Verity Alice Price

Things that did not rank on Verity's list of "top one hundred things to do before you die": steering a large SUV through Chicago rush hour traffic. Horns honked all around them, and their fellow drivers seemed concerned about her education, as they were introducing her to all manner of exciting hand gestures.

Some of them were even new to her. She pointed to one of them. "Look, Liam! We're learning new things."

Look, they'd just gotten married a yesterday. Not even shitty Chicago drivers in the dead of winter could ruin her good mood.

( There was no good time to drive through Chicago, but winter was the WORST. )

[Yay they're married! Text adapted from Seanan McGuire's Snake In The Glass and preplayed with the ever-wonderful firstofitskind. NFI, NFB]

Verity and Liam arrived in Vegas accompanied by the cheers of the Aeslin mice and the dulcet tones of Johnny Cash. Liam was glaring at the radio again, but, in fairness, he'd been doing that a lot recently. Liam's introduction to pop music was going...slowly.

To say the least.

They'd been on the road for pretty much the whole day, leaving the Price homestead before the sun rose. Verity still didn't know what strings her dad had pulled to have a rental car available to them the day after Christmas at oh-god-thirty in the morning; her best guess was that it was his way of apologizing for all the fighting and nagging they'd gone through during the rest of the holiday.

Liam had driven for the first few hours, and then Verity had taken over once she'd woken up again at a more civilized hour and had several cups of coffee to boot. There had been a few rest stops at weird tourist traps and now Liam could definitely say he'd seen both the biggest ball of yarn and a museum devoted to Big Foot as run by a family of yeti who were far too entertained by the whole notion.

But now it was past dinnertime and Las Vegas was in view...and yep. Liam was still glaring at the radio.

( Let's Go To Vegas )

Verity woke up to the distant sounds of cheering. She smiled slightly, eyes closing again...and then remembered abruptly where she was. Her room was quiet, even the beeping machines were dark and pushed to the corners and she was no longer attached by tubes and wires to them. She waited a few minutes to be sure that no one was going to come barging in before she stretched slowly and folded back the covers, finally moving into a full sitting position. She was wearing one of those pale green hospital gowns. It was almost a relief to realize that those were just as much standard issue in cryptid hospitals as they were in human ones. Verity took a breath, steeling herself, and pulled the gown up to get a look at her stomach where Peter had shot her.

The gunshot wound was gone, and while the skin there was slightly paler than the skin around it, there was no scar. She touched it lightly with the tips of her fingers, feeling the first tears wet her cheeks. She was going to be okay. She was going to be better than okay, in fact. (  And that meant that whatever came next, it was going to be something that she needed to deal with. )
[AND WE'RE DONE! The last bit of text, adapted and mutilated from Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire. Thanks so much to firstofitskind for a) all the preplaying, b) all the coding, and c) her endless patience with getting this done. <3 <3 <3 Could have technically? maybe? done this without you, bb, but nowhere near as well or stylishly.]

Verity and Liam hadn't spoken much on the way back from the docks. He'd been stationed elsewhere, just in case a different angle had afforded them more information, but hadn't come back with much beyond what Verity had noticed. It put her in a mood and Liam was polite enough to respect her need for brooding silence as they made their way back to her - their apartment.

She stomped up the stairs, taking her frustrations out on the poor, innocent banister, which had never done anything bad to anyone. None of the neighbors poked their heads out to see what the ruckus was about - it was Fandom, most people didn't bother checking on a little noise unless it was also accompanied by screaming. That just served to make Verity grumpier. ( Baltimore was about to be a battleground, and the rest of the building wasn't even going to notice unless the Covenant decided to firebomb her while she slept. )

[Preplayed with the wonderful firstofitskind who also coded this all like a hero. Adapted from Midnight Blue-Light Special, by Seanan McGuire. NFI, NFB]

The high of taking down the ghouls who'd been murdering those girls had worn off sometime yesterday afternoon, leaving behind only the remaining guilt that she hadn't figured it out sooner and that she'd managed to have a great time with Liam and Sarah on Friday night, even with four dead girls hanging on her conscience. She'd gone to dance practice in a funk and James had ended up calling it half an hour early because her brain was clearly not in the music.

Which was even more depressing, because if there was one thing Verity had always been good at losing herself in, it was the dance.

Cries of exultation greeted Verity's key turning in the lock. She opened the front door to find the entire Aeslin congregation gathered on and around the tiny table where she kept the mail. Several of them were waving tiny banners made of tissue paper that had been meticulously painted with drops of blue, black, and red ink.

"Hail!" shouted the head priest, waving his banner with extra enthusiasm.

"HAIL!" agreed the congregation.

"Hail," Verity said tiredly, and shut the door, taking off Valerie Pryor's wig and tossing it onto her desk, since the mail table was in use. “What's the occasion?”

"Today is the Holy Feast of I Swear, Daddy, I'll Kiss the Next Man That Walks Through That Door," said the priest, sparking a second, more solemn declaration of "Hail" from the rest of the mice.

"Cool." Verity started for the living room. The mice scampered after her, still waving their banners wildly in all directions. Aeslin religious rituals were nothing if not enthusiastic. "Do I need to do anything?"

One of the novice priests looked at her like he wasn't sure whether or not she was joking. "Priestess…"

"Right, right. I have to kiss the next man who walks through the door, right?" Cheers from the mice, interspersed with more cries of "Hail." "Got it. At least I'm not expecting company." She had some quality brooding to get in.

Her stomach rumbled and she cursed herself for not stopping to grab food on the way. Time to order takeout--and specify that the driver needed to be a girl or non-binary. Thanks mice.

[For one, text taken and heavily adapted from Chapter 14 of Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon. Out of chronology but I just love this holiday so much. Up early because time zones are dumb (and also SP)]