Chapter 06 — Behind the Scenes

Josh woke to the faint sound of keys tapping across the room. His eyes were blurry and unfocused, and his head hurt, but he was definitely awake. Something seemed wrong about the tapping sound, but he couldn't quite figure out what. He rolled over and blinked, trying to see the time on his bedside clock.

"Man, we slept all day…" he muttered.

"Yup," said Nikki. "Worth it."

There was still a sense of something amiss, but Josh couldn't place it. He stretched his arms and sat up slightly, leaning against the corner of the wall to prop himself up more easily. Finally, as he glanced around the room, he finally realized what was wrong.

"Hey… how did you login to my computer?"

Nikki was sitting in his desk chair, spun around and leaning over the back of it. She hadn't bothered to put on a shirt, or anything really besides her underwear, and was lazily browsing a social network he didn't recognize. At Josh's question, she shot a smirk over her bare shoulder.

"Cast a spell," she said, smug. "Took me like half an hour to figure out how to get your password."

"You can get passwords?" asked Josh, torn between admiration and exasperation. "Shit, we're really gonna get in trouble now."

"Don't worry, I only use my powers for good," said Nikki, waving him off. "It's fine."

Josh shrugged. He got up and trudged across the room, planting a kiss on her shoulder before leaning over it to see what she was up to.

"Hey—" started Nikki.

"You're gonna talk to me about privacy when you just lifted my password with magic and you're on my account?" asked Josh, raising his eyebrows.

"...Okay, fair."

"It's fine." Josh ran a hand through her hair affectionately before turning to pick up his clothes. "What are you doing, anyway?"

"Just… checking in." Nikki shrugged. "I do have friends outside Rallsburg, you know."

"Do I count?"

"Friend, sex slave, whatever." She grinned. "This was my whole world before the goddess."

...Shit, sometimes I forget she really does buy into Cinza's religion. "What do you mean?"

"I barely ever left home. Mom and Dad…" Nikki took a breath, as a dark look crossed her face. "They were always home, or if they weren't, I was. Somebody had to watch the farm. Boring as hell. I wanted to move out, maybe go into the big city."

"Seattle?"

"Didn't matter to me. Everything was a big city compared to Rallsburg." Nikki sighed. "I was never brave enough. Always wonder though… if I had been, I wouldn't have met Cinza. I might not have met Grey-eyes before she stopped awakening people." She shivered a little, and Josh could tell it wasn't just because she was nearly naked. "Keeps me up at night."

"I didn't know," said Josh, trying to sound sympathetic.

"'Course you didn't, you sleep like a log," said Nikki. She laughed. "Let's be real, I would've just ended up working the farm my whole fucking life. I was never actually gonna leave. I had to meet Cinza and Grey-eyes before I could learn how to be brave."

"You're brave as fuck."

"Still never left," she pointed out. "Since I joined the Greycloaks, this is the very first time I've left Rallsburg."

"What about when you rode a helicopter to Olympia?" Josh pointed out.

"That doesn't count."

Pretty arbitrary, but whatever. "Well, welcome back to the rest of the world," said Josh, finally buckling his pants back on. "It's not so bad out here."

"Thanks," said Nikki, with a genuine smile on her face. "Now can we get something to eat?" She glanced around. "Where's your family, anyway?"

Josh shrugged. "No idea. They'd never come in here without permission though."

"Ah. The forbidden zone," intoned Nikki ominously. "...Hey, what's that noise?"

His phone was beeping in his pocket. Josh picked it out, already dreading what he might see. That particular sound was urgent alerts related to the awakened on news feeds… and sure enough, there was something going on.

"Josh?"

"Hang on." Josh hurried to the computer, clicking through to open the video stream. "Cinza's in Seattle."

"What?" Nikki leaned forward, eyebrows creased, practically radiating fear. "Why would she have left… oh, fuck."

Josh felt exactly the same, as they both watched Cinza and Ruby emerge from a corridor. Apparently, they'd already been inside for some time, and had been ushered upstairs by the Secret Service. Whatever meeting they'd had was long-done, and now… they were about to throw down.

"We can't hear anything inside," shouted one reporter over the clamor of noise around the front doors to the hotel, "but it looks like the police are in a standoff with Cinza and her companions. Sources tell us they were sent here to rescue Hannah Newman, also called Ruby, and return her to her father."

"Fuckers," muttered Nikki, practically spitting each word with sheer disgust. "Fucking journalists."

More specifically, bad journalists… shouldn't generalize that, especially when we need 'em.

They watched as the rest of the standoff played out, resolved by the President and Rachel in fairly short order. Cinza and Ruby exited the building to shouts of support and jeers alike. They got into a strange carriage-like vehicle with Cinza's favorite star emblem emblazoned on the sides, which promptly merged back into traffic and sped off. As the news story wrapped up, the rage radiating off Nikki's skin was practically tangible.

"Just leave her alone already," she growled. "Why do they care so much? She's already seventeen, she'll be eighteen this year."

"Optics," said Josh. "It's the easiest thing to get people pissed off about that's related to us and it builds resentment. If it wasn't Ruby, it'd be something else. No huge difference to them. They'll always find something."

"So what, do nothing?"

"Fuck no." He was already grabbing his phone from his bed. "Makes no difference to them, but it sure as hell makes a difference to Ruby."

"Who are you calling?"

"Rachel," said Josh, both to Nikki and to the click in his ear which told him she'd just picked up.

Rachel sighed, her voice a little fuzzy through the phone. "I take it you were watching?"

"Yup. They're trying to tear Cinza apart right now." He gestured for Nikki to vacate his chair. She did and began pulling on her clothes, while he accessed articles and other resources he'd saved related to Ruby. "What was she doing there, anyway?"

"Proving you right yet again."

"What?"

"It doesn't matter." Rachel's voice got muffled for a moment, talking to someone else nearby. "She was angry about our response to the attack on Felix."

Take one fucking night off… "The what?"

"Felix Wieczorek was attacked in his home last night by one or more awakened assailants. They didn't touch him, but they stole from him and destroyed his belongings."

"...Shit," muttered Josh. "How bad?"

"We're working on it." Rachel sighed again. "It would be easier if we could improve public perception. We can't exactly build sympathy when the public hears stories about terrifying home invasions and cults kidnapping children. Exaggerated, obviously, but…"

"But we need better optics," said Josh, nodding. "Let's start with Ruby then. That's pretty unambiguous, right?"

"Not exactly."

"For fuck's sake, Rachel. She was in an abusive home with a drunk father who beat her for being gay. What the hell more do you want?"

"It's not that simple," said Rachel, now a touch annoyed. "We've got no evidence. She never made any claims prior to running away from home or in the year afterward. The only scars left are on Ruby's wrists, which were concluded by both an appointed psychologist and a school counselor as unlinked to parental abuse or neglect, self-inflicted due to other stressors. By all outward appearance, Ashley Newman is a reformed model citizen, and Ruby's the depressed possibly-suicidal runaway underage member of a cult. He's being a responsible adult, too, going to the authorities and asking for help instead of hunting her down solo."

"So we can't prove the guy's a terrible parent. How about from Ruby's side? Can we make it clear she's better off?"

"We either need to prove Ruby's in a more stable home with proper guardians and education—"

He sighed. "Okay, you got me there."

"—or we need to have her emancipated, so that she's no longer considered either Mr. Newman's responsibility or a ward of the state."

Josh frowned. "What does getting emancipated take?"

"A petition and a hearing, where Ruby needs to prove the ability to manage her own financial affairs, as well as educational, social, and other affairs, and take responsibility for her own actions as such. If a parent opposes the petition—and he certainly will—we need to prove there's clear and convincing evidence that denying the petition would be detrimental to the minor."

"And if we just try to wait it out? She turns eighteen in September."

"That's a long nine months, and if Ashley proves she's being brainwashed or otherwise mentally unstable, he could extend his guardianship past eighteen against her wishes, if ordered by a court. The accusation of statutory rape against Cinza is still holding weight in some areas."

"How friendly are the courts with us yet?"

"Hasn't been tested…" Rachel sighed. "Hawlstead, the judge who's been picking up these cases, just released Felix on bail against the advice of a line of police officers from Lakewood and Tacoma, Captain Hoskins, Governor Milton, and myself."

"Balance of fucking powers," muttered Josh.

"I wouldn't count on anything yet. We can't reliably pick our judge either—there aren't enough cases involving the awakened yet to claim we don't have enough justices to provide a speedy trial. Every case might end up with Hawlstead."

"So… emancipation." Josh frowned at the form he'd searched up while Rachel spoke. "We could probably handle financial and social affairs, and definitely taking responsibility for her actions. But…"

"Education," Rachel finished. "Ruby hasn't been in school since April in twenty-seventeen, when she was fifteen. She's years behind where she should be, and despite available education options in Rallsburg, she didn't attend any kind of school. That's a huge knock against her."

"What if she did?" wondered Josh aloud.

"What?"

"What if the Greycloaks had a school? Every religion's gotta have a school, right?"

Nikki snorted nearby. She'd been listening in silently on the conversation. Josh grinned.

"That's actually not a bad idea," said Rachel.

Josh raised his eyebrows. "I was joking."

"I'm not. If Cinza intends to make the Greywood and the camp a more permanent settlement, and if anyone out there intends to have children anytime soon, they would want to start thinking about education."

Nikki was nodding along with Rachel's words, now obviously interested despite her initial reaction. Josh frowned. "You think Cinza can run something like that?"

"If not her, then doubtless there's at least a few teachers among the hundreds of people up there. They can put something together, and we could say one of them is tutoring Ruby." Rachel leaned away to talk to someone else again for a moment. "If nothing else, Ruby honestly could use it. She's definitely got a few gaps to be filled in."

"How do you plan to pull this off?"

"Well," said Rachel, her voice getting a little more excited—as it always did when she felt like she'd stumbled onto something new to develop and execute. God, she's weird sometimes. "The President's giving a speech on education tomorrow, in fact."

"You're kidding."

"It's nothing related to this. He's prepping for his reelection run next year and education's one of his primary platforms."

"Him and every other president."

"Well, it is important," said Rachel with a touch of annoyance. "Anyway, we have a lot of policy advisors and other important people in the education department around. I'll see what we can dig up about making an accredited school in the Greywood."

"You don't already know?"

"Josh, I don't know everything," said Rachel, now definitely annoyed. Josh grinned at Nikki—he was just teasing her. "I've never had a reason to read about how schools get accredited in Washington State."

"And now you're saying 'state'," said Josh with a sigh. "Careful, Rachel, before they turn you into one of them."

"Was there anything else?"

"Nope. I'm starving, and Nikki looks like she might shrivel up from hunger here. We're going out to dinner." Nikki's eyes lit up—obviously they hadn't talked about anything like that, but Josh figured she could use something to eat after their… strenuous night.

"...Good night, Josh."

"Bye."