“Okay Bad Bitch Barbie, out with it.” Madison says as she kicks the chair the woman is sitting in. The woman rolls her eyes.

  “I have a name you know.”

  “Yeah, Bad Bitch Barbie.” Madison kicks the chair again. “If you don’t like that, how about Psycho Sally?”

  “That’s two different letters though.” The woman again rolls her eyes. I’m pretty sure she would flip her hair if her hands weren’t tied.

  “Yeah, but they sound the same… so shut up.” Madison kicks the chair over and walks away and sits on a stool next to the wall. I lift the chair back up and sit down in front of the woman.

  “Look, why don’t you just tell us why you were helping Trevor? That’s all we want to know.”

  “Nah, I’m good.” She turns her head away from me. I sigh. We are getting nowhere fast with this one. She has the level of snark of a mean girl and the energy of, well, a mean girl. No matter what we throw at her, nothing. Even Gretchen Weinercould be cracked, but this woman, not even close.

  “I could make her tell us.” Prisha says softly from the corner of the room. Ever since the fight was over and everyone regained their senses, she has been keeping her distance. This is the first time she has spoken since we came up here.

  Tate was in the process of cleaning up scene at the pub and working with the rest of the Minor Arcana to deal with the deceased. The Order doesn’t come into the Den of Sin unless it has to, so they have no involvement in this like they did with Devon.

  “But, I don’t like to do that.” Prisha slowly turns to look at Madison who quickly looks away from Prisha.

  I think Madison knows it wasn’t her doing, but that doesn’t change it nonetheless. Madison could have died if Dardania hadn’t managed to override Prisha’s spell somehow.

  “We should probably try to find another way to get the information out of her.” I say softly and Prisha nods in response. She’s already done enough today that goes against her morals, let’s not add to the list.

  “Why won’t you just talk to us?” I ask, my frustration levels starting to rise.

  “Cause you all suck.” She huffs and turns away from me.

  “Oh my god you are so infuriating!” I scream at her as I stand up and storm over to a closet on the opposite side of the room and open the door. I walk back to her, grab the chair, drag it across the room, and shove her into the closet and slam the door on her. “Enjoy the closet bitch.”

  I walk away as she moans and screams and tries to break out of her bindings. I spent a ton of time in there, she can suffer a few hours there.

  I look to one corner of the room and see Madison curled up in a ball saying anything, and in the other is Prisha basically doing the same thing. Honestly there isn’t anything I can do about that right now. They will have to work it out themselves.

  I walk into the dining room and have a seat at the table next to Dardania and Avis who had the very good idea of making tea.

  As I take a sip, I can feel the warm liquid run down my throat and I let it soothe me. It’s only now that I remember holy fuck my entire body hurts. Not merely just a few places but every since inch of me hurts so much.

  “You okay?” Avis says as she looks at me concerned. No matter how gorgeous he may be, there is nothing he could do in this moment to make the pain go away.

  “Um well, my entire body feels like it’s on fire. Someone I used to think was a friend was a serial killer who tried to kill you. That evil Regina George in the next room tried to use one friend to kill another and oh yeah still have a ancient psycho who wants all of us dead.”

  “Oh, so good?” Avis responds. I stare at him blankly for a few seconds before I let out a hardy laugh. I could feel the laugh start in my core, and work it’s way all the way up until I couldn’t help but let it out.

  Avis and Dardania give a good chuckle or two before we all calm down and level back out.

  “It is really weird when you put it all together like that.” Dardania says as she places a card down on the table between the three of us.

  The Lovers. The card before us depicts a naked heterosexual couple standing in the middle of Tabathia holding hands. Each of their hearts is in the other one’s hand. It’s beautiful and morbid all at the same time.

  “Speaking of weird, what the hell is up with her?” Dardania questions.

  “I wish I knew.” I say as the woman’s scream from the closet echoes gently into the room. It’s low enough to just be annoying. “Well, based on what we saw, I would say her power is to make people do what she wants.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “I think it’s more complex than that.” Dardania begins. “She always prefaced it with calls of her needing help, or how she was in danger. It’s like a lover asking another lover to protect them.”

  We all fall silent as we contemplate that power. If that is the case, holy shit that’s terrible. Basically convincing someone to act like they are in love with you, it’s insane. You could have someone take a bullet for you, willing to die for you, and even willing to kill for you. I shutter at the thought. A power like this could be extremely dangerous. Well, it is. I saw it first hand and that psycho influencer convinced everyone to try and kill us. It’s bad news.

  “I don’t think she wanted to do it.” Avis says softly as he stares at the card.

  “You’re too nice.” Dardania sighs, “You’re just trying to see the best in people.”

  “No. When asked why she was doing it, she looked to Trevor.”

  “A look? You’re basing your opinion on her using her eyes?”

  “It’s more than that.” Avis lowers his head as it to contemplate it. “There was a moment where her facade dropped for just a second, she looked scared.”

  “I mean crazy jock who wants to kill us all is pretty scary.” I respond.

  “But why not kill her? Why work with her instead unless he was threatening her and planned to kill her when he was done with us.”

  I look to Avis, and I think he has a point. There was a brief second where she instinctively looked to Trevor when I asked her why she was doing it. I want to say I get it because that man is terrifying. The energy that rolls off of him is enough to give you nightmares, but I don’t think that excuses what she did. People died because of her.

  “Let me out of here!” The woman screams at the top of her lungs, it echoes through the room. I sigh.

  “The woman temporarily forgot how to speak.” Prisha yells back at her and the place falls silent.

  “Finally, I feel like I can hear myself think now.” I joke, though it was true. She was making a ton of noise in the background during this entire conversation and it was driving me insane. Though, I’m mostly to blame since I was the one who shoved her in the closet in the first place. But, we weren’t getting anywhere with her and I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Either way, I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt. All I know is we can’t hand her over to the Order.” Avis raises his head, his face stern.

  “I agree.” Dardania says before sliding the card towards her and begins analyzing it.

  “How do we punish people like her?” I ask. Both Avis and Dardania look to be inquisitively. “The Order would just throw her in a camp and say she needs to be cleansed. They would call her a sinner and then call it a day. In my world, we probably would have thrown her in prison for life or killed her in return. Not that much different from being cleansed I suppose.”

  “I don’t know.” Dardania falls silent as the contemplates what I asked.

  “Whatever it is, it has to be better than the current system.” Avis chimes in. “If we just throw her on the gallows and off her, it’s not different than the Order.

  “How do you solve the problem of a murderer?” I jingle to the tune of How do you solve a problem like Maria, probably not the time for it, but that’s how my brain works. I can’t control it. Avis shoots me a dirty look and I immediately cease what I’m doing.

  “You’re cute, don’t push it.” Avis jokes, I can’t help but to smile. “But, you’re right. What the fuck do you do in this situation? What’s the right thing to do?”

  “I say throw her to wolves and let them ravage her.” Madison says as she slogs into the room and slumps down at the table. “Fuck that bitch.”

  “We’re better than that.” Avis argues.

  “Are we though?” Madison says as she places her bracelet on the table. “Prisha just tried to kill me, but that was after I tried to kill her. The moment I saw her as an enemy I tried to fry her. I’m not better than her. She’s no better than me. We both are fucked.”

  “I won’t even dignify that with an answer.” I mutter.

  “Oh I sure as shit will.” Avis interjects. “You defended yourself, that doesn’t make you evil. Prisha was under a spell, doesn’t make her evil. If Trevor had his hand to your throat and demanded you kill us or die, I don’t think you’d do it. That’s the difference.”

  “I—”

  “Stop beating yourself up.” Prisha says as she slumps into the room. “We both have to. Avis is right, it’s that woman, it’s not us.”

  Prisha looks like death warmed over. She hasn’t been sick, but what she did to Madison has clearly taken a toll on her, and obviously Madison as well. I figured it was just what Prisha did to her, but clearly she is regretting her own actions as well. And here I thought the whole moral quandary of what that woman did was very simple, apparently I’m the only one who thinks that way. Am I the dumb one here?

  “Look, we don’t know why she did it, don’t really think it matters. She did it, people died. At the end of the day she lacked any moral compass to do the right thing, the two of you were forced to do what you did. Don’t beat yourself up.” Dardania stands up and begins pacing the room. “Sure Trevor may have threatened her but she still could have said no. Perhaps the desire to live is stronger than ones moral compass, but I disagree. I would never attack any of you to save my own skin, I’d rather die, it’s that simple. As to what to do with her, perhaps we turn her over to the Minor Arcana and let them decide.”

  “Is that just the easy way out?” Avis wonders aloud.

  “I think it’s more of a test than anything else. When the Order falls we need a new system in place and I think the Minor Arcana is the most likely choice, so we see what they decide to do with her. If they make a bad choice then we know that they as well can’t be trusted with power.”

  “And what if they kill her?” I wonder.

  “She killed people.” Madison responds, slowly raising her head to look at me. “Should she not get the same?”

  “Does a sinner deserve to be cleansed for their act of murder?” Avis turns towards Madison, his gaze sharp.

  “This has nothing to do with being cleansed.”

  “Of course it does. It’s exactly the same.” Avis spits. Madison turns away to stare at the wall, choosing not to respond.

  “None of us have the answer, all we can do is hand her off and then judge from there.” Dardania adds.

  “Is passing off the judgment to someone else us chickening out?” I genuinely wasn’t sure. We could decide what to do with her, but who are we? Why do we have the right to decide her fate, especially since we were her victims. We have a personal bias against her and at this point it would be merely revenge. The same as it was with Trevor.

  “There is no right answer, but we aren’t the ones who should decide her fate. For now, we leave it in the hands of the Minor Arcana. It’s all we can do.” Dardania climbs up from the table leaving the rest of us in silence.

  I don’t think it’s a decision that any of us really like. I guess we will let them decide.

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