Anger was a pit, and Emma was sitting at the bottom with a cross expression and folded arms.

She had managed to keep a lid on it, just long enough to find a quiet, empty room away from the tower. With the door shut behind her, she let out a great scream, the kind that a person might make if they were being ripped in half.

It was, as always, difficult to nail down what had pissed her off so much. Lillian Stone giving her father a bullshit ultimatum was one factor, for sure. But there was a deeper well of anger that she felt tethered to, a great hole in the ground that ran hot with rage.

The anger came up frequently enough to be a bother to her, but not frequently enough to pin down a real pattern. No emotion came from nothing, so there had to be an origin…

She sat down on the floor of the empty castle room and did the one thing she could do, which was to think really hard about it and swear a whole bunch.

Lillian Stone. The rock stuck in her boot; the sting of a self-righteous prick of a wasp. How dare she threaten Emma’s father? He was looking out for her. Emma, thanks to him, had a shot at normalcy!

That normalcy was good, and those who disdained it were simply jealous. Letting the church run her transition was the best thing to happen to her; there were no hard choices to make about which procedures to get, or indeed any choices at all. You either did it the church’s way (which was all the way), on their schedule, on their approval, or you didn’t transition at all.

Alice, the bitter old bitch, could have done it. All it took was a panel of judges, looking you over! That wasn’t so bad. What was so hard about putting in the effort, dressing up nice, and answering some questions?

That whole argument had crystallized into a tumor of hatred in Emma’s stomach, but that wasn’t the end of the anger. The well went deeper, deeper still into layers yet unseen and unknown to human life.

“Fuck,” she said. Hot, wrathful, mournful tears rolled down her cheeks, and she didn’t even know why.

“Rough day?” asked a voice behind her.

No. No no no no no. This was not happening. That was not Dorian’s smug baritenor voice asking a rhetorical question he damn well knew the answer to. Dorian was dead and gone and it was her job to locate him, and he had not come to her, through some inexplicable means.

So, with that in mind, she turned around, and a man who exactly resembled her old dormmate-slash-guy-she-slept-with-out-of-desperation-with-once was there.

Of course, the only rational move was to tear him to shreds with her bare hands.

*****

Dinnertime at the tower was crowded; four people sat around a table. Bailey felt a beam of pride as Henry, Lillian, and Hannah all partook in the meal she’d prepared… though part of her wondered where Emma was. Oh well.

Lillian had not said a word since Bailey brought her the late lunch of eggs and toast, but at least she was up and about. Her dark curls, which were normally well-kept and looked after with pride, were a greasy bedheaded forest of tangles. Even her coat was a mess for once.

“So,” Henry said, with a goofy smile that made Bailey smile back, “we’ve got some big news.”

“Yeah. But it’s the kind of thing where you’ll roll your eyes at us for taking so long,” Bailey put in.

Hannah, with an inscrutable twinkle in her eye, said nothing. Lillian managed an interested expression, but the exhaustion still hovered over her like a rain cloud.

“So… we, that is, Bailey and I, are going on a date.”

“Hell yeah,” Hannah said.

Lillian made a sound that was somewhere between a chirp and a happy laugh.

“How did you do that, with your mouth?” Hannah asked her.

At that, all Lillian did was shrug.

“Still feeling nonverbal right now, eh?”

A nod from Lillian.

“Cool. Gotcha.”

Attentions turned back to Bailey and Henry. A feeling of pride swelled up in Bailey… the attention from Lillian and Hannah felt pretty good, in a way comparable to Henry’s gaze. Bailey’s reasoning capabilities frittered away as to why that was the case; but for now, with three sets of nice faces around her, life was pretty good.

“So where’s this hot date happening, exactly?”

“It’s a secret,” Bailey said.

“Boo, boo!” Hannah replied, “or… wait. Is it a secret, or have you just not decided where yet?”

Bailey fumed; Henry slurped soup surreptitiously.

“Got it in one.”

“What, I take it you have a suggestion?” Henry asked, in a way that could have been sardonic. This was a rare side of Henry; Bailey knew him to be earnest in most things… but sardonic wasn’t bad. She was raised sardonic and dry, witty and at times a little mean.

“Not for a place, but for activity.”

“Do tell,” Henry said.

“A heist.”

Bailey gave Henry a Look; Henry shrugged, as if the idea was passé to him.

“You know the three of us,” Hannah gestured to herself, Henry, and Lillian, “used to get up to some real shenanigans, yeah?”

“In theory. I hadn’t considered doing shenanigans myself. Most shenanigans I ever got involved in were sisterly spats.”

Why, oh why did that pique Hannah and Lillian’s curiosity?

“Oh?”

“Yes, now I’m curious, too,” Lillian said, for the first time in hours.

“Fuck. Now I have to, huh?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” Henry said, while both Hannah and Lillian said, “yes.” For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to say no to Lillian in particular, but she could easily see Hannah being quite convincing in the near future, too.

“You’re my favorite, Henry. Always so sweet,” Bailey said, “But, fuck it, sure. So, Hannah, for context, I have this sister, Alice. She’s Emma’s twin.”

“Is she the good twin?”

An ugly noise escaped Bailey’s mouth. Some might call it a laugh, but ‘some’ didn’t understand anything.

“You’re not ready for the answer to that. Anyways, she was an angry kid. Really really angry. And I, the adorable little devil I am, was a very annoying child. Mix that with our family’s stubborn disposition and inability to leave well enough alone, and you get an endless campaign of trying to fuck with one another.”

“This one time, we were living in one of the towns downriver of Golden Ravines, to the northeast of here. I don’t remember what it was called.”

“You don’t recall the name?” Lillian asked.

“Fuck no! I’ve lived in about thirty different towns, and about forty houses, apartments, tents, wine cellars, basements, attics. It’s all a blur.”

For some reason, everyone in the room but Bailey made sad faces at that; or at least, concerned ones. But as far as she was concerned, that was just the shape life took. You lived someplace, you moved a few months later in the dead of night in disguise, you went by a different name in each town, et cetera et cetera.

Wait, was that not normal? Whatever.

“Anyways, we were living in this town, and the river that runs down from Golden Ravines was near us… but here’s the thing. The water was filthy. I’m talking a whole city’s worth of refuse, of bits of heavy metals and all that.

“We weren’t allowed to go swimming in it.” Bailey chuckled. “Neither of us were very enthusiastic about swimming, but we did like to dare each other to drink the water…. And this one time… I was like eight. Alice knows how much I hate swimming, and she’s really pissed off at me. So, well, heh. She dares me, ‘I triple dare you with powdered sugar on top’-”

“Wait. Powdered sugar?” Henry asked.

“Yeah. It’s a triple dare with powdered sugar on top.”

Everyone else at the table looked at her like she was dancing naked in the municipal market.

“It’s very much not that,” Hannah said.

“It is ‘triple dog dare’,” Lillian put in.

“Wow. You’re all wrong. Anyways, she dared me to swim in the river. But, funny thing about the Golden River: it’s got a strong current in its belly. When you swim in that stretch of it, it’s like being swallowed whole. Neither of us knew that, though. We had just moved there and the rule against it was because of the garbage.” Bailey took in a breath. “So, I go in. Of course, my mother was around the bank, writing or something, and the last thing I heard before the rush of the current was her screaming after me.”

The room was dead quiet. Bailey frowned.

“It was a rush after that. I couldn’t move at all. And all I was thinking is, I’m either going to die, or I’m going to win this fucking dare, Alice. It was like a good luck charm, I guess. But, you know, my mom dived in after me, and pulled us back to shore. I didn’t even know I was cold and wet until I was back on dry land…”

She chuckled, continuing, “As I coughed up water, and as my dad wrapped a blanket around me and gave me my stuffed unicorn, Alice tore into me. She was crying, she was so fucking mad. ‘How could you be so stupid,’ that whole deal. I’ve always held onto that.” Bailey laughed. “she was mad like that river, you know. She said ‘I can’t lose another one,’ and she said it like she had half a mind to throw me back in herself for being such a dipshit.”

Why wasn’t anyone else laughing? This was a funny story!

Lillian’s face was drawn in a tight neutrality, the kind that could only be anything but neutral. Hannah was biting her tongue. And Henry… he was crying. Oh, Sorceress take Bailey, the man she cared for was crying.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said, “I’m still here.”

“You almost weren’t,” Henry replied.

Lillian nodded, and reached a hand out to Bailey’s. For some reason, Bailey felt compelled to take it, so she did.

******

“Alright, alright! Uncle!”

“Dorian Shrouder, I am going to rip that smug smile off your face with my bare fucking hands,” Emma said. Her knee was pressed into the man’s stomach, and he sputtered when she increased the pressure.

“Now I know things were weird when we parted-”

“Weird? You ruined my chance to ever get a degree, you dickweed. I had friends and a peer group in college, and I haven’t had one since! I ought to kill you right here and now.”

He wheezed and clawed at Emma’s leg.

“You were a rotten friend, and nobody missed you,” he said, “just FYI. I mean, I did, but- urghk”

“Do you want to die, inventor boy? Because if you wish, I will gladly grant.”

“Please. You wouldn’t kill a fly if it landed in your soup.”

Emma grabbed Dorian by the neck.

“A fly is a part of a complex web of life; you, on the other hand, are worth less than the grime stuck under my shoe.”

“Wait-” he wheezed, breathlessly, because he was asphyxiating.

She squeezed harder, but then he did something impossible. He dissipated from her grasp, completely and utterly.

“I’ve waited long enou- Where the fuck did you go?”

He reappeared behind her, standing.

“Sorry, Emma. I’m what the kids call ‘semi-corporeal’ and ‘trapped in superposition hell’. It seems to get me out of most scrapes… though you almost had me. Kudos for that.”

“You ought to be breathless and choking, still.”

“I experienced a little more time than you; I got my composure back. Did you get it out of your system?”

Rage flared in her eyes.

“Get what out of my system?”

“Your very unladylike anger,” he said.

“Suck my hog, Dorian,” Emma said.

He made a gesture that indicated the idea was a boring one, a sort of been there, done that, kind of thing. It was too bad he was out of Emma’s reach, because there were few things she regretted more than being sad enough to sleep with her shitty college roommate who was stealing her coursework.

“So why the hell are you here? How are you here? What was that about ‘superposition hell’?”

“Well, Emma, old fuckbuddy old pal of mine,” Dorian patted her shoulder. She brushed his hand off like a speck of dust from a priceless painting, “I built myself a big machine in the tower.”

Oh. Okay. Yeah, the brass monster.

“I’ve seen it.”

“Yeah, well, the night I turned it on, it sort of ate me.”

Emma tried to look nonplussed; she was only partially plussed, which was close enough. Hopefully. With Dorian, it was hard to tell.

“Ate you?”

“Yeah. I figured I’d get a peek at the very forces of causality and time and space and stuff… I did, but it cost me. I’m-”

He flickered, and for a second there were three of him, in slightly different spots in the room. One of them appeared to be in great pain, and the other was as stiff as a corpse in a box. They all had a flickering effect, like shadows cast by a campfire.

“In a tight spot.”

“Serves you right,” Emma said.

“Yes, yes, justice and retribution and all that. Listen. I can help you.”

Emma turned away from him, towards a window on the far wall. Pale light melted into liquid darkness, and the night sky’s tide was coming in.

“You couldn’t help yourself out of a shallow puddle, let alone me.”

He looked sad, but sad the way a melodrama actor was sad. He was Big Sad, I Can Fake Tears Easily, not any sort of sad that Emma registered as a real thing.

“Right now? Yes. But if you help me fix the machine…”

A terrible grin, the kind that started wars and hatched doomed plans, spread across his face.

“What if you could change anything in the whole cosmos?”

“You’re bullshitting.”

“Oh, ye of little faith. For all the,” he flickered between spaces again, “complications, I did succeed. I can now play with the cosmic dough like I was the bastard who baked it.”

There was but one thing Emma could think to say; sadly, it would also make the conversation go for longer. Oh well.

“Prove it.”

“Remember a little incident with a horse, an elevator, and a ballroom?”

Ugh. Yes, yes Emma did. She never did sort out what was up with that. Oh well.

“That was me, baby. I thought to myself, hey, wouldn’t it be funny if I managed to scare a horse into an elevator? And I did, and boom. I created this whole new timeline we’re in by just fucking around. How do you like that?”

The phrase ‘hey, wouldn’t it be funny if…’ crossed her mind, but it didn’t connect to anything. She was too busy being annoyed beyond what she thought was possible for her to really think it through.

“Your ego’s inflated and you’re a terrible liar.”

“I have a healthy ego, thank you. I feed it religiously.”

Yeah, it was no wonder he did.

“By your logic, every person who ever does anything is the creator of this- time ‘line’. Whatever that is.”

It was a sound counterargument, which meant he was about to do something ridiculous to shift the terms of the argument. At least she saw it coming.

“Ah! But every person, save me, is hopelessly bound by the oppression of physics, chemistry, cause and effect.” He began to float a foot above the ground.

“You stop that.”

“Spoilsport,” he said, as he returned to the ground.

Emma shook her head at all this. This was, as all things with Dorian, more of a theatrical performance than anything else. She was almost not entirely bored and pissed off with it, but it was a gossamer thin ‘almost’ holding that together. Such was life.

“This is ridiculous. I have no reason to trust you.”

“Alright… I’ll gladly keep the secrets of the cosmos to myself, if you like. I always did hate to share.”

Emma hated that fucking smile on his dumb face. It was handsome enough to make her hesitate damaging it permanently, but sadly, beauty and morality and decent human-cy had very little correlation one way or another.

“Go ahead. Ask me how you can have a slice of this pie. Pop the big question,” he took on a nasally voice that Emma took to be an imitation of hers, “oh Dorian, you’re so brave and smart. Tell me how you became the lord of all time and space and cause and effect in three simple steps.”

“I’ve had enough. The next time I see you, I’m bludgeoning your face with the heaviest object I can find,” Emma said.

She made a move for the door, but he appeared in front of her, thus blocking her exit. This was, as the kids called it, a red fucking flag and a half.

“I’ll melt you with a spell if you try anything,” she said.

“I know! But I have an offer for you.”

“Not interested in anything you’ve got to offer, pal.”

She shoved him aside, and made a move for the door, more emphatically this time.

“All right, I’m annoying, I get it. But listen-”

“No listening. You talk, talk, talk–” Emma made a ‘jerking off’ motion for emphasis. “–because you’re a pest, and I wish you were dead.”

For some reason, that was terribly amusing.

“Here’s my deal, Emma Thistle, or Emma Raymond, or whatever or whoever you are,” he said, “If you can help me get my machine in the tower working, you’re going to be able to change things. Past things, present things… you could fix the hole you’re walking around with in your spirit. The women you call your sisters aren’t really your sisters, you know.”

“Fuck you.”

But Emma, despite herself, was listening. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t said to herself before, but it was strangely enticing to hear someone else say it.

“They have the same blood as you… but their parents,” he shook his head, as he might at dog shit under his shoe, “they were freaks. Criminals. Communists. They dared call themselves healers, doctors, but worked without profit in mind. How fucked up is that? They deserved to be chased across the country, I’ll say that. Imagine how they could have spread their vile ideas if they’d ever had a chance to settle down.”

“What’s the deal?” Emma meant to say stop wasting my time, you tool, but for some reason she didn’t actually say those words.

“Easy. Fix the machine- I’ll tell you exactly how… and fire Bailey, chase away the inquisitor, and evict the slut on your couch. Then, you’ll get a chance to change the world, past, present, and future… all from the comfort of home. How’s that sound?”

Emma couldn’t bring herself to say ‘no’, but she didn’t say ‘yes’, either.

“I’ll be here whenever you’re ready,” Dorian smiled, and then evaporated before her eyes.

******

After Bailey’s bout of shameful oversharing, bottles of wine were brought out. It was cheap wine, the kind that you bought if you were depressed and needed to get drunk quickly. So, in other words, it was perfect for the new mood set over the table.

Lillian took to pouring (“Decanting,” she said, “let’s get it right, shall we?” “You’re so fucking pedantic, Lillian,” Hannah said, with love in her throat) everyone’s wine, since she had the steadiest hands. They were lovely hands, too, long fingers, slight claw shape to the nails…

It was about a glass and a half in when the mood brightened. Henry took to telling jokes suitable only to corny fathers.

“You’d make, I gotta say,” Hannah said, “a killer dad. Just, the best.”

“Just because I have the jokes for it…”

Bailey cut in and shook her head.

“Uh-uh. No. No self deprecation, Henry. You’d make a great dad.”

“Why don’t you two go upstairs and try for it,” Lillian added, with a flush to her cheeks and a fang in her smile, “the only way to know for sure is hard evidence.”

Bailey choked on wine at that.

“Wow, Lillian,” Henry said.

“Oh, you haven’t seen the depths of my depraved humor yet,” she said, between sips.

Yeah, that checked out. Bailey smiled.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes,” Lillian smiled like a predator about to descend upon their next prey.

With an affectation of condescension, Bailey said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Don’t get her started,” Hannah put in, “she’ll never let up.”

“Now I really want to see it.”

Everyone laughed at that; another round of wine was poured (“Decanted. Are you people even listening to me?”). Conversation turned, much to Henry’s chagrin, to his kissing abilities.

“You guys kissed?” Bailey asked.

“Well, once,” Henry said.

“It was a very good once,” Lillian put in.

Hannah nodded, with an evil evil smile plastered on her face.

All eyes were on Henry, who was as bashful as the groom in a suit a size too small for him. He drank soup, because he was the only person who anticipated the pain of a hangover in the morning, and because it gave him something to do with his hands.

“Is it okay that we talk about this?” Bailey asked.

“It’s fine.” Henry slurped. “It’s just…” Once more- “It’s silly. We were dumb teens. Hardly worth exhuming. A lot’s changed since then.”

Lillian nodded.

“The only way to know for sure is for one of us to repeat the experiment.”

“What, kiss me?” Henry asked.

“Yes.”

He mulled it over for a second.

“Well, if it’s for science…”

Henry’s gaze met Bailey’s. Hers met his. The space between the two of them melted like butter on the sun’s surface, and before anyone could say anything else, they were locking lips like they were the last two human beings in the world.

Where Bailey lacked in technique, she far outpaced with sheer enthusiasm. She attacked Henry’s lips like they were her worst fucking enemy, and hers were a deadly weapon. She absorbed his lips like they were a stain on a tablecloth, and hers were a napkin.

“Damn. Now I’m kind of jealous,” Hannah said.

The pair broke the kiss long enough to come up for air, and for Lillian to ask her question.

“So. How was it? How do you rate his technique?”

“I want to do that every day, every hour, forever,” Bailey said.

“Well there you have it,” Henry said, “I’m a little mad that we’re not kissing right now, actually, that’s how good it was.”

Hannah washed more wine down her throat and said, “Now I’m really fucking jealous. I’m supposed to be the horny one.”

The room was awash with joy and laughter. Henry drank eagerly from his soup, and he encouraged everyone else to do it too (“Water and protein. Do you want to be sick in the morning?” “And now I’m upstaged as the party expert,” Hannah mourned).

“But, okay, Bailey,” Lillian said, “for science. How does it feel, specifically?”

“Is everyone here more horny than I am tonight?” Hannah asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

Hannah drank soup and made a forlorn face.

“Actually, actually: new question,” Lillian said, “Henry, how does it feel to…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but she did look at Bailey with a hungry expression on her lips, eyes, and just sort of her whole face.

“Well… if Bailey’s okay with it, why don’t you find out?” Henry asked.

That caught Bailey off guard. She looked at him with hope in her eyes and her heart in her throat, and he smiled and nodded in return.

“We can hash out details… but I’m not worried right this second.”

“Bailey?” Lillian asked.

A million different thoughts occurred to Bailey. This was an Inquisitor. This was her friend. This was… her hot friend. Her hot, inquisitor friend. Her hot friend who wore a jacket meant for men and didn’t give a fuck. Lillian Stone was…

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Why don’t you come closer and make me alright?” Bailey heard herself say.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lillian said.

After that there weren’t a whole lot of words, because once more, lips met lips. There were worries in Bailey’s mind, there were fears and sorrows and pain… but how could they compare? How could they match up to Lillian’s kiss?

Oh, no.

Oh, no no no. Bailey was… no. Okay.

Fuck.

The kiss broke, and she resented her flesh for needing air to breathe. She resented herself for being but one person, and not a conglomerate of people, where love flowed in all directions, and where the sun never rose.

“Now this is just fucking absurd. Can I have a go? Or does that sound too desperate?”

“Hannah,” Bailey said, after she remembered how to work her mouth, “shut the fuck up and kiss me.”

“On it, boss.”

*****

Emma came home with a lead weight in her chest and gravity pulling at her legs. Oh, it would have been so easy to find a spot and crumple up-- Dorian wanted what? For just… some….

Whatever. It was a bad deal, but it was stuck in her mind and body.

So she wasn’t at all ready to find four people asleep at her kitchen table, surrounded by wine glasses and empty bowls of soup. There was Henry, leaning against Bailey… but Bailey’s hand was outstretched to Lillian’s, across the table, and the Hannah girl was happily snoring with her face planted into an empty soup bowl.

“Woah… what happened here?”

No one awoke.

She went to Bailey.

“Wake up, Motte and Bailey.”

She did, but just barely. Bailey frowned, looked around in a sweeping gaze, and closed her eyes again.

“Let’s get you to bed.”

“Mmmmmno. I’m good,” Bailey said.

“You are exquisitely drunk. Come on.”

Bailey let out a whine, but when Emma offered a shoulder to lean on, she accepted. It took a second of fumbling-

“I got it. I got it.”

Fuck’s sake. No, not in a million years did Bailey have it.

“Okay, sure, but just in case. Come on, girly, it’s past your bedtime,” Emma said.

Her little shit of a sister laughed, and Emma helped her up.

“I never- never had a bedtime. Didn’t need one. Always woke up in the morning with the sun… way before anyone else. Make breakfast-- five placements. Just in case you came back one day. Breakfast was a favorite at the house… or tent or fucking… lean-to. We lived in a lot of… urgh.”

That was the saddest thing Emma had ever heard by a long shot, but she was too busy navigating herself and her drunk sad sack of a sister up the stairs to respond.

“Y’know. You know. Emma. Emma.”

“What?”

They were at the workshop, then. Dorian’s infernal contraption leered at them. In return, Emma gave it a I’m watching you, motherfucker gesture, and returned to guiding Bailey towards her room.

“Emma, Emma. Look. Life. You know? Life. It’s pretty good.”

“Is it?” Emma asked, because she wasn’t sure.

They were starting up the stairs to the bedrooms, now.

“Yeah! Life can be fucking awesome!! Listen. I kissed…”

Bailey tried to count on her fingers, but for some reason she looked at her hand like she had double the usual amount of hands she normally had. Why she had to pause and think halfway up the stairs was beyond Emma’s reckoning, then.

“Three hot people! Three of them! Two of which I’ve not known for very long!”

“You’re living the dream,” Emma said, with a dash of judgment in her voice. She knew it was mean and unnecessary, but she couldn’t help it. The echoes of her father’s instructions would sound through her…

Also, Emma didn’t grasp the appeal of a non-monogamous thing, anyways. It was convenient, in a way, that it was also not a recognized relationship structure; she didn’t have to understand.

Wait, that was a fucked up thing to think, wasn’t it? Damn it. She got Bailey moving again.

“No, no, no. Listen. Good stuff… is real. Sometimes I don’t believe it. But. Listen,” Bailey said.

“I’m listening.”

“Shh! Shh! I’m- words. Hang on.”

“Bailey-”

“Hang on!”

Emma held on, but not without some annoyance. She opened the door to Bailey’s room and gave the girl a push towards the door.

“Okay. So. For all my life… It was like there was a hole. In space. Y’know cups?”

“I know cups, yes.”

This response seemed to stumble Bailey’s cognition a little. It took her a second to speak again, and when she did so, she was focusing very hard.

“Well! There’s, there’s a space there, like a tube of space. And- that was where you were supposed to be.”

“I don’t follow.”

Emma sat on Bailey’s bed, and patted a spot near her. Bailey ambled over to her, as sober as a fish on land.

“Okay. The cup was a bad example. You know… doughnuts?”

Emma did in fact know doughnuts, but she had no idea where this whole thing was going. She just let her very drunk baby sister keep on talking. At least Bailey was sitting on the bed, now.

“It’s like bread with a hole in it. Life was like that, a big old- a big hole. In the middle. Because… Alice missed you. I never knew you, but, I-”

Bailey looked at Emma, with an expression that felt like a shattered window.

“I missed you the worst of everyone. How stupid is that? Missing someone you never even met. Alice and mom and dad- they had stuff they could link you to. They could taste, uh, bread, or something, and know- Emma would’ve liked this. They could feel the rain and go- man, Emma would have hated this rain.”

“I like the rain.”

“Shh! Shh! Your genius of a sister is… she’s thinking. Talking.”

“Brat,” Emma said.

“The point is… you should’ve been there. With me and her. The three of us- a blight on the world. A plague of locusts to a, what’s the word, field. Field! Imagine the hell us three sisters could have raised…”

A sour expression crossed Bailey’s face, like a lone pedestrian in the early morning.

“I dunno. I missed you so much. Without my sisters, I’m… not much. Just a pile of anxieties, really.”

For a moment, Bailey looked so… alone. Her face, normally alight with a sly grin or perhaps a silly smile… was weighed down by something. The weight of years, maybe? Lost time? It was hard to say… but even if she couldn’t wrap language around it, Emma could wrap a hug around it. She took her sister in her arms.

“Bailey. Don’t say that.”

“I’m tired, Emma.”

Bailey collapsed out of the hug, onto the bed.

“I know, Bailey. For whatever it’s worth… I missed you too. With just dad and me… it was lonely. I wish I could’ve shown you all the places I used to play,” Emma said, “I had a bunch of hidey holes in the hedge maze.”

Emma massaged the blankets with her thumb. Somewhere in the pile of sheets was the patchwork unicorn… she sought it out. Stuffed animals wouldn’t solve the problem, but they could surely help.

“I never really got to know you past being a baby but… I’d think of you.” Emma rustled the blankets, but the errant lump was just a lump, and in fact not a stuffed unicorn. “I’d wonder how my kid sibling was doing. For as much of a pain in the ass you are, for as much as you deserve to be swatted with a newspaper sometimes… I’m glad we’re sisters. Or as close as we can get to it.”

“We’re sisters… Your dad…”

There was a bitter expression on Bailey’s face… but it was a different anger from Emma’s. This was not deep like a well, burrowed into the flesh of the world. No, this was deep like a flooded cavern, full of sharp turns and shadows on the wall. It frightened Emma, to see her baby sister like that.

“What?” Emma asked.

“He did this to us. He took you,” Bailey said, with a wrathful sound in her otherwise sleepy voice.

Hearing this did something horrible to Emma. Her warmth, like a sandy beach, like the heat of a well-tended furnace, went cold and hateful. The beach resolved itself into a glacier; Emma’s smile turned itself around and her voice went flat and hateful.

The irony was that Emma had just found the unicorn, too. It was on the floor. And as far as she was concerned, the little shit could stay there.

“Go to sleep. I need you to work tomorrow.”

“Good night Em.”

Emma looked at the person who was her sister by blood with a furrowed brow, and did not say good night. She did not, in fact, say anything. The court mage, daughter to a knight, Emma Raymond, left Bailey Thistle’s room with a stone face and a staccato walk.

And when she retired to bed a few minutes later, she tried not to cry, and failed utterly.