Ophilia sat at Micah's old, worn desk. She focused on the smells that permeated the room, the smell of leather, of paper, of varnished wood. The faintest hint of his cologne drifted through the air. The room smelled of him, and she reveled in it. It comforted her, made her feel at home. She felt like she could drift off to sleep, a feeling she normally only had when she was in his arms.

But she had work to do tonight. Some of it needed to be done urgently, like her need for new studs. She fired up Micah's computer and played with his desk toys while she waited for it to come to life. A pair of snow globes took pride of place; one from their wedding in Scotland, the other from their honeymoon in San Francisco. The one from San Francisco was an antique, the dome real glass, the flakes of snow made of tiny flakes of metal. In contrast, the one from Scotland wasn't glass or metal; it was enchanted ice, and the snow inside swirled for hours after it was shaken. Sometimes it swirled without being shaken. It had been a present from her mother, and to this day Phil wasn't sure whether it was alcohol, water, or something unspeakable beneath the surface of the ice.

To one side of the snow globes stood a miniature pool table Phil had given him for their tenth anniversary. Unlike the ones you'd see in a catalogue, pixies had made this one by hand, and the difference showed. She played for a while as the computer ran through an antivirus scan. Micah didn't use his desktop machine much anymore, preferring the convenience of his smart phone. She looked over the last two items on the desk; a pair of paperweights, one made of petrified wood and the other made of amber. She'd given him the wood on their fiftieth anniversary and the amber on their seventy fifth. A pair of insects had been captured in the amber; their embrace preserved for all eternity.

Phil remembered how he'd joked with her when she'd given him each of the items. Just as the computer chimed its readiness to work, she had the same realization she'd had every time she worked at Micah's desk. Everything atop it related to work or to her. That was Micah; his world started with Art and ended with her, and precious little else interfered.

She thought about that as she fired off a quick email to her jeweler, asking him for another three sets of her special studs. She printed out a shipping label to send her corroded jewelry to be recycled and paid for both the order and the shipping. After her purchases she checked her bank account. It was nearly empty. Her mother would be livid; she expected Phil to live like the princess she was, not to be checking her purse after every purchase, worried that she might not have enough money to pay for food.

The museum accounts were in good shape; they'd received more than the usual amount of donations this month. That meant Micah and Phil could afford to pay themselves, which meant they could afford to go shopping. For just a moment, she indulged in fantasies of waltzing down South Street with a purse full of cash, a fat debit card, and Micah to tote her purchases home.

The thought of Micah reminded her of the smell in the room. She inhaled deeply, the scent rolling through her in a wave, sending tingles along every inch of her skin. She savored the subtle undertones in it, the earthy pull of the musk in his cologne, the intoxicating headiness of the varnish in the wood, the savory smell of tanned skin in the leather, the faintest hint of the maddening delicious aroma of fear in his sweat. Her emotions hit her like a tsunami, obliterating her ability to think clearly, or even at all. She nearly lost herself entirely, carried away by a river of emotion, but for one small detail that snagged at her like a submerged log, yanking her up short and catching at her gut like a broken branch.

Maddening delicious aroma of fear?

In that instant, multiple realizations struck her with enough force to leave her blind, deaf, and shaking on the floor. The first, that the faintest scent of her beloved's fear had roused both irresistible fury and insatiable lust the moment she smelled it. The second, that unearthly green witch light bathed the room, the third her tattoos floated half an inch over her skin, and the final that her studs lay in fragments on the floor.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit."

Sightless, Phil scrabbled at the bottom drawer of Micah's desk. Since an invading demon turned her steel studs to pure silver years before, she secreted a number of small items around the museum for just such an occasion. She groped through the contents of the drawer, identifying each by feel. Micah’s gun case; rarely opened. A spare shirt neatly folded before she yanked it from the drawer. Two ties tidily rolled until she unrolled them to see if they were what she was looking for. Finally, stuck to the side of the drawer, she found her choker.

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The moment she pulled it out of the drawer, she could see again. Her vision blurred and someone had driven spikes through her eyes, but she could see. She had to yank hard. The studs were covered by some neodymium magnets Micah kept for pulling small nails, screws and nuts out of cracks and crevices. Her skin instantly flushed red wherever the studs or the magnets dragged across it. Even once the magnets and metal were past, the welts remained. She pulled the choker around her neck, closed the clasp...

And suddenly everything was normal. Phil's magic required the connection between her heart and mind be uninterrupted. Wearing the choker severed that mystical connection immediately and completely. Her heart still beat, but it no longer drove the reality warping power of the Morrigan through her.

Of course, her seeming was gone now, too. She was still recognizable. As a Sidhe she wasn't one of the grotesque Fae. She could even pass for a very skinny human if she wore a hat to cover her ears and sunglasses to cover her eyes. Her tattoos disguised how thin her frame was, so she didn't need to cover her arms and legs. Finally, until she took the collar off, she had to make damn sure not to bleed where anyone could see. Her godson told her that faerie blood had copper rather than iron, but all she knew was that when something ripped her seeming away, she bled an unhealthy green.

With a heartfelt sigh of mixed relief and frustration, she climbed painfully back into Micah's chair. Once she'd accustomed herself to the lack of magic enhancing the strength of her limbs, she went back to her jeweler's website and paid for the expedited delivery. She needed new studs, and she needed them fast.

With that, the third realization returned. Micah was afraid. Micah had been afraid long enough to mark the scent permanently in his sanctum, and she never noticed. She inhaled deeply. She still smelled the leather, the cologne, and even a bit of the varnish, but without the Morrigan's power overwhelming her, she couldn't smell her lovely Micah's fear. She thought about what might make him afraid.

It might be mortality. He'd thought for hundreds of years that he would live forever, and now he thought he might be dying. She sat there thinking about it, wondering what she could do to help him if that was the problem, but nothing came to mind. She was a true immortal; so long as she held her mother's power, she would live forever. Without power she was mortal; in fact, she would likely die of something like malnutrition in a few months.

She wasn't any more afraid of mortality than any other immortal. It terrified her in an abstract sort of way, but it seemed so unlikely that it would touch her that she couldn't work up a great deal of emotion about it. It wasn't like Micah to feel real fear over something so nebulous.

Phil needed to help him. She stared at his screensaver, a drifting pattern of fireworks, trying to figure out a way to get rid of the constant, nagging pain Micah felt, caused by the distant threat to the Art in the museum. The lights on the screen soothed, slowly and gently hypnotizing her.

She woke up staring at a darkened screen. An idea, half dream and half inspiration, drifted through her mind like a soap bubble. Before it could pop, she accessed her email and fired a message to DevA. DevA was a friend, a graphic artist who worked with computers a great deal. Before Phil could wake fully, a text message popped up on her screen.

"What's the issue, Philly?"

Phil smiled at DevA's use of her screen name. The artist knew her real name, but she never used it, even on official correspondence.

"I need to know if something is possible."

The response was immediate, "Anything's possible if you've got enough cash."

"Yeah, well. How much cash is 'enough' for a custom security system."

This time the response took longer. "Automated computer security is pretty cheap. Automated physical security? Not so much."

Ophilia typed her reply, then waited half a breath, staring at the screen, gathering her nerve before she hit 'send'. "How much to create a single automated system for computer and physical security for our museum?"

DevA didn't reply immediately. After about thirty seconds, Phil typed "Are you still there?". Before she could send the message, an alert popped up on Micah's computer. It closed before she could read more than the header, the name of the security package they'd purchased. Two more popped up, disappearing faster than the first. She tried to hit the 'send' button, but nothing happened. A few moments later, a text editing window opened by itself. A message appeared, character by character.

"Your comp sec kung fu is weak sauce. The suxx0rz can be replaced, physical security added, and all automated, but the price will not be small. - DevA"

The chat window opened again. A number hovered on the screen next to DevA's handle. Phil stared at it. It wasn't as large as the annual budget of the museum. It was very close, though. She thought about how long she and Micah had worked to purchase the museum, how long they'd lived there. This, in every important way, was home, their sanctum. If Micah could not feel safe here, it would, eventually, destroy him, whether he kept moving or not.

She typed her reply with one hand, the other already dialing the phone. "Can you stay connected? I need to talk with someone about financing."

"No problem. I'll be here."

As the phone rang in her ear, she typed in a question prompted by an errant thought. "I thought you said you were a graphic artist, not a security hacker."

The reply came after Phil spoke to a secretary, while she was holding for a decision maker. "I said I did graphic art. I didn't say I was a graphic artist."

That finely split hair weighed on Phil's mind as her phone clicked, and an old, familiar voice sounded over the line. "Yes, Sammy speaking."