I had several options.
I could hunt down one of the Abcurses—whoever was least likely to be angry at me—or I could skip the secret meeting with the dwellers. I didn’t like either option, so I continued to sit inside the closet for a while longer, practising my evasion skills. When a soft knock at the door sounded, I knew that one of them had come for me, and guilt immediately swept through me. The old me would have ignored the knock, burrowing deeper into the darkness of safety and denial, but I realised in that moment that I wasn’t actually the same person anymore.
I thought the old me was a bit of a brat, and I really didn’t like her methods of dealing with shit.
“I’m sorry!” I exclaimed, jumping up and throwing the door open.
“I know a way you can make it up to me.” Fakey stood on the other side, smirking.
She was wearing loose, dark pants, paired with a flowy dark top and ass-kicking boots. I was immediately suspicious of her clothing, because they were far too loose and flowing for a Blesswood sol. Only sweet village dwellers were allowed to wear clothes like that. Preferably while they were out in the fields picking flowers for their grandmothers. On Fakey, it just made me wonder what she was hiding beneath.
Or, more specifically, how many weapons she was hiding beneath.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” I needlessly told her, peeking around her for a moment. No sign of the Abcurses. They were still giving my stupid, arrogant ass the space I apparently needed.
“They’re all tucked up safely in bed,” she told me, her smirk growing. “Sorry about the fight you guys had. Looked nasty. Siret seemed to heal up nicely though, don’t you think?”
My mouth dropped open a little bit, and my mind immediately flickered with an image of the little jewelled beetle that was crawling around in a jar in my ‘room.’ Elowin had planted it in my hair, and it had somehow made me invisible to sols. I had no idea how the magic of the beetle worked, which was precisely why it was locked securely away in a jar, being fed lettuce leaves—not that it was eating the lettuce leaves, but that was another matter.
“Have you been using an invisibility bug to sneak around on us?” I asked Fakey, my eyes narrowing a little. I was trying to look both unthreatening and suspicious all at once. I was pretty sure I just looked like I was having vision-difficulties.
“An invisibility bug?” She snorted. “Do you mean a jewel-skin?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “I definitely mean an invisibility bug. You know the one. The one Elowin put on me? The one that made me invisible and stuff—”
“The one that’s called a jewel-skin?” she cut me off, mocking my questioning tone.
“Let’s agree to disagree.”
She growled, looking like she wanted to stab me, so I quickly slipped past her, ducking out of the closet. I was starting to think that trapping myself in a closet with Fakey was a great way to get killed.
She turned, tracking me with her eyes. “I’m not going to attack you, idiot. I’ve been thinking things through.” The smirk slipping back onto her lips. “I’m not anywhere near as stupid as you are.” She punctuated that statement by dropping her eyes over my near-naked body. “Killing you was one thing, but now I’m starting to see that if I fail and make you bleed without killing you, the Abcurse brothers will hunt me down and break my neck the same way they broke Elowin’s neck.”
“First of all, I’m not an idiot. I just don’t know all the fancy names of all the fancy invisibility bugs—”
“You’re standing in the middle of the hall in your underwear.”
“I’m a naturalist.”
Fakey closed her eyes, pulling a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose. She looked like she was trying not to get a headache.
“A what?” she finally asked.
“A naturalist.”
“That’s not a thing.” She was still focussing on her apparently-looming headache, which allowed me time to back up a few steps down the hallway.
“It wasn’t a thing a few sun-cycles ago,” I permitted, “but it’s a thing now. I’m making it a thing.”
“Well then what does it mean?” she snarled, her eyes snapping back open.
I immediately stopped trying to creep backwards. “It means I like to be naked. It’s a thing, dammit. I’m owning it.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that onto Scar.”
“Scar …?” I drew the name out a little, my tone questioning.
“Scarlet. My friend. You met her before. Although she looks different right now. Kind of like you. Or …” She broke off in a chilling laugh. “I guess you could say she looks exactly like you. I now realise where my performance as you was lacking, but I’m afraid I just don’t have the skills required to pull it off a second time. Not now that I know exactly what is required to fully become you.”
“Ok.” I held both of my hands up. “You’re talking in ominous circles, and it’s kind of freaking me out.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot! But can you maybe … like … simplify it a little?”
Fakey laughed again, flicking her silken curtain of ebony hair back over her shoulder. She took three long strides until she was right in my face, and then she bent down so that she was level with me, needing to plant her hands on her knees.
“You. Are. A. Filthy. Dweller. Slut.” She said the words slowly, enunciating each one so that the last word managed to fly out of her mouth and land across my face like a heavy slap.
I reeled in my reaction, folding my arms over my chest. “And you looked much better when you were bleeding from the face.”
She straightened up, touching her finger to my nose. “And you still haven’t figured out that Scar is inside one of your guys’ rooms right now, in your preferred naturalist state, doing terrible terrible things.”
Her red lips stretched wide, making her grin a formidable thing to behold, and then she was brushing past me, back towards the common area. How was this freaking possible? Two sols gifted with the rare shape-changing ability? And they were friends? I should have expected that. My head felt numb and my palms were tingling. It took me a few moments to figure out what my reaction was.
Panic.
I was panicking almost too severely to move.
“Better hurry!” Fakey called out over her shoulder. “If she sleeps with one of them, the others will never forgive you!”
If she sleeps …