“I need to negotiate my surrender,” I said, as soon as I felt remotely coherent again.

“Excuse me?” Lou said. “Your surrender?”

She and Slick were sitting on the couch, next to me. Lou had a glass of iced tea and a dangerous look on her face.

“He’s won,” I said. “He has us pinned, and I have two choices. To surrender, or to flee.”

“You don’t need to run or give up,” Lou said. “And Slick, put down that damned bottle.”

“On a day like today, Lou…” he started, but she cut him off.

“We’ll be having tough days,” she said. “Get over it. Get sober. We’ve got work to do.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “Lou… he is clever, and he is hunting me. The hunt must end.”

“He needs evidence, solid evidence,” Lou said. “And we won’t give it to him. Aera, you need to fix up the house. I’ll get the old blueprints and write up new ones, but we’ll need to make sure the house can be inspected without finding anything weird.”

“He can get evidence!” I said, my voice raising. “He’d merely need to set a trap! Lou, we cannot hide after being spotted.”

“It ain’t a hunt, Aera,” Slick said. “You can only take calling it a hunt so far. He’s investigating, sure, but if he’d gotten enough to bring you in by force, he’d have done it already. It’s not like he didn’t know it was you.”

“It is a hunt,” I said, feeling desperate. “You’ve not been hunted. You don’t understand how dangerous this is. You are in danger if I continue to hide! I cannot -”

“Aera, chill,” Lou said, grabbing my shoulders and making me look at her. “Look at me and take a breath.”

“Lou, please…” I said, closing my eyes. “If ever you have trusted me, then trust me on this.”

“Last time you tried something, it got in the papers,” Slick said.

“This is different!” I said. “You are mundanes, you’ve never -”

“And it comes down to that, again,” Slick said, putting down his bottle with a thud. “I’ve got magic, remember? And you still call me a ‘mundane?’ And you act like we’re not as good as you?”

“You do not understand power!” I said, looking at Lou in desperate hopes she’d hear me. “Slick, yes, you have some specks of magic, but you do not understand power. Neither of you! Pash understands power, he knows what I am, please, you have to understand!”

“I think we understand plenty,” Slick said.

“Aera, seriously, stop this,” Lou said. “You’re not okay. You need to relax.”

I tried to breathe and focus. She was right about that.

“He invited my surrender,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. Which wasn’t much. “He invited me, gently, without pressure. I do not want him to feel the need to pressure me. All it would take to reveal me is a trap - I can think of a dozen ways, off the top of my head.”

“Like what?” Slick asked.

“A staged accident, where one of you gets hurt in front of me,” I said. “If lethally injured, but not immediately dead, I would be compelled to act with haste. He knows that I can heal others.”

“That’s beyond fucked up,” Lou said. “He gives me the creeps, granted, but that’s too far. Attacking a citizen of our own country? You’re not a citizen, and you’re not even from Earth, so I could see them justifying messing with you. But with us? No. We’re safe, Aera.”

“I…” I said.

“Let’s see how this plays out, okay?” Lou said, keeping me steady. “Let’s fix up the blueprints and the house, let’s see what move he makes next. Without enough evidence to just up and grab you, we should be able to get him off our trail.”

“What about shooting Kito?” I asked.

“A bluff,” she said. “He’s not going to get Kito to press charges against me. He admitted he couldn’t even get Kito to fess up to what happened, no matter what he offered.”

I clutched at my dress uneasily. This felt wrong. Listening to her now felt wrong. I shouldn’t continue to hide. But… I only knew what I shouldn’t do, not what I should do.

So I did what I apparently did best, these last years. I shut up and did nothing.

Which, in application, was a great deal of work.

The changes I’d made to the house were considerable. When Lou pulled up the old blueprints and compared them to her new measurements, she groaned. The support structures in the house were in entirely the wrong places. I’d strengthened and curved the wood, so it had a structure more like a tree, within the walls. Strong, but not straight, which was apparently not a thing easily possible by mundane means.

Deconstructing my garden had broken my heart, and this felt as though I were decorating my own grave. I was erasing every trace of my art, of my investments, of my own self. I kept finding myself thinking of Benjamin. I missed him. I missed his peace, the simplicity of his companionship, his laughter.

At the same time, I was glad he was gone. He would not have enjoyed dealing with this. Pash would have stressed him enormously. All of this would have, really. It was better for him that he wasn’t here.

Still, I felt very alone.

We had to leave the layout of the upstairs the same, because Pash had seen it, giving Lou an interesting challenge of research to try to figure out how to adjust the supports to let the building meet the city’s requirements. She was working about as hard as I was, poring over books, making measurements, and making sketches.

Another key issue was that I needed to hide the lab. I decided the best plan was to simply “shove” it underneath the back yard, to return that section of basement to an open space. I made the lab as small and compact as possible, then worked on displacing the rock bed.

It was one of the most exhausting weeks of my life. There was nothing particularly difficult or challenging - just a massive amount of magical labor. When the work was done, Lou hired a professional to make and file the blueprint, so we’d have a paper trail. She paid an extra sum of money to speed up the process, with both the contractor as well as city hall.

During that time, Lou was insisting on thoroughness. She wanted everything to be mundane, even the insides of the walls. All the soundproofing of the garage, all the acoustic effects I’d made for Slick and Benjamin, all removed.

It was draining work, in every sense of the term.

A mere two days after we’d submitted the blueprints to the city, there was another knock on the door. Only Lou and I were home, and I scarcely had strength to move, so Lou answered it.

“Greetings, Ms. Williams,” came Pash’s voice, and I sank into my seat.

“What do you want this time?” Lou asked.

“I noticed that you have filed the blueprints with the city,” he said. “However, it would seem there is a problem. Due to the dramatic change from the original, particularly in regards to these supports here and here…’

His voice paused for a moment, presumably while showing something to Lou.

“... has led to a conclusion that this house has either had faulty construction or the blueprints have been falsified. Combined with other pieces of evidence, I have obtained a warrant to examine the construction.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lou said, sounding legitimately pissed off, despite having been specifically expecting this result. “A warrant to search our house? Over compliance with a city ordinance?”

“The judge agreed to provide a warrant on suspicion that there is a possible connection with an ongoing military investigation,” Pash said. “Now, Ms. Williams, if you would step out of the way and permit us to search.”

“Fine,” Lou said, and stepped back. I saw Pash enter the house, and a number of men followed him inside.

I dragged myself to my feet, and walked over to the door.

The men were burly sorts, and wore dubious expressions. They immediately dismantled a small section of flooring, to my annoyance.

“What did you find?” Pash asked, trying to look over their shoulders.

“Air. Wood,” the man replied dryly. “Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.”

Pash frowned, then looked over at me. I smiled awkwardly.

“They’re not going to find anything, are they?” he asked, though it was more of a statement than a question.

“Nothing to find,” Lou said. “You done here?”

He appraised her for a moment, considering. He had to know I was exhausted, from his glance at me, and the look on his face shifted to a sense of conviction. He’d decided something, though gods knew what.

He looked at me, then, and held my gaze. My heart ached, and a strange feeling overtook me.

Take me, Pash, I thought despairingly. Take me away from here. Give me a place where I don’t have to hide.

The intensity of the thoughts shook me, and I felt Lou’s gaze on my back. I bit my lip, frozen in place like a frightened animal.

Please, just ask, my pleading thoughts continued. I’ll fail, I’ll give in, I’ll “slip up.” Just ask… chained though I’d be, different chains would at least hold me in new ways.

But I couldn’t speak. I knew it was wrong to even think it, to surrender without even an attempt at negotiation. But I was so tired… so exhausted from the pointless labors my friends had put me to, so emotionally drained from feeling alone and not understood, so endlessly fatigued of a lifestyle that I could not bear.

I was so tempted to just submit to him, and be done with everything. No hard choices, no decisions, no struggling with who I was. Just to simply give up.

A slave’s “peace.”

He broke the connection before I could even begin to decide what to think. He left, letting the workers continue to evaluate the house without him.

I watched him leave, and despaired.

Over the following days, I was sullen and withdrawn from the others. They’d ask me what was wrong, but I didn’t want to talk to them. I didn’t know what to do, but I felt bitterness and resentment towards them building.

Yet, for all the frustration I felt at being confined, the idea of stepping forth entirely alone was terrifying. I hated myself for it. I was a slave because I was a coward, and neither of these truths were acceptable.

I used magic for everything, as my only expression of ire. I glided down the stairs. My coffee was heated with Flamus. The newspaper would hover before me, changing pages without my touch. Even my food was floated to my lips.

The others complained in a variety of ways. Alice found it creepy. Slick felt the tension beneath the actions, and felt I was shoving my magic in their faces. Like I was insinuating that I was better than them. Lou figured out I was upset, but didn’t understand the depth of it. She just was annoyed that I was “childishly” acting out.

They didn’t understand that I just desperately wanted to be free. To act against their wishes, in this small and harmless way, was the only defiance against their chains that I could see.

They’d tried to argue with me a few times, but I just wouldn’t. They’d try to talk to me, and I’d go silent. Or leave. I’d had enough of Lou’s justifications for my bondage. Of Slick’s continual insistence that all my issues stemmed from a superiority complex. Of Alice’s refusal to look at anything but the positives, acting like the pains were just “in my head,” and I’d be fine if I just stopped thinking about them.

After a week, I wrote a letter to Pash. I wrote it over and over again, continuously changing my mind about what to say. Sometimes, I begged him to save me from my own cowardice, like an utter imbecile. Other times, I insinuated that the others bound me by moral imposition and imposed ignorance.

I kept the letter on me, whatever version was most recent, since I didn’t want anyone to find it. It’d make for an annoying conversation.

Despite my frustrations with the others, though, I just didn’t know what I really wanted. Pash had struck me as a very dangerous person, and quite possibly not a moral one. Being the slave of new masters hardly seemed appealing, in the scheme of things. And it wasn’t like my companions were cruel, by any stretch - they honestly cared for me, and thought they were doing the right thing.

I just couldn’t get them to understand how caged I felt.

It seemed my choices were to stay the course, with them - a proposition which seemed increasingly impossible. Or to take my chances with Pash, and most likely be a servant of the US government, to some extent. Or to try to step forth entirely on my own, making decisions which could reshape the entirety of their world.

That last option terrified me more than anything else. Any wrong decisions I made, all the pain of guilt would be on my own head. How could I bear such a thing? Especially alone?

No option seemed acceptable, and so I raged in silence.

Days turned into weeks, and I felt myself going mad.

It was a warm Thursday evening, especially for the middle of November. Slick and Alice were doing better, but she still wasn’t staying over at our house. Slick would have periods of success with not drinking, but bad days at work kept getting to him, and he kept regressing. Those nights, he usually just passed out in the front sitting room.

That night, he was on the couch again. Lou was in her room across the hall from mine. I’d gone to sleep with an entirely ordinary amount of silent frustration, sleeping as uneasily as usual.

I woke to the sound of gunfire.

Lou! Slick! They must be okay!

I rushed from the bed as fast as my half asleep self could manage, which involved tripping on, and subsequently ripping apart, my blankets. I ran to the stairs with all the speed and grace of a drunken rhino, turning on lights as I went.

Smoke was rising from the first floor.

“Lou!” I said, seeing her in the hallway. “Are you alright?”

“The house is burning!” she said, as fast as she could, looking terrified. “The fire! You have to stop the fire!”

“I will,” I said. “But the guns? And Slick?”

“I’ll check on Slick,” she said. “Put out the fire!”

“Wait!” I said, grabbing her arm. I tore off the bullet enchantment and gave it to her. “Put this on!”

“What is it?” she asked.

“No questions, there’s no time, it’ll protect you from bullets, now go!” I yelled, wrapping myself in a protective barrier, and ran to the nearest source of fire.

There was a broken bottle, and fluid on the floor was burning. I quickly snuffed it out. But there were easily a dozen of those bottles in the house, and the fire was spreading.

I had to know who did this.

I ran to the sitting room, to the large window there. It was pitch black outside from where I stood, due to the lights. Slick was on the ground, shaking in pain as he clutched his thigh. His leg and Lou’s hands were covered in blood. Bullets were continuing to come through the broken window frame.

“Are you alright?” I asked, having to yell over the noise of gunshots.

“Aera, just get the damned fire!” Lou said. “Slick’s been shot in the leg, he’ll be fine.”

“Who’s firing at us?” I asked.

“The fire, Aera!” Lou yelled.

“One moment,” I said, and darted to the window, squinting.

There were men standing next to the road, barely visible except for the flashes of light from their guns. They must have seen my silhouette in the window, because they focused their fire at me, which I blocked. The bullets were much weaker and slower than last time I’d been shot - due to the range, perhaps? One car was still running, big enough to easily hold all four of the men on the lawn.

There was another car, though, that was parked on the other side of the street in full view of the house, and hadn’t been there the prior evening. A flash of light came from the window. A photographer?

After a brief spurt of bullets in my direction, most failing to even hit my barrier, the attackers rushed into the waiting car, which pealed off down the street.

I could go after them, but…

Gritting my teeth, I turned back to the house and poured out my strength to stop the flames. The house wasn’t nearly as flammable as the Cocoanut Grove had been, so I was able to put out the flames quickly enough.

As soon as the flames stopped, I ran to the window again. The second vehicle was still there.

Aeros reached from me to the driver. I wanted to peek into his mind, to see who he was, as delicately as possible so that I didn’t overstep my bounds. Non damaging mind magic required subtlety, which was not easy to manage when angry. I tried to cool my rage enough to get solid control of my strength, and focused.

But the one thing fear is good for is resisting magic. Between the distance, the person’s fear, my anger, and my own inexperience with mind magic, I couldn’t get a grip on him.

My jaw tightened. That would not do.

The door opened and I charged down the pathway faster than humanly possible. Another flash of light, then the car turned on and the wheels starting spinning. They spun too fast to grip the road, making the car lurch strangely.

From right behind the car, I reached to the person’s mind again.

His fear was cripplingly intense. I couldn’t pierce it without hurting him, not as angry as I was.

I tried another angle.

Aquas poured from me and dissolved the side of one of the tires, making it burst. The car swerved, but his fear grew more intense, and he didn’t stop.

Fine. I ripped apart all of the tires.

Sparks flew as the rims scraped the asphalt.

My hand was forward, in a grasping pose, the most threatening position a spellcaster can take. I could destroy him, destroy the car, so easily…

I hesitated. He got further away.

I can still catch him, but…

Slick’s screams were the only sound I could hear over the pounding in my ears.

I screamed uselessly at the fleeing car. But I turned back to the house, and ran to help my friend. My captor, my savior, my dubious ally.

Police would be coming, and I had to heal him before it was too late.

I was panting by the time I made it back to the house.

“Aera, what the hell were you doing?” Lou asked, as soon as I made it to her side.

“I tried to find out who attacked us,” I said. “I’m sorry. I failed. Let me heal Slick.”

“No,” Slick said, gritting his teeth. “It’s fine. They can take me to the hospital.”

“What?” I said, stunned.

“You don’t need magic to fix everything,” Slick said, then closed his eyes and panted.

“But I…” I stammered. “I stopped chasing them, to come save you.”

“Good for you,” Slick said.

“I could have found out who they were!” I said, my voice tightening into a growl. “Lou, please, talk some sense into him.”

“Check the wound, and tell me how bad it is,” Lou said.

I frowned and reached my magesense within his leg. Tinged with Aquas magic, all of the liquid, all of the little natural transformations, became “visible” to me, in the mind bending multidimensional view that magesense permitted.

“The skin and muscle are notably damaged,” I said. “No major blood vessels were harmed, his system is becoming more stable, and the bullet is still imbedded in the muscle of his thigh.”

“Which means what?” Lou asked. “He’ll be fine?”

“The bullet needs to be removed,” I said.

“The doctors can do that,” she said.

“He’ll heal, but Lou, I don’t understand,” I said. “He’s hurt. He’s been screaming. Why would you not let me heal him?”

“He doesn’t want you to,” she said.

I groaned, then turned to Slick.

“Slick, please,” I said. “There’s no sense in this. Let me heal you.”

“If one of us is hurt,” Slick said, gasping, “We look normal. If none of us is hurt after an attack like that, it looks weird.”

I started hearing sirens in the distance. We were running out of time.

“To hide,” I said, staggered. “We just got attacked in the middle of the night, we are being investigated by the military… the time for hiding is over.”

“No,” Slick said, then gave up speaking and leaned against the couch, sweat glistening on his forehead.

“Aera, you don’t get to decide that,” Lou said. “This one’s on us. This is what we can do.”

“I could decide that,” I said. “I could go, right now, and track down our attackers.”

“Would you fucking drop it?” Lou said. “Seriously, right now. Slick’s hurt. He’s going to the hospital. We’re staying under the radar. You don’t decide crap like that in the middle of the night right after a disaster like this. The plan is to not reveal magic, and it’s staying that way.”

Anger boiled in my soul, driving tendrils of magic all around my body. I was “bleeding” magic, as we called it. It was where we lost control of our magic to a degree, and little changes occurred around us, in accordance with the emotion that had stolen control. My nightgown was shifting in texture and color, hardening and thickening as though I wished to form battle armor. Without my conscious direction, though, the changes were minor.

Rage had silenced my voice. I’d let the photographer go, for the sole purpose of getting back to Slick in time. Now he’d gotten away… and for what?

I glared at Slick as the sirens got closer.

Despite my glaring, or perhaps a result of it, he stayed firm in his resolve.

“Aera, you need to go clean up the molotov cocktails,” Lou said, and my language spell identified those liquid filled bottles, making me grit my teeth. “With the house not having burned down, there can’t be evidence of them.”

“As you command,” I growled, half mockingly, as I stomped off to the house to remove evidence of the magnitude of the attack.

Lou had called for an ambulance as soon as the guns had stopped firing, but the first to arrive were a pair of regular coppers, who’d been called by the neighbors at the first sounds of gunfire. When they saw the extent of the damage, they called for a detective to arrive.

They tried to get our statements, but only got one out of Lou - Slick was too out of it, and I simply glared at them till they left me alone.

The ambulance arrived next. They immediately checked us all over - I scarcely managed to permit them to look at my face - and began to work on Slick’s leg. I didn’t want to witness their barbaric practices. I wanted to ignore them, but Slick was my friend, and I just couldn’t.

They cut away the leg of his pants, cleaned the wound, and wrapped it in a bandage. They didn’t even remove the bullet, and when I advised them of this, they said they couldn’t. He’d have to have surgery, and a doctor was going to cut open his leg to get the bullet out.

He was given some medication, called morphine, which severely inhibited his mental function in addition to stopping his pain. He was just getting loaded up into the ambulance when the detective arrived.

I was briefly distracted from my anger by the fact that I recognized him. He briefly spoke with the other coppers, then with the paramedics, before coming up to us.

“Hello again,” the red haired detective said. “You seem to have a bit of bad luck.”

“Luck, indeed,” I said, my tone surly. “Entirely random coincidence. Surely.”

The copper gave me a curious look, but Lou caught his attention with a cough.

“Hello, Lieutenant O’Brien,” Lou said, incidentally reminding me of his name. “Nice to see you again. Wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Glad to see that you ladies seem well,” he said. “The paramedics tell me that Mr. Williams should have a complete recovery.”

“Magnificent,” I said, and my tone was dripping with sarcasm. “All hail the glory of modern medicine, which nothing in all the world can best.”

“Ms. Koryn, was it?” O’Brien said, looking at me curiously.

“Don’t mind her,” Lou said. “Aera’s just not handling the attack well. None of us are.”

“With that, I will entirely agree,” I said, crossing my arms and glaring at her.

Lou sighed.

“Your home has been attacked,” O’Brien said with a sympathetic tone. “It is entirely reasonable to be upset. You don’t need to worry, now. You’re in good hands.”

“Ha,” I muttered under my breath.

“The officers gave me a brief rundown, but would either of you be willing to give a little more detail? Perhaps on why you were attacked, if you have any idea?” O’Brien asked.

“For that, we’d have to know who attacked us,” I snapped. “A shame we couldn’t get that information.”

I glared at Lou again, but she ignored me.

“No glimpse of the attackers?” O’Brien asked.

“None,” Lou said.

“Four men, on our lawn,” I said. “Each of them held a gun firing many bullets. After perhaps a full minute, at most, of firing at us, they gave up, got into a vehicle, and fled.”

“Interesting,” O’Brien said. “Where were you standing, to see this?”

“In front of the window,” I said dryly, earning a glare from Lou. “I got marvelously lucky to not get shot.”

“Is that so,” O’Brien said, giving me a funny look. “Another point, does the phrase ‘Jewish Witch’ mean anything to you?”

“I am not Jewish!” I spluttered.

Lou made an exasperated sound and said, “Sir, it’s a strange insult we’ve heard before. Why do you ask?”

“Because it’s been spray painted on the front of your house,” he said, and gestured with a flashlight.

I hadn’t noticed it before, between the lack of lighting and my own distraction, but clearly visible on the front of the house was black paint. The words were slowly illuminated by his flashlight till we read the entire sentence.

THE JEWISH WITCH MUST DIE

“Charming,” I said. “The Irish Mob, then, most likely.”

“You have some connection with them?” O’Brien asked.

“We had a run in with them, a few months ago,” Lou said. “They were looking for an ex band member, and we had a disagreement. They decided Aera was Jewish, and we left on bad terms.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “What matters is how to find them, now.”

“Aera, don’t you even -” Lou started, but O’Brien spoke over her.

“Miss, that’s not something you should consider,” he said, with authority in his voice. “The Irish Mob are extremely dangerous. If you’ve done something to provoke them, we can give you protection, but under no circumstances should you seek them out.”

“Oh, but I will,” I said. “They attacked my home, Lieutenant.”

“Aera, for god’s sake, chill,” Lou said.

“It’s almost two in the morning,” O’Brien said. “I understand that nerves are frayed right now. We can discuss more tomorrow. Do you ladies have a place to sleep? I can give you a ride wherever you need to go.”

“We’ll be going to the hospital, to be with Slick,” Lou said.

“Do you know where to find the Mob?” I asked O’Brien.

Lou threw her hands up in the air and made a strangled yell.

“I have some knowledge of where we might get more information,” O’Brien said. “I’ll be looking into that in the morning. You can trust us to handle this, Miss.”

“The place of contact,” I said. “Take me there. You can take her to the accursed hospital.”

“Miss, I’m not letting you in my car for any reason other than to take you to a place to rest,” he said.

I sneered at him.

“Unless I punched you in the face, hmm? Then you’d take me in your car. Perhaps you could leave me handcuffed in the back seat while you visit this contact of yours.”

Part of me wanted to start giggling at the sheer, ludicrous insanity of the thought. For me, of all people, to try to throw a punch. I hadn’t even the faintest idea how, other than balling up my fist and trying to more or less throw it. I’d never attacked with anything other than magic before.

O’Brien’s gaze intensified, appraising. He was trying to decide if I was a threat of some kind.

I felt cold and my jaw tightened. I didn’t want to be looked at like that.

I took a deep breath and covered my face with my hands.

“My apologies, Lieutenant,” I said, trying to be calm again. “Lou is correct - I am not handling this well. I have no intention of attacking you. I just want to see this resolved, desperately.”

“I do understand that,” he said. “You didn’t directly threaten me, either, so I’ll let that go, under the circumstances. I think you need to get some sleep. You’ll think more clearly in the morning.”

I tried to smile in his direction, but it felt twisted on my face.

“Could you just take us both to the hospital?” Lou asked. “I need to check on my brother.”

He nodded.

“I’ll bring you there. I’ll be looking for you tomorrow, most likely in the afternoon, to discuss the events of tonight in more detail. Let me give you my office’s phone number. If you leave the hospital before I get there tomorrow, please leave me a message with where you’re staying.”

He brought us to his squad car and let us in. I got in the back seat, not wanting to be close to anyone just then. He briefly jotted down his number and gave it to Lou before starting the car and taking us away.

It was the coldest hour of the night when we arrived.

Pain and death surrounded me, pressing against me, just as it had on my first visit when I came to see Kito, four years prior. Somehow it felt more acceptable, now, like a decoration on the cloak of rage that billowed around me with every step.

I went silent again, letting Lou handle the hospital details. I wanted no part of this.

Slick was in surgery when we arrived, and it wasn’t a very long one. He was put into a recovery room only half an hour or so after we’d arrived. By then, as our nerves began to settle, exhaustion began to take its place.

Still, even exhausted, emotions were running too high to even conceive of sleep.

We sat, unmoving, without saying a word to each other.

After a little while, another patient was wheeled into the recovery room with us. He was a young man with red hair and severe burns, and strangely, he was handcuffed to his recovery bed. I passingly looked him over to ensure he was unconscious, so that if I said anything, it wouldn’t be overheard.

Though I couldn’t help but wonder why I bothered.

Fatigue grew stronger with each passing moment, and eventually I found myself passed out on the chair.

The morning found me less delirious with rage, but no less determined.

“You gals okay?” Slick’s slurring voice asked, dragging me out of my sleep.

“Don’t worry about us, you idiot,” Lou said, yawning. “You’re the one who got shot. How are you feeling?”

“Fuzzy,” Slick said. “Real fuzzy.”

“Is your leg hurting?” Lou asked.

“A little,” Slick said. “It’s okay. Is Alice here?”

“We didn’t call her yet,” Lou said. “We fell asleep after we got here.”

“We need to call her,” Slick mumbled.

“You rest,” Lou said. “I’ll give her a call.”

Slick nodded as Lou went over to the nurse’s station to make the call. The silence between Slick and I was uncomfortable for the several minutes it took for Lou to finish.

She looked deflated when she got back.

“Alice is fine, just worried,” Lou said. “And there’s some bad news.”

“What?” Slick asked.

“Last night, the pawn shop was burned down,” Lou said. “Around the same time our house was hit.”

Slick groaned, and my resolve thickened. Lou glanced at me, but I said nothing.

“A few of the attackers got caught in the fire,” Lou said. “Alice says that the police talked to her and Dorothy about it. It seems like they abandoned some of their men inside - apparently the mob offs its own that way sometimes.”

I looked over at the handcuffed, burned man.

“That man was brought in last night,” I said. “Around the same time as Slick. He must be one of them.”

“Probably,” Lou said. “But it doesn’t matter. We can’t do anything about it. It’s up to the police.”

“I’ll find out from him how to contact Buddy,” I said, never taking my gaze from the unconscious figure.

“Again, Aera?” Slick said. “Can’t you just give it up?”

“I am done with ‘giving it up,’” I said. “This has gone too far. My home is damaged, and Slick is hurt.”

“Our home,” Lou said. “And Slick makes up his own mind.”

“I need to talk to them,” I said. “Is that so unreasonable? Just to talk, to make peaceful arrangements, so we needn’t fear this happening again.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, Aera,” Slick said. “You’re making it hella hard to protect you.”

“Since the moment we first met, you believed I needed your protection,” I said, my voice deepening. “I have told you, again and again, that I can protect myself. But you have never had faith in me. And what has that resulted in? Kito getting shot, over what could have been solved with a five minute conversation. Years of telling me what I may or may not do. Six dead, at the club fire. And now, our home and livelihood destroyed.”

“And you not being the pet of someone like Pash,” Lou said.

“You are so unshakably certain that I would become a slave so easily,” I said, shaking my head. “I am sick of it. This is something I have decided. I must resolve this with the Mob.”

“And what if you get hurt?” Lou asked. “What then?”

“I can take care of myself,” I said.

“Then you don’t need us,” Slick said.

“I wouldn’t have you come with, no,” I said. “I would be safer on my own, without needing to protect you, if things get hostile.”

“And what about whoever else is there?” Lou asked. “What if they get hurt?”

“You’re worrying about the Mob?” I asked, flabbergasted.

“With the stories you told us about your family?” Lou said. “Yeah. If you get mad, you could kill someone. And we have a justice system. We don’t just execute people.”

“I don’t intend to kill anyone,” I said, crossing my arms. “I’m not my mother. I’ve never killed anyone. I simply wish to talk to them.”

“Your intentions don’t always work out,” Lou said. “Right now, Slick is who we should be focusing on. He’s going to need help getting home and moving around for the next little while.”

“Or he could have competent healing,” I said, gritting my teeth, “Instead of wasting everyone’s time on his convalescence!”

A nurse walked over and we were all silent while she checked Slick’s bandages. Afterwards, she said that all he needed was rest and medicine, which could happen at the hospital or elsewhere. Due to the expense, they opted to take him home right away.

She gave him a bill for the surgery and one night’s stay, which made them both have tight expressions. The nurse then told us where to get some crutches for him, how to check the wound, and said she was going to get the doctor to go ahead and discharge him.

Slick thanked her warmly, entirely ignoring the look I was giving him.

Once she was out of sight, he spoke again.

“You just don’t get it, Aera,” Slick said, his voice low. “Tossing magic around like you’ve been this last month or so, acting all better than us. You need to understand that we’re fine, alright? We don’t need your magic. We can build, we can heal, we can do whatever we need to, all without magic.”

I just stared at him. What was the sense in rejecting a superior tool, to suffer, for his arrogance? To prove some sort of point to me? Magic was better than non magic, in all cases - was this not blatantly obvious?

“Let’s go to Dorothy’s,” Lou said. “She’ll take us in for the time being. Come on, Aera, help me get Slick ready.”

“No,” I said. “I am going to speak to Buddy. Today.”

“Don’t be stupid, Aera,” Slick said.

“I am the one who was trained in how to handle matters like this,” I said. “You were not. I must resolve this. Peacefully, if possible. Please, Lou, Slick - I just want your support.”

“You’re not getting our support in this,” Lou said. “I don’t want an ounce of guilt weighing me down when you get hurt or killed because you overestimated yourself. Or if you murder someone by accident. You do this, you do it on your own.”

My throat tightened, and fear of being alone tugged at me again. But…

“So be it,” I said, turning to face the wounded mobster. “Go, and heal at the rate of an animal. I will be doing what must be done.”

“Good luck, I guess,” Slick said.

“Goodbye, Aera,” Lou said, and there was a touch of heartbreak in her voice. “I hope you don’t die.”