Lev, the kid with dirty blond hair, handed me a tin of stewed steak. The label had long since burned off in the fire, but the smell was there.

“Careful,” they said, holding it barehanded, “It’s hot.”

The wolves’ camp was comfortable, if a little cramped. Three large tents made a triangle around a central fire, and we sat on whatever was stable and dry enough. The stew was hot in both senses, Lev had mixed in some chilli powder or sauce, either as a prank or as a test. My mouth watered from the heat after the first few bites, But Jodie ate it up. I looked around the circle, at the wolves. Lev had their hair chopped close to the scalp and looked like something out of a documentary about feral children. Maria, the one who had tried to kill me, looked harmless curled near them under a knitted blanket, sat on her log. Amy, Stephen and Rachel, as I’d been introduced to them, had skipped the tins. They’d gone off for an hour and returned clutching a handful of squirrels by the tail. When she’d finished my stew Jodie joined them in eating the mostly-cooked meat. Among them, Stephen was the smallest by attitude, even if Amy looked the youngest. Second youngest, after Lev. Robin looked the closest to normal out of them all in the wilderness, he looked at home in hiking boots and waterproofs. I kept examining them as if they were a tensed spring, and from the stolen glances and wary looks I caught, the feeling appeared mutual.

“Hey,” Lev jabbed me in the side, “she wants to know where you got that ring.” Maria made some hand gestures, and Lev repeated, “and why you have so many.”

“It’s uh,” I didn’t want to betray any secrets but this seemed comparatively basic to some of the trinkets I had on me, “It lets me do magic.” I awkwardly imitated holding a magic wand, then an explosion. Lev stifled a laugh, and signed back to the old woman. Her mouth split into a laugh and I saw her teeth again, too sharp and too long to be human. Lev noticed me and soured. “Don’t stare, you’re being an asshole.” they said, “She’s turned a lot of times, some of it sticks after a while.”

“How long’s she been like this?” I said.

“I dunno, ask her.”

“Err. how long,” I tapped my wrist, “you be,” I made a halfhearted wolf face, baring my teeth, and she howled with laughter, inviting looks from everyone. When she’d calmed down, and i’d turned suitably red, she made the same face back at me, fangs dripping with saliva. She signed the answer to Lev and they responded. She was over 70 years old.

I turned away from them and watched the fire lick at discared squirrel bones. Lennie and Robin were talking, almost whispering

“-know it’s a lot, but it’d be-”

“It is a lot. We’ve been laying low for nearly a year, Lennie, we can’t get involved again.”

“What about Amy?”

“What about her?”

“Rach told me on the way.” Robin hesitated at that, and looked at Amy. She and Jodie were going through the bones, cleaning them off

“We can keep her safe.” Said Robin

“She needs a hospital, medical care. Brigette can help. Remember-”

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“Of course I remember Hannah, Lennie.” Robin lowered his voice, I tried not to seem like I was listening.

“I’m always going to remember Hannah,” he continued, “but that was ten years ago. We can get Amy to Hartlepool if we need, I have contacts.”

“Who, Jean? Nobody’s heard from her in years.”

“Fatima.”

“Fatima’s been compromised since 2019.”

“She’s not bent, you know her better than that.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Lennie glanced around and I kept focussing on Rachel, now arm wrestling both Lev and Stephen

“They’re watching her. She’s been quiet about it, helping out where she can, but if you go to her, you’re all dead.”

“Fine.” Robin grimaced at the word, “We’ll put it to a vote.” Rachel pushed Lev’s and Stephen’s hands into the floor, and Robin stood up.

“Alright, everybody! Lev put that stick down, huddle up.”

Everyone broke from what they were doing, and Robin continued, signing as he spoke.

“Lennie and his group want us to help them, head down to London and attack an Upper Court outpost. It’ll mean a pretty big detour, but It’s fucking over the Uppers something vicious.”

The wolves glanced around, at each other, then at us, then Rachel stood up, also signing. “We’ve got shit to do up north, we can’t afford detours. Not even to fuck with the Uppers.”

“They’ll understand. Besides, we’ve needed an excuse to go at them for ages.” Said Amy, Standing up as well.

“Sit down, Ames” Said Stephen, bringing both his palms to his chest to make one of the few words of BSL I knew, “we have our lot, we should stick with it.” he said.

“No, The Upper Court are the reason we’re all in this mess, we can’t start just letting them go. That’s not us.”

“Yeah, fuck the upper court!” Lev stood up, balancing effortlessly on the log to reach the same height as everyone else.

“What’s us is keeping care of our own. And sometimes that means sticking to the plan.”

“There’s nothing we can do to… stop what happens” Lev said, they shifted their voice slightly when translating for Maria “we have to stick to what’s right.”

“Look.” Jodie stood up. Until now she’d almost blended into the shadows for how little she talked. ”Chloe owes a debt to the Lower Court. If you guys help people like us out, then help us. If you want money or some other shit like that, we can work that out. Sid’s got money”

The wolves glanced around at each other, entire conversations passing in moments. Finally, Robin held his hand up. “All in favour?” Lev and Maria’s hands were up first, Amy only a few moments after. Stephen grimaced, Rachel just sat down. “It’s decided” she said. “Early night, we leave at dawn.”

Leaving at dawn meant we were moving by dawn. We were up an hour before. The wolves ate breakfast and disassembled their tents, meeting us by the car. Maria and Amy would come with us, the rest would run it, leaving their gear to return to. I caught Stephen pissing on a tree nearby. “It’s effective for tracking” he explained, sheepishly. Lennie had tried to convince Robin to ride with us, but he refused. He stayed in contact through phones though, and guided us towards the roudezvous.

“How do you know about this place?” I asked when we were back in the city.

“I don’t” he answered, through slightly drawn breaths. He’d run the equivalent of a marathon in an hour by that point. “We’re Upper-Court aligned. Comes with some insider instincts. Even if we don’t know how.”

The outpost was the Tate Modern. “You’re fucking me.” said Jodie when we met up, “All the outposts in the city and you chose the art gallery locked up like it’s hiding the Pope?”

“You wanted alignment shifting, this has been Upper territory for god knows how long. Losing it means a big Lower win. We go big, or we go home.”

We settled by the millennium bridge, to plan and to prepare. Going big was starting to seem like the only option.