I turned around to find Rosefinch sitting on the chair behind me.

  ‘I did not sense her, Caller,’ Hwari said, and I heard the rare alarm in Hwari’s voice.

  Rosefinch sat with her legs crossed, the slit in her dress showing scandalous amounts of thigh skin. She had the oriental fan unfolded and was slowly fanning her neck with it. She faced the front of the room, so I was in her peripheral vision. But there was no doubt that the vampyr could see every movement I made even from this angle.

  “Well?” She asked. “Am I?”

  “Yeah, I am. I mean, you’re right. And I’m looking for a second.” I swallowed. Questions flicked through my mind, such as why she was here, or whether she saw me trade away the compass. I wondered if it was considered rude to give away a boon not even an hour after I received it. Another more important question: how had she not been sensed by Hwari?

  “I see. Pray tell, who are your options?” She said, looking bored.

  “The Namahage, Kita. Menele the butterfly woman.”

  “The two most ambitious minors in the game, straining for a more advantageous position. I was under the impression that the Sewer Mistress and Assad had them cowed. Looks like they saw you and thought it worth a risk. Which way do you lean?”

  “Menele,” I said, despite myself. If it came down to it, I was willing to renegotiate with her.

  “You did not take the bakeneko’s deal? He was sure to have offered you names.”

  “He was. I wasn’t buying,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “He asked for my names. Or ways to kidnap little kids. Or a daemon’s name.”

  "Hmm," She murmured softly under her breath. “I understand your reluctance regarding your own name. You only have three, after all. As for the children, that too, I could understand. Practitioners are closer to humans than they pretend to be.” She snapped the fan shut. “But I do not understand the daemon name. You have one, do you not?”

  “You know, from the way everyone made such a big deal about the inheritance, I could’ve sworn that giving out daemon names was a bad thing,” I said. “But when I don’t give it out, people are kind of shocked.”

  “The nature of power is that the more you have, the little bits of it become inconsequential. It is the same with mortal money.” She waved her hand dismissively.

  I snorted. “I wish I had enough money for it not to matter anymore.”

  “You digress. You are in need of a second. And yet, you would not bargain with what little you have in your arsenal to learn the name of those who would stand beside you?” Rosefinch studied her nails, colored in with ruby-red nail polish. “I was of the impression that you wanted to win.”

  “Correction, I’m going to win,” I said, despite not feeling any sense of confidence in myself. With that and a nickel, I’d have a whole nickel. “But it's not worth having people die.”

  “Are you sure that people would die?”

  “Um, he basically asked me to steal people's keys so he could kidnap little children? That doesn’t scream murderer to you?”

  “There are worse things than death, little mageling,” Rosefinch said quietly and I was forced to look away from her, just in case she turned her head and we locked eyes.

  “Well, I’m not going to fight you on that,” I said, just as quietly as her. I saw Wol and Hwari listening intently at my side. “But I’m not going to be responsible for helping someone do bad things. I’m supposed to be stopping them if anything.”

  “Why?” She said. “No one helped you. Inty has looked into you. You were not treated kindly by others. No one would fault you for wanting a little taste of vengeance. You could promise the merchant a key. With the abilities you have now, it would be easy to deliver.”

  I leaned on the chair. I was already tired and this conversation was exhausting on a different level. But I tried my best to answer. “No, that’s fucked up. It doesn’t matter what they do. I’m not going to give up a little kid who had nothing to do with it. Hell, I don’t want to offer up my classmates either. Even…”

  I was about to finish the sentence with ‘Even those guys wouldn’t do that.’

  A memory flicked by. My first day at charter. I found my copy of Romeo and Juliet all ripped up and halfway in the toilet. It had been a copy that I borrowed from the library and ended up paying for it.

  Another one came, where they took a razor to my pants during gym class. I was dressed in shorts the rest of the day, having to face the whispers about who did it, why they did it, and how funny it was to see me walking home like that in January.

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  And a dozen more memories slid by, every one of them crystal clear.

  Petty, petty things that shouldn’t matter in my judgement that people weren’t cruel enough to send others to their deaths for their own gain. That people don’t screw over others like that. Period. It has nothing to do with being an asshole, or a pushover. There’s a line people won’t cross and I wanted to believe that.

  So why was it so hard to say it out loud?

  “...Even if I can’t find a second, I’ll find a way.” I swallowed. “I always do.”

  Rosefinch finally turned her head in my direction. The smirk from the previous meetings were gone, and her face was stone still. No smile, no smirk, no lifting of the eyebrows. There was no rise and fall of the chest, which didn't make me inappropriate as much as her a vampyr. When she looked directly at me, I found it hard to meet her eyes.

  “Not this time, mageling. The codes of the Practitioners are written throughout history, and no one loves to flaunt the failure of others to meet those codes while making an exception for their own shortcomings by twisting their honor than the very people you face today,” she said, “Show up without a second, and they will tear you to pieces even before you set foot in the trial grounds. If they were in your shoes, they would do anything possible to bring the advantage over to their side, even making such hideous dealings that you find yourself averse to.”

  “Geez, thanks,” I said. I wish I knew something better to say. But everything Rosefinch said was the truth and that matter-of-fact tone hammered it home with impunity.

  I already knew all those things. I knew that in my shoes, Victor and Mina would take the deal in a second. Innocent people be damned, Victor fucking Valentine was feeding his familiar during the fire when kids our age was being nearly eaten by a glamour tiger.

  “It doesn’t change what I have to do. If you're done, I’m going to go and talk to Menele now.” I finally said and began the long trek across the room.

  She stopped me by putting her fan out in front of me. “One last question, little Mageling. Why?”

  “You already asked that.”

  “No. I asked why will you not make the deal. Why are you going so far to participate? Granted, you have the silly notion that you might actually achieve victory,” She said. "But for all intents and purposes, you were a regular mortal before all this. You have lived without your womb-mother for decades. Her inheritance showing up now is hardly enough to illicit such a strong sense of responsibility towards her belongings."

  I leaned back on the crutch and nearly folded my arms out of habit, then frowned at the vampyr. "What kind of question is that? And what the hell is a womb-mother? My mom's my mom. There's no other reason."

  "Humor me, mageling."

  "Well," I said. "It's my mom's. Of course I have to do this."

  "So you do this out of a natural born instinct to ensure the continuation of family wealth? Chemicals in your mortal brain which tell you that what was hers is rightfully yours? And that it must be protected?"

  The chain of questions wasn't like the Rosefinch I met before with the Intellect Transit. She had been, what's the best word here, flippant of anything that didn't concern herself or the Intellect's wellbeing. So when she continued to hang onto this line of questioning, it made me think.

  Why was I doing this?

  I mean, did I really need my mom's inheritance? When it came down to it, the answer was no. Rosefinch was right. I could give up her inheritance and nothing would change. Hell, I doubted even getting her inheritance would change much. From the look of things, the lion's share of inheritance in this world worked through knowledge and contacts. That wasn't going to add the extra bathroom and a half to the apartment. If anything, I'd have to move to the middle of nowhere if everyone kept coming after me to get to it.

  So the question remained, why was I doing this?

  Well, back in the daemon's den at the docks, when I was near death with nothing but the gravity knife, one of the strongest motivations had been to not lose to the daemon. But looking back on that motivation, it was more stubbornness than anything else. Everything had felt so unfair back then, that I was going to die at the age of seventeen. And I don't mean death in the life-or-death manner. I'm talking about a spiritual death. The kind that makes you a coward for life. If I had turned away from the daemon, I was sure that taking the exit, I.E, running away when things got tough, would become a road well-travelled. I'd only be able to run, and I didn't want to be someone like that.

  But was that the reason why I was doing this trial? Again, I didn't think so.

  So why?

  Why did I not mind getting a six hundred thousand dollar bounty on my head, or having to burn my school down, or having to face off a daemon if it meant I could receive this inheritance? Was it really due to some mommy issues? Some psychological sickness that Freudian psychologists would love to document?

  Why?

  And surprisingly, I found the reason to be much the same as the one I gave her before.

  "Because what you said is true. If anyone else got it, they'd use it for the stupidest things." I shook my head. "I think," I swallowed, looking down at my shoes. Rosefinch's stare was intense. "It's my responsibility now, to make sure it's not going to be misused. Clear the family name so to speak. It sounds like my parents did a lot of bad things, and I want to set it right. And I don't mean just keep bad things from happening... I think... I think I want to use it to help people. Like today, during the fire."

  I left out the part where it had been me who started the fire.

  But once I said it like that, I kind of realized this whole thing was bigger than me. Bigger than school, bigger than my college acceptance letters, and even my stupid dad flying over to Europe without helping me out with all this.

  This thing I was doing? It mattered. It mattered a lot. I was finally starting to realize why everyone else was making such a big deal about it.

  Rosefinch said something which I didn’t catch. “...like her.”

  “Yes. Night and day,” Wol answered.

  Rosefinch sighed, then began speaking to Wol and Hwari. “Familiars. You are aware of what will happen?”

  Wol nodded quietly. “I am aware. I was prepared for it the moment he was told he needed a second.”

  ‘The path is wrought with danger, this will be the least of them.’

  “Whoa,” The topic had changed without warning and I had to shake off my internal thoughts. “What are you three talking about?”

  Rosefinch stood up, more striking than beautiful. More moonlight than human. Those damning eyes of her stared into mine, luminescent and absolutely hypnotizing.

  “We are talking about how the other practitioners will react to you having a vampyr as your second, little Mageling. Do try and keep up,” she said, her face controlled into a careful neutrality. But one corner of her lip lifted into a damned good-looking smirk, “And a word of warning… I bite.”