Lanie dropped her duffel bag against the wall beside the stairs, but kept the messenger bag over her shoulder. Nips was keeping quiet, peeking out from under the bag’s flap, trying to see what was going on without being seen in turn. Lanie wasn’t worried about him being spotted, though. Brownies had plenty of tricks for remaining unseen.

  She stopped outside the office door, running her fingers over the chipped and battered paint of the doorjamb. The white door was almost black at the edge where greasy fingers tended to catch it. She’d never noticed how dingy it looked, and noticing it now meant she was procrastinating, and she knew it.

  She was going to ask Jorge to break the rules. Most of the world’s rules were pretty much optional, but Jorge had a set of rules that weren’t. At least, not to him.

  It wouldn’t be the first time she’d bumped up against his rules. With a pang of nostalgia, she remembered an overcast day standing in an alley that smelled like rain-soaked concrete and motor oil. Faded graffiti scrawled across the brick wall behind them, and somewhere nearby a siren wailed, low and distant. Jorge leaned against the hood of a dented Civic, arms crossed, watching her with a look that was half amusement, half disappointment.

  “Come on, chica,” he said, his voice rough but not unkind. “You got a brain. Use it. What’s rule number one for rule breakers?”

  Lanie stood a few feet away, scuffing her sneaker on the cracked pavement. She hated it when he went into teacher mode, but she couldn’t stop the smirk creeping up her face. “Know the reason for the rule before you break it. Otherwise, you end up starring in some viral video where you splat all over the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”

  Jorge barked a laugh that bounced off the walls. “Okay, listilla, you think you’re clever?” He tipped his chin at her. “What’s rule number two?”

  “Know who gets hurt if you break it,” she said, more subdued now.

  “Bien.” His smile faded, the edge returning to his tone. “Now, tell me where you went wrong last night.”

  Her eyes dropped. The fun part was over. She traced the crack in the sidewalk with her toe, avoiding his gaze. “I did a job on the Sixteens’ patch.”

  “Uh-huh.” The amusement was gone completely. Jorge straightened up, the easy weight of his body shifting into something alert and dangerous. “And why do we stay away from the Sixteens?”

  “Because they’re psychos,” she muttered. “And they don’t let things go.”

  He took a slow step closer, voice low and steady. “So who gets hurt if they find out it was you?”

  Lanie’s throat tightened. She glanced up, met his eyes for half a heartbeat, then looked away again. He didn’t need to shout or hit. His disappointment hurt more than a blow. “We all do,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  The silence that followed was heavier than a shout. He put his hand on the nape of her neck, holding her gaze. “And knowing what it could cost you, cost us, are you going to make that mistake again?”

  Her throat was too tight for words, so she shook her head.

  Jorge nodded once, the tension easing from his shoulders. His hand was rough with calluses; grounding, but not unkind.

  “Good,” he said. “Then you learned something. Don’t make me teach it twice.”

  He hadn’t had to teach it twice. She understood. His rules had good reasons behind them; they were there to keep the world from eating his people alive. He didn’t break them lightly.

  She pulled in a deep breath and squared her shoulders, remembering his lessons. There was a damn good reason for breaking this one. She just had to convince him, and to do that, she’d need to tell him everything. Even about the magic. He was the one person she’d always been straight with, and she couldn’t change that now.

  Keeping her voice low so that only he could hear her, she said, “Hey, Nips? I’m going to have to tell Jorge a lot of things. You okay with being introduced, or would you rather I keep you a secret?”

  “If you don’t mind,” His voice was hesitant. “I think I’d prefer to remain unknown. I don’t wish to make things more difficult for you, but…” He trailed off as if searching for the right words.

  Lanie spoke up before he could say more. “Yeah, I get it. You’re good.” She took another steadying breath. “Okay,” she murmured. “Here goes.” She opened the door.

  In the shabby office, another radio played corridos on low volume. The little room smelled like coffee and degreaser. Jorge sat behind a battered metal desk, leaning back in his chair, his phone to his ear. His wide mouth split into a grin when he saw her, but he held up one finger, then pointed to his phone to ask her to wait.

  While he finished his call, she looked him over. He was the same man she’d always thought of as an older brother; tall and wiry with faded tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves. For the first time, she noticed tiny crow’s feet starting to show at the corners of his eyes, and with a start, she realized he was over thirty. Neither of them were the same half-feral kids they used to be.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He looked tired; there were shadows under his eyes, and his black hair had the slicked-back look it got when he was stressed and kept running his fingers through it. She smirked, and when he finished his call, she said, “Your little girl keeping you up all night?”

  He smiled with a wry chuckle. “Mi hija has a good set of lungs on her.” He rubbed his face. “Corrine is nursing, so it’s not like I can do much to help, but I still wake up and lie there feeling like I should be doing something, you know?”

  Pushing away from the desk, he stood and walked around it. “But never mind about me. Come here, hermanita.” He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight before pushing her back with his hands on her shoulders to get a good look at her. A little more of the tension she’d been carrying melted away as she returned the hug. After looking her up and down, he grunted. “Not missing any pieces, at least. Your call was all cryptic and mysterious and shit, and I’ve been dying of curiosity for days.” He motioned to the pair of chairs in front of the desk. “Come on, I’ll grab a couple beers, and you can tell me the whole story.”

  He turned to the little mini-fridge in the corner and rummaged in it while she flopped bonelessly into a seat. She’d built this moment up in her head as a scratchy hair shirt, only to find it more like a comfortable sweater. He was the same old Jorge, and though she’d changed, she wasn’t so far from the teen who used to sprawl over the arms of this very chair. Maybe this wouldn’t be too hard, after all.

  Jorge offered her a brown bottle with beads of condensation forming on its cool surface. The label was from a local microbrewery, and she smiled at it. It felt good to be home.

  That thought made the smile fall away again. She’d made up her mind to leave, hadn’t she? As much as she loved these people, she didn’t want to risk pulling them into crazy, magical danger. But now that she was back, she wasn’t sure she could leave again so easily.

  Jorge took the other chair and turned it to face her rather than the desk. He must have seen the sudden departure of her smile, because his own face turned serious. He used his keychain to pop open his beer, then offered it to her as he said, “Okay, tell me. What’s the damage?”

  “You won’t believe half of it.” She popped the cap off her own beer and handed the keychain back to Jorge. “Hell, I’m still wrapping my brain around it, myself.” She tapped a fingernail against her bottle, trying to decide the right way to start. She couldn’t leave him ignorant of the possible danger. He needed to know about the magic. Maybe it would be best to just rip off the Band-Aid, so to speak.

  Fortifying her nerves with a long pull from the bottle, she set it on the desk and looked Jorge in the eye. “I’ll show you just how weird, but you need to promise you’ll keep your cool.”

  His eyebrows drew together in puzzlement and concern, and he held her eyes for a couple of heartbeats before he nodded. “Yeah. I know you, Lanie. My word.” He held out his fist for her to bump just as he had when they were younger, and she bumped his knuckles with hers.

  Then, she channeled prana into her hand and peeled the shadow from under the edge of the desk like a length of discarded fabric. She swirled it around herself, fully covering her form in gossamer midnight silk, nearly vanishing even in the well-lit room.

  Jorge’s mouth dropped open. “What the fu…” His words trailed off, and he checked the label on his beer, then sniffed the mouth of the bottle. Then he moved his fingers in front of his eyes, checking for motion echoes. “No. Not tripping.” He slumped back in the chair and tried to examine her, but his eyes kept sliding away. “Okay, that’s just freaky. Talk to me, chica, before I decide I’m going nuts.”

  Lanie let the magic dissipate, and the shadow dissolved. “Well, that heist I was hired for went off like clockwork. It was when I left the museum that things went all Twilight Zone.” As she spoke, she could see Jorge wanting to jump in and ask questions. His face went nearly red with fury when she described the little concrete room and what Cole had done to her, but he held his tongue.

  She told him almost everything. The only thing she held back was Nips. That took a little careful editing; she framed his opening of the portal to fairy as a one-time bit of help, but there was enough strangeness in the story that one glossed-over detail shouldn’t stand out too much. She was very careful to tell the technical truth, and let her only lie be one of omission and mistaken assumptions.

  Jorge kept his word through the telling and didn’t interrupt, but Lanie could see the questions lining up behind his eyes. By the time she finished, they were each on their second beer, and Jorge took a long pull on his as Lanie fell silent. He rolled the bottle between his hands as he stared off into space.

  Lanie watched him as he processed what she’d said. Emotions played across his face, and his eyes darted back and forth as he thought about the ramifications of all the new information. She wasn’t sure how much of it he believed, but this careful consideration was just like him. His flash temper and tendency to overreact had gotten him into plenty of trouble when they were younger, and he’d worked hard over the years to train himself to slow down and consider all the angles.

  Slowly, his voice even and distant, he started talking. His voice and features were tightly leashed, but Lanie knew him well enough to read the tension he was trying to hide. “Okay, Lanie, most immediate issue first. You have dangerous men chasing you. Lay out why you thought it was okay to maybe lead them back here.”

  She’d known that question would come, and had her answer ready. “I thought about it a lot on the way back. I took a couple extra days to play tourist and make sure I didn’t have a tail.” She set down her beer bottle and leaned forward, using her hands as she spoke. “The way I break it down, there are two possibilities: either they know who I am and already know about this place—it’s my legal mailing address, after all—or they don’t know who I am, and were tracking me. If it’s the second one, I ditched them clean. If it’s the first, then it wouldn’t matter if I came back or not; they already know who you are. They never used my name, so I’m betting it’s a little better fifty-fifty that they don’t know my identity.” She looked him straight in the eyes, “But tell me this: if I hadn’t come in person and demonstrated the magic, would you have believed it? Would you be taking the danger seriously?

  “I could have cut contact and just vanished, but even if I’d called to explain it to you, I know you, Jorge. You wouldn’t have let it go. You would have worried, and maybe even come looking. Either way, you’d be in danger. At least this way, I could show you, prove I’m not tripping or cracked in the head. I’m not dragging you in blind.”

  She leaned back and crossed her arms, then leaned forward again. Then, she grabbed her beer bottle and took a sip. Her fingers started to pick at the label as she said one more thing, “Besides, I’ve got to ask you for something, and I needed you to know the stakes before I asked because you aren’t going to like it.”