Of course, it hadn’t been Nocturne she should have been worried about.

Akemi typed back into the accomplice panel anxiously as she weaved through the city streets. Everything felt tight, cramped, closing in; her irritability grew as she pushed past slow-walking villagers, knocking over their baskets and ignoring their angry fist-waving.

Akemi: What do you mean, she knows? Knows what?

She spotted a figure in a black, moon-spotted robe traveling down the street toward her. A Shadow Auditor. She took a sharp turn, pressing herself to the cold stone of a nearby alleyway.

Bamo: I ran into her at the tavern. She noticed me, then… interrogated me. She wouldn’t let me go until I told her what I was doing there.

Akemi scowled, pressing her palm to forehead.

This was why it was better to do things yourself.

Akemi: Exactly how much did you tell her?

She hadn’t told Bamo why she was in the market for the spellbook, so at least there was that. But Teacher’s Pet Pyre knowing about the contents of the book was incriminating enough. She’d babble about it to Nocturne, and then the game was up.

Bamo: I told her I was buying it for myself. But then she could tell I was lying—again, I’m really bad at lying, my whole body starts cramping up, and my face gets super red—so eventually it slipped out that it was for you, not me.

Bamo: Please don’t hunt me down and kill me.

Akemi clenched and unclenched her fist. The thought was tempting.

But—whatever. There was no time for that now. She had to act quickly.

Before she could get caught up in the moment, she shot off a message to Pyre.

Akemi: Change of plans. I need to see you.

Pyre wrote back immediately, as if she had been waiting for Akemi to message her again.

Pyre: Oh yeah? And why’s that?

Akemi groaned, and broke away from the alleyway, trailing towards the tavern again.

Akemi: You know why. Meet me in the horse stalls in five minutes.

—

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should have known she’d be here. That she’d catch Bamo. It was so dumb to send him. I should have hired someone more anonymous. Someone she didn’t know. Or scoped the place out first and done it myself.

Akemi’s mind was cannibalizing itself as the seconds rolled on. She sat on the edge of the unkempt bed, leg bobbing anxiously as she watched the curtain. She had made sure to tell Pyre she was in stall number three. The same one as before.

The curtain whisked open.

Pyre stalked in, characteristically serious, but not frothing at the mouth by any means. She looked the same as usual, placidly annoyed, casually irritated.

The fire-haired woman noisily dragged a stool from the corner of the room and sat on it, facing Akemi.

“So,” she clapped her hands together, raising her eyebrows. “Why exactly are you wasting my time now, when we could be on our next mission already?”

Akemi’s leg stopped bobbing. She was startled, but hid it, keeping her face schooled.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Is she pretending not to know?

Has she already sold me out, and she’s just trying to get me to play along?

“Don’t play games with me,” Akemi said coldly. “Bamo. You ran into him here.”

Pyre nodded, narrowing her eyes in apparent confusion. “Yes, I did. Caught him trying to buy from a street magister. I’m amazed he’s not dead.”

There was something lightly accusatory in her tone. She clearly knew Akemi put him up to it.

“Please,” Akemi said, attempting to keep things light. “He’s a bat. They have nine lives.”

“Those are cats, idiot,” Pyre grumbled, taking the bait. “And I know you don’t care. The only reason you’re happy he’s alive is because he got what you asked him to get.”

Akemi glared. “So you do know.”

Pyre huffed. “Well, of course I do. Why else would a kid like that be in a place like this? Really, he should have just taken the money and ran. I know you wouldn’t have bothered to chase him down. You’re way too lazy for that,” Pyre rolled her eyes lightheartedly. “But regardless—look—I just wanted to tell you, you’re wasting your time. This plan of yours is never going to work.”

Akemi’s jaw clenched. In her head, she evaluated all the ways she could kill Pyre. She had a few levels on her, sure, but Akemi’s orb was disgustingly effective. And if that failed, a knife through the throat would work just the same—

“I saw it was a high-level Mindshaper book you got."

Akemi's gruesome thoughts paused.

Wait, what?

It was a spellbook from the Mindshield class, not Mindshaper. It had said so on the front.

"Inflict Mindshaping,” Pyre continued, crossing her arms. “Like, what kind of knockoff spell even is that? I've never heard of it. You probably got ripped off."

Pyre rolled her eyes. Akemi stared at her blankly.

"I’ve gotten to know you well enough by now. You’re obviously going to try and Influence Nocturne into giving you some absurd reward. Well, it's not going to work."

Akemi’s fingers uncurled. Her shoulders fell by an imperceptible amount.

She breathed out, all thoughts of murder evaporating.

She misread the spell title. And the class name.

Pyre. She has dyslexia.

The other woman had mentioned it to her while they were discussing Mind Paper. How it was easier for her to be the one writing than the one reading.

“Even if you do manage to roll a crazy good number and Influence him, he’d realize what you did once it wore off, and then he’d kill you,” Pyre said, leaning forward emphatically. “It’s a stupid plan. I honestly thought you were smarter than this.”

Akemi's instinct was to defend herself—but she paused.

Not the time.

Still, she couldn’t appear like a wet door mat. Pyre would notice. She concocted a quick lie to go along with Pyre's accusation.

“I am smarter than that,” she replied, folding her arms. “I wasn’t going to Influence him into giving me a reward. My plan was much simpler. I was going to Influence him into turning the other direction while I swiped something. It’d be so innocuous, just a little turn to the left, he wouldn’t even notice it was a spell making him do it.”

Persuasion Check (Medium)

Failed!

Pyre groaned. “Great. That’s an even stupider plan. What do you think life is, a cartoon?”

Akemi stifled a grin. It didn’t matter if she believed Akemi’s lie or her own confused theory. Both served her equally well. The stupider she thought Akemi was, the less likely she was to forewarn Nocturne about anything.

Pyre rose as the mirthling peeked his head in again. Their time was up.

“Trust me,” Pyre said, turning her head to look back at Akemi before reaching for the curtain. She pinned her with a serious glare. “Don’t try anything stupid. The reward we’ll get if we keep serving Nocturne will be worth more than anything you can dig up in his closet.”

She stepped through the curtain, and headed for the street.

—

There was no more procrastinating.

She had the spell, she had the potions, and Pyre was none the wiser.

Akemi headed for the chapel.

She drank all six of the mana potions before setting out, gulping them down in the coffeeshop bathroom. This variant of potion was long-lasting, so they would each up her mana pool for up to four hours, but they disabled mana regeneration while in effect.

Considering she only had to cast one spell, that would be no issue. All she had to account for was time—the time it took to walk there, the time it took for Nocturne to acknowledge her existence, and so on. Luckily, he did so fairly quickly, spotting her as she entered into the nave, and appearing out of thin air, looming darkly above her.

“Akemi,” he greeted. He sounded eager, to the degree that Nocturne could ever sound eager. “It’s good to see you. Pyre tells me the mission was a success.”

“Yep. Easy breezy,” she said, feeling uneasy under his mammoth shadow. She hadn’t expected him to approach her so quickly—she hadn’t had an opportunity to cast the spell yet. “I’m here to collect my rewards, but I need a quick run to the bathroom first. Care to point me towards one?”

He huffed, which to Nocturne, was practically a chuckle.

“Just around the corner, past the skeletons,” he said, gray eyes narrowing like a cat’s. “But do be hasty. I’m eager to hear about what you…” he paused, then loomed even closer, so she could feel his icy breath through his mask, “discovered.”

She met his gaze, staring at him straight on.

Game on, bitch.

She grinned.

“And I can’t wait to share it with you.”