"Better! now kick!” my leg was in the air before she said the word but I could never surprise Jodie, and with unnatural speed she ducked through my kick and swept my leg out from under me. My head hit the rubber matting and I lay there, wheezing.

"How long was that?” I asked “thirty-two seconds,” Jodie said, “eight longer than last time.” She was almost short of breath, almost. I’d learned to take the small wins.

I’d calmed down since three nights ago, and I’d gotten round to booking an appointment with Katrine’s therapist. The dream was finally starting to feel like just that, a dream.

“Come on, we aren’t done yet. Projectiles training.” The gym was one of the few places that Jodie was willing to use magic, which made it perfect for her idea of magic training, repeatedly pelting me with tennis balls from all angles. “Got your ring on?” she pulled off her gloves and cracked a couple of her fingers before settling into a fighting stance on the other side of the room. I nodded and picked myself up off the ground.

“Just let me get my gloves- fuck!” A tennis ball hit my shoulder from behind

“Let the magic guide you, turn it into your sense. And If you can’t use magic, dodge and weave!” she reached out again and another ball from another angle grazed past my shoulder as I threw myself aside. I bit at the velcro of my gloves, trying to keep an eye on Jodie as she pelted me. In my mind, I visualised something solid, something simple and easy to defend myself. The gloves came off, Jodie had told me to always look at the eyes, the eyes would tell you everything you needed to know. Hers flickered to my right and without looking I batted my arm out, something heavy and circular went with it, and the tennis ball burst open against the wall.

“Good, but I want you to work on accuracy, control. Bring the ball to a stop, like you’re a Jedi.” I tried to focus on an ethereal hand catching the next ball, but it rocketed away and nearly shattered the lone window in the gym, a musty piss-coloured square of glass near the ceiling that washed the room in yellow when the sun hit it just right. I tried some other ways, imagining a net, a sheet, even the ball simply stopping in the air, which just made it pop like a balloon three inches from my face.

“Okay, that’s enough for today. You’re able to use magic consistently, that’s enough. Need me to recharge your ring?” Jodie asked after the fourth time a stray tennis ball forced her to give me a demonstration.

“Thanks.” I tossed my ring over to her. I’d taken to wearing one more often, Addie told me to pick something that fitted my personal style, but until I found something that worked I was borrowing one of his, the braided gold one. I made a note to buy something less attention-grabbing and slipped it back on once Jodie was done.

“Any plans? Katrine wants me for lab rat stuff in the afternoon.” She asked, still just the slightest bit out of breath.

“I’m meeting Addie, he wanted to go over some stuff, catch up I guess.”

“Have fun. Oh, wait,” She caught me as I was walking out the door, “You left this at the bar.” I turned and she was holding a crumpled green hoodie. My hoodie. I took it from her,

“You washed it.” I smelled faintly of lime

“You vomited a lot.” she chuckled. I held it close, and she didn’t turn away. Was she waiting for something? Had I missed a cue? Shit, how should I respond?

“I’m sorry.” I eventually landed on. “For the whole whiskey glass thing.” Jodie rubbed her forehead, there was just the faintest scar, magic wouldn’t fix everything apparently.

“The first time I killed someone hit me really hard, it’s not fun, Chloe. Never will be. All in all, I’d rather you act like a sorry bitch for a while than try to off yourself.”

Addie met me in the shop above the base and took me for a drive. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going until we got there, a shopping centre. “Jodie’s taught you to fight, Katrine’s taught you about magic, but half of our job is information gathering, Which is where I come in.” He explained over a pretzel. “I work people, I’m the face. Bless their hearts, intimidating schoolteachers, teens who could deadlift you and one-woman armies don’t tend to be the most personable bunch. A well-dressed young black man without an accent though,” His voice shifted into something that sounded like it would come out of a BBC presenter, “makes people trip over themselves to point out how charming and eloquent I am.” He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and pulled a lanyard out of his pocket. “Lesson one, Chlo. Use anything and everything you can to your advantage, especially people’s perceptions of you. I’m a man, and I pass for cis, people take me seriously when I seem in charge. You’re a white woman with purple hair, people believe anything that comes out of you when you act the victim.”

I took a moment to think. Addie was getting up when I looked back. “Wait, but what’s the plan, what are we doing?” He passed an earpiece over and hung his bag off the back of his chair.

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“We’re information gathering, beyond that, lesson two. You can’t plan around people, so don’t. Improvise and stay in constant communication.” I slipped my earpiece in and asked again,

“What information are we gathering exactly?” I saw him raise a finger to his ear and his voice crackled to life in my ear right before he rounded a corner

“This is a training mission, Stray. Something low-stakes, security camera footage. Check the bag.” I reached over and pulled it onto the table. “The thing that looks like an NFC pad can clone pretty much any keycard and the USB thing is-”

“A Rubber Ducky?” hacking wasn’t my area of expertise but I’d had to learn a bit about it to work with electronics. Christ, it had been a while since I’d messed around with a circuit board, I had a moving box that looked like an improvised bomb, I made a note to do something with it.

“See? You’re learning already. It’s set to copy basically everything on a given hard drive and send it to a secure server. Don’t plug it into your laptop, is what I’m saying.”

“Gotcha. What am I doing now?”

“You tell me, Chlo, you’re running point. Tell me what you’re gonna go, tell me how to help, and get that security footage.”

“Okay, so you’re putting me all the way on the spot, huh.”

“Yup! have fun and try not to get caught.”

I came up with a quick and dirty plan and instructed Addie to make a scene. A small revenge, but he took to it well, and I heard some old man screaming at him through his earpiece, and a few moments later a crash and two security guards speed-walked past me, almost excited for something to do. I googled the floorplans for the centre and made my way to the nearest security office.

“Distraction went off nicely. Whoever would have thought that middle-aged white guys would be so antagonistic to some light flirting?”Addie said as I dodged into a Claire’s to put up my hood and turn my facemask inside out to show the red underside.

“I heard a crash from your end, what happened?”

“Oh y’know. A fountain, an angry man helped along by a touch of magic, he was pretty clumsy.” I got to the security room and opened the door, straight onto a man tucking into his cornish pasty.

Shit.

“Are you at the place?” Addie asked at the same moment as the man started telling me I couldn’t be in there. What had Addie told me to do? Victimise myself.

“There’s a... There’s a man out there,” I started, trying my best to sound lost and worried, which wasn’t hard, “He tried to... He tried to take...” The guard dropped his pasty back on the plate and got up

“Oh dear, shshshsh, it’s alright, love, you’re safe.” he got up and put his hands on my shoulders. Really? A woman came up to him saying she got harassed and his first instinct was to hug her? I kept the annoyance off my face, but not without effort.

“I came here as quick as I could,” I continued, glancing at the screen for fountain guy. There he was, three inches tall and pixelated, talking to some security guards and soaking wet. “He’s wearing a blue checked shirt and he has a big beard,” Sorry, fountain guy, “can you get him for me?”

“Of course I can, love. You just wait right here, I’ll get him.” And he ran off.

“Classic ploy, that.” Addie continued as I looked for the main computer under a mass of ten-year-old towers and monitors. “Classic but smart, all men secretly want to be a knight in shining armour, every one of them ends up being a Don Quixote.”

“It didn’t feel realistic, I didn’t even cry.” I slid the rubber ducky into place. A loading screen flickered for a fraction of a second and then disappeared.

“Doesn’t have to be, people aren’t looking out for secret witches tricking them to steal their footage, he would’ve believed you over his own screen if you’d told him a riot had broken out.”

I looked for Addie on the cameras. The security guard was steadily making his way towards his people to ask about a man in a blue checked shirt and a beard, they’d hopefully tell him that they’d been talking to him for the last 10 minutes and fountain guy would get off without a hitch. Hopefully. Addie was dutifully walking around the centre, blending in with the crowd. Except he wasn’t. He was following someone, a woman in business-casual, and she didn’t notice. What was he doing? Addie bumped into her, and I saw something fly out of her purse, lifted by invisible strings, and brush against Addie’s pocket before shooting back in. Addie made his apologies, frantic and exaggerated, before leaving.

We met back in the car park, Addie’s phone was connected to the server and he showed me what I’d gotten. Three days of surveillance, some bank statements, and a few angry emails to The Guardian.

“And there’s one more thing,” Addie said slightly guiltily, “This wasn’t exactly just a training mission. I mean it was, and you passed with flying colours, but-”

“You had your own agenda, yeah. I saw you on the cameras pickpocket that woman.” Addie’s face broke into a smile,

“Shit, Stray, I’m impressed! Well done, good instincts. Lesson three, be warier of your allies than you are of your enemies.” He pulled an NFC pad out of his pocket, “It’s a shame you didn’t get to use yours, it really is fun, but this one is set up to copy data, not keycards. That woman was low-level RWHS, low enough to post about her day-to-day life on Twitter. This might have some fun stuff on it, I’m taking it to Sid, we can try and work it into the next-” he caught himself and didn’t finish the sentence.

“The next job.” I finished his sentence when he didn’t. I’d tried not to think of it, but the next job was always gonna happen.

“Yeah. I didn’t wanna spring it on you till you were R&R’ed, but… you in?” I grimaced.

“There’s only one option to that question, isn’t there?” He nodded in reply.

“Anyway. I want my ring back, and you need some more jewellery, lets go shopping.”