Chapter 1: Morning Bell
Chapter Text
The Archmother’s herald quakes beneath the onslaught, crying out for aid, but Pocket has nothing left to give. They stand alone amidst the rival ritualists besieging the Patron. They open their suitcase, and magic bursts forth, coating the enemy in the plague they’ve taken it upon themself to contain. Even afflicted, most ignore Pocket in favor of taking down the Patron, but two dive straight for them.
Once, they nearly died from a single bullet to the chest. Now they take a dozen, with a bite of bitter magic to add insult to injury. Even with devils from their past demolishing their future, their final thought is, humiliatingly, Oh, shit.
Bells ring in the distance, grieving the early hour. These days many churches are more decorative than devotional, at least to the deity they were originally built to honor, but they can still be trusted to keep time throughout the city.
Pocket blinks drearily at the plaster ceiling. For a moment, it could be any solemn morning.
On the final dolorous chime, they bolt upright, patting frantically at their chest. No pain follows. Stranger still, they wear no bandages. When they peek down the front of their sleep shirt, they find their chest marred with sparse hair and a single years-old scar.
“Are you up, dear?” Ligaya Flores’s soft voice wafts into the tiny bedroom alongside the smell of garlic and frying eggs.
Pocket rented the bed before the Maelstrom arrived. Has she let them stay for free while they’ve convalesced?
“I’m up,” they call. “I’ll be right there, Ms. Flores.”
In the bathroom across the hall, their toothbrush rests right where they left it. They could probably stand to shave, but their razor is missing. Their facial hair has hardly grown anyhow.
Despite their insistence that she has no obligation to feed them, Ms. Flores has cooked breakfast every morning since they arrived. When they emerge from the bathroom, they find her at the stove in her bright little kitchen, juggling three pans at once.
Diminutive in reality, she carries herself like she’s eight feet tall. Gray-streaked hair tumbles from the loose bun atop her head to frame the near perfect circle of her face.
“You really didn’t have to,” they say, gesturing lamely at the stove top.
“Have you seen yourself, payatot? I’d feel like a criminal if I let you starve.” She scoops a mountain of garlicky rice onto a cheery yellow plate, followed by matching foothills of eggs and sausage. Her age-spotted arm strains before the heaping plate lands with a clatter on the table. “You’ll need your strength,” she says firmly.
Their ears ring with déjà vu as she flutters like a plump bird until they sit. “Thank you for taking care of me,” they say. “How much do I owe you?”
“You paid already.”
“Well, that was before, wasn’t it?”
“You paid through the week,” she says with a dismissive flap of her hand. “Now eat.”
That much they can do, at least. They shovel food into their mouth while she retrieves two coffee mugs. She pauses at the window. “It looks bad. Are you sure you need to go out there?”
Dizzy again, they ask, “What do you mean?”
“That’s what you told me yesterday, isn’t it? To stay indoors while you go do something foolish.”
“Yesterday?”
“Are you alright, dear?”
Their legs feel numb as they rise to join her at the window. Outside, a dark cloud circles in a doleful sky tinged with the miasmal yellow of dawn and an impending eclipse.
Maelstrom.
“Ms. Flores, do you keep a calendar?”
“Of course, dear.” She waves them over to the writing desk in the family room. Next to a framed photograph, there’s the calendar. Xes mark the days gone by, but the date of the ritual remains glaring in its emptiness.
With rubbery knees and a mouthful of ash, they go through the motions of getting properly dressed and collecting their things. They barely hear Ms. Flores when she bundles them into their coat and scarf and admonishes them to be careful.
On leaden feet they descend the stairs and lurch out onto the windy street. A newsboy shivers bravely at the end of the block, unable to unbind the stack lest all his papers go flying. “Get inside,” Pocket tells him after they’ve checked the date on the front page.
The ritual felt so real. They can even remember everything that preceded it. The night before, they sat paging through one of Christie’s mysteries while Ms. Flores hummed to the radio a hair off the rhythm, kindly mending one of the less hopeless tears in their coat. It was as calm an evening as they were likely to get before the Maelstrom. In the morning they woke to the bells’ lament and Ms. Flores’s cooking. They arrived at the ritual site last among their allies, then endured agony after agony, humiliation after humiliation.
No dream has ever felt as real as that.
Everything they’ve worked for over the past five years fell apart in a matter of hours, because they don’t have the killer instinct, because their fellow ritualists couldn’t agree on a strategy, because Pocket simply wasn’t good enough.
Failure’s trade-off ought to be the freedom of nothing left to lose. Instead, they have… whatever this is.
They light a cigarette with shaking hands cupped against the wailing wind. After all their preparations, it’s only natural to have vivid nightmares. As for the memories, it’s a phenomenon common enough to have a name; déjà vu feels real by definition.
No amount of either nicotine or reason steadies their nerves, but their walk grants them enough time to repeat the argument until it adopts some semblance of truth.
At the cultists’ hideout, they meet their fellow mystics: the pit fighter, the Wraith, the ghost, Professor Dynamo, and blessedly, Mo and Krill. For a moment the world tilts; overlaid atop the present are images of them all riddled with wounds. It still feels like a memory.
Pocket finds all eyes on themself.
The professor speaks first: “Arin, what are you doing here?”
Flinching, Pocket asks, “Can we worry about that later? Just get this done?”
Dynamo’s noise of protest might be breathy if he had any lungs. “I just found out you’re alive.”
Pocket forces themself to look at him directly, no matter how much it twists their gut. “Later, please. There isn’t time.”
Dynamo concedes with another wordless sound. He doesn’t need a human face to demonstrate his disappointment.
He can’t be their focus. There are too many other things to worry about.
The strategy is to work in twos and threes until they can breach the enemy’s first line of defense. As the last to arrive, Pocket doesn’t get a choice in working partner — or at least not one that doesn’t require them to address Dynamo again.
They get saddled with Jacob Lash, the fighter from the Bear Pit. Pocket has never been, but Lash’s reputation precedes him. The man is twice their width, a solid wall of muscle. In defiance of the chilly morning, his sleeveless top bares tattooed arms nearly as thick as Pocket’s waist.
“I didn’t sign up to babysit,” Lash says with a dramatic groan.
The phrase reverberates inside them, one more vertiginous layer of dream sense. What would they have said if they heard it before? Nothing, most likely.
Now they ask, “How old do you think I am?”
“I don’t know, kid. Twelve?”
“Twelve. Really?”
He rolls his eyes. “Young. Whatever. I’m giving you shit.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Sure.” Lash’s eyes narrow. Some dim light of intelligence glints in them when he looks Pocket over again, reassessing. “Twenty-four,” he says.
“Surprisingly close.”
Lash smirks, satisfied with himself, and Pocket escapes further scrutiny. Their tentative peace only lasts as long as it takes for the ritual to begin, and for Pocket’s past to race back to them.
Bells chime mournfully in the distance. Pocket blinks at the low plaster ceiling. For a moment, it could be any other morning.
On the final peal, they shoot upright, groping at their torso.
“Are you up, dear?” Ms. Flores’s voice floats alongside the smell of eggs and garlic rice.
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
They brush their teeth, splash water on their face, then head to the kitchen. Ms. Flores stands at the stove again, cooking three things at once.
“You really didn’t have to,” they mumble, rubbing their forehead.
“Have you seen yourself, payatot? I’d feel like a criminal if I let you starve.” She scoops heaping servings of rice and eggs and sausage onto a plate, then sets it on the table. “You’ll need your strength,” she says, waving for them to sit.
“Thank you.” The food is filling, at least, even if they’re distracted.
Ms. Flores grabs two coffee mugs then pauses at the kitchen window. “It looks bad. Are you sure you need to go out there?”
They chew on increasingly flavorless eggs while they wonder what they’re supposed to say. They settle on honesty: “I’m not sure, actually.”
“Here I thought you were hellbent on doing something foolish.”
A glance at Ms. Flores’s calendar shows the same as before: big Xes marking off every day leading up to the Maelstrom. The sky outside seethes with the impending storm.
They’ve had recursive dreams before, loop after loop until they awaken, but none has ever felt so real. Safer to assume this is something else. The suitcase ribbits as if in agreement.
They take a deep, steadying breath. “Thank you, Ms. Flores. For everything.”
“Of course, dear. Don’t forget your coat and scarf. It’s cold out there.”
Again, they walk to the hideout. Again, they have to brush off Dynamo’s attempt at a conversation.
Again, Lash says, “I didn’t sign up to babysit.”
“Worry less about me and more about that golem’s uppercut.”
He scowls back, which makes his already squinty eyes nearly recede into his face. “That was a fluke.”
“I didn’t mean the past. I saw him on the way here today. He’s not with us, though.”
That’s what went wrong before. Lash spent half the ritual complaining about Bebop. Maybe if it’s not a surprise, he’ll do better.
He’s already muttering to himself. He doesn’t stop until they’re standing in front of the guardian. Pocket tries not to assume the worst, but it’s hard to keep the faith once the bullets — and hooks — start flying.
Bells, breakfast, Ms. Flores’s kindness. Coat, scarf, a cigarette to steady the nerves. One foot in front of the other until they arrive at the hideout. They’re last again.
Lash eyes them head to toe. “I didn’t sign up to—”
“Can someone else deal with this guy? Or let him work alone. I can help somewhere else.”
“Don’t tell me you’re intimidated,” Lash says.
“I’m not,” Pocket says with as much patience as they can muster. “Anyone?” Dynamo looks like he might say something, so they ask, “Mo? Krill?”
Krill hesitates. “While we would love to work with you, I’m not sure you’re going to convince her to change her mind.” He gestures to Wraith.
“He’s right,” she says bluntly. “If you wanted a choice, you should have gotten here earlier.”
“You’ll be fine, Pocket,” Krill says. Mo places a huge paw on Pocket’s shoulder. “The Lash has an excellent reputation as a fighter.”
Lash’s chest puffs out. “See? Nothin’ to worry about, kid.”
“I wasn’t worried for me. I don’t want to work with some insecure meathead who’s going to get in his head when he sees that golem on the enemy’s side.”
“Insecure?” Lash laughs. “Please. The Lash has an unimpeachable self-est— wait, what golem?”
Pocket starts counting down the seconds before they wake up in that bed again.
It isn’t wholly Lash’s fault. Alongside the hook and the bombs and some sort of laser gun, there’s something worse: Maggie McGinnis, head of research and development at Fairfax Industries. An unrepentant war criminal at the top of their father’s payroll, McGinnis has brought all manner of toys to the ritual. Pocket can see the souls it takes to operate most of them, perverse technology horrifyingly similar to the power contained in their suitcase.
They can’t decide if it’s worse for her to recognize them or for her to simply not care who it is she mills down. She’s an amoral creature regardless, one like their father, who cares more for profit than for human life.
They take special satisfaction every time one of her turrets explodes in a burst of their spirit power, but neither they nor any of their allies can stop her inexorable march toward the Patron.
In many ways she’s the worst of the mystics working for the Hidden King, but she isn’t the only one Pocket hates.
They taste blood on their teeth again every time they see the assassin. Calico’s cold mockery cuts to the bone. As dispassionate and indiscriminate in her violence as McGinnis, the only true difference between them is the scale of operation.
Pocket doesn’t hate Mina Ha. She’s a distraction though, a reminder of the vicious world they left behind and the life they could have had. They might have considered her threatening but never deadly before now. Five years changed a great deal, including her very species.
Pocket could blame Lash for many things, and they do, but they aren’t so deluded they can’t see the real problem.
If only that self-awareness changed a goddamned thing.
Chapter Text
“I didn’t sign up to babysit.”
“You’re assuming a lot for a guy who’s never met me. You have no idea what I can do.”
Lash’s gaze zips down their body, as unimpressed as the previous four times. “You look like a stiff breeze could knock you over.”
“Like the one between your ears?” It bursts out before they can contain it. If Lash were anyone else, they might even regret it.
“No need to be hostile,” Lash scoffs.
“I’m not—” Pocket stops themself short. Slowly and with a steadying breath, they find their self control and uncurl their fists. “Like it or not, we’re stuck together. We need a plan.”
Lash rolls his eyes. Maybe starting with an insult was not the winning strategy. Rubbing at the gouges their nails left in their palms, they promise themself that next time, they’ll manage the situation better — if there is a next time.
Who are they kidding? There will definitely be a next time.
Once the ritual begins, they try to hang back, but Bebop hooks them in. When they escape his grasp, McGinnis’s gun pins them behind cover. Lash manages to knock Bebop out, chasing him well beyond a reasonable point, then McGinnis’s turrets take him down. Pocket follows soon after.
With both of them gone, there’s no one to push McGinnis back. By the time they return, the guardian is already falling. It’s humiliating how quickly she does it; there’s not even time for Calico to try to ambush them like she has before.
“What happened to working together?” Lash growls as they retreat.
Their side aches and they can barely hang onto their gun, blood dripping down their fingers, but some part of them finds it vital to argue with Lash. “Oh, did you want something from me?” they snap right back. “I can’t read your mind.”
“I shouldn’t have to explain this shit.”
Pocket briefly fantasizes about shooting him. “Go help someone else. I’ll take care of this myself.”
“The Lash is gonna take his services elsewhere,” he says as if it was his idea. “Don’t give them too many souls while I’m gone.”
Pocket’s jaw hurts from clenching their teeth, but at least he’s gone.
Now it’s only a matter of facing down Maggie McGinnis and her turrets and that magic that looks exactly like the kind Pocket’s been trying to keep from their dad. Without Bebop to distract them, Pocket handles her turrets more easily, taking them out as fast as she can get them operational and grinding her down slowly with barrages from the case. They even make enough space for some forward momentum.
But they’re alone out here, and McGinnis’s turrets don’t remain their only problem. They round a corner to reload, and find themself face to face with Mina Ha. “Shit.”
“That’s all you have to say?” she sneers. Her bullets sting past their defenses, tearing at them with an awful sound. They’re bleeding faster than even McGinnis’s turrets can cause, and they dive into the safety of the case for a moment, if only to get a chance to rethink.
When they burst back out, she shrieks, but it doesn’t stop her from shooting until a burst of magic rips through them, worse than any of the bullets. “You were always pathetic,” she says, darting into close range. Instinctively they back away; they know what she can do if they let her get too close. They throw the cloak back toward the Archmother’s base of operations, and they teleport to safety.
Too late, they remember the turrets and McGinnis’s gun. The walker goes down without anyone to defend it, and they don’t even have Lash there to blame.
Pocket’s mother was a better parent than their father by the slimmest margin; only by comparison to the worst can she seem any good at all. They reflect on this when the next attempt at the ritual goes better than the last. Relative terms are the only terms that save them from despair. Viewed in absolutes, it’s one more unmitigated disaster.
They hold their initial defenses long enough for Calico to try to ambush them, and Pocket defends themself well enough to send her running with her tail between her legs. It’s a near thing, but a success is a success.
In the quiet between waves of attacks, they leave Lash long enough to find some of the denizens that have been summoned into the side streets and nearby buildings. They barely have time to handle one of them before Mina descends slowly from above, gun already popping furiously at them.
They duck for cover between one building and the next, casting about for an escape route or better vantage for attack.
“Disappearing again, Arin?” she calls. “You’re good at that.”
They flinch away from her words, ducking into the lounge and dashing up the stairs. She was on the ground last they saw, but when they come out the rooftop exit, there she is at the edge of the roof, emptying her gun into their chest. Mina’s red-eyed glare follows them as they’re snatched away from death once more by the Archmother.
There’s no escaping any of it. There’s only more pain. Calico’s claws slash into their chest. McGinnis’s turrets tear them to shreds. Mina hunts them, by turns furious and mocking.
The other enemies pose a different sort of problem. Despite how much Bebop and Lash clearly detest each other, he doesn’t seem to bear any particular ill will toward Pocket. From what they’ve gleaned from everyone who isn’t Lash, Bebop’s perfectly decent when he’s not mid-bloodsport. They don’t know Abrams personally, but they’ve seen the detective around; seven feet of blue Ixian is hard to miss, especially when he’s haunting their end of the city, turning over stones that a lot of people would prefer remain unturned.
Paige is the bigger mystery. Bibliomancy is an uncommon enough talent that if they had more than this single, recurring day, they could probably do some digging on her. Nobody else knows anything about her. But from her defensive style and the slew of apologies that fumble out of her mouth when they’ve crossed paths, it’s probably safe to assume she has more in common with Bebop than with Calico.
None of them seem like bad people. Pocket can’t even find them guilty by association; they didn’t know who’d be working for the Archmother until that first time they arrived in the hideout. Did those three, like Pocket, simply show up to find their alliance already formed?
They don’t have time to ruminate on it before Abrams charges them into the side of a building and something ominous pops inside them, but the question lingers when they’re floating in the Archmother’s base, waiting for their soul to be reattached to their body.
The Hidden King’s ritualists break down their defenses until they can lead wave after wave of troopers into the Archmother’s base of operations. It takes less than a minute for them to rip apart the sentries that protect her screaming herald.
Pocket is the first on their side to return to their body. They leap in alone to defend her. They don’t have high hopes, but they do have a powerful last resort.
They unleash the affliction — just as all six enemies are yanked out of range. A moment later, they all hit the ground, and Lash follows it by diving down onto Bebop first. In an instant, a green shield appears around the golem, then green fire spreads in a line from Lash to Pocket. “Idiot,” Calico says smugly as she throws gloom bombs at them both.
A wall erupts behind them, and Pocket has nowhere to run. Before they can use any of the magic at their disposal, Abrams slams into Lash — and then into Pocket, with Lash still in tow. They’re crushed beneath him as the Ixian drains the life from both their bodies. The Archmother’s effigy crumbles again.
They wake to a live current of frustration.
They can’t keep working with Lash. What they need is someone who understands teamwork or at least uses their goddamned words.
He should have waited until after Pocket’s attack before he did anything. Or maybe if he had announced his plan, Pocket could have responded. Instead, he ruined Pocket’s last ditch effort and got both of them killed.
They can’t do it again. They can’t. It was awful from start to finish, and Lash saving the enemy is the last straw.
They shovel breakfast into their mouth faster than they’ve done before. They jog all the way to the hideout. “Arin?” Dynamo asks.
“Not now.” They wave him off. All six of the others are already here. They’ve already paired off. Pocket is stuck with the Lash again.
The following morning, they wolf down two cursory mouthfuls of eggs and dart out the door, and they push themself, arriving at the hideout sweaty and winded.
“Arin?” Dynamo asks.
“Not now.”
Everyone else is here already. Again. “I didn’t sign up to babysit,” Lash groans.
Attempt number three: they skip brushing their teeth, skip breakfast altogether, skip everything but waking up and throwing on their clothes. “Don’t forget your coat,” Ms. Flores calls, as if they would. They snatch it up before they’re dashing out the door, using the garment to teleport wherever possible.
By the time they stop at the hideout, they’re doubled over with their hands on their knees.
“I didn’t sign up to babysit.”
“Shut up,” they wheeze, too resigned to bite back.
“Rude,” Lash says, and they dig their hands into their legs until their fingertips turn white.
“You know what? I’ll pay you,” they say, no longer looking at Lash, but at Wraith. “When this is over, I will pay you if you let me work with Mo and Krill.”
With Lash muttering on in the background, Wraith studies them. “What do you think?” she asks Krill after a moment. “They good for it?”
“Of course,” Krill says.
“I suppose I can be benevolent,” she says with a shrug. “I won’t shoot Lash until the ritual’s over.” Lash grumbles in protest, but nobody’s paying him any attention. “Have at it,” Wraith continues. “Don’t forget you owe me, though.”
“Never,” they say as solemnly as they can. Most of their gratitude is entirely genuine anyway.
She saunters Lash’s direction, and she’s already saying, “If you do anything stupid, I’m cutting my losses and ditching you.” Lash looks as annoyed as she sounds.
Relieved, Pocket turns to Mo and Krill. This is going to go so much better; they’re sure of it.
“We weren’t expecting to see you here,” Krill says.
“I could say the same to you. What are you doing here?”
“The Hovel could use a facelift.” The Hovel has seen better days, but it’s a shallow reason to show up here, and Krill sounds cagey.
Pocket chooses not to push it. It’s too nice being free of Lash.
Out in the street, things are different. Here they face Calico from the beginning, squashing down the way their chest clenches and their jaw aches.
“Relax,” Krill says while they take down the Hidden King’s troopers. “We’ve got this.”
Most of their energy goes toward convincing themself they won’t die simply by existing in front of Calico. By the time they get into the flow of the fight, she lunges, and they’re yanked back into the Archmother’s embrace, getting their soul stitched back into their body.
They have to return. Mo and Krill are out there struggling against Pocket’s would-be assassin. Their chest squeezes and every muscle feels tense, but they go back.
She lunges in like before. This time, Mo catches her. “Help us with this!” Krill commands. Pocket is too slow to react; she gets away again, but at least now it’s a retreat.
“I never thought I could hate cats,” they say mournfully.
“I’ve never liked the things,” Krill answers.
Without Calico to back her up, Paige backs away. Her primary contribution to the Hidden King’s alliance is how very hard she makes it to fight back against them, or to do enough damage to knock Calico out of the fight for good. Suppression is the best they can manage so long as Paige is there.
Calico returns, but this time when Mo tries to grab her, Pocket doesn’t even have time to respond before they’re getting trampled by ethereal horses. They return to that strange stasis in the Archmother’s chamber.
They don’t win this one either.
The second time they try to work with Mo and Krill, they ask to speak with them privately in the hideout. The moment they’re alone, they ask bluntly, “How many times have you done this Ritual?”
“This would be the first,” Krill says. “How old do you think we are?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Eighty?” Pocket answers dryly.
“Children,” Krill scoffs. Mo echoes it with an amused huff.
It leaves a dent in their burgeoning theory that the Archmother’s resurrection caused this. They light a cigarette, scowling at the floorboards.
“Something’s wrong,” Krill says.
“I’m just going in circles. Nothing I do makes a difference. Tomorrow’s going to be exactly the same as today.”
Mo almost knocks them over as he leans comfortingly into their space. Krill pats their arm delicately. “You make a difference, Pocket.”
“No, I—” It’s not funny, but they almost laugh. “I mean literally. I’m reliving the ritual over and over. It’s some kind of curse or hex or something, but this ritual isn’t my first. It’s my tenth? Twelfth? I’m losing track. And I don’t know what to do or how to stop it.”
Krill is quiet a moment, though he and Mo share a glance that they seem to think is subtle. “Perhaps you should approach it like any other puzzle. If you’re stuck, change one thing at a time. Figure out the pattern.” Krill shrugs, having dispensed the last of his wisdom.
They need more than a vague methodology. They need answers. But what did they expect? Krill wasn’t going to have the solution conveniently scribbled on a note somewhere. He’s only helping the best way he knows.
Besides, his advice isn’t wrong. They need to determine a method, change one thing at a time, then keep trying. They’ll find the pattern or find the absence of one. Either way, it’s more information than they had before.
It can’t hurt any more than anything else. They’re starting to believe they have all the time in the world.
Learn something. Find the pattern. Easier said than done.
The following morning, they take a right instead of a left out of Ms. Flores’s apartment. The route is slightly longer, but if they’ve learned anything so far, it’s that it seems impossible to get there early enough to make a difference. Time to try getting there late.
They arrive five minutes late, which isn’t late enough not to hear it: “I didn’t sign up to babysit.”
The next morning, they try ten minutes, then fifteen. The later they arrive, the more likely they are to find their fellow ritualists in varying states of distress. They lose every time regardless, and often faster than before. It’s clearly not helpful to stress their teammates out before the ritual; that only distracts them and makes their performance worse.
Having pushed their lateness to half an hour with no positive results, they try something else: they avoid the ritual entirely.
A pink neon sign sits unlit in the window of a psychic. On a whim, they knock anyway. They’re greeted by a sunken-eyed old woman in a sensible sweater. She scowls at the sky before she lets them in and locks the door.
“Sit, sit,” she insists.
There at the table is the expected: a deck of cards, a crystal ball, enough candles to make them worry about the fire hazard, all carefully aligned on the tattered silks draped over the table. They’ve never felt like reading the future held much purpose, even in a world full of other wonders. But it can’t hurt, right? Maybe it will give them a sense of the problem they’re trying to solve.
She shoves a deck of cards into their hand unceremoniously. “You shuffle,” she says. “Think of question. When ready, you give back.”
It’s harder to focus on a question than they thought it might be; skepticism is one hell of a hurdle. But a general What’s going on here? is easy enough to cling to. They decide at random that they’re finished shuffling and hand the cards back.
The first card she flips is upside down from their side of the table. It depicts a figure in a cloak, five goblets strewn at their feet. “Your past,” she says. “Five of cups. Grief, loss.” She stares hard at them. “A loss of self, I think. Is right?”
It takes work to suppress their cynicism enough to keep their face smooth. Who hasn’t lost something? “Right.”
She places the next card. This one faces them directly: an angel pouring one cup into another. “This is present. Temperance. Your life out of balance. Maybe because of a careless choice.” Again, she squints at them. She only nods this time, not bothering to ask if she’s right. An eerie feeling settles on their shoulders like a blanket.
“Future now,” she says. She pulls the final card, but it lands face down, the simple stars on black pattern on its back winking up at them both. Her brow wrinkles, and she turns it over, only to be met with the same. Her mouth flattens. They get the distinct impression she’s quite intentionally not looking at them now. “Means nothing. We try again.”
She flips another. Her bony hand spasms, sending it drifting off the table and down, where it slides neatly beneath one of the many shelves of trinkets.
“We come this far. Should see it through,” she says almost as if to herself as she goes searching for it.
Guilt slithers through them at the sight of this old woman crawling on hands and knees. “Let me help,” they say.
There is just enough space between the floor and the arching bottom edge of the furniture to fit their hand, as long as they roll up their sleeve. With the tips of their fingers, they manage to seize the card and slide it back out. The card they retrieve comes out with its long side parallel to Pocket and the old woman alike, neither upright nor inverted.
“Wheel of Fortune,” she says. “Cycles, fate. As future, big changes coming to you.”
“Good changes or bad changes?” they ask, unsure why their throat is suddenly tight.
“Hard to say like this.”
Loss, life out of balance, cycles. Nothing they couldn’t have figured out for themself, if any of the reading is even real. Big changes coming. They scoff. Maybe when it’s sideways it means no change, or it means they’re stuck repeating the same day over and over. And what does it mean when it’s on the floor? they want to ask.
The whole thing feels like a cruel joke.
“I have to go,” they say. “What do I owe you?”
“That is only beginning. We have to discuss,” she protests as they help her to her feet. Hazel eyes search their face, then she sighs. “Three dollars.” Wordlessly, they surrender the cash.
Outside on the curb, they light a cigarette, shielding it from the wind and the mist that’s steadily becoming a drizzle. “Highway robbery,” they mutter to themself. Three whole dollars to learn nothing. They’ll get it back when the day resets, but they’re offended on principle.
They didn’t think the reading took that long, but they can hear gunfire in the distance. A brilliant blue light gleams uptown at the Archmother’s base. The nearby buildings obscure it, but they know if they got a good angle, they’d be able to see the Hidden King too.
The rain comes harder now, pelting them with fat, stinging droplets. It’s not this bad at the part of the city cordoned off for the Ritual. They’re in the eye of the magical storm there, a fact which Pocket has taken for granted until now.
They glare at the sky when the water puts out their cigarette, and the wind squeals in their ears. Above them, an air conditioning unit shakes violently in its fifth-story window before it unlatches.
They wake with a start, grateful, for once, for the miserable cycle they’re trapped in. Better than dying to an air conditioner. They can picture the headlines now, the puns some yellow press asshole would make with heir and air.
They brush their teeth, creating an imaginary list of objects that could be more humiliating to die to. The scatological come first, then the sexual. It makes them feel slightly better about the AC unit, at least. They spit out their toothpaste and stare at their own reflection, marveling at how quickly they’ve turned to morbid absurdity. It only took a baker’s dozen of full-blown disasters.
The obvious hits them only afterward: they died outside the ritual, and they’re still here.
When their hand stops trembling, they shave the fuzz off their top lip and wonder how many times they’ll do this. Three hundred and fifty-something more of these, and they’ll be a year older. Will they keep waking to this same weedy mustache, this same tired body, while their mind careens off into either insanity or senility?
They rub their face clean. Comb their hopeless hair. This can’t go on forever. They’ll find a way out before then.
They eat Ms. Flores’s cooking and wonder how long it will take to tire of the same breakfast every day. It’s a good thing they’re not picky. A good thing she’s a good cook too. They might already be sick of it otherwise.
“Don’t forget your coat,” she says kindly.
“Thank you,” they call as the door swings shut. They sling the gun over their shoulder and fish a cigarette out of their coat pocket. Now they know how much time they have to get there before their fellow mystics start to panic.
At least they’ve learned something. It’s a start.
When they arrive at the hideout this time, they suffer the same as before: “Arin? What are you doing here?” Dynamo asks.
“We can talk about it later,” they say, appeasing him with a later they don’t believe will come.
“I didn’t sign up to babysit,” Lash groans.
“I’ll pay you,” they say to Wraith again, ignoring Lash entirely. Only this time, they try to change a new variable. “I’ll pay you to work with me.”
Even with her eyes half hidden by the brim of her hat, they can sense Wraith’s amused calculations. “If the boys will allow it, why not? Might be nice to have a Fairfax owe me a favor.”
Pocket wants to hide inside their coat. Embarrassing to be figured out so easily, but it shouldn’t matter. However it is she knows, she knows. She can’t get paid if she betrays them, and she’s willing to work with them now to let them avoid Lash.
“You’re gonna keep me in mind, right, kid?” she asks.
They nod, resigned to owing a favor to a crime lord. If that’s what it takes to stop their father, then that’s what it takes. How bad could it be? It certainly can’t be as bad as the war profiteering. “Sure. I’ll remember that you helped me.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” She smiles, a real one with teeth and all, and for a moment, they’re taken aback by how pretty she is for someone so ruthless.
Working with Wraith is enlightening. There’s the aforementioned ruthlessness, but that’s for the enemy. For Pocket, she’s amicable, even funny sometimes, and chatty in a way that isn’t demanding they cater to some meathead’s ego.
When she’s shot down Calico and the librarian has to retreat, Wraith pushes one of the dying candle-headed troopers with a shoe that’s both sensible and stylish. “What are you here for, anyway?” she asks. “Daddy’s fortune?”
Under ordinary circumstances, it would seem unwise to share with her. Under these circumstances, they’re not terribly concerned about what she’ll remember tomorrow. “Close enough. I’m taking the company. How did you know who I am?”
She grins as she fires into the guardian, and only answers once it’s crumbled and her noisy gun has spun back down. “Nothing happens in my city without me knowing about it.”
“Sounds exhausting,” they say.
“That’s power for you.” She shrugs. “We all want it. Some of us get it. Takes work to hold onto, though.”
“Is it worth it?”
Her smirk arrives more slowly this time. “Ask me again when we’ve won.”