“Latte with a dangerous number of shots for you, and carrot cake for you.” I placed the food on the counter with almost theatrical care, smiling under my mask. It showed in the eyes, or so I’d heard. The alt kid and their friend took it, the one with purple hair blushing when they met my gaze. Dotty had pointed out ages ago that they seemed to have a crush on me and I couldn't unsee it. It was kind of endearing. They murmured thanks and on the way out their friend elbowed them in the side, jokingly. I glanced at my phone, Jodie was due five minutes ago and my shift had technically ended.

I’d had my ‘getting to know you’ meetings with everyone else; Addie was first, obviously. He’d brought me to everyone else, and that counted in our eyes. Katrine had been next, then Sid a week later, taking me to a bar to talk. She’d basically told me the same thing as before, followed by a slightly inebriated magic lesson in the back alley. I’d manage to break a bottle when Sid had loaded the ring for me and shaped it, but the loading, the drawing in of magic, that was what got to me. Addie had described it like taking a shit, Sid described it like clenching a muscle. Katrine had instructed me and Jodie to have what she called a playdate, we were going to meet up at the coffee shop and spend some time in town. No real agenda, no real plan. It was going to be awkward, Jodie had been pretty frosty towards me, but I was anticipatory. Not excited, but interested.

“Hey, the tube was fucked so I had to walk it.”

I snapped out of my imagination to see Jodie, leaning on the counter. I hadn’t seen her come in.

“Hey there customer, what can I get you?” I joked, putting on a weird, slightly American accent for no discernible reason.

“Cute. Come one, let’s go.”

Katrine had been fine to talk over my awkwardness, I don’t think she noticed it. I’d liked that, and I was sorely missing it when I counted five minutes of silence between Jodie and me.

“These kebabs are shit.” she said. We were sitting on the edge of a fountain, eating the same kebabs Addie so loved.

“Don’t tell Addie that.”

“I plan on it.”

We both chuckled at that and settled into another minute of silence.

“Right, fuck this,” she tossed her half-eaten food in the fountain and got up, “Come on. We’re going to the gym.”

“Arms up! Keep one hand covering your head- stay on the balls of your feet!” When Jodie had said gym I’d thought of treadmills and weights, maybe a friendly bouldering session. Not getting the shit beaten out of me in a seedy boxing gym. There hadn’t even been a person at the front desk, Jodie had promised that she was allowed in, and she seemed to know her way around well enough. “Left foot forwards, now kick! Faster than that, if I’d grabbed your leg you’d be on the floor. And keep your arms up!” She battered me in the forehead for the third time, presumably a lot softer than she could have, but I could still feel myself bruising in real-time. “Right, your turn. Jab, jab, hook, knee.”

“Are these legal kickboxing moves?? I thought it was kicks and boxing”

“It’s Muay Thai. Besides, legality doesn’t matter as much as being the one still standing at the end. Jab, jab, hook, kick”

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I jabbed, and then again, my hook felt weak but the elbow almost caught her in the side, it would’ve if her hand shot down to block, she moved fast when she had to.

“Good. now some free sparring, I’m going to leave my left side open,”

I barely nodded and she came at me like a tornado. By some miracle, I kept my hands up and fended off her strikes but when she went for a kick I was too slow and fell to the mats, wheezing.

“You knees protect kicks.” she said, “Come on.”

I focused on my knees and as a reward took an elbow to the chest

“Arms up, don’t let them down. You get hit in the leg, it hurts like a bitch. You get hit in the solar plexus or head, the next one kills you.”

I went for a punch, but by the time I hit the air where she’d been, she was 2 feet away and went to kick me. I threw my knee up but didn’t balance myself when she hit and went tumbling back.

“Better. Keep your weight centered, so you don’t plant it.” There was a trickle of sweat on her temple and her brown face was flushed red. She was more animated than I’d ever seen her before, but I could tell that i’d be wincing at every movement tomorrow morning. “Again.”

What was it she’d said about her left side? I watched her as she pummelled me, trying to decipher what her opening was between blocking hits aimed for my nose. There. She never raised her left arm to block her face and her left leg was too far forwards. It was obvious, when I looked for it. I jumped back, out of her hits, and thought up a plan. Feint a kick, then elbow her in the face when she went to block.

In the heat of things I forgot that I wasn’t capable of doing either, but Jodie was caught off by my sudden burst, and I drove into her, a mess of knees and elbows until I heard a crack, and pulled away. Jodie’s nose was at an odd angle, and blood was starting to pour out of it.

“Oh shit, fuck, Jodie I’m so sorry!”

She looked up at me. Took her gloves off and wiped the blood trickling down her lip. She went to her duffel bag and pulled out a copper ring from one of the side pockets. She put it on, scrunched her face for a second and winced, before grabbing her broken nose and twisting it into place.

“Fuck me,” she grimaced and held the bridge of her nose, “healing magic. Advanced shit, needs a good understanding of biology or you’ll give yourself a tumour,” she eventually explained while I caught my breath. The leak trickled to a drip, and then to nothing. Jodie wiped the last of it with her shirt.

“Not bad. Not good, but not bad. If we do this three times a week and you get a move on with magic, I can have you in fighting shape in a month, maybe two.”

The idea of spending every other day in a dingy gym scared me, but not as much as the idea of telling her no, I pressed at my forehead. The skin was hot and rough where a bruise was coming into shape, one of many. A message on Jodie’s phone grabbed her attention from me, she read it and started packing up.

“You’re in luck, Chlo.”

“I’m in luck?”

“That’s what I said. We’re doing a job, tomorrow morning.”

“A job?” the realisation hit me, “Wait you mean like, like a heist?” I quieted my voice despite nobody around to hear.

“Yup. A heist. Pass me my bottle?”

“Shit.” for the thousandth time I wondered what I’d gotten into. What would Dotty think? It had been a long couple of weeks, I’d just managed to get back in her good graces and now I was robbing the government?

“I just… a load of people are already dead. I don’t want you to be the next one” she’d said over sushi.

A pit of guilt formed in my stomach, but I was robbing the government. The question in my mind wasn’t whether or not I would do it, but how I would explain it to Dotty. That was concerning, to say the least. Or was it? Was the fact that it wasn’t concerning what concerned me?

“Yeah okay, sure. Let’s rob the fucking government”

Jodie clapped me on the shoulder, “pack your shit, we need to get back to the shop.”