The werewolf howled as Luc sprinted into the trees. Wood splintered and cracked like dry kindling under its mouth as it chomped through the first tree and turned its sights on the next.

  It’s going to tear up the whole orchard at this rate.

  Luc’s usual strategy with pests was to build some sort of trap, then bait them in, then destroy them. That clearly wasn’t going to work here, not unless she was willing to let it continue to run amok in the orchard. And she wasn’t.

  This orchard was a piece of the Barnes’s livelihood. They were selling apples and apple cider and baked goods at every farmer’s market and local festival, not to mention the harvest festival they had here on their own property. Luc couldn’t let all of that get destroyed.

  Which meant the order of operations had to change. Either she needed to destroy them right off, which seemed unlikely with nothing but the rope and utility belt at her disposal, or bait them first.

  Turns out, Luc made great bait.

  She sprinted full force toward the werewolf, the laces on her tennis shoes coming loose and causing her to stumble. Her outfit wasn’t tailored or specially made like most of the magical girl uniforms she saw. Instead, it was patched together of pieces she’d found at the thrift store or the local Walmart, including the worn black shoes.

  Once she had enough money, proper shoes were the first thing on her docket.

  Picking herself back up, Luc kept running until she reached the small clearing the werewolf had created. Trees lay in pieces, apples in various stages of growth strewn around like ball bearings. Even if Luc had wanted to keep running, she wouldn’t have been able to, not without sending herself sprawling again.

  “Hey!” she shouted before the creature could destroy another tree.

  It swung its head in her direction, and Luc grimaced. She’d called it a werewolf, but that wasn’t quite accurate. It was huge, standing on four stocky limbs and covered in shaggy grey fur that looked closer to moss than hair, but its face wasn’t canine. It was that of a bat, huge cone ears pointed upwards, nose smushed like a pug, eyes black and beady like a bug’s. When it opened its mouth, lines of drool strung from its sharp, canine teeth easily long enough to pierce through any of her limbs.

  “Ugh.”

  The werebat seemed to take that as an insult and lunged.

  Luc yelped, scrambling back in the direction she’d come as the beast took off after her. It was huge, bulky, and shouldn’t have been nearly as agile as an athletic teenage girl with long legs, but it was fast. Faster than it had any right to be, really.

  Halfway back to the house, Luc realized she shouldn’t lead the creature that way. It was currently after her. She didn’t need it getting distracted and going after the house, or Mama Barnes if she hadn’t listened to Luc’s warning.

  Pivoting so fast she felt something in her knee twinge and her shoe finally relieve itself of her foot, Luc sprinted further into the Barnes’s property with no idea where she was going.

  The edge of the orchard came into view, and with it, a raised wooden fence.

  This was, possibly, going to hurt.

  Luc was far from out of shape, and she'd considered herself athletic, but she'd never regretted not being on track and field more than she did right now.

  Gritting her teeth, Luc sped up and leapt. To her shock, she cleared the top of the fence, tumbling to the ground on the other side.

  Between this and her fall early, she was accumulating her fair share of dirt and bruises.

  Being a magical girl had never involved this much running before, but then again, she wanted to move up to bigger threats.

  That bigger threat didn't bother leaping or climbing over the fence, it barreled straight through it. Pieces of wood went flying in all directions, including directly at her as though thrown.

  Luc threw up an arm, doing what she could to at least shield her face from the debris.

  A piece of wood as tall and sharp as a spearhead sliced across her side, another striking the monitor on her wrist with enough force to echo into her bones.

  “Warning. Magical monitoring device offline.”

  Fuck. That couldn’t be good. They wouldn’t charge her for that, would they?

  The werebat let out a noise like a huff, digging one huge foot into the earth. It gouged a line in the ground and Luc began to back up, blood trickling down her side. This thing was going to charge her, and she couldn’t keep running from it.

  A shot like thunder rang out. Luc flinched, and the beast let out a howl of pain.

  Luc looked around to see where the noise had come from and found Tobias standing behind the wrecked fence, gun propped against his shoulder. He lowered it slightly as Luc gaped in shock. He was trying to fight a magical beast with a rifle?

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  “Looked like you could use some help,” Tobias said, his voice strong and far more sure than Luc felt. He was still dressed in his basketball uniform, ruddy brown hair damp and clinging to his forehead. She didn’t know him well, didn’t even know he was on the basketball team. What was he doing here?

  “You should get back inside!” Luc shouted, struggling to catch her breath enough to raise her voice. “It isn’t safe!”

  “I would, but I’m pretty sure that thing will kill you if I leave, and I wouldn’t be able to live with that.” He fired off another shot as the beast got its bearings, causing it to howl again.

  The gunshots were working, but they wouldn’t be able to kill it. Luc would have to manage that.

  “You distract it, and I’ll capture it,” Luc said. She barely waited for Tobias’s confirmation before she took off, sprinting toward the barn at the far end of the pasture.

  If she had a little more time, she’d go back and grab the coffee pot and see if the incinerator had enough power to work against something this big, but she didn’t. Instead, she’d have to make do with what she had and what she could find.

  She had a rope. That could be used to capture the thing, tangle it up somehow or snare it. She had a few eye rings in her utility belt, maybe those would work?

  Would they be strong enough?

  Luc reached the back of the barn, several cows staring out curiously with their wide, innocent eyes. Fuck, she didn’t need the werebat coming after the cows.

  She ran to close the doors before beginning her trap, then paused. The doors ran on a roller, and that was absolutely something she could use.

  “Sorry, cows,” she said, dropping the horseshoe door handle. “You’ll just have to tough it out.”

  Grabbing as far up on the door as she could, she shoved her toes into the U-shaped door handle, suddenly grateful she’d lost her shoe, and hauled herself up. Holding herself to the door, she unwound the rope from around her shoulder and through the roller the doors ran on.

  She dropped back to the ground. There, that should be enough leverage for a snare.

  Leaving one end of the rope, she took the other and ran it around the nearest posts on either side of the barn door as yet another gunshot ran out. Just how many more bullets did he have?

  Finally, she formed her snare, then ran back out into the field, heart dropping into her stomach at the sight before her. Tobias had climbed over the fence at some point and was doing his best to evade the beast as he fired shots at it, weaving back and forth as the werebat barreled at him head on.

  “Tobias! This way!” she shouted, waving both her arms.

  “What? No!” he shouted back. “We need to lead it away from the barn!”

  “No, I have a trap! Lead it this way!” Luc shouted. If Tobias didn’t listen, she’d have to run out there and make herself bait again, but she needed to be here to control the trap.

  With a groan audible from several hundred feet away, Tobias lowered the gun from his shoulder and began to sprint for all he was worth, running toward the barn.

  Luc ran back, trying to beat him there.

  “Watch out for the rope!” she shouted as she grabbed the loose end by the barn doors, the cows inside moaning in distress.

  Sprinting so fast he wasn’t going to be able to slow down before running into the barn, Tobias leapt over the rope and kept going, the werebat hot on his heels.

  Its front legs had just passed over the rope when Luc hauled against it, throwing her whole body weight against it. Leveraged against the door, doing far more than she’d ever have been able to with her own strength, the rope went taught around the werebats back foot.

  It flipped on its head, jerked suddenly upward by its back foot. It howled, screeching in rage, swinging front legs around wildly as it tried to free itself, but it couldn’t. Not so long as Luc could hold onto the rope.

  “Help,” Luc choked out, scrabbling to keep the rope in her grip even as it began to slip. She needed to secure the end of the rope, tie it in place so she could run and grab the makeshift incinerator.

  Tobias ran to her aid, propping his rifle against the barn wall and grabbing the rope behind her.

  “Tie it to the fence,” Luc said through gritted teeth. “We have to secure it so I can finish it off.”

  Tobias grunted in response and began to haul the rope backwards, able to do far more than she could. Damn, he was strong. He really didn’t look that strong, built more tall and narrow than anything else, but she supposed looks could be deceiving.

  With his help, she was able to tie the rope to the nearest post and let out a gasp of relief.

  “God,” she panted, hands pressing into her sides as she caught her breath. “That was fun.”

  “Not the words I would use to describe that,” Tobias said, breathing hard. “Do you want me to shoot it?”

  She shook her head. “That won’t kill it. Just let me go grab my tools…”

  Luc trailed off as something in the air shifted, like a ripple in a pond that was the magic fueling her power. She didn’t get a chance to figure out what it was before it was abundantly obvious.

  The magical girl flew over the barn on a pair of magical wings, shimmering pink in the sunlight. She didn’t recognize the magical girl, with her glossy black skin and thick hair done into two huge poofs on either side of her head, outfit pink and resembling that of a ballerina’s.

  “No, no, no, no.”

  The newcomer pulled out something like a wand, pointing it at the trapped beast and letting off a beam of magical energy. Trapped in its light, the werebat only lasted a moment before it poofed into dust.

  “No, no!” Luc shouted, voice rising in volume as the magical girl descended toward the ground. “That was mine! That was my kill!”

  “If it was yours, you would have killed it,” she said, a smarmy grin spreading across her face. “Thank you for the assist, though.”

  “Assist?” Luc all but screeched. “I did all the hard work! You just came in and stole it.”

  The magical girl smiled. “Next time, you’ll try harder. Now, doesn’t that sound nice? A rivalry.”

  Her smile only widened as Luc’s face darkened. A rivalry? Fuck that. She didn’t have time for a rivalry, not when there were bills to be paid and supplies she needed to buy. She needed to take jobs, she’d needed this job, just to get by.

  The new magical girl took off before Luc could say anything else, flying off on her ridiculously expensive wings with her ridiculously expensive magical wand.

  “Dude,” Tobias shook his head as he watched her retreating form. “Do you know who that is?”

  “A thief,” Luc said, feeling her eyes start to burn. How could someone have that much audacity? What had happened to honor? To honesty? To hard work?

  “That’s Commissioner Blanchet’s daughter.”

  It took a moment for the words to sink in before she let out a chest deep groan. “I’m not getting paid enough for this.”

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  The Glass Knight.