Will of Fortune started as a response to a writing prompt posted on Reddit by u/HappyFeet005. The original thread can be found here.
I paused my game, taking a second to scratch my nose and maybe stretch a bit. I hadn’t stood up in hours now. I cleared my throat, making sure that the extended period of disuse hadn’t finally robbed me of the ability to speak entirely.
“Ah, thought you could sneak up on me, did you?” It was a joke that I told myself, whenever I was alone. I tossed out a quick ‘I know that you can read minds, too,’ for good measure.
“Shit. Uh…”
I did my best not to freeze up. My first thought was that if they actually could read minds, I would be found out in an instant, so there was no point in going down that route. I swiveled around slowly in my chair, steepling my fingers and crossing one leg over the other. Time to Bond Villian the shit out of it.
There was a girl standing in my room, just inside of the door. The door that was still closed and locked. Hmm. She didn’t look terribly threatening—more like a cat burglar, dressed in dark jeans and a black hoodie pulled up over her head. I could see that she was rocking the half-shaved head look, and she looked as surprised to see me as I should have been to see her.
I raised an eyebrow. “Nobody sneaks up on me. You’re not the first to have tried.” Lies, spun up between when my lips started moving and when the sound came out. I was desperately trying to think of any weapons that were close at hand, in case it came to that.
“I, uh, I wasn’t sneaking up on you. Promise. Just passing through.” She shifted to the side, pressing against the door. “Sorry. I should have known better than to come here.” A moment later she began to sink into the wood, sliding through the door like it was made of fog.
That was enough to get me out of my chair. I jumped up, grabbing at her arm as it disappeared, only to get a fistful of air. “Wait, hold on!” I struggled with the lock, throwing the door open to watch as she hurried down the hallway. “Come back! Who are you?”
She slowed down, turning to face me from the end of the hall. It didn’t look like she had any intention of moving closer. Now it was her turn to cock an eyebrow. “I’m number nine. The Hermit. You didn’t know?”
I shook my head, dumbfounded. “You can walk through walls?”
She shrugged. “I can make things ignore me, for a while. You were supposed to be ignoring me.”
“I was ignoring you. I called you out by accident.” Giving up the air of mystery perhaps, but I figured that it paled in comparison to what I had just seen.
“That was an accident?” She widened her eyes a bit. “Hell of a coincidence. Figures, I guess.”
“Figures?”
“You’re number ten, aren’t you? Wheel of Fortune?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her face cracked into a wide grin, and she stepped forward, closing the gap between us. “Well then, I guess that today is your lucky day.”
The Hermit pulled me forward, and I stumbled along after her, trying to keep up. If she had been walking any faster, she would have been jogging, which wasn’t exactly my strong suit.
“Keep up, Wheel. We’re going to need some momentum for this.”
“My name’s not Wheel, it’s…” I blinked, slowing down for a moment only to get tugged along. “It’s Will. Huh. Is that a coincidence?”
“Pretty sure that coincidence is sort of your thing. But seriously, we need momentum for this, especially if I’m taking you along for the ride. Keep moving.”
We were almost running down the outside hall, speeding our way past apartment doors as she broke into a quick jog. I was becoming acutely aware of the fact that the only thing ahead of us was the guardrail, and that the concrete below was more than a few stories down.
“Hold on, momentum for what? You’re not going to jump, are you?”
She turned her head back, flashing me a wide grin, and the entire world disappeared, myself included. For just a moment, I was formless, drifting through something less than void. I couldn’t even tell if everything had gone black or white, there was just nothing—nothing but a sense of rapid movement, pulling me forward.
In another second, we were back in the world. The Hermit skidded to a stop ahead of me, panting, before letting go of my hand to double over and take a deep breath.
“Whew. Big jump. I’ve never taken someone else along before, give me a second.”
I took stock of my surroundings and tried to ignore the fact that my jaw was hanging down like an idiot. We were in some kind of office with fluorescent lights overhead and potted plants stuffed into corners. There were a couple of desks in the room, which seemed to be abandoned for the night. We were definitely not in my tenement building anymore.
I turned to The Hermit, who was just straightening up. “Where are we? What the hell was that? Seriously, give me some explanations here.”
She tucked her hands into her hoodie, leaning back against the wall. “Alright, I guess you deserve that. We’re in an office.”
“I sort of figured that. How did we get here?”
“I can make things ignore me, for a while. The world is a thing. I took us out of it for a few seconds and brought us back somewhere else.”
I thought back to us running along the hall a minute ago. “That’s what you needed the momentum for? To send us forward, or to the right spot or something?”
“Forward, yes. Getting to the right spot was all you.” She pushed forward off the wall, giving me a playful punch on the shoulder. “Good job with the coincidences, luck boy. I’ve been trying to hit this place for months.”
“Yeah, I’m still not sure where I fall in all of this. I’m not exactly caught up on my Tarot interpretations.” Something about what she had said stuck out to me, and I stopped, mentally running back through the conversation. “Hold on. You’ve been trying to do what to where now?”
She pointed to a sign on the wall. Community First Credit Union of the Bronx.
Oh.
She leaned forward, gripping me by the shoulders and flashing that devilish grin and fixing her eyes on mine. “Now, I’m going to go find the vault. Stay here, and stay out of trouble, okay?”
Before I could even blink, she had pushed off and was walking away, hurrying toward one of the doors leading out of the room. I stumbled after her, calling out while she was halfway inside of the door.
“Wait! I don’t even know your name!”
She turned, half inside of the wood.
“Names are powerful things. You can’t just be giving them out all willy-nilly, you know.” And with another wide grin, she sank backward through the door.
I tried the handle. Locked. Figures. I tried the other doors, only to the find the same on each of them. I shook my head, wandering back to where we had come in and pacing the room. Nothing for it but to wait, and hope that she came back for me. I sat on the edge of the one of the desks and waited.
No more than five minutes had gone by when I heard a key being turned in a lock, and a door swung inward. On the other side was a tall, thin man in a cheap gray suit. I locked eyes with him like a deer in headlights, and a second later, he had pulled a very large pistol from inside of his jacket and leveled it at me. I gulped.
“Uh, hi. This probably isn’t what it looks like.”
The man kept his eyes locked on me, tilting his head up to call something out over his shoulder.
“Arlene, get in here. I found someone.”
I backed steadily away from the door, raising my hand slowly above my head.
“Whoa, hey, really not looking to get shot here. I’m not dangerous, I swear.”
The tall man stepped into the room, keeping his pistol trained on my chest. “You’re standing in a locked bank in the middle of the night. Whether or not you’re dangerous, you really shouldn’t be here.”
A short woman that must have been Arlene stepped around the man and into the room. She was wearing an overwhelmingly green outfit with a brown vest. As she entered she flipped off her hat, a dark green bowler, and twirled it around on a finger, revealing a mess of curly red hair.
“Well, well. What do we be havin’ here, Riley? Young’n shooting for his first B&E?” She turned to look at me with an almost pitying gaze. “You’re a wee bit young to be breakin’ into banks, don’t ye think, lad?”
I cleared my throat, trying to find the will to speak. Riley’s gun was still looming awfully large in my vision. “I—I didn’t break in, I’m honestly not too sure about how I got here. Look, I think you have the wrong guy.” I saw the look that Arlene gave to Riley, another glance of pity, and it set me on edge.
“And who the hell are you, anyway? Don’t tell me you’re security, you clearly don’t work here. You just come into closed buildings at night and point guns at people?”
The tall man, Riley, lowered his gun while still keeping it pointed in my general direction. He pulled a badge out his back pocket, flashing it to me. “Agent Riley, and my partner, Agent Arlene. We’re here on a routine checkup. What’s your excuse?”
Ah. Shit.
Arlene nudged at Riley, glancing pointedly down at my feet. I followed her gaze, and realized for the first time since I had left the house that I was barefoot. I’d been chasing after the girl so quickly that I hadn’t bothered to do anything like put on shoes. Taking another glance over myself, I realized that I was wearing a pretty ratty t-shirt and some very faded jeans. Not exactly the best look if I was about to get arrested.
“You walk here without yer trainers, lad,” Arlene asked, “or didja kick ’em off somewhere? Feel like puttin’ yer feet up a little, relaxin’ on the job?”
“I didn’t walk here. I showed up seriously, like, five minutes ago, this girl just pulled me along. I really don’t want to get arrested, please, I have class tomorrow.” Not quite the truth, but the pity points couldn’t hurt.
The mention of the girl seemed to catch their attention. “This girl,” Riley said, “did she have dark hair, half-shaved? About yea high?” He held up a hand about six inches above Arlene’s head. He definitely knew who she was. I nodded.
That got a worried glance between the two. Riley finally lowered his gun, stepping in closer to me. “Look, kid, that girl is dangerous. Did you catch her name? It’s probably best if you tell us what you know, and we can keep you safe.”
I blinked a few times. My heart was still pumping from having a gun turned on me for so long. It felt wrong to betray the girl, but then, I hardly knew her. Also, Riley had a gun.
“I don’t know her name. All I know is that she called herself the hmmmpph—”
I was cut off as a hand clutched at my mouth from behind, dragging me backwards. The last thing I saw was Riley raising his gun with a look of alarm, and then I was being pulled directly through the wall behind me. In a second I was through, sprawled on the floor of another, darker room—some kind of supply closet? The Hermit was standing over me, looking down with a disapproving look.
“Good work on the distraction. Bad work on almost saying who I am. Don’t do that next time.” She bent down to offer me a hand, and helped to haul me back to my feet. I dusted myself off a bit, shaken.
“Okay, you’re seriously going to have to explain what’s going on, or I’m dipping out right now. That guy had a gun and he looks pissed. What the hell are you doing dragging me along on a bank robbery? I didn’t ask for this!”
Her eyebrows raised. “He had a gun? Okay, first, we need to move.” She grabbed me by the hand, pulling me along one more as she led me out of the closet and through a series of rooms and hallways. Whenever we came across a door she would walk straight through it, pulling me along with her. It was incredibly unsettling. At the very least she kept talking as she went.
“So first, this isn’t a bank robbery. Okay, actually it is a bank robbery, but that’s kind of secondary. The cash is just there, y’know? But more important than the cash is this.” She used her free hand to pull a small, flimsy cardboard box out of the pocket of her hoodie. A thick stack of bills fell out when she did, and she quickly stooped to pick it back up. We stopped in what seemed to be a meeting room, fairly far from where I’d run in with the Agents. I could hear them running through the building faintly in the distance.
She let go of my arm, opening up the cardboard box and sliding out a set of cards. They weren’t regular playing cards. Tarot was at the forefront of my mind, given the girl’s introduction, but even with my lackluster knowledge of Tarot I could tell that this wasn’t a standard deck. All of the card names were different, and the art wasn’t anything that I had seen before.
“Is that Tarot? Does this have something to do with you being The Hermit, and me being Wheel of Fortune? Also, still not sure on what that means.”
She started to shuffle the deck as she spoke. “Some people are pretty good at the whole ‘magic’ thing,” she said, “I’m sure that you know type. Licensed Wizards and Witches, people like Isengrim or Gwendolyn.”
I gaped at her. “You’re a Witch? Seriously?”
She shook her head. “No, no, nothing that powerful. I only have a little bit of magic. So do you, it looks like.”
I tried to calm down a bit. “You’re The Hermit, right? I really need a better name for you than that.”
She grinned. “Call me Nine, if you’d prefer. You should probably stick with Wheel, or Ten, or something, for what it’s worth.”
“Wheel of Fortune. I have something to do with luck? I’m really not up to date on my Tarot readings.”
“You don’t need to be. It’s never a perfect match, anyway. If I was a perfect Hermit I wouldn’t been in society at all.” She cut the deck, flipping over a card from the top. It was the Two of Bottles, which I was pretty sure wasn’t in the regular deck. She set it on the table with a nod and kept shuffling. “I’ve been checking out anyone in the area that pops up in the Major Arcana, seeing if there was anyone interesting.”
“And I was interesting?”
“Not until you turned around.”
“Huh.” I thought for a moment. “I don’t feel very lucky, to be honest with you.”
She shrugged. “It probably comes and goes. It’s a Wheel of Fortune, right? It’s probably spinning, or moving in cycles.” She grinned at me, and it was a little more unsettling than it had been before. “I was counting on that, actually. Hoping that you would draw any attention while I searched through the vault and the safety deposit boxes for this deck.” She flipped over another card as she spoke, laying it on the table. It was a Major Arcana card—0. The Hero. Her grin quickly fell to a frown.
“The Hero? Who’s that?”
“Must be one of the people you were talking to. Two of Bottles probably means a pair, working together in some form of secrecy. The Hero means that it’s someone with morals. Ugh.”
“Also, I’m pretty sure that zero is supposed to be The Fool.”
“Heroes are idiots, and there’s a reason that I’m not using the Versailles pack.” She continued shuffling, her expression now much more serious. “There are some people that are… shall we say, not the biggest fans of my work. They’re playing with a different deck.” She held up the cards, cutting them with one hand. “This deck, to be precise.” She flipped over the top card, and swore loudly as she threw it down on the table. It was a face card—the Shade of Ingots.
She began to pace back and forth rapidly, pulling down her hood and running one hand through her hair, muttering to herself. Eventually she seemed to remember that I was there, and she fixed her gaze on me. “The person you were talking to. Was he tall, neat blonde hair, messy gray suit? Probably carrying a big-ass gun?”
I nodded. “He called himself Agent Riley, his partner was a woman named Arlene.”
She was already pale, but what little color was in her face drained. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me there were Agents here? We need to move, now!” She scooped up the cards from the table, shoving them back into her hoodie before gripping my hand and pulling me along.
“I really hope you’re feeling lucky, Will. We might just need it.”
I seemed to be getting pulled around a lot today. As we hurried through more rooms, Nine talked to me over her shoulder, filling me in.
“Those two, they’re Agents of the Grand Council. Serious business. I’ve run in with Riley before, you don’t want to cross him.”
“What’s a Shade of Ingots? Does he have magic, too?”
Nine shook her head. “Just the opposite. He’s a negative on the scale, and a powerful one at that. He tries to keep it secret, but that gun of his is custom, I tried to look it up. Let’s just say that if he starts firing at you, no amount of luck is going to let you dodge those bullets.”
“And the girl?”
“His partner, presumably. She’ll have magic, not sure what. If you have to fight one of them, fight her.”
I pulled back against her, stopping us toward the end of a hallway. “Look, I don’t want to fight anyone! I was shooting zombies and you just showed up and dragged me along!”
She gave me a withering stare. “You followed me. And besides, this has to be more interesting than shooting zombies.” She batted her eyelashes at me. “Don’t you think I’m interesting, Will?”
I snorted. “Sorry. You’re not my type.”
She dropped her smile, pulling me roughly forward toward the end of the hall. “Fine. Be that way.”
We started moving again, and I immediately tripped over my feet, sprawling out onto the ground. I could feel the low rug giving me friction burns as I fell, even through my jeans, which seemed to have ripped. I let out a low groan.
“Hmmph. Serves you right. Trip on a shoelace?”
“I’m not wearing shoes,” I grumbled as I stood up. “Tripping over my own feet, I guess.”
Nine looked pensive. “Noted. Left or right?”
“Hmm?” The hallway split ahead of us, branching off in two directions. We’d done so much walking through walls and doors by this point that I had no idea where we were in relation to where we had come in. “I dunno, left?”
She veered immediately to the right, pulling me along with her. “Right it is, then.” As we rounded the corner, I stubbed my little toe hard against the corner, and proceeded to hop along on one foot after her while swearing under my breath.
“I think you’re on the unlucky part of the cycle,” she said. “But that’s fine, we can use that. We just need to go in whatever direction you don’t choose.”
“I don’t think that it works like that.” I tried to work my way through the logic of the universe trying to screw me over with bad luck, and it set my head spinning. “Wouldn’t I just end up choosing the best path, because that’s the one that we aren’t going down?”
“Nah,” she said, pulling us through a door. “I don’t think that the universe thinks that far—”
She stopped abruptly, and I slammed into her back. Looking over her shoulder, I could see Riley standing directly in front of us, in the process of unlocking a door a little further down the hall. Everything froze for a moment as he stared us down, mouth slightly agape.
“Hey!” His shout broke the silence. I backed up against the door that we had just passed through, and found it to be stubbornly solid. I blinked, and looked around—in the space of a second, Nine had disappeared. I hadn’t seen her walk through any walls, she seemed to just be gone entirely, leaving nothing between me and Riley as he stepped forward with long strides, pulling his pistol from a holster under his jacket.
“Arlene! Over here, I found them!” He raised his gun, but before it was fully leveled at me, his gaze whipped to the side and he shot out a hand, grasping at empty air.
When he closed his fist, he was holding Nine, gripping her firmly by the hair. From the look on her face, he wasn’t being gentle about it. She cried out in a mix of alarm and pain, scratching at his hand with her fingers without any effect.
“Your vanishing act won’t work on me, kid. Sorry.”
Arlene rounded the corner at a sprint, hurrying over to where Riley was holding Nine at arm’s length.
“Oy, nice catch! This is the one that got away, innit?”
Riley nodded. “She is. I’d go for the iron cuffs, I think.”
Arlene pulled a pair of handcuffs out of a pouch on her vest, passing them over to Riley. “You cuff the lass, let me be dealin’ with the other one, yeah?” She waited for another nod, and started to walk in my direction. I flattened myself out against the wood of the door.
“Look, lad,” she said with a sigh, “you’re obviously a bit green. You cannae take me. Just come quietly, yeah? It’ll be easier for ye if ye do.” As she walked, she casually pulled a set of brass knuckles out of another pocket, sliding it smoothly onto one fist. She gave me a fiery look, one corner of her mouth upturned. “Trust me on this one, lad.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You’re threatening to shoot or beat up teenagers? I’m not so sure that you’re the good guys.”
Arlene said “We’re definitely the good guys, laddie,” at the same time that Riley responded with “Good is a relative term.” She turned to give him a look, and he shrugged. I saw my chance, and I leaped forward.
I didn’t get far. As I ducked past Arlene, she spun, smashing me in the back of the head with a closed fist. I went down seeing literal stars as a bust of red sparks shot out from her fist, cascading around my head. I was pretty sure that she hadn’t used the hand with the brass knuckles, but it sure as hell felt like she had.
I fell flat on my stomach, slamming my chin into the ground. I could taste blood where I had bitten down, hard, on my tongue. I groaned, and felt Arlene stepping on my back.
“I warned ye, didn’t I? Tch.”
I looked up, my vision still spinning, and saw Nine being forced into handcuffs by Riley. She was looking down at me with serious concern, and I could see her brow lighten a bit when she saw that I was still conscious.
Shit. She actually did care about what happened to me. That made it even worse. My head made a dull thud as I let it drop to the ground, and I began to study the corner of the wall and the floor with extreme curiosity as I waited to get handcuffs of my own.
And there, directly in front of me, was a penny lying up against the wall. It was leaning almost perfectly parallel to the wall, so that just the edge would have been visible from above, but now I was looking Lincoln directly in the face as I laid on the floor, taken out by one punch from a girl a foot shorter than me. I tried not to think about how disapproving he looked.
“Pfft. Some lucky penny you are,” I mumbled to myself.
A second later, I felt Arlene step off of me. I blinked, still staring down Lincoln, and thought to myself about how much the meaning of the word ‘luck’ had changed over the past half an hour.
“Oy, lad. Ye alright down there? I didn’ae hit ye that hard, did I?”
I heard Arlene speaking from right above me, and with a quick push, I stood up. I immediately slammed my head into something hard, and almost went back down before I heard Arlene howl out in pain and stumble backwards. When I stood up, I could see her standing a few steps back, clutching at her nose while a steady stream of blood flowed from between her fingers. “Ah, Gods! I’ll feckin’ smack ye fer that, ye little git!”
She swung wildly forward, and I dodged to the side. She clipped me in the shoulder as I went, but she was punching in the same direction I was moving, and wasn’t much more than a tap. She swung at me again and I stumbled backward toward Riley, each clumsy footstep taking me just outside the range of her swing. I heard Nine call out from behind me.
“Cycles, Wheel! It’s working in cycles! Get me the hell out of here before it goes back!”
I spun around, turning my back to Arlene to face Riley, who looked more than little surprised at the turn of events. One of his hands had a grip on Nine by the handcuffs, while the other was holding his pistol, which was turned away toward the wall. With an ongoing melee between me and his partner, it seemed like he wasn’t willing to risk shooting at us. I took the opportunity and jumped forward, grabbing at the hand holding Nine and trying to pry her loose.
He brought his gun around, moving to slam it down on my head, and I ducked back at the last moment. The butt of the gun carried downward, slamming into his own fist, and he let out a yelp as his hand opened and Nine wriggled herself free.
She leaped forward, arms still stuck behind her back, and pushed her shoulder into me, charging us both into and through a wall. We were barely on the other side when I heard a thunderous bang, and a bullet punched through the wall after us, sending flecks of drywall flying. She didn’t have to say anything—I was already moving away from the area, and now it was my turn to pull her, helping her keep her balance as she ran along with her hands still cuffed behind her. I shot her a sideways glance as we ran.
“Please tell me you have an escape plan.”
She nodded, speaking between quick breaths. “I have an idea of one. We’re going to need some momentum.”
Nine and I dipped our way in and out of rooms, ducking through walls whenever we heard the Agents catching up to us. It seemed like slipping away from them a second time had seriously ticked them off. We stopped for a moment to catch our breath, only to have a section of wall explode outward behind us in a shower of plaster and glowing red sparks.
Arlene stepped through the gap, massaging her knuckles. There was still some blood dripping from her nose, and she wiped it off with the back of her hand.
“Y’won’t be gettin’ out of here that easy, ye little shits. Sit still!”
She crouched, then leaped forward, propelled through the air by a cloud of sparks shooting out of her feet, hands outstretched as she rocketed toward us. I shoved Nine out of the way at the last second, no doubt aided by my luck, and she used her own power to take us through the wall. I heard a muffled crashing from the room that we had just left, and we didn’t stick around to wait for Arlene to repeat the performance.
We didn’t stop again until we had put some distance between us, crouching down in what must have been the same storage closet that Nine had pulled me into before. It took a moment for us to both catch our breath enough to speak, and when we did, it was in low whispers.
“In my hair,” Nine said, “there’s a bobby pin. Grab it and get me out of these cuffs.” She tossed her head back, flipping down her hood and turning to give me better access. I grabbed the pin, causing her hair to fall down and cover half of her face.
“I’m guessing you can’t just ignore these cuffs, or you’d be out of them already,” I said. She turned her back to me, holding her hands out behind her. I began to fiddle around with the lock. I had no idea what I was doing—I was basically just jiggling the bobby pin around and hoping for the best.
“They’re iron, which doesn’t help, but my magic tends to apply to anything I’m wearing anyway. Otherwise I’d be running around naked any time I used it.”
“Yeah, I can’t imagine that would be very convenient.”
She turned her head half around, looking at me through a curtain of hair. “Don’t pretend you’re not imagining it. Or—wait—I’m not quite your type, am I?” Her glare was withering.
“Look, do you want these cuffs off or not?”
She sighed. “I would definitely prefer them off.”
“Well, that sucks, because I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
As I spoke, one of the cuffs clicked open. I stared at it in amazement.
“Well, there you go,” she said. “Beginner’s luck. Come on, it’s time to get out of here.”
She stood up first, pulling me to my feet, and we stepped through the wall. To my surprise, we didn’t end up in another room, but outside on the sidewalk. I looked around, making sure that nobody had seen us emerge from the wall, and exchanged a quick nod with Nine.
“We need momentum, right? Is the sidewalk good enough for that?”
She scanned the surroundings. “Looks empty enough. Let’s go while we can.”
This time, instead of getting pulled along, we were running together. Nine took off at a jog and I ran alongside her, one hand on her shoulder. As we passed a window into the bank, I glanced over.
Riley was standing just inside, head turning to watch us run past.
A second after we passed the window, I heard the glass shattering. We both picked up the pace. I glanced behind me and saw Riley vaulting through the window, landing easily and breaking into a dead sprint. He was tall, and he was fast. Within another few seconds he was almost on us, his tie whipping back over his shoulder as he pumped his arms.
“Stop! Don’t make this worse for yourselves!”
I stumbled on the pavement, stubbing my toe on a crack as I ran and almost falling on my face. I was able to catch myself, with a bit of help from Nine, just in time.
“I think my luck is wearing thin here! Might want to get us out of here soon!”
She didn’t say anything, but stared intently forward and gave me a curt nod. A second later, the world disappeared around us.
We were formless again, and I could feel the rush of forward momentum. I let myself relax a little, without actually having any muscles to relax. We drifted on for a few more seconds, and then the world snapped back into place around us.
We were back in the tenements. From what I could tell, we were a couple floors below my apartment. Not the best aim, then, but I would take it.
Nine slumped over beside me, leaning heavily on my shoulder. I propped her up, alarmed.
“Hey, whoa! You alright? Nine? Talk to me here.”
She lifted her head, her eyelids drooping with fatigue. “S-sorry. Just a pretty big jump. Takes a lot out of me. I’ll be fine.”
“Mhm. Sure.” I slung one of her arms over my shoulder, and helped her to stumble up a few flights of stairs. By the time we were back at my apartment, she was dozing off, drifting in and out of consciousness. I opened the door and helped her inside.
Once we were in, she stirred, sliding her arm off of my shoulders and stumbling forward, half-asleep, to collapse onto the couch. She sprawled out, face down, letting out a long sigh of relief.
“I’m just gonna crash here for the night, if that’s cool,” she said. Her voice was muffled somewhat by the cushions, until she turned her head to look at me. As tired as she was, she still managed to flash me a mischievous grin. “You probably used up a lot of magic guiding us back here, so don’t think you’re getting lucky tonight. Besides,” she closed her eyes, settling her head down onto a throw pillow, “I need to get my beauty sleep.”
I stared at her, not quite sure of how to respond. “Look, uh…”
She frowned, opening her eyes. “You aren’t going to try and kick me out, are you? Not when I went to all the trouble to make this worth your while?”
“I’m not totally sure what you mean by that.”
She reached one hand into the pocket of her hoodie, rummaging around and fishing out a stack of bills. She tossed it forward, and it tumbled to a stop on the coffee table. I went over to look at it. It was all hundreds, wrapped in a paper band with ‘$10,000’ printed across it. I could feel my heart skip a beat.
“Holy shit. You can’t be serious.”
She shrugged. “The bank is insured. It won’t impact them. Besides,” she rummaged around in her pocket again, pulling out the deck of unfamiliar Tarot cards that she had been using earlier. “I got Orren’s personal Tarot pack, and that’s way more valuable than the cash. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” she shut her eyes once more, turning her head so that it faced away from me. I could hear her beginning to snore a few moments later.
I picked up the stack of bills, my hands trembling just a little as I thought about how much money I was holding. I thumbed through it in awe, and then sat down in a chair opposite the couch, alternating between marveling at the cash in hand and at the girl that had managed to sneak up on me out of nowhere earlier that night, and who was now sleeping on my couch.
I still didn’t even know her name, but I had a feeling that I would end up getting to know her pretty well.
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