“You don’t even know a cute, super awesome heroine is visiting you,” Candy said, mischievous. “Vista is Aunt Rachel’s friend, which means she’s not just kickass, she’s kickass with cool friends. She visits Aunt Rachel’s, Byron, and she likes dogs. If you get better and come along with her, you can sit in the puppy bucket. That’s where you get put in one of the great honking big laundry buckets and they put a whole litter of puppies in with you. It’s great.”

“It sure sounds great,” Byron said, with just about as much enthusiasm as Byron showed for anything, which was about two bars below Tristan’s baseline.

“Except when they pee on you,” Chicken Little said. “That happens.”

“It’s an excuse to swim,” Candy said, jostling him, tugging on his arm.

Chicken Little shot one last look at the woman in the one crystal, looked at other crystals but found them too narrow to provide a coherent picture. He gave Candy his full attention, as Darlene butted in to break Candy’s grip on his arm. He asked, “Swimming in winter?”

The conversation had turned, and I was keeping an eye on Damsel, who had gone very still, and on Kenzie, who hadn’t stopped looking at Damsel.

“Let’s keep moving,” I said. “We don’t have a ton of time and we have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said.

So many of us, we had a couple of people. People we’d loved and lost, that were reflected in crystals here. In one crystal, a few friends I’d known in school that I’d called best friends once, who had drifted away. In another, Sveta… possibly because she’d left the hospital to go with Weld.

I could see that for Kenzie, it was like every crystal had a dozen faces, and each face had a different person.

“Damsel,” Kenzie said.

“Let’s not engage,” I said, my hand at Kenzie’s back to keep her moving. I was aware of how stiff Damsel was. She’d been ignored, her provocations hadn’t worked.

Kenzie looked back at Candy, who was jogging over to catch up with her. “I think you’re great, Damsel. You’re stylish and beautiful and intimidating and badass and awesome and you’re a kickass villain who’s only going to kick more and more ass as time goes on.”

If Damsel attacked, what was I even supposed to do? One knife had done enough damage to Tattletale, who was actually the one who’d gone ahead now, and Damsel had ten.

No powers here, nothing in the environment to salvage as an improvised weapon. I had my buckler, at least, but everything put together, I gave better odds to Damsel.

“And?” Damsel asked, her voice sharp as she penetrated the hanging silence after Kenzie’s statement, as though a sentence had been left unfinished.