My insides turned to ice at the sound of her voice. I felt paralyzed, like the way it feels sometimes when you wake up too quickly from too deep a sleep. My throat locked shut, which was entirely incidental since my lungs also refused to work. I could feel her gaze beating into the back of my head, could feel her looking down at me.

I felt tiny. I felt trapped. I felt nine years old and alone.

But I wasn’t alone… I had Amaranth and Ian, and I had Lee who was being well-compensated by someone to watch my back. Granted, I wasn’t sure exactly what good a lawyer was against an authoritarian grandmother… but in thinking that, I realized that his relative uselessness directly related to the lack of actual power she had over me.

She could talk… that was it. It could be awful, it could be hard for me to get through, but eventually it would be over. She couldn’t make me do anything. However difficult it could be for me to say no to her, she couldn’t make me say yes.

I turned to face her.

She was as I remembered her, wearing the winter version of what she called her “traveling clothes”, though she’d never traveled more than two towns over in them that I could remember: a tweed overcoat and a riding cape. The bottom of the long coat was segmented , as was the woolen skirt I knew she’d be wearing beneath it.

I couldn’t picture my grandmother as any kind of a knight, but it occurred to me that her clothing always tended to resemble armor of a sort: thick layers, little skin exposed… as though it were protecting her from a wicked world.

Her face was… not something I could comment on directly. I could picture it well enough without raising my eyes to meet her gaze. Stern… hard and cold as stone. It wasn’t a face that needed to be seen more than once or twice before it burned itself all the way into the back of your skull.

“You might say hello to your grandmother,” she said.

“Hello, Grandmother,” I croaked through lips that felt heavy and numb.

“Ungrateful as ever, I see,” she said. “I traveled all this way to do what I can…”

“Excuse me,” Lee said, rushing just past me to stand slightly in front of me. “We appreciate how far you’ve traveled, but as I told you before, my client has nothing to say to you at this time.”

“That’s fine for your client, but I have plenty to say to my granddaughter,” she said. “I have come all this way to help her.”

“That’s kind of you, but what she needs right now is capable legal representation,” Lee said. “Which is something, regrettably, you cannot provide… especially as you have insinuated yourself into the investigation.”

“Insinuations are for serpents and servants of the dark ones,” my grandmother said. “I offered my services, as it was needful and I was nearby.”

“Commendable,” Lee said. “But having done so places you in something of a compromised position with regards to…”

I winced at his choice of words, and was not surprised at what came next.

“‘Compromise’ is a dirty word, Mr. Attorney,” my grandmother said.

I touched Lee’s arm and stepped forward. His words were carefully chosen, but he wasn’t dealing with a temporal court when he spoke with my grandmother. He was not going to do anything if he stood there trying to ironwall her except maybe provoke another physical response. Maybe that was his goal… maybe he was trying to get her removed from the situation entirely, I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to see it happen.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Mackenzie, I think we should just walk away,” he said quietly.

“I walked away from her already,” I said. “It didn’t take.”

“All the more reason not to engage with her now,” he said. “I can’t speak about your personal life, but there are more important things going on right now… you can’t afford to be distracted.”

“I know,” I said. “Let me try to deal with this now, and if it works… then there won’t be any distraction.”

He looked at me, and then nodded.

“If we get that reflection I’m waiting for, we’re going,” he said.

“That’s fine by me,” I said.

I kind of hoped it came sooner rather than later.

I didn’t really deserve any bravery points for deciding to confront my grandmother. I was, after all, simply giving in to what she wanted. It came naturally, even as my mind rebelled from it. This was why I had been so reluctant to read her letters or reach out to her. I’d spent nine years jumping at her command, fearing her anger, hiding from her disapproval… a couple months of relative liberty was not going to undo all that.

If I didn’t have Amaranth in my life… if I didn’t have her physically present… I couldn’t say that I wouldn’t just surrender completely and go back with her when she demanded it.

“Hello, Grandmother,” I said again, a little more clearly.

This time I raised my eyes… and I was surprised to find that my eyes were just about level with hers. I was maybe even a little taller. It seemed strange… it had always felt like she towered over me.

Her face was as I had expected, and not. She looked tired… tired and older. She’d never been young even in my dimmest memories, but somehow she seemed to be, well, diminished. Had the years caught up with her suddenly somehow? Or had my impression of her been frozen in time, and it was only when seeing her with fresh eyes that I could see what the last decade or so had done?

“Well,” she said. “The academic life has wrought some changes, I see.”

I nodded. For the better, I thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that. I kicked myself inwardly for not being able to voice disagreement. How much could I really believe it if I couldn’t say it?

“And your… companion,” she said, looking past me. “I heard about that, of course, but I wasn’t sure I believed it.”

“I’ve heard about you, too,” Amaranth said, her voice getting closer as she spoke. “I want to thank you for keeping Mack safe after her mother’s passing. It can’t have been easy…”

“Do not condescend to me, creature,” my grandmother said. “I won’t stand for it.”

“Hey!” I said, my voice rising completely out of control. “Don’t you talk to her like that.”

My grandmother recoiled as if struck… struck by something ugly, poisonous, and unexpected. She stared, her face frozen in a horrified expression.

“Baby…” Amaranth said.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I know I shouldn’t have raised…”

“Your head is on fire,” Amaranth said.

“What?” I said. I touched my face with my hand. My fingers, up near my hairline, felt the tickle of flame. “Oh, shit.” I tried to calm myself, while also drawing the flame back into me. “Um… how’s that?”

“Better,” Amaranth said.

My grandmother clicked her tongue. I looked and saw her shaking her head sadly.

“All that work, undone just like that,” she said. “Apparently my love for you is no match for a little lust.”

“I love Amaranth,” I said. “And she loves me.”

“You poor, confused child,” my grandmother said. “She cannot love you. Her mistress makes nothing but low beasts, and that is what she is: a beast of the field, wrapped up in sinful flesh to mock and tempt the creations of more civilized gods.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Blaise, but I think your grasp of theology, while undoubtedly very good within a narrow field, is somewhat lacking in breadth,” Amaranth said. “That is to say, I think that perhaps you aren’t as knowledgeable about deities who aren’t your own as you maybe think you are.”

“Ooh, sick burn?” Ian said.

“Well, excuse me for being polite, but I’m not about to speak disrespectfully to a senior citizen, who’s also a paladin and Mack’s closest living relative,” Amaranth said.

“I’m sorry, folks, but I really can’t allow this… reunion… to continue right now,” Lee said. He had his mirror out. “Mackenzie, do you know where the admin building is? We’re going to go there right now. Even if we have to wait when we get there… I’d rather wait in a closed environment than hang around in the open and wait to see what else comes along.”

He looked at me like he expected an argument but I just nodded. There wasn’t going to be anything productive coming out of talking to my grandmother, obviously. By speaking to her… even lashing out at her a little… I felt like I’d won a small personal victory. She could intimidate me, yeah, but I didn’t have to let her control me.

“It’s over by the east edge of campus,” I said.

“Alright,” he said. “I’m just going to let them know we’re coming.”

“Wait,” my grandmother said. “You could at least hear my offer, Kenzie.”

“My mother named me Mackenzie,” I said. My effort to control the volume of my voice only succeeded in turning it into a sort of growl.

“The least of her sins,” my grandmother said. “But not so small that I’ll take part in it.”

“You’re going to insult my mother…”

“And you, baby,” Amaranth said, putting her hand on my shoulder.

“…and expect me to listen to what you have to say?” I asked.

“I loved your mother as dearly as any mother loves her child,” my grandmother said. “Faults and all. That doesn’t mean I can be blind to them. Real love isn’t blind, Kenzie. It keeps its eyes open. If I were blind to your nature, for instance, I wouldn’t have been able to care for you as well as I did. That was a difficult job, and a thankless one, and one that no one could have forced me to do if I hadn’t felt obliged to do it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Really. I could sit here and argue about whether you made the best decisions or whether you were fair or kind or loving, or whatever, but you’re right, you took me in for nine years and I’m still alive and I’m free. So, thank you… but you’re done. I’m eighteen. I’m an adult.”

“You’re a demon,” she said. “You don’t grow out of that, child. If there’s any truth to what I’ve been hearing in the news, you’ve been growing into it in my absence.”

“Yeah, I’m half-demon,” I said. “Going back with you isn’t going to change that either, is it?”

“It’ll matter less,” she said. “Out here, you could kill someone so easily. I know you didn’t have anything to do with that shifter girl, Kenzie, but you could have… and eventually, inevitably, it will happen. You will kill someone and they will put you down, or you’ll be killed by someone trying to stop you. And you probably think that’s the most awful thing, but that’s not even the beginning of your torment. You’ll end up the only place in creation meant for your kind, and your precious human soul will suffer forever for it.”

“You’ve always made it sound like you think that’s going to happen anyway,” I said. “No matter when I die.”

She nodded.

“It’s a hard truth, child… all you can do is live as well as you can, as long as you can,” she said. “I don’t want to hold out false hope… I know the ways of the gods and the ways of souls as well as any mortal woman, and that isn’t saying much. I suppose it’s possible that if you do as little evil as you can, there might be… well, the main point is that if you live a quiet life, under close supervision, it may be longer before you have to find out.”

“And that’s your idea of living as well as I can,” I said. “Going back and hiding in your basement.”

“You never complained about the basement before,” she said.

“It took me away from you,” I said. “It was my place. You came into my bedroom. You searched my bag, my books, my bed sheets. I didn’t even have a fucking door for years. The basement door locked. You never went down there. You never bothered me there. No one ever bothered me there.” I laughed as I thought about what I was saying. “Do you know how messed up it is that I’m grateful for a door that locked on the other side? That’s all the privacy I had.”

“My vigilance kept you safe,” she said.

“Well, I’m done being kept,” I said. “And anyway, what would happen to me when you die?”

“I’ve made arrangements,” she said. “The temple has institutions…”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of them,” I said, remembering Mercy’s story about where her new half-demon slave came from. “I’ve seen what they do to people.”

“As with anything of the mortal world, there’s good and there’s bad,” she said. “I have your interests at heart, child.”

“Actually, I represent her interests,” Lee said. He snapped his mirror shut. “And we’re going right now. Mrs. Blaise, if Mackenzie wishes to discuss this any further after the present situation is resolved, she knows how to contact you. Come along.” He gestured to an eastward path, and I started walking down it. He stepped in behind me.

“This discussion is not finished,” my grandmother said.

“It was, um, nice to finally meet you,” Amaranth said as she and Ian followed behind Lee.

“Mackenzie,” my grandmother said.

I stopped. Lee took hold of my arm.

“Mackenzie… if I were not your attorney and you were not about to speak to an imperial investigator, I’d still you it’s not a good idea to let her play on your emotions,” he said. “If I were your friend, I would tell you that you’ve got nothing to gain by giving her any more of your time.”

“Yeah, and you’d be right,” I said. I sighed and pulled my arm away. I turned and walked back past Amaranth and Ian.

“Baby…” Amaranth said, but she didn’t seem to have anything to follow that up with.

“What do you have to say?” I asked my grandmother, looking her square in the eye. My gaze was as steady as it had ever been. The rest of me was about as steady as an overcaffeinated sylph.

“This is not a good place,” she said.

“Even if that were true, that still wouldn’t make me come home,” I said. I winced at the fact that I’d called it home.

“We can find a better one,” she said. “Come home and we’ll look. A smaller school, not so far away.”

“Any school that meets your approval is not likely to approve of me,” I said. “Or be safe for me to walk around on.”

“Secular,” she said. “You’ll live at home. Think about it: you’ll be able to focus on your studies. How much studying do you do here, with your wild parties and all the trouble you get into?”

“You don’t know anything about my life here,” I said.

“A beautiful child got murdered here,” she said. “A godless child from the Shift, but I’ll eat my cape if she was the only one who died this weekend. There’s a culture of death here.”

“It’s a dangerous campus. A lot of the courses are adversity-oriented,” I said. “I’m just here to learn to enchant.”

“You could do that other places.”

“Not as well as I can do it here,” I said.

“We could get you into a guild school and you’d be finished in three years,” she said.

“And then what?” I asked.

“And then you go off and do what you want to,” she said. “Can I stop you?”

“You mean if I went off and got a job somewhere on the coast or wherever else, you wouldn’t turn up there trying to talk me into coming back to your house like you did here?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t pick the coast for you,” she said. “But, Kenzie… this is not a good place. I knew it wasn’t a godly place when you left, and I let you go. It was only when I started to see just how bad it was for you that I followed.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that won’t happen no matter where I go?” I asked. “If I went back with you and started next semester at a community college, how long would it be before you saw something in the paper or heard about something that you disapproved of? How long before you decided it was bad for me?”

“Kenzie, you’re not being reasonable,” she said.

“My name is Mackenzie,” I said. “I’d say you can call me ‘Mack’ if you want, but that’s for my friends. And I don’t for one second believe that you’re being as reasonable as you want me to think… you came here because you don’t believe I should be out in the world. Whatever you’re offering me now, I don’t believe you’d follow through with it.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Her tone rattled me, but I stood firm. Well, I took a step back, but metaphorically I stood firm.

“I’m saying you have dishonest intentions,” I said. “So, uh… yeah, I guess that’s a yes, I am calling you a liar.” I watched her lips get very thin and very white, but I kept talking. If I stopped, I might not get to start again. “You’re thinking of it as the truth because you’ve convinced yourself that you really would help me find another college, but you know in your heart that it would never happen… or that it wouldn’t last. You think that if you can get me back under my roof, you can just wear me down again and eventually I’ll stop fighting… and you’re probably right, and that’s why I’m not going back, no matter what you promise.”

She didn’t respond immediately. Her upper lip trembled a little and her nose kind of bulged out at the side a bit, like her nostrils were flaring. I didn’t know how to read that… I’d spent years not looking at her face, especially when she was angry. It didn’t seem like it could be good.

“Well,” she said. It was a whole sentence in and of itself. “I hope that you remember that I came to you in love and kindness. I’ll be in Enwich for a week, maybe more, but not less than a week. If you decide to come back to me after that… well, a lot will depend on circumstances.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “If you want me to, you know, keep in touch or something… I’m not making any promises about that, either, but I’m definitely not going to have anything to say to you when I know you’re angling to drag me back home with you.”

“You can’t trust yourself,” she said.

“Maybe not,” I said.

“That’s why you have to trust me, Kenzie,” she said.

“You’re the reason I can’t trust myself here,” I said.

“I’m not one to give up,” she said. “And I’m too old to learn the habit. This is a wicked place. It would be better for all if you would leave it… it can do no good for you, and you can bring no good to it. I came to you in love and kindness, Kenzie… I’ll be back if I have to, and if need be, I’ll leave the kindness at home.”

I felt Lee’s hand on my shoulder. It occurred to me that I was getting touched an awful lot, but except for that weird moment where I realized it, I didn’t mind it. It was a very neutral touch, an announcement that he was here.

“That really is enough,” he said.

I didn’t expect my grandmother to back down, but she nodded once.

“Any thing further I say would be a waste, I expect,” she said. “And I’m not in the habit of wasting words. I’ll leave my current address at your hall, Kenzie.”

I didn’t respond, didn’t even so much as nod back. I just turned and started walking away again. This time she didn’t say anything to stop me, didn’t follow.

“You know,” Amaranth said to me, as we got farther away from the classroom buildings and from her, “she really does seem to have your best interests at heart.”

I couldn’t really disagree with that… I didn’t particularly want to agree, and I was afraid of where she might be going, but I couldn’t disagree.

“That doesn’t make her right, though,” she said, taking my hand. “And more, it doesn’t give her any control over you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since coming here… well, I’ve learned lots of things, I mean, it is a school and there are so many new people and… sorry, that’s a little off topic. What I meant to say is, someone can have the best of intentions and still screw things up terribly.”

“You know, when you put it that way, I’m not sure I agree that she has the best of intentions,” I said. “I mean, there are intentions behind intentions. What she wants could be summed up as being ‘for the greater good’ or even ‘the best for me’, but… it’s based on assumptions about who and what I am and what I’m going to do that really aren’t… good.” The tail end of that thought process had got away from me, but I thought the idea came across pretty well. “And you… you’ve never wanted anything for me that I haven’t wanted for myself. Well, I mean, you haven’t actively done anything that wasn’t based on what I want for myself. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, baby,” Amaranth said.

“You don’t actually think she’s going to leave you alone for the rest of the week, do you?” Ian asked. “I mean, I don’t know her at all, but… she didn’t really give off a ‘leave well enough alone’ kind of vibe.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think she’s done with me, but I don’t care. I’m done with her.”

“Listen, Mackenzie,” Lee said. “I let you play that out because I don’t believe she’s going to be integral to the investigation in any way. But it’s going to be a different situation when we’re dealing with the imperials… a much tighter leash. If someone makes an emotional ploy, let me respond. Whatever arrows come your way, I’m your shield. Got it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got it.”

“Good,” he said. “Now, I had a quick conference while you were… involved, and so I think we’re going to be able to see Gregory fairly quickly. There are going to be a few reporters around, but they should behave themselves… the imperials don’t have to play nice with them. We’re lucky, if this weren’t an imperial matter then the campus would probably be lousy with reporters. We wouldn’t have taken a walk outside if that were the case, of course… as soon as we’ve spoken to Gregory, I’ll get a statement out with the highlights: you’ve spoken to investigators as a floormate of the deceased, you weren’t present, aren’t under suspicion, and so on. I have a draft of it on my tablet already to go… I don’t want to send it out before the ‘definitely not under suspicion’ and ‘most certainly not under arrest’ parts are officially true.”

“You are pretty confident that they will be true, though, aren’t you?” Amaranth asked him.

“I am very confident,” he said. “I just don’t want to tempt fate… or anybody else. Despite all the pressure, a murder investigation can drag on a long time. The longer it drags on, the more attractive a convenient solution looks. That’s why I’m determined to get this resolved for you today, before anything else goes wrong.”

I appreciated his enthusiasm, but it seemed to me like Lee could have used a few lessons in the whole “not tempting fate” thing.

Next: Would having Mr. Embries show up in the main story right after Martha be pandering? Possibly!

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I must have… I had to have heard him wrong. My grandmother was hundreds of miles away. She’d shown no inclination to follow me to MU when I first left. It seemed impossible that she should show up now, in the midst of everything that was going on.

“Martha Blaise,” Lee repeated. “Is she your grandmother?”

“What’s my grandmother doing here?” I asked.

“Sounds like she’s advocating for you… somewhat,” Lee said. “She’s in a conference with the lead finder on site. Closed door, but very loud. I figured she was a student’s parent or relative, but I asked one of the locals who she was when I realized she was talking about demonic traces, or rather their absence.”

“So you haven’t talked to her?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Lee said. “She seems to be arguing with… it sounds like she thinks the case against you is stronger than it is. She’s trying to cut a deal on your behalf. You folks weren’t kidding about thin walls.”

“Her voice sort of carries,” I said, and in fact I could sort of hear her in the background of the reflection. “I don’t want any part of a deal she makes.”

“Mackenzie, you’re a competent adult,” Lee said. “I represent you, not her… she’s not in a position to make a deal for you and you’re not in so bad a position you’d need her to. I don’t know your whole family background, so I’m sorry if this is upsetting to you, but overall it’s a good thing. Her word isn’t going to be definitive, given her obvious bias, but if she knows what she’s talking about and can be assumed to be telling the truth…”

“I really can’t imagine her lying,” I said. “I think she’d probably burst into flame or something.”

“Yes, well, that’s a huge trump for us,” Lee said. “We can already establish that you were elsewhere. It’s going to be established that you weren’t here. My job is just going to be making sure these facts aren’t overlooked, and that neither are your rights.”

“Um, can I butt in?” Ian said, sliding around next to me and leaning into view of the small mirror. “Hi. Again, just going by the TV version here, but don’t you think this could actually look kind of bad? Her, um, lovers vouch for her whereabouts, her close relative volunteers her demon-scanning expertise to prove it wasn’t her…”

“Yes, there are some potential pitfalls there, but I’m not in the best place to discuss strategy,” he said. His voice dropped. “I’m about to interrupt the conversation… let both parties know that I represent Mackenzie and that you are ready to talk to Inspector Gregory whenever it’s convenient for him. I think we should be able to wrap up your part of this investigation this afternoon.”

“If we can do it without any interaction between my grandmother and me, I’d appreciate it,” I said.

Amaranth grabbed the mirror from me. Lee swore as the image in front of him undoubtedly spun like crazy.

“Lee, don’t worry… do whatever’s most certain to see Mack through safely,” she said. “We’ll sort out the family stuff later.”

“I wouldn’t do anything else,” he said. “And please… please don’t do that again.”

“Oh, sorry!” she said.

“I’m attracting stares now,” he said. “So I’m gonna get to work. You three sit tight.”

“Okay,” Amaranth said. “Good luck!”

“Uh, thank you.”

She snapped the mirror shut with a satisfied smile that wobbled a little when she saw my glare.

“I’m sorry for snatching him away like that, baby, but you shouldn’t let your feelings about your grandmother jeopardize your safety,” she said.

“Is that really what that was all about?” I asked. “Or are you just jumping on a chance to attempt some kind of reconciliation?”

“Baby… this would so not be the time for that,” Amaranth said. “Honestly, I wouldn’t want even a happy reunion to distract you before we know you’re out of the woods.”

“But otherwise… once I am out of the woods… you think it would be a happy reunion,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be difficult now, of all times,” Amaranth said. “I was being hypothetical.”

“Well, you’re hypothetically wrong,” I said.

“‘Hypothetical’ isn’t exactly a strong suit around here,” Ian said.

“I know you think that everyone should just love each other, and Dee can’t understand why I wouldn’t want a relationship with my maternal…”

“Excuse us,” a voice said, pleasant and musical. I thought it had come from nowhere, but it had actually come from one of the two cloaked elves, who had both come up upon us so suddenly they might have teleported. “We do not mean to be intrusive, but by ‘Dee’, are you referring to Delia Daella?”

“Well, yes, actually,” Amaranth said, “but this is sort of a private conversation. We’re actually waiting for our lawyer, so if you have any questions…”

“Oh, we wouldn’t dream of bothering your legal advocate,” the second one said.

“Then you probably shouldn’t be talking to us,” Ian said. “I’m pretty sure that’ll bug the crap out of him.”

“We would, however, appreciate a few words with friends of our willfull charge,” the elven woman continued as if she hadn’t even heard Ian’s snarky interjection.

“Yes, you may be able to help her a great deal by speaking to her as friends.”

“Oh!” Amaranth said. “Well, if there’s something we can do to help Dee, we’ll be happy to talk about it just as soon as our other friend gets back to advise us.”

“Please, it’s no matter of great legal complexity,” the hooded woman said. “We just wondered if you have had a chance to observe her condition. She seems so drained, so fatigued from her self-imposed vigil… but she won’t admit to the possibility that she may have fallen asleep at some point during it.”

“I don’t see…” Amaranth started to say.

“What, you think Steff did it?” I asked. “Or Viktor?”

“We venture no opinion on the question of who is responsible,” the second elf said. “Our duty is to see that our Delia Daella is shielded from blame. The light of doubt is already falling upon those with whom she has sequestered herself. It is not in her interest to offer them a defense.”

“But is Dee really going to be a suspect?” I asked. “And if she was, their defense is her defense. They were all there together, right?”

“That is what Delia Daella says. But she perhaps may not be in the best condition to positively assert that.”

“Steff is our friend, too,” I said. “And Dee’s. You’re not going to get any of us to sell her out.”

“That really is enough,” Amaranth said to me. “It was so nice meeting you,” she said to the elves, “but I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”

“Please forgive the interruption, then,” one of the elves said, bowing and backing away.

“Perhaps we should speak to your advocate,” one of the elves said.

“I don’t think you’ll find him receptive to any proposals to lie,” Amaranth said. “Trying to frame someone else isn’t going to make anyone look good.”

“We would not ask anyone to lie,” the elf said. “We are not attempting to ‘frame’ anyone, just to… reframe the circumstances.”

“Again, we really don’t have anything to talk about,” Amaranth said. “Thank you.”

I wasn’t sure what she was thankful for, but it seemed like a polite attempt to end the conversation, and the elf didn’t have anything to say to it. She bowed and went back to her group. In addition to the gorgon and the mushroom person, there was now also a small rock-like humanoid huddled under the protective aegis of the shimmering fish-beast. The gorgon had stepped a few feet away and was chatting quietly with the harpy from the skirmish team and her human boyfriend.

Lee made a reappearance in the room shortly. He had a small cut on his forehead, right underneath a lump that seemed to swell visibly in the time from when he entered the big room and when he reached us.

“Your grandmother moves quickly for a woman her age, Mackenzie,” he said.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything,” he said.

“I’m still sorry,” I said.

“Expressing unearned guilt is a bad habit for a suspect to have,” Lee said. “Though I don’t think that label exactly fits. There’s a lot of interest in you… but you’re definitely not the only name on the short list, and I got the distinct impression that it’s not just your whereabouts and doings last night that they’re interested in.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

His voice dropped.

“The point man upstairs, Agent Nevis, told me they ‘mainly’ have questions about some of your acquaintances,” Lee said. “I think part of that emphasis was to make sure we’re not going in overly defensive. I guarantee you that they’re going to ask about your whereabouts and that they will check on what we tell them, just as they’ll double-check what Ms. Blaise told them about the scene.”

“Do they just let anybody’s grandma wander into crime scenes and start divining?” Ian asked.

“She has some credentials, apparently,” Lee said. “I don’t know who gave her access or what was going through their head.”

“She was an exorcist,” I said. “I don’t know if she was certified, or if it’s still valid.”

Lee looked at me in surprise.

“I don’t think it matters as much in small towns… where there aren’t boatloads of powerful clerics in the temple… if someone’s licensed or not,” I explained.

“Mackenzie, she’s a paladin,” Lee said.

“What?” I said.

“Dame Commander in the EWD Reserves.”

“What?” I repeated.

“She showed me her badge right after she threw the book at me,” Lee said. “Figuratively, I mean. Paladins are only empowered to act as peace officers in places where there’s no other active law enforcement.”

“Hold on,” I said. “I think there must be some kind of mistaken identity thing going on. You’ve been misinformed or you’ve mixed a couple people up. The woman who hit you, did her badge identify her by name?”

“Mackenzie, there’s no confusion… she introduced herself, and she said she was your grandmother,” Lee said. “Her shield is inscribed with her name.”

“My grandmother is a little old lady who chases away disembodied demons,” I said. “She’s not a paladin.”

“I’m pretty sure I read or heard that she was,” Ian said. “In the news or something.”

“If the woman I spoke with isn’t your grandmother, then she stole a badge from your grandmother who is still a paladin,” Lee said. “But this is all very far afield of the point.”

“Mack… you do know that your grandmother must have had a life before you were born, don’t you?” Amaranth asked.

“Yes, but… I can’t imagine her lying about something like this,” I said. “Or about anything. She hated lies more than just about anything. She said they were the beginning of all sins, and that they give other sins shelter.”

“Um… did she ever tell you she wasn’t in the White Dragons?” Ian asked.

“You know, Mack, if you picked up your outlook on lying from her, then it seems like she can’t have nearly as big a problem with lies of omission as other kinds,” Amaranth said. “And frankly, if it was part of her life that she’d left behind, I’m not sure I’d count it as a lie not to mention it, either.”

“If it makes things any clearer at all,” Lee said, “I should mention that she only produced her shield with great reluctance, after I raised questions about her right to be present and after I dismissed her family-related argument.”

“It doesn’t make anything clear,” I said. “Okay, yes, she’s always been sort of… militant, I guess… but in the old-lady-who-loves-Khersis kind of way, not the knight-in-holy-armor kind of way.”

“Mack… I don’t mean to keep harping on this point,” Amaranth said, “but you do know that people aren’t born as old ladies, right?”

“Of course I know that,” I said, though, of course I couldn’t really picture my grandmother as a young woman and I had never really tried.

When I did, though… when I tried to imagine what someone who was so pious, so stern, so uncompromising in her beliefs, and so powerful in her faith but who had never been a cleric…

“Holy fuck,” I said, as the image came into my head of my grandmother clad in mail and holding a blessed broadsword.

“I’m sure this must be an interesting revelation for you,” Lee said. “If you need a few minutes to digest it, take them… but let’s not get completely sidetracked. I spoke to Nevis and I told him that we’re eager to help, but that we’d prefer it if we can deal with Mike Gregory and if you can talk to him as a group. He’s having Gregory paged when he’s done at the admin building. Nevis couldn’t make any promises. I think that they may want to talk to you two ladies individually afterwards, or at least you, Mackenzie, but I will be there handling things for each of you if it comes to that.”

“Why would they want to talk to Amaranth alone?” I asked. Obviously they would if they were going to try to pick our story apart to somehow indict me, but Lee was acting like that seemed like a remote possibility. Besides that, Ian as the human and the one who’d probably be less strongly linked to me in the eyes of anybody else they talked to would seem to be the weaker link.

“You’re both Harlowe residents,” he said. “Truth be told, there are a lot of prospective suspects in here… a lot of members of predatory races, races with anthropophagic history.”

“Um, sort of on that subject, Lee,” Amaranth said, her mouth twisting in between her words. She looked like she had the urge to chew her lower lip off with worry. “I know I said that I supported you doing anything to keep Mack safe, but we want you to know that we’re not willing to say things to implicate other students, even though that might shift suspicion off Mack.”

“To be clear: are you saying you would withhold evidence from the investigators to shield your dormmates?” Lee asked.

“Oh, no, I’m not talking about withholding anything,” Amaranth said. “But say someone comes at us with a theory that implicates someone else, and they ask us in a leading sort of way if we ever noticed that person sneaking out at night, or something like that.”

“If you’re not comfortable with a line of questioning, look to me to intervene,” Lee said. “My first responsibility here is to you three, not to your friends or your neighbors, but I will not allow you to be compromised for the sake of a lazy investigator’s convenience.”

“Thank you,” Amaranth said.

“May I ask what prompted that?” Lee said.

“This is a discussion I would rather have somewhere away from prying ears,” Amaranth said.

Lee nodded, and his eyes flickered almost imperceptibly towards the underworld contingent… the only ears in the room that were likely to overhear a quiet conversation in a large room full of quiet conversations being elven was probably a dead giveaway.

“Let’s take a walk outside,” he said.

“Is that going to be okay?” I said. “If that Gregory guy gets here and we’ve vanished…”

“I told them to reflect me if they need anything from us,” Lee said.

With that settled, I had no objection to getting away from the pair of cloaked underelves who were willing to use us and throw Steff under the behemoth’s feet to make double sure that Dee wasn’t implicated. I wondered if there wasn’t some racial animosity involved there… if my job was to make sure that someone wasn’t tarnished by a murder investigation, suggesting that one of the people she spent the weekend in the company of might have been responsible wouldn’t be my opening gambit.

Though… they had said that suspicion was falling on Steff and Viktor anyway, so maybe it hadn’t been their choice of a first move, either. That thought kind of gave me chills. How much suspicion, exactly, would it take for “maybe I fell asleep and didn’t notice them going out and murdering someone” to sound like a better defense to her advocates than “no, I was with them the whole time and there was no murdering”?

Lee had told Ian that if I were under suspicion, he’d be suspect, too, for providing part of my alibi. The same would be true of Dee, with regard to Steff and Viktor. I trusted Dee to know whether or not she’d fallen asleep, and I certainly trusted her to tell the truth. I hadn’t given much thought to the blowup we witnessed earlier… with Dee and Viktor both taking her obligation to Steff’s health so deadly seriously, her actions seemed perfectly understandable as a reaction to being pulled away from Steff’s bedside.

It also fit in nicely with how I imagined she would react if it were suggested that she bend the truth to save her own skin at the expense of a friend… maybe with a little extra indignity thrown in at the idea that she might have fallen asleep on the job without immediately realizing it.

These were the thoughts that swirled around in my head as we headed out onto the patio and up the uneven stairs. We headed south away from the front of the building, towards a group of school buildings I’d never been in. Lee didn’t say anything until we were on the other side of one of them from Harlowe.

“What happened?” he asked, straight to the point.

Amaranth recounted the interruption from the eavesdropping elves.

“Hmm,” Lee said. “This ‘Dee’ is the Delia Daella who’s been in the news? The so-called ‘naked priestess’?”

“That’s her,” Amaranth said, nodding.

“They call her ‘the naked priestess’?” I asked.

“Do you never watch the news?” Ian asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“I don’t sit down and watch it very often, but… it’s on sometimes,” he said. “You pick things up.”

“There are more TVs in your dorm than in mine,” I reminded him. “We don’t even get the student newspaper.”

“Listen,” Lee said. “There may be a reason why the dark elves think that Dee’s friends would be under special scrutiny. That may be difficult if they’re your friends, too, but that can’t distract you. If charges are brought against them, I’m sure you’ll have chances to speak out on their behalf, offer testimony about their characters, what have you… but for now, if it comes up, the most you can honestly say is that you were gone all weekend and so you can’t really speak to anything that might have happened on campus. If the imperials ask you about them, I’ll say that. Don’t let them goad you into saying anything else.”

I kind of expected him to look at me after he said that last bit, but he kept his gaze on Amaranth. I suppose she had as little self-control as I did when it came to some things. He only knew her because of her protective impulses towards me.

“Thank you, Lee,” Amaranth said, nodding. “Really, truly… I know this is your job, but you’ve been so helpful, and I don’t know what we would do without you.”

“Remember, Amaranth, that technically the fact that you’re speaking to them at all is a courtesy,” Lee said. “You have divine privilege. They can’t arrest you. They can’t question you against your will. They can’t make you testify or go on record. For questions about Mackenzie’s whereabouts, you’ve got every reason to answer, but if they stray to other topics, you could tell them to go to hell and they couldn’t do anything. Don’t, incidentally.”

“Oh, I could never do that,” Amaranth said.

“The point is that you have a pretty big trump card if they get in your face,” Lee said. “I mention this because you seem somewhat… delicate, in some regards. If things get too stressful, tell me that you think you’re done and I’ll manage the damage control on that. It’s likely to be better for our side than if you snap.”

Amaranth nodded. She nibbled at her lip a little bit.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just realized… your head. I should have offered earlier. Would you like me to do something for it?”

“Is that going to limit my proximity to Mackenzie?” he asked. “They offered me healing, but I wanted to wait until we were finished for the day.”

“It shouldn’t make a difference,” she said. “It’ll only take a touch. As long as you don’t headbutt her or dance cheek-to-cheek, she shouldn’t even be able to feel it.”

“Shouldn’t or won’t?” Lee asked.

“Won’t,” I said. “She’s healed worse in front of me before. It can be… uncomfortable… to look at while it’s going on, but the aftereffects are pretty negligible.”

“Well, alright, then,” Lee said. “I suppose it’s probably best if I don’t have an untreated head injury when I’m representing.”

“What did she throw at you, exactly?” Ian asked.

“Her librum, I think,” Lee said. “I would imagine that’s what it was. It was very impressive-looking.”

“Ouch,” I said. My grandmother’s travel librum had metal brackety things protecting the corners of the dragonhide cover.

“Yes, exactly,” Lee said.

“Better take a step back and cover your eyes, baby,” Amaranth said, and I did step back, though I only shaded my eyes and lowered them slightly… after my experience at the club, I was curious how much I could really stand to be exposed to her healing energy.

The glow was far more intense, and I had to quickly drop my gaze to the ground, but the pain wasn’t that bad… it was intense, but it wasn’t bad.

Far worse was the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach when I heard my grandmother’s voice in my ear.

“Of course you avert your eyes from a display of her pure spirit, after spending all day lustfully ogling her corrupt flesh.”

Next: Brimstone.

I might have guessed that I would somehow see my grandmother again, but I would never have predicted it would be on TV… still, there she was, in living color and larger than life.

Except, tiny and black and white.

Sound came back to me.

“…always called her Kenzie. I told her mother the child would have problems if she gave it a man’s name, I said to her that Lord Khersis would not be mocked so, and this was long before we knew…”

“Can we change this to color?” I asked, my gaze falling on Oru. One look at her murderous glare was enough to remind me that I wasn’t her favorite person in the world at the moment… the shock of hearing that my grandmother was on television had completely overridden that knowledge.

“I told you not to talk to me,” she said. “And who said you could come into my room?”

“Oh… sorry,” I said, starting to back towards the door, but Steff put her hands on my shoulders and stopped me.

“Hold on,” she said. “This isn’t just your room… Shiel lives here, too.”

“Yes, I do,” Shiel said from behind us. “And I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to just waltz into somebody else’s quarters like you own the place and start using their possessions without their permission.”

“Yeah, sorry, we’ll go,” I said.

“Was it really necessary to challenge Oru like that?” Amaranth asked Steff once we were out of the room and had moved a short distance away towards the lounge. “It’s more her room than it is yours.”

“Yeah, but… I thought Shiel was cool,” Steff said. “I didn’t expect her to take Oru’s side over ours… I never got the feeling that they got along with each other.”

“I do not believe she sided with anything except for the sovereign right of an individual to be secure in their domicile,” Dee said. I realized that she alone had stayed in the hall when the rest of us rushed in.

“Oh, come on,” Steff said. “It’s a dorm, the door’s open… it’s not like we broke in and started carting off loot.”

“Neither did you have an invitation,” Dee said.

“Oh, let’s not argue about this,” Amaranth said. “Let’s just go downstairs before we miss the rest of it.”

“It’s over,” Honey reported from the door. She stepped all the way out into the hall and closed it behind her. “There wasn’t much. I expect they’ll probably show it over and over again, though.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “I wouldn’t have guessed your gram was a paladin.”

“Uh, she isn’t,” I said.

“Oh, sorry,” Honey said. “I meant that she had been one.”

“She hadn’t,” I said. “I mean, she wasn’t… she was a Sunday school teacher and an exorcist.”

“Oh, well, I guess they got that bit wrong,” Honey said.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“Well… I’m afraid I wasn’t completely paying attention to it until the name caught my ear,” Honey said. “But… she wants you to come home.”

“Yeah, that’s hardly a surprise,” I said. “She didn’t want me to come here in the first place… I thought she’d given up on me, though.”

“No, she said she writes you a letter every day,” Honey said.

“That’s strange,” Amaranth said while I shifted uncomfortably. “I wonder why you haven’t been getting those, baby?”

In the process of looking everywhere but at her face, I noticed Steff and Dee exchanging glances. I guessed my expression must have been something of a giveaway. Amaranth looked from them to me, and then her cheeks reddened. She grabbed my hand and pulled me to her side.

“Please excuse us, Honey… I have to have a little ‘talk’ with my Mack,” she said.

“Er, before you go… do any of you know if we’re still allowed to move dorms?” Honey asked.

“What, you don’t actually want to room with Oru, do you?” Steff asked.

“Steff, be nice,” Amaranth said.

“Not exactly,” she said. “I meant out of Harlowe… I don’t know if I can live in a dorm where people are getting arrested.”

None of us knew what to say to that… she said it almost apologetically. We just sort of stared while she fidgeted. Finally she said, “Excuse me, I have to use the magic mirror thing,” and headed around to the side of the lounge.

“What a fucking little priss!” Steff said.

“Steff, hon, she’s right around the corner,” Amaranth said.

“I don’t care,” Steff said. “Just because Dee spent a couple of nights in lock-up is no reason for anybody to look down their nose at her.”

“I would not ascribe malice or judgment to her comment without knowing more about her situation than would fall within my prerogative,” Dee said.

“I would,” Steff said.

“Yes, that is manifestly obvious,” Dee said.

Amaranth started pulling me in the direction of my room.

“Excuse us, guys, but we’re going to need a minute alone,” she said.

“Take your time,” Dee said.

Amaranth led me into my room and closed the door behind us. She walked over to the window and stood as though she was looking out of it, though the curtains were drawn. I wondered in an idle sort of way if the newsfolks had any idea what room was mine. Amaranth didn’t say anything. I let the backpack full of things she’d packed for me slip off of my shoulder and set it down on the floor.

“I guess your mail is your business… and your family is your business, too… but I would have liked to know that this was going on,” Amaranth said finally, with her back towards me. “If I thought you were close to your grandmother, I would like a chance to be a part of that, even if it had to be indirectly… and if you’re having problems with her, I need to be a part of that. So, I’m just going to ask you this once: is there anything in those letters that you’d like to talk about?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I… haven’t been reading them,” I said. “I destroyed the first bunch on sight, and asked Two to get rid of any more that came in.”

“You asked Two?”

I ducked my head. I won’t call what I did then a blush… blushing had become, in itself, a sort of sexual experience to me. It was a form of foreplay… the prelude to an orgasm. It didn’t belong in this conversation.

“I told her,” I said.

“Don’t mumble, baby,” Amaranth said. She still hadn’t turned to face me. “Speak up and give me a straight answer.”

“I told her to,” I said.

“You ordered her to do it, you mean?”

I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see it. I choked out the word, “Yes.” Big fat tears spilled out of the corners of my eyes.

“How did Two feel about this order?”

I didn’t answer… I couldn’t. I tried not to break down completely, but then Amaranth finally turned around to face me and I let out a sob.

“Do I even have to tell you how disappointed I am?” she asked. “Or why?”

I shook my head, and was about a second away from collapsing when Amaranth caught me and squeezed me to her chest.

“You are going to apologize to Two, and you are never going to give her another order that’s for your benefit instead of hers,” Amaranth said. “I think I understand why you don’t want to read the letters… or at least, I understand the fact that you don’t… but there could be something important in them. However strange your grandmother’s ideas about some things might be, she must know something about demons. Do you think there could be anything in these letters that you wouldn’t want me to know about?”

I had to think about that. Given my preference, I would have liked to leave my past completely behind… but given that it didn’t seem like I had much say in the matter, I couldn’t think of anything my grandmother could or would say that would be a damaging revelation.

I didn’t want to read letter after letter of her alternating reminders that she was family and loved me accordingly and that I was a vile hellspawn who only lived because of my mother’s blood, but I knew Amaranth’s opinion of me wouldn’t be shaken by such a thing… if anything, she’d understand where I was coming from when I didn’t want to talk about my family life.

“No,” I said. “No, ma’am.”

“If any more letters come, I want you to give them to me,” Amaranth said. “If there is anything important in them… anything you need to know… I’ll tell you. If not, I’ll destroy them myself. Okay, baby?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I feel like I’ve been neglecting you a bit lately,” she said.

“No!” I said. We’d been sleeping together so often lately that it almost seemed like she’d been neglecting her duties for me.

“It’s just how I feel,” she said. “I think maybe it’s because you have so much going on… you go out with Ian, you go out with Steff… you’re going out with Sooni… I’m not jealous, of course, but it makes me realize how little social time we spend together.”

“What about meals?” I asked. “Or library time? That’s my favorite part of the week, every week since we’ve been here…”

“I guess that’s true,” she said. “But you have to admit, I’ve at least been slacking a bit in the discipline department.” She gave me a little pat on the rear. “I don’t want to leave our friends outside in the hallway, but we’re going to have a little ‘quality time’ before your date with Sooni.”

“Ugh… if it was anybody else, I’d really think about postponing that,” I said. “This week’s been complicated enough, and I wouldn’t want to go out with anybody with the circus in town…”

“Well, if you’re going to do that, make sure you tell her soon,” Amaranth said. “Now, let’s get Steff and Dee in here, and you two can tell me what happened on your date.”

Amaranth went to let them in, and then we all sat down on the carpeted floor.

“First of all… did you guys have a good time?” Amaranth asked.

“Yeah,” I said, and Steff nodded. “I guess, overall, we did.”

“That’s the most important thing,” Amaranth said.

“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you,” Steff said. “But… there were some other things that I think might trump that.”

“Like what?”

“Well, first of all, I met Mercy,” I told Amaranth. “In the gray-colored flesh.”

“Is that a metaphor?” Amaranth asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.

“No, her skin is gray,” I said. “She’s a gray elf.”

“A gray elf?” Dee repeated.

“Yeah,” I said. “As in, an elf with gray skin.”

“That is a disturbing image,” Dee said. “I wonder how such a thing came to be?”

“Well, my thought… and she verified this… was that she was a cross between the two different colors of elves,” I said.

Dee’s face seemed to turn to stone. Her eyes went very wide. There was a high-pitched sound that I thought at first was coming from her, despite her mouth being closed… but then I realized that Steff was doubled over, her hands over her crotch. As her wordless cry grew in volume to become a shriek. Dee turned towards her in surprise, and she seemed to catch on a moment after I did that her own mental powers were the source of Steff’s pain and distress.

“I’m sorry,” she said, releasing Steff from her mental clutches. “That was an entirely subconscious reaction.”

“Heal! Heal!” Steff gasped. She’d fallen over on her side, curled up in the fetal position.

“Turn your head, baby,” Amaranth said to me, and I averted my eyes as she drew on her divine healing powers. “There you go… you probably shouldn’t have sex with Mack for a while, though, and try to avoid… um… don’t do anything that’s going to get me in trouble with Mother Khaele while your stuff’s still sanctified.”

“What could she possibly do that your holy mother would not approve of?” Dee asked. “Upon reflection, I would probably not thank you for answering that question.”

“It’s okay,” Steff said. “I don’t think I’m going to want to have sex with anything for a while… fucking hell, Dee, it’s not like I’ve personally been going around knocking up forsaken priestesses… if that was even possible… which it isn’t.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Dee said. “But… it’s simply too disgusting to contemplate.”

“Why isn’t it possible?” I asked.

“Because it isn’t,” Dee said. “In the first place, the necessary union would never happen. If it did, no pregnancy could result. If it could, it would never be allowed to progress to term.”

“Mack, hon, don’t push the psychokinetic’s boundaries,” Steff said.

“Who exactly is this Mercy?” Dee asked.

“She used to be an assassin, but some decades ago she made some kind of deal to go legit,” Steff said. “Now she’s a slaver, among other things.”

“I wouldn’t have expected her to handle the delivery personally,” Amaranth said.

“Delivery? You purchased a slave?” Dee asked.

“Not exactly,” I said. Steff and I exchanged guilty looks.

“At least,” Steff said, and as I fervently wished for her not to say what I knew she was going to say next, she continued, “not a whole one,” and then forced out half of a nervous laugh before looking down at the floor, her face ashen.

I felt sick.

“I think perhaps you should clarify things before I draw the wrong conclusion,” Dee said.

I kind of wished that she would… whatever she was thinking couldn’t be any worse than the truth.

“Well,” Amaranth said, pulling on her hair as her lip tried to curl around her lower teeth, “when we said that she’s a slaver, what we really mean is that Mercy runs a kind of fairly unique sort of business, for people who have… unique… dietary habits, or want to try something different.”

Nobody said anything for a while.

“Allow me to test my understanding,” Dee said. “You live in a region where food is so plentiful that there are places where, for a thin piece of silver you can fill up a plate as many times as you would like with meat and seeded plants… and yet you still find it necessary to slaughter your fellow beings for food?”

“Well, no, not necessary,” Amaranth said. “I think, for some people, that’s the point… it’s a luxury. I don’t approve of it, obviously, but…”

“And you placed an order from this establishment?” Dee asked.

“Mack did!” Steff said.

“I wasn’t exactly myself,” I said.

“Who precisely were you?” Dee asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We think I might have been a little possessed.”

“A little possessed?” Dee repeated.

“We don’t know for sure,” I said.

“And what is the possible cause of this possible possession?”

“We don’t know,” Steff said.

“So, you might have done this of your own free will?” Dee asked me.

“No, I definitely didn’t do that!” I said. “I don’t even remember placing the order.”

“So, it was a surprise when it arrived?” Dee asked.

“Well, no,” Steff said. “She told me before she, you know… came out of it, or whatever.”

“And you went through with it, anyway,” Dee said.

“It’s an ‘all sales are final’ kind of thing,” I said.

“Yeah, the damage was already done,” Steff said. “Even if Mercy allowed cancellations, it wasn’t like we could actually undo it.”

“Did it not occur to you that if you could have offered payment but made it clear that you did not actually desire the ‘finished product’?”

“The thing is, we couldn’t even offer payment,” I said.

Dee sighed.

“I suppose I should be reassured that life is, apparently, not all that cheap,” she said. “I take it that this visitation from ‘Mercy’ had to do with the subject of payment, then?”

“Not exactly, no,” I said.

“See, we took care of that… I managed to find other buyers for most of the order,” Amaranth said. “And Steff’s lover, Viktor, was going to pay for their portion.”

“You actually consumed the flesh of another?” Dee asked, aghast.

“I didn’t,” Steff said quietly.

“I did,” I said.

“Well, at least you sound properly horrified,” Dee said. “I can’t imagine what possessed you… well, I suppose that is either an extremely poor choice of words or an extremely apt one. Are all three of you insane?”

“Hey, I was trying to make the best of a bad situation!” Amaranth said indignantly, her eyes flashing. “The order was already placed, canceling it outright wasn’t an option, and I thought this was something that Mack and Steff could share…”

“Yes,” Steff said. She shivered. “We were insane.”

“Anyway… the reason Mercy was there was because of me,” I said. “She wanted to buy me.”

“Buy you?” Amaranth repeated.

“For a pet,” I said.

“Forgive me for saying so, but you seem to attract that sentiment quite often,” Dee said.

“That’s what I said,” Steff said.

“Her back-up plan was to get me to have a daughter for her,” I said. “She has a pair of male half-demon slaves, apparently, and she wants to create a breeding line.”

“That sounds like a toweringly bad idea,” Dee said.

“Yeah, well, there’s absolutely no danger of that happening,” I said. “I would never have a child… much less one with another demonblood… much less on behalf of a slaver who wants to create a hundred more.”

“I was told that this sort of thing was quite common in the skydomed lands, but I dismissed it as wild rumor and propaganda… and yet, as the time of my visit drew nearer, I prepared myself for the shock of encountering it,” Dee said. “And then I felt relief when I arrived and found that while meat was plentiful, it came from dumb beasts… and now… well, the human tongue lacks the words to describe the feeling of mingled shock and disappointment I feel to learn that what I have dismissed as baseless falsehood is in fact the truth.”

“And yours doesn’t?” I asked.

“It has three,” Dee said.

“See, that’s just excessive,” Steff said. “Why would you need more than one?”

“Shades of nuance… and yet, even with all three words at my disposal, I find myself unequal to the task of articulating what I feel,” Dee said. She got to her feet and started backing towards the door. “I have had a change of mind… I think I would rather remain in my own company at this juncture.”

“Oh, don’t go!” Amaranth said.

“Dee… we made terrible mistakes,” Steff said. “But…”

“For that, I do not judge you… but my view of the order of things has been shifted, and I fear if I remain in your company before I have had time to acclimate to the changes, I may say something that one of us regrets,” Dee said. She bowed. “I will pray for all of you.”

She opened the door, still going backwards, and gave an uncharacteristic startled yelp as she almost tripped over Honey.

“I beg your pardon,” Dee said. “I hadn’t heard you approaching the door.”

“That’s… that’s quite alright,” Honey said. She was pale and shaking a little, which might have just been a side-effect of almost being bowled over by a flowing black cloak. “Er, you lot probably need to come to the telly now.”

“What about Oru?” I asked.

“She says it’s fine,” Honey said. “This is important. It’s your mum… she’s giving an interview.”

“My mother’s dead,” I said.

“Er, not yours,” she said. She pointed to Amaranth. “Yours.”

I’d woken up wet, with my grandmother standing over me. She hadn’t needed to tell me what had happened. Without a word, she’d taken me by the hand and dragged me down the hall to her cozy little kitchen, lit the stove, and put the pot on.

The moonlight angling through the windows and the flickering flame of the stovetop were the only lights. Somehow, the things they illuminated seemed ghastly and frightening in a way the darker parts of the room weren’t. I kept my eyes towards the shadows, looking at the familiar jars of herbs on the spice rack, the long knives hanging on the wall, the pots and pans on their pegs, the temple calendar. No light touched these things, and they remained untransformed.

I was cold and wet, but hopeful. I thought maybe my grandmother was finally going to make me something to eat… she hadn’t let me have any food since I’d arrived.

The strange thing was, I wasn’t that hungry. I was aware that my stomach was empty, but the gnawing hunger that had been with me my whole life was gone.

I missed food. I wanted food. I didn’t need it.

“Now, Kenzie,” my grandmother said when the contents of the pot began to bubble. Her voice was muffled and indistinct with the interference of intervening years, but the words themselves were sharp and clear. They were seared into my mind. “Do you know what holy water is?”

“Water… water that’s holy?”

She nodded.

“It’s a simple enough description, but apt,” she said. “Do you know what holy water would do to something of your kind?”

I shook my head.

“Something like what boiling oil would do to someone of mine,” she said, and she thrust her hand into the pot.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry out. She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw and held her hand there. I don’t know how long. Time wasn’t working right. It had been like that the first time, in real life, and it was even worse in my dream.

“Grandma, no!” I cried.

I called her “grandma” back then. I was frightened and confused by the changes in my life, but she was still the comfortingly familiar shape that had loomed over me at irregular intervals throughout my childhood. Visits to “Gan’ma” had been a special treat when I’d been little, and when she and my mother fell out over something my mother had refused to tell me about, those increasingly rare visits had become all the more important.

Now, she was hurting herself in front of me, and I didn’t know why.

She pulled her hand out of the oil and thrust it in my face, talking calmly while I screamed my head off.

“From now on, there will be a bucket of holy water by your bed at all times,” she said, waving the mangled limb in front of me. “If you have one accident, I will douse you and put out the fire. If you have another accident, I will douse you and put out the fire. If you have a third accident in the same night, it will be the last one. Do you understand me, child?”

She did not get a clear answer out of me that night, but she repeated the message and the question in the morning. She repeated it again before I went to bed.

I didn’t go to sleep that night. It was easy. I was keyed up with fear. The next night was harder. I was still frightened, but I was exhausted, too. The fear won out in the end, and I stayed awake until morning.

When my grandmother caught me nodding off during the day, she called me willful. There was no question of making it through another night without sleep. I passed out as soon as I climbed onto the bare mattress, and slept deeper than I ever had before.

That was the third night without any accidents, and my grandmother let me have my blankets after that.

I didn’t dream about all of that, though. My dream stopped when my grandmother shoved her hand… burnt, blistered, and bloody… into my face.

I don’t mean it ended. I mean it stopped, frozen on that image. Seconds replayed. The hand came closer, then came closer again, then came closer again. It never moved back. It was simply thrust into my face again and again, forever.

Angles changed. Sometimes I could see my grandmother’s face, the look of grim resolve. Sometimes I could see my own. Sometimes it was just the hand.

I think the dream stopped there because that was usually the part where I woke up. That was the fun thing about being stuck in an enchanted sleep for eight hours, or until somebody kissed me.

There was no escape clause for nightmares.

I just had to ride it out, sometimes more aware that it was just a dream, that the event I was witnessing was nine years in the past and I never had to see my grandmother again… and sometimes less.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Lynette, the healer, said… her voice was the first clue I had that I was awake. The image of my grandmother’s hand still hung in the air in front of me for several seconds. I gasped and tried to stir myself to brush it away, the way you wave away an image in a mirror. “Oh! Are you alright?”

“Bad… bad dream,” I said. My throat felt dry. My head hurt and I was cramping again… or still… and the dream was still fresh and vivid in my head. “My grandmother… hurt.”

“Do you want a mirror?” Lynette asked. “So you can talk to her?”

I shook my head.

“No!” I said fiercely. “I want to forget her.”

“Well, I can’t help you there,” she said. “How about a glass of water? Sleeping potions often cause a bit of dry mouth.”

I nodded, and she got me one.

“You’re not really going to make me stay here all day, are you?” I asked after I’d finished drinking.

“Roger said you might be difficult… if there were any way to speed up your recovery, I would do so,” Lynette said. “But it would be blatantly irresponsible of me to let you out of our care before I’m certain your energy levels have normalized. Here’s some reading material.” She handed me a pamphlet. “I gather you may not have received some rather crucial information about your menstrual cycle.”

“I knew it affected things,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was so dangerous. That’s going to make it difficult to keep up in my labs if I can’t use magic at all…”

“I doubt you’ve been just ‘using magic at all’ for these past few days,” Lynette said. “The key is to try not to use any more magic than you normally would. Your body has natural barriers that protect you by preventing you from drawing too deeply on your energy reserves, but those barriers are weakened during menstruation. You have to substitute your own judgment for your body’s.”

“My body’s judgment,” I echoed darkly.

I squeezed my eyes shut. That sounded just like something my grandmother would say. Not judgment by my body… but a judgment of my body, upon my body.

In her mind, being born female was a judgment from on high… a curse, and menstruation and everything that went along with it was part of that curse.

It wasn’t that I liked to agree with her, but I could certainly understand where she was coming from.

“Miss Mackenzie, if I’d known how… inexperienced… you were about these things, I never would have been so brusque with you the other day,” she said. “But what I said is true: it is just a period, and we all have them. So long as you’re careful in how you expend your energies in the future, I can promise you’re not going to die from one.”

“You’re a divine caster, right?”

“What?”

“Are you a divine caster?” I asked again.

“I don’t like the term ‘caster’,” she said. “To me, what I do isn’t ‘spells’, it’s a miraculous gift… but yes, I use divine energy for healing and protection.”

“Well, then, you don’t have to worry about burning up or bleeding yourself dry, do you?” I said. “Even though we both have periods, you don’t have to worry as much about yours.”

“You know, I’m going to go get you some more blood leaves to chew on,” she said. “We can have somebody go over and get some breakfast for you, too. There’s a fresh pad on the table, and a sponge by the sink if you want to clean up a bit.”

“Can I have some privacy for that?”

“There’s a curtain you can pull around the sink,” she said pointing to it.

“Can I have a little more privacy?”

She smiled.

“If you close the door, we won’t come in without knocking,” she said. “Unless you don’t answer.”

“Just close it behind you,” I said. “I’ll open it when I’m done.”

She nodded, then left, pulling the door closed. I felt a tiny bit better, exerting a pointless bit of authority over the administration of my prison.

My legs were a little bit wobbly, but I attributed that to having slept too deeply for too long, and in an unaccustomed position. The princess pose was not my thing, but it was another side effect of restful magic sleep.

I washed up in the sink and changed my pad. I had an uncomfortable moment when I realized somebody must have done that while I was unconscious the day before, very possibly more than once.

I tried not to think about it. I tried to make myself believe they had somehow done it magically with no actual contact or exposure. I didn’t succeed at either.

It was so humiliating. Everything about my infirmity and confinement was. Ordinary healing was such a quick and painless affair. Wounds, poisons, diseases, and broken bones could all be taken care of quickly with no loss of dignity… being mystically depleted and bleeding to death out your nether parts was apparently a different story.

I found that for once, I could push my mortification away by resenting the people who caused it. Okay, so there were some good sides to worse-than-average period symptoms. I hadn’t asked anybody to clean me up in my sleep or mess around with my private bits. It wasn’t my fault. They should be embarrassed, not me.

I also had an idea where I could start healing my pride. I never had changed before I conked out, but if I was going to spend the day in bed, my comfy shorts would beat the hell out of the flimsy robe.

Or they would have, if Two had brought them. What was hanging in the cupboard was clearly hers. At least it was opaque, but ridiculous all the same: all tassel trim and dangling pom poms, covering only the bare essentials.

I looked about a bit to see if my own clothes were anywhere in sight, then put on Two’s nightclothes underneath the robe. It made me feel less naked, anyway.

I didn’t bother opening the door when I was done. I simply settled back in bed and picked up one of Ian’s comics, waiting for Lynette to knock.

“Enter,” I said when she did. I tried to sound haughty and didn’t look up when she came in.

“Well, you’re just making yourself at home, aren’t you?” she said.

I didn’t say anything. I’d grabbed without looking, and ended up with an eastern import. Not in the mood to admit a mistake even to myself, I’d actually started reading it.

“Here are some herbs and a bit of restorative tea,” Lynette said, shifting the stack of comics to put them closer to the bed

“Don’t move my stuff,” I said. Being difficult made me feel ever-so-slightly better.

“I just want to make sure you can reach them,” she said.

“I’ve got arms and legs.”

“You’re supposed to be resting,” she said.

“Now I have to get up to reach my graphic novels.”

“Fine,” Lynette said. She picked them up and put them on the bed beside me. “Now they’re…”

“I told you not to move my stuff!” I said. I sounded about twelve years old and felt about six. That was okay with me.

“Look, if you really don’t want to be here, we can just give you a few more sleeping potions and you can sleep until you’re discharged,” she said. “Is that what you want?”

A whole day stuck asleep, at the mercy of whatever dream popped into my head? I didn’t answer, but my expression must have been enough.

“If you continue to get all aggravated, I can force you to take them,” she said. “You’re here to relax. If everything goes as it should, you’ll be out of here by Friday morning at the very latest.”

“Friday morning?” I repeated.

“At the latest,” she said. “Your friends can visit starting at eight, as long as they don’t get you excited or tire you out.” I blushed, and felt all the more embarrassed because I knew she didn’t mean anything like that. “Do you want breakfast first? Do you want a mirror?”

“Breakfast,” I said. “Waffles or pancakes, with strawberry syrup.”

“I’ll send somebody over. Anything to drink?”

“Lemonade,” I said, without thinking.

“Lemonade?”

“I can have lemonade, can’t I?” I asked.

“I don’t know if the cafeteria has lemonade in the morning,” Lynette said. “Would you like orange juice if…”

“I want lemonade,” I said. I remembered Two’s lemonade, almost sickly sweet. “And extra sugar to put in it.”

“Okay, but if they don’t…”

“Then I don’t want anything,” I said. “I’ll get my friends to bring me some.”

“Okay,” Lynette said. “If that’s what you want. We’ll try to stay out of your hair, Miss Mackenzie…”

“Ms. Blaise,” I corrected, though I’d long since stopped caring what other people called me. “I have a last name, you know. I am half-human.”

“Ms. Blaise, then,” she amended.

“And why is it ‘miss’ for non-humans and ‘ms.’ for humans?” I asked. “That seems demeaning, somehow. Men are ‘mister’ no matter what their race is. Why aren’t women the same?”

“Actually, as recently as twenty years ago, it was still fairly common for non-human men to be styled ‘master’,” Lynette said. “But that was considered to be a bit diminutive.”

“And ‘miss’ isn’t?”

“Maybe it is,” Lynette said. “I’ll go get your breakfast taken care of. As I said, Ms. Blaise, we’ll try to stay out of your hair, as long as you try to relax a little. You’re not doing yourself any favors getting all wound up over little things.”

“Call me Ms. Mackenzie,” I said.

She gave me a “don’t push it” look and headed for the door.

Okay, so I was being peevish on purpose, but really… why not Ms. Mackenzie? The different forms of address for non-humans came from the reality that human-style surnames were rare in other cultures, but why did that mean we had to be titled differently? And didn’t I have a right to be addressed as I saw fit?

I persisted in reading the stupid backwards comic out of obstinance. It was a slightly-larger-than-pocket-sized digest of the first several issues of a series, with girls having weird adventures in a high school.

I think it was a high school, anyway. It seemed in some ways to be more like a university.

Lynette came in with a tray and set it down on a folding stand. She didn’t say a word. I was absorbed in reading, or else I would have remembered that I wanted to complain about having really wanted either waffles or pancakes, depending on which one she actually brought.

There was a stack of each, anyway… and lemonade.

The main plot in the comic was all about how the oh-so-stereotypical “bad girl” kept trying to mess things up for the heroine and her friends, challenging her to a bunch of pointless contests and getting competitive in class seemingly for no other reason than to get in the heroine’s way. At the end of the collection, she was utterly humiliated after being defeated—in a cooking contest of all things—and was slinking away and monologuing about dropping out of school when the heroine caught up to her and put her hand on her shoulder.

That was how it ended. I could see where the story was heading. They’d become friends and the bad girl would be integrated into the gang, though they’d always be rivals.

It was trite and it was stupid and it was clichéd and it bugged the crap out of me that I didn’t have the next part to read… though I wasn’t annoyed for long: I could hear Amaranth out in the hall. It was eight, and I had visitors.