But this time she was keeping pace with me and she wasn’t being unusually gropey or otherwise acting like she was particularly hard-up, or even just her regular amount of it. If anything, she seemed to be more than a little bit on edge.

“Um… is everything okay, Steff?” I asked her.

“What? Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I’m fine… I’m just, you know, trying to stay close to you.” She threw an arm around me, a gesture that couldn’t help seeming necessary from her. “It’s not safe out here, you know.”

“You’ve never seemed particularly safety-conscious before,” I said.

“My safety? No,” she said. “Yours? That, as the frog said to the miller’s son, is a different story. Somebody’s got to look out for you, kitten.”

“I’d rather stay away from feline-based terms of endearment,” I said, thinking of the nekos.

“Okay, but I’m not calling you ‘poodle’,” Steff said.

“Deal,” I said. “Anyway, it’s not even dark out yet… so what’s really on your mind?”

“Well, it’s getting there,” she said. “Sort of. Ish. But not all the monsters are afraid of the light… especially not the kinds you have to worry about. I just don’t want anyone to see you walking alone.”

“That’s… sweet, I guess,” I said. “What brought this on?”

“Something Jilly said,” she said. I winced, but it was a step up from her full nickname for Coach Callahan.

“About?”

“About not being a good idea to let anyone see you walking around alone,” she said. “She says that when a group of people who are used to feeling powerful or invulnerable have been scared witless by something and then been reassured, some of them end up taking a swing at the thing that scared them in the first place.”

“Or the nearest convenient scapegoat, I suppose,” I said. “That sounds sound enough, I guess, but I haven’t really seen anything like that. Yeah, there’s a lot of relief, but nobody’s come up and punched me. I’m actually having one of my better weeks, in terms of things like that.”

“Well, let’s just work on keeping it that way,” Steff said. “I kind of trust her judgment when it comes to things like what evil lurks in the hearts, et cetera… and what stupid and scared lurks there, too.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me and put on a hurt tone. “Unless… well… you’re not saying that you mind my company, are you?”

“Of course not!” I said quickly. Even knowing that she was hamming it up, I still felt guilty. My heartstrings had to come equipped with great big handles for easy gripping. “I love spending time with you, Steff… you know that.”

I expected her to laugh or something, but she just shook her head.

“Oh, Mack,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re almost making this no fun,” she said.

“If teasing people isn’t fun, maybe you shouldn’t do it,” I said.

“Let’s not get crazy… I said ‘almost’.”

“Well, there are other reasons not to do it,” I said.

“Mack… let’s be honest,” she said. “If I told you that I would never tease you again, you’d be heartbroken.”

“Well, there’s teasing and then there’s teasing,” I said.

“Yeah… so just tell me which one you don’t want me to do anymore, and I’ll take you at your word,” she said. “And if you wouldn’t mind doing one thing for me?”

“What?”

“Walk a little faster,” she said. “I mean, seriously, this moving at a human’s pace is killing me.”

“What, you think I’m dawdling so I can enjoy the cold a little bit longer?” I said. “Anyway, technically it’s my pace… is that what elves say instead of ‘a snail’s pace’?”

“When we remember that snails move,” she said.

Mariel was waiting for me in the girl’s stairwell in Harlowe, standing there at the first landing up with both sets of arms folded. I stopped when I saw her… having a conversation while walking up the stairs seemed like an easily avoided recipe for tripping. There was traffic heading in both directions, but not heavy enough to cause a collision. We both waited while a few people threaded their ways around us.

“What do you want?” Steff asked her when she figured out why I’d stopped.

“Hey, be nice,” I said quietly.

“What, do you want to spoil all of my fun now?” she asked.

“She’s not doing anything,” I said.

“Puddy’s waiting for you upstairs,” Mariel said to me, ignoring Steff.

“What, is she looking for a fight?” Steff said. “Or maybe an audience? That seems a bit more likely. She probably hasn’t had IDA recommended daily dose of attention yet…”

“She’s just looking to talk,” Mariel said.

“Yeah, well, maybe Mack doesn’t want to t…”

“Steff, I can speak for myself,” I said. “And… yeah, for certain values of ‘want’, I do want to talk to her. Or at least, I feel like I have to.”

“What the loving fuck?” Steff said. “Is this like when you ‘had’ to go out on a date with Sooni instead of being with me, because in the secret forgotten tongue of crazy people you’d promised her that? If so: fuck that, and get Amy to fuck the horse it rode in on. I thought you were done with Puddy.”

“I am… I will be. I want to be,” I said. “This is just for closure. To make sure she leaves me alone.”

“Mack, feeding a starving dog is not how you get it to leave you alone forever,” Steff said. “In fact, if it’s really starving enough, not feeding it pretty much guarantees that it will leave you alone. Though I’m not sure this metaphor extends quite that far.”

“Okay, look, I only told you she was waiting for you so you wouldn’t be all surprised and try to squirm your way out of it,” Mariel said. “I told her you said you wanted to see her, so if you back out now she’ll be… well, I’m going to look bad.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sure she’ll avoid your face if you ask nicely enough,” Steff said.

“Steff, I said I wanted to talk to her,” I said. “She wouldn’t be looking to talk to me if I hadn’t… if I backed out now, she’d have every reason to be upset.”

“A reason,” Steff said. “One reason. Do you want to stack that up against all the reasons you have to be upset with her?”

“She has her reasons, too,” I said. I was having a hard time calling to mind the specifics of what she’d said in the shared dreamscape, but that was part of the general impression I had. “I mean, everyone has their reasons for doing things. I’m not saying that her reasons are good, but they make sense to her…”

“And that and five coppers will buy you a can of soda,” Steff said.

“I thought it was ‘cup of coffee’,” Mariel said.

“I don’t drink coffee,” Steff said. “Why are you still here?”

“I just want to make sure she doesn’t back out,” Mariel said.

“I’m not going to,” I said.

“You’re not going to talk to her alone,” Steff said.

“I’m not going to go off with her, or go anywhere with a closed door,” I said. “But Steff… I don’t want this to be a big confrontation… or even a small one.”

“I’m not going to abandon you, Mack,” she said.

“Then don’t,” I said. “Just stay close. I’ll shout if I need you.”

Of course, I wouldn’t need to shout any more than Steff would need to be in the room with us to hear every word that was said, and I hoped that by saying this I would remind her of that without giving Mariel a similar mental nudge. I understood why she wanted to be there… it was about keeping me in sight and within arm’s reach, as she’d done on the way back from class. I wondered exactly what Callahan had said that had got her so spooked on my behalf, but now wasn’t the time for that.

“Fine,” Steff said, nodding.

“So you’re going?” Mariel asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Is she in her room?”

“Yeah,” she said. “She t… asked me if I wouldn’t mind clearing off for a bit, so I’m going to go have dinner.”

“Alright, then,” I said. “I’ll, uh… see you later.”

I didn’t really have any plan on doing so, but it seemed like something needed to be said to end the awkward encounter. I’d barely said it when Mariel hurried away… though from her point of view, she was probably moving pretty slowly.

“Well,” Steff said. “Once more unto the bitch?”

“That’s not nice,” I said as we headed upstairs. “And it just barely works, as wordplay.”

“That’s your real objection, isn’t it?” she said.

“Puddy’s room is right next to the stairs, so when we get upstairs, you just keep walking,” I said. “I’d like her to have the impression that I’m alone.”

“Do you have any particular destination in mind?” she said. “Remember, this isn’t my floor or my side.”

“Here, let me give you my key,” I said. I dug it out of my pocket… in the process, I caught my foot on the lip of a step and went sprawling forward.

“Good job,” Steff said, helping me up. “Most people only manage to fall the other way. Don’t let gravity keep you down.”

“Very funny,” I said.

I handed off the key and we continued on our way… or ways, as she ended up ahead of me well before the top of the stairs. I was silently hoping that Puddy’s door was open. The thought of dealing with my former roommate had a tendency to put me back into the mindset I’d had during my first few days at MU, in which I’d been quite a bit meeker. If I went in feeling all weak and submissive, she’d just walk all over me.

That thought seemed dangerously close to Puddy’s own philosophy, which she’d charmingly expressed to me in the form of “big dog vs. little bitch”. But I didn’t want to juggernaut over Puddy… I just didn’t want her doing so to me.

Luck was with me, though… insofar as luck can arrive in the form of someone like Puddy waiting for you. She was leaning against the bit of wall between her door and the one to the stairs.

“Well, well,” she said. “A little sylph told me that you had something to say to me. Who’d've thunk it?”

“Do you mind if we get out of the hall?” I said, nodding towards her open door. I figured that wording was a little safer than suggesting we go into her room. We’d end up in her room either way, but it seemed to me like you had to go further in to “go into the room” than you do to “get out of the hall”.

“What, are you ashamed to be seen with me?” she asked.

“If I were, why would I want to be seen going into your room?” I countered, then winced when I realized what I’d said. Oh, well.

“See? You can’t even say that with a straight face,” she said.

“I’m not ashamed of you, Puddy,” I said. “I have no reason to be. There’s just a lot of nosey people on this floor who are way too interested in… people like us.”

I really didn’t know if anybody gave any portion of a rodent’s anatomy about what Puddy did, but it seemed like a diplomatic misstep to suggest that I was the more interesting person.

“Alright,” Puddy said. She ushered me towards her room. “After you.”

“Do you think we should leave the door open?” I said as I headed in. I just stepped to the side of the doorway, just out of sight of the hallway. “It might look less suspicious.”

“Probably. I don’t care,” she said, following me. “I really don’t know where you got the idea that I care what anybody thinks of me.”

“Well, you put enough effort into making sure everybody thinks you don’t care about that,” I said.

“Truth in advertising, Mack,” she said. “I’m not going to apologize for who I am. If that’s what you’re looking for…”

“Who you are was never the problem… it’s what you do.”

“They’re the same thing. I am what I do and I do what I am… that’s what you call honesty. No hypocrisy, no lies, no two-faced… ness,” she said. “What you see is what you get, with me.”

“Are you saying I’m different?”

“What? You know you are,” she said. “You don’t talk, you button up and keep everything to yourself. The first day we were here, you didn’t want to tell me what you were. I had to pry it out of you.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Oh? Because as I remember it…”

“You don”t have to pry anything out of me, or out of anyone,” I said. “You could have just as easily minded your own business and let me have my secrets.”

“It would’ve come out sooner or later anyway,” she said.

I nodded. There was no sense getting bogged down in side arguments.

“You’re right,” I said. “But that doesn’t make what you did right.”

“So you don’t mind your secret being found out, just as long as it’s not me doing it,” she said. “That’s petty. Really petty. I don’t know why I expected better.”

“Puddy, if you stole money from me, the fact that someone else might have done it later wouldn’t change the fact that you stole it, would it?” I said.

“We aren’t talking about stealing, though if you want to talk about money I was always generous…”

“And always quick to make sure I knew that I owed you,” I said.

“Well, no one just gives money without expecting something in return. That’s not how the world works.”

“And that’s not how generosity works,” I said. “Or friendship.”

“Friendship works on trust, Mack… you wouldn’t need secrets if you’d trusted me,” she said.

“And you don’t have secrets?” I asked.

“Not big ones, like my race,” she said. “I’m open and free about that.”

“So you get to decide what secrets are worth keeping,” I said. “And whose.”

“Well… everything’s worked out okay for you, hasn’t it?” Puddy said. “Not that I’m suffering. I get by… I always do. Ungrateful roommates, traitorous friends, accusations of cheating… I have problems you couldn’t even dream of, Mack.”

“Everyone has problems, Puddy,” I said. Her injured pose was kind of irksome, but there didn’t seem to be anything gained by getting into a “who has the bigger problems” pissing contest. I didn’t want to start up a new conflict with her and I didn’t want her knowing about my life.

That, and I could well believe that she had her life had its share of problems… more easily than I could believe that she wasn’t suffering. If there was one thing about Puddy I could believe without straining my imagination, it was that she wasn’t happy with her life.

“Look… you wanted to talk to me,” Puddy said. “What do you want from me?”

“After last night, I just wanted to… I don’t know, clear the air,” I said. “I guess I want to know what you want from me. I’m not going to be your ‘little bitch’, Puddy, but I don’t want to be your enemy or rival or whatever. I’m not interested in stealing your thunder. I have too much thunder in my life already. I don’t want the thunder I get.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t stop you from getting it,” she said.

“But you don’t have to take it personally when I do. I’m not trying…”

“And I am?” she said

“I didn’t say that,” I said. This was getting to be pointless, if it hadn’t been from the outset. I could dance around trying to avoid being confrontational and trying to avoid a fight all night and it wouldn’t matter if she wanted one. “But as long as we’re both here, we’re going to keep running into each …”

“Who’s stuck?” Puddy came back, shouting. “You don’t want to be here… that’s what the realproblem is. Why don’t you just go?”

“I’m not dropping out of school to get away from you, Puddy,” I said.

“I’m not talking about leaving school,” Puddy said. “I’m talking about getting out of Harlowe.”

Soon: Mackenize leaving Harlowe? DUN DUN D…okay, you already knew that. OR IS SHE?

Discuss this story on the Livejournal community.

I realized that he had the right idea… there was no reason to assume that she knew everything, or even any one thing in particular, but a careless response or even the wrong question could change that in a flash.

“What you know, apparently,” Mariel said. “I heard everything. Almost everything. Everything important, I think… I mean, I heard enough, right?”

She didn’t sound too sure. That could be good, or it could be very, very bad… if she knew what we knew about Iona but didn’t understand why we weren’t doing anything, for instance… or if she knew what we knew but not how we knew it, she might infer that I’d had something to do with it.

“None of us had anything to do with it, and we’ve made sure that the authorities know,” Ian said, quietly and firmly. “What they’re doing with that information, we don’t know, but it’s probably best for you if you don’t get in their way.”

I looked at him, knowing that this was kind of far removed from what he actually thought and wondered at his ability to say it with such confidence.

I felt a little bit bad for Mariel, being so much smaller and slimmer than Ian… a confrontation between her and a human guy was much like one between a human and an ogre, at least at the level of physique comparisons.

I had to remind myself that she had abilities that he didn’t that could make any difference in size and strength utterly irrelevant. She could think, move, and react much faster than he or I could. She could move faster than either one of us could follow… which probably went a long ways towards explaining how she’d managed to eavesdrop.

“I wasn’t planning on… I mean, I’m not going to… I just…” Mariel sputtered.

“You wanted us to know that you know we know,” Ian said. “Great. Ten points. Twenty points. In fact, you win. Okay? We’re in your power.”

I wondered what he was thinking, being so antagonistic… but Mariel didn’t look antagonized. She seemed deflated… almost scared.

“You’re making it sound like I’m… like I was… look, I’m not trying to start something with you guys,” Mariel said. “I was just doing what Puddy told me.”

“She had you follow us?” I guessed. “That’s why I kept feeling a breeze.”

“Yeah, I was buzzing you in the hallway,” she said. “In the union. Puddy wanted me to find out what you were saying about her today. You know, after the thing last night. She thought you might try to take credit for it, or that you might be, you know, just… talking about her?”

“So, what… you were supposed to follow me around just in case I happened to say something about her?” I asked. Her face twitched into a kind of guilty/shocked expression, and I took a wild guess. “You couldn’t see any reason why I’d be talking about anything else. Or rather, she couldn’t, and you didn’t question it.”

“It’s not like I do everything Puddy says without question,” Mariel said. “Not anymore. But… she seemed pretty sure you’d be talking about her a lot. Like, there was no room for doubt.”

“Oh, yes, confidence equals rightness,” Ian said. “This is why we call trustworthy individuals ‘confidence men’.”

“Hold on, you’re mixing up deliberately lying with not knowing what the hell you’re talking about,” I said to him.

“My point is that someone can be sure of something that’s wrong,” Ian said.

“But a con man knows what he’s saying is wrong,” I said. “He’s not mistaken, he’s trying to fool others.”

“Hey, don’t you two dare-ignore-me-becauseIamseriouslyzzzzzzzzzzzz…” Mariel said, her words and body both becoming a blur as she became more agitated.

“Sorry, we’re not trying to not take you seriously,” I said. “We’re just…

“Tangent-prone,” Ian said.

“Yeah,” I said. “And anyway, you shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.”

“Yeah?” Mariel said. “Well, you shouldn’t have been… um, look, I didn’t exactly want to have this conversation out in the open.”

“Right,” Ian said. “Some unscrupulous individual might position herself to overhear.”

“I am not unscrupulous,” Mariel said. “When Trina wanted me to help her spy on Mack because she thought she had something to do with the… stuff… I said no, because I didn’t think she had any proof and I didn’t want to be involved. And of course she was almost right, wasn’t she? Because you did know something. But I stayed away out of principle.”

“Until Puddy asked you to,” I said. I filed away the bit about Trina in a folder marked “later”. It wasn’t so much news as another piece of evidence in a growing pile.

“Told you to,” Ian corrected.

“Don’t you turn this around,” Mariel said. “Does it really matter how I found out?”

“So what are you going to do… with that information?” I asked. My original intended wording, “about it”, sounded like more of a challenge than I wanted to lay down. “Ian’s right, the best thing you could do is just stay out of the way.”

“Well…” Mariel said, and it was very clear she didn’t have anything to follow that up with. She hadn’t thought this through, beyond the imagined moment of triumph when she confronted us. “I’m going to have to tell Puddy.”

“And what do you think that’s going to do?” Ian asked.

“Well, I was listening for her,” Mariel said. “So I can’t not tell her what I heard… can I? I mean, that would be immoral, wouldn’t it? Like… a breach of trust?”

“You don’t owe her anything,” I said. “Just because she forced you…”

“She didn’t force me,” she said. “I’m not like you, okay? I don’t have to let people push me around. I’m with Puddy because I want to be. I mean, I left her and came back. That proves something, doesn’t it?”

I looked at Ian, not knowing what to say to that… from the look on his face, he knew exactly what to say to it but he also knew better than to do so.

“Look… don’t you think Puddy’s going to want to do something, if she knows?” I asked Mariel. “It won’t be enough for her to just know a big secret, or to see that it’s taken care of by someone else. She’ll want to take things into her own hands, don’t you think?”

“Probably… I could see that, yeah,” Mariel said. “But… I promised her, didn’t I?”

Ugh… promise. I was starting to hate that word. Some people… like Sooni… wielded it like a weapon. I could well imagine Puddy doing the same thing to Mariel.

The very concept of a promise seemed kind of peril-fraught to me… you made them in the present based on what you thought the future would hold. A promise was nothing more than a prediction, when you got down to it. I’ll love you forever. I promise. I’ll be there for you always. But no one ever got more than a glimpse of the future, and even those glimpses were mutable, to a degree. Were promises like that broken, or did they simply fail to come true?

If Mariel had promised Puddy to spy on us and report back based on the idea that there was nothing more interesting for us to talk about than Puddy herself, and that idea proved wrong… was there even a valid promise? I had a feeling that this would be a little too philosophical a route to take with her, though.

“Tell her what she wants to hear,” Ian said. “I can’t imagine how you’ve managed to live with her if you don’t know how to do that.”

“I don’t actually live with her anymore,” Mariel said. “I moved in with Trina. I’m on my own now… independent. Though I do sleep in Puddy’s room most nights, but I’m sleeping over.”

“Right,” Ian said. “So you know about compromising to keep her happy while also looking out for yourself. That would be the smart thing to do now.”

“Though you’ll really be looking out for both of you,” I said. “It’s just safer to keep this quiet.”

“Maybe,” Mariel said. “But… if you want me to not tell Puddy about this, you have to do something for me.”

So either she hadn’t fully bought into the idea that it was in her best interest to keep quiet, or else she didn’t see the contradiction in asking for a concession in exchange for accepting good advice.

I didn’t want to push it because even though there was a technical truth to everything we were saying, it still felt like we were bullshitting her… it wasn’t too far-fetched to believe that she felt it, too. Mariel may have literally been something of an airhead, but my time with Pala the day before had taught me a lesson about underestimating air types.

“What do you want?” I asked her.

“I want you to sit down and talk to Puddy,” she said.

“I thought you wanted me to stay away from her,” I said.

“I do,” she said. “But I don’t like seeing her being mistreated, either.”

“Well… done. I’m not mistreating her,” I said. “I’m not treating her any which way, and I’m not in a hurry to start. So you get what you want, and…”

“I want you to show her some freaking regard for once,” Mariel said. “She’s really hurt that you’ve rejected her. I’ve told her again and again that she’s better off without you…”

“Thank you for that,” I said.

“See? We can’t even talk about her for five seconds without you badmouthing her,” Mariel said.

“Then what do you think it’ll accomplish to put them together?” Ian asked.

“I don’t want to put them together,” Mariel said. “I just want for there to be some kind of understanding, some… closure, or whatever.”

“So if I just sat down and told her that I wish her well but don’t want anything to do with her, that would be okay with you?” I asked.

“Well, I’d rather you weren’t such a bitch about it,” Mariel said.

“But you don’t want us to end up being friends or anything again,” I said. “What’s the point?”

“She wants to understand what went wrong,” Mariel said. “Thinking about it makes her soooo…”

“Angry?” I guessed.

“Sad,” Mariel said. “She has a heart, you know.”

“I’m sure she has many fine organs,” I said, “but I think I’ve spent enough time this semester getting roped into doing things with people I don’t like, or who don’t like me, or who are going to become angry at my mere presence.”

“Well, this is the deal,” Mariel said. “Take it or leave it.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll talk to Puddy. But… I mean… let’s not make it into a whole thing. I’m not going to go off with her somewhere.”

“Good,” Mariel said. “I wouldn’t want you to. I’ll just tell her that I heard you say that you wanted to talk to her, okay? And we’ll pretend that’s all that happened.”

I looked at Ian. I’d made enough bad decisions on my own… maybe I felt like it was time to start making them with his help, or something to that effect. He nodded his reluctant approval of the arrangement.

“Okay,” I said to Mariel. “You can tell her that. And then I’ll let her come to me, if she wants to… I guess we can finish the conversation we started last night.”

“Okay,” she said. “Um… I guess that’s it then. Bye!”

She zoomed off, leaving Ian and I standing there in the hallway.

“Dorm politics,” he said, shaking his head. “You know, if two guys don’t care for each other, we just don’t hang out.”

“Let’s not go dragging sex into this,” I said.

“Yeah, I can think of much better places to drag it,” he said. “You know what the real lesson of all that was, right?” he asked as we started walking towards lunch.

“Don’t trust Mariel?”

“There’s nowhere really private,” he said. “Even without super fast air sprites, this campus has got elves, telepaths, illusionists, diviners… and any or all of us might be under imperial surveillance. We shouldn’t assume that anything we say… or even think… is a secret.”

“That’s kind of a sobering thought,” I said.

“Really? It makes me want to get drunk,” he said. “I’m really hoping Dee can help give me some kind of mental defenses. That’s the first step.”

“First step towards what?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s kind of pointless to think of a plan to safeguard your privacy when your thoughts might be under observation.”

“Aren’t you getting a little paranoid?”

“Do you want to replay the last twenty-four hours in your mind?” he countered.

“Point ceded,” I said.

“My actual point is that maybe for safety’s sake we shouldn’t talk about this at all anymore, until we get to the point where we’re going to be telling other people anyway,” Ian said.

“Oh, drat… because there’s so much fertile ground for discussion that we haven’t gone over again and again already,” I said.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, with half a smile. “I hate the feeling of leaving something unsettled…”

“An argument, you mean,” I said. “And I do, too. But you’re right.”

“Hearing you say that almost makes it worthwhile,” he said.

“So now you should tell me I’m right about something, for balance,” I said.

“Yeah… uh, I’ll let you know,” he said, ducking his head and not quite turning his chuckle into a cough.

“Is it weird that we’re joking about this?” I asked.

“Well… what’s ‘this’?” he said. “We’re not joking about, you know, death or anything.”

“We’re kind of joking around it,” I said.

“I thought we were flirting.”

“That’s worse,” I said. “I mean, if joking’s bad, flirting would logically be worse.”

“I don’t want to just say ‘life goes on’… but, it kind of does,” Ian said. “No matter what happens, however bad or widespread it is, life goes on for the survivors. That’s what surviving means. It’s kind of implicit in the definition.”

“Okay, yes, obviously,” I said. “But still… I guess it feels weird to me that we’re coping with… everything. I don’t mean to suggest that we’re coping particularly well, but the fact that we’re doing it at all…”

“If you want to go curl up in a ball in a corner, I’m pretty sure that your room comes equipped with as many as four of them,” Ian said.

“You’re just a font of useful advice,” I said.

“I’m glad you think so,” he said. “Because I’ve got another piece: I think you should take Bohd up on her offer.”

“I’m going to think about it, just like I told her,” I said. “Though… I’m thinking the answer will be no. Trying to advance the boundaries of magical knowledge in that way is either really boring or way too exciting, depending on how you approach it. I think Bohd would probably take the boring approach.”

“So, it’d be money for nothing,” he said. “What’s better than that?”

“Money for something interesting,” I said.

“But you were talking about just selling energy,” Ian said. “How much more interesting could that be?”

“Well, my ideal would be to find some small-time enchanter who could use an energy boost and a mundane assistant during the summer,” I said. “So I could watch him work and maybe pick his brain a little. But even if I ended up working for some item mill where I’m not allowed to be present when the actual work is done and I have to sign a bunch of non-disclosure forms for what I do see… well, I’d be getting a glimpse at the business side of things, you know… possibly a little glimpse into the future? Anyway, why d… did you want to know?”

That sounded slightly less touchy than “Why do you care?” Ian cared about my summer plans because he cared about me.

“I’m not sure what I’m doing for the summer, either,” he said. “I mean, it’s not all up in the air like it is with you… I’m supposed to be going home. But that’s not a decision or a plan or anything… it’s just sort of the default. And I think you could do worse than going with Bohd. It’s good to have an ally on the faculty.”

“I’m not used to thinking in those terms,” I said. “Allies, connections… you mentioned ‘dorm politics’, but I’d really rather just hang out with the people I like and avoid the ones I don’t.”

“I’m not really used to it, either,” he said. “But my dad lives and breathes it. I’m supposed to be trying to make friends with department heads and stuff like that… he’s a little bit happier about my gladiator ‘hobby’ now that I’ve told him that I see Callahan coming out of the admin building all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you were there, too,” he said.

“‘All the time’ implies more than once,” I said.

“Well, my dad also told me that it’s okay to employ slight exaggerations when I’m pursuing these kinds of contacts,” Ian said.

“Like exaggerating to him how much pursuing you’ve done?” I asked, and he nodded.

“You’ve got it,” he said.

“So, this sudden interest in my summer job prospects wouldn’t be so that you can write home and say that you’re personally involved with someone who’s very close to a highly-placed elementalist?” I asked.

“There are worse ways I could introduce you to the old man,” he said. “But really, I wasn’t thinking about that. Whatever my dad thinks, I don’t need these kinds of connections… not like you do. I mean, look at this conversation: I don’t have to stop and think about what I’m doing with myself for the summer. I can probably come up with something, but if I don’t, it’s taken care of. By default. If I get in some kind of a fight with the school? Okay, it’s not like I’m going to win automatically, but I won’t have to go digging for allies. I’m human. I’m an almost-fair-haired Imperial boy. My dad’s not going to endow a chair or anything but he could maybe contribute to a footstool, and… though I’m sure he exaggerates them, too… he does have connections.”

“On the other hand… it’s not like I’m universally despised,” I said. “I’ve had people rally around me. I didn’t have to go digging for Bohd or… well… Callahan to take a chance on me.”

“Nice that you’re acknowledging that,” he said. “But on the other hand, you also don’t have to go looking for fights. You need people you can count on, not just people who happen to turn up.”

“Well, yeah… but don’t I already have Bohd on my side? It’s not like she’d just turn her back on me if I gave her a polite ‘no thank you’,” I said. “I don’t think there’s that kind of quid pro quo at work here. I think she’d probably be insulted by the idea.”

“Yeah, but without some kind of, I don’t know… ongoing relationship, I guess… where’s her motivation to stick her neck out?” Ian asked. “I mean, I don’t want to sound callous about it but there are probably a hundred horribly unfair things that happen on campus every day. There’s racism and discrimination all over. But you’re her student. You sit right in front of her. She can’t ignore you. If, after the end of the semester, she doesn’t have anything more to do with you, then when the next thing happens… and you have to assume there will be a next thing… if she hears about it at all, it’ll be, ‘Oh. Mackenzie Blaise. I had her in a course. Good girl, lots of potential. I tried to help her, as best I could, but…’”

“But what?” I asked when he didn’t finish that thought.

“But nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t go anywhere, because there’s something else right in front of her now, demanding her attention. If you signed on for this summer job, though, then there would be a connection. You wouldn’t be the student she used to have. You’d be, I don’t know… one of her people.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought in the last hour and a half,” I said.

“I was thinking about what I’d do in your place,” he said.

“Well, anyway… I’m still going to have to think about it,” I said. “But I do have some different things to think about now, at least.”

“That’s a start,” Ian said. “And anyway, I think the main thing is that we aren’t thinking to ourselves. I mean, right now, when we’re talking about the future… at least the immediate, foreseeable part of it… we’re talking about a future together, right?”

“Yeah… yeah, I suppose you’re right about that,” I said. “Does that mean you’re thinking about staying through the summer?”

“Well… it is a ways away,” he said. “But, yeah… now that I know that you probably will be, too, I’m definitely thinking about it.”

“It’s not definite,” I said. “I mean… Amaranth will be going back to her home, and it’s possible that something might happen with that… in terms of me going with her, I mean. We haven’t really talked about it.”

“Well, okay,” Ian said. “So talk about it with her… and then talk about that with me. Or we’ll all talk about it together. The point is that we are talking about this, thinking about it, so we don’t all just end up in a jumble of hurt feelings and shattered expectations somewhere down the line.”

I laughed, because I could totally see this happening… but at the same time, I thought Ian was making a big deal over nothing.

“What?” he asked. “You don’t think that could happen?”

“No, I do,” I said. “But I don’t think it necessarily would. I mean, I think it’s a good thing, you getting all proactive about this… but even if you didn’t, well, I think we’d end up talking about this stuff at some point in the course of things, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I did think that,” Ian said. “And I’m sure Amaranth would think it, too, and obviously you did… don’t you think it would be pretty easy to keep on thinking that?”

I sighed.

“What?” Ian said. “Don’t you agree?”

“I do,” I said. “That’s the problem… why is it that you being right about something makes me feel like I’m wrong?”

Next: Jillian Callahan stars in A Surprisingly Decent Proposal.

Discuss this chapter on the Livejournal community.

A brief note: For the immediate future, I’m going to be switching back to slightly shorter updates, more often.

“That’s pretty… unambiguous,” Amaranth said when I’d finished recounting what Iona had said. “A lot more so than I would have expected.”

“You don’t think Mackenzie misheard her or something, do you?” Ian said. There was a note in his voice that was accusing, but it seemed balanced against a desire to defend me, and that kept me from jumping in to defend Amaranth and turn the whole thing into another argument.

“What?” Amaranth said. “No! I just… I was hoping there’d be some room for doubt, you know?”

“It seems like doubt is the last thing you’d want when there are murders going on,” Ian said. “I mean, the whole point of an investigation is to remove doubt.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, once there’s some suspicion at all that somebody might be a killer and might have her sights on me, I’d really rather know for sure.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Amaranth said. “As long as there was some room for doubt, there was still the chance… however slim… that there hadn’t been any murders, that there wasn’t any killer, at least not in the sense of a person… a fellow student.”

It seemed like the part that bothered her the most: the idea that another student could have done this. Did do it, as it transpired. Amaranth liked to think the best of people. Even when she knew for a fact that someone had done something pretty terrible, she would be as forgiving and understanding as she could be. When faced with something that couldn’t be easily excused or explained away, she would prefer to believe that it didn’t happen… and when she couldn’t do that without deluding herself, then she didn’t know what to do, except for vainly wishing that it wasn’t the case.

I couldn’t really blame her for that, as I didn’t know how to process the information, either. It was a case where there was nothing we could do, and no redeeming message or comforting moral. Nothing that was said and no way of looking at it would change what had happened, make Leda less dead or Iona more innocent.

With nothing else to say or do, I put my arms around Amaranth and pulled her in close. She had given me so much comfort… giving some of it back seemed like an easy and natural thing to do. It didn’t do anything for Leda or about Iona, either, but it seemed to help her.

I agree that at a practical level it’s better to know,” she said, when we pulled apart. “Especially when there’s danger to you, baby. It’s good that we have a definite answer. It really is. But… I’m disappointed that the definite answer isn’t that she’s innocent and only interested in a little fun.”

“Funny, I think if you asked her she’d say that’s the case,” Ian said. “It’s the definition of ‘fun’ that’s the problem. And if neither she nor Feejee had anything to do with it? Then we’d still have the same basic problem of not knowing. I mean, if you’re gonna regret hypothetical things that could have happened but didn’t, why not wish that no one had died?”

“Ian, I haven’t forgotten about Leda,” Amaranth said. “Or anyone else who died on Veil Night. If I could bring them back with a wish…”

“That’s never a good idea,” I said.

“I mean metaphorically,” she said. “Well, I mean literally bring them back but not with an actual wish. My point is that if I could actually change the world by wanting things it would be a different story… but given what we knew, it was still just remotely possible that no students were involved in any of the, um, deaths.”

“I understand what you mean,” I said. “And how you feel… I’m sorry about the kneejerk correction. Some of my classes have been dealing with wishes, at least in passing, so the strict definitions are kind of engraved in my mind.”

“Anyway,” Ian said, “if it hadn’t turned out that it was a mermaid, you still wouldn’t know for certain that it wasn’t someone you knew. You’d still be in the same situation, as far as uncertainty goes.”

“Yes, but if it had turned out it wasn’t either of them, we’d be on the same ground as the rest of the campus,” Amaranth said. “Mack wouldn’t have any special knowledge that could help the investigation after all, and we’d have no more reason to be afraid than anyone else. If it wasn’t one of the mermaids, it could be a wandering monster, like the official report said. Wouldn’t that be better?”

“For us, yeah, I guess,” Ian said. “Okay. I can understand your disappointment. But why do I think you’re still hoping Iona can be saved?”

“Wouldn’t you rather she was?” Amaranth said. “I mean, if there were a way she could learn that what she did was wrong, and pay for what she did… but in a way that’s, I don’t know… I suppose ‘productive’ is the word I’m thinking of, but I don’t know that it’s necessarily the best one. Locking her away or… getting rid of her, that’s not going to help anyone.”

“It would help anyone else that she might hurt or kill in the future,” Ian said.

“I meant relative to a solution where she doesn’t die but also doesn’t hurt anyone,” Amaranth said. “I operate on the principle that less harm is better than more.”

“Even to a murderer?” Ian asked.

“Well, yes,” Amaranth said. “I mean, if you don’t take that view, then it could stand to reason that whatever punishment you can devise as fitting for a murderer, adding more brutality to it would be justified, or at the very least, acceptable. If more harm is not a bad thing.”

“I’m not going that far,” Ian said. “I just think avoiding harm to her should be considered a low priority. Anyway, if Mackenzie’s right, I somehow doubt she’s going to pay her debt to society…I think it’s more likely she’ll end up paying the family directly. And I’m pretty okay with that, if it comes to pass. From what she said, I really don’t think she can redeemed… or that she wants to be.”

“You weren’t there, though,” Amaranth said.

“Neither were you,” Ian said.

They both looked at me. I held up my hands. I’d been listening to their conversation with interest, but only insofar as I wanted to understand what they were both saying and where they were coming from. I felt like I did, but the fact that I could understand both of them made it hard to sort out which one of them, if either, I believed was right.

“I’m the wrong person to ask about this,” I said.

“Baby, you’d know better than anyone,” Amaranth said, and Ian nodded.

“Iona terrifies me… I feel like Ian’s more right, but I know that’s not a rational response… but that doesn’t mean that if I could sit down and think it through rationally that I wouldn’t come up with the same answer.

“Well, I don’t believe that anyone is past the point of redemption,” she said. “But it’s not up to us to save her, and it wouldn’t be safe for you to try… the one thing I think we can agree with is that you need to steer well clear of her, baby. Don’t give her a chance to catch you alone, walk away if she comes near you… run if there’s no one around. Make noise. Don’t worry about how it looks, as long as you can get other people looking.”

Ian nodded in agreement.

“And also,” Amaranth added, “if a couple of days go by and she’s still walking around… we’re going to have to do something more… say something. If the kind of ‘private justice’ we think is in play here has anything going for it, it should be pretty expedient.”

“So if nothing happens soon, it probably won’t happen,” Ian said. “Yeah, that makes sense… and I believe you already know what I think about this, Mackenzie.

“Yeah,” I said. “And you’re not wrong, neither one of you.”

“It’s good to know we’re on the same page,” Ian said. “I’d feel better if we had an actual plan of action, but, you know, I’ll take what I can get.”

Amaranth had to go get ready for her first class of the day. I started to excuse myself from Ian for the same reason when I realized that we’d be heading to the same place anyway. So we meandered down towards the big atrium-like lobby of the union and just hung out on a bench for a little while, talking about class.

Ian was of the opinion that Bohd was taking an unusual interest in me.

“Unusual for her, I mean,” he said. “Her reputation has always basically been that she’s a teaching automaton. No offense to automata. Or to her. The fireball she dropped on the class last time… well, I think she’s gong to have a new reputation to worry about.”

“Yeah, I really don’t know what to make of that,” I said.

“Did you go and talk to her?” Ian asked.

“No,” I said.

“You realize that whole ‘if anybody wants to come talk to me’ thing was aimed at you?” he said.

“I’m not so sure about that,” I said. “I mean… yes, I get that she was making a show of support for me. But she said she didn’t care about my demonblood, and I doubt we’ve got the kind of shared experiences where she could tell me anything to help me. I thought she was trying to negate as much damage from her coming out about hers as she possibly could, by offering to talk about it.”

“So you can believe that she’d be so interested in looking out for you that she’d re-arrange her class curriculum to help you and then reveal the heritage she’s been keeping secret for her whole teaching career, but you can’t imagine she’d have anything to say to you in private?” Ian said.

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds kind of silly,” I said.

“But you’re still not going to go talk to her, are you?” he said.

“What am I supposed to say, exactly?” I asked. “‘Here I am, in case you have anything you wanted to say to me?’ If it’s that important… well, she’s a professor and I’m a student. She can kind of demand my attention if she wants it.”

“But that doesn’t stop her from reaching out and seeing if you reach back,” Ian pointed out.

“True,” I said. “But also, I’ve kind of been preoccupied the past few days. I don’t think she could blame me for not finding the time to come see her.”

“True,” Ian said. “How about this? We’ll head over a bit early and see if she uses the opportunity to say anything.”

“Okay,” I said. “But, you know… she’s already stuck her neck out pretty far for me. Maybe that’s honestly as far as she wants to take it.”

It was some consolation that I didn’t have to see the look on Ian’s face when he was proven right moments after we entered the room, as his desk was much closer to the back of the room than mine and so he was already behind me when Professor Bohd looked up from some papers and said, “Oh, Ms. Mackenzie, I was hoping I could have a word with you.”

“Oh?” I said. “I mean, yes. Sure.”

“It’s not class-related,” she said. She glanced back at Ian. “Would you prefer to save it for a more private moment?”

“No, it’s okay,” I said.

“I don’t make a habit of prying into my students’ personal lives… and by that I mean, any aspect of their lives at, at all… but I can’t help being somewhat aware of your family situation,” she said. “Your grandmother is your only living relative?”

“The only one worth mentioning,” I said. “And that, just barely.”

“I thought that you and she might not get along,” she said. “Were you living on your own before the start of the term?”

“No,” I said. “We managed to co-exist through the summer after my graduation, but I really don’t see that arrangement… arranging itself again.”

“Do you know where you’ll be staying over the coming summer?”

“No, not exactly,” I said. “But that’s a long way off.”

“Yes, and if you spend the next several months telling yourself that, you’ll find yourself scrambling to get a roof over your head,” she said. “Have you considered student housing?”

“I’d have to sign up for a full load during the summer session,” I said. “I’m not sure I could afford that.”

“You’d be surprised… I can’t quote the actual restrictions to you, but I know that student housing isn’t just available for full-time students,” Bohd said. “I hire additional assistants for my research projects during the summer, to take advantage of my more extensive free time… many of them are undergraduates from out-of-province who are only taking a class or two so they don’t have to travel back and forth so much. And if you don’t think you could afford the summer semester, how would you manage to live in Enwich?”

“Well, I was sort of counting on finding a job,” I said.

“Ms. Mackenzie, I submit to you that a plan that involves the words ‘count on finding’ isn’t exactly much of a plan, and the inclusion of the qualifier ‘sort of’ does nothing to negat that impression. The summer job market in Enwich is pretty tight, and forgive me for saying this, but I can’t really see you working on a farm.”

“Poor choice of words,” I said. “It’s not like I’m factoring a lottery win or a pot of gold into my survival strategy. I feel like I’ve got some decent prospects. I mean, if nothing else I could sell my energy reserves to an enchanter or to a magic broker… that would hardly be work, but the pay would be decent enough.”

“Decent enough for a student, but you might be surprised how fast renting a property in town and living on your own would eat up your earnings,” the professor said. “Living on campus would be cheaper than any apartment or room you could find in Enwich.”

“Except I’d be paying tuition and going to classes, too,” I pointed out.

“You’d have time for some classes if that’s all you’re doing for your money… and I’d be surprised if your scholarships specify which semesters they can be used during,” Bohd said. “And I think you might be surprised at how much less… complicated… life on campus can be during the summer term. There’s less going on, fewer students around… and a much less homogeneous campus, as a higher percentage of non-human and international students stay behind. Some of my favorite students have told me that their first summer sessions were when they really found their footing. I’ve seen it happen, too.”

“I… I’ll think about it,” I said, and tried to sound like I meant it. I did mean it, but I wasn’t sure I could see my way to doing it. My fall-back plan… or fall-back idea, since it really wasn’t much of a plan… was to go home with Amaranth for the summer. I didn’t want to mention that, because I really didn’t want Bohd that involved with my life, and I doubted she wanted that, either.

“You don’t really have the qualifications for me to hire you as an assistant, but we need raw power, too,” she said. “So you wouldn’t have to leave campus, necessarily, to sell your energy. You wouldn’t have to just be a passive power source, either… you could gain valuable experience, by observing the experiments and helping out in small ways. An internship like that is a more valuable addition to your resume than a stint as someone’s powerstone.”

“What exactly are you working on?” I asked.

“Pseudoelemental constructs,” she said. “Primarily light and shadow. I’ve been doing some work with sound, but that’s still at the theoretical stage.”

“You don’t work with infernal energy, do you?”

“No,” she said. “Apart from the other reasons, it just doesn’t exist in any kind of abundance on this plane.”

“This doesn’t really relate to my area of study,” I said.

“No, but the mundane skills you could learn would be invaluable in a career as an enchanter,” she said.

“I’ll think about it,” I said again. I had a feeling that she would be happy to see me switching my major to elementalism, and I didn’t want to lead her on… or leave myself too open to being persuaded. I would never be an old-fashioned robed wizard like Ian’s father, or a serious academic practitioner like Professor Bohd. I wanted to learn magic I could use to make a good living, but I didn’t necessarily want that magic to become my life.

“Well, as you said… you do have time to think about it,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind if I drop you a few reminders throughout the year.”

“No, that would be fine,” I said. I almost added how likely it was that I would otherwise forget her offer in the intervening months… the fact that she was offering to remind me meant I probably didn’t need to say anything.

“Well, then, I’ll look forward to hearing what you decide,” she said. The door opening at the back of the room ended the conversation, and class began shortly after that. She kept things pretty much on point, after the digressions of the previous class. It was hard for me to judge if the atmosphere in the class had changed any because of her announcement the time before, but again this was because I didn’t have a baseline. Every time somebody coughed or cleared their throat, every time I heard a table leg scoot at all, my brain wanted to interpret it as a sign of discomfort. The quiet in the room got to me, too, which was silly because I knew she ran a quiet classroom.

I tried to end my worries by reminding myself that she could take care of herself. She was a tenured professor, and whatever her students might have been thinking, she was capable of maintaining discipline in the classroom. Still, if something did happen to her as a result of the revelation of her distant infernal ancestry, I knew I’d blame myself. It had been her decision, but my presence had brought it about.

When the class ended, it had been my plan to stick close to Ian since we didn’t have anything else until after lunch, but that plan got upended when I felt a sudden, insistent tug on my hand as we headed out of the room. Mariel had rushed up and grabbed hold of me with two of her hands.

“Um, hi?” I said. I didn’t know how else to react… I looked at Ian, but he seemed even more bemused by her sudden appearance than I was.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Well, sorry, but I’m kind of with my boyfriend,” I said, not wanting to be rude to her just because she’d always been rude to me. I also thought the mention of Ian might blunt her urgency somewhat, as the only thing she’d ever wanted to talk to me about before was Puddy, with the idea that I might be a threat to their relationship. “But if you want to walk with us for a while…”

“We really need to talk, privately,” she said. Her eyes darted to him. “He can come, too, I guess.”

“Mariel… you don’t get to dictate that,” I said. “I don’t particularly want to talk to you but I’m trying to be nice. If you want…”

“We have to talk about mermaids,” she said.

Discuss this story on the Livejournal community.

Of course my ex-roommate would be the next one to show up. Her blood was supposed to contain a smidgen of just about everything, including giants and sidhe. None of it could possibly be in a very large proportion to her human blood, but she’d have ties to more planes than anyone else on the floor, and possibly in the whole dorm.

She was wearing an indistinct, shimmering mix of outfits… she seemed to be cycling between her showy gladiator get-up, plaid boxers and a dirty gray t-shirt, and shorts and a collared shirt with coordinating neckerchief. There were flashes of other things in between them, and her strawberry blonde hair was also shifting styles and lengths. None of the outfits quite formed all the way before another one took its place.

“This is a new one,” she said. She sounded half-asleep, which I supposed was a bit of an accomplishment given that she was in fact all the way asleep. She was still looking at me. I was a little bit surprised at how easily I could meet her gaze. “Can’t say I’ve ever dreamed about you before.” She looked up at the owl-turtle thing. “Or you. Whatever you are.”

“That’s some sort of ridiculous owl-turtle thing,” Two said. “I like it better than I like you.”

“Well, that’s just real fucking special, isn’t it?” Puddy said.

“Y’know, I’m all about encouraging self-awareness, but I think I know when I’ve met my match,” the owl-turtle thing said, and disappeared.

“This isn’t like my dreams,” Puddy said. “This is more like… when someone falls asleep and dreams on a TV show, and they just bring out the same actors they always use on a dark set or something.”

“”It’s not your dream,” Two said. “It’s mine. I was here first, and I put my name on it.”

“You weren’t here first,” I said.

“Tied first is still first,” she said. “My friend Hazel said so.”

“Or like limbo,” Puddy said, looking around at the lack of surroundings. “Big empty space, confronted with my past failures… well, some of them. Maybe my most recent ones?” She looked at Two like she was studying a menu on the wall. “I’m not sure where you’d figure in there. Unless it’s because you took my place.”

“You don’t think we’re really here,” I realized. “You think this is just you, dreaming.”

“No fucking shit,” she said. “I know you’re not here because the real Mack wouldn’t dare look me in the eye. And also because it’s a dream. But even when you stand up to people, you shake like a leaf.”

“You caught me,” I said. I felt the urge to giggle and didn’t quite suppress it, and though I didn’t appear to giggle in the dream I had the feeling of doing so. “I’m not Mackenzie, I’m the dream incarnation of all your past sins remembered. Or a third of them, anyway. The non-blonde portion of your sins. I’m all your dark-haired sins remembered.”

Things had been weird and surreal before, but we’d all been coping with it pretty well. Somehow Puddy’s presence, and her blase approach to it all, was making me more aware of the strangeness of things.

“Oh, you aren’t even,” she said with a snort. “You’re just the one nice thing I tried to do that went wrong.”

“You can’t seriously believe that,” I said.

“You know what? You wouldn’t be worth arguing with even if you were here,” she said. “So why should I waste a dream on you?”

“You weren’t nice to me, Puddy,” I said. “I could almost buy that you were treating me like a friend, but that just means you’ve got a seriously skewed idea about what friendship means.”

Puddy’s face reddened and her eyes went big, but she clenched her jaw and squared her shoulders and with an almost exaggeratedly visible level of effort she forced herself to be calm. Her shifting clothing coalesced into what looked like a private school uniform now.

“Whatever the hell my subconscious is pulling, it’s a nice break from the usual routine,” Puddy said. “So I don’t even really care if you want to stand there running your mouth at me like you’ve got anything to say to me. Go right ahead. Feel free. I’ll enjoy it.”

“You know what? You’re the one who’s not worth it,” I said.

“Go ahead and think that,” she said, her outfit slowly drifting back to the shorts and neckerchief. It kind of reminded me of a girl ranger uniform, but not quite. “But you don’t even know the first thing about me. You just judge. That’s all you’ve ever done. You judged me for being a lesbian until you came out…”

“I never did that,” I said.

“… and now you treat me like I’m a rapist or something even though I never laid a finger on you.”

“Puddy… you hit me. You manhandled me. You beat me. You laid several fingers on me.”

“I meant I never laid a figurative finger on you!”

“Literal fingers are worse,” I said.

“I meant I didn’t rape you. Khersis Fucking Dei, you’ve got to twist everything around…”

“Puddy, I was so far from judgmental of you when we first met,” I said. “If I’d had any judgment in my head I would have seen what you were doing the first time we met and started making other plans immediately instead of waiting for things to come to a head.”

“What was I doing?” she asked. “I was just hanging out, trying to get to know you. You were the one who was being all secretive and untrusting while I was trying to make friends.”

“You were being a bully,” I said. “Manipulative. Right from the start, you were trying to get me under your thumb, using emotional blackmail…”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t,” I said. “You never see yourself doing anything wrong.”

“You never see me doing anything right… and you have no fucking idea how I see myself, so seriously don’t even start.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea, actually,” I said.

“You’ve known me for a few weeks,” she said. “And you haven’t really spent any time with me for most of them. During that time I helped you make friends… who all stayed with you rather than me… come out of the closet, come out of your shell, get involved in campus politics… not that most of that stuck after you kicked me to the curb.”

“You moved out,” I pointed out.

“Because I know when I’m not wanted,” she said. “And you’ve treated me like I’m dead or a criminal or something ever since.”

“I’ve reached out to you.”

“For money to fix the TV you broke,” she said. “And let’s not even get into how I saved your ass after the fight in the bathroom.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Your skills in intimidating people and disposing of evidence really came in handy there.”

“See? Ungrateful,” she said. “This is what I meant when I said you’re not worth arguing with. Nothing I do is enough. You decided I was one of the bad guys and now you’ll never see anything I do as good. It’s no wonder you hang out with Princess Mecha Fox or whatever she calls herself. This is what happens when you grow up watching kiddy shows… or you watch kiddy shows and you never grow up. You end up seeing things all black and white.”

“Like your ‘top dog’ routine is the height of maturity,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s mature. I see the world as it is and I pick out the place I want to have in it. That’s realistic, not a fantasy like you try to live,” she said. “That’s not just me. Everybody does it, even if they don’t admit it. Who doesn’t want to be the best? Who doesn’t want to be the most popular? It’s why sports are so popular. It’s why you look down your nose at them… because you know you wouldn’t measure up, so you don’t want them to be used as a measurement.”

“That’s not… necessarily the only reason,” I said, though it did seem like she might have a bit of a point there. “The main reason that I don’t like sports is because they steal away focus from more important things.”

“The things you’re good at,” she said. “The stuff that would put you on the top of the shit heap, if they were the things that everybody idolized.”

“No, the things that matter,” I said. “The things that let you make something of yourself or make the world a better place. Anyway, it’s not that I don’t think you have some good qualities but they don’t change the fact that you lie, you push people around physically and emotionally, you cheat…”

“When do I cheat?”

“In the arena,” I said. “You were buffed to hell and back.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. Her garb faded into her armor. “Do you think that bitch Callahan would have let me get away with anything?” She pointed at Pala. “She threw a ringer at me anyway.”

“Oh, I’m not a ringer,” Pala said. “I’m a spear-maiden. They don’t trust me with the rings.”

“Whatever,” Puddy said. “I’m surprised anyone has the gall to accuse me of cheating while you’re around. That was a real dirty trick with your spear.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Pala tricked you into thinking you’d tricked her into throwing her weapon aside so you could grab it and turn the tables on her. It was the kind of complex, multi-layered plot that only a true mastermind could have devised.”

“I am just happy that you weren’t badly hurt,” Pala said. “If I had known that its protective qualities were mocked so perfectly, I would not have used even a phantasmal duplicate of the spear in the ring.”

“Don’t play innocent,” Puddy sad, right as a huge gout of water hit her from the side. We both spun around to see Two standing there, holding a large, old-fashioned wooden bucket… the kind that looks like the bottom of a barrel. “What the fuck?” Puddy roared.

“Oh. I was hoping that would wake you up,” Two said, just before the enraged Puddy grabbed the bucket and yanked it out of her hands. Or at least, that’s what I had expected to happen, but Two retained her grip on the handle and didn’t do more than stagger a bit. She let go with a shove and Puddy fell over backwards with a wordless shriek of rage.

“Oh, that is fucking it!” Puddy screamed, throwing the heavy bucket aside with much less force than I would have imagined. Her hair was up in pigtails now and she was wearing a set of faded and worn teddy bear pajamas.

“I think you would have to throw the water on her in real life to wake her up,” Pala said. Then she got a panicked look on her face. “What if throwing water on someone when she’s dreaming makes her body go poofing away in real life?”

“I’m not poofing anywhere,” Puddy said, getting to her feet. “But if I could wake up right now, I would. I don’t have to take this kind of abuse from anyone… much less an uppity golem and the resident good girl gone bad.”

“Is that really how you see me?” I asked.

“Well, I’d call you the campus slut but I don’t think you’ve got enough guts to really go all-out like that,” Puddy said. “You’ll have a couple of girlfriends and a boyfriend so you can revel in all the naughtiness of it, but you won’t relax and just have fun. Sluts don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. You probably think your little lesbian liaisons are like delightfully sinful or something.”

“I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, either,” I said. “And now you’re the one who’s talking about stuff she doesn’t know anything about. I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with my relationships.”

“So you don’t get all hot and flushed with shame when you go doughnut-delving with Amaranth?” Puddy said.

“I get hot and flushed… and yeah, okay, maybe I do have some ingrained shame issues,” I said. “But I know it’s bullshit. I get the feeling that in your mind, anyone who’s not having casual sex is repressed or a hypocrite. I suppose whether or not they want to have sex with you makes a handy test for that.”

“You think that this is all because you won’t have sex with me?” Puddy asked. “You must think you’re pretty hot shit. I’ve got so many chicks crawling into my pussy, I’m not even sure I could squeeze you in if I tried. Pun fucking intended.”

“Even if that’s actually true… I think the more girls who say yes to you, the more it’s going to bother you that I won’t,” I said.

“Yeah, here’s your problem… or one of them,” Puddy said. “You’ve got me confused with Barley. You always have. I might have come on a little strong, but she’s the one who actually tried to get your clothes off when you said no. She’s the one who’s gone absolutely bugbear insane because you fuck everyone else and not her. Me? I don’t care that much. I care that you ignored my friendship. I care that you kept up your shrinking violet routine just long enough to steal the spotlight from everyone around you. I care that people look at you like you’re the fucking face of Harlowe Hall when you didn’t even want to admit you were non-human until I dragged it out of you.”

“I think Sooni actually has that position,” I said. “She gets in the paper often enough.”

“Talking about you, most of the time,” Puddy said.

“Are you going to be talking about sex much more?” Pala said. “I am supposed to talk to the druids if I have dreams like this.”

“Yeah, I think we’re done,” I said. “I really can’t think of anything else I’d care to talk about less with Puddy.”

“Yeah, well I can’t think of anyone else I’d want to talk about sex with less than you,” Puddy said. She turned away. “This is a weird fucking dream, you know? And it’s coming on the heels of a weird fucking night, which probably explains where it came from but gives me that much less fucking patience for it. Sleep is supposed to be restful, last time I checked.”

“You said this was better than your usual dreams.”

“I said it was a nice break from them,” Puddy said. “But it’s like having a break from having pine cones shoved up my ass so I can eat them instead. The break’s wearing a little thin.”

“I thought you don’t eat anything you don’t like,” I said.

“I’m in charge of my life. I’m not in charge of my dreams. People can’t control what they dream.”

“I can,” Pala and Two said at the same time. “Sort of,” Two added. “I’m learning.”

“Whoop de do, good for you,” Puddy said. “But you are dreams, so that’s about as impressive as wind being able to control air.”

“Puddy, you should know… this isn’t a regular dream,” I said.

I just couldn’t keep it from her any more. I wasn’t entirely sure why… at least part of it was the way that the owl-turtle thing had been going on about missed opportunities. Puddy and I probably couldn’t have had a productive conversation in real life, and we weren’t having one in the dream… but I kind of wondered what might happen if she knew that I was actually there hearing her, and wasn’t just a reflection of some facet of her subconscious.

“No shit,” Puddy said. “I said that already. This is nothing like my normal dreams.”

“It’s not your dream,” Two said.

“It’s all of… we’re all dreaming,” I said, changing my intended sentence to avoid a side argument with Two. “The four of us are sharing a dream. The rest of the dorm might be sort of overlapping with us, too.”

Puddy looked at me, and I expected doubt or disagreement.

“So you brought me here?” she asked. “What gives you the right?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “It’s something in the air… that eyeless fish-beast that’s an emissary of the underworld. Our extraplanar blood makes us a little more susceptible, that’s why we’re all sharing a dream.”

“Yeah? Then why’s she here?” Puddy asked, jerking a thumb at Two. “Extraplanar mud?”

“I think everybody else is getting a more subtle version of what we’re experiencing,” I said. “And she hasn’t really mastered the subtleties of dreaming, I guess.”

“I’m learning,” Two said.”I practice every night.. They are very well-organized dreams.”

“So this fish… whatever… thing… is just invading our minds and disturbing our sleep?” Puddy said. “Fucking typical.”

“Um… I’m pretty sure this the least typical thing that’s ever happened to me,” I said. “And considering the semester I’ve been having, I think that’s saying a lot.”

“I just mean the lack of basic fucking consideration,” Puddy said. “Did anybody ask me if I want to have sharing and caring time with my former roommate and some of her groupies? Did I give my fucking consent to be dragged out of my bed… or my head, or whatever… and dumped into your dream?”

“It’s not her dream, it’s my…” Two said.

“Fucking shut your mouth!” Puddy screamed, loud enough and with enough force that even Pala was rocked back on her heels. Two just blinked.

“Okay,” she said, and then clenched her jaw shut. It seemed that her desire to obey orders was still strong enough to kick in if she was addressed forcefully enough, or if she was too shocked to do anything else.

Or maybe that was just the most obvious way for her to avoid a screaming match with Puddy.

“That’s not going to fly, Puddy,” I said.

“What? I didn’t touch her. But on the subject of touching, let’s talk about your best friend Sooni,” Puddy said. “Because you know what? She’s laid plenty of fingers on you, and you don’t seem to mind being her sidekick. She’s manipulative. She’s a bully. She put you into a freaking coma.”

“I passed out from energy loss,” I said. “That’s a little different.”

“You passed out from energy loss fighting her,” Puddy said. “And if we’re talking about, you know, imposing your will on people or whatever… I’m pretty sure her pussy posse isn’t strictly an all-volunteer force.”

“Well… she tries,” was all I could manage to come up with. It sounded horrifically inaccurate.

“Oh, she tries? Well, that makes a load of… fuck you! I try!” Puddy screamed. “And I try hard enough that I don’t own slaves and I never put you in the healing center. I don’t make you go on dates with me, I don’t inflict my company on you when it’s not wanted. Maybe what I really did wrong was give up too easily.”

“What Sooni does in the heat of anger is one thing,” I said. “I’m not excusing it but… well, okay, maybe I’m excusing it a little. But I woke up with you standing over me, holding a pillow down on my face. The day after I met you. That’s not a temper tantrum, Puddy. That’s not being the product of a fucked-up culture…”

“Bullshit, we are all products of fucked-up cultures,” she said. “Don’t act like you’re trying to understand me now when…”

“I am trying to understand you, Puddy!” I said. “I have been. You were the first person to call me a friend in a decade. Maybe you don’t know how huge that is…”

“Oh, so the problem is that I don’t value my friendly gestures enough,” she said. “Oh. Wow. Glad that’s cleared up! I’m really glad you could invade my sleep so I could find out that’s what the problem is…”

“I didn’t invade anything!” I said. “This is just happening. I’m not doing it any more than you are.”

“Well, at least you’re not blaming me for this,” Puddy said. “I suppose I should be grateful for that…”

“What’s the shouting about?” Ian’s voice said, sounding sleepy and distant behind me. I turned and saw him, looking somewhat indistinct… but quite distinctly naked. And pretty obviously aroused.

Weirdly, his dick was not only longer in the dream than it is in real life, but it also looked thinner… though the extent of that might have been exaggerated by the way he’d mentally lengthened it.

“Oh, fucking great,” Puddy said. “It’s the new coach’s pet.”

“What the hell are you doing in my room?” Ian asked.

“We’re not in the room,” I told him. “We’re dreaming.”

He looked around at the blankness.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “What do you see when you look around?”

“I see… okay, I don’t see anything,” he said. “But I’m thinking my room. Well, no. I’m thinking my room but thinking of the stuff that’s in your room. Which I’m thinking of as mine. Fuck. I hate dream imagery. Like when I have a dream about here but all the classes are in my old elementary building and it’s only when I wake up that I realize that, because while I was sleeping it was just ‘college’.”

“Is everybody going to show up here before the night is over?” Puddy asked.

“I really don’t know,” I said. “The owl-turtle thing made it sound kind of like the effect was based on physical proximity to extradimensional beings. If you’re sleeping with anyone tonight, they’ll probably be next.”

“Could you please be putting on some pants?” Pala said, her voice frantic and high pitched. She was covering her eyes, as was her stuffed pig. Two wordlessly held out a pair of baggy cotton shorts to Ian.

“Huh? Oh,” he said, accepting them sheepishly. He turned around and stepped into them. They disappeared as they slid up his legs. “Um… sorry. I guess I’m usually kind of naked in my dreams.”

“Are you always that hard up?” Puddy asked.

“You would be, too, if you were up against what I am,” he said, putting an arm around me.

“I need a druid!” Pala cried. “I need a druid!”

“Puddy?” a sleepy voice buzzed. Mariel came into focus. She was also naked, though nudity differed from the sylph concept of clothing by a mere technicality. Her blue hair was down to the space where a floor would have been, like it had been before her recent cut. “Why are all of these people in your room? You said we didn’t have to… oh.” Her big silver-blue eyes focused on Ian’s groin. “You told me that human guys were half the size of sylphs.”

“They are, babe,” Puddy said. “This is just a fucked-up dream. Go back to sleep.”

“Oh, okay,” Mariel said. “Wait… what?”

“Hold on,” Ian said. “That’s actual size, I’ll have you know.”

“Um…” I said, before thinking better of it. My thoughts were pretty close to the surface in the dream.

“What?” he said. “You know it, Mackenzie. Tell them.”

“Really don’t care about your wang, dude,” Puddy said.

“I don’t care about it-care about it,” Mariel said. “But it’s just that you said…”

“Hold the image, are you calling me a liar?” Puddy asked. “Because guys lie about their schlongs all the time.”

“I’m not lying,” Ian said. “I’m not even saying anything. I’m just… here.”

“It’s probably the right volume, more or less,” I said. “It’s just off a bit in the specific… shape?”

“I think I know my own dick a little bit better than you do, Mackenzie,” Ian said.

“You said it, not us,” Puddy said.

A sign appeared hovering in front of Ian’s crotch that read “Inappropriate For Some Audiences”. He jumped backwards like he’d been bitten, but it moved with him.

“Two… you can talk,” I said.

“I’m not good at all dreaming, but I’m pretty good at signs,” she said.

“Thank all the gods,” Pala said, calming down a bit.

“You know, this is a lot fucking zanier than I thought my night was going to be, after the day I had,” Ian said. “I mean, after… wait. This is actually happening? I mean… it’s real?”

“Yes. Well, it’s a real dream,” I said. “Except not with what that usually implies. Yes. It’s real. It’s happening.”

“Okay,” he said. “I guess it’s possible we won’t remember any of this when we wake up, but I don’t want to go blurting stuff out.”

“If this is about you knowing the shape of your dick better than your dyke of a girlfriend, it’s a little late for that,” Puddy said.

“Hey, I’ve had a longer acquaintanceship but she’s getting to know it pretty damn well, if I say so myself,” Ian said. “I mean, if it’s not enough that she’s pressed up against it all night, I pretty much fucked her silly earlier. We did everything, a lot more than you’ve done… I’m talking…”

Exactly what he was talking got lost as Pala finally just burst out crying. Well, not just… the three of us who were in the room with her all woke up at once a moment later when we found out what happens when a storm giant wets the bed.

Soon: Mackenzie gets a small taste of life outside Harlowe. And there’s an important non-ominous announcement about the exciting future of Tales of MU. But that doesn’t actually happen in the story. Though wouldn’t that be kind of cool, in a post-modern, meta sort of way? No? I didn’t think so, either.

Discuss this story on the Livejournal community.

The question of exactly what to tell Amaranth and how to tell her began to weigh on me as soon as I closed the compact… I couldn’t lie to her, but I didn’t want to put her in an awkward spot in dealing with Lee. The easiest way to do it would be to tell her that he had thought of someone else who might know and could be convinced to come forward. That was the truth… or at least it was true, which was almost the same thing… and it might not be all that different from how I would have explained it if he hadn’t impressed the need for secrecy onto me.

But he had, and that meant that anything short of the whole truth… both what I knew and what I suspected… would feel like a lie. I’d lived my life by such “technical truths” before. It had been part of my initial strategy for dealing with life at MU, and it had been Amaranth who had first made me question whether it was any better than lying.

That Amaranth didn’t come to bed with me didn’t so much take away the pressure as much as it left me to suffer under it all night. I didn’t have any unwelcome visitors in my dreams that night, but that may have been a side effect of never falling into a deep enough sleep long enough to have any proper dreams. Every time I woke up I found myself treading over the same ground in my head.

Deciding to speak up and tell the truth should have made everything simpler, but things were only getting more complicated… I was back to half-truths and keeping things from people I cared about.

Of course, we’d made things complicated by trying to have the best of both worlds by sharing our information but keeping out of the investigation. I didn’t think I could be blamed for that… I’d already been more entangled in it than I should have been because of what I was. I couldn’t be blamed and it couldn’t be helped. Not unless I wanted to take a gamble on a straight-up anonymous tip.

By the time morning came around, I’d more or less made peace with the decision. This didn’t mean I was feeling great about what I’d have to tell Amaranth… or about the likelihood that I’d run into Feejee sometime before the hammer came down, knowing what I’d put into motion while she was none the wiser… but I’d accepted that it was likely to be the best of several bad choices.

I could avoid the bathroom for a while. I’d miss baths, but a couple days without showering wouldn’t kill me.

I was already awake when Two began preparing for her meditation session, though I begged off accompanying her… I needed more rest to make up for my lack of actual sleep. When I did decide I’d had enough of lying there in the semi-darkness, it was earlier than I needed to be up for breakfast or anything else… Two wasn’t even back yet. I had a moment of regretting that I hadn’t gone with her… what was the point of regretting? Learn from it and move on, I thought, and felt kind of better for it.

I’d spent the night beating myself up over things that were perhaps at least worth wrestling with a bit, but how to spend an hour of the morning wasn’t it.

I decided to go out and take a shower. It was cold in the dorm room and hot water sounded nice… if I ran into Feejee, well, that was going to happen eventually. I wouldn’t be lingering right near her in the other bathtub or anything, I’d just breeze past. Chances were good she’d be still be asleep, anyway.

I got my things together and headed for the door, but froze at the sound of voices on the other side of it. It was a little bit early for conversation in the hall. I was used to stray sounds coming in through the front of the room, as people headed towards the lounge or the stairs, but people didn’t really hang out in the hallway that much, and they especially didn’t do it early in the morning.

Very carefully, I leaned my head in close to the door and then put my ear against it. I wasn’t interested in eavesdropping… I just wanted to see if I could recognize the voices. I was interested in knowing who I might end up having to walk through to get to where I was going.

“…not going to… for you,” was the first thing that I heard. I couldn’t make out the whole thing, and I didn’t recognize the voice.

“Nobody’s asking you to spy,” said another voice, that I did recognize: Trina. “Just help Gladys here get into position where she can find something out.”

It probably said something that I assumed they were talking about spying on me, but they did seem to be pretty close to my door. On the other hand it wasn’t smart to discuss their plan so close to the intended target, but if one person was getting cold feet then Trina and Gladys might not have any choice.

The next thing I heard was a kind of buzzing hiss. I couldn’t tell if somebody was whispering and it was carrying weirdly, or if it was something else entirely.

I put my eye to the peephole… I could see Trina, Mariel, who was gesticulating urgently with all four arms and saying something to the speaker whose voice I hadn’t quite recognized: Twyla. Gladys wasn’t in sight, but the group was clustered just at the edge of the peephole’s distorted field of vision.

I hadn’t had nearly as much contact with Twyla, good or bad, as I had with some of the other girls on our floor. It was easy enough to forget that she was there. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find that the other girls were trying to bully her into doing their dirty work for them.

I realized that whether or not they were talking about me, I could break up their little meeting and at least temporarily end Twyla’s predicament just by opening the door at that moment. Having realized that, I felt something cold and hard twisting its way around through the lower regions of my torso. I’d come a long way from feeling like I was going to throw up whenever people looked at me, but that didn’t mean I was comfortable just jumping into the spotlight.

Being led around on a stage by Amaranth was one thing… she was my owner, I was fulfilling my function as her toy… but race aside, Trina and Mariel were every bit the kind of girls whose attention I’d tried and failed to avoid in high school.

That thought was still crossing my mind when my hand went for the doorknob. The fact that it stuck a little meant there was no chance of dramatically throwing the door open and catching them off-guard, but Trina and Twyla were still standing there when I got it open. Mariel and Gladys were nowhere to be seen. Mariel moved very quickly and seemed to perceive time at a very different rate from the rest of us, and evidently Gladys had a similarly incredible reaction time and speed.

I thought about throwing out a chipper “Good morning” or something, but I wasn’t sure I could manage more than an awkward “hi”. I wasn’t even sure I could handle that. I managed to stop myself from feeling guilty at having busted them… they were the guilty ones, and the look on Trina’s face dispelled any doubt from my mind that I was the target of the planned espionage. She didn’t say anything, though, she just turned and walked off.

“You… um… might not want to stand there with your door open,” Twyla said, before heading down the hall towards the stairs or the bathroom.

“Um, thanks?” I said, then stepped back and closed the door.

What had that been about? Good advice for somebody with nosy neighbors, but what the hell could anybody see by looking in through my open door? Trina and company’s sudden interest in the goings-on they imagined to be… going on… in my room was no doubt related to Leda’s death, which meant that they suspected I had something to do with it. But since I didn’t, there was no evidence in my room, much less anything that you could see just by walking past when the door happened to be open. Still, I didn’t necessarily want gawkers hanging around outside of it… and I really didn’t want people trying to eavesdrop on what was happening inside it.

It hit me that what they’d probably been asking Twyla for was access to her room. It was right next to mine. I wondered why they’d be going to her and not her roommates, but I didn’t exactly keep up with the dorm politics of people who didn’t like me.

Since I couldn’t manage a shell of silence like the one Lee had used through my mirror, I’d have to ask Steff if she had a spare sound-damping blanket I could hang over that wall… that would put a serious crimp in their plan.

I waited until Two got back before I went to take my shower. Mercifully, Twyla wasn’t in there, and even more mercifully, neither was Feejee. The bathroom was empty except for us, and nobody else came in until we passed Celia on the way out. It was an eerie reminder that with Sooni and her entourage and Dee gone, there were at least three dorm rooms standing empty because of Leda’s death.

That could be another reason Trina had been leaning on Twyla instead of going to the Leightons, I realized. Maybe they weren’t around to let her friend into their room.

Amaranth looked to be in a very good mood when she came upstairs to walk to breakfast with us. Once we were outside, she pulled on my arm to get me to walk a bit behind Two. That suited me, since I had things I needed to talk to her about, too.

“You know what you were saying yesterday,” she said, “about how they wouldn’t necessarily take my word at face value because I’m just a nymph?”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly how I put it,” I said.

“Oh, baby, I’m not saying I took it personally,” she said. “But you were right. It’s not that I have any special legal standing, it’s just my mother’s protection. So I was thinking about how to make my idea work, and I think I’ve come up with something.”

“Amaranth… we already contacted Lee,” I said.

“Yes, but I figured it would be at least today before he got back to you, and in the mean time I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” she said. “And once I did, the answer seemed so obvious, so simple. I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of it when we were first talking about this.”

“Well, the thing is… Lee did get back to me last night,” I said. “And, uh, he also had a kind of simple solution. Simple-ish. It doesn’t need anything from us, it keeps me out of it completely.”

“Oh,” Amaranth said. It sounded like there was some disappointment in her voice.

“Of course, I’d still like to hear what you came up with… it might be useful, if we ever… um… if this situation… it might be interesting,” I said.

I couldn’t even pretend I thought that we’d ever have a use for Amaranth’s plan.

If the same situation ever came up again, I was going to quit and move to another, less absurd plane of existence.

“Well… the thing is… I thought it was such a simple and obvious solution… elegant really,” she said, “that I couldn’t see any reason to wait…”

“Amaranth, you didn’t,” I said. I felt like the ground beneath my feet and the bottom of my stomach were both in a race to get to the bottom of a deep pit.

“Baby, you don’t even know what I did,” she said. “I promise you, it’s a really great idea, or else I wouldn’t have…”

“Well, what is it, then?” I asked.

“Like I told you: you made me realize that the problem is that the protection I have doesn’t belong to me, but my mother,” Amaranth said. “She is the one that the Imperium respects enough to back off of, not me. So…”

“So you asked her to get involved?” I said. Somehow I felt relieved… I didn’t know Mother Khaele, but somehow I couldn’t imagine she’d casually get involved in mortal legal affairs, and I had to believe she was used to being petitioned by Amaranth that she’d be inclined not to take her requests seriously. When she appeared on TV, she made the point about how often people died, right before a giant monster wave made the point for her.

“Not directly,” Amaranth said, which sounded even better.

“Indirectly involved?”

“I asked her sort of indirectly,” Amaranth said. “I mean, I thought if I just up and asked her she’d probably shut me down out of hand… she’s sort of getting in the habit of not really listening to me, sometimes. Also, she wasn’t available when I tried to commune. So I… well, it’s basically the equivalent of leaving a reflection. She’ll get the message when she gets back from… the thing she didn’t tell me that she was going to be doing this week.”

“She’s gone all week?” I asked, not even bothering to try to parse how a goddess could be “gone” or where she’d go to.

“That’s what it seems like,” Amaranth said, her lower lip wobbling. I gathered that this was a new experience for her.

“Well, then you just have to leave a new message for her,” I said. “Because Lee’s already taking care of it. Um… since you’re the one who left the echo, you could always just say that you handled it yourself.”

“I guess,” she said. I couldn’t tell what she was more bothered by: that her elegant and simple idea wouldn’t be used, or that Mother Khaele had apparently stepped out.

Actually, as soon as I thought that, it seemed obvious… and I felt a little unworthy of her for even thinking it. Of course she was bothered by the thought that her brilliant plan wouldn’t fix everything. She was Amaranth. But it was even more obvious that she wasn’t bothered half as much by that as she was by the fact that her mother, her goddess… the only constant in her life now that she’d left her home and lost her closest companion… had gone away without telling her.

Personally, I didn’t think that a goddess actually needed to update all of her followers with her travel itinerary, and Mother Khaele had evidently used some means of letting her daughters know that she was away and when she’d be back. Pointing that out to Amaranth didn’t seem terribly helpful, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I just hugged her.

That turned out to be the right thing to do.

“Thank you, baby,” she said when we were done. There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, but she was already done crying. “So… what did Lee say?”

“His thoughts were actually pretty close to yours,” I said, figuring this out as I said it. “Get someone, you know, powerful and credible to give the information. He had someone in mind but, you know, since the whole point is that we have nothing to do with it, we’re not supposed to know. Or talk about it.”

“That makes sense,” Amaranth said.

“So, basically… we can sit back and things should sort themselves out,” I said. “As much as they can be.”

“I need clarification!” Two yelled, from maybe thirty feet up the path. Two had a habit of shouting… and whispering… like a very small child, or someone who was accustomed to talking at one set volume. She understood the theory behind modulating what came out of her mouth, but the finer points of variation escaped her.

“We’re still going to breakfast with you, hon,” Amaranth called. “You can go ahead or wait for us to catch up.”

“Are you going to be doing anything before catching up?”

“We’ll be right there,” I said.

“Then I’ll wait,” Two said.

We didn’t keep her waiting long.

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Friday: Ian brings important news to the table, plus Goldman’s class.

She shrugged.

“I honestly wasn’t expecting it to stick to me in the first place,” she said. She giggled. “I suppose Two could have warned me, if I’d asked.”

“What, is she some kind of an expert on body paint?” Ian asked. I was just as perplexed as he was by this idea.

“No, but she’s an expert on things doing what they’re supposed to,” Amaranth said. “And body paint is supposed to go on bodies. I might have remembered, if I’d thought about it, that we sometimes get decorated with woad and henna for festivals. It wipes right off, though, because whatever residue would be left behind is mess, and I simply don’t do mess.”

“Isn’t it already a mess when it gets smeared on your skin by accident?” I asked.

“Probably, but I think she was decorating me… that girl is really into the idea of marking people,” Amaranth said.

“Yeah, that sounds like Semele,” Ian said.

“Oh, do you know her?” Amaranth asked. “You should introduce us sometime. She seems like she might be fun if she learned how to relax a little… Semele.” She sounded it out a few times like she was trying it on for fit. “Semele, Semele. That‘s kind of a pretty name. I’d love to get to know her.”

“What, did she just run off when you finished?” I asked.

“Well, she did kind of mess up her costume,” Ian said.

“Oh my kosh, is she okay?” Winnie asked.

“Yes, I think so,” Amaranth said to Winnie. “It was a very emotional experience for her… I think, in spite of my best efforts, it still wasn’t quite what she was expecting… but maybe she’ll have a better time the next time around, now that she’s got some idea what it feels like.”

“I’m just happy she got laid,” Winnie said.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,” Amaranth said. She held out a spotless hand. “I’m Amaranth.”

“Winnie Champlain,” she said.

“Oh, I have class with William Champlain!” Amaranth said.

“I’m related to at least three Williams, and two of them are here now,” Winnie said.

“Oh, this is the one with an incest fixation,” Amaranth said.

“Boy, I wish I could tell you I needed more to go on,” Winnie said. “But I know exactly who you mean.”

“He has brown hair,” Amaranth said.

“Brownish-blond?”

“No, more like a dark chestnut.”

“That’s not… oh. Oh!” Winnie said. “Ew.”

“As transgressive fantasies go, it’s one of the more harmless ones,” Amaranth said. “There isn’t even an implicit power differential, in cousin or sibling incest… and the extension of the taboo to include cousins is kind of a recent innovation in the first place. Before the most recent advances in communication and transportation, most people never met enough people to be sure of a match they weren’t related to.”

“Really?” Winnie asked. “That’s interesting.”

“Oh, yes,” Amaranth said. “And in fact, while it’s kind of become an entrenched view in the Imperium, it’s far from universal among humans. And that’s to say nothing of other races. Some elves consider it enough to avoid a partner who shares both their parents, and dwarves don’t even track kinship with the opposite sex.”

“So, a dwarf could end up dating his sister?”

“For a certain value of ‘date’, I suppose,” Amaranth said.

“It’s amazing how much she knows about how other races fuck,” Ian said to me.

“Wasn’t Winnie grossed out a moment ago?” I asked him. He shrugged.

“So, what about other races?” Winnie asked Amaranth. “Like, gnomes.”

“Well, gnomish attitudes pretty much mirrored human ones at the time they both colonized the Westering Lands,” Amaranth said. “But their insularity and isolation means that they haven’t changed as much. So on the one hand things like cousin marriages never really became taboo, but on the other hand, things that are seen as perfectly normal in human society would be scandalous in theirs. Things are slightly different in the riverfolk subculture… they travel more, so they’re exposed to wider influences and as a consequence, they end up being a little more adventurous about some things.”

“Hey!” Hazel yelled from a short distance away, where she was dancing with… or rather, around… Two. “Watch it with the ‘a-word’!”

“I can’t think of a better word for a woman in shoes,” Honey said. “No, wait, I can. I’m just not going to say it.”

“Sorry, Hazel!” Amaranth said. She giggled a little, which was cute, and Winnie giggled, too… which was not. “What’s really interesting is when you look at cultures that have entirely different kinship systems, like the lizardfolk in Blackwater, or the Kaha Moai people.”

“Everybody’s making new friends,” Ian said. I followed his gaze to where Pala and Sooni were hanging out on the dance floor. Pala was clutching the dolled-up Kai to her chest, the giant costume head very badly askew. I hoped for her sake that they’d left Kai’s sword in the baby buggy, if not back at the dorm. “Want to dance?” he asked me.

I looked at Amaranth, who it seemed had somehow got onto the topic of the reproduction habits of freshwater hydras… and Winnie, who seemed to find the topic humorous. Ugh… that laugh of hers. It went right through me like a red-hot skewer.

“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”

“You don’t have to jump into my arms or anything,” Ian said.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head to try to clear out the lingering sound. “I want to… I’ll be a little better when we get some distance between us and that laughter.”

“Winnie’s?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“It is a little infectious,” he said.

“That’s not the word I’d use,” I said. I put my arms on his shoulders, then realized it was a fast song, then decided to leave my arms there anyway. Fast meant it would be over fast, and I didn’t want us to devolve to awkward conversation or something while waiting for a slow song and then miss it.

“It’s okay,” Ian said. “I’ve had to get used to the idea that you’ll be easily distracted by pretty girls.”

“Winnie Champlain is not pretty,” I said.

“Also not deaf,” Ian said, wincing. “Though I might be. Khersis, Mack. Okay, yeah, she’s kind of plain, but she’s got a nice laugh and I’m not going to be jealous if you notice it.”

“What? No. She laughs like the bizarre offspring of a barghest and a howler monkey,” I said. “Who was raised by woodpeckers. Woodpeckers with an annoying laugh.”

“Whatever,” Ian said. “I’m not going to stand here and argue with you about a girl’s laugh.” The song finally changed to something good, and he put his hands just above my hips. “Not when I’ve got you to myself and there’s music.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, and we started to sway. “There’s something weird about her, though… her whole family.”

“Oh, don’t start,” Ian said. “She’s related to Puddy. So what? All that means is that they could get married in gnomeland.”

“Be serious,” I said.

“You be serious,” he said. “Are you seriously going to start judging people based on their family relations?”

“I don’t think of that side of my family as family, per se,” I said.

“And you think everyone who shares a little blood with Puddy’s going to own her?” Ian asked. “Anyway, the only person on your other side that I’ve heard of besides your mother is your grandmother. Would you want to be judged by your relationship to her?”

“I don’t not like Winnie because she’s Puddy’s cousin,” I said. “I dislike her, I dislike her cousin in my history class, and I dislike Puddy, all independently of each other… and then I find out they’re all from the same family.”

“So’s half the human student body, it seems,” Ian said. “A group that includes a lot of jerks and losers, but also a lot of people who came out to rally for you when you went poof, and who walked out of your history class with you, who’ve been writing letters to the student paper…”

“What letters?”

“You could try reading it every once in a while and finding out,” he said. “My point is you’ve probably bumped into a lot more LaBelles than those three.”

“Yeah, and the three I’ve had enough contact with to find out their family background all turned out to be…”

“What?” Ian asked. “Slightly annoying?”

“Puddy’s not just slightly annoying.”

“She’s naked.”

“No, she’s… what?”

He turned us around so that I was facing the entryway. There was a crowd gathering, and I had to stand on my tippy-toes to try to see what was going on. I couldn’t see more than the top of Puddy’s strawberry blonde head, which had a circlet of laurel leaves. Then the crowd shifted a bit and there she was, in all her… glory. She was naked except for the wreath, and holding a gold-colored lyre and a big scroll wound around wooden roller thingies.

I let go of Ian and he turned around.

“What’s she supposed to be… a muse?” Ian asked.

“Looks like,” I said.

“She’s really not bad looking,” Ian said. “She could lose some weight, but she’s carrying it pretty well. She’s a lot smoother than I… would have thought.”

There was a commotion out on the dance floor.

“But why do I have to leave?” Pala said, her voice carrying clearly now that all conversations everywhere else had stopped. She sounded like she was near tears.

“Yes, why does she have to leave?” Sooni demanded.

“Just step into the ladies’ room for five minutes, Tiny,” Callahan said to her. “Just five minutes, okay? I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll buy you stilts.”

“Fine! I am going!” Pala said, turning and storming towards the restrooms. “But don’t think I’m not going to…”

The rest was unintelligible blubbers.

“What the heck was that about?” Ian asked as Callahan headed over to deal with Puddy.

“No idea,” I said. “But I think Puddy’s about to get a bit of a talking to.”

“You mean a dressing-down?” Ian asked.

“Funny,” I said.

“I don’t think she can do anything, really,” Amaranth said, coming over to join us. I felt a stab of jealousy that she was holding hands with Winnie, and I took her other hand.

“What do you mean?” Ian asked. “I know it’s a costume party, but… I’m not sure that qualifies.”

“Yes, but… nymph,” Amaranth said.

“No offense, but I don’t think your presence in a room this size negates the need for her to wear clothes, especially when you aren’t even together,” Ian said.

“Not me,” Amaranth said. “Puddy. She’s got her bloodline registered with the Hamadryad Preservation Board. One-sixteenth… the smallest proportion they recognize, but legally, she’s a nymph.”

“You don’t really buy that, do you?” I asked her.

“Oh, no, it’s true,” Winnie said. “Her great-grandmother Eugenie Banks was an oak tree who fell in love with a woodcutter.”

“That must have made for some awkward holiday visits,” Ian said.

“They say that’s why the Bankses are so, you know, wild… and why they have so many daughters,” Winnie said. “It’s in their blood.”

“So what about her dragon and her giant blood?” I asked her.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

From the way Callahan stomped off, it looked like Puddy had won the argument. Mariel, who had some kind of djinn/harem girl thing going on with her costume, just looked like she could die.

I felt a cool hand touch my neck.

“Hey, Mack,” Feejee said, leaning her body against my back. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Were you looking for a dance, Feejee?” Amaranth asked, letting go of my hand so she could turn and look at us.

“What? Oh, no… I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m… you know,” Feejee said, draping her arms down my front and feeling my sides. I tried to see if I could smell anything on her breath, but there was just the slightly salty scent of Feejee herself. “I just thought… well, I kind of wanted to talk to her about something she said earlier.”

Amaranth gave her a pleasant but fixed smile.

“If it’s not something you’re comfortable talking about in front of everybody, I don’t think it’s a conversation you need to be having with my Mack,” she said.

Feejee looked back at her. I couldn’t see her face, but her body went tense and her hands kind of clutched at me. One of them was kind of right between my legs at that moment. Under other circumstances, it might have been kind of… actually, it was pretty arousing.

“I just wanted to give Mack a chance to talk about her true feelings, now that they’re out in the open,” Feejee said.

“True feelings?” Amaranth said.

“What she said… what she did… this morning,” Feejee said, and my stomach fell out of my abdomen. What had I done that morning? Pretty much try to jump into her mouth and climb down her throat. “It was very revealing.”

“I don’t think you should pay much attention to anything she said or did while under the influence of alchemical products,” Amaranth said.

“Even when those products are doing nothing but revealing people’s inner desires?”

“Feejee, I know this must be confusing for you, but there are desires and there are desires,” Amaranth said. She put her hands on Winnie’s shoulders. “For instance, Winnie’s cousin William masturbates while he imagines having sex with her, but that doesn’t mean he’d actually desire a relationship with her if the chance came up. It’s the idea that…”

“I know what I saw,” Feejee said, letting go of me and straightening up. “And we are going to talk about it, whether you want to or not… now that I know for sure we both want the same thing, I’m not going to let anything stop me.”

“Wow, is everyone gay for you?” Winnie asked while Feejee walked away, her naked butt peeking out from beneath the apron strings like a present beneath a little bow.

“I don’t understand it, either,” Ian said. “And I never figured you for the jealous type,” he said to Amaranth.

“I just don’t want to see anyone getting hurt,” Amaranth said.

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It seemed like much of Harlowe shared our plans. On our way down the boys’ side we passed a few guys who were carrying garment bags and things that were obviously costume props. One of the other canids whose name I didn’t know had evidently decided to highlight his appearance by dressing up like a stereotypical werewolf. In the girls’ stairwell, we passed Trina… dressed like a faerie princess, complete with wings and sparkles in the air all around her… and a girl I’d never seen before, who seemed to have painted her entire body with gold and green paint. There was only the faintest outline of pasties over where her nipples would be. You could only just barely make them out if you looked really closely. I wasn’t sure what she was going for with the costume, exactly, except for “sexy mostly naked girl covered in body paint”.

I had to admit, it worked.

“Oh my kosh, Gladys, did you see her checking you out?” Trina said once they were a flight down. So that was Gladys. I wondered what her racial background was… she’d looked human enough, except for maybe being bald. Though it was possible that might have been a skull cap… I hadn’t been paying that much attention.

“Man, did you see her eyes?” Ian asked.

“Um, what about them?” I asked. I hadn’t really noticed anything out of the ordinary about them.

“They weren’t there,” he said. “She had like an illusion effect or something… it was like you could see straight through to the wall behind her, like she had a chameleon spell just in that spot. Or those spots.”

“That’s weird… why would she do that?” I asked.

“Maybe because she couldn’t paint them?” Amaranth suggested. “I mean, maybe she wanted her costume to feel complete?”

“I don’t know why she wouldn’t just use glamour for the whole thing,” I said. “That paint had to be a hassle for whoever helped her put it on…”

“I don’t know about that,” Ian said.

“…and it’s probably going to make a mess everywhere she goes,” I said.

“Maybe she’s glamour-resistant?” Amaranth suggested.

“I don’t think anyone’s specifically resistant to glamours,” I said. “Except in the ‘able to see through them’ or ‘dispel them through contact’ senses. It’s nothing more than an alteration of appearance. I suppose if somebody were resistant to alterations, or to magic in general, that might make it harder to apply a glamour, but anyone or anything that has an appearance is equally susceptible to having that appearance manipulated.”

“Well, then it’s probably a tactile thing,” Amaranth said. “She was feeling very sexy, and very confident in her sexiness. I’d imagine that if she were just wearing a skimpy bikini and had her skin glammed, she might feel more exposed compared to the feeling of the paint against her skin. It could be her way of being both daring and coy, by covering herself and revealing herself.”

“It’s kind of a weird costume, though,” I said. “I mean, she’s not really going as anything, as far as I can tell. She’s just going as herself covered in paint.”

“I think it’s a bold choice, and I hope I have a chance to tell her so at the dance,” Amaranth said.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “That’s Trina’s friend she’s reflecting to every minute of every day with the latest up-to-date reports on every tiny little thing anyone does.”

“Yes, well, we can hardly judge her for that,” Amaranth said. “I mean, you’ve never heard her side of those conversations… maybe she just tolerates Trina’s gossipy ways because she wants to be a friend to her?”

“Okay, I don’t exactly have a lot to go on here, but from my one almost-run-in with her, I’m pretty sure it’s a mutual relationship,” I said.

“Well, I’m withholding judgment,” Amaranth said.

“That’s a shocker,” Ian said.

“Oh, hush,” Amaranth said.

There was a strong breeze and a high-pitched buzz when Amaranth opened the door at the top of the stairwell.

“Whoa,” she said, laughing and rocking back a little. She stuck her head into the hall, then laughed and stepped through. Ian and I followed.

The hallway was pretty busy. Mariel the sylph was zipping around like a hummingbird on haste. She stopped in front of us… well, hovered might have been a better word since she didn’t actually stop moving. An incomprehensible torrent fell out of her mouth in Amaranth’s direction, though her eyes kept darting over towards me. From the look she was giving me, I thought she was complaining, but Amaranth just said, “Yes, please, if you aren’t too busy.”

Mariel’s four delicate arms moved like a tornado, and a wash of rich woody color spread over Amaranth’s skin while her hair darkened and turned green.

“Thank you!” Amaranth said. She dropped a few coins, but Mariel had already zipped off… though she zipped back and caught them before they hit the floor.

Leda was out and about, dressed as a prima ballerina. She was talking in low tones with a tall, athletic human girl who looked a little familiar. She didn’t seem to be in costume, though from the way she kept staring at her hands like she was on something, I almost wondered if it wasn’t Celia in a really elaborate illusion. Celia would have been probably the second last person to dress up like a human, but she might have done it for irony purposes.

“Yo!” Celia called from by her room, dispelling that theory. “Can I get a little help?”

Mariel flitted over and buzzed angrily at her.

“Hey, slow it down,” Celia said. “I don’t speak bumblebee.”

“…have time to slow down I have people waiting on other floors and I thought you said you didn’t need my help and anyway I know you don’t have money to pay and I’m not doing this for my health and…”

“Please help her out,” Feejee said from within the room. “I’ll pay for her.”

Mariel sighed, then went to work on Celia. Her pink skin tinted itself orange and slightly metallic. The texture changed, looking leathery and scaly.

“Can you do wings and a tail?” Celia asked. Mariel exploded into another hypervelocity outburst, and then flitted away towards the other end of the hall.

“That would take an illusion,” I said.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Celia said. “That’s why I told her I didn’t want her weaksauce glamour in the first place. Oh, well… I guess I can use this as a base and whip up the full effect at key moments.”

“Hello, Mack!” Feejee said, sauntering into view of the doorway.

She was wearing a chef’s hat, a long white apron with a barbecue fork, a basting squirty thing, a brush, and a squeeze bottle of some kind in the pockets. That was all she was wearing. She’d gone the opposite route of Celia, melting her scales into mammalian-looking flesh.

“Wow,” Ian said.

“Oh, do you like it?” Feejee asked, leaning against the doorframe and striking a pose. “I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows lately. Something about the look just appealed to me.”

“Well, I think you look just great, Feejee,” Amaranth said.

“What do you think, Mack?” Feejee asked.
“I… uh… I have to get my own costume on,” I said.

“I look forward to seeing it,” Feejee said, and she turned and headed back into her room.

“I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling,” Celia said. “That girl is so queer for you.”

“Seems that way,” Ian said.

“Yeah, um, let’s get changed,” I said, and I started heading down the hall… though I stopped outside my room when I saw Honey’s outfit.

She had let Mariel tinge her skin a mottled goblin green. Her curly hair was pulled up into three short spikey pigtails. Her dress was kind of an approximation of something that Oru might have worn, though the top came up much higher and the skirt went down much lower than was the goblin style. She was wearing Oru’s lock necklace around her neck.

“Um… have you seen Shiel?” I asked her. What I really meant was, had Shiel seen her.

“Oh, Shiel can go soak her fat head,” Honey said. “We’re just having good clean fun. It’s Hazel who should be ashamed of herself. Her costume doesn’t hide anything. You can see the shape of her legs, all the way up.”

“Go soak your own head!” Hazel yelled from down the hall… from the door to my room, in fact. Her hair had been glammed blonde, and she had vaguely runic-looking letters stenciled on her forehead that said “TFH”. “There is nothing wrong with my costume.”

As far as I could see, she was right. Far from being more revealing than Honey’s, hers actually covered more than her cousins. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a fuzzy sweater. They maybe clung to her small form a bit more snugly than her everyday clothes, but that was the look she was evidently going for… everything Two wore was pretty perfectly fitted to her.

It was a little shocking to see Two’s friend in anything other than an earthy shapeless house dress. I’d seen Hazel in the showers before, so I knew that she’d been hiding a mature woman’s body under those dresses, but this was a whole new context to process it in.

“Hazel, you forgot the band,” Two called.

“I didn’t forget it, love, I just had to straighten my cousin out a little,” Hazel said.

“If you think I’m going to let you walk out of the hall dressed like that…” Honey said, her bare feet slapping the tile of the hallway as she stomped her way past us towards her cousin.

“Let? I don’t at all hate to tell you this, Miss Honey Callaway, but you are not my mother,” Hazel said.

“No, but it’s her I’m thinking of,” Honey said. “What do you think she would say, if she knew her only daughter was strutting about in trousers, like the commonest trash that ever floated down the river?”

I braced myself for an explosion, but Hazel just drew herself up to her full height… she seemed to be an inch or two taller than Honey, though I’d never noticed before… and said, “I don’t know, Honey. Maybe she’d say, ‘That’s my daughter’.”

“I can’t believe that even at her…”

“At her what?” Hazel said.

“Most rebellious,” Honey said. “I can’t believe that even at her most rebellious, she would have countenanced her daughter gallivanting around in trousers, with her feet shoved into shoes.”

“They’re sandals,” Hazel said, and I realized that was the source of Hazel’s elevation… I hadn’t registered the unusualness of a shireling with footwear because the clunky wedges she was wearing went with the rest of her outfit. “And they’re just part of the costume. Golems don’t go around bare. They’ve got regular feet of clay.”

“They’re shoes, Hazel, whatever you want to call them,” Honey said. “May Owain the Merciful have mercy on your soul, because Owain the Just probably won’t.”

“I don’t see what’s…” I started to say, but Amaranth reached out and shushed me with her finger.

“Come on, baby, don’t put yourself in the middle of this,” Amaranth said.

“Yeah, I have to side with her,” Ian said quietly, drawing me towards my door. “This is cultural and it’s family… you really don’t want to get involved.”

We ducked into the bedroom while Honey and Hazel continued to quarrel loudly in the middle of the hall.

“Hi, Mack,” Two said. She was wearing a human-sized copy of one of Hazel’s dresses. Her runes had been masked over, and her hair was curled and chestnut color. “Hi, Amaranth. Hi, Ian.”

“Hi, Two,” I said, along with the others. “Wow, you guys really went all out.”

“Yes,” Two said. She scowled. “My clothing is not indecent. It’s just regular clothing. And it’s pretty.”

“Oh, honey, Honey’s just from a different culture,” Amaranth said. “She has different values.”

“Well, her values are wrong,” Two said. “There is nothing wrong with girls wearing trousers and there is nothing wrong with the shape of my legs, so there is nothing wrong with letting people see them.”

“She’s not talking about you, sweetie, she’s talking about her cousin,” Amaranth said.

“She’s talking about the way I dress,” Two said. “She just won’t say it to me because she knows it’s none of her business.”

“Well… it isn’t,” Amaranth said. “So don’t worry about it. It’s her culture and her values, not yours, and so whatever she thinks, it doesn’t really hurt you, does it?”

“No,” Two said. “She’s still wrong, though.”

“Well, let her be wrong,” Amaranth said.

“Okay,” Two said.

“Are you done getting ready?” I asked. “Because Ian needs to get changed.”

“Yes, I’m done,” Two said. “I think you are the last one on the floor to get ready.”

“Well, we’ll take care of that if you’ll just excuse us for a few minutes,” I said.

“Okay,” Two said. “I have to go to the bathroom, anyway.”

“Thanks, Two,” Ian said.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and she left the three of us alone.

“Man, if I could attract girls the way you seem to…” Ian said, leaving the sentence hanging unfinished in the air.

“What?” I said.

“I’d attract a lot of girls?” he said, pulling off his jeans.

“It’s not all great,” I said. “Believe me, some attention is not worth the trouble it causes.”

“You’re talking to the human guy who’s dating a half-demon,” Ian said. “When you’re sexually involved with someone who might occasionally look at you like you’re a tasty snack cake, then you can talk about trouble.”

I would have liked to change the subject, but what could I say to that? Some dramatic irony we’ve been having lately, huh? So instead I just let it hang awkwardly, while I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my shirt. We got changed in silence, Amaranth helping me get the bikini top on.

“I am going to freeze to death,” I said, looking at myself in the mirror. It was amazing how my boobs seemed to have stayed just as tiny as ever while my tummy was starting to hang out and my ass had blown up like a pair of balloons. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You can put an insulation spell on the cape,” Amaranth said, holding it up. “The fur… even if it’s fake… will be good for that, right? And of course, you can wear your coat on the way there… I’ll take it when we get inside.”

“Looking good,” Ian said. He took a step back behind me. “You know, I’m not even sure you need the cape.”

“Oh, I am wearing the cape,” I said, grabbing it from Amaranth. “I can feel myself hanging out in back.”

“While I agree she looks better without it, Sooni might feel put out if she doesn’t wear the cape after she took the time to fix it up,” Amaranth said. “The poor girl tries so hard to be a good friend, and I think she actually came pretty close here. It would send the wrong message to reject that.”

“Thank you,” I said, though I suddenly felt a lot less sure about the cape. I’d forgotten Sooni’s part in it.

“You’re welcome, baby.”

I finished decking myself out with the accessories. The boots, which were fuzzy inside, were a big surprise… not only did they fit my feet snugly, but they were pretty damn toasty inside.

“Oh, wow,” I said. “I am so keeping these boots.”

“Feel free,” Ian said. “I rescued them from the garbage… I mean, I saved them from going into the garbage. I didn’t rescue them from out of the garbage.”

“I think I’d probably wear them anyway, as long as I’d already put them on before you told me that,” I said. “I think they’ll even kind of go with my coat, as long as the color change is permanent.”

“With that coat, I don’t think it would matter if they were hot pink,” Ian said.

“Can I put making fun of my coat on the black list?” I asked Amaranth.

“The important thing is that you like it,” Amaranth said.

“I think the important thing is that it keeps me warm,” I said. “That’s what a coat does. That’s what it’s for.”

“Who’s dressing up as a golem, again?” Ian asked.

“I’m just saying form’s not as important as function. If it keeps me toasty on a cold night, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world by default.”

“The most beautiful thing?” Amaranth repeated, arching an eyebrow at me.

“Uh… well…” I said, starting to shrink down inside myself. I recovered, though, and slipped an arm around her. “That criteria isn’t just for coats.”

Discuss this story.

I was treated again to fragmentary nightmares: running across the penthouse pool towards a rapidly fading Steff while dark shapes bit and slashed at my legs and pulled me down, Caron trussing me up to an X-shaped frame and hammering great big spikes through my parts of me, Mercy chasing me on a motorcycle.

My sex dreams had been strange and frightening to me before I’d been able to accept what many of them actually were… I would have hoped that being more at peace with my desires would allow me to enjoy them, but it seemed like I just plain didn’t remember them as often, if I was still having them… and in their absence I was getting these fun little scenarios.

None of my nightmares were complete stories. They weren’t even complete scenes… just snatches, vignettes. That made them worse. They could start at any time, repeat at any time, and they never ended. There was no conclusion until I finally woke up… or in this case, until Two woke me up with some less-than-gentle shaking.

It was a good thing sleep wasn’t ready to release me completely when she did, because it startled the fuck out of me to have a tiny, feminine hand grabbing my shoulder roughly at the same time when Mercy caught up to me and grabbed hold. I could barely manage a hoarse scream, much less a physical reaction.

“I’m sorry, Mack,” Two said. “I did not mean to frighten you, but you were shaking the bed. Also, it’s almost time to meditate with Dee.”

“Huh?” I said. “Oh… Dee.” I sat up slowly and yawned. “I haven’t really been keeping that up, have I?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Two didn’t even seem to hear it. Her eyes were locked on my bare chest. My first thought was that she was going to chastise me for not wearing anything to bed, despite Amaranth’s insistence that it was none of her business.

“You need to go to the healing center!” she said, her eyes huge as moons and luminescent in the darkness.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re hurt!” she said. She pointed at my nipple piercing. “You have metal stuck through you. You need to get healed.”

“Two, those are piercings,” I said. “Like earrings.”

“No they aren’t,” she said. “Earrings go in the ears and are pretty.”

“These are kind of pretty,” I said, trying to look down at my heart lock.

“No they aren’t!” Two said. “They’re stuck in your nipples. That isn’t pretty at all.”

“Well, thank you for your opinion, Two,” I said. “But these were a present from Amaranth, and they’re supposed to be like that.”

“Oh, okay,” Two said. “Are you going to come meditate today?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “Has Dee asked about me, other mornings?”

“No,” Two said. “I asked her if she thought we should wake you up and she said you would wake up or you wouldn’t.”

“Oh,” I said. “I guess that makes sense.”

“It does make sense,” Two agreed, nodding sagely. “You would have to.”

“I’d have to what?”

“Wake up or not,” Two said. “I don’t think you could not do that.”

“I suppose you’re right about that,” I said.

“Yes.”

It was just past five thirty in the morning… Two’s interruption of my troubled sleep meant we had time to shower beforehand, which I chose to do because I’d woken up all sweaty.

When we got to the bathroom I kind of wished I’d decided to forego it… the place was a disaster area. One of the sinks had been plugged up and left on, resulting in a swamp centered around the drain in the middle of the floor. There were sodden wads of toilet paper stuck to the walls and rolls draped over the stalls and the curtain rods of the bathtub. The mirrors had been smeared with soap and lipstick and what looked like blood but didn’t smell like the kind that came from a vein. The artists responsible had written “FEEJEE PLUS MACK 4 EVER” in soap across all the mirrors. There was water all over the floor around the far right stall that couldn’t have been from the sinks, and the place smelled like… well, like a toilet.

Not a place with toilets in it, but an actual toilet.

Two looked like someone had punched her in the gut, there was so much wrongness all around. I didn’t want to keep walking, even in my flip-flops… there was too much moisture on the floor between us and the shower and I didn’t trust that all of it was water.

“Feejee is going to be in big trouble,” Two said, looking at the mirrors.

“Feejee didn’t write that,” I said.

“You did?”

“No,” I said. “I’d bet platinum to peanuts it was the Leightons, but see if Kiersta lifts a finger to punish them. You might as well go back to the room.”

“I want to take a shower,” Two said, looking across the bathroom at the open curtain. I could tell from the conflicted look on her face that she didn’t want to keep walking any more than I did.

“You should be okay using the next one down,” I said. I figured I’d skip it… I was more likely to encounter hostility for simply being out of perceived bounds than she was. “Don’t take any orders from anybody while you’re doing it, if anybody asks what you’re doing there tell them that ours is out of order, and if anybody gives you a serious problem just leave and come back up here.”

“Okay,” she said. “You aren’t coming, too?”

“No, I’m going to have a little talk with Kiersta,” I said. “Probably best if you’re not around, that way she can’t hold a grudge against you.”

“Okay,” she said.

We left the wreckage of the bathroom, Two turning left and heading downstairs while I turned right. I waited until I couldn’t hear Two’s footsteps and then knocked, firmly enough that I figured it would rouse even a drunken resident advisor.

There was no immediate response, so I knocked again. This time I heard blankets moving and the bed shifting, and then a crash of breaking glass followed by a groan.

“Kiersta?” I said through the door.

“Fuck off…” she moaned.

“You need to come out here,” I said.

“I’m sleeping.”

“You’re the R.A.,” I said.

“What the hell do you want from me?”

“I want you to come look and look at what your drinking buddies did to the bathroom!” I said.

I heard her coming closer and thought she was going to open the door. Instead she stopped at the other side of it and said, slightly more clearly and awake-sounding, “That’s your problem now.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not my problem. Cleaning the bathroom is one thing, but that’s just nasty.”

“It’s a bathroom,” Kiersta said.

“It’s vandalism,” I said. “And it’s disgusting.”

“You should have thought of that before you had sex in the shower.”

“I don’t even want to guess what they did in the shower,” I said. “And don’t forget, you’ve got to use it, too.”

“Do you think I would actually go in there? I shower in the fitness center.”

“Do something about it, or… I’m going to report you for drinking.”

“Good!” she yelled. The door ripped open inward and she was screaming in my face. “Do that! And when you find someone who gives a shit what anybody does in this hellhole, let me know!”

She stepped back and slammed the door so hard it bounced back from the frame instead of latching, then did that again before finally closing it forcefully but with her hand on the knob and locking it. Other doors were opening down the hall… Mariel, Maliko and Suzi, the twins, and both of the gnomes.

“Oh, of course,” Maliko said, looking at me before turning and going back into her room while Suzi stood there blinking sleepily. Sooni’s door opened and Maliko jumped and turned right back around, but it was Kai.

“Will everybody be the fuck quiet?” Kai shrieked. “Some of us have an examination this morning!”

Suzi’s head lolled to the side and she looked at Kai for a second before lashing out with one paw-like hand and swiping at her face. It was so random it seemed instinctive. Kai just stepped back out of the way and glared at her. She looked around the hall and spotted me, her lantern eyes locking with mine. Kai had no subtle arts that I knew of, but she might as well have been a telepath for how loud and clear I got the message: this is your fault and if it affects my grades, I will kill you for it.

“What in Owain’s name is going on?” Hazel asked.

“Hazel Willikins, bite your tongue!” Honey said, pinching her elbow and then making a tossing gesture over her shoulder.

“Er, I meant Owain,” Hazel said. I must have misheard her the first time, because I was sure she’d said that.

“Of course you did,” Honey harrumphed.

The Leightons, of course, could barely contain themselves through all this.

“You think this is funny?” I asked, stomping over towards them. Sara got a gleam of panic in her eye while Tara looked defiant. “Other people have to use that bathroom!”

“Oh, yeah, I guess you’ll have to find somewhere else to take Feejee out,” Tara said. “Hopefully your next date spot will be almost as classy.”

“People are going to have to start getting ready for class soon,” I said.

“Oh, wow, better get cleanin’, then,” Tara said. “And, in case you haven’t seen the shower yet… brace yourself before you go in there.”

“I didn’t do that!” Sara said. “That was all…”

“Oh, shut your mouth,” Tara said. “We didn’t do anything… we just got up early and saw it.”

“Wait a tick,” Hazel said, which I guessed was like shire slang for “a second” or something. “What did you two do to the lav?”

“The lav?” Sara repeated, and they both snickered.

“They wrecked the place,” I said. “Water, toilet paper… other stuff. It’s disgusting. You wouldn’t want to go in there with your bare feet.”

“Oi!” Hazel said, turning scarlet and smoothing down the front of her floor-length robe. “You don’t have to tell the whole world about that!”

“I thought you said ‘everyone does it’,” Honey said, rolling her eyes.

“Not the point!” Hazel said.

“We don’t know what she’s talking about,” Sara said. “We didn’t do anything. It was like that when we got there.”

“Yeah, all I know is that I’d hate to be the one who has to clean it up,” Tara said.

“Well, you’re going to be, because I’m not doing it,” I said.

“Kiersta said…” Sara said.

“Fuck Kiersta,” I said. “What’s she going to do? One shout to my lawyer and she’d lose her job,” I said, not having any clue if this was true or not but pretty sure Kiersta could hear every word. “I’m not cleaning up your mess, and if you don’t clean it up, nobody’s going to be able to use the showers.”

“That’s not our fault,” Sara said. “You’re supposed to clean it up. Kiersta…”

“Shut up about Kiersta,” I said.

“Hold on,” Hazel said, shuffling over. “I have a headache, I’m queasy, I ache all over, and I’m not a big fan of being woken up early in general. I have to get up at the crack of eleven today and the first thing I’m going to want is a shower. Is it going to be fit to use then, or isn’t it?”

“Don’t talk to us, bunny,” Tara said. She pointed her thumb at me. “Talk to the help.”

“I’m talking to you,” Hazel said. “Call me bunny again and I’ll kick both your arse.”

“‘Arse’,” Sara repeated, and they both giggled.

“What is wrong with you? Were you born in a barn?”

“Were you born in a dollhouse?” Sara asked.

“I was born on a boat,” Hazel said.

“Hazel!” Honey said, more urgently than she had objected to Hazel’s evidently profane pronouncement earlier.

“I don’t care who knows,” Hazel said to her. “I’m proud of it.”

“Honestly, I wish you could hear how you sound,” Honey said.

“I am!” Hazel said. “I’m proud of where I come from.”

“Why in the world would you be proud of your mother’s smelly, rancid cunt?” Tara asked.

Hazel turned a shade of purple-red normally reserved for eldritch abominations.

“Hazel… think about your condition…” Honey pleaded, sounding terrified.

I took a step back. As I did, I remembered Steff’s description of Hazel “going orcshit” over the term “motherfucker”… but that was only after I’d started backing away. I didn’t have to know anything about Hazel or her past behavior to see where this was going. I’d step in if things went too poorly for Hazel… the twins seemed pretty athletic and she was no fighter, though I thought the way Sara seemed to be trying to turn and scramble away while Tara tried to stand their ground might take away some of her disadvantage

“Hazel, they didn’t mean it!” Honey shrieked.

“Oh, I fucking meant it,” Tara said. “What are you going to do, bunny? Dig me to death?”

With an angry howl, Hazel charged forward, barreling into their legs and knocking them down. Tara’s arm punched her in the face while Sara’s flailed around, but she might as well have been punching an ogre or a dwarf’s skull for all that it slowed Hazel’s fury. She pulled herself up until she was straddling the twins’ torso and started punching at Tara’s head with alternating fists.

“Kiersta! Kiersta!” Sara shrieked as Hazel pretty much beat Tara’s face in.

More doors had opened. Everybody who lived on the floor was out in the hall except for the skirmishers, Celia, Leda, Amaranth, and Dee… and Kiersta, naturally. I was trying to figure out how to get Hazel off of Tara without hurting her, especially given her “condition” as Amaranth had diagnosed it. Tara was trying to push her off with her one arm; Sara was useless, sobbing with her eyes squeezed shut.

Before I could decide what, if anything, to do, a powerful force wrapped itself around me and yanked me backwards off my feet. I flew down the hall away from the melee, passing the swishing robes of Dee as she flew forward.

“Hazel Willikins!” she called as I landed on my butt halfway down the hall. “Be at peace!”

That worked about as well as you might have expected it to. Dee waved her arms in the air and became too bright to look at. When my vision cleared, Hazel was floating up off of the twins, a placid expression on her face. Dee guided her mentally back towards Honey while she herself crouched by the fallen form of the Leightons and grew bright once more as she gave them healing energy they didn’t deserve.

“Hazel, I wish you’d think about your daughter!” Honey said.

“I am not having any daughters!” Hazel said, snapping out of the divinely-bestowed serenity at once, but fortunately not reverting back to her state of unreasoning rage.

Sara suddenly started shrieking and kicking spasmodically. Dee stepped back at once. Tara groaned and touched her head.

“I apologize for any unexpected familiarity,” Dee said to them.

“Get away from us, you cowl headed freak!” Sara said.

“Somebody provide a concise summary of events, please,” Dee said, looking around the hall. Her eyes settled on me. “Mackenzie?”

“They trashed the bathroom,” I said coming forward. “Because Kiersta said I have to clean it.”

“Why under earth should that task fall to you?” Dee asked. “Never mind. I think I can surmise.” She looked around. “And then one of the twins said a word against Two’s friend Hazel’s departed mother, I suppose?”

“Hey, that’s right!” Hazel said.

“Let it go,” Honey said, grabbing Hazel’s sleeve.

“I believe you owe Miss Hazel an apology,” Dee said to the Leightons. “And then she will apologize to you.”

“Like hell,” Tara said, as they got to their feet. She groaned and clutched at her head with her hand.

“That goes for double for me,” Hazel said.

“I can’t force you to apologize,” Dee said. “But I’ll ask again once I’ve finished healing you, as duty…”
“You’re not touching us!” Sara said.

“Please,” Dee said. “I would not be offering if it were not dire. The most superficial portion of your wounds healed first. I do not believe the underlying damage is…”

“Go fuck yourself, drow bitch,” Tara said. “I’m not letting you do any more black-ass demon witchcraft on me.”

The twins turned to go back into their room.

“Go to the healing center, then,” Dee said. They both flipped her off. “Don’t let her fall asleep!” Dee called after them as they closed the door. “Willful… willful idiots!” Dee shouted at their door, then let off a stream of what certainly sounded like swear words. She turned around to face Hazel, her eyes narrow and her nostrils wide. “And you! Your kinswoman has the right of it! Does avenging the memory of your mother take precedence over the safety of your daughter?”

“I… don’t… have… a… bloody… daughter!” Hazel yelled. “I can’t have a daughter, I won’t have a daughter, I don’t have a…”

There was a pop and a flash of light and Hazel was asleep on her feet. Dee’s mental powers caught her mid-slump, tilted her gently back, and then floated her past a very stunned looking Honey into their room, where I have little doubt she continued floating until she reached her bed.

“Please try to keep her calm when she wakes,” Dee said to Honey, who snorted. “And, out of curiosity, how do you know she’s having a daughter?”

“Oh… um… how do you?” Honey asked.

“I was merely repeating what I heard from you,” Dee said. “But it’s the default assumption… or it is, among my people.”

“Oh… the same,” Honey said. “For mine, I mean.”

“I did not realize gnomish culture was so gynocentric,” Dee said.

“Oh, well, if a woman’s expecting we say it’s a daughter and if a man is, we say it’s a son,” Honey said.

“Indeed,” Dee said.

“I should get back to bed,” Honey said, hurrying into her room and shutting the door, then locking it.

Other people, apparently deciding the show was over and realizing just how fucking early it was, were also drifting back towards their beds. Mariel was still standing in front of Puddy’s room, staring at the bathroom door and then whipping her head around in a dizzying pattern down the rest of the hall before staring at the bathroom.

“Don’t be so fucking dainty!” Puddy grumbled sleepily from the depths of her room.

I sighed.

“We’ve got to do something about the bathroom. Or I guess I do,” I said. “They only did it because of me.”

“That doesn’t make it your responsibility,” Dee said. “Is it simply untidy, or have they… befouled… it?”

“I think it’s beyond befouled,” I said.

“I will see to it then,” Dee said.

“Dee, you don’t have to,” I said.

“Somebody must… I have never cleaned anything beyond the chapel floor, but I believe I can remove the mess without having contact with it,” Dee said. “No one else, perhaps save for Two, could do that, and she does enough cleaning after others as it is. Do you intend to join me this morning?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Please go downstairs and reserve us a chamber. I will join you shortly.”

“Thanks,” I said. I hesitated, torn. “Uh… are you sure you don’t want any help?”

“I need not touch your mind to see that you are hoping I will say no,” Dee said. “Your offer is appreciated, but your efforts would not combine effectively with mine. Thank you, but no.”

“Thanks,” I said, and I turned and I headed past Mariel for the stairs. Dee followed behind me. I glanced back from just inside the stairwell and saw that she was turning to face Kiersta’s door.

Part of me wanted to know what she was going to do or say, but most of me didn’t want to be anywhere near the kind of ass-chewing I thought Dee just might be able to administer.

Discuss this story.

The silence which greeted Callahan’s announcement seemed to be deafening, but the noise which followed a few seconds after the silence would have been able to teach it a thing or two on the subject.

Most of it seemed to be positive… there were still threads of bitter anger just audible in bits and pieces, but now that the diviners had established that there had been no illegal enchantments or buffing, most of the crowd was accepting that they were allowed to be blown right the fuck away by what they had just seen.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” Steff said. She didn’t have to shout to be heard… an example of elven privilege. “She’s not that strong.”

“She’s stronger than me,” I yelled in response. “She always has been.”

“How is Mariel not paste?” Steff said.

I didn’t have an answer for that.

“It’s very loud in here,” Two said.

It took quite some time for the crowd to settle down, and in the end Callahan just gave a signal and got the matches underway again, then went off with the lead marshal, still arguing. I checked the program and saw BANKS LABELLE had been moved down to the next section, though she had an asterisk after her name. As I watched, it dissolved.

I would have expected Puddy’s act to be a tough one to follow, but once the realization that the matches were back on filtered throughout the stands, the audience seemed twice as rapt as before. I don’t know if they were thinking lightning was going to strike twice or what, but the fights did not exactly have my undivided attention from that point on.

I knew that Puddy really was that strong, and after seeing her display of brutality I had a slightly better idea of just how strong that strong was. The question was, how? She had some resemblance to a dwarf, but her supposed ancestry was so far back that it could hardly have made the difference here. Besides, while I imagined a properly braced dwarf could slice an unarmored man in two with a decent axe of dwarven make, I couldn’t quite picture one cleaving through enchanted mail and plate at the same time… and it wouldn’t be effortless.

She claimed to have giant blood, as well… but if appearance was an accurate indicator of heritage, then that had to be even more diluted than the dwarf portion. Of the other bloodlines she’d claimed, the only one I knew she had some documentation of was a nymphly great-great-grandmother, but that could hardly explain it. Her ancestors supposedly also included dragon and sidhe… I supposed the officials who checked for buffs would have been likely to notice if she happened to be a secret half-dragon or something, and I couldn’t see how being related to the sidhe would begin to help.

“I want to have a little talk with her,” Steff said, breaking into my thoughts.

“What?”

“With Puddy,” Steff said. “I want to know how the hell she did that.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, images of Steff’s body slowly starting to separate replaying over and over again in my mind.

“No, it’ll be fine,” Steff said. “You know her as well as anybody does… what do you think she’d do if somebody came up and went, ‘Hey, I saw you in the arena!’ She’s a total attention whore… she’ll eat that shit right up, and probably blab the secret before I even ask.”

“What are you going to do if she tells you?” I asked.

“Probably nothing,” Steff said. “I’m not the marshal of the lists and I didn’t have any money on the fight. I just want to know how the hell she did it. It’s going to bug me. Though… on the other hand,” she said, her eyes darting to the side and narrowing as she spoke, “it would give me another in with Jilly if I could bust her. Have you ever seen her so pissed?”

“Uh… not that I can remember,” I said, thinking of the time she’d apparently strangled me into unconsciousness.

Steff laughed.

“Oh, honey, she wasn’t all that mad when you challenged her,” Steff said. “Just a little ticked off.”

“If she’s actually just that strong… without any buffs… would that disqualify her?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Steff said. “I know there are size restrictions, but I don’t know if they benchmark strength, or how they would even do that… but anyway, how would she have got to be that strong without magic?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t begin to figure it out. Even if her parents are rich enough and generous enough to shell out for a permanent strength enchantment… and it would have to be a huge one… I don’t think she’d have been able to hide it from the professional diviners.”

“Isn’t it harder to hide big enchantments than little ones?” Steff asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “And this one ought to be… well, I can barely imagine the scope of the resources it would take to cast it in the first place. To hide it, they’d basically have to do it twice. If she was going to cheat with enchantments, it would be much simpler to have a bunch of enhancements on her gear: a bunch of weightlessness, speed, strength, sharpness and stuff. But even if they were individually small enough to hide, the odds that they’d all go unnoticed… well, it’s not much better.”

“The helmet!” Steff said. “She pitched off her helmet, remember?”

“But wouldn’t that have been checked before?” I asked.

“Yeah, but obviously she pulled a fast one somehow… and smuggling in a replacement helmet would be a lot simpler than a lot of the things she could have done,” Steff said.

“Except she had to take the helmet off to pitch it,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” Steff said. “But couldn’t it have been enchanted to work its magic when it’s in contact with her?”

“That would be levels of magnitude more difficult,” I said. “The nature of a helmet is that it’s worn on the head. Magic that goes against something’s nature is harder to work and harder to hide. For that matter, a helmet wouldn’t be the best medium for strengthening spells. Eyesight, hearing, willpower, mental acumen, protection… yeah. Juggling battleaxes and prancing around in plate? Not so much. Besides, as much as I love geeking out like this, Puddy’s strong enough to overpower me in her street clothes. Trust me on that.”

“If you say so,” Steff said. Stymied, she turned her attention reluctantly back down to the pit, swinging her legs in the narrow gap in front of the next seatback down, her face crinkling in irritation. “Damn it, though… I just wish I knew.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. I felt like I had more of the puzzle pieces in front of me but could see even less of the picture.

We watched the fights, though it was clear the highlight of the second round had came and went. Few people pulled out any more flashy enchantments, and those who did so were usually in the process of being defeated when they did so. The winners were the people who were saving their magic uses for later rounds, when they’d be fighting each other.

An announcement came near the end of the second round, jarring what remained of my attention: “Mack Blaise to the box office… Mack Blaise to the box office.”

Maybe it was just because I hadn’t been paying attention to the crowd noise before, but it seemed to me like there was some murmuring at the sound of my name. I know I didn’t imagine the people I saw in the area down in front of us who turned and looked over their shoulder, some of them pointing less-than-discreetly.

“You could ignore it,” Steff said. “It’s probably a reporter or something.”

“How would they know I’m here?” I asked. “Maybe it’s Ian, or a message from him.”

“How would he know you’re here?”

“I was operating under the theory that he might have invited me,” I said.

“I’ll come with you,” Steff said.

I shook my head… if it was Ian, maybe he wanted a kiss for luck or something boyfriendy like that. I didn’t want to show up to meet him with Steff on my arm.

“You stay and watch the matches with Two,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

It wasn’t Ian who was waiting at the counter for me, but Mariel the sylph, among the more exotic residents of our exotic dorm… a five-foot tall, lithe air sprite with four arms and long silvery-blue hair, dressed as always in a dress that fulfilled only the barest minimum requirements for actual existence. Her hair had once flowed down well below her ass, but she’d cut it since the last time I saw her into a much shorter pageboy flip kind of thing. I wondered how much weight she’d lost… most of it, probably.

“Hi,” she said curtly. The single syllable word was barely a blip of her lips. It took me a couple of seconds to sort out that she’d actually said it instead of just opening and closing her mouth.

“Uh, hi,” I said.

“Puddy says your presence is distracting her,” Mariel said. “She wants you to leave.”

“I’m distracting her?” I said.

“That’s what she says.”

Right, I thought. Puddy says. I almost hadn’t recognized Puddy down in the pit, where she’d been standing by herself. There was no way she could have spotted my face in the crowd. It was kind of incredible to think that Mariel had just happened to notice me… but more credible than her claim that Puddy had seen, or that Puddy wanted me to leave. I didn’t even know if Mariel and Puddy were actually together any more.

“Well, I’m here with friends, Mariel, and we’re planning on staying until Ian fights,” I said.

“Ian?”

“My boyfriend,” I said.

“When does he fight?”

“Not until late,” I said. “He’s an unarmed fighter.”

“So you could leave and come back,” she said.

“I’m not going to leave,” I said. “I’m here with friends.”

“Just for her match,” Mariel said.

“Why should I?”

“Because-she-doesn’t-want-you-here!” Mariel said, the words exploding out of her in a torrent as she jumped up and down, waving her arms angrily around. It was easy to see why the older drawings of sylphs gave them hummingbird wings… it looked like she actually got a little lift from flapping her arms. She kept talking, too, but the words all blurred together indistinguishably.

“Okay, okay!” I said. “I’ll go hang out with Amaranth when she fights.”

“You have to leave the arena,” Mariel said.

“It’s out of sight,” I said. “There’s no way she could even know if I was there or not.”

“She told me to make sure you promise to be all the way out of the arena,” Mariel said.

“How would she even know if I kept my promise?” I said. “For all she knows, I could tell you I’m leaving, and then go back and sit in my seat. She’d never know.”

Mariel didn’t say anything, she just stood there staring at me, folding and re-folding her arms. She knew… or Puddy knew, or suspected… that I wouldn’t make a promise and then deliberately break it.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go out in the hallway, or something. Is that far enough?”

“She just said out of the arena,” Mariel said. “You promise?”

“Yeah, I promise,” I said. “But tell Puddy to chill, okay? Whatever’s passed between us, there shouldn’t be any reason we can’t be in the same…”

I blinked mid-sentence and realized that Mariel had taken my answer and vanished, leaving me talking to her wake. Lovely. Well, it wasn’t like I cherished her company or anything.

There was a possible angle for Steff’s “snuck in a ringer” theory, though… so many aspects of university life were arranged around human expectations. That meant somebody could have really pulled a fast one… would they have any precautions against a gladiator whose girlfriend could literally run like the wind? Mariel could have switched out some of Puddy’s gear after it was checked… or maybe smuggled in something small, like a ring. Rings were more versatile than helmets, enchantment-wise, and small enough that she could have hid it in the helmet before she…

No. That was even worse than the magic helmet theory. She wouldn’t even have been touching the ring when she lobbed the helmet. That, and it didn’t account for the fact that Puddy had shown the same awful strength before.

Of course, if it was something small, it could have been on her the whole time… then taken off before the match, snuck in by Mariel, and hidden in the helmet and flung out of range of the diviners. She stomps off the field, retrieves her charm or whatever from the helmet before they think to check…

But she’d been superhumanly strong when she threw the helmet.

There was just no way to make it add up. It was ridiculously unlikely that she was that strong to begin with, that she could have a sizable enough enchantment to make her that strong, that she could have hidden it… I couldn’t make sense of it, no matter how I tried.

As much as I would have loved to keep myself and everybody I cared about as far away from Puddy as I could, it seemed like Steff was right about one thing: the only way to find out would be to ask. I’d do it myself, though, just in case it got ugly… Steff was a far better fighter, but I was a lot closer to matching Puddy in strength, and I knew she was afraid of my fire.

Puddy wheeled around mid-stride, bringing her axe up and catching me in the forehead with the flat of the head. She didn’t have the space for a good swing, so it was more my momentum than hers, but it was enough to send me reeling with pretty colored lights exploding inside my eyes.

Shaking my head as though to clear my vision, I snarled and flexed my… well, my whole body sort of contracted in one powerful spasm. When my arms came up into my field of vision, I became aware that they were on fire.

I wasn’t terribly surprised.

I reached out one burning hand towards Puddy. She swiped with her axe and I took half a step back.

Two yelled something. Puddy twitched as if she wanted to turn around to face her, but she kept her eyes on me. I took a step to the side, trying to circle around. Puddy said something, but her words made no sense to me.

They were just a low, dull rumble. Sounds without sense.

They infuriated me, all the same.

She jabbed forward with the axe. It wasn’t a real attack, just a prod. I wanted to get that axe away from her. It was the only thing keeping me off her. I reached for it, and she swung at my hand.

I pulled back.

The axe could hurt me. It could kill me. Puddy knew it. She wasn’t letting me get close. If I got close, I could end it.

Fast.

Forever.

If Puddy would let me past the axe. That didn’t seem likely, though. She was watching me too closely.

She should have been watching Two.

The cute little mace came down on the back of Puddy’s head, with whatever strength Two could muster with both of her arms. More potent was the electrical jolt which lifted Puddy off of her feet and sent the axe flying from her hand.

She fell forward, landing heavily on the floor… unconscious, or at least stunned.

I wasn’t seeing her lying on the ground, though. I was seeing her standing over my bed, “jokingly” smothering me. I saw her leering at me, beckoning to me. I saw her hands on me… those same hands reaching for Two. I saw her leading me to the basement for the first time.

I fell on her, teeth bared.

“Baby, no!” Amaranth cried from behind me, her words cutting through the fog in my head. A heavy form crashed into me and long arms circled around me, knocking me down onto Puddy’s downed form and then wrenching me away to the side.

We rolled and wrestled around a bit. I howled in rage and frustration, and my flame increased threefold. A cry of pain and anguish from the soft form which had ended up beneath me which was choked off as my fire-wreathed hands found a throat and closed in around it, squeezing the life out of the stupid thing that had come between me and my target.

Suddenly half convinced that it was Puddy beneath me, I squeezed harder.

There was screaming all around me. Something jabbed me in the side, and pain shot through me with an explosive snap. All my joints seemed to pop at once, and my jaw locked tight.

The world went away for a bit, and I was laying on my back on the floor twitching and covered in water. There was a smell in the air… something cooking. Something burning.

“What…?” I murmured. My arms and legs were numb. Somebody was screaming their head off. I couldn’t sit up. I managed to turn my neck a little.

“Oh, fuck, Mack, don’t look,” Steff said, grabbing my head and turning it back towards the ceiling. “Don’t look. Two, get Dee. Don’t tell Kiersta. Mariel, shut up or I will shut you up.”

I could see Mariel helping Puddy unsteadily to her feet.

“If she dies, I swear to fuck I’ll kill you,” Steff said. “I don’t care if she comes back. You don’t get away with that.”

“I didn’t start this,” Puddy said. “And I didn’t even touch her.”

“I’m not dying,” I said feebly, though I wasn’t entirely sure. I still didn’t seem to have full control of my limbs. I started to sit up. Steff pushed me down.

“Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t look around.”

“Where’s Amaranth?” I asked. My voice sounded thick and slurred. There was a slight echo, but that might have just been in my head.

“Shh,” Steff said. “Help’s coming.”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“Shh.” Steff said.

There was a gasp from the doorway.

“Mother of mothers!” somebody said, and it took me a moment to recognize it as Dee. I’d never heard her with that much emotion in her voice. “Get her out of here. I will tend to Amaranth as best I can.”

“What’s wrong with Amaranth?” I asked. Had I been knocked out? Had Puddy done something else while I was oblivious?

“Nothing, hon,” Steff said. She ducked down beside me and pulled me up into a sitting position, then helped me to my feet. To Dee, she said, “If you can bring her around, she should be able to help.”

“What’s…” I started to ask, twisting around and out of Steff’s grip. I was still a little shaky, but I was able to get free and see what she hadn’t wanted me to.

Amaranth lay on the floor. Her stomach, chest, and parts of her thighs were covered with fresh, angry burns, as was her neck. The neck was the worst. Dee knelt beside her, chanting quietly.

My knees turned to water.

“Come on,” Steff said, tugging me towards the door. “You need to get out of here if Dee’s going to help her.”

“What did I do?” I asked, though I knew exactly what I had done.

“Help me, Two!” Steff said.

“Okay,” Two said, and there were two sets of arms supporting me and taking me out into the hall, which was now deserted except for Celia who looked totally lost. They leaned me against the wall, and then I collapsed crying against Steff.

“Hon, it’s okay,” Steff said. “The worst… she’ll just have to catch a coach back to school. That’s all.”

“You had to fucking interfere,” Puddy said, coming out into the doorway.

“Fuck off,” Steff said.

“Me fuck off? You come to my room spouting a bunch of bullshit, you attack me… nothing that happened is on me,” Puddy said.

“Oh, right,” Steff said. “You were just minding your own business, innocently beating the shit out of your girlfriend…”

“She w-w-wasn’t beating me,” Mariel said, and I could see that, though her eyes were puffy and irritated, there weren’t any bruises or other injuries. She hiccupped. “I w-wish she would. It would be b-b-b…” The words turned into a sob, and she threw back her head and wailed. Four arms reached out to Puddy, who stepped back and turned aside, and Mariel collapsed on the floor, pounding her tiny fists and crying.

“What the fuck did you do to her?” Steff asked, handing me over to Two who put her arms around me without a word.

“Nothing,” Puddy said.

“Bullshit!” Steff said.

“We broke up!” Puddy said, which only made Mariel wail more loudly. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we broke up!”

“I left my boyfriend for you,” Mariel said, getting to her feet. “I did everything for you. Three weeks we’ve been going out… three… weeks… and I’ve done everything you ever said!”

“The hell you did,” Puddy said. “We both agreed to vote for Mack. After I stopped drinking for you, you turn around and stab me in the fucking back and make me look like an idiot in front of my friends!”

“They aren’t your friends! They hate you! I hate you! And I am so fucking sick of Mack!” Mariel shrieked, her speech becoming faster and higher pitched as she spoke. “Ever since we got here, it’s been nothing but…” and after that it was an incomprehensible squeak.

A door opened up the hall. Kiersta poked her head out.

“Can you guys please … holy shit, what happened to your clothes?” she asked.

I reached up and felt the ragged, charred collar of my t-shirt that hung around my neck. It was all that was left of the garment. My bra was a twisted ruin. My jeans had fared only a little better.

“You’re dripping all over the hallway,” she said. “What the fuck did you guys do now?”

“Whatever we did, it’s your fault,” Steff said. “And if any of this gets out, I’ll make sure everybody knows.”

“Fuck it,” Kiersta said, and she disappeared back into the Leightons’.

“Hey, send Fin down here!” Steff called just as the door closed. It opened a moment later and Finbar stepped out, a little hesitantly.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” he asked.

“Healing potions,” Steff said.

“What?”

“Go get healing potions,” Steff said.

“You know that shit doesn’t come cheap,” he said.

“Do I look like I care?” Steff asked. “Go!”

Finbar went.

The twins popped out of their room.

“Hey, what’s…?” Sara started to say, but she took one look at Steff and they disappeared, too. I didn’t blame them. Steff looked like she didn’t know whether she wanted to break something or stab somebody, and was probably willing to do both.

A short while later, Dee came out into the hallway.

“I have done what I could,” she said. “That is not as much as I would like. The burns are slightly resistant. I touched her mind and put her into a healing slumber for now. As impolitic as it would be, we may have no choice but to take her to the healing center.”

Steff shook her head.

“I sent Fin for healing potions. There’s no way I’m letting anybody at the healing center see this… especially not when they’re afraid of a lawsuit from Mack,” Steff said. “There’s no way they wouldn’t put it together. I’m not handing them any ammunition. Not when Amy can just, you know, come back.”

“Ian… Ian said they asked him about his burn,” I said. “After my flare-up in class. He lied about it.”

“They asked Two about hers, too,” Steff said. “Though luckily you had nothing to do with that.”

“What was that about, anyway?” I asked Two, who was still holding me. I’d stopped shaking enough to notice that she was shaking, too. “Why did you summon a demon?”

I’d meant to ask her that long before, but it had never seemed like the right moment. I didn’t think this particular moment could be any more wrong, but it didn’t look like the right moment would ever come, and the subject was up.

“I had questions,” she said quietly. “The library book didn’t have the answers.”

“Like…” I started to say, but then Finbar arrived with a duffel bag over his shoulder.

“Luckily I keep all my legal stuff in one place,” he said. “I brought everything.”

“Come on,” Steff said.

“You stay the hell out of my room,” Puddy said to Steff.

“Fuck you,” Steff said and breezed past her. I pulled away from Two and followed.

We all piled in, even Celia, who’d been standing dazedly in the hallway the whole time.

Amaranth looked a little better. What had been black was now red, and what had been red was pink. Her breathing was steady and peaceful. Though I could see the dried and cracked skin breaking as her chest rose and fell, her face was serene.

“Fucking cock balls,” Celia said.

“Oh, shit,” Finbar said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“I know,” Steff said. “Fix it.”

“This is gonna add up,” he said. “You know that?”

“Know,” Steff said. “Don’t care.”

“Right,” Finbar said. He set the bag down on one of the beds and rummaged through it. He handed Steff three small jars of unguent. “Rub this on her… well, anywhere that’s bad. Slather it on.”

Steff nodded and took the jars from him. She unscrewed the lid from one and began to daub the yellowish contents around Amaranth’s burns.

“Don’t be fucking dainty! Rub it in!” Fin said.

Steff grimaced, looked at Amaranth’s sleeping face, and began to massage the thick paste directly onto her wounds. She stopped when the scorched skin began to peel away.

“Keep going,” Fin said. “It’s supposed to do that… I think.”

“You think?” Steff asked.

“I’ve never used it,” Fin said. He turned and rummaged around some more while Steff continued to rub the unguent over Amaranth, using up one jar and then another. Her skin sloughed off. It was unsettling to watch, but I couldn’t look away.

I did this.

It was my fault. I’d done it to her. My rage at Puddy had overwhelmed me, and I’d nearly killed the first person who’d truly loved me in years.

Two’s arms were around me before the first tears spilled from my eyes.

“Tip her head up,” Fin said. Steff did, and he poured something down her throat. She coughed and spit up the bluish liquid. “Shit.”

He tipped her head back and poured some more of the potion in, then held her mouth closed. Steff tickled the front of her neck, and she swallowed. Finbar went and grabbed two more potions, which they force-fed her. Steff took another of the potions and gave it to me. I started to protest, but she gave me a look and I took it. I hadn’t realized how fuzzy my head really was until it cleared up.

Some of the burn ointment was on the floor with bits of skin dissolving in it, but the front of Amaranth was clean. There were a few pink spots where the worst of the damage had been, but other than that it looked like nothing had even happened.

“She should be awake,” Fin said. “Why isn’t she awake? Shit.”

“Her mind isn’t allowing her,” Dee said. “I will awaken her.”

She stepped forward and reached a shaky hand out towards Amaranth. Amaranth’s eyelids fluttered and then flew open. She gasped and a blue bubble popped out of her mouth.

“Amy?” Steff said.

“Um… hi?” Amaranth said. “What’s everybody standing around for?”

I threw myself down on her and clung to her like a lifeline, sobbing. There was a faint, slightly painful tingle from the residual divine power of Dee’s healing, but I didn’t care.

“She’s fine, okay?” Puddy said. “Can everybody please get the fuck out of my room now?”

“My room,” Mariel said. “This was my room first!”

“Yeah, well, it’s mine now,” Puddy said. She threw her head back. “Fuck!” she screamed. “What the hell do I have to do to catch a break? I’ve saved your ass how many times now, Mack? And you turn around and lead a fucking raiding party to my door…”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I got to my feet, and helped Amaranth out. “I was wrong about the circumstances… but I’m not going to let you keep hurting people.”

“What hurting people?” Puddy said. “I told you that wasn’t me. I’m sober now.”

“It was you,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m glad you stopped drinking…”

“If I’m not going to get any credit for it, maybe I should start again,” Puddy said.

“Come on, baby,” Amaranth said. She kissed the side of my head. “There’s really nothing else to say.”

“Everybody out!” Puddy said.

“I want you out, too,” Mariel said to Puddy, who ignored her.

Fin was the first one out the door, hightailing it back to his girlfriends’ room. The rest of us followed. A shriek from behind us turned us back around to see Puddy hauling Mariel towards the door by her upper forearm and throwing her out, slamming the door behind her and locking it.

Mariel’s scream was too fast to decipher as she hammered on the door with her four fists, tears streaming down her face. She seemed to exhaust herself in seconds, then kicked the door feebly and turned away.

“You can sleep in my bed if you want,” Amaranth said, holding out her key.

Mariel looked sullen as she took it, but said, “Thanks.”

She glared at me before she headed to Amaranth’s room. She obviously blamed me for everything that had happened. Was she wrong? I didn’t know.

Amaranth had stretched away from me to hand Mariel the key, and I clung all the more tightly to her when her arm was back around me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hugging her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“I did it,” Amaranth said. “Not you. And I’d do it again.”

“Don’t say that,” I said. “I couldn’t live if I ever… if I…”

“I’d come back,” Amaranth said. “I have that. Most people don’t. If I have to throw my body away to stop you from hurting somebody else, I may be saving your life as well as theirs.” She kissed me. “Remember that, baby. If it ever happens. Promise me you’ll remember that.”

“I promise,” I said.

“I’m sorry I maced you, Mack,” Two said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You had to. Who put me out?”

“I did that, too,” Two said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Let’s get to bed,” Amaranth said quietly. “Steff, you sure you don’t want to join us?”

Steff shook her head.

“I think I need Viktor,” she said. She looked pale and drawn, and was shaking now that the crisis was over without fighting.

“Okay,” Amaranth said. “Good night.”

“Night.”

“What the fuck happened?” Celia asked, still sounding out of it.

“We’ll tell you tomorrow,” Amaranth said. “Come on, Two… come on, baby. It’s been a long day.”

As understatements went, that one pretty much won. I think I was out before we actually got into bed.