I looked at Clem. Clem looked at me, then the gnomes, blinking in slow motion. Her frizzy blonde hair stood off in every direction, as if I’d awoken her from hibernation. Did she even recognize me? I probably looked like shit, and I wasn’t exactly known for having four arms.

  She looked so tired that her brain only seemed to catch onto the situation after staring holes into the air for a ten whole seconds

  “Samantha.”

  “Clem.”

  “Why are you in my attic?”

  “I got abducted.”

  “By tiny gnomes?”

  “There were like twenty of them.”

  “You have a gun. And four arms.”

  “That I, uh, do.” Slowly, I revealed all four arms, four hands, and twenty fingers from behind my back. The simultaneous movement was as natural as it was alien. More than anything, being observed made me feel weird.

  She noticed. Of course she did, it wasn’t like the second shoulder joint disappeared, it wasn’t like having four arms was normal enough not to comment on them. Oh god, this was another one of those things people were going to stare at me in public for. Cursed by god to be born with boobs in my first life, cursed with an extra pair of limbs in my second one. To be fair, extra arms were cool and spiders were neat, but those weren’t popular opinions. When people saw me they saw Sam, the weird bug girl, the quiet one, and now Clem was looking at me too and was judging me and this is this how I lose my bestie—

  I paused. “You… still recognized me?”

  “‘Course I did, you big dork.” Clem yawned the biggest yawn she ever had before breaking out into a smile. “You look like you made out with a lawnmower. Wanna come down for breakfast?”

  Right. Clem was Clem. Radiant, upbeat, a bit ditzy, but with a god-given temper like an eternal sunrise. She would never let me down. She was the bestest bestie fate, god, or random chance deposited into my lap. God, I didn’t deserve a friend like her and woah. Dangerous thought to have.

  Probably true though considering what happened this morning.

  “Sam-Sam? You coming?”

  I made a woodpecker impression and climbed down the attic ladder right behind her.

  Clem’s house was less a house and more a mansion. They had a mansion-sized garden at least, an English lawn stretching up the driveway and around each side into the garden out back. It had a left and right wing, with more than one marbled bathroom with fully functional showers, per floor. The living room freaking echoed when I coughed in it. This place probably used to be some rich dude's estate in the 1800s, someone who really liked putting animal heads on display. The corridor of taxidermy gave off big hunting lodge vibes.

  The inside was even more Victorian than the outside. Clem’s parents were biochemists with a penchant for the weirdest stuff. Long carpets in colorful tones lined the hallways, decorated by hardwood furniture marked by the swirly craftsmanship style of the time. The hallway we walked down was dotted with flower vases on side tables and an eclectic mix of obscure and occult curios, from grimacing totem poles to effigies made of stone, bone, feathers and sticks. It used to scare me when I came here as a little girl, before I’d realized that this was the only house in the entire neighborhood that wasn’t haunted by some spirit or ancient ancestor’s restless ghost.

  Now the scariest things in the rooms were the tall, copper-rimmed mirrors. They made it hard not to see myself, the changes I’d made, the new person I had become, or was in the process of becoming. I definitely was more egg than hatchling, more pupa than butterfly. Potential, ready to be wasted. I didn’t even have the right amount of limbs for a spider.

  I stopped at one of them, flexed two right arms, checked my teeth and the gash above my left eye before hurrying back along. Clem was right. It was still me, for the most part.

  I caught Clem right as she missed a step and nearly tumbled down the swerving flight of marbled stone stairs.

  “T-thanks,” she muttered as I lifted her up much too easily. “Did you start working out?”

  “You could say that.” If running for your life could be counted as cardio. “I started this morning.”

  “How do you get up so early?” she groaned. “I could never.”

  I smiled. Clem was still Clem. She was definitely not the super dangerous Ur-mimic in disguise.

  “Mmfgnh,” she grumbled, peeking out of the blinds before staggering her way down the stairs. “It’s barely noon.”

  “Long night?” I asked.

  “My birthgivers are in the Bahamas again, so yeah.” She paused at the third step as if she was seriously considering turning around and going back to bed. “Gotta watch the house ‘n stuff. Was a long DnD session,” she mumbled through another yawn. “The brave elf Hlfundar survived the interrogation of the dark-elf matriarch with only a couple bruises and a kiss on the cheek.”

  Hlfundar. That was Akira’s character. Akira, the guy Clem invited to join the DnD session she ran on Friday nights. Akira, the buff nerd. That Akira.

  We didn’t have DnD yesterday, unless it was a one-on-one session, which implied…

  Clem finally made a move. You go, girl!

  And that meant gossip time! Except argh, no, later. There were more important things to discuss, like the murder mimics, or why the heck Clem wasn’t surprised about the gnomes.

  That one had an easy answer. She was an associate of The Society at the very least. But I couldn’t just start that topic when Clem was too damn tired to walk down some stairs.

  In all this time she had taken three whole steps. The wait was turning suffocating, which meant my arms were fidgeting, tugging at the sleeves, scratching the dried blood out of my hair. Whenever I wasn’t concentrating on them, my extra pair of hands turned almost invisible to my senses, doing whatever they wanted. I always needed to keep busy, that’s just how I was, and apparently wandering-hand-syndrome was how that was manifesting now.

  Better put them to use.

  Clem let out a tiny squawk as I picked her up with all four arms and princess-carried her down the curving flight of stairs, plopped her down in a hardwood chair, and got started looking through her cupboard. I knew it like the back of my hand since the one thing Clem was incompetent at was food prep. She was a bit of a peanut butter and jelly princess like that.

  “Coffee or hot chocolate?” I asked, staring at a whole pantry filled with instant drink powders and fancy special roasts in glass jars.

  “Chocolate.”

  “You look like you need coffee.” I grabbed some of the instant stuff. Clem was already sinking into the table.

  “Ugh. Both, please,” the sleepy princess said, lying face down.

  She barely noticed that I served her an espresso roast in a latte cup. The coffee helped turn her from a grumbling pile of curls and muttered unpleasantries into a semi-functional human being that could hold a conversation.

  I was practically vibrating with questions. “I am so glad that the gnomes abducted me into your attic instead of that of someone else.”

  She put down her third cup and stretched, her slender frame heaving under the nightgown. “Not exactly how I was expecting this conversation to start. I’ll have to give them another seminar about common conduct in human society. But thanks for helping them out. I would rather not have spilled fae-blood fuck up my home’s feng shui for the next three generations. Crap, I shouldn’t call them fae; they’re helpful little guys and they can’t steal your name.”

  Okayyy, that was rather a lot of stuff to unpack.

  “You know that they have, like, a dozen rooms somewhere in your house?” I asked.

  She waved me off without a hint of concern. “They’re not really in my house, more like… in the walls and foundation.”

  “The gnomes live in your walls,” I said flatly. “Clem, we’ve spent countless hours lounging on your many couches, how did I never notice?”

  “The power of the glamor,” she said with a shrug. It only served to frustrate me.

  “I can see through the glamor. I always could, ever since I was a little kid. You never told me about the gnomes.”

  She sipped quietly at her coffee. “Besides the fact that as an associate, revealing that much to an uninitiated is super bad, I thought it’d be too much. I thought it’d make you uncomfortable. And I didn’t want to risk losing my best friend over something as outlandish as… do you know how insane I’d sound if you didn’t believe me?”

  Well. That was… well. Huh.

  “I never told anyone about what I could see either,” I said. “Not my parents. Not my sister. Not my best friend. ‘I see dead people’ is a friggin’ movie line, y’know, not like some grand, personal revelation. If I walked up to you and said that, I’d sound absolutely, irrevocably—”

  “—insane. Huh.”

  We both sat there and sipped our coffee and hot chocolates for a while. On some level, I felt our bond deepen.

  She cleared her throat. “Say, even if you could technically see gnomes all along, they could probably avoid you if they wanted to. They’re almost as good at space-time magic as they are at being shy.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Gnome magic?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “How does that work?”

  “Very, very well.” She took another sip, grumbling into her coffee cup. “They don’t even need any expensive reagents. No chalk, no conduits, no sacrifices, nothing. All they need is more gnomes in one place.”

  “Ah.” Turns out, magic requires reagents and prep and using emotions to cast is only one way to cheat the system. Being born a gnome is a second. Maybe mimics had their own way to cheat magic into the world. “So Clem, are you aware that we are currently being invaded by little pink shapeshifting aliens?”

  She burst out laughing. “Sam, you can’t just — wow, I mean, wow. Theatre studies has really made your poker face ten times better. Pink aliens, seriously?”

  I gave her a flat stare and pointed at the four arms on my chest. Then I pointed at the bloody slash across my face. Then I undid the blinds and used the power of quadruple index fingers to point at the scar and the pink planet in the sky so hard that it would have proven any point I wanted to make with finality.

  Clem’s eyebrows slowly rose as her face turned from disbelief to surprise to worry.

  “A convergence event.” And she had slept right through it. Typical Clem.

  “You know about those?” I asked.

  “It’s in every basic disaster drill manual for associates. We’ve been preparing for the big one the same way Los Angeles has been preparing for the next earthquake.” She leaned her chair backwards and knocked thrice on the wall. “Timony, check the wards, please?”

  I swear I heard the shuffling of a hundred tiny shoes coming from inside every solid surface of the house. So yeah, not only was my bestie cohabitating with gnomes that I didn’t even know existed until a day ago, but apparently they had a working relationship.

  It was exactly the opposite of Addy and I.

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  I sighed, leaning back in my chair to stare at the ceiling until it answered all my questions. It didn’t, so I leveled my stare at Clem.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’m just… I’ve had quite the morning. Did I say that I’m a Custodian yet?”

  “One of the magical girls?” she asked, beaming.

  “Yes, thank you! Addy kept on denying the whole magical girl thing, but it’s so obviously true. Emotional magic casting, shops full of magic wands, gosh darn frills and lace on every second piece of armor.” I took a hefty sip. “So, uh, yeah. Custodian Sam. That’s the new me.”

  “I’m so happy for you! But, er, isn’t this kind of a late start?”

  “I know! It’s not just that it’s… everything. Everything is new and unfamiliar and some of it is cool while some is outright terrifying. Did you know that love-bombs are all, without exception, heat-seeking? That’s so fucked up! And, like, sure, it doesn’t feel as heroic as tv shows make it out to be, but slinging spells and doing good is still pretty dang cool.”

  “But...?”

  I inhaled sharply. This was it. Time to come clean.

  I fumbled around with my pockets and placed down Clem’s teddy bear. “This is all that’s left of your car.”

  I told Clem everything. I told her all about my tumultuous weekend. I told her about the emotional support mascots and how they were technically holding my cat hostage. I told her how my morning went; how I crashed her car, twice, in exact detail.

  By the end I was curled into a ball on my chair, and the table in front of me was filled with crumpled tissues.

  “I just… can’t fathom why they chose me,” I said. “Me! I’m not magical girl material. I’m a failure. A magical girlfailure. I’m supposed to complete the hardest quest, but I can’t even complete the easiest, and while I want to run after Addy and kick her in the proverbial nuts for leaving me behind, I don’t think I can even make it to the evac zone if I tried.”

  My hands were shaking. Oh wow, my entire body was, actually. I wasn’t channeling any spells and I didn’t accidentally load [Arms & Arms proficiency] with fear, so why was I…. oh, right.

  I’m afraid. Afraid I’ll fail. Afraid I won’t change, that I’ll make the same comfortable decisions, forever staying a disappointment to everyone.

  A pair of soft hands wrapped around me. Clem was hugging me. I twisted in her grip and hugged her back with all four arms, eliciting a small eep! We stayed like that until the shivers subsided, which could have been minutes or hours.

  “You’ve barely been a magical girl for two hours. You deserve to experiment, to try new things, even if they might turn out wrong or stupid in hindsight. No more talk about how you don’t deserve this, or aren’t good enough for that. Promise me that you’ll take care of yourself as much as others, okay?”

  “But I crashed your car.”

  She poked me with the teddy bear and a smile. “I value you and your safety much more than some ol’ four wheeler.”

  “But, but… the car.” How could she just overlook the car? Losing it was like losing a leg out here in the boonies. The closest Walmart was in Sault Ste. Marie, which was in friggin' Canada!

  “Samantha. That was a Toyota Tacoma 2006. It’s a thirty year old car. I was going to get a new one if it makes you feel any better.”

  It did. A little. I nodded, wiping the last of the tears from my face.

  “Good. Now, let me go please. I can barely breathe.”

  I released her immediately from my vice-like grip. Clem was oddly fixated on my arms for a moment before coughing into her hand and looking away.

  “I bet you could give killer massages with those. You’re going to make some girl very happy one day.”

  I blushed. “Sorry. I don’t really have control over all of them all the time. Did I do something weird?”

  “Not at all. Now, I believe you wanted to show a very special tanuki how much she is loved and valued despite her incredible tsundere nature? Clearly, you need to bake her a cake.”

  I groaned, but the sudden enthusiasm in Clem’s voice only allowed me to dismiss the idea for so long.

  “I guess I could, if I knew how to even find her. She ran off to murk some mimics and I have no way of finding her because she’s just so much higher level than me.” I draped a hand over my eye with a sigh. “I think she might have more than just a couple issues bothering her, and I’m just… me. What can I reasonably, practically do?”

  Clem chewed her lips thoughtfully.

  “You’re right. This is a pickle. I wasn’t approaching it with the right mindset.” Suddenly, she shot to her feet. “Forget the cake, we’re making brownies.”

  “Clem, please.”

  “I’m serious. Running around saving the world will give anyone the munchies. Custodians are a busy lot; I bet no one ever gave her victory brownies. You could be her very first.”

  “I need to be out there and blasting mimics as soon as possible.” I groaned. “And you don’t know how to bake.”

  “That’s why I’ll be making instant brownies,” she said triumphantly. “And before you try to talk me out of helping you, maybe try and think about important questions. Like, are there any angles you can take with your Custodian friend? Is there some weight you can take off her shoulders? Does she prefer dark chocolate with orange or cinnamon?”

  I sighed. It was useless arguing with her. If Clem said she was making brownies, then she was making brownies. But she had a point. Maybe I should take this moment of peace to plan ahead. God knows I didn’t have much time for both plans and peace ever since I stumbled into all this crap.

  I thought about it, really thought about it as Clem whipped up all the baking prep within minutes.

  “She’s an animal person.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Har-har. I meant that she has a thing for animals.” I mulled it over. “Girls too, I think. But that’s another issue I barely know how to approach. I can’t just build a-a romantic relationship on the basis that I want to quote-unquote ‘fix’ her. What kind of relationship is that? What if she finds out? No, I don’t think it’s moral to approach someone vulnerable with the intention of making them dependent on you. Not just because that prevents them from actually dealing with their problems, but because of the power imbalance.”

  “It might already be too late for that, considering how often you accidentally flirt with people,” Clem tittered. “Remember how we met?”

  I winced. “Don’t remind me, please. That was so awkward.”

  Clem, with a mischievous grin, turned around, sensually licking her spoon the same way I had on that fateful day while pretending to fuck me with her eyes. “Heya shorty. You want some too?”

  “I was referring to the ice cream!” I said in a too-high voice. “It was the best ice cream I had in years and I wanted to share. And I do not sound like that. I don’t. Do I? Crap, maybe I do.”

  There was a pause before we both broke out laughing.

  “Alright. So the choice is between showering her in pets, or in love and admiration.”

  I groaned. Two of my arms were rapping their fingers on the table. “She is rather competitive. Rather, I think she just hates losing.”

  “Then help her get a big win. Who knows, maybe she’s depressed because she’s on a loss streak?” Clem dipped a finger into the batter and tasted it. “You said she’s a weretanuki? Check the small drawer on the left. No, the other drawer. Yes, that one.”

  I frowned as I went through a chaotic mess of pens, nail-clippers, and rolls of doggy bags. Clem probably didn’t want me to convince Addy with a professional pedicure, so there really was only one thing that could possibly fit what she was referring to.

  “A whistle?” I asked, holding up the metal cylinder.

  “Old Borfo’s doggy whistle, may he rest his slobbery bones in peace. She should be able to pick it up over other noise if you blow it.”

  I gave her a flat look. “Clem, she’s not a dog.”

  “I know, I know, it’s a bit narrow-minded, but werecreatures have insanely enhanced senses when they’re in their more animal-y shape.”

  “I’m not saying it won’t work, I’m saying it’s insulting if it does.” I turned it left and right with twenty fingers, trying my best to get all of them to work in unison. It worked, mostly, but the moment my focus faltered, one hand twitched and I dropped it.

  Right. As good a time as any to assign my free stat point from getting to Level 6.

  I don’t need a stronger body right now per se, and I was trying to figure out exactly how the other stats affect me. So, as promised, I suppose I’m putting it in Mind.

  [Mind: 0->1]

  A cool wave of blank, thoughtless seconds ticked by. My mind was clear. Then came a single thought, followed by a tingling many, like wind airing out my brain. It was cold where getting a point in Body was hot, and it was centered entirely on my head before driving down my spine where it fizzled out slowly. A single memory flashed in front of my eyes, more vivid than any I’d had before. When I was 11, I accidentally broke a vase and Dad was trying to convince me that he wasn’t mad, but he totally was because it was his grandma’s vase. Only three years later did I understand that he wasn’t mad about the vase, but because all the dust and ash inside was grandma, or what was left of her.

  Sorry Dad. Sorry Gran-gran.

  It felt as if I’d used one of those utility programs on my laptop for removing unwanted files and reformatting storage to be more efficient while at the same time dusting off the internals and giving the screen a good scrub.

  I was more than before. Then the feeling ebbed and wow, suddenly it didn’t feel like a single point did all that much.

  Eleven points in Body made me a decent bit tougher, faster, more agile, enough for Clem to notice. Maybe I needed eleven points in Mind to notice a difference too. Maybe I just needed a good essence with better stat growth.

  Right, essence. I gained a slot after reaching level five, because I had one extra due to that spider melding with my soul-stuff.

  But did I deserve… no, could I really be lucky enough to have that kind of advantage handed to me?

  [Essences [1/2]: Huntsman Spider]

  Haha, yup. Apparently I get a single free slot. God, I hope that’s enough to make up for ten years of missed magic training. I wonder how I stack up against the average Custodian?

  Samantha Rubens

  [Lvl 6] - Transformation Locked

  Body: 11

  Sense: 0

  Mind: 1

  Soul: 0

  Free Stats: 0

  Silver Soulcoins: 4

  Average emotion-crystal-core efficiency: 11% (Expand List)

  Essences (1/2): Huntsman Spider

  Passives: [More Arms]

  Spells: [Arms & Arms Proficiency]

  Augments: —

  Someone waving a hand in front of my eyes got me to blink away my stats and stuff.

  “Hello-o, earth to Sam. You here? You’re not tripping out on some Custodian-quality meds, are you? Blink twice if they’re forcing you to dope yourself with combat stims.”

  “No.” I blinked, once. “I mean, I could dope myself. Now that you say it, there’s a whole catalogue of potions, inhalers, candies, chewables, and other stuff. Wow, there’s bubblegum that gives a mild sense of euphoria. I could try getting that to see if it would help with channeling joy.”

  If I had the points. Screw you, past Sam, for being such an impulsive buyer!

  She laughed and shook her head. “Why waste money when you’re right at the source.”

  I blinked at her, then noted her slightly red eyes and the odd flush of red that had conquered her face.

  “Clem. Are you high?”

  “Wha— no! I mean, not exactly. You know how it is, a cute boy comes to visit, you talk, laugh, play DnD, and before you know it, you’re trying out all kinds of potions, tinctures, and acupuncture on each other. It’s a real disney-esque lovestory. Think Yzma and Kronk, except Yzma isn’t wrinkly or evil.”

  “Clem. What did you do to your boyfriend?”

  Clem spluttered. “He’s not my — well, I guess he is now. Maybe. We haven’t really talked about it yet.”

  The living room door opened up and a shirtless Akira walked through, a towel around his waist while he was using a smaller one to rub his hair.

  Six foot tall, cute face, built like he benches twice my weight on the regular, and apparently, he studied math. I heard he corrected a mistake by the algebra tutor on his finals after already getting a straight A. He broke the mold for both nerds and jocks, making him as rare as a unicorn and an overall certified cool guytm. Honestly, I was happy for Clem, because after two years of watching her flounder her way towards making a move, she finally did, and hit the jackpot.

  He brushed through his black hair, eliciting a sigh from the maiden in question.

  “Sup?”

  He was a bit too much Mr. Perfect for my tastes. Objectively hot, yes, but too much. I’d be constantly comparing myself to him. But Clem was happy and that meant I was happy.

  [Charging spell]

  “Sup.” I waved at him with three arms, which made him pause.

  “Woah. How’d you get those?” he asked.

  “I am an alien who has come for your freshest brownies.”

  “In that case you have come to the wrong house. We only have the burnt, the soggy, and the entirely indescribable sort of brownies in this house,” he said with a chuckle, giving the top of Clem’s head a kiss to assuage the affront evident on her face.

  I grinned at him, then turned to my bestie. “Clem. Why is he purple?”

  Akira frowned, only seeming to realize that his entire skin was three shades redder than papa smurf when he went to check out his pecs.

  “Uh, yeah Clem. What the heck?”

  “I can explain!” she said perhaps a bit too quickly before narrowing her brows. “Bun-bun, did you use the potion labeled ‘experimental’ that was in the bathroom?”

  Bun-bun? They have nicknames!

  “I honestly have no clue. Everything is written in shorthand so I just took whatever was in the shower basket. That was shampoo, right?”

  I narrowed my eyes as some of his perfect beard fell off in a gooey blob. It hit the floor like a spoonful of jam.

  “Is he melting?” I whispered to Clem who immediately put on a face of pure neutrality.

  “Not if we feed him a binding agent. Chop-chop, people, let's move.”

  “Where to?” I asked, watching Akira slowly turn see-through.

  “The basement. Obviously.”

  “No, not ‘obviously’. Clem, you haven’t given me a lick of context. Like sure, obviously you’re an associate of sorts, otherwise you wouldn’t be interacting with the paranormal so casually. But why do you have a friggin’ slimeification potion? And why were you storing it in the shower of all places?

  “So I can clean up the mess after an experiment, obviously.” She looked between me and Akira before coming to a decision. “I’m a witch. Now, I need your help to save my boyfriend from turning into a slimefriend.”

  “I don’t— what? I’m not, I don’t think…”

  “Relax,” she said as she pulled the both of us towards the cellar door. “All I need is a little bit of your blood.”