Claudette sniffed when Criton moved as though she would walk into the Carver shop. Eatons had made a habit of respecting boundaries in Helter—well, most of them. She glanced back at Wyatt when he walked into the ruined shop across the street.

Connie called out an offer of tea and Claudette smiled politely but waggled her coffee cup in explanation, as though she’d drink any brew the Carvers handed her unless she was laid out on her deathbed—even then, she might be pigheaded enough to risk it and rely on her own body rather than their magic.

Connie asked about pack availability and Claudette took her opportunity to step away. “Pack business is pack business,” she muttered, took another sip of her coffee and nodded goodbye before heading away. She had a say in a lot of things in Helter Close—but not Medici business. They offered the Medicis contracts and schedules and the wolves either agreed or countered. Nothing was ever commanded, because wolves were not dogs and they sure as fuck would bite. Her mother had told her that and shown her a very ugly scar on her arm from her own youth.

-

Noel sighed relief when a cup of tea was pushed into her hands. She hadn’t realized how cold her fingers were until they pressed against that hot ceramic. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from laughing when Connie tried to antagonize the Eaton heiress with a skin masque.

She sipped and watched the big wolf in the doorway. There was no shadow following him—not like the one that followed Vester. Not all dead things stayed. Some went into the woods to become something else and some just…went. Noel couldn’t decide which she would prefer and wondered maybe if thinking that way was part of her problem. If she stopped thinking about fading—would she stop fading?

Not likely. Luck had never been a Laurent charm. That was Carver and Eaton magic, among other things.

-

Wyatt didn’t seem to notice the mess. Of course, the shop had been wrecked—they’d fought a monster there. He shrugged when asked if they could fix this—assuming the wolf meant Eaton money and willpower. “Sure. Why not?” he smiled. Eatons had built large parts of Helter, along with the mill. They dressed fine and held their chins high now, but they had all been raised to get things done and keep up appearances. They would do much worse things than sweat for Helter Close.

He swung sideways when he heard the shuffle, slide, of the teenage Medici coming for an eyeful of destruction. Wyatt smiled at her sharp words. Were there such things as nice siblings?

Forest spirits that size never came into Helter Close. Not into the town proper. Not ever. And that meant something when the families that settled the town had stayed all the hundreds of years since, keeping track of the behaviors of the creatures in the woods.

So why today? What had changed?

Noel was deep in thought, trying to find a difference in their small town from one day to the next. Her name snapped her out of it, looking up into a familiar face, Connie’s hands warming one of Noel’s. She nodded when the other woman suggested leaving the street, allowing herself to be pulled toward the Carver home shop.

-

Claudette raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow when the wolf told her to sit tight and called her mam. She couldn’t decide if she liked it or hated it. She frowned all the same, eyes narrowed on the scene. One hand settled on her hip when Henry cleaved the antlers from the beast. What a mess they were making. She wanted her coffee back. She would have carried it in with her but that might have looked too cocky. No, the goal was always competent and capable, not gloating and careless. She had to look like she was taking this seriously, and she was, but the important part was to look like it. How stupid.

She missed the years in highschool when she’d taken up smoking. No one had ever caught her and made her quit. She’d never gotten into trouble. But she’d stopped one day, because she realized she wanted it too much. She was addicted. And Claudette had no room in her life for another force running the show. She already had the legacy of the Eatons to uphold. Everything else had to be her own. But right now, she kind of wished she had a cigarette in her hand.

She’d stand long enough to see that the monster was dead before leaving the shop and assuring the people everything was handled—everyone still safe. Well, as safe as anyone ever could be in Helter Close.

Noel stopped on the sidewalk when his arm came out to block her. It was a relief of sorts. What was she supposed to do about a spirit in Helter Close other than watch it? Could she kill it? Could she get close enough without it eating her first?

The women on the street let out shrill cries when the Medici tackled the nightmare at their backs. They swung around, confusion painted across their faces in waves that turned slowly to horror when they too caught glimpses of something otherworldly.


-

Wyatt’s smirk soured when the boy spoke again. He put the mug in his hands down but Connie was already snapping back at him, about to throw him out of her shop, when she swung toward the window instead.

Wyatt turned, catching glimpses of the spirit and the wolf before Connie was rushing past him and out the door. He sprang after her, catching her waist to stop her only a few steps out of the building. Her words caught up to him, her panic over the fading girl. She wasn’t hard to spot, a flare of yellow on a gray morning. The window across the street shattered, Wyatt turning on instinct to shield Connie from debris or attack. He clicked his teeth at the destruction and pointed her toward the Laurent girl standing on the sidewalk. “She’s fine.”

He nudged Connie toward her and took a few steps into the street, crunching glass, torn between whether he should reassure the frightened Helter citizens on the road or follow the fight into the hardware store.

He didn’t have time to decide, or maybe he was just too slow, because when her dark silhouette cut through the gray and stepped around the human ladies, the choices were made.

-

Claudette Eaton handed her recently purchased coffee to one of the two women standing nearest the scene, cupping her hand around the woman’s and giving her a reassuring smile. It was an Eaton smile. It promised that everything was being handled and no one need worry. It was the very face of competence and power. “Hold this for me, Marcy?” she asked. She knew every resident of Helter Closer by name.

She tsked at the broken glass across the street, shaking her blond head once and unbuttoning her jacket. “Wolves,” she said, loud enough for people to hear, to set their nerves at ease that this mess was a casualty of beasts. Beasts they needed, but still beasts. She walked toward the shop, unhurried, and cast a glance at her cousin. She dragged her gaze over him, unimpressed when no one but Carvers and Laurents could see. She kept all that contempt out of her voice when she spoke. “Keep an eye on the crowd, Wyatt?” Her heeled boots crushed glass.

She stepped over the broken window frame and into the shop, her burgundy lips pulling into a severe frown. If they had killed a citizen in this mess of a fight, there would be hell to pay. She had disappeared a few casualties of the families battles before but she wouldn’t do it for a dog. “Henry?” she called. The lights were flickering, even more glass inside than out. A girl screamed and the fight raged on.

She caught sight of the girl and forced a cool smile. “Bev, dear, go on outside,” she said, reaching out to offer the girl one gloved hand. Beverly sobbed, for a moment clinging to her hand before nodding and running from the store, sliding on glass but catching herself on the wall. The bell on the door chimed when she fled.

The sound struggled to compete with the racket of fallen metal and shelves. “Gods, Medici, could you have made more of a mess?” she called, stalking around the shelves in time to see Henry of all people swinging an axe at the forest spirit. She had seen plenty of spirits and monsters come crawling out of the woods to threaten the mill before, and seen Medicis rip them into pieces. But she never thought she’d see a broken limb of the Carver tree hacking at a spirit. Could he see it? Maybe as well as the humans? To her it was a dark shape, something between a deer and a crocodile.

She laughed in amusement, nodding her approval at the Carver. Teach monsters not to come barging into his store, she supposed. If he added another swing, he could teach Medicis not to throw them through his window too.

Flirting with Connie was Wyatt’s own personal escapism. For fleeting seconds he could pretend he wasn’t an Eaton and didn’t have to go back to that miserable house of assholes. And that meant today he could pretend his brother wasn’t a walking monster locked in the basement, behind wards that strained to hold with every passing day.

The bell chimed and he stared coldly at the boy that walked in. Weren’t kids supposed to be in school by now? Wyatt stepped back, leaning against the counter and picking up his mug again, sipping the tea and watching Connie explain an overnight mask. He hid his smirk against the lip of the cup. He hated tea, but never said anything. Warm, floral water.

-

Noel played pretend with what was left of Vester. It was a reprieve for them both. She blinked at the sad gnome display. She squatted down beside him and laughed a little when he knocked over the one with the yellow hat.

She reached out to right it but her hand froze before her fingertips even brushed the fallen chocolate denizen of the shop. The shadows whispered and she stood upright, head turning to look out the window just as a dark figure moved down the street, into her line of sight. It was tall, deerlike but too slender, like bones dipped in ink and held together by sinew. It followed a couple of women heading toward the market, the two talking in high spirits and oblivious to the forest spirit. Its maw opened, teeth like a crocodile rather than a deer, snapping shut once and sending a jolt up her spine. “You see it too?” Noel whispered, moving toward the door, toward the reek of decaying trees. She had never seen one in Helter Close before—had only glimpsed them in the depths of the forest, devouring the remains of things in the woods, whether animals or trees. Maybe this was a part of her madness? Maybe it wasn’t real?

She pushed the door open, the bell chiming, and felt the wave of its hunger along with that stink. If had to be real. It was closer to the women now and their cheer had drained to the dawning sense of something not right, noses wrinkling when they too smelled it, tears welling in their eyes when they felt it.

Wyatt smiled at the familiarity Connie offered up so naturally. He leaned against the counter, watching her make the tea. Carvers had such a different energy than Eatons. The scents of chamomile and peppermint rose up in the steam, competing with all the others permeating this shop. He laughed a little. “Are you giving me bedtime tea in the morning? Is it like an herbal roofie? You know you could just go for it, I’d let you take advantage of me.”

He never knew if the jokes were too close to home—too close to an almost their teen selves had reached for. There was a reason Eatons tended to marry nice, sweet, naïve people. They were all trying to find that missing piece, the warmth that didn’t exist in their home. He had realized since then how tragic they all were, because that warmth never survived in their family. They brought in kind people and made them into proud, cold things. Luckily, there was also a reason Sentinel families didn’t have romances—a lot of reasons actually, clear allegiances not the least of them. His father had found out and Wyatt had pushed their almost back to friendship.

“Oh, I’m sure the tea will fix all my problems,” he assured, reaching for the cup she offered. His hand brushed hers still on the cup, her gaze turned out the front window with narrowed scrutiny. She hadn’t been listening.

Wyatt followed her gaze. He had seen Vester on his way in but how had he missed the mud witch in bright yellow? There was something off with that Medici. They chalked it up to his girlfriend skipping out on him and the sudden awakening of his powers. If Wyatt had more room in his skull for other family’s problems, he might have dwelt on it. He would regret that he hadn’t someday. Instead, he assumed her focus was on Noel—the withering Laurent. His father said not all Laurents survived adulthood. Some just faded. Claudette had asked what that meant—fading—but he had just shrugged and smirked to himself.

Connie recovered herself quickly, all smiles and cheer and going on about a hand cream. She came around the counter and he put his tea down, catching her hand and pulling her back before she could get to the wall of samples. He lifted her hand as if inspecting it, sliding his thumb against her palm. “They are soft…” he conceded, flipping her hand over, palm up and scrutinizing it. He hummed as though serious. “You have a very healthy fate line, Con, but you’re head line is looking real shallow… Maybe you should have studied harder?” He stroked a random crease in her palm, no idea what he was talking about.

-

Bell had never told her what happened that night Vester came to the property. They hadn’t come up to the house. But even if she hadn’t heard it in the whispers of the ground and the dead, she would have known by that shadow following the Medici boy.

She blinked up at him when he asked about her family. Her mouth opened to answer but then he was leaning in, looking close and looking back—and the air around him changed. He looked right at it—at the shadow behind him, but he didn’t see her. Noel wished she didn’t see her. If she stopped fading, maybe she would stop seeing. If she finished fading, maybe she’d just be a shadow too. Who would she follow?

He asked if she was going and Noel smiled because whatever she was doing, she was going. Her hand came up, the ends of her sleeves frayed, and the backs of thin fingers pushed at her pale lips to try to control that reaction. She nodded and glanced around the street, toward the window of Cleanse. Wyatt Eaton was in there. She could wait to drop by. Eatons and Laurents didn’t mix well—spring water and mud. “Are you going to buy me something?” she asked curiously, turning toward the sweet shop and remembering walking these exact steps when they were younger, saying those exact words. Everything had been better then—for all of them. But maybe that was how things worked in Helter Close? They retraced their steps over and over until it all soured or until they ran away.

Historically, Laurents had been good at running away from Helter Close. Noel wondered if she tried to run right now—would the wolf chase her? Would she become another one of his ghosts? Her gaze slid over him, not entirely hating the idea of following him forever.

Okay! So we're doing the "Caleb Eaton is possessed" plot on the side and the longer he is in Helter Close and getting stronger, the more weird shit is going to happen and creepy things will be coming in closer than usual. And depending on how this goes, we could make the Eatons turn on the other families when they figure out what's going on.

I'm going to toss up more character info bits because I just made a bunch of random Eatons...

In the early morning the fog clung to the yard, heavy and thick. It hid the haphazard garden the old Aunties tended and the downward slope of weeds leading to the road to town. The woods loomed in all directions, thick and green year-round.

Bellamy sat on the porch in one of the rickety old rocking chairs—easily older than his twenty-six years. He leaned back, boots on the railing. He couldn’t get away with that if the Aunties were out. If one saw him, he’d get a hard glare and be apologizing for days. But these days, they took longer and longer to rise from their beds. He was likely to see the end of them in his lifetime, if he didn’t have the good grace to die young like so many other Laurents—or run away like the selfish cowards many of their parents had been. No. He wouldn’t run. And something grim in his blood promised him a long and painful life. Sometimes the Aunties looked at him like they knew too, like they pitied him—but only for a second, and then they were back to their gentle berating and prideful resistance to any help at all.

The screen door creaked when it opened. Everything in their home-made sounds and no one ever thought to fix any of it. The house spoke to them, just like the sounds of the forest did.

“Where are you going?” Bellamy asked his sister without looking away from the oh-so-slowly thinning fog.

Noel was two years his senior, but ever since he grew taller than her in their teens, she’d felt like his little sister. She passed him on the porch, pausing on the first step as though something invisible were trying to keep her from leaving. She teetered, frail and drawn with circles under her eyes. Her yellow coat had a deep hood, flopped back on her shoulders to let those long dark tresses fall in tangled waves. Her long, pale nails clicked together once before sliding her hands into her pockets. “Town,” she mumbled.

She was far away. He could hear it just as well as he could feel it. Noel had been wandering for years now. That was what the Aunties called it. She whispered to the dead. The Aunties said it was a good sign of great gifts, but if she didn’t decide to live soon she might fade. Bellamy wasn’t sure what fade meant. They wouldn’t explain.

“Are you going to eat first?” he asked even though he knew it was futile. He was just making conversation while she stood there.

She huffed, almost a laugh, her breath forming a cloud. “Be nice to the boy,” she said before stepping down the porch in her clunky boots and marching down the narrow path—into the fog.

He frowned after her, wondering which boy she meant. They had a few kids in the family but—and then he felt it, someone walking onto the property and making their way up the path. He waited on the porch. The kid passed Noel in the fog and didn’t even realize it. Bellamy pretended it was because she was quiet and the boy was preoccupied and not because she was fading.

He finished his coffee and put his boots on the porch, leaning forward when the little shape of a person came through the fog.

The boy sniffled, no older than eight, with a box in his hands. He carried it carefully, taking slow steps up to the porch and stopping before the first step. He looked up at Bellamy, round face tear stricken and eyes more pained than fearful.

Bellamy cocked his head to the side, staring back at the child. Human.

The boy dragged a deep breath, shuddering it out and placing the box on the porch, pushing it toward Bellamy’s boots. “Please, Mr. Laurent,” he said.

No one but townsfolk ever called a Laurent “mister” or “miss”. He had heard the Eatons call them “mud witches” more than once.

Bellamy used the toe of his boot to flip the lid on the box before leaning forward to look down his nose at the contents. His dark curls slid forward, into his pale eyes. A dead thing. No one ever brought him gifts.

“What happened to it?” Bellamy asked. The puppy’s lungs were full of water.

The boy tried to hold back his sobs, using his sleeves to scrub his cheeks as the tears fell. “I was going to give him a bath. I turned on the water and put him in and he was happy and then I went to get his snacks and I forgot to turn off the water,” the words mushed together the farther he got until he was sobbing, shame and heartbreak thick in the air around him.

Bellamy frowned. “And what will I get for the trouble?”

Hope glinted in the boys eyes. That was how you knew he was too naïve and too young to be making deals. He opened his mouth, about to offer anything.

Bellamy cut him off. “Turn out your pockets.”

The boy blinked and then hurriedly shoved his hands into the pockets of his raincoat, pulling out fistfuls of wrappers, a few coins, gum, and lint. The air tasted like his despair when they both looked at what little he had to offer.

Bellamy snatched the gum before the boy realized he was on his feet, never touching his skin. He knelt down and reached into the box. He stroked one finger down the puppy’s cold back, still damp. That cold rippled up his arm and curled over his shoulder. He tasted bathwater and shoved the gum in when he stood.

The puppy jerked, spitting up water and whining.

The boy rushed in, pulling his pet from the box. With every pet and coo, the puppy grew more alive—more itself. Some deaths were easier to heal. Mistakes, fresh and with little trauma had the best results. Some things, like this, could be brought back to life. Some were just made undead. The Laurents had made a rule of not giving the townsfolk undead things. It never went well. Had Noel not only known the boy was coming with a dead thing--but that the thing could be saved?

Bellamy nudged the box with his boot when the kid started away. “Take what you brought,” he snapped.

The boy doubled back, grabbing up the box and mumbling a dozen more thank yous. The puppy was jumping in his arms now, licking his face and barking happily, looking around like it had no idea how they had gotten to this strange place, but would have gone anywhere with its boy.

Bellamy chewed his gum, shoving the foil rapper into his own pocket.

“Softy,” an old voice laughed from inside the house.

LOVE IT! We'll do that! The Medici (or the whole family) could have made some bargain with the Laurent to "resurrect" their inner wolf and then thought it didn't work.

AND I'm thinking the Medicis are stock holders in the Eaton Lumber Company, since the Eatons needed the Medidics to act as guards against the stuff in the forest. So they "work" hanging out around the lumber yard and warding off the scary shit in the woods?

Jillibean! Yes, that sounds great. One of the ideas I was considering for the Medicis is that they were actually wolves in the woods before and one of the other families (Laurents) turned them into people back in the day, either because they needed the help or because of a debt of some kind. But all of that info is old legend now that not even all of the Medicis would believe. Oh! And the Eaton's own a logging company in whatever part of the woods is considered the safer part. They could have the Medicis out there to ward off anything extra scary from the woods that might come along and eat the workers.

Same. Some ideas and stories I find myself daydreaming about and then back here to reread. 

Oooooh! Love it! So the bastard will be new to The Garden??

I'm thinking the "kids" in The Garden range in age from like 14 to 22? Pretty much sent there until their parents decide to bring them into their own circles and drama.

Margo had been quite enthralled in his story until he snatched her up and pulled her onto his lap. Her round face pulled into a gasp of alarm and outrage, for a moment to surprised to even react more than that dropped jaw and wrinkled nose.

Emerald didn’t seem to notice, looking pleased instead by his news on the rising cult. “Well, as least Florian won’t be as dull of Catori proved to be,” he said, eyeing Agatha sideways though she ignored him. He had blamed her for agreeing to go to Catori—where there was nothing but murderers playing Born. At least cultists and princes would make for fun prey. No one ever died as enjoyably as the pious and the powerful. That look on their faces when they fell, surprised, like they didn’t know they too could die. If the greatest, oldest, dragons could fall—so could any man or woman. One of the best parts of being a Witch Hunter was the right to execute indiscriminately. It didn’t matter if the traitor was a baker or a prince—they were all subject to the discretion of a Hunter. Of course, not Emerald. Not yet. He was still indentured. The decision to execute would be Agatha’s. But, luckily for him, she had never been one for mercy.

Margo finally slapped her hand across the stranger’s cheek when he bounced her. It wasn’t a ferocious slap, her soft glove batting his cheek as she awkwardly pulled herself from him and pushed into her corner again. “Really!” she protested, cheeks red and eyes flashing to the other two as though they should have saved her. Emerald supposed she might think that, with some notion of chivalry at play. But both Hunters knew the difference between danger and teasing.

“Are you to be our guide?” Emerald asked.

“What a lovely idea,” Agatha added enthusiasm to his dry query.

“Hardly,” Margo mumbled, arms crossed and cheeks still bright red.

“Allyseus isn’t expecting us for another couple days. We could do a bit of sight seeing and still arrive uncomfortably early,” Agatha spoke as though negotiating, as though the other two didn’t belong to her in some way and weren’t subject to her unilateral decisions. She liked the illusion of democracy. “Where should we leave your dragon?” she asked Keyzer as though it had been decided.

Margo hugged her books and tablet to her chest, eyes bulging when the man got into their carriage. She wedged herself into the corner, back straight and gaze running up and down him, seeming to bulge more with every bit of grime and blood she took in.

“This is Margo, my personal library of sorts,” Agatha introduced flippantly, settling into her seat. The carriage whirred to life, rising a little off the ground before starting forward on the path again. “And Emerald.” She gestured to the lithe bodied man beside her. He was dressed much like her, somewhere between practical and formal, all black with firm layers and fine tailoring.

Margo pressed her plush mouth into a tight scowl at the other woman. She wanted to snap at her, to accuse her of endangering them by inviting strange murderous riffraff onto the carriage—but she couldn’t exactly do that without saying it out loud in front of said riffraff.

She eeped in alarm when the man spoke to her. “Book learning?” she sputtered. “Out there? Oh, well, that’s wonderful. Then you may know as much as the beasts…”

Agatha’s upper lip pulled up to hiss at the woman warningly. “He comes from Florian and likely knows more of the city than you do.”

Emerald lifted heavy lashes, eyes like the stone he was named for glinting out, made brighter with a bit of that witch tech woven into his retina. His red lips pulled at one side into a little smile at Margo’s discomfort before considering the stranger. He’d worked for Agatha long enough to stop being surprised by her whims. He sat up a little taller, arms sliding from the firm cross against his chest while he slept down into a casual collapse in his lap. “Business,” he answered first and stretched out one arm, offering his hand. “Your name was? Agatha has enough fortune not to care about manners, but I would be remiss to go a whole carriage ride with a man I didn’t properly meet.”

Margo continued to lean out the window of the carriage, eyes narrowed on trees she couldn’t see through. “Did you hear that?” she said in a sharp whisper. It wasn’t the first booming sound or shake of the ground since Agatha left.

“No. I can’t hear anything over your heavy breathing and stupid gasps.” Emerald had not moved, eyes still closed to the world and head tipped back into his corner, legs crossed like his arms as though he were a strange corpse laid out for viewing. She wished he was a corpse sometimes…

“What if she needs help?” Agatha pressed.

Emerald huffed a little breath that could have been a laugh. “Well, if she dies I’ll get a promotion and since she hasn’t summoned me…” his voice trailed off as though this meant he should be napping and not talking.

-

The Chaser put on a show, though she wasn’t sure he intended to. A quick scan of the surrounding area confirmed that he had no team—fallen or lying in wait. Her head turned to follow his careen through the air, surprised when he looked back at her for a flicker of a second with the spread of arms as though to shout, “what the hell are you standing around for?”

Agatha grinned, eyes flaring with purple light. He didn’t have time to look at her again or yell whatever he might have in mind. She jumped down from her ledge and landed in a walk, following the trail of thick blood his dragon left. She didn’t step in it. She didn’t usually mind a mess, especially on a hunt, but she was still planning to make an entrance in the city today and upset the local officials and aristos. She’d like to save her bloodier image for when things became more serious and she knew exactly who she was looking to scare. As it stands, she hadn’t been to Florian since she was a child.

The beast made horrible sounds ahead, half inside a building, thrashing, claws digging up street.

Her witch tech lit up the dragon in thin gold lights, outlines brighter in open wounds. The Chaser was a darker blue, pulsing with his own gold, fainter where he had contaminated his muscles and brighter where he had consumed something for the boost. There were only two ways to kill monsters, dragon contamination or witch tech. Both could go terribly wrong for very different reasons. Both could make them into the monsters in the end—if they found themselves among the unlucky.

She hadn’t drawn a weapon, shoulders relaxed on her casual walk toward his kill. She pushed the hood of her jacket back when he made his way around the dragon and in her direction. Her hair was pale, white like her skin, and pulled back from her face into a braid. The edges of tattoos peeked up from her collar on the left side, reaching up her neck. “I would not have bet money in your favor,” she spoke first, stopping on the street beside a puddle of blood. “I would have lost. Do you stalk this area often?”

Bam! And, by the way Verse, I CRAZY loved Ebelt freaking out on Hiev and Hiev being sooooooo transparent!