The rest of the trip went fast.

  Or, fast-ish. Saying the entire trip would take four weeks had been optimistic at best. The actual travel time had been more than that. Still, life fell into a routine and slid by.

  Birch abandoned her practice of annoying Jasque by spreading some rumors about him and his… proclivities. Within hours, the entire caravan was looking at him like he was the shit someone had forgotten to scrape off their boot.

  His meals always seemed to have the gristle from the meat and the most watery part of the pot. Even more difficult for him, he was not allowed anywhere near any of the animals that were a part of the caravan. To ensure that, his movements were tracked so thoroughly that it was hard for him to sneak off to train with Wade.

  Agnes left them a few days after the rumors came out. She did not condone what she considered bullying. But, after hearing how he had spoken to Shilloh, she refused to confirm or deny the story when asked. It was not tacit approval, but it was not opposition either. She just advised the concerned parties from the caravan that, for clear communication, they should speak directly to Jasque to hear his side of the story.

  Before it had gone further than that, she was gone.

  Soon after, they hit another big stop where most of the other passengers dropped off.

  The tenor of the days changed. Wade found less and less time to train with Shilloh and Scotty. Without Agnes there, the book club petered off. Birch spent more and more time on phone calls or using a satellite uplink to type frantically at a laptop.

  Some part of Shilloh wanted to ask about her work and offer emotional support, but she took the coward's option. With a separation looming, the possibility of her not returning to Forsythe, and all her attention focused on classified matters she couldn't talk about, silence was easier.

  She let more of their time in the car together devolve into her looking out the window and avoiding any sort of commentary that would spark a conversation.

  In her time outside of the car, she trained and studied. Scotty had long since cashed in on the movies they owed him, and he seemed to become more alert and dangerous by the day. Sure, he was fun and goofy when it was friend time or when the three of them were together, but those times became less frequent.

  He always seemed to be around Wade. That shouldn't have been a problem, but when Shilloh was around Wade, so was Jasque. That precluded her or Birch from seeking him out too often.

  It wasn't running away through. She maintained frigid politeness towards Jasque, even as he treated her as if nothing had happened, and Wade's nerves visibly frayed each second the two were together. It was difficult, but she managed to stop herself from reaming Wade out for all the bullshit he was tolerating and, de facto, enabling from the shark-eyed psycho. But her grandma had taught her that almost all of an apology was what you did after speaking to the person. Shilloh had apologized to Wade for being bitchy and aggressive with him. She'd be making a liar of herself if she sniped at him the first time the strain came back. Retreating into work and firmly compartmentalizing their lives was the best way to proceed with a somewhat convivial atmosphere.

  So the days went by.

  Before too long, Birch left them while still in a frenzy of constant phone calls and vigorous emails. She told Shilloh they would hang out soon and find a way to get back to Forsythe together.

  Shilloh didn't let herself get too taken with the idea. The logistics were too complicated, especially when any bridge could spawn a troll and force them on different caravan routes home.

  Day by day, she let the romance novels, the crush, and the silly nights out dancing fall away. She wanted to be a missile made of purpose and propelled by unassailable focus towards her dreams.

  When the evenings alone grew hard, she thought about compounding interest. Using conservative rates, she calculated how much each hour of her time in the big-paying roles would grow her fortune if she had another hundred years of compounding interest. Crunching those numbers helped make her hungry for the work. The village she could prepare for the rest of the dryads who would be released from The Vault filled her imagination.

  Her days became incremental progress towards a goal, and her nights were filled with thoughts about how to diversify her assets and defend a large stretch of land once she had the means to build her haven.

  Statistically, she reminded herself, her life span meant she would probably see some sort of rebellion, civil war, or great recession. She'd need to ace the interview and get one of the highest salaries if she was going to be rich enough to ride that out.

  With that frame of mind, transitioning into blightbane vehicles with Scotty, Wade, and Jasque was easy. They left the caravan behind with no ceremony. The other banes from their journey joined their own small procession, but they didn't leave much of an impression on her.

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  She interrogated Scotty while flicking through her cartography portfolio to pick work samples and memorize the bane standard operating procedures.

  By the time they got to the campsite, she was ready for anything. She could solve any math problem needed to demonstrate her skill at cartography. She had read about the blightbanes from their inception to finding Godkiller and knew the ethos of their work so well that she could write a definitive non-fiction book about it.

  ~~~

  Her first sight of the destination was people setting up a massive campsite not too far from a frigid autumn sea. The space being prepared was too large for the skeleton crew preparing latrines, fire barrels, and thick canvas pavilions filled with benches.

  She moved through the growing ghost town with very few details actually reaching her. All focus went towards making a good first impression. Back straight, eyes direct, face a pleasant but not overly excited. She even had clean(er) clothes to wear.

  Her interview site looked like an advanced camp for soldiers; the implicit danger of that should have freaked her out. She did not let herself get freaked out.

  She was a missile.

  Wade's expression reached new depths of stone-face, martyr-ready resolve. It should have annoyed her. She did not let herself get annoyed.

  She was a missile, and the target was in sight.

  "This isn't the interview," Scotty muttered into her ear. "It's just a politeness thing. We'll introduce ourselves so the local command structure knows what assets are available. Then we'll be told to rest until a meeting some other time. Probably tomorrow. Wade, Jasque, and I will likely linger behind to be read up on the situation report for active banes."

  "Gotcha."

  "Don't be nervous."

  "I'm not nervous."

  And that was true. Missiles weren't nervous. Her pulse was calm. Her mind was filled with common interview questions, her list of counterquestions, and a highlight reel of all the professional accomplishments she wanted to slip into conversations to show her value as a candidate.

  This was a first impression and a first step in getting the job. Regardless of what Scotty said, Shilloh had no delusions about it. Every move she made in this camp was going to leave an impression that could impact her goals. Explicitly or accidentally, it did not matter; Shilloh had begun interviewing for this role the second she saw the camp. That was why she would be calm, poised, professional, and friendly no matter what.

  With that in mind, they were led into a tent taller than any of the others. Its material was worn but well cared for. There were soldiers not just around the tent, but stationed in concentric circles around it. There was a sense of hurried protective magics drawing energy from the earth, and the grass at the door had started to wear thin from all the foot traffic.

  Keeping her own magic wrapped up tight, Shilloh ducked under the tent flap. She focused on the warmth coming from an enchanted brazier rather than allowing herself to be thrown by the conspicuously looming way Jasque positioned himself behind her.

  Maybe it was to disrupt her calm, or just setting up to kill her if she threatened whatever important person was in the tent. Didn't matter. No one would ruin her first impression.

  After ducking her head under the entrance, Shilloh came to hear feet, shoulders back, eyes forward.

  She smiled and looked at the people in the tent. Nothing mattered but composure. Poker face on, she tried to pick up cues and clues that would help—

  Holy fucking shit balls wale dick goddamn forrest fire ghonerria FUCK!

  She was wrong. She had been really wrong. Something did matter.

  What the fuck? What she saw mattered a lot.

  Across from her was a figure sitting at a small folding camp desk. They were all in black, except for a white mask.

  Trying to determine if they were male or female was impossible. Something magical was poking at her eyes like stubble from freshly shaved legs. It didn't want her to know what this person looked like, and she could sense the headache that would come from trying to pierce the veil and form a clear impression of anything beyond the iconic mask.

  It was completely smooth, other than two eye-holes and a sloppy, faded, Sharpie drawing of a broken infinity symbol hanging a bit over and to the side of the right eye.

  Godkiller—the mother fucking Godkiller—stood up.

  "A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Methuselah," said a voice exactly as obfuscated at the uniformed body. "I've heard great things about you but, let me go out on a limb," they said, the distortion not letting her know if the change inflection was meant to hide their voice or was indicating some sort of pun (which couldn't be the case. Not after Scotty), "and assume that you are aware of the interim director who will be joining us for your interview."

  "You would be correct," she said, using all her willpower to keep her body language professional.

  Because, while seeing Godkiller—who, you know, fucking killed gods and/or god adjacent things so frequently it had become their, literal, goddamned name—in her interview tent was shocking, it wasn't the most shocking thing in the room "Ms. Genandoah and I have met before."

  "Hell yeah, we have, sister! Shilloh here met me at a wine bar before I took her out dancing, and she started, well, ended a bar figh—"

  Shilloh's composure broke then.

  She made it two steps forward, all the shock and distress flooding her face just in time for Birch, as she had promised, to lift a small Polaroid camera and take a picture of her face as she finally realized what her friend had been orchestrating.

  "Cheese!" the short woman in her eventual interview tent chirped.

  All of Shilloh's plans collapsed. That evil, maniacal, psychotic, loving, protective heifer was here to try and support her. And Shilloh wasn't sure her career would survive it.

  Birch saw her expression and took a second picture. The bitch.

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