awickedtime | The darkness at the edge of town

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The darkness at the edge of town

It's just coffee. The weather outside is pretty frightful, snowing and wet and cold, and Nick's huddled in a coat and scarf when he steps through the door of the place where he arranged to meet Rosie. He's got a pile of prospectuses for Barton under his arm; he's still trying to decide what course to enroll in for the Fall, and he's hoping that Rosie might help him narrow it down. He grabs himself a coffee, orders a pot of the kind of tea that he knows she likes best, and then he grabs them a table close to the window and settles down to wait. He strips out of his coat and scarf, pushes his sleeves up to his elbows and grabs the first course catalogue that's under his had.

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Thanks to the change in the weather, Rosie's all the more trapped at the Home, her emancipation hearing having been rescheduled to a nebulous when we reopen by the City and her plans to apartment-hunt and move in with Neil subsequently put on hold until that day--whenever it was--arrived. It's all made her fractious and eager for distraction, so when Nick texts asking for her help, she agrees readily.

After several minutes of promising the Home's staff that she'll be careful out in the snow and come back the minute it gets worse, she's bundled up and out the door, making her way through the piled drifts and patches of ice to the cafe Nick had suggested. Seeing him through the window, she waves to catch his attention before pulling the door open and going inside.

"I thought we were done with winter ages ago," she grouses as she gets to their table and removes her coat and hat, a clump of snow she hadn't quite brushed off falling to the floor as she drapes the coat over the back of her chair. Seeing the pot of tea already waiting makes her smile; after pouring some into her empty mug and adding milk and sugar, she picks up another of the catalogs stacked on the table.

"You said you're planning on a theatre degree, right?"

"That's what I'm thinking," says Nick, reaching for his own coffee cup, smiling as Rosie settles into her chair with her tea. "I'm going to have to take an exam for anything I want to sit because I didn't go to school like everyone else, and what I learned at the Academy doesn't exactly transfer."

"No, I suppose it wouldn't," she says, already flipping through the catalogue to find the section labeled Theatre Arts. "They likely mean something a little different when they talk about the magic of the theatre, anyway." Rosie looks up, more amused than is maybe warranted given how terrible that joke had been.

She finds the page with the major requirements, then turns the catalog around to face Nick. "If I'm reading this right, you should be able to complete a few of these almost straight away," she says. "The first stage production class, as well as Acting I, look like they're open to freshmen."

Nick shoots her a look that ends in a slight roll of his eyes, but he's smiling too. He reaches out to take the catalogue from her, studying it. "I don't even really know what a freshman is, Rosie," he says, a slight hint of desperation in his voice. "I need all the help I can get."

"And you'll have it," she says. Her only real experience so far had been in selecting a handful of her high school classes at Petros, both after her arrival last year and a few weeks ago during the enigmatically-titled forecast period, but the idea of it should scale well enough. "Or at least I'll try."

If she stays in Darrow long enough, she realizes, she'll be doing something exactly like this herself in a year or so; something that makes her pleased and a little nervous all at once.

Rosie looks over everything spread across the table, just thinking for a moment. "Okay, freshmen are students in their first year at the university. Or at the high school. They use the same terms, which seems a little unnecessarily confusing." She shrugs faintly, a quick and barely-there gesture. "So we'll need to look mostly for classes that'd be open to people just starting out at Barton."

Nick nods. He's following that much, so far. He reaches for his coffee, taking a sip.

"Sometimes, I'm not actually sure why I'm putting myself through this," he admits. "What do I actually need a mortal degree for?"

"Because it's a different world," she says. "Different requirements, maybe, since there's not an Academy here."

Rosie picks up her own mug and drinks, then looks up at him, smiling. "Maybe you're just a little curious about what a mortal education would be like."

"I do like mortal things," he says. "It's...the whole thing. Fascinating, actually. When you grew up the way I did."

"I suppose it would be to you," she says thoughtfully. "Not being used to it, that is. For me, mortal life is things like French prep, and rain, and choir practice or errands after school, nothing very exciting or magical at all." Rosie still doesn't know where to place the thing in Lytten's cellar, whether to classify it as magical or mystical or some sign that the normal life she'd thought she had in Oxford was--or could be--anything but.

As she moves to put her mug down and pick up the course catalog again, the lights in the cafe flicker, casting them into darkness for a second before coming back on again. "This stupid weather," she mutters. "At least it's not out permanently, I'd heard that's been happening further north."

"We don't have much daylight left," he says, glancing out of the windows to his left, up on the foreboding sky, the heavy snow. He takes a sip of his coffee. "Sabrina and Charlie are coming back to my place tonight. You should come with us. Safety in numbers. Sabrina and I can keep watch."

"I'd promised to go right back to the Home once we were through," she says, but it's the weakest of protests, more to give her the excuse that she'd tried than anything else. Being cooped up had made all of them irritable with one another, prone to squabbles and snappishness as they huddled in the common room or picked listlessly at whatever dinner the staff scrounged up from the pantry's dwindling stock. Being with her friends, even just for an evening, is exactly the respite she needs.

"I'll call them once we're back at your apartment," she says, with a single, emphatic nod of her head. "They'll probably be glad there's one less person there to keep track of tonight."

"I'd just rather have everyone where I can see them." In his head, he's already including Rosie as one of his people, because Sabrina loves her, and that makes her important to him, too.

"That makes sense," she says, smiling a little at the way he's seemed to lump her in with everyone--or at least, the everyone that he'd want to keep an eye on. "With all this strange weather, there's no telling what else might happen."

There's more tea in the little pot he'd ordered for her, but the daylight is fading quickly, shadows lengthening outside and the snowfall seeming to increase in ferocity. "Should we...?" she starts, looking from Nick to the window and back again. "We should go, shouldn't we?"

"Yeah, we probably should," he says, looking doubtfully at the sky, and then shoving the catalogues into his bag and standing up to pull on his coat and loop his scarf around his neck. "It isn't far. We'll be fine."

"We will," she echoes, putting on her own coat and hat and following him out into the snow. "It's only a few blocks."

They're about halfway to Nick's building, turning onto an empty street, when Rosie looks up and sees a cluster of small figures ahead. Not moving. Just waiting. Something about it sparks a strange uncertainty within her, and she looks up at Nick.

"Let's turn around. Go a block up and over, maybe."

When he sees the figures, Nick automatically reaches for Rosie's hand. He nods, starting to turn them. "You're right. We can cut over on the next left, and..." Which is when he sees more of them, ahead of them in the other direction, hugging the wall, trying to stay out of sight, but there, all the same. "Shit." Nick's posture shifts slightly. "Stay close to me, Rosie, okay?"

She has a brief, slightly silly flicker of hesitation when he reaches for her hand, a faint question of whether it's right to be holding hands in the middle of a dark and deserted street when they're both with other people, when they only barely know each other. But the two groups are moving towards them now, slow and steady, and she slides her hand into his grip, holding tight.

"Whoever you idiots are," she shouts at them, trying to compensate with volume for the fear starting to twist in her gut, "this isn't funny."

In response--or maybe just as a challenge--the two mobs simply laugh, high and hysterical, as they continue advancing.

Shouting isn't going to do anything, and Nick knows that. He lets go of Rosie's hand once she's tucked in behind him, his hands forming the shape he needs to build the incantation, electric crackling around his fingers.

There's a smell of something like ozone in the air, the heavy scent that comes before a storm. Rosie presses herself to Nick, back to back, watching for anything coming behind them until he's done. Done with his spell, she thinks, awed even despite the frightening nature of their situation. Because it turns out, magic is real.

The thought distracts her a beat too long. The snow swirls, heavy and blinding, and something leaps at her, grabbing her around the waist and pulling. She screams, and screams, and kicks out blindly, catching the thing's knee with the heel of her boot. It grunts, but keeps hold of her. "Spirit and spite get you nowhere, girlie," hisses a voice in her ear.

Sparks fly from Nick's fingers, singeing flesh, and the creature backs off, snarling. It's something, but it's nothing like what he expecting, what he wanted. He frowns, trying again.

"Rosie," he says, voice tight with concentration. "You might...Do you think you can run?"

The creature drops her with a yelp as it retreats, and Rosie nearly slips and falls, her boots skidding on the slick ground before finding purchase again. She's not the only one to have heard Nick's question; another high, mocking laugh goes up from their attackers. "A chase! A chase!" they cheer, regrouping and starting to advance once more. "We'll have some fun with you then, running you to ground."

There's an even darker note in that threat, in the relish they take in saying it, and Rosie trembles to hear it. "I'm not leaving you," she insists, or tries to, the words coming out tremulous and frightened rather than full of conviction. "I'd never--"

But then the mob moves again, swarming towards the two of them, and Rosie loses what little nerve she has. With a gasping sob, she turns and runs.

Rosie runs and, immediately, they're after her. Nick fires off what sparks and flames he can, but it's pitiful. He remembers, in a flash, Sabrina after that scarecrow attacked them at her house. It didn't work. I didn't work. Magic leaves him, so Nick does the next best thing he can: he fights. He tries to give Rosie as much time as he can.

But the creatures don't seem interested in him at all. They only want to go through him to get to her.

She doesn't know where she's going; just away, slipping and falling and getting up again, her route erratic as she looks for whatever escape she can find. Above the gasping, terrified wheeze of her breath, she can hear snatches of the spells Nick tries--again and again--to cast, then the sound of fighting, blows on skin and something that sounds like the crack of bone.

Whose, she doesn't know. She doesn't turn around to look.

A light goes on in a house up ahead and Rosie veers towards it. "Help! Please!" she calls, pushing herself as hard as she can as she runs towards it. Some of the creatures see it too; moving silently through the whirl of the snow, they outflank her. One grabs at her again, its clawed hand tearing at the fabric of her coat sleeve as she shrieks and pulls away--right into the waiting grasp of another. "Thought you'd be more sport than that, girlie," it says, its arms, thin but unnaturally strong, curving around her chest. "We wanted a chase."

She screams and kicks, even tries to bite at the thing holding her fast. None of it works. The last thing she sees is Nick, outnumbered but still fighting, before she's hit over the head. Her vision doubles, then goes black.

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The darkness at the edge of town

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