I knew right away that I was dreaming.
In the dream I was a little girl again, taking shelter in the unlit doorway of a closed coffee shop, my knees pulled up to my chest and an oversized sweater pulled down over my legs. I’d salvaged the sweater out of a garbage can. It smelled like wet trash and the previous owner’s body odor, and was big enough that it could have fit three more girls my size in it like a tent. It was warm, though, and that was the only thing I cared about.
The sun had set hours before, and the darkness had fallen with snow in tow. My little paper coffee cup was still in my hand, outstretched and waiting for some late night passerby to give me whatever they had – usually a nickel, but even more usually just an excuse.
It had been a few weeks since I’d come through the mirror into the human world, a few weeks since I’d left Equestria. I’d come through with nothing except for a few books and keepsakes, thinking that no matter where I went, I’d be fine as long as I had my magic.
Who could have guessed I’d end up in a world without magic?
Whomever, or whatever, had created the portal had seen fit to give me a new body to blend in with the natives of this new world. Gone was my horn, gone were my hooves, my tail, my fur. Those first few hours, even standing had been a challenge, as my new body didn’t agree with quadrupedal locomotion.
If I’d been smart I would have turned around – gone home and begged Celestia to take me back. But at the time, I didn’t think I’d been wrong, so I had decided to tough it out. I’d figured that my weird, hornless new body had been the reason my magic wasn’t working right. Celestia had taught me a lot about magic, and I had convinced myself that I’d just need a little time to adjust to my new form, and that when I did, my magic would come back.
I’d been wrong about that, of course.
There was a sneeze, and the bundle of filthy blankets sitting opposite me in the doorway stirred. The other little girl looked up at me with snot dribbling down her nose, and her beautiful icy-blue eyes were bloodshot. Her long red hair was clumped into a single mass by filth and cobwebs from sleeping in doorways and under bridges – though my own hair probably didn’t look much better.
She coughed into her fist – it was a ragged, wheezing sound that probably indicated a fairly serious upper-respiratory condition – and whined in pain. She was another ‘street kid’, as they called themselves, and she was a year older than me. Maybe it was because she was only just a little older, but she’d started hanging around, helping me get on my feet as one of the newly-minted urchins. She probably had seen me as something of a little sister.
I had never even bothered to learn her name, or even why she’d ended up in the street.
“Sunset, I’m sick,” she said weakly. Her voice was hoarse and brittle.
“Obviously,” I said sarcastically, being a bratty little shit to her when she didn’t deserve it. “You’ve been coughing all week.”
“I need medicine,” she said. She coughed again. It was weaker, but the way she trembled made me think it had probably hurt worse than the last.
I shook my little cup at her, jingling the coins around. “Does it look like we have enough for medicine?”
“I need an adult,” she said. “I’m going to the home.”
“Good luck,” I replied, curling in on myself a little tighter. I hadn’t cared enough to learn her name, but she’d been hanging around me for weeks, and I’d gotten used to having her close by. The prospect of being alone was scarier than that young, immature version of me would have admitted.
I know better now, though. Now I know, with absolute certainty, that there’s nothing more frightening than being alone.
“Come with me,” she pleaded.
“Screw off,” I said. I was imitating something I’d heard one of the older street kids shout at a police officer. I hadn’t known what it meant, but his tone had been harsh, so I’d assumed it was a curse word. My cheeks burned a little as I said it. I’d never said a curse word before, not even when I’d been shouting at Celestia with more anger than I’d ever felt in my life. “I’m never going back to an orphanage.”
“It’s not an orphanage,” she said, “and it’s not that bad.”
“If it’s not bad then why are you living on the street?”
She stared at me for a while, her little brain trying to work through whatever thoughts and memories my question had conjured up. I wanted to get up, give her a hug and tell her I was sorry, but lucid or not, I had no control. I had to sit and watch as she doubled over, burying her face into her blankets and coughing violently. The younger me in the dream didn’t even lift a finger.
She composed herself after a minute or so and asked me, “Do you really want to know?”
“No,” I replied immediately.
“I still think you should come with me,” she said, unfazed by my reply and still urging me gently as she tried to play big sister. “Please. You need help, too.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked. She stood and tightened her bundle of blankets around herself like a shawl. “I’m scared, Sunset. Please come with me. I’ll feel better if I have someone brave like you with me.”
“Reverse psychology won’t work on me,” I said with a sneer.
She tried to say something, but all that came out was another coughing fit that left her leaning against the wall. “Stay safe, then, I’ll come look for you when I’m better, if I can,” she said as she stepped onto the sidewalk and began walking the five blocks to the place where she could get some help.
As I watched her walk away, I almost got up and followed. I was cold, and hungry, and I stank. I wanted to be warm, I wanted food, and I wanted a shower. But getting those things would have meant going back to an orphanage, and I’d sworn that I’d never step into one again so long as I lived.
My mother had died giving birth to me, and all I knew about her was what she’d told the hospital staff as she waited to push me out. She had no family, she had no idea who my father was, and that was it. The doctor had at least had enough kindness in her to deliver me to the orphanage herself and give what little information they had.
I’d lived there until my grades in school had been enough to get me into Canterlot Academy, and my grades there had been enough to catch Princess Celestia’s attention. The day she’d taken me as her protégé was the day I’d sworn to myself that I’d never go back to the sort of place I'd been rescued from.
As I watched the other girl disappear into darkness and snow, fear and hunger were enough to get me to my feet. I almost shouted at her to wait, but at the last moment the words caught in my throat.
All I had to do was swallow the last few shreds of pride I had left, and I’d have a shot at getting back on my feet, and then I could work on regaining what I’d lost... but I couldn’t do it. Begging in the street was bad enough, but the only bit of pride still left for me was in the promise I'd made to myself. I could betray anyone if it meant getting ahead, but I couldn't betray myself.
I sat back down and stared at the other girl’s back until the night swallowed her up, and suddenly I was alone with my smelly sweater and my little coffee cup filled with nickels and excuses.
“I think you made the right decision.”
My heart began thumping at the sound of the man’s voice. I looked up to find him standing there in the snow, the flurries dancing around him as they fell, as though they didn’t want to touch his body.
He was dressed in a long gray overcoat, with a simple blue suit under it. He wore a pair of black leather gloves and shoes to match. The straw cabana hat atop his head clashed with the rest of his attire, but for the most part he looked like your average businessman on his way home from work.
He was the most dangerous creature I had ever met, but I wouldn’t learn that until much, much later.
The man had a cane, topped with a single red jewel, which he lifted and pointed in the direction that the other girl had gone in. “She’s got no pride,” he said. “Not like you.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, my cheeks flushing with warmth.
It felt good to be complimented. My professors and tutors had always fed me a steady diet of praise, until I was fat with it. Even Celestia was very liberal with her encouragement, despite her higher standards. I hadn’t realized how starved I was for an adult’s approval until that moment.
“You look hungry,” he said. He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a paper bag. He opened it and a puff of steam wafted out into the cold night air. “Bagel? It’s very fresh.”
My stomach growled at the smell, but I didn’t take the offer. I wasn’t stupid. “I’m not taking food out of your pocket,” I told him. I shook my cup at him, jingling the coins around like a rattlesnake warning off a predator. “Money only – it can’t be drugged like food.”
He smirked at me. “Smart,” he said appraisingly as he closed the bag and tucked it back into his coat. “Then how’s about I take you somewhere to get something to eat? Unless you think they also drug the food at the InterContinental Lodge of Pancakes.”
“The only thing stupider than taking food from strangers is following strangers to another location,” I said.
“Still smart,” he said with a laugh. His laugh was a horrible sound, dry and cruel, but I wasn’t old or experienced enough to recognize that yet. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled something out, which he dropped into my cup. It was heavy, whatever it was. “There you are, then.”
I watched him walk away, wary in case he tried to come back and try to snatch me. The other street kids had warned me about that. I didn’t have any magic, but if he tried anything I had a half of a brick behind my back that I could use to smash the coffee shop window and set off the alarm.
If I had been a little smarter, I might have noticed that the footsteps he left in the snow led away from where he’d appeared next to me, but there weren’t any footsteps leading up to that spot.
Once I was sure that he was gone, I looked into the cup and nearly dropped it in surprise. Sitting atop the drab little human coins was a glittering golden bit – an actual Equestrian bit. I fished it out and stared at it in confusion, but it was definitely a bit. It had the treasurer’s mark, Equestria’s flag, and Celestia’s Cutie Mark, right where everything was supposed to be. I got up and started running after him, but he’d already disappeared.
I knew it was a dream, and that all I was doing was going through the motions of that day, but I wished with all my heart that I hadn’t gotten up and tried to follow him. I wished that I could tell myself to sit back down and wait patiently until the pawn shop opened so I could sell my coin and buy something to eat. I wanted to tell myself to swallow my damned stupid pride and go to the orphanage. I wanted to tell myself to do literally anything except follow that man.
But I couldn’t do anything as the younger version of myself ran, panting in the falling snow, looking up and down the street and trying to find the stranger. He’d mentioned the pancake lodge, which I knew was only a couple of blocks away, so I started running as fast as I could while still being careful of ice patches.
I found the man sitting in a booth inside the ICLOP. He had a cup of coffee and a stack of quarters on the table next to him. I watched him through the window from across the street as he sipped his coffee, smiling to himself as he toyed with the stack of coins. He would grip the stack between his gloved fingers and lift it about an inch off the table, then release and let the stack fall, only to pick it up again.
A waitress came over and set down two plates of pancakes in front of him. He said something to her and she laughed. She smiled and brushed his shoulder flirtatiously with her fingertips as she was walking away. The stranger didn’t even touch the silverware. He just placed two fingers on the edge of one of the plates, and slowly pushed it across the table to the other side of the booth.
I recognized the invitation for what it was and crossed the street. Places like this didn’t like homeless people. The smell tended to upset the other customers, but in the middle of the night, when they were less busy, they were a bit more tolerant so long as you had some money to pay for your meal and didn’t try to hang around all night.
There was no one at the hostess station, but I wouldn’t have stopped even if there was. I breezed past the waitress as she was helping another customer and went straight for the stranger’s booth. She must have made a move to stop me because the stranger waved at her and shook his head.
I sat at the table without a word and started eating. I had questions, but food was first. The stranger didn’t say a word. He just sipped his coffee and waited, playing with that stack of coins as he watched the snow pile up in the parking lot.
I finished the pancakes in short order and was chugging a glass of water when the stranger slid the other plate over to me.
“Who are you?” I asked as I tore into the second plate.
He shrugged. “You can call me Fiddler,” he said.
“My name’s Sunset Shimmer,” I said around a mouthful of pancake. The waitress came with a second glass of water and a frown for me.
“I know,” Fiddler said.
I waited until the waitress was out of earshot. “You from Equestria?” I asked. “Did Celestia send you?”
“Me? From Equestria?” He laughed again, and the sound was just as cruel and dark as it had been before. “Not a chance.”
“Where’d you get a bit then?” I demanded. “And how’d you know my name?”
“I know lots of things,” he said dismissively, waving a hand in front of his face like he was brushing aside a fly. “As for the coin?” He picked up the stack of quarters again, clenching them in his fist. He held out his fist over my dirty plate and slowly loosened his fingers one at a time. One by one, gold coins fell noisily onto the plate. “It’s magic, kid.”
I dropped my fork as I watched the coins land on the dish. I reached for one and studied it. It was sticky from the syrup left on the plate, but it was a genuine gold coin, just like the one he’d left in my cup.
“I thought there wasn’t any magic in this world,” I said breathlessly.
“It’s complicated, but it’s there if you know where to look.” He lifted his mug of coffee and drank, his eyes never leaving me.
I clenched the coin in my fist hard enough to dig painfully into the flesh of my palm. “Uncomplicate it, then.”
He gave me an appraising look that was poorly hidden behind more smiles, like a crocodile grinning at a gazelle and wondering how fast it was. “Magic isn’t native to this world,” he said as he set down his mug, “but there is magic to be found. It slips through cracks in the universe, trickles through into this world from others – from places that are ripe with the stuff. Humans that want a taste of that power go around and get what little magic they can, by hook or by crook. They’re scavengers at best, and parasites at worst… but you’re not like them. You’re special, because of where you come from. You’ve got power inside you, but it’s rotting on the vine because you don’t know how to bring it out. I can teach you, if you want.”
My knuckles had gone white, and my fist was clenched so tightly that it was starting to tremble a little, but I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to remember the feel of an Equestrian coin in my human hand.
“What do you get out of it?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.
His grin widened.
“I was so right about you.” He waved his hand over the plate and the conjured bits disappeared, including the one in my hand. I focused on the lingering pain, committing it to memory as I ran my fingertips over the indent in my fleshy palm, trying to feel the imprint of Celestia’s Cutie Mark. “I’ll be honest. You do have something I want, but right now there’s not much of it. In fact, right now you don’t have much of anything, really. So I’m going to work a deal with you. I’ll show you how humans do magic, give you somewhere to live, get you some money, anything you want. In the far, far distant future, I’ll collect.” He looked up, pursing his lips in thought as he waved his hand vaguely in the air like he was trying to coax a thought from the back of his mind. “Think of it like a loan. I’ll give you the chance to build yourself up until you’re in a better position to pay me back.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I told him. “Loans have interest. And you haven’t actually said what it is I have that you want.”
“I don’t want anything from you that Celestia didn’t, when you really think about it,” he said vaguely, obviously avoiding the truth despite – or, more likely, because of – his assurances that he would be honest. “It’s almost the exact deal that she cut you. She plucked you from obscurity, took you into her home, gave you knowledge and power. The biggest difference is that I won’t hold you back. I’ll teach you anything you want to learn, and I won’t worry about stupid, pointless things the way she did. I think you’ll be much, much happier as my student.”
“I don’t know…” I said unsuredly.
“It’s me or the orphanage, because believe me, kid, in a few weeks it’s going to get real cold, and you won’t make it out there on your own.” He thrust his hand across the table. “Grab it and shake. This is something humans do to seal a deal.”
It wasn’t even that great of a pitch, but at the time, I was so desperate and so starved for the praise of an adult that I’d bit right into the worm, even knowing the hook was there. He’d been telling the truth, at least, about the cold snap that had hit the city over the following month. Coldest on record. I would have ended up going to the orphanage anyway, or freezing to death.
Freezing to death might have been preferable, honestly.
I wanted to say no, to tell him to shove his offer up his ass, to throw my water in his face, to ram my fork into his eyes – anything. Instead I could only sit there as I relived the moment that I reached out my hand and signed away everything I had, everything that I was as a person, as a human, and as a pony.
* * *
I woke up with a pounding headache and a dry mouth. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was familiar. Like waking up in bed next to a favorite mistake.
I hadn’t even bothered opening my eyes, but I knew that a shaft of sunlight was pouring in through a crack in the curtain, shining right in my face like the heated glare of a disappointed parent. I lifted my hand – it felt like I was wearing ten-pounds of lead weights on my wrist – and pinched my thumb and forefinger together, extending a bit of my will and focusing on the heavy velvet drapes.
I didn’t dare open my eyes until I heard the whisper of the curtain rings sliding back into place. I was in my living room, again, with half my body hanging off my couch. I groaned, rubbing at my face and wishing I knew a spell to take the bite off of the morning after a night of heavy drinking.
Laying around and sulking wasn’t going to help, so I forced myself to sit up, ignoring all the cracks and pops and strains my body was using to remind me that passing out on the couch was bad for me. I wasn’t even thirty yet, but mornings like this always made me feel at least sixty.
There was a half-empty water bottle next to the fully-empty tequila bottle, and I grabbed at the water to eagerly chug what was left. It was warm, but a quick swish chased away the cottony feeling in my mouth and helped with the throbbing sensation in my head and the aches in my joints.
I leaned back on the couch – an old, ratty thing I’d picked up from a thrift store for pocket change, that smelled like cigarette smoke but felt like it was stuffed with clouds – gently nursing the last few swallows from the bottle. My living room was pretty bare. Just a couch, a coffee table, a bookcase with some paperbacks and an old set of encyclopedias, and a television sitting on a little entertainment center. The walls were bare, except for a few decorative photos of nature scenery that had either come with the house been on clearance at the outlet mall. The remote was sitting in the middle of the coffee table, next to my car keys in a shallow green candy dish. I leaned forward enough to grab it and switch on the TV.
The channel was on some infomercial for knives that could cut through soda cans – early morning TV, right? The lady shilling the things was absolutely orgasmic over how cheap they were, and how you could get three for the price of two if you ordered right now.
I let the remote fall to the couch next to me. I didn’t care about what was on, I just needed to hear someone else’s voice.
I hadn’t had that dream in a while. Maybe it was because I’d gotten so drunk the night before. I hadn’t done that in a long time, either. There wasn’t any particular reason I’d been drinking. No special occasion, no celebration. I’d finished work, put on some dirty sweatpants, and just so happened to see the locked cabinet that I kept my various drinkables in. It had seemed like better company than nobody.
Up until a few years ago, I used to drink pretty often, but I’d given it up, because of the expense and because I didn’t like what kind of person it was making me. But people who climb out of a bottle spend the rest of their lives living on the lip of it, and sometimes you just fall back inside.
Most people dreamed about crazy stuff, random synapse-firing nonsense where they could fly and have sex with people they couldn’t or shouldn’t have sex with. I never really dreamed, but when I did, it was always just a memory – usually an unpleasant one.
It had been six years since I’d last seen Fiddler, but not a day went by where I didn’t think of him. I could practically see that smarmy, superior little grin of his – cold as a winter’s heart and half as kind – as he leaned in, staring down at me and laughing to himself. The last time I’d seen him, I’d told him to go away and never bother me again, and he’d agreed.
And why wouldn’t he? He already had a marker on me. All he had to do was wait to collect.
I held the water bottle between my thighs and lifted the old gray sweatshirt I was wearing over my head, tossing it carelessly against a wall. I closed my eyes and brushed my fingertips over the spot just above my heart, right between my breasts, feeling for something that wasn’t physically there.
I couldn’t feel it with my flesh, but I could sense the presence of the last thing Fiddler had ever given me. It was a little phantom reminder that I’d always have a piece of him inside me. He’d dug his fingers into my skin, and I could practically still smell my own flesh burning under his touch as he marked me – scored me like a teenager carving his name into a tree. There was a little sigil there, written right onto my soul. It was a seal of some kind, and I knew what Fiddler had said it was for, but damned if I knew what it really did. That’s the way it had always been with him. He always gave you just enough truth that you wouldn’t think to ask about what he wasn’t saying until it was too late.
Over the years I’d managed to read a little of the sigil, but whatever hidden purpose it ultimately served still eluded me, no matter how much I poked at it. It just sat there as a constant reminder of all the mistakes I’d made.
I was drawn out of my reverie by the sound of a woman shouting. The shill on the TV had just climaxed again as she watched the knife slowly saw its way through a lead pipe and still retain enough of an edge to slice a tomato.
I sat on my couch, half-naked and freezing in the early-morning chill, crinkling the plastic of the empty water bottle in my hands. I watched the infomercial for a while longer. Just so I didn’t feel like I was so alone.
* * *
My name is Sunset Shimmer and I’m what most people would refer to as a swindler.
Of course, that isn’t what it says on the sign out in front of my house. Swindlers and conmen really like to downplay the fact that they’re swindlers and conmen. To that end, I advertise myself as something closer to respectable, without actually trying to be respectable.
Sunset Shimmer, Seer of the Unseen, Mistress of Mysteries
That’s what it says on my ad in the Yellow Pages, and on the big hand-carved wooden sign at the end of my driveway. I tell people’s fortunes for a living. And when I say I tell people’s fortunes, I mean I look at their palms, flip some cards, and stare at my own own reflection in a crystal ball for a few minutes before loudly gasping out proclamations of doom. Then I tell them that the spirits think they should get a new job, or try to make things work with their husband, or tip me an extra twenty spot.
Is it a waste of a perfectly good, classically trained sorceress with nigh-limitless godlike power? Probably. But it’s the most honest living I know how to make.
Which probably says a lot more than I like to admit about the stuff I learned about magic.
And it’s not like anybody gets hurt. The vast majority of the people who come by know what the deal is and just treat what I do as entertainment. I wear a belly-dancer outfit and set out some crystals, talk in a funny voice – that sort of thing. I put on a show for them, and they ‘Oh~’ and ‘Aah~’ at the theatrics. When the flashy stuff dies down I give them a little advice. Obvious stuff that mostly just gets a nod.
To those people, I’m pretty much just the human equivalent of a fortune cookie in a sexy bikini top.
Sometimes I get groups. People who are tired of ‘movie night’ and want to do something a little more thrilling with their friends. I put on seances for them and I get to do my dead celebrity impersonations. I do a great imitation of the Lucille Ball, not that there's much call for that anymore. Nobody appreciates the classics.
Of course, I do get the periodic ‘true believer’ – the crack-jobs that believe with all their little heart that chunks of quartz are the most magical thing in the world. I’m not a paragon of righteousness by any stretch of the imagination – I’ve done things in the name of learning that would uncurl the curliest hairs on your body – but I have enough of a heart left to not take advantage of those types. They have deep pockets, but not deep enough that I wouldn’t feel lousy taking their coins with bum advice. It’s not a great policy as far as my checkbook is concerned, but it does help me sleep.
Weekends are when I’m most busy. That and when the lotto gets up into ten digit territory. It never occurs to people that if I could pick numbers like that, I wouldn’t be making a living charging fifty bucks for a tarot reading.
Most of the time, though, I’m just sitting on my porch, playing solitaire in my little Romany scarf-dancer outfit and waiting to see if I get any walk-ins. I live on the outskirts of Canterlot City, where the suburbs start blurring with the countryside. I get less foot-traffic than I would with an office in the city, but I get more privacy. My neighbors are kept at bay with tall hedges and a lawn big enough to play a serious game of football on. Us mystical wisemen-types love our privacy. I think it adds a little bit to my allure for the people who do make the trip, and I try to play it up in my act when I can.
It was a weekday that found me on my porch, as usual, sipping a glass of lemonade and practicing trick-shuffling with my tarot deck as I waited for sundown so I could close up shop. The little bells on my bracelets jingled with every wave of my hands as I flicked the deck and fanned the cards out like a stage magician. The level of dexterity would have been way harder – and way more impressive – with hooves, but fingers are one of the things that I most enjoy about living in the human world.
That and television. Sweet, sweet television.
I looked up at the sound of a car driving past. It was anything but remarkable, just your standard four-door family-mover. It was the kind of car you bought because it had a big trunk and a sturdy driver’s seat so you wouldn’t feel it when the kids kicked you from the back.
What did stand out, however, was the fact that it was the fourth time I’d seen that car crawling by in the past several hours.
The guy driving was probably nervous. Sometimes people come by my place just to check it out, or they decide they want a reading but chicken out at the last second. They usually don’t spend most of a day going back and forth on it, though.
Either way, whether he stopped or not, I wasn’t currently hurting for money. I’d had a flood of really good gigs, including some repeat customers, owing to a series of A-list celebrity deaths over the past few months. A loss for the world’s culture to be sure, but a definite net gain for my bank account.
I went back to playing with my cards, turning the cards over one at a time and practicing my dramatic flourish. The sound of tires scraping against loose asphalt filled the air as my reluctant pigeon hit the breaks.
“Finally bit the hook, eh?” I said with a grin. I may have been flush with liquid assets, but it had been a slow day, and more money was always more than welcomed.
I kept my eyes on the cards, appearing disinterested in the fact that I had a guest. The marks always had this romanticized image that mystics were always busy, in constant battle with dark forces from ‘the other side’. As a mystic, I could tell you that the struggle against the forces of darkness is real – real, but liberally interspersed with very, very long bouts of television watching.
Still, this business is all about appearances, so I hunkered down and threw myself into the role. I watched out the corner of my eye as my customer backed up and turned into my driveway. He pulled up alongside the house and sat in his car for a while, staring at me through the window. His lips were moving, like he was trying to talk himself out of – or into – getting out of his car. Ultimately, he won – or lost – the argument with himself and got out.
He had a little hitch in his steps that told me that he was still really nervous about coming to me with whatever problem he was having, and the look on his face was textbook skepticism. The guy looked about forty, which meant that he was probably wondering if a girl a whole decade or more younger than he was knew what she was talking about.
He was handsome in a nondescript way – average build, average height, average everything. His dark blue hair was neatly combed back into a tidy little wave, and the tweed jacket he wore was almost alarmingly age-appropriate. It even had leather elbow patches.
I briefly toyed with the idea of putting on an accent. Customers like this, the kind I expected would never come back, I always liked to try an accent. I did a pretty good approximation of that woman on the TV that’s always telling people to “Call me now~” and that always at least gets a laugh. It helps the nervous ones to unwind. I got the feeling that that might be a little much for this guy, though. The look on his face told me that I’d have to be my most professional soft-sell if I wanted to wring any cash out of this guy.
“Welcome to my home,” I said to him as I splayed out my hands, touching just my fingertips to the little wooden patio table. “The cards said I should be expecting a visitor today, and here you are.”
He hesitated at the top step, and for a split second I wondered if I’d oversold it. He shook his head and sighed as he pulled out the chair opposite me and took a seat. “Do we do this here, or…?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “That depends on what you require of me,” I said. “Why don’t we start with your name?”
He hesitated again, indecision flashing across his features for the span of a breath. He was probably wondering if he should give me his name. The average, magically-challenged guy off the street tends to have a lot of misconceptions about what magic is and what it can do. Even if you’re not a believer, some things just get picked up by osmosis when you live in a media-saturated society. Lots of books and movies and stuff say that wizards can do bad things if they get ahold of your name. While that can be true if the name is attached to someone of a certain magical persuasion, for your typical non-magical schmo, names are pretty much meaningless.
“My name is Night Light,” he said.
I gave him a smile. You can sell anything to anyone as long as you kept up a good smile. That was one of the most important things I’d ever learned from Fiddler, and it had nothing to do with magic.
“It’s nice to meet you, Night Light,” I said as I thrust out my hand in greeting. “I’m Sunset Shimmer. You seem to have a lot on your mind.”
He reached out and shook my hand. “Um, yeah, I do,” he said nervously. “I don’t… I don’t usually go in for this kind of thing…”
“I hear that fairly often,” I said, keeping up my smile. The thought came to me that maybe a little smalltalk would loosen him up. My schtick always worked best when the customer wasn’t so guarded, and more information was better, in case I needed to do any kind of cold reading on him. “What do you do for a living?”
He blinked. “I teach literature at Canterlot U.”
“Ah, a professor. You know, I had you pegged for a teacher.” He gave me a curious look and I lifted one arm and tapped at my elbow. “The jacket.”
“Oh, yes,” he said with a chuckle. “My wife bought it for me. I suppose it is a little on the nose.”
“Just a bit,” I said. I gathered up my cards and cut them back into the deck. “Any children?”
“Two,” he replied. He was already looking more relaxed. “Boy and a girl. The boy, he’s just started high school – he goes to Crystal Prep. The girl is my youngest, she’s going to turn nine this year.”
“Nine, huh? That’s a good age.” I shuffled the deck a few times, nothing tricky, and set it aside. “So I hear, anyway. When I was nine, most girls my age were outside playing with dolls and throwing tea parties. I was more of an indoor-kid. I liked books more than seesaws. Still do, actually.”
He flashed me a smile filled with genuine, fatherly warmth. “You’d get along well with my daughter,” he said. “She’s the exact same way.”
I nodded. “Why don’t we talk about what’s bothering you, now?”
During our short chat, a lot of the tension had eased up out of his body, but it had all rubber-banded back in a single spasm as he sat up straight in his seat. It was almost enough to make me sigh, but I held it in as he carefully scanned the street, craning his head behind him like he was expecting someone to jump out of the bushes.
He leaned across the table. “I’m, um, not here for palm reading or anything like that,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “I have some questions about… about magic.”
“Well, that’s what I’m here for,” I said graciously. “The Great and Wise Sunset Shimmer can answer all your questions.”
“No, I mean real magic,” he said insistently. He jabbed his index finger on the table to emphasize his words. “Not the smoke and mirrors stuff.”
“I assure you, there are no smoke and mirrors here.” I held a hand daintily against my chest and feigned offense. “My powers are the genuine article.”
He leaned back again, a shadow of something tired and complicated coming over his features. “I’m serious,” he said. “Please. I know that this stuff is…” He pressed the heel of his palm against his temple and ground it in, like he was trying to hold back the first pangs of a headache. The act jostled a few strands free of his immaculate coiffure. “Last week, I overheard some of my students in the quad talking about you. You did a seance for their sorority a few months ago. They’re smart girls, despite their youthful… exuberance. They said you were really impressive. I remembered your name and found you in the phonebook.”
I remembered that gig. Bunch of young, frisky coeds, experimenting with everything they could get their hands on – alcohol, stimulants, the occult, each other. They’d gotten liquored up and had me try to channel their favorite dead poets. I read a lot, but if I don’t know anything about a person, I can’t very well pretend to be their ghost, so I’d had to turn down a lot of the requests I’d gotten. In a desperate attempt to hold on to my appearance fee, I’d let loose with a little bit of real magic and faked-up a poltergeist. Nothing dangerous, just making some furniture levitate and slamming doors on the other end of the sorority house. It had been impressive to a bunch of inebriated liberal arts majors, at least.
“Please,” Night Light pleaded. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out his wallet – a worn leather thing that bulged with old receipts and family pictures. He pulled out two bills and laid them on the table between us. He pulled his hand away and left his wallet on the table, as though promising that there was more where that came from. “I’ll pay up front, just be level with me. Do you know anything about actual magic? If you don’t, I’ll just leave, and you can keep that.”
I eyed the money suspiciously. This was a first. The guy had slapped down two crisp new hundreds and all he was looking to buy was the truth. If I’d had a mind to, I could tell him that I didn’t have any real mojo, that I was no different than the telephone psychics or the flea-market palm readers. It’d be the easiest two bills I’d made in a long, long time, and the only thing I’d have to do was tell a little lie to a guy I’d never see again afterwards. I’d certainly done worse in my life for far less, and smiled while I’d done it.
But that wasn’t me anymore – or, at least, I didn’t want it to be.
I grabbed the cash and stuffed the bills into one of the cups of my little gypsy bikini top. With a sigh, I took off the big golden hoops dangling from my ears. They were a part of my outfit, but they were heavy and damned uncomfortable to wear for a whole day. I tossed them on the table next to my tarot cards and the jingly-bell bracelets followed suit.
“I can listen,” I said tiredly. It wasn’t a direct confirmation, but the slight widening of his eyes told me that he took it as one. “I can’t promise more than that, though.”
He gave me a studious look, his eyes searching my face for any sign of deceit. He licked his lips. “It started earlier this month,” he said softly, the barest hint of fear tinging his voice. “It started as just… I don’t know, just a general feeling of unease. Like something was watching me. Then after that, it was shadows moving on their own, noises outside my windows – that kind of thing.”
“‘Hairs on the back of your neck standing up’ kind of stuff, huh?”
“Exactly!” he said, nodding excitedly.
I arched an eyebrow. “And you think this feeling of unease is supernatural in origin?”
He nodded without hesitation.
I drummed my fingers on the table and leaned back in my chair, frowning at his description. “Paranoia is part of the human condition,” I said. “While it’s possible that you might be being shadowed by something supernatural, the far more likely culprit is a mundane, everyday case of the heebie-jeebies.”
His brows went up at that. “Skepticism from a psychic?”
I shrugged. “You’re paying me for my expert opinion. I’m not lying when I say I have a little experience with actual magic, but you wanted me to level with you.” I had quite a bit more than a ‘little’ experience with magic, but he didn’t need to know that. “Nine times out of nine, the thing going bump in the night is a hungry raccoon knocking over your trash can, or the sound of your house creaking from thermal expansion. The odds of it being an actual magical incident are small enough to be statistically insignificant.”
Most people who were absolutely certain that they’d crossed paths with the supernatural would have had the wind taken out of their sails by an assessment like that. Surprisingly, Night Light seemed to actually be more at ease with the fact that I was taking a logical approach to his predicament.
“I appreciate that,” he said, that little bit of fear finally leaving his voice, “but believe me, I’m the first person who would agree with a diagnosis of basic paranoia. The problem is... it’s not just my nerves.”
“How do you mean?”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a single big huff. “The day before yesterday I was on campus, grading midterms. I finished up for the night, and as I was walking to my car I saw…” He grimaced. “...something.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve said as much already. Can you be more specific?”
“It was big.” He frowned and held his hands out, awkwardly trying to size the sighting out like he was describing a fish he’d caught. “Really big. But other than that I don’t know. It hit me from behind and—”
“Hold on,” I said, interrupting him. “It hit you?”
He nodded grimly and slipped off his coat, letting it fall against the backrest of his chair. He undid the buttons on the cuff of his left sleeve and rolled it up, revealing a large white medical pad that had been taped around his forearm. A little splash of pink had soaked through the cotton pad.
Night Light pulled the the tape off slowly, sucking air through his teeth as his wound was exposed to the chilly air of late afternoon. Beneath the bandage was a series of small puncture wounds, around a dozen of them, and a small gash held together with black stitches. The wounds were clearly fresh, and the skin around them was still discolored from the iodine in the hospital antiseptic.
That definitely wasn’t just paranoia. I held out my hand and he leaned across the table so I could get a better look.
I’m no expert on animal dentition, but I knew a bite when I saw one, and I could tell that this one wasn’t right. The punctures were misaligned, and the sizes were all different, like the thing that bit him had teeth from a bunch of different animals.
“Okay, so what happened then?” I asked.
“I don’t know what I can say other than that it knocked me down, bit me, and ran away,” he explained. “It happened so quickly that I didn’t even realize that I’d been bitten until I was already back on my feet. It was late at night, so no one was even around to see what happened. I went to the hospital and they said it was probably a dog.”
“What do you think it was?”
“Not a dog,” he said in a deadpan. “You don’t wake up the morning after a dog bite with a tattoo.”
I blinked at that. “A tattoo?” I asked.
His cheeks went pink, but he stood and pulled the hem of his shirt free from his waistband. I looked out over my lawn, giving him the courtesy of not watching him undress. Humans were weird about their naked bodies, which I could understand, having lived as a human for so long. I was comfortable in my own skin, but that didn’t mean that other people were.
“My wife was the one that found it,” he said as he dropped his shirt onto the table and turned around.
I got up and tugged at the top of Night Light’s white undershirt, revealing more of his back. The tattoo was of a face, about the size of a tea saucer and done with an almost primitive sensibility. The eyes were two spirals that spread outwards until they filled half of the face. The mouth was represented by flat, angular teeth that were pressed together in a fierce grimace. At each end of the mouth the lines of the teeth curved into long tusk-like fangs. A pair of elongated, drooping ears – like the creature pictured had worn very heavy earrings for many years – framed the face on each side. The whole thing was contained within two circles, with a stylish fretting between them, like something you would find in Greek pottery.
I didn’t recognize the symbol, but I knew bad juju when I saw it. Mysteriously appearing magical tattoos were very rarely ever a good thing. A mark like this was often, but not always, a visual representations of a practitioner’s power within another person’s body. Or, even scarier, it was a claim by something with serious power on the branded person. I should know, I had something similar imprinted directly onto my soul.
I brushed the mark with my fingertips, and the magic contained in the pattern reacted with my own, like a spark of static, or holding a 9-volt battery against your tongue. This was definitely magic, but I damned if I knew what this was. I’d never seen the symbol before, and there wasn’t any kind of writing for me to try and decipher. The face itself was probably some kind of rune.
But just because I didn’t understand it didn’t mean I didn’t know how to break it. There wasn’t actually all that much power in the thing, so I was fairly confident I could pull the magic out by sheer force.
“I can remove this,” I said.
“W-what?” he asked. He tried to turn around, but I put my hands on his shoulders and kept his back turned towards me. “You actually know what it is?”
“No,” I admitted, “but I know it’s something you don’t want.”
“Then please,” he said immediately.
I set my jaw, preparing for the possibility that this might blow up in my face. That was always a danger when dealing with counter-magic. I pressed my palm flat against the mark, ignoring the angry buzz of magical feedback as the magic in the sigil pushed back against my own. I focused on drawing out the magic, gathering it in my fingertips and in my palm, pulling it to the surface. Slowly I drew my hand back, and the black lines of the tattoo pulled away from Night Light’s body, tugging at the skin of his back as I drew it out. He flinched, and a quiet groan of discomfort wheezed out of him, but I placed my free hand on his shoulder and gripped it reassuringly.
“Almost done,” I said.
I spun my fingers around, winding up the strands of magical ink like a loose thread from a sweater. The tingling aside, the sensation was not unlike brushing my hand through cobwebs. The threads of darkness worked their way into my own skin, spreading cancerously over my hand. Slowly but surely I pulled the magic out of him, until all that remained of the mark was a bright red welt. The skin would be tender, but in a day or two he wouldn’t even have that.
I pat his shoulder and guided him back onto the chair. He sat, sweating and pale, and his eyes went wide when he saw my hand.
I could help but grin at the look on his face. My entire hand was stained black, like I’d just dipped it into an inkwell. I flexed my fingers and took a deep breath, then gathered all the dark magic into the center of my palm. The stain on my flesh receded, gathering into a crystallized ball in my palm until it was nearly the size of a chicken egg. Magic like this was very delicate, made to last for a very long time, but only when it was contained within a living body. I had pulled it free from Night Light, and cast out if out my own body. Exposed to the air, the magic died, becoming as brittle as eggshell. I closed my hand, crushing the nullified curse magic. It felt like wet sand, and as I loosened my fingers, black dust spilled out of my fist and onto my wooden patio.
I frowned at the little pile of inert magical powder. It was harmless now, so I just swept it towards the edge of my deck and into the bushes with my feet.
“That was magic?” Night Light asked.
I recognized the question as rhetorical, so I chose not to answer. I took a seat and pushed my forgotten glass of lemonade towards him. I’m usually not one to share drinks, but the guy looked like he could use one. He must have thought the same, because he reached out and took it without hesitation. He held the glass with shaky hands, taking very small sips while carefully avoiding the lipstick marks I’d left on the lip of the glass. By the time he’d nursed his way to the bottom of the glass, he looked a little more composed.
“Thank you,” he said. “What now?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“What do we do about the thing that bit me?” he asked. “It’s still out there. It needs to be stopped.”
“We don’t even know what it was that attacked you,” I said, shaking my head.
I was already deeper in this than I wanted to be. I don’t know what put that spell on him, but taking it off meant indirectly opposing whatever had a mind to hurt Night Light. If it was a random creature attack with a weird magical bite, that was bad, but if it was another mortal practitioner, that was really bad.
The fact that I’d not only failed to turn him away, but possibly actively interfered in another practioner’s… whatever this was, meant I risked putting myself on the playing field. I’d done this guy a favor, but right now all I wanted to do was quietly sneak back into the shadows.
“We can find out,” he said. “I’ll help you. I’ll pay whatever it costs.”
I scratched the back of my head absentmindedly, unsure of what I should say to the guy. “Look, Night Light, I can certainly give you some advice, but you’re asking for something a little more proactive than that. I’m sorry, but I’m not really the person to provide that kind of service.” I picked up my deck of tarot cards and held them up like a badge. “I normally just give card readings and tell the future with leftover bones from a bucket of fried chicken. I’m not a bodyguard, or a cop, or a detective, or anything like that.”
“Then who can help me? Is there anyone else you can recommend? I can’t exactly look up ‘Wizard’ in the phonebook.”
He did sort of have a point. There aren’t many people in Canterlot City in my racket – not any that stay in business for more than a month or two, at least. And as far as I know, of the few regularly operating shysters in town, I’m the only one with actual juice.
I do my best to stay way the hell off the grid of other mortal practitioners, because frankly, they’re all a little loony tunes. If any of them padded their income by working as magical mercenaries, I wouldn’t have any way of knowing.
Not to say that I couldn’t introduce him to some muscle. The problem with that was that the circles I used to run in were a fair bit less than mortal, and the fees they asked for were paid in something more valuable than common greenbacks. Night Light seemed desperate enough that he might take a bum deal like that, and I couldn’t in good conscience show him a bear trap knowing that he’d stick his head in it the second I turned my back.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I don’t know anyone else.”
“Then please!” Night Light got to his feet. “Please! Someone has to do something. What if this thing goes after someone else? What if it goes after my family?”
Damnit. He had to bring up the kids, didn’t he?
I’ve never been very good with children, not even when I was a child myself. Back in Equestria, back before I’d ended up in the human world, I’d spent most of my time reading alone, studying magic and cultivating my power. I’d always seen things like ‘playtime’ and ‘fun’ as wastes of perfectly good study time.
Of course, I’d long ago grown out of that sort of snobbery, and as an adult I could piss away time at the Olympic level, but I still had difficulty… connecting with children. It probably stemmed from never having had a childish mentality of my own. But despite that difficulty of connecting with younglings on a personal level, I still always had a soft spot in what was left of my heart for the idea of children.
What it all boiled down to was that I just plain didn’t like seeing kids get hurt.
And the kids getting hurt was a real possibility. Night Light had said this feeling of unease he’d been having had been going on for a while, which meant that whatever had targeted him, it had been watching. It probably knew where he lived, and if it made a play for him while he was home?
At that moment, Night Light decided to do something I hadn’t expected. He came around the side of the table, fell to his knees, and begged.
“Please,” he muttered as he lowered himself to the ground. He bowed his head and stared helplessly into his own empty hands. “Please… I don’t care about what happens to me. I don’t care what it costs. I just can’t bear the thought that something might happen to my children…" He lifted his head and looked me straight in the eyes. "Miss Sunset, I need your help.”
I’m a proud person, always have been, even before I was a human. I’d been a beggar once, in those early days, just after I’d first reached the human world. I knew how demeaning it was to get down on your knees and ask for help. People see beggars and think that they’re looking at someone who wants something for nothing, and they never think about what it was actually costing that other person – but I knew. You give up a little bit of your independence, a little bit of your pride, a little bit of your soul. You take the only thing you have left and you hold it out in your hand, hoping that you can leverage your dignity against someone else’s pity. It was a hard price to pay, and usually all you got in return was a stranger’s pocket change.
Night Light was paying that price right now. He was in over his head, and he needed my help. There was a chance he was playing me, sure, but I doubted it. I’ve seen men backed into a corner, begging for their own sake, and that isn’t what I saw in Night Light’s eyes.
“Stand up,” I said tersely. I was touched by the show of humility for the sake of his family, but I also kind of resented the fact that I could be so easily swayed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He stood and grasped my hands, and the look of gratitude on his face was so naked that it was enough to make me blush.
“Thank you, thank you,” he repeated.
I pulled my hands free of his grasp and got up to go into my house. “Wait here,” I said. “I need to ask you some questions, but I need something to write with.”
I closed the door behind myself and leaned against the wall, groaning into my palms and hoping against hope that I hadn’t just gotten myself tangled up with something that might end up biting me in the ass.
* * *