I’m not supposed to be where I am.

  It used to be one of those tacky mansions that your friendly neighbourhood corporate overlord owned, only when Salem became Salem and took Boston down with it, the real rich people fled. Since then it was just one island of hedge in a sea of lawns that called itself a Lexington suburb, hiding a lonesome building with nothing but a dusty old security system protecting it from looters and witches and those in between.

  Like me.

  I wait, at the top of the hedge, for the guard drones to patrol away, then lower myself and drop the last twelve feet, holding in a wince as my knees buckle to take the impact. The all consuming whine of the drones and the welcoming thorns and brambles of the hedge cover me.

  No alarm bells. No lights flipping on. No power armored police thundering towards me. Vern sometimes exaggerates just how easy my jobs were going to be, but it looks like he’s right for once. It’s just me and the drones, and he gave me something for them.

  I pull Squishboy from my pocket, extend my arm, and he crawls along, gripping my outstretched finger with his six cute little grabby legs, the feather-like antennae on his head twist anxiously from side to side, orienting him after a long commute in my hoodie.

  A drone passes by, its spotlight blanketing the grass, cut so cleanly it might have been by scissors. And a second after the copter passes, I flick the moth into the air. “Go get ‘em, boy,” I whisper.

  His wings extend and he takes off, a streak of green that contacts the drone and vanishes.

  The heavy quadcopter stops, turns to face the corner of the hedge like it’s on a time out. And then I watch the cameras on the building do the same, one by one. The motion sensitive lights flicker twice in quick succession. All clear.

  I run across the lawn, over the helipad that proved this place hadn’t been remodelled since before the days everyone’s racist uncle could afford a flying car, and shoulder into the wall beside a tall, low, inviting window. I wiggle my cold ass fingers into my gloves, crowbar tucked under my arm. “Is the security system down too?” I ask, facing a camera so the magic moth can read my lips from its spot in cyberspace.

  The light in the hallway does a double flash, then stays on.

  “Delete this feed, keep the system off, if the AI corners you, squeeze back into meat space and come find me, kay?”

  Another double flash.

  “God I wish I had a familiar,” I say. I take the crowbar and smash the nearest window. Glass scatters into the hallway, bounces off of the walls, it’s loud enough to drown out the sound of my laughter.

  I clear the shards from the edges of the window and hop through. I turn on a little headlamp so I don’t have to mess around with lightswitches.

  Documents. That’s what I’m here for, any signs this rich dumbass left juicy papers in his estate twenty years ago. What counts as juicy? No idea. Am I the best person for the job? God no. Is Vern even worse? Absolutely.

  The first floor has a dining room fit for a royal visit, an industrial kitchen for the staff, a big theater room, a spa and a gym and an indoor pool- still full, and clean! Someone had been maintaining the water in this pool in case the rich guy visits for the first time in a decade. The interior is all flat surfaces of black, silver, and glass, like it's still 2010, but the giant curving staircase in the foyer looks like it was looted from a castle. I get a sense of vertigo climbing it, the building is so quiet, so empty.

  The second story has a bedroom with a low ceiling, warm plush carpets and fairy lights, and a four post bed with a duvet I would have stolen if I thought I could fit it on the bus ride home. I kind of wish I hadn’t smashed the window, if I broke in delicately I could do this night after night, get all the good stuff.

  Other than the bedroom there were two different libraries. Both full of unopened books, only one is all cozy nooks and fiction and one is all dark wood and sophisticated economics, a study. All these mismatched rooms painted a picture of an architect with no backbone and a client with no clue.

  The home office- different from the study, somehow- has a computer dripping in RGB, top of the line stuff from 2020, if not earlier. I pop open the side of the computer tower and yank the ssd. While I kneel down to shove it in my bag I spy a banker’s box down under the desk.

  I open that next. It’s got a bunch of paper files, meeting minutes to discuss the strategy for the selection of a slogan for internal use, year over year dividend breakdowns, and eye watering budget approvals for whole departments, earmarked in single sentences by an assistant who actually read them. Buried under them there’s another harddrive, an even older, clunkier magnetic. Secret extra storage, hidden nearby enough to be accessed? This is going to be worth it.

  “Hello?” someone calls, down the hall.

  I jump, then freeze. I’m totally going to jail.

  I grab the harddrive, fumble getting it out of the box, drop it and catch it before it clunks to the ground. A light switch turns on in the hall. I switch off my headlamp and hunker behind the desk.

  The footsteps advance. I stare at the window. I’m at the second storey, and even if I can make it out of here, it wouldn’t take much of a camera sweep to find the hooded figure with the crowbar in their backpack walking to and from this neighbourhood. “Juan?” the man calls. “You working at this hour?”

  Oh, so this empty house has not just one but two people living in it. And I smashed that window loud. How long till they notice it’s broken and call the cops? The sooner I deal with this the better.

  The footsteps pass the office I’m in. Then stop. Then come back.

  Only one option left.

  “Can you help me?” I ask.

  “Jesusfuckingchrist!” the man yells, all in one squealing breath. He attempts to put on an authoritative baritone: “Come out where I can see you!”

  I peel off my headlamp, lay my crowbar on the floor, and stand up. I tuck my shoulders together, swallow deep, put on some waterworks, clutch my left elbow with my right hand.

  “Who the hell-” asks the man, just a tall silhouette, blurry and unreadable behind the flashlight of his phone

  “There were these cyberjunky looking guys following me home, I jumped the fence- I’m so so sorry I just- I got scared- and-”

  “And came inside the building?”

  “They were following me! I didn’t have a phone and I didn’t have- I’m so sorry, the front door was unlocked, I’m sorry!”

  He fumbles for the light switch without taking his eyes off me, then lowers the flashlight. Latino looking, a well groomed beard, hair military short, face not quite pulling off stern so much as disappointed.“Why did you come upstairs?”

  “Please don’t tell anyone- I can pay you, make it worth your while- but promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

  “This is a breakin, there’s going to be records with the alarm company, I have to tell my boss-”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Please,” I beg. I take an angle, this guy is thin, and in the extra cheap meal replacement soy bag kind of way. There are faded tattoos under the sleeves of a nice collared shirt that’s threadbare at the wrists. “Please I’m freaking out, I can’t go back to prison, I’ll pay, I can get you ten bunks tonight, just don’t call the cops, don’t call your boss- please I know I fucked up but- I was so scared- this isn’t my fault. Promise you won’t call them.”

  He sighs, closes his eyes, takes a long hard think. Pretty sure I bet right when I took the prison angle.

  “I’m Heidi, what’s your name?” I ask.

  “Luis,” he says. He smiles a smile I know well, the kind of smile you learn when someone at the shelter has a nightmare and wakes you up holding a knife and yelling about Jupiter. “Okay, for sure, Heidi. Why don’t you come downstairs with me for a minute to talk, and I won't tell anyone about you.”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay, Heidi, I promise.” It comes off as deeply insincere, an attempt to placate an unpredictable stranger and nothing more. But I’m a dirty liar too, so who am I to judge? He said the words.

  I smile, snap my fingers, and the pact manifests, slipping through the air like the lash of a whip. Between us is an imperceptibly thin thread of silver, from me to his tongue, a binding contract. He jolts, eyes wide.

  You see, borrowers like me usually get simple spells. Fire and fangs. But my witch leant me a strange spell, the kind borrowers don’t usually get, the kind of magic you don’t see coming till it’s too late.

  I grab my crowbar and sling the backpack over my shoulder. “Nice to meecha, Luis, you have a great night, hope your boss can afford to fix his window,”

  “What the-” he swats at the air between us, like he’ll grip the spell with his bare hand. Already it’s vanished, but I can visualize it, feel it in my fingers, pluck it if I want to mess with him. “I’m calling the-” He pulls out his phone, dials a number, blocking the doorway with his body.

  “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

  “There’s a-” he begins, and then his voice dies, invisible threads holding his tongue. He tries again, and a third time.

  “Hello?” the responder asks.

  I put the end of my crowbar against his forehead, let him feel its cold hard surface, tilt my head inquisitively. “It’s- we’re fine, sorry,” he says, and hangs up.

  I whisper: “You want to stand there and explain that you gave yourself a concussion too?”

  He looks me up and down, I watch him do the math, our little promise won’t stop him from physically detaining me, and he’s gotta be a foot taller than me, which is intimidating even if he is on the gangly side. Then he has the other, more important calculation. He’s not paid enough to take a crowbar to the teeth.

  Luis steps aside. “Heidi. That’s your real name?”

  “For all the good it’ll do you,” I say, walking past him, back to the stairs.

  “Isn’t Heidi a girl’s name?”

  “Aren’t I a girl?” I ask, curtseying in my grass stained jeans.

  He starts following me. “Juan has a gun,” he says.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say.

  “What’d you do to me?”

  “Witchcraft,” I say.

  “You’re a witch?” he asks.

  “That’s not what I said,” I tell him, and stop at the top of the stairs. “Now, stop following me, or do you want to know what other spells I have in mind?”

  “No- uh- no- just- if I wanted to talk to you again-”

  “Run along, Luis, I have no time for puny mortals today.”

  “Right- right!” he says, and averts his eyes and stumbles off back down the hall.

  I can’t help but smile. No regrets on selling my soul, magic is awesome. I walk down the stairs into the foyer, towards the front door, and just as I’m about to open it, I see out of the corner of my eye the other man.

  He’s searching the colossal walk in closet, three steps to my left.

  I don’t touch the door, I step back, eyes wide, heart pounding, conscious of my every footstep. How the fuck did he not hear me already? I get a hand on the railing of the staircase and duck behind it.

  Way too close- way way way too close. And he’s in the direction of the broken window, my other escape. I duck down the furthest hallway, put some distance between us. This whole wing of the house is a gallery- weird roman architecture this time. There are dozens of exhibits, at least a hundred paintings, all buried under black tarp. And on the other end, a window.

  I hear Juan’s footsteps behind me, and run for it. He’s following me, and this gallery just keeps going. I’m expecting to get shot in the back any second, expecting him to call out, expecting any reaction- is this guy deaf or something? Why hasn’t he caught me?

  The lights turn on and I duck behind a tall lumpy form under a dust cover. The man is just slowly walking through the room like an enemy in a horror game, unaware yet getting closer. I need a better hiding place, so I crawl under the dust cover, make myself small, next to the granite feet of a larger than life woman.

  I hear him stepping through the room, I might be hallucinating but I swear I see his silhouette through the cloth, strafing around, ready to put a bullet through the conspicuous lump under the sheet.

  “Hello.”

  The voice does not belong to the man, it comes from inside the tarp, an airy, detached, feminine voice. It’s not alarming, I don’t jump or scream or swing my crowbar.

  “Hi,” I reply. Without moving from my foetal position on the floor, I look up, make eye contact, notice this massive nude form has hair made of snakes and look quickly away. “Medusa?” I ask.

  “A priestess raped, deformed by her own goddess, who decided to make her ugliness into her strength.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, except to swallow and offer conversationally “I think that that’s actually like a christian retelling of the old myth. That she’s just a monster in the Greek version.” It makes me sound smart, but I’m just repeating information I got from watching history videos while high.

  “Nothing remembered is truly true, so does it matter?” she asks, tilting her head. Suddenly paint covers her granite form, striping her snakes, blemishing her shoulders and the tops of her breasts, bringing a warm olive tone to the stone. Then she tilts her head the other way and it’s gone. “When one story makes a mark on you and the other does not, which would you choose to repeat?”

  “Your version is sadder.” I stay curled up at her feet, craning my neck to see her. “But I like it more too. And the paint. But the paint is accurate, right, and the version isn’t?”

  I can see a smile crinkle her lips, a hint of white teeth, blush on cheeks, and then all the colour washes back over her. “If you like it, then that is what I am.”

  “How long have you been under this tarp?”

  “Always.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Do you want to be under this tarp?”

  She stares at me, tilts her head, quizzically.

  “Okay, dumb question. Should I take it off? Do you want to run away together?” I ask, then wince. Yeah, the 11 foot tall greek monster can bus home with me, that’s not going to get us both burned on TV.

  “You may do as you wish.”

  “What do you want?”

  “In the 2045 edition of Introduction to physics, grade 11-12, a theorem attributed to Emmy Noether has no attribution, to save space.” She says it without any pause to consider, as easily as one would say they wanted to order a pizza.

  I blink.

  “Make them put her name back,” Medusa says, her painted teeth grit, the dust cover vibrating, her voice a growl not at me, but at the supposed them.

  “Okay,” I say, tentatively. “What about you?”

  Her tone returns to its old, dreamy quality: “What about me?”

  “Do you want to stay? Or go?”

  “I have told you what I want.”

  “Okay. I’ll- uh- send an email, or something? And leave you here? Should I set up a rescue mission?”

  “You may do as you wish,” she repeats. And then, as I awkwardly nod, she adds: “But it was very nice to meet a human, Heidi.”

  I giggle, “Nice to meet you too, Medusa,” I say, only she’s gone completely still, just carved rock once more.

  I’m jolted back to reality by a footstep right outside of the tarp. Have I been speaking out loud this whole time? Or was that- that felt dreamlike- I huddle closer to the inert form of Medusa, hold my breath. He steps on the edge of the tarp, an inch and some cloth separating us.

  “Juan!” calls Luis. “There you are.”

  Juan doesn’t react.

  “I said- Juan!” Luis calls louder. Through the tarps I see the lights flick on and off, Juan finally turning his attention to Luis. “Help me clean up this broken glass.”

  “What?” Juan replies. Okay, maybe he is a little deaf. “Luis there’s been a break in.”

  “No, just me, I broke the window-”

  “What? How?”

  “Just got cabin fever, was throwing a ball around-”

  “Are you fucking stupid?”

  “Yeah, yeah, now let’s clean it up. You call the cops?”

  “No way, after what Yonah did last time? You’re lucky security hasn’t gone off though.”

  “I think the system is down.”

  “What?” he scoffs. “Did that fucker turn it off again?”

  “I don’t know, I got lucky. Come on,” Luis says.

  Juan’s steps retreat, out of the gallery. I pull the sheet off of me, catch a glance at the door. Juan is gone, but Luis looks me dead in the eye, holds up a scrap of paper, and puts it on the ground before he walks off.

  I go back to the entrance, grab the paper, which just has a number. I pocket it- cause you never stop networking- then check the coast is clear, and book it out the front door.