Makeshift traps

They'd reached the foot of the house. It was a narrow building, and much of it had burned, with the edges of plastic siding having charred and melted. Plastic sheeting had been nailed down to minimize the water damage. Whoever owned it didn't have the money to make the extensive repairs, and they couldn't or wouldn't sell it, probably.

This close to it, Verona could smell the burned plastic, even though it had been like this since before winter.

Toadswallow crept up onto the stairs in front of the house. He didn't give Cherrypop a helping hand, as she fought to climb the scraggly bush next to the stairs. Instead, he walked over to the front door, reared back enough it looked like he was going to tip backwards onto his ass, and then kicked it with surprising violence. The door swung open, a bit of wood dropping from where the latch met the frame.

"We heard John Stiles was twitchy, so maybe-"

"Please pardon our rude intrusion!" Toadswallow hollered into the house.

"-Don't be too noisy?

Only silence answered them.

It looked like older teenagers had broken in at one point to have a party, and there were remnants everywhere. Stuff was written on walls, and there was debris littering the area. Surprisingly, not a lot of alcohol. There wasn't much light outside to begin with, and the boarded up windows let only dark grey slices of light through around the edges, while the plastic that covered the other windows allowed a dull glow that barely reached past the frames themselves.

Verona shrugged out of one strap of her bag, pulled out her mask, and pulled it on, because it helped with her Sight. The sources of light seemed to reach further, and details melted away, like everything had been covered in a thin film. Connections were marked out like spiderwebs or hairs, glistening wet and bright in the gloom. She picked up her feet more to avoid stepping on anything like a can or a bag that might have held organic trash, before melting or being trampled down into a sketchy black patch on the floor.

She reached out to pluck at Avery's sleeve, gently pulling Avery away from a course that would have seen her walking into a shin-high pile of trash.

Lucy kicked a bottle she hadn't realized was there, producing a loud clatter. The clatter extended as Cherrypop flung herself at the rolling bottle, propelling it further across the floor, until it reached a wall and audibly broke. Both goblins stuck to the shadows, only visible for fleeting moments, even with Verona's sight.

"This is a good haunted house aesthetic," Verona whispered.

"Where's John?" Avery asked.

There was light down the hall, dull and red. Lucy took the lead, her back running along the side of the staircase that led upstairs as she inched closer to the room with the red glow within.

Verona used the same staircase to lean against as she pulled a pack of longer post-its from her pocket. Putting one foot flat against the wall, her knee pointing out, she laid the post-its across her leg, and penned out a quick, simple diagram, one that was badly imbalanced, a triangle atop a circle, atop a triangle, each triangle pointing the same way. Within the circle, she penned the simple 'fire' rune, underlining it.

"He was here recently, I hope," Lucy said. "Looks like he was cooking."

It might've been that there wasn't enough heat. She tried pressing her thumb to the bottom end of the diagram. Pull in heat, feed it to the rune that defined the function, then push it out. She could feel the rune at her fingertip, uncomfortably numbing and kind of painful. The end of the slip of post-it turned orange, smoking.

"What are you even doing?"

"Trying to create a light source," Verona said. The end of the paper ignited in flame, spitting out the occasional spark. It wasn't as much light as she'd hoped. The fire extended to the diagram, and traced out glowing orange lines as it burned through, the entire thing coming to pieces, with fire rushing to the fingers that held the paper. She tossed it up into the air rather than at the ground. It was ashes before it reached the floor. "Didn't work."

"Yeah," Lucy said, shaking her head.

"I wonder if there's a good 'light' rune."

"Focus, Ronnie. Please," Lucy said.

"What's he cooking?" Avery asked. "That can doesn't have a label."

Verona looked past the pair. There was a hotplate sitting on the kitchen counter, which was tidier than other areas of the building, and a can sat on the plate, glowing red near the bottom. The glow from within cast light onto the cabinets, that was more than the light elsewhere in the house.

"Makes sense to remove the label, if you don't want it to burn," Lucy said. She entered the kitchen, heading for the hotplate. "Where is-"

The kitchen door slammed shut, almost in Avery's face.

"Hey! Lucy!" Avery raised her voice. She pushed at the door. A heavy mass bigger than Lucy hit the door, slamming it shut yet again.

Verona backed away a few steps, alarmed.

Lucy.

She bolted, running back into the front hall, avoiding the heaps of trash, and took a hard right. The house had rooms off to the left and right of the front hall, and they'd been cutting straight down the middle. Verona took the right route, hoping that the rooms off to the right reconnected to the kitchen. She grabbed a door frame to help swing herself around in a sharper left turn.

What could she do? She had the post-its. The fire hadn't been much but it had at least been fire. If she wrote something down, she could slap it down and the post-it part of it would make it stick. She reached for her pocket, trying to extricate the post-its again. Hard to do when running.

She circled around, saw the open kitchen door, and paused to pull the post-its free.

He came out of a dark corner, rising from a crouch so swiftly as he closed the distance that it seemed like he grew to triple height. One-armed, he reached past her to take hold of her wrist, drove the length of his arm into the side of her neck, and stepped in close enough that he could place a foot in the way of one of her legs, when she tried to step backward and catch her balance.

Verona tipped over, half-spinning on her way to the ground. Her mask fell ajar, obscuring the part of her vision that was normal, while leaving the general bleed of light, shadow, and the strings mostly visible when she looked through the mask's material. She shook her head until it fell into a position where she could see with one eye. She felt a weight press on her chest.

He was leaning on her, pinning her down. She had a hand beneath her and another hand in his grip.

John had used only one arm to take her down, and he used one thumb from the hand that held her wrist to pry the post-its free. They flopped to the floor. His eyes were all intensity, but he barely looked at her, his head angled more in the direction of the front hall. Avery.

Verona looked past him. His other arm held Lucy, who had her chin about as high as it would go, her eyes shut. She was breathing hard.

Her eyes adjusted again, the Sight helping to clarify things in the gloom. John Stiles had a gun, and it was pressing up against the underside of Lucy's chin, his elbow hooked under her armpit, holding her close to him. Lucy's hands were out in front of her, fingers splayed, not facing anything in particular.

Verona pressed her lips together, tight. She didn't move as he let go of her wrist, brought his hand closer to his chest, and then pulled out a knife. The blade touched her mouth, where her lips would be if she wasn't already pressing them together enough they were barely out there.

"Hands out, fingers splayed," he said. His head didn't move, but his eyes did, falling on her.

Verona obeyed, moving just enough to slowly free her trapped hand. She put them out where he could see them.

"Uhhh, guys!?" Avery called out. She might have called out a second ago, but Verona was too busy being thrown to the ground. "Lucy? Verona! If this is a joke, it's a really sick one!"

Verona couldn't even move, because the blade being where it was made even the tiniest of movements hazardous. She could feel her skin rasp against the blade's edge. If she had any hairs on her lip, even the tiny white fuzz hairs, then some were getting shaved off with the movements that the tiniest of breaths forced.

Lucy's hands were shaking. Verona's were shaking, more for Lucy than for herself. The reality of a gun being there, a gun, and that his finger was on the trigger.

If there was any way she could let her mouth get cut open, and with where the knife was, it looked like it would be nose to chin, and somehow save Lucy from that… absolutely.

"Anyone!?" Avery called out. "Toadswallow? Cherrypop!? What was that thump?"

Avery sounded so scared.

He didn't move. Verona's tiny movements were making skin rub against the blade's edge, not quite enough to cut, but enough that she could feel it, but John Stiles was statue still. Even his hair was short enough it didn't move. His eyes were open, whites visible, and he didn't blink. His eyes didn't water. Heck, even the tiny movements of his eye didn't change. His clothes weren't the sort that shifted or settled.

He really wasn't human.

"Um, guys!?" Avery called out. Her voice sounded closer.

"Stop!" John called out.

There was a pause.

"Stopped," Avery said, quieter, and not quieter because she'd moved away.

"Name."

"Avery Kelly."

"Full sentences."

"My name is Avery Kelly. Where are-"

"Stop."

Lucy made a sound of protest. The gun shifted, pressing further into her chin.

The knife moved, pressing in. Verona realized her hands had moved involuntarily, on seeing Lucy's distress.

For a while, Lucy had been the only person she could stand. Lucy and Avery were maybe the only people she really cared about.

"Speak only when spoken to. Don't go off topic. Words are a weapon in a practitioner's hands."

There was no response.

"Where were you this morning?"

"A campsite, with Matthew, Edith, and Charles. I don't remember the name."

Bethlehem, Verona thought.

"They dropped you off?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Around a quarter to six."

"Tell me your movements since."

"I was dropped off at home, after my friends were. I dropped off my things, I started dinner, left early, I called them. We thought we'd move into the interviews."

"Are you under any compulsion?"

"No, pretty sure."

John shifted, and Lucy made another involuntary sound. His voice was loud and crystal clear, no doubt audible through the entire house. "Why only pretty sure?"

"I mean, I don't- I don't want to say anything for certain when I could be wrong, like… what qualifies as a compulsion? 'Any' is a strong-"

A violent crash interrupted Avery, and made John move, throwing Lucy to the ground beside Verona, the gun aiming at another target.

Toadswallow sat on the dining room table, which he had just cleared the bottles from.

"Toadswallow," John said. "I nearly shot you."

The plump goblin cackled.

The knife was no longer at Verona's lips. "Toadswallow, vouch?"

"Let 'em go, John," Toadswallow called out. "No reason to think anything's up."

"Can I trust you?" John asked the goblin. "Practitioners have your name. All it would take to sell the lie would be to summon you and compel you to a course of action."

"I haven't been. Rest assured. Not in months."

John pulled the knife away, then stood, backing up a step, leaving them to get to their own feet.

"Avery, I think it's okay now" Lucy called out. She backed away from John, and walked around the end of the badly abused dining table, keeping it between her and John. She was still breathing hard, and she had a shine of sweat on her face now.

Verona stayed put, moving her mask to the top of her head. Staying where she was meant that John was less likely to move around or approach Lucy.

Avery stepped through the doorway. She stopped short as she saw John standing there in the dark. "What happened?"

"Why do that?" Verona asked.

He put his gun into his waistband, and put the knife into a pocket sheath. He stood there for a moment, too still, too intense looking, his eyes fixed on a distant point in space. He was wearing a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up, cargo pants, and boots. He had circles under his eyes and his hair was sun-bleached blond and buzzed to an even shortness. The only decorations he had on him was a narrow black label on each sleeve and the dog tags he wore- six tags and a gold loop that stood out against the fabric of the sweater.

He turned, striding out of the room and into the kitchen.

"Hey, John!" Verona called out. She approached, saw him at the hot plate, grabbing the hot metal with his fingers. She heard sizzling. He turned, coming right toward her, red hot metal gripped in one hand. The contents were smoking. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a plastic container.

"Out of the way,"

She scrambled back. She could smell something acrid and awful in the smoke, and the chemical smell from the bucket.

He went to the window at the end of the dining room, pulled away the wood covering, and tossed the contents of the can into the backyard. The red hot can was draped over the stem of a glass vodka bottle at the top of a trash pile. He reached into the bucket, pulled out a cigarette, and dropped it into a beer can before sloshing the bucket's contents out the window.

"Okay," he said, like that was done. He approached the table, and stood there, hands on the back of a chair. Avery was inching closer, drawing nearer to Lucy.

Verona went to the back window, moved the wood out of the way, and looked at the glowing contents of the can, which now sat on dirt. Metal that might have been a steel scrubbing pad, long narrow things that might have been nails and screws, and…

"You eat batteries and metal?"

"No. I don't need to eat, though I like the routine," he said.

"Why, then?"

"Boom," Toadswallow said.

"If our discussion had continued for much longer, if you had forced a stalemate or initiated a binding, it would have interrupted things. The can would explode. If you handled the can, there was still the bucket, with a longer timer."

"Geez. You're that nervous about having us around?" Lucy asked.

John didn't give her an immediate response.

"Not us," Verona guessed. "I think he thinks we could be hypnotized?"

"Or disguised, or bound, or compelled," John said. "I'll assume it was after he dropped you off, but Matthew addressed some of us, to let us know other Practitioners had found out about the Carmine Beast. There are good reasons to be careful. We should be able to tell if they enter Kennet, but there are never any guarantees in times like these."

- Lost For Words 1.5