“His light’s quiet and shy. And sweet,” she added. “Very sweet.”

“His mother was one of the rescues from the anti-magick cult. Indoctrinated and brainwashed to believe magick was evil. She’d have taught him that, tried to repress what he was.”

“I remember. Petra pretended to come from the same cult, and lived with them here. God knows what she tried to teach him. They are good people, his mothers now. If they’d reacted differently—too strongly, not strongly enough—he might have tried to hide his nature again instead of embracing it.”

“Strawberry ice cream never hurts. You’ve got something on your mind,” he added.

“I came into town to talk to you.”

“Okay. We can head up to the station, or just head up to the house. I was just coming from the house, going to check in with Chuck. Trying to find my wife.”

“Oh, she’s at our place. Having a … meeting with Mom and Fred, Katie. Could we go ahead into Chuck’s den? He could add to this.”

“Sure.”

She turned to Laoch, stroked him. He rose up on his wings, soared off.

“Never gets old.” Shading his eyes with the flat of his hand, Will watched Laoch fly. “Where’s he going?”

“Where he likes. He’ll come when I need him.” As would her wolf, her owl. “Can you tell me if the rescues are acclimating? That’s the wrong word,” she realized. “That sounds cult-like, doesn’t it?”

“Not when I know what you mean. The medicals have set up therapy—group and individual. Physically some of them still need some time to heal. Emotionally’s going to take longer for a lot of them. You know Marlene, right?”

“Town planner.”

“Yeah. She’s playing den mother in one of the group houses. Plus, one of the rescues was a therapist before the Doom. He’s a little shaky yet himself, but it seems like a good idea to have one of their own working with them.”

“It does.” Resilience, she thought, was a light of its own. “How many have left New Hope?”

“Three so far.”

“A smaller number than I figured. And the baby, his mother?”

“Both doing okay, according to Jonah. I saw him earlier.”

They walked around the back of the house where Rachel and Jonah lived with their boys, and to Chuck’s basement entrance.

She smelled freshly mown grass, sun-soaked herbs before they went inside and down.

There she smelled salt, something sugary.

Chuck sat in front of monitors and keyboards and odd electronic boxes, switches, and joysticks.

Fallon could speak countless languages, had within her every spell ever written, but the world of computers posed a thorny mystery for her.

She’d gained a little skill—with Chuck’s help—since coming to New Hope, but for her entire life before they’d left the farm for New Hope, she’d been IT-free.

“Who enters the master’s den?” Chuck slurped at the something sugary in his glass. “Hi, guys.”

“No minions today?” Will asked, as Chuck had a variety of IT apprentices.

“Class dismissed. It’s summer, dude. And my top guys and gals are working on their own with some of the goodies you brought me back from the dungeons. You fried a bunch of it.”

“We were a little fixed on life and death,” Fallon reminded him.

“Yeah, yeah. Well, components are people, too. Anyway, I got Hester seeing if she can revive some of it with the woo-woo.” He reached a hand into a bowl of chips. “Want? Got more. Fixed this old PlayStation out at Fred’s yesterday and scored the chips of potato.”

“I’ll pass on the chips,” Will told him, “but I could use something cold if you got it.”

“Brew?”

“I’m still on duty.”

“Lemonade.”

“Sold.”

Will went over to Chuck’s cold box, took out the jug. “What are you monitoring?”

“I’ve got a PW base in Utah—that’s a new one. They’re just setting up.”

“Branching out,” Will added.

“What I’m getting is that our favorite lunatic, Jeremiah White, sent about twenty from Michigan, had them meet up with a group from Kansas, then pull together with some new recruits in Utah to set this up. They lost about fifteen percent getting there. But they rounded up most of a community in Nebraska—farming settlement, magickals and nons. They’re estimating to have the base secured—the housing, the weaponry, the supplies, and all that—by the end of the week. So they can have their first round of executions on Sunday.”

He shoved the bowl of chips aside. “Fuckers.”

“We’ve never attempted any rescues that far out,” Will said to Fallon. “They’re not secure yet, but—”

“Now’s the time. They won’t have any Dark Uncanny with them.”

“If they did,” Chuck put in, “it wouldn’t take them days to secure. So, no DUs.”

She shifted Arlington out of her mind for the moment. “Can you get exact coordinates?”

“I’m working on it.”

“How confident are you in your numbers?”

“I’m confident that’s what they’re reporting back to Arlington. I’ve been catching bits of chatter off and on for a while, but it didn’t amount to much before this morning. And like Will said, they’re a hell of a lot farther away than anything we’ve tried. I’ve been banking it, keeping track when I could.”

A new plan, even more ambitious, began to form in Fallon’s mind. “We need everything you have. We’ll get it to Mallick and Duncan. Both have flashed farther than Utah before, and they’ll know who at their base can handle the tagalong.”

She took the lemonade from Will but set it down again as she paced the big room crowded with electronics, with monitors and screens, with shelves stacked with wound-up cables, components, spare parts.

And the scavenged dolls Chuck haughtily called action figures.

“Duncan takes two to scout, get the lay of the land, the setup, the security in place.”

“Elves and shifters are usually best for that,” Will said.

“Yeah. He’ll know. Relay the intel. By the end of the week, you said.”

“They’re reporting they’ll be fully up and operational by Friday,” Chuck confirmed.

“That gives them three days. But it can be done. The prisoners will fight back. They’ve formed a community, so they’ll fight back once they’re able to. And once they hit it…”

Yes, yes, she could see it. See how it could be done. Fate had just dropped an opportunity in her lap.

“We don’t take out their communications.”

“Yippee.” Chuck pumped a fist in the air. “More toys for me.”

“We don’t take them out. Let them signal the attack—back to Arlington. And when they do, when Arlington’s dealing with that, we hit Arlington.”

Will lowered his glass. “Sorry, what? Did you just say we hit Arlington?”

“Yes. It’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’d thought next week, but this is the time.” She considered a minute. “And one more. There’s the base in South Carolina we’ve been monitoring.”

“Yeah, near Myrtle Beach, but it’s more an outpost, almost a vacation spot for good PWs,” Chuck added.

“We haven’t gone that far afield, either, and it hasn’t been high on the list, as it is more an outpost. But now.” She circled the room again. “We hit all three, simultaneously.”

“Holy shit, Fallon.” Will, a man who’d survived the Doom and all its horrors, who’d fought DUs, PWs, Raiders, commanded troops, served as the town’s law, sat down. Hard.

“They’d never expect it. They’re getting reports on attacks on two far-flung bases. There’s a scramble, distraction. Add it’s a walled base—a fancy gated community they’ve fortified.”

“They’ve got DUs,” Chuck reminded her, thoughtfully tugging on the little goatee he’d dyed magenta. “You’ve helped me take down the shields their DUs put up so I could get some intel, but they’ve got DUs, Raiders and, from that intel, experienced ex-military. Ex-cops. It’s their main conduit to the war in D.C. I know we’ve kicked this around—”

“You kicked it around?” Will interrupted.

“Theoretically,” Fallon told him. “And I talked to my dad about it last night. I’d plotted it out differently, but this is better. It’s more than a rescue, and yes, getting people out is always the priority. But this is more. Three bases, the weapons, equipment, supplies—and the damage done to White’s organization. To his reputation. His power grid.

“Duncan and Mallick to Utah, Thomas and Minh,” she decided, thinking of the elf community, and the base established near Mallick’s cottage, “to South Carolina. And we hit the main target. We take Arlington.”

She looked around. “I need a map.”

“I’ve got … somewhere.”

Rather than wait for Chuck to find anything that wasn’t electronic or edible, she flashed back to her room, flashed back with a map.

“Let me show you how I see it. Then you can show me how it can be better.”

CHAPTER FOUR

With time so short, the goal so ambitious, Fallon called for a meeting that night, asked the key members to gather at her home.

As her mother, being her mother, would never consider holding any sort of gathering without food, Lana organized a menu. When Fallon finished her own preparations, she went out to find her mother making her own in her outdoor summer kitchen.

“Deserted by the men? I’ll give you a hand.”

“Cucumbers, thin, curled,” Lana told her.

“Got it.” As she worked, Fallon felt the mood. “You’re worried about the scope of these missions, the timing, but—”