John fast

“Can I see your hat, before we get going?” Edith asked.

Avery had placed it with her main bag, and that was just through the tent flap.  Plate still in her lap, still chewing, she leaned back until she had to put a hand on the ground to keep from toppling back, reached through the flap with the fork, and managed to hook her hat.  She got it close enough to grab it, then sat up again.

She gave it a once-over, noting the diagram they’d put on it before leaving.  The wide brim was useful in a way, because it provided a lot of drawing area.

The idea of this particular bit of chalk-drawing, like the one on Lucy’s hat and Verona’s hat, was not to work on spirits, but to work on the bands she could see with the Sight.  Every relationship between a person and a person, place, or thing had a band or a ‘connection’.

The main drawing on the brim served to temporarily sever the connection between her and her home.

- 1.3 Lost for Words

______

“It’s what I want,” Avery said, firmly.  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a frayed black rope.  “Miss brought me this.  Bit of a consolation prize, when I couldn’t save Reagan and the others.  I kind of want to play with it.  Figure it out.”

Lucy wanted to say something, but her own feelings on that subject were a bit too heavy.  And new.  She’d been trying not to dwell on it while focusing on the subject of Avery.

“What does it do?” Verona asked.

Avery wrapped the rope around her hand, then walked backwards, until a tree blocked line of sight.

She kept walking backwards, but now she was ten feet away.  She kept walking, and whenever line of sight was broken, she appeared a distance away.

Moving like Miss had, kind of.

“Stay in touch?” Lucy asked.  “I’ll worry if you don’t.”

Avery nodded.  Rope still wrapped around her hand, fist closed around the ends, she broke into a run.

Covering an easy ten times the distance as she cut from tree to tree, ducked behind a rock and appeared twenty feet away from behind a tree, took two paces until she’d disappeared behind another tree, and appeared another thirty feet down the path.

- Out on a Limb 3.2

______


John's house… she didn't recognize it from this angle, but she recognized some of the houses from near it.

Rope in hand, she skipped-

And tripped. Her shin banged against rock, little corners of slate digging in. She made a face, looked around, and saw some people by the water. She flipped up the bit of scarf in front of her chin, and checked the diagram.

Faded to the point of almost being gone.

That had burned out fast. She pulled it free, leaving the hat on, and pulled out a chalk marker-pen. She started at one end and traced along the already-drawn lines as she went, ascending the hill and keeping to the shelter of the trees.

It took a few minutes. Her eyes scanned the gaps in the trees to make sure nobody was springing up. Especially John. Or John's friends, like the goblins. The four local goblins seemed to like hanging out in the dead bushes, trees, and ditches around the edges of civilization.

The faint chemicals of the chalk pen was thick in the air as she replaced the scarf. She checked her leg, which had only a bit of blood running down from a scuff, and then resumed moving, skipping across the street to John's neighbor's house.

The house backing up on John's backyard was unoccupied too, and she found her perch on the upstairs patio, which used the ten or so feet of garage that overlapped the house as a platform for an extended balcony. Dead leaves and plants littered the corners, where the short fence and railing at the edge kept them from blowing away.

It gave her a view of John's place; she could look through and see the guitar on the back porch, the beer bottles, and the interior, which hadn't been cleaned up in a while. Some windows had newspaper or boards put up, to keep the light out.

John's movement through the bottom floor of the house was so abrupt she jumped a little. Moving with purpose, from the one corner of the house to the other, disappearing from view because the one corner didn't have a lot of visibility.

Then going the other way.

She had the impression he was getting ready for something, but his hands were empty when he walked by the big window.

It wasn't until the fourth crossing that it dawned on her that he was pacing.

He has two modes. Hurry up and wait, and shooting. They'd been told that early on. She'd seen another side of him that was tense and hinted at being dangerous, but casual. Playing his guitar and smiling over a gift of video games.

'Hurry up and wait' hadn't felt this ominous before. Like there was a latent energy or frustration behind the hurrying and waiting both.

"What's going on, John?" she murmured. "What did you do? What part did you play in all of this?"

This was the observation the others had wanted. John had heard or been told about the nine years ago thing, and now he was acting different. Could that be explained away as the threat of outside practitioners? He was one of the Others who protected the perimeter of Kennet, kept the monsters out. This agitation could stem from that, right?

She watched him pace.

He stopped, mid-pace, by the largest window.

The smell of chalk and the marker's chemical filled her nostrils. She pulled the cape away so she could check it, and she saw the chalk coming away in curls of smoke.

Crap.

She bolted, jumping from the ledge, using the rope to carry herself away. The nearest good landing point was the fence where three yards met, and she landed there, the diagram smoking.

She looked over her shoulder before her next skip ahead, and saw John at the window, looking at her with that thousand-yard stare she'd seen a few times.

Avery carried on, heading to the street, using the rope to gauge that the way was clear, then skipping over to the trees. She hunkered down, put the rope away, and checked her scarf.

That had burned through fast. Was she weaker? Maybe she'd lied and hadn't realized it?

She still had to head back to the others. She set to work fixing up the cape, sitting on a fallen tree in the middle of the glade and moving the cape across her lap so she had a flat-ish surface to work with for each portion.

"Is there anything I need to worry about?" His voice was deep.

She grabbed the rope from her pocket and lurched to her feet, flicking it as she slipped past the tree, her other hand holding the cape.

Ten feet away, her back to a tree, she peeked.

John Stiles stood at the edge of the glade, holding a rifle. It was off to the side, butt end on the ground, barrel pointed up and away.

"That's a tough question to answer," she told him. "We have no plans to do anything to you that's really worth worrying about… uhh, unless you have something to hide."

"Don't we all?" he asked. Then, after a moment's consideration, he added, "I didn't think I needed to hide that much."

"I was just checking in. I didn't want to bother you so I used a connection blocker. It burned out fast, there."

"I wouldn't be very effective at what I do if it was that easy to blind me to you."

"I'm not a confrontational person," Avery said. "I'm not angry, I'm not after you. We were just wondering how you were doing."

"But you ran. You hid yourself. Your first instinct was to flinch, dash away, and hide," he said. She couldn't really see much of him past branches and tree trunks, but his voice was clear.

"I'm a little easily spooked right now. Last weekend was a lot," Avery ventured.

John was silent. She had to check he was still there.

The silence felt judgmental. Her heart pounded.

"You're a bit scary right now. More intense than I've seen, except for our first meeting at your place."

"I don't mean to be scary."

"You're kinda standing there with a big gun."

"I always have a gun, Avery."

"See, that? That's a scary thing to say."

*

She heard him walking away.

Maybe she wouldn't send Snowdrop over.

She peeked, and saw John walking through the woods at a quick march, ducking under a branch, and using the length of the rifle to push another aside. He was strong enough to maintain a good foot pace despite the barriers the branches provided, and no wood or twigs broke. He left no trail.

She used her Sight to watch him. Fog rolled out, handprints and paw prints traced some of the trees, and ribbons trailed from branches. She saw the thread of connection between him and… at her left hand, she wore the charm bracelet, with a wristband over it to keep it in place and hide the specific charms. The dog tag was held over her pulse.

- Out on a Limb 3.5

_______

"John maybe? When you scouted out his place the other day, did he teleport?"

"No," Avery said. "Jogged after, I'm pretty sure. Caught up while I was fixing my diagram. He was still pretty fast and good at tracking, though."

- Out on a Limb 3.8