I could hear Ashley using her power, hear the impact, the tearing as the power-use went wild, hitting things it shouldn’t.

Then quiet.

Quiet, and the sound of a squeaking door.

Imp, at the end of the hallway, and a woman in black jeans and a white dress top, underweight and hair unbrushed.

“What do you need?” the woman asked.

Dying 15.7

“This is the bogeyman?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sveta said, not sounding happy.

“Fuck yes,” Imp said, all excitement. “Power: win.”

Win. Sveta had mentioned her, but she hadn’t phrased it quite like that. She’d called it powerful precognition, potentially the most powerful in the world.

Win, though?

“I prefer Contessa,” the woman said. “One moment—forcefield.”

She pointed at me.

“Do it,” Imp said.

I activated my forcefield, just in time for the Custodian’s return. She pushed, the Wretch pushed back. The accumulated, sustained force drove me into the wall, and broke my forcefield.

But I wasn’t the target. The force that was the Custodian rushed past me and down the hall, pushing past wires and over water, touching that water enough times to leave overlapping handprints and footprints.

My skin crawled as I shifted my position to better avoid the dangling wires.

Barely able to stand, Contessa raised her hands, fending off a similar onslaught. Arms moved in minute, strict ways, her body twisted, one leg slightly raised, as she almost lost her balance, then regained it.

She spoke, while defending herself.

“He’s going to ask you to tear it down.”

There was a slight pause in the assault, then a sudden, violent strike. A hand whipped out to catch a doorframe, and the woman altered the trajectory of her movement through the air, ducking low. It bought her a second while the ambient force that was the custodian flowed around her, grabbing her and dragging her by inches, but not slamming her violently into the wall at the end of the hallway.

“Tool,” Contessa said, while she was unmolested enough to say something. “Rain.”

“Tool? Which tool? What?” Rain asked. No use. Contessa was busy enough fending off a further assault that she didn’t have the breath.

“Any tool,” Imp said. She stood with her back to the corner, arms folded, looking unruffled, even though the Custodian had come damn close to hurling Contessa into her. “It’ll be what she needs.”

He reached into a discreet side pocket at his costume, where his pants were more rigid at the side with decorations. He pulled out something that looked like pliers.

“This?”

The woman continued to defend herself, fending off a thousand accumulated strikes by way of efficiency, deflecting the ones that would have driven the entire assault home. She sidestepped an invisible attack, and the wall groaned behind her, white paint flaking off of plaster and wire mesh.