Ghost Town

I like the drip-feeding tactic that this fic employs in a lot of areas, especially with regards to Jodi's and Tacoma's relationship. It seems like the further we get on, the more little revelations are made that paint a clearer picture. I still couldn't really visualize Jodi's injury. But one-by-one you start giving us details: avalanche and surgeries using bolts. And when I found myself asking, "Wait, shouldn't that mean Jodi's rather fearful of winter weather?" you actually brought that up! Even littler moments, like Tacoma jumping in to offer a lie for Jodi to use, felt like a nice, natural way to further the dynamic b/w them just a tiny bit.

Speaking of dynamics, it really does seem like other characters' thoughts are having a more noticeable impact on the way Jodi behaves compared to the earlier chapters. I think you do a good job showing both her frustrations with feeling the thoughts of others (say, her sister) and the sorta neurotic panic that comes from Sarah giving off this uncomfortable aura. I also liked the subtle differences with how much more blunt and terse Jodi got with Sarah the longer they conversed. Similarly, I think the bits of snark that went on between Jodi and Tacoma were my favorite parts of the library scene. Probably because a fair amount of snark is involved in what few friendships I have, so it's a nice sense of familiarity for me that makes their friendship (even if it was nonexistant for a few years) feel real and genuine.

And, oh man, out of all of Tacoma's relatives, it's Nick that Jodi winds up seeing first. Yeah, you pretty effectively show just how much of a wreck he is, since he nearly manages to emotionally overwhelm Jodi. I can't help but think that something's not right when you have Jodi visibly trying to convince herself that Nick's hands are clean in all of this... but even then she's second-guessing herself. At least things end with (a bit of) a happy reunion. It was a sweet moment in what felt like mostly a downer chapter. Not that that was bad. It's very clear that this chapter's focused a lot on physical and mental strain. Physical in that Jodi's leg injury really takes a more active role in limiting her abilities. Mental in that everyone else's stress is not doing Jodi any favors, combined with the rpeeated references to her old name making her feel even more uncomfortable. I think it's all handled very well!

Some closing, less serious stuff:

Aw man, do they really give you guys work over holiday breaks over in Britain? That's straight-up evil. Even my old friends from college who went on to med school say their holiday breaks were free.


Bless you, you dorky fruit-loving dragon.


This is the doggiest dragon I think I've ever read in fiction - fan or otherwise. Not a bad thing. I love my doggos. X3


Can confirm that there are school papers that still do stunts like this.


You can practically sense an absol stalking Jodi, even if they're not Johto-natives.

EIGHT: FOUR MOURNERS
ELLA

Things are just so weird lately. You know? This time last week, everything was just the way it always had been: school; big brother at uni being all psychic and stuff; painting pictures and sometimes selling them to adults who want some local art for their living-rooms. And then – well, then Tacoma Spearing died. And then there was a murderer somewhere in town for Ella to worry about on her way home in the dark. And then Jodi came home and Ella suddenly had a big sister.

She remembers the drive over here, sitting in the car and staring out of the window so she didn't have to look at Jodi and feel bad for finding her so unrecognisable. She kept her face turned away for so long that Jodi asked if she was okay, and Ella had to admit that she didn't know because there's no point lying about your feelings to Jodi, and then Jodi reached out across the middle seat and took hold of her hand for what must have been the first time in about four years.

“Me either,” she said. “I think it's gonna be a rough one.”

Ella had no idea what to say. She barely even knew the touch of her; Jodi's fingers were small and smooth and freezing cold, completely unlike what she remembered from when Jodi used to walk her to school in the mornings. Sometime in the years since they last touched hands, Ella had apparently outgrown her.

It's a mess, honestly. Probably the best Ella can hope for is to not think about it and hope Con catches the guy before anyone else gets killed coming home in the dark.

She tugs surreptitiously at her dress, trying fruitlessly to rearrange it into a more comfortable position. She only has this one smart dress, and she's been wearing it for a couple of years too long now; it's definitely too tight around the chest. Ella tells herself she's a nineteenth-century princess chafing in her corset, and for a moment Lucas Spearing and the knot of townsmen gathered around him to express gruff masculine sympathy become a king and his coterie of courtiers before the tapestries of her imagination fade back into yellow wallpaper and brown carpet.

It's different to how she remembers. Ella has been to one funeral before, but that was Asshole Grandpa's (as he was privately known in the Ortega household) and the atmosphere wasn't anything like this. People were sad, sure, but there was a sense in the air that he'd lived his time, that his life had been long and rich and for him to be leaving now was a natural conclusion.

This is worse. Lucas and Annie look like someone cut them open and pulled something important out; Ella can almost smell the blood in the air. Tacoma wasn't meant to die. Ella didn't really understand that properly until she found herself here, and now she feels young and stupid, the only actor in the drama who doesn't know her lines. Look at it all. The snow and sandwiches and the dozens of adults looking grim.

And her sister, Jodi, looking strange and beautiful in a purple dress so dark it's almost black. Talking to Sam Spade from the petrol station, who turned up in a man's suit and a face so firmly set that nobody has yet dared to argue with her about it. Ella watches them both: Jodi's fingernails glinting red in the light as she gesticulates, Sam shaking her head, arms folded. Beside them, Lothian and Sam's clefairy are poking warily at one another, clearly wanting to play but too aware of the mood to dare spoil it.

Ella thinks about going over and trying to join the conversation, but her nerve fails her. How can she talk to anyone in this atmosphere? Besides, Sam is scary. And it really hurts to think this, but – so is Jodi.

It's not that Ella isn't happy about her. She's always thought it would be cool to have a sister, someone to share in the rituals of adolescent girlhood. But now that she actually has one, she finds that she's too nervous to do anything with her. She does want to, does want to talk with her about all the things she never really knew if it was okay to talk to Alex about, but everything is so new and strange. Would Jodi even want to hear about Ella's life? Would she enjoy it if they painted their nails together and shared secrets?

Ella thinks she might. Jodi probably wants to be Ella's sister even more than Ella wants her to be. But she's home from Goldenrod, from a university Ella will never attend in a city she's never visited, and she's so smart and grown-up, and now she's also much prettier than Ella ever managed to be, and honestly how the hell is Ella meant to get on that level?

“Hello, Ella.”

She tears her eyes away from Jodi to see Sam's cousin Gabriella approaching, smiling sympathetically. Taking pity on her, she thinks sourly. Because Ella is just that obviously lost.

“Hi,” she replies. She should probably say something else as well, but she has no idea what it should be.

“How are you?” asks Gabriella. The question doesn't sound the way it normally does. This isn't just a polite enquiry.

“I dunno,” admits Ella. “Um … not great, I guess.”

Gabriella nods slowly.

“Yes,” she says. “I don't feel so good myself.”

Brief pause. Ella's gaze slides back over to Jodi, as it always does. Ever since she came home Ella can't seem to stop staring at her. She's aware she shouldn't, that Jodi can definitely tell she's doing it and that it probably makes her feel bad, but she can't help it. She just looks so different, and yet so much the same.

“How are you getting along with Jodi?” asks Gabriella, following her eye.

Ella shrugs.

“She's my sister,” she says, which feels to her like a very inadequate way of communicating what she's thinking but which Gabriella seems to understand.

“Yes, she is,” she says. “It's good of you to come today. I think she could probably use the support.”

This is patently ridiculous, but talking back to people at a funeral is probably some kind of sin, so Ella can't really point that out.

“She doesn't need me,” she replies, in the most neutral voice she can muster. It's just a fact, after all.

“That's selling yourself short,” Gabriella tells her. “And it's putting a lot of pressure on her, don't you think?”

“What?”

Gabriella shakes her head.

“At the risk of sounding like an old person dispensing unwanted life advice,” she says, “you should talk to her.”

Ella gives her a look.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” confirms Gabriella. “Like you said, she's your sister. And I think she might also be about to get Sam angry, so if you'll excuse me, Ella, I'd better go over and intervene.”

“Okay,” says Ella, slightly too late. “Um. Thanks.”

Gabriella flashes her a smile that cuts through the stagnant atmosphere like a laser beam and insinuates herself between Jodi and Sam with the ease of someone who has done this a thousand times before, her hand curling around Sam's arm and gently moving her a step further back. Ella watches her talking for a moment, sees Sam's brows part and Jodi's cheeks redden, and makes a break for the hall, unable to stand it any more.

What is she even doing here? Everyone else knows what to do, how to stand and talk and breathe in the awful air. Ella? Ella's only here because it was awkward to not come when her parents and sister did. Her father said she could just come for the service, if she wanted, but that seemed disloyal somehow. Tacoma was Jodi's best friend. The two of them really loved one another, so much so that Ella was always kind of jealous. And so, well, here she is. Because if everyone else respects what Jodi and Tacoma had, then Ella has to as well.

She sighs, tugs on her bodice again. Jessica Fay cuts through from the dining-room with a plate for Lucas, looking haggard; her daughter Charlie is close behind, holding a couple of full glasses. Probably conscripted to help out. From what Ella hears, Jessica's been holding the household together the past few days.

She tries to say hello with her eyes – Charlie might well be the only person in the house her own age – but the gesture goes unnoticed. Jessica and Charlie go out through the door Ella just came through, and she sighs again, drifts on aimlessly into the kitchen. (The alternative is the dining-room across the hall, but that's where the body is, and though Ella knows she should pay her respects properly she absolutely cannot make herself go in there.) Here are more people, pecking at the assorted food like birds scratching in the dirt. Janine, Chief Wicke, Dr Ishihara; Annie Spearing at the window, looking out while Ella's mother grips her arm and mutters to her in a voice too low to be overheard.

There's some shortbread at one end of the table, beyond the sandwiches and casseroles. Ella would kind of like a piece, but she isn't sure she can walk past all these people to get it. Instead she stands there by the door, willing her mother to turn around and see her, to save her, but this does not happen.

Half an hour by the hall clock till they put Tacoma in the hearse and leave for the service. Half an hour, and yet by the feel of it Ella could swear it must be six months.



The church is packed: all the people from the house, sure, all the friends and family and notable townsfolk, but also everyone else, too. Here are the Lockwood triplets, coming down the aisle while Steph and Rocky sit at the back with the other pokémon; there's Mayor Winshaw, in a suit so black it doesn't seem to reflect the light. (How would you paint that, she wonders. It would just look flat, right?) Sarah and Roy from the store. Old Ina, her ancient onix coiled heavily at the back. Dean and Ria. Jackie from the police station. Harry the stationmaster. Lorna, talking quietly to Alistair Buckley, the vicar.

Good crowd, thinks Ella, looking around as they all find their way to their seats, and immediately tells herself off for being flippant. Someone's dead. Her sister is sitting next to her and shaking so hard that she's having trouble breathing. Would it kill her to be aware of the mood?

She thinks about holding Jodi's hand or something, to make her feel better, but she thinks about it for so long that in the end her mother, on Jodi's other side, puts her arm around her instead and all Ella is left with is guilt.

Lorna sits down at the organ. Alistair takes up the pulpit. Ella clenches her fists so tight she can feel her nails cutting into her palms and listens to the music swelling as everything begins.

She can't believe that back at the Spearings' house she was actually looking forward to this. The music. The coffin. There's a dead body in there, she thinks, unable to process the information. There's a dead body in there and it's only three years older than her, barely even a woman. Or it was barely even a woman, anyway. Now it's not anything at all.

The thought feels blasphemous, somehow. But Ella can't see a way in which it isn't true.

“Good morning, all,” says Alistair, and somehow in his mouth the words seem to mean something beyond themselves, something slow and painful that makes Ella tremble on the inside. “It is my pleasure, and my deepest regret, to welcome you here today …”

She's losing track of it already, his voice moving on in one smooth wave, rising and falling on the intonations of words she can no longer quite make out. Across the church, Annie is ramrod-straight in her seat, as rigid as a board, and next to her Everett has hunched over like a gargoyle, head barely visible above his shoulders. Named after towns in Washington. Why did they do that? Did they just pick the names out of an atlas or something? Maybe they were following in the family tradition. Phoenix and Anastasia are pretty weird names too.

Her mind is wandering. Next to her, Jodi is as shaky and breathless as a frightened kitten, leaning heavily on her mother's shoulder. Ella feels a buzzing in her teeth and knows that Lothian must be worried too, afraid for his partner but too obedient to leave his place at the back of the hall.

She wishes Virgo were here. She wishes she could do something to help her sister, wishes this was over, wishes that the world around them would crumble into ash and reveal the four comforting walls of their living-room at home, but most of all she wishes Virgo were here.

At least she feels something. She was afraid that she'd get here and have to stare at everyone's grief without even having the decency to be sad herself, but it looks like that isn't going to be an issue.

“… join me now in prayer,” says Alistair, and everyone kneels except for some of the older folks and Jodi, who if she got down on the floor would never be able to get back up again. Ella repeats the words after Alistair mechanically, without hearing them; she breathes in the musty scent of old wood and the faded upholstery on the bar against which her knees are braced, and breathes it out again, and straightens up.

Jodi is holding onto her cane so tightly that it looks like her knuckles might burst through her skin. Hold her hand, Ella tells herself. She's your bloody sister, right? Hold her hand.

She does not hold her hand. She looks straight ahead, at the back of the mayor's bald head with its gleam of reflected candlelight, and waits for someone to haul Tacoma out into the yard to burn.



They passed the pyre on the way in, a huge platform of stacked wood that reeks of holy oil, crouched in the empty space beyond the memorial stelae like a malevolent toad. In other towns, Ella's father once told her, there are crematoria, where the bodies go into a furnace and come out as an urnful of ashes to be scattered on the wind. But Mahogany is too small for that, and so here they destroy their bodies the old-fashioned way.

Frankly, Ella hates it. The damn thing creeps her out.

“How are you doing, kids?” asks her father, as they all file out of the church and down the path to find places to stand around the unlit pyre.

“Okay,” says Ella, not wanting to make a fuss.

“Mmn,” grunts Jodi, the way she does when she's deep inside herself, doing her ESP stuff. Her father nods, understanding, and takes her arm so she doesn't trip and fall while she's distracted. Lothian is close behind, tail flicking anxiously back and forth, and Ella follows with her mother and Lucille. Best not to get in their way, she thinks. Dad and Lothian can probably help more than she can.

“Hang in there, darling,” says her mother suddenly, slipping cold fingers through Ella's own. Her breath comes out in white clouds with every word. “You're doing great.”

Ella swallows and turns her face away so she won't see the way her eyes are watering. It's the cold, she tells herself. And it's a funeral, right? It'd be weird if she wasn't a little bit teary at least.

They take up their positions among the crowd, shuffling back on either side of the path to clear the way for the pallbearers. Across from them, Ella sees the Franklins, their eyes all sharply focused on her sister. Stacy Franklin notices and looks back, one eyebrow raised in a devastating display of wounded teenage dignity. Ella moves as if to scratch her cheek and surreptitiously sticks two fingers up at her. Stacy's mother, Deb, notices and gives her a look, but Ella just looks straight back, and faced with such a stalwart refusal to be intimidated Deb becomes very interested in settling her pidgey on her shoulder.

Ella almost smiles. At least she got that one right. She remembers Stacy coming up to her at the end of their chemistry class and pretty much outright accusing Jodi of being some kind of predator. You sure he isn't just doing it to get close to girls, she asked. And Ella didn't know how to argue with her, because she had no goddamn idea how it is that Jodi being a girl actually works, had no idea it was even possible until she came home looking weird and pretty, so she just stood there and mumbled something vague while Stacy got more and more scornful. You can't even defend him, can you?

No. No, Ella can't. And it's killing her.

She winces when she thinks this. What a tasteless choice of word.

The music starts, a tune picked out on sacred bells by someone Ella can't see, and out of the corner of her eye she sees the coffin coming out of the church, turning the corner onto the path. She looks down at her feet, unable to bear the thought of seeing it again and getting stuck on the idea of Tacoma's body rotting inside, and watches the pallbearers' shoes crunching the salt on the path as they manoeuvre up to the pyre.

There is a final kind of thump, and then a scrape as the coffin is shoved over the stinking wood. The bells stop. Ella holds her breath.

“You have all heard me say my piece,” says Alistair. “I'm aware that were Tacoma here, she'd thank me for keeping it brief.” She still isn't looking, but he sounds upset. “I now open the field to you. If anyone else has any final words to share in Tacoma's memory, before God and this community, then now is the time.”

She keeps holding it, hears shuffling feet and agonising silence and, at last, someone clearing their throat.

“Suppose I should say something,” says Tacoma's uncle Nick, and Ella breathes out. She looks up to see him standing there near the pyre, his face a charcoal drawing in shades of grey. (Coffin just behind him. Don't look. Don't. Don't.) “Morning, all,” he says, eyes flicking nervously across the crowd. “Guess you probably all know me, even if I've forgotten some of you. Nick. Tacoma's uncle.” Long pause, too long, and then just as Alistair is about to step in he continues. “I've always been the one my family turns to when they want a speech. But today, I … I don't think I've got much I can say to you. Maybe no one can really say what Tacoma meant to them. To all of us. But she's – she was my niece, and there's an obligation there.”

He straightens as he speaks, shoulders squaring and head rising, like he's talking himself back to life. When he raises his hand and brushes back his hair across his forehead Ella sees a sudden flash of beauty cross his face, and realises that he must be handsome, under all that grief.

“She didn't suffer fools lightly,” he says. “She had principles, and she stuck to them, no matter what. She was smarter than me, and kinder than Annie, and tougher than Lucas: best parts of all of us, just a little bit better.” His magneton rises silently behind him and hovers above his head, its cores swapping positions in patterns too complex for Ella to fathom. “I couldn't have asked for a finer niece. I'm proud to have known her, and to have been a part of what made her who she was, no matter how small. And I'm honoured to see all of you gathered here, not just to mourn what could have been but to celebrate what she achieved, even in just nineteen years.” He bows his head. Someone is crying; Ella looks, sees Annie clutching Lucas' arm. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Nick.” Alistair waits, but Nick seems to have seized up; his shoulders slump again, a loose lock of hair spilling over his brow, and instead of stepping back into the crowd he just stands there. “Thank you,” repeats Alistair, and still Nick doesn't move.

“Oh no,” murmurs Ella's mother, tightening her grip on her hand without thinking. “Nick …”

Other people are muttering too, heads turning toward one another, and Annie is glaring through her tears as if to say don't ruin this, Nick, and Ella feels all the tension building in her skull like a blocked pipe about to blow―

“Okay, Nick,” says Con, stepping forward to put a hand on his arm. Taking charge of the situation. “Time to―”

“Don't you touch me,” growls Nick, jerking back into life. “You―!”

His magneton whirrs into motion, rising, orbs spinning up cloaks of sparks; Moira tenses up at Con's heels, arching her tail over her back like a scorpion's sting.

“Easy, Nick.” Con steps back smartly, hands raised. “This isn't the time for that.”

“Isn't it?” What is that in his eyes? Ella has never seen hate like that before. Schoolyard rage, petty fury – these are things she's familiar with. But this is something else, colder and older and as brutal as the crunch of a scyther's claw into a girafarig's ribs. “I think I've been bloody patient in not throwing you out as soon as you―”

“Nick.”

Annie's voice is shocking in its clarity. Somehow Ella had imagined that she'd have cried herself hoarse, but maybe that's another thing she's got wrong, another part of grief that only adults understand.

“Nick, if you bring this to my daughter's funeral you are not setting foot in my house again,” she says, and he sags like a puppet with slashed strings. “And you,” she adds. “Con. You should know better.”

“Sure, Annie―”

“I don't want to hear it.”

He nods, takes a measured pace back into the crowd without another word. Nick shakes his head and walks away in the opposite direction, ramming his hand viciously into his jacket pocket.

“God, Nick,” breathes her mother. Ella can't tell if she knows she can hear. What is going on here? Why does she seem to be the only one who doesn't know?

“Um,” says Alistair. “If … if that's all, then I'd like to invite someone else to speak.”

There's a long wait before anyone else volunteers, and when someone does it's Harry, with a gentle summary of his encounters with Tacoma at the station over the years. It's a welcome relief from whatever the hell that was between Nick and Con, and it even makes Ella smile a little when he talks about Nikole. It's the kind of smile that stings a little, but it is a smile, and that's what she needs.

After Harry comes Victor Orbeck, who seems to have liked Tacoma more than he ever said; and after him, Steven the butcher, who is badly broken up and for some reason keeps talking about bloodcake; and after him Pryce Aske, who remembers sparring with Tacoma and Nikole with fondness; and on and on, people with memories and stories so warm with history that they take the bite out of the December chill even before anyone sets light to the pyre. Ina. Janine. Ella's mother. Even Everett, although he can't even get through one sentence without his voice cracking and his eyes watering. He loved his sister. Like Ella loves hers, except he can actually show it.

“Thank you, Everett,” says Alistair, helping him away from the pyre. “Anyone else?”

Silence. Everyone who has anything to say has said it. Now all that's left is the fire.

“All right then. Lorna, if you'd―”

“Hang on.”

Ella's heart pulses erratically. Jodi steps out from between their parents, and as the eyes gather on her like wasps on unattended marmalade she opens her mouth to speak.



LEÓN

It's been a while. León hasn't worked the mill floor since '63, and though he takes care to stay in touch with his old friends, goes out drinking with them and lets them mock him for softening at a desk, he still hasn't seen too much of Lucas. Once whatever it was that Tacoma and Alex – Jodi, he reminds himself, as he has done every time this week, Jodi – once whatever that was faded, the Spearings and the Ortegas started to see less of each other. Chelle and Annie still kept in touch, sure, but they stopped bringing their families along for the ride, not wanting to force Jodi and Tacoma back together after their parting. León stayed back too. He regrets it, honestly. Lucas was always good company. But, barring the odd drink in the Briar Rose, they let their lives diverge.

Now they've come to touch again. And it is absolutely nothing like it was before.

Lucas is holding himself together well, but León is a father too, and he knows the shadow behind Lucas' face for what it is. He thought he was going to lose his son once. (Daughter. His eldest daughter, damn it.) If it had actually happened, if Lothian hadn't acted as quickly as he did …

León would say it doesn't bear thinking about, but of course today, talking to Lucas like a stranger in this overheated living-room, he can't stop. Tacoma and Jodi were born just a few days apart. And whoever killed Tacoma is still out there.

“You know, I hear we're getting more snow before the week's out,” he says, aware that he is letting his thoughts slow down the conversation. “I keep thinking of all those people living out in the woods.” He shakes his head. “You couldn't pay me to do it.”

León's distaste for snow is well known. He's travelled extensively, ever since he seized his chance to escape life under Somoza as a young man and worked his passage to Hoenn; after a godawful three months in Sinnoh's Snowpoint, he tried to stick to hot countries, but then he went and fell in love with a Mahogany girl, and he hasn't stopped complaining about Johto winters since. The old familiar gripe makes Lucas' mouth turn up at the corners just a little. Thank God. León was kind of banking on the fact that he might want a little shred of normality to hang onto.

“Shoulda stayed home,” says Lucas, and León smiles back. When he first came to town, old Mick Field was still around, and the two of them have been taking the piss out of his half-baked racism ever since. “Good of you to come, León. I … I didn't know if you would.”

“Why's that?”

Lucas shrugs.

“Y'know. Your kid. ESP and shi― and stuff.”

Your kid. How … delicately put. Christ, but Lucas is holding himself together well. He really wouldn't have blamed him if he'd forgotten, what with his daughter lying in her coffin just across the hall and mourners flitting through the house like overgrown bats. León has enough trouble remembering himself, though he's trying his best.

“She wanted to come,” he tells him. “Got, you know, brain control exercises she can do to make it okay.”

Lucas' face creases in the middle. León can't really call it a smile, but it is something like the same shape.

“I know Annie appreciates it,” he says. “Tacoma really loved him. Her. Sorry.”

León nods. He isn't sure whether he's allowed to say it's okay or not. Jodi says that to him when he makes that mistake, but he isn't sure if he can say it on her behalf. There are a lot of things he isn't sure about these days.

“I think Jodi loved her too,” he replies. “Even now.”

The two of them look at one another for a while, thinking about what they wish they'd done, ways they wish they'd pushed their kids while both of them were still around. Jodi and Tacoma missed years of each other's lives. Too many, for people who still cared.

Before either of them can think of a way to continue the conversation, Con Wicke turns up wearing his Police Chief face, the one that usually means you're about to either get arrested or receive some terrible news, and Lucas has to stand there and accept his halting condolences all over again before he gives a municipal nod and withdraws to talk to John Winshaw instead.

“Seen a lot of him lately, I'll bet,” ventures León.

“He's doing a good job,” says Lucas. “He'll get the bastard.”

He says it like you'd say it was sunny out, like it's just something that happens. León isn't sure what this means, but he's old enough to know pain when he sees it.

“Sure, Luke,” he says. “Just a matter of time.”

Another lull in the conversation. Voices in the hall: Con and someone else, a woman maybe. Wasn't he speaking to John a moment ago? León looks, but John is talking to – or at; it is John, after all – Nick now. He supposes that explains it. This would be a bad day for a fight.

“I should thank you,” says Lucas suddenly. “For helping with Nikole.”

“Jodi's idea,” replies León.

“Your house. She been okay?”

León shrugs.

“Scared Ella a couple of times,” he says. “She came home yesterday, ran into her in the hall and jumped right out the door again. But mostly pretty calm.”

“Mostly pretty calm,” repeats Lucas. “She broke things here.” He shakes his head, so slowly that at first León can't actually tell what he's doing. “Jodi's done good.”

“She has,” agrees León.

“Didn't bring her?”

“Jodi thought it was best she stay at home. She's got her settled now.”

Lucas nods.

“Probably right,” he says. “Probably right.”

The silences are getting more frequent, harder to climb out of. León reaches for their shared history, but he feels like this might be about as deep into it as he's capable of digging. Emotions are Chelle's thing. He just sells wood. Assuming anyone's still buying.

“Listen,” he says. “Luke. I don't know when this ends, if it ever does, but … we're here. You know? Till it does. And then some.”

Lucas meets his gaze. One of his eyes is brown, the other blue. León knew that – Tacoma's the same – but after so long it's almost a surprise.

“Never gonna end,” he says. “But, León – thank you.”

Noise from the doorway: the boys from the mill are here now, five or six all together, looking ill at ease in their suits and twisting their hats between their hands. León is relieved, in a way; now he doesn't have to do this alone. But he's glad that for a few minutes at least he did.



Later on, León gathers up his courage and leaves Lucas in the care of Pete and Mike to go and pay his respects in person. After the living-room, warm with a radiator on full blast and a crush of human bodies, the dining-room has the freezing feel of a mausoleum. The chairs have been cleared away, and aside from the china cabinet against the far wall there is nothing left but the table, spread with a pristine white cloth and a little under six feet of smooth, dark pine.

For a few minutes, León stays by the door, trying to ready himself. He remembers Chelle's father lying in his coffin, the way his face seemed to have sunk in on itself like a rotten fruit. Some of that was age, some of that was the cancer, but some too was death. There was something missing in him, and without it his face was barely even his any more.

This is probably not how it is with Tacoma. She is – was – young. And if the rumour mill is to be believed, she was killed by a thunderbolt to the back of the head; nothing there to ruin her features. She'll look like she's sleeping. Probably.

Part of León wants to see. Most doesn't.

He steps forward and sees.

She looks like she's sleeping. Except that she doesn't, that there is something off about her pallor that not even Ellison the undertaker's expert art can hide; that in life Tacoma's wild curls were never possible to tame; that the high neck of her dress and a layer of make-up cannot quite conceal the bruises on her throat. That this kid who couldn't sit still for even a second, whose leg always bounced and jittered with the urge to be moving if forced to stay in her seat, is now as motionless as carved ice.

Tacoma is patient. She stays motionless for the several long seconds that León stays at her side, staring, and when at last he turns away he knows she stays motionless then, too.

There's a noise, a familiar click, and he turns to see Jodi leaving Gabriella Kendrick in the hall to join him here in the dining-room. He is awed by her purpose: no hesitation, just straight over to the head of the coffin, to look into her dead friend's face.

She says nothing. León's temples prickle – apparently he too is very, very slightly psychic, which is where the doctors said Jodi gets it from – and he supposes she must be making her goodbyes on a plane where no one else can eavesdrop. It is such a private moment that he takes a few steps back without thinking, and the creak of the floorboards beneath his shoes makes Jodi start, look up over her shoulder towards him.

“Oh,” she says.

He can count the number of times he's seen her this pale on the fingers of one hand: lying there in the hospital bed, her shattered leg hidden beneath a stained sheet; that moment last week when she looked into his eyes and told him she was a girl; and now, standing over Tacoma's body. She looks like blown glass, beautiful and too delicate to touch. He is as always startled by the realisation that she and Ella are his daughters, that something so perfect could come from him.

“I didn't see you there,” she continues. “Sorry.”

“It's okay, kiddo.” He chooses the pet name deliberately, not wanting to make this worse by getting her name wrong again. “You take your time.”

Jodi shakes her head.

“I'm done,” she says. “It's not her, Dad. This is just … what's left.”

He can't hold back any more: he steps forward, puts his arm around her. She leans gladly into his grip, head against his ribs. So small. Dr Ishihara said that all the energy that other kids used for their growth spurts just got eaten up by her brain, that she needed thousands more calories a day to actually get much growing done, and now it's too late to fix it. Jodi will always be short.

“I'm sorry,” he says. It's not what he wants to say, but it's all he knows how to. Jodi understands anyway, of course. She always understands.

“I know,” she replies. “So am I.”

He doesn't know when she got like this, where she got the kind of wisdom to navigate this mess. Sometimes he feels he doesn't know anything at all about Jodi, but she is his daughter, and he is determined to figure it out.



Jodi struggles at the service, León can tell; he doesn't know how exactly her empathy works, but he has a feeling it's much easier for her to blank out a single powerful emotion as she did at the house than to resist the curious attention of an entire churchful of people – not to mention the fact that this is Tacoma's funeral, that her body is right there at the front. About five minutes after everyone's found their seats, she starts shaking and struggling to breathe, and León burns with the desire to hold her but he's not sitting next to her and, if he's honest, Chelle's probably the best one for that job anyway. Nothing like a hug from your mum. Or so León is told. He never really got on with his own parents.

Right on cue, Chelle slips her arm around Jodi and pulls her close against her cheek.

“I know, chickadee,” León hears Chelle murmur, and feels his love for her vibrate like the string of a guitar. “I know.”

Jodi clings to her like a baby aipom, streaks of mascara blackening the skin around her eyes. In this moment she looks so much like a young Chelle that León momentarily forgets how to breathe, catapulted back into the spring of 1950 and one of Simone's cheap boarding rooms in the husk of Mahogany Manor, opening his door to the girl who cleaned the rooms and being punched straight out of his hangover by the brightness of her eyes. The night before last Jodi was up late watching TV with him, and without thinking he leaned against her the way he would against Chelle before remembering himself and abruptly jumping up to go to bed, equal parts ashamed and afraid of himself.

He was never like this with Ella. That he is with Jodi worries him, as so much about this does, but there's a time and a place for these worries, and this isn't it. León listens attentively to Alistair as he speaks, notes with satisfaction his choice of readings and the strength with which Everett and Lorna deliver them, and does his best to remain focused. It's not Jodi's day. She is incredibly brave to be here, is weathering God only knows what in that strange head of hers, but this is about Tacoma and her family.

It's a beautiful service. The hymns are few but well chosen, calculated to give a kind of release when sung hard into the echoing vault of the roof, and by the time they all rise to leave León imagines that there can't be a dry eye in the house. Exactly as it should be. Clean 'em all out of their emotions, make some space for the stories shared around the pyre. He never really understood why Johtonians do this until Chelle's father died; only when they stood there by the stinking mound of wood and shared memories that made even León remember the old bastard fondly did it start to make sense. Mourn, get all that pain out of the way, then celebrate. Wake, service, pyre. It has a rhythm to it, even if the order seems strange at first.

After the candles and the dim glow of winter light through stained glass, even the weak sun is blinding. León blinks to clear his eyes, and the next thing he knows Lothian is back and all over Jodi, making those squeaks with the strange gaps in where it goes too high for humans to hear. Poor thing. He must have known she was upset all the way through the service, but of course he must also have known that she wanted him to stay where he was until it was over.

“How are you doing, kids?” he asks, wanting to make up for not being close enough to Jodi to help earlier.

“Okay,” says Ella, subdued.

Her second ever funeral. León is about to reach out and take her hand, but remembers how embarrassed she was the last time he did that in public and hesitates, torn between paternal affection and an intimate understanding of the fact that thirteen-year-olds want to be adults more than any adult does. Before he can come to a decision Jodi grunts a vague response, eyes clouded over in a way that means her mind is occupied elsewhere, and León's hand automatically redirects towards her arm. Better not let her fall. People don't need any more reason to stare than they already have.

Lothian falls into step alongside them, ears cocked towards her like radar dishes, and the telltale rumble in the nerves starts up a moment later. As they turn onto the path up to the flat space where the pyre has been built up, León catches Chelle taking Ella's hand out of the corner of his eye, and breathes out. Okay. Both the kids have someone looking after them. Good.

He tries to lead them all to a position a decent distance away from the pyre, but the crowd keeps pushing down the path behind them and they end up much too close to the front, where the fishy stink of the oil is almost unbearable. This feels like a bad place for Jodi to be, and for Ella, come to that, but now the Franklins are here, and the mayor and Con and the Fays and dozens of others, and there's no room to back off. León keeps his hand on Jodi's arm and an eye on Ella, looking lost between Chelle and Lucille, and holds his breath as the Spearings are slowly pushed through the crowd up to the pyre. Annie. Lucas. Everett, supporting him on one arm.

Someone starts on the bells, and as one they all take a step back as the casket emerges from the church. Lucas cranes his neck with the rest of them, and inadvertently squeezes Jodi's arm as it comes near, the pallbearers grunting and shuffling beneath its weight. The physicality of corpses has always bothered him. That heaviness. Like the rolls of fat falling from the whales as they flensed them at the station in Albany.

Jodi starts at the tightening of his grip, directs a worried look up into his face. For a moment he contemplates a reassuring smile, but even if he could manage one this is not a time for smiling, and in the end he just nods at her instead. She nods back, with a composure that León is sure he never had at her age, and returns her attention to the coffin as its bearers slide it awkwardly up onto the mound of wood.

Is it just that kids are different now? That all these new ideas, the endless information that the TV and radio beam straight into their heads, gift them things that León didn't learn till at least halfway through his twenties? Or is it that Jodi is exceptional, mind enriched with the emotional awareness of every single person she's ever met?

León first felt old when Jodi went away to university, and he came back one evening to a cold, empty house (Ella out with friends, Chelle working late) and the realisation that his kids were moving on with their lives. Since then, the feeling has returned several times, with varying degrees of intensity; it returns now, standing here alongside the daughter who apparently does not need as much help as he thought to make it through the funeral of her old best friend, and he stands and waits for the speeches to begin in stunned, shameful silence.



SAM

Sam hasn't arrived in the right frame of mind. Let's face it, she's a little nervous; it's hard not to be, at a funeral, and when you add the most mockable man in town into the mix something in her just goes for it. It's Jessica who lets them in, but then Con Wicke catches sight of Gabriella as he passes and steps in immediately with an offer to take their coats. And the shark in her head scents blood.

“Thanks,” she says, tossing her coat casually over his arm. “Chief of Police on the coat check? You've gone down in the world, Con.”

Before he can react, Gabriella shoots her a hard look.

“You'll forgive Sam,” she says, laying her own coat atop Sam's. “Sometimes she misses the tone of the situation.”

“Yeah,” says Sam, chastened. “Sorry. Nervous.”

“I get that.” Took him long enough to answer, didn't it? Like a teenager whose crush has finally spoken to him. “I didn't know you knew Tacoma.”

“Knew her well enough,” Sam tells him. “Know Annie better.”

Half true. Gabriella knows Annie, because Gabriella knows everyone and given ten minutes alone with them can make them swear she's their best friend. And if Gabriella's coming, Sam is damn well coming with her.

“Right,” he says. “I'm … sure she appreciates the support.” Sounds like he's having trouble finding words. “You, uh, you let me know if you need anything.”

Gabriella gives him the smile, and Sam watches with a certain glee and a certain self-loathing as the blood rises in his cheeks.

“I will, Con,” she says, knowing he was talking to Gabriella but completely unable to resist. He's just such an easy target. “I will.”

“Sure,” he mumbles, eyes still fixed on Gabriella. “Annie's in, um, I think Annie's in the kitchen, if you wanted to talk to her.”

“Right,” says Gabriella. “See you, then. Come on, Sam.”

She takes a firm hold of Sam's elbow and steers her towards the kitchen, Morgan skipping after them with strides too long and floaty to be natural. There was a full moon a couple of days ago; she'll be buoyant and mean for a week till her magic levels die down again.

“Sam,” mutters Gabriella, under her breath. “I know he's an ass, but we're at a funeral.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

Even Con's upset, isn't he? Everyone is. A girl is dead before twenty, shot in the back of the head and thrown in a river to be washed away. Sam should know better. She's been here before, after all. Back then, she was the only one who cared. And now she's making jokes at Tacoma's funeral.

It's the nerves. It has to be. Nerves and the fact that Sam's default response to any kind of stress is to make fun of it. Sometimes that works; sometimes it just gets you punched. (Goldenrod, mid sixties, a guy calling out to Gabs to leave the dyke and let a real man take care of her.) Gabriella is too well-bred to punch people, but she doesn't need to punch to make you hurt. All she needs to do is look.

She is looking now. Sam holds her gaze, ashamed but asking her to understand, until Gabriella sighs and reaches out to smooth the collar of Sam's shirt back into place. Not much. But it's enough for Sam to know that she gets it.

Christ. If Sam believed that anyone up there really gave a damn about her, she'd never be done with thanking them for leading her into Nero's that night.

“Come on,” says Gabriella, taking her hand away. “Let's talk to Annie.”

They're at the kitchen door now; Sam can see a table spread with clashing foods from a dozen different households. Morgan perks up at the smell and bounces on ahead, her stumpy wings flaring in the warm air. Sam follows with Gabriella, and over by the stove, Michelle Ortega turns Annie Spearing gently to face them.

“Annie,” says Gabriella, rushing up to her with a click of heels on fake parquet. “God, I am so sorry.”

Annie nods. How many times has she heard that recently? And she can't say anything, can she, because every single person who said it really means it. Sam nods back at her, unwilling to cheapen this with her attempts at expressing condolences, but she doesn't seem to notice.

“There was no one else like her,” Gabriella says, and maybe it's the accent but this doesn't sound trite when she says it. “And I'm going to stop now, because I'm sure you don't need to hear it all again, but we're always here. If you ever need to get out of the house …”

Annie nods again. For some reason Sam can't seem to read her expression at all. Like looking into a broken mirror and seeing only scattered shards of human face.

“Thanks, Gabbi,” she says. “It's … it's good of you to come.”

Gabriella has a thousand smiles; Sam has counted them, grown first less surprised and then more as she keeps on bringing out new permutations for new situations. This one is sweet, sad, laden with shared pain, and it is so perfectly suited to this moment that it draws a faint response from even Annie's stony face.

“There was never a chance we wouldn't,” Gabriella tells her. “I'm sorry we didn't have anything to bring.”

Annie shakes her head.

“It's fine. Never gonna eat all this anyway.”

“Right.” Gabriella's eyes move from Annie to Michelle, appraising. Barmaid's knack for sizing up a situation. Sam's always admired that about her. Sharp as a new knife. “I'll let you go,” she says, in response to whatever it is she sees in their faces. “But we'll be right here if you need anything.”

She turns to Sam, who knows a cue when she sees one and repeats her earlier nod.

“Sorry for your loss,” she says, aware that next to Gabriella she sounds like a worn-out tape recording but unable to do better, and follows her back out into the hall.

They look at each other. Behind them, Michelle says something to Annie and gets an indistinct response.

“You did good,” says Sam.

“I hope so,” says Gabriella. “Ready for round two?”

Voices from the living-room. Morgan floating out of the kitchen, holding a sugar doughnut that she shouldn't be eating but which Sam can't seem to find it in her to take away. The shark making nervous, hungry circles in her head.

One dead girl in the dining-room and another hanging off her back.

“With you?” she says. “Guess I can stick it out a bit longer.”

They let their hands brush oh-so-accidentally against one another, aware as ever that someone might be watching, and then Gabriella goes in and from somewhere comes the energy to yank the doughnut out of Morgan's paws and follow her.



Mae just won't leave her alone today. In the living-room, after wandering around and saying a few awkward hellos, Sam runs into Jodi, and she knows right away by the look in her eyes that she hasn't taken Sam's advice.

Not that this is a surprise. Even before Gabriella reported that she was asking questions, Sam knew that Jodi wasn't going to let this lie.

“Hey, kid,” she says, as she approaches. Quick look over her head: no, no one's watching. Ella Ortega in the corner there. Bunch of guys around Lucas. Nobody paying them any attention.

Good. Sam has a feeling this is a conversation that they don't want to be overheard.

“Hey, Sam,” says Jodi. She looks good. Polished, like Gabriella. Nice nails. Killer eyebrows, like that movie star Gabriella has a crush on. Sam hopes people see these things when they look at her, instead of the edges of her discarded boyhood. As well as them, even, if that's what she wants. Not Sam's place to say. “I didn't know you'd be here.”

Sam shrugs.

“Gabs is friends with Annie,” she says. “How are you bearin' up?”

Jodi twists her hand back and forth around the grip of her cane. Lothian, who has been sniffing inquisitively at Morgan while she sulks about the doughnut, tenses up, pulls back to curl protectively around the back of her legs. Kind of incredible, really. Most people are close to their partners, of course, but Lothian and Jodi are clearly on a whole different level.

“I'm okay,” she says. “I think I'm probably going to sleep through all of tomorrow, but I'm okay.”

Sam starts to laugh, but it gives out halfway through and turns into a grunt.

“Yeah,” she says. “Must be rough. The psychic thing and that.”

A taut little smile.

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “The psychic thing.”

Neither of them have an immediate follow-up. Across the room, Jessica breaks away from a conversation with Byrne Winter and leaves, trailing her kid behind her.

Sam can almost feel Mae's breath on the back of her neck. Okay. Time to have this out.

“You might as well come out and say it,” she tells Jodi. “Whatever the hell it is.”

Jodi blushes, which is kind of cute, honestly; Sam is used to Gabriella and her brazen ruthlessness, and it's always refreshing to remember that regular people actually get embarrassed about things like trying to chase leads at their best friends' funerals.

“Um,” she says, looking for her voice. “Yeah, we went to the library yesterday.”

“We?” Christ. Sam hopes she hasn't dragged anyone else into this.

“Me and Lothian,” says Jodi. “He won't leave me alone since I dropped that rock on my leg.”

“Right,” says Sam, not sure if this is a joke, or whether to believe her at all. “So what're you sayin', anyway?”

“I'm saying that this isn't the first time, is it? I read the old papers on microfiche. I know about Mae West.”

In Sam's head, her fist snaps out, sends Jodi tumbling backwards into the wall with a spray of red flying from her nose. But she does not act on these impulses, hasn't done since she kicked a guy's face in when she was twenty and scared Gabriella so badly that she almost lost her for good, and so she just stands there and watches Jodi flinch as her ESP absorbs the aggression.

“No, you don't,” she tells her, keeping her voice low and her hands by her sides. “You don't know a damn thing about Mae.”

“I know she disappeared. And that you cared enough to start asking questions.”

Cigarette smoke spiralling up through the trees. Buds vivid on the branches. And that face, twisted on one side from the scar.

―Listen, Sam, I'm a pretty patient girl but come on. When exactly are you planning on kissing me?

Yes. Yes, Sam cared. Mae was her first, and more than that she was the one who showed her that this was even an option, that she too could love and be loved, if she only knew what it was she actually wanted.

Sam sighs. She could murder a cigarette about now.

“Look,” she says, folding her arms to stop herself making fists. “I told you I'm not gonna stop you. But I'm not helpin' you, either.”

Morgan's picked up on the tension now; she's shifted into a fighting stance, knees bent and paws wide, ready to cast. Lothian crouches lower, arching his back and opening the edges of his wings to flash the pale membrane within.

“Please, Sam.” Jodi moves a little closer, gesturing with her free hand. Her eyes are bright in a bad way, a maybe-tears kind of way. “She was murdered.”

Goddamn. The worst of it is that she's right. Sam has stood exactly where Jodi is standing now, and if she had to, if someone disappeared Gabriella the way they disappeared Mae, she'd stand there and do it all over again. This time she probably wouldn't run away, either. She'd stand her ground until either she got her revenge, or they disappeared her, too.

But she can do that kind of thing. She's thirty-one, broke, in charge of a dying petrol station in a town where no one can afford to retire and the kids have no future; if Gabriella wasn't around, then she could afford to burn these petty scraps of a life to ash in her quest to get justice. Jodi is what, twenty, and she's got strong enough psychic powers that she'll get work for sure, as a therapist or psy officer or one of those League counsellors in Pokémon Centres who check the kids are staying sane out there.

That's not something you can throw away. It's definitely not something Sam can throw away for her. She's not sure she has the right to withhold the information, either, but it definitely feels less culpable.

“I know,” she says, fighting to keep the anger out of her voice. It's too much. All of this is too much, this house with Tacoma in the dining-room and Mae in her head and Jodi right bloody here in front of her, being young and pretty and distressed. Dead girls and those who want to follow in their footsteps. How the hell did she get herself into this position?

“You think I don't know?” she continues, barely even hearing herself. “Mae was murdered too, Jodi. And I tried to fight about it, and guess what, I lost that fight. 'Cos it ain't one you can win. And it ain't worth you losin' too, just for the sake of someone who's gone.”

“But she's not―” Jodi breaks off, her hand curled tight and trembling in a gesture Sam cannot even begin to interpret. “I'm sorry,” she says, face falling. It doesn't have far to go, considering, but it does its best. “I didn't mean to have this argument with you again.”

What a weird thing to say. Weird, and kind. That's what this is, isn't it? Jodi is being kind. To Sam. To her dead friend. Both their dead friends.

Anyone ever figures out a way to respond to that, Sam would love to know.

Fortunately, it's not on her to come up with one.

“Hello, Jodi.”

A gentle pressure on Sam's shoulder. A flash of auburn waves in her peripheral vision.

“Oh,” says Jodi. “Uh, hi, Gabbi.”

It's her. She's here, with her always-cold hands and her metamorphic smile; and she does nothing to dispel the vague, angry fog clouding Sam's mind but she is here, and that's a start.

“I'm not sure what we're talking about here,” says Gabriella, “but I think that this might not be the best time for it.”

“No, I know.” Jodi bites her lip, takes her teeth away again with red stains along the edges. “I'm sorry, I just … it's Tacoma.”

“Yes,” says Gabriella. “It is. Let's stick to that for today, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Sam?”

Gabriella's eyes change with the light; right now, fixed on Sam in the wan glow reflected from the snow outside, they are something not green and not brown but which Sam has always thought of as the natural colour of spring.

The fog is fading. It's all there still, the girls who died and the ones they left behind; Sam can hear Mae's laugh, scratchy with cigarettes, and see the fan turning round and round on the shelf in her crappy little trailer. But she can see Morgan and Lothian posturing at one another too, and the woman who turned her from a causeless rebel to someone who could hold a life together, and she is in control of herself, not the anger or the fog, and she is going to be okay.

“Yeah, Gabs,” she says. “Morgan, get away from him.”

She glares, but she moves, and across from her Lothian relaxes, folds his wings back up again. Behind him the world is moving the same as it ever did, Lucas and his friends, Byrne and Janine, Ella heading out into the hall. Impossible as it seems, nobody has even noticed that this conversation is happening.

Jodi is looking at her like she wants to ask if she's okay, and Sam wonders how much of that she saw. Gabriella says that Jodi can only read emotions, not thoughts, but if Sam could read minds, she'd be lying about it too, so she doesn't see why Jodi wouldn't.

Either way, she's not going to tell her anything. Gabriella's right, as usual. This isn't a healthy conversation to be having.

“Think I might get somethin' to eat,” she says instead. “Gabs?”

Gabriella's fingers tighten momentarily on her arm: this conversation isn't over. But it's time for a break.

“Coming,” she says.“Jodi?”

“No, I should … you know.” Hesitation. Her free hand reaching down as Lothian raises his head. “Go see Tacoma.”

“Ah. Okay.” This time Gabriella's smile is sympathetic, understanding. Watching her fills Sam with the kind of anger that happens to her when her love gets too intense. “Come on. We're heading that way.”

“Thanks.” She smiles back, shy and pained. Sam would like to get away from all this right now, honestly, but she doesn't leave. No one cared when Mae died. She will not be that asshole now that Tacoma has, too. “I'm ready. I think.”

“Okay, then.” Gabriella's hand brushes Sam's again, cold as the snow outside, and as the thrill of it echoes down Sam's nerves she follows her out into the hall.



Bastard Jack was excluded from both the wake and the service – Gabriella can usually keep him in line, more or less, but she didn't want to risk bringing him to a situation that delicate – but he glides down to settle on her shoulder as they leave the church, wings gleaming like white gold in the December light. His beak is stained an interesting colour, which Sam takes to mean he got bored and went to find a snack. Most wingull are exclusive fish- and garbage-eaters, but since being brought several hundred miles inland Jack has adapted to terrestrial hunting. Once Sam saw him fire a water pulse down a rabbit hole with such force that the unfortunate occupant was catapulted out of another exit halfway across the field.

“Hello, trouble,” says Gabriella, rubbing a knuckle down his neck. “Found some wildlife to terrorise, I see.”

Jack makes that mewling seagull scream that Sam hates and Gabriella (unaccountably) loves, and shuffles his feet into his preferred shoulder-perching position.

“Okay,” she says, letting her hand fall. “Come on, we should get out of the way.”

The four of them move off down the path between the rows of memorial stones, each stele wearing its own cap of snow. So damn bright.

“You should have brought your sunglasses,” says Gabriella, as if reading her mind.

“Mm.” Sam has managed to convince the rest of the town that she wears sunglasses to look cool, but the truth of the matter is that her pale eyes sting and water in even moderately bright lights. About the only time of year she doesn't need them is autumn, when the sky is as dull as rock salt; she's not wearing them today because she didn't know if that's allowed at funerals.

Gabriella's left eyebrow twitches up into a perfect arc.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

Sam's instinct is to lie, but she doesn't. It's fine. You can't help your first reaction: you can only affect what you actually do. She's lived by that line for over a decade now, ever since one of her Goldenrod friends took her out for a drink and a talk about anger.

“No,” she says, keeping her voice low so that the others will hear nothing over the crunch of shoes on dirt and salt. “Not really.”

Gabriella nods.

“Yes,” she says. “I don't think I am, either.”

Crunch, crunch. Some pokémon Sam can't see bleats from within the crowd.

“Good to be out,” says Sam. “Don't like church.”

She knows she sounds like a petulant teenager, but she also knows that Gabriella is aware that what she means is that she hates sitting around on a hard wooden chair while Alistair drones on about the infinite love of the God who hates people like her, and so she says it anyway.

“I know,” says Gabriella. “I don't even know if Tacoma liked it, honestly. But being here's the right thing to do.”

The right thing. Like nobody did for …

Sam has really got to stop this. Months go by at a time without her thinking of her and then suddenly up she pops again, laughter in her eyes and that big, twisted scar across her face.

―Just got the film star name. Didn't get lucky enough to get the looks as well.

I don't know, she said. But they better run, because if they ever get caught then half the town is going to come for their blood.

“Goddamn it all to hell,” she mutters, earning a disapproving look from Sarah as she passes. “How much longer is this gonna go on for?”

Gabriella lays her hand briefly on Sam's shoulder.

“Let's light the fire when we get home,” she says. “And just sit there until it's over.”

Until it's over is something they've been saying to each other for years, and it means anything and everything that it ever possibly could: until the fire goes out, until they fall asleep, until the world ends. Sam imagines their living-room, Gabriella leaning into her, soft and fragrant. Firelight turning her hair into red flames. Asleep, or not, and Sam unable to risk moving for fear of ruining things, like when a kitten goes to sleep on your lap and you think, well, I guess I live in this chair now. Until it's over, and they go to bed to dream their intertwining dreams.

“Yeah,” she says. “Let's do that.”

They find places to stand at the back of the churchyard, between the last two rows of stelae. The names of the dead press in on them from both sides. Sam's eye moves instinctively to read them, but she has had enough of death today and distracts herself by picking up Morgan so she can climb on her shoulders and see over the heads of the Fays in front. Clefairy are always curious; if Sam doesn't let her watch, she'll only start scratching her leg till she does.

Not that there's all that much to see. Just a box being carried down the path and shoved onto a pile of stinking wood. What's holy oil even made of, anyway? It smells like old fish and gasoline. Like Jack when he got stuck in the garage and broke open a grease gun trying to get out.

Almost makes her smile. Her parents got their tomboy daughter a clefairy for her trainer journey in the hope it might make her more of a girl; they never stopped to consider the fact that maybe clefairy don't know that being pink and fluffy is meant to make them sweet and demure. Sam was wary of her at first, but then Morgan threw a stick at an opposing trainer in a tantrum because she wasn't strong enough to beat his quagsire, and after that she had a place in Sam's heart that nobody else ever even came close to until Mae.

“You have all heard me say my piece,” says Alistair. “I'm aware that were Tacoma here, she'd thank me for keeping it brief.”

Sam appreciates it too. The sooner she can get out of here and back home to that fireside, the better. Maybe her irritation shows, because suddenly she feels cold fingers wrapped around her own, squeezing gently. She looks quizzically at Gabriella, what are you doing, and gets a shrug in response: we're at the back, nobody can see.

Risky. But hell, she'll take it.

“I now open the field to you,” Alistair is saying, when she returns her attention to him. “If anyone else has any final words to share in Tacoma's memory, before God and this community, then now is the time.”

No one takes up the offer. Sam wonders what they're meant to say. She liked Tacoma, is glad she knew her and sorry that she's gone, but these feel like poor offerings. Everything else she might say isn't the kind of thing she can share with the town; neither Tacoma nor her family would thank her for it. Probably wouldn't do her and Gabriella any good, either.

The silence goes on, long enough for Sam to start getting angry. This is the part where you celebrate the dead person's life, right? That's why they all came. Someone has to do something, has to have something to say to get everyone going. Tacoma deserves better than that. Sam saw her in the summer, sweltering in a long-sleeved shirt, and she's spent enough time among people who hate themselves to have her suspicions about what that means. If no one speaks at her pyre, that's just adding insult to injury.

“Suppose I should say something,” says Nick, and Sam heaves a silent sigh of relief. Okay. She's never really been to a funeral before – when she came back home, she found that those of her grandparents who were alive for her childhood had passed away in her absence – but she imagines that the first speech is always the hardest. They've all just spent several hours feeling sad at the house and in the church; now it's time to celebrate, to share in Tacoma's life instead of her death, and that's a hard shift in tone to navigate.

It's a good speech that he gives. Short – which again, Sam appreciates – but punchy. Unsentimental. In Nick's telling, Tacoma is the kind of person Sam would like to be, although of course she is not sure that Tacoma quite made it all the way into being that person, either. She nods along with the rhythm of it, annoying Morgan with the movement, and then all at once Nick's gears seem to grind and he just … stops. Like a run-down car pushed beyond its limits.

Sam can see the situation unfolding even before it happens. There's Alistair, saying “thank you” over and over, but that won't make Nick move, and then someone else will have to step in, and that someone is going to be Con, isn't it, because he just can't shake off that urge to be Police Chief even when he knows that his intervention would be the worst way there is to handle this situation, and then when his hand meets Nick's arm …

It was just before she left town that it happened, and to this day nobody really has any idea why. But she was one of the ones who saw it. Back then, she had part-time work at the post office with Marlo – this was before his drinking got out of hand and someone else had to take over – and she was just coming back from lunch when she saw the two of them coming out the door, shouting like they were trying to wake the dead.

You have no understanding of human suffering, yelled Nick.

You don't have any idea what you're talking ab, yelled Con, but he never quite finished, because at that point Nick laid him out flat on the pavement with the best right hook Sam had ever seen.

That was back when Nick was a student, before he moved away permanently, and apparently he was on the Yellowbrick wrestling team at the time. Still impressive. Con's a pretty big guy, after all.

It was funny at the time, of course, because Sam was eighteen and even more pointlessly rebellious than she is now, but today it just seems ominous.

She holds her breath.

Con steps out from the crowd.

“Ah, shit,” she mutters, and feels Gabriella's grip tighten. She knows too. And now they're going to see two grown men slugging it out over Tacoma's funeral pyre like toddlers fighting over a toy in a sandpit.

“Okay, Nick,” says Con. “Time to―”

As he speaks, he lays a hand on Nick's arm, and that's where it all starts to go wrong.

“Don't you touch me,” growls Nick, exploding back into motion like he just got filled with the breath of Ho-oh. “You―!”

That magneton of his zooms up over his head, arcs of lightning jumping between its cores; Sam can't see Moira, but she imagines she must be responding in kind, arching her tail and making her cheeks spark. The crowd pulls back, muttering like a parliament of owls, and she has to take a step back with Gabriella to avoid getting trodden on. For a moment Danny Fay's head is blocking her view, and the next thing she can see is Nick shifting position, fists rising.

Goddamn. Sam really didn't want to be proved right about this.

“Easy, Nick.” Con raises his hands, backs off. “This isn't the time for that.”

“Isn't it?” Nick's eyes flash with a cold light. What happened between these two? Sam is no stranger to hate, but this is deep stuff. Maybe he's spent the past decade brooding over whatever slight it was, condensing the hate down into something pure and violent. “I think I've been bloody patient in not throwing you out as soon as you―”

“Nick.”

“Oh thank God,” breathes Gabriella, and Sam finds she can't argue with that. Annie to the rescue. If anyone can pull Nick back from the edge of whatever cliff he's standing on, it has to be her.

“Nick, if you bring this to my daughter's funeral you are not setting foot in my house again,” she says, and that's it: all the fight goes out of him in an instant as he remembers where he is, and why. “And you, Con,” she snaps, just in case he thought he was getting away with his stupid intervention. “You should know better.”

“Sure, Annie,” he begins, but she doesn't let him finish.

“I don't want to hear it.”

Never has Sam seen anyone so comprehensively shut down. Con barely even reacts, just retreats back into the crowd. Nick shakes his head and stalks off, pushing roughly through the crowd with one hand and searching for something in his pocket with the other. Cigarettes? Sam feels like she needs one, and she only had to watch.

“Um,” says Alistair, his nerves obvious enough to give Sam a little thrill of satisfaction. Teach him to preach about what is and isn't natural. “If … if that's all, then I'd like to invite someone else to speak.”

The wait for a second speaker is almost as tense as that for the first; Sam's eyes move restlessly around the crowd, flicking back to Nick every so often to see him still fidgeting in his pocket and glaring, but nobody looks like they're psyching themselves up to step forward. Eventually someone does, though, and old Harry makes his slow way up to the pyre, his ancient electivire dragging himself slowly along behind him. Normally Jacob stays at home or in his ball, sleeping, but evidently he felt his human needed support today. It's been years since Sam saw him; his fur is almost completely grey now.

“I mostly saw Tacoma while she was on her way to see something more interesting,” Harry begins, to general smiles, and Sam knows that things are finally looking up. It's a nice speech, heartwarming really, and the only sour note is when he mentions that he regrets being the last person that Tacoma saw alive and Sam's mind jumps from Tacoma being killed with electricity to the fact that Harry (and maybe Jacob) knew exactly where she was on the evening she was killed. But that passes – why would he kill her, after all? Sam isn't sure if he's part of the chapter house group or not, but she is sure that Tacoma wasn't killed by members of the group – and then she can relax again. He's always had a knack for putting people at their ease. Good man.

After Harry comes that guy Victor, and that self-centred sap Steven, and Pryce Aske; Michelle takes a turn, talks about the way Tacoma used to run in and out of the Ortega house like it was her own, and Sam's eyes turn involuntarily to find Jodi in the crowd. She sees León and Ella, and assumes that Jodi is with them, but both she and Sam are too short for Sam to be able to see her.

She wonders if Jodi will speak. What would she say? Sam has no idea, really. She's probably sensible enough that she wouldn't talk about the fact that someone here is a murderer, but Sam doesn't know that for sure.

“Thank you, Michelle,” says Alistair, and as she walks away to rejoin León Sam feels Gabriella pull her hand free from hers.

“My turn,” she tells her, and edges politely through the crowd to tell her story about Tacoma being the first person she met in town. She comes back a little flushed, a little shaky, and grips Sam's hand tighter than before. Sam grips back, whispers that she was great, and feels her heart lift a little with Gabriella's nervous smile.

Ina. Marlo. Elsie. Janine. More and more of them, everyone who knew her and everyone who cared. They come and go, tossing stories into the crowd like coins into a fountain, watching the ripples spread across the mourners. The longer it goes on, the more distant Mae seems, the less ready to leave Sam feels. At some point, she even stops noticing the cold; the pyre still hasn't been lit, will not until the stories are done, but the glow of history here is like the hot charcoal in the bowl of a hookah, a gentle warmth that seeps in through your skin.

And then Everett returns to his parents, Annie wrapping one arm tight around him, and at last it is over.

Alistair looks around.

“Anyone else?”

No takers. Sam feels strange. Satisfied, maybe. She wasn't sure how she felt about watching Tacoma get incinerated, but now she thinks she's probably ready for it.

“All right then. Lorna, if you'd―”

“Hang on,” says a thin little voice, and Sam swears under her breath. She's going to do it, isn't she?

She'd better not say anything that anyone comes to regret.



???

This is proving to be a difficult day.

He knew it would be, of course. He's dealt with corpses before, but he was never the one that created them, and he's certainly never had to stand and suffer through their funerals. This Tacoma thing was a bad business. None of it was meant to happen, it was just … well. She got herself involved, even if she didn't mean to. The moment she picked up that package in Saffron, the wheels were set in motion. And that encounter in the park was as good as sealed.

He feels bad about that, he really does. He didn't necessarily understand Tacoma, but he knew she was heading for a life more important than his, and he cared, he did. Sometimes he wants to climb up onto the icy roof of his house and scream it into the night for everyone to hear: please, you have to believe me!

But … but it's happened now, and it can't be taken back, and that means there's nothing left for it but to fight the guilt and suffer through her funeral.

The wake was bad, standing around with everyone else, all so apologetic, so cautious of the Spearings' loss. At least he didn't have to fake his sorrow; on one occasion, he had to excuse himself and stand in the bathroom, gripping the edge of the sink and breathing hard while his partner moved around in erratic little bursts, upset by his obvious distress. When he came out again, face as white as the snow outside, he saw people looking at him, and murmuring sympathetically to one another. If only they knew, he thought. If only they knew.

The service was a little easier; that was just sitting around, after all, and if he concentrated on the chiming of the bell-vanes on the roof as they turned in the wind he could blank out Alistair's sermon easily enough. Got a little dicey when Everett took the pulpit to deliver one of the readings, though. The God that the killer believes in has never quite matched up with the God of the Church, but in that moment he was certain that His judgement was only a matter of time.

Now, standing by the pyre with everyone else, he can take a measure of comfort in the fact that it is almost over, for today at least. (The police investigation is still ongoing, of course, and there's a lot to be done there yet, but that's a problem for another day.) There was that damn stupid fight – God, that was painful – but that's past now, and the speeches are pretty much done. He can't see anyone choosing to follow Everett and his choked-up elegy.

Except that someone does. Except that that damn Ortega kid still has something to say.

“Hang on.” Eyes bright. Tears, or determination? Impossible to be certain. “I wanted to say something, actually.”

“Of course,” says Alistair, although he does not sound very sure about it. Probably wondering whether or not letting the kid make a speech would profane the rites. “Um, come on up … Jodi.”

Up there now, moving slowly. Leg playing up, maybe. Lothian is there too, sticking close as a shadow.

He swallows. He has a feeling he knows what he's about to hear.

“Tacoma was my best friend, once. And I really wish that she still was.” Surveying the crowd. Absolutely fearless, despite the empathy. He hates this: nerves would be more approachable, easier to deal with. “There were a bunch of reasons why we stopped hanging out, I guess, and I understood those, but I never stopped hoping she'd come talk to me again someday. Maybe I should have taken the lead. I guess that ship has sailed now.

“But that's not the point. The point is, I still cared. She did too, I think. I always got that sense from her, even when she'd pass me in the street and not say anything. And now she's gone, but she's watching, and I want to admit that, here where we can all hear. We missed an opportunity. I really hope we get a chance to make up for it, eventually.”

Cute. Maybe this is going to be okay after all. This isn't any worse than what anyone else has said; it just reminds him that he tore a hole in people's lives, is all, and that's something he's been dealing with all this afternoon.

“I probably don't need to repeat what everyone else has said, about how smart she was and all. You know that stuff. But she was, you know. And now she's dead, and … and I'm standing here talking to you, and all I can think is that as I look at you, I'm looking at the person who did it.”

People don't like that; heads are turning, low murmurs exchanged. By the pyre, Lothian unfolds his wings and arches his back, unsettled.

“I hope I'm wrong. I hope you're all the people I thought you were. But I don't know any more, and I owe it to Tacoma to be suspicious.” Okay. Okay, this is starting to get harder to bear. “I'm not here to make accusations. I don't want to spoil things. But I hope Tacoma gets the justice she deserves.”

Their eyes meet. As if … but nobody knows, right? It's impossible. Nobody can know. He was careful. So careful.

But what if someone could read minds?

He can hear the blood roaring in his ears. The world seems to be much further away than it used to be, except for those eyes, drilling down through his face into the dark place in his head where terrible secrets are kept, and suddenly it seems incredibly hard to breathe―

“Sorry.” The eyes move on, turn their awful intensity on someone else. Just looking around. All of this was just a coincidence. He knows that. “Tacoma was … incredible. She still is, wherever she is. Let's focus on that.” A sigh. “Thanks. I'm sorry for upsetting things.”

Gone before anyone can even think of responding. He breathes out, tells himself he's being stupid. He's actually seen mind-readings take place before, and they're not the kind of thing you can pull off standing up while giving a speech; it takes real concentration to make them work. His secret is still safe. Even from the psychic kid.

“Uh … thank you, Jodi,” says Alistair, looking confused. “All right. If that's all …? Lorna. It's time.”

She hands him the holy taper, its handle carved with phoenix wings, and Alistair's flareon raises her head to light it with a breath.

“Most holy and gracious God,” he says, “we commend the soul of this girl into Your eternal care.”

It catches instantly, the holy oil flaring like petrol, and as one the crowd takes a step back as the fire roars up towards heaven, heat rolling off it in thick waves that seem to scorch their faces after the long winter cold.

There's an art to making a pyre; you want to choose the right woods, the right mixture of oils, so that it burns hot enough to turn flesh and bone into ash – and too bright to look at, so that you don't have to watch it happening. The coffin should hold for a little while, until the pressure of the hot air inside becomes too great, and by that point most of Tacoma herself should be gone.

In some places, he has heard, they arrange things so that the ash of the person cannot mix with the ash of the fuel, so that the family can keep them as a memorial.

He is very, very glad that this is not what is done here.

“Within the flame and in our hearts,” begins someone, begins that damn kid, and as the old Johto hymn spreads throughout the crowd, the words rising up with the pillar of smoke, the killer stands there and keeps his eyes fixed on the flame, on the box even now beginning to crumble at the corners.

He stares until he can stare no more, and after he finally gives in and blinks he finds he cannot see anything at all but the ghost of the fire, flashing blue-green before his eyes.

Hey so I'll be commenting on the first two chapters here but I hope to read further later on!

So far I'm realy digging the premise here, murder mystery with the main character having psychic powers. I'm reminded of the video game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter where a psychic detective has to solve a series of murders related to the disappearnce of a kid, so it should be cool to see how you tackle this kind of premise here. Already there's some neat worldbuilding like with the mentions of ghost studies and Lothian's ability being used there.

I too thought it was a nice change with Jodi's family being accepted of her coming out. Tachoma's reaction she made a few slip ups despite having good intentions, but she's willing to learn from her mistakes so that's good. Speaking of Tachoma, oh boy her being a Spiritomb now. I would react the same way if I were in her place.

I'm very interested in this story so far, I'll come back to comment on the later chapters!

Content warning: There is some closer engagement with Tacoma's self-harm in this chapter.

NINE: BACKWOODS REDOUBT
TACOMA

One day maybe Tacoma will get used to this. One day she might have a rhythm, a kind of order to her existence here, although it's hard to imagine what that would look like when at the moment only three living creatures know she's still around, and two of those are pokémon.

This is not that day. Hasn't even been a week yet, after all. The tower is already achingly familiar – she can recite those names in alphabets she can read for twenty-nine floors down – but it isn't home, not by a long shot. She's taken off her coat and boots, thrown her sweater across her sarcophagus at a careless kind of angle; still, she has the feeling that even if she stripped naked and flung her clothes everywhere she wouldn't be able to make this space feel like a place in which someone lived.

The problem is probably that this isn't a place in which anybody lives, really. Back on Tuesday, after she'd bid Jodi goodnight and promised Nikki she'd be back with her in the morning, she decided she'd try and simulate some kind of routine and actually got undressed to sleep for once. She noticed then that the stubble on her legs hadn't grown any longer than it was when she got dressed to catch her train home, which in turn made her realise that her nails were the same length too, and that despite a week without brushing her teeth her mouth still tasted normal, and after that she put her clothes back on and decided to hell with a routine, nothing mattered any more and there was no reason for her to do anything at all.

She did not recover on Wednesday. Jodi was out, and Nikki is too used to her depressive bullshit to help her break out of it: she just lay down with the rock, holding it between her claws and whining when Tacoma went back inside. It's something Tacoma feels bad about. They both used to be so restless, and for a while after Tacoma's energy burnt itself out Nikole still was, dragging her out of bed and into the fresh air. Until she realised that there was something wrong with Tacoma beyond the fact that she didn't want to take her for walks any more, and she started to spend all her time just sitting with her, uncertain why she couldn't make her partner happy any more but desperate to do it anyway.

Thursday isn't any better. At this point, Tacoma hasn't heard from Jodi since Tuesday night; she pretended to be asleep on Wednesday morning, aware of Jodi's nerves but unwilling to start that conversation, and while she sensed Jodi's distress when she got back home she couldn't bring herself to ask if she was okay.

After that, Jodi ate almost without breathing for fifteen straight minutes and then immediately fell asleep. The last time Tacoma left the rock, her clock said it was about twenty past twelve. How long Michelle and León will leave it till they come to check on her Tacoma isn't sure, but she's been using the fact that they might do it at any time as an excuse to stay in.

This is not the right thing to do. Especially not after Jodi plunged right into her parents' grief to go and get Nikki for her. That's not nothing, especially not for an empath, and especially not for an empath who's just come out. Jodi did that for her, and she let Nikole wreck her leg on the way home too, and here Tacoma is, refusing even to stick her head out and say hello to the partner Jodi brought her.

She's not making this any better by beating herself up about it. She knows this.

She's doing it anyway.


Lothian is up, she thinks. But last she looked, he was just sitting there on the end of Jodi's bed like a gargoyle, completely uninterested in occupying Nikole. Worried about his partner. Like Nikole is about hers.

Tacoma did a course on partnership in her first year, as it goes, on the unique instincts that bind humans and certain pokémon together, but she really doesn't want to think about that right now.

Jodi's mind ripples, like water beneath a falling pebble, and Tacoma puts her eye to the crack to see Lothian stirring, shuffling down to the head of her bed. This is a chance to break the fugue, and Tacoma forces herself to take it: she pushes her head out, making Nikole look up and make a little breathy noise of pleasure, and watches as Jodi grips the bed frame and drags herself slowly into a sitting position.

“Mm,” she grunts, scratching Lothian's head. “Hey, you.”

Her voice is thin and quiet. She might at this moment be the most exhausted person Tacoma has ever seen.

“Morning, Tacoma,” she says, looking up. “Gotta be quiet. Not sure I can do telepathy today.”

“'S okay.”

Tacoma jerks her head at Nikki, signalling that she should come pick her up. It's been a long time since she last carried her, but these past couple of days Tacoma has rediscovered the old pleasure all over again. Nikki always liked it. Kangaskhan are primed for parthenogenesis and motherhood; those who don't conceive for whatever reason feel better if they have something else to hold – a soft toy, a partner. And it's pretty nice being on the receiving end, too. Tacoma likes physical contact, even if she hates when people initiate it.

“Bit closer, Nikki,” she says, and feels the thread connecting her to the rock stretch and sway as Nikole brings her over to Jodi. “How're you doing?”

“Tired.” Jodi leans back against her pillows, eyes closed. Something about this position makes the bones of her face seem horribly prominent, like her skin could just melt off her skull at any moment; a second later, gathering up her energy or detecting Tacoma's unease, she opens her eyes again and seems to come back to life. “I'm sorry. I might not actually be getting out of bed today. Definitely not leaving the house, anyway.”

“Because of the funeral?”

Jodi sighs.

“Yeah. Because of the funeral. Standing up all day, especially after I already hurt it yesterday” (Nikole's fault, thinks Tacoma, which of course means it's her fault, really, as if she hasn't hurt Jodi enough already over the years) “and the amount of … of everything I had to block out.” Lothian moves closer, settles himself at her side with his fuzzy neck pressed up against her chest, and she slips her bony arm around him as she speaks. You could fit maybe two or three of those arms into one of Tacoma's. She isn't sure whether she's envious or worried. “Grief, sure, but everyone staring, and everyone wondering who …. you know, who did it, and their shock and curiosity and everything.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.”

“I meant that it happened,” says Tacoma, although this is not, in fact, what she meant.

Half-smile.

“Okay,” says Jodi. “Thanks.” She scratches her face, then freezes for a second when her fingertips encounter stubble. Tacoma wonders what it's like. The way Jodi's mind feels, it definitely can't be much fun. “Hmph. Anyway,” she says, taking her hand away with a visible effort of will, “it was a nice service. A lot of people really care about you. They're gonna be really happy, after all this is done and we can tell them you're not gone.”

The terrible thing is that Tacoma believes her. People do care. They care about her, because she's the success story, the Mahogany kid who got the scholarship and soared even as the town fell off a cliff beneath her, and because they don't know what she did, back on her trainer journey. She wants nothing more than to tell them the truth, turn the pride in their eyes into horror, but she never has done, and now she figures it's probably too late. Let them have their moment. Let them celebrate a brilliant dead daughter. To take that away at this point would just be cruel.

“Okay,” she says, aware that Jodi is waiting for some kind of response. “I … I don't know how to feel about that.”

“I guess that's understandable.” Of course it is. Jodi the empath, understanding everything. Makes her skin crawl. “Look, we don't have to talk about it,” says Jodi. “The funeral, I mean. If you want, we can just focus on―”

A knock at the door. Tacoma is back inside the rock in an instant, Nikole's dismayed growl echoing in her ears; the next thing she knows, Jodi is calling out:

“Yeah?”

“Jodi?”

Ella's voice. What? Has term ended already?

“Ella?” Jodi sounds as confused as her. “Don't you have school?”

“We all got the day off for the funeral and then they figured there was no point bringing us back for two days. Can I come in?”

“I, um … sure, I guess.”

She's nervous; Tacoma can feel it in whatever it is that passes for her bones. Because Ella might have overheard them? Or because she hasn't shaved yet? It's only been a few days, but Tacoma is beginning to get an idea of the lengths Jodi goes to to avoid people seeing her on anything but her own terms.

The click of the door; a little gasp of inward breath.

“Nikki,” says Jodi. “Calm down.”

Tacoma presses her eye hastily to the gap and sees the room sway dizzyingly around her as Nikole shoves her into the crook of one arm, the other curling across her vision into a battle stance, ready to slash or punch.

“Nikki!” she snaps, hoping she can hear. Her ghost powers do seem to extend to some kind of telepathy; she summoned Jodi that night, and she got Nikki to calm down the last time she scared Ella, too. “You have got to stop doing this.”

Nikole pauses, confused as to where the voice is coming from, but she does lower her claws, and Tacoma just catches Ella's sigh of relief as she moves.

“Sorry,” says Jodi, like any of this is her fault. “What is it, Ella?”

“Um … who were you talking to?”

“Lothi. He wanted to know if I was okay.”

“Oh. Right, I forgot he can … I forgot.”

Pause. Tacoma reaches up to her lips, tells herself not to pick, and picks.

“Did you want something?” asks Jodi.

“Oh. No, I mean – Mum asked me to check on you if you weren't awake by one. Make sure you didn't die or anything.”

“That's what she said?”

“Maybe she didn't use those exact words.”

“Okay. Well, thanks.” Jodi leans out of bed to grip Ella's arm, and all at once Tacoma misses Everett so much it hurts. “I'm okay. Exhausted, but okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mostly.” It sounds like she's smiling. “Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, too defensive, too fast, and Jodi sighs.

“Because I'm psychic,” she says. “And because I know that me doing … this, you know, it doesn't just affect me.”

Another, longer, pause. Ella stares at the floor, nudging something around with her toe. Talk, Tacoma wants to scream. Your sister's still alive! Talk to her! But she stays silent, and so does Ella, and in the end it's Jodi who has to take responsibility.

“C'mere,” she says, tugging Ella closer, and as she sits down on the bed and leans with an unexpected eagerness into the hug Tacoma cuts the line.

This isn't for her, she reflects, in the stygian gloom of the tower. Watching would be spying.

She thinks of Everett, for whom she is herself an Ella, a wayward little sister who doesn't know how to talk to him, and she thinks of the funeral he just attended where he saw her burnt to ash, and Tacoma yanks hard on her half-healed cut so that the flesh pops apart again like a bag of crisps but though it hurts like hell there isn't any blood at all.



When she next dares to look outside, both Jodi and Ella are gone, and only Nikole is left. She is delighted to see her, so much so that Tacoma doesn't have the heart to retreat again, and they spend an hour alone in Jodi's room that would be funny if Tacoma wasn't actually living it. Nikki seems to be aware her partner can't get things for herself, so she keeps taking books off Jodi's shelf (about music, mostly, and also one about that Watergate thing that Tacoma remembers vaguely was in the news a couple of years ago) and putting them down in front of her with an expectant look on her face. The kind of thing you'd laugh at on TV, but which in real life is just frustrating.

But it's Nikki, it's her partner, so Tacoma clamps down hard on her annoyance and keeps on thanking her for each one. After a while, she seems to get that they're unwanted and gives up to just lie down with her instead, resting her heavy head on her arm and staring at Tacoma's mouth. (She doesn't like eye contact, and assumes that everybody else is the same because she is even more self-centred than her partner.) Sometimes she reaches out with her free claw, just to make sure she's still there. As if she's afraid she might disappear.

It's not such an unwarranted fear, honestly. Kind of a shitty thing to realise, but there it is.

Eventually, the wait is over. Tacoma hears footsteps – very slow today, and uneven – and the muffled click of Jodi's cane, and then there she is, pushing the door shut behind her and leaning heavily against it.

“Hey,” she says, closing her eyes. Tacoma is half afraid of seeing the skull beneath her skin again, but now she's made her face up it's much less obvious. “Sorry. We, um … I think we needed that.”

“It's fine,” says Tacoma. “She all right?”

“Mostly.” Jodi smiles, and the skull fades even further, blanked out by her prettiness. “Thanks for asking.”

Tacoma moves to shrug, except of course all she manages to do is wiggle the thread around a little.

“She seemed upset. So. You know.”

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “I know.” Pause. “I need to spend some time with her soon,” she adds, hesitantly. “Just us. If that's all right.”

It is. Or no, it isn't, there is a huge selfish thing roaring in Tacoma's head for Jodi's attention, rattling its spines against each other and clawing at the sides of her skull, but this is unreasonable and she knows it.

“Sure,” she says, certain that Jodi can see the spiny thing raging in her, not knowing what to do except try to hide it anyway. “I mean, she's your sister. Can't really complain about sharing you with her.”

“Thanks.” Jodi pushes herself away from the door, limps over. Normally she hides it better, but today the pain of moving is written all over her. “Tomorrow,” she begins, and Tacoma leaps in before she can finish.

“Let your leg get better first,” she says. “And your brain. Dunno what we're gonna find out there, but you should be ready.”

“Tomorrow,” repeats Jodi. “We'll go tomorrow. Then I think Saturday I might take Ella to Ecruteak. They probably have last year's movies by now.”

It takes a while for films to reach Johto; there aren't a lot of cinemas, and not that many people who can afford to attend them. There isn't much of a home film industry, either; the closest thing to Johtonian film is Kantan film, and obviously that means that half the cinemas here don't show it on principle, even though the only real difference between Johtoni and Kantan is the alphabet and intonation.

“That's cool,” says Tacoma. “Hope you guys have fun.”

“Thanks. But. First – you know. That cabin.” Jodi sighs. “I'm not gonna lie, I don't really know how we're gonna find it when the cops can't, but, um, we'll have to try.”

“Can you get it from Nikki?”

“Dunno. Not today, anyway. Maybe she'd understand if you asked her.” She frowns. “Actually, why didn't Con ask me to do that? You'd think they'd want the help. It's a nightmare finding anything up there even when it isn't snowing.”

“No idea. Let's leave it for now.” God damn, would Jodi just let herself rest for a bit? She looks like she might die if you asked her to go downstairs. “Where's Ella?”

“Painting. It's okay, she always plays her tapes when she paints; she won't hear us.” Something seems to occur to her then: she straightens up a little, gives Nikki a look. “Are you two okay in here? Sorry, I just left you here all day.”

“'S all right. Guess I wouldn't mind the radio or something.”

“Right. Okay. Um … TV? Sorry, I think if I go outside I'll need to be rescued by Lothian before I get to the end of the drive.”

“TV is okay,” says Tacoma, relieved at the prospect of Jodi spending the afternoon sitting down. “You like TV, don't you, Nikki?”

The ridges around Nikole's eyes shift into a new alignment, and despite herself Tacoma has to smile. Sometimes Nikole has the patience for TV and sometimes not – but she always knows when her partner wants her to agree with her on something.

“That's a yes,” she says. “She likes things that move.”

“Cool.” Jodi plants her cane, pushes herself back up. “C'mon then, you two. That TV isn't gonna watch itself.”

It sure isn't, agrees Tacoma, and so they go downstairs, where Jodi drags her bad leg stiffly up onto the sofa and they watch a Kantan art historian talk expansively about paintings. The broadcast assumes you're watching in colour, unfortunately, but they can still see some of what she's talking about.

Jodi watches with genuine interest, curled against the arm of the sofa with her leg trailing stiffly along the cushions. Next to her, Tacoma listens to her breath, and out of the corner of her eye looks at the profile of her face against the light from the window, a portrait of concentration.

She's really interested, isn't she? In this moment Tacoma loves her more than ever, her brilliant friend who reads non-fiction and watches educational TV with genuine enjoyment, who is the kind of dedicated that Tacoma is fundamentally incapable of being; here is someone who has a future, someone curious to want one and brave enough to accept it, and even if Tacoma has burnt her life to ash the way they burned her corpse yesterday, she might at least be able to see Jodi's turn out okay.

Tacoma lets her disc slip to one side until it leans against Jodi's hip, fog splashing against her side, and apparently without realising it Jodi moves her hand around her back, to rest on the thread of mist between disc and rock and send a little tingle of excitement through what passes for Tacoma's body. How long has it been since she was this close to anyone? Probably not since she and Jodi went on their journey, honestly. Sure, the last time they spoke was probably only five years ago, but they were already almost strangers then.

Nikole watches them from across the room, eyes narrow with suspicion at the way this girl she doesn't know has wormed her way into Tacoma's affections. Tacoma could try to explain, could call her over and tell her again that this is the kid she once tried to dig out from under the mess of ice and stone and shattered trees; if she moves, though, if she speaks, then Jodi might move too and the moment could end, and right now she can't think of anything she's more afraid of than that.

She sits there, watching Nikole glare, and feels bad about the fact that she does not feel bad about this at all.



“You're sure you're up to this?”

“Nikki needs a walk, Mum,” says Jodi. “And I … kind of need to get out too. After Wednesday.”

Tacoma listens from the dark of her tomb, watching Jodi's lipstick shuffle across her vision as the car shifts the contents of her bag. Nikki's ball is in there too, somewhere. Took some convincing to get her to go back in there, but Tacoma had to try; even if she'd somehow managed to fit through the car door, she'd probably have just gone straight through the floorboards. After all this time, she's almost completely destroyed the old sofa that Tacoma inherited after her parents got a new one for the living-room, and that was sold as pokémon-proof. Cars are much flimsier.

Speaking of that sofa, she probably should've asked Jodi to have a look inside it. There's a hole in the arm that you can just get your hand into, if you try, and this is where Tacoma keeps things she doesn't want her parents to find: cigarettes, weed, a two-hundred-florin note she found in a park once and decided to keep in case she ever needed to put her secret plan of last resort into action. Would've been nice to have that stuff, and as it is she has no idea if she'll ever see it again.

“Okay,” says Michelle, the sound of her voice bringing Tacoma back out of her thoughts. “If you're sure. I'll be back at noon, okay? Don't be late.”

“I won't,” promises Jodi. “And I'll be fine, I promise. I have Lothi and Nikki. It'd be pretty difficult to get any safer than that.”

“I know, I know, I just …” It sounds like the kind of pause you leave when you're trying to think of how to finish, but in the end Michelle never comes up with anything. “Have a nice time, chickadee,” she says, after a few awkward seconds of silence. “Back here at noon.”

“Noon. Got it.”

Car door thumping. The contents of Jodi's bag shift over her vision again, so close it feels like they're going to hit her in the face, although of course they never do.

“Bye!”

“Bye!”

The motor growls, the tyres crunch, and then, as the sound fades, there is nothing at all except a vast and eerie silence.

“Okay.” Light floods into Tacoma's field of view, making her squint, and a second later it disappears again as Jodi's hand delves into her bag and blocks it out, made unsettlingly large by the weird perspective. “Nikki first.”

The unmistakeable sound of a ball opening, and then of heavy paws settling onto hard earth.

“And Tacoma,” says Jodi, as Tacoma's view swings around in dizzying circles; a moment later, it stabilises, and she thrusts her head out into the chilly air to find herself between Nikole's claws once more.

She looks around. They're standing in that area of cleared forest just off the north road where people park to take walks in the woods; there are no cars here today, just icebound earth, and beyond the wooden railing that marks the perimeter endless rows of pine trees, their branches almost black beneath the heavy load of gleaming snow.

Been a long time since she was last here. Probably she was exercising Nikki then, too. Summer, maybe, when she was hiding her depression from her family by making an effort to go outside and smile at people.

“Hey,” she squinting against the dazzling reflection of sunlight on ice. “So we've got an hour and a half?”

“Yep,” replies Jodi. She's wearing mirrored sunglasses that make her look like a movie star, lenses shining with magpie-feather iridescence in the winter light. Tacoma isn't sure if she's ever seen anyone look quite this cool.

“And the cops have been looking for how long now, exactly?”

“Almost a week.” Jodi shrugs. “All we can do is try.”

“Yeah,” sighs Tacoma. “I guess.”

The air rushes overhead, and Lothian glides down from somewhere to join them, claws digging effortlessly into the icy dirt. He looks at Jodi expectantly, fanning the edges of his wings; she smiles and waves him away.

“Going towards the river,” she calls, as he takes off again. “And be careful! If you knock the snow off the branches on top of us, you are in so much trouble.”

He hoots in understanding, or just out of the delight of having wings and space to use them, and vanishes again, into the upper reaches of the trees. Tacoma can't see him, but she doubts he'll go far enough to lose track of Jodi.

“Okay,” she says, twisting around as best she can to look up at Nikole. “Nikki? Do you remember being here a few days ago?”

The ridges shift around her eyes.

“Don't lie to me,” she warns her. “D'you remember where you came from?”

She sniffs deeply, casts a suspicious glance at Jodi.

“Yeah, sure, Jodi saw. But we need to go back where you came from, Nikki. 'S important, okay? And you like walks, I know you do.”

Nikki stiffens a little, recognising the word walk in there somewhere, and as she turns her head towards the woods Tacoma suddenly understands: she didn't believe it, did she? After all this time, all those days wasted in lying in darkened rooms while the light crept cautiously around the edges of the curtains, she just didn't think that this was going to happen. That Tacoma might want to take her out again and wander through the forest.

Tacoma Spearing: literally the worst trainer on the peninsula. She swallows her anger, aware that Nikki will think that it's directed at her, and does her best to smile.

“That's right,” she says. “We're gonna go for a walk, Nikki. Back to where my bag is. You remember where that was?”

She moves much faster this time, looks into the woods and points clumsily with one hand. It's not a natural movement for kangaskhan; their forelimbs don't have the same range of movement as human arms, and their hooked claws can't uncurl like fingers can. But she learned to do this watching Tacoma, back when she first started training her properly, and as she does it now it makes Tacoma a little dizzy with nostalgia and guilt.

“Nice,” she says, talking around the lump in her throat. “Uh … c'mon, then. But not too fast, okay? Jodi can't keep up with you.”

They set off, heading down the trail that goes west towards the river. The light beneath the trees is strange, moving from bright to dim in an instant; sometimes they'll walk through an early twilight, beneath branches so thick with snow that the sun seems to have disappeared, and a second later emerge into a blinding glare stolen from a summer's day. The brightness makes Tacoma's eyes water with something thin and discoloured that seems to be the liquid form of her fog; she blinks it back, but the odd drop escapes and gets caught in the swirling of her disc, to be hurled out into the forest and splatter against a tree.



“Whoa,” she says. “Thanks, Lothi.”

He squeaks – it always seems to Tacoma like such a weird noise for a dragon to make, but she supposes that technically he is just a giant bat – and launches himself at a nearby tree, crawling up the trunk as easily as he would over flat ground. After a few seconds, he's hidden by the branches, and a little explosion of falling snow marks his leap back into the sky.

“How does he go that fast?” asks Tacoma, still unsure where exactly he came from in the first place. “Is that like a modified quick attack or something?”

Jodi laughs.

“Not a move,” says Jodi. “Just fast. He likes to race my friend Carmine's jolteon. Sometimes he wins, and the jolteon gets so angry I always think she's gonna explode.”

“Oh. Uni friend. Telekinesis and precognition. Really powerful, actually, like a 74% on the brain test. Most of us are in the fifties,” she adds, realising Tacoma has no idea what that means. “She picked me up with her mind once, which was probably the scariest ten seconds of my life.”

“What about when you looked up to see half a mountain falling on you?”

“Okay, whatever, second scariest ten seconds.”

Tacoma makes no reply, aware that she probably shouldn't have said that. Jodi has to be uneasy, walking around in the woods with snowy branches all around; what kind of asshole reminds her that this is how she lost her partners and almost her life as well?

Tacoma Spearing, apparently. Figures, she thinks, and retreats sullenly into Nikole's arms as they walk on towards the gurgling of the river.



It's beautiful, and quiet. There's the creaking, of course, and the occasional whoosh as Lothian beats his wings harder than usual; there's the crunch of dirt and sticks giving way beneath Nikki's heavy feet. A couple of birds singing. Tacoma tries to remember what that one that goes whee-ee-oo! is, but the last time she identified a bird was on her trainer journey and she can't figure it out.

And then there's the Rageriver: a huge, pulsing mass of shattered ice and churning water, flooding south from the Lake of Rage to vanish underground into the Mount Mortar caves. When they get close enough to catch a glimpse of it through the trees, they can't help but get closer, drawn to see what it is that's making all the noise, and then when they emerge onto the riverbank trail, they just have to stop and stare. It's a good forty feet across even now, with fingers of ice clutching at its sides. In spring, after the melt – well, there isn't going to be a riverbank trail for at least a few months.

“Wow,” says Jodi, taking off her sunglasses to stare. Today, it seems, her eyeshadow is the smoky blue of summer twilight. “I'd kinda forgotten.”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. “Me too.”

They watch. A branch floats by, its edges blending into the blackness of the water.

“I don't even know when I was last here,” says Jodi. “I usually only exercise Lothi in town.”

“Same,” says Tacoma. But this is a lie, isn't it, and Jodi cares far too much for Tacoma to lie to her like that, and so she corrects herself: “Or, uh, no. I … haven't been exercising Nikki.”

Jodi looks away from the water then, eyebrows raised.

“You said she needed walking,” she says. It's not an accusation, not quite, but it's very hard not to take it as one.

“Yeah,” says Tacoma, uncomfortably. She can't seem to look away from Jodi's face right now, much as she'd like to. “D'you, uh, know what I do in the tower?”

“No …?”

“I, um, lie on my back. And stare at the ceiling.”

Jodi looks at her for a long while. She's projecting a little without realising, or that link between them is open again; Tacoma can feel her pain from over here.

Christ. How does Jodi live with this? It's awful. Tacoma can hardly stand sensing her distress; what it's like to feel this for everyone you ever meet she can't even imagine.

“You don't just do this in the tower, do you.”

Tacoma has had a lot of cause to feel ashamed, over the past few years. All the people she's been mean to, all the lies she's told, all the shit she's put Nikki through just because she couldn't make her emotions work properly. But this is something else.

“No,” she admits. “I haven't.”

Jodi's knuckles are white on her cane. Above her, Lothian comes into view, banking sharply over the river to land at her back.

“Tacoma,” Jodi begins, reaching out towards her, but before she can finish Nikki tightens her grip and snatches Tacoma away, taking a too-long step back that leaves her off balance, and then suddenly she bellows and slips and Tacoma is falling onto the slope and rolling down towards the water, the world whirling nauseatingly around her, and in the tower she scrabbles desperately for purchase as if she could grab the roots bouncing past her head―

―and finds something, and grips it, and stops.

Tacoma's eyes are shut tight, waiting for the impact with the water that will carry her away into an underground lake for centuries of solitary immortality. Carefully, cautiously, she opens them again, and sees Jodi's eyes locked with hers.

Jodi's eyes move to the side. Tacoma's move with them, and together they look at the pair of hands locked together on the ground between them.

One small, red-gloved hand. And, gripping tightly onto its wrist – one dark, sludgy purple one.

Tacoma looks some more. The hand is connected to a forearm, far more similar to hers than the face in the disc; it's like the mist has been shoved into the shed skin of her living body, purple swirling beneath the surface around the livid green streaks of her scars. It fades away around the elbow, but it's her hand. Almost just like it used to be.

“Tacoma,” says Jodi. There's a stick poking into her cheek, but Tacoma isn't sure she has a hand free to move it. She wishes she had a hand free to move it, but she only seems to have the one.

“Yeah?” says Tacoma.

“I'm not sure I can get up.”

The world comes into focus again: here she is, halfway down the riverbank, hand in hand with Jodi. Who appears to have literally flung herself at the ground to catch her.

Holy shit.

“Oh,” she says, which is about as coherent as she can get right now. “Right.”

A few long breathless moments pass. It's starting to sink in, a little. The fall. The hand.

The scars, right there for everyone to see.

Jodi says nothing; she just pushes herself up off the ground with her free hand, dragging Tacoma up with her. Halfway through the movement, Lothian sinks his teeth into the fabric of her coat and helps her turn over into something vaguely resembling a sitting position, her good leg bent and the other stretched out at an uncomfortable-looking angle.

“Okay,” she gasps, letting go of Tacoma's hand to push her hair out of her face. “Okay, thanks.”

Lothian's nose twitches, transmitting some kind of message; Jodi reaches out to scratch his head, but he picks up her cane and puts it in her hand before she manages to actually touch him. She lays it on her lap and hugs him close.

“Okay,” she says again, looking over his shoulder at Tacoma. “That … just happened.”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. “It― are you fucking kidding me?”

Her hand is fading, its substance sloughing away and dissolving on the wind. She concentrates, digging her fingers into the earth in case gripping is what summons it – but still, it fades, and then it is gone and Tacoma is just a head again.

She takes a deep, sharp breath. She's not going to shout about this. She's not going to cry. She's not going to do so many things.

“I'm sorry,” says Jodi, trying to shuffle closer. “Tacoma, I'm so sorry―”

“Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn't be,” snaps Tacoma, and the things she is not going to do rise within her like a wild skarmory, four hundred pounds of angry steel flying at the world with unstoppable force. “It's just a hand. And I'm just dead.”

“No, Tacoma―”

Hand on her disc, the warm glow of Jodi's psionics. Tacoma twists away sharply and slams the mental link closed so hard that shadows pop at the corners of her vision. She's a dark-type, isn't she? She doesn't have to take this psychic bullshit if she doesn't want to. Jodi flinches, clutches at her head, and even as the guilt begins to prickle Tacoma is filled with an acid satisfaction. Look at her, kicking her disabled friend in the brain. Turns out she really is the asshole she always thought she was.

Jodi is shaking. Holding her head like it might break. Tacoma can't see her face but she can hear her breath, thick and staccato. Like someone crying.

The skarmory folds its wings and falls straight out of her mind. What has she done?
“Jodi?” she asks. “Are you okay?”

No answer. Lothian hisses at her, teeth bared and ears forward, and as she shrinks away unfolds his wings and curls them around Jodi the way Tacoma imagines he would around a baby noibat, making a little echo chamber into which to fire his vibrations. She watches anxiously for what might be ten seconds or might be a year, and then Jodi sniffs deeply and Lothian pulls back.

She straightens up, and without looking at Tacoma reaches for her bag for a tissue and her mascara, fixing her tear-smudged make-up. Making her wait. When she's done, Tacoma thinks she might be about to speak but instead she gets out her cigarettes, and a heavy silver lighter with the bell-and-wing arms of Johto engraved on the side. Michelle's lighter. Tacoma remembers Jodi telling her the story back when they were kids: Michelle stole it from her father when she was fifteen, a petty revenge for his liberality with the belt, and ran off with it to offer boys a light and seduce them out of their sugar rations. Apparently Jodi has since inherited it.

Jodi smokes her cigarette for a while, taking care to direct the smoke over the river and away from Lothian, and just when Tacoma is starting to think she'd rather have been dropped in the river after all she speaks.

“That really hurt.”

“I'm sorry,” she says, immediately.

“I know.” Jodi blows a smoke ring, watches it float away. “You can't do that to people, Tacoma.”

“I know, I'm sorry, I don't – I'm not even sure what I did …”

Jodi finally looks at her then, and Tacoma wishes she'd just kept looking at the river.

“Me either,” she says, “but it was dark-type.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I know,” says Jodi again. “I know.” She blows another smoke ring. Two for two. She must have had a lot of practice. There is so much that Tacoma doesn't know about her any more. “Look, I'm not gonna pretend I know what you're going through, but you can't do things like that.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't even – I didn't know I was doing it, I was just trying to stop you psychicing me.”

“I would've done that if you'd asked.”

Four times Tacoma has apologised now, and Jodi hasn't said she forgives her. It stings, but Tacoma gets it. You don't get to demand that of someone. They have a right to their hurt and their anger.

“I know,” she says. “I'm not trying to make excuses, I just … I was angry and I messed up.”

Jodi sighs.

“Well, you wouldn't be the first person to do that,” she mutters, stubbing out her cigarette on a rock. “I should have asked too, I guess.”

“No,” says Tacoma. It seems fundamentally wrong that Jodi should take any blame for this. Better that it all be on her, just the way it ought to be. “No, I like it when you … I like it. I was being unreasonable.”

“I'm not saying you weren't,” says Jodi. “Look, Tacoma, I know you're hurting, I know you don't even know all your powers yet. It's okay. But I think we're gonna have to talk sometime.”

“About …?”

“About what's wrong.” Jodi holds her eye, steady as a rock. “I know there's something you're not telling me,” she says, and suddenly bands of ice seem to tighten around Tacoma's chest. “I'm sorry. I should have asked you sooner, but I didn't know how. Now I guess I feel like I have to do it, whether I know or not.”

“I can't,” says Tacoma. She didn't mean to whisper, but apparently that's what her voice is doing today. “Jodi, you don't understand―”

“Well, I'm gonna try.” Jodi folds her arms. “I'm not offering you a choice, Tacoma. We're gonna talk. Soon.”

She's right. God damn it all, but she's right. Did Tacoma really think she could run forever? She's not bloody D. B. Cooper, she's just some dumb, angry kid. Someone like her can only hide so long before she's caught and made to stare into the nuclear incandescence of the final judgement.

And after that? God only knows. But she has a feeling that she might be looking at the end of her second chance to find a place in Jodi's life.

“Okay,” she says. It makes her feel physically sick to say it, but she gets it out. “Okay.”

“Good.” Jodi smiles, and just for a second Tacoma sees real warmth there. Thank God. She doesn't hate her, then. Or at least, not yet. “I think you should probably talk to Nikki now,” Jodi adds. “She seems upset.”

Tacoma follows her gaze and sees her, crouched a little way off on the other side of the path. Eyes down. Ears flat. Jodi's right, she does look upset. No wonder, really; she almost threw her partner in the Rageriver and lost her forever.

It's almost enough to make her smile. Like partner, like pokémon; it looks like Nikki is nearly as good at beating herself up as Tacoma is.

She supposes that that isn't really anything to smile at, when you think about it.

Okay. Time to forget her missing hand, her mean streak, her hurt friend. Time to be reassuring.

She calls out for Nikki to come over, and at first Nikki doesn't want to but she does, and in the end this turns out to be one problem at least that Tacoma can solve.



It's okay. It's not great – Jodi doesn't want to talk, and Tacoma hasn't got the guts to push her – but it's okay, and there are moments when it's even as high as good. When they decide to leave, for instance: Jodi is all set to get Lothian to hover over her and pull her up in his talons, but to everyone's surprise Nikki simply curls her claws into her coat and sets her back on her feet like a child righting a fallen toy.

“Oh,” says Jodi, trying not to fall over again in her surprise. “Um, thank you, Nikki. Wasn't expecting that.”

“She saw you save me,” says Tacoma. “Maybe she doesn't know who you are, but she knows you're cool.”

Jodi reaches out to rub Nikole's snout, and Nikole closes her eyes, silent. Kangaskhan only make noises when they're upset, or dealing with joeys too young (or humans too stupid) to have learned what the movements of their facial scales mean. If they can get away with it, they prefer to communicate with gesture and expression.

“She likes it,” Tacoma translates, and Jodi nods.

“I know,” she says. “I know.”

This is about all that Jodi says to her for the next half an hour. They keep going, until the snow on the trail gets too deep and they have to turn off into the woods and trust in Nikki's memory to get them where they need to go. It's slow going, and Tacoma finds herself thinking more than once of the deadline Michelle set, but Jodi doesn't so much as look at her watch, and she figures that if Jodi's okay with this the least she can do is be supportive. Especially after dark pulsing her in the head or whatever it was she just did.

River and birdsong. Footsteps. The smell of pine sap. Odd piles of snow where branches have given way and dropped their burdens to the earth. It continues, until Nikki stops and scrapes one foot along the icy ground, snorting.

“Here?” asks Jodi. Nikki looks at her, and perhaps Jodi can read her mind or perhaps she's just good at reading faces, because she nods and looks around. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, there's that tree from your memory.”

She points at a particularly large pine, broken at the base and now leaning precariously against the branches of three others. How it hasn't been knocked down by the wind yet Tacoma isn't sure; she can see it wobbling.

“And I'm guessing if we went that way, we'd see the river bending,” Jodi continues. “So … Lothi?”

He swoops down from nowhere in an instant, hooting his response.

“We're looking for a cabin,” she says. “Somewhere close. Can you get up there and look for me?”

He cocks his head on one side, uncomprehending.

“A cabin,” repeats Jodi. “It's like … hang on, I'll do you a picture.”

Lothian squawks eagerly and leaps back into the air, message apparently received. It's kind of incredible how high he can jump: his wings must be twelve, thirteen feet across when he unfolds them all the way, and he has to be even higher than that to stop them clipping the ground with those first few wingbeats. Tacoma watches him twist upwards into the sky, wondering if Jodi is light enough that she could ride on him, and then drags her thoughts back down to earth.

“We're not looking for my bag?” she asks.

“I mean, we could if you want,” says Jodi. “I dunno how I'd explain it to Mum, but we could. I just thought … we don't have much time, so the cabin is the priority.”

“Right.” Tacoma sighs. “Probably better leave it for the cops, anyway.”

She can pick it up when all this is over, right? Minus the weed, probably, but that's fine. Most of what she had left is still safe at home inside her sofa.

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “That's what I thought.”

Her face is unreadable behind her sunglasses. Nothing more to say. They wait for a few minutes, Nikki scratching restlessly at the dirt and fallen branches, and then Tacoma hears a screech like a falcon's call and tilts her disc upwards to see Lothian circling above, the sun glowing through the thin skin of his wings.

“Looks like we're in luck,” says Jodi. “C'mon.”

She limps off, following Lothian deeper into the forest, and Nikole lumbers on behind, tireless as ever. She's doing better at matching pace with Jodi now. Was she pulling ahead before just to be mean? It's not beyond the realm of possibility. Kangaskhan are known for their gentleness, but they only really extend it to their kids, and to the trainers they choose. Once when Nikki was half-grown Tacoma saw her catch a blackbird and play with it like a cat toying with a mouse, flicking it over onto its back every time it tried to get up and flee until the poor thing went catatonic and just lay there, waiting to die. Fortunately that was when Tacoma arrived to order Nikki to let it go – and to her credit, she obeyed and never did it again, but she never really seemed to understand why Tacoma had a problem with it.

Something dark appears between the trees up ahead, and Jodi stops.

“Okay,” she says, glancing back at Tacoma and Nikki. “I'm going to go knock on the door, and if anyone answers I'll say me and Lothi got a bit lost and could we get directions back to the trail. If they don't, then I'll come get you two and we can, uh … break in.” She scowls. “I was trying to find a nicer way to say that but I'm not sure there is one.”

“Right.” Tacoma stretches up as far as she can, nudges Nikki's chin. “We're gonna stay here a minute, got it?” Nikki nudges back. “Okay. Go on ahead.”

Jodi nods and walks stiffly off through the trees. In the quiet, the rapping of her knuckles against the door sounds like gunshots. Tacoma waits, heart in her mouth – what if the murderer lives here? and who would even know where to look if Jodi vanished? – and then relaxes again when she hears her voice:

“C'mon! It isn't even locked!”

Man. Ask anyone who knows them, and they'd tell you that Tacoma is the gutsy one, the one who wouldn't be afraid to break a law or two. Jodi's the nervous one who'd never do this without Tacoma talking her round. And yet – here's Jodi, breaking and entering like she was born to it, while Tacoma hangs back and worries.

“Coming!” she calls, putting as much feeling into it as she can, and concentrates on not shrinking back against Nikki as she brings her out into the clearing in which the cabin stands.

It's smaller than she thought. Windows dark, chimney cold and smokeless. Lothian up on the roof, kicking snow loose for the fun of watching it fall. The snow on the dirt track leading back to the main road is unbroken save for deer or girafarig tracks, and a tall drift has built up against the wall where Tacoma imagines you would park. Whoever lives here hasn't come home in a while.

“No blue Crowne,” says Jodi, seeing Tacoma looking. “But this is the place. D'you remember, Nikki?”

Tacoma can tell that she does; she's tensed up, her grip on the stone tightening. She's like Tacoma in that way, as in so many others. Doesn't like to be reminded of her moments of weakness.

“Yeah,” she says. “She remembers.”

“Cool.” Jodi takes off her sunglasses and sticks them in her pocket. “Ready to go in?”

It's nice that she's talking to her again, at least. She probably wouldn't be if she didn't have to, but it's nice all the same.

“Sure,” lies Tacoma. “You said it wasn't locked?”

A lot of doors go unlocked in Mahogany, even now in the seventies. Out here, in the literal middle of nowhere, there are even fewer. You're more at risk from wild pokémon than people in the woods, and ursaring tend not to care whether a door is locked or not when they walk through it.

“Nope.” Jodi twists the handle and pushes. “See?”

“Right, right.” Is it obvious she's putting it off? Yes. Almost certainly. “Okay,” she says. “Let's, uh … go.”

Jodi nods.

“Lothi? Watch out and let us know if anyone's coming, okay?” The response must be ultrasonic or something; Jodi nods and goes in without another word. Nikki follows cautiously, hunched a little like she's ready to drop to all fours and charge, and in her claws Tacoma shifts uncomfortably. She is starting to discover that dangerous situations seem a lot more so when you lack the ability to run away from them. Is that how Jodi feels, with her leg and her cane? If so, she's even braver than Tacoma thought.

It takes a little while for their eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the cabin, after the sun and snow outside. When they do, they find they can see the whole thing at a glance; most of the cabin is a single room, a bed at one end and a bare-bones kitchenette at the other, and between them chairs around a table.

“What on earth …?” Jodi moves closer, frowning. “Looks like someone was trying to build a bomb or something.”

Three of the chairs are stacked high with books; the tabletop is scattered with wires, papers, tiny pieces of metal. Screwdrivers. Pliers. An iron and a few lengths of solder.

Tacoma and Jodi exchange looks. It's not immediately obvious what they've found here, but they've definitely found something.

“There could be an innocent explanation,” suggests Jodi.

“Could there?”

“I dunno,” she admits. “Let's have a look.”

She leans over, carefully avoiding touching any of the bits of machinery, and turns a stack of books to look at the spines.

“Home Electrical Engineering, Circuitry 101, Beyond the Veil: Essays in Cross-dimensional Transference, the Pokédex, The Massive― wait, sorry, that's in Kantan script, I think it's The Mechanics of Rarefaction.” Jodi looks up at Tacoma, a question in her eyes. “Pretty eclectic mix.”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. “Pretty weird.”

If she had a heart, it would be pounding. Cross-dimensional transference? That rings a bell. A lot of them, actually, ringing and ringing in the back of her head like the fire alarm in her halls when her cigarette set it off and the noise sliced so cruelly into her depression that she almost cried.

Jodi's frown deepens.

“What's wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing,” says Tacoma. “It's fine. What do the notes say?”

“Are you―?” Jodi breaks off, shakes her head. “Sorry. I won't push it.”

“Uh,” says Tacoma, unable to think of a response. She really doesn't deserve this kind of compassion. “Thanks?”

“It's fine.” Jodi smiles without heart, returns her attention to the table. “So, uh, these look like … notes?”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma, glad to be moving on. “What's it say?”

Who and why, huh? Well. Here's the goddamn who.

“Hang on.” Jodi leans closer. “Some kinda notes? 29th November: I'm starting to – I've started to – sorry, it's in Kantan – I've started to turn the plan into a reality. The calculations have been difficult to work out without the facility – without the faculty computer, but if you … okay, that is way too much maths for me. But I think this is about whatever they were building here?”

She glances at Tacoma again, and now there's no hiding it, wouldn't be even if Jodi weren't psychic.

“I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to ask,” begins Jodi, and then Tacoma's resolve breaks and she crumbles like ash falling from the tip of a cigarette.

“It's Nick,” she says. “It's his handwriting, and his pen was in the park, and he writes in green ink and he studies dimensions and he knew I had the rock and I don't think he was in Alola at all.”

Jodi stares.

“Oh,” she says, eyes wide. “Um … shit.”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma, voice as quiet as distant rain. “Shit.”

Plenty to respond to here! Thanks for the extensive review; I really appreciate it!

I'm gonna admit, this particular plotline, with these two rather similar people who have diverged and come back to each other, is one I've used before; when I set out to write Ghost Town, the idea was that I'd basically be very unadventurous for once and just write something easy and self-indulgent. Except of course I then got the idea for the rotating POVs and everything started getting experimental and difficult again. I guess I just can't stop myself.

Yeah, Jodi's family – in which I include Lothian – are great. It's so nice to write them, after writing stuff like Go Home and Arbitrary Execution. Kindness and acceptance are in short supply, and it's wonderfully refreshing to focus on depicting them for once.

Obviously Con's is the chapter where I had fun pretending to write a procedural drama; I'm glad that you liked the mash-up of that with pokémon stuff. It was pretty fun to write!

They were hard to write, too. But like – even now, people are kinda awful, and in the seventies they were even more so, so I felt like I had to try and represent that as faithfully as I could if I wanted to draw a portrait of the town, which was one of the main goals I had in mind when I set out to write this story. Anyway, I'm glad my little cop drama experiment went down well!

Glad you liked it. I really enjoy writing Jodi and Tacoma – as you probably guessed already, since they and their evolving relationship are the main focus of the fic – and I'm always delighted when people like the same sweet little moments they share as much as I do. It proves I'm not just writing this for myself, if nothing else. :P

Yes! That was a great bit of advice from Phalanx; I like this reworked scene much better. Good to know other people do as well!

He is! I don't know if he's going to appear at all – I thought he might when I started writing but at this point I'm no longer sure – but even if not, I wanted him to at least be there in the background, in readiness for the future.

Thank you! I had a great time writing it, and I'm pleased to hear so many people had a great time reading it, too.

100% deliberate. :P I remember I'd been waiting to use that pun ever since I came up with Con's name.

Yeah, Con is … not such a great guy, though even I have to admit, he's broadly trying to do the right thing most of the time. It's just that sometimes his idea of the right thing is, in fact, the wrong one.

As for Nick, well! We're certainly about to see a lot more of him very soon, starting with tonight's chapter. I hope it ends up answering a few questions – and raising some more on top of them.

Aw, thanks; the weirdness around the early phases of a transition is something I find endlessly interesting – I've done a lot with people who have already transitioned in other stories, and with this and AE I wanted to have a look at more of the beginning of the process. Good to know that I'm conjuring up the right feelings here. Artemis is obviously right at the start of her transition, so all of this is very raw for her, and she's in the unique position of being able to start a whole new life and leave her old name behind completely, at least for a while. Jodi's position is different, since she's stuck in a place so full of history (her own, and other people's) that she couldn't escape even if she wanted, and she has no choice but to face the remnants of her old life even as she tries to establish her new one.

That's also coming soon! The funeral marks the point where things start to pick up speed, so we'll be getting answers to some of these nagging questions in the coming weeks.

As you've seen in later chapters – yeah, kind of. They've got a way to go, but they'll get there in the end.

Yeah, people like Stacy are … uncomfortably common, honestly. I did want to have at least one in this story though, to connect with the whole building up the picture of the town thing.

León is the best, agreed. He may not get it, but he tries – and he's got the parental drive to make his efforts stick, unlike Ella, who's still very much caught up in that young person mindset where she's too stuck on her anxieties to actually act.

Oh, for sure! But I can't say too much about that without giving the game away, so I think I'll take a step back here and let the story speak for itself.
[
Well, y'know, it's hard to say whether or not the killer was in the fight, or just saw the fight, which is kinda the point. :P But yes, we're getting to the point where the clues are going to start dropping with a bit more frequency now. Should be fun for all involved!

Yeah, Tacoma could … really use some therapy, honestly. She's lucky her best friend's an empath, though I think it would be unhealthy of her to expect Jodi to fix everything, and I think she probably realises that, too.

Yep, it wasn't just a passing reference to SM after all! There's a reason I made Nick a specialist in other dimensions, and why Tacoma is trapped in a little pocket universe; these things are going to get more and more relevant as time goes by.

Thank you for the giant review! I think everyone loves clicking through to see a great big wall of text – it's always so flattering that someone put in the time and effort to come up with and post it. Later tonight, we've got chapter eleven, and we're back with Jodi as she and Tacoma try to deal with the fallout of what they discovered at the cabin. I hope you continue to enjoy the story!

Apologies for how long it took me to get to this stuff. Every time I sat down to read, I got distracted and lost all the willpower to do it. I shall do push-ups as punishment. But first, comments!

Ch 9
Hmm, interesting that you're treating Tacoma's spirit so... human-like. Giving her clothing and having her injury still be there and all that jazz. It is not something I'd ever considered for a Spiritomb. But I'm a fan of having corporeal spirits in Pokémon fics (I mean, I do it too :V), so I can totally roll with it. I was going to make a snide remark about TV in the olden days (something something "Three channels on but never anything to watch") except Jodi is actually into edutainment. So, instead I'm-a just go, ohmygosh Jodi, you're a total dork. *hastily switches own TV off of PBS*

There is a sense of purposeful awkwardness in reading this. Because all of it is punctuated with the circular, negative thinking and sense of hopelessness that characterizes major depression. *shoves DSM-V into a corner* So, like, humorous little moments like the joke about Carmine never feel entirely humorous, but I think that's what you're going for. Though, in all the symbolism that you end up using with the whole dropping Tacoma by the river scene, I think I may have lost the exact play-by-play narrative. Which means I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. Looks like Tacoma used an actual move? Like a dark-type attack? I'll just say Lothian is a good boy, as usual. <3

Onto the actual cabin then... and I was expecting something creepy. But otherwordly? Not so much. I was able to jump to Nick as soon as Kantan script gets mentioned and Tacoma thinks about how she knows the writing. So that, at least, is really concerning. What the devil was he up to in this place, anyway? I thought it was tied to trainers disappearing and some sort of town conspiracy... unless Nick's part of it? O.o

Ch 10
I'm not sure if the "killer on the loose" bit was added in response to external feedback, but it does help sell the overall concern Jodi's mom has for her. So, I like how things how appear currently, if there was a change. Then, more hesitation between Tacoma and Jodi. Sorry if it doesn't sound like I've got much to say about it. From my vantage point it's one more baby step toward the point where, at least, Tacoma finally comes clean about what's going on in her head... figuratively speaking. I suppose I can compliment Tacoma's constant need to put herself down and draw comparisons. That's pretty standard fare for a depressed person. Though the anger and short temper are different... usually because of the whole "lack of energy" thing. Nothing wrong with it, just surprising.

That said, I think it contrasts the following part with Ella nicely. As a confession, I saw your change to Ella and I guess I see why it was necessary. Though I don't believe I originally had problems with how Ella acted, so maybe I didn't read things closely enough... or, rather, that's what I thought when I saw how she was acting around her friends. I do think both 16 and 13-year-olds would be trying to "blend in," even if that means giving the cold shoulder to a family member. But, I understand your reasoning for changing it.

I will shake my fist at you for teasing me with Tacoma finally spilling the beans about something important. It's also funny, because Jodi's able to mentally strongarm Nick into confessing to the truth about the cabin (before cliffhanger), yet she exercises far more restraint with Tacoma. I realize all of it's on purpose, of course. But darn it if I don't want my immediate gratification.

ELEVEN: THE KINDLY ONES
NICK

He'd be lying if he said that didn't sting, but at least he can take some comfort in the fact Tacoma knew how to pick her friends.
“Yep,” agrees Nick. “Come on. I have an idea about where we should start.” He feels in his pocket for the machine, still there, still safe in its cloth wrapping. “Annie's been kind enough to lend us the car,” he says, closing his fingers around it. “Least we can do is fill it up.”
It screams at him as he pulls in, keeping its head tilted to one side. Missing an eye, Nick notices. He's never seen a bird with a missing eye before. How does that even happen?
Forget Sam and Gabriella, forget however it is that he's failed. He's got a cult to destroy.
He stares out into the whirling snow for a moment, turning over the idea of going home to wait out the weather, and then he feels the pressure of Tacoma's ghost on his spine and trudges on out into the cold.
Three Pines. Post office. The old line of houses on Back Road. Everywhere he goes, he finds a few doors that don't seem to lead onto anything, testament either to the fact that old buildings are full of strange nooks and crannies or that this town is riddled with entrances to a secret network of tunnels.
“Think it might be time to go home,” he murmurs, but he carries on and visits the place where the mill used to be all the same.
He wakes to the shrilling of the clock, and perhaps it's the weird time throwing him off, but for a long and blissful moment he remembers absolutely nothing except that he is home for Christmas. Then the fog clears, and everything settles back onto his shoulders once more.
Tomorrow, maybe, he can finally go to sleep and not wake up more tired than before.
Gabriella has no patience for lone wolves, he remembers. He has a feeling he's just figured out why.

It occurs to him that he really should have called Miles after all.

I think he'd probably be offended to be described as “liberal”, honestly. :P Nick's political leanings are fairly far leftward of that. And yes, that's exactly right. Like – the thing that links all of our narrators together, if it wasn't obvious yet, is that they're people who don't entirely fit in here in Mahogany. Jodi is trans and at uni; Tacoma is a gay disaster and also at uni; Nick has successfully transplanted himself into a different social class to everyone in Mahogany; Con holds himself deliberately apart from everyone in town; Ella is one of very few non-white people in Mahogany, and will come to realise this more the older she gets; León is from Nicaragua and has travelled the world; Sam and Gabriella are a couple in a sense that half the town doesn't even really know is possible. Being part of this group gives Nick a perspective that not many others have. And of course, as a professor, he has a lot of experience of debating with earnest young students – which naturally helps him counter Jodi's expertise in manipulating people.

Indeed! One of Nick's heroes, and an oblique hint about him and Miles before it comes up openly later on.

Well, the thing about Nick is that we've seen a lot of other people's suspicions about him, but like up till now, we haven't really learned any actual facts about him. You were supposed to read this and think “huh, this … makes sense, but I actually wasn't quite expecting it, hang on, do I actually know anything about this guy?” – which, broadly, seems to be the response it's got, so I guess that worked out okay.

Most of this is based on a fusion of Mahogany's canon history of having ninjas hide out underneath it and the historical fact of clans living in remote areas who were known for producing professional mercenary spies. (Also Night in the Woods, which is where my "hooded figures serving a mysterious cult in an economically-depressed town" image comes from; I have seen Hot Fuzz, but as I've said, I'm drawing on more American sources than British here.) But like, cults are everywhere – that Hot Fuzz exists and was successful proves that the concept of an idyllic town hiding a seamy underbelly studded with unsavoury organisations is at home in British media as it is in American. No one watches that film and doesn't understand it, you know? Cults are everywhere, and unhealthy, controlling secrecy has been a cornerstone of British power relations for a long, long time.

I mean, I could've written less of it? I'm gonna level with you, I finished this chapter the day before I was due to post it and I was exhausted and I said to myself, Oyster (I don't actually call myself that, that would be weird, but for the sake of argument let's say I said that), you're gonna need to cut a huge amount of this for it to be readable. And then I went to bed instead and I just couldn't face doing it in the morning, either, so I posted it as it was. Which is a bad idea! Don't do that. My normal writing process is to write more than I need to and then cut the excess, and that I didn't do that here really shows. Anyway, point is, I've cut like 800 unnecessary words; it's still slow – partly by design, I have to say, since I needed the stakeout to feel convincingly long despite so people wouldn't care about the fact that it actually only took a total of like eight hours – but it is hopefully more readable.

Yes, that wasn't meant to be a surprise. The point is more that Nick is, despite his mental acuity, not really thinking straight. He knew this would happen, and he still tried to do it all by himself, without putting a backup plan into place. These are not the actions of a successful man.

Anyway: new chapter coming a bit later this weekend, sorry; there was a bunch of rewriting to do and I just didn't finish it in time. I have Thoughts about that, but those can wait for this fic to be over, I think. For now, let's do the obligatory 'next time' thing. Next time: Tacoma has something to say, and it isn't going to be pretty.