Tristan was gone. Sveta was sitting up, rubbing at the shoulder that wasn’t working, near where the damage was, and the cars were moving down the road, barely visible past the cover of construction.

At least chances were slim that some of the Error-induced disasters hadn’t been caught on camera. I could imagine that would go over well.

With the phone pressed to my ear, I walked over to the javelins, which were almost lost in the dirt that had been turned over by the passage of the vans and slashes of the chain whip.

I released the Wretch, and I reached out with my free hand, the bicep twinging from the gunshot wound that hadn’t fully healed.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

If it had mattered, would I have been able to?

Come on.

The Wretch grabbed the first javelin, then the next, and then a third. One broke in two—a bite, not a hand.

The other two, the Wretch simply held. I waited, then I moved my hand. There was no way to tell if it would work or not, because they broke to pieces as the grip tightened or changed.

I bent down and looked in the direction Capricorn had gone, and I reached down to one of the chunks of stone.

It crumbled in my grip. No power in effect.

We’ll work this out, I told the Wretch.

I straightened. Sveta reached me, having walked over. Her metal shoulder bumped my spiked one. Solidarity.

The phone was answered. There was squabbling. Boy and girl.

“Cryptid.”

“She hasn’t gone home?”

“No family dinner to get back to. She’s fiddling. Her person’s here, the guy Natalie knows.”

“I’ll have a talk with her in the morning,” I said. Talks were overdue.

“You call for something? I hope you called for something. I was asleep and you woke me up. The thing go okay?”

“Atrociously, actually,” I said. “But it’s not over, as far as I’m concerned. I need you to call people.”

I could hear his groan. I could also hear Kenzie in the background, volunteering her help.

“Or give me the numbers. I’ll call.”

“It’s fine. I’ll do some. Which people?”

“Everyone underlined in green. It’s not an emergency, but if they’ll do us this favor and help out, we’ll pay them back, or I will.”

There was a pause.

“If I didn’t spontaneously swap rods and cones in my eyes, that’s… a lot of people.”

They were the ones I didn’t think would take too much convincing, ones we’d worked with or had contact with.

Capricorn was back. There hadn’t been delay in getting the info. His arms were folded as he stared at me, and orange motes danced to either side of his head, forming shapes. Like branches.

Like antlers.