"Thank you. But I still did promise... I'm not sure how much leeway I'd get... hm..."

She looks thoughtful.

"Was the promise for sixty years, or sixty years extorted from Others? You might be able to claim you paid the debt, if only because all practitioners are at least a little bit Other."

"It was the second one, and I'm not sure it counts if I wasn't the one doing the extortion, or at least that could be an avenue of argument."

"I think the argument favors them, but it's plausibly worth arguing. The drawback being that then they know you know about their windfall, and that if you move against them it won't be in ways they can counter by being rich."

"Or I could extort some time off a demon and bet on them not wanting to take that."

Rose stares briefly. "That is...technically an option. If you don't mind walking up to a powerful family and announcing that you're a diabolist, and also think you can successfully extort a demon."

"Maybe not a demon, but something they might not want to infect their pools with. I'm not sure the argument will work, but the argument plus something like that... It feels ungrateful but on the other hand they already got a lot of power that they got off me without even telling me about it so I'm at least somewhat inclined to ignore that feeling."

"Ungratefulness doesn't enter into it. They got the benefit you agreed to give them, and a contract certainly doesn't entitle them to your good will. You do have time before making a decision, since there's no deadline."

"Yeah, I think my best next move is going to Toronto. ...except for my father, I wonder what I'm gonna do about that mess."

"Magic-based solutions to personal messes are usually a bad idea. Now that you have a wider scale of problems and opportunities, can you just declare him irrelevant and leave him in the dust?"

"I'm... not sure he would accept that, is my main concern. I wasn't thinking of using magic for this, I was just wondering how I'm going to prevent him from deciding to just come after me. He's the Laird Behaim of this town's non-practitioners, if you pay attention to that."

"Some. Not as much as the people who can use politics. He'd likely be able to find out where you went from practitioners, but would have to know who to ask. Unless they volunteer the information."

"Might they? Volunteer it? And I'm pretty sure he'd go on a hunt to find me, missing posters and talking to the police and all that."

"Laird's day job is as a high-ranking officer; if your father talks to them it will be exactly as effective as Laird wants it to be. That is probably a good sign. Both families want you as an ally against the other and me, so they won't go out of their way to act against you unless they give up on recruitment."

She sighs. "So petty."

"Extremely.

It might be worth retaliating or defending yourself with magic if there's no other way out. It would be frowned upon, but that doesn't mean it would fail."

"Yeah," she sighs again. "I might just vanish, leave a note, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst."

"You can use the note to accuse him of wrongdoing, preferably varieties where the spirits would agree with you. That can give you an edge.

You could even say you talked to a well-informed lawyer if you don't mind risking the Behaims finding out you've been in contact with me."

She raises an eyebrow at 'well-informed lawyer' but elects not to comment. "What kinds of things would the spirits find wrong in the relevant sense?"

"There isn't really a line where they'd think he went too far. In an older time the head of the house had the power of life and death. You can get some of the same effect by emphasizing contemporary opinions, framing it as him going against his social role. Best of all—as in most effective, not as in better—is if he acts against you dishonestly, or punishes you for obeying the spirits' own rules."

"Dishonestly like how? And wouldn't his ignorance of the rules solve that?"

"The spirits haven't been paying attention to him, correct. They do listen to you. If you can accuse him of, say, claiming he wants to give you a safe home and instead driving you away from it, they'll go along with your version to at least some extent."

"Of course. Well, if I can get this stupid system to work in my favour that's probably what I'll do."

"I'll write ahead to the cabal and tell them to expect an ally. They'll be in a position to help you land on your feet when you arrive."

"'An ally'? Not their founder?"