Natalie exploded into motion, beating even Mackenzie to Deirdre's side. The sudden reappearance of the Threshold rooftops had left Mackenzie disoriented, but Natalie was already scooping her mother into her arms. She was impressed with Natalie's wherewithal. Deirdre mumbled something but Mackenzie couldn't make it out. She was still conscious. Good. The blow had left her reeling though, and she was in no condition to finish this.
Jona, Lex, and Christy descended from other rooftops and formed a discount rent-a-phalanx to protect Natalie and her mother from Carter. Christy's mallet was chipped, spoiling the perfect candy swirls, and a blacklight bone in Jona's skeletal left wing flickered like a dying neon tube. Videos playing on Lex's skin got stuck buffering. Mackenzie took her place in the bruised and battered B-squad's lineup and brandished her blade.
Arrayed against them were the true die hards, the casual Otherworld dwellers having bailed when they realized both sides were playing for keeps. Carter stood flanked by Rodger and Courtney, a pair of faeries Mackenzie knew by name but had never spoken to. Behind them were Padma and Greg. Padma had spruce needles as thick as rail spikes growing like porcupine spines from her back. Greg hovered with gentle, steady beats of his butterfly wings, but there was nothing gentle about his crossed, firefighter-thick arms.
Carter stepped forward. "You can't win this."
All the subtlety of his prior machinations was gone. Crude, nakedly magical influence invaded Mackenzie's mind. The first thought that played out in her memory was of the time he'd backed her into saying she didn't belong here. That sense of utter defeat rose to the surface. The shame and rage swelled as fresh as the day it'd happened.
The memory barrage didn't stop with the most recent wound. Her phone's text message screen appeared behind him, large as a cinema projection. It loomed on the edge of existence, where only she could see his fauxpology for not letting her join them because of her season.
Words lurched into her throat: You're right. I should go. He wasn't bothering with sterile, minimally invasive; this was chest cracking, open heart surgery on a kitchen table. And Carter was the smug-grinning street doctor using her gaping wound to ash his hand-rolled cigarette.
Her only alternative was to not speak at all. So she didn't. She just stared, fire-eyed and brutal, waiting for him to open his silly little mouth again so she could cram her sword in it. He'd conjured up a molten bubble of raw emotion and now she was daring him to pop it.
Instead, Carter looked at Lex. "They're nothing like you. Why do you bother?"
Even without magic, there was no making a statement like that without making waves. From the way Lex's signal body color shifted and popped in and out of phase with itself, those waves were a most unwelcome interference. But Lex was enigmatic at the best of times. There was no telling whether Lex would turn on them, or upload 12Tb of porn to all of Carter's cloud storage accounts. Maybe both.
Carter didn't bother waiting for Lex to decide. He rounded on Christy. "You disappoint me. You're selling out to the very people who will keep us down forever, and for what? A pat on the head?"
She thought for sure Christy would punch him for a statement like that, but Mackenzie wasn't comfortable with the way Christy was looking at her instead. She could see her running the numbers. Her grip on her mallet was a little too relaxed as she poured all her effort into bludgeoning back whatever unwelcome thoughts in order to come up with an answer.
"Don't do it, Christy," Mackenzie said. "Don't play his game. You know where that kind of thinking gets you. Lex help me out here."
"Why? I've offered you my help plenty of times and all you've done is throw it in my face. Suddenly you want it?"
"Oh Goddex, Lex. Don't do this now. That wasn't helping. You were getting between Natalie and me."
"I was looking out for you, and you didn't even thank me!"
Mackenzie stomped her foot, the jarring physicality of it reminding her that no matter what Carter did with her memories, her body was hers. "Dammit, Lex! We knew he could do this. Mess with us. Mess with our heads. Don't fall for it!"
Despite her words, she was having a hard enough time keeping her own thoughts straight. Maybe this was hopeless. Maybe they had been just delaying the inevitable meltdowns between each other.
"I'm just pointing out the truth," Carter said, eerily calm despite the circumstances. His soothing tone, his placid demeanor, even his relaxed posture. It was all too much. An injection-molded plastic facade, hollow, brittle, but refined so well that from a distance he appeared genuinely blameless for the chaos he wrought. "There's perks to selling out. Isn't that right, Jona?"
Jona looked as though they'd been punched in the teeth. Their glowing hands came up to sign a reply, but the shock hadn't worn off. If Mackenzie had to guess, she'd say Carter's magic could make even his lip movements mean exactly what he wanted them to mean to Jona. Well, that was one question answered.
Christy squared off with Jona. Her body language alone was enough to dim the glow of Jona's blacklight body. "What about you? What do you know that you're not telling us?"
"Christy, leave them alone."
Carter spoke over Mackenzie. "It's a valid question." Affirmation of fears was the last thing any of them needed. But Carter had tasted blood and he wasn't letting go.
There wasn't a single memory it brought forward, just snippets of a thousand little moments of conversation she'd interpreted one way when they could have meant another. She fought it. She trusted Jona.
But the thoughts slipped, like earthworms wiggling through her fingers, escaping her control and sickening her with the sensation. She'd never considered Jona's privacy as something suspicious or malicious, but the doubt tickled like a feather running up her spine. And so there she stood, waiting for Jona to answer a question that seemed uncomfortably . . . valid. The others gave Jona the same questioning look.
The hurt in Jona's glowing eyes was something Mackenzie would never forget. It seared her memory more ferociously than the outline of their neon skull seared her retinas. Even as it was still forming, the memory twisted into a one of a more pained expression, like the corners of a burnt page of a book curling up and distorting the letters.
That snapped Mackenzie out of it. "Forget it. It doesn't matter."
It was enough to get Lex to realize ey was glaring like a stern schoolteacher. Ey nodded. "You're right."
"No way," Christy said. "If you two know, I wanna know."
"I don't know. But it's not so important that Jona has to say it if they don't want to."
"You have every right to know," Carter said. "You both do."
Jona crouched down and buried their face in their knobby knees. Mackenzie had never witnessed Jona so fragile. They'd seen it all. Nothing fazed them. But the intensity of their reaction only fed Mackenzie's curiosity.
It had all gotten twisted. The point of them doing this together was to keep each other focused. Instead, Carter had hammered on every wedge he could find. And with his backup, they didn't stand a chance. She'd put them all in danger. She'd have been better off doing this alone.
She shot a deadly violent glare at Carter before crouching down at Jona's side. She didn't need Semantomancy to get the point across: Stay put. I'll deal with you in a moment. Mackenzie navigated her hand around their retracted wings to stroke their rope-light hair.
"I was first," Jona signed without looking up. Mackenzie had to shift around in front of them to get them to look at her.
"First? First g-e-n? I know."
Jona shook their head. "First."
"Jona wasn't just first gen." The voice was Natalie's. She approached with heavy steps, leaving Deirdre propped up against the rooftop's ledge. "They were the first artificial faerie to survive infancy. That anyone knows of, at least. Survived, but Actyun figured deafness was still a failure. Jona's project was terminated. They escaped to the one place the lab coats couldn't follow."
"The Otherworld." Mackenzie kissed Jona's head. "That explains why you hate Actyun as much as I do. But what does your mother have against the rest of us that she doesn't have against Jona?" That question came up on its own, with no help from Carter.
"Ask her yourself," Natalie said.
Mackenzie looked at Deirdre, but Deirdre looked away in obdurate defiance. "Well?"
"Back then we didn't know what to think," Deirdre said. Her voice was weak. Her speech, worryingly slow. "I don't have to explain myself to you."
As soon as she spoke, Greg made a move to charge. Lex, Christy and Natalie formed up to face him, but Carter held him back. "Let her speak."
"We'd never encountered anything them before. We thought they were just another faerie. A little young to be unaccompanied, but orphaned faeries aren't unheard of." Even in her half-alert state, Deirdre managed a dismissive flick of her wrist. "We found out the truth once more of you started appearing. But by then Jona was one of us. It was the rest of you that brought trouble. Raised by the mundane. No concept of your culture, your heritage. No respect for this realm or what it means to real fair folk."
There was that R-word. Christy's jaw set hard. Even Mackenzie bristled at it. Her question was answered, but now Deirdre was rambling without a filter. Things could turn in a hurry if she kept going.
"Who needs a new car for their sweet sixteen? Doesn't everyone know magic is the hot thing to buy for your precious little crotch spawn these days?"
"Mother, enough," Natalie said.
As Natalie, spoke Greg lunged once more, and this time Courtney joined him. Carter had to physically restrain them. It was the most aggressive action she'd ever seen Carter himself take. His magic was worthless once the fists were doing the talking, and he knew it. He couldn't afford to have someone taking a swing or it'd all be over.
"That's what you wanna be like? One of them?" Christy demanded of Jona.
"Shout all you want. They're deaf."
Natalie's remark drew Christy to her instead. "And you? Is that how you look at the rest of us?"
Lex stepped in between them to break them up, but Natalie shoved em aside with a remark about "fighting her own battles." Lex's body skewed, and the thousands of overlapping waveforms became sharp, high amplitude spikes. Natalie responded by tightening the grip on her spear, daring Lex to test her.
With all eyes on the standoff, Mackenzie didn't notice Carter approach until he was close enough to whisper. She nearly jumped out of the Otherworld. "Do you see now? This is why I do what I am doing. No matter how nice they are on the surface, we will never be one of them in their eyes. There is no reconciliation. There is no room for compromise. You're not a hero, Mackenzie. You're just in the way."
Cold horror poured into Mackenzie, filling the space between her skin and her soul left behind as she retreated inward. You're not a hero, Mackenzie. Her thoughts scrambled about her mind searching for a solution, a witty comeback scrawled on a Post-It note, any way to insist it wasn't true. The anxiety mounted. She was a miniature homunculus pilot, thrashing about the cockpit of her skull, hammering buttons and wrenching a dead stick.
From a ripple of strange gravity arose a susurration of concrete crackling and joints groaning. For a wild moment no one spoke, only looking at one another for confirmation that they'd felt it too. Then, with a silent snap the effect reversed itself. The Threshold shuddered violently, tossing Lex and Carter to the ground and leaving the others staggering. Rodger caught himself on Courtney. Christy's mallet threw off her balance and she stumbled shoulder first into Natalie who fell onto Lex. Mackenzie was the only one unmoved by the quake, leaving no question of the source.
"Don't do it," Christy said. "Don't flip out on us now, girl."
But this was always the plan, wasn't it? If she wasn't a hero, she could at least do this. The clear expanse of morning sky darkened as clouds bloomed into being all around the rooftops. She stood in the eye of the coming storm. She took refuge in the quiet inevitability of it all. "Get out. Now," she told Carter.
"You would destroy all of this for what? Your ego? Because you can't wave a wand and save the day? You're as bad as she is!" Carter pointed at Deirdre.
"I'm no hero. Your words, not mine." She surprised herself with the boldness in her voice. The swirl and swell of conflicting thoughts rose at Carter's words, but her resolve was unbroken. It wasn't bravery; she just never considered backing down. "Last chance. Three."
"She's not gonna do it," Greg said with a smirk.
"Don't be stupid," Lex said. Mackenzie didn't care whether ey was talking to her or Carter.
The undulation of the clouds continued, but they drew no closer. The rooftop didn't shake; its concrete didn't shatter. "Do it, Kenz," Natalie said. Mackenzie tried to fall further inward, to be a stone sinking to the bottom of her being and drawing a whirlpool behind her. It didn't work. She skipped over the placid surface. The same resolve that had spared her Carter's manipulation moments earlier had come at the cost of her despair.
"It's not working," she mumbled, hoping only Natalie could hear.
"What do you mean 'not working'?" Natalie hissed.
Rodger elbowed Courtney and chuckled. "You can't force it," Carter said. His sigh was sodden with pity. "Surrendering to a panic attack is like steering into a drift: it's how you get control again. Your therapist has taught you that much at least, haven't they?" Disappointment flashed across Carter's face.
If she let him keep talking, they'd be at each others' throats in no time. Time for Plan B. Mackenzie grabbed Carter by the lapels of his cardigan and headbutted him square in the nose. He staggered back, eyes closed and fighting the involuntary need to tear up. He called her a bitch under his breath, but without his Semantomancy, Mackenzie really couldn't see what he was talking about.
Courtney rushed forward, thick tendrils of sooty, black smoke rolling off of her with each movement. Just inches before she slammed into Mackenzie, a glowing streak of light swept her up and into the sky, leaving what looked like a cloud of neon-lit rocket exhaust. Mackenzie coughed and waved the smoke away in time to see Jona drop Courtney off the edge of the rooftop. As soon as she dropped out of sight, a black trail of smoke appeared high above and a flailing Courtney came careening toward the rooftop once again. Greg flew out to catch her.
To Mackenzie's left, Padma ran for Deirdre but Christy cut her off. Padma crouched down and a salvo of needles shot out at Christy. She raised her lollipop mallet as a shield and they lodged themselves in its wide face. She swung at Padma, but Padma caught the blow and rolled with it, firing another needle blast. It was a wild shot, narrowly missing Lex and Rodger who had squared off nearby.
Carter shuffled side to side as the others fought. He looked like a rookie child on a soccer field, all the excited energy needed to look engaged, but unwilling to commit to a single confrontation. So Mackenzie took the fight to him. She pointed her blade right at his throat as she stomped toward him. She had no intention of taking him by surprise. He would see her coming and tremble.
Or not. The sting of burning metal filled her nose and lungs, and before she took another step, the smoke robbed her muscles of all their strength. Mackenzie collapsed to the ground, coughing desperately. As she rolled over, she saw Courtney standing above her, sneering. She hadn't even seen her there. A single tendril of smoke extended from her finger into Mackenzie's throat, a black umbilical cord filling her with death.
Natalie clobbered Courtney over the back of the head with her spear. Courtney staggered and tripped over Mackenzie, catching herself with her elbows on the concrete. A lurching, involuntary coughing fit took over as Mackenzie expelled the cruel air. She was dizzy. Her ribs were still bruised from the fight with the Brute and each cough left her whimpering. Pride be damned, it hurt.
Jona bobbed and weaved around Greg nearby. They danced circles around his fluttering wings, ducking his haymakers and rolling with his hooks. With each movement, they left arcing walls of blacklight glow, until at last one of his punches collided squarely with the solid light. It burst into a shower of dayglo sparks, but from the way he clutched his knuckles it must have been like punching brick. They tripped him with a wing and took flight to avoid his counterattack.
Christy was trapped in a pickle with Padma and Carter closing in. Lex had Rodger flailing wildly at eir insubstantial form, but wasn't doing anything to him either. As soon as Courtney got to her feet, Jona changed targets and drew her off of Mackenzie again.
"It's now or never, girlie," Natalie said.
"Then let me help." She extended a hand to lift Mackenzie to her feet, but there was something impish in her grin. It wasn't a hand up off the ground she was talking about.
Mackenzie coughed, ugly and wet. "You've seen what'll happen. If you're with me until it opens . . ." She shook her head. "There's no telling if you'd get away in time."
She shrugged. "We're in this together." That was all there was to say. In the quiet seconds they stole in the brawl, Natalie swayed with the electric urgency of a dancer in a club, riding out the beat drop. Her magnificent self-assurance was contagious. It said that if she died, she'd just swagger into Hell and turn the volume up.
Mackenzie hesitated, but Natalie's mischievous grin became a sincere smile of reassurance. She took Natalie's hand, and the Heartfire took control.
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