My breathing steadied and my head began to clear. Only a moment ago, my body felt like it was burning up, turning itself inside out under the building pressure of some tumultuous force inside me. What had any of that been? In so much heat, it was impossible to think straight about anything at all. The only thought that managed to fix itself in my head was the promise I had made to my familiar. Failing Mara simply wasn’t an option after everything she had done for me, and I refused to let the trust she had given me be misplaced.

What Constance said had terrified me. Swallowing the idea that we had come all this way to have only one of us lay hands on the future we’d been waiting for felt horrendous. I’d gotten a body I couldn’t ever have even dreamed of, and it felt so right that what I was a few days ago felt like a shadow of myself. I’d gotten partners, plural; three entire people that loved me even through one of the weirdest, scariest, most exciting experiences of my life. I’d even been slowly deconstructing my secondhand worldview that my family had so graciously seen fit to pass down to me, complete with a system of existential dread that kept me from stepping out of line for fear of burning alive forever.

I was me, and I was free. Compared to all that I’d already gotten, finding a way to let Mara see her family again felt so small. When Constance systematically broke down the reality of the situation we’d landed ourselves in, all I wanted to do was reject it. I wanted to push back against cruel fate the way I had when I’d carried those stupid capsules to the school gymnasium and painted chicken scratch runes over Mara’s old circle. I wanted to wrap my hands around the hope I’d seen in Mara and keep it alive, protect it from what I knew deep down was truth.

Everything past that was a vibrating haze of hot electricity.

“So, uh…” Marcus was the one to break the silence. “You just went for it and gave her magic, huh?”

Magic? If it was magic, it was deeper and more intense than anything I’d ever experienced. In the gymnasium, drawing magic felt like a gentle ebb and flow. When I latched on, I moved with it, and it poured into me. What I had just experienced was nothing I could ever call gentle. The force inside me roared and raged, lighting me up from the inside with an unquenchable fire. How could anybody ever control something like that?

“Dude, I do not have magic, remember?” Mara looked up from my lap, but made no move to stop hugging me. “If I gave it to her, I’ve got no clue how. Where would I even get it from?”

“That one’s above my pay grade,” Marcus said as he stroked my hair. “I’m the only one of us who’s not a demon.” The grin slowly faded from Marcus’ face as realization set in. “Also the only guy now, I guess. Damn.”

“She doesn’t have magic.” Connie spoke as much to herself as any of us, the gears still turning in her head.

“Wait, but I felt it.” Mara turned to Connie, confusion in her eyes. “It was just like when she pulled power from my circle.”

“Yeah, I felt it too- when it left me. Fuck if I know how, but she was siphoning my magic.” Connie twisted her tail around my torso and idly dragged her claws in featherlight trails along my neck. “She shouldn’t be able to do that without a pact.”

My body tensed. “I… took your magic?”

“How’s that working out?” Marcus smirked, peeking across me to throw a smug stare at Constance. “What, you guys were honest about your feelings, kissed once or twice, and now you’re swapping spells?

Mara let out a tiny gasp, her eyes growing wide. “True love.”

Any hint of Connie’s serious demeanor went entirely out the window as she snorted in response, devolving into a short burst of cackles. “No. I mean, yes, I love her, but that’s not what’s going on here, you massive dork.” Connie reached down and ruffled Mara’s hair, eliciting a displeased groan from my familiar. “You’re such fucking creampuff. How was I ever worried about you?”

“I’m…” Mara wriggled under Connie’s touch, finally releasing me from her grasp. “Shut up!”

“Brilliant. A-plus, girl. You really got me on the ropes here.” Connie and Mara were cute, but I was in no place to appreciate how well my loved ones were getting along. I had somehow accessed Constance’s magic, and I had now idea how it had happened. Following Mara’s lead, I pulled myself free from the grip of my partners and stood back up.

“Connie, what was that? I felt like I was going to explode.” I ran a hand through my hair, doing my best to regain my composure. “That’s in you all the time? Do you feel like that all the time?”

“I mean, I don’t, but I’ve had a lifetime to figure it out, you know? You were pulling pretty hard from me, Chrissy. That was probably way too much for a first timer.”

“Yeah, but how’d she do it, though?” Marcus did what he did best in times of stress and began tidying up the table, picking up our plates one by one. He managed to nab everyone’s dish but Mara’s, which was quickly snatched away by my ravenous demon. She shot him a glare that could kill a lesser man. “Okay, okay!”

“Yeah, no, not a chance.” Constance grabbed Marcus by the shirt and pulled him back, snagging her plate from his hands despite how little was left on it. With her head tilted backwards, she scooped the remaining slurry of egg and hash browns into her mouth. “There’sh no telling forsure, but I’fe got a guessh,” Connie managed through a mouthful of breakfast.

“Come on, Connie. Please just tell me. It’s not like we’ve got anything else to go on, and I’d super love to know why I just slurped you like a slushie and turned into a time bomb.” I knew how the words sounded as soon as they left my mouth, but there was no taking them back. Mara and Marcus traded cheshire grins with each other.

“Not a word from either of you,” Constance spat in a venomous tone. “Holly, that stunt you pulled with your little toys was stupid as hell, but also totally novel. The spells that make those capsules are designed to draw and recycle remnant magic when a failed pact causes a broken circle. Spur crystals take like a year to charge, and I’m sure some pissy witch somewhere with her britches halfway up her ass decided that spilling all that magic for nothing was a waste.”

“Right. It’s just odds and ends, but it’s still magic.” I mimed drawing a rune in the air, to the best of my shoddy memory. “The sigils absorbed it, at the very least. I got the circle open.”

“You sure did. Never do that shit again, by the way.” Connie patted me on the cheek in a way that was simultaneously affectionate and just a smidge demeaning. I pouted, folding my arms across my chest. “All the magic in your circle came from those capsules, including what you pulled from to change your body. When it fell apart, there’s a chance the thing just collapsed into a giant version of the spells that built it.”

“We accidentally cooked up a giant magic collection spell?” Mara chewed on her claw, casting a wide-eyed glance in my direction.

Connie nodded. “It’s just a guess. Magic is wild like that. You can plan it all out, cross your t’s and dot your i’s, but in the end you’re not going to stop it from doing what it wants. The river runs until it’s dry.”

I blinked a few times, processing the information I’d been fed. If Constance was right, and she usually was, what did that mean for me? 666 capsules, each created from the same base spell meant to absorb ambient magic, folded in on themselves into the magic that made me into this. In a way, it was poetic; I’d spent so long gathering those capsules, and now I was built to harness magic forever. Cole from the diner had called me Holly the Collector, and he’d been right on both counts. I ran my tail against my leg, mulling over what was and what could have been. I think most people probably would have been satisfied knowing they’d become some sort of engine for magic absorption, treating it like they walked into a brand new super power.

All I could think was just how right Constance had been about the danger I’d been in.

Mara and I had both been so unfathomably lucky to escape the whims of a supernatural art that liked to do what it wanted. I silently wondered if magic might be more like cooking than baking, relying on feeling and instinct rather than cold, hard calculation. I let go of the breath I’d been holding.

“So, how do I…” I choked on the words, reeling them back in to reform them into what I meant. “What do we do? Where do I go from here?” The final words held onto my tongue longer than the rest, but I knew what they were. "What if I hurt you?"

“We’ll figure it out along the way, baby girl.” Marcus leaned in, planting a tender kiss on the side of my head. How was he always so chill about everything? Wasn’t he worried I’d… I don’t know, blow up the apartment or something? I was suddenly in possession of a very specific kind of ability that I had absolutely no clue how to utilize. I kissed him back. I grabbed his face, pulled him in, and I kissed him again. I wished with everything I could just ride things out the way he did, but even if I couldn’t, just having Marcus here made me feel like we could always find a way through. God, I loved my boyfriend.

“Yeah, he’s got it.” Connie smiled and pulled the both of us into a hug. “We’re like magic, you know. We’re just gonna feel it out as we go. We’ll do what we want.”

“And if you turn into some hellish monstrosity, we can turn your ass around and point you straight at that little cult of yours!” Mara found her way into the pile, pushing her cheek against mine and doing her best to hug all three of us. 

I was still getting used to the feeling of being totally smothered in people that loved me; I kind of hoped the feeling of wonder would never wear off. All I had ever wanted was to have someone to love and to be someone worthy of love. As I buried myself in the beautiful, chaotic mess that was my collection of partners, I thought back to the person who carried me here.

For so long, I had deeply resented my younger self. When I pictured her, all I used to see was a brittle, fragile little thing incapable of change. I cursed her for how long she stood still, for how she swallowed when they shoved their rhetoric down her throat. I mourned the life I might've had if only she had the courage to find a way out sooner. I screamed and thrashed against how naive she'd been, how she simply let them hurt us.

She was born wrong, handed a temptation she couldn't resist no matter how hard she tried.

Coward.

Useless.

Damned.

She ruined my life.

What awful, cruel things to think about a child.

She was just a little girl, born into a world of fire and brimstone. Of course she trusted the people who were supposed to care for her; who else did she have? Her whole world was nothing but the lies upon lies, an artificial enclosure where they could shape her into the creature they wanted her to be. They cut off the parts of her that weren't useful and served her bedtime stories full of torture and hate.

I hated that it took me so long, but I was proud of her now. She got out. At the cost of everyone and everything she knew, the destruction of the only world she had ever known, she still got out. What more could I have asked of her?

Why had I hated her so much?

I hid my face away in the mess of limbs that fell around me, and I cried. I was still the same brittle little thing I had always been, and that person was deserving of love.

That night, I fell asleep next to the three people I cared about most. Mara found Garbanzo and popped him out of his capsule for me, giving him a kiss on his little bean nose that she told him was to be delivered to me immediately. Marcus found some black and white flick none of us had ever heard of and threw it on in the background for us to fall asleep to. Connie dabbled in a little magic to cast some soft, shifting lights along the walls, bathing the room in a soothing glow.

I'd never felt love like this from God.

What a small God, I thought, to be outdone by a bunch of idiots in a seventh floor apartment in some nowhere town.