Josie let Jack deal with the Endwrights while she walked Lady Endwright to the

  courtyard outside. She still had her paper and she had an idea of what she wanted to

  do. And she had the means to get it done.

  She doubted the noblewoman would like what was going to happen, but she had a

  small amount of patience for people hurting others. She supposed that was too much

  comic book reading coming up from the back of her brain.

  “What are you going to do?,” asked Lady Endwright.

  “I’m going to change forms and take all the information I can from you,” said Josie.

  “Then I am going to send you somewhere where you can’t do any more harm.”

  “I would like to live,” said Lady Endwright. “Isn’t there something material you

  want?”

  “Your organization tried to make me a mindless pawn,” said Josie. “All I want is the

  fulfilment of my quest so my patrons know that I am still working on the job that I

  said I would do.”

  Josie reached for her watch face.

  “I’m not your judge,” she said. She pushed down for Zatanna. “I’m your judgment.”

  Josie wished for all the relevant facts that she wanted to appear on clean sheets of

  paper. She read the contents as the words wrote themselves. She nodded at the

  confirmation of Donald Corle’s involvement. And the fact that he was dead made her

  feel even better about Jack operating on his own.

  When the spell had run its course, she bound the information into a notebook and put

  it to one side.

  “What are you going to do now?,” asked Lady Endwright. She tried to catch her

  breath to recover from the assault on her mind.

  “I’m going to let you go,” said Josie. She wished for her victim to appear in the sky

  over the city and start falling to the ground.

  She returned to her normal form and sighed. She should have thought of some way

  to express mercy instead of vowing to kill all the members of the Montrose.

  Executing them was starting to take a mental toll no matter how much they deserved

  it.

  Maybe she needed to send an invitation out to get as many as the Montrose together

  so she could get rid of them all at once. Maybe that would ease her pangs. She had

  totally wrecked herself out of anger.

  She throttled her regret down. This wasn’t the first time she had jumped into

  something without looking where the bottom was. She had survived those, and she

  could survive this.

  And she had the kids and Elaine to help with that. They made some of this worth it.

  She saw Jack coming out of the house. He looked grim but satisfied. Helping people

  suited him a lot more than it did her. Out of the two of them, he was the one who was

  doing better with the challenge they had been given.

  He could survive anything with the same cool attitude as getting a tea out of the

  fridge. He had survived a few years getting shot at and had slipped back into civilian

  life without a problem.

  “Ready to go?,” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Josie. “The nobles?”

  “Fixed,” asked Jack. “Could you clean up the place?”

  “Really?,” Josie turned her squint of doom on him.

  “Pulling out a tooth sometimes requires gum surgery,” said Jack.

  “You’ll have to carry me back to the girls,” said Josie.

  “Deal,” said Jack.

  Josie shook her head. He didn’t look as regretful about his request as he should in her

  opinion.

  “How did you get a gun?,” asked Jack as she turned back into Zatanna and checked

  her watch.

  “Bulletgirl,” said Josie. She didn’t want to use her full power on the house. Maybe

  something out of Mary Poppins would do. The staff, whomever remained, could

  handle anything she didn’t after they left.

  “Bulletgirl?,” said Jack. “Bulletgirl. I don’t believe you.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you believe,” said Josie. She picked a spot of blood on the

  floor. She told the blood to start burning up the rest of it as fast as it could. The

  bodies would vanish as the blood did its work.

  She cast a general clean up spell to do the rest of the work. The servants might leave

  when they saw things hopping around. There was nothing she could do about that.

  “All right,” said Josie. “Let me put up some monitors, and we can go.”

  Birds appeared and perched inside the house. When the area within their watch areas

  cleared, the bird would vanish.

  “We can go now,” said Josie. She almost smiled as damage started repairing itself in

  little dancing motions. “The birds will make sure the job gets done.”

  “All right,” said Jack. “You ready to fly?”

  “I guess so,” said Josie. She let Zatanna go so the watch could recharge.

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  “Let me call up Gravity and we’ll be on our way,” said Jack. He made the switch to

  an outline of color and pulled them both in the air. They soared above the city at a

  leisurely pace. “Do you think the Montrose will start coming after us now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Josie. “Lady Endwright had a lot of deals in the works trying to

  increase her fortune. Her death might throw a spanner in the works, might make the

  organization try to hold her husband to her deal.”

  “I told the servants to turn anyone with the Makeover away,” said Jack. “I don’t know

  how long that will hold with a force of armed men.”

  “Probably not long,” said Josie. “If we keep taking back their slaves, we might rise

  above being minor annoyances.”

  “If we keep killing their personnel, we might rise above being minor annoyances,”

  said Jack. “If we can force them out of Hawk Ridge, we might rise above medium,

  and into the major threats to their dealings.”

  “I was feeling tired,” said Josie. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should work on

  trying to clear them out of Hawk Ridge. I would love to get as many as I can together

  so I can get rid of them in one fell swoop.”

  “What do we do?,” asked Jack. “Advertise?”

  “I doubt they will go for something like that,” said Josie. She rubbed her face. “This

  is making me car sick.”

  “Really?,” said Jack. “Why?”

  “I think it’s the falling without hitting the ground,” said Josie. “Still, it’s fast.”

  “I can go faster, but I didn’t want to try that inside the city walls,” said Jack. “I

  didn’t want to splat against a building.”

  “Thanks,” said Josie. “There is the Corle house. Bring us down, and we can walk

  the rest of the way.”

  “Bringing us in,” said Jack. He let the natural gravity of the planet slowly take over

  and they drifted to a landing.

  “What do you think about what we found out?,” said Jack.

  “The Montrose are big users of alchemists and if we hurt them, we can hurt the

  overall production,” said Josie. “The hex we put on the love potion seems to have

  permanently taken it off the table somehow. So they can’t make willing slaves

  anymore, and the ones they had might decide to fight back if they aren’t broken

  already.”

  “We might have created an army of amazons waiting for their chance?,” said Jack.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Josie. “I haven’t seen any more deaths inside the

  organization other than the ones we caused. We are still on our own unless I start

  seeing massive losses.”

  “Nothing from the hunter?,” asked Jack.

  “No, so either he is out of the picture, or he is traveling,” said Josie. “The watches are

  making it easy for us to travel, but most people have to take days to get where they

  are going.”

  “So he might have cleared out everyone around him?,” said Jack. “How would he

  know about any others?”

  “If he is traveling,” said Josie. “He might be dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  “But if he is traveling, how would he know there were more than one little group

  doing business?,” asked Jack.

  “He has a copy of the ledgers,” said Josie. “That’s the only way.”

  “He might have done some Jack Bauer on a few of them,” said Jack. “I like the

  ledgers because it matches up to what the Society told me.”

  “So he knows as many of the Montrose as we do,” said Josie. “Is he coming the

  way?”

  “No idea,” said Jack. “We need to do something with what you took from Lady

  Endwright.”

  “I’ll ask Elaine to map it,” said Josie. “It might give us a hot spot we can clear out

  after we clear Hawk Ridge.”

  “How did you get Bulletgirl?,” said Jack. “I have been wanting someone I can shoot

  with other than Gravity.”

  “Still stuck with hand to hand guys?,” asked Josie. She smiled slightly.

  “I pulled out the Human Torch,” said Jack. “Setting people on fire doesn’t have the

  knockdown that I want.”

  “Blade?,” asked Josie.

  “Too messy, too upclose,” said Jack. “Sure, I can cut through anything with fifty

  blades swinging around, but I am spraying blood and body parts everywhere. It’s like

  putting your hand in a cuisinart. Nobody wants that.”

  “I suggest you look at any of the old gunslingers and see what they can get you,” said

  Josie. “Bulletgirl is an heroine bought up by DC who was the sidekick to Bulletman.

  Their real power was flight, but the name change from the watch lets me do with them

  what you do with Blade.”

  “And that’s nearly the same as the Arrow,” said Jack. “I can see that.”

  “There has to be some gunslingers on the watch,” said Josie.

  “There are,” said Jack. “The names are what’s stalling me from trying them since they

  all have variations of kid in their names. Rawhide Kid, Apache Kid, Two-Gun Kid,

  Kid Colt. I am afraid of turning into a goat with a gun.”

  “Really?,” asked Josie. She smiled.

  “Don’t act like you don’t know what I am talking about since you lucked out with

  Grundy,” said Jack.

  “You’re right about that,” said Josie.

  She wanted someone superstrong, but got someone supersmart instead. They had

  made it work out.

  Their talk had taken them from their landing spot to the gates of the former Corle

  estate. They paused when they saw their ducklings playing with other kids. Elaine and

  Jane stood off to one side talking.

  “So what do we do now?,” asked Jack.

  “We let them play while we work,” said Josie. “Isn’t that what Imagine Dragons

  said?”

  “We haven’t been able to build a town, but okay,” said Jack.

  “We might the way we’re going,” said Josie. “Hello, ladies. How are things?”

  “We already sent the ones who wanted to go home back,” said the leader of the

  refugees. “The rest want to go with you.”

  “Why?,” asked Jack.

  “Their families couldn’t afford to feed them and sold them to get money to live on,”

  said Elaine. “The problem is we don’t have room unless we expand the hole in the

  wall.”

  “We could expand the hole in the wall,” said Jack. “I would have to look at it, I

  guess.”

  “A solution would be to let them stay here,” said the head woman. “But if I do, what

  do you want in return?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “How long can you support a group of women and girls

  here? Josie and I don’t have an idea on what costs are here in the city.”

  “If we aren’t extravagant, we can support what we have for years,” said the head

  woman. “More people coming in would be a draw on our resources.”

  “What do you think, Elaine?,” asked Josie. She didn’t want to bargain with this

  woman but she knew they were imposing on someone who had just had everything

  ripped up around her. They couldn’t take in every kid they saved no matter how much

  she wanted.

  “Judging by what I saw, the taxes on this place would be enormous,” said Elaine.

  “Turning part of the grounds into a garden might help with food, but they will go

  through the fortune they recovered in two years as long as they live modestly with

  small amounts of upkeep.”

  “All right,” said Josie. “This is what I want. Anybody we rescue and wants to stay,

  they stay here. If you want to pick up people off the street, that’s good too but not

  necessary. If they want to go home, you arrange for that. In return, I will budget your

  tax bill and reasonable expenses with Elaine to keep you afloat. If any of you want

  to learn how to fight with swords, or shoot a bow, I will pay to have that done too.”

  “Define reasonable expenses,” said the head lady.

  “Upkeep on the house, small expandings of the wall to the property line, food and

  drink, and one Christmas party,” said Josie. “I don’t want to see golden privies when

  I visit.”

  “You are not nearly as angry as Jack made you out to be,” said the head lady.

  Jack shook his head.

  “I can be,” said Josie. “Do we have a deal?”

  “All right,” said the head lady. “We will need carpenters and workmen if we have to

  add to the house for others.”

  “That’s a reasonable expense,” said Josie. “Anything else?”

  “What’s Christmas?,” said the lady.

  Find a way to get home.

  Find a way to get home.