Aranea looked tired. Her eyelids were drooping, her shoulders were slumped, and she walked with a shuffling gate that would have done a zombie proud. Val considered the sorry state of the Spider Goddess and grinned.

It had taken more than a little effort for Val to get Aranea out of bed. It was a cold, rainy day, and they’d had a monumental dinner the previous night. Together those factors had worked on Aranea’s spidery instincts to leave her sluggish and curled up under the blankets, unwilling to be drawn out until Val had lifted her from the bed and plopped her down in front of a stream of warm water in the shower.

A fresh mug of hot chocolate and the promise of a surprise had secured Aranea’s wakefulness. Hot chocolate wasn’t a terribly “spidery” beverage, but that hadn’t stopped Aranea from claiming it as her own. Some things transcended the bounds of culture, habit, and even species.

“You promised there would be a surprise,” Aranea said as they walked together under Val’s umbrella down the rain soaked streets. “It occurs to me that you didn’t promise that it would be a nice surprise.”

Val gestured down and skipped over the puddle in front of them.

“You’re correct,” she said. “I did not.”

“Will you make that promise now?” Aranea asked, skipping over the puddle in unison with Val. The burst of energy didn’t seem to cost her much, suggesting that her shambling was mostly a matter of mood and preference.

“I think I’d like to see how much you trust me,” Val said, angling the umbrella to keep the runoff from a gutter from splashing onto them.

“There is both the question of how much I trust your intentions, and how much I trust your knowledge of my tastes and desires.” Despite her words, Aranea continued walking along at her slow and plodding pace. If she was eager to learn what the surprise was, she was being adept at biding her time and appearing patient.

“Are there different answers to those two questions? Or are you willing to go through with this blind?” Val asked.

“We’ll see I suppose,” Aranea said.

Val felt a blip of adrenaline ping against her heart. Aranea’s fatigue might have been due to the meal and the environmental conditions but her emotional lassitude felt like someone who was fading away. Val tried to stuff that concern down. If Tam’s ideas turned out ok, the danger of Aranea redefining herself into non-existence would fade away. The alternative, that she’d have to return to her home realm and resume her usual existence was less pleasant to consider, but even that wouldn’t mean they could never see each other again.

A goddess who came to Earth once a year for a vacation would be a small enough variation on the central idea that made up Aranea’s being that it wouldn’t put her in any peril.

It would be something they could have together.

But maybe not enough to base a relationship on.

Val could imagine meeting Aranea for drinks once a year. Maybe on the anniversary of their original meeting. It would be a delight, and a sorrow. They might manage it a few times, but long term, the reminder of what they couldn’t have would be hard to live with. They would both have to move on, their lives diverging whether they wanted them to or not.

Val unspooled the movie that was playing in her mind and dropped the footage in a mental garbage bin. Was it a valid worry? Certainly. Had it happened to other people? Absolutely. Was it worth borrowing trouble from a future that might never arrive? One which she was specifically going to do her best to avoid? Definitely not.

“However this turns out, promise me you’ll be honest about it?” Val asked.

Aranea chuckled and turned to face her.

“You’ll offer no promise to me, and yet you would extract one the hardest ones I can be asked to make?” Aranea’s tone was arch, but she was smiling as she spoke.

“Yes, I would,” Val said, without shame or regret.

“Very well, I will be honest about whatever it is you intend to inflict upon me. Remember that you have only yourself to blame that.”

“That seems fair.” Val knew she was playing with fire, but on reflection, she had to admit it was one of the more fun aspects of the current stage of their relationship.

They walked a few blocks in the rain, Val holding her pace at a speed that was comfortable for Aranea and Aranea continue to march forward at Val’s direction despite the ‘surprise’ visibly nibbling away at her patience.

“There are a number of people gathered here,” Aranea said as they crossed the last  street before their destination.

“Yep. The convention isn’t open yet, but people started lining up last night.”

“It’s like a small city within a city.”

“This one’s been put on for a long time now. People know the crowds will be here, so they get permits for vending booths for concessions and pre-convention swag.” Val pointed towards the nearest both which was offering three flavors of fried dough and had accumulated a small crowd around it.

“Swag?” Aranea asked.

“Various bits of licensed merchandise,” Val said. “This con attracts a pretty wide fan base, so there’s plenty of stuff that people are looking for. New thing. Old things. Doesn’t matter what it is, someone out there will be collecting it.”

“And you think someone will have something in their collection which I might enjoy?” Aranea asked, her face a mask of disbelief and confusion.

“No. I’m not planning to woo you with props and memorabilia,” Val said. “We’re heading inside.”

She took them to one of the side doors which only the staff was normally allowed to use. Aranea’s eyebrows climbed even further up her forehead.

“You are a puzzling creature,” she said.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Val said. “I’ll be boring and predictable someday.”

She left out the ‘if we get to stay together that long’. Neither of them want to think of that.

Inside the convention center, away from where the exhibits were receiving their last minute setup touches, Val lead Aranea to one of the dressing rooms off the convention center’s main stage. Inside a woman with shockingly bright green hair and an uncountable number of tatoos was waiting for them

“I wasn’t sure you were going to make it! Let me see what we have here!” Georgiana Bell said, scurrying over to take a closer look at Val and Aranea.

“Who is this?” Aranea asked.

“Aranea, this is Georgie. Georgie, Aranea,” Val said, returning the hug Georgie offered. “So, how do you think she’ll work out?”

“Oh my god. She’s perfect!” Georgie said.

“Yes,” Aranea said. “But for what?”

“Georgie is a professional costume designer,” Val said. “Also a member of the Second Chance Club in good standing. And also, a serious competitor on the cosplay scene.”

“Cosplay?” Aranea asked.

“You didn’t tell her what we’re doing?” Georgie asked.

“It’s a surprise!” Val said with a smile.

Georgie punched her in the arm.

“That’s not nice!” George said. “Not everyone is comfortable getting up on stage in costume.”

“Costume?” Aranea asked.

“It’s what I do,” Georgie said. “I help make people up as different fantastical characters. It’s fun thing to do at conventions like this, and the contest brings out some of the best talent in the country. Val was supposed to tell you all this.”

“She had other ideas apparently,” Aranea said with a scowl.

“Tell her what theme you’re working with this year!”

“I’ve been working for the last six months on a spider-lady design, but my model backed out a month ago. I’ve been looking for someone new to wear the outfit since then but no one’s had the right look.”

Val watched Aranea’s eyes widen slowly as her understanding grew.

“Why do you not wear the costume yourself?” Aranea asked, cautiously.

“I…I don’t like being on stage,” Georgie said. “I love seeing my work up there, but I kind of pass out when I’m up in front of people like that.”

“And you say I would fit into the costume you’ve made?” Aranea asked.

“Your bone structure is flawless, and your skin is perfect for the makeup I’ll be working with. I’ll need to make a few alterations to the costume itself, but that’s always true,” Georgie said. “Are you sure you want to go through with this though? I don’t like asking people to do anything their uncomfortable with. I mean if you wanted to you could just do the contest and not worry about walking the con floor to show off the design.”

“Walking the con floor? You mean I would get to appear in front of everyone as a spider for the whole day? Including a stage appearance?” Aranea asked.

“Yep. You can spend a whole day with people thinking ‘what an amazing spider lady’ every time they see you,” Val said, grinning.

Aranea licked her teeth and for just a moment Val was sure she saw the tiny hint of fangs Aranea displayed when she was hungry for something. Val grinned wider.

“Yes,” Aranea said. “I believe I could be persuaded to spend a day like that.”

***

As the convention wound to a close, Val found Aranea in Georgie’s dressing room, packing away the costume carefully. Despite a day on her feet and then hours afterwards at various con parties, Aranea had a brighter glow of life about her than Val had ever seen before.

“So, how did you like my surprise?” Val asked.

Aranea stalked over to Val. Calmly, and wordlessly, she took Val’s shoulder’s in her hands, and leaned in. Val thought Aranea was going to offer her a quick kiss and an amused quip but she was mistaken. There was nothing quick about the kiss Aranea gave her. When they finally broke apart for air, the building’s lights were off and Val was left feeling drunk, high, and weak in her knees.

“This was a most enjoyable day,” Aranea said, watching Val with a satisfied smile.

“Wow,” was all that Val could manage for a few moments.

“That is how I felt all day,” Aranea said. “So many people seeing me as a mythical spider figure. Their awareness of who I was through a false exterior which matched my inner truth. That was ecstacy.”

“That’s what I was hoping for,” Val said. “I didn’t know if it would work though. Or how strong the effect would be.”

“How did you think of it?” Aranea asked.

“I had help,” Val said. “Tam had the general idea of getting people to add to your story, to see you like I see you, so that it would be a little easier for you to live like this full time.”

“You wanted them to see me as a human woman in a costume?” Aranea asked.

“No,” Val said. “I wanted to honor both of the parts of your nature. You as a spider goddess and you in your human form.”

“I…thank you,” Aranea said, blinking rapidly.

“So what do I get if I say I have another surprise for you?”

“My undivided attention.” Aranea said, clearing her eyes.

***

The college classroom was abuzz with chatter, as all classroom’s are before the teacher begins. The chatter quieted down as Dr. Tereg walked in with someone new though.

“Hello class, we have a special guest lecturer today,” Tereg said. “Please welcome Professor Aranea Arana, she’ll be presenting for some new findings to us today on Arthropoda Chelicerata Arachnida.”

Val watched from the door as Aranea walked to the podium beside Dr Tereg and greeted the class. The lecture hadn’t even begun and Val could hear the students saying ‘hey, it’s the spider-lady!’ and ‘did she bring any tarantulas this time?’.

Some of the students looked terrified at that notion, but the rest were fully onboard for a lecture from an instructor everyone could see had both a passion for her subject and a startling breadth of information about it.

Catching Aranea’s eye, Val saw her drinking in the the focused belief and attention of the students. It wasn’t worship, but something better; recognition and appreciation for the things she valued in herself.

Val smiled. Conventions only came around every so often, but there were so many other ways that Aranea could be cherished for who she was that the worry Val had been carrying was able to drift away.

She hadn’t had to ask Aranea to change who she was. That never worked in a relationship.

Becoming more than you’d once been though? Val thought back on all the roles she’d played, and how they’d defined her for a time. She was still many of those things. Still a daughter. Still a warrior. Still a rule breaker, when the need arose.

She could still draw on all of those things, but with each day she lived, she had the chance to become something more.

As workouts went, Val had put herself through tougher ones. Tam knew that Val’s work regaining the use of her legs had been rough, and the regimen Val went on before she, Anna, and Tam took down PrimaLux was one she claimed she never wanted to try again. Even compared to those though, her current training routine looked like it was pushing her pretty far past her limits.

“Should I get you a fresh towel or would a bucket and a mop be more appropriate?” Tam asked, wandering into the Club’s private gym during one of Val’s brief rest periods.

“Towel’d be nice.” Val’s breath came in short, hard pants. She was thirty seconds away from her next set of reps according to the schedule Tam had seen on tracking app but since Val was already ten sets past how many she was original supposed to do, it seemed pretty reasonable that her body was a bit winded.

Tam grabbed one of the bigger, more absorbent towels from the wall and tossed it to Val. It was a good throw but the towel still landed at Val’s feet.

“How long have you been in here?” Tam asked, pausing to observe her friend.

Sweat covered every inch of Val’s body, but it was the fatigue trembles Tam saw in Val’s muscles that surprised her. Tam was used to seeing Val go all out, so she knew what a tired Val looked like. This was beyond tired. This was someone who’d worked themselves to the point of exhaustion and beyond.

“I don’t know,” Val said, picking up the towel and wiping her face and arms dry. “What time is it?”

“Around 2:00am,” Tam said. “My show let out a little while ago.”

“How’d it go?” Val reached for a pair of fifty pound weights but waited for Tam to answer before beginning her next workout.

“Good. The crowd liked the new effects. The routine needs a bit more work overall but the bones are solid.”

Tam would have been happy to talk at length about the various ideas she’d come up with for fine tuning the performance. There was so much thought that went into each effect and each turn of phrase she used, that it was hard not to want to share it all. Val’s state of exhaustion suggested that there were more important topics at hand though.

“How are things going here?” she asked.

“Good,” Val said, too quickly. “Or, no new crisis at least. Anna and Jen were meeting earlier. I think they were prioritizing some of the low grade issues that have come up so that we can knock them out in between the bigger cases we still have to tackle.”

“Sounds good,” Tam said with a nod. “What’s got you going at it so hard tonight though?”

“Trying to work something out,” Val said and tried to lift the weights. Her arms didn’t so much refuse as visibly protest, quaking with the effort of repeating yet another set of exercises.

“Anything I can help with?” Tam wondered if calling JB would be a good idea. JB had a gift for working with people. Tam considered Val a friend, but if Val was having real problems, JB would be better at connecting with her and helping her sort them out.

“It’s stupid,” Val said, and redoubled her effort with the weights.

Calling JB would be effective, but Tam hesitated. If Val was ready to open up then there was no need to call in the big guns yet.

“I’ve done stupid plenty of times myself,” Tam said. “What flavor are you trying for today?”

“It’s for Aranea.” Val sagged to her knees and let the weights rest on the floor.

“She wants you to be more buff?” Tam frowned. Muscles were nice. Cynthia had some wonderful ones. For someone to have a taste for muscles that Val couldn’t satisfy though, their preferences would have to run pretty deeply into the ‘inhuman’ level of aesthetics.

Which would make sense for a Spider Goddess, Tam mused.

Except when she turned that idea over in her head, it seemed incongruous with how Aranea had acted previously.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t care how I look,” Val said, flashing Tam a quick smile. “No, this is…well, maybe you can tell me how bad an idea it is?”

“It looks kinda bad from here, but lay it on me,” Tam said

“When we get enchanted up, some of those enchantments only act as enhancers right?”

“Yeah. There’s a class of magic that takes what’s present and magnifies it. Those are easier up to a certain point.” Tam liked talking about magic but she suspected Val’s problem lay in some other area.  “Some of the other spells we use will replace a quality that there’s with something else. The whole ‘strong as 10 men’ thing usually just gives you a set amount of strength. Why do you want to stronger though? Have the enchantments lately been on the weak side?”

Tam knew that wasn’t true. They’d been a little less dependable than usual, thanks to the fluctuations in magic. She’d been able to compensate for most of that however by linking in more volunteers from the Club’s network of members to cover the shortfalls. That was a short term solution – she couldn’t rely on too often without burning people out – but it looked like it could get them through the bulk of their backlog before they started running out of useful volunteers.

“No, they’ve been fine.” Val sat back and raised a hand to reassure Tam. “Stronger than usual even. That’s part of what gave me this idea.”

“You thought that if the boost was stronger then having a better base to boost off of would give an even bigger effect than we normally get?” It was the obvious leap of logic to make, but if the enchantments had been working ok, Tam wasn’t certain why Val had bothered making it.

“Yeah, but that’s only part of it,” Val said. “What I’m thinking about is how strong I’d have to be to match someone like Hercules.”

“Which Hercules?” Tam asked.

“The Greek one. Son of Zeus. Twelve Labors. That guy.”

“He was a demi-god. Also, mythical. Also, a jerk.”

“Right, but what would it take to have the same…stature, I guess?” Val mopped her head with the towel and looked at Tam with a more intent and eager gaze than the question seemed to warrant.

Tam considered the question and the ones that were lurking behind it.

Val had never been one to pursue power for power’s sake. She tended to work with the load out of enchantments that were available and even occasionally refused some, preferring to hold them in reserve for later rather than expend resources needlessly.

For her to be working herself to the point where she could be enhanced to demi-god levels Aranea had to have put some fairly unreasonable demands on her.

“That’s not something you can do just by getting stronger,” Tam said, concerned that her words would be ignored since they probably weren’t what Val wanted to hear.

Instead though, Val sighed and chuckled softly and shook her head.

“Ugh, I probably should have asked you that before I tried this I guess.”

“Is there a new problem that’s come up?” Tam asked.

“Sort of?” Val said. “It’s not Club business, specifically though.”

“If it involves you and Aranea, it involves all of us,” Tam said and winced at the fire that had crept into her voice. “I mean, you know we’ve got your back right?”

“Yeah,” Val said with a disarming smile. “It’s not like that though. It’s…”

She paused, seemingly searching for the right words, though Tam noticed they were straying into the kind of personal space that Val didn’t usually talk about much.

“We’ve got your back whether you can talk about it or not,” Tam said. “I mean, knowing would help, but prying can be awful sometimes, so…whatever you need. We’re here.”

“How much do you know about gods?” Val asked, her expression relaxing she spoke.

“Bits and pieces, more about some, less about others,” Tam said.

“Words matter to them right?” Val asked.

“Yeah. Again some more than others,” Tam said. She tried to recall if there were any specific linguistic restrictions around spider gods in general, or for Aranea in particular in the any of the texts that had mentioned her in passing.

“Aranea was explaining how what she says is a bit different from what you or me might say,” Val said. “She can lie, but if she says something meaning it to be true, especially something about herself, it can change her so that it is true.”

“That’s true to some degree with almost everyone.” Tam nodded in agreement and understanding. “With humans we’re not defined by our words quite as much as conceptual beings like gods are but the idea of Daily Affirmations points to how repeating something over and over can begin to shift our psyches. With some like Aranea the effect is more profound I’d imagine.”

“It’s not just that words can change her mind though,” Val said. “They can change who she is. Unless the change is big enough that it tears her apart. Then it can kill her.”

“That would be a pretty severe change,” Tam said, beginning to see the scope of Val’s worries. It was one thing to know that a mortal lover could be taken from you. It was part of the deal with being mortal. An immortal lover though was another matter. Discovering that even a goddess had vulnerabilities had clearly been a bit of a rude shock. “For what it’s worth, I haven’t heard of a god dying because of that ever, I think? Or maybe in only a few stories.”

“Are those stories where they fell in love with a human?” Val asked.

Tam bit her lip. She wanted to say, but lying seemed like a terrible idea under the circumstances.

“Love can be an unstoppable force,” Val said. “Unfortunately that’s not always a good thing is it?”

“Not always,” Tam said, looking down. “But Aranea’s been around a while right? And you haven’t left her or anything – that’s usually the trigger for the god’s discorporation. It fits in too well with people’s experience with how all encompassing the pain of a broken heart feels. It was too easy for them to believe that kind of loss could slay even a god.”

“That’s more of a long term problem,” Val said. “I mean, sure, I’m not going to live forever, but we’ve got time to work that one out. What drove me to all this,” she waved her hand at the various exercise machines she’d overused, “is more immediate. It’s not just death, or rejection that can tear you apart. Aranea said try to become a cat would kill her because there’s no overlap between spiders and cats. She can only change so much before she rips in two.”

“And you’re afraid that being with you is going to change her like that?”

“How many stories do you know of a spider goddess settling down with a mortal woman?” Val asked.

Tam couldn’t think of any.

“She says I seduced her,” Val said. “I knew it wasn’t a good idea when I did it. I knew I was getting in far over my head even walking up to her. I’m just terrified now that I was right but not for the reason I thought. She said she was going to destroy us, then she said she wouldn’t hurt me, and I don’t think she was lying about either one. I don’t know how she can do both, and even if she could, I keep thinking about how just being with me is destroying who she is. I thought if I could swing the whole demi-god thing then things might work out. I could meet her halfway kinda. That was never going to happen though, was it?”

Tam drew in a long breath.

“The demi-god thing? No, I’m afraid not,” she said. “There’s no enchantment that would do that for you, and even if there was, it wouldn’t last forever.”

“Figured it was stupid,” Val said.

“It wasn’t,” Tam said. “It was caring.”

“Caring’s not going to save her though.”

“Workouts won’t,” Tam said, her eyes narrowing as an idea occurred to her. “But maybe you still can.”

Val wanted more. She hadn’t expected to though. Having an open ended series of casual but intense hook-ups with a goddess who was intent on destroying her seemed like it should have been enough to satisfy both her desire for affection and her love of danger.

Hearing Aranea say that she wanted to take whatever it was they had to another level scared Val in a different way though. She didn’t feel herself instinctively pulling away, or even wanting to be cautious. She could feel herself falling for the strange, and sometimes inhuman, Aranea and it felt right, though she couldn’t quite explain to herself why that was.

“If you had to pick a word for us, what would it be?” Val asked, shifting closer into Aranea’s embrace as they sat lazily on the couch and watched an old black and white movie named ‘Earth vs. the Spider’. It was an amazingly terrible film, but Aranea had a fondness for it. Val couldn’t get much out of the movie, but watching Aranea’s reaction to any of the scenes where a spider, even a fake one, was on the screen was delightful.

“If I had to pick a word, it would be inadequate,” Aranea said, shifting to turn a bit so her attention was more on Val than the screen.

“We’re inadequate?”

“No, my choice of word would be inadequate,” Aranea said, shaking her head quickly. “As you’ve noted, words have power, and I am more constrained by that power than any mortal would be.”

“Constrained how?” Val asked and then pulled back a bit, concerned she’d overstepped a boundary, “Unless that’s something you can’t talk about.”

“It is a secret, but not one I need to keep from you,” Aranea said, pulling Val back in close. “As a mortal, you are made of flesh and blood and you create ideas. I do not share those traits.”

“I would say you’ve got at least one of those traits down pretty well.” Val ran her fingers down Aranea’s bicep, around the curve of her elbow and up her forearm in a slow, teasing glide.

“You’re adorable,” Aranea said. “But you illustrate my point as well. This is not me.” She moved her hand under Val’s touch and turned it until their palms were touching.

Val watched as the nails grew an inch longer on Aranea’s hands, elongating into sharp, spiky tips.

“I know,” Val said, threading her fingers with Aranea’s. “You’re a shape changer. You can look like whatever you want.”

“What’s important is why that is so.” Aranea let her fingertips flow back into smooth curves.

“One of the perks of being divine?” Val resisted the urge to nibble on Aranea’s fingers. It was always tempting to flirt, but it didn’t feel like the right moment to distract Aranea.

“In a sense.” Aranea’s gaze was watchful, as though she could sense the desire Val was holding back. “Other beings shared the same capability though, and for the same reason.”

“Is it because you don’t have one specific form? Or maybe your original form can’t exist here?” Val turned from looking at their entwined hands to get a read on Aranea’s expression towards the ideas.

“My original form is lost to me.” Arenea glanced at Val, meeting her gaze, and then stared off wistfully, looking for a memory that was too distant to recall.

“Do you remember who you were then?” Val asked.

“Maybe? There are stories I carry in my mind, but I cannot be sure which of them were told to me by someone else, which I told to myself, and which, if any, of them are true.”

“Is that how it is for everyone like you?”

“I suspect so. It is not something which we have cause to speak openly about much.”

“Does it worry you?” Val shifted to sit up fully and give Aranea her full attention. The movie continued to play in the background, but as it wasn’t the first time they’d watched it, nor likely to be the last, Val wasn’t concerned about missing ‘the good bits’.

“Why would it worry me?” Aranea asked.

“I don’t know. I guess it leaves a lot of questions open. Things like ‘Am I who I believe I am?’ and ‘Are my choices ones I’m making or did someone else make them when they made me?’. There’s whole books of philosophy on stuff like that.”

“I think there can be no gods with questions like those, though, to be fair, I have not met them all.” Aranea smiled, reinforcing the idea that reality was even weirder than the extent of her divine knowledge could encompass. “Doubts about our nature are more difficult for us though. I said before that you are made of flesh and blood and create ideas. The reverse is true for me. I am more an idea than anything else, and with my power I create the flesh and blood you see before you.”

Val let her gaze drift inwards as she considered the idea. Aranea felt warm and solid beside her, but illusions were capable of affecting all of the senses according to Tam. It didn’t sound like that was quite what Aranea was talking about though.

“I think I get it,” Val said as the pieces started to line up in her head. “For humans, we’re primarily physical, so our bodies are a basic element of who we are. Our thoughts, on the other hand, come and go freely. We can change our minds, or even re-invent who we want to be. With you, if I’m hearing you right, being ‘Aranea the Goddess of Spiders’ is who you are. That’s the most basic thing that defines you. That concept. Your body’s only as much a reflection of who you are as the things I’m thinking about at the moment are a reflection of who I am.”

“Yes, which is why I am more constrained in my use of language than you are,” Aranea said. “Ideas I speak resonate within me.”

“Does that mean you can’t lie?” It was a tricky question since any denial of the ability to lie would have to be met with suspicion.

“I can lie easily. In some situations at least. No one expects spiders to be honest with their prey. Though we often are. What I cannot do, is lie to myself easily.”

“Is that a magical ban someone else put on you?” Val asked.

“No, simply a part of my nature. I am defined by the stories that make me up. If I lie to someone else, then there is the story within me that I have deceived them, and that is a truth in its own fashion. If I lie to myself, if I describe myself to myself with words that aren’t true, they will either fall silent, or they will become true.”

“So if you try to say ‘I’m not a spider, I’m a cat’, you’d either wind up being silent, or you’d actually become a cat?” Val’s mind leapt at the possibilities for how a trait like that could be exploited.

“Or I would rend myself asunder.” Aranea sighed. “It is one of the methods by which a god may die.”

“Trying to become something they’re not?” Val felt a series of misgivings bubbling up inside her chest.

“Yes. I am not a cat. I can tell you ‘I will become a cat tomorrow’, and I would be fine, if I didn’t intend to become a cat. If I believed that I would become a cat though, then those words would become real within me, and when I tried to become a cat the story of how I became a spider would fall apart, leaving me with nothing.”

“How much danger are you in day to day?” Val asked, voicing the simplest of her fears. “If we make plans and you get held up doing something, is that going to tear you in half? Or are you shackled to doing them even if you change your mind?”

“A missed lunch date isn’t enough to destroy me,” Aranea said. “It would be irritating and would leave me out of sorts for a while but eventually the discordance would subside.”

“Does phrasing help there?” Val asked. “If I said ‘let’s meet for lunch’ and you said ‘I might be available’, would that give you more leeway if something came up?”

“It would, though it is unsatisfying in its own right as well.”

“Because you can’t just say what you want to in the moment?”

“Being coy and seeking not to be constrained by my own words is close to my nature, but living like that means holding myself apart from the world.” Aranea reached to draw Val in closer. “Being bound by what I say to you makes my time here more real, more a part of who I am. I would not give that up lightly.”

It was hard not to take that as declaration of a word that neither of them had uttered so far. Val felt her heart begin to race and willed it to maintain a sane rhythm. The aching hunger she felt could chase Aranea away as easily as it might draw her in, and neither one of them would benefit if they rushed things too fast. Val’s past relationships had proven that time and again.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered.

“I know. And I won’t hurt you.”

Val didn’t ask her if she was lying. Aranea had pledged to destroy the Second Chance Club, or something like that. She couldn’t promise not to hurt Val. It had to be a lie. At least a small one.

Maybe Aranea would help them fake their deaths. Maybe she’d fight them but hold back enough that she could say she made the attempt without causing any serious or lasting issues. A Spider Goddess had to be allowed those sorts of tricks, and even more subtle ones.

But that wasn’t what was going to happen. Aranea wasn’t lying about not hurting her. Val knew that. Just like she knew she wasn’t going to let Aranea be hurt for her sake either.

“What word would you use, if you could? If you were a mortal woman like me?” Val asked, the hunger inside gnawing at her stronger than ever.

“One that I cannot use as I am now,” Aranea said.

Val searched Aranea’s face for…what? Clarity? Permission? Perhaps just confirmation of the connection that she felt.

“I took this form as a disguise,” Aranea said. “It’s one I’ve worn before. I’d grown fond of it. So few of my prey expect someone who looks like this to be a predator.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Val said, adopting a smile to diffuse the tension that had gripped her heart. “You looked deadly the first time I laid eyes on you.”

“And you were terrifying,” Aranea said. “Though less so than you are now.”

“I’m scaring you?” Val asked, blinking in surprise.

Aranea leaned forward and closed Val’s shock parted lips with a kiss.

“I fear myself,” Aranea said, pulling away only a few inches. “In keeping you, in losing you, in staying as we are, I teeter on the brink of the abyss, but in that uncertainty there is a joy that fills me.”

“It sounds like…” Val caught herself, not wanting to even voice the question much less hear the answer. She had to know though. If any of what she thought they had was real, she owed it to Aranea to be brave enough to ask. “It sounds like being with me is a danger to you. You don’t look like a spider at the moment. And you’re not acting like one. Is that costing you? Are you tearing apart bit by bit just from being here? Can you be the Goddess of Spiders if you stay here?”

“I don’t know,” Aranea said. “I’m changing. In you there is a different story of who I am than any I have ever known. I can feel it pulling at me. I don’t know what it means though. I don’t know if it will destroy me, or if I will survive as someone new. I have never faced something like this. I have never loved someone as I love you.”

Val scooped an egg out of the tray, and cracked it, separating the shell with one hand as she poured the contents onto the hot buttered pan. It was a performance as much as an attempt at making breakfast but for all her apparent grace the effort was marred. As the egg began to quickly cook in the pan, she watched the broken yoke run out across the pool of white that surrounded it.

Her attempt at a sunny side up breakfast was a flop.

So she whipped a spatula through the ruined egg and redeemed it into a scramble as best she could.

“A clever recovery,” Aranea said, sitting down on one of the high top chairs in Val’s kitchen. She snatched one of the cinnamon buns Val’s had pulled from the oven a moment earlier.

“Yeah, but now I need cheese and chives,” Val said, yanking the refrigerator door open to grab a bag of shredded cheese before turning to the drawer she kept her spices in.

Aranea watched the flurry of motion with confused amusement.

“Weren’t you going to serve the egg without those a moment ago?” she asked.

“When it was going to be sunny side up? Yes. Scrambled means cheese and chives though,” Val said, hastily adding the ingredients before the egg finished cooking completely. She wasn’t happy with the outcome – it certainly wasn’t an offering fit for a god – but it was also clear that Aranea didn’t look like it’s quality concerned her.

“I see how the many religions of this world arose,” Aranea said. “If something doesn’t have rules and boundaries, humans will invent some anyways.”

She made biting into the cinnamon roll look like a sin and Val had to resist the to kiss away the little bit of frosting that clung to the side of her mouth.

“It’s not about setting arbitrary boundaries,” Val said. “It’s just that somethings work better when they’re done a certain way. Sunny side up eggs have a flavor and texture that’s different from scrambled eggs, so you combine different ingredients with them to bring out the best parts. It’s all about taking the flavors you’ve got and getting them to be what you want.”

“My usual meals are the liquified remains of my enemies after their bodies have been broken down by my venom,” Aranea said, accepting the plate of the scrambled egg garnished with honey buttered toast from Val.

“So you’re saying you don’t know what you’ve been missing then?” Val said, cracking another egg into the pan for herself. Her second attempt went better than her first but she scrambled it anyways, to match what Aranea was having.

“That may be true,” Aranea said with a contented sigh. She brought a fork full of the eggs to her lips but her gaze remained on Val.

Val smiled back and took a bite of her own eggs. They’d turned out ok, a little under done but she wasn’t used to the stove in her apartment yet. With how often the Second Chance Club moved around she tended to eat out or eat the club more than she did at home. Thinking of that made her shake her head.

“What are you pondering?” Aranea asked, sensing even without divine awareness that Val’s musing involved her.

“I move a lot,” Val said.

“Yes. It’s quite fetching,” Aranea said.

“I didn’t think I would,” Val said, ignoring the compliment. “When my goal was to join the Army, I figured I’d be at whatever base I was assigned to for a while and then be moved to whatever my next assignment was. I didn’t picture that I’d be the one choosing to live in so many different places. Or travel as much as I have.”

“It’s a benefit of the life you’ve chosen?” Aranea asked. “Or a liability?”

“I don’t know if it’s either,” Val said. “It’s different, not what I expected, but I like it.”

“Would you give it up if a more expected pursuit was available?” Aranea asked. She’d stopped eating and while she didn’t sound concerned about the question, she was paying more serious interest to Val’s than she had been.

“No,” Val said with an easy laugh. “I didn’t know this was a life I could have, but I can’t deny how much it appeals to me.”

“Good,” Aranea said. “I would be displeased to find you were laboring in unhappiness.”

“But isn’t it your job to destroy me?” Val teased.

“Of course,” Aranea said, feigning proper severity. “I am pledged to cast you into the Abyss. You and all of the rest of your team.”

“And yet here we are,” Val said holding a fork full of scrambled eggs aloft. “You’re happy I’m not miserable in my job, and I’m happy to be making eggs with you.”

“It is an unexpected circumstance for me as well,” Aranea said, her pride slipping a little as her voice softened.

“How did we get here?” Val asked, easing into the questions that had been filling her mind since they first met.

“I believe you seduced me,” Aranea said, taking another bite from the cinnamon roll.

“What was seductive about me?” Val asked. “I just kissed you.”

“Yes, but it was when and why you kissed me,” Aranea said. “When I saw you, I knew you were my prey, but I wasn’t ready for that, and I certainly wasn’t ready for prey who walked right up to me, took my drink, gave me hers, and kept inching closer as she spoke to me until our lips met.”

“You know, the funny thing is, I didn’t know who you were then, I just knew you were dangerous, and you were alone, and you looked delicious.”

“I can look however I want you know,” Aranea said, blinking and changing her eye color with each blink.

“Yeah,” Val said, reflecting on the attraction she’d felt on first seeing Aranea and how it had changed over time. “It’s more than just the color of your eyes, or the shape you’re wearing though.”

“I am a goddess as well,” Aranea said. “There is an awe that mortals feel.in my presence.”

Val flicked a bit of scrambled egg so that it landed on Aranea’s nose.

“Awe, that’s definitely it,” she said, threatening to flick another bit of egg.

“You know I would eat anyone else who did that,” Aranea said.

“I do,” Val said, unfazed. “But not me.”

“Not you,” Aranea agreed.

“Why?” Val asked.

“Perhaps I’m saving you for later,” Aranea said. “Fattening you up for a feast when your team is cast down.”

“Are you?” Val asked, already knowing the answer.

“No,” Aranea sighed, her regal aura deflating to more of her true self.

“Why me then?” Val asked. “What do I have to offer a goddess?”

Aranea laughed.

“That’s a question many mortals have asked,” she said. “I wonder if it’s not backwards though.”

“Backwards?” Val asked.

“Beings like me have power, but it’s a circumspect sort of majesty,” Aranea said. “I am the Goddess of Spiders, but that means I am, to some degree, bound both by the nature of spiders and by the…worship of them, though that’s not quite the right word.”

“I don’t follow,” Val said.

“Worship in this sense is more than supplication and begging for divine favor,” Aranea said. “It’s an awareness of the divine as it exists embodied within the world. Each time someone is surprised by a spider, or sees silk threads catching the sunlight, or cleans out old cobwebs, my domain is enriched. They’re small bits of worship of course, and they are not mine alone, but taken together across years and centuries they give me strength and substance.”

“So your power comes from people?” Val asked.

“No more than yours comes from the gods,” Aranea said. “Which is to say both yes and no. We each draw strength from the world that we all create, and yet humans are so quick to bow and scrape for favor from those with more power than themselves that they never seem to question if that’s the proper form their relationship with the divine should take.”

“What form would you suggest it take then?” Val asked, meeting Aranea’s gaze and holding it with a willing openness.

“That’s a complicated question,” Aranea said, breathing a little quicker than before.

“And yet I’m betting the answer is ultimately a pretty simple one,” Val said.

“Yes, but which simple one?” Aranea asked.

“Probably the one that feels right, even if it’s scary as hell,” Val said, reaching across the counter and placing her hand on Aranea’s.

“As one of the gods, fear is quality which is largely unknown to us,” Aranea said. She looked like she wanted to pull her hand away, but she kept it in place, under Val’s hand as though its slight tremble didn’t betray the tempest within her.

“As a mortal, it’s a quality we’re rarely ever completely free from,” Val said, squeezing Aranea’s hand gently. “But I don’t think this has to be about fear.”

“What would you suggest?” Aranea asked.

Val drew in a breath, paused for a moment to consider her response and then let her feelings carry her forward.

“I like you,” she said. “Maybe even more than that. Not the Spider Goddess, though she’s cool too, but you, Aranea, the person who’s right here with me having breakfast, and who was there yesterday when I had to get groceries, and the day before when I was tired and sore after my workout.”

“That is only a part of who I am though,” Aranea said.

“I know, and that’s what’s great about this,” Val said. “Whenever people meet, they only show one small part of themselves to the other. Well, I like the part that I’ve seen, and I want to see more. I know there’s parts of you that I’ll never understand, and probably can’t even comprehend, but that’s true in any relationship.”

“And if there are parts you don’t like?” Aranea asked.

“The parts I see now, the you that I think I’m falling for? I think she’s worth those parts, if they exist, and she’s absolutely worth taking the risk to find out,” Val said. “Here’s the great thing though, and why this doesn’t have to be scary; we don’t have to rush anything. Whatever we call what we have, it’s not going to magically make it stronger, or keep us from getting closer if that’s what we both really want.”

“There is a power in words though,” Aranea said.

“I know,” Val said. “I guess what I’m saying is, it’s not on you to know what you want to do next, or what you want us to be just because I do.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” Aranea asked, looking away.

“Always,” Val said.

Aranea began to speak but hung frozen for a moment, unable to breathe, much less form words.

“It’s ok,” Val said. “I can be good with what we’ve got now. I can be good with whatever you need. I don’t want this to be hard, or painful for you.”

“I want more,” Aranea said over one long breath, as though admitting it to herself as much as to Val.

“How much more?” Val asked, a nervous, excited pulse beating a tremor throughout her body.

“That’s the part that scares me,” Aranea said. “I don’t know. I can’t find a bottom to this desire.”

“There’ll be one,” Val said, forcing her calmer, more rational voices to the surface. “We call it falling for someone because it feels like there’s no end to it, but we’ll wind up with our feet on the ground eventually.”

“And when that happens, will you still desire me as you do now?” Aranea asked.

“I hope not,” Val said, joy at the idea of what the future could hold beaming through her. “I hope what we have then is even deeper than what we’ve got now. All the good relationships that I’ve seen are like that. They all change over time.”

“I am unused to change,” Aranea said. “And yet I find it is what I want most of all now. It feels like sorcery, but you’ve cast no magic on me.”

“I think maybe I used one of the oldest magics there is,” Val said. “When you needed me, I needed you back.”

The first rule of escaping a trap is not to get caught in it in the first place. Since they’d been lured out to a magical island that was only occasionally present in the South Pacific, Jen decided that they’d probably failed the first rule.

And the second one too, in all likelihood.

“We need to figure out who did this,” Connie said.

“That’s the second key to getting out of here,” Jen said. “If we knew the motivations of the people who lured us here, we could make a guess at what they wanted and how they’re planning to handle us.”

“And maybe what they’ve done to Sarah?” Connie said.

Whatever spell had grabbed ahold of their resident magician seemed to have its talons in deep. Jen had been forced to knock Sarah down and sit on her to keep Sarah away from the waterfall and whatever doom awaited them inside.

“Maybe,” Jen said. “Or maybe that gives us a clue in and of itself?”

Wheels began to turn in her head. She’d been letting Sarah take the lead because Sarah had confidence and experience and strange mystical powers that Jen wasn’t fully up to speed on.

Sarah hadn’t been watching for traps though. She’d been following her instincts and leaning into her magic to find answers. That was fine for tactical level planning. Gut instincts and immediate information gathering were great in moments of crisis. Jen’s strengths lay in a different sort of leadership though.

As various observations turned over and over in her mind, new connections formed painting a bigger picture of the forces at play.

“What have you worked out?” Connie asked, watching Jen with a wary gaze as she tried to hit the delicate balance between pulling answers out while not disrupting the thoughts that were assembling those answers.

“Ok, try this on for size,” Jen said. “Let’s start with the assumption that someone lured us here for less than ideal reasons.”

“Do we have support for that?” Connie asked.

“Circumstantial, but it’s strong,” Jen said as Sarah grumbled and struggled beneath her. “In fact, she’s strong enough that keeping her down like this is a bit tricky.”

“Do we know what’s happening to her isn’t just a natural effect of the island?” Connie asked.

“Consider that we’re here because of a letter that was sent specifically to us,” Jen said. “The letter gave us all the breadcrumbs we needed to notice this place and, once we did, was there any chance we wouldn’t come and check it out?”

“Not really,” Connie said. “Even apart from Marcus being missing, this place would have been pretty high on my list of choice vacation destinations.”

“Ok, so add to that the ocean telling Sarah that the island’s presence is unusual, and that Sarah got hit by some kind of mind whammy right after we got here. Does it sound more likely that we’d be lured to an unusual spot which just happens to knock our team magician out of commission or is the safer bet that someone orchestrated this?”

“So, we’ve got enemies here who are out to get us, I’ll buy that, the question is what do we next?” Connie asked.

“The smart move would be; we haul Sarah back to the boat, retreat back to the Second Chance Club and trace back the letter to find who set us up,” Jen said.

“And leave Marcus to his fate?” Connie asked.

“We don’t have any proof that there ever was a Marcus,” Jen said. “All of the map coordinates and log files could have been faked.”

“Yeah, but the ports he pulled into would have records of his arrival and departure,” Connie said.

“We didn’t get any records for those,” Jen said.

“Oh, ah, I thought you’d checked on that,” Connie said. “Sorry. I should have looked in it.”

“No, that was my mistake,” Jen said. “I didn’t know about checking the port logs, and I didn’t think to bring you in on the research. I was too eager to get going on this, but I can promise you that’s not going to happen again.”

“That does argue in favor of Marcus not being real,” Connie said. “With how thorough the rest of the documentation was, its weird that his ‘parents’ would have left out some easy corroborating evidence like that. So we bail then?”

Jen stared at the waterfall and the cave beyond it. The darkness wasn’t exactly inviting, and she wasn’t ensorcelled by whatever spell had taken over Sarah, but there was still a temptation that she felt drawing her into it.

“We can,” Jen said. “We can run away. We can solve this problem the smart way and bring in the whole team on this. We can be safe, and clever, and stack the odds as high in our favor as they’ll go.”

“But you don’t want to,” Connie said.

“No.”

“Good. Neither do I. We came here to take the burden off the others, how about we teach this particular problem the error of trying to mess with us?”

“I say we do more than that,” Jen said. “I say we make an example out of them so that no one else makes the mistake of thinking we’re an easy target ever again.”

***

The plan had been a simple one. It shouldn’t have gone off-track. Not when it was set to trap three entirely mortal women.

Garg’nix paced in the Sealing Chamber, fire venting from his thirty seven different orifices.

“Please. Calm. Down,” Clyde Demorney said, forcing his voice and demeanor to stay cool and collected.

“They should be here already!” Garg’nix said. “We arranged for the Potestates people to fall into our clutches and We. Need. Them!” He ground out the last words like metal tearing through bone.

“We will have our subjects,” Demorney said. “And we will send a message to the one who calls herself Charlene Potestates. We just need patience.”

It was a lie of course. Demorney knew the Second Chance Club’s three newest recruits should have been captured an hour ago and the transformation ritual begun minutes thereafter. Each grain of purple sand that fell through the hourglass on the chair beside him was one step closer to Potestates discovering their operation before they had the leverage to hold her back, and that thought sent a horrified chill down to the bottom of Demorney’s bowels.

“We need the three!” Garg’nix insisted.

As demons went Garg’nix wasn’t one of the more clever ones, but it was a mistake to think his single minded obsessiveness made him stupid. If anything he was more dangerous because he placed all of his intellect into achieving the goal he sought. How well those goals lined up with a greater overall ambition was questionable but that was what Demorney brought to their compact.

“They’re on the island,” Demorney said. “We have them, whether or not they’re here right now, there’s no escape. Not when we control the wind and the waters and the soul of the island itself.”

“No escape? You said there would be no delay,” Garg’nix growled. He shambled over to glower above Demorney, a move Demorney allowed. It was posturing. Neither one could afford to hurt the other. Not when it took both of them to control the environment around them.

“There shouldn’t have been,” Demorney said. “We arranged for the false note to come through safe channels, we guided them through the currents that turn away man and beast when the island isn’t ready for them, and we cast the song to ensnare their mage. The agents of the Potestates should have delivered themselves to us without fail if they were truly worthy of serving her cause.”

“Then why aren’t they here?” Garg’nix demanded.

“Perhaps we misjudged them?” Demorney said. “They are only fledglings. We set our trap to capture the Potestates senior agents. Perhaps they weren’t able to work out the runes that promised a cure for their mage’s condition? Or perhaps they didn’t have the courage to split up and gather the components from within the haunted depths above us?”

“You said they could handle the traps,” Garg’nix said. “You said the traps would only weaken them. We need them alive.”

“I’m not sure that we do,” Demorney said. Garg’nix flared to his full height and began to emit an acrid odor, as Demorney hastened to add, “if they fell victim to the traps we set, then they may not have been real agents of the Potestates. If we’d tried to transform such weak specimens as that, the ritual would have collapsed and all our planning would be lost.”

“We need our own agents,” Garg’nix said. “The Potestates has destabilized the world. Now is the time to take land, take people, take power. We need them now.”

“And we will have them,” Demorney said. It was futile to make promises like that to Garg’nix but Demorney was too used to dealing business partners who could be swayed by reason to give up his attempts so easily. “If not this set, then the senior agents, when they come looking for their lost lambs.”

“We won’t have that long,” Garg’nix said and began pacing again.

“He’s not wrong about that,” Jen said.

Garg’nix attacked.

No words.

No pause.

Six hundred pounds of bulk powering four arms, each ending in six twelve inch long, spear tipped claws.

Jen snap kicked him into the basalt granite wall a hundred feet away on the other side of the chamber.

For a moment there was silence. Demorney worked his jaw but words would not come out. Not until he found the right one.

“How?”

“Mountain charm” Jen said, shaking the anklet she wore.

“There’s a lot more magic here than there’s supposed to be,” Sarah said. “Shockingly easy to make temporary charms with, but then you knew that didn’t you? I mean you two are the ones who are throwing all that juicy energy around. It’s like you’re inviting people to use your own magic against you.”

Demorney looked at the mage. The mage who was fully conscious and in possession of her own wits.

“HOW?” he demanded.

“We drowned her,” Connie said, dropping down from the rope the other two had been lowered into the room with.

Garg’nix started to peel himself out of the wall he’d been cratered into.

“Shouldn’t do that,” Jen said.

Garg’nix did anyway.

With a huff, he swelled to twice his normal size as a nimbus of fire blazed from every patch skin on his body.

And again he charged

Jen dropped him with an axe kick this time, slamming his head into the floor so hard that he was buried in stone to the bottom of his neck.

“This can’t be happening,” Demorney said, focusing on Sarah. “You can’t be free of the Whispers. The land itself sustains that spell.”

“Yeah, that’s why they drowned me,” Sarah said. “Or why drowning me worked. It was a lucky break on their part I guess?”

“We saw you turn into a mermaid,” Jen said. “Drowning didn’t seem like it would be much of a problem for you, and the ocean sounded like it had its own magics separate from the island. So it was an informed lucky break at the worst.”

“I will grant you that,” Sarah said.

“But..but…the traps, all of my wards, how could you get past them?” Demorney said. He was dead. He knew he was dead. The Potestates agents were supposed to arrive in the room exhausted and Garg’nix was supposed to make short work of them. Even if they had enough energy left to somehow overcome Garg’nix, Demorney should have had plenty of time to lay enchantment after enchantment on them to bind their wills to his own. They were not supposed to catch him at unawares. Not with the defenses he’d set. This could not be happening!

“You might need these,” Connie said and threw a small pack to him. It landed at Demorney’s feet and the hundred and eight runestones, and enchanted dolls, and other foci that he’d tied his traps to spilled out over the floor. “It was a bit of pain to get to some of those. Next time I’d suggest not tossing them onto ledges you can’t see. It makes clean up into a gymnastics workout.”

“You took everything,” Demorney said. “Everything I built up. You took it all again!”

“Pretty sure we’ve never met before,” Jen said.

“We haven’t but I’m betting the other team has,” Sarah said. “Phillip Demorney right? Or, wait, no, you’re the younger brother, Cooper? Calvin? Cankersore?”

“Clyde,” Demorney said, anger warring with despair.

“Clyde! Right!” Sarah said, “I heard of you. Pretty talented, supposedly. Not terribly bright, but a decent contract writer and aces at mystical fabrication. Tried to stake your claim on Majorca was it?”

“Yes,” Demorney said, his face reddening with shame.

“Shocking how people in other parts of the world can have a clue too isn’t it?” Sarah said, before turning to her teammates. “They kicked his butt off the island so hard, he’s physically incapable of returning there. Amusingly he tried the same thing in Singapore and New Zealand. Same results in both places.”

“Thanks to your Club,” Demorney said.

“Yeah, no,” Sarah said. “Tam told me about it over drinks one time. Cankersore here tried to take over New Zealand’s Avian Mysterium (it’s a mystic thing, I’ll explain later) while the Tam was there. She talked to a bird, who talked to an old lady, who talked to a little girl, who went all Gandalf against the Balrog on Canker here and tossed his butt off a mountain with a lightning bolt.”

“She cheated,” Demorney said.

“Yeah, an eleven year old fighting a grown man cheated. Conjure up some self respect dude.”

“What are you going to do to us?” Garg’nix asked without pulling his head out of the stone floor.

“We were going to shut you down and call it a day,” Connie said.

“But then other people might get it into their head to try something similar,” Jen said.

“So we’re going to make an example of you,” Sarah said.

“How?” Demorney asked, his voice smaller and more timid that he’d hoped it would be.

“By giving you just what you asked you,” Jen said.

“You wanted to be the winning team?” Connie said. “Congrats, now you work for the winning team. We’re taking you back to Charlene and letting her find a use for you.”

“We will never work for the Potestates!” Demorney said.

“Or we leave you here,” Sarah said. “Forever. Since kicking you off islands hasn’t worked out, we talked to this island, and it would be happy to have guests for the rest of your lives.”

“I am immortal,” Garg’nix said.

“Exactly,” Sarah said.

“We won’t accept this!” Demorney said.

“I will,” Garg’nix said, pulling his head out of the floor. “Whatever the Potestates desires, that will be my role.”

“Really?” Demorney said.

“This was my chance to usurp my masters,” Garg’nix said. “I am as free of them sworn to the Potestates as I would be were my binding to you to be completed, and she is far more terrible. My masters will not dare move against her like they would against you.”

“You raise an interesting and terrifying point,” Demorney said. “Very well, I believe I will accept those terms too then.”

“Wonderful,” Jen said. “This may not exactly be your second chance, but if you’re wise I would encourage you to reflect on the fact that it’s almost certainly your last one.”

Demorney swallowed a gulp. Accountability was something he’d never been fond of, but he was pretty sure it was what the rest of his life was going to revolve around.

The crunch of warm sand between her toes was a sensation Jen knew she would never get tired of. Sure, it was inconvenient when she needed to use her feet for delicate work, but having each step offer a soft but firm massage that sent a pleasant amount of heat radiating through the tired muscles she abused so often? There wasn’t much in the world that could compare to that.

“So,” Connie said, looking around the beach and unpacking their gear from the boat they’d been riding in for the last seven hours, “The island is real.”

“You were starting to wonder weren’t you?” Sarah asked, rising out of the surf in a shimmer of green and blue as she regained a fully human form.

“Maybe not wonder whether it was real so much as wondering if we were going to be able to find the place,” Connie said. She didn’t pause once the gear was safely on the beach, turning to secure the anchor on the small boat so that it wouldn’t drift away in the surf.

“Sorry there,” Jen said. “I must have plotted the route here wrong. We probably could have saved a few hours if we’d made a direct approach.”

Six hours into the sea voyage, Jen had begun to question the wisdom of trying to map the team’s course. Just because she’d been on a boat didn’t make her any kind of a sailor. Her talents lay in other areas, and she was ok with that. It was still hard to accept making a mistake that had cost them so much time, especially after Jimmy B had managed to score them a flight that got them from North America to the South Pacific in less than sixteen hours. If he could pull off an impossible feat like that, Jen felt she should have at least been able to get them through the rest of the trip in something close to the estimated time.

“I’m pretty sure your route was the most direct one,” Sarah said. She shook herself like a cat and through some spark of magic managed to wind up completely dry when she was done.

“We had to turn around three times,” Jen appreciated Sarah’s attempt to console her, but it was a little annoying too. She had to own her mistakes just like anyone else.

“Exactly,” Sarah said. “This place isn’t where it appears to be on the satellite scan. In fact, I’m pretty certain that without the turns we made, we would have sailed through open ocean no matter which path we tried to take.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Connie said, walking up to join them and passing Sarah a backpack. Jen had offered to carry one as well, but Connie had talked her out of it.

Jen was the team’s combat specialist (though that had yet to be put to the test). As such, she needed to be able to move freely and hide in good ambush positions when the opportunities presented themselves. Better, in Connie’s view, that one of them stay as unencumbered as possible, and if that person happened to be the one who would have issues getting gear out of a tightly packed backpack, the allowing Connie to carry the load she typically bore on an expedition seemed like the wisest course all around. Jen wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but she did like the idea of staying free to move and fight as needed, so she went along with it. This was only their first mission, feeling out team tactics and roles like that was something they’d have to experiment with to get right and letting Connie carry what she claimed was a typical load was as good an experiment as any other.

“It could be worse,” Sarah said. “That there’s a boatload of magic on this island at least explains why it vanished from the satellite photos last year. Or, if not why, then at least how.”

“If it took specific turns to get here though, doesn’t that diminish the chance that Marcus made it here?” Jen asked. The series of events that she’d constructed in her mind included a number of possible variations on what the teenager might have encountered. A magical vanishing island triggered a whole lot of warning flags but Jen had to agree with the others that it was too significant an item for them not to investigate.

From the beach, the island looked bigger than the satellite photo had suggested it would be. It was a good hundred or so meters before the tree line began and the two peaks that dominated the center of the island looked like they rose at a kilometer or more above the ocean. Seeing it’s size, left Jen recalculating the effort which searching it was going to require, but also more willing to consider the possibility that Marcus had landed somewhere and managed to remain hidden and/or lost for several days. There was enough space on what should have been a tiny blip of an island to get lost for a month or more by her estimation.

“Normally, I’d say accidentally stumbling into a place like this would be impossible,” Sarah said. “In this case though, I think the magic might make it more likely he’d wind up here, than not. Once we made the turns, I think the island started calling to us.”

She started walking inland as she spoke, her attention pulled by somehow unseen beyond the thick vegetation of the tree line.

“Is that why you went into water?” Connie asked, as she and Jen followed along in Sarah’s wake.

“Partly,” Sarah said. “I’ve felt minor compulsions like that before and since it seemed related to the waters around the island I thought it would be easier to pick out why we were being called if I got closer to it. Also, being able to turn into a mermaid is not a chance you get in many places and I was not about to pass that up!”

“I thought this place was supposed to be mundane this time of year?” Jen asked. “Are we going to find another rift to hell lurking in the trees like we did at the military base?”

It seemed like a remote possibility at best, but then so did having a companion who’d been able to leap into the water as a human and come leaping back out a moment later clad in blue and green scales with functional gils on her neck.

“I don’t think we’ve got to worry about hell beasts or portals to other worlds here,” Sarah said. “From what the ocean was whispering about this island, it’s a natural part of the currents here. It’s its own source of magic, and it comes and goes on a fairly regular cycle.”

They reached the treeline and Jen noticed that what she’d mistaken for palm trees were nothing of the sort. In fact they didn’t look like anything she’d encountered before, or possibly even anything that existed anywhere else on Earth.

The long trunks were wrapped in a smooth blue-black bark which smelled faintly of cinnamon and vanilla. As the wind coasted through their high broad leafed branches the individual leaves twisted and flowed as though they had life and independent movement of their own. The rustling and whistling they produced might have made a gentle song but there was an eerie undertone to it that set Jen’s nerves on edge. It didn’t sound as though the trees were threatening them, more that they sensed violence in the wind and were afraid of what was to come.

“How long do the cycles last?” Connie asked. “Are we in any danger of being trapped here?”

Sarah was still ahead of them but from how she was turning her head, Jen got the sense that she was listening intently for the call she’d spoken of rather than paying attention to where they were going.

“I’m not sure,” Sarah said slowly. “The ocean was surprised, as much as water can be surprised, I’m translating a bit here, that the island was back so soon. I get the sense that the cycle is usually longer than it was this time, so we might be on unstable ground.”

“All the more reason to find Marcus and get him out of here,” Jen said. No one was saying where the island went when it wasn’t hanging around on Earth and even if it was a land of rainbows and back massages, Jen didn’t want their first mission to wind up with them trapped in some far off realm. Especially if that would mean that the other three would have to come rescue them. Joining the Second Chance Club had been exciting enough on its own, but at least part of the point was supposed to be to make things easier for Anna and Tam to repay them for saving her.

Apart from the moaning wind playing through the treetops, the island was strangely silent. No call of birds, no buzzing of insects, just the sound of the trees and, in the distance, running water.

“I think we should head towards the waterfall,” Sarah said, pushing through the underbrush to forge a new trail.

“What waterfall?” Connie asked. She’d fallen behind Jen, the heavy pack she was carrying slowing her more from bulk than weight.

“I can hear one too,” Jen said. “Should this island have a waterfall?”

“I’m not sure it should have anything,” Sarah said. “The more I listen to the islands voices the more wrong this whole situation sounds.”

That sounded like an excellent argument to Jen for why they should leave. A voice was buzzing in the back of head, scrambling around and forming questions that she couldn’t quite put words to yet. Even without the fully formed questions though, her gut was telling her that there was something wrong.

In her mind, she felt like a chess piece, except one which had stumbled onto Monopoly board. Moving one square forward might still be a thing she could do but its impact would be radically different than what she expected because she wasn’t playing the game she thought she was.

“Is Marcus what’s wrong?” Connie asked. “If this place isn’t supposed to be here now, could he have, I don’t know, called it back into being because he needed a place to hide?”

Jen puzzled over that for a moment. A few pieces didn’t line up – like why the island would be moaning if it was providing shelter to a lost traveler – but that might be due to her missing information on it still. Whether it was true or not though, she liked how Connie was thinking. It was good to know that the team had someone who thought along different lines than she herself did. That made Connie a valuable resource when it came to putting plans together and checking for holes in existing ones.

They arrived at the waterfall after some more trailblazing through the underbrush. Sarah had grown quiet and distant as they drew closer and as the moaning of the trees grew deeper and more ominous.

Jen wanted to check the area out but Sarah walked straight forward, exiting the trees and heading towards whatever was behind the waterfall without saying a word.

Through the water, Jen saw the mouth of a cave. It was dark and uninviting, but that didn’t slow Sarah.

“What’s in there?” Connie asked, breaking the silence.

Sarah didn’t answer. Or stop. Or even slow.

Jen stepped in front of her and stood solid like a wall.

Sarah opens her eyelids and gray smoke roiled where her eyes should have been. She tried to move around Jen, but Jen stepped to the side to block her. She tried to push past Jen, but that didn’t work either. Jen flexed back with Sarah’s shove and then stepped into it, pushing Sarah off her feet onto her butt.

“What happened?” Connie asked, rushing up to join them.

“This isn’t what we thought it was,” Jen said. “It’s a trap.”

Finding a needle in a haystack is a relatively simply endeavor. Choose the right needle, setup a sifting machine with some powerful magnets, and the work can be all but guaranteed. Finding a teenage boy lost in the South Pacific though? That presented a few more significant challenges.

“I’ve plotted out the points where we have tracking data for Marcus,” Jen said, bringing a map up on their central display monitor. Her prosthesis were back in her room, charging up, so she typed with her toes, though given the speed she typed at she would have used them regardless. In response to her clicks, a line in red traced in from points off the map, dotting a path across the featureless blue of the area of the ocean she had focused in on. The line ran to the center of the map and then simply stopped in the middle of the open ocean.

“Here’s the course he’d plotted out originally,” Jen said, calling up another overlay which put a black line onto the map. It matched the early part of Marcus’s actual trip but began to deviate at a time marker which matched Marcus’s first reported sighting of the other boat which seemed to be following him. At first the deviation was slight, a few turns to ascertain if the boat was actually following him but over time it curved more sharply away, each point showing an increasing degree of concern.

“What are the current’s like in that area?” Sarah asked. “Is some of this that he wasn’t expecting the extra drift from being off course, or are we seeing panic take hold over the course of several hours?”

“I don’t know,” Jen said. “He didn’t report anything like a strong drift in the printed logs we got.”

The family had included all of the electronic data they’d been able to collect. It didn’t point to a definite destination, but it painted a vivid picture nonetheless. Jen could only imagine how her parents would have reacted to seeing similar charts if she’d been lost at sea.

“Even if the currents dragged him farther off course than he expected, it shouldn’t have mattered,” Connie said. “His boat had a fairly good navigation system onboard. GPS would have given him an accurate position for the whole trip. He might have had to fight with the winds a bit to get back on course, but that should of been trivial for someone with enough skill to attempt an around the world sailing trip.”

They looked at the map as though it would offer some new clue in response to Connie’s observation. Even something small that might help them resolve the mystery. The ocean guarded its secrets well though.

“His trail just ends,” Sarah said. “What would explain that?”

“A lot of things, potentially,” Jen said. She didn’t like any of the options but they needed to consider each of them, no matter how unpleasant they were. “The most obvious one is that the other boat caught him there and someone smashed the radio gear. It would explain the sudden signal loss and why he never made it to Australia like he’d intended.”

“That’s unlikely though isn’t it?” Connie asked. Her brow was furrowed and she was reading the secondary data from the transmitted logs.

Jen had looked that over as well but hadn’t wanted to clutter the diagram with the data on the reported weather patterns, ocean temperatures, and seasonal fish migration patterns. If Connie could extract some meaning from them that would be wonderful, but Jen guessed they wouldn’t get that lucky.

“Why’s that?” Sarah said. “Was Marcus a particularly good sailor? Or was his boat extra fast?”

“No to both of those,” Jen said. Connie was right about the first scenario being unlikely but walking through them point by point was a part of brainstorming, and she knew better than to ever discourage someone from asking questions. “I mean according to his parents he was a very talented sailor, which checks out with them allowing him to do a solo circumnavigation of the globe, but they didn’t provide any info on him winning awards, and there’s plenty of people out there with more experience than a dedicated hobbyist would have, so it wasn’t amazing skill that would have helped him get away. Also, he was in a sailboat. It was a good sailboat, but those are limited by the wind, where a motor boat is not.”

“That makes it sound like whoever was chasing him could have easily caught him? But it also sounds like you agree with Connie. Where’s the unlikely bit coming in?” Sarah asked.

“Because we don’t have any log messages saying that they were gaining on him,” Connie said, when Jen nodded to her. “It’s on thing to be able to catch someone on the ocean, it’s another thing entirely to sneak up on someone who’s already spotted you.”

“Yeah, you’d think once it became clear that they were getting too close for comfort, Marcus would have started sending out Maydays,” Jen added. “Especially when he was so diligent about sending log information at all other times.”

“That makes an unfortunate amount of sense,” Sarah said, sighing and  sitting back in her chair. “Unfortunate because it strikes out the simplest and most mundane answer, though maybe it gives us a better chance of finding him still alive?”

“Let’s hope so,” Jen said. There were several other scenarios that lead to grim endings but none of them had definite supporting evidence in their favor. “The next most obvious reason would be that whoever was pursuing him knocked out his radio before coming into range.”

“I suppose we can’t rule that out, can we?” Sarah asked. “It would explain why he went radio silent without needing something like a giant whale to come up and swallow him and his boat.”

“Hold onto the whale theory,” Connie said, glancing to Jen who again nodded in agreement. “There are issues with this option too. Take a look at the timing of Marcus’ personal logs compared to the automated positioning logs the boat transmitted.”

She flicked a document up onto the central monitor to show the communication logs with their time stamps.

“The last thing that was received was an automated log message,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, it wasn’t too long after one of Marcus’ personal messages though,” Connie said. “In his last message he says the other ship is about three miles away. It would be possible to knock out a boat’s communication system from that far away, but it would take some fairly sophisticated and expensive gear to do it.”

“And we know the time window they would have had to act in because the automated log messages were coming in at regular intervals,” Jen said. “Even if Marcus’ ‘three mile’ estimate was off, they still would have been over a mile away, at the absolute closest, when the radio signal was lost.”

“And gear which some random ocean goons would have access to would not be able to shoot at radio that was a mile away,” Sarah said, following the thought to its logical conclusion. “But where does that leave us? Are we into my territory now?”

“We don’t have to assume magic was involved yet,” Jen said, and zoomed the map out to show a slightly larger swath of the South Pacific.

“That’s good, because for the last few weeks the seasonal patterns of the ley lines in that area have left it almost entirely mundane,” Sarah said. “I checked with some of the my contacts and that’s typical for where we are in the cycles that hold sway down there, but with the lack of ambient mana in the area, I’m not even sure if Tam would be able to pull a rabbit out of hat that had a rabbit pre-loaded into it.”

“Wasn’t that also supposed to be true of that Chinese military base that had a portal to hell open in the middle of it?” Jen asked. As reintroductions to the team went that had been more thrilling that Jen had expected. It had turned out fine, but she hoped they’d do a bit better on a mission she’d suggested they take.

“Sort of,” Sarah said. “The base was supposed to be in the equivalent of a magic dead zone. No ley lines there ever. Places like that are more common than not on our world. The ocean’s a different sort of beast though.”

“Ocean magic is really strange isn’t it?” Connie said. “James was describing how it worked but we didn’t have time to get into it fully.”

“It’s not strange, or not any more than any magic is, it’s just its own thing,” Sarah said. “Where the land is solid and changes slowly, the ocean is constantly changing, so the magic that runs it through acts the same.”

“How can we be sure this spot of ocean was free from active ley lines then?” Jen asked. She leaned forward, and tipped her head in curiosity. This was new information, tactically useful information in particular, so it had her full attention.

“The ocean appears featureless to us land dwellers, but it has its own locations and territories,” Sarah said. “With the amount of interaction between the land and the seas today, there’s a pretty fair number of people who keep track of how things sit with each major body of water in the world. They know where the magically active zones are and where the calm waters run. Oh, and the Bermuda Triangle is not one of the active areas, almost ever. I was disappointed to find that out too.”

“Nice,” Jen said. “But does that means we have confirmation there wasn’t supposed to be any magical activity in that area around the time Marcus went missing?”

Sarah shrugged and rolled her hands in a limiting gesture.

“We know what the known ley lines were doing,” she said. “I can’t rule out whether people brought their own source in, or found something esoteric materials in the area to tap into.”

“Ok, so general magic of the kind you’re familiar with is still on the table, but less likely than even it’s usual ‘rarely seen’ status?” Jen asked.

“Pretty much,” Sarah said.

“The good news is, there’s lot of mostly non-magical things that could have happened to Marcus, though I’m not quite sure how to characterize our leading contender,” Jen said, zooming the map out a bit further and calling up a new line on it.

From the spot where the line of Marcus’ reported positions ended the new line began, graphing a path in yellow that led to a tiny dot of green on the map.

“This is one possible projection of Marcus’ course following the loss of radio signal from him,” Jen said. “It presumes he didn’t sink, and didn’t have any working electronics on board anymore, maybe due to a lightning strike or something like that.”

“Plausible,” Connie said. “We don’t have any proof that the boat he was worried about actually was hostile.”

“Or that it was really there,” Sarah said. “We’ve only got Marcus’ logs for any of this after all.”

“That’s true,” Jen said. “He could have been hallucinating, or just mistaking a normal boat for something sinister. If so, if there weren’t actual bad guys out to get him, then it’s not critical for us to know that. The important thing is that he drove intentionally off course, and then lost radio signal.”

“I see some other islands in the area too,” Connie said. “Any reason you picked this one as the most likely landing spot? I think it’s a little farther from his original position than a couple of the ones to the east.”

“It is but not by all that much,” Jen said. “It has one other important quality though. Here’s a satellite photo of that region from ten years ago.”

An image which looked identical to the one which had been displayed appear on a side monitor.

“And here’s a photo of the region from last year.” The image appeared on another side monitor.

“They look pretty similar to me,” Sarah said.

“They are…except, wait, where’s the island?” Connie asked, pointing to the area on one year old image which showed barren sea where an island had been ten years previous.

“And here’s a photo from yesterday,” Jen said.

It showed the island exactly where it had appeared ten years ago, which was also in the exact place where it had not been the previous year.

After traveling the world solo for several years, the concept of receiving physical mail was a little odd to Jen. She’d stayed with various teachers for weeks or months at a time but she’d never had their houses as places where people sent her mail. Most of the correspondence she’d had was via email, and the few physical items she’d needed had been specially shipped. The letter on the table in front of her therefor was something of an oddity.

“Got something from home?” Connie asked, coming into the breakfast nook and heading to the coffee machine.

“Nope,” Jen said, sifting with her foot through the small stack of papers which had been inside the envelope. “It was in my mailbox but it’s not from anyone I know.”

“Huh, I wonder why it was left for you?” Connie asked. The coffee machine beckoned and not even the mystery of the letter was enough to alter the beeline she made for it. “What’s it about?”

“It sounds like someone’s asking to join the Club,” Jen said, scanning through the initial greeting on the first page. There was lots of establishing who the sender’s family was and how they’d heard of the club, which amounted to a barely disguised argument for why the writer deserved the club’s help. As Jen read further though, the tone of the text changed, growing more desperate. “Wait, no, they’re asking for help, and offering to join the club for it.”

“What kind of help?” Connie asked.

“Their son is missing,” Jen said as she sat up straighter and read the rest of the letter aloud. “Marcus was an accomplished mariner despite being only 16. We supported his desire to try for a solo circumnavigation of the globe by sail in part because we knew he was capable of it, and in part because we were afraid he would attempt with or without our support.”

A vivid memory of the ocean spreading to the horizon in every direction came to her. She’d preferred to fly when she could before the incident where she first met Anna and Tam. Since then she’d forced herself to travel by boat a few times, but she hadn’t yet managed to do so without remaining wary at all times.

“Sounds like quite the boy,” Connie said, bringing her freshly poured cup over to sit on the other side of the table from Jen. “I don’t like we’ve gotten a letter about him though.”

“Yeah, listen to this,” Jen said. “Marcus’s trip was largely uneventful until he entered the South Pacific. He called in several times to report that he’d sighted another boat on a similar heading as his own. After a few days it seemed like this other boat was following him. The last transmission that we received from his indicated that he was changing his heading and would be a few days late getting into Sydney, which was his next planned stop.”

The scene that played out in Jen’s head was not a pleasant one. She pictured it as her story except without Anna and Tam’s timely intervention. As soon as the thought occurred to her, she cast a silent hope against it that the reality of the situation was something else.

“Do they give the location of where that transmission was from?” Connie asked. Whether she saw Jen’s inner turmoil or not, Jen wasn’t sure, but the question did serve to ground her back into the situation at hand, rather than the one she’d escaped from long ago.

“I think so,” Jen said. She moved some of the pages over with her right foot. She could have used the prosthesis to ‘look more normal’ but she was so much faster with her feet and more comfortable with them than with the prosthesis that she didn’t see a point in putting on a show. Connie wasn’t judging her, and even if she had been, Jen was (more or less) at home, and at home she did things her way. “It looks like there’s a few pages of technical data after the note.”

“So what are they asking us to do? The maritime authorities in the area should be all over this right?”

“That’s the next thing our writer friend gets to,” Jen said and resumed reading the note aloud. “There was a registration issue with Marcus’s boat that we didn’t learn about until this situation came up. Because there was no record of the Asterion’s Promise even leaving port, much less being in their waters, the authorities haven’t been willing to search for him at all. They say they’ve seen no sign of him and haven’t received any distress calls so there’s nowhere to start looking, but we can’t accept that. Our boy needs a second chance! Please can you help us?”

“Wow, that’s pretty intense,” Connie said. “It does sound like it came to the right place though.” She eased back from the table and took a slow pull from her coffee.

“Yeah, it’s not that far off from what happened with me,” Jen said, looking over the pages another time, trying to shake the imaginary scenarios that were leaping into her mind to show her various fates Marcus could have suffered.

“You’re a sailor?” Connie asked, putting her cup back down on the table but folding her hands around it to capture the warmth.

“Well, I was on a boat, so I kind of, I guess?” Jen said. “It was supposed to be a vacation cruise though, not a solo sail around the world.”

That sparked a question in her mind. She’d been attacked because vacation cruises were taken by people with money. Not that she was wealthy, but for the pirates that attacked her boat, even the traveling money her parents had given her was enough to tempt their interest. Someone doing a solo sail around the world wouldn’t be traveling in luxury though. So why target him?

A personal vendetta? That seemed unlikely when the target was a 16 year old.

The sailboat itself? It would have value, and the gear on board even more value in terms of being simpler to liquidate. With only one person onboard the ship, it would make stealing the boat and the gear as easy as possible, so theft could be an answer. Doubly so because Marcus was unlikely to have kept his attempt a secret. Jen bet that if she checked his social feeds there’d be all kinds of posts about the trip. Even beyond that, he would probably have talked to people in the different ports of call that he stopped into for resupply. Any one of he talked to could have had dangerous connections.

“Maybe that’s why the letter was left in your mailbox then?” Connie said. “You’re our resident expert on mayhem on the high seas. I’ve sailed a bit too, but it’s been for specific expeditions and I haven’t had to do much more than tie off a few lines and haul stuff around when the captain needed heavy things moved.”

“We’re talking sailing?” Sarah asked, wandering into the room with a heavy book of spells open in her hands. “Do we have a new crisis on the High Seas or something?”

“Missing person,” Connie said, pointing to the papers in front of Jen, without reaching forward to grab them.

“Someone wrote us a letter about it,” Jen said and shifted the papers towards Connie and Sarah with her foot.

Sarah looked up from the spell she was studying, her interest captured by the letter.

“Not a great time for this to come in,” she said as she scanned it’s contents.

“Yeah, it’s just us three, JB, and Jim here today,” Connie said. The rest of the Club’s associates were tied up on other projects, or (in Tam’s case) finally taking a well deserved break to spend time with a loved one.

“This isn’t the kind of thing where waiting is going to produce better results,” Jen said, concern blossoming in her heart at the thought of a delay. “Do you think we should try to handle it without the others?”

It wasn’t an unreasonable question. Each of them were accomplished in their areas of expertise. Together they had an array of skills similar to the ones Anna, Tam, and Val brought to the table and with JB and Jim to back them up they had a solid support system to draw on.

Despite that, it felt weird to Jen to contemplate taking off on their own. She’d been with the club officially for less than a month, and with Connie being a member only slightly longer than that, and Sarah a bit less (officially).

“Can we get in touch with them?” Connie asked. “It wouldn’t hurt to get their input on how to tackle something like this.”

That was the counterpoint to immediate action that was rolling around in Jen’s head too. Maybe they didn’t need to check in with the senior associates to ask permission, but drawing on Tam’s knowledge, or Anna’s experience could prevent some fairly terrible missteps.

“It wouldn’t hurt us, but we’ve seen how run down they’ve gotten,” Sarah said. “Do you really want to ask Tam to come back in and spend a night workshopping a problem like this?”

Connie sighed and shook her head.

“Anna’s not much better off, I think,” she said. “She hides it well, but if you listened to how she talked about getting to spend some more time with Zoe, I think she’d needed a serious vacation for a while now too.”

Jen thought back to the trip she’d taken with Anna to Chicago. Grandma Russia had mostly been her usual self, strong, confident, and a furious driver. There’d been little things though that suggested some of that was a facade though.

From what Jen knew, Anna had spent years in high finance, and had learned to project an exterior of ice and perfect cool as a result. Hiding weakness wasn’t entirely a choice anymore since it had grown so automatic for her, but even effective efforts to hide fatigue and stress could leave clues to someone’s real inner state.

In Anna’s case, Jen thought those clues might come in through her storytelling. When she’d met Anna originally, Anna hadn’t explained things, she’d spun a tale which drew the listener in so that they understood what Anna was saying just as she wanted them too. On their trip to Chicago, that narrative capacity had been there, but Anna had often cut herself a bit short, as though weaving the full tale was just a little more effort than she could manage.

“Ok, so we can handle this on our own,” Jen said. “Are you both onboard with a trip to the South Pacific then? Or would you want to stay behind and work the problem from here?”

With a team of only three, leaving any resources behind might have a big impact on the mission, but Jen didn’t want the others to feel forced to join her on what might turn out to be a complete waste of time. Marcus could be long past helping already, however much Jen hoped he wasn’t.

“I’m in!” Connie said. “I’ll need about an hour to pack and I’ll be good to go. I can coordinate with JB to see about getting transport if you’d like?”

“That would be excellent,” Sarah said. “I’m in too, and I’ll go with you too. I’ll need about two hours though between packing and brushing up on the current mystic alignments that are in place around the South Pacific.”

“I’ll need around two hours to pack too,” Jen said, thinking ahead to the kind of gear she’d like to bring compared to the gear that was readily available in the Club’s base.

“I can help you pack once I’m done, if you’d like?” Connie asked.

“Thank you, that’d be great,” Jen said. “I’m a little familiar with the islands in that area, I’ll try to see which ones were close to Marcus’ last known position in case he had to beach his ship on one for repairs.”

“Good thinking,” Sarah said. “And don’t worry, if he’s out there, we’ll find him!”

Jen wasn’t worried about that. Her imagination was all too happy to show her scenarios where they found Marcus in any number of horrible conditions. None of those were productive though, so she bent focus to a more useful purpose – working on a way to avoid those scenarios and bring him home, safe and healthy.

Connie had thirty different tabs open on each of the fifty tablets, laptops and smartphones that were strewn around her and yet they still weren’t enough to keep up with her needs.

“Well, that looks like a recipe for burnout if I’ve ever seen one,” Val said, leaning through the doorway of the empty office Connie had laid claim to when the team returned from their last excursion.

“Oh! You’re back!” Connie said. “Did things go okay?”

Val was still in the same set of clothes that she’d been wearing when Connie had last seen her. The leather jacket looked a bit worse for having survived a trip through an Actual Hell, but her boots and jeans had held up surprisingly well. Better than their wearer based on the state of Val’s unkempt hair.

“Yeah, Aranea has a place in town. We got back yesterday,” Val said. She picked up one of the tablets and began scrolling through the article that was on the open browser tab.

“No weird time shenanigans there I hope?” Connie asked. Before joining the Second Chance Club she wouldn’t have thought to ask that particular question, but James was bringing her up to speed on the perils of planar travel as fast as he could.

“Tuesday was a little fuzzy, but that was probably more the margaritas’ fault than anything actually weird happening with time,” Val said.

Connie did the mental math. If Val and Aranea had gotten in yesterday and everyone else had returned a week ago, then they’d enjoyed a nice little vacation somewhere. Connie felt the itch of curiosity to hear the details but a more rational part of her wondered if she really wanted to know what a spider goddess did for ‘fun’?

“Are you back for a bit, or just stopping to check in?” she asked, instead of delving for vacation details which she probably wouldn’t be able to un-hear once she was told them.

“Was going to get cleaned up, but it looks like you could use a hand here,” Val said. “Is there another crisis brewing? No. Wait. Scratch that. There’s always another crisis brewing. How big is this one?”

“End of the world,” Connie said. “Oh, sorry, that was last week. Looks like we’re fresh of out of apocalypses. Apocali? Apocii? That’s not really word that should need a plural is it?”

“Welcome to the Second Chance Club,” Val said, smiling and taking a seat on the floor beside Connie. Despite her disheveled appearance, Val smelled wonderful. Like freshly cleaned cotton sheets that had dried in the wind and sunshine.

“This isn’t for a crisis, I’m just trying to get caught up,” Connie said.

“On?” Val asked, picking up a cell phone that was displaying an image of Tokugawa era spider statue from a Japanese artist.

“Everything,” Connie said. “I thought I had a pretty eclectic background before you folks recruited me. When I see the kinds of things we’ve gotten into already though, I’m left feeling like I’m woefully under educated for keeping up with everyone.”

“So, your plan is to learn everything there is about everything?” Val asked.

“Not exactly,” Connie said. “I mean, obviously that’s impossible. It is impossible right? The club doesn’t have like a god-memory tiara or something does it?”

“Nope.” Val laughed. “Though, believe it or not, I looked for pretty much the same thing when I was sitting where you are.”

Connie leaned back, placing her hands carefully so she wouldn’t smoosh one of the devices she was surrounded by.

“What was your onboarding like?” she asked.

“Well, we didn’t go to hell,” Val said. “So, easier than yours I’d say.”

Connie laughed and ran a hand through her hair. She still hadn’t really processed that experience. In hindsight it was terrifying, but it had been so hectic while she was there and it was such a brief event that was so disconnected from everything else, that she had a hard time believing it was real. The more days that passed, the more the whole affair felt like a dream.

Except for the bit where they were getting daily updates from Mr. Fong on his cousin’s progress towards Tibet.

Modern technology could have returned the Unity statue to its rightful holders within hours of the team’s return, but in this case the journey held an element of penance which couldn’t be avoided without reigniting the spirits’ wrath, and no one wanted that, not even the spirits themselves.

“I felt pretty overwhelmed,” Val said. “Before I signed on, I’d had no idea about the whole mystical, otherworldly stuff that was out there, and after the first time we ran into something I couldn’t explain, I wanted James and Tam to teach me everything about everything.”

“How long did it take them?” Connie asked. Her smile said she was joking, but there was a note of sincerity in her question too.

“I’ll let you know when they’re done,” Val said.

“You seem to have the basics down at least,” Connie said. “I feel like I’m flying blind even in terms of the simple things.”

“That’s because you’re like Tam,” Val said. “You’re used to either knowing something, or knowing where to look to find it out. Or figuring it out on your own I guess?”

“What other options are there?” Connie asked.

“Experiencing it,” Val said. “I didn’t come up with that. It’s something James told me. I thought he was saying that there was stuff we’d just have to suffer through, and to a point that is true. What he meant though is that there’s always going to be things we haven’t learned about. Or that we’ve learned incomplete or incorrect things about. It’s kind of inevitable given that we deal with a lot of unique people and situations.”

“I can see the value of keeping an open mind, but walking into hell blindly on purpose seems like a great plan if you want to get stuck there forever.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Val said. “If you can do research related to the case your working, then by all mean, stock up on all the info you can. The key there is the ‘all you can’ part. I know I don’t have the best memory in the world, so I read for the high points of things. Anything else and my brain turns to much and I absorb nothing.”

“That can leave out some important details though,” Connie said.

“It can, but that’s what we’ve got each other for, and James, and JB, and everyone else in the club,” Val said. “We’re each good at something but that doesn’t mean any of us have to be perfect at any of it.”

“Yeah, but information is supposed to be my ‘thing’,” Connie said. “I mean you hired me on as a librarian didn’t you?”

“Charlene is the one who makes all the hiring decisions, so you’ll need to ask her if it was your amazing Dewey Decimal skills that drew her attention. If I had to guess though, she picked you because you bring a whole lot more than that to the table.”

“I’m not sure that my archeology background is going to help on many cases,” Connie said.

“You might be surprised,” Val said. “I didn’t think my training in leading a squad was ever going to come up, but then I never pictured that I’d be leading a team into a demon infested Chinese military base either.”

“You got us in, you got us out, and no one got hurt,” Connie said. “Well except for the demon lord I guess. I’m not sure he counts though. Anyways, put me down as happy to follow you again and curious why you didn’t think you’d get to lead?”

“Because we have Anna,” Val said. “And she’s amazing.”

“Granted,” Connie said. “But she can’t be everywhere.”

“Yeah, I’m seeing that now,” Val said. “And I’m seeing something else too. Anna’s an excellent leader, and there’s a ton of stuff I can learn from her, but my training is a bit different from hers. She thinks big picture. Very strategy focused. I’m used to smaller scale stuff. Fewer people. Shorter timeframes. I’m tactical. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Anna can handle tactics just fine too, but I can handle them well enough that if I step up, she’ll be able to keep an eye on what’s going on overall, which I think is what she naturally tries to do.”

“So you’re saying I should be looking at the things Tam doesn’t do, or at least things that I can do better?” Connie asked.

“Not exactly,” Val said. “It doesn’t have to be a competition. We’ve seen your work already, and I’ve seen you in the field. You don’t have anything to prove. You absolutely belong here and we’re lucky to have you with us. That’s true regardless of your skill in any area relative to any of us. What I’ve suggesting is just find what you’re good at, what you enjoy doing, and then see what those things can add to the team.”

“What if what I’m good at is reading a ridiculous number of articles looking for answers to an ever expanding series of questions that pop in my head?” Connie asked.

“That sounds super valuable to me,” Val said. “With one catch.”

“What’s that?” Connie asked.

“It’s only good if it’s good for you,” Val said. “Doing something because you think we need you to, or because you’re pursuing some imaginary ‘good enough’ target is just going to leave you burned out. Tam was pushing herself like that, and she had a good cause, but outside of the short term, that sort of work does more harm than good.”

“Even if it means saving the world?” Connie asked.

“Things get a little fuzzy there,” Val said. “Do you destroy yourself to save the world? What happens the next time the world needs to be saved? Do you hold back? Is there a world left to be saved if you do? Sometimes you get stuck with a rotten deal of the cards and there’s just no good answers.”

“What do you usually choose to do then?” Connie asked.

“I cheat,” Val said. “If that’s not possible, then I hit things. Or get hit by them. My role on the team is kinda simple sometimes.”

“I could do with simple about now,” Connie said. “But I really want to read these too.”

“Split the difference?” Val suggested.

“Read half of them?” Connie asked.

“Sort of,” Val said. “You read the first one that looks interesting and I’ll pick out the others from the pile that I know we’ve run into before or are likely to come up. If you have any questions, you can ask me and that might save time doing research on it. At least for now.”

“That’s…really generous of you,” Connie said. “Are you sure though? I mean you just got back?”

“Let’s be honest,” Val said. “I just had a week off. I owe you all some time after you covered for me like that.”

“There really wasn’t much to cover,” Connie said. “We haven’t had any problems come up since we got back.”

One of the phone’s beside her rang. The number on the screen was just digits. No one in her phone book.

Val picked it up.

“Hello?”

The caller on the other end of the line sounded frantic but the volume was so low Connie couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“Glowing red cracks on the box and eerie moaning from them?” Val asked. “Sure, let me check. Connie, got any suggestion on a sealing agent for a Voxable Puzzle Box that seems to be exploding, slowly?”

Connie blinked. She’d never heard of a Voxable Puzzle Box. Her fears rose to swallow up her thoughts but before they could another idea flitted to her awareness.

“Scrub the cracks with salt and then drip molten silver onto them,” she said. “I was just reading an article on warding a room from otherworld intrusions and they mentioned the salt and silver trick worked on other things too.”

Val repeated the instructions and then listened to the phone for a minute.

“Ok, excellent, glad we could help,” she said before hanging up.

“It worked?” Connie asked.

“Like a charm,” Val said. “Literally. That was the sealing charm they needed. The box is safe and secure now. Crisis averted.”

“Neat! I guess, with a little help, sometimes people can make their own Second Chances!”

A strange yellow orb hung in the sky, beaming deadly radiation down across the land. Or at least Tam found it strange. Having been cooped up in her sanctum for more nights than she could remember, fresh air and bright sunlight seemed as alien to her as any facehugger or creature from beyond the stars could be.

“Come on, it’s just a little sunshine,” Sarah said. “You’re not a vampire, it can’t actually hurt you.”

She pulled on Tam’s arm to lead them down the stairs from the Club’s current offices. Tam squinted and groaned. She could argue that sunlight was capable of doing all sorts of bad things to a person but she knew that wouldn’t change Sarah’s resolve to her away from her cauldrons and iPads.

“There’s still stuff to do though,” she groaned, the protest pressed out of her by the sheer number of tasks that were pending in her queue. “We don’t know what formed that sinkhole in Mumbai. Or why Anchorage is reporting purple stars appearing at midnight?”

“James is working on that,” Sarah said, dragging Tam further down the street. Tam wasn’t making a particular effort to resist. On some level she seemed to know she needed the intervention.

“James is working on a lot of things,” Tam said, not quite willing, or able, to give up without more of a struggle.

Not that she had a lot of energy left. She was tired. Even with the extra help from both Connie and Sarah, it still felt like the world was resting on her shoulders.

“And if he wasn’t agoraphobic, I would be dragging him out here too,” Sarah said.

“But what if there’s some monster that’s inhaling whole villages or something?” Tam said.

“Then those villages have a big problem to deal with,” Sarah said.

“They’re not going to be able to though!” Tam said.

“And neither are you,” Sarah said. “Did we stop the first sinkhole from forming?”

“No.”

“Can we stop all of the bad things in the world before they happen to someone good?”

“No.”

“Can we help anyone at all if we’re too tired to keep our eyes open?”

“Maybe,” Tam grumbled. “No.”

“You like to help people,” Sarah said, stopping and turning to face Tam. “I get it. It can be kind of addictive. But you’ve got a responsibility to help yourself too.”

“You sound like my girlfriend,” Tam said.

“Good. I’ve met Cynthia. She’s a lovely woman. Very sensible,” Sarah said.

“Did she put you up to this?” Tam asked.

“No, though she has been calling for you pretty regularly,” Sarah said.

A police car passed on the street, it lights twirling. Another problem. Another thing to worry about.

“Why haven’t I gotten those calls?” Tam asked.

“Because she’s trying to respect your time,” Sarah said and mimicked Cynthia’s voice, “I’m just calling to check in, how’s Tam doing? No, no, don’t interrupt her if she’s busy, I know she needs to concentrate. No, it’s ok, you don’t have to let her know I called, everything’s ok here. I don’t want to worry her.”

Tam massaged the bridge of her nose.

“Oh, that’s not good at all, is it?”

“No,” Sarah said. “Or yes. I mean on the positive side, you’ve got someone in your life who truly cares you. That’s uncommon to rare in my experience. On the other hand, they’re stressed out and aren’t sure what to do to make things better for you, which is depressingly common.”

“Ugh, I have got to carve some time off for her,” Tam said. “We were supposed to go out together two nights ago, and I had to bail to deal with the bog lights in Kemeri.”

“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head.

“No, what?” Tam asked. “That really was why I had to cancel. I didn’t want to bail!”

“I know that,” Sarah said. “What I’m saying no to is ‘carving some time’ for your girlfriend. That’s not healthy or sustainable. You can’t make spending time with her just another chore on a ToDo list.”

“That’s not…” Tam started to object but then slumped in defeat. It was a painfully accurate characterization of how she’d been picturing making time for the woman she loved.

“Yes, that’s not what you’re going to do,” Sara said. “Instead you’re going to come with me and we’re going to solve a problem the old fashioned way.”

“Without magic?” Tam asked.

“I try to do as little without magic as possible,” Sarah said. “And in this case I think we need to use one of the most ancient magics there is.”

Tam sagged further. Ancient magics tended to deal with primal energies, which were either incredibly difficult to summon, or incredibly difficult to control. Or both. Most times it was both.

“I don’t know if that’s wise,” Tam said. “If I cast a big spell now, I can promise it’s going to go sideways starting with the first syllable.”

“That’s the beauty of this magic,” Sarah said. “It’s not big at all.”

Tam didn’t trust that. Maybe it wasn’t big by Sarah’s reckoning. Sara had more experience casting high tier spells than Tam did though, and that could have easily distorted her view of what a less experienced caster could manage, especially when said caster was already exhausted. On the other hand, if and when things did go wrong, having Sarah there gave the best chance to someone being able to get the spell back on track, and it would serve Sarah right to be stuck with the legwork to make that happen.

“Ok, where do we go for the casting then?” Tam asked.

“You’ll see!” Sarah said. “We’ve just got a few stops to make first.”

***

The first stop in question turned out to be a basketball court. Not a venue Tam had been expecting, but Sarah moved with purpose as she strode along the sidelines.

Her target was a high school aged girl who was tying on a new pair of shoes.

“Just won those, I’m guessing?” Sarah said.

“Yeah, what of it?” the girl said, looking up at the two women. Her hair was woven into cornrows and hung halfway down her back. It showed wonderful braiding work, better than Tam had ever managed for her friend Ayisha when they were teenagers, but where Ayisha had always had a smile when she saw Tam, the basketball playing girl’s dark brown eyes held only suspicion.

“I’m off my game,” Sarah said. “I could use a practice round against somebody with some skill.”

“Two on one?” the girl said. “Sounds like a hustle.”

“Nah, just me,” Sarah said. “My friend’s a nerd, I don’t think she even knows how to play.”

Tam wanted to take offense. She knew the rules of basketball. She’d even played before. A while ago. Ok, over a decade ago. But she could sort of dribble still. Probably. If she had an hour or so to practice first.

“What do you want to play for?” the girl asked.

“Those shoes are around a $100, right?” Sarah said. “Let’s play for that.” She flashed a small handful of bills to show she could cover her end of the bet.

“Now I know you’re a hustler,” the girl said.

“Afraid to take my money?” Sarah asked.

“You afraid to lose it?” the girl asked.

“Depends if I get a good match in or not,” Sarah said. “My name’s Sarah.”

“McKenzie,” the girl said.

“First to eleven?” Sarah suggested.

“Sure, I’ll even let you start out,” McKenzie said, tossing Sarah the ball.

Tam may not have been able to play basketball all that well, but she was able to follow the flow of the game easily enough.

Sarah put in a valiant effort, but it clear from the start that McKenzie was in a different league entirely. What was the most interesting to Tam though were the half dozen moments when Sarah could have easily cheated with a quick spell or a whispered incantation but chose to play it fair instead.

With the match concluded, the two players came over to where Tam was sitting.

“I’m more out of shape than I thought,” Sarah said, passing the folded bills over to McKenzie.

“You’ve got a decent fake out,” McKenzie said. “Can’t use it on someone who’s reading you though.”

“It was my go to move for a while,” Sarah said. “Seemed like all the balls I sunk this time were just straight shots though.”

“Yeah, well, I had to give you some space for those or you’d have gotten more of the fakes through,” McKenzie said.

“You ever do any coaching?” Sarah asked.

“What? Me? Nah. I’m not a coach. I’m still in school,” McKenzie said.

“I don’t know, one of my friend’s daughter’s plays in a youth league and they could definitely use someone with your eye,” Sarah said.

“Well if they’ve got any openings, you let me know, ok?” McKenzie said.

“Sure, you around much?” Sarah asked.

“I’m here every day,” McKenzie said. “Or at least every day there’s someone looking to lose some coin.”

“I’ll let you know then,” Sarah said. “Thanks for the match.”

***

As they continued on the journey, Tam couldn’t help but notice the smug expression on Sarah’s face.

“You look awful happy for someone who just got beat and lost a hundred dollar,” Tam said. “I’m hoping the spell’s going to turn out a little better than that.”

“Believe it or not, I think the magic turned out just fine,” Sarah said.

“What magic?” Tam asked. “You didn’t cast anything during that game. I mean you had some golden opportunities, but I didn’t see one spell go off.”

“They’re going to take away your magician card,” Sarah said. “I never said I was going to cast a spell. I said we were going to work some magic. And we did.”

“The basketball game was magic?” Tam asked. Her brain felt like a lake of sludge on top of her shoulders. She knew she should be looking at the situation from a different angle. Sarah had played the most basic of magic tricks on her – set her up to expect one thing and then did something totally different while Tam was distracted. Even knowing that though, the wheels in Tam’s head were still stuck in the sludge and she couldn’t work out what had really happened.

“Yes. The most ancient kind of magic,” Sarah said. “It was communication. I talked to McKenzie and now the world is changed.”

“I am about five paces behind still,” Tam said. “Break it down for me in more detail ok?”

“Sure,” Sarah said with a gentle laugh. “Ok, McKenzie’s out there everyday hustling to make ends meet. She’s good at basketball, but playing games for money is only going to take her so far. It’s hit-or-miss when people will be willing to play, and dangerous if she plays the wrong people. She’s smart though, so she knows that and tries to only take the safe bets. Meaning the people who aren’t going to break her legs when she wins.”

“That sounds good?” Tam said.

“It’s not,” Sarah said. “She’s playing the odds and the odds always turn on you eventually. What she needs, what she knows she needs, is something more stable. And she needs people in her life too. Did you notice that we played one-on-one?”

“Yeah. That’s not usual is it?  I thought basketball was usually five-on-five?”

“That or three-on-three is more common. McKenzie can’t do that though because she’s not exactly flush with friends. Especially not ones that can play like she can.”

“So, coaching?”

“Yeah. It’s something she’s naturally gifted at. More than that though, the youth team I talked about? They really do need help, and McKenzie is the perfect person to provide it. She can be there as a coach, and as a friend in a way that none of the adults who are working with the kids can be.”

“I feel like there’s a lesson here for me?” Tam said.

“There is,” Sarah said. “What you’re doing isn’t wrong, you’re just going about it wrong. You can’t fix all the world’s problems. And that’s good. If you could the world wouldn’t need the rest of us.”

“But the problems still need to be fixed, don’t they?”

“Some of them, but you’ll get a lot more done by giving people the little bits of help or information they need to fix both their own problems and other peoples’,” Sarah said. “We don’t need special teams swooping in to save us all the time. In a lot of cases, we can make our own second chances.”