone had snuck off with a display TV, everybody except the managers and the company would have their bonuses docked.  Still, zoning the stuff on the shelves so that it was centered and appealing to the eye was a good trick, and one she had kept while she had shorn as much of those Walmish habits as she could manage.

 She reached a certain shelf, which was slightly higher than head-height and had a jaw-dropping price tag attached to it.  She felt her heart skip a beat.

 "Aw, no," she muttered.  "I knew I should've put you in a ca..."

 Doris-Blanche checked the shelves beneath the elevated shelf.  Then, on a whim, she checked the floor.

 She sighed in relief and retrieved the Flesh and Blood starter deck.  She rubbed the dust off on her shirt, then centered the deck on its home shelf.  Then, seizing on her whim, she retrieved a bell jar and clamped it over the starter deck.  Which knocked it down.  She lifted the jar, righted the deck, and lowered the bell jar nice and slow.  Perfect.

 All was right with the world.

Chapter Text

 Sasha had been to Head Like A Hole a few times.  She hadn't actually bought anything, but she had looked at a lot of things longingly, and imagined what her girls would look like dressed in some of the outfits she'd stroked.  Marcy had a few ear piercings, and she wanted to--

 There was no non-gay way to put it, but she was far away from her parents and she had blood money to spend.  As they approached Head Like a Hole's doors, she cooed in Marcy's ear, "Girl, I wanna jam metal in all your holes.  I wanna see you bleed..."

 Marcy giggled and blushed.  "That's... with earrings, right?"

 "If we must," Sasha said, and as Anne took point and opened the door for them, she kissed Marcy's ear.  She pushed her Marshmallow through that door and only then stepped in.

 Head Like a Hole had been born a boring, nondescript office building, and had over the course of its decades of existence become increasingly gothified by its workers.  The walls were pasted with thick black paint and graffiti in white and red and tacked-up panels from remaindered comic books.  Late 90s/early 00s alternative played over the speakers.  Old CRTs played spooky black-and-white movies and public domain cartoons with the sound off.

 To the ladies' left was the clothing section, with band and fandom tees on the back wall and more varied clothes on hangars.  To the right was first jewelry and earrings, then an oddly out-of-place comic section (ah, hence the wall decor), weed merchandise (less out-of-place), and geejaws and gag gifts and figurines scattered around the more coherent offerings.  And at the checkout counter at the back, along with a trio of workers minding their own business while glinting with piercings, was an ample selection of weed.

 Thus the heady weedscent hanging about the store, along with faint cleaning chemicals and... yes, that was sweat.  Sasha glanced to her side and saw Marcy standing on tiptoes and breathing in, respectfully, but still savoring the store's bouquet.  Between that and the not-too-loud music, her pet must be getting the precise level of stimuli she needed.

 Perfection.

 "Wow," Anne said.

 "Don't I bring you beautiful things?" Sasha cooed, stroking her girls' backs.

 "You do-o-o-o," Marcy said, melting back into her arm.

 "Thank you," Anne said, cuddling Sasha's neck.

 Sasha rolled her head into Anne's fragrant Thai 'fro.  "Hey, babe," she said.  "I know it's your birthday, and we should be getting you clothes... but I think I know what we both wanna see even more than that."

 "M-hm," Anne said.

 They didn't have to rehearse this bit of choreography; they lived it with greater surety than they lived in their own bodies.  They flanked Marcy, each taking an arm.

 "Guys...?" Marcy said, a pleasant tilt of curiosity in her voice.

 "For my birthday present," Anne said, "I'm going to dress you up."

 Marcy's response was a warbling squeal of joy.

 Bee Boonchuy was not at Thai Go.  He hated leaving Oum alone at work... well, metaphorically alone.  They had employees who could be trusted handling the Boonchuy proprietary recipes, some permanent, some just needing a little extra work.  (The Thai community had saved their lives; it was only right to keep giving back.).  But leaving her there generally meant something more important was happening.  He might be sick and need to heal; he might be making more money than a day at Thai Go on an especially-productive stream as his sexy VTuber personality; he might be taking Anne to one of her games.  That sort of thing.

 This wasn't profitable, but the mail had been late again.  He could wait to give it to her tomorrow, but... hell, he was nervous when the package didn't come in yesterday or the day before.  He would've given it to her sooner if he could.  But the delivery update had it arriving at home "in the morning," which translated to "12:45."  Okay; he had a couple of hours.  And he had, in fact, earned a little streaming money this morning as Suay Cerana, sexy bee daddy.

 And this was important.  This was more important than profit.

 As he tumbled the little red pill in the coating machine, he prayed.  Oum was nervous about praying; Bee had simply brute-forced his natural prayer instinct to something that listened.  So he prayed not in the direction of his upbringing or in the direction of the God of the Cross, but to Hecate.

 Maiden-mother-crone, he prayed, watch my daughter through the long night, through the crossroads, and through the maze of sleep.  May her heart be true.  May the love she feel for her girls be worthy love.  May Sasha's hand be steady and true.  May Marcy's eye be keen and focused.  May love be repaid with love.  May peace be repaid with peace.  May we be guarded in dreams.  One day, may we breathe freely.

 To the mothers of night I send this invocation.  May the night be kind.

 He popped the little red pill onto a strip of gauze.

 What a beautiful little jewel, he thought, and blew on it gently.

 In that changing room where half the lights were broken and the mirror was cracked, the three ladies had time to themselves; and in that time there was joy, only joy.  But though the world could be put on hold, it would not wait forever, and their time alone could only end.  One by one they left that room.

 Anne had, while she was at it, picked out a new shirt.  It was a sporty tee with pink sleeves and a red lotus insignia on the chest.  ("Boobchuy" was meant as a pejorative, and it hurt coming out of Maggie's mouth, but when Sasha or Marcy's tongue tripped it was not an insult, but a mark of pride.)

 Sasha had found a silkscreened, sleeveless top with old-school Japanese art of what she presumed were gods of thunder and lightning on front and back, hence the hand-written title.  Below this she wore a translucent tattoo sleeve shirt which gave her pale skin the impression of being covered in elegant black-and-blue floral tattoos; her belly button peeked above memory-of-earth-tone-gray jeans.

 And Marcy; oh, Marcy.

 Sasha's steady hands had locked that choker around her throat.  Sasha's wise hands guided Marcy into that black dress with its ruffled sleeves, though Anne had to hold Marcy down to keep her from vibrating out of it.  A zipper ran across the chest; if unzipped, it would technically not reveal anything but a stretch of Marcy's brown skin.  (What a shame, to tease more of her, and deliver on exactly that.)  Sasha of course had affixed that skirt, knee-length, breezy, with pockets!  (An aftermarket addition, and the skirt was discounted, being lightly used.)  Tender stockings: Anne had to do those, with Sasha taking her turn calming Marcy through the process of clothing her.  And last but far from least, the shoes.

 Black Converses.  The ladies briefly considered platform shoes, but... no.  Not on Marcy.

 The girls made their way to the checkout counter.  The woman behind the desk set down her vintage copy of High Times and looked them over.  "A'ight... gonna wear all that out?"

 "Oh yes," Sasha said.

 "Cool.  Okay.  Start scanning yourselves."

 "Marcy, ragdoll," Sasha said, and Marcy flopped bonelessly into Anne's arm, like someone flipped her to "off" in GMod.  "Alright--go looking for tags."

 "Can d--"  Anne blinked heavily and suddenly remembered.  "...aw, flip, my bag's still in the changing room."

 "We'll grab it after," Sasha said, guiding Marcy over to the counter.  She laid her out onto the counter, her cheek smushed against the cash register.  Once her arms and legs were splayed in a reasonably balanced position (and they would stay balanced as long as Marcy let herself be limp), Sasha began the jolly task of hunting for tags.

 Oum wrung cold water out of the bandana she used as a hair tie, then reaffixed it.  The hairnet would come later, once she was off her break.

 The breakroom of Thai Go was stocked with old furniture, a minifridge with a community jug of Pedialyte (with paper cups on top of the fridge, they weren't animals), and a set of Bluetooth speakers to share.  Oum didn't need music right now, she just needed to breathe and cool down.  She poured herself a blue cup of Pedialyte, took a heavy seat, and felt her skeleton first creak, then relax, as it settled into the cracked pleather of the old couch.

 She let her belly settle, realizing she hadn't eaten since breakfast.  Okay.  That would necessitate getting out of the chair and rifling through the cabinets for the crew-available granola or protein bars; leaving comfort would be more painful than continuing to starve for five more minutes, and so she--

 Her school phone rang.

 Oum had a personal phone and a school phone.  It was her general public-service phone, not just for the school, but broadly it was St. James sending her calls or texts with regards to her daughter.  Feeling punished by existence, as often she was, she lurched free of her all-healing cradle.

 "Hello?"

 "Good afternoon, m'am," said an older man on the other end.  She didn't recognize him and distrusted him at once.  "Is this Ms. Oum Boonchuy?"

 "It is," Oum said.  "What appears to be the problem?"

 She felt for her personal phone.

 "Nothing at all," the man said.  "It's just that I had--well, let's start from the top.  My name is Hopediah Plantar, I'm a private investigator.  Nobody is in trouble, this isn't a Maltese Falcon situation.  I've just been sent to inquire for an interested party."

 "Yes?"

 There was an hours-old text from Anne.  She must have missed it during the rush.

 "Well, it's very confidential, I wouldn't be comfortable sharing the information over the phone," Mr. Plantar said.  "Your daughter seemed to have reacted with an abundance of caution and is presently... well, she's not at school, and it seems like none of the other students know where she might be.  Can you possibly get to your daughter and--"

 She hung up.  As she assembled a plan, she muted the school phone, then turned off vibration, then jammed it into her purse.  She checked her pants pockets.  They weren't deep, but they were just deep enough to hold a knife.  The knife was not of a legal length in California.  She understood the law, would have even followed it even in these peerless times if she had felt only a normal amount of endangered, but she had seen too much and dreamed more.

 Needs must as the devil drives.

 She stormed through the kitchen: "My daughter's in trouble," she said, just loud enough to break above the noise of the kitchen, and the employees saluted in silence.

 She weaved her way through the exit to the dining room; she smiled and waved at the diners in Thai Go.  "My daughter won a tennis trophy!" she said, skipping through the doors, and then breaking into a run, aiming at the employee parking lot.  She set her bag in the passenger's seat, hit the keyless ignition, remembered the important part of ensuring her daughter's safety, and sent a return text:

 WHERE R U????

 She waited ten seconds.  Then she called.

 Sasha paid for all of it.  Including the new shoes, which were somehow the most expensive of all their acquisitions.  She paid enough that seeing the bill made Anne nervous.

 "You're sure it's okay?" she said.  "I mean, to give me all of this?"

 "I'll be spending more soon," Sasha said, curling her finger around a lock of Anne's hair.  "This is blood money.  I'm not holding on to it."

 Allowance from her dad she didn't seem to care about.  Any and all money from her mother was blood money.  That was one way of dividing money between savings and spending, Anne supposed, who was terrible at both in different directions.

 Speaking of different directions, once Sasha pocketed the CVS-length receipt covered in website references and sponsored plugs, Anne hiked back to the changing room.

 As her mom was taking a seat in the breakroom, Anne took a seat in the changing room as she checked her bag.  There was a nagging sense of uncertainty: there hadn't been anyone else in the store, so far as she could tell, but it wasn't impossible for someone to sneak in while they were paying for their clothes, and then, well.

 Her paranoia was unfounded.  Everything was in its place: her bigass bottle of Blam Berry Blitz, her journal, her schoolbooks, her phone and its Hef-T-Max terabyte flash card, her illegally-long pocket knife--

 Mom insisted.  Very strongly insisted.  Couldn't be too careful, she said.  The biggest advantage to going to private school was a lack of metal detectors.

 --and the music box.

 "Oh, hey..." Marcy said, taking a seat by Anne.  "You know, since we have the time..."

 Sasha took the other side of the seat and reached her arm around both her girls' shoulders.  "Let's," Sasha said.

 Anne smiled.  "Nobody's watching," she said.  "Why not?"

 Far from the most shocking thing they'd done in this room within the last hour.

 Anne set the music box on her lap.  She tried to pull the lid up and found that it was firmly locked.  She felt along the seam for a latch or something else that would let her open the damn thing.  The gemstones embedded in the lid seemed to catch every last drop of light in the dim room, the colors sumptuous, concupiscent.  A color that demanded the attention of the tongue.

 She found the latch and pressed it open with her thumb.  The little barb keeping it in place bit into her skin and drew a tiny bead of red.  She held up her hand to present it, and Marcy was the first to kiss it.  Sasha waited; Anne squeezed the tiny wound to get another drop out for Sasha to enjoy.  Then she pressed on the injury to seal it, and opened the lid.

 The interior of the box was a sweet little scene: three ballerinas standing on little round platforms lined in red, dancing in a circle with each other.  The platform they danced on was lined in red, covered in small symbols and text she couldn't read; maybe it was Nordic runes or something like that.  She did not recognize the waxing-full-waning moon of the mothergod, the signature of Lucifer Morningstar, the scales of Cipher, or the spewing pain-sigil of Korrok.

 There was a little blonde ballerina all in red.  There was a little dark-skinned ballerina with wavy hair, clad in an orangey-brown getup of unclear color.  There was a delicate black-haired ballerina in a moment of ecstatic dance, clad in a donut-icing-white unitard.

 The song played to completion, the dance ending with the ballerinas facing each other.  Each had one arm outstretched, and at rest they almost, but did not quite, touch.  The sight made Anne want to push them together so they could finally erase that last moment of distance, but she did not before the lid fell shut.

 "Whoops," she said, waving her hand as if the lid had snapped on it.  (It hadn't.  But  the closing startled her; she didn't consciously let the lid slip from her hands, or guess that it would close so vigorously.)  "...Well, that was pretty."

 "It was..." Marcy said, sighing into Anne's shoulder.

 "A'ight," Sasha said.  "We're golden.  Let's roll."

 She helped her darlings to their feet and led them out into the store.

 Between when they had entered and when they had left, the music playing over the speakers had stopped.  The air conditioning seemed to have suddenly shut off, too, the subtle background drone suddenly gone.  One of the TVs was still playing, though, and at an oddly loud volume.

 Weird.  But a power outage would work in their favor, at least for even further losing the guy who was tailing Anne.

 Anne and Sasha walked toward the exit, but Marcy beelined--but for swooping around some racks of clothes--toward the single playing TV.  It was, admittedly, a weird-looking movie, and Anne in particular peered in curiosity at what was playing.

 It was black-and-white, as was the style of the spooky stuff they played.  A blonde woman, or at least a light-haired woman, was lying on a therapist's seat.

 "...why, ever since I was a child," the woman said, eyes closed, painted eyelids glinting in the harsh stage lights, "I've been deathly afraid of blood.  But isn't that the most reasonable thing in the world, doctor?  Bleeding, it means that something's gone wrong, that you've been hurt..."

 "That's the thing with phobias, dear," the doctor responded, with a voice that was reasonably smooth, but the actor's apparent smoking habit was catching up with him.  "They are unreasonable, even about reasonable things.  I once knew a man who was terrified of car accidents, and he couldn't so much as set foot on a bus without dry-heaving into his sleeve.  I knew a woman who was chased by dogs as a child, and as an adult couldn't so much as be in the same room as a golden retriever or a Chihuahua.  Once you let fear take control of you, then it grows, and grows, and grows, until fear is all you can see and hold.  The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh.  Are you afraid of the flesh, Colleen?"

 Colleen opened her eyes.  She opened her mouth.  The film split, splintered, and butchered cow carcasses flowed past the camera, suspended on meat hooks.  The soundtrack was uninterrupted.

 After a few seconds of parading cow parts came a much smaller butchered shape.

 "...man," Sasha said.  "Old horror movies could go hard sometimes."

 Marcy blinked heavily.  "I--"  She swallowed.  "Yeah, I'm ready to go."

 Anne took her hand.  "Come on," she said, as Oum frantically called her again.  Her phone was silent and would be silent for a while.  "Let's just head home."

 Hand in hand, the trio went through the frosted panes of the door,

 into the fog.

Chapter Text

 That morning, Andreas L. Wu decided that he felt like espresso.

 He poured filtered water into the electric kettle, set the temperature, and let it ride. He weighed his beans, gently misted them, then poured them into the grinder.  The grounds dispensed into a metal tray which would slot into the actual maker in just a moment.  He sifted the grounds with... what was this thing called again, anyway?  It looked like a torture device, a couple dozen needles arranged underneath a dial that he spun through the grounds to make them more orderly.

 Once the grounds were domesticated, he dropped a filter on them.  The manufacturer's logo was printed on the top, a ghostly image of a shrike atop a thorny branch.  (It came free with the torture device.)  The kettle beeped as he slid the puck of grounds into the espresso maker.  He poured the boiling-hot water into the hopper and, at last, pulled on the knife switch which activated the machine.

 Heat and pressure worked their magic, and thick, syrupy espresso poured into his waiting mug.  This was the part he enjoyed the most.  The stuff this machine poured out looked like hot molasses.  It was a miracle in action, and he was a believer in miracles, so that was no small compliment.  The last few drops of espresso dripped into the mug, and he took it from under the machine.  He sniffed.  By God, the scent!  The best part of coffee, by far.

 As he took a longer sniff, his daughter walked down the stairs.  She typically took her breakfast upstairs; she had morning errands to do, cute TV shows to watch, et cetera.  He didn't have to pry.  She froze on the third step from the bottom.  Her backpack was slung low on her shoulders.  The lower half of her face was hidden by a Quest chocolate-chip-cookie wrapper.  (She would probably eat cookies for breakfast if allowed, and had done so when not allowed; this was a compromise.)

 She swallowed heavily and said, "Hi, dad."

 Ah, that voice.  She put it on when she thought she was in trouble, so she put it on about 2/3rds of the time he addressed her.  So it goes.  The price of being a good papa meant being stern and strong.

 "Good morning, Marcy," Andrias said, saluting her with his cup.  "It's Anne's birthday today, isn't it?"

 "M-hm," Marcy said, nodding.  "I mean, yes sir."  She fidgeted with her skirt, making sure it lay nice and even.  Then she crossed her arms behind her back.

 "Got your gifts all wrapped and ready?  Got your dress ironed for the party later?"

 "Yes, sir!"  She nodded.  Almost bowed, in fact.  Good.

 "Wonderful!  Wonderful.  My little lady is a well-dressed one, and well-behaved.  You're up on your studies, you've been serving God in word and deed..."  He looked into his cup as if he were judging it.  Thin foam stared back up at him.  "But."

 "Yes, sir?" Marcy said.  Her voice wavered.

 "But..."  He raised his free hand.  "I can't help but cast my memory back.  It was... how old was Anne?"

 "Thirteen," Marcy said.  "She was turning thirteen, I mean.  Sir."

 He nodded.  "Five years sounds right.  The, ah, little scare."  He let out his breath and took a thin sip, disguising his dislike of the taste. Taking his eyes off of her was important.  She behaved differently when observed, like a particle.  When he looked back, her hand was over her mouth and her eyes were wide.

 He let the silence hang heavy for a moment.  Long enough for her to think, perhaps to plan, and then he spoke again.

 "I've thought about that day a lot.  As I'm sure you have, of course.  It would be downright strange if I thought about it more than you did.  Then again, you're young, and busy and enjoying your life as best you can.  Maybe you don't have the time to slow down and remember.  Mm... suppose that's my priveledge as a father."

 He looked her in the eye at last.  She was holding back tears.  M-hm.

 "Marcy.  Baby.  Darling.  Sugar beet."  He swished his drink-glass at her.  "I'm going to be real with you.  It occurred to me then, as it occurs to me now: you got everything you wanted, didn't you?  Against all advice with dealing with... well, dramatic statements, let's say... it seemed that, in the end, you were right."

 Now her expression was unreadable.  She was confused.  Good.

 "Moving was a bad idea.  The money would've been great... but there is wealth which is not found in money.  When you learn to put down roots and grow a tree, you find out what the treasure really is beneath your feet."  He took a fake sip.  "Marcy, today, I have just one demand of you."

 "Yes, sir?" she said.  Barely a whisper.

 "Whatever happens," he said, "be by your girls' side.  Be their little piece of heaven on earth, and they will show you all that heaven has to offer.  Do you pick up what I'm puttin' down, Marcy-baby?"

 She nodded.  Then: "...y-yes, sir!"  A little yelp in her throat.  Good.

 "Maybe, maybe," he said, "don't move as dramatically as you did all those years ago.  But feel love and show it.  That's an order, soldier."

 "Yes, sir!" she said.  "Uh.  Uhm."  She dug around for her phone.

 Andrias raised his hand.  "Just go, sweetie.  Don't let me hold you up."

 "Yes--I mean--uh, bye dad, bye mom!"

 "G'wan, git!" Andrias said, shooting a playful set of finger-guns at her as she sped to get her shoes on and out the front door.  He watched her leave and felt a swelling of pride.  There went a good girl.

 A believer.

 Only when the door closed did his wife speak.

 "I'll be visiting Olivia today," she said from the other side of the breakfast table.

 "Mhm," Andreas said, continuing to enjoy the feeling of the espresso in his hands.  "That sounds fun."

 He wasn't sitting at the breakfast table; he was just on the opposite side of it relative to Olivia.  Olivia sat ramrod-straight, her hands pressed together, elbows not on the table because she wasn't raised in a barn.  She had a calculated lack of expression.  (All her expressions were calculated.  It was why they had been married.)

 "When would be a good time to return?" Olivia said.

 "Mm... this evening, I think," he said.  "After four, but before seven.  If you think you should be out later, text.  I'll have my phone with me.  And if it doesn't work, well.  It doesn't work."

 "Of course."

 She stood up, pushed away from the table.

 After a moment, she pushed her chair back under the table and left.

 Andrias regarded his coffee.  He enjoyed coffee-flavored things, even enjoyed chocolate-covered espresso beans, but actual coffee, actual espresso, was too full of itself for him to abide by.  He poured some chocolate milk and stirred the espresso in; there we go.  He had a mind to make some for Marcy when she got home, if she came home.  Maybe in a thermos... mm.  Maybe so.

 Los Angeles spent late spring to late fall thick with fog.  Usually it came with the morning or the night.  In the fog the city wasn't quiet, it was only muffled.  It could be scary, of course, when it was smog, or if you were in some part of town where people had wisely decided to get in out of the fog.  In select moments the sound of the city was ghostly and the lack of people looked apocalyptic.  Not the fun kind of apocalypse with leather and chopped cars; the lonely kind.

 It was one of the right months for fog.  It was not the right hour.  The fog had a sharp, clean, rainy scent, which was odder yet for the hour.  There was no sound of traffic, and as the girls stood in the awning of the goth shop they saw no people walking past them.  No phone flashlights.

 Silent.  Still.

 "...huh," Anne said.  The sound of her voice was scarcely above a sigh.  It was the loudest sound in the world.

 "Is it gonna rain?" Marcy said.  "Did the wind change?"  She didn't sound confident.  "This, uh... heh, it's kind of spooky, isn't it?"

 "Let me check the wea-ther-r-r..." Sasha said, pulling out her phone.  "...no signal.  Shit."  The wifi next.  "...they don't have wifi?  That's just irresponsible."  She glowered.  "Okay.  Weather's gone weird and it's knocked out signal.  Okay."

 Marcy fidgeted with her new skirt.  "Is anyone else spooked out?  Just me?"

 "No, not just you," Anne said, huddling closer to Sasha.  Of course.  "Something feels..."

 "It's the weather," Sasha said, feeling for Marcy's hand and meeting instantly.  Of course.  "Let's get back inside and wait this out.  They had snacks, right?"

 "Yeah!" Anne said, just as Marcy said "Well..."

 Anne and Sasha tilted their heads toward her.

 "It's..."  Marcy huffed.  "It feels kind of--why not the coffee place?"

 "Across the street," Sasha said.

 "Well, have there been any cars?" Anne said, and it hit them all that there had been no cars passing by in the minute or so they had been out here.  Either Los Angeles had suddenly been populated by people who sensibly came to a stop when the fog got bad, or...

 The traffic bollards at the periphery of the fog suddenly seemed like the edge of the world.

 "Let's just walk," Sasha said, keeping her voice steady.  She squeezed Anne and Marcy's hands tight.  This was the sort of thing she had trained for, after all.  Okay, she had imagined she was training for The Big One, or zombies, or Decepticons (hopefully), but "bad weather" was reason enough.  She squared her shoulders, puffed up her chest.  "Either we find someone or we don't."

 She checked her mental map and walked northeast.  There were some cafes and, most critically...

 They walked.  Hand in hand, they walked up the street.  They reached the crosswalk and here they saw that the crossing light was off.  Not dark, not blinking, not dim, dark.  The button did nothing.  (Sasha doubted it did anything even when it made a noise, but... fuck.)  Marcy insisted on looking both ways, then Anne proposed just shining their phone flashlights both ways.  Sasha, exerting her authority, put her weight behind Anne's idea.

 Sasha led them across in one terrific dart across the street, Marcy ducking down and waving her phone at the street, Anne holding hers bold and high.  No cars rushed just behind them as they touched down on the sidewalk.  Nor did they stumble into someone killing time at the crosswalk light.

 What they saw was a store called TRINITY, and more importantly its large painted sign reading TACTICAL GEAR: Shotgun Parts, Scopes, Etc.  The windows were dark, all save the front door.  There was a light on the other side of the head-height window.

 Sasha came to a stop outside that door.

 "Sashy...?" Marcy said.

 "Are..."  Anne swallowed heavily.  "Am I going to be... picking up... something in here?  Because I think the stakes are a little bit higher if I--"

 "Only if we have to," Sasha said.  In her heart, she wished they would have to, and opened the door.

 The walls were covered in guns.  The glass cases ringing the checkout counter were full of parts Sasha could name (slides, barrels, stocks) and a lot she couldn't.  The air conditioner was running, a low, droning noise, almost throaty.  One of her grandparents lived in a nasty little one-story deal in one of the poorer neighborhoods of L.A. and his living room was kept icy-cold courtesy an ancient and loud air conditioner that was probably running on CFCs and an unshielded fuel rod; whatever was cooling Trinity was something of the same vintage.  It also smelled weird in here.

 Not the fun kind of weird.

 The source of the light in the window was a flashlight lying on the counter.  The flashlight was flat, rectangular, with rounded corners and rubber furniture.  It had a cluster of LEDs instead of a bulb, but the light shone through cloudy, yellowed plastic.

 She picked it up and saw it was lying atop a note.  She shined the light and read:

 "To Ellie
 "I'm going to Naimie's.  There's someone there who's calling for help on the radio.  I can't just wait and see if they're okay.  I'm sorry, it's not how I'm made.
 "The conversion is mostly done.  I was waiting on a new lens, but I might not be here to get it.  Or the mail may never come.  If you ever find this, please, take care of it.  It was good to your grandpa, and it will be good to your grandkids.
 --J."

 Sasha lowered the note.

 "...you're not taking that, are you?" Marcy said.

 Sasha realized she had not let go of the flashlight; in fact, had brought it closer to her collar.  There was a clip on the back.

 "If he sees this," Sasha said, "or she, or whatever.  Then when we pop in, he won't shoot us.  We'll explain it to him, and then we'll bring it back."

 "And if he's dead?" Anne said.  Not a challenge.  Just raising the possibility.  She wouldn't challenge her.

 "Then we'll take a little revenge."  The word tasted sweet.  "Alright.  Come on.  Let's get our good deed for the day in."

 "You're serious," Anne said.  Not a challenge.  Simply an observation.  She took Sasha's hand again.  Anne was trembling.  "Oh, you're really serious."

 "It's dark, it's foggy, it's fucking weird out," Sasha said.  "What's worse, maybe finding a little something exciting, or waiting for something to happen?"  She clipped the flashlight in place.  The light played across Anne's chest, casting her face into shadow.  "Something to happen to us."

 Anne sighed.  "If one or all of us get killed," she said softly, "you owe me an extra present."

 "Two extra," Sasha said, kissing her.  "Per body."

 Marcy looked between the two of them, and Sasha kissed her, too.  "It is kind of exciting," Marcy said, putting a little Marcy-energy behind it.

 Anne unzipped her backpack, felt around inside, and took her knife in hand.  She held it in as unobtrusive a way as she could.  Concealed, if you will.  In case they stepped out and fifteen cops were waiting, perhaps.  "Let's go."

 No cops.

 It wasn't too far past noon; the clouds overhead were thick and dark enough that it felt more like 8 PM in the late autumn instead of 2 PM in the early.  Naimie's loomed ahead, an unassuming, eggshell-white building of no unusual height or potency but for the sheer strangeness of the day.  The parking lot was half-full, the cars standing mute and inviolate, and the tarmac under their shoes dark and gritty and spattered with spilled oil.  The front door was slightly ajar.

 Anne unfolded her knife.  Sasha tried to step past her, but Anne barred her.  "I got this," she said, half-whispering.

 She toed the door open and slipped inside.

 The lights were out, all save two dim and sputtering bulbs on opposite ends of the store.  The layout was wide and intended to be open, but in the near-total darkness the displays of jewelry and makeup became an obstacle course, the alleys between a maze.

 The air conditioning was on.  Somewhere, not far away, was the sound of radio static.

 Okay.  That was something.

 Anne held her breath, holding her knife out in front of her.  As she grew older, her Muay Thai lessons started integrated some Krabi Krabong; you never knew when a knife would do the job better than the Eight Limbs.  Or a long stick.  Or if you had fallen into a John Wick movie and found a sword.

 She felt better with a knife.  Not courageous, not safe, but... better.  She walked as slowly as she could stand, aware of every noise she was making.  Aware of the noise in the dark, growing ever-closer.

 Aware of the darkness itself.

 She didn't see the gun she stepped on.  She gasped, held her breath, steadied herself, and looked down, squinting at--a rifle?!  She knew next to nothing about guns beyond having played a few first-person shooters noncommittally.  She could just barely make out the shape of it in the dim light.  It was an old-style wooden rifle with a comedically thick barrel.  It was pointed to the front of the store; she tried to imagine how it could have landed there before realizing the noise of the radio was right in front of her.

 She strained her eyes.  There was a splash of deeper darkness on the tiles, something that glinted in the pair of faint lights.  She followed dribbles and splats of this to a small radio lying on the ground.  Its tiny screen had a faint blue light, showing a pair of numbers she couldn't make out from this distance.  As she approached the radio, she could make out a sound inside the static.  It was a constant jangle, a familiar one.  Why was it familiar?

 She picked it up.  She felt for anything like a power switch.  The sound modulated, fluttered, but did not stop, until she found a round, recessed button that turned it off and replaced the "99" with "- -."

 The static died.  And at last she heard what the static was hiding.

 She looked to her right.

 There was someone lying on the ground.  There was something much larger than a person hunched over them.  The faint light played off its skin in ripples and shimmers, as though it were made of vinyl.  The shape of it, the movement of it, was so ambiguous that she could not begin to imagine how it was built.  But it was hunched over the person and it was making soft, awful noises.  Wet mouth noises.

 Anne stood in the darkness, as the poet said, wondering, fearing, doubting.

 Until Sasha reached her.  She skidded to a halt, the light of the flashlight playing across the thing in the darkness.

 First Anne saw why the thing shone even in dim light: every inch of it was wet and slick, like oiled leather.  It was human-shaped, almost; its head was a long, thick which wriggled like a worm in wet soil.  The end of the tube was latched onto something laying on the ground. It leaned on one titan arm; its elbow was at head-height to Anne, its forearm a blunt club of flesh ringed with barbed wire.  Its entire body twitched in a slow, painful rhythm.

 After a few moments, it felt the light, and pulled its heavy head up  The end of the tube was a flat, meaty plate.  It had lips, gigantic, overly-plump and bruise-colored, like cartoon parodies of painted lips.  Red strings dangled between its blunt teeth.  The strings led to the gnawed ruin of a human head.

 The monster made a soft trilling noise.

 Sasha could only whisper: "What...?"

 Behind them, Marcy screamed.

 The monster's head fluttered, pointing between Anne and Sasha, and Anne followed her most base instinct and lunged at the beast, and she rammed her knife into the seam where the neck met its shoulder.

 The clicking noise turned into a pained squeal, and the thing moved back, taking her knife with it.  She turned, following Marcy's screaming.  The color had drained from Marcy's face.  Her eyes were wide and pupils constricted.  Anne's body moved without conscious orders: Anne charged, scooped her up, held her over her shoulder, and ran.  She just fucking ran.

 She hopped over the gun; as Sasha caught up with her she heard a faint huff of exertion and a short, sharp drag.  In moments Sasha was running alongside her, and they fled down the maze of aisles.  The flashlight bounced and flashed, flicking light off of mirrors and stainless steel fixtures; Anne's foot rebounded off of a fallen rack that she had not remembered passing by on the way to the monster.  However fast they ran, however far, the thing behind them made steady progress, moving with languid certainty.

 The front door was closed, the windows clouded, greasier than they'd been on the way in, and the last ten feet past the checkout counter took ten full-length-strides to reach.  Anne led with a kick and forced the door open and ran until she reached an empty parking spot ten yards away.

 In silence, she set Marcy down. Stars burst in her vision; she could barely stand, and every breath was hard-won.  There was a car in the next space over; she leaned against it, commanding her heart to stop pounding so goddamn hard, so fast, and it did not obey her.  Sasha came to a stop next to her, nowhere near as winded.  But then, she hadn't carried an entire Marcy.

 Speaking of.  Marcy had stopped screaming sometime between being scooped up and actually escaping the makeup store.  She stood where she had been planted, hands locked over her mouth, whimpering into her palms.

 "What the fuck was that?" Sasha said.  It was a murmur, first.  Then she screamed it.  "The fuck was that?!!"  She shook the gun.  It was pointed away from her girlfriends, but her finger was just under the trigger, not on the guard.  Anne didn't know this was gun safety at the time.  She had barely paid attention during the handful of lessons her parents had sprung for when she turned 16; the instructor was kind of a...

 Well, it's a pity she barely paid attention then.  If only she knew now what he knew then.

 "Anybody?" Sasha said, struggling to calm herself.

 "I don't know," Anne said.  She wiped sweat from her forehead.  She did so with her radio-holding hand; her thumb slipped and it powered back on.  The static returned, playing at a more sensible volume now.  "It's bad.  Something unimaginably bad is happening."

 "No fu--" Sasha spat, before stopping herself.  She bit her lip.  "No kidding," she said in a more collected and neutral tone.  Then she tried to be cool.  "No fucking kidding, babe."

 "What do we do?" Marcy said.

 "The best we can," Sasha said, patting the barrel of the gun.

 Anne felt her heartbeat slow.

 Then she realized the noise had returned to the radio.  It was low, but getting louder, the sound of rushing bells; of a fire alarm, perhaps.  She still felt a more profound terror than just an alarm could inspire.

 The girls held still, listening.  The sound of the alarm rose steadily, up until the door to the makeup shop slammed open, and the sound spiked in volume.

 A gigantic, meaty club of a forelimb pushed through the now-open door, forcing it to stay open.  The monster began to press itself through.

 Sasha raised the gun, the stock under her arm, the sights nowhere near her shoulder.  She was aiming on instinct.

 "The bolt," Marcy said.  "Sash, check the--"

 The monster slipped its head through; then one long leg; then it dragged the rest of itself free of the building.  In the light, its body was the same, bruised-skin color from its head to its overlong legs.  Its body was feminine, in a sense: it had breasts, it had hips, it had legs stuffed into high heels.  It reared higher, twice the height of the door at its full extension.  Was it in a dress?  Or was that its skin?

 By then Sasha had pulled the trigger a dozen times and fired nothing.  "Don't you goddamn dare," Sasha muttered to the gun.

 Marcy quietly held out her hands, and Sasha shoved the gun into them.  Marcy shouldered the gun, pulled back the bolt, sent a shiny brass casing sailing free into the parking lot, slammed the bolt back into place.

 The monster took a step forward, swaying its shoulders as it led with one enormous arm.  Marcy fired.

 The gun made a noise as loud as an impatient stomp in tennis shoes.  Blood bloomed in the monster's chest.

 Marcy worked the bolt.  The clatter of the casing on the ground was louder than the gunshot.  One more.  An easy, clean shot through its chest.  It didn't try to dodge, didn't try to evade.  It just walked forward, one more step, another, then collapsed.

 It writhed on the ground, sprawled out.  It made a noise that was wet and bubbling, the sound of perforated lungs filling with blood.

 Marcy pulled back the bolt, but Sasha took action first, screaming and lunging and stomping the monster just on the back of its head.  A squeal escaped its gigantic lips.  She kept stomping, leading with her heel, until something made a wet, crisp snap and most of its body fell still.

 Jagged blades the length of baseball bats slid free of slits at the end of each of its arms.  No longer held in place by muscular action, Marcy would write later, trying to make sense of it, but in the moment all she could do was lower the rifle.

 The head moved just a little longer, jittering, spasming. Deflating.  As the life left it, the alarm-bell sound dimmed, grew weak, and then vanished from the radio static.

 Sasha knelt by the monster and worked Anne's knife free from its neck.  She scraped the blade along the thing's slippery hide, but could not adequately clean it.  Still she tried, until Anne's hand touched hers and she brought Sasha to stand.

 The blade did not tremble in Sasha's hand; it downright vibrated.  Sasha's breath was a fluttering, tremulous thing in the depth of her chest.

 "What the fuck?" she said, and began to cry.  "What the fuck is happening?"

Chapter Text

 The phone rang exactly twice, and Doris-Blanche picked it up.  "Good afternoon," she said.  "Burbank Thrift Shop, consistently near the top 5 of Burbank thrift and antique stores.  How can I help you today?"

 "Hello," a woman said on the other end of the line.  "Have you seen a teenage girl?  Tall, brown hair, just turned eighteen today.  My daughter."

 Doris-Blanche had seen one too many scared people and received one too many strange calls to immediately trust such an inquiry.  "What's the occasion?" she said.

 "She left school early, she's celebrating her birthday on the town.  I'm not mad, I just want to surprise her with a present."

 "Mhm."  She had seen Anne, and she hadn't looked overly concerned.  Anne was a nice girl, she remembered; she liked cat-themed everythings, cute plushes in general, pretty clothes, and her girlfriends.  (Her gaydar was not the most-honed but Anne was very, very gay.)  "I'll have to check the security cams, just in case.  Can you wait a moment?"

 "Can I call back?  I only have so much time before she just comes home," the woman said.

 Anne had come in with her mother once or twice, Doris-Blanche recalled.  Did that voice match?  Would asking for a photo be weird?  "Maybe not... you said she left school?  How long ago?"

 "About half-past eleven," Anne's potential mom said.

 Doris-Blanche reached over to the cash register and pretended to turn a dial on a functioning camera system (if that's how that worked, anyway; the cameras had been busted since before Doris-Blanche worked here).  "Let me see if I can--ah, one moment."

 She set the phone down and smiled at the customer walking through the door.  "Good afternoon.  Can I help you?"

 "Why, yes," the elderly gentleman said.  He presented an ID.  "Hopediah Plantar, private detective.  I'm looking for a Ms. Anne Boonchuy--yea tall, brown hair, just turned 18 today."

 "Is that so," Doris-Blanche said.

 "It is so.  I have important information for her, and my last attempt to get in contact with her ended--poorly.  According to her social media, she likes to come here with coffee and take pictures with cat-themed things.  It seemed like an unlikely place for a teenager to go on her birthday, so I decided to try it out first."

 Doris-Blanche blinked.  "You know, funny enough, I was just talking to my manager about security camera footage.  If you could give me a moment, this is confidential..."

 "Yes'm," the detective said, and shuffled off.

 Doris-Blanche turned around and covered the mouthpiece.  "An old man just asked me about Anne's location."

 "Jan rai," snarled the woman on the other end of the line.  "He's trying to find my daughter.  Keep him busy."

 "She dropped in, but she left a while ago," D-B said.  "I think she was embarrassed about knocking something off a shelf... or maybe she just didn't want me to think I was being robbed.  I didn't see where she went, but..."

 "Thank you," Anne's mother said.  "That's all I need."

 "Good luck," D-B said.  "And God bless."

 Anne's mother made a little choking sound.  "Not Her," she said.  She hung up.

 Doris-Blanche returned the phone to the hook.  "Mmm, if you could follow me, Mr. Plant..."

 He was out the door already.

 "Dang it," she said, and wondered, briefly, if she should call the cops.

 Yes.  She would.

 The nice lady behind the desk did not hear the capitalization of Her pronoun;

 nor did she see that, despite his age, Hopediah's hearing was still keen.

 He popped up his collar, lowered his hat, and watched the car pull away from the parking space across the street.  He caught a glimpse of brown hair, of tan skin.  Even accounting for the tinting of the window and the narrowness of his vision, he recognized the quality of Churai "Oum" Boonchuy's hair.  It looked like Anne's, and it moved like Anne's.  Springy, light.  A Thai afro.  The family resemblance was considerable.

 He counted to ten.  He ran to the f'wagon.  It would take a minute to escape, parallel-parked as precariously as it was between two absurdly-sized pickup trucks.  But, then, he needed time, time enough that Mrs. Boonchuy wouldn't see him following her.  Without a word, and to the vague encouragement of his grandchildren, he climbed into the f'wagon and buckled up.

 And slowly-but-surely he made his way to her.

 They couldn't leave immediately.  Marcy wouldn't let them.  Sasha stood guard with the rifle after Marcy walked her through the steps of charging it.  (She also called it a "carbine."  Sasha did not internalize this.)

 Marcy pressed a washrag over her face and knelt by the dead monster, examining its injuries.  The washrag was wrapped around a little bouquet of mint, crushed rose petals, and blue Jolly Ranchers; she used it if the smell of something was too much for her to handle (and if politeness, or at least people watching, meant she couldn't take succor elsewhere).  She squinted at the injury a good minute or so; Anne held her steady and pulled her shirt's hem over her nose.

 "Look," Marcy said, tracing lines in the air.

 The edges of the injury were blackened, bloated, thick red veins of rot spreading out from it like cracks.  She then called attention to the exit wounds left by the gun.  Drying blood shined on the monster's back, but the injuries were not excessively awful, beyond the inherent awfulness of gunshots, at least.

 "What does it mean?" Anne said.

 "What's your knife made of?"

 "Steel," Anne said.  "Not stainless... mom said stainless steel was for, uh, chumps."

 "You can swear," Sasha said.  "I don't think the monsters will tell on us."

 "'Water buffalo.'  She calls dumbasses 'water buffalo.'  Kwai, actually."

 "Oh.  That a Thai thing?"

 "Yep," Anne said, struggling to put a little pride in there for the sake of her nerves.

 "Steel, alright..." Marcy said.  Anne guided her up to a standing position.  "So maybe the knife being stuck in it for so long made it vulnerable to gunfire.  Or you softened it up enough just two bullets killed it... or maybe I got it in a vital spot and it's like... oh, I wish we had a scale, or maybe--"

 Anne snapped her fingers, and Marcy shook her head, banishing the train of thought.

 "The--the blades," she said.  She stepped around the monster, walking alongside its arm.  "Sashy, can you shine on these spikes that popped out of it?"

 Sasha unclipped her light and threw it over her shoulder; Anne caught it and held it out over the end of the monster's arm.  The slits were glinting with a thick liquid, and the iron spike jutting out of the monster was slick with finely-impregnated liquid.

 "Protective mucous," Marcy said.  "Ooh... these things have metal in their arms that could poison them or like... dissolve them!  If I had--"  She bit her lip.  "Nnh.  That means it has to be advantageous to have these enough to risk going dry and poisoning yourself.  It's already huge, and we know that its prey is--"

 "Ix-nay on the..." Anne said, but realized the Pig Latin of "prey" was substantially worse.  "...on the hunting talk."

 Marcy took a deep sniff of her washrag, counted to three, and said in one long exhale, "It wouldn't need these spikes unless it needed to protect itself from something scarier than it."

 Sasha looked over her shoulder.

 Anne looked back at her.

 Marcy's own sentence resolved in her head.

 "We should be indoors," she said.

 "Where the giant monsters live?" Sasha said.

 "Could get bigger outside," Marcy said, before clamping her washrag over her mouth.

 "Goddammit," Sasha said, slapping her own forehead, "you're right.  You're always right."

 "We need more weapons," Anne said.  "Something that isn't a gun we've fired two shots out of... something that's easier to use."

 "Come on," Sasha said.  "We're getting our asses more guns."

 There were plentiful dining options around the theater, many of them among Olivia's favorites.  The Wus were wealthy enough that higher-end dining was not only regular, but routine.  Olivia was spoiled for choice, and if she insisted, could have gone anywhere she wanted.

 Today, they opted for Pink's on La Brea.

 The line was interminable, the noise inside profound, and the weather among her least-favorite for dining outside; but still she and Olivia sat at a cramped plastic table.  Olivia quietly ate a basket of onion rings as she watched Yunan down four absurd hot dogs in a row.  She paused only to quaff directly from a pair of bottles of Diet Coke.  Not all of one and then the other; she alternated.  Not consistently, not with rhythm; she just drank from the bottle closest to hand when she reached out for one.

 Yunan was a mountain of a woman, Chinese-American, an Iraq War veteran.  In Yunan's tiny apartment, she had her uniform proudly on display, its chest dripping with medals; she wore them almost as proudly as her bleached hair, her scars, and the plentiful tattoos decorating and tying together her scars.  She wore a Terrifier shirt, distressed jeans, and dangling earrings.  She downed her hot dogs with the grace and poise of a poorly-trained dog.

 Most who looked at her would see her wolfing down themed hot dogs (Shaq, Lord of the Rings, Rosie O'Donnell, and Martha "she served hard jail time, you remember" Stewart) and assume she was, at best, a poser.  At worst, a rabid dog waiting to bite.  Olivia, though...

 As she watched, Yunan finished her last hot dog, thoroughly cleaned her face with napkins and a wet-nap (from Olivia), and finished both her drinks at once, pouring them into her mouth from a small height.  She gulped them down and flashed a sharky grin at her.  "My good lady," she said, "I have been fed and I am more than ready to sally forth."

 "Of course," Olivia said, picking at her next onion ring with a plastic fork.  She bit one corner, let the steam escape, and only then finished.  It was how she conducted herself with such ridiculous food as this.  Too much and she'd be bloated and miserable the rest of the day.  Not enough, and, well, she never noticed the difference.  But it was never a bad idea to eat when the opportunity presented itself.  Better a little garbage now than to run on nothing later.

 Yunan watched her eat.  She was not halfway through her onion rings, and, it seemed, hungrier than she thought.  Yunan watched, and she waited, and she made small talk: "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"

 "M-mm.  Tell me about it."  A sip of Pink's Bottled Water.

 "Frankly, I have no clue what the National Hockey League is doing with itself these days.  Are we playing hockey or some sort of Children's Safety Hockey?  Would God Herself smile upon ice unstained by blood?!"

 Not a drop of food-mess had gotten on Yunan's clothes.  She was an attack dog, yes, but she wasn't rabid.  She was free.

 Every time Olivia saw her, she felt the freedom shine through her eyes like a sunbeam through a crack in a tomb.  She would grow in such light and she would subsist on it as long as she could.  So long as there was sun.  So long as she could breathe.

 "She would not," Olivia said.

 There was a vitally-important phrase they had missed on the sign for Trinity Gun Accessories.  Sasha had read it, but it had never registered as important before.

 Anne held the door open and Sasha charged.  She vaulted the counter, landed softly, and grabbed a shotgun mounted on the wall.  It was light, oddly so, compared to the exactly two guns she had handled in her life.

 (The other was a .22 semiauto at a very game attempt at getting Sasha into scouts.  That had less failed and more, perhaps, had gotten mom thinking that Sasha should not learn how to shoot a gun.)

 The barrel tip was bright orange.  There were attachment points for--

 "It's a fucking paintball gun?!" Sasha said, staring at a slot for a CO2 canister.  She dropped the gun, which clattered on the tile floor as she ran her eyes across the other guns.  All of them were hard plastic, some having more obvious canister slots, some trying a little bit harder to blend in.  Sasha went rifling through the cabinets and found--"Not a single--you're--dammit, not on this side--Anne, is there a...?"

 "I see..." Anne said from the other end of the cabinet.  "Uh... parts... something called a 'grip...'"

 "Parts," grunted Sasha.  "Fucking... not even any bullets?"  She threw open each cabinet, seeing nothing useful to her.  "They sell bullets at Walmart, right?  Where's the nearest..."

 Marcy set the gun on the counter and tried to vault over, but her head was too full and she found herself balancing on her belly like a seal, terrified of tipping over.  Sasha picked her up under her arms, set her on her feet, and gave her a furious, grounding kiss.  Marcy nodded in thanks.  Then she pointed at the door to the back.

 Unlocked.

 The back room wasn't half the size of the front, and the front wasn't exactly spacious.  It was dominated by boxes of paintball pellets, a minifridge, and a desk with a beat-up desktop computer sitting on it.  There were two firearm magazines on the desk; Marcy took them.  And Anne cut open a box wrapped with red tape.

 "You see this?" she said, prying a plastic jar from the box.  It was labeled PepperBall LIVE-MAXX, and was full of plastic balls in black-and-white hemispheres.  "We don't have to kill everything if we can make them cry or barf or... something."  She looked at Marcy expectantly.  "They can cr... well, that one didn't have... eyes..."

 "If it can..."  Marcy stumbled over her words.  "...if it's, uh, compatible, uh, with, humanity, like I think it is, and if it's a mammal, like it looks, then yeah.  If you can get this in the mouth or whatever, this would... you know..."

 Sasha ran her hand down Marcy's back, firmly, but soothingly.  "We get it."

 Marcy nodded.

 "Alright.  Anne, find a paintball gun."

 "Yes, m'am!" Anne said, saluting.

 Hopediah popped his neck.  "Kids," he said, his voice steady, "verify our parking."

 "Yes, sir!" Sprig said, saluting.

 "On it, pops," Polly said, audibly winking.  "R-i-i-ight on it."

 "Polly," Sprig said, in a conversational tone, "if we don't verify our parking and we get towed, that's our home gone."

 "...dang it," Polly sighed.  "Okay.  Verifying parking."

 "Thank you, Sprig," Hop Pop said.

 The kids hiked into what Hopediah assumed was a costume shop.  Collating what he knew about Anne from her social media, she had never gone to this costume shop before, but she had posed with photos of specialty drinks from The Palm, which was directly across.  If she were doing kid-things and exploring kid-places, the chance of going in to goof around with the plastic skeletons and jack-o-lanterns was close to 100%.  Moreover, there were all sorts of places for kids to get lost in, cheap food for them to overindulge in, and--

 A strong hand looped around his neck.  He yelped, and within a few moments he was pulled between the costume shop and its neighbor store.

 He tried to worm his hand under the offending arm, but a grappling leg and a knife pressed against his cheek took some of the fight out of him.  He looked behind him and saw a stray lock of curly brown hair.

 "Who sent you?" Oum Boonchuy hissed.  In the alley, the noise of Los Angeles was blunted, kept at arm's length.  Only now did he hear the low, staticky radio playing from somewhere around Oum's hip.

 "Afraid that's confidential, m'am," Hopediah said.

 "Who the hell was it?  The Wolfs?  The last Gillespie?"

 "If you need a refresher," Hopediah said, "'confidential' means I am not at liberty--"

 "What did they tell you about me?"

 "Enough," Hop Pop said.  "I understand why you ran away with your girl.  Whatever my contact wants, it's not anything related to--"

 "They know where we live," Oum said.  She moved the knife higher, pointing it at his eye.  "That means we're all in danger."  She took a deep, ragged breath.  "Did they tell you everything?"

 "Everything relevant to this case."

 "Did they tell you abo--"

 A strange noise played over the radio.  It had a swift, rushing quality; he thought of an oncoming train before ancient memories bubbled up unbidden.  It sounded like a fire alarm.

 The knife trembled.  He could feel Mrs. Boonchuy's heartbeat through her chest.

 "No..." Oum said.  "Not now, not here, not..."

 "Mrs. Boonchuy," Hopediah said, his voice level.  "May I ask what is happening?"

 "They didn't tell you about the Otherworld," Oum said.

 It took a few minutes of Marcy reading from the instructions sheet in fine detail, but the quest was done when Anne screwed on the lid to the paintball gun.  The body of it was bright yellow, as was the plastic tank that accepted a full jar of the pepper spray paintballs.  Marcy had selected one of the red-dot sights from the store in lieu of the one that came with the gun; it was open, easy to look down, and provided a little red glowing dot that Anne could, in theory, place on a monster's... mouth region... to hopefully make them reconsider trying to kill her.

 This was the plan.  Man-eating 12-foot-tall monsters slouching around out there and she had a knife and a paintball gun.

 She raised the paintball gun, aimed it down the empty streets.  She kept it trained on the emptiness as her hand went to the radio, now tied to a loop on her backpack.  She flicked the volume on, and it played low, soft static.  No alarms.  Yet.

 "We ready?" Anne said.

 Marcy made an acknowledging noise.  She stood at the back, gun held tight but with her hand nowhere near the handle, just in case.

 "Go," Sasha said.  Sasha found nothing to her liking in the shop.  She borrowed Anne's knife for now; no use letting her go unarmed.

 "Where?" Anne said, softly.  "Hell, how?  We're--what, it takes twenty minutes to drive here?  How long will it take to walk?"

 Marcy snapped her fingers.  "Four hours."

 "I don't want to be in the streets after dark," Anne said.

 "The hell we gotta be, then?" Sasha said.  "Underground?  Flying?"

 Marcy lit up.  "Under... oh!  There's a train station--" she pointed.  "That way.  Past the Nickelodeon animation studio."

 "...huh," Sasha said, leaning to get a peek around Marcy.  "Do we think the trains will be running?  Are they on a different circuit?  Or... can they run on low power?"  They were already walking, Sasha on point.

 "If nothing else, there's utility corridors up and down the railway," Marcy said, drawing lines in the air.  Anne walked beside her, watching her air-doodle with no small fascination.  "Of course, if the train's running--if--I mean, there were some lights, there's some power, but--oh--"

 "Too much to hope for," Sasha said.  She inspected the knife as she marched, as if hunting down some last motes of blood that had somehow escaped being wiped off.  "But assuming these things don't follow Minecraft rules, underground means fewer ways for them to sneak up on us."

 "Air vents, maybe?" Anne said.

 "Too small," Marcy said.

 "Right.  Real life.  Sigh... never thought I'd be happy to have un-crawl-through-able air vents."

 "These are peerless ti--" Marcy said.

 The alarm played over the radio, the sound of rushing bells faint but growing stronger.

 The girls ran for the eaves of the next store over, pressing themselves into the nook under its awning.  Sasha covered both of the girls, Anne's knife trembling in her grasp.  "Come on, fuckers," Sasha whispered.  "Try me.  Just you fucking try me."

 Moment by moment, the radio picked up in volume, and a new and awful noise joined it.  Wind. The pressure dropped, popping Anne's ears.  She nervously swallowed, and then choked.

 A shadow passed over the street.  It engulfed the street as surely as a passing cloud blots the sun; but it passed by in a moment, and in the moment after the fog billowed and trees rustled.  Garbage and leaves fluttered in the wake of its passage.

 The radio ebbed, warbled.  Did not silence.

 Somewhere overhead was the sound of many grinding wheels.

 "Come on," Sasha said, hardly able to breathe.  She peeked out of the eave, checking the street, and darted to the next awning.  Anne was next, carrying Marcy on her back; no room to risk it.  They held still for a long moment, waiting for the industrial noise overhead to calm.  It did not.  It diffused.  The radio grew louder.

 Anne felt for the doorknob, found a handle instead.  Wouldn't push in.  Tried to pull out and hit a lock immediately.  No going in.

 A shadow darkened the fog.  It was like a cloud passing over the sun, but it was too fast, too low.  There was a sound like a speeding car, only it was too high, too fast.  The pressure rose, un-popping Anne's ears.  The fog cleared, briefly. Between the un-pop and the thinning air she felt as though someone had stolen the breath from her chest.

 The shadow passed, and the wind with it, and the radio's noise ebbed.  Did not stop; but it went from screaming to humming.

 There was a new noise in the sky.  Anne thought of ASMR videos made about old hand-cranked tools, the sound of solid metal gears clattering together, only this was some kind of anti-ASMR, a dozen jarring, looping noises that did not quite overlap.

 "Fuck," whispered Sasha, just loud enough to be heard.

 There was nothing else to say.  From awning to awning, cover to cover, they fled to the east.  Away from the sound of grinding metal overhead.

 It followed.