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Viv hesitated, torn between the privacy of the booth, the excitement of the performers, and the opportunities of the bar.

But the bar seemed like the best option. She could get a drink right away and learn more about town from the bartender—wasn’t that one of their specialties? And besides, since she was being brave tonight anyway, she had to admit she would never forgive herself if she avoided the opportunity to talk to a gorgeous nagi.

She’d always thought snakes were lovely. 

Determination fueling her, she headed over to the bar and took one of the seats there. There were plenty of free bar stools, since more people were gathered around the tables near the stage or filling the booths for dinner.

Just as she’d hoped, the nagi bartender slithered over, giving Viv a bright smile and leaning her arms on the bar so she could be heard more easily without shouting. Her dark hair showered down over her shoulder, snakelike in itself. She was wearing a halloween blouse, black with little jack-o-lanterns all over it. “Hey there. What can I get you?”

“Uh… cider, please,” Viv said. She didn’t exactly want to get drunk, and the last few days hadn’t adequately prepared her for heavy drinks. “What’s your favorite?”

“Normally, pear ccider,” the nagi said cheerily. “But right now? I have to recommend the pumpkin cccider. We only have it in the fall, but it’s ssso good.”

Viv perked up more at the nagi’s bright attitude. “That sounds perfect! Very Halloweeny. Yeah, I’ll have that.”

“Sure thing,” the nagi said. She produced a cold can from a fridge behind the counter and poured it into a pint glass. 

While the nagi worked, Viv let herself get distracted by the band. The singer was one of the high lords of the fae from the look of him, a sidhe—although his typical Tolkien-elf sort of appearance was slightly bespoiled by a mass of fine silver hair that stood out around his head. She was reminded of when she’d been a kid and had touched one of those electrical orbs at the science museum.

“You like the mussic?” the nagi asked, placing the glass in front of her.

Viv looked back with a smile. “It’s great. I listened to a lot of much softer Celtic stuff growing up. My parents were mundane, but my aunt’s a witch and you know that whole sort of… well, you know the music.”

“Actual witch or the, you know…?” 

The nagi’s voice was cheerful, and Viv didn’t take any offense. “Actual witch but they kind of embraced the aesthetic.”

“Lotsss do,” the nagi agreed. “There’sss power in expectationss.”

Viv found she really didn’t want to talk about her aunt anymore and cast around for a change of subject. “You get lots of sidhe performers?”

“Among other kindsss,” the nagi said. “Our opening act didn’t show up today, ssso Dandelion iss onsstage early. The Gentry will be playing for sssome time yet.”

“Nice of them to go on early,” Viv said. She gave the nagi another smile. “So, uh, can I ask you something?”

“It doesssn’t hurt to assk.”

Viv drew a breath. Every dumb instinct she had was to flirt, but the bartender was working; she should focus on getting information. “So, I’m actually new; I just moved in a few blocks away. Do you know much about the area? I mean, you work here.” Belatedly, she wondered if she was being rude, and offered her hand. “Hi, um, Vivian. Viv to my friends.”

The nagi dimpled sweetly, taking her hand and shaking it. “Hi, Viv. I’m Varsha. I live nearby too, actually, ssso I know a fair amount.” 

“Great,” Viv said, a bit relieved. “I’ve had a few people recommend me places to go around here, so I don’t need that so much, but my apartment’s had a couple of things going on. Are there frequent power outages or, uh, bug problems in the area generally?”

“Bug problemsss?” Varsha tilted her head, her blue, forked tongue sticking out between her lips briefly. “I don’t have any problemss with them mysself. Power outagess, thossse are fairly regular. My building hass more than mosst reccently, I think.”

“That’s what I heard about my building too,” Viv admitted. “Maybe they all do around there, and everyone thinks it’s just them.”

“Hah!” Varsha grinned, showing small fangs. “Could be. Wouldn’t it be funny if insstead of being the ussual leyline ssspikes, it wass just Hydro One being lousssy in our neighbourhood?”

“I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than some mysterious supernatural happenings,” Viv groaned.

“Oh, worsse,” Varsha said knowingly. “You can fix sssupernatural happeningss. You can’t fix public ssservices.”

Viv laughed, but before she could ask more, several new patrons showed up, and Varsha gave her a wink and slithered away to serve them as well.

She waited to see if Varsha would get free again, but it was only getting busier—she imagined that the Genry’s actual scheduled play time had started, and so their fans had shown in addition to the standard late-night pub crew. Her chance to get a booth had passed, the last one now taken by a girl who appeared to be part octopus, and so she just nursed her cider, turning her stool and watching the band.

They seemed to have endless energy. The sidhe leader, Dandelion, danced across the stage like he owned it, lights shining on his odd hair and the glittery glam-style makeup he wore. A satyr with a big beard and long curly hair played on the drums, a nixie played bass, and a tall woman in white, standing stiff as a board, played the keyboard. Every time a song ended, Dandelion would flirt with the crowd around him briefly, laughing and teasing as if he wasn’t fae nobility, and then would slam into the next song in his set, his guitar screaming out fiddle tunes into the night.

She wondered who the opening act had been and why they hadn’t shown up. Her paranoia had dimmed between the cider and the energy of the room, so although the thought of mysterious vanishings crossed her mind briefly, she assumed it was much more likely the ever-present fall flu.

By 11, she had long finished her cider and wasn’t sure she wanted another. Delaying here was filling a seat that a paying customer could have—and she didn’t think that she’d get the chance to get more information from Varsha, who seemed to be going off her shift, trading places with a stoic-looking gargoyle and vanishing into the back. 

The music stopped. “Thanks all for the love,” Dandelion said to the cheering crowd, blowing kisses to everyone his eyes fell on. “I’ll be giving my fingers a bit of a rest for a time, but you all know the next hour is trivia anyway. Stay and win—or lose—big. The stakes are always high, as you surely know. Susan, I’ll hand it over to you?”

A dryad bounded up onto stage. “Thanks for the introduction!” she chirped. “That was Dandelion and the Merry Gentry! Stick around for another hour, and they’ll be back. In the meantime, who is ready to risk it all? Hands up!”

Vivian looked down at her empty glass. If she left now, she might still happen to bump into Varsha as she left work. Of course, it was possible that Varsha would be less cheerfully willing to talk when she wasn’t on duty, but Viv considered herself relatively sensitive to that. If Varsha seemed unwilling to talk, she’d go her own way with just a greeting.

Then again, maybe she shouldn’t bother Varsha further, Viv thought, a little anxious. And there was no guarantee she’d run into her anyway. Perhaps she could stay and try the trivia game, or at least watch it, if she were willing to order a second drink. Or maybe she should just go home. Though, those weren’t the only options; there’d been other places that had been recommended to her which she could head out to, and surely other things she could do that she hadn’t thought of yet.

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Viv wrinkled her nose, stepping forward reluctantly. Something about the garbage room just seemed off—and she wasn’t entirely sure it was just in terms of the rot. Tentatively, she stepped forward, her garbage bag hanging loosely from her hand. 

On the one hand, it felt like this was deeply not her business; garbage rooms stank, it was something they did. She was just on edge. Sleeping three days and only waking up to stuff bread in one’s face and feed the cats would do that to a person, especially after then having a rich dinner of fried chicken and coke. The thing with the moth and Yasmin’s nervousness about this building had only added to it.

On the other, this was a heavily magical area, and her specialty was divination. Should she really be shrugging it off if she got a bad feeling about something?

Hesitantly, she made her way toward the garbage containers, picking her way around gross puddles of indeterminate fluid on the ground. Flies buzzed around the compost bins and the dumpsters alike, and fruit flies seemed to swarm on their surface. For a moment, she longed for colder weather to finally get here. No more bugs to worry about then.

The smell seemed to be the worst from the middle container. She made a face, looking up at it. If she really wanted to investigate, she’d have to grab the rim and haul herself up to look inside.

The light flickered overhead, and she froze in the middle of reaching for the rim. The last thing she wanted was for the power to go out while she was holding herself up over who knows what rotting, leaking mess. The stutter of the light sent large shadows through the room, warping the space around her.

“You okay, miss?”

She jumped, a scream strangling in her throat as the flickering light resolved back into the steady hum of fluorescent lights. Spinning in place, she barely held herself back from swinging her garbage bag at the newcomer.

It was an older man, white and with some sallowness to his skin, his salt and pepper hair swept back from his brow. He was leaning on a mop in a tub and wearing a janitorial vest with the name Theodore embroidered on it, his brows raised in some concern. She wondered how long he’d watched her creep her way across the floor toward a dumpster.

Viv’s face heated. “I! Yeah, sorry, I was just…” She trailed off. What could she say? She was worried about the garbage? “I was going to throw this out.”

“Let me get this for you, then,” Theodore said, still in a light tone, almost murmuring it. He left his mop in his bucket and came forward with a smile, hand outstretched. It didn’t reach his eyes, which were dark, hard, and, she thought, judgmental. “It’s nasty in here today, yeah? I’m just going to get this cleaned up and prepped to be taken out tomorrow.”

She wasn’t sure she’d been so embarrassed in her life, except that the entire last month had happened to her. “Yeah, sure! Thanks! Sorry,” she babbled, shoving the garbage bag at him, and fled.

When she made it to the ground floor, she ducked into the building’s gym room to wash her hands and splash her face. It still felt like it was practically sizzling. She must have looked like a total weirdo—she could only hope that he’d rounded the corner when she was at the dumpster already and it had looked like she was just waiting out the power glitch to toss her bag in, not playing amateur garbage detective.

She definitely needed to get out, Viv decided, looking at herself ruefully in the mirror as water dripped off her long, angular nose. Somewhere fun, somewhere that she could just relax for a bit. Live music and booze sounded like just the thing.

Besides—the quote she had read mentioned a neighbour’s party, and while she was pretty sure that the literal meaning was that you could learn to enjoy something outside your comfort zone if you just joined in… she had literally been recommended a bar that seemed like a party joint and was actually named the Good Neighbours. Couldn’t get more meant-to-be than that.

Trying to stop replaying the last five minutes over and over, she headed out into the night, determined to make herself enjoy the brisk air and the scurry of leaves around her ankles, red and brown and ashy gray. Autumn was her favorite season, and she was going to have a good night tonight if it killed her.

Google Maps wasn’t always reliable in Valleys—less through a fault of its own and more that the geography changed so often, roads shifting, buildings moving, shops opening and closing under their own power or, sometimes, their own will. There were even websites dedicated to trying to track the changes day after day. But Good Neighbours seemed like it was an establishment that had been around for a while, and sure enough, her phone brought her there easily enough.

From the outside, it didn’t look like much. It was a pub that had taken over what had once been retail space off a side street,with offices overhead—she had to assume that they worked opposite hours from the pub, so that the nightlife wouldn’t bother any of the workers. It had a brick front, and large windows with GOOD NEIGHBOURS written across them in sparkling gold and white window paint. The loud electric take on traditional Celtic music could be heard even with the door closed.

Of course, she thought, scanning the menu outside—standard pub fare, it looked like—with a name like the ‘Good Neighbours’, she’d expect a pretty high number of fae performers and servers. Probably under fae ownership as well, which would explain its reputation. Yasmin hadn’t identified it as such, but then, Yasmin also said she didn’t do bars.

From the poster hanging up outside, it looked like the band playing today was called the Merry Gentry, which only further affirmed her sense it was fae-owned. But it should be safe enough to go and get a drink; not eating or drinking on fae territory really only applied to spaces where they offered you something for free. A business was a totally different situation.

She headed in, almost bowled over by the music, and stood in the doorway, looking around as she got her bearings and adjusted to the noise of the screaming electric guitar jig currently playing, the dim lights and fog hovering around the tables, the patrons yelling at each other to be heard over the music. It looked like it was a ‘seat yourself’ pub, so she took a moment to figure out where to head to.

There were some quieter booths to the side and away from the stage, less occupied, where she could go and sit and just talk to a server when they came by; one booth was even entirely free. She could sit by the stage, and lose herself in the music, maybe get familiar with the band. Or she could go sit at the bar, where a beautiful nagi, a snake-woman, was serving up drinks. 

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The delivery driver perked up immediately. “Right, I’ve got your order here,” she said. She seemed to sniff at Viv briefly, making her wonder if her shower had somehow failed at its purpose, but she’d done a sniff test on herself after and was sure she didn’t smell of anything more than rosewater shampoo.

The driver just smiled down at Viv, apparently not noticing her sudden anxiety. “I brought the machine?”

“Thanks,” Viv said awkwardly, pulling her card out of her pocket. “Hey, I’m new here, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” The driver handed the card reader over. “How can I help you?”

Viv punched in a 20% tip. “I just moved here from out of town—you said that the buzzer was acting up again? Does it do that often?”

The driver relaxed minutely. Viv reminded herself that an OmegaEats driver probably got asked a lot more rude and intrusive questions than that—in the Valley or out of it. “Yeah,” the driver said. “I deliver in this neighbourhood a lot, and this building’s buzzer recently started acting up, I guess. Sometimes it’ll let me ring up but won’t let them buzz me in, and sometimes it’s just dead. Looks like it’s just dead today.”

“Wild.” Viv printed out the receipt and saw that the driver’s name was Yasmin, debated calling her it, and then felt weird at the very idea. “Does that happen to a lot of buildings in the area? Leyline spike?”

“Ehh.” Yasmin waggled a hand. “These problems happen more often than leyline spikes do; I think it’s just faulty wiring. The power goes out in this building fairly often too, I get a few orders just ’cause people can’t cook on one night or another.”

Viv pulled a face. “Ugh. Figures I learned about that after I moved in, not before.”

“Tough luck,” Yasmin said lightly. As Viv handed the card reader back, she took out Viv’s food from her insulated bag. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” Viv said. “Anything in the area you’d recommend a newcomer check out?”

Yasmin’s thick brows raised in surprise. She was a rather attractive woman, Viv couldn’t help but notice, even as she chided herself for the inappropriateness of that—let alone the fact it’d be a rebound. Her hair was long and thick, bound back in a braid, and she was tall and strongly-built. At her own fairly short height, Viv found she always appreciated taller women. “Like, for entertainment, or otherwise?”

“Anything, really,” Viv said. “I’m from out of town.”

“Right, okay. Library’s nice. We’ve got a few theatres—the Theatre of Dreams is always pretty mesmerizing.” Yasmin said, relaxing further. She seemed pretty chatty, Viv thought, more comfortable to have a conversation than Viv had first thought from how antsy she’d initially seemed. “I hang out in the skate park a few blocks away a lot; it’s really friendly and open to every level of experience. If you’re outdoorsy; it’s part of a larger nature park in the area with good walks. I’d avoid the West Street Dog Park, though, it’s picked up a bad crowd. Food wise… lots of local stuff is good, I’d suggest trying all kinds of places, and ordering through OmegaEats.” Shameless. “If you’re a night owl, I can’t really answer about pubs or clubs—I’ve heard that the Good Neighbours is really wild after hours, but I don’t really do that sort of thing. Otherwise, Beanheadings is always hopping? It’s a fae-run coffee shop, but everyone goes there. Open 24 hours, fairly human-friendly, though it’s not in the best part of town.”

“Well, downtown?”

“Downtown, yeah.” Yasmin gave her a sunny smile. “That everything?”

Viv gave her one back. “Yeah. Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. I’m Vivian, by the way. If you work this neighbourhood, I’m sure I’ll see you again.”

“Yasmin.” Yasmin offered a hand, and they shook. She seemed pleased to get an introduction; probably something else that didn’t happen a lot in her line of work. “Let me know how you’ve settled in next time.”

“Will do. Thanks again.”

With that, Yasmin headed back out to a motorcycle that she’d parked next to the entrance. Viv watched her put on her helmet and take off. 

A cold autumn wind rushed past in her absence, and Viv shivered, shutting the door and taking the stairs back up this time. She didn’t want to go back into the elevator room—and besides, Yasmin’s warning about power outages was stuck in her mind. No point in getting stuck in an elevator

The cats greeted her—or, more likely, greeted the scent of chicken—with a riotous chorus of meows as she reentered her apartment, and she wove through piles of boxes to her desk with them tripping her up the entire way.

As she drank her coke and ate her chicken, occasionally peeling off strips to throw for the cats, she looked up the places that Yasmin had named. The library did seem nice, though it would be closed at this hour; the Theatre of Dreams looked to be that famous shadowfolk Lithway’s theatre, as the rumors had said. The skate park had an immediate attraction, even though she wasn’t a skateboarder herself: it looked to be home to a number of feral cats, as pictures of the place showed them lounging insouciantly everywhere, heedless of danger. 

But the attached nature park looked big and dark and, she thought, the whole area would probably be safer during the day than at night. She continued browsing. The Good Neighbours was a pub, with live music and trivia and a reputation for fae trickery and mysterious disappearances; by contrast, even if run by a dullahan, Beanheadings seemed to have more of a reputation of everyone being safe there, regardless of whatever faction they claimed—or no faction at all.

“Ughhh. Pebbles, where should I go?” she asked Pebbles, who was licking Viv’s fingers clean of chicken grease. Pebbles chirped at her. “Just follow wherever my footsteps take me? I’d go introduce myself to the neighbours like the quote said, but I don’t want to interrupt them at dinner time… but I guess most people I’d meet at local spots would be locals themselves, right?”

Pebbles gnawed on her fingers and Viv tugged them away gently, booping her nose.

Before she went anywhere, she had to get rid of the garbage or the cats would get into the bones, since she hadn’t found where her closed garbage can had ended up yet. She downed a glass of water to chase away the taste of chicken, dug up a garbage bag from the clearly-marked box of cleaning supplies, then changed the litter boxes for good measure. After three days without cleaning them, the apartment was smelling a bit foul.

“I’m heading out after this, so don’t wait up,” she called to her inattentive cats.

Tying off and picking up the garbage bag, she headed out again. At the choice between stairs and elevator, she hesitated, feeling silly about her earlier nerves, then took the elevator down to the sub-basement with no problem. It took a little wandering through the parking lot there before she found the garbage room—but once found, there was no mistaking it.

It reeked even the bins seemed barely full; she gagged a little, hesitating at the doorway. It felt like it couldn’t be just from the accumulation of trash, but maybe bags were leaking, or hadn’t been taken away recently. Maybe that’s what Yasmin was sniffing earlier, a floor away. Another strike against this new apartment, she thought, a bit sourly.

Better get it over with, she decided. She still had to decide which place she’d go to after this—hanging around in the garbage room door wasn’t going to do her any favors.

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Beano pawed at Viv’s leg again, letting out a kitty whine that was interrupted with an asthmatic snort. She couldn’t help but laugh, nudging him aside with a foot as she headed into the living room and toward the balcony.

“You’re very brave,” she informed him seriously, when he seemed about to take offense at her snickering. “Defending your sleeping mama like that. I’m so very proud. But let’s let this lil moth go, okay? I’ll give you a treat.” She repeated the last word. “Treat?”

Obediently, Beano sat. He was the most food motivated of her three cats, the other two of whom were sleeping on her couch between some boxes that had been piled on it. 

“Good boy,” she said. She got the balcony door open one-handed and stepped out onto it, looking out into the early evening darkness of Branwin’s Valley. Her apartment was on the second floor of a lowrise, and overlooked some of the downtown core. Lots of pubs, she saw, some coffee shops. A bus stop in front of her house was a good sign that she could get anywhere she needed to quickly, at least—given that she didn’t drive, it was a small blessing.

She gently released the moth onto the balcony rail, where it clung on, flexing its wings and flicking its antennae around. It looked unharmed, but she wondered how tired it must be after its panic behind the curtain and attempts to avoid Beano. “Stay there for a second and I’ll get you some sugar water,” she said. She’d been around cats too long to feel too self-conscious talking to an animal.

Viv popped back inside and prepared some sugar water quickly, but by the time she stepped back out, the moth was gone. Well, she hadn’t really expected it to understand her. Still, she left the bottle cap she’d prepped the water in out on the rail; might as well be some other creature’s good fortune. 

With that done, she leaned on the rail, looking around the area some more. An unnaturally gorgeous harmony was rising from the street, two lovely winged humanoids below leaning on each other as they wandered away from a pub. She closed her eyes, just listening for a moment and breathing.

It was a strange, new Valley, and she hadn’t wanted to come here. But that didn’t mean it’d be a bad place to live, she reminded herself, moved by the sound of their music. It was going to be like any other Valley: home to both humans who had refused to abandon their houses when the gates opened, and monsters who had chosen to leave the Otherworld and live in this one. And then there’d be people like her: mostly human, but partly other, who needed for their own reasons to stay near a gate, but still wanted to enjoy the human experience.

Some of those part-monster folks would have been here even without the gate, she reminded herself. Monsters had lived on Earth a long time ago, before the gates closed, and were back now, but their bloodlines from interbreeding had carried on over the centuries, as had the curses they’d shared to humans.

Lycanthropes, for example—she remembered from her initial research before moving that there were several packs of werewolves (or weredogs, or werecoyotes, something like that), who called Branwin home. Vampires—two rival princedoms ‘ruled’ Branwin, or so they claimed. Other witches, certainly; she could see the hex shops and potionries from here. 

Those weren’t the only factions, either. In the two decades since the gates had opened, plenty of creatures had poured through. Fae, demons, creatures that were once considered mythological monsters… anyone and anything could be found in the Valley. She was pretty sure this was even the same Valley that was home to the actor Lithway, one of the shadowfolk, creatures that even monsters whispered about with fear.

She’d have to figure all those factions out over time, she thought, moroseness beginning to creep back in. Who you knew was everything in a place like this, where trading favors and building alliances was the norm, and she didn’t have a coven anymore. 

She was jolted out of her thoughts by two simultaneous sounds—her stomach growling, and Beano letting out a particularly mournful wail that she’d forgotten about his treats. Laughing at herself, she headed back inside.

Beano’s cries had woken Pebbles and Notch too, so she gave each of them treats, and apologized to them all. “I’ll order in chicken,” she told them. “You all can have some. Especially you, Beano, since you did such a good job protecting me.”

Beano, who had eaten Pebbles’ treat before she could get to it, groomed himself. Viv snuck Pebbles another treat while Beano was occupied.

She opened OmegaEats, quickly browsing the listings past local shops such as Humanburger and The Good Neighbours Bar until she found KFC and put in a quick order. Everything else looked interesting, but she was too hungry to try something new, and besides, once you took the breading off, KFC was safe for kitten consumption.

Then she looked down at herself, made a face at her rumpled, three-days-worn pajamas, and decided to clean up before she could totally horrify whatever delivery person came to her door.

One quick shower later found her drying her hair—long and straight, and naturally ginger though she’d added in a few black streaks at the start of October in the name of the season—and throwing on a long black sweater-tunic over Halloween leggings, brown and orange with leaves outlining the shape of skulls. Her sweater hung baggy on her, bought a size too large so it would be comfortably loose despite her curves. It did mean she’d have to push her sleeves up to do anything, but she always liked the aesthetic of how they flopped over her hands otherwise.

The OmegaEats app showed the driver still as ten minutes away, and she sighed, stomach absolutely aching at this point. “Well,” she told the cats, who were milling around her legs to try to get fur on her clean leggings, “I woke up at 6 so I’m gonna be up all night. Want to help me decide what I should do next?”

They didn’t answer, but didn’t need to. She focused on the power she could feel inside her and gently directed it towards the cats. Two of them lay down; Beano began washing himself again.

Ailuromancy, the art of divination through cats, was one of the most unreliable methods of divination, but was usually reliable enough to predict the weather. Their relaxation, combined with the face washing, meant that it’d be a clear night with enough wind to keep away the clouds. So no reason for her to stay in, at least.

The magic was stirring in her, eager to be of greater use. Perhaps it was due to connecting to a different gate than usual, or how she’d spent several days at rest, but she felt it surging, so she figured she might as well ride it. She pulled the tape off one of her boxes of books, dug around, and pulled out the first book she found with her fingertips. It was one of her many books of quotes—ones she kept around specifically for bibliomancy, which was encouraging. She must be on the right path with this particular divination attempt. 

Viv flipped it open and read the first paragraph her eyes fell on:

“Nothing makes you more tolerant of a neighbor’s noisy party than being there.”
– Franklin P. Jones

Ah, she thought. Of course. Useless.

As always, the best guidance she got was whatever she decided to read into it—exactly what made the other witches so scornful about divination as an art. She snapped the book shut, then jumped as her phone rang. Fumbling, she managed to pick it up after the third ring. “Hi?”

“Hey, this is your Omega driver,” the woman on the other end said. “Your buzzer is malfunctioning again, can you come down?”

Again? “Sure,” Viv said, glad she’d at least dressed. “I’ll be right back,” she told the cats, and grabbed her keys, heading out to the elevator.

It exited on the first floor in the elevator room—a well-lit room with exits into both the lobby and the underground parking area. A few dead moths were scattered about on the floor of the elevator room—maybe the building had a problem with them. These, at least, were clearly dead, wings torn, parts scattered around. She felt a bit sorry for them—probably because they made her think of her moth. It set her on edge, made her stomach clench, uncomfortable with this thing that she would have not even had second thoughts about before today.

She headed through the lobby to the building entrance, where her Omega driver waited. She was a South Asian woman in her early 30s, and about five years older than Viv. It looked to Viv as if she was looking around nervously, and she jumped when Viv opened the door.

“Hi,” Viv said. “Order for 210, right?”

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Vivian Dormer woke up in the darkness and was, briefly, confused about where she was and why she felt so awful.

An annoying arrhythmic ticking was happening somewhere to her left, an uneven patter that made her waking even less comprehensible. She raised a hand to scrub her face, then sighed as her surroundings slowly became familiar again.

She was in her new room, in her new apartment, in a new city—a place her aunt had rented for her and practically forced Viv to move to. It was across Canada, a good eight-hour flight from her home in B.C., but was a much shorter distance to travel with careful use of gates in the Otherworld, sending her from one Valley to another.

It was that trip which had made Viv so sick that she’d barely eaten for days, only getting up to take care of the cats and shove a piece of bread or two into her mouth before stumbling back to bed. She hated having to spend time in the Otherworld—it always did this to her, like she’d never really got acclimatized to it no matter how long she was forced to spend in it. The magic she supposedly had in her body reacted to the Otherworld, but some sort of…allergy did too. She couldn’t go too far from a gate or the active magic in her body would start to quell, something that would also make her sick. But she couldn’t go all the way into the Otherworld easily either without the magic in her body staging a complete revolt.

She basically had no choice but to live in a Valley. The Uncanny Valleys were the rifts that had been torn into the human world when the gates to the Otherworld had opened a couple of decades earlier. Not quite human territory and not quite monster territory, it was considered an ideal place for witches and other monster-adjacent humans to live—although, of course, they were also heavily occupied by humans and monsters alike. The one she’d lived in near Vancouver had been just fine for her, familiar and comfortable, until…

Viv considered going back to sleep, rolling over with a groan to face the window.

She should have known better than to date within her aunt’s coven. She was already treated more like a novelty than a proper witch, some sort of scientific curiosity to the others. The magical veins in her body failed to work right, and only her aunt’s word to the others that the magic did live in Viv gave her any clout. Viv knew it was there too, could feel it inside her, knew it was what kept making her sick. But the only thing she could do with it was minor divination, fortune telling to help herself guide her actions or foretell the weather or things like that. Simple tricks, half of them wrong or, perhaps, changed through the actions she took after doing the foretelling.

No matter how many spells she memorized, the language of them seemed to escape her. Like a mundane human with no monster blood, the spells just didn’t want to be spells for her. She’d doubted herself a dozen times, despite feeling the magic inside her; her parents were mundane, even if her aunt was a witch—couldn’t she be too? But her aunt had insisted that Viv join her, and Viv couldn’t say no. And, since she had to be in the coven anyway, she’d tried to make the best of it.

Sure, dating had been nice, but having a messy break-up with one of the covenmates? It had practically caused a faction split.

So here she was, in Branwin’s Valley. On her own, in a city she hadn’t picked, in an apartment she hadn’t picked, in a room she still wasn’t familiar with, boxes literally everywhere since she’d been too sick to unpack.

But… she was feeling better finally, she had to admit. The effects of the Otherworld had passed, and she was just hungry now, and with an awful caffeine headache. Viv sat up, rubbing her head with a grumble, scrunching her hair between her fingers. With everything still packed, maybe she should order something in? Or maybe it’d be better after so long stuck inside to go out, find a coffee shop, start to get used to the area. She needed to do something to get herself fed ASAP, anyway.

The patter started up again, this time accompanied by a chittering meow next to the bed from one of the cats—Beano, from the sound of his relatively deep voice. So the sound was a bug trapped behind the curtain, huh?

Viv hauled herself out of bed, straightening her fox-patterned pajamas, and nudged Beano out of the way of the curtain. She reached in behind it—and closed her hand directly around the bug, with perfect aim.

Holding it loosely, careful of the flutter of wings in her hand, Viv pulled it to her. Peeking down at it, she saw an absolutely enormous moth huddled in the curve of her hand. She froze, a little grossed-out but mostly afraid to do damage to it by holding it too tightly.

But it just stayed where it was, little legs on her hand, seeming to look up at her between the gaps in her fingers.

“Better get you outside,” she muttered. The balcony would do.

Beano let out a plaintive meow, pawing at her leg. He’d been hunting it, she recalled; he’d want her to give it to him instead. 

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[Next Day: Day Two]