“I really just thought you got new ink,” Rog said as he grabbed the last biscuit from the bag.
To my great pleasure, Mols rolled her eyes at him. “Of course she wouldn’t get new ink without telling me,” she said, thoroughly disgusted. “Use your head, Rog.” She handed me a packet of honey for my biscuit. “Gills are so unique,” she said, sounding unsure. “But I think it’s really hot that Justice got matching tats.”
He had, in fact, gotten a permanent set of new gills from our interaction with the merman. I wasn’t sure how he felt about the magical ink. I suspected he’d be thrilled with it the next time we had to do a job in Aqua. It was darned handy being able to breathe under water. On the other hand, I wondered what other magical surprises were waiting for me to discover them.
The woman who’d passed on her traveler magic to me had gotten a snoot-full of other magics from her own maker. A mix of powers that had been gained in illegal and unethical ways. She’d harmed a lot of innocent shifters in the process.
“So, everything was because the…Nessile?” Molly asked with a lift of her brows.
“Nessile,” I agreed.
“This Nessile thought you and your gills would be nice to have on the payroll?”
I laughed. “Payroll no. Servitude is more like what she had in mind.”
Molly said a word she rarely used, which started with a B. “All that devastation. You and Justice and Juggler nearly died. Several times. Humans died and were hurt. Rog and I suffered great discomfort.”
“Hey!” Rog objected. “I almost died too. I looked like a giant St Patricks’ Day sausage, remember?”
She nodded, unimpressed with the extent of his near-death experience.
“Rat men and horned bears died too,” Rog added.
Molly flipped a dismissive hand. “I didn’t say it was all bad.”
“Plus, you and I got some magical powers out of it,” her assistant said with a grin.
I slid him a shocked glance. “Wait, you don’t still…”
He performed a clumsy stab at the biscuit in my hand with a butter knife. The knife tumbled from his grip and clattered onto the desk where we were eating. Rog sighed.
I grinned. “That answers that question.” I looked at Molly. “You didn’t get any powers, right, Mols?”
My bestie suddenly found her biscuit very interesting.
“Mols?”
“Look at that bird,” she finally said.
Rog and I looked and she laughed. “Gets you every time.”
“In our defense,” I said, “The occasional bird does get into The Muddle.”
She snickered.
I decided it was time to change the subject. “I love the changes to the store, Mols.”
Her pretty features lit with pleasure. “I do too! Since I needed to spend money to repair the damages anyway, I figured I might as well update the place to match my brand while I was at it.”
“Matching her brand” translated to more recycled brick on the walls and floor, an expanded snack and juice bar, and several iconic urban features such as half of an old red truck and an antique sports car set into an area made to look like a city street. There was also a jungle area filled to the brim with tall palms and oversized concrete planters filled with flowers. The new beach area featured an entire wall painted like the ocean, as well as an enormous sand box where Molly planned to have all her beach and sun-wear displayed.
“The features will allow me to hold more photo shoots in the store instead of traveling to expensive locations.” She shrugged. “It will save me a ton of money in the long run.”
I was happy she’d once again turned lemons into lemonade. Her customers, who were already rabid fans and longtime friends, would flock to the new store and spend twice as much time there just because it was their favorite place to be. However…and there was always a however with a job like mine…I still felt guilty for dragging them into the mess. “I love it.”
She narrowed her gaze on me, reading my body language as she always did. “Stop that. I’m not blaming you for what happened.”
“But it was my fault you were taken.”
She shook her head forcefully. “No, it wasn’t. It was the fault of a crazy sea horse who thought the world was hers to play with.”
Rog glared at me. “Well, I do blame you. Molly and I were nearly killed by those beasts. As it is, I’m still having nightmares about them.”
Molly rolled her eyes and I pressed my lips tight so I wouldn’t smile. I happened to know that Rog had the time of his life on his adventure, with the not-so-minor exception of the Nessile bite, the healing of which he mostly slept through. Also, as he loved to remind us, he came out of the experience with temporary but exciting magical powers from his healing. “You told Molly you had fun.”
He looked at Molly and frowned. “You told her that?”
Molly laughed. “Stop trying to make her feel bad. You loved having those kick-butt powers.”
He tried to frown but failed. “It was kind of cool. Maybe Fair would be willing to visit once in a while and pump me full of magic again.”
Okay, maybe he hadn’t slept through all of his healing.
Molly and I shared a look. I gave up trying not to grin. “I think that one over there, with the rope swing, would be perfect.”
Molly glanced toward the tree I was referencing. “Yep, that would work.”
Rog frowned. “What are you two talking about?”
“You need a tree,” Molly said, giving him a bright smile. For…”
We both sang, “Rog and Fair, sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”
As we laughed, he crossed skinny arms over his skinny chest. “Are you guys five years old?”
We laughed again.
I popped the last bite of biscuit into my mouth and ran a hand over the smooth, uncracked top of the desk. “This no longer looks like an alien pod,” I told my best friend. “How’d you fix it?”
She gave me a look. “You know I’m an engineering genius.”
“Unhn.” Molly could build the bejeezinx out of clothing, but she was even worse than Rog in assembling anything else. “Still. We kind of botched it irretrievably.”
“You certainly did,” she agreed unhappily. “It didn’t help that you took one of the pieces with you into the rat ship.”
I’d filled them in on what had happened as best I could. I figured I owed them that after what they’d gone through. They didn’t like that Molly had been a pawn in the Nessile’s crazy plans to force me into servitude, but it helped to understand why Molly had been taken and then basically just passed off to the strange, hermit-like sect of mole people. The Nessile had wanted to keep Molly out of sight for a while so she could keep using her as leverage against me. I had no doubt Elizabeth, my daughter, would have been next on the menu if the sea monster had needed more leverage against me.
“It’s a good thing I took it,” I told her. “It probably saved my life since I had no other weapons.”
She frowned. “You need to practice more. Justice is right, you’re not going to be safe until you have a better handle on your magic.”
I bit my tongue, wanting to throttle my partner for engaging Molly to help threaten and shame me into training harder. I wondered what she’d think if she learned that I might have other magics, like the fish magic that had unexpectedly given me gills. There were likely other magics I didn’t even know about yet that I’d need to train on too. “You don’t need to pile on,” I told her sourly. “I’m setting aside an hour every weekday and three hours on weekends to train.”
She nodded. “Okay, I have something I need to do.”
“Hold on,” Rog said, raising a hand. “I want the truth. How did you get this desk together? I know you couldn’t have salvaged the mess we left. Not by yourself.”
Molly gave us a wink and a secretive grin. “Maybe I did have help.”
Rog and I opened our mouths to argue with her. But we were distracted by a section of swirling air across the room.
My hand was on Rog’s dropped butter knife in the time it took me to rise to my feet.
In a blink, Juggler appeared and lifted a hand. “Hello, Fishcakes.” He frowned at the butter knife. “Am I in danger of being buttered to death?
I growled just a little bit. “Maybe. What are you doing here?”
He grinned, winking.
“You two can go home,” Molly said, striding toward Juggler with an extra sway in her hips. “I’ll see you on Monday.”
Rog and I watched Juggler drop an arm around her waist and touch his lips tenderly to her temple. The annoying assistant and I shared a look. Then, as one, we started forward. “Oh, no you don’t!” I yelled after the retreating pair.
“Overtime!” Rog yelled over me. “I have lots of paperwork to do, Mols. And I’m going to need your help.”
They kept walking.
“Wait,” I yelled. “You promised you’d help me plan the attack on the mole people and our rescue of the victims they’re draining.”
“Tomorrow,” Molly threw over her shoulder.
“But…” I yelled.
“Wait…” Rog exclaimed.
A happy snicker wafted back to us as Molly and Juggler waved goodbye, and then disappeared into thin air.
“Argh!” I screamed.
Rog put hands on hips and glared at me. “This is all your fault. What are you going to do about it?” he demanded.
My lips flapped for a beat as I tried to think. What could I do? Molly was a grown woman. Juggler was a… He was a flippin’ disaster. I turned on my heel and marched toward the door.
“Wait,” Rog said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I yanked the door open and turned. “I’m going to do the only thing I’m good at. I’m going to go buy some shoes.”
The End