My scream of unadulterated horror at the appearance of the scarecrow backlit by a lightning flash cut through the ambient noise and the general atmosphere of fear.

I recovered a bit when the figure jumped away from me in obvious surprise, if not fear, letting out a distinctively womanish shriek. Recovered mentally, anyway… my heart was still pounding in my ears and my limbs were shaking like jelly in an earthquake. I’d landed on my ass, my cape tangled up beneath me and pulling on my neck.

The afterimage from the lightning burst cleared away from my eyes, and I found myself looking up at Barley, in her most immodestly modest outfit yet: coveralls over a long-sleeved shirt, with straw sticking out around the openings and a floppy straw hat.

Seen clearly, she looked more goofy than anything… it had only been the timing of the thunderburst and the resulting silhouette that had kicked off my fear reflex.

Not that I was positively ecstatic to see Barley… I’d take her over the shadow scarecrow from the cursed farm any day of the week, but I wouldn’t have sought out either of their company. The relief I felt was relative. My reaction to her was pretty visceral in its own right.

“Oh my goddess, I didn’t mean to startle you!” she said. “I hope that was just you being startled, I mean… because I also kind of hoped that we could get past, well, you know, everything…”

“Everything” was a funny of saying “attempted rape”, I thought, but my tongue was pretty much still pressed against the roof of my mouth by my heart and my stomach.

“What… what are you doing here, Barley?” Amaranth asked, her voice croaking a little.

“It’s a school party,” Barley said. “That means it’s for everybody, not just you and your special friends.”

“There’s room for everybody, but I thought you were supposed to stay away from us,” Amaranth said. “Mother Khaele told me…”

“Mother Khaele told you that I’m not your concern,” Barley said. She reached out a hand to me. “Here, Mackenzie let me help you up.”

“Don’t touch her!” Amaranth shrieked, getting between us… but not fast enough for me to miss the look of pain on Barley’s face.

“I think she can speak for herself,” Barley said. “Unless you’ve beaten that out of her.”

I found my voice then… anger will do that. Calm, rational thought isn’t so great for pushing back even the silliest and most baseless mortal terror. Anger, though, cuts through it like an enchanted knife through warm butter.

“I can,” I said. “And I don’t want you touching me.”

I reached a hand up to Amaranth and she helped me up.

“Well, you shouldn’t need her to say it,” Barley said.

“I agree,” I said. “It should go without saying. Barley, you tried to rape me.”

“But Puddy…”

“I don’t want Puddy touching me, either,” I said. “I might be… adventurous… a little, sometimes… but I’m not public property, and I don’t like people who treat me like I am.”

Barley’s eyes rolled over to Amaranth in a way that made me glad that nymphs weren’t related to basilisks.

“No?” she said. “But you love her.”

“Amaranth has her values,” I said. “They’re not always the same as mine. We… we compromise sometimes. But she’s never tried to rape me.”

“Listen, can we not use that word? I’m willing to talk about what I did, but…”

“Great… good for you. But I’m not willing to talk about it,” I said. “Not with you.”

“Could you just hear me out for one minute?”

“Were you possessed?” I asked. “Had you been messing around with strange pitchforks? Were you under the influence of strange alchemical vapors?”

“Oh, yeah. See, that’s the thing. I actually drank some of Puddy’s wine to get my courage up…”

“Up for what?” I asked. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you hadn’t already made up your mind about what you were going to do before you took the first swig.”

She steeled herself up, swallowed, and then she did look me in the eyes.

I didn’t know if it was something that was against their nature, or if going for a dozen and a half years of mature existence with nothing worth lying about just didn’t cultivate the habit of deception. I knew the truth as soon as her eyes met mine, all big and bright and brittle as Two’s… but not nearly as innocent.

There was a calculation in there. Not a particularly complicated one… one that was straightforward and direct as two plus two equals four. I’d just told her what she had to say for me to give her a chance, and she was about to say it.

“Honestly, Mackenzie, I don’t remem…”

“Stop,” I said. Her eyelids ratcheted down and her blue eyes flashed with anger. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see her face any more. “Stop, Barley… you’re lying to me.”

“That’s because you won’t listen,” she said. Her straw-stuffed pants crinkled as she stomped her foot.

“Barley… if you really are trying to change, I’m glad,” I said. “For so many reasons. But it’s not my job to forgive you. I don’t owe you that. Your mother was right… the best thing we can do is stay away from each other.”

“I will,” she said. “I was going to, except for this one night when she’s not looking… I just thought I’d be big and apologize, but if you don’t even… if you won’t… if… I wonder if it’s the demon blood that makes you so petty, or if it’s her.”

“Barley… just go,” I said. I kept my eyes closed as I heard her crinkling away, then let out a very relieved breath.

“That was… that was really pretty good, baby,” Amaranth said.

“Thanks,” I said. I turned to Ian as we started to wander away from the scene of the… scene. “Were you planning on jumping in at any point?”

“Not even a little bit,” he said.

“I guess there’s a reason you didn’t go as a knight in shining armor.”

“Maybe because you didn’t need one?” he said. “I don’t know what I could have added except another loud voice, and I don’t think that’s the same thing as helping.”

“Is doing nothing really better?” I asked.

“Excuse me,” Pala said. She held up a furry bikini bottom that looked a lot like mine, except for the broken strap and the not even barely covering up my girly parts. “Is this yours?”

Ian’s gaze flicked down. I was suddenly intensely aware of the feel of my cape on my barer-than-before butt. While my face turned into another glowing pumpkin, Amaranth reached out and took the broken garment from the demi-giantess.

“Thank you so much, Pala,” she said. “Hold your cape closed, baby… I’ll just go grab Two. Unless you just wanted to slow dance real close against Ian for a while?”

“Uh, yeah, no,” I said, pulling the cape around myself. “Hurry back.”

“It was just a thought,” Amaranth said. “Making the best of what could be a fortuitous accident. I’ll go get this fixed, though,” she said, and she hurried off towards Two’s group, which had gone straight for the refreshments.

“I don’t get a vote on the slow dancing thing?” Ian asked. “You impressed Amaranth with how you handled that whole deal… it could be like a whole streak.”

“That’s pretty much what I’m worried about. Anyway, you can dance if you want to,” I said. “It’ll be like a compromise. She likes those, too.”

“Miss Mackenzie!” another voice said, the speaker coming up behind me. “Miss Mackenzie!”

This time, I knew exactly who it was, even though the voice was a little muffled and echoey… Sooni was one of the few people apart from teachers who ever used a title when she addressed me, and her yippy little voice was fairly distinctive even when she wasn’t quite screaming at the top of her lungs.

“What, Sooni?” I asked, turning to face her. “What is… ack!”

I had an excuse for being startled that time… even if her voice might have suggested a mask, the last time I’d seen her, her head had been uncovered, and in any event, the last thing I would have expected was to see her entire head covered with a “realistic” (as far as that went) foam representation of an animated character.

“You’re bunching up the cape! It doesn’t look right!” she said, slapping at my hands where I was clutching it. I yelped and let go. The big foam head rocked back a bit. “Actually, I think maybe it did look better the other way.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, closing it.

“Science Princess!” Pala yelled, running over… well, stepping over. We weren’t that far away from her, comparatively. “You are the Pretty Neko Science Princess!”

“Yes!” Sooni said. She looked up at Pala and her badly abused elven gown. “I like your swimming costume!”

“Thank you!” Pala said. “It is in my room at the inn. Why do you not have Science Princess’s science boots?”

“Oh, these are my mother’s shoes,” Sooni said. “She gave them to me when I was very young. I liked them because they made me look tall.”

“Oh,” Pala said. “Maybe I should get some?”

“You look pretty tall already.”

“They must be working already,” Pala said. “I need to stand next to you some more.”

“You… you aren’t a lesbian, are you?” Sooni asked.

“That is a type of sex pervert?”

“Yes!” Sooni said, nodding her head so enthusiastically I thought it was going to fall off.

“No!” Pala said.

I mouthed “Let’s get out of here,” to a very bemused Ian, and we began to shuffle away from the new best friends, in the direction of Two and Amaranth.

“If that head doesn’t win for scariest costume, I’m demanding a recount,” Ian said.

“Don’t speak too soon,” I said. spotting something that would give Sooni’s head a run for its money: two people who could only have been Suzi and Maliko wearing similar outfits complete with heads, and… most frightening… pushing a stroller with Kai, who was wearing a giant Baby Kai-Kai head with giant oval eyes taking up almost all of the face that wasn’t covered by the giant pacifier. “Don’t stare at her,” I said. “She’s probably already plotting to kill me in my sleep.”

“She could probably sneak out of that and nobody would ever know,” Ian said.

The nekos were parked at one end of a long table covered with Veil treats. Amaranth and Two’s group were at the other end, fortunately, next to a big placard welcoming students to Anna Paradox Tower and Residence Hall for the Veil Ball.

“Hey, baby,” Amaranth said as we approached. She held up the repaired garment. “Two put it right for you.”

“Thanks, Two,” I said. “Sorry for making you work during the dance.”

“It’s okay, I forgive you,” Two said. “Anyway, it isn’t your fault that you were made clumsy.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Hey, listen,” Hazel said. “I don’t know the whole thing that’s been going on between you and that stuffed shirt, but if she gets up in your business again, I’ll be happy to show her how we do things on the river.”

“Oh, Hazel, don’t,” Honey said, looking as mortified as she ought to have looked in her mock-goblin costume. “Not in your…”

“Not another word from you on that, or I’ll give you a refresher course,” Hazel said. “I’m as fit as the day I was I popped Andy one for putting his hands where oughtn’t've, and a woman who can whoop a dwarf could take on just about anyone in this room, up to and including the very tall elf.”

“You didn’t ‘whoop’ him, Hazel, you took him by surprise,” Honey said. “Which he had every right to be, considering that you apparently weren’t so modest as to…”

“Not another word, Honey,” Hazel said.

“Where… um… so, where is Andy tonight?” I asked Hazel.

“He’s… we’re taking a little bit of a breather, actually,” Hazel said.

“I can’t believe that even a dwarf would cut and run when…”

“Owain! Will you please shut it? I will belt you one, Heather Callaway!”

“Let’s go find the ladies’ room, baby,” Amaranth said, grabbing my cape-wrapped elbow and pulling me away.

“Yeah, I think I’ll just join you,” Ian said.

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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.

Two wakes up in the glass case, which means that she hadn’t woken up at all.

The case, like everything else in the full but tidy basement workshop, bears a label. Its label says “Golem Case”. The block letters were applied to the glass almost directly across from her eyes, and so she can see the backs of them without moving or looking around and so she knows without moving or looking around that she was in the proper place, that she was in her place and so she knows that much at least is right in the world.

This means she’s dreaming.

She hears the bolts on the door at the top of the stairs sliding open, one after another. She tenses up. She hears the door open and she sucks in her lips a bit.

This time I won’t do it, she thinks as she hears feet tread on the stairs. I won’t say it. I don’t have to. I don’t have to say anything I don’t want to ^{I WANT TO DO WHAT I’M TOLD} but I’m a free being ^{but if I were a free being I wouldn’t be back here} but if I’m back here and not a free being then Miss Ruth never told me to say it and so I don’t have to.

Then she hears the bolts on the door at the bottom of the stairs and that door opens, and the man steps inside.

“Good morning!” Two says, and he freezes. The perfect dream of her perfect life begins to crack and fray around the edges. She doesn’t know what he says in response to this. She doesn’t know what happens next.

She had never said “good morning!” to the man.

Sometimes when this happens she wakes up and she cries because she ruined the dream and she can’t get it back. Other times she keeps dreaming. The workshop falls to pieces and is blown away, leaving her on a vast, flat, featureless plain (labeled “A Vast Flat Featureless Plain”) in an infinitely expanding empty space (labeled “An Infinitely Expanding Empty Space”), alone except for some sort of ridiculous owl turtle thing sitting on a post, both labeled appropriately.

The ridiculous owl turtle thing has occupied the vast featureless plain ever since the day that Two, wanting something to replace the workshop dream that had been her refuge until Miss Ruth’s increasingly specific admonitions to be more personable had finally destroyed it, had asked her friend Hazel what sort of things people dreamed about. Her friend Hazel had told her that a lot of her dreams had impossible things that were not quite one thing and not quite another. The next time Two had fallen asleep, after she wrecked the workshop dream, there it was: not quite an owl and not a quite a turtle.

It perched upright on the top of the post on bird-like talons, but it had a reptilian underbelly and a turtle shell. The things that stuck out of the holes at its shoulders might have been flippers and might have been wings. Its head was turtlish, but with owl-like tufts over big yellow eyes and a beak that almost might have belonged to a snapping turtle as much as a bird.

“Oh,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “Back again?”

“Yes,” Two says sullenly. “I am back again.”

“Did you try what I said?”

“No,” Two says. “I did not.”

“Well, there’s no use glaring at me like that if you aren’t going to take my advice.”

“Your advice isn’t any good,” Two says. “I cannot make something up about my own… my maker. Making things up about people is called lying and gossip, and it’s wrong.”

“It’s only gossip if you tell other people and it’s only lying if you act like it’s true,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing said.

“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think I know those things,” Two says. “So I don’t know how you could possibly know them.”

“I am a ridiculous owl turtle thing,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing responds, “and I am clearly impossible.”

“I am going to ignore you,” Two says. She looks around the vast, flat, featureless plain. “I think I am going to sweep.”

“Going to sweep? But you’re alweady sweeping,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “This is all a dweam.”

“That isn’t very funny,” Two says.

“It’s your nascent sense of humor, honey. I just work here.”

“I need a broom,” Two says, looking around the infinitely expanding space, but of course, there is no such thing as a broom there.

“And who told you to sweep?”

Two freezes, looking guilty. Her face in the dream takes on the spasmodic tic that it does when she’s stuck in a chain of thoughts. In her bed, under the blankets, her whole body kicks and twitches.

“I… I… I… this is my space and I am supposed to keep my space clean and tidy,” she says with a measure of triumph as she works the justification out.

“Looks pretty neat and tidy to me,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says.

“Miss Ruth says that practice makes perfect.”

“I don’t think she was talking about sweeping perfectly clean surfaces.”

“She did not specify,” Two says. She says again, “I need a broom.”

“Have you tried the other side of my post?” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “It seems to me that you can see everything there is here from where you’re standing, except for the other side of my post. So if you can’t see a broom, that’s the only place it could be.”

“Oh, okay,” Two says, and she walks around the ridiculous owl turtle thing. There is no broom leaning up against the post. “No,” she says. “There is no broom here.”

“Well, of course,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. It’s facing her again. “That’s this side of the post. You want the other side.”

“But I went to the other side,” Two protests.

“I beg to differ,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “You did not go to the other side. You came to this side. The other side is always the one at which you are not.”

“That poor chicken must be very tired, then,” Two says. “And dizzy.”

“Now who isn’t very funny?” the ridiculous owl turtle thing asks as Two reached around to the other side of the post and feels her hand closing around a wooden handle. She pulls out the improbably-placed broom. It’s labeled “Improbably-Placed Broom”.

“You,” Two says, and she begins to sweep the perfectly flat, perfectly clean surface of the vast, flat, featureless plain. “You aren’t funny. Still. Now be quiet. I have sweeping to do.”

“How will you know when you’re done?”

“When I’ve swept the whole place.”

“But it’s endless.”

“Yes,” Two says, and she smiles.

“You aren’t very good at dreaming, you know,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says.

“I don’t care,” Two said as she starts to sweep.

“Your name isn’t even Two,” it says. “You just made that up.”

“I think I hate you, ridiculous owl turtle thing,” Two says.

“You aren’t supposed to hate anybody.”

“You aren’t anybody,” Two says. “So that’s okay.”

Steff doesn’t have the self-awareness to know that she’s dreaming, but when she wakes up it will seem like it should have been obvious to her… so obvious that in the moment she awakens, she’ll manage to convince herself that she knew it was a dream and was just going with it.

There is no room in the fortress at Kilrest as big and expansive as the throne room in her dreams. While the ogres tower over her, they don’t build their structures any bigger than they need to. They lack the architectural cunning to build a great big hall with a high vaulted ceiling like the one Steff always imagined before she saw the real place, the one she still pictures more than half the time when she imagines her life after graduation.

Steff sits on her throne in the hall, and it is her throne. Viktor doesn’t factor into this dream. She has dreams about Viktor and she has dreams about Kilrest, but ever since they went there she hasn’t had any dreams about Viktor and Kilrest. Her sleeping mind cannot make them fit together. Her brooding lover does not fit with her idealized fantasy life of wicked decadence.

The hall is full of her subjects… ogres and reanimated skeletons and zombies… and her victims, which this time around consist entirely of people she went to school with. The ones who attacked her, the ones who teased her, the ones who snubbed her, the ones who happened to be present for the worst years of Steff Johnson’s life are being torn apart, being impaled on spits, being tortured to death in a dozen ways, but none of them are dying because Steff’s dark magic is too awesome to allow them that escape.

They’re starting to twist off Cindy Mears’s head now. What had Cindy done? Steff couldn’t remember anything in particular. But she was hot and effortlessly popular and Steff had popped so many boners over her while trying to figure out if she was a gay boy or a straight girl or what and that hadn’t made things easier for her.

Not that Cindy had been alone on that score. An adolescent male body is on a hair trigger to begin with. Adding in fifty percent elven blood… for a while it had seemed like everything turned Steff on, and this at a point in her life when she regularly found herself thinking of violent and/or morbid things…

It really was no wonder that certain associations had stuck in her head, though Steff has never had the self-awareness necessary to think about how she might have come to associate violence and death with sex. Even asking the question could seem to imply that there was something wrong with doing so, and Steff had spent too many years and too many tears convincing herself that she was fine to do that.

Life in her dream of Kilrest was so good. She didn’t feel like rocking the boat with a lot of moody self-examination.

“Why, yes, I do see your point,” Mother Khaele tells Amaranth in an utterly realistic and wholly plausible scenario in which the nymph has just pointed out the fundamental flaw in existing cosmological models which results in the perceived division between the so-called higher and lower races, the people and the animals. “You’ve worked it out quite nicely. In fact, I have to admit that I left that mistake there on purpose to see which of my children would be the first one to spot it, so that I would know who would be worthy of sharing my…”

At this point, Mack’s leg twitches in her sleep and she kicks Amaranth in the ankle, jarring her awake. She blinks her myopic eyes several times in the perfect darkness of the blanket tent before she realizes where she is and that her Mother’s praise had simply been a dream. She sighs, and tries to go back to sleep.

Moeli’s working the desk when She comes in, cool as ever. She doesn’t look at anyone when she comes into the room. She keeps her head down, thinking her important thoughts, but She‘s not afraid to say anything to anybody. Really.

She‘ll just blurt out things that would make a bugbear blush without even thinking about it. Just like that.

Eventually She sidles up to the counter, the way She does, like whatever She has got to do isn’t even that important.

“Hey,” She says, with that quiet, husky voice that drives him wild. “I, uh, found your notebook.”

“Oh?” Moeli asks. His hearts skip a couple of beats as She puts it down in front of him. He’d wanted to show his notebook to her, but he’d always chickened out. It was a million to one chance that She would be into something so weird.

“I hope you don’t mind I looked through it… well, I had to figure out whose it was. I thought the drawings of motorcycles were kind of cool. Did you do them?”

“Yeah,” Moeli said. “I did.”

“I like motorcycles,” She says. “I think they’re awesome.”

“I do, too,” Moeli says.

“In fact,” She says, leaning in close. “I’ve got one outside. A real one.”

“No shit?” Moeli says.

“Yeah,” She says. “Half-demons have motorcycles. But I can’t seem to figure out how to make it go. You seem like you know a lot about them, though. Do you think maybe we could try to take a ride… together?”

“Well, I’m kind of working now,” Moeli says. “And I can’t just walk away. Also, you said you weren’t into me.”

“I’m a bitch and I was lying to you for no reason,” She says. “Didn’t you know that?”

“Of course,” he says. “You know what? My shift’s over.”

Two has been sweeping for what seems like hours, and the ridiculous owl turtle thing is a distant memory behind her, as she’s sweeping in the way she’s been taught: one straight line until she comes to the wall or carpet, and then move over.

She doesn’t expect to find a wall or carpet any time soon. She doesn’t expect to find anything, as there has never been anything in the vast, flat, featureless plain except the post with the ridiculous owl turtle thing on it. But there had also never been a broom behind the post (that she knew of, anyway), and unfortunately for her, Two understands that one runs across unexpected things in dreams.

However, there are an infinite number of things she does not expect to run across, so it won’t necessarily have to be a wall or carpet or something else that would force her to turn around and start heading back towards the ridiculous owl turtle thing.

In fact, the first unexpected thing she runs across is her teddy bear, Hand Wash. In her dream, he’s as tall as she is, though he still just sits there with his firmly stuffed legs jutting out in front of him to support him and his upper body leaning slightly forward to keep him balanced on those legs.

“Hello, Two,” he says.

“Hello, Hand Wash,” she says. “I can’t stop to talk. I’m busy sweeping and I have to keep going until I’m done.”

“Sweeping? I thought you were dreaming.”

“I can do both,” Two says.

“I can’t do anything,” Hand Wash says.

“I know,” she says.

“I’m a teddy bear,” he adds.

“Yes.”

“I’m not even supposed to be talking,” he says. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “I forgive you.”

And onward she sweeps.

Ariadne knows the dream before it starts, because it’s the same one she’s been having for weeks now. That thing is in her class. It wears a mousey, unassuming little face, but the elven professor knows the fire and death and hate that lie behind that mask. She can’t say anything about it, though. She can’t do anything.

Nobody else sees. Nobody else knows.

Every time she turns her back, even if it’s only for a second, another of her students is gone. The thing is clearly responsible. Why can’t anybody else see this?

And now there’s more of it. More of them. It’s brought in its friends.

How much longer can this go on?

How long before the school’s overrun?

Something must be done.

Something must be done.

Amaranth, having just found out that she had aced all of her classes (as expected!), was getting ready to go home for winter break, but she was planning on taking the fast route home and traveling there in style. Steff had helped get her “dressed”, so to speak… arranging her on the platter with roasted potatoes and other vegetables, brushing her body down with garlic oil, and even stuffing an apple in her mouth for aesthetic purposes. Steff had wanted to use garlic butter, but Amaranth had felt that using an animal product would be more likely to bring Mother Khaele’s disapproval.

Now Steff is wheeling the trolley with the covered platter on it to the elegant dining room where her Mack waits along with Viktor and their new best friends, Iona and Feejee. This was such a brilliant idea, she thinks to herself, enjoying the smell of the garlic and the pepper and the fire roasted onions, and when she surprises all of her sisters by arriving home early and explains how she got there, they’ll all be so excited to try this… the ultimate carnal experience, the ultimate sharing of self… and the new phenomenon of responsible, consensual cannibalism utilizing renewable resources will put places like Tender Mercy’s out of business, she just knows it.

Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it, too?

And then the trolley stops and she knows that the moment of revelation is upon her and Mack is going to be so surprised and everybody’s going to think she looks sexy and delicious and she’s going to taste so good…

…and then Mack rolls over in her sleep, pulling on the blankets and Amaranth isn’t on the platter at all.

“Oh, phooey,” she says, and then she tries to go back to sleep.

Some dreams are simpler than others.

In Trina’s dream, everybody had four eyes, except for her, and this made them all freaks. Sara Leighton dreams that the teleport accident which in reality had joined her with her sister had actually sent her twin to another plane of existence. Tara’s version has it so that it merged them fully and they’d become one person. On occasion, they’ve each dreamed it the other way and broke out in a cold sweat in their sleep.

Feejee dreams of blood in the water.

Iona dreams of blood.

Kai, who often thinks of nothing but murder all day, dreams a surprisingly peaceful dream about her grandfather’s calligraphy pens. Suzi dreams of invisible cheeseburgers. Maliko dreams about her Sooni.

Scylla dreams that she’d made it to the damned rabbit before the snake-eyed bitch did. The snake-eyed bitch dreams of cutting off her pink skin and finding scales underneath. Gladys dreams of being up on stage, hundreds—no thousands—of people’s eyes upon her. Cetea dreams that she can use a damned mirror without it breaking.

Honey dreams absolutely nothing, as six crushed flower petals in a tall glass of vodka have rendered her oblivious even to oblivion.

“Hey, hey Two!”

“What is it, ridiculous owl turtle thing?” Two asks as the clearly impossible thing flaps its flipper wings in ungainly flight alongside her, oblivious to her attempts to sweep away from it.

“How come you never dream about your friends?” it asks her.

“I do,” she says. “Sometimes. But not when I dream about the workshop, because they weren’t in the workshop.”

“You never dream about them here, either.”

“They were never here,” Two says. “And anyway this is still the workshop dream. It’s just broken, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“You could stop saying good morning,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says.

“No,” Two says, shaking her head. “I tried that.”

“You could stop freaking the hell out when it happens,” it says. “That’s what breaks the dream, you know.”

“I don’t care,” Two says. “I have a different dream now. I’m sweeping.”

“But have you considered the ramifications of that?”

“No,” she says.

“Do you think there really was a broom on the other side of my post?”

“Yes,” she says.

“It was there because you dreamed it up,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “You could dream up anything you wanted.”

“I don’t care,” Two says. “I’m sweeping.”

Dee is a child in the marketplace. One of her hands is being held by Dehsah, and the other by her mother.

No, that’s wrong. My mother never took me to the marketplace.

Dee is a child in the marketplace. Her mother, pretty Dehsah…

No.

Dee is in the marketplace, with her lover, Dehsah.

Dehsah hasn’t been out of the house since we became lovers.

Dee passes a fitful night, her subconscious unable to provide any dreams of succor which her conscious mind does not reject out of hand.

Amaranth looks beautiful in her wedding dress, and so does Mack. They are having an outdoor ceremony, of course, and even a hilltop shrine was out of the question under the circumstances, so they’re holding it in a beautiful elven forest bower. Everybody from Paradise Valley is there, and so are all the students she’d worked with during her years of study (in which she’d attained multiple degrees and many honors), and nymphs and satyrs and fauns of all stripes.

Mack had agreed to have a Mechan officiate, to get around her little disability, but when they get to the end of the aisle Amaranth sees that it’s not the scientist there at all, but Mother Khaele herself. Amaranth looks in alarm at Mack, but Mack is standing unharmed in the presence of the divine.

“Rest easy, my daughter,” Mother Khaele says. “For your love has redeemed this demon-tainted soul completely, and now I will happily join the two of you as one, after which you will be taken to your honeymoon in a carriage pulled by specially trained horses, who will join you for…”

“Sooni!” Mack blurts out, and Amaranth looks at her in confusion as the wedding dissolves and she finds herself in bed once more, where Mack blurts out Sooni’s name a few more times.

“Suzune-Darling, there is something you must know,” her mother tells Sooni, who sits anxiously by her feet, hanging on every word. Her mother is so wise and so beautiful, just like herself. “We have kept this from you for years, for your own protection, but now you must be told.”

“What, Mother?” Sooni asks. “What is it?”

“I only hope you can forgive my dishonesty towards you,” her mother says.

“I’m sure if you were not truthful towards me, it was for a very good reason,” Sooni says, bowing her head.

“You are such a good daughter, Suzune-Darling,” her mother says. She gets to her feet. “Perhaps it would be easier to show you than tell you.”

She turns around in a circle, and when she does her features have changed. It’s the same kind, wise eyes that are looking down at Sooni, but they’re yellow instead of black. The same calm smile, but with a shorter snout.

Her mother is a nekoyokai.

“Mother… you’re…?”

“Yes,” her mother says, nodding. “And not just that, but I am Queen of the Nekos. Which means that you, my humble daughter Suzune-Darling, you are the Neko Princess. You look like you do because you are half kitsu, but now that you know the truth you will be able to change between the two at will. You must keep your identity as Neko Princess secret, though, or else you will be in terrible danger.”

“That’s why Father always became angry when I acted like a neko!” Sooni exclaims.

“Yes. He was simply worried about you,” her mother says. “And you must know that Kai…”

“Kai is my true sister!” Sooni says. “I’ve known it all along!”

“Yes! Your heart knows the truth, Suzune-Darling, my Neko Princess!”

A door slams downstairs, pulling Sooni away from her mother. She sits upright in bed, shaking her head in confusion. What had she just been dreaming? It had been about her mother, she’s sure about that… but the details are all slipping away. Her mother and nekos.

Oh, well. It couldn’t have been a True Dream if I can’t remember it.

She reaches down and gets her mother’s shoes, the shoes she wears everywhere, even inside the house, off the floor and holds them to her chest as she lays back down, hoping her mother comes back to her soon. She had left a map of the Imperium with Prax circled on it at the family shrine, along with a brochure for the campus with her room number on it, but she wasn’t sure if her mother could come this far, or that she’d have the time.

She had a lot of work to do, her mother did. She was a very important person.

“My friend Hazel used to keep a dream diary,” Two says.

“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says.

“I’m talking,” Two says. “I don’t think it matters if I’m talking to you or not, since you are not real. Her mother made her keep a dream diary from when she was eleven until she turned twenty-two. She made my friend Hazel write her dreams down every morning, and then she read it. She wanted to make sure that my friend Hazel didn’t get the curse.”

“No, she wanted to find out if your friend Hazel already had it,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing replies. “That’s a different thing. And it isn’t a curse.”

“I know,” Two says. “I told my friend Hazel that, and she said ‘Well, it isn’t a blessing.’ And then she told me not to talk about it.”

“But you are.”

“I’m dreaming,” Two says. “I’m not really talking.”

“So why can’t you stop yourself from saying ‘good morning’ to the man?”

It’s the war again.

The bridge.

Theona’s down by the bridge, trying to finish her spell of unmaking before the orcs overwhelm her. Jill can see that she’s just going to make it… get the spell off, that is. She doesn’t have time to finish it and escape.

The rest of Hydra Company… all four of the other survivors… have their hands full. Nora’s gone dead to the world again, seemingly conscious of nothing but the bow in her hands. Ironically she’s doing the most to help Theona, sending arrow after arrow at the thundering horde as it bears down on her.

She makes every shot she takes, and every shot is a fatal one, but she might as well be standing on a beach trying to shoot down the waves as they head towards the shore.

Mur-Si is… who the fuck knew where Mur-Si was? The most Jill could see was where she had just been, as ogres collapse with the legs cut out from under them and orcs die in fountains of spurting blood. Jill had been told… some hundred years before… that she had been bred to be the greatest warrior the world had ever seen… but the bastard elven hybrid is a strong argument that the Founders had wasted their efforts.

Jill and Fayborn are fighting back to back, Fay’s gleaming sword and Jill’s giant axe cleaving a circle around them. Jill keeps getting glimpses of the kid in the wizard robes down by the bridge, kneeling helpless and alone as she focuses on her spell.

“What’s the plan for extraction?” Jill asks.

“Soon as we see the bridge go down, we bug out,” Fay says. “Simple enough for you, Flattop?”

“What about The?”

“She bugs out, too.”

“She’s never going to make it back up to us,” Jill says.

“She might,” Fay says. “Didn’t think we’d make it this far at all.”

“We’ve got to get down to her,” Jill says.

“Can’t,” Fay says. “If she fails, we’ve got to be ready to try Plan B.”

“She’s our wizard,” Jill says. “What are we supposed to do to the bridge without her, have Mur-Si stab it to death?”

“Need to know basis.”

“You sent her down there to die,” Jill says.

“We were all sent here to die,” Fay says. “Some of us are better at it than others.”

Jill headbutts the orc in front of her and then charges through the gap left as it goes down, trampling goblins, shouldering past orcs, and dodging around ogres. Fay yells out behind her, something about sticking together, but let the bitch yell. She stands a better chance on her own than the neophyte mage who had, completely unwittingly, become the linchpin of the entire mission.

And as she thunders down the side of the ravine towards the bridge, Jill remembers that this has all already happened and that it’s just a dream, and she realizes she’s not going to make it in time.

The bridge starts to crumble and Theona stands and turns to run up towards her. The bridge is collapsing as a pair of ogres catch hold of her.

They don’t even have weapons out. Why would they? She doesn’t. If she’d been fighting them, they might have been forced to kill her, but instead they’ve got her in their hands…

“Opening the first charity brothel together was the best idea ever, Amaranth,” Mack says.

“Oh, it just seemed like the natural thing to do, after you and Two overcame your inhibitions and embraced the nymphly codes as a way of life,” Amaranth replies. “But this is just the start. Once we start teaching our classes, we’ll get more women of all races to subscribe to my new revolutionary philosophy and soon the entire world will be at peace because everybody will be too busy loving one another to hate anybody. Of course, some credit belongs to Mother Khaele.”

“No, she told me it’s all because of you,” Mack says. “And that you shouldn’t need to feel humble about it, but that’s just like you to think of her.”

“But, Mack, you couldn’t have spoken to… oh, poop. This is a dream again, isn’t it?” Amaranth says as she wakes up.

“Huh? What?” Mack murmurs sleepily beside her in the darkness.

“Nothing, baby,” Amaranth mutters, frowning. “Nothing.”

Leda is dancing across the smooth, glassy surface of the lake. It’s winter, her favorite time, but though a dusting of snow coats trees and the ground on the shore around the lake, the water remains unfrozen. Even in human form, though, it bears her weight. She leaps and she glides about in the moonlight, and then she heads for the thicket of reeds in the center of the lake, where on this side there is a small island, barely more than a bump of rock jutting up above the surface of the water.

That small island of reeds is the gateway to the other side, where her mother’s castle and where her true kingdom is. On both sides, the kingdom of Mariinsky Lake is not more than the lake itself, but on the Other Side, that lake is much bigger.

Even though she loves the castle and she loves the true lake far more than she loves the dreary, cramped one she’d just been dancing upon, she feels cold dread seeping down her spine as she passes through the reeds and finds herself on the large island with her home in front of her. It’s daylight on this side, but the sun doesn’t seem to warm her up much.

She knows what’s coming next.

Leda is a true princess: grace defined, possessing endless reserves of natural charm and refinement. But somehow—witches, probably—she screwed up and got herself exiled for four years to a moonforsaken frontier outpost in an empire of human barbarians. It was unthinkable, it was impossible… but it had happened, and it was going to happen again.

What would it be this time? Would she upset a tureen of soup? Lean against a priceless tapestry? Would she tread on an ambassador snail’s tail? Accidentally insult a visiting frog prince?

Knowing that her doom was coming but not knowing what shape it would take was terrible torture, but no matter how much she fights against it, her body still insists on passing over the drawbridge, under the portcullis, and through the gatehouse. She exchanges polite pleasantry with the guards in their bright red uniforms.

Her mother and her stepfather are waiting for her in the throne room, and in between her and them is a gauntlet of respected courtiers, servants bustling around with important loads, and guests of high social rank. But no matter what Leda did, no matter how careful she was, something would go wrong because when she reached the throne room, her stepfather would smile that sneering smile at her and say those nine most hated words:

“Your mother and I have been discussing your education.”

And so the dream went.

“Do you want to know what I think?” the ridiculous owl turtle thing asks.

“No,” Two says. “I really think I do not.”

“I think you say ‘good morning’ because you want to.”

“I want to do what I’m told,” Two says.

“Among other things,” it says. “But I think you want him to acknowledge you.”

“No,” Two says, shaking her head. “You are mistaken.”

“I think you know you couldn’t go back to being a piece of lab equipment now that you’ve been a person, and you want to know if he could relate to you as a person.”

“No,” Two repeats decisively.

“I think part of you would like to have a conversation with him.”

“You are mistaken.”

“I think you want to know what he thinks about you… if he thinks about you. Does he miss you like you miss him? Would he take you back as you are now? Would he hire you as a free person? Would he like you?”

“No!” Two yells. She turns and clobbers him with the broom. “I hate you, some sort of ridiculous owl turtle thing!” she yells as she hits him again and again. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

“Amaranth, you’re so smart!” the professor proclaims. “In all my years of teaching, I’ve never met a student who understood the material so quickly and so completely. That a nymph should be the one to…”

Under the covers, Mack begins to masturbate furiously. Amaranth, awoken once again, sighs, reaches over, and guides her lover’s hand to a slightly better spot. Mack moans in her sleep.

“At least somebody’s having pleasant dreams tonight,” Amaranth says.

We poked around the shops in the upper city, then took a public coach across the canal and browsed through the bazaar for a bit before we finally made our way towards the gate and the school carriages.

“Well, this has been fun,” I said when the carriage pulled into the turnaround back on campus.

“Yes,” Sooni agreed. “Don’t forget to think about everything.”

“I won’t.”

“Oh, hey!” she said brightly. “The golem said there were arena fights tonight! Do you want to go watch?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Gladiators aren’t really my thing.”

“Oh, okay,” Sooni said. “I guess… I guess I will see you later?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Later.”

She seemed reluctant to part company with me… I didn’t mind her presence, but I really wanted to either hook up with Amaranth, or failing that, get some alone time in my room. Even getting along with her, being with Sooni was mentally fatiguing. I was wary of stumbling into traps or unprovoked ambushes.

“Hey!” she said, her face lighting up. “You should come swimming with us tonight!”

“Sooni,” I said. “We’ve gone over this… I don’t have a swimsuit, and honestly, I’m not entirely confident about getting into a big pool.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, when we… if we get our business started, maybe I’ll make you one.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Have a nice afternoon.”

“You, too!”

The next bit was a little awkward, as we’d just said our goodbyes and then immediately started walking across campus in the same direction. Duh… even if we were just going back to our respective rooms, they were right across the hallway from each other.

“I think my father has some trading partners in the East Reaches,” Sooni said after we’d walked near each other in silence.

“Does he?”

“Yes,” she said. “I wonder if he knows anybody who…”

She trailed off. I understood why. “Knows anybody who died?” It was a morbid thought. A hundred thousand people… we’d avoided the topic since leaving the Crystal Palace, but it was hanging there in the background. It felt like the whole world had changed, shifting under our feet while we walked on oblivious.

The sort of men that Sooni’s father did business with could probably afford every protection imaginable, but who would imagine a giant wave that smashed whole towns and then swept people by the thousands out to sea? Even if you could afford a resurrection, how would they ever find the body among all that open water?

I suddenly wondered if there were mermaids in the eastern sea.

“Do you think it will hurt his business?” I asked. It seemed a little cold, but it was easier to think of the impact on things than people. And from Sooni’s point of view, that could be an important question.

“I… I do not think so,” she said, but she sounded worried. “He did not export very much until recently. Most Yokano business stayed within Yokan. He only started expanding in the last few years.”

“What does your father do?”

“He manages several enchanteries,” Sooni said. “That is why I am majoring in applied enchantment. I am going to help him with his business!”

“Was that his idea?” I asked. Unless Mr. Hoshinotama was as good at blocking out reality as his daughter was, I couldn’t imagine him thinking she would be a valuable addition to his team.

“No, he said I could study whatever I wanted,” she said. “It will be a surprise.”

“I bet it will,” I said. “Aren’t you minoring in transportation?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is father’s dream to make carriages that are the envy of the world. I will need to understand them, too, in order to take my place at his side.”

“If the dress thing takes off, though, you can have that as a back-up plan,” I said. “I mean, since you enjoy making them anyway.”

“That may be a fun hobby, but my destiny is with my family’s business,” Sooni said. “My father wanted a son to raise and teach, but the gods blessed him with me instead. So when he retires, I will become the first woman to head a major company ever in the history of Yokan.”

“Uh, good for you.” If women didn’t run companies in Yokan, I didn’t really see them making an exception for her, but who said it was my job to crush her dreams? She was going to spend at least four years in college, with many opportunities for reality checks along the way. “I’ve got to go downstairs and check my mail,” I said, as we were nearing the dorm complex. “See if the replacement mirror arrived.”

“Alright,” Sooni said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the arena?”

“Positive,” I said.

“Then I guess I’ll just go to the pool again,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“After you think about the weavesite!”

“I’ll be thinking about that for a while, Sooni,” I said. “I won’t necessarily have an answer the next time I see you.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

There were no red envelopes in my mailbox, though there were coupons and a couple things for Two to prove that the mail had arrived. Had she given up? That would be great timing… no letters meant that I’d be able to obey Amaranth’s order without doing anything. Neither of us would have to be exposed to my grandmother’s guilt and poison.

Two had something from the student work office, a letter from a Miss Ruth at Hearts of Clay, and one other thing that I almost missed: a hand-addressed envelope from a Stephen Callaway in Logfallen Shire. That was a little weird. Why would a gnome be writing to her? Well, I could ask her, but otherwise it was none of my business.

I flipped through the coupons and flyers looking for anything good or even interesting for a bit before shuffling over to the counter, where of course Moeli the hobgoblin was on duty again. I always felt at least a little awkward talking to him… I felt even more awkward at the prospect after our disastrous “double date”.

“Hey, Moeli,” I said. I smiled nervously. “It seems like you’re always down here, doesn’t it?”

“Well, you seem to come by in the afternoon,” he said in his slow, rumbly voice. “That’s my shift, you know.”

“Yeah… yeah it is,” I said.

“The first time, I thought it was a coincidence,” he said. “The second time, I started to wonder…”

“Still coincidence,” I said.

“Oh. Have you, uh, talked to Oru since the dance?” he asked. “She’s on your floor, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, I’ve ran into her,” I said. “She’s a little mad.”

“At me? Or you?”

“At me,” I said. “She kind of bit me, actually, after the dance. On the leg. It really seemed kind of random… does it mean something, uh, culturally?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“What?”

“She doesn’t like you very much.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Men get in fights over girls and things, but women just bite each other,” he said. “Though that sort of thing is becoming frowned upon. Too many fatalities.”

“From the fights, you mean?”

“No, we use our fists,” he said. “The bites. Did you see her teeth? Goblin women can bite clean through an arm. ”

“Yeah, I guess I kind of noticed that,” I said.

“Oru’s an old-fashioned kind of girl,” he said. “Too old-fashioned for me. She wants to chain herself to a man and start popping out babies. Anyway, I’m sorry she bit you, Mackenzie. Why don’t you let me make it up to you by…”

“Moeli, you seem like a nice guy,” I said.

“Oh, here it comes,” he said, waving one of his oversized hands dramatically. “The ‘nice guy’ speech… I thought that was something only hobbish girls did.”

“I think some things are universal,” I said. “I’m just… well, my personal life is kind of involved to begin with. I don’t see how another person… any person… would fit in it right now.”

“So if you weren’t seeing anybody else?”

“Moeli, I… well, probably not,” I said. “Sorry.”

“You don’t date hobgoblins?”

“I’m just not interested,” I said. “Don’t take it personally… there aren’t a lot of guys I, you know, notice.”

“What if I was a woman?”

“I… I like women with breasts,” I said. “Mammals, you know? And maybe mermaids. I’m trying not to be racist, but goblinoids and reptiles just don’t do anything for me… physically. Sexually. But that’s moot because you aren’t a woman.”

“So it is because I’m a hobgoblin.”

“You aren’t my type,” I said. “And if you got to know me better, you’d probably… well, a lot of people think I’m annoying. I’m socially oblivious, I’m clumsy, I’m forgetful…”

“You smell nice,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, blushing like mad. Damn. It sucked having hypersensitive cheeks. “I could… well, I could stand to hear that more often, but… there isn’t any alchemy, Moeli. Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s not your fault,” he said. “Do you want me to talk to Oru?”

“What would you say?”

“That it isn’t your fault I don’t want to be with her,” he said. “I can’t stand her voice, and the way she clings…”

“Yeah, no, that’s fine,” I said. “I’ll deal with her.”

“I just thought I’d offer.”

“It’s sweet, really,” I said. “Um… anyway… I’m looking for a package that was supposed to have been rushed over?”

“We don’t usually get packages in on Saturday,” he said. “Unless it was the imperial mail, and they just came an hour ago. I don’t remember any packages.”

“Well, please check,” I said. “This would have been like a special delivery. It’s from my lawyer…”

“Oh, that sounds important,” Moeli said, and he turned and headed back into the office. “What size would it be?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just a mirror, but it might have packing stuff.”

“Found it!” he said. He came out carrying a small padded envelope with a rectangular bulge. “It was the only one on Gwen’s desk. Just sign this slip for it.”

“Okay,” I said. I signed it, and he gave me the envelope. I tore it open, pulled out the box and got out the new mirror. It was sleeker than the old one, a polished black octagon case that flipped open. The interior was lighted, and there was a sparkly purple powder in the bottom compartment. “Ooh, what’s this?” I asked, sticking my finger in it. Some of the dust adhered to the tip, but I couldn’t feel it, and when I pulled my finger up to my face it faded. “Some kind of illusion,” I said. I poked my finger in the dust again, and then prodded the mirror. The dust made a glowing dot on its surface. “Oh, it’s a smart mirror!” I said, noticing there was a little brush recessed near the hinge. I pulled it out and started doodling a little face. “This is awesome.”

“Your lawyer sent you that?” Moeli asked. “Did you win a big lawsuit?”

“Uh, no,” I said. “It’s just a loaner. They were having some problems and I guess they had to get all new ones.”

“Wish I had those kinds of problems,” Moeli said.

“I should probably let him know I got this,” I said. I picked up the box and handed Moeli the envelope. “Can you toss that for me?”

“Sure, why not?” Moeli said.

My drawing disappeared when I invoked the mirror. Lee didn’t answer, though I didn’t really expect him to. If he was still working that late in the day on a Saturday, he was probably too busy to grab a mirror. I left him an echo saying that the new one had arrived, obviously. The picture came back when his echo catcher faded.

“Oh, cool,” I said. I willed the image away, then held the compact up to my face. “Reveal your functions to me,” I said, extending my will towards it. Immediately a series of tiny images fluttered into view. One of them practically jumped out at me: ethernet.

I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my afternoon.

The sun was out, and though it was cooler than I would have liked, the weather seemed to be taking a turn for the warmer again. Under the circumstances, Sooni’s jacket seemed to be enough.

We walked to the restaurant, a small neighborhood spot that was off the main streets. The food there was good, and the prices were reasonable… I hadn’t counted on paying for Suzi when I said I’d buy lunch, but I knew very well she didn’t have any money of her own. It was easier to follow Amaranth’s advice on taking smaller bites and savoring them when my head wasn’t swimming in a sea of wine. All in all, it was shaping up to be a not entirely unpleasant day.

When she wasn’t interacting with the waiter, Sooni was very quiet and withdrawn. Suzi, on the other hand, seemed to be on top of the world. She was smiling blankly at everyone and everything, her head darting around to watch trays being carried past our table and people walking on the sidewalk outside. A couple of times she even reached out like she was going to swipe at a passing waiter before stopping herself and glancing guiltily at Sooni, who didn’t seem to have noticed.

Sooni had trout and rice with some kind of white sauce. Suzi didn’t share her mistress’s distaste for red meat… after inquiring in her fashion about the possibility of acquiring a cheeseburger, she’d accepted the waiter’s suggestion of a chopped steak with mushrooms and white cheese.

“Is better than regular cheeseburger,” Suzi declared after trying it. “No fill up on bread.”

“So… um… the dress you made for me was really nice,” I told Sooni, looking for a positive topic of conversation.

“Thank you,” Sooni said. “I let Kai-Kai help me figure out how to do the star glamours, but I did all the work myself.”

“Well, it looked really good,” I said.

“I’m glad you think so,” Sooni said. “I suppose it will be the last one I can afford to make, for a while…”

Was it stupid of me to feel guilty that she’d thrown away all her money on some ridiculous pipe dream she’d picked up from reading the wrong comic books? Probably, but I still did.

“You can have it back if you want,” I said. “After I get it cleaned, I mean.”

“Why would I want it?” she asked, her voice picking up some of the old derision. “It wouldn’t fit me, I made it for you.”

“I just meant… well, I thought maybe you could sell it to get back some of the money you spent,” I said. “Never mind. It was just a stupid idea.”

“Yes, it really was,” Sooni said. “It’s custom fitted to you, it wouldn’t look half as good on anybody else as it does on you.”

“Sorry!” I said. “It was just a thought!”

“Well, it was a ridiculous one,” Sooni said.

“Well, Sooni, most people own at least some clothing that wasn’t made just for them,” I said, a little defensively. I was doing my best to get along with her, but honestly, I’d only been trying to help.

“Yes, but there’s a difference between being forced to buy something off of the rack and paying money for something that was custom made for another person!” Sooni said. “Don’t you think if someone were to buy a custom dress from me, they would prefer… they… um…” She trailed off. “Miss Mackenzie, would you mind if I took a few pictures of you wearing your dress?”

“You want me to model it, you mean,” I said, seeing where she was going. It wasn’t a bad destination, necessarily, but I didn’t want to go along for the ride.

“Yes, please,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes at me. “If you wouldn’t mind… it would be so very helpful.”

“I’m not exactly the model type, Sooni,” I said.

“I know you aren’t!” she said, and the table jerked. I think she’d tried to stomp her foot while sitting down and she hit it with her knee. “But the dress won’t look right on anybody else!”

“You could just take pictures of the dress,” I said.

“But that doesn’t show how perfectly it suits you, how it flatters you,” Sooni said. “I know! We can take pictures of you in your dumpy, ugly everyday clothes and then take pictures of you in the dress so that everybody can see what a difference the dress makes.”

“Kee, you’re really selling me on this idea, Sooni,” I said.

“I gave you the dress for free!” she said.

“Yeah, and I offered it back,” I said. “I’m not a model, Sooni.”

“Not yet,” she said. “This could be your break.”

“Sooni, it’s not that I don’t want to help you,” I said. “And honestly, if you can make some money with your talent, I think that’s got to be a good thing…”

“If you want some of the money, fine!” Sooni said. “I thought you would do it to be nice, as a friend…”

“I would!” I said. “I don’t want the money, and I know you need it.”

“Oh, good!” Sooni said, all smiles again.

“Sooni, I mean the money isn’t the issue,” I said. “I just don’t want pictures of me all over the ethernet…”

“We can put them on the ethernet!” Sooni cried, so loud that the clatter and chatter stopped all over the restaurant. “Oh, that’s a brilliant idea! College students don’t have much money, anyway. Do you know how to make a weavesite?”

“Yeah, I mean, I’ve never done anything fancy, but…”

“Oh, this is such a wonderful idea!” Sooni said. “See? Do you see? I knew everything would work out, after all.”

I sighed. Okay, it wouldn’t be that hard to slap a page up on the ethernet with some pictures of me in the dress… cropped at the neck… and maybe some other examples of her less ridiculous work… with Sooni’s a-mail address at the bottom. I did have a lot on my plate, but it wouldn’t take too long to set the whole thing up and then it would be all on Sooni.

“Fine. Okay,” I said.

“Great! So, what should we call our business?” Sooni asked.

“Our business?” I repeated.

“Yes,” Sooni said.

“I wasn’t really looking to get that involved,” I said.

“Then you can be the silent partner,” Sooni said.

“Sooni, once I get the site set up, what would you even need me for?” I asked. “I can show you how to change the pictures and the text if you need to update something.”

“But once I start making clothing for sale instead of just for myself and my friends, I will need to think about things like the prices I pay for materials and shipping,” Sooni said.

“I don’t know anything about that!”

“You know more than I do,” Sooni said. “You’re poor.”

“What?”

“When I purchased the fabric for your dress, I just went to the fanciest store I could find and bought the first thing that caught my eye,” Sooni said. “You could probably have bought enough fabric to make a whole wardrobe for what I paid.”

“That’s not some special secret poor people skill,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You just… shop around. Look for sales, try to find the best price, stuff like that.”

“See? You know so much.”

“It’s something you could do on your own,” I said.

“But it doesn’t come naturally to me,” Sooni said.

“Sooni, you know I’m involved in a big legal thing right now?” I asked.

“That’s not a problem!” Sooni said. “We’ll keep everything in my name so the company can’t be seized.”

“I’m not being sued,” I said.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t have time for this!”

“You can’t back out now!” Sooni said. “What about all of our plans?”

“All the plans that you just made up right this moment?”

“Yes!” she said. “Those plans!”

“Okay, here’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be anybody’s personal shopper, but I am pretty good at finding things on the net… so, I’ll get the page set up, and I’ll find you some good sources for buying cheap fabric and whatever else you need. That shouldn’t take long.”

“And you’ll model for me!”

“I’ll model the dress you’ve already made,” I said. “But, Sooni… I’ve got classes, and so do you. And you’ve got the student senate thing, which is important. And I’m dating… I mean, we both have social lives. ”

“Oh, this is perfect!” Sooni said.

“It is?” I asked. I thought I’d just outlined a lot of problems with the plan, personally.

“We were about to go shopping anyway,” she said.

“Window shopping,” I said. “Unless your fish came with a small business loan, we can’t afford to do more than look.”

“Yes, but that’s what’s perfect,” Sooni said. “We can shop for ideas!”

“Okay, I know we haven’t exactly articulated a business plan, but I thought the basic idea we were groping towards was custom clothing designs,” I said. “Why do we need ideas before we have customers? Won’t they tell us… you… whatever… what they want?”

“But how will they know what they want if there is nothing to spark their interest?” Sooni said. “Anyway, I am very good at drawing. I can do sketches.”

“Well, okay,” I said. Why argue? If she wanted to look for ideas while we were out and then draw them… well, that was something she could do on her own.

“I’m so excited!” Sooni said. “Please excuse me.”

She got up and gave a little bow, then turned and started limping towards the restrooms, clutching at her knee. I started to get up to go after her and make sure she was alright, but Suzi grabbed hold of my sleeve.

“Miss Lesbian?” she said.

“Uh, what, Suzi?” I asked.

“Sooni has no skills of an artist,” Suzi said.

“None?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Fuck,” I said.

If this had happened before I’d got to know Sooni a bit, I might have thought it would be hilarious to watch the spoiled princess put up her scribbles for the ethernet to laugh at. Okay, I still thought it would be a little bit funny… but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. Watching people being humiliated often gave me the same sick feeling in my stomach I got from public embarrassment, and it would be a genuine shame if Sooni’s incompetence in other areas stopped her from shining in the one field where she was actually extremely talented.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” I told Sooni when she got back from the restroom. “Simplicity is one of the key values of weavesite design, so we should probably start with something not too elaborate.”

“Simplicity,” Sooni repeated, nodding.

“The real selling point isn’t going to be sketches, it’ll be the pictures of your actual work,” I said. “They’re the proof. I think we need pictures of our dresses, and some of the other stuff that you’ve made.”

“Like the Baby Kai-Kai costumes?”

“Um… maybe not those,” I said.

“But I work so hard on those!” Sooni said. “They are the most accurate Baby Kai-Kai outfits anywhere!”

“Well, it’s like you said about the dress you made just for me,” I said. “They only look so good because they’re on her. Most people don’t have their own Baby Kai-Kai lying around, so it wouldn’t make much sense…”

“Oh, I see what you mean,” Sooni said. “But most of my clothing is Yokano style.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That could be a problem. Most girls in Magisteria don’t need tail slits, and they’d probably prefer skirts that cover their underwear a little more consistently. But I guess we could look at what you’ve got and pick out some examples.”

There I went, committing myself further and further just to stop Sooni from falling on her face… might it not be a good thing if Sooni got out there on her own and failed a little bit? After all, I’d only just got done lamenting my life choices… why go and chain myself to her runaway carriage?

On the other hand, I’d been spending and spending and spending and didn’t have any money coming in. The school wasn’t going to give me a boatload of gold coins even if we did win and I wasn’t about to rent my womb to Mercy. Deciding to take what skills I had and my ongoing entanglement with Sooni and doing something positive with them… was that such a bad choice?

What was the right decision here?

Well, the fact that I couldn’t tell probably meant it wasn’t “make up your mind right this second and then stick to it no matter what.” I needed time to think, to look at my other commitments… to see how some of the various ongoing crises in my life were going to shake out in the long run… before I took on something like this.

“Sooni… we’ve got some good ideas here,” I said.

“I know!” she said. “It’s going to be great!”

“But the absolute bottom line is that I can’t commit to this… I can’t promise anything right now.”

“But you just said…”

“We just said a lot of things!” I said. “And so far, that’s all it’s been: just saying things. I know how important promises are to you,” I added quickly, seeing her getting ready to let me have it. “Which is why I’m telling you now that I can’t make any promises. I have to think about this. I don’t want to say yes and then find out later that I can’t.”

“But… what am I supposed to do if you won’t help me?”

“We go to a major university,” I said. “There are probably people who would make a commercial weavesite for you as a class project. Anyway, I’m not saying no… I’m saying I don’t want to rush into anything. If we’re going to do it, we should do it properly, right?”

“Oh,” Sooni said. “Yes, of course. I always do things properly.”

“Obviously,” I said. “And for a business decision, that means taking the time to think it through.”

“Of course it does,” Sooni said. “I need time to think it through, too! You aren’t the only one who isn’t ready to commit, you know. I have to sit down, and look at things, and figure out if I’m ready to do this or not.”

“Great,” I said.

“How long do you think we should think about it for?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Oh, shit,” I said, looking at the number of reflections I’d missed. Twenty-three. I hadn’t imagined it.

“What is wrong?” Sooni asked.

“Looks like my lawyer’s been trying to get a hold of me,” I said. I couldn’t imagine who else would have left that many echoes… unless it was Amaranth? Had there been some kind of emergency? I could picture her getting that frantic, if she didn’t know what else to do… actually, as I thought about it, that seemed a little more likely than it being Lee Jenkins. I didn’t know what could have prompted him to try so many times over the course of one night… I mean, had that little impromptu interview really been that bad? If he was pissed, wouldn’t he have left one long rant or something?

Well, there was no sense sitting there speculating when I could find out. As much as I didn’t want to know, I took a deep breath and took the plunge… metaphorically speaking. Well, I took the breath literally. I mean, I literally took a breath.

I invoked the echoes.

The first echo was from the Chester Howell guy, the one from Pendragon and Associates, telling me that Lee was expecting a message about who they’d picked to arbitrate any time now, and he wanted to move forward as fast as possible so I should clear some time on the weekend.

After that, I might have predicted the next echo: an update from Lee.

“Hello, Mack, it’s… five after nine on Friday, Calendula 9th. I guess you’re in class right now, but give me a shout back when you get this. They’ve picked a Philomenes… Philomenes of Utter Hall, called Philomenes the Adjudicator… in case you can’t tell, this guy is an elven oathspeaker. He’s done a lot of work in Prax and the surrounding provinces, so we’ve got a file on him here and I’ve sent around for some more information, but he looks to be acceptable. He has a reputation which I think will be very favorable to us. Well, it should. It might. I’ll tell you what, I’m rambling here. Give me a reflection when you have a chance and I’ll go over it in more detail.”

That was two down, and nothing terrible… only twenty-one left to go.

The next one was also from Lee.

“Mackenzie, I’ve got the TV on and your name’s been coming up,” he said. “Nothing bad, and nothing that’s your fault, but I just wanted to touch base in case you’re watching, too. I know we spoke about this the other day, this situation with Ms. Delia Daella and the newspaper, but if there’s been an arrest I have to advise you to maintain a little bit of distance. You’re not going to help anybody by getting involved in this.”

The next one was him, too.

“Hey, I just saw you on TV… I guess you’re not in class, but you must not have the mirror on you. Listen, I gave it to you for a reason, so please try to keep it with you during the day. What you did at the press conference? That was fine. You don’t have to talk to any reporters, and in fact it’s a good thing if you don’t. You just showed up to support a friend. That’s got no bearing on anything. Of course, Philomenes being an elf… well, we’ll try to hold him to his reputation for fairness. Seriously, though, reflect me back. Please.”

I considered stopping there and reflecting him right away. I could tell him that I hadn’t watched the rest of the echoes because he’d sounded pretty urgent. Would getting it firsthand be better or worse than watching the play of captured images? Before I could make up my mind, the next one came on.

“Just trying you again because they showed you going back to your dorm… I thought you might be in range of the mirror. Hey, your friend has some sense of humor. ‘We don’t know who the father is.’ That’s funny. In all seriousness, though, it’s probably best not to say anything. Anyway, none of this is really important to your case… not compared to them naming the arbiter… and I don’t mean to nag, so I’ll just wait for you to return my reflection, unless something big happens.”

The fact that the reflections continued was a pretty good indicator that something big had happened, from his point of view. I had a couple ideas what might have qualified there… considering that there were eighteen echoes left to go, chances were they were both right.

“Ms. Mackenzie, I’m watching a greater divinity talking about you on INN,” he said in the next reflection. “Let’s talk.”

Something was starting to feel off. I’d only left the mirror behind Friday night, but these echoes had started at just after nine on Friday morning… I’d had the mirror with me. Had I accidentally silenced it somehow? But it wasn’t like I played around with it invoking things at random…

“Ms. Mackenzie, I could see that the woman from Channel 7 ambushed you, but that little interview wasn’t wise. I know it wasn’t directly about your arbitration case, but I’m going to have to advise you to answer any further questions with ‘no comment’ or by directing them to… you know, you get in touch with me and we’ll put together a statement.”

The end of that one reassured me… I’d been starting to worry that Lee Jenkins or his firm was rethinking his involvement. After all, they wouldn’t get paid if I blew the whole thing somehow. The face that came up next was from the Howell guy again.

“Hi, it’s Chester Howell again,” he said. “Lee’s off, uh, screaming… something’s up with our mirrors, so you might be getting a lot of echoes at once, or you might miss them entirely. We’re still figuring things out. Anyway, if you could please return Mr. Jenkins’ reflection at your earliest convenience, he’s got some things he’d like to go over.”

Well, that was a bit of a relief… I was off the hook for the missed reflections, and possibly for my public gaffes. Though, upon reflection… no pun intended… that probably wasn’t the most mature response, to be glad my lawyer couldn’t be mad at me when whatever damage I’d done was still there.

But of course, the lawyer was supposed to be on my side. If the whole world went to hell, I’d want somebody professional-looking to smile and tell me he could fix it, not scold at me from the other side of a desk.

The next reflection took me completely by surprise.

“Miss Mackenzie, this is Loretta Parker, Channel 7… we spoke earlier? I realize your responses were off the cuff and maybe you didn’t come off as well as you might have wanted to. If you’d like to sit down sometime and clarify your answers, go ahead and give me a reflection any time.”

The next one was from another reporter, offering to give me a chance to tell my side as a rebuttal to Channel 7′s coverage. So were the next four. The one after that was Howell again.

“Hello, Ms. Mackenzie, Chester Howell… sorry to contact you so late, but this is just to give you some advance warning… there was a mix-up lifting the veil that had been placed on your mirror, and the filter that was cloaking you from the media may have been lifted. Mr. Jenkins wants you to deactivate the mirror and bring it in for a little check-up. If you could please give us a reflection back from another mirror, that would be great. I repeat, do not use this mirror any more after getting this echo.”

I closed the mirror. The snap was like a sigh of relief… I didn’t have to see what fresh horrors awaited in the last few echoes. They were probably all from reporters…

Relieved as I was, I had to wonder what was with the hard line approach to the compromised mirror… okay, maybe I couldn’t handle media contact but all I had to do was not answer it… I could handle that, right? It also didn’t explain why I couldn’t use the mirror to reach out.

“Hey, can I borrow your…” I started to ask Sooni, but she was already holding it out to me. It seemed she’d heard at least the gist of it. “Thanks.”

“You are welcome,” she said.

“Lee Jenkins, Attorney at Law, Pendragon and Associates, Enwich,” I told her mirror. I didn’t have to wait. There was no swirling fog… his face appeared instantly. It looked like he was in his office. It didn’t look like he’d shaved.

“Uh, hi,” I said sheepishly.

“You aren’t using the mirror we gave you, are you?” he asked.

“No, I borrowed one,” I said.

“Has that mirror been out of your possession for any length of time?”

“I left it in my room overnight when I went out last night, but I had it with me all day,” I said.

“When did you go out?”

“Seven,” I said. “On the dot.”

“And you had it with you at all times before that?”

“I think so,” I said. “Why?”

“Somebody interfered with its operation in a fairly major way, and we’re trying to determine if that happened on your end, or on ours,” he said.

“I didn’t get any of those reflections,” I said. “I watched the echoes, right up until the one from Mr. Howell telling me not to use the mirror… there were a bunch of reporters right before him, by the way.”

“I suppose it was too much to hope that we were the first ones to notice,” he said. “Be specific, though. How many is ‘a bunch’?”

“Six,” I said.

“One or two might have been determined enough to get a rise out of the half-demon after seeing how well that played that they’d sit there plugging away until they suddenly found you,” he said. “But six is a bit too big of a coincidence…”

“Yeah, uh, sorry about that,” I said. “She just kind of jumped out at me, and I didn’t want to be rude… and you didn’t tell me not to talk to reporters, if it wasn’t about my case.”

“Yes, but I did tell you to use your best judgment,” he said.

“But Mr. Jenkins, sir, that was Miss Mackenzie’s best judgment!” Sooni said from off to my side.

“Who’s there with you?” he asked.

“I’m here with Sooni… Ms. Hoshinotama… and, uh, one of her friends,” I said, swinging the mirror around to show him.

“Oh, sweet Khersis, don’t do that to me!” Lee shouted.

“Oops, sorry,” I said, turning it more slowly back to face me. “I forgot you get…”

“Motion sick,” he said. “At this point I’m running on espresso with enhanced caffeine. My poor stomach can’t take it.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Look, this business with the media and the mirrors is all secondary,” he said, waving his hand. “It’s a distraction. We’ve got our arbiter. We had a little sit-down yesterday, and all the parties are ready to go forward so I’d like to get to work. We can’t actually have you come down right now…”

“The reflection from Howell said you wanted me to bring the mirror in,” I said.

“We did,” Lee said. “Yeah. But we’re having some necessary work done right now, with regards to our communication difficulties, and the office wouldn’t be a comfortable environment for you right now. I can send a courier to the school to collect the mirror…”

“I’m actually in town right now,” I said.

“Oh? Where are you?”

“The Crystal Palace.”

He sucked in his breath.

“Ms. Mackenzie, please don’t take this comment amiss, but I hope you’re not spending big now in anticipation of a payout later,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I wouldn’t… I know there are no guarantees.”

“Then I’ll say nothing more about it,” he said. “What are your plans for today? Are you going to be at the Palace for… say… the next half hour?”

“I think we have to check out soon. We were going to go window shopping and get some lunch,” I said, trying to emphasize the word “window”… not that he cared about my spending habits, but I wanted to give some impression of responsibility after my screw up with the Parker woman.

“Do you know when and where you’ll be eating?” he asked. “It’s important we get the mirror back.”

“I don’t really know the town that well, I was just going to see what looked good… but I could just drop the mirror off,” I said.

“That isn’t going to work.”

“I couldn’t just leave it downstairs?”

“Right now, the whole building is warded,” he said. “And there’s divine energy everywhere, to boot.”

“What?”

“I’m really not able to go into that, but it’s important we get that mirror back and get you a clean one,” he said.

“Did somebody curse your mirrors?” I asked. “Or… is it just mine?”

“We’re sorting it out,” he said. “Wait, the Crystal Palace has concierge service…”

“You know, we could always just eat lunch here,” I said. For some reason, the word “concierge” made my stomach go all floppy. I wasn’t the sort of person who dealt with concierges. “You said half an hour?”

“No, this will be so much easier,” he said. “I’ll just give you a billing number to use, and you can have it expressed it over.”

“I… I don’t know, Lee,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to just have somebody come pick it up?”

“Oh, no, this is very simple,” he said. “You just tell him that you have a package that needs to be delivered to… oh, you aren’t feeling intimidated, are you?”

“I… um… kind of,” I admitted.

“The guy’s there to serve, Mack,” he said. “He’ll spend most of his day dealing with clueless tourists or classless assholes. He won’t bite, or look down his nose at you because you don’t know the right way to send a package, or whatever. You can ask him to recommend a restaurant while you’re at it.”

Right. I would totally be able to pull that off without looking, sounding, and feeling like a gigantic fraud.

“Mack?” Lee said.

“I… I…”

Sooni grabbed the mirror out of my hands.

“Khersis fuck!” Lee swore. Well, it sounded like he’d been having a bad day.

“What is the billing number, please?” Sooni asked pleasantly. She was sitting on the corner of the bed with a pad of paper balanced on her knee. When Lee recovered from the shock, he rattled it off. “And the address?” She took it down as he gave it. “And should it be sent to your attention? Very good. Thank you so much, Mr. Jenkins, sir. I am going to hand the mirror back to Miss Mackenzie now.”

“Well, I guess that’s taken care of,” Lee said. “The university’s going to be sending over an interrogatory… that’s basically a questionnaire they need you to answer. It’s kind of like written testimony. You’ll have to answer them in your own words, but we’ll be going over them together before we send it back. There really isn’t anything else to say right now.”

“In one of your echoes, you said you were going to tell me something about the elf guy’s reputation,” I said.

“Oh, right,” he said. “Philomenes. He’s known for being very a straight forward and down-to-business type. That’s good news for us, in that everybody wants a speedy resolution and he’ll force the opposing counsel to stay on-task and not bring in a lot of irrelevant side issues or file a bunch of pointless motions to try to wear us down, but potentially bad if he feels you’re wasting his time.”

“Why would he feel that way?”

“He has a low level of nonsense tolerance, is what I’m getting at,” Lee said. “Just something to keep in mind. If you and Ms. Hoshinotama can get that mirror sent back, I’ll have a replacement waiting at your dorm when you get back, and we’ll hash out a face-to-face meeting as soon as it’s convenient. In the mean time, just try to avoid reporters…”

“Sorry,” I said.

“No problem,” he said. “Thank Khersis that wa… no, I don’t mean that. But be glad you’re alive, and that most people are talking about something else.” He shook his head. “Over a hundred thousand, they’re saying now…”

“What?”

“Sorry, I got off topic,” he said. “Have you not been watching the news?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But one hundred thousand what?”

“That’s the current estimate,” he said. “They say it’s only going to go up as more information comes in, and we may never have a full count… a lot of the places that were hit don’t have ethernet or television, or linked mirrors.”

“A full count of what, though?”

“The dead, Mack,” he said.

I stared at him.

“Well, we have got so much to do,” he said, “and you’ve got to get checked out, so I’ll let you go. Thanks for returning my reflection. You ladies have a great day.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, after a couple of seconds. “You, too. Bye.”

He waved off, and I closed the mirror.

“He was wrong,” Sooni said. “He misheard.”

“I know,” I said. I was sure that she was right, as sure as I’d ever been about anything.

“That many people cannot die at the same time,” she said matter-of-factly. “The bridge to heaven is only so wide, and the gods would not permit it to become overcrowded.”

And that was the point at which I realized that Lee Jenkins had likely not been misinformed, after all. I thought of the illusion map, the miles and miles of inhabited coastline, the devastation they’d shown in single cities… I couldn’t wrap my head around it, but I didn’t see how the toll could be any less than he’d said. Not without resorting to childlike logic which said it couldn’t happen, it just couldn’t.

Suzi was standing there looking utterly bemused. Sooni was smiling placidly at me, serene in her belief that only a few thousand lives had been lost in the distant disaster, if that many. I felt… well, it was hard to say what I felt.

Either my mirror in particular or my lawyer’s entire mirror system had evidently been the target of infernal magic. My public pillorying had been forestalled only because of a monstrous upheaval of nature on the other side of the world. What was I doing? I was going shopping with an emotionally stunted fox girl and her feline servant, who was kind of adorable when she wasn’t torturing somebody at her mistress’s behest.

And that was just what was going on at that moment…

Was it too late to start evaluating my life choices a little?

I didn’t want to push her… hell, I’d take silence over pointless belligerence any day. Instead, I turned on the TV and then sat down on the edge of the bed, flipping around looking for something interesting. I normally wouldn’t have bothered even checking the news and the morning shows, but I was curious if they were still talking about us. To my surprise, they were showing images of desolation along a debris-strewn coastline. A faint voice speaking some foreign tongue was all but drowned out by a Pax-speaking newscaster describing the scene. A hurricane?

The phrase “thousands dead” jumped out at me… especially as it was paired with the phrase “at least”.

“Oh, shit,” I said. “Looks like there was some kind of huge storm.”

“Where?” Sooni asked dully.

“They haven’t said… oh, the Far Reach Islands,” I said as the words appeared near the bottom of the image.

“Which one?” Sooni asked, sounding slightly more interested.

“I don’t know,” I said.

The scene shifted, showing an illusionary map of the Far Reaches, with the land rendered in green. Blue arrows rolled up from the southeast, and the southeastern shored of island after island turned an angry glowing red.

“It looks… it like all of them,” I said. Sooni came over and sat down on the bed. “What the hell kind of storm was this? Don’t they usually see hurricanes coming?”

A naga… a true snake-bodied person, not just a snaky humanoid like Celia, appeared on the screen, hissing and clicking. A translator spoke over her.

“The ocean just disappeared, and nobody knew what was happening. Then, it was towering over us like a giant… ten, fifteen lengths tall.”

“Tsunami,” Sooni said, awed.

“What?” I asked, looking at her.

The TV switched to a woman who looked like a cross between an ogre and a tiger, who was trying to describe the scope of the wave that had taken her children and husband. She spoke Pax, with a cultured, Metropolitan accent. She gave up, and just shook her head, saying, “All gone, all gone.” The image shifted back to a montage of ruined coastline, while the voiceover talked about “the wave” hitting.

All of that from one wave? I thought.

“That’s what it’s called,” Sooni said. She was staring at the screen. “A tsunami. There is a disturbance in the earth layer, and then, the water… it draws back, like a fist… like a great god taking in a breath. And then…” She gestured towards the TV. “That.”

“How can you have a name for something like that?” I asked. That idea terrified me almost as much as the existence of the wave itself… inside the TV, people who’d seen it, who’d lived through it were struggling to put into words exactly what had happened. My mind was taking the images of devastated coastlines and ruined cities and trying to multiply them by the miles and miles of coastline, and it just wasn’t working.

It was too big.

“My nurse used to tell us a story,” she said. “Oji-San and the Tsunami. There was a village by the sea, a village of fisherneko. The young men fished, and the old men and the women tended the rice fields up in the hills. One day there was an earthquake, but it was mild and nobody thought anything of it except for Oji-San, the old man who lived up on the mountain. Then the sea rolled back from the beach, and all the people ran out to see, to stand on the seabed and stare at the retreating waters… up on the mountain, old Oji-San saw them all running out there, and he told his son, ‘Get me a torch!’ When his son did, he went down to the terraces and started lighting the rice on fire. An alarm was sounded, and the people ran up, but by the time they got there it was too late to put the fire out. The son cried out, ‘My father has gone mad, my father has gone mad! He will burn us all!’ But Oji-San just pointed a long furry finger down at the bay, and the people looked and saw a great swelling wave coming up across the dry seabed. It smashed all the boats in the empty bay to pieces, it roared over the village and devoured all the houses, it surged up the hills and came within an arrow’s flight of where the villagers had climbed to. When the water receded, nothing was left… not a piece of bamboo, not a scrap of thatch. The only sign the village had ever been there was the house of Oji-San, high on the hill, and the villagers who had come to save his field.”

“So, that kind of thing actually happens in the east?” I asked. “I mean, this isn’t actually the first?”

“Not often,” Sooni said. “This was probably the first one to happen in the age of global television. None have ever happened in Yokan, in my lifetime. In the story, it hadn’t happened in years. That’s why nobody knew what it meant when the sea ran away.”

“How did Oji-San know?” I asked.

“He probably knew even older stories,” she said. “Stories like that one. My nurse told me all the nekos in the coastal village used to be told those stories, so they would know… some people remembered them, but most people forgot. My nurse knew a lot of old stories, but I don’t remember all of them. I always remembered that one, though.” She shivered. “I thought the sea was going to come crashing in through the walls at night. Our house was high on a cliff by the sea, but there was nowhere higher to go around it. Father said that we were safe, but… he also said that wind and water were forces above us, and bore no respect for the stations of mortal men.”

She shivered and hugged herself. She looked a lot more vulnerable, more… mortal… with her hair down.

“Well… we’re a long way away from any ocean here,” I said.

We watched the footage from the disaster scene… or scenes, rather… for a while, in silence. The thing that got me was that except when they showed them being carried out of flooded buildings, there were no bodies anywhere. It was like the tiger-woman had said: all gone, all gone. Thousands dead… and thousands of survivors who had suddenly lost their husbands, their wives, their parents, or their children.

I scooted a little bit closer to Sooni. Even now, I didn’t have a lot of warm, fuzzy feelings for her, but she was the nearest person, and the only one I could see. In a world where the sea itself could wake up and decide to roll over beaches and cities, it didn’t seem like I could take anything for granted. I wanted very badly to run back to campus and go around making sure that Amaranth, Steff, Two, and Ian were all still there… Dee, Hazel, and even Celia, too.

If getting teleported into the middle of a deadly maze hadn’t been enough to hammer home how random life could be, thousands of people being wiped off the face of the world in the blink of an eye was just about enough to do it.

The first time in the age of global television… if not for the advances in enchantment and transmitting information etherically, we would never have known. Whole towns could be wiped off the map and the people who never had any reason to go there or trade with them… more than ninety percent of the world, in other words… would never even know they’d been there.

The Far Reaches… here in an inn room in Enwich. It was like the world was shrinking.

After a while, there was a knock on the door.

“Hello?” Suzi said.

Sooni was at the door and had it open in an instant.

“Finally! What took you so long” she said. It seemed like all thought of the deadly tsunami and everything else had flown from her head now that she had somebody to criticize and lord over, but I sort of wondered if it wasn’t a case of slipping a well-worn mask in place over those feelings. “You are going to have to help me in the shower.”

“Shower?” Suzi repeated.

“Yes, shower,” Sooni said. She grabbed the cat girl by the back of her neck and pulled her through the door, barely stopping to close it before pulling her in the direction of the bathing area. Suzi’s fur was sticking up and her eyes were just about jumping out of her skull. She dropped the bundle she’d brought. “You don’t expect me to clean myself, do you?”

Even with my newfound insights, I somehow couldn’t feel sorry for Sooni… never learning how to wash oneself might have been sad, but bullying an unwilling slave girl into doing it was pathetic, in the very worst sense of the word. I turned up the TV volume as the water came on, and started flipping around again. The tsunami coverage was on most of the channels… a few of them had even picked up the Yokano word. Apparently, the event had actually happened the day before, but they were still counting the dead, still learning the full extent of the disaster.

It was still Saturday morning, and I’d had enough of ruined beaches and ruined lives, so I looked for some mindless animated entertainment. The pickings were slim as it was getting late, and I didn’t really know the Saturday morning lineup, but I found a giant golem fighting show that looked halfway interesting.

Sooni and Suzi were chattering away inside the shower. Sooni seemed to have dropped her objection to their native language… probably having realized that it was hard to have a meaningful conversation in Pax.

Either that, or they were talking about something Sooni didn’t want me to hear… but I kind of doubted that. Sooni seemed to be past the point of scheming and planning, for the time being.

She came out of the shower in the other robe, with her hair up in several towels. The room only came with two of the robes and a limited supply of large towels… so Suzi hung back in the shower area, probably dripping wet.

“I am not sure how I feel about shopping when I know that such a thing has happened,” she said. “But Suzi is of the opinion that we could show the victims no greater respect by huddling back in our dorm rooms than we would by continuing with the business of living. So, if you are still willing, then I am, as well.”

I looked towards Suzi, wondering if she’d really said that or if Sooni had just projected what she really thought onto her like a child with a stuffed doll. It was more than possible for Suzi to be perfectly eloquent in her native tongue, but I just kept picturing her trying to negotiate with Two for cookies.

“Oh, Suzi would be coming, too,” Sooni said, misinterpreting my glance. “I… I would enjoy being in a larger company at the moment, I think.”

I nodded. I would have rather had Two or Steff along for a shopping trip, but I understood what she meant.

“You know, there’s probably a hair dryer in there somewhere,” I said. “So Suzi can dry off and get started on your hair.”

“Oh, yes,” Sooni said. “I think I saw that by the sink.”

She headed back behind the glass screen, and I heard her fiddling around by the sink. I watched the distorted silhouettes as Sooni handed a thick rod to Suzi, who turned it on herself. I expected Sooni to berate her and demand she dry Sooni’s hair before taking care of her fur, but Sooni said nothing. I couldn’t see her face or her exact posture in order to comment on whether she looked patient or not.

I got dressed while Suzi took care of Sooni. Two had sent along my jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweater, but she hadn’t included my wonderfully warm winter coat. That was my fault for not mentioning it, I supposed. Well, I had the black coat Sooni had given me… I’d just have to keep the enchantment up on it if the weather continued on the way it had.

Sooni ended up with her hair in one of the simplest configurations I’d seen yet. It was basically a bun, but she had so much of it that it looked like she was wearing a great big hat. I couldn’t guess how many of those wooden sticks she had holding it in place.

“Are you ready?” she asked me.

“All set,” I said, stowing my money and my mirror in my jacket pockets. “Oh, wait,” I said, pulling out the mirror. “I should probably check this… I’m still not used to having it.”

“I’m surprised you have one,” Sooni said.

“Well, technically, it’s not mine,” I said, flipping it open. “It’s so my lawyer can get a hold of…”

I trailed off, as I saw the words floating inside it.

“You have twenty-three new echoes.”

In retrospect, even if sleeping with Sooni had been a good idea, the situation wouldn’t have been ideal for it. I hadn’t exactly come into Friday well-rested… pouring a bunch of alcohol on top of that was like a recipe for crashing early and crashing hard. Well, at least I had made my stand before falling asleep.

Consciousness came back to me grudgingly. The darkness turned gray, and I became aware of my body. I regretted it immediately… my limbs were leaden, and my head was full of a dull, persistent thudding. I let out a groan.

“Good morning,” Sooni said, in a neutral but pleasant tone from the space next to me. I cracked open my eyes and glanced over. She was laying on her back the way Two did, princess-style. I wondered if that was uncomfortable, with her tail. Her gaze was fixed on the ceiling. “After thinking it over, I decided it wasn’t the right time for us to have sexual relations. I hope you aren’t too terribly disappointed.”

“Uh, I think I’ll live,” I said. I spent a few moments trying to spit out the wad of cotton in my mouth before I realized there wasn’t one.

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve decided to be mature about this.”

She rolled over and climbed out of bed. I stared at her bare back for a second before realizing she was topless. She’d taken off everything but the thong, in fact. What did I talk myself out of? I closed my eyes, rolled over, and pulled the blanket over my head when she started to turn around. There was no sense tormenting myself with visions of what I couldn’t have, after all. I’d made my choice.

I felt a little better with my eyes closed and covered, too… since when did light carry tiny little knives to stab you with? Things were much better under the covers.

“Are you going back to sleep?” Sooni asked a few seconds or several minutes later.

“I’m just resting,” I said.

“Well, don’t. We have to talk about how we’re going to get back to school now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, lifting my head and opening my eyes. She’d put her bustier back on at some point. I hoped that my headache was making me misunderstand her.

“Well, I only ordered the carriage for last night,” she said.

“What, you don’t have money for cab fare?” I asked.

“No, I spent all… that is to say, not right at this moment, I do not,” she said. “I just assumed everything else would work itself out after we… before I changed my mind, I mean.”

Strangling her wouldn’t get me out of Enwich, I told myself. If anything, it would prolong my stay. I supposed I couldn’t blame her entirely, though… who bothers to plan past a happy ending?

“Well, I guess we’ll have to go for the school coaches,” I said, sitting up. “We might look a little weird strolling across town in evening wear, but…”

“We couldn’t walk that far!” Sooni said.

“I’m sure we… oh, shit. It doesn’t even matter… I don’t have my ID, remember?” I said.

“You are hopelessly irresponsible,” Sooni said. “Well, help me braid my hair and put it up, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

“I don’t know how to braid hair,” I said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know how to?” she said. “You just… braid it!”

“I could probably work it out if I had somebody with less of it to practice on,” I said. “But there’s no way I could do your hair.”

“Ooh!” Sooni said. She kicked at the wall, seemed disappointed in the sound, then went and put on her sandals before she did it again. “What good are you?”

“Sooni, I’m sorry… I’m sorry that this didn’t work out how you expected,” I said. I felt bad for her, as she’d evidently staked so much on this… but it was difficult to work out how to make a proper apology when she insisted on taking credit for nixing it.

“It isn’t your fault,” she said quietly.

“Anyway, your nekos all have their own mirrors, right?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I could get Kai to come help us… it isn’t as though any of your friends can afford mirrors.”

“Ian has a mirror,” I said, not wanting to drag Kai away from her private time to come rescue us. “Why don’t you let me try him first? It can be like my contribution to the trip.”

“Oh, very well,” Sooni said.

She pulled a compact out of her handbag and handed it to me. I tried to summon Ian up in it, but there was no answer. The only other person I knew that I could have tried was Viktor, but… well, I’d rather disturb Kai, all things considered.

Not that there weren’t other alternatives…

“I guess he must be out. Why don’t we try… uh… Suzi?” I asked, wishing there were more options. She seemed to be the least hostile of the nekos… at least towards me personally… but she didn’t seem that bright. Of course, that might have been personal bias talking. She wasn’t as fluent in Pax as the others, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was stupid.

“Suzi? She’s worse than useless,” Sooni said. “And I want my… I would very much like to see Kai, I think.”

It was the first glimpse of how Sooni was really feeling, underneath the act she was putting on. She needed a teddy bear. She needed someone like Amaranth to hold her close and make everything alright. All she had was Baby Kai-Kai, a furry little slave who resented the hell out of her but put up with her for her own purposes.

I missed hating Sooni. It had been easier than feeling sorry for her.

“I suppose we can give Suzi a chance,” Sooni said. “It isn’t as though I need it to be Kai.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She flipped open the mirror. The only thing I understood in her address was “Suzi”. She tapped her sandaled foot on the carpet while she waited. I watched her and lamented the fact that it probably wasn’t possible to suck somebody’s toes casually, as a friend. Then I heard Suzi’s voice.

“Oh, hi!”

“What is that all over your face?” Sooni demanded. I got up from the bed and came around to see what was going on. Suzi’s face was huge and distorted… she was sticking it way too close to her own mirror. There was some kind of goopy stuff stuck on her chin and all over her whiskers.

“I eated a butter,” Suzi said. “We’re baking!”

“You are what?” Sooni asked.

“Baking!” Suzi repeated happily. I winced… her level of joyful exuberance was physically painful. “I made you a cookie! But… I eated it.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Sooni said. “You do not know how to bake cookies! Now quit goofing off and listen. I am at the inn with Miss Mackenzie and…”

“Hi, Mack!” a familiar voice called from out of the frame.

“Hi, Two,” I said.

“I am at the inn with Miss Mackenzie and we need money and street clothing,” Sooni said. “And somebody to help me with my hair. How soon can you get here?”

Suzi turned her head to the side, then started speaking in Yokano.

“In Pax, you stupid thing!” Sooni yelled. “How are you going to learn to speak correctly if you don’t even try?”

My poor head… I couldn’t take it. I needed to do something quick, and I wasn’t ruling out smashing either the mirror or my own skull into itty bitty pieces. I’d try something a little less drastic first.

“Sooni, can I please see that?” I asked, and Sooni handed me the mirror. “Suzi, could you please give the mirror to Two?” I asked. I didn’t really relish the chances of Suzi understanding what we needed and making it down to us, with her limited command of the imperial language.

The image shifted to show Two, wearing a white lacy apron over her clothes. This seemed to be entirely for show, as there wasn’t a speck or a spot on it.

“Hi, Mack,” Two said. “Hi, Sooni.”

“Hello,” Sooni said. “Stop what you are doing and get money…”

“Don’t tell her what to do,” I said.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Sooni countered.

“I can’t stop what I’m doing,” Two said. “There are cookies in the oven, and we already mixed more frosting.”

“Two, we could really use your help,” I said. “Please?”

“I’m sorry, Mack, but I’m busy,” she said. “If you can wait, I can come when all the cookies have been made.”

“Can’t you finish the next batch and then do the rest later?” I asked.

“I promised Steff I would make cookies for her bake sale,” Two said. “And I have to work later.”

“Steff’s having a bake sale?”

“The Prism Pride Coalition is,” Two said. “They are running the concessions at the arena tonight.”

“Well, this is kind of important,” I said. “We’re going to have to check out eventually.”

“Nothing is more important than promises, Miss Mackenzie!” Sooni said. “Miss Two, do you have a few moments to help Suzi find suitable clothing for Miss Mackenzie, as well as her coin purse and her identification card?”

“Yes, I do,” Two said. She turned her head and looked down. “Hazel, I’m sorry, but I have to leave for…”

“It’s fine, love,” Hazel said. “Help your other friends.”

“Sooni isn’t my friend,” Two said. “Just Mack.”

“Well, even so, go do what you have to.”

“Anyway, yeah… we both need clothing, and I need my ID and money, and my mirror,” I told Two. “Then I guess we’ll give Suzi the address… oh, and make sure the clothes you pick out are mine.”

“Okay,” Two said. From the crease in her forehead I knew I’d spoiled her fun.

“Two, you know I always end up messing your stuff up,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I wish you were more careful, but I also would like to see you dress better.”

“Well, wait until you see the dress Sooni made me,” I said. “Um… after I get the stains out. Anyway, I guess I’d better let you get going, so you can get back to your baking and we can get out of here.”

“Yes, you should,” Two said. She shifted the mirror up to the side of her head while they walked down the hall. “We have to get clothes for Sooni,” she said to Suzi. “Can you get into her room?”

I couldn’t make out the reply, but whatever it was, there didn’t seem to be a problem.

“So… what kind of cookies are you making, Two?” I asked.

“Iced sugar cookies,” she said. “In different shapes. It’s my friend Hazel’s recipe… if it’s still a recipe when it isn’t written down and you don’t really measure things.”

“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” I said.

“I’m writing everything down,” she said. “So that next time we can do it right.”

“Are you saving me any?” I asked.

“If you want some, you have to pay for them,” Two said. “Because they’re for the bake sale.”

“I hope Suzi didn’t give you any of my money!” Sooni said over my shoulder.

“No, my friend Suzi gets cookies because she’s helping,” Two said.

“And why is Suzi your friend and I am not?”

“Because she’s helping.”

“Put Suzi back on,” Sooni said.

“Okay,” Two said, and she handed off the mirror.

“Why are you helping the golem, Suzi?” Sooni asked.

“For cookies!”

“Well, don’t,” Sooni said. “Cookies will just make you fat and stupid.”

It was pathetic watching Suzi’s ears droop. I was feeling less and less sorry for Sooni… jealous that her purchased playmate had made an outside friend? She didn’t have any bodyguards following her around and rushing her to and from school here… nothing stopped Sooni from making her own friends, except for Sooni herself.

“Look, I’m going to take a shower,” I said, not really wanting to be a witness to any more of the conversation. A chill was beginning to intrude through the painful fog that filled my head. “You might want to give Suzi the directions to get here in Yokano, just so she doesn’t get lost.”

“I suppose you are right,” Sooni said.

“You know… when I was in that basic knife class, you seemed to be pretty popular,” I said. It was about half a charitable impulse towards Sooni and half one towards Suzi. If Sooni felt better about her social life, she might not clamp down on Suzi’s.

“Of course I was,” Sooni said. “I mean, I am. Everybody loves me, because I am so exotic-looking.”

“Of course they do,” I said. That had pretty much seemed to be the shape of it, from what I’d seen… they’d been cooing over her like she was a fancy poodle. It wasn’t the best basis for a friendship, but it might give her an inroad. She just needed to take it a step further. I wasn’t some sort of social savant, but Suzi bonding with Two and her friend Hazel gave me an idea. “I bet they’d love trying some of your Yokano food sometime.”

“Of course they would!” Sooni said. “Go take your shower, if you’re going to.”

“Hello?” Suzi said from the mirror. “Hello? I’m in your room, getting your clothes.”

“Yes, now listen carefully,” Sooni said, and she turned away from me and began speaking in Yokano. I watched her for a while… too long, probably, before I turned and headed towards the shower. The bathroom wasn’t properly separated from the bedroom… it was just sort of screened off with a frosted glass wall. I was almost bothered by that, but Sooni wasn’t paying any attention to me.

Had we made any kind of progress the night before? It had seemed like she’d opened up quite a bit, but now she was back to business as usual. In fairness, though, it was possible that she could just be hungover, too.

I tried not to take too long in the shower… Sooni probably wanted one, too. I realized I didn’t even know what time it was, or when exactly we had to check out.

I didn’t have my bathrobe, but there were a pair of towel robes. The Crystal Palace wasn’t as plush as the Empress Suite, but it certainly wasn’t bad.

“I’m done in the shower,” I said, peeking around the corner of the glass. Sooni was sitting in a chair, staring off into space with a look on her face that was between exhaustion and resignation.

“Finally,” she said, without looking over. “I know you’re dirty… but…”

She trailed off. I guess it was too much effort to finish the sentence.

“Sooni… after we’ve checked out, we don’t have to rush back to campus,” I said. “We can, you know, hang out… go window shopping, or something. I’ll buy us lunch. If you want to, I mean. Just, hanging out… as friends.”

She scowled, then frowned, then scowled. It was like she was going through responses and rejecting them. Finally, her expression calmed, and then she turned to face me.

“I think that might be acceptable,” she said.

Whatever… it was progress. I hoped I wouldn’t end up regretting it too much. I also hoped Kai would appreciate the extra personal time I’d just given her.

“What?” I asked.

“Need more hairbrush, please,” she said, then reached out and batted at my head. I jerked back.

“We don’t have time,” Kai said, taking the coat and hat from Suzi and handing them to me. “Put these on.”

I didn’t argue. I could hardly have looked less conspicuous with the hat pulled low over my face, but I wasn’t going to complain about the get-up… it beat the hell out of going out in the cold night air with nothing but Sooni’s handiwork to protect me from the cold. The coat didn’t feel magic… it would probably be a good idea to slap an insulation spell on it, I thought.

“Can you guys give me a second to…”

“No,” Kai said. She and Suzi hurried me downstairs, all the way down to the basement lounge. We came out into the sunken patio, out of sight of the street.

“Ooh, shit, that’s cold,” I said, as freezing air rushed inside the slitted dress. I felt like somebody had slapped an ice pack between my legs. On instinct, I jerked back towards the door, but Suzi grabbed me by the elbow and marched me forward.

She was stronger than I would have expected. Not in a Puddy way… she wasn’t any stronger than she could have been without serious magic, but she was definitely stronger than she might have been. Kai signaled for us to stop at the end of the patio. I pulled the collar of the coat up over my face and tried to use my breath to warm my cheeks while she headed partway up the stairs, then stopped and climbed the cinderblock wall to poke her head above the ground.

“Go, go, go!” she said, ducking back down. Suzi gave me a shove, Kai grabbed my hand and started pulling me up towards the street level while Suzi pushed.

The whole sneaking-out-incognito thing might have been kind of exciting, if it hadn’t all been so surreal.

Also, I probably would have managed to stumble a lot less on the way up the stairs if they hadn’t been “helping” me.

A sleek black carriage with opaqued windows pulled up over the curb and onto the sidewalk as we reached the top of the stairs. Kai hopped up and opened the door and Suzi pushed me inside. The carriage was in motion as soon as my feet were off the ground.

“Why, Miss Mackenzie… I was starting to worry you weren’t coming, after all,” Sooni said while I scrambled into my seat, panting and shivering. The door swung closed and the carriage lurched as it went down off the curb.

“I know you were,” I said, trying to get my chattering teeth under control. “That’s why you put Kai on me, remember?”

“You do say the silliest things, Miss Mackenzie,” she said. She held up a gloved hand in front of her mouth and giggled. “Why don’t you take off that coat and hat?”

The air inside the carriage was warm on my skin, so I did so.

“Um… why don’ t you put the hat back on?” Sooni said.

“Sorry,” I said, slipping it on again. “I just got out of the shower and I didn’t have time to really…”

“Shh,” she said. “Just let me look at you for a moment.”

While she did that, I looked at her. She was wearing a glittering red dress, with a high neck that went around behind like apron strings and a cut-out over her cleavage. I wondered if she had made it herself, too. That was assuming she actually had made the black dress… I wouldn’t put it past her to count her contribution in selecting and handing over the money for a dress to be tantamount to that of actually designing and fabricating it. Her absurd hair was up in a tall beehive, with a single braid hanging down by the side of her face like an overgrown out-of-place hair. Her earrings each had three red beads strung on a black cord. She was… I had to admit… the very picture of elegance, if you could look past the ugly, clunky, oversized sandals she was still wearing.

Her eyes had ended up in the same place as mine.

“Oh. Are those really the nicest shoes you own?” she asked.

“How many shoes do you think I have?” I asked her. If she’d wanted me to have nicer footwear, she should have done something about it. Considering that she’d given me stockings and garters, why hadn’t she thought of it in the first place? “Anyway, you’re one to talk.”

“What do you mean?”

I pointed at her sandals.

“Oh, do you like them?” she asked, swinging her feet like a little kid. “My mother picked them out for me.”

“Well, your mother has some pretty weird tastes,” I said.

Okay, so maybe Dee or Amaranth would have had some words to say about me insulting somebody’s mother… but I didn’t think it was all that, what I’d said. Sooni’s reaction, though, was completely overblown. Her lip started to tremble, and her big black eyes filled up with tears.

“Wah!” she said. And I mean that… she actually said “wah”, like it was a word. The strange part is, she really was crying. “Y-y-you hate my mother’s shoes!”

“I don’t!” I said. “I don’t hate your mother’s shoes!”

Her mother’s shoes? A moment ago, they’d been shoes her mother had picked out. It was amazing how fast she could change things around in order to make things more dramatic.

“You do!” she said, blubbering louder and louder. “You hate them!”

“No, I don’t!” I said. “They… they suit you.” They kind of did, anyway… at least, it was hard to picture her without them.

“Say more nice things!”

“They… show off your feet?” I said, looking at her tiny toes with their red-painted nails that looked like little beads.

“Say you love them!” she yelled. “Say you love my shoes!”

‘I… uh… I’ve had dreams about them,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, drying her eyes. She pulled a tissue out of her handbag and blew her nose, then another one to dab at her eyes. “Oh! I have champagne,” she said. She pulled a cloth napkin off of a bucket beside her seat. “See?”

“Sooni, I’m not a good person to be drinking,” I said. “And we’re underage, and there are reporters all around…”

“They would not dare to intrude upon our moment,” Sooni said. She pulled out two tall, narrow flute glasses and handed them to me, then pulled the bottle out of the ice bucket. She popped the cork off it and tipped it towards one of the glasses in my hands. “Say ‘when’!”

“When,” I said, before the fizzy liquid had even begun to flow. Once the bubbles had gone down a bit, the glass was about half full. “That’s plenty,” I said, and I started to pull the glass back but Sooni topped it off.

“Hold it still!” she said. “I don’t want to waste any.”

She took the other glass from me and filled it about a third of the way up.

“I’m going to go easy,” she said. “I don’t have as much experience as you do, and I don’t want to forget anything about tonight.”

“What, you think I go out every night and get drunk?” I asked.

“Hush, Miss Mackenzie,” Sooni said. “You needn’t talk about your sordid past. We’re putting that behind us. Drink up, before it goes flat.”

I slowly lifted the glass towards my face, looking at it dubiously. I was just about to take a first… and possibly last… experimental sip, when Sooni shrieked, “Wait!”

“Fuck!” I said, sloshing wine on my hand and the front of my dress. “What?”

“A toast!” Sooni said. “A toast to… friendship! And the power of love!”

“Um, okay,” I said, holding my glass immobile while Sooni clinked hers against mine.

“I feel so sophisticated,” she said, then she put a finger up to her nostrils. “And my nose burns.” She looked at me. “Does that mean it’s working… hey, you aren’t drinking.”

“You know, we made the toast, so I don’t think I need to actually drink it,” I said.

“But if you don’t drink, it won’t come true,” she said.

“It’s a toast, not a wish,” I said.

“You don’t believe in the power of love?”

Of course I believed in the power of love. How could I have had somebody like Amaranth in my life and not believed in that? I wasn’t going to say that, though. Just to forestall any further arguing, though, I swallowed a mouthful of the stuff.

“There!” Sooni said. “Now the toast is official. I’m so glad we’re friends now, Mackenzie. We were enemies for so long…”

“We only met a month ago, Sooni,” I said.

“Yes, I remember,” she said. “You were so angry, so bitter that night. I told you that you had nothing to prove to me, but you insisted on fighting.”

“You made fun of me and then walked away, snarking with your nekos,” I said.

“You’ve come so far since that night, so long ago!”

“Yes… yes I have,” I agreed, then emptied my glass.

If I’m very lucky, I thought, I won’t remember any of this tomorrow.

Oh, and champagne? Tastes awful, for the record. I didn’t even like grape juice that much to begin with. I couldn’t imagine why anybody ever thought it would a good idea to wait until it went bad and then bottle it.

“Let me pour you another glass,” Sooni said.

“No, that’s fine,” I said. “One’s plenty.”

“Yes, but, you spilled most of that, so you haven’t had one yet,” she said. She filled my glass back up to the top and then poured a bit more for herself.

“Sooni, seriously, I don’t want to get drunk,” I said.

“You can’t get that drunk on champagne,” she said. “It’s mostly bubbles, right? You can’t get drunk from air, or we’d be drunk all the time.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “But, bad things happen when I lose control.”

“You won’t lose control with me here,” she said. “I won’t let you.”

I sighed. I didn’t know why Sooni thought she would have any say in the matter… maybe she thought that I simply wouldn’t dare to lose control against her wishes, or maybe she thought “the power of love” would save me. Whatever… it occurred to me then that she wasn’t human, and didn’t have any human blood inside her. If I did slip into a less-than-restrained mindset, she would be as unappetizing… and as safe… as Mercy had been.

With that in mind, I dutifully choked down a second glass.

“Hey! Do you think our mothers could be friends?” Sooni asked suddenly.

“What?”

“Your mother and my mother,” Sooni said. “Do you think they might be friends with each other?”

“Sooni… my mother is dead,” I said, trying not to get upset. She might have forgotten, if she’d ever even known that. It was a ridiculous idea in the first place, given the size of the world and the number of people in it, but it was harmless.

“Yes,” Sooni said. “Do you think she could be friends with mine? Think about it… it would explain so much of what’s been happening.”

“What, you mean, if they had met?” I asked. “Yeah, I guess it’s possible they might have been friends.”

I didn’t think it was likely, even allowing for their paths to have crossed in the first place. My mother hadn’t really had a harsh word for anybody, but I couldn’t picture her hobnobbing with Sooni’s family. More to the point, I couldn’t imagine Sooni’s family hobnobbing with her.

“I will ask my mother,” Sooni said, beaming with pride as if this was the best idea in the history of ideas.

“You do that,” I said, holding out my glass. The third glass of champagne was a bit better than the first two had been. “Why was Maliko in the healing center?” I asked.

“She broke several of her limbs and ribs,” Sooni said.

“How did she do that?”

“Arguing,” Sooni said.

I felt a chill going down my spine. When Sooni started talking like she thought she was in a comic book, it was easy to forget just how dangerous she could be to those who were under her power. Of course, if she had been a comic book character, she’d either have to be a harmless kook or a homicidal lunatic. In real life, there wasn’t one type of crazy for the good guys and another for the bad guys… there probably weren’t even really good guys or bad guys, just people who did good and bad things.

“Could I have a bit more?” I asked, holding out my glass. Sooni held up the bottle and patted the seat beside her. I came over, and she poured the last of the champagne into my glass.

“Would you like to scratch my ears?” Sooni asked, leaning in towards me.

“I’d like to lick your breasts,” I said, then giggled and snorted at the same time I unwisely took another sip of champagne. The bubbles did burn your nose. Before I had recovered from that, Sooni’s red beaded handbag slammed into my face.

“No!” she said, swatting me again and again. “No, no, no! That’s gross and wrong!”

“Okay, okay!” I said. “Stop hitting me!”

“It’s too soon,” she said, settling down. “You have to wait until after dinner for that sort of thing, I think.”

“Would this be a good time to mention that I have no clue what we’re doing here?” I asked.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to find out,” Sooni said, putting her handbag down beside her and smoothing out the front of her dress. “Together.”

Kai sat outside the curtain with her book while I headed into the showers. I didn’t know what she would do if one of the other yokai came in… she hadn’t brought a towel or changed out of her regular clothes. It seemed like she’d rather be caught shirking her duty guarding me than jump into the shower area naked with me.

In deference to her, I’d worn my robe in and hung it up on one of the other fixtures. I went as quickly as I could without neglecting hygiene, and with at least a bare minimum of time to relax under the hot flow. While I soaked in the steam, I did my best to forget about Amaranth’s resigned spirit and focus instead on my coming date.

Part of it was that I wouldn’t be able to do anything to help the situation. Part of it was that it didn’t seem fair to Sooni, to have my mind full of my own problems during our promised date.

Most of it was the fact that I didn’t want to give Sooni an excuse to throw a plate at my head during dinner, or something. Having her make a big scene and getting us kicked out of the restaurant was the last thing I needed, image-wise.

It wasn’t easy getting my mind off of Amaranth…but I tried to remember the meditation that Dee had led me through and bit by bit, I let the warmth and the wet wash over me, until my mind was clear and free to turn to other things.

It had been an incredibly eventful week, even given the tumultuous time I’d been having so far. This date felt like it would be the culmination of so much more than my… well, I didn’t really have a relationship with Sooni.

I didn’t even know if “flirtation” would be the right word. I hadn’t been flirting with her. She’d flashed her underwear at me and shoved her bikinied boobs in my face… but she did that to the whole world. Amaranth had said Sooni was a hard read, sexually. If she hadn’t disappeared, I’d have to ask her if she’d noticed anything different about the fox girl’s aura, or whatever it was she looked at.

She’d tried being my rival, my enemy, and my friend… had there ever been any hints of attraction? Real attraction? Her reaction to anything that smacked of lesbianism had always been “ew, gross!” She’d seen me in various states of undress with so little reaction I might as well have been wearing sets of black censor bars. The one time she’d physically contributed to me getting off, she’d been angry at me for stealing focus from her “victory”.

Once again, the only conclusion I could come to was that Sooni didn’t really know what she wanted from me. I could relate to that. It might have been the only thing about her that I could relate to. Two parents who spoiled her rotten, the best friends money could buy… she and I could hardly have had less in common if we’d tried.

But maybe that was why she’d singled me out. Opposites were supposed to attract. I didn’t know how true that was, but in the world of popular fiction that apparently drove Sooni’s thought processes, they did tend to make pretty good spunky sidekicks.

“Finally,” Kai said when I came out of the shower. “Did you remember to wash…?”

“I washed everything,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “If she asks, I checked.” She tucked her book under her arm, went over to the sink, ran some water over her hands and then wet down her hair and the fur on her face. “There. That should cover me, at least against Suzi’s dull wit. You need to be changed into your outfit before she gets here.”

“Yeah, about that… do you have any idea what Sooni made for me?” I asked.

“Why don’t you go see?”

“I’d like to be able to prepare myself,” I said.

“You didn’t look?”

“No,” I said. “She made me promise I wouldn’t.”

“Was the box warded?”

“Not that I noticed,” I said. “But I didn’t check.”

“You just assumed it was?” Kai said.

“No,” I said. “I promised I wouldn’t open it.”

“Do you always keep your promises?”

“The ones I actually make,” I said. “I try to. I’m not perfect. Don’t you? I mean… try.”

“I try to do whatever’s most likely to get me through the day unscathed,” Kai said. “Of course, if you’re only pretending to be somebody’s plaything, I guess you don’t have to worry so much about that kind of thing, do you?”

She said everything matter-of-factly, with a pronounced air of disinterest.

“Why do you hate me so much?” I asked her. “I used to feel sorry for you.”

She started walking towards the front of the bathroom.

“Hey, I asked you a question,” I said.

“And then you answered it,” she said, without turning around.

“I what?” I asked, then I realized what she meant. “Well, excuse me for caring… sorry I tried to help.”

“I already told you that I don’t need a hero,” she said, spinning around on her bare heel. “I need a college degree. I need a visa. I need employment in this land. Can you provide me with those things? Can your magical girlfriend pull them out of her secret pocket for me? If not, then it seems I need Sooni’s help more than I need yours.”

“You could work something out without her… get asylum or something,” I said. “We have laws here…”

“Which I am here in violation of,” Kai said. “It is a small technicality, but without the patronage of Sooni’s father it would be more than enough to get me deported. Her father has no special love for nekos. If I’m not here watching his daughter, he would sell my contract in a heartbeat. Can you not imagine how much worse my situation could be?”

“Frankly, no,” I said. “Sooni almost killed you once that I know of. She messed up your fingers and didn’t let you heal them…”

“I messed up my fingers,” she said. “And I told you before, it wasn’t the sort of thing that you heal. If you truly cannot imagine a worse use to which I could be put than having shoes flung at my head, then I envy and pity you at the same time.” She pointed at the spot over her eye. “This is supposed to be lucky. It was just my luck that Sooni spotted it before some middle-aged pervert saw me and decided he wanted a Baby Kai-Kai of his own.”

“What was your name before?” I asked. “I mean, your real name.”

“No,” she said.

“Your name is ‘No’?”

“My name is my own,” she said. “And it will stay that way until I’m ready to reclaim it.”

“You know, I get that you haven’t had an easy life,” I said. “But I haven’t exactly…”

“What you break, other people fix. What you start, other people finish,” Kai said. “You have people who care about you, who take care of you.”

“Well, I do now,” I said. “Since coming here, I’ve met people who care about me, because I was open when they reached out. Before that…”

“Your grandmother went on television to say that she was worried about you.”

“Don’t talk to me about my grandmother,” I said, and I was able to match her frosty tone without even trying. “You don’t know anything about that.”

“I know that she is your family and she cares. My grandmother was run over by a delivery cart. They paid my grandfather the equivalent of five silver in compensation. He was arrested five months later, for teaching skills that nekos aren’t supposed to know. The last time I saw any of my family was moments before I met Sooni. That was my younger sister. My older sister left a few years before that, to go to the city with an inuyokai man.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “Inuyokai.”

“Like a canid,” she said. “A dog man.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know anything about Yokano racial politics, but the imagery of dog vs. cat seemed like something that would translate across borders. I couldn’t imagine that a neko going off with an inu was likely to end well.

“He’d bought her a dress. The first new dress from a store she’d ever owned. He promised to give her more, and set her up with an apartment. I could have told her that he was a pimp, but she wouldn’t have believed me. He was her way out, you see. Her only way out. I don’t even blame her for it. Maybe her life is better for it. Maybe she has good clients who treat her nicely and buy her things.” She shrugged. “It was her way out. She couldn’t hope for another one. She wasn’t clever or graceful.”

“Why are you telling me all this if you don’t want my sympathy?” I asked.

“I want you to understand the difference between you and I,” she said. “The difference between a lower middle-class girl with human blood living in the Imperial Republic, and a nekoyokai living on Yokan. What are your hardships, Mackenzie? Did you get a sweater for Khersentide when you wanted a doll? Were you not popular in school?”

“My grandmother, who impressed you so much by telling the world what an abomination I am, used to lock me in the basement,” I said. “She didn’t let me have any normal food for nine years.”

“I suppose you win, then,” Kai said, turning away. “The longest I’ve ever gone without eating was only a handful of days. Considering the pain in my belly and the weakness in my limbs that caused, I can hardly imagine what you must have gone through.”

“It isn’t a contest,” I said. “I’m not saying I’ve suffered more than you… just that I’ve suffered.”

“Fine, you’ve suffered,” she said. She gestured over her shoulder towards me. “Come along, please. You have to make yourself ready for your next ordeal.”

I sighed and repressed the urge to catch up to Kai and strangle her. We were both stuck with Sooni, for the time being. Even if I didn’t know what it was like to be a member of an oppressed underclass, I had my own stigma to worry about. The fact that our experiences were different didn’t mean that we couldn’t relate to each other.

There was just no talking to her, though.

When we got to my room, I found that Amaranth and Steff had made themselves scarce, and Two hadn’t returned. I might have liked their company… and their help if whatever Sooni had made proved to be too complicated… but I was also kind of glad to be alone for a minute. I’d worked hard to get past my emotions in the shower… seeing Amaranth would just bring it all flooding back.

I got out the box that Sooni had given me and looked it over. A quick visual and mystical check showed that there were no wards on the box. Of course, any that were there would have had to have some kind of timed or remotely deactivated component, or they would have been a booby trap rather than a protection. Once I was sure I wasn’t going to get blasted with lightning or ice the instant I opened it, I slid the ribbon off the box and closed my eyes.

“Okay,” I said out loud, lifting the top off. “Let’s see what I’m about to get myself into… literally.”

I opened my eyes and saw shiny, glittery black fabric. Lifting it out of the box, I found a relatively simple dress… low cut, with a single shoulder-strap, and a wide slit up the side. The fabric was glammed up with little twinkling lights like stars. Inside the box were a pair of lacy black panties, what looked like pantyhose, and a strapless bra. Lifting the items out, I saw that the pantyhose were actually separate stockings… and the panties were missing a key component that was pretty integral to the primary function of such garments.

“Oh, she has got to be kidding,” I said. I didn’t think she was… but could she really expect me to go around all evening, exposed under the dress like that? With my “lady parts”… however clean they might be at the moment… just sort of there, framed by black lace? It was unthinkable. I’d go crazy long before dinner was over, just thinking about it.

Though at least it clarified her intentions a little bit more, if nothing else.

There were a pair of garters in the box, too. It took me a few tries to work out how everything went together. When I was done, I had to admit that it was almost a sexy look… it probably would have been one on somebody else. It just looked weird on me. I felt like a kid playing dress-up, or something.

I got the bra on, and then slipped the dress over my head. Sooni’s magical measurements had been accurate, it seemed… it felt like it was clinging a bit much, but everything looked fine in the mirror. Actually, it looked good… very good. At least, from the neck down. My hair was a mess and I couldn’t do anything about my face, make-up wise. I wondered if I had time to find Steff… and if there was even the tiniest chance she could be persuaded to help make me pretty for Sooni.

Before I could make up my mind to go look for her, there were two quick raps on the door. “Get decent,” Kai said, and then she opened the door a crack and slipped through it, with her eyes closed.

“I’m done,” I said, and she opened them.

“Suzi’s coming,” she said. “Remember…”

“You never left me alone,” I said.

“Shoes,” Kai said, looking at my feet.

“She didn’t give me any,” I said.

“You don’t have some?” she asked.

“I guess I could wear my black ones,” I said, heading to the closet to get out the shoes from the dance.

“I would assume that was the intent,” Kai said. “Hurry, please.”

She was starting to look a little antsy. I had one shoe on and was working on the other when there was a heavy thunk on the door.

“Hello?” Suzi said, in her kind of dazedly bored voice. “Kai-Kai? Lesbian? It can be go times now?”

Kai opened the door.

“Yes, I think so,” Kai said. “You are ready, Miss Mackenzie?”

“Ready as I can be,” I said.