It was an interesting walk to O’Brien’s place. I arrived early and, as expected, he wasn’t there. So, I took a stroll around his neighborhood. I half wanted someone to try mugging me, just so I’d have something to take my mind off things.

He’d been honest when he said it was a bad part of town. The apartment next to his had some woman yelling inside. She was mad about something, though I couldn’t make out any details. The buildings in the area were poor quality, though not as bad as Slick’s and Lou’s home, when I first met them. A number of unsavory people gave me speculative looks, but my cheerful demeanor must have put them off.

For a few hours, I wandered, frequently checking back to see if he’d arrived. At ten thirty seven, according to my watch, I saw a police car pull up to his apartment. It was a bit of a distance away, and I took a breath.

After checking to make sure no one was watching, I used a bit of magic to speed up my movement, catching up to him as he unlocked the door.

“Oh, Aera,” he said, hearing me approach and turning around, “Good timing. I was afraid you’d have to wait, since work held me up again.”

I decided not to mention that I’d waited, and smiled instead.

“Hi,” I said shyly, then lifted up the bottle. “I brought you a bottle of whiskey. I hope you like it.”

He took it from me and looked at the label. He looked a little surprised.

“It’s a nice one,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, and took a breath. My heart was pounding in my ears. “Would you… maybe want some company while you try it?”

“That sounds like a fantastic way to spend my Christmas Eve,” he said with a warm smile, and I almost swayed on my feet.

He’d accepted!

Alice had assured me he would. She’d said that he wasn’t half as dense as Slick, and he had to know I was interested in him.. That if he was going to reject me, he wouldn’t have given me his address in the first place.

Even so, the moment of asking was terrifying. And it wasn’t going to be the only unnerving topic I wanted to bring up.

He opened the door and gestured for me to go inside. I stepped in and looked around.

It was very small, about the same size as Alice’s apartment, when I’d first stayed with her. The furniture was simple and mismatched, but looked very comfortable.

“Please, have a seat,” he said. “I’ll grab some cups.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I sat down on his sofa, and squirmed a little awkwardly when he rinsed out and quickly washed a pair of coffee mugs. I wasn’t sure if it would be weird to offer to clean them, but at least it wasn’t long.

He sat down on the chair across from me and gave me a rueful smile.

“Sorry I don’t have proper cups for this sort of thing,” he said.

“That’s fine,” I said.

He poured a small amount of whiskey into each of the cups. As I picked up mine, he took a sip and made a happy little sound.

“That’s really good,” he said. “Most of the good drinks disappeared over prohibition. How’d you get this one?”

I took a sip before answering. I tried not to wince. The flavor was rich, but the burn was far too much. I quickly adjusted the nerves in my mouth to be less sensitive to the burning.

“Slick gave me some leads to follow,” I said. “He got into drinking too much when he was wealthy, and got to know half the bartenders in the city, it seems. Talking to the bartenders got me connected to some alcohol hoarders, who had some nice bottles saved up from before prohibition began.”

“Impressive,” he said, taking another sip.

His expression suggested he had an understanding how expensive this bottle was, but he didn’t comment.

“So what are your plans for Christmas?” I asked.

“Working,” he said wryly, and his smile turned warm.“But I’ll also be spending as much time as I can with my nieces and nephews. Got a huge gaggle of the little tykes. It’s how I spend most of my holidays, with family.”

“That sounds lovely,” I said.

“It’s a good life, even if they’d disagree,” he said with a laugh.

“They disagree?” I asked.

“They think I work too much,” he said, taking another sip of whiskey. “My ma, especially, wants me to settle down and have a family of my own. She just doesn’t accept that it’s never going to happen. My nieces and nephews are enough for me, and my work is too important.”

I nodded. I took a sip and smiled at the smoothness of the taste.

It was quite nice, though I hadn’t had nearly enough to be bold enough to use his comment as a way to bring up the real reason I’d wanted to come by, so I took another angle.

“It’s noble of you, to care so much for the city,” I said.

“Someone’s got to,” he said with a shrug. “My siblings aren’t the only people with families. The city’s full of people. Most of ‘em good, and a good number of bastards. I want those families to be safe.”

“I envy that,” I said with a sigh. “To do something of value, to make the world better… I look forward to the time when I can.”

“Sounds like you’ve already taken some opportunities to do so,” O’Brien said.

I frowned and leaned forward, looking down.

“I’ve tried,” I said. “The fact is, as I said before, I… well, I was a coward.”

My voice turned pleading as I continued, “I have to do more, next time something happens. I can’t just sit back and let people die again…”

“Then don’t,” he said.

I looked at him in surprise. The others had always pushed back when I’d said something like that.

“You mentioned it before, too,” he said. “It matters to you - not wanting to be cowardly.”

I nodded.

“Then don’t,” he repeated. “If that’s what you’ve decided you need to do, then learn to stand up for yourself and do what’s right.”

“Even if it compromises the secret?” I said, awkwardly parroting the others’ argument.

“It’s your secret,” he said, shrugging. “There’s better and worse choices to make regarding it, but the choice is yours alone.”

I looked at him, feeling a strange warmth in my heart.

We were silent for a moment, while I took in his words.

“So what are your plans for Christmas?” he asked, breaking the silence.

I shook my head a little to snap back to reality.

“Nothing much,” I said. “Giving each other little gifts, having a nice dinner, and giving Lou a break from studying. She’s applied for the test, by the way. She’s scheduled to take it on January second.”

He nodded.

“I’m glad for her,” he said.

“So am I,” I said. “I want to thank you for the suggestion - she’s taken to it like a fish to water.”

That earned a bright smile.

“I’d hoped it would,” he said. “She’s a feisty one, and I expect she’ll do the force proud.”

“She will,” I said. “It’s a shame she has such an issue with magic. I’ve tried to make her comfortable with it, but to no avail. That ‘feistiness’ you speak of would make her quite talented.”

“Is that so?” he asked, and leaned back a little, giving me a curious look. “I’ve thought about that magic of yours quite a bit since we last met, and have more or less convinced myself I’ve not lost my mind.”

“That’s good,” I said with a laugh. “If you’re actually curious… I could show you some more.”

“I don’t want to treat you like a circus freak,” he said wryly. “Though I can’t deny I am curious.”

I smiled.

“This is the most difficult, complex spell that I know,” I said, and closed my eyes in concentration.

It had been years since I’d used my magic in this way. Four years - the last time was my first day in this world.

Matter flowed into my body from around me, and since raw material was a bit lacking, I trimmed a little from my own fat, muscles, and skeleton. Far more halting and awkward than the demonstration four years prior, burgundy wings slowly grew from behind my shoulder blades.

Once it was done, I took a deep breath. That had been harder than I’d expected. I’d gotten rusty with my lack of practice. Aside from the haste spell I’d fashioned, tending my garden, and trivial little magics, I’d hardly done anything at all these years.

“Amazing,” he said, looking at my right wing in fascination. “May I touch it?”

“Certainly,” I said, reaching the wing out to him.

I managed not to frown when the movement was as awkward as the magic had been. Learning to use additional limbs was hard on the brain, and I’d not realized how easily it could be lost.

He gently stroked the feathers at first, and seeing my acceptance, moved onto the couch and examined in closer detail. I tried not to giggle at his fascination as he poked and prodded the muscles and skeleton beneath the fragile skin.

“You can fly?” he asked after a minute.

“Yes,” I said, then gave him a rueful smile. “In theory, anyway. It’s been a few years - I probably would need a good deal of work to manage it again.”

“How, though?” he said, his tone bothered. “These wings are beautiful, but there’s no way they’re big and strong enough to carry a human. I guess you could glide, but flight?”

I dropped my jaw in astonishment.

“That’s incredible,” I said, and he seemed taken aback. “I’ve been showing off this spell since I learned it when I was about ten or so - a simpler version back then, of course - and you’re the first mundane to ever realize that!”

“Thanks, I think,” he said.

“It truly is a wonderful thing,” I said, leaning towards him eagerly. “Most think, aha, it is magic, of course it works! But magic follows rules, it has limits. These wings, they are not for flight, not directly.”

I held out my right wing, the one closest to him, as a demonstration.

“It is useful to have the ability to control falls in a physical way, for when one loses concentration,” I explained. “Not dying from falls is the most important skill in flying.”

“I’d imagine so,” he said dryly.

I suppressed the urge to stick my tongue out at him playfully, and just smirked at him instead.

“The wings can be used for gliding, but mostly are to be used as a framework, to shape the magic,” I said. “The ‘true’ wingspan, the barrier of magic that commands the air, is the same shape and position as the physical wing, only it is perhaps ten times the size.”

With that, I used the ludicrously poor illusion skill I had to create little pinpoints of light. These were used to show the outline of the wind barrier that would be used for true flight. I bent the wing, as though flapping it in slow motion, and let the little lights match the pattern.

“The strength of the muscle is only to move the physical wing,” I went on. “The actual strength of flight is purely from the magic pushing back against the air. Even then, the wings are insufficient - most flighted things require a tail, else they tumble out of control. As such, the legs provide the other framework, for a ‘tail’ wind barrier. My legs mark the outside of the barrier, and based on their position, the ‘tail’ changes shape, like the wings.”

He nodded.

“Couldn’t you do the wing thing with your hands and arms instead?” he asked.

“Yes, but there’s two problems with that,” I said. “One, it’s nice to have hands available for things. And two, the arms don’t bend in ways that are best for flight. The tail doesn’t need to be complicated, so legs are fine, but wings can be shaped to match one’s needs, such as for slow, soaring flight, or high speed chases.”

“Huh,” he said. “Sounds like, even with magic, it’s a lot of work.”

“You have no idea,” I said. “I was happy to learn to make the wings, since they were pretty, but flight was… extremely painful.”

“Painful?” he asked.

I nodded.

“My family had a rule that we could only have things we acquired ourselves,” I explained. “Once I could make clothing, they no longer purchased clothing for me. Once I could heal, they no longer healed me. And so forth. They didn’t want us to be entitled, due to our wealth and power.”

“There’s some sense in that,” he said, but his tone was cautious.

“They insisted I learn to fly,” I went on. “I broke my bones dozens of times. The only time they healed me was when I fell unconscious.”

He frowned.

“I take it you’re very used to dealing with pain,” he said.

“Temporary pain, yes,” I said with a shrug. “I’ve grown very fast at silencing my nerves, so that I cannot feel it. But if pain lasts longer than even a minute or two, I cannot stand it at all.”

He chuckled.

“I suppose we all have our weaknesses,” he said. “It’s wild to think of the things you learned. Me, when I was in school, I’d daydream about being about to do things like that. My favorite idea was teleportation. Can you do that?”

I laughed.

“They tried to teach me that,” I said. “By the time I was skilled enough to begin learning, I’d grown more adept at avoiding it. It was far too complicated - I wanted no part of it.”

“I suppose teenagers are the same everywhere,” he said with a laugh. “Avoiding schoolwork, even if it’s learning teleportation.”

“It seems so,” I said. “Though, that reminds me of something I wanted to bring up.”

“Oh?” he asked.

“The enchantments,” I said. “There’s two basic kinds, essentially. Passive ones that function the same, no matter the situation - they’re good for mundanes, animals, and objects. Like if I wanted to protect a building, or make someone infertile, say. The anti-bullet enchantment is an example of that.”

He nodded.

“The other kind is an active enchantment,” I said. “They act differently, based on what the user wants to do with them. They can be dramatically more complicated and intricate. But those need to have someone who has, at the very least, awakened to their magic in order to use them.”

“Awakened to their magic?” he said. “Odd way of putting it.”

“It’s another sense,” I explained. “Another way of perceiving the world. The transition is pretty straightforward - you can’t see, then you can. Takes some practice to get the hang of it, but once it starts, it’s yours. You don’t need much to use an active enchantment, but you have to at least see the magic in order to interact with it.”

“Huh,” he said. “Interesting.”

“So, I wanted to ask if you wanted me to awaken you to magic,” I said. “If not, I can make simplistic enchantments that anyone can use, but if so, I can make nearly anything, given enough time.”

He took a deeper sip of the whiskey than usual.

“An interesting suggestion,” he said after a minute. “On one hand, the simpler enchantments would be good to have a lot of, to give to the police, when the time comes. On the other… well, I’m interested in what sort of things you might be able to make.”

“It’s really up to you,” I said. “For Lou, I made a magnifying glass that can see through objects. I could make a more specific version of that - would that be useful?”

“Not especially,” he said. “Could you make something that can talk to the dead?”

I blinked.

“Um… no, actually,” I said. “That’s… you have no idea how involved something like that would be.”

“What about seeing back in time?” he suggested.

I shuddered. An Lum. The magic of shadows - of possibilities, of potential, of chance. Rigging a coin flip was easy, but time magic?

Except I didn’t want to say that I could do anything, and then shoot down two suggestions in a row.

“Technically possible,” I said slowly. “That would take some work.”

“That’d probably be the most useful thing you could make,” he said. “Figuring out what happened in the past is almost my entire job. That, and getting the evidence to prove it.”

“It would be limited,” I said. “Time magic is… challenging. I’ll need to think about some options, and then talk to you about them. Best when sober, I think.”

I smiled nervously.

“I should come by again, then,” I said. “It shouldn’t take me more than a day or so to get a few ideas together. When would be a good time to come back?”

He frowned.

“It’s hard to get time away,” he said. “For the next few weeks, I’ll probably be pretty swamped. I’ll be squeezing time away from work for family, for the holidays, and then I’ll need to catch up on work. Maybe best if I call you, once things settle down.”

I took a slow sip of the whiskey. It burned more in my veins than in my throat, and my unease felt further away. More importantly, this sounded like it was leading to the end of our conversation, which meant I was out of time.

Now or never.

“That’s agreeable,” I said, and went on as casually as I could manage, “It sounds as though your life is often terribly busy.”

“I keep myself occupied,” he said, with a faint smirk.

“Do you ever manage to make time for… other things?” I said. “With women?”

“I’ve given it a shot, from time to time,” he said, his tone relaxed. “Wasn’t too long ago that I got out of a relationship. A coworker of mine set me up with her, and we had some good times. But I worked too much. She couldn’t handle being second place to my job. After a while, I found her with someone else.”

“That’s despicable,” I said.

Not that I had an issue with the idea of multiple partners, but trust was the core of any relationship. I felt myself fuming on his behalf.

He shrugged.

“I didn’t take it personally,” he said. “It was her way of being done with us.”

“But… she betrayed you,” I protested. “If she was done with your relationship, she should have simply told you as much.”

“People don’t always do the best thing, especially when emotions get tangled up in it,” he said. “What people do says something about them, not about the people they’re close to. She felt hurt, so she wanted to hurt me back. My mistake was not realizing the problem sooner. When I saw what she did, I clued in. So I ended it. All there was to it.”

“It sounds like you have a lot of experience with things ending,” I said, and he nodded. “For me, I’ve only had one. I was with a man for a few years, and he… he wanted to marry me. But he didn’t perceive the problems with that, with the situation I’m in.”

He nodded again.

“I’ve had quite a few relationships,” he said. “They always end up wanting more than I can offer. Seems like we both had that issue, to an extent.”

I swallowed.

“One could see that as being a compatibility between us,” I said.

“One could,” he said. “There is the issue that nothing could happen with us as long as we have a working relationship.”

“What? Why?” I said, surprised.

He hid a smile with another sip.

“There’s a few issues with that,” he said. “One is that it’s not uncommon for women to be interested in the hero who saves the day. That kind of infatuation doesn’t tend to last all that long. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like women are throwing themselves at me all the time, but it’s a pattern I’ve noticed.”

I crossed my arms.

“You’re not my hero,” I said.

“I’m not?” he said, with a raised eyebrow.

“I didn’t need your help,” I said. “It was helpful, don’t misunderstand, and I do appreciate it. But that’s not why I’m interested.”

As with inviting him to dinner, I realized what I said after the words came out of my mouth. I blushed, and he looked amused.

“Then why are you interested?” he asked.

I dropped my jaw at him.

“You can’t just ask a question like that!” I said.

“One thing I’ve learned, when it comes to relationships, is that beating around the bush is a waste of time,” he said, then leaned back again, waiting.

I glared at him, and he just smiled.

“Fine,” I said huffily. “It’s because… you… when you were over, and we were talking, you…”

His smile shifted into a smirk as I started stumbling over my words. I was tempted to throw something at him.

“You know who you are,” I said, making an exasperated noise. “I don’t know how to describe it better than that. Your confidence, your certainty, the way you looked at me… I noticed you, then. In… in that way. I mean -”

I cut off, blushing again, and he chuckled lightly.

“Interesting,” he said, and I felt like either throwing something at him or running away screaming.

Instead I took a long drink of whiskey, even though I was already starting to get past tipsy.

“A second issue is with the power dynamic,” he said. “The fact is, you’re a young woman, much younger than I am, and I’m in a position of authority over you. With the situation you’re in, you don’t have a lot of people you can talk to. I don’t want to be in a relationship where I’m a cop taking advantage of a lonely young woman.”

“Hmph,” I said, crossing my arms again. “You forget who I am. Are you so sure it is not a powerful young sorceress taking advantage of a lonely, old cop?”

“Touche,” he said, raising his glass in the air with a laugh.

I smiled triumphantly.

“There is an issue that can’t be addressed so quickly, though,” he said. “The simple fact is, as long as I’m working on your case, it would be wrong for us to even discuss the idea of having something between us.”

“Why’s that?” I said. “And aren’t we already discussing it?”

“I’ve been discussing reasons to not have a relationship with you,” he said with a laugh. “Beyond that, it’s a professional conflict of interest. Police aren’t supposed to have any sort of relationship to the work we do - we’re supposed to pass the responsibility to someone else if we’re personally involved.”

“Which you can’t right now, because of the secret,” I said, sighing.

“That’s right,” he said. “It’d look bad for your case if the copper working it has an apparent ulterior motive, and it’d look bad for me, like I was taking advantage of you.”

“So… that’s it, then,” I said.

“For the time being,” he said. “Let’s hold off on this conversation for now. We’ll see how things settle over the next few weeks. I’ll call you when I know I’ve got a little time, and we can discuss those enchantment ideas.”

“That sounds reasonable,” I said, feeling uncertain.

“I’ve had a wonderful evening with you,” he said, starting to stand up. “I look forward to talking with you again. Do you think you’ll be all right heading home?”

“Yes,” I said, standing as well. “I’ll take a taxi back.”

He walked me over to the door.

“Goodnight, Aera,” he said.

“Goodnight, Lieutenant,” I said, and stepped outside.

The cool air did wonders for my heated flesh and sluggish mind.

Alice was curious to hear all about what happened, when I next visited. Lou was oddly standoffish - neither condemning nor supportive, but still curious. Slick didn’t care at all about the details, beyond supporting O’Brien for trying to do what was right.

For the next few weeks, I worked on building more anti-bullet enchantments, so that everyone close to me could have one. When I wasn’t working on that, I often chatted with Alice. She had many opinions on the things O’Brien said, some of which were more flattering than others, and loved to discuss it.

Considering how out of sorts the whole thing made me feel, I enjoyed having someone to talk to about it.

The holidays were fun for everyone, and immediately afterwards, it was time for Lou to take her test. We all encouraged her as much as we could, and as soon as she left, we anxiously discussed our hopes and expectations.

When she returned, she was nervous, but pleased, saying she thought she’d done well. From there, it was just a matter of time.