As we fall in slightly behind the mech, my eyes meet Taka’s. He taunts me with a smile and a sarcastic wave, then completely ignores me and gets into a heated conversation with Ernest. The guy’s a certified dickhead, no two buts about it, but he seems like a normal kind of dickhead. Not in line with what I know HuSt can do.

“You’ve talked to everyone you said you wanted to, so where should we watch all this go down from?” Noland asks Gisela. “Or do you still think you have a chance at your initial goals?”

Gisela frowns at Gasp’s back, then shakes her head. “Even if we accomplish our goals, now we know the consequences of them. Which means I have to shift my priorities somewhat.”

She yanks my arm a little to get my attention and points off at a group of people. I follow her finger to the faraway forms of the friends we met an hour ago, along with a pretty big cluster of people I don’t recognize. Well, I sort of remember seeing them out of the corners of my eyes, but I didn’t try to commit their features to memory.

“Who’re they?”

“Politicians and corporate sponsors. My friends must have decided it isn’t worth gambling on the Preservation’s scraps.” Gisela explains with tense words. “That, or the group is everyone who wants to side with the Preservation and HuSt.”

“If it’s that, then you might need new friends.” I chuckle and start walking. “Noland, what’s our plan here? Are we going to do something?”

He nods curtly. “Of course we are. We can’t let the Preservation get too comfortable, and I just kind of despise HuSt with my entire being for what they did to Ursula. And the rest of the world, too, I guess.”

I find myself in complete agreement. “So what can we actually do?”

“Now that,” He barks a short laugh, “that is the part that I’m struggling with. Let Gisela talk to the big group and we’ll brainstorm some ideas.”

We approach the group, and the aura doesn’t change as we get close. I overhear more than a few arguments about coin distribution and magical regulation, but nobody’s devolved to screaming yet. Gisela glances back at me as she lets go of my arm, and I discreetly push a shield-filled coin into her palm. She barely looks down at it before she nods and dissolves into the group, joining the conversation like she’d been there all along.

“She sure is a social shapeshifter.” Noland notes as we get a good thirty feet away from the group. “How about here? Can you still feel Gisela in your awareness?”

‘Here’ is a little bit of shade underneath a tree with a loudspeaker and a cable stapled to it. I glance up at it suspiciously, unsure if it’s a listening device as well as a speaker, but Noland doesn’t seem to be worried at all.

“They can hear us anywhere we go. Except when I do this.” Noland taps my wrist, and once again, gold creeps up on me and time slows down. “Did you overhear when they’re going to be doing their ‘announcement’?”

I shake my head. “My awareness isn’t as good for sounds.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Really? You’ll have to work on that. Well, they said they’re getting things ready for fifteen minutes from now. I’m not stupid enough to think they have all the real documents and treaties here–they probably already signed them days ago–but we have to make it look like we stopped them from being signed. Sow a little bit of chaos before we do the real dirty work.”

Sounds good to me. “How’re we doing this?”

“That’s what we’re about to discuss. I’ll start; we expose Gasp’s mind manipulation and force Ernest’s hand. As long as he has to have her keep wiping people’s minds, we’ll buy enough time for people to start wondering what the hell is going on.”

I lean against the tree and click my tongue. “Not a bad idea, but what happens if the crowd doesn’t give a shit? Some people don’t care if they’re being lied to as long as the lie profits them.”

“Mind manipulation goes one step higher than lies, don’t you think?” Noland looks over his shoulder at the mech and grimaces. “Shit, you’ve got a point, though. Half the crowd or more probably knows what Gasp can do–they wouldn’t be ogling her if they had a real problem with it. Got a better idea?”

“Kill someone.” I say flatly. “Preferably Ernest or one of HuSt. That’d cause a mass panic.”

He snorts and shakes his head. “And turning whoever died into a martyr. Only way that’s going to work is if it looks like it's in self defence–and if Gasp is the one who dies. Anything else and they can twist the narrative into whatever they want. But I would like to rip Ava’s head from her shoulders for Ursula…”

The glint in his eye says he’s not joking. His fingers drumming against his arm while he stares at Ava says he wishes we could solve it that easily. She doesn’t even notice his gaze; she’s way too focused on keeping her fists balled in her pockets as she chats with someone from the Preservation. The predator… what’s his name…

I lick my lips as a horrible idea comes to me. “What if we’re not the ones doing the killing?”

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

Noland raises his eyebrows and motions for me to continue.

“Ava’s unstable. If we can get her to snap at someone important, that’ll break down the negotiations like nothing else.” I cross my arms and nod in her direction. “Do you know what sets her off?”

“Someone sneezing. A slight breeze. Existing.” Noland scoffs. “Honestly, I’m surprised she hasn’t punched someone else into a red mist. Someone must have told her to be on her best behavior. But… now that I think about it… why is she even here? HuSt has to have less volatile members at the ready.”

Huh. I hadn’t even thought of that. Taka was an ass, sure, but he didn’t seem unstable, and Zeze didn’t seem like the type to kill for no reason. So why the hell is Ava with them? Is there something important going on behind the scenes that we’re not seeing?

“I can think of a few options.” I say slowly, then meet eyes with Noland. “I’ll keep it short. One; they need her violence for some reason. Two; she has a personal connection we don’t know about. Three; they’re going to use her as a scapegoat to cement their bond. For two of those she knows what’s going on, and for three she’s in the dark.”

Noland nods absentmindedly. I can almost see the gears turning in his mind, and like a toy being wound, the sides of his mouth tense up into a sadistic grin.

“Hey, Shelby, you think we can convince her that number three’s true?”

An involuntary laugh bubbles out of my throat. “You think she’ll need convincing?”

He laughs right back and pats me on the shoulder. “Every day, I get a little happier that you managed to tame that coin. Wait until they’re up on the stage. I’ll go talk to the other two and make sure Ava isn’t involved. That’ll prime her for detonation. Think you can come up with a good enough spark for when she’s right next to Gasp up on stage?”

“Oh, hell yes.” I lower my arms and push off the tree. “This is going to be bad.”

Noland clicks his tongue and shoots me finger guns, then spins on his heel and beelines for the group. The gold washes away and slowed sounds return to normal as I lock eyes with Gisela, who must’ve been looking at me for god knows how long. I offer her a small wave and a nod, which she returns and goes right back to chatting with the group.

With slow steps and small strides, I make my way over to them while taking some time to think. The more I think about it, the more I think option three isn’t actually true. Ava’s too much of a risk–she could kill someone important before they subdued her. Which means either option one, two, or something I didn’t think of is the truth.

“I think she’s a victim.” Pearl says bluntly. “But she’s hyperfocusing on Gasp, not Phineas. Why would she… oh, Shelby!”

It comes to me the second Pearl realizes, too. But since I can’t talk, I just swallow hard and slightly nod my head.

Pearl crosses her arms and looks over her shoulder into the darkness. “What do you think, Fleur? Did Gasp manipulate someone really close to Ava, or is it something different?”

“I don’t know.” A soft, glassy voice rings through my ears. “I can’t see out of here, remember?”

My heart skips a beat with relief, and I have to force myself to keep from calling out Fleur’s name. Her voice sounds so much… smaller than before. Yet, somehow, it’s infinitely more… intense. Concentrated. But she’s alive. She’s talking.

A smile tugs at my lips, and I can feel my eyes starting to water. I carefully flick away the tears before they can ruin my makeup, then steel myself as I once more become Gisela’s bodyguard. She takes a slight step back and laces her arm through mine once more the moment I’m close enough.

Fleur quietly huffs. “Lucky woman.”

“Fleur!” Pearl hisses quietly. “Shelby can hear you now!”

“She… she can?” Fleur asks just as quietly, and more than a little embarrassed. “Could you please disregard my last comment? It is quite… embarrassing for me.”

My smile only grows as Fleur piles on excuses and reasons, and I can imagine her core glowing brighter and brighter with each one. Just hearing her voice was relief enough for me, but knowing that she doesn’t hate me for what I made her into fills my soul with happiness. I’m going to apologize to hell and back when we get back to the resort.

Pearl puts both her hands on an invisible person’s shoulders and sighs hard. “You’re just making it worse for yourself, Fleur. Wait a few hours and Shelby can talk back to you. Just a few more, okay?”

“Only a few more hours. I can endure for that long.” Fleur murmurs equally to Pearl and herself. “I have so much I want to tell her. So much I want to show her. I… she can still hear us right now.”

“Yes.” Pearl giggles. “And she’ll be able to hear everything you say until you learn to control it better.”

Ooh, did Fleur get something good out of the transition? I hope to hell that’s true; I cost her so much, she deserves to get something nice for the life-threatening trouble. Just as I’m starting to focus on their mundane conversation, Gisela tugs on my arm.

I look over at her and see an expectant expression. Whoops. “Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. Can you say it again?”

“They want to know where you got your tattoos done.” Gisela motions at my shark bites, then at a pair of burly guys with long beards and tattoos down both their arms. “The quality is apparently very good, and nothing like anything they’ve ever seen before.”

Oh. I shake my head and exhale with amusement. “Sorry, guys, but these aren’t tattoos. I actually got bit by a shark, and these are just some weird-ass scars from when the healed on the other world.”

The guy on the right frowns in disappointment, but the one on the left looks… inspired. Ah, shit, I hope I didn’t just put some very weird goals in his head. I blink the thought from my mind and lean in close to Gisela, which gets a… weirdly jealous noise out of Fleur. It’s freaking adorable.

“I need you to tell Ava something for me.”