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Vee took a breath, counted to 5 in her head, and breathed out.
She was back in the Boiling Isles, had been for almost an hour, and everything was fine. No one had bothered her or her human friends from Camp, no one had threatened them, and no one had hurt them. She’d turned into a new humanoid-demon-form she’d come up with — like her regular mostly-human form, but instead of just keeping her ears and disguising them as dyed hair, this time she also kept a couple feet of her tail — so she didn’t have to worry about anyone finding out she was a basilisk and getting afraid. She just needed to wait for Masha to try on a new suit, and then the two of them would catch up with Larry and Jaime outside the shop and go to the Library next.
She could handle this, right?
Masha came out of the changing room, giving the most beautiful twirl in the beautiful black suit they’d found. Their cheeks blushed when they saw Vee staring at them, and they gave her the most beautiful smile.
Vee could handle this.
The shopkeeper, who smelled more like a vampire than a witch — like a hissing, or maybe a bubbling, with a little hint of a snapping or a chirping — held two pendants up to Masha, one with a large green gemstone and the other with a few small red ones. “I believe these two would probably work best for you. What do you think?”
Masha gazed longingly at the red one before shaking their head at the price tag. “I’ll have to start with the green one for now. Can’t go blowing up the budget on my first day here.”
“Very well.” The shopkeeper handed the green pendant over. “That’s supposed to be 55 snails for the suit and 11 for the pendant,” he said as Masha clasped the pendant around their neck, “but since this is your first time here, I think I’ll round you down to 60.”
Masha bit their lip in excitement — deciding whether to push their luck and ask for the same discount on the expensive one instead? — before taking a few large coins out of their purse. “Thank you very much. I’m sure we’ll be back.”
“Have a lovely day.”
Masha all but skipped over to Vee. “What do you think?” they asked, lifting the gemstone with their finger.
Vee’s cheeks burned. “Beautiful.”
Masha put their soft hands on Vee’s burning cheeks, and they put their soft lips on her lips. Vee couldn’t stop her tail from wagging as she kissed the most beautiful creature in the world. She could stay held in Masha’s hands like this forever. Masha pulled away from Vee, but gazed into her eyes with the most incredible smile on their own blushing face.
Vee took their hand in hers and led them to the door, practically skipping through with them to where Jaime and Larry were waiting outside. Larry twirling some special drumsticks he’d just bought that apparently combined Bardic and Illusion magic to create extra-dramatic performances, and Jaime was studying a map that combined Oracle and Illusion magic to locate and pinpoint where they were in town and how to get places quickly. Luz had said this was one of the quieter neighborhoods, and so far, she’d been right — no other people outside as far as the eye could see, and not too many inside as far as Vee’s nose could smell.
“Took you long enough!” Jaime said without looking up from her map. “You ready to go to the library?”
“One second!” Masha planted another sloppy kiss on Vee’s cheek. “Ready!”
“Hey!” Some lizard-looking guy with green scales — probably late-teens, maybe early-20s — gestured at Masha from an alley next to a bakery. “Nice rock!” he snarled.
Vee’s stomachs twisted. How much of a problem was this guy going to be?
“… Excuse me?” Larry asked in what Vee recognized as his “trying not to get nasty” deadpan instead of his normal “it’s all good, man” deadpan.
“I said: That’s. A. Nice. Rock.” He started taking steps towards the kids. “Where’d you get it?”
Vee scanned for any adults around — none outside. Was anybody seeing this from their windows?
Masha pointed behind them, face steady but finger trembling a little. “That shop right there.”
“Well, that’s not good.” The young man picked another rock off the ground, throwing it up and immediately catching it. “Because that shopkeeper promised me a week ago he’d hold on to that one for me.”
Should Vee scream for help? Would anybody hear her? Would anybody be able to help if they did? Would anybody be willing to help? From what Luz had told her, Belos had spent decades as Emperor — and centuries before that as a conservative cult-leader — teaching people not to take care of each other when someone was in danger. That couldn’t have all evaporated overnight when he’d died, could it?
“OK, just, bear with me,” Masha said, “it sounds like we’re talking about different necklaces here. This one was dirt cheap — he had like a dozen other ones exactly like it.”
“You think I don’t know my promised necklace when I see it?”
No good escape routes. Just from the guys’ height and her friends’ lack of track/field experience, Vee could already guess that he was a better runner than they were. Even if he didn’t throw any spells at them, they couldn’t get inside anywhere before he caught them, and as he drew closer, Vee could smell that he had quite a bit more magic in his system than most of the people she’d met so far.
“Look, just bear with me, OK?” Jaime asked. “If that really is the kind of necklace you want, then why not just get another one?”
“I don’t want another one.” He threw the rock to himself again. “He said that one was mine, and I want that one.”
Vee’d never forgive herself if she just turned into something fast and escaped to save herself, but she couldn’t turn into anything big enough to pick her friends up and carry them with her. What could she do to help them right here?
“Come on, bear with me,” Larry said, “what’s so special about that one?”
“I don’t have to answer shit!” He threw the rock at the ground in front of the kids’ feet. “Just hand it over!”
Should Vee try to drain him before he could do anything? She didn’t want to hurt him — would she be able to just slow him down and make him tired instead? She didn’t think she could drain him without hurting him, but it was getting too late to worry about that, right?
Larry put his hand out, gesturing at the shop. “Dude, just, bear with me, OK? Let’s ask the shopkeeper what happened.”
The young man draw a spell circle in the air. A high-pitched whining flooded Vee’s nostrils just as a fireball erupted in front of the man’s hand. “I’m not going to ask again. Hand! It! Over!”
Vee decided to give him one last chance to leave her friends alone. “Or, just, bear with me —”
“Vee?” Jaime asked through clenched teeth.
“Yes?”
“That was a SECRET CODE, YOU SHAPESHIFTING DINGUS!”
…
…
…
Oh.
That would actually work much better — just scare him enough that she didn’t need to risk actually hurting him. Vee took a deep breath before transforming into a gigantic black bear.
The young man shrieked. Before he could throw the fireball, Vee was right in front of him, lifting him up with her paws and roaring in his face. She pushed him to the ground, and he scrambled away as fast as he could.
Vee turned back into her natural form, looking nervously at the friends who’d apparently been waiting a while for her to catch on to the plan.
“Dang,” Larry said. “That was, like, painful.”
Jaime rolled her eyes. “I was about to just ask him to shoot me.”
Vee looked over at Masha. “Masha, darling? Love of my life? You’re on my side, right?”
They fidgeted with the hem of their jacket. “… You’re very pretty.”
“Wow.” Vee wanted so badly to point out that none of the told her about the code ahead of time, and she wanted to badly to argue that codes don’t mean anything if you just make them up on the spot and that you have to tell the other person first. Except that none of her friends had clearly talked about it with each other ahead of time, and yet Larry and Jaime’d both immediately caught on to what Masha’d been getting at.
She crossed her arms and started slithering up the street. “I’m going to the library,” she said, trying not to pout too dramatically.
“I know that was the original plan,” Jaime said, “but, bear with me, what if we —”
Vee shapeshifted her ears closed.