Running Dry

“Two pair, queen’s high,” he said, laying his cards on the table with a playful flourish. “You’re comin’ at it from the wrong direction, girl. God didn’t put Lycans on Earth to act as our equals. If he intended them to be equal to us, he would’ve given ’em the tools they need to fight back. Look at the furfolk – and I mean really look at ’em. They might look human from a distance, you might even think they look pretty. But they’re barely more evolved than fuckin’ feral wolves. I heard if you look at one of their brains, you’ll see how much smaller it is than one of ours.” Violet had barely registered what her opponent had said, her eyes resting blankly on the cards in her hand. “Finished?” She gingerly placed her cards on the table.

“Flush. Spades.”

“Bullshit.” The man flew from his seat, letting it fall behind him with a thump. “You haven’t had a hand worse than a two pair all night. I should kill you where you sit, you cheat.”

Violet was still staring down at the cards, running her finger along the edge of a Jack of Spades. She’d always admired the cards at the Salted Hog, how the faces seemed to look back blankly at her. For too long, she’d been profiting off of them without even taking a good look at their faces.

“Are you listening? I am speaking to you.”

“Give it a rest, partner,” muttered another player at the table, lazily reading a book. “She’s not cheating. She never is.”

“Yeah, friend”, she chimed in. “Give it a rest. You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack, worrying so much.”

Clenching his teeth, the man’s eyes darted around the table, from player to player. “You’re letting this girl take you folks for a ride. Nobody’s that good at five-card. Nobody.”

Violet’s bored expression had turned up, into a barely-concealed grin. “If God had intended you to win, you would’ve won.”

When someone with a low mental capacity is pushed a bit too far, you can practically hear the sound of their brain shutting down. Violet heard it then, the sound of gears shrieking as they pushed against one another in the head of this man. He was a traveller, passing through Dry Gulch on his way to make an ill-gotten fortune. It was almost understandable of him to make the mistake of thinking Violet would cheat at poker, almost sad. Later, Violet wondered if she could’ve saved him. She wondered if she’d told him what really happened around that table, if he’d even believe her.

The man quickly reached down to his hip, grabbed his six-shooter, and leveled it at her. He’d read enough gunslinger books to know he had to make it quick. Death screamed forth. However, as soon as Violet saw his hand start to move, her reaction was in motion. She pushed back against the poker table, which was nailed into the ground, sending her chair careening back. She slammed against the hardwood floor, the bullet flying over her. Then, without a wasted movement, she produced her own pistol and fired it off at the man’s shins. As always, Violet was relaxed. She found that if she started trying to come up with a plan, she would overthink things and get herself worked up. However, if she just acted on instinct, she’d be fine.
She climbed to her feet and quickly removed herself from the room, leaving the man screaming in pain on the ground.

“I told you, she’s not a cheater.”

It was market day. Violet had come into town from her cabin for groceries. Dry Gulch was bustling in the hot summer sun; noon was always the worst. She counted herself lucky to be in the shade of her thick-brimmed cap, watching folks tiredly move from place to place. However, their routine was broken by the sound of beating hooves and cracking chains.

A slave convoy rolled into town, then, a collection of cages the size of small buildings, mounted on iron wheels and pulled by groups of horses. Inside the cages sat humanoid beasts, with matted coats of fur on their chests, legs, and forearms; Lycans. Violet knew now why well-dressed men from out of town were lurking in Dry Gulch on market day.

The convoy pulled up to a stage in the crossroads of Dry Gulch, which was usually set up for the town’s gruesome displays of frontier justice. A small crowd began to form around the stage as, one by one, Lycans were attached to a chain and dragged out on display. A man with a bowler hat and a thick mustache quickly grabbed a small wooden crate, which he tossed in the corner of the stage, a safe distance away from the chained beasts. He then climbed on the box and began prognosticating the sales of the Lycan men and women.

“This one,” he claimed, poking a wiry baton at one of their chests, “is much stronger than he looks. He may appear gaunt and malnourished, but appearances are not everything – especially when it comes to these creatures. Let’s start the bidding at $10.”

As much as she wanted to turn tail and go, something was keeping Violet in the crowd. Her eyes were planted firmly on the face of the man on display.
“$15!”

“I hear 15 – do I hear 20? $20?”

She knew the man. They had grown up in the same town back east; his house was just down the street from hers. They had gone to the same schoolhouse. They played fantasy in the evenings before getting called back for dinner by their respective parents.

“$20.”

“I hear 20! Do I hear 25? 20 going once!”

Of course, he was a human back then. That was how many Lycans started out; they were still a young race. One day, the first one transitioned, and from that day forth, those with a predisposition began to change as well. To that very day, it was regarded as a severe medical condition.

“$25.”

“25 heard – do I hear 30? 30 dollars for the strong young Lycan? 25 going once!”

Violet reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of crumpled dollar bills, her winnings from the previous night. She counted them with impressive speed, then held them aloft, shouting “$60!”

“Seriously, Violet, I can never repay you.”

The door to her cabin swung shut with a violent crack. Violet was balancing a stick on her back, with two huge jugs of water on either end. She brought the water over to a small wood stove, and poured some into a pot which she gingerly placed down on the hot black metal.

“You can repay me by leaving Dry Gulch and heading back toward Massachusetts. It’s not safe for your kind out here. You can live free in the Northeast.”

The Lycan sighed and turned his gaze out a small window. “I wish it were that simple, but I’m afraid it’s not. They still have my girl, and she doesn’t know where I am. She’s all alone and scared.”

“I’m giving you another shot at life here, Perry. Why can’t you just take it? Why do you have to walk right back into slavery?”

“Would that be enough to clear your conscience? Knowing you set your friend free, even though dozens remain in captivity a few miles from your house?”

Violet clenched her fists, not taking her eyes away from the pot of water. “Have you ever heard the one about the gift horse?”

“I appreciate what you did for me. I really do. But I won’t be satisfied, knowing my only friends in the world are still in chains.”

“What are you suggesting? That we abolish slavery ourselves? Here’s a fucking news flash: we already tried that. Half the country tried, and they failed. And who are we? Two nobodies.”

Perry raised his hand, in an attempt to cut Violet off. “You’re wrong. We’re one nobody, and one wizard.”

The pads of his fingers began to glow red, as an imperceptible heat filled the cabin. In mere moments, a tiny fireball shot out of his fingertips and into the metal pot, dispersing through it. The pot shook and rattled for a few moments as the water came to an almost immediate boil. Violet couldn’t help but to hide a smirk. “Make that two wizards.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, almost ten, which she held in a pile on the edge of her thumb. “Tails,” she said. Then, flicking her wrist up, she sent the coins hurdling through the air. They spilled onto the ground.

Violet knelt down and counted the coins. All of them had landed on tails, except for one, which she quickly grabbed.

“Pretty impressive,” Perry said. “But you missed one.”

Staring down at her hand, Violet quietly palmed the coin from one side to the other. Just as she thought, this was her double sided trick coin; both sides were heads. “It happens,” she said. “Still, 8 out of 9 is a pretty good hit rate. You can’t always count on luck.”

Dry Gulch was a small town, but it was prosperous. Set in the center of a large, fertile valley, it was often regarded as a sort of oasis. Those who could get past the misleading name found a town where fortunes could be made.

The main area of the town, where the slave auction had taken place, was a long, narrow strip of roads and shops along the floor of the valley, where the looming cliff-like canyon walls kept the sun out any time of day save noon. This is where the Salted Hog, Violet’s favorite place to make money, sat. Across the street, set against the other side of the canyon, were a general store and a small clinic. Just down the street was the sheriff’s office, an embarrassingly small affair housing only a single cell. The cell was currently unoccupied, but it made Violet uneasy to think that a crime spree involving two or more people might be more than the town could handle.

The sheriff spat black, a disgusting mixture of saliva and chewing tobacco, into a jug, where it landed with a twang. “Good that you came, anyway. Saved me the trip out to your cabin.”

Violet crossed her arms. “So, not only do you not want to help, you gotta brand me a criminal, too.”

“Understand, kiddo. This town don’t exist on an island. Our actions have consequences. Besides, think of what happens once you get rid of the slaves. Suddenly, we have five plantations outside town with no workers. No way of making money. No more tobacco, no more food for the town, no more money coming into Dry Gulch. The entire town suffers.”

“Just don’t get in my way, or you’ll be sorry,” Violet said, turning to head out the door.

“Hold on there, kiddo.” The sheriff clamored to his feet, resting his hand on the gun at his side. “This morning I got a visitor. Big fellow, smelled of liquor, but I could tell he had his wits about him. Accused you of cheating at poker in the back room of the Salted Hog. That’s the fifth one so far this year. Got anything to say for yourself?”

“Not really,” she muttered, still facing away from him.

“You know, it’s basically stealing, what you’re doin’.”

“Is it stealing to take from those who have too much? From those who profit on the suffering of the weak?”

“It’s a public table, Vi. It isn’t just slavers who play there.”

“And I fold for the ones who deserve it.” Violet walked out the door, slamming it shut behind her.

On the edge of the valley, Violet and Perry sat, looking out at the plantation several hundred feet in front of them through a pair of binoculars. Violet was pinching a cigarette between her fingertips, trying to calm her shaking hands. They watched as Lycans toiled in the fields, cutting tobacco from plants and bending down to pick it up, their fur dripping with sweat in the hot sun; the pair could smell it even from that distance.

“One walks around the south border every five minutes or so… If we could get past the guard post there, we might be able to get into the house…”

“Best laid plans,” Violet muttered. Perry happened to pick up on it.

“Are you suggesting we just roll in there without a plan?” he asked.

“Well, when you put it like that… Yeah, I guess that is what I’m suggesting.” She shifted somewhat uncomfortably, letting her cigarette fall into the dust at her feet. “In the past, when I’ve tried to make careful plans, they usually ended up fucking me over.”

“Only if you stick to them too closely,” Perry admitted. “Obviously, we should adapt if necessary. Plans are my lifeline. They’re all I had when I was in chains. Anyway, for now, I think our best option will be to wait to see when the guard shifts change. Then, we go in and take out the two guards on the south side of the plantation before they even have a chance to get to their posts.”

“Take them out,” Violet repeated.

“We’re not going to kill them,” he said, scratching a furry spot behind his ear. “Well, not unless we have to.”

“Only if we have to. No sense fighting slavery with murder.”

Perry put his binoculars on the ground, satisfied with his plan. He turned to face his companion. “Many of them have shown that they aren’t afraid to murder us. They beat us when we disobey them, sometimes within an inch of our lives, sometimes to death. They refuse to recognize our humanity, and if they had their way, they would put each and every one of us in chains. I have no qualms about answering that sort of injustice with murder. If we just sit by and let them do it without truly fighting back, what sort of message does that send?”

Violet simply stood, speechless.

Two Lycan women sat at a wooden table, watching the sun set in the distance. They were sitting over plates of steak and steaming golden potatoes. One was eating voraciously, the other simply poking at her food with a bent wooden fork.

“What’s bothering you, Blue?”

She sat in silence for several moments, not really wanting to talk about it, but knowing it would be rude if she didn’t. “I guess I was just hoping we’d all end up in the same place. Maybe I should’ve known better.”

“Aw, don’t you worry about Perry. I think he’s okay out there. I got a good feeling from that girl who bought him – can you believe she paid $60? I can’t remember the last time I saw that much money in the same place.”

“Yeah,” she said, letting the conversation fizzle in awkwardness.

As the woman she was talking with finished her dinner and left, a man made his way over to the table, entering from her peripheral vision. He wore a black suit and tie, and a black hat – not a cowboy’s hat, but one that made him look quite like a city dweller. He sat down next to her, looking at her with a smile.

“May I ask, was something wrong with your dinner? Our chefs pride themselves on delivering consistent, delicious meals to our workers. If there was a problem, I can have it taken care of in no time at all.”

“I’m just not very hungry,” Blue said.

“Ah,” he murmured. “Well, you should try to eat anyway, or you’ll be feeling it in the morning. I’ve been there.”

“Excuse me,” Blue said, grabbing her plate and standing up, intending to bring it back to the kitchen to be washed. As she started to walk away, she felt a cold, firm hand on her shoulder.

“You know,” he began, “you didn’t even ask my name. I happen to be the owner of this plantation. I’ve put a lot of work into making it a comfortable place for all of my workers. All I ask for in return is a bit of respect, and to be treated like you would treat anyone else.”

She squirmed, trying to free herself from his grasp. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’ll try to be more respectful in the future.”

“I find your kind to be quite beautiful, you know. I admire your powerful bodies, covered in fur. There are ways that you could make your stay more… Enjoyable.”

Every cell in her body was screaming for her to get away from the man in black. However, for every backwards step she took, the man took two forward. “Thank you,” she said, through gritted teeth, “but I’m not interested.”

“That’s a shame…” the man said. “You could have quite a luxurious life. You would never even have to lift a finger. Oh well.”

On the other side of the plantation, two guards were making their way to their posts. As they rounded the corner, coming around to the back side of the house, Violet and Perry were waiting to take their places.

“It’s a shame we don’t look like normal human men,” Perry whispered. “Apparently those are the only people who are worth giving an actual job here. We could’ve disguised ourselves.”

“Shut up, you fucking idiot,” Violet hissed. The moment the two guards rounded the corner, they were each grabbed. Perry took his man, squeezing his neck until he quietly passed out. When Violet’s man started to struggle against her, she kicked his legs out from under him and brought him down, pressing her weight into his back in a flashy display. In mere moments, he was out cold.

“That could’ve gone worse,” Perry said. Violet ignored him. The two dragged the guards out, through a hole they had cut in the perimeter fence of the plantation. They shoved the unconscious bodies in a patch of tall grass, gagging their mouths and binding their arms and legs. With that, they began to move toward the building where the slaves were kept.

“Perry, you know I love you, but could you possibly save the smart comments until after we’re out of here?”

“Sorry, partner. Me and the smart comments are a package deal.”

The pair pushed up against the side wall of the barracks. Peering out from the corner, Violet watched for guards as her partner worked on the lock. His method of lockpicking was brutish and unrefined, but it would get the job done as long as he could keep it quiet enough. In one hand, he held a metal spike, and in the other, a hammer. He brought the hammer down on top of the spike. However, to keep the metal clang from ringing out across the entire plantation, he kept his hand wrapped around the edge of the spike. It was more like he was hitting his hand than anything else.

Eventually, the spike tore into the padlock, tearing the tiny metal plates asunder. A guard’s gaze passed over Violet, but just as he was about to step closer and try to get a good look at her, his friend called out his name, distracting him. The pair moved into the barracks. Dozens of pairs of tiny, beady eyes passed over them, silently. Perry moved to the center of the room, grabbing everyone’s attention by flailing his arms back and forth. Then, somewhere between a whisper and a shout, he said: “Attention everyone! We are getting you the fuck out of here!” No one had to be told twice.

As the Lycans made their way from the barracks and back behind the main plantation house, Perry seemed to be counting heads. Violet strode lazily from the building, as if unafraid of being spotted. The group was starting to make their way out of the facility when Perry grabbed the arms of a Lycan he recognized. “Hey,” he nervously barked, “where’s Blue?”

“Uh… I haven’t seen her since dinner.”

Before he had time to process the response, they were spotted. A piercing, barbaric horn filled the surrounding area. With a short glance, Violet and Perry exploded into motion. The pair ran up to the front porch of the plantation’s main building, vaulting themselves over the small fence that surrounded the deck. A pair of guards came running up to them. Perry flung his arm forward, like he was throwing a baseball. However, instead of a ball, a crackling burst of fire shot from his palm. It hit the chest of one of the guards with a painful thump, sending him careening to the ground. Violet pulled her six-shooter from its holster and quickly fired a shot into the leg of the other guard, bringing him down. With that, the two of them sprinted to the entrance.

Perry lunged into the door with a powerful kick, sending it swinging from its hinges. As they reconvened inside the house, Violet slammed the door shut behind her. She pulled a curtain aside and peered into the courtyard, at the group of guards that was now forming. “Okay…” she muttered, softly. “Try and find her. I’ll hold them off here. With any luck, I can use the entrance as a choke point.”

Her partner nodded in response. It seemed she wasn’t lying about her ability to plan on the fly. Without further hesitation, he bolted up the stairs, hoisting himself along the bannister. As he made his way around the upper floor of the house, keeping his ears perked up for any sign of Blue, he heard a gunshot.

Acting on pure instinct, he flung himself in the direction of the sound. He was expecting the worst, but his body was too pumped full of adrenaline to think much about it. When he finally reached the source of the gunshot, he flung the door open. He couldn’t quite believe what he saw.

Blue was standing over a man in a black suit, with a gun in her hand, as soft pink blood seeped across the wooden floorboards. When she saw him, she smiled. “Perry,” she whispered, “what took you so long?”

Violet stood beside the door to the house, her gun hand trembling slightly. She could hear footsteps approaching her position, and she started to hold her breath. If their clunky boots hadn’t given away their approach, it would’ve been the unmistakable stench of tobacco Violet had smelled so many times from the rich slavers at the poker table. She wore a different sort of poker face, now.

When the door swung open, she haphazardly fired a shot through the thin plywood. It sunk into the gut of one of the guards, who let out a horrible shriek. She knew she had to act fast. She had counted six guards in total, and there were now five shots in her barrel. She threw herself into the door, bashing it into the skull of the second guard who had been trying to enter the building. Now realizing what had hit them, the remaining four guards fell back, taking cover behind the fence. With careful precision, Violet popped out of the doorframe and fired at them. The sound of bullets whizzing by her head left her unphased. She shot one, then another. Then a third. Finally, the fourth guard looked around, decided his job was less important than his life, and made a break for it. She let him go.

Blue shuddered, her arms wrapped around herself. “I was making my way back to the barracks when a pair of guards grabbed me and took me to his bedroom. He thought he could just use me like a doll and toss me aside. So, I killed him. And I would do it again if I had to.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” Perry said, trying to keep himself from getting emotional. He walked up to Blue and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into an embrace. “It was a long journey, but I think… I think we made it.”

Blue rested her head on his shoulder. “For a minute there, I didn’t think you were coming back.”

“Come on, are you kidding? Of course I came back.”

As Blue raised her head from Perry’s shoulder, her entire body tensed up. She whispered “turn around”. So, he turned around.

There, in the center of the room, the man in the black suit was rising into the air. The pale blood, glistening in the moonlight, streamed up and around his body. It was filling his wounds, knitting his flesh back together.

Violet knelt down next to the bodies of the unconscious guards, removing their weapons in case they decided to get back up. She resolved to find Perry and to get medical attention to them as soon as she could. However, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a silhouette. She then heard a loud crack as a bullet whizzed by her head. She spun her body around, and saw the sheriff of Dry Gulch with a smoking gun in his hand. “Hey there, kiddo. Wish I didn’t have to do this.”

“You don’t,” Violet pointed out.

“I reckon I do,” he said. “Don’t look too good, lettin’ a wanted criminal steal all the slaves from the biggest plantation in town.”

“I didn’t steal them. I couldn’t have. You can’t steal what can never belong to someone. They’re people. It’s not like I took them. All I did was open the door for them.”

The sheriff spun the chamber of his gun, locking another shot into place. “It don’t exactly work that way in the eyes of the federal government.”

“Fuck the federal government. What are they gonna do, bring in the army and force us to be slaveholders? This is our town. We live by our rules. Always have, always will. Search your conscience. There must be some scrap of humanity left in there.”

“Save the big words for the courtroom.”

Violet knew her time was running out; she could only bluff for so long. She had to put her cards on the table. So, in the blink of an eye, she ripped her gun from its holster, pointed it at the sheriff, and pulled the trigger.

*click*

She pulled it again, and again, and again. She knew she’d loaded six shots, and only fired five. Was it jammed? A bullet ripped into her leg, and another, her arm. She pulled the trigger again, and again, and again. Click, click, click.

She saw herself in the back room of the Salted Hog. Sitting across from her was the sheriff. At that time, she considered playing with him to be a treat. He was a kinder than most men who played at that table, and he didn’t come around very often. She knew he didn’t make much, so she had decided to go easy on him.

“I fold,” she said.

“Come on, kiddo,” he said, with a friendly smirk. “That’s no fun. You’re not taking it easy on me, now, are you?”

“I just have a bad hand,” she said, blankly.

“Yeah right. Best poker player in town, and I been wiping the floor with you all night.”

“Fine.” She laid her cards on the table. “Flush. Hearts.”

The sheriff’s smile spread across his entire face. “Well, well…” He put his cards on top of hers. “Royal Flush.”

He looked at the shock that had spread across her face. It was the same expression she wore now, in the courtyard of the plantation. “What’s wrong?” He asked. “Ain’t you ever seen someone luckier than you?”

Blue fired several bullets at the man in the black suit. Each one sank into his flesh in a bizarre, inhuman fashion. She fired over and over, until the chamber was empty. He seemed unphased, and began to float in their direction.

“You think you can simply do whatever you want? You think you are above us? Time and time again, the place of your kind has been shown to be beneath ours.”

The man unfurled his body, sending a wave of force shooting through the bedroom that knocked Perry and Blue on their backs.

“You are a savage. A barbarian,” Perry spat.

“You’re the savages here. Without us, your kind would be nothing; wasting away in the forests. No culture, no civilization, nothing.” He floated daintily to the ground in front of Perry. Then, he reached down and wrapped his arms around his neck, hoisting his prey into their air with tremendous strength. “Say goodbye to your precious little girlfriend.” Perry clutched at the wrists of the black suited man. Sparks flew from his fingertips, but with no oxygen flowing to his brain, he couldn’t find the necessary discipline to conjure a flame. It seemed his long road was finally coming to an end.

Then, just as his vision was turning to black, he heard Blue’s voice.

“Turn around”, she said. So, the black suited man turned around. With claws extended, Blue dug her fingers into his eyes. He shrieked like a banshee as the very foundations of the building shook. Perry fell to the ground, gasping for air. Then, acting on pure instinct, his hands lit up with crackling fire. He ripped the man away from Blue’s hands, as blood poured down his face.

“Get cauterized, motherfucker.”

Though he still lives, some say his eyes never opened again.

The smell of blood filled the moonlit courtyard. The sheriff was standing over Violet, his gun leveled at her face. He had made the classic mistake of trying to get in some final words. “Sorry, kiddo. You’ve been too bad for business for too long.”

Without thinking, he looked up at the main building of the plantation. Some otherworldly screech was emanating from the second floor. He figured it was the loudest yell he’d ever heard. Violet counted herself lucky; it was all the distraction she needed. Using all her strength, she pushed against the ground and slid between the sheriff’s feet. Then, she grabbed him by the ankles and yanked him to the ground, his face slamming into the dust. His gun flew from his hand and hit the ground a few feet away, so she made the painful climb to her feet and prepared to dive at it. However, as soon as she put weight on her shot leg, she collapsed. She pushed off the ground, climbing to her hands and knees, always pushing toward the gun. Unfortunately, the sheriff had the same idea. He jumped, landing next to Violet.

Violet grabbed the gun by the handle, the sheriff by the barrel. Before he was able to point the gun away from his body, Violet fired off a shot. It sunk into his chest. His grip loosened, so she fired off another. His grip loosened further.

She painstakingly pulled herself onto her feet, limping away from him. Then she pointed the gun at him.

He coughed up some blood.“Well, shit… Do you think… You could bury me by the ocean?”

“Don’t talk like that. You aren’t dead yet. You’re gonna be ok.”

“I can feel it coming, kiddo.” He coughed again. “You’re not gonna make me out to be… Some kinda villain, are you?”

Violet was shaking, trying not to cry. “No. I don’t think you’re a bad person. I just think you got dealt a shit hand.”

It was market day. Although now, market day only served as a way for people in Dry Gulch to buy groceries, never Lycans. Violet was strolling up to a caravan, surrounded by Lycans. Perry and Blue were starting to load up their paltry belongings to make the long journey back East, to the free territories.

“Hey,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about. About the two of you staying here in Dry Gulch.”

“Well, well, well,” Perry laughed. “Wasn’t it you who told me I should just head back to Massachusetts while I had the chance?”

Violet bit her lip.

“Sorry, partner. I think Blue and I wanna head back to where it’s safer for us.”

“But…” She had practiced this conversation so many times in her head. Why wasn’t it playing out the way she wanted it to?

“But what? What’s gotten into you?”

“But…” Blue interjected, climbing down from the driver’s seat of the caravan. “She is the sheriff now – she’s gonna be running Dry Gulch without a deputy. Besides, we Lycans are free to live wherever we damn well please.”

Violet made eye contact with Blue, mouthing a thank you. “Hey,” she said. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we just leave it up to luck?”

Perry started laughing again. “You would say that.”

“We’ll flip a coin. Heads you stay, tails you leave.” Violet reached into her pocket and fished out her double-sided trick coin. “Ready?”