Len pressed her fingers against her temples and rubbed them vigorously.

  "No, you can not just kill her, Cammie."

  "Why the hell not? She's been poisoning you. That's a blatant attack against you and, more importantly, me."

  Now that she'd had a moment to collect her thoughts, they were starting to come a little more clearly. She really couldn't say for certain if she even HAD been poisoned or if she'd simply had a bad reaction to consuming far more of a caffeine-adjacent beverage than she should have. Still, it had all felt so much more extreme than just a minor burst of counterproductive energy from a rush. No, something was definitely up and she'd need to look into it. For starters, she sighed regretfully, she'd need to cut back on the stuff.

  Whether it was active poisoning or not, the drink had definitely caused some bad effects. She hadn't even realized how bad it was getting until her minions literally pulled her out of space and time to address the issue. Not the most encouraging of signs. Worse yet, she had no real way of knowing if it was some sort of sabotage on Keris' part or not. Functionally, there was no real difference in behavior to observe from someone who was going out of their way to provide something that their employer had become desperately attached to and someone intentionally feeding an unhealthy substance to someone who didn't realize the dangers they were putting themselves in.

  It was an unpleasant feeling, pondering whether someone she'd felt she was making strides of growth with was actively trying to harm her or not. There wasn't any good to be had in dwelling on it but it did demand some pondering. The first issue was to deal with the poison in her system itself.

  "Hey Pitch, how does this place work, exactly?"

  "Exactly? Well, I'm not sure your brain could handle the technical details of it all, but you are removed from the world around you just enough that your time passes differently."

  "So, like, I'd still get hungry if I stayed here a while and didn't eat? My metabolism IS working?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, that's something that could really come in handy if I wanted to abuse it."

  "Now you're talking."

  "Relax, shade. I'm definitely NOT going to be doing that if I can help it, but I think it's probably best to spend some time here and let whatever this is get out of my system."

  "Whatever you say," the shade bowed in a mocking show of respect.

  Cammie sulked in the corner while waiting for the preferred amount of time to pass. The bitch of trying to tell if your own mind was still in a dangerous place or not was that it rarely FELT like you were teetering on the edge. You might feel drained or tired, but fully frantic, that was the sort of thing that only really hit you in the moment. Len had spent more than a few occasions in this weird timelock before and had gotten something of a feel for it at this point, it didn't actually make it any easier to just sit around.

  Pretty much any other time she'd been in this situation, things had felt more urgent, there was a battle to be won or a Pitch to berate. Now, all she had to do was sit and it was infuriating. On the bright side, she'd already learned that she could interact with the world around her. This made for some slightly awkward thoughts as she considered how she could use the ability to spy on others, slip into rooms unnoticed, steal documents, hell copy them and return them with no one the wiser. It was a profoundly broken power if she chose to use it.

  Except that it wasn't really HER power, was it? She might be able to blur the lines between her powers and Pitch's to a point, but she wasn't at all willing to accept that it was just something to be used on a whim. Still, if she was stuck like this indefinitely, might as well take advantage of it. She spent the next several... thinking on it, she realized that believing that she'd spent hours working wasn't an appropriate thought given that time and space around her was mostly at a standstill. Whatever, she spent the time it took her to recover from whatever was affecting her working through the remainder of the paperwork. It occurred to her that if she'd been using this ability, a lot of the labor over the past weeks would have proved much easier.

  Staring at the now fully completed stack of work, Len allowed herself a satisfied smile. She'd cheated to get through it but, for the first time in ages, she'd actually gotten all the work on her plate taken care of. She could lie down and go to sleep if she so desired. She probably shouldn't while she was in a realm that Pitch so thoroughly controlled, but it was still an option. Really, what surprised her the most was Cammie. The gremlin had been sulking in the corner for the entire affair of the work. Clearly, she'd gotten herself worked up to the idea of going on a relaxing adventure and Len had instead cast that aside entirely and spent even more time working.

  "Oh come now," Len said cheerily. "You can't be that upset that I won't let you murder a woman before you get at least some evidence to back things up."

  "No," the girl said sullenly.

  "Then what is it? Talk to me."

  "Oh for crying out loud," snapped Pitch. "Stop treating her like a child. Technically, I'm pretty sure that she's older than me and you sure as hell don't treat me with that kind of consideration."

  "What? Jealous?"

  It took Len a moment to realize that she and Cammie had said that in unison. The two looked at each other, blinked, then burst out laughing.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  "Oh yes, be insufferable together. It doesn't change how ludicrous this situation is."

  "Dude, every last thing about my life has been ludicrous lately. You can't expect me to behave as if THIS is the thing that's truly worthy of consideration for the absurdity hall of fame? I don't think I could stand the irony."

  "Nevertheless, it's ridiculous. You treat her like a friend and equal when you should be treating her like a servant or, at best, a pet."

  "Yeah... that ain't happening. For that matter, I don't treat her like a friend. I don't forget for a second that neither one of you is my friend. We're all just trying to do the bare minimum here to keep from destroying each other while circumstances continue to overtake us. At best, you're distractions from the other problems that are constantly coming my way. I sure as hell wouldn't mistake you for allies."

  "What are you talking about? Of course we're your allies. The closest ones you'll ever have."

  "Allies? You are a constant headache, quite often literally. How on earth can you imagine that any of that translates to ally?"

  "I have saved your life COUNTLESS times now," Pitch snapped. "My very existence is married to your own. I allow you to deal with things as your whims demand and you go and get yourself poisoned with something that threatened to drive you mad. Why in all of creation would I put up with that if not as an ally?"

  "Because it's fun," Len snapped back. "Don't think I've forgotten your nature. You made that very clear when first we met and every time since. Any time the game isn't going the way you want it to, you're more than happy to try to tilt the scales in a manner that's just slightly more amusing. You give me something, some little advantage that helps just enough to keep everything from collapsing around me, but then you make sure that I pay for it. Nothing is free, I've always known that, but the idea that you're in this for anything other than a laugh is a joke. I'm not even sure you'd care if you ceased to exist. And that's assuming I can trust your claims that we ARE bound together."

  The nice thing was that, even though her blood was boiling, she still felt the rational thought processes playing out in her head. Nothing going on here was being said in haste, she wasn't feeling that gnawing panic that she'd felt before. Pitch was a threat that she needed to bear in mind at all times and any conversation with him was a risk. She probably should make sure to see Cammie in that exact same light, but it was harder. A lot, Len admitted to herself, had to do with the form the lesser shade took. An adorable little girl that promised chaotic joy was objectively more fun to be around than an inky black something or its newly chosen sultry male model form.

  Len had to admit that it wasn't the greatest of looks to have that distinct reaction between the two, but... she just didn't trust Pitch at all. For all her foibles, Cammie was an easier read. The creature knew what she wanted and made those wants plain, often to the discomfort of the listener, but never masked with guile. Pitch, every time Pitch talked there was layers of meaning that had to be considered. She had no way to be sure if it ever directly lied, but it did obscure the truth quite readily. Its concern about her growing relationship with Cammie was particularly suspect but Len wasn't sure how to exploit that just yet, a question for later. For now, the big concern was whether or not she was still in control of the situation.

  "All right, I think that shit's out of my system one way or another. I'm not sure if it's this timelock you've had me in or the lack of chakkar, but I'm starting to get a hell of a headache, so let's just call it here, shall we?"

  "We haven't finished this conversation."

  "For today we have. I don't know what your game is, Pitch and for the moment I don't even care. I just want to be done with this. Come along, Cammie, we're going to go on that adventure you wanted so badly."

  "Really?" Cammie's eyes came alight. Len caught the rather petty smirk that the girl shot Pitch and felt a wave of seething anger from the shade. She liked that a bit more than she probably should have.

  "Do it, Pitch," she commanded.

  With a grunt of disgust and a flick of his wrist, the shade dispelled the magicks that kept them frozen in time and Len was suddenly hammered by a wave of exhaustion. While she'd been in the lock, she hadn't felt the 'time' that had passed. Now? It felt like she'd been awake for a full day working on that paperwork and the idea of going out was suddenly decidedly less appealing. Still, she had promised...

  "Oh, you're going out," Keris asked as Len barged out of the office.

  "For a bit, yeah. Need to get some air. Work's done for now, anyway."

  "How is that possible, we still had dozens of papers to go over."

  "Nah, I took care of it, trust me. Congrats, you're off the hook for the rest of the day."

  "Well, if you say so. Seems awfully unlikely to me. Did you just sign the things without looking? A terrible habit for a leader."

  "No, Mom, I swear I didn't pencil whip a single one. Not even the weirdly specific request for 137 rutabagas from that creepy farmer guy in the east quarter. It's all done and I want to go out on the town and get some food fer crying out loud. Go, do whatever it is you feel like doing and leave me be."

  Confused, but not noticeably offended, Keris nodded and left.