Tattletale looked at me in the rear-view mirror of the car.

My eyes dropped. The Old Man was draped across the back seat, braced by Sveta. Bruises crept along his arm and the side of his face, and my gloved fingers held a wad of sterile cotton swabbing Tattletale had had in the glove compartment against the wound. He’d been knocked out as part of the fall, and he stayed that way for seven minutes before stirring awake. Tattletale had looked in his eyes, then drugged him with another of the drugs in the glove compartment. Something to ease the pain and make it easier for him to sleep. My leg kept his head stable, while my other leg was a spot for my mask to rest on. Black with gold tracery, it stared at me, accusatory. Or maybe it was accusing of everything it looked at.

“She was his teacher,” she said. “He pulled every string he could and twisted the other Heartbroken’s arm to keep it a secret from me. Everyone in his class wrote in a big letter to her. We’re going to miss you, you’re my favorite teacher, yadda yadda. And he wrote a poem. You can use it if they start in again on our junior team and you absolutely need to. No, it wasn’t an indecent poem, it was heartfelt. He’s still embarrassed by it.”

“What the fuck?” Sveta asked, from her seat behind Tattletale.

Tattletale waved her off.

“The other nuclear option is she cried when she read it. You can use that detail if he gets too upset after you bring it up.”

A response from Imp. A question.

“If I have to, and they have a way of making you have to.”

More from Imp.

“Fine,” Tattletale said, still talking into her phone. “But—let me talk. Let me—fine, I’m a cunt, just—”

I nodded at that last bit, dramatically and closed-mouthed, Sveta joining in, until Tattletale glanced in the rear-view mirror, saw us nodding in unison, and flipped us the bird.

“If you want to have any authority, then it comes down to fear and love, and I think you know this, Imp, but most of them are either fearless or react to fear in screwed up ways, and they all have some fucked up background when it comes to love. So maybe, you know, you’re not going to have any pretty options. You were the one telling me that some of them are getting to be adults and some of them are barely any younger than you. If you want to convince them that you’re the one in charge, then you need to bring your A-game.”

There was a pause as Imp talked. I could hear only notes of her voice through the phone, pieces of words, but not words themselves.

All against the backdrop of the barely audible car engine, the hum of tires against road—Tattletale liked nice cars, and the interior of this one was quiet—I could hear the Old Man’s breathing punctuated by small, unconscious noises of pain.