“I’m saying that we shouldn’t settle for being survivors. We have a room of magic here. We exist outside of time. Why not stop granting wishes?”
“Doll, did you somehow forget about the whole part where if we stop granting wishes, we stop existing?”
“Not in the slightest.” Jo shook her head.How was no one else thinking about this?“I don’t just mean stop. I mean . . . change the Society. Maybe there’s another way to get the magic instead of wishes? Some other ‘Plan B’ that we haven’t thought of.”
“Jo,” Snow spoke up with a cautionary note.
“Or put a stop to it altogether, if we can, and keep existing.” No one had an answer for her, because there wasn’t one. “Unless we change the Society itself, we’re nothing more than slaves, cattle, waiting for slaughter regardless of what Pan—”
“The only thing that matters are the wishes, and keeping our team alive,” Snow interrupted harshly. Jo instantly regretted suggesting he stay. “There are no alternatives, Josephina.”
She openly glared at Snow, and he met her stare. Tears fought against screams and stalemated into silence. Surely, he knew something that could help them. Why was he complacent to just sit on the sidelines? And if it was true, if he couldn’t help them, what circumstances had come to pass that had set them all on such a long, drawn-out suicide highway?
“Right, Snow,” Eslar started again cautiously, as if waiting for Jo to object again. She sunk back into her chair, keeping her thoughts to herself . . . for now. “We should focus on the wish.”
Assessing the situation was a fragile affair after that, as though everyone felt the subconscious need to watch their words, not sugar-coating, but definitely avoiding anything that could be intentionally antagonistic as well.
“So, all of this is happening in United North America, right?” Takako pulled up the original photo of the bone in snow.
“Yes,” Snow affirmed. With a wave of his hand, illuminated images spread across the table once more.
“The latest incident seems to have been in Boston Harbor . . . Police there are investigating,” Wayne said.
Jo continued to sit back in her chair, keeping her mouth shut. She couldn’t trust herself not to interject again, to point out how foolish the hamster wheel they were running on actually was.
Eslar nodded, stood again, and leaned towards the video feed Snow had shown them earlier. He pointed toward the news station logo in the bottom left corner. “There’s reporting in the greater metro area.” With the swipe of a green-nailed finger, he pulled up a social media thread on the matter. “However, there are rumors of police activity in the small town of Rockport.”
Takako stood, widening the map of the Bone Carver’s victims. “They must know something. These murders are all over the place. For the investigation to be narrowing down on such a small town . . .”
“I’m guessing the Bone Carver lives there?” Jo asked quietly. If she was doing this, then she wanted more than these static photos and brief news reels. She wanted something concrete to sink her teeth into.
Snow gave a final swipe of his hand with a grim nod. An address, a simple looking house, and a photograph of a man in a suit all pulled up together. It was a simple little bio, but not unlike what they had received for the first wish, and every wish after. They all stared at the face of their wisher, at the face of a killer. “This is the man who made the wish.”
“Do the police have this information?” Takako asked.
“I do not know,” Snow admitted, at least having the decency to look upset about it. He made a few final hand motions. Magic swirled in the table in a way that seemed random, but if Jo stared at it long enough, it was almost as if she, too, could make some sense of it. Every bit of information they’d been presented with appeared one after the next. “This is all I have been presented with.”
“Why don’t we get more information when the wish comes in?” she asked their leader. “Why is it limited to only morsels every time? It’s like the system is designed to try to coax us into failure.”
“This is how it’s always been,” Eslar answered for Snow, the protective note in his voice undeniable.
Jo looked sidelong at the elf. “That’s not what I asked.”
“I am only afforded a brief glimpse into the wisher’s current state of affairs when a wish is made.”
“Why?”
“This is how it’s always been.” Snow repeated Eslar’s words.
“That’s not an answer,” Jo shot back, rephrasing her earlier protest.
“If Snow could help us more, he would.” Eslar slammed a hand on the table and Jo jumped back in her seat. Less from the noise and more from seeing the elf emote so openly.
“I don’t doubt that,” Jo said quietly, looking Eslar in the eye, and then Snow. “I don’t,” she added softly, just for him. She needed him to know that even if she was struggling with just about everything right now, she could afford him the benefit of the doubt. She believed in him, even if she knew that he was holding something back. “But I’m askingwhyit’s this way.”
“What you should be asking is if you can go into the field and gather information yourself,” Eslar replied coolly. “We’re not going to get up-to-the-minute status on the police activity sitting here or looking online.”
He had an odd idea of punishments (if that was his intent) because Jo couldn’t help but perk up at the prospect. Getting out of the mansion, gathering upactualintel withactualcomputers, looked a lot like freedom; the idea offered a boost of adrenaline straight into Jo’s veins. Perhaps it would be like Nico and Florence. Perhaps it would give her the new perspective she needed on the Society, looking at it from the outside.
