For the first time in my life, I wished I was worse at math. It was an odd thing to want. I’d spent much of my life studying math since geometry was crucial to ritualcraft.

I’d considered before what my most valuable skill would be if I didn’t want to be a witch. What kind of mundane job could I get? All the answers I’d found related to that mathematical ability.

The calculations I was doing now to find the cosmic coordinates of the summoning ritual were time-consuming, but far too routine. They left far too much of my brain free to think.

When I’d gotten to the house, Margaret had asked why I was with that Felicity girl again. I had explained the need for a bodyguard and she’d accepted it. She even called the idea of using Felicity clever. I knew I never would’ve gotten away with it if she hadn’t used the curse on me earlier today. She always got more lenient for a while after that.

I’d pushed my luck, showing her the photos of the bindings I needed to identify. She’d promptly animated a book from her workshop into my hands, mildly berating me for not remembering the contents of a book I hadn’t read.

I didn’t use animation so casually, because I was at least an order of magnitude worse at spellcraft than Margaret. She hadn’t even needed the crutch of a gesture to do it. It was probably an intentional reminder, so I didn’t think to try using the book against her.

I now had the book, Crossplane Summonings by Illia Foucault, in my backpack. I planned to memorize as much of the book as I could in a day. I doubted I’d be allowed it for much longer.

When I put the book in my backpack, I noticed I still had two of Amy’s books. I took them out to keep them on a whim. I would eventually return them to the library, I wasn’t a monster, but I was somewhat curious about this person I never got to meet. Reading her books seemed like the best way to do that, but I had far more important tasks at the moment.

Which left me here at my desk with a scientific calculator, my math, and my thoughts.

Lily and Felicity took up most of my brain, of course. Just once, I’d like a problem that I agonized over to be something other than my hormones, but I doubted that would ever come to pass.

I wasn’t sure which was the easiest one to process. Felicity first, I decided on a whim. I’d met her first, a decade ago.

I still had feelings for her. Of course I did, we’d dated for half a year and I’d known her to some degree most of my life. All the best memories I had involved her. No amount of cutting away my own thoughts could stop the biochemistry happening in my brain.

Except every one of those happy memories was a lie. Felicity was a member of the Moonrise cult, using me to get information about Margaret. In some ways, it was horrifying to imagine little nine-year-old Felicity forced into engaging in spycraft. But when her target was little seven-year-old Claire, I couldn’t afford to consider that.

She’d already been wearing her glamour that first day we met. I had caught her following me and ambushed her at knifepoint, using the same pocket knife I would give her years later. Though it might be more accurate to say she’d taken the knife from me for my own good. I still couldn’t convince myself that was a purely calculated act.

So yes, today revealed quite thoroughly that avoiding her as much as I could for two years had done little to unwind her influence over me. Not that I’d successfully stayed away the whole time, of course. She always found ways to run into me, to remind me of how happy the lie had been.

I needed to be very careful not to fall back into old patterns. I’d asked her to meet me at the library without even considering if she was truly needed there.

The library led my thoughts to Lily. I allowed them to move to the new topic.

It had been two days. That was the craziest thing. My mind couldn’t possibly accept that it shouldn’t care about this person who it has known for so little time.

Margaret would be able to kill her without any hesitation. Margaret killed people whom she had worked closely with for longer than I’d been alive. Few witches make it even into their forties. Most were closer to my age than that. The fact that Margaret lived for over seventy years was a testament to her ruthlessness. It was how ruthless I would need to be.

Claire the Witch should be able to kill Lily. Maybe I should, just to prove to myself I could. I didn’t even have to get my hands dirty. I could simply tell Felicity that Lily’s protection had been revoked and she would remove her rival without me ever seeing. Felicity had done it before, after all.

Considering the conversation Lily had refused to tell me about, maybe Felicity had already done something. If so, then all this agonizing was for naught. I would be furious at Felicity and there would be no Lily to fret over. That would solve both of my problems simultaneously.

I wanted to move on from the thought process and leave it there on such a cruelly ironic note.

My mind, however, insisted on dragging up the memory of the lonely girl who had wanted to be in the library with me. In hindsight, that probably had more to do with the fact she was hearing voices, but at the same time she’d come to me instead of anyone else. It implied she didn’t think she had anyone else, a problem I was intimately familiar with.

She was the same girl who had learned I was a ‘wizard’ and in the space of a minute was convinced I would be able to save her. She had even helped me save her. If I had been the outsider’s target on my own, I would’ve died to it, spiraling into mania from the backlash of a basic ward.

Then I had made something far less basic, gone so far into backlash that I forgot I was human. I had a hazy memory of trying to kill something that was probably Lily. She’d also mentioned waking up at least once more than I could remember.

I was a paranoid lunatic pissing myself and Lily had gone, gotten me a change of clothes, and come back. She’d sat there talking me through my delusions for hours.

I had responded to this undeserved kindness by putting her life in more danger than she knew. Not even out of a calculated decision. Margaret had been right, I might have killed the only friend I had because of my weakness.

And even then, Lily had decided to comfort me. She’d practically tricked me into talking about the curse and then held me as if she understood how much I needed that in particular. That conversation was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in years and possibly the kindest thing done with honest intent for me ever.

Margaret had to die as soon as possible. I couldn’t let her hurt someone as kind as Lily. I’d had an inkling of an idea with this spider outsider. It was part of why I’d killed Nathan, because- no that was too dangerous a thought to allow consciously.

Lily might skip town. She had intentionally not said she would come to the library tomorrow because communication would know if she meant it. Which meant at minimum she wasn’t sure if she would.

I could probably track her. If I spent enough time on it, I could divine her location reliably enough to send people after her. Margaret had never taught me tracking divination directly, but the Weaving specialized in things like that.

I wouldn’t though. Leaving was a message that anything more would be a hostile act.

Oh, that was why Felicity hadn’t called my new phone. I looked up from my calculations, fishing out my phone to unblock her numbers. She deserved that, at least, for today.

I returned to my math, my mind racing no less than when I began.

----------------------------------------

Lily had decided it was ‘later’.

She was in her dorm room, the original one again. Today they finally decided she was allowed to return as long as she stayed out of Amy’s room.

So she was there now, staring at Amy’s door with a glass of milk in her hand.

Amy had been her only real friend here, even if she hadn’t thought of Lily as a friend. Lily was bad at making friends. She knew how to make acquaintances, she had tons of those. She could name random people all over campus and recall enough details about their lives to creep them out. But Lily had no clue how to turn acquaintances into friends.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Maybe it was that Amy had reached out first. Genuinely reached out, not in an attempt to get something from her or to hit on her. It was as if she could tell Lily needed a friend and just decided to do it. That meant a lot to Lily, enough that she had repeated the gesture herself yesterday.

Lily had to repeat the gesture because her only friend had died. She sipped her drink, fighting back a sense of foreboding.

Madison had probably killed Amy. Madison had also touched her yesterday, which Lily noted because it was the first time Madison had done it willingly.

Lily was a very touchy person. She tried to suppress it because some people got very weird about it, but her instincts were almost always screaming to touch people. It gave her something to do with her hands so they weren’t flailing about ridiculously and it just felt nice.

Amy had gotten this and been totally fine with it. She hadn’t thought it was clingy or weird when Lily wanted to sit very close while talking or even hug for no real reason.

Claire didn’t mind it either, though Lily suspected that was for very different reasons. No, Lily wasn’t quite ready to deal with that one yet. She should start with an easier thing.

Lily took a sip, the milk noticeably less cold than it had been a few seconds ago.

Margaret then. There was something very wrong with Lily that the death threats were the easiest thing to unpack. Margaret was a powerful archwizard who was torturing… her daughter and now had a reason to want Lily dead.

Maybe she should just run. Lily would hate to lose Reston, she’d had to argue with her mom for years to be allowed to go to college, but no amount of wanting a normal life was worth dealing with an angry archwizard.

Truthfully, Lily should’ve run the minute they removed the magic marking her for the monster. But Lily wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if she’d ignored her new friend after that and she definitely couldn’t abandon Amy.

Could Lily even run? Apparently ‘the weaving’ was about connections. Lily had been told by the person she wasn’t unpacking yet that you could do things to people via stray hairs. There was no way Lily could get rid of all of them without burning the dorm down.

Lily could ask the expert. She would tell Lily, easily. She loved doing that so much.

Lily had a plan for that now. She took another warm sip.

Next death threat, Felicity’s.

Felicity was just not fair.

Lily knew she was beautiful. No one would ever say she was as pretty as Rose, but she wasn’t supposed to be bitter about that. Maybe it was vanity, but Lily had long since decided that she liked to look good. She took proper care of her hair and face. She almost always had some degree of makeup on and she kept in great shape despite not really needing it for anything in Reston.

And then in walks Felicity who is literally magically pretty. Lily felt like such a bitch for caring about that, but she was unpacking and that meant being honest. Seriously, how was she supposed to compete with that? It didn’t even seem to take work, Felicity just existed in a permanent state of physically unachievable beauty.

Felicity also threatened to kill her, though not for anything that made sense like jealousy. Felicity had basically delivered the kind of speech a father holding a shotgun would make to the boy who wanted to date his daughter. That relationship was clearly very complicated and most of Lily wanted to stay out of it in any way possible.

Except Felicity’s speech had very strongly implied that staying away was what would earn her the proverbial shotgun to the face. Supposedly, the mental health of Felicity’s ex was riding on Lily’s shoulders now, which was a lot more than she wanted to be burdened with this close to cutting and running.

Felicity had also killed Nathan in cold blood. Lily knew Nathan. They hadn’t ever really been close, but still. She had quite a lot of memories of him and their time in the gaming group. Nathan had killed Professor Lansberg, but he very clearly had no idea what he was doing. He didn’t deserve to die for that.

Lily had never seen anyone die before. She’d seen dead bodies, of course. She’d found Amy’s body, which had looked a hell of a lot worse than Nathan’s. That was probably the only reason she was together now: she’d been through this so recently.

Lily had mostly succeeded in mentally separating the Amy who was her friend from the pile of indistinct gore she’d found. It probably wasn’t a very healthy coping mechanism, but it had worked well enough for her to stop wanting to vomit every time she remembered Amy.

This time though, she saw the moment Nathan’s eyes stopped having a soul behind them. She didn’t know if she would ever forget that. Nathan was so clearly a real human even once he’d died.

Lily wanted to blame Felicity for it, but it wasn’t Felicity’s decision. Felicity probably would have let him go if Claire-

Lily dropped her glass in shock as she felt the milk that had bubbled over come spilling out of the top. Fortunately, the glass didn’t shatter or even visibly crack against the carpet.

Some ‘gift’ she had.

Lily started to find something to clean the spill up with before she stopped. She didn’t actually care about the spill.

She was being ridiculous, trying to unpack without acknowledging the elephant in the ‘later’ corner. No wonder her control slipped to the point her drink boiled over.

Claire. Claire was so vulnerable, physically and emotionally. She was also an evil wizard. Claire had put herself through hell several times over for Lily’s sake. Claire had killed Nathan without even caring. Claire reminded her so much of Jason, another emotional landmine of a memory. If Lily left, Felicity had made it very clear that Claire would be shattered-

Lily was forced to shove those thoughts back down. But that, in and of itself, was an answer.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and went to find something to clean up the spill with.

Lily would stay long enough to find Madison, Amy deserved that much. Then she would get the fuck away from all these psychotic wizards before they sunk their claws in any deeper.

She was such a coward.

----------------------------------------

The Fool was having a great day. She knew she shouldn’t be, her final sacrifice was fast approaching and all of her schemes around it were unraveling quickly.

However, the long game had paid off. She practically skipped away from the SUV as it rolled down the hill. She’d found a great spot where one strong kick sent the truck and the corpse inside right to the bottom of the lake. This was a favorite dumping ground of hers.

The Fool started the long walk back to Reston happily.

Her Princess had come back to her!

She still loved the Fool, it was obvious in a thousand things. Her struggles to resist and eventual acceptance of the banter the Fool offered. Her longing looks on the elevator. Her jealous disdain for that boy she’d seduced. Her need to defend the Fool’s honor when that very same boy insulted it. Her absolute terror at the thought of a monster coming for the Fool. Even her occasional cruelty towards the Fool was raw and emotional, a need to lash out to convince herself. It was enough to turn the Fool into a giggling schoolgirl.

Oh, there were things the Fool hadn’t expected. The plan had failed, but in a way that still moved things forward. She thought she was in tune enough with the stories to see that coming, but it still caught her off guard.

The new girl wasn’t completely a surprise. Her Princess needed someone and right now it couldn’t be the Fool. The girl’s role in the story was still very fluid. She was a change to the status quo, but that change could come in a hundred different archetypes.

She was mundane and ignorant, yet curious. That spoke to an Apprentice. Her moralizing could also make her a good Heart. Her knowledge of electronic lockpicking was interesting, but a Thief overlapped too much with the Scoundrel, who lived within the Fool. It didn’t seem right.

A shift in the music told the Fool that something was approaching. What was that melody? Opportunity or danger? Probably both, as it usually was.

The Fool spotted it before long, a single gray pickup truck headed toward Reston. She was far enough away from the rest of civilization that the roads were mostly bare, with only a few cars in sight. If not for the music, she would have expected this one not to see her in the darkness of the night. Instead, she stopped walking and watched the driver slow down to a stop next to her.

“Hey miss, are you ok?” The man rolled down his car window. “I’m headed to Reston, do you need a ride?”

The Fool tried to read the story here. There would be some conflict, there had to be. However, the refusal would be a story in and of itself. If the Fool didn’t accept the hand offered, someone in turn would refuse hers.

The Fool donned the mask of the Virgin in order to speak.

“I’d love that,” it said.

The man gestured to the passenger seat and she walked around the front to reach it. As she got in the car, she tuned her glamour with a twist of her hand, dramatically decreasing her attractiveness while increasing her approachability and innocence. The man’s image of her shifted, though he had no training to notice it.

The Fool had her gun and her oathblade, should the worst come to pass.

The Virgin made idle conversation with the man, almost entirely on instinct. It was a well-worn mask, useful with older people and especially men. It would continue to flatter her driver in such a way that its appearance of innocence was maintained. The Fool’s mind returned to the task at hand.

Her Princess and the new girl were hurtling toward conflict, the climax obvious to her and her alone. The Fool needed to decide if she wanted to make them regrow stronger or fall apart.

Her instincts said to tear them apart. Her Princess, desperate for comfort, would come to the Fool and she would be more than happy to provide it. The Fool felt sure that if she could get an opportunity like that, she could barrel her way back to the center of her Princess’ life.

The Fool struggled to think of an act she would not commit to have her Princess back. She still fantasized about those good times. Her Princess would quite literally leap into her arms at the first opportunity, looking up at her Fool with such elation that it made the Fool’s heart skip even now. She would plead and beg for her Fool’s affection like it kept her alive and her Fool was more than happy to drown her in it.

There were smaller things too, quiet moments that the Fool recalled longingly. Sometimes, in the middle of her studies, her Princess would reach out as if to check that the Fool was still there and give this wonderful smile when she found that the Fool was. She would do it all without looking up from her book, seemingly unaware it had even occurred.

However, if her Princess ever truly returned to her lover, her Princess would die. The story was crystal clear, a tragedy told a thousand times over.

No. If there were an act she could not commit, it would be to betray her Princess for a second time. Her Princess deserved better than that. Better than the Fool, certainly, but she was all her Princess had.

Though what if her Princess could have someone else, another pillar to hold her up once the Fool was gone?

The mask of the Virgin apologized for startling her driver, for it could not hide the wicked grin of the Fool as she concocted her master plan.