It was after ten and fully dark out by the time Luc made it home, tiredly fueling her car long enough to get it into the small driveway out front of their two story townhome. The place was tiny, the siding close to falling off, the front porch sagging. Luc had done what she could to rig the place back together, mainly focused on the inside of the house.

  Stepping inside, she was mildly tempted to navigate up to her room with her eyes closed. If she closed her eyes, she wouldn’t have to notice everything that still needed to be done. From home repairs to growing tasks like laundry and dishes.

  Of course, her mother was still at the diner. She probably would be for hours still. If Luc saw her at all before the next time she worked, it’d be an oddity.

  Putting the rest of the house out of mind, Luc escaped into her bedroom and shut the door to her sanctuary. She didn’t bother undoing her transformation; she needed to figure out a way to clean and patch it anyway. Needed to do that before her next outing as a magical girl.

  And then there was homework to do.

  Which was why she collapsed onto her bed before doing anything else, sinking so far into the mattress it might as well have consumed her. The day finally began to process as she stared up at the ceiling, mind going through everything that had happened. Struggling to deal with the bigger threat, nearly getting fired from the commission, getting an offer from the commissioner to be his daughter’s rival. Being told she had no star power. No star power.

  She lay there, unable to move, until something began to scrape outside the window.

  A groan escaped her lips as she sat up, swinging around to look at the window. In the dark, with the glare of her lamp bouncing off it, she couldn’t make out anything. Were raccoons on the roof again?

  Just when she’d laid back down, content to let the raccoons do what raccoons do and infest her attic, the window squeaked upward.

  Luc yelped, falling off the bed with a thump in her scramble to find a weapon and beat off whatever intruder was barging in. God, who looked at her house and thought yeah, there’s something worth stealing there?

  The figure grunted as it hauled itself through the window, diving head first toward the floor. It let out a strangled noise, voice deep, before beginning to curse.

  “This is a terrible angle to climb through a window,” he said, letting go of the window frame and catching himself with his hands. He arm crawled the rest of his way through, knees thumping against the floor as Luc grabbed her lamp, ready to wield it as a weapon.

  She wound back, ready to strike, when he lifted his face. Through the rapid beating of her heart and roaring of blood in her ears, she recognized him, and dropped the lamp.

  “Tobias? What the fuck!”

  Tobias grunted, pushing himself up onto his knees, dusting off his hands on his shirt. “You’re terribly hard to contact.”

  The blood roared right back up to her face. What the hell was wrong with him? Who just climbed through a stranger’s bedroom rather than knock on the front door? Why was he trying to reach her at all? “You climbed through my window!”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You weren’t answering your door.”

  “So you climbed through my window?”

  He shrugged, a sheepish look on his face. “I recognize that it’s a little bit stalkery, but I tried to find your number first. Nobody seems to have it.”

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, and I asked her for your number first. What does that have to do with it?” The thought seemed to come to him even as he asked the question, and he shook his head. “Oh, no, I guess it does look that way but no. I have a girlfriend, and you’re gay, aren’t you? I just wanted to check on you and make sure you were okay.”

  Luc took a step away from the lamp and dropped onto her bed, watching as Tobias picked himself up and shut the window. He was acting like this was completely normal, not like he was a psycho who’d just climbed through a stranger’s window. It wasn’t like they were friends, they hardly knew each other. There was a reason he hadn’t had her number.

  “And you couldn’t just wait til tomorrow?” Luc asked, looking up at him. Was she really in such a terrible state that he’d been compelled to come make sure she hadn’t, what, bled out?

  He shrugged again. “Could have, but I figured you wouldn’t want to talk about magical girl stuff at school.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “It’s not like it’s some big secret,” she muttered.

  “More like an open secret, yeah.” He leaned against her dresser on the opposite wall, crossing his feet over each other, staring at her. “I thought you would have changed by now.”

  “I did,” she snapped. “I just had to change back so I can figure out how to get the blood out of this.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Tobias said.

  Luc rolled her eyes. “Really? Didn’t realize cleaning blood up was common knowledge.”

  “It’s not, but I’m a farmer, and an athlete. I’ve gotten my fair amount of blood stains out of clothes before. Do you want some help?”

  “I don’t want you touching my clothes.”

  “I don’t want to touch your bloody clothes, I’m just trying to be helpful. God, are you always this combative?”

  “I’m combative? You’re a stalker!”

  “This isn’t stalking,” Tobias said, rolling his eyes. “This is me trying to be your friend. No wonder you don’t have any.”

  Luc scoffed. “I have friends.”

  “Sure, and that’s why nobody had your phone number or social media or anything.”

  Luc stared at him, mouth open as she tried to formulate a response. Maybe he was right. She didn’t really talk to anyone, spend time with anyone, but when did she have time for friends? She was always working for her mom, or out doing magical girl things, just trying to make ends meet. What friend was interested in hanging out while she waited tables, or coming along on jobs.

  “Maybe you have a point,” she murmured, looking down at her hands. She’d scrubbed and scrubbed them at work, trying to get the blood and grease out from beneath her nails, to the point her skin was raw and red. No matter how short she kept her nails, she couldn’t seem to keep them clean, and endlessly picking at her cuticles didn’t help either. “I should probably make a social media, but apparently I have no star power.”

  “I mean, you kinda don’t.”

  Luc lifted her head to glare at him.

  “Hey, I’m just telling you the truth. And you could probably fix that with a little effort. Right now, you just aren’t trying.”

  “Because I don’t have time for it.” Luc sank back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling once more. If Tobias wanted to hang around in her bedroom, it wasn’t like she could stop him. Well, she could call the cops, but it wasn’t really worth doing all that. “I’m going to have to make time for it, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m Miss Money Bag’s new rival,” Luc said, rolling her eyes.

  “Really?” Tobias laughed. “I thought you didn’t want to be anyone’s rival.”

  “I don’t want to, but the commissioner offered to pay me for it, and I can’t really turn him down.” She lifted a hand and motioned around, as if that would explain it.

  “Well…” Tobias trailed off. “You can’t be her rival looking like that. Give me your clothes.”

  She lifted her head, turning to look at him. “You’re being weirdly insistent about the clothes.”

  “Oh, do you know how to get blood out of them?”

  “No,” she grumbled. “Get out so I can change.”

  “Out onto the roof or…?”

  She tossed her pillow at him, then pointed to the bedroom door. He rolled his eyes, threw the pillow back, and stepped out into the hall.

  As strange as it was, Luc stripped out of her magical girl outfit, deciding she wasn’t going to think too hard about it. She changed into a pair of loose sweat pants and a T-shirt before opening the door back up, handing the skirt and blouse over to him. She’d just buy a new pair of tights; they weren’t worth trying to save.

  “Where’s your bathroom?” he asked. Luc pointed him down the hall, then decided to follow as he made his way inside and began filling the sink. He turned the clothes over in his hands, running a finger along the large gash in the shirt. “I hope you can sew.”

  “I can.”

  “Good, because I really can’t,” he said. “Anyway…”

  Luc ended up sitting on the bathroom counter as Tobias walked her through cleaning blood out of her clothes, one knee tucked up to her chest as she listened to him talk.

  “You really just came over to check on me?” she asked, her voice soft. “You don’t want anything from me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Is that weird?”

  “A little.”

  “Would it make you feel better if I asked for a favor?”

  “A bit, actually,” she said with a chuckle. It wasn’t charity if he was getting something out of it too.

  “All right, give me a second to think about it.” He continued scrubbing the clothes as he thought, pausing to look up at her. “You build things right? Do you think you could make some sort of monitor for the farm? This isn’t the first time we’ve gotten a magical infestation, and it’d be really nice if we could catch them before they became a big problem.”

  Luc frowned. “You’ve had infestations before?”

  “Yeah, several times,” he said. “It’s odd, right?”

  “It is,” Luc agreed. Multiple infestations in the same place was almost unheard of. “I can come check it out, see what I can do.”

  “Excellent,” Tobias said, grinning at her. “Oh, and come join me and Maisey for lunch. She can help you set up your social media page!”

  “Wait, what?” She didn’t want to be put in his debt again, or that of his girlfriend.

  “You’re not going to let this nepo baby outshine you, are you?” Tobias asked. “You’ve worked hard for what you have, she hasn’t. You deserve the attention for it, not her. And rivalries go both ways, don’t they?”

  “I suppose…”

  “Then give it a try,” Tobias said. “I’d much rather root for you over some nepo baby.”

  “All right, fine,” Luc said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll try and figure out this star power thing.”

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