Chapter 1

Jack

Later, Jack would tell people he’d seen the gun.

He hadn’t.

He’d only seen the time.

Ever since he’d woken up—at exactly 5:30 a.m., which was one of his safe times—all he’d been thinking about were the seconds slowly ticking down to disaster.

He’d showered, drunk a protein shake for breakfast, and driven the twenty-three minutes to the human-only gym Gracie insisted they go to “for their protection.”

Jack was pretty sure the monster-kin in New Justice City had more cause to be scared of humans than the other way around. But he was hardly one to criticize the things anyone did to feel secure, given his own personal obsessions.

Besides, he didn’t like to argue with Gracie. Things had been weird since they’d lost the baby last year. He already felt like he was walking on eggshells. If the human-only gym helped make Gracie feel better, who was Jack to pick holes in her bubble?

With no traffic hiccups or unusual small talk—a two minute maximum—to mess up his schedule, he arrived at exactly 6:10 a.m.—another designated safe time. He completed his workout: it had been an A day: chest, shoulders, and back. Five sets of fifteen reps of the designated seven exercises—525 total reps, a safe number. He showered again, then drove back across town to Havenseed Apothecary. He planned to arrive at exactly 8:11 a.m. to begin the store opening routine.

It had to be completed before 9:00 a.m.

Nine was a bad number. A killing number. He avoided it at all costs.

Jack was meticulous about dodging the unlucky opening time. He would unlock the pharmacy’s front door at 8:59 a.m. and turn the “Open” light on at 9:01 a.m. in order to ensure that the store was technically open at 9:00 a.m.—one of his duties, and a ritual he couldn’t ignore—but that no one crossed the threshold in the bad zone.

The pressure was constant, but that day was worse than others because he was expecting someone when the apothecary opened at 9:00 a.m. He’d been worrying about it obsessively since he’d received the phone call from Headquarters the day before. A bad omen. Or a test? He wasn’t sure. But he didn’t like it.

“The Boss will be right on time,” the voice had said. “Not a minute early or late. The Boss is always on time.”

Okay. That was something Jack could appreciate, even if this particular schedule set his teeth on edge.

Timekeeping had become one of his safety rituals over the last year.

It wasn’t like it ruled his life or anything like that. He could do it in the back of his head, on autopilot, so no one caught on to the fact that he had a ticker tape running behind his eyes keeping track of the seconds, minutes, and hours that others took for granted.

That was important. People tended to get weird when they found out about his rituals.

Gracie, especially. And he tried to do everything he could not to freak out Gracie. She had enough to worry about. Besides, stress was a leading contributor to fertility problems. He had to be vigilant and subtle. Another constant stress. But his fertility wasn’t an issue, so it was one he absorbed, gladly.

Next time, when Gracie was ready to try for another baby, Jack would be ready. He’d be vigilant so nothing would go wrong.

He’d learned that lesson the hard way as a kid. Fail a ritual and the world would retaliate by taking something he loved away. He never thought he would forget… In the months and years after his father’s death the importance of his rituals had been seared into his brain. They’d become more and more complex as he discovered more loopholes that the bad luck could reach through and rip away at the things he cared about.

But in recent years—thanks to extensive therapy and the ongoing support of his mother—Jack had begun to believe he was normal. He convinced himself that the rituals really were a form of cognitive distortion like his psychiatrist had told his parents when he was a kid.

He’d had a lot of cognitive distortions as a kid: inflated sense of responsibility, thought-action fusion, magical thinking. Shrink talk for the fact that, for as long as he could remember, Jack had been convinced that he could hold the world together and prevent bad things from happening if he was careful to observe a few simple rules.

There was a right order, for example, to putting on and taking off his outerwear when leaving the house or coming in from outside. There was an order to washing up for dinner, eating dinner, and cleaning up after dinner. There was an order to his bedtime routine, to getting into and out of a car or an elevator. To crossing the street, to lifting weights, to checking for hazards while driving.

These rituals helped him feel safe, and he visualized his safeness as he performed them. If he completed a step out of order, he would start again from the beginning. If an intrusive, dark, or upsetting thought interrupted the ritual, he would start again from the beginning. If anything out of the ordinary happened when completing a ritual, he would start again from the beginning.

And each time a ritual was completed properly, Jack felt the little rush of satisfaction of a job well done. A confirmation of his purpose in the world. He was Atlas with the weight of the entire globe on his shoulders.

Dopamine, his childhood psychiatrist had explained. She’d said it like it was a dirty word. I’m looking for a hit of dopamine.

That rush was why the rituals became addictive. That was why it was important to practice exposure and response prevention—ERP for short. Essentially, he needed to force himself to skip the rituals to prove to himself that nothing horrible would happen if he didn’t complete them, all the while internally screaming and panicking that the world was going to burn around him for his failures.

Jack was a little high-strung as a kid. But he was much better now. Really, he was.

He knew he was fucking weird, he’d known it even when he was four years old and insisting that his toy cars went back in the toy box in exactly the right order. But he never thought there was something wrong with him. It was more like he saw things other people didn’t see. That’s why he was the one who had to perform the rituals and keep everyone safe. He wasn’t a freak. He was special.

Good luck explaining that to the kids at school who heckled him when he was taking off and putting on his shoes five times before recess because he kept getting interrupted by intrusive thoughts. “Freak” was their go-to word. He didn’t figure out how important it was to hide his “specialness” until he was much older, and by then… he kind of agreed with his classmates.

But his parents hadn’t been too worried about it. Jack had always been weird, but it was a manageable sort of weirdness. They’d been exasperated sometimes, but not worried.

They even liked some of his rituals as much as he did, like the bedtime routine. Actually, Jack was pretty sure his parents had been the ones to start that one. It might, even, have been his very first ritual.

Every night, Jack would put on his pajamas, brush and floss his teeth, get a glass of water for his bedside table, and get into bed. Then his parents would come to tuck him in, and together, they would recite the lines from his favorite picture book:

“When I go to sleep in the dark—” Jack would say.

“—I'll be right here,” his mom would answer.

“When I go where the bad dreams are—”

“—I'll be right there,” his dad would say.

“When I go so far I can't be found—”

“—there is nowhere we will not follow,” his parents would recite together, before saying goodnight.

That was it. His very first hit of dirty dopamine. He still sometimes whispered the words of the book and pictured their soft watercolor paintings when he was stressed. The family of horses in the book had always reminded him of his own—mommy horse, daddy horse, and baby horse, together forever. The memory made him feel safe.

The only time they didn’t complete the bedtime ritual was the day Jack’s father died…

After that, Jack’s vigilance went into hyperdrive.

That was when he first noticed something he’d missed before, an aspect of the rituals he was neglecting. Numbers. They were hidden in everything. If Jack wasn’t diligent, even the most carefully completed ritual could be undone by a bad number.

Like nine.

Jack was nine when his father was struck and killed by a drunk driver while walking to the corner store. An unlucky age. His father was forty-five years old. Forty-five was a bad number, too. Four plus five is nine. Had it been 9:00 p.m.? Jack wouldn’t have been surprised. He’d never found out the exact time of his father’s death, so he’d been forced to speculate. But he had his suspicions. It had been March 3rd. Third day of the third month. And three times three is, of course, also nine.

He could never believe, in retrospect, that his younger self hadn’t seen it before. And once he saw it, he became obsessed.

Then his mother did get worried.

Jack’s psychiatrist had told him he was cherry-picking the data, looking for nines to justify when things went wrong. It seemed plausible. For example, his father died in 2005. That was a seven year. Jack didn’t have anything against sevens.

It had taken years to get the compulsions back under control, to convince himself that there were no unlucky numbers guiding his fate. That this was one of his cognitive distortions.

He’d spent eleven years reining the rituals back in with ERP. Forcing himself to stop counting, redirecting his obsessive compulsions into more socially acceptable habits… He still tried to dress in the same order when leaving the house, but he didn’t start over if he made a mistake.

He focused on clean eating, rigorous exercise schedules, meticulous cleanliness, punctuality.

Routines, not rituals.

Routines were normal, celebrated, the sign of a disciplined mind and body. People liked routines.

Rituals were weird and freaked people out, apparently a sign that an unhinged whack job lurked inside his skull wearing his face like a mask. People did not like rituals.

Jack’s routines had earned him a full scholarship at New Justice University, gotten him through his pharmacy degree with top marks, and walked him into a prime position with Healix Corp, one of the largest pharmaceutical retailers in the city. Shortly after that, he’d been offered a position as Havenseed Apothecary’s head pharmacist.

His routines had given him an admirable physique, healthy complexion, and an impressive immune system. They had landed him on the arm and into the bed of Gracie Sullivan—at the time, an up-and-coming model and aspiring actress—which made him the envy of all his friends and colleagues.

With his compulsions in remission, Jack had been willing to believe that routine was the answer, not ritual.

But he’d been wrong.

Last year, disaster struck again. It was 2025. A nine year. Which would have been bad enough, but it was also September. The eighteenth. Nines all around. The worst part was, he’d been so convinced he was cured that he hadn’t even realized until it was too late. He didn’t need to cherry-pick the data when he was living in a veritable cherry tree, surrounded by the blood-red orbs of his failures.

He’d vowed never to make the same mistake again.

Jack had been amazed at how quickly the vigilance seeped back into his life, all the little rituals he’d suppressed and molded into something fit for polite society. He tried to keep them on the down low, so as not to upset Gracie. She’d been different since the miscarriage, and while Jack knew she didn’t blame him for their loss he could sense a change in the way she treated him too, as if subconsciously, she knew.

It was his fault.

He’d gotten lax and failed to protect her.

Over a year had passed since he’d renewed his diligence. Gracie still wasn’t ready to try again. She’d actually started saying maybe the loss was “meant to be” and that she wasn’t cut out for motherhood. That maybe she didn’t want to have a baby after all.

Jack continued to not let a single ritual slip, just in case.

A part of him wondered if his hypervigilance was a way of protecting himself, too. Maybe if he stuck to it, if he was perfect, he could save himself from a future where Gracie never wanted to have children. In that bleak future, their paths would diverge and the life he’d built on the power of routines would fall apart just like it had when his father died.

Then the mask would fall off and everyone would see him for the whack job he was meticulously pretending not to be. That would be bad. People especially did not like whack jobs.

Having an important meeting set up for exactly 9:00 a.m. felt like a cruel joke. He was being set up by whatever trickster god had cursed him with this responsibility. Nothing else made sense. The circumstances were too convenient.

The Boss was bringing in a case of human-optimized elven salves that were being considered for distribution through their premium pharmacies—hush hush.

Headquarters didn’t mention the fact that human-optimized monster-kin medicine was illegal, but of course Jack knew. They wanted him to compare the Boss’s formula to Healix’s legal monster-kin salves to ensure they weren’t getting hoodwinked.

The Boss was the leader of New Justice City’s criminal underworld—Headquarters didn’t bother to tell Jack that part either, but he knew that too—and a little scammy ingredient swapping wouldn’t be completely out of his wheelhouse.

Jack didn’t care. He was itching to see those salves.

If he wasn’t coming at 9:00 a.m., Jack would have been ecstatic about the opportunity.

For all Jack’s devotion to routines and rituals, he viewed society’s rules and laws as arbitrary. He followed only what made sense to him, regardless of how illogical he might appear to others.

If he hadn’t been sick with a fever when he was nine years old, he wouldn’t have failed to complete the bedtime ritual. His father never would have had to go out that night to buy medicine from the corner store, and he’d still be alive today.

So, when it came to New Justice City constricting the genuinely exciting Other World medicine discoveries with miles of red tape, Jack was more than willing to circumvent a few laws in order to help more people live healthy lives.

It never crossed Jack’s mind to question Headquarters’ interest in the salves.

As he drove from the gym, he only wished the Boss could have picked a different time.

***

He parked his car in the Havenseed Apothecary parking lot at exactly 8:11 a.m. If he arrived at his destination during a bad time—like 5:31 or 6:58 or 8:01—he could prevent disaster by waiting for the clock to change before opening the car door. He wasn’t sure why it worked that way, but it did. Actions during a bad time triggered bad events, but it was safe to stay still.

Engine off. Key out. The dashboard died. He counted to ten—a safe number—then scanned for anything that might still be running. Dome light, off. Radio, off. The little glow by the gearshift, off.

One time, he’d been in a hurry and left the accessories running the entire time he was at work. It was almost as bad as leaving the lights on.

Last time he’d left the lights on, Gracie had needed him. He’d been stuck waiting for a boost for his dead battery while she waited for him to get home and take her to the hospital while she bled on the bathroom floor.

Intrusive thought. Start again. Focus. Engine. Key. Count to ten. Scan accessories.

That was why the rituals were necessary. If he completed the rituals, he would always be prepared. The rituals kept the people he loved safe. That wasn’t a fucking cognitive distortion. It was a fact.

Lights off.

Set the parking brake. Put the shifter in park. Fuel gauge above a quarter tank, check. Phone battery full. Ringer on. Charging cable in pocket, check.

Jack got out and locked the door. Before he walked away, he checked the handle four times—four was a better number than three. He circled the car once clockwise, and once counterclockwise, doing a visual check on the lights and tires.

It sounded excessive all listed out—he knew that. He’d seen the expression on past psychiatrists’ faces when he made the mistake of listing his rituals in detail. But the ritual itself didn’t actually take much time, as long as he stayed focused and didn’t have any dark, intruding thoughts to screw up the process so he had to start over again. To an outside observer, it didn’t look strange. That was important. People didn’t like strange.

 His car exit ritual finished, he walked across the parking lot to the front door of the apothecary.

Jack checked his watch, and waited for a safe number before he opened the store door and crossed the threshold.

Phase One of his morning, completed with zero complications, check.

But that had been the easy part.

***

Havenseed Apothecary sat right on the border between Havenseed Heights—the monster-kin neighborhood that bigots referred to as “Halfbreed Heights” or “the monster ghetto”—and a rough, industrial sector of New Justice City proper. Jack saw about an equal number of human and monster-kin customers. None of them were wealthy.

He’d often wondered why Healix bothered to put one of their newest, most prestigious outlets in NJC here, on the cusp of two of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. But, after the phone call about the Boss’s visit, he was beginning to understand. Headquarters was playing free and loose with the law to stay a step ahead of its competitors, and a high-end pharmacy in the territory of NJC’s top crime lord was bound to open up certain opportunities.

Despite the seedier clientele, Jack actually liked the location. People who were worried about how they were going to make rent or where their next meal would come from typically didn’t have a lot of spare shits to give about a guy circling his car and checking his lock multiple times.

He spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to smooth his rough, “crazy” edges down so he could pass for normal. He’d been doing it for so long he mostly did it without thinking: get the right grades, wear the right clothes, date the right girls. He often felt that his entire personality was an elaborate costume designed to hide the real him from the world. But here, amongst the destitute and the literally monstrous, he could relax.

Well, as much as Jack was capable of relaxing, which admittedly wasn’t all that much.

 Looking into the Heights from the pharmacy’s front window was a bit like peering into another dimension. The closest thing Jack could compare it to was the feeling of being in a country where he didn’t know the language. Only this was dialed up to eleven. More than exotic. Alien.

The Heights were familiar, yet different enough to trigger alarm bells in the lizard brain. Warning! Uncanny valley. This place is not what it seems!

Maybe that was how people felt when they caught a glimpse of the real him behind his mask.

The monster races that had flooded into New Justice City when the portals had opened came in as many shapes and sizes as a person could imagine. Not to mention those that went beyond the limits of human imagination.

Being in a different country, where you didn’t speak the language, the people could only be so different. They were still human, after all. But there was no such comfort when looking into Havenseed Heights.

It wasn’t just a matter of unfamiliar languages and art styles on the signs. The buildings themselves were different. Doors were wider and taller, built to accommodate monstrous anatomy: enormous bodies, horns, hooves, tails. Bodies that literally did not fit in the rest of New Justice City.

Of course this was no accident. Monster-kin kept to Havenseed Heights by design. Gracie was hardly the only human to feel uneasy about their monstrous neighbors. Yet, Jack had always felt he was more like one of the monster-kin refugees than people of his own race, only his monstrousness was on the inside so people usually couldn’t see it.

Jack locked the door behind him and continued with the rest of his opening routine, trying to keep his mind from wandering to the 9:00 a.m. meeting. He’d just have to stall opening the door. That was all there was to it.

But… if punctuality was that important to the Boss, being late to open the door was going to be a negative first impression. He really didn’t want to risk losing the opportunity to test those salves…

Jack keyed off the alarm. He switched on the overhead lights in their fixed order—the back room first, then the dispensary, then the front floor. He counted the cash drawer and put it in the till. Then he opened the narcotics safe and counted the controlled substances against the running log, according to Headquarters’ requirements.

This was his favorite part of the opening routine, because counting and recounting was actually a part of the job. To anyone watching through the glass, he was a careful man, meticulous in his work, the kind you trusted to handle your medication.

He worked as quickly as he could without throwing off his count, and was pleased when the totals came back clean and balanced. Dopamine! Dopamine!

He even finished with time to spare. When he looked up to check the clock above the till though, he froze.

A man stood at the mouth of the alley across the street. A human man. Well dressed. Not the usual clientele.

Was he waiting for the bus? Or was he a customer waiting for the pharmacy to open? Jack's eyes stuck on him and would not come loose. The nearest bus stop was two blocks away. He wasn't on the phone. He was just… waiting, eyes fixed on the front window of Havenseed Apothecary with a dead sort of stare.

Something about the man tweaked a nerve in the back of Jack’s mind. He had a sudden urge to recheck his counts, like the man was an intrusive thought that had somehow escaped his head. He hadn’t known he was being watched when he was counting, and that fact seemed to disrupt the ritual retroactively.

Why would anyone be watching the pharmacy?

Shit. Was he about to be robbed?

Jack pictured blood spraying over the glass of the front door. A shape on the floor. His body or someone else’s?

He stepped back, putting a rack of nasal decongestants between him and the window to break the man’s line of sight. His heart beat against his ribs like a rabbit kicking its legs in a snare.

“When I go to sleep in the dark—”

He whispered the words like a prayer, picturing the soft watercolor paintings of the book to push the dark images in his mind away.

He could almost hear his mother’s response. I’ll be right here.

The intrusive thought faded. But it was too late. The ritual had been contaminated. Jack didn’t care if his counts were finished, he was going to have to redo them.

How the hell was he going to do that with some creep watching him from the other side of the street? For fuck’s sake, this was the last thing he wanted to be dealing with before the Boss got here. But he definitely didn’t want to risk messing up another ritual on a bad luck day.

Should he go out there and confront him? Jack was a big guy, and he’d done enough sparring with his friends to know he could hold his own in a fair fight. But who the hell knew if the guy had a knife or was on drugs or—

He peered around the corner of the nasal spray rack to get a better look at what he was dealing with.

The black mouth of the alley stared back at him. The man was gone.

Relief prickled across the back of Jack’s neck and down his spine.

Quickly, with half an eye on the clock and the other half watching for the return of the man, Jack re-counted the controlled substances cabinet. When he was counting the strip seals on the salve allotment, he saw the bloody window in his mind again, and made himself restart.

Now the clock was the enemy. 8:51 a.m. The seconds ticked by, so loudly Jack could almost feel the sound in his teeth. Cold sweat broke out over his back. But he managed to finish the count with no further mistakes, just in time.

A big black car pulled up front at 8:58 a.m. It didn’t park in one of the stalls, but parallel to the door, like a chauffeur dropping off a rock star at a red-carpet event. Jack expected the chauffeur to get out and open the door for his infamous passenger.

But the driver stayed in the car and the passenger door opened on its own.

The man who climbed out of the back seat was huge. At least as tall as Jack, but twice as wide and built like a barrel of nails. He wore a crisp black suit with lavender pinstripes and a lavender shirt with no tie. He carried a stainless steel briefcase in one hand. The Boss.

The big man crossed the distance to the front door with leisurely steps, like he was timing himself. Jack knew a stalling technique when he saw one. The Boss would reach the door at nine exactly.

Not a minute early. Not a minute late. The bastard.

Jack hurried across the pharmacy floor, like he could rush the Boss’s footsteps by triggering some subconscious desire to match Jack’s pace.

Something flashed in one of the upstairs windows of the building across the street, like a mirror or a glint off polished metal. It seared into Jack’s brain like a hot iron, igniting the barely controlled panic that had been building in him since the phone call from Headquarters.

Blood on the windows. A body on the floor.

Nine o’clock. Nine o’clock.

Time moved like slow motion and Jack felt like he was speed-running through it in fast-forward. The Boss seemed to freeze, with one powerful leg outstretched, as Jack reached the door before him. He shoved it open, got his fist in the big man’s lapel and hauled him forward, desperate to get him over the threshold before the fateful seconds ticked over into dangerous territory.

If he’d stopped, he might have considered that grabbing the Boss by the collar and wrenching him off his feet was the dangerous territory. It was a fucking death wish. But Jack wasn’t thinking about the Boss. He was thinking about the time.

“The fuck—?” The Boss’s gruff voice cut off as Jack practically threw him onto the ground.

A crack ricocheted off the building, then another, and the glass of the door and the front window shattered.

Shards blew inward, showering down on the polished floor of the apothecary like rain. Jack dropped down beside the Boss, covering his head with his hands. His thoughts were stunned, frozen, as he attempted to process what had just happened. He’d pulled way harder than he meant to. Had he somehow thrown the boss through the window instead of the door? That didn’t make sense.

The Boss rolled. His hand came up with a pistol in it.

Ahh, fuck. He’s going to kill me. I must have been too late. Nine is a deadly number. Nine is the killing number. I should have—

The Boss fired two rounds across the street.

A window on the top floor of the building across from the apothecary shattered. The same window where Jack had seen the flash of light earlier.

Everything got very quiet.

Glass scattered the pharmacy like spilled sugar, the pieces so small they were more like powder than shards. Apparently, Headquarters hadn’t thought safety glass was a worthwhile investment, even in this neighborhood. Jack's ears rang. His hands were flat on the floor like he’d been glued there.

The chauffeur—or bodyguard more likely, Jack realized—got out of the big black car. He was even bulkier than the man on the floor next to Jack, and he had a bigger gun in his hands. He shouted across the parking lot, “You good, Boss?”

The Boss got to his feet. He brushed the glass from his sleeves like lint. “Right as rain, City Boy.”

“You want me to go deal with it?”

“I got him,” the Boss said. “But double-check it for me, will you? And give Moses a call to clean it up.”

Jack could only stare at the two men who seemed to be taking all of this in stride. He wondered if he should apologize for throwing the Boss on the ground, if he needed to explain about his nine o’clock rule, or if he was a dead man either way.

But the thing that was really stuck in his mind was the intrusive thought from earlier, the blood splattered over the apothecary window. Had it been some kind of premonition? There was no way the Boss was going to believe Jack had thrown him to the ground because of some psychic brainwave…

The man in the pinstriped suit crouched in front of him. He looked at Jack for a while, studying him like a scientist with a curious insect pinned beneath his microscope. Then he smiled, flashing a gold tooth.

"Good instincts, son," the Boss said. "Not many men in New Justice City would dare put their hands on me like that, even to save my life.”

“Sorry,” Jack stammered. “I just—”

“Don’t apologize. That bullet might have hit me instead of the window. I’m not the kind of man who forgets a thing like that."

He stood and picked the briefcase up off the floor.

“The salves,” Jack said. “D-did you still want me to—”

“All in good time,” the Boss said as he stepped through the empty frame of the door. “I have some unexpected business to attend to.”

A white van pulled up in front of the building the bodyguard had gone into. A man in pristine white coveralls got out and nodded to the Boss. The Boss nodded back. The man in white unloaded some cleaning supplies from the back of the van and headed into the building. Was that Moses? How the hell had he gotten here so fast? Or had Jack just been processing for longer than he’d realized, his brain stuck like a jammed transmission?

“What’s your name, son?” the Boss asked Jack without turning to look at him.

“Jack,” he said. “Jack Anthony. I’m the head pharmacist here.”

“You did a very brave thing today, Jack,” the Boss said. “You’ll be well taken care of for your efforts. I’ll sort out the details before the next time we meet. Let’s say Friday, this week, same time.”

Jack felt his mouth run dry.

He cleared his throat. “Uh… Would 10:00 a.m. be okay instead?”

The Boss glanced down at him and Jack realized he was still sitting on his ass on the floor. He got to his feet and brushed the glass dust from his palms, grateful that he couldn’t see anywhere he’d been cut.

“Sure,” the Boss nodded. “10:00 a.m. it is. We’ll talk salves, and your payment. And maybe you can tell me just how you managed to spot that shooter when my own security missed him.”

“I—” Jack stopped himself before he could talk himself into trouble. “Yeah. Of course. Anything I can do to help.”

“Do me a favor, son,” the Boss said. “And leave the cops out of this. Moses will handle it.”

Jack nodded dumbly. It hadn’t even crossed his mind to call the cops. Something about the Boss just instilled a sense of confidence that outside help was not going to be necessary.

The Boss nodded again, like he was confirming something he’d already known. “Good man.”

The bodyguard exited the building across the street, gun back under his jacket, and gave the Boss a thumbs up. He got into the car. The Boss strode over and got in after him, and the big black vehicle peeled out of the lot.

Jack stared out the broken window in a daze, wondering what the hell had just happened.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there when a crunch of glass from the doorway brought him back to the present moment. He turned to see a girl stepping through the open doorway.

No, not a girl. She was short, maybe four feet tall. Her head would barely clear the cash counter, which was what had made him think “girl.” But as she paused in the doorway and he got a full look at her, it was clear that she was no child.

It was clear, too, that she was not human. Her skin was a soft, dusky color that could have been purple or gray depending on the light, and she had long, lustrous silver hair that was so shiny Jack first wondered if she was using some sort of magical charm or… what did the monster-kin call it? A glamour? She had cartoonishly large eyes of a startling pale pink, that was almost pearly. Like rose quartz or…

Jack realized he’d been staring and felt himself flush. Men weren’t supposed to stare at women, even when they were strange. Maybe especially when they were strange. It was one of the rules that made him fit in so easily in Havenseed Heights.

He cleared his throat. “Can I help you?”

“You open?” She looked down at the broken glass curiously, and moved her feet, crunching more beneath her black hooves. “Or… redecorating?”

“Sorry.” He grabbed a push broom and started sweeping up the worst of the mess, but it was clear that he was going to have to close up shop for the day. “There was a bit of… excitement earlier.”

Her nostrils flared, and Jack thought the pink of her eyes looked darker, more fuchsia, suddenly, as carmine flecks bloomed in her irises. Her ears—the same sleek dusky color as her skin—perked up. They looked like a horse’s ears, but smaller. Like everything on her had been miniaturized. “Nobody was hurt?”

“Fortunately not,” he said. “But I’m going to have to close while I get everything cleaned up.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders deflated slightly, and she shrank another couple of inches, as if good posture was the only thing that kept her around that four-foot mark. “I was just hoping to grab some candy. I… I have a job interview this morning. Nerves always make my sweet tooth extra hungry.”

Jack took in her crisp white blouse with ruffles down the front, which looked a bit old-fashioned but was very charming on her, highlighting her improbably large chest. Her narrow waist was tucked into a sophisticated black pencil skirt that might have been a size or two too small for her. But Jack couldn’t say it looked bad. The hint of a silky tail behind her added some volume to her already bubbly backside, giving it a perky look, like a parade pony.

He racked his brain for what the horse-type monster-kin were called… That must be what she was, though she was much, much smaller than any horse-type girl he’d seen before. More like, goblin-sized. Though, he had to admit, considerably more enticing to look at.

She was still standing in the doorway, looking at him with those huge pink eyes. He realized he hadn’t actually said anything. What the hell was wrong with him?

This pony-girl, whatever they were called, was too cute. It was making his brain hurt.

Intrusive thought. Start over.

Except it wasn’t, really. Intrusive thoughts always made him feel bad. And the way she was looking at him made him feel good. It was a lot like the way Gracie looked at him when they first met, like he was something special. Before she figured out how broken he was.

Intrusive—

No. He hadn’t been doing anything that needed starting over, anyway. Besides struggling to form a damned sentence and not ogling the girl like a fool.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I… I think maybe I’m in shock or something. My head’s all…”

Stop, don’t tell her that. Don’t tell her anything that’s going to make her ask questions or worry or… flare her nostrils again.

Why was she doing that? Was she smelling him?

Start over.

“I don’t think I should let anyone in with all this glass around. It’s not safe.”

“Please?” Somehow, she made her eyes even bigger and he noticed how long and pretty her eyelashes were. “My hooves are really tough, I promise. I just need a little sugar…”

She let the word “sugar” hang in the air, as if her sentence were incomplete. His mind tried to fill in the blank. Sugar high? Sugar rush? Sugar daddy?

Was she flirting with him?

She was breathing heavily all of a sudden, deep inhales through her small, perfectly shaped nose that made her breasts do… interesting things.

Intrusive fucking thought. START OVER!

“Okay!” The word came out more abruptly than he’d intended and the pony-girl jumped back a step, her ears alert and her eyes suddenly skittish.

But he’d just wanted to stop the insane thoughts running through his head. He really must be in shock. He was not normally like this at all. He was dating one of the most famous models in New Justice City for God’s sake. He didn’t lose his mind over every cute face he saw. What the fuck?

“Sorry. Okay. If you think your… hooves… will be safe. Uh, come in. Get your candy. Then I’m turning on the ‘Closed’ sign.”

“Really?” Her plump, dusky cheeks lifted like little balloons as her mouth stretched into an enormous smile. She blushed plum instead of pink. Even that he found adorable.

He immediately had regrets.

But he swept the last of the glass out of the entryway, so that it was at least mostly out of the way, and set the push broom against the shelves. Then he stood back and ushered her inside. “Ladies first.”

She darted past him. Over her shoulder, Jack could see the man in white across the street—Moses, he was sure now—making another trip from his van, carrying an oversized tote. He hoped the girl wasn’t going to take too long choosing her candy, because the longer she stayed, the more likely she would be in danger of being associated with whatever had happened here.

Police in New Justice City liked to handcuff first and ask questions later when it came to monster-kin at the scene of a crime. Assuming any onlooker called them, which wasn’t a given in Havenseed Heights. Jack hoped that stayed true.

When he turned back to the counter, she was bent at the waist, inspecting a selection of gummies on the bottom shelf in front of the cash register. Now he had a full view of her high, proud tail, and the alarmingly round backside it was attached to.

Jack blew out a sharp breath and quickly crossed the store to get behind the counter so he wouldn’t get caught staring at her ass, too, and really make himself out to be a jerk.

She put her selection up next to the till. One bag. Two. Three. Jesus. There were at least ten bags of different candies—the kinds of things he would never consider eating on his regimented diet. He couldn’t decide if he was appalled or impressed.

She giggled when she saw the expression on his face. “I’m… really nervous I guess.”

She put her money down on the counter and he rang her up.

“Don’t be,” he said automatically. “You look great. Uh, I mean… You’ll do great. I’m sure of it.”

She blushed again, gathering her haul against her chest. “Thanks.”

“Do you need a bag, or…?”

She shook her head, backing up like she’d stolen them and was about to make a break for it. Her round cheeks had darkened so that they were completely purple, which made her eyes look much brighter than before. Almost red.

Jack felt his own face flush. He was such an idiot. He’d obviously made her feel uncomfortable with his stupid stumbling mouth. You look great. And I look like a creep.

“Okay,” he said again, feeling like he’d said the word a thousand times already. “Thanks for shopping at Havenseed Apothecary. Uh… come back soon. Or when the window’s fixed.”

She nodded. At least, he thought it was a nod. It could have been a tick of some kind. And before he could make an even bigger ass of himself, she bolted from the store, arms wrapped around her candy like she was saving an infant from a burning building.

Today was really not his day.

He glanced down at the candy rack. She’d bought every single package of candy he’d had in stock, leaving only the sugar-free options.

That, at least, made him laugh.

Over the next hour, Jack focused on cleaning every last shard of glass from the store door and window. Across the street, Moses made a few trips back and forth from the van, carrying various totes and bags. They came out of the building looking fuller and heavier than they went in, and his pristine white coveralls had flecks and streaks of red on them.

To anyone else, it might look like paint.

But there wasn’t anyone else. The usual trickle of morning customers was nowhere to be seen. The police never arrived, either. People in Havenseed Heights had a good instinct about avoiding trouble.

Except for the pony-girl. And she’d figured it out eventually.

It wasn’t until after Moses the Cleaner left that Jack finally allowed himself to turn the “Closed” sign on—not that he was sure it would do much good at keeping people out. That would be a problem for Headquarters. He needed to call them to report the incident, as well as pass on the Boss’s message about no police involvement.

And then, he was going to have to figure out what his story was.

If the day had been a test, Jack had passed with flying colors. Nine was a bad number. A killing number. Such immediate, visceral confirmation gave him a perverse thrill.

It was only because he’d been so focused on the clock that the Boss was alive. But it would become a lot easier to explain, later, if he just told people he’d seen the gun.

They always got so fucking weird about his rituals.

Cocoa-Pie

The trick to being harmless was all in the eyes.

Cocoa-Pie made hers big and round as she aimed them up at the bunny-girl behind the reception desk and smiled her sweetest smile.

Her name tag said “DOTTY.”

“Well, hi there, Dotty,” Cocoa-Pie crooned. “I’m here about the ad I saw in the newspaper? Are you still hiring?”

The bunny-girl smiled back. They always did.

“Oh, we’re pretty much always hiring,” Dotty said. “New Justice City can’t get enough of monster-kin maids. Please, have a seat and I’ll call Mrs. Ramsbottom for you.”

“Thank you kindly, Dotty. I’ll do just that!”

Cocoa-pie probed the edges of Dotty’s mind with her magic. The bunny-girl was bored, a little hungry, and not even the teensiest bit afraid. Boring!

Fear could tell her a lot about a person, reveal their deepest, darkest secrets…

She always relished a little taste of anxiety. It made her feel powerful and in control, because she knew, if she had to, she could destroy that person.

Not that she was likely to need to destroy the receptionist of Maid for You, but she liked to stay in practice.

It had just been a touch, not so much that Dotty would notice. That would get Cocoa-Pie in trouble, not just with the receptionist, or the owner, but possibly with the Department of Interportal Immigration. It was a silly risk. DIPI, along with the new Department of Magical Regulation, were cracking down hard on monster-kin they deemed dangerous.

And despite Cocoa-Pie’s sweet and diminutive appearance she was one of the most dangerous monster-kin out there.

She knew she should rein it in. What was to be gained by manipulating a secretary? But it gave her a little shiver of excitement every time she did it, and she couldn’t quite make herself stop.

“Just… uh… just over there?” Dotty’s long white ears twitched. She pointed at a row of chairs along the wall.

Cocoa-Pie realized she’d been standing still, staring at the girl. She blushed. “Oh dear, I must have been daydreaming!”

She dutifully pranced over to the chairs and hopped up onto the first one, using her hand to sweep her tail aside. She folded her hands in her lap and kept her face as soft as could be. She swung her short legs and tried to look pretty while she waited.

Dotty picked up the phone and whispered something into the receiver. She tugged on one of her ears as she spoke and gave Cocoa-Pie another smile. This one was smaller and faker.

Bitch, Cocoa-Pie thought, keeping her own smile plastered on her face. Like I don’t know a fake smile when I see one.

She wondered what boring Dotty was telling Mrs. Ramsbottom about her.

She knew she was a bit unusual, even for a so-called “monster.” Her horse ears and long, silver mane and tail were just like the rare and elegant equestrikin from Valestria—the home world she’d claimed on her immigration papers.

But Cocoa-Pie was tiny, in comparison. More goblin-sized than true equestrikin, though she had curves that wouldn’t have been out of place on a succubus.

She knew she probably didn’t look like a very hard worker, and she wasn’t a monster type that would be in high demand. She hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.

Given her diminutive stature, she could have gone with a bigger, louder personality to balance things out, giving the impression she was the kind of girl who could get things done and didn’t take shit from anyone.

But that sort of attitude always drew the wrong sort of attention. It was safer for people to think she was small, sweet, and a little dim rather than letting on what she really was. So, she played it up, even if it was going to be harder to get a job that way.

And she really, really needed a job.

The waiting room of Maid for You was small and clean. The scent of lemon polish and freshly brewed coffee filled the air in a not-totally-pleasant sort of way.

Maybe it was nicer if you liked coffee. Or lemons.

Cocoa-Pie did not. Both were far too bitter for her taste. She’d much prefer something rich and chocolatey with lots and lots of sugar and whipped cream, like her name implied.

In fact, she’d chosen the name Cocoa-Pie after having a dessert by the same name at Sinfully Sweet, a succubus-owned café and bakery in downtown Havenseed Heights.

If the succubus sisters were allowed to stay in New Justice City, Cocoa-Pie didn’t see why she should be any different.

Except there were drugs now to keep succubus magic under control. And there was nothing like that to tame monster-kin like her.

She caught herself before her smile got too smug.

Cocoa-Pie crossed her ankles and swung her feet back and forth, back and forth, and tried to keep her big, innocent eyes from roaming too freely. Dim girls didn’t notice too much.

Someone had swept the waiting room not long ago. The trash can in the corner had a fresh liner and there was not even a single dust bunny hiding in any of the corners. She supposed that shouldn’t be surprising for a company that hired out maids, but it didn’t leave much of interest to look at.

A calendar hung on the wall beside the water cooler, turned to a page with a very large, very wet human man on it. He wore almost nothing and carried a big fire hose. Somebody had drawn a small red heart in the corner of the page.

Darkness! Could she end up working for someone like that? How unsettling! She’d hardly known human men could get so large. She wasn’t sure she liked the over-filled look of the man’s muscles, like he had balloons under his skin that were ready to pop.

What a mess that would make. Blood everywhere!

Oops… Nice girls didn’t think about things like that, did they?

No, they thought about… umm… probably puppies and cupcakes and giggling babies or something.

Or that big, hunky shadow daddy she’d seen at the apothecary that morning. Now that was a man she wouldn’t mind seeing naked. He was tall, but not thick and bulky like the gross firefighter man. He looked lean, powerful, and athletic, like his muscles were for being used, not for showing off. Which was a good thing, because if she had a man like that, she would rather die than have him show off his body to the whole world on some lame fundraiser calendar.

Just thinking about him brought back the delicious scent of darkness that permeated his being like a thick, black cloud. It had been so intense she hadn’t even been able to see through it to find the cause. Something bad had happened, but what? She’d had to eat every single bag of candy she’d bought to make herself forget him and focus on the job interview.

And it had worked until she’d seen that darn calendar.

Down the hallway a vacuum cleaner started, stuttered, and started again.

“No, no, no,” a woman’s voice said. “From the elbow! Keep the head on the ground. Like this, you ninny… Ugh! What is wrong with this thing?”

Another voice said something Cocoa-Pie couldn't catch. Laughter.

She found a spot on the wall to stare at and tried not to go cross-eyed with boredom. She was starting to understand the origin of lackluster Dotty’s dull aura.

Reluctantly, Cocoa-Pie even forced thoughts of the apothecary man from her mind. If she was too excited, it was hard to look cute and not scary. She’d learned that the hard way.

Goodbye, sweet hunky prince. I’ll see you in my dreams.

An orc came down the hall with an armful of folded towels. She was green-skinned and broad-shouldered, stretching the black dress with a little white apron to within an inch of its life. There was a little white cap pinned into her blue-black hair that didn’t do much to distract from the tusks.

If orcs could find placement with Maid for You, Cocoa-Pie didn’t think it was impossible that she could. She was much cuter than an orc. And much less likely to gore someone. Physically at least.

The orc glanced into the waiting room, and gave Cocoa-Pie a polite nod.

“Mrs. Ramsbottom says she’ll be right out,” she told Dotty. “As soon as she figures out who used the vacuum to clean soup out of the cauldron.”

Dotty’s blue eyes went wide. “Oh, not again!”

An inner door slammed open a moment later. Both the orc and the bunny-girl jumped. A red-faced satyress came out, grumbling under her breath.

“Third vacuum this week,” she muttered. “I don’t care how in demand elves are, that one is defective!”

“Is it Trixala, ma’am?” Dotty asked. “Shall I put her down for another week of training?”

The satyress slammed her clipboard onto the front desk and wiped a hand across her forehead. “At this point, I’m wondering if we should just put her down.”

“Umm…” Dotty tugged on her ear again, trying to get the woman’s attention by motioning with her eyes. When the satyress continued to stand there with her eyes firmly shut, the bunny girl cleared her throat. “There’s a new applicant here to see you, Mrs. Ramsbottom.”

Cocoa-Pie put on her very best face, pretending she hadn’t heard the woman’s comment about the elf, or hadn’t understood it. She hopped off her chair, her shiny black hooves landing with a sharp sound on the clean floor. “Hi there, Mrs. Ramsbottom! My name is Cocoa-Pie. It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

The satyress had streaks of gray in her reddish-brown hair, which was pinned up on her head around two short ivory horns. She wore a gray suit with a skirt that came to her knee, and a white blouse with a ruffle down the front, much like the one Cocoa-Pie was wearing.

Cocoa-Pie had read that mirroring a person’s fashion choices could make them like her more, as long as she was subtle about it. So, she’d gone through newspaper and magazine archives at the library to get a good feel for how the woman dressed when she wanted to impress clients and donors, and then spent some of her remaining money buying an interview outfit she thought Evelyn Ramsbottom would approve of.

Unlike Cocoa-Pie, Mrs. Ramsbottom wore a small pink scarf knotted at her throat. Cocoa-Pie had left that detail out on purpose. Mirroring someone too closely just made a person look like a creep or a weirdo—which Cocoa-Pie probably was by most standards—but she didn’t necessarily want other people to know that.

Mrs. Ramsbottom pushed her reading glasses up her nose as she stared at Cocoa-Pie like she was wondering where she’d come from.

“Right,” she sighed eventually. “Sorry about that. It’s been… a day.”

The office had only been open for about fifteen minutes, but Cocoa-Pie didn’t think she should mention that.

She curtsied instead, which was always a safe maneuver. “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, no,” the satyress waved the question away like she was swatting a fly. “Nothing a nice cup of tea won’t fix. Cocoa-Pie, is it?” She glanced down at the clipboard Dotty was holding under her nose and peered at it through her glasses. “What a darling name.”

"Why, thank you ever so much, ma'am." Cocoa-Pie made her voice small and let one ear droop. "My mother named me for my great, great grandmother Cocoa-Pie, and it’s been an honor to call it my own."

She smiled even more sweetly as she lied.

Besides being a delicious dessert, Cocoa-Pie was the sort of name that made people drop their guards. Relax. Open their minds.

She sensed Evelyn Ramsbottom warming towards her already.

The drooping ear had been a nice touch. She’d have to remember that one.

The satyress’s mouth softened. “Come along then. My office is in the back. Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”

Mrs. Ramsbottom’s dainty hooves clip-clopped down the hallway as she led Cocoa-Pie deeper into the building. For an older woman, the satyress had a remarkably pert bottom and shapely calves. Her tail twitched when she walked with a mind of its own. She wasn’t very large, but still Cocoa-Pie had to take two steps for every one of the satyress’s.

“Here we are,” Mrs. Ramsbottom said, holding open the door to a small, tidy office. “Please have a seat. Do you take milk and sugar in your tea?”

“Cream if you have it,” Cocoa-Pie said. “And lots and lots of sugar. Can’t be too sweet, if you ask me!”

There was a small snack station tucked into one corner with an electric kettle, a few different varieties of tea, and a little basket with packaged treats from various monster-kin home worlds.

As Mrs. Ramsbottom prepared their drinks, they chatted.

The satyress asked perfectly ordinary questions and Cocoa-Pie gave perfectly ordinary answers, using her magic to sense whether or not her lies were being detected. Yes, she was from Valestria. No, she had no family here. Yes, she was small for her race. No, she wasn’t picky about work. Yes, she’d clean anything, and she was ever so much stronger than she looked.

Cocoa-Pie lifted her chin when she said that part, putting every ounce of earnestness into the words as she could muster. There was nothing quite so harmless as a little girl insisting she was a tough cookie. Just you watch!

Mrs. Ramsbottom smiled, right on cue. Nothing about her aura indicated she had any suspicions about Cocoa-Pie’s true nature, even if she did have her doubts about how useful the miniature pony-girl might be.

"You understand what we do here, dear." The satyress took off her glasses. "The agency."

"You find girls like me nice homes to work in." Cocoa-Pie folded her hands in her lap and crossed her hooves beneath the chair. "So we don't have to—" She let it stop there. “You know…”

She looked at the floor and let the satyress finish the sentence in her own head. This trick always ensured a person filled in the blank with their own personal fear. It was always much more effective than anything Cocoa-Pie could come up with on her own.

It worked.

She could feel the sympathy radiating off Mrs. Ramsbottom in waves. Despite her exasperation with the elf, Cocoa-Pie was surprised to find the satyress genuinely cared about the girls of Maid for You, which made her feel a little teensy bit guilty about all the lying she was doing.

But it couldn’t be helped. She needed work and a place to live. The Department of Interportal Immigration was getting a lot more aggressive in their search for dangerous monster-kin, and the last thing Cocoa-Pie needed was to get caught in one of their sweeps.

An unemployed, homeless monster-kin was a liability, and liabilities got shunted over to the Department of Magical Regulation for “suitability interviews.” She wasn’t exactly sure what that entailed, but the rumor on the street was that these interviews could reveal all a monster’s hidden sins.

The sins Cocoa-Pie was hiding needed to stay hidden. Not that she had done anything all that bad. Her greatest secret was her potential to sin. But she doubted DIPI or the DMR were going to see it that way.

Mrs. Ramsbottom reached across the desk and patted Cocoa-Pie's arm with a dry hand. "You poor thing," she said. "You've come to the right place. I was not so different from you, once, if you can believe it."

Cocoa-Pie made her eyes shine with tears. “Really?”

The satyress told her about how she had clawed her way out of a bad place and spent all her time since pulling other girls out after her. She was a woman with a very large, very soft, very unguarded heart.

Unguarded hearts just happened to be Cocoa-Pie's favorite kind, for reasons that DIPI would object to.

But there was something in the woman’s demeanor that made Cocoa-Pie tense. A snag in the plan. She sipped her sugary, creamy tea and tried to keep her expression as sweet and innocent as she could.

"Now, I think you’d do quite nicely here, as a maid,” the satyress was saying as she turned a form over on her desk. Cocoa-Pie tried to keep listening through the buzz of other emotions coming off the woman. “But you know, many of our clients aren’t just looking for maids. They’re looking for… more.”

Cocoa-Pie blinked at her in surprise. She had heard rumors about some of the maids from this company hooking up with their clients, but she didn’t think the owner was actively recruiting them for that purpose. Had she made a mistake? Was this some kind of undercover prostitution ring?

“Umm, what do you mean by more, Mrs. Ramsbottom?”

The satyress sighed and took a long sip from her mug, then set it down and took off her glasses. She rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“I'll be honest with you, dear, you seem to be a sensible girl. Our clients do like a certain type of monster-girl. The elves do very well—Even Trixala would eventually find a place if I wasn’t so embarrassed to recommend her again. Cat-girls are popular. People want exotic, but they want it—" She waved the glasses between them. “—subtle. The kind you can hide if necessary. Do you understand?”

Cocoa-pie was pretty sure she did, but it was probably better to maintain the dim and innocent act. “No,” she said with an embarrassed shrug. “Not really, ma’am.”

“We have a strong track record of our maids marrying their clients,” the woman continued. “And as marriage to a human is one of the safest ways for a monster-girl to get by in New Justice City, it’s not something we ever discourage, if the romantic feelings are mutual. But there are regrettably many maids who remain ‘dirty little secrets.’ I do warn the girls not to give away the goods if they aren’t certain of the man’s affections, but… young love rarely sees sense. Well, what I’m trying to say, dear, is… you are a lovely little thing, truly. But you are rather more, hmm, unsubtle if you know what I mean."

A burst of relief like fizzy cream soda flooded through Cocoa-Pie’s limbs. She’d started to worry that the satyress had sensed that she was not what she pretended to be. But she was just worried that Cocoa-Pie was hunting for a man.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said quickly. She wriggled to the edge of her seat and looked up at the woman with big, innocent eyes. “I’m not looking for that sort of placement, Mrs. Ramsbottom. Oh, goodness me, no. I only want to clean, I promise. I want somewhere safe and quiet to live. Surely you must have some clients who aren’t… you know…” She made herself blush as she whispered behind her hand, “perverts. There must be somewhere I can be useful. That’s all a girl like me wants, ma’am.”

A flicker of doubt came off the satyress, an edge of distrust, as if she’d pushed too far. Some deep, primal instinct had looked at the sweet, bubbly pony-girl and felt, for a moment, that something didn’t add up.

Cocoa-Pie sat very still, deep inside herself, her big eyes fixed on Mrs. Ramsbottom as she tried extra hard not to think about the man from the pharmacy.

A placement with him would be a dream, even if she was just a dirty little secret. 

She could fix this. It would be nothing at all to ease the woman’s fear back inside her head, like a bad dream forgotten upon waking.

But she couldn’t risk it. Evelyn Ramsbottom was not a silly front desk bimbo. She had a dark past. She would recognize if her emotions were being manipulated, which would only make it worse.

Not just for the interview, but for afterward too.

Because dangerous monster-kin didn’t just scare humans. Lots of monster-kin resented humans, too, for making life more difficult for the rest of them. There was a very good chance that if she failed this interview by letting the satyress catch a whiff of her power, that she would be in DIPI’s hands by that night.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing, about Cocoa-Pie that looked dangerous. The thought was laughable, and she knew it. If she kept her magic tight inside her chest, she’d be just fine.

Cocoa-Pie smiled with her whole cherub-cheeked face and waited for Mrs. Ramsbottom to talk herself out of her doubts honestly.

It didn’t take long.

"Well." The satyress rubbed the little nub of one horn between two fingers. "I do have a soft spot for the ones nobody else knows what to do with. Always have.”

“You do, Mrs. Ramsbottom?”

“It's a terrible character flaw. Gets me in trouble more often than not. My hair used to be the loveliest shade of auburn, you know, until you girls started painting me gray." She sighed. "We'll get you trained up, Cocoa-Pie.”

“Really?” Cocoa-Pie’s whole face lit up, and this time her smile was as genuine as her love of chocolate. She hopped down from the chair and her hooves clapped against the tiles. “You mean it, Mrs. Ramsbottom?”

“You can call me Evelyn, dear.” The woman’s horizontal pupils widened in her golden eyes as she relaxed into her decision. “And you’ll have room and board in the meantime, so even if we don’t find an immediate placement for you, it will keep you off the streets. Actually, Trixala’s roommate was just hired on at the Mayor’s house, so you can bunk with her. Never mind what I said about her earlier, she’s a very kind girl, and quiet as a mouse.” She smiled. "Though I'll warn you, it may be a bit of a wait until we find a suitable client for you. The rumor mill in New Justice City seems to have changed the demographic of our customers recently. For all the anti-monster sentiments you read about in the papers, it seems that behind closed doors most humans are more… monster-curious… than they let on.”

Cocoa-Pie didn’t care about that. She didn’t care if it took years to find her a placement. She’d survived the weeks since she’d snuck through the Darklands portal by using her magic to cheat at card games in seedy bars and buy rooms in seedier hotels. And she was already getting enough of a reputation that no one wanted to let her play cards anymore. The money was drying up, and she did not want to end up on the streets.

She could take care of herself, that wasn’t the problem. But the way she took care of herself would buy her a first-class ticket to Deportation-Ville.

“Oh, thank you so much, Mrs. Ramsbottom!” She squealed and stomped her hooves in excitement, purposefully ignoring the satyress’s invitation to call her by her given name. “I’ll work extra hard around here to make sure I earn my keep, so even if it takes forever for you to find me a home, you won’t regret it! I’ll even… I’ll even fix your vacuum cleaner!”

Mrs. Ramsbottom’s thin eyebrows shot up into her graying hair. “Do you know how to repair appliances?”

“Nope!” Cocoa-Pie said cheerfully. “But I bet I can learn. And if I can’t… well, at least I can clean it, so you don’t pay an extra fee when you take it in to be repaired by a professional.”

The satyress smiled again, wider this time, and rubbed her horn. It reminded Cocoa-Pie of the way some people rubbed stones or statues for good luck. She noticed the horn was smoother on one side than the other, and she wondered if that was how it got that way.

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Cocoa-Pie,” Mrs. Ramsbottom said. “Maybe you can find Trixala and get her to help you.”

Cocoa-Pie brightened at that. She wanted to meet this new roommate of hers, and get a sense for what she was dealing with. Some monster types were more sensitive to her kind of magic than others and elves could be a mixed bag. She wouldn’t want to slip up and give herself away by being careless.

“Oh, sure!” she said. “She might be less likely to make a mistake like that if she’s responsible for cleaning up after it.”

“A nice thought, but I won’t hold my breath,” the satyress said, stepping around the desk and clip-clopping efficiently out the door. “Come with me. I believe the poor girl’s having a sulk out back. I know I should apologize for the way I spoke to her earlier, but I think I’ll let her sit with it for a little while longer. She’s gotten so careless lately! Anyway, I’ll take you there.”

Cocoa-Pie moved as quickly as her little legs would carry her, her hooves making a double echo behind Mrs. Ramsbottom’s as she followed. She could feel her long tail swishing back and forth behind her as she trotted along. This had gone so much better than she’d hoped for. She didn’t want to mess anything up now!

The satyress stopped in front of a dented metal door that seemed to lead outside.

“This will take you to the alley,” Mrs. Ramsbottom said. She used one of her hooves to drag over a doorstop that had been resting against the wall. “Prop open the door when you go out. She’s usually weeping by the dumpster when I come looking for her. I’ll go make sure we’ve got a uniform in your size and have it brought to your room this evening. You’re… er… rather well-endowed for a woman of your stature, so I might have to have one of the girls do some alterations. But Sylvia is quite adept with a sewing machine, so we’ll get it sorted.”

“Thank you ever so much, Mrs. Ramsbottom,” Cocoa-Pie said with sugar dripping from every syllable. “I just know I’m going to be so happy here!”

The satyress sighed. “I hope so, dear. I hope so. Welcome to the team.”

***

Cocoa-Pie propped the dented door with the stopper, the way Mrs. Ramsbottom had shown her. The alley smelled like a dumpster that had died and come back as a zombie. She stepped out into the gap between the buildings and let her eyes adjust to the dim light.

A strip of gray sky ran overhead in the narrow gap between the brick walls. Below it, a row of silver metal trash bins had been lined against one wall, and on the other a green dumpster sat against the brick with its lid up. A slimy, dark stain leaked out from under it toward the drain.

Someone had spray-painted the wall with great dripping red letters that screamed: “MONSTERS OUT.” But someone else had put a line through “OUT” and written “FOREVER” underneath in pretty, looping silver script. The silver tagger was obviously more skilled at their art, and Cocoa-Pie found their message much more agreeable. “MONSTERS FOREVER.”

She hadn’t had more than a handful of encounters with humans since she’d snuck into New Justice City, and she wasn’t sure she liked them all that much—handsome hunk from the apothecary not included. It was the biggest qualm she had about working at Maid For You. But Mrs. Ramsbottom seemed so certain that not only were they not all bad, that some of them were good enough that the girls wanted to marry them.

She found that hard to understand, but she needed the job enough to pretend for a little while. Cocoa-Pie was good at pretending.

These humans who were good enough to marry were obviously not the same sort who snuck into Havenseed Heights to vandalize back alleys. If she ended up working for the wrong sort, she could always quit. If Mrs. Ramsbottom’s heart was soft and squishy enough to give the incompetent elf multiple second chances, Cocoa-Pie could probably get one or two.

She had arrived at Maid For You early that morning, and through the mouth of the alley, across the narrow street, she could see a few shops that were just waking up for the day.

A pawn shop grille rattled half open and stayed there. An elderly goblin man dragged a ragged-looking lawn chair out front and lit up a cigar. The proprietor, she guessed. That probably worked as well as any “Open” sign.

Steam seeped out of a vent on the front of an oni noodle place next door. Her tummy rumbled. The smell of noodles made her think of all the sweet dumplings and pastries that could be ordered for dessert. She had just enough money left over from her last win at the card table that she could probably afford a dozen of them, even after the candy binge.

But before she snuck away to satisfy her ever hungry sweet tooth, she should probably do what she’d said she was going to do and find this sappy, weeping elf.

Cocoa-Pie’s hooves made almost no sound on the wet concrete. That was the nice thing about being small. She could tiptoe with the best rogues, and most people forgot to look down.

She sent her magical senses out to probe the air around the dumpster, seeking the deep reverberations of remorse. Nothing.

She perked her ears to listen, but she couldn’t hear the sound of anyone crying, either.

Cocoa-Pie stomped a tiny hoof on the pavement, not loud enough to give herself away but enough to vent a little irritation. She had come out ready to be very kind and very useful and, hopefully, to get a good sense of what this elf-girl was made of—magically speaking.

This part was not supposed to be difficult!

She crept forward until she could see Trixala’s hiding place behind the dumpster. The elf sat on an overturned milk crate with her back against the brick, one slender leg folded over the other. She snapped a piece of gum between her teeth and stared at her phone.

With her white-blonde hair, pointed ears, and waif-like build, she could have been fifteen or a hundred and fifty. Cocoa-Pie never knew how to tell with elves. She was almost as small as Cocoa-Pie, though, without the triple order of curves.

The girl’s phone glowed in both hands, and her thumbs moved fast. Whatever was on the screen tugged the corner of her mouth up. Not a tear in sight.

Well, well.

Cocoa-Pie reached out with the softest edge of her magic, just a feather of it, and had a taste. It was much easier to sense a subject when she had them in her sights.

But still, there was nothing weepy about the elf at all.

What came off Trixala was hot and layered like one of those coffee drinks Cocoa-Pie couldn’t stand. Boredom swirled with something sly and slightly pleased. But underneath that, down where even the elf probably didn’t look very often, there was a bright red seam of pure rage. It sat there and glowed like an ember from the planes of Hell.

Now that was interesting.

Most people were one flavor all the way through, variations on a theme, like boring, bored Dotty. This one was a mess.

Cocoa-Pie’s hoof scraped a pebble. Darkness and curses!

Trixala’s head snapped up. The phone vanished up her sleeve or into a pocket. Cocoa-Pie couldn’t tell, it had happened so fast.

Then the elf’s face crumpled like wet paper. Her chin wobbled. Two fat tears welled up and spilled over, right on cue. It was such good work that Cocoa-Pie wanted to applaud. If she hadn’t been spying on the girl first, even she might have been convinced without magic to see through the charade.

“W-who are you?” Trixala said, in a small, trembling little voice.

Oh, wonderful, Cocoa-Pie thought. We’re going to get along like runes carved of the same stone.

She made her own eyes go round and worried and hurried over, hooves clopping.

“Oh, don’t cry, miss! I’m Cocoa-Pie. Mrs. Ramsbottom hired me on, just this morning, and sent me to find you.” She clasped her hands under her chin. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

The tears stopped like a tap turning off. Trixala sat up, suddenly ramrod straight. “You’re a new maid?”

“Mm-hm!”

“She’s going to fire me? Is that what this is?” The elf’s voice cracked, the rage-coal flared, and a cold drop of real dread poured out under it. “She could at least have the decency to do it herself—”

“Oh! No, no.” Cocoa-Pie waved both hands. “Goodness, no. She said I’m to bunk with you. I’m your new roommate! Isn’t that great?”

Relief and disappointment came off her together, like she couldn’t decide which way to feel. But it didn’t take long for both emotions to flatten under a heavy blanket of resignation.

“Oh, right.” Trixala said. “That’s good, I guess.”

She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Now that the crying was done, she stopped bothering to keep her voice small. She looked Cocoa-Pie up and down—all four feet of her, the hooves, the silver mane, the tail—and she narrowed her eyes in a sly, assessing sort of way.

That was just fine. Cocoa-Pie could assess her right back.

But Trixala didn’t seem to be using any kind of magic on her. In fact, other than when she let her emotions slip, there was a bubble of dull air around the elf that Cocoa-Pie had only experienced around non-magical races.

Elves were supposed to be the prize placements, all grace, good looks, and clever fingers. But whatever magic Trixala had, she kept it banked low. Maybe Mrs. Ramsbottom was right, and she was just a dud.

Which meant Cocoa-Pie could afford to be curious.

“Can I ask you something?” She kept her eyes round and guileless, just in case, so she could pass the question off innocently if she had to. “Why are you out here pretending to be upset if you don’t care about this job?”

Trixala froze mid-chew. For a second the stricken face came back as she reached for the tears. But something in Cocoa-Pie’s expression must have made her realize there was no point. Either she was too innocent or too stupid to be worth faking tears for. She slowly pressed her tongue forward through the gum until it snapped, and just like that the act dropped.

The elf looked at Cocoa-Pie with a flat, dry, grown-up expression.

“You’ll understand soon enough.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Once you get a placement.”

“You don’t like being a maid?”

The elf shrugged one shoulder. “I thought I would. My first house, I did like it. At first.” The rage-seam pulsed. “I even thought I was in love for a little while. But it turns out human men only use girls like us until they find something better. The whole time he was making me believe he loved me back, he was dating some human bitch on the sly. They got engaged and I got fired.” She snapped her dainty fingers with a bone-cracking sound. “After that, I haven’t been particularly good at pretending I don’t hate them.”

“Your employers?”

“Humans.” Trixala said with a snort. “And I stopped trying. It’s easier to break the vacuum and burn the soup so old Ramsbottom stops sending me out.” She flicked her eyes up at the strip of sky. “Though I’ve been pushing it lately. She’s getting cross now.”

Cocoa-Pie sensed the cold flicker of dread under the elf woman’s cool façade again.

Trixala shook it off and gave another shrug. “I should be more careful, I guess. It’s not exactly safe out there. On the streets.” She snapped the gum. “You wouldn’t—”

Her eyes went to Cocoa-Pie’s mane and the words died on her lips. Her icy blue eyes sharpened as she peered at Cocoa-Pie like she was pulling back her skin and looking at the bright red muscles and blue twisting veins beneath.

Cocoa-Pie froze, keeping her magic held in a tight little ball, as small as she could make it. She mustered up her most innocent giggle. “I wouldn’t what?”

“You’re not—” Trixala started again. Then she shook her head and laughed at herself. “No. Never mind. That’s ridiculous. Where are you from, pony-girl?”

“Valestria!” The answer came as sweet and easy as a stick of cotton candy. She swung her tail. “Same as my mama, and her mama before her. If I ever have children, they’ll be the first ones who can’t say that, as a matter of fact.”

She let her ears droop like the thought made her sad, but she watched Trixala like a hawk, her heart practically vibrating right out of her chest. What in the Hell Planes had she done to make the elf suspicious?

But Trixala’s shoulders dropped as she relaxed.

“I thought so.” She turned the phone over in her fingers, not looking at it. “It really is dangerous, though. I’m not just saying that. There’s been a rash of illegal entries lately—hostile realms, the bad ones. That makes things dangerous for all of us. I’ve heard DIPI’s got some secret task force running around Havenseed Heights looking for them.” She lowered her voice, and the sly delight crept back. “I heard a Nightmare came through a few months ago. A real one. How does that even happen? Aren’t there supposed to be wards on the portals?”

“A Nightmare,” Cocoa-Pie shivered. The tremble of fear in her voice was real. “Golly…”

The elf held up her phone and wiggled it back and forth in the air between them, like it held all the answers.

“They put a bulletin out and everything.” Trixala grinned, friendly now as the two of them cozied up over the delicious horror of it. “For a second when you came out that door, I thought—” She giggled behind her hand. “I thought you might be one.”

Cocoa-Pie let her jaw drop. “You thought I was a Nightmare?”

“Obviously not now.” Trixala looked her up and down, seeming to encompass Cocoa-Pie’s essence from her chubby, dimpled cheeks to her freshly polished hooves in that one sweeping glance. “Nightmares are terrifying. Everyone knows that. And look at you. You’re like… something off a kid’s birthday cake.” She popped the gum. “It’s just, the bulletin said to watch for pony-kin with unusual coloring. And you have that dusky sort of skin and silver hair. So, for a second…”

Cocoa-Pie felt like someone had stuffed her into a deep freeze next to the popsicles. She shivered despite herself.

She hadn’t heard a whisper of this bulletin in the bars, card rooms, and hotels she’d been hiding out in. But here it was on this dumpster-diving elf’s gossip phone like everyone and their grandmother had heard of it.

She’d been walking around the city for weeks, feeling perfectly safe, because her Nightmare bloodline was buried deep, deep inside. But she didn’t look anything like a Nightmare, obviously. Except maybe for her coloring. But who had ever heard of a Nightmare the size of a… well, to borrow the elf’s rude words, a cake decoration?

Now she really needed this job. She could not be wandering around New Justice City looking like the fun-sized edition of DIPI’s Most Wanted!

Darkness, was she going to have to dye her pretty silver hair? No… that might look suspicious.

Damn it, what was she going to do?

 The rush of panicked thoughts ran through her in the time it took to blink, and just as quickly she had her runaway emotions under control.

She rolled her eyes and laughed, high and silly, and pressed a hand to her chest. “Me! A Nightmare! Golly, can you imagine? I scream when I see spiders.” She hopped in the air and clicked her hooves together. “Now come on, Trixi! Can I call you Trixi? Mrs. Ramsbottom made me promise we’d fix that vacuum cleaner you murdered, and I always try to keep my promises, at least on my first day.”

Trixala groaned and tipped her head back against the brick. “I didn’t murder it. I just… sent it to a better place.”

“Up.” Cocoa-Pie tugged her sleeve, all sunshine now. “I don’t want to be stuck on the streets any more than you do, not with a Nightmare running loose. So, we’ll be good and clever so we can keep our beds and not have to sleep behind this dumpster. Come on. I’ll help!”

That got a real laugh out of the elf, rather than the bitter one from before. “What do you know about fixing vacuum cleaners, anyway?”

“Never mind that,” Cocoa-Pie chirped cheerfully. “If we put our heads together, I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

“I suspect if we put our heads together all we’re going to get is a headache,” Trixala said as she unfolded herself off the crate. “But fine. Lead the way.”

Cocoa-Pie crossed her arms and gave the elf the same up and down assessment Trixala had given her. “Excuse me. Who are you to call anyone a cake decoration, by the way? You’re not that much taller than I am!”

“If I’m a cake decoration, that makes you fit for a cupcake.”

“Well, I happen to like cupcakes,” Cocoa-Pie said. “So there.”

Trixala grinned. “So do I. And… you can call me Trixi if you like.”

“Oh. Well. Good.”

“Lead on, Little Nightmare,” the elf said. “But I’m not touching the stupid vacuum. You want to be the appliance genius, you take all the credit. I’m not doing one more thing to make that woman think I’m worth placing.”

“Whatever you say, Trixi,” Cocoa-Pie sang as she trotted back toward the dented metal door. “But please. Do not call me Little Nightmare. The last thing any of us need is to get DIPI’s attention over nothing. You know how easy it is to start rumors in this town.”

Trixala’s face darkened suddenly. “Yeah. I do.”

The elf went in first, and Cocoa-Pie followed, her heart practically leaping in her throat. It didn’t settle down until the door had closed behind them, and she was safely encased inside the building once more.

She’d had no idea how close she’d come to capture.

Apparently, today was her lucky day.