Glen Powell. Everyone knew the name. From windmills and solar panel factories to operating systems like the SmackOS (Used in 32% of devices worldwide) to the convenient phone-based payment processor Yoodle, he was the face of progress. He made his first billion dollars buying up those tiny phone repair shops pockmarking every city, refurbishing them as high-fidelity single-brand shops, and then selling them off to the highest bidder at ten times the price, or so I heard. I also heard he was developing a new contact lens with the same functionality as my AR glasses. Allegedly, they gained enough charge to run through blinking.

  And I. Love. Gadgets. Almost as much as magical girls.

  So, you’ll forgive me if a squeaked ‘Eeee!’ escaped my lips. It wasn’t loud enough for the average human to perceive, judging by how his expression didn’t change.

  He looked quite normal for a human. Naturally bald head, thin nose, flannel shirt. He wasn’t as short as Addy, but he was decidedly under 6ft tall. Something about the way he wore his glasses gave the impression of an everyman’s friendly uncle who works some nondescript, overpaid job in tech.

  “Come, come,” he said, standing up and offering us his chair. “Please, Samantha, Adelaide — can I call you that? there are seats for everyone, and the lemonade is to die for.”

  “Ohmygosh, I, uh, I don’t know if it’s, uh, I feel…” What was the word? Nervous? Surprised? Unworthy?

  His forehead scrunched up. “Unless this is a bad time? I could free my schedule, come back later.”

  “What — no! Oh god no. Now is fine, right Addy?”

  Addy grunted noncommittally, tired as she was. And boy, was I tired too. Nothing like an emergency summons at the tail-end of high intensity training to just leech the energy out of you.

  We sat down. The lemonade was served in crystal glasses that were designed to look like a normal everyday glass of water. But my eyes could pick out a difference; the weight, the way it broke the light, a faint and tasteful single letter marking some designer company’s logo engraved at the bottom. Subtle and stylish, a signal of wealth through understated symbols.

  I can’t believe it. I’m sitting at a table with a billionaire. Me.

  He grinned contentedly. “I—”

  “Can I say that it is an honor? Mister Glen, uh, Powell, uh, sir.” I grinned, awkwardly. Dammit get your face in order. “Sorry, I’m a big fan. I’ve had a SmackPhone ever since my parents got me my first one, and I haven’t managed to wean myself off of it.”

  His eyes flickered with a glint of mischief. “It’s the design, isn’t it?”

  “Yes! It’s so smooth but fits into my hand comfortably. I always thought that only offering every one of your devices in a monochrome color was an odd design decision, but now it’s practically a hallmark. They all fit together, color coded by their use. Addy, you’ve got a SmackPhone too, right?”

  “It’s my old phone.” She crossed her arms. “The AI integration was a moronic idea executed by a staff of brain-amputated monkeys.”

  The entire table went silent.

  My. God.

  “Oh my god, Addy. You can’t say that!”

  She furrowed her brows. “What? Which part?”

  Glen Powell, the Glen Powell, cleared his voice, looking like a bit of the wind had left his sails. “It was a different time. AI was just coming out. The technology was there, and we had to do something with it. Shareholders don’t like investing half a trillion dollars only to hear that the product isn’t quite ready yet.”

  Addy’s eyes were laser focused on him. “I refuse to pay to update to the newest AI model. Now the old one is broken, and I can’t find anything not saved on desktop mode because you removed traditional file structuring. And I can’t open my picture gallery because that is tied to a password to log into the AI account which I cannot access.”

  I was about to gag Addy, with my bare hands if I had to, before I stopped and ran that back once more. Addy didn’t have access to her picture files. Pictures of her buddy Mason, who got crippled after the incident in Capua. Pictures of her dead mentor.

  I… I couldn’t judge her reaction then. This was war and I had no business getting stuck in the crossfire.

  We’re definitely going to have words about keeping up our image in public though.

  “Why are you here?” she nearly spat.

  “Well. To thank you, firstly. To meet the first of a new kind of superhero, and learn that they’ve been living among us all this time! Would you believe me if I said I was excited?”

  “I mean, yeah, of course,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Addy!”

  She looked between me and the billionaire whose tech she had just called a very impolite word. Abruptly, she got up.

  “This is a waste of time. I’m taking a shower.” She tapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t let up on your training.”

  We watched her stalk off into the RV. The moment the door slammed shut I turned to mister Powell, mortified.

  “It’s fine,” he waved me off with a sigh that said it was not fine, the kind of sigh a train exhales to remove excess steam. “Sometimes, it feels like just because you made a lot of money people suddenly think you have to be a monster.”

  Becca wiggled in my backpack. We had expanded on the wiggle vocabulary, integrating morse code into it. Becca had all the time in the world since we had no idea how to train her body, sense, and soul, and I needed something to train my Mind on that wasn’t another logic puzzle.

  “Truth is,” Mister Powell started, “I have family in the Creektin area. After hearing they made it out of a, frankly, terrible situation, I just had to meet their saviours in person.”

  Becca wiggled some more.

  Lie.

  I tensed.

  “Well, I can empathize with that,” I said, hoping that my smile wasn’t betraying my encroaching nervousness. I took another sip of lemonade. “But I am also interested in what exactly brought you here. Do you need your RV back? Now might be the last chance to get a quick vacation in before things get dicey."

  “Dicy how?” he asked.

  “Oh, uh, y’know. Just things. Work.” I folded my hands and he folded them the exact same way. Mirroring me. Trying to get me to trust him. Trying to get me to… what exactly?

  “Work,” he repeated with a raised eyebrow.

  “Work. Custodian stuff. Saving the world is what I do. Like a million jobs in one. You know what that’s like, no?”

  He stared at me for a moment before breaking out into a chuckle.

  “Do I? Do I!? Of course! I’m a busy man these days, busier than normal. Eighteen hour days were common before all… this. But at least now I know why things weren’t adding up. People rising up with a portfolio filled with nothing-burgers, close friends losing fortunes on ventures nobody ever hears of, the government locking me out of… well, that doesn’t matter.” He paused to stare at me. “I suppose you would know more than me about unusual happenings.”

  “I’m not exactly into finance?” Bit of an odd segue. “I was just barely chosen as a Custodian a few weeks ago, by sheer coincidence. I-I’m not some entrepreneurial businesswoman who controls the speed at which economies die. You’re closer to the pulse of the world than I am.”

  “But you can feel it. The change.” His gaze was steady, like it was a knife he was using to peel me back and inspect every part of me. “I’ve seen more ghouls and werecritters this week while walking down the road than on TV in my entire life. I’ve seen them accomplish feats beyond humanity’s ability to compensate. There is a change coming. You’re at the source. You must have felt it too.”

  What, besides the whole ‘magic is real, cryptids too, and earth is going to become a battlefield for a terrible war between worlds in the near future’? What, was he afraid? Wait… he was! That tangy smell of fear-sweat, barely eclipsed by perfume, was unmistakable.

  Was he afraid of me? I folded my arms behind my head, casually stretching as if after a long day — holy crap, the smell just got ten times worse.

  Glen Powell was afraid of the supernatural. Or maybe he just didn’t like spiders. My bet was on the former.

  “You of all people don’t have to be afraid. Custodians like me are here to protect. Frankly, you’re currently at the safest picnic table in all of the Midwest. Assuming no higher level Custodian is currently on coffee break.” I took out my Toothpick and laid it on the table. “See? I’m entirely unarmed.”

  Which wasn’t exactly true, but potato-schmomato, appearances were all that mattered here. Gotta leave a good impression with the guy who owns more money than some non-island states.

  His eyes focused on the warped plastic like a buzzard spotting a field mouse. “Can I see that, for a moment?”

  A cold tentacle poked me in the back of my neck.

  Don’t.

  “And why the hell not?” I said a bit too loudly. One of the golfers in the distance twitched. “We’re friendly, I’m friendly. Friendly Sam. And besides, this thing is trash.”

  Glen Powell inspected the gun, let his fingers roam over the grip, the blackened focus bulb, and battery with its partially melted casing. He set it down. “I will buy this gun for seven hundred million US dollars.”

  I blinked at him with all four forward-facing eyes. “... what?”

  “Eight hundred. Mind you, I’ll be completely honest here: I’ll send it to a lab. Have people smarter than me figure out how it works, then replicate it at a cheaper price. I’ll pay five hundred for the battery alone. God, Samantha, do you have any idea how important batteries are for solar and wind power? For catching spikes in the power net? For transportation? This alone could revolutionize the world’s energy demands. So much charge in so little space… the battery is tiny!”

  “It’s also partially magical,” I said. “Can’t really break physics the way it does otherwise.”

  He waved me off. “I’ll find some experts. Buy some wizardly expertise. Everyone can be bought.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. The Society already had companies producing plenty of goods, albeit not at a price I’d call affordable. They were handcrafted items for the most part. And what was more, there had to be a good reason they hadn’t pulled in every single one of the richest, most powerful people on earth when literally everything was at stake.

  Right?

  “I, uh, thought you were here to thank the saviors of your family,” I said.

  “Yes yes, but this will save them, and everyone else in the long term. People need a way to defend themselves against threats. With my means, I can scale production. Everyone will be able to have a laser pistol.” He got a check out of his shirt pocket, and a pen. “Two billion.”

  Two. Fucking. Billion. For a weapon that barely worked when it wasn’t blowing itself up.

  On second thought, giving everyone a Toothpick sounded like a terrible idea. Sure, people would feel safer, but they would also forget about the heat buildup until the thing literally blew their face off.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, motioning to pick the Toothpick up. “I don’t think I’m in the position to understand all the implications of this deal. I’m still new to this. I can’t make an informed decision.”

  Which is exactly why he approached me.

  He didn’t resist, just staring at the half-written check.

  “It was a nice talk, for the most part,” I said, giving him a smile before moving to join Addy in the shower. Not join-join, just…

  Ugh, thanks horny brain, now I’m thinking of water running through her hair, down her back and around—

  “You were a human until recently, Samantha,” came Glen Powell’s voice. “When all this turmoil is over, do you really think we can go back to how things were? There will be revolts, governments will fail; their only recourse to alien invasions appearing inside their territory is upping the military, becoming more authoritarian. The people who survive, who’ll be hailed as heroes, those will be the werewolves, the goatsuckers, the what-have-yous. Humans aren’t strong, aren’t fast, and are ready to die over the pettiest of reasons. Technology has to be made idiot proof because on average, we are a pretty dang stupid race. Heck, we almost nuked ourselves into oblivion dozens of times throughout the cold war! And you know what happened to the dumber apes, when humans were still competing with neanderthals and australopithecus?

  “They died out.”

  More wiggles.

  Divide. Conquer.

  Even without Becca telling me, I knew what his game was. He saw the world as team human and team other, and he wanted me to pick his side. Maybe his side wasn’t even the one that benefited humans in specific, but an abstract sense of humanity, and he was just using that as rhetoric to distract from how he wanted to create yet another monopoly. Two billion was a bribe, to commit treason against the idea that we weren’t in all of this together, if not as a nation, or a single people, then as a whole friggin planet.

  “Aliens are raining from the sky, people have died in the millions, and you’re afraid that people will turn on each other?” I asked. “Do you really think that people like Addy, that werewolves are going to replace us? A vampire is not going to be a US president in your lifetime. Hell, we had a billionaire make it before the first woman did!”

  “There won’t be a US if things go pearshaped,” he hissed.

  “So who then? Who are you so afraid of?” I wanted to slam the table, I really did. But it would have been rude, and besides that, I was preoccupied with some mild multitasking. Out of the corner of my eye, some golfers in baggy cloaks started moving closer to our position. Bodyguards. Of course the billionaire wasn’t here alone, what was I thinking?

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Could just be hired mooks. He’s not going to try to abduct me, is he? That would be… incredibly stupid.

  His goons stopped a polite distance away. He didn’t make a move, but I could see the lightest sheen of clammy sweat on their hands. “Maybe your handlers. Maybe the person with a bigger gun. No question about who that’ll be just looking at the weapon you called trash. Violence is the only power that matters, in the end.”

  There are 9.21 billion people living on Earth today. There are under 90.000 Custodians alive today. 100.000 humans per Custodian. Violence is power, so are numbers. And as he said, humans will kill over the stupidest of reasons.

  All you have to do is crunch the numbers to know who’s really a threat to whom.

  I paused to give him my most disappointed look. “Maybe you should stick to making phones instead of elbowing in on the arms business. You’re too emotional about it.”

  “Yes, well, call it a human flaw. Sadly, I can see that this is going nowhere.” He leaned back, looking at the sky lost in thought.

  My cue to leave. “It’s been a pleasure, in part, and the opposite of pleasure for the rest.”

  I made to walk away, towards the RV, when I heard him stand up behind me. There was Glen Powell, holding out his hand to me.

  A trap? A hidden dagger? Poison.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m glad we had this conversation,” he said.

  “I’m, uh, happy, I suppose, that you’re not angry with me?”

  “Angry? No, no, of course not.”

  He tried to pull me down to eye level, but when he noticed that I was rooted to the ground, he had to lift himself on his tippy toes to whisper into my ear.

  “Keep the RV. It’s yours.”

  Ah, there’s the poison.

  The RV was an easy ’in’ for him, an excuse to keep visiting. The whole thing was probably bugged to shit. God, I changed in there. Addy changed in there. Suddenly, it felt much less inviting than before.

  I stomped away, feeling more than a little bit of anger at myself and a whole lot more at others as I passed Addy just exiting the shower. I jumped on the bed, stayed there for a moment, then grabbed a pillow and tossed it across the room.

  “How’d the talk with Wormtongue go?” Addy asked, dodging the pillow.

  “Great! Just great! Fuck! Why are people so goddamn small minded?”

  “Fear is a strong motivator, ” Addy said. “It keeps people alive. It’s hard to ignore. Even when it is irrational.”

  “Did you—”

  “Check for and remove the bugs the moment we set foot in this thing a couple weeks ago? What, you think I’m an amateur?”

  “God, Addy, what would I do without you?” I groaned.

  “Probably still believe in false idols. If anything, not realizing that he wanted something out of you immediately with your level of Soul means we need to do some more training.”

  I groaned louder.

  “But not today. It’s getting late.”

  “Right, late…” I shot up from the bed. “Addy, we’re late for Clem’s party!”

  +++

  When Clem partied, she partied hard. The venue was audible from a mile away. The mixture of surviving a life or death scenario followed by weeks of discomfort and hard work as Creektin was rebuilt created a certain kind of tension. Over a hundred people were letting loose, hollering and whooping loud enough to wake the dead.

  Literally. A group of ghosts that haunted the nearby areas had gathered a polite distance away from the property. They were swaying to the beat of the music. I gave them a wave, which some of them politely returned, while others answered with ghostly wails, hisses, and screamed promises of vengeance.

  Definitely gonna check if anyone of those needs a hug once we’re done here.

  Man, what a neighborhood.

  “Why are you wearing your baggy hoody again?” Addy asked.

  “Because this is Clem’s party. She loves parties. And I’m not about to cause some sort of uproar just because people didn’t expect a magical girl spider vampire thing to arrive unannounced." I tightened the gray hoody around my face, then hid four of my six arms by wrapping them around my body beneath it. It was hella uncomfortable, but this is what friends do for each other.

  “That billionaire dude really made you self conscious, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah? Well… I have decided that the world isn’t ready for a magical girl spider person thing yet. But soon that will change. Very soon. For now, normal baggy-hoody-plus-hotpants Samantha is my secret identity.”

  When we arrived on the front porch, it wasn’t Clem who answered us, nor her boyfriend Akira. The door just kind of swung open, as if the house was a monster trying to swallow us, and the party its glowing lure. Some girl I vaguely knew from high school greeted us at the door, handing us two random plastic cups from a table absolutely covered with them.

  “Welcome to the roulette, where your poison picks you," the girl said, wearing a conical party hat on her nose. Together with a layer of white mascara, she looked like a snowman. “Nine of ten are harmless sodas, but one of ten is a ghastly surprise. It’s not mandatory but a good icebreaker.”

  Addy and I shared a look.

  “I think we’re—”

  “Sure, hit me up.” I shot Addy my smuggest grin. “We’re here to relax, after all. Now that I’ve massaged your body, it’s time to show you a massage for the soul. Party rule numero uno: Leave duty on the coat hanger.”

  She frowned. “Technically, we’re never off duty.”

  “Oof. Clearly, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

  We both knocked the drinks back to the sound of solitary hollers and whoops. Mine was pink and both smelled and tasted like disinfectant. Addy’s was lime green, and by the look on her face she also didn’t get a normal soda. I wasn’t worried about getting roofied, partially due to my Body stats, and partially because I trusted Clem not to invite just anyone off the streets.

  Seriously, who would ever think of messing with us? We were, compared to anyone in the crowd, leagues above in terms of physical and magical ability. It was a sobering thought, seeing all these people enjoying their lives and knowing that in some way, I was not like them.

  “Second round, please,” I said, a choir of ‘oohs’ rising in the background.

  “You sure?” The party girl handing out the drinks asked. “Pretty sure we’ve got some real nasty stuff in here—”

  I grabbed two drinks, then four, then six, all with two hands, and knocked them back one after the other while staring her in the eye. Cheers erupted as I finished my final cup, stacking them all neatly on top of each other in a pyramid in a flash. There were some ooh’s and polite applause.

  “Lovely initiation ritual. Reminds me of college.”

  “People came here to get sloshed and forget about stuff,” the party girl said. “I am merely the facilitator.”

  “Fair.”

  I turned to Addy, who’d bravely tried to match me. Her face was as sour as a lemon as she stared at the last cup before downing it too.

  “That was—”

  “Yup.”

  “Straight up Vodka.”

  “You already feeling the fun?”

  “I’m feeling statistically unlikely,” she said with a swallowed burp. “Nine out of ten of those were alcoholic.”

  “It seems we were lied to.” I caught a glimpse of a bottle being passed around. Everclear. 95% Alcohol. “Or perhaps there is trickery afoot.”

  I snatched the next drink that Addy was preparing to imbibe. Yep, definitely Everclear. The turpentine-like drink didn’t feel like a 95 percentile drink, more like… a strong 20. Usually this stuff was mixed, so someone was definitely out to prank us, but honestly, who cares? ‘Tis the time of fluid fun.

  “I barely felt that,” I mused, setting my cup aside. “Must be all the stats. Man, having a high body stat totally rocks.”

  Addy turned to me, her face already turning plum red. “Yuhuh. Mhm. Easy stuff.”

  “Addy.”

  “Myes?”

  “Are you a lightweight?”

  “I don’t think so…” Her brows furrowed. “Hm. Maybe. I am a little light after all.”

  “You can change into your hybrid form if you’d like. People here would probably just compliment your costume style."

  “Doesn’t help,” she muttered. “Alcohol’s more… poisonous to tanukis. Human bodies are really… really good at the… alcohol stuff.”

  Well, immediately getting sloshed not five steps into the party wasn’t a great way to start out the evening. There was so much more to do besides that. People to meet. Party games.

  I caught sight of a table off to the side where people were playing poker, but before I could drag Addy over there, we were rudely interrupted by an awfully familiar voice.

  “HEEEeeeyyy! Samantha.” A positively cherry-red Tanya fumbled her way out of a crowd of people towards me. She was clinging to the Everclear as if it had her name on it. “Heyyy. It’s me. Tanya. Friend-o. Hey people, this is her, the big, fat hero spider—”

  I clamped a hand down on her face before she could literally scream my entire build across the crowd. “Tanya. A word.”

  “Mfff.”

  I pulled her to the side and lifted my hand. “Tanya, when I arrive at a party with no extra eyes and the baggiest hoodie available, does it look like I want attention?”

  “Uhh, when you say it like that… the right answer is no. Nooo? No…” She giggled and I practically had to pin her to the wall to keep her looking straight at me. “Uh, Samantha, you good? You look a little gray.”

  “It’s makeup. Tanya, do you realize that I don’t like you?”

  “Woah. Uh. Fuck you too, I guess?”

  “Tanya. You made me lick a slug in middle school and posted a remix of the video on social media. And that is just the tip, the very tip of the iceberg.”

  “Oh yeah, that, right, hahah… I, you want the video? I still have it, I think…” She fumbled around her pants, looking for her phone. “I think I lost it. Oh fuck me, not again. Can you, uh, maybe let me go? I kinda need to find my phone.”

  “And I kinda want you to say something that isn’t a deflection, for once.” Some of the people close by were starting to stare. I was getting myself worked up too much. “Tanya.”

  “Yes?”

  “When you were a toddler, did your parents ever tell you what to do if you did something bad to another kid?”

  She stared at me for a moment. “Oh, you want me to say sorry. Sorry! I know I can be a bitch sometimes. Elise usually tells me when to shut the fuck up, but I don’t have her around so I just kinda… say dumb shit. You know where she is these days?”

  “Haunting the mall.” A morbid irony. She always said she would never be seen dead without Prada. Now she could stare at Prada every day. While dead.

  My stare continued to bore into Tanya until she looked away.

  “I… I’m in trouble, aren’t I? You… you’re here to fire me, right? Oh god, please no. I’m doing numbers! I’m a-an influenza now. Influ-flu… I’m famous! I have, like, an income. I’ve Invested into Custodian Coin! Please, I’ll be a good girl, but don’t take this away from me-heee!”

  By the end of her blubbering rant she was ugly crying. I put her down, took her bottle (it was empty), and refilled it with sparkling water from a nearby cooler. She barely noticed, taking a big swig that had her fighting more against the carbonation than against any other source of tears.

  In the end, this was about as good an apology as I could get from someone like her. In her mind, that video was probably just one of her many ‘harmless’ pranks. It wasn’t burned into her mind like it was for me.

  I suppose overwhelming pity will have to do in place of righteous anger. I sighed. System, find her phone, please.

  [Calling Tanya Smith]

  [Signal strength indicates it to be near this location]

  I maneuvered her towards her phone as if she was a caravel in a storm. The phone was in a flower pot. She didn’t notice it, not when I picked it up, not when I snuck it into her back pocket. After dropping her off with some people who knew her, I decided to wash my hands of the whole situation. That was part of my old life. A clean cut was better for both sides. I was still her employer and her only supplier of cool Custodian clips. Letting my emotions get the better of me while she was actually doing pretty good on the social media front was not the most efficient move.

  Oh god, I’m starting to think like Addy.

  Wait, where is she?

  I scanned the crowd. Suddenly, my breath hitched. There was another unwelcome familiar face.

  I strutted up to the tall grey skinned man standing in a corner while being completely ignored by everyone around him.

  “Coyote. Hey. Why are you here?”

  “Oh, Samantha. Good to see you.” The elder vampire still had that stupid dictionary in his hands. “I was just about to ask you: How do you pronounce this word?”

  “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?”

  He frowned. “Ah. Of course. In what context would I use it?”

  “Unless you want to comedically exaggerate how cool a thing is or make a reference to Mary Poppins, not many.”

  We stared at each other for a while longer.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “Yes. Or as you people say these days: Yeppers. Totally rad, bro.”

  “Please don’t use outdated lingo like that,” I groaned. “But you seriously just came here to ask me how to pronounce a random word?”

  “I must confess, I also had to commend you and your propensity for making friends even with those who seldom deserve it, or appear deserving thereof.” I followed his gaze to Tanya, who had once again outsourced thinking to the nearest bystander and as punishment was now sprinting for the bathroom. She barely made it halfway before elbowing someone aside and puking out the window. “The power to do good is also the power to do harm.”

  “Point taken.” Firearms are pretty morality-agnostic. It’s all about the user and the target. Though, no matter of moral posturing could ever make someone aiming a gun anything but a fearful proposition.

  I supposed what he was trying to say was that, given Tanya was in my situation with the exact same tools, she wouldn’t make the same selfless choices, if any at all. Or perhaps he was likening me to an armed gun, which people had to trust would be pointed at their enemies. Or, perhaps, he was just making a general statement on how the threat of power invokes fear in those who do not possess it.

  Fitting then, since I could feel my instincts yelling at me to put two countries between me and the vampire that could crack open people like a juicebox.

  “I—” I turned to him, only to find that he was making a face like he’d licked a lemon, coughing and hacking at his drink. It smelled violently of cinnamon and mint, and it was so acidic I could feel the prickle in the air from four feet away.

  He caught himself, his face a darker shade of gray than normal. “I must say, many things have changed in these past two hundred years, but parties stay the same.”

  “I suppose people are always finding crazy things to drink, no matter the time.”

  “Totes true, bestie.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I shall stick to my outdated vernacular then. ‘Twas a pleasure, and for the time, I bid you adieu.”

  I blinked and he was gone.

  Great. Now I was going to yoyo between expecting a jumpscare and existential philosophical horror for the rest of the night. I just wanted one damn night to let loose and forget all the obligations piling up and up. This was like the opposite of a massage for the soul.

  A tap on my shoulder almost had me whirling around, ready to belch rage and hellfire at the nearest hapless victim.

  “What—oh. Hey Akira.”

  Clem’s boyfriend. Finally a normal face. He was wearing two party hats, one on his forehead like the horn of a unicorn, the other dangling around his neck as a backup. He was flanked by Addy, who was busy eating two entire sandwiches filled with meatstuffs.

  “I need you to vouch for me,” she said with filled hamstercheeks. “This guy says I can’t be here if you don’t.”

  I blinked. Akira had only seen Addy in her full weretanuki form before. “Oh, right. Addy is with me. She’s also a Custodian.”

  Akira broke out into an awkward smile. “Sorry about that, but you know how it is. Welcome to the party of liquid moves and solid style,” he yelled over the din of music and people. “Come on in, get a drink, dance.”

  “Thanks for inviting me!” He offered a genial hug, which I accepted, before he offered one to Addy, whose acceptance was a lot more stiff and awkward. “Addy’s the friend I was talking about. Addy, this is Akira.”

  She stood up straight. “Custodian Weretanuki. Adelaide. Wait no, other way around.”

  He laughed, leading us through the throng of people, proving his adept social skills by deftly weaving us around the rowdier groups of people while still finding the time to chat a few lines with the odd person he recognized. I recognized a few people as well. It felt like I’d gone to school with a quarter of the people here.

  “Is that Miss Alexa over there? Our math teacher who hit a bird on our class outing to Tahquamen Falls, and subsequently drove our minibus into a ditch?”

  “She seems quite fond of the punch bowl,” Addy commented.

  “Hah, yeah, she loves her drinks.” Akira chuckled. “We’ve got some more space out back in the garden. As your friend has already discovered, a few caterers have been busy barbecuing and making pulled pork sandwiches since this morning. You like pulled pork? Who am I kidding, everyone likes pulled pork.”

  Addy had already finished annihilating her sandwiches and washed it down with another mystery drink. If anything, she seemed to be a big fan of the free food.

  “You really did go all out, didn’t you?” I asked.

  This must have cost a fortune to set up.

  “Yeah, well, we had the time on our hands, and Clem is rich, so it’s more of a question of getting the right people in the right place at the right time.”

  If the volume of music was any indication, then there wasn’t a place more right left in the world. “I’m just glad most of the house is still standing.”

  “Well, most of the west wing has some form of fire damage, but I hear the gnomes managed to get it under control. That’s why that wing is off limits today.” He sighed, sipping on his drink. “Glad you could find the time to drop by. You’ve gone almost radio silent for weeks. Been busy?”

  “Absolutely. We fought a giant kitchen mecha in Canada around noon. I met Glen Powell.”

  Akira’s eyebrows rose. “The Glen Powell?”

  “Don’t get too excited. He… did not live up to his image.”

  “He’s a dick who couldn’t find his own ass if he sat on it,” Addy said and Akira almost snorted his drink out of his nose.

  “Right. As if politics wasn’t already complicated enough.”

  “So, where’s our gracious host? Princess sleepypants isn’t still a-snoozing, is she?”

  Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, speaking of complications, how to say this… Clem has locked herself in her room. She’s had a rough time after the whole ‘getting chased by a giant alien worm mimic’ thing. I tried everything: treats, back rubs, movie nights, but she’s in a bit of a funk. Thought the party would get her out, but it seems I have to call in the heavy ordinance.”

  “Which is… me?”

  “You’ve known her since kindergarten. I’ve known her for… two, three years maybe?”

  “There’s gotta be stuff you know about her that I don’t,” I countered.

  “Evidently, it’s not the right type of stuff. So… please?”

  “None of that. I was already going that direction anyway.” I grabbed two cups of punch, a platter of assorted snacks, left Addy with Akira, and made my way up the old swinging stairwell.

  People were still up here, but less to crowd the corridors, and more to look at the odd tiki statues with a drunken sense of appreciation for the weird. Also, there were a lot more toilets up here. An old tinge of nervous paranoia had me checking them for mimics as I passed. I walked by a pair of girls propping each other up with red-faced giggles. Someone had forgotten their foldable pocket mirror plus make-up on a windowsill. Past the windows and down on the lawn, people were gathered around a group of guys engaged in a tug-of-war, complete with a ref and all.

  Now lessee, this is the master bedroom, which means Clem’s bedroom is right around the corner…

  The door was locked. Giving it a rattle confirmed as much.

  “Clem? It’s me, Sam.” I gave the door a knock. “Can I come in?”

  Silence.

  A cold sensation ran down my arm. Becca’s slime pseudopods could stretch until they were thinner than a pinky now. She was getting quicker at transforming into objects too.

  Her tentacle met the old lock, glooping inside. There was a click. I gave Becca a look as her tendril retracted back into my spider backpack. Her ability to bulldoze through the walls people built around themselves was as scary as always.

  “Clem?” I asked, opening the door and stepping in. “As your bestie, I respect your boundaries and need for privacy. However, as your bestie, I have also elected to come in anyway.”

  Her room was huge, easily over 500 square feet large, filled with hardwood cabinets, and a pearly white vanity next to a sink discretely built into the solid stone wall. Worn clothes carpeted every solid surface, wrappers of half eaten junk food strewn throughout. A pair of gnomes were driving a knee-high toy excavator, trying to make sense of this mess.

  This was a grade A bestie emergency.

  There was a sniffle, coming from the canopy bed. I pulled the drapery aside only to find Clem, sitting in the middle of a fort of pillows and plushies, watching bollywood romance. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes puffy and red, and there were chocolate stains on her nightgown.

  But most notably was the plum-sized bulge on her forehead, wrapped in cloth and bandages. Something moved beneath it, twitching as she looked up at me.

  “Sam?” she said, looking up at me. “I don’t think I’m human.”