Whatever Aelise was about to say is interrupted by the air catching on fire everywhere it touches the incandescent figure in Elspeth's arms.

Juliet's aura slurps up the fire; she's very bright, for a moment, but then it calms down in among the usual harmless licks of flame that dance on her person. Nothing catches; it is merely warm while her aura performs.

Harley. It's me. With Bells. And she works her witchcraft on the vestiges of what Chelsa did to him.

Lizzie opens her hands slightly in an understated shrug.

Harley clings to Elsie and makes muffled sobbing noises.

Elspeth holds him and she works.

"Weren't you going to do the talking?" Juliet asks Lizzie. "Does she mean she wants me to turn my aura off?"

Tab writes to Aelise: Would you please ask them if they can grab me down there like they did Harley?

Aelise glances at the screen and says, "Tab would like to be included in this conversation, if you wouldn't mind fetching her. And since she is not currently buried in the sun, it shouldn't be quite so spectacular this time."

"Turning your aura off would be conducive to reasonable negotiations," says Lizzie. "She means that she wants to know what we're doing here, what we want, and that we're not going to harm her or Tab or anyone else who might drop into the line of fire while we're talking it over. And there are probably some dicey secrets in the mix that she would rather we not mention to anyone without her say-so."

Juliet withdraws her aura. "Tab's safe if she's a Bell like it sounds like she is, probably safe even if she's not, and if she is a Bell this is her jurisdiction and we are just here to hand her the ability to do whatever she pleases with the place; if you're lucky, she likes you." She snaps her fingers and spends a pentagon, and here is Tab.

"In the interests of full disclosure, Elspeth is not a suitable repository for secrets."

Here is Tab, indeed. The auras didn't come through on the security feed; she blinks a lot, when she gets a look at them. "Wow."

"All this and more can be yours for nine ninety-nine," Aurora mutters under her breath. "Should any subset of us duck into Milliways?" she adds at normal volume.

Aelise is now looking analytically at Harley.

"Good question," says Lizzie. She is looking analytically at Aelise.

Aelise says, very definitely to Harley: "Chelsa is retired."

He bursts into tears and clings to Elspeth.

"Just retired?" mutters Elspeth.

"World's Downsideable," reports Golden in an undertone.

"I don't know what that means, but it sounds murdery; don't just up and kill her, please," says Tab, "she still has enough contact with the population for it to be a sharp shock."

Golden's aura is still out, like all of them except Juliet's; her hiss is very nonhuman, but she doesn't disagree aloud.

"And Corona is dead."