“As you can see behind me, there, we have investigators from the Canterlot City Fire Department sifting through the ashes of the blaze that claimed the lives of a family of four last night. There’s still no word on whether last night’s unexpected storm had anything to do with the fire, as investigators have yet to determine the cause. The CCFD’s fire marshall has issued a statement in the wake of this tragedy, reminding everyone to perform routine maintenance on their in-home smoke alarms and carbon-monoxide detectors…”
I muted the TV and changed the channel just so I didn’t have to see the smoldering remains of Night Light’s home anymore. I’d been flipping channels all afternoon, trying to see if there was anything about last night’s fight on the news. All I needed was for some paranoid neighbor with a security camera in his driveway to have caught me running away from a burning house with one of the victim’s children.
Luckily, it seemed like that hadn’t been the case. And to top it off, it looked like they thought that Twilight had burned up in the fire, too. That meant that nobody would be looking for her for a while – at least until they realized they were missing a body.
I dropped the remote on the coffee table and pressed my forehead against the wooden surface. I was sitting on the floor, my legs under the table and my back against the couch. Twilight Sparkle was laying on the couch behind me, still sleeping.
Twilight Sparkle.
How could this have happened? This had to be some kind of cosmic joke.
The human world has billions of people, and only a fraction of them are dopplegangers of people from my world. The odds of me getting caught up in something like this with the double of Twilight Sparkle were… god, it was so astronomical that I couldn’t even begin trying to work it out. The odds were so vastly incalculable that it had to be karmic punishment – my just deserts for wallowing in hatred for all those years.
And I had hated Twilight Sparkle, the little filly that Princess Celestia – my Princess Celestia – had said could perhaps be my equal. Twilight Sparkle, whom I had seen as a usurper of my place in the world. She was a stranger, but with nothing more than news of her existence, she’d shaken the very foundations of the pedestal I’d put myself atop.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s all in the past. That was the viewpoint of a bitter and foolish little girl. I didn’t want to be that ugly, hate-filled person anymore, or ever again. I’d let the weight of that hate bend my back for nearly half my life before I’d managed to put it down, and without it I stood a little straighter… but that didn’t stop the pain in my chest and the fluttering of my guts every time I looked at the human child behind me. Every time I thought of her name it was like thunder, like heaven itself laughing at me.
I tried to stand up and banged my knee against the underside of the table. I winced, sucking air through my teeth and muttering the sort of words that shouldn’t be spoken with a child in the room as I rubbed the sore spot. I pushed the table away impatiently and walked over to my liquor cabinet. It was locked, but I always kept the key – one of those antique brass skeleton key dealies – in the lock. Maybe it defeated the purpose of locking the cabinet to leave the key in it, but it’s not like I’d ever had to keep anyone except myself out of it.
The inside of my cabinet was well-stocked with a variety of spirits. I’d been struck by whimsy during one of my previous benders, and I’d covered over the labels with sticky notes bearing smiley faces that expressed what liquor went best with what mood – at least I think that was what the faces meant, my mind went weird places when I was drinking. I reached for a bottle with a frowny face on it, but hesitated to pull the bottle out.
My eyes drifted towards the couch, where Twilight was curled into a tight little ball. She’d gotten one of my throw pillows and was hugging it to her chest like a drowning man clutching a life preserver.
I sighed and – reluctantly – let go of the bottle. I wanted it real bad, but I’d made enough mistakes for the week. It didn’t matter if she was sleeping, I wasn’t going to sink low enough to let myself get smashed in front of a child.
“I’m sorry, kid,” I whispered as I closed the cabinet and turned the key. “I screwed up, but I’m not going…” A lump formed in my throat. I swallowed it down. “I can’t…” It came back.
What could I say? That I was going to make it right? Nothing I did could give her back her family, nothing could undo what had been done to her.
I walked over to the coffee table and sat down to watch Twilight sleep. That unsettling pain in my chest started up again.
She was a cute kid, fair of skin and chubby of cheek. Her hair was a dark, almost purple-ish blue, with streaks of indigo and bright, rosy pink – the colors of the sky at actual twilight. It was cut into a short little bob, with a straight curtain of bangs that looked like they might need a trim soon. I’d never met the pony Twilight, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d had the same mane style.
I watched her for a while, letting myself drink in the sight of her sleeping form. She was the very picture of innocence in repose. Every moment I spent watching her was another pound of guilt settling on my shoulders, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t deserve.
This was one of the children that Night Light had gotten on his knees and begged me to help him protect... so that was what I was going to do. It was all I could do now.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Twilight,” I said, my voice tight but my words as resolute as any I’d ever spoken. The burden on my shoulders was no lighter, but I felt stronger beneath it with every word. “I promise you, I’m not going to mess up again. I’ll keep you safe.”
I stood and scooped her up from the warm embrace of my smelly, comfortable couch. She stirred long enough to cast me a drowsy glance, drop the pillow she’d been clutching, and bury her face against my chest as I carried her up the stairs. The door to the guest room was still open, and I set her down as though she might shatter with the slightest mistreatment. The front of my shirt was wound up in her tiny fist, and I very gently pried her fingers loose enough to slip free of her grasp. I tucked her in and left the room.
I had one last look back at her as I was shutting the door. The kid was sleeping a lot, and she’d probably be sleeping a lot more over the next few days. You’d be surprised how much as person can sleep when their heart has been broken. If the circles under her eyes were any indication, it wasn’t restful sleep either.
* * *
No more half-measures. That’s what I’d decided. I wasn’t going to let myself repeat the stupid little mistakes that had brought me here.
The first thing I needed to do was make sure Twilight and I were protected in my house. I had been planning to lay down some wards around Night Light’s place, but those were just basic spells and formations that would gently nudge aside any bad juju sent their way. More than enough to turn back the power of some cut-rate practitioner, but they would have been the magical equivalent of a ‘No Trespassing’ sign compared to what I had in mind. I wasn’t quite ready to start calling up demons to sit on my porch like guard dogs – that kind of protection came with its own set of risks – but anything short of that was definitely on the table.
It was already dark by the time I’d finished my preparations. I was kneeling in the grass, the short-cut blades pricking at the flesh of my exposed legs. My skin was sensitive, tingling from the hard scrubbing I’d given myself in the shower to cleanse my body. My hair was loose, still a little damp and beginning to frizz as it dried. It wasn’t very chilly out, but I felt the full effect of the night air through the silk bathrobe I was wearing. It was a little black number, with rose patterned embroidery, and it made for very poor protection from the elements seeing as it barely covered halfway down my thighs.
I opened the canvas bag that I kept my ritual materials in and pulled out the little red clay offering bowl. It was one of the first things I’d ever made with my own hands, and the shoddy craftsmanship showed in the lumpy bowl as uneven edges and fingerprinted dimples. It was ugly, but it had been made with a bit of my magic in it, and it would take a lot of the dirty work out of what I wanted to do. I set it aside and pulled out a short knife – another of my own crafts that I’d made by sharpening an ox bone against a grind wheel. It was another ugly tool, but it was sharp as the will I had poured into it. I laid the knife down and started filling the bowl with dry herbs and incense. Scents can be very spiritual, and knowing what sort of scents attracted certain kinds of spirits made it easier to speak with them.
I ground up the ingredients with the butt of my knife until they were powder, then set down the knife and got to my feet. I undid the belt of my robe, letting it slide from my shoulders with a whisper of silk over flesh and onto the grass, exposing my bare skin to the light of the crescent moon in the cloudless sky. I didn’t need to be naked for this, but it helped. That’s what a lot of magical learning was, picking up all the little shortcuts that let you do difficult things with more ease.
I walked across the lawn to the chicken coop I kept next to my gardening shed. I’d built the coop myself, using blueprints I’d found in a Do-It-Yourself book I’d picked up from the hardware store. It was painted red and white, and the little hutch that the chickens slept and laid their eggs in was made to look like a barn. It was a little lopsided, but it was one of the first home-improvement projects I’d ever undertaken after I’d bought my house. I was proud of it.
I opened the little hatch in the back of the hutch and squinted at my birds. I grabbed the fattest one and pulled her out. She was getting older and didn’t give many eggs these days, so it wouldn’t hurt much to lose her. She clucked in annoyance at being manhandled, but didn’t put up much of a fuss as I shut the door. The other chickens just ruffled their feathers and spread out a little, filling in the now vacated space and hunkering back down for the night.
Chickens aren’t just a good source of meat and eggs. They’re an easy, cheap, and readily available source of life-energy for when you need to make a blood sacrifice.
Blood sacrifices get a bad rap, but that’s only because they’re messy. Even if I hadn't sacrificed her, I still would have ended up killing this old hen and frying her up. Offering her life-essence to a spirit that would protect my house was just me using every part of the animal, even the parts you couldn't see.
I wrung the bird’s neck and carried her body back to where I’d set up my ritual supplies. By the time I was kneeling back on the grass in front of my bowl, the last of her post-mortem twitching had stopped. I cut open her belly and carefully yanked out the insides, dumping them onto the grass in a pile. It was more delicate work than the layman would suspect, but I was a practiced hand at it and it went quick.
I grabbed a lighter from my ritual bag – one of those long wands with a trigger on it for lighting a barbecue – and started burning the potpourri in the bowl. The air was immediately filled with a rich composite of sweet scents, like one of those fancy home and bath stores in the mall.
My hands were already covered in blood, so I smeared a little on my face, symbolically linking my life-essence with that of the sacrifice animal. I scooped up the innards and dumped them into the bowl. The giblets went up in a flash, the fat popping and crackling almost musically, and the clean white smoke turned black and greasy. It was a small fire, but the magic in my offering bowl made the heat intense as a bonfire’s. I leaned forward, holding back my hair so it wouldn’t fall into the flames, and inhaled a lungful of the smoke. The spicy scent of burning meat and incense stung my nostrils as I sucked hot smoke into my chest. I held it in, closing my eyes and infusing the smoke with some of my will and a portion of my magic as I focused on the type of protection I wanted.
I exhaled, blowing the smoke into the air above me, and a plume of smoke far larger than what I had inhaled trailed away in the breeze. The fire in the bowl flared brilliantly as my offering was accepted and the spirits took their payment. Within seconds the meat in the bowl had burned away, until not even ashes were left.
I cleaned up the mess and put my robe back on. I’d have to spray the spot down with the hose later, but that could wait until morning. I picked up my ritual bag and my chicken, and walked back to the house.
I stowed the bag under the sink and washed the blood off my face before I got to work cooking the bird. The spirits had gotten what they wanted, and that left me with a chicken that was perfectly good for eating – once it was properly cleaned, scalded, and plucked, that is.
It was familiar work. I’d done similar rituals dozens of times when I’d been learning from Fiddler. I might have thrown up the first time, but every time after that it got a little easier. I’d learned to cook for myself because of this sort of thing, truth be told. It took a bit of the sting out of the cruelty of the act if I knew I was going to be eating the poor animal – like the chicken wasn’t dying in vain, or something.
I lost myself in the preparation of the meal for a little while, the steps of it as ingrained and practiced as any meditative act. I could empty my mind while I did this, and focus just on the task in front of me. It was a much needed breather after having spent the whole day ruminating on the impossibility of my predicament.
An hour had passed by the time I was taking the first pieces of chicken out of the pan. It was a little late in the evening for fried chicken, but I’ve never let little things like that stop me before. Plus, I hadn’t eaten since my meeting with Clavus, and that meal hadn’t even stayed inside me long enough to get digested.
One of the chairs at the dining table behind me scraped along the hardwood floors with a loud, grating sound, cutting through the hiss of crackling oil in the pan. I looked over my shoulder, knowing that it had to be Twilight. Sure enough, she was sitting at the table, her tired, bloodshot eyes watching me with a gaze that I might have described as appraising if it weren’t coming from a cute-as-a-button eight-year-old.
There was a seed of something in those tired eyes, the ghostly remains of unrestrained weeping. The last time I’d seen her awake, her grief had been huge, imposing as a mountain. Tears had worn it down, like a river smoothing out the hard edges of a rock. That was the look in her eyes – the look of a worn, smooth river stone that had been carved from a mountain. I felt a pang of heartache to see that look in the eyes of a kid her age, so I forced myself to break eye contact almost immediately.
She was still wearing her pajamas, because of course she was. I hadn’t thought to grab any clothes for her as we were fleeing the scene of the crime. I didn’t own anything in her size, so I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do if she wanted to change clothes.
That struck me as a strange, almost novel, thought to have. I’ve never had to worry about someone else’s needs before. Never had to think about clothes or even food for someone else. She was a kid, though, and I supposed that there was no one else around that could worry about those things for her right now.
I opened my mouth to say good morning, but the words felt wrong and died upon conception. Was that the right thing to say? If not, then what should I say? What could I say?
“I’m sorry.” Or maybe, “How’d you sleep?”
Words failed me, so I chose to say nothing and turned back to the pan to continue cooking. Words must have failed her, too, because she didn’t say a thing as she watched me working at the stove.
I finished up and got out some plates. I set a place for myself and one for Twilight where she was already sitting, and put the basket of chicken in the center of the table. I got us a couple of sodas and then took a seat opposite her. The dining table was round, as secondhand as everything else I owned, and about the size of a card table. It didn't afford a lot of space between us, but I felt the distance was... maybe not appropriate, but definitely necessary, or at the very least more comfortable than being close.
I knew we were both hungry, if the tightness in my belly and the way Twilight was staring at the food were any kind of indication, but neither of us moved to fill our plates. When the wall between us finally broke, it was Twilight who spoke out first.
“Why were you at my house last night?” she asked.
“I’m a friend of your dad’s,” I said.
“I know. You said so last night. You said your name was Sunset Shimmer.”
I was impressed. I’d given her my name to try and get her to stop fighting me when I had found her in the closet. She’d been pretty worked up, but she’d been aware enough to remember my name.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been too surprised, though. Night Light had mentioned briefly that his daughter was a smart cookie, and the pony Twilight had been impressive enough to get Princess Celestia’s attention. If this was one of those cases where the pony and the human analogue were fairly close in temperament and talent, then Twilight was most probably more than just a little bright.
“You didn’t answer my question, though,” she said. Sharp kid, alright – insistent. “Why were you at my house?”
I fiddled nervously with the hem of my robe. The silk felt good between my fingers. “Answer me something first,” I proposed. “What do you remember about last night?”
The color drained from her face. “You… you won’t believe me if I tell you,”
“I think you might be surprised what I’d believe.”
Her mouth pulled into a tight little line as she narrowed her eyes at me in distrust. I knew that look. It was the look that children gave adults when they were trying to figure out if they were about to get talked down to.
“It was a monster,” she said. “A monster came into my house and it…” The hard look in her eyes wavered for just a second, and a shiver went through her body as her lower lip trembled. I thought she was going to start bawling, but she pulled herself together at the very edge of losing her composure. “...it hurt my mom and dad and brother. I know monsters aren’t supposed to be real, but I know what I saw. I saw a monster, so that means monsters are real. That’s called empirical evidence.”
“Okay then,” I said. My mouth was suddenly very dry, so I opened my soda and took a drink. “I believe you.”
“You do?” she asked. “Did you see it last night?”
“I did,” I replied.
Her eyes narrowed as she searched my face for any indication that I might be lying. It was startlingly like the scrutinizing look that her father had given me when we had first met – the kid had a lot of her dad in her. She must have been satisfied with what she’d seen, because she slumped forward, folding her hands and sighing with obvious relief. “I was so worried,” she muttered. “I was scared that… that no one would believe me.”
“Your dad was the same way. One of those things had been following him around. That’s why he asked me for help.”
She looked up, her face etched with confusion. “He came to you for help?” she asked. “Why?”
“Because he didn’t have anyone else to go to,” I said. I chugged down the rest of my drink, then went to drop the empty can in the recycling bin next to the trash before going to the fridge for another.
“What about the police?” she asked. “My mom said that if you’re in trouble, the police are supposed to help you.”
“Cops can’t help you with monsters,” I said. I rooted around the fridge a little, trying to see if I had any beer or cider or something. I’d decided to stay out of the liquor cabinet, but something between straight whiskey and sodee-pop would have been nice. I had nothing, though, so I went back to the table with another soda. “They don’t know how to deal with magic.”
“And you do?”
“I know a little something about it,” I said with a shrug.
She crossed her arms impetuously. “Prove it.”
I stretched my hand towards the cabinet where I kept my glassware, and opened the door with a tug of my magic. A glass zipped out of the cabinet, across the kitchen, and into my open hand. I pointed at the soda, poured the drink into the glass without touching the can, and levitated the empty into the recycling bin.
The look of surprise on Twilight’s face was too adorable. There was a little part of me that was amused by her cutely shocked expression, and I couldn’t hold back my grin, or the urge to rub it in a little harder.
“Empirical evidence, right?” I took a drink, smugly.
“Are you a Magic Princess?” she asked in what might have been a reverent whisper.
I inhaled sharply at that question, which was unfortunate, because I was in the middle of drinking. I pounded my chest, hacking the fizzy liquid out of my lungs. Memories of my fight with Celestia, and of the impossibly unreasonable request I’d made of her that day, came flooding back to me. That the question had come from Twilight Sparkle made it sting all the worse.
It took me a few moments, but I finally managed to wheeze out, “Excuse me?”
“I asked if you were a Magic Princess,” she said. She leaned back and tugged at the bottom of her pajama top, flattening it out to better show off the picture printed on it. I hadn’t really paid it any attention, but her pajamas had a picture of six girls posing heroically in front of a castle with a rainbow behind it. They were all smiling, wearing masks and skimpy – almost fetishistically so – cosplay outfits. They even had a cute animal sidekick that looked like some kind of fat little platypus and could probably talk.
“Oh, is that some kind of kids’ show?” I asked. As much as I would like to, I can’t just watch TV all day. I do have to earn a living, you know.
“They’re the Ultra Pretty Magic Princesses,” Twilight explained. “They’re princesses from another dimension who know magic and fight monsters.”
“So they’re like superheroes?”
She nodded.
“I guess so, then,” I said with a sigh. I’m no hero, in fact I probably have more in common with the monsters on her show than the heroes, but if it put her mind at ease to think that I was Kamen Rider, then I wasn’t going to burst her bubble. I reached for the basket of chicken and put a couple of pieces on her plate. I gave her the drumsticks, because she was a guest, and a kid. “Try to eat something.”
I started eating, pointedly ignoring the strange looks I was getting from Twilight now. After a while, I couldn’t take the staring anymore.
“Come on, kid,” I said, dropping my half-eaten piece of chicken back on the plate. “You gotta try to eat something. Please?”
She folded her hands together, lacing her fingers and twiddling her thumbs nervously. “Can I ask something first?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing,” I said without hesitation. “I told your dad I was going to make sure you were okay. I’m going to make sure that the monsters can’t touch you.”
It wasn’t exactly the whole truth, but it was enough truth for a child.
She shifted in her seat in obvious discomfort. “Okay… but what about after?”
“After?” I asked.
“After the monsters are gone, what’s going to happen to me?” she asked, a note of panic filling her voice. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
I make my living talking, telling people what they want or need to hear, but for the second time in the span of an hour, my words failed me. Sure, I could tell her that I’d find some relatives for her to stay with, or tell her about what it was like being in an orphanage, but none of that was what she was asking. What she’d lost wasn’t a roof, or people who would support her until she was old enough to do it herself.
She’d lost her home, her family, the place she belonged to. She’d lost the people that had loved her, and now she was alone.
The scariest thing in the world – in any world – is knowing without a doubt that you’re alone. I knew that better than most. What I didn’t know, was what to do about it.
“I don’t know…”
We sat in silence, neither of us knowing what to say to the other. The distance afforded by the small dining table between us suddenly felt immeasurable, vast and cold as the distance between two stars, and no longer comfortable in the least. The soft clicking of the cheap wall clock above the back door counted out the awkward seconds, one at a time.
“Miss Sunset?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“My family is gone.”
“I know, kid.”
She’d been remarkably composed up to this point, but admitting aloud the truth of her situation had finally put her over the edge.
That seed of grief in her eyes blossomed, spilling over until it filled her face, until it filled her entire body and she quivered with it. She doubled over, clutching her hands over her heart like she was trying to hold the broken pieces in place. The sound of her wailing echoed horribly off the bare walls of my kitchen and I winced at the sound.
I turned away, unable to watch her cry, but unable to go to her and offer comfort. It was my fault that she was in pain, and I had no right to comfort her. I tried to tell myself that I shouldn’t let that stop me, that what I felt didn’t matter compared to what Twilight needed… but I’m a weak woman, and I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I sat there, hating myself as I listened to Twilight’s grief-song.
I had stopped counting the seconds, so I don’t know how much time had passed, but eventually Twilight’s sobbing had died down to sniffles and strangled little hiccups. She wiped the snot from her nose with her sleeve, leaving behind a slimy mess all the way from the crook of her arm to the wrist in a single movement, and finally reached for a piece of chicken.
We ate without another word, and the meal passed without further incident. Even though she finished first, Twilight waited until I was done before she got up and went back upstairs – manners that her parents had probably drilled into her. I was left alone in the kitchen with the dirty dishes.
* * *
I hadn’t slept very well, but at least my sleep had been dreamless. After the events of the past few days, I was worried about the kind of memories my brain might try to betray me with.
I hadn’t bothered to set an alarm, but it had been one of those nights where your body seemingly anticipates the next day’s labors, and decides to treat sleep like an expectant pause rather than a chance to rest. My eyes opened at five in the morning, on the dot, without that drowsy transition from sleep to wakefulness. Just a blink and I was awake.
Very unsettling.
I didn’t bother with breakfast. I just changed into a fresh pair of jeans, and a t-shirt that voiced my dissatisfaction with Mondays. The jeans were irreparably stained with paint and the shirt had a hole in the armpit, but they were clean and good for working around the house.
The plan for the day was to work on the rest of my house’s wards. What I already had up was pretty good, but I knew I could do better. Until I could figure out what my next move was going to be, the best thing for me to do was to turn Casa de Sunset into a magical fortress.
The previous night’s blood sacrifice had given my house a good deal of protection, but I wasn’t stupid enough to rely on just one extra layer. The best defenses were layered like an onion – an onion with a knife inside of it, and the onion is inside of a guard dog’s mouth.
Silly analogy, yes, but a magically-sound plan if there ever was one.
I stopped to look into the guest room on my way downstairs, just to check and see if Twilight was alright. The cold hinges on the door squealed as I carefully opened it, and the little lump under the covers twitched at the noise, but didn’t rise.
I’ve been in some really awkward situations before, but last night was definitely standing at the top of the hill, with bloody knuckles, as the undisputed king of awkward life moments. Days like this, I really wished I still had Princess Celestia around to give me advice. Celestia would have known what to do. She always knew.
I closed the door and went downstairs. The first blush of sunrise was just starting to color the skies outside, and the early-morning air was wonderfully cool and damp with last night’s dew. I fed the chickens and cleaned up what was left of last night’s ritual off my lawn before getting the belt with my engraving tools and a ladder out of the shed. I took the things back into the house and upstairs, careful to avoid making too much noise outside of the room Twilight was in, and opened the hatch in the ceiling that led to my attic.
Most people use their attics for storage. It’s traditionally a place to shove old Christmas decorations and family photo albums, so you can forget about them for long stretches of time. Me, though? I don’t have any of that stuff.
In fact, I don’t own a lot of stuff, period, and what stuff I do own is in the rooms I most frequent – bedroom, bathroom, living room, my study in the basement. So the attic went unused, for the most part, like the other two bedrooms in the house – Twilight’s temporary residency aside.
I did get some use out of it, though. The big empty room was built more for utility than for style, so there were no wall panels or sheetrock covering the room’s support structure. The exposed rafters and joists were a part of the house’s skeleton, in a sense, which meant that anything I did in this room would easily spread throughout the house. It was the perfect out of the way place to put down some wards.
The beams already had more than a few sigils carved into them. They were protections that I’d laid down when I’d first moved in. Some of them were spells and minor incantations written in ancient demonic languages that I could read but didn’t have the right mouth-parts to speak, while others were old runes that attracted good spirits that would look after my house. It was a good, strong mix of various protections, but it never hurt to have more.
The sunlight spilling in through the attic’s only small window wasn’t bright enough to light such delicate work, so I pulled the cord dangling above the hatch and turned on the fluorescents. I took a few minutes to visualize what I wanted to do, then set up my ladder and got to work, occupying my mind with the complexities of my craft. It wasn’t as mindlessly instinctual as cooking dinner, but it was no less meditative an act. Hard as a lot of my lessons were, I love magic, always have. Casting magic is like lassoing a tornado and dragging it into the bedroom. It’s an intensely emotional, humbling, empowering thing, and nothing else is quite like it.
And then there was this kind of magic, the part of witchcraft that was actual craft. The sigils and runes were ancient, but putting them together in a way that suited my purposes was a labor of pure intelligence and creativity. Every move of my tool and every sliver of wood I cut away with my chisel was deliberate and complex, a signature as unique to me as my own magic. Someone with enough talent in the craft could read spellwork like this the way most people could read handwriting.
Hours later, I was still on the ladder, holding a chisel and working a symbol into one of the joists, when I heard the pitter-patter of curious little feet climbing the attic steps. Twilight was standing at the hatch, looking around in apparent interest at the carvings on the walls.
“Morning, kid,” I said as I turned back to my work.
“Good morning,” she replied.
She didn’t sound chipper, but there was a bit of warmth to her voice that put the ghost of a smile on my face. You could hardly tell that she’d been screeching her soul out for the last two days. Kids were resilient, far more than adults give them credit for. She wasn’t doing much better, but she’d deal, and having confirmation of that was more than a little relieving.
I left her alone to wander around the room. She wouldn’t hurt anything up here, and there wasn’t anything that could hurt her. Considering this was where the bulk of the house’s wards were laid, it was actually probably the safest room in the house.
“What is all this?” she asked as she walked up to one of the exposed wall studs and studied a sigil with a hard squint. “Is this magic stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it… safe to touch?” she asked hesitantly.
“Yeah, these are just things to protect us,” I explained. “Stuff that repels magic and attracts helpful spirits.”
“Spirits? Like ghosts?”
“Nah, ghosts are things that used to be alive,” I said. “Spirits are just masses of magic with a certain degree of intelligence. They’re also territorial as all get-out. If you can attract a few good ones to hang around your house, they’ll defend your place like it was their own. It’s good for keeping out bad spirits and bad magic.”
“Neat."
I watched her out the corner of my eye as she abandoned her inspection of the symbol and walked around the room, examining every sigil she could reach. Her forehead wrinkled as she glared at each of the wards, scowling at them as though she was trying to intimidate them into spilling their secrets.
She gave that up after a while and took a seat on the floor behind me. She crossed her legs under herself, holding her dirty bare feet with her hands and rocking back and forth as she watched me work.
We stayed like that for a while, silent except for the sound of my tools carving away at wood a sliver at a time, and the jingle of the tools in my belt. Every time I finished a sigil and moved the ladder to another spot, Twilight scooted across the floor on her butt to stay close.
My goal had been to put at least one ward on each of the joists, and every wall stud that didn’t already have one, and I was nearly done. The only breaks I took were to reach into my pocket and check my phone.
Still no missed calls or new messages. Not even a text.
“Waiting for someone to call?” Twilight asked after watching me angrily shove my phone back into my pocket for the fifth time in a half hour. “My brother was acting like that over Christmas break. My mom said it was because he probably got a secret girlfriend that he didn’t want to tell us about yet.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I said, sighing. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of a friend of mine since yesterday. I asked him to do something for me and a lot of stuff’s happened since then. I need his help but he’s probably holed up in some rich old woman’s penthouse, licking her—” I cleared my throat uncomfortably as I suddenly realized what I was about to say in front of the kid. “Ice cream... Licking all of her ice cream…”
“Oh,” Twilight said, furrowing her brow in contemplation. She was old enough to know that I was about to say something dirty, but not old enough to know what that dirty thing was, and her little brain was clearly trying to puzzle it out. After a few moments of quiet contemplation she just shrugged and said, “I like ice cream.”
“Me, too, kid,” I said, sighing in relief.
I probably wasn’t wrong, though. Clavus, old changeling that he was, needed a lot of love to keep himself going. The little sips and nibbles that the rest of his little urchins lived off of would have starved him to death inside of a week. Being old, though, also meant that he was strong enough that his magic and shapeshifting skills didn’t just limit him to pretending to be a human child.
While the other changelings in town paid respect to Clavus by offering him a small share of the love they collected, the lion’s share of the love he needed came from his day job as a gigolo – sorry, ‘compensated male companion’. His teenaged body was every little girl’s first fantasy, but in his adult body, Clavus had the kind of man-beauty that could make even the stuffiest broad swoon. Affluent people in Canterlot City and beyond – men as well as women – paid out the nose for the privilege of showering him with gifts. More than a few of his clients claimed to love him, and it must have been true, because I’d never seen Clavus go hungry.
Sometimes he’d disappear for days at a time, spirited away by one of his clients to Milan or Prague or something. When he was working like that, he usually turned off his phone, which was probably why he wasn’t returning my calls.
“So you don’t have a boyfriend, then?” Twilight asked.
“Nope.”
There was a pause. “Girlfriend?”
“Nope again,” I said.
“You live all by yourself in this big house?” she asked.
“It’s not so bad.” I finished up the sigil I was working on and cleaned away the dust with a puff of air and a brush of my fingertips. “I’ve got lots of hobbies. I’m big into home improvement, as you can see. I like reading, magic, card tricks, working on Philomena.”
“Philomena?” Twilight asked with a curious tilt of her head.
“My car,” I explained with the enthusiasm of a proud parent. “She’s my baby.”
Twilight sniggered. “You named your car? That’s silly.”
“Hey, I put a lot of love in that car.” I shot her an annoyed glance over my shoulder.
“But even if you name them and love them, cars aren’t people. Don’t you get lonely?”
I climbed down off the ladder and sat on one of the bottom steps. “Everyone gets lonely,” I said.
She pouted cutely, the bridge of her nose and the corner of mouth scrunching up in thought as she considered my words. “I dunno… Just seems extra lonely to me. I’ve never lived by myself, though.” She laughed humorlessly. It was a strange sound coming from a child. “Guess I’ll have to learn, huh?”
And just like that things were getting awkward again. I decided that now was as good a time as any to bring up something that had been on my mind. Ever since she’d asked me what was going to happen to her, I’d been wondering about who was going to take care of her once this was all done. I had been afraid to bring it up, for fear of Twilight thinking I was trying to hurry her out the house, but she’d opened the door and I was going to stick my foot in it while I had the chance.
“You don’t have any other relatives?”
Twilight shook her head. “I have some cousins that live really far away, but I don’t even know their names. My parents never did more than mention them. They weren’t very close.”
“What about grandparents?” I asked, emboldened by how calm she was being. I could only hope that I wasn’t pushing too much.
“Gone,” she said simply. “Gram-mammy, my dad’s mom, was the last of my parents’ parents, and she passed away in her sleep last year while I was at Junior Astro Camp.” She pulled her legs up and hugged her knees to her chest. “You didn’t happen to get Smarty Pants, did you? She’s a patchwork doll that gram-mammy made for me when I turned five.”
“Sorry, no.” I vaguely remembered seeing a raggedy-looking doll on the bed, but it hadn’t crossed my mind as anything important.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “It’s okay. I figured as much.”
“Sorry,” I repeated.
“It’s fine.” Her bangs were just long enough to hang over her eyes, and she blew at them, only for her hair to fall right back into place. I wasn’t a fan of bangs like that.
A fresh wave shame washed over me. I knew what it was like to lose a home, so I knew what it was like to suddenly find yourself without so much as a pot to piss in. At least I’d managed to bring along a few small, personal trinkets and keepsakes from my formative years in Equestria. I had them hidden away, safe from prying eyes and protected enough that no one would be able to get at them unless I wanted them to. I took them out sometimes, just to hold them and remember what things had been like.
Made me wish I could have salvaged something like that for Twilight.
And then, suddenly, I remembered the photo. After seeing the names written on the back, I’d had my little breakdown and stuffed the picture in a junk drawer. In all the angst, the thing had completely slipped my mind.
“Stupid me,” I muttered, slapping my own forehead and getting to my feet. I jerked my head towards the attic door. “I did get something for you.”
“Really?” Twilight asked, a note of hope creeping into her voice.
Twilight shot up and followed me as I led the way back downstairs. She had something of a bounce in her steps, the kind of eager curiosity that children have when they’re told not to run to the tree on Christmas morning. But the sentiment was dulled, diluted by the solemnity of the events of the past few days. Still, she was obviously eager for anything that could even possibly be good news.
I had a little antique telephone stand that had long outlived the technology it was built to support, and now just sat in the front entryway collecting dust. It was decoration that served as a junk drawer for old receipts and fast food coupon flyers that I saved but never remembered to use before they expired.
I opened the drawer and pulled out the picture, free of its cracked frame, and held it out for Twilight with both hands. I was careful, pinching just the corners so I wouldn’t crease it or leave smudges.
Her eyes went wide at the sight, and began to dew with fresh tears. She reached out with small, trembling hands, and held the photo with the care one showed a newborn. She squeezed her eyes shut, and a few tears fell down her cheeks as she held the picture against her chest with an open hand.
I don’t know how much of her family’s last moments she’d seen or remembered, but any memories of that night she did have were still fresh. Time would scar over her wounded heart, make those tender spots tough, but that was many years down the road.
In light of that, the thought had crossed my mind that maybe it was too soon to give the photo to Twilight, but in the end I decided that, difficult or not, this wasn’t something I could keep from her. The picture belonged to her, and so did whatever memories went along with it, for good or bad. My mistakes had taken away her family – I had no right to take also away the pain that was rightfully hers.
But Twilight surprised me yet again. She sucked in a choked, gasping breath, and heaved a sigh as she roughly swiped the tears away with the sleeve of her pajamas.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice heavy with sincerity but steady, strong even.
I reached into the drawer and removed the frame that I had been meaning to give her. “I got a frame, too. To help protect it.”
Twilight flashed me a watery smile and together we placed the photo in its new home. She took the picture back and looked up at me expectantly. “Can we hang it up in my room?”
“Of course.”
I dug around in the drawer, searching for the little claw hammer beneath the loose papers and miscellaneous junk. It was too small for serious housework, so I didn’t keep it in the shed, but it was the perfect size for hanging up pictures. I found the hammer and went to the spot on the wall where the frame had originally been, with its computer paper landscape. The picture had been there for years, becoming visual static that I only noticed now that it was gone. Luckily, I had so few pictures hung up that removing one didn’t make the walls look uneven, decor-wise. I pulled the nail out of the wall and brushed away the little bit of plaster dust that came out with it.
I let Twilight lead the way upstairs, and when we got to the room I let her point me to where she wanted the picture. She decided that she wanted the picture hanging above the writing desk against the wall opposite the bed. The desk, and the chair that went with it, was the only piece of furniture in the room, aside from the secondhand bed left by the previous owners. I’d picked it up at a yard sale a few years ago. It was an antique and had belonged to an old retired couple. It had needed a lot of work – sanding, repainting, some new knobs – so they’d given it away for free, and I brought it home just to have something to fill up the weekend. I’d had nowhere else to put it, so I just stuck it in the guest room, to help fill out the empty space.
Twilight sat at the foot of the bed, watching as I hung the picture for her. I don’t know why, but I sat next to her when I was done. She grabbed my arm, hugging it to her chest the way she had the previous morning, and we sat for a while, just admiring the memory of Twilight’s family.
It hadn’t occurred to me until later that Twilight had called the guest room her room.
* * *
My love of both bargain hunting and reading is kind of a curse. I love going to flea markets and yard sales, and that usually means I end up coming home with more than a few old paperbacks and hardcovers that I picked up for pocket change. People are always trying to get rid of their old summer reading and college textbooks, and I can never resist the urge to rescue a book in need.
Of course, I don’t always get complete collections. A lot of the time I end up with something like the fourth, fifth, and seventh of an eight book series, which means that I then have to go track down rest of the series. As you can imagine, this means that I end up with quite a lot of books.
So a couple of years ago I decided to turn my basement into a study. It wasn’t anything fancy. The shelves were a patchwork of things I’d gotten ahold of cheap. There were old, rusty steel shelves next to antique mahogany bookcases, next to stacked milk crates, next to planks of wood propped up with cinder blocks. Whatever I could get my hands on that could be used to hold books, I’d dragged down to the basement and made room for.
No matter how many shelves I brought down, though, I kept the center of the room clear. I had a big faux-Persian rug spread in the middle of the room, with the biggest beanbag chair I could find sitting right on top of it. There was also a stool and a scuffed-up dining table, where I did most of my magical tinkering. I don’t do a lot of experimentation – at least not as much as I used to – but sometimes it’s nice to have a place I can sit down and work on my craft when the mood strikes me.
Everything magical in the house was kept in this room, in a big, fancy gun safe that I’d repurposed into a storage vault. The safe was set into the wall, and it was one of the few home improvement things that I’d hired a contractor for. It was big, solid steel, and cemented to the foundation.
I can do a lot stuff with just my own power and a few calculations and incantations in my head, but some things required a little extra oomph, and that’s where my supply vault came in. It held things for potions, ritual blades, herbs, small magical trinkets and fetishes, and books – lots of books. I wasn’t worried about other sorcerers getting ahold of my things, it was the average burglar types that I wanted to keep away from my magic stuff. Not everyone has the talent for magic, but there are some pretty nasty spells and rituals that were designed in such a way that pretty much anyone could use them. While that might be tempting to some people, you have to understand that most of the rituals that fall into that category are things like summonings, which usually call up the kind of beings that prey on the uneducated in one way or another.
Good rule of thumb when it comes to summoning rituals: if it’s easy to summon, it probably wants you to summon it, and not for anything good.
The safe was also where I kept my keepsakes from home.
Sitting with Twilight and looking at her only link to her family had made me feel… homesick, in a way. Call it melancholy, or whatever, but when she’d asked to use the shower, I’d taken the opportunity to come down to the basement to look at my things.
It was almost all things that had only really seemed important to a sheltered, spoiled little academic filly. I had a medal that I’d won in a science fair, a dinky little trophy I’d gotten for an essay contest, and a wrapper from an Equestrian candy bar that I’d long ago eaten. I also had two books from back home.
One of them was a history text, full of dry facts about famous unicorns, and heavily illustrated with portraits of each of the subjects and artistic representations of important moments in their lives. The book wasn’t that special, and it hadn’t even had any sentimental value. I’d only packed it in what limited space my tiny saddlebag had because I had been in the middle of reading it, and running away from home or not, I hated leaving a book unfinished.
The most important thing, though, was the second book I’d brought with me. It was a custom made journal, hardcover, with my Cutie Mark on the front. Celestia had given it to me as a gift on my first birthday as her student. She had a duplicate of the book, with her own Cutie Mark on it, and enchanted them both so that anything written in one would appear in the other. She’d said it was a way for us to communicate if I ever had any questions, and boy, had I taken the word ‘any’ as literal.
I’d probably used a fifth of the pages that first week alone, bothering Celestia with every little thing that came to mind. She’d been so patient with me, taking the time to write back almost immediately, no matter what she was in the middle of, even if all I’d asked was if she was having a good day. Looking back on it, I think maybe she’d enjoyed the novelty of the thing almost as much as I had.
I flipped through the pages, not really paying any attention to what was written. I’d read through the book several dozen times, and I could practically recite from it like a script. I got towards the middle of the journal, where the blank pages started, and ran my fingers over the paper. The soft, yellow parchment felt good against my skin, and the pages still smelled like an Equestrian book. Maybe it sounds silly to say, but Equestrian books just smell different. It’s somewhat similar to the dusty, earthy aroma of human books, but with subtle undertones that called to mind fresh-cut hay and blooming pastures – the smells of my homeland. It was probably all in my head, but to me, the smell of this book would always be the smell of home.
I was glad I’d brought it with me, even if it couldn’t serve its original purposes anymore. The magic that had connected the two books was long gone, cut off when the portal was closed. Sometimes I thought about maybe sitting down and working out the math of when the portal would be open again, just to see if the doorway opening might recharge the book’s magic, but I never did.
There was no going home for me. I couldn’t face Celestia as the person I’d become.
I turned the pages until I found the photograph tucked away in the middle of the book. It was a picture of me as a filly, sitting next to Princess Celestia atop the dais of her throne. I probably wasn’t more than seven or eight – just a bit younger than the Twilight upstairs in my shower – and the trillion-watt smile on my face could have lit up the Las Pegasus strip for a week. I was so proud to be at the side of the princess, her only student watching as she saw to her supplicants in open court. One of her scribes had been something of an amateur shutterbug and asked us to pose for a picture. Princess Celestia and I had jumped at the chance.
I hadn’t meant to bring the picture with me. I hadn’t even found it until I’d already been in the human world for months. I’d been looking through the journal out of boredom, and the picture had fallen out. I’d been using it as a bookmark and had completely forgotten about it. I’d tried to talk myself into throwing it away by whipping myself into a froth about how the princess had betrayed me. I didn’t end up throwing it away, of course, for the same reason I’d brought the book with me in the first place. No matter what happened, no matter how angry I was, Princess Celestia was the closest thing I’d ever had to a mom, and I just couldn’t let go of this last little link to her.
“Miss Sunset!” Twilight’s voice called out from upstairs.
I put the photo back in the journal and stuffed the book at the bottom of the pile in the safe. “Down here, kid! Down the hall, door next to the kitchen’s side entrance!”
I locked the safe just as Twilight was coming down the stairs. Her pajamas were in the wash, so she was dressed in one of my silk bathrobes – bright pink with a lacy white belt cinching it closed. Twilight was a kid, and a scrawny one at that, and she was practically swimming in a robe that almost qualified as a negligee when I wore it.
Twilight froze halfway down the stairs. Her mouth hung agape as she swept the room with eyes that I could swear were glinting with an almost animalistic hunger. “Holy… macaroni…” she whispered.
I arched an eyebrow. “What?”
“Books!” Twilight shouted, squealing in delight as she bounded down the stairs in her bare feet. She ran up to the nearest shelf and started browsing. “You didn’t tell me you had a library!”
“Well it’s not really a library,” I said. “I just like collecting books.”
If she’d heard what I said she didn’t show any sign of it. She just darted from shelf to shelf, scanning the titles with the hugest grin on her face. It was the first real smile I’d seen her wear – the first time I’d seen the carefree glimmer of that happy little girl from the photograph. I went over to the table and pulled out the stool to sit and watch her for a while. She was like a little hummingbird, flittering about and stopping only long enough to admire one particular thing that caught her eye before moving on to the next.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed in excitement as she finally chose a book to pull off a shelf. She started thumbing through it immediately. “You’ve got the second volume of the Young Daring Do, Girl Adventurer series? This is the first-edition, too! This is the one they took out of the libraries because of all the racism!”
Twilight took the book and hurried over to the bean bag chair. She wiggled herself into the seat, the foam beads inside crunching and scraping as she got comfortable, and started reading like she owned the place.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Reading, duh,” she said. “I’ve read the edited version twice, but I’ve never read this edition. I want to see what else got changed.” She looked up, casting me a pensive look. “That’s… that’s okay, right?”
I scratched idly at my cheek. This was weird, having someone else pawing around with my personal stuff, but kids were shameless like that. It was in their DNA. And I guess it wouldn’t hurt to let the kid do some reading. That’s what the books were for, and it was better than her sitting up in her room and crying all day.
I cleared my throat. “Uh… sure…”
Twilight grinned happily and shoved her nose back into the book. She was holding it kind of close to her face though, and squinting. Come to think of it, I’d noticed her doing the same thing when she was examining the sigils up in the attic.
“Hey, Twilight,” I said. “Do you wear glasses?”
“Yeah, but I don’t really like them,” she replied, her nose still in the book. “I’m a little bit near-sighted, and the optometrist said it’s going to get worse as I get older. I’ll be fine, though.” She held the book open and waved it at me. “Big print. I can read this no problem.”
The sound of a chiming bell sounded from upstairs, signalling that someone was at my door.
I’d already canceled all of my appointments and changed the message on my voicemail to say that I wouldn’t be seeing clients for the foreseeable future. I’d even hung up the ‘No Walk-Ins’ placard on the sign out on my lawn.
“You didn’t order a pizza, did you?” I asked Twilight.
She shook her head, the joke whizzing past her ears with a near-audible woosh.
I rolled my eyes and got up from my stool. “Stay here, stay quiet.”
“Be careful,” Twilight whispered as she climbed out of the beanbag.
She followed me to the foot of the stairs and watched as I went up to the first floor. She still held the book in her hands, nervously thumbing the pages of the paperback the way I sometimes play with my tarot deck when I’m bored. I nodded to her and shut the door to the basement behind myself.
The doorbell rang again, and almost immediately I heard someone knocking rapidly on the door. Whoever it was, they must have really wanted to talk. My first thought was that it might be the law. There was a good possibility that some neighbor of Night’s might have seen my car driving up and down their street and told the cops about it. Philomena wasn’t the kind of car you drove when you wanted to go unnoticed, and there can’t have been too many like her registered in the city. It’s the kind of thing the cops would have to follow up, depending on how the investigation was going. I’d been checking the news on my phone, and there still wasn’t anything about Twilight’s body having been missing from the fire, but it was something I had to be prepared for.
It could have also been a client looking to book me despite the fact that I had closed up shop, even if it cost a little extra. Rich housewives looking to put together a fancy dinner party were always on the lookout for kitchy new themes for their get-togethers, and they can get pretty insistent when you tell them no. I’d once made two-grand in a single night from overcharging a party like that. If it was that sort of gig, it’d suck to turn down, but I didn’t really have much of a choice with Twilight in the house.
I looked through the peephole of my door and saw a face I recognized, but definitely hadn’t been expecting. Luna was up on her tip-toes, one eye closed as she leaned in to the peephole, trying to look in through the wrong side. Even through the distortion of the peephole’s fisheye lens, Luna was a real knockout, and from the angle I was looking I could see right down the front of her shirt.
“Hello?” she shouted as she rang the doorbell again. “Sunset Shimmer? Are you home?”
I undid the deadbolts and opened the door just as she was holding up a loose fist to rap on the door again.
“Oh!” she exclaimed with a start. “Sorry, um… hiya.”
“What’s up, Luna?” I asked. “Not that it’s not nice to see you again, but how’d you find my place?”
“I, um, Googled your name,” she said sheepishly.
I sighed. “Course you did… why?”
She was nervous, but my question seemed to sober her up. The bashful pinkness in her cheeks faded, taking the rest of the color in her face down a few notches. She licked her lips as she looked around nervously. Night Light had done the same, and it was enough to make me wonder what people thought might be in my bushes.
“Can… can I come inside?” she asked.
“It’s not really a good time right—”
“Please.” She took a half step across my threshold so I couldn’t shut the door in her face. I frowned at that, and she had the good manners to at least look sorry, even though she didn’t take a step back. “Please,” she repeated. “Just for a few minutes.”
Twilight was downstairs in the study, and as long as she kept quiet there was much danger of anyone finding her down there. Luna probably just wanted to talk about magic stuff, or to flirt with me – both scenarios were equally likely, honestly – and I could probably have her out of the house pretty quickly. There was also the chance that she’d heard about Night Light, which… well, I’d just have to play that by ear.
I made a show of thinking it over, so she’d feel just uncomfortable enough that she wouldn’t think about trying to push her welcome, then stepped aside and swept an arm out, like a bagboy at a nice hotel.
“Thank you,” she said as she walked past me.
I tried not to notice the smell of her perfume, but it was exactly the kind of scent that was designed to make you notice it – something fancy, the kind of stuff that came in bottles worth as much as the perfume. I tried not to think of the implication in her breaking out good perfume just to visit lil’ ol’ me, and just shut the door behind her so I could lock back up.
I led her into the living room and pointed at the couch. She took a seat, leaving me room to sit next to her, which I chose not to fill. I stood in doorway, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed. I’d read in a book once that standing while someone was sitting was a good way to get them anxious and out the door.
Luna brushed a few errant locks of her wavy hair back behind her ear. Last time I’d seen her, her hair had been a mess, all frizz and split ends. My hair got like that sometimes, too. It came part and parcel with being an academic. It happens when you end up going a few days without a bath and spend a lot of time scratching your head. This time, she’d obviously spent time getting her hair did right. Her long blue tresses looked soft as silk and bounced with every little movement of her head.
The little spaghetti straps holding up her black top were redundant, considering how tight it was. The bottom of her blouse flared out into a cute little skirt, and the jeans she wore were somehow even tighter than her shirt.
I let my gaze drift towards the window so I wouldn’t keep ogling Luna. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, it wasn’t like me to notice someone like that in more than passing. Though, the first time we’d met, Luna had made a good impression on me with her open personality and her friendly smile, and she didn’t exactly make her own attraction to me a secret. I’d read a study once that said that people are more likely to find someone attractive if they find out that the other person finds them attractive first. Even still, this girl had her finger all over my buttons, and it was bugging me more than a little.
“So, what’s up?” I asked, trying to hurry this along. Twilight was still downstairs, probably pacing around the room in worry, or, more likely, standing at the top of the stairs with her ear against the door.
Luna wrung her hands in her lap nervously. “I… I haven’t really left my room since the other night,” she said. “I kind of shut myself off from the rest of the world for the whole day… vegged out and watched some DVDs, y’know?”
I nodded.
“This morning my sister woke me up and tells me to check my email. The school sent out a statement to all students, telling us that Doctor Night Light had passed. Apparently it was in the news.” She bit her lip as she looked up at me, her eyes filling with tears. “They said he died in a fire. But it was that night, when you killed that thing at the school… I have to know. It wasn’t really a fire, was it?”
I sighed and went over to sit on the couch. Admittedly, the sight of her tears might have shaken my resolve just a little bit. “Another one of those things attacked him and his family at their house,” I explained. “I was going over to check on them and I found the front door kicked in. It was too late to help them. Night, his wife, and their son were already dead by the time I got there. I killed the thing that did it, set the house on fire during the fight.”
Luna heaved a shuddering sigh and nodded, the tears shaken from her eyes by the movement to spill down her cheeks. “I thought as much,” she said in a whisper. “Twilight, too?”
I blinked at that. “You know Twilight?”
“Of course. Doctor Night Light used to take his whole family to the Faculty-Student Picnic Mixer at the end of every Spring semester. Plus, he and my sister were pretty close.”
“Close?” I repeated, my eyebrows lifting in surprise. Night Light didn’t seem the type to step out on his old lady, but he wouldn’t have been the first man to have a moment of weakness around a hot young coed. At least a third of the movies on the chick flick channels were about just that thing.
“Not like that,” Luna replied, frowning as she picked up on what I was insinuating. “He was her academic advisor, and he wrote a recommendation for her to get into grad school. She even spent a summer working as his research assistant for a paper he was publishing.”
“They’ve both been to my house for dinner,” Twilight said from the kitchen doorway. She was half-hidden by the wall, just her head peeking shyly around the corner. I must have looked mad, because she met my eyes and shrunk away like I was about to yell at her. “Sorry… I got worried so I came in around the side.”
Luna was on her feet in a flash. The action was so quick that I stood up, too, out of pure reflex. Luna practically leapt over my coffee table to run up and pull Twilight into a crushing embrace. “You’re okay!” Luna said, sobbing as she cradled Twilight’s head against her chest.
“Don’t cry,” Twilight said as she pat Luna on the back consolingly. “Miss Sunset’s been taking really good care of me.”
Twilight’s attempts to calm Luna down only seemed to drive her further into tears. Twilight just stood there and let Luna vent her emotions all over her. It was a sight, seeing Twilight’s little hand on Luna’s back, gently stroking her like an upset cat.
I felt a little bit like a third wheel, like I was intruding on something personal. I had no idea that Luna had been so close with Night Light’s family, but she had seemed pretty friendly with him the other night at the college, so I wasn’t too surprised.
The awkward feeling of intrusion was pretty short lived, because Luna decided that she wanted to make the awkwardness more personal.
I have pretty good reflexes, but Luna probably did track or something, because before I knew it, she’d let go of Twilight and ran up to wrap her arms around me. She was just a bit shorter than I was, and as I stood there, dumbstruck by the surprise hugging I was getting, she half-sobbed, half-laughed into my shoulder.
“Thank you for saving her,” she said in a throaty whisper.
You ever get a hug from a relative or an extra-friendly acquaintance? One of those leaning-forward, upper-body-only hugs? This wasn’t one of those. I could feel her whole body pressed tightly against mine, her thin arms wrapped around my middle with wiry strength. I could also feel that she wasn’t wearing a bra, and that perfume I’d caught a whiff of earlier was hitting me full on in the face now.
Damn, but did she smell good.
I felt movement in my pants, and a half second later the phone in my back pocket started ringing.
“Phone! Phone, phone!” I pushed Luna off me – gently – and nervously hastened to put some distance between us. A sharp pain went up my leg as I banged my shin against the coffee table. “Damnit!”
Second time in two days. That’s a record.
I pulled out my phone and checked the caller ID while I massaged the feeling back into my leg. The number wasn’t in my phonebook, but I recognized it immediately.
“Sorry,” I said to Twilight and Luna as I retreated to the hallway. “I gotta take this.”
I scurried away like a fiddler crab, too flustered to even think of a good analogy for what I was scurrying away like. I took a deep breath, steadying my heartbeat as my phone continued to vibrate and ring in my hands.
“Come on, Sunset, she’s just a pretty girl, so get your head out of your ass,” I muttered to myself as I swiped my thumb over the screen and answered the phone. I held it up and spoke into the receiver. “What’s up, Cilia?”
Clavus was the A-number-one top dog changeling in Canterlot City, by leagues, but if he wasn’t around, Cilia would definitely be the queen bee. She was old for a changeling, a few hundred years old, in fact, but she was a baby compared to Clavus.
Technically, a changeling could live forever if you fed it enough love, but as changelings aged, their power grew, and so did the amount of love they needed. Aging was a hard thing for their kind, and it was a sad fact that every changeling’s fate was to eventually die of starvation as their hunger outstripped their ability to feed themselves. Because of that, the old ones who were wily enough and clever enough to keep themselves going for a long time were held in great regard.
I’d known Cilia almost as long as I’d known Clavus. As the second oldest changeling in the area, she considered herself Clavus’ second-in-command – I consider her his secretary, and our differing viewpoints have become something of a sticking point in our acquaintanceship.
“We need to meet,” Cilia said. Her voice was shrilly-feminine and obviously childish. Like if you shrunk down a prudy librarian real tiny-like.
“Come to my house, then,” I said tersely, not liking the tone in her voice. “Why are you calling, anyway? Where’s Clavus? I’ve been blowing up his phone since yesterday. He’s who I need to talk to.”
“My esteemed uncle is otherwise engaged,” she said. All changelings considered the oldest of their kind to be aunts and uncles to the younger ones, and Cilia always made sure to afford Clavus the respect of the appellation. “I am also unable to make the trip out to your home. You will need to come to me.”
“I can’t leave my house unattended right now.” I went back to peek into the living room, where Luna and Twilight were on the couch conversing in hushed tones.
“You’ll have to,” Cilia said insistently. “Uncle Clavus left a message and he explicitly said not to utter it over the phone.”
I frowned at that. Clavus was always the type to be cautious, but this seemed a little extreme for him. The other night he’d laughed about his friend’s distrust of phones, but now he was pulling this on me? Something wasn’t right.
“You’re certain you can’t come out to my place?” I asked. “What about if I called you a cab?”
“No. You live too far away. There is something dark in my city, and I will not leave my nieces and nephews unguarded whilst Uncle Clavus is away.”
“Hey, I got my own business to tend to here,” I replied.
“I care little,” she snapped in her shrill little girl voice. “The usual place. Come.”
My phone went silent, and I glared angrily at the 'Call Ended' message on the screen as if I was looking Cilia right in the eyes.
I didn’t like this, not one bit, but Cilia was right. There was something nasty stalking around in the shadows in Canterlot City, and that meant that everyone needed to be on guard. On top of that, Clavus' promise to look into this mess for me had apparently borne fruit. Whatever it was he'd found, it was important enough that it couldn’t be said over the phone, but not important enough for him to stick around to tell me himself. I knew there was no way he’d been scared off. The old guy was wily as any trickster, but he wasn’t a coward. Made me wonder, though, what had he left town for?
I needed answers, which meant that there was no way I could ignore Cilia’s call. Problem was, that meant leaving Twilight alone, because I damn sure wasn’t letting her outside of my house’s wards.
I poked my head back into the living room, and an idea came to me.
“Hey,” I said as I walked back into the room. Twilight and Luna stopped their conversation to look at me with curious expressions.
“Was that your friend?” Twilight asked.
I shook my head. “Nah, another friend of his, though,” I said. “Look… um… Luna, I really hate to ask this, but I need a favor.”
“What is it?”
“My friend is tracking down some info for me – magic stuff – and he left a message for me with his secretary,” I explained. I rubbed at the back of my neck sheepishly. “I, uh… was wondering if maybe you could watch Twilight for an hour or two while I check it out?”
Twilight was already standing before I'd even finished talking. “I’ll come with you!” Twilight said immediately.
“Sorry, kid, you need to stay here.” I pointed up to the ceiling. “Remember what I was doing up in the attic? That stuff will keep you safe, but you need to be on my property for the mojo to work.”
Twilight’s hands were balled into fists at her sides, and she was working herself into a nice little tantrum, but the tide was stemmed by Luna’s hand resting gently on her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Luna said in that velvety smooth voice of hers, “I’ll be here with you. And I’m sure Sunset will make sure to stay safe.” She shot me a pointed look, insistence stretched thinly over her own worry. “Won’t you, Sunset?”
I nodded vigorously. I wasn’t sure which of the two looks was more effective. “Y-yeah. Of course. I’ll be totally safe.”
Twilight sat back on the couch, crossing her arms over her chest petulantly. “You’d better,” she muttered.
Luna smiled at me as she wrapped an arm around Twilight’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of her.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I went back upstairs to change out of my frumpy housework clothes.
My room is definitely the messiest part of my house. Clients sometimes come inside to sit in my living room or my kitchen, so I tend to keep the place clean for the sake of appearances. Nobody goes in my room, though, so the signs of my bachelorette lifestyle were scattered about in the form of old takeout boxes and dirty clothes. A pair of lacy red panties were hanging on the lamp next my bed, casting a dim pink light over the whole room. I grabbed them and sniffed to see if they were clean. They weren’t, so I threw them onto the pile of dirty clothes next to the closet. I really needed to do laundry.
I dug around until I found a pair of jeans under my bed that were clean enough, and got a clean t-shirt out of the closet. I got changed and grabbed my wallet off the dresser. Thankfully, I had some cash that I could leave for Luna and Twilight to order a pizza or something.
I went back downstairs to find Twilight and Luna flipping through channels on the TV.
“Hey, I’m leaving now,” I said. “There’s food in the fridge, but if you want takeout I’m going to leave some money next to the door. Just leave me something, too.”
“Be safe,” Luna said.
Twilight gave me a sidelong glance, but just nodded curtly and continued flipping channels. She was definitely not happy with me.
I walked away, and I’d made it as far as the door before their conversation stopped me in my tracks.
“I really think we should call her,” Luna said.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Twilight said with a sigh.
“Even if it’s not, she should still know. Celestia’s been crying in her room all day. She thinks you’re dead, Twilight.”
No. No way. Absolutely not.
I went back to the living room, every step feeling like I was taking it through molasses and my blood running cold in my veins.
“I’m sorry, what were you just talking about?” I asked, struggling to keep the trembling out of my voice.
“We were talking about my sister,” Luna said. She tilted her head in confusion and frowned. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
“You said her name was Celestia?” I asked. My mouth was feeling dry. “You got a picture of her?”
Twilight and Luna exchanged confused looks. Twilight had even seemed to put her anger on hold for the moment.
“Yeah, I do,” Luna said. She pulled out her phone and thumbed through it as she came over to me. “Here we go.”
Luna held up her phone, and right there on the screen was a picture of Luna that looked like it must have been taken at a Halloween party. She was dressed as a cop, but her uniform consisted of a pair of skintight booty shorts and a shirt that barely had enough material to cover her boobs, let alone pin a fake badge to. She was holding a red plastic cup that no doubt had something spirituous in it, and her arm was wrapped around a taller woman wearing a pointy witch’s hat and a black cocktail dress with a neckline that plunged down to her belly button. The dress was almost as tight as Luna’s shorts, showing off her more than generous figure.
She was utterly human, and her eyes were glazed with slight inebriation, but I knew this woman. I knew Celestia when I saw her, and this… this was Princess Celestia, or at least her human analogue.
It took me a moment to realize that Luna was talking to me. I asked her to repeat what she’d just said.
“I asked if you knew her,” Luna said, concern clear on her face.
“No,” I said immediately. “She looks like someone I used to know, that’s all.”
“But—”
“Hey, I gotta go now,” I said as I backed away, edging my way towards the door. “Save me some pizza or egg rolls or whatever.”
I left, ignoring the questions that Luna and Twilight were shouting at my back. I went around the side of the house to the garage and got into my car. I turned the key and started driving until I got to a clearing that was fairly far removed from anywhere else. I pulled off the road and drove out to the middle of the dirt lot, my tires kicking up dust and loose gravel as I swerved and spun, doing donuts like a teenager who'd just gotten her license. Once I was far enough from the road I killed the engine and got out.
I started walking until I found a rock, a really big one, then I picked it up and hurled it as hard as I could. It didn’t go very far, and it landed in the dirt with a soft thud, throwing up a pathetic little puff of dust.
I fell to my knees right there in that field and shouted the loudest, angriest obscenity I have ever shouted in my entire life.
* * *